The AAR/SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta is definitely over; hopefully all the 10.000 participants have arrived safely home. Those of us travelling halfway around the globe to get there may still suffer from some jetlag, but that’s temporary. Soon we will be back ‘on stage’ carrying out our day to day duties.Below are some glimpses from two of the four Philo seminars that were held this year (click on the pictures to enlarge them).
The seminar on Monday Nov 23 (9.00 to 1130PM) dealt with Historical and Intellectual traditions in Philo. The lecturers were (from left on picture), Ellen Birnbaum (presiding), then Miriam Ben Zeev, Joan Taylor, Courtney Friesen, Angela Standhartinger, and Michael Pope. Their papers are available here.
The last seminar, on Monday Nov 23, at 4.00 to 6.30 PM, was devoted to Philo’s work De Plantatione. The session was presided over by Thomas Tobin (here to the left on picture), and the lecturers were Albert Geljon, David Runia, James R. Royse, Sami Yli-Karjanmaa, ,and Maren Niehoff. The lastmentioned was obviously reading her paper when this picture was taken. These papers too are available here.
The paper of Maren Niehoff (to the right here), was a response to the papers by Albert Geljon, both presenting issues from their work on a new commentary on De Plantatione.
Her conclusion was quite positive: “I am delighted to speak at this session on the work in progress on another volume of the Philo of Alexandria Commentary series. This series has already made an excellent start with running commentaries on several treatises of Philo from different series, namely the Exposition, the historical writings and the Allegorical Commentary. …. I am sure that the resulting translation and commentary will be of the highest academic quality. As a suggestion for the work in progress I recommend seriously taking into account the author-reader relationship in the context of the Jewish community in Alexandria. “
Philonica et Neotestamentica 