Editorial: Edinburgh University Press
Colección: Edinburgh Studies in Religion in Antiquity
Número de páginas: 272 págs. 15.0 x 23.0 cm
Fecha de edición: 01-10-2022
EAN: 9781399502733
ISBN: 978-1-3995-0273-3
Precio (sin IVA): 113,66 €
Precio (IVA incluído): 118,21 €
In the ancient Mediterranean world, individuals routinely looked for divine aid to cure physical afflictions. Contested Cures argues that the inevitability of sickness and injury made people willing to experiment with seemingly beneficial techniques, even if they originated in a foreign cultural or religious tradition. With circumstances of close cultural contacts, such as prevailed in Palestine, the setting was ripe for neighbouring Jews, Samaritans, Christians, Greeks and Romans to borrow rituals perceived to be efficacious and to alter them to fit their own religious framework. As a result, they employed related means of seeking miraculous cures. The similarities of these rituals, despite changes in the identity of the divine healers that they invoked, made them the subject of polemical discourse among elite authors trying to police collective borders. Contested Cures investigates the resulting intersection of ritual healing and communal identity.