Grant, A Prototype Approach to Hate and Anger in the Hebrew Bible (Routledge)

RECENT BOOK FROM ROUTLEDGE:

A Prototype Approach to Hate and Anger in the Hebrew Bible

By Deena Grant
Copyright 2023

Paperback
£19.99
Hardback
£54.99
eBook
£17.99

112 Pages
by Routledge
VitalSource Logo Learn about VitalSource eBooks
Also available as eBook on:
Amazon Kindle
Taylor & Francis eBooks

Description

This innovative book applies findings from the field of cognitive linguistics to the study of emotions in the Hebrew Bible. The book draws on the prototype approach to conceptual categories to help interpret emotion language in biblical passages. Contemporary scholarship has come to recognize that biblical emotion terms do not necessarily possess exact equivalents within our modern lexicons, even if some of these terms express (or appear to express) concepts similar to those conveyed by modern emotion language. In particular, the book focuses on sn’ and ḫrh, which are almost always equated in modern English with hate and anger. However, the ancient Hebrew roots evoke varied and robust emotion-scripts that are quite different than their English counterparts. We see how the prototype script model may help to expose the unique nuances of sn’ and ḫrh and put into profile elements of these emotions that may otherwise go unnoticed. Overall, the study demonstrates that even though modern emotion terms cannot fully capture the ancient emotional experience, our shared use of language to evoke meaning offers us entrée into the emotional world represented in the Hebrew Bible.

The hardback came out in 2023, but I missed it then. The paperback came out last November.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Hoppe, Transforming Proverbs (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Transforming Proverbs

Intertextuality in 4Q185

Series:
Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, Volume: 150

Author: Isabell Christine Hoppe

This is the first published monograph on 4Q185 Sapiential Admonitions B, an enigmatic Dead Sea Scroll’s wisdom text. The author offers a new edition that is based on the IAA images and aided by the Göttingen Qumran-Digital database. In an intertextual analysis, she shows that the text of 4Q185 radically transforms the sapiential discourse manifested in Proverbs, by integrating both eschatological tropes and the discourse on memory and national identity reflected in Pss 78, 105 and 106. Before it was conserved in the manuscript, the text underwent literary growth: the section discussing Isa 40:6–8 proves to be a redactional insertion.

Copyright Year: 2025

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-71622-3
Publication: 20 Jan 2025
EUR €115.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-71621-6
Publication: 23 Jan 2025
EUR €115.00

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Prof. Kenneth Kitchen (1932-2025)

SAD NEWS: Obituary: Kenneth Kitchen, Professor Emeritus of Egyptology. Words by Dr Glenn Godenho, Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology (University of Liverpool). HT Rogue Classicism.

Kenneth Kitchen, a giant of Egyptology and lifelong University of Liverpool student and staff member, passed away on 6th February, aged 92.

Professor Kitchen was born in Aberdeen, started studying Egyptology at the University of Liverpool in 1951, and never left, becoming a lecturer and in due course being awarded a Personal Chair and then the title of Brunner Professor of Egyptology.

[...]

Peter J Williams has an obituary at Tyndale House: Professor Kenneth A. Kitchen (1932–2025).

Kenneth Anderson Kitchen was a phenomenon, one of a kind, and I felt very privileged to know him. He was someone with a vast knowledge of the ancient world. For parts of his life, he may have been the person who had read a greater variety of ancient Near and Middle Eastern texts than anyone in the entire world.

The Egyptian Exploration Society also has a notice:

Kenneth A Kitchen (1932–2025).

The EES, and many friends and colleagues around the world, mourn the death of Ken Kitchen who sadly passed away on Thursday 6th February, aged 92.

I am very sad to hear of Professor Kitchen's passing. I never met him, but when I was a teenager I encountered his popular book Ancient Orient and Old Testament. It signficantly influenced my decision to go into biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies.

Requiescat in pace.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

On Pseudo-Hegesippus

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: My Next Guest Needs an Introduction: Proudly Presenting “Pseudo-Hegesippus” (Carson Bay).

The exceptional influence and popularity enjoyed by DEH from late antiquity through the Middle Ages, and its critical interface with Jewish historiography as a work both based on and source of major Jewish histories, suggest that this work is important for scholars of pre-modern Judaism and/or Christianity to know. DEH’s afterlives represent a treasure-trove of literary-historical data for studying the (largely conceptual) Jewish-Christian interface in premodernity. Perhaps most interesting of all is that DEH commanded concerted and widespread attention from readers, Christian and Jewish, starting just decades after the penning of the work up through the early-20th century, when scholarly interest fizzles out. ...

An excellent, brief introduction to Pseudo-Hegesippus' De excidio Hierosolymita, an important, but much-neglected, late-antique, Christian, Latin reworking of Josephus' Jewish War.

I noted Carson Bay's book, Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity: The Historiography, Exemplarity, and Anti-Judaism of Pseudo-Hegesippus (CUP, 2023) here with links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Review of ... a catalogue of the Richard B. Witschonke collection of coins ...

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Local coinages in a Roman world, second century BC-first century AD: a catalogue of the Richard B. Witschonke collection of coins in the early Roman provinces.

Lucia F. Carbone, Local coinages in a Roman world: second century BC-first century AD. A catalogue of the Richard B. Witschonke collection of coins in the early Roman provinces. New York: American Numismatic Society, 2023. 2 vols. Pp. 576. ISBN 9780897224000.

Review by
Corey J. Ellithorpe, University of Central Oklahoma. cellithorpe@uco.edu

This chapter is of particular interest for PaleoJudaica:

35. The Decapolis, Idumaea, and Judaea
Introduction (Oliver D. Hoover)
Catalogue (David Hendin, Oliver D. Hoover and Lucia F. Carbone)

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

More on the Sartaba-Alexandrium dig

ARCHAEOLOGY: Jewish rebels and earthquake rubble: New dig aims to solve a pair of historical enigmas. Sartaba/Alexandrium was built by the Hasmoneans and expanded by Herod. A team of archaeologists has launched a first excavation in 40 years to probe the final days of the fortress (Rosella Tercatin, Times of Israel).

One of the goals of the new dig, the first at the site in over 40 years, is to discover more about what happened to Alexandrium during the 1st century CE, especially during the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome (66-73 CE). The excavation is being carried out by Bar Ilan University in cooperation with the Staff Officer of Archaeology at the Department of the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria (the site stands in Area C, under Israeli control).

I noted a recent epigraphic discovery at Sartaba-Alexandrium here and here. The current article is a broader survey of what is happening at the excavation.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

A Geniza fragment related to the Second Temple texts?

GENIZA FRAGMENT OF THE MONTH (FEBRUARY 2025): Qumran, Qaraites and Controversies: Mosseri I.40 (Ben Outhwaite).

Beyond individual fragments, there are a few groups of manuscripts whose fame extends beyond the usual audience of Genizah scholars too. Among these, the ‘Second Temple texts’ are pre-eminent. These manuscripts, whose textual origins lie in the period between the construction of the Second Temple in the 6th c BCE and its destruction in 70 CE, have somehow been preserved in the amber of the Fusṭāṭ Genizah, despite largely dropping out of the historical record elsewhere.

Foremost among these are the fragments of the six Genizah manuscripts of Ben Sira – with copies a thousand years older subsequently turning up in caves 2 and 11 at Qumran, and at Masada. The first Ben Sira discoveries were followed rapidly, thanks to Solomon Schechter’s remarkable eye for the unusual, by the two manuscripts of the Zadokite Work, T-S 10K6 and T-S 16.311 . Later on, numerous fragments of its forebear, the Damascus Document, were found in Qumran caves 4 and 5. Added to these is the single parchment manuscript of Aramaic Levi in the Cambridge, Oxford and Manchester Genizah collections, which preserves a text probably composed in the 3rd c. BCE. Fragments were identified in Qumran caves 1 and 4.

What is the relationship between the Second Temple texts of the Genizah and the fragment under discussion here, Mosseri I.40? The first publication of the Mosseri fragment suggested a thematic and historical link to this group of Second Temple manuscripts. Since then, except for the occasional appearance in footnotes, the Mosseri manuscript had mostly been forgotten, until this year.

The article also discusses the apocryphal psalms manuscript Antonin 798, another Cairo Geniza text. More on it here and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

No, they haven't found "a lost Bible chapter."

SYRIAC WATCH: Ancient Syriac text reveals lost Gospel details after 1,500 years. The Old Syriac text specifies disciples 'rubbing it in their hands,' highlighting significant nuances in interpretation (Jerusalem Post).

Using ultraviolet (UV) photography, Kessel revealed a lost Bible chapter hidden beneath layers of writing in an ancient manuscript. This practice of reusing parchment was common in medieval times due to the scarcity of writing materials, particularly parchment made from animal skins. Scribes often scraped off existing text to overwrite new content, resulting in palimpsests—manuscripts bearing traces of previous writings.

I've been debating whether to post this one, since PaleoJudaica has already posted on the story itself. But the bold-font phrase (my emphasis) is appearing often enough in the media that I think it merits some comment.

The story involves a significant discovery. But it is quite misleading to call it the discovery of "a lost Bible chapter." This phrase and similar have been appearing a lot in the coverage. Usually the Jerusalem Post handles such stories well, so I was surprised to see it here.

The actual story: new technology has allowed scholars to read the erased bottom-layer text of a double-palimpsest section of a Georgian manuscript. Written under the Georgian text was a Greek copy of the Apophthegmata patrum. And under that was an Old Syriac translation of the Gospels dated to the sixth century, which is early. Not much of this layer is left, but part of a chapter of Matthew has been recovered.

That in itself is exciting, but of further interest the text of Matthew 12:1 has a rare variant reading. It adds "and rub them in their hands" after (the disciples) "began to pick the heads of grain." This is not a unique reading. It also appears in another (fifth-century) Old Syriac manuscript called the Codex Curetonianus (British Library, Add. 14451). The two share a number of readings against the text of the Syriac Peshitta.

A notable story overall. Already covered in 2023 in the articles I linked to here.

It is technically true that a Syriac biblical manuscript was lost, and part of a chapter of it has now been found. Let us rejoice. But no chapter of the Bible went missing and has only now been rediscovered. That would be newsworthy indeed.

As I said, the phrase has appeared in many headlines. I don't mean to single out the JP. The rest of its article is substantially accurate. But one more detail is worth mentioning.

The article credits "Jerusalem Post Staff," but at the bottom it adds, "The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system." I take that to mean that someone used an LLM AI to produce the piece. I see more and more articles that have notes like this at the end.

Journalists, please don't try to cut corners with AI. It is unintelligent. It has no judgment. It makes things up. And it propagates bad takes like "a lost Bible chapter." Double and triple check anything it tells you.

Cross-file under Technology Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Tony Burke's Regensburg Year: February

THE APOCRYPHICITY BLOG: My Regensburg Year Part 7: February 2025.

Tony Burke is on research sabbatical for the 2024-25 academic year at the University of Regensburg in Germany.

In this post he describes his trip to Malta and recounts apocryphal tales of Longinus the soldier. At Malta he visited some New Testament (apocrypha)-related locations, but he doesn't mention any Punic sites. Maybe someday I will get around to visiting those for you.

For earlier posts in the series and more on Tony's work, see here and links.

Cross-file under New Testament Apocrypha Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Gupta on early Judaism

NIJAY K. GUPTA has a substack series on early Judaism. I have already noted one post on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha here. The first post in the series is here:

New Series: Studying Early Judaism

Lists some good bibliography.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Pottery evidence for Egyptians at Megiddo in Josiah's time

ARCHAEOLOGY: Archaeologists Find Evidence of Egyptian Army That Felled Biblical King at Megiddo. King Josiah's killing at Megiddo 2,600 years ago sparked apocalyptic traditions in Judaism and Christianity. But no traces of this biblical episode had been found. Until now (Ariel David, Haaretz).

So far, no hard archaeological evidence of this biblical story had emerged from the ruins of the ancient city of Megiddo, in modern-day northern Israel. But now, archaeologists have unearthed an unusual collection of ceramics which they say may be linked to Necho's army.

The assemblage, found in a newly-excavated building at Megiddo, includes unexpectedly large amounts of Egyptian and Greek pottery, according to Prof. Israel Finkelstein of Haifa University – the longtime head of the Megiddo dig – and Dr. Assaf Kleiman of Ben-Gurion University.

The discovory of lots of seventh-century BCE Egyptian pottery (and Greek pottery - from mercenaries?) at Megiddo offers some support to the biblical account (2 Kings 23:28-30) of Pharaoh Necho II meeting King Josiah there and killing him. The pottery, of course, does not prove the event happened, but it puts Egyptians there at the right time.

I don't doubt that it did happen. The Deuteronomistic Historian recounts it even though it directly contradicted his historical theology. It was very awkward that the Davidic king who finally did what the Historian wanted was promptly killed in battle.

For more evidence for those Greek mercenaries, see here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

BAR 50-year anniversary issue

NOW OUT: Biblical Archaeology Review, Spring 2025.

In our Spring 2025 issue, which celebrates 50 years of bringing biblical archaeology to the public, we reflect on the BAR brand and what it represents.

[...]

The link gives you the full ToC, with links to the individual articles etc. But just about everything is behind the subscription wall.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Long overdue — Warburg Library update

SAVED AND RESTORED: The Warburg Institute: the Hamburg library that escaped the Nazis and was reborn in London. In 1933, with books being burned across Germany, a collection of 60,000 art-historical tomes was shipped to England by steamer. Now, ‘the world’s weirdest library’ has reopened after a £14.5-million transformation (Harry Seymour, Christie's).

Inside an unremarkable 1950s red-brick building in Bloomsbury — London’s academic heartland — lies what has been described as ‘the world’s weirdest library’.

Little-known beyond art-history circles, it’s called the Warburg Institute, and it houses nearly 400,000 books dedicated to the study of the transmission of symbols from antiquity to the Renaissance — with a reputation for focusing on the esoteric. Had Dan Brown’s fictitious Harvard professor of symbology, Robert Langdon, been real, wrote Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, this is where you’d find him.

[...]

The other day I was poking around in PaleoJudaica and I came across an in-progress story from 2014 which I had forgotten. It was about a court case to decide whether the Warburg Library in London could retain its own identity or whether the University of London could shut it down and absorb its books into its other collections. I posted about it here and here. The underlying articles are now both behind subscription walls, but you can get the gist from the quotations.

This recent (November 2024) Christie's article relates the happy ending:

Fast-forward to 2014, as London rents spiralled, and a legal row about the fate of the library reached the city’s courts. On one side was the university, looking to clarify the terms of the deed, signed during the stresses of the Second World War. On the other was the Warburg Advisory Council (and members of the Warburg family), voicing a fear that the institute could lose its identity, swallowed up among the millions of books held nearby at Senate House Library.

After 10 days of deliberation, the judge ruled that the deed was iron-clad, and from that decision came £9.5 million, the core of the budget for the recent redevelopment.

The Library was saved and has just undergone a major refurbishment. Its vast collection of esoterica remain available for study in its own dedicated building. For more details see the Christie's article.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Maaloula after Assad

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: Christian town in Syria keeps Aramaic alive, amid fears for future under new regime. Residents of Maaloula, one of the few places where the ancient language is still spoken, worry they’ll be blamed for ousted leadership’s abuses, targeted in ‘revenge’ attacks (KAREEM CHEHAYEB, AP via Times of Israel).

Another recent article discusses Saint Thecla's legacy at Maaloula. It has a more upbeat view of the situation than the AP article.

Maaloula: Aramaic-speaking town bridging cultures between Syria, Türkiye (Türkiye Today).

Maaloula has been through a lot in recent years. I hope the future will be better.

For lots of PaleoJudaica posts on Maaloula (Ma'aloula, Malula, Maalula - etc!), start here and follow the links. And for more on Thecla and Maaloula, see here and links

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Biblical Studies Carnival 225

READING ACTS: Biblical Studies Carnival #225 for February 2025 (Phil Long).

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament

THE AWOL BLOG: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament.

Follow the link for description and a link to the site. Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.