Authorial Fictions and Attributions in the Ancient Mediterranean II

This colloquium brings together scholars working on early Judaism, early Christianity, and Classics to discuss authorship and attribution beyond the typical boundaries of our fields. Monthly events through December will feature panel discussions of prominent work in this area, alongside new research presentations. Come join us to hear interdisciplinary dialogue on authorial fictions and attributions in the ancient Mediterranean, featuring top scholars in ancient history, as well as rising stars among early career researchers!

Stay tuned for further registration details for our upcoming events on November 9 and December 9!

Programme

Jeremiah Coogan, “Early Christian Negotiations of Gospel Authorship”

Alin Suciu, “Authorship and Fiction in the Coptic Apostolic Memoirs”

Olivia Stewart Lester, “Can a Fictional Prophet Be an Author? Attribution and the Production of the Sibylline Oracles”

Natalie Dohrmann, “Rabbinic Authorship, Authority, and Canon Making”

Tobias Nicklas, Respondent

Participants

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Jeremiah Coogan is a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity whose research focuses on Gospel reading, material texts, and late antiquity. His forthcoming monograph, Eusebius the Evangelist, analyses Eusebius of Caesarea’s fourth-century reconfiguration of the Gospels as a window into broader questions of technology and textuality in early Christianity and the late ancient Mediterranean. His current book project investigates how early Christians deployed literary and bibliographic categories to understand similarities and differences between Gospel texts.

Alin Suciu is specialised in the history and literatures of Eastern Christian Churches, with a special emphasis on the Egyptian Coptic Church. He is particularly interested in the transmission of apocryphal and patristic literature from early Christian centuries to medieval times. He is the author of the Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon: A Coptic Apostolic Memoir (Tübingen, 2017).

Olivia Stewart Lester’s research focuses on prophecy in Hellenistic Judaism, early Christianity, and the larger ancient Mediterranean. Her first book is entitled Prophetic Rivalry, Gender, and Economics: A Study in Revelation and Sibylline Oracles 4­–5 (Mohr Siebeck, 2018). The book adds to a growing body of scholarship challenging narratives about prophecy’s decline in the early Roman imperial period and examines constructions of true and false prophecy at the intersections of interpretation, gender, and economics. She is currently working on a monograph on the Jewish-Christian Sibylline Oracles.

Natalie Dohrmann is a scholar of early rabbinic Judaism, with a special interest in the place of rabbinic law in the imperial culture of the Roman Near East. Her most recent piece is “Ad similitudinem arbitrorum: On the Perils of Commensurability and Comparison in Roman and Rabbinic Law,” in Legal Engagement: The Reception of Roman Tribunals and Law by Jews and Other Provincials of the Roman Empire, edited by K. Berthelot, N. B. Dohrmann, and C. Nemo-Pekelman (École française de Rome, 2021).

Tobias Nicklas, born 1967, has published a wealth of research on early Christianity, including apocryphal literature, New Testament, reception history, and canonisation. As the director of the Beyond Canon research centre, his work continues to explore these topics.