Household and Family Religion in Antiquity

by Saul M. Olyan (Editor)

The first book to explore the religious dimensions of the family and the household in ancient Mediterranean and West Asian antiquity.

Genres: Ancient History

346 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 2008

Reviews

[DAJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

In academia, and I think particularly in religious studies, there's a growing trend of treating the ancient Mediterranean as a single cultural region, instead of the traditional approach of segregating Near Eastern and Greco-Roman studies from each other. This book tackles the difficult subject of religion on the smallest scale, for which the evidence can be very sparse and under-studied. It's not an introduction to the topic; for that, the closest thing I can think of would be the chapter on practices of the individual and family in Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide.

The book can be tediously theoretical; the whole second chapter is dedicated to theory and terminology, but most of the chapters that follow also spend a fair bit of time discussing the same issues. But when it gets down to the actual evidence, it's a valuable resource. In addition to an introduction and conclusion by Bodel and Olyan and the theoretical chapter by Stanley K. Stowers, there are studies on Mesopotamia, Syria, Ugarit, Philistia, and Rome. Ancient Israel receives three chapters and Egypt and Greece two each. Each chapter has a different author, so when there's more than one chapter per culture, one can get an idea of the range of viewpoints within a discipline (Barbara S. Lesko's chapter on Egypt rather amusingly lists all the points on which she disagrees with the author of the other Egyptian chapter, Robert Ritner). With six studies dedicated to the Levant, the book would be most useful to someone specializing in that region, but anyone interested in any of these cultures can benefit from it.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review of the book can be found here:http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/6657_7...