Marc Brettler and Amy-Jill Levine join us to discuss the Jewish Annotated New Testament: what it means to have a “Jewish” version of the NT, how we can effectively understand the NT within its historical and social context, and why all this matters in terms of scholarly developments as well as the relationship between Judaism and Christianity today.
Continue readingFor this episode, we are joined by Robert Alter to discuss his monumental translation of the Bible. Robert Alter has been translating the Bible for more than twenty years, beginning with his translation of Genesis published in 1996. It’s really a tremendous achievement, as he brings his own particular sensibilities to the project as a literary scholar. We’re excited to share our fascinating conversation about the meaning of translation, the significance of Bible translations in particular, and what we get from a translation of the Bible that emphasizes its literary character and sensibilities.
Continue readingListen to a roundtable discussion on the materiality of Jewish culture with B Buncic, David Sclar, Nathan Mastnjack, and Jason Lustig, who in 2018-19 have been Harry Starr Fellows in Judaica at Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. The theme this year has been the history of the Jewish book, and we come together to discuss why books matter in Jewish culture and why we should look at the material objects, writing platforms, and physical form in addition to the contents that they contain.
Continue readingDavid Stern joins the podcast to discuss his book The Jewish Bible: A Material History and the meaning of the history of the Jewish Bible as a material object: How the Bible has served as a symbol, how its form has stood in for struggles over ownership of the Bible, what this all tells us about the relationship between Jews and the world in which they lived, and ultimately what the future of digitization holds in store for the Bible.
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