University of Ottawa, Simard Hall, Room 125
Time: 4pm-5:30pm
Title: Paul, Practical Pluralism, and the Invention of Religious Persecution in Roman Antiquity
Abstract: In antiquity, gods and their humans formed family groups. What we think of as “religion” – relations between heaven and earth, between humans and the divine – thus corresponded closely to ethnicity: Romans worshiped Roman gods, Egyptians worshiped Egyptian gods, Hellenes worshiped Greek gods, Jews worshiped the Jewish god. People (Jews included) generally found ways to show respect to other gods while maintaining primary allegiance to their own god. The Empire, in brief, accommodated and indeed embraced great ...