An investigation of the Luvo-Hittite dammara- religious functionaries (male and female) and the borrowing of the term into Ahhiyawan (Ur-Aeolian) and, thence, European Mycenaean cult vocabulary as dumartes and its variant damartes (a scribal borrowing), and an exploration of the Anatolian source of the theonym Artemis. The intersection of both the cult title and divine name with Mycenaean dialect variation is carefully examined.

Conclusions are summarized and final reflections added. Neither Hannibal nor Scipio received cult in the strong sense. The Roman Flamininus did – but only from Greek communities. Herodotus on a Hamilcar’s death might show cult was thinkable for defeated Carthaginian commanders – but the story is dubious. Neither Hannibal nor Scipio founded eponymous cities or aimed at monarchical positions. Both, as overseas commanders, took policy initiatives on the spot, including appointment of key subordinates; but Publius and Lucius Scipio in the east after 190 acted on general understanding of senatorial wishes. Neither was conspicuously successful as politician. Hannibal did at least bravely and single-handedly carry unpopular reforms to curb oligarchic corruption, but it is uncertain how long they lasted after his hasty exit from Carthage. Ancient poets and modern biographers have always found Hannibal, the glamorous failure and precursor of Cleopatra, a more popular and congenial subject than the more conventional Scipio.

The public worship of Christian saints started to spread in Egypt in the fifth century CE. This was particularly the case in the Nile Delta, which is characterised by its unique location. This phenomenon is a multi-layered practice that is difficult to explore in full; nonetheless, the object of this chapter is to grasp some of the dynamics behind the growth or decline of a saint’s cult and the overall alteration of Christian saints’ glorification in the Delta between the fifth and ninth centuries. The dynamics in this context suggest that the evolution or decline of saints’ popularity were due to religious, cultural and social practices. A large variety of literary texts were witness to the presence of a saint’s cult and bear information about saints’ veneration in different periods. Selections from these sources are explored in this chapter. Other complex factors to be discussed include the topography and location of cults, the nature of the religious landscape where the veneration started, cultural exchanges and language barriers, socio-economic growth and political and institutional rivalries and shifts.

A study of Archaic Spartan commemoration, starting with Homeric ideas and the poetry of Tyrtaeus. A look at some key commemorative events in Archaic Sparta, including Sparta’s relationship with Samos and the Messenian Wars. A consideration of the role of commemoration in Spartan religion and cult.

The rise of QAnon in the US and abroad is best understood within a “socio-epistemic” context of hyper-polarized politics and populism, growing mistrust in authoritative sources of information, and the ubiquity of misinformation, especially from online sources. Although there has not yet been a systematic study of how people have come to be followers of QAnon, psychological research on conspiracy theories, cults, and “internet addiction” can inform applicable mechanisms of “recruitment” and “conversion.” Published anecdotal accounts likewise illustrate the process by which some individuals have fallen down the QAnon “rabbit hole.” Believers in conspiracy theories like QAnon can be modeled along a typological continuum that distinguishes “fence-sitters,” “true believers,” and “activists,” as well as “apostates” who manage to disaffiliate. “Clinical staging” of QAnon believers in this fashion might be useful in predicting effective interventions for those vulnerable or who succumb to belief in conspiracy theories.

Over the course of 2020, QAnon has repeatedly captured the news media’s attention more than ever as the group starts to move their activities from online chat boards into the offline world. With increased public attention, so too political commentators (expert and lay) increasingly refer to QAnon as a “cult” (Blazakis, 2021; Hassan, 2021). What is missing in the growing literature on QAnon is: (1) an examination of the movement within the context of the substantial academic literature on new religious movements and (2) use of this research to see whether labeling QAnon a “cult” or “new religious movement” makes sense in a comparative context. This is of particular importance not only because the use of these terms by the public is usually divorced from academic research on the topic, but also because the terms are often used as weapons to tarnish a movement that is considered to be deviant in some way. We argue that QAnon indeed has elements of a new religious movement, and note that treating it as such reveals insights for how the movement will evolve and develop over time.

This chapter analyzes the evidence that suggests that Jesus endorsed and participated in the worship of the Jerusalem temple during his public ministry, arguing that the Gospel of Matthew offers important data that have been often overlooked and undervalued by the quest. Among other traditions, this chapter offers analysis of Jesuss instructions on offering sacrifice in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:23–24), Jesus’s Instructions to the leper to offer sacrifice (Matt 8:1–4); the healing of the paralytic (Matt 9:1–8); Jesuss quotation of Hosea 6:6 (Matt 9:13; 12:7); Jesuss statement that something greater than the temple is here (Matt 12:6); Jesus and the temple tax (Matt 17:24–27); Jesuss statement that the house is desolate (Matt 23:38); and Jesuss participation in the Passover celebration (Matt 26:17–19).

Jan Bremmer’s contribution returns to the thorny issue of divine identities. Bremmer offers a case-study that shows the interplay between local and universal forces that characterises most recent works on localism, religious and otherwise. His study of the presence of the goddess Hera on the Greek island of Samos during the Archaic and Classical periods integrates myth, ritual, and cult, and brings them together in a comprehensive account of the same divine persona. The chapter confirms that one and the same divine presence might combine both local and universal elements. Visible throughout is a distinct tendency to localise elements of the divine persona by attributing Hera with particular local connections. Through an erudite study of the larger contexts in which the worship of Hera took place on Samos, Bremmer teases out some of the forces at work in this localising process: among them are the move to integrate aspects of the local landscape or environment into the cultic practice.

Jan Bremmer’s contribution returns to the thorny issue of divine identities. Bremmer offers a case-study that shows the interplay between local and universal forces that characterises most recent works on localism, religious and otherwise. His study of the presence of the goddess Hera on the Greek island of Samos during the Archaic and Classical periods integrates myth, ritual, and cult, and brings them together in a comprehensive account of the same divine persona. The chapter confirms that one and the same divine presence might combine both local and universal elements. Visible throughout is a distinct tendency to localise elements of the divine persona by attributing Hera with particular local connections. Through an erudite study of the larger contexts in which the worship of Hera took place on Samos, Bremmer teases out some of the forces at work in this localising process: among them are the move to integrate aspects of the local landscape or environment into the cultic practice.

This chapter describes the psychopathological consequences of harmful spiritual beliefs, practices and experiences. It explores the concepts of spiritual defences, offensive spirituality, false spiritual teachers or gurus, and attempts to define the characteristics of cultic groups and compare how they differ from healthy groups. Terms such as ‘conversion’, ‘brainwashing’, ‘thought reform’, ‘coercive persuasion’ and ‘mind control’ are discussed. The complex psychopathology experienced by people who have been harmed by cult-like organisations and the related abuse is examined, and specific diagnostic issues are considered. Current evidence-based recovery-orientated psychotherapeutic interventions are also described. Treatment may best be understood in four phases: separation from the cult, psychoeducation and story-telling, emotional healing, and – finally – a resumption of an authentic identity and new life. The themes of the chapter are explored in a series of case studies.

This chapter presents the first detailed study of afterlife heroic power in the Oresteia. Aeschylus only uses the word “hero” (hērōs) once in his plays, for the anonymous powerful ancestors who send and receive the expedition to Troy in the Agamemnon. But in the Choephoroi, Agamemnon is prayed to as powerful at his tomb, and in the Eumenides, Orestes predicts his own heroic power from beyond the grave. The Oresteia famously relocates these two mythical heroes to Argos to associate them with that city’s treaty with Athens. This chapter demonstrates that the representation of father and son after death reverses expectations not only from the world external to the play, but also from their living actions within the trilogy. Agamemnon becomes an ethically whitewashed ancestor figure; conversely, Orestes, who killed his mother, becomes a political hero. These radical afterlife transformations are a major part of the Oresteia’s “poetics of the beyond.”

This chapter turns to early Byzantine homiletics, beginning with the works of early fifth-century preachers including Hesychios of Jerusalem, Attikos, and Proklos of Constantinople. Problems with the dating and attribution of many of the earliest Marian hymns persist; this chapter offers new approaches to this subject. The preoccupation of fifth-century homilists remained Christological and we find few, if any, references to Mary’s intercessory power in the surviving sermons. However, the situation begins to change in the sixth century, with the homilies of (ps-)Basil of Seleucia, Severos of Antioch and Abraham of Ephesus displaying more interest in Mary’s human aspect and intercessory role between humanity and God. The sixth century is thus a turning point, as scholars have already remarked; with the addition of Marian feasts to the calendar during this period, preachers began to focus increasingly on the Virgin’s importance as a holy figure in her own right.

This section provides the main argument of the book, followed by historical background on the development of doctrine and devotion to the Virgin Mary up to the end of the fifth century and the flourishing of the cult from that period onward. This section is followed by one on literary genre, which attempts to justify the structure and argument of the book as a whole. A section on gender, which takes into account recent approaches to this subject in the Byzantine context, develops a methodology for studying the cult of the Virgin Mary. The Introduction finishes by outlining once again the goal of this study: it is to assess early and middle Byzantine texts on the Byzantine Virgin according to the diverse settings and audiences for which these were intended.

Conclusion: The final chapter sums up the findings of the book as a whole, assessing again whether its literary approach to the subject is productive. I also return to the question of gender, suggesting here that Mary embodies the characteristics (or virtues) of both genders to the extent that she becomes a paradoxical figure. I conclude that she appealed to both female and male devotees, since evidence of successful petitions from both genders survives. Finally, I point the way towards future studies that might follow the methodology that is employed in this book. Other literary genres that deal with the Virgin Mary require examination too; these include histories, chronicles, poetry, epistolography, polemical treatises and others.

The introduction provides necessary background on Ancient Greek religious and literary ideas about the afterlife, methods for analyzing ethics in literature that several of the chapters will challenge, a working definition of tragic poetics, and historical context and preliminary definitions relevant for political structures and themes in the Oresteia.

Studies of trade are predicated on the antithesis between ‘personalised exchange’ (the Network) and ‘arms-length exchange’ (the anonymous Market). As regards ancient trade, the putative incongruity between the two has informed the view of the supremacy of personalised exchange, and the concomitant absence of market exchange. In historical analyses, furthermore, trade networks are appraised solely for their role in the distribution of raw materials and commodities. This chapter challenges these views. Focusing on a formalised kind of network, the association, it first charts the diffusion of traders’ associations to, and their integration in the economic life of, eastern Mediterranean commercial centres. Then, it investigates the mechanisms that enabled associational networks to act as fighters of trade constraints, distance-shortening entities, bridge builders between state/fiscal concerns and private profit, co-determinants of routes and prices, and as producers of knowledge and trust. Formalised networks, it is concluded, helped trade to break out of its lone-peddler mode and to amalgamate with a wider organisational world, whose newly fashioned business behaviour approximated that of the firm. In all this, this chapter is in alignment with the more recent trend among social scientists to consider networks as integral parts of market models of the economy.