The historical impact and archaeological reflections of intense religious movements.

摘要

This thesis explores the role of intense religious movements as forces of social change. Religion features in history as a source of control in daily existence, as a means for promoting political power and as a tool for the advancement of individual and group agendas. While the impact of religion predates the formation of states, it gained additional significance with their emergence. Aided by professional priesthoods, rulers could use religious institutions to signify that divinity sanctioned their rule. In terms of ideology, elite political actors could use religion to defame and suppress alternative perspectives. Still, some independent religious ideologies prevailed, with their promoters using god or gods to effectively justify dissention.; Intense religious movements significantly expedited the process of dissention, provoking developments that further fueled the social unrest that aided their rise. From the perspective of rebel preachers the destruction of the status quo and its institutions was a pre-condition for the forthcoming regency of God. Repercussions were traumatic, often catastrophic. This dissertation departs from previous historical studies by examining the phenomenon through combined historical, archaeological and anthropological lenses. In doing so, central methodological aspects of textual and artifact-based research are analyzed, with an emphasis on religious-ideological perspectives.; This study uses a distinct cross-cultural perspective by closely examining six historical intense religious movements. The earliest case, the First Jewish Revolt against Rome is discussed in particular detail in association with a new archaeological methodology for investigating intense socio-religious movements. The study incorporates historical evidence indicating religious intensity as the chief motivator for the revolt, supported by extensive archaeological evidence. A case is argued for the advantages of archaeological methods for the examination of radicalization within religions in the past, in coordination with textual evidence. Overall, this dissertation combines historical and archaeological evidence with anthropologically derived models to produce a previously untested model of religion-inspired mass action, short-lived as an individual event but with long-term historical repercussions.