THE MASORAH OF DANIEL AND EZRA-NEHEMIAH TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED. VOLUME 2: EZRA-NEHEMIAH (Gorgias) CROSS-REFERENCE WITH VOL ONE

NEW BOOK FROM GORGIAS PRESS:

THE MASORAH OF DANIEL AND EZRA-NEHEMIAH TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED. VOLUME 2: EZRA-NEHEMIAH
Ezra-Nehemiah

By David Marcus

Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC
Availability: In stock
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-4996-0

Formats *
Hardback (In Print) ISBN 978-1-4632-4996-0
eBook PDF (In Print) ISBN 978-1-4632-4997-7 on Gorgias Mobile App (Glassboxx)

Publication Status: In Print
Series: Texts and Studies (Third Series) 35
Publication Date: Jun 15,2026
Interior Color: Black
Trim Size: 7 x 10
Page Count: 509v Languages: English
ISBN: 978-1-4632-4996-0

Price: $95.00 (USD)
Your price: $57.00 (USD)

OVERVIEW

Each masoretic note in the books of Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah in the Leningrad Codex is transcribed, translated, parsed, and annotated in this user-friendly reference work.

I have just noted Volume 1 (Daniel) here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Marcus, THE MASORAH OF DANIEL AND EZRA-NEHEMIAH TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED. VOLUME ONE: DANIEL (Gorgias)

NEW BOOK FROM GORGIAS PRESS:

THE MASORAH OF DANIEL AND EZRA-NEHEMIAH TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED. VOLUME 1: DANIEL
Daniel

By David Marcus

Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC
Availability: In stock
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-4994-6

Formats *
Hardback (In Print) ISBN 978-1-4632-4994-6
eBook PDF (In Print) ISBN 978-1-4632-4995-3 on Gorgias Mobile App (Glassboxx)

Publication Status: In Print
Series: Texts and Studies (Third Series) 34
Publication Date: Jun 15,2026
Interior Color: Black
Trim Size: 7 x 10
Page Count: 365
Languages: English
ISBN: 978-1-4632-4994-6

Price: $95.00 (USD)
Your price: $57.00 (USD)

OVERVIEW

This volume represents the first time that the Masorah of the Aramaic sections and the Masorah of the three books of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah in the Leningrad Codex, fully translated and analyzed, will have been presented to an English-speaking public. All biblical words and terms, whether Hebrew or Aramaic, are translated and parsed fully. For comparison purposes, the most authoritative ancient manuscripts (Sassoon 1053; Madrid M1; and Cambridge Additional 1753) and the Second Rabbinic Bible are regularly consulted.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

A children's book series on the Talmud

TALMUD WATCH: Series Makes Talmudic Stories Accessible to Young Children (Jewish Link Staff).

Highlighting: “Stones on the Road: A Story from the Talmud,” by Rabbi Elliot Goldberg. Scribal Scion Kids. November 2026. Paperback: 32 pages. ISBN-13: 979-8886650266.

... In an effort to instill in young Jewish children an interest in Talmudic stories, Scribal Scion Publishing, through its Scribal Scion Kids imprint, has begun a new series of children’s picture books for ages 5 to 8 that will present stories from the Talmud in an accessible manner. The first book in the series, Rabbi Elliot Goldberg’s new book titled “Stones on the Road: A Story from the Talmud,” is based upon a story that appears in Masechet Bava Kamma, page 50b. ...

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Restoration of the Beit Alfa synagogue mosaic

DECORATIVE ART: Preserving an ancient mosaic: Israeli specialists gather to conserve 1,500-year-old synagogue floor. Beit Alfa’s ancient synagogue was built during the Byzantine period, at the end of the fifth century CE, approximately 1,500 years ago. The mosaic floor was discovered in 1928 (Miriam Sela-Eitam, Jerusalem Post).

About 20 Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) conservation specialists gathered at Beit Alfa National Park in northern Israel earlier this week to preserve the 1,500-year-old mosaic floor of the site’s ancient synagogue.

[...]

For more on the Beit Afha synagogue and its zodiac mosaic, see here, here, and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Coptic manuscripts exhibited in Manchester

EXHIBITION: John Rylands Library takes centuries-old Coptic treasures into the heart of the community. More than 400 Coptic Christians examine manuscripts at a Stockport church in rare opportunity to connect with their cultural and religious heritage (University of Manchester).

The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library has taken a selection of its historic Coptic and Ethiopian manuscripts out of the library and into the community, giving hundreds of people the rare opportunity to encounter their heritage first-hand.

The special exhibition - held on 1 November at St Mary & St Mina Coptic Orthodox Church in Stockport - attracted more than 400 visitors and their children, many of whom travelled from across the UK to see manuscripts dating back as far as the tenth century. ...

Among the manuscripts on display were biblical texts, Coptic liturgies and a Holy Week lectionary, alongside two parchment manuscripts from Egypt’s White Monastery containing sermons by St Shenoute of Atripe, a hugely influential fifth-century monastic leader.

Visitors were also able to see fragments of an ancient Coptic translation of the Gospel of Matthew, written on papyrus, and an eighteenth-century Ethiopian manuscript recounting the life and miracles of St George. ...

For more on the work of Sarah Parkhouse, see the links collected here some time ago.

Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Review of Schwartz, Flavius Josephus: translation and commentary. Volume 8: Judean Antiquities, books 18-20

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Flavius Josephus: translation and commentary. Volume 8: Judean Antiquities, books 18-20.

Daniel R. Schwartz, Flavius Josephus: translation and commentary. Volume 8: Judean Antiquities, books 18-20. Leiden: Brill, 2024. Pp. xxiv, 386. ISBN 9789004703681.

Review by Carson Bay, University of Austin. cbay@uaustin.org

... But this work is far, far more than a translation. On many pages, a few lines of text sit above what is effectively a full page of detailed footnotes. For both English translation and interpretation, then, this work is now the standard resource for Books 18–20 of Josephus’ Antiquities, replacing Louis Feldman’s 1965 Loeb volumes.

On the issue of the Testimonium Flavianum, see here most recently and follow the links. For more on Schwartz's book and Schmidt's and how they deal with the TF, see here and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Falla Festschrift (Gorgias)

NEW BOOK FROM GORGIAS PRESS:

I SAY IT JUST BEGINS TO LIVE THAT DAY
Essays in Honour of Terry Falla

Edited by Charbel El-Khaissi, Janet Dyk & Daniel King

Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC
Availability: In stock
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-4992-2

Formats *
Hardback (In Print) ISBN 978-1-4632-4992-2
eBook PDF (In Print) ISBN 978-1-4632-4993-9 on Gorgias Mobile App (Glassboxx)

Publication Status: In Print
Series: Perspectives on Linguistics and Ancient Languages18
Publication Date: Sep 22,2026
Interior Color: Color
Trim Size: 7 x 10
Page Count: 503
Languages: English
ISBN: 978-1-4632-4992-2

Price: $114.95 (USD)
Your price: $68.97 (USD)

OVERVIEW

This Festschrift is published in honour of Professor Terry C. Falla on the occasion of his 86th birthday. A Founding Professor of the University of Divinity, Falla is widely known in Australia for his devotional best-seller, Be Our Freedom, Lord (1982), and internationally for his pioneering work on A Key to the Peshitta Gospels (KPG). He is co-founder with Beryl Turner of the International Syriac Language Project (ISLP), an international, interdisciplinary research group that has been advancing the study of ancient-language lexicography and linguistics for over two decades.

Celebrating the breadth of Falla’s intellectual interests, this collection includes twenty original essays by scholars around the world on topics of lexicography, linguistics, textual analysis in Syriac, Greek, and Hebrew, and theology. The Festschrift features a sugitho (Syriac poem) recounting Falla’s life and work, a photo section documenting his scholarly journey since the 1980s and a special foreword by his right hand and decades-long collaborator, Beryl Turner. The volume is edited by Charbel El-Khaissi, former Syriac student of Falla’s at the University of Melbourne, Janet W. Dyk, a founding member of the ISLP, and Daniel King, Series Editor of the ISLP’s Perspectives on Linguistics and Ancient Languages series.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Bay, Contesting Jewish History in Late Antique Christianity and Early Medieval Judaism (Brill, open access)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Contesting Jewish History in Late Antique Christianity and Early Medieval Judaism

Flavius Josephus’ Jewish War between the Latin On the Destruction of Jerusalem and the Hebrew Book of Yosippon

Series:
Études sur le judaïsme médiéval, Volume: 105

Author: Carson Bay

The open access publication of this book was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

On the Destruction of Jerusalem, an anonymous Latin Christian text from Late Antiquity (c. 375 CE), paraphrased Flavius Josephus’ Greek Jewish War (ca. 75 CE) to reinterpret the Roman-Jewish War (66-70 CE) and the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple (70 CE) as proof that God had abandoned the Jews (because they had rejected Jesus Christ). No Jewish alternative to this supersessionist historiography existed for hundreds of years. Then, around 900 CE, the anonymous Hebrew Book of Yosippon rewrote this history anew, based on the narrative of On the Destruction Jerusalem. This monograph provides the first extensive comparison of these texts, showing how the Book of Yosippon biblicized, theologized, and Judaized its Latin source, overwriting the Christian narrative of late-Second Temple Judaism and underwriting a new version of that story. In so doing, the Book of Yosippon resurrected the spirit of Hellenistic Judaism, reclaiming Jewish history for the Jews in the Early Middle Ages.

Copyright Year: 2026

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-75911-4
Publication: 22 Sep 2026

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-75910-7
Publication: 14 Oct 2026
EUR €101.00

For PaleoJudaica posts on Pseudo-Hegesippus' De excidio Hierosolymita ("On the Destruction of Jerusalem"), including posts on Carson Bay's previous work on the subject, see here and links. Posts on or involving Sefer Yosippon are here, here, and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Jodi Magness profiled

THE DAILY TAR HEEL: UNC Professor Jodi Magness has led an excavation of an ancient synagogue for over a decade. The archaeological site is located in Huqoq, Israel, and offers an unexpected trove of preserved mosaics (Sam Stavchancsky).

Across the world from Chapel Hill, hidden mosaics in an ancient synagogue in Huqoq, Israel, now sit at the forefront of a new project led by UNC professor and archaeologist Jodi Magness.

Magness, the Kenan distinguished professor for teaching excellence in early Judaism at UNC, serves as the archaeological consultant for the next phase of development for the Huqoq site, an excavation she led from 2011 to 2023.

Magness said she first came to Huqoq — a historic site just north of the Sea of Galilee, which previously was a Jewish village — to answer research questions surrounding Jewish settlements under Roman Christian rule. She said there were signs that a synagogue was in the area, and her team succeeded in finding and excavating one.

[...]

For many PaleoJudaica posts on Professor Magness and her wide-ranging work, including the remarkable Huqoq excavation, see here and links, plus here, here, and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Patmore obituary

CHURCH TIMES: Obituary: The Revd Professor Hector Patmore. ‘His ministry was marked by gentleness, encouragement, and care’.

Professor Josef Lössl, the Revd Chris Burr, Canon Peter Sedgwick, and Canon Jack McDonald write:

HECTOR PATMORE, who died after an accident on 13 September, aged 45, was one of the most brilliant young academics of his generation. An expert in the field of Judaism in the time of Jesus, he was also an Anglican priest and much loved by congregations wherever he served.

[...]

Background here and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The Testimonium Flavianum in the news

AND ONCE AGAIN: Study Asks What Josephus Really Wrote About Jesus’ Resurrection (Bill Giannopoulos, Greek City Times).

A new study of the Testimonium Flavianum argues that the Jewish historian Josephus may have recorded early reports of Jesus appearing alive after the crucifixion. The researcher stresses that his reading is plausible, not proven.

Independent Spanish researcher Jesús Fernández-Pedrera Correa set out his case in a preprint, which has not yet passed peer review. The Daily Mail reported on it this week.

[...]

This GCT article has a good summary of the Mail article. There isn't a lot of news in this story, but the Mail piece has drawn some attention to it, so I will comment briefly.

The unpublished essay looks like a good description of the textual evidence, which has already been discussed endlessly in the critical literature. It has sensible observations, and may have some original formulation of them. It ignores a lot of recent secondary literature. In its conclusions I see no substantive new proposals about what was and wasn't in Josephus' autograph text. Whether its contribution merits peer-review publication would have to be decided by reviewers. At minimum I would say it needs some revision to take into account more recent publications and to clarify what the original contribution is.

Meanwhile, if you want a good overview of the complicated textual evidence for the Testimonium Flavianum, the essay is open access and is worth a look.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on Josephus's Testimonium Flavinum, see here and links, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Greek-style Tetradrachms excavated in Israel are mostly from Athens

NUMISMATICS: 2,400-Year-Old Greek Coins Found in Israel Reveal Surprising Links to Ancient Athens (Abdul Moeed, Greek Reporter).

The origins of ancient Greek coins found in Israel are clearer after a new study traced much of their silver to Athens and territories it once controlled. Researchers say many of the coins, long suspected of being local copies, were likely genuine Athenian currency carried east during a costly war more than 2,400 years ago.

[...]

This article links to the underlying open access article in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports:

When is an owl not an owl? An analysis of Attic tetradrachms circulating in the southern Levant in the late fifth and fourth centuries BCE

Liesel Gentelli, Gillan Davis, Francis Albarède, Janne Blichert-Toft, Haim Gitler

10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105634

Abstract

This article, dedicated to the memory of the late Prof. John H. Kroll, focuses on late fifth century BCE Athenian-style tetradrachms found in the southern Levant, to shed new light on whether they are genuine Athenian issues or local imitations. To address this important yet vexed historical question, we analysed the Pb isotope compositions of 22 coins from ten controlled archaeological excavations in Israel and compared them against the ∼ 7,000 galena samples in the Lyon Pb isotope database. Nineteen of the coins are of the “three-quarter profile eye” variety conventionally dated mid to late fifth century BCE. We found that they match Attic or Athenian-controlled silver sources, suggesting they are authentic Athenian issues and not imitations as some of them were originally categorised. We argue that these coins likely entered the Western Asian money supply during Athens’ massive naval campaigns in the eastern Aegean in the third and final phase of the Peloponnesian War, and that the series should be refined to end with the city’s defeat and loss of silver sources in 404 BCE. The fact that three of the coins are plated supports the contention that they were part of the series minted when Athens was under extreme financial duress. The remaining two coins are of the pi-style series struck in the early 340 s BCE, as proposed by John H. Kroll (personal communication and cf. also Flament, 2023). The Pb isotope data indicate that our examples were not struck from Athenian silver casting doubt on the current theory that they were restruck Attic coins. These overall findings call for a reassessment of monetary sources, coin circulation, and local minting in the fourth century BCE in the southern Levant. This study also highlights the need for independent archaeological dating beyond reliance upon numismatic typology.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Teenager finds Bronze Age Egyptian amulet at Tel Gezer

ANCIENT ICONOGRAPHY: US teen discovers 3,300-year-old Egyptian amulet during Israel tour. 17-year-old Shiloh Attoun spots the small scarab-shaped seal while visiting Tel Gezer National Park with his class (Zev Stub, Times of Israel).

Shiloh Attoun, a student on the Jewish National Fund-USA’s Muss High School in Israel study-abroad program, was visiting Tel Gezer National Park in the Judean lowlands when he spotted the small scarab-shaped seal lying on the ground. The amulet, decorated with two cobra motifs, dates to the Late Bronze Age, according to an examination by Prof. Ido Koch of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.