Aristeas at the Water Gate: Rituals in Hellenistic Jewish Literature

Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies is a part of SFU: The Canadian university that is Engaging the World

SFU Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies

Join us Friday, March 21st at 2:30pm for a talk by Dr. Daniel Picus, Western Washington University

SFU Bennett Library, Room 7200

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University is pleased to present <a href="https://chss.wwu.edu/global-humanities-and-religions/picusd" title="https://chss.wwu.edu/global-humanities-and-religions/picusd" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Dr. Daniel Picus</a>, Western Washington University. Join us Friday, March 21st at 2:30pm in person at the Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby, Room 7200, or online (https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86319652060), for his talk “Aristeas at the Water Gate: Reading Rituals in Hellenistic Jewish Literature”. This talk will be moderated by <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/globalhumanities/human-dir/chair/d-mirhady.html" title="https://www.sfu.ca/globalhumanities/human-dir/chair/d-mirhady.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Dr. David Mirhady</a>, Department Chair and Professor, Global Humanities. Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and will be recorded. This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the <a href="https://trk2.cp20.com/click/ds9u-2vguei-i8x8z4-cocw1z80/" title="https://trk2.cp20.com/click/ds9u-2vguei-i8x8z4-cocw1z80/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Stavros Niarchos Foundation</a> (SNF).

ABSTRACTThe public reading of the Torah scroll has been one of the central liturgical practices of Judaism for two millennia. Because of its importance, generations of Jewish scholars and rabbis have formulated, written, and then interpreted regulations, narratives, and regulations surrounding it. These can be found across the breadth of ancient Jewish literature. In this paper, Professor Picus examines the reading ceremony described in Pseudo-Aristeas. How does it conform to scriptural antecedents—and how does it re-understand them in a Greek-speaking context? Is the ceremony described a pre-cursor of the later rabbinic Jewish ritual, or does it reflect a different stratum of the tradition?

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY<a href="https://chss.wwu.edu/global-humanities-and-religions/picusd" title="https://chss.wwu.edu/global-humanities-and-religions/picusd" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Daniel Picus</a> teaches in the department of Global Humanities and Religions at Western Washington University, and is a specialist in classical rabbinic literature. His research explores ideas of text, from the abstract to the material, in Jewish and Christian writings from late antiquity. His current book project, from which this paper derives, is a cultural history of the religious practice of the public reading of Torah in ancient Judaism. He has served as the co-chair for the Book History and Biblical Literatures program unit of the Society of Biblical Literature, and is an associate editor at the <a href="https://www.ancientjewreview.com/" title="https://www.ancientjewreview.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Ancient Jew Review</a>.

MODERATOR BIOGRAPHY<a href="https://www.sfu.ca/globalhumanities/human-dir/chair/d-mirhady.html" title="https://www.sfu.ca/globalhumanities/human-dir/chair/d-mirhady.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">David Mirhady</a>'s research spans several related fields: Greek rhetoric, law, and the school of Aristotle. It began with a dissertation on the political and legal writings of Aristotle's student Theophrastus. In order to get a background for that, he looked at Aristotle's approach to legal argumentation in his Rhetoric, which led to articles on the parallel accounts of argumentation on documentary forms of evidence in the Rhetoric, its contemporary, the Rhetoric to Alexander, and in the Athenian orators, the speeches of one of whom, Isocrates, he translated. He has also continued his interests in the parallels between the Rhetoric and the Rhetoric to Alexander, which led to a Loeb translation of the latter.

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Aristeas at the Water Gate: Rituals in Hellenistic Jewish Literature

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Aristeas at the Water Gate: Rituals in Hellenistic Jewish Literature

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