In The Jerusalem Temple in Diaspora, Jonathan Trotter offers a new reconstruction of the relationship between diaspora Jews and the Jerusalem temple that is both grounded in lived practices and informed by literary analysis.
Read MoreDyeing the Martyr’s Death: Exploring Martyrdom and Memory through a Coloring Book
This assignment encouraged students to confront and interrogate their role (even, at times, their complicity) as active participants in forming martyrdom traditions through the act of vivifying these images with color.
Read More“Mirror, Mirror!” Speaking Objects and Speaking to Objects in the Classroom
Bronze mirror ca. 100 B.C.–A.D. 100. Accession Number: 74.51.5405 at the Met.
Bronze mirror ca. 100 B.C.–A.D. 100. Accession Number: 74.51.5405 at the Met.
Dr. Reyhan Durmaz describes how her students brought objects to life with creative autobiographies.
Read MoreYear in Review: Top Ten Articles of 2020
Mosaic from a series on the months of the year (early 3rd century CE). Image courtesy of Ad Meskins via Wikimedia Commons.
Mosaic from a series on the months of the year (early 3rd century CE). Image courtesy of Ad Meskins via Wikimedia Commons.
As 2020 draws to a close, the editors of Ancient Jew Review want to thank our contributors and readers for a wonderful year! Here are the most popular AJR articles:
#10 Sarah Wolf - The Rabbinic Legal Imagination
#9 Krista Dalton - Incantation Bowls and Embodied Knowledge
#8 Yakov Z. Mayer - Book Note | Between Mishna and Midrash
#7 Chance E. Bonar - Book Note | The Rise of Coptic: Egyptian Versus Greek in Late Antiquity
#6 Geoffrey Smith - Make Your Own Magical Papyrus
#5 Sarah Rollens - Essay | Notes on the Historical Paul and his Intellectual Activity
#4 David Marcus - Introduction to the Masorah | The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)
#3 Shayna Sheinfeld - Book Note | When Christians Were Jews
#2 Ross Kraemer - Publications | The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity
#1 Sarit Kattan Gribetz - Using Zoom for Online Instruction: Tips for Undergraduate and Graduate as well as Adult Education Courses
We are busy preparing new content for 2021. Posts will resume January 11th!
Reading Biblical Texts with a Focus on Status and Gender
Equipped with the insights of material evidence and theoretical reflection, I thereby approach Luke-Acts as a text ripe for re-valuation.
Read MoreBook Note | Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence
How can we account for the seemingly contradictory perspectives of responses to empire and imperial subjugation in the Book of Revelation? Through the lenses of humor studies and trauma theory in postcolonial discourse, Sarah Emanuel’s innovative work addresses this question and demonstrates how comic is used as a mode of survival for the Jewish community of John’s Apocalypse.
Read MoreAJR Conversations I Appalling Bodies
AJR continues its #conversations series with an exchange between Joseph A. Marchal and Jennifer W. Knust on Marchal’s new book, Appalling Bodies: Queer Figures Before and After Paul’s Letters.
Read MoreBook Note | Self-Portrait in Three Colors: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Epistolary Autobiography
Peter Paul Rubens, St. Gregory of Nazianzus (1621). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (Source: Copyright Albright-Knox).
Peter Paul Rubens, St. Gregory of Nazianzus (1621). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (Source: Copyright Albright-Knox).
Storin’s work, both monograph and translation, marks another excellent entry in the UC Press Christianity in Late Antiquity series. Taken together, these volumes will prove valuable not only to scholars of Gregory or ancient epistolography, but all those interested in the interdependent constructions of rhetoric, philosophy, and the self in late antiquity.
Read MoreSBL/AAR 2020 Panel | Beyond Canon
Ancient Jew Review is pleased to host a series of papers delivered at the annual SBL/AAR conference as part of a panel organized by Janet Spittler and Lily Vuong, chairs of the Christian Apocrypha Section.
Read MoreSBL 2019 Review Panel | Food and Transformation
AJR is happy to host publish remarks delivered as part of a review panel for Dr. Meredith J. C. Warren’s recent publication, Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature.
Read MoreBeyond Canon: An Introduction to the Project
![An etching of the Serbian Orthodox Monastery of Studenica from Moscow (1758), currently housed in the Museum of the Serbian Church in Szentendre, Hungary. [Source: Wikimedia]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1604953554651-NSZ4FGB324T7XQHJSZN9/1024px-Unknown_etching_moscow_1758_The_Serbian_Monastery_of_Studenica_IMG_0484_serb_museum_szentendre.JPG)
An etching of the Serbian Orthodox Monastery of Studenica from Moscow (1758), currently housed in the Museum of the Serbian Church in Szentendre, Hungary. [Source: Wikimedia]
An etching of the Serbian Orthodox Monastery of Studenica from Moscow (1758), currently housed in the Museum of the Serbian Church in Szentendre, Hungary. [Source: Wikimedia]
Even if the fourth and fifth centuries may have brought important changes for large parts of the “Christian” movement (or better: the different groups of Christ followers), the production of texts which reasonably can be labelled “Christian apocrypha” did not simply stop. To the contrary, with some genres the production of texts seems to have exploded.
Read MoreSenator Marcellus as an Early Christian Role Model: The Destruction and Restoration of a ‘Statue of the Emperor’ in Acta Petri 11
![Marco Zoppo, Saint Peter (ca. 1468) [Wikimedia].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1606156007002-3TGB2TL6O1MYEYY020WX/image-asset.jpeg)
Marco Zoppo, Saint Peter (ca. 1468) [Wikimedia].
St. Thomas the Apostle in the Armenian Church Tradition
![Illuminated Armenian manuscript showing canon table (15th c.) [Source: MET Museum].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1605711852169-R4SWAXGGVVGAECKFVKVG/DP342091.jpg)
Illuminated Armenian manuscript showing canon table (15th c.) [Source: MET Museum].
Illuminated Armenian manuscript showing canon table (15th c.) [Source: MET Museum].
Therefore, while in general the Armenian apocrypha have rarely been the focus of interest, the acts/martyrdoms of the founders of the Armenian Church—which, in fact, were not considered ‘apocryphal’ in medieval times—can boast of being at the center of great interest for scholars.
Read MoreVisual Representations of Early Marian Apocryphal Texts: Some Notes on the Top Register of the Triumphal Arch at Santa Maria Maggiore
![Santa Maria Maggiore (Rome) [Image courtesy of the author].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1605114814811-FYC8CSIY67255WH4WHQ8/Picture1.png)
Santa Maria Maggiore (Rome) [Image courtesy of the author].
Santa Maria Maggiore (Rome) [Image courtesy of the author].
While there may be books that “should not be read,” does that injunction necessarily equate to art that should not be painted or viewed?
Read MoreRetelling Thomas’ Story: Reception of the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas in the Synaxarion of the Liturgical Thomas-Feast
![Panagios Taphos 22. Menaion Oct. 11th cent. 301 f. Pg. 51 ft. 11th Cent, 1000. Manuscript/Mixed Material. [Source]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1605112090166-XTBK3KRCIGTZ9P20Z941/image-asset.png)
Panagios Taphos 22. Menaion Oct. 11th cent. 301 f. Pg. 51 ft. 11th Cent, 1000. Manuscript/Mixed Material. [Source]
Panagios Taphos 22. Menaion Oct. 11th cent. 301 f. Pg. 51 ft. 11th Cent, 1000. Manuscript/Mixed Material. [Source]
The indisputable presence of information from the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas in the Synaxarion of the Thomas-Feast (concerning especially the beginning of the Thomasine mission in India and his martyrdom there) proves the liturgical functionality of the reception of this apocryphal text.
Read MoreManuscripts Beyond the Canon
![CBL W 139, Beginning of Matthew’s gospel [Image courtesy of the author].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1604941023190-XAY8BK0VKJL78I5G9LMZ/DCU+Garrick+Allen+SELECTS_060+copy.jpg)
CBL W 139, Beginning of Matthew’s gospel [Image courtesy of the author].
CBL W 139, Beginning of Matthew’s gospel [Image courtesy of the author].
In one sense manuscripts play an obvious role in the research carried out on apocryphal and other early Jewish and Christian writings beyond the canon. They are the primary arbiters of the texts or works that are the main focus of most affiliated scholars, even if most people tend to rely on critical editions and translations when they exist.
Read MoreBook Note | Between Mishna and Midrash
“Close reading, suggests Rosen-Zvi, resembles micro-historical study since in both cases a close look at one detail reveals large social and cultural processes that cannot be seen from a wider perspective.”
Read MoreBook Note | Enoch From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
…[O]ne of the most valuable contributions are the plentiful insights throughout this volume that have implications for a wide variety of fields, ranging from antiquity to the medieval period. And, while there are no doubt plentiful insights with regard to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, a number of observations throughout this work also hold implications for the field of Ancient Mesopotamian religion and its relation to later traditions.
Read MoreBook Note | Time in the Babylonian Talmud
Kaye suggests that time as imagined in the BT is best represented by Wassily Kandinsky’s painting, Several Circles (1926). According to Kaye, the painting’s circles of various sizes and colors represent various moments; these moments, as circles, interact both temporally and spatially and are spread across the canvas non-linearly.
Read MoreSBL 2019 Review Panel | Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature
Depiction of Rev 10:8-11, Trinity Apocalypse, ca. 1250; the James Catalogue of Western Manuscripts, Trinity College Cambridge.
Depiction of Rev 10:8-11, Trinity Apocalypse, ca. 1250; the James Catalogue of Western Manuscripts, Trinity College Cambridge.
Hierophagy is the word I chose to describe this genre of transformational eating. I define hierophagy as a mechanism by which characters in narrative cross boundaries from one realm to another through ingesting some item from that other realm.
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