COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 31 studies, and a different outlook on the sanctity of original texts in the past. He gives the example of chapter two of Genesis. “The Hebrew says, ‘On the seventh day God finished the work that he had done and on the seventh day, he rested from all the work that he had done.’ Of course, the Jewish Sabbath is a day which is supposed to be for rest, so the text is a little weird,” Wright says. “It suggests that God might have worked on the seventh day. He got up in the morning, trimmed the hedges, edged the grass, did the last few little details, and then he finished by noon and went off and watched college football or something.” When you get to the Greek translation, there is a change. “It reads, ‘On the sixth day God finished the work that he had done, and on the seventh day’ God rested. Somewhere along the line, whether it’s in Hebrew or Greek—we really don’t know—somebody noticed the world would think of changing the text. But we have one version that suggests that God worked on the seventh day, and one that says God finished on the sixth day, which resolves the problem completely. So, there’s a different attitude toward the text in antiquity from the one we have when we talk about Bible.” This kind of thing this is commonplace in the study Wright says the study of early Judaism has changed since he entered the field in the 1980s. For that reason, he went out of his way to invite a significant group of younger and mid-career scholars to the upcoming conference to explore new aspects of the research being done. “How has our approach to studying early Judaism changed,” he asks, “and what kinds of questions are we asking now that we weren’t asking before?” One answer, says Wright, is that scholars of religion are casting a wider net in their inquiries. “I started my doctoral program in 1978. We worked with what in my area is called the historical-critical method, which was the standard in the field for a long time,” Wright says. “The younger scholars, many of whom are now friends, are working in a different way from the way I worked in the 80s and using methods from different areas. I get pushed by my younger colleagues on these kinds of questions, and it’s really healthy and good.” Now, Wright often finds himself delving into literary criticism or taking on anthropological or sociological questions in his work. “In the 80s, for instance, we weren’t asking questions about how ancient peoples constructed their identities. We ask those questions now.” As an example, Wright brings up the Letter of Aristeas, a second century BCE Jewish text from Egypt that relates the story of the oldest translation of the Hebrew Pentateuch, or Torah, into Greek. “We talk a lot in our field about what we call Hellenistic Judaism. It could have a notational hyphen in it, similar to Italian-American,” Wright says. “Did the author of this letter consider himself a kind of Greek-ized Jew? I don’t think so. If we had the author of the Letter of Aristeas in front of us and asked if he were a Hellenized Jew, I don’t think he’d know what that meant. He’d say he was both!” Wright says this hypothetical dialogue shows that even more than 2,000 years ago, static representations of identity blur the complexity of social realities. “We’ve learned that identities are fungible. They develop, they change, and they’re different in different contexts,” says Wright. Another aspect of Wright’s research that presents deep complexity is the fragmentary nature of the historical documents he CHRISTINE KRESCHOLLEK, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO A 15th century manuscript of Epistula ad Philocratem, known in English as Letter to Philocrates or Letter of Aristeas.(left). A copy of Ben Wright’s The Letter of Aristeas sits in his office (below).
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