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]

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]

This article looks at the field of Black Judaism, with a viewto understanding how scholars articulate the distinctionbetween Black Judaism and the Hebrew Israelite move-ment. The Hebrew Israelites are an autonomous AfricanAmerican movement who identify themselves as descen-dants of the Israelites and some of whom self-identify asJews, probably…[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.

Religious practice is shaped by technology. Technological practice is shaped by religion. Since the early 1990s, this parallel formation has become visible through the internet and other digitally networked technologies, as the perception of a barrier between the digital and the non-digital dissolves. Fully rendered 3D temples and churches, prayer…[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]

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion…[Read more]

This article analyses the confluence of Islamophobia and anti-government conspiracy theory in the works of the far-right think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He argues that, rather than only being a contemporary form of the religious and racialized demonologies that code ‘Islam’ as being the constitutive outside of ‘the ‘West…[Read more]

In this seminar we will examine representations of health and accounts of disease in a variety of Chinese religions. We will explore the various vectors of disease, including the so-called “winds” and various types of demonic infestation. We will identify modes of
healing that employ therapies such as mineral, animal, and vegetable drugs, exo…[Read more]

This chapter argues that the textual and archaeological evidence for imperial involvement in the Corinthia provides faint traces of what Jas Elsner has called “internal friction” in the manifestation of imperial and Corinthian authority in the region.

This chapter argues that the textual and archaeological evidence for imperial involvement in the Corinthia provides faint traces of what Jas Elsner has called “internal friction” in the manifestation of imperial and Corinthian authority in the region.

A short paper on legacy data, flow, and time in archaeology based on my experiences at Polis on Cyprus.

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]

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]