[[Please repost as appropriate: originally sent to PSCO, IOUDAIOS-L,
Lt-Antiq, ELENCHUS, MEDTEXTL, Medieval-Religion]]
PHILADELPHIA SEMINAR ON CHRISTIAN ORIGINS
in its 37th year
an Interdisciplinary Humanities Seminar
under the auspices of the
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Department of Religious Studies
201 Logan Hall
TOPIC FOR 1999-2000: Ethnicity, Regionalism and Religious Developments
in Late Antique Egypt
Chairpersons:
Kirsti Copeland (Princeton University) [log in to unmask]
Ra'anan Abusch (Princeton University) [log in to unmask]
Coordinator:
Robert Kraft (University of Pennsylvania) [log in to unmask]
THE THIRD MEETING OF 1998-99 will be held on Thursday, December 2 from
7-9 PM in the Lounge on the second floor of Logan Hall at the University
of Pennsylvania. Persons wishing to dine with other participants prior to
the meeting should meet at 6 PM at Logan Hall (southeast of Locust Walk
and 36th Street Walk). Take-out food (vegetarian and non-vegetarian) will
be provided. Cost is $7-10 per person.
Please RSVP to either chairperson (addresses above), if possible, so that
we might have a rough idea of how much food to arrange.
This meeting will be broadcast live on the Web so that colleagues unable
to attend in person can participate from a distance. Virtual participants
will be able to see the presentation and to send questions and comments to
the meeting using email. For more information, please consult this web
page:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/psco/webcast.html
PROGRAM: Roger Bagnall (Columbia University) with Robert
Kraft (University of Pennsylvania)
"In Conversation with Roger Bagnall -- Early Judaism and Early
Christianity in Greco-Roman Egypt: the Papyrological Evidence"
Suggested Topics for Discussion and Suggested Readings:
1. Identifying people and their affiliations as a methodology:
the principles of onomastics.
--R. S. Bagnall, Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History (London 1995) 85-89
(with earlier bibliography);
--I. F. Fikhman, Scripta Classica Israelica 15 (1996) 223-229.
2. Thinking quantitatively about models of growth:
continuous incrementalism vs. punctuated equilibrium?
--Bagnall, Reading Papyri, 73-85 (about quantification and the papyri);
--R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton 1996), chapter 6.
3. Monasticism and the economy:
implications for the social locations of asceticism.
--E. Wipszycka, "Contribution a l'etude de l'economie de la congregation
pachomienne," Journal of Juristic Papyrology 26 (1996) 167-210.
4. Reasoning from books to beliefs: questions of method.
--C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London 1983);
--H. Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven 1995);
--T. C. Skeat, New Testament Studies 43 (1997) 1-34.
5. Structures, titles, practices, and power: thinking about Egyptian cults.
--D. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (Princeton 1998).
1999-2000 TOPIC DESCRIPTION:
The Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins in its 37th year will
address the themes of "Ethnicity, Regionalism and Religious Developments
in Late Antique Egypt." The mass of surviving literary, material and
documentary evidence for and about Greco-Roman Egypt enables scholars to
produce local histories that focus on the social and economic context of
religious developments. It is this local scope which makes it possible
to pry apart the relationship between regional developments and the
massive continuity that characterizes Egyptian culture well into the
Roman period. Factors such as ethnicity, language, and religion
operating at a local level can be correlated to the larger historical
trajectories without being lost in generalizations about Egyptian or
Late Antique civilization.
Religious affiliation and ethnicity in Egypt constitute overlapping
frameworks of identity. Phenomena which uncomfortably carry the titles
"Hellenistic Judaism," "Christianity," "Gnosticism," "Paganism" and
"Magic" flourished alongside each other in Late Antique Egypt. The
instability that characterizes this religious world complicates the task
of delineating the historical developments of these competing
traditions. By focusing on the interplay between religious development
and contextualized social conditions, these sessions will explore the
synchronic and diachronic continuities and discontinuities that exist
along contested fault-lines in Late Antique Egypt.
1999-2000 SCHEDULE:
Thursday, February 10: David Brakke (Indiana University)
Howard Clark Kee responding
"Jews, Christians and Anti-Semitism in Athanasius"
** Session to be held at Princeton University
Thursday, March 9: Christopher Haas (Villanova University) with
Guy Stroumsa (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) responding
"Ethno-religious Identity and the Struggle for Cultural Hegemony
in Late Antique Alexandria"
Thursday, April 12: Sarah Iles Johnston (Ohio State University)
"Divination and the Magical Papyri"
** Session to be held at Princeton University
For detailed directions to the meetings and for further information,
visit the PSCO web site:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/psco/
--
Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
227 Logan Hall (Philadelphia PA 19104-6304); tel. 215 898-5827
[log in to unmask]
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html
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