The Jewish Studies Book Club: The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity

Using familiar sources, such as the Psalms, Ben Sira, and Jubilees, Eva Mroczek tells an unfamiliar story about sacred writing not bound in the Bible. In listening to the way ancient writers describe their own literature—rife with their own metaphors and narratives about writing—The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity (2016) also argues for greater suppleness in our own scholarly imagination, no longer bound by modern canonical and bibliographic assumptions. Join us for this event featuring Mroczek in conversation with two scholars of ancient Judaism, Karina Martin Hogan and Karen Stern.

The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity was a winner of the 2017 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise; the 2017 George A. and Jean S. DeLong Book History Book Prize, and a finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association of Jewish Studies.

About the Speakers
Mroczek is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of numerous articles about the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the history of Jews and Christians in antiquity.

Martin Hogan is an associate professor of Biblical studies and ancient Judaism in the theology department at Fordham University. She is the author of Theologies in Conflict in 4 Ezra: Wisdom Debate and Apocalyptic Solution (2008), and the co-editor of Pedagogy in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (2017) and The “Other” in Second Temple Judaism (2011).

Stern is a professor of history at Brooklyn College. She is the author of Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity (2018) and has conducted archaeological research throughout the Mediterranean region, including Petra, Sepphoris, Pylos, and Athens.

The Jewish Studies Book Club is a joint initiative of The CUNY-Graduate Center and Fordham University’s Center for Jewish Studies.