Meals in the Early Christian World Social Formation, Experimentation, and Conflict at the Table
, by Smith, Dennis E.; Taussig, Hal- ISBN: 9781137002884 | 1137002883
- Cover: Hardcover
- Copyright: 12/24/2012
In the past 20 years a new paradigm has emerged around the study of festive dining as a seminal social practice that functioned as the matrix for social formation of a variety of groups in the Greco-Roman world, including earliest Christianity and pre-Rabbinic Judaism. Most recently, an international team of scholars, organized as the Society of Biblical Literature Seminar on Meals in the Greco-Roman World, has developed this paradigm in a series of groundbreaking studies. This book provides a collection of those studies divided into three categories of investigation: 1) The Typology and Context of the Greco-Roman Banquet, 2) Who Was at the Greco-Roman Banquets, 3) The Culture of Reclining. These studies extend the scope of the influence of the meals and begin to detail their effects on a variety of Greco-Roman populations. Together they establish festive meals as an essential lens into social formation in the Greco-Roman world.