The Body in the Late Antique East

In Oration 14, “On Love for the Poor (Περὶ φιλοπτωχίας),” Gregory of Nazianzus deconstructs barriers to justice and compassion amongst his late antique Christian audience and advances an ethical agenda of caring for the poorest in society. Gregory, relying on medical knowledge gleaned from late antique medical sources, recharacterizes the disease for his audience and reorients them to seek justice for the marginalized lepers. He rhetorically links elephantiasis with sanctity and provides an account of the etiology of the disease that counters popular ‘superstitions’ of the faithful. He further argues that the disease is the result of greed, an insight grounded in ancient theories of the connection between health and moderation. For Nazianzus, the remedy to poverty – and leprosy – thus lies in convincing his audience to alleviate the suffering of lepers with concrete acts of generosity and charity, which will restore balance and justice to society.

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What rights do fetuses have? And how do these potential rights relate to particular understandings of fetal personhood? This paper explores these questions in relation to rabbinic laws of inheritance and gifting. Through close readings of b. Baba Batra 142a, b. Arakhin 7a, etc, I examine one feature of Talmudic discussions of fetal inheritance: its consistent pairing with discussions of fetal sex.

I argue that, rather than reinforcing a model of inheritance wherein only male offspring inherit property directly, the Talmudic discussion of fetal inheritance works to create a default male-sexed fetus who does not inherit property;  the rabbis construct the fetus as potential property owner and inheritor but resist seeing the fetus as actual property owner and inheritor. Simultaneously, the rabbis construct the fetus as an actual male, who may potentially be female or intersex. I conclude by contextualizing these findings within the context of Sasanian inheritance law, and discussing the implications of this study for rabbinic understandings of fetal personhood and fetal rights.

Since the discovery of primary Manichaean sources in the early 20th century, scholars have largely focused on untangling aspects of the Manichaean mythos, with comparatively little attention being paid to more practical aspects of Manichaean religious expression. Uncovered in 1929 among the Coptic Medinet Madi codices, the Manichaean “Sermon on Prayer” from the Homilies codex, has received almost no scholarly attention. This paper will seek to remedy that by examining this long-neglected treatise in order to gain a clearer understanding of the spiritual rhetoric behind Manichaean askesis and its relationship with parallel discourses of renunciation across the late antique Near East. Special attention will be paid to exploring connections between this work and more recently published portions of the Medinet Madi corpus, such as the Dublin Kephalaia and the Letters of Mani.