Neo-Assyrian wall relief depicting an eagle-headed apkallu (sage) | In the British Museum, from the Palace of Ashunasirpal II at Nimrud, Iraq | Image source
On AJR
Book Note: Seth Sanders, From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017)
Lester: “Seth L. Sanders’s recent book, From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylonia puts forward a new history of cultural contact between Mesopotamian and Judean scribal cultures that culminated in the Second Temple Period. Sanders revisits the question of the shared features between Judean and Mesopotamian literature (such as ascent to heaven, heavenly visions, in addition to distinctively Babylonian astronomy and metrology), but he also offers two pointed methodological correctives for the study of ancient Near Eastern scribal cultures. The first corrective addresses the question of how to write a history of scribal culture; the second, addresses the question of how to approach religious experience in the ancient world.”
Articles and News
Online hi-res images of a German volume of the Madaba Map.
Malcolm Choat reflects on forgery, papyri, and the history of scholarship.
At the New Yorker, reflections on what the way scholars write about Jewish history reveals about how they see their present.
Reviews of new books dealing with materiality of Jewish and Christian antiquity, as well as purity in early Christian writings.
At the Katz Center Blog, a piece on Nina Davis – a fin-de-siècle frequent contributor to Jewish Quarterly Review.
Ruth Jackson on Vial’s discussion of how race and religion wove together in the nineteenth century.
Larry Hurtado talks recent books on the “Triumph” and “Distinctiveness” of Early Christianity.
Reflections on the transformation of Roman power in the late antique west.
Following the illustrious example of @AnnetteYReed an Intro to NT class revels in papyri @pennmuseum (& P1!) #amteaching pic.twitter.com/TgkR1c7cQ1
— Matthew Chalmers (@Matt_J_Chalmers) 26 March 2018
In anticipation of the upcoming #Passover holiday, we share an image of a #Haggadah (c. 1809) from the @upennlib collection.
— Katz Center (@katzcenterupenn) 29 March 2018
Happy Passover to all those celebrating!#TBT pic.twitter.com/hWEPxpdmOZ
Save the date: 4/18 Martin Goodman will be talking about his new book, History of Judaism, @cjewishhistory in conversation with me & Shaul Magid https://t.co/jilimQazeJ
— Annette Yoshiko Reed (@AnnetteYReed) 28 March 2018