The Gift in Antiquity

269 Pages·2013·3.89 MB·English

by  Michael Satlow

5m 16.7mm 5m
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95mm 174mm 174mm 95mm
ABOUT THE EDITOR E The Gift in Antiquity
d
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Michael L. Satlow is Professor of Religious Studies d Edited by Michael L. Satlow
and Judaic Studies at Brown University. He is b
y
a co-editor of Religion and the Self in Antiquity
S In his seminal essay The Gift (1922), French
(2005) and the author of Creating Judaism: a
tl sociologist Marcel Mauss proposed an original
History, Tradition, Practice (2006); Jewish Marriage o
w theoretical framework for thinking about gift-
in Antiquity (2001); Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic
giving practices. Emphasizing that all gifts
Rhetorics of Sexuality (1995), and numerous essays
were “total social facts” that created bonds of
on Jews and Judaism in antiquity.
reciprocity between communities and individuals,
Mauss’s framework has been fundamental in
anthropological research. The Gift in Antiquity
The Gift in Antiquity
applies Mauss’s notion of gift-giving as a catalyst
in strengthening group bonds to the study of
antiquity. This thought-provoking collection
Edited by Michael L. Satlow
of 14 original essays covers such wide-ranging
topics as vows in the Hebrew Bible; ancient Greek
wedding gifts; Hellenistic civic practices; Latin
“The Gift in Antiquity is an exciting and learned dialogue with Marcel Mauss’s
literature; Roman and Jewish burial practices; and
The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, published
Jewish and Christian religious gifts, along with
ninety years ago. The essays engage Mauss’s model, offering critique and
wider theoretical and methodological reflections.
nuance, and sometimes push Mauss’s insights far beyond what he had
Collectively, the essays open up a cross-cultural
imagined. While many anthologies are useful for the one or two essays they
dialogue that generates new ways of thinking
contain, this volume offers a tightly organized collection useful as a reader in about both antiquity and theories of gift-giving and
classics, religion, or anthropology courses.” reciprocity. The Gift in Antiquity offers illuminating
John S. Kloppenborg, University of Toronto insights into the enduring value of Mauss’s work
and the influential nature of reciprocity and
exchange throughout the course of history.
“The Gift in Antiquity offers a rousing demonstration of the lessons to be
learned from Marcel Mauss’s early insight that gift-giving offers a privileged 25
2
way to understand social relations and social obligations. The book brims m
The Gift in Antiquity m
with the excitement of scholars from different disciplines building on a
common theoretical tool to offer new perspectives on topics in their own
fields as well as on the foundational concept of the gift itself. It is a book
that all scholars of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, as well as all T Edited by Michael L. Satlow
h
scholars interested in the gift, will want to read.”
e
David I. Kertzer, Brown University
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The Gift in Antiquity
The Ancient World: Comparative Histories
Series Editor: Kurt A. Raaf laub
Published
War and Peace in the Ancient World
Edited by Kurt A. Raaf laub
Household and Family Religion in Antiquity
Edited by John Bodel and Saul Olyan
Epic and History
Edited by David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaf laub
Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies
Edited by Kurt A. Raaf laub and Richard J. A. Talbert
The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives
Edited by Johann P. Arnason and Kurt A. Raaf laub
Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World
Edited by Susan E. Alcock, John Bodel, and Richard J. A. Talbert
The Gift in Antiquity
Edited by Michael L. Satlow
The Gift in Antiquity
Edited by
Michael L. Satlow
A John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Publication
This edition first published 2013
© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The gift in antiquity / edited by Michael L. Satlow.
p. cm. – (The ancient world: comparative histories)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4443-5024-1 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Gifts–History. 2. Civilization, Ancient.
I. Satlow, Michael L.
GT3050.G55 2013
394–dc23
2012036176
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Jacket image: Detail from Byzantine mosaic of kings bearing gifts, Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna,
6th century. © Neil Harrison / Alamy
Jacket design by cyandesign.co.uk
Set in 10/13 pt Galliard by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
1 2013
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Series Editor’s Preface x
Preface xii
1 Introduction 1
Michael L. Satlow
2 Ceremonial Gift-Giving: The Lessons of Anthropology
from Mauss and Beyond 12
Marcel Hénaff
3 Alms, Blessings, Offerings: The Repertoire of Christian
Gifts in Early Byzantium 25
Daniel F. Caner
4 Gift-Giving and Power Relationships in Greek Social
Praxis and Public Discourse 45
Marc Domingo Gygax
5 Fictive Giftship and Fictive Friendship in Greco-Roman Society 61
Zeba Crook
6 Ovid Negotiates with His Mistress: Roman Reciprocity from
Public to Private 77
Neil Coffee
7 “Can’t Buy Me Love”: The Economy of Gifts in Amorous Relations 96
David Konstan
8 Without Patronage: Fetishization, Representation, and the
Circulation of Gift-Texts in the Late Roman Republic 107
Sarah Culpepper Stroup
9 Roses and Violets for the Ancestors: Gifts to the Dead
and Ancient Roman Forms of Social Exchange 122
Nicola Denzey Lewis
vi Contents
10 Graffiti as Gift: Mortuary and Devotional Graffiti in the
Late Ancient Levant 137
Karen B. Stern
11 Marriage Gifts in Ancient Greece 158
Beate Wagner-Hasel
12 Charity Wounds: Gifts to the Poor in Early Rabbinic Judaism 173
Gregg E. Gardner
13 Barter Deal or Friend-Making Gift? A Reconsideration
of the Conditional Vow in the Hebrew Bible 189
Anne Katrine Gudme
14 Neither Mauss, nor Veyne: Peter Brown’s
Interpretative Path to the Gift 202
Ilana F. Silber
15 Gifts for God, Gifts for Rabbis: From Sacrifice to Donation
in Rabbinic Tales of Late Antiquity and Their Dialogue
with Early Christian Texts 221
Galit Hasan-Rokem
Index of Subjects and Names 245
Index of Ancient Sources 253
Notes on Contributors
Daniel F. Caner is Associate Professor of History and Classics at the University of
Connecticut, Storrs. Author of Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority
and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (2002) and History and
Hagiography from the Late Antique Sinai (2010). He is currently writing a book
on religious wealth and society in the age of Justinian.
Neil Coffee is Associate Professor of Classics at the State University of New York
at Buffalo. His research focuses on Latin epic poetry, the social conditions of poetic
production, and digital approaches to literary history and stylistics. He is the author
of The Commerce of War: Exchange and Social Order in Latin Epic (2009). He also
leads the Tesserae Project (http://tesserae.caset.buffalo.edu/), which uses compu-
tational methods to study allusion among classical and later authors, and offers a
free online tool for intertextual research.
Zeba Crook is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Carleton
University (Ottawa, Canada). He is the author of Reconceptualising Conversion
(2004); “Honor, Shame, and Social Status Revisited” ( JBL 2009); “Reflections on
Culture and Social-Scientific Models” ( JBL 2005); and many other articles on
social- scientific approaches to biblical literature.
Marc Domingo Gygax is Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University
and author of Untersuchungen zu den lykischen Gemeinwesen in klassischer und
hellenistischer Zeit (2001). His main interests lie in ancient Greek history, historical
anthropology, and modern historiography. He is currently working on a book on
the origins of Greek euergetism, the phenomenon of voluntary donations to city-
states, and the reciprocal recognition of these services as benefactions.
Gregg E. Gardner is Assistant Professor and the Diamond Chair in Jewish Law
and Ethics in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at
the University of British Columbia. His publications include “Jewish Leadership
and Hellenistic Civic Benefaction in the Second Century B.C.E” (JBL 2007) and
Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World
(coedited; 2008). His current project is a monograph on charity in ancient Judaism
and rabbinic literature.
viii notes on Contributors
Anne Katrine Gudme is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible Studies at the
University of Copenhagen. She did her doctoral research on votive practices in
the Hebrew Bible and the dedicatory inscriptions on Mount Gerizim, and she has
published several articles on ritual, vows, and votive practices in the Hebrew Bible.
Galit Hasan-Rokem is Max and Margarethe Grunwald Professor of Folklore
and Professor of Hebrew Literature at the Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among her books are Web of Life: Folklore and
Midrash in Rabbinic Literature (2000) and Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative
Dialogues in Late Antiquity (2003). Galit Hasan-Rokem is a published poet in
Hebrew and in translation in several languages and is literary editor of Palestine-Israel
Journal, as well as a founding member of its editorial board since 1993.
Marcel Hénaff is a philosopher, anthropologist, and professor at the University
of California, San Diego. His publications include Claude Lévi-Strauss and the
Making of Structural Anthropology (1998; orig. 1991); Public Space and Democracy
(coedited with Tracy Strong; 2001); The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, Philosophy
(2010; orig. 2002: Grand Prize of the French Academy); La Ville qui vient (2008);
and Le Don des philosophes: Repenser la réciprocité (2012). His main field of research
is political philosophy and the anthropology of political institutions and symbolic
practices.
David Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University and Professor
Emeritus at Brown University. Among his books are The Emotions of the Ancient
Greeks (2006) and Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea (2010). He is
currently working on a book on ancient conceptions of beauty.
Nicola Denzey Lewis is the author of The Bone Gatherers (2007). A specialist
on Roman mortuary history, she is at work on a new book, Catacomb Religion:
Ordinary Christianity in the Age of Constantine. She has taught at Bowdoin College,
Harvard University, and currently teaches at Brown University.
Michael L. Satlow is Professor of Religious Studies and Judaic Studies at Brown
University. He is the author of Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (2001) and Creating
Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice (2006), and is working on a study of Jewish
popular piety in late antiquity.
Ilana F. Silber is Professor of Sociology at Bar-Ilan University. One of her main
interests is the sociology of gift-giving, to which she brings a comparative historical
and interpretative cultural perspective. Related publications include “Bourdieu’s
Gift to Gift Theory: An Unacknowledged Trajectory” (Sociological Theory 2009);
and “Beyond Purity and Danger: Gift-Giving in the Monotheistic Religions,” in
Toon Vandevelde, ed., Gifts and Interests (2000).