Alex Istok

Determined to write more this semester, so also planning on actually being active here! Be on the lookout for random ideas about Roman law and Justin martyr.

infancy thomas is funny for sure (esp. interactions between Joseph and kiddo Jesus)! and yes maybe dark comedy bc of the quick deaths!

Here's the wager: invest your time in reading and writing and, if they're right, then you haven't lost anything; if they're wrong and you go along, you've lost a skill you should have been developing *and* you've been distracted then whole time

domicilium and habitatio maybe?

Anyone know when/if the Tesserae Project website is coming back online?

a piece of paper on a brown table with two columns drawn. Above the columns the title is labeled as “real” vs. “fictional”. there is a small stack of books in the background.

scare quotes doing a lot of work:

An image of an article that has been printed out (the pages are held together by a red paper clip in the top left corner and there is one sentence highlighted in purple). The article is Barbara Johnson’s “Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion” 1986). It is set on top of another stack of papers (a printed version of the loeb of Xenophon’s Apology with only the Greek visible).

annoyed with rhetoric about politics and stuck trying to write about fiction and this article is kind of helping (a must read anyway if you haven’t):

Congrats!!!

pretty fun to play guess the #NAPS2025 attendee while people watching in the lobby of the Hyatt

too kind!! a proposal is in the works!

Ok! So just the phrase wouldn’t turn you away if you were interested in the other content? (I’ve had a varied experience with needing to justify my work on “early Christian” things in Classics spaces!)

If a book has “early Christian” in the title, do you think a Classicist is less likely to pick it up?

hey the #NAPS2025 program is uuuuuup!

www.patristics.org/wp-content/u...

Working on my intermediate Latin poetry syllabus and keep thinking about how to approach LLMs/ai and their role/hindrance in the translation process with my students. Any suggestions? Articles? Translation theory texts? To help out the conversation?

white coffee cup with a logo of a black and white Greek military helmet with a bright red plume (the logo of Achilles Coffee). there is a brick street in the background.

classicist at SBL #sblaar24:

so helpful! Thank you!

thought I would be fine working at the coffee shop without headphones but I just heard someone say “Roman Empire”

A pile of printed pages of a Syriac text are in the bottom right of the image with handwritten notes in English on the top of the page. An open MacBook is on the left. In the top right, there is a cream colored mug with black coffee in it sitting on a ceramic coaster that is green and cream.

Some Saturday morning Syriac:

Saturday at 4pm: Book review panel for Monika Amsler’s The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture (Co-sponsored with the Book History and Biblical Literatures program unit) Monday at 4pm: Back from the Dead: Lost Texts, Ideas, Things Tuesday at 9am: Theopraxy: Knowing the Gods by Doing

Book review panel for Monka Amsler's The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book culture. Daniel Picus, presiding James Redfield, panelist Rebecca Wollenberg, panelist Elena Dugan, panelist Duncan MacRae, panelist Monika Amsler, respondent

Back from the Dead: Lost Texts, Ideas, Things Andrew W. Higginbotham: The Omission of Northrop Frye and Hayden White from Literary Criticism of Late Antique Religion Todd Berzon: Disappearing Creeds Alexandria Istok: Remembering the Edges of Empire: Reconsidering the Dialogue Form of Bardaisan’s The Book of the Laws of Countries Jason Zaleski: “Garbled and Illegible”: Reviving an East Syrian Monastic Commentary and Reconstructing Late Antique Knowledge Creation Emanuel Fiano: The Sententiae Syriacae (The Laws of the Christian and Just Kings) in Their Imperial Legal Context

Theopraxy: Knowing the Gods By Doing Hasan H Degerli: Military Martyrdom in Late Antique Christianity Michelle Freeman: “According to Custom”: Comparing Eastern and Western Patterns of Relic Veneration in John of Thessaloniki, Pope Gregory the Great, and Pope Hormisdas Jonah Bissell: Holy Men along the Nile: Gesture, Emotion, and Procession in Late Antique Egypt

Please join the Religious World of Late Antiquity program unit at SBL/AAR in San Diego.
#sblaar24
#aarsbl24

It depends on the province! A few other scholars are working on provincial law in more detail rn I think (like Yair Furstenberg + his local law project!). I’m more focused on literary things but am invested in the legal too.

Mainly focused on how people in the Roman provinces imagine Roman provincial courtrooms within texts and what that tells us about how they want the law to work! (Which is often at odds with how Roman governors want the law to work!).

Hey! Quick intro: I’m working on a writing project that contextualizes second and third century early Christian apologies in the Roman world. I’ll post about that + sometimes teaching (gen ed. + Latin) + things related to poetry/being outside !

Hi! Can you add me as well?

i really thought this country would say no. instead, it shouted yes

here's a partial #AARSBL24 starter pack. if you're going to be part of the conversation at or around AARSBL, like this post and i'll add you! repost to signal boost!

i'm hoping combos of starter packs, feeds, and hashtags will help folks connect, whether they can come or not.

thanks for doing this! so helpful!

okay, the second starter pack i want to create is folks attending + presenting + advertising panels at #SBLAAR24.

like this skeet if, and only if, that’s you. we’ll get a good running commentary going in anticipation of and during the conference!

please reskeet to signal boost.