For at least one esteemed name in the worldwide field of Jewish studies, religion and raciness may have surprisingly close historical ties.
As a social and cultural revolution rocked much of Judeo-Christian society in the first and second centuries A.D., Moscow State University professor Arkady Kovelman described Tuesday afternoon to a crowd at the Hopkins Center, unprecedented literary changes sparked the collapse of most classical genres and the appearance of Greek and Roman novels.
In its place emerged what Kovelman referred to as "serio-comic literature," blending elements of different pre-existing genres. This mixed very serious topics, such as stoicism, with humor.
At the same time, there was a similar revolution in Jewish culture, as Biblical and Hellenistic literature died, taking along with the languages they were written in -- chiefly Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and classical Greek.
"One finds the themes of theology and law blended with humor, sensationalism, eroticism, even pornography," he said.
Kovelman proceeded to discuss the role of androgyny in Jewish culture.
He devoted the rest of his talk to Philo, the Alexandrian philosopher, and his views on the myth of creationism and the origin of humans.
Philo found certain parts of the Bible unacceptable, including the creation of Eve, which he called shameful, and he decided to simply interpret the Bible allegorically instead of literally.
Earlier theories included that propounded by the philosopher Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, essentially a discussion of love.
According to Aristophanes, Kovelman said, primeval humans were of three basic types: male-male, female-female and male-female.
They were obnoxious, and God cut them in half to punish them.
As a result, humans spend their entire lives trying to find their other halves, with heterosexuals being the descendants of the male-female pairs and homosexuals being descendants of the other two kinds.
According to Kovelman, there are striking similarities between this theory and the myth of Eve's creation where God cut Eden in half.
College Provost and Russian professor Barry Scherr,who is also affiliated with Dartmouth's Jewish Studies program, responded that Philo's reaction reflected how he though about men and women.
"The very suggestion that males and females were ever one was unacceptable for him," Scherr said.
Tuesday's speech was entitled "The Tale of Androgynous and the Unity of Jewish Culture." Kovelman, its main speaker, is a world-renowned scholar, and is visiting Dartmouth this month.
He also sits on various organizations and committees in the field of Jewish Studies, and has written more than 50 journal articles in English, Russian and Hebrew.
The seminar was essentially a panel discussion of a paper with the same title that he had previously published.
Kovelman also spoke of why the concept of the unity of Jewish culture must be defended in the first place. According to him, this is simply a result of the fact that it is questioned.
He cited the example of a book released last year called "Jewish Cultures".
The author pointedly defends the use of the word "cultures" in the plural, saying that there is no single Jewish culture.
All the "cultures" have been created in various countries, among different peoples, and are simply the subcultures of other dominant societies such as the Greek, Russian and Arab civilizations, Kovelman said.
Kovelman went on to tell the audience how in The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, under the entry for "Jews" it reads that there is no single group of Jewish people.
The population belongs to different ethnic groups, live in different locations, and speak different languages.
The only connection between them all is their relation to a mythical tribe from Palestine, he said.
