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.[...]
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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.For more on the work of Sarah Parkhouse, see the links collected here some time ago.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. ...
Cross-file under Coptic Watch.
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Daniel R. Schwartz, Flavius Josephus: translation and commentary. Volume 8: Judean Antiquities, books 18-20. Leiden: Brill, 2024. Pp. xxiv, 386. ISBN 9789004703681.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.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.
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I SAY IT JUST BEGINS TO LIVE THAT DAY
Essays in Honour of Terry FallaEdited by Charbel El-Khaissi, Janet Dyk & Daniel King
Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC
Availability: In stock
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-4992-2Formats *
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: 978-1-4632-4992-2Price: $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.
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Contesting Jewish History in Late Antique Christianity and Early Medieval JudaismFor 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.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: 105Author: 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 2026Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-75910-7
Publication: 14 Oct 2026
EUR €101.00
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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.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.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.
[...]
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Professor Josef Lössl, the Revd Chris Burr, Canon Peter Sedgwick, and Canon Jack McDonald write:Background here and here.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.
[...]
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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.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.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.
[...]
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.
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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 BCELiesel 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.
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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.
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But even if the Talmud’s dense walls of Aramaic remain impenetrable to many, there are ways to appreciate its content. Rabbi Zalman Eisenstock’s new book, Talmud Chronicles, offers an entertaining glimpse into the history and culture of the sages.I noted the publication of the book here and a recent review here.He has taken episodes from the second century CE and presented them in the form of newspaper articles – not only as news stories, but features, interviews, advice columns, cartoons and even adverts (for dream interpreters, succah builders or camel drivers). He has clearly had a lot of fun along the way. But then the Talmud recognised the value of humour. The Babylonian master Rabba reputedly opened his classes with something light-hearted to bring a smile to the faces of his students.
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Notice of a New Book: Rezania, Kianoosh, Neda Mohtashami & Yusef Saadat (eds.). 2026. The final frontier: Unveiling the ancient Iranian language of eschatology (Dynamics in the History of Religions 18). Leiden: Brill.
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The project was launched by Tunisia's National Heritage Institute, known as the INP, in cooperation with China's National Centre for Archaeology, or NACA. The mission brings together researchers, specialists, heritage conservators and students from both countries.Glad to hear it. There has also been recent archaeological work by the INP at the Carthage Tophet.The programme includes excavations at the Punic ports and studies of the remains and their immediate surroundings. Teams are also carrying out geometric and topographic surveys with modern technology, while archaeological collections found during the work are being studied and inventoried. Details of the mission published by Le Quotidien place the start on 15 October 2026 and the planned end on 8 January 2027.
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