Neo-Assyrian bas-relief from Ninevah of Assyrian king Ashurbanipal slaying a lion | Currently housed in the British Museum, London | Image Source
On AJR
Book Note: Maren Niehoff (ed.), Journeys in the Roman East: Imagined and Real (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017)
Luckritz Marquis: “I appreciate that so many of the contributions to this volume strove to think the imagined and the real at the same time as a way of examining the unique relationship between the two in each case. These contributors do not dispense with the vehicle as they take their journeys, they keep their eyes on the territory as they draw their maps, and this volume is all the more instructive and gratifying for it.”
New Publication! Massimiliano Vitiello on his monograph tackling the Gothic queen (and empress?), Amalasuintha
Vitiello: “A virago – a woman-man, whose distorted gender imbued a woman with male qualities. A foolish Arian heretic. A regent. A mother. A Queen. Perhaps even an empress. Our sources leave us with a conflicted and contradictory image of Amalasuintha, a remarkable woman who ruled for almost a decade (August 526-ca. December 534) over the most significant portion of the former Western Roman Empire.”
Articles and News
At the Manchester Centre for Jewish Studies, Stefania Silvestri launches a new Fifty Jewish Objects project – and blog.
Natalie Dohrmann engages with law on walls, and with the Torah revealed and displayed.
Massive collaborative multi-year project (launch coming 2019) visualizing ancient harbour data from Roman period to the Middle Ages.
Reflections on teaching Sappho beyond reading Greek.
Cavan Concannon on continued back-and-forth with the Museum of the Bible in the wake of SBL/AAR.
BAJS conference 2019 call for papers on the topic “What is Commentary?”
Reflections from Sarah Bond on the material remains associated with Ashurbanipal at the British Museum and cultural heritage.
Special edition of Studies in Late Antiquity, tackling medical metaphors in late ancient Christianity [alas, paywall].
This week our #MicrographyMonday is very micro, a beautifully detailed border on this 1757 ketubah #HebrewProject Or 6706. Zoom all the way in on our digitised version 🔎🔎 https://t.co/uAuT3OTDdj pic.twitter.com/Gj8BMVkuTE
— BL Hebrew Project (@BL_HebrewMSS) 3 December 2018
It is customary to eat potato pancakes (Yiddish: latkes) on Hanukkah. The Hebrew word for this dish since the beginning of the 20th century is לביבה. The word was taken from II Samuel (13:6), where it is used to refer to a dish Tamar makes for her brother King Amon. pic.twitter.com/VIA8RzuGik
— Hebrew Words (@HebreWords) 3 December 2018
Huh, who knew you could write an article abt Hanukah and actually ask experts (and women), rather than random (male) authors! @shaynasheinfeld @shaynamalka @theradr @nytimes https://t.co/hYo8bmPjW2
— Michael Rosenberg (@rosenfish) 5 December 2018