[Please cross-post as appropriate: initially sent to psco, ioudaios,
elenchus, lt-antiq, h-judaic, 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 FIFTH MEETING OF 1998-99 will be held on Thursday, March 9 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.
PROGRAM: Christopher Haas (Villanova University)
"Multitudo Immanis: Public Disorder and Communal Identity
in Late Antique Alexandria"
Suggested Readings:
A sampling of ancient sources --
Ammianus Marcellinus 22.11, 22.16.15-23 (J. C. Rolfe, trans. in LCL,
vol. 2, pp. 257-263, 303-309)
Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium 34-37, (ed. and trans. J. Rouge/,
Sources Chre/tiennes, vol. 124)
Julian, Ep. 21, 47 (W. C. Wright, trans. in LCL, vol. 3, pp. 61-67,
143-151), (Bidez-Cumont nos. 60, 111)
Historia Acephala 18 (NPNF ser. 2, vol. 4 <Athanasius>, p. 499)
see http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/NPNF2-04/TOC.htm (just before the
Festal Letters; "Letters of Athanasius with Two Ancient Chronicles...")
Socrates Scholasticus, Historia Ecclesiastica, 5.16-17, 7.13-15 (NPNF
ser. 2, vol. 2, pp. 126-127, 159-160)
see http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/NPNF2-02/TOC.htm
Modern Discussions --
Garth Fowden, "Religious Communities" in Bowersock, Brown, and Grabar,
Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, (Cambridge, MA,
1999), pp. 82-106
William D. Barry, "Popular Violence and the Stability of Roman
Alexandria" Bulletin de la Socie/te/ Arche/ologique d'Alexandrie 45
(1993): 19-34
C. Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity (Baltimore, 1997), chap 1
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, April 13: 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/
/end/
--
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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