Читать книгу Religion in the Roman Empire - Группа авторов - Страница 12

The themes we have chosen are those for which a lived religion approach seems to us to have most to offer. Objects and well explored locales feature, as a result, more than does law or philosophical theology. Other thematics were discussed and would have been possible, and sometimes we have made difficult choices in order to avoid duplication or artificial demarcations. One example is the question of how to deal with the body, a key locus for ritual action and prohibition in the Christian period and also before. It would be been possible and interesting to explore Roman religion in these terms. But after discussion we decided that since knowledge and practice are both embodied, it would be better to stress this integrally within other chapters, so we could explore lived spaces in terms of the bodies that passed through them, connect images of bodies and body parts to those of the worshippers who dedicated them and so on.

This instance illustrates one other distinctive feature of this book, its collaborative nature. Encyclopaedic projects often divide authorial responsibilities between a team of authors who work more or less autonomously if in parallel. We felt it was important that this subject be more deeply and routinely collaborative. One expression is that almost every chapter is co-authored. But our collaboration goes deeper than this. The conception and design of the project has been a shared one from the start, and although the editors share the final responsibility, they are glad to acknowledge, with gratitude, the degree of participation by all involved.