Classics Commons^™

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Outside The Dichotomy: Redefining Judith As A Prophet, Heidyn Von Bose

Studia Antiqua

The character of Judith has often been reduced to a dichotomy: is she a pro-feminist or an anti-feminist character? This traditional debate limits Judith and tries to squeeze her into ill-fitting literary boxes. The fol- lowing paper offers a more nuanced interpretation for the character and role of Judith within her story, particularly that Judith is a prophet. It first dem- onstrates that she meets the criteria of a prophet by synthesizing the works of Martti Nissinen, Esther Hamori, and Lester L. Grabbe. It then examines how her “irritations”—morally or culturally questionable actions—do not disqualify her from this role. The …

Joshua As A Hymn Of Glory: An Analysis And Comparison Of Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Richard D. Jarvis Iii

Studia Antiqua

A knowledgeable reader of the Hebrew Bible understands that there are two conflicting conquest narratives contained in the books of Joshua and Judges. This paper seeks to reframe Joshua 5–11 in a genre other than the traditional interpretation of a conquest narrative. These chapters of Joshua, as compared with Merneptah’s Victory Stele and the annals of Adad-Nārārī II, fit thematically into an entirely different genre from ancient Near Eastern literature: hymns of glory. Using four char- acteristics inspired by the work of Susan Hollis—propagandistic royal ideology, divine empowerment or call, utter destruction of enemies, and will of the deity accomplished—to …

"All Power Over Ouranos And Gaia": The Maiestas Domini Supra Caelum Motif In Matthew 28:18 And The Junius Bassus Sarcophagus, Calan Christensen

Studia Antiqua

The maiestas domini supra caelum motif, as depicted in the central vignette of the upper register of the Junius Bassus sarcophagus, is widely understood as epitomizing a Christian ideal or an eschatological adventus as opposed to a representation of any “historical” biblical narra- tive. Nevertheless, this paper addresses the compelling iconographical al- lusion between the Bassus enthronement scene over Caelus and the final chapter of Matthew, specifically highlighting Jesus’s declaration of divine power “ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς.”

Through an examination of the relevant contemporaneous theological and ritual literature produced during the period of Matthew’s authorship and the crafting of …

Full Issue

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Towards Orthodox Polity: Episcopal Apology In Eusebius Of Caesarea’S Ecclesiastical History, Chris Cox

Studia Antiqua

During the last twenty years Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History has received some examination by scholars as a work of apology. In this paper, I propose that one element of Eusebius’ apologetics is a defense of the episcopal polity which existed during his lifetime. This is evident through the priority which the episcopacy is given throughout Ecclesiastical History’s narrative, and the authority that Eusebius presumes the episcopate holds from its origin. Additionally, it is possible that groups which Eusebius considered heretical and who rejected the authority of orthodox bishops may have motivated his episcopal emphasis.

A Pauline Dress Code Or A Roman Analogy: Reinterpreting Paul’S Discourse In 1 Corinthians 11:1–16, Nicole Francis

Studia Antiqua

Historically, the debate surrounding 1 Corinthians 11 has focused on whether or not Paul is referring to women veiling their heads in church or simply wearing their hair up. This debate roots itself in a nearly universally accepted assumption that Paul is requesting a sort of dress-code standard for praying and prophesying in church. While this has been the dominant reading in scholarship for centuries, there are numerous compelling weaknesses in this interpretation. This paper will explore those weaknesses and provide an alternative reading: When confronted with group conflict, Paul attempts to reason his way through the hierarchical structure he …

Retracing The Historical Via Dolorosa: A Logistical Exercise In First-Century Jerusalem, Calan Christensen

Studia Antiqua

Since the identification of Herod’s palace on the Western Hill of Jerusalem as the Praetorium (πραιτώριον) of the Gospels, the notion of Jesus being tried at the Antonia Fortress, and the associated Via Dolorosa, has been relegated to mere tradition. This presented a prime juncture to responsibly reinform a tantamount Christian pilgrimage tradition through the lens of archaeology. Unfortunately, this opportunity has seemingly been neglected by the greater academic community. Any scholar that ventures to mention a plausible route from the Praetorium to Golgotha hastily assumes a route through the Upper City and neglects to cite any compelling evidence. This …

The Different Esthers Of The Septuagint And Masoretic Text: How The Inclusion Of God Changes The Character Of Esther, Heidyn Von Bose

Studia Antiqua

The Book of Esther is a unique work that contains significant differences between the Hebrew and Greek versions of the text. One significant difference is the character of Esther herself. In the throne room scene of chapter five (or addition D in the LXX), the LXX Esther is more passive than the Esther of the Hebrew Bible because of the inclusion of God and more specifically the differences in the power structure between God, Esther, and the king. By analyzing the different characters’ movements and the language describing them in chapter 5 or Addition D, the differences of Esther’s character …

Embodiment And Ritual Clothing: Dressing The Israelite High Priest, Ally Huffmire

Studia Antiqua

Exodus 28 and 39 contain a detailed description of the clothing God instructed to be made and worn by Israelite priests. In this essay, sacred clothing will be understood through the lens of ritual studies, characterizing clothing with a sense of liminality that defines and endows the human wearer with identity and power. The social meanings and implications of the high priest’s dress will be reconstructed by engaging in sensory criticism, drawing upon insights from the greater eastern Mediterranean world. Given the ancient world’s unique conception of a permeable body, ritual clothing had the ability to imbue the wearer with …

The Carnivalesque And The Carmel Competition In 1 Kings 18, Paul Bryner

Studia Antiqua

While humor is a difficult feature to identify in the Bible, the concept of the “carnivalesque”—a form of literary humor with sociological implications, coined by Mikhail Bakhtin — is much easier to apply. I argue for the presence of carnivalesque themes in the Elijah narrative of 1 Kings 18 which give a subtle, implicit social commentary on Israelite society.

Front Matter

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Scientists As Citizens: The Role Of The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists In The Postwar Era, 1945-1949, Elizabeth Baker Given

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In mid-August 1945 the dropping of the uranium and plutonium bombs devastated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing Japanese leaders to surrender to the United States. World War II had finally come to a close. However, the manner in which the war ended also marked the beginning of a new age. The detonation of the atomic bomb prompted unprecedented challenges in controlling the destructive weapon. Manhattan Project scientists, who had created the bomb in the midst of wartime secrecy and understood its grave dangers, were deeply concerned about the future of their brainchild. In a world that had been …

The Coronation Of An Historic Process: Franco And Spanish History, 1937-1947, Patrick Moran

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

History is not a whim, Francisco Franco declared to a youth group in January 1945. "It was not chance that many centuries before other nations Spain had forged its nationality and obtained its personality, nor that the undertakings of its sons had amazed the world with their heroic deeds." Six years had not yet passed since the end of the Spanish Civil War. World War II was drawing to a close, Spain faced an uncertain diplomatic and political future as one of the last of Europe's ultra-rightist political regimes, and the Spanish dictator was choosing to open his speech to …

Examining The Early Influences On England's First Female M.D.: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Audra Bollard

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In 1859 Elizabeth Garrett Anderson returned home from a short vacation. At this time she made an announcement so shocking her mother cried for days in humiliation and her father declared it disgusting; she had simply informed them she was going to be a doctor. Victorian women of the upper-middle class were expected to prepare for domestic lives as wives and mothers. In mid-nineteenth century England, professional careers were unheard of for females. Although the British-born Elizabeth Blackwell had become the first female to earn an M. D. in America, where she set up a practice, measures were quickly taken …

Glasnost, Perestroika And Big Mac's: The Significance Of Mcdonald's In The Changing Face Of The Ussr, Theresa Bartholomew

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Early on the morning of 30 January 1990, George Cohon, president of McDonald'sCanada, left his hotel room and drove to Pushkin Square in Moscow. Nervous about the international press that would be covering the opening of the first McDonald's in this nation and anxious to make the opening perfect, he arrived to see the streets empty in front of the fast-food restaurant except for a lone policeman. Wondering where the anticipated crowds of Muscovites were, Cohon approached the officer, concerned by the apparent lack of interest in the first McDonald's opening in the Soviet Union. After a short conversation with …

Re-Defining Thainess: Negative Identification During The Franco-Thai Border Conflict, Shane Strate

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

On the night of 15 October 1940 over three thousand university students and city residents marched, torches in hand, through the streets of Bangkok to protest the latest incident in the long-standing border dispute with France. Local newspapers had organized the demonstration and a few journalists accompanied the demonstrators, standing in the back of trucks and making speeches designed to incite the crowd. The march was part of a newspaper campaign to convince the government to deliver an ultimatum to French Indochina: either return territories formerly belonging to Siam or face military retaliation. Among the banners carried by the students …

Preface, Rachel Cope

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

This year the production of The Thetean has undergone significant changes. For the first time we have obtained our own equipment and are solely responsible for the publication of the journal. Although exciting, producing this work has also been a long and often cumbersome process; if things could go awry, they did! Yet despite the difficulties encountered, we have met our goals and will always remember the moments of cooperation and success we shared.

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

A Rifle Totin' Cartoonist: In Memory Of Bill Mauldin, 1921-2003, Casey Sullivan

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In late 2002, Jay Gruenfeld, a veteran of the Pacific Theater of World War II, set out on a mission to give comfort to a man who unknowingly had done the same for him many years before. During the war, Gruenfeld was an infantryman in the Philippines. In the ensuing battles, his squad was decimated with close to one hundred percent American casualties. Gruenfeld was injured and sent to a hospital to recover, where he felt alone. While there, his father sent him a copy of Up Front, a collection of cartoons by Bill Mauldin. This was the first contact …

"La Tierra No Prometida" The Jewish Colonization Association's Venture In Argentina, Jeffery Richey

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the Jewish Colonization Association undertook the most ambitious agricultural project in Jewish history. The aims of the JCA project were simple and staggering: the relocation of millions of Russian Jews to the Argentine countryside, to be effected over the course of twenty-five years. Adjudged by its own epic ambitions, the colonization effort was an epic failure. Not only did it fail in its stated intentions (the transplantation of millions of Jews), but the colonization venture also failed to provide the thousands of Jewish colonists with self-sufficiency and social well-being, the pursuit …

The Myth Of An Easy Passage To The Far East, Brenden Rensink

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The tales of North American exploration and westward expansion have often been painted in tones of manifest destiny, heroic bravery, and divine providence. While such portrayals surely prove insightful in some cases, they do not paint the whole picture. A more accurate depiction of American exploration would include the driving forces of economic gain, naive optimism, overeagerness, and the hasty acceptance of geographical misinformation. The strength of these motives and forces was so strong that for centuries adventurers continued to explore the continent despite constant disappointment and financial loss. In particular, the closely related myths of the Strait of Anian …

A Tale Of Desire And Deceit, Dallas Peterson

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

This essay is a narrative account of the rebellion of An Lushan and the death of Precious Consort Yang, drawn primarily from a section of Sirna Guang's Zizhi tongjian, translated by Paul W. Kroll in "The Flight from the Capital and the Death of Precious Consort Yang," Tang Studies, no. 3 (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1985). This narrative also utilizes one of the two biographies of An Lushan: Howard S. Le,y, trans., The Biography of An Lushan (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960). With these two primary sources and a few key secondary sources I have …

Changing Of The Guard In Imperial Ideology Clement Attlee Vs. Winston Churchill, Charles C. Olson

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

On 2 February 1927, the young Labour Representative and future Prime Minister Clement Attlee found himself, much to his own surprise, on the shores of Bombay, sent to find solutions to a problem he later termed "virtually insoluble. " His ship arrived to a confused reception of both noisy protesters, waving banners of "Go Back," juxtaposed by a welcoming rain of flowers and leaves by supporters of the visit.' These polar reactions to perceived British intent in India during the late 1920s no doubt showed Attlee the energy of the debate surrounding Indian independence, which only intensified through the coming …

The Time Of Troubles Causation, Class Warfare, And Conflicting Interpretations, Jeffrey S. Hardy

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The end of a dynasty in medieval or early modern Europe was often followed by a calamitous period of conspiracy and revolt, intrigue and bloodshed. Such was the case in Russia from 1598 to 1613, the period later called the Time of Troubles. Few epochs still weigh on the collective conscience of the Russian people as does the Time of Troubles. Fears associated with this period remain to this day, as evidenced by the frequent references to it after the fall of the Soviet regime. But the Time of Troubles has not always been well understood. The chroniclers and revisionists …

"Watchman Over The Gate" Fort Snelling' S Role In Transforming Minnesota From Territory To State, 1819-1858, Nicholas Gentile

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

For nearly a century, scholars of Minnesota's history have told the story of Fort Snelling and its causal relationship with the expansion of Minnesota from a territory to a state. In 1918, Marcus L. Hansen wrote an important monograph on the outpost, entitled Old Fort Snelling: 1819-1858. His claims focused on the protection and opportunities for social interaction provided by the fort during the period of its use as the northwesternmost garrison of America's frontier defense program. Hansen's thorough work stood as an unapproachable milestone in the literature on the post for almost half a century. Evan Jones wrote the …

Freedom: The Temporary Gift Of Christmas, Suzy Bills

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In Solomon Northup's account of his years as a slave, he described "the happiest day in the whole year for the slave. . . . Happiness sparkled in the eyes and overspread the countenances of all." What was the day that caused so much delight for slaves, and what were the reasons for this joy? It was Christmas Day and, more broadly, the larger Christmas holiday that often lasted many days. Northup continued to explain that these feelings resulted because "it was to be a day of liberty among the children of Slavery. Wherefore they were happy and rejoiced." In …