FRIENDS OF ASOR WEBINARS
From Standing Stones to Sacred Emptiness: Textual and Visual Portrayals of Israel’s God
Registrants now receive a discount code for 30% off of Ted’s book from Oxford University Press!
Friends of ASOR present the next webinar in our monthly series on August 29, at 7:30 pm EDT, featuring Prof. Theodore Lewis. Portrayals of divinity are incredibly complex as they are culturally, sociologically, politically, and theologically contingent. Asking the simple question about how ancient Israelites and Judahites portrayed God (i.e. El and Yahweh) turns into a historical puzzle, interacting with a wide variety of ancient writers and artisans on how they conceptualized divinity. Did they imagine Israelite El as an enthroned, benevolent patriarch, a majestic bull, or even a solid block of stone? What about Yahweh and the Hebrew Bible’s aniconic tradition that the Almighty is not to be portrayed in concrete form?
This webinar will sift through both visual (archaeological) and textual narratives as they have diverse functions and/or audiences and reflect different kinds of literacies. We’ll look at artisans’ considerable diversity, from standing stone installations to anthropomorphic figurines to bull images. Even within the Hebrew Bible’s aniconic tradition we see diversity—from the ethereal quality of fire to solar metaphors to abstract notions of Yahweh taking up residence via his sacred “Name” or manifesting through “radiance” (kābôd yhwh) that conjures Neo-Assyrian melammu imagery. Strikingly, we’ll also investigate the use of sacred emptiness to portray divinity. How is it that less is more? Wide ranging questions will be explored and invited. Are there archaeological correlates for such abstract expressions? How do we imagine the pragmatic focal points for ritual performance? Join us for this exploration of some of the expressions of divine presence in the lives of ancient Israelites and Judahites. Prof. Lewis will conclude his webinar with a live Q&A session. For more information on this topic, please check out the speaker’s recent article in The Ancient Near East Today on “The (Historical) Origin of God.”
Theodore J. Lewis holds the Blum-Iwry Professorship in Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is a Semitist, a Hebrew Bible scholar, and a historian of religion whose research has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Lewis received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and also studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as an ITT Fellow. Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins he taught at Harvard University and the University of Georgia.
Lewis is the author of The Origin and Character of God: The Religion of Ancient Israel through the Lens of Divinity (Oxford University Press), which received the 2020 Frank Moore Cross Award from ASOR for “the most substantial volume related to the history and/or religion of the ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean.” He is also the author of Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (Harvard Semitic Monographs) and co-author of Ugaritic Narrative Poetry. He is General Editor of the Writings from the Ancient World series (SBL Press).
ASOR Sustaining Members: $0 | ASOR Members: $5 | Public: $10
To receive your ASOR member discount, log into the online store. If you are new to ASOR, please click on the “New Visitor Registration” link to register your e-mail address and choose password for our online store. Once logged in, navigate to “Meeting and Event Registration” to register for the webinar and pay the fee. Each paid registrant will receive a confirmation e-mail when you pay for the webinar. If you do not receive this e-mail, then you are not registered. Please e-mail membership@asor.org with any questions or issues with registering.
You will be e-mailed the Zoom Webinar link in the week prior to the lecture on August 29, 2021 If you do not receive the link by the close of business on the Tuesday before the webinar, please e-mail membership@asor.org immediately. All webinars are recorded and all paid registrants will be sent a link to view the recording.
All proceeds from this lecture are used to fund scholarships for members impacted by COVID-19 as well as increasing ASOR’s online resources, which are free to the public.
WHY SPONSOR A WEBINAR?
Several levels of support from $50-$1,000 are available. Proceeds go towards membership scholarships and towards increasing ASOR’s virtual resources. Each sponsorship is tax-deductible and you can give your friends free registrations to a webinar!
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PAST WEBINARS
You can now purchase the link to the recording of any webinar. You can also purchase the bundle packages of all webinars from the 2020-2022 seasons. Please e-mail membership@asor.org for purchase details.
To see a printable pdf of the webinar titles from the 2020-2021 season, please click here. To see a printable pdf of the webinar titles from the 2021-2022 season, please click here.
Pricing:
Members: $6.00 per recording
Non-Members: $12.00 per recording
Bundle of 2020-2021 Webinars: $75.00
Bundle of 2021-2022 Webinars: $75.00
Bundle of 2020-2022 Webinars: $125.00
2021-2022 Season
A World at War: Protecting Cultural Heritage in Times of Conflict
Patty Gerstenblith (DePaul University), Lisa Ackerman (Columbus Citizens Foundation), Andrew Cohen (Government Professional and Cultural Heritage Expert) | May 12, 2022
Preserving Cultural Heritage in Hisban and Umm al-Jimal, Jordan
Øystein LaBianca (Andrews University), Elizabeth Osinga (Umm al-Jimal Archaeological Project), Darrell Rohl (Calvin University) | April 24, 2022
Back to the Field: Recent Discoveries & Summer Plans 2022
Lorenzo d’Alfonso (ISAW), Kathryn Grossman (NC State University), James R. Strange (Samford University) | April 3, 2022
Uncovering What is Nubian Beneath the Veneer of Egyptianness: Excavating the Archives
Debora Heard (University of Chicago) | March 20, 2022
Where Are They Now?: A Preview of 2022 ASOR-Affiliated Fieldwork Projects
Michael Given (University of Glasgow), Xenia-Paula Kyriakou (Florida Gulf Coast University), Stephen Batiuk (University of Toronto), Monique Roddy (Walla Walla University), Kent Bramlett (La Sierra University), Friedbert Ninow (La Sierra University), and Michael Hoff (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) | March 8, 2022
Excavations at Tel Gezer: A Personal Story
Sam Wolff (Tel Gezer Laboratory) | February 20, 2022
Tel Rehov: A Major Bronze and Iron Age City in the Jordan Valley
Amihai Mazar (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Nava Panitz-Cohen ( Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Nota Kourou (Athens University), Naama Yahalom-Mack (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Robert Mullins (Azusa Pacific University) | February 10, 2022
The Not-So-Innocents Abroad: The Beginnings of American Biblical Archaeology
Rachel Hallote (Samford University) | January 20, 2022
Synagogues as Jesus Knew Them
James R. Strange (Samford University) | December 2, 2021
Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City
Andrew Lawler | November 4, 2021
Jesus and Jerusalem on TV: How Do Bible Documentaries Get Made?
Robert Cargill (University of Iowa) | October 17, 2021
Digging the Divine?: Judahite Pillar Figurines and the Archaeology of Israelite Religion
Erin Darby (University of Tennessee) | October 7, 2021
David, Solomon, and Rehoboam’s Kingdom—The Archaeological Evidence
Yosef Garfinkel (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) | September 19, 2021
From Standing Stones to Sacred Emptiness: Textual and Visual Portrayals of Israel’s God
Theodore Lewis (Johns Hopkins University) | August 29, 2021
2020-2021 Season
Making May Matter: Webinarathon to Endow Diversity
Multiple Speakers | May 21-23, 2021
Archaeogaming: Why Video Games Deserve Their Own Archaeology
Tine Rassalle (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Shannon Martino (Morton College), Matthew Winter (University of Arizona), Michael Zimmerman (Rhode Island) | April 18, 2021
How the Bible Became a Book
William Schniedewind (UCLA) | March 21, 2021
The Mysteries of Mithras in Caesarea: Exploring the Cult’s Rites and Remains
Jane DeRose Evans (Temple University), Alexandra Ratzlaff (Brandeis University) | March 11, 2021
Archaeology and the Hidden Religious Culture of Israelite Women
Carol Meyers (Duke University) | February 21, 2021
Meet the Directors—Fundraiser to Support ASOR’s Affiliated Overseas Research Centers
Matthew J. Adams (AIAR), Pearce Paul Creasman (ACOR), Lindy Crewe (CAARI) | February 11, 2021
Early Synagogues, Jesus, and Galilee—A Jewish Perspective
Eric Meyers (Duke University) | December 13, 2020
Home Sweet Home: Ancient Israelite Households in Context
Cynthia Shafer-Elliott (William Jessup University) | October 18, 2020
Priestesses in the Days of Solomon and Ahab
Susan Ackerman (Dartmouth College) | September 13, 2020
Digging Deeper: How Archaeology Works
Eric H. Cline (The George Washington University) | August 9, 2020
Tine Rassalle is a PhD candidate in the Religious Studies department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has an MA in Archaeology of the ancient Near East from Gent University (Belgium) and another BA in Hebrew and Aramaic Languages and Cultures from Leiden University (the Netherlands). Her main research focuses on the material culture of ancient Judaism and early Christianity in Palestine. She is currently finishing up her dissertation project: a digital database of coin deposits found in ancient synagogues from Late Antique Palestine. Tine is the field supervisor of the Horvat Kur excavations in the Galilee, an executive staff member of SASA (Save Ancient Studies Alliance), and a member of the ASOR Early Career Scholars Committee. Her main hobby, however, is playing video games, which has now started to influence her scholarly work. She has been writing articles and has given talks on archaeogaming, and she recently guest-edited a special issue of 
Shannon Martino is an archaeologist and art historian living in Chicago, Illinois, who specializes in archaeological ceramic illustration and ceramic analysis. Shannon graduated from the University of Chicago with an honors BA in Anthropology and earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Art History. Her work focuses on Chalcolithic ceramics and clay figurines from the eastern Balkans and Turkey and she is currently a member of the Yalburt Yaylası archaeological team and a faculty member of Morton College in Cicero, IL.
Matthew Winter is an archaeologist, with a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Arizona with a focus on the archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. In addition to archaeogaming, his research interests focus on archaeological and anthropological theory, social network analysis, ancient urbanism, approaches to the archaeology of religion and identity, and the archaeology and anthropology of food. He has been involved in several different archaeological projects in Italy, Israel, and Jordan.
Michael Zimmerman is an archaeologist, with a PhD from the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. He also holds an MA in Classical Languages from the University of Florida. He has been involved in the past ten years in the analysis and publication of pottery, lamps and other ceramic material from the Joint Expeditions to Caesarea Maritima in Israel. His graduate work, centered on the analysis of Hellenistic and Roman period pottery from ‘Iraq al-Amir in Jordan, was published by ASOR in late 2019. He has excavated at a number of archaeological sites, including Caesarea Maritima in Israel, the Petra Great Temple Project in Jordan, and the Middleboro Little League Site in Massachusetts, as he expanded into the field of North American archaeology. His other work and research interests include archaeogaming in pedagogical contexts, antiquities trafficking, cultural heritage law and public policy, pottery studies, the archaeology of the Near East, and the prehistoric archaeology of Northeastern America. He teaches introductory and upper level archaeology courses, Middle Eastern cultures, and myth and folklore courses.
Friends of ASOR
William Schniedewind is a Professor of Biblical Studies at 
Jane DeRose Evans is Chair and Professor of Art History at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, 
Alexandra Ratzlaff is a Lecturer in the Department of Classical Studies at 
Eric M. Meyers, a 1962 graduate of Dartmouth College, holds an M.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University, and received the Ph.D. with distinction from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, specializing in Bible, Jewish History, and archaeology. He served on the active faculty of Duke University from 1969 to 2015 where he has been a Professor since 1979; he presently is the Bernice and Morton Lerner Emeritus Professor of Judaic Studies and Archaeology at 
I wrote you all in late August with the exciting news that ASOR’s Board of Trustees had voted to remove the word “Oriental” from ASOR’s name. Now I write with an update and a timeline for the next steps, which will include town halls with the membership and two votes over the next month.