Speaker: David Moster, Bar-Ilan University
Location: Yeshiva Stern College 215 Lexington Ave (between 32nd and 33rd Street, Room 208, New York

The Jordan River is often depicted as a significant boundary in the Hebrew Bible. Moses may not cross it, Joshua must perform a miracle to cross it, and the tribes on one side almost go to war with those on the other. Recent scholars have named this outlook “the Jordan as a boundary” viewpoint. In this talk I will use geographic and ethnographic evidence to demonstrate that the Jordan as a boundary viewpoint has a uniquely southern perspective. That is, in the south the Jordan was a forceful river situated in a harsh and wide desert valley, making it difficult to traverse. However, in the north the Jordan was a relatively tame river in a lush, open plain and was much easier to cross. This insight has significant ramifications for our understanding of the two-half tribes of Manasseh, which were separated by the river. According to a growing number of scholars, the “half-tribes” of Manasseh must have been an artificial literary construction because one tribe could not have lived on both sides of the boundary. In this talk I will demonstrate that in the north, where Manasseh was located, the Jordan was more of a non-boundary than a boundary, more of a stream than a divisive river. Furthermore, the ethnographic record reveals that a number of other tribes lived on both sides of the river in the north, which makes it much less likely that the biblical authors invented the two-half tribes of Manasseh from whole cloth.

David Z. Moster is a research fellow in the department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, a lecturer in Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins at Nyack College, and a PhD candidate in Biblical Studies at Bar-Ilan University. He previously studied Ancient Israelite and Near Eastern History at New York University (M.A.) and Hebrew Bible, Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Education, and Rabbinics at Yeshiva University (B.A., M.A., M.S., Semicha). David has written articles for The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, the Journal of Biblical Literature, and the Biblical Archaeology Society’s Bible History Daily. In addition to his dissertation about the biblical tribe of Manasseh, he is currently writing about each of the 929 chapters of the Hebrew Bible on this blog, 929chapters.com

Speaker: Steven Notley
Location: Nyack College, Manhattan Campus, 2 Washington Street, Room 2241, New York

For the past two seasons archaeologists from Nyack Collage (New York) and Kinneret Collge (Israel) have excavated el-Araj, one the possible locations for ancient Bethsaida-Julias mentioned in the New Testament, Josephus, and other early Jewish sources. Notley will present findings from the second season which may have finally found evidence for Herod Philip’s urbanization of the Jewish fishing village.

The identification is controversial as for many years Rami Arav, the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) has proudly led a consortium of universities in excavating Bethsaida, an ancient city located on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee for almost 30 years according to the website of the Bethsaida Excavations Project.

Which one is the real Bethsaida?

R. Steven Notley is Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins on the New York City campus of Nyack College (2001-present) and director of the graduate programs in Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins. He received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem where he studied with the late Professor David Flusser. Dr. Notley lived sixteen years in Jerusalem with his wife and four children, during which time he was the founding chair of the New Testament Studies program at the Jerusalem University College. He has been directing groups of students and laypeople to Israel and the eastern Mediterranean region for over 25 years. He is the author of many books and articles. He continues collaborative research and publication with Israeli scholars in the fields of historical geography, ancient Judaism, and Christian origins. Among his list of publications, he co-authored with Flusser the historical biography, The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus Genius (Eerdmans 2007); with Professor Anson Rainey (Tel Aviv University) the monumental biblical atlas, The Sacred Bridge: Carta s Atlas of the Biblical World (Carta Publishing 2005, 2014); with Professor Ze ev Safrai (Bar Ilan University) an annotated translation of Eusebius important description of Roman Palestine, Eusebius, Onomasticon: A Triglott Edition with Notes and Commentary (Brill 2005). Recently he rejoined Safrai for their second work, a pioneering collection and translation of the earliest rabbinic parables that provide the literary and religious context for the parables of Jesus, The Parables of the Sages (Carta 2011).

Speaker: Stephen A. Geller
Location: Jewish Theological Seminary, 3080 Broadway, New York City (Private Dining Room)

The familiar seven-branched menorah known from Second Temple times on numerous Jewish objects, as well as the Arch of Titus, where it is portrayed as part of the spoils of the Jerusalem temple, does not seem to be directly related to the descriptions of the menorah in the Hebrew Bible. But what was that object? Was it a simple stand with lamps on top? Or was it a branched object representing the tree of life, a fertility symbol? Or were the lights symbolic of the “eyes of God,” as the prophet Zechariah says?  We will examine the evidence from the perspectives of both text and art.

Stephen A. Geller is the Irma Cameron Milstein Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic languages, Emiritus, at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Dr. Geller teaches courses in biblical literature, with special emphasis on the Book of Psalms, biblical poetry, and the prophets.

Dr. Geller has published numerous books and articles on biblical language, poetry, literature, and religion. His dissertation, “Parallelism in Early Biblical Poetry,” was published in 1979. His most recent book is Sacred Enigmas: Literary Religion in the Hebrew Bible. Dr. Geller’s article “Wisdom, Nature, and Piety in Some Biblical Psalms” appeared in Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen (edited by I. Tzvi Abusch). He is currently completing a commentary on the Book of Psalms for the Hermeneia series of commentaries.