Category: Website

Jews and their Roman Rivals

I have just received my copy of the (in so many ways) great work of Katell Berthelot, Jews and their Roman Rivals. Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 2021). I must still postpone indulging in the book for some days, but here and now I would just like to direct my readers to a website she mentions in the Bibliography of her book (cf. p. 436ff):

HTTP://www.judaism-and-rome.org

“On this website you will find useful resources for studying Roman imperial ideology, or Roman imperial discourses, artefacts and performances, displayed in literary records, epigraphy, numismatics, as well as through monuments, statues and other material artefacts. There is a particular focus on sources connected to the three sub-themes of the project, “Roman Power,” “Roman Law” and “Roman Citizenship”.
You will also find Jewish, Greek, Egyptian and Christian sources documenting the responses of some of the provincials of the Roman empire to the challenge of Roman domination. By “responses,” however, we do not intend only the provincial sources that explicitly mention Rome and address issues such as Roman law courts or grants of Roman citizenship. We also take into account the way the Roman imperial context led provincials to formulate their own conceptions of power, law, and citizenship or membership with a given group.”

“The website Judaism and Rome aims to:

  • give access to some important sources, providing as much information as possible: images, original text, translation…
  • provide the reader with an original and detailed analysis of each source, a service that is very rarely offered on the internet, and which makes this website comparable to a rich sourcebook
  • promote interdisciplinary discussion between scholars working on Roman history, Jewish Studies, Epigraphy, Numismatics, Classics, Patristics, History of Christianity, etc.”

There are multiple ways to perform a search and to find sources that are relevant to your specific interests.

A Great source, indeed!

Philo on Youtube!

It probably was only a mater of time; why not present material related to Philo of Alexandria on other platforms than just webpages and blogs? Now it has happened:

You will get more info by going to this webpage: Inicio – Filón de Alejandría (filonalejandria.com) : “Welcome to Philo of Alexandria. This space is part of the Research Projects of the National University of La Pampa, aimed at the translation, academic study and dissemination of the work, life and thought of Philo of Alexandria, and scientific research around its production” (from webpage). You can get more info by going to the page listed above, and its subpages. All pages are in Spanish, but translations are available by the browser.

Introduction/Self-presentation (from webpage): “We welcome those who have an interest in the work of Philo of Alexandria or who want to contact the members of the organization group of the page. We are a team that more than ten years ago works on the translation into the Spanish language of the complete work of Philo of Alexandria. We started under the direction and guidance of José Pablo Martín and have now established ourselves as a group that has enthusiastically received other contributions. Different researchers, specialists in authors and related aspects of philology and ancient philosophy, collaborate with us and enlighten us with their vast knowledge. We all owe them something. In the joint work, relationships of mutual support, shared ideals, cooperation and, above all, affection have grown. We invite you to join, much or little you can offer, or have nothing but questions. Every contribution is valuable, we never in life have we finished learning. Personal exchanges are the ones that nourish our intellectual life.”

As to Philo on Youtube, you will find several (and of various quality) by just searching for Philo on Youtube, but here is info presented by this Project: Creación de Canal de YouTube “Filón de Alejandría” – Filón de Alejandría (filonalejandria.com) So far, all of it is in Spanish; hopefully in the future there will also be contributions in English.

“Durante el mes de abril del año 2021, Equipo de Trabajo del portal filonalejandría creó el canal de YouTube Filón de Alejandría, donde los usuarios tendrán acceso a los videos de los eventos desarrollados en el año 2020 (Primer Congreso Internacional sobre Filón de Alejandría y Entrevista al Dr. Marcelo Boeri, “Filón de Alejandría y los estoicos”), y al resto de los materiales generados a partir de las actividades del Equipo.”

Eng. transl: “During the month of April 2021, a Team of the Philo of Alexandria portal created the YouTube channel Philo of Alexandria,where users will have access to the videos of the events developed in 2020 (First International Congress on The End of Alexandria and Interview to Dr. Marcelo Boeri, “Philon of Alexandria and the Stoics”), and to the rest of the materials generated from the activities of the Team.”

Greg E. Sterling 65!

I presume that every person who wants to get a little more acquainted with Philo of Alexandria and his works, and who starts by looking up some recent books, articles, bibliographies (not to mention The Studia Philonica), will soon discover that there are some names that pop up more often than others. And among these, the name of Greg E. Sterling will be prominent, not only because of the amount of references and articles discovered as authored by Greg Sterling, but also by the range of various topics and the quality of the articles found.

In the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature there use to be a Philo Seminar with two or three sessions dedicated to the study of Philo of Alexandria. Those visiting the seminar for the first time, will – probably very soon – discover a robust guy (who looks like a former wrestler) with glasses, grey hair and a short-cut grey beard, who steps forward either as a lecturer, providing a response, or asking questions from the audience: Yes, it will most probably be Greg E. Sterling. In November 2019, a few days before the Annual Meeting of that year started, Greg Sterling could celebrate his 65th birthday (on Nov 21st).

There were, however, no Festschrift presented that year. And when the time for the next SBL Annual Meeting arrived, and the Festschrift was about to be presented, that Meeting was to be arranged online, due to the Corona Virus! Now, in 2021, we are almost getting used to these awkward (and for some terrible circumstances of the) pandemic), and we can only hope for an Annual Meeting in person upcoming November. Time will tell.

But the Festschrift was there, and is here. In a special on-line arrangement via Zoom, the volume was presented to Greg Sterling; the 2020 volume of The Studia Philonica Annual. Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, edited by David T. Runia and Michael B. Cover, and published by SBL Press.

Happily, for all those who were not able to attend that session on Zoom, there was made a video of the session, a video that now is made available for all to see; by clicking on this link:

https://youtu.be/gj2LhNMTQdU

Better late than never; Happy Birthday Greg.

BibleWorks is closing…

Shocking news from BibleWorks arrived today:

A special note to our friends…

BibleWorks has been serving the church for 26 years by providing a suite of professional tools aimed at enabling students of the Word to “rightly divide the word of truth”. But it has become increasingly apparent over the last few years that the need for our services has diminished to the point where we believe the Lord would have us use our gifts in other ways. Accordingly as of June 15, 2018 BibleWorks will cease operation as a provider of Bible software tools. We make this announcement with sadness, but also with gratitude to God and thankfulness to a multitude of faithful users who have stayed with us for a large part of their adult lives. We know that you will have many questions going forward and we will do our best to answer some of them here.

Read more here!

 

 

 

 

 

Webpage for K.-G. Sandelin

Prof. em. Karl-Gustav Sandelin has been challenged – and helped – by a grandchild to set up a personal webpage, and here is the nice result:

https://karl-gustavsandeli.wixsite.com/minsida

The page contains a Self-presentation (About Me), a list of Publications, Some Texts, and a possibility of contacting him pr mail/form.

Have a look!

Philo Seminar, The SBL Annual Meeting 2017

The papers to be discussed at The SBL Annual Meeting 2017 Philo Seminar, that is S 19-138: Philo of Alexandria (at 11/19/2017 9:00 AM to 11:45 AM Room: 103 (Plaza Level) – Hynes Convention Center (HCC)) on the Philo’s De Cherubim, with Ronald Cox, Pepperdine University, Presiding, is about to be available at my website here: http://torreys.org/philo_seminar_papers/

The rest of the papers will be made available as soon as I receive them from the writers.

 

Runesson on Academia.edu

By way of a post on Facebook, I became aware of the Academia.edu page of prof. Anders Runesson (University of Oslo). Anders has uploaded a lot of his articles. Some of the pdf copies are somewhat blurry, a little hard to read and difficult to index (at least for my NotaBene Orbis indexer), but most of them are good, both in visibility and content.

To my surprise, I find that his Ph.D. dissertation (from Lund, Sweeden) is also available on this site, in pdf format. Only that volume alone makes this site worthy of a visit. It is one of the really great dissertations published in Sweeden in the last decades (and by great, I do not just mean the number of pages…).

Have a look. Enjoy.