Markus Vinzent presents a working paper on 'Precarious times, precarious spaces'

 Last year I presented first ideas of a retrospective historiography, tested in several case studies from early Christianity, a project which is now in press at Cambridge University Press, and in a further Werkstattbericht I have laid out the foundations of this kind of historiography.

In a book, commissioned by Herderverlag, Freiburg i.Br., I am now writing a retrospective history of the various constructions of the beginnings of Christianity, as we can find them in the formative writers from the fifth century back to the first century by equally showing, what contemporary writing of the beginning of Christianity has embodied from these constructions. As a result, one will discover that much of what we teach today goes back to these constructions, and, that beyond the constructions of the late to mid-second century we can hardly go.

In the introduction I am giving the rationale for the project and develop in the first chapter the construction of the first formative author, chosen, here, namely Orosius, a student of Augustine.

Killing Christians, Christians Killing: : Violence, Trauma, and Identity in early Christianity

An international conference, sponsored by the DFG, the Max-Weber-Kolleg, and the University of Erfurt, titled Killing Christians, Christians Killing: Violence, Trauma, and Identity in early Christianity, was held from July 14–16 at the Augustinerkloster in Erfurt. Organized by Prof. Katharina Waldner and Dr. Jennifer Otto, the conference aimed to challenge both popular and academic stereotypes of early Christians as predominantly the victims of persecution. Participants were invited to explore texts that depict Christians as both victims and perpetrators of violence, as well as sympathizers and unwitting beneficiaries of structurally violent systems, and as individuals and communities that grappled with ethical dilemmas and struggled to determine the legitimacy of violent actions undertaken for salutary ends.

The discussion was opened by Dirk Rohmann (University of Sheffield), whose paper “Attitudes on Violence in the Roman Empire: Between Pagan and Christian Worlds” provided a valuable overview of relevant texts and terminology from the late Roman period. Papers by Markus Vinzent (King’s College London/Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt), pointing out the 'killing of friends' (Justin Martyr), and Eve-Marie Becker (Aarhus University) read early Christian narratives in light of the trauma of the Bar Kochba War and the Jewish Revolt, respectively. Sigurvin Larus Jonsson (Aarhus University) proceeded with an interpretation of James 5:6 (“You have condemned and murdered to righteous one, who does not resist you”) as a reflection of the widely-circulated traditions of the martyrdom of James. In their papers, “Origen and the Ethics of Execution” and “A Violent Salvation: Stigma, Discipline, and Masculinity in the Teachings of Silvanus,” Jennifer Otto (Universität Erfurt) and Blossom Stefaniw (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle) highlighted early Christian apologies for benevolent/disciplinary violence. Emiliano Urciuoli (Max-Weber-Kolleg, Erfurt) challenged the easy elision of the concepts of martyrdom and sacrifice in scholarship on early Christianity. Katharina Waldner (Universität Erfurt) introduced trauma studies as a conceptual lens for interpreting Eusebius’s The Martyrs of Palestine, while Gianna Zipp (Universität Mainz) outlined Lactantius’s rhetoricized depiction of persecution in his De mortibus persecurotum.  A final session, titled “Politics, Power, and Violence in Late Antiquity” included papers from Elizabeth De Palma Digeser (University of California at Santa Barbara) on the effects of collusion during persecution on communities of survivors, by Mark Edwards (Oxford University) on Constantine’s use of religious violence, and by Jamie Wood (University of Lincoln) on the integration of Christian ritual into military training handbooks of late antiquity.

The organizers look forward to publishing the results of the conference as a volume in the series Studia Patristica (Peeters, Leuven) in 2018.

Claudia Bergmann is going to present a working paper on 'Messiah and Meal: Early Jewish and Christian Ideas of the Role of the Anointed One at the Meal in the World to Come'

My Habilitation „Endzeit als Mahl-Zeit“ investigates early Jewish texts that develop the idea of an abundant meal in the World to Come. Located at the intersection of Religious and Ritual Studies, it discusses the foods served at the utopian meal, the location imagined for the meal, the participants at the table and the hierarchies among them and attempts to develop a matrix, with which to understand this biblical and extrabiblical motif.

Markus Vinzent presents a working paper on 'Retrospections – A History of early Christians'

The project develops first a new approach to the writing of history in terms of retrospections to then test it by using several case studies. These cover the two earliest ‘Christian’ monuments (the ‘Abercius’ inscription; the Hippolytus statue), the first preserved apology (Aristides); the first collection of non-canonical letters (Ignatius); the first catechism (Didache); the first ‘Christian’ iconography (Dura-Europos); the first Gospel (Marcion); the first ‘Christian’ witness (Paul).

In this first methodological chapter I reflect upon the paradoxical nature of writing history. Though we cannot but approach the past by retrospection and reflecting upon what we think we perceive, most historiographical narratives proceed in a chronological way, as if we were able to first jump into the period we are looking at, and then, once arrived there, start following the lives of our protagonists. This, as I think, clouds the fact of the hiatus between than and now, it also gives the impression of a neutral, contemporary observer who is capable of following the events described and the fact that what the historian is doing is anachronistic creation. Furthermore, the initial leap obscures the initial stages through which I have come to be informed of the past. Instead, retrospection, as will be developed here, reveals that perspectivity is a core notion that is linked with ephemeral individual insights. Retrospection also re-evaluates the objects that are targeted. Instead of the idea of sources that were handed down through history – explicated in the fashionable new historicity, new philology, reception history or Überlieferungsgeschichte – retrospection highlights that all targets are actively appropriated, isolated and shaped by the viewers. It then reveals that such appropriations continuously happens, but that major steps of appropriation in history took place (the early 20^th and second half of the 19^th centuries; the High Middle Ages; the fifth and the fourth century; the late second century). Until we can target the evidence of the second and first century, we have to make a long journey backwards through layers of such appropriations to be discovered in retrospection.

'Religion in the Roman Empire' - New journal in the History of Religion

 

 

The first issue of a new journal dedicated to “Religion in the Roman Empire” (RRE) is out. “Individual appropriation in lived ancient religion” is the title of the first issue of 130 pages. The articles focus on methodologies to reconstruct individual appropriations of traditions, religious experiences and communication on religion in different social spaces. Such perspectives, standard in approaches on recent and contemporary religion, are facing serious challenges when addressing the material available for ancient Mediterranean religion. New methods are developed in case studies on Mithraic representations, practices of sacralizing space at Italian Ostia, consumption of religion in Egyptian Karanis or rituals and their literary reflections at Rome. 

The new journal, published by Mohr Siebeck, intends to further and document new and integrative perspectives on religion in the Ancient World combining multidisciplinary methodologies. Starting from the notion of “lived religion” it will offer a space to take up recent, but still incipient, research to modify and cross the disciplinary boundaries of “History of Religion”, “Archaeology”, “Anthropology”, “Classics”, “Ancient History”, “Jewish History”, “Rabbinics”,  “New Testament”, “Early Christianity”, “Patristics”, “Coptic Studies”, “Gnostic and Manichean Studies”, “Late Antiquity” and “Oriental Languages”. The editors, based at European and American universities hope to stimulate the development of new approaches that can encompass the local and global trajectories of the multi-dimensional pluralistic religions of antiquity. The editorial office is based at the Max Weber Center of the University of Erfurt and can be reached via rre@uni-erfurt.de. See also www.mohr.de/rre