In this text, Muller breaks new ground in the study of this changing region and along the way she includes details of her own poignant journey, as a young, white South African woman, to the other side of a divided society.

Porneia means fornication, unchastity, desire for another's body. Drawing on Roman and Greek works of science, medicine, gynecology, and law and on Christian and pagan religious texts, Aline Rouselle discovers the intimate fears, passions, superstitions, and ambitions of the people of the Mediterranean world during the first four centuries AD. The first part of the book describes Roman notions of male and female sexuality; attitudes to fertility, inheritance, child care, and training; legal restraints on sexual behavior; concubinage and divorce; and the extraordinary rituals of orgy, castration and sacrifice associated with ancient rites of fertility and spirituality. Yet the sexual problems of antiquity will be seen in many respects to be almost exactly those of the contemporary West--from fear of impotence to the concern of parents about teenage misbehavior. The second part of the work is concerned with the impact of Christian ideas upon a settled pagan tradition. Abstinence, once associated with the enhancement of fertility, becomes the key to salvation. The first monastic regimes, and the means by which men and women curtailed and overcame their desire for one another, are described in detail. Centuries of concern with fertility became, in this revolutionary period, an obsession with chastity in this world and a secure place in the next. This is a tour de force of scholarship and historical anthropology. The author's argument may be controversial, but few can fail to be fascinated by the evidence she marshals to support it.

How do we begin to carry out such a vast task-the examination of three millennia of diverse uses and influences of the biblical texts? Where can the interested scholar find information on methods and techniques applicable to the many and varied ways in which these have happened? Through a series of examples of reception history practitioners at work and of their reflections this volume sets the agenda for biblical reception, as it begins to chart the near-infinite series of complex interpretive 'events' that have been generated by the journey of the biblical texts down through the centuries. The chapters consider aspects as diverse as political and economic factors, cultural location, the discipline of Biblical Studies, and the impact of scholarly preconceptions, upon reception history. Topics covered include biblical figures and concepts, contemporary music, paintings, children's Bibles, and interpreters as diverse as Calvin, Lenin, and Nick Cave.

This book is a richly detailed comparative analysis of endogenous, Muslim, and Christian religious thought and practice in sub-Saharan Africa. Organized thematically, the book presents a conceptual and analytical framework for the study of religious traditions as complex and constantly evolving social phenomena. The most salient theme in the book is how different religious traditions defined and provided for the personal and communal wellbeing of their adherents. Other major themes explore how religious traditions have influenced one another, how religious practitioners conceptualized and interacted with spiritual entities, how religious knowledge and expertise were acquired and transmitted, how rituals were organized and structured in order to achieve their aims, and how rituals affected those who performed them. Additional topics analysed include the personalization of relationships with spiritual entities, the gendering of religious thought and practice, how personal transformative rituals were conceptualized and enacted with reference to stages of the life cycle, such as birth, marriage and death, and how suffering was seen as integral to the process of personal transformation. Overall, the book engages with issues that continue to animate the study of religious thought and practice in Africa and African studies more generally.

In Isaiah Shembe’s Hymns and the Sacred Dance in Ibandla lamaNazaretha, Nkosinathi Sithole explores the hymns of Prophet Isaiah Shembe and the sacred dance in Ibandla LamaNazaretha, and offers an emic perspective on the Church which has attracted scholars from different disciplines. Isaiah Shembe’s Hymns and the Sacred Dance in Ibandla lamaNazaretha posits that in the hymns, Shembe found a powerful medium through which he could voice his concerns as an African in colonial times, while praising and worshipping God. Sithole also refutes claims by some scholars that the sacred dance was a response to colonialism and oppression, showing that in fact the sacred dance in Ibandla lamaNazaretha is considered to be a form of worship and is thought to exist on earth and in heaven.

The Christian axis has shifted dramatically southward to Africa, Asia, and Latin America, so much so that today there are more Christians living in these southern regions than among their northern counterparts. In the case of Africa, the African Initiated Churches-founded by Africans and primarily for Africans-has largely contributed to the exponential growth and proliferation of the Christian faith in the continent. Yet, even more profoundly, these churches espouse a brand of Christianity that is indigenized and thoroughly contextual. Further, the power and popularity of the AICs, beyond the unprecedented numbers joining these churches, are attributed to their relevance to the existential everyday needs and concerns of their adherents in the context of a postcolonial Africa. At the heart of Christian theology is Christology-the confessed uniqueness of Christ in history and among world religions. Yet this key feature of Christianity, as with other important elements of the Christian faith, may be variously understood and re-interpreted in these indigenous churches. The focus of this study is the amaNazaretha Church, an influential religious group founded by the African charismatic prophet Isaiah Shembe in 1911 in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The movement today claims a following of some two million adherents and has proliferated beyond the borders of South Africa to neighboring countries in Southern Africa. The book addresses the complex and at times ambivalent understanding of the person and work of Christ in the amaNazaretha Church, presenting the genesis, history, beliefs, and practices of this significant religious movement in South Africa, with broader implications for similar movements across the continent of Africa and beyond.

This book tells the story of one of the largest and most influential African churches in South Africa.

New Religious Movements (NRMs) can involve vast numbers of followers and in many cases are radically changing the way people understand and practice religion and spirituality. Moreover, many are having a profound impact on the form and content of mainstream religion. The Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements provides uniquely global coverage of the phenomenon, with entries on over three-hundred movement from almost every country in the world. Coverage includes movements that derive from the major religions of the world and to neo-traditional movements, movements often overlooked in the study of NRMs. In addition to the coverage of particular movements there are also entries on topics, themes, key thinkers and key ideas, for example the New Age Movement, Neo-Paganism, New Religion and gender, NRMs and cyberspace, NRMs and the law, the Anti-Cult Movement, Swedenborg, Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, Lovelock, Gurdjieff, al-Banna, Qutb. The marked global approach and comprehensiveness of the encyclopedia enable an appreciation of the innovative energy of NRMs, of their extraordinary diversity, and the often surprising ways in which they can propagate geographically. The most ambitions publication of its sort, the Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements is a major addition to the reference literature for students and researchers of the field in religious studies and the social sciences. Entries are cross-referenced with short bibliographies for further reading. There is a full index.

This study questions the traditional view of sacrifices in hero-cults during the Archaic to the early Hellenistic periods. The analysis of the epigraphical and literary evidence for sacrifices to heroes in these periods shows, contrary to the traditional notion, that the main ritual in hero-cults was a thysia at which the worshippers consumed the meat from the animal victim. A particular handling of the animal’s blood or a holocaust, rituals previously taken to be typical for heroes, can rarely be documented and must be considered as marginal features in hero-cults. The terms eschara, escharon, bothros, enagizein, enagisma, enagismos and enagisterion, believed to be characteristic for hero-cults, are seldom used in hero-contexts before the Roman period and occur mainly in the Byzantine lexicographers and in the scholia. Since the main kind of sacrifice in hero-cults was a thysia, a ritual intimately connected with the social structure of society, the heroes must have fulfilled the same role as the gods within the Greek religious system. The fact that the heroes were dead seems to have been of little significance for the sacrificial rituals and it is questionable whether the rituals of hero-cults are to be considered as originating in the cult of the dead.

Ethnomusicology: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography of books, recordings, videos, and websites in the field of ethnomusicology. The book is divided into two parts; Part One is organised by resource type in catagories of greatest concern to students and scholars. This includes handbooks and guides; encyclopedias and dictionaries; indexes and bibliographies; journals; media sources; and archives. It also offers annotated entries on the basic literature of ethnomusicological history and research. Part Two provides a list of current publications in the field that are widely used by ethnomusicologists. Multiply indexed, this book serves as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared in the field over the past decades.