Philo at SBL Annual Meeting (III)

We continue our third presentation of the sessions at this years SBL Annual Meeting in which lectures or papers focus on Philo of Alexandria.

This time we point to
S19-72Philo of Alexandria
Joint Session With: Philo of Alexandria, History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
11/19/2006 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM Room: 140A - CC

Theme: Reception of Philo of Alexandria in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity: The Question Revisited

Hindy Najman, University of Toronto, Presiding

James L. Kugel, Bar Ilan University
Philo and the Problem of the Book of Genesis (30 min)
Abstract: "The very existence of the book of genesis posed a problem for Jews of the late second temp period: unlike the other 4 books of the Pentateuch, it had no laws or halakhic instruction per se. What was it there for? Along with the authors of Jubilees and other biblical pseudepigrapha, Philo of Alexandria wrestled with this question."

Maren Niehoff, Hebrew University
Philo and Genesis Rabbah: Similar Questions and Answers (30 min)
Abstract: "A comparison between Philo's "Questions and Answers on Genesis" and Genesis Rabbah against the background of the genre of "Questions and Answers" in Homeric Scholarship. I shall discuss whether the exegetes in Genesis Rabbah raised the same or other questions and whether they may have been familiar with the genre as it appears in Philo's work."


Daniel Boyarin, University of California-Berkeley
From Greek thought to Jewish and Christian Scriptural Allegory (30 min)
Abstract:"In this paper, I propose to work out in a general way some new thinking about continuity, rather than rupture, in the history of allegoresis, in particular I wish to locate allegorical thinking in some persistent themes of Greek thought of various types and argue then that it is not as foreign to rabbinic interpretation as once I would have claimed."


Judith H. Newman, University of Toronto
The Composition of Prayers and Songs in Philo's De Vita Contemplativa (30 min)
Discussion (30 min)
Abstract: "In contrast to Greek pagan prayer and in spite of its infinite variety, early Jewish prayers are marked by their interpretive engagement with Torah. How can we account for this production of scripturalized prayers? This paper compares the "philosophy" practiced by the Therapeutae at Mareotis with the nature and function of prayers at Qumran to argue that all such utterances were offered as manifestations of internalized torah, conceived through the prophetic gift of divine spirit."