Jews in Pre-Islamic Arabia

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Jews in Pre-Islamic Arabia. Tracing the Jewish diaspora in ancient North Arabia (Marek Dospěl).

In the first two centuries CE, Jews led two major revolts against the Romans—first, the Great Revolt (66–74), then the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (132–135). In their tragic aftermath, when the Temple lay in ruins and Jews were forbidden to live in or near Jerusalem, many decided to seek new homes abroad. Some from this early Jewish diaspora turned south and ended up in North Arabia, where only inscriptions survive to bear witness to individuals who clearly belonged to the scattered Jewish communities of pre-Islamic Arabia.

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This essay summarizes an article by Gary A. Rendsburg in the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. The full article is behind the subscription wall.

For more on the site of Hegra (the "Petra of Saudi Arabia" and an important Nabatean/Nabataean site) see here and links. For more on Aramaic and Jews at the site of Tayma, see here, here, here, here, and here.

As some of those posts indicate, Tayma is also known as the site of the Babylonian King Nabonidus's self-exile, a legendary version of which appears in the Aramaic Prayer of Nabonidus from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Something like this legend looks to be the source of the legend of Nebuchadnezzar's madness and exile in Daniel chapter 4. Follow the links for more information.

There was also a Jewish Kingdom of Himyar in late-antique Arabia.

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Virtual Persepolis

PERSEPOLIS WATCH:

HT the Bible Places Blog.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on Persepolis, the ancient Achaemenid ceremonial capital city, see here and links.

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More on that Jewish (?) gladiator in Pompeii

MORE ON MARTIAL MATERIAL CULTURE: A Jewish gladiator in Roman Pompeii? A helmet found in the ruins of the famous Roman city wiped out by a volcano eruption a few years after the destruction of Jerusalem depicts a palm tree, a symbol of Judea (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

I've already noted a more detailed article on this story here, but this one notes an additional underlying technical study. And in-between there has also been another study on the question of Jewish gladitors in the ancient Roman world.

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Sukkot 2024

THE SEVEN-DAY FESTIVAL OF SUKKOT (BOOTHS, TABERNACLES) begins tonight at sundown. Best wishes to all those observing it.

Last year's Sukkot post is here. Another relevant post is here.

For the biblical background to Sukkot, see here and here.

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Aramaic at the UAE's Shamash temple

ARAMAIC WATCH: UAE rebuilding region's sun temple, brick by brick. (Sajila Saseendran, Khaleej Yimes).

Umm Al Quwain - The Aramaic inscription found at the temple mentioned the name of the sun deity Shamash, throwing light on the fact that the deity was worshipped in the region some 2000 years ago.

[...]

This restoration project has been going on for some time. For more on this temple and Aramaic inscription, and on Aramaic at the site of ed-Dur, see here and follow the links.

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Persica Antiqua

THE AWOL BLOG: Open Access Journal: Persica Antiqua: The International Journal of Ancient Iranian Studies.

I noted an article in this journal a while ago, but I understood (apparently misunderstood) it to be behind a subscription wall. As the headline above says, the journal is open access.

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The Bible's big bad Babylonians

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Who Were the Babylonians? A brief look at one of the Bible’s biggest baddies (Nathan Steinmeyer).

The Babylonians are certainly one of the Bible’s biggest baddies, but they were also one of history’s greatest empires. So, who were the Babylonians? ...

A good brief overview of the Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian Empires.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on ancient Babylon, start with the links collected here, plus here, here, here, and here, and just keep going.

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Another review of Mazza, Stolen Fragments

VARIANT READINGS: Roberta Mazza’s Stolen Fragments. (Brent Nongbri).

There is a palpable urgency in Mazza’s writing, and for good reason. Mazza documents the ongoing problem of looting in Egypt, and her narrative highlights the connections between looting, the trade in unprovenanced artifacts, and academics who work on unprovenanced pieces. Stolen Fragments will become a a key reference point in these discussions.

I noted another review of the book here with some background links

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The Tel Dan Stele's next move

THE JEWISH MUSEUM, NEW YORK: 5 DECEMBER 2024–5 JANUARY 2025. Tel Dan Stele.

The Tel Dan Stele is presented within Engaging with History: Works from the Collection, a selection of rarely exhibited objects from the Museum's holdings of over 30,000 works including new acquisitions from Carrie Mae Weens, William Kentridge, and others on view for the first time in dialogue with Museum treasures reflecting millenia of global Jewish culture.

The Tel Dan Stele is currently on display at Armstrong College in Oklahoma until 25 November. It then moves to the Jewish Museum in New York.

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Was Jesus short?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Jesus the Short King. Measuring up Jesus and Zacchaeus in Luke 19 (Nathan Steinmeyer).

Translating a text can be a difficult task under any circumstance. But it is all the harder when the meaning of the original text is ambiguous. Such is the case with Luke 19:3. Although most readers assume the text states that Zacchaeus was too short to see Jesus, the original Greek is less clear. Publishing in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Isaac Soon, Assistant Professor of Early Christianity at the University of British Columbia, points out that the original text makes no distinction between which of the characters is “short in stature,” and that it is instead the reader’s preconceived notions of what Jesus “should” look like that leads most to read the text as being about Zacchaeus.

[...]

The JBL article is behind a subscription wall, but you can read the abstract for free.

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Orlov, Abraham Among Golems (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Andrei A. Orlov. Abraham Among Golems. The Imago Dei Traditions in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha. 2024. XVIII, 296 pages. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism (TSAJ) 189. €149.00 including VAT. cloth available 978-3-16-164009-4. Also Available As: eBook PDF €149.00..

In this insightful book, Andrei A. Orlov examines the symbolism of the »image of God« found in early Jewish pseudepigraphical accounts, paying special attention to the cultic traditions in the Apocalypse of Abraham. The study demonstrates that the Jewish pseudepigrapha transform various biblical characters — including Enoch, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Aseneth — into eschatological embodiments of the imago Dei. The book argues that these cultic metamorphoses preserve memories of ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian rituals involving the vivification of cultic statues. The Apocalypse of Abraham and other early Jewish pseudepigraphical accounts attempt to polemically refashion the concept of cultic statues by envisioning their protagonists as divine representations in the form of the eschatological image of God.

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Hybrid Princeton workshop on Maagarim (Historical Dictionary of Hebrew database)

H-JUDAIC: Ma'agarim Workshop at Princeton.

On Thurs, Nov 7, the Program in Judaic Studies will host an afternoon workshop on using Maagarim. This Digital Rabbinics Workshop is convened by our own Amit Gvaryahu, JDS’s associate research scholar and a cultural historian of ancient Judaism. It is open to everyone – undergraduates, grad students, faculty, and in fact anyone else. Feel free to share this invite within your circles.

Maagarim – the database for the Historical Dictionary of Hebrew, maintained by the Academy for the Hebrew Language – is an invaluable tool for the study of rabbinic and other ancient Jewish literature. It is however underutilized and not well known in the U.S. In this workshop we will learn how to use Maagarim, its advantages and limitations, practice complex searches, compare it with its manuscript sources, and use it to answer questions about our own texts.

Participants may attend in person or online. ...

For registration information etc., follow the link.

I have a post on the Maagarim database here.

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Review of Iovine, Latin military papyri of Dura-Europos (P.Dura 55-145)

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Latin military papyri of Dura-Europos (P.Dura 55-145): a new edition of the texts, with introduction and notes.

Giulio Iovine, Latin military papyri of Dura-Europos (P.Dura 55-145): a new edition of the texts, with introduction and notes. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. 450. ISBN 9781009183130.

Review by
Rudolf Haensch, Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik des Deutschen Archäologischen Institut. Rudolf.Haensch@dainst.de

The documents of the cohors XX Palmyrenorum found in Dura-Europos are, alongside the wooden tablets from Vindolanda and the ostraca from the Roman guard posts in the eastern Egyptian desert (Hélène Cuvigny, Rome in Egypt’s Eastern Desert, 2 vols., New York 2021 etc.), among the most important groups of written records of the Roman army. ...

With regard to the edition of the texts, the use of new technology by Iovine has largely served to confirm the reliability of the texts of the earlier editors. He has improved them in detail, but was unable to present major new readings—this is a compliment to the earlier editors and not a criticism of him, except that the work should not be announced as grandiloquently as it was. Similarly, the commentary rarely adds much to the older ones. Unfortunately, the commentaries and the introductory sections contain a number of minor errors.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on Dura-Europos, start with the links collecte here and just keep going.

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Nodet Festschrift (Peeters)

NEW BOOK FROM PEETERS PUBLISHERS:

L'univers de Flavius Josèphe
Judaïsmes et christianismes au début de l'Empire romain. Mélanges offerts à Étienne Nodet, O.P.

SERIES:
Cahiers de la Revue Biblique, 96

EDITOR:
Leroy M.

PRICE: 85 euro
YEAR: 2024
ISBN: 9789042951952
PAGES: XXXIV-275 p.

SUMMARY:

Le frère Étienne Nodet, o.p., est décédé le 4 février 2024 à Jérusalem. Ancien élève de l’École Polytechnique, dominicain, professeur à l’École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem pendant plusieurs années, son enseignement et ses publications ont marqué plusieurs générations de chercheurs et d’étudiants. Son projet principal fut sa traduction commentée des Antiquités juives de Flavius Josèphe. Mais il aborda également des sujets aussi divers que la crise maccabéenne, les Samaritains, les origines du judaïsme et du christianisme, le Jésus historique ou les Actes des Apôtres. Ses amis et collègues ont voulu regrouper en un recueil intitulé L’univers de Flavius Josèphe. Judaïsmes et christianismes au début de l’Empire romain treize contributions ainsi qu’une biographie intellectuelle écrite par Justin Taylor, s.m. Ce volume d’hommages, qui paraît après son décès, voudrait être un témoignage de gratitude envers le frère Étienne Nodet, o.p., pour sa vie, son enseignement et sa recherche.

The articles are in French and English.

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Isaksson, The Verb in Classical Hebrew (OpenBooks)

NEW BOOK FROM OPENBOOK PUBLISHERS:

The Verb in Classical Hebrew
The Linguistic Reality behind the Consecutive Tenses

Bo Isaksson (author)

The consecutive tenses are fundamental in all descriptions of Classical Hebrew grammar. They are even basic to the textbooks on Biblical Hebrew. Being fundamental in the verbal system, and part of any beginner’s grammar, they pose a serious problem to a linguistic understanding of the verbal system, since grammars describe an alternation of ‘forms’ or ‘tenses’ in double pairs: wayyiqṭol alternates with its ‘equivalent’ qaṭal, and wə-qaṭal alternates with its ‘equivalent’ yiqṭol.

This ‘enigma’ in the verbal system is handled in the book by recognising that the alternation of the consecutive tenses with other tenses, in the reality of the text, represents a linking of clauses. The ‘consecutive tenses’ are clause-types with a natural language connective wa- directly followed by a finite verbal morpheme, a type of clause that expressed continuity in the earliest stage of Semitic. The commonly held assumption that there is a special ‘consecutive waw’ is unwarranted. The use of the ‘consecutive’ clause-types in order to express discourse continuity indicates that Classical Hebrew has retained the old unmarked declarative word order of Semitic syntax. Seen in the light of recent research on the Tiberian reading tradition, the ‘consecutive’ wayyiqṭol can be analysed as a retention of the old Semitic past perfective *wa-yaqtul, which was pronounced wa-yiqṭol in Classical Hebrew. The ‘consecutive’ wə-qāṭal (pronounced wa-qaṭal in the classical language) constitutes the result of an internal Hebrew development into a construction (in the sense of Joan Bybee) already foreshadowed in the earliest Northwest Semitic languages.

The book understands the ‘consecutive tenses’ as discourse continuity clauses, which typically form chains of main line clauses. Such chains can be interrupted by other types of clauses. This interruption is a clause linking that receives special attention in the interpretation of the Classical Hebrew verbal system. Chapter six presents a regenerated text linguistics founded on the new terminology. A clause linking approach is the central methodological procedure in this book. To this must be added diachronic typology in a comparative Semitic setting. The linguistic examples of clause linking are gathered from a large Classical Hebrew corpus, the Pentateuch and the Book of Judges, and made searchable in a database of 6559 non-archaic text records.

The pdf version of this 2024 book is open access. It is also available for purchase in hardback (GBP 43.95) and paperback (GBP 40.95).

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Yom Kippur 2024

YOM KIPPUR, the Day of Atonement, begins this evening at sundown. An easy and healthy fast to all those observing it.

Last year's post on Yom Kippur is here, with links. Biblical etc. background is here and links. Additional Yom Kippur-related posts are here and here.

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Jonah, the "rather unusual prophet"

FOR YOM KIPPUR: The Book of Jonah: God and Humanity Don’t Understand Each Other (Susan Niditch, TheTorah.com).

Jonah is an idiosyncratic prophet who disobeys, doesn’t really repent, and even gets angry with YHWH. While later interpretations seek to explain Jonah’s problematic behavior, in the book, it is Jonah who is confounded by YHWH’s actions.

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Review series on Fisch, Written for Us, part 2

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Midrash, Paul, and Difficulty (Daniel Picus).

This review essay is part of the 2023 Society of Biblical Literature's review panel for Yael Fisch, Written for Us: Paul’s Interpretation of Scripture and the History of Midrash. Find the full panel here.

Yael Fisch’s Written For Us: Paul’s Interpretation of Scripture and the History of Midrash achieves something remarkable: it is a book about Pauline hermeneutics and rabbinic literature that is both new and grounded. It gives us a new way to think about a set of old problems, and it refrains from drawing genealogical conclusions in favor of making a series of more nuanced arguments about the landscape of interpretive strategies present in first century Judaism.

[...]

I noted part one of the series here.

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Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus is back in Georgia

AND HEADED FOR A MUSEUM: Calligrapher John Zosimos’ “unique” 10th-century manuscript returned to Georgia after purchase at Christie’s by ruling party Honorary Chair (Agenda.Ge).

A “unique” 10th-century manuscript by John Zosimos, a famed Georgian calligrapher, author, translator and bookbinder monk, has returned to Georgia after being purchased by Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder and the Honorary Chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party, at the Christie's auction in London. ...

The GD press office noted Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus, a 5th-7th centuries CE manuscript compiled in Aramaic and Georgian languages, would be donated to the Georgian National Museum network.

The palimpsest is overwritten with Georgian text written by Zosimos, and preserved in its 10th-century binding from St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, the earliest known signed, dated, and localisable binding. The manuscript will be the only masterpiece of Ioane Zosimos to be kept in Georgia. ...

This article in The Paradise gives additional information on the manuscripts current location: 10th-century Georgian manuscript arrives at Georgian Patriarchate.

Background on the manuscript and on its sale last spring, is here and here.

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