Laura Salah Nasrallah
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 4587537 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Laura Salah Nasrallah |
| NOMBRES | Laura Salah |
| APELLIDO | Nasrallah |
| FIRMA | NASRALLAH L S |
| AFILIACIONES | Harvard University Press |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 16 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 1 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 17 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2005 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 1 |
Centering Cyprus in Late Antiquity
Late Antique Cyprus – autocephalous in relation to the Christian ecclesial systems of organization, with island ports accepting the traffic of continental Mediterranean cities, replete with beautiful mosaics, still echoing with the powerful voice of heresiologist-bishop Epiphanius – deserves even more attention than it has received of late. The two volumes under review attend to the island and inspire future directions for research. The collected…
Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses
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 materiality, poetics, song, incantation, and glossolalia were used as technologies of power. Laura Nasr…
Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses
Making Justice
At the beginning of Justin’s Apology, an account of injustice, Justin calls upon the emperors as φύλακες δικαιοσύνης, “guardians of justice.” Justin, 1 Apologia 2,2 (OECT, 80,13 Minns/Parvis). As part of a documentary and legal strategy, Justin’s Apology includes what he claims is an imperial rescript. This paper probes Justin’s Apology and its appended document(s) in relation to other contemporaneous strategies and materializations of seeking ju…
The Work of Nails
This article contributes to the study of religion by investigating the ritual significance of the ancient nail, focusing on its material power in piercing curse tablets (defixiones, sing. defixio) in Mediterranean antiquity. It thus brings a humble object and the gestures and labor associated with it more centrally into the study of religion in antiquity. The article also contributes to the study of religion more broadly by developing a theoretic…
Christemporos
Early Christians coined the word christemporos (“Christ-seller”) to mark other early Christians as abusive in their apostolic or Christian labor. This article explores the neologism, first embedding it within the market terminology of contemporaneous epigraphy and emphasizing its similarity to the term sōmatemporos , slave-seller or slave-trader. Second, the term christemporos , because of its frequent connection to the image of “huckstering the …
A Formation of a Christian Archive?
Justin Martyr’s Apologies cite an imperial letter. Scholarly debate has usually focused on whether this letter is real. This chapter argues instead that the rescript associated with Justin’s Apologies , and the Apologies themselves, evoked known cultural and adminstrative practices – practices of hanging papyrus libelli and their subscriptiones in Rome at the Temple of Apollo or the Baths of Trajan, practices also known from the ‘publication’ of …
How Do You Know God? Athenagoras on Names and Images
T hroughout the book we have been asking what claims regarding ethnicity, paideia , piety, and power are made through words and images. How are people represented? How do they represent themselves? And who, gently or not so gently, points to the gap between the thing and its representation? The city squares of the Greek East were crammed with statuary of gods and elites. From the coin in your pocket – if you were so lucky – to the sculptures that…
What Is Justice? What Is Piety? What Is Paideia? Justin, the Forum of Trajan in Rome, and a Crisis of Mimēsis
I n literature, architecture, and even on coinage, the roman imper ial family repeatedly claimed its commitment to and even embodiment of justice and piety. Justin's Apologies , which are addressed to the Roman emperors, the Senate, and the Roman people, contest such claims. This chapter shows how Justin's arguments about correct philosophy and religious practice (that is, topics usually treated by theologians) and about imperial power (that is, …
What Do We Learn When We Look? (Part I) Images, Desire, and Tatian's to the Greeks
T he paidagŌgos is a slave, often described as greek, who led the children of the elites to school and back home. In this chapter and the next, I shall discuss images as pedagogical not only because I treat ancient discussions of what Roman-period images of the bodies of humans and gods teach, but also because I discuss Greek objects that were purchased, stolen, replicated, interpreted, and displayed by Roman elites. These anthropomorphic images …
What Do We Learn When We Look? (Part Ii) Aphrodite and Clement of Alexandria
F rom the hellenistic period on, praxiteles' sculpture of the Aphrodite of Knidos appears frequently in life-size, over life-size, and miniature reproductions; she is also much discussed in literary sources. She is an object – a sculpture or figurine or painted image – that duplicates and spreads in the Roman Empire. This object, in her many iterations, has complex lives and biographies. The sculpture of the Aphrodite of Knidos inhabits several c…
What Is the Space of the Roman Empire? Mapping, Bodies, and Knowledge in the Roman World
I n the late 1960s, african american children in boston were asked to draw maps of their neighborhood, near the old Mission Hill housing project. The housing project, largely white at the time, took up a large part of their hand-drawn maps, but was figured in various ways as a big blank: a no-man's land, a topography absent of marks or monuments. The streets around it, as well as schools, restaurants, and stores, were often carefully and clearly …
Epilogue
T wo texts by lucian briefly encapsulate some of the key issues of this book. In Lucian's Images or Representations , the speaker Lykinos tells Polystratos the story of how he saw a woman and was practically turned to stone, “more motionless than statues” ( Imag. 1). The play between statues and people continues: “Have you ever travelled to Knidos, Polystratos?” “Yes, certainly!” “So then you saw their Aphrodite, no doubt?” “Yes, by Zeus, the mos…
The Embarrassment of Blood
Laura Nasrallah analyzes first- and second-century discourses concerning human sacrifice, both in contemporary Roman art and in the language of Roman and Christian writings. She identifies four major discursive sites in which sacrifice was thematized: first, in polemical accusations of human sacrifice; second, in discussions of humans as appropriate living, rational sacrifices to the gods, if those humans are philosophically and theologically tra…
Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture
Laura Nasrallah argues that early Christian literature addressed to Greeks and Romans is best understood when read in tandem with the archaeological remains of Roman antiquity. She examines second-century Christianity by looking at the world in which Christians 'lived and moved and had their being'. Early Christians were not divorced from the materiality of the world, nor did they always remain distant from the Greek culture of the time or the rh…
Reading 1 Corinthians in the Twenty‐First Century – By Cornelia Cyss Crocker
Mapping the World
In the late 1960s, African American children in Boston were asked to draw maps of their neighborhood, near the old Mission Hill housing project. The housing project, largely white at the time, took up a large part of their hand-drawn maps, but was figured in various ways as a big blank: a no-man's land, a topography absent of marks or monuments. The streets around it, as well as schools, restaurants, and stores, were often carefully and clearly a…
The Work of Nails
This article contributes to the study of religion by investigating the ritual significance of the ancient nail, focusing on its material power in piercing curse tablets (defixiones, sing. defixio) in Mediterranean antiquity. It thus brings a humble object and the gestures and labor associated with it more centrally into the study of religion in antiquity. The article also contributes to the study of religion more broadly by developing a theoretic…
Mapping the World
In the late 1960s, African American children in Boston were asked to draw maps of their neighborhood, near the old Mission Hill housing project. The housing project, largely white at the time, took up a large part of their hand-drawn maps, but was figured in various ways as a big blank: a no-man's land, a topography absent of marks or monuments. The streets around it, as well as schools, restaurants, and stores, were often carefully and clearly a…
Reading 1 Corinthians in the Twenty‐First Century – By Cornelia Cyss Crocker
Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture
Laura Nasrallah argues that early Christian literature addressed to Greeks and Romans is best understood when read in tandem with the archaeological remains of Roman antiquity. She examines second-century Christianity by looking at the world in which Christians 'lived and moved and had their being'. Early Christians were not divorced from the materiality of the world, nor did they always remain distant from the Greek culture of the time or the rh…
The Embarrassment of Blood
Laura Nasrallah analyzes first- and second-century discourses concerning human sacrifice, both in contemporary Roman art and in the language of Roman and Christian writings. She identifies four major discursive sites in which sacrifice was thematized: first, in polemical accusations of human sacrifice; second, in discussions of humans as appropriate living, rational sacrifices to the gods, if those humans are philosophically and theologically tra…
How Do You Know God? Athenagoras on Names and Images
T hroughout the book we have been asking what claims regarding ethnicity, paideia , piety, and power are made through words and images. How are people represented? How do they represent themselves? And who, gently or not so gently, points to the gap between the thing and its representation? The city squares of the Greek East were crammed with statuary of gods and elites. From the coin in your pocket – if you were so lucky – to the sculptures that…
What Is Justice? What Is Piety? What Is Paideia? Justin, the Forum of Trajan in Rome, and a Crisis of Mimēsis
I n literature, architecture, and even on coinage, the roman imper ial family repeatedly claimed its commitment to and even embodiment of justice and piety. Justin's Apologies , which are addressed to the Roman emperors, the Senate, and the Roman people, contest such claims. This chapter shows how Justin's arguments about correct philosophy and religious practice (that is, topics usually treated by theologians) and about imperial power (that is, …
What Do We Learn When We Look? (Part I) Images, Desire, and Tatian's to the Greeks
T he paidagŌgos is a slave, often described as greek, who led the children of the elites to school and back home. In this chapter and the next, I shall discuss images as pedagogical not only because I treat ancient discussions of what Roman-period images of the bodies of humans and gods teach, but also because I discuss Greek objects that were purchased, stolen, replicated, interpreted, and displayed by Roman elites. These anthropomorphic images …
What Do We Learn When We Look? (Part Ii) Aphrodite and Clement of Alexandria
F rom the hellenistic period on, praxiteles' sculpture of the Aphrodite of Knidos appears frequently in life-size, over life-size, and miniature reproductions; she is also much discussed in literary sources. She is an object – a sculpture or figurine or painted image – that duplicates and spreads in the Roman Empire. This object, in her many iterations, has complex lives and biographies. The sculpture of the Aphrodite of Knidos inhabits several c…
What Is the Space of the Roman Empire? Mapping, Bodies, and Knowledge in the Roman World
I n the late 1960s, african american children in boston were asked to draw maps of their neighborhood, near the old Mission Hill housing project. The housing project, largely white at the time, took up a large part of their hand-drawn maps, but was figured in various ways as a big blank: a no-man's land, a topography absent of marks or monuments. The streets around it, as well as schools, restaurants, and stores, were often carefully and clearly …
Epilogue
T wo texts by lucian briefly encapsulate some of the key issues of this book. In Lucian's Images or Representations , the speaker Lykinos tells Polystratos the story of how he saw a woman and was practically turned to stone, “more motionless than statues” ( Imag. 1). The play between statues and people continues: “Have you ever travelled to Knidos, Polystratos?” “Yes, certainly!” “So then you saw their Aphrodite, no doubt?” “Yes, by Zeus, the mos…
A Formation of a Christian Archive?
Justin Martyr’s Apologies cite an imperial letter. Scholarly debate has usually focused on whether this letter is real. This chapter argues instead that the rescript associated with Justin’s Apologies , and the Apologies themselves, evoked known cultural and adminstrative practices – practices of hanging papyrus libelli and their subscriptiones in Rome at the Temple of Apollo or the Baths of Trajan, practices also known from the ‘publication’ of …
Christemporos
Early Christians coined the word christemporos (“Christ-seller”) to mark other early Christians as abusive in their apostolic or Christian labor. This article explores the neologism, first embedding it within the market terminology of contemporaneous epigraphy and emphasizing its similarity to the term sōmatemporos , slave-seller or slave-trader. Second, the term christemporos , because of its frequent connection to the image of “huckstering the …
The Work of Nails
This article contributes to the study of religion by investigating the ritual significance of the ancient nail, focusing on its material power in piercing curse tablets (defixiones, sing. defixio) in Mediterranean antiquity. It thus brings a humble object and the gestures and labor associated with it more centrally into the study of religion in antiquity. The article also contributes to the study of religion more broadly by developing a theoretic…
Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses
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 materiality, poetics, song, incantation, and glossolalia were used as technologies of power. Laura Nasr…
Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses
Making Justice
At the beginning of Justin’s Apology, an account of injustice, Justin calls upon the emperors as φύλακες δικαιοσύνης, “guardians of justice.” Justin, 1 Apologia 2,2 (OECT, 80,13 Minns/Parvis). As part of a documentary and legal strategy, Justin’s Apology includes what he claims is an imperial rescript. This paper probes Justin’s Apology and its appended document(s) in relation to other contemporaneous strategies and materializations of seeking ju…
Centering Cyprus in Late Antiquity
Late Antique Cyprus – autocephalous in relation to the Christian ecclesial systems of organization, with island ports accepting the traffic of continental Mediterranean cities, replete with beautiful mosaics, still echoing with the powerful voice of heresiologist-bishop Epiphanius – deserves even more attention than it has received of late. The two volumes under review attend to the island and inspire future directions for research. The collected…
History (15 obras) · Art (13 obras) · Classical Antiquity Studies (13 obras) · Classics (10 obras) · Philosophy (10 obras) · Aesthetics (6 obras) · Byzantine Studies and History (6 obras) · Literature (6 obras) · Ancient history (5 obras) · Archaeology (5 obras)