Dear all,
It is my pleasure to invite you to the next *online *Ancient World Seminar
on the 18th of May. The online environment can be accessed from 16.00
onwards via the following link:
https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/c0a4a27b95a54e049a343ae308fe8209. During the
lecture, please turn off your microphone and camera. After the lecture, a
student will give a short response and open the discussion by asking some
questions. After this, there will be time for your remarks and questions.
If you wish to contribute to this discussion, use the 'raise hand' button.
The moderator will give you time to ask your question which can either be
done via the chat or 'live' by turning on your audio and video.
On *Tuesday 18 May 2021, prof. dr. Jutta Jokiranta *(University of
Helsinki), 16.15-18.00, will give a lecture on:
*'**How to Think of God? Anthropomorphism and Agency in the Dead Sea
Scrolls**'*
*Abstract*
This paper begins to address the question of divine conceptualizations in
the Scrolls and explore what we might learn from recent cognitive
approaches. The Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls are often approached
with the assumption that they reveal a gradual but steady development of
“monotheism.” This assumption can be nuanced by analysing how people
conceptualize divine entities: To think of one omnipresent and omnipotent
God and to make distinctions to other beings as ‘not-God’ is not
cognitively easy. A related question is if anthropomorphic depictions of
God came to be avoided, as has been suggested in relation to Greek
translations of some Hebrew Bible passages. Yet no consensus exist as to
how widespread phenomenon this may have been. I will argue that, instead of
seeking an anti-anthropomorphic tendency in the Scrolls, they may be
successfully approached for other tendencies that help us to understand how
thinking of God(s) mattered and was facilitated.
*About the speaker*
Jutta Jokiranta is Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and Cognate
Studies at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Theology. She defended
her doctoral thesis Identity on a Continuum: Constructing and Expressing
Sectarian Social Identity in Qumran Serakhim and Pesharim in 2005, and
earned her Doctoral Degree in Theology at the University of Helsinki in
2006. Her special field within Hebrew Bible Studies is Qumran (Dead Sea
Scrolls) studies and Second Temple Judaism. Her research interests include
social changes within late Second Temple Judaism, ritual studies, social
identity construction in ancient religious movements, ethnicity,
archaeology of Hellenistic and Roman Palestine, cognitive science of
religion, sociology of sectarianism in early Judaism and early
Christianity, and collective memory and transmission of traditions.
--
Evelien de Graaf
ReMa-student Classical, Medieval and Early Modern studies.
on behalf of the CRASIS team
University of Groningen
CRASIS is the Groningen institute for Interdisciplinary Studies in Culture,
Religion and Society of the Ancient World. Follow CRASIS on Facebook
<https://www.facebook.com/rug.crasis> or find out more about us on
www.rug.nl/crasis.
