Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



June 18, 2013

Dumbarton Oaks’ Films from the Byzantine Institute Now Online


June 11, 2013

Fourteen 16mm films from Dumbarton Oaks’ Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives published online.

In December 2010, the Dumbarton Oaks Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) team rediscovered films documenting some of the Byzantine Institute’s most important fieldwork—in a freezer. After more than two years of restoration and digitzation, the 14 films were recently published online.

“We recognized that these were really unique materials. The films are a treasure trove for the study of Byzantine art, particularly since they relate directly to other archival materials and photographic documentation in our holdings,” said Shalimar Fojas White, manager of the ICFA. She added, “We had to act quickly if we wanted to preserve them because we detected vinegar syndrome—or acetate decay.”

The films, made between 1930 and 1950, focus on the Byzantine Institute’s field work at the Red Sea Monastery of St. Anthony in Egypt, Hagia Sophia and Kariye Camii in Istanbul, Turkey and also document the conservation and restoration techniques employed by the Byzantine Institute’s staff. The Hagia Sophia films, for example, feature fieldworkers restoring the North Tympanum Mosaics, which had been covered in plaster in the 19th century when the building served as a mosque.

Following consultation with colleagues at the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation and the Smithsonian Institution’s Human Studies Film Archives and support from Jan Ziolkowski, director of Dumbarton Oaks, and Arthur Kingsley Porter, professor of Medieval Latin, ICFA had the films reformatted and digitized. Fani Gargova, Byzantine research associate, hopes to publish an online exhibit relating the films to fieldwork notebooks and other documents in the collection.

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection is an institute in Washington, DC administered by the Trustees for Harvard University. It supports research and learning internationally in Byzantine, garden and landscape and pre-Columbian studies through fellowships and internships, meetings and exhibitions.
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