A persistent exegetical tradition exists linking the Pauline controversy over the consumption of idol meat in the Corinthian correspondence to social and economic assumptions about the Roman world. Specifically, there is the assumption that access to meat was limited to the elite within the Roman world. According to this exegetical tradition, the lower classes only had access to meat through public religious festivals or as derivative through cultic sacrifice by means of the marketplace, resulting in the view that non-elites were sustained on a diet of legumes, grains and wine. Roman access to meat along such class demarcations, furthermore, is founded upon an economic dichotomy of elite and non-elite. This article challenges these social assumptions regarding meat consumption in, especially, Corinth by engaging recent scholarship that re-evaluates Roman diet in regard to access to meat and other animal products. Specifically, methods in archaeological science (especially stable isotope analysis) are used to supplement literary reassessments. What arises is a new picture of Roman diet, wherein meat consumption was not limited to the elite, but was prevalent in nearly all levels of Roman society. With this fresh perspective on Roman dietary practices, Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 must be re-evaluated.

A pervasive, yet under‐discussed, problem in religious studies classrooms is the presence of faith crisis. Many students face a type of cognitive dissonance when faced with the critical‐analytical approach in the academic study of religion. This essay, in an open and conversational tone, addresses the learning opportunity underlying such crisis moments. The discussion begins with a delimitation of what constitutes the secular university's goals in pedagogy and research. After arguing that a reductive limitation of knowable knowledge construction is to be the focus of the university, the discussion moves to the presence of cognitive stages of development, or liminal rites of passage as analogous for explicating the learning process in which crisis moments emerge. Finally, the discussion concludes with a reflection on the coherence of reductive limitation and collaborative pedagogy.

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Several theoretical impediments face the ancient historian who wishes to embark on the study of religious experience within ancient cultures. While many of these difficulties face other religious studies scholars, the historical quality compounds these challenges. This paper explores several of these theoretical difficulties with a specific focus on the Valentinian, Sethian, and other so-called “Gnostic” groups in late antiquity. Specifically, the study of religious experience tends to give privileged interpretative position to insiders (evoking the etic/emic problem) and psychological analyses due to the “personal” or “individual” quality of such experiences (typified by perennialist approaches) (Otto, Wach, Eliade, Smart), or, following James and Jung, focus on the initial charismatic moment’s effect upon subsequent social structures. In contrast to such tendencies I suggest, by building on Fitzgerald’s lead in the Guide to the Study of Religion and largely agreeing with constructivist approaches, that we re-direct our focus toward the external social forces at play that discursively facilitate, shape, and direct experiential moments within the confines of social identity construction. This article builds on attachment theory from social psychology. Such analysis will allow us to better appreciate the experiential aspects of “Gnosticism” while appreciating the individual, communal, and (most importantly) discursive quality of the intersection of the individual and communal. Specific examples of such social facilitation will be briefly explored from Nag Hammadi, where ritual, narrative, and mythological discourse function to enable, and thereby define, religious experience.

Over the past twenty-fi ve years, the social and ethical aspects of Gnosticism have won increased attention. Scholars have tended to shift away from phenomenological approaches to Gnosticism, 1 which maintained a strict demarcation between ethics and cosmological speculation. Rather, scholars have increasingly recognized and explored social ethics within the various "Gnosticisms" that fl ourished in the second to fourth centuries, focusing on particular topics such as sexual ethics, gender roles, * An earlier version of this article was presented in the "Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism" section of the SBL annual meeting in Toronto on 25 November 2002. I wish to express appreciation to Michel Desjardins and Louis Painchaud for their helpful comments on this study, as well as to those in Toronto who gave helpful feedback, especially Elaine Pagels and Ismo Dunderberg. 1 The very designation "Gnosticism" continues to be problematic for scholars. Early Christian historiography is troubled by the construction of separate trajectories for "Gnosticism" and "Christianity"; such binary opposites usually signal evaluative rather than descriptive or explanatory connotations. A recent, and arguably the most provocative, challenge to the classifi cation "Gnosticism" is that of Michael Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Williams correctly notes that "Gnosticism" is a prejudicial term that has led to various misunderstandings of "Gnostic" texts and social bodies. Although I generally agree with Williams's criticism (see my "Categorical Designations and Methodological Reductionism: Gnosticism as Case Study," MTSR 13 [2001] 269-92; and "Gnosticism, Taxonomies and the Sui Generis Debate: A Response to the Rennie-McCutcheon Exchange," Religion 30 [2000] 65-67), I still fi nd that the category is useful if employed as a second-order analytical device that classifi es according to relative relations. For a similar position, placing "Gnosticism" in juxtaposition to "syncretism," see the excellent discussion in Karen L. King, "The Politics of Syncretism and the