Ancient Afterlives

In this episode we - Joseph Scales and Charlotte Trombin - interview Sara Parks, Shayna Sheinfeld and Meredith Warren about their new book - Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean. We are so grateful for their time and hope you enjoy the interview. Sara Parks is Assistant Professor in Biblical Studies (New Testament) at Dublin City University, Ireland. She researches gender in late Second-Temple Judaism and early Christianity. Parks is the author of Gender in the Rhetoric of Jesus: Women in Q (2019). Shayna Sheinfeld is a Fellow at the Frankel Institute for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, USA. Her current project examines diversity in Jewish leadership by challenging androcentric ideas of authority in both ancient sources and contemporary scholarship. Sheinfeld recently edited Gender and Second-Temple Judaism (2020). Meredith J. C. Warren is Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, UK, where she is Director of the Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies. Author of Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature (2019), Warren researches shared cultural understandings of eating in ancient narratives. Bibliography: Ahmed, Sara. Complaint! Durham: Duke University Press, 2021. Brooten, Bernadette. Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues. Atlanta: Scholars, 2020. (This book is online open access.) Conway, Colleen. Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman Masculinity. Oxford: OUP, 2008. Ehrensperger, Kathy and Shayna Sheinfeld, eds. Gender and Second-Temple Judaism. Lanham: Lexington Fortress, 2020. Junior, Nyasha. An Introduction to Womanist Biblical Interpretation. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015. Kateusz, Ally. Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019. (This book is online open access.) Kraemer, Ross Shepard. Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Lefkowitz, Mary R. and Maureen B. Fant. Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 1992. Parks, Sara. “‘The Brooten Phenomenon’: Moving Women from the Margins in Second Temple and New Testament Scholarship.” The Bible & Critical Theory 15.1 (2019): 46-64. Schussler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation. Boston: Beacon, 1992. Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies 1.2 (2020) The Bible: Transgender and Genderqueer Perspectives

13 Jan 20221h 26min

We are now on a short hiatus. Season 2 will arrive January 2022. A bonus episode will arrive in the near future where the team has a chat about the experience of recording season 1. Thanks for listening!

2 Des 20211min

This week's episode, and the last main episode of Season 1, is a special roundtable discussion with various scholars working on aspects related to gender and biblical studies. Our guests include Karina Atudosie, Eleanor Vivian, Charlotte Trombin, Will Moore and Emily Allsopp. The roundtable is hosted by Katherine Gwyther. There is a content warning for this episode as we discuss topics related to sexual violence, rape and still-birth. Karina recently completed her MA by Research at the University of Birmingham with a thesis looking at hegemonic power in the Song of Songs. She is currently examining how queenship is constructed in the Hebrew Bible. Her twitter handle is @KAtudosie Ellie is an AHRC-funded PhD Candidate at the University of Birmingham researching the function of metaphor in the representations and conceptualisations of disabled bodies in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ellie is also a contributor/team member at the Ancient Afterlives academic podcast. Charlotte is an SWWDTP (AHRC) funded PhD candidate at Exeter University researching military metaphor usage in global Neo-Muscular Christian men’s groups. Her research interests include biblical violence, feminist hermeneutics, the theology of Veganism, Ecotheology, and the intersection of masculinity, the Bible, and nationalism. Charlotte is an honorary Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence, and a contributor/team member at the Ancient Afterlives academic podcast. Will is training for priesthood in the Church of England at Westcott House, Cambridge and his first book, exploring the Bible, toxic masculinity, and the Christian faith, will be published with SCM Press in 2022. He writes broadly in the areas of gender, masculinity, sexuality, and violence, and how they intersect with Christianity and the Bible. You can find him on Twitter @willmoorewill Emily is studying for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, researching women’s bodies in the prophetic metaphors. Her research interests include feminist criticism, sexual and maternal imagery, sexual violence, and depictions of pregnancy and birth. Thanks for listening!

18 Nov 20211h 26min

This week is the second of a two-part interview with Ingrid Breilid Gimse, hosted by Katherine Gwyther and Michael DeVries. Ingrid is a theologian doing her PhD at the University of Agder in Norway. She is a research fellow in the research project "The Lying Pen of Scribes: Manuscript Forgeries, Digital Imaging, and Critical Provenance Research." Her PhD project concerns the publication history of the official publication series of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD). The Lying Pen project is on Facebook (https://facebook.com/lyingpen) and has a formal web site (https://lyingpen.uia.no) and a more informal blog (https://lyingpen.com). Ingrid's twitter handle is @IngridBreilidG. Ingrid's article (Gimse, I. B. [2020]. The Post-2002 Fragments' Dependency on Modern Editions of the Hebrew Bible. Revue de Qumran, 32[1]: 115, 57-77) can be found here: https://uia.brage.unit.no/uia-xmlui/handle/11250/2784067 Bibliography: Dennis Mizzi and Jodi Magness, "Provenance vs. Authenticity: An Archaeological Perspective on the Post-2002 'Dead Sea Scrolls-Like' Fragments," Dead Sea Discoveries 26.2 (2019):135-169 DOI:10.1163/15685179-12341503. Kipp Davis, Ira Rabin, Ines Feldman, Myriam Krutzsch, Hasia Rimon, Årstein Justnes, Torleif Elgvin, and Michael Langlois, "Nine Dubious 'Dead Sea Scrolls' Fragments from the Twenty-First Century," Dead Sea Discoveries 24 (2017): 189–228. Kipp Davis, "Caves of Dispute: Patterns of Correspondence and Suspicion in the Post-2002 'Dead Sea Scrolls' Fragments*," Dead Sea Discoveries 24 (2017): 229–270. Eibert C. J. Tigchelaar, "A Provisional List of Unprovenanced, Twenty-First Century, Dead Sea Scrolls-like Fragments," Dead Sea Discoveries 24 (2017): 173–188. Stephen A. Reed, "What is a Fragment?," The Journal of Jewish Studies 45 (1994): 123–125. Stephen A. Reed, "Find-Sites of the Dead Sea Scrolls," Dead Sea Discoveries 14.2 (2007): 199–221. Gerrie Snyman, “The African and Western Hermeneutics Debate: Mimesis, The Book of Esther, and Textuality,” OTE 25 (2012): 657–684. Thanks for listening!

4 Nov 202136min

This week is the first of a two-part interview with Ingrid Breilid Gimse, hosted by Katherine Gwyther and Michael DeVries. Ingrid is a theologian doing her PhD at the University of Agder in Norway. She is a research fellow in the research project "The Lying Pen of Scribes: Manuscript Forgeries, Digital Imaging, and Critical Provenance Research." Her PhD project concerns the publication history of the official publication series of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD). The Lying Pen project is on Facebook (https://facebook.com/lyingpen) and has a formal web site (https://lyingpen.uia.no) and a more informal blog (https://lyingpen.com). Ingrid's twitter handle is @IngridBreilidG. Ingrid's article (Gimse, I. B. [2020]. The Post-2002 Fragments' Dependency on Modern Editions of the Hebrew Bible. Revue de Qumran, 32[1]: 115, 57-77) can be found here: https://uia.brage.unit.no/uia-xmlui/handle/11250/2784067 Bibliography: Dennis Mizzi and Jodi Magness, "Provenance vs. Authenticity: An Archaeological Perspective on the Post-2002 'Dead Sea Scrolls-Like' Fragments," Dead Sea Discoveries 26.2 (2019):135-169 DOI:10.1163/15685179-12341503. Kipp Davis, Ira Rabin, Ines Feldman, Myriam Krutzsch, Hasia Rimon, Årstein Justnes, Torleif Elgvin, and Michael Langlois, "Nine Dubious 'Dead Sea Scrolls' Fragments from the Twenty-First Century," Dead Sea Discoveries 24 (2017): 189–228. Kipp Davis, "Caves of Dispute: Patterns of Correspondence and Suspicion in the Post-2002 'Dead Sea Scrolls' Fragments*," Dead Sea Discoveries 24 (2017): 229–270. Eibert C. J. Tigchelaar, "A Provisional List of Unprovenanced, Twenty-First Century, Dead Sea Scrolls-like Fragments," Dead Sea Discoveries 24 (2017): 173–188. Stephen A. Reed, "What is a Fragment?," The Journal of Jewish Studies 45 (1994): 123–125. Stephen A. Reed, "Find-Sites of the Dead Sea Scrolls," Dead Sea Discoveries 14.2 (2007): 199–221. Gerrie Snyman, “The African and Western Hermeneutics Debate: Mimesis, The Book of Esther, and Textuality,” OTE 25 (2012): 657–684. Thanks for listening!

21 Okt 202144min

In this week's episode, Simeon Whiting and Michael DeVries talk about their research in this edition of Coffee Chat. We apologise for Mike's audio quality, but we didn't want to lose this fascinating conversation. Simeon has just completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham. His thesis applies trauma theory and collective memory studies to the Reed Sea story. He is interested in trauma, masculinities and how they can shed light on biblical texts, and he has also published work on Exodus commentaries and their curiously narrow views on how the Pentateuch was composed. Alongside his research, Simeon works part-time as a writer, editor and tutor. He likes long-distance running and good coffee. His Twitter handle is: @simeonwhiting Michael is completing his PhD, also at the University of Birmingham, and an Adjunct Professor at Azusa Pacific University in California. His research is focused on the War Scroll and related material known from the Dead Sea Scrolls. He examines questions of ritual, purification and defilement in these texts. He is a contributor and the co-general editor of the conference proceedings volume Ezra-Nehemiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls (SBL Press, forthcoming) and a contributor to the edited volume Purity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity: Proceedings from the 10th Schwerte Qumran Meeting (Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming). His Twitter handle is: @mike_devries Thanks for listening!

7 Okt 202150min

This week’s episode of Ancient Afterlives is slightly different! In this episode of coffee chat, Joseph Scales and Katherine Gwyther discuss what they’ve been reading recently. They chat about everything from J. Cheryl Exum’s revised edition of Fragmented Women and being a feminist in biblical studies, to the recent biblical film ‘Mary Magdalene’ (2018) and representing biblical voices accurately. Katherine Gwyther is a third year PhD student at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on Exodus and utopia. You can find her on twitter: @katgwyther. Joseph Scales is an independent scholar. His research is on late Second Temple Judaism. His twitter handle is: @josephdscales Short bibliography: Exum, J. Cheryl. Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narratives. Second Edition. London: T&T Clark, 2015. Guest, Deryn. Beyond Feminist Biblical Studies. The Bible in the Modern World 47. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012. Svärd, Saana. Women and Power in Neo-Assyrian Palaces. State Archives of Assyria Studies 23. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015.

9 Sep 202141min

This episode is hosted by Joseph Scales and Eleanor Vivian. We discuss the work behind an open call for papers in a special issue of the Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies (JIBS), edited by Susannah Rees and Ellena Lyell. We talk with them about how they organised this issue and the broader themes they seek to engage with in the issue itself. Susannah Rees is about to go into the third year of her PhD at King’s College London. Her research focuses on cosmetics in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East more broadly. You can find her on twitter: @ReesSusy Dr Ellena Lyell is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. Her research sits at the intersection of biblical studies, Classics, anthropology, and ancient Near Eastern studies. Her forthcoming monograph analyses the material, cultural and theological significance of colour in the Hebrew Bible. Her twitter handle is: @ellenaclyell You can find the call for papers for Unnamed and Uncredited: Anonymous Figures in the Biblical World here: https://jibs.group.shef.ac.uk/unnamed-and-uncredited-anonymous-figures-in-the-biblical-world/ Short Bibliography: Reinhartz, Adele. “Anonymous Women and the Collapse of the Monarchy: A Study in Narrative Technique.” In A Feminist Companion to Samuel and Kings, ed. Athalya Brenner (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 43–67. Meyers, Carol L., Toni Craven, and Ross Shepard Kraemer. Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000). Thanks for listening!

26 Aug 202132min