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Gabriele Boccaccini — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:11:06 GMT

Jesse Mirotznik

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	==== Jesse Mirotznik ====		==== Jesse Mirotznik ====

	* Jesse Mirotznik -- '''The Pagan Religious Experience: An Ancient Jewish Perspective''' -- In my monograph, The Portrayal of Pagan Worship in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism, I argue that a decisive change took place in ancient Jewish portrayals of the Other around the 3rd century B.C.E. In		* Jesse Mirotznik -- '''The Pagan Religious Experience: An Ancient Jewish Perspective'''
	Israelite/Jewish literature composed up to this point, the worship of other gods and the reverence of their icons is consistently depicted as sincere, and its appeal, whether to Israelites or non-Israelites, is, as a rule, not questioned. At some point around the end of the 3rd century B.C.E., however, a new form of argument arises: that the worship of other gods and the reverence of their icons is, in fact, an entirely
			In my monograph, The Portrayal of Pagan Worship in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism, I argue that a decisive change took place in ancient Jewish portrayals of the Other around the 3rd century B.C.E. In Israelite/Jewish literature composed up to this point, the worship of other gods and the reverence of their icons is consistently depicted as sincere, and its appeal, whether to Israelites or non-Israelites, is, as a rule, not questioned. At some point around the end of the 3rd century B.C.E., however, a new form of argument arises: that the worship of other gods and the reverence of their icons is, in fact, an entirely
	unattractive practice, and that even its practitioners must inwardly reject it. Put differently: while the devotees of 'false gods' appear to take these deities seriously, even they must know, on some level, that their gods are nonsense. In this lecture, I will attempt to demonstrate some elements of this shift in ancient Jewish portrayals, in particular focusing on greed and sex, and their relationship to idolatry."		unattractive practice, and that even its practitioners must inwardly reject it. Put differently: while the devotees of 'false gods' appear to take these deities seriously, even they must know, on some level, that their gods are nonsense. In this lecture, I will attempt to demonstrate some elements of this shift in ancient Jewish portrayals, in particular focusing on greed and sex, and their relationship to idolatry."


			==== Carmen Palmer, Stetson University ====

			Carmen Palmer -- “Female Converts in the Dead Sea Scrolls”

			Evidence mounts against any simple understanding of the presence of female gentile converts in the Dead Sea movement (the movement affiliated with Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, though not restricted to the site of Qumran). Josephus suggests that generally, the Essenes (if one were to affiliate the Essenes with the Dead Sea movement in some way) prefer to avoid marriage (J.W. 2.120–121). Certainly, there is a paucity of female gendered objects at the site of Qumran, itself. And even though the rulings within the Scrolls describe ample inclusion of references to women participating in both kinship and culture, a prohibition restricts marriage to a free, gentile woman (Temple Scroll 11Q19 LVII, 15–17). That said, the Damascus Document CD XII, 10–11 prohibits the sale of male and female slaves to gentiles because they entered the “covenant of Abraham” with their owner. Nearby, CD XI, 14–15 prohibits proximity to a gentile on the Sabbath. Surely these enslaved persons are not sent away on the Sabbath. Instead, the coexistence of such rules implies that gentile women are joining the movement and undergoing some sort of transformation, meaning a conversion. This presentation will argue that the case of the beautiful captive woman, as reworked from Deut 21:10–14 in 11Q19 LXIII, 10–15, exemplifies how the combined processes of marriage and timed integration function as a conversion mechanism for gentile enslaved women into the Dead Sea movement.

			==== Jordan Henderson, St. Athanasius College ====

			Prefigurations of Perfidy: The Typological Use of False Oaths in Josephus’ Antiquities

			Josephus’ accounts of the invasions of Jerusalem by the pharaoh Shishak, Sennacherib, and
			Nebuchadnezzar in his Antiquities each have an added element of treachery which is not
			present in his biblical sources for these accounts. Each account in the Antiquities involves
			the king taking an oath of clemency towards the Judeans, then promptly breaking his oath. I
			have argued elsewhere (Defeat and Deliverance [Leiden: Brill, 2025]) that the foreign
			rulers’ treachery in each account corresponds literarily to the treachery which Josephus
			depicts on the part of the Jewish rebels of his own day in the Jewish War, particularly John
			of Gischala. This allows Josephus to reframe the typological relationship between these
			events of the past and Rome’s recent conquest of Jerusalem. Instead of Vespasian and Titus
			appearing as the latest foreign tyrants attacking Jerusalem, Josephus depicts these foreign
			invaders of the past as more similar to the rebels through the motif of treachery. In this
			paper, I will focus this typology more particularly on an event at the outbreak of the revolt
			when the Roman commander Metilius’ troops are massacred by Jewish rebels after the
			latter had taken oaths to spare the soldiers’ lives upon their surrender.

	== LETTER OF INVITATION ==		== LETTER OF INVITATION ==

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