BOB2025MOOT

Épître aux Hébreux ou plutôt comme l’indique lui-même son auteur anonyme, parole d’encouragement qui se donne à écouter. Le temple de Jérusalem est en ruines depuis une dizaine d’années déjà. Les stigmates de la guerre sont encore bien visibles dans Jérusalem. La pratique religieuse est réduite à sa plus simple expression : quelques sacrifices en cachette, une liturgie qui a perdu tout son lustre, des grandes fêtes comme le Jour de l’Expiation dont la célébration est devenue impossible. Les Romains sont toujours là, qui veillent à ne pas laisser la moindre illusion de reconstruction. Dans la population judéenne, le découragement prévaut. Il faudrait peu de choses pour que le feu de la révolte se ranime. Hébreux est une parole d’encouragement particulièrement adressée aux prêtres, dont un bon nombre « obéissent à la foi » (Actes 6.7). Ils doivent sortir de la torpeur dans laquelle ils se sont enfermés. Comme la génération du désert qui s’est arrêtée aux portes du pays promis, ils se sont laissé paralyser par l’épreuve de la guerre. La parole d’encouragement les conduit sur un chemin de réinterprétation des textes anciens. La religion de leurs pères n’est pas dépassée. Elle portait en germe des trésors inestimables. Hébreux accompagne ses auditeurs sur le chemin d’une relecture exigeante, qui jette les bases d’une société reconstruite sur des fondements sacerdotaux.

The Decapolis city of Jerash has long attracted attention from travellers and scholars, due both to the longevity of the site and the remarkable finds uncovered during successive phases of excavation that have taken place from 1902 onwards. Between 2011 and 2016, a Danish-German team, led by the universities of Aarhus and Münster, focused their attention on the Northwest Quarter of Jerash — the highest point within the walled city — and this volume is the seventh in a series of books presenting the team’s final results.This volume provides an in-depth analysis into the ceramic materials found in Jerash’s Northwest Quarter, much of which comes from largely undisturbed contexts. The ceramic finds presented in this volume are typo-chronologically evaluated and contextually analysed. The authors then use this dataset as a starting point to explore the micro- and macro-networks that existed in ancient Gerasa from Roman to Early Islamic times more broadly, examining how finely meshed exchange could take place on a micro-regional level, and assessing what conditions were required in order for trade to occur.

This volume concludes that there is such a thing as a unified Senequian theology, which forms a system despite the necessary duality of its philosophical and literary approaches. This quest for a definition of the Stoic god is achieved through multiple literary forms, which provide as many perspectives on the divine. Seneca's religious views offer the individual growing in wisdom to develop a knowledge of the god which is inductive rather than deductive, experimental and not only theoretical, sensitive and not purely rational – all within the context of a pagan and philosophical monotheism. Thus all the originality of Seneca’s theological undertaking lies, paradoxically, in a refocusing on Man, who must be freed from his existential fears and led to the heroic acceptance of the divine plan. Indeed, Seneca’s carefully thought out theodicy goes beyond the Stoic’s traditional optimism – which considers the rational god to be inherently provident – and positively confronts the question of the existence of Evil, which culminates in tragedies. Ultimately, the center of gravity of Seneca’s religion, which is based on an exaltation of human interiority, shifts from the god to the sage, a true hero who has managed to overcome the vicissitudes of life and whose glorification constitutes the supreme degree of piety.

Romulus et Rémus naissent d’une vierge vestale (Ilia ou Rhéa Silvia) ou d’une esclave qui s’accouple avec un phallus divin. Après avoir été soustraits à leur mère, ils sont allaités par la louve, une bête qui, malgré son caractère de prédateur, se comporte comme une nourrice pleine d’attention et d’affection. L’abris pour cet allaitement interspécifique est offert par le figuier Ruminalis, qui dérive son nom, comme la déesse Rumina, de la mamelle allaitante. Cette enfance sauvage se conclut quand les jumeaux sont accueillis par Acca Larentia, femme de renommée redoutable, qui les allaite et les fait grandir dans un milieu pastoral. Comme la louve, dont elle est l’alter-ego, Acca Larentia s’affiche pour sa remarquable générosité, qui est à l’origine d’une fête publique, les Larentalia, célébrée en décembre. Un fil rouge se dénoue entre ces figures primordiales : le lait nourricier, que la mère n’a pas pu donner à ses fils, et que les autres figures offrent à sa place.

En suivant les traces de ce fluide, cette enquête anthropologique, historique et philologique analyse les valeurs culturelles et religieux de ces présences féminines devenues des piliers de la mémoire collective des Romains.

On Michelangelo’s first day in Rome, in June 1496, Cardinal Raffaele Riario asked him if he could create ‘something beautiful’ in competition with the antique. The twenty-one-year old sculptor responded to this unique challenge with the statue of Bacchus now in the Bargello museum. This statue, as well as the Sleeping Cupid which first brought Michelangelo to Riario’s attention, have long been shrouded in mystery, and the Bacchus as well as its patron have long suffered from critical censure.

Through a comprehensive analysis of overlooked and previously-unpublished sources, this study sheds new light on the Sleeping Cupid, the Bacchus,and a fascinating period in the history of Renaissance Rome when the careers of Riario, Galli, and Michelangelo were closely intertwined. It considers the rise of the Riario dynasty starting with the election of Pope Sixtus IV in 1471, Riario’s partnership with Jacopo Galli in the reconstruction of the palace now known as the Palazzo della Cancelleria, the attempted sale of Michelangelo’s Sleeping Cupid in Rome as an antiquity, Riario’s patronage of the Bacchus, and the Bacchus’s displayin the house of the Galli up until its sale to the Medici in 1572. Taking a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, it offers a fundamental reassessment of Cardinal Riario’s career as a patron, of Jacopo Galli’s role as an intermediary for both Riario and Michelangelo, and of Michelangelo’s collaboration with Riario and Galli.

In the last decade, biblical exegesis has gradually taken into consideration the so-called “spatial turn.” However, the literary concept of space and its narrative analysis have found less interest than the study of space as a social and cultural phenomenon. This obvious gap in biblical research has become the impulse for the present work, dedicated to the book of Judith. Its aim is, on the one hand, to present the narrative analysis of space as a still-developing field in non-biblical literature and, on the other, to show how this promising approach can be developed in biblical studies.

In particular, this monograph provides the narrative analysis and interpretation of space in the book of Judith in response. The first part of the study offers a synthetic overview of perceptions, concepts and theories of space from antiquity to contemporary research, and of the theoretical approaches to space in the Old Testament. The main part is dedicated to the analysis of space on the micro and macro levels of the Judith story through the application of Katrin Dennerlein’s narratological theory of space. Thus, it can be demonstrated to what extent an in-depth analysis of the notion of space can contribute to better understand its thematic and symbolic dimension in the narrative, its function of characterising persons and actions, its role as a structuring element in the story and, last but not least, as a vehicle for an ideological and theological message.

This groundbreaking study takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a ‘Central Hall of Arts and Sciences’. Prince Albert’s overarching vision was to promote technological and industrial progress to a wider audience, and in so doing increase its cultural and economic reach.Placing materiality at its core, this volume provides an intellectual history of Victorian ideas about technology, progress, and prosperity. The narrative is underpinned by a wealth of new sources – from architectural models and archival materials to 19th century newspapers. Each chapter focuses on a particular element of the Royal Albert Hall’s construction, chronicling the previously overlooked work of a host of contributors from all walks of life, including female mosaic-makers and the Royal Engineers.Lighting, ventilation, fireproofing, ‘ascending rooms’, cements, acoustics, the organ, the record-breaking iron dome, and the organisation of internal spaces were all attempts to attain progress - and subject to intense public scrutiny. From iron structures to terracotta, from the education of women to the abolition of slavery, in the making of the Royal Albert Hall scientific knowledge and socio-cultural reform were intertwined.This book shows, for the first time, how the Royal Albert Hall’s building was itself a crucible for innovation. Illustrious techniques from antiquity were reimagined for the new mechanical age, placing the building at the heart of a process of collecting, describing, and systematising arts and practices. At the same time, the Royal Albert Hall was conceived as a ‘manifesto’ of what the Victorians thought Britain ought to be, at a crucial moment of its socio-economic history: a symbolic cultural hub for the Empire’s metropole.This is the Royal Albert Hall: a central piece of the puzzle in Britain’s march towards modernity.