New Books in Ancient History

Where can the the boundaries of science, philosophy, and religion be drawn? Questioning the nature of the universe is an excellent place to rethink how these categories have been deployed across time. Mary-Jane Rubenstein, professor Religious Studies at Wesleyan University, offers a genealogy of multiple-world cosmologies that demonstrates these terms pliability and the debated relationship between 'Science' and 'Religion.' In Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse (Columbia University Press, 2014), Rubenstein wonders why there is a proliferation of multiverse theoretical cosmologies by contemporary scientists. While the cosmos are generally considered to be singular and finite many well-respected physicists explain the universe's complexities as evidence of a multiverse. These explanations argue that our world is just one of the infinite number of universes existing simultaneously.Worlds Without End shows that multiple-world cosmologies have had currency among many thinkers for over 2500 years. What draws philosophers, religious practitioners, and scientists together on these questions is there appeal to metaphysical postulates, which serve as pseudo-theologies for the contemporary age. In our conversation we discuss the Greek philosophical tradition of Plato, Aristotle, the Atomists, and the Stoics, medieval Christian interpreters such as Thomas Aquinas, Nicolas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, the Telescopic discoveries of Galileo, Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Immanuel Kant, the Big Bang debate, cosmic shredding, the fine-tuning problem, dark energy, Inflationary Cosmology, String Theory, Quantum Mechanics, and Intelligent Design. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daryn Lehoux‘s new book will forever change the way you think about garlic and magnets. What Did the Romans Know?: An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking (University of Chicago Press, 2012) is a fascinating account of the co-production of facts and worlds, taking readers into the sciences of Rome from the first century BC to the second century AD. Masterfully blending approaches from the history and philosophy of science, Lehoux traces the significance of the “threefold cord” of nature, law, and the gods in making up the early Roman world. The chapters use the works of Cicero, Seneca, Galen, Ptolemy, and others to explore topics making up the foundation of a history of Roman science, including the importance of divination to Roman politics and natural knowledge, the relationship between optics and ethics in the Roman world, and the entanglements of law, nature, and witnessing. What Did the Romans Know? also contributes to philosophical debates over the theory-ladenness of observation, scientific and historical realism, and relativism. Lehoux ends his account as an “epistemological coherentist,” suggesting a model for thinking about and with the sciences in history and beyond. On top of all of this, the language of the text sparkles. It’s a wonderfully enjoyable read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[Re-posted with permission from Sol Lederman’s Wild About Math] I love novel ways of looking at arithmetic. I’m fascinated with how computers compute in binary, with tricks for simplifying calculations and with how Vedic mathematicians handle difficult arithmetic efficiently. So, when Princeton University Press sent me a review copy of their new book Count Like an Egyptian: A Hands-on Introduction to Ancient Mathematics (Princeton University Press, 2014), I immediately fell in love with it. I was delighted to learn even more techniques and the ideas behind them to deepen my appreciation of the beauty of what most consider to be mundane arithmetic.Count Like an Egyptian is a delightful book, full of color illustrations, fun stories, lots of hands-on exercises, and an appreciation for the power of simple but deep ideas.David Reimer was a pleasure to interview. He is a brilliant mathematician who hasn’t lost sight of the power and beauty of mathematics. He taught me and modeled that, despite the stereotype, the more advanced mathematicians are the ones who are more likely to communicate ideas well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Crucifixion is one of the most widely envisioned symbols in history. So much so, that for a contemporary reader the notion almost immediately plants an image of Jesus on the cross. Sean Anthony, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Oregon, argues that an assumption of uniformity in the role of crucifixion hinders our understanding of it, which is especially true when looking at crucifixion as a cross-cultural category during the Late Antique period. In Crucifixion and Death as Spectacle: Umayyad Crucifixion in Its Late Antique Context (American Oriental Society, 2014), crucifixion is examined in the early Muslim context but placed within broader social and political tactics of late antiquity. Extreme death techniques, especially in the disciplining of religious deviants, were most often public spectacles of ritualized violence used to legitimize political leaders. Umayyad leadership used crucifixion as a ideological tool to reinforce their own political legitimacy. Anthony demonstrates how this all plays out in the cases of Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr and Zayd ibn ‘Ali. The study of crucifixion also enables us to examine the rich ways that Muslims remembered and accounted for their own personal histories. In our conversation we discussed the relationship between early Islam and late antique societies, crucifixion in the Zoroastrian setting, the treatment of the dead Muslim body, crucifixion in the Qur’an and Hadith, the public/private spheres of the body, deciphering historical sources, religious deviance, and the ironic fate of the conquered Ummayads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all know that religion is a universal feature of human history, right? Well, maybe not. In Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (Yale University Press, 2013), Brent Nongbri, Post Doctoral Fellow at Macquarie University, argues that throughout time people have conceptualized themselves in various ways but did not classify what they were doing as religious. As someone who works in the antique period Nogbri found it peculiar to find translations of ancient works referring to religion. In the first half of the book, he examines how and why terms like the Latin religio, Greek threskeia, or Arabic din, are repeatedly rendered as “religion” in translations. He also draws our attention to various births of the modern conception of religion, such as the Maccabean revolt or the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea.Ultimately, he concludes this phenomena could be more usefully described in other terms. Nongbri explains that in the pre-modern era Christians generally classified others as bad Christians or heathens and not as other religious traditions. The second half of the book contends that religion as an idea has a history and the way we generally understand it today can be traced back to a number of historical events. Nongbri points to the three moments as instrumental in a public of understanding of religion as a universal, private, non-political affair – Christian disunity following the Reformation, increasing colonial encounters with indigenous people, and the formation of Nation-states. He provides ample evidence for these claims through a number of vignettes tracing this transformation over time. With these complex issues surrounding the concept religion we might feel at a loss as to what we should be doing in Religious Studies. Nongbri offers some useful approaches to how we can examine social activities and ideas in the context of this loaded term. In our conversation we discuss definitions, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Manichaeans, Muhammad, John of Damascus, the story of Barlam and Ioasaph, John Locke, the early Muslim community, the World Religions model, the invention of Mesopotamian religion, issues of translation, and Talal Asad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s an odd thing: there really haven’t been any universally-acclaimed geniuses since Einstein. At least I can’t think of any. Really smart people, yes. But geniuses per se, no. It seems Einstein was such a genius that he destroyed the entire concept of genius for us. Or perhaps we’ve just become tired of “genius.” There is, it must be admitted, something democratic cultures don’t like about “geniuses.” If we’re all equal, well, then how can some of us be “geniuses” and others just ordinary folks? It seems that either we’re all “geniuses” or none of us are.In his fascinating book Divine Fury: A History of Genius (Basic Books, 2013), Darrin M. McMahon explains Einstein’s impact on the idea of “genius” and much more. You will learn, for example, how in Greco-Roman culture a “genius” was a spiritual double: it was something you had, a ghostly sidekick, not something you were. Sometimes your “genius” was good–a guardian angel–and sometimes it was bad–a demon. It’s only since the Enlightenment that we’ve come to think of “genius” as a certain kind of person, namely, someone with truly extraordinary capacities. It’s a fascinating story. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the most exciting approaches in the contemporary study of China is emerging from work that brings together archaeological and historical modes of reading texts and material objects to tell a story about the past. In Ancient Central China: Centers and Peripheries Along the Yangzi River (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Rowan... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christians in the United States and around the world have varying images of Jesus, from one who turns the other cheek to one who brings the sword. Reza Aslan, in his highly popular and beautifully written new book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (Random House, 2013), approaches Jesus by first taking the context in which he lived – first-century Palestine – quite seriously. Aslan argues that Jesus’ time was one awash in a fervent nationalism that is important for understanding the man as well as his message. It is not a book about the Jesus of the Gospels. Indeed it is not even a book about Christianity. Rather, Aslan’s book attempts to grapple with how Jesus understood himself and his role during a volatile period in history. Zealot has shot to the best seller lists in recent weeks, partly due to a controversial interview Reza Aslan gave to Fox News during which he was questioned about why a Muslim would be interested in writing a book about the founder of Christianity. We also talk to Reza about his earlier books, No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War, as well as his two edited collections, Tablet & Pen and Muslims and Jews in America. We talk to him about growing up Iranian, while pretending to be Mexican, in the United States during the 1980s, about graduate school, about Fox News and Islamophobia, and about writing for a popular audience, being a public intellectual, and the challenges involved with such endeavors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Early Korea is a resource like no other: in an ongoing series of volumes produced by the Early Korea Project at the Korea Institute of Harvard University, the series provides surveys of Korean scholarship on fundamental issues in the study of early Korean history, archaeology, and art history. The volumes, produced... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Contemporary philosophers still wrestle mightily with Plato’s Republic. A common reading has it that in the Republic, Plato’s character Socrates defends a conception of justice according to which reason should rule the soul and philosophers should rule the city. On all accounts, the Republic is centrally concerned with the question of what philosophers are and how they come to be. A standard reading contends that the multiple discussions in the Republic of the nature of the philosopher all aim to depict the very same kind of creature.In her new book, Philosophers in the Republic: Plato’s Two Paradigms (Cornell University Press, 2012), Roslyn Weiss challenges this view. She argues that the Republic depicts at least two distinct kinds of philosopher. She then employs this analysis in discussing several puzzles that emerge from the text concerning, for example, the absence of the virtue of piety in the Republic, and the curious similarities between Socrates’s conception of justice and moderation. The result is a fascinating examination of the Republic that has much to offer both to Plato scholars and more casual readers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices