International networking in the GKM

Prof. Dr. Noah Hacham from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was a guest at the GKM as part of an ERASMUS student exchange in the summer semester 2025. Noah Hacham is one of the world's leading experts on the Jewish diaspora in ancient Egypt. As part of an interdisciplinary workshop, he discussed the topic “The Communal Institutions of Egyptian Jewry after the Diaspora Revolt according to the Papyri” with GKM researchers from the fields of papyrology, ancient history, Jewish studies, liturgical studies and church history. And as part of the research colloquium “NT and Ancient Judaism”, he will present his theses on the text and context of the 3rd Book of Maccabees.

Shlomi Efrati received his PhD in 2019 from the department of Talmud at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The main foci of his research are on the one hand processes of composition, transmission, and reception within the rabbinic milieux, and on the other manifestations of the entangled relations between rabbinic literature and other early Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman texts and traditions. In the academic year 2024/25 he is a Heinrich-Hertz fellow at the Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum. In this framework he studies the early Jewish / Christian composition The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (2nd c. BCE–2nd c. CE), focusing on variations and discrepancies found across some of its central themes and treating them as testimonies to the transformation of textual and conceptual traditions throughout their broader Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman contexts. In this way he hopes to offer a more nuanced understanding of the complicated development of this composition, and of textual and conceptual dynamics in broader literary and cultural milieux, which may also have implications on the question of the “Parting of the Ways” during the formative years of the emerging Christian and rabbinic groups.
 

Sylvie Honigman teaches ancient history at Tel Aviv University (Israel). Her areas of expertise are the history and literary production in Judaea in Hellenistic times, and the history and literary production of Judaeans in Graeco-Roman Egypt.
She was spending the accademic year 2022/23 at the GKM and regularly comes back to the university in the summer months.
Her research project aims to define afresh the social and cultural setting in which new kinds of literary works emerged in Judaea in Hellenistic times, primarily apocalyptic, narrative texts, and new wisdom works. Using the recent studies on Empire and local elites as a promising alternative to the paradigm of ‘Hellenisation and resistance’, she aims to show that the literary production in Judaea owed as much to lively intellectual exchanges with other temple cultures as to the Alexandrian centre of Greek culture and literature. We are currently expecting her from July to October 2025.

Dr Matan Orian received his first degree in Law (LL.B.), his Masters in Classics and Religious Studies and his PhD in Jewish History from Tel Aviv University.
He specialises in the Jewish view of non-Jews in antiquity with a focus on the participation of non-Jews in the Jerusalem Temple cult or their exclusion from it. He was at the GKM from August 2023 to October 2024. During this time, he also presented his research in lectures: In the research colloquium New Testament and Ancient Judaism, he lectured on the topic ‘Was conversion to Judaism denied in the Second Temple period?’. In the summer semester 2024, he taught the course ‘Circumcision and impurity of the Gentiles in Paul and in Lucan's double work’ together with Professor Doering.

From April to July 2023, Prof. Dr. Sandra Gambetti from the City University of New York was at the GKM for a research visit. Her research focus is on Hellenistic Judaism. 

She gave a public lecture during her stay.
Wednesday, 04/26/2023: The Introduction of Philo's Legatio (ch. 1-8): what does it really say?
Location: ETH 102, Universitätsstraße 13-17

 

In the summer of 2019, the GKM entered into a cooperation agreement with the University of Ioannina.
The agreement serves in particular to deepen joint research in the fields of Byzantine studies, history and archaeology and to initiate new projects and to intensify the exchange of students.
Thus, in October 2021 and during the Whitsun vacations 2022 Students from Münster were in Greece. In the winter semester of 2021/22 a group of students here in Münster.In spring 2023 Maria Gkina and Fotis Theophilou from the University of Ioannina were working at the Icon Museum Recklinghausen. They familiarized themselves with the collection and offered guided tours through the permanent exhibition in Greek.  

At the invitation of Professor Doering, Prof. Dr. John R. Levison was a guest at the GKM in June and July 2022.
He is Professor of Old Testament Interpretation and Biblical Hebrew at the Perkins School of Theology (Dallas).

During his stay, he was able to prepare his monograph, The Greek Life of Adam and Eve, for print. The book will be published by De Gruyter in November 2022 in the series "Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature" and will contain more than 1000 pages. In it, Levison links experiences of illness, death, and hope with the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Seth.

In the summer semester of 2022, Prof. Dr. Kondasingu Jesurathnam from the United Theological College in Bangalore (India) was a guest at the GKM. He is an Old Testament scholar and one of the leading representatives of a Dalit hermeneutics, i.e., a social-historical interpretation of the Bible that focuses on the humanitarian and religious situation of the personae miserabiles of ancient society in Israel on the one hand and modern society in India on the other.
During his research stay, Professor Jesurathnam used the specialized libraries and the interdisciplinary exchange with colleagues to advance his two-volume work on Dalit hermeneutics in the Old Testament.

From fall 2020 to fall 2021, Dr. Eran Shuali was a guest at our research center as a Heinrich Hertz fellow. He is a lecturer in Biblical Hebrew and Old Testament at the University of Strasbourg.
His research focuses on Jewish-Christian relations, Christian Hebraism, and New Testament and ancient Judaism.
In the summer semester of 2022, Mr. Shuali was again in Münster and gave the seminar "Christianity in rabbinic literature" from June 7 to 9.

From October 2019 to September 2020, Dr. Bärry Hartog from the University of Groningen was a Humboldt Research Fellow visiting Prof. Dr. Lutz Doering. His focus is on ancient Judaism in the context of the Greco-Roman world, the study of ancient manuscripts, and identity formation in complex societies. During his stay, he advanced his project "Identities on the Move: Jewish, Christian, and Greek Travel Narratives from the Early Roman Empire." This examines cross-cultural encounters in travel narratives from the 1st to 3rd centuries A.D. Hartog explores how inhabitants of globalized spaces (such as the early Roman Empire) write themselves into these spaces while maintaining the distinctiveness of their own traditions.

From June 2018 to June 2019, Dr. Michael Cover from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (USA), has been a Humboldt Research Fellow visiting Prof. Dr. Lutz Doering at the Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum of the Faculty of Protestant Theology. Dr. Cover's work has included a commentary on Philon of Alexandria, De mutatione nominum, and a monograph on 1 Corinthians, which has the working title "The Divine Comedy at Corinth." To this end, Cover relates the Pauline epistles to texts by Dio Chrysostomos, Menander, and Euripides.

PD Dr. Juha Pakkala is a lecturer in "Biblical Studies" at the Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki, and a member of the "Centre of Excellence in Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions".
Period of stay: April - August 2018

Anneli Aejmelaeus Professor of Old Testament and Near Eastern Culture and Literature at the University of Helsinki. Her scholarly work focuses on the study of the textual history of the Old Testament, including the Septuagint. Currently, Prof. Aejmelaeus is leading the international research project Textual Criticism of the Septuagint.

Period of stay: December 2017 and January 2018

Carson Bay, PhD candidate at Florida State University, was at the Institutum Judaicum as a Fulbright Scholar during the 2016/17 academic year. In collaboration with Prof. Dr. Lutz Doering, Carson Bay conducted research on "Multiculturalism in Flavius Josephus." In doing so, he was able to draw on the excellent resources of the IJD.

Period of stay: September 2016 – July 2017

Sophie Ramond is professor of "Bible and Orient" at the Institut Catholique de Paris. Her research focuses on the Psalms.

Period of stay: August 2017

PD Dr. Juha Pakkala is a lecturer in "Biblical Studies" at the Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki, and a member of the "Centre of Excellence in Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions".
Period of stay: February - April 2017

Old Testament scholar Christophe Nihan is an outstanding researcher, and his work in French, German, and English has received the highest recognition and attention in the scholarly community. His comprehensive work on the Book of Leviticus is a milestone in research development, which has been honored by a prestigious American research award. Christophe Nihan has published on all other literary areas of the Old Testament in addition to Pentateuch research and is a profound expert on ancient religious history and ancient Mediterranean cultures.
Period of stay: 2016

The ancient historian Volker Menze from the Central European University is a specialist for the epoch of Emperor Justinian and the theological disputes and religious developments of this time of upheaval. He is currently researching the cult of the martyr Sergius, which emerged in the 5th century and spread throughout the Roman and New Persian Empires from the 6th century onwards.

Period of stay: January - March 2016

Old Testament scholar Ville Mäkipelto (University of Helsinki) is a collaborator in the Finnish Cluster of Excellence 'Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions' (www.cstt.fi). He is writing his doctoral thesis on the textual history of the Book of Joshua. In his research, he combines text-critical analysis of various textual sources, especially the Septuagint, with literary-critical models, thus shedding light on how biblical texts have been changed throughout their history.

Period of stay: October 2015 to July 2016

Olivier Artus is professor of Old Testament at the Institut Catholique de Paris and director of the École des langues et civilisations de l'Orient ancien (ELCOA). He is an international Pentateuch expert.
Period of stay: May 2016

Sophie Ramond is professor of "Bible and Orient" at the Institut Catholique de Paris. Her research focuses on the Psalms.

Period of stay: May 2016

Corinne Lanoir is professor of Old Testament at the Institut Protestant de Paris.

Period of stay: May 2016

In December 2011, the GKM initiated a framework agreement on cooperation with the École des Langues et Civilisations de l' Orient Ancien (ELCOA) at the Institut Catholique de Paris. This agreement was renewed in December 2017 for another four years.

The agreement is intended to serve the cooperation in the common research areas, to offer the possibility of partnership doctoral supervision and to promote the exchange of students.