This dissertation is an examination of the Emperor Constantine's religious building program as presented in the writings of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea. I seek to …
2009 Animal sacrifice, the ritualized slaughter and consumption of an animal in dedication to a divinity, is one of the most pervasive religious acts in …
"Apostolic Memories: Religious Differentiation and the Construction of Orthodoxy in Syriac Missionary Literature" is a dissertation project on Syriac hagiography and apocryphal narrative. I argue …
In "'You Divided Sea by Your Might': The 'Conflict Myth' and the Biblical Tradition," I analyze the ancient west Asian theme of divine combat between …
This dissertation is largely a project of redescription and taxonomy. In it, I redescribe, reclassify, and recontextualize the divinatory practices of the apostle Paul. Throughout …
This work seeks to explain the recurrent doubt and misunderstanding of, and hostility towards, naturalistic, Darwinian evolutionary accounts of the origins and development of living …
This dissertation proposes a new blueprint for an ethically informed reading of literary texts. It takes up four novels that highlight outsider or maligned protagonists …
This dissertation is a detailed study of ethics in the second-century BCE text Huainanzi, and its implications for our understanding of classical Daoist ethics in …
Interpreters of Thomas Hobbes take two distinctive approaches to his views on religion, either rendering God foundational to his vision or giving primacy to human …
This study examines evidence from approximately the mid-1C BCE − 1C CE for varieties of freelance religious experts at Rome, a period within which they …
This project provides a new way to describe and compare Paul's letters to facilitate nuanced comparison with texts and authors not typically used as comparanda. …
Dehumanization is a social and psychological phenomenon in which a distinctively human mind is not attributed to another person. Dehumanization is also endemic in hospitals. …
This dissertation is an analysis and critique of the use of the concept of religious capital in the explanation of religious beliefs and practices. The …
This dissertation examines the topic of animal sacrifice in ancient Judean/Jewish religion (Judaism) with a historical focus on the late Second Temple period. It analyzes …
This dissertation offers a reevaluation of the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and a hypothetical document thought to be common to Matthew and Luke, …
Abstract of “Gaining Virtue, Gaining Christ: Moral Development in the Letters of Paul,” by Laura B. Dingeldein, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2014 Inhabitants of the …
People throughout history and around the world have drawn on religion to frame and negotiate disaster phenomena. Recent research shows that these links between religion …
This dissertation explores how Israelites regarded foreign lands, relates this to the debate about biblical categorizations of pollution and purification, and points to larger questions …