Religious Identifications in Late Antique Papyri

3rd—12th Century Egypt

Mattias Brand, Eline Scheerlinck, Mattias Brand, Eline Scheerlinck

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032263502
• eBook ISBN: 9781000735765
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This volume provides novel social-scientific and historical approaches to religious identifications in late antique (3rd–12th century) Egyptian papyri, bridging the gap between two academic fields that have been infrequently in full conversation: papyrology and the study of religion.

Through eleven in-depth case studies of Christian, Islamic, "pagan, " Jewish, Manichaean, and Hermetic texts and objects, this book offers new interpretations on markers of religious identity in papyrus documents written in Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. Using papyri as a window into the lives of ordinary believers, it explores their religious behavior and choices in everyday life. Three valuable perspectives are outlined and explored in these documents: a critical reflection on the concept of identity and the role of religious groups, a situational reading of religious repertoire and symbols, and a focus on speech acts as performative and efficacious utterances.

Religious Identifications in Late Antique Papyri offers a wide scope and comparative approach to this topic, suitable for students and scholars of late antiquity and Egypt, as well as those interested in late antique religion.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in Open Access at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction: Theorizing Religious Identification in Late Antique Papyri
• Part I Problematizing Religious “Identity” and the Identification of Religious Groups
• Part II Reconstructing Situational Religious Identifications
• Part III Performance and Audience
• Index