Shoemaker’s study is a contribution to a rapidly expanding body of scholarship that locates Islam firmly within the contexts of late antiquity. He points to imperial eschatology as the crucial late ancient discourse for the development of early Islam.
Read MoreBook Note | Children in Ancient Israel
Recent studies on the legal, social, and religious status of children are part of this development. Reconstructing the voices and lived realities of children and, indeed, other groups largely overlooked by biblical writers requires scholars to utilize different strategies in interpreting the extant evidence.
Read MoreBook Note | The Bible and Feminism: Remapping the Field
Edtaonisl (Ecclesiastic), Francis Picabia (1913); Oil on canvas © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Edtaonisl (Ecclesiastic), Francis Picabia (1913); Oil on canvas © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Like so many feminist works on the Bible, the concern in this volume is not simply ancient gender politics, but also modern ones; as the terrain of the field shifts, so must our maps.
Read MoreBook Note | Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature
Christ Cleansing a Leper by Melchior Doze (1864). Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Christ Cleansing a Leper by Melchior Doze (1864). Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
For early Christians, questions of embodiment, ethics, and the construction of communal boundaries turned around (im)purity discourse as a central node.
Read MoreBook Note | The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World
Frankish Disk Brooch, mid-seventh century (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York)
Frankish Disk Brooch, mid-seventh century (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York)
Merovingian Kingdoms makes a cogent argument about the place of post-Roman Europe in the world of late antiquity: though no longer under the aegis of the Empire, it remained well-integrated within what could still be described as a Mediterranean-wide Roman cultural sphere.
Read MoreBook Note | Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period
Because of its breadth, Priests in Exile is bound to become essential reading, not only for those interested in Oniad history, but also for anyone interested in Egyptian Judaism or Hellenistic-Jewish literature.
Read MoreBook Note | Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity
Doubting Saint Thomas, Béla Iványi Grünwald (unknown date); Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.
Book Note | Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle
Trotti, Giovanni Battista, Circle of, Italian; 1555-1619. 1590-1610. Saint Paul. Drawings and Watercolors, ink with wash, Drawing, Prints and Drawings. Place: The Art Institute of Chicago, The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1922.598, http://www.artic.edu/aic/. https://library.artstor.org/asset/AMICO_CHICAGO_1031150000.
Trotti, Giovanni Battista, Circle of, Italian; 1555-1619. 1590-1610. Saint Paul. Drawings and Watercolors, ink with wash, Drawing, Prints and Drawings. Place: The Art Institute of Chicago, The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1922.598, http://www.artic.edu/aic/. https://library.artstor.org/asset/AMICO_CHICAGO_1031150000.
How does Paul come to understand himself as a messenger of Jesus? How did that message change in those hazy decades between the life of the historical Jesus and Paul’s co-writings?
Read MoreBook Note | Ethics in Ancient Israel
James Nati reviews Barton’s Ethics in Ancient Israel: “Barton’s work is thus meant not at offering clarity for believers as they try to live more “biblically,” but rather to argue that ancient Israelite thinkers deserve a seat at the table among other ethical thinkers throughout history.”
Read MoreBook Note | In the Image of Origen
Hiroshi Sugito. 2005. mirror. Paintings. https://library.artstor.org/asset/LARRY_QUALLS_10312611076.
Hiroshi Sugito. 2005. mirror. Paintings. https://library.artstor.org/asset/LARRY_QUALLS_10312611076.
To whom are we entrusting ourselves when we follow a particular instructor? To what extent should our will be constrained by a teacher, friend, rabbi, abba? Or is it an image of these figures? What do we make of teaching practices that restrain habits of thinking and opinion? What is the role of Tradition?
Read MoreBook Note | Shifting Images of the Hasmoneans
Noam shies away from firmly positing the existence of a concrete document or text that served as the shared source of rabbinic and Josephan traditions. Rather, she suggests that we conceive of a “pool of traditions,” a shared storehouse of stories and narratives, perhaps containing multiple documents, likely written in Hebrew and Aramaic, to which the rabbis and Josephus both had access.
Read MoreBook Note | Gregory of Nyssa’s Doctrinal Works: A Literary Study
Fresco from Saint John’s Church (Karşı Kilise) in Cappadocia, Turkey (Image courtesy of Tiberio Frascari).
Fresco from Saint John’s Church (Karşı Kilise) in Cappadocia, Turkey (Image courtesy of Tiberio Frascari).
“With this steadily growing interest in Gregory, specialization in particular texts has become the norm. Radde-Gallwitz, having done some of that slow, careful work in his previous books, translations, and articles, argues that there is value in panning back to look at broader patterns, parallels, and divergences.”
Read MoreBook Note | Arguing with Aseneth: Gentile Access to Israel’s Living God in Jewish Antiquity
Gillian Glass reviews Hicks-Keeton’s Arguing with Aseneth: Gentile Access to Israel’s Living God in Jewish Antiquity.
Read MoreBook Note | Synagogues in the Works of Flavius Josephus: Rhetoric, Spatiality, and First-Century Jewish Institutions
This nuance does not help scholars reconstruct detailed synagogue practices, but helps us understand an idea of what synagogues could mean for Jews of the first-century CE.
Read MoreBook Note | Rewriting Masculinity
"Gideon thanks God for the Miracle of the Dew", painting by Maarten van Heemskerck (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg)
"Gideon thanks God for the Miracle of the Dew", painting by Maarten van Heemskerck (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg)
Kelly Murphy’s Rewriting Masculinity: Gideon, Men, and Might (OUP 2019)offers a fascinating journey through the multiple and layered maculinities of the biblical character Gideon (Judges 6-8), while providing a methodological model for biblical masculinity studies to emulate.
Read MoreBook Note | Pantheon
For students of the rabbis, Roman religion is often thought of as a constant. It is a yardstick against which we measure changing conceptions and ideas of the rabbis. But we would do well to remember that the period in which the rabbis, writ large, were active, is one of the headiest periods of religious change and upheaval in the Roman Empire.
Read MoreBook Note | The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age
Illumination from a manuscript - BL Royal 19 B XV f. 10V.
Illumination from a manuscript - BL Royal 19 B XV f. 10V.
Anxiety over the end of time was deeply felt in Late Antiquity. In The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age, Jesse Hoover turns our attention to the role of apocalypse for the Donatists, a currently neglected aspect of their theological and ecclesial vision.
Read MoreBook Note | Paul and the Emergence of Christian Textuality: Early Christian Literary Culture in Context
Nikolai Bodarvesky, Trial of the Apostle Paul (1875) Wikimedia Commons
Nikolai Bodarvesky, Trial of the Apostle Paul (1875) Wikimedia Commons
The thoroughgoing analysis, broad learning, and original theses evinced in this volume are a lodestar for scholars.
Read MoreBook Note | Ancient Prophecy: Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek Perspectives
With scholarship of the highest caliber, Ancient Prophecy is one of the most complete and authoritative accounts of the prophetic phenomenon in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean, says reviewer William Kelly.
Read MoreBook Note | The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy
Mosaic from Sant'Apollinare in Ravenna (© José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro via Wikimedia Commons)
Mosaic from Sant'Apollinare in Ravenna (© José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro via Wikimedia Commons)
In The Cross, Robin Jensen has challenged us to think across discipline and beyond simple periodization, throwing down a cross-shaped gauntlet. I suggest that we pick it up.
Read More