Yeshiva University

Faculty Member, Jewish History

Professor of Jewish History; Director, Center for Israel Studies

About

Steven Fine is a cultural historian, specializing in Jewish history in the Greco-Roman period. His work focuses mainly upon the literature of ancient Judaism, art and archaeology-- and the ways that modern scholars have interpreted Jewish antiquity.

Dr. Fine’s blend of history, rabbinic literature, archaeology and art, together with deep engagement with historiography and contemporary culture, is expressed in a broad range of publications.  The author of academic monographs, museum catalogs, more than 60 articles and even a book for children,  Professor Fine’s most recent monograph, -Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology- (Cambridge, 2005, revised edition 2010) received the 2009 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award of the Association for Jewish Studies. He is an editor of -IMAGES: A Journal for the Study of Jewish Art and Visual Culture- and section editor for Judaica of the -Cambridge World History of Religious Architecture- (forthcoming).  A collection of Dr. Fine's essays on Art, Archaeology and the History of Judaism in Late Antiquity will appear with E. J. Brill in 2012/3.

Dr. Fine was curator of  -Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World an exhibition organized by Yeshiva University Museum and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (1996-7).  The catalog, published jointly by YU Museum and Oxford University Press, received the Philip Johnson Award for Excellence in Published Exhibition Catalogues of the Society of Architectural Historians. His 1999 edited volume, -Jews, Christians and Polytheists: Cultural Interaction During the Greco-Roman Period- (Routledge) was the finalist for the Charles H. Revson Foundation Award in Jewish-Christian Relations of the National Jewish Book Council.

Fine's current projects include Samaritan-Jewish relations during late antiquity, polychromy in ancient Jewish art (which includes -The Arch of Titus Digital Restoration Project-, 2011-2),and a nearly completed monograph, -God's Artisan:  Bezalel the Tabernacle Builder in Judaism and Christianity-

His -The Samaritans: A Biblical People-, will open at the Museum of Biblical Art in 2014, and Dr. Fine is a contributor to -Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (7th – 9th Centuries)-, a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition that will open in March, 2012.

Steven Fine has lectured to both popular and academic audiences throughout the United States, Israel and Europe, in both English and Hebrew.  In recent years, he has given academic presentations at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, the University of Basle, Bar Ilan University, Ben Gurion University, University of Haifa, Oxford University, the Hebrew University, American Jewish University, Union Theological Seminary, Yale University, the Hebrew Union College, UC Davis, Duke University and the Brooklyn Museum. Dr. Fine delivered the first Cecil Roth Memorial Lecture at the Jewish Museum in London.

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