Plenary Presentations

PL-1 Ready 4 Opportunities
Greg Constantine, Emeritus Professor of Art

I have always maintained an attitude of readiness to accept invitations to share my discoveries with the Art World. The sharing (gallery exhibitions) follows the focused accomplishments of creative studio work. Working on ideas in my studio begets other ideas that in turn need to be investigated and developed. It is not really a vicious circle of frenetic activity, but rather a steady dynamic exercise in prioritizing the direction of my work. Having a body of coherent artworks defines readiness to accept opportunities to share (exhibit) them. This is the story of my exhibition and publication life for the last 55 years.

PL-2 Didactic Logic and the Authorship of Leviticus
Roy Gane, Professor of Hebrew Bible & Ancient Near Eastern Languages

The presentation summarizes findings from my essay with this title that is to be published in Current Issues in Priestly and Related Literature: The Legacy of Jacob Milgrom and Beyond (Resources for Biblical Study series), which I am editing with Ada Taggar- Cohen. The essay opens up a new approach to a biblical book by probing evidence for teaching logic in Leviticus and the implications of this logic for the purpose and authorship of the book. The first part of the essay identifies examples of ten literary relationships that could function as effective didactic strategies. The second part weighs the likelihood of pedagogical authorial intention against the possibility that what appear to be teaching strategies may have resulted secondarily from other literary factors. The third part enters preliminary exploration of the question, “Who was trying to teach what to whom by writing this book?” by pointing out some aspects of the didactic background and foreground of Leviticus. The essay concludes by considering implications of didactic logic for the authorship of the book, which counter the current theory of historical-critical scholarship that Leviticus was composed within a priestly scribal matrix during the Persian period after the Babylonian exile.