Bøger af Jorg Rupke

Die romische Kaiserzeit stellt insgesamt eine Epoche dar, deren religiose Transformationen die nachantike mediterrane, europaische und westasiatische Religionsgeschichte gepragt haben. Trotz oder gerade wegen der Fulle der Details, die wir aus dieser Epoche kennen, bleibt der Versuch, ein Modell fur die Beschreibung oder gar Erklarung dieser Veranderungen zu entwerfen, eine groe Herausforderung.Jorg Rupke nahert sich einem solchen Modell von zwei Seiten: Zum einen legt er fur die Beschreibung den Interpretationsrahmen einer gelebten antiken Religion"e; zu Grunde. Der individuellen Aneignung religioser Traditionen und der daraus resultierenden Dynamik wird hohe Aufmerksamkeit eingeraumt, Gruppenbildungen werden erst als Folgeerscheinungen analysiert. Zum anderen wird der groe politische Raum des Imperium selbst als struktureller Rahmen individuellen Handelns interpretiert, in dem neue Normen religiosen Handelns entwickelt werden.

The Roman Empire was home to a fascinating variety of different cults and religions. Its enormous extent, the absence of a precisely definable state religion and constant exchanges with the religions and cults of conquered peoples and of neighbouring cultures resulted in a multifaceted diversity of religious convictions and practices.This volume provides a compelling view of central aspects of cult and religion in the Roman Empire, among them the distinction between public and private cult, the complex interrelations between different religious traditions, their mutually entangled developments and expansions, and the diversity of regional differences, rituals, religious texts and artefacts.

Was religious practice in ancient Rome cultic and hostile to individual expression? Or was there, rather, considerable latitude for individual initiative and creativity? Joerg Rupke, one of the world's leading authorities on Roman religion, demonstrates in his new book that it was a lived religion with individual appropriations evident at the...

The gods were the true heroes of Rome. In this major new contribution to our understanding of ancient history, Jorg Rupke guides the reader through the fascinating world of Roman religion, describing its unique characteristics and bringing its peculiarities into stark relief.

Religious individuality is not restricted to modernity. This book offers a new reading of the ancient sources in order to find indications for the spectrum of religious practices and intensified forms of such practices only occasionally denounced as 'superstition'. Authors from Cicero in the first century BC to the law codes of the fourth century AD share the assumption that authentic and binding communication between individuals and gods is possible and widespread, even if problematic in the case of divination or the confrontation with images of the divine. A change in practices and assumptions throughout the imperial period becomes visible. It might be characterised as 'individualisation' and informed the Roman law of religions. The basic constellation - to give freedom of religion and to regulate religion at the same time - resonates even into modern bodies of law and is important for juridical conflicts today.