Late Antique Latin Hagiography, Truth and Fiction: Trends in Scholarship (original) (raw)
The Ancient Novel and Early Christian and Jewish Narratives: Fictional Intersections, ed. by Marília P. Futre Pinheiro, Judith Perkins, Richard Pervo, 2012
This innovative collection explores the vital role played by fictional narratives in Christian and Jewish self-fashioning in the early Roman imperial period. Employing a diversity of approaches, including cultural studies, feminist, philological, and narratological, expert scholars from six countries offer twelve essays on Christian fictions or fictionalized texts and one essay on Aseneth. All the papers were originally presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Ancient Novel in Lisbon Portugal in 2008. The papers emphasize historical contextualization and comparative methodologies and will appeal to all those interested in early Christianity, the Ancient novel, Roman imperial history, feminist studies, and canonization processes.
https://www.barkhuis.nl/product\_info.php?products\_id=276, 2021
Following Splendide Mendax and Animo Decipiendi?, this is the latest installment of an ongoing inquiry, conducted by scholars in numerous countries, into how the ancient world-its literature and culture, its history and art-appears when viewed through the lens of fakes and forgeries, sincerities and authenticities, genuine signatures and pseudepigrapha. How does scholarship tell the truth if evidence doesn't? But fabula docet: The falsum does not simply make the great, annoying stone before the door of the truth (otherwise this here would really be a "council of antiquarians and paleographers"). The falsum makes a delicate, fine tissue. It allows the verum to shine through, in nuances and reliefs that were less noticeable without its counterpart, really tied at the head. And, treated differentiated, it becomes even itself perlucidum, shines out with "hidden values."
M. P. Futre Pinheiro, J. Perkins, R. Pervo (eds.), The Ancient Novel and the Early Christian and Jewish Narrative: Fictional Intersections, pp. 139-152., 2013
Since the early twentieth century, scholars have noted that the Christian Apocryphal Acts bear a striking thematic and narrative resemblance to the ancient Greek novels. 2 The pervasive similarities and parallels between the two are not surprising given that not only do both feature the same geographic and cultural context -the late antique Hellenic world -but also that both corpora reveal as well as examine the social concerns of the period for a particular audience: the novel for urban élites, and the Apocrypha for the emerging Christians. 3 Both were often presumed to have had a predominantly female readership due to the unprecedented role women play in their narratives. 4 It is generally assumed that the Apocryphal Acts were most probably influenced by the ancient Greek novel, since the writers of these (later) Christian texts appear to have adopted and applied novelistic topoi and themes, as well as rhetorical techniques. 5 Recent scholarship on the intersec------1 I would like to thank Froma Zeitlin for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this paper. I am also grateful to Scott F. Johnson as well as to the audience present at the 'Ancient Novel and Early Christian Narrative: Intersections' panel at ICAN IV. 2 Von Dobschütz 1902 emphasizes that the resemblances between the Apocryphal Acts and the novel are 'quite apparent', especially 'in the accounts of threatened chastity and its preservation'.
https://www.barkhuis.nl/product\_info.php?products\_id=240, 2018
any new and fruitful avenues of investigation open up when scholars consider forgery as a creative act rather than a crime. We invited authors to contribute work without imposing any restrictions beyond a willingness to consider new approaches to the subject of ancient fakes, forgeries and questions of authenticity. The result is this volume, in which our aim is to display some of the many possibilities available to scholarship. The exposure of fraud and the pursuit of truth may still be valid scholarly goals, but they implicitly demand that we confront the status of any text as a focal point for matters of belief and conviction. Recent approaches to forgery have begun to ask new questions, some intended purely for the sake of debate: Ought we to consider any author to have some inherent authenticity that precludes the possibility of a forger's successful parody? If every fake text has a real context, what can be learned about the cultural circumstances which give rise to forgeries? If every real text can potentially engender a parallel history of fakes, what can this alternative narrative teach us? What epistemological prejudices can lead us to swear a fake is genuine, or dismiss the real thing as inauthentic? Following Splendide Mendax, this is the latest installment of an ongoing inquiry, conducted by scholars in numerous countries, into how the ancient world-its literature and culture, its history and art-appears when viewed through the lens of fakes and forgeries, sincerities and authenticities, genuine signatures and pseudepigrapha. How does scholarship tell the truth if evidence doesn't? As the Cyclops is munching on the comrades of Odysseus, is he lulled into thinking that any creatures so easily deceived must be too stupid to accomplish meaningful deception themselves? Sentimental tradition reads the Odyssey and identifies the blind bard Demodokos, singing his tales at the court of Alkinoos, to be Homer's own self-portrait. But what if we thought about the blind Cyclops in the same way? How does scholarship evaluate the truth con
Antike Mythologie in christlichen Kontexten der Spätantike
2015
Myth, the stories of gods and heroes,s tories understood to hover somewhere in the grey area between the whiteblaze of truth and the black hole of falsehood,was omnipresent in the visual world of the laterR oman Empire.¹ In places public and private; in media as diverse as sculpture and textiles;a nd in scales rangingf rom the minute to the monumental,g ods and heroes disported themselvesw ith varyingd egrees of decorum as here at aleo fs ylvan revelry wovet hrough the border of silken hem, and there ag atheringo fs tatelyO lympians graced the porticoes of ap ublic space. In its ubiquity myth wasu nremarkable; except,that is, for the earliest Christian apologists who used it as the centerpieceintheir arguments against polytheistic belief and practice. Fors econd-a nd third-century commentators such as Tatian (c. 120-c. 180), Athenagoras (c. 133-c. 190), and Tertullian (c. 160-c. 225), myth, whethere ncountered throught he sounds andc adences of poetry or thes hapesa nd colors of images,tookcenterstage as it encapsulatedthe errorthatwas Romanbelief andp ractice. Thus,a ccording to Tertullian,w ho himselfl ookedt ot he authorityo f Varro(116-27 B.C.) in structuringhis analysis,m ythwas problematicinthatitrooted theunderstandingofthe gods in thequicksandsofphilosophic argumentationand poetic compositionwitht he former,p hilosophy, offering only theu ncertainty of conjecture,the latter,poetry,merefable.² Myth was, in other words, an affrontt otruth.Ina like vein Tatian observed that tales of divine metamorphoses, such as that of theaquiline Zeus in pursuit of thec omelyG anymede, simply beggared imagination.³ As well, thev eryd efinitiono fd ivinityt heyo ffered wass uspect,a si ts howedt he immortals caught in thew eb of humanemotions andt he impermanence of humanexperience.⁴ Herodotus(2.23.1;2.45.1)and Thucydides (1.22.4)define myth as anarrative that is not verifiable. As such it stands in contrast to history.Inthe fourth century Sallustius, De disetmundo (On the gods and the world),3states unequivocallyt hat myth treats of the divine. On the problems of modernd efinitions and terminologywith respect to the classical world see F. Graf, "Myth" in DNP 9. 444-63. See 452-63 in this same article for an overview of Greek and Roman definitions as they developed between the sixth century B.C. and late antiquity.G rafd efines myth as "at raditional narrative of collective significance".This essaylayers this basic definition with the ancient understanding of myth as story that is fictitious and implausible. As such it is associated with poetry and seen as distinct from history.S ee Graf: 445. See generallyT ertullian, Ad nationes,2.1-10.Section 2.1takesupthe tripartiteclassification of the discussionofthe gods set out in Varro'streatise on the divine: their physical nature, which he states is the property of philosophical speculation; their associated myths,t he provenanceo fp oetry;a nd their veneration by different populations. Tertullian argues that the approachi sweakasp hilosophy deals onlyw ith speculation and poetry with foolish ideas.
http://www.barkhuis.nl/product\_info.php?products\_id=211, 2016
Scholars for centuries have regarded fakes and forgeries chiefly as an opportunity for exposing and denouncing deceit, rather than appreciating the creative activity necessary for such textual imposture. But shouldn’t we be more curious about what’s spurious? Many of these long-neglected texts merit serious reappraisal, when considered as artifacts with a value beyond mere authenticity. We do not have to be fooled by a forgery to find it fascinating, when even the intention to deceive can remind us how easy it is form beliefs about texts. The greater difficulty is that once beliefs have been formed by one text, it is impossible to approach the next without preconceptions potentially disastrous for scholarship. The exposure of fraud and the pursuit of truth may still be valid scholarly goals, but they implicitly demand that we confront the status of any text as a focal point for matters of belief and conviction. Recent approaches to forgery have begun to ask new questions, some intended purely for the sake of debate: Ought we to consider any author to have some inherent authenticity that precludes the possibility of a forger's successful parody? If every fake text has a real context, what can be learned about the cultural circumstances which give rise to forgeries? If every real text can potentially engender a parallel history of fakes, what can this alternative narrative teach us? What epistemological prejudices can lead us to swear a fake is genuine, or dismiss the real thing as inauthentic? Many new and fruitful avenues of investigation open up when scholars consider forgery as a creative act rather than a crime. We invited authors to contribute work without imposing any restrictions beyond a willingness to consider new approaches to the subject of ancient fakes and forgeries,. The result is this volume, in which our aim is to display some of the many possibilities available to scholarship when the forger is regarded as “splendide mendax”— splendidly untruthful.
Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus
While the New Testament offers the most extensive evidence for the existence of the historical Jesus, the writings are subject to a number of conditions that have dictated both the form and content of the traditions they have preserved. These conditions did not disappear with the writing of the first gospel, nor even with the eventual formation of the New Testament canon. They were expressly addressed by Christian writers in the second and third century who saw an incipient mythicism as a threat to the integrity of the message about Jesus. The history of this controversy is long, complex, and decisive with respect to the -question‖ of Jesus.