As historical-critical scholars, we need to realize that we cannot be absolutely sure of our conclusions, and that like any discipline, they may change over time as the result of new evidence or new hypotheses that better explain old evidence...Yet—I know how uncomfortable these methods make many students from religious backgrounds. For that reason, in the very first class I introduce an image of a Monopoly board, and explain that my class is like the game of Monopoly.
Read MoreSBL 2022 Review Panel: Eusebius the Evangelist
AJR is pleased to host the #SBLAAR2022 review panel of Jeremiah Coogan's Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Read MorePoetic Geography: Reading Eusebius’ Fourfold Gospel
Epiphanius Canons (P.Mon.Epiph. 584 = LDAB 1062). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. (Egyptian) X.455, recto, fifth or sixth century CE. Used under CC0 1.0 Universal license.
Epiphanius Canons (P.Mon.Epiph. 584 = LDAB 1062). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. (Egyptian) X.455, recto, fifth or sixth century CE. Used under CC0 1.0 Universal license.
Reading over Eusebius’s shoulder affords an opportunity to rethink what we are doing as Gospel readers.
Read MoreSimilar Things: Reflections On Eusebius The Evangelist
Canons from an Armenian Gospel Book (13th c. manuscript) [The Met Museum].
Canons from an Armenian Gospel Book (13th c. manuscript) [The Met Museum].
By naming Eusebius as an “evangelist,” however, Coogan asks scholars to take a further step and acknowledge that writing and reading are always already pre-determined by prior commitments and categories.
Read MoreEusebius, the Evangelist, and the Rabbinic Mapping of Knowledge
Four Gospels in Armenian featuring the Epistle to Carpianus on folios 7v-8r (1434/5) [The Met Museum].
Four Gospels in Armenian featuring the Epistle to Carpianus on folios 7v-8r (1434/5) [The Met Museum].
These paratextual tools, he shows, enabled the many excerpting, reorganizing, and compiling projects of late antiquity, the very literary features, in fact, that earned the period the reputation of intellectual decline in modern assessments.
Read MoreEchoes of Eusebius in Syriac
Final image of the sequence of canons in Ethiopic Gospel MSS (14th c.) [The Met Museum].
Final image of the sequence of canons in Ethiopic Gospel MSS (14th c.) [The Met Museum].
With Eusebius the Evangelist, Professor Jeremiah Coogan offers a vivid and illuminating portrayal of the Eusebian apparatus and its manifold afterlives.
Read MoreFive Initial Thoughts on Eusebius the Evangelist
Canon Tables (fol. 6v-7r) from a Carolingian Gospel Book (ca. 825-850) [Met Museum].
Canon Tables (fol. 6v-7r) from a Carolingian Gospel Book (ca. 825-850) [Met Museum].
While not based on a close study of a select group of manuscripts, Eusebius the Evangelist often centers the materiality of the text in its analysis, and encourages the reader to experiment with the Canons—easier said than done, of course, if one doesn’t have an ancient manuscript in one’s hands, but it’s possible to do makeshift experiments nonetheless.
Read MoreEusebius the Evangelist: Introduction
Armenian Gospel canon and Epistle to Carpianus (15th c.) The MET Museum.
Armenian Gospel canon and Epistle to Carpianus (15th c.) The MET Museum.
To the end of highlighting the far-reaching significance of the book, we have gathered a group of scholars who, while all working on late antiquity, specialize in a diversity of materials and languages.
Read MoreRabbis and the Reproduction of Species
Rafael Rachel Neis, Figures of Speech, pen and ink on paper, 11 in. x 17 in., 2020
Rafael Rachel Neis, Figures of Speech, pen and ink on paper, 11 in. x 17 in., 2020
“If we abide by these insights in our encounter with ancient sources, we find a (surprisingly?) queer world in which a human gives birth to a raven, a cow delivers a camel, mud generates mice, and fire begets the salamander.”
Read More"They Shall Teach Your Statues to Jacob": Priests, Scribes, and Sages in Second Temple Times
Dr. Steven D. Fraade wrote this article while on sabbatical in 1988. It was accepted for publication soon after, but the journal wanted substantial cuts due to the space constraints at the time. AJR is pleased to give this article a permanent home and hope it will inspire future work on this important subject.
Read MoreHow the Rabbis Taught the Jews (Not) to Read the Bible
Rebecca Sharbach Wollenberg introduces her new monograph, The Closed Book (Princeton, 2023).
Read MoreSBL 2022 Review Panel: Hell Hath No Fury
AJR is pleased to publish remarks delivered as part of a book review panel at the annual meeting of the 2022 Society of Biblical Literature in Denver. The panel was organized by members of the Disability and Healthcare in the Bible and the Ancient World steering committee.
Read MoreAJR Conversations | Hell Hath No Fury
Image of the Hellmouth from the ‘Winchester Psalter’ or ‘Psalter of Henry of Blois’(mid-12th c. CE) British Library [Wikimedia].
Image of the Hellmouth from the ‘Winchester Psalter’ or ‘Psalter of Henry of Blois’(mid-12th c. CE) British Library [Wikimedia].
As early Christian authors continued to build upon and intensify Roman carceral spaces they imagined a system of divine justice in which ever increasing forms of violence are sanctioned by God to elicit proper behavior.
Read MoreHell Hath No Fury: A Response
Follower of Hieronymus Bosch, An Angel Leading a Soul into Hell (ca. 1450-1516) Wellcome Collection [Wikimedia].
Follower of Hieronymus Bosch, An Angel Leading a Soul into Hell (ca. 1450-1516) Wellcome Collection [Wikimedia].
It goes without saying that I could talk for hours about any one of the questions that has been posed in this forum, but I will just share a few initial thoughts in response to each of the panelists.
Read MoreHell Bound Bodies No More: Unhoused, Disabled, and Incarcerated Bodies in the Ancient Imagination
Francisco de Goya, Confesiones en la cárcel (1808-1812) Real Monasterio de Santa María de Guadalupe, Spain. [Wikimedia].
Francisco de Goya, Confesiones en la cárcel (1808-1812) Real Monasterio de Santa María de Guadalupe, Spain. [Wikimedia].
In her work Henning proves herself to be the first real textual archaeologist of hell: she plumbs depths and asks questions that, with few exceptions, previous scholars did not.
Read MoreA Queer Tour of Hell
Figure 1. Screen capture of Edith Massey in Pink Flamingos (1972).
Figure 1. Screen capture of Edith Massey in Pink Flamingos (1972).
One of the many strengths of Henning’s book is the multiple references to contemporary practices and conversations, which highlight the importance of engaging the ancient and medieval tours of hell.
Read MoreWhere, the Hell?
Cuicul civic prison (2nd century CE). Image taken from 3D model of the space, © Letteney and Larsen.
Cuicul civic prison (2nd century CE). Image taken from 3D model of the space, © Letteney and Larsen.
For my part, I want to examine some of the evidence for the material realities of punishment in the Roman world, exploring a few spaces that bring archaeological and affective texture to the penal and carceral language informing tours of hell to which that Henning so insightfully points in her book.
Read MoreHell and the Human
George Romney, A Procession of the Damned: Study for the Damned in Dante's Inferno (undated) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
George Romney, A Procession of the Damned: Study for the Damned in Dante's Inferno (undated) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
What we find when we do so—with Henning as a surefooted guide through these hellscapes—is a stunningly vivid and visceral picture of how the Christian anthropological imagination actually worked during the formative centuries of the movement and extending into late antiquity.
Read MoreHell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature
Auguste Rodin, The Gates of Hell (modeled 1880-1917 and cast by Alexis Rudier 1926-1928) Philadelphia Museum of Art - Rodin Museum.
Auguste Rodin, The Gates of Hell (modeled 1880-1917 and cast by Alexis Rudier 1926-1928) Philadelphia Museum of Art - Rodin Museum.
Building upon scholarship that sees juridical contexts at the heart of these conceptions of punishment and just desserts, Henning pushes such conclusions further by asking what other assumptions, namely concerning bodies and gender, are brought into our scholarly interpretations of Hell and the afterlife.
Read MoreAugustine’s Latin Christian Synthesis
Emil Nolde, The Last Supper (1909) National Gallery of Denmark [WikiArt].
Emil Nolde, The Last Supper (1909) National Gallery of Denmark [WikiArt].
Augustine drew on the central Christian idea of sacramentum—a technical but expansive concept indicating the mysterious conjoining of the sensible to the intelligible, the human to the divine—to produce a unified theory of existence that stands in contrast to the dualisms of his time.
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