A Teacher A Researcher An Editor
Professor Paul V. M. Flesher Religious Studies Program Telephone: 307-766-2616 Fax: 307-766-3189 Mailing Address: Religious Studies Program Box 3353, University of Wyoming Laramie, WY 82071-3353 PFlesher@uwyo.edu
Professor Flesher teaches full-time in the Religious Studies Program at the University of Wyoming. A specialist in Ancient Judaism, he nonetheless teaches a wide variety of courses covering different religions and periods. These are taught from an academic perspective rather than the view of a religious practitioner. The goal is to understand how a religion is put together, why it makes sense, and why someone would want to practice it and believe its truths. He also works to develop new ways to incorporate technology and the World Wide Web into helpful learning experiences.
Professor Flesher observes: "Religion is one of the three predominant forces that people draw upon to make their life decisions; the other two being economics and family ties. Given this importance, it is necessary for people to understand religions other than their own if they wish to understand humankind."
Paul Flesher teaches:
And a host of other courses.
Paul Flesher completed and published his first book in 1988. It is called Oxen, Women, or Citizens? Slaves in the System of the Mishnah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). It is an analysis of slavery according to an ancient Jewish law code called the Mishnah. In it he looks at the role of slaves in the family, in the society, and in the Temple. .
While Dr. Flesher has continued to speak and write about various topics in Rabbinic Judaism since then, he has focused most of his research efforts into two areas. The first constitutes an attempt to understand the earliest development of the synagogue and how it rose to become an important institution of Jewish worship. With Dan Urman (Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel), he edited the two volume work, Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery (Leiden: Brill, 1995). It includes his essay on the question of synagogues in First-Century Palestine, and his computer-assisted study of the reredos of the Dura Europa Synagogue. Dr. Flesher's second area of concentration comprises the rabbinic translations of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic called Targums. He is currently working on publishing findings concerning the sources of the Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch, which he discovered with a team of former graduate students. In addition, he is writing an Introduction to the Targums with Professor Bruce Chilton of Bard College.
Bibliography of Publications
Paul Flesher holds the position of Executive Editor of the Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate Studies, which is a bi-annual bibliographic publication concerning the Targums, Aramaic Studies, and related fields. It is also the official news organ of the International Organization of Targumic Study.
He also edits Targum Studies, which is a series of occasional volumes publishing articles and monographs on the targums. Volume Two will be available by early 1998; it brings together a number of papers discussing the relationship between the two main Aramaic Bibles of Late Antiquity, namely, the Targums and the Peshitta.