Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World - Hardcover

by Ellen Muehlberger (Author)

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

How do you know the nature of another person: who she is, or what she is capable of? In four exploratory essays, a seasoned historian examines the mechanisms by which ancient people came to have knowledge--not of the world and its myriad processes but about something more intimate, namely the individuals they encountered in close quarters, those they knew in everyday life. Tracing previously unfathomed structures beneath the surface of late ancient Christianity, Ellen Muehlberger reveals surprising insights about the ancient world and, by extension, the modern. Things Unseen holds treasures for scholars of early Christian studies, for historians in general, and for all those who wonder about how we know what we seem to know.

Back Jacket

How does a teenager pretending to be a sex worker enact elite male mastery? How do the venerable walls of a church expose deceitful fake converts within? How does a forged text secure the unbroken lineage of Christian orthodoxy? How do seemingly realistic 'portraits' unmask modern (colonial, racialized) fantasies of an ancient past? In Things Unseen, Ellen Muehlberger exposes readers to a late ancient hall of mirrors: a series of illusory exteriors that ultimately reveal how interior truth is manufactured out of exterior falsehood.--Andrew S. Jacobs, author of Gospel Thrillers: Conspiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible

"How did late ancient Christians know about the world, and how do we come to know about theirs? Drawing on sources from school exercises to mummy portraits, Ellen Muehlberger's elegant essays consider the construction of Christian masculinity and patriarchal authority, while contemplating how their worldview shapes and influences our own."--Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, University of California, Santa Barbara

Author Biography

Ellen Muehlberger is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She is author of Angels in Late Ancient Christianity and Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity and serves as editor for the Journal of Early Christian Studies.