Abby Epplett, Historian

A few months ago, I received a perfect gift, the revised and expanded second edition of Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East . Few other readers will be quite so pleased by the book as I was, but for those who are interested in mythology from Egypt, the Akkadians, and other ancient cultures, this is an easy-to-read primer. Authors Dr. Victor H. Matthews of Missouri State University and Dr. Don C. Benjamin of the Kino Institute of Theology wrote the book with the intention of creating “a readable, affordable, and portable anthology of ancient Near Eastern law and stories”, beginning with their first edition published by Paulist Press in 1991. I read the 1997 edition, which includes black-and-white illustrations and runs about 380 pages in length. Along with this book, the authors co-wrote The Social World of Ancient Israel 1250-587 B.C.E. in 1993, while Dr. Matthews published Manners and Customs in the Bible in 1988. I knew a considerabl

On Monday, April 10 at 6:00 p.m., I attended a virtual talk, “Tragedy, Comedy, and Democracy in Ancient Athens”, presented via Zoom by Dr. Katherine Kelaidis of the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago, IL. Dr. Kelaidis began the talk by defining the meaning of tragedy as understood in Ancient Athens . In the 5 th century BC, the city-state or polis hosted a festival called Dionysia in honor of Dionysus , a god also called Bacchus or Bromius. He represented wine and theater, making him an excellent choice for the festival. Very few plays submitted to the festival have survived to the modern era, with notable examples written by Aeschylus , Sophocles , and Euripides . Everything in Athens was a competition, including intellectual and athletic events. Athenians compared competition to democracy, where all members of society tested themselves against each other. Dr. Kelaidis explained that the philosopher Aristotle lived about a hundred years after the peak popularity of