New Books in Ancient History

Aristotle, the co-called father of rhetoric, supposedly conceptualized his theory of persuasion as a means of bringing meaning to rest. But what if there’s another story, one in which forgotten tropes such as alloiosis turn rhetoric toward the flux and difference?On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (s/t) Drs. Jane Sutton and Mari Lee Mifsud about how our classical conceptions of stylistic language may be more open opening to otherness than stabilizing meaning.A Revolution in Tropes is a groundbreaking study of rhetoric and tropes. Theorizing new ways of seeing rhetoric and its relationship with democratic deliberation, Jane Sutton and Mari Lee Mifsud explore and display alloiōsis as a trope of difference, exception, and radical otherness. Their argument centers on Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric through particular tropes of similarity that sustained a vision of civic discourse but at the same time underutilized tropes of difference. When this vision is revolutionized, democratic deliberation can perform and advance its ends of equality, justice, and freedom. Marie-Odile N. Hobeika and Michele Kennerly join Sutton and Mifsud in pushing the limits of rhetoric by engaging rhetoric alloiostrophically. Their collective efforts work to display the possibilities of what rhetoric can be. A Revolution in Tropes will appeal to scholars of rhetoric, philosophy, and communicationWe hope you enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed chatting about this fascinating book. Connect with your host, Lee Pierce, on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Gmail @rhetoriclee for interview previews, the best book selfies, and new episode alerts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are the canonical Gospels historically reliable? The four canonical Gospels are ancient biographies, narratives of Jesus’s life. The authors of these Gospels were intentional in how they handled historical information and sources. Building on recent work in the study of ancient biographies, Craig Keener argues that the writers of the canonical Gospels followed the literary practices of other biographers in their day.In Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2019), Keener explores the character of ancient biography and urges students and scholars to appreciate the Gospel writers’ method and degree of accuracy in recounting the life and ministry of Jesus. Keener’s Christobiography has far-reaching implications for the study of the canonical Gospels and historical Jesus research. He concludes that the four canonical Gospels are historically reliable ancient biographies.Dr. Craig Keener is F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is the author of over 30 books, 6 of which have won awards in Christianity Today. Keener is also the New Testament editor for the award-winning NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, and is serving as the president of the Evangelical Theological Society. With more than a million copies of his books in circulation, Keener also serves the global church by teaching and lecturing all over the world.Jonathan Wright is a PhD student in New Testament at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He holds an MDiv from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a ThM from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and can be reached at jonrichwright@gmail.com, on Twitter @jonrichwright, or jonathanrichardwright.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After reading How Dead Languages Work (Oxford University Press 2020), Coulter George hopes you might decide to learn a bit of ancient Greek or Sanskrit, or maybe dabble in a bit of Old Germanic. But even if readers of his book aren’t converted into polyglots, they will walk away with an introduction to the (in)famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is responsible for the inaccurate meme claiming that Inuits understand snow more deeply than other cultures because their language has one hundred (one thousand?) words for it. George criticizes this hypothesis, but through his six chapters, uses examples of ancient languages to argue that a subtler form of that hypothesis is apt: languages aren’t fungible, and the properties of different languages are interwoven with their literary traditions. The book takes readers through Greek, Latin, Old English and the Germanic Languages, Sanskrit, Old Irish and the Celtic Languages, and Hebrew, introducing their phonology, morphology, lexicons, grammar, and excerpting passages from texts such as the Illiad, Beowulf, and the Rig Veda, to illustrate how the flavor of a language is always lost a little in translation.Malcolm Keating is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale-NUS College. His research focuses on Indian philosophy of language and epistemology in Sanskrit. He is the author of Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy (Bloomsbury Press, 2019) and host of the podcast Sutras (and stuff). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Heroic Saktism is the belief that a good king and a true warrior must worship the goddess Durga, the form and substance of kingship. This belief formed the bedrock of ancient Indian practices of cultivating political power. Wildly dangerous and serenely benevolent at one and the same time, the goddess's charismatic split nature promised rewards for a hero and king and success in risky ventures. Heroic Shāktism: The Cult of Durgā in Ancient Indian Kingship (Oxford UP, 2017) is the first expansive historical treatment of the cult of Durga and the role it played in shaping ideas and rituals of heroism in India between the 3rd and the 12th centuries CE. By assessing the available epigraphic, literary and scriptural sources in Sanskrit, and anthropological studies on politics and ritual, Bihani Sarkar demonstrates that the association between Indian kingship and the cult's belief-systems was an ancient one based on efforts to augment worldly power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A radical and vivid rendering of poetry from the first Buddhist nuns that brings a new immediacy to their voices.The Therigatha ("Verses of the Elder Nuns") is the oldest collection of known writings from Buddhist women and one of the earliest collections of women's literature in India. Composed during the life of the Buddha, the collection contains verses by early Buddhist nuns detailing everything from their disenchantment with their prescribed roles in society to their struggles on the path to enlightenment to their spiritual realizations. Among the nuns, a range of voices are represented, including former wives, women who lost children, women who gave up their wealth, and a former prostitute.In The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns (Shambhala), Matty Weingast revives this ancient collection with a contemporary and radical adaptation. In this poetic re-envisioning that remains true to the original essence of each poem, he infuses each verse with vivid language that is not found in other translations.Simple yet profound, the nuance of language highlights the beauty in each poem and resonates with modern readers exploring the struggles, grief, failures, doubts, and ultimately, moments of profound insight of each woman. Weingast breathes fresh life into this ancient collection of poetry, offering readers a rare glimpse of Buddhism through the spiritual literature and poetry of the first female disciples of the Buddha.Matty Weingast is co-editor of Awake at the Bedside and former editor of the Insight Journal at Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.Dr. Yakir Englander is the National Director of Leadership programs at the Israeli-American Council. He also teaches at the AJR. He is a Fulbright scholar and was a visiting professor of Religion at Northwestern University, the Shalom Hartman Institute and Harvard Divinity School. His books are Sexuality and the Body in New Religious Zionist Discourse (English/Hebrew and The Male Body in Jewish Lithuanian Ultra-Orthodoxy (Hebrew). He can be reached at: Yakir1212englander@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite the competition it posed to the Romans’ eastern empire and the longevity it enjoyed compared to its Iranian predecessors, English-language histories of the Sassanian Empire are few and far between. In The Last Empire of Iran (Gorgias Press, 2020), Michael R. Jackson Bonner fills this gap with a work that surveys the empire’s history from its rise in the 3rd century CE to its conquest by Muslim invaders in the 650s. To Bonner, a key reason for the empire’s longevity was the degree of centralization of its government, which was far greater than that of its Parthian predecessors. Thanks to that centralized control and the access to resources that it afforded them, the Sassanians were able to deal with the various challenges their empire faced on its many frontiers, from Roman legions to assaults from Central Asian nomads. Thanks to their effective administration and their military effectiveness, the Sassanians not only persevered against these threats but they succeeded in driving the Roman frontier back westward in the early 7th century, though the extended struggle and the civil war that followed left the Sassanians too weak to face the challenge that arose from the Arabian peninsula just a few years later. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus’s prophecy—“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”—they were, in their own eyes, history's last generation. But in history's eyes, they became the first Christians.In When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation (Yale University Press, 2018), Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, Middle East television commentator, and host of the Van Leer Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Renshaw modestly describes his interactive textbook, In Search of the Romans (Bloomsbury, 2019) as an attempt to bring his high school readers to a “base camp on Mount Everest and then hand them off to the Sherpas.” Renshaw explains that the “Sherpas” are historians who delve into a particular aspect of Roman history in greater detail.But what a delightful base camp In Search of Romans is! Following on the success of the book’s companion piece, In Search of the Greeks (both published in their second edition by Bloomsbury Academic), Renshaw has created an engaging and thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the history, politics, culture and everyday life of the Romans from their mythical beginnings to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476.In clear and cogent prose, Renshaw leads us masterfully from the era of the Roman kings through the foundation of the Res Publica, Rome’s brutal civil wars, and the dictatorship of Julius Caesar. The reign of Emperor Augustus with its sweeping reforms of religion and politics is discussed in detail, as are the reigns of the "good,” and “bad” emperors who follow Augustus, including the infamous Nero, and Constantine, who gifted Christianity to Europe. Finally, Renshaw unpacks the role of the barbarian tribes who brought the Western Empire to its end in the 5th century.James Renshaw approaches his subject with zeal and infectious enthusiasm, which no doubt resonates with his students at London’s Godolphin and Latymer secondary school. “In Search of the Romans” provides a broad overview of Rome’s history with plenty of recommendations for further reading by authors as diverse as Mary Beard and Tacitus. The book is filled with clear maps and photos, which bring the ancient world to life in vivid color and detail.In Search of the Romans goes beyond the “I came, I saw, I conquered,” Tick-Tock of Roman history. With detailed chapters on everyday life, culture, and religion, and individual chapters on Pompeii and Herculaneum, the reader emerges with a well-rounded sense of the world of the ancients. Renshaw is particularly good on the cultural touchstones of Ancient Rome, including the enduring obsession with Greek culture and the ever-present yearning for “the good old days.”For the past few months during the global pandemic, Renshaw has been teaching his students via Google Meet, which he believes the Romans — those masters of innovation — would have applauded. In Search of the Romans makes a compelling case that the classics are still very relevant for any curious about the march of civilization and humanity’s drive to innovate.Though designed for high school seniors, In Search of the Romans is an excellent choice for college students looking for an easily digestible overview of Roman history, and, indeed for anyone embarking on a voyage of discovery of Ancient Rome by land, sea, or from an armchair.James Renshaw was educated at the University of Oxford and has held teaching positions at St. Paul’s School and Westminster Under School. He currently teaches classics at London’s Godolphin and Latymer. He is the author of many manuals on Ancient History, and “In Search of the Greeks.” Find out more about James Renshaw by following him on Twitter or LinkedIn.Jennifer Eremeeva is an American expatriate writer who writes about travel, culture, cuisine and culinary history, Russian history, and Royal History, with bylines in Reuters, Fodor's, USTOA, LitHub, The Moscow Times, and Russian Life. She is the award-winning author of Lenin Lives Next Door: Marriage, Martinis, and Mayhem in Moscow and Have Personality Disorder, Will Rule Russia: A Pocket Guide to Russian History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

‘THOSE THAT DENY THEIR HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT!’ So Tweeted the 45th President of the United States to his 80 million followers in June, as American streets once again were transformed into spaces of protest. It turns out that the President prefers one particular route between the American past and present, and has vowed to defend both it and its symbols against all comers. The once unifying power of the national narrative is now one of many of points of sharp and often violent division.This is also true of the United Kingdom as it seeks to balance its historical self-image with the realities of its colonizing past. Central to all of this is the question of how we rewrite and debate our constructions of the past, a collective human activity as hardwired into our cultures as music, dance, or art.Daniel Woolf is Professor of History at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He is the author and editor of many essays and books on history and historical thought in early modern Britain, including the prize-winning The Social Circulation of the Past. Woolf has also served as general editor of the 5 volume Oxford History of Historical Writing, and has published The Global History of History in 2012.All the while, he has held a number of senior administrative posts, most recently serving a ten year term as the 20th Principal and Vice Chancellor of Queen’s University. His A Concise History of History: Global Historiography from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge University Press) provides a cogent and compact survey of historical practice from ancient times to the present. Its point of departure is that those of us in ‘the west’ could do with some consideration of historical traditions from other parts of the globe.Charles Prior is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Hull (UK), who has written on the politics of religion in early modern Britain, and whose work has recently expanded to the intersection of colonial, indigenous, and imperial politics in early America. He co-leads the Treatied Spaces Research Cluster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In A Śabda Reader: Language in Classical Indian Thought (Columbia University Press, 2019), Johannes Bronkhorst, emeritus professor at the University of Lausanne, makes the case through an extensive introduction and select translations of important Indian texts that language has a crucial role in Indian thought.Not only does it form the subject of inquiry for grammarians, philosophers, and aestheticians, but it forms the background for the religious and cultural world which informs these investigations. Writing in, and deeply invested in, the Sanskrit language, brahminical thinkers considered the status of phonemes, words, sentences, and larger textual units, as well as the relationship between language and reality.Their interlocutors, Jains and Buddhists, wrote in Pāli as well as Sanskrit, addressing many of the same topics. A Śabda Reader includes excerpts of texts from all three groups, in new translations, which shows the interplay among these thinkers.Malcolm Keating is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale-NUS College. His research focuses on Sanskrit philosophy of language and epistemology. He is the author of Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy (Bloomsbury Press, 2019) and host of the podcast Sutras (and stuff). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices