My Regensburg Year Part 10: May 2025

From the start of my interest in the ancient world, I have wanted to see Athens. All I needed to do was wait to be invited to a conference in the area so that I could score free travel and accommodations! Unfortunately, no invitation has come my way, but now that we are in Europe, it is not so expensive nor so time-consuming to travel there for a short visit. We found a decent hotel in the Monastiraki neighbourhood, not far from the acropolis, and checked off the list of typical tourist activities: an early morning visit to the acropolis (beat the crowds and the heat!), then the acropolis museum to see the artifacts on display, the agora, and the Panathenaic Stadium. We also attempted a visit to the Byzantine and Christian Museum but it was closing just as we arrived. Along the way we popped into several churches. The rich iconography of Greek Orthodox churches are quite a change from what we have seen in Bavarian Catholic towns; there was no shortage of apocryphal imagery for me to document. One of the highlights of our trip was a play performed on a rooftop in Plaka with the Parthenon, lit up in the night sky, as its backdrop. And we took our usual bus trip out of the city, this time to see the ancient site of Mycenae, the theatre at Epidaurus, and the port town of Nafplio.

From Athens we flew over to Crete. We stayed in the capital city of Heraklion, which was a bit gritty for our tastes but from there we could take a boat to the island of Santorini. My wife Laura was determined to visit the island to see its iconic white and blue buildings. We were warned it would be very busy and the crowds did take some of the enjoyment out of it. But we enjoyed listening to the information provided by our tour bus driver on how everything somehow goes back to Greece (if you’ve ever seen the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you will know what I mean). Apparently the Suez Canal was named after Zeus (spelled backwards!), Symon of Cyrene (who carried the cross of Jesus) was actually from Santorini, and Palestinians come from Crete. Fascinating.

In Heraklion we also saw the Cathedral of Saint Titus, decorated with scenes from the saint’s preaching in Crete (as told in the Acts of Titus) and proudly displaying the relic of his head (encased in a golden, bejeweled globe). From Heraklion we took a short bus ride to see the ancient city of Knossos and marvelled at its (ahem) imaginative reconstruction and spent a day across the island in the lovely town of Chania (Heraklion, why can’t you be more like Chania?).

In work-related news, I attended the annual meeting of the North American Patristics Society in Chicago, accompanied by my conference-wife and Regensburg office neighbour Nathan Betz. Nathan and I were participating in a workshop put together, largely, by Lorenzo DiTommaso. The workshop is part of a project created by Lorenzo examining late antique apocalyptic literature from a variety of perspectives. The project will continue with a full conference in Regensburg in 2026 and in France at the meeting of l’AELAC (Association pour étude de la littérature apocryphe chrétienne) in 2027. The first session of the workshop was chaired by Lorenzo and featured papers by Nathan, Chance Bonar, and Jean-Michel Roessli. It opened up questions of genre, a necessary starting point for any protracted investigation of a body of literature. The discussion continued in the second session with papers by Gio DiRusso, Meghan Henning, and Daniel C. Smith. My role for the workshop was to chair this session and respond to the papers. I particularly like Gio’s paper because it focused on the Book of Rolls, an apocryphal text near to my heart. It was of particular interest because it questioned some of the parameters of the project, namely what do we mean by late antiquity? In the imperial Muslim context of the Book of the Rolls, this comes far later than in the Christian world though the circumstances of the text’s composition are very similar to the time of composition of the early Jewish and Christian apocalypses: living as a Christian minority under non-Christian rule. I was plagued with a cold during the conference and didn’t feel particularly sociable, but I did enjoy a dinner with the workshop participants and a lunch with my apocrypals Nathan Hardy and Kelly Holob.

Perhaps the most impactful experience of my Chicago trip was the time I spent in detention. Let me back up. With the recent rhetoric coming from south of the border on making Canada the “fifty-first state” and the increased tariffs on Canadian goods, many of my fellow Canucks have decided to skip travel to the US for the time being. I would like to have done the same but felt obligated to attend NAPS because of the apocalypse project. Laura urged me not to go, not only out of principal but also because of concern that ICE might send me to a prison in El Salvador. Don’t worry, I said; I’ll be fine. Turns out Laura was half right. I was told by a Customs official that there is another Anthony Burke out there in the world who is apparently a criminal mastermind or something. He said “it’s not you” (little did he know!) but put me in a holding room with a few dozen other potential criminals and subjected me to the cruel and unusual punishment of having nothing to do but watch the worst game show in television history: Person, Place or Thing (what’s next, Snap?). After 45 minutes I was given my passport back and sent on my way. But I won’t forget this indignity, America!

Lest readers think I didn’t do anything in Regensburg this month, I should mention attending a concert at the Alte Mälzerei not far from the train station. The event was a kickoff for a European tour by NYC ska/reggae band the Slackers with local ska group the SKAreCREW opening. Both groups have been performing for 30 years (or more), though I have never seen or heard of either of them before. But I have been starved for live music. The only other acts I have seen here in town are busking accordion players and the occasional group of drummers, dancers, and what-have-you taking over a platze for an ad hoc performance. Laura and I were joined for the show by officemates Scott Robertson and Agata Deptula. For the most part, we enjoyed it; though Scott did put it all in perspective by saying “Now here’s a song that sounds like all the other ones.” That’s reggae for ya.