I am writing to invite you to give us a sign of your support and become a member of the Enoch Seminar for the year 2023, with a suggested donation of $150 or more (Honored Members), $100 (Full Members - Professors, Lecturers), or $50 (Discounted Members, upon request - Graduate Students, Post-Docs, Independent Scholars, Emeriti, etc.). Donations are welcomed by everyone, but membership to the Enoch Seminar is open only to scholars and graduate students, and is required to present research at our events. Membership will give you the opportunity to write your membership officially in your C.V., to participate as a speaker at our events, to receive additional information about our activities, and to access reduced meeting registration fees. In this first request, we ask that you complete the membership process by January 15, 2023.
We are and remain an informal gathering of international scholars who work to promote studies in the field. None of us receives any honorarium as directors, board members, chairs, speakers, or respondents. In addition to the Nangeroni funds, many of us (including myself) have voluntarily and generously contributed year by year to cover the expenses for the organization of our many events.
We are now at a turning point. Twenty years of activities has led the Enoch Seminar to a renewed mission in the field of Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins. We are organizing additional meetings and new formats of meetings (hybrid/virtual meetings) to keep pace with the innovative research of our members. The Enoch Seminar does not rely upon employees, but we have to compensate the work of our support staff and bear the rising costs of technology.
The experience of the past years tells us that we need to collect at least $10,000 a year to cover our expanded organizational expenses. The best way to reach this goal is that each of us offer a small contribution by becoming formally a member of the Enoch Seminar.
As the director of the Enoch Seminar, I was the first to make my donation and become an Honored Member.
Making a donation and becoming a member is easy. Donations to the Enoch Seminar are collected through the Michigan Center for Early Christian Studies and are tax deductible for American Citizens. Please follow these instructions:
(2) Select the preferred amount of money you would like to donate for the year 2023.
(3) [optional] Write a note: "Membership Enoch Seminar 2023"
(4) Pay with "PayPal" or select "Credit or Debit Card"
(5) [optional] Write an email to the Director (gbocca@umich.edu) and the Secretary (scottjos@umich.edu) confirming that you have registered to become a member of Enoch Seminar
(6) You will receive an email with a confirmation of membership within 10 business days
We thank you for your continuous and generous support!
~Prof. Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
The Enoch Seminar at the 2022 SBL Annual Meeting in Denver, CO
The Enoch Seminar Reception at the 2022 SBL Annual Meeting, Denver CO
In this book, Jason Staples proposes a new paradigm regarding the biblical concept of Israel and how it was shaped by Jewish apocalyptic hopes for restoration after the Babylonian Exile. Challenging conventional assumptions about Israelite identity in antiquity, his argument is based on a close analysis of a vast corpus of biblical and other early Jewish literature and material evidence.
This review panel welcomes Jason A. Staples for an introduction to his work, review presentations by Al Baumgarten, Jackie Wyse-Rhodes, Mark Leutcher, and Gabriele Boccaccini, followed by an open dialogue among participants.
The present volume explores the ever-evolving understandings and diverse manifestations of the Hebrew notion of torah in early Jewish and Christian literature and the different roles torah played within those communities, whether in Judea or in the Hellenistic and early Roman diaspora. This collection of essays is purposefully wide-ranging, with contributors exploring and rethinking some of the most basic scholarly assumptions and preconceptions about the nature of torah in light of new critical approaches and methodologies. Contributors include Gabriele Boccaccini, Francis Borchardt, Calum Carmichael, Federico Dal Bo, Lutz Doering, Oliver Dyma, Paula Fredriksen, Robert G. Hall, Magnar Kartveit, Anne Kreps, David Lambert, Michael Legaspi, Jason A. Myers, Juan Carlos Ossandón Widow, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, Patrick Pouchelle, Jeremy Punt, Michael L. Satlow, Joachim Schaper, William Schniedewind, Elisa Uusimäki, Jacqueline Vayntrub, Jonathan Vroom, James W. Watts, Benjamin G. Wright III, and Jason M. Zurawski.
Nangeroni Meeting ~ Naples 2023
DATE: 5-8 June 2023 THEME: "'Listen to the Sibyl in all things': Reconsidering the Sibylline Oracles" CHAIRS: Olivia Stewart Lester, Hindy Najman, and Gabriele Boccaccini SECRETARY: Joshua Scott
This conference will bring scholars of ancient Judaism, Classics, and early Christianity together for an interdisciplinary re-examination of the Jewish-Christian Sibylline Oracles. These texts, historically underappreciated by biblical scholars and classicists, are becoming a site of growing interest as both disciplines increasingly turn to texts outside of their own canons, more deeply integrate gender into the study of antiquity, further their exploration of the themes of authenticity and forgery, and reassess relationships between Jews, Christians, and their neighbors across the ancient Mediterranean world.
Papers are invited on the following topics:
The Figure of the Sibyl: What roles does gender play in the presentation of sibylline prophecy across the collection? What are the political and literary implications of taking up a sibyl as a figure for producing Jewish and Christian prophecy?
Sibylline Pseudepigraphy: How does the ongoing production of Sibylline Oracles relate to larger Hellenistic, Roman, Jewish, and Christian practices of pseudepigraphic writing? How do the Sibylline Oracles resemble or participate in Jewish prophetic pseudepigraphy, and how might they have been shaped by Hellenistic and Roman educational techniques?
Sibylline Interpretation: How do the Sibylline Oracles reinterpret Greek mythology, poetry, and philosophy, on the one hand, and Jewish and Christian scriptures, on the other? How has the language of the Sibylline Oracles been inflected by surrounding literature, including the Septuagint and Homeric epic?
Sibylline Oracles as Oracles: How do the Sibylline Oracles resemble or differ from other oracle collections in antiquity? Why might the oracle as a literary type have appealed to ancient Jewish and Christian sibylline writers?
Time in the Sibylline Oracles: How is time constructed within the collection: past, present, and future? In what ways do the Sibylline Oracles participate in the tropes of apocalyptic eschatology, and how do they transform them?
Judaism and Christianity in the Sibylline Oracles: What can we learn from the Sibylline Oracles about intellectual and literary interactions between Jews and Christians in antiquity? How do we make sense of the distinct Jewish and Christian layers of the text alongside the Christian preservation of these texts as a collection?
DATE: 26-29 June 2023 THEME: Enoch Studies in the 2020s
This conference will focus on the work of scholars who have done new research on 1 Enoch. We will devote one hour to the work of each scholar, with a 15-20 min presentation followed by a panel of 2-3 respondents. At the end we conclude with a wrap-up session.
During this event, we will also award the Enoch Seminar Lifetime Achievement Award to 7 participants.
Confirmed Participants:
Daniel Assefa
Kenneth Atkinson
Al Baumgarten
Gabriele Boccaccini
Kelly Coblentz Bautch
John Collins
Paula Fredriksen
David Hamidovic
Angela Harkins
Michael Langlois
Jim McGrath
Hindy Najman
Adele Reinhartz
Joshua Scott
In compliance with the European Regulation no. 679/2016 (GDPR) and the new regulations on data protection that came into force on 25 May 2018, we inform you that your personal data will be used exclusively for sending communications relating to the activities of the Enoch Seminar. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the editor at jason.vonehrenkrook@umb.edu.
