A flute played on Yom Kippur

DR. MENACHEM KATZ: The Baal Shem Tov and the Boy who Played Flute on Yom Kippur (TheGemara.com).

A Talmudic reading of a Hassidic tale—and vice versa.

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Precedents for the Yom Kippur War?

DR. NADAV SHARON: An Ancient Precedent for the Yom Kippur War? (TheTorah.com).

Two Roman conquests of Jerusalem (Pompey in 63 B.C.E. and Sosius in 37 B.C.E.) purportedly happened on “the day of the fast,” during which the Jews barely defended themselves. Is this a reference to Yom Kippur and why didn’t the Jews defend themselves?

Perhaps.

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Kapparah

YONA SABAR: Hebrew Word of The Week: kapparah "expiatory sacrifice; atonement" כפרה. Timely

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Moss and Baden, Bible Nation

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS: Scholars Highlight Hobby Lobby Owners' Path From Retail Giant to Bible Curators (Shannon Hill, Publisher's Weekly).

In 2010, the owners of retail giant Hobby Lobby started buying something that would never grace the shelves of its crafting megastore: biblical artifacts. Since that time, the Green family has accumulated over 40,000 items that range from fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Elvis Presley’s personal Bible. Much of their collection—one of the largest private collections in the world—will be displayed at their new Museum of the Bible, set to open in Washington, D.C. this November. But biblical scholars Candida Moss and Joel Baden question the ethics behind some of the Green’s acquisitions and the way the museum is being presented as a nonsectarian “Christian Smithsonian.” Their new book, Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby (Princeton University Press, Oct.), provides an investigative look into the Green’s collection and their Museum of the Bible, making a case for how the powerful evangelical family is trying to dominate the story of the Bible.

A brief interview with the authors follows. And follow the link in the excerpt above for a brief review.

For past PaleoJudaica posts on Hobby Lobby, the Museum of the Bible, and the Greek Collection, start here (cf. here and here) and follow the links. For a recent article by the authors, see here.

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Ancient Judaism, philosophy, and early Christianity

THE OUP BLOG: Stoicism, Platonism, and the Jewishness of Early Christianity (Troels Engberg-Pedersen).

This new understanding raises a question that may be worth pondering: is Stoicism better suited than Platonism to capture, express, and articulate the Jewishness of Early Christianity? That is, can one understand why early Christian writers, like Paul and John, may have felt that Stoic ideas were more congenial than Platonic ones for bringing out their own understanding of God, Jesus Christ, the ‘Spirit’ and the meaning of these three entities for human beings?

The author's new book John and Philosophy: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel came out earlier this year with OUP.

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Review of Afterman, '“And They Shall Be One Flesh”

H-JUDAIC BOOK REVIEW: Hecker on Afterman, '“And They Shall Be One Flesh”: On​ The ​L​anguage of Mystical Union in Judaism​'.

Adam Afterman. “And They Shall Be One Flesh”: On​ The ​L​anguage of Mystical Union in Judaism​. Supplements to The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy Series. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2016. Illustrations. x + 279 pp. $145.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-90-04-32872-3.

Reviewed by Joel Hecker (Reconstructionist Rabbinical College)
Published on H-Judaic (September, 2017)
Commissioned by Katja Vehlow

In this first book-length historical overview of mystical union in the Jewish tradition, the thesis is stated succinctly in the introduction (chapter 1): “The history of Jewish unitive language is constituted of ... two trends: the lineage of Philonic or Neoplatonic mystical union, in which the human is elevated to God’s dwelling and becomes one with Him; and the lineage of mystical embodiment, the notion of the divine indwelling by means of its name, light and spirit, in the midst of the human” (p. 3). Adam Afterman contends that the historical arc traces a movement that begins with the upward unitive trajectory predominating, until the downward integrative dynamic took the fore, corresponding to a gradual historical shift of religious focus from the Godhead to the human body and psyche in premodern and modern Jewish mysticism. In Afterman’s telling, medieval Judaism posited metaphysical structures extending between God and man that allowed for spiritual or intellectual ascent, leading to forms of intimacy and union with God and the development of new forms of religious expression.

[...]

Not surprisingly, Philo of Alexandria has a prominent place early in the book.

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Ezrah

YONA SABAR: Hebrew Word of the Week: ezrah "help, assistance, strength" עזרה.

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Yom Kippur 2017

YOM KIPPUR, the Day of Atonement, begins this evening at sundown. An easy fast to all those observing it.

For background and past posts on Yom Kippur, follow the links collected here in last year's post.

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Israel gives UNESCO replica of Arch of Titus

GOOD TROLLING: In unsubtle critique, Israel gifts UNESCO Arch of Titus replica. Cultural agency's chief Irina Bokova accepts frieze of menorah being carted off by Romans as 'recognition of the strength of our partnership with Israel' (Raphael Ahren, Times of Israel).

Shama-Hacohen handed the replica to UNESCO’s outgoing director-general Irina Bokova, who, in her speech, offered a more subtle critique of one-sided anti-Israel resolutions passed routinely by her organization’s member states.

I'm sure Ms. Bokova was in on the joke. Too bad she's stepping down next month.

Background on the recent and often unhelpful UNESCO resolutions mentioned in the article is here and links.

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They found *what* in a jar in an ancient tomb?

DISCOVERY: 4,000-YEAR-OLD DECAPITATED TOADS DISCOVERED IN ANCIENT JERUSALEM TOMB (Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post).

This sounds like the beginning of a B horror movie involving mummies. If I were there, I would leave fast.

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Abrams, The Jewish Journey

FORTHCOMING SOON: New book shines spotlight on Ashmolean's Jewish treasures (Andrew Ffrench, The Oxford Mail).

A NEW book is to shine a spotlight on 22 little-known treasures at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, revealing the 4,000-year history of the Jewish people.

[...]

They range from a 2000-year-old Dead Sea Scroll jar, to be displayed by the museum next month for the very first time since its purchase in 1952, to a forged English banknote made by Jewish prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp.

[...]

The Jewish Journey: 4,000 Years in 22 Objects is being published by the Ashmolean Museum on Tuesday, October 17, priced £15.

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Another review of Hunt, "Hannibal"

PUNIC WATCH: 'Hannibal' is a biography told with a novelist's touch (David Walton, Dallas News).

Hannibal, Patrick N. Hunt's readable and accessible biography of the great Carthaginian general, reminds us how little we know about even the best-known historical figures.

"And let's not forget the elephants."

Past posts on the book are here and here.

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Conference in honor of Malachi Beit-Arié

AT HAMBURG UNIVERSITY: Manuscripts East and West – Towards Comparative and General Codicology. A Conference in Honour of Malachi Beit-Arié. Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Hamburg, 17 - 19 October 2017.

Malachi Beit-Arié is the Ludwig Jesselson Professor Emeritus of Codicology and Palaeography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the leading scholars in manuscript studies worldwide. He was head of the Hebrew Palaeography Project under the auspices of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and he served as the director of the Jewish National and University Library of Jerusalem from 1979 until 1990. He is also the founder and director of SfarData, the first online codicological database of dated mediaeval Hebrew manuscripts.

Malachi Beit-Arié's work has an enormous impact on contemporary research in comparative manuscript studies. Therefore CSMC has invited 25 colleagues to this conference in honour of his 80th birthday in May 2017 and his scholarly achievements. The scholars and scientists working on diverse Asian, African and European manuscript cultures will contribute to a general methodological re-assessment of manuscript research and to new comparative perspectives on codicology and palaeography.

Follow the link for further particulars.

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Review of Uusimäki, Turning Proverbs towards Torah

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Turning Torah Towards Proverbs: 4Q525 in Late Second Temple Perspective (Carson Bay).

Elisa Uusimäki, Turning Proverbs towards Torah: an Analysis of 4Q525. Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 117. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

Excerpt:

This work constitutes a robust study of a text which, it turns out, is quite important among the Qumran material due to what it can tell us about wisdom and torah as generic and intellectual categories among the Scrolls and within late Second Temple Judaism.

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Conjectural emendation

THE ETC BLOG: Trovato on why we need to face the ‘awkward problem’ of conjectural emendation (Peter Gurry).

I agree with much of the reasoning in this post, but I would like to see some bibliography to back up some of the statistical assertions. In any case, I fully agree that cautious use of conjectural emendation is necessary when dealing with ancient texts that have come down to us in a long manuscript tradition. This includes the New Testament.

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Dvorah

YONA SABAR: Hebrew Word of the Week: dvorah "bee"; "Deborah" דבורה.

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The Talmud on idolatry and sorcery

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: False Idols. Talmudic rabbis disagree on whether the action or the intention of veneration or protest is more important. Plus: Is magic holy?

Throughout this discussion, there is a certain ambiguity in the Talmudic attitude toward pagan gods. Are Jews supposed to refrain from worshipping idols because they are not really gods, or precisely because they are? In other words, is the sin of idol-worship a sin of frivolity, taking a thing of wood and stone for a divine being? Or is it a sin of disloyalty, preferring another divine being to the Jewish God? Today, we are usually taught the first explanation: Judaism invented ethical monotheism, replacing belief in many gods with belief in the one Creator of the universe.

But in the Talmud, things are not so clear. In Sanhedrin 67a, for instance, we learn that sorcery is another crime punishable by death in Jewish law. But this is not because sorcery is a lie; on the contrary, it is a crime because it is a very real and powerful form of trafficking with demons. The Hebrew word for sorcery, keshafim, is read by the rabbis as an acronym for the phrase “contradicts the heavenly entourage”: In other words, it involves calling up infernal powers to challenge the power of heaven. ...

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Herod and his family

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Herod the Great and the Herodian Family Tree. From Lawrence Mykytiuk's BAR article identifying real New Testament political figures.

More on Dr. Mykytiuk's list of externally verified New Testament persons, as well as his related research, is here and links. For past PaleoJudaica posts on Herod the Great and the Herodian family, see here (cf. here, here, and here) and links.

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More on the Lublin DSS conference

THE CONFERENCE PROGRAM IS NOW POSTED: The Dead Sea Scrolls Seventy Years Later. Manuscripts, Traditions, Interpretations, and Their Biblical Context. Johnn Paul II Catholic University of Lublin Institute of Biblical Studies, Lublin, Poland. October 25-26, 2017. The announcement has the indicated dates, but the program listings start on 24 October.

I noted the CFP for this conference last year here.

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Netanyahu

YONA SABAR: Hebrew Word of the Week: netanyahu "Netanyahu (proper name)" נתניהו.

I have fallen well behind on the Hebrew Word of the Week columns. I'll try to get caught up in the coming days.

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Epic-fantasy ancient Judea

NOVEL SERIES: “Game of Thrones” Meets the Ancient Middle East: An Interview with Daniel Arenson, Author of “Kings of Ruin” (Ilana Teitelbaum, HuffPost).

Dynastic politics, magic, and violence—Daniel Arenson’s new epic fantasy series, beginning with Kings of Ruin, has them all. Set in an alternate version of ancient Rome and Judea, the series recalls Game of Thrones with its political and sexual intrigues, brutality, and vivid characters. Arenson’s world is deeply imagined and inspired by historical events, even as it is infused with magic.

I caught up with Daniel to talk about his inspirations for the Kingdoms of Sand series, the magic of his world, and more.

[...]

If you like epic fantasy, you may want to give this series a try.

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Satlow on the Ten Commandments

MICHAEL SATLOW: What are the Ten Commandments? Excerpt:

In teaching this material the other day I was also left with another question: Exactly how important is the account of the giving of the Ten Commandments in the narrative of the Torah? In the DeMille movie, it is the climax of the Moses narrative. If you didn’t have such a preconception, though, would it really seem all that important or would it seem “flatter,” just one of the Torah’s many stories and law collections? I’m still pondering that one.

Good question.

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The "fifth" and "sixth" supplements to the Hexapla

SEPTUAGINT STUDIES BLOG: Origen’s Fifth and Sixth Greek Editions (JOHN MEADE). I'm not sure how much these accounts really tell us about the discoveries of these sources, but they are all we have.

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Review of Livesey, Galatians and the Rhetoric of Crisis

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Nina E. Livesey, Galatians and the Rhetoric of Crisis: Demosthenes - Cicero – Paul. Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2016. Pp. 273. ISBN 9781598151749. $26.00 (pb). Reviewed by Alexandra Gruca-Macaulay, Saint Paul University, Ottawa (amacaulay@ustpaul.ca).

The New Testament Letter to the Galatians continues to raise questions regarding the function of its sustained polemics against the primacy of Mosaic law and the requirement for male circumcision for gentile adherents to the early Christ movement. In Galatians and the Rhetoric of Crisis, Nina Livesey has sought to bring the Letter to the Galatians into a comparative analysis with selected passages from Demosthenes’ and Cicero’s Philippics from within a “rhetoric of crisis” framework, in an attempt to uncover “a viable explanation...for Paul’s stance regarding circumcision and Torah adoption of non-Jews” (p. 8).

[...]

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Review of Wendt, At the Temple Gates

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS: Marketing Religion in the Roman Empire. Sarah E. Rollens reviews At the Temple Gates by Heidi Wendt.

In her new book At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire, Heidi Wendt examines sociology of religion in the Roman Empire and attempts to discern how figures such as Paul marketed their religious ideas in urban spaces. Wendt explores popular religions’ key players in the Roman Empire (primary the first three centuries CE), and in doing so reflects a broad trend that examines religious competition within ancient cities and civic life.

[...]

The book and the review have a lot to say about Paul and other ancient Judean "self-authorized," "freelance experts" and their cultural context.

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Hapax legomenon

PHILOLOGY: Hapax legomenon: the classicist's googlewhack (Boing Boing). Hapax legomena are, of course, important for biblical studies and all areas of philology. There is a well-known book by Frederick Greenspahn on Hapax Legomena in Biblical Hebrew

At some point early in Google's history it was a thing to try to find a search term that gave back just one Google result. That is rather like a hapax legomenon. But I guess those days are gone entirely and now you need two terms together; hence the "googlewhack."

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Woes of the Barsavmo Monastery

ASSYRIAN (MODERN SYRIAC) WATCH: Historic Syriac monastery needs attention (Hurrieyet Daily News).

A 1,300-year-old historic rock monastery near the Barıştepe village in the southeastern province of Mardin’s Midyat district is waiting to be discovered.

Also known as the Mor Barsavmo Monastery, where Syriac priests are estranged, some of its outer walls collapsed because of negligence and some of the historic inscriptions were destroyed.

Rahibi Edip Daniel Savcı, the priest of the Mor Yakup Monastery, said: “We are few in number here, unfortunately we cannot protect structures like this.”

[...]

The 1,300 year-old Mor Barsavmo Monastery, which was built on a carved rock in a mountainous field and once was the center for Syriac priests, is waiting to be taken under protection.

[...]

There have been many difficulties for the Syriac Christians in the Mardin Governate of Turkey in recent years.

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Hurtado, Ancient Jewish Monotheism and Early Christian Jesus-Devotion

LARRY HURTADO: Selected Essays on Jesus-Devotion.

I’m pleased to have author’s copies of a volume of selected essays of mine: Ancient Jewish Monotheism and Early Christian Jesus-Devotion: The Context and Character of Christological Faith (Baylor University Press, 2017), the publisher’s online catalog entry here.

[...]

Cross-file under New Book.

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