The Book of Chronicles stands out in the biblical context as it systematically, and at times literally, revisits historical events recounted in other biblical books like Samuel and Kings. This article aims to shed light on the phenomenon of this historical rewriting by employing Jeffrey Alexander’s cultural trauma theory. While Alexander’s theory has found application as a framework for interpreting specific biblical books in recent years, the uniqueness of the proposed article lies in its approach. Rather than applying Alexander’s theory to books written in close proximity to the traumatic events, such as the exile, the article seeks to explore its relevance in a book shaped approximately 250 years after the occurrence of the trauma.

This article argues that several biblical texts, including some previously unrecognized ones, impelled the foundational apologetic argument of the first letter to Autolycus by Theophilus, the second-century bishop of Antioch. I focus here not only on biblical passages in Theophilus’s mental and social worlds that he may have consciously used and that appear in biblical indices in modern editions of Ad Autolycum, but also on previously unrecognized ones which, nonetheless, leave subtle traces, and which Theophilus may even have used unconsciously. To uncover the “literary echoes” of these passages, I exploit Hollander’s intertextual approach. This study can show how a sensitivity to literary echoes can produce deeper understanding of the formation of the strategy of Theophilus’s first apologetic letter, of his conformity to ancient ideals regarding the creative use of a classic corpus, and of functions of Scripture in his largely oral second-century community and in early Christianity more broadly.

In recent decades, biblical and early Christian studies have become more keenly aware and critical of how ancient Mediterranean literature perpetuates patriarchal stereotypes about women, incites gendered violence, and often participates in a culture of blaming women for the perpetuation of such stereotypes and violence. This article examines how the soul is gendered and made a victim of sexual violence in a Nag Hammadi text known as the Exegesis on the Soul (Exeg. Soul). After introducing Exeg. Soul and Nag Hammadi Codex II, I examine how the text participates in victim blaming and in conversation with recent advances in classical and biblical scholarship, as well as key differences between Exeg. Soul and other texts in Codex II regarding their characterization of sexual violence. I argue that despite its usefulness in encouraging ascetics to resist desires and repent like the soul portrayed in the text, Exeg. Soul offers a less forgiving portrayal of divine intervention (or lack thereof) in moments of sexual violence and risks the revictimization of survivors.

While Paul urged practitioners of Christ-worship to abandon their old gods and replace them with Christ—a demand later re-issued by Justin, Tertullian, and other spokespersons—this study suggests that such an “abandon and replace” ideal would not normally have been followed. Relinquishing old gods when turning to Christ posed risks compared to other methods of embracing new gods. Furthermore, in antiquity, abandoning old gods was neither necessary nor common upon adoption of new deities. In light of these observations, my study highlights underexplored modes of embracing Christ in the Roman principate, and argues that a plurality of Christ-followers maintained connections with the Roman gods. I suggest that interpretatio Christiana and various other forms of adding Christ to existing religious practices were likely embraced by a prominent number of Christ-followers prior to Constantine.

This article offers an exploration of the transmission of the Pericope Adulterae (PA) in medieval manuscripts through the reports of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Egyptian scholars Abū al-Barakāt ibn Kabar and al-Asʿad ibn al-ʿAssāl. Ibn Kabar’s investigation reveals disparities between Arabic and Coptic sections, prompting a study of the PA’s presence in manuscripts across languages. Ibn al-ʿAssāl’s research involves examining manuscripts in Coptic, Greek, and Syriac, uncovering the PA’s rarity rather than prevalence. Byzantine-text based Arabic translations are found to introduce the PA to Coptic and Syriac circles. In contrast, the Melkite tradition, reliant on Greek manuscripts, often omits the PA. By tracing these scholars’ inquiries, the article provides insights into the PA’s complex journey of presence and absence in medieval Egypt and the Levant.

Jewish Hebrew writings spanning the Middle Ages to Modern times across multiple genres frequently include a large number of biblical quotations, often merged semantically and syntactically with the original material. This biblical metatext—mostly employed through metaphors, allusions and allegories—serves as a literary device, fulfils an aesthetic function, and endows the text with didactical, historiosophical or theological depth. This article will focus on the influence of this metatext in Hebrew chronicles from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and will examine cases where it demonstrates a specific type of historical thought, reflective of certain theological perceptions. The article will outline a tentative model of the phenomenon of biblical metatext through its cultural and social functions in traditional Jewish culture. Presenting this phenomenon as an “open work”—a concept developed by Umberto Eco—enables us to more clearly analyze the interaction between author and reader, as well as their creative process.

The past decade has seen significant advances in our understanding of the early modern reception of 1 Enoch, thanks to the pioneering work of Ariel Hessayon, Annette Yoshiko Reed, and Gabriele Boccaccini among others. Building on their research, this article reconstructs the dynamics that generated interest in 1 Enoch in early modernity, focussing on the reception of the Syncellus fragments published in 1606 by Joseph Scaliger. To do so, it offers three observations. Firstly, it expands our understanding of the nature of interest in 1 Enoch prior to 1606. Secondly, it corrects a common misinterpretation of Scaliger’s comments on the Syncellus fragments. Finally, it reconstructs three trends which arose after Scaliger and which functioned to perpetuate interest in 1 Enoch. This account should interest both scholars of Enoch’s afterlives and historians of scholarship for the light it sheds on the development of early modern biblical criticism.