“Outside” Evidence – Evidence for Religion and Culture in the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods from Sources “Outside” the Biblical Canons

Programme

The EABS has long appreciated that religious, social and cultural phenomena not directly attested in the biblical evidence itself provides a more complete picture of the “world(s)” within which the biblical texts were produced, received and interpreted in antiquity and late antiquity. For this reason many highly focussed research groups have been established at the EABS over the years, each directed to the study of a discrete body of such “outside” evidence – that of Qumran and Elephantine to name just two.

There is a need, however, on an ongoing basis to include annually scholars and scholarship on a wide variety of such “outside “ evidence in a more open and less topically restricted arena at the EABS – from the evidence of magical bowls to the Talmud, and from Manichians to Magi – in service of promoting scholarship that contextualizes the biblical traditions and early Judaism and early Christianity. This group is intended to accommodate that “open” range of high-quality scholarship for the many scholars not currently accommodated by the more topically focused research groups, and in so doing offer valuable research of interest and benefit to a wide range of the EABS’s membership.

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