Jill Joshowitz, PhD (New York University, 2023) is a scholar of Jewish visual culture in the late antique Eastern Mediterranean. She has curated exhibitions for Jewish cultural institutions throughout the United States including the Maltz Museum, Museum of Jewish Heritage, Rauh Jewish Archives, and the Yeshiva University Museum.    

Between the third to seventh centuries of the common era, Jewish communities throughout the Eastern Mediterranean began to adorn their synagogues with figural illustrations inspired by the Hebrew Bible. Although the Bible had long been the cornerstone of Jewish life, it was only in late antiquity that its patriarchs, prophets, and heroes entered the Jewish visual lexicon. Through careful consideration of the rich history of Jewish biblical interpretation alongside similar motifs in Near Eastern, Greco-Roman, and Christian visual culture, Visual Exemplars: Biblical Figures in the Art and Literature of Jewish Late Antiquity challenges the reader to consider the relationship between late antique Jewish biblical art, synagogue rituals, rabbinic teachings, and exemplary paradigms.