Alexandria was a central hub of the Hellenistic world. Businessmen and migrants, scholars, philosophers, and the religious avant-garde flocked here. Hellenistic, Egyptian, Jewish, and early Christian identities coexisted and influenced each other in the metropolis. The present volume describes these processes of identity formation from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Alexandria was one of the main hubs of the Hellenistic world and a cultural and religious »kaleidoscope.« Merchants and migrants, scientists and scholars, philosophers, and religious innovators from all over the world and from all social backgrounds came to this ancient metropolis and exchanged their goods, views, and dreams. Accordingly, Alexandria became a place where Hellenistic, Egyptian, Jewish, and early Christian identities all emerged, coexisted, influenced, and rivaled each other. In order to meet the diversity of Alexandria's urban life and to do justice to the variety of literary and non-literary documents that bear witness to this, the volume examines the processes of identity formation from a range of different academic perspectives. Thus, the present volume gathers together twenty-six contributions from the realm of archaeology, ancient history, classical philology, religious studies, philosophy, the Old Testament, narratology, Jewish studies, papyrology, and the New Testament.
Table of contents:
Jan Rüggemeier: Alexandria: Hub of the Hellenistic World. Introduction
I. The City
Gregory E. Sterling: »The Largest and Most Important« Part of Egypt. Alexandria according to Strabo -
Balbina Bäbler: Whose »Glory of Alexandria«? Monuments, Identities and the Eye of the Beholder -
Barbara Schmitz: Alexandria: What Does the So-Called
Letter of Aristeas Tell Us about Alexandria? -
Christina Harker: Religious Violence and the Library of Alexandria -
Maria Sokolskaya: Was Demetrius of Phalerum the Founder of the Alexandrian Library?
II. Egyptian and Hellenistic Identities
Christoph Riedweg: Alexandria in the New Outline of Philosophy in the Roman Imperial Period and in Late Antiquity -
Stefan Pfeiffer: Bottom Up or Top Down: Who Initiated the Building of Temples for Augustus in Alexandria and Upper Egypt? -
Sylvie Honigman: The Shifting Definition of Greek Identity in Alexandria through the Transition from Ptolemaic to Roman Rule -
Beatrice Wyss: Cultural Rivalry in Alexandria: The Egyptians Apion and Chaeremon -
Sandra Gambetti: When Syrian Politics Arrived in Egypt. 2nd Century BCE Egyptian Yahwism and the
Vorlage of the LXX -
Michael Sommer: The Apocalypse of Zephaniah and the Tombs of the Egyptian Chora. An Archaeological Contribution to B. J. Diebner's Opinion about the Relation between Clement of Alexandria and the Coptic Tradition of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah
III. Jewish Alexandria
Benjamin Wright: The Letter of Aristeas and the Place of the Septuagint in Alexandrian Judaism -
Jan N. Bremmer: The First Pogrom? Religious Violence in Alexandria in 38 CE? -
René Bloch: How Much Hebrew in Jewish Alexandria? -
Justin P. Jeffcoat Schedtler: From Alexandria to Caesarea and Beyond. The Transmission of the Fragments of the Hellenistic Jewish Authors -
John Granger Cook: Philo's
Quaestiones in Genesin and Paul's σῶμα πνευματικόν
IV. From the New Testament to Early Christianities
Samuel Vollenweider: Apollos of Alexandria. Portrait of an Unknown -
Jörg Frey: Locating New Testament Writings in Alexandria. On Method and the Aporias of Scholarship -
Benjamin Schliesser: Jewish Beginnings: Earliest Christianity in Alexandria -
Enno Edzard Popkes: The Interpretation of Pauline Understandings of Resurrection within »The Treatise on the Resurrection« (NHC I 4) -
Wolfgang Grünstäudl: The Quest for Pantaenus Paul Collomp, Wilhelm Bousset, and Johannes Munck on an Alexandrian Enigma -
Thomas J. Kraus: Alexandria, City of Knowledge: Clement on »Statues« in his
Protrepticus (chapter 4) -
Anna van den Kerchove: Origen and the »Heterodox.« The Prologue of the Commentary on John within the Christian Alexandrian Context -
Luca Arcari: »Monotheistic« Discourses in Pseudo-Justin's
De monarchia. The »Uniqueness« of God and the Alexandrian Hegemony -
Tobias Nicklas: The Martyrdom of Mark in Late Antique Alexandria