CMS Digital Talk: Hagith Sivan (History, University of Kansas )

Title: "The Theater of Religion--Rabbinic Midrash and Christian Apocrypha on 'Adultery'"

Abstract: Our point of departure is a vignette from Midrash Lamentations Rabbah featuring repeated confrontations between the biblical patriarchs and God over salvation and restoration.  Through this narrative, with its striking echoes in Christian apocryphal literature, we explore the permeable borders of religious folklore in Late Antiquity. 

Bio: Hagith Sivan has been encircling the Roman Mediterranean in Late Antiquity through research projects ranging from a biography of a little known poet from the wine region of Bordeaux to Palestine and its panoply of populations in late antiquity.  Her most recent book explores Jewish childhood in the Roman World.  She currently pursues a project on parrhesia, or the "free" speech through comparative perspectives, Jewish and Christian, in late antiquity.