How Roman Britain ended is one of the most controversial questions in British history. Unique among former Roman citizens in Western Europe, the Britons established long-lived kingdoms, resisting 'barbarian' political takeover for centuries. Yet so little is known of them from written records that even the names of most of their kings are effectively lost to history.

Packed with the latest discoveries and ground-breaking research, in Tyrants and Traders: Tintagel, Arthur and the Lost Kings (Bloomsbury, 2026) Professor Ken Dark brings the fascinating, but mysterious, world of these rulers and their kingdoms to life. Archaeological evidence, along with re-analysis of the few existing texts, reveals an unexpectedly sophisticated society, connected to a wider international network of trade and cultural contacts than might until recently have seemed imaginable. Professor Dark demonstrates through the latest archaeological discoveries that Tintagel – an eroded coastal stronghold in Cornwall, closely associated with the later legend of King Arthur – was a royal fortress and trading centre of one of the most important British kingdoms of this period.

This is a historical period filled with memorable characters and stories: from the outraged churchman Gildas, attempting to reform the corrupt rulers he thought threatened civilized life itself, to St. Patrick, who played a major part in converting Ireland to Christianity, to no less than King Arthur – whose historical existence Professor Dark shows to be much more likely than usually supposed.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Strange and Familiar History of Byzantine Ar: Interpretation, Risk, and Empathy (ARC Humanities Press, 2026) represents a risky experiment in art-history writing. It takes objects of Byzantine art—manuscript illustration, frescos, mosaic, sculpture—and reads them through the lenses of disability studies, media studies, and gender studies in order to reveal something about their significance not only in that historical culture, but also in our own. Moreover, it uses lenses of personal history and self-reflection as a way to model an open-ended and faceted art history. Modern works of film, fiction, and art likewise appear frequently so that the Byzantine objects can emerge as both more strange and more familiar, and as both of the past and of our world. Their capacity for holding multiple times, generating multiple meanings, and for multiple subjectivities is fully embraced, and perhaps a different kind of art history emerges, one that eschews argument and mastery for humility, openness, empathy—thinking with, rather than about.

New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review

Glenn Peers is Emeritus Professor, Art History at University of Texas Austin and Syracuse University

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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In The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought (Cambridge UP, 2026), Gabrielle Thomas questions the popular assumption that the devil served as the primary explanation for evil, sin, and suffering as early Christians grappled with all that is wrong in the world. Interrogating the status of the devil in the teachings of the Cappadocians – Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Macrina the Younger – she identifies their points of agreement, that the devil is a fallen angel, and disagreement, notably how Christ defeated him, his continued existence, and his ultimate end. In her investigation, Thomas engages fourth-century Christian thought in conversation with ancient philosophy, ancient history, classics, and biblical studies. She demonstrates how the Cappadocians negotiated myriad philosophical, theological, and spiritual problems with the devil. Thomas argues that the devil is not simply a strategy for explaining the problem of evil. Rather, the devil himself is the problem.

New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review

Gabrielle Thomas, an Anglican priest, is Dean and President of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Early Christian, Anglican, and Theological Studies at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of The Image of God in the Theology of Gregory of Nazianzus and For the Good of the Church: Unity, Theology, and Women and co-editor of Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at Umass Boston

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How did the state become Christian in late antiquity? Many scholars have traced the Christianization of the Roman world in the centuries following the conversion of the emperor Constantine in 312 CE. Robin Whelan, however, turns his attention away from the usual suspects in such accounts-emperors, empresses, bishops, ascetics, and other holy people-to consider a surprisingly understudied set of late ancient Christians: those who served the state as courtiers, bureaucrats, and governors. By tracing the requirements of regimes, the expectations of subjects, and patterns of engagement with churches and churchmen, he argues that that those who served the state in late antiquity could be seen-and indeed, could see themselves-as distinctly Christian authority figures-just as much as the emperors and kings whom they served, and the bishops and ascetics whom they governed. Serving the Christian State in Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2026) is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Robin Whelan is Reader in Mediterranean History at the University of Liverpool.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston

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Ancient apologetics is usually treated as a literary genre or a branch of early theology. This Element offers a different account. It argues that many Jewish and Christian texts conventionally labeled 'apologetic' are better understood through a bibliographic and archival lens: They produce authority not only by defending doctrines, but by organizing books, constructing corpora, mobilizing archives, and regulating interpretation. Tracing a trajectory from the Letter of Aristeas to Jerome's De viris illustribus, this Element shows how citation, collection, cataloguing, and textual ordering made traditions appear authoritative. Examining Aristeas, Josephus, Tatian, Justin, Origen, Pamphilus, Eusebius, and Jerome, it argues that apologetics is best understood as a form of curatorial power through which ancient communities learned to think with books. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review.

Sabrina Inowlocki is a Senior Research Fellow Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry (IRCI) at the Australian Catholic University.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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Restoring the Ancient Religion: The Theurgic Orthopraxy of Iamblichus (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026) reconsiders Iamblichus’ Response to Porphyry, Late Antiquity’s seminal work on theurgy, which is often referred to as De Mysteriis. Was this text intended to be more than just a defense of ritualism or a philosophical crossing of metaphysical wits between Porphyry and Iamblichus? This volume examines whether De Mysteriis constituted a manifesto of restoration, a call to resignify and revive a religion that Iamblichus felt was spiraling into barren traditionalism.
Through a nuanced examination of Iamblichus’ theurgy, this book shows the emergence of a sophisticated philosophic-ritualistic system, one designed to reform religious practice through divine epiphanies and direct communication with the gods. Using a thorough textual analysis, this book uncovers crucial distinctions between theurgy and magic and explores the mechanics of divine illumination during theurgic rituals in the context of Iamblichus' intricate hierarchy of spiritual beings. In this system, this book demonstrates, material objects could become vessels of divine power and humans could become interlocutors with the divine itself.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Marios Koutsoukos received his PhD in Classics from the University of Liverpool, UK. His current research focuses on Late Antique theurgy, hermeticism, Graeco-Egyptian magic, animated statues and the survival of mystery cults beyond the sixth century. He also works as a fiction author, translator and screenwriter.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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In Beyond Hope: Rabbinic Eschatology of Late Antiquity in Comparative Perspective (Oxford UP, 2026) Jenny Labendz addresses distinct patterns within rabbinic eschatology that have been overlooked in scholarship and in Jewish thought. Contrary to what is usually expected of eschatology, this book demonstrates that the rabbis held a sustained eschatology of irresolution. While the rabbis occasionally waxed poetic along the lines of a perfected new world in the eschaton, a vast store of rabbinic texts depicts a deeply imperfect eschaton. This is the profound difference between rabbinic and early Christian eschatology.
Despite its differences from the Christian doctrine of perfection, rabbinic eschatology aligns neatly with a different Christian concept, namely inaugurated eschatology. The eschaton is not only be hoped for in the future, but can be attained in the present. The best of all possible worlds has not yet been entirely actualized, but it has been inaugurated, in the rabbinic view by the exodus from slavery in Egypt, the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, and the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness. This is a paradigm shift for thinking about rabbinic eschatology, which rejects the dogmas and binaries that generations of scholars have taken for granted.

In this new book, Jenny Labendz explores the relationship between this world and the best possible world, the limits of that best possible world, and asks a crucially grounding question--what are we talking about when we're talking about the end of the world?

Interviewee: Jenny R. Labendz received her PhD from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2010 and was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at St. Francis College until 2025. She is also the author of Socratic Torah: Non-Jews in Rabbinic Intellectual Culture, published by Oxford University Press in 2013.

Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism and Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

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Exemplarity and Allusion in Macrobius' Saturnalia (Oxford UP, 2026) offers a new framework for interpreting interactions with classical source material in Macrobius’ Saturnalia. It argues that the Saturnalia, an educational dialogue from the fifth century ce, does not view its Greco-Roman models as hegemonic sources of authority but engages with these texts in dynamic and critical ways. In particular, Macrobius responds to both the literary and ethical agendas of his predecessors, a strategy which is termed ethical allusion. The book explores this intertwining of moral, social, and aesthetic commentary in the Saturnalia’s allusions to authors such as Aulus Gellius, Cicero, Plato, Plutarch, and Virgil. It also examines Macrobius’ ethical allusions alongside the aesthetic practices and moral thought of the late fourth and the fifth centuries, and sheds light on the Saturnalia’s role in pioneering a late antique intellectual culture at once less hierarchical and less engaged with civic life.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review.

Katherine Krauss is Assistant Teaching Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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