How did Prof. Christopher A. Rollston change his mind?

SYMPOSIUM: I CHANGED MY MIND: Farm Boy to Biblical Scholar (Prof. Christopher A. Rollston, TheTorah.com).

This pilgrimage of mine is certainly not unique to me. But it does reveal something about the way in which the texts of the Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament themselves, knowledge about their transmission through the centuries (i.e., the copying), and knowledge about the world from which these texts hailed, have all combined to refine and nuance my understanding of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. The pilgrimage continues, and I am grateful for that.

For more on the series, see here. A recent topically related post is here.

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Scripta Classica Israelica again

THE AWOL BLOG: Open Access Journal: Scripta Classica Israelica.

It's been a while since I noted this journal, so this is a good chance to mention it again.

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At the National Library of Israel

LIBRARY TOUR: What Can Texts Do? A Morning at the National Library of Israel (Keira Kahn, Yeshiva University Commentator).

The oldest items in the collection are in the first display case. They are clay incantation bowls made by the Jews of Babylonia between roughly the fifth and eighth centuries, and they look like ordinary cereal bowls, except that the inside of each one is covered in Aramaic script that spirals from the center outward. They are amulets. People commissioned them by name, had them inscribed with blessings and incantations, and then buried them upside down beneath the threshold of the house so that demons could not get in. Nobody was ever supposed to read them; we only have them because they were buried intentionally and then unearthed. The plaque above the case ends by asking the question the entire exhibit is built around: what can texts actually do?

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How did ancient Israelites actually live?

DOMESTIC ARCHAEOLOGY: How People Actually Lived in Ancient Israel According to Archaeology. Excavated four-room houses, ancient grains, and domestic tools reveal the daily struggles, diets, and routines of everyday life in ancient Israel (Eljoh Hartzer, The Collector).

While paging through the Bible, one can find it hard to truly see the daily life of ancient Israelites. What did they eat? Where did they live? What kind of clothes did they wear? In recent years, however, Levantine domestic archaeology has given us a few rare glimpses into what that life was like, with magnificent findings like the famous four-room houses, Judean pillar figurines, and even insights into the probable diet that sustained the people who lived in that reality.

This article does give a realistic view of the lives of people in antiquity, including the endemic parasite infestations. On that, related posts here and here and links. Life in antiquity was not very pleasant, even for the elites, let alone for regular people.

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"Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World" coming to ISAW (NYU)

EXHIBITION: ISAW presents: Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World. Exhibition explores the central role of magic in ancient societies; opens September 17 (NYU News).

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University presents Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World (September 17 to December 13, 2026), an exhibition that examines the central role of magic in ancient societies. From its integration into religious traditions in Mesopotamia and Egypt, to its marginal, often illicit status in Greece and Rome, Cursed! explores the visualization and practice of magic in these communities between the years 2000 BCE and 300 CE.

[...]

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Longacre's Psalms book is forthcoming

THE OTTC BLOG: Psalms Monograph Submitted (Drew Longacre).

That's good news!

For more on Dr. Longacre's work on the text of the Hebrew Psalter, see here and links. And for updates on the related lawsuit, see the Critical Edition of the Hebrew Psalter Blog here.

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Gadot, A Historical Archaeology of Jerusalem: Bronze and Iron Ages (SBL)

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

A Historical Archaeology of Jerusalem: Bronze and Iron Ages

Yuval Gadot

ISBN 9781628377910
Volume ABS 35
Status Available
Price $62.00
Publication Date March 2026

Paperback $62.00
Hardback $82.00
eBook $62.00

In the first book to examine Jerusalem’s archaeological remains in detail since Kathleen M. Kenyon’s Digging Up Jerusalem (1974), Yuval Gadot reexamines the results of more than one hundred years of excavations and incorporates findings from recent research based on the most up-to-date scientific methods. The book covers six pivotal periods of Jerusalem’s development and correlates those with historical texts, including those from the Hebrew Bible, for the purpose of portraying a nuanced and detailed reconstruction of Jerusalem during the Bronze and Iron Ages. More than one hundred color illustrations and maps supplement Gadot’s analysis of the archaeological data and reconstruction of Jerusalem’s history. This volume presents the most complete picture of Jerusalem’s history for scholars and students interested in the city’s role as a royal seat and a religious center.

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Congress Volume Zurich 2022 (Brill)

NEW(ISH) BOOK FROM BRILL:

Congress Volume Zurich 2022

Proceedings of the 24th Congress of the IOSOT

Series:
Vetus Testamentum, Supplements, Volume: 201

Volume Editors: Samuel Arnet, Konrad Schmid, and Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

This volume presents the main lectures of the 24th Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament (IOSOT) held in Zurich, Switzerland, in August 2022. It is written by nineteen established international scholars, whose combined research reflects the broad spectrum of contemporary biblical scholarship. The volume includes articles ranging from the study of the ancient Near East, the archaeology of ancient Israel and Judah, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, via thematic investigations and ideological readings of key texts, to studies exploring the formation, ideology, and reception of biblical books.

Copyright Year: 2025

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-74047-1
Publication: 20 Oct 2025
EUR €159.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-74046-4
Publication: 06 Nov 2025
EUR €159.00

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Rosh HaShanah 2026

HAPPY NEW YEAR (ROSH HASHANAH - Jewish New Year 5787) to all those celebrating. The New Year begins tonight at sundown.

Last year's Rosh HaShanah post is here. For biblical background, see here.

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Rosh HaShanah and the Akedah

FOR ROSH HASHANAH: The Ram Caught in the Thicket by Its Horns—Rosh Hashanah’s Shofar (Prof.Rivka Ulmer, The Torah.com).

At the climax of the binding of Isaac, Abraham sees אַיִל אַחַר “a ram behind” (MT)... or does he see אַיִל אֶחָד “one ram” (SP, LXX, etc.)? Both readings are developed in midrash: aḥar into Israel’s future redemption through the shofar, eḥad into the primordial ram created for the Akedah—two paths that converge in the shofar of Rosh Hashanah.

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How did Prof. Rabbi Phil Lieberman change his mind?

SYMPOSIUM: I CHANGED MY MIND: De-anthropomorphizing God: Did It Really Begin with Onkelos? (Prof. Rabbi Phil Lieberman, TheTorah.com).

Onkelos’ choice, then, to dissolve the metaphor “fat of the land” in favor of “goodness of the land,” then, may be evidence of a broader, deliberate program eschewing metaphor more generally. That might imply that when Targum Onkelos dissolves metaphors, even about God, it has something more than deanthropomorphizing in its program: the translator appears to prefer semantic clarity to figurative language. In other words, this is part of a literary project rather than a theological one.

For more on this series, see here.

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Interview with Schmidt on, Josephus and Jesus

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Josephus and Jesus. Evaluating the earliest non-Christian source about Jesus.

In this interview, BAR Editor-in-Chief Glenn Corbett speaks with Schmidt about his new book Josephus & Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. After examining how ancient translators rendered Josephus’s words, how early Christian writers understood them, and who may have supplied Josephus with information about Jesus—including people present at Jesus’s trial—Schmidt offers a fresh perspective on what the earliest non-Christian historian knew about Jesus.

PaleoJudaica posts on Schmidt's book are here (with my own assessment of the Josephus and Jesus problem), here, and here.

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On the Herculaneum scrolls

HERCULANEUM WATCH: Eighteenth-century scholars destroyed hundreds of Herculaneum scrolls trying to prise them open, because the eruption that buried the library had carbonised the papyrus shut — and in June a crowdsourced team that started as amateur contestants read an entire one, still rolled, without touching the inside. A machine-learning competition finally cracked a puzzle that had stumped scholars for 250 years: how to read ancient scrolls without destroying them (By Lab Report · Edited by Nato Lagidze, Science Blog).

This long blog post gives an overview of the history of efforts to read the Herculaeum scrolls and the current state of the question.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and its destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and on the efforts to reconstruct and decipher the carbonized library at Herculaneum, start here and follow the links. For speculation on what else we may find in the library, see here. Cross-file under Technology Watch.

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

How did Prof. Peter Enns change his mind?

SYMPOSIUM: HOW I CHANGED MY MIND: Christianity’s Origins: They Are Jewish! (Prof. Peter Enns, TheTorah.com).

To realize that Paul was actually Jewish now seems too obvious to mention, but at the time it changed everything. I walked out of class stunned with the realization that I didn’t really get Paul at all—not because I hadn’t tried, but because I hadn’t known his world.

I began asking different questions. Rather than, “How does Paul get this from the Old Testament?” I asked, “What kind of interpretive world made Paul’s reading possible?” I stopped assuming I understood what Paul and the other New Testament writers were about and started asking how and why they actually read Scripture the way they did.

For more on the series, see here.

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Did the conqueror worm consume the Library of Alexandria?

LOST LIBRARY: What Really Destroyed the Library of Alexandria? History loves a villain, but the culprit was likely something much more mundane (Candida Moss, National Geographic).

We can’t excavate the Library of Alexandria; If it is not under water, then the other place on the peninsula where it was said to be located is currently occupied by the Egyptian military. But we do know that insects, mice, and mold were major issues for Egyptian book collectors that could only be counteracted by recopying texts. And we also know that the third century C.E. was a period of military crisis and financial upheaval that disrupted funding streams in the Roman Empire. Given the instability and currency devaluation of this period, [papyrologist Roger] Bagnall said, along with the rapid turnover of Roman prefects, budget cuts, staff losses, and ample opportunities for theft, “it’s not difficult to imagine the whole enterprise just falling apart.”

This article reviews other explanations for the loss of the Library of Alexandria and then proposes a very plausible one I have not heard before. Before the printing press, every piece of literature was within, at most, a few generations of oblivion, if no one found it interesting enough to copy.

PaleoJudaica posts on the Library of Alexandria and what may have happened to it are collected here (cf. here).

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

Matheny on ḥesed in the Hebrew Bible.

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Ḥesed in the Hebrew Bible

Ḥesed is a central theological term in the Hebrew Bible that is fundamentally relational, resistant to reduction to a single-word equivalent, and semantically multivalent. While earlier scholarship often treated this ambiguity as a lexical problem, recent studies have increasingly recognized it as a source of interpretive and theological richness. By examining its use across a variety of contexts, from covenant relationships to descriptions of God’s character and name, the semantic breadth of ḥesed contributes to its enduring theological significance throughout the Hebrew Bible.

See also Ḥesed, the Seed of the Biblical Story: New Life for Old Testament Theology (Baker Academic, 2026).

By Jennifer M. Matheny
Associate Professor of Christian Scriptures (Old Testament)
George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University
August 2026

I guess I come from the era when translating the word as "covenant loyalty" seemed to work most of the time. But this essay nuances the meaning of the term well beyond that.

That said, I think a discussion of the meaning of ḥesed (hesed) should come to terms directly with some of the more awkward verses in Psalm 137 (English versions). "Lovingkindness" or "steadfast love," which sound like someone being nice, doesn't work very well there. "Covenant loyalty," where niceness is optional, does.

Cross-file under New Book.

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Ziemba& Poulsen (eds.), Judeans in the Land of the Nile (Zaphon)

NEW BOOK FROM ZAPHON PRESS:

Judeans in the Land of the Nile.
Papers on Achaemenid Egypt, Elephantine, and the Hebrew Bible
Presented in Copenhagen, August 19–20, 2024
Edited by Kacper Ziemba and Frederik Poulsen
Ägypten und Altes Testament 136

75.00 €

2026
VI + 181 pp.
DIN A-4 / hardcover, thread stitching
ISBN 978-3-96327-350-6 (book)
ISBN 978-3-96327-351-3 (e-book, via ProQuest, Ebsco, ISD)

HT Todd Bolen at the Bible Places Blog.

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