2-11 of January 2009 I will be on an excursion trip to Egypt, together with a collegue and some students. We will primarily be located in Cairo, but will also travel to Alexandria.
I am especially excited about finally being able to visit Alexandria, the hometown of Philo, and to see the new Library there etc etc.
I intend to post some pictures here when I return, so you might come back and have a look at the Alexandria visit!
A happy new year to all of you.
To those of you who have links to my Resource pages for Biblical Studies, please update your reference to my institutional work association.
Since august 2005 I have been a professor at The School of Mission & Theology, Stavanger, Norway, and not Volda University College, as many of you still have on your web pages.
A review has been posted on Review of Biblical Literature on
Naomi G. Cohen,
Philo’s Scriptures: Citations from the Prophets and Writings: Evidence for a Haftarah Cycle in Second Temple Judaism
Leiden: Brill, 2007, pp. xvii + 278 Cloth
The review can be read here.
Happy holidays to all, and especially to you readers of this blog!
I will have some days off now; see you in 2009!
Over at the toshunka blog of Michael Helfield I found this announcement about a conference that might be of interest to many NT scholars:
CALL FOR PAPERS
Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
XVth World Economic History Congress
Utrecht, The Netherlands
3-7 August, 2009
“Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy” is a new international, interdisciplinary research project that seeks to delineate the relationship between early Christianity and the ancient economy in the period from Jesus to Justinian. The project comprises three sub-projects: The first sub-project involves a study of all the major aspects of the economy in the ancient world, especially the Roman Empire. The second sub-project examines first-century early Christianity both in relationship to the ancient economy and in regard to its own economic aspects. The third sub-project does the same for Christianity in the second to the fifth centuries. Paper proposals for all three sub-projects are welcomed at the Utrecht congress, which is sponsored by the International Economic History Association.
Scholars who are interested in proposing a paper should contact David B. Hollander Department of History, Iowa State University, dbh8@iastate.edu) or John T. Fitzgerald (Department of Religious Studies, University of Miami, john.fitzgerald@miami.edu).
The Call for Papers closes on January 31, 2009 .
Sacra Scripta
the new Romanian journal for Biblical Studies
edited by the Centre for Biblical Studies of Babes Bolyai Universität Cluj-Napoca
Chief editor: Stelian Tofana, Executive editor: Korinna Zamfir
Editorial board: Gjörgy Benyik, Ioan Chirilla, Erik Eynikel, Marius Furtuna, Hans Klein, Lehel Lszai, Ulrich Luz, Sorin Martian, Janos Molnar, Tobias Nicklas, Zoltan Olah, Joseph Verheyden
Two issues of ca 120 pages per year.
Articles are accepted in English, German, French and Italian.
Among the authors of the years 2007/08 were Ioan Chirilla, Walter Dietrich, Marco Frenschkowski, Hans Klein, Johannes Klein, Ulrich Luz, Daniel Mihoc, Vasile Mihoc, David Moessner, Tobias Nicklas, Constantin Oancea, Armand Puig y Tarrech, Stelian Tofana, Gerd Theißen, Michael Tilly, Michael Wolter, Korinna Zamfir
Subcriptions: for two issues 35 € incl. postage (in Europe) (for students 20 €). Subscribers from Eastern European countries get special prices.
Applications for subscriptions to: Anisoara Taut: anisoara_t@yahoo.com
Bank account: Associatia Diatheke, Banca Transilvania, Sucursala Cluj-Napoca, B-dul Eroilor 36. Please add: For “Sacra Scripta”. IBAN: RO11BTRL01304205B80615XX
Please support the emerging Romanian Biblical Scholarship through a subscription for your library!
(I have copied this from Mark Goodacre, who posted it on behalf of Ulrich Luz.)
Some are more informed than others: Mark Hoffman over at Biblical Studies and Technological Tools Blog can reveal “that it is now possible to conduct searches in Greek on the beta of the Olive Tree iPhone Bible Reader,” and over at This Lamp blog there is even a screen shot on how the Greek on the Iphone looks like. It is still in Beta version, and I have found nothing about it on the company’s webpages. But it looks pretty cool, and I am looking forward to its official release. But I presume it will not be possible for me to get this new ‘toy’ for Christmas. 😦
I have added a new link box in the right frame of this page. It will contain Google-links to important books on Philo of Alexandria. Having, for instance the bibliographies of Radice-Runia 1937-1986 and Runia 1987-1996 is extremely helpful as even though you can not read all pages in a setting, you can search the pages for items. But still there might be pages you can’t read, so the best thing is still to have access to the paper version of the book. But to make preliminary searches, these links are very helpful.
The link roll will be updated; suggestions are welcome.
When working on Philo as a Diaspora Jew, I realize the need for literature that can tell me more about ‘Diaspora’ as a social phenomena per se. ‘Diaspora’ as such is both an ancient as well as a ‘modern’ phenomena, and I am looking for some works that may help me spell out how to consider, and not at least how to conceptualize, on ‘Diaspora’ as a phenomenon; not necessarily as a problem, but as a social setting. There surely must be something out there written from a sosiological, social-antropological, and/or other perspectives. If you have come over any such works that you found, or may think, might be rewarding in dealing with the ancient diaspora of Philo, please give me a note in the comments field below. Thanks.
Google Books is an helpful device when searching for books on the internet; even when you are not allowed to read all the pages of a book, the service is very helpful as you can search for words in the books, and in this way may be directed directly to the most relevant pages of the book. Here are some examples:
When it comes to Philo, I would like to point out the availability of the followings books on Google:
D.E.Aune et al., Neotestamentica et Philonica (Festsschrift Peder Borgen)
P. Borgen, Philo of Alexandria; An Exegete of his time (Brill 1987)
Per Jarle Bekken, The Word is Near You.
Martina Bøhm, Rezeption und Funktion der Vätererzählungen bei Philo von Alexandrien,
Kåre Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism in Perspective
David T. Runia, Philo of Alexsandria and the Timaeus
T. Seland, Establishment Violence in Phil and Luke (Diss 1995)
Philonica et Neotestamentica 