More than 20 years ago, the Meals in the Greco Roman world program unit had its first meeting. It was established as a consultation at the 2002 SBL Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada. The program of the 2002 consultation, entitled “Meals in the Greco-Roman World: Defining a Research Field” consisted of six papers.

Tomb stele, Cyzicus (Mysia), Hellenistic period (photo: Jan Heilmann)

In 2003, Dennis E. Smith and Matthias Klinghardt presented their work, which – as the so called Klinghardt-Smith paradigm and the leading typology describing ancient meals – became fundamental for the Meals in the Greco-Roman world seminar. In the last 20 years, the Meals in the Greco-Roman world seminar hosted 40 Sessions at 19 SBL annual meetings (we had a pause due to the pandemic), 111 paper were presented. You can find a list of all sessions, papers and summaries of the papers of the SBL annual meeting on this blog.

In 2011, as a co-sponsor of the Collaborative Research Center 804 “Transzendenz und Gemeinsinn”, the seminar “Meals in the Greco-Roman World” organized a conference on “Meals and Religious Identity in Early Christianity” in Dresden, Germany. The work of the seminar is documented in three anthologies. In addition, several dissertations and books around the world have been influenced by the work of the unit, and many articles based on papers presented at the sessions or influenced by the work of the unit have been published in high-impact international journals.

Jan Heilmann, Soham Al-Suadi, Matthias Klinghardt, Andrew McGowan, SBL Annual Meeting in San Antonio (2023)

But that’s all just statistics. After more than 20 years 2023 in San Antonio, Matthias Klinghardt, Soham Al-Suadi, and Andrew McGowan were looking back on 20 years of successful research on behalf of many scholars who were involved in the program unit. Both the panel and the plenum agreed that it was worth continuing the work with a new focus on late antiquity. A designated steering committee is currently working on a proposal for the continuation of the program unit and we hope to be able to continue the work under a new name from 2024.