Call for Abstracts for SBL 2023

Greco-Roman Religions this year will offer four sessions at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Antonio (Nov. 18-21, 2023): three of these include an open call for abstracts, while the fourth will have invited speakers. Please click here and scroll down to submit an abstract for one of our open call sessions on the SBL site. Please indicate in your abstract the session (1, 2, or 3 below) for which you wish your paper to be considered. All abstracts are due by March 14, 2023.

1. “Interactions between Human and Divine in the Ancient and Modern World,” co-sponsored with the AAR Contemporary Pagan Studies unit, is an open call session. We invite papers for this session that address divine epiphanies in ancient Greek and Roman religion and/or in contemporary paganism. Divine epiphany and appearing gods define the vitality of Greco-Roman cults in the lives of ancient cult adherents – experiences of this nature define these religious traditions and the gods as real, as well as contributing to shaping social identities and cultures. Mindful that “paganism” in Mediterranean antiquity simply means traditional cults and practices in local and translocal manifestations, contemporary paganism may include deliberate re-installing and performances of ancient cults or modern adaptations of these in new settings, often countercultural in character, within a context of hegemonic Christian cultures or secular societies. This circumstance invites comparative description because the juxtaposition raises the question of the relationship of modern paganism to ancient cultic discourses and practices. In addition, proposals may also explore the function of contemporary reconstituting of ancient cultic traditions in comparison to the function of cults in antiquity. Papers will ideally address issues of divine epiphany and the differential reception of the divine in the Greco-Roman and modern worlds. Proposals that pursue comparative theorizing are also welcome.
2. “Reconsidering Belief in Greek and Roman Religion,” focuses on a theme prominent in recent scholarship, namely that of belief as central to Greek and Roman religion. This session will consist of two parts. A panel of invited speakers will review Jacob L. Mackey’s Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion (Princeton University Press 2022), and the author will respond to these papers. For the second part, we issue an open call for papers addressing the issue of belief in the various manifestations of Greek and Roman religions. Long considered idiosyncratic of (Protestant) Christianity, belief has for the past two decades been reevaluated in light of new theoretical approaches, with scholars (including Mackey) attributing to belief a vital role in the functioning and even the foundation of religious traditions. For the open portion of the session, we welcome studies that do not necessarily engage with Mackey’s book, although appropriate papers might apply or challenge featured aspects of his theoretical approach (e.g., “Intentionality” of belief, relationship of belief to emotion and action, shared belief, “deontology” and its relation to morality, “social ontology”), or present case studies that demonstrate the application of theory to specific religious phenomena that complement without duplicating Mackey’s richly informative array of case studies (on Lucretius’ Roman theory, children’s cult as cognitive apprenticeship, “folk theology” of Roman prayer, and inauguration). Given that Mackey’s book focuses almost entirely on Roman religion, papers on religions of Greek or explicitly Greco-Roman cultural heritage would be especially appropriate for the open portion of the session.
3. “Secrecy and Sociogenesis: Mysteries, Restricted Rituals, and the Growth of Religious Communities,” co-sponsored with the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions, is another open call session. We invite papers that address the following question of why do rituals sealed by secrecy – or even just rumored to be – generate robust trajectories for emergence, growth, and longevity in social groups? The question underwrites a broad range of religious phenomena in the ancient Mediterranean, including the mystery cults of Eleusis, Dionysos and Mithras, Egyptian polytheism, Christian communities, and Jewish Kabbalists. Theoretical frameworks from Georg Simmel onward emphasize the productive irony of the social contagion that arises through restricted access, acts of silence, and the mechanisms which simultaneously advertise and maintain the unspeakability of core ideas. The exploration of secrecy integrates the sacred with questions of hierarchy, political domination and resistance, rhetorical strategies, religious architecture, sacred viewing, scriptural hermeneutics, and the aesthetics of concealment.  This panel will focus on the paradoxical dynamics of secrecy and sociogenesis in ancient Mediterranean contexts. Papers should be rooted in specific case studies, and engage with the critical frameworks drawn from Religion, Anthropology, Biblical and Classical traditions. Possible avenues of inquiry include: what kinds of data – material, epigraphic, liturgical or literary – support the investigation of ancient secrecy? What are the benefits and boundaries of models drawn from living cultures in these investigations? Do the uses of secrecy change over the long history of a cult or ritual? To what extent do practices of secrecy coincide with the boundaries between public and private religion? How does the use of secrecy as vilification compare to the use of secrecy as a confirmation of authority and authenticity? How does secrecy differ in its deployment between urban and rural cult?   
4. In addition to these three sessions with open calls, GRR will also offer a book review panel with invited speakers on Jae Han’s Prophets and Prophecy in the Late Antique Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2023). The list of speakers will be posted here before the meetings.