A new logo for the Observatório

A new logo for the Observatório de Universos Bíblicos

The logo gives visual form to the idea of “biblical worlds”: the biblical text as a gateway, as Othmar Keel argued, or as a vantage point from which to observe ancient cultures.

The research group Observatório de Universos Bíblicos (OUB) began in late 2024. Led by Prof. Dr. Silas Klein and Prof. Dr. José Adriano Filho, it is based in the Professional Graduate Program at Faculdade Unida de Vitória and belongs to the research line “Religion: Traditions and Theologies”.

The OUB studies religious phenomena, practices and productions in the historical and cultural contexts in which biblical texts were conceived, produced and first received, through the lens and tools of religious studies. Long bound to Christian exegesis and theology, the study of biblical traditions has increasingly drawn on the concepts and methods of other fields. This new configuration has dissolved old disciplinary boundaries and brought back bodies of evidence that were once neglected, but it still lacks the concepts to resolve the epistemological instability that follows. In response, the group brings together research on the inscriptions, images, objects, literatures and rites of the religions of the biblical worlds, with the questions, tools and conceptual frameworks of the anthropology, archaeology, hermeneutics, philosophy, history, literature and sociology of religions.

The group currently has three research foci:

1 – Material and visual mediations of biblical religions How artifacts from these contexts mediated religious ideas and practices in the ancient southern Levant. Research on the inscriptions, images and objects of the biblical worlds through the questions, tools and conceptual frameworks of the anthropology, archaeology, hermeneutics, philosophy, history and literature of religions.

2 – Literary and social mediations of biblical religions How (para)biblical texts from these contexts mediated religious ideas and practices. Research on the inscriptions, literatures and rites of the biblical worlds through the questions, tools and conceptual frameworks of the anthropology, hermeneutics, philosophy, history, literature and sociology of religions.

3 – Socio-epistemic mediations of biblical religions How scholars mediate the concept of religion in these contexts. Research on reception aesthetics, the history of interpretation and the history of scholarship on the biblical worlds through the questions, tools and conceptual frameworks of the anthropology, hermeneutics, history, literature and sociology of religions.