Missing site: D.Binder's 'Second Temple Synagogues'

Donald Binder had a fine web site based on his 1997 Southern Methodist University PhD dissertation, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period. Its url was http://www.smu.edu/~dbinder/.

But I have not been able to spot this site anymore. Its url does not work, and I have not been able to find it through Google. Anyone out there who knows what happened to this site? Please notify me.

Update:
I found the old website at quite another site: you will find it at http://www.pohick.org/sts/index.html.

Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism

I want to direct your attention to this very informative site: Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism. It is, in fact " an interdisciplinary seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism designed as the internet version of an ongoing research seminar of graduate students at the department of theology of Marquette University (Milwaukee, USA). The seminar is directed by Alexander Golitzin, a professor of eastern Christian theology (Marquette University). The seminar started in March 2002 as an attempt to investigate Jewish mystical traditions in the eastern Christian theological and liturgical texts. It was thought that the seminar would help initiate and inspire the discussion about the Jewish influences on eastern Christian mysticism among a broader audience.
The internet version of the seminar was constituted on April 17, 2002. It is a regular text seminar consisting of scholars and graduate students of ancient languages, systematic theology, philosophy, patristics, biblical exegesis, and Judaism.

Currently the seminar is not confined solely to the students of Marquette University but also includes participants from various scholarly communities.
Themes are announced and resources pertaining to them are posted on this webpage. The resources normally include previously published and unpublished scholarly articles, electronic publications, lectures, reviews, and sometimes the critical responses to these materials. All copyrighted materials on this page are for classroom use only. Reproduction other than "fair use" quotations is prohibited. The articles, reviews, lectures, and critical responses must be send to the project moderators in order to be posted on the webpage."

The site has an important and informative list of links related to the 28 topics focused in the seminar. An additional bibliography on bibliographies is added at the end of the file.

Some Journal blogging

Some relevant articles for Philo and -or diaspora Judaism from the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha:

Jared W. Ludlow, 'The Testament of Abraham: Which Came First-Recension A or Recension B?' Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Vol. 13 No. 1 (April 2002): 3-15.

An intriguing aspect of the Testament of Abraham’s transmission history is the existence of two Greek recensions. Which recension came first? Why were changes made to the ‘original’ story? This article addresses these issues from a narrative viewpoint. Some scholars suppose that both recensions come from an original Ur-source but are not directly dependent on each other. Through a close examination of the narratives of both recensions, however, this article concludes that there is a direct relationship between the two Greek recensions with Recension A coming first and Recension B reacting to the earlier Recension A.
Erkki Koskenniemi, 'Greeks, Eygptians and Jews in the Fragments of Artapanus,' Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Vol. 13 No. 1 (April 2002): 17-31. Artapanus, an Egyptian Jew who wrote the treatise About the Jews, lived in a society in which tensions between the native Egyptians and the Greeks were strong. As elsewhere in the Hellenistic world, the Greeks formed the upper class and the natives the lower. If the Jews were numerous, as they were in Egypt, they would have tried to separate themselves from the native inhabitants and to seek contacts with the Greek population. Scholars dealing with Artapanus’ fragments have seldom differentiated between Greeks and Egyptians, but the point of view is fruitful: this article shows that Artapanus never writes negatively about the Greeks, though he does consider the Egyptians to be a simple people led by wicked rulers. Moses has a role as founder of the Egyptian religious practices, but misunderstandings and errors led to a cult suited for lower people.
Louis H. Feldman, 'PHILO’S INTERPRETATION OF JOSHUA,' Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Vol. 12 No. 2 (October 2001): 165-178.Philo, especially in De Vita Mosis, diminishes the role of Joshua as compared with that of Moses, whom he seeks to defend against the Greeks who belittled him. In the war with Amalek it is Moses who takes the lead. In the Golden Calf incident Joshua represents subjective feeling toward the tumult in contrast to Moses, who understands the true cause. In his version of the spying mission it is to Caleb that Philo gives greater importance. However, in the account in De Virtutibus of a choice of successor to Moses, Philo stresses that Moses did not select one of his own sons, although he says in De Cherubim that the seed in Moses’ wife Zipporah was divinely planted.

Joan E. Taylor, 'Virgin Mothers: Philo on the Women Therapeutae,' Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Vol. 12 No. 1 (April 2001): 37-63. Philo of Alexandria describes the Jewish men and women known as the ‘Therapeutae’ in his treatise De Vita Contemplativa (c. 41 CE) as people who are truly good. They live a virtuous existence, practicing an ascetic, contemplative life of philosophy. However, in antiquity women philosophers could be seen as unfeminine and dangerously sexual. Women Therapeutae were therefore a rhetorical problem for Philo, as it would have been difficult for him to ensure that they were clearly seen as ‘good’. To solve the problem Philo insists on their virginity, while also characterizing them as maternal (thereby feminine). By considering Philo’s rhetoric here we not only better understand his concerns but also aspects of the historical Therapeutae that this rhetoric can both illuminate and obscure.

Jewish Magic Bibliography

I am trying to update my self on Magic in antiquity, and especially on magic among the diaspora Jews, Philo included. I have found this bibliography in particular valuable: Jewish Magic Bibliography. It does not, however, contain many items on magic in Philo.

One aspect of magic is the 'evil eye' syndrome. In several texts this is apparently the meaning behind the use of the baskainw word group. This verb and its related nouns are fairly frequent in the works of Philo, though not always in contexts of magic. There are several studies on the phenomenon of the 'evil eye' in the New Testament. Mark Nanos has an article on his website that is very informative on both the bibliography of 'evil eye' and on the use of this feature in Gal. 3:1. This article is missing in the bibliography mentioned above.

If anyone else is working on magic in the Jewish diaspora, and have further references, I would be very pleased if they could get in touch via the 'comment' field below.

Famous quote,-

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

Several persons have e-mailed me, presuming that the saying quoted above is from Philo. But I have not been able to verify it in any of Philo's works.
Some webpages also accredit it to Philo; more often, however, it is said to come from Plato, but with no further references.

Can anyone out there help to locate the origin of this saying? Use the comment field below for your suggestions.

Back again....

I'm back again from my brief vacation, cf. my former posting......

I got a mail last week from the Ingenta search engine. Using the search word 'Philo' it brings up the following articles about Philo of Alexandria from 2003:

Conway C., 'Gender and Divine Relativity in Philo of Alexandria,' Journal for the Study of Judaism, 1 December 2003, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 471-491.

Rooke D., 'Writing the Wrongs. Women of the Old Testament among Biblical Commentators from Philo through the Reformation,' Journal of Theological Studies, April 2003, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 169-171.

Hultgren S., 'The Origin of Paul's Doctrine of the Two Adams in 1 Corinthians 15.45-49,' Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 1 March 2003, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 343-370.

For those of us working in an institution with strongly limited library access to Journals, services as Ingenta is a great help to locate relevant articles and books.

BTW, I see it has been quiet on this WebLog last week. I presume Kaare has been away
on some winther holiday. Did you know that by the end of February many people in Norway use to have one week off work, going skiing in the mountains. And at Easter time, they go to the mountains again for skiing, enjoying the last snow before spring time and summer?
According to the mass-media most of us do so, but that is a media-created world. We don't. But many do. And then; nobody can praise the summer like the Norwegians.....:)

From megasites to 'minisites'....

Some weeks ago we had an exchange of opinions on 'megasites'. Sites like my RPBS and NTGateway is a kind of megasites; trying to gather links to valuable resources on the Internet for the whole New Testament, or even wider. There are similar sites out there on the 'Old testament'.

Here is however, another kind of site: WWW Resources for the Study of Genesis 1-3. It is obviously established by and for Anne McGuire for a teaching course at Department of Religion, Haverford College. What it demonstrates, however, is the fact that there is coming up so much material now on the Internet, that it can be useful to establish not only sites for individual works of the Bible, but even on chapters or groups of chapters like Genesis 1-3. We may probably see more of this kind of 'mini-sites' in the future.

I am taking the rest of the week off, leaving for the southern part of Norway today to do some carpenter work on our 'cabin'. 12 hours driving- 740 km in winther Norway. Hope to be back on Monday.....

Are you reading this, Kåre? how is your work with revising your dissertation proceeding???

Some recent reviews

Some recent reviews of posssible interest to studies of the works of Philo and Diaspora Judaism in general have been posted on Bryn Mawr Classical Review:

David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Pp. xv, 448. ISBN 0-691-11465-X. $35.00.
Reviewed by Molly Myerowitz Levine, Howard University (myerowitz@comcast.net)

Clifford Ando (ed.), Roman Religion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. Pp. xxi, 393. ISBN 0-74386-1566-0. £14.99 (pb). Contributors: Jonathan Z. Smith, Greg Woolf, Richard Gordon, Arthur Darby Nock, Denis Feeney, John Scheid, Arnaldo Momigliano, John North, Sabine MacCormack, Mary Beard, Carl Koch, and Georg Wissowa. Reviewed by Alison B. Griffith, University of Canterbury.

Sophia Aneziri, Die Vereine der Dionysischen Techniten im Kontext der hellenistischen Gesellschaft. Historia Einzelschriften 163. Munich: Steiner, 2003. Pp. 542. ISBN 3-515-08126-7. EUR 96.00.
Reviewed by William Slater, McMaster University.

Exit HTR online...

Mark Goodacre has noted that my reference to an article of Gregory Sterling in my last update of RPBS was, in fact, a reference to a dead link. It turns out, alas, that all the former references to Harvard Theological Review on FindArticles are to dead links.

I can understand that one can not expect a publisher of a journal to publish all the articles of a paper print edition free on Internet. Though some really do just that. But it is annoying to see some articles available for a while, and then they suddenly disappear. Shouldn't we at least expect a note of explanation, og even better, a note warning readers that this article is just temporarily available on the Internet?
Well,I have checked my RPBS; there shouldn't be any more references to articles from HTR.

RPBS update

My RPBS has been updated; most update items are articles on aspects from Philo's works.
I have also expanded the range of this WeBlog a little by including Diaspora Judaism in its headline. The label 'Hellenistic Judaism' has been deliberately avoided as that is not a very helpful term for dealing with Philo or the Judaism of of the second temple period in the western diaspora that is my focus.

Last Saturday was a wonderful day; clear sky, bright sun, and a meter of snowin the fields and mountains; a perfect day for skiing. And so I did. But how was Sunday; wet, wet, wet, and gray and rainy. That's how weather is in this part of the globe; wonderful the one day, terrible the next. Do you know how heavy wet snow can be? Sometimes I envy those of you living in a great city, with no worries about the snow. But when the weather is like last saturday: you can have the city for yourself......:-)
You don't believe me? OK, have a look at these pictures from my area.

Philo and Abraham Abinu

I mentioned last thursday that Philo was very popular among the early Christian theologians. It is also a fact that it was the Christians, not the Jews, who took care of his writings and preserved them for the future. It took a long time before Philo became acceptable readings amongst Jews.

But time has changed, and to the profit of both, Jews and Christians can now study and evaluate together the value and influence of the works of Philo.

Last week I happened to come over a site that used the works and theology of Philo for a devotional exposition of a text from the Torah; Genesis 12,1ff. It is very interesting to see how Philo is here used as a witness for the theology the writer want to set forth. And he adds a brief review of the life of Philo.

Have a look at this Parasha Lech Lecha from nov 2000, on faith in God and on Abraham Abinu.

+++++++++
And then again; have a nice weekend!
Weather in Volda is wonderful today. The possibilities for skiing is great! ;-)

More on the Therapeutae..

In a couple of earlier postings I have referred to works on the Therapeutae. You may (re)read them by clicking here or here.
The Society of Biblical Literature Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Group has placed several of their papers online, in fact most of their papers from 2000-2002 seem to be online. The papers from the 2003 session in Atlanta are not online at this site, but can be accessed from the SBL site of that conference. Go here, and scroll a little down.

In the 2002 conference Celia Deutsch, (Barnard College), read a paper on "Study, Ritual, and Mystical Experience: Philo's de Vita Contemplativa." She believes that The Therapeutae was a real group, living somewhere in the neighborhood of Alexandria. In this paper she explores ways in which study becomes a ritual site for mystical experience. The article is quite interesting, and describes the various ways ritual is present in Philo's descriptions. Her own conclusion runs thus:

Philo's De Vita Contemplativa presents a description of a group which exemplifies the contemplative life. According to that description it is a community whose life is framed by the temporal boundaries of the liturgical cycle and the spatial boundaries of the sanctuaries, individual and communal. These frames display clearly the sacred texts and its study which are intextricably associated with mystical experience through the oral reading which provides an aid to altered states of consciousness, as well as the metaphors which serve as the content of the visualization process.

Celia Deutsch is Adjunct Associate Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University.

o( Klh/mhj puqagori/zei

The influence of Philo on the early Christians, the socalled 'church fathers' was great. One article on his influence upon the thought of Clement is written by Eugene Afonasin, Novosibirsk State University, and published as
o( Klh/mhj puqagori/zei: Pythagorean Symbolism and the Philosophic Paideia in the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria.
You can read it at the Paideia website. Part of its conclusion runs like this:

Importance of the Pythagorean tradition for Clement of Alexandria's philosophic development has recently been stressed by several researchers of Medioplatonic and early Christian doctrine. But as it was justly noticed some time ago by M. Tardieu, Pythagoreanism of Clement, both in his theoretical and moral philosophy, is still a terra incognita. (56) Thorough examination of Clement's use of Philo of Alexandria, recently undertaken by Annewies van den Hoek (57) and David Runia (58) are particularly illuminating for the purpose of analysis of the Neopythagorean and Medioplatonic elements in Clement's writings.

The questions I put in the present paper were (1) what at all did Clement know about the Pythagoreans and (2) how and to which extend did he make use of them in his own philosophic contemplation and theological speculations? Both of this question are difficult to answer due to (1) paucity of evidence about the intellectual climate of Clement's time and (2) controversial and pioneering nature of Clement thought. And while the former cannot be helped, the latter is in our hand, as long as we are able to perceive clouds of Clement's thought revealed in his own words. An analysis of the Pythagorean elements in Clement, combined with ad hoc observations of textual parallelism, found in Clement and Neopythagorean writings, constituted the goal, in which the present study was intended to aim. Now, in the present stage of research I do not claim to have the questions, complicated as they are, answered in full details. But still the pages of Clement's thought already unfolded, have given us certain hints and led us to some results to be summarized as following.
Ooops, I see that the Greek does not show up too well. Those of you who knows Greek, will probably understand it, the font used is SGreek.

‘…as a little child’?

The Norwegian scholar Reidar Aasgaard has sent me a description of his ongoing research project. Though it may not be described as a philonic project, it is nevertheless supposed to draw on the wider culture of early Christianity, a culture of which Philo also was a part. Hence it may be interesing for philo scholars too to know about this.

Description:

‘…as a little child’?
An investigation of perceptions of children and childhood
in Early Christianity, related to the general culture of Antiquity

The ways in which a society deals with its “out-groups”, can often be seen as an indicator of its degree of humanity. Children are such an “out-group”, and have in the course of history often fallen victims to the vicissitudes of fate. Today there is, however, a growing understanding of childhood as a phase of life in its own right, and of the cultural history, characteristics and rights of children.

Late Antiquity (A.D. 30-430) was an epoch of upheaval, with parallels to our own time, and with children as an important “out-group”. In the hierarchical-patriarchal society of the period, children were at the lower steps of the social ladder, and they were often made invisible. Recent research confirms such a picture, but also points to elements in the sources of more positive attitudes towards children and childhood.

In the new religion of Late Antiquity, Christianity, and in its main collection of writings, The New Testament, the picture given of children and childhood is also ambiguous. However, in the gospel stories about Jesus children appear to play a more central and positive part than was customary.

The research project aims partly at mapping perceptions about childhood, partly at describing the living conditions of children in Late Antiquity, with special focus on early Christian sources. It puts special emphasis on how attitudes towards children and childhood are motivated ideologically and theologically, and on the interplay between different cultural impulses. The project employs a diacronic perspective, in order to trace possible changes in living conditions and in the attitudes towards children: Did the development of a Christian church and culture lead to a new understanding, or even an upgrading, of children and childhood?

The project will utilise a broad range of sources, both as concerns social origin and genre, such as literary texts, epigraphical material, and art. Interdisciplinary contact and co-operation will be central.

The research results are to be presented in a monograph, some minor studies (articles), a book of a popular character, and in teaching and lectures.

The main object of the project is to contribute to new knowledge about the status and living conditions of children in Late Antiquity/Early Christianity. But it also aims at giving insights into a society’s manner of dealing with marginalised groups, impulses to reflection on human worth and rights, understanding of strategies for religious and cultural formation, and contributions to a reform of Christian education within the churches of Norway. More generally, the project also intends to gain insight into the interplay between ideological and social changes within a society.

A more comprehensive description of the research project is available under his profile description at www.tf.uio.no:82/kompkat/?login=reidaraa (only in Norwegian).

No more Philo on EB

The cryptic headline above refers to the annoying fact that it is no longer possible to access articles on the Encyclopedia Brittannica online. I had a reference to the Philo article of EB on my resource Page, a fairly good article, as most of the EB articles are, but now that link is dead.

They are smart, those dot.com people. I remember -some time back - the EB was completely free and accessible on the Internet, then they changed the acess so you could only read the first sections of the articles. And now it is completely closed. (yes, I know there is a free trial period, and a paid online access possibility..).

Well, to be honest, as a business project, they have to earn money. I know, I know... It is just that I had to shovel a heavy load of wet, norwegian snow this morning to get out of my house... That's a hard way to wake up; with a shovel in your hand.....

Wanna see how it is in Volda this stormy day; have a look here! My office is on the second floor, to the right of the entrance. If the lights are on, I'm in! Have a nice day!

Philo and the Alexandrian Riots of 38-41

One of the few articles left on the LookSmarts FindArticles site, is one by Matthew B. Schwartz, 'Greek and Jew: Philo and the Alexandrian Riots of 38-41 CE,' Judaism Spring 2000.
The article is just as much an introduction to Philo's place in Alexandria and the Judaism of his time as to the riots of 38-41, and may thus serve as an introduction for those not too familiar with Philo. (Remember then to also read the articles by David T Runia available on the Philo page)!
The opening sentences of his article may serve as a summary to Schwartz view of Philo:

Philo, the Jew of ancient Alexandria, was product and part of two worlds, Jewish and Greek. Much of his life and thought was devoted to sorting out the contradictions inherent in that situation and the personal dilemmas with which it burdened him. One answer he attempted was to seek tranquillity and quiet above the storm through a life devoted to the joys of philosophical contemplation and higher wisdom. However, although the dilemmas became more manageable, they did not disappear, and the wide world outside, impatient of philosophical solutions and ways, would intrude harshly, threatening to shatter Philo's contemplative calm, disrupting his peaceful and well reasoned order. Never was this more true than in the violent Alexandrian civil conflict of 38-41 CE between Jews and Greeks, perhaps a precursor to the Civil War of 115 CE, which concluded with the Roman destruction of the Jewish community. To my own annoyance, I have not been able to find out more about Matthew B. Schwartz. Is he the same M.B. Schwartz that have written some books on Judaism and Religion from a psychological point of view together with Kalman J. Kaplan. I really don't know. Do you?

Tanach תנ״ך on-line.

Rubén Gómez has a posting about the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia from the Michigan-Claremont electronic text at the Oxford Text Archivev now being available on the web.
Readers of Philo may also be interested in the Hebrew texts, without always having them available in book form. Hence this is a useful site too.

The Tanach of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia is transcribed from the
Michigan-Claremont electronic text by Whitaker and Parunak as archived in the Oxford Text Archive (OTA)(biblheb.525). The standard version contains 4 of the 6 textual elements of the OTA document: consonants, vowels, cantillation marks, ketib-qere variants, and the paragraph (pe,samekh) marks. The morphological division marks and the end-of-line marks have not been included, but are available by request. The transcription was based on the "Supplement to the code manual for the Michigan Old Testament" by Alan Groves and includes the transcription notes defined there.
A listing of these notes can be obtained by clicking on the "Notes" link of the index page. Transcription notes appear as subscripts and can be viewed by clicking on them. Even though my Resource Pages are primarily for the New Testament, texts like these surely belong to the 'social world of the NT', to say the least..... Thanks to those making this possible.

Niffy things??

I have also followed some of my blogger colleagues in adding a tracking feature to my postings. Time will show if they will be used. But let me add; comments in the comment-field is especially appreciated.

I would also add that I also recommend the features of Bloglines; to use their own phrases, "Bloglines is a free service that makes it easy to keep up with your favorite blogs and newsfeeds. With Bloglines, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs, and Bloglines will monitor updates to those sites. You can read the latest entries easily within Bloglines." Really nice. You save time as you dont have to skim several sites. But is time -> money?......

Read this, -and have a nice weekend....

The Silver Mountain Software company will probably be known to many who use to work with the TLG texts on a PC. Another program from this firm was the Bible Windows. Due to Microsoft's concern about the name of that program Silver Mountain had to change it: it is now called Bibloi 8.0. What happened to Bible Windows? They say:

After 10 years of Bible Windows without any confusion, we received a letter from the Seed "Intellectual Property Law Group" (www.seedlaw.com) which stated, "Microsoft is concerned that your use of the name Bible Windows for your software product could confuse customers. Consumers seeing your product name may think that your product is manufactured by, sponsored by or affiliated with Microsoft Corporation. As a trademark owner, Microsoft much [sic] watch for and take steps to remedy potentially confusing and dilution uses of its trademark." Although we deny that there has been any confusion of this sort, or any dilution of Microsoft's trademark name, we have no ability to challenge Microsoft. So, although we have been a loyal Microsoft customer for many years, we were forced to change our product name. Hence, no more Bible Windows, but Biblio. The version number is obviously taken over from BW as they call it Biblio 8.0. This version also have some improvements, and there is in particular one that I find interesting:The major new feature is the ability to add texts to the program. Bibloi includes a C# program that reads texts into an MS Access database that can then be used in Bibloi. The source code for this program will be available on request to registered users. So, while there are a number of formats supported, users could extend the import program to include other formats. The import program and Bibloi are Unicode compatible so that a wide variety of translations and texts can be imported. This obviously means that the users can import and add texts to the program. They mention that "The BibloiImport program can import texts from the Unbound Bible Project (http://undev.biola.edu). " This would certainly be interesting for those of us who work with other texts than the Bible texts, for instance the texts of Philo and Josephus. I hope Rubén Gómez or other reviewers will come up with a review of this program soon.

La Rivelazione in Filone di Alessandria

Last September there was a conference in Bologne, Italy, on La Rivelazione in Filone di Alessandria: Natura, Legge, Storia ('The Revelation in Philo of Alexandria; Nature, Law, History'), and Francesca Calabi has been so kind as to inform me about the program. She also tells me that the lectures most probably will be published this year by an Italian publisher. The editors are Angela Mazzanti and F. Calabi.

Though I am not strong in reading Italian, I look forward to the publication, hoping that it also will contain summaries in English of each contribution. I know there are several Italian scholars working on Philo too, hence this will surely be a worthy contribution from Italy.

I provide a list of the topics at this conference below, You will probably understand the Italian. I tried to use the BabelFish but it didn't work out too well.) Nevertheless, I presume most of you can get an impression of what to look for when the publication is out.

Lunedì 29 settembre
Lucio Troiani , Università di Pavia; Natura e storia politica in Filone.

Clara Kraus Reggiani, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”; La presenza di Dio nella storia secondo Filone di Alessandria.

Mauro Pesce, Università di Bologna; Filone e il sacrificio.

Roberto Radice, Università Cattolica di Milano; Considerazioni sulle origini greche dell’allegoria filoniana.

Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, Università di Messina; Mosé e Balaam, propheteia e mantiké. Modalità e segni della rivelazione nel De vita Mosis.

Angela Maria Mazzanti, Università di Bologna; Creazione dell’uomo e rivelazione in Filone di Alessandria

Francesca Alesse, C.N.R. Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee, Roma; Il luogo del nous. Alcuni aspetti dell’antropologia di Filone Alessandrino.

Pierluigi Pavone, Pavia; Tò pathetón, materia preesistente o intero creato?

Martedì 30 settembre
Francesca Calabi, Università di Pavia, Ordine della città e ordine del mondo nel De decalogo.

Cristina Termini, Pontificia Università Urbaniana, Roma; Dal Sinai alla creazione: il rapporto tra legge naturale e legge rivelata in Filone di Alessandria.

Paola Graffigna, Università di Genova; Modelli di vita felice. Felicità e stabilità in Filone.

Antonio Cacciari, Università di Bologna; Presenze filoniane nelle Omelie su Numeri di Origene

Sara Mancini Lombardi, Università di Bologna; La versione armena di Legum allegoriae: osservazioni su alcune particolarità lessicali

Paola Pontani, Università Cattolica di Milano; La traduzione armena del De Abrahamo e i suoi rapporti con il testo greco (The Armenian translation of De Abrahamo and its relationships with the Greek text).

Biblical Hermeneutics,- and some Philo articles

Those of you who read Mark Goodacre's NTGateway Weblog(who doesn't?), will have observed his reference to a new new website focusing on Biblical Hermeneutics. Biblical hermeneutics is important also for philonic studies. What I miss on this site, however, is a somewhat greater focus on Jewish hermeneutics related to the Hebrew Scriptures. As it is now, if focuses mainly on hermeneutics from a Christian or more general perspective.

The owner of the site, Holger Szesnat, has also published some articles on Philo of Alexandria, and made them available on the Internett:

Philo and Female Homoeroticism: Philo's Use of GYNANDROS and Recent Work on Tribades. Journal for the Study of Judaism 30 (1999) 140-147.

'Pretty Boys' in Philo's De Vita Contemplativa. Studia Philonica Annual 10 (1998) 87-107. (a zip file containing scanned pictures of the article).

Philo and the Presence of the Therapeutrides at Lake Mareotis. Neotestamentica 32 (1998) 191-201 (This page contains links to scanned images of the article. You may download these files for your personal use only. The images are saved in the form of six GIF files, compressed into a ZIP file).

Philo and Arithmology

Philo's use and understanding of the role of numbers are one of the more strange features in Philo's works. It is especially evident in De Opificio that he was interested in the symbolic value and role of various numbers, not at least the number 7.

Robert Kraft, University of Pennsylvania, has most recently mad available a paper on Philo's Treatment of the Number Seven in On Creation, a paper originally delivered for the SBL Philo Group, November 1996 (New Orleans). Here he has a confession that many others may subscribe to:

It is tempting to say that the author of On Creation was inebrieated with thoughts of numbers in various connections and relationships. Whether and to what extent he might have been unusual for his time and training is one aspect of the problem. That he is usually perceived as unusual in this regard from our modern perspectives is obvious in the literature. My own interest in these matters is closely related to the fact that when I was first learning about the ancient Pythagoreans and their interpretations of reality in terms of number, I never could force myself, in scholarly empathy, into their world. Plato was difficult enough in his otherness. Now that I have been studying these issues for several decades, I find myself still largely an outsider. And this is itself seductive Philo's use of arithmology is interesting also because he refers to an other work in which he porbably dealt more extencively with arithmology, but this is lost to us.

Kraft has also made available another work on Philo's arithmology, namely Horst Moehring, "Arithmology as an Exegetical Tool in the Writings of Philo of Alexandria," pp. 191-227 in SBL Seminar Papers 1978/1.
In Kraft's own article he discusses the article of Moehring and the older work of Karl Staehle, Die Zahlenmystik bei Philon von Alexandreia (a 1929 Tuebingen dissertation published by Teubner in 1931).

I will include both this work of Kraft and the article of Moehring in my next update of my Philonic Resource Pages. But just to wet your appetite a little more, I'll quote the following from Kraft's conclusion: If I am forced to draw some tentative conclusions from all this, my feeling is that Op is a product of confident informed and enthusiastic youth, from an author who has not yet felt the sting of criticisms from his associates and others from whom he expected support. His discourse on seven is a draft of what he also included in On Numbers around the same time, but never introduced in such a full sampling in subsequent writings. If LA is based directly on that material, it is a faint and extensively reworked echo. It is easier for me to believe that Op is an improved version of what appears in LA, or perhaps simply an alternate version. I can also understand LA as a faint and toned down echo of the more inclusive and sophisticated tradition by an author who had lost or laid aside some of the boldness or brashness he once exhibited. Alternatively, but with less enthusiasm, I might resort to a theory of early and later editions of Op to explain how LA might reflect such a weak form of the "seven" tradition, being based on the early edition that was considerably strengthened later, after On Numbers had been completed. There are many paths; but they are all conjecture.

Porn attack?

I apologize to all who were attacked by some aggressive porn-related pop-up window while accessing my Resource Pages for Biblical Studies. I have no idea of how this function was linked to my page, but it has now been removed, and I do hope it will never appear anymore on any of my pages. Arrrrrgh....