Over the last century and a half, the one conclusion of critical biblical scholarship is actually twofold: the dehistoricization of John and the de-Johannification of Jesus. The problem with these two platforms, however, is that despite being different and theological, the Fourth Gospel is also mundane and topographically grounded, conveying more archaeologically attested details than...

There has never been an America without Muslims. Yet in our current political climate, there is ignorance and fear about Muslims. Join us for a conversation with Amir Hussain, a professor at LMU and expert on America’s Muslims. He will talk about his new book, Muslims and the Making of America, which discusses the contributions...

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Restrictions imposed on women in Mediterranean societies both past and present are often understood to reflect a gendered model of “honor and shame” that conditions men’s status on their female relatives’ sexual purity. This talk will use legal documents from the Cairo Geniza, an enormous corpus of everyday papers preserved in a synagogue in Cairo,...

Study of Religion Graduate Student Conference

Keynote Lecture for the UCLA Graduate Conference on Religion: Performing Devotion: Religious Rituals and Religious Practices   This talk explores the concept and representation of post-mortem paradises in Ancient Egypt and Early China. The notion of a paradise for the worthy, accessed through personal piety, ethical conduct or ritual knowledge, developed at a particular historical...

All three religions’ representations of how Jesus/Yeshu/`Isa died, developed over centuries, promoted very different understandings and valuations of the event itself, its aftermath, and its significance. At stake in these competing narratives were claims about messiahship, prophethood, divine sonship—and God’s favored people.  A close weighing side-by-side of (a) select Christian interpretations of the meaning of...

A conference convened by David N. Myers (UCLA) & Sami Adwan (Hebron University) RSVP RSVP required, space is limited.   This international conference will bring together historians, education scholars, and elementary and secondary school teachers to discuss the way in which Palestinians and Israelis teach their own and the other's history. Underlying our discussions is...

American Evangelicals believe prayer can do a lot, both for themselves and for the world. Yet just as prayer solves problems for them, it also creates them.  Two especially important problems are spontaneity and certainty: it’s important for Evangelicals to feel as though they “really mean it” when they pray and that they understand God’s...