John Jarrick (ed.) with Holly Thompson, Society for Old Testament Study Book List 2017 (= JSOT 41.5) (London: Sage, 2017).For the first time I can recall, the Book List has not been made available to subscriber on the Sage website by the time the hard copies have gone out. But you should be able to access it eventually here. It might even be there by the time you read this.
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Many of the issues discussed are familiar case studies in Roman provincial administration: Cicero’s governorship in Cilicia, Pliny’s letters from Bithynia, Judea as presented in both the New Testament as well as Josephus, the Roman diaspora in the provinces, etc. Several provincial rebellions challenged the Roman peace, ranging from Arminius’ ambush at the Teutoburger Wald/Kalkriese, a unique case of a rebellion that led to a permanent loss of territorial control, to a slew of failed rebellions: Tacfarinas in North Africa, Boudicca in Britain, and the three great Jewish rebellions. Goldsworthy raises an important point: by the High Empire, schismatic rebellion had all but ceased. Even the Jews, the religiously inspired arch-rebels of the Roman world, who had previously carved their own kingdom out of the flailing Seleucid Empire, did not revolt again after the failure of the Bar Kochba rising. The end of schismatic revolt is all the more puzzling given that such actions would have been more than feasible during the chaotic Third Century Crisis. But all subsequent rebels posed as pretenders rather than schismatics (including Postumus in Gaul and Zenobia as regent for her son), aspiring to rule the whole empire rather than separate themselves permanently from it.
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And what can we learn by comparing it to another ancient book mentioned in the Bible, Sefer HaYashar (The Book of the Upright)?I wrote about lost books quoted in the Hebrew Bible, including these two, in my article "Quotations from Lost Books in the Hebrew Bible: A New Translation and Introduction" in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume one (ed. Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov; Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 673-698.
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As Christianity spread into the Roman World, one of the major, growing, cults that it faced was the worship of the ascended, deified, Roman Emperors—and eventually the worship of living Emperors. It is well–known that this practice forms part of the background for the book of Revelation and also for many additional passages found in the New Testament.There are many past PaleoJudaica posts on the site of Herculaneum, which was destroyed and buried at the same time as Pompeii by the eruption of Vesuvius. (Start here and follow the links.)
So, where did all this take place? To my knowledge, there is only one almost completely preserved structure known where this occurred. It is called the Sacellum (chapel/temple) of the Augustales (priests in charge of Emperor Worship) that was excavated at Herculaneum—near Pompeii. In this and the following post, I will share some images of this very unique structure.
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... Of all the issues that perplex the Jewish people and the wider world, none is so troubling is the primal one — what, after all, links us to the people, the land and the faith of distant antiquity as described in the Bible?Some past posts on Professor Weitzman's research are here, here, here, here, here and links. His work on genetic studies is particularly relevant to this book.
An answer is proposed in “The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age” by Steven Weitzman (Princeton University Press), the Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania. He has studied and mastered the scholarship of Jewish origins, and he seeks to explain exactly what “connects all Jews into a single people, religion, or community; the very beginning of their collective story.”
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The incentive for that study was the discovery of a detailed petroglyph that Reeves subsequently interpreted as showing a Roman officer carrying out a religious ceremony at a location on one of Humayma’s sandstone ridges.I noted an article on the site of Hawara recently here. Hawara is the ancient name of the city. The modern name of the site in Jordan is Humayma (or Humeima). It is not to be confused with the Hawara (Huwara) on the West Bank (see here and here).
“I returned in 2014 to survey the ridge associated with the petroglyph, along with some sites on the adjacent landmasses,” Reeves said.
“During that survey, more than 150 petroglyphs, 20 inscriptions [Greek, Nabataean and Thamudic], 2 betyl niches and numerous recent Arabic inscriptions were documented in association with 15 human activity areas.
“The petroglyphs were carved into vertical and horizontal faces and on both natural and human-modified surfaces, showing wild and domesticated animals, hunting scenes, armed humans standing and riding, human worshippers, human footprints, gods, and symbols,” she said.
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Between the first and sixth centuries C.E., a group of sages that scholars refer to as the rabbinic community systematized their ideas about Judaism in works such as the Mishnah and the Talmud. David M. Grossberg offers a new approach to thinking about this community's formation. Rather than seeking an occasion of origin, he examines the gradual development of the idea of an authorized rabbinic collective. The classical rabbinic texts imagine a diverse setting of Sadducees, Pharisees, sinners, and sectarians interacting in complex and changing ways with pious sages, teachers, and judges. Yet this representation aligns only vaguely with the social reality in which these ancient sages actually lived and operated. The author contends that these texts' primary aim was not to describe real rabbinic opponents but to create and enforce boundaries between piety and impiety and between legitimate and illegitimate teachings. In this way, the emerging rabbinic movement set standards of inclusion and exclusion in the community of righteous Israel and established the bounds of the community aspiring to lead them, the rabbinic community itself.
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The Torah describes Moses building a copper serpent to heal the Israelites. According to Kings, Hezekiah destroys it because it was being worshiped. Archaeology and history clarify the religious and political meaning of this image.A past PaleoJudaica post touching on Philo's use of the bronze serpent story is here.
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At 176 folio pages, Tractate Bava Batra is the longest in the Babylonian Talmud; in the Daf Yomi cycle, it takes six months to complete. Over the last two weeks, Daf Yomi readers began the 10th and final chapter of the tractate, in which the rabbis take up a very practical question: How is a valid legal document prepared? Throughout Bava Batra, we have learned about many kinds of transactions that involve written documents, including promissory notes, deeds of sale, deeds of gift, and wills. In modern society, such transactions usually leave a long documentary trail, because they involve lawyers, registrars, and probate courts. In Talmudic-era society, however, the physical possession of a signed piece of paper was the standard way to prove a claim of ownership or a debt. Such documents would ordinarily be written by professional scribes, who knew the legal formulas involved. But how should a document be composed to assure its authenticity and minimize the opportunity for forgery?There is a lot of indirect information about the material culture of ancient documents in this passage.
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LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 10, 2017) – University of Kentucky Provost Tim Tracy announced today that the former head of one of the most highly regarded honors programs in the country will be the first dean of the Lewis Honors College.Chris Brady is a longstanding blogger at the Targuman Blog. His work on the Aramaic Targumim, especially the Targum of Ruth, is well known to PaleoJudaica readers. Start here and follow the links.
Christian Brady for 10 years — from 2006 to 2016 — served as dean of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State University. Previously, he directed the honors program at Tulane University. At Penn State, Schreyer — under Brady’s leadership — raised more than $80 million to enhance honors education, developed a renowned leadership academy, and tripled applications to the college while also increasing selectivity.
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Israeli authorities arrested two antiquities thieves in the West Bank who were attempting to make off with artifacts dating back to the Byzantine era, the IDF’s Civil Administration said on Monday.Smugglers stole columns from a church? Good grief!
A spokesperson for the Defense Ministry agency — which oversees Israeli civilian activity in the West Bank — said that the two Palestinian suspects were arrested between the West Bank city of Bethlehem and the settlement of Tekoa with three columns from a nearby Byzantine church inscribed with pseudo-Greek text in the back of their work truck.
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A while back, Jim Davila asked whether the card game included certain extracanonical Jewish texts, and I told him that if he gave me a list, I could make a deck with whatever works he wishes. Some of the ones he mentioned were already in the Old Testament/Jewish Bible deck, and so he substituted a few others.The new deck is now available. Follow the link for ordering information.
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Meir Ben Shahar, "A Future and a Hope" in Babylonia: Three Sayings of Rav as a Diasporan Manifesto; pp. 101-121(21)
Abstract:
The Jewish Diaspora is often viewed as the paradigm of exile, which implies longing for a place from which a people has been forcibly expelled. This article interprets three sayings by Rav in the Babylonian Talmud as reflecting an alternative ideology, in which living outside the Holy Land is not seen as regrettable or shameful, for God is revealed through the Jewish people's observance of the Torah and the commandments everywhere. Although the relevant sugya in BT Ta'anit 29a–b opens with catastrophe – the destruction of the Temple – Rav's three sayings here exude optimism, implying that a good life is attainable wherever Jews reside. Every moment of Torah study is the realization of the "future and hope" promised by the prophet Jeremiah.
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In Jethro and the Jews, Beatrice J. W. Lawrence examines rabbinic texts that address the biblical character of Jethro, a Midianite priest, Moses’ advisor and father-in-law, and the creator of the system of Jewish jurisprudence. Lawrence explores biblical interpretations in Midrash, Targum and Talmud, revealing a spectrum of responses to the presence of a man who straddles the line between insider and outsider. Ranging from character assassination to valorization of Jethro as a convert, these interpretive strategies reveal him to be a locus of anxiety for the rabbis concerning conversion, community boundaries, intermarriage, and non-Jews.
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My work primarily focuses on ideas about martyrdom, death, suffering, and afterlife in the New Testament and literature of Early Christianity. I have additional interests in disability theory and theology, religion and public life, the Bible and education, and cultural heritage.
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How fitting that sculptor David Breuer-Weil’s Philosopher — a mammoth bronze head assembled from smashed-up and reconstituted plaster — should be made following his discovery that he is a direct descendant of philosopher Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the celebrated Maharal of Prague.The sculptures apparently are not intended to depict golems, but some of them could certainly could pass for golems.
“You can imagine my surprise when I learned in a recently published book that the Maharal was my great-grandfather 14 generations down,” he tells me. “It puts a different emphasis on making figurative sculptures if you are related to the Maharal who, according to legend, made the ‘Golem of Prague’.”
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In spite of a very busy schedule, he is committed to his daily study of the Talmud, which he says is filled with “the most tremendous imagery” of every aspect of life. He credits the Talmud with fuelling his creativity, resulting in paintings with “multiple layers of meaning and complex imagery”.
Breuer-Weil’s art constitutes “ways of philosophising about life in a visual way”. In recent years, this has culminated in a series of monumental sculptures, themed around the human body, be it through the creation of feet, a head, or the body in its entirety. Although all are colossal in size, their fragility and vulnerability is rendered through texture and context.
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Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Volume 1 (Eerdmans, 2013).If any of you have used the book for your research, teaching, or other creative projects, I would be grateful if you would give me a little information about how you used it.
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The ancient text, known to scholars as Codex L17, contains only Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings and 2 Kings. Researcher Kim Phillips wrote in an article the Tyndale Bulletin that he determined that the author was the scribe Samuel ben Jacob, or “Samuel, son of Jacob,” and that it was written around the year 975.This story reached the blogosphere late last week. I noted it here. But it's good to see the mainstream media taking some notice.
Samuel ben Jacob also wrote The Leningrad Codex, the earliest known complete copy of the Hebrew Bible, completed in the year 1008 and the basis for many modern biblical translations.
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A relative newcomer to the debate, [microbiologist Chris] Allen insists that until now no hard material evidence has been presented that would indicate the most likely path. “Nada, zero, zip, zilch,” he says. “Everything has been guesswork based on readings of the classical texts.” He believes that he and his team of collaborators—led by Canadian geomorphologist Bill Mahaney—recently unearthed the first compelling clues, thanks to a massive patty of ancientmanure.Allen's theory that this is the trail left by Hannibal's army during his crossing of the Alps in the Second Punic War. But it is controversial. I have already noted the theory here, but this Smithsonian article is a very detailed treatment of it and is worth reading.
Embedded 16 inches deep in a bog on the French side of the Traversette is a thin layer of churned-up, compacted scat that suggests a large footfall by thousands of mammals at some point in the past. “If Hannibal had hauled his traveling circus over the pass, he would have stopped at the mire to water and feed the beasts,” reasons Allen. “And if that many horses, mules and, for that matter, elephants did graze there, they would have left behind a MAD.” That’s the acronym for what microbiologists delicately term a “mass animal deposition.”
By examining sediment from two cores and a trench—mostly soil matted with decomposed plant fiber—Allen and his crew have identified genetic materials that contain high concentrations of DNA fragments from Clostridia, bacteria that typically make up only 2 or 3 percent of peat microbes, but more than 70 percent of those found in the gut of horses. The bed of excrement also contained unusual levels of bile acids and fatty compounds found in the digestive tracts of horses and ruminants. Allen is most excited about having isolated parasite eggs—associated with gut tapeworms—preserved in the site like tiny genetic time capsules.
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And I went off and sat down at the waters of Dan, in the land of Dan, to the south of the west of Hermon: I read their petition till I fell 8 asleep. And behold a dream came to me, and visions fell down upon me, and I saw visions of chastisement, and a voice came bidding (me) I to tell it to the sons of heaven, and reprimand them.
(Charles translation)
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