Israel returns 22 unprovenanced artifacts to Greece

REPATRIATION: In first, Israel returns artifacts to Greece amid push to secure return of antiquities. Israel hands over 22 recovered ancient objects that were apparently illegally taken, with both countries hailing increasingly close cooperation in a range of spheres (THANASSIS STAVRAKIS and DEREK GATOPOULOS, AP via Times of Israel).

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Phoenician Umm al-Amad

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Exploring Phoenician Heritage: The Ancient City of Umm al-Amad Near Naqoura (Waradana).

The Ancient City of Umm al-Amad is one of the paramount sites aiding in understanding southern Lebanon’s history during the late Phoenician period and the Hellenistic era. Through its columns, temples, and inscriptions, the site reflects a society that preserved its language, religious, and cultural traditions despite major political changes in the region.

The Phoenician inscriptions discovered at the site, along with the temples of Melek Ashtart, the eastern temple, and the stone stelae, are among the key pieces evidencing the site's historical value. With its inclusion in the UNESCO list of protected Lebanese cultural properties, preserving Umm al-Amad becomes more significant as a part of Lebanon and the Mediterranean south's archaeological memory.

An informative introduction to this important Phoenician site in Lebanon. Also known as Umm al-‛Amad or ’Umm al-‛Amad.

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Review of Kaufman, Phoenicia, Carthage, and popular government in the pre-classical Mediterranean

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Phoenicia, Carthage, and popular government in the pre-classical Mediterranean: the other democracy.

Brett Kaufman, Phoenicia, Carthage, and popular government in the pre-classical Mediterranean: the other democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026. Pp. 320. ISBN 9780198867685.

Review by
Christopher Stedman Parmenter, Ohio State University.
parmenter.14@osu.edu

... Brett Kaufman’s new book is an exercise in flag-planting. Kaufman also makes a bold claim: the people of ancient west Asia invented democracy and the Phoenicians carried it to Europe. Kaufman’s Phoenician history follows well-received work by Josephine Crawley Quinn (2017), Carolina López-Ruiz (2021), and Denise Demetriou (2023), who cast the Phoenicians as the stars of the first millennium BCE. Parts of Kaufman’s argument ring true, for instance his critique of ancient history’s Hellenocentric bias. But much cannot be endorsed. ...

I noted the publication of the book here and a topical essay by the author here. Cross-file under Phoenician Watch and Punic Watch.

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Forthcoming: Long, 40 Questions about Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (Kregel)

READING ACTS: Book Announcement: 40 Questions about Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (Philip J. Long).

Some regular readers of Reading Acts have noticed I have slowed down a bit this year. Here’s why: I have been writing a book on the Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha for Kregel’s 40 Questions series. The book is now finished, edited, (nearly) printed, and will be available mid-November. Kregel tells me they will have copies at ETS and SBL in November, so if you are at the conferences, pick up a copy at a good discount. ...

[...]

Looking forward to it.

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On the Roman Sibylline Books

THE KIWI HELLENIST BLOG: Sibyls and Sibylline oracles. 2. The Sibylline books.

The Sibylline books weren’t primarily books of predictions: they were instructions for rituals, which also mentioned predictions in passing. The idea seems to have been that, when required, priests might choose a ritual from the books, then perform that ritual, to ensure purity, or ward off evil. Some extracts were made public, but a complete text wasn’t widely known. ...

The most famous thing about the books is the story of how they were sold. ...

An informative introduction to the mostly-lost Roman "Sibylline Books." Not to be confused with the Jewish and Christian "Sibylline Oracles," which were inspired by the idea of the Roman books. The Oracles are the scheduled topic of the next post in the series

I noted the first post here, with links to other posts on the Sibylline Oracles.

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Greek influence on Coptic

COPTIC WATCH: How Greek Shaped Coptic, Egypt’s Final Ancient Language (Abdul Moeed, Greek Reporter).

A recent study examines how centuries of contact between Greek and Egypt’s native language shaped Coptic, the final stage of ancient Egyptian, influencing both its structure and vocabulary.

In a study published in the Journal of Greek Linguistics, Sonja Dahlgren of the University of Helsinki explores how Greek influence on Egyptian-Coptic transformed everyday language, religious texts, and administrative documents.

[...]

The underlying article by Dalgren is actually an (open access) book review:

Greek Influence on Egyptian-Coptic: Contact-Induced Change in an Ancient African Language, by Eitan Grossman, Peter Dils, Tonio Sebastian Richter, and Wolfgang Schenkel, (eds.)

Eitan Grossman, Peter Dils, Tonio Sebastian Richter, and Wolfgang Schenkel, (eds.), Greek Influence on Egyptian-Coptic: Contact-Induced Change in an Ancient African Language (DDGLC Working Papers 1. Lingua Aegyptia, Studia Monographica 17). Hamburg: Widmaier Verlag. 2017.

... All in all, this book can be highly recommended to anyone aiming to get a grasp of the multilingual situation of Graeco-Roman/Arabic Egypt, including scholars with a background in papyrology, Ancient Greek linguistics, Egyptian linguistics, and general historical linguistics, as well as even linguistic typology. The high standard of this book comes hardly as a surprise, given that it has been compiled, edited and commented on by many of the leading Egyptologists, Coptologists, and linguists in the world. ...

If your are interested in the technicalities of the ancient Coptic language, have a look.

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A new section of Jerusalem's Lower Aqueduct uncovered

ANCIENT INFRASTRUCTURE: 300-meter stretch of ancient aqueduct uncovered during planning for new Jerusalem neighborhood. (Zev Stub, Times of Israel).

Archaeologists have uncovered a 300-meter (1,000-foot) stretch of a 2,000-year-old aqueduct that carried water from springs south of Bethlehem to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, shedding new light on one of the ancient city’s most ambitious engineering projects.

The discovery was made ahead of plans to build a new neighborhood in southern Jerusalem, where archaeologists and planners hope to incorporate the remains into the future development, according to an announcement Sunday by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

[...]

This section is more of the earlier "Lower Aqueduct." For PaleoJudaica posts on Jerusalem's ancient water supply, substantial parts of which have been rediscovered only in this century, start here (cf. here) and follow the links.

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Israel Museum: “Tiny Footprints: Childhood in the Ancient Land of Israel”

EXHIBITION: From birth to play, new exhibition explores childhood in ancient Israel. Israel Museum traces the lives of children through 500,000 years of artifacts: ‘What’s amazing about these toys is how similar they are to today’ (Zev Stub, Times of Israel).

The exhibition brings together hundreds of artifacts from 11 institutions, tracing the lives of children in the Land of Israel and neighboring cultures from prehistory through the end of the first millennium CE. It draws on artifacts from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Greece and Rome as well as Israel.

“Overall, we see a lot of things that are really similar to how things are today, even if there are plenty of shocking differences,” [exhibition curator Tali] Sharvit said. “We can see the roots of modern institutions like schools and marriage, and observe similarities in the relationships between mothers and their children. At the same time, though, many of our ideas about children’s roles in the family structure have completely changed.”

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Review of Raja & Seland (eds.), Palmyra, the Roman empire, and the third century crisis

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Palmyra, the Roman empire, and the third century crisis: zooming in and scaling up from the evidence.

Rubina Raja, Eivind Heldaas Seland, Palmyra, the Roman empire, and the third century crisis: zooming in and scaling up from the evidence. Oriens et occidens, 46. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2025. Pp. 323. ISBN 9783515140218.

Review by
Marco Ferrario, University College London. m.ferrario@ucl.ac.uk

... Perhaps the most famous—although, in many respects, quite peculiar—case of a community that turned the more general “crisis” into an opportunity is that of Palmyra. Its power and wealth rose to unprecedented heights precisely during the “crisis”, with its fortunes declining right when the imperial center under Aurelian got a stronger foothold for the first time in decades and decidedly reasserted itself throughout the provinces.

The contributions collected in Palmyra, the Roman Empire, and the Third Century Crisis approach the period innovatively in their attempt to make sense of this and similar (apparently paradoxical) discrepancies. ...

I noted the publication of the book here. Cross-file under Palmyra Watch.

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Olanrewaju, The Compositional History of the Book of Kings (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

Samson Olanrewaju

The Compositional History of the Book of Kings

An Analysis of the Evaluative Frameworks in 1 Kings 14–2 Kings 25

2026. 286 pages.
Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe (FAT II) 177

€89.00
including VAT

sewn paper
available
978-3-16-200567-0

Also Available As:
eBook PDF

Summary

Samson Olanrewaju investigates the composition of the book of Kings through an analysis of the formal regnal evaluations of Israelite and Judean kings found in 1 Kgs 14-2 Kgs 25*. Using source- and redaction-critical approaches, he postulates that the earliest edition of the book of Kings (Kings Edition0), commissioned by Amaziah's court in early eighth-century Judah, documents the reigns of Judean kings from Rehoboam through Jehoash ben Ahaziah. Kings Edition0 was subsequently updated with the accounts and evaluations of Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, resulting in Kings Edition1.
Kings Edition1, a document produced by pro-Assyrian groups operating within Manasseh's court in seventh-century Judah, retained the Judah-centric orientation of its predecessor (Kings Edition0), concentrating on the reigns of Jehoash ben Ahaziah's successors rather than on synchronized lists of Judean and Israelite rulers. Such synchronizations were introduced in Kings Edition2, a sixth-century Deuteronomistic edition of the book of Kings produced by an exilic editor who was also responsible for the regnal evaluations of Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, Jehoahaz, and Jehoiakim as well as the northern entries of Nadab, Baasha, Omri, and Ahaziah.
Furthermore, the polemical references to idolatrous Judean bamot found in the regnal evaluations of »good« Judean kings are attributable to the Deuteronomistic editor of Kings Edition2. This early exilic edition of Kings subsequently evolved into Kings Edition3 through revisions and expansions undertaken by late/post-exilic redactors, who incorporated the northern entries of Jehoash, Jeroboam II, Zechariah, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah as well as the southern entries of Abijam, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah.

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Fassberg, The Hebrew of Qumran (Ugarit-Verlag)

NEW BOOK FROM UGARIT-VERLAG:

The Hebrew of Qumran (AOAT 482)

Steven Fassberg

Reihe + Nummer: AOAT 482
ISBN: 978-3-86835-352-5
Erscheinungsjahr: Juli 2026
Seitenanzahl: xvii + 356 pp.
£130.00
Taxes included

This grammar owes its existence to Prof. Josef Tropper, at the time editor of the series Lehrbücher orientalischer Sprachen (LOS), who invited me to contribute a short grammar to the series on the Hebrew of Qumran. Because of previous commitments, many years passed before I was able to take up the task. The grammar turned out to be longer than originally intended and Prof. Thomas R. Kämmerer, the head of Ugarit-Verlag, suggested that Alter Orient und Altes Testament (AOAT) might be a more suitable series for the volume. I thank Prof. Kämmerer and the editors of AOAT, Prof. Régine Hunziker-Rodewald and Dr. Ulrike Steinert, for accepting the manuscript for publication.

This monograph does not replace the larger grammar of Elisha Qimron, A Grammar of the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Jerusalem, 2018). All students and scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls are greatly indebted to Prof. Qimron for the massive amount of data he has amassed in his grammar as well as for his countless contributions to the language and the texts of the Scrolls over the past fifty years. It would be amiss not to mention also the pioneering Hebrew work of E. Y. Kutscher, Language and Linguistic Background of the Great Isaiah Scroll (Jerusalem, 1959; English translation Leiden, 1974), which still serves as a beacon to all in the field. The important contributions of many additional scholars are noted throughout the grammar.

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Old photos of late-antique church epitaphs from Shivta

GREEK FUNERARY EPIGRAPHY: Ancient Greek Inscriptions Reveal Secrets of Elite Byzantine Burials in Israel (Abdul Moeed, Greek Reporter).

Ancient Greek inscriptions on grave markers are revealing how Byzantine burials reflected power and family ties at Shivta, a former Christian settlement in Israel’s Negev Desert. Two rediscovered photographs from a 1930s excavation show where tombs were located inside the North Church baptistery, a room used for baptisms.

The graves were apparently reserved mainly for priests and children from influential families, according to a study published in Palestine Exploration Quarterly. Researchers Emma Maayan-Fanar and Yotam Tepper studied two negatives preserved in University College London’s archives. The excavation team led by H. D. Colt photographed the chapel but later removed its inscribed stone markers without leaving a complete record of their positions.

[...]

The underlying PEQ article is open access:

Old Photographs, New Discoveries: Privileged Burials in the North Church Baptismal Chapel in Shivta, Israel

Emma Maayan-Fanarn & Yotam Tepper
Published online: 07 Oct 2026
https://doi.org/10.1080/00310328.2026.2716943

ABSTRACT

This paper presents new insights into the burial practices of Byzantine Shivta, Israel, based on the analysis of two previously unpublished photographs from excavations led by H. D. Colt in the 1930s. The photographs provide the first documentation of the floor of the North Church Baptistery, revealing the spatial arrangement of the burials. By comparing the visible features of the tomb slabs to individual photographs, three out of seven people were precisely identified. They were members of privileged families and their burials follow a certain hierarchy. Baptistery burials, a distinctive feature found nowhere else in the Negev, were reserved mostly for presbyters but also for special family members who died young. The burial dates, spanning from 612 to 679 ce, coincide with major historical events during the seventh century, such as the Byzantine-Sasanian wars, the Islamic conquest of the region, and the first plague pandemic. This study cautiously proposes that the distinctive ornamentation of some slabs, such as the Golgotha cross motif, may have been a response to these events. The study furthermore expands on the dynamic nature of the gradual decline and abandonment processes in Shivta as evidenced in the North Church burial practices.

For more on the archaeology of the site of Shivta, known notably for its churches and its late-antique viticulture, start here and follow the links.

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Philo's apathetic theology

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Philo of Alexandria’s Theology and Soteriology: Tensions, Ambiguities, and the Experience of God’s Goodness and Mercy

Philo of Alexandria combines Jewish scripture and Greek philosophy in a theology marked by tensions between divine transcendence and intimate human encounter. An apparently unknowable and impassible God also loves, shows mercy, and shares divine attributes with humans. These tensions suggest the importance of transformative religious experience in shaping Philo’s understanding of God.

See also Seeing God in Philo of Alexandria: Contemplative Ascent and Visionary Experience (State University of New York Press, 2026).

By Scott D. Mackie
Associate Fellow
Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge
September 2026

Cross-file under New Book.

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Nabel, "Fake Prostration in Late Antique Literature and the Ambiguities of Domination"

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Fake Prostration in Late Antique Literature and the Ambiguities of Domination.

Notice of a New Article: Nabel, Jake. 2026. "Fake Prostration in Late Antique Literature and the Ambiguities of Domination." Studies in Late Antiquity 10 (3). 265-293.

Follow the link for the abstract and a link to the full text of the article. Yes, ancient Judaism is involved.

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A First Temple-era curse inscription

IRON AGE HEBREW EPIGRAPHY: 2,800-year-old curse reveals surprising detail about Kingdom of Judah (Assaf Golan, Israel HaYom).

Limestone tablet from the Hebron area bears a curse in ancient Hebrew and the earliest known extrabiblical reference to the title "Lord of Hosts". Find indicates the divine name and title were in use in the Kingdom of Judah during the First Temple period. The Stone is now on display in the "Six After the War" exhibition at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem.

Not new; this inscription has been known for quite a while. Hagaf son of Hagav must have made someone really angry!

Cross-file under Exhibition.

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Patmore et al., Reading: Performance and Materiality in Hebrew and Aramaic Traditions (Open Book)

THE AWOL BLOG: Reading: Performance and Materiality in Hebrew and Aramaic Traditions.

Notice of a New Book (open access): Hector Patmore et al., Reading: Performance and Materiality in Hebrew and Aramaic Traditions. Open Book Publishers. Cambridge, UK, 2025.

Co-edited by the late Hector Patmore.

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Egyptian–Hittite peace treaty fragments recovered

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Fragment of World’s Oldest Peace Treaty Found. Bringing people—and tablet pieces—together (Lauren K. McCormick).

The Egyptian–Hittite peace treaty was recorded in more than one place. Apparently originally cast in silver, versions of the treaty survive today from both parties on tablets in Hatti and in two temple inscriptions in Thebes (modern-day Luxor).

The best kind of peace treaty is one where both sides can declare victory and go home.

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