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Abraham’s Sacrifice in Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions:
16 March 2023–17 March 2023, 9:00 am–5:00 pm
Abraham’s Sacrifice in Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions: Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives The conference will focus on the foundational scriptural narrative of the FILIAL SACRIFICE which appears to be the conceptual kernel of the most fundamental ritual practices shared by the adherents of Abrahamic religions.
Event Information
Open to
- All | UCL students
Availability
- Yes
Organiser
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Sara Ben-Isaac
Location
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Institut d’études avancées de ParisInstitut d’études avancées de Paris17 quai d’Anjou, Paris 4Paris4
The conference will be opened by a cluster of thematic papers. The first one will be devoted to the Biblical milieu. The purpose will be to provide special emphasis on methods and approaches to the theologeme of the Filial Sacrifice within the framework of the canonical corpus, along with exegetical and historical perspectives on the “Abrahamic narrative” and its reception history.
Another keynote paper will be devoted to an overview of epistemological strategies employed by social and cultural anthropologists in the field of research on ritual dimensions of sacrifice. Along these same lines, a third lecture will discuss ritual sacrifice in an historical, prebiblical setting, as significant background information. Papers dealing specifically with Jewish tradition will discuss relevant topics from the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls, rabbinic tradition (the Talmud), midrashim, liturgy, and retrospective views from later medieval commentators. The themes within Christianity will feature discussions of Akedah as a prefiguration of Crucifixion and Isaac as foreshadowing figure of Christ. Within Islam, both the Sunni and Shīʿa traditions will be considered, with special emphasis on heterodox and mystic movements within them (e.g. Sufism, Bektashism, Alevism, etc.). Iconograph evidence will also be considered, emphasising the vitality of the reception history of the narrative of the FILIAL SACRIFICE and its ritual re-enactments.
The programme will focus on how the collective memories and identities are defined according to the social norms, ethics and belief system of the communities, and how the transmission of knowledge was managed.
The conference is a joint event with the University of Lausanne (Institut romand des sciences bibliques), the Royal Anthropological Institute (London), and the Institute of Jewish Studies (London).
View the full programme here: Programme FBG_16_17mars.pdf
About the Speakers
Florentina Badalanova Geller
Senior Researcher at Royal Anthropological Institute, London
Florentina Badalanova Geller is Senior Researcher at the Royal Anthropological Institute, London. In September 2022, she joined the Paris IAS as part of the French Institutes for advanced Study fellowship program - FIAS - co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 945408. Her fellowship also benefits from the support of the RFIEA+ LABEX, with a national funding (Grant ANR-11-LABX-0027-01).
David Hamidovic
Professor of Jewish apocryphal literature and the history of Judaism in antiquity at University of Lausanne
David Hamidovic holds a doctorate in the history of antiquity from the University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). He is Professor of Jewish apocryphal literature and the history of Judaism in antiquity at the University of Lausanne. He has published numerous articles and monographs on ancient Judaism, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. Recently, he published L’interminable fin du monde (Paris, éditions du Cerf, 2014), Encyclopédie des messianismes juifs dans l’Antiquité (Louvain, Peeters, 2018), L’insoutenable divinité des anges (Paris, éditions du Cerf, 2018), Les racines bibliques de l’imaginaire des pandémies (Paris, Bayard, 2020), Dans l’antechambre. Pour un dialogue entre la pensée juive et la connaissance renouvelée du judaïsme ancien (Paris, Hermann, 2022).