This paper has two parts. First, I examine Basil of Caesarea’s theological anthropology and show how he understands the human being as a body-soul unity. The body is the good instrument of the soul. It is marvelous because it has been molded by God’s own hands. In the second part, I examine what I call Basil’s theological physiology, which flows…[Read more]

Basil of Caesarea, in his polemic against astrology (Homiliae in hexaemeron 6,5−7), makes direct, creative uses of Origen’s anti-astrological treatise (Philocalia 23). My argument is based on an identical context, namely the interpretation of Gen 1:14b, and five close similarities in content, some verbatim, between Basil’s sermon and Orige…[Read more]

This essay uses Arnaldo Momigliano’s genealogy of antiquarianism and historiography to propose a new method for engaging the past. The Italian historian Arnaldo Momigliano (1908-1987) traced antiquarianism from its advent in ancient Greece and later growth in Rome to its early modern efflorescence, its usurpation by history, and its transformation…[Read more]

This article presents the results of a multidisciplinary project aimed at better understanding the impact of different digitization strategies in computational text analysis. More specifically, it describes an effort to automatically discern the authorship of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in a body of uncorrected correspondence processed by HTR…[Read more]

Analysis of the story of David and the Gibeonites, argues that two different stories have been spliced together.

In this essay I sketch an outline of how the book of Isaiah presents its politics, working from the assumption—based on the research of Peter Ackroyd and others—that the presentation of Isaiah, the prophet, in the book’s opening chapters is key. I end up arguing that the book advocates for Davidic politics, as others have claimed, but that its d…[Read more]

Applies theory of literature as simulation speech to argue that knowledge of the Lord is not reflected in texts of the Hebrew Bible but created by them.

A review of Sören Petershans’s revised dissertation entitled Offenbarung des Namens und versöhntes Leben: Eine Untersuchung zur Gotteslehre bei Kornelis Heiko Miskotte, Arbeiten zur Systematischen Theologie 11 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016).

Manuscript Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6298 contains an as yet unexamined fragment of the second batch of the gospel glosses (EvII) from the biblical commentaries of the Canterbury School inserted as an addition in 3r of the manuscript. In this article, I describe this fragment, and I attempt to contextualize its insertion into the…[Read more]

This document provides the description and transcript of a set of liturgical fragments from the holdings of University Library in Utrecht. The fragments belong to a twelfth-century breviary, probably from St. Paul’s Abbey in Utrecht.

‘If God Meant to Interfere’: Evolution and Theodicy in Blood Meridian

Taking the late ninth-century Breton Gesta Sactorum Rotonensium as a starting point, this article aims to demonstrate that there is more to the biblical quotations and allusions employed by early medieval hagiographers than initially meets the eye. By juxtaposing the stories these quotations are in with their ‘original’ biblical context, as wellas…[Read more]

Besides glosses and other textual annotations, early medieval Latin manuscript commonly feature technical signs, annotation symbols and sigla that reflect readership or provide a framework for interpretation and use. The early medieval Insular book users were particularly keen on using such devices. This article maps the usage of technical signs…[Read more]

The extensive chains of excerpts from the Scriptures and other sources in two of the narratives prominent in the Virtutes apostolorum, the Acts of Peter (BHL 6663) and the Acts of Paul (BHL 6575) are studied in order to come to a clearer understanding of the origin of these Latin texts. The Virtutes apostolorum is an amalgam of textual material…[Read more]

The extensive chains of excerpts from the Scriptures and other sources in two of the narratives prominent in the Virtutes apostolorum, the Acts of Peter (BHL 6663) and the Acts of Paul (BHL 6575) are studied in order to come to a clearer understanding of the origin of these Latin texts. The Virtutes apostolorum is an amalgam of textual material…[Read more]

A response to Erin Runions’ monograph, The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex, and Sovereignty (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014)

Most scholarship of the last few decades on the book of Revelation has focused on its colonial conditions and heated, even forceful, political engagement, making conflicting conclusions about to what extent it “reproduces” or “resists” imperial ideology. Of particular focus has been the striking image of the lamb on the throne, an image that am…[Read more]

The story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts – a tale about a hapless Arab peasant who uncovers the buried secrets of early Christianity – has accompanied most scholarly and popular explorations of Nag Hammadi literature. As a colonialist relic, however, it is more than a quirky tale of the accidents of history. It represents and per…[Read more]

This essay is an intellectual history, one of affect theory both within and without biblical studies, rendered as an ecology of thought. It is an “archive of feelings,” a series of thematic portraits, and a description of the landscape of the field of biblical studies through a set of frictions and express discontentments with its legacies, as wel…[Read more]

This article explores how the ancient graphic symbol of the obelus changed from being an instrument of textual criticism to a tool of censure between c. 200 and 900.