Sources and Interpretation in Ancient Judaism

Sources and Interpretation in Ancient Judaism: Studies for Tal Ilan at Sixty, a collection of studies by 14 scholars, is designed to honor an outstanding scholar in the field of Ancient Judaism, Tal Ilan. These studies reflect realms within the broad field of Ancient Judaism that are central to Ilan’s scholarship: Second Temple literary sources and history, Gender, Jewish papyrology and rabbinic literature. The studies within this volume are of an interdisciplinary nature, offering new readings and interpretations of known sources such as Josephus and rabbinic texts, but also introducing the reader to an entirely new body of sources, namely Jewish papyri. The volume therefore aims to introduce specialists and non-specialists to new fields of research.

Meron M. Piotrkowski, Ph.d. (2015), Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a postdoctoral researcher at the university’s Department of the History of the Jewish People. He has published articles on Josephus, Jewish-Hellenistic Literature, the Temple of Onias and Jewish Papyri.

Geoffrey Herman Ph.D (2006), Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has published monographs and articles on Babylonian Jewish history, including A Prince without a Kingdom: the Exilarch in the Sasanian Era (Mohr Siebeck, 2012).

Saskia Dönitz, PhD (2008), Freie Universität Berlin, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt a.M. Her major fields of research include medieval Hebrew historiography, and Ashkenazic and Byzantine Jewish intellectual history. Earlier she published Überlieferung und Rezeption des Sefer Yosippon (Mohr Siebeck, 2013).