{"product_id":"icons-of-power-ritual-practices-in-late-antiquity-hardcover","title":"Icons of Power: Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity - Hardcover","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eNaomi Janowitz\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the waning years of the Roman Empire, Jews, Christians, and pagans alike used rituals to bridge the gap between the human and the divine. Depending on one's point of view, however, such rituals could be labeled negatively as \"magic\" or positively as \"theurgy.\" This has led to numerous problems of interpretation, including marginalizing certain ritual practices as magic or occult while privileging others as genuine or orthodox. In \u003ci\u003eIcons of Power\u003c\/i\u003e, Naomi Janowitz sifts through the polemics to make sense of the daunting mosaic of religious belief and practice in Late Antiquity. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom rabbis who ascended to heavenly places, to sorcerers seeking to harm enemies with spells, to alchemists working metals to purify the soul, Janowitz reveals how ritual practitioners held common assumptions about why their rituals worked and about how to perform those rituals. Indeed, such assumptions were so much a part of the inherited mentality of the age that they were, for the most part, never explained--and this is precisely what Janowitz accomplishes in \u003ci\u003eIcons of Power\u003c\/i\u003e. By shifting the discussion out of the rhetoric of \"magic\" or \"mysticism\" and describing the mechanisms of ritual with semiotic terms, she moves us beyond the value-laden terminology of ancient polemicists and modern scholars so that we can better see how these rituals worked and how they affected the social identities of their followers. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJanowitz recovers a lost world of religious expression that has been clouded by misinterpretation for many centuries. In the process, \u003ci\u003eIcons of Power\u003c\/i\u003e makes an important contribution to our understanding of society in Late Antiquity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNaomi Janowitz is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California at Davis. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Poetics of Ascent: Theories of Language in a Rabbinic Ascent Text \u003c\/i\u003e(1989).\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 192\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.77 x 9.48 x 6.38 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e May 15, 2002\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52987686617395,"sku":"9780271021478","price":149.11,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0300\/5595\/6612\/files\/WZBVlmjc-79780271021478.webp?v=1769068520","url":"https:\/\/www.vysn.com\/en-ca\/products\/icons-of-power-ritual-practices-in-late-antiquity-hardcover","provider":"VYSN","version":"1.0","type":"link"}