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In this report we will discuss the results and interpretation of three related and recently completed studies: (1) a Raman study of 17 papyri from Egypt, spanning the 4th cent. BCE to the 10 cent. CE; (2) a Raman study of the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” and the Gospel of John, both the subjects of heated debate with respect to provenance, date, and authenticity; and (3) a scanning electron microscope study of the morphology of ink particles on papyri and ink pots or wells from Karanis in the Kelsey Museum at the University of Michigan.

The Dominican preacher, exegete, and philosopher, Robert Holcot (b. circa 1290) trained at Oxford and there completed his regency (c. 1338). At this point in his career he became acquainted with Richard de Bury, the bishop of Durham and scholar often credited with composing the Philobiblion. His relationship with the house of Richard de Bury provided Holcot access to classical texts which feature prominently in his later commentary on the Twelve Prophets.

A fundamental challenge facing not simply this panel but the medieval reader was the difference between wisdom literature on the one hand and the interpretation of literature as wisdom on the other. The accessus tradition and more importantly the approach to literature taught in the schools that it reflects has the reader consider of whatever piece of literature is before him, cui parti philosophiae subponatur. The answer for most pagan literature is ethics.

If there a consensus among readers of the corpus of wisdom literature, it is that a proper understanding of these texts requires interpretation. For Gregory the Great (d. 604), one of the earlier writers on wisdom literature, this drive often took the traditional form, commentaries composed in the form of a treatise such as the monumental Moralia in Iob and In Canticum Canticorum.

Several tragedies that foreground the rape of an unmarried woman by a god or hero

portray the rape as necessary for the political foundations of a community. Scholars have

analyzed these tragedies in terms of an ongoing debate about consent in antiquity (Scafuro 1990,

Doblhofer 1994, Omitowoju 2002, Harris 2004, Sommerstein 2006, Rabinowitz 2011, James

2014). In an attempt to expand analysis of sexual violence in tragedy beyond issues of consent,

this paper asks, borrowing from feminist philosopher Robin Schott (2010, 25), “what logic

Nonnus’ Dionysiaca is replete with violence more graphic and more ubiquitous than anywhere else in
the Greek epic tradition. Much of this violence is directed against the Indians, who are killed in
the name of, and often at the hands of, Dionysus himself. In this paper, I argue that Nonnus’
representation of this divinely-sanctioned slaughter should be seen as political rather than merely
literary, that it reflects on the Christian violence of the late-antique world in which Nonnus