The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? In Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years (Princeton University Press, 2024), Dr. Paula Fredriksen traces the evolution of early Chris…

Light The Lamp, Not The Rat!Di Ancient & New

(Spoiler alert! This episode is jam-packed with plot spoilers for THE RETURN.) Homeric scholar Barbara Graziosi joins me in the Lesche to discuss Umberto Pasolini's THE RETURN, a film dramatization of the second half of the Odyssey starring Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope. About our guest Barbara Graziosi is Department Ch…

Cosden and Fr. K break open one of C.S. Lewis's finest books, The Great Divorce.

What did it mean for ordinary believers to live a Christian life in late antiquity? In Christians at Home: John Chrysostom and Domestic Rituals in Fourth-Century Antioch (Penn State University Press, 2024), Blake Leyerle explores this question through the writings, teachings, and reception of John Chrysostom—a priest of Antioch who went on to becom…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the third week of December. December Museum Highlights Karnak Winter Solstice MrBeast and the Giza Plateau These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstreets.com/tag/cairo/ http://www.egyptindep…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the second week of December. Black Market Antiquities Ancient Perfumes Exhibition GEM Volunteer Program Artefacts Returned from Ireland New Minya Discoveries Giza Plateau Revamp These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Her…

Leyla Ozgur Alhassen’s book Qur’anic Stories: God, Revelation and the Audience (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) provides excellent analyses of several Qur’anic surahs, or chapters, to explore how Qur’anic stories function as narratives – but not just any kind of narratives: narratives with a theological purpose behind them. The specific stories s…

Playlist Super SpyDi Ancient & New

Starting nearly a thousand years ago at the Ben Ezra Synagogue of Old Cairo, worn-out books and scrolls were put in the genizah, a storage area for sacred texts. In The Illustrated Cairo Genizah: A Visual Tour of Cairo Genizah Manuscripts at Cambridge Univertity Library (Gorgias Press, 2024), Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee tell the story of…

Emma Greensmith and Tim Whitmarsh join me in the Lesche to discuss how Imperial Greek epic fits into our understanding of Ancient Greek epic as a whole. Emma has just edited the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic, and she was also a member of the research project Greek Epic of the Roman Empire: A Cultural History, which Tim directed. About o…

The Bible shaped nearly every aspect of Jewish life in the ancient world, from activities as obvious as attending synagogue to those which have lost their scriptural resonance in modernity, such as drinking water and uttering one’s last words. And within a scriptural universe, no work exerted more force than the Psalter, the most cherished text amo…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the first week of December. Giza Area Development Plan Theban Tomb TT39 Now Open Khufu Pyramid Price Increase SCA Inspects Esna and Edfu Temples New Discoveries at Taposiris Magna These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/H…

Today I talked to Joy McCorriston about Persistent Pastoralism: Monuments and Settlements in the Archaeology of Dhofar (Archaeopress Publishing, 2023). In the Dhofar region of southern Oman, pastoralists have constructed monuments in discrete pulses over the past 7,500 years. From small-scale stone burial markers to platforms to settlements, these …

Poor Man's LightsaberDi Ancient & New

Kalīlah and Dimnah: Fables of Virtue and Vice by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, translated by Michael Fishbein and James E. Montgomery, with a foreword by Marina Warner (Library of Arabic Literature, NYU Press, 2022), is a vibrant new rendition of a literary classic that has captivated readers for centuries. Rooted in ancient Indian storytelling and adapted into…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the last days of November. El-Anani UN Tourism Ambassador Museo Egizio Celebrates 200 Years Minya Named Capital of Egyptian Culture Health Insurance for Tourists These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https…

Thanksgiving SpecialDi Ancient & New

The Jews of Ptolemaic Egypt: The History of a Diaspora Community in Light of the Papyri (De Gruyter, 2024) offers a comprehensive and nuanced history of the Jews of Egypt, who constituted an important ethnic minority ever since they first appeared in the country. As part of the Greek-speaking ruling class, the Jews played an active role in the poli…

Emily Wilson, acclaimed translator, joins me in the Lesche to discuss the challenges and pleasures of translating the Iliad. We discuss the Greek of two passages in detail: Book 6 lines 482-502 and Book 22 lines 199-204 (lines as in the OCT). About our guest Emily Wilson is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pe…

Joined by Fr. Brian Park this episode examines what were coined the "anti-sacraments of the sexual revolution" and matches them with the real sacraments which they are imitating and distorting.

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the fourth week of November. Great Pyramid Not Being Demolished Egyptian Goat-Fish Petroglyph Mummified Falcon on Sale New Ptolemaic Temple in Sohag Nubia Museum Anniversary These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritag…

Women's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising, often nonanatomical ways. Eventually Christians took part in a cross-cultural shift toward viewing virginity as something that could be…

In The Fate of the Jews in the Early Islamic Near East: Tracing the Demographic Shift from East to West (Cambridge UP, 2022), Phillip Lieberman revisits one of the foundational narratives of medieval Jewish history--that the rise of Islam led the Jews of Babylonia, the largest Jewish community prior to the rise of Islam, to abandon a livelihood bas…

Grati-ganzaDi Ancient & New

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the third week of November. Damage in Mereruka Tomb New AR Filters for Museums Physical Evidence of Hallucinogens in Bes Mug Egyptian Museum Celebrates 122 Years SCA Not Demolishing the Great Pyramid These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahr…

Utilize My AdorablenessDi Ancient & New

David M. Pritchard joins me in the Lesche to discuss what appears to have been, in Nicole Loraux's famous words, a "very Athenian invention": the epitaphios logos, or funeral oration given over the war dead at their public burial. Both the Athenian funeral oration and the legacy of Nicole Loraux's pioneering study of it are the subjects of David's …

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the second week of November. Harry Smith 1928 - 2024 These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstreets.com/tag/cairo/ http://www.egyptindependent.com/ http://www.egypttoday.com/ https://www.fac…

The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery (Yale UP, 2024) offers a bold rereading of Augustinian thought for a world still haunted by slavery. Over the last two decades, scholars have made a striking return to the resources of the Augustinian tradition to theorize citizenship, virtue, and the place of religion in pu…

This is a live recording from a class that Fr. K taught at the parish on how to read the Bible in general and Genesis Chapter 1 in particular.

In Delicious Prose: Reading the Tale of Tobit with Food and Drink (Brill, 2018), Naomi S.S. Jacobs explores how the numerous references to food, drink, and their consumption within The Book of Tobit help tell its story, promote righteous deeds and encourage resistance against a hostile dominant culture. Jacobs' commentary includes up-to-date analys…

The Embassy, the Ambush, and the Ogre: Greco-Roman Influence in Sanskrit Theater (Open Book, 2024) presents a sophisticated and intricate examination of the parallels between Sanskrit and Greco-Roman literature. By means of a philological and literary analysis, Morales-Harley hypothesizes that Greco-Roman literature was known, understood, and recre…

Tasmanian Devil Cleaning ServiceDi Ancient & New

Fr. Paul Haverstock a long time friend and classmate joins me on the podcast. He got me into chant, the EF, C.S. Lewis and more.

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the beginning week of November. New Flights From Cairo to Aswan/Abu Simbel South Asasif Middle Kingdom Discovery ZH and Robot Mission in Great Pyramid Why the GEM Won't Open Just Yet These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/…

I Would've Done The Same ThingDi Ancient & New

This is a live recording from a class that Fr. K taught at the parish on how to read the Bible in general and Genesis Chapter 1 in particular.

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the fourth week of October. 19th C Antiquities Tour to Upper Egypt Expo Solar Event at Abu Simbel New Details Uncovered at Esna Temple CFEETK Announces Karnak Open-Air Museum Project National Veterinary Care Programme for Animals at Archaeological Sites Queen Nefertari's Tomb to Reopen These ne…

Augustine believed that slavery is permissible, but to understand why, we must situate him in his late antique Roman intellectual context. Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics (Princeton UP, 2024) provides a major reassessment of this monumental figure in the Western religious and political tradition, tracing the remar…

At this point of the scholarly debate on the nature of Second Temple pseudepigraphy, one may ask why another look at the problem is needed. Second Temple Pseudepigraphy: A Cross-cultural Comparison of Apocalyptic Texts and Related Jewish Literature (de Gruyter, 2014) is not the definitive answer to that problem but it proposes different paths - or …

Does Job convincingly argue against a fixed system of just retribution by proclaiming the prosperity of the wicked, an argument that runs contrary to traditional biblical and ancient Near Eastern wisdom? Addressing this question, Dominick Hernández gives careful consideration to the rhetoric, imagery, and literary devices used to treat the issue of…

Rachel Kousser joins me in the Lesche to discuss Alexander III of Macedon's post-Persepolis campaigns in Asia (330-323 BCE), the subject of her recent book Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great. About our guest Rachel Kousser writes and teaches about Alexander the Great, the destruction of monuments in …

Our goal in the Christian life is to see things as Christ sees them. In this long form episode, the priest-cousins hit a variety of topics including the sanctity of coffee, how you should form your mind to vote in the upcoming elections, whether or not you can attend weddings outside of the Church, the vocation of running and more.…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the third week of October. The GEM Opens its Doors Tutankhamun Treasures to Move to the GEM Donald Redford R.I.P. The Dog at the Top of the Pyramid These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstr…

A “wonderful…highly comprehensive” (John Barton, author of A History of the Bible) global history of the world’s best-known and most influential book For Christians, the Bible is a book inspired by God. Its eternal words are transmitted across the world by fallible human hands. Following Jesus’s departing instruction to go out into the world, the B…

Which society was the first to domesticate the horse? It’s a difficult question. The archaeological record is spotty, with only very recent advancements in genetics and carbon dating allowing scientists to really test centuries-old legends about where horses came from. For example, historians argued that the Botai civilization in Kazakhstan provide…

Blue 86 SunbirdDi Ancient & New

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the s…

We don't often realize the drastic effect that seemingly benign inventions have had on us. There is no such thing as a pure gain; we always lose something. In this lighthearted conversation, Fr. K and Cosden Leahey discuss what we lost with the addition of the microphone––especially in the liturgy!