Thoughts on Antiquity

I had an email yesterday from someone at a German periodical, Antike Welt.  Nothing wrong with that; indeed somewhat flattering. 
Apparently they’re doing a Christmas article.  As we all know, the only reference to a pagan festival on 25 December is in the Philocalian calendar, part 6 of the Chronography of 354, which I have online […]

I was interested to see that Codex Sinaiticus of the bible is to be digitised.  Articles in the Times here, and an opinion piece by Ruth Gledhill here are very welcome.
The article has a facility for comments on it, which I used to express support for the digitisation and to query when the remaining 50,000-odd manuscripts […]

I was interested to find many volumes of the Patrologia Orientalis online at Archive.org.  Three of the four volumes that contain Agapius are among these.  So I downloaded PO7, which contains the section of Agapius from the birth of Christ (part 3 of 4), and printed a few pages. 
Now I’ve been doing some business trips […]

Title: CFPs Journal of Hellenic Religion Volume 2
Nottingham UK - The Journal of Hellenic Religion’s (JfHR) Editorial Panel decided to pursue a second volume of the Journal, which will be forthcoming in the mid 2009.
A brief reaffirmation of the Journal’s statement is as follows: The JfHR is a peer-reviewed annual periodical. It has as a […]

With fears over inflation increasing again these days, I thought it would be interesting to take a glimpse back two millennia and see what inflation was like back then—and yes, there was inflation: government winding up the monetary printing press, or in this case the hammer and anvil, is not a new phenomenon. As part […]

Though there seems to have been a dearth of scholarly work on Marcion in the English- and German-speaking world from the time of WWII until the mid-1980s (and for obvious reasons), a large number of scholars who have sought to “re-assess” the Gospel of the Lord, traditionally attributed to Marcion himself. Matthias Klinghardt suggests […]

I recently discovered that the forum, yes, the forum, has RSS feeds. Even I, it’s administrator for 4 years, didn’t know that. So here’s to keeping up with yet another feed! (And thanks to Stephen Carlson who made me check!)
Forum: http://neonostalgia.com/forum/index.php?type=rss;action=.xml
Blog Posts: http://neonostalgia.com/weblog/?feed=rss2
Blog Comments: http://neonostalgia.com/weblog/?feed=comments-rss2
Please max out the technological advantage we have! And if you […]

Rather a lot of people mistrust biblical scholars.  Other scholars look at them sideways.  Christians treat them with suspicion, because they so often appear on TV in the UK bashing the Christians.  Since few outside of Christianity are much interested in biblical studies, the curious effect is that the discipline in general is brought under […]

No, it’s not Jimmy Hoffa (he was American, remember?). Instead, someone in West Sussex:

A 2,000-year-old body has been uncovered in North Bersted. The rare find has excited archaeologists who have labelled the discovery as being of international importance.
The skeleton is believed to have been a warrior who died around the time of the Roman invasion […]

From Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant:
“Historians have helped themselves [to remember the kings of Egypt] by further grouping the dynasties into periods: (1) The Old Kingdom, Dynasties I-VI (3500-2631 B.C.), followed by an interlude of chaos; (2) The Middle Kingdom, Dynasties XI-XIV (2375-1800 B.C.), followed by another chaotic interlude; (3) The Empire, Dynasties XVIII-XX […]