Pre-publication draft (not intended for circulation or citation) of a contribution to a forthcoming edited volume on Narsai of Nisibis. Any comments, suggestions, or corrections are welcome (email to jwalters@rc.edu).

Review of the collected volume Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean.

From Constantinople to the Frontier: The City and the Cities provides twenty-five articles addressing the concept of centres and peripheries in the late antique and Byzantine worlds, focusing specifically on urban aspects of this paradigm. Spanning from the fourth to thirteenth centuries, and ranging from the later Roman empires to the early…[Read more]

Introduction to special journal edition of Medieval Worlds, focused on revisiting and reframing the debate over ethnicity and nationhood before modernity.

This paper investigates the influence of the Aeneid on the ninth poem of Prudentius’ Peristephanon. In the poem, Prudentius is on his way to Rome when he discovers the tomb of St Cassian, and an account of the saint’s passion follows. The framing narrative employs some of the conventions of pilgrimage literature, while the poem as a whole con…[Read more]

The Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity series undertook this translation of a monumental synthetic study of ecclesiology in the Gospel of Matthew by notable German scholar Matthias Konradt. Israel, Church, and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew is a meticulously researched and provocative challenge to latent anti-Semitism and…[Read more]

Virginia Tech professor Brian Britt presents this far-reaching study on biblical curses and their reception history. Britt’s introduction clearly sets out his goals for the book, especially the importance of distinguishing between the general power of curses in the ancient world and the general profanity of curses in early modern modern Europe and beyond.

University of Lethbridge professor Kevin McGeough presents a meticulous and thorough three-volume series on the reception of Near Eastern culture, his- tory, and art in nineteenth-century Europe and America. Both in the introduction to the first volume and throughout the series, McGeough makes clear the fascination held by Western entities such as…[Read more]

This paper investigates the application of the legal stigma of infamia (disrepute) in Late Antiquity. The legal status is used as a lens through which to view the changing systemic, religious, and social landscapes between the reigns of Diocletian and Justinian, indicating the various uses and, ultimately, abuses of the status, as well as the…[Read more]

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, like many apocryphal gospels, has been much transformed over the course of its transmission. Though composed in Greek in the second century, the gospel is extant in a number of other languages and a myriad of forms. The most well-known form is a 19-chapter version in Greek based on late manuscripts (none earlier than…[Read more]

This critical commentary argues that the novels submitted (emphasis on Ammonite, The Blue Place, and Hild, with three others, Slow River, Stay, and Always briefly referenced), form a coherent body of work which centres and norms the experience of the Other, particularly queer women. Close reading of the novels demonstrates how specific word-choice…[Read more]

This article considers a recent critical problematisation of the discussion of ›Otherness‹ in Merovingian archaeology (Halsall 2017), and extends this problematisation to the early mortuary archae- ology of post-Roman/early Anglo-Saxon England. The article first examines the literary goals of Gildas’ De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, and espec…[Read more]

This article considers a recent critical problematisation of the discussion of ›Otherness‹ in Merovingian archaeology (Halsall 2017), and extends this problematisation to the early mortuary archae- ology of post-Roman/early Anglo-Saxon England. The article first examines the literary goals of Gildas’ De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, and espec…[Read more]

This article considers a recent critical problematisation of the discussion of ›Otherness‹ in Merovingian archaeology (Halsall 2017), and extends this problematisation to the early mortuary archae- ology of post-Roman/early Anglo-Saxon England. The article first examines the literary goals of Gildas’ De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, and espec…[Read more]

Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott offer a sustained argument for the monastic provenance of the Nag Hammadi Codices. They examine the arguments for and against a monastic Sitz im Leben and defend the view that the Codices were produced and read by Christian monks, most likely Pachomians, in the fourth- and fifth-century monasteries of Upper Egypt.…[Read more]