FRIENDS OF ASOR WEBINARS
Archaeology and the Hidden Religious Culture of Israelite Women
Friends of ASOR presents the next webinar in our monthly series on February 21, at 7:30 pm EST, featuring Dr. Carol Meyers. An expert in biblical studies, archaeology, and gender in the ancient world, she will address an important question: Who were the most important religious figures in ancient Israel? Most people would probably say that the priests were. But they would be wrong. The main arena of religious life for most people in the biblical period was not the Jerusalem temple or a regional shrine; it was the family household, and women were major figures in household religious activities. Those activities are largely invisible in the Bible with its focus on the priesthood and sacrifice. However, the use of an array of archaeological materials—and also some carefully selected and fascinating ethnographic data—can reveal many aspects of women’s household religious culture and its meaning for the lives of ordinary ancient Israelites.
In this lecture Professor Carol Meyers will take you into the Israelite household for an in-depth look at women’s religious activities, otherwise hidden from view. The webinar will conclude with a live Q&A session.
Registrants now receive a discount code for 30% off of Carol’s book from Oxford University Press!
Carol Meyers received the A.B. with honors from Wellesley College and the M.A. and Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. She is currently the Mary Grace Wilson Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at Duke University. A prolific scholar, she has lectured and published widely. She is the author of more than 450 articles, reports, reference-book entries, and reviews; and she has authored, co-authored, or edited twenty-two books. Her 2013 book, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context, is a landmark study of women in ancient Israelite society. Other recent books include a commentary on the book of Exodus and several excavation reports (with Eric Meyers). Among her co-edited volumes are Archaeology, Bible, Politics, and the Media (2012), The Bible in the Public Square (2014), and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel (forthcoming in 2021).
As a field archaeologist, Meyers has worked on numerous digs since she was an undergraduate, and she has been a staff member and then co-director of several archaeological projects in Israel. She has been a frequent consultant for media productions relating to archaeology and the Bible, including A&E’s Mysteries of the Bible series, DreamWorks’s “Prince of Egypt,” NOVA’s “The Bible’s Buried Secrets,” and several National Geographic documentaries.
Dr. Meyers has served on the editorial boards of many reference works and journals, including the Bulletin of ASOR. She was a senior editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East and associate editor of The Torah: A Woman’s Commentary. She is currently a trustee of the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR) and Vice-President of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation and recently served as President of the Society of Biblical Literature. Among her many honors and awards are ASOR’s Charles U. Harris Service Award for her many years of service as an ASOR trustee and ASOR’s P. E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award for her contributions to Near Eastern archaeology.
ASOR Sustaining Members: $0 | ASOR Members: $5 | Public: $10
To receive your ASOR member discount, log into the online store. If you are new to ASOR, please click on the “New Visitor Registration” link to register your e-mail address and choose password for our online store. Once logged in, navigate to “Meeting and Event Registration” to register for the webinar and pay the fee. Each paid registrant will receive a confirmation e-mail when you pay for the webinar. If you do not receive this e-mail, then you are not registered. Please e-mail membership@asor.org with any questions or issues with registering.
You will be e-mailed the Zoom Webinar link in the week prior to the lecture on February 21, 2021. If you do not receive the link by the close of business on the Thursday before the webinar, please email membership@asor.org immediately. All webinars are recorded and all paid registrants will be sent a link to view the recording.
All proceeds from this lecture are used to fund scholarships for members impacted by COVID-19 as well as increasing ASOR’s online resources, which are free to the public.
