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With regard to the gem once preserved at the Berlin museums and currently lost, depicting a crucified figure with the inscription ΟΡΦΕΟΣ ΒΑΚΚΙΚΟΣ (Furtwängler 1896, no. 8830), this article aims at demonstrating that: 1) the depiction of the crucified man is probably the work of a modern carver, 2) the inscription ΟΡΦΕΟΣ ΒΑΚΚΙΚΟΣ is most likely a copy of an ancient epigraph (which occurs not surprisingly on other ancient gems without any depiction), as can be proved by both a philological and a paleographic analysis. The carver probably acted on commission from a member of the Roman élite (perhaps in the 18th century), to whom the association between Orpheus and Christ must have had a precise cultural-ideological significance. In its final part, the article recalls some of Lupieri’s remarks on Reception History, which support the iconographic analysis as a successful method in the resumption and/or reformulation of earlier representational models.

This article aims at discussing some recent assessments of the so-called “apocalyptic” literary genre. The study focuses mainly on deconstructionist approaches towards the concept of genre for the analysis of historical and cultural contexts in which literary theories are not explicitly attested. Focusing on media connections between the so-called prophetic and apocalyptic texts, the article emphasises the communicative continuity between Jewish prophetic materials and Second Temple and Early Christian visionary texts, especially in light of the progressive canonisations of prophetic corpus during the 1st and the 2nd century CE. It is this process which forms the basis for the growth of a literary reflection on the distinction between prophetic and apocalyptic texts, as we find it in some early Christian writers between the 2nd and the 3rd century CE.

Beyond overly one-sided interpretations concerning the close connections between eschatological views such as those addressed in this paper and the armed opposition of part of Judaism against Rome, what emerges, even in texts of Judaism that have often been interpreted as carrying somewhat ‘universalistic’ demands, is that the centrality of Israel and/or Jerusalem and/or its Temple represents the element in which the expectations of deliverance of divine intervention foreseen for the end of time coalesce. The conceptions of Jesus, the apostles and therefore the so-called ‘presbyters’ were thus to converge equally at this same point. The figure of Papias, in this process, will certainly have played a role with a partial or relative disentanglement of these same instances from an exclusively ‘Israel-’ or ‘Judeo/Jewish-centric’ perspective, although what we can deduce from texts attributed to Papias cannot be assessed in an entirely unambiguous way. Irenaeus’ perspective in transmitting Papias’ fragment 1, on the other hand, is completely marked by a systematization in a primarily polemical (anti-Marcionite and anti-gnostic) perspective and, at the same time, in a strongly confirmatory view concerning two of the pillars of his soteriological vision: the close connection between Yhwh and Jesus and the mystery of Christ crucified as the center and focal point of the action of the incarnate son and of the whole economy tending toward the salvation of the created world and, therefore, also of the righteous who died before the advent of Jesus.

La narrazione visionario-apocalittica appare come uno strumento comunicativo in cui vedere direttamente il mondo «altro» ha implicazioni nell’al di qua. Nell’Apocalisse di Giovanni, in particolare, la visione diretta dell’oltremondo sostiene la costruzione di particolari forme di autorità. Nella sua visione finale si impone uno spartiacque tra un presente di contaminazione e un futuro in cui Gesù mostra l’esclusivismo proprio della coabitazione definitiva con i suoi seguaci. La dimensione del tempo ultimo emerge come un orizzonte imminente che riproduce e riassembla gli antichi e autorevoli modelli visionari giudaici (soprattutto di Isaia e di Ezechiele) in vista di una realizzazione anticipata del futuro definitivo.

This essay aims at reading the norms exposed in Leviticus as mirrors of a “mental universe” that is subject to both possible replacements and manipulations. More particularly, this study tries to analyze the elements that are variously linked to or derive from the biblical text in later Jewish texts, as well as the ways through which those same elements are reinvented in particular socio-cultural contexts. Particular attention it is paid to the Jewish visionary texts of the Hellenistic-Roman period and, within this scenario, to the Apocalypse of John. The essay emphasizes the way the seer of Patmos rereads and re-assesses the mental universe of Leviticus, as well as the specific polemic reasons why this seems to happen, even perhaps in function of contextual frameworks in which Jews (believers in Jesus and not) live together with other groups, in strongly urbanized environments where the role of the Greek-Roman hegemony has assumed the role of towing for both people and collectivities coming from both other cultural-religious contexts.

This essay aims at reconsidering the various preserved forms of the Apocalypse of Peter as mirrors of longue durée processes of transmission. According to such a perspective, it is quite difficult to explain the Greek version of the Akhmim Fragment as a “secondary”, manipulated and/or ideologically oriented version, especially when it is compared to the supposed original Ethiopic text. All the transmitted forms of the Apocalypse of Peter, the Greek and the Ethiopic ones, appear as individual appropriations of previous visionary accounts, which are based on contextual and rewritten practices of personal contact with the other-world. Visionary narratives are disseminated and transmitted thanks to various communication modes, among which writing emerges as just one of many that have been in place for a long time.

This essay aims at rereading the so-called Papyrus of Bologna n. IV (Pap. Bon. IV) in light of Jewish and early Christian visionary accounts. Pap. Bon. IV appears as an account of an otherworldly journey in which the pains of the hell are described, like some apocalyptic narratives from Second Temple Judaism (for example, the Fourth Book of Ezra) and Early Christianity (the Apocalypse of Peter or the Apocalypse of Paul) seem to do. Pap. Bon. IV emerges as an actual 'trait d'union' between Jewish apocalyptic descriptions of the hell, early Christian accounts concerning the other-worldly pains and the Greek-Roman (Orphic?) visions of the other-world.

The paper provides an analysis of the different waves identified by Lustig and Weiler through the lens of the concept of dédoublement fonctionnel elaborated by George Scelles.

Jesus’ followers as individual religious actors of the Roman empire. Notes to the ‘new’ history of the Roman religion by Jörg Rüpke · Starting from J. Rüpke’s analysis in his new history of Roman religion, this essay aims to reconstruct the cultural and religious dynamics of early Jesus’ followers in light of two different but related aspects of ancient religious history according to the frame of Rüpke’s reflection : communicative religious acts as an expression of the “living religion” of early Jesus’ followers (in the context of both Jewish and Graeco-Roman cultures) ; early Jesus’ followers as mirrors of individualized appropriations and/or manipulations of religious communicative acts (in the context of both Jewish and Graeco-Roman cultures).

Il libro è un tentativo di analisi a tutto tondo dell’ampio corpus letterario apocalittico proveniente dal giudaismo tra IV secolo a.C. e II secolo d.C. e assunto come strumento comunicativo dalle prime generazioni di seguaci di Gesù. Mettendo da parte visioni teologiche o esclusivamente ideologiche, il volume prova a ricostruire i legami tra i testi apocalittici e le concrete esperienze individuali di visione diretta del divino, o di ciò che appare interpretato come il divino, sullo sfondo della testualità visionaria proveniente dalle culture del Mediterraneo antico. In questo modo, gli scritti apocalittici si stagliano come punto di intersezione tra esperienze interiori e/o religiose individuali e l’azione di tecnici della scrittura intenti a collocare queste stesse esperienze di un orizzonte di senso ritenuto di volta in volta rappresentativo del giudaismo. Per quanto concerne i seguaci di Gesù attivi nelle diverse zone dell’impero romano almeno fino al II secolo d.C., questi vanno visti non solo come parte attiva ed integrante dell’universo culturale giudaico, ma come produttori e consumatori di reti di comunicazione visionaria sulla lunga durata.

In the very complex framework of Jewish and early Christian visionary literature – which is literally dominated by both eye-centred and anthropomorphic representations of the otherworld – what Andrei A. Orlov has called as the “experience of the voice” or of the “divine name” is well attested. According to such a descriptive/epistemological mechanism, several elements deriving from the heavenly world stand out as primarily connected to aural experiences. But it is not difficult to find, also within these texts, a specific anthropomorphic mechanism concerning the heavenly voice, which seems to emerge like a kind of visible being. This aspect appears especially in the Apocalypse of John, where the seer turns “to see whose voice it was that spoke to me” (1.12) as well as in the Apocalypse of Abraham, where the voice could literally fall from the sky “in a stream of fire” (8.1) and reach the seer like this had motor abilities like that of an anthropomorphic being. If in the Apocalypse of John the relationship between the voice and Jesus is quite ambiguous, this is very much manifest in the Ascension of Isaiah, especially in 9.2, 5, where one of the speaking voices of the text is clearly identified with “Your Lord” (according to the Ethiopic version) or also with “the Son of God” (according to other versions). This essay aims at highlighting these forms of “anthropomorphization” of an aural experience, interpreting it as a direct vision of the other-world, which are, in turn, put in writing (or “textualized”) according to an “eye-centred”, or visual, perspective, in order to better adhere to specific social and/or cultural functions.

The representation of Christian origins in the Italian Encyclopedia (Treccani) is the result of a particular way of looking at the religions of the past. It stands out as an alliance between European historicist reflection and strictly theological-dogmatic and apologetic assessments. The political fact of the Concordat of 1929 strengthens this alliance. The Italian Encyclopedia becomes one of the tools by which it is possible to emphasize and amplify the Fascist discursive machine, that at that moment emerges as strictly connected with the traditionalist Catholicism. This traditionalist Catholicism is 'incorporated' and ‘institutionalized’ within the media-communicative framework built by the Fascist regime, as it emerges also, among other elements, from the same Italian Encyclopedia.

This essay is a critical reassessment of Carlo Ginzurg's approach to ecstatic and visionary experiences of the kind he deals with in his Storia notturna (1989), according to the methodological perspective of Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). Starting from recent researches on the so-called "ecstatic experiences", this essay aims at discussing the comparative methodological approach carried out in Ginzburg's book. In light of concepts like that of "cognitive experience", "memory" and "framing processes," this essay wants to re-evaluate and update the structural approach fielded by Ginzburg, especially as regards the comparison of cultures and the historical consequences which Ginzburg draws from this.

Partendo dalla trattazione di Barbero contenuta in Costantino il vincitore sulle “visioni” di Costantino riportate in Pan. lat. VI (VII) ed. Mynors (= VII [VI] ed. Galletier), in DMP 44 e in VC 1, 27-32, soprattutto in relazione e in reazione alla discussa tesi di P. Weiss, l’articolo esamina la questione dei fenomeni di “messa in cultura” di particolari esperienze rituali o di contatto diretto con il soprannaturale come strumenti di accreditamento di particolari discorsi e come specchi di dinamiche di costruzione di specifiche autorità religiose. Il saggio riprende, in questa stessa prospettiva, anche il problema delle identità religiose del periodo costantiniano alla luce delle riflessioni di R. Brubaker sull’identità “segmentata”: declinare particolari esperienze di contatto in prima persona con il mondo “altro” come vere e proprie visioni dirette delle realtà soprannaturali significa “tradurre” le reazioni che si legano a particolari espressioni della ritualità tardo-antica in e per differenti contesti e/o individualità, soprattutto in quanto manifestazioni di un universo culturale e sociale estremamente complesso e variegato e per nulla sintetizzabile nella semplice contrapposizione tra “pagani” e “cristiani” (e/o “ebrei”) ancora in voga in certa storiografia., Reti Medievali Rivista, Vol 19, N° 1 (2018)

This paper aims at analyzing a case of individual scribal intervention on the Jewish pseudepigraphon known as the Fourth Book of Ezra as it is attested in the so-called Sangermanensis Codex XVII (9th century CE, from Saint-Germain-de-Prés). This manuscript reveals an entrepreneur (the scribe[s]? or the customer?) engaged in related typologies of individual acquisition/intervention, appropriation, modification, and transposition of an ancient Jewish text in the context of Carolingian monasticism. The analyzed manuscript reveals a case of re-formulation connected to a specific late-antique “religious” habitus, i.e. the visionary habitus, a cognitive and socio-cultural pattern from which processes of re-proposition and re-contextualization of previous authoritative accounts in and for specific environments seem to stem.

This essay aims at analyzing the function and the role of body in visionary experiences and/or accounts from ancient Christianity. Starting from some early Christian texts (Iren., Adv. Har.; Eus. Caes., Dem. Ev.), the analysis covers a strict comparison with other visionary experiences from Hellenistic-Roman world (of which early Christianity is obviously part), and such a comparative platform allows to show the significance and the cultural values of the body in both the visionary experience (or the supposedly visionary experience) and the written reconfiguration in texts arising (or supposedly arising) from that experience.

Historiography has always neglected Caterina Visconti, whose political abilities were often disregarded due to gender bias. Nevertheless, the analyzed documents confirm her leadership, showing how Caterina was able to handle the succession using the civic symbology of Milan, despite going against the popolo, which was highly taxed. Its rebellion and the uprising of the Lombard cities, fighting for independence from the central power of the duke, made impossible for her to continue ruling, putting an end to the Regency. DOI 10.17464/9788867743339, La figura di Caterina Visconti e le sue abilità politiche sono state trascurate dalla storiografia, in gran parte a causa del pregiudizio di genere. La documentazione superstite rivela però per lei un ruolo da protagonista, mostrando come la duchessa fu capace di gestire il delicato momento della successione dialogando con la simbologia civica milanese, scontrandosi tuttavia con il popolo, sottoposto a pesanti tassazioni. La rivolta di questo e poi delle città lombarde, desiderose di autonomia dalla politica ducale, le impedì di rimanere al governo, ponendo fine alla reggenza. DOI 10.17464/9788867743339

This paper aims at re-reading the well-known “house of the inscription” of the insula 104, discovered by the Italian Archaeological Mission at Hierapolis of Phrygia. Starting from the studies by N. Brocca, R. Cacitti, T. Ritti and A. Zaccaria Ruggiu, it is time to re-read such a testimony on the basis of the recent researches concerning the relationships between some specific places of worship and the emotional and/or religious experiences. As it is well-known, in this place an inscription reproducing the apocryphal Prayer of Manasseh was discovered – an inscription running around the walls of the room and reproduced also on both the door and the window of the place (probably locked during the reading/recitation of the text). On the basis of the recent scholarly debate, this paper aims at contextualizing the place of worship also in light of some late-antique Christian “psychotropic” experiences connected to the meditation of actual codices in pariete (Aug., Serm. 319,8 [NBA 33/III, 766-768]; Poss., Vita Aug. 31,2 [Bastiaensen 1975, 236]), as well as the relevance of emotional experiences lived around some elitist late antique places of worship (cf. Orig., De orat. 31.4).

This essay aims at showing the process of 'orientation' connected to the term εὐαγγέλιον, and how this word seems to assume a role of hermeneutic indicator for appropriation processes of various streams of transmission of/about Jesus in early Christian book-communities, as it clearly emerges from the subscriptio of the Gospel of Thomas in the Coptic Nag Hammadi collection. Such a process implies a fluidity of views and actualizations concerning the meaning of the gospel in whole similar to the same fluidity through which words that are, in a way or another, lead back to Jesus among the different proto-Christian groups are recorded, reassembled and re-adapted during the preaching as well as the writing practices. The comparison between P.Oxy. IV.654, 1-5 and NHC II, 32, 10-14 seems to add another important 'tessera' in such a direction. The attempt, at the same time, of 'implementation' as well as of 'normalization', or of a real orientation, towards a mechanism of 'historicization' of the expression "Gospel according to Thomas," as it emerges from the subscriptio of NHC II on the basis of the comparison with the Greek text preserved in P.Oxy. IV.654, 1-5, seems to polemicize against some perceived deviant tendencies very similar to that which are battled by some late-antique Fathers of the Church.

Da quando Luciano Canfora ha ripercorso, tra gli altri, le tortuose vicende storiografiche dell'“ellenismo”, in particolare l'applicazione nell’opera di G. Droysen, è possibile verificare, con maggiore circospezione che in passato, le molteplici declinazioni e le divergenti prospettive (almeno rispetto all'origine del termine/concetto così come si trova nella I edizione della droyseniana Geschiche des Hellenismus, 1836 ss.) che il neo-conio ha avuto nella storia della cultura europea almeno dall’800 in poi e, più in particolare, nella ricerca teologica e storico-religiosa tedesca dell’epoca. Come è noto, i teologi e gli storici delle religioni tedeschi tra ‘800 e ‘900 hanno visto nel cristianesimo antico la risultante del conflitto intercorso tra il giudaismo e quel fenomeno denominato come ellenismo. Parallelamente, altri esponenti della ricerca (si pensi a F.C. Baur e alla scuola di Tubinga) si sono concentrati su quello stesso conflitto considerato, però, soprattutto nella sua dimensione intra-cristiana, ovvero come una dinamica propria della “nuova” religione, uno scontro tra il “giudeo-cristianesimo” e la cristianità gentile di matrice ellenistica. L’evoluzione del “nuovo” fenomeno è finita con l’apparire, nonostante le differenti prospettive di indagine (intra- ed extra-cristiana), come il prodotto di una sintesi di impronta hegeliana, la stessa che avrebbe dominato la temperie intellettuale cosiddetta liberale. Termini come “giudaismo” ed “ellenismo” emergono, dunque, come complessi ideologici mascherati nella forma di entità storiche e/o storiografiche. Da un lato, troviamo la particolarità di una religione etnica o nazionale; dall’altro l’universalismo di una religione plurale, e quindi estendibile a tutta l’umanità. Scopo dell'articolo è soprattutto quello di contestualizzare, sotto il profilo storico-sociale, culturale, ma anche più generalmente politico, l’associazione tra il concetto di ellenismo e quello di pluralismo, soprattutto nella sua declinazione universalistica all’interno del campo accademico considerato.

This essay aims at analyzing the re-use and the polemic re-proposition of some preexisting Orphic discursive fragments in Origen's Contra Celsum 1.16 and Augustine's Contra Faustum Manichaeum 13.1-2.

The missile strikes launched on 7 April 2017 by the United States as a response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria raise serious challenges to the current regulation of recourse to force in international law. Differently from past episodes of armed interventions by third States in the context of the Syrian conflict, in the present case the right of individual or collective self-defense as provided for in Article 51 of the UN Charter was not mentioned among the relevant arguments. The few explanations put forward by the United States, as well as the interpretations offered by the member States of the Security Council which supported the US initiative, call into play different legal categories such as necessity, humanitarian intervention or countermeasures. On this score, the episode in hand reveals that the range of legal arguments by which States try to justify their unilateral use of armed force is expanding well beyond the traditional category of self-defense. At the same time, the US action has contributed to embroil the distinction among applicable legal categories, with the presumed effect to introduce an unwelcome degree of flexibility in the conditions governing unilateral recourse to force, as well as to complicate, rather than clarify, the overall picture of ius ad bellum in international law

Il contributo si interroga su una significativa assenza all’interno di un volume che Eliade stesso definiva come dedicato ad una considerazione sistematica e complessiva dello sciamanesimo. L’assenza ha radici ideologiche e teoretiche, e si ricollega alla concezione eliadiana della storia delle religioni e del rapporto tra religione e sacro, oltre che al suo “antisemitismo ideologico”. Eliade distingue tra uno sciamanesimo stricto sensu, quello siberiano e centroasiatico, e «fenomeni magico-religiosi» che però sono «realmente sciamanici», che contengono cioè elementi sciamanici: tra gli esempi elenca Odino, Pitagora, Zarathustra, il Libro tibetano dei morti, i Moso della Cina sud occidentale, eppure non il profetismo ebraico antico. I «procedimenti estatico-mistici attestati nel giudaismo» (p. 77), come rileva anche Moshe Idel, sono messi da parte. L'articolo risale dunque alle radici ideologiche di questa scelta, che in definitiva siconnette alla prospettiva «“arcaico-centrica”» (p. 81) dello studioso romeno: per Eliade vi sarebbe una «purezza originaria e primordiale» (p. 82), massimamente emergente nei fenomeni sciamanici (come ierofanie), la quale sarebbe stata “corrotta” dalle «religioni storiche» come cristianesimo ed ebraismo.

Starting from the recent book by A. Destro and M. Pesce, Il racconto e la scrittura (Rome, Carocci, 2015), this article endeavors to explain the differences and contradictions between the Gospels in the light of the fact that their authors were dependent on information dating back to groups of followers of Jesus who were located in different parts of the Land of Israel and who did not have contact with one another.

This is the introduction (co-authored with Maria Amodio and Raffaella Pierobon Benoit) to the proceedings of the International Conference "Signs of cohabitation in Urban Spaces of the Roman Near East (1st-6th cent. CE)", Naples January 22-23 2015, Department of Humanities, University of Naples Federico II, Accademia Pontaniana, organized in the context of the FIRB - Future in Research Program 2012 on "The Construction of Space and Time in the Transmission of Collective Identities. Religious Polarizations and/or Cohabitations in Ancient World (1st-6th cent. CE)" (Project n. RBFR12R82W). Starting from the methodology explored in the volume L’oiseau et le poisson. Cohabitations religieuses dans les mondes grec et romain (PUPS, Paris 2011), edited by N. Belayche and J.-D. Dubois, this conference aims to analyze different cultural elements that prove the interactions between neighboring groups that share actual and symbolic spaces in the so-called “Roman Orient” (Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Persia, and so on). Thanks to a methodological approach that considers religious groups as loci of cohabitation, rather than emphasizing their ideological and/or theological polarizations (i.e. the consideration of Jews, Pagans and/or Christians as isolated entities), cultural products, literary texts, epigraphs, papyri, as well as schools, places of meeting, public and religious spaces will be regarded under a different perspective. First of all, the conference aims to focus on distinct aspects concerning the implicit value of the documents analyzed: for example, the use of specific literary forms and/or specific terminology, the reformulation of traditional topoi, the use of appellatives and formulae that also characterize contexts represented and/or considered as ‘other’ in order to construct a viable representation of the self. In such a perspective, the conference will also pay attention to cases of renegotiated identities, in which the alterum appears to be re-constructed in terms of conflict, with the aim of defining specific group identities. Our congress, in other words, intends to analyze the construction of conflicts as instruments of self-definition, rather than mirrors of real and/or well-documented social contrasts. We aim to analyze the material traces of collective identities in the East Roman Empire and an important contribution to the research will be provided by the survey on the location of specific groups in space and, above all, on the particular mode of appropriation of urban spaces, on the possible processes of distinction due to the presence of peculiar buildings (‘christianization' of a specific space with churches or other, the presence of synagogues, the presence and / or 're-functionalization' of pagan temples) or of possible elements of distinction or separation of burial spaces (restricted areas, burial types, funerary decoration and epitaphs, structures linked to rituals, location of the burial areas in relation to the village).

Introduction, Italian translation and commentary of the Greek Septuagint book of 1 Maccabees

Introduction, Italian translation and commentary of the Greek Septuagint book of 2 Maccabees

A persistent tradition of studies has often interpreted the text of the Apocalypse of John as a kind of “Christian” meditation on the destructive effects of the Roman imperial power. Such an interpretation has often moved from the idea that 1st cent. Christianity was an entirely structured and a well-defined institutional entity, in spite of divergent visions as well as considerations about Roman Empire which are well-attested in proto-Christian sources. This essay moves from a different consideration: it is at least anachronistic to consider the Apocalypse as a “Christian” meditation on Imperial power as the manifestation par excellence of the Evil. In my approach, the Apocalypse of John is a local discourse, i.e. a tentative to affirm (or to re-affirm) a particular group authority (which is re-constructed in terms of “true” belonging to Judaism) in specific urban spaces, where religious and cultural cohabitations influenced and repositioned actual proto-Christian and/or Jewish self-definitions in response and/or competition with other group (proto-Christian and/or Jewish) self-definitions. In such a context (i.e. the urban spaces of 1st cent. Asia Minor), different declinations as regards Jesus’ worship and/or faith cohabited, and in such a context traditional imagery (or a distinctive reinventions of traditional imageries) functioned as discursive stratagems in order to stigmatize competitive postures of group-authority as well as deviant (or considered as deviant) Jewish and/or proto-Christian self-definitions.