Program via Zoom One of the most famous epic narratives of classical mythology is that of the Trojan War, a decade-long conflict over the possession of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. Pitting Greeks against Trojans, the war featured heroes like Achilles and Odysseus, and it was integral both to the psyche of […]

The famous formulation that all Gaul was divided into three parts came from the self-serving pen of Caesar himself, whose conquest of Gaul served as the springboard for a quest for power that ended fatally on the Ides of March in 44 B.C.E. Rome gradually acquired commercial and military interests in southern Gaul that provided […]

Betsy Bryan – Emerita Professor of Egyptian Art and Archaeology, Johns Hopkins University The Egyptian empire built during the early New Kingdom was the result of wealth accumulation from the gold of Nubia, combined with small and large wars with the Mitanni in Syria and their vassal states in the rest of the Levant. As […]

Presented By Jonathan Klawans – Boston University The story of mass suicide at Masada has been told by our only contemporary source, Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, priest, autobiographer and general. Although his histories may have been written, at least in part, for a Roman audience, this presentation evaluates the story in the context of […]

Lecture Presented by Lillian Doherty – Emerita Professor of Classics, University of Maryland  Greek myths look timeless to today’s audiences, but in ancient Greece they were constantly being retold in new ways to please, inspire, or even unsettle their contemporary audiences. As the Greeks had no canon of scripture, their poets had considerable freedom to adapt […]

The Aramaic translations (targums) of the Hebrew Bible provide a fascinating window into the history of Jewish Bible interpretation. Since the targums were not created to be “the Bible” for any community, they were free to explicate the text by providing expansions and commentary from tradition and midrash. A case study of the targums to […]

Program via Zoom Menachem Fisch – Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science at Tel Aviv University Debra Band – Author and Illuminator of Biblical Texts How does one live a life of wisdom and fulfillment in a far-from-perfect world? This lecture is an inquiry into the value of life “under the sun” as […]

From the Middle Bronze Age (around 1750 BCE) to the Iron Age (ninth century BCE), Hazor was the largest fortified city in the region and is today the largest archaeological site in northern Israel. In the Book of Joshua, Hazor is described as “the head of all those kingdoms”. How did the Iron Age Israelites […]