Courtney Friesen, Professor in the Department of Religious Studies & Classics, has received the Frank W. Beare Award from the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies.
Presented at the society’s annual meeting in June in Toronto, the Beare Award recognizes an outstanding book in the areas of Christian Origins, Post-Biblical Judaism and/or Graeco-Roman Religions.
Friesen’s Acting Gods, Playing Heroes, and the Interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Greek Drama in the Early Common Era, published by Routledge in 2024, explores religion and the receptions of classical theater (tragedy, comedy and satyr drama) in the early centuries of the Common Era.
Judges for the prize commented that this is “a slim but surprisingly expansive volume, [the book] models an approach to ancient Mediterranean religion that collapses the conventional disciplinary boundaries separating classics and ancient history from biblical studies to patristics. Friesen successfully demonstrates the ongoing influence especially of Euripides on interwoven Greek, Jewish, and Christian intellectual cultures, and offers tantalizing hints of drama’s durable place in the popular cultural imagination of the ancient world. The book is well-argued, breaks new ground, and overturns the traditional view about early Christian opposition to theatre.”