18th Annual Lecture in Jewish/Christian Engagement “Ancient Judaism between Christian Memory and Jewish Forgetting”

Drawing on her in-progress book project on Forgetting, this seminar will explore the place of memory and forgetting in the reception of Second Temple Judaism, revisiting the supposed Rabbinic retreat from “history” after the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and exploring Christian and Jewish contestation over pre-70 Jewish pasts, from antiquity to the present.

Annette Yoshiko Reed is Krister Stendahl Chair of Divinity and Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School. She studies ancient Jews and Christians, with a focus on questions of knowledge, identity, and difference. Her recent books include Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism and Christianity (2018) and Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism (2020). She is currently working on a book on the cultural power of forgetting, focusing on the Jewish reception of the Second Temple past.