<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[The Byzantine Ambass]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Byzantine Ambass]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/musings</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 06:31:24 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.byzantineambassador.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[The Man Nobody Knew: A Primer on Homer's Odyssey]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Odyssey begins in relative mystery. Its first word andra — "man" — is stripped of genealogy, name and social bearings. While the Iliad opens with the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, and tells of the Trojan war, Apollo and the grievance of Chryses, the Odyssey just talks of a mortal. Not a demigod whose anger deforms the whole Aegean. Just a man. And within the same breath Homer adds polytropos, of many turnings, and then plagchthē, meaning he was driven to wander. While the Iliad opens...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/the-man-nobody-knew-a-primer-on-homer-s-odyssey</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a5873469c687b0d7a3caea3</guid><pubDate>Thu, 16 Jul 2026 06:15:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_8324ffeaa41740c994e1fbd4d12cf36c~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The View from the Upper Gallery]]></title><description><![CDATA[From a converted cathedral to an annulled degree, Erdoğanism shows how procedure can be made to escort power to a destination it wanted all along, and how little the liberal order has to say about it. It has been 2,360 years since Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont and yet, thanks to a particular kebab, his name is still handed to Turkish waiters alongside requests for extra yoghurt. A casual visitor might think this proves the Hellenic conqueror never left Anatolian hearts but the...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/the-view-from-the-upper-gallery</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a4ffc01c6874e38d2bc92d1</guid><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:06:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_af2d99914b2545bba8d9369fe312bb40~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_728,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Gift, Ungiven]]></title><description><![CDATA[Anthropic and the Pope are asking what the human person contains. The question that would actually do the work asks what it receives. In May, in the Vatican's Synod Hall, Christopher Olah stood beside Pope Leo XIV at the presentation of Magnifica Humanitas — the first encyclical of his pontificate, on AI and human dignity. Olah, a Canadian, is one of Anthropic's founders, and the company is understood to have been among the AI labs consulted while the document was drafted, if only to make...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/the-gift-ungiven</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a352e323306f881e521e34e</guid><pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2026 14:13:35 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_89658acb51c84d10b33105c9b8a832c4~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Before the Romans and Hellenes]]></title><description><![CDATA[A conventional view of the pre-Indo-European West is that it belongs to linguists and cranks. The first shot across the boughs is that it's a double-hyphenated area of study. The second is the overwhelming fact that the evidence is so fragmentary that any claim made about it amounts to a Rorschach test. Meanwhile, there's the half-true assumption that the only people motivated to go back this far are pushed by some agenda, from proving Odin's indigeneity to supplying Atlantis with a backstory]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/before-the-romans-and-hellenes</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a0ae8968ba6aec9a80fb87b</guid><pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:06:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_8237872b8d314b31b0d0cd7a62736031~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_846,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Nimrod: The Tyrant Nobody Invented]]></title><description><![CDATA[Genesis dedicates just five verses to Nimrod. In a book which gives several chapters to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Nimrod gets a paragraph. He is the son of Cush, a "mighty one on the earth," a hunter of some distinction, the ruler of a string of Mesopotamian cities, and then the narrative moves on without so much as a backward glance. This is unusual. Biblical minimalism usually means that either figure is unimportant, or the figure is so important that the tradition cannot quite decide how to a]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/nimrod-the-tyrant-nobody-invented</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a06f068f943bb95ae57fbb1</guid><category><![CDATA[Byzantium]]></category><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 06:07:55 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_a5b8016528574394a63c305731e712e7~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_702,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Easter 2026: Doe of the Dawn]]></title><description><![CDATA[A dying man quotes a psalm in the vernacular. Everything follows from that. There is a moment in the Passion narratives that has always disturbed commentators more than they tend to admit. From the cross, according to both Matthew and Mark, Jesus cries out: Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Church Fathers wrestled with it. Hilary of Poitiers, in De Trinitate, noted that some took the cry as proof that Christ had been deserted and reduced to weakness....]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/easter-2026-doe-of-the-dawn</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69ce64156def0df73ca9a236</guid><pubDate>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:50:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_bdb003b2f3554bbabf1f995b245fc9af~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_735,h_556,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The gods are no longer resident: An Obituary for Habermas]]></title><description><![CDATA[He could diagnose thinning but not see clearly what might be taking shape in the shadow of that thinning, because doing so would have required him to admit that liberalism was one historical formation among others, subject to exhaustion like any other. What comes next is not, in the first instance, a philosophical problem in his sense. It is practical, liturgical and reproductive. It concerns the communities that build worldviews in people, well or badly, while the old administrative order conti]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/the-gods-are-no-longer-resident-an-obituary-for-habermas</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b700ed37c549f407999c0a</guid><category><![CDATA[Philosophy]]></category><pubDate>Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:01:56 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_ae67c0ea9ddd403ca7bd62362694b0d7~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Load-Bearing Peoples]]></title><description><![CDATA[Identities endure not because they are ancient, nor because they are invented. They endure because they make the future cheaper. Everything else—origin stories, bloodlines, myths of awakening—is post-hoc decoration. Consider the Greeks, who manage the extraordinary feat of being Greek for centuries before thinking to mention it. Homer's warriors know nothing of fighting for Hellas or invoking "the Greek people" in their interminable speeches about honor and inheritance. In the Homeric poems,...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/load-bearing-peoples</link><guid isPermaLink="false">699354ac6afbe985b7a3a5df</guid><pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:30:21 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_de414baa386a47feb911472994c36615~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Church that Survived Empire]]></title><description><![CDATA[Orthodoxy is usually encountered in full dress. You know the drill: there’s domes 'afloat,' mosaics 'suspended between heaven and earth,' and (over)confident hierarchies. Seen from this angle, survival appears almost tautological; a system so ceremonially complete, so intellectually self-assured, and so visibly intertwined with power has endurance in its DNA.  History, however, has a habit of stripping costumes. Byzantium did not survive as an empire; it survived empire.  And that...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/the-church-that-survived-empire</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69888164104fdf314aa65acc</guid><pubDate>Sun, 08 Feb 2026 12:57:08 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_72c60b4cbb0f4405996041a9ae9a84e7~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[EASTER QUINTET ON THE CHURCH’S DAWN// Part V// The New Testament as Jewish scripture]]></title><description><![CDATA[I t would be an error to treat the Christian story as merely the gradual sedimentation of various Greek philosophies narrowing and...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/easter-quintet-on-the-church-s-dawn---part-v---the-new-testament-as-jewish-scripture</link><guid isPermaLink="false">67ffa99c710f980e71bd5035</guid><pubDate>Sun, 20 Apr 2025 19:13:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_79e3e46d725e461b9905cb843694da47~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[EASTER QUINTET ON THE CHURCH’S DAWN// Part IV// A kingdom of questions]]></title><description><![CDATA[I t  is impossible to understand the actions of the martyrs––though Roman reactions to Christianity were fluid and erratic––without...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/easter-quintet-on-the-church-s-dawn---part-iv---a-kingdom-of-questions</link><guid isPermaLink="false">67ffa3a9710f980e71bd371b</guid><pubDate>Sat, 19 Apr 2025 19:13:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_7485cbfc83954c5e8ef77a62d351e586~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_630,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[EASTER QUINTET ON THE CHURCH’S DAWN// Part III// Cosmology and its discontents]]></title><description><![CDATA[T he fate of parties engaged in the intersectarian fighting that marked much the late Second Temple period was often decided by levels of...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/easter-quintet-on-the-church-s-dawn---part-iii---cosmology-and-its-discontents</link><guid isPermaLink="false">67ff8bfee0efa71a20bf9002</guid><pubDate>Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:12:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_d40519875adc4febaed75a7d3f595864~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[EASTER QUINTET ON THE CHURCH’S DAWN// Part II// From ‘Judaism for Gentiles’ to the ‘Judaism of Gentiles’]]></title><description><![CDATA[B y the early second century AD gentile forms of Christianity began to dominate sources. Exactly how this transition occurred is...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/easter-quintet-on-the-church-s-dawn---part-ii---from-judaism-for-gentiles-to-the-judaism-of-genti</link><guid isPermaLink="false">67ff757af006df4c9c5239fe</guid><pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2025 19:12:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_2d6b089733294431a9e35cf166f3b447~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_819,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[EASTER QUINTET ON THE CHURCH’S DAWN// Part I// Foundations of a Romano-Jewish culture ]]></title><description><![CDATA[N arratives concerning the journey from Christ to Nicene Christianity tend to fall into two camps with one implying that its...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/easter-quintet-on-the-church-s-dawn---part-i---foundations-of-a-romano-jewish-culture</link><guid isPermaLink="false">67ff6fa72aeb1301d665d91a</guid><pubDate>Wed, 16 Apr 2025 19:12:04 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_51b5cf096c9647b7949437c1065bc7e6~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Dialogue of the Deaf: Judeo-Christian Relations in Late Antiquity and Beyond]]></title><description><![CDATA[‘A love-hate relationship.’ [1] Spyros Troianos on Christians and Jews ‘This Jew would be dear to my heart were it not for his abominable...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/dialogue-of-the-deaf-judeo-christian-relations-in-late-antiquity-and-beyond</link><guid isPermaLink="false">673c55ffc8e1b24cf5c94df1</guid><pubDate>Tue, 19 Nov 2024 10:21:41 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_ec25b4dd91d54b13a76e506f57cb0336~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Romano-Britons: a strange brand of reactionaries]]></title><description><![CDATA[C5th Vergilius Romanus, Folio 101 recto, Biblioteca Apostolica, Cod. Vat. lat. 3867.  The conventional view of late antiquity is that...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/romano-britons-a-strange-brand-of-reactionaries</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6451015096b418450947050a</guid><pubDate>Fri, 05 May 2023 17:04:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_c14510b0ed7f4093aab4efe4ce0930d9~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_914,h_868,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Henry Hopwood-Phillips</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Dozen Delights in Byzantine Thessaloniki]]></title><description><![CDATA[Recently I enjoyed talking about Byzantine Thessaloniki at the Hellenic Centre, Marylebone, London, at an event held by the Macedonian...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/a-dozen-delights-in-byzantine-thessaloniki</link><guid isPermaLink="false">63a06696be4132a931eaf29f</guid><pubDate>Mon, 19 Dec 2022 14:13:48 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec71fd_6f932ae181154c778c3fa45eb2d4ae14~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Forging Venezianita: Venice the Byzantine Naval Base]]></title><description><![CDATA[SLAVIC BRAKES (3.1)  The first half of the ninth century saw Croats and other polities emerge. A group named Narentines were particularly...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/forging-venezianita-venice-the-byzantine-naval-base</link><guid isPermaLink="false">629608c6da90fea7fa109fb3</guid><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jun 2022 10:00:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ab5813_a0114d4c1d114c7aa0717bdd1093cc73~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_815,h_550,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Forging Venezianita: The Birth of Venice]]></title><description><![CDATA[REMILITARISATION OF ITALY (2.1) Italian society had not contributed large amounts of manpower to the Roman military since the mid-third...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/forging-venezianita-the-birth-of-venice</link><guid isPermaLink="false">627e7e235cf057534ddf10bc</guid><pubDate>Thu, 19 May 2022 12:56:40 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ab5813_3c1e4cf41fb54502b179e269c8d74e7a~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Forging Venezianita: La Serenissima’s Tortured Relationship with its Byzantine DNA]]></title><description><![CDATA[St Theodore’s Column, Venice, Sydney Vacher (1919) AIM: This paper is split into four parts and seeks to address the source scarcity that...]]></description><link>https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/forging-venezianita-la-serenissima-s-tortured-relationship-with-its-byzantine-dna</link><guid isPermaLink="false">626994971221c457420e7872</guid><pubDate>Thu, 28 Apr 2022 12:22:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ab5813_bb850436c2db4b4aac43c908e6eecc35~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_503,h_768,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator></dc:creator></item></channel></rss>