Late Antique Context Research Articles

In Search of a Sinful Pun: A Granular Analysis of Q 2:58–59

Abstract This paper offers a new reading of Q 2:58–59 by way of Muqātil ibn Sulaymān’s Tafsīr and its use of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish or possibly Christian traditions. While the scholarly study of the Qurʾān in its late antique context has often been ambivalent toward medieval Arabic tafsīr, this paper uses the testimony of the tafsīr corpus on a single mysterious passage to reconstruct a plausible meaning in its original Qurʾānic milieu and shed light on the exegetical intimacies of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the first Hijri centuries. Q 2:58–59 contain a puzzling pericope about God punishing the Israelites because they substituted one word, which God had commanded them to say, with another. The word God commanded them to say, ḥiṭṭa, does not represent any Arabic word that makes good sense in context. The word they substituted is never specified. Later Arabic exegetes were thus puzzled by the passage and proposed many different solutions. The paper closely analyzes Muqātil ibn Sulaymān’s reading of the relevant passage in light of biblical intertexts and Jewish or Christian traditions, yielding an interpretation of this passage with reference to a perfidious pun on the words for “sin” and “grain” that works in Aramaic or possibly Hebrew, but not in Arabic.

Bound by Binders: Multicraft Organisation and Industrial Interdependence of Lime Production for Mortar in the Eastern Mediterranean during Late Antiquity

In the late antique period (fourth-seventh centuries AD), lime was produced and consumed in great quantities for use in building, medicine, tanning, fulling, mortuary practices, and as an agricultural fertiliser. As a result, lime kilns (and associated slaking pits) are common features of late antique contexts – both in urban and rural environments and involving public institutions and private enterprise. In this paper we consider the archaeological remains of lime production and use in the eastern Mediterranean, a region in which dozens of lime production sites have been recorded. Focusing on the example of lime mortar production specifically, and following evidence for the associated chaîne opératoire, we demonstrate the versatility of the lime production process and how it frequently involved and even relied upon multiple industries.

A House Filled with Light: The Birth of Moses in Late Antique Contexts

Abstract In a homiletic cluster expounding upon the first two chapters of Exodus, Bavli Sotah 12a–b includes a tradition describing light filling the house upon Moses’s birth. While this appears to be a standard trope of the heroic nativity, this motif is uncommon. It is found only in Second Temple accounts of Noah’s birth, and in depictions of the birth of Zoroaster and apocryphal infancy gospels that were popular among Syriac Christians (and later concerning the birth of Muhammed). After examining the textual evidence pointing to the uniquely Babylonian provenance of this talmudic tradition, I explore the variations on the motif in these other birth narratives. I argue that these similarities suggest a desire on the part of the rabbis to depict the focal hero of the rabbinic imagination in cosmological and even divine terms similar to those of competing religions, though it deviates from the usual midrashic depictions of Moses.

Clusters of re-use: the late Roman Wall and the Unfinished Baths of Lepcis Magna

Lepcis Magna is a privileged site for investigating re-use in all its forms, and this paper focuses on the materials which are to be found recycled in two late-antique contexts: the late Roman defensive circuit and the so-called Unfinished Baths. In both contexts, the architects made use of a multitude of older elements, mostly architectural and epigraphic, many of which are still unpublished. These are discussed here for the first time in an attempt to investigate their character, their original provenance and in which ways they were employed within these new settings. On cover:Late Roman wall, the portion immediately south of the West Gate (Porta Oea) with re-used blocks from first-century mausolea (Drawing by Francesca Bigi) and Tombstone of Regina from South Shields (Arbeia) (Tyne and WearArchives and Museums/ Bridgeman Images). E-ISSN (online version) 2611-3686 ISSN (print version) 0065-0900

The Basilica of Betä Sämaʿtiʾ in its Aksūmite, Early Christian, and Late Antique Context

The ancient Kingdom of Aksūm, located in Ethiopia and Eritrea, was one of the most influential civilizations of the first millennium ce. More than a dozen Aksūmite structures attest to the spread of Christianity from the fourth to the seventh centuries ce. Among these structures, a basilica recently discovered at the site of Betä Sämaʿtiʾ in northern Ethiopia first constructed during the fourth century ce constitutes one of the earliest examples of Christian architecture in Ethiopia. In this paper, we place the basilica of Betä Sämaʿtiʾ in the context of early Ethiopian Christian architecture while highlighting the importance of this new finding for broader studies on the early developments of the basilica form in the Afro-Eurasian Late Antique world. In doing so, we shed light on the connection between Syriac Christianity and the Kingdom of Aksūm and the neighboring Kingdoms of Nobadia, Makuria, and Alodia, which emerged in Nubia after the collapse of Meroe in the fourth century. We also emphasize the adaptation of indigenous pagan elements in influencing the first monotheistic structures of Ethiopia, offering an overview of the shift from paganism to monotheism in the Horn of Africa.

“Is a Cushite Made in the Image of God?”: Christian Visions of Race in Late Antiquity

There has been an increasing interest in classical and late antique studies on the existence of something approximating the modern concept of race in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Scholars of early Christianity have also debated the presence of prejudice based on skin color. The following study seeks to broaden this conversation by including late antique contexts outside of the Roman Empire as well as marginal language communities within the Roman Empire. This paper will demonstrate that anti-Black prejudice—or racism—did indeed exist in the late antique Roman world and that such racism was more pronounced in Roman literature written in Greek and Latin.

Musaeus’ “Hero and Leander”: Introduction, Greek Text, Translation, and Commentary by Silvia Montiglio

346 PHOENIX more enjoyable than its satisfaction. Smith sees this posture as unusual and distinctive, and he reads the epigram as engaging with conceptions of manhood: since self-control (enkrateia) was “traditionally” the way to express manliness, the door deprives the speaker of an opportunity to express his masculinity and instead provokes “a complete disregard of encratic practice and an impulse to luxuriate in apparent powerlessness” (125). Here, the adverb “traditionally” does a lot of work and effaces some nuance. From the standpoint of the tradition, Paul’s speaker is also a descendant of the numerous excluded lovers of Hellenistic epigram who stand outside, and sometimes directly complain to, the door of a would-be lover, and who often seem to derive an analogous, self-indulgent pleasure from their exclusion and from their suffering and lack of control. In other cases, too, some additional consideration of Hellenistic intertexts would be beneficial. To give a single example, in Paulus AP 10.15.3, Smith sees a specific allusion to A.R. 2.594–595, where a ship at sea rides the waves “as if on a cylinder” (ºste kul’nd~), but the reference in both passages is to the practice of launching ships on rollers such as is recounted at A.R. 1.375–377 (cf. A.R. 1.377: ¥lisya’nousa). In any case, the idea that encouraging sailors to set sail without fear “exposes the fear and anxiety at the heart of masculine identity” and that it evokes the sailors’ shortcomings relative to the Argonauts in the alleged intertext (154) does not adequately address the direct model provided by Satyrus AP 10.6.5 or account for the tradition, grounded in reality, that all sailors, no matter how brave, had good reason to be anxious, especially outside of the sailing season (e.g., Leonidas AP 7.665.1–2). Such quibbles hardly detract from Smith’s achievement in this pathbreaking book. I have learned a tremendous amount from it, and it has led me to think about the ways that the approach could be applied productively to earlier poetry. It is essential reading not only for specialists in Byzantine literature, but also for anyone working on epigrams or interested in the treatment of sex, gender, and power in antiquity. Georgetown University Alexander Sens Musaeus' “Hero and Leander”: Introduction, Greek Text, Translation, and Commentary. By Silvia Montiglio. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. 2020. Pp. 123. The tale about Leander, the nighttime clandestine lover who crosses the dangerous waters between Sestos and Abydos to see his beloved Hero and drowns in the process, is among the “classics” of European literature. Since the editio Aldina of 1495, Musaeus’ poem has been associated above all with tragic romantic love. Manutius’ choice to print this poem even before the Homeric epics—Musaeus was thought a forerunner of Homer—has marked the reception of the poem as one of the hallmarks of humanism. The present work is a convenient and useful edition. It includes an extensive introduction of forty-nine pages, taking up almost half the book; a Greek text with a facing English translation; and a concise line-by-line commentary. The up-to-date bibliography provides an excellent reference tool as it includes all past and even forthcoming scholarly works. Below I present some of the highlights of Montiglio’s edition as well as some personal thoughts on the poet in his late antique context. The author has succeeded in producing a modern English translation and an excellent literary discussion accessible to novice and expert readers alike. By contrast to C. Whit- BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 347 man, who attempted to maintain the poetic effect of the text by adopting a loose fourbeat verse,1 Montiglio’s adaptation is in free verse and resembles rather Orsini’s poetic French prose for the 1968 Budé edition.2 The interpretation of pœmatow (“hindmost,” “last”) in line 343 (úll}lvn d' úp—nato ka“ \n pum‡t~ per ¥lŽyr~), for instance, translated as “and they had joy of each other even in the extremity of death,” evokes Orsini’s “et ils jouirent l’un de l’autre éternellement, jusque dans l’abı̂me...

Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser

Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser

Acquiring Incorruption: Maximian Theosis and Scientific Transhumanism

Several theologians have pointed to resonances between the Greek Patristic doctrine of deification or theosis and recent transhumanist narratives: both discourses indicate death as the final enemy of humankind and invest heavily in a hoped-for transcendence of life as we know it. These resonances will be investigated further by comparing the approach to human nature found in Maximus the Confessor and in the prominent transhumanists Nick Bostrom and John Harris. In addition to sharing with transhumanists a disavowal of death and a trajectory towards transcendence, Maximus also shares a view of human nature that is more dynamic and open-ended than is commonly attributed to his Late Antique context. On the other hand, Maximus also insists on the persistence of this dynamic nature in its integrity even into the eschaton. He does so for a number of reasons that should give Christians pause about any rhetoric that calls for an abandonment of human nature: (1) that theosis depends precisely on sharing a human nature with Christ; (2) that our vocation as mediators in creation depends on our physical bodies as the locus of shared existence with the material world; and (3) that corruption has a providential use in binding us together with our neighbors and in cultivating virtue as we strain for the incorruptible and supernatural gift of theosis.

Qur'anic Covenants Reconsidered: mīthāq and ʿahd in Polemical Context

ABSTRACT This article examines the Qur'an's use of 'covenant' (Arabic ʿahd and mīthāq). Recent scholarly attention to covenants in the Qur'an has hitherto largely hinged on modern questions of inclusivism, pluralism, or notions of Islamic salvation history. Most studies have focused on Q 7.172 (and its interpretations), which is usually treated as the most important covenantal verse in the Qur'an. The analysis here is intended to be not an exhaustive study of covenant in the Qur'an, but an attempt to re-orient the discussion in terms of the qur'anic usage as distinct from later categories, and to move away from the tendency to prioritize Q 7.172 as the central covenant verse. The article pays particular attention to the way in which the Qur'an re-contextualizes 'covenant' for its own theological ends, and argues that the Qur'an uses this motif for a multiplicity of purposes. To this end it highlights three elements of the Qur'an's covenant theology: (1) its prophetological connotations, (2) its association with legal injunctions and the Decalogue, and (3) its eschatological implications. All three components often serve polemical functions. The article also makes some brief observations concerning the relationship between the Qur'an's use of covenant and its Late Antique context.

The Polemic of Individualized Appellation in Late Antiquity

This article describes rhetorical innovations in late antique Christian polemic around the construction of orthodoxy/heresy and Christianity more broadly. Late antique Christian polemicists label groups as heretical by using their founders' names as eponymous proxies for an entire group and set of ideas: Marcionism/ites, Valentinianism/ites, and so forth. This type of group construction, which I term the polemic of individualized appellation due to the pejorative labeling of a group after an individual founder, is an intentional and often artificial type of elite, literary polemic put to service in the wider creative mythmaking and boundary/identity construction by heresiologists such as Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Eusebius, and Epiphanius. In identifying both precursor ingredients in various ancient Mediterranean comparanda and novel developments in the Christian heresiologists' discourse, I also engage with recent scholarship on heresy, orthodoxy, and identity constructions in Late Antiquity. I explain why the polemic of individualized appellation was especially effective in constructing difference, its role in this particular late antique context, and its function in effacing apparent similarities in widespread practices and beliefs. I conclude with a methodological discussion, arguing that scholars in religion and history should reject their sources' categories of group identity construction due to their inherent bias.

Metalworking Evidence from a Late Antique Context in the Forum of Grumentum

ABSTRACTThis paper is a preliminary report on metallurgical activity detected in the Forum of the ancient city of Grumentum ( Basilicata, Italy). In the Late antique period, an area next to one of the most important temples of the square was turned into a metalworking structure, which has yielded a set of hearths, metallurgical remains, and some tools. The results of archaeometrical investigation on the debris are reported and discussed, together with a general analysis of the archaeological context, also in comparison with other similar evidence detected elsewhere in Italy.

TheTraditio Legisin Late Antiquity and Its Afterlives in the Middle Ages

The traditio legis—Christ standing on a mountain holding an open scroll flanked by the apostles Peter and Paul—is one of the most widespread and enigmatic Christian images from Late Antiquity. Over the course of the Middle Ages the scene was frequently reinterpreted, and this semantic flexibility has largely obscured its initial raison d’être. The first part of this article repositions the traditio legis in its late antique context, arguing that it was understood as a visualization of the Old Testament prophecy at Isaiah 2:2–4. These verses predicted the coming of the new Messiah and the spreading of his Law across the world in a time of peace; they were uniformly understood to describe the present time after the first coming of Christ. The second part discusses the reemergence of the motif in the Middle Ages and the new meanings that were attached to it. While these included the investiture of Peter and Paul in images of the traditio legis et clavium, the grouping was not seen as a political statement on the primacy of Rome. Some medieval examples also used the motif to express both hopes and anxieties about the coming of Christ at the end of time, while others depict the two apostles as models for the mission of converting unbelievers during the crusades. Exploring the manifold reappropriations of the traditio legis permits us to understand its complex web of meanings and highlights the importance of historic specificity in reconstructing how beholders might have experienced the representation over time.

Musical Values and Practice in Old Hispanic Chant

Augustine's appraisal of music's moral value in Confessions, as selectively abbreviated by Isidore of Seville, provides a conceptual framework for understanding early medieval Iberian musical values. Augustine advocates a devotional focus primarily on text, expressing anxiety about elaborate liturgical music. For Isidore, by contrast, diverse melody leads both faithful and unfaithful toward a transcendent anticipation of heaven, beyond reason-based concentration on text. In this article I test the hypothesis that Isidore's musical values shaped the extant Old Hispanic chant texts and melodies, offering a new appraisal of the way Old Hispanic musical values and practice relate. Examples are drawn from Old Hispanic (“Mozarabic”) chant, whose texts (preserved before 732) are closer to the late antique context than any other Western liturgy. Old Hispanic melodies are preserved in unpitched notation ca. 900. The methodology developed here has the potential to be applied to other ritual traditions.

Metallurgical evidence from a late antique context in the Forum of Grumentum

ABSTRACTThis article is a preliminary report on metallurgical activity detected in the Forum of the ancient city of Grumentum (Basilicata, Italy). In an area next to one of the most important temples of the square, a set of hearths belonging to a metallurgical plant was brought to light and investigated, together with a great quantity of metallurgical remains, a tuyere, and a fragment of what might be identified as an iron crucible: according to stratigraphic evidence and the preliminary data from the study of pottery sherds, this intense metallurgical activity seems to be dating to the Late Antique period. It is not clear yet if it has some relationship with the abandonment of the Forum itself.

Crucifixion and Death as Spectacle: Umayyad Crucifixion in Its Late Antique Context. By Sean W. Anthony. American Oriental Series 96. New Haven, Connecticut: American Oriental Society, 2014. Pp. x + 99. $39.50 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsCrucifixion and Death as Spectacle: Umayyad Crucifixion in Its Late Antique Context. By Sean W. Anthony. American Oriental Series 96. New Haven, Connecticut: American Oriental Society, 2014. Pp. x + 99. $39.50 (cloth).Christian LangeChristian LangeUtrecht University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 75, Number 1April 2016 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/684979 Views: 178Total views on this site © 2016 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse a book review in this section, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

New Evidence of the gens Ciartia: An Etruscan Tile Stamp from Cinigiano (GR), loc. Tombarelle

AbstractIn the course of excavating the site of Tombarelle near Cinigiano (GR), a roof tile with a public stamp in Etruscan was recovered from a late Antique context. The stamp contributes new information on the regional distribution of the

Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean:

Most current discussions on Late Antique and early medieval archaeology are focused on issues such as the use of the landscape, the abandonment of towns, and the reorganisation of rural settlements. The common element in all these cases is that the presence of a central place is key to analysing the social, political, and economic interrelations between sites, areas, and territories. Within the academic literature, however, the notion of a ‘central place’ has been determined by the conceptualisation of Roman towns, and this is not necessarily applicable to Late Antique contexts. Discussing this, and taking the Iberian peninsula as a case study, we propose various different archaeological regional trends to define how a central place was configured in the Visigoth period. These regions are the north coast, the north plateau, the Toledo–Reccopolis axis, and the Mediterranean coastline, taking advantage of the most recent archaeological finds. For this, special attention is given to towns (older Roman settlements and new foundations), hill-forts, and other major places that had a primary economic, religious, or administrative role in a given territory. These models, in which various degrees of urbanisation and territorial organisation are noticeable, form the basis for further discussion of Iberian central places in the Late Antique Mediterranean context.

A ‘pioneer of nations’: Ireland’s earliest writers

This book is a landmark publication in the field of Early Irish History. Working from the fact that Ireland, in the period c.AD 400 to c.AD 1000, produced a massive body of literature, in a wide variety of genres and in two languages, Irish and Latin, that was far more extensive than in any other country in Europe, the author offers a context for the ‘communities of learning’ that produced such literature. Previous writers have struggled to explain how a society situated at the very edge of the known world could have done such a thing. Not the least of Elva Johnston’s achievements is to force a rethink of such underlying perceptions. Rather than viewing Ireland as an isolated and backward intellectual desert, for her ‘it is useful to see the island as a frontier-zone, comparable to other Roman frontiers’ (p. 11), and to see the evolution of Irish literacy and literate elites against the backdrop of Roman Frontier Studies. Though Ireland never suffered the traumatic consequences of barbarian invasion and the fall of Empire, Johnston argues nevertheless that there was much more than trading and raiding, or colonizing and slaving involved; she would see a much more profound influence at work: ‘the culture of early Christian Ireland is incomprehensible outside of the Late Antique context’ (p. 25).

Christus Saltans as Dionysios and David : The Dance of the Savior in its Late-Antique Cultural Context

In this article, I situate the Dance of the Savior within its Late Antique cultural context, beyond its place in the history of doctrine. In particular, I outline early Christian forms of dance, not as a marker of heresy, but as an important aspect of post-Constantinian liturgy. While some patristic authors criticized dance as a pagan or Jewish practice, my study is structured around the Christian appropriation of Dionysiac and Davidic imagery, which is found especially in references to dance at festival celebrations (including the cult of martyrs) and imperial rituals (such as the return of the Cross to Jerusalem under Heraclius), respectively. The Dance of the Savior should therefore not be viewed as an “apocryphon,” but rather a text closely related to various public rituals of Late-Antique Christianity.