International Conference!

SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL STUDIES

2014 INTERNATIONAL MEETING

Vienna, Austria

July 6 - 10, 2014

THE BIBLE IN BYZANTIUM: THE USE AND ABUSE OF TRADITION

Organizer: Claudia Rapp

Description: The Bible is the foundational text for all aspects of politics and culture in the Byzantine Empire from the fourth to the fifteenth century. This program unit consists of three sessions exploring its reception through appropriation, interpretation and application. ‘The Bible between Jews and Christians in Byzantium’ shows how the Bible was pressed into service by Christian authors to demarcate the dividing line to Judaism. ‘Biblical Scholarship in Byzantium’ investigates the mechanisms and tools by which Byzantine theologians, preachers and scribes sought to make the Biblical text accessible to a contemporary audience. ‘Biblical Foundations of Byzantine Identity and Culture’ demonstrates the different uses of the Bible in the social and political reality of Byzantium.

Program of Byzantine sessions


o7.07.2014

8:30 - 11:30

Room: SR2 Geschichte - Hauptgebäude

Theme: The Bible between Jews and Christians in Byzantium

Christian Gastgeber, Presiding


Claudia Rapp, Universität Wien


The Bible in Byzantine-Jewish Relations: A Problematic History (25 min)


Ra’anan Boustan, University of California-Los Angeles


Relics of Biblical Kingship between Jews and Christians in Byzantium (25 min)


Andreas Külzer, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften


Bibelrezeption im Heiligen Land: Der Beitrag der Proskynetaria ton Hagion Topon (25 min)


Break (30 min)


Leena Mari Peltomaa, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften


Women of the Bible in Early Byzantine Religious Poetry: The Case of Romanos (25 min)


Albrecht Berger, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and Sebastiano Panteghini, Institut für Mittelalterforschung - OEAW


Jesus, Maria, und die Apostel in der Kirchengeschichte des Nikephoros Kallistou Xanthopoulos: Ein Beitrag zur Spätbyzantinischen Bibelhermeneutik (25 min)


Discussion (25 min)

10.07.2014

8:30 - 11:30

Room: HS 42 - Hauptgebäude


Theme: Biblical Scholarship in Byzantium

Claudia Rapp, Presiding


Ernst Gamillscheg, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek


How to Study the Septuagint: Greek Church Fathers and Manuscripts of the Catenae in Vetus Testamentum in the Austrian National Library (30 min)


Christian Gastgeber, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften

The Use of Bible Quotations in Byzantine Documents: A Text Pragmatic Approach (30 min)


Discussion (15 min)


Break (30 min)


Elisabeth Schiffer, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften


Biblical Imagery in the Homiletic Writings of a Constantinopolitan Patriarch in Exile: The Case of Germanos II (1223-1240) (30 min)


Antonia Giannouli, University of Cyprus

Biblical Learning in Byzantium: The Exegetical Didaskaliai in Context (30 min)


Discussion (15 min)

10.07.2014

13:00 - 16:00

Room: HS 26 - Hauptgebäude

Theme: Biblical Foundations of Byzantine Identity and Culture


Andreas Külzer, Presiding


Meredith Riedel, Duke University


Echoes of Scripture in Byzantine Political Identity (30 min)


Ioannis Stouraitis, Universität Wien


Using the Bible to Legitimize Byzantine Warfare (30 min)


Discussion (15 min)


Break (30 min)


Alexandra Wassiliou-Seibt, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften


Biblische Reminiszenzen auf Byzantinischen Siegeln mit Metrischen Inschriften (30 min)


Eirini Afentoulidou, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften


The Posthumous Judgement in Byzantium: The Transformation of a Biblical Theme (30 min)


Discussion (15 min)

International Workshop!

Historiographies of Identity VI:

Historiography and Identity around 1000 CE – China and the West

During this workshop, organized by the SFB VISCOM in cooperation with Princeton University - History Department and the ERC Starting Grant OverMode, international scholars from various disciplines will discuss comparative approaches to the study of historiography and identity as seen from their respective fields. The meeting is hosted by the Institut für Mittelalterforschung and will take place Wednesday 25 June 2014 in the Seminar Rooms on the Ground Floor of the Wohllebengasse 12-14 (A-1040 Wien).

Book tip!

Jason König/Greg Woolf (eds.), Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Cambridge University Press 2013

Table of Contents

There is a rich body of encyclopaedic writing which survives from the two millennia before the Enlightenment. This book sheds new light on that material. It traces the development of traditions of knowledge-ordering which stretched back to Pliny and Varro and others in the classical world. It works with a broad concept of encyclopaedism, resisting the idea that there was any clear pre-modern genre of the encyclopaedia, and showing instead how the rhetoric and techniques of comprehensive compilation left their mark on a surprising range of texts. In the process it draws attention to both remarkable similarities and striking differences between conventions of encyclopaedic compilation in different periods. The focus is primarily on European/Mediterranean culture. The book covers classical, medieval (including Byzantine and Arabic) and Renaissance culture in turn, and combines chapters which survey whole periods with others focused closely on individual texts as case studies.

International Workshop!

In the Shadows of Empire 

Peripheral Polities in the Eurasian Middle Ages

Monday 23 June 2014

Wohllebengasse 12-14 (A-1040 Wien)

During this workshop, organized by the SFB VISCOM and hosted by the Institut für Mittelalterforschung, international scholars from various disciplines will present and discuss comparative approaches to phenomena related to “empires” and their peripheries in different regions and time-periods.

Presentation and discussion!

Book Tip!

W. Pohl/G. Heydemann (eds.), Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, Turnhout 2013

Table of Contents

This volume traces the creation of ethnic and religious identities in the Early Middle Ages in a wide range of sources. How were identities created in the early Middle Ages and when did they matter? This book explores different types of sources to understand the ways in which they contributed to making ethnic and religious communities meaningful: historiography and hagiography, biblical exegesis and works of theology, sermons and letters. Thus, it sets out to widen the horizon of current debates on ethnicity and identity. The Christianization and dissolution of the Roman Empire had provoked a crisis of traditional identities and opened new spaces for identification. What were the textual resources on which new communities could rely, however precariously? Biblical models and Christian discourses could be used for a variety of aims and identifications, and the volume provides some exemplary analyses of these distinct voices. Barbarian polities developed in a rich and varied framework of textual ‘strategies of identification’. The contributions reconstruct some of this discursive matrix and its development from the age of Augustine to the Carolingians. In the course of this process, ethnicity and religion were amalgamated in a new way that became fundamental for European history, and acquired an important political role in the post-Roman kingdoms. The extensive introduction not only draws together the individual studies, but also addresses fundamental issues of the definition of ethnicity, and of the relationship between discourses and practices of identity. It offers a methodological basis that is valid for studies of identity in general.