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Books by Nicola Denzey Lewis
Discovered in Egypt in 1945, the fascinating and challenging Nag Hammadi writings forever changed... more Discovered in Egypt in 1945, the fascinating and challenging Nag Hammadi writings forever changed our understanding of early Christianity. State-of-the-art and the only volume of its kind, Introduction to "Gnosticism": Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds guides students through the most significant of the Nag Hammadi texts. Employing an exceptionally lucid and accessible writing style, Nicola Denzey Lewis groups the texts by theme and genre, places them in the broader context of the ancient world, and reveals their most inscrutable mysteries.
Ideal for use in courses in Early Christianity/Origins of Christianity, Christianity to 1500, Gnostic Gospels, Gnosticism, Early Christian Writings, Orthodoxy and Heresy, and New Testament Studies, Introduction to "Gnosticism" is enhanced by numerous pedagogical features, including images of the manuscripts, study and discussion questions, annotated bibliographies, tables, diagrams, and a glossary.
n "Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity," Denzey Lewis explores the rhetor... more n "Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity," Denzey Lewis explores the rhetoric of "enslavement to fate" in the intellectual history of the 2nd century C.E., which she argues is differently articulated by ancient authors but to similar rhetorical ends.
The bone gatherers found in the annals and legends of the early Roman Catholic Church were women ... more The bone gatherers found in the annals and legends of the early Roman Catholic Church were women who collected the bodies of martyred saints to give them a proper burial. They have come down to us as deeply resonant symbols of grief: from the women who anointed Jesus's crucified body in the gospels to the Pietà, we are accustomed to thinking of women as natural mourners, caring for the body in all its fragility and expressing our deepest sorrow.
But to think of women bone gatherers merely as mourners of the dead is to limit their capacity to stand for something more significant. In fact, Denzey argues that the bone gatherers are the mythic counterparts of historical women of substance and means-women who, like their pagan sisters, devoted their lives and financial resources to the things that mattered most to them: their families, their marriages, and their religion. We find their sometimes splendid burial chambers in the catacombs of Rome, but until Denzey began her research for The Bone Gatherers, the monuments left to memorialize these women and their contributions to the Church went largely unexamined.
The Bone Gatherers introduces us to once-powerful women who had, until recently, been lost to history—from the sorrowing mothers and ghastly brides of pagan Rome to the child martyrs and women sponsors who shaped early Christianity. It was often only in death that ancient women became visible—through the buildings, burial sites, and art constructed in their memory—and Denzey uses this archaeological evidence, along with ancient texts, to resurrect the lives of several fourth-century women.
Late Antiquity by Nicola Denzey Lewis
Creating Religions By Historiography. Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 20/1 , 2018
At some point in late antiquity, most scholars believe, Christians reversed the powerful valence ... more At some point in late antiquity, most scholars believe, Christians reversed the powerful valence of death pollution and considered corpses and bones to be sacred. The rise of the 'Cult of the Saints' or 'cult of relics' is widely accepted as a curious social phenomenon that characterized late antiquity. This paper argues that although present elsewhere in the late Roman Empire, no such 'corporeal turn' happened in Rome. The prevailing assumption that it did-fostered by the apologetic concerns of early modern Catholic historiography-has led us to gloss over important evidence to the contrary, to read our own assumptions into our extant textual, material , and archaeological sources. As a 'case study', this paper considers the so-called 'Crypt of the Popes' in the catacombs of Callixtus, which is universally presented unproblematically as an authentic burial chamber attesting to an age of persecution and the strength of Catholic apostolic succession. This paper argues, by contrast, that the chamber is not what it seems; it is, rather, a case of early modern historio-graphical artifice masquerading as late antique Roman Christianity.
Early Medieval Europe 26/4, 2018
Death et al by Nicola Denzey Lewis
Published in The Gift in Antiquity, ed. Michael Satlow (London: Wiley Blackwell, 2013)
Gnosticism by Nicola Denzey Lewis
Die Nag-Hammadi-Schriften in der Literatur- und Theologiegeschichte des frühen, 2017
Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity, 2018
Beyond Duty: Religious Professionals in the Roman Empire, 2017
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2009
Discovered in Egypt in 1945, the fascinating and challenging Nag Hammadi writings forever changed... more Discovered in Egypt in 1945, the fascinating and challenging Nag Hammadi writings forever changed our understanding of early Christianity. State-of-the-art and the only volume of its kind, Introduction to "Gnosticism": Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds guides students through the most significant of the Nag Hammadi texts. Employing an exceptionally lucid and accessible writing style, Nicola Denzey Lewis groups the texts by theme and genre, places them in the broader context of the ancient world, and reveals their most inscrutable mysteries.
Ideal for use in courses in Early Christianity/Origins of Christianity, Christianity to 1500, Gnostic Gospels, Gnosticism, Early Christian Writings, Orthodoxy and Heresy, and New Testament Studies, Introduction to "Gnosticism" is enhanced by numerous pedagogical features, including images of the manuscripts, study and discussion questions, annotated bibliographies, tables, diagrams, and a glossary.
n "Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity," Denzey Lewis explores the rhetor... more n "Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity," Denzey Lewis explores the rhetoric of "enslavement to fate" in the intellectual history of the 2nd century C.E., which she argues is differently articulated by ancient authors but to similar rhetorical ends.
The bone gatherers found in the annals and legends of the early Roman Catholic Church were women ... more The bone gatherers found in the annals and legends of the early Roman Catholic Church were women who collected the bodies of martyred saints to give them a proper burial. They have come down to us as deeply resonant symbols of grief: from the women who anointed Jesus's crucified body in the gospels to the Pietà, we are accustomed to thinking of women as natural mourners, caring for the body in all its fragility and expressing our deepest sorrow.
But to think of women bone gatherers merely as mourners of the dead is to limit their capacity to stand for something more significant. In fact, Denzey argues that the bone gatherers are the mythic counterparts of historical women of substance and means-women who, like their pagan sisters, devoted their lives and financial resources to the things that mattered most to them: their families, their marriages, and their religion. We find their sometimes splendid burial chambers in the catacombs of Rome, but until Denzey began her research for The Bone Gatherers, the monuments left to memorialize these women and their contributions to the Church went largely unexamined.
The Bone Gatherers introduces us to once-powerful women who had, until recently, been lost to history—from the sorrowing mothers and ghastly brides of pagan Rome to the child martyrs and women sponsors who shaped early Christianity. It was often only in death that ancient women became visible—through the buildings, burial sites, and art constructed in their memory—and Denzey uses this archaeological evidence, along with ancient texts, to resurrect the lives of several fourth-century women.
Creating Religions By Historiography. Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 20/1 , 2018
At some point in late antiquity, most scholars believe, Christians reversed the powerful valence ... more At some point in late antiquity, most scholars believe, Christians reversed the powerful valence of death pollution and considered corpses and bones to be sacred. The rise of the 'Cult of the Saints' or 'cult of relics' is widely accepted as a curious social phenomenon that characterized late antiquity. This paper argues that although present elsewhere in the late Roman Empire, no such 'corporeal turn' happened in Rome. The prevailing assumption that it did-fostered by the apologetic concerns of early modern Catholic historiography-has led us to gloss over important evidence to the contrary, to read our own assumptions into our extant textual, material , and archaeological sources. As a 'case study', this paper considers the so-called 'Crypt of the Popes' in the catacombs of Callixtus, which is universally presented unproblematically as an authentic burial chamber attesting to an age of persecution and the strength of Catholic apostolic succession. This paper argues, by contrast, that the chamber is not what it seems; it is, rather, a case of early modern historio-graphical artifice masquerading as late antique Roman Christianity.
Early Medieval Europe 26/4, 2018
Published in The Gift in Antiquity, ed. Michael Satlow (London: Wiley Blackwell, 2013)
Die Nag-Hammadi-Schriften in der Literatur- und Theologiegeschichte des frühen, 2017
Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity, 2018
Beyond Duty: Religious Professionals in the Roman Empire, 2017
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2009
Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36/3 (2014): 240-250.
This review article applauds Simon Gathercole and Mark Goodacre for presenting strong arguments i... more This review article applauds Simon Gathercole and Mark Goodacre for presenting strong arguments in favour of the dependence of the Gospel of Thomas on the Synoptic Gospels. Their shared emphasis on Thomas as a second-century text drawing on Synoptic tradition does, nevertheless, raise wider questions about the author's aims and the purpose of the text, whose series of sayings were probably intended as a medium to unlock the secrets to eternal life. A redaction-critical approach to Thomas can also open up a whole new field of questions about its setting and transmission history.
Journal of Biblical Literature 133/2 (2014): 397-417
Co-authored by Justine Ariel Blount
The Journal of Theological Studies, 2014
Each year in Sicily, Sicilians commemorate the life and death of Saint Agnes, a young woman marty... more Each year in Sicily, Sicilians commemorate the life and death of Saint Agnes, a young woman martyred in antiquity, by consuming small cakes in the shape of a female breast. How did such a curious practice-eating a specific food shaped like a female body part-come to commemorate a late antique martyrdom, and when? This paper considers the curious conflation of bodies-particularly martyrial bodies-and food in late antique Christian martyrial legends, and explores how gender and consumption work together in text and literature to produce a distinctive preoccupation with body parts, fluids, meat, milk, and bread-sometimes positive, sometimes negative, and occasionally meant to evoke disgust or even delight. Each February 5th in the city of Catania, Sicilians commemorate their patron saint, Agatha. The heady mix of pious Catholic ritual-extravagant and deeply felt-and raucous street celebrations provides rich opportunities for considering "lived religion." The festival is resolutely modern in many ways-it continues unabated in twenty-first-century Italy-and yet, it centers around a young woman believed to have been martyred in 251 CE, linking modernity with antiquity. How a modern Italian community evokes the collective memory of their patron saint is a fascinating and huge topic, albeit one that I cannot fully explore here in a project dedicated to antiquity. Nevertheless, this contribution to LAR's final meeting conference volume will focus on one particular element of this Catanian feast. During these festal days, in memory of Agatha's sexual mutilation at the hands of her torturers, Sicilians bake and consume mimetic food: small cherry-topped iced cakes known as minne di Sant'Agata or, in Sicilian dialect , minnuzzi di Sant'Ajta-Saint Agatha's little breasts. Why do Catanians "eat" Agatha? How do they do so, and why? Historian Cristina Mazzoni, in her wonderful book on women, cooking, and religious behaviors , terms the minne "edible icons of sexual sadomasochism" whose white icing "highlights rather than covers the perversion they evoke" (Mazzoni 2005, 81). Is this not a curious way of commemorating a saint-to make her severed sexual
Historia Religionum 10, 2018
In Janet Spittler, ed., The Narrative Self in Early Christianity, 51-72. SBL Writings from the Greco-Roman World Supplemental Series. Society for Biblical Literature Press, 2019
Narratives of Time and Gender in Antiquity, 2020