Monday, October 20, 2008

The Meeting in Riga, Oct. 3-4, 2008

We had a very fruitful meeting between Helsinki, Munich and Tartu in Riga. The meeting was hosted by the Faculty of Theology of the University of Riga. Some of the local faculty members, doctoral students also participated.
This is the program we had:

October 3
9:00-10:30 Francis Borchardt: Overview and Conclusions Concerning the Place of the Law in 1 Maccabees
10:30-11:00 Coffee break
11:00-12:30 Urmas Nõmmik: The Position of the Dialogue of Job in the Old Testament
12:30-14:00 Lunch
14:30-16:00 Marko Marttila: Social and Political Circumstances in Palestine in Ben Sira's Lifetime
16:00-16:30 Coffee break
16:30-18:00 Juha Pakkala: Jehoiada’s Rebellion. Chronicler’s Use of 2 Kgs 11 in 2 Chr 22:10-23:21
19:00 Dinner

October 4
9:00-10:30 Reinhard Müller: Yahweh as Weathergod
10:30-11:00 Coffee break
11:00-12:30 Mika Pajunen: 4QPsX – An Archaic Form of Ps 89 or a Secondary Arrangement of the Text?
12:30-14:00 Lunch
14:30-16:00 Indulis Paics: A chiastic and cyclic way of Interpretation of the canonical Texts of the Decalogue
16:00-16:30 Coffee break
16:30-18:00 Christoph Levin: Israel and Canaan: The Origins of a Fictitious Antagonism


I think the presentation sparked many discussions . At least, I was very inspired by many of the discussions so that I had to put down the new ideas immediately down to writing (The Date of the Oldest Edition of Deuteronomy - I hope to publish it soon).

We agreed that we will meet next year in Tallinn, either in late September or early October - the date has not been fixed yet. I will get back to you when I know more.