Textual Identity in Jewish and Christian Antiquity

RELIGION 1169 Subject & Catalog Number

Modern concepts of "book" and "authorship" often do not fit much of our ancient Jewish and Christian evidence for literary production. In many cases--from biblical and NT literature to the Dead Sea Scrolls to LXX to Old Testament pseudepigrapha to New Testament apocrypha to Hekhalot literature--our evidence resists the limitation of "authorial creativity" to one closed and complete moment of composition, let alone a single "author," instead reflecting processes more akin to what we call redaction, compilation, anthologizing, etc. The same units can be repeatedly reconfigured into new orders and structures. Translations can shift a text's identity or setting. Excerpts can sometimes take on a life of their own. Anthologies can have orchestrating logics of meaning-making beyond their contexts. This advanced seminar explores these questions through a series of test-cases, with the aim of bringing multiple corpora and special subfields into productive conversation. Patterned on a laboratory, there will be many student-led textual discussions, collaborative in-class work with primary sources, etc. Enrollment for this course is limited and by application; interested students should email the instructor outlining their ancient language background and any relevant previous coursework as well as describing one text or textual tradition on which they would like to focus in this context.

Students should have at least an intermediate level of language training in at least one (and ideally at least two) of the following: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Aramaic/Syriac. Since this is an advanced seminar, some basic background will be presumed.