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El santuario de Sarapis en Ostia
Authors: ---
ISBN: 8484240096 9788484240099 Year: 2001 Volume: 4 Publisher: Tarragona : Universitat Rovira i Virgili,


Book
Romanising oriental Gods
Authors: ---
ISBN: 1282396315 9786612396311 9047441842 9789047441847 9789004132931 9004132937 Year: 2008 Publisher: Leiden New York

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Abstract

The traditional grand narrative correlating the decline of Graeco-Roman religion with the rise of Christianity has been under pressure for three decades. This book argues that the alternative accounts now emerging significantly underestimate the role of three major cults, of Cybele and Attis, Isis and Serapis, and Mithras. Although their differences are plain, these cults present sufficient common features to justify their being taken typologically as a group. All were selective adaptations of much older cults of the Fertile Crescent. It was their relative sophistication, their combination of the imaginative power of unfamiliar myth with distinctive ritual performance and ethical seriousness, that enabled them both to focus and to articulate a sense of the autonomy of religion from the socio-political order, a sense they shared with Early Christianity. The notion of 'mystery' was central to their ability to navigate the Weberian shift from ritualist to ethical salvation.


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Isis and Sarapis in the Roman world
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ISBN: 9004101217 9004283463 9789004101210 Year: 1995 Volume: 124 Publisher: Leiden ; New York : E.J. Brill,

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Isis and Sarapis in the Roman World deals with the integration of the cult of Isis among Roman cults, the subsequent transformation of Isis and Sarapis into gods of the Roman state, and the epigraphic employment of the names of these two deities independent from their cultic context. The myth that the guardians of tradition and Roman religion tried to curb the cult of Isis in order to rid Rome and the imperium from this decadent cult will be dispelled. A closer look at inscriptions from the Rhine and Danubian provinces shows that most dedicators were not Isiac cult initiates and that women did not outnumber men as dedicators. Inscriptions that mention the two deities in connection with a wish for the well-being of the emperor and the imperial family are of special significance.

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