Identity and Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean

Stephen G. Wilson was Professor of Religion at Carleton University, Ottawa, and Director of the College of Humanities until his retirement in 2007. His contributions to the study of the religious identities of Jews, Christians, and Gentiles in the first three centuries of the Common Era are widely acknowledged; his interests have been no less in the contrasting and sometimes conflicting religious identities within each of these three groups. Among his best-known publications are The Gentiles and the Gentile Mission in Luke^Acts (1973), Luke and the Law (1983), Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70^170 CE (1995), and Leaving the Fold: Defectors and Apostates in Antiquity (2004). The present collection of essays develops further Wilson's researches on the general theme of identity and interaction.

The sixteen contributors to this Festschrift include Kim Stratton on curse rhetoric, Adele Reinhartz on Caiaphas, Willi Braun on meals and social formation, Philip Harland on meals and social labelling, Richard Ascough on missionizing associations, John Barclay on Judaean identity in Josephus, John Kloppenborg on the recipients of the Letter of James, Laurence Broadhurst on
ancient music, Larry Hurtado on manuscripts and identity, Edith Humphey on naming in the Apocalypse, Michele Murray on the Apostolic Constitutions, Roger Beck on the Late Antique Ohoroscope of Islam,, Graydon Snyder on the Ethiopian Jews, Alan Segal on Daniel Boyarin, Robert Morgan on theology vs religious studies, and William Arnal on scholarly identities in the study of Christian Origins.