How can social-scientific approaches to the gospels advance biblical studies? This volume offers the proceedings of a conference that brought together a number of expert biblical scholars, specialists of ancient religious practices, and proponents of an anthropological approach to ancient Christian and Greco-Roman religious tradition.
Over the past decades, biblical scholars have gradually become more aware of the importance of the social sciences for their own field. This has produced a steady flow of studies informed by work that was done in the fields of group formation psychology, the sociology of emerging movements and the sociology of religion, and historical anthropology. This volume offers the proceedings of a conference that brought together a number of expert biblical scholars, specialists of ancient religious practices, and proponents of an anthropological approach to ancient Christian and Greco-Roman religious tradition. It was the explicit purpose not to focus exclusively on purely methodological reflections, but to explore and evaluate how methodological concepts and constructs can be developed and then also checked in applying them on specific cases and topics that are typical for understanding earliest Christianity.
Table of contents:
Joseph Verheyden/John S. Kloppenborg: Introduction
Bodies, Demons, and Magic
Giovanni B. Bazzana: Beelzebul vs Satan: Exorcist Subjectivity and Spirit Possession in the Historical Jesus -
Laura Feldt: Monster Theory and the Gospels: Monstrosities, Ambiguous Power and Emotions in Mark -
Sarah E. Rollens: From Birth Pangs to Dismembered Limbs: The Anthropology of Bodily Violence in the Gospel of Mark -
Brigidda Bell: Discerning the False Prophets: An Embodied Approach to Prophetic Testing in Matthew and the
Didache -
William Arnal: Textual Healing: Magic in Mark and Acts
Practices
Zeba A. Crook: Religion's Coercive Prayers -
Martin Ebner: Der Wanderprediger und sein Anhang als »Lehrer« und »Schüler«: Jesus und seine Jünger im Rahmen der römischen Lehrertopographie
Spaces
Halvor Moxnes: Secrecy in the Gospel of Matthew from an Anthropological Perspective: Creation of an Alternative World -
Daniel A. Smith: Excursion, Incursion, Conquest: A Spatial Approach to Mission in the Synoptics
Visions
Santiago Guijarro Oporto: The Visions of Jesus and His Disciples -
Jan N. Bremmer: Ghosts, Resurrections, and Empty Tombs in the Gospels, the Greek Novel, and the Second Sophistic -
Pieter F. Craffert: Re-Visioning
Jesus' Resurrection: The Resurrection Stories in a Neuroanthropological Perspective
Response
Simon Coleman: Being Undisciplined: An Anthropologist's Response
