This research group brought various scholars of Ancient Mediterranean Studies into sustained dialogue on the interrelations between knowledge, authority and personality. Its comparative approach involved discourses, methodologies and technologies of Ancient History, Archaeology, Cultural Studies, Greek and Latin Studies, Epigraphy, Old and New Testament Studies, Patristics, Religious Studies and Social Thought.
| 30 | Researchers |
| 8 | Research Projects |
| 7 | Dissertation Projects |
| 63 | Publications |
| 14 | Events |
| 14 | Cooperating partners |
The testimonies at stake range from ca. 500 BC to 500 AD. In particular, the group’s research was concerned with the issue of personal authorization of knowledge in religion and science. Such authorization emerges as a construct from the social interaction of the actors involved. To us, it is clearly visible in textual representations. Interdisciplinary questions to be addressed include, e.g., points of reference (individual, group, polis, state), morphology (e.g. ascendancy vs. descendancy, lists vs. genealogical narrative), networks of places and knowledge (e.g. libraries or other institutions for storing and imparting knowledge), inclusive and exclusive functions of various strategies of personal and non-personal authorization, sociopolitical and religious commissioning and granting of access to bodies of knowledge (e.g. legitimization in political power, embedding in a salvation narrative), as well as trade practices (both discursive and normative) and finally the spatial localization (media, geographical localization) and the performance of personal authorizations of knowledge.
Research Projects
- (B-5-1) The personal authorization of knowledge in ancient succession narratives
- (B-5-2) Personal and nonpersonal authority in ancient Greek theoretical knowledge
- (B-5-3) Authorization of early Christian knowledge claims in Asia Minor and Greece
- (B-5-4) Places and authorities of the Christianization of knowledge
- (B-5-5) Basic structures of Jewish genealogies in Hellenistic times
- (B-5-6) Auctoritates magicae. Edition of the curse tablets of Attica (Corpus defixionum Atticarum)
- (B-5-7) Genealogical and dynastic space
- (B-5-8) The Construction of Personal and Nonpersonal Authority
Dissertations
- (B-5-2-1) Medical Experts in Imperial China (10th to 19th centuries) – Competition, Legitimation, and Professionalization
- (B-5-2-2) Literary studies on imperial Greek doxographical texts
- (B-5-2-3) Diagrammatic issues concerning Aristotle
- (B-5-3-1) Early Christianity in Galatia
- (B-5-4-1) Early Christianity in the Kalykadnos valley and adjacent areas
- (B-5-8-1) Authority and the authorization of knowledge in a sociological perspective
- (Z-BerGSAS-X-15) Das frühe Christentum zwischen der Donau, der Ägäis und dem Schwarzen Meer (Moesia Secunda, Haemimontus, Thracia und Rhodope, 3.-6. Jh. n. Chr.)