Cart
Free US shipping over $10
Proud to be B-Corp

Rethinking the Gods Peter van Nuffelen (Dr, Universiteit Gent, Belgium)

Rethinking the Gods By Peter van Nuffelen (Dr, Universiteit Gent, Belgium)

Rethinking the Gods by Peter van Nuffelen (Dr, Universiteit Gent, Belgium)


$112.39
Condition - New
Only 2 left

Summary

From the first century BC onwards religion was embraced as a source of philosophical knowledge. This book shows how that approach increased the authority of religion and how it further developed in Christianity, thus contributing to current debates about the origins of modern ideas about religion.

Rethinking the Gods Summary

Rethinking the Gods: Philosophical Readings of Religion in the Post-Hellenistic Period by Peter van Nuffelen (Dr, Universiteit Gent, Belgium)

Ancient philosophers had always been fascinated by religion. From the first century BC onwards the traditionally hostile attitude of Greek and Roman philosophy was abandoned in favour of the view that religion was a source of philosophical knowledge. This book studies that change, not from the usual perspective of the history of religion, but as part of the wider tendency of Post-Hellenistic philosophy to open up to external, non-philosophical sources of knowledge and authority. It situates two key themes, ancient wisdom and cosmic hierarchy, in the context of Post-Hellenistic philosophy and traces their reconfigurations in contemporary literature and in the polemic between Jews, Christians and pagans. Overall, Post-Hellenistic philosophy displayed a relatively high degree of unity in its ideas on religion, which should not be reduced to a preparation for Neoplatonism.

Rethinking the Gods Reviews

' [Nuffelen] has provided us here with a most stimulating, well-researched and well-argued monograph on a complex of topics central to the intellectual concerns of a wide range of thinkers in the first two centuries of the Common Era.' Literaturkritik

About Peter van Nuffelen (Dr, Universiteit Gent, Belgium)

Peter van Nuffelen is Professor of History at Universiteit Gent, Belgium. His interests cover Hellenistic history, ancient historiography, ancient religion and philosophy and late antique history and literature, including in oriental languages. He has published widely in these fields, including the monograph Un heritage de paix et de piete. Etude sur les Histoires ecclesiastiques de Socrate et de Sozomene (2004) and the edited volumes Faces of Hellenism (2009), Monotheism in Late Antiquity Between Christians and Pagans (2010, with S. Mitchell) and One God. Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (FirstFourth Centuries AD) (2010, with S. Mitchell). He is currently working on projects on late antique historiography and on ritual communication in Late Antiquity.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I. Ancient Wisdom: 1. Tracing the origins: ancients, philosophers, and mystery cults; 2. Plutarch of Chaeronea: 'History as a basis for a philosophy that has theology as its end'; 3. Numenius: philosophy as a hidden mystery; 4. Dio Chrysostom, Apuleius and the rhetoric of ancient wisdom; Part II. Cosmic Hierarchy: 5. Towards the pantheon as the paradigm of order; 6. The Great King of Persia and his satraps: ideal and ideology; 7. Dio Chrysostom: virtue and structure in the Kingship Orations; 8. Plutarch: a benevolent hierarchy of gods and men; Part III. Polemic and Prejudice: Challenging the Discourse: 9. Lucian, Epicureanism and strategies of satire; 10. Philo of Alexandria: challenging Greco-Roman culture; 11. Celsus and Christian superstition; Epilogue.

Additional information

NPB9781107012035
9781107012035
1107012031
Rethinking the Gods: Philosophical Readings of Religion in the Post-Hellenistic Period by Peter van Nuffelen (Dr, Universiteit Gent, Belgium)
New
Hardback
Cambridge University Press
2011-12-01
282
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a new book - be the first to read this copy. With untouched pages and a perfect binding, your brand new copy is ready to be opened for the first time

Customer Reviews - Rethinking the Gods