Late-antique monastery excavated in Egypt

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Byzantine Monastery Unearthed in Egypt. How early Christians answered the biblical call to the desert (Lauren K. McCormick).

Now, excavations in southern Egypt have revealed how some of Christianity’s earliest monastic communities pursued religious practice in the desert. At the site of Al-Qariya bi-Duwayr in the Sohag region, Egyptian archaeologists with the Supreme Council of Antiquities have uncovered one of the most complete ancient monastic complexes yet discovered in the country.

The discoveries reportedly include Coptic inscriptions.

For more on Egypt's Sohag region and its archaeology and history, some of which is of interest to PaleoJudaica, see here and links. For posts on Akhmim, see here and links. For posts on Shenoute and the White Monastery, here and links.

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Angels in Coptic magic, part one

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Angels in Coptic Magic I: Introduction.

For this year’s first blog post, we start a new series looking at angels in Coptic Magic. As an introduction, this first post provides a brief discussion of the concept of angels and their importance in various ritual and literary traditions, as well as an overview of the main groups of angels found in Coptic magical texts. The following posts in this series will focus on specific groups of angels and individual angels, discussing their roles, names, and descriptions. ...

While Coptic magical texts are witnesses to some new and original traditions about angels, they also drew upon, and evolved together with, older and contemporary traditions, including the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri, Jewish private ritual, orthodox Christian liturgical practice, and Christian literature. It is therefore important to mention these briefly before moving on to the Coptic magical material.

For more on the Talmudic-era Hebrew magical tractate Sefer Ha-Razim (Sefer HaRazim), see here and here and various other mentions in the archives.

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The Nimrud archives

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Nimrud Letters. The royal archives of the Assyrian Empire (Marek Dospěl).

A nice overview of this important archive.

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On Abgar V's correspondence with Jesus

NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: Did Jesus Write Letters? The Legend of King Abgar V. The New Testament never says that Jesus wrote anything. But a Christian legend claimed that he once penned a letter to an Anatolian king named Abgar (Eljoh Hartzer, The Collector).

A nice overview of Abgar V and his apocryphal correspondence with Jesus. Eusebius preserves the letters in a Greek translation, but they also survive in the original Syriac, notably in the Doctrine of Addai.

For PaleoJudaica posts on the Agbarid dynasty and the Abgar letters, as well as on ancient Edessa, start here and follow the links. Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

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Looting arrests near Sea of Galilee

APPREHENDED: 4 suspected antiquities robbers caught digging in ancient Sea of Galilee burial cave. Authorities arrest four suspects caught in the act at a Roman‑era tomb near the Sea of Galilee, causing severe damage to a historically significant site tied to Jewish life and Talmudic sages (Ynet News).

Four suspected antiquities robbers were caught “in the act” Sunday afternoon digging inside an ancient Roman‑era burial cave near the Nabi Shu’aib/Chitin archaeological site in the Arbel Ridge area, on the outskirts of the Jordan Valley near the Sea of Galilee.

[...]

For more on the Talmudic gladiator-sage Reish Lakish (Resh Lakish), who lived in the region, see here, here, here, here, and here.

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On "The Beginnings of Christianity as an Integral Part of Early Judaism"

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

The Beginnings of Christianity as an Integral Part of Early Judaism

Jesus and his first followers were Jews who never intended to form a new religion apart from Judaism. The so-called “parting of the ways” between Jews and Christians was long and by no means monolinear. Rather, it was a complex process that stretched over five hundred years, occurring in different places at different speeds and under a variety of circumstances. What we today call the “beginnings of Christianity” was in fact an integral part of multifaceted Judaism.

See also Early Judaism and the Beginnings of Christianity: Common Roots and the Parting of the Ways (Kohlhammer, 2026; open access).

By Markus Tiwald
Professor of New Testament
Faculty of Catholic Theology
University of Vienna
January 2026

Cross-file under New Book. You can download it for free at the link.

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Did Simeon and Levi do a bad thing or the right thing?

PROF. SHAUL BAR: Jacob Rebukes Simeon and Levi for the Shechem Massacre—but Post-Biblical Interpreters Disagree

... and instead praise them!

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Still more Barkay obituaries

THREE MORE MEMORIALS to the late Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkay:

Archaeologist Gabriel Barkay, pioneer of Temple Mount research, dies at 81. Discoverer of the Ketef Hinnom scrolls and founder of Temple Mount Sifting Project was a larger-than-life figure who stirred controversy, loved Jerusalem and made the city his mission (Rossella Tercatin, Times of Israel; long and detailed)

Jerusalem University College's post (Jerusalem University College on Facebook)

Gabriel Barkay, 81, Dies; His Discoveries Revised Biblical History. One of Israel’s leading archaeologists, he found evidence that the writing of the Old Testament likely began much earlier than historians had thought. (Clay Risen, New York Times; behind the subscription wall)

Background here and links.

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Review of Hornblower, Hannibal and Scipio: parallel lives

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Hannibal and Scipio: parallel lives

Simon Hornblower, Hannibal and Scipio: parallel lives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 528. ISBN 9781009453356.

Review by
Jeff Tatum, Victoria University of Wellingon. jeff.tatum@vuw.ac.nz

Its subjects—Hannibal and Scipio, Rome and Carthage—are big. Its learning is deep. Its keen, focused curiosity is an inspiration. And its style, conversational and lucid, is a pleasure to read. This, in sum, is a delightful and instructive book. There can be only a very few readers who will not learn something, or even quite a lot, from it. By putting in parallel the lives of Hannibal and Scipio, Simon Hornblower endeavours to furnish a fuller picture both of their twinned yet distinctive careers and personalities but also of Carthaginian and Roman ambitions, local as well as geo-political, during the late third and early second centuries bce. And he succeeds admirably.

[...]

For PaleoJudaica posts on Hannibal Barca and Scipio Africanus, start here, here, and here, and follow the links.

Cross-file under New Book and Punic Watch.

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Adam, Time and Tradition: Temporal Thinking in Ecclesiastes ... (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

Moritz F. Adam

Time and Tradition

Temporal Thinking in Ecclesiastes in the Context of Emerging Apocalypticism and the History of Ideas in the Hellenistic Period

2025. 335 pages.
Forschungen zum Alten Testament (FAT) 191

€139.00
including VAT

cloth
available
978-3-16-164797-0

Also Available As:
eBook PDF
Open Access
CC BY-SA 4.0

Summary

Moritz F. Adam explores conceptions of time in the book of Ecclesiastes and its place in the history of thought in Hellenistic Judaism. He situates Ecclesiastes before a wider panorama of emerging apocalyptic thought and investigates how the text reflects, resists, and reworks prevailing ideas about time, history, knowledge, and meaning. Adam shows how Ecclesiastes stands at an important moment of conceptual transformation to the manner in which time was thought about in ancient Judaism, and how the book reflects new, broader, totalising, and abstract concerns in conversation with contemporary interlocutors. Through textual studies, comparative discussions and theoretical engagements with the fields of Classics and Literature, Adam challenges scholarly boundaries between wisdom, apocalypticism, and other genres, and highlights Ecclesiastes' pluralistic, open-ended discourse as a vital part of ancient Jewish thought.

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Performance, Space, and Time in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Performance, Space, and Time in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Papers from the Eleventh Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Zürich 2022

Series:
Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, Volume: 154

Editors: Michael B. Johnson, Jutta Jokiranta, and Molly M. Zahn

The collection focuses on performative and ritual aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls, originating from the IOQS 2022 meeting. The concept of ritualization is examined at both individual and collective levels, using ritualization of covenant as a case study. Other essays examine performative aspects of the Hodayot manuscripts, and singing, meditation, and poetic form in Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. Spatial aspects are examined in two essays: one argues against the common assumption that the temple city in the Temple Scroll is clearly or only referring to Jerusalem, and the other essay demonstrates 4QMMT’s legal stringency in the question of the presence of dogs in Jerusalem. Aramaic compositions are examined for their view of priesthood. Finally, past, present and future time is argued to be brought together in ritual, with the result that the role of eschatological time in the Scrolls should be complemented by ritual time.

Copyright Year: 2025

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-73445-6
Publication: 08 Dec 2025
EUR €118.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-73444-9
Publication: 11 Dec 2025
EUR €118.00

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Galoppin & Lebreton (eds.), Divine Names on the Spot III (Peeters)

NEW BOOK FROM PEETERS PRESS:

Divine Names on the Spot III
Naming and Agency in Ancient Greek and West Semitic Texts

Series:
Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, 307

Editors:
Galoppin T., Lebreton S.

Price: 85 euro
Year: 2025
ISBN: 9789042955943
Pages: XXII-318 p.

Summary:
In the line of the previous volumes of the series “Divine Names on the Spot” devoted to the study of divine names in Greek and Semitic contexts, this third one focuses on the question “who named the gods?” Naming the divine, within the ritual communication or in narratives and discourses about gods and goddesses, involves choices, negotiations or strategies by human agents, in accordance with traditions or in order to activate innovations. Always context-sensitive, the agency of human addressers, narrators, or beneficiaries of the divine powers must be put forward as a main factor of these processes. From the addresses to the gods by kings in Cyprus to the carriage drivers naming Poseidon Helikapanaios in Thessaly, through the carving of divine names on a cup found in Jerusalem, the dozen of contributions gathered here make steps for a long exploration of divine names in the making, and suggest a few directions and orientations for investigating human agency in religious history.

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Darby, Shaping Text Through Song (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Shaping Text Through Song: The Influence of Singing Upon Processes of Textual Interpretation and Variation in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Series:
Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, Volume: 156

Author: Jonathan M. Darby

This book explores the influential role played by singing as a performative medium within processes of textual interpretation and variation during the late Second Temple Period, as reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Singing is argued to be a prominent and widespread mode of performance, and a medium which exerted considerable influence within and upon processes of textual composition, interpretation and transmission. These complex processes result in the variation of textual forms, meaning that sung performance contributed to the widespread pluriformity of textual traditions, including those that were eventually codified in the scriptural canons of Judaism and Christianity.

Copyright Year: 2026

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-74934-4
Publication: 22 Dec 2025
EUR €121.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-74933-7
Publication: 18 Dec 2025
EUR €121.00

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Kaufman, Phoenicia, Carthage, and Popular Government in the Pre-Classical Mediterranean (OUP)

NEW BOOK FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Phoenicia, Carthage, and Popular Government in the Pre-Classical Mediterranean

The Other Democracy

Brett Kaufman

£99.00
Hardback
Published: 26 December 2025
320 Pages | 57 figures and 3 maps
234x156mm
ISBN: 9780198867685

Also Available As:
E-book

Description

From Aristotle to John Adams, great minds of government have revered Carthaginian democracy as the purest expression of a people's will. Yet today, while Phoenician influence on the Graeco-Roman worlds has been revisited and corrected from the perspectives of art, architecture, industry, crafts, and writing systems, the sphere of government in general and constitutional democracy in particular are still largely, and incorrectly, considered to be purely within the preserve of ancient Greece or Athens.

This book is the first comprehensive treatment of Phoenician government, drawing on archaeological, epigraphic, and historical sources. The Phoenicians introduced a brand of state-level society that enfranchised not only men, but also women, children, and even slaves into the popular assembly. Phoenician governmental leaders fostered a foreign and domestic policy that emphasized development, political stability, and economic growth insured by mutual incentives, as well as shared ritual practice, marriage alliances, social mobility, and concern for commoners, at home and abroad. This sustainable form of global leadership lasted for around eight centuries (~1000–146 BC).

This work in no way attempts to diminish the exceptional Athenian democracy and its subsequent positive effects on political history and the peoples who have benefited from its legacy. Rather this work amplifies ancient Greek democracy to help us better understand its origins, as well as expanding democratic heritage. In turn, it serves as an historical corrective that recenters democracy as a conversation and a competition between peoples as opposed to a monolithic institution. It highlights an alternative model of imperial democracy.

Cross-file under Phoenician Watch and Punic Watch. There's a lot of interest lately in Phoenicia and Carthage. It's not just me.

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Religion at Carthage 800 BCE-439 CE (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Religion at Carthage 800 BCE-439 CE

From Baal-Hammon to Christ

Series:
Vigiliae Christianae, Supplements, Volume: 191

Volume Editors: Jane Merdinger, Jesse A. Hoover, and Nancy Weatherwax

This volume investigates the rich spectrum of religious practices and beliefs at Carthage from its foundation until the end of Roman rule. Essays analyse the metropolis’s Phoenician, Punic, and Graeco-Roman cults (all exhibiting a remarkable degree of assimilation and amalgamation), mystery cults, Judaism, and Manichaeism. A majority of essays comprehensively examine Christianity’s development (including persecution, martyrdom, Montanism, and Donatism) within Carthage’s multi-cultural environment. Utilizing methodologies from popular culture studies, biblical exegesis, cultural studies, and archaeology, contributors cover such innovative topics as: polytheistic religiosity; Jewish identity and devotional life based on a recently discovered ancient synagogue near Carthage; and challenges experienced by St. Augustine as a guest-preacher to rambunctious congregations at Carthage.

Copyright Year: 2025

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-73859-1
Publication: 01 Dec 2025
EUR €183.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-73858-4
Publication: 04 Dec 2025
EUR €183.00

Cross-file under Punic Watch.

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New evidence for the construction of Cartagena's city wall.

PUNIC WATCH: How Carthage Organized the Construction of Its Great Wall in Hispania: A Unique Case in the Ancient Mediterranean (Guillermo Carvajal, LBV).

A geoarchaeological study identifies that the mud bricks were manufactured 7–8 km from the site, demonstrating detailed knowledge of the territory and a centralized political organization under Barcid rule.

The headline is a little confusing. It's point is that the North African city Carthage organized the construction of the city wall of its namesake, Carthage or New Carthage, it's chief colonial city in Spain. That is the modern city of Cartagena, about which you have already heard a great deal from me.

The underlying open-access article, cited at the end of the LBV piece, is Cutillas-Victoria B, Ramallo Asensio SF, Martín Camino M. "Landscape exploitation and middle-distance supply of mudbricks for the Carthaginian rampart of Qart Hadasht (Spain)." Antiquity. Published online 2026:1-19. doi:10.15184/aqy.2025.10276.

Abstract

Founded in 228/227 BCE, the Carthaginian city of Qart Hadasht in southern Spain became the principal Punic political centre and military port in the western Mediterranean. Its defensive architecture featured a robust casemate wall composed of an outer sandstone face and inner mudbrick walls. Here, the authors present the geoarchaeological analysis of the earthen materials used in the construction of this wall. The results reveal differences in composition and provenance between mudbricks and mud mortars, with the former sourced across distances of 7–8km, highlighting the detailed knowledge of hinterland resources and complex political organisation involved in the wall’s construction.

For PaleoJudaica posts on Cartagena, its Annual Festival of the Carthaginians and Romans, and its history and archaeology, see the links collected here. For a very quick history review, see here. And for more on that Punic-era city wall (which in the end did not save the city) and other Punic archaeological remains, see here.

Cross-file under Ancient Fortification.

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