Torah and Jewish Identity in Second Temple Judaism
Wed, February 12, 2014 • 6:30 PM • AVAYA Auditoritum (POB 2.302)
Ancient Near East Lecture Series presents John Collins Ph.D.
According to Second Maccabees, during the persecution by Antiochus Epiphanes in the Maccabean era, a man could not even admit that he was a Ioudaios. Dr. Collins will explore precisely what a loudaios was and what exactly, then, a person could not admit to be. More specifically he will examine how the Torah of Moses came to be definitive for Judean identity in the Second Temple period, and the shifting ways in which the Torah’s significance was understood.
John Collins is Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale University Divinity School. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and holds an honorary D. Litt. from University College in Dublin. He has published widely on the subjects of apocalypticism, wisdom, Hellenistic Judaism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls.