In 2017, the Religious Worlds of Late Antiquity SBL section organized a review panel to discuss Todd Berzon's Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity. During the month of July, AJR will feature the panelists' responses.
Read MoreWeek in Review (6/29/2018)
Foot of the Constantine colossus | Courtyard of the Musei Capitolini, Rome | Image Source
Foot of the Constantine colossus | Courtyard of the Musei Capitolini, Rome | Image Source
This Week: Dead Sea Scrolls bonanza, big private money and biblical scholarship, the Alexamenos graffiti, Melania, Roman usurpers – and more!
Read MoreMade Tyrants by the Victory of Others
The colossal head of Constantine from the Capitoline Museum. This image of the emperor was recarved from a portrait of his fallen rival Maxentius, after the latter's death in battle against Constantine. (Wikimedia)
The colossal head of Constantine from the Capitoline Museum. This image of the emperor was recarved from a portrait of his fallen rival Maxentius, after the latter's death in battle against Constantine. (Wikimedia)
It would not be a mischaracterisation or an exaggeration to say that the late Roman state was a polity defined by civil war. Roman leaders at this time approached their rule ever cognizant of the fact that sooner or later, one of their subordinates could don the purple robe, stand before a provincial army, and be proclaimed emperor.
Read MoreBook Note | Melania: Early Christianity Through the Life of One Family
Melania, then, is a testament both to the impact the Melanias had on the nascent Christianity of the fourth century as well as the impact that Elizabeth Clark has had in shaping the study of that very world.
Read MoreWeek in Review (6/21/18)
Ben Ezra Synagogue | Site of the Cairo Geniza, Old Cairo | Image Source
Ben Ezra Synagogue | Site of the Cairo Geniza, Old Cairo | Image Source
This Week: Sex in Sasanian Iran, the Cairo Geniza, Jubilees palimpsests, ancient birds, massive digital exhibitions – and more!
Read MoreA History of Judaism: Martin Goodman at the Center for Jewish History
A History of Judaism, while marketed as a ‘popular book,’ needs also to be considered for its ‘innovative conservatism,’ that is, its between-the-lines critique of current academic tendencies, and its active decision to step back towards a historiographical approach to the study of religion that has mostly lost its holding among current scholars.
Read MoreBook Note | Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud
Week in Review (6/15/18)
Sixth-century mosaic of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman | Santa Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna | Image Source
Sixth-century mosaic of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman | Santa Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna | Image Source
This Week: Anatomy and virginity in late antiquity, Roman-Jewish tomb discoveries, Samaritans, false etymology, Pentateuch mysteries, papyrus furore – and more!
Read MoreDissertation Spotlight | Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity
Roman Votive of a pregnant female, ca. 200 BCE - 200 CE (Wikimedia Commons)
Roman Votive of a pregnant female, ca. 200 BCE - 200 CE (Wikimedia Commons)
The multiplicity of virginity and the rise of anatomical definitions created both opportunities and problems for late ancient Christian reasoning.
Read MoreWeek in Review (6/8/18)
Poster ad for the 1959 film, Solomon and Sheba | Starring Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida, directed by King Vidor | Image Source
Poster ad for the 1959 film, Solomon and Sheba | Starring Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida, directed by King Vidor | Image Source
This Week: Teaching biblical epic, Jesus’ foreskin, ancient Israelite legal petitions, robots, Achaemenid Persepolis, early Christian inscriptions – and more!
Read MoreTeaching Tactic: Critical Review of a Bible Film or Novel
Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments (1956).
Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments (1956).
“The trickiest part of the review assignment is getting students to understand what it means to perform expertise as a biblical scholar.”
Read MoreBook Note | Prudentius, Spain, and Late Antique Christianity: Poetry, Visual Culture, and the Cult of the Martyrs
This book represents a step forward in Prudentian scholarship by situating the Peristephanon in its social and historical context.
Read MoreWeek in Review (6/1/18)
Illustration of Job struck by disease | Folio 46r, Syriac Bible of Paris (BN, MS syr. 341) | Image source
Illustration of Job struck by disease | Folio 46r, Syriac Bible of Paris (BN, MS syr. 341) | Image source
This Week: Massive Syriac open access site launch, digital humanities everywhere, even more ancient animals, God’s wife, Dead Sea Scrolls – and more!
Read MoreAnimals in Late Antiquity
After Post, or, Animal Religion in an Age of Extinction
Ancient Roman fresco of a bird from the Villa of Poppaea, Oplontis, Italy, ca. 70 CE (Wikimedia Commons).
Ancient Roman fresco of a bird from the Villa of Poppaea, Oplontis, Italy, ca. 70 CE (Wikimedia Commons).
The human animal destroys itself through confusion over its animality, but it destroys other animals in that confusion too.
Read MoreWeek in Review (5/25/18)
Caves cut into the rock | The site of Qumran, Israel | Image source
Caves cut into the rock | The site of Qumran, Israel | Image source
This Week: Grumpy donkeys, Christian milk, pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions, cult of saints, Talmud online, NAPS – and more!
Read MoreThe Uppity Donkey and the Distraught Rabbi: Critical Animal Studies and the Talmud
Creative Commons Zero - CC0.
Creative Commons Zero - CC0.
Beth Berkowitz continues AJR’s Animal Forum: “Ancient texts like the Talmud allow us to take biopolitics back to their formative years, to reveal how animals came to occupy the margins of personhood and how their only partially suppressed subjectivities formed the backdrop for the emergence of the human self as we know it.”
Read MoreBook Note | Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity
Figure from the sarcophagus of Marcus Cornelius Statius, ca. 150 CE, Louvre Museum (Image courtesy of Marie-Lan Nguyen)
Figure from the sarcophagus of Marcus Cornelius Statius, ca. 150 CE, Louvre Museum (Image courtesy of Marie-Lan Nguyen)
Attention to the ways that the apparently natural is harnessed to specific cultural ideologies through our most basic metaphors of food is the first step in redefining what it means to “eat well.”
Read MoreWeek In Review (5/18/18)
Roman mosaic of Dionysus riding a tiger | House of the Faun, Pompeii | Image source
Roman mosaic of Dionysus riding a tiger | House of the Faun, Pompeii | Image source
This Week: Ancient Animals, Future Philology, the Acts of Thomas, Messianic Secrets, Jewish hex scrolls, state-of-field surveys – and more!
Read MoreAnimals in the Way
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Byzantine Mosaic, Istanbul, 5th c. CE (The Yorck Project - Image Source)
Byzantine Mosaic, Istanbul, 5th c. CE (The Yorck Project - Image Source)
Janet Spittler continues AJR’s Animal Forum: “To be sure: the writings of many of the early Christian authors most closely associated with negative evaluations of animals are, upon closer inspection, much more complex than a cursory reading might suggest.”
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