Miles Hollingworth’s Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography is an odd intellectual biography. He includes many generous quotations from Augustine, but Hollingworth sprinkles in references to Frantz Fanon, Whitehead, Cecil Day Lewis, C.S. Lewis and many other modern writers along . . . . Continue Reading »
Zechariah 5:3-4 threatens a curse to those who steal and those who swear falsely. It’s a somewhat unusual combination. Perhaps the implied scenario is this: A thief steals, he is questioned about his theft, and he swears falsely that he did not steal. His theft is compounded by an oath . . . . Continue Reading »
In response to his brother’s request, Photius, ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, write the Bibliotheca , which contained brief summaries and reviews of 279 books of theology, history, grammar, and literature. Among other things, it gives a glimpse of what an educated ninth-century . . . . Continue Reading »
As Raymond Van Dam points out ( Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge ), one of Zosimus’s main complaints against Constantine was that he stopped the Secular Games ( Ludi Saeculares ), founded in 17 BC by Augustus and celebrated every saeculum (110 years) since. “Games” . . . . Continue Reading »
To interpret the Bible well, we need open ears . We need to know Jesus, who heals the deaf. . . . . Continue Reading »
In the title essay of his 1980 collection, Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion , the Dutch classicist Hendrik Wagenvoort traces the Roman notion that their success was a result of their piety back to the Roman conquest of Greece. How, the Greeks wondered, could the culturally inferior Romans . . . . Continue Reading »
In his contribution to The Old Testament in Byzantium , Robert Ousterhout examines the efforts of Eusebius and others to draw connections between Solomon’s temple and the church of the Holy Sepulcher: ““‘holy sites’ and relics previously associated with the Temple . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s rare to see a book utterly miss its target. When it purports to expose a mortal threat to our Republic, it’s a rather astonishing achievement. But Sean Faircloth has done it in his Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It . The . . . . Continue Reading »
In the introduction to their Dumbarton Oaks symposium on The Old Testament in Byzantium , Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson observe that the Byzantine empire’s use of the Old Testament seems to involve a strange reversion to Judaism: “the New Testament threw open the election of one . . . . Continue Reading »
In the aforementioned article, Charlesworth points to a passage from Procopius where he describes a bronze equestrian statue of Justinian, which was, the writer says, “arrayed as Achilles.” Charlesworth observes: “why should Justinian, in the sixth century, have chosen Achilles? . . . . Continue Reading »
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