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Abstract
This article presents an imaginative exercise in which a fictional author from the year 4025 details results from excavations of archaeological sites dating to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Based on analyses of small domestic finds, as well as the discovery of a monumental complex utilizing similar imagery, the author concludes that people must have worshipped an anthropomorphic mouse god – the Historical Mouse – in the Mechano-Digital Age, keeping devotional votives in their homes and traveling at least once a year to a primary space of worship centered around the experience of various ritual mysteries. This article calls upon students to perform a self-evaluation about their own assumptions and approaches to the ancient world as they witness a hypothetical historian make outrageous, yet plausible, errors in the course of trying to describe an ‘ancient’ religion.
Abstract
In this article, I will examine the functions of oaths in narratives of encounter, confrontation and polemic between religious communities in late antiquity, especially Jews and Christians. Through an analysis of these narratives, I hope to show that oaths had several functions: specific oath formulae were strongly associated with specific religious identities, and as such could be used to highlight distance between religious groups. However, oaths could be used to demonstrate the permeability of religious boundaries, or even be deployed cunningly to conceal one’s identity or subvert expectations of its performance.
Abstract
Four fragmentary Egyptian papyrus sheets containing liturgical texts housed at the Catholic University of Milan were published by Giuseppe Ghedini in 1933 and subsequently known as the Milan Euchologion. While reportedly lost, a single photograph of the papyri preserved in Harold Idris Bell’s papers in the British Library allows for a reassessment of the arrangement and contents of the papyri. Based on a new analysis of the fragments, it is clear that they preserve the end of an anaphora (fruits of communion, intercession, and doxology), a prayer of fraction, and a prayer of thanksgiving after communion and that they date to the second half of the fourth century. This places them among the earliest material witnesses to the anaphora and the post-anaphoral part of the Eucharist.
Abstract
Are name statistics in the Gospels and Acts a good test of historicity? Kamil Gregor and Brian Blais, in a recent article of the jshj , argue that the sample of name occurrences in the Gospels and Acts is too small to be determinative and that several statistical anomalies weigh against a positive verdict. Unfortunately, their conclusions result directly from improper testing and questionable data selection. Chi-squared goodness-of-fit testing establishes that name occurrences in the Gospels and Acts fit into their historical context at least as well as those in the works of Josephus. Additionally, they fit better than occurrences derived from ancient fictional sources and occurrences from modern, well-researched historical novels.
Abstract
Having taught the subject of the historical Jesus for more than thirty years, from New Zealand to London, I review from a personal perspective what has changed, and how I have taught the course over the decades. Overall, it seems harder to teach now than ever before, for reasons explored here.