Gaming Greekness : : Cultural Agonism among Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire / / Allan Georgia.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2021 English
• VerfasserIn: Georgia, Allan,
• Place / Publishing House: Piscataway, NJ : : Gorgias Press, , [2021]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Gorgias Studies in Early Christianity and Patristics ; 76
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (374 p.)

How the Jewish and Christian communities that emerged in the early Roman Empire navigated a 'Hellenistic' world is a longstanding and unsettled question. Recent scholarship on the intellectual cultures that developed among Greek speaking subjects of Rome in the so-called Second Sophistic as well as models for culture and competition informed by mathematical and economic game theories provide new ideas to address this question. This study offers a model for a kind of culture-making that accounts for how the cultural ecosystems of the Roman Empire enabled these religious communities to win legitimacy and build discourses of self-expression by competing on the same cultural fields as other Roman subjects. By considering a range of texts and figures-including Justin Martyr, Tatian, the 'second' Paul of the Acts of the Apostles, Lucian of Samosata, 4 Maccabees, and Favorinus of Arelate-this study contends that competing for legitimacy enabled those fledgling religious communities to express coherent cultural identities and secure social credibility within the complex milieu of Roman Imperial society.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- TABLE OF CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -- CHAPTER ONE. GAMING THE SYSTEM: CULTURAL COMPETITION AND THE STAKES OF "GREEKNESS" IN THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE -- CHAPTER TWO. "IN AND OUT OF THE GAME": FAVORINUS, LUCIAN AND THE STRATEGIC POSSIBILITIES OF COMPETING FOR GREEKNESS -- CHAPTER THREE. PAUL'S UNDERSTUDY: RECASTING PAUL AS A 2ND CENTURY CULTURAL COMPETITOR -- CHAPTER FOUR. PIETY AND PAIDEIA: JEWS DYING LIKE GREEKS IN FRONT OF ROMANS IN 4 MACCABEES -- CHAPTER FIVE. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS HAD GREEK ROAD SIGNS: POSTURE, DEPORTMENT AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL MARKETPLACE IN THE FRAME NARRATIVE OF JUSTIN MARTYR'S DIALOGUE WITH TRYPHO -- CHAPTER SIX. THE MONSTER AT THE END OF [T]HIS BOOK: HYBRIDITY AS THEOLOGICAL STRATEGY AND CULTURAL CRITIQUE IN TATIAN'S AGAINST THE GREEKS -- CONCLUSION -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDICES