Appropriating Religion: Methodological Issues in Testing the 'Lived Ancient Religion' Approach

Rüpke, Jörg

doi:10.1628/219944615x14234960199632

Cited by 20 publications

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“…11. Rüpke, 2011;Albrecht et al, 2018. For the applications of the lAR-paradigm in archaeological material see Raja and Rüpke, 2015b;Raja and Weiss, 2016;Gasparini, 2020;Rieger, 2020b. 12. See supra p. 55 and nn.…”

Section: To Unmute the Evidence Materials Practices Religious Communmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…22 bringing agency to bear on 19. This focus on the re-shaping, re-negotiating and re-appropriating religious traditions, hence on the creativity and transformative capacities of religion, lies at the heart of the "lived Ancient Religion" paradigm: see for applications Gasparini et al, 2020 and for the approach Rüpke, 2011;Raja and Rüpke, 2015b;Albrecht et al, 2018, where, however, ritual does not take center stage. Habits are understood as repeated schemes of actions by members of a group (community of the Pompeians) that rely on shared values, ideas, and belief.…”

Section: Materials Religion and The Concepts Of Religious Communicatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Spectrum of Religiousness, or What Makes an Object Religious. Habits, Patterned Evidence and Religious Meanings of Image-Objects in Pompeii

Rieger

2020

Arys

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¿Cómo adquieren los objetos-imagen un significado religioso? ¿Cuándo podemos interpretar las fuentes materiales como restos de un ritual religioso? Estas cuestiones son fundamentales para la arqueología de la religión, pero a menudo se responden en favor de lo religioso sin criterios sólidos. Utilizando ejemplos de Pompeya, exploro en este estudio la “religión material” a través del prisma de los hábitos de visión y de las prácticas habitualizadas que están imbricadas en, y que a su vez moldean el habitus social y cultural de una ciudad romana del siglo I d.C. Este enfoque de la religión y de la cultura material centrado en la práctica permite una interpretación más precisa de cuándo y cómo las personas en la Antigüedad grecorromana concebían un objeto-imagen como religioso y le adscribían un significado religioso. Basado en la idea de religión como comunicación con agentes suprahumanos, la noción de “espectro de religiosidad” suaviza la visión en blanco y negro de los motivos y de los objetos como religiosos o profanos. La distinción de una percepción gradualmente variante de los objetos-imagen esta fundamentada arqueológicamente, tanto en los materiales que aparecen reunidos de manera indirecta o casual (ej. los vestigios iconográficos y materiales de una casa), como en aquellos que fueron deliberadamente organizados (ej. nichos con altares en frente de ellos). En la repetición de estos reflejos materiales de las prácticas se aprecia el carácter religioso de los objetos-imagen.

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Section: To Unmute the Evidence Materials Practices Religious Communmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Materials Religion and The Concepts Of Religious Communicatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

The Spectrum of Religiousness, or What Makes an Object Religious. Habits, Patterned Evidence and Religious Meanings of Image-Objects in Pompeii

Rieger

2020

Arys

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“…From a methodological perspective, the project focused on four different social and communicative spaces, from the domestic over associations, public sanctuaries and literary communication. Building on recent research of the relationship between religious institutions and individualization (briefly Fuchs and Rüpke 2015;Fuchs et al 2018) made it possible to focus on the connections between social structures and individual agents, with the help of four key notions: appropriation, agency, situational meaning, and mediality (Raja and Rüpke 2015a).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Appropriation denotes the situational adaptation and deployment of existing practices and techniques, institutions, norms, and media in order to suit the contingent needs and aims of the individual or group (Raja and Rüpke 2015a; Arnhold and Rüpke 2016; Rüpke 2016c). The idea of religious agency, which grew out of an interest in the ascription of agency and a focus on competences, was used to underline the priority of personal engagement, knowledge, and skill in providing services of all kinds, including public and private performances, authorship, teaching, and networking, whether on an occasional or a professional basis (Gordon 2005;Hüsken 2009;Petridou 2013;Raja 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

Pursuing lived ancient religion

Gasparini,

Patzelt,

Raja

et al. 2020

Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World

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Pursuing lived ancient religion "Lived ancient religion" is a new approach to the religious practices, ideas, and institutions of the distant past. The notion of "lived religion", as it has been applied to recent phenomena that go beyond orthodox beliefs and religious organizations, cannot be transferred directly to a study of ancient religions because its methodology, inspired above all by anthropology and empirical sociology, requires some form of direct access to the living of the religion. This departure is implied by the oxymoronic form of "lived ancient religion", which juxtaposes the living of religion with an only incompletely accessible past in which the subjects of study are no longer living. What might have been deplored as a loss, has turned out to be a gain, allowing for a significant expansion of the concept. While still invoking "lived religion" as it is understood in modern contexts, 1 "lived ancient religion" is neither restricted to "everyday religion" nor focused on subjective experiences. Rather, the focus on the ancient world, the past, the already lived experiences and events, provides the opportunity to study lived religion with a renewed and revitalized focus. This approach overcomes the dichotomy of official and institutionalized religion on the one hand and "lived religion" on the other. Rather, taking the perspective on individual appropriations to its extremes, it also allows studying institutions as sedimented forms of lived religion. Thus, as "lived ancient religion" a framework to analyze religious change is given, religion in the making even on a large scale (see Albrecht et al. 2018). As is indicated by the subtitle of the foundational project, "Questioning 'cults' and 'polis religion'", "lived ancient religion" shares a critical impetus with the study of contemporary "lived religion". Yet given the very different degrees of coherence and embeddedness of religious practices in ancient Mediterranean societies, and in the Roman Empire in particular, our project (2012-2017) aimed at a much broader re-description of ancient "religion" (Rüpke 2012). Fundamentally, it questioned the implicit assumption that all inhabitants of the Imperium Romanum were equally religious. Likewise, the tendency to focus upon civic, that is collective, institutionalized religious practices was questioned, as such a focus has led to the production of a series of sub-categories ("oriental cults", "votive religion", "funerary rites") in order to save those phenomena whose relation to civic practice is indeterminate. This shift in focus was

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“…I am reminded of Roman domestic cult as one example (cf. Harlow and Laurence, 2002;Johnston, 2004;Raja and Rüpke, 2015) or maritime rituals to ensure or express thanks for a safe journey (e.g., BGU 2.632, expressing thanks to Serapis for being saved at sea; see also Casson, 1994a: 149-62; and the discussion of a relief from Portus ca. 200 CE depicting onboard offerings in Casson, 1994b, 111-15).…”

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confidence: 99%

Transgression and Countercultural Gnosticism: A Review Essay of April DeConick’s The Gnostic New Age

Tite

2019

Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses

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This review essay presents and critically engages April DeConick’s The Gnostic New Age, thereby elucidating a series of theoretical problems currently facing the study of Gnosticism and ancient religion more broadly. Notably, a post-theoretical shift—identified as pervasive in the field of religious studies in the 2010s—has emerged in recent Gnostic studies, a shift that has failed to embrace the critical insights offered by Michael Williams (1996) and Karen King (2003) and is on the rise in Gnostic studies. In addition, a historical “mapping” (in the sense offered by J. Z. Smith) of ancient religion into dichotomies leaves us with a romanticized ”Gnosticism” and a caricatured understanding of ancient religion and ancient Christianity. On the positive side, however, DeConick illustrates a rising interest in studying the experiential in Gnosticism while advocating the application of cognitive science of religion.

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Appropriating Religion: Methodological Issues in Testing the 'Lived Ancient Religion' Approach

Cited by 20 publications

References 0 publications

The Spectrum of Religiousness, or What Makes an Object Religious. Habits, Patterned Evidence and Religious Meanings of Image-Objects in Pompeii

The Spectrum of Religiousness, or What Makes an Object Religious. Habits, Patterned Evidence and Religious Meanings of Image-Objects in Pompeii

Pursuing lived ancient religion

Transgression and Countercultural Gnosticism: A Review Essay of April DeConick’s The Gnostic New Age

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