New Books in Ancient History

Where did the idea of sin arise from? In The Origin of Sin: Greece and Rome, Early Judaism and Christianity (Bloomsbury, 2022), David Konstan takes a close look at classical Greek and Roman texts, as well as the Bible and early Judaic and Christian writings. He argues that the fundamental idea of “sin” arose in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, although this original meaning was obscured in...

What are we to make of the Temple envisioned by Ezekiel? How can we better understand Ezekiel, chapters 40 through 48? One way, suggests Tova Ganzel, is by examining evidence from Babylonian sources. She argues that Neo-Babylonian temples provide a meaningful backdrop against which many unique features of Ezekiel's vision should be interpreted. Tune in as we speak with Tova Ganzel about her recent...

Understanding and explaining societal rules surrounding food and foodways have been the foci of anthropological studies since the early days of the discipline. Baking, Bourbon, and Black Drink: Foodways Archaeology in the American Southeast (U Alabama Press, 2018), however, is the first collection devoted exclusively to southeastern foodways analyzed through archaeological perspectives. These essa...

The prophet Ezekiel speaks from a unique perspective: he resides in Babylonia, yet laments the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem; his prophecies range from furious messages of rebuke to comforting depictions of the future redemption of the Jewish people.  Join as we speak with Tova Ganzel about her recent commentary, Ezekiel: From Destruction to Restoration (Maggid, 2020). Dr. Tova Ganzel rec...

Drawing insights from gender studies and the environmental humanities, Demonic Bodies and the Dark Ecologies of Early Christian Culture (Oxford UP, 2022) analyze how ancient Christians constructed the Christian body through its relations to demonic adversaries. Through case studies of New Testament texts, Gnostic treatises, and early Christian church fathers, Travis W. Proctor notes that early fol...

Stanley Lombardo is Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Kansas. His previous translations include Homer's Iliad (1997, Hackett) and Odyssey (2000, Hackett), Hesiod's Works & Days and Theogony (1993, Hackett), among others.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The shifting image of the Hasmoneans in the eyes of their contemporaries and later generations is a compelling issue in the history of the Maccabean revolt and the Hasmonean commonwealth. Based on a series of six Jewish folktales from the Second Temple period that describe the Hasmonean dynasty and its history from its legendary founders, through achievement of full sovereignty, to downfall, Vered...

The ongoing debate surrounding who gets to determine the subjects of public commemoration, particularly in the form of statues, has become more heated over the past few years. In his timely book, A History of Love and Hate in 21 Statues (Aurum Press, 2021), Peter Hughes examines the long history of statues being used to articulate the values of rulers, governments, organizations, and average citiz...

Satan's transformation from opaque functionary to chief antagonist is one of the most striking features of the development of Jewish theology in the Second Temple Period and beyond. Once no more than an "accuser" testing members of the human community, Satan, along with his demons, is presented by Jewish apocalyptic texts and the New Testament as a main source of evil in the world. In Satan and th...

Anthony Kaldellis is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at The Ohio State University. He is the author of many books, including The Christian Parthenon, Hellenism in Byzantium, and The Byzantine Republic. The focus of today’s conversation is his latest book, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, out now from Harvard University Press.     Learn more about your ad choices. Vis...

Ever wonder about the Roman catacombs? Look no further. Today I talked to William "Chip" Gruen of Muhlenberg College about his article "Roman Catacombs" from the collection The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries (2019) from Bloomsbury. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adrienne Mayor is renowned for exploring the borders of history, science, archaeology, anthropology, and popular knowledge to find historical realities and scientific insights--glimmering, long-buried nuggets of truth--embedded in myth, legends, and folklore. Combing through ancient texts and obscure sources, she has spent decades prospecting for intriguing wonders and marvels, historical mysterie...

A senior scholar and teacher with four decades of classroom experience offers a concise, student-level theology of the entire Old Testament. W. H. Bellinger Jr. uses ancient Israel's confession of faith, the Psalms, to introduce the sweep of Old Testament theology: creation, covenant, and prophecy.  In Introducing Old Testament Theology (Baker Academic, 2021) he shows how these three theological...

Rethinking 'Classical Yoga' and Buddhism (Bloomsbury, 2021) revisits the early systemic formation of meditation practices called 'yoga' in South Asia by employing metaphor theory. Karen O'Brien-Kop also develops an alternative way of analysing the reception history of yoga that aims to decentre the Eurocentric and imperialist enterprises of the nineteenth-century to reframe the cultural period of...

For the Freedom of Zion: The Great Revolt of Jews against Romans, 66–74 CE (Yale University Press, 2022) by Dr. Guy Maclean Rogers is a deeply researched and insightful book examines the causes, course, and historical significance of the Jews’ failed revolt against Rome from 66 to 74 CE, including the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Based on a comprehensive study of all the evidence and new s...

In Masculinity and Dress in Roman Antiquity (Routledge, 2020), Olson argues that clothing functioned as part of the process of communication by which elite male influence, masculinity, and sexuality were made known and acknowledged, and furthermore that these concepts interconnected in socially significant ways. This volume also sets out the details of masculine dress from literary and artistic ev...

Despite the Talmud being the richest repository of medical remedies in ancient Judaism, this important strain of Jewish thought has been largely ignored – even as the study of ancient medicine has exploded in recent years. In a comprehensive study of this topic, Jason Sion Mokhtarian recuperates this obscure genre of Talmudic text, which has been marginalized in the Jewish tradition since the Midd...

Sabdanugamah (Sanskrit Library, 2021) is the first of two volumes of studies in honor of Professor George Cardona, the preeminent authority on Paninian grammar and the linguistic traditions of India as well as one of the worlds leading scholars of Indo-European linguistics. These studies cover topics in Paninian grammar, other Indian linguistic traditions, issues in Sanskrit morphology and syntax,...

Today I talked to Nomi Claire Lazar about Out of Joint: Power, Crisis, and the Rhetoric of Time (Yale University Press, 2019). Drawing on stories of leaders and thinkers across a range of cultures and political contexts, ancient and modern, Nomi Claire Lazar shows how constructions of time can help stabilize or destabilize political order and spark violent resistance or coax quiescence by shaping...

Emma Natalya Stein's book Constructing Kanchi: City of Infinite Temples (Amsterdam UP, 2021) traces the emergence of the South Indian city of Kanchi as a major royal capital and multireligious pilgrimage destination during the era of the Pallava and Chola dynasties (circa seventh through thirteenth centuries). It presents the first-ever comprehensive picture of historical Kanchi, locating the city...

The Crown Games were the apex of competition in ancient Greece. Along with prestigious athletic contests in honor of Zeus at Olympia, they comprised the Pythian Games for Apollo at Delphi, the Isthmian Games for Poseidon, and the Nemean Games, sacred to Zeus. For over nine hundred years, the Greeks celebrated these athletic and religious festivals, a rare point of cultural unity amid the fierce re...

Since the original airing of this episode in June 2021, Roger Reeves' second book Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. was published by W.W. Norton, and the paperback edition of David Ferry's translation of The Aeneid was published by the University of Chicago Press. The underworld, that repository of the Shades of the Dead, gets a lot of traffic from heroes (Gilgamesh, Theseus, Odysseus, Aeneas)...

To many the city might seem simply a large urban area to live within, but it actually forms an important political concept and community that has been influential throughout European history. From the polis of Ancient Greece, to the Roman Republic, to the city-states of the Italian Renaissance, and down to the present day. Modern concepts of democracy and citizenship that have shaped European thou...

In 510 BC, an obscure Greek city located literally on a backwater revolted against its tyrant. This was not extraordinary; such things happened regularly in the many Greek city-states. What followed however was extraordinary, and even world-changing. Athens became a democracy. Then just seventeen years after that, Athens and its tiny ally of Plataea defeated a raid by the mighty Persian Empire. Th...

Core Buddhist teachings are preserved in the ancient Indian language Pali. Listen in as Aleix Ruiz-Falqués speaks about its structure, its significance, and opportunities to study it with him online. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices