Book review of a recent book on the reception of late antiquity.

Book review of a recent book on the reception of late antiquity.

“The Microcosmic Imaginary in Rabbinic Midrash,” BeDarkhei Shalom, Studies in Jewish Thought Presented to Prof. Shalom Rosenberg, B. Ish-Shalom (ed.), Jerusalem: Beit Morasha, 205-207 (Hebrew

Review article on five recent books relating to late Latin poetry

Review article on five recent books relating to late Latin poetry

This volume presents a case for how and why people in archaic and classical Greece worshipped Underworld gods.

These gods are often portrayed as malevolent and transgressive, giving an impression that ancient worshippers derived little or no benefit from developing ongoing relationships with them. In this book, the first book-length study that…[Read more]

in: Sebastian Grätz, Axel Graupner, Jörf Lanckau, Ein Freund des Wortes. Festschrift Udo Rüterswörden, Göttingen 2019, 100-109.

This article examines the young girls aged between seven and eleven year old who are elected to serve in the cult of Athena Polias, patron deity of Athens, in the classical period (roughly 5 th century, BC). I look at the creation of the dress given to Athena at the yearly Panathenaia festival, the creation of which is the main activity of their…[Read more]

The Tannaitic Laws of Battery: Scripture and Halakhah
Amit Gvaryahu
Four laws in the Pentateuch discuss fights between people. The arrangement of these laws and their relationship to one another were debated in the Tannaitic academies. The school of Rabbi Ishmael read these laws as a single entity, each law “coming to teach things omitted” in…[Read more]

A review of Katell Berthelot, Jonathan Price (ed.), In the Crucible of Empire: The Impact of Roman Citizenship upon Greeks, Jews and Christians. Interdisciplinary studies in ancient culture and religion, 21.

abstract A foundational text in the study of Tannaitic Midrash and Halakhah, Sifre Deuteronomy 122 is a list of places where Halakhah ʿ qpt scripture. This word, ʿ qpt, has long been understood to mean ‘circumvent’, ‘bypass’ or ‘belie’, and the pericope has been read as a list of places where ‘Halakhah circumvents scripture’, and thus a testament…[Read more]

Published in Sächsische Leute und Länder Benennung und Lokalisierung von Gruppenidentitäten im ersten Jahrtausend, and a considerably expanded version of a paper delivered at the Internationales Sachsensymposion in Leipzig, 2015.

The article considers the literary representation of Saxons in the works of the late antique authors Sidonius Ap…[Read more]

Ezekiel 37 is based upon Judean mortuary culture, and the revivification of bones is a reversal of death. Rather than a resurrection event, Ezekiel’s metaphor of Israel as a mass of dry bones is based upon the burial customs that occurred inside the family tomb.

King Manasseh of Judah is blamed for the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile, a heavy mantle to carry. But as a character, Manasseh is boring—he looks like the other ordinary bad kings, even described as a “cardboard cutout,” that Kings has little literary use for. Wouldn’t we expect a more colorful villain? Is there anything in the…[Read more]

Many of the feminist readings of the Dinah story in Genesis 34 in recent years have focused on the question of whether Dinah is raped. The interpretations that perhaps Dinah was not “raped” span the spectrum from a teenage love affair between Dinah and Shechem, to a case of statutory rape, to a marriage by abduction. Guilty of exploring this que…[Read more]

Illustration of various features in the arrangement of Linear B tablets in the photo plates of Scripta Minoa II, and a proposed rationale in terms of underlying art.

This is an enhanced compilation of relevant entries from Clavis Patrum Graecorum which was compiled by me (GS) for the “Patristic Literature in Arabic Translations” volume up to Nov. 2015. It is an embryonic version of what was later substantially enlarged and published as “A Bibliographical Guide to Arabic Patristic Translations and Related T…[Read more]

Seventeen years ago, Brian Shefton wrote, “the distribution pattern of the Greek imports for the Hallstatt period has crystallized a number of years ago and is unlikely to be greatly modified in the future except on point of detail” (Böhr and Shefton 2000, 28). Indeed, publications describing Greek pottery have reached similar conclusions: Gree…[Read more]

In this paper, I explore how Greek and Roman poets alluded to the lamentatory background of elegy through the figures of the swan and the nightingale. After surveying the ancient association of elegy and lament (Section I) and the common metapoetic function of birds from Homer onwards (Section II), I analyse Hellenistic and Roman examples where…[Read more]

This article forms part of a symposium on Paul Cartledge’s ‘Democracy: a life’ (2016). It argues in support of new approaches to Athenian democracy focused on the experience of those who were not active participants in the political institutions of the democracy but excluded because of their status (women, metics, slaves). It further argues that…[Read more]