Fridays, 11:10am, in the Martin Hall unless otherwise stated All welcome. For enquiries, please contact Dr Matthew Novenson: matthew.novenson@ed.ac.uk. Semester 2: Spring 2024 Date Speaker(s) Topic 2 February Book Launch: Hugh Pyper, The Five Scrolls (Handsel Press, 2023), with Alison Jack, Suzanna Millar, and Jock Stein 9 February Rebekah Welton (University of Exeter) "Sacrifice in The Last of Us and Cyberpunk 2077" Wednesday 14 February 5:15pm, Playfair Library Professor Matthew Novenson Inaugural Lecture: ‘The Bad Bible in the Twenty-First Century’ Further Information 1 March Holly Morse (University of Manchester) “Seeing Hidden Crimes: Visual Art as Witness to Violence against Biblical Women” 15 March Madhavi Nevader (University of St Andrews) “Mountaintop Worlds: The Utopian Enterprise of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel 40–48” 29 March Marieke Dhont (University of Cambridge) "Scriptural Allusions in Jewish Greek Scribal Practice” 5 April Graeme Auld (University of Edinburgh) “War and Peace: David in an Older Royal Story” Semester 1: Autumn 2023 Date Speaker(s) Topic 13 October Harald Samuel (University of Oxford) “Historical Linguistics and the Pitfalls of Electronic Tools and Statistics” 27 October Anja Klein (University of Edinburgh) “Resilient in the Face of Crisis: Conceptions of the Divine in the Book of Isaiah” 10 November Richard Bell (University of Nottingham) “GWF Hegel and Richard Wagner on the Death of Christ” 24 Novemeber Graeme Auld (University of Edinburgh) “War and Peace: David in an Older Royal Story” 8 December 4pm Yuko Takahashi (Rakuno Gakuen University) "Dead Sea Scroll 4Q550 and Its Theological Implications"