Wolakota kagapi: The Study of Peace Making on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

314 Royce Hall

Unfortunately, the Center for the Study of Religion must postpone this event due to extenuating circumstances. We apologize for the inconvenience, and look forward to welcoming you at our next event.   The Oglala Lakota Peace Making Team, was instrumental in putting together a number of training sessions for community members to become Peace Makers....

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 it have on Jewish experience in the period of the Second Temple? In short, was there a "Jewish problem" in Greco-Roman antiquity?   Co-sponsored by...

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 both in South Asia, where it originated, and elsewhere. This talk will tour a selection of the rich body of texts composed by Jains, Buddhists...

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 is anchored in the ideological commitments—often implicit and unrecognized—of their authors. A great deal of work has been devoted to examining these questions as they...

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 species of fruit that caused the Fall of Man, nor do any of its many translations. While early Christian and rabbinic commentators identify various species...

Ancient Judaism between Christian Memory and Jewish Forgetting

Royce Hall, Rm 314

  Drawing on her in-progress book project on Forgetting, this seminar will explore the place of memory and forgetting in the reception of Second Temple Judaism, revisiting the supposed Rabbinic retreat from "history" after the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and exploring Christian and Jewish contestation over pre-70 Jewish pasts, from antiquity...

Lost Books: The Forgetfulness of Writing and the Forgetting of Jewish Pasts

314 Royce Hall

  It is often noted how the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls transformed our understanding of ancient Judaism, radically expanding our evidence for Jews and Judaism prior to the rise of Christianity. Yet this material also stands as a striking reminder of how much of the literary heritage of Jewish antiquity has been lost...

Mark of Contradictions: The Creation of Judah’s History and the Case of Samson

236 Royce Hall

  In biblical texts, we find preserved the “mark of contradictions, fragmentations, and adjunctions,” as intellectual historian Michel de Certeau once wrote (The Writing of History 1988: 313). This talk will explore the mark of contradictions in what may seem a peripheral set of texts within the broader biblical narrative, the Samson stories of Judges...

Ethics in Paul and Paul in Ethics

Zoom

  This talk looks at a few examples of Paul's ethical reasoning and then discusses how his ethical discourse compares with those of several types current today. RSVP required for Zoom access. Click here   Adela Yarbro Collins is the current president of the Society for Biblical Literature and an American author and academic who...