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…

Grati-ganzaKirjoittanut 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 …

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.

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…

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…

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 AdorablenessKirjoittanut Ancient & New

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…

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 ServiceKirjoittanut 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/…

I Would've Done The Same ThingKirjoittanut Ancient & New

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.

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the fourth week of October. 19th C Antiquities Tour to Upper Egypt Expo Solar Event at Abu Simbel New Details Uncovered at Esna Temple CFEETK Announces Karnak Open-Air Museum Project National Veterinary Care Programme for Animals at Archaeological Sites Queen Nefertari's Tomb to Reopen These ne…

Augustine believed that slavery is permissible, but to understand why, we must situate him in his late antique Roman intellectual context. Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics (Princeton UP, 2024) provides a major reassessment of this monumental figure in the Western religious and political tradition, tracing the remar…

At this point of the scholarly debate on the nature of Second Temple pseudepigraphy, one may ask why another look at the problem is needed. Second Temple Pseudepigraphy: A Cross-cultural Comparison of Apocalyptic Texts and Related Jewish Literature (de Gruyter, 2014) is not the definitive answer to that problem but it proposes different paths - or …

Does Job convincingly argue against a fixed system of just retribution by proclaiming the prosperity of the wicked, an argument that runs contrary to traditional biblical and ancient Near Eastern wisdom? Addressing this question, Dominick Hernández gives careful consideration to the rhetoric, imagery, and literary devices used to treat the issue of…

Rachel Kousser joins me in the Lesche to discuss Alexander III of Macedon's post-Persepolis campaigns in Asia (330-323 BCE), the subject of her recent book Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great. About our guest Rachel Kousser writes and teaches about Alexander the Great, the destruction of monuments in …

Our goal in the Christian life is to see things as Christ sees them. In this long form episode, the priest-cousins hit a variety of topics including the sanctity of coffee, how you should form your mind to vote in the upcoming elections, whether or not you can attend weddings outside of the Church, the vocation of running and more.…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the third week of October. The GEM Opens its Doors Tutankhamun Treasures to Move to the GEM Donald Redford R.I.P. The Dog at the Top of the Pyramid These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstr…

A “wonderful…highly comprehensive” (John Barton, author of A History of the Bible) global history of the world’s best-known and most influential book For Christians, the Bible is a book inspired by God. Its eternal words are transmitted across the world by fallible human hands. Following Jesus’s departing instruction to go out into the world, the B…

Which society was the first to domesticate the horse? It’s a difficult question. The archaeological record is spotty, with only very recent advancements in genetics and carbon dating allowing scientists to really test centuries-old legends about where horses came from. For example, historians argued that the Botai civilization in Kazakhstan provide…

Blue 86 SunbirdKirjoittanut Ancient & New

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the s…

We don't often realize the drastic effect that seemingly benign inventions have had on us. There is no such thing as a pure gain; we always lose something. In this lighthearted conversation, Fr. K and Cosden Leahey discuss what we lost with the addition of the microphone––especially in the liturgy!

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the second week of October. Egypt Signs Manuscript/Papyri MoU with Germany Fayoum Portrait For Sale GEM Trial Opening 3 Artefacts Returned from Germany These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptia…

Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2024) recounts women authors' struggle to define the female intellectual through their engagement with the classical world in early modern France. Bringing together the fields of classical reception and women writers, Helena Taylor looks at various female novelists, tra…

Ferdia Lennon joins me in the Lesche to discuss his award-winning and bestselling novel, Glorious Exploits (UK Penguin Fig Tree/US Macmillan 2024), which is set in Syracuse in the aftermath of the Athenian invasion of Sicily during the Peloponnesian War. About our guest Ferdia Lennon was born and raised in Dublin. He holds a BA in History and Class…

We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team constantly looking for ways to make the academic publishing industry grow and to promote groundbreaking academic publications to scholars, students and enthusiasts globally. Based in the renowned publishing city of Leiden, we eat, sleep and breathe publishing! Matteo Barbato’s The Ideology of Democratic Athens: I…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the first days of October. Intangible Cultural Heritage in Tahrir Free Entry to Museums on Oct 6th New Discovery in Asyut Tomb Shanghai and Cologne Exhibitions Looting Sudan's Heritage Artefacts Returned From US These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http:/…

Made Up Facts And Youth MinistryKirjoittanut Ancient & New

Charlie Covell joins me in the Lesche to discuss their hit Netflix show KAOS, a modern dark dramedic take on Ancient Greek mythology. The show, set in something like modern-day Crete (and on Olympus and in Hades), interweaves stories of Prometheus, the Olympian gods, Orpheus and Eurydice, Minos/Ariadne/Theseus/the Minotaur, and Caeneis. Special tha…

Universalism is the heresy that holds to some degree or another that most or all people will be saved. It is an extremely dangerous heresy (as all heresies are) because if one believes that everyone is saved in the end he is probably very unlikely to condemn, criticize or correct any morally reprehensible behaviors in the name of "compassion"! In o…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the last week of September. GEM Coin and Stamp Competition Inaugaral Meeting of the GEM Authority CT Scans and X-Rays 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…

From the eighth to thirteenth centuries along China’s rugged southern periphery, trade in tribute articles and an interregional horse market thrived. These ties dramatically affected imperial China’s relations with the emerging kingdoms in its borderlands. Local chiefs before the tenth century had considered the control of such contacts an importan…

Egypt is revered as the home of the famous Desert Ascetics, who first embraced a monastic life and established homosocial communities on the borders of their urban centres in the Nile Valley. Regarded as angels and warriors, the wisdom of the Desert Ascetics formed part of the oral and literary tradition of wonder-working saints whose commitment to…

From the Rockies to the Himalayas, the bond between horses and humans has spanned across time and civilizations. In this archaeological journey, William T. Taylor explores how momentous events in the story of humans and horses helped create the world we live in today. Tracing the horse's origins and spread from the western Eurasian steppes to the i…

Scouting Property In EuropeKirjoittanut Ancient & New

Leah Lazar and Christy Constantakopoulou join me in the Lesche to discuss their work on the relationship between Athens and its subject communities (the "allies") during the fifth-century Athenian "empire" (ἀρχή). Leah has a new book out on the subject, Athens and Power in the Fifth Century BC; Christy’s monograph Dance of the Islands (a favorite o…

Nāgārjuna (c. 150-250), founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy and the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers aside from the Buddha himself, concludes his masterpiece, Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, with these baffling verses: For the abandonment of all views He taught the true teaching By means of compassio…

In Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington, 2012), William Altman shines a light on the pedagogical technique of the playful Plato, especially his ability to create living discourses that directly address the student. Reviving an ancient concern with reconstructing the order in which Plato intended his dialogues to be taught as opp…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the middle two weeks of September. El-Enany and UNESCO Aboudi's at Giza James Ogden in Wales The Colours of Edfu Revealed Horizon of Khufu in London Nightime Upgrade for Giza New MoTA Museum Database These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahr…

Today I talked to Philip Freeman about his new book Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (Yale UP, 2023). Flavius Claudius Julianus, or Julian the Apostate, ruled Rome as sole emperor for just a year and a half, from 361 to 363, but during that time he turned the world upside down. Although a nephew of Constantine the Great, the first Christian empero…

'Wicked Problems' are those problems facing the planet and its inhabitants, present and future, which are hard (if not impossible) to resolve and for which bold, creative, and messy solutions are typically required. The adjective 'wicked' describes the mischievous and even evil quality of these problems, where proposed solutions often turn out to b…

Two strangers meet in a trapped elevator. One is an archaeologist, the other isn’t. A simple question, ‘What do you do?’, becomes the springboard for a dialogue that weaves a fascinating tale. In How to Fit All of Ancient Greece in an Elevator (William Collins, 2024) archaeologist Dr. Theodore Papakostas takes us on a spectacularly iconoclastic and…

Yvona Trnka-Amrhein and John Gibert join me in the Lesche to discuss their editio princeps of a newly-discovered papyrus (P.Phil.Nec. 23) containing lines from two of Euripides' fragmentary plays, Ino and Poluidos. The publication, in ZPE, is currently only available in print. The ToC for the issue in which it appears is available here. Information…