Spend 2016 with Judith. Or Achilles. Or Muhammed.

Welcome to 2016!  Perhaps one of your New Year's resolutions is: "I'd really like to spend more time reading interesting ancient and medieval literature."  Such a resolution probably won't extend your life the way a quit-smoking resolution will, but it will certainly make 2016 more interesting and enjoyable.

"Judith mit dem Haupt des Holofernes"
(Lucas Cranach)

One nice approach to building a 2016 reading list is to focus on a particular author, text, or corpus.  This gives you the opportunity to really explore a few primary sources in a focused way, with a handful of interesting and helpful secondary sources as your travel companions.  The examples below reflect my personal research interests and tastes, and perhaps they aren't your cup of tea.  If you come up with your own "spend 2016 with an ancient/medieval author/text" list I'd love to see it!  Feel free to post it in the comments section at the bottom.  I've listed five categories -- Greek, Roman, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic -- but there are naturally other fun categories one could build a reading list around.

Creon and Antigone Reference in "After Auschwitz"

It's interesting to me to note and collect references to ancient Greek literature in modern religious works.  Whie reading Richard Rubenstein's After Auschwitz I came across the following reference to Sophocles' Antigone:

"Tragic encounters can lead either to murder or to moral modesty and mutual enrichment.  The problem has ultimately little to do with the question of Jewish safety.  Creon was hardly better off with Antigone dead than confronted with the terribly annoying presence of Antigone alive.  The murderer does something to himself as well as to his victim.  In some respects, his is the greater problem, for, unlike his victim, he must live with himself after the deed.  Creon and Antigone were driven by forces of which they were in no sense the masters.  The forces and loyalties constituent of Jewish and Christian identities respectively can be little altered by either Jew or Christian.  There is the possibility that, with awareness into the explosive potentialities of our religious ideologies, we will be able to moderate their destructiveness.  Above all, I want to emphasize that at this point in history the conflict is beyond blame.  Neither Christian nor Jew can avoid or deny the religious traditions out of which he has come.  In some very important respects, we are heirs to conflicts we did not create but which we cannot with dignity or honor entirely avoid."
(Richard L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism [1966], 63-64).

iTunes U: Courses in Classics and Biblical Studies

Every time class registration rolled around I would pore over the course listings for the many different departments at the university, wishing I had an endless amount of electives I could take.  Now with things like iTunes U I can sit in on lectures in some of those classes outside of my major that I just wasn't able to fit into my degree program, whether its psychology, history, or physics.  This interdisciplinary online buffet also includes some good resources in my areas of focus, the ancient world and religious studies.  Below are a few that you might want to check out.  I've broken them down into four categories: (1) Biblical Studies, (2) Ancient Greece, (3) Rome, and (4) Religious Studies.  When you're done with all of these, why not move on to learn about Quantum Mechanics?

Biblical Studies

RLST 145: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible)

Christine Hayes

Open Yale course

[Check out Hayes' openyalecourses book Introduction to the Bible)

The Hebrew Scriptures in Judaism and Christianity

Shaye J.D. Cohen

Harvard, iTunes U

RLST 152: Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature

Dale B. Martin

Open Yale course 

[Check out Martin's openyalecourses book New Testament History and Literature)

Historical Jesus

Stanford, iTunes U

Beginning Hebrew: Ruth

Steven Schweitzer

AMBS, iTunes U

The Basics of New Testament Textual Criticism

Daniel B. Wallace

The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, iTunes U

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece: Myth, Art, War

Gillian Shepherd

LaTrobe, iTunes U

Ancient Greece: City and Society

Gillian Shepherd

LaTrobe, iTunes U

"Deformity and Disability in Greece and Rome."

Nicole Kelley's essay "Deformity and Disability in Greece and Rome," which is part of the edited volume This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities and Biblical Studies, offers an interesting and brief engagement with disabilities and deformities in classical antiquity.  She opens by drawing attention to some of the methodological and definitional problems in trying to understand the historical reality of disabled and deformed persons in the ancient world.  Despite the probability that disability and deformity were very common, the evidence is relatively sparse, and portrayals in art and literature may not always reflect social reality.  The ancients also lacked clearly defined categories like "disabled" or "deformed."  Kelley spends the rest of her essay focusing on two figures from Greek mythology: the god Hephaestus, who is often portrayed as congenitally lame, and Teiresias, the blind prophet.

In her discussion of Hephaestus she gives attention to other sources that address congenital disabilities and deformities, including evidence that idealizes the exposure or elimination of infants who are deemed unfit.  Whether or not these texts reflect actual practice remains an open question.  She also discusses the role of deformed people in entertainment, mentioning, among other things, the evidence that deformed persons were kept as pets in the Roman world and sold in "monster markets."  Kelley's treatment of Hephaestus closes by mentioning the economic prospects of disabled persons, noting that there is evidence that their economic outlook "was not necessarily bleak or characterized by utter dependence on family and friends" (41).      

Two Thumbs Down: Biting Literary Criticism in Dionysius of Halicarnassus

I always cringe when I read harsh and mean-spirited reviews of someone's literary or academic work.  Hiding behind a pen (or keyboard . . . or touchscreen) seems to give some people the courage to say nasty things that most of us would never say to someone's face.  Like most human phenomena, biting reviews are nothing new.  I was recently reading Dionysius of Halicarnassus' criticism of Hegesias of Magnesia.  Check out his not-so-friendly review:

"Those authors who have not paid attention to this part of their craft (rhythm) have produced writings which are either mean or diffuse, or have some other deformity or disfigurement.  The first, middlemost and last in this is that sophist from Magnesia, Hegesias.  Concerning him, by Zeus and all the other gods, I do not know what I should say.  Was he so insensitive and dense that he could not envisage which the ignoble or the noble rhythms are?  Or was he so bedevilled and mentally deranged that he still chose the worse, though he knew the better?  I am inclined to believe the latter: for it is a characteristic of ignorance that it often lands on its feet, wilfulness never does.  At any rate, in the large volume of writing which the man has left behind him, you could not find a single page that has been felicitously composed.  Indeed, he seems to have supposed that his way of writing is superior to that of his predecessors, and to have practised it with enthusiasm; yet any man of sense who fell into such errors under the stress of impromptu speech would feel ashamed." (De Compositione Verborum, 18)

Dionysius goes on to quote an excerpt from Hegesias on Alexander the Great and then compare it unfavorably with a similar episode from Homer's Iliad.  He closes with this last jab at Hegesias:

". . . the manner of description used by the Magnesian could be adopted only by women or emasculated men, and not seriously even by them, but in a spirit of mockery or ridicule.  What then is the cause of the nobility of these lines (from Homer), and of the miserable inadequacy of the other drivel?  The main cause, if not the only one, is the difference in the rhythms.  In the passage of Homer there is not a single undignified or undistinguished line, whereas in that from Hegesias not a single sentence will fail to give offence." 
(De Compositione Verborum, 18)

W. Rhys Roberts identifies the use of double trochees as the primary offense that made Dionysius' poetic blood boil.  Let that be a lesson to you: watch your trochees.  Hegesias of Magnesia is typically considered the founder of the Asianic style. 

Dionysius was not alone in his criticisms of poor Hegesias.  Cicero also had a few unkind words of his own:

"Hegesias . . . was so vain of his own taste for Atticism, that he considered his predecessors, who were really masters of it, as mere rustics in comparison of himself.  But what can be more insipid, more frivolous, or more puerile, than that very concinnity of expression which he actually acquired?" (Brutus 83)

If something you write ever gets an unfavourable review or grade, just remind yourself of these passages.  As long as your work is not being called "drivel" or "miserably inadequate" then you're still ahead of old Hegesias.

You can read up a bit on Hegesias here and here.

Leaves on a Tree: Homer and Ben Sira on Human Mortality

What does Jerusalem have to do with Ionia?  

At the moment my research focuses on the influence of Homer's epics, particularly the Iliad, on early Jewish literature.  While there continues to be academic disagreement over the extent of Greek literary influence on some early Jewish texts, it is indisputable that some ancient Jewish writers read/heard the blind bard's epics and allowed his voice to echo off the nooks and crannies of their own works. (See, for example, my earlier notes on Theodotus and Sosates).  One passage where there has been some scholarly agreement on Homeric influence is Ben Sira 14:18, which scholars like Th. Middendorp, R.A.F. MacKenzie, Benjamin Wright, Martin West, and Jack T. Sanders believe is influenced in some way by Iliad 6.146-149.  Check out the similarities between the two texts:

     

Ben Sira 14:18 (MS A)

 {כפרח עלה על עץ רענן / שזה נובל ואחר גומל {צומח

כן דורות בשר ודם אחד גוע ואחד גומל

“As leaves grow upon a green tree, Whereof one withereth, and another springeth up;

So of the generations of flesh and blood, One perisheth, and another ripeneth.” (Schechter and 

Taylor, XXX)

Starship Theseus: Star Trek, Plutarch, and Personal Identity

Leon Thomas' fascinating video "Starship Theseus" was brought to my attention by @ReligionProf.  Thomas brings together Star Trek, Plutarch, and philosophy -- what's not to love?

If you're interested in digging a bit further, here is what Plutarch said about the ship of Theseus:

"The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths and returned in safety, the thirty-oared galley, was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones in their places, so that the vessel became a standing illustration for the philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel." (Plutarch, Theseus, 23.1) 

As Thomas observes in his video, this raises questions about the persistence of identity, a question which he explores by looking at Star Trek's transporter technology as well as the death and resurrection of Spock.  Such questions are interesting within the spans of our mortal lifetimes, as we try to understand what it means to be "me" as "I" grow, develop, and constantly cash in old cells for new ones.  They also stand at the heart of reflections on the possibility and nature of the afterlife.  If an afterlife consists of a disembodied existence, to what extent is that disembodied stuff still you?  If the resurrection of the dead is your afterlife of choice, what does that actually look like and how does your identity persist?

Baby Bear will be your master: climate and ethnocentrism in the Greco-Roman world and Jubilees

Kids who grow up on dull children's programming like Dora the Explorer or Bob the Builder don't know what they're missing out on.  Back in the day parents used to tell their children wonderful stories about trespassing little girls who stole strangers' food and nearly got themselves eaten by ursine homeowners.

In the ancient world there was a belief that physical environments shaped the people who lived within them.  The physical, social, cultural, and political characteristics of entire people groups could be explained based on the climate and terrain of their homelands.  Some writers in Greco-Roman antiquity argued that harsh and mountainous terrains created tough warriors, while flatter areas with nicer terrains created soft people who naturally ended up in servitude to others.  There's a particular strand of this tradition that I like to call the "Goldilocks climate."  Some writers argued that some regions were extremely cold and other regions were extremely hot, and that the peoples in these climates exhibited an extreme set of strengths and an extreme set of weaknesses.  Greece (for Greek writers) or Rome (for Roman writers) was in the center of the world and therefore had the perfect blend of hot and cold.  This meant the peoples of Greece or Rome exhibited the strengths of those in the extreme regions, but without the accompanying weaknesses.  This of course made them perfectly suitable for ruling the world.  Aristotle had this to say:

Eumaios: a collaborative website for Early Greek epic

An embyronic digital variorum.  This is not the name of a Brave New World style reproductive facility or a reference to the National Library of Medicine's cool new app, but the self-description of the helpful Eumaios website.  If you took our advice in an earlier post and picked up Eleanor Dickey's volume Ancient Greek Scholarship then you may find Eumaios a particularly interesting tool, as it gives you easy access to Homeric scholia.  It does more than this, however.  The homepage lists the following elements the site offers:

1. Information that is tied to specific lines of text, in particular:
   1. Papyrus readings for the Iliad and Odyssey, gathered from Dana Sutton's list, now maintained by the Center for Hellenic Studies, but displayed differently here
   2. Scholia from Hartmut Erbse's edition of the Scholia
   3. Correspondences between the Iliad and the Aeneid, based on the lists in Georg N. Knauer's Die Aeneis und Homer. Studien zur poetischen Technik Vergils mit Listen der Homerzitate in der Aeneis (Göttingen, 1964)
   4. Bibliographical items gathered from volumes 35-63 (1964-92) of L'Année Philologique
2. Bibliographical information about lemmata, wordforms, and repeated phrases gathered from volumes 35-63 (1964-92) ofL'Année Philologique
3. A report by Martin Mueller About Homeric repetitions: facts, figures, and hypotheses as well as notes on some 300 interdependent repetitions in the first and last books of the Iliad . 

Scholarship on Scholarship: Eleanor Dickey's "Ancient Greek Scholarship"

Scholia and Eustathius . . . I think my doctor diagnosed me with that once.

Believe it or not, modern classicists are not the first nerds scholars to analyze and write about Greek "classics."  Even 2,000 years ago there were precocious young adults adding gray hairs to their parents' heads: "Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you -- I've dropped out of my business program and decided to major in classics."  Ancient works like Homer, Hesiod, or Euripides were carefully preserved and studied by ancient and medieval scholars, many of whom asked the very same sorts of questions we like to ask today.

PRISM: Ancient Persian Edition

The recent leaks from Edward Snowden have brought government spying into popular attention, particularly PRISM, which is an extensive NSA electronic surveillance program.  It turns out the U.S. government is using some advanced technology to keep an eye on us.  Fortunately, I don't need to worry about the NSA reading what I write here, because even super computers and government spies are bored by the history of the ancient world.

While the specific technologies may be new, government surveillance is quite ancient.  The rulers of ancient kingdoms needed to keep tabs on their subjects, and they developed surveillance and communication methods to make this happen.  Oppenheim states this quite strongly when he says: "Informers, accusers, internal spies, censors, secret agents and their like form, in all these civilizations, then as well as today, an effective and often unobtrusive web, that with constant vigilance and demonic effectiveness directs, controls and coerces the individual in his social setting." ("Eyes of the Lord" 180)