Miracles and Paradoxography in Biblical Reception from Late Antiquity

This research unit is intended to host conversations between texts of biblical reception (broadly conceived) and so-called paradoxography, an ancient genre invested in cataloguing and describing what we moderns would call natural wonders. Thematically, these collections include accounts of animals, plants, rivers, or peoples and their customs. The recently renewed focus in Classics on paradoxography has demonstrated that fascination with marvels impacted many different literary productions, and may, at times, be responsible for the apparent increase in fantastic and super-human motifs in late antique literature. The research unit encourages scholars to engage with paradoxographies and related literature to study the attitudes of authors toward marvellous and paradoxical phenomena, and to reflect on their prospective literary influence. It is our contention that a basic understanding of the genre of paradoxography might in many cases be imperative to locate any miraculous story in its literary context and to put an author’s literary creativity under perspective.