Experience ​Ancient History with Expert Host while Cruising the Caribbean via Norwegian

NORWEGIAN: the Caribbean’s Leading Cruise Line

Escape the humdrum of home and/or office in March of 2025 on MS Epic, one of the most exciting ships sailing the Caribbean. Join us on this amazing opportunity to cruise aboard this luxurious vessel and to learn from six lectures presented by renowned professor Andrea Berlin of Boston University.

Together you’ll enjoy an exciting journey as you visit these destinations in the Eastern Caribbean: Porto Plata, Dominican Republic, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Tortola, British Virgin Islands, and Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas.

The Epic will depart from Port Canaveral, Florida. We’ll see you there!

NOTE: You must book your flight to the Orlando Airport (MCO) and transportation to the port.

Lectures

Andrea Berlin’s lectures:

Worlds Colliding: Hellenism and the Jews in the Second Temple Period

Day 1: The World of the Maccabees (2nd-1st centuries BCE)

Lecture 1: Mediterranean Cosmopolitans: A Visit to Maresha

In the second century BCE many Levantines were cosmopolites – Greek for “citizens of the world.” For an up-close view, we visit Maresha, the chief city of the region of Idumea, and its multicultural citizens. Their names reflect pride in their ethnic origins – Edomite, Sidonian – while their household goods show a warm embrace of Greek goods and styles. This was a world of choice, where people honored the ties of the past while being open to the allures of the present.

Lecture 2: The Rise of the Maccabees

Where did the Maccabees come from, and how did they craft a kingdom? The story begins in the middle of the second century BCE, when the great imperial powers – the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria – were fighting for control of the southern Levant. The Hasmoneans, a landed family from rural Judea, combined armed muscle and a savvy political game to carve out an independent territory. In the tumult of Mediterranean politics in those years, they made Judea a player on the world stage.

Lecture 3: Beyond the Temple: Life in Hasmonean Palestine

The establishment of the Hasmonean kingdom gave Judeans a new political identity. How did they react? Archaeology gives us the answer. They fashioned a lifestyle that was explicitly local, a deliberate rejection of the cosmopolitan world of their neighbors. We see houses marked by simplicity, by the absence of imported items, by goods only in Jerusalem style. We see a world where people set aside materialism, making a different kind of statement about what matters.

Day 2: From Herod the Great to the Great Revolt

Lecture 4: Class Divides: Life in Herod’s Jerusalem

Today Herod the Great is best known for stunning architectural creations. In his own time, he was the influencer-in-chief, a man whose tastes and lifestyle had a huge impact on elite Jewish society. In this lecture we visit Herod’s Jerusalem, where the city’s upper class took on the trappings of Roman culture. We see how their choices opened the way to a new class divide.

Lecture 5: A Land Transformed: Galilee in the 1st c. CE

Galilee in the first century CE was a land transformed, a place where Jews lived in their own villages, surrounded by goods that reflected a particular identity and lifestyle. We see what Jewish daily life looked like in this time and place, and how simple household items provided people with an indelible feeling of communal solidarity.

Lecture 6: The Revolt and its lessons

Why would the Jews – a small population without military capabilities or political allies – dare to challenge the might of Rome? A major factor were deeply divided factions, a social fabric torn from within. For some, communal solidarity had become a hardened identity, widening the rift between Jewish commoners and elites. Some of the former turned toward zealotry; many of the latter advocated cooperation. The decision to revolt was a consequence of disunity, a scenario whose lessons still resonate today.

Andrea Berlin

Boston University

Andrea M. Berlin is the James R. Wiseman Chair in Classical Archaeology and Professor of Religion at Boston University. Dr. Berlin is a former Fulbright Distinguished Scholar and an award-winning teacher and lecturer who has written and edited six books and over 70 articles about life in the ancient Near East from the time of Alexander the Great through the Roman era. [More Bio]

Areas of Interest

Archaeology and history of the Achaemenid; Hellenistic, and Roman East, Ceramic Studies; Second-Temple Judaism; archaeology of Israel

I focus on the eras of the later ancient empires: the Achaemenid Persians, Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic successors, and the Romans.

I am especially interested in understanding the realities of daily life under these regimes, and in exploring the intersection of politics and cultural change in antiquity.

Some of Andrea's Awards and Honors

· 2024, Recipient of the AIA's 2025 Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement

· 2021, P.E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award, ASOR/American Schools of Overseas Research. This award honors an archaeologist who, during their career, has made outstanding contributions to ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology

· 2010-11, National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellow, Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem

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