By focusing on known dynamics of memory and archaeological evidence, Pioske brings together sometimes-disparate methodological considerations to make a persuasive case for how one might engage in a historically and theoretically responsible way with the knowledge claims made in early Hebrew texts.
Read MoreWriting on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity
Jillian Stinchcomb reviews Karen Stern’s Writing on the Wall: “Stern’s work synthesizes archaeological and material histories across the Mediterranean, bringing together discussions of the lived realities of a Jews from socio-economic perspectives that are under-represented in rabbinic and other (elite) literary Jewish texts.”
Read MoreBook Note | How Repentance Became Biblical
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.
Read MorePSCO 2017-18: Nurses, Midwives, Healers, and Talmudic Medical Encyclopaedism
Roman marble plaque showing parturition scene, 400BCE - 300CE (Ostia, Italy) - UK Science Museum
Roman marble plaque showing parturition scene, 400BCE - 300CE (Ostia, Italy) - UK Science Museum
Lehmhaus’s talk pointed to exciting possibilities for future scholarship which grapple with how to fully understand the multipolar functions, within rabbinic literature and beyond it, of discrete bits of scientific or medical data embedded in rabbinic texts.
Read MoreBen Sira as a Baby: The Alphabet of Ben Sira and Authorial Personae
Betty Blythe as the Queen of Sheba, 1921
Betty Blythe as the Queen of Sheba, 1921
Jillian Stinchcomb (“Ben Sira as a Baby: The Alphabet of Ben Sira and Authorial Personae”) shows how the persona of the sage and “author” we see in the early Jewish book of Ben Sira takes surprising--and sometimes shocking--turns in Ben Sira’s medieval afterlife.
Read MoreBook Note | The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity
Jillian Stinchcomb booknotes Eva Mroczek's The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity, developing how Mroczek "presents a convincing native theory of text production."
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