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Old Age in Ancient Judaism, Early Christianity, and Their Contexts: Senescence and Its Significations book cover

1st Edition

Old Age in Ancient Judaism, Early Christianity, and Their Contexts Senescence and Its Significations

Edited By Albertina Oegema, Seth A. Bledsoe Copyright 2026
244 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

244 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
The collection of chapters in this volume explores the significance of old age for Jews and Christians as well as Greeks and Romans in antiquity. By examining a diverse range of sources, the authors in this volume elaborate on the manifold ways that old age functioned as a social discourse in ancient Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Roman contexts. The discussions herein demonstrate how... Read more

List of Contributors

 

Foreword

Mira Balberg

 

Acknowledgements

 

List of Abbreviations

 

Introduction

 

Section 1: Old Age, Wisdom, and Authority

 

1. Old and Young in Philo’s Legatio ad Gaium

Pieter B. Hartog

 

2. “O Glorious Wisdom in an Ugly Vessel”: Old Age, Wisdom, and Wine in Rabbinic Literature

Lieve M. Teugels

 

3. Old Age and Political System Change in Ancient Rome

Christoph Michels

 

Section 2: Old Age, Gender, and Social Dynamics

 

4. Beyond Gender: Polycarp’s Martyrdom at the Intersection of Old Age and Masculinity

Peter-Ben Smit

 

5. “Wearing Clothes of a Young Woman”: The Agency of Elderly Women in Tannaitic Literature

Albertina Oegema

 

Section 3

Old Age, Anxiety, and Familial Discourse

 

6. Dying in Peace: Old Age and Death Anxiety in the Hebrew Bible and in the Ancient Near East

Klaas Spronk

 

7. Diverse Representations of Old Age in Literary and Iconographic Works of Classical Athens

Silvana Dayan

 

8. Old Age and the Ethical Discourse of Familial Reciprocity among the Aramaic Documents from Elephantine

Seth A. Bledsoe

Section 4: Old Age, the Body, and Disability

 

9. Ambivalences in the Process and Prolongation of Ageing in the Hebrew Bible

Hugh Pyper

 

10. A Disabled Patriarch: John Chrysostom’s Use of Disability Discourse in His Characterization of Abraham

Chris L. de Wet

 

Index

Biography

Albertina Oegema is Postdoctoral Researcher in New Testament Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.

Seth A. Bledsoe is Assistant Professor of Ancient Judaism at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

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