Call for Papers: 2026 Midwest Regional Meeting for Biblical Studies, March 13-15, 2026 Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN. Submissions due January 9, 2026 mailchi.mp/283c7c7cfe58...

It was an honor to contribute an essay to this festschrift for Robert Hanhart, whose edition of Septuagint Esther has been a constant companion on my desk for many years.

Chiasm-haters need to read Teeter's essay "Biblical Symmetry and Its Modern Detractors," which deals with *why* scholarship became skeptical but also finds that "biblical compositions appear designed to be read and understood as a fractal-like hierarchy of recursively embedded structural levels."

I'll be presenting for the EABS Graduate Seminar on September 18th at 7:00pm CEST on "A More Ethical Esther? Violence in the Versions of Esther 8–9." Message me if you would like the Zoom link.

You: I will write a balanced book review with fair critiques where necessary. Michael V. Fox: Here's a scathing review of a whole academic journal that shouldn't even exist.

🧵(1) Exciting news regarding the Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library (EMML) project, which photographed more than 9,000 manuscripts in Ethiopia from 1973 to 1994 and is the largest repository for scholarly access to texts in Geʻez. hmml.org/collections/...

My #IOSOT2025 book haul is clearly dominated by Georgian children’s books.

Someone at #IOSOT2025 brought their 2013 Munich bag, still in good shape 12 years later. They just don’t make conference bags like they used to.

I got my copy of Speaking to Job in Greek signed by the author! @maxavenariolus.bsky.social @dgb-relbibtheo.bsky.social #IOSOT2025

Biblical scholars love to find an inscription that says “Only the LORD is God” and say “Actually, that presupposes polytheism.”

"wow, you study the Bible, so you must be a pastor or rabbi or something, right?"

Working with high-res medieval manuscript images? Just published our practical IIIF-based solution that's transformed how we handle manuscript fragments in paratextuality research and manuscript studies overall digital.csic.es/handle/10261... #medievalmanuscripts #paratexts #IIIF #codicology #HHDD

Lecture (online and in-person): "Translation as imperialism: Late Greek Poetics and the Hebrew Bible" by Tim Whitmarsh, Durham University, Ritson Room, Department of Classics. 19 June 2025, 5:00pm. Register here: tinyurl.com/43mue34c

Publishers: a very simple thing you can do to sell more books is to put the Table of Contents on the website.

I discovered Esther among the Coca-Cola scrolls. I mean bottles.

"From Giant to Pocket Bibles: The Development of the Size of Biblical Manuscripts," 19 June 2025, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Romero Room, COVE 02.10, Sint-Michielsstraat 4, Leuven

Book talk (in-person and Zoom): The Book of Esther: Themes and Issues, edited by Kristin Joachimsen and Helge Bezold, MF Norwegian School of Theology, May 27, 11:30-12:00 CET mf.no/arrangemente...

Book panel (in-person): Scriptural Vitality: Rethinking Philology and Hermeneutics by Hindy Najman. 6 May, 3:30 Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. Registration: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Free online workshop: Framing Religious Art in UK Collections www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/framing-re...

If you're in Edinburgh, this workshop on epigraphy with Dr Margaret Williams will be great: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/getting-th...

Power and Leadership: Biblical, Anthropological, and Practical-Theological Perspectives, International and Interdisciplinary Symposium organized by Prof. Dr. Veronika Burz-Tropper & Dr. Armin Kummer, June 3-5 2025, KU Leuven, register by May 25 theo.kuleuven.be/en/research/...

Join us this 1st of May if you want to hear a little more on my work on Pamphilus' library at Caesarea !

the moment when you find out that there's a 4th Ezra.

you, a simpleton: Why would there be Greek letters on a product called “Pharaoh’s Revenge”?? me, an historian: It dates to the Ptolemaic era.

I’ll be launching my book The Limits of Erudition in Cambridge on 2 May 2025 with Simon Ditchfield. All very much welcome, whether in person or online! For further details see the poster attached and register for Zoom here: www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series... #earlymodern

Book launch event (in-person): Panel discussion of Andrew Danielson's new book Edom in Judah: Trade, Migration, and Kinship in the Late Iron Age Southern Levant (Cambridge University Press, 2024), 5pm–7pm EST, May 5, 2025, Plimpton Room, Barker Center, Harvard University

Lecture series (online & in-person): Let’s talk about Paratexts, 6:00pm Wednesdays 30 April 2025 – 23 September 2026 Chester Beatty Library, Dublin @chesterbeatty.bsky.social chesterbeatty.ie/exhibitions/...

More Kafka + Hebrew: two sets of playing cards I found in Prague years ago, one set featuring Kafka and Milena Jesenská and another with the Maharal of Prague.

Conference (Zoom and in-person): Quale ebraicità di Gesù dopo J.P. Meier? April 4, 2025, 9:00-19:00, Pontificia Facoltà Teologica di Sicilia www.fatesi.it/eventi/quale...

Kafka writing a letter in Hebrew. Note that he didn’t know how to write “Europe” in modern Hebrew, so he wrote it out phonetically and then in brackets wrote “laugh not.” Draft of letter to Puah Ben-Tovim, 1923, on exhibit now at the Morgan Library, NYC.

we found a Complutensian Polyglot Bible (1514-1517) at the New York Public Library.

1513 Ge’ez Psalter, printed for Johann Potken, the first printed Ge’ez book (Morgan Library, NYC).

5 aprile 2025, Giornata di studio: Il corpo nella Bibbia, sede ISSR via della Conciliazione, 6 Siracusa

now until August 10th, 2025 at the Jewish Museum, NYC: The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/...

My last name is Alfaro, "the lighthouse," related to Φάρος, the island where Philo says the Septuagint was translated & celebrated annually, and also the namesake of Kok Pharos, the publishing house my doctoral advisor founded in 1990.

If you can guess which 20th century giant of Jewish studies authored all of these (and more) encyclopedia articles, I will give you $1AlfaroDollar (=5.23 Schrute Bucks).

Postdoctoral and PhD opportunities: "Work without End: Informal Taxation and Forced Labor within Persian Southern Levantine Temple Economy and Society" at the University of Helsinki jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

File under nominative determinism: Sefer Ha-Mo'adim by Yom-Tov Lewinsky, 9 vols.

whatever happened to academics thanking their mom for financing their scholarly commentary on Philo of Alexandria?

Abstract accepted for @ioscs.bsky.social in Berlin this summer. Hope to see many of you at IOSOT!

Hill Museum & Manuscript Library fellowship: application deadline: March 15 hmml.org/research/fellowships

Colloque Lire et choisir. Formes, usages et finalités des signes d'excerption (VIe - XIIe siècles), 2 au 4 octobre à l'université Paul Valéry-Montpellier 3 crises.www.univ-montp3.fr/fr/node/191458

The legend of Pope Joan, but make it contemporary and with Ralph Fiennes.

Um novo blog: Bíblia, História e Arqueologia. Uma iniciativa do Laboratório do Antigo Oriente Próximo-USP voltada à difusão de conhecimento acadêmico sobre a Bíblia Hebraica. laop.fflch.usp.br/blog-bha

Historical criticism is not the demise of allegorical reading but its fulfillment as political allegory. Every narrative is a parable of a kingdom: Adam and Eve are a prophetic critique of monarchy; the Gerasene demonaic is really about resisting the Roman empire, and so on.

Seminário "A Influência Persa/Aquemênida na Teologia Judaíta do pós-exílio," 22-24 de abril/25, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, Curitiba. Inscrições são gratuitas: t.co/HOueuLs7rP

Betteridge's law of headlines ("Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.") doesn’t also apply to academic publication titles?

Hey Joe Rogan, check this out. I’d be happy to talk about this groundbreaking discovery of the book of Esther among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

With Jacob Raphael Saraval's c. 1750 Hebrew translation of Handel's oratorio libretto, the book of Esther comes full circle from Hebrew to English back to Hebrew.