THE SBL FORUM FOR OCTOBER has lots of goodies. Some highlights (but have a look yourself):

Stefan C. Reif has a piece on "A Fresh Set of Genizah Texts." This is a nice summary of the contents of the Cairo Geniza in general, with special reference to biblical studies. But it also surveys the contents of the recently discovered Cairo Geniza material in Geneva. Excerpt:

What then has been added to all this wealth of data by the new finds in Geneva, recently described for us by Professor Rosenthal? Apparently, these 350 items constitute a microcosm of Genizah material, since all the topics that are already represented in existing Genizah collections around the world are also to be found among the Geneva texts. Here too the Hebrew Bible has a place of honor, and there is a sixth century palimpsest containing a Greek Bible translation as well as fragments of text, translation, and Masoretic comment. There are also remnants of Sa'adya Gaon's translation of the Pentateuch into Arabic and also of the translation and commentary he prepared for the book of Daniel. As often in Genizah collections, the work of that tenth century head of the Sura academy in Iraq appears and reappears among the Geneva manuscripts, sometimes in the form of previously unknown comments and compositions. These will undoubtedly attract the attention of Bible scholars, Hebraists, and philologists, and one hopes that the texts are being conserved quickly and will soon be digitized so that they can be widely accessible.

Meanwhile, Rosenthal has enlightened us about those items that are of special interest to himself and his colleagues. There are fragments with precise dates, always a welcome discovery for paleographers, since it assists with the process of assigning dates to the vast majority of items that remain undated. The Mishnah is well represented in versions from the Jewish homeland, mostly with Tiberian pointing but in one case with the Babylonian variety, and sometimes reflecting a different order of the tractates. There are folios from the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds and it is especially exciting to hear that some of these belong to a single codex, the original parts of which are today scattered among libraries in Cambridge, Oxford, and New York. The poems include one that eulogizes a bridegroom who died before his wedding day and another by Dunash ibn Labrat that confirms a textual restoration suggested thirty years ago by the late Professor Ezra Fleischer. There is also additional evidence for the recovery of the liturgical rite of the land of Israel in pre-Crusader times, a lengthy astrological treatise, and medical recipes.

Among what may be dubbed the more "historical" items is a bifolium on vellum that recounts in Hebrew the journeys of Alexander of Macedon. This will be of special interest to those who see a growing interest in history and chronology on the part of some Jewish communities of the early medieval period. There are also documents and letters that provide additional information about personalities, particularly from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, who are already known to us from other Genizah collections. Some of these were distinguished rabbis, but there are also more ordinary folk and in one case a somewhat disreputable figure, at least in the eyes of the religious establishment of the day. Wuhsha was a wealthy woman banker who lived with a Muslim and bore him a child. This so distressed the rabbis that she was ejected from the synagogue on Yom Kippur. This did not discourage her from leaving money to Jewish communal institutions in her last will, and this undoubtedly gave her the last word in the controversy.

Read it all.

Stephen C. Carlson has identified another manuscript forgery of Mark. This guy just doesn't let up. "'Archaic Mark' (MS 2427) and the Finding of a Manuscript Fake."

Carl Kinbar writes on "Open Access and the SBL." Much of the material he cites as examples has to do with ancient Judaism.