In her monograph Body Language: Voice, Embodiment, and Textuality in the Hebrew Bible (Yale University Press), Jacqueline Vayntrub challenges traditional philological paradigms. She examines how biblical authors did not merely record oral speech, but staged it as a deliberate literary device to negotiate questions of identity, continuity, and presence.
To mark its publication, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) invites you to a panel discussion featuring leading voices in the international academic landscape: Glenn W. Most (Classical Philology), Volker Leppin (Church History), Bernd Schipper (Hebrew Bible), moderated by Christoph Markschies, president of the BBAW. This interdisciplinary panel will evaluate the theoretical potential of the work, discussing how Vayntrub’s methodological intervention might fundamentally reshape the study of biblical literature, its history of reception, and the broader foundations of a renewed philology.