“The following is an essay about fragments composed of quotations. These quotations are drawn from the Bible, rabbinic sources, the works of Origen, Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius, and from the works of Friedrich Schlegel, the foremost modern thinker on this subject.”
Read MoreFour Notes on Memory Theatre
“It is a way of asking questions about the past, and about ourselves in relation to the past, in so far as we can feel fragments of the lives of earlier humans and non-humans reverberating in us. It is an imitable model for asking historical questions by means of staged, layered, immersive bodily performance.”
Read MoreFragments
Panelists from the 2018 Religious World of Late Antiquity SBL section panel on “Fragments” offer close readings of a range of secondary or technical sources outside the field in order to investigate provocative problems, ideas, and disciplinary techniques for scholars who study the late ancient world.
Read MoreTurning Clockwise: Jews and Timekeeping from Antiquity to Modernity | Dissertation Spotlight
Clock with Star of David, Germany, ca. 1550, Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague
Clock with Star of David, Germany, ca. 1550, Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague
In order to show the promise of examining Jewish history in a technological frame, I chose to study timekeeping technology, whose long and complex development touches every era and region in which Jews have lived.
Read MorePublications | Mary, Mother of Martyrs
My book is about this question: why tie mothers so easily and naturally to notions of self-sacrifice? Why assume that mothers will resemble the martyrs?
Read More“Given as a Sign”: Circumcision and Bodily Discourse
“Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time” by Joshua Koffman, currently at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia
“Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time” by Joshua Koffman, currently at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia
Dr. M Adryael Tong provides an overview of her recent dissertation, “Given as a Sign”: Circumcision and Bodily Discourse in Late Antique Judaism and Christianity: “Traditional classification of early Christian and Jewish texts on circumcision into binary opposition cannot be substantiated once we look beneath disagreement over the practice of circumcision on the surface.”
Read MoreForeign Holidays and Festivals as Representative of Identity in Rabbinic Literature: a Dissertation Spotlight
Thomas Couture, Romans during the Decadence (1847). Image is under public domain.
Thomas Couture, Romans during the Decadence (1847). Image is under public domain.
Catherine Bonesho writes about the polemics of rabbinic legislation on holidays: “I find that the law sets Judaism and Christianity in competition with one another and, in the process, the law authorizes the imperial version of Christianity while asserting the nefarious qualities of Jews and Judaism.”
Read MoreThe Samaritan Other: Representation, History, and Lost Late Ancient Difference
Top register: the Good Samaritan | Rossano Gospels, f. 7v | Image Source
Top register: the Good Samaritan | Rossano Gospels, f. 7v | Image Source
What happens when we render Samaritans as full-bodied participants in an array of representation and counterrepresentation?
Read MoreJustice for The Poor
Benjamin Porat provides a preview of his new book, Justice for the Poor: The Principles of Welfare Regulations from Biblical Law to Rabbinic Literature [hebrew].
Read MoreThe History and Literature of Late Antique Babylonian Rabbis
Richard Kalmin offers a retrospective of his work on the historical analysis of Talmudic narratives.
Read MorePublications | Christian Dialogues and Late Antiquity
The volume is conceived as a comprehensive guide to Christian dialogues composed in Greek and in Syriac from the earliest examples in the second century until the end of the sixth century.
Read More“The Time Is Fulfilled”: Jesus’s Apocalypticism in the Context of Continental Philosophy
In this book, I aim to expand beyond the traditional critical-exegetical methods (while these always remain indispensable) to show how Continental philosophy, with its emphasis on disrupting metaphysical and dualistic orders, offers a useful hermeneutical resource that poses new lines of questioning to the biblical texts.
Read MoreThe Manichaeans of Kellis: Religion, Community, and Everyday Life
Excavation at the Roman town of Kellis (Image courtesy of ISAW on Flickr)
Excavation at the Roman town of Kellis (Image courtesy of ISAW on Flickr)
When would the Manichaeans of Kellis have felt “Manichaeanness” as the most relevant factor to define their behavioral choices?
Read MoreThe Masada Myth(s)
Jodi Magness discusses the myths of Masada while offering a preview of her recent book, Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (Princeton University Press, 2019).
Read MoreFood and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature
In other words, if transformational eating like hierophagy is something that ancient authors took for granted, why is it that eating or tasting other-worldly food has such a profound effect?
Read MoreExecution and Irony
Dr. Beth Berkowitz writes a retrospective of her first book, Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (Oxford UP, 2006).
Read MoreHow to Get a Head in Ancient Israel: Women-Turned-Warriors and Queer Theory
Judith and the Head of Holofernes by Gustav Klimt.
Judith and the Head of Holofernes by Gustav Klimt.
Caryn Tamber-Rosenau provides an overview of her recent publication, Women in Drag: Gender and Performance in the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Literature (Gorgias, 2018).
Read MorePerforming Exercises, Performing Exorcisms
The wedding night of Tobias and Sarah by Jan Steen (1660)
The wedding night of Tobias and Sarah by Jan Steen (1660)
Sara Ronis describes the pedagogical impact of role playing exorcisms.
Read MoreDivining Student Engagement: Studying Divination and Prophecy in the Classroom
Patrick Angiolillo describes his divination role-playing activity: “The students would be asked to develop their own forms of ritual divination, underscoring the concept that prophecy and divination were highly physical, calculated, lived experiences, and concretizing those aspects of the concept in practice.”
Read MoreIntroducing the Hebrew Bible and the History of Ancient Israel
Andrew Tobolowsky shares his classroom handout: “A Short Introduction to the Bible and the History of Ancient Israel.”
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