"Andrew takes us from present theory to past subject and ultimately brings us back to the present, rendering us the subject, and challenges us, the reader, to ponder our assumptions about what Late Antiquity was and is and how the pieces of our extant puzzle fit into it."
Read MoreEpiphanius of Cyprus: Reconsidered
"In modern scholarship Epiphanius has thus been routinely maligned as hell-bent on sniffing out heresy wherever it could be found, fanatical, narrow-minded, intransigent, aggressive, theologically inept, and even given to buffoonery. But is there more to this figure than these caricatures suggest?"
Read MoreBook Note | The People Beside Paul: The Philippian Assembly and History from Below
"How does an orientation towards “a people’s history,” following Howard Zinn, help scholars ask new questions about the context and content of Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, a brief but important text in the Pauline corpus?"
Read MoreDissertation Spotlight | Philip Michael Forness
Paul preaching in Beroia - Wikipedia Commons (Contributor: Edal Anton Lefterow)
Paul preaching in Beroia - Wikipedia Commons (Contributor: Edal Anton Lefterow)
"Around seven hundred homilies authored in Syriac survive from the fourth through sixth centuries. Yet most have resisted efforts to identify their dates, locations, and liturgical settings. By attending to these texts, we are forced to confront the difficulty of interpreting the seemingly de-contextualized remains of most sermons from late antiquity."
Read MoreTeaching Students to Read (the Mishnah)
Reading at a Table, Pablo Picasso, 1934, oil on canvas
(image: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1996.403.1/)
Reading at a Table, Pablo Picasso, 1934, oil on canvas
(image: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1996.403.1/)
Dr. Sarit Kattan Gribetz shares her strategies for teaching the Mishnah to students with no exposure to rabbinic texts.
Read MoreLearning to Read Talmud: Bridging Scholarship and Pedagogy
"Much as we write about the Talmud itself, we pay far less attention to the significance and contribution of writing about our teaching. With our book, Learning to Read Talmud, we aim to expand the research agendas of Talmudists to include scholarship on the teaching of rabbinic literature."
Read MoreWhat's Divine About Divine Law? #SBLAAR16
SBL's History of Rabbinic Literature's 2016 review panel of Dr. Christine Hayes' What's Divine About Divine Law?
Read MoreChristine Hayes: A Response to the SBL Forum
Christine Hayes responds to the SBL forum featuring her book, What's Divine About Divine Law?
Read MorePaul and the Mosaic Law
![Paul Writing His Letters attributed to Valentin de Boulogne [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1482324718488-P5P72NL97X7AQLIVIG03/image-asset.jpeg)
Paul Writing His Letters attributed to Valentin de Boulogne [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Paul Writing His Letters attributed to Valentin de Boulogne [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Dr. Fredriksen asks three questions regarding Paul's relationship with the Mosaic Law.
Read MoreDivine Law: Nominalist/Realist or Rational/Irrational?
"There is, in short, a an important but small subset of the Law that many ancient Jews, in the second temple and rabbinic periods, believed to be self-evidentially rational."
Read MoreDivine Law in the Container Store
Row of Amphorae (Ad Meskens, Bodrum Castle Turkey)
Row of Amphorae (Ad Meskens, Bodrum Castle Turkey)
Dr. Beth Berkowitz reviews Hayes' What's Divine About Divine Law with a "Container Store" worthy synopsis and explores the modern relevance of Hayes' work in the recent Supreme Court ruling on Same-Sex Marriage.
Read MoreBook Note | Late Ancient Knowing
"What these essays offer instead are provocative and stimulating inroads into the task of recognizing just how different the late ancient world may have actually been."
Read MoreRetrospective | Jorunn J. Buckley
![Mandaean Incantation Bowl By Daderot (Daderot) [CC0 or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1478699091019-EGE9UO8H23CEULYPFVRB/image-asset.jpeg)
Mandaean Incantation Bowl By Daderot (Daderot) [CC0 or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
Mandaean Incantation Bowl By Daderot (Daderot) [CC0 or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
"Most of my contributions to Mandaean studies engage topics in Mandaean texts for these topics’ own sake. That means trying to take the literature on its own terms, in accordance with its own religious logic, and avoiding flights into the hallowed sanctuaries of comparisons."
Read MorePaul is Dead. Long Live Paulinism! : Imagining a Future for Pauline Studies
Hendrik Goltzius - Saint Paul's Martyrdom
Hendrik Goltzius - Saint Paul's Martyrdom
"When I think of what it would take to make Pauline studies fun, I am drawn to one simple idea: we have to kill Paul.”
Read MoreBook Note | The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity
Jillian Stinchcomb booknotes Eva Mroczek's The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity, developing how Mroczek "presents a convincing native theory of text production."
Read MoreBook Note | Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity
California drought, 4th year via Bluesbby via Flickr CC 2.0.
Dissertation Spotlight | Travis Proctor
Michelangelo - The Torment of Saint Anthony
Michelangelo - The Torment of Saint Anthony
Despite their general agreement regarding demonic pervasiveness, Christian writers often disagree concerning the nature of the demonic, particularly vis-à-vis the demons’ physical appearance and substance.
Read MoreDissertation Spotlight | Phillip Webster
Psukhai that Matter: The Psukhē in and behind Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus aims to investigate the ideology and mechanics of the ancient soul’s materiality.
Read MoreCharity in Rabbinic Literature
A reflection on the contribution of scholars working on rabbinic charity and some of the methodological problems they have faced.
Read MoreAJR Charity Forum: a Response
Dr. Michael Satlow responds to the AJR Charity forum, concluding "we can no more speak of 'the' rabbinic view of charity than we can of “the” rabbinic view of anything else."
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