Ben Ezra Synagogue | Site of the Cairo Geniza, Old Cairo | Image Source

On AJR

Erez DeGolan reports on the Center for Jewish History event celebrating the launch of Martin Goodman’s A History of Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017)

DeGolan: “Yet, returning to the book at hand, can we really claim that there’s such a narrative of the Jewish religion, from Genesis to yesterday, that can be carved out of the available data? And if the answer is ‘no,’ what does it mean for a key figure in the field to compose A History of Judaism? In other words, Goodman’s book forces us to ask what is at stake in setting aside current discussions in scholarship on religion in order to disseminate scholarly work.”

Book Note: Yishai Kiel, Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud: Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016)

Bickert: “Through convincing close readings of Jewish material alongside compelling parallels in Greek, Syriac, and Pahlavi texts, Kiel illustrates how Babylonian rabbis used the language of sexuality to negotiate their Iranian context, their Palestinian heritage, and the myriad of concomitant challenges posed by western and eastern Christian thought. This book is highly recommended for scholars and students of rabbinics, early Christianity, and Iranology, especially for those who are interested in the history of sexuality.”

Articles and News

Judith Olzowy-Schlanger gives a sparkling one-off lecture at the Schoenberg Institute on “Genizah Scribes at Work.”
Exciting news from Brill’s Greek dictionary project regarding expansion into late antiquity.
Terrific piece at the OUP Blog on birds and human responses to them in the ancient world.
Jubilees Palimpsest Project makes site updates, including quick links to manuscript images and an array of user tools.
Cristian Modello asks what coins and other tokens have to do with religious diversity in antiquity.
Report on the ambitious crowdsourced Penn Geniza project.
An extensive discussion of Christine Hayes’ What’s Divine about Divine Law? at the Lehrhaus.
The Staatsbibliothek Bamberg sets up a permanent digital exhibition of more than one thousand manuscripts.

Twitter

This Samaritan miscellany from the early 20th century contains letter templates in both Samaritan Hebrew (right column) and Arabic (left column). Or 10200#HebrewProject pic.twitter.com/l0x9dD3Zih
— BL Hebrew Project (@BL_HebrewMSS) 19 June 2018

.@AnnetteYReed makes the case for owning “methodological baggage” because the historical critical method is not a neutral approach. Theory and history are not in contrast. pic.twitter.com/LqICx7q9FN
— Enoch Seminar (@Enoch_Seminar) 19 June 2018

Happy #SummerSolstice!
This late Roman mosaic pavement from Carthage has a representation of the Summer season. #aestas pic.twitter.com/sO49K6qY19
— Following Hadrian (@carolemadge) 21 June 2017