Fr. Paul Haverstock a long time friend and classmate joins me on the podcast. He got me into chant, the EF, C.S. Lewis and more.

I Would've Done The Same ThingDoor Ancient & New

Augustine believed that slavery is permissible, but to understand why, we must situate him in his late antique Roman intellectual context. Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics (Princeton UP, 2024) provides a major reassessment of this monumental figure in the Western religious and political tradition, tracing the remar…

Send us a text Rachel Kousser joins me in the Lesche to discuss Alexander III of Macedon's post-Persepolis campaigns in Asia (330-323 BCE), the subject of her recent book Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great. About our guest Rachel Kousser writes and teaches about Alexander the Great, the destruction o…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the beginning week of November. New Flights From Cairo to Aswan/Abu Simbel South Asasif Middle Kingdom Discovery ZH and Robot Mission in Great Pyramid Why the GEM Won't Open Just Yet These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/…

This is a live recording from a class that Fr. K taught at the parish on how to read the Bible in general and Genesis Chapter 1 in particular.

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the fourth week of October. 19th C Antiquities Tour to Upper Egypt Expo Solar Event at Abu Simbel New Details Uncovered at Esna Temple CFEETK Announces Karnak Open-Air Museum Project National Veterinary Care Programme for Animals at Archaeological Sites Queen Nefertari's Tomb to Reopen These ne…

At this point of the scholarly debate on the nature of Second Temple pseudepigraphy, one may ask why another look at the problem is needed. Second Temple Pseudepigraphy: A Cross-cultural Comparison of Apocalyptic Texts and Related Jewish Literature (de Gruyter, 2014) is not the definitive answer to that problem but it proposes different paths - or …

Does Job convincingly argue against a fixed system of just retribution by proclaiming the prosperity of the wicked, an argument that runs contrary to traditional biblical and ancient Near Eastern wisdom? Addressing this question, Dominick Hernández gives careful consideration to the rhetoric, imagery, and literary devices used to treat the issue of…

Our goal in the Christian life is to see things as Christ sees them. In this long form episode, the priest-cousins hit a variety of topics including the sanctity of coffee, how you should form your mind to vote in the upcoming elections, whether or not you can attend weddings outside of the Church, the vocation of running and more.…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the third week of October. The GEM Opens its Doors Tutankhamun Treasures to Move to the GEM Donald Redford R.I.P. The Dog at the Top of the Pyramid These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstr…

A “wonderful…highly comprehensive” (John Barton, author of A History of the Bible) global history of the world’s best-known and most influential book For Christians, the Bible is a book inspired by God. Its eternal words are transmitted across the world by fallible human hands. Following Jesus’s departing instruction to go out into the world, the B…

Which society was the first to domesticate the horse? It’s a difficult question. The archaeological record is spotty, with only very recent advancements in genetics and carbon dating allowing scientists to really test centuries-old legends about where horses came from. For example, historians argued that the Botai civilization in Kazakhstan provide…

Blue 86 SunbirdDoor Ancient & New

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the s…

We don't often realize the drastic effect that seemingly benign inventions have had on us. There is no such thing as a pure gain; we always lose something. In this lighthearted conversation, Fr. K and Cosden Leahey discuss what we lost with the addition of the microphone––especially in the liturgy!

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the second week of October. Egypt Signs Manuscript/Papyri MoU with Germany Fayoum Portrait For Sale GEM Trial Opening 3 Artefacts Returned from Germany These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptia…

Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2024) recounts women authors' struggle to define the female intellectual through their engagement with the classical world in early modern France. Bringing together the fields of classical reception and women writers, Helena Taylor looks at various female novelists, tra…

Send us a text Ferdia Lennon joins me in the Lesche to discuss his award-winning and bestselling novel, Glorious Exploits (UK Penguin Fig Tree/US Macmillan 2024), which is set in Syracuse in the aftermath of the Athenian invasion of Sicily during the Peloponnesian War. About our guest Ferdia Lennon was born and raised in Dublin. He holds a BA in Hi…

We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team constantly looking for ways to make the academic publishing industry grow and to promote groundbreaking academic publications to scholars, students and enthusiasts globally. Based in the renowned publishing city of Leiden, we eat, sleep and breathe publishing! Matteo Barbato’s The Ideology of Democratic Athens: I…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the first days of October. Intangible Cultural Heritage in Tahrir Free Entry to Museums on Oct 6th New Discovery in Asyut Tomb Shanghai and Cologne Exhibitions Looting Sudan's Heritage Artefacts Returned From US These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http:/…

Made Up Facts And Youth MinistryDoor Ancient & New

Send us a text Charlie Covell joins me in the Lesche to discuss their hit Netflix show KAOS, a modern dark dramedic take on Ancient Greek mythology. The show, set in something like modern-day Crete (and on Olympus and in Hades), interweaves stories of Prometheus, the Olympian gods, Orpheus and Eurydice, Minos/Ariadne/Theseus/the Minotaur, and Caene…

Universalism is the heresy that holds to some degree or another that most or all people will be saved. It is an extremely dangerous heresy (as all heresies are) because if one believes that everyone is saved in the end he is probably very unlikely to condemn, criticize or correct any morally reprehensible behaviors in the name of "compassion"! In o…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the last week of September. GEM Coin and Stamp Competition Inaugaral Meeting of the GEM Authority CT Scans and X-Rays These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstreets.com/tag/cairo/ http://www…

From the eighth to thirteenth centuries along China’s rugged southern periphery, trade in tribute articles and an interregional horse market thrived. These ties dramatically affected imperial China’s relations with the emerging kingdoms in its borderlands. Local chiefs before the tenth century had considered the control of such contacts an importan…

Egypt is revered as the home of the famous Desert Ascetics, who first embraced a monastic life and established homosocial communities on the borders of their urban centres in the Nile Valley. Regarded as angels and warriors, the wisdom of the Desert Ascetics formed part of the oral and literary tradition of wonder-working saints whose commitment to…

From the Rockies to the Himalayas, the bond between horses and humans has spanned across time and civilizations. In this archaeological journey, William T. Taylor explores how momentous events in the story of humans and horses helped create the world we live in today. Tracing the horse's origins and spread from the western Eurasian steppes to the i…

Scouting Property In EuropeDoor Ancient & New

Send us a text Leah Lazar and Christy Constantakopoulou join me in the Lesche to discuss their work on the relationship between Athens and its subject communities (the "allies") during the fifth-century Athenian "empire" (ἀρχή). Leah has a new book out on the subject, Athens and Power in the Fifth Century BC; Christy’s monograph Dance of the Island…

Nāgārjuna (c. 150-250), founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy and the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers aside from the Buddha himself, concludes his masterpiece, Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, with these baffling verses: For the abandonment of all views He taught the true teaching By means of compassio…

In Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington, 2012), William Altman shines a light on the pedagogical technique of the playful Plato, especially his ability to create living discourses that directly address the student. Reviving an ancient concern with reconstructing the order in which Plato intended his dialogues to be taught as opp…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the middle two weeks of September. El-Enany and UNESCO Aboudi's at Giza James Ogden in Wales The Colours of Edfu Revealed Horizon of Khufu in London Nightime Upgrade for Giza New MoTA Museum Database These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahr…

Today I talked to Philip Freeman about his new book Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (Yale UP, 2023). Flavius Claudius Julianus, or Julian the Apostate, ruled Rome as sole emperor for just a year and a half, from 361 to 363, but during that time he turned the world upside down. Although a nephew of Constantine the Great, the first Christian empero…

'Wicked Problems' are those problems facing the planet and its inhabitants, present and future, which are hard (if not impossible) to resolve and for which bold, creative, and messy solutions are typically required. The adjective 'wicked' describes the mischievous and even evil quality of these problems, where proposed solutions often turn out to b…

Two strangers meet in a trapped elevator. One is an archaeologist, the other isn’t. A simple question, ‘What do you do?’, becomes the springboard for a dialogue that weaves a fascinating tale. In How to Fit All of Ancient Greece in an Elevator (William Collins, 2024) archaeologist Dr. Theodore Papakostas takes us on a spectacularly iconoclastic and…

Send us a text Yvona Trnka-Amrhein and John Gibert join me in the Lesche to discuss their editio princeps of a newly-discovered papyrus (P.Phil.Nec. 23) containing lines from two of Euripides' fragmentary plays, Ino and Poluidos. The publication, in ZPE, is currently only available in print. The ToC for the issue in which it appears is available he…

Martha Rampton, Trafficking with Demons: Magic, Ritual, and Gender from Late Antiquity to 1000 (Cornell University Press, 2021) explores how magic was perceived, practiced, and prohibited in western Europe during the first millennium CE. Through the overlapping frameworks of religion, ritual, and gender, Martha Rampton connects early Christian reck…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the first days of September. New Nefertari Chamber in Turin Zahi Hawass in Search of Queen Nefertiti Western Frontier Fortress Discovered These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Portal/9/Heritage.aspx https://egyptianstreets.com/t…

In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests, the Seleucid kings ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia to Anatolia, Armenia to the Persian Gulf. In a radical move to impose unity and regulate behavior, this Graeco-Macedonian imperial power introduced a linear and transcendent conception of time. Under Seleucid rule, time no lon…

Recent scholarship focused on the role of embodiment within cognition and communication reminds us that part of how we “know” is through our physical senses. We only know the softness of a kitten by touching its fur, or the tastiness of bread by eating. How might this influence our understanding of biblical texts, such as Jesus’s claim, “I am the b…

After reading David Chaffetz’s newest book, you’d think that the horse–not oil–has been humanity’s most important strategic commodity. As David writes in his book Raiders, Rulers and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires (Norton, 2024), societies in Central Asia grew powerful on the backs of strong herds of horses, giving them a military and a…

What makes us human? What, if anything, sets us apart from all other creatures? Ever since Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the answer to these questions has pointed to our own intrinsic animal nature. Yet the idea that, in one way or another, our humanity is entangled with the non-human has a much longer and more venerable history. In the Wes…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the last week of August. MoTA meets UNESCO Saqqara Excavator Reports Artefacts Returned From The Netherlands Khufu Price Increase Khaled el-Anani in Congo Late Period Coffin Returns to Swansea, Wales These news stories are taken from various public internet sources including: http://english.ahr…

Violet Moller has written a narrative history of the transmission of books from the ancient world to the modern. In The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found (Doubleday, 2019), Moller traces the histories of migration of three ancient authors, Euclid, Ptolemy and Galen, from ancient Alexandria in 500 t…

Ancient Christians and their non-Christian contemporaries lived in a world of 'magic.' Sometimes, they used curses as ritual objects to seek justice from gods and other beings; sometimes, they argued against them. Curses, and the writings of those who polemicized against curses, reveal the complexity of ancient Mediterranean religions, in which mat…

A Two-Seater OuthouseDoor Ancient & New

Send us a text Welcome to Lesche, a podcast on new books and ideas in the field of Ancient Greek Studies. In each episode, we'll be talking to classicists about their latest contributions to the field. We’re going to start by releasing two episodes each month, on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month. The first episode will debut on Wednesd…

The stories that made the Ancient Egypt headlines over the third week of August. New Digital Interactive Platform Investigation into Tourist in Luxor Temple EgyptAir Luggage Tracking More Sites Get e-Ticketing Astronomical Observatory Discovered in Kafr el-Sheikh Metalworking at Giza These news stories are taken from various public internet sources…

The ancient Indian Vedas contain sentences of rather varied content, including religious statements ("Varuṇa truly is the king of the gods"), words of wisdom ("Thought is quicker than speech") or even banal observations ("Wife and husband wash each other's back"). The well-known Erlangen Indo-Europeanists and Indologists Karl Hoffmann (1915-1996) a…