As I have mentioned, I am presently writing an article on immigrants and immigrant associations in the Greco-Roman world. My primary focus now is on comparing Judean (Jewish) synagogues in the dispersion with other immigrants from the Levant (east of the Mediterranean) who likewise formed associations, especially Syrians or Phoenicians.

Jews were by no means the only group of immigrants who gathered together regularly in associations and maintained important connections with the culture and religion of their homeland. I will save the Syrians for future posts, but thought I’d mention one of our earliest attested cases of a group of immigrants who formed an association devoted to the deity of their homeland: the Thracians devoted to the goddess Bendis near Athens, Greece, in the Piraeus.

Votive relief depicting the Thracian goddess Bendis with a number of torch-race victors approaching their goddess (c. 400-350 BCE, now in the British Museum, photo by Phil)

We know very little about the goddess Bendis herself, who is often (as here) depicted in Thracian hunting gear (and with affinities to Artemis the huntress). At the Piraeus there were at least two associations devoted to her, one of them for immigrants from Thracia (north of Macedonia) specifically and the other for citizens of the city. We first catch a glimpse of a group of Thracians requesting and gaining permission from Athens (which controlled the port city of Piraeus) to set up a temple for their goddess somewhere between 434 and 411 BCE.

I have recently updated the Travel and Religion in Antiquity website, which now includes the papers (in pdf) that will be presented this year at the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, meeting at York University (soon my home).

I am presently designing another website for the “Meals in the Greco-Roman World” seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature, which will hopefully appear soon.

I’ve been bogged down with family issues for a while, but perhaps these other website updates (as well as an article I’m writing on immigrant groups for the July SBL conference) will be considered a more legitimate excuse for not posting often on the blog. I will be back to the blog in full force eventually. As a friend has warned me, the blog entries falling off may be a sign of imminent death for the blog, but I’m fighting this near-death blogging experience and will succeed!

The fifth BIblical Studies Carnival is now up over at Bluecord.