Moderated by James Nati
Tuesday, Oct. 20, 11:30 PDT/ 2:30 EST/ 7:30 PM UK
Please register here for the link
A precirculated paper will follow for all registered participants
Recent scholarship has emphasized the fluidity of canonical boundaries in the late Second Temple period, how “authoritative scriptures” at the time could include more than just biblical texts. But such accounts still presume the existence of a very specific sort of “scriptural” relationship to texts—whether non-biblical or biblical—in particular, an often dubiously attested authority structure and instructional setting. These developments raise a fundamental question: What is Scripture? Is the idea of Scripture a natural, inevitable component of human religious experience? Do people relate to sacred texts according to regular, defined patterns?
In this workshop, David Lambert will address these questions based on a chapter, “What is Scripture? An Introduction to Biblical Assemblages,” from a forthcoming book project, in conversation with John Barton, Laura Carlson Hasler, and Chontel Syfox.
David Lambert is the author of How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture. His work aims to identify tendencies present in the history of biblical interpretation in order to elucidate “untimely” aspects of the Hebrew Bible itself. He is currently working on a book project, “Is Bible Scripture? Reassembling the Biblical in Ancient Judaism and Beyond.”
John Barton‘s research interests have included the prophets, of the Hebrew Bible, the biblical canon, biblical interpretation, Old Testament theology, as well as biblical ethics. He is the author of many books, including Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in Israel after the Exile, What is the Bible?, Ethics in Ancient Israel, and most recently, A History of the Bible: The Story of the World’s Most Influential Book.
Laura Carlson Hasler‘s research focuses on the relationship among texts, monumental spaces, and cultural power in Jewish antiquity. She is particularly interested in how Hellenistic Jews used texts to adopt and adapt symbols of empire to facilitate recovery. She is the author of Archival Historiography in Jewish Antiquity, which argues that the form of Second Temple Jewish texts like Ezra-Nehemiah and the Greek editions of Esther are read best as archives.
Chontel Syfox’s research focuses on the reception and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Second Temple Jewish literature, with an emphasis on using gender-nuanced interpretative methods to better understand the developing literary character of these texts and the world behind them. Her forthcoming monograph (under contract with Brill) explores the construction of gender in the Book of Jubilees’ depiction of the biblical matriarchs.
Bible and Religions of the Ancient Near East Collective 