BHPC alumna Eva Mroczek wins the George A. and Jean S. DeLong Book History Book Prize 2017

“The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) is delighted to announce the award of the 2017 DeLong Book History Book Prize to Eva Mroczek of UC Davis, USA, for her title The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity (published by Oxford University Press) … The book is breathtaking and beautifully written, taking issue with the notion of both ‘the Bible’ and ‘the book’. Stripping away scholarly assumptions about early Jewish literary culture, this study tackles the scraps, fragments and scrolls that have, over the centuries, been imaginatively ordered – often, as Mroczek shows, erroneously – into a coherent canon. The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity asks readers to explore the literature of early Judaism on its own terms, and, in doing so, prompts us to rethink dominant paradigms which structure our imaginative approach to biblical literature and textual circulation. Despite its impressive and wide-ranging scholarship, the book is deft of touch, enjoyable and accessible, and should be read by any scholar interested in the history of the Bible, early Jewish literature, and the idea of the book.”