This year is a bit complicated. There have been endless interesting and important discoveries and advances in 2025, but very few stand out as top-ten material. That is reflected in the wide variation in earlier 2025 lists. Also, the biggest stories for PaleoJudaica have been of a more personal nature.
The following list has ten bullet points, but it's a mixture of stories, themes, and single posts. And it has a lot more than ten links. Most are not already covered in other 2025 lists. Let's start with a couple of personal stories.
● The top story of the year for PaleoJudaica was the publication of:
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2: More Noncanonical Scriptures (Eerdmans, ed. Davila and Bauckham; MOTP2).
Theoretically this was on 25 April, but I received my first copy in March. You can read a chapter of it for free:
MOTP2: Introduction to the Book of Giants
The first review, by Phil Long at Reading Acts, is noted here.
Noteworthy around the same time was the first paperback publication of volume 1 (hardback published in 2013). And during the year I seized some opportunies to mention MOTP2 (and MOTP1) in connection with other stories. See here, here, here, here, here,here, and here,
● The other big personal story was my visit to Cartagena, Spain, to help the locals celebrate their annual Festival of the Carthaginians and Romans. I have been noting the festival off and on for many years (see here and links), and finally got around to attending this year. The 2025 posts:
In anticipation:
Cartagena Festival 2025 is coming
Starts today: The Carthaginians and Romans Festival of Cartagena
The reports on the trip, with lots of photos and videos:
The Festival of the Carthaginians and Romans 2025
Carthaginians and Romans: the capture of Carthago Nova
Cartagena: Phoenician and Punic archaeology and epigraphy
Cartagena: Roman-era archaeology
Carthaginians and Romans: Final Events
And a couple of follow-up posts with more photos:
Phoenician shipwreck exhibition in Cartagena
A first-century Latin sortilege inscription from Cartagena
● A persistent theme throughout the year has been the use of AI for improving our understanding of ancient Judaism and the ancient past in general. Here are the posts.
The life of an (aspiring) lost-language decipherer
Text excerpts in Syriac manuscripts
Satlow on AI and Word Similarity in the Talmud
Social inferences from the ancient Hebrew onomasticon
"Enoch" AI and new Carbon dating may push the dates of some DSS back (with follow-up posts here and here, notably on the implications of the re-dating of 4QDanielc)
An AI system for reconstructing ancient (Latin) inscriptions
Algorithm and multispectral imaging meet the DSS
An AI-Based Analysis of a Jewish Textual Corpus
AI is transcribing the whole Cairo Geniza
Drones, AI, and archaeological mapping
Also, let's reprise a couple of 2024 posts in which I discuss the limitations of LLM AI as I see them. I will not expatiate here. Maybe in another post.
Using AI to reconstruct damaged Hebrew & Aramaic inscriptions?
Machines agree that those special Talmud tractates are special
● The ongoing decipherment of the Herculaneum papyri also came up quite a bit. There continues to be steady progress, although I saw no dramatic developments like 2024's recovery of a lost biography of Plato. I'm also throwing in an extra post on other ancient libraries.
The Musk Foundation is funding the Vesuvius Project
Deciphering another Herculaneum scroll
Aksu, Collecting Practices and Opisthographic Collections in Qumran and Herculaneum (Brill, open access)
More Philodemus from Herculaneum
Bigtime grant for Heculaneum scrolls research
Plato's grave located? I doubt it.
The latest on the Heculaneum papyri
A library without scrolls and scrolls without a library
We also saw the recovery and decipherment of some other scroll material. The Nahal Zohar fragments were newly recovered in that mysterious pyramid. The tax fraud papyrus was acquired by the Israel Museum some time ago under unclear conditions. It was finally noticed in 2014 and published this year.
● A pyramid and scroll fragments excavated in Judean Desert
More on the pyramid and scroll finds at Nahal Zohar
● A tax-fraud and forgery trial recorded in a pre-Bar Kokhba Revolt papyrus
More on that fraud-trial papyrus
Ancient Roman taxation practices
● An ongoing debate in Ethiopia about Ge'ez was in the news. Ge'ez is the ancient Ethiopian language that preserves the only complete texts of the ancient Jewish books of 1 Enoch and Jubilees. Is it a "dead" language? Should it be? Or should it be taught in Ethiopian schools? How important is it for Ethiopian culture today? Meanwhile, SBL Press has published a new reader's edition of Ethiopic (Ge'ez) 1 Enoch.
In defense of Ge'ez
Another defense of Ge'ez
Olivero, 1 Enoch: An Ethiopic Reader’s Edition (SBL)
● Perhaps surprisingly, PaleoJudaica found two postable stories about Neolithic archaeology, with a bonus story for each.
A six-fingered shaman, giants, and a ghost wheel—two prehistoric stories
Proto-writing at Göbekli Tepe? Plus Ashubanipal's looted library? (with an update noting a response by an archaeologist who has worked at Göbekli Tepe)
Finally, two additional personal stories.
● The first involves, belatedly, a trip to the Isle of Jura in Scotland.
● The second, and last in this year's list, is a (successful) experiment involving enabling comments. I may repeat it sometime.
Ezra and Nehemiah pseudepigrapha?
Last year's top-ten list is here.
Cross-file under Annual Archaeology List Watch.
Have a good and safe New Year's Eve 2025!
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