The Social Worlds of Ancient Jews and Christians

Jaimie Gunderson, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Fellow of Teaching and Research in the Religious Studies Department at George Mason University. Her published work focuses on embodiment and emotion in early Christian texts. Tony Keddie, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Class and Power in Roman Palestine: The Socioeconomic Setting of Judaism and Christian Origins (Cambridge, 2019). Douglas Boin, Ph.D., Classics, is Associate Professor of History at Saint Louis University. His is the author, most recently, of Alaric the Goth: An Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome (W. W. Norton, 2020).

Contents


List of Figures and Tables


Abbreviations


Notes on Contributors


Introduction


 Jaimie Gunderson, Tony Keddie, and Douglas Boin





Selected Publications of L. Michael White





Part 1: Paul and His Legacy


1 Are Paul’s Moral Teachings Designed for Ordinary Humans?


 Stanley Stowers





2 Gods and Non-Gods in Galatians: Reconsidering Paul’s Stoicheia


 Emma Wasserman





3 Crisis Management and Boundary Maintenance


Gentile Christ-Followers, Multiple Identities, and Sacrificial Practices in Corinth


 Richard A. Wright





4 Corinthian PDA


Medea Monuments, 2 Corinthians, and the Negotiation of Grief


 Jaimie Gunderson





5 The Function of Paul’s Grief in Romans 9:1–2 in Light of Hellenistic Moral Philosophy


Transforming Gentiles’ Misunderstanding and Boasting


 Jin Young Kim





6 Reading between Two Worlds


Philippians and the Formation of Pauline Letter Collections


 Angela Standhartinger





Part 2: Social Relations


7 Dining in Martial’s World


 John T. Fitzgerald





8 The Pliny-Trajan Correspondence about Christians as Epistolary Fiction


 Tony Keddie





9 Did Paganism’s First Intellectual Encounter with Christianity Include a Jew?


Celsus and Philo


 Gregory E. Sterling





10 Social Relations between Jews and Christians in the Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity


 Ross S. Kraemer





Part 3: Material Culture


11 Greek Tragedy, Pompeian Amphitheater Art, and Christian Martyrs in Nero’s Gardens


1 Clem. 6.2 and Tacitus, Ann. 15.44


 David L. Balch





12 Putting Gods in Their Place


Terracotta Figurines Discovered in the Synagogue Complex at Ostia


 Mary Jane Cuyler





13 The Production of Late-Antique Lamps with Jewish Symbols in Rome and Ostia


 Letizia Ceccarelli





14 The Archaeology of Two Early Gospels


P.Oxy. 1 and 2 and the Trash Mounds of Oxyrhynchus


 Geoffrey S. Smith





15 The Latinity of the Muratorian Fragment


“Life to the Reader, Forgiveness to the Scribe, Salvation to the Possessor”


 Clare K. Rothschild





Index of Ancient Sources

Index of Subjects