How the Biblical texts became Holy Scripture

After reading Bible scholar James Kugel’s great book, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now I was thrilled to find his lecture Can The Torah Make Its Peace With Modern Biblical Scholarship? (website). Kugel was formally a star lecturer at Harvard where his courses were routinely packed, and he now [...]

Two views of Israel at 61

In honor of Israel’s 61st birthday this week, here are two interesting lectures about the Jewish state.
First, historian and veteran peacenik Tom Segev gives a sobering assessment of prospects for peace in Understanding The Israelis (website). In this University of Delaware talk, Segev comments sadly on the younger generation of Israelis, including his own [...]

Pondering a leap of faith

If you’ve been following UC Berkeley Professor Ron Hendel’s excellent course The Bible in Western Culture (feed), you know that he’s been looking at understandings of the Bible, beginning in ancient times and moving through the Middle Ages into modernity. In the last couple of weeks we watched as Enlightenment thinkers like Spinoza and Herder [...]

The Bible Through Literary Eyes

When we are accustomed to a literary genre, such as the Western, we have certain expectations. We expect that a manly hero, who is good with a gun, will defeat some dastardly foe. A writer of the Western can then play with these expectations for dramatic or comic effects.
But what about the Bible? Does [...]

More Jewish studies resourses

Here are some more Jewish studies resources I’ve recently discovered.

From Israelite to Jew (iTunes, website), Michael Satlow, Brown University.
Satlow, a professor of Religious and Judaic Studies, covers the history of ancient Israel in the Biblical period in these podcasts, which are not classroom lectures, but instead have the feel of chapters in an audio book. [...]

The Bible’s Buried Secrets on TV & YouTube

In the past 50 years archaeologists have done much to illuminate the world of the Bible and challenge traditional notions of how the Bible was written.
Last month PBS broadcast The Bible’s Buried Secrets, a special two-hour edition of its award-winning science program NOVA,  which presented a summary of that research in dramatic form for a [...]

Hartman Institute update

Alan Abbey, website director of the Shalom Hartman Institute, wrote in to announce that the institute’s lectures are now being posted as podcasts on iTunes. Enjoy.

Lectures from Shalom Hartman Institute

Here’s a treat for fans of Jewish Studies lectures. The Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Israel is a world renowned educational institution which provides continuing studies for rabbis and Jewish studies scholars from around the world. Its founder, philosopher and Rabbi David Hartman, is the author of numerous books and a prominent advocate for [...]

Muscular Judaism

Filmmaker and photographer Eli Ungar did the do-it-yourself scholars of the Bible a favor when he posted the audio recordings of his Muscular Judaism class on iTunes and on his website. This class examines the biblical book of Sampson line by line in Hebrew and English, looking at that literary structure of the biblical [...]

Judaic studies podcasts

Here are some great resources on the Web for Judaic Studies podcasts:
Center for Jewish History — Website
Here you will find audio and video recordings of events at New York’s Center for Jewish History. Programs include Michael Walzer speaking on “The Anomalies of Jewish Identity,” a panel discussion on Jewish journalists in America and a [...]