Participating Members

Donald T. Ariel (B.A. magna cum laude, Brown University, 1976; M.A. with honors, Hebrew University; Ph.D, Tel Aviv University, 2007, dissertation on Herodian numismatics). Since 1989 Ariel has been the head of the Coin Department of the Israel Antiquities Authority and keeper of the State of Israel ancient national coin collection. He is editor of Israel Numismatic Research, journal of the Israel Numismatic Society. Ariel has written four books, including two excavation reports and one numismatic treatise. He has edited another four books, including three excavation reports, and has published over 120 articles. Ariel serves as numismatist for six active foreign archaeological expeditions in Israel, and as Hellenistic amphora expert for a similar number of teams. He is currently co-authoring the final report of the bullae found in the Hellenistic archive of the University of Michigan and Boston University excavations at Tel Kedesh. Ariel is especially interested in the uses of coins, amphorae and bullae in the dating and understanding of archaeological sites in the Hellenistic southern Levant.

Donald T. Ariel’s webpage: http://antiquities.academia.edu/DonaldTAriel

Mordechai Aviam is an archaeologist and senior lecturer at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, in the Department of the Land of Israel Studies. His B.A. was magna cum laude from Hebrew University, and Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University with a 2005 dissertation on Yodefat – A Case Study for the Development of Jewish settlement in the Galilee during the Second Temple Period. Since 1997 he has been a resident of the Upper Galilee and continued to conduct research on the archaeology of the region, specializing in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods. Between 1990 to 2001 he served as the District Archaeologist of Western Galilee for the IAA. He has conducted numerous surveys and excavations in the region, and published two books and more than 100 articles. Among his most important excavations are the Jewish town of Yodefat, the synagogue of Bar’am, the Hellenistic-Hasmonaean fortress at Keren Naftali, the Jewish village at Shikhin, the Roman-period Jewish farmstead at Tel Rekhesh and seven churches and monasteries in the region. He is the founder of the “Kinneret Institute for Galilean Archaeology.”

Mordechai Aviam homepage:  https://kinneret.academia.edu/Mordechaiaviam

Andrea M. Berlin is the James R. Wiseman Chair in Classical Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology at Boston University. She has been excavating in the eastern Mediterranean for over thirty years, working on projects from Troy in Turkey to Coptos in southern Egypt to Paestum, in Italy. Her specialty is the Near East from the time of Alexander the Great through the Roman era, about which she has written four books and over forty articles. She is especially interested in studying the realities of daily life, and in exploring the intersection of politics and cultural change in antiquity. Since 1997, she has been the co-director, with Sharon C. Herbert of the University of Michigan, of excavations at Tel Kedesh, a large mound in Israel’s northeastern Upper Galilee. Discoveries include a huge compound (2400 sq m), built c. 500 BCE and used as a royal or imperial administrative center under the Achaemenid, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid regimes. The site has produced new evidence pertinent to the historical realities of life in southern Phoenicia and Judea from the fifth through second centuries BCE, with pointed implications for the historicity of the books of the Maccabees.

Andrea M. Berlin’s webpage: http://www.bu.edu/archaeology/people/andrea-m-berlin/

Katell Berthelot is a CNRS Researcher within the University of Aix-Marseille, France. As a historian of Jews and Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman period, she first worked on accusations of misanthropy against the Jews in the Greco-Roman world and on the Jewish responses to these charges (Philanthrôpia judaica. Le débat autour de la “misanthropie” des lois juives dans l’Antiquité [Leiden: Brill, 2003]). Her work then developped in four main directions:   1) the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls (she is co-editor of the series La Bibliothèque de Qumrân with Les Editions du Cerf in Paris); 2) the comparative study of ancient Jewish ethical teachings and Greco-Roman philosophy (L’«humanité de l’autre homme» dans la pensée juive ancienne [Leiden: Brill, 2004]); 3) the history of Jewish biblical interpretation, with a particular focus on the reception of the texts pertaining to the conquest of the Promised Land and the fate of the Canaanites (The Gift of the Land and the Fate of the Canaanites in Jewish Thought [ed. K. Berthelot, J. David and M. Hirshman; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014]); 4) the study of the impact of empires on the formation of Ancient Judaism. She just finished a book on the Hasmonean wars of conquest, which challenges the common interpretation that understands these wars as a planned reconquest of the biblical Land of Israel, and which emphasizes the influence of Hellenistic models of kingship upon the Hasmoneans. She now coordinates a program funded by the European Research Council, on the political and religious challenge posed by Roman imperialism to the Jews.

Katell Berthelot’s webpage: https://cnrs.academia.edu/KatellBerthelot

Francis Borchardt is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at Lutheran Theological Seminary Hong Kong, where he has been teaching since 2011. Additionally, he is a post-doctoral researcher with the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence at the University of Helsinki: Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions. His work focuses on two main areas of research: 1) the transmission, adoption, and adaptation of Jewish literary traditions in their Graeco-Roman and Hellenistic contexts, and 2) performances of Jewish identity in the literature of the Hellenistic period. He has written a monograph and a number of articles on 1 and 2 Maccabees and their relationship to Jewish traditions, and is currently completing a book describing Judean ethnicity and nationalism from the Hasmoneans to Bar Kokhba. A primary goal in both areas of research is to understand Judeans and Judean culture as active participants in the cultural matrix identified as Hellenism.

Francis Borchardt’s website: https://lts.academia.edu/FrancisBorchardt

Benedikt Eckhardt is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Bremen, Germany. One aspect of his work as an ancient historian is the study of Judea and the Jews from the Hellenistic Period until the early Roman era, with a special focus on the political and ideological history of Hasmonean and Herodian Judea. In addition to a number of articles on Jewish sources from this period (Qumran, Judith, Psalms of Solomon), he has edited a book on Jewish Identity and Politics between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba (Leiden: Brill 2012). He has also written a book on the interrelations between ideologies of rule and identity formation in Hasmonean and Herodian Judea: Ethnos und Herrschaft. Politische Figurationen judäischer Identität von Antiochos III. bis Herodes I. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013).

Benedikt Eckhardt’s webpage: https://bremen.academia.edu/BenediktEckhardt

Yonder Moynihan Gillihan (PhD University of Chicago, 2007) is Associate Professor of Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins at Boston College. His research focuses on law and ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Roman world. His current book project treats the status of associations in state ideology and law during the Hellenistic-Roman era, with emphasis on Judea under Hasmonean and Herodian rule.

Yonder Gillihan’s webpage: https://bc.academia.edu/YonderGillihan

David Gurevich is a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in Harvard University. His major academic interests focus on the Classical Archaeology of Ancient Israel and the Archaeology and the History of Jerusalem. His doctoral dissertation, titled Unroofed Water Pools in Jerusalem in the Late Second Temple Period, studied the Jewish society of Jerusalem through a prominent phenomenon of its material culture – the unroofed water pools. His present research project deals with the identification of sites that are mentioned by Josephus Flavius in Jerusalem. Dr. Gurevich holds Ph.D, MA and BA in Archaeology (University of Haifa), MA in Social Sciences (Sapienza University of Rome) and B.Sc in Computer Science (University of Haifa).

David Gurevich’s webpage: https://harvard.academia.edu/DavidGurevich

Sylvie Honigman has been teaching at the Department of History at Tel Aviv University since 1998. Her research is focused on the Hellenistic world, and particularly Judea in Late Persian and Hellenistic times, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Seleukid Empire. Her work explores relations between kings and temples in a comparative perspective; Judean historiography of Hellenistic times, in particular 1 and 2 Maccabees, LXX 1 Esdras, and Ezra–Nehemiah; Greek historiography in Classical and Hellenistic times, in particular concepts of truth, lies, and fiction; Jewish literature in Greek, especially The Letter of Aristeas; Greek ethnicity, continuity and changes from Archaic to Hellenistic times; and Jews in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. She is currently a member of the international research collective Groupe d’Étude des Mondes Hellénistiques, based in Paris. Her last book, Tales of High Priests and Taxes: The Books of the Maccabees and the Judean Rebellion Against Antiochos IV (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), combines a literary analysis of 1 and 2 Maccabees and a historical analysis of the causes of the Judean rebellion against Antiochos IV in the 160s BCE.

Sylvie Honigman’s webpage: https://telaviv.academia.edu/SylvieHonigman

David M. Jacobson (D.Phil. in Materials Science, University of Sussex, 1972; PhD. in Classical Archaeology, King’s College London, 1999) is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. Research interests include Herodian architecture and numismatics and, more recently, examining the historical context of motifs on Hasmonaean coins. He has published extensively on those subjects, including most recently a book entitled Antioch and Jerusalem: The Seleucids and Maccabees in Coins (London: Spink, 2015). He has recently presented a research paper at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies on ‘Hasmonean coinage: some issues and fresh insights’ (February 2014) and a lecture at the British Museum on ‘Reflections in ancient coins of the Maccabean struggle against Seleucid rule’ (February 2016).  Among the research projects on which he is currently engaged is one looking more deeply at the interplay between the Hasmonaeans and Seleucids, as reflected in coinage. From 2010 to 2015, he was was Editor of the Palestine Exploration Quarterly (PEQ).

Jonathan Klawans joined the Department of Religion and the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies in the fall of 1997. Professor Klawans is a specialist in the religion and religious literature of ancient (second temple) Judaism. In addition to numerous articles and reviews, he has published three books, all with Oxford University Press: Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (2000), Purity, Sacrifice and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (2005), and Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism (2012).

Jonathan Klawans’s webpage: http://www.bu.edu/religion/people/faculty/bios/klawans/

Paul J. Kosmin read Ancient and Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford (BA 2005), then moved to Harvard University for his PhD. His first book, The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire, examines the relationship between the kings of the Seleucid dynasty and the landscape, from Bactria to Thrace, over which they ruled. Paul studies Hellenistic kingship and imperialism, ancient ethnography, interactions between the Greek and Near Eastern worlds, and Greek epigraphy. Current projects include a study of Ptolemaic ethnography, an investigation of the role of magical rituals in city-state politics, and a comparative history of resistance in the Near East during Hellenistic times.

Paul Kosmin’s webpage: https://harvard.academia.edu/PaulKosmin 

Uzi Leibner is a senior lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received a Ph.D. in archaeology from Bar Ilan University in 2004 and joined the faculty of the Hebrew University in 2008. He specializes in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine archaeology of the Land of Israel and its surroundings. His interests lie in various aspects of landscape archaeology; rural settlements; ancient synagogues; ancient Jewish Art; and the integration of archaeological material and historical sources. He is currently directing the Hellenistic Galilee Project: A study of Material Culture, Settlement Patterns and Ethnicity in the Galilee during the Hellenistic Period.

Uzi Leibner’s webpage: scholars.huji.ac.il/uzileibner

Danny Syon is an archaeologist and numismatist. His Ph.D. is from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; his dissertation was on the coin finds from Gamla and patterns of coin circulation in Hellenistic-Roman Galilee. Since 2007 he has been head of the Scientific Assessment Branch of the Israel Antiquities Authority. He has excavated extensively at Gamla, ‘Akko, Bet Shean and at the underwater excavations at Caesarea Maritima, and coordinated, contributed to and scientifically edited the final report on the Gamla Excavations, of which three volumes are now published. In addition to a monograph on coin circulation in Galilee, which is in press, he has published over 100 excavation reports, numismatic reports and encyclopedia entries. He is on the editorial board of Israel Numismatic Research and has been the numismatist for several foreign expeditions. His work focuses mainly on the history and archaeology of Galilee from the Persian to the Roman periods, as well as the Crusader period, with particular focus on coin circulation, epigraphy, the era of the Jewish Revolt against Rome, and burial customs.

Danny Syon’s webpage: http://antiquities.academia.edu/DannySyon

Steven Weitzman’s webpage: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/religious_studies/profile/steven-weitzman