May 8, 2018

When Species Meet in the Mishnah

Joann Sfar, The Rabbi’s Cat, New York : Pantheon Books, 2005), 11/3-4 (image used with kind permission of artist) — Joann Sfar, *The Rabbi’s Cat,* New York : Pantheon Books, 2005), 11/3-4 (image used with kind permission of artist)

R.R. Neis begins the AJR Animal Forum: To the extent that concerns about the human, species, animality, and reproduction criss-cross antiquity and the present, a species-informed approach to late antiquity not only allows us to hazard ways of thinking/being the non/human, it also can short-circuit rhetorical invocations of a “Judeo-Christian tradition” by falsifying cherished myths.

May 7, 2018

Book Note | Kingship and Memory in Ancient Judah

by Chance McMahon in Book Notes

Kingship and Memory in Ancient Judah is useful in reframing historiographic methods in biblical studies. Wilson aptly moves beyond the use of memory studies to merely determine the historicity of events of Israel’s past.

May 3, 2018

Week in Review (5/4/18)

by Ancient Jew Review

Yaakov ben Aharon, Samaritan High Priest (1896-1916), with a Samaritan Pentateuch | Part of a stereograph series from Views of Palestine (1905) | Image source — Yaakov ben Aharon, Samaritan High Priest (1896-1916), with a Samaritan Pentateuch | Part of a stereograph series from *Views of Palestine* (1905) | Image source

This Week: Palmyra, stolen Samaritan Pentateuchs, smuggled cultural heritage, Virgil, animal personhood, sacred landscapes – and more!

May 2, 2018

Dissertation Spotlight | Mari Jørstad

by Mari Jørstad in Articles

John Martin - Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon (1816) National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. — John Martin - Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon (1816) National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

In my dissertation I explore such texts – what I call “personalistic nature texts” – and their potential contribution to contemporary environmental ethics. I argue that the biblical writers lived in a world populated with a wide variety of “persons,” only some of whom are human.

April 30, 2018

PSCO 2017-18 | Sacred Landscapes of Germanus

by Matthew Chalmers in Articles

Deambulatory Mosaic in S. Costanza, Rome (Image Source)

Drawing on the phenomenology of movement – landscape made knowable through movement in it – Grey explored an alternative way to get to know ancient sources.

April 26, 2018

Week in Review (4/27/2018)

by Ancient Jew Review

Papyrus Amulet, with citation of Romans 12.1 and John 2:1-2 | Vienna, Nationalbibliothek G 2312 | Image Source and Trismegistos Entry

This Week: Magical amulets, pedagogy workshops, Hagar, Sinai palimpsests, digital humanities everywhere you look, Qumran photos – and more!

April 26, 2018

Teaching History Beyond Grand Narratives

by Sarit Kattan Gribetz in Articles

William Bell’s 1849 translation of Friedrich Strass’s ‘Strom der Zeiten’ (Stream of Time). Image from http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.co.il/2010/04/time-after-time.html — William Bell’s 1849 translation of Friedrich Strass’s *‘Strom der Zeiten’* (Stream of Time). Image from http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.co.il/2010/04/time-after-time.html

How do we encourage our students to think of the past not as a grand narrative to be learned from a textbook (or a teacher), but as a complex constellation of events, values, personalities, and ideas that can be analyzed and understood from a variety of perspectives and that can be used to construct multiple possible stories about the past?

April 22, 2018

Book Note | Making Amulets Christian: Artefacts, Scribes, and Contexts

by Andrew Henry in Book Notes

Although many of the topics discussed in the book could shed light on ritual practice elsewhere in the Mediterranean world, de Bruyn limits himself to Egypt because this is where the bulk of textual amulets from this period are found.

April 20, 2018

Week in Review (4/20/18)

by Ancient Jew Review

A minstrel plays for King Solomon | Illumination for opening verse of Song of Songs, in the Rothschild Mahzor (Florence, 1492) | Image Source

Song of Songs, heresy, magnificent mosaics, digital humanities, angels, secret knowledge, forgetting – and more!

April 17, 2018

Dissertation Spotlight | Alex Ramos

by Alex Ramos in Articles

"Herod Takes Jerusalem"  from Flavius Josèphe, Les Antiquités judaïques, illuminations of Jean Fouquet, 1470-1475. — "Herod Takes Jerusalem" from Flavius Josèphe, *Les Antiquités judaïques,* illuminations of Jean Fouquet, 1470-1475.

Drawing on insights from scholars in Religious Studies who have demonstrated the artificiality of modern distinctions between religious, political, and economic spheres, I consider the ways that political and religious institutions and frameworks could have shaped the boundaries and incentives of economic behavior among Jews in Early Roman Galilee.

April 16, 2018

Book Note | The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity

by Michael Papazian in Book Notes

Shuve demonstrates that for some of its most prominent Latin readers, the Song was self-evidently an allegory about the Church and its purity.

April 13, 2018

Week in Review (4/13/18)

by Ancient Jew Review

Painted Miniature, with Paul, Peter, and the Evangelists | Tempera on Parchment, Byzantine Empire (ca.1070-1100) | Image Source

This Week: Adele Reinhartz on anti-Judaism, biblical repentance, Cairo Genizah, ancient Coptic, digital humanities – and more!

April 11, 2018

Reflections on My Journey with John | A Retrospective from Adele Reinhartz

by Adele Reinhartz in Articles

El Greco, "Saint John the Evangelist" (ca. 1605) | Image Source

For my part, I am satisfied that I have said what I can, and want, to say about this Gospel. Aside from my growing discomfort with John’s anti-Jewish language, I have gained much from my longstanding relationship with this Gospel, including a community of scholars whom I value and respect.

April 9, 2018

Book Note | How Repentance Became Biblical

by Jillian Stinchcomb in Book Notes

In How Repentance Became Biblical, David Lambert argues that, rather than an inherently biblical concept, “repentance” came to be understood as such in a long process that continued into late antiquity.

April 5, 2018

Week in Review (4/5/18)

by Ancient Jew Review

Illustration of the Magi | Harvard, MS Syr. 168 | Image Source

This Week: Finding the family of Jesus, Egyptian monasticism, West Syriac liturgy apps, imaginary Phoenicians, Passover, open access journals - and more!

April 3, 2018

Why Do the Infancy Gospels Matter?

by Christopher A. Frilingos in Articles

As I studied the infancy gospels, I began to wonder if something had been overlooked in the intense scholarly focus on the figures of Jesus and Mary. That something, I concluded, was the depiction of familial relationships.

April 2, 2018

Book Note | The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt

by Candace Buckner in Book Notes

With essays from several renowned scholars of Coptology, Byzantine Studies, art history, anthropology, archaeology, and history, this volume seeks to present and preserve the marvels of the early Byzantine Red Monastery Church.

March 30, 2018

Week in Review (3/30/18)

by Ancient Jew Review

Neo-Assyrian wall relief depicting an eagle-headed apkallu (sage) | In the British Museum, from the Palace of Ashunasirpal II at Nimrud, Iraq | Image source

This Week: Ancient Babylonian sages, Enoch, Roman power in late antiquity, forgery and papyri, trailblazing women scholars of Judaism – and more!

March 26, 2018

Book Note | From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon

by Mark Lester in Book Notes

Odilon Redon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Sanders shows that the history of genre is enmeshed with political history as well as with the social and ritual roles that literary forms allow scribes to adopt.

March 23, 2018

Week in Review (3/23/18)

by Ancient Jew Review

Illustration of Christ directing John to write the Book of Revelation | Spanish Beatus manuscript, ca.1180, currently held in The Cloisters | Image source

This Week: Sibylline Oracles, ancient Israelite priesthood, Canaanite tombs, Genesis Apocryphon, Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea scribes – and more!