Michael DeVries

Email notice for article: Responsibility for Murder: The Background of Judith’s Legal Argumentation

My latest (published) article “Responsibility for Murder: The Background of Judith’s Legal Argumentation” Journal of Biblical Literature 144.4 is now available. I spoke about the argument with the folk at MF Norwegian School of Theology (recorded and available in the link): youtu.be/tN_6LwMqOVs?...

Very exciting to see the new book of Leuven colleague Hanneke van der Schoor has now appeared, who uses Dead Sea Scroll evidence about the mysterious figure of Qahat to think through modern practices of editing and textual classification (brill.com/display/titl...; @dgb-relbibtheo.bsky.social).

Pretty much spot on.

A stack of books featuring Eddie S. Glaude's We Are The Leaders We Have Been Looking For, Violence Over the Land by Blackhawk, Cash on the Block by Beryl Satter, Inherited Inequality by Christina J. Cross, What is Free Speech? by Fara Dabhoiwala, Traveling Black by Mia Bay, and Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope by Brandon M. Terry

This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we're celebrating the authors, activists, and historians who have championed and enriched our understanding of civil rights and justice for all. For a limited time, save 25% on these titles with the code MLK25—keep reading below.

A Gate to Heaven - Reading Religion Etienne Nodet proposes that Qumran functioned as a pilgrimage site for the Essenes from the 1st century BC onwards. Nodet suggests that the Essenes were scat...

My review of Étienne Nodet's *A Gate to Heaven: Essenes, Qumran: Origins and Heirs* is now live on @readingreligion.bsky.social. Check it out and let me know what think!

readingreligion.org/978056770971...

Postdoc Position: Early Christian Studies | Radboud University Do you want to work as a Postdoctoral Researcher: Early Christian Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies? Check our vacancy!

Please share widely! 3-year Postdoc in Early Christian Studies. Deadline: 8 March. Let me know if you have any questions or want to nominate a colleague.

Some important new government policy that Native Americans might be interested in:

And so a new semester begins. Teaching a new-ish Hebrew Bible survey class. Using material from other courses I have taught so not too rough of a prep!

ICYMI: Texas A&M admin is requiring a faculty member to either remove *Plato* from their syllabus for being too woke

or

be reassigned to teach “Ethics for Engineers” at 8am

📢 #OpenAccess 🔓 Objects, Qualities, and Attributes as Deities in the Ancient Near East 🪔 By Jennifer Singletary
A cross-cultural study of near-eastern texts from the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE, applying research in cognitive science of religion and prototype theory.
🔗 brill.com/display/ti...

Scholars, please cite yourselves when relevant! You are creating a body of work, a world even, and we want to know where all the pieces are, and how they fit together.

Not to mention Grok “apologizing” in the first person!

Was Christmas moved to eclipse Rome's Saturnalia festival? Ancient scribes often calculated Christ’s birth as falling in early spring.

I didn't want to write this piece on Christmas stealing from pagan festivals because I have always thought that was a myth. BUT in researching it I realized something interesting 1/6

www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...

featuring: @praxeas.bsky.social @zafulotus.bsky.social

Chorizo breakfast burrito (with beans). Still works to this day!

Daniel K. Falk and Rodney A. Werline, "Prayer in the Ancient World Vol.1" (Brill, 2027)

Wonderful interview with Daniel Falk on the upcoming three volume *Prayer in the Ancient World* with @degruyterbrill.bsky.social

open.spotify.com/episode/3ES1...

Agreed. Been giving serious thought to going back to in-class, hard copy, blue book exams this spring.

The reality for the other students is that they are no longer enrolled in a psychology class. It is a Psychology plus My Personal Christian Beliefs class.

Every class at OU is now a My Personal Christian Beliefs class.

Every time any student raises such beliefs, instructors have to accept them.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

Text that reads, “Dr. Michael, please get back to me when you see this. My puppy seems to be getting worse. What should I do?”

I mean, I have been reading up on exorcistic texts lately, but really???

“When I teach about ancient letter writing, one of the things I emphasize is the precariousness of sending letters any great distance in the Roman world. Without an organized postal service, the delivery of letters could be quite haphazard.”

Congrats to @rlharris.bsky.social! Can’t wait to read it!!

And this is how everything dies. We'll stop reading and citing anything new because of the ubiquity of AI slop. Our students won't be exposed to new stuff through our classes unless we can somehow verify that it's been written by an actual human being. Knowledge creation grinds to a halt. Not great.

My book, _An Exotic Apocalypse: Revelation and the Appropriation of Judaism in the Roman Empire_, is officially forthcoming with Penn State University Press. It'll be the inaugural book in their _Religions in the Ancient Mediterranean_ series.

#post2002DSS

Cover image of Anthony Giambrone's *The Bible and the Priesthood: Priestly Participation in the One Sacrifice for Sins* (Baker Academic)

Submitted a review of Anthony Giambrone's *The Bible and the Priesthood* for CBQ. Fascinating read. @catholicbiblical.bsky.social

Among the Qumran manuscripts, several enigmatic scripts have been discovered. While Cryptic A was deciphered in 1955, Cryptic B has until now remained undeciphered. In this new study, Emmanuel Oliveiro offers the first decipherment of two Cryptic B manuscripts!

Read more ➡️ brill.com/view/journal...

Congratulations, Michael! Looking forward to reading it!

We are delighted to announce that the volume, Performance, Space, and Time in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Papers from the Eleventh Meeting of the IOQS, Zürich 2022 has been published by Brill as volume 154 of the STDJ series. Find it here: brill.com/edcollbook/t... - Thank you to all our contributors!

Congrats, Dan!

This is actually a good example of why the customer model is wrong.

I wouldn't have chosen poetry writing, but UNC made me take a class. And it absolutely made me become a much better writer, with an eye to concision and an ear now trained to the rhythm of words. I'm a better historian as a result.