Intro -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Bibliographical Note -- List of Illustrations -- Notes on the Contributors -- Introduction -- Part I: Innovation: Forms and Limits -- Public priests and religious innovation in imperial Rome -- Lucian on Peregrinus and Alexander of Abonuteichos: A sceptical view of two religious entrepreneurs -- Lived Religion among second-century 'Gnostic hieratic specialists' -- On and beyond duty: Christian clergy at Oxyrhynchus (c. 250 - 400) -- Part II: The Author as Religious Entrepreneur -- Best practice. Religious reformation in Philo's representation of the Therapeutae and Therapeutrides -- A roadmap to heaven: High-priestly vestments and the Jerusalem Temple in Flavius Josephus -- Contesting religious and medical expertise: The therapeutai of Pergamum as religious and medical entrepreneurs -- Christians, the 'more obvious' representatives of the religion of Israel than the Rabbis? -- Rhetorical indications of the poet's craft in the ancient synagogue -- Part III: Filling in the Blanks -- In search of the 'beggar-priest' -- Projects, performance and charisma: Managing small religious groups in the Roman Empire -- Enforcing priesthood. The struggle for the monopolisation of religious goods and the construction of the Christian religious field -- Part IV: 'Written on the Body' -- Tertium genus? Representations of religious practitioners in the cult of Magna Mater -- Negotiating the body: Between religious investment and narratological strategies. Paulina, Decius Mundus and the priests of Anubis -- 'You can leave your hat on.' Priestly representations from Palmyra: Between visual genre, religious importance and social status -- Index rerum.

RGVV (History of Religion: Essays and Preliminary Studies) brings together the mutually constitutive aspects of the study of religion(s)--contextualized data, theory, and disciplinary positioning--and engages them from a critical historical perspective. The series publishes monographs and thematically focused edited volumes on specific topics and cases as well as comparative work across historical periods from the ancient world to the modern era.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2022. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.