By the fourth century CE there circulated a collection of texts in Greek arranged to serve the study of astronomy. Contemporary manuscript evidence for this curriculum is not extant, but what survives after the ninth century CE are the echoes of this collection in later Greek manuscripts and a corresponding curriculum, the Middle Books, in…

The acquisition of two major coin collections (Peter Donald and Chris and Helen Theodotou), has placed Princeton in the forefront of institutions supporting research in Byzantine Numismatics. Both of these purchases were made with the help of generous support of the Friends of the Princeton University Library and the Seeger Center for Hellenic…

During the Rabbinic period of Jewish history, the land of the Hebrew Bible was, so to speak, reconfigured in a plethora of statements transmitted in the two building blocks of the literature of the sages, in Talmud and Midrash. In this paper I will discuss the land according to a literary genre that is thought to be characteristic of the later…

Contemporary scholars are fascinated by the interplay of Christian content and pagan literary forms in the writing of fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nazianzus. This intersection emerges from Gregory’s treatment of examples from myth, which are often qualified as πλάσμα (“fabrication”) and μῦθος (“story”), in opposition to ἀλήθεια,…

Please join us for a lecture by Professor Matthew Milliner, titled “The Mary Underground: Subterranean Global Virgins.” Milliner’s presentation will view Mary as a cipher for the politics and theology of global Christianity, and will examine a history of neglected “underground” Marys as a corrective to overly exalted practices of veneration and…

Fragmentary papyri that seem inconspicuous at first glance sometimes contain important historical information — like this hastily written list of the names of soldiers from the two legions that were stationed in Egypt in the Roman imperial period: legio III Cyrenaica and legio XXII Deiotariana. In this lecture I will try to show that the…

Beginning with an introduction to early global trade, my paper traces the arrival of monotheism in the Red Sea region through a comparative approach taking into account other nodal first-millennium regions (e.g., Central Asia) to reframe the complex interweaving of faith, identity, and economic activity during Late Antiquity.

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Contemplative reading is a spiritual practice developed by Christian monks in the early Middle Ages. This talk traces the history of monastic reading in sixth- and seventh-century Mesopotamia. Ascetics belonging to the Church of the East pursued a form of contemplation which moved from reading, to meditation, to prayer, to the ecstasy of divine…