Across various Buddhist texts we find, again and again, a story of how the Buddha in a past life (as Bodhisattva) made a great sacrifice in exchange for a single verse of true teaching. Although we can interpret such stories as simply glorifications of Buddha or dharma, more interesting questions also arise, such as: How...

You are cordially invited to attend the Center for the Study of Religion Fall 2021 Welcome Reception. We look forward to seeing you there!   Event Flyer RSVP Below:    

Given the historic role played by the victorious Constantine in spreading Christianity, it is ironic that senatorial aristocrats were more cooperative with Constantine than were the early fourth-century bishops of the city. Although the bishops of Rome and the clergy, along with other Christians, benefitted greatly from the restoration of their property and the recognition...

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 Tradition, Dr. Keiter will focus on varying Jewish interpretive strategies toward the Song, highlighting the development of Jewish biblical exegesis and its impact on the...

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 Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the Ten Commandments have retained their place as especially ancient, and especially important in the religious and communal life of Israel....

The dignified and extravagant public rituals of Romans - ancestral institutions as the last generations of the Republic imagined them - definitively failed in the last century BCE. Future senatorial priests presided only over the cults of a city that was less and less a capital. In place of a narrative of early imperial religion...

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...