Maria S. Thomas

Miss Piggy and the Pretty Woman of Proverbs 11:22: Beauty, Animality, and Gender Keeping the connection alive between the adorned pig and the pretty woman brings forth many fruitful interpretative possibilities. I offer to go beyond the tendency to limit the meaning of a proverb to its parallelistic structure in order to consider appositional tensions as well as reversible metaphors at play. —Anne Létourneau

Check out "Miss Piggy and the Pretty Woman of Proverbs 11:22: Beauty, Animality, and Gender" by Anne Létourneau in Ask the Animals: Developing a Biblical Animal Hermeneutic edited by Arthur W. Walker-Jones, Suzanna R. Millar. buff.ly/USlwpnC #WomensHistorySBL26

3 book covers: The Warehouse of Bamiyan, Persian World Histories in the Mongol Era and The Rise and Fall of the Barmakids

🎉The first 3 books have now published in The Islamicate East series, edited by @arezouazad.bsky.social, Hugh Kennedy and Teresa Bernheimer🎉 @invisibleeast.bsky.social
Find out more at edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-the-i...

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

Since it's still Library Lovers' Month, you might as well expand your collection by learning about other collections!

If you're in Vienna next week, this is a very interesting conference.

Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin 11, 2025

#NewPublication #OpenAccess #ChristianEast #ManuscriptStudies #BookHistory #ArabicBible
“Monastic Literature in Early Islamic Palestine and Sinai: Manuscripts, Scribes, Translators, Authors, and Later Readers”, COMSt Bulletin Special Issue, ed. by Adrian C. Pirtea

A TeTra paper by @dekayra.bsky.social tomorrow!

GenAut talks | Maria S. Thomas, "Publishing in a Twelfth-Century Syriac Monastery: Manuscript Production, Authority, and Scribal Practice at the Monastery of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem," Thursday 26 February, online. @dekayra.bsky.social.

All Roads Lead to Rome: Why we think of the Roman Empire daily Why we think of the Roman Empire daily

I see "Western Civilisation" is back in the discourse and I'd love to do a thread all about it but... I have no time this week so maybe read my book instead?

All good bookshops etc...

uk.bookshop.org/p/books/all-...

Conference Announcement!

Sanctity and Ritual Remembrance: Comparative Approaches to Christian Liturgical Memory from Medieval Iberia to Central Asia

ÖAW, Vienna |
5–6 March 2026

Congrats to our collaborators @worldlyscribe.bsky.social, Giorgia Nicosia, @madalinatoca.bsky.social, and Adrian Pirtea for their articles in the newly published thematic issue of the Journal of Eastern Christian Studies (co-edited by Marion).

Several in Open Access!

brill.com/view/journal...

The first talk of this years online seminar: Jakob Engberg, "The Care for the Remains of Polycarp in the Martyrdom of Polycarp in its Second Century Context."

Tuesday, 17 February (10 AM CET)
•Followers of the Apostles in Cultic Contexts•
genaut.univie.ac.at

Read Nabataean!

Next week we are hosting another paper, this time by Nicolas Atas (KU Leuven) on Syriac lexica! Tune in on Thursday 5 Feb at our regular time of 10 AM CET.
As always, don't forget to register w/ @andyhilkens.bsky.social if you're not yet on our mailing list!

The programme of the 2026 GenAut online seminar, with the general theme "The Followers of the Apostles in Cultic Contexts." It can be found online at https://genaut.univie.ac.at/?page_id=671.

We're thrilled to share with you the programme for the 2026 online seminar of the project! The series is curated by our colleague Maria S. Thomas (@dekayra.bsky.social).

All welcome! Let us know if you'd like to add you to the email list. genaut.univie.ac.at/?page_id=671

We have now a bsky page for the Vienna project, which just announced the 2026 online seminar. Check it out, it's a nice series of talks – organised by @dekayra.bsky.social.

Xeirographa A guided learning platform for reading Greek manuscripts with interactive transcription exercises.

My (free) website for learning to read from Greek manuscripts is available. Still some tweaks to be made but it’s ready with 12 lessons, tips and hints, downloadable reports if you use it for a class, and links to lots of resources.

Please share and give feedback!

xeirographa.com

Promo graphic for my book _Smoke & Mirrors: Discourses of Magic in Early Petrine Traditions_. The graphic features a discount code for 30% off if you purchase directly from Oxford University Press. That code is AUFLY30 (case sensitive).

today’s the day!!

congrats!!

it’s officially book promo time! so, hey, i wrote this book; it comes out in a week! would you mind signal boosting and asking your library to buy it? if you’d like a copy, the code AUFLY30 will get you 30%off.

A Short History of the Entanglement between Syriac and Armenian Christianities | Mary Jaharis Center

Attend: A Short History of the Entanglement between Syriac and Armenian Christianities, lecture by Andy Hilkens, Princeton University, November 13, 2025, 4:30–6:00 PM maryjahariscenter.org/blog/a-short...

Later today (at 1pm CET): Chance Bonar (Virginia),
"Onesimus: Apostle and Martyr in Eastern Mediterranean Literature"

Since we mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living, I’m bumping my thread about how from my perspective as a former Junior Olympic level track runner, this “fairness” transphobia is fucking bullshit blacksky.community/profile/did:...

A reminder that we have no colloquium event this week! However, our affiliated program, the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, is holding a book event on Zoom with Prof. Ellen Muehlberger (Michigan) from 6:30–8:00 pm on Thursday, Oct. 30.

Details here:

rels.sas.upenn.edu/events/2025/...

Click here to support Chance Bonar's story *AncientGazanLitTranslation *spotfund is the easiest place to create beautiful and free online fundraisers. It takes just minutes to start raising money today.

🗣️ PLEASE SHARE 🗣️

I'm writing an intro & sourcebook on late ancient Gazan literature for Dar al-Kalima University Press. The press and I plan to produce an Arabic translation to make Gazan literature more accessible to Palestinians. Help me compensate the Gazan translator!

spot.fund/dn8t744sc

Syriac AI Manuscripts and Fragments: Reimagining Digitally the Damaged Past The field of Syriac Digital Humanities continues to advance rapidly, moving from basic text recognition (as discussed in my previous posts on OCR/HTR, particularly our launch of the first public Sy…

In today's post, Ephrem Aboud Ishac writes about using #AI to visually reconstruct and complete partially damaged or fragmented #Syriac manuscripts, exploring its benefits and the ethical obligations involved.

🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2025/10/21/s...

Also next week!

It’s hard to overstate how important these resources are!

Opened palimpsest codex (Leiden UL Or. 14236) with Syriac upper text and Armenian undertext. The upper text is written in black and red ink and decorated braided band patterns. There's also a fragment with Arabic on it between the two pages of the opened codex.

Mind-numbing how many layers of history there can be to a single manuscript page: Syriac upper text (10th c.), Armenian undertext (pre-10th c.), Arabic material used for binding (11-12th c.?), Coptic foliation in the margin (date?), modern foliation at the bottom. Image: Leiden UL Or. 14236, link ⬇️