A group for scholars of or interested in ancient Judaism.
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Reuven Chaim (Rudolph) Klein deposited World Religions and the Noahide Prohibition of Idolatry in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 2 weeks, 5 days ago
Although the prohibition of avodah zarah (literally, “strange/foreign worship,” but more loosely translated as “idolatry”) is included in both the Torah’s 613 mitzvos for Jews and in the seven Noahide laws, many authorities maintain that the exact parameters of the prohibition differ when applied to Jews versus when applied to non-Jews. There is…[Read more]
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Joseph Scales deposited Susanna and Callirhoe: Female Bodies, Law, and Novels in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 month, 3 weeks ago
The Greek addition to Daniel Susanna and Chariton of Aphrodisias’ Callirhoe are early examples of novels/novella. These works reflect on legal protocol and the place of women vis-à-vis the law and the household, exposing female bodies to make their point. This article connects these features to ancient novelists’ utilisation of female bodies. Cont…[Read more]
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Paul Michael Kurtz deposited A Historical, Critical Retrospective on Historical Criticism in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 3 months ago
This chapter examines how historical and critical modalities of reading sacred scripture became central to modern biblical studies. It examines what “criticism” was, whence it came, what it did, and which critiques it sustained, before considering its prospects for future historical and literary analysis of the Bible.
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Julia Rhyder deposited “Festivals and Violence in 1 and 2 Maccabees: Hanukkah and Nicanor’s Day,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, 10, no. 1 (2021): 63–76. in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 3 months, 3 weeks ago
This article analyzes the nexus between collective violence, temple violation, and military glory in 1 and 2 Maccabees by comparing two festivals established in the context of revolt and guerilla warfare; namely, Hanukkah and Nicanor’s Day. It argues that the accounts of the origins of these two festivals in 1 and 2 Maccabees reinforce the close c…[Read more]
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Andrew Jacobs deposited “Coloured by the Nature of Christianity”: Nock’s Invention of Religion and Ex-Jews in Late Antiquity in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 5 months ago
It is my modest goal in this essay to trace how Nock uses conversion to produce religion(s) and then to explore its similarities to and differences from an analogous construction of religion-through-conversion in late antiquity.
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Collin Cornell deposited The Value of Egyptian Aramaic for Biblical Studies in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 6 months ago
Biblical Aramaic accounts for a small fraction within the two-testament Christian Bible. Studying it would seem therefore to present a modest value for biblical studies, and Egyptian Aramaic, a nonbiblical counterpart from the same historical era, even more so. The present article argues, however, that comparing Egyptian Aramaic with biblical…[Read more]
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Julia Rhyder deposited “Unity and Hierarchy: North and South in the Priestly Traditions.” Pages 109–34 in Yahwistic Diversity and the Hebrew Bible. Edited by B. Hensel, D. Nocquet and B. Adamczewski. FAT 2/120. Tübingen. Mohr Siebeck, 2020. in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 8 months, 2 weeks ago
This essay examines select Priestly texts that describe the roles of leaders from the northern and southern tribes in the wilderness cult: the texts of Exod 25–31, 35–40 that concern the sanctuary artisans Bezalel (from the tribe of Judah) and Oholiab (from the tribe of Dan), chosen to lead the construction of the wilderness shrine; the des…[Read more]
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Andrew Jacobs deposited Christianizing the Roman Empire: Jews and the Law from Constantine to Justinian, 300–600 CE in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 8 months, 3 weeks ago
The circulation and republication of Christian Roman laws on Jews and Judaism gives us a window into the ways imperial attention to the Jewish “other” – sometimes benevolent, sometimes punitive – created multiple paths for the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Laws on economic status, social interaction, and religious custom ultimately produce…[Read more]
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Andrew Jacobs deposited Christians, Jews, and Judaism in the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East, c. 150–400 CE in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 8 months, 3 weeks ago
The institutional, social, and theological rise of an imperial-episcopal orthodoxy in the 4th-century Roman Empire transformed the productive, if not always genial, scriptural and ritual interactions among Jews and Christians in previous centuries into a discourse of theological difference, enabling violence and exclusion.
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Michael Miller deposited Name Theology: Judaism in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 9 months, 3 weeks ago
An entry for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception on the topic of Name Theology, how this has evolved in different Abrahamic religions from the scriptural origins.
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Julia Rhyder deposited “ ‘The Temple which You Will Build For Me in the Land’: The Future Sanctuary in a Textual Tradition of Leviticus,” Dead Sea Discoveries 24, no. 2 (2017): 271–300 in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 10 months, 3 weeks ago
This article examines the instruction regarding the wood offering and the festival of new oil in fragment 23 of 4QReworked Pentateuch C (4Q365), and in particular its setting at a future temple (בית) in the land. It argues that while 4Q365 23 represents a departure from earlier versions of Leviticus, it should be considered nonetheless as part o…[Read more]
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John Penniman deposited How Gay Were the Early Christians? Or, The Perils of Hyperbole in Historiography in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 11 months ago
Review of Douglas Boin’s Coming Out Christian in the Roman World
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Julia Rhyder deposited “Sabbath and Sanctuary Cult in the Holiness Legislation: A Reassessment.” Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 4 (2019): 723–42. in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 11 months ago
This article examines the innovative focus on sabbath observance that characterizes the Holiness legislation (“H”). By comparing H’s conception of the sabbath with what is known about this sacred time from other biblical and extrabiblical sources, the article demonstrates that H creatively blends two aspects of the sabbath that were not alway…[Read more]
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Julia Rhyder deposited “The Prohibition of Local Butchery in Leviticus 17:3–4: The Evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in La Bible hébraïque et les manuscrits de la mer Morte. Études en l’honneur de George Brooke, eds. Christophe Nihan and Julia Rhyder, Semitica 62 (2020): 307–27. in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 11 months, 2 weeks ago
This article reviews the textual transmission of the ban on local butchery in Leviticus 17:3–4. It explores the importance of the manuscripts from the Dead Sea, in particular 4QLevd and 11Q19, for interpreting the plus at verse 4, attested in the Septuagint and in the Samaritan Pentateuch, as well as the change in address in v. 3, which is found i…[Read more]
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Julia Rhyder deposited Christophe Nihan and Julia Rhyder, “Aaron’s Vestments in Exodus 28 and Priestly Leadership.” Pages 45–67 in Debating Authority: Concepts of Leadership in the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets. Edited by Katharina Pyschny and Sarah Schulz. BZAW 507. Berlin/Boston, MA: de Gruyter, 2018. in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 12 months ago
This paper examines how the description of Aaron’s vestments in Exod 28 encodes a distinct concept of high priestly leadership. This chapter of Exodus has garnered relatively little attention in biblical scholarship, even among recent and comprehensive treatments of the high priest in the biblical and post-biblical traditions. This general n…[Read more]
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Andrew Jacobs deposited Interpreting conversion in antiquity (and beyond) in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 8 months ago
This essay explores the persistent scholarly desires and motivations that structure the historical study of conversion in religious studies. Most “conversion studies” take a phenomenological approach, which acknowledges the diverse processes, contexts, and meanings of conversion but nonetheless sees the phenomenon as a way to access the con…[Read more]
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Ian Wilson deposited Review of ‘Even God Cannot Change the Past’: Reflections on Seventeen Years of the European Seminar in Historical Methodology, ed. Lester L. Grabbe in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 9 months ago
Review of said book.
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Ian Wilson deposited Remembering Kingship: Samuel’s Contributions to Postmonarchic Culture in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 9 months ago
Kingship has been a political mainstay in human history, even when peoples have lacked monarchic rulers. This essay examines the book of Samuel as a source for the cultural history of ancient Judah, focusing on the question of how Samuel’s representations of monarchy would function for its readers in the early Second Temple era. In this era, w…[Read more]
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Ian Wilson deposited Ezekiel as a Written Text: Archiving Visions, Remembering Futures in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 9 months ago
This chapter focuses on Ezekiel as a text, i.e., a collection of writings meant to be read again and again. As a text, it presents a range of ideas in dialogue with one another—and sometimes in tension—thus providing ample space for continual discussion and reinterpretation of its ideas among its original communities of readers in antiquity. Eze…[Read more]
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Pamela Barmash deposited Blood Feud and State Control: Differing Legal Institutions for the Remedy of Homicide During the Second and First Millennia B.C.E. in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 10 months ago
Since the discovery of the Laws of Hammurapi in December 1901–January 1902,1
the dependence of biblical law upon Mesopotamian law has been hotly debated. Among
the most contentious issues is the abjudication of homicide, and the discussion has focused
on particular odd cases in biblical law, such as an ox that gored or assault on a p…[Read more] - Load More