Sam Boyd wins 2016 SBL Regional Scholars Award
, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies, received a 2016 Regional Scholars award. Dr. Boyd was nominated for the award by the Rocky Mountains-Great Plains regional selection committee of the SBL on the basis of his presentation“The Flood andthe Problem of Being an Omnivore.”
Dr. Boyd's paper sets thecommon tradition of two-by-two animal rescue in light of the widerPriestly ideology. In doing so, heargue that, despite this common tradition, the role of animals andparticularly of permissible eating plays a vitally different role in P than in the flood tradition asattested in Gilgamesh. For P, animal consumption is the cause of the flood whereas for theGilgamesh Epic it is the means of population control after the flood, thereby obviating anotherdeluge.
By understanding the role of animal consumption in the larger narrative of P, thedistinctive uses of the biblical adaptation of meat eating in this tradition over against that inGilgamesh become clear. Moreover, isolating this tradition in P and juxtaposing it with a similarmotif used for a different purpose in Gilgamesh situates the retelling of the flood narrative in 1Enoch 7 and Jubilees 5 in a more extended transmission and conversation of a stream of traditionextending well into Second Temple Judaism.
