Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Travel Experiences

3rd century BCE – 8th century CE

Susanne Luther, Pieter B. Hartog, Clare E. Wilde, Susanne Luther, Pieter B. Hartog, Clare E. Wilde

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9783110717419
• eBook ISBN: 9783110717518
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient History

Travel and pilgrimage have become central research topics in recent years. Some archaeologists and historians have applied globalization theories to ancient intercultural connections. Classicists have rediscovered travel as a literary topic in Greek and Roman writing. Scholars of early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been rethinking long-familiar pilgrimage practices in new interdisciplinary contexts.

This volume contributes to this flourishing field of study in two ways. First, the focus of its contributions is on experiences of travel. Our main question is: How did travelers in the ancient world experience and make sense of their journeys, real or imaginary, and of the places they visited? Second, by treating Jewish, Christian, and Islamic experiences together, this volume develops a longue durée perspective on the ways in which travel experiences across these three traditions resembled each other. By focusing on "experiences of travel," we hope to foster interaction between the study of ancient travel in the humanities and that of broader human experience in the social sciences.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Travel Experiences
• “And as They Travelled Eastward” (Gen 11:2): Travel in the Book of Genesis and the Anonymous Travelers in the Tower of Babel Account
• The Consolations of Travel: Reading Seneca’s Ad Marciam vis-à-vis Paul of Tarsus
• The (Missing) Motif of “Returning Home” from an Otherworldly Journey in Menippean Literature and the New Testament
• The Educational Aspect of the Lukan Travel Narrative: Jesus as a Πεπαιδευμένος
• Acts of the Apostles—A Celebration of Uncertainty? Constructing a Dialogical Self for the Early Jesus Movement
• “Today or Tomorrow We Will Go to Such and Such a City” (Jas 4:13): The Experience of Interconnectivity and the Mobility of Norms in the Ancient Globalized World
• Heavenly Journey and Divine Epistemology in the Fourth Gospel
• Following Vespasian in His Footsteps: Movement and (E)motion Management in Josephus’ Judean War
• Religion on the Road—Nehalennia Revisited: Voyagers Addressing a North Sea Deity in the Second Century CE
• Mapping Cosmological Space in the Apocalypse of Paul and the Visio Pauli: The Actualization of Virtual Spatiality in Two Pauline Apocalyptical Journeys based on 2 Cor 12:2–4
• The Travels of Barnabas: From the Acts of the Apostles to Late Antique Hagiographic Literature
• Rabbinic Geography: Between the Imaginary and Real
• The Journey of Zayd Ibn ʿAmr: In Search of True Worship
• Nautical Fiction of Late Antiquity: Jews and Christians Traveling by Sea
• Monasteries as Travel Loci for Muslims and Christians (500–1000 CE)
• Sachregister
• Stellenregister