Fall 2017 lectures
Admission is free and open to the public
The Invention of Judaism: Torah and Jewish Identity
A lecture by John J. Collins
Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation, Yale University
with an introduction by Gregory Spinner,
teaching professor, Religious Studies Department, Skidmore College
Tuesday, September 26
8 p.m., Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall
The Torah of Moses is widely considered normative for Judaism. This lecture reviews how it came to be so in the Second Temple period. It also shows how it could be interpreted in quite diverse ways.
John J. Collins is Holmes Professor of Old Testament at Yale Divinity School. He has written widely on apocalyptic literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls and is author of Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (third edtion, Fortress 2017). He is editor in chief of the Yale Anchor Bible series. His most recent book is The Invention of Judaism: Torah and Jewish Identity (University of California, 2017).
This presentation is part of the Jacob Perlow Event Series and is co-sponsored by the Office of Special Programs and the Religious Studies Department. Funding is also provided by a gift from Beatrice Troupin.
About the Jacob Perlow Series: A generous grant from the estate of Jacob Perlow—an immigrant to the United States in the 1920s, a successful businessman deeply interested in religion and philosophy and a man who was committed to furthering Jewish education—supports annual lectures and presentations to the College and Capital District community on issues broadly related to Jews and Judaism.