Conference: Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon

It being a rather slow news day, I thought it might be an opportune time to post the invitation to an upcoming conference that I'm organizing with Dr. Uri Gabbay. If you are in Israel on May 23-25 and are interested in the intersection between ancient Babylonia, Sasanian Iran, and the Jews in antiquity, please come join us in Jerusalem!

Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations between Jews, Iranians and Babylonians in Antiquity

Dates: Monday, May 23 to Wednesday, May 25, 2011, Rabin Building, Room 3001, Mt. Scopus

Organizers: Uri Gabbay and Shai Secunda (Scholion, Hebrew University)

Preliminary program:

Monday, 23 May

16:00-18:30:

Greetings: Reuven Amitai

Introductory remarks: Shai Secunda and Uri Gabbay

Opening session: Introducing the Intellectual World of the Ancient Near East

Chair: Daniel Boyarin

Irving Finkel: Babylonian scholarship in cuneiform and the Babylonian Talmud

Prods Oktor Skjaervo: Ancient and Late Antique Zoroastrianism and its Priestly-Scholastic Tradition

Isaiah M. Gafni: The Intellectual World of Babylonian Jewry: Teachers, Students, Study-Circles, and Academies

19:00: Reception: Ground floor, Rabin Building

Greetings: Israel Yuval

Tuesday, 24 May

9:00-12:15: Society and Religion

Chair: Nili Wazana

Yaakov Elman: Contrasting Trajectories: The Mesopotamian Encounter of Iranian and Semitic Cultures

Ran Zadok: New sources for the presence of Israelites, Judeans and other foreign population groups in pre-Hellenistic Mesopotamia

10:30-10:45: coffee break

Caroline Waerzeggers: Studying Babylonian priests and its relevance to the Second Temple of Jerusalem

Geoffrey Herman: The Institutional History of Babylonian Jewish Society: Where Do We Stand Today?

Respondent: Daniel Schwartz

12:15-13:30: Lunch

13:30- 15:00: Jewish Law in Dialogue

Chair: Oded Ir-Shai

Kathleen Abraham: Jerusalem in Babylonia: New Evidence on a Judean Community in Babylonia During and After the Exile

Maria Macuch: Jewish Jurisdiction within the Framework of the Sasanian Legal System

Respondent: Robert Brody

15:00-15:30: coffee break

15:30-17:00: Magic: The Aramaic Incantation Bowls

Chair: Shalom Paul

James Nathan Ford: Ancient Mesopotamian Motifs in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls

Shaul Shaked: The Iranian Influence on the Aramaic Incantation Bowls

Respondent: Gideon Bohak

18:30-22:00: evening activity

Wednesday, 25 May

9:00-12:15: The incorporation of Mesopotamian and Iranian knowledge in Jewish Tradition

Chair: Rachel Elior

Nathan Wasserman: Old-Babylonian, Middle-Babylonian, Neo-Babylonian, Jewish-Babylonian? Thoughts about Transmission Modes of Mesopotamian Magic Through the Ages

Abraham Winitzer: Assyriology and Jewish Studies in Tel Aviv: Ezekiel among the Babylonian literati

10:30-10:45: coffee break

Jonathan Ben-Dov: Jewish Acquaintance with and Application of Mesopotamian Astral Sciences

Reuven Kiperwasser: The Encounter Between Iranian Myth and Rabbinic Mythmakers in the Babylonian Talmud

Respondent: Reimund Leicht

12:00-13:30: lunch

13:30-16:45: Hermeneutics and Scriptural Exegesis

Chair:

Eckart Frahm: Reflections on Babylonian text commentaries from the Achaemenid Period

Uri Gabbay: An Akkadian Midrash? Babylonian Commentaries and Rabbinic exegetical terms

15:00-15:15: coffee break

Shai Secunda: Between Rabbi and Dadwar: The Intersection between Rabbinic and Zoroastrian Hermeneutics

Yishai Keil: Shaking Impurity: Exegesis and Legal Innovations in Rabbinic and Pahlavi Literature

Respondent: Paul Mandel

16:45: Concluding remarks: Uri Gabbay and Shai Secunda