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There was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored \"ethnic and cultural,\" but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac's systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism--or proto-racism--which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society. Magisterial in scope and scholarship, and engagingly written, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity further suggests that an understanding of ancient attitudes toward other peoples sheds light not only on Greco-Roman imperialism and the ideology of enslavement (and the concomitant integration or non-integration) of foreigners in those societies, but also on the disintegration of the Roman Empire and on more recent imperialism as well. The first part considers general themes in the history of discrimination; the second provides a detailed analysis of proto-racism and prejudices toward particular groups of foreigners in the Greco-Roman world. The last chapter concerns Jews in the ancient world, thus placing anti-Semitism in a broader context.

In the classical period, the scholars built the division of science into two groups namely, the science of religion called “al-‘ulûm al-dîniyah”, and the science of non-religious or “al-‘ulûm al-dunyawiyah”. In the science of religion, they have the science of exegesis, the science of ḥ adîth, the science of kalâm, the science of fiqh, and the science of tasawuf. While on non-religious sciences, they have history, medicine, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, optic, physics, cosmography, and many more. On that time, the scholars were imbued with high appreciation of tought, so they succeeded in making rapid progress in various fields of life, including the field of knowledge and philosophy. The peak of progress occurred at the time of the ‘Abbâsids, the previous Khalîfah al-Ma’mûn. In the view of Greek or Hellenic thought there were two expert views, rejecting Hellenism or accepting it. The differences lied in the views of Islam, Islam as ‘aqîdah (creed) and Islam as a civilization. Those who reject Hellenism view Islam as a creed with revelation as the source of knowledge. While those who accept Hellenism view Islam as not a creed, but Islam as civilization.

Interaction between Greeks and non-Greek peoples is a central theme of contemporary Greek historiography. Most such studies, however, involve the peoples of the successor states of Alexander's empire. Less well known were the encounters between Greeks and the independent peoples living beyond the frontiers of the Greek world. A noteworthy example of such an encounter is that between Ptolemaic Egypt and the kingdom of Kush in Nubia. Early interpretations of this encounter relied on the concept of Hellenization, arguing that objects of Mediterranean origin found in Nubia and examples of Greek influence observed in Kushite art were evidence of Hellenization. My purpose in this paper is to offer a new interpretation of the encounter of Kush with Ptolemaic Egypt, one that emphasizes the function of Greek culture in Kush and does not rely on the concept of Hellenization but highlights instead the agency of the Kushites in determining the extent and character of that influence.

This provocative new history of Palestinian Jewish society in antiquity marks the first comprehensive effort to gauge the effects of imperial domination on this people. Probing more than eight centuries of Persian, Greek, and Roman rule, Seth Schwartz reaches some startling conclusions--foremost among them that the Christianization of the Roman Empire generated the most fundamental features of medieval and modern Jewish life. Schwartz begins by arguing that the distinctiveness of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and early Roman periods was the product of generally prevailing imperial tolerance. From around 70 C.E. to the mid-fourth century, with failed revolts and the alluring cultural norms of the High Roman Empire, Judaism all but disintegrated. However, late in the Roman Empire, the Christianized state played a decisive role in ''re-Judaizing'' the Jews. The state gradually excluded them from society while supporting their leaders and recognizing their local communities. It was thus in Late Antiquity that the synagogue-centered community became prevalent among the Jews, that there re-emerged a distinctively Jewish art and literature--laying the foundations for Judaism as we know it today. Through masterful scholarship set in rich detail, this book challenges traditional views rooted in romantic notions about Jewish fortitude. Integrating material relics and literature while setting the Jews in their eastern Mediterranean context, it addresses the complex and varied consequences of imperialism on this vast period of Jewish history more ambitiously than ever before.Imperialism in Jewish Societywill be widely read and much debated.

One of the most prolific approaches to the comparative study of Buddhist and Christian philosophy has been the use of Buddhist anti-metaphysicism to overcome the allegedly obsolete metaphysical discourse of Christianity. This approach has been practiced, among others, by Edgar Bruns, Frederik Streng, Joseph O'Leary, and John Keenan. Keenan's 1980–1990s seminal works were determinative in that they appeared to rely on intuitive and evident premises: Christianity became infused with Greek metaphysical concepts early on; consequently, it adopted the forms of essentialism and ontological discourse practiced in metaphysics. That discourse has now become obsolete and must be overcome; Buddhist anti-metaphysicism helps overcome it; hence, Christianity can learn from Buddhism. In this paper, I show that although Keenan presents the first of these claims as self-evident, it is in fact highly polemical. Its origins lie in Albrecht Ritschl's and Adolf von Harnack's Hellenization theory. While the theological and historical background to this theory has been debated, Keenan does not engage in these debates. Even more, he transforms the theory in such a way that it becomes incongruent with its inherent aim. Following the problems implied on these two levels, I suggest that Keenan's project makes itself vulnerable to incoherencies. In the end, I argue for the overcoming of antimetaphysicism as a basis for Buddhist-Christian dialogue.

The present paper examines the two different accounts of the same Egyptian symbols that appear in Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride (11.355B, 34.364C) and Iamblichus's De mysteriis (7.2). While both these authors interpret the lotus flower and the sun boat allegorically, this article shows that their distinct interpretations reflect not only divergent perspectives on the role of (Greek) philosophy and (Egyptian) religious practice in one's pursuit of the divine, but also contrasting conceptions of the symbol.

Abstract In Judaism and Hellenism, Hengel described Judean society and literature as torn between absorption and rejection of Hellenism. Following the publication of that work the idea of a clear-cut dichotomy between several social circles and their assorted literary productions remained hugely popular, although the identification of the sides in conflict varied between scholars, with \"hellenization\" being located either within or without (and against) the temple. This article offers an historiographic survey before proposing a new paradigm inspired by the New Empire Studies. At its core, it identifies the Jerusalem temple as a lively site of learning, whose literati selectively appropriated ideas, literary forms, and technologies not only from the Greek, imperial culture(s) but also from neighboring temple cultures (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Phoenician), in a bid to keep their ancestral traditions relevant as they made sense of the ever-changing world that they lived in. Everything was adapted, or subverted and hybridized.

Abstract The phrase \"Hellenistic Judaism\" often assumes an underlying picture of the relationship between \"Judaism\" and \"Hellenism\" as self-contained cultural containers. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Philip Alexander, Gregory Sterling, and Erich Gruen argued against such an assumption, and their work moved towards developing theories of globalization, which regard cultures as porous and dynamic. Beginning from the insights of these three scholars, I argue that globalization theory has advantages for the study of Jews in the Hellenistic Mediterranean oikoumenē, which moves beyond static notions of Judaism and Hellenism and prompts questions of whether Hellenization works as an analytical category. In order to illustrate the case, I examine three Jewish writers-the author of the Letter of Aristeas, the sage Joshua Ben Sira, and his translator/grandson-and how their knowledge and use of Greek language and sources demonstrates both the homogenizing and disjunctive aspects of globalization in the Hellenistic period.

Il contributo affronta lo studio della porta urbana settentrionale della cinta fortificata della colonia latina di Aquileia, fondata nel 181 a.C. Questa apertura fu realizzata lungo la cinta repubblicana e permetteva l'ingresso in città della via Postumia; fu scavata negli anni Settanta del XIX secolo da parte degli archeologi austriaci e successivamente negli anni Trenta del secolo scorso da G. Brusin. Il ritrovamento nell'archivio del Museo di Aquileia di una pianta inedita dei primi scavi e dei diari di scavo dell'intervento più recente permette di gettare nuova luce sui caratteri architettonici del monumento. Inoltre, l'esame dei materiali, delle tecniche costruttive e dei caratteri dimensionali indicano un probabile decisivo ruolo di maestranze greche nella progettazione e nella realizzazione della porta. Ciò conferma il rilievo delle presenze elleniche ad Aquileia e in Cisalpina nel corso del II sec. a.C.

Lord Byron described Greece as great, fallen, and immortal, a characterization more apt than he knew. Through most of its long history, Greece was poor. But in the classical era, Greece was densely populated and highly urbanized. Many surprisingly healthy Greeks lived in remarkably big houses and worked for high wages at specialized occupations. Middle-class spending drove sustained economic growth and classical wealth produced a stunning cultural efflorescence lasting hundreds of years. Why did Greece reach such heights in the classical period-and why only then? And how, after \"the Greek miracle\" had endured for centuries, did the Macedonians defeat the Greeks, seemingly bringing an end to their glory? Drawing on a massive body of newly available data and employing novel approaches to evidence, Josiah Ober offers a major new history of classical Greece and an unprecedented account of its rise and fall. Ober argues that Greece's rise was no miracle but rather the result of political breakthroughs and economic development. The extraordinary emergence of citizen-centered city-states transformed Greece into a society that defeated the mighty Persian Empire. Yet Philip and Alexander of Macedon were able to beat the Greeks in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, a victory made possible by the Macedonians' appropriation of Greek innovations. After Alexander's death, battle-hardened warlords fought ruthlessly over the remnants of his empire. But Greek cities remained populous and wealthy, their economy and culture surviving to be passed on to the Romans-and to us. A compelling narrative filled with uncanny modern parallels, this is a book for anyone interested in how great civilizations are born and die. This book is based on evidence available on a new interactive website. To learn more, please visit: http://polis.stanford.edu/.