A review panel from the 2024 Association for Jewish Studies featuring scholars engaging with Simcha Gross’s award winning Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity.
Read More2023 SBL Review Forum for Yael Fisch's Written for Us
The 2023 Society of Biblical Literature's review panel for Yael Fisch, Written for Us: Paul’s Interpretation of Scripture and the History of Midrash.
Read MoreE.P. Sanders In Memoriam
Adele Reinhartz introduces a memorial panel for the late E.P. Sanders that occurred at the 2023 SBL Annual Meeting.
Read MoreSBL 2022 Review Panel: Eusebius the Evangelist
AJR is pleased to host the #SBLAAR2022 review panel of Jeremiah Coogan's Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Read MorePoetic Geography: Reading Eusebius’ Fourfold Gospel
Epiphanius Canons (P.Mon.Epiph. 584 = LDAB 1062). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. (Egyptian) X.455, recto, fifth or sixth century CE. Used under CC0 1.0 Universal license.
Epiphanius Canons (P.Mon.Epiph. 584 = LDAB 1062). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. (Egyptian) X.455, recto, fifth or sixth century CE. Used under CC0 1.0 Universal license.
Reading over Eusebius’s shoulder affords an opportunity to rethink what we are doing as Gospel readers.
Read MoreSimilar Things: Reflections On Eusebius The Evangelist
Canons from an Armenian Gospel Book (13th c. manuscript) [The Met Museum].
Canons from an Armenian Gospel Book (13th c. manuscript) [The Met Museum].
By naming Eusebius as an “evangelist,” however, Coogan asks scholars to take a further step and acknowledge that writing and reading are always already pre-determined by prior commitments and categories.
Read MoreEusebius, the Evangelist, and the Rabbinic Mapping of Knowledge
Four Gospels in Armenian featuring the Epistle to Carpianus on folios 7v-8r (1434/5) [The Met Museum].
Four Gospels in Armenian featuring the Epistle to Carpianus on folios 7v-8r (1434/5) [The Met Museum].
These paratextual tools, he shows, enabled the many excerpting, reorganizing, and compiling projects of late antiquity, the very literary features, in fact, that earned the period the reputation of intellectual decline in modern assessments.
Read MoreEchoes of Eusebius in Syriac
Final image of the sequence of canons in Ethiopic Gospel MSS (14th c.) [The Met Museum].
Final image of the sequence of canons in Ethiopic Gospel MSS (14th c.) [The Met Museum].
With Eusebius the Evangelist, Professor Jeremiah Coogan offers a vivid and illuminating portrayal of the Eusebian apparatus and its manifold afterlives.
Read MoreFive Initial Thoughts on Eusebius the Evangelist
Canon Tables (fol. 6v-7r) from a Carolingian Gospel Book (ca. 825-850) [Met Museum].
Canon Tables (fol. 6v-7r) from a Carolingian Gospel Book (ca. 825-850) [Met Museum].
While not based on a close study of a select group of manuscripts, Eusebius the Evangelist often centers the materiality of the text in its analysis, and encourages the reader to experiment with the Canons—easier said than done, of course, if one doesn’t have an ancient manuscript in one’s hands, but it’s possible to do makeshift experiments nonetheless.
Read MoreEusebius the Evangelist: Introduction
Armenian Gospel canon and Epistle to Carpianus (15th c.) The MET Museum.
Armenian Gospel canon and Epistle to Carpianus (15th c.) The MET Museum.
To the end of highlighting the far-reaching significance of the book, we have gathered a group of scholars who, while all working on late antiquity, specialize in a diversity of materials and languages.
Read MoreSBL 2022 Review Panel: Hell Hath No Fury
AJR is pleased to publish remarks delivered as part of a book review panel at the annual meeting of the 2022 Society of Biblical Literature in Denver. The panel was organized by members of the Disability and Healthcare in the Bible and the Ancient World steering committee.
Read MoreHell Hath No Fury: A Response
Follower of Hieronymus Bosch, An Angel Leading a Soul into Hell (ca. 1450-1516) Wellcome Collection [Wikimedia].
Follower of Hieronymus Bosch, An Angel Leading a Soul into Hell (ca. 1450-1516) Wellcome Collection [Wikimedia].
It goes without saying that I could talk for hours about any one of the questions that has been posed in this forum, but I will just share a few initial thoughts in response to each of the panelists.
Read MoreHell Bound Bodies No More: Unhoused, Disabled, and Incarcerated Bodies in the Ancient Imagination
Francisco de Goya, Confesiones en la cárcel (1808-1812) Real Monasterio de Santa María de Guadalupe, Spain. [Wikimedia].
Francisco de Goya, Confesiones en la cárcel (1808-1812) Real Monasterio de Santa María de Guadalupe, Spain. [Wikimedia].
In her work Henning proves herself to be the first real textual archaeologist of hell: she plumbs depths and asks questions that, with few exceptions, previous scholars did not.
Read MoreA Queer Tour of Hell
Figure 1. Screen capture of Edith Massey in Pink Flamingos (1972).
Figure 1. Screen capture of Edith Massey in Pink Flamingos (1972).
One of the many strengths of Henning’s book is the multiple references to contemporary practices and conversations, which highlight the importance of engaging the ancient and medieval tours of hell.
Read MoreWhere, the Hell?
Cuicul civic prison (2nd century CE). Image taken from 3D model of the space, © Letteney and Larsen.
Cuicul civic prison (2nd century CE). Image taken from 3D model of the space, © Letteney and Larsen.
For my part, I want to examine some of the evidence for the material realities of punishment in the Roman world, exploring a few spaces that bring archaeological and affective texture to the penal and carceral language informing tours of hell to which that Henning so insightfully points in her book.
Read MoreHell and the Human
George Romney, A Procession of the Damned: Study for the Damned in Dante's Inferno (undated) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
George Romney, A Procession of the Damned: Study for the Damned in Dante's Inferno (undated) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
What we find when we do so—with Henning as a surefooted guide through these hellscapes—is a stunningly vivid and visceral picture of how the Christian anthropological imagination actually worked during the formative centuries of the movement and extending into late antiquity.
Read MoreSBL 2022 Review Panel: Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible
The 2022 SBL Book Review panel of Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible: Possession and Other Spirit Phenomena (De Gruyter 2022) by Reed Carlson. The panelists were: Jutta Jokiranta (University of Helsinki), David Lambert (University of North Carolina), Ingrid Lilly (Wofford College), and Ethan Schwartz (Villanova University).
Read MoreCareers in Jewish Christian Relations
At the 2021 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, two senior scholars (Adele Reinhartz and Judith Lieu) and two junior scholars (Deborah Forger and Krista Dalton) whose work relates to the study of early Jews and Christians convened to reflect upon their career trajectories.
Read MoreThe Pharisees: a SBL 2021 Review Forum
“The Pharisees includes historical studies that range from archaeology and etymological investigation to contributions that take up the Pharisees in association with Dead Sea Scrolls, 1 Maccabees, Josephus, selections from the New Testament, and rabbinic literature.”
Read MoreLied's Invisible Manuscripts: a Review Forum
“It provides a new, critical look at the traditional academic narrative of this writing. And, it offers a critical and constructive engagement with approaches to textual scholarship in the field, paving the way for a provenance aware material philology.”
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