Sam Boyd

Samuel Boyd published an essay in The Conversation

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 15:53:59 +0000

Samuel Boyd published an essay in The Conversation Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/26/2023 - 09:53

The tree of life—a powerful image in Judaism for thousands of years—signifies more than immortality

Jurors recently delivered a guilty verdict for the gunman who killed 11 worshippers in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue—the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Tree of Life has almost become shorthand for the tragedy, yet it highlights a symbol from the Bible that has transformed over time. CU scholar Sam Boyd discusses on The Conversation. You can read the essay here.

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Samuel L. Boyd publishes an article on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 20:48:04 +0000

Samuel L. Boyd publishes an article on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/19/2022 - 14:48

Samuel L. Boyd has recently published a new article in the Conversation on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah.

You can find it here.

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Samuel Boyd's research featured in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 19:38:01 +0000

Samuel Boyd's research featured in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/22/2022 - 13:38

Samuel Boyd shares his research on the Bible and its legal material in response to a sermon by Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, in which Kirill suggested the violation of “God’s law” provided divine license for the war against Ukraine.

"Given these historical observations, ‘God’s law,’ at least in the Bible, limits royal authority and provides a statement against imperialism, all of which would seem to undermine Kirill’s use of divine statutes to promote war and support Putin’s agenda."

— Samuel L. Boyd

Read Dr. Boyd's article here:
Russian church leader puts the blame of invasion on those who flout ‘God’s law,’ but taking biblical law out of its historical context doesn’t work

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Samuel Boyd publishes an article in The Conversation

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 17:21:38 +0000

Samuel Boyd publishes an article in The Conversation Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/09/2022 - 10:21

Samuel Boyd recently published the article "Why Translating 'God's Law' to Government Law isn't Easy," based on his research on the Bible and its legal material.

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Samuel Boyd publishes an article about the High Holidays

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 20:07:05 +0000

Samuel Boyd publishes an article about the High Holidays Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/03/2021 - 14:07

Samuel Boyd has a new article published in The Conversation about the High Holidays.

You can find the article here .

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Professor Samuel Boyd published his first book: Language Contact, Colonial Administration, and the Construction of Identity in Ancient Israel

Anonymous — Sat, 20 Feb 2021 18:24:13 +0000

Professor Samuel Boyd published his first book: Language Contact, Colonial Administration, and the Construction of Identity in Ancient Israel Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/20/2021 - 11:24

In Language Contact, Colonial Administration, and the Construction of Identity in Ancient Israel, Boyd addresses a long-standing critical issue in biblical scholarship: how does the production of the Bible relate to its larger historical, linguistic, and cultural settings in the ancient Near East?
https://brill.com/view/title/39263

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Samuel L. Boyd's Article in The Conversation

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 23:21:15 +0000

Samuel L. Boyd's Article in The Conversation Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/12/2021 - 16:21

From Biden’s giant Bible to Christian flags waved by rioters, ‘religion’ means different things to different people and different eras

by Samuel L. Boyd

The Bible featured prominently in the inauguration. In fact, three were used in the swearing-in ceremonies – Kamala Harris used both Thurgood Marshall’s and one belonging to a friend; Joseph Biden used a 128-year-old family Bible.

About two weeks earlier, on Jan. 6, rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol also held Bibles as a nod to the apparent religious motivations for their actions. The mob took with them flags saturated with Christian nationalist ideology, such as bannerswith “Jesus Saves” written on them accompanied by chants that “Christ is king, Trump is president.”

These and other religious symbols, used both in the service of the presidential transfer of power and also violent protests, demonstrate how deeply religion can motivate people in society and influence their actions politically.

Yet the way people think about religion these days, often as a set of beliefs, has evolved across time and cultures.

Religion in ancient Near East

As a scholar of the Bible and the ancient Near East, I study the role of religion in history and how this term originated and came to be understood over the centuries.

For most cultures in the ancient world, such as Egypt, Assyria and Babylon, until the second century B.C., there was no word for “religion” as a singular, abstract concept.

While these cultures had rituals and rites for worshiping gods and goddesses, there was not a singular word in these languages that refers to “religion” in the modern sense. For example, the Assyrians had a unique blend of religious devotion to their chief god Assur and a belief in a divine mandate to spread their empire, but they did not have one word to cover all such practices and beliefs.

The same is true for the Old Testament, written in Hebrew and Aramaic from approximately the ninth century B.C. to the second century B.C. There is no word that can really be translated as “religion” in the modern sense in the Old Testament, even if there were religious concepts, such as prayers and acts of piety toward the god of Israel.

The evidence from the ancient Near East and the Old Testament points to a complex set of practices that defy a singular notion of religion, such as a creed of faith or spirituality in distinction from other realms of society such as politics or economics.

Early Christianity

A similar complexity appears in the history of early Christianity in how religion functioned, both in terms of rituals and in the use of the Latin term it derives from.

The word “religion” in English originates from the Latin “religio.” One of its earliest appearances is in works such as the plays of second-century B.C. writer Plautus.

According to the classicist Niall Slater, the word defies “a theologically rigorous definition” in Plautus. It means something like “awe” in one passage, as well as reserve, in the often ironic sense of characters who find themselves in situations in which they display restraints from certain impulses. For example, in one scene in Plautus’ “Asinaria,” a woman is bound by a contract from following other male lovers, including gods, a restraint called “religiosa.”

In the classical age, religion could possibly imply “scruples,” as evident in the writings of Plautus and certainly a few decades later in the writings of playwright Publius Terentius Afer.

By the first century B.C., the word began to be associated with devotion to the divine realm. As seen in the writings of the orator and politician Cicero, one conception of the Latin religio that became frequent in Roman texts was the specific rituals and rites that were a part of worship of the gods and goddesses.

According to the classicist Clifford Ando and scholar of religion Brent Nongbri, for Cicero each ritual could be a religio, and, at the same time, when Romans performed all such rituals they could together be referred to as a “single, Roman, religio.”

However, Roman thinkers did not use this term for Christianity in its earliest phases. In the second century A.D., Roman writers such as Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius labeled Christianity not a religio but rather a superstitio, or a “superstition,” a term usually applied to non-Roman, foreign practices.

Eventually Galen, a physician and philosopher who died in A.D. 210 in Rome, would call Christianity a “philosophical school,” elevating the status of the movement.

Early Christians who wrote in Latin, beginning with Tertullian in the second century A.D., often used the word religio to refer to their own rituals and rites, though other uses appeared as well, which were inherited from the variety of definitions employed by earlier Latin writers.

The ancient Latin translations of the New Testament, which was originally written in Greek, use religio when rendering passages such as James 1:26-27, which described true religion as care for orphans and widows and keeping oneself unstained from worldly pollution, or sin.

Modern-day interpretation

So how did the modern interpretation of religion come about?

If, according to 19th-century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, humans are prone to imagining God in their own image, then according to the scholar of religion Brent Nongbri people are often tempted to do the same with our understanding of the word “religion.”

As Nongbri observes, people need to be aware that when they encounter the word “religion” in English translations of ancient sources, it is not the same as spirituality or belief in the sense of an abstract set of convictions.

Often religion is thought of as referring to some inner disposition or abstract belief, such as privately held convictions about salvation separate from politics. The 17th-century thinker John Locke argued this point in his book, “A Letter Concerning Toleration.”

Yet, as Nongbri argues, the concept of religion as an activity distinct from others, such as “politics, economics, and science,” is a recent and modern contrast, alien to ancient societies. In ancient societies, religion was part of every facet of life because gods and goddesses were involved in every facet of life.

Indeed, the inner, spiritual and privatized nature of what many think of as religion is more a reflection of modern Protestant Christian developments and has little to do with the origins of the term.

Read the original article here.

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Samuel Boyd interview on NPR

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 23:12:58 +0000

Samuel Boyd interview on NPR Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/12/2021 - 16:12

Samuel Boyd returns to continue our discussion on the article he co-authored with Samira Mehta titled, A justification for unrest? Look no further than the Bible and the Founding Fathers.

Samuel L. Boyd is an Assistant Professor in Religious Studies and the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on the origins of biblical texts in their historical context, as well as how people have interpreted the Bible over the millennia. He combines history, archaeology, linguistics, and multiple other theoretical lenses to explore why the Bible was written and why people have cared about it so much.

Listen to the Interview here.

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Professor Samuel Boyd Featured on NPR's Podcast, On the Media

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 20:22:18 +0000

Professor Samuel Boyd Featured on NPR's Podcast, On the Media Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/20/2020 - 14:22

Samuel Boyd, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies, recently spoke with NPR's On the Media podcast about the long tradition of religious communities adapting when they're denied access to their houses of worship.

He explains that there's a tension common across faith traditions between the idea that God dwells in specific holy places, and the idea that God can be found in all places and things. According to Boyd, Zoom seders, Facebook Live Jummah prayers and online Mass all feel new, but virtual worship has historic roots.

Listen to the podcast episode, published on April 15, 2020, on the NPR website or through Apple Podcasts.

Listen to Professor Boyd's Podcast Episode on NPR

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"Think the Bible is fully understood?" Professor Sam Boyd Featured in the CU Arts & Sciences Magazine

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 21:38:29 +0000

"Think the Bible is fully understood?" Professor Sam Boyd Featured in the CU Arts & Sciences Magazine Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/05/2018 - 14:38

Sam Boyd, Professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies, was recently interviewed by the Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine. In the article, Professor Boyd talks about his research on the Bible and how these ancient texts are still so relevant today.

Boyd didn’t always want to become a professor — in fact, when he was a kid, he dreamt of growing up to be Indiana Jones. He studied economics and American history as an undergraduate at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and was working at a bank when a series of conversations caused him to rethink his career path entirely.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Boyd remembers having happy hour debates with his coworkers about Christianity, Islam, and other religions. But for Boyd, these after after-work conversations went much deeper.

“I thought, ‘I should go read these texts so I know what I’m talking about’ and I just got hooked — that’s what led me on this journey,” he said.

Read the full article on the Arts & Sciences Magazine website

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