Humanities

Contrary to what we might think at first, biblical and Second Temple Jewish literatures are filled with mathematical thought. The densest concentration of mathematical thought in these texts is found in writings concerned with priestly and priestly-adjacent matters such as temples and sacrifice. Embedded within larger narrative contexts, these instances of counting, calculation, and measurement offer a unique glimpse into the socio-historical contexts of these texts and their relationship to broader knowledge networks in the ancient world. Mathematics in the ancient world, as in modernity, is highly contextual and culturally conditioned. How one counts or approaches even a simple arithmetical...