The End of Sacrifice: Religious Mutations of Late Antiquity

Abstract

A series of major political, cultural and social changes affected all aspects of life in the Near East as well as around the Mediterranean under the Roman Empire. The chasm between the study of Roman (and Greek) religion, on the one hand, and that of early Christianity (and Judaism) on the other is worrisome. In the religious world of late antiquity, one can distinguish different Idealtypen of religious virtuosi. The first centuries of the Roman Empire witnessed what is probably the most radical revolution in the history of the book before Gutenberg. A puzzling parallelism can be observed in the redaction and canonization process of the Mishna and the New Testament. The Christians, who were not bound by cultural, religious or linguistic traditions, offered a new attitude to religious language. Keywords: early Christianity; Judaism; late antiquity; New Testament; Roman Empire