Please excuse the weekend blogging hiatus.

Everything is fine. I was just unusually busy.

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On literacy in Iron Age II Judah

NORTHWEST SEMITIC EPIGRAPHY: Was literacy important in the biblical Kingdom of Judah? Expert offers answers. Questions related to literacy in ancient times are not an exclusive prerogative of academic studies on the Israelites (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

Jews are known as the "people of the book," but was literacy important in biblical times? As explained by Matthieu Richelle, a Professor of Old Testament at the Université Catholique de Louvain in a recent paper published in the latest volume of the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology, "the subject of literacy in ancient Israel and Judah remains hotly debated among scholars, and the case of the Kingdom of Judah proves especially controversial."

[...]

It's nice to see something new from Rossella Tercatin. This article is a good summary of a technical article published in the current volume (7, 2024) of the open-access Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology. I noted this volume, and its focus on Iron-Age II Hebrew epigraphy, here. The article and its abstract:

Literacy in the Kingdom of Judah: A Typology of Approaches and a Criticism of Quantitative Perspectives

Matthieu Richelle
Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, matthieu.richelle@uclouvain.be

Abstract

The subject of literacy in ancient Israel and Judah remains hotly debated among scholars, and the case of the Kingdom of Judah proves especially controversial. To disentangle a complicated issue, this article first draws up a typology of approaches used by scholars to tackle questions such as the population’s rate of literacy, the Judeans’ ability to write down literary texts, and the development of literacy throughout the centuries. Then, it critically examines two quantitative approaches, which have been highly influential and currently promote the thesis that the levels of literacy were minimal in the early monarchic period in Judah (in contrast to the situation in Israel) and considerably increased at the end of this period.

Professor Richelle's observations and conclusions seem sensible to me. Given that most of the evidence, presumably written on fragile papyrus and vellum, is long gone, any conclusions should be provisional.

For reasons to hope for the discovery of surviving scrolls from this era, start here (toward the end) and follow the links.

For lots more on the question of literacy in First-Temple-era Judah, see the thread of posts that starts here and concludes here.

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Shaked memorial volume (De Gruyter, open access)

THE AWOL BLOG: Yahwism under the Achaemenid Empire: Professor Shaul Shaked in Memoriam. Edited by: Gad Barnea and Reinhard G. Kratz and published by De Gruyter in 2024.

About this book

Open Access

The Achaemenid period (550–330 BCE) is rightly seen as one of the most formative periods in Judaism. It is the period in which large portions of the Bible were edited and redacted and others were authored—yet no dedicated interdisciplinary study has been undertaken to present a consistent picture of this decisive time period.
This book is dedicated to the study of the touchpoints between Yahwistic communities throughout the Achaemenid empire and the Iranian attributes of the empire that ruled over them for about two centuries. Its approach is fundamentally interdisciplinary. It brings together scholars of Achaemenid history, literature and religion, Iranian linguistics, historians of the Ancient Near East, archeologists, biblical scholars and Semiticists. The goal is to better understand the interchange of ideas, expressions and concepts as well as the experience of historical events between Yahwists and the empire that ruled over them for over two centuries. The book will open up a holisitic perspective on this important era to scholars of a wide variety of fields in the study of Judaism in the Ancient Near East.

Also noted by the Bibliographia Iranica Blog.

I am very pleased to see the late Professor Shaul Shaked honored with this volume. A couple of years ago I noted the (at the time upcoming) symposium that was the basis for the volume. The topic covers a major focus of his career, although his chronological range was much wider.

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McKenzie & Richelle, The Oxford Handbook of the Books of Kings

NEW BOOK FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS:

The Oxford Handbook of the Books of Kings

Edited by Steven L. McKenzie and Matthieu Richelle

Oxford Handbooks

£115.00

Hardback
Published: 26 September 2024
624 Pages
248x171mm
ISBN: 9780197610374

Also Available As:
Ebook

Also Available In:
Oxford Handbooks Online

Description

The Books of Kings have long been at the center of scholarly discussions on the Hebrew Bible because they constitute important sources for the history of ancient Israel and Judah, and because they are key components of the Deuteronomistic History. The Oxford Handbook of the Books of Kings provide a clear and useful introduction to the main aspects and issues pertaining to the scholarly study of Kings. These include textual history (including the linguistic profile), compositional history, literary approaches, key characters, history, important recurring themes, reception history and some contemporary readings. As a one-volume introduction embracing all the aspects of the study of Kings, written by an international and diverse team of scholars, this handbook is the ideal point of entry into the study of Kings for generations of students and scholars.

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More on the Petra chalice

NABATEAN (NABATAEAN) WATCH: What 12 ancient skeletons discovered in a mysterious tomb in Petra could tell us about the ancient city (Claire Isabella Gilmour, The Conversation).

This essay gives a very preliminary assessment of the new discoveries in that tomb under Al Khazneh in Petra, as well as some background on the Nabateans and on Petra. It caught my eye because it addresses an obvious question: why is the chalice excavated in the grave so similar to the Holy Grain in Indiana Jones 3?

One of the most headline-grabbing discoveries has been dubbed a “holy grail” in many reports, suggesting that the vessel is similar to the fictional cup from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, also discovered at the Khazneh. In fact, it’s a humble jug, not a cup offering the drinker eternal life.

The similarities between the vessels aren’t a case of art imitating life, but the result of painstaking research into Nabataean pottery carried out by Deborah Fine, who was the director of archives at Lucasfilm Ltd.

She chose wisely.

PaleoJudaica posts on the new discoveries at Petra are here and here.

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Berlejung & Bohak (eds.), Amulets of Protection and Texts for Fears in Antiquity (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Amulets of Protection and Texts for Fears in Antiquity. Edited by Angelika Berlejung and Gideon Bohak. 2024. XII, 311 pages. Orientalische Religionen in der Antike (ORA) 57. €139.00 including VAT. cloth available 978-3-16-163549-6. Also Available As: eBook PDF €139.00.

Amulets are devices for fear management and communication with supernatural forces. Textual amulets - that is, amulets which contain mostly texts - attest explicitly to human fears, or threats which were supposed to be repelled by the amulets. They are valuable sources which can be analyzed for the study of the history of religion, historical anthropology, and interreligious research. The contributions in this current volume are based on the research project »Between Materiality and Scribal Magic: West-Semitic Textual Amulets from the First Millennium BCE to the Rise of Islam«. Within this project, teams from Leipzig University and Tel Aviv University studied textual amulets from the Levant in the 1st mill. BCE and CE that were written in the West-Semitic languages. Several scholars were invited to discuss and share their expertise within the scope of this research project. The present volume is the result of this interdisciplinary and international cooperation.

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On Samaritan coinage and a name

SAMARITAN NUMUSMATICS AND ONOMASTICS: A Son of Mazday on Samarian Coins: Reattribution From Bdyḥbl to Brochubelus (David Hendin, CoinWeek).

Early Samarian coins often feature legends with names that may be linked to local minting authorities. Some of these names are documented in historical and archaeological sources, such as the Wadi ed-Daliyeh papyri, while others remain speculative.

One of those speculative names is BDYḤBL. Meshorer and Qedar acknowledged in MQ that they were “unable to find an identical name,” though they interpreted BDYḤBL as a personal name. However, no historical records confirm the existence of a figure by this name. This interpretation has persisted in various publications and auction catalogs.

But it seems it needs to be revised. Read on. Bold-font emphasis in the above quote is in the original.

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Afterlife activities and foreshadowing shadows in Sefer Chasidim (and the Talmud)

FOR SUKKOT ETC.: Hoshana Rabbah: Delivering Judgment and Night of the Dead (Dr. Emilie Amar-Zifkin, TheTorah.com).

On Rosh Hashanah, our judgment is written; on Yom Kippur, it is sealed; and on Hoshana Rabbah, it is sent out to be fulfilled. It is said that on the night of Hoshana Rabbah, those judged to die that year will lose their shadows. Sefer Chasidim relates that, in a final plea for forgiveness, even the spirits of the dead rise from their graves to pray for the living.

The latter story is based on one in the Talmud that takes place on the even of Rosh Hashanah.

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A Qilliri Yom Kippur Geniza fragment

GENIZA FRAGMENT OF THE MONTH (OCTOBER 2024): A fragment of a piyyut by Qilliri for Yom Kippur from the Collection of Yeshiva University (Shulamith Berger, Joseph Ginsberg, and Aaron Koller).

Yeshiva University owns two Geniza fragments. The first, published back in 1906 by Siegmund Fraenkel, is a section of Saadia’s commentary on Isaiah.² The second is a fragment of a piyyut by El‘azar Qilliri. Although the piyyut is well known and has been published with a full critical apparatus and commentary, the YU fragment has flown under the radar.³ As we will see, though, our little fragment has its own stories to tell.

[...]

This eleventh-century fragment has now been (remotely) joined up with a fragment containing much of the rest of the manuscript. The latter is housed in the Jewish Theological Seminary Geniza collection. This manuscript has some variant readings from the traditional German-Polish text, but none that weren't already known from other manuscripts.

For more on the late-antique poet Qilliri's piyyutim (liturgical poetry), see here. For more on the piyyut more generally, see here.

For many PaleoJudaica posts noting Cairo Geniza Fragments of the Month in the Cambridge University Library's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, start here and follow the links.

For Yom Kippur, belatedly noted.

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Ark of the Covenant replica on display

RECONSTRUCTION: Historic Ark Replica Makes Its Jerusalem Debut During Sukkot Festival. They shall make an ark of acacia wood, two and a half amot long, an amah and a half wide, and an amah and a half high. EXODUS 25: 10 (THE ISRAEL BIBLE) (Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Israel365 News).

In a remarkable fusion of ancient tradition and modern craftsmanship, a meticulously constructed replica of the biblical Ark of the Covenant was showcased in Jerusalem during the Sukkot holiday. The display, which took place at the prestigious King David Hotel, featured the golden vessel housing a Holocaust-surviving Torah scroll from Thessaloniki, Greece.

[..]

Who knows how close this replica is to the original Ark of the Covenant, assuming there was one that was anything like the biblical description? But its creators seem to have put a lot of work into representing what the Ark described in the Bible could have looked like.

For many, many PaleoJudaica posts on the Ark of the Covenant, start here and follow the links. For an overview, see here. For efforts to determine the original structure and appearance of the Ark, see here, here, and here (and, indirectly, here).

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Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah 2024

SHEMINI ATZERET begins tonight at sundown. In Israel, this is also the holiday of Simchat Torah (Simhat Torah). Outside of Israel, the latter holiday begins tomorrow at sundown. I wish you the joy of the holiday in the midst of the mourning for last year.

Last year's Shemini Atzeret post is here. Biblical etc. links are here.

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Does variable paragraphing of the Hallel Psalms matter?

FOR SUKKOT ETC.: Hallel: How Many Psalms? (Dr.Eric J. Harvey, TheTorah.com).

The answer depends on the manuscript and tradition we read: Psalms are segmented differently from as early as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint and continuing through the medieval Hebrew manuscripts of the Masoretic Text.

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Archaeological discoveries in Israel this year

AND ITS ONLY OCTOBER: Israel: Ten of thousands of archaeological relics uncovered in 2024.

(Oct. 23, 2024 / JNS) Amid the ongoing wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, countless artifacts from the Second Temple era, the Late Roman period, and more were uncovered across Israel in 2024.

[...]

The article lists half a dozen of the more significant finds.

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That submerged Nabatean temple again, plus that Petra chalice

NABATEAN (NABATAEAN) WATCH: Archaeologists discover 2,000-year-old 'Indiana Jones' temple (Stacy Liberatore, Daily Mail).

Archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of a 2,000-year-old temple built by an ancient civilization featured in Indiana Jones.

The religious temple had a rectangular plan and two rooms with access to internal routes of the vicus Lartidianus, an area designated for foreign people engaged in trade.

The discovery off the coast of Puteoli, modern-day Pozzuoli, marks the first known temple built by the Nabataeans, nomadic Arabian merchant civilization who hailed from Jordan, outside of the Middle East.

[...]

The Mail is late to the party; this discovery is a year and a half old. But the coverage and photos are good.

A link in the article leads to another article about the recent remarkable discoveries at Al Khazneh in Petra. It too has decent coverage and good photos; heavy on Indiana Jones, but also of the excavated chalice. It really does look like the one we last saw following Elsa Schneider down the chasm in the film.

For more on the submerged Nabatean temple excavated off the coast of Puteoli, see here, here, and here.

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Fourth-century church excavated in Armenia

ARMENIAN WATCH: Remains of one of the oldest churches in the world discovered in Armenia. Octagonal-shaped structure dates from the mid-4th century CE, not long after the Kingdom of Armenia is thought to have become the first Christian kingdom (Gavriel Fiske, Times of Israel).

“This does appear to be a significant discovery and credible claim by well-qualified archaeologists,” said Prof. Jodi Magness, a classical and biblical archaeologist and religious historian who teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in an email exchange with The Times of Israel.

“The discovery of this church makes sense since the Kingdom of Armenia was the first state to adopt Christianity as its official religion in the early fourth century,” she said, and noted that at around the same time, “Armenians established a presence in Jerusalem, which they have maintained until today.”

For information on surviving Armenian artwork and architecture in Israel, see here.

Note that the Armenian alphabet was invented only half a century or so after the time of this church. See here and links. For still more on Armenian literature, including Armenian translations of otherwise lost works of Philo of Alexandria, see here and links and here.

As I noted earlier, MOTP2 will reprint Michael Stone's translation of the idiosyncratic Armenian translation of 4 Ezra.

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Review series on Fisch, Written for Us, parts 3-5

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW has posted two more reviews and the author's response in this series on Yael Fisch's Written for Us: Paul’s Interpretation of Scripture and the History of Midrash.

Pauline Christcentric Hermeneutics (J. Ross Wagner).

I have learned a great deal from this book, especially about the distinctive character of Tannaitic interpretation. With respect to the subject area that I know best, however, I am left with the impression that, despite her careful study, Dr. Fisch has not revealed the heart of Paul’s hermeneutic. In what follows, I offer an all-too-brief justification for this rather bold assertion. My intention is not to foreclose discussion; rather, I hope, in the same spirit of intellectual humility modeled by Fisch, to spark further conversation and debate among scholars of these three significant interpretive traditions.

Does Paul Give Preference to an Oral Nomos over the Written Nomos in Romans 10 for the sake of the Gentiles? A Response to Yael Fisch (Isaac Soon).

My response here will focus specifically on the second chapter of Dr. Fisch’s book, her analysis of Romans 10:5–13 through midrash-pesher in conversation with Romans 3. I want to contend with the implication drawn that Paul gives preference to an oral nomos over a written nomos in scripture. In this response, I argue that Paul does not give preference to the oral over the written but emphasizes the oral in his wider argument in Romans 10 about ethnic Jews (Israel) who have not heard the message about Christ (“the word”). According to Romans 10 and 3, following the oral nomos is essential for fulfilling the written nomos.

Author Response: Review Forum Yael Fisch's Written for Us (Yael Fisch).

What I certainly did not intend to do was to end the conversation, and this collection of responses proves that I certainly did not. A committed reading of Written for Us generated 4 new papers: Christine Hayes provides a methodological contextualization of the book, asking me to consider different approach to comparative religion; Daniel Picus expands my discussion of reading practices to new avenues that may host both Paul, the Tannaim and other ancient Jewish authors without committing to a narrow (and precarious) social institution of reading; J. Ross Wagner questions my approach to Paul as an exegete and traces some of the books’ shortcomings to a systematic marginalization of Christ; and Isaac Soon offers a new constellation of two Torot in Paul, that thoroughly, though not entirely, differs from my own. In what follows, I will offer some comments and questions on each of these rereadings and departures.

I noted the first two essays here and here.

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Still more on that Jewish (?) gladiator at Pompeii

MARTIAL MATERIAL CULTURE: It turns out that Samuele Rocca's article "A Jewish Gladiator in Pompeii: Reassessing the Evidence" is available by pre-print open access from Brill. It is published in the forthcoming volume (17, 2024) of IMAGES: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture.

Rocca, S. (2024). A Jewish Gladiator at Pompeii: Reassessing the Evidence. IMAGES (published online ahead of print 2024). https://doi.org/10.1163/18718000-12340185

Thanks to reader Michael Helfield for drawing my attention to it.

I noted two popular articles on this scholarly one here and here.

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The latest on the raising of the Mazzarón II

PHOENICIAN WATCH:

The raising of the Phoenician ship in the bay of Mazarrón is well underway. The first month of work has seen archaeologists remove 30% of the Phoenician ship from the sea in Mazarrón (Murcia Today).

New findings during the extraction of a Phoenician shipwreck in Spain, the most complete ancient vessel found in the Mediterranean Sea (Guillermo Carvajal, LBV).

Although the area has been previously excavated, the team has found materials that had not been documented before, which has been a pleasant surprise for the researchers. Among the most notable discoveries are fragments of ropes and ceramic pieces that had been buried under layers of sediment.

The preservation of such delicate objects is a unique opportunity for scholars, as they will offer new insights into trade practices and life aboard this type of vessel in antiquity. According to the experts, the condition of some of these materials is exceptional, allowing for in-depth studies of the navigation and trade techniques of the ancient Phoenicians.

Emphasis in original.

Background on the project of raising the Mazzarón II shipwreck in Murcia, Spain, which has been in planning for years and is currently being executed, see here and links. Note the variable spellings Mazarrón (Mazarron) and Mazzarón (Mazzaron).

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Hybrid event: Revealing Royal Jerusalem

ARMSTRONG INSTITUTE OF BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY: Upcoming Event: Revealing Royal Jerusalem. Join AIBA, the Israel Antiquities Authority and other select partners on an archaeological journey to the core of ancient Jerusalem..

The event on 10 November will be both in-person and livestreamed. Follow the link for ticket information etc.

For more on the current "Kingdom of David and Solomon Discovered" exhibition, which includes the Tel Dan Stele, see here, here, and here.

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Orientalism and HB scholarship

THE BIBLE AND INTEPRETATION:

Orientalism and Hebrew Bible Scholarship

The standard version of Orientalism as a pernicious regime of power/knowledge is simplistic and somewhat grotesque. It entails the negation of the very possibility of philological knowledge and critical scholarship of ancient Middle Eastern texts, including the Hebrew Bible.

See also Genesis 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Yale University Press, 2024).

By Ronald Hendel University of California, Berkeley October 2024

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Frendo, How to Read Ancient Texts (Archaeopress, open access)

THE AWOL BLOG: How to Read Ancient Texts: With a Focus on Select Phoenician Inscriptions from Malta. By Anthony J. Frendo, open access by Archaeopress, September 2024.

This book foregrounds the principles of interpretation that scholars employ when reading ancient inscriptions. In order to better come to grips with Canaanite, such as Phoenician, inscriptions, we need to first understand how people wrote and read texts in the ancient Mediterranean world, including that of the Greeks and Romans.

Cross-file under New Book, Phoenician Watch, and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy.

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Altmann & Angelini, To Eat or Not to Eat (Mohr Siebeck, open access)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Peter Altmann, Anna Angelini. To Eat or Not to Eat. Studies on the Biblical Dietary Prohibitions. 2024. X, 295 pages. Archaeology and Bible (ArchB) 9. €94.00 including VAT. sewn paper available 978-3-16-163657-8. Also Available As: eBook PDF. The PDF version is open access.

Anna Angelini and Peter Altmann address pivotal issues on the biblical dietary prohibitions and their significance as practices and texts through philological, zooarchaeological, iconographic, and comparative ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman lenses. They explore theoretical frameworks adopted in modern interpretation, possible origins in relation to ancient Israelite religion and society, and location in relation to Priestly terminology and Deuteronomic tradition. The authors expand the arc of investigation to the Second Temple reception of the prohibitions in both the Dead Sea Scrolls and Greco-Roman discourses from the first centuries CE. With their foundational studies, they provide an approach to the dietary prohibitions, opening the way for reconstructing their path of development into their present-day contexts.

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