February 20, 2020, Oxford
MBI Al Jaber Building, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
A conference sponsored by:
The Centre for the Study of the Bible in the Humanities, Oriel College
The Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research
The Faculty of Oriental Studies
Organised by:
Hindy Najman, Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture
Christian Sahner, Associate Professor of Islamic History
The idea of martyrdom features prominently in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Despite this, pre-modern Jews, Christians, and Muslims often understood martyrdom in radically different ways. This conference aims to explore both the similarities and differences between ideas of ‘dying for God’ in the three religions, stretching from the Hellenistic to the Medieval periods. In particular, it explores the concept of ‘martyrdom on the margins,’ that is, cases which diverge from the classic model of martyrdom most closely associated with the saints of the pre-Constantinian period. This may include, but is not limited to Jewish martyrs in the Seleucid and Roman periods, martyrs who emerged through intra-Christian violence, martyrs in Shi‘i or Khariji Islam, or Jewish martyrdom at the time of the Crusades. It may also include reflections on the theological significance of martyrdom in the three religious traditions, the semantic range of the word ‘martyr’ in various pre-modern languages, the rhetoric of martyrdom and its connection to biblical tradition, early Christian, Rabbinic, Islamic and the Qur’an. We are also interested in possible influence between and among the three religions.
The goal is to understand martyrdom more broadly by exploring non-traditional manifestations of the practice, both as an event in time and its literary, liturgical, and theological afterlives. By studying martyrdom ‘on the margins,’ we stand to better understand what is central to tradition more broadly, the ways in which innovation is introduced, how old practices are revived, and how minority traditions become majority ones. Contemplating practices on the margins also prompts us to rethink what constitutes a ‘canon’; indeed, what texts constitute the most significant examples of martyrological literature and how can these be reconceptualized through study of sources often regarded as ‘peripheral’?
Programme
8.30–9.00 Coffee
9.00–9.15 Introduction
Hindy Najman (University of Oxford)
9.15–11.15 Session 1: Judaism
Jan Willem van Henten (University of Amsterdam) – The Marginality of Ancient Jewish Martyrdom
Israel Yuval (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) – Jewish Martyrdom as Halachic Transgression
Anna Abulafia (University of Oxford) – The Polemics of Martyrdom in the Hebrew Chronicles of the First Crusade
11.15–11.40 Coffee
11:40–13.00 Session 2: Christianity
Elizabeth Castelli (Barnard College) – Hostile Witnesses: Making Martyrs out of Persecutors in Lactantius's De mortibus persecutorum
Mark Edwards (University of Oxford) – Were the Early Christians Persecuted?
13.00–14.00 Lunch
14.00–16.00 Session 3: Islam
Christian Sahner (University of Oxford) – Community and Identity in the Christian Martyrs of the Early Islamic Period
Sean Anthony (Ohio State University) – The Crucified Martyrs of the Early Shīʿah: Understanding their Late Antique, and Early Islamic, Context
Adam Gaiser (Florida State University) – Early Shurāt (Khārijite) Poetry on Martyrs
16.00–16.30 Coffee
16.30–17.00 Summing up
Hindy Najman (University of Oxford) and Christian Sahner (University of Oxford)
17.30–18.30 Reception
Please register online through this link.
