Prayer in Antiquity

Call For Papers: For the 2019 meeting in San Diego, the Prayer in Antiquity program unit will be hosting three sessions. The first session is jointly hosted with the Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds program unit on how sensory perception is described and experienced in early Jewish and early Christian prayers, and on the impact of the material environment on the senses during prayer. Papers are invited to engage one or more of the following questions: How do prayers use language about the senses to express how ancient communities thought about or ascribed meaning to the senses, and what can this tell us about their social and cultural practices pertaining to the senses? Also what does this convey about their theologies and beliefs concerning the divine? What impact did material objects and space have on the sensory experiences accompanying prayer? Priority will be given to papers that examine prayer as embodied practice, moving beyond traditional historical and form-critical methodologies to consider philological, anthropological, psychological, and phenomenological ways of understanding how prayers refer to or engage the body's sensory perceptions. The second session is a review of Judith Newman's new book, Before the Bible (OUP, 2018). Reviewers have been invited for this session. The third session is a completely open session on any topic related to the study of Prayer in Antiquity that fits our program description. Please highlight the methodology that will be used in the proposal.

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