Robyn Faith Walsh's Blog, page 7

Upcoming MythVision Appearance: "Were the Gospels Authored by Jesus' Disciples?"

I'll be appearing on MythVision again to discuss, with Jonathan Sheffield, the authorship of the Gospels. If you'd like to tune in, our debate will occur live on MythVision's YouTube page on 16 September 2022.

If you'd like to review my previous appearances on MythVision, you can find them here:

Epistles: The Origins of the Gospels

Biblical Archaeology Review has published a feature on my book, The Origins of Early Christian Literature. Please see this latest piece on their website:

"Epistles: The Origins of the Gospels"

New Publication: "Of Dualisms and Döppelgangers"

I am excited to announce that I have a new chapter in the forthcoming volume Key Categories in the Study of Religion: Contexts and Critiques (Equinox Publishing), edited by Rebekka King. Here's the summary for my chapter, "Of Dualisms and Döppelgangers: Mapping Ancient Minds and Bodies in Religious Studies":

Reflecting on the work of Richard Newton, this chapter critiques certain racist and nationalist viewpoints inherited from Romanticism that persist in the study of Religion— among these are speculative theories on so-called Aryan history, the origins of language, and the moral-psychology of the ancients. Essential to this discussion is a reflection on, as Newton describes, “how we narrate… intellectual heritage” and expertise, from the scholars and research we cite to the adaptation of speculative theories that can come to govern our everyday lives and assumptions.

The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus

I’m excited to be joining a terrific group of scholars in the UK next month for a seminar on The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus!

Upcoming events both livestreamed on the Enoch Seminar’s Facebook page:

Part I (virtual conference only): 11 July, 10am–3.30pm (UK time)Part II (in-person and virtual): 15–16 July, 10am–5pm (UK time)

For updates and further details, see the Facebook pages of the Enoch Seminar and the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements (CenSAMM). To register, go to the CenSAMM page.

Featuring: Giovanni Bazzana, James Crossley, Tucker Ferda, Paula Fredriksen, Deane Galbraith, Mark Goodacre, Meghan Henning, Nathan Johnson, Brandon Massey, Chris Keith, John Kloppenborg, Halvor Moxnes, Robert Myles, Gideon Wongi Park, Janelle Peters, Taylor Petrey, Adele Reinhartz, Rafael Rodriguez, Sarah Rollens, Nathan Shedd, Mitzi Smith, Joan Taylor, Matthew Thiessen, Robyn Walsh, Matthew Whitlock, Sean Winter, Stephen Young.

MythVision: What the heck is the Apostle Paul up to?

I recently visited Derek Lambert on Mythvision again for a chat about Paul the Apostle. This was a wide-ranging but, as always, fun conversation—check it out!!!

Did the Greco-Roman Elite Class Write the Gospels?

Last week, I appeared on the History Valley podcast with Jacob Berman. Here are the show notes for this episode:

Conventional approaches to the Synoptic gospels argue that the gospel authors acted as literate spokespersons for their religious communities. Whether described as documenting intra-group 'oral traditions' or preserving the collective perspectives of their fellow Christ-followers, these writers are treated as something akin to the Romantic poet speaking for their Volk - a questionable framework inherited from nineteenth-century German Romanticism. In this book, Robyn Faith Walsh argues that the Synoptic gospels were written by elite cultural producers working within a dynamic cadre of literate specialists, including persons who may or may not have been professed Christians. Comparing a range of ancient literature, her ground-breaking study demonstrates that the gospels are creative works produced by educated elites interested in Judean teachings, practices, and paradoxographical subjects in the aftermath of the Jewish War and in dialogue with the literature of their age. Walsh's study thus bridges the artificial divide between research on the Synoptic gospels and Classics.

Thanks to Jacob for having me on!

Featured in QEP Newsletter: Is Star Wars a Religion?

The University of Miami's Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) has featured one of my courses in their most recent newsletter. QEP seeks to promote learning through discussion and dialogue, a mission that very much aligns with the goals of REL 369: Is Star Wars a Religion?

Please check out the QEP's full April newsletter for information about the course and about other initiatives and events governed by the QEP.

If interested, you can also check out the interviews I conducted for my podcast "Is Star Wars a Religion?"

Economic Aspects of Reading

Last June, I participated in a colloquium with Ludwig-Maximilians Universität. This August, working again with Jan Heilmann, I'm helping to put together an international symposium at Ludwig-Maximilans Universität: "Economic Aspects of Reading."

See the image below and stay tuned for more details:

Myth Vision: Who Wrote the Gospels?

Derek Lambert invited me back for a live session on Myth Vision to talk about the authorship of the gospels. Here's the thing, though: Derek has turned me into one of the four horsemen (horsepersons?) of the apocalypse!

Don't believe me? Check it out:

Yes, that's me on the right, giant scythe in hand.

As always, chatting with Derek was a great deal of fun, and I thank him for bringing me on again. You can access a recording of the episode below! (You can also check out my previous appearance on Myth Vision.)

Manufacturing Religion: From Christian Origins to Classical Islam

I am excited to announce that I'll be part of a webinar on Friday, March 4th, with the University of South Africa. The speakers include me, Willi Braun, and Ahmed El Shamsy.

Here's the official description from the University of South Africa:

“Religion” as concept, as collective noun for sets of discourses and practices, and as “object” of study, has, in recent years, been retheorised and redescribed as a discursive formation. Within the context of an anthropocentric study of religion, the concept “discourse,” together with the phrase “religion as a socialdiscourse,” does not just indicate that “discourse” (as even in the sense of religious discourse) is a collective noun for the contents of sets of significations that construct our way of knowing the world, it also includes the social location/s that form/s the originary matrix for the particular invention of these sets of significations; and it includes the social interests encompassed by or encapsulated in, and giving rise to, these sets of significations. This way of knowing-through-acts-of-signification is not just individual but is socially conditioned, that is, it is institutionalised in canons of tradition, schools of thought, habitus as habituated action, social formations, cultural and socio-political-economic conventions, that is, as discursive formations.

“Discourses are practices ‘that systematically organize and regulate statements about a certain theme; by doing so, discourses determine the conditions of possibility of what (in a social group at a certain period of time) can be thought and said’ (Eder 2006). Hence, discourse analysis does not only look at the textual and linguistic dimension of a topic but also at the practices that carry or change orders of knowledge. This includes institutions such as governments, courts, scientific associations, religious organizations, the media, as well as universities. These practices determine ‘the conditions of possibility of what can be thought and said’ from identifiable positions of power. That is why discourse research always pays attention not only to an analysis of what is being said or done, but also of who says or does it, and from which position and institutional background this is said or done” (Jay Johnston and Kocku von Stuckrad, Discourse Research and Religion, 3).

The study of “discourse” is, in this understanding, a way into investigating all the concrete operational sites of a given historical society’s sense of self – its self-understandings, its self-representations, and its self-reinscriptions, the way in which these manifest in social and political institutions, public texts and literary traditions … at all levels and stages of history.

These questions of discourse run as a golden thread through Willi Braun’s Jesus and Addiction to Origins. Towards an Anthropocentric Study of Religion, Robyn Faith Walsh’s The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture, and Ahmed El Shamsy’s Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition.

The authors discussed in this webinar have all three in their various ways explored the formation of religious discourses (whether early Christian or Islamic), and the formation and institutionalisation of scholarly discourses both in Late Antiquity and in more recent centuries, thereby laying bare how religions and the study of religions are invented traditions and invented, mythographic histories. This webinar is an opportunity to draw the conversations elicited by these works into our research and teaching as resources for imagining scholarship differently, and for thinking with to the enrichment of scholarship, and for the promotion of inter-field and interdisciplinary/trans-disciplinary work on religion.

If you're interested in attending the webinar, please see this Word document:

Manufacturing Religion: From Christian Origins to Classical Islam Proposed programme webinar Braun and Walsh.docx 25 KB .a{fill:none;stroke:currentColor;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:round;stroke-width:1.5px;}download-circle

Thanks so much to the University of South Africa for inviting me!