Eliav Y., Friedland E., Herbert Sh. (eds.) The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East. Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power

Leuven: Peeters, 2008. — xxvii + 769 p.Public sculptures were the “mass media” of the Roman world. They populated urban centers throughout the empire, serving as a “plastic language” that communicated political, religious, and social messages. This book brings together twenty-eight experts who otherwise rarely convene: text-based scholars of the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian realms from the fields of classics, history, and religion and specialists in the artistic traditions of Greece and Rome as well as art historians and archaeologists. Utilizing the full spectrum of ancient sources, the book examines the multiple, at times even contradictory, meanings and functions that statues served within the complex world of the Roman Near East. Moreover, it situates the discussion of sculpture in the broader context of antiquity in order to reevaluate long-held scholarly consensuses on such ideas as the essence of Hellenism (the culture that emerged from the encounter of Greco-Romans with the Near East) and the everlasting “conflict” among paganism, Christianity, and Judaism.Yaron Z. Eliav is the Jean & Samuel Frankel Associate Professor for Rabbinic Literature and Jewish History of Late Antiquity in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.Elise A. Friedland is the George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Scholar in Classical Studies and Associate Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology in the Department of Art and Art History and Program in Classical Studies at Rollins College, Winter Park, FL.Sharon Herbert is the John G. Pedley Professor of Classical Archaeology and the Director of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan.