Late Antique Jewish and Christian Travelogues - (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - Tension, Transmission, Tr) (Hardcover)

About the Book

This volume discusses Christian and Jewish travel narratives against the background of both biblical exempla and the heavy presence of broader storytelling cultures. Special attention is paid to narrative strategies, aiming at outlining, modifying,

Book Synopsis

Focusing on travel narratives as a setting for spelling out both cultural exchanges and identity building, the present volume maps a variety of strategies employed in travelogues by Christians and Jews in the late antique Roman East.
The first part sheds light on the shared cultural background - folkloric or mythic - reflected in late antique Jewish and Christian sea-travel stories, and the various attempts to adapt it to a specific religious agenda. While the comparative analysis of the sources from two textual communities emphasizes their different religious agendas, it also allows for restoring patterns of the broader background with which they converse. The second part highlights Christian perceptions of the Land of Israel in missionary enterprises and in the eschatological visions.
The travelogues offer a window on the interplay between shared inheritance and new agendas within the dialectical development of religious traditions in Late Antiquity.

About the Author

Reuven Kiperwasser, Ariel University, Aryeh Kofsky, Haifa University, Serge Ruzer, Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel.