Tag Archives: Ritual

Understanding Jewish Ritual Baths: Archaeometric insights into the production of its plaster

In last month’s Yliopisto Lehti, Rick Bonnie’s fieldwork in Israel was featured. Together with Dr. Elisabeth Holmqvist-Sipilä and Dr. Paula Kouki, Rick has been sampling the plaster of stepped pools (commonly identified as Jewish ritual baths) across various sites in Israel in order to conduct archaeometric analysis. The aim of the research is to get better insights into the production of these pools and whether their ritual functioning also had an impact on the materials used for constructing these pools.

 

The fieldwork forms part of the University of Helsinki-funded project “Religious Responses to Climate Change in the Southern Levant: Understanding the rise and fall of Jewish ritual purification baths in the Hasmonean-Roman period.” This project, which runs from 2019 to 2021, aims at examining to what extent environmental factors affected the introduction, change and upkeep of Jewish water purification rituals in the southern Levant from around the late second century BCE into the second and third centuries CE.

Helsinki Lectures on Intersubjectivity: “Social sciences meet biblical studies”

CSTT-member Jutta Jokiranta, team leader of CSTT team 4, will give one of the Helsinki Lectures on Intersubjectivity tomorrow (Fri March 11), which are organised by the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Intersubjectivity in Interaction. Her lecture is entitled:

Social sciences meet biblical studies: Conversations with social identity and magical agency Continue reading Helsinki Lectures on Intersubjectivity: “Social sciences meet biblical studies”

“Three Days of Pure Joy”: Nordic Workshop on Jewish and Christian Purity Rituals

by Rick Bonnie

Over the last decades purity rituals among Jews and Christians in antiquity have received considerable scholarly interest — not the least in the Nordic countries. To celebrate this common Nordic interest a workshop was held at Uppsala University from October 21 to 23, 2015, entitled “Jewish and Christian Rituals of Purification in Antiquity”. Continue reading “Three Days of Pure Joy”: Nordic Workshop on Jewish and Christian Purity Rituals

Uusi filologia nostaa käsikirjoituksen keskiöön

Uskontotieteen professori Liv Ingeborg Lied piipahti CSTT– ja RRR-huippuyksikköjen vieraana 14.–16.4.

Liedin kiinnostuksenkohteita ovat esimerkiksi Vanhan testamentin pseudepigrafit sekä antiikinaikaiset käsikirjoitukset ja viestintäkulttuuri. Helsingissä pitämässään luennossa hän keskittyi ennen kaikkea uudeksi filologiaksi (new philology) kutsuttuun tutkimussuuntaukseen. Uuden filologian avulla pyritään ymmärtämään paitsi tekstejä myös sitä, miten niitä tuotettiin ja käytettiin. Niinpä uudessa filologiassa nostetaan pääosaan käsikirjoitukset ja niitä tarkastellaan ennen kaikkea sellaisinaan – ei esimerkiksi osana jotakin kokoelmaa, johon niiden sisältämä teksti on myöhemmin päätynyt.  Continue reading Uusi filologia nostaa käsikirjoituksen keskiöön

Scripture and/or scripture – Reflections from the joint RRR/CSTT Workshop on Text, Ritual and Magic, April 14th-15th

by Nils Hallvard Korsvoll (MF Norwegian School of Theology)

In these two days of discussing various interfaces between texts and rituals it has become increasingly clear to me that the category scripture in itself is insufficient to describe the range of venues and contexts where we find biblical material. Tracing the presence and use of biblical text in various contexts, it seems we must treat scripture as an analytic rather than a descriptive category.  Continue reading Scripture and/or scripture – Reflections from the joint RRR/CSTT Workshop on Text, Ritual and Magic, April 14th-15th

Workshop on Text, Ritual and Magic (Helsinki, April 14-15)

The workshop focuses on the interface between texts and magical or ritual practices. As a starting point, we wish to question and deconstruct the dichotomy between magic and religion. We are particularly interested in texts as material artefacts and their magical and ritual uses as well as practices described in texts. The presentations cover a variety of source materials and methodological approaches as the workshop brings together scholars working in different fields.  Continue reading Workshop on Text, Ritual and Magic (Helsinki, April 14-15)