Book contents
- Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235
- Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Timeline
- Abbreviations
- Map
- Introduction
- Part I Refiguring Roman and Greek Interactions
- Part II Imperial Infrastructure: Documents and Monuments
- Part III Cultural Translation and Transformation
- Chapter 13 Bardaisan’s Disciples and Ethnographic Knowledge in the Roman Empire
- Chapter 14 Chaldean Interactions
- Chapter 15 Gilgamos in Rome
- Afterword
- References
- Index
Chapter 13 - Bardaisan’s Disciples and Ethnographic Knowledge in the Roman Empire
from Part III - Cultural Translation and Transformation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2020
- Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235
- Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Timeline
- Abbreviations
- Map
- Introduction
- Part I Refiguring Roman and Greek Interactions
- Part II Imperial Infrastructure: Documents and Monuments
- Part III Cultural Translation and Transformation
- Chapter 13 Bardaisan’s Disciples and Ethnographic Knowledge in the Roman Empire
- Chapter 14 Chaldean Interactions
- Chapter 15 Gilgamos in Rome
- Afterword
- References
- Index
Summary
What were the sources for the ethnographic knowledge of Bardaisan of Edessa (active c. 200 CE) and his literary circle? This chapter maintains that such ethnographic knowledge, as exhibited by Bardaisan’s surviving historical fragments and the Syriac Book of the Laws of the Countries, was much more indebted to intertextual engagements with Greek and Latin material available to a contemporary Roman readership than to information collected from ‘eastern’ contacts and connections, as scholars sometimes surmise. Roman imperial networks in fact enabled the circulation of ethnographic information that served the authorial strategies of Bardaisan’s literary circle. Yet, Bardaisan’s circle attributed such knowledge, whether implicitly or explicitly, to eastern literary and oral sources and thus framed themselves as ‘eastern’ experts for both local Edessene and broader Roman audiences. In this way, they navigated the intricate space between ‘Roman’ and ‘Other’.
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- Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235Cross-Cultural Interactions, pp. 291 - 308Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020