Discipline, Authority, and Text in Late Ancient Religion is a new set of essays published in honor of David Brakke. Edited by Ellen Muehlberger and Bradley K. Storin, it was published by Brepols.

Summary (from the publisher's website)

This collection of essays on religious practice in the Mediterranean, Near East, and Middle East (ca. 100–800 CE) celebrates the impact that Professor David Brakke has had on the study of late antique religious history. Nineteen scholars celebrate the career of Professor Brakke with essays on a range of subjects on late ancient religion. Some chapters treat monastic texts, ascetic practice, and ritual performance; others address the roles of magic, demons, and miracle stories; still others examine Christian violence and martyrdom.

In particular, many of these essays explore the kinds of ascetic theory, practice, identity, organization, performance, and writing found throughout the diverse authors, groups, and locales of Late Antiquity. Essay topics cross disciplinary boundaries and operate in the overlapping intellectual space of Religious Studies, History, Classics, English, Anthropology, and Comparative Literature. By treating asceticism as a phenomenon within a relatively confined time period and geography across a variety of religious and literary traditions, this volume highlights the ascetic impulse within new areas.

The volume thus stands alone for its multifaceted discussions of religion and asceticism in Late Antiquity, and advances scholarly investigation of and discourse about late antique asceticism by expanding conceptual and disciplinary boundaries in new and exciting directions.

Preface 

This volume celebrates the admirable and ongoing career of Professor David Brakke. David received an MD iv from Harvard Divinity School ( 1986) as well as an MA ( 1987), MPhil ( 1989), and PhD ( 1992) in Religious Studies from Yale University. From 1993 to 2012, he served at Indiana University as Professor and Chair of Religious Studies before taking up his current position in 2012 as the Joe R. Engle Chair in the History of Christianity and Professor of History at The Ohio State University. He has held visiting appointments at Concordia College, University of Chicago Divinity School, and Williams College. David's research has garnered the support of prestigious grants and fellowships - most notably; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship ( 2022), the National Humanities Center's Henry Luce and Hurford Family Fellowships ( 2022-2023), the National Endowment for the Humanities Scholarly Edition Award (2007-2010 ), the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship (2002-2003), the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers (1999-2000), and the American Council of Learned Societies Junior Fellowship (1999-2000). Invested in the work of others as much as his own, David has served as the president of the International Association for Coptic Studies (2016-2022), editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies (2005-2015), and the U.S. delegate for the Association Internationale d'Etudes Patristiques, in addition to serving on the editorial boards of the Journal of Early Christian Studies (2022-present), the Gorgias Coptic Studies series ( 2020-present), the Journal of Religion ( 2014-present), the Journal of Coptic Studies ( 2012-2022), the Christianity in Late Antiquity monograph series ( 2017-2020), and the Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity series ( 2005-2015). His work has ventured into public scholarship too: he has co-authored a textbook on Christianity, produced three audio-video classes for the Great Courses series, composed many encyclopaedia entries, and recorded several podcast interviews. 

Most scholars of Christianity in Antiquity and Late Antiquity know David from his published work on religious diversity in Egypt. Indeed, his monographs have become classics in the field. His first book, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism ( 1995; reprinted in 1998 as Athanasius and Asceticism), expanded the Athanasian corpus of writings through his work in Coptic and Syriac, then used this new archive to track the nexus of theology; asceticism, and episcopal politics in fourth-century Christian leadership. The book showed that the boundaries between Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, between the learned and the unlearned, and between so-called orthodoxy and heresy were far blurrier than scholars had supposed. His second book, Demons 10 PREFACE and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (2006), considered the surprisingly strange psychology of early Christian monastic thought. In it, David anticipates the post-humanist turn in our field, arguing that monks were hardly individuals sequestered in isolation, but rather figures ever engaged in the self-formation and ascetic discipline of spiritual combat (however conceived) with demons (however conceived). His third book, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (2010), tackles the historiographical issues of how to understand early Christian diversity without stumbling into triumphalism, and where the Gnostics fit into that diversity. David's most recent book, The Gospel of Judas: A New Translation exegetical with Introduction and Commentary (2022), provides the richest, most detailed treatment to date of this recently discovered text. Readers have much publication to look forward to, though, as David is preparing two more monographs for in coming years. As further evidence of his indefatigability, David which has also published fifty-five journal articles and book chapters - among stand the incomparable essays 'The Lady Appears: Materializations "Woman" of in Early Monastic Literature' (2003); 'The Early Church in North America: 'Ethiopian Late Antiquity, Theory, and the History of Christianity' (2002); Monastic Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Self' (2001); and 'The Problematization Early of Nocturnal Emissions in Christian Syria, Egypt, and Gaul' (1995) - as well as five book-length critical more editions and translations of ancient works, eight edited volumes, and than sixty scholarly book reviews. 

David's impressive contribution to the field of Christianity in Antiquity and personal Late Antiquity is outpaced only by the impact that he has had on the and professional lives of students and scholars. Those who most directly gained from David's intellectual generosity are the eight doctoral students whose dissertations he directed; all have productive careers teaching and/or and patient researching guidance. late antique religions thanks in large part to David's sage around There are also the ten doctoral students at universities the world who benefited from David's involvement in their dissertation committees as external reader. Then there are the more than one hundred external scholars who owe their promotion and tenure in part to David's service as an letter writer, and the twenty-eight authors whose books David reviewed anonymously fields within the for prestigious outlets. Finally, there are his colleagues in other humanities at Indiana and Ohio State who know David to be a cherished conversation partner, a prudent and reliable administrator, sociable a colleague, and a good departmental that David enters companion. In short, any room professional (literally or figuratively) is brightened by his presence, and the This lives of many, in the field and beyond, are better for that presence. 

This volume, then, is a necessarily inadequate gesture of gratitude- for Antiquity David has made and still makes on the study of Christianity in had and Late Antiquity, for the profound impact that his teaching has on undergraduate and graduate students, for the mentorship that he has offered to countless colleagues throughout the academy, and for the warmth PREFACE 11 and support that he unwaveringly offers to those around him. If you have ever worked with or simply known David, then you know how David makes every environment happier and more joyful. All contributors in this volume regard David as their friend and, to one degree or another, their abba; all contributors in this volume count themselves lucky to have shared some of their time on this earth with David. 

It often happens that Festschriften are presented to their honourees either as a surprise or at a particularly significant milestone (a retirement or a seventieth birthday, say), or both. With this volume, none of that is the case. The original idea was conceived at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2019, on a walk near the San Diego Bay. We wanted to host a conference in the spring of 2021- in coordination with David's sixtieth birthday - at either Louisiana State University or the University of Michigan where each contributor would share a paper that would later be collected into a thematically unified volume and published in David's honour. At sixty, our thinking went, we could celebrate him and show him the far-reaching effect his mentorship and scholarship has had on the field without intimating that his retirement was imminent. Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened; everything shut down; the future remained unknown and unknowable for a good eighteen months. 

Only in the fall of 2021, оonce people began to feel safe for travel and gathering, did we begin to organize the conference. By happy coincidence, new funding opportunities from the University of Michigan, the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University, and the Provost's Conference Fund at Louisiana State University allowed us to provide accommodations for presenters and attendees. As presenters, we invited those who were formally and informally mentored by David, his graduate school colleagues from Harvard Divinity School and Yale University, and folks affiliated with the Journal of Early Christian Studies (which David shepherded for a decade). We gathered at the Lod Cook Hotel and Conference Center on the campus of Louisiana State University for a few days of scholarship and fun (February 16-17, 2023). Over a successful four sessions, twenty papers were delivered. As a little bit of Louisiana lagniappe, the timing could not have worked out better: it was Mardi Gras weekend, and so king cakes were gobbled down and parades were enjoyed. Yes, the timing and style of this Festschriftis unorthodox, but in the end, it could not have worked out better. 

The work produced by these scholars in David's honour is collected here, and the wide range of their topics, time periods, languages, and disciplines is a testament to the remarkably broad range of his skills and interests. Readers will find essays on subjects as diverse as monastic organization, ascetic leadership, the New Testament, Mandaean religion, astrological expertise, magic and theurgy, Marian piety, martyrdom, Coptic chronicles, ecclesiastical histories, demons, and, of course, Shenoute of Atripe. Equally diverse are the disciplinary approaches represented by the contributors, stemming from the fields of cultural history, literary history, comparative literature, folklore, biblical studies, philology, and religious studies. And unsurprising to all who studied with David (he personally taught many  of his doctoral students Coptic and Syriac), there is an assortment of late antique and medieval languages discussed in this volume: Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Demotic, Gǝ'əz, Georgian, Greek, Latin, Mandaean, and Syriac. This expansive collection is but a dim reflection of David's capaciousness as a scholar and thinker. 

And so, it is with humble gratitude and deep appreciation that we offer this volume to recognize David's deep and abiding impact on not only the editors and authors of this volume, but also the field of religion and history in Antiquity and Late Antiquity as a whole. 
 

Acknowledgements 

This volume is the result of the efforts of many, many people. We have felt lucky to find such a fitting home for the book at Brepols and in the Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages series, where Yitzhak Hen and Guy Carney were both welcoming and offered their expert support for the work along the way. As it came together, the manuscript benefitted from the sharp eyes of Jonathan Farr, Deborah Oosterhouse, and Martine Maguire-Weltecke. 

Then, of course, are those who came to the conference to honor David Brakke in Baton Rouge and made it a party-the contributors you see in the volume were all there, but also other attendees who traveled from afar to celebrate David, like Jenny Barry, Darlene Brooks-Hedstrom, Kate Cooper, Andrew Crislip, Hubertus Drobner, Michelle Freeman, Christine Luckritz-Marquiz, Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Sainte-Laurent, Samantha Miller, and Jeremy Schott. 

For financial support, we express our enduring gratitude to the University of Michigan, the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University, and the Provost's Fund for Innovation in Research at Louisiana State University. 

Fun as it was, the logistics of the conference would have fallen apart without the steady hands of Margaret Toups and Lisa Munson. We both are grateful to our families for their love and support, too-Gina Brandolino and Suzannah Edgar, not to mention Corrina and Ruby Storin, are truly the best. 

Last but absolutely the opposite of least, we owe endless gratitude to David, this volume's honouree. His expertise, his example, and his care made us both the scholars we are and allowed us to live out our vocations as teachers and writers.