Zwischen dem 5. und der Mitte des 6. Jahrhunderts bestand das Regnum der Vandalen und Alanen wie eine Reihe berberischer Territorien im römischen Nordafrika, welches sich in der althistorischen, mediävistischen und archäologischen Forschung zusehends als Testfall für ein besseres Verständnis der Umgestaltung der römischen Welt in Spätantike und Fr…[Read more]

Exodus 15, the Song at the Sea, appears to be triggered by the
divine victory over the Egyptians at the Sea, but the poet draws on other
literary images of destruction, images that are incompatible, in order to
express exuberance over divine victory. This seemingly rudimentary technique
is adroitly deployed in tandem with strategies of…[Read more]

Exodus 15, the Song at the Sea, appears to be triggered by the
divine victory over the Egyptians at the Sea, but the poet draws on other
literary images of destruction, images that are incompatible, in order to
express exuberance over divine victory. This seemingly rudimentary technique
is adroitly deployed in tandem with strategies of…[Read more]

We must, first of all, ask what a barbarian is or could have been in our sources. There were different kinds of barbarians, based upon the Roman and Greek ethnographic tradition and view of geography. Greek writers defined identities of human societies in the known world and bequeathed ethnonyms. Since the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E., these…[Read more]

This essay will show, however, that the text is not linked to diplomas, but belonged to an African version of Prosper’s chronicle. I will propose a new edition, which will put the text back in its original context. Rather than looking for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ texts according to 19th-century categories, I will try to analyze the specific character…[Read more]

This is the Syriac section for the Wisdom of Solomon article.

Das vandalische Afrika gilt als Musterbeispiel des „Kirchenkampfs“ zwischen homöischen Barbaren und katholischen Römern. Kronzeugen sind Victor von Vita, Fulgentius von Ruspe und Quodvultdeus von Karthago. Etwa 50 Jahre nach dem Ende der Vandalenkönige in Afrika 533 kam es in Spanien zum Ausgleich zwischen Katholiken und Homöern. Die westgot…[Read more]

The Vandal royal title Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum is known from the reign of king Huneric (477-484) from two decrees preserved in Victor of Vita’s History of the Vandal persecution. This catholic polemic pamphlet itself derives from the eighties or nineties of the fifth century. As traditional diplomatics throughout the 19th and 20th centuries c…[Read more]

This paper offers a re‐examination of some problems regarding the coinage of Vandal North Africa. The coinage of this barbarian successor state is one of the first non‐imperial coinages in the Mediterranean world of the fifth and sixth centuries. Based on the fine collection in the Coin Cabinet of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, this art…[Read more]

John 20:24-29 – the Doubting Thomas Narrative – is explored in terms of the thesis that Jesus showed Thomas wounds absolutely identical to the wounds originating at the time of the crucifixion. John understands the risen Jesus to enact sovereignty over time in this passage. This was a new stage in John’s Christological Development and aug…[Read more]

In interpreting the risen Jesus’ action of appearing ‘out of nowhere’ at John 20:19-20 (and Luke 24:36) and his inferred action of rising from the dead at John 20:5-7 (and Luke 24:12), the consensus of both classical and modern biblical tradition has been to understand these actions as Jesus in some sense passing through physical objects and there…[Read more]

Abstract and introduction for PhD dissertation, defended and deposited in April 2019.

Seit der frühen Neuzeit standen geschichtsmächtige Gruppen im Zentrum historischer Meistererzählungen. Vor allem die Umgestaltung der römischen Welt zwischen Antike und Mittelalter erklärte man durch die Wanderungen von Völkern, mit Dekadenzmodellen und konstruierten nationalen Charakteren. Meist wurde eine klare ethnische, kulturelle oder gar r…[Read more]

An overlooked but important document in the history of magisterial pronoun- cements on historical-critical biblical scholarship is the 1964 Instruction of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Sancta mater ecclesia. This article traces the history leading up to the Instruction and analyzes its importance during the Second Vatican Council and…[Read more]

Some gentes–armed social units or peoples such as the Goths, the Franks, the Burgundians or the Vandals–became an intrinsic part of European history. Others like the Heruli, the Sciri, the Gepids and the Rugians played their somewhat vague role, but disappeared from our sources without having had the opportunity to form any stable regnum on…[Read more]

Studying North Africa poses a variety of problems. Historical as well as archaeological research bears the burden of a colonial view on Africa’s past tending to overemphasize its Roman aspects. Berber (Numidian and Moorish) political entities together with Punic (Carthaginian) cities had a long history when Rome entered the African scene. The h…[Read more]

This dissertation is a study of the usury prohibition in rabbinic literature. It focuses on the usury laws in Tannaitic literature, the first formulation of the usury prohibition as a complex and multifaceted judicial norm. I place the Tannaitic usury laws against the backdrop of the economic and cultural norms of the wider world which the Tannaim…[Read more]

Original Abstract:
The sources for the history of Christianity in the early fourth century in the Persian Empire are notoriously sparse. And the sources that are available, such as the Demonstrations of Aphrahat, are vague and difficult to correlate with other sources. Historians of early Christianity have often incorporated these scant sources…[Read more]

A book review of _Symbol and Icon: Dionysius the Areopagite and the Iconoclastic Crisis_ (Wipf & Stock, 2010), which extensively catalogs the severe lack of proper attribution of other scholars’ work in the book.

This article argues that the Gospel of Thomas was written in Alexandria, not in Eastern Syria as is the current consensus. The arguments in favor of a Syrian Gospel of Thomas are not as strong as is often assumed, and a stronger case can be made for Alexandria. The Gospel of Thomas has a number of features that suggest it was a product of the…[Read more]