Public Lecture: "The Lost Cosmic Epic of Judaism"

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 23:00:00 GMT

“The Lost Cosmic Epic of Judaism: How a Tattered Scroll Reveals a Forgotten Jewish World.”
A public lecture by the Simon and Riva Spatz Chair in Jewish Studies, Dr. Eva Mroczek.

How much ancient culture has been lost forever?

While knowing our record of the past is fragmentary, we usually have no way of knowing just how much we are missing. But one two-thousand-year-old Dead Sea Scroll offers a rare insight. The Genesis Apocryphon, an Aramaic retelling of primordial stories in the first-person voice of biblical heroes like Noah and Abraham, has survived only in three disintegrating sheets of parchment. The surviving sheets come from the end of the text, rolled up in the inner part of the scroll and numbered from seventeen through nineteen: the previous sixteen sheets worth of literature, a massive epic describing the world before Noah, have turned to dust.

What might this composition, more extensive than the Bible, have been like? Can we imagine how this ancient Jewish writer understood the secrets of heaven and the origins of evil? What would have been different if more had survived? And can this rare knowledge of the scope of our loss — the limitations of our knowledge— have something to teach us today?

TALK: Alexander Treiger

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 16:00:00 GMT

“Judeo-Arabic Manuscripts and History of Philosophy: Solving the Mystery of the Longer Theology of Aristotle”

Join us for a talk by Alexander Treiger (Professor of Religious Studies, Ģ��AV).

Location: McCain Arts & Social Sciences Building, Room 1102

Dal Events

Public Lecture: "The Lost Cosmic Epic of Judaism"

TALK: Alexander Treiger

“Judeo-Arabic Manuscripts and History of Philosophy: Solving the Mystery of the Longer Theology of Aristotle”