{"title":"On Shaky Ground","authors":"Ra‘anan Boustan","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952597","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.627
Mark Letteney, Simcha Gross
This article reexamines the evidence underlying the widely cited identification of a late ancient synagogue in Qanīʾ (modern Biʾr ʿAlī, Yemen), challenging its identification and the historical narrative built around it. We first assess the epigraphic, archaeological, and literary evidence used to identify a synagogue, and therefore a community of Jews, in fourth- through sixth-century Ḥimyar. We suggest that none of the evidence can bear the weight of the identification. We then discuss the reception of this tenuous claim by a wide variety of scholars—including those who have questioned its underlying rationale—and the way that it has been used to buttress wishful claims about an early and powerful Jewish presence in South Arabia. Ultimately, the mirage of Qanīʾ’s Jews serves as a cautionary tale, illustrating how surprising conclusions that bolster exciting historical narratives can result in speedy and unanimous acceptance by scholars of interpretations deserving of skepticism.
这篇文章重新审视了被广泛引用的关于在qan - al(现代的Bi - r - al，也门)的一个晚期古代犹太教堂的证据，挑战了它的识别和围绕它建立的历史叙述。我们首先评估了用于确定犹太教堂的铭文，考古和文学证据，因此，在四世纪到六世纪Ḥimyar的犹太人社区。我们认为，这些证据都不足以证明他的身份。然后，我们讨论了各种各样的学者对这一脆弱说法的接受情况——包括那些质疑其基本原理的学者——以及它被用来支持关于早期强大的犹太人在南阿拉伯存在的一厢情愿的说法的方式。最终，《古兰经》中犹太人的海市蜃楼起到了警示作用，说明了支持激动人心的历史叙述的令人惊讶的结论是如何导致学者们迅速和一致地接受值得怀疑的解释的。
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Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.742
Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos
{"title":"Review: Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity, edited by Jitse H. F. Dijkstra and Christian R. Raschle","authors":"Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.742","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.742","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952814","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.547
Matthew Delvaux
{"title":"Review: Women and Weapons in the Viking World: Amazons of the North, by Leszek Gardeła","authors":"Matthew Delvaux","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.547","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66953055","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.174
Geoffrey D. Dunn
Examining the information we have about deacons and presbyters in Rome during the first two decades of the fifth century contributes to the larger picture of their role and function and is instructive for several reasons. While there has been scholarly attention drawn to the prescriptive decrees of the Roman bishops regulating the life of their clergy, particularly regarding the clerical cursus honorum and lifestyle (marriage and sexual continence), less has been given to descriptive information about how deacons and presbyters operated. Although far from complete, this information is valuable. From the letters of Innocent I (402–417) we discover much about the liturgical functions of such clerics (through the invaluable letter to Decentius of Gubbio) as well as the role they played in being episcopal letter-bearers and negotiators. From Boniface I (418–422) we are reminded of another role of deacons and presbyters, that of electors and candidates for episcopal office. This information is filtered through the imperial correspondence concerning the electoral dispute between Boniface and Eulalius. We only gain insight into this process of episcopal election in practice when something went wrong. In this case, the undercurrent of tension between deacons and presbyters in Rome overflowed into open rivalry that required imperial intervention. This dispute is linked with the tensions that characterized the last months of Zosimus’s episcopacy of 417–418, where complaints about the bishop reached the imperial court in Ravenna and seem to have flowed from reactions to Zosimus’s changing responses to the Pelagian controversy. Such tension between deacons and presbyters existed in the time of Damasus (366–384), as revealed through Ambrosiaster and Jerome. It would be reasonable to conclude that such tension was present throughout this fifty-year period, ignited by different issues and most visible at the time of the election of a new bishop. Why then do we not find evidence of this tension under Innocent I? Perhaps he was a successful enough manager of his personnel that there were no significant outbreaks, or whatever problems there were did not require him to write about them to anyone else, thereby eliminating any trace of them from recorded memory. Most of our information comes filtered through the bishop’s perspective, and it is only with a letter sent from the presbyters of Rome to Ravenna in 419 in support of Boniface that we hear anything from the clergy themselves during this period. The evidence for the liturgical function of presbyters in the letter to Decentius perhaps unwittingly helps us understand the tension. Presbyters were closely tied to the populace, while, as we know from elsewhere, deacons were more closely tied to the bishop. It was the priestly or sacramental function of presbyters in controlling the boundaries of church membership that contributed to the collision course between them and the financially and administratively powerful
{"title":"Interpreting the Functions of the Roman Clergy in the Early Fifth Century","authors":"Geoffrey D. Dunn","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.174","url":null,"abstract":"Examining the information we have about deacons and presbyters in Rome during the first two decades of the fifth century contributes to the larger picture of their role and function and is instructive for several reasons. While there has been scholarly attention drawn to the prescriptive decrees of the Roman bishops regulating the life of their clergy, particularly regarding the clerical cursus honorum and lifestyle (marriage and sexual continence), less has been given to descriptive information about how deacons and presbyters operated. Although far from complete, this information is valuable. From the letters of Innocent I (402–417) we discover much about the liturgical functions of such clerics (through the invaluable letter to Decentius of Gubbio) as well as the role they played in being episcopal letter-bearers and negotiators. From Boniface I (418–422) we are reminded of another role of deacons and presbyters, that of electors and candidates for episcopal office. This information is filtered through the imperial correspondence concerning the electoral dispute between Boniface and Eulalius. We only gain insight into this process of episcopal election in practice when something went wrong. In this case, the undercurrent of tension between deacons and presbyters in Rome overflowed into open rivalry that required imperial intervention. This dispute is linked with the tensions that characterized the last months of Zosimus’s episcopacy of 417–418, where complaints about the bishop reached the imperial court in Ravenna and seem to have flowed from reactions to Zosimus’s changing responses to the Pelagian controversy. Such tension between deacons and presbyters existed in the time of Damasus (366–384), as revealed through Ambrosiaster and Jerome. It would be reasonable to conclude that such tension was present throughout this fifty-year period, ignited by different issues and most visible at the time of the election of a new bishop. Why then do we not find evidence of this tension under Innocent I? Perhaps he was a successful enough manager of his personnel that there were no significant outbreaks, or whatever problems there were did not require him to write about them to anyone else, thereby eliminating any trace of them from recorded memory. Most of our information comes filtered through the bishop’s perspective, and it is only with a letter sent from the presbyters of Rome to Ravenna in 419 in support of Boniface that we hear anything from the clergy themselves during this period. The evidence for the liturgical function of presbyters in the letter to Decentius perhaps unwittingly helps us understand the tension. Presbyters were closely tied to the populace, while, as we know from elsewhere, deacons were more closely tied to the bishop. It was the priestly or sacramental function of presbyters in controlling the boundaries of church membership that contributed to the collision course between them and the financially and administratively powerful","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952610","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.740
P. Crabtree
{"title":"Review: Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West, by Jamie Kreiner","authors":"P. Crabtree","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.740","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.740","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952798","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.746
B. Hostetler
{"title":"Review: Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds: Studies in Honour of Erica Cruikshank Dodd, edited by Evanthia Baboula and Lesley Jessop","authors":"B. Hostetler","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.746","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.746","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952850","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.101
Anne-Valérie Pont
This article investigates the involvement of Christians in local public life before the time of Constantine through a phenomenological approach, based on the observation of behaviors and of style of interactions in public contexts. It thus explores how the practical conduct of Christian local elites acting as civic officials could be framed as conventional, in their religious group as well as in their sociopolitical milieu, with minor arrangements allowing for ease in public roles and interactions. This study consequently outlines interpretative paths regarding epigraphical evidence as well as sources less often used by historians of cities for the time preceding the legalization of Christianity. Comparing different types of sources from several areas of the empire and asserting methodological principles first exemplified by the study of an inscription from Kios (Bithynia), this study identifies a variety of behaviors by Christian local elites and of interactions with their civic environment: although barely visible, these modes of conduct emerge in the examination of sources if attention is not focused on conflictual events in the context of the persecution beginning in 303. Despite its rarity, evidence regarding Christians in local public contexts thus emerges as historically significant. This pattern of Christian participation in civic life is perceptible in some regions of the empire in the second part of the third century and reflects a specific moment in the long life of the postclassical city.
{"title":"Local Christian Elites on the Public Scene in the Third Century","authors":"Anne-Valérie Pont","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.101","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the involvement of Christians in local public life before the time of Constantine through a phenomenological approach, based on the observation of behaviors and of style of interactions in public contexts. It thus explores how the practical conduct of Christian local elites acting as civic officials could be framed as conventional, in their religious group as well as in their sociopolitical milieu, with minor arrangements allowing for ease in public roles and interactions. This study consequently outlines interpretative paths regarding epigraphical evidence as well as sources less often used by historians of cities for the time preceding the legalization of Christianity. Comparing different types of sources from several areas of the empire and asserting methodological principles first exemplified by the study of an inscription from Kios (Bithynia), this study identifies a variety of behaviors by Christian local elites and of interactions with their civic environment: although barely visible, these modes of conduct emerge in the examination of sources if attention is not focused on conflictual events in the context of the persecution beginning in 303. Despite its rarity, evidence regarding Christians in local public contexts thus emerges as historically significant. This pattern of Christian participation in civic life is perceptible in some regions of the empire in the second part of the third century and reflects a specific moment in the long life of the postclassical city.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952193","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.207
M. Anderson
{"title":"Review: Food, Virtue, and the Shaping of Early Christianity, by Dana Robinson","authors":"M. Anderson","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.207","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952623","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.213
Kristina Sessa
{"title":"Keep Late Antiquity Weird","authors":"Kristina Sessa","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.213","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952650","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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