Narrative in Antiquity

2018

This undergraduate work of mine provides an overview on the historical genre of hagiography. The paper examines hagiographic texts in the Western and Eastern traditions, as well as its usage in successor states such as Ethiopia and Anglo-Saxon England. Received 95%

Within the field of ancient religion, ‘narratives’ have frequently been narrowly understood as mythological narratives and interpreted as constituting the most important dimension of ancient ‘belief systems’, being slowly or aggressively supplemented or replaced by systematic philosophical thinking. This approach has produced valuable insights and a vast body of literature. In a splendid volume, Judith Perkins and Ilaria Ramelli have elucidated the relationship of details of forms and motifs in religious narratives and religious action. It is with a view to such details that the contributions of this issue will focus on the role of narratives in the wider fields opened up by the aforementioned new directions in historical, social, and even psychological research. Such narratives can help the individual actors to develop or strengthen competences in developing and stabilizing routines that involve gods and thus further agency. As first person narratives are hardly available for the period under consideration, the articles adduce material that has hitherto hardly be analysed with a view to a form of agency that is shaped by narrating about close interaction with deities, in everyday life as well as exceptional situations. Only briefly touching on the narrative constitution of identities of individuals, of groups and sub-groups by one’s own and others’ narratives, this issue employs a concept of narrative which opens up a broad range of generical realisation, of writing and orality, of solipsistic, dialogical, face-to-face, and public primary as well as secondary, media-based, narration.

Mnemosyne, 2008

Religious Studies Review, 2007

Pp. 332, appendices. $135.00, ISBN 0-567-02592-6. Gmirkin proposes a new theory concerning the date of the composition of the Pentateuch that focuses upon the parallels between the Babylonian mythological materials preserved by the priest Berossus (ca. 278 BCE) and the Genesis stories, and the Egyptian historical and mythological materials preserved by the priest Manetho (ca. 285-80 BCE) and the accounts in Exodus. Because these materials closely accord with the earliest level of the biblical accounts, he proposes that the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek, the Septuagint, in 273-72 BCE in Alexandria was actually the first time that the text was written down as a whole. In presenting this hypothesis, Gmirkin summarizes archeological, epigraphic and literary evidence that would weaken the basis for the documentary hypothesis (or JEPD theory). He proposes that the biblical narratives should be seen in the light of the events of the third century BCE, primarily those of Alexander and his immediate successors.

2016

L’Antiquité Classique, 2018

Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies, 1999

Falling by the wayside in Clement of Alexandria and Epiphanius To illustrate the theme of repentance, Clement of Alexandria tells a story about the apostle John coming from Patmos to Ephesus and of his setting out from there to regulate ecclesiastical affairs in the neighbouring provinces; in one city not far from Ephesus he had left in the care of the local bishop a young man, physically well-endowed, good-looking, and spirited, and had then gone back to Ephesus; the bishop brought the young man up and finally baptized him, but then relaxed his guard, which led to the young man's falling in with and being corrupted by some contemporaries of his who were idle, dissolute, and versed in evil ways ('tell Of avE-a£w.; 1tpC> (Opa.; Aa~OIlE-vcp 1tpoCHp8dpov,tat 'tlV£'; t!AtlC£'; apyot Kat a1t£PPwy0't£.;, £8&0£'; KaKwv); at first they led him astray through expensive banquets, then they seduced him into going out at night to steal clothes, next they asked him to do something more terrible, and gradually he became used to wrongdoing, abandoned hope in the salvation offered by God, and ended up putting together a band of robbers and practising a particularly bloody form of banditry. The story ends with John's securing his repentance (Q,d.s. 42.1-15). The tale certainly captured the imagination of later generations: Eusebius repeats it verbatim (HE 3.23.6-19); and it is

2015

"Ancient Fiction," published by the "Ancient Fiction and Early Jewish and Christian Narrative Section" at the Society of Biblical Literature, as part of its symposium series, is a collection of fifteen independent papers on Hellenistic, Jewish and Christian narratives in late antiquity. Th e book is divided into three sections. Th e first, "Ancient Graeco-Roman Narrative," is limited, except for one paper on Vergil, to the Greek Novel of late antiquity; the second, "Jewish Narrative," concentrates on Helleno-Jewish compositions written in Greek (3 Maccabees is merited with two separate papers), which the exception of two papers: one on the book of Daniel and the other on the rabbinic composition Seder ʾOlam. Th e papers of the

This discussion starts from the encounter between Achilles and Priam in Iliad 24, and especially Achilles’ remarks on the jars of Zeus (525-35), the seminal expression of a characteristic Greek attitude towards the mutability of fortune and the instability of happiness. Such ideas can be readily paralleled in other cultures, literatures and narrative forms, both ancient and more recent, Greek and non-Greek. Their expression in language, symbol, and art (both verbal and visual) illustrates the way that the condensation of such complexes of thought and feeling in typical and traditional forms makes a particular ethical or emotional perspective tangible, tractable and transferable. These recurrent forms capture important aspects of a culture’s emotional and normative repertoire in a way that allows them to be reconstituted and applied in the mind of each recipient or audience member. The paper considers some of the implications of this in the Greek narrative tradition, from Homer, through archaic poetry, tragedy and Aristotle’s theory of tragedy to a detailed examination of the persistence of the phenomenon and its extensive influence on narrative shape in Plutarch’s Life of Aemilius Paullus, a splendid example of how later Greek narratives return explicitly to the most authoritative of all Greek narrative sources as a way of locating themselves in what their authors clearly regard as a distinctive Greek tradition.

2020

of a large audience of students and colleagues. I am indebted to all for coming to the event and for contributing to the informative discussion-sessions. The chapters comprising this volume are revised versions of most of the papers which were delivered at the conference. I would like to thank Michael Paschalis and Costas Panayotakis for our cooperation in the publication of this volume, and also our publisher, Roelf Barkhuis, for producing-yet again-a splendid Ancient Narrative Supplementum. Stelios Panayotakis Calasiris as a 'servus callidus', 134 death of-, 136 Callirhoe as a tragic heroine, 28 elite status of-, 7, 41 Callirhoe and Artaxates, 48 Callirhoe and Dionysius, 40 Callirhoe and Plangon, 44, 128 Callirhoe enslaved not a 'real' slave, 40 capillatus, 192 captivity ~ slavery,