The basalt Tel Dan stele, C9-C8BCE | On display at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem | Image Source
On AJR
With a special one-off article, David Goodblatt on ancient Jewish Identity
Goodblatt: “Issues of identity---national, ethnic, racial and sexual---preoccupy much contemporary discourse. Perhaps this is why the past decades have seen extensive scholarship on identity in antiquity, including Jewish identity. On the other hand, some specialists doubt the validity of this approach, questioning the creation of “quasi-ethnic” categories for the ancient world. Less radically, some scholars have denied the continuity of Jewish identity from Second Temple times through the early centuries of the common era. What follows summarizes my own view while also surveying some of the scholarship on the issue.”
Book Note: Michael Azar, Exegeting the Jews: The Early Reception of the Johannine “Jews” (Leiden: Brill, 2016)
Peters: “In the Gospel of John, slanderous comments are leveled at Ioudaioi (traditionally translated “Jews”). For example, Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest urges that Jesus be killed since “it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (John 11:50, JANT translation). To “Jews” who neglect his teachings, Jesus says “you are from your father, the devil” (John 8:44). Scholars have grappled with such statements, interpreting them as products of a playful sibling rivalry or outright supersessionism. But decoding slanderous language is not just a complicated task for modern scholars; the Gospel of John’s earliest interpreters also chewed over the anti-Jewish language in the text.”
Articles and News
Exciting digital exhibition at Penn Libraries using the Lenkin collection of photographs of the Holy Land.
The Visual Midrash project, online here, connects Bible art and commentary, sponsored by the TALI Education Fund.
Over at the JQR blog, a short piece on how scientific knowledge connected Karaites to larger inter-Jewish networks.
Series of reflections at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) on angels including a crash course in angelology from Annette Yoshiko Reed, Associate Professor in the Skirball Department at NYU.
New tests confirm scholarly suspicion that the Museum of the Bible collection includes forged Dead Sea scroll fragments.
Ancient historians tackle the portrayal of mythic Greece in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
The New Yorker reflects further on important trend of drawing attention to artificial whiteness in classical sculpture.
Jacqueline Hidalgo at Bible Odyssey talks postcolonial theory.
Tony Burke on the importance of collaboration in dealing with often tricky Christian apocrypha text traditions.
So excited for this: Paul J. Kosmin, Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire @Harvard_Press https://t.co/1DWtpAfy0t
— Dr. Annette Yoshiko Reed (@AnnetteYReed) 25 October 2018
Save the date for our annual FMN Colloquium: "Constructing the Past in the First Millennium" Nov 9 at UMD pic.twitter.com/ChFbd00mZv
— Dr. Jenny Barry (@jennisifire) 24 October 2018
I love how elaborate the decorations around Eusebius' letter to Carpianus (explaining the Eusebian canon tables) becomes in the Syriac and especially Armenian tradition. This image is from Armenian Diocese of Aleppo, MS 48 (AODA 00048 at @visitHMML). pic.twitter.com/2SOmBstrdU
— James "Scary Halloween Name" Walters (@jedwardwalters) 22 October 2018