Can archaeological remains be made to "speak" when brought into
conjunction with texts? Can written remains, on stone or papyrus, shed
light on the parables of Jesus, or on the Jewish view of afterlife? What
are the limits to the use of artifactual data, and when is the value
overstated? Text and Artifact addresses the complex and intriguing
issue of how primary religious texts from the ancient Mediterranean
world are illuminated by, and in turn illuminate, the ever-increasing
amount of artifactual evidence available from the surrounding world.
The book honours Peter Richardson, and the first two chapters offer
appreciations of this scholarship and teaching. The remaining chapters
focus on early Christianity, late-antique Judaism and topics germane to
the Roman world at large. Many of the essays relate to features of
Jewish life -- the epigraphic evidence for gentile converts to Judaism
or for Jewish defectors, ancient accounts of the Essenes or of the siege
of Masada, and the material context of the first great rabbinic work,
the Mishnah. Other essays connect early Christian texts with the social
and cultural realia of their day -- modes of travel, notions of gender,
patronage and benefaction, the relation of tenants and owners -- or
reflect on the aesthetics of Christian architecture and the relation
between building and ritual in Constantinian churches. One study relates
the writing of the famous novelist Apuleius to a household mithraeum in
Ostia, while another explores the changing appropriation of religious
realia as the Roman world became Christian.
These wide-ranging and original studies demonstrate clearly that texts
and artifacts can be mutually supportive. Equally, they point to ways in
which artifacts, no less than texts, are inherently ambiguous and teach
us to be cautious in our conclusions.
