Reviving the Memory of the Apostles: Apocryphal Tradition and Travel Literature in Late Antiquity

2008 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Travel Literature ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Greco Roman

In this essay I aim to consider the association of place with apostolic personae. The imaginative worlds generated between the time of the apostles in the first century and the rise of the medieval Christian world in the seventh and eighth centuries can be seen as an integral part of what we now label ‘late antiquity’. The period of late antiquity, roughly from 300 to 600 AD (from Constantine to Mohammed), is substantively a period of consolidation and reorientation: knowledge from the ancient Greco-Roman civilizations was queried, repackaged, and disseminated; classical literature was copied, commented upon, and imitated; Roman law was collected, rearranged, and declared authoritative. What has been less studied in this period is the reception of the apostolic world as a realm of knowledge in its own right.

The Eleazar Miracle and Solomon's Magical Wisdom in Flavius Josephus'sAntiquitates Judaicae8.42–49

1985 ◽  
Vol 78 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis C. Duling
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nag Hammadi ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
And Function ◽  
Miracle Story ◽  
New Evidence

The fascinating legend of Solomon's magical wisdom was widespread in Late Antiquity, and new evidence for it has surfaced in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts. Yet the key literary text for understanding the legend remains the miracle story of Eleazar in Josephus'sAntiquitates Judaicae8.42–49. In this article, I would like to examine the story's form, content, and function. First, it is necessary to clarify the story by a formal analysis and by relating its form to other miracles within the corpus of Josephus, and to similar accounts of miracles in Late Antiquity. Next, I shall examine the way in which this miracle functions in theAntiquitatesfrom the perspective of Josephus's overall apologetic purpose, his view of miracle and magic, his portrait of Solomon, his knowledge of the Jewish legend of Solomon's magical wisdom, and his immediate context for the story. Finally, I shall propose a modest hypothesis about Josephus's treatment of the Eleazar miracle in relation to his social location as a Jewish apologist to educated Greco-Roman readers in the first century CE.

History of Recording Demotic Epigraphy

2020 ◽  
pp. 491-507
Author(s):  
Jan Moje
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Period ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Rosetta Stone ◽  
Roman Egypt ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter gives an overview of the history of recording and publishing epigraphic sources in Demotic language and script from the Late Period to Greco-Roman Egypt (seventh century bce to third century ce), for example, on stelae, offering tables, coffins, or votive gifts. The history of editing such texts and objects spans over two hundred years. Here, the important steps and pioneering publications on Demotic epigraphy are examined. They start from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt found the Rosetta stone, until the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals A critical investigation of Y7 students’ perceptions of Roman slavery as evidenced in the stories of the Cambridge Latin Course

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (42) ◽  
pp. 43-54
Author(s):  
Ella Parodi
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
English Language ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Public High School ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Sensitive Topics ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Introductory Textbooks

In an article, ‘The Slaves were Happy’: High School Latin and the Horrors of Classical Studies, Erik Robinson, a Latin teacher from a public high school in Texas, criticises how, in his experience, Classics teaching tends to avoid in-depth discussions on issues such as the brutality of war, the treatment of women and the experience of slaves (Robinson, 2017). However, texts such as the article ‘Teaching Sensitive Topics in the Secondary Classics Classroom’ (Hunt, 2016), and the book ‘From abortion to pederasty: addressing difficult topics in the Classics classroom’ (Sorkin Rabinowitz & McHardy, 2014) strongly advocate for teachers to address these difficult and sensitive topics. They argue that the historical distance between us and Greco-Roman culture and history can allow students to engage and participate in discussions that may otherwise be difficult and can provide a valuable opportunity to address uncomfortable topics in the classroom. Thus, Robinson's assertion that Classics teaching avoids these sensitive topics may not be so definitive. Regardless, Robinson claims that honest confrontations in the classroom with the ‘legacy of horror and abuse’ from the ancient world can be significantly complicated by many introductory textbooks used in Latin classes, such as the Cambridge Latin Course (CLC), one of the most widely used high school Latin textbooks in use in both America and the United Kingdom (Robinson, 2017). In particular, Robinson views the presentation of slavery within the CLC as ‘rather jocular and trivialising’ which can then hinder a reader's perspective on the realities of the violent and abusive nature of the Roman slave trade (Robinson, 2017). As far as he was concerned, the problem lay with the characterisation of the CLC's slave characters Grumio and Clemens, who, he argued, were presented there as happy beings and seemingly unfazed by their positions as slaves. There was never any hint in the book that Grumio or Clemens were unhappy with their lives or their positions as slaves, even though, as the CLC itself states in its English background section on Roman slavery, Roman law ‘did not regard slaves as human beings, but as things that could be bought or sold, treated well or badly, according to the whim of their master’ (CLC I, 1998, p. 78). One might argue, therefore, that there seems to be a disconnect between the English language information we learn about the brutality of the Roman slave trade provided in the background section of Stage 6, and what we can infer about Roman slavery from the Latin language stories involving our two ‘happy’ slaves.

At the Still Point of the Turning World: Freud's Reception of Winckelmann's Greece

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-152
Author(s):  
Sharon Kool
Keyword(s):  
Vital Role ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Cultural Ideal ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
With Memory ◽  
Of Greece

Freud's theory is primarily concerned with memory, about the present contained within the past. It is also rooted to the past in another way; Freud's reception of the Greek classical tradition played a vital role in the genesis of his oeuvre. Winckelmann's revival of ‘Greece’ dominated German culture up to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, yet besides the importance of Bildung in shaping Freud's early Gymnasium experience, his influence upon Freud is often neglected. While Freud's debt to German Hellenism is clearly demonstrated in his library of classical literature and his collection of Greco-Roman antiquities, the afterlife of Winckelmann's legacy is more subtly inscribed upon psychoanalysis. This paper focuses on Winckelmann's aesthetic reconstruction of classical Greece which made beauty, self-restraint and repression a cultural ideal to be imitated and admired. It is argued that hysteria provided one of the most powerful challenges to this ideal. Psychoanalysis can thus be seen as developing out of a milieu that was still overshadowed by Winckelmann's idealization of Greece. Further, it is argued that Winckelmann advanced a homoerotic tradition in German culture and the sedimentation of this tradition can be discerned in Freud's response to hysteria, his privileging of the masculine and his theory of bisexuality.

Environmental Change, the Acts of John, and Shifting Cultic Landscapes in Late Antique Ephesus

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-215
Author(s):  
Travis Proctor
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Deep Water ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Cultural Shift ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The City

The city of Ephesus experienced a marked civic transformation in Late Antiquity. After having centered its settlements and economic fortunes on its proximity to a deep-water harbor for over a millenium, late antique Ephesus gradually shifted to an inland, fortified settlement on Ayasoluk Hill. While several factors undoubtedly informed this civic reorientation, the most commonly cited impetus for Ephesus’s late antique reorientation was the infilling of its deep-water harbor. This article argues that, in addition to this environmental cause, an important cultural shift correspondingly informed Ephesus’s late antique reconfigurations. Namely, the emergence and development of the tomb of John on Ayasoluk Hill, informed by an array of literary legends associating the apostle with the city, increasingly positioned this site as a cultic and economic focal point in Late Antiquity. This article argues that an important early strand in this cultural fabric was the Acts of John, a collection of apocryphal tales that narrate John’s exploits in Ephesus. Significantly, the Acts of John articulates a “counter-cartography” that disassociates Christian identity from prominent Ephesian cultic sites and accentuates the importance of spaces “outside the city” of Ephesus, including and especially the tomb of John. Through its own circulation as well as its influence on later Johannine narratives, the early Acts of John helped inform a shift in the cultural cartographies of Ephesus, where Greco-Roman polytheistic spaces were gradually devalued in favor of Christian sites, the tomb of John on Ayasoluk chief among them.

Roman Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Ando
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
National Context ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Contemporary Study

Roman law has been a system of practice and field of academic study for some 2,400 years. Today, the field enjoys unprecedented diversity in terms of linguistic, disciplinary, and national context. However, the contours of contemporary study are the product of complex and imbricated historical factors: the non-codification by the Romans of the classical period of their own public law; solutions taken in the classical period and later to resolve conflicts among sources of law of very different antiquity; the codification in late antiquity of academic jurisprudence regarding private law; the on-going prestige of Roman civil law in medieval and late medieval Europe, which made it a resource for analogical argumentation in both public and international law; and much else besides. This chapter evaluates the contribution made by some of these factors to Roman legal history as a contemporary endeavour, with an eye to its future.

Personification Allegory in the Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses

Mnemosyne ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dunstan Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
First Century ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Important Stage ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
Depth And Complexity ◽  
Roman Epic ◽  
Narrative Role

AbstractThis article will show that Ovid's well-known innovations in the use of personification allegory combine closely with those of Virgil, to form a distinctive 'Augustan' phase in the development of allegory in classical literature. Both Ovid and Virgil make fictional abstractions concrete and ontologically ambiguous. Innovations common to both the Aeneid and Metamorphoses constitute an important stage in the emergence of 'compositional allegory', in the wake of the Roman adoption of Stoicising interpretative reading practices in the course of the first century BC. Both epics involve Furies as models for their major personified abstractions, both in narrative role and in concrete detail. Uniquely in and to Roman literature, Furies changed from supernatural beings into personified abstractions. This change, enabled by the semantic replacement of proper names such as Erinys or Eumenis with the word Furia ('frenzy'), produced new depth and complexity in the form and metaliterary function of personifications in Roman epic and later literary traditions.

Natural Law in Early Modern Legal Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ibbetson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Hugo Grotius

Natural law thinking in the early modern world had two principal roots: Greco-Roman moral philosophy and Roman law. These two strands came together in sixteenth-century Spain, from where they influenced the Dutchman Hugo Grotius. Grotius can be seen as the channel through which this thinking reached a pan-European audience. His works, and the works of his followers, came to have an enormous influence on the development of legal thought and practice after the seventeenth century. Ideas of natural law were no longer regarded as dependent on God’s will. A rational structure could be derived from self-evident premises in the law of nature and identification of concrete rules of natural law was regarded as the work of human reason. These features, coupled with its seeming moral objectivity, allowed natural law to provide a template for positive legal systems, and fuelled the move towards codification of law in eighteenth-century Europe.

The Triumph of the Mule

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter starts as the Roman Empire fragmented, encompasses the emergence of Christianity and Islam, and explores the donkey’s place in the history of the Middle Ages, as well as what Fernand Braudel termed ‘the triumph of the mule’ in the ensuing early modern period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Being closer in time to the present, historical documents are generally richer and more plentiful than for earlier periods, but archaeological excavations and surveys—especially of post-medieval sites and landscapes—are still undeveloped in many regions. Inevitably, therefore, what I present draws as much on textual sources as it does on them. I look first at the symbolic value of donkeys and mules in Christianity and Islam. Next, I consider their disappearance from some parts of Europe in the aftermath of Rome’s collapse and their re-expansion and persistence elsewhere. One aspect of this concerns their continuing contribution to agricultural production, another their consumption as food, a very un-Roman practice. A second theme showing continuities from previous centuries is their significance in facilitating trade and communication over both short and long distances. Tackling this requires inserting donkeys and mules into debates about how far pack animals replaced wheeled forms of transport as Late Antiquity gave way to the Middle Ages. Wide-ranging in time and space, this discussion also provides opportunities for exploring their role in human history in areas beyond those on which I have concentrated thus far. West Africa is one, the Silk Road networks linking China to Central Asia a second, and China’s southward connections into Southeast Asia a third. According to the New Testament Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday seated on a donkey (Plate 20). The seventh-century apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew also envisages donkeys carrying His mother to Bethlehem, being present at the Nativity, and conveying the Holy Family into temporary exile in Egypt. Donkeys thus framed both ends of Jesus’ life and, given their importance in moving people and goods in first-century Palestine, must have been a familiar sight. But the implications of their place in Christianity’s narrative were originally quite different from those that are generally understood today.

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