December 18, 2018

Dissertation Spotlight | A Principio Reges: The Reception of the Seven Kings of Rome in Imperial Historiography from Tiberius to Theodosius

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, "Romulus, vainqueur d'Acron, porte les dépouilles opimes au temple de Jupiter" (1812), (Wikimedia Commons)

In my dissertation, I group twelve authors by chronology and language of writing. Chapter two treats Velleius Paterculus (d. 31 CE), Tacitus, and Suetonius (d. 126 CE), three authors separated by time, genre, rank, and aims, but unified in their approach to imperial history as in certain respects a recapitulation of regal history; determined by the ancestry of the Julio-Claudian emperors.

December 17, 2018

Book Note | Inconsistency in the Torah

by Ethan Schwartz in Book Notes

In Inconsistency in the Torah, Joshua A. Berman turns the critical lens on source criticism itself, arguing that it is built upon several epistemological flaws and illustrating these with a variety of case studies.

December 13, 2018

Week in Review (12/14/18)

by Ancient Jew Review

Coptic Papyrus Fragment | Seventh-century papyrus and ink from the Monastery of Epiphanius, Egypt | Image Source

This Week: Creative pedagogy, unfinished Bibles, ancient letter networks, Yemeni cultural heritage, Coptic magical papyri – and much more!

December 12, 2018

Teaching Hebrew Bible with Creative Writing

by Andrew Tobolowsky in Articles

“The Bible is, and will likely long continue to be, both building material and building. It’s a treasury of the ancient world, a storehouse in which lie a large percentage of the glittering gems which survived the ancient Levant in any form. And it’s a doorway through which the ancient Levant continues to shape the present, as well as the history of how this heritage has been repeatedly reshaped and by whom.”

December 9, 2018

Book Note | Assembling Early Christianity: Trade, Networks, and the Letters of Dionysios of Corinth

by Sarah Porter in Book Notes

Port Scene, Roman fresco from Stabiae housed at Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Naples) (Image courtesy of Wolfgang Rieger on Wikimedia Commons)

Cavan Concannon’s Assembling Early Christianity: Trade, Networks, and the Letters of Dionysios of Corinth examines the traces of an understudied bishop to draw larger conclusions about how early Christianities effloresced and dissolved over time.

December 6, 2018

Week in Review (12/7/18)

by Ancient Jew Review

Neo-Assyrian bas-relief from Ninevah of Assyrian king Ashurbanipal slaying a lion | Currently housed in the British Museum, London | Image Source

This Week: Journeys in the east, Assyrian kings, Gothic queens, surprises with Sappho, ambitious digital humanities initiatives, Torah on display – and more!

December 4, 2018

Amalasuintha: The Transformation of Queenship in the Post-Roman World

by Massimiliano Vitiello in Articles

Diptych of Rufus Gennadius Probus Orestes, Ivory, ca. 530 CE (Victoria and Albert Museum)

Unlike these Gothic queens, Amalasuintha was more than an instrument of diplomacy: she was diplomacy, a ruling mother who dealt with legates directly, without an interpreter since she knew so many languages

December 3, 2018

Book Note | Journeys in the Roman East

by Timothy Luckritz Marquis in Book Notes

“Like a Roman idol marking a crossroads in a way that makes visible the danger and domination that was always there, focusing on travel allows writers ancient and modern a vantage point on interplays between materiality and ideology that otherwise might slip by us.”

November 29, 2018

Week in Review (11/30/18)

by Ancient Jew Review

Announcement of the resurrection of Christ, from a C13 Peshitta Gospel | State Library of Berlin, Sachau 304, parchment manuscript 195 Bl., f.106v | Image Source

This week we return from break: forgery, apocrypha, disreputable professions, Syriac, material ancient religion, a liberal sprinkling of Samaritans – and more!

November 25, 2018

Book Note | Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professions in the Roman Mediterranean

by Alexander D. Perkins in Book Notes

In fact, Bond argues, it is in part because of the indispensability of these professions that they were so stigmatized. The lowbrow, servile nature of these labors disqualified members of the elite from practicing them, but the dependency of civic institutions and day-to-day well-being upon them brought great wealth and power to those within the trade.

November 16, 2018

Week in Review (11/16/2018)

by Ancient Jew Review

English Hebrew Psalter, open at Ps. 6:7-9:19, with extensive French and Latin annotation | MS. Bodl. Or. 621, f.2b, early thirteenth-century | Image Source

This Week: The resurrection, Bulgarian Byzantium, the Jewish Bible, Gospel books (or not), open access digital tools - and more!

November 13, 2018

Gospels Before the Book

by Matthew Larsen in Articles

Ignoring, or at least unaware of, the disjointed discourses about gospel textuality and authorship within the first centuries of the Common Era, modern historians of ancient Christianity speak about first century gospel texts in ways unknown in the first and second century discourses about the gospel.

November 12, 2018

Book Note | Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism

by Karen Connor McGugan in Book Notes

“As Elledge’s book capably demonstrates, it is the diversity, complexity and adaptability of resurrection belief—the very attributes that make it so difficult for scholars to pin down—that characterized and facilitated its growth in early Jewish thought.”

November 8, 2018

Week in Review (11/10/2018)

by Ancient Jew Review

So-called “carpet” page from the Burgos Bible | Dated 1260, from Burgos in Spain | Image Source

This Week: Dissertation spotlight on the rabbinic bible, Pauline gift exchange, the Arabic Bible, tools for Hebrew, Bodmer papyri online, Judeo-Persian, piyyutim – and more!

November 7, 2018

Dissertation Spotlight | Daniel Picus

by Daniel Picus in Articles

Julius Fehr (German, 1860-1900) “A Rabbi scholar in his study”

“I argue that that the rabbis are deeply concerned with the form, format, and divisions of the biblical text, and that these aspects of the text have a crucial role in rabbinic understandings of the formation and transformation of the reader.”

November 5, 2018

Book Note | A Spiritual Economy: Gift Exchange in the Letters of Paul of Tarsus

by Jennifer Quigley in Book Notes

A Spiritual Economy is a helpful addition to recent studies in gifts in the letters of Paul, and its multidisciplinary engagement contributes to the study of religion in antiquity and to broader conversations in history, sociology, and anthropology about gift exchange.

November 1, 2018

Week in Review (11/2/18)

by Ancient Jew Review

Sixth/seventh-century incantation bowl with Aramaic inscription | From Nippur, currently in the Met Collection L1999.83.3 | Image Source

This Week: Responses to anti-Semitism, forged scrolls, Constantine’s daughter, commemoration in Roman Syria, Antioch through time, a menagerie of ancient fauna – and more!

October 30, 2018

Book Note | The Archaeology of Death in Roman Syria: Burial, Commemoration, and Empire

by Dina Boero in Book Notes

Tower Tombs located in Palmyra, Syria (Wikimedia Commons)

Whereas most archaeologists of Roman Syria focus on discrete regions, de Jong is the first to undertake a systematic study of burials from across the province.