Here are some recent carnivals that I have not yet mentioned:

Biblical Studies Carnival 29

Patristics Carnival 10

History Carnival 63, History Carnival 64

Carnivalesque 38

Carnivalesque no. 37, aka “The Tiny Shriner Ancient/Medieval Edition” is up over on In the Middle.

Kevin A. Wilson has posted the most recent Biblical Studies Carnival XXVII over on Blue Cord. (When a carnival begins with an obscure reference to some prog rock band, you know it’s got to be good).

History Carnival no. 62 is available on Spinning Clio.

I have been falling behind in linking to carnivals, so this is an attempt to offer penitence for my sins:

Biblical Studies Carnival no. 26 on Biblicalia

Carnivalesque no. 35 (covering medieval and ancient history) on Highly Eccentric

History Carnival no. 60 on Victorian Peeper

The following recent carnivals are now up:

Biblical Studies Carnival no. 15, at Awilum;

Carnivalesque no. 24 (early modern edition), at The Long Eighteenth;

History Carnival no. 49, at History is Elementary.

The most recent Carnivalesque, this one covering ancient and medieval history blog-postings, is now up on Tony Keen’s blog, Memorabilia Antonina.

Phil S. has posted his most recent Patristics roundup.

The 46th History Carnival has also been uploaded over on the interestingly titled blog: “Investigations of a dog: Failing better at understanding the past”.

Biblical Studies Carnival no. 12 is up over on Jim West’s blog.

History Carnival no. 44 is posted on Barista: Heartstarters for the Hungry Mind.

Carnivalesque no. 21, which alternates months between ancient/medieval and early modern historical topics, is available as well.

The indefatigable David Meadows has also posted his most recent ‘Best of the Classical Blogosphere’ Carnival.
Note the variations in my descriptions of each carnival, particularly the use of different vocabulary (even strange words like indefatigable), which is a sure sign that some creativity leading to my own postings may be on the way.

History Carnival no. 39 is up over at the History News Network. There Ralph E. Luker guides you to the most recent blogging on various periods of history, including the ancient period.

The most recent History Carnival (no. 28) is now up over on Patahistory. In my recent, general neglect of blogging (due to reasons beyond my control), I have also missed mentioning History Carnivals 26 and 27.

Tony Keen has a post on Robert Graves - is he all bad?, which discusses the value of Grave’s Greek Myths despite its other shortcomings.

Stoa.org points to an article regarding an ancient Greek ship: Robot explores ancient Greek shipwreck.

There is a new blog by Matt Page (thanks to Mark Goodacre’s mention) devoted primarily to discussing films that involve biblical stories and themes: Bible Films Blog. There are already several posts there about the South African film Son of Man. I wonder if Matt Page will also discuss some of the earlier wave of both Bible and Roman-related films from the 1950s, some of which are hokey (corny), which makes them so enjoyable.

History Carnival no. 24 is up at the Elfin Ethicist.

One of the items links to a classical studies related blog that I had not yet noticed, called Memorabilia Antonina, by Tony Keen (an expert on the Lycians in Asia Minor who teaches at Open U.). He has several posts on Greeks and Romans as depicted in modern popular culture (film and TV).

The Biblical Studies Carnival has returned under the leadership of Tyler Williams (whose expertise is in Hebrew Bible) and will commence its monthly issues on February 1. Tyler now has a call for submissions for the February edition. He clarifies that the carnival will focus on historical or academic approaches (rather than devotional) to biblical studies and cognate areas. He also explains what a blog carnival is, in the event that you are unfamiliar with this. This will be working on the model of things like the History Carnival, which I find enjoyable and often mention.

In case you hadn’t noticed, David Meadows has an ambitious daily Classicarnival linking to the most recent posts relating to Greek and Roman topics. How does he keep up with it all?

History Carnival no. 23 is up over at Old is the New New, which is a blog by Rob MacDougall, an expert on the history of the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. (His doctoral work was on “The People’s Telephone: The Politics of Telephony in the United States and Canada, 1876-1926″.)

Among the links there is one to a batch of new history-related blogs connected with the Centre for History and New Media. He also links to Histomats’ list of top ten marxist historical works. G.E.M. de Ste Croix’s The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981) appears there alongside classic E.P. Thompson and Christopher Hill, whose The English Revolution of 1640 (1940) is now available online here. I still remember reading Hill’s books for courses in my undergrad days. His works were among the ones that made quite an impression on me and got me into social history (or “history from below”) in the first place. Among the more exciting of Hill’s works are The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, and Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England. I bet you never thought this one would come around to the history of Satan and his minions again.

History Carnival no. 22 is now up at Frog in a Well, the Korea History Group Blog. One of the links there is to a number of graffiti from Pompeii which, however offensive they may seem to some of us now, were clearly intended to be humorous (as well as offensive) then. Among the less offensive: “Satura was here on September 3rd.”

History Carnival edition 21 is now up over at CLEWS: The Historic True Crime Blog (by Laura James). This interesting blog, which I discovered only now, focusses on the history of crime and criminals. In browsing through some of Laura James’ other posts, I could not yet find any ancient criminals discussed, but do check out fascinating posts like The Very Nutty Professor (poisoned chocolate–now that is one professor you don’t want on your bad side).

Over at “Tigerlily”, the most recent edition of History Carnival (XX) has been posted.

Previously I have mentioned the History Carnival, which (twice a month) pulls together interesting posts on a variety of history related topics in various historical periods. Another regular carnival is Carnivalesque, which alternates between ancient / medieval and early modern topics in historical study. They often touch on the history of religions in the process. The most recent Carnivalesque (#10) is hosted by Sharon Howard (U. of Wales) at Early Modern Notes.

As we move our way from medieval to early modern Christianity in one of my classes, I thought I’d mention an interesting blog that focusses on the early modern period (though not on Christianity specifically). Sharon Howard (post-doctoral fellow at the U. of Wales), who also hosts the Early Modern Resources site, has her blog on Early Modern Notes.

In a recent post she discusses why she blogs as an academic, as well as the value of blogging for research (much of which rings true to me). She writes, in part,

“Blogging research lets you develop the very first drafts of ideas. Bits and pieces that don’t yet amount to articles (or even conference papers), but they may well do some day. And something else, sometimes: last year I was having trouble thinking up any new ideas at all, but blogging old ideas, often attached to new sources, meant that I kept writing, if only a few hundred words a week, without having to worry about it being original or impressive. And now, because it’s all archived and easy to find, I can look back over some of that work and see potential themes, little seeds of ideas that are worth working on, start to make them grow. . . Another thing: writing for a slightly different audience than in the usual academic contexts. This is an amazing opportunity to reach out.”

I also really enjoy the broader audience thing.

UPDATE: Jim Davila and Instapundit point to an online article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on academic blogging.

Among other things, the author of the article, Henry Farrell, notes that perhaps the majority of academic bloggers “see blogging as an extension of their academic personas. Their blogs allow them not only to express personal views but also to debate ideas, swap views about their disciplines, and connect to a wider public. For these academics, blogging isn’t a hobby; it’s an integral part of their scholarly identity. They may very well be the wave of the future.”

I was recently interviewed for an article, “Academics take up blogging,” in our local Thursday Report here at Concordia U, where you can see some of my basic thoughts on academic blogging.

There is an ongoing, substantial project on cultural interactions in antiquity hosted at York University and led by Steve Mason. The Project on Ancient Cultural Engagement (PACE) “aims to recover the Ancient Mediterranean World for our time in new ways. Its focus is the set of problems arising from the encounter and interaction of cultures: representation of one’s own group and others’, motivations for learning about or depicting the other, stereotypes (e.g., the barbarian) and rhetorical commonplaces, attraction to the exotic or revulsion at the alien, conscious assimilation or repudiation, and all the attendant problems of identity-construction.” Although only entering phase two of the project, there are already Greek texts and facing English translations (with commentaries) of Josephus’ works and Polybius’ Histories (click on “Texts and Commentary” on the site). There are also many relevant images and even videos pertaining to important places mentioned in Josephus’ works. The plan is to include other living commentaries of ancient authors who engage in ethnography or reflect cultural encounters. This is an excellent resource.

View other posts in the late-medieval and reformations series.

Carlo Ginzburg’s classic social historical study of an obscure peasant living in Italy provides a fascinating window into popular culture during the late medieval and reformation periods. Menocchio, a peasant miller who considered himself among the poor and yet was also literate at a basic level, was put on trial in Italy during the later inquisitions, church run court-cases against heresy (in the late 1500s). As one witness put it, Menocchio “is always arguing with somebody about the faith just for the sake of arguing – even with the priest” (Ginzberg, p. 2). His well-documented testimony and the perspectives of other peasants and priests on his views (from the court records) provide a picture of an independent thinker who was nonetheless in some respects reflecting a deeper stream of medieval popular religion, as Ginzburg argues.

Quite captivating is Menocchio’s view on creation, his cosmogony, which draws on the analogy of putrefaction:

“I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels. The most holy majesty decreed that these should be God and the angels, and among that number of angels, there was also God, he too having been created out of that mass at the same time, and he was made lord, with four captains, Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael” (Menocchio as cited by Ginzburg, pp. 5-6 )

The inquisitorial judges just could not get their minds around these elaborate and imaginative ideas of a relatively uneducated peasant. The angels emerged like worms in rotting cheese? God was created as one of these angels? Where did you come up with this stuff, and why do you insist on continually sharing your strange ideas with others (was the sentiment)?

More on Menocchio and popular religion later, which you can also read about in Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (trans. by John and Anne Tedeschi; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992 [1980]).

Ginzburg was among the pioneers of “microhistory“, a type of social history which focusses attention on detailing what we can known about one particular individual, family or village, for instance. You can read an online interview with him about microhistory and his work on the witches’ sabbat here.

Another social historian that engages in microhistory is Natalie Zemon Davis, well known for her book on The Return of Martin Guerre: Imposture and Identity in a Sixteenth-Century Village (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). As you may know, Martin Guerre’s story was also made into a film (in French, 1982) followed by a less historically-injected Hollywood version called Sommersby (1993), which was instead set in post-Civil War America (rather than a 16th century French village).

View other posts in the late-medieval and reformations series.

Carlo Ginzburg’s classic social historical study of an obscure peasant living in Italy provides a fascinating window into popular culture during the late medieval and reformation periods. Menocchio, a peasant miller who considered himself among the poor and yet was also literate at a basic level, was put on trial in Italy during the later inquisitions, church run court-cases against heresy (in the late 1500s). As one witness put it, Menocchio “is always arguing with somebody about the faith just for the sake of arguing – even with the priest” (Ginzberg, p. 2). His well-documented testimony and the perspectives of other peasants and priests on his views (from the court records) provide a picture of an independent thinker who was nonetheless in some respects reflecting a deeper stream of medieval popular religion, as Ginzburg argues.

Quite captivating is Menocchio’s view on creation, his cosmogony, which draws on the analogy of putrefaction:

“I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels. The most holy majesty decreed that these should be God and the angels, and among that number of angels, there was also God, he too having been created out of that mass at the same time, and he was made lord, with four captains, Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael” (Menocchio as cited by Ginzburg, pp. 5-6 )

The inquisitorial judges just could not get their minds around these elaborate and imaginative ideas of a relatively uneducated peasant. The angels emerged like worms in rotting cheese? God was created as one of these angels? Where did you come up with this stuff, and why do you insist on continually sharing your strange ideas with others (was the sentiment)?

More on Menocchio and popular religion later, which you can also read about in Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (trans. by John and Anne Tedeschi; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992 [1980]).

Ginzburg was among the pioneers of “microhistory“, a type of social history which focusses attention on detailing what we can known about one particular individual, family or village, for instance. You can read an online interview with him about microhistory and his work on the witches’ sabbat here.

Another social historian that engages in microhistory is Natalie Zemon Davis, well known for her book on The Return of Martin Guerre: Imposture and Identity in a Sixteenth-Century Village (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). As you may know, Martin Guerre’s story was also made into a film (in French, 1982) followed by a less historically-injected Hollywood version called Sommersby (1993), which was instead set in post-Civil War America (rather than a 16th century French village).

I may be behind the times, but I only now discovered something called History Carnival (it began in January 2005 and happens twice a month). You can read about the whole thing at that info site, but essentially this is an ongoing series of substantial blog entries that pass from one historian to another (both professionals and solid amateurs) and that guide you to a variety of good history-related blogs or blog-entries.

The current History Carnival XVI is hosted on Respectful Insolence (a.k.a. “Orac Knows”), a very wide-ranging blog by an “academic surgeon and scientist” whose historical interests are in WW II and the Holocaust. The next History Carnival (XVII) will be hosted by Lisa Roy Vox, a doctoral candidate at Emory U. (aka the Apocalyptic Historian), an expert in modern apocalypticism. So I’m looking forward to that one as well. Perhaps I should soon slip in a few more apocalyptic entries in my own blog to see if I make it into mention. (After all, I’m teaching a course on NT Apocrypha. . . maybe something on the Apocalypse of Peter to come;).

ONLINE PRIMARY SOURCES

• Cartularium: Primary Sources, sources for the study of women and monasticism (Monastic Matrix)
• Christian Classics Ethereal Library: Writings by monks, nuns, or mystics: Johannes (Meister) Eckhart(c. 1260-1327), Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), John of the Cross (1542-1591), Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-c. 1413), Richard Rolle of Hampole (c. 1290-c. 1349), Henry Suso (c. 1296-1366), John Tauler (c. 1300-1361), Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). Writings by “reformers”: John Calvin (1509-1564), Martin Luther (1483-1546)
• English Reformation Sources (Julie P. McFerran)
• Hanover Historical Texts Project: Council of Trent, Catholic (”Counter-”) Reformation (Hanover College)
• Internet Medieval Sourcebook (Paul Halsall, Fordham U.)
• Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Reformation Europe (Paul Halsall, Fordham U.)
• The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies (Georgetown U.)
• Martyrs Mirror (1660), Anabaptist history of martyrs from the first to the seventeenth century
• Medieval Heresy (Internet Medieval Sourcebook)
• Project Wittenburg: Selected Works of Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)
• Reformation, including links to online works by Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, and others (Hans Rollmann, Memorial U.)
• John Wyclif and the Lollards (Geoffrey Chaucer page)

OTHER RESOURCES

• Bodleian Library: Western Manuscripts to 1500, images of manuscripts (University of Oxford)
• Digital Scriptorium, image database of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts (U. California, Berkeley)
• Hagiography, Lives of Saints (Thomas Head, ORB Online Encycl.)
• Monastic Matrix: Resources for the Study of Women’s Religious Communities from 400 to 1600 AD
• Monasticism in Medieval Christianity (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• NetSERF: Medieval Religion (Catholic U. of America)
• Relics and Reliquaries in Medieval Christianity (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• The Reformation (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Reformation Picture Gallery: People, Places
• Religious Orders (Kimberly Georgedes, ORB Online Encycl.)
• Women and Hagiography in Medieval Christianity (Thomas Head, ORB Online Encycl.)

NOTE ON USING THE INTERNET FOR STUDYING THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS: Internet sites are not all equally valuable and reliable when it comes to historical information, and it is not always easy for everyone to distinguish which ones are reliable. Above I have limited myself primarily to sites which collect together or link sources from the time period we are studying (”primary sources”) and to sites with ties to legitimate educational institutions or produced by professors. This means that they will be relatively reliable. However, at this point in history, the internet is never a substitute for doing proper reading and research in primary sources, journal articles and books.

Other posts in the late-medieval and reformations series.

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS ONLINE

• Early Christian Writings, including the Apocrypha and Gnostic writings (Peter Kirby)
• Early Church Fathers, including the so-called heresiologists (combaters of “heresy), such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
• The Five Gospel Parallels, including the Coptic gospel of Thomas (John W. Marshall, U of Toronto)
• Noncanonical Literature: Documents to Aid Students and Scholars in Biblical Interpretation, including M.R. James’ introductions and translations from The Apocryphal New Testament (1924) (Wesley Center)

RESOURCES ON CHRISTIAN APOCRYPHA AND GNOSTICISM

• Apocryphal Acts Homepage (István Czachesz, U. Groningen)
• Christian Apocrypha (Section of the Society of Biblical Literature)
• From Jesus to Christ: Gnostics and Other Heretics (PBS Frontline)
• NT Gateway: Non-Canonical Christian Texts (Mark Goodacre, Duke U.)
• Nag Hammadi Library, an historical introduction to the discovery
• Middle Platonism in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Edward Moore; St. Elias School of Orthodox Theology)

RESOURCES ON SPECIFIC APOCRYPHAL WRITINGS

• Papyrus Egerton 2 Homepage (Wieland Willker)
• The Coptic Gospel of Judas (Iscariot) (Roger Pearse)
• The Secret Gospel of Mark Homepage (Wieland Willker)
• Gospel of Thomas Commentary (Peter Kirby)
• Grondin’s Interlinear Coptic/English translation of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas
• The Acts of Thecla: A Pauline Tradition Linked to Women (Nancy A. Carter)

ONLINE DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS ON APOCRYPHAL WRITINGS

• The More Spiritual Gospel: Markan Literary Techniques in the Longer Gospel of Mark by Scott G. Brown (U. Toronto; now available as a book; interview with author here)
• The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: The Text, Its Origins, and Its Transmission, by Tony Chartrand-Burke (U. Toronto)
• Apostolic Commission Narratives in the Canonical and Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, by István Czachesz (U. Groningen)
• The Apocryphal Acts of Andrew, by Fernando Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta (U. Groningen)

(Thanks to Tony Chartrand-Burke [Atkinson College, York U.] for sharing with me the links he had already found in connection with his course on gnosticism).

In preparations for a graduate course, I just came across the Apocryphal Acts Homepage of István Czachesz, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Groningen. So far, he provides useful bibliographies and links to online resources. Also available there are several of his own articles. His dissertation, which is forthcoming in revised form, is currently available online at the University of Groningen website (Apostolic commission narratives in the canonical and apocryphal Acts of the Apostles).

In the future, I will have more entries on Apocryphal Gospels and Acts in connection with the graduate course I’m teaching in the Fall on the “Diversity of Early Christianity”, which is focusing on the above this time around.

For those of you who have not yet heard, or like me need to be reminded, there are numerous excellent maps–free for educational use–at the The Ancient World Mapping Center (associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). They also have a frequently updated “features and news” page which provides information relating to geography and cartography of the ancient world (and happened to refer to the CSBS Travel and Religion in Antiquity seminar, which is what reminded me about the maps). The Center was and is directly involved in the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World project and continues to do work in revision and updating. Now that I have the Barrington Atlas–the most detailed map of the ancient world ever, I don’t know how I did without it.

The organization summarizes its aims:

The Ancient World Mapping Center promotes cartography, historical geography and geographic information science as essential disciplines within the field of ancient studies through innovative and collaborative research, teaching, and community outreach activities.