Talk:2020 Aramaic Enoch Conference
This year the Enoch Seminar celebrates 20 years of activity. It was born in the year 2000 as an attempt to bring together all the major international specialists of Second Temple Judaism and in particular of Jewish Apocalypticism. We chose the name Enoch Seminar, since George Nickelsburg’s commentary was in the making and the study of Enoch literature was reshaping our view of ancient Jewish diversity. Our first meeting in Florence in 2001 was on the origins of Enochic Judaism. Our second meeting
There was however another reason for calling ourselves the Enoch Seminar. We needed an ubiquitous character who did not belong to any particular corpus of ancient Jewish literature but was present everywhere (in the Old and New Testaments, in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the Church Fathers, rabbinic literature and the Koran). We wanted to get rid of all the traditional “canonical” boundaries, free to reshape the Jewish Literature of the Second Temple according to new categories.
Over time the Enoch Seminar has grown considerably from a small group of scholars to a much larger and more diverse community, affiliated to the Society of Biblical Literature.
In 20 years the Enoch Seminar has organized more than 30 international meetings, published more than 20 volumes, and inspired many more books and articles by its members. At the beginning there were only the biennial Enoch Seminars, then came the Enoch Graduate Seminars, then the Nangeroni Meetings, then the Colloquia at the SBL, and now the first online Conference.
With the COVID-19 crisis we have entered a new era in which this kind of meetings will become more and more frequent. I think we have proven that it can be done. We have brought together specialists for all around the world. The current crisis will not end soon. Our next colloquium in November on the Gospel of Matthew will be online, and so will our next Enoch Graduate Seminar.
Even when we are able to resume our meetings in person, it will never be the same again. From now on, residential conferences will also have a larger online component. We have entered the cyberspace.
At the end of these four days of conference, I would like to thank all the organizers: Lorenzo DiTommaso, Kelley Bautch (it is always a privileged and a pleasure to work with you), Loren Stuckenbruck (who unfortunately could not be present to our meeting but has contributed much to its organization), Jason Zurawski, Archie Wright, and Benjamin Reynolds. They have worked so hard for months to make this conference a success. I also would like to thank Lawrence Schiffman, Myriam Brand, John Collins, and James McGrath, who have attended all four days of the conference and contributed to the daily opening sessions. I would like to thank Rodney Caruthers, Jackie Wyse-Rhodes and Deborah Forger who facilitated the meeting of the graduate students, and the oditor of our website and newsletter, Jason von Ehrenkrook.
I would like to thank all the panelists, the respondents, the discussants, those who contributed thru the chat, and all the almost 300 participants with an average of 100-150 attendees for each session. Many particpants sometimes heroically joined the sessions very late in the evening or very early in the morning and in some cases during the night.
Special thanks go to our wonderful secretary (Joshua Scott), he made everything look so easy, while every day and every minute he was adjusting the program to our specific needs. Our thanks also go to the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, the Michigan Center for Early Christian Studies, and the Alessandro Nangeroni International Endowment for their continued support.
In our opening session we celebrated the work of Paolo Sacchi, George Nickelburg, Robert Kraft, Michael Knibb, Michael Stone and Devorah Dimant. It was a wonderful reminder that we walk on the shoulders of the giants who preceded us.
The 4 Enoch website provides a fascinating journey through the history of research in Second Temple Judaism, from the time when Giovanni Pico della Mirandola began searching for the 70 secret books of Ezra at the end of the 15th century and Paul Eber wrote the first history of the Second Temple period in 1548.
We started our conference full of sadness over the death of James Dunn. Now that we are at the conclusion of such an important milestone as the first international online conference on Second temple Judaism, I think it is most appropriate to remember with gratitude the late members of the Enoch Seminar: starting from Hanan Eshel and Shemaryahu Talmon, to Harold Ellens, Klaus Koch, Michael Bonner, Geza Xeravits, and Larry Hurtado. While we miss them so much, we rejoice to see so many talented young women and men attending our seminar. We see in them the fulfilment of our commitment to building the new generation of specialists in Second Temple Judaism.
We as scholars, and the Enoch Seminar as an organization, would not even exist without the memory of the past. We are all closely related to each other. Being part of this collective history is a privilege and a responsibility. As scholars, we do not live isolated from the world and untouched by the evil of this world. But we will all be measured by the courage and determination with which we adapt to even the most difficult challenges and promote a climate of inclusiveness and friendship. Stay tuned, my friends: the best is yet to come.