A Royal Osirian Funerary Rite? The Awakening of Osiris Ritual in Tutankhamun’s Tomb
Kaplan 365Over 100 years after its discovery, the tomb of Tutankhamun continues to be the focus of numerous Egyptological studies and scholarly research. Due to Howard Carter’s meticulous documentation of...
“Abba has begun to make money from the beer business”: Beer, Business, and Halakhah in Rabbinic Literature (Bible and the Ancient World series)
314 Royce HallPresented by: Professor Jordan D. Rosenblum of the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Where Was Adam Buried? Textual Communities and the Changing Location of a Sacred Site
Online on ZoomJoin Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95410494359 Because neither the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, nor Qur’ān specify the place of Adam’s burial, its location became an object of contention over the ages among...
Mark of Contradictions: The Creation of Judah’s History and the Case of Samson (Bible and the Ancient World series)
314 Royce HallPresented by: Professor Mahri Leonard-Fleckman of College of the Holy Cross
History and Ideology: Is There A Second Temple Judaism?
Haines 39/ZoomPeriodization 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/ZoomWith 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 314Drawing 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 HallIt 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...
The Mothers, the Mamzers, and the Rabbis: Reconstructing Family and Community in Post-Holocaust Jewish Law
Haines 39/ZoomThis talk centers on the little-known story of the children of illicit unions that resulted from a highly unusual situation in post-Holocaust Munkacz, a SubCarpathian town that had been a major Jewish center before World War II. A number of women who returned to Munkacz in 1945 believed their husbands had perished in the...
Mark of Contradictions: The Creation of Judah’s History and the Case of Samson
236 Royce HallIn 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...