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Households and Kinship Households and Kinship
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Iron Age Settlement, Migration, and Movement Iron Age Settlement, Migration, and Movement
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Civic and Religious Communities: Cities and Villages, Temples and Churches Civic and Religious Communities: Cities and Villages, Temples and Churches
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Empires and Kingdoms Empires and Kingdoms
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Global Trends Global Trends
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Bibliography Bibliography
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24 Religious Life in the Near East: Plurality, Variation, and Innovation
Get accessNathanael Andrade is a professor in the department of history at Binghamton University, SUNY. He has authored many publications on the Roman Near East and the Roman Empire’s connections with the societies of Asia. These include Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), The Journey of Christianity to India in Late Antiquity: Networks and the Movement of Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), and Zenobia: Shooting Star of Palmyra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
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Published:22 April 2025
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Abstract
Religious pluralism was a defining feature of all the societies in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. The Near East was also home to Jews, and its peoples over time played a pivotal roles in the formation of Zoroastrian, Christian, Manichaean, and eventually Muslim communities. This chapter aims to identify various social factors that shaped and structured the Near East’s pluralistic religious landscapes and the religious lives of those inhabiting them. Areas of analysis include households, kinship groups, Iron Age continuities, cities, villages, regional formations and trends, imperial and state structures, global phenomena, and the Roman army. Finally, the chapter probes the complicated impact that members of religious movements with transregional or universal aspirations, especially Christians, had on these landscapes during late antiquity.
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