Christine (Tina) Shepardson | University of Tennessee Knoxville (original) (raw)
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Papers by Christine (Tina) Shepardson
The Conversation, 2023
Historical reflection on the 2023 earthquake
Religious Violence in the Ancient World, 2020
Heirs of Roman Persecution, 2019
Church History, 2007
Scholars have long recognized that the theological arguments of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Naz... more Scholars have long recognized that the theological arguments of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa against their opponent Eunomius helped to shape the development of Christian orthodoxy, and thus Christian self-definition, in the late fourth-century Roman Empire. The cultural and theological significance of the strong anti-Judaizing rhetoric contained within these Cappadocian authors’ anti-Eunomian treatises, however, remains largely unexamined. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the critical role of anti-Judaizing rhetoric in the arguments that early Christian leaders Athanasius of Alexandria and Ephrem of Nisibis used against “Arian” Christian opponents in the middle of the fourth century, and the implications of this rhetoric for understanding early Christian-Jewish and intra-Christian relations. Scholars have yet to recognize, however, that anti-Judaizing rhetoric similarly helped to define the terms and consequences of the anti-Eunomian arguments mad...
Journal of Late Antiquity, 2009
Libanius’ Oration 24 and John Chrysostom’s On Babylas represent contemporaneous and competing eff... more Libanius’ Oration 24 and John Chrysostom’s On Babylas represent contemporaneous and competing efforts to reshape narrations of the emperor Julian and thus influence local and imperial politics fifteen years after his death. Following the emperor Valens’ death at the battle of Adrianople in 378, which echoed Julian’s death in battle in 363, Libanius and Chrysostom revived the memory of Julian in order to address the strength of the gods and define ideal imperial behavior as Theodosius I came to power. Reading these two texts in light of each other highlights the renewed importance that Julian’s legacy carried immediately following Valens’ death, and the late fourth-century implications of that legacy for Antiochene and imperial politics.
Journal of Late Antiquity, 2015
Teaching the historical study of the New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Te... more Teaching the historical study of the New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Tennessee requires creativity, confidence, and compassion. The forty-person upper-level “Introduction to the New Testament” course that I teach every year is my most challenging and most pedagogically interesting class, and also the most rewarding. My goal in this class is to make space for a variety of responses to the material while teaching the context and history of the New Testament texts as well as how to think critically about the politics of their interpretation. The challenge is to take the diverse passions that my students bring to the class and help them all to engage together critically with both the historical study of early Christianity and the politics of its interpretation that are so visible in the world around them.
... Christian Orthodoxy Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria Christine Shepardson Page 2. ... more ... Christian Orthodoxy Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria Christine Shepardson Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. Page 5. Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy Page 6. North American Patristics Society Patristic Monograph Series Volume 20 SERIES EDITOR Philip Rousseau The ...
Dealing with Difference: Christian Patterns of Response to Religious Rivalry in Late Antiquity and Beyond, ed. Geoffrey D. Dunn and Christine Shepardson, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum, vol. 129 (Tűbingen: Mohr Siebeck), 2021
University of California Press
Melania the Younger died more than a decade before the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) and the ensu... more Melania the Younger died more than a decade before the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) and the ensuing bitter conflicts between Chalcedonian and miaphysite Christians. Nevertheless, the Greek Vita by Gerontius portrays her as actively involved in numerous religious and political controversies surrounding bishop Nestorius preceding her death. This chapter argues that the historicity of her alleged anti-Nestorian activities in the Vita must remain in doubt. The anti-Nestorian Melania of the Greek Vita appears to support Gerontius’s miaphysite condemnation of the politically dominant Chalcedonian Christians, providing him with a useful weapon in the pressing Christological battles he faced following her death. While the anti-Nestorian stance Gerontius attributed to Melania remained orthodox in Greek Christianity, his anti-Chalcedonian views, which he considered the natural extension of Melania’s, did not. Gerontius’s Vita Melania thus serves as a microcosm of the complex and highly polit...
Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, 2020
This article discusses the ways in which my Introduction to the New Testament class at the Univer... more This article discusses the ways in which my Introduction to the New Testament class at the University of Tennessee engages with and offers students tools for understanding and participating in social activism, particularly around race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality, and class. In recent years I have added new readings and class projects to the syllabus explicitly to encourage students to consider ways in which interpretations influence our conversations on LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, and racial and economic justice. In addition to covering the early history and context of the New Testament texts, my course teaches students to recognize how readers' own embodied experiences affect their culturally contingent reading of these influential texts. The region of Appalachia is largely rural and economically depressed; deeply held conservative Protestant strains of Christianity pervade "the Bible belt" region, and Donald Trump won Appalachia easily in the 2016 presidential election. A new wave of student activism has developed on campus in response to recent national events and to the concurrent rise in polarizing rhetoric in our country. I demonstrate here some of the concrete ways I am adapting my classroom teaching about the New Testament to engage with these urgent local, regional, national, and global conversations and the activism they are inspiring.
Wabash Journal on Teaching, 2020
Hugoye, 2021
Anti-Chalcedonian Christians like John of Tella, Severus of Antioch, Philoxenos of Mabbug, and Jo... more Anti-Chalcedonian Christians like John of Tella, Severus of Antioch, Philoxenos of Mabbug, and John Rufus were concerned about orthodox Christians mingling with heretics. This essay argues that John of Tella combined narratives of heresy with those of bodily purity and pollution, such as those related to menstruation, to frame heretics as dangerous to orthodox Christians not only in their beliefs that could lure an unsuspecting Christian to accept heretical views, but in their very bodies whose proximity brought the threat of contamination. John integrated expectations of bodily purity and doctrinal orthodoxy in ways that suggested that heresy could physically contaminate, while Severus tried to calm his congregants’ fears about the same. The spread of COVID-19 and the global responses to it have heightened our awareness of the dynamics of fear and anxiety that can be produced by threats of physical contamination. The global pandemic in 2020 thus helps to clarify the power that the rhetoric of these sixth-century anti-Chalcedonian texts had to confront the spread of what John of Tella implied was the dangerous physical pollution of Christian heresy.
The story of Jonah and the repentance of the Ninevites has a rich history of interpretation in Je... more The story of Jonah and the repentance of the Ninevites has a rich history of interpretation in Jewish and Christian communities, and the Syriac Christian mmr on Jonah attributed to Ephrem proves particularly interesting in light of exegetical differences between the Yerushalmi and the Bavli. Like the Bavli, this Christian mmr describes the Ninevites' repentance in superlative terms, but in the Christian text high praise for their repentance leads directly to sharp contrasts between the praiseworthy gentile Ninevites and Jonah's sinful people. This mmr's anti-Jewish expansion of the Jonah story, side by side with the mmr's and Bavli's shared vulnerable uses of the Ninevites as superior role models for their own communities, attests to the intricate and unique complexities of " Christian " and " Jewish " biblical interpretation—and their relation to one another— in late antique Mesopotamia.
The Conversation, 2023
Historical reflection on the 2023 earthquake
Religious Violence in the Ancient World, 2020
Heirs of Roman Persecution, 2019
Church History, 2007
Scholars have long recognized that the theological arguments of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Naz... more Scholars have long recognized that the theological arguments of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa against their opponent Eunomius helped to shape the development of Christian orthodoxy, and thus Christian self-definition, in the late fourth-century Roman Empire. The cultural and theological significance of the strong anti-Judaizing rhetoric contained within these Cappadocian authors’ anti-Eunomian treatises, however, remains largely unexamined. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the critical role of anti-Judaizing rhetoric in the arguments that early Christian leaders Athanasius of Alexandria and Ephrem of Nisibis used against “Arian” Christian opponents in the middle of the fourth century, and the implications of this rhetoric for understanding early Christian-Jewish and intra-Christian relations. Scholars have yet to recognize, however, that anti-Judaizing rhetoric similarly helped to define the terms and consequences of the anti-Eunomian arguments mad...
Journal of Late Antiquity, 2009
Libanius’ Oration 24 and John Chrysostom’s On Babylas represent contemporaneous and competing eff... more Libanius’ Oration 24 and John Chrysostom’s On Babylas represent contemporaneous and competing efforts to reshape narrations of the emperor Julian and thus influence local and imperial politics fifteen years after his death. Following the emperor Valens’ death at the battle of Adrianople in 378, which echoed Julian’s death in battle in 363, Libanius and Chrysostom revived the memory of Julian in order to address the strength of the gods and define ideal imperial behavior as Theodosius I came to power. Reading these two texts in light of each other highlights the renewed importance that Julian’s legacy carried immediately following Valens’ death, and the late fourth-century implications of that legacy for Antiochene and imperial politics.
Journal of Late Antiquity, 2015
Teaching the historical study of the New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Te... more Teaching the historical study of the New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Tennessee requires creativity, confidence, and compassion. The forty-person upper-level “Introduction to the New Testament” course that I teach every year is my most challenging and most pedagogically interesting class, and also the most rewarding. My goal in this class is to make space for a variety of responses to the material while teaching the context and history of the New Testament texts as well as how to think critically about the politics of their interpretation. The challenge is to take the diverse passions that my students bring to the class and help them all to engage together critically with both the historical study of early Christianity and the politics of its interpretation that are so visible in the world around them.
... Christian Orthodoxy Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria Christine Shepardson Page 2. ... more ... Christian Orthodoxy Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria Christine Shepardson Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. Page 5. Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy Page 6. North American Patristics Society Patristic Monograph Series Volume 20 SERIES EDITOR Philip Rousseau The ...
Dealing with Difference: Christian Patterns of Response to Religious Rivalry in Late Antiquity and Beyond, ed. Geoffrey D. Dunn and Christine Shepardson, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum, vol. 129 (Tűbingen: Mohr Siebeck), 2021
University of California Press
Melania the Younger died more than a decade before the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) and the ensu... more Melania the Younger died more than a decade before the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) and the ensuing bitter conflicts between Chalcedonian and miaphysite Christians. Nevertheless, the Greek Vita by Gerontius portrays her as actively involved in numerous religious and political controversies surrounding bishop Nestorius preceding her death. This chapter argues that the historicity of her alleged anti-Nestorian activities in the Vita must remain in doubt. The anti-Nestorian Melania of the Greek Vita appears to support Gerontius’s miaphysite condemnation of the politically dominant Chalcedonian Christians, providing him with a useful weapon in the pressing Christological battles he faced following her death. While the anti-Nestorian stance Gerontius attributed to Melania remained orthodox in Greek Christianity, his anti-Chalcedonian views, which he considered the natural extension of Melania’s, did not. Gerontius’s Vita Melania thus serves as a microcosm of the complex and highly polit...
Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, 2020
This article discusses the ways in which my Introduction to the New Testament class at the Univer... more This article discusses the ways in which my Introduction to the New Testament class at the University of Tennessee engages with and offers students tools for understanding and participating in social activism, particularly around race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality, and class. In recent years I have added new readings and class projects to the syllabus explicitly to encourage students to consider ways in which interpretations influence our conversations on LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, and racial and economic justice. In addition to covering the early history and context of the New Testament texts, my course teaches students to recognize how readers' own embodied experiences affect their culturally contingent reading of these influential texts. The region of Appalachia is largely rural and economically depressed; deeply held conservative Protestant strains of Christianity pervade "the Bible belt" region, and Donald Trump won Appalachia easily in the 2016 presidential election. A new wave of student activism has developed on campus in response to recent national events and to the concurrent rise in polarizing rhetoric in our country. I demonstrate here some of the concrete ways I am adapting my classroom teaching about the New Testament to engage with these urgent local, regional, national, and global conversations and the activism they are inspiring.
Wabash Journal on Teaching, 2020
Hugoye, 2021
Anti-Chalcedonian Christians like John of Tella, Severus of Antioch, Philoxenos of Mabbug, and Jo... more Anti-Chalcedonian Christians like John of Tella, Severus of Antioch, Philoxenos of Mabbug, and John Rufus were concerned about orthodox Christians mingling with heretics. This essay argues that John of Tella combined narratives of heresy with those of bodily purity and pollution, such as those related to menstruation, to frame heretics as dangerous to orthodox Christians not only in their beliefs that could lure an unsuspecting Christian to accept heretical views, but in their very bodies whose proximity brought the threat of contamination. John integrated expectations of bodily purity and doctrinal orthodoxy in ways that suggested that heresy could physically contaminate, while Severus tried to calm his congregants’ fears about the same. The spread of COVID-19 and the global responses to it have heightened our awareness of the dynamics of fear and anxiety that can be produced by threats of physical contamination. The global pandemic in 2020 thus helps to clarify the power that the rhetoric of these sixth-century anti-Chalcedonian texts had to confront the spread of what John of Tella implied was the dangerous physical pollution of Christian heresy.
The story of Jonah and the repentance of the Ninevites has a rich history of interpretation in Je... more The story of Jonah and the repentance of the Ninevites has a rich history of interpretation in Jewish and Christian communities, and the Syriac Christian mmr on Jonah attributed to Ephrem proves particularly interesting in light of exegetical differences between the Yerushalmi and the Bavli. Like the Bavli, this Christian mmr describes the Ninevites' repentance in superlative terms, but in the Christian text high praise for their repentance leads directly to sharp contrasts between the praiseworthy gentile Ninevites and Jonah's sinful people. This mmr's anti-Jewish expansion of the Jonah story, side by side with the mmr's and Bavli's shared vulnerable uses of the Ninevites as superior role models for their own communities, attests to the intricate and unique complexities of " Christian " and " Jewish " biblical interpretation—and their relation to one another— in late antique Mesopotamia.