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About Jona Lendering


De rand van het Rijk Livius is a website on ancient history written and maintained since 1996 by the Dutch historian Jona Lendering. It started on a different URL; the present one has been in use since 2000.

Lendering read history at Leiden University (MA 1993), specialized in Mediterranean culture at the Amsterdam Free University (MA 1996), and worked at excavations in Holland (Riethoven) and Greece (Halos). After teaching historical theory and ancient history at the Free University for several years, he was one of the founders of a school for history teaching, Livius Onderwijs. Born in Amsterdam, it has now spread to auxiliary locations in Bussum, Dronten, Gouda, Hoorn, Leiden, Schagen, Zaanstad, and Zoetermeer. As of 2013, Livius Onderwijs has eight teachers, about 500-600 students a year, and offers tours to countries like Italy, Turkey, Iran, and Lebanon. The field trips help to etch into the students' minds some of what they've learned at the school.

Because history is for a large part telling a story, something you do best in your own language, Lendering prefers to publish in Dutch journals. However, he has several times contributed to the Bryn Mawr Classical Review and is a regular contributor to Ancient Warfare. He is also the publisher and editor of the on-line publication of the Babylonian Chronicles of the Hellenistic Period, a set of important cuneiform sources for the history of the Seleucid and Parthian Near East, transcribed, translated and commented on by Bert van der Spek of the Free University Amsterdam and Irving Finkel of the British Museum. A publication as book is in preparation.

Lendering is currently writing a book on the separation of Judaism and Christianity, and maintains a blog on ancient history and a blog in Dutch. He is the author of several books, including Edge of Empire and Consensus and Crises; some other bits and pieces can be found here. For the Livius website, which was awarded the "Oikos publieksprijs" by the Dutch classicists in 2010, he collaborates closely with Bill Thayer of LacusCurtius.

Books by Jona Lendering

The next projects will be:
  • A history of the study of Antiquity;
  • A book on the rise of Early Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism;
  • A general history of Antiquity;
  • A biography of Synesius of Cyrene.
Other projects:
  • A history of the Seleucids;
  • A brief history of the Roman legions, not unlike the webpages already devoted to this subject;
  • A little book on the Limes Tripolitanus;
  • A book on Mediterranean culture under the Severan dynasty;
  • A book on Babylonia between 800 BCE and 200 CE;
  • and a book on the 'long but single year' 69.
Ancient-Warfare.com, the online home of Ancient Warfare magazine
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