Saturday, March 7, 2026

The Theology of Arithmetic: Number Symbolism in Platonism and Early Christianity

  

In the second century, Valentinians and other gnosticizing Christians used numerical structures and symbols to describe God, interpret the Bible, and frame the universe. In this study of the controversy that resulted, Joel Kalvesmaki shows how earlier neo-Pythagorean and Platonist number symbolism provided the impetus for this theology of arithmetic, and describes the ways in which gnosticizing groups attempted to engage both the Platonist and Christian traditions. He explores the rich variety of number symbolism then in use, among both gnosticizing groups and their orthodox critics, demonstrating how those critics developed an alternative approach to number symbolism that would set the pattern for centuries to come. Arguing that the early dispute influenced the very tradition that inspired it, Kalvesmaki explains how, in the late third and early fourth centuries, numbers became increasingly important to Platonists, who engaged in arithmological constructions and disputes that mirrored the earlier Christian ones

Available for purchase in print via Harvard University Press.

Kalvesmaki, Joel. 2013. The Theology of Arithmetic: Number Symbolism in Platonism and Early Christianity. Hellenic Studies Series 59. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_KalvesmakiJ.The_Theology_of_Arithmetic.2013.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.

  
Posted by at 0 comments

Africa: Greek and Roman Perspectives from Homer to Apuleius

  

A sourcebook of selected excerpts used in conjunction with the Montclaire State University course, Africa in Classical Antiquity (HUMN 381). Made available here by permission of the author.

Use the following persistent identifier: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_JonesP.Africa.2016.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.

  
Posted by at 0 comments

Theocritean Pastoral: A Study in the Definition of Genre

Theocritean Pastoral: A Study in the Definition of Genre
Amy Edith Johnson
  
Curated Books

A thesis presented to the Department of Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Comparative Literature, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 1, 1980, published here by permission of the author.

Use the following persistent identifier: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_JohnsonAE.Theocritean_Pastoral.1980.

Copyright, Amy Edith Johnson. Published here with permission of the author.

  

 

Posted by at 0 comments

The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study

  

The Life and Miracles of Thekla offers a unique view on the reception of classical and early Christian literature in Late Antiquity. This study examines the Life and Miracles as an intricate example of Greek writing and attempts to situate the work amidst a wealth of similar literary forms from the classical world. The first half of the Life and Miracles is an erudite paraphrase of the famous second-century Acts of Paul and Thekla. The second half is a collection of forty-six miracles that Thekla worked before and during the composition of the collection.

This study represents a detailed investigation into the literary character of this ambitious Greek work from Late Antiquity.

Available for purchase in print via Harvard University Press.

Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald. 2006. The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study. Hellenic Studies Series 13. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Johnson.The_Life_and_Miracles_of_Thekla.2006.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.

  
Posted by at 0 comments

Friday, March 6, 2026

Der Begriff τέχνη bei Plato

Der Begriff τέχνη bei Plato 
Friedrich Bernhard Jeffré
  
Curated Books

Edited with a Foreword by Marco Romani Mistretta.

Inaugural Dissertation for Doctorate submitted to the faculty of philosophy at Christian-Albrechts University, Kiel. Referent: Professor Werner Jaeger. Defended August 6, 1920; approved for printing December 2, 1922. Published here under a Creative Commons License 3.0.

Use the following persistent identifier: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_JeffreF.Der_Begriff_TEKHNE_bei_Plato.1922.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.

  

 

Posted by at 0 comments

The Web of Athenaeus

  

In The Web of Athenaeus, Christian Jacob produces a completely fresh and unique reading of Athenaeus’s Sophists at Dinner (ca. 200 CE). Jacob provides the reader with a map and a compass to navigate the unfathomable number of intersecting paths in this enormous work: the books, the quotations, the diners, the dishes served, and—above all—the wordplay, all within the simulacrum of an ancient Greek library. A text long mined merely for its testimonies to lost classical poets, the Sophists at Dinner has now received a full literary re-imagining by Jacob, who connects the world of Hellenistic erudition with its legacy among Hellenized Romans. The Web of Athenaeus simultaneously offers a literary history of the rarest and finest of Greek culture along with a creative anthropology of a Roman imperial world obsessed with the Greek past

Available for purchase in print via Harvard University Press.

Jacob, Christian. 2013. The Web of Athenaeus. Hellenic Studies Series 61. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_JacobC.The_Web_of_Athenaeus.2013.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.

Posted by at 0 comments

Open Access Journal: Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin

[First posted in AWOL 26 June 2017, updated  6 March 2026]

Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin
ISSN: 2410-0951
The Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin (ISSN 2410-0951, since 2015) has succeeded the Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Newsletter as the main organ of the European network in Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies.
It is a peer-reviewed international journal, published on-line (under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license) and on paper as print-on-demand.
It is dedicated to the vast variety of issues concerned with the research into the oriental manuscript traditions, from instrumental analysis, to codicology and palaeography, to critical text editing, to manuscript preservation, to the application of digital tools to manuscript research. The geographical focus is the Mediterranean Near East, with its wide array of language traditions including, though not limiting to, Arabic, Armenian, Avestan, Caucasian Albanian, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Slavonic, Syriac, and Turkish.
1/1 (2015) read online or buy on Lulu.com
1/2 (2015) read online or buy on Lulu.com
2 (2016) read online or buy on Lulu.com
3/1 (2017) read online or buy on Lulu.com
3/2 (2017) read online or buy on Lulu.com
4/1 (2018) read online or buy on Lulu.com
4/2 (2018) read online or buy on Lulu.com
5/1 (2019) read online or buy on Lulu.com
5/2 (2019) read online or buy on Lulu.com
6/1 (2020) read online or buy on Lulu.com
6/2 (2020) read online or buy on Lulu.com
7 (2021) read online or  buy on Lulu.com 
8/1 (2022) read online or buy on Lulu.com
8/2 (2022) read online or buy on Lulu.com
9 (2023) read online or buy on Lulu.com
10 (2024) read online or buy on Lulu.com
11 (2025) read online or buy on Lulu.com

 

Table of Contents

Section 1.

Monastic Literature in Early Islamic Palestine and Sinai: Manuscripts, Scribes, Translators, Authors, and Later Readers
ed. Adrian C. Pirtea

  • pp. 7-14: Monastic Literature in Early Islamic Palestine and Sinai: Studies on Manuscripts, Scribes, Translators, Authors, and Later Readers. An Introduction (Adrian C. Pirtea)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18346
  • pp. 15-57: Building a Christian Arabic Library at Mount Sinai: The Scribe Thomas of Fusṭāṭ and the Manuscripts of His Workshop (Peter Tarras)
    DOI:  10.25592/uhhfdm.18348
  • pp. 59-89: Scribes, Owners, and their Multilingual Annotations in the Byzantine Euchologia of Saint Catherine’s Monastery (Giulia Rossetto)
    DOI:  10.25592/uhhfdm.18350
  • pp. 91-115: ‘Inhabiting the Word of the Other’: Linguistic Hospitality, Early Christian Arabic Psalters, and the Functions of Bilingual Manuscripts (Miriam L. Hjälm)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18352
  • pp. 117-139: From Greek into Arabic through a Syriac Intermediary: New Evidence from Palestinian Hagiography (André Binggeli)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18354
  • pp. 141-171: St Macarius the Great at Mar Saba: Melkite Syriac, Arabic and Georgian Translations of the Corpus Macarianum in Early Islamic Palestine and Sinai (Adrian C. Pirtea)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18356
  • pp. 173-208: A Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Refutation of the ‘Eternalists’: David of Damascus’ Homily on Palm Sunday (Alexander Treiger)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18358

Section 2.

Regular Issue

Articles and notes

  • pp. 211-230: Moses bar Kepha’s Book of Homilies: Manuscripts and Contents (J. F. Coakley)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18360
  • pp. 231-241: The Lamentation of the Flesh (Saqoqāwa Śǝgā): An Ethiopic Penitential Hymn and Companion Text to the Lamentation of the Soul (Saqoqāwa Nafs) (Augustine Dickinson)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18362
  • pp. 243-264: The Qôf Dĕḇûqâ: The Origins and Original Meaning of the Joined Qôf (Marc Michaels)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18364
  • pp. 265-288: Tools, Tricks, and Techniques: Managing the Manuscripts of Chrysostom’s Homilies on Romans (Peter Montoro and Robert Turnbull)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18366

Conference reports

  • pp. 289-291: Ethiopic Hagiographic Literature: Manuscript Tradition, Textual Transmission, Motifs and Use (University of Hamburg, 8–9 October 2024) (Vitagrazia Pisani)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18368
  • pp. 291-293: The Visual Scribe: Tables and Diagrams in Middle Eastern Manuscripts (Berlin, 10–11 April 2025) (Red.)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18370
  • pp. 293-294: Legal Texts on the Move: Normative Texts Crossing Boundaries in the Medieval World (4–5 September 2025, Vienna) (Red.)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18372
  • pp. 295: Scribes and Hands. Old and New Methods of Scribal Identification (800–1550) (Vienna, 17–19 September 2025) (Red.)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18374
  • pp. 295-297: Lire et commenter les Pères de l’Eglise, de l’Antiquité tardive à la Renaissance (Université de Fribourg, 15–18 October 2025) (Red.)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18376
  • pp. 297-298: Interpreting the Ancients (Philadelphia, 20–22 November 2025) (Red.)
    DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.18380

Posted by at 0 comments
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)