Christian Brady, Dean of Schreyer Honors College; Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, and Jewish Studies, will present a paper entitled

“The Transformation of Ruth and Boaz in Targum Ruth”

on Tuesday, Dec 9, at 3:45 pm in 130 Moore

Coffee and cookies will be served!

Targum is a unique genre, offering a verbatim Aramaic rendering of the Hebrew biblical text, while weaving into it additional details and context that transforms the text often in significant ways. This paper will consider how the Targum of Ruth transformed the figures of Ruth and Boaz into paragons of rabbinic excellence.

Michael Legaspi, Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, and Jewish Studies, will be presenting a paper entitled

“The Problem with Knowledge: Perspectives from Classical and Biblical Traditions”

on Tuesday, October 20, 2015 at 3:30 pm in 102 Weaver. Coffee and cookies will be served!

Modern attitudes toward knowledge have been shaped in crucial ways by the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. We tend to view knowledge as indispensable, the pursuit of knowledge as something natural and noble. Yet many foundational texts in Western culture present knowledge as a dangerous and problematic attainment. They prompt us to consider its limits and ambiguities and to ask whether certain forms of knowledge may actually be obstacles to human flourishing, hindrances in the pursuit of another ancient ideal: wisdom.