Very proud that our volume “Old Age in Ancient Judaism, Early Christianity, and Their Contexts: Senescence and Its Significations” has been published with Routledge! It’s the result of the symposium “Conceptualizing Old Age in Ancient Jewish and Early Christian Contexts” which Seth Bledsoe and I organized at the Protestant Theological University in Amsterdam in 2022. The contributions demonstrate how ancient Jewish, early Christian, and Greek and Roman perceptions of old age were closely intertwined with notions of authority and wisdom, gender and social dynamics, social and familial anxieties, and the body and disability. Many thanks to all contributors!
The table of contents:
- List of Contributors
- Mira Balberg, Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Albertina Oegema and Seth Bledsoe, Introduction
- Section 1: Old Age, Wisdom, and Authority
- 1. Pieter B. Hartog, “Old and Young in Philo’s Legatio ad Gaium“
- 2. Lieve M. Teugels, “’O Glorious Wisdom in an Ugly Vessel’”’: Old Age, Wisdom, and Wine in Rabbinic Literature”
- 3. Christoph Michels, “Old Age and Political System Change in Ancient Rome”
- Section 2: Old Age, Gender, and Social Dynamics
- 4. Peter-Ben Smit, “Beyond Gender: Polycarp’s Martyrdom at the Intersection of Old Age and Masculinity”
- 5. Albertina Oegema “’Wearing Clothes of a Young Woman’”: The Agency of Elderly Women in Tannaitic Literature
- Section 3: Old Age, Anxiety, and Familial Discourse
- 6. Klaas Spronk, “Dying in Peace: Old Age and Death Anxiety in the Hebrew Bible and in the Ancient Near East”
- 7. Silvana Dayan, “Diverse Representations of Old Age in Literary and Iconographic Works of Classical Athens”
- 8. Seth A. Bledsoe, “Old Age and the Ethical Discourse of Familial Reciprocity among the Aramaic Documents from Elephantine”
- Section 4: Old Age, the Body, and Disability
- 9. Hugh Pyper, “Ambivalences in the Process and Prolongation of Ageing in the Hebrew Bible”
- 10. Chris L. de Wet, “A Disabled Patriarch: John Chrysostom’s Use of Disability Discourse in His Characterization of Abraham”
- Index
Until December 31, 2025, the volume (hardback and e-book) can be ordered with 20% discount. Please use the discount code here or here.