Mediterranean & Near Eastern Studies
The story of Europa, daughter of the Phoenician king of Tyre, carried off to Crete by the Greek god, Zeus, symbolizes the aims of our Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies project. The myth was used by the historian, Herodotus, to explain the animosities between Europe and Asia, but it can also exemplify the meeting of East and West and the indebtedness of Europe to the cultures of the Near East. It is this cultural interchange between the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds – an interchange that forms the very basis of western civilisation – which lies at the heart of our project. This is a collaborative venture of research and teaching between The School of World Religions and Theology and the School of Classics.
Call for papers by the Institute for Culture and History, University of Amsterdam
Centre for Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies & the Herzog Centre, Trinity College Dublin
Re-interpreting Hellenistic Judaism in the Nineteenth through Twenty-First Centuries
Amsterdam, September 12-14, 2011
In the paradigm of the early Wissenschaft des Judentums Hellenistic Judaism was put forward as one of various models for a modern European Jewish identity. As the (superior) Hegelian synthesis of the ancient Greek and oriental Semitic spheres, it anticipated the exemplary medieval Muslim-Jewish ‘symbiosis’. Jewish scholars with a training in Classics and the historians of the Wissenschaft des Judentums began to explore Jewish history in the Hellenistic period through the relevant sources. From the onset this research served as a platform for intense discussion of Jewish religious, cultural and national identity. This colloquium will be devoted to exploring the scholarly negotiations of Hellenistic Judaism in this period of major Jewish change as well as their reflection in other contemporary discourses, notably in literature and the arts. It will also explore the ongoing process of re-interpreting the Greek (i.e., ‘universal’) dimension of Jewish antiquity in connection with changing socio-political contexts and rapidly differentiating ideologies.
The colloquium will focus on the modern reception of Hellenistic Judaism in terms of who, what, why, when and where, by specifically concentrating on the works of Josephus, Philo and Maccabees, but simultaneously opening up their reception to include special books, art and music. We would welcome contributions that address the tradition of which present-day scholars of Josephus, Philo and Maccabees are still a part, and trace the continuities, hereditary pitfalls, opportunities etcetera of that tradition.
The following themes may be particularly fruitful:
(1) The challenges of writing commentary – a diachronic comparison of approaches and obstacles (19th-21st centuries).
(2) Contexts, conventions and relevance: Josephus, Philo and the Maccabean Books and their roles in New Testament -, Classical -, and Rabbinic scholarship as well as in Wissenschaft historiography.
(3) Josephus, Philo and the Maccabean Books as sources of (Jewish, classical, national, ancient) history.
We envisage the colloquium as a first exploratory workshop, designed to bring more focus into this wide-ranging topic, and to be followed up by a series of panels that can be part of larger scholarly meetings. The programme will be a combination of invited keynote lectures and more informal expert presentations as well as proposed papers (including work in progress on one of the three topics mentioned above).
We are inviting paper proposals for contributions of c. 30 mins on the topics outlined above. Please send them to Jan Willem van Henten (J.W.vanHenten@uva.nl) by July 1, 2011.
For those giving papers accommodation will be offered and we may be able to contribute to participants travel costs.
Zuleika Rodgers, Department of World Religions and Theology, Trinity College Dublin
(rodgersz@tcd.ie)
Jan Willem van Henten, Graduate School for the Humanities, University of Amsterdam (J.W.vanHenten@uva.nl)
Irene Zwiep, Institute for Culture and History, University of Amsterdam (I.E.Zwiep@uva.nl)
For more information on current research projects visit the website of Mediterranean & Near Eastern Studies.
Contact: jwelch@tcd.ie | Last updated: Nov 16 2012 | Back to top