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Sacha Stern

Professor Sacha Stern - Professor of Rabbinic Judaism.

Professor Sacha Stern completed a BA in Ancient History at Oxford (1986), an MA in Social Anthropology at UCL (1988), and a D.Phil in Jewish Studies at Oxford (1992). He also studied in Yeshivot in Israel. He was Lecturer and Reader in Jewish Studies at Jews" College, London, where he was Head of Department, and then at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies). He is now Professor of Rabbinic Judaism at the UCL Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

His fields are Jewish history in Antiquity, and rabbinic Judaism. He teaches a range of courses in both fields, e.g. "Judaism and the origins of Christianity", “Greeks and Jews: Antiquity and the modern world”, "Rabbis and Judaism in late Antiquity ", and “Introduction to the Babylonian Talmud”.

His earlier research dealt mainly with the themes of Jewish identity, relations between Jews and non-Jews, and attitudes towards idolatry in ancient rabbinic literature; further work in this area is still in planning. He has also published articles of general importance on early rabbinic literature and rabbinic history, e.g. "Attribution and authorship in the Babylonian Talmud", and "Rabbi and the origins of the Patriarchate".

More recently, Sacha Stern has researched and written extensively on the history of the Jewish calendar, the concept of time in ancient Judaism, and ancient calendars generally. His latest monograph, Calendars in Antiquity (forthcoming), covers the full range of calendars in Antiquity, e.g. Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian. He argues that the history and development of ancient calendars was related to a broader, socio-political context, such as the rise and fall of great empires and the relationship of subject people to their imperial rulers. He contends that calendar reckoning should not be treated as a technical curiosity, but rather as an integral part of ancient culture and society.

From October 2008, he has been directing several major research projects on medieval Jewish calendars: "Medieval Monographs on the Jewish Calendar" (AHRC), “The Jewish Calendar in Early Islamic Sources” (Leverhulme), ‘Medieval Christian and Jewish calendar texts from England and Franco-Germany’, and “Jewish calendar controversies in the 10th-11th centuries Near East: a historical and codicological analysis” (British Academy), with a staff of five Research Associates and several international collaborators. The aim of these projects is to produce critical editions, with translation and commentary, of some of the most important medieval texts in Hebrew and Arabic on the Jewish calendar, and to establish their literary and historical context in relation to medieval culture and medieval astronomy.

Sacha Stern is editor of the Journal of Jewish Studies (jointly with Prof. Geza Vermes) and of the Brill series Texts and Studies on Time, Astronomy, and Calendars (jointly with Prof. Charles Burnett).

Books

• Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994).
• Calendar and Community: a History of the Jewish Calendar, 2nd cent. BCE – 10th cent. CE. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
• Time and Process in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Littman Library, 2003).
• (ed.) Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History (IJS Studies in Judaica 12, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2011)
• Calendars and Antiquity: Empires, States, and Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press), forthcoming.

Articles

• "Attribution and authorship in the Babylonian Talmud", Journal of Jewish Studies 45 (1994), pp.28-51.
• "The concept of authorship in the Babylonian Talmud", Journal of Jewish Studies 46 (1995), pp.183-95.
• "Figurative art and halakha in the Mishnaic-Talmudic period", Zion 61 (1996), pp.397-419 (in Hebrew).
• "Fictitious calendars: early rabbinic notions of time, astronomy, and reality", Jewish Quarterly Review 87 (1996), pp.103-29.
• "New Tombstones from Zoar (Moussaieff Collection)", Tarbiz 68 (1999), pp.177-85 (in Hebrew).
• "The Babylonian Calendar at Elephantine", in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 130 (2000), pp.159-71.
• "Rabbi and the origins of the patriarchate", Journal of Jewish Studies 54 (2003), pp.192-215.
• "Near Eastern lunar calendars in the Syriac Martyr Acts", Le Muséon 117 (2004), pp.447-72.
• (with Haggai Misgav) "Four additional tombstones from Zoar", Tarbiz, 74 (2005), pp. 137-51 (in Hebrew).
• (with Piergabriele Mancuso) "An astronomical table of Shabbetai Donnolo and the Jewish calendar in 10th-century Italy", in Aleph. Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 7 (2007), pp.13-41.
• "The Babylonian month and the new moon: sighting and prediction", Journal for the History of Astronomy 39.1 (2008), pp.19-42.
• ‘A ‘Jewish’ birth record, sambat-, and the calendar of Salamis’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 172 (2010), pp. 105-14

Chapters in Books

• "Dissonance and misunderstanding in Jewish-Roman Relations", in M.D.Goodman (ed.), Jews in a Graeco-Roman World (Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), pp.241-50.
• "Qumran calendars: theory and practice", in T.Lim (ed.), The Dead Sea Scrolls in their Historical Context (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), pp.179-86.
• "Pagan images in late antique Palestinian synagogues", in S.Mitchell and G.Greatrex (eds.), Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity (London: Duckworth and Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2000), pp.241-52.
• "Jewish calendar reckoning in Graeco-Roman cities", in J.R. Bartlett (ed.), Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities (London: Routledge, 2002), pp.107-16.
• "The rabbinic concept of time from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages", in Time and Eternity: the Medieval Discourse (G. Jaritz and G. Moreno-Riaño eds.), Turnhout: Brepols, 2003, pp.129-45.
• "Avodah Zarah", "Calendar", "Mishnah", "Quartodeciman controversy", "Sadducees", and "Talmud", in E. Kessler and N. Wenborn (eds), A Dictionary of Jewish-Christian Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
• ‘Rabbinic academies in late antiquity: state of current research’, in H. Hugonnard-Roche (ed.), L'Enseignement supérieur dans les mondes antiques et médiévaux (Paris: Vrin, 2008) pp. 221-238.
• ‘Qumran calendars and sectarianism’, in T. Lim and J. Collins (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) pp.232-53.
• ‘The Talmud Yerushalmi’, in P.S. Alexander and M. Goodman (eds.), Rabbinic Texts and the History of Late-Roman Palestine (Proceedings of the British Academy 165), (London: British Academy, 2010) pp.143-64.
• ‘The ‘sectarian’ calendar of Qumran’, in S. Stern (ed.), Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History (Leiden: Brill, 2011) pp.39-62.

Review Articles

• Review article of E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (revised edition), Christian Jewish Relations 21.4 (1988), pp.49-59.
• Review article of E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief: 63BCE - 66CE (1992), Journal of Jewish Studies 43 (1992), pp.307-12.

Short Notes

• "The death of idolatry?", in Le'ela, April 1993, pp.26-8.
• "The second day of yom tov in Talmudic and Geonic literature", in Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies (1993), Jerusalem, 1994, vol.C.1, pp.49-55.
• "The Origins of the Jewish Calendar", Le'ela, October 1997, pp.2-5.