Joshua Alfaro

Biblical scholars love to find an inscription that says “Only the LORD is God” and say “Actually, that presupposes polytheism.”

"wow, you study the Bible, so you must be a pastor or rabbi or something, right?"

Working with high-res medieval manuscript images?
Just published our practical IIIF-based solution that's transformed how we handle manuscript fragments in paratextuality research and manuscript studies overall
digital.csic.es/handle/10261...
#medievalmanuscripts #paratexts #IIIF #codicology #HHDD

Lecture (online and in-person): "Translation as imperialism: Late Greek Poetics and the Hebrew Bible" by Tim Whitmarsh, Durham University, Ritson Room, Department of Classics. 19 June 2025, 5:00pm. Register here: tinyurl.com/43mue34c

Publishers: a very simple thing you can do to sell more books is to put the Table of Contents on the website.

I discovered Esther among the Coca-Cola scrolls. I mean bottles.

"From Giant to Pocket Bibles: The Development of the Size of Biblical Manuscripts," 19 June 2025, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Romero Room, COVE 02.10, Sint-Michielsstraat 4, Leuven

Book talk (in-person and Zoom): The Book of Esther: Themes and Issues, edited by Kristin Joachimsen and Helge Bezold, MF Norwegian School of Theology, May 27, 11:30-12:00 CET mf.no/arrangemente...

Yes, May 6th this coming Tuesday.

Book panel (in-person): Scriptural Vitality: Rethinking Philology and Hermeneutics by Hindy Najman. 6 May, 3:30 Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. Registration: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Free online workshop: Framing Religious Art in UK Collections www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/framing-re...

This event is hosted by the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins (CSCO) at the School of Divinity. For those concerned with understanding Jewish society at the start of the first millennium CE, inscriptions provide an invaluable source of evidence. They can (and do) provide information of a type hardly ever found in literary texts from the period. Thanks to the proliferation of Jewish epigraphic corpora in recent decades and the emergence of epigraphically oriented web sites, we are now in a better position than ever before to access this type of evidence. Exploiting it responsibly, with skill and to the full, however, are different matters altogether. The purpose of this workshop is to provide help in these areas. Our main focus will be on Jewish inscriptions from the Early Christian period - both those from Judaea and those from key Diaspora communities. The workshop will be followed by a sandwich lunch in the Senate Room. Dr Williams is also offering to take any interested students to the National Museum of Scotland in the afternoon to look at inscriptions.

If you're in Edinburgh, this workshop on epigraphy with Dr Margaret Williams will be great:

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/getting-th...

Power and Leadership: Biblical, Anthropological, and Practical-Theological Perspectives, International and Interdisciplinary Symposium organized by Prof. Dr. Veronika Burz-Tropper & Dr. Armin Kummer, June 3-5 2025, KU Leuven, register by May 25 theo.kuleuven.be/en/research/...

Join us this 1st of May if you want to hear a little more on my work on Pamphilus' library at Caesarea !

the moment when you find out that there's a 4th Ezra.

you, a simpleton: Why would there be Greek letters on a product called “Pharaoh’s Revenge”??
me, an historian: It dates to the Ptolemaic era.

A poster with details for the book launch of The Limits of Erudition: The Old Testament in Post-Reformation Europe (Cambridge, 2024). For more information, see: https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series/early-modern-scholarship-and-religion

I’ll be launching my book The Limits of Erudition in Cambridge on 2 May 2025 with Simon Ditchfield. All very much welcome, whether in person or online! For further details see the poster attached and register for Zoom here: www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series...

#earlymodern

Book launch event (in-person): Panel discussion of Andrew Danielson's new book Edom in Judah: Trade, Migration, and Kinship in the Late Iron Age Southern Levant (Cambridge University Press, 2024), 5pm–7pm EST, May 5, 2025, Plimpton Room, Barker Center, Harvard University

Lecture series (online & in-person): Let’s talk about Paratexts, 6:00pm Wednesdays 30 April 2025 – 23 September 2026 Chester Beatty Library, Dublin @chesterbeatty.bsky.social chesterbeatty.ie/exhibitions/...

More Kafka + Hebrew: two sets of playing cards I found in Prague years ago, one set featuring Kafka and Milena Jesenská and another with the Maharal of Prague.

A dictionary of Greek and Latin legal terms in rabbinic literature : Sperber, Daniel : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive 226 pages ; 25 cm

פְּסִילוּס in Leviticus Rabbah comes from the Greek word ψελλός and it means inarticulate, but it doesn't come from the Septuagint. Rabbinic literature sometimes uses Greek words. Sperber wrote a dictionary of Greek and Latin Words in Rabbinic Literature archive.org/details/dict...

Conference (Zoom and in-person): Quale ebraicità di Gesù dopo J.P. Meier? April 4, 2025, 9:00-19:00, Pontificia Facoltà Teologica di Sicilia www.fatesi.it/eventi/quale...

There was a Johannine community, but it was 18th century scholars named Johann.

Kafka writing a letter in Hebrew. Note that he didn’t know how to write “Europe” in modern Hebrew, so he wrote it out phonetically and then in brackets wrote “laugh not.” Draft of letter to Puah Ben-Tovim, 1923, on exhibit now at the Morgan Library, NYC.

Thanks, I was totally unaware! Very interesting.

we found a Complutensian Polyglot Bible (1514-1517) at the New York Public Library.

1513 Ge’ez Psalter, printed for Johann Potken, the first printed Ge’ez book (Morgan Library, NYC).

5 aprile 2025, Giornata di studio: Il corpo nella Bibbia, sede ISSR via della Conciliazione, 6 Siracusa

now until August 10th, 2025 at the Jewish Museum, NYC: The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/...