Overview

In the past 20 years, a new paradigm has emerged around the study of festive dining as a seminal social practice that functioned as the matrix for the social formation of a variety of groups in the Greco-Roman world, including earliest Christianity and pre-Rabbinic Judaism. Most recently, an international team of scholars, organized as the Society of Biblical Literature Seminar on Meals in the Greco-Roman World, has developed this paradigm in a series of groundbreaking studies. This volume provides a collection of those studies in four areas of focus: The Typology of the Greco-Roman Banquet; The Archeology of the Banquet; Who Was at the Greco-Roman Banquets?; and The Culture of Reclining. Together they establish festive meals as an essential lens into social formation in the Greco-Roman world.