Jamey Walters

Scandal and the Late Ancient Christian Historian Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2026 Jennifer Barry Abstract This article argues that scandal functions as a key narrative technology in late ancient Christian historiography. Rather than treating scandal as anecdote or moral failure, ecclesiastical historians use it as a structured way of arranging deviant bodies, contested practices, and moments of exposure to produce claims about Christian truth. Through recurring controversies, this study traces how biblical stories are reworked by authors such as Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret to stabilize doctrine, police boundaries, and articulate Christian identity. Across these writers, scandal emerges as a method of historical control, not merely a record of past conflict but a means of containing theological ambiguity and disciplining memory. By foregrounding scandal as a historiographical strategy, this article exposes how Christian histories were crafted through narrative forms that made orthodoxy appear inevitable and deviation unmistakable.

new *open access* goodness from @jennisifire.bsky.social!

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Jess is entirely correct, but there's more: a lit review is also a reflective exercise alongside a communicative one. The process of creating a lit review helps researchers understand what they are contributing and why it matters. Automating this process makes research less thoughtful.

Do you know somebody who needs to learn Latin from scratch or improve their Latin to PhD standard? CMS Toronto's summer Latin program is now entirely online and a remarkable bargain for the intensity and quality of instruction. Details here: www.medieval.utoronto.ca/latin/summer...

#medievalsky

In their lawsuit against NEH, ACLS, AHA, MLA, etc., include as an exhibit the AI-produced DOGE spreadsheet that determined if a project was too DEI for Trump. Here is the spreadsheet www.historians.org/wp-content/u...

When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities

It’s almost like being a historical subject given the Big Data distant reading treatment sucks.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...

Which is almost certainly why they ran to the Pentagon when the opportunity came.

A company with an insatiable need for cash to keep propping up their faulty overhyped product 🤝 the most awash-in-endless-taxpayer-cash government agency in world history

“A Clear Account of the Codex Simonideios:” Ideological Infrastructures of Biblical Vulnerability in the Nineteenth Century In: Philological Encounters Author: Andrew S. Jacobs Online Publication Date: 24 Feb 2026 Abstract Metadata References Metrics Abstract Soon after Constantin Tischendorf (1815–74) publicized his “discovery” of the Codex Sinaiticus, notorious manuscript broker (and forger) Konstantinos Simonides stunned elite literary circles by announcing that Simonides himself had produced this biblical codex in his youth as a gift for the Russian tsar. Simonides claimed that his “Codex Simonideios” was illicitly being passed off as an ancient biblical codex after being mutilated and disfigured. I argue that this brief but explosive debate about manuscripts, forgeries, and “find” narratives produces a biblical text liable to revision and emendation, due to new discoveries or new methods, and so vulnerable to mischievous actors manipulating the possibilities of new discoveries and methods. The iterative process of attack and defense on display in this codicological debate has remained, in various guises, from collegial disagreement to scorched earth campaigns, an ideological component of critical biblical studies.

well helloooooo

brill.com/view/journal...

👇👇

It is wild to me that DOGE/Musk could dismantle so much of the government in just a few months from a combination of anti-regulatory personal greed and fascism-tinged stupidity and no one will ever face any consequence for it.

What Charlie Kirk did for me was create an org whose watchlist targeted mostly Black & Brown jr professors who named white supremacy & other oppressions. For years, I got rape threats & death threats. Thanks Dept of Ed for featuring Kirk & reminding the rest of us how much you hate us.

75 years ago, the 22nd Amendment was ratified.

It’s a good day to remember what the 22nd Amendment ratified: that presidents are limited to TWO terms in office.

No exceptions.

I have been saying for a while now that LLMs are going to mean that human pursuits will become niche and artisanal. It's not "everyone can be an artist/writer now." Creating art will be for the wealthy.

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military

EXCLUSIVE: At more than 30 installations, U.S. commanders told troops the war on Iran is a Christian war.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been “inundated” with more than 110 complaints.

One NCO said they were told the U.S. war is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus…

fuck, I’m sorry, I can’t compete with this

Text on an academic article about "Moving Things: Moving Cartloads of Treasures from Venice to Ethiopia, ca. 1400" pasted into Grammarly in a Browser. It offers to invoke the digital ghosts of David Abulafia, Barry Flood and Chris Wickham to give me "expert feedback".

Using Grammarly for the first time in forever ... WHAT?

As a non-native speaker writing primarily in English, I used to use it to check prepositions, point out too long/convoluted sentences etc.

It now offers to summon colleagues both living and dead to "expert review" the piece???

What?

You cannot talk like this about any other minority in America.

And if it was any other president’s adviser who said something like this about any other minority, it’d be the instant end of their presidency.

Join us on March 6 at noon EST for this month's First Fridays Workshop with @jeremiahcoogan.bsky.social, who will present a paper titled "Uses and Abuses of the Gospel(s) according to the Hebrews."

See more about Jeremiah and his work here:
www.scu.edu/jst/about/fa...

I'm hiring! 🏛️

This is a VA-based, hybrid 3-year position for a historian working on digital projects related to religious history. We'll also be hiring a historian working on onsite programming and training related to religious history.

Feel free to reach out! www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/43...

Frankly, I expected better from a FIFA Peace prize winner

Librarian & Executive Director of the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut, 06032 | Other at Yale University Apply for Librarian & Executive Director of the Lewis Walpole Library job with Yale University in Farmington, Connecticut, 06032. Other at Yale University

JOB ALERT 📜📚

Librarian & executive director of Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library (Farmington, CT)

•Research center for 18th-century Britain
•You’d report to the fabulous Michelle Light

careers.yale.edu/us/en/job/13...

Congress must return immediately and vote to put an end to this war.

Every Senator should be on the record—the American people deserve to know which of their leaders supports another potentially bloody and costly war in the Middle East.

No war with Iran.

Here’s the thing: a President openly contemptuous of Congress & willing, unilaterally, to recklessly and illegally commit the US to wars of aggression is an existential threat to the Republic, *regardless* of whether he can ultimately explain his acts to Congress.

The demand must be impeachment.

Title page of "El principe en la idea" by Diego Enriquez de Villegas, printed in Madrid at the Imprenta Real, 1656

First opening after the title page. Verso of title page has a quote from what seems to be the book of Solomon in Latin (book 3, chapter 3, verse 7). Recto of opening has a centered column of text in many different fonts ala an early modern title page

Another two pages of the weird title page/intro thing. The printer is using *ALL* the types. All the text is centered, the font size varies. It's all very dramatic and quite a statement.

The dude is still going. And it's totally like a title page advertising it's content. But we're like 6 pages after the title page??? He's just saying what is going to be in the book.

Graphic design is my passion, but make it early modern:
There's a book called _Principe en la idea_, and someone got new type & wanted to use ALL of it, or the author wanted to have a 22-page title page? & the body has an entire column for footnotes?
books.google.com/books?id=EP1...
#BookHistory

AI update: replication crisis — Jessica Kant Regardless of who actually prints a story, it is the merger of social media and machine learning which increasingly drives narratives in the immediate wake of a major event. The next time a catastroph...

Reposting this because, hilariously, someone running an AI news aggregator just plagiarized the hell out of it and got shared 3x as much as the original post. So you know, here's the actual piece. Where I talk about LLMs making copies of copies of copies of copies and how that drives disinformation.

The Enneads of Plotinus: A Commentary | Volume 2 by Paul Kalligas

Paul Kalligas' The Enneads of Plotinus: A Commentary | Volume 2 is the second volume in a landmark commentary on an important and influential work of ancient philosophy.

Now available in #paperback!

Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

#Philosophy #AncientPhilosophy

Don't miss this great write-up by @christycobb.bsky.social about the influence of Christian apocrypha on history & tradition!

View Jürgen Geuter’s graphic link Jürgen GeuterJürgen Geuter • 2ndVerified • 2nd Research Director @ART+COM | Independent writer/theorist | Keynote Speaker | AI-Deinfluencer | #LudditeResearch Director @ART+COM | Independent writer/theorist | Keynote Speaker | AI-Deinfluencer | #Luddite 22h • 22 hours ago • Visible to anyone on or off LinkedIn Follow Very few narratives piss me off as much as the whole "let's give marginalised people LLM assistants for inclusion". Inclusion does not mean giving marginalised people shittier versions of a thing: Sure you can give kids from poorer backgrounds an LLM to "learn" but what you are saying is that poor people are not worth having trustworthy sources of information. When you say that older or lonely people can talk to chatbots to feel less alone you are saying that some people are not worth a social life. This is a deeply inhumane perspective that goes actively against the ideas and ideals of inclusion. likesupportcelebrate 186 You and 185 others

Regret to report that there has been another good linkedin post

So, here's the article I have out as of today and it's #OpenAccess. It deals with one of the earliest Christian Arabic scribal workshops in the Sinai monastery, where many of the mss produced there have been preserved to this day. In this 🧵 I do a quick rundown of the most important findings. 1/n

This is shocking and appalling on the one hand but a perfectly reasonable articulation of what we have collectively decided education is - a consumer product and a means to an end - on the other.

This is not the crisis itself but a logical outcome in one that has long been ongoing.

No war with Iran