Disease & Death in the Early 1^st Century CE
Wednesday, June 29, 2022, at 8 PM Eastern

Julie Laskaris, University of Richmond

What were the most pressing health concerns of the people living during the first century CE?  What relief could they find from ancient doctors, herbalists, midwives, and others?

After an initial foray into the health problems of our earliest ancestors as background, this talk portrays the disease landscape of the early first century CE with a focus on Italy, drawing heavily on the evidence presented by the human remains from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Insight into human suffering in this period and the attempts to alleviate it can perhaps deepen our understanding of biblical texts by offering a context for their stories of disease and sin, and of healing and salvation.

How to Access the Twice Monthly BAF/BASONOVA Zoom Lecture Series

If you wish to subscribe to the lecture series, please access the BASONOVA PayPal portal and use a credit card for an annual subscription ($35 per family). Go to: http://www.basonova.org/ membership-form.html

It is also possible to access the series one lecture at a time, for $7 per lecture. To reserve your single-lecture Zoom spot for this event, wait 10 days before the scheduled date and then go to: http://www.basonova.org/ next-lecture-reservation.html

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Riddle of the Rosetta
Wednesday, July 13, 2022, at 8 pm via Zoom

Diane Josefowicz

In 1799, a French Army officer was rebuilding the defenses of a fort on the banks of the Nile when he discovered an ancient stele fragment bearing a decree inscribed in three different scripts: ancient Greek, Egyptian Demotic, and Egyptian hieroglyphs whose meanings had been forgotten for centuries. So begins one of the most familiar tales in Egyptology―that of the Rosetta Stone and the quest to decipher hieroglyphs.

At the center of the story were two very different protagonists: the polyglot French scholar Jean-François Champollion, who sought clues in ancient Egyptian history, geography, and culture, and; the English doctor and physicist Thomas Young, who took more of a puzzle-solving approach to the mysterious script. Much more than a decoding exercise centered on a single artifact, the race to decipher the Rosetta Stone brought humanists and scientists together in a wild and unpredictable intellectual adventure.

This presentation will feature new and neglected archival evidence at the heart of this quest and situate the decipherment within broader nineteenth-century disputes about language, historical evidence, biblical truth, and the value of classical learning.

Diane Josefowicz, Boston University Professor

How to Access the Twice Monthly BAF/BASONOVA Zoom Lecture Series

If you wish to subscribe to the lecture series, please access the BASONOVA PayPal portal and use a credit card for an annual subscription ($35 per family). Go to: http://www.basonova.org/ membership-form.html

It is also possible to access the series one lecture at a time, for $7 per lecture. To reserve your single-lecture Zoom spot for this event, wait 10 days before the scheduled date and then go to: http://www.basonova.org/ next-lecture-reservation.html

Questions: info@basonova.org

Strong Inscriptional Confirmations of People in the Hebrew Bible
Wednesday, December 14, 2022, at 8 pm via Zoom

Lawrence Mykytiuk, Purdue University

How many people named in just the Five Books of Moses have been confirmed by historians?

Bible-era inscriptions confirm the historical reality of more than 55 persons in the entire twenty-four books Hebrew Bible (Tanach). Most of these inscriptions are from the lifetime of the people in the Bible.

Of 43 Hebrew monarchs in the Hebrew Bible, 16 have been confirmed: 45% of the kings of the northern kingdom of Israel and 30% of the kings of Judah. These confirmations are about 3/8 of the Bible’s Hebrew monarchs. Also confirmed have been 25 of approximately 160 Gentile monarchs in the Hebrew Bible or about 15%.

Finally, more than 14 royal officials, priests, and others have been confirmed as recorded in inscriptions; several more await publication. These persons are Hebrew, Assyrian, and Babylonian, plus Persian-empire governors who might not have been Persian. Examples illustrate the two ways researchers identify a biblical person in an inscription.

How to Access the Twice Monthly BAF/BASONOVA Zoom Lecture Series

If you wish to subscribe to the lecture series, please access the BASONOVA PayPal portal and use a credit card for an annual subscription ($35 per family). Go to: http://www.basonova.org/ membership-form.html

It is also possible to access the series one lecture at a time, for $7 per lecture. To reserve your single-lecture Zoom spot for this event, wait 10 days before the scheduled date and then go to: http://www.basonova.org/ next-lecture-reservation.html

Questions: info@basonova.org