Experiencing Presence in the Second Temple Period

This volume brings together twelve essays by Angela Kim Harkins that use integrative and interdisciplinary approaches to contribute new insights to the understanding of religious experience in ancient Judaism and Christianity. Building on the text-centered work that characterizes much of Second Temple studies, Harkins seeks to reintegrate ancient Jewish and Christian texts with various aspects of the flesh-and-blood experience of religion by using performance-based methods, ritual studies, integrative cognitive science approaches, and emotion studies. This volume aims to overcome the common mind-body dualism that dominates the study of ancient texts by offering ways to imagine the integrative phenomenological experience of these texts for ancient peoples.