David Frankfurter | Boston University (original) (raw)
Papers by David Frankfurter
History of Religions, 2021
Cultures in the Roman Mediterranean world, including Christianity, conceptualized their most valu... more Cultures in the Roman Mediterranean world, including Christianity, conceptualized their most valuable and potent ceremonial elements not only through the occasionally learned abstraction or larger social categories but by imagining their perversion by others: sometimes witches or savages, sometimes intimate, conspiratorial enemies, sometimes evil heathens and debauched heretics. These concerns with dangerous alterity cluster around areas of culture and practice that can be generalized as religion and that point to a tentative, discursive concept of religion.
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2015
Review of Nongbri, Before Religion (2013). For more on the challenge of defining "religion" fo... more Review of Nongbri, Before Religion (2013). For more on the challenge of defining "religion" for ancient and late antique cultures see "Religion in the Mirror of the Other" (2021)
Comparer en histoire des religions antiques: Controverses et propositions
Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 10
Christianization of the Ancient World by David Frankfurter
Studies in Late Antiquity, 2024
The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Secrecy, 2022
Journal of Early Christian History, 2020
This article addresses a pattern in the representation of the spaces of heathen practice in late ... more This article addresses a pattern in the representation of the spaces of heathen practice in late antique Christian literature and in the conceptualisation of a necessary response to those spaces. I argue that Christian authors came to regard both temple structures and homes as suspicious enclosures, potentially concealing nefarious practices that could harm civic order and fortune. This view developed out of both a progressive suspicion of the domestic sphere in late antique Christian culture as harbouring heathen and heretical devotion, and a broader Roman suspicion of the Near Eastern temple, its architecture, and its secret priestly activities within. Such temples were constructed from early antiquity to exclude outsiders and to privilege a priestly cult within, unlike Roman temples that visibly framed the main cult image.
As a way of getting beyond the vague category "Jewish Christianity," this paper looks at two type... more As a way of getting beyond the vague category "Jewish Christianity," this paper looks at two types of "continuous communities" that seem to have integrated Christian ideas into Jewish visionary traditions during the second and third centuries CE: one prophetic (Rev, Ascension of Isaiah) and the other priestly/messianic (Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs).
This paper addresses the great diversity of female figurines produced during the Christian period... more This paper addresses the great diversity of female figurines produced during the Christian period (iv–vii ce) in Egypt, from Aswan to Karanis to the Abu Mina pilgrimage city. While not documented in any texts, by their sheer number the figurines offer important evidence of local religious practices performed under the aegis of Christianity (e.g., at saints’ shrines) yet without any ostensible connection to Christian liturgy or mythology. Their usage seems to have been predominantly votive, signifying a desired procreative body to deposit in hope, while the diversity of figurines points to an autochthonous, rather than imported or imposed, ritual tradition. The paper, part of a larger project on the local sites of Christianization, uses these figurines and their forms to reconstruct the iconographic strategies of the workshop, the ritual procedures of the client or ritual subject (at shrine or tomb), and the nature of domestic altars as stages for images.
Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 2
People's History of Christianity, vol. 2
Vigiliae Christianae 44/2
Church History and Religious Culture 86 (2006)
Book of Revelation by David Frankfurter
Harvard Theological Review, 2023
While scholars have traditionally taken Revelation’s “letters to the seven churches” (Rev 2–3) as... more While scholars have traditionally taken Revelation’s “letters to the seven churches” (Rev 2–3) as documentation for the experiences of the Christ-movement in those cities, this article argues that the letters amount to a fictional device—that the Apocalypse appropriates epistolary forms in response to the increasing authority of early Pauline collections among the late first-century Asia Minor Christ-movements. With its divine epistolary authority and heavenly sevenfold “collection,” the Apocalypse attempts to exceed and denigrate Pauline authority in the Christ-movement, and it elevates a Jewish Christ-devotion based in priestly apocalyptic traditions. In the end, we can see John of Patmos both as a competitor to the Pauline tradition and as a witness to the earliest circulation of Pauline collections.
The Study of Magic by David Frankfurter
Preternature, 2021
In Mediterranean antiquity the ritual acts of binding and charming were often associated with ord... more In Mediterranean antiquity the ritual acts of binding and charming were often associated with ordinary domestic tasks reoriented through accompanying incantations and sometimes the adjustment of the task’s gestures. Drawing on theories of ritualization (Bell, Humphrey and Laidlaw) and extending the classical evidence with medieval and modern comparative materials, this paper addresses how mundane economic practices are brought into service for magical performance. Ritualization highlights the process by which a domestic “agent” can isolate and transform some particular element or stage in an overall activity (clothes-making, cooking) to reflect a sense of stipulation, of traditional and efficacious action, and thus reorient the isolated domestic task for curse or binding charms.
History of Religions, 2021
Cultures in the Roman Mediterranean world, including Christianity, conceptualized their most valu... more Cultures in the Roman Mediterranean world, including Christianity, conceptualized their most valuable and potent ceremonial elements not only through the occasionally learned abstraction or larger social categories but by imagining their perversion by others: sometimes witches or savages, sometimes intimate, conspiratorial enemies, sometimes evil heathens and debauched heretics. These concerns with dangerous alterity cluster around areas of culture and practice that can be generalized as religion and that point to a tentative, discursive concept of religion.
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2015
Review of Nongbri, Before Religion (2013). For more on the challenge of defining "religion" fo... more Review of Nongbri, Before Religion (2013). For more on the challenge of defining "religion" for ancient and late antique cultures see "Religion in the Mirror of the Other" (2021)
Comparer en histoire des religions antiques: Controverses et propositions
Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 10
Studies in Late Antiquity, 2024
The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Secrecy, 2022
Journal of Early Christian History, 2020
This article addresses a pattern in the representation of the spaces of heathen practice in late ... more This article addresses a pattern in the representation of the spaces of heathen practice in late antique Christian literature and in the conceptualisation of a necessary response to those spaces. I argue that Christian authors came to regard both temple structures and homes as suspicious enclosures, potentially concealing nefarious practices that could harm civic order and fortune. This view developed out of both a progressive suspicion of the domestic sphere in late antique Christian culture as harbouring heathen and heretical devotion, and a broader Roman suspicion of the Near Eastern temple, its architecture, and its secret priestly activities within. Such temples were constructed from early antiquity to exclude outsiders and to privilege a priestly cult within, unlike Roman temples that visibly framed the main cult image.
As a way of getting beyond the vague category "Jewish Christianity," this paper looks at two type... more As a way of getting beyond the vague category "Jewish Christianity," this paper looks at two types of "continuous communities" that seem to have integrated Christian ideas into Jewish visionary traditions during the second and third centuries CE: one prophetic (Rev, Ascension of Isaiah) and the other priestly/messianic (Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs).
This paper addresses the great diversity of female figurines produced during the Christian period... more This paper addresses the great diversity of female figurines produced during the Christian period (iv–vii ce) in Egypt, from Aswan to Karanis to the Abu Mina pilgrimage city. While not documented in any texts, by their sheer number the figurines offer important evidence of local religious practices performed under the aegis of Christianity (e.g., at saints’ shrines) yet without any ostensible connection to Christian liturgy or mythology. Their usage seems to have been predominantly votive, signifying a desired procreative body to deposit in hope, while the diversity of figurines points to an autochthonous, rather than imported or imposed, ritual tradition. The paper, part of a larger project on the local sites of Christianization, uses these figurines and their forms to reconstruct the iconographic strategies of the workshop, the ritual procedures of the client or ritual subject (at shrine or tomb), and the nature of domestic altars as stages for images.
Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 2
People's History of Christianity, vol. 2
Vigiliae Christianae 44/2
Church History and Religious Culture 86 (2006)
Harvard Theological Review, 2023
While scholars have traditionally taken Revelation’s “letters to the seven churches” (Rev 2–3) as... more While scholars have traditionally taken Revelation’s “letters to the seven churches” (Rev 2–3) as documentation for the experiences of the Christ-movement in those cities, this article argues that the letters amount to a fictional device—that the Apocalypse appropriates epistolary forms in response to the increasing authority of early Pauline collections among the late first-century Asia Minor Christ-movements. With its divine epistolary authority and heavenly sevenfold “collection,” the Apocalypse attempts to exceed and denigrate Pauline authority in the Christ-movement, and it elevates a Jewish Christ-devotion based in priestly apocalyptic traditions. In the end, we can see John of Patmos both as a competitor to the Pauline tradition and as a witness to the earliest circulation of Pauline collections.
Preternature, 2021
In Mediterranean antiquity the ritual acts of binding and charming were often associated with ord... more In Mediterranean antiquity the ritual acts of binding and charming were often associated with ordinary domestic tasks reoriented through accompanying incantations and sometimes the adjustment of the task’s gestures. Drawing on theories of ritualization (Bell, Humphrey and Laidlaw) and extending the classical evidence with medieval and modern comparative materials, this paper addresses how mundane economic practices are brought into service for magical performance. Ritualization highlights the process by which a domestic “agent” can isolate and transform some particular element or stage in an overall activity (clothes-making, cooking) to reflect a sense of stipulation, of traditional and efficacious action, and thus reorient the isolated domestic task for curse or binding charms.
Arethusa, 2020
Several embarrassing incidents at the 2019 Society of Classical Studies conference showed how far... more Several embarrassing incidents at the 2019 Society of Classical Studies conference showed how far classics (and other academic fields oriented towards western antiquity) must go to demonstrate both relevance and openness to minority cultures (Pettit 2019). This paper focuses on the persistent use of a particular term, “Voodoo Doll,” to classify certain artifacts and argues that it is both fundamentally misleading in the history of its applications and especially egregious in our modern context: that is, the opening of classical studies to scholars of African, Hispanic, and other ethnic heritages. For a term that gratuitously and erroneously exploits Afro-Caribbean religion epitomizes the sort of thoughtless language that has marginalized young scholars from minority cultures. In fact, using Voodoo Doll not only exploits caricatures of Afro-Caribbean religion, it maintains a fundamental error in the interpretation of ancient ritual figurines: the assumption of a primitive
“law of sympathy.” This paper will review current scholarship on ancient
ritual figurines, including some penetrated by nails, and then discuss the
historical sense of Voodoo Doll and its modern origins, all to plead for the elimination of this term in scholarship on ancient ritual artifacts.
Leiden: E. J. Brill [Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, vol. 189], 2019
In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meanin... more In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic seeks to advance the discussion by separating out three topics essential to the very idea of magic. The three major sections of this volume address (1) indigenous terminologies for ambiguous or illicit ritual in antiquity; (2) the ancient texts, manuals, and artifacts commonly designated “magical” or used to represent ancient magic; and (3) a series of contexts, from the written word to materiality itself, to which the term “magic” might usefully pertain.
The individual essays in this volume cover most of Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquity, with essays by both established and emergent scholars of ancient religions.
In a burgeoning field of “magic studies” trying both to preserve and to justify critically the category itself, this volume brings new clarity and provocative insights. This will be an indispensable resource to all interested in magic in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, ancient Greece and Rome, Early Christianity and Judaism, Egypt through the Christian period, and also comparative and critical theory.
Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, 2019
How should we conceptualize "magic" in antiquity? This is the keynote essay for the Guide to t... more How should we conceptualize "magic" in antiquity? This is the keynote essay for the Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic.
Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, 2019
Can we apply the term "magic" to verbal expressions, and if so, what kind?
Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, 2019
This is a revision and updating of my 1994 "The Magic of Writing and the Writing of Magic" (Helio... more This is a revision and updating of my 1994 "The Magic of Writing and the Writing of Magic" (Helios vol. 21)
Helios, 1994
This paper has been revised/updated in the 2019 Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, available above
Many cultures regard particular stories as not only essential to hear at certain times of the yea... more Many cultures regard particular stories as not only essential to hear at certain times of the year but efficacious: as capable of blessing the hearers, bringing together the community, and acting in some positive and material way on the audience. At the same time, ancient manuscripts, as well as students of living cultures, such as folklorists, give evidence of healers and other ritual specialists adept at improvising on official religious narratives, at telling stories about healings and victories that often use those same principal gods but in this case to heal or protect individuals. How are stories thus envisioned as acting on people, as transmitting a kind of magical power? In this chapter, we look at the essential religious features of the performance of narrative and how recitation itself is traditionally imagined as bringing a power into the world. We look at the category " myth " as the repository of ideas, values, traditions, and heroes in which a magical power is imagined to reside and from which expert storytellers weave narratives in performance. And we look at the category historiola, the " little stories " that ritual specialists recite as the mythical basis of ritual efficacy—a story that narrates power, as it were, into the body of a suffering patient. When they tell, or inscribe, or most often sing historiolae, they conjure the magical powers of the heroes of these stories and direct them to their clients' predicaments.
Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen und Konstruktionen
Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religion 5
Numen-international Review for The History of Religions, 2003
Religion, 1994
... Wliere once this rumor lived only in the fantasies and exhortations of sectarian ministers an... more ... Wliere once this rumor lived only in the fantasies and exhortations of sectarian ministers and their audiences, the Satanic conspiracy rumor became epidemic with the broadcasting of Geraldo R.ivera's ... Dodds, ER, Pagan and Christian in an Age of./lnxiety, New York, Norton 1965 ...