In the following interview with William Ross, we discuss the creation of the Reader, technical aspects of the design, and what’s in store for LXX studies in the future. If you’re in Denver right now for ETS/SBL, now’s the time to get your copies.Background here and links.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
For the first time, archaeologists have released detailed images of stunning biblical mosaics discovered at the site of an ancient synagogue site in Northern Israel.Nice photos.
The mosaics depict Noah’s Ark, the parting of the Red Sea, Jonah and the fish and the Tower of Babel, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Portions of the mosaics have been revealed before, but this is the first time the artifacts have been shown in their full glory.
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This is the revised version of Jennifer Cromwell’s PhD dissertation (Liverpool 2008). The author originally aimed at studying and reediting the corpus of Djeme papyri (P.KRU). The enormity of the task led her to focus on the texts drawn up by a specific scribe, Aristophanes, son of John, who lived in Western Thebes during the first half of the 8th century.1 Not only did the author explore Aristophanes’ scribal practices, but she also considered people and procedures involved in the documents. This original perspective allows her to draw an interesting portrait of the society of a village in the early Islamic period and to offer a stimulating study on a scribe’s life and practices.Cross-file under Coptic Watch.
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The Jewish Bible: A Material HistoryExcerpt:
by David Stern
University of Washington Press, 320 pp., $50 [2017]
In The Jewish Bible, Stern masterfully synthesizes this scholarship, offering a chronological history of Jewish sacred books from Qumran to the JPS Tanakh. For if the Sefer Torah itself hasn’t changed, other ways Jews encounter their scripture definitely have. Indeed, as Stern shows, the Jewish book serves as a lens through which we can study central themes of Jewish history and thought.Adam Kirsh also has an ongoing Daf Yomi column at Tablet Magazine.
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JJMJS is strongly committed to remain open access. Moving forward, we, as any other open-access journals, must secure long-term economic stability without compromising academic quality. We are therefore very pleased to announce that, through a unique collaborative effort, JJMJS is now entering a multilateral partnership with Hebrew University of Jerusalem, DePaul University in Chicago, and the University of OsloThere are more details at the link, as well as the full text of the current, free, open-access Issue 5 (2018).
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The current issue of JJMJS, the first in its new form, offers a Special Issue on Paul, which we have entitled Paul, Judaism, and the Jewish People. Contributors include: Margaret M. Mitchell, Matthew Thiessen, Paula Fredriksen, James Crossley, Neil Elliott, Adele Reinhartz, Matthew Novenson, and Gregory Tatum, with an introduction by the undersigned [chief editor Anders Runesson]. The issue considers in particular the impact of the work of E.P. Sanders forty years after the publication of his magisterial Paul and Palestinian Judaism, but also includes discussion of the very latest research in Pauline Studies.
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Heidi Marx-Wolf, Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Manitoba, has presented us with a study of the work of several third-century philosophers in Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority. Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century C.E., published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2016. In it, she takes us in some unusual directions that sometimes lead to unexpected results.And still in 2018. I noted the book here (cf. here) when it was first published. And I noted earlier reviews here and here.
The Introduction lays out the agenda of the book. In the late second and early third centuries a number of philosophers, both Christians and polytheists, began producing hierarchical taxonomies of spiritual beings much influenced by Platonism. They also presented themselves as authoritative priests who could pronounce on ritual matters and they tried to influence their social order so as to make themselves “brokers of salvation.” They did all this in competition with the more traditional religious experts in their society. These are new developments in the broad philosophical world of late antiquity and, Heidi argues, they bear closer examination. She sets out to explore these spiritual taxonomies and their social implications by focusing on a number of specific philosophers: the Christian Origen, who was a controversial figure in his own time, and the polytheists Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus.
Chapter One, “How to Free a Daemon: Third-Century Philosophers on Blood Sacrifice,” argues that proponents in the third century advocating a particular ontological status of evil demons reached conclusions that fall into an unexpected pattern. Christian and polytheistic philosophers could agree while the polytheistic philosophers disagreed among themselves.
Porphyry argued that it was evil demons who required blood sacrifices. In this he agreed with Christian writers, notably the author of Pseudo-Clementine Homily 9. Porphyry may have drawn on a work by Origen called Concerning Demons, although there is debate on whether the author is the Christian figure Origen or an otherwise unknown polytheistic philosopher with the same name. And somewhat later, the Church historian Eusebius drew on (and perhaps somewhat misrepresented) Porphyry’s work to argue that the Greek and Roman gods were actually demons. Porphyry had considerable agreement with Christians on the issue of blood sacrifice. These agreements may to some degree be explained by shared influences about issues such as pneumatology and the nature of blood by the likes of Plato and Galen.
Iamblichus, however, disagreed with Porphyry on this matter. Iamblichus believed that blood sacrifices had their place in the divine order and that they were efficacious in purifying people who were at a certain spiritual level.
Indeed, Porphyry and Iamblichus disagreed more broadly on the whole issue of the validity and usefulness of ritual. Porphyry believed that ritual was superfluous for the philosopher and that the intellect alone sufficed to reach the divine. But Iamblichus believed that ritual, in the form of theurgy, was not just for the philosopher; it could bring about universal salvation.
Chapter Two, “Everything in its Right Place: Spiritual Taxonomy in Third Century Platonism,” focuses on these taxonomies and the intellectual agenda behind them. It also probes points of moral and ontological disorder in the taxonomies in which, as Heidi says, “the spirits refuse to stay put” (p. 39).
Origen set out to refute the notion that human souls could be divided into multiple spiritual species. Rather, he believed that all “minds” were created with the same nature and their spiritual rankings came about through their own primeval decisions. The ones whose choices led them to “fall” into the material realm were subjected to “cooling” that rendered them into “souls.” Origen’s attempt to described a process for reversing this transformation led to his less-than-clear ideas about “apocatastasis,” the means by which souls, perhaps even including the devil and his demons, could be restored to their original state and reconciled with God. In Origen’s pneumatology, there is no ontological difference between human souls and demons.
Porphyry has no consistent taxonomy of spirits. He refers to souls and to daemons, between which there seems to have been some slippage. But he also refers to various kinds of gods, as well as to angels, archangels, and archons.
Iamblichus works with Porphyry’s categories, but he does formulate them into a rigorously consistent pattern. Nevertheless, some “taxonomic amorphousness” (p. 55) remains in his system. Heidi guides us through the issues by focusing on Iamblichus’s treatment of “daemons.” He may have taken properties tied to matter in Platonic cosmology, notably an inductility that tends to thwart the advancement of human souls, and transferred it to demons. This was his way of rehabilitating matter. On this reading, his system was not “decadent,” as earlier scholars such as Dodds thought. He was simply not using a fully Platonic cosmology. Rather, his theology and teachings about proper ritual praxis engaged with popular theology and praxis.
As an illustration of this perspective, Heidi takes us through his treatment of the category of “archons.” Archons add nothing to his system. He includes them simply because they were already part of the popular consciousness. We find them at about the same time in magical handbooks and the work of “Gnostics,” about which more will be said below. Philosophers, Heidi argues, made deliberate connections with the concerns of popular piety in an attempt to place themselves as religious authorities on the popular front as well as the intellectual.
Chapter Three, “The Missing Link: Third-Century Platonists and “Gnostics” on Daemons and Other Spirits,” considers the focus on spiritual taxonomies by third-century philosophers, a focus unique to them. Why did they do it? Heidi finds the missing link in the cosmologies and spiritual taxonomies in the Nag Hammadi texts and related “Gnostic” literature. The Gnostic writers, like the philosophers, set out to harmonize all human wisdom and struggled to make their systems consistent and unambiguous. The Gnostic texts are now regarded as important for the study of early Christian theology. Heidi suggests that they are also important for late-antique philosophy.
Origen’s interactions with Ophite theology may indicate that he was familiar with Sethian texts. Porphyry and Plotinus knew versions of some of the Nag Hammadi texts. Porphyry mentions them by title in his Life of Plotinus. Plotinus interacted with the Gnostics throughout his career, and this interaction seems to have deteriorated into rivalry. He criticized their theology, but his own view of matter as deficient and the basis of evil undermined his critique. And in some cases he and his school may well have been influenced by such texts.
Having acknowledged and briefly discussed the problems with the term “Gnostic,” Heidi presents us with two case studies on Sethian texts.
The case study on the Secret Revelation of John (or Apocryphon of John) focuses on an interpolation in the Codex II manuscript which describes the 365 demons of the psychic body of Adam, one for each body part. External parallels to this list indicate that in its original context it may have had a ritual or apotropaic function. Considerable moral ambiguity is involved, but these beings may have been seen to have something of a positive function.
The case study on Zostrianos focuses on its treatment of daemons and human souls. In antiquity there was some association of the figure Zostrianos with the Platonic figure of Er (in the guise of Zoroaster). This Platonic connection may have drawn Porphyry’s attention to this text, which he mentions, and may have led him to address questions of cosmic geography and spiritual taxonomy, as it does. Its ritual elements may also have induced him to write about ritual in relation to philosophical salvation. More specifically, Heidi argues that he borrowed from Zostrianos regarding the question of the fates of different sorts of souls. Mainly, there is a somewhat similar threefold division of souls for Porphyry and Zostrianos. Roughly this amounts to one group that is earthly, a second group that is making progress, and a third group that has attained full blessedness.
Chapter Four, “High Priests of the Highest God: Third Century Platonists as Ritual Experts,” looks at the ideology of priesthood advocated by our philosophers and how it fed into their competition with more traditional priests.
In his homilies on Leviticus, Origen connected the Levitical high priests with Christian priests, a status that he himself could claim. That said, his status was contested both in his native Egypt and elsewhere. For him, the high priesthood included knowledge involving systematic spiritual taxonomy. A priest also knows the hidden meaning of ritual. In addition, Origen was careful to “perform” his identity as high priest in his homilies by rehearsing the details of the rituals in Leviticus and expounding on their inner meaning. As already noted, for Origen, the priests of his day who literally undertook blood sacrifices were implicitly worshipping evil spirits.
Porphyry similarly condemned blood sacrifice and otherwise disparaged ritual actions used by contemporary ritual experts. Porphyry and Origen agreed that only the philosophical lifestyle could make one a high priest of the highest god.
Iamblichus and Porphyry disagreed about the validity of blood sacrifice, but they agreed that philosopher priests like themselves were the higher ritual practitioners. Iamblichus, considered the theurgist to hold the highest status of ritual practitioners, higher than Egyptian priests. He too was setting himself up as a high priest to replace other, more traditional priests and practitioners.
Heidi places this situation into a larger context by bringing in the (so-called) Greek Magical Papyri and the Hermetic literature. Recent research on the magical papyri sees them as mainstream ritual instructions rather than subversive and illicit as they have been traditionally regarded by scholars. They are actually innovative adaptations by traditional Egyptian priests, whose role and power had been derailed by Roman rule. Increasingly these priests had to rely on their own charismatic authority to make a living. To do this they mixed traditional Egyptian religion with Greek, Jewish, etc. material and took advantage of “stereotype appropriation” of the “magos” identity found in the traditions of the ruling power.
The Hermetica seem likewise to have been produced by disenfranchised Egyptian priests. Hermeticism combined Egyptian priestly ritual material with trendy Platonism. This connection with Platonism may have made Hermeticism of interest to our philosophers.
Based on the content of the Hermetic books according Plutarch, it seems likely that Iamblichus’s knowledge of Egyptian religion came from Hermetic sources and thus consisted of some priestly Egyptian traditions but in a highly syncretistic mixture.
Why did our philosophers take on the role of priest and assign regular priests a lower status over inferior gods and even malign spirits? Heidi argues that it was because they had competitors: the Gnostics and the newly unemployed Egyptian priests. The social situation for this competition would have been schools in major cities, especially Alexandria and Rome. Our philosophers probably sincerely believed that their all-encompassing philosophical lifestyle gave them superior spiritual knowledge and that they could protect people from the dangerous, botched teachings of the inferior ritual experts.
The Conclusion carries the inquiry of the book into the next century, arguing that charismatic authority continued to be important even in the context of institutional church authority. Heidi gives two examples, both from the late fourth century. Ambrose of Milan showed charismatic authority over good and evil spiritual forces as part of a political and institutional conflict during which he located the hidden bodies of two martyred saints. John Chrysostom wrote an infamous series of letters condemning Christians for involvement in Jewish festivals, rituals, and synagogue worship. In them he asserted charismatic authority over the ritual practices of other Christians and in the discernment of dangerous spirits.
In sum, our third century philosophers were marginal figures, but they still had political ambitions and cultivated political connections. They attempted to place themselves as advisors to the politically powerful or even just imagined themselves in such roles. Often their efforts had little impact in the real world. But their approach of combining and adopting the roles of philosopher and high priest eventually, after their time, proved to be viable and productive.
What then, are the contributions of this book? On a very focused level, by looking closely at the work of several third-century philosophers in their broader intellectual context, it demonstrates a strategic shift toward consolidating the role of philosopher with the role of priest in this century. The elucidation of this basic point brings out a number of subsidiary conclusions. The philosophical dialogue was complex and nonlinear: Christians and polytheists could agree while polytheists disagreed among themselves. Areas of agreement could be established by the common influence of earlier figures rather than current affiliations. Far from being decadent, the work of these philosophers was an innovative attempt to engage with popular philosophical and theological trends. Thus the Gnostic literature is important for understanding late-antique philosophy as well as theology. And the trendy Platonism of the Hermetic writers arguably presented a challenge that our philosophers felt obligated to address.
Out of this examination of such philosophical interactions arises the key conclusion that our third-century philosophers were not writing in a vacuum. They had competition. The Gnostic Christians and the disenfranchised traditional Egyptian priests were promulgating their own popular Platonist theologies for their own purposes. The Gnostics were certainly in dialogue with both Christians and traditional polytheist philosophers and the same may well have been true of the priests who produced the Hermetica and the Greek Magical Papyri. Jewish traditions were at work in the mix as well, although placing them remains for another discussion. At least to some degree, our philosophers felt that they had to respond to their competitors. In interacting with their ideas they were inevitably also influenced by them.
Some broader points and areas for further research also arise from the tightly-focused research in this book. First, the point that disenfranchised priests and religious experts in late antiquity were a force to be reckoned with for contemporary philosophers has the potential for broader application. Our most abundant sources come from Egypt, due to their preservation in its dry climate. But there is reason to infer that similar social processes were at work elsewhere. A closer look at the less abundant, but still suggestive, evidence from places such as Syria and Iraq would likely be rewarding.
Second, in the Conclusion, Heidi makes a case that our philosophers established a productive cultural template in their fusion of the roles of intellectual philosopher and charismatic high priest. This fusion was perhaps ahead of its time: for the most part it failed to fulfill the ambitions of those who conceived it. But in the fourth century some Christian leaders used it considerably more successfully. A closer look at this cultural transition would, again, likely be rewarding.
I can find very little to criticize in the book. Given the paucity of our information, even in the relatively abundant sources from Egypt, Heidi necessarily had to connect a lot of dots to establish patterns. Some of her suggestions are imaginative reconstructions, but she is careful to label them as such and they are generally expressed cautiously and judiciously. They are useful at the very least as stimulating thought experiments. That said, I am not quite convinced that Porphyry’s taxonomy in the surviving fragments of On the River Styx is necessarily a response in particular to Zostrianos. Although he does tell us that he did write a response to that work and On the River Styx does have some parallels to Zostrianos, Heidi offers us no direct connections. The parallels are quite general and could be a matter of both works drawing on ideas that were being discussed in the schools and implemented by different philosophers each in their own way.
I will mention two small matters. First, it is surprising to encounter a monograph published in 2016 which still uses inconvenient end notes rather than footnotes. I can think of no reason that could justify it. This was clearly outside of Heidi’s control, but I hope she will let the publisher know that readers are not pleased by it.
Second, a more comprehensive conclusion would have strengthened the volume and topped it off nicely. The Conclusion of the book has a few summary comments, but most of it consists of new material making a new point. A larger summing up what Heidi wants us to take away from Chapters One through Four would have been helpful. I have given my best understand of that here and I hope I have gotten it right.
It remains only for me to thank Heidi for a thought-provoking piece of work that shines new light on a fascinating corner of the late-antique intellectual world by placing it in the context of popular philosophy and competition for influence in an age when traditional authority was breaking down. An age rather like ours in 2017.
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The Religious Worldviews Reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 28–30 May, 2013
Series:
Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, Volume: 127
Editors: Ruth A. Clements, Menahem Kister and Michael Segal
The Dead Sea Scrolls offer a window onto the rich theological landscape of Judaism in the Second Temple period. Through careful textual analysis, the authors of these twelve studies explore such topics as dualism and determinism, esoteric knowledge, eschatology and covenant, the nature of heaven and / or the divine, moral agency, and more; as well as connections between concepts expressed in the Qumran corpus and in later Jewish and Christian literature. The religious worldviews reflected in the Scrolls constitute part of the ideological environment of Second Temple Judaism; the analysis of these texts is essential for the reconstruction of that milieu. Taken together, these studies indicate the breadth and depth of theological reflection in the Second Temple period.
Publication Date: 16 October 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-38423-1
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THE NATIONAL HEBREW SCRIPT - Up To The Babylonian ExileHT Todd Bolen at the Bible Places Blog.
The present work is Ada's last contribution to the field of Hebrew and West-Semitic palaeography that a sad fate prevented her from completing. *** FORTHCOMING *** PRESALE *** Note: Orders will be delivered upon publication (early December 2018).
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Nongbri has produced a “must read” for all those interested in early Christian manuscripts, and will likely persuade some of those who haven’t shown such interest that they should! His proposals for revisions of dating of some key manuscripts carry varying force, but deserve a careful and considerate evaluation. But it has to be said that the dates assigned to early Christian manuscripts have tended to be reached by papyrologists and palaeographers, practicing the same methods by which they date non-Christian manuscripts. So, for example, if too many Christian manuscripts have been assigned too early, then is the same the case for the many more non-Christian manuscripts dated by the same people and by the same methods? But, to repeat myself for emphasis, we can all be grateful for Nongbri’s impressively researched book, which I am sure will deservedly generate still greater interest in the study of early Christian manuscripts as artefacts.Dr. Nongbri responds to the review here: Palaeography and Codices: A Couple Thoughts on Larry Hurtado’s Review of God’s Library.
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We wish to appoint a Professor within the School of Divinity in the field of New Testament Studies. The successful candidate will be an outstanding scholar of international reputation whose core focus of research is the New Testament. He or she will be expected to have a range of interests in this field which strengthen and complement those already within the School, and to make an outstanding contribution to the advancement of the study of the New Testament through research outputs and teaching. The successful candidate will be expected to represent the University of St Andrews in the UK and international communities in prominent ways.Follow the link for further particulars and application information. The closing date is 14 December 2018.
The successful candidate will hold a doctorate in (or directly related to) the field of New Testament Studies. He or she will be expected to be capable of teaching the subject to undergraduate and taught postgraduate students from a wide range of backgrounds, as well as attracting and supervising research postgraduate students. The primary criteria for appointment will be evidence of an internationally recognised record of outstanding research relating directly to the New Testament, and a clear programme of anticipated research activity in this field for the coming years.
Informal enquiries about this post may be directed to Dr Steve Holmes, Head of School (divhos@st-andrews.ac.uk) or to Prof. Judith Wolfe, Deputy Head of School (jw240@st-andrews.ac.uk).
Applications are particularly welcome from women, who are under-represented in academic posts at the University.
The University is committed to equality for all, demonstrated through our working on diversity awards (ECU Athena SWAN/Race Charters; Carer Positive; LGBT Charter; and Stonewall). More details can be found at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/edi/diversityawards/.
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More than 2,200 years after it sank beneath the waves, diving archaeologists have possibly found a missing piece of the Antikythera Mechanism, the fantastically complicated, advanced analog "computer" found in a shipwreck off a Greek island. Scanning shows the encrusted cogwheel to bear an image of Taurus the bull.Past PaleoJudaica posts involving the Antikythera Mechanism are here and here. Like the Gozo shipwreck on the coast of Malta, the Antikythera shipwreck just keeps on giving. Even after more than a century.
The Antikythera Mechanism was discovered in 1901, technically speaking. An encrusted lump was salvaged by Greek sponge divers in clunky metal diving suits from the Mediterranean seabed. Not that anybody realized what it was at the time. It would take decades and advanced x-ray technology for scientists to realize that the "rock" was a wondrously advanced sophisticated analog calculator consisting of dozens of intermeshed gears.
The Mechanism could do not only basic math: with dozens of exquisitely worked cogwheels, it could calculate the movements of the sun and moon, predict eclipses and equinoxes, and could be used to track the solar system planets, the constellations, and much more.
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A two-day conference entitled “Syriac Christianity at the Crossroads of Cultures” gathered researchers from all over the world at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome last week.That's a good photo of Professor Brock.
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The evidence, I argue, suggests a first- or second-century reader of the textual traditions we now call the Gospel according to Matthew and Gospel according to Mark would not have thought of them as two separate books by two different authors. Rather they would have regarded them as the same open-ended, unfinished, and living work: the gospel—textualized. Thus, the validity and utility of source-, redaction-, and textual-criticism as traditionally practiced are called into question. For example, what does it mean to talk about the “Synoptic Problem” without recourse to ideas like books, authors, and textual finality?Interesting.
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International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt is urging fellow Cabinet ministers to back plans to withdraw the UK’s £11.1m funding from Unesco, according to reports.This article also gives an update on the current state-of-play regarding the plans of Israel and the United States to withdraw from UNESCO as of 31 December 2018.
“Mordaunt’s department ranks Unesco as its worst-performing multilateral agency,” says The Times. “She believes that its work does not meet her spending criteria for international aid.”
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Precious little early Christian art has survived in the Holy Land, though this is where the religion itself was born. But now, an extremely rare depiction of Jesus from the early Christian era has been found in the ruins of Shivta, a large Byzantine farming village in the heart of Israel’s Negev desert.To my unpracticed eye the new wall depiction of Jesus looks like one of those "Jesus on a piece of toast" pictures that surface constantly on the internet. But I'm sure the art historians looking at the original wall can see it better than I can. I'm happy to take their word for it.
“His face is right there, looking at us,” says Dr. Emma Maayan-Fanar, the art historian who finally noticed the wall painting a century after it was uncovered.
A first painting found by others in Shivta last year turned out to show Jesus’ transfiguration: the present team was the one to realize what the painting showed, but the drawing of his face did not survive the centuries. The second one shows his baptism and his face. Maayan-Fanar and the team – Dr. Ravit Linn, Dr. Yotam Tepper and Prof. Guy Bar-Oz of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa – described the find in the world archaeological journal Antiquity: "Christ's face revealed at Shivta".
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In Chapter Ten of Menachot, the rabbis ask how these precise measurements were actually made in the Temple. It stands to reason that there must have been measuring bowls or cups—but how many, and in what denominations? This is one of those prosaic questions that brings home the magnitude of what was lost with the destruction of the Temple. Precisely because measuring cups were such humble, ordinary tools, there is no record of them anywhere for the rabbis to rely on. Instead, here as with many other facets of Temple ritual, they must recreate the past using the only resources available to them: oral tradition, which is full of disagreements and contradictions, and the text of the Torah, which is often silent about matters of detail. Finding or inventing an answer out of these meager resources is what the Talmud is all about.Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.
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C. D. Elledge, Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism, 200 BCE—CE 200. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.Excerpt:
While early Jewish evidence for resurrection is often considered primarily as a stage in the linear development of resurrection belief as it eventually emerged in Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity, Elledge provides in-depth analysis of this evidence in its own right; later evidence is considered largely as it illuminates the early Jewish materials.I noted the book and a related essay by the author here.
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