(More on) Associations, Synagogues and Congregations, - with a view from aside on megasites

This year it is - in fact - 20 years since I published my first article on the Greaco-Roman Clubs and Associations... It was a review article, written in Norwegian and printed in a small Norwegian journal. The reviw focused mainly on works on the associations, and how these had been or could be applied in investigating the social life of the early churches.

Since then, the interest and publications on both the associations per se, and their value for understanding the social lfe of both Jews and Christians have increased amazingly. The publication of S.G. Wilson and John Klobbenborg (eds.), Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (1995) was one example of this interest, and several more, not at least from some of Kloppenborgs students, like Richard Ascough and Philip A. Harland have been published.

I my self became interested in this field as part of my efforts to understand the social world of Philo and the early Christians, and have tried to keep updated since. Hence, though I have referred to it before on this blog, I would again like to refer you to the site of Philip A. Harland on Associations, Synagogues and Congregations. It is regularly (?) updated, and his latest article provided in full text on that site; Imperial Cults within Local Cultural Life: Associations in Roman Asia (Originally published in Ancient History Bulletin / Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 17 (2003):47-69. Reprinted in accordance with the journal's policies. Copyright Philip A. Harland 2003), provide also a lot of bibliographic information in its footnotes.

Harland's site, in addition to being very nicely designed, is also an example of sites that focus in depth on a particular issue of the Graeco-Roman world and/ or its literature, and represent a type of sites very helpful for us trying to upheld "megasites" (vf. the debate on megasites initiated on this Weblog (ses also later postings on my site). In fact, this may be the way to go in the future: to build a site focusing on a specific, almost narrow topic, providing material that covers and promotes research in that particular field. When such sites are administered by persons who are real experts in the field, like Philip A Harland on associations, the sites become immensely interesting and profitable for other scholars. For the momens we have some such topic or more narrowly focused sites (examples; Felix Just on Johannine literature, Goodacre on the Joseph and Asenath, or the case against Q; or Vernon K Robbins on Socio-Rhetorical criticism; and- of course, my page :-) on Philo of Alexandria, and several others... ; I hope and believe that we will get more and more of these kinds of sites in the coming months and years.