"With one eye on Barr’s critiques and another on Guy Deutscher’s more recent linguistic work, she avoids a lexical-based approach and posits that a better method for identifying reflective thought on time is to appeal to an author’s syntax and “habital use” of language—ways by which the author directs the reader to concentrate on certain aspects of the world—and an author’s ability to do this transcends the sum of her lexical stock.
Read MoreWeek in Review (6/2/17)
St. Paul disputing with the Jews and the Greeks | Enamel gilding, copper plaque, made in England ca. 1170-80 (probable) | London, Victoria and Albert Museum 223-1874
St. Paul disputing with the Jews and the Greeks | Enamel gilding, copper plaque, made in England ca. 1170-80 (probable) | London, Victoria and Albert Museum 223-1874
This Week: Jewish identity, Open Access wonders, frescoes, endangered Ethiopian archives, material religion - and much more!
Read MoreBook Note | Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority: Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century CE
"Marx-Wolf demonstrates that these Platonist thinkers were closely connected despite the fact that one is a Christian and the other three are non-Christian. To this end, she reads these Platonists not in terms of different social or religious affiliations, but in terms of a shared paideia (2-3). She contends that this common formation explains elements of their thought that might otherwise be “surprising” such as Porphyry’s rejection of animal sacrifice."
Read MoreWeek in Review (5/26/17)
Jerusalem, from the Madaba Map | Plate from Piccirillo and Alliata (ed.), The Madaba Map Centenary, 1897-1997: Travelling through the Byzantine Umayyad Period (1999)
Jerusalem, from the Madaba Map | Plate from Piccirillo and Alliata (ed.), The Madaba Map Centenary, 1897-1997: Travelling through the Byzantine Umayyad Period (1999)
This Week: Dura Europos, Melania, working-class women, anti-Semitism, patristics, Epiphanius the twit and much more!
Read MoreBook Note | The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity
"Stroumsa makes a subtle move here, however: rather than suggesting, as many before him have, that there was a transition from cult-centered religion to book-centered religion, he argues that book becomes cult."
Read MoreThe Scope and Shape of the Watchers Myth in Antiquity
Week in Review (5/19/17)
Moses in the scriptorium | Bible, Hagenau ca. 1441-1449 (Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. Germ. 19, fol. 141v)
Moses in the scriptorium | Bible, Hagenau ca. 1441-1449 (Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. Germ. 19, fol. 141v)
This Week: Archaeological experiments, ancient brain science, the meaning of “Jew,” ancient library organization, and more!
Read MoreDissertation Spotlight | Jessica Wright
ff. 490V from the Trilingual Compendium of Texts (England, 14th c). Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library
ff. 490V from the Trilingual Compendium of Texts (England, 14th c). Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library
"The 'cerebral subject' might be the product of neuroscience and early modern philosophy, but its roots go much further back to antiquity, in the encounter between emergent Christian theories of the soul and entrenched medical understandings of the brain."
Read MoreThe Developmental Composition of the Bible in View of Qumran
Week in Review (5/12/17)
David and Goliath, Silver Plate from the Karavas hoard (Constantinople, 629-30CE) | Currently held in the Met Museum, NY | http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/17.190.396/
David and Goliath, Silver Plate from the Karavas hoard (Constantinople, 629-30CE) | Currently held in the Met Museum, NY | http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/17.190.396/
AJR's Week in Review features Jerash, Genizah medicine, tasty Nabataean dates, Armenian, Silk Road studies, alchemy, rappers doing Deuteronomy, and more!
Read MoreBook Note | In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of An Islamic Empire
"Of course, explaining the rise of an Islamic empire as a response to decline in the Roman and Sasanian empires is not a novel approach. Hoyland departs in analyzing the Arabs as a “peripheral people” that had specific political ties to both the Roman and Sasanian empire and thus gained a broader perspective for their own political ambitions."
Read MoreQumran Aramaic Texts: A Forum
AJR and @TWUDSSI’s online celebration of the seventieth anniversary of the Dead Sea Scrolls continues with a second forum devoted to the Aramaic Texts at Qumran with Jonathan Ben-Dov, Daniel Machiela, Devorah Dimant, Andrew Perrin, Henryk Drawnel, and Liora Goldman.
Read MoreThe Compositions Relating to the Levitical Line in the Qumran Aramaic Scrolls
Herod the Great entering Jerusalem. Flavius Josephus, The Judaic Antiquities, Illumination by Jean Fouquet, circa 1470-1475. Paris, BnF, Department of Manuscripts, NAF 21013, fol. 1V. (Book XV)
Herod the Great entering Jerusalem. Flavius Josephus, The Judaic Antiquities, Illumination by Jean Fouquet, circa 1470-1475. Paris, BnF, Department of Manuscripts, NAF 21013, fol. 1V. (Book XV)
Dr. Liora Goldman on priestly tradition, wisdom, and apocalypticism in the Qumran Aramaic texts.
Read MoreWeek in Review (5/5/17)
Aleksandar Makedonski (Alexander the Great), 12th-century mosaic in Otranto Cathedral (Otranto, Italy) | Wikimedia Commons
Aleksandar Makedonski (Alexander the Great), 12th-century mosaic in Otranto Cathedral (Otranto, Italy) | Wikimedia Commons
AJR's Week in Review features Epiphanius' afterlives, Enoch and Babylonian scribality, ancient whiteness, Syriac manuscripts, biblical chickens, and more!
Read MoreEpiphanian Literature Beyond Greek: The Multilingual Textual Afterlives of Epiphanius
Armenian manuscript at Tübingen (Ma XIII 93) - ff. 283r begins Epiphanius’ On the Gems in Aaron’s Breastplate
Armenian manuscript at Tübingen (Ma XIII 93) - ff. 283r begins Epiphanius’ On the Gems in Aaron’s Breastplate
"These extra-Greek survivals of Epiphanian texts underscore the important place of, at a minimum, an awareness of these other languages and the activity of translators, and at best, facility in reading and understanding one or more of these languages. They remind us likewise of how far, linguistically speaking at least, the name and fame of Epiphanius had spread, and much the same might be found for many other writers included in the pages of CPG. "
Read MoreBetween Mesopotamia and Qumran: Cuneiform Literature and Jewish Aramaic Texts of the Second Temple Period
Pallas Athena and Aegis surrounded by the moon's cycle. Vatican Museum.
Pallas Athena and Aegis surrounded by the moon's cycle. Vatican Museum.
Dr. Henryk Drawnel on cultural competition and critique between Mesopotamia and Qumran.
Read MorePliny’s Prices: Signs of Economic Thought in the Early Empire
"Mosaïque des échansons", du IIe siècle ap. J.-C., provenant de Dougga, au Musée national du Bardo (Tunisie) - Pascal Radigue (2001) - Wikimedia Commons
"Mosaïque des échansons", du IIe siècle ap. J.-C., provenant de Dougga, au Musée national du Bardo (Tunisie) - Pascal Radigue (2001) - Wikimedia Commons
"Ultimately, while Pliny clearly had an eye for prices, the actual numbers he provides aren’t especially useful. His discussions of price formation, however, do give us considerable insight into the way the market functioned in Pliny’s time as well as into Pliny’s ‘economic thought’. In various places Pliny mentions the role of supply and demand, changes in fashion, lying salesmen and other forms of fraud, as well as labor costs."
Read MoreThe Inception and Idiom of the Apocalypse in the Qumran Aramaic Texts
"The New Jerusalem" number 80 from 'The Apocalypse of Angers', 1373-87 (tapestry) by Nicholas Bataille. Photograph by Kimon Berlin, CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0, via Wikimedia Commons
"The New Jerusalem" number 80 from 'The Apocalypse of Angers', 1373-87 (tapestry) by Nicholas Bataille. Photograph by Kimon Berlin, CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Dr. Andrew Perrin on the origins of the apocalypse in ancient Judaism.
Read MoreAramaic Tobit at Qumran
"Tobias' and Sara's Wedding Night" by Jan Havicksz Steen ca. 1626 – 1679 in Museum Bredius
"Tobias' and Sara's Wedding Night" by Jan Havicksz Steen ca. 1626 – 1679 in Museum Bredius
Dr. Devorah Dimant on marriage, demons, burials, and halakhah in Tobit and Qumran.
Read MoreTheorizing “the Ancient Economy”: Three Paradigms
Conrad Cichorius: "Die Reliefs der Traianssäule", Zweiter Tafelband: "Die Reliefs des Zweiten Dakischen Krieges", Tafeln 58-113, Verlag von Georg Reimer, Berlin 1900
Conrad Cichorius: "Die Reliefs der Traianssäule", Zweiter Tafelband: "Die Reliefs des Zweiten Dakischen Krieges", Tafeln 58-113, Verlag von Georg Reimer, Berlin 1900
"In the field of classical studies, the 2008 publication of The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World has effectively ushered in a post-Finleyan era in the study of Greco-Roman economies by incorporating methods developed in the field of New Institutional Economics. In what follows, we examine representative samples of three emergent methodological trends: (1) the turn toward New Institutional Economics in studies of Greece and Rome; (2) Roland Boer’s model of the economy of ancient Israel; and (3) K. C. Hanson and Douglas Oakman’s social-scientific approach in New Testament studies."
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