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ANCIENT JEW REVIEW

February 9, 2021

Book Note | Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination

by Chance E. Bonar in Book Notes


Graffito of Esmet-Akhom from Hadrian's Gate at Philae (394 CE) [Wikimedia].

Graffito of Esmet-Akhom from Hadrian's Gate at Philae (394 CE) [Wikimedia].

Graffito of Esmet-Akhom from Hadrian's Gate at Philae (394 CE) [Wikimedia].

Graffito of Esmet-Akhom from Hadrian's Gate at Philae (394 CE) [Wikimedia].

Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination is a broad-ranging and accessible treatment of how late ancient writers engaged with pharaonic history and culture in the midst of the Christianization of Egypt.

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January 31, 2021

Book Note | The Jerusalem Temple in Diaspora: Jewish Practice and Thought during the Second Temple Period

by Jocelyn Burney in Book Notes


9789004409859.jpg
9789004409859.jpg

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.

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January 20, 2021

Dyeing the Martyr’s Death: Exploring Martyrdom and Memory through a Coloring Book

by John Penniman in Articles


Picture1.jpg
Picture1.jpg

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.

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TAGS: pedagogy


January 11, 2021

“Mirror, Mirror!” Speaking Objects and Speaking to Objects in the Classroom

by Reyhan Durmaz in Articles


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.

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.

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TAGS: pedagogy


December 31, 2020

Year in Review: Top Ten Articles of 2020

by Ancient Jew Review


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.

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!


December 8, 2020

Reading Biblical Texts with a Focus on Status and Gender

by Christy Cobb in Articles


Equipped with the insights of material evidence and theoretical reflection, I thereby approach Luke-Acts as a text ripe for re-valuation.

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TAGS: publications


December 7, 2020

Book Note | Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence

by Megan Remington in Book Notes


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51tzDgfmHAL._SX351_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

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.

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December 1, 2020

AJR Conversations I Appalling Bodies

by Joseph A. Marchal and Jennifer Wright Knust in Articles


41FBITzq1dL.jpg
41FBITzq1dL.jpg

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.

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November 29, 2020

Book Note | Self-Portrait in Three Colors: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Epistolary Autobiography

by Charles Austin Rivera in Book Notes


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).

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.

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November 26, 2020

SBL/AAR 2020 Panel | Beyond Canon

by Ancient Jew Review in Articles


#SBLAAR20 Review Panel on Ancient Jew Review.jpg
#SBLAAR20 Review Panel on Ancient Jew Review.jpg

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.

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TAGS: conference


November 26, 2020

SBL 2019 Review Panel | Food and Transformation

by Ancient Jew Review in Articles


Girl Dog Landscape Photo White Border Album Cover.jpg
Girl Dog Landscape Photo White Border Album Cover.jpg

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.

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TAGS: conference


November 25, 2020

Beyond Canon: An Introduction to the Project

by Tobias Nicklas in Articles


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]

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.

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November 24, 2020

Senator Marcellus as an Early Christian Role Model: The Destruction and Restoration of a ‘Statue of the Emperor’ in Acta Petri 11

by Thomas J. Kraus in Articles


Marco Zoppo, Saint Peter (ca. 1468) [Wikimedia].

Marco Zoppo, Saint Peter (ca. 1468) [Wikimedia].

Marco Zoppo, Saint Peter (ca. 1468) [Wikimedia].

Marco Zoppo, Saint Peter (ca. 1468) [Wikimedia].

Marcellus might be seen as a role model of how to negotiate a relationship with Roman authorities, on the one hand, and with the Christian faith and a Christian life, on the other.

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November 18, 2020

St. Thomas the Apostle in the Armenian Church Tradition

by Mari Mamyan in Articles


Illuminated Armenian manuscript showing canon table (15th c.)  [Source: MET Museum].

Illuminated Armenian manuscript showing canon table (15th c.) [Source: MET Museum].

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.

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November 16, 2020

Visual Representations of Early Marian Apocryphal Texts: Some Notes on the Top Register of the Triumphal Arch at Santa Maria Maggiore

by Lily Vuong in Articles


Santa Maria Maggiore (Rome) [Image courtesy of the author].

Santa Maria Maggiore (Rome) [Image courtesy of the author].

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?

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November 11, 2020

Retelling Thomas’ Story: Reception of the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas in the Synaxarion of the Liturgical Thomas-Feast

by Cosmin Pricop in Articles


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]

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.

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November 9, 2020

Manuscripts Beyond the Canon

by Garrick V. Allen in Articles


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].

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.

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November 2, 2020

Book Note | Between Mishna and Midrash

by Yakov Z. Mayer in Book Notes


image-asset.jpeg
image-asset.jpeg

“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.”

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October 27, 2020

Book Note | Enoch From Antiquity to the Middle Ages

by Josiah Bisbee in Book Notes


…[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.

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October 26, 2020

Book Note | Time in the Babylonian Talmud

by Catherine Bonesho in Book Notes


4154DtdN+YL.jpg
4154DtdN+YL.jpg

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.

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