Material Culture and Women's Religious Experience in Antiquity

Mark D. Ellison is associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University.Catherine Gines Taylor is Hugh W. Nibley Postdoctoral Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.Carolyn Osiek is Charles Fischer Professor of New Testament emerita at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University.

• IntroductionMark D. Ellison, Catherine Gines Taylor, and Carolyn Osiek1.Keynote: Between the Holy and the Ordinary: Women’s Lives in Early ChristianityCarolyn Osiek2.Transferring and Transforming Religious Identity Abroad: The Personal Adornment of an Egyptian Woman in CanaanKrystal V. L. Pierce3.Besieged Maternity: Reading Textual Cannibalism in the Hebrew Bible through Material CultureSusannah M. Larry4.Material Expression and Mantic Performance: An Examination of Women’s Religious Experience at the Time of JosiahAmanda Colleen Brown5.“Part of the Same Miracle”: Women and Visual Art in the Dura Europos SynagogueSarah E. G. Fein6.Female Experience at the Tomb: Ritual Commemoration and Sarcophagus ImagerySarah Madole Lewis7.Assessing the Roles of Women in New Syrian Funerary Reliefs in Japanese CollectionsKerry Hull and Lincoln H. Blumell8.Foreseeing the Divine Bridal Chamber: A Household of Mosaics from Shahba-PhilippopolisCatherine Gines Taylor9.Reimagining and Reimaging

The fascinating essays in this book make an important contribution to the scholarship seeking to recover women’s religious experience in antiquity. They show how archaeological and iconographic evidence can be invaluable in the quest to recover the lived experience of women in the past—from ancient Egypt to late ancient Christianity. Using material remains, the authors provide compelling arguments about women’s religiosity that often differ from the impression one gets from texts alone. This readable and well-illustrated book is a must for both scholars and general readers.