Edvard Munch, Separation (1894) Munch Museum [Wikimedia].
I wanted to make this intervention because the ubiquity of humans being described as enslaved to God or Christ is easy to miss. As Clarice Martin demonstrated in her 1990 article on womanist biblical interpretation and inclusive translation, scholars and translators have often disguised or euphemized language of enslavement because of a discomfort with acknowledging the presence of enslaved people within the pages of the Bible. I argue that the process of undoing euphemistic translation and uncovering the presence and logics of enslavement in Jewish and Christian literature does not stop with those depicted as enslaved to humans, but extends to those depicted as enslaved to deities.
Read MoreEmil Nolde, The Last Supper (1909) National Gallery of Denmark [WikiArt].
Emil Nolde, The Last Supper (1909) National Gallery of Denmark [WikiArt].
Augustine drew on the central Christian idea of sacramentum—a technical but expansive concept indicating the mysterious conjoining of the sensible to the intelligible, the human to the divine—to produce a unified theory of existence that stands in contrast to the dualisms of his time.
Read MoreAn illustration on vellum from the "Compendium of Chronicles" (Jami' al-Tawarikh) by Rashid al-Din, published in Tabriz, Persia, 1307 CE. This image depicts a young Mohammed being recognized by the monk Bahira. Now found in the collection of the Edinburgh University Library, Scotland [Wikimedia].
An illustration on vellum from the "Compendium of Chronicles" (Jami' al-Tawarikh) by Rashid al-Din, published in Tabriz, Persia, 1307 CE. This image depicts a young Mohammed being recognized by the monk Bahira. Now found in the collection of the Edinburgh University Library, Scotland [Wikimedia].
By thinking with premodern Christians as they imagined Muslims and Jews, we can also take a reflexive look at ourselves in the present. How and why do we identify with objects, particularly those from the past?
Read MoreThe beginning of Cyril of Alexandria’s Antirrhetica adversus Julianum from Parisinus graecus 1261 [Image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France].
The beginning of Cyril of Alexandria’s Antirrhetica adversus Julianum from Parisinus graecus 1261 [Image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France].
The implications for our understanding of Julian and Cyril, as well as the ancient traditions they represented and maintained, are enormous. But the implications extend further still, as should be clear from my concluding list of possible indicators that suggest narrative conflict may be at play between rival traditions, past or otherwise.
Read MoreCapture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, miniature by Jean Fouquet, courtesy of Wikimedia
Capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, miniature by Jean Fouquet, courtesy of Wikimedia
“I contend, however, that the impetus to reconstruct a historical account of ‘what really happened’ has significantly undertheorized the differing ways in which biblical texts both recount and shape the very idea of destruction of Jerusalem.”
Read MoreMedallion with Saint Paul (ca. 1100 CE) [MET Collection]
Medallion with Saint Paul (ca. 1100 CE) [MET Collection]
My doctoral thesis intervenes in this discussion by focusing this relatively new analytical gaze on Paul’s self-presentation in his undisputed letters to argue that the apostle evades straightforward classification as either disrupting or conforming to masculine norms.
Read MoreRitual immersion pool in a domestic context at Magdala: Photo Credit - Joseph Scales
Ritual immersion pool in a domestic context at Magdala: Photo Credit - Joseph Scales
This thesis answers the following two questions: how did ancient Jews create meaningful spaces of religious activity in ancient Galilee, and how did those spaces in turn influence the constitution of ancient Judaism?
Read MoreTerracotta Lekythos by the Amasis Painter depicting women spinning and weaving. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.
Terracotta Lekythos by the Amasis Painter depicting women spinning and weaving. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.
How does a household function? Who owes what to whom, and how did people conceive of their relationships to one another? How did the realities of work in an agricultural society shape these relationships?
Read MorePaul Gauguin, Christ on the Mount of Olives (1889) Norton Museum of Art [Wikimedia]
Paul Gauguin, Christ on the Mount of Olives (1889) Norton Museum of Art [Wikimedia]
Cassian's foray into Christology has been regarded as a misstep by most scholars who have written on it, though this is an admittedly small cohort. I show instead Cassian’s profound insight into Nestorius' thought.
Read MoreBarcelona Disputation [Source: Wikimedia]
Barcelona Disputation [Source: Wikimedia]
Scholars working in the adjacent fields of Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity have shared a focus on anonymously written Adversus Iudaeos dialogues and rabbinic multivocal narratives, but this common interest has not spurred comparative analysis of Rabbinic and Christian evidence.
Read MoreMedallion with Saint Paul from an Icon Frame, ca. 1100 (Image courtesy of the MET Museum).
Medallion with Saint Paul from an Icon Frame, ca. 1100 (Image courtesy of the MET Museum).
My dissertation focuses on the role of thinking, feeling, and remembering in the relations between Paul and the Corinthians to demonstrate how social worlds, boundaries, and power structures are (re)produced. I argue that attention to affect prompts a rethinking of the production (or dissolution) of Pauline authority and the concomitant making (or unmaking) of social relationships in the Corinthian assembly.
Read MorePanel from an ivory dyptich of Rufius Probianus, who was vicarius urbis Romae around 400 CE. [Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Ms. theol. lat. fol. 323, Buchkasten].
Panel from an ivory dyptich of Rufius Probianus, who was vicarius urbis Romae around 400 CE. [Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Ms. theol. lat. fol. 323, Buchkasten].
There are several ways to think about the rise of Christianity. I have chosen to tell this story in this manner because I think that it helps to elucidate a number of fascinating shifts in late antiquity, and some of the shifts that I detail continue to reverberate today.
Read MoreWhile these two analytical approaches are ostensibly discrete they represent two modes of inquiry that are unique to material ecocritical discourse: ‘matter in text’ and ‘matter as text’, respectively. This approach places trees at the center of my study; narrated trees are the focus of my textual analysis of Gen. 2:4b–3:24 and real-world trees are the primary natural material from which the text of the Green Bible is manufactured.
Read MoreHans Schilling, “Judith Beheading Holofernes” (detail) in Barlaam and Josaphat, 1469. J. Paul Getty Museum.
Hans Schilling, “Judith Beheading Holofernes” (detail) in Barlaam and Josaphat, 1469. J. Paul Getty Museum.
My dissertation seeks to identify the motives and priorities that guided the author of Jubilees in his rewriting of the biblical stories concerning the matriarchs and asks if Jubilees was unique in its foregrounding of female characters or dealt with them in a manner that was typical of the then literary Zeitgeist.
Read MoreTalmud Bavli | Bavarian State Library, Munich, Germany, 1342; Ms. 95, page 1152.
Talmud Bavli | Bavarian State Library, Munich, Germany, 1342; Ms. 95, page 1152.
My dissertation offers a new lens into rabbinic legal activity by using close literary analysis of legal passages to show how late rabbinic thought uniquely partakes of broader Sassanian scholastic cultural trends.
Read MoreChristian hagiography was a powerful medium with which Muslim communities built and expressed their distinct local identities, religious notions, and collective memories. In order to understand this medium, this dissertation undertakes an intricate study of the mechanisms of hagiographical transmission between Christianity and Islam.
Read MorePeter receiving the keys to heaven by Pietro Perugino (1481-1482)
Peter receiving the keys to heaven by Pietro Perugino (1481-1482)
Structured meetings of the populus, even if they are chronologically irregular, reveal more clearly the systematic and propagandistic thought of the papal administration, and so demonstrate how the institution of the papacy used rhetoric and propaganda to build and maintain power.
Read More“Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time” by Joshua Koffman, currently at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia
“Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time” by Joshua Koffman, currently at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia
Dr. M Adryael Tong provides an overview of her recent dissertation, “Given as a Sign”: Circumcision and Bodily Discourse in Late Antique Judaism and Christianity: “Traditional classification of early Christian and Jewish texts on circumcision into binary opposition cannot be substantiated once we look beneath disagreement over the practice of circumcision on the surface.”
Read MoreThomas Couture, Romans during the Decadence (1847). Image is under public domain.
Thomas Couture, Romans during the Decadence (1847). Image is under public domain.
Catherine Bonesho writes about the polemics of rabbinic legislation on holidays: “I find that the law sets Judaism and Christianity in competition with one another and, in the process, the law authorizes the imperial version of Christianity while asserting the nefarious qualities of Jews and Judaism.”
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