• Song of Songs, Time after Time

    Haines 39/Zoom

    The Song of Songs has been subject to numerous and varying interpretive approaches since its emergence. Drawing from her recently published book, Perils of Wisdom: The Scriptural Solomon in Jewish...

  • The Ten Commandments: Who What When Where Why

    Kaplan 365

    For over two thousand years the Ten Commandments have been understood as the fundamental set of divine laws in the Hebrew Bible. Even for those who do not believe that...

  • Antisemitism in the Pagan World

    Royce Hall 306/Zoom

    What counts as antisemitism? Did antisemitism exist among Greeks and Romans? How far and how deep did hostility to Jews extend in the pagan and pre-Christian world? What impact did...

  • Tending the Garden: Ahimsa in the Early Indian Literature

    314 Royce Hall/Zoom

    Source: Shakyamuni Buddha - Jataka (Previous Lives). 1800, Zanabazar Mongolia National Museum, Mongolia, https://www.himalayanart.org/items/50191. Accessed 22 Sept. 2022.   The practice of ahiṃsā (non-violence) has a long and illustrious history...

  • History and Ideology: Is There A Second Temple Judaism?

    Haines 39/Zoom

    Periodization is a critical tool for historians, but it is also practice fraught with difficulty. As scholars have come to recognize, the division of historical narratives into broad analytic rubrics...

  • How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple

    Haines 39/Zoom

    With the exception of the cross, the apple—as the forbidden fruit—may be the most widely-recognized biblical image. Yet the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew original does not name the...