Daniel Picus

Hahhhh, I gave a similar rant to my students when we were talking about the Flavian amphitheater

Book Preview: What Animals Teach Us about Families — ANCIENT JEW REVIEW "One difference between my first book and my most recent one is that this time I let my freak flag fly. My freak vegan flag. What Animals Teach Us about Families is, covertly, a memoir about my…

New publication preview from Beth Berkowitz! Learn more of the vegan ethics that motivated What Animals Teach Us about Families: Kinship and Species in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature.

Besides everything else, James Van Der Beek was wonderful Don't Trust the B, a truly underrated sitcom

the *original* Bubo the mechanical owl from 1981 CLASH OF THE TITANS

it's his day #SuperbOwl

“A Clear Account of the Codex Simonideios:” Ideological Infrastructures of Biblical Vulnerability in the Nineteenth Century Andrew S. Jacobs | ORCID: 0000-0003-4886-6287 College of Arts and Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA andrew@andrewjacobs.org Received 24 June 2025 | Accepted 17 January 2026 | Published online Abstract Soon after Constantin Tischendorf (1815–74) publicized his “discovery” of the Codex Sinaiticus, notorious manuscript broker (and forger) Konstantinos Simonides stunned elite literary circles by announcing that Simonides himself had produced this biblical codex in his youth as a gift for the Russian tsar. Simonides claimed that his “Codex Simonideios” was illicitly being passed off as an ancient biblical codex after being mutilated and disfigured. I argue that this brief but explosive debate about manuscripts, forgeries, and “find” narratives produces a biblical text liable to revision and emendation, due to new discoveries or new methods, and so vulnerable to mischievous actors manipulating the possibilities of new discoveries and methods. The iterative process of attack and defense on display in this codicological debate has remained, in various guises, from collegial disagreement to scorched earth campaigns, an ideological component of critical biblical studies. Keywords Tischendorf – Simonides – Codex Sinaiticus – biblical criticism – manuscript studies

proofs!

thanks to @greggiven.bsky.social & @danielpicus.bsky.social for inviting me to their show!

imagining an ancient tiktoker writing the Name as "y*hw*h"

A recommendation: write with @greggiven.bsky.social, if you can! Truly, though, I can’t wait for this to be out in the world.

Ooooh yay fun email treat day lol

Renee Nicole Good, murdered by ICE, January 7, 2025.

"There was a young woman who'd take bread to the poor in a pitcher so the people of Sodom wouldn't see it. The matter was revealed, so they smeared her with honey, put her on a wall, and hornets came and devoured her... a woman killed for an act of kindness." (Talmud, Sanhedrin 109b, Steinsaltz ed.)

Iktr

Cecil stares blankly into the future

Happy caturday to one and all!

Oh come on, it got…a horrible Disney film

tweet that reads ‘keep seeing things about films releasing in America on December 25. Do Yanks really go to the cinema on Christmas Day?’

we have this exotic thing here that maybe hasn’t made it ‘across the pond’ yet it’s called jewish people

I have photos of Cecil under a dresser for that first day or two—Phoebe, on the other hand, immediately understood that she owned the house and made sure we all understood that.

HAS SHE ACCEPTED A KISS ON HER TINY FOREHEAD YET!!!!

😍😍😍

attn: @danielpicus.bsky.social

It's also like - the whole idea that if a practice is at all influenced by another practice, it is therefore not real is extremely ahistorical

A cast iron skillet oven-heated to 400F will give you wok hei, and allowed me to create a phad see ew that actually tastes correct.

Can’t believe I spent so long without your puns!

What!! I saw her in June and she didn’t mention it!!

😳

My most boring personality trait is that I am extremely grinchy about Christmas, and I love this.

Yeah even if you’re my mortal nemesis (Andrew) I’ll answer an email about the rabbis

You just don’t want to be unc AND chopped

RIP Martin Luther, you would have loved Papal Audience Black Friday deals.

Puff pastry by yours truly 😇

The soft launch of our house cider, “Goodman’s Own A to J ‘Proper Scrumpy’” was very successful.

You too!!

A small orange cat sits in an open suitcase

Cecil wants you to know he tried very hard to come with me.