Abstract
It was the site of a court whose membership the emperor Marcus Aurelius sought to regulate; it is also famously where the Furies or Erinyes were appeased despite the injustice of intrafamilial violence; it is where the apostle Paul was said to have stood, speaking philosophically about God’s judgment. Just to its north, sunk into a well in the Athenian agora, a curse calls upon the Erinyes to exact justice. Bringing together these historical data allows us to explore how divinities and the violently dead effect justice, to consider the inheritances of the university, and to probe ancient and modern ideas of reparations and intergenerational responsibility
Preparation
As a preparation, we will read a manuscript awaiting publication, titled “Justice and ancestral fault: What we might learn at the Areopagus.” The manuscript will be available before the semiar.
About Laura Nasrallah
Laura Nasrallah is Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation, jointly appointed in Yale Divinity School and Yale University’s Department of Religious Studies. Her research and teaching bring together New Testament and early Christian literature with the archaeological remains of the Mediterranean world, and often engage issues of colonialism, gender, race, status, and power. Her books include Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses: Magic, Aesthetics, and Justice (2024), Archaeology and the Letters of Paul (2019), Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire (2010), and An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity (2004) as well as co-edited volumes on archaeology, race, and gender. She has served on the Council of the Society of Biblical Literature as well as many other boards and committees.