Wednesday, July 05, 2017

Klawans receives BU fellowship

CONGRATULATIONS TO JONATHAN KLAWANS: BU Center for Humanities Names New Fellows. Research interests range from religious forgeries to food production (Rich Barlow, BU Today).
As is another 2017–2018 fellow, Jonathan Klawans, a CAS religion professor. He’d already planned a fall sabbatical, and “the BUCH fellowship makes an enormous difference, by expanding the time frame of my sabbatical from one semester to a full year and by putting me in conversation with an interdisciplinary group of humanities scholars to discuss our works-in-progress.” Klawans plans a monograph on Heresies, Forgeries, and Novelties: Constructing and Crossing the Boundaries of Ancient Judaism, premised in part on the idea that scholars continue to be fooled by ancient Jewish and Christian forgeries. (For example, he’ll disagree with what he calls a scholarly consensus that one ancient text, “Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides,” was written by a Jew; Klawans believes it the work of an early Christian.)
I agree with Professor Klawans that there is no compelling case that Pseudo-Phocylides is of Jewish origin and that it may well be a Christian composition. See, for example, here, here, and here. I look forward to his monograph.

Congratulations also to the other new BUCH fellows.

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