Frits Naerebout has been teaching and researching Ancient History at the History Department of Leiden University for forty years, until his retirement in 2020. His main interest are ancient religions (especially dance, the subject of his 1997 PhD, Attractive Performances), culture contact and culture change in the ancient world, and the reception of Greco-Roman culture in the post-classical world. He has published monographs, text books, and numerous articles and reviews, including (with H.W. Singor)
Antiquity. Greeks and Romans in context (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).
Kim Beerden is Assistant Professor of Ancient History at the History Department of Leiden University, where she got her PhD in 2013, published by Brill as
Worlds Full of Signs. Ancient Greek Divination in Context. She works mainly in the fields of ancient religion and of reception studies, but has also published on food history. Most recently she edited (with Timo Epping)
Classical Controversies. Reception of Graeco-Roman Antiquity in the Twenty-First Century (Sidestone Press, 2022).
Preface
Introduction: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of Human Life A Personal Account of the Scholarship of Henk Versnel
Frits G. Naerebout and Kim Beerden
Bibliography of H.S. Versnel
Part 1: Inconsistencies and Other Complexities
1
Cognitive Science of Religion and the Work of Henk Versnel Ancient and Modern Scholars on Inconsistencies, from Aristotle to Versnel
Jennifer Larson
2
“One Must Not Ask Questions Such as These” Casper C. de Jonge
3
Divine Metonymy: Theology and Rhetoric Tim Whitmarsh
Part 2 : Myth and Ritual
4
The History of Myth and Ritual Robert A. Segal
5
Transitions, Reversals, Inconsistencies H.S. Versnel on Myth and Ritual
Michael D. Konaris
Part 3 : Magic, Prayers for Justice, and Emotion
6
The Typical and the Outlier in Ancient Greek Cursing Prayers for Justice, Erotic Curses and other Important Categories
Chris A. Faraone
7
Ancient Magic in a New Key Refining an Exotic Discipline in the History of Religions
David Frankfurter
8
My God! Religion as Emotional Experience in the Hellenistic World and the Roman East Angelos Chaniotis
Part 4 : Saving Death
9
Jesus Christus als neue Alkestis und neuer Kodros Das Sterben „für“ andere Menschen bei Paulus und im paganen Kontext
Christina Eschner
Part 5 : Henotheism
10
Henotheism, a ‘Consistent’ Category of Polytheism Nicole Belayche
Epilogue
11
Foreword to an Afterword Henk S. Versnel