Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2023.7.3.407
J. Han
The goal of this article is to situate the Manichaean Bema Psalms from the Coptic Manichaean Psalmbook in the late antique Roman Empire, on the one hand, and to introduce it as a point of comparison for scholars interested in comparative liturgy, on the other. It argues that public expressions of adoration in the late antique Roman Empire, especially acclamations and panegyrics, functioned as the cultural scaffolding for the performance of the Bema Festival in the Roman Near East. To support this claim, it will first show how Bema Psalm 222 uses imperial acclamations and topoi drawn from panegyrics to welcome Mani to the bema. It then turns to compare the Bema Psalms with Christian and Jewish liturgy, thereby demonstrating that the Bema Psalms participate in the same liturgical developments as their neighbors in the Roman Empire. It shows how various “hailing” acclamations found throughout Bema Psalms parallel Christian hymns in praise of Mary, the Theotokos (God-bearer) in both form and epithets used. It then pivots to compare the role of refrains in a Jewish liturgical text for Passover with another Bema Psalm, ultimately arguing that both locate the congregation within a liturgical drama through the performance of acclamatory refrains.
{"title":"“Hail, Bema of Victory, Great Sign of Our City!”","authors":"J. Han","doi":"10.1525/sla.2023.7.3.407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.3.407","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of this article is to situate the Manichaean Bema Psalms from the Coptic Manichaean Psalmbook in the late antique Roman Empire, on the one hand, and to introduce it as a point of comparison for scholars interested in comparative liturgy, on the other. It argues that public expressions of adoration in the late antique Roman Empire, especially acclamations and panegyrics, functioned as the cultural scaffolding for the performance of the Bema Festival in the Roman Near East. To support this claim, it will first show how Bema Psalm 222 uses imperial acclamations and topoi drawn from panegyrics to welcome Mani to the bema. It then turns to compare the Bema Psalms with Christian and Jewish liturgy, thereby demonstrating that the Bema Psalms participate in the same liturgical developments as their neighbors in the Roman Empire. It shows how various “hailing” acclamations found throughout Bema Psalms parallel Christian hymns in praise of Mary, the Theotokos (God-bearer) in both form and epithets used. It then pivots to compare the role of refrains in a Jewish liturgical text for Passover with another Bema Psalm, ultimately arguing that both locate the congregation within a liturgical drama through the performance of acclamatory refrains.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66953640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"National Borders and the Contours of Historical Knowledge","authors":"Ra‘anan Boustan","doi":"10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.162
Robin Whelan
{"title":"Review: Masculinity, Identity, and Power Politics in the Age of Justinian: A Study of Procopius, by Michael Stewart","authors":"Robin Whelan","doi":"10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.162","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In her 1998 article “The Lady Vanishes,” Elizabeth Clark issued a challenge to the foundationalisms of feminist historiography of Late Antiquity through developments in poststructuralist theory. This article proposes its own reorientation to historical work on gender, but it does so now in light of recent developments in Black feminist, transgender, and postcolonial feminist studies, arguing gender should be understood as always within colonialism and racialization. It describes the way gender appears in the linked projects of the medicalized body and ethnographic discourses, both in antiquity and modernity, and asks about the political stakes and ambivalent histories attending gender as an analytically separable facet of experience. It also offers a brief reframing of the Proto-gospel of James and select scholarship on late ancient Christianity to offer a constructive redirection for the field of Late Antiquity.
{"title":"The Ethnography of Gender","authors":"Maia Kotrosits","doi":"10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.5","url":null,"abstract":"In her 1998 article “The Lady Vanishes,” Elizabeth Clark issued a challenge to the foundationalisms of feminist historiography of Late Antiquity through developments in poststructuralist theory. This article proposes its own reorientation to historical work on gender, but it does so now in light of recent developments in Black feminist, transgender, and postcolonial feminist studies, arguing gender should be understood as always within colonialism and racialization. It describes the way gender appears in the linked projects of the medicalized body and ethnographic discourses, both in antiquity and modernity, and asks about the political stakes and ambivalent histories attending gender as an analytically separable facet of experience. It also offers a brief reframing of the Proto-gospel of James and select scholarship on late ancient Christianity to offer a constructive redirection for the field of Late Antiquity.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2023.7.2.242
K. Langenfeld
The writings of Ammianus Marcellinus, Libanius, and John Chrysostom have enshrined the Antiochene treason and magic investigations conducted under Emperor Valens in 372 CE as a testament to the ruler’s excessive paranoia and poor relationship with the eastern metropolis. By reexamining these three authors’ allegations of judicial corruption and abusive policing during the trials, this article contends that Valens’s response to the crisis was leveraged with far more legality, moderation, and success than often discussed. The rigorous tactics implemented during the trials demonstrate Valens and his administration’s intent to counter potential sedition among Antioch’s citizenry with the full brunt of Roman law and military action. Comparisons with legal precedents reveal, however, that Valens’s administration balanced these stern deterrents with deference to the law and attempted to assuage Antiochene interests throughout the investigations. Antiochene lobbying efforts were also more impactful in mitigating the imperial response, as demonstrated by Chrysostom’s account of a public protest that successfully petitioned Valens to pardon one of the accused. This article concludes that this pardon and Valens’s application of moderated or commuted sentences throughout the trials indicate his efforts to maintain a constructive imperial-urban relationship with the Antiochene populace. This conclusion not only forces a reconsideration of Valens’s relationship with his de facto imperial capital throughout the trials but also indicates the dangers of relying too heavily on literary interpretations of Valens’s reign.
{"title":"Imperial Crisis Response and the Antiochene Magic and Treason Trials of 372 CE","authors":"K. Langenfeld","doi":"10.1525/sla.2023.7.2.242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.2.242","url":null,"abstract":"The writings of Ammianus Marcellinus, Libanius, and John Chrysostom have enshrined the Antiochene treason and magic investigations conducted under Emperor Valens in 372 CE as a testament to the ruler’s excessive paranoia and poor relationship with the eastern metropolis. By reexamining these three authors’ allegations of judicial corruption and abusive policing during the trials, this article contends that Valens’s response to the crisis was leveraged with far more legality, moderation, and success than often discussed. The rigorous tactics implemented during the trials demonstrate Valens and his administration’s intent to counter potential sedition among Antioch’s citizenry with the full brunt of Roman law and military action. Comparisons with legal precedents reveal, however, that Valens’s administration balanced these stern deterrents with deference to the law and attempted to assuage Antiochene interests throughout the investigations. Antiochene lobbying efforts were also more impactful in mitigating the imperial response, as demonstrated by Chrysostom’s account of a public protest that successfully petitioned Valens to pardon one of the accused. This article concludes that this pardon and Valens’s application of moderated or commuted sentences throughout the trials indicate his efforts to maintain a constructive imperial-urban relationship with the Antiochene populace. This conclusion not only forces a reconsideration of Valens’s relationship with his de facto imperial capital throughout the trials but also indicates the dangers of relying too heavily on literary interpretations of Valens’s reign.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66953091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2023.7.3.339
L. Bailey
This article explores the story of Berthegund, a Merovingian woman who tried to leave her husband to join a religious life. This story comes to us only from a hostile witness, and most scholars have echoed his dismissive perspective. However, it is possible to reconstruct Berthegund’s perspective by exploring what would have seemed possible for her. The article then sets her story into the context of several broader issues. The first is the idea of the marital debt and its relation to early medieval ideas about sexuality, as well as stories about marital sex avoidance. The article then takes a further step back to consider the implications of her story for understandings of female agency in the early Middle Ages and how this was shaped by ideas about sexual consent. Berthegund’s small story therefore reveals a rich set of worldviews and understandings.
{"title":"“No one who has been joined to a spouse will see the Kingdom of Heaven”","authors":"L. Bailey","doi":"10.1525/sla.2023.7.3.339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.3.339","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the story of Berthegund, a Merovingian woman who tried to leave her husband to join a religious life. This story comes to us only from a hostile witness, and most scholars have echoed his dismissive perspective. However, it is possible to reconstruct Berthegund’s perspective by exploring what would have seemed possible for her. The article then sets her story into the context of several broader issues. The first is the idea of the marital debt and its relation to early medieval ideas about sexuality, as well as stories about marital sex avoidance. The article then takes a further step back to consider the implications of her story for understandings of female agency in the early Middle Ages and how this was shaped by ideas about sexual consent. Berthegund’s small story therefore reveals a rich set of worldviews and understandings.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article interrogates the historiography of the field of classical Judaism and suggests what a revisionist feminist historiography of this foundational period might look like. Feminist analysis of gender, class, and race in antiquity allows us to see how scholarly biases today reinscribe and even exceed ancient prejudices. Building on Blossom Stefaniw’s essay “Feminist Historiography and Uses of the Past” and deploying Saidiya Hartman’s method of critical fabulation to analyze synagogue inscriptions and rabbinic texts, this article offers counternarratives of Jewish daily life in the period of Late Antiquity. Through investigation of evidence for enslaved, manumitted, and fostered people in the households of the late antique Jewish patriarchs, this article emphasizes the contribution of ostensibly nonnormative Jews to late antique synagogues, rabbinic learning, and Jewish society in Late Antiquity. It argues that our imaginings of Jewish society and the Jewish household in premodernity must change to accommodate the evidence of these heretofore marginalized Jews and the challenges posed by their enslaved status and/or gendered identity. This restoration of excluded perspectives and traditions represents a more ethical historiographic practice, which produces more inclusive and accurate representations of the past, sets the stage for recognizing continuities through the medieval era, and, finally, enables a different present, one with subjects empowered to construct more ethical social norms within and outside the academy.
{"title":"Critical Fabulation and the Foundations of Classical Judaism","authors":"Mika Ahuvia","doi":"10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.29","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.29","url":null,"abstract":"This article interrogates the historiography of the field of classical Judaism and suggests what a revisionist feminist historiography of this foundational period might look like. Feminist analysis of gender, class, and race in antiquity allows us to see how scholarly biases today reinscribe and even exceed ancient prejudices. Building on Blossom Stefaniw’s essay “Feminist Historiography and Uses of the Past” and deploying Saidiya Hartman’s method of critical fabulation to analyze synagogue inscriptions and rabbinic texts, this article offers counternarratives of Jewish daily life in the period of Late Antiquity. Through investigation of evidence for enslaved, manumitted, and fostered people in the households of the late antique Jewish patriarchs, this article emphasizes the contribution of ostensibly nonnormative Jews to late antique synagogues, rabbinic learning, and Jewish society in Late Antiquity. It argues that our imaginings of Jewish society and the Jewish household in premodernity must change to accommodate the evidence of these heretofore marginalized Jews and the challenges posed by their enslaved status and/or gendered identity. This restoration of excluded perspectives and traditions represents a more ethical historiographic practice, which produces more inclusive and accurate representations of the past, sets the stage for recognizing continuities through the medieval era, and, finally, enables a different present, one with subjects empowered to construct more ethical social norms within and outside the academy.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.137
Timothy Pettipiece
Scholars have long been curious about the transmission of religious and philosophical ideas across Eurasia in antiquity. It is well known that Mani named a number of important figures from “Eastern” religious traditions—such as Buddha and Zoroaster—among his list of prophetic forerunners in an effort to establish his own authority as a religious teacher. Recently published portions of the Dublin codex of the Manichaean Kephalaia provide an additional attestation of this prophetological paradigm in an even more amplified form, as it includes figures not previously attested. Textual analysis of this new testimonium invites us to reflect on how Mani and his early followers imagined their relationships to other religious traditions. It will be shown that, while Manichaean textual traditions were an important conduit of religious information across Eurasia, modern interpreters should be cautious about supposing that ancient readers of Manichaean texts made any meaningful association between the names of these prophetic forerunners and particular doctrines, which by then had been fully naturalized as “Manichaean” teachings.
{"title":"Eastern Sages in Roman Egypt","authors":"Timothy Pettipiece","doi":"10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.137","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars have long been curious about the transmission of religious and philosophical ideas across Eurasia in antiquity. It is well known that Mani named a number of important figures from “Eastern” religious traditions—such as Buddha and Zoroaster—among his list of prophetic forerunners in an effort to establish his own authority as a religious teacher. Recently published portions of the Dublin codex of the Manichaean Kephalaia provide an additional attestation of this prophetological paradigm in an even more amplified form, as it includes figures not previously attested. Textual analysis of this new testimonium invites us to reflect on how Mani and his early followers imagined their relationships to other religious traditions. It will be shown that, while Manichaean textual traditions were an important conduit of religious information across Eurasia, modern interpreters should be cautious about supposing that ancient readers of Manichaean texts made any meaningful association between the names of these prophetic forerunners and particular doctrines, which by then had been fully naturalized as “Manichaean” teachings.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.166
P. Wood
{"title":"Review: Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers, by Michael J. Hollerich","authors":"P. Wood","doi":"10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.166","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2023.7.2.327
L. Bailey
{"title":"Review: The Pursuit of Salvation: Community, Space, and Discipline in Early Medieval Monasticism, by Albrecht Diem","authors":"L. Bailey","doi":"10.1525/sla.2023.7.2.327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.2.327","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66953120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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