Episodes

  • Matthew Elia, "The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery" (Yale UP, 2024)

    Matthew Elia, "The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery" (Yale UP, 2024)
    Nov 11 2024
    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 public life. However, these scholars have not sufficiently attended to Augustine’s embrace of the position of the Christian slaveholder. To confront a racialized world, the modern Augustinian tradition of political thought must reckon with its own entanglements with the afterlife of the white Christian master. Drawing Augustine’s politics and the resources of modern Black thought into extended dialogue, Matthew Elia develops a critical analysis of the enduring problem of the Christian master, even as he presses toward an alternative interpretation of key concepts of ethical life—agency, virtue, temporality—against and beyond the framework of mastery. Amid democratic crises and racial injustice on multiple fronts, the book breathes fresh life into conversations on religion and the public square by showing how ancient and contemporary sources at once clash and converge in surprising ways. It imaginatively carves a path forward for the enduring humanities inquiry into the nature of our common life and the perennial problem of social and political domination. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Matt Elia is Assistant Professor of Theology, Race, and Environment at Saint Louis University Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 18 mins
  • Naomi S. S. Jacobs, "Delicious Prose: Reading the Tale of Tobit with Food and Drink: A Commentary" (Brill, 2018)

    Naomi S. S. Jacobs, "Delicious Prose: Reading the Tale of Tobit with Food and Drink: A Commentary" (Brill, 2018)
    Nov 8 2024
    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 analyses of issues of translation, text-criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, and issues of class and gender. Jacobs situates Tobit within a wide range of ancient writings sacred to Jews and Christians as well as writings and customs from the Ancient Near East, Ugarit, Greece, Rome, including a treasure trove of information about ancient foodways and medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Roberto Morales-Harley, "The Embassy, the Ambush, and the Ogre: Greco-Roman Influence in Sanskrit Theater” (Open Book, 2024)

    Roberto Morales-Harley, "The Embassy, the Ambush, and the Ogre: Greco-Roman Influence in Sanskrit Theater” (Open Book, 2024)
    Nov 7 2024
    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 recreated in India. Moreover, it is argued that the techniques for adapting epic into theater could have been Greco-Roman influences in India, and that some of the elements adapted within the literary motifs (specifically the motifs of the embassy, the ambush, and the ogre) could have been Greco-Roman borrowings by Sanskrit authors. This book draws on a wide variety of sources, including Iliad, Phoenix, Rhesus and Cyclops (Greco-Roman) as well as Mahābhārata, The Embassy, The Five Nights and The Middle One (Sanskrit). The result is a well-supported argument which presents us with the possibility of cultural exchange between the Greco-Roman world and India – a possibility which, though hypothetical, is worth acknowledging. This book is available open access here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    39 mins
  • Toni Alimi, "Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)

    Toni Alimi, "Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)
    Oct 28 2024
    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 remarkably close connections between Augustine’s understanding of slavery and his broader thought. Augustine is most often read through the lens of Greek philosophy and the theology of Christian writers such as Paul and Ambrose, yet his debt to Roman thought is seldom appreciated. Toni Alimi reminds us that the author of Confessions and City of God was also a Roman citizen and argues that some of the thinkers who most significantly shaped his intellectual development were Romans such as Cicero, Seneca, Lactantius, and Varro—Romans who had much to say about slavery and its relationship to civic life. Alimi shows how Augustine, a keen and influential student of these figures, related chattel slavery and slavery to God, and sheds light on Augustinianism’s complicity in Christianity’s long entanglement with slavery. An illuminating work of scholarship, Slaves of God reveals how slavery was integral to Augustine’s views about law, rule, accountability, and citizenship, and breaks new ground on the topic of slavery in late antique and medieval political thought. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Toni Alimi is Assistant Professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Vicente Dobroruka, "Second Temple Pseudepigraphy: A Cross-cultural Comparison of Apocalyptic Texts and Related Jewish Literature" (de Gruyter, 2014)

    Vicente Dobroruka, "Second Temple Pseudepigraphy: A Cross-cultural Comparison of Apocalyptic Texts and Related Jewish Literature" (de Gruyter, 2014)
    Oct 25 2024
    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 better still, a two-fold path: on one hand to understand Second Temple pseudepigraphy as a mystical experience and on the other, for lack of a suitable ancient example, to compare it to modern-day automatic writing. Vicente Dobroruka can be reached at vicente@unb.br. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 21 mins
  • Dominick Hernández, "The Prosperity of the Wicked: A Theological Challenge in the Book of Job and in Ancient Near Eastern Literature" (Gorgias Press, 2022)

    Dominick Hernández, "The Prosperity of the Wicked: A Theological Challenge in the Book of Job and in Ancient Near Eastern Literature" (Gorgias Press, 2022)
    Oct 24 2024
    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 the fate of the wicked in Job's first two rounds of dialogue. Tune in as we speak with Dominick Hernández about his monograph on the Book of Job, The Prosperity of the Wicked: A Theological Challenge in the Book of Job and in Ancient Near Eastern Literature (Gorgias Press, 2022) Dr. Dominick Hernández is Associate Professor of Old Testament and Semitics at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, and Director of Talbot en Español. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015), and Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption (IVP Academic, 2020), and a recent 2 volume commentary on Numbers. He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    23 mins
  • Bruce Gordon, "The Bible: A Global History" (Basic Books, 2024)

    Bruce Gordon, "The Bible: A Global History" (Basic Books, 2024)
    Oct 19 2024
    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 Bible has been a book in motion from its very beginnings, and every community it has encountered has read, heard, and seen the Bible through its own language and culture. In The Bible: A Global History (Basic Books, 2024), Bruce Gordon tells the astounding story of the Bible’s journey around the globe and across more than two thousand years, showing how it has shaped and been shaped by changing beliefs and believers’ radically different needs. The Bible has been a tool for violence and oppression, and it has expressed hopes for liberation. God speaks with one voice, but the people who receive it are scattered and divided—found in desert monasteries and Chinese house churches, in Byzantine cathedrals and Guatemalan villages. Breathtakingly global in scope, The Bible tells the story of this sacred book through the stories of its many and diverse human encounters, revealing not a static text but a living, dynamic cultural force. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • William T. Taylor, "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History" (U California Press, 2024)

    William T. Taylor, "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History" (U California Press, 2024)
    Oct 17 2024
    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 provided some of the earliest evidence of horse domestication–only for more recent studies to discover that the Botai domesticated an entirely different species of horse altogether. Even a lot more recent horse domestication has a less certain starting date, with recent studies suggesting that the Plains Indians domesticated horses at least a century earlier than originally thought. William T. Taylor is Assistant Professor and Curator of Archaeology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History in Boulder. He was part of several archaeological expeditions to test some of the proposed starting points for horse domestication—some of which are portrayed in his latest book Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History (University of California Press: 2024) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Hoof Beats. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    50 mins