Steven Weitzman: "Mining for Solomon"
Department: Religious Studies
Date and Time: October 17, 2013 | 5:00 PM-6:30 PMEvent Location: Humanities Gateway 1010
Event Details
Teller Chair Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies:
Professor Steven Weitzman (Stanford University)
Mining For Solomon
Thursday, October 17, 2013, 5pm, Humanities Gateway 1010
The biblical king Solomon, famed his for wisdom, exists at an intersection between history and legend. This talk will explore the connections between history and myth in the story of Solomon by focusing on the quest to understand how he became so wealthy. Recent archaeologists claim to have uncovered the possible source of that wealth, but they are not the first to believe they have made such a discovery. By recounting the history of this quest, we will learn something of the historical king but also of his imagined counterpart, the Solomon of later Jewish and Christian fantasy.