Title
Inventing Superstition : From the Hippocratics to the Christians / Dale B. Martin.
ISBN
9780674040694
Published
Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, [2009]
Copyright
©2004
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (320 p.)
Item Number
10.4159/9780674040694 doi
Call Number
B187.R46 ǂb M37 2004eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
398.410901
Summary
The Roman author Pliny the Younger characterizes Christianity as "contagious superstition"; two centuries later the Christian writer Eusebius vigorously denounces Greek and Roman religions as vain and impotent "superstitions." The term of abuse is the same, yet the two writers suggest entirely different things by "superstition." Dale Martin provides the first detailed genealogy of the idea of superstition, its history over eight centuries, from classical Greece to the Christianized Roman Empire of the fourth century C.E. With illuminating reference to the writings of philosophers, historians, and medical teachers he demonstrates that the concept of superstition was invented by Greek intellectuals to condemn popular religious practices and beliefs, especially the belief that gods or other superhuman beings would harm people or cause disease. Tracing the social, political, and cultural influences that informed classical thinking about piety and superstition, nature and the divine, Inventing Superstition exposes the manipulation of the label of superstition in arguments between Greek and Roman intellectuals on the one hand and Christians on the other, and the purposeful alteration of the idea by Neoplatonic philosophers and Christian apologists in late antiquity. Inventing Superstition weaves a powerfully coherent argument that will transform our understanding of religion in Greek and Roman culture and the wider ancient Mediterranean world.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
1 Superstitious Christians
2 Problems of Definition
3 Inventing Deisidaimonia
4 Dealing with Disease
5 Solidifying a New Sensibility
6 Diodorus Siculus and the Failure of Philosophy
7 Cracks in the Philosophical System
8 Galen on the Necessity of Nature and the Theology of Teleology
9 Roman Superstitio and Roman Power
10 Celsus and the Attack on Christianity
11 Origen and the Defense of Christianity
12 The Philosophers Turn
13 Turning the Tables
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index
