Ahuvia Goren delivered a lecture at the annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age at the University of Pennsylvania, devoted this year to the theme “Interpreting the Ancients.” His talk, “The Revived Heretic: Epicurus and the Talmudic Apikoros in Early Modern Italian Jewish Thought,” examined how early modern Jewish thinkers in Italy, much like their Christian counterparts, re-engaged with the figure of Epicurus through renewed encounters with classical philosophy. Drawing on largely unpublished manuscript sources, the lecture showed how Epicurean ideas were both rejected and selectively appropriated in debates over unbelief, philosophy, and religious authority
https://www.library.upenn.edu/events/lawrence-j-schoenberg/interpreting-ancients