Cuneiform tablet with instructions for dying wool | Neo-Babylonian, found at Sippar, currently in the collection of the British Museum (BM62788) | Image Source
Cuneiform tablet with instructions for dying wool | Neo-Babylonian, found at Sippar, currently in the collection of the British Museum (BM62788) | Image Source
This Week: Disciplinary shifts with Erich Gruen, ancient virginity, law and gender, Hebrew manuscripts, a surprising amount of exile – and more!
Read MoreA fresco found in Dura Europos depicting scenes from the Book of Esther.
A fresco found in Dura Europos depicting scenes from the Book of Esther.
Erich Gruen with a retrospective of his work: “If a consistent thread runs through my studies of Jewish history in the context of classical antiquity, it can be found in resistance to the common portrayal of Jews as victims.”
Read MoreRosenberg’s book sets out to examine rabbinic paradigms of how virgin women’s bodies work, how the loss of that virginity happens, and therefore, what evidence proves the existence of virginity.
Read MoreCover and first surviving page of the Syriac Life of Barsawma (d. ca.492) | Undated MS from Urfa | Image Source
Cover and first surviving page of the Syriac Life of Barsawma (d. ca.492) | Undated MS from Urfa | Image Source
This Week: Brent Nongbri, Dead Sea Scrolls fakery, looted antiquity raids, Call for Papers up the wazoo, ancient Arabs, excavation found footage – and more!
Read MoreAncient manuscripts are more than just carriers of texts. They are archaeological artifacts and deserve to be studied as such.
Read MoreThe “Babylonian Map of the World,” Babylonian map on clay tablet (C6) | Found at Sippar, currently in the collection of the British Museum (BM 92687) | Image Source
The “Babylonian Map of the World,” Babylonian map on clay tablet (C6) | Found at Sippar, currently in the collection of the British Museum (BM 92687) | Image Source
This Week: Summer pedagogy forum, Bulgarian archaeology, early New Testament manuscripts, volcanic explosions, Museum of the Bible, chained books – and more!
Read MoreBabylonian Map ca. 6th century BCE (Wikimedia Commons)
Babylonian Map ca. 6th century BCE (Wikimedia Commons)
Borders change, today and throughout history. Incorporating maps into the classroom encourages the students to view this for themselves and to begin to understand the myriad of ways that politics shapes geographical borders.
Read MoreCodex Claromontanus: Romans 1:7-1 (Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Codex Claromontanus: Romans 1:7-1 (Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France)
At the core of the dissertation, three chapters analyze the scribal habits of the copyists of various manuscripts.
Read MoreLate thirteenth-century restored “Deisis” (δέησις) Mosaic | Hagia Sophia, Istanbul | Image Source
Late thirteenth-century restored “Deisis” (δέησις) Mosaic | Hagia Sophia, Istanbul | Image Source
This Week: Dunhuang manuscripts, calls for papers, Jewish foodways, ethnicity and the Peutinger Table, Shayna Sheinfeld on acting apocalypses – and more!
Read MoreThe Wedding Banquet of Cupid and Psyche (1517) by Raphael. Villa Farnesina, Rome
The Wedding Banquet of Cupid and Psyche (1517) by Raphael. Villa Farnesina, Rome
“Performing the banquet shifted their analysis from the realm of the academic into the realm of something that is socially functional, assisting with student thinking about the ancient texts as representative of real people and their actions and beliefs.”
Read More“To briefly sketch some of Rosenblum's findings, we see that Greek and Roman sources are often perplexed by or antagonistic to these laws, Hellenistic Jews justify the laws via allegory, reason, and revelation, Rabbinic sources only begin to provide justifications beyond revelation with the Amoraim, and later Christian sources return to allegory, while denying the literal adherence to these prohibitions.”
Read MoreFolio 1r from Hebrew Bible manuscript with Targum and commentaries | Bodleian Library Ms. Canon Or. 62, Oxford | Image Source
Folio 1r from Hebrew Bible manuscript with Targum and commentaries | Bodleian Library Ms. Canon Or. 62, Oxford | Image Source
This Week: St Catherine’s Monastery and digital humanities, multilingualism along the Nile, antiquities trafficking, philosopher monks, ethical philology - and more!
Read MoreIf Esther had a Pinterest, what would she post on it? If Ruth had a Spotify playlist, what songs would she include? What if Susannah joined the #metoo movement?
Read MoreGherardo Starnina - Thebaid, ca. 1420, Tempera on wood (Wikimedia Commons) [Sometimes attributed to Fra Angelico]
Gherardo Starnina - Thebaid, ca. 1420, Tempera on wood (Wikimedia Commons) [Sometimes attributed to Fra Angelico]
Instead of only studying one particular practice, I have taken the monastic path of life as a whole, as proposed by the Apophthegmata Patrum, from conversion to advanced practice, and analyzed it light of the philosophical schools.
Read MoreEarly Islamic-period mosaic with elaborate floral and Nilotic mosaics | Church of St. Stephen, Umm ar-Rasas | Image Source
Early Islamic-period mosaic with elaborate floral and Nilotic mosaics | Church of St. Stephen, Umm ar-Rasas | Image Source
This Week: Sara Ronis kicks off August Pedagogy Month, extra-biblical Psalms, rabbinic conversion, Syriac #openaccess, late antique bullying – and more!
Read MoreSouthwest Texas McAllen Border Fence, Rio Grande Valley [ Photographer: Donna Burton ]
Southwest Texas McAllen Border Fence, Rio Grande Valley [ Photographer: Donna Burton ]
In this creative assignment, students were empowered to engage with the biblical text in new ways: they understood some of the ways that biblical texts can relate to the modern world and vice versa, they used their own creative voices, and they reflected critically on why we must develop awareness of moments of pain and trauma in the world around us.
Read MoreLavee argues for reading the conflicting attitudes of renewal and rejection as reflecting a Babylonian attitude of ‘genealogical anxiety,’ marking the convert as reborn so as to disassociate them from their natal families while in so doing marking them as the ‘eternal other.’
Read MoreTrellis-carpet mosaic segment, with animals | Lod Mosaic, Israel | Image Source
Trellis-carpet mosaic segment, with animals | Lod Mosaic, Israel | Image Source
This Week: Berzon’s response to Classifying Christians forum, apocrypha galore, Greco-Roman science, booksquashing and digital humanities, Lod mosaics – and more!
Read MoreStylized map of the world with Jerusalem at its center by Heinrich Bünting (1545-1696), woodcut, (Wikimedia Commons)
Stylized map of the world with Jerusalem at its center by Heinrich Bünting (1545-1696), woodcut, (Wikimedia Commons)
Throughout Classifying Christians, I proposed that Christian polemical ethnographers were operating both like physicists and anthropologists. In getting closer to the heretics—whether through personal or textual experience—the heresiologists actually made the terms of Christian culture both more and less clear.
Read MoreAs a whole, the volume provides compelling evidence that various, interrelated “techniques of self-authorisation” were employed across (what the modern reader might categorize as) different scientific and technical genres, as a means not only for professionals to establish their credentials, but also for non-professionals to situate themselves in the social and political networks of the late Republic and the Roman Empire.
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