Christopher B. Zeichmann

A Wordpess Site

New Article in Scripta Classica Israelica


For those interested, an article I co-authored with Fernando Bermejo-Rubio was recently published in Scripta Classica Israelica: Where Were the Romans and What Did They Know? Military and Intelligence Networks as a Probable Factor in Jesus of Nazareth’s Fate. Here is the abstract, for those interested:

In the wake of the Gospels’ accounts, modern scholars do not pay much attention to the role Romans played in Jesus of Nazareth’s arrest, and are prone to give credit to manifestly biased sources. Besides, some misconceptions (e.g. that the military in pre-War Judaea was exclusively confined to its largest cities) prevent them from seriously weighing up the possibility that the role of the Romans in Jesus’ fate was more decisive than usually recognized. In this article, we reconsider a number of issues in order to shed light on this murky topic. First, the nature and functions of the Roman military in Judaea are surveyed (for instance, Palestine before the Jewish War had a robust network of fortlets and fortresses, which Benjamin Isaac has argued largely served to facilitate communication into the hinterlands). Second, we track some traces of anti-Roman resistance in the prefects’ period (6-41 CE), Third, the widely overlooked issue of the intelligence sources available to Roman governors is tackled. Fourth, the extent of the problems of the Passion accounts is seriously taken into account. The insights obtained are then applied to the Gospels’ story, thereby rendering it likely that Pilate had some degree of “intelligence” regarding Jesus and his followers before their encounter in Jerusalem that led to the collective execution at Golgotha.

Finally, that very issue has a nice review of my book by the great scholar Oliver Stoll. For those that care to read it, it can be found here.

Chapter in an upcoming book


Robert Myles has posted the Table of Contents for an upcoming book to which I am contributing, Class Struggle in the New Testament which will be published by Fortress Academic/Lexington Press. The Table of Contents looks amazing!

  1. Class Struggle in the New Testament! (Robert J. Myles)
  2. Jesus, the Temple, and the Crowd: A Way Less Traveled (Neil Elliott)
  3. Romans Go Home? The Military as a Site of Class Struggle in the Roman East and New Testament (Christopher B. Zeichmann)
  4. Peasant Plucking in Mark: Conceptual and Material Issues (Alan H. Cadwallader)
  5. IVDAEA DEVICTA: The Gospels as Imperial “Captive Literature” (Robyn Faith Walsh)
  6. Fishing for Entrepreneurs in the Sea of Galilee? Unmasking Neoliberal Ideology in Biblical Interpretation (Robert J. Myles)
  7. Hand of the Master: Of Slaveholders and the Slave-Relation (Roland Boer and Christina Petterson)
  8. Populist Features in the Gospel of Matthew (Bruce Worthington)
  9. Troubling the Retainer Class in Antiquity (Sarah E. Rollens)
  10. Rethinking Pauline Gift and Social Functions: Class Struggle in Early Christianity? (Taylor Weaver)
  11. The Origin of Archangels: Ideological Mystification of Nobility (Deane Galbraith)
  12. Christian Origins and the Specter of Class: Locating Class Struggle in the New Testament Today (James G. Crossley)

X-Men


This page collects all links for my book chapter “X-Men Films and the Domestication of Dissent: Sexuality, Race, and Respectability”

Last updated: 30 July 2018

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Ahmed, Sara. 2004b. “Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-performativity of Anti-Racism.” borderlands 3/2: n.p. Available from http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/ahmed_declarations.htm.

Brothers, David. 2013. Professor X Isn’t Martin Luther King, and Magneto Isn’t Malcolm X, Either. 4th Letter, 2013. Available from http://4thletter.net/2013/04/professor-x-isnt-martin-luther-king-and-magneto-isnt-malcolm-x-either/.

Brown, Michael. 2011. “Mutant” as a Codeword for “Gay” in the X-Men Movies. Townhall, 2011. Available from https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2011/11/03/mutant-as-a-codeword-for-gay-in-the-x-men-movies-n1216545.

Burrows, Cedric Dewayne. 2005. The Contemporary Rhetoric about Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X in the Post-Reagan Era. M.A. thesis, Miami University. Available from https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=miami1118689456&disposition=inline.

Clark, P. Djèlí. 2015. On Malcolm, Martin and that X-Men Analogy Thing. The Musings of a Disgruntled Haradrim, 2015. Available from https://pdjeliclark.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/on-malcolm-martin-and-that-x-men-analogy-thing/.

Dussere, Erik. 2000. The Queer World of the X-Men. Salon, 2000. Available from https://www.salon.com/2000/07/12/x_men/.

Ealey, Shani. 2013. What “The Butler” Didn’t Reveal About The Black Panther Party. In Black Women Unchecked. Available from https://blackwomenunchecked.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/what-the-butler-didnt-reveal-about-the-black-panther-party/.

Evans, Angel. 2013. ‘The Butler’ Movie Review: New Film, Old Stereotypes. In Mic. Available from https://mic.com/articles/60669/the-butler-movie-review-new-film-old-stereotypes#.wGdEVP4Ij.

Godoski, Andrew. 2011. Professor X and Magneto: Allegories for Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, 2011. Available from http://www.screened.com/news/professor-x-and-magneto-allegories-for-martin-luther-king-jr-and-malcolm-x/2316/.

Goldstein, Hilary. 2006. “Xavier vs. Magneto: A Philosophical Debate. IGN.com, 2006. Available from http://www.ign.com/articles/2006/05/05/xavier-vs-magneto-a-philosophical-debate.

Independent Gay Forum. 1998. About IGF CultureWatch. Independent Gay Forum, 1998. Available from https://igfculturewatch.com/about/.

LaCapria, Kim. 2016. Chants Encounter. Snopes, 2016. Available from https://www.snopes.com/black-lives-matter-protesters-chant-for-dead-cops-now-in-baton-rouge/.

Lamb, J. 2013. Magneto Was Right. Nerds of Color, 2013. Available from https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2013/09/18/magneto-was-right/.

Lund, Martin. 2015. “The Mutant Problem: X-Men, Confirmation Bias, and the Methodology of Comics and Identity.” European Journal of American Studies 10/2: n.p. Available from https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/10890.

Martin, Orion. 2013. What If the X-Men Were Black? The Hooded Utilitarian, 2013. Available from http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2013/12/what-if-the-x-men-were-black/.

Miller, Stephen H. 2016. Cop Lives Matter. Independent Gay Forum, 2016. Available from https://igfculturewatch.com/2016/07/08/cop-lives-matter/.

Nair, Yasmin. 2015a. The Gay Marriage Campaign Shamelessly Exploits Martin Luther King, 2015a. Available from http://yasminnair.net/content/gay-marriage-campaign-shamelessly-exploits-martin-luther-king.

———. 2015b. The Secret History of Gay Marriage, 2015b. Available from http://yasminnair.net/content/secret-history-gay-marriage.

Pulliam-Moore, Charles. 2017. It’s Time for the X-Men’s Stories About Discrimination to Evolve. io9, 2017. Available from https://io9.gizmodo.com/its-time-for-the-x-mens-stories-about-discrimination-to-1818715399.

Rose, Charlie. 2000. Bryan Singer. Charlie Rose, 2000. Available from https://charlierose.com/videos/3806.

Smith, Nigel M. 2015. Ian McKellen: ‘X-Men Was a Gay Man’s Delight, Because It Was Full of the Most Amazing Divas’ 2015. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/21/ian-mckellen-x-men-was-a-gay-mans-delight-because-it-was-full-of-the-most-amazing-divas.

Thompson, Chad. 2006. More than Mutants. Relevant, 2006. Available from  https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/film/features/3383-more-than-mutants.

Wheeler, Andrew. 2013. Avengers Assimilate: Identity Politics in ‘Uncanny Avengers’. In Comics Alliance. http://comicsalliance.com/uncanny-avengers-5-rick-remender-identity-politics-mutants/.

Yearwood, Smiley. 2015. For the Billionth Time, Magneto Is Not Malcolm X: Thoughts on Appropriation and Mutants of Color, 2015. Available from https://smileyyearwood.com/2015/09/11/for-the-billionth-time-magneto-is-not-malcolm-x-thoughts-on-appropriation-and-mutants-of-color/.

Guest blog post at The Shiloh Project


A recent guest blog post at The Shiloh Project that I wrote has recently been uploaded. The Shiloh Project is important work concerning rape culture and the bible – this particular blog post addresses the healing of the centurion’s slave and how rape culture informs certain interpretations of the passage.

You can find the post here: http://shiloh-project.group.shef.ac.uk/?p=2009

Guest post at the University of Toronto Press blog!


Getting the rights to publish images of Superman in my recent article was far more complicated than I had expected, so I wrote a blog post about it at the UofT Press blog.

I would just want to add, as an addendum to the post, that DC Comics granted me the rights to publish two of the four images requested, but did not elaborate on the reasons.  The two they granted explicitly mentioned the Jewish judge Samson and were the two that had Superman in costume, so I would speculate that they were approved for some combination of those reasons, but who knows?

New article in Journal for the Jesus Movement in Its Jewish Setting


Just a quick update. An article I wrote for the Journal of the Jesus Movement in Its Jewish Setting was recently published.  The article concerns Mark’s use of Latinisms and the location of its geographic setting.  JJMJS is an open-access journal, so it can be found online free here: http://www.jjmjs.org/

 

Loanwords or Code-Switching? Latin Transliteration and the Setting of Mark’s Composition

Abstract

The composition of Mark’s Gospel is variously located in metropolitan Rome, Syria, and Palestine, with nothing close to a consensus emerging. This article takes up one particular line of argumentation for Markan provenance and provides it a clearer methodological and theoretical apparatus, namely the issue of Latin transliteration. Some commentators note that the prevalence of Latin suggests a Roman context, while others contend that Markan vocabulary is consistent with the Roman East. This article examines the distinctive ways in which Latin was transliterated in the aforementioned regions in epigraphs, papyri, and literary texts. Comparative work will indicate that Mark’s use of transliterated Latin verges on incompatible with pre-War Palestine, is quite dissimilar for the city of Rome, but overlaps in significant ways with that of Syria and post-War Palestine. Though this argument is not conclusive about Markan origins in its own right, it may clarify the utility of the argument from Latinisms for future discussions.