What can early Jewish courtroom narratives tell us about the capacity and limits of human justice? By exploring how judges and the act of judging are depicted in these narratives, Trial Stories in Jewish Antiquity: Counternarratives of Justice (Oxford University Press, 2024), Chaya T. Halberstam challenges the prevailing notion, both then and now, …

Struck In SoHoAv Ancient & New

James Diggle joins me in the Lesche to discuss the 2021 Cambridge Greek Lexicon (2 vols.) of which he was editor-and-chief. We discuss why it was time for this sort of thing (and why it took 24 years to complete), how to use it, and why it improves on LSJ ... plus, how the team approached translating some of the naughtier words. Some links 'Liddell…

Chad Koppes was a long time Methodist minister, when the "woke" culture finally woke him up and he walked out. In this episode Chad shares his conversion story as well some of his insights into the state of Protestantism today.

From its earliest recorded history, India was a place of remarkable and varied religious activity, ranging from elaborate sacrificial rituals and rigorous regimes of personal austerity to psycho-spiritual experimentation and utopian visions. In Religions of Early India: A Cultural History (Princeton UP, 2024), Richard Davis offers a history of Indi…

Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (Oxford University Press, 2019) is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian imagery in Roman households. Caitlín Eilís Barrett, Associate Professor of Classics at Cornell University, draws on case studies from Flavian Pompeii to investigate the close association between repr…

Based on an understanding of scholasticism as a cross-cultural phenomenon, undertaken by rabbinic, Graeco-Roman, and Christian scholars in late antiquity, this book examines the development of Palestinian rabbinic compilations from social-historical and literary-historical perspectives. Rabbinic Scholarship in the Context of Late Antique Scholastic…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the first days of 2025. Middle Kingdom Discovery in Luxor Old,New Kingdom Discoveries at Saqqara BM Animal Mummy Exhibition Planned These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstreets.com/tag/cai…

Why yet another book on the Manusmriti? In From Fire To Light: Rereading the Manusmriti (Harper Collins, 2024), acclaimed academic Arvind Sharma argues that the present understanding of the Manusmriti - regarded as a text designed by the higher castes, especially brahmanas, to oppress the lower castes and women - only tells one side of the story. A…

Recognizing the absence of a God named Yahweh outside of ancient Israel, this study addresses the related questions of Yahweh's origins and the biblical claim that there were Yahweh-worshipers other than the Israelite people. Beginning with the Hebrew Bible, with an exhaustive survey of ancient Near Eastern literature and inscriptions discovered by…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the last week of December. Christie's Auction Abu Qir Bay Thieves Caught Mummy DNA Carried the Black Death These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstreets.com/tag/cairo/ http://www.egyptindep…

I had a great conversation with almost-Dr. Henry Wickus about the intellectual life, the importance of philosophy in the study of theology, and some behind the scenes of what he is learning as he dives deep into writing his dissertation on the Franciscans.

Christ's Torah: The Making of the New Testament in the Second Century (Routledge, 2023) explores the creation of the collection now known as the New Testament. While it is generally accepted that it did not emerge as a collection prior to the late second century CE, a more controversial question is how it came to be. How did the writings that make …

John Ma joins me in the Lesche to discuss the longue durée of the Greek polis. John is the author of the new, monumental, and much anticipated book Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity (Princeton 2024). Happy Holidays! About our guest John Ma was born in New York of Chinese parents. He…

The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? In Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years (Princeton University Press, 2024), Dr. Paula Fredriksen traces the evolution of early Chris…

What did it mean for ordinary believers to live a Christian life in late antiquity? In Christians at Home: John Chrysostom and Domestic Rituals in Fourth-Century Antioch (Penn State University Press, 2024), Blake Leyerle explores this question through the writings, teachings, and reception of John Chrysostom—a priest of Antioch who went on to becom…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the third week of December. December Museum Highlights Karnak Winter Solstice MrBeast and the Giza Plateau These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstreets.com/tag/cairo/ http://www.egyptindep…

Light The Lamp, Not The Rat!Av Ancient & New

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the second week of December. Black Market Antiquities Ancient Perfumes Exhibition GEM Volunteer Program Artefacts Returned from Ireland New Minya Discoveries Giza Plateau Revamp These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Her…

Leyla Ozgur Alhassen’s book Qur’anic Stories: God, Revelation and the Audience (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) provides excellent analyses of several Qur’anic surahs, or chapters, to explore how Qur’anic stories function as narratives – but not just any kind of narratives: narratives with a theological purpose behind them. The specific stories s…

(Spoiler alert! This episode is jam-packed with plot spoilers for THE RETURN.) Homeric scholar Barbara Graziosi joins me in the Lesche to discuss Umberto Pasolini's THE RETURN, a film dramatization of the second half of the Odyssey starring Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope. About our guest Barbara Graziosi is Department Ch…

Playlist Super SpyAv Ancient & New

Starting nearly a thousand years ago at the Ben Ezra Synagogue of Old Cairo, worn-out books and scrolls were put in the genizah, a storage area for sacred texts. In The Illustrated Cairo Genizah: A Visual Tour of Cairo Genizah Manuscripts at Cambridge Univertity Library (Gorgias Press, 2024), Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee tell the story of…

Emma Greensmith and Tim Whitmarsh join me in the Lesche to discuss how Imperial Greek epic fits into our understanding of Ancient Greek epic as a whole. Emma has just edited the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic, and she was also a member of the research project Greek Epic of the Roman Empire: A Cultural History, which Tim directed. About o…

Cosden and Fr. K break open one of C.S. Lewis's finest books, The Great Divorce.

The Bible shaped nearly every aspect of Jewish life in the ancient world, from activities as obvious as attending synagogue to those which have lost their scriptural resonance in modernity, such as drinking water and uttering one’s last words. And within a scriptural universe, no work exerted more force than the Psalter, the most cherished text amo…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the first week of December. Giza Area Development Plan Theban Tomb TT39 Now Open Khufu Pyramid Price Increase SCA Inspects Esna and Edfu Temples New Discoveries at Taposiris Magna These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/H…

Today I talked to Joy McCorriston about Persistent Pastoralism: Monuments and Settlements in the Archaeology of Dhofar (Archaeopress Publishing, 2023). In the Dhofar region of southern Oman, pastoralists have constructed monuments in discrete pulses over the past 7,500 years. From small-scale stone burial markers to platforms to settlements, these …

Poor Man's LightsaberAv Ancient & New

Kalīlah and Dimnah: Fables of Virtue and Vice by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, translated by Michael Fishbein and James E. Montgomery, with a foreword by Marina Warner (Library of Arabic Literature, NYU Press, 2022), is a vibrant new rendition of a literary classic that has captivated readers for centuries. Rooted in ancient Indian storytelling and adapted into…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the last days of November. El-Anani UN Tourism Ambassador Museo Egizio Celebrates 200 Years Minya Named Capital of Egyptian Culture Health Insurance for Tourists These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https…

Thanksgiving SpecialAv Ancient & New

The Jews of Ptolemaic Egypt: The History of a Diaspora Community in Light of the Papyri (De Gruyter, 2024) offers a comprehensive and nuanced history of the Jews of Egypt, who constituted an important ethnic minority ever since they first appeared in the country. As part of the Greek-speaking ruling class, the Jews played an active role in the poli…

Emily Wilson, acclaimed translator, joins me in the Lesche to discuss the challenges and pleasures of translating the Iliad. We discuss the Greek of two passages in detail: Book 6 lines 482-502 and Book 22 lines 199-204 (lines as in the OCT). About our guest Emily Wilson is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pe…

Joined by Fr. Brian Park this episode examines what were coined the "anti-sacraments of the sexual revolution" and matches them with the real sacraments which they are imitating and distorting.

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the fourth week of November. Great Pyramid Not Being Demolished Egyptian Goat-Fish Petroglyph Mummified Falcon on Sale New Ptolemaic Temple in Sohag Nubia Museum Anniversary These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritag…

Women's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising, often nonanatomical ways. Eventually Christians took part in a cross-cultural shift toward viewing virginity as something that could be…

In The Fate of the Jews in the Early Islamic Near East: Tracing the Demographic Shift from East to West (Cambridge UP, 2022), Phillip Lieberman revisits one of the foundational narratives of medieval Jewish history--that the rise of Islam led the Jews of Babylonia, the largest Jewish community prior to the rise of Islam, to abandon a livelihood bas…

Grati-ganzaAv Ancient & New

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the third week of November. Damage in Mereruka Tomb New AR Filters for Museums Physical Evidence of Hallucinogens in Bes Mug Egyptian Museum Celebrates 122 Years SCA Not Demolishing the Great Pyramid These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahr…

Utilize My AdorablenessAv Ancient & New

David M. Pritchard joins me in the Lesche to discuss what appears to have been, in Nicole Loraux's famous words, a "very Athenian invention": the epitaphios logos, or funeral oration given over the war dead at their public burial. Both the Athenian funeral oration and the legacy of Nicole Loraux's pioneering study of it are the subjects of David's …

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the second week of November. Harry Smith 1928 - 2024 These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstreets.com/tag/cairo/ http://www.egyptindependent.com/ http://www.egypttoday.com/ https://www.fac…

The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery (Yale UP, 2024) offers a bold rereading of Augustinian thought for a world still haunted by slavery. Over the last two decades, scholars have made a striking return to the resources of the Augustinian tradition to theorize citizenship, virtue, and the place of religion in pu…

This is a live recording from a class that Fr. K taught at the parish on how to read the Bible in general and Genesis Chapter 1 in particular.

In Delicious Prose: Reading the Tale of Tobit with Food and Drink (Brill, 2018), Naomi S.S. Jacobs explores how the numerous references to food, drink, and their consumption within The Book of Tobit help tell its story, promote righteous deeds and encourage resistance against a hostile dominant culture. Jacobs' commentary includes up-to-date analys…

The Embassy, the Ambush, and the Ogre: Greco-Roman Influence in Sanskrit Theater (Open Book, 2024) presents a sophisticated and intricate examination of the parallels between Sanskrit and Greco-Roman literature. By means of a philological and literary analysis, Morales-Harley hypothesizes that Greco-Roman literature was known, understood, and recre…

Tasmanian Devil Cleaning ServiceAv Ancient & New

Fr. Paul Haverstock a long time friend and classmate joins me on the podcast. He got me into chant, the EF, C.S. Lewis and more.

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the beginning week of November. New Flights From Cairo to Aswan/Abu Simbel South Asasif Middle Kingdom Discovery ZH and Robot Mission in Great Pyramid Why the GEM Won't Open Just Yet These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/…