Philo of Alexandria Blog

Attending the SBL Annual Meeting is also - believe it or not - to attend some lectures. But, being one of those who do not have English as my mother tongue, my understanding and profit of some of the lectures are sometimes not as good as I would like. There are many reasons for this; in addition to my own understanding of the language, some presenters are speaking much too fast, and what is my main point here; I do think it is somewhat old fashioned to have a 40 minute session of listening to a scholar speed-reading his paper. As we do live in the 21. century there should be more ways of making one's ideas available.

• Some lecturers do hand out a sheet of paper with texts they refer to, but just quite a few (of those I attended) did hand out an outline of the lecture. I would even ask for a handout with the main arguments of the paper. Using a program like FinePrint makes it passible to decrease the size and thus print several pages on a A4 piece of paper. That would help the audience to follow the arguments, and thus also to improve the debate.
• I would also prefer that more presenters were using programs like PowerPoint or similar visualizing devices to enhance the appropriation of the paper.
• Webpages are also nice places to publish the papers in advance. Especially now as the SBL Seminar Paper book is no more to be published, this would be a way to do it. And there sure might be other ways.

Mark Goodacre has also some - as so often - very pertinent comments concerning the old fashioned way of presenting papers:

One of the striking differences about the CARG in comparison to many of the other sections is that speakers rarely actually read out papers. Because they are illustration-rich, they tend to "speak to" their topic. Now I've been wondering recently why it is that so many academics read out their papers so often -- it's the standard. I am toying with the idea of not reading out my own paper to the Mark Group tomorrow. My reason for wondering about this is that there is something absurd about writing out a paper and then reading out one's own voice, sometimes stumbling over the very words that one has written. Why not just talk about it? We all do this when we lecture all the time -- very few scholars these days read out lectures to undergraduates, do they?
I've asked a few people about this business of reading out papers and why it is the norm. One colleage said to me that it is for him a question of timing. Another said that it was fear. It was all about the importance of making sure that one does not say anything erroneous or silly. I think that that may be the best reason I have heard yet, but I wonder whether it's sufficient. I would say that audiences are sympathetic to people who give a paper extempore and understand that one is not going strictly on the record with every tiny nuance of one's speech.I do think this may be a way to do it, at least it some cases. But in papers of a very technical nature, with lot of references to texts, words, terms, etc etc it might be a problem. But by combining some of the more recent technical devises we have, I see very few reasons to continue speed-reading a 40 minute paper of complicated arguments. Don't you agree?

My favorite place at the SBL Annual Meetings, and for many others too; the book marked. It is great to have so many publishers of books and software gathered at one place, to be able to see what is new, have a look into the books and programs and decide what to buy or not. Usually I buy too much. This year I restricted myself to 12 books; but I have a Norwegian colleague who said he had bought about 40. I wish it was me, but I have neither the money, nor the suitcase available to carry that load home....

SBL Annual Meeting 2004 is now history, and so are my travel problems getting there in time. But KLM made no good impressions on me. First, on Thursday my flight was cancelled; second, on Friday, we arrived too late in Amsterdam to get on the plane for San Antonio, and I had to stay overnight there; third, I almost missed the connecting flight in Detroit on Saturday. I did, however, get on the plane, not because of good timing by KLM/NW, but because of my desperate running to the gate... I'm not going to use KLM for some time to come...

Now I am on a family visit on Long Island, New York, relaxing and getting ready for Thanksgiving on Thursday and some golfing on Friday. At home it is half a meter snow, so there will be no golfing in quite a while.
Saturday I'm leaving for Norway, and finally, on Wednesday morning life will be back to normal, back to work......

I am very happy to be able to present this posting on my blog today, and thus join the gratulations to a great philonist:

To Greg Sterling on his 50th Birtday!

Philonists all over the world will wish to extend to Greg Sterling their warmest congratulations on his 50th birthday, which he celebrates (?) on November 21st while attending the Society of Biblical Literature's Annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas. Many will know Greg as the hugely energetic and enthusiastic editor of The Studia Philonica Annual and the Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series. Of course, these projects are only two among the many research, teaching and administrative activities in which he is engaged. Theoretically it is possible that Greg may wish to slow down a bit as he enters his 50's, but those who know him well consider this very unlikely. We wish you a wonderful day, Greg, and many more happy years doing the things you love to do.

David Runia, on behalf of his many friends.

If you are among those who wants to see Greg at the SBL Annual Meeting, it may be a hard time of hunting; but according to the program, he is supposed to be present at the following events:

S21-60: Formation of Luke-Acts 11/21/2004 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Ballroom C-2 - San Antonio Convention Center
Theme: Intertextuality in Luke-Acts
Gregory E. Sterling, University of Notre Dame, Presiding

S22-71: Philo of Alexandria 11/22/2004 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Room #214A - San Antonio Convention Center
Theme: The Worlds of Logos Theology II
David Winston, Berkeley, CA, Presiding
Assan Yadin, Rutgers University
Philo: Between the Logos Didaskalos and the Nomos Didaskalos (30 min)
Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer, Wiesbaden, Germany
Creation and the Logos in Philo and John: Eternity Meets History (30 min)
Gregory E. Sterling, University of Notre Dame
"The Second God": The Exegetical Traditions of Genesis 1:1–5 in Philo and John (30 min)
Thomas H. Tobin, Loyola University of Chicago
The World of Thought in the Philippians Hymn (Philippians 2:5–11) (30 min)
Break (5 min)
Business Meeting (25 min)

Though he is not listed in the program, you will surely also find him at S22-22: 11/22/2004 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Philo of Alexandria
Room: Room #214A - San Antonio Convention Center
Theme: The Worlds of Logos Theology I

Eerdmans has informed the editors of The Philo Index. A Complete Greek Word Index to the Writings of Philo of Alexandria (Borgen, Fuglseth and Skarsten, Eerdmans/Brill 2000) that due to tax demands the publisher has decided to withdraw the last copies from the market.

Within short time, then, the index will no longer be available, apart perhaps from Amazon.com.

There are certains plan to publish a new index electronically, see the Norwegian Philo Concordance Project Home Page for details.

Louis H. Feldman has analysed biblical violence according to Philo, Pseudo-Philo and Josephus.

Feldman’s book is reviewed by Zev Garber in the latest RBL http:www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp

According to Garber Feldman’s says that:
"Philo...labored in the vineyeard of Socrates and Plato, raised questions of theodicy and resolved seeming paradoxes between the yoke of the Torah and Hellenistic thought by his creative and innovative method of allegory."

"For Philo and Josephus, the preoccupation of Israel and Gentiles is not essentially a problem of history but attitude."

The reviewer thinks Feldman’s interpretations of nonrabbinic exegetes are novel, but he questions Feldman’s approach in relation to some essential hermeneutical issues: "There is little attempt to show how divinely sanctioned criteria relates to modern religious radicalism".


Cf. the monograph by the editor of this blog, Torrey Seland Seland: Establishment Violence in Philo and Luke. A Study of Non–Conformity to the Torah and Jewish Vigilante Reactions. Leiden, Brill 1995.

Feldman, Louis H.
"Remember Amalek!": Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible, According to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=4241

I am happy to be able to attend the SBL Annual Meeting this year too; this time in San Antonio Texas. I've never been to Texas before; hope it will be worth the trip.

I'll be leaving my hometown Volda Friday Nov 12th, spending some days of vacation in southern Norway before heading for San Antonio Nov 18. Hence my blogging oppourtunities will be limited in the next two weeks; I hope to do som from the US, if I can manage to get my laptop up and going on the Internet.
In the mean time, perhaps Kåre has some more postings on Philo.

This announcement was copied from the Ioudaios Discussion List, as it might be of interests to Philonists too.

A Covenant to The People, A Light To The Nations:
Universalism, Exceptionalism, And The Problem Of Chosenness In Jewish Thought

See http://jewishthought.mcmaster.ca)
and Annette Yoshiko Reed (http://www.annettereed.com)

COLLOQUIUM - May 18-20, 2005

The Colloquium will consider the ongoing reflection about the concept of Israel as a "light to the nations" (Isa 42:6; 49:6) in ancient, medieval, and modern Jewish thought, together with its relevance for Christianity and contemporary philosophy and theory. This and other biblical attempts to reconcile the election of Israel with the universality of Israel's God will
serve as a starting point for exploring the range of ways in which Jews past and present have negotiated the nature and boundaries of their collective identities (ethnic, religious, cultural, political) in relation to other nations and peoples. Inquiries into the historical development of concepts such as chosenness, Jewish exceptionalism, and Jewishness, and the history of
their reinterpretation in different socio-cultural contexts, will be combined with philosophical and theoretical explorations of their continued contemporary relevance.

Speakers include Idit Dobbs-Weinstein (Vanderbilt), Willi Goetschel (U of Toronto), Dana Hollander (McMaster), Andrew Jacobs (UC Riverside), Joel Kaminsky (Smith College), David Novak (U of Toronto), Gesine Palmer (FESt, Heidelberg), Randi Rashkover (York College of Pennsylvania), Annette Yoshiko Reed (McMaster), Kenneth Reinhard (UCLA), Peter Sch fer (Princeton/Berlin), Yossef Schwartz (Tel Aviv University), and Susan Shapiro (U of Massachusetts, Amherst)

In the coming months, further information (e.g., paper titles, abstracts, schedule) will be posted at http://jewishthought.mcmaster.ca

PRE-COLLOQUIUM SEMINAR, May 17, 2005

This special daylong Seminar, geared toward graduate students in Jewish Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and related fields, will involve intensive discussion of key texts on the theme of chosenness, including classical works such as the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic literature and works by modern and contemporary authors. Sessions will be led by Dana Hollander, Joel
Kaminsky, David Novak, and Annette Yoshiko Reed.

Seminar participants will be selected through application and will be granted stipends to cover the costs of travel, meals, and accommodations during both the Seminar and the Colloquium. Interested students should submit a CV and a letter detailing their relevant academic background and research interests to Dr. Hollander (danahol@mcmaster.ca) by DECEMBER 15, 2004. The Seminar is geared towards graduate students but open to post-docs and other interested scholars.

FURTHER INFORMATION

These events are the first in a series to be sponsored by the recently established Canada Research Chair in Modern Jewish Thought at McMaster University. McMaster's Department of Religious Studies has been distinguished by a long tradition of studying Judaism and Christianity in concert, as equally significant yet intertwined religions, and in conjunction with philosophy and political thought. Building on this scholarly profile, the conference aims to promote a vision of the study of Jewish thought traditions as engaged in an ongoing conversation with philosophy and theory, political thought, and the study of Christianity, both classical and contemporary.

For more information about the Seminar and Colloquium, please contact Alisha Pomazon (pomazoaj@mcmaster.ca) or see our website: http://jewishthought.mcmaster.ca/

Congratulations to Kåre Fuglseth for the news (see the posting below) that an edited version of his dissertation has now been accepted to be published in E.J. Brill's Supplements to Novum Testamentum as:

"Johannine Sectarianism in Perspective: A Sociological, Historical and Comparative Analysis of Temple and Social Relationships in the Gospel of John, Philo, and Qumran".

Great news!

As the recent posts on this blog has suggested, the way Philo may be of help in New Testament historical studies is far from completely explored. My earlier posting suggested a thorough comparison of words, a comparison that also includes common words of the LXX, and I also suggested that such word list may at least be used to enhance further thematic studies.

In my doctoral dissertation, now two years ago, I used a comparative method much similar to the one employed by the editor of this blog, Torrey Seland, a comparison in social history and by using social scientific models and methods.

In my comparison I focused on how Philo, Qumran and the Gospel of John may be compared when it comes to temple relationship and social boundaries. My starting point was the characterisation of the Johannine community and Johannine Christians as a sect, i.e. not Gnostic, but in the meaning of being isolated in some way. To see the addressees of the gospels as small isolated groups has been attacked several times, the last important one is perhaps Bauckham (ed). "The Gospels for all Christians." (1998). Although this perspective has its merits, I do not agree when it comes to the Gospel of John. On the other hand, I do not believe that John was sectarian.

To demonstrate this thesis, I combined J.L. Martyn’s thesis that the Gospel may be read on different levels and that an expulsion from the local gathering in the town or village of Johannine Christians was responsible for a crisis in the community (cf. the aposunagogos-places in 9:22; 12:42; 16:2), with Brown’s thesis that the group behind the Gospel had not broken communion, koinonia, with other Christian groups. I also added the idea of a close connection with its traditional (Jewish) surroundings and customs, and, naturally, the particular experiences with the belief that Jesus from Nazareth was the Messiah. To maintain the Martyn-Brown hypothesis does not necessarily mean that the community behind John was sectarian or isolated, and Philo may help us to see that.

Compared to Philo’s rejection of the Temple of Jerusalem and his acceptance of it at the same time, I argued that John’s accusations against the Temple as institution (not the buildings, they were gone) in temple-texts like John 2:13-22 and John 4:16-26, is not particularly schismatic and therefore not sectarian.

Philo, motivated by his philosophical ideas and much in accordance with the Prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible (LXX), in fact attacks and rejects the Jerusalem Temple in a much more severe way than the Johannine Christians or any Christian in the New Testament. On the other side, Philo clearly defends the temple and the ordinances of the Law, cf. Migr. 86-93. This makes one wonder what the Johannine Christians would have done if the Temple had not been destructed by the Romans, but the question is too hypothetic.

By comparing John, Philo and core Qumran writings (i.e. the writings that clearly belonged to the Yahad) I found that the milieus behind these writings may be compared to a sociological model developed in recent years in the sociology of (new) religions, Stark and Bainbridge’s theory of two different ways of relationship of a religious group to the parent body: the sect and the cult ("The Future of Religon", 1985). John clearly becomes the cult, Philo represent the parent body, while Qumran represents the sect. This solution is also evident when it comes to their social boundaries.

An edited version of the dissertation has now been accepted to be published on E.J. Brill Supplements to Novum Testamentum by the title: "Johannine Sectarianism in Perspective: A Sociological, Historical and Comparative Analysis of Temple and Social Relationships in the Gospel of John, Philo, and Qumran".

As demonstrated in a lot of research up through the last decades (centuries?), and also pinpointed in the former posting by Kaare Fuglseth, Philo has been widely used in investigating the plausible context of John. And the writing and research continue; Mohr Siebeck now announces a new anthology volume just published that should be of interest to both Philonists and students of the Gospel of John:

Kontexte des Johannesevangeliums. Das vierte Evangelium in religions- und traditionsgeschichtlicher Perspektive.
Hrsg. v. Jörg Frey, Udo Schnelle, unter Mitarb. v. Juliane Schlegel.
2004. IX, 799 pages. (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 175).ISBN 3-16-148303-0 cloth € 144.00.

The publisher presents the book thus: Eine der strittigsten Fragen der Forschung ist die religionsgeschichtliche Einordnung des Johannesevangeliums. Während dieses lange primär im Kontext des Hellenismus gesehen wurde, beherrschte im 20. Jahrhundert zunächst das Verhältnis zur Gnosis die Diskussion. Seit den Qumranfunden finden jüdische Hintergründe wieder stärkere Beachtung, doch lassen sich die Bezüge zur hellenistisch-römischen Welt nicht vernachlässigen. Ebenso kontrovers diskutiert wird das Verhältnis der johanneischen Tradition zu den anderen frühchristlichen Traditionsströmen, den Synoptikern, zur paulinisch-deuteropaulinischen Tradition oder zu der im Thomasevangelium erkennbaren Gnostisierung der Jesusüberlieferung. Die Autoren in diesem Band erörtern die religions- und traditionsgeschichtlichen Bezugsfelder des Johannesevangeliums. Damit bietet der Band in nuce ein Kompendium der wichtigsten Kontexte, die für die Interpretation des Johannesevangeliums zu berücksichtigen sind.
They also provide a List of the contents of this volume: among the articles directly dealing with the works of Philo (as far as this can be detected by the titles of the articles) are these Folker Siegert: Der Logos, "älterer Sohn" des Schöpfers und "zweiter Gott". Philons Logos und der Johannesprolog
Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer: Der Logos und die Schöpfung. Streiflichter bei Philo (Op. 20-25) und im Johannesprolog (Joh 1,1-18).
But the influence of Philo is probably present in several of the other articles too. You can have a closer look at the list of contents by clicking here.

This is a posting that deals with the possibility of an automatic generated comparison of Greek words of different corpora, Philo, NT and the LXX in particular.

The reason for taking up this subject, is my experiences with the compiling of a Philo concordance (cf. http://webster.hibo.no/alu/seksjon/krl/kaare/filon). During the project, my co-editors (Prof. Peder Borgen and Prof. Roald Skarsten) and I gathered several other electronic texts, lemmatised and tagged, in order to improve our own work on Philo.

I discovered that the BETA-code was a convenient format to use in a comparison of different corpora since the code is pretty unambiguous. I designed a script, a program, by myself that compared the Philo-concordance and the New Testament texts. The results were by no way surprising, but confirmed some trends that are well-known, such as the word correspondance between The Letter to the Hebrews and Philo.

I sent the list to the Mellen Press, cf. www.mellenpress.com that accepted it for publication in 2003 (A Comparison of Greek Words in Philo and the New Testament).

What the list is good for is first of all that it forms a starting point for comparing ideas and words between Philo and the New Testament.

Now, other comparison and even more advanced ones are easily at hand. I have wondered if a similar comparison should be undertaken, pulling in the Septuagint (LXX). Is it probably fair to say that an experienced scholar who knows all three texts is not be in much need of such a list. For New Testament scholars the list would be welcomed I guess, since it is urgent for these scholars to see the correspondence between these features in order to evaluate Philo’s possible and indirect influence on the New Testament also independently of the LXX.

Among the books of Philo of Alexandria there are several 'biographies' of biblical persons, and several works containing biographical sections. A recent study of the role of biographies in classical works may be of interests to philonists too:

Dennis Pausch,
Biographie und Bildungskultur. Personendarstellungen bei Plinius dem Jüngeren, Gellius und Sueton
(Millennium - Studien / Millennium Studies / Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr. / Studies in the Culture and History of the First Millennium C.E. 4)
Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Oktober 2004. 24 x 17 cm. X, 408 Seiten. Gebunden. Euro [D] 88.00 / sFr 141.00 / approx. US$ 106.00. ISBN 3-11-018247-5

Abstract: What role did biographies play for the intelligentsia of the 2nd century AD? What literary forms were used by contemporary authors in their personal portrayals? These two questions have led to this cross-genre investigation of the personal portraits in the letters of Pliny the Younger, in the miscellaneous work of Gellius, and in the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius. Among the common features which can thus be observed are the normative potential of historical figures, the commemoration of contemporaries, and the interaction with communicative conditions of the Roman Empire. Such a functional and historical perspective further demonstrates that many of the characteristics of the featured authors, which to date have been seen as deviations from the genre tradition, are, in actuality, conscious developments, closely related to the authors' common social and cultural background.