Renunciation and Embrace

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Interpreting Magic and Divination in the Ancient Near East and Magic and Divination in Ancient Israel

Magic in the Ancient Greek World

Book Review| April 01 2006 Imagination in the Late Pagan and Early Christian World: The First Nine Centuries AD Peter Dronke, Imagination in the Late Pagan and Early Christian World: The First Nine Centuries AD (Florence: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2003), 261 pp. Caroline Walker Bynum Caroline Walker Bynum Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2006) 12 (2): 310. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2005-014 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Caroline Walker Bynum; Imagination in the Late Pagan and Early Christian World: The First Nine Centuries AD. Common Knowledge 1 April 2006; 12 (2): 310. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2005-014 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsCommon Knowledge Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2006 by Duke University Press2006 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: LITTLE REVIEWS You do not currently have access to this content.

Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World. Edited by Noegel Scott, Walker Joel, and Wheeler Brannon. Magic in History Series. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. xiv + 255 pp. 22.50 paper. - Volume 74 Issue 1

Muhammad, the prophet of Islam (d. 632 CE), who was born around the time of Justinian’s death in 565, is associated with changes that heralded the arrival of a new world unimaginable when Justinian was on the throne, and which we associate with the rise of Islam itself during the seventh century. Some of these changes, of course, must be attributed to distinctive features of Muhammad’s teachings, which, in turn, were shaped in part by his own unique character and life experiences (and, believing Muslims would insist, by the revelations God vouchsafed to him). Yet in a number of ways, it makes sense to try to see the rise of Islam in the context of social and intellectual developments in the late antique world. For no matter how original or unheralded Muhammad’s ideas and message may have been, his own outlook and understanding were inevitably shaped in part by the historical situation in which he lived. Likewise, the reception of Muhammad’s message by those around him would have been shaped by the concepts they had been exposed to in their lives. In both cases, this historical context derived from the institutions and ideas that prevailed in the immediately preceding generation - the Age of Justinian. Problems of Perception Attaining a clear historical view of the beginnings of Islam in historical perspective, however, has never been easy. Indeed, it is fair to say that despite the many “historical” works written about Islam’s beginnings, we still do not have a very good idea of what the movement begun by Muhammad was all about, and how it fit into the historical context of the late antique Near Eastern world.

Popular Culture in the Ancient World is the first book to provide an interdisciplinary study of the subject. Traditionally neglected by classical scholars, popular culture provides a new window through which we can view the ancient world. An international group of scholars tackles a fascinating range of subjects and objects - from dice oracles to dressing up, from toys to theological speculation. Diverse comparative and theoretical approaches are used alongside many different ancient sources to provide a wide-ranging and rigorous approach to ancient popular culture. After a substantive introduction, the book moves from classical Greece through the Roman Empire to end in the late antique world. It enriches our understanding of the ancient world as well as our conception of the legacy of the ancient world in our own.

Everyday Life <i>in extremis</i>

The late antique world was particularly conscious of malevolent supernatural power constantly laying in wait to attack and enslave humans. Demons incited vices; they could persuade both their unsuspected and suspected victims to venerate them, and to persecute Christians, and to feel an overwhelming attachment to material things. However, what demons seemed to enjoy the most was taking total control by retiring into a human soul. Today our Western civilisation would not easily recognise anti-social behaviour, mental disorder and a strange illness as signs of demon possession, as it was often the case in late antiquity. Christian ascetics and monks were generally considered a very powerful antidote to demonic possession and they managed to enhance their power and to build great reputations, and attract considerable numbers of admirers (even from the upper classes) and converts to Christianity by successfully handling demons.

Veiling meant many things to the ancients. On women, veils could signify virtue, beauty, piety, self-control, and status. On men, covering the head could signify piety or an emotion such as grief. Late Roman mosaics show people covering their hands with veils when receiving or giving something precious. They covered their altars, doorways, shrines, and temples; and many covered their heads when sacrificing to their gods. Early Christian intellectuals such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa used these everyday practices of veiling to interpret sacred texts. These writers understood the divine as veiled, and the notion of a veiled spiritual truth informed their interpretation of the bible. Veiling in the Late Antique World provides the first assessment of textual and material evidence for veiling in the late antique Mediterranean world. Susannah Drake here explores the relation between the social history of the veil and the intellectual history of the concept of truth as veiled/revealed.

The article investigates the ways through which peculiar representations of the late Ancient World passed to the Middle Ages. Among them, the astrological discipline is one of the favorite vehicles. The sculptures and other decorations of the Romanesque churches, have rewritten this archaic knowledge in the context of the Christian faith. Another constant presence in the imaginary of Western Christianity are the fabulous creatures related to what in astrology are the Decans. These odd Egyptian deities had at some time before the sixth century of our era made the long voyage to India and back they had travelled to Islamic lands, and so finally returned to Byzantium and the West.

Reviewed by: Walking Corpses: Leprosy in Byzantium and the Medieval West by Timothy S. Miller and John W. Nesbitt Lucy Barnhouse Timothy S. Miller and John W. Nesbitt, Walking Corpses: Leprosy in Byzantium and the Medieval West ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2014) 264 pp., 6 ill. Timothy S. Miller and John W. Nesbitt have written a book that, despite its brevity, helps to redress significant lacunae in the study of medieval leprosy and of Byzantine medicine. Too often, medieval medical history has been treated as a mere curiosity, and relevant texts consequently neglected. In working with diverse and scattered sources, and attempting to synthesize the [End Page 265] evidence of multiple genres, Miller and Nesbitt also point out desiderata for future research. The book’s introduction addresses the specter of leprosy in the medieval and modern imagination, and the ways in which it dominates popular ideas of medieval disease. In discussing how visible symptoms of leprosy may have affected interpretations of the disease by medieval physicians, theologians, and hospital donors, Miller and Nesbitt show a precision in analyzing medical symptoms and vocabulary which is lamentably rare in scholarship on medieval leprosy. Their attention to language is not always so careful, however. The book’s title, taken from a fourth-century sermon, is symptomatic of a tendency to interpret the elevated, emotional vocabulary of this genre as denoting widespread terror in the face of a disease that ran rampant in the Byzantine empire. Such a claim, however, is tenuous. The fourth-century increase in mentions of wandering lepers in need of support may indicate increased incidence of the disease. But alternate possibilities—that this reflected changing ideas about desirable structures of social support, or changing ideas about the desirable extent of Christian charity—are not explored. Perhaps as a result of the book’s brief length, and deliberately accessible prose style, Nesbitt and Miller leave several such points without explication from which they might benefit. The first four chapters of the book engage with the treatment and perception of leprosy in the Byzantine world. The first chapter offers a useful study of medical vocabulary in the ancient world, the evolution of attitudes towards leprosy over time, and how the disease was represented in different regions and textual genres. Lepers are discussed as one category of recipients of Christian charity in the late antique world; the evidence suggests that they were among those likely to be excluded from multipurpose hospitals due to their special needs. The second chapter is perhaps the book’s most ambitious, discussing leprosy in the Byzantine empire. There are obvious difficulties associated with considering evidence drawn from a span of over a millennium, but the discussion of hospital development over time is admirably lucid. Miller and Nesbitt portray the Byzantine imagination as dominated by two competing visions of leprosy: as divinely-imposed affliction or Holy Disease. This is particularly intriguing in view of how much space existed between those poles in western discourse on the disease. Chapter 3 engages with Byzantine medical discourse, contrasting the theories of Galen and Aretaios. Nesbitt and Miller query whether doctors working in “leper asylums” would have had time to serve private patients as well; it would be interesting to know more about their sources on how these doctors were paid, especially since medieval medical practitioners in western Europe usually served hospitals as part of their wider practice. This chapter also discusses regional and chronological developments in contagion theory. Nesbitt and Miller argue, more contentiously than they acknowledge, that this theory was influenced by religious belief in both Islam and Christianity. The challenge of retrospective diagnosis is delicately handled; Nesbitt and Miller offer a cogent consideration of how elephantiasis and judham may have corresponded to Hansen’s Disease. Chapter 4, on Byzantine leper hospitals, offers a thoughtful treatment of labile vocabulary in the sources, but problematically identifies the Zotikos leper hospital in Constantinople, and [End Page 266] others, as “asylums.” Asylum is not only a loaded word but also, as the work of John Chircop, Guy Geltner, and others has shown, a flexible one well into the early modern period. Its use by Nesbitt and Miller is particularly puzzling in view of the...

PHILOSOPHY AND THE ‘GREAT WORLD RELIGIONS’ IN THE MIDDLE AGES: AN OVERVIEW The transition from the ancient world The period from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the sixteenth century saw several significant transitions in the way students of philosophy and religion understood the relationship of the two, and whether they saw them as distinct at all. For the Greeks and Romans they were closely allied, if not one, because philosophy was a way of life as well as a way of thinking about the universe. A philosopher could be a ‘practitioner’, even an ‘adherent’, as well as a student. In the ancient world, philosophy had been concerned with moral as well as intellectual explanation of the universe and how to live in it. It is not too much to call it a ‘vocation’. In Christianity, Judaism and Islam, ‘rules for living’ and a ‘framework of belief’ were distinctive to each religion, and stood in a particular relationship in each case. Each arrived at its own ‘settlement’ with ancient philosophy, while preserving its integrity. Christianity and some forms of Judaism found it comparatively easy to identify the ‘love of wisdom’ in the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament; and once the doctrine of Christ as Logos developed in Christianity, Christ himself was frequently portrayed as a philosopher, teaching his disciples much as philosophy tutors taught young men in the late antique world. But the era of persecutions in late antiquity had made it clear that neither Jews nor Christians could engage in a simple syncretism.

Sosipatra’s life helps us to understand important facets of elite women’s lives in the late ancient world in general. The wealth of both Christian and non-Christian women allowed them a range of opportunities for being cultural and intellectual leaders. However, by the end of the fourth century, non-Christian women had to be more careful about their philosophical views and their leadership activities, as we see in the case of Hypatia of Alexandria. Similarly, diversity in Christian theologizing was also subject to critique and persecution. Sosipatra is one of the last female Platonists we have record of from the ancient world.

From the Editor Sabine R. Huebner This issue was produced in part under the aegis of my predecessor, Professor Andrew Cain, who steered the ship expertly over the past five years, and I cannot thank him enough for his generous and patient introduction to the complex business of being editor-in-chief. I am also delighted to have gathered around me a stellar editorial board that will support this journal in the years ahead. The Journal of Late Antiquity is composed of veteran editors, as well as younger members in our field, whose expertise covers a wide variety of areas, regions, and topics of the discipline. I feel very honored to be following in the footsteps of Ralph W. Mathisen, Noel Lenski, and most recently Andy Cain, and hope to do the journal justice in the years to come. The Journal of Late Antiquity, which has already won several awards in its fifteen-year history, will continue to encourage cutting-edge and interdisciplinary research on all methodological, geographical, and chronological facets of Late Antiquity, defined roughly as the period from ca. 250–800 ad. The entire field of late antique studies will be represented—bridging disciplines and late antique peoples from the late Roman, western European, Byzantine, Sassanid, and early Islamic worlds and their direct exchanges with their respective neighboring peoples and trading partners, without slipping into the arbitrariness of a thematic global setting. This cross-disciplinary cooperation in ancient studies has become a matter of course over the past few decades: from my first days as a student, I myself worked in supra-departmental interdisciplinary research networks that, in addition to the traditional text- and material-based subjects of classical studies—such as ancient history, classical philology, Egyptology, archaeology—had also already included Arabic studies, Jewish studies, art history, ethnology, law, and comparative religious studies. My doctoral studies in the interdisciplinary doctoral program in Jena on "Leitbilder der Spätantike," my postdoctoral work at, amongst other institutions, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW), and currently as head of the Department of Ancient Civilizations at the University of Basel, have shaped my impression of late antique studies in its widest sense. Although appearing small in scope, late antique studies encompasses the cosmos of the university (universitas), pioneering the possibilities of interdisciplinarity and the challenges and opportunities of true consilience. My goal is to further the Journal of Late Antiquity's heartfelt mission of an all-encompassing, multidisciplinary treatment of Late Antiquity in all its multiregional and multilingual facets, while also affording a wide scope to new trends, particularly, collaborative opportunities with the natural sciences. [End Page 1] The range of disciplines working on Late Antiquity has expanded further since the first edition of the Journal of Late Antiquity in 2008. Without exerting influence, as an editor has no control over the nature of submissions, moving forward I would like to see even broader consideration of the so-called palaeosciences—e.g., palaeoclimatology, palaeogenetics, bioarchaeology—as well as digital technologies. These evidentiary pools are increasingly taking up important space in our transdisciplinary dialogue on late antiquity, and are providing new data and fascinating insights into ancient genomes, migrations of peoples, livestock and crops, the spread of infectious diseases, and ancient climatic variability and change, by which some text-focused reasoning has already been upended. I am thrilled that this issue gives consideration to these new methods, such as David Devore's and Scott Kennedy's contribution to the pestilence during the reign of Emperor Maximinus II Daia—arguably not a pandemic, but a regionally-limited epidemic in Syria and adjacent areas—and a review of Kyle Harper's new book Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History. Similarly, I hope for greater consideration of research from countries outside the western-oriented, European-Anglo-American context, as this journal also devotes attention to the history of the Near and Middle East, and North and East Africa. This spring issue of the Journal of Late Antiquity collects eight innovative contributions on multiple regions and aspects of the late antique world. The issue opens with a contribution from Adrastos Omissi on "Hamstrung Horses: Dating Constantine's...

Sister-Queens in the High Hellenistic Period is a cutting-edge exploration of ancient queenship and the significance of family politics in the dysfunctional dynasties of the late Hellenistic world. This volume, the first full-length study of Kleopatra III and Kleopatra Thea and their careers as queens of Egypt and Syria, thoroughly examines the roles and ideology of royal daughters, wives, and queens in Egypt, the ancient Near East, and ancient Israel and provides a comprehensive study of the iconography, public image, and titles of each queen and their cultural precedents. In addition, this book also offers an introduction to the critical concept of the ‘High Hellenistic Period’ and the maturation of royal female power in the second century BCE. Sister-Queens in the High Hellenistic Period is suitable for students and scholars in ancient history, Egyptology, classics, and gender studies, as well as the general reader interested in ancient queenship, ancient Egypt, the Hellenistic world, and gender in antiquity.