Nine contributors consider many facets of Ben’s scholarship on translation, authorial personae and voice, concepts of text and transmission, wisdom and the sage, and Jewish identity in the Hellenistic world.
Read MoreDissertation Spotlight | Michael Motia
Silver Mirror (4th c. CE) - The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Silver Mirror (4th c. CE) - The Metropolitan Museum of Art
If Gregory describes the aim or perfection of the Christian life as “never to stop growing towards what is better and never placing any limit on perfection,” how does mīmēis (Greek: imitation, representation) function within that endless pursuit?
Read MoreDissertation Spotlight | Hilla Alouf
![17th cent icon of Elijah and Enoch in Historic Museum in Sanok, Poland. Przykuta [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1514987405965-Y10A3AY8PH8635QUSHX3/1024px-MHS_Eliasz_i_Enoch_XVII_w_p.jpg)
17th cent icon of Elijah and Enoch in Historic Museum in Sanok, Poland. Przykuta [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
17th cent icon of Elijah and Enoch in Historic Museum in Sanok, Poland. Przykuta [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Hilla Alouf's dissertation argues that "the Elijah traditions reflect the influence of not only the Torah-Centered wisdom tradition which viewed the law as the source of wisdom, but also the Apocalyptic-Centered and the Spirit-Centered wisdom traditions."
Read MoreDissertation Spotlight | Phillip Fackler
Saint Ignatius of Antioch - 10th century ceramic (Turkey) courtesy of The Walters Museum
Saint Ignatius of Antioch - 10th century ceramic (Turkey) courtesy of The Walters Museum
Sometime near the end of the fourth century, an anonymous scribe carefully read and revised the Ignatian epistles, extensively amending many of the letters and adding a few of his own in Ignatius’s name.
Read MorePSCO 2017-18: Thinking with Ancient Animals
Centaur - Bestiary, Royal MS 12 C XIX; 1200-1210 | Image source
Centaur - Bestiary, Royal MS 12 C XIX; 1200-1210 | Image source
How do claims, explicit or implicit, about what animals are—and what they do, suffer, or feel—reflect assumptions about what people are? And what types of knowing engage animals?
Read MoreScriptures and Sectarianism: Essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls
Together the essays of this volume explore the themes of Scriptures and Sectarianism from a variety of lenses, ranging from close study of specific texts to broad assessments of scriptural authority and meaning-making in the Second Temple Period.
Read MoreDissertation Spotlight | Yael Landman
Louvre Reproduction of the Law Code of Hammurabi via CC BY-SA 2.0 Mary Harrsch
Louvre Reproduction of the Law Code of Hammurabi via CC BY-SA 2.0 Mary Harrsch
When viewed in conjunction with the wealth of pertinent biblical and ANE sources, the biblical law of bailment can tell us about a law in its many contexts, about divine justice and compassion, about the interactions of law with literature, about everyday life in ancient societies, and about the earliest articulations of a legal topic whose relevance has persisted into the modern era.
Read MoreDissertation Spotlight | Jessica Dello Russo
View inside of an arched burial niche or arcosolim inside of the Villa Torlonia catacombs. The walls, vault, and even the insides of the burial troughs were originally plastered and painted, but were subsequently damaged by additional burials in the back wall and above the original tomb covers. Photo: International Catacomb Society
View inside of an arched burial niche or arcosolim inside of the Villa Torlonia catacombs. The walls, vault, and even the insides of the burial troughs were originally plastered and painted, but were subsequently damaged by additional burials in the back wall and above the original tomb covers. Photo: International Catacomb Society
Ironically enough, at the time these stories, literally, made history, the catacombs for Jews remained "secret" and known to a minimal extent. Nevertheless, they, too, were seen as collective responses to ritual needs and distinctly Biblical traditions.
Read MorePSCO 2017-18: Jews and the Land from Muslim to Christian Spain
"Berns’ talk, and the seminar discussion, enabled reflection from an unexpected angle on the PSCO theme for the year: what does it mean for us to have expertise about what ancient Jews knew (and how they knew it)?
Read MorePhiladelphia Seminar on Christian Origins (PSCO) 2017-2018
AJR will be sharing highlights from the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins. This year's theme "science and the scientific" asks, "Does considering knowledge as practiced in the ancient world disrupt, modify, and nuance our understanding of the “scientific”?"
Read MoreMedicine, Health Care Studies, and the Field of Late Antiquity
Marble relief of Asclepius and his daughter Hygieia. From Therme, Greece, end of the 5th century BC. Istanbul Archaeological Museums. (Wikimedia Commons)
Marble relief of Asclepius and his daughter Hygieia. From Therme, Greece, end of the 5th century BC. Istanbul Archaeological Museums. (Wikimedia Commons)
How did ancient scientists think about the ways plants fit into the larger cosmological order in relation to other ontological forms such as metals/minerals, animals, celestial beings, and other divinities?
Read MoreAncient Medicine: An AJR Forum
Caroline Wazer, Lennart Lehmhaus, Chris De Wet, Julia Watts Belser, and Heid Marx examine aspects of ancient medicine from their own research.
Read MoreDisability Studies and Rabbinic Resistance to the Roman Conquest of Jerusalem
The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under the Command of Titus, A.D. 70, David Roberts Oil on canvas, 1850.
The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under the Command of Titus, A.D. 70, David Roberts Oil on canvas, 1850.
Dr. Julia Watts Belser uses disability theory to read rabbinic narratives about the destruction of Jerusalem, identifying how "the disabled Jewish body serves both as a visceral occasion for lament and a potent site of protest against empire."
Read MoreMedicine, Culture, and Self in Late Antiquity: A Gastronomic Reflection
![Fig.: The yellow indicates the vagal nerve running from the nervous system to the stomach (from Gray’s Anatomy, plate 793; Wikimedia commons [public domain]).](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1506362512031-CY0T2K6AEF0K345F70S4/Untitled.jpg)
Fig.: The yellow indicates the vagal nerve running from the nervous system to the stomach (from Gray’s Anatomy, plate 793; Wikimedia commons [public domain]).
Fig.: The yellow indicates the vagal nerve running from the nervous system to the stomach (from Gray’s Anatomy, plate 793; Wikimedia commons [public domain]).
"What is intriguing about such statements as cited above—and one can list many similar cases with other authors—is that in them we witness how health, physiology, and anatomy are structured by means of social and cultural discursive formations. In this case, the discourse of slavery, which I have termed doulology,[iv] structures the dynamics between mental and gastric health. By their extension into the realm of the material psychē, these dynamics, in turn, shape the self. You are how you eat."
Read More“Curiosity Cures the Reb:’” Studying Talmudic Medical Discourses in Context
Galen and Hippokrates from Anagni Italy. Photo: Nina Aldin Thune via wikimedia commons.
Galen and Hippokrates from Anagni Italy. Photo: Nina Aldin Thune via wikimedia commons.
Dr. Lennart Lehmhaus shares a rabbinic case study in order to reflect upon the history of science and rabbinic texts: "A careful study of the discursive strategies and the embeddedness of such medical knowledge within their broader contexts of theology or religious law (Halakhah), allows one to highlight the differences in form and content in the variants of this narrative."
Read MoreAsking the Right Questions in Roman Public Health
Dr. Caroline Wazer shares her work on Roman public health in the AJR forum on Ancient Medicine, concluding "that Roman ideas of what could and should be done in the interest of public health were more intimately connected to political climates than they were to the state of scientific knowledge, such as it was."
Read MoreDissertation Spotlight | Dana Robinson
Sale of Bread at a Market Stall - Roman fresco from the Praedia of Julia Felix in Pompeii. Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Naples)
Sale of Bread at a Market Stall - Roman fresco from the Praedia of Julia Felix in Pompeii. Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Naples)
"When I asked what this emerging Christian food culture might have meant for the ordinary fourth century Christian, I found that it was not merely a trickle-down or oppositional model of lay vs. monastic or institutional piety. Rather, food helped early Christians negotiate among ideas across the spectrum of lived experience."
Read MoreTurning Torah Towards Proverbs: 4Q525 in Late Second Temple Perspective
Carson Bay reviews Turning Proverbs towards Torah: an Analysis of 4Q525 by Elisa Uusimäki as part of our joint #Scrollsat70 celebration with @TWUDSSI.
Read MoreRetrospective | Martha Himmelfarb
Rutland Psalter. Jacob's dream. 13th century British Library Additional 62925, image 744
Rutland Psalter. Jacob's dream. 13th century British Library Additional 62925, image 744
Dr. Martha Himmelfarb with a retrospective piece on her work with the Book of the Watchers and ancient apocalypses: "Thus I no longer see the ascent apocalypses as an unbroken tradition emanating from the Book of the Watchers as I did in Ascent to Heaven."
Read MoreFashion for the Wise: Philosophy, Clothing, and Competition in Late Antiquity
Detail of polychrome fragments showing Christ dressed and posed as a philosopher, Museo Nazionale Romano - Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome, ca. 300 CE (photo: Arthur P. Urbano)
Detail of polychrome fragments showing Christ dressed and posed as a philosopher, Museo Nazionale Romano - Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome, ca. 300 CE (photo: Arthur P. Urbano)
"The appearance of the philosopher type in early Christian art was part and parcel of developments in late antique education, intellectual culture, and philosophical competition."
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