Awards

• Winner of Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2003
• Winner, 2003 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Overview

This volume aims to sift through the polemics to make sense of the daunting mosaic of religious belief and practice in late antiquity. In the waning years of the Roman Empire, Jews, Christians, and Pagans alike used rituals to bridge the human and the divine. labelled negatively as ""magic"" or positively as ""theurgy"". This led to numerous problems of interpretation, including marginalizing certain ritual practices as magic or occult while privileging others as genuine or orthodox. From rabbis who ascended to heavenly places to sorcerers seeking to harm enemies with spells, the text reveals how ritual practitioners held common assumptions about why their rituals worked and how to perform those rituals. It aims to shift the discussion out of the rhetoric of ""magic"" or ""mysticism"" and describe the mechanisms of ritual with semiotic terms, so moving us beyond the value-laden terminology of ancient polemicists and modern scholars so that we can better see how these rituals worked and how they affected the social identities of their followers.

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9780271021478

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Reviews

<em>Icons of Power</em> will interest anyone who wants to understand the role that ritual played in the Late Antique world. Crossing sectarian boundaries and examining texts from Jewish, Christian, and pagan sources, Janowitz succeeds in outlining the hidden syntax underlying ritual practices in a wide variety of religious communities. </p>--Gregory Shaw</p>

Exploring the permeable borders between esoteric Jewish practices and rabbinic Judaism and setting those Jewish practices alongside Christian and pagan procedures, [Janowitz] illuminates a shared discourse of similar concerns and competing strategies. . . . Beyond her careful elucidation of relatively obscure texts, this study should appeal broadly to theorists of ritual. . . . Monographs on this subject suitable for undergraduate courses are rare; the theoretical sophistication of this book only aids in its utility. G. Spinner, Choice

Exploring the permeable borders between esoteric Jewish practices and rabbinic Judaism and setting those Jewish practices alongside Christian and pagan procedures, [Janowitz] illuminates a shared discourse of similar concerns and competing strategies. . . . Beyond her careful elucidation of relatively obscure texts, this study should appeal broadly to theorists of ritual. . . . Monographs on this subject suitable for undergraduate courses are rare; the theoretical sophistication of this book only aids in its utility. --G. Spinner, Choice

Icons of Power will interest anyone who wants to understand the role that ritual played in the late antique world. Crossing sectarian boundaries and examining texts from Jewish, Christian, and pagan sources, Janowitz succeeds in outlining the hidden syntax underlying ritual practices in a wide variety of religious communities. --Gregory Shaw, Stonehill College This book is a significant contribution to our understanding of late antique religion and ritual, as it considers some of the common ritual elements of late antique Judaism, early Christianity, and Greco-Roman religions. --R. H. Cline, The Historian Exploring the permeable borders between esoteric Jewish practices and rabbinic Judaism and setting those Jewish practices alongside Christian and pagan procedures, [Janowitz] illuminates a shared discourse of similar concerns and competing strategies. . . . Beyond her careful elucidation of relatively obscure texts, this study should appeal broadly to theorists of ritual. . . . Monographs on this subject suitable for undergraduate courses are rare; the theoretical sophistication of this book only aids in its utility. --G. Spinner, Choice Icons of Power will interest anyone who wants to understand the role that ritual played in the late antique world. Crossing sectarian boundaries and examining texts from Jewish, Christian, and pagan sources, Janowitz succeeds in outlining the hidden syntax underlying ritual practices in a wide variety of religious communities. Gregory Shaw, Stonehill College This book is a significant contribution to our understanding of late antique religion and ritual, as it considers some of the common ritual elements of late antique Judaism, early Christianity, and Greco-Roman religions. R. H. Cline, The Historian Exploring the permeable borders between esoteric Jewish practices and rabbinic Judaism and setting those Jewish practices alongside Christian and pagan procedures, [Janowitz] illuminates a shared discourse of similar concerns and competing strategies. . . . Beyond her careful elucidation of relatively obscure texts, this study should appeal broadly to theorists of ritual. . . . Monographs on this subject suitable for undergraduate courses are rare; the theoretical sophistication of this book only aids in its utility. G. Spinner, Choice Icons of Power will interest anyone who wants to understand the role that ritual played in the Late Antique world. Crossing sectarian boundaries and examining texts from Jewish, Christian, and pagan sources, Janowitz succeeds in outlining the hidden syntax underlying ritual practices in a wide variety of religious communities. --Gregory Shaw This book is a significant contribution to our understanding of late antique religion and ritual, as it considers some of the common ritual elements of late antique Judaism, early Christianity, and Greco-Roman religions. --R. H. Cline, The Historian Exploring the permeable borders between esoteric Jewish practices and rabbinic Judaism and setting those Jewish practices alongside Christian and pagan procedures, [Janowitz] illuminates a shared discourse of similar concerns and competing strategies. . . . Beyond her careful elucidation of relatively obscure texts, this study should appeal broadly to theorists of ritual. . . . Monographs on this subject suitable for undergraduate courses are rare; the theoretical sophistication of this book only aids in its utility. --G. Spinner, Choice Icons of Power will interest anyone who wants to understand the role that ritual played in the Late Antique world. Crossing sectarian boundaries and examining texts from Jewish, Christian, and pagan sources, Janowitz succeeds in outlining the hidden syntax underlying ritual practices in a wide variety of religious communities. Gregory Shaw This book is a significant contribution to our understanding of late antique religion and ritual, as it considers some of the common ritual elements of late antique Judaism, early Christianity, and Greco-Roman religions. R. H. Cline, The Historian Exploring the permeable borders between esoteric Jewish practices and rabbinic Judaism and setting those Jewish practices alongside Christian and pagan procedures, [Janowitz] illuminates a shared discourse of similar concerns and competing strategies. . . . Beyond her careful elucidation of relatively obscure texts, this study should appeal broadly to theorists of ritual. . . . Monographs on this subject suitable for undergraduate courses are rare; the theoretical sophistication of this book only aids in its utility. G. Spinner, Choice Icons of Power will interest anyone who wants to understand the role that ritual played in the Late Antique world. Crossing sectarian boundaries and examining texts from Jewish, Christian, and pagan sources, Janowitz succeeds in outlining the hidden syntax underlying ritual practices in a wide variety of religious communities. Gregory Shaw This book is a significant contribution to our understanding of late antique religion and ritual, as it considers some of the common ritual elements of late antique Judaism, early Christianity, and Greco-Roman religions. R. H. Cline, The Historian Exploring the permeable borders between esoteric Jewish practices and rabbinic Judaism and setting those Jewish practices alongside Christian and pagan procedures, [Janowitz] illuminates a shared discourse of similar concerns and competing strategies. . . . Beyond her careful elucidation of relatively obscure texts, this study should appeal broadly to theorists of ritual. . . . Monographs on this subject suitable for undergraduate courses are rare; the theoretical sophistication of this book only aids in its utility. G. Spinner, Choice Icons of Power will interest anyone who wants to understand the role that ritual played in the Late Antique world. Crossing sectarian boundaries and examining texts from Jewish, Christian, and pagan sources, Janowitz succeeds in outlining the hidden syntax underlying ritual practices in a wide variety of religious communities. --Gregory Shaw This book is a significant contribution to our understanding of late antique religion and ritual, as it considers some of the common ritual elements of late antique Judaism, early Christianity, and Greco-Roman religions. --R. H. Cline, The Historian Exploring the permeable borders between esoteric Jewish practices and rabbinic Judaism and setting those Jewish practices alongside Christian and pagan procedures, [Janowitz] illuminates a shared discourse of similar concerns and competing strategies. . . . Beyond her careful elucidation of relatively obscure texts, this study should appeal broadly to theorists of ritual. . . . Monographs on this subject suitable for undergraduate courses are rare; the theoretical sophistication of this book only aids in its utility. --G. Spinner, Choice

Author Information

Naomi Janowitz is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California at Davis. She is the author of The Poetics of Ascent: Theories of Language in a Rabbinic Ascent Text (1989).

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