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Conference on Heidi Wendt's Recent Book, At the Temple Gates

Book cover of At The Temple Gates
September 30, 2017
All Day
The Ohio Union's Maudine Cow Room

Conference on Heidi Wendt's recent book At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (Oxford 2016), with papers by Cliff Ando, Heidi Marx-Wolf, Kendra Eshleman, Radcliffe Edmonds and Heidi Wendt.  Wendt's book looks at the proliferation of free-lance religious experts in the ancient Mediterranean during the centuries immediately before and after the emergence of Christianity—experts who promised to purify the souls of the clients, preparing them for a happy afterlife, or to ward off illnesses or demonic attacks, for example.  The book then contextualizes the rise of the Apostle Paul within this milieu, pointing out the ways in which he had to sell his new religion and the benefits it promised.

Sponsored by the From Homer to the Qu'ran Discovery Theme initative.