This short essay considers rabbinic ideas of reproduction, likeness, and species variation in conversation with the work of Joann Sfar and Sunaura Taylor. Part of Ancient Jew Review’s Forum on Animals.

Neis traces an expression of bodily language (kavvanat halev, literally “directing the heart”) from biblical to early rabbinic sources and demonstrates how it oriented people to the affective, physical, and spatial dimensions of prayer. Rejecting a binary that would treat such language as either mental/subjective (and thus metaphorically) or sol…[Read more]

Behind the literary form of testament and expressions memorializing the dead is a concept of how objects, rights, and speech pass from one generation to the next: transmission. This essay examines two interrelated phenomena that give filial succession in the biblical and Ugaritic literature its contours: first, the discourses surrounding…[Read more]

This thought experiment considers whether Siamese (Conjoined) are allowed to marry according to Halacha. It considers various aspects of the Biblical bans on incest and offers a very contemporary discussion about the meaning of personhood. This paper uses medical journals, works on medical history, and various responsa to find a precedent and…[Read more]

Preview of Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature (SBL Press, 2019) https://secure.aidcvt.com/sbl/ProdDetails.asp?ID=064211C&PG=1&Type=BL&PCS=SBL

From SBL Press:
In her book, Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature, Meredith J. C. Warren identifies and defines a new genre in ancient texts that she terms…[Read more]

Tracing an early rabbinic approach to the human, this article analyzes how the Tannaim (early Palestinian Jewish sages) of the Mishnah and Tosefta (redacted ca. early 3rd century CE) set the human side by side with other species, and embedded their account within broader considerations of reproduction, zoology and species crossings. The human here…[Read more]

Article exploring the use of sibling language in associations beyond Judean or Christian groups.

A chapter exploring rivalries among groups in ancient Greek cities of Asia Minor.

Article exploring Jewish or Judean groups in the context of associations at Hierapolis.

This article makes several claims. It argues that the genre of “pilgrim’s literature” is present in rabbinic sources, and identifies rabbinic pilgrimage itineraries. Secondly, it shows that aside from the expected melancholic post-Temple itinerary, there exist itineraries for Babylon and for biblical conquest that do a very dif…[Read more]

Article on banqueting within associations.

This is the complete second, fully revised edition of the book with links to inscriptions on the AGRW website. (First edition was published by Fortress in 2003).

Article surveying economic conditions within associations in Asia Minor and on Greek islands.

Book that explores processes of identification within various small group situations in the Greco-Roman world.

Article comparing representations of domestic, civic, and imperial violence in novels and in apocryphal acts.

PDF of Bosporan section of work only in keeping with the publisher’s policy.

Article on parental language within small groups in the Greco-Roman world with special attention to fathers or mothers of the synagogue.

Chapter introducing and surveying the intersection of the gods and travel in the Greco-Roman world.

An interpretation of the rock art appearing in The Shaft at Lascaux and a discussion of Aurignacian Rites of Passage

The anonymous “Le Sacrifice d’Abraham” performed before Francis I in Paris in 1539 has traditionally been treated–if at all–simply as a variant of an earlier play of the same name published as part of the 15th-century “Mistère du Viel Testament.” More recently, it has been suggested that the play anticipates the direction taken by Théodore de B…[Read more]