A comprehensive history of Roman Berytus, from its founding as a Roman military colony in the reign of Augustus to its development as one of only three centers for the styudy of law in the rule of Justinian.

The aim of this monograph is to understand the extent to which the landscape of Roman Berytus and the Bekaa valley is a product of colonial transformation following the foundation of Colonia Iulia Augusta Felix Berytus in 15 BCE. The book explores the changes observed in the cities of Berytus and Heliopolis, as well as the sites at Deir el-Qalaa, Niha, and Hosn Niha. The work fundamentally challenges the traditional paradigm, where Baalbek-Heliopolis is seen as a religious site dating from as early as the Bronze Age and associated with the worship of a Semitic or Phoenician deity triad and replaces it with a new perspective where religious activity is largely a product of colonial change.

A comprehensive history of Roman Berytus, from its founding as a Roman military colony in the reign of Augustus to its development as one of only three centers for the styudy of law in the rule of Justinian.

As the principal Greek witness of the so-called "Western" tradition of the gospels and Acts, Codex Bezae’s enigmatic text in parallel Greek and Latin columns presents a persistent problem of New Testament textual criticism. The present study challenges the traditional view that this text represents a vivid retelling of the canonical narratives cited by ancient writers from Justin Martyr to Marcion and translated early into Syriac and Latin.

In the first centuries of the Common Era, an eclectic collection of plain and embellished underground and aboveground tombs filled the cemeteries of the Roman province of Syria. Its inhabitants used rituals of commemoration to express messages about their local identity, family, and social position, while simultaneously ensuring that the deceased was given proper burial rites. In this book, Lidewijde de Jong investigates these customs and the belief systems that governed the choices made in the commemoration of Syrian men, women and children. Presenting the first all-inclusive overview of the archaeology of death in Roman Syria, this book combines spatial analysis of cemeteries with the study of funerary architecture, decoration, and grave goods, as well as information about the deceased provided by sculptural, epigraphic, and osteological sources. It sheds a new light on life and death in Syria and offers a novel way of understanding provincial culture in the Roman Empire.

Approaching the subject of late Roman law from the perspective of legal practice revealed in courtroom processes, Caroline Humfress argues for a vibrant culture of forensic argumentation in late Antiquity - which included Christian controversies concerning 'heresy' and 'orthodoxy', revealing its far-reaching effects on theological debate.

The Phoenicians created the Mediterranean world as we know it--yet they remain a poorly understood group. In this Handbook, the first of its kind in English, readers will find expert essays covering the history, culture, and areas of settlement throughout the Phoenician and Punic world.

The Saint's Saints presents Jerome’s world picture as seen through his saints’ Lives. It analyses both his rhetoric and his descriptions of realia, and the way he combines classical, Christian and Jewish sources to re-write the biblical Holy Land as a new and Christian world for his readers. Susan Weingarten looks at how Jerome dovetails his literary sources with his experience of the material world of the fourth century to write the Lives of the saints Paul, Hilarion, Malchus and Paula, effectively using them to write the Life of Saint Jerome. This is the first full-length study of Jerome’s saints’ Lives. It widens the on-going debate about mutual influences in Jewish and Christian literature in the fourth century, and revises our picture of the historical geography of Palestine.