Meals in the Greco-Roman World

Call For Papers: The MGRW seminar has planned three sessions for 2023: 1) Open call: Meals in Late Antiquity. In this session, the MGRW would like to explore meals in Late Antiquity. Papers with a wide variety of emphases on pagan, Jewish, and Christian meal culture from Late Antiquity are welcome. 2) Open Call (some papers may be invited): Redescribing the Last Supper (Joint Session with Redescribing Early Christian Origins) Over more than two decades, two SBL program units, Redescribing Christian Origins and Meals in the Greco-Roman World have investigated the formative phases of the Jesus movement from a social anthropological and sociological perspective– the former more with regard to ancient myths and modern theories about early Christianity, the latter with regard to a concrete ritual in its ancient cultural context and modern myths about the origins of the Eucharistic meal, which became a central element of the Christian practice in late antiquity. This joint session will focus specifically on redescribing the “Last Supper” as presented in the Synoptic Gospels and in 1 Corinthians. While we welcome proposals that interrogate these passages in light of larger communal meal practices in antiquity, we are particularly interested in evaluating the description of this meal and the so-called “words of institution” in the canonical texts. Of interest is reevaluation of the degree to which these literary descriptions of the meal and its institution have been taken for granted and/or anachronistically interpreted. 3) Two decades of SBL’s Meals in the Greco-Roman world seminar: A Retrospective. MGRW subscribes to SBL’s Professional Conduct Policy and is committed to SBL’s core values, particularly those of critical inquiry, inclusivity, accountability, and professionalism.

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