Past years’ papers

2024

January 11
Joe Glynias (Harvard)
‘Outside Knowledge’ and the Antioch Translation Movement

January 24 | TeTra Lecture
Jost Gippert (Universität Hamburg)
The Written Heritage of Caucasian Albanian

January 25
Oana Maria Cojocaru (Tampere University)
Dis/ability and Byzantine Hagiography

February 8
Ayhan Aksu (Groningen/Leuven)
The Unclear Provenance of the Nabataean Dead Sea Scroll 4Q343

February 22
Armine Melkonyan (Florence/Matenadaran)
A Newly Discovered Armenian Interreligious Disputation

March 7
Ya’el Nu’emah-Kremer (University of Oxford)
“Be for me a mother:” The Syriac Devotion to Saint Shmuni and Child Loss in Late Antiquity

March 19

Peter Van Nuffelen (UGent)
Andreas, the brother of Magnus and his chronography: towards a new history of Greek chronicle writing

April 11
Aneta Dimitrova (Sofia)
The Two Complete Slavonic Translations of John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Statues and Their Greek Sources

April 25
Monika Amsler (Bern)
Creative Work with Excerpts: A Lesson from the Babylonian Talmud

May 9
Mina Monier (MF Norwegian School of Theology, Oslo)
A Quest for the Pericope Adulterae: A Historical Assessment of ibn Kabar and ibn al–ʿAssāl’s Notes

May 15 | TeTra Lecture
Marianna Shreve Simpson (University of Pennsylvania, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies)
Dioscorides Disordered: A Fragmentary Kitab-i Hashayish (Book of Herbs) in Philadelphia

May 23
Benjamin Sharkey (University of Oxford)
Literacy, transmission and translation: the epigraphic evidence of an East Syriac community in Mongol-era Kyrgyzstan

June 7
Martina Palladino (UGent)
The Sanskrit Yasna and Its Philological Project

June 20
Tilke Nelis (KU Leuven)
The Use of Sense-Lines in Greek-Latin Manuscripts of the New Testament: A Case Study

July 4
Sophia Dege-Müller (Universität Hamburg)
Scribes at work – the transmission of texts from Ethiopian Christians to Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jewish)

August 1
Yonatan Moss (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
John of Litharb, On the Soul (c. 730): A Rediscovered Work in its Broader Historical Contexts

August 29
Khachik Harutyunyan (Matenadaran)
Daily Life in Armenian Colophons

September 9 | Book in the Spotlight
Valentina Duca (Hebrew University), ‘Exploring Finitude’: Weakness and Integrity in Isaac of Nineveh 
Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 309 (Leuven, 2022).
Discussant: Emiliano Fiori (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia).

October 3
Sarah Whitear (KU Leuven)
Menstruation in the Apostolic Constitutions

November 7
Andrew Hochstedler (Oxford), 
Mary’s ‘Syriac’ Assumption: The Sleep of Souls and the Fate of the Virgin in the Earliest Syriac Dormition Literature

November 28
Daria Elagina (Universität Hamburg), 
The Reception of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu in Ethiopia and Eritrea

December 5
Benedetta Contin (Universität Wien)
Models of Interpretations: Post-Chalcedonian Armenian Theological Texts and Problems

December 19
Piril Us MacLennan (UGent) 
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2023

January 26
Matthijs Zoeter (UGent)
The Entropy of Basil of Caesarea’s Letter Collection

February 9
Chiara Barbati (University of Pisa)
Multilingualism, multigraphism and tools in education: The case of Manichaeans and Christians in the Turfan oasis

February 23
Mariapia Muccigrosso (UCLouvain)
Building Blocks for the Editio Critica Maior of Gregory of Nazianzus’ Or. 19

March 9
Alexey Muraviev (HSE Moscow / University of Tübingen)
The Church of the East and the origin of the first Barlaam and Josaphat: Kekelidze’s idea revisited

March 13 | TeTra Lecture
Margaret Cormack (College of Charleston)
Medieval Icelandic Ecclesiastical Charters and Cartularies

March 30
Daniel Gallaher (University of Oxford)
Text and Transmission in the Armenian History of T‘ovma Arcruni (9th/10th century)

April 21
Radu Mustață (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
The Textual Formation and Reception History of the “Malabar Sermonary”: From Syro-Catholic to Syriac Orthodox Environment

April 27
Chloé Agar (University of Oxford)
The Transmission of Traditions in Coptic Hagiography: The Dichotomy between Christian and Pagan Practices

May 10
Matteo Nicolini-Zani (Community of Bose, Italy)
The kaṣāya-clad Messiah: Buddhist Christology as revealed in the earliest Christian (East Syriac) literature in Chinese

May 22, 2023 | TeTra Lecture
Hagith Sivan (The University of Kansas)
Why not teach girls Greek and Torah? Rabbinic views on the transmission of knowledge from fathers to daughters in late antiquity

May 23
Noam Maeir (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Greek Loanwords in Syriac Literature: New Findings

June 7
Nina Vanhoutte (UGent)
The horse-loving man who teaches – Niketas of Herakleia’s didactic poem On Syntax

June 15
Aashu Mattackal (KU Leuven)
The Scriptural Basis for the Soul’s Journey towards Perfection in Origen’s Homilies

July 6
Eva Rodrigo Gomez (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
The presence and understanding of Greek loanwords in Emmanuel bar Shaḥḥare’s Hexaemeron

July 27
Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent (Marquette University)
Change of Taste: The Power and Paradoxes of Food in Ancient Christianity

August 3
Lisa Agaiby (St Athanasius College, University of Divinity)
Manuscript Project at the Coptic Monastery of St Paul the Hermit at the Red Sea, Egypt

August 28
Giovanni Gomiero (UGent)
“While one brother was a writer, the other was a bookbinder”: literary activity and East Syrian monks in Thomas of Marga’s works (9th century)

September 21
Aaron Butts (Universität Hamburg), in collaboration with Ted Erho (Universität Hamburg / Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
The Ethiopic Version of the Life of Abraham of Qidun (CPG 3937): A New Trajectory in the Ethiopic Reception of Syriac Literature

September 28
Yakir Paz (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Translating Jannes and Jambres into Rabbinic Literature

October 5
Philip Forness (KU Leuven)
The Role of the Bible in Shaping Historiographical Imagination: The Ecclesiastical History of Pseudo-Zachariah (fl. c. 568/569)

October 26
Reyhan Durmaz (UPenn)
Rural lives and global visions between Syria, Armenia, and Rome in the Life of Aḥo of Rishʿayno: Introductory notes on a new translation project

November 16
Ugo Mondini (University of Oxford)
The Poet John Mauropous: Reflections on poetry and literature in eleventh-century Byzantium

November 30
Veronika Wieser (Austrian Academy)
Reduce, reuse, recycle: structure, authorial strategies and methodological problems in Gennadius of Marseille’s De viris illustribus

December 7
Mari Mamyan (Regensburg/Matenadaran)
The Apostle Thomas in the Armenian Tradition

2022

January 13
Fokelien Kootstra (Universiteit Ge​nt)
Scribal practice in the early Arabic papyri

February 3
Matteo Poiani (Université de Strasbourg/Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
The Syriac translation of Evagrius of Pontus: some initial observations

February 17
Jacopo Gnisci (UCL)
All that glitters is not gold: Metalwork in Early Solomonic Manuscripts

February 24

Laura Mariotti(KU Leuven)
Writing Practices and the Reception of Basil of Caesarea in Judean Desert Monastic Sources

March 10
Marina Rustow (Princeton)
Stitching, Bundling and Provisional Binding: Physical Traces of Archiving Practices in Geniza Documents

March 24
Shlomi Efrati (KU Leuven)
Traditions, Transmission, and The Blurry Edges of Rabbinic Composition(s)

April 7
Emiliano Fiori (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia)
Homer against Origen: Two Neglected Letters in Syriac of the 6th Century

April 21
Geneviève Lachance (UGent)
Transmission of the Ancient Greek Philosophical Corpus in Armenia The Case of an Anonymous Armenian Commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation

May 5
Marijke Kooijman (UGent)
Leo of God or Leo of Rome? The overt and hidden authority of Bishop Leo of Rome in a fifth-century Constantinopolitan letter collection on the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451)

May 26
Michele Trizio (Università degli Studi di Bari)
The Tradition of the Middle Byzantine Philosophical Works: a Sociological Approach

June 9
Emmanuel Van Elverdinghe (UCLouvain)
The Social Dimensions of Copying Manuscripts in Medieval Armenia

June 23
Stephanie Pambakian (St Andrews)
Seeds of science in medieval Armenia: Anania Širakac’i’s corpus reconsidered

July 14
Lara Sels (KU Leuven)
Editing Slavonic in the light of a Greek source text. The case of Pseudo-Proclus of Constantinople, In sanctam Pentecosten (CPG 5815)

August 18
Lieve Van Hoof (UGent)
In cauda venenum: The end of Libanius’ letter collection and Foerster’s edition

September 9
Seth M. Stadel (University of Oxford)
Biblical Interpretation in Pre-Islamic Persia: Aḥob of Qatar and the Sources of his Old Testament Exegetical Works

September 19
Simon Ford (UGent)
Transmission through Redaction: the case of the Syriac pseudo-Nilus

October 6
Dan Batovici (KU Leuven/UCLouvain)
The Clementine Catholic Epistles in Syriac

October 27
András Kraft (Universität Wien)
A proleptic conflict: apocalypsis and apokatastasis in late eleventh-century Constantinople

November 10
Nathan Gibson (LMU Munich)
Circumnavigating Jewish and Christian Realities: What the Polemicist al-Jāḥiẓ Didn’t Want to Admit about His Society

November 21
Serena Causo (UGent)
Use and Transmission of Legal sources in petitions from Roman Egypt: scribal practices and the representation of power

December 1
Sabrina Inowlocki (KU Leuven)
From the Hand of the Slave to the Hand of the Saint: Pamphilus of Caesarea and Autography

December 8
Nafisa Valieva (College de France)
Textual unit: its physical and logical articulation in the Geez (Ethiopic) “Gadla Lalibala collection”

2021

January 21
Peter Toth (British Library)
Visions of Hell Between East and West: An Unknown Latin Version of the Byzantine Apocalypse of the Virgin

February 11
Pietro D’Agostino (KU Leuven)
The Notitia de locis sanctis transmitted in the Par. ar. 300: about the first Arabic guide to the Holy Places. A study and edition

February 24
Nathan Carlig (Université de Liège)
Codex MONB.CP: a codicological reassessment of a late patristic collection from the White Monastery (12th cent.)

March 23
Valentina Duca (KU Leuven)
Paul via Mark to Isaac? The Syriac version of Mark the Monk as a possible source of Isaac of Nineveh’s interpretation of Paul’s theology of grace

April 9
Amber Ivanov (Universiteit Gent)
The Textual Transmission of the Translated Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla in Old Church Slavonic

April 27
Miriam Blanco Cesteros (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
The Alchemical Papyri of Leiden and Stockholm: Outcomes of A New Approach and Open Questions

May 7
Sofia Puchkova (KU Leuven)
The vision of Isaiah in the Temple (Is 6: 2-7): Theodore of Mopsuestia’s heritage in Theodore bar Koni and Ishodad of Merv

May 21 
Emmanouela Grypeou (Stockholm University)
The Hours of Day and Night: The complex history of text and transmission of the Horarium-traditions

June 10
Marianna Mazzola (Universiteit Gent)
Cross-cultural interactions in reconquered Syria (10th-11th c.): the case of Melitene region

June 24
Alice Croq (Ecole pratique des hautes études, Paris)
The Christian Arabic Apocalypse of Gregory of Edessa: Literary sources and sociocultural context

June 28 | TeTra lecture
Michael E. Stone (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
The Apocrypha and their Role in the Armenian Embroidered Bible

August 9
Pouyan Rezvani (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften München)
Between education and patronage: a classification of Arabic astrolabe texts in the 10th and 11th centuries A.D.

August 18
Sarah Parkhouse (University of Manchester)
Selling Mysteries in Coptic Egypt: Religious Entrepreneurship and the Pistis Sophia

September 21
Mara Nicosia (Universiteit Ge​nt)
Syriac Rhetoric between Greek and Arabic: A Look at its History and Technical Vocabulary

September 30
Samuel Noble  (KU Leuven)
Reading al-Fārābī in Byzantine Antioch: ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Faḍl and the Baghdad Peripatetics

October 14
Philip Wood (Aga Khan University)
Accounts of the Arab conquests of the seventh century in the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian

October 28
Ralph Barczok (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
Visualizing the Multireligious History of the Medieval Middle East. Methodological Challenges of a Digital Humanities Project

November 22
Shiva Mihan (IAS Princeton)
Text transmission and editing in 15th-century Iran under the Timurid Prince Baysunghur

November 30
Alison John (University of Oxford)
Bilingual poetry in Late Antiquity: author, audience, and reception

December 9
Emanuel Fiano (Fordham)
The Corpus of Isho’bokht of Rev Ardashir

2020

January 16th | in Leuven

Marion Pragt (KU Leuven)
Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs and its Syriac Reception

Mircea Duluș (ICUB Bucharest)
New Evidence on the Transmission of Late Antique Polemics in Byzantium: the Monogenes of Makarios Magnes and the Homilies of Philagathos of Cerami

February 27th | in Leuven 

Julie Van Pelt (Universiteit Gent)
Miracle or Magic? The Figure of the Magos in Byzantine Hagiography

András Mércz (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest)
Translating Syriac in the 16th century. Andreas Masius’  translation of the Syriac Anaphora of St. Basil in the light of his correspondence with Moses of Mardin

April 21
Giorgia Nicosia (Universiteit Ge​nt)
Syriac Collections of Greek Prophecies about Christ 

May 22
Adrian Pirtea (Freie Universität Berlin and BBAW)
The Story of the Sleepers of Ephesus in Eastern Christianity and Early Islam

May 28
Zaroui Pogossian (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Center for Religious Studies)
Drowning in a Sea of Apocalyptic Manuscripts: Translation, Creation, Transmission between Greek, Syriac and Armenian Texts 

June 18
Sergey Minov (Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV)
The Syriac “Story of Pawla the Priest and his Dialogue with Satan”: Orgy and Massacre in a late antique Bathhouse

July 1
Brent Nongbri (MF Norwegian School of Theology)
Revisiting the Date of Codex Sinaiticus

August 6
Liv Ingeborg Lied (MF Norwegian School of Theology)
The Syriac Christian Transmission of Jewish Texts: Methodological and Ethical Challenges

August 18
Alin Suciu (Göttingen Academy)
The Revelation of Jesus Christ to Peter: A New Coptic Arabic Historical Apocalypse

September 14
Bert Jacobs (KU Leuven)
Resisting the Islamic Appropriation of Biblical History: The Use of Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ in Dionysius bar Ṣalībī’s Disputation against the Muslims

September 24
Barbara Roggema (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
New sources for the history of Jewish-Christian confrontation in the early Islamic period (results from the ERC-project JEWSEAST)

October 7
Flavia Ruani (IRHT CNRS Paris)
A Robber in Paradise: Luke 23:43 in Manichaean and Anti-Manichaean Exegesis

November 5
Tamara Pataridze (University of Oxford)
Painting the Saint on the background of ideological controversy: ‘The Life of Peter the Iberian’, Syriac and Georgian Sources

November 26
Susanne Hummel (Universität Hamburg, Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies)
The birth of an Ethiopic hagiographic text and its reception: The case of the Gadla Śarṣ́a Ṗeṭros

December 10
Matthew O’Farrell (Macquarie University)
Holding Out for a Hero: Post-Islamic Imperial Saviors in Rome and Iran

December 17
Rachel Dryden (Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge and Faculty of Theology, Oxford)
How al-Shayṭān got his name: Qur’ānic and Arabic Recensions of the Syriac Cave of Treasures