Michael L. Satlow

Then and Now

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Antisemitism: A History

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Throughout my teaching career, I have dabbled with the topic of antisemitism.  The closest that I came to tackling it head-on was one called “Judaism and Christianity in Conflict,” which was more a survey of theological polemics.  What happened in Paris first, and then Pittsburgh, though, was a wake-up call for me, and in my state of, “what the hell is happening and why,” I proposed a new, comprehensive survey course on the history of antisemitism.  The last couple of months have again emphasized to me the unfortunate need for such a course (although whether students identify that need is yet to be seen).

The syllabus was difficult to put together (the whole topic, of course, is difficult) and I benefited greatly from the generosity of colleagues (especially Stephanie Cobb).  You can access my syllabus here.  Any feedback would be welcome and I’ll let you know how it goes at the end of the semester.

Canonizing the Bible: Historical Simulation

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For several years, I have included a historical simulation as the final exercise of my undergraduate class, “How the Bible Became Holy.”  This year I will do the same.  The guidelines for the simulation are below.  They are similar to previous renditions.

Also as I’ve done in the past, I invite you to join us for live tweeting of the simulation.  It will take place on Monday, December 16, starting around 2:45 PM ET, and will probably last about 90 minutes. I will use the hashtag: #htbbh2019.  The tweets will be displayed in the classroom in real time and in the past students have really enjoyed watching scholars from across the world dip into their conversations.  So even if you can only attend briefly, please do – it should be great fun.

 

BACKGROUND

We are sometime in the fourth century CE in Constantinople.  The Roman emperor, a devout Christian (and also a practical ruler), spurred by the bishops in his court and concerned about both growing Christian diversity and his own eternal salvation, has recently convened a series of synods to hash out “orthodox” Christian theology.  They have not gone particularly well.  While some bishops were able to develop creeds that they could live with, other participants left angry and alienated.  Chastened by the limited success of these synods, he has decided to address an issue that he hopes will be significantly easier to resolve: the confusing state of “scripture” within the Church.  Does the Church need a canon, and if so, what should be in it?  Primarily of interest to the bishops is whether, should it be decided that a canon is desirable, any parts of the Hebrew Bible should be included.

You have been summoned to participate in this Synod.  Representatives of the competing parties will attend; the emperor expects you all to arrive at an agreement.  Representatives of the Jewish community have also been invited to participate.

[N.B.  This Synod is a historical fantasy.  There was no Synod convened at this time to canonize the Christian Bible.  If there was, Jews would not have been invited and some of the other participants would have been long dead.   This is pretend.]

PARTICIPANTS

The Emperor

The Bishops within the Royal Court

Marcionites

Montanists

Gnostics

Rabbis

PROCEDURE AND SCHEDULE

December 3

You will meet with your groups today and organize yourselves.  Read through these instructions carefully, particularly how the simulation will play out and be scored.  Begin dividing your research, both for your own position and that of your opponents (a few resources, to get you started, are at the end of this handout.  To get a feel for Christian canonization, you should all read the following short texts, available on OCRA:

  1. Eusebius, Church History, 3.24-25
  2. Athanasius, Selection from Letter 39
  3. Harry Gamble, “The Canon of the New Testament”

You may want to get started on your group assignment, your “victory objectives.”  This should be a list of three to five goals (outcomes of the Synod) that align with your role.  Each objective should be assigned points; the sum of all the points should be 100.  At the end of the Synod the groups will be scored based on these objectives in order to determine who won.

December 5

 We will spend this class in group work on (1) the victory objectives and (2) your opening speech, as a group.

Assignment Due, December 6, 11:59 PM:  Each group will submit their victory objectives (one file per group) in the appropriate place on Canvas.

Assignment Due, December 13, 11:59 PM:  This is an individual speech due on Canvas.  This is the opening speech that you, in character, would deliver at the Synod.  This is individual, not group, work, and your group presentation might well differ.  It should run about five pages and is worth 10% of your course grade.

THE SYNOD

 Our simulation will take place on Monday, December 16, 2-5 PM.  The location will be announced.

Procedure

 

  1. Each group will denote a representative to deliver its opening statement. The statement should run 5-7 minutes, no less.  Each statement will be followed by about 5 minutes of questioning;
  2. After the opening statements, groups will meet/negotiate for about 30 minutes;
  3. A second round of statements (which can be shorter than the first), each followed by Q&A period;
  4. A shorter round of negotiations (10 minutes);
  5. A vote to determine if the Rabbis will get to vote (the Rabbis themselves do not vote);
  6. Each group or “team” of groups gets to make a proposal;
  7. Vote on the proposals (following the rules in [5]; whether Rabbis vote or not depends on the outcome at that stage);
  8. Calculation of winner, followed by general discussion.

 

FOLLOW-UP

 

You have two short assignments due on December 17, at 11:59 PM; each should be about two pages.  One is an assessment of the simulation: how did it go?  What did you learn from it?

The second document is a self-assessment.  Remember that this has no impact on your grade.  This exercise is an opportunity for you to consider your own learning in this course and how it might help you in the future.

  1. What is the most important insight that you will take away from this course?  Why is it important to you?
  2. What skills have you learned or improved in this course?  What helped you to develop those skills?
  3. Learning is often a process of self-discovery, sometimes in unanticipated ways.  Did you discover anything about yourself this semester?
  4. If you could advise a new student in this course about how to succeed in this course, what would you say?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inscriptions and FAIR Archiving

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I direct on online project that seeks to collect, analyze, and make accessible the inscriptions of Israel/Palestine from roughly the sixth century BCE to the seventh century, CE.  The site can be accessed here.  Over the past few years the team working on this project has had to confront a wide variety of technical and architectural challenges, and we have been producing presentations on those challenges and our approach to them.  We (although I was not there!) recently presented at TEI2019, a meeting devoted to the Textual Encoding Initiatives.  In this presentation, we discussed our approach to archiving our data according to the best current framework, known as FAIR, which seeks to make data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.  We will soon be submitting the paper for publication, but the abstract and slides of the presentation are now available.  The slides can be found here and the abstract is below:

The Inscriptions of Israel Palestine Project is an online corpus of inscriptions from Israel and Palestine, written in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Aramaic, dating roughly from the Persian Period to the Arab Conquest. As of spring 2019, it has collected and encoded more than 4000 inscriptions, out of some 10000 relevant texts: we aim to create an exhaustive and easily accessible collection and to enable users to carry out a variety of searches and extensive textual analysis.

The FAIR Principles aim to enhance the ability of machines to automatically find and use digital objects, in addition to supporting their reuse by individuals. The principles are organized under four areas intended to ensure digital objects are findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable. Following epigraphy.info’s mission statement we are applying the FAIR Principles to guide our development of archival formats and processes for our corpus.

As IIP prepared to deposit files in the Brown Digital Repository, we defined formats for ensuring that our files will be as informative, self-documenting and re-usable as possible. Each inscription is contained in a single, XML file, encoded in the well-documented Epidoc subset of the TEI. These files, however, linked to externally maintained controlled vocabularies (using the xi:include feature) and bibliography (using Zotero), in order to facilitate the work of our encoders and ensure consistency.  One of our challenges was to incorporate these external data into the robust, stand-alone, archival format.

We will introduce the FAIR Guiding Principles and FAIR Metrics as they apply to epigraphic corpora and TEI encoding, discuss the roadmap for implementation, and look at archival practices beyond FAIR when it comes to preservation of data as well as re-use. While the first steps to making a digital corpus findable and accessible seem straightforward—IIP texts have been ingested into the Brown Digital Repository, have unique and persistent identifiers, rich metadata, and are freely available, we can still improve on both facets. Simple interoperability and re-usability are available through the IIP API in both the production and the archival versions of the corpus, however, it will be important to do further work on controlled vocabularies, shared concepts, and encoding practices in order to enhance both of these facets.

Blurbing Ecclesiastes

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Last week in my course at Brown, “How the Bible Became Holy,” students read the book of Ecclesiastes and portions of Sirach.  At the beginning of class I tried a new warm-up exercise, in groups: Imagine that you are the publicist team for Ecclesiastes (today or in antiquity).  Write a blurb that would sell the book without misrepresenting it.

Here are some of their blurbs:

For Ancient Readers:

The Many Habits of Highly Righteous Individuals.  Want to be a highly respected person? Want to serve G-d in the best way possible? Pick up Ecclesiastes and learn all the morals you need in 12 easy chapters. G-d will smile down upon you.

How are you spending your days? Is there meaning to this life? How should you be serving yourself and others in the eyes of God? The book of Ecclesiastes will answer all of your questions!  Read this book and learn from the experiences of others that came before you.

 

For Modern Readers:

How the Ancients Did It.  Frustrated with the day to day grind.  Worried that you are not living life to its fullest potential? Pick up the book of Ecclesiastes and find out how the wise people of ancient times lived their best life. Forget minimalism.  Dwelling in the past is the only way to improve the world.

Ecclesiastes: A hard but necessary look at the realities of living a truly pious life. Enjoy what you can, when you can – before it all ends.

Do you want to know the secrets to happiness? Do you want to truly live every day as if it’s your last? Read the book of Ecclesiastes! It has all of this and more. Listen to the wisdom of your ancestors and spend your days with food and delight.

Ecclesiastes serves as a succinct account of ancient wisdom that functions as a “self-help” book for a modern reader. Investigate an account from antiquity that shines light on how to turn your life around and live life to the fullest that remains applicable and fundamental to success in today’s world.

Learn from the unparalleled wisdom of ancient King Solomon. Find success, happiness, and God’s favor through the teachings of the book of Ecclesiastes.

Do you want learn all the wisdom concerning everything done under heaven? Do you want to lead a meaningful life? Ecclesiastes will help you live your life to your potential. Learn the steps to lead a pious life.

Want to learn how to improve your life and your understanding of the world? Read Ecclesiastes and in just 12 short chapters, gain a lifetime’s worth of self-help knowledge that will teach you everything you could ever want to know about God, the world, wisdom, and good. Becoming a better person has never been so easy!

The 1619 Project, and a Quibble

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The New York Times has recently been running a series of articles marking the 400th anniversary of the arrival of African slaves in the New World that they are calling the 1619 Project.  The approach that they took on these essays is original and commendable.  Each of them illustrates a different aspect about how slavery and then racial discrimination shaped various aspects (e.g., cultural, social, legal) of present day America.  I have enjoyed reading these essays, which gave me a different lens to view some modern issues.

At the same time, the essays tap into a larger academic sociological debate about the relationship between “society” and the individual.  That is, to what extent can we explain social phenomenon with reference to social institutions and structures?  The authors of the 1619 Project essays mostly take a stand on this debate, attributing many of our present social woes and challenges to “the system.”  Thus, a few of the essays use the metaphor of “DNA,” as in, the United States has a particular racist DNA at its core.

My own scholarly proclivity is to treat such arguments and analogies with a great deal of skepticism.  Societies are unlike living organisms and while they do hand down certain laws, institutions, and norms, they do not have a DNA.  Societies don’t act on their own; the individuals who make comprise them are the actors.

I wrote a letter to the New York Times along these lines, which was published yesterday and which I reprint here:

To the Editor:

I very much appreciate and enjoy the 1619 Project, both as a necessary corrective to the way that American history is often portrayed and as an impetus to productive change. At the same time, I take issue with a metaphor of “DNA” that appears in several essays, such as “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” The metaphor is misleading and perhaps pernicious, as it obscures agency.

Every generation receives traditions, found in laws, customs and institutions, but every person in every generation has significant leeway in how to understand and live those traditions. Traditions — perhaps the meaning of “DNA” in this metaphor — make racism easier, but ultimately it is the quotidian choices that we have and continue to make that cause racism, as they will its eradication.

Michael Satlow
Providence, R.I.
The writer is a professor of religious studies at Brown University.