The Oval Forum, Gerasa | Image source
On AJR
Book Note: James Ker and Christoph Pieper, eds. Valuing the Past in the Greco-Roman World: Proceedings from the Penn-Leiden Colloquia on Ancient Values VII. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
Morrison-Atkins: “Valuing the Past in the Greco-Roman World asks how the past was defined, accessed, and valued in that period of time so often considered “our” antiquity (18) and provides an array of fascinating examples that work together to undercut notions of the value of the past in the past as in any way uniform or monolithic. This range of historical perspectives calls for further reflection on the ethics and politics underlying our own individual and institutional practices of valuing the past in the present and contributes much to our understanding of the range of values ascribed to the past in the past.”
Dissertation Spotlight: Jessica Dello Russo, “Jewish Shadows of Subterranean Christian Rome”
Dello Russo: “The original contributions of this research to a growing body of scholarship on Jews in the Roman era are threefold. My thesis integrates the Jewish cemeteries more thoroughly into traditional accounts of the study and exploration of "subterranean Rome." In the process, I introduce unpublished archival data that clarifies the location and appearance of the known Jewish tombs. And, to return to the big question, I try to draw out and better define what is meant when modern scholars label these sites as “Jewish.””
Articles and News
Times of Israel reports on the British Library bilingual Hebrew/English digitization web space.
On excavating the lost film set of Cecil DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments”
Purple pages and the ninth-century Royal Bible of Canterbury.
Short overview of Mira Wasserman’s book Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals.
David Brakke on the failure of lists of apocrypha to end – and why that might not be a bad thing.
Interesting piece on German royalty travelling to the Holy Land in the footsteps of Helena and medieval crusading monarchs.
Tony Burke’s overview blogposts of apocrypha at SBL 2017.
Some much-needed attention paid to pigeons in the ancient world over at the ASOR Blog.
Published #HebrewProject Phase 2 #manuscript dated 1896; Or 10700 Samaritan prayer book for Shemini Atseret. Languages #Samaritan #Arabic https://t.co/Sblvxa6wxa #digitisation Image f41v pic.twitter.com/NnB97vz494
— BL Hebrew Project (@BL_HebrewMSS) 30 November 2017
Magic bowl, #Vespasian, oil lamp, #Samaritan amulet, Judean coin. 5 artifacts, 5 #frankelfellows tlks #jewishstudies #lateantiquity #handson pic.twitter.com/Cac2SgzkXS
— Rachel R. Neis (@RNeis) 29 November 2017
Old Testament tales were treated in paintings during Late Antiquity, though New Testament depictions seem to get a bit more press. An indigo dyed and painted piece of linen now @metmuseum (2nd-4thC CE) preserves a scene from Exodus. Look at Miriam! https://t.co/HPiABQvNLH pic.twitter.com/cPVMCv080K
— Sarah Bond (@SarahEBond) 27 November 2017