Contested Cures : Identity and Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine

Studies the people, places and objects credited with ritual cures and the elite rhetoric critical of these cures In the ancient Mediterranean world, individuals routinely looked for divine aid to cure physical afflictions. Contested Cures argues that the inevitability of sickness and injury made people willing to experiment with seemingly beneficial techniques, even if they originated in a foreign cultural or religious tradition. With circumstances of close cultural contacts, such as prevailed in Palestine, the setting was ripe for neighbouring Jews, Samaritans, Christians, Greeks and Romans to borrow rituals perceived to be efficacious and to alter them to fit their own religious framework. As a result, they employed related means of seeking miraculous cures. The similarities of these rituals, despite changes in the identity of the divine healers that they invoked, made them the subject of polemical discourse among elite authors trying to police collective borders. Contested Cures investigates the resulting intersection of ritual healing and communal identity. This innovative study synthesises evidence for the full range of healing rituals that were practised in the ancient Mediterranean world. Examining both literary and archaeological evidence, it considers ritual healing as a component of identity formation and deconstructs the artificial boundary between 'magic' and 'religion' in relation to ritual cures. Megan S. Nutzman is Assistant Professor in the History Department at Old Dominion University.

Author: Megan Nutzman

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Publication Date: Aug 15, 2024

Number of Pages: NA pages

Language: English

Binding: Paperback

ISBN-10: 1399502743

ISBN-13: 9781399502740