Lecture
The Biblical Covenant and its Afterlife
- Date
- Monday 8 June 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 1.128 (Verbarium)
The covenant arguably constitutes the core of biblical tradition: the Noachide covenant; the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Mosaic covenant; and last but not least, God’s covenant with David and his descendants. Robert Kawashima will explore the significance of the Mosaic covenant as it is embedded in the narratives of the wilderness in Exodus through Deuteronomy as a type of rite of passage. Stephen Russell will explore the influence that the biblical idea of the covenant had in early-modern political theory, namely, in the work of Thomas Hobbes.
Robert Kawashima is Professor in the Department of Religion and the Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. He writes primarily on the Hebrew Bible and other ancient myths and epics, which he focuses on through the lens of comparative literature. He is most notably the author of Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode (Indiana UP, 2004) and The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge (Indiana UP, 2022).
Stephen C. Russell is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at John Jay College, City University of New York. His research focusses on the Hebrew Bible, on the social and legal world that produced it, and on the politics of the Bible's use in the modern world. His most recent book, A Lesson on Race: The Bible and the Morant Bay Rebellion in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, 2025), reveals the competing visions for race relations encoded in biblical slogans that were used to discuss Jamaica's 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion.
RSVP to s.a.cramsey@hum.leidenuniv.nl