Voice of Jacob: Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission

Israel, 8 – 12 June 2014

Chair: Alexander Kulik

The meeting and the resultant volume will deal with problems of preservation, reception, and development of Jewish texts and traditions from the Second Temple period in diverse ecclesiastical traditions. The papers will present: (1) general up-to-date surveys of separate traditions (addressing, inter alia, recent developments in the state of research and perspectives for future research); (2) discussion of the destinies of specific texts and corpora among diverse traditions; (3) methodological issues (distinction between originally Jewish and Christian material, modes of medieval transmission and compilation, early Jewish texts and motifs in liturgy and iconography, etc.); and when possible, (4) innovations relevant for the topic. We plan to have panels on the following topics: Overview of linguistic traditions; Pseudepigrapha; Philo; Josephus; Minor Jewish Hellenistic authors; OT motifs in Christian pseudepigrapha; Qumran and Christian traditions; Comparative perspective: Preservation of Second Temple texts and traditions in Rabbinic, Islamic, and Manichaean transmission, and in late Judeo-Christian contacts (see the Contents below). The central purpose of discussing these diverse topics is to move towards mapping trajectories of early Jewish traditions among diverse cultures and to prepare a volume of introduction to the field.

We intend this conference to be the foundational meeting for a series of conferences, with subsequent meetings devoted to more specific topics.

The pre-circulating papers shall be presented briefly (5 min.) before being discussed by the participants. Every participant shall take responsibility for a response to at least one paper (5-10 min.). The papers (15-20 pages) should be submitted by March 1, 2014. This will allow respondents and other participants enough time to prepare their responses.

William Adler – Early Jewish Texts in Greek Transmission
James H. Charlesworth – The “Pseudepigrapha Crescent” and a Taxonomy of How Christians Shaped Jewish Traditions and Texts
Martha Himmelfarb – Medieval Jewish Knowledge of Second Temple Texts and Traditions
Alexander Kulik – Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Slavonic Transmission
Martin McNamara – The Voice of Jacob: Some Jewish Texts and Traditions in Irish Transmission
Brian Murdoch – Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Medieval Germanic Transmission (Early German and Early English)
John C. Reeves – Stalking Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in the Literature of Classical Islam: Some Paths for Exploration
Michael E. Stone – Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Armenian Transmission
Michael Tuval – The Works of Flavius Josephus: Context, Text, Ancient Versions, and Adaptations
Gabriele Boccaccini – The Transmission History of Enochic Traditions, from the 2 nd to the 19 th century
John C. Reeves – Considering Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Christian Arabic Texts: Some Initial Thoughts
Folker Siegert – Minor Jewish Hellenistic authors
Gregory E. Sterling – The Christian Preservation of the Works of Philo of Alexandria: Historical Accident or Inevitability?
Folker Siegert – Early Jewish liturgical texts
William Adler – Response to “Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Slavonic Transmission”
Gregory E. Sterling – The Pseudepigrapha Crescent: The Christian Preservation of the Jewish Past
Robert A. Kraft – Response to Bill Adler’s Paper on “Early Jewish Texts in Greek Transmission”
Jacques van der Vliet – The voice of Jacob in Egypt: Coptic echoes
Robert A. Kraft – Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Latin Transmission
David Hamidović – Qumran Texts in Jewish and Christian Traditions
Albert I. Baumgarten – Josephus: The Patristic Evidence
Lorenzo DiTommaso – Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
Pierluigi Piovanelli – Towards a History of the Pseudepigrapha in Ethiopia
Gabriele Boccaccini – Why not Jubilees?: A Response to David Hamidovic
Cyril Aslanov – The Romance tradition
John C. Reeves – Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Manichaean Literature: Some Steps toward Categorization

 

  • William Adler, North Carolina State University, USA

  • Cyril Aslanov, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

  • Florentina Badalanova Geller, Royal Anthropological Institute, England

  • Albert I. Baumgarten, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

  • Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan, USA

  • James H. Charlesworth, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA

  • Lorenzo DiTommaso, Concordia University Montreal, Canada

  • Mark Geller, University College of London, England

  • David Hamidović, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland

  • Martha Himmelfarb, Princeton University, USA

  • Robert A. Kraft, University of Pennsylvania, USA

  • Alexander Kulik, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

  • Martin McNamara

  • Brian Murdoch, University of Stirling, Scotland

  • Pierluigi Piovanelli, University of Ottawa, Canada

  • John C. Reeves, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA

  • David Satran, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

  • Folker Siegert, University of Muenster, Germany

  • Gregory E. Sterling

  • Michael Stone, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

  • Loren Stuckenbruck, University of Munich, Germany

  • David Taylor, Oxford University, England

  • Michael Tuval, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität , Germany

  • Jacques van der Vliet, Leiden University, Netherlands

  • Jason M. Zurawski, University of Michigan, USA