Papers by David Frankfurter
Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism
Journal of Biblical Literature, 1999
Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept by Brent Nongbri
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2015
“genuine” essence of womanhood—or, more specifically, the essence of womanly piety—that Lubinsky ... more “genuine” essence of womanhood—or, more specifically, the essence of womanly piety—that Lubinsky finds in the protagonists from start to finish in the Lives? Lubinsky stresses that the protagonists’ holiness—when still daughters, wives, and mothers—was characterized by their extraordinary virtue and ascetic aspirations, which remain consistent throughout the narratives. Even as they adopt masculinized personae, we should regard the persistence of their holiness to be womanly, since it is not essentially new nor essentially tied to the new masculine contexts in which it has been relocated (221). Readers who see more gender fluidity and ambivalence in the Lives, who understand the registers of late ancient gender to be interconnected (even when contradictory), and who perceive the hagiographers to be playing with these registers of gender in manifold ways may find Lubinsky’s discussion of gender in the Lives to be too rigid and tidy. Moreover, readers who understand gendered performances, as well as the gendering of virtue, spiritual progress, and asceticism, to be more integral to the construction of early Christian identity may not share Lubinsky’s conclusions. That said, she provides us with a thought-provoking argument sure to stimulate further discussion of these intriguing texts. Her survey of the scholarship will also serve as a useful resource. At times, though, I thought she oversimplified or misrepresented the scholarship against which she positions herself (e.g., Anson [51] and dress theorist Terence Turner [113–14]). I was also disappointed that some pertinent scholarship was noticeably absent (e.g. Burrus [2004]) and, although I understand that the lag time between manuscript submission and publication can be quite long, that relevant scholarship since 2006 is mentioned only in passing or missing entirely (e.g., Frilingos [2007], Krawiec [2009], Upson-Saia [2010, 2011]). Regardless, Lubinsky has produced an accessible and well-written book that will be of interest to scholars of early Christianity, as well as to dress historians. Kristi Upson-Saia, Occidental College
David Frankfurter - 1936 Gli Albori Del Nazismo in Svizzera: Naqam
La storia di David Frankfurter e per certi aspetti comune a quella di molti ebrei durante il trag... more La storia di David Frankfurter e per certi aspetti comune a quella di molti ebrei durante il tragico periodo nazista ma, nel suo piccolo, peculiare: David Frankfurter si rese infatti conto molto prima della grande maggioranza degli ebrei, e non solo di essi, del pericolo che incombeva sul mondo in generale e sul suo popolo in particolare, sentendosi in dovere di agire con i mezzi limitati di cui disponeva per arginare quel pericolo, anche a rischio della propria vita, o quanto meno del carcere, come infatti avvenne. David Frankfurter (1) nacque il 9 luglio 1909 a Daruvar in Jugoslavia, terzo figlio di una coppia di ebrei osservanti che vantava origini antiche, quali il famoso rabbino di Francoforte sul Meno, Morenu haRav R. Samuel Schotten haKohen. Continuando la tradizione familiare il padre era diventato rabbino della piccola comunita ebraica locale di origine unghe-
Studies in late antiquity, Feb 1, 2021
Let me begin by laying out the downside of the term syncretism. Syncretism seems to propose two (... more Let me begin by laying out the downside of the term syncretism. Syncretism seems to propose two (or more) discrete religious systems, like Christianity and Heathenism, or Judaism and Hellenism, or Persia and Greece. And this is problematic because none of these systems or traditions was ever discrete and pure. Syncretism thus relies on a romantic fantasy of the pure culture: apostolic Christianity, biblical or rabbinic Judaism, Pharaonic Egypt. Syncretism, then, implies mixtures that are ad hoc, base and commercial, intellectually unsophisticated, travesties and distortions of those pure traditions. The pure religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Platonic Hellenism gain only cheap mystification, even pollution, when mixed with Persian or Berber traditions. Thus the very epitomes of syncretism in Late Antiquity can be found in the Greek Magical Papyri, in Mystery Cults like Mithraism, in pseudo-intellectual ritual schemes like Hermeticism and Gnosticism, and in those latter-day Christianities that used to strike Protestant scholars as rife with "pagan survivals": Greek Orthodoxy, Italian Catholicism, Haitian Vodou, and so on. 1 So overall, syncretism mistakenly imagines pure religious traditions in haphazard collapse and regards their mixture in terms of
Tabitha in the Apocalypse of Elijah
The Journal of Theological Studies, 1990
Ce n'est probablement pas a la Tabitha d'Actes 9 que nous renvoie celle de l'Apocalyp... more Ce n'est probablement pas a la Tabitha d'Actes 9 que nous renvoie celle de l'Apocalypse d'Elie, mais, comme l'a propose Rosenstiehl en 1972, a une deesse-scorpion Tabithet, epouse du dieu Horus. En faveur de cette identification, l'A. ajoute de nombreux temoignages empruntes a des formules de guerison et en association syncretiste avec le culte isiaque
The Interpenetration of Ritual Spaces in Late Antique Religions: An Overview
Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 2008
Rituals in the home, rituals in the square, rituals in the temple, the church, or the synagogue –... more Rituals in the home, rituals in the square, rituals in the temple, the church, or the synagogue – how do they infl uence each other? It used to be that the world of domestic piety was cast in terms of fertility, children, and hearth, the purview of women, or else (in Weberian terms) the heterodox thinking of maverick craftsmen and intellectuals.1 Civic piety then comprised public sacrifi ce, liturgical mysteries, high-minded theology, and the space of men. While there may be some truth to these broad contours, work on the character of piety across these domains has dissolved simplistic contrasts between public and private. Our now requisite attention to pilgrimage, festival, and procession has complicated the picture of public piety, while new studies on how domestic space was represented in Christian and rabbinic literature show the complex interpenetration of institutional ideology and domestic sphere. Th e home is not isolated from public religion but, as in rabbinic Judaism and ...
Making Amulets Christian: Artefacts Scribes, and Contexts. By Theodore de Bruyn. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. xx + 286 pp. $85.00 cloth
Church History, 2018
<i>Riot in Alexandria: Tradition and Group Dynamics in Late Antique Pagan and Christian Communities</i> (review)
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2011
K. B. STERN, WRITING ON THE WALL: GRAFFITI AND THE FORGOTTEN JEWS OF ANTIQUITY. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Pp. xxiii + 283, illus. isbn9780691161334. £27.00/US$35.00
Journal of Roman Studies, Nov 1, 2019
An Historian's View of the "Gospel of Judas
Near Eastern Archaeology, 2007
If we set aside the historical reconstruction of Jesus's last days as problematic in itself (... more If we set aside the historical reconstruction of Jesus's last days as problematic in itself (even given the relative antiquity of our earliest gospels) and the history of the vilification of the character Judas as a separate topic (one closely linked to the history of anti-Semitism), we are then left with a typical, yet fascinating, document of the late-second century of Christianity. This was a time, as historians know well, that Christian teachings were diversifying as quickly and creatively as Darwin's finches in the Galapagos, even while certain writers like Irenaeus of Lyons and Eusebius of Caesarea were insisting, speciously, on the essential unity of Christianity. We know of this diversity first from the testimony of various Christians of that time, like Origen and Clement of Alexandria, as well as from the many mysterious apocryphal texts preserved over the centuries in the Armenian, Ethiopian, Coptic, and Slavonic churches. But we also have come to know
The Binding of Antelopes: A Coptic Frieze and its Egyptian Religious Context*
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2004
In the collection of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Center there hangs a limestone frieze from a six... more In the collection of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Center there hangs a limestone frieze from a sixthor seventh-century monastic church (fig. 1). The frieze portrays a cross atop two antelopes, their bodies moving away from the cross, supporting it, while their heads turn towards it; beyond the antelopes are fruit trees; and beneath this scene spreads a border of three-lobed leaves. The frieze is one of a number of animal-decorated pieces that the original owner, Dikran Kelekian, attributed to unnamed monasteries at Sohag and the Fayyum, but the prominence and style of the antelopes resemble reliefs known to have come from El Minya.1 In his 1995 publication of this and other sculptural specimens in the Dumbarton Oaks collection, Gary Vikan labeled these antelopes “heraldic,” in the sense of decorative insignia, related to other friezes in which animals flank central symbols and in a pose reminiscent of frontal images of chariot processions.2 Also in the Kelekian collection a limestone...
Books, lists, and scribes in Early Christian Egypt
Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2013
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
Volume publié avec le soutien du Centre AnHiMA (UMR 8210), Paris et de l'Université de Chicago (D... more Volume publié avec le soutien du Centre AnHiMA (UMR 8210), Paris et de l'Université de Chicago (Divinity School) Couverture : Disque de bronze dédié à Zeus par un athlète après sa victoire au pentathlon à Olympie (255 e Olympiade). Musée d'Olympie. N o d'inventaire M 871 © Ministère grec de la culture, 7 e Éphorie des antiquités préhistoriques et classiques.
Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 10
Rituals in the home, rituals in the square, rituals in the temple, the church, or the synagogue -... more Rituals in the home, rituals in the square, rituals in the temple, the church, or the synagogue -how do they influence each other? It used to be that the world of domestic piety was cast in terms of fertility, children, and hearth, the purview of women, or else (in Weberian terms) the heterodox thinking of maverick craftsmen and intellectuals. Civic piety then comprised public sacrifice, liturgical mysteries, high-minded theology, and the space of men. While there may be some truth to these broad contours, work on the character of piety across these domains has dissolved simplistic contrasts between public and private. Our now requisite attention to pilgrimage, festival, and procession has complicated the picture of public piety, while new studies on how domestic space was represented in Christian and rabbinic literature show the complex interpenetration of institutional ideology and domestic sphere. The home is not isolated from public religion but, as in rabbinic Judaism and Manichaism, the place where religion is thought out, texts are exchanged, ideology is formulated, and individual piety modelled.
Christianization of the Ancient World by David Frankfurter
Studies in Late Antiquity, 2024
Africa and Byzantium is a sumptuous exhibition, essential for the scholar of late antique religio... more Africa and Byzantium is a sumptuous exhibition, essential for the scholar of late antique religion and culture, bringing together artifacts from Nubian excavations, Tunisian museums, Cairo's Coptic Museum, and the vital icon collection in St. Catherine's Monastery; important materials from the British Museum, Cleveland Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art itself; and manuscripts and papyri from Yale and the Morgan Library. The show proceeds through three sections: "Africa in Late Antiquity," which explores Egyptian, Nubian, and North African Christian cultures through about the seventh century; "Bright as the Sun: Africa after Byzantium," which focuses especially on Nubian, Egyptian, and Ethiopian wall paintings, icons, illuminated manuscripts, and other artifacts through about the sixteenth century; and "Legacies and Reflections," on the continuing post-Byzantine productions in Ethiopia to the present day (and in the last room, contemporary Ethiopian art that draws on traditional motifs and materials). As someone who tends to focus on local cultures, I entered the galleries with an excitement for the artifacts of Egyptian, Nubian, Ethiopian, and Tunisian Christianities but with some skepticism about these grand categories, Byzantium and Africa. The curators want "Byzantium" to suggest a global system of art and patronage from Late Antiquity on-the excitement 300
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.