In Muhammad and the Empires of Faith, Sean W. Anthony demonstrates how critical readings of non-Muslim and Muslim sources in tandem can breathe new life into the historical study of Muhammad and how his message transformed the world. By placing these sources within the intellectual and cultural world of Late Antiquity, Anthony offers a fresh assessment of the earliest sources for Muhammad’s life, taking readers on a grand tour of the a ...
Though ancient rabbinic texts are fundamental to analyzing the history of Judaism, they are also daunting for the novice to read. Rabbinic literature presumes tremendous prior knowledge, and its fascinating twists and turns in logic can be disorienting. Rabbinic Drinking helps learners at every level navigate this brilliant but mystifying terrain by focusing on rabbinic conversations about beverages, such as beer and wine, water, and even breast ...
A seminal figure in late antique Christianity and Christian orthodoxy, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus published a collection of more than 240 letters. Whereas these letters have often been cast aside as readers turn to his theological orations or autobiographical poetry for insight into his life, thought, and times, <I>Self-Portrait in Three Colors</I> focuses squarely on them, building a provocative case that the finalized collection co ...
Ephrem the Syrian was one of the founding voices in Syriac literature. While he wrote in a variety of genres, the bulk of his work took the form of <I>madrashe</I>, a Syriac genre of musical poetry or hymns. In <I>Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia,</I> Jeffrey Wickes offers a thoroughly contextualized study of Ephrem’s magnum opus, the <I>Hymns on Faith</I>, delivered in response to the th ...
Christian Reading shifts the assumption that study of the Bible must be about the content of the Bible or aimed at confessional projects of religious instruction. Blossom Stefaniw focuses on the lesson transcripts from the Tura papyri, which reveal verbatim oral classroom discourse, to show how biblical texts were used as an exhibition space for the traditional canon of general knowledge about the world. Stefaniw demonstrates that the work of Di ...
Throughout history, the relationship between Jews and their land has been a vibrant, much-debated topic within the Jewish world and in international political discourse. <I>Identity and Territory </I>explores how ancient conceptions of Israel—of both the land itself and its shifting frontiers and borders—have played a decisive role in forming national and religious identities across the millennia ...
Was Socrates an ironist? Did he mock his interlocutors and, in doing so, show disdain for both them and the institutions of Athenian democracy?  These questions were debated with great seriousness by generations of ancient Greek writers and helped to define a primary strand of the western tradition of political thought. By reconstructing these debates, <I>The Politics of Socratic Humor </I>compares the very ...
The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Naomi Weiss demonstrates that Euripides’ allusions to music-making are not just metatheatrical flourishes or gestures towards musical and religious practices external to the drama but closely interwoven with the dramatic plot. Situating Euripides’ ...
