Chairs: Dr David Horrell and Dr Peter Oakes
Session 1:
'Wall Speech: How the Roman division of the Corinthian Demeter sanctuary's space is a symptom of more general traits in early imperial religion'
The paper addresses the Roman division of the space of the Greek sanctuary of Demeter and Kore. When they rebuilt the sanctuary, the Romans also built a retaining wall that protected the temples on the upper terrace and thus divided the former sanctuary space into two distinct areas. The division seems to be religiously significant, as there are traces of very different types of ritual activity on the two sides of the Roman wall. I ask if the spatial division is related to broader developments in Roman religion in this period, and suggest various possibilities. One possibility is to connect the development to the Secular Games, a second is to connect it with the regular Roman attempts at controlling various forms of magic. A third possibility is to treat some of the magical-ritual activities on the lower terrace as coincidental and subversive.
Session 2 (Joint session with the Revelation Seminar):
'The Fall of the “Great Harlot” and the Fate of the Aging Prostitute: An Iconographic Approach to Revelation 18'
What is John’s attitude to the fall of the “great harlot” in Rev. 18? In order to shed more light on this controversial question, this paper opts for an iconographical approach that regards images as constructs of reality. Objects of everyday use, epigrams and a famous statue from Asia Minor show that Roman society scoffed at the fate of the “typical” aging prostitute who, once wealthy and attractive, living at the expense of her lovers, loses everything in old age, ending up as a drunken woman. With its image of the fall of the “great harlot”, Rev. 18 alludes to this stereotype and re-interprets the concept of old age with that of divine judgment. In “quoting” the lament of the kings, merchants and ship-owners, John forces a role upon those who co-operate with Rome that is ridiculous by the moral standards of Roman society itself. Thus, the Seer’s rhetorical strategy does not only consist in opposing two different sets of moral standards, is also consists in proving his opponents wrong by their own set of moral standards.
Session 3:
Post-Mortem Divinization on Macedonian Gravestones and in Paul.
Funerary monuments in Roman Macedonia commonly represent ordinary people as being heroized or divinized after death. In some, they go to be with the gods. In 1 Thessalonians and Philippians Paul makes eschatological promises that probably respond to such hopes. If some of Paul's eschatology corresponds to non-eschatological Greek representations of post-mortem hope, this poses sharp challenges to arguments used by J. D. Crossan and N. T. Wright in recent studies on resurrection.