Travel and Religion in Antiquity (edited by Philip A. Harland)

Book information and sample chapters

Philip A. Harland, ed., Travel and Religion in Antiquity. Studies in Christianity and Judaism, vol. 21. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011.
289 pages. ISBN 978-1-55458-222-8. Order the book now

Travel and Religion in Antiquity is a book by a group of scholars that explores the ways in which travel and mobility influenced, constrained, and facilitated religious activity and cultural interaction in antiquity, especially in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. This encompasses issues pertaining to ancient travel literature, ethnography, pilgrimage, topography of sacred space, occupational travelers, and migration.

Table of contents

INTRODUCTION

1 Pausing at the Intersection of Religion and Travel (click title read sample chapter in pdf; Philip A. Harland)

HONOURING THE GODS

2 Religion on the Road in Ancient Greece and Rome (Steven Muir)
3 Going Up to Jerusalem: Pilgrimage and the Historical Jesus (Susan Haber)
4 Pilgrimage, Place, and Meaning-Making by Jews in Greco-Roman Egypt (Wayne O. McCready)
5 Have Horn, Will Travel: The Journeys of Mesopotamian Deities (Karljürgen G. Feuerherm)

PROMOTING A DEITY OR WAY OF LIFE

6 The Divine Wanderer: Travel and Divinization in Late Antiquity (Ian W. Scott)
7 Journeys in Pursuit of Divine Wisdom: Stories of Thessalos and Other Seekers (click to read sample chapter in pdf; Philip A. Harland)
8 “Danger in the Wilderness, Danger at Sea”: Paul and Perils of Travel (Ryan Schellenberg)

ENCOUNTERING FOREIGN CULTURES

9 Roman Translation: Tacitus and Ethnographic Interpretation (James Rives)

MIGRATING

10 Migration and the Emergence of Greco-Roman Diaspora Judaism (Jack N. Lightstone)

MAKING A LIVING

11 Religion and the Nomadic Lifestyle: The Nabateans (Michele Murray)
12 Christians on the Move in Late Antique Oxyrhynchus (Lincoln Blumell)

Bibliographies Online

“Travel and Religion in Antiquity: A Preliminary Classified Bibliography.”
(Prepared by Angela Brkich, Sacha Mathew, Daniel Bernard, and Philip Harland -- June 10, 2005 edition)

Includes sections on:

1. Realities of Travel in the Ancient Mediterranean (including general works and works on dangers of travel [banditry])
2. Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean and Travel (including pilgrimage, itinerant religious practitioners, diffusion of religions)
3. Ancient Ethnography, Geography, and Travelogues
4. Immigrants and Occupational Travelers (including Nomads)
5. Judaism, the Near East, and Travel
6. Early Christianity and Travel (including Jesus and the Gospels, Paul and Acts, other early Christian literature, geography of heresies)
7. Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Methods and Theory (including geography of religion and the cultural history of travel)

Links (to external resources)

Realities of Travel

Distance and Communication in the Roman empire (John Paul Adams)
Chart showing distances and travel-times between ancient cities, by land and by sea (based on ancient accounts)

Roman Roads (Lacus Curtius, Bill Thayer)
Several useful resources concerning Roman roads, including photographs of the Via Flaminia and Via Appia in Italy

Roman Roads in Britain by Thomas Codrington (1903)
Full text of the book, now in the public domain. Hosted at Bill Thayer's website.

Roman Roads: Peutinger's Tabula
This site allows you to view the various parts of Peutinger's Table, a 12th century copy of a Roman road map

Tabula Peutingeriana (Bibliotheca Augustana)
Photographs of Peutinger's Table, a 12th century copy of an ancient Roman map

Virtual Museum of Nautical Archaeology (Texas A&M)
Photographs and discussion of several underwater archeological projects, including several Greek, Roman, and Byzantine shipwrecks

Ancient travel narratives (real or imagined), travel literature, and ethnography

Hanno (Livius.org, Jona Lendering)
Introduction and translation of Hanno of Carthage's voyage along the western coast of Africa in the early sixth century BCE

Herodotus, Histories (Perseus)
Greek text and translation (by A. D. Godley)

Herodotus on the Web
Links to translations and discussions of Herodotus' Histories

Lost Trails: Herodotus Project

Pausanias, Description of Greece (Perseus)
Greek text and translation (by W.H.S. Jones and H.A. Ormerod) from the Loeb Classical Library

Project on Ancient Cultural Engagement (PACE at York University, Steve Mason)
Materials pertaining to ancient ethnography and encounters among cultures in antiquity, including the works of Josephus and Polybius with Greek texts, English translations, and commentaries

Ptolemy: The Geography (Lacus Curtius, Bill Thayer)
The only available (also non-scholarly) English translation of Claudius Ptolemy's second century CE work (translated by Edward Luther Stevenson [1932] based on a Latin translation by Karl Müller, not the original Greek text)

Strabo: The Geography, books 3-5 (Lacus Curtius, Bill Thayer)
English translation (by H. L. Jones) for books 3-5 from the Loeb Classical Library edition

Strabo: The Geography, books 6-14 (Perseus)
Greek texts and English translation (by H. L. Jones) for books 6-14 from the Loeb Classical Library edition

Travel Narratives: Travel and Travel Accounts in World History (Jerry H. Bentley, Center for History and New Media, George Mason University)
General discussion of travel narratives as historical evidence, including links to other online resources, particularly for the modern period

Travel, Judaism, and early Christianity

Anonymous Pilgrim of Bordeaux (333 A.D., Franciscan order site)
Introduction and English translation of the earliest known travelogue by a pilgrim (from Bordeaux to the Holy Land)

By Land and By Sea: The We-Passages and Ancient Sea Voyages (Vernon Robbins)
Article dealing with travel in the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles

Inscription of Abercius (Early Christian Writings, Peter Kirby)
Links and translation (by Quasten) of the second-century grave inscription of Abercius of Hieropolis (perhaps Avercius Marcellus, a bishop), which relates this Christian's journeys across the empire