Religious Studies

Events

Papyri and Religious Imagination in Ancient Egypt By Rob Kugler (Lewis & Clark College)

Date: November 7 2012 3:30pm Location: J.R. Howard Hall - J.R. Howard Hall

The recent publication of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife brought the papyri from ancient Egypt into public imagination. There is, though, far more to the story of payrological remains and their implications for understanding religion in the ancient world than that nine-line fragment, and the rest of the story is also surprisingly much more engaging than the recent item splashed across the pages of local and national newspapers.

Prof. Rob Kugler, Religious Studies and Classics, offers a glimpse into that larger world with the year’s first Religious Studies Department colloquium, to be held on November 7, 2012, at 3:30 pm in JRHH 124. As a scholar who works in papyrology in the Hellenistic period, he brings to the topic his own research, which includes direct work with papyri in collections across Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. He will address the recent publication of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, as well as the ongoing debates regarding its authenticity, and, of course, share parts of that larger, more interesting story. He will take up in particular the question of how the broad range of documentary and literary evidence papyri from Egypt help us understand the emergence of religion in the ancient world.