A group for scholars of or interested in ancient Judaism.
James M. Tucker deposited From Ink Traces to Ideology: Material, Text, and Composition of Qumran Community Rule Manuscripts in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 month ago
This study is a fresh analysis of a collection of scrolls and fragments grouped under the rubric, The Community Rule or Serekh ha-Yaḥad. As part of the manuscripts discovered in the Judean Desert, the Community Rule manuscripts are all fragmentary to various degrees, yet attest to important issues of legal dispute and community formation in the S…[Read more]
Collin Cornell deposited The Costobar Affair: Comparing Idumaism and Early Judaism in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 2 months, 2 weeks ago
This article examines the Costobar Affair, a narrative aside in Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities and a moment in the history of Idumeans, to revisit the parting of the ways and the relationship of early Judaism and early Chistianity to their next-door neighbors in other Hellenistic Levantine traditions (such as “Idumaism”).
Paul Michael Kurtz deposited The Spirit of Jewish Poetry: Why Biblical Studies Has Forgotten Duhm’s Psalter Commentary in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 2 months, 2 weeks ago
This essay addresses the generation and perpetuation of interpretative modalities in academic communities. It tells a story of curbed reception on account of theological interference. In the end, Duhm interpreted the Psalms as a product of Jewish communities under the Seleucids, Hasmoneans, and Romans. This inquiry argues the historicist…[Read more]
Michael Miller deposited The Name of God and the Name of the Messiah: Jewish and Christian Parallels in Late Antiquity in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 4 months, 1 week ago
This study argues that there is a tradition, arising from a ‘Jewish milieu’, based around the exegesis of select biblical passages, indicating that the messiah bears the Divine Name. This tradition appears to predate the Christian movement, and is referenced also in rabbinic literature. In the first section we highlight a tradition regarding the…[Read more]
Andrew Jacobs deposited Early Christianity, Theory, and Me in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 4 months, 2 weeks ago
Paper delivered at the University of Pennsylvania to the graduate students in religious studies on May 6, 2016
Andrew Jacobs deposited Revisiting Reconsidering “Jewish-Christian Relations”: Some Thoughts on Theory, History, and Antiquity in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 4 months, 2 weeks ago
Paper delivered at Cornell University, March 7, 2013 to the Department of Near Eastern Studies.
Collin Cornell deposited Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine, written by Karel van der Toorn in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 6 months, 2 weeks ago
A review of Karel van der Toorn’s Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine (Anchor Bible Reference Library). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp xi, 270. Hardcover: $65. ISBN: 9780300243512.
Thomas Bolin deposited 1-2 Samuel and Its Role in the Cultivation of Jewish Paideia in the Persian and Hellenistic Periods, in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 7 months, 3 weeks ago
This article asks the question how post-exilic readers would have read 1-2 Samuel in Yehud. It answers the question by looking at ancient Mediterranean models of textual authority and education.
Andrew Jacobs deposited Ex-Jews and Early Christians: Conversion and the Allure of the Other in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 8 months ago
This essay explores how and why three early Christian figures–Epiphanius, Romanos the Melode, and Ambrosiaster–have, at various times, been imagined as former Jews. By applying a hermeneutics of conversion, this essay argues that the significance of these three Christians’ ex-Jewishness lies not in its historicity (or falsity) but in the way…[Read more]
Andrew Jacobs deposited “This Piece of Parchment Will Shake the World”: The Mystery of Mar Saba and the Evangelical Prototype of a Secular Fiction Genre in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 11 months ago
The 1940 evangelical novel The Mystery of Mar Saba by James H. Hunter shares with a later, secular genre of novels I call gospel thrillers a common plot (the discovery of a new gospel from the first century and a race to prove or disprove its authenticity) but also common anxieties about biblical authority mapped onto geopolitical, theological,…[Read more]
Philip J. Lowe deposited The Premise and Paraenesis: Rhetorical Studies and the Connection of the Christ Hymn with the Corresponding Paraenesis of Colossians in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 2 months ago
Much has been written on the epistle to the Colossians. Much less has been written on Colossians and rhetoric. Even less has been written on the connection of praise and paraenesis found in the epistle. If the book of Colossians can be understood as epideictic rhetoric, then a connection between its paraenesis and the encomium to Christ…[Read more]
Ian Wilson deposited The Emperor and His Clothing: David Robed and Unrobed before the Ark and Michal in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 2 months ago
This essay examines the issue of David’s (lack of) clothing in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 15. It asks: what potential meanings would be at play for ancient readers of these texts? Drawing on research into social memory and “forgetting,” it argues that Judean readers would partially warrant Michal’s distaste for David’s dressing-down, while still…[Read more]
Philip J. Lowe deposited A Qualm About Q in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 2 months ago
The Q hypothesis has long dominated the study of the Synoptics. It is often heralded as the key to Synoptic interpretation, yet it is simultaneously challenged at nearly every juncture. Regarding parable study, the Q hypothesis offers much by way of identifying redaction, but the impact of identifiable redaction is often overvalued. Those choosing…[Read more]
Andrew Jacobs deposited “I Want to Be Alone”: Ascetic Celebrity and the Splendid Isolation of Simeon Stylites in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 4 months ago
An exploration of the paradoxical celebrity of ascetic renunciants in early Christianity, using the example of Simeon Stylites, the pillar saint.
Rachel Rafael Neis deposited Interspecies and Cross-species Generation: in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 4 months ago
This article treats late ancient rabbinic texts (ca. 1st-early 3rd cents. CE), reading them as biology, and following their ideas about the limits and possibilities of reproductive and species variation. I read sources from the tractates of Niddah, Kil’ayim, and Bekhorot, in the Mishnah and Toseta, as expressions of a science of generation, or a b…[Read more]
Collin Cornell deposited The Forgotten Female Figurines of Elephantine in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 4 months ago
In spite of renewed scholarly interest in the religion of Judeans living on the island of Elephantine during the Persian period, only one recent study has addressed the religious significance of the fired clay female figurines discovered there. The present article seeks to place these objects back on the research agenda. After summarizing the…[Read more]
Andrew Jacobs deposited Writing Demetrias: Ascetic Logic in Ancient Christianity 2 in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 5 months ago
Writing Demetrias: Ascetic Logic in Ancient Christianity
Johannes Bernhardt deposited Die Jüdische Revolution. Untersuchungen zu Ursachen, Verlauf und Folgen der hasmonäischen Erhebung in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 5 months ago
The Seleucid Antiochus IV profoundly intervened in the cult of Jerusalem in 168 BC. Under the leadership of the Hasmoneans, an uprising developed against these interventions, which led to the restoration of the cult, the establishment of the Hasmoneans as high priests and the independence of Judea. Against the background of widely differing…[Read more]
Ellen Muehlberger deposited The Representation of Theatricality in Philo’s Embassy to Gaius in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 6 months ago
In this paper I argue that Philo’s Embassy to Gaius makes use of the literary paradigm
of theatricality, a strategy of representation marked by the portrayal of multiple
and competing discourses amongst those in unequal relations of power, as
well as an emphasis on the arts of acting and discernment. Th e Embassy marks an
appearance of the t…[Read more]Ellen Muehlberger deposited The Will of Others in the group
Ancient Jew Review on Humanities Commons 1 year, 6 months ago
Scholarly reflections on the concept of the will as it is articulated in late ancient texts have centered on the male individual and the difficulties he faces as he tries to train or direct his intentions. By contrast, in this article we seek to explore late ancient concepts and negotiations of the will by considering a cluster of ancient Jewish…[Read more]
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