Pub Date : 2021-05-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2021.5.2.270
J. Gillman
{"title":"Review: Death and Afterlife in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature, by Pau Figueras","authors":"J. Gillman","doi":"10.1525/sla.2021.5.2.270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2021.5.2.270","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47628187","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 : 2021-02-01DOI: 10.1525/SLA.2021.5.1.128
D. Frankfurter
Let me begin by laying out the downside of the term syncretism. Syncretism seems to propose two (or more) discrete religious systems, like Christianity and Heathenism, or Judaism and Hellenism, or Persia and Greece. And this is problematic because none of these systems or traditions was ever discrete and pure. Syncretism thus relies on a romantic fantasy of the pure culture: apostolic Christianity, biblical or rabbinic Judaism, Pharaonic Egypt. Syncretism, then, implies mixtures that are ad hoc, base and commercial, intellectually unsophisticated, travesties and distortions of those pure traditions. The pure religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Platonic Hellenism gain only cheap mystification, even pollution, when mixed with Persian or Berber traditions. Thus the very epitomes of syncretism in Late Antiquity can be found in the Greek Magical Papyri, in Mystery Cults like Mithraism, in pseudo-intellectual ritual schemes like Hermeticism and Gnosticism, and in those latter-day Christianities that used to strike Protestant scholars as rife with “pagan survivals”: Greek Orthodoxy, Italian Catholicism, Haitian Vodou, and so on. So overall, syncretism mistakenly imagines pure religious traditions in haphazard collapse and regards their mixture in terms of
{"title":"Restoring “Syncretism” in the History of Christianity","authors":"D. Frankfurter","doi":"10.1525/SLA.2021.5.1.128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/SLA.2021.5.1.128","url":null,"abstract":"Let me begin by laying out the downside of the term syncretism. Syncretism seems to propose two (or more) discrete religious systems, like Christianity and Heathenism, or Judaism and Hellenism, or Persia and Greece. And this is problematic because none of these systems or traditions was ever discrete and pure. Syncretism thus relies on a romantic fantasy of the pure culture: apostolic Christianity, biblical or rabbinic Judaism, Pharaonic Egypt. Syncretism, then, implies mixtures that are ad hoc, base and commercial, intellectually unsophisticated, travesties and distortions of those pure traditions. The pure religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Platonic Hellenism gain only cheap mystification, even pollution, when mixed with Persian or Berber traditions. Thus the very epitomes of syncretism in Late Antiquity can be found in the Greek Magical Papyri, in Mystery Cults like Mithraism, in pseudo-intellectual ritual schemes like Hermeticism and Gnosticism, and in those latter-day Christianities that used to strike Protestant scholars as rife with “pagan survivals”: Greek Orthodoxy, Italian Catholicism, Haitian Vodou, and so on. So overall, syncretism mistakenly imagines pure religious traditions in haphazard collapse and regards their mixture in terms of","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44871575","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}
Late Antiquity witnessed a revolution in textuality. Numerous new technologies transformed the practices through which readers accessed written knowledge. Editors reconfigured existing works in order to facilitate new modes of access and new possibilities of knowledge. Despite recent investigations of late ancient knowing, tables of contents have been neglected. Addressing this lacuna, I analyze two examples from the early fourth century: Porphyry of Tyre’s outline of the Enneads in his Life of Plotinus and Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel canons. Using tables of contents, Porphyry and Eusebius reconfigured inherited corpora; their creative interventions generate and constrain possibilities of reading—sometimes in ways which run against the grain of the assembled material. I thus argue that Porphyry and Eusebius employed tables of contents to structure textual knowledge—and readers’ access to it—by embracing the dual possibilities of order and creativity in order to offer new texts to their readers. This dual function—of affording structure and inviting creative use—was significant in the construction of composite works which characterized much late ancient intellectual production. The examples of Porphyry and Eusebius illuminate broader late ancient practices of collecting and cataloguing textual knowledge.
{"title":"Transforming Textuality","authors":"J. Coogan","doi":"10.1525/SLA.2021.5.1.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/SLA.2021.5.1.6","url":null,"abstract":"Late Antiquity witnessed a revolution in textuality. Numerous new technologies transformed the practices through which readers accessed written knowledge. Editors reconfigured existing works in order to facilitate new modes of access and new possibilities of knowledge. Despite recent investigations of late ancient knowing, tables of contents have been neglected. Addressing this lacuna, I analyze two examples from the early fourth century: Porphyry of Tyre’s outline of the Enneads in his Life of Plotinus and Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel canons. Using tables of contents, Porphyry and Eusebius reconfigured inherited corpora; their creative interventions generate and constrain possibilities of reading—sometimes in ways which run against the grain of the assembled material. I thus argue that Porphyry and Eusebius employed tables of contents to structure textual knowledge—and readers’ access to it—by embracing the dual possibilities of order and creativity in order to offer new texts to their readers. This dual function—of affording structure and inviting creative use—was significant in the construction of composite works which characterized much late ancient intellectual production. The examples of Porphyry and Eusebius illuminate broader late ancient practices of collecting and cataloguing textual knowledge.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45833471","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}
The Syriac tradition presents an exceptional opportunity to investigate how the people of a late Roman frontier articulated local community affiliation against the backdrop of the larger Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. Over the last decade, Syrian/Syriac identity and Roman identity in late antique Syria-Mesopotamia have emerged as topics of increasing interest. In concentrating on ethnicity, however, studies of specifically local affiliations have generally left unexamined the other modes of group identification which may have been equally or more salient. This essay fills that gap by excavating non-ethnic means of constructing local and regional identity in three Syriac texts written in and about Edessa in the pivotal century around 500 CE: the Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite, the Chronicle of Edessa (540), and Euphemia and the Goth. Across their differences in date and genre, these three texts demonstrate a convergent set of strategies for reconciling Edessa and its neighbors to the Roman Empire at large. Crucially, all three project notions of local belonging which focus not on ethnic markers but on particular places: in the first instance, on the city. Drawing from cultural geography’s interdependent concept of “place,” the essay shows how in these texts local identity emerges from the interaction of city, church, and empire; Edessa’s connections to the wider Roman world serve not to negate but to articulate its specificity as a community. Moreover, such place-based means of identification could be extended to frame larger regional communities too, as Ps.-Joshua does in its most distinctive moments.
{"title":"Writing Edessa into the Roman Empire*","authors":"John P. Kee","doi":"10.1525/SLA.2021.5.1.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/SLA.2021.5.1.28","url":null,"abstract":"The Syriac tradition presents an exceptional opportunity to investigate how the people of a late Roman frontier articulated local community affiliation against the backdrop of the larger Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. Over the last decade, Syrian/Syriac identity and Roman identity in late antique Syria-Mesopotamia have emerged as topics of increasing interest. In concentrating on ethnicity, however, studies of specifically local affiliations have generally left unexamined the other modes of group identification which may have been equally or more salient. This essay fills that gap by excavating non-ethnic means of constructing local and regional identity in three Syriac texts written in and about Edessa in the pivotal century around 500 CE: the Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite, the Chronicle of Edessa (540), and Euphemia and the Goth.\u0000 Across their differences in date and genre, these three texts demonstrate a convergent set of strategies for reconciling Edessa and its neighbors to the Roman Empire at large. Crucially, all three project notions of local belonging which focus not on ethnic markers but on particular places: in the first instance, on the city. Drawing from cultural geography’s interdependent concept of “place,” the essay shows how in these texts local identity emerges from the interaction of city, church, and empire; Edessa’s connections to the wider Roman world serve not to negate but to articulate its specificity as a community. Moreover, such place-based means of identification could be extended to frame larger regional communities too, as Ps.-Joshua does in its most distinctive moments.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41800590","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 identifies a military prison (carcer castrensis) in the Roman legionary fortress at Lambaesis (Tazoult, Algeria) and contextualizes the space among North African carceral practices evidenced in epigraphic, papyrological, and literary sources of the first through fourth centuries CE. The identification is made on the basis of architectural comparanda and previously unnoticed inscriptional evidence which demonstrate that the space under the Sanctuary of the Standards in the principia was both built as a prison and used that way in antiquity. The broader discussion highlights the ubiquity of carceral spaces and practices in the ancient and late ancient Mediterranean, and elucidates some of the underlying practices and ideologies of ancient incarceration.
{"title":"A Roman Military Prison at Lambaesis","authors":"Mark Letteney, M. Larsen","doi":"10.1525/SLA.2021.5.1.65","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/SLA.2021.5.1.65","url":null,"abstract":"This article identifies a military prison (carcer castrensis) in the Roman legionary fortress at Lambaesis (Tazoult, Algeria) and contextualizes the space among North African carceral practices evidenced in epigraphic, papyrological, and literary sources of the first through fourth centuries CE. The identification is made on the basis of architectural comparanda and previously unnoticed inscriptional evidence which demonstrate that the space under the Sanctuary of the Standards in the principia was both built as a prison and used that way in antiquity. The broader discussion highlights the ubiquity of carceral spaces and practices in the ancient and late ancient Mediterranean, and elucidates some of the underlying practices and ideologies of ancient incarceration.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43088950","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 : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.580
David J. DeVore
Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, a seminal late-antique historical narrative, features three periodizations of the church’s past. First, a soteriological periodization divides God’s relationship with humanity at Christ’s Incarnation, an event that Eusebius marks in Book 1 with detailed commentary on the gospels rather than narrative. Second, an ecclesiastical periodization divides pristine, heroic apostolic times from post-apostolic times. The divide between apostolic times and the post-apostolic periods is illustrated through a comparison of History 2.13–17, about Simon Magus, Peter, and Mark, and 6.12, on Serapion of Antioch. And third, an epistemological periodization distinguished earlier times from Eusebius’s lifetime, the latter marked by frequent references to “our time.” Eusebius changed numerous narrative features with his changes of period, including alternating between commentary, diachronic, and synchronic format for different time periods; changing protagonists’ fallibility, individuality, composition of texts, and citation of scripture; and providing notices of episcopal successions and quotation of sources. Moreover, Eusebius’s History changed periods not with the sharp breaks of many modern histories but with gradual transitions. He also underscored key continuities, including God’s intervention in human events and alternation between persecuting and protecting rulers—a continuity within which, contrary to scholarly assumptions, the History never inaugurates a new era with the emergence of Constantine. The case study of Eusebius’s periodization suggests an important limitation of the analytic usefulness of periodizations such as “Late Antiquity” for organizing intellectual history.
{"title":"Time in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History","authors":"David J. DeVore","doi":"10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.580","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.580","url":null,"abstract":"Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, a seminal late-antique historical narrative, features three periodizations of the church’s past. First, a soteriological periodization divides God’s relationship with humanity at Christ’s Incarnation, an event that Eusebius marks in Book 1 with detailed commentary on the gospels rather than narrative. Second, an ecclesiastical periodization divides pristine, heroic apostolic times from post-apostolic times. The divide between apostolic times and the post-apostolic periods is illustrated through a comparison of History 2.13–17, about Simon Magus, Peter, and Mark, and 6.12, on Serapion of Antioch. And third, an epistemological periodization distinguished earlier times from Eusebius’s lifetime, the latter marked by frequent references to “our time.” Eusebius changed numerous narrative features with his changes of period, including alternating between commentary, diachronic, and synchronic format for different time periods; changing protagonists’ fallibility, individuality, composition of texts, and citation of scripture; and providing notices of episcopal successions and quotation of sources. Moreover, Eusebius’s History changed periods not with the sharp breaks of many modern histories but with gradual transitions. He also underscored key continuities, including God’s intervention in human events and alternation between persecuting and protecting rulers—a continuity within which, contrary to scholarly assumptions, the History never inaugurates a new era with the emergence of Constantine. The case study of Eusebius’s periodization suggests an important limitation of the analytic usefulness of periodizations such as “Late Antiquity” for organizing intellectual history.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952428","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 : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.678
Graham Chamness
{"title":"Review: The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History, by Andrew Chittick","authors":"Graham Chamness","doi":"10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.678","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952516","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 : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.684
A. Johnson
{"title":"Review: Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, by Anthony Kaldellis","authors":"A. Johnson","doi":"10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.684","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952564","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 : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.475
E. Digeser
{"title":"Being in a Place","authors":"E. Digeser","doi":"10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.475","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66951905","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 : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.618
Ido Israelowich
This article has two interwoven objectives. The first is to show what these items of law reveal about the Visigothic healthcare system and its origins. The second is to portray the attitude of the Visigothic Code toward healthcare as an exemplum of a more general trend of acceptance of the Roman law of obligations.
{"title":"Visigothic Medici","authors":"Ido Israelowich","doi":"10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2021.5.4.618","url":null,"abstract":"This article has two interwoven objectives. The first is to show what these items of law reveal about the Visigothic healthcare system and its origins. The second is to portray the attitude of the Visigothic Code toward healthcare as an exemplum of a more general trend of acceptance of the Roman law of obligations.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952486","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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