Lindstedt (Ilkka), Nikki («Nina») and Tuori (Riikka), Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Walking Together & Parting Ways, Leiden ("Studies on the Children of Abraham; 9"), 2022. ISBN: 978-90-04-47116-0

Authors

Ilkka Lindstedt, Ph.D. (2013), University of Helsinki, is a University Lecturer in Islamic Theology. He has widely published on early Islamic history and classical Arabic literature, including a chapter on the medieval Islamic world in The Cambridge History of Atheism.

Nina Nikki, Th.D. (2015), University of Helsinki, is a postdoctoral researcher in Biblical Studies. She is the author of Opponents and Identity in Philippians (Brill, 2019) and co-editor of Magic in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021).

Riikka Tuori, Ph.D. (2013), University of Helsinki, is a University Lecturer in Jewish studies. Tuori has published articles on Hebrew literature and Karaite Judaism, including ‘Renewal and tradition in devout Hebrew poetry’ (Zutot, 2019).

Contributors

Antti Lampinen, Elina Lapinoja-Pitkänen, Ilkka Lindstedt, Joonas Maristo, Janne Mattila, Nina Nikki, Anna-Liisa Rafael, Antti Vanhoja Jarkko Vikman, Holger Zellentin.

Presentation

Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages contains eight thought-provoking articles that discuss the formation of antique and early medieval religious identities and ideas in rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, Islam, and Greco-Roman culture. The articles question the artificial disciplinary and conceptual boundaries between traditions. Instead, they stress their shared nature. The collection is a result of discussions at the international symposium “Ideas and Identities in Late Antiquity: Jews, Christians, and Muslims” at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies on March 12–13, 2018.

Content

Notes on Contributors

1 Introduction
  Ilkka Lindstedt, Nina Nikki, and Riikka Tuori

2 A Merchant-Geographer’s Identity? Networks, Knowledge and Religious Affinity in the Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium
  Antti Lampinen

3 Reconstructing the Identity of the Bacchic Group in Athens: οἱ Ἰόβακχοι and IG II² 1368
  Elina Lapinoja-Pitkänen

4 Signs of Identity in the Quran: Rituals, Practices, and Core Values
  Ilkka Lindstedt

5 Sabians, the School of al-Kindī, and the Brethren of Purity
  Janne Mattila

6 Righteous Sufferer, Scheming Apostate: Traditions of Paul from a Cultural Evolutionary Perspective
  Nina Nikki and Antti Vanhoja

7 Death in the “Contact Zone”: An Analysis of Ibn Ḥanbal’s Hadith about a Hairdresser-Mother and Her Sons (Ḥadīṯ al-Māšiṭa)
  Anna-Liisa Rafael and Joonas Maristo

8 Little Big Gods: Morality of the Supernatural in Lydian and Phrygian Confession Inscriptions
  Jarkko Vikman

9 “One Letter yud Shall not Pass Away from the Law”: Matthew 5:17 to Bavli Shabbat 116a–b
  Holger Zellentin

Index