Who Were the Phoenicians?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Who Were the Phoenicians? Exploring the Phoenician empire (Megan Sauter).

Who were the Phoenicians?
Where did they come from? Where did they live? With whom did they trade?

Ephraim Stern addresses these questions—and much more—in his article “Phoenicia and Its Special Relationship with Israel,” published in the November/December 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. He explores the rise and fall of the Phoenician empire and highlights the special relationship that the Phoenicians had with their neighbors, the Israelites.

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The article by Stern is behind a subscription wall, but the BHD essay is interesting in itself.

Now and again I like to remind readers why PaleoJudaica takes an interest in Phoenician and Punic, with a link to this post.

Cross-file under Phoenician Watch.

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

Another review of Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink

TALMUD WATCH: Getting Personal About The Talmud. Ilana Kurshan’s memoir about her journey through the ancient tractates (SANDEE BRAWARSKY, New York Jewish Week).

“If All the Seas Were Ink” by Ilana Kurshan (St. Martin’s) recounts the 7 ½-year period in which she participated in daf yomi, learning a page a day of Talmud. The details of her life unfold, not in a linear way, but through her engagement with all the tractates of the Talmud, the vast compendium of Jewish religious and commercial law and legends. Kurshan, who grew up on Long Island and now lives in Jerusalem, writes beautifully about the complexities of love, loss, shame, growth and the things that matter. Her voice is refreshingly modest, gently confident and profound.

Other works with fresh literary takes on the Talmud include “Six Memos from the Last Millennium: A Novelist Reads the Talmud” by Joseph Skibell and Jonathan Rosen’s “The Talmud and the Internet,” both memorable and original works. Kurshan’s is the most personal; her entry into the world of daf yomi was sparked by grief over her divorce after less than a year of marriage. While running the hills of Jerusalem, she learns that her running partner, who is not particularly observant, has just begun day yomi.

Earlier PaleoJudaica posts on the book are here and here.

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

Sahidic Coptic intensive course at Wuppertal

COPTIC WATCH: Wuppertal Coptic Intensive 2018 (Christian Askeland, ETC Blog). Christian is teaching the course in February of 2018. Follow the link for details.

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

Friedman et al., The Trial of the Talmud

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS: The Trial of the Talmud Anti-Judaism and the Talmud in Medieval French Society (Sarah Ifft Decker).

The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240, ed. John Friedman, Jean Connell Hoff, and Robert Chazan. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2017, 182 pp., $19.95

Excerpt from the review:

Gregory’s letters set into motion the series of events that have been termed “the Trial of the Talmud.” Nicholas Donin, a convert to Christianity who had received an extensive Jewish education, claimed that the Talmud was a human creation that the Jews valued over the Torah, and that it moreover contained blasphemous and anti-Christian teachings. If proved true, such accusations would justify banning the Talmud—a major blow to Jewish religious practice. Despite the efforts of Rabbi Yehiel of Paris, a scholar who acted as the chief Jewish representative, Donin proved his charges to the satisfaction of a hostile Christian jury, and copies of the Talmud were burned in 1241 or 1242.

The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240 brings together in English translation the primary source texts essential to understanding this series of events.These sources include a series of Latin letters, sent by and addressed to two popes, the Latin text of the accusations brought forth against the Talmud, and Latin records of the testimony of two learned Jews, as well as the substantial Hebrew account penned by Rabbi Yehiel and a Hebrew lament on the burning of the Talmud.

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Bauckham (ed.), Magdala, Jewish City of Fish

RICHARD BAUCKHAM has kindly sent me details of his forthcoming book, which I mentioned recently. For other past posts on Magdala, start there and follow the links.

MAGDALA, JEWISH CITY OF FISH

Edited by Richard Bauckham
Baylor University Press, autumn 2018

Contents

Chapter 1 Magdala As We Now Know It: An Overview
Richard Bauckham

Chapter 2 The Harbour
Anna Lena

Chapter 3 Domestic and Mercantile Areas
Marcela Zapata-Meza

Chapter 4 The Domestic Miqva’ot
Ronny Reich and Marcela Zapata-Meza

Chapter 5 The Synagogue
Mordechai Aviam

Chapter 6 The Synagogue Stone
Mordecai Aviam and Richard Bauckham

Chapter 7 Magdala and Trade
Santiago Guijarro

Chapter 8 Magdala and the Fishing Industry
Richard Bauckham

Chapter 9 Magdala and the Jewish Revolt
Morten Hørning Jensen

Chapter 10 Magdala in the List of the Twenty-Four Priestly Settlements
Richard Bauckham

Chapter 11 Magdala in Rabbinic Literature
Richard Bauckham

Chapter 12 The Prosopography
Richard Bauckham

Magdala Bibliography

Comprehensive Bibliography

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Reviews of books on ritual purity

BOOK REVIEWS: Purity and Obscurity (Shai Secunda, Jewish Review of Books). Dr. Secunda reviews three books on ancient Jewish ritual purity:

Taharah u-kehilla ba-eit ha-atikah: mesorot ha-halakhah ben Yahadut Bayit sheni la-Mishnah (Purity and Community in Antiquity: Traditions of the Law from Second Temple Judaism to the Mishnah)
by Yair Furstenberg
The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 479 pp., $42

Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature
by Mira Balberg
University of California Press, 262 pp., $90

At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity Among the Jews of Roman Galilee
by Stuart S. Miller
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 423 pp., $188

Posted online by Magnes Press, the publisher of the first book on the list.

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Besler, Rabbinic Tales of Destruction

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Disability Studies and Rabbinic Resistance to the Roman Conquest of Jerusalem (Julia Watts Belser).

Roman conquest leaves its mark on Jewish flesh. Whether through the physicality of war itself, the privations of famine, or the brutalities of sexual violence and enslavement, imperial dominance has powerful effect on the bodies of the conquered. In my new book, Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem, forthcoming in November 2017 from Oxford University Press, I argue that disability is central to the Jewish experience of conquest in late antiquity. I read rabbinic texts through the prism of disability studies theory, in order to probe the cultural and political significance of physical and mental difference in early Jewish culture. Rather than taking disability as a straightforward medical category, disability studies hones critical tools to analyze how societies construct and contest notions of normativity and deviance, illuminating the way disability becomes a site for negotiating stigma and social power. In rabbinic accounts of the destruction of Jerusalem, the disabled Jewish body serves both as a visceral occasion for lament and a potent site of protest against empire.

[...]

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Scholz on Reading the Bible in a Feminist Key

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Reading the Bible in a Feminist Key: Three Challenges for Feminist Biblical Interpretation Today

Yet despite these and many other scholarly accomplishments, feminist biblical interpreters face several cultural-intellectual challenges. They pertain to the pervasive ignorance about feminist biblical studies among lay and scholarly Bible readers, the persistence of essentialist views about gender in (feminist) biblical studies, and the overall lack of engaging feminist theories and practices in feminist biblical exegesis.

See Also: Introducing the Women's Hebrew Bible (Bloomsbury T&T Clark; 2 edition, 2017).

By Susanne Scholz
Professor of Old Testament
Southern Methodist University
October 2017

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Kalimi on Fighting Over the Bible

THE ASOR BLOG: Fighting Over the Bible: Jewish Interpretation, Sectarianism and Polemic from Temple to Talmud and Beyond (Isaac Kalimi).

The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament stands as an important sacred text for all branches of the Abrahamic faiths, although these maintain fundamentally different attitudes towards it. Nonetheless, far from unifying Jews, Christians and Muslims, the biblical texts divided them, and have regularly been used as weapons to condemn opponents – insiders and outsiders – rather than as tokens of unification and reconciliation.

Fighting Over the Bible, explores the roots of those interpretive conflicts, especially as they are reflected in pre-modern Jewish literature. It addresses the place of the Bible in Judaism, and the rich Jewish interpretative and theological methods that grew out of internal and external controversies in the Land of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. It illustrates how the study of the Scriptures filled the vacuum left by the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), and became the foundation for Jewish life and existence at all times and places.

The focus, however, is on Jewish texts from the late Second Temple, talmudic and medieval periods, that is from ca. the 2nd century BCE to the 16th century CE. The creative intellectual and spiritual activities of the Jews – including their Scriptures – are explored within the historical, political, social, economic, religious and academic circumstances of the societies among whom they lived.

[...]

I noted the publication of the book here earlier this year. This essay provides a useful summary of it.

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Inscribed Coptic tombstone partially deciphered

COPTIC WATCH: Newly discovered Coptic tombstone in Luxor belonged to a child: Study. The medieval headstone has been partially deciphered as studies continue (Nevine El-Aref, ahramonline).

A preliminary study carried out on the Coptic tombstone recently discovered in Luxor reveals that it belonged to a little girl named "Takla," who died at the age of ten sometime between the 7th and 10th centuries AD.

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Stay tuned!

Background here.

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Lecture on Armenian-Syriac relations

SYRIAC WATCH AND ARMENIAN WATCH: Ararat-Eskijian Museum Present a Lecture on Armenian-Syriac Relations (Asbarez).

MISSION HILLS, Calif. – Ararat-Eskijian Museum presents a talk by Onnik Kiremitlian entitled “Armenia-Syriac Cultural Relations and Armenian Translation of Syriac Literary Works” to take place on Sunday November 5 at 4pm at the Sheen Chapel of Ararat-Eskijian Museum (15105 Mission Hills Road, Mission Hills, Calif., 91345).

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Even if you can't make it to the lecture, the rest of the article is informative and worth reading.

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

Stephen Greenblatt on Adam and Eve

INTERVIEW: Stephen Greenblatt On How The Story Of Adam And Eve Shaped History (Talya Zax, The Forward).

Has there been a more consequential story to the history of humanity than that of Adam and Eve?

In the assessment of Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare scholar and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Swerve,” probably not. But for Greenblatt, the significance of the origin story of Abrahamic religions ranges past its tangibly profound impact on the course of western society, presenting an unmatched opportunity to explore the elusive yet absolute power of stories.

“This is fiction at its most fictional, a story that revels in the delights of make-believe,” Greenblatt writes in the introduction to his new book “The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve.”

“Yet millions of people, including some of the subtlest and most brilliant minds that have ever existed, have accepted the Bible’s narrative of Adam and Eve as the unvarnished truth.”

Greenblatt and I met to discuss the book. Read excerpts of that conversation, below.

[...]

Cross-file under New Book.

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Abraham as a hero?

PROF. EVERETT FOX: What Kind of Hero is Abraham? (TheTorah.com).

The lack of details surrounding God’s first call to Abram—לך לך, “go forth”—or about Abram’s trip to Canaan contrasts starkly with other biblical figures, highlighting that Abraham is not a typical hero.

A past post on Lord Raglan's typology of the Hero is here.

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Review of Brooke and Feldman (eds.), On Prophets, Warriors, and Kings

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | On Prophets, Warriors, and Kings Former Prophets through the Eyes of Their Interpreters (Joshua Matson).

George J. Brooke and Ariel Feldman eds., On Prophets, Warriors, and Kings: Former Prophets Through the Eyes of their Interpreters (BZAW 470), VI + 268 p., € 99,95, Berlin: De Gruyter 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-037738-5.

Excerpt:

When pieced together, these essays create a mosaic about biblical interpretation that is illuminating, challenging, insightful, and beneficial for any scholar related to the texts or reception of the Hebrew Bible.

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

Blade Runner 2049, the Bible, and Gnosticism

CINEMA: Forget it, Kinbote, it’s Chinatown: A Blade Runner 2049 reference guide (Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club).

Call it the ultimate tribute to the original’s religion-obsessed atheist director, Ridley Scott, a hodgepodge of crypto-Judeo-Christian references: the Nicene Creed, The Epistle To The Galatians, contrasting artificial women named Joi (Ana De Armas) and Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), a flight into the desert. And then there’s the successor to Tyrell’s fallen replicant-making empire, the aforementioned Niander Wallace, who took over the business after making a fortune on synthetic food. A very literal life-giver, feeding the huddled human masses trying to weather the global flood, hidden in his fortress headquarters (lit by reflections off pools of water, of course), where he tends and is tended to by his “angels,” the superhuman replicants.

Wallace speaks of battles at the gates of heaven and the wombs of Old Testament prophets’ wives as though narrating portentously. It should be noted that like Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost by dictation, he is blind. But this pseudo-poetic, antagonist world-builder isn’t very redolent of a personal Christian god, is he? He’s more like the demiurge of gnosticism, an old religious philosophy that obsessed Dick, the author of Blade Runner’s source novel, in his later years.

This is from a long review of the film that discusses the influences behind it, including biblical influences, in great detail. Worth reading in full, if you're interested in the film.

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Is the Bible true?

ARCHAEOLOGY: Is the Bible a True Story? Despite feverish searching with Scripture in one hand and cutting-edge technology in the other, evidence backing the Bible remains elusive. But there are some surprising anomalies (Nir Hasson, Haaretz).

Beauty and biblical evidence both lie in the eye of the beholder, it seems. No evidence of the events described in the Book of Genesis has ever been found. No city walls have been found at Jericho, from the appropriate era, that could have been toppled by Joshua or otherwise. The stone palace uncovered at the foot of Temple Mount in Jerusalem could attest that King David had been there; or it might belong to another era entirely, depending who you ask.

Archaeologists always hope that advances in technology will shed fresh light on at least part of this ancient mystery: Did the Bible really happen? So far, what discoveries there are, tend to indicate that at the least, the timelines are off.

[...]

In general, the writers of the Bible were not very interested in the sorts of historical questions that interest us. And archaeology is often not well suited to answer our historical questions either. So much of the actual (in our terms) history of ancient Israel remains a mystery and it is likely only loosely related to the biblical narratives.

In any case, go get your favorite beverage and sit down and read this long, balanced, and informative article before it vanishes behind the subscription wall.

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The Museum of the Bible is opening soon

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Museum of the Bible in the Spotlight. Washington, D.C. Bible museum invites dialogue (Robin Ngo and Megan Sauter).

A new museum dedicated to the best-selling book of all time will open next month in Washington, D.C.—just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. The Museum of the Bible is large and impressive. With a total square footage of 430,000, the museum boasts six floors, including part of a recreated first-century C.E. Jewish village, a ballroom, a performing arts hall, a rooftop garden with Biblical plants, and a 140-foot-long LED screen on the ceiling of the museum’s lobby. It would take a visitor 72 hours to see every artifact, read every placard, and participate in all of the museum’s activities.

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Some of the material in this essay is reproduced from the earlier BHD essay noted here. But some of the information is new. For other past posts on the Museum of the Bible, Hobby Lobby, and the Green Collection, start here and follow the many links.

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

Magdala

ARCHAEOLOGY: Magdala (Rhona Lewis, The Jewish Press).

If you haven’t heard of Magdala, it’s where you can find out about the unearthing of an ancient fishing port on the edge of the Kinneret and a first-century synagogue, one of only seven synagogues in the world from this period of time.

[...]

This is a nice overview of the fascinating discoveries at this site.

By the way, Richard Bauckham is editing a new book on Magdala and the ancient Galilean fishing industry, which is coming out soon. I will keep you posted as more information becomes available.

For many past PaleoJudaica posts on the discoveries at Magdala, start here and follow the links.

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

Library of Congress given Italian Talmud

TALMUD WATCH: Rome’s rabbi gifts Talmud to Library of Congress (Chris Mathews, Religion News Service).

WASHINGTON (RNS) — The Library of Congress got an Italian-Jewish present, brought all the way from Rome by its chief rabbi.

Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni of the Roman Jewish community on Monday (Oct. 23) presented the library the first volume of the first Talmud to be printed in Italy in 500 years.

[...]

For more on the recent translation of the Babylonian Talmud into Italian, see here and here.

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

Inscribed Coptic tombstone excavated at Luxor

COPTIC WATCH: Coptic tombstone unearthed at Sphinxes Avenue in Luxor. The object is carved of limestone and decorated with a cross and Coptic texts (Nevine El-Aref, ahramonline).

Egyptian archaeologists in Luxor have stumbled upon a decorative Coptic tombstone buried on the eastern side of the Sphinxes Avenue, under Al-Mathan Bridge.

The tombstone is carved of limestone and decorated with a cross and Coptic texts, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Ahram Online.

The exact date of the object has not yet been ascertained, nor the identity of the deceased. However, Mostafa Al-Saghir, director of the Sphinxes Avenue, said experts are now studying the tombstone find out.

[...]

The photographs are good enough for the surviving text to be readable. Enterprising Coptologists can have a go at deciphering it.

UPDATE (26 October): More here.

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Review of Wilke, Farewell to Shulamit

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Carsten Wilke, Farewell to Shulamit: Spatial and Social Diversity in the Song of Songs. Jewish thought, philosophy and religion, 2. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2017. Pp. viii, 170. ISBN 9783110500547. $91.99. Reviewed by Susan Sorek, Oxford Continuing Education (suzor16@hotmail.co.uk).

The Song of Songs has long been the focus of various conflicting debates amongst Old Testament scholars. Is it theological allegory, a story, or a compilation of erotic folksongs? There is only one constant throughout the Song, the central female character Shulamit, who appears to embody an ideal ‘norm’ of womanhood. Wilke examines the text in terms of spatial diversity and finds that the Song displays a discontinuous cycle of personal encounters within urban, rural and pastoral scenes. Then he attempts to contextualise the Song by comparing it with the conventions of Hellenistic love poetry and with the ritual symbolism of Dionysian cult, within the historical framework of the multiethnic borderland east of the Jordan.

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

Septuagint Studies Supervision (3)

WILLIAM ROSS: SUPERVISORS & PROGRAMS FOR SEPTUAGINT STUDIES – PART III. Part three in a three-part series. I noted part one here and part two here.

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The Shekel Prize

NUMISMATICS: New book prize created by AINA (Numismatic News).

A new award called the Shekel Prize has been created by the board of directors of the American Israel Numismatic Association.

It is to be given annually to the author of the best book published on the subject of Ancient Judaea, Holy Land, Israel or Jewish Numismatics.

[...]

The first prize winner is Yoav Farhi, author of “Khirbet Qeiyafa Vol. 5: Excavation Report 2007–2013, The Numismatic Finds: Coins and Related Objects.” Other contributors to this volume are C. Lorber, S. Shalev and S. Shilstein. The Shekel Prize medal will be presented later this year in a ceremony in Israel.

[...]

It is good to hear of this new award. Congratulations to Yoav Farhi and colleagues.

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

Penn State acquires Eisenbrauns

CHANGE: Penn State University Press acquires Eisenbrauns as new imprint. Eisenbrauns has been a major publisher for scholarly books on the Bible and the Ancient Near East for a long time.

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

Aramaic "Pseudo-Daniel"

IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: What the Bible Doesn’t Tell You About Daniel (Exclusive) (Andrew Perrin, Christian Week).

Most would know Daniel as a sage, courtier, dream interpreter, and lion tamer. If you’ve read sections of the Apocrypha you’ll also know him as a dragon slayer. Yet Daniel’s resume in the Dead Sea Scrolls was even broader. We gain glimpses of this from a newly discovered Aramaic text suitably called Pseudo-Daniel.

All of the Danielic material is pseudepigraphic, including the biblical Book of Daniel. So "Pseudo-Daniel" isn't a very descriptive title. But the text gives us some new legends about the figure of Daniel.

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Provenance issues with a Coptic Galatians manuscript

THE BIBLE NATION: Is An Ancient Text In The Museum of the Bible Real Or Fake? Sketchy doesn't even begin to describe the controversy surrounding artifacts in the new Museum of the Bible, which is backed by evangelicals investigated for illicit artifacts (Candida Moss and Joel Baden, The Daily Beast).

In 2014, an exhibit of biblical artifacts was displayed with great fanfare at the Vatican. Called “Verbum Domini,” or “The Word of the Lord,” it featured items from the Green Collection, which had been amassed by the owners of Hobby Lobby, the Green family of Oklahoma City. That collection of artifacts amassed by the evangelical family is part of the controversial soon to be opened Museum of the Bible.

Along with rare fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a first edition of the King James Bible were lesser-­known items, including some never-­before-­seen ancient biblical manuscripts.

Among the two hundred artifacts was a papyrus fragment of the New Testament. Its edges are frayed, but it is clearly decipherable: the text is from the second chapter of the book of Galatians. It is written in Coptic, the language of Egyptian Christianity for much of the first millennium. While visually it looks like Greek, because it uses many Greek letters, the script hints at the papyrus’s origins in the arid climate of late antique Egypt. Given its small size—­about four inches by four inches—­most visitors probably gave it little more than a passing glance. But it immediately caught the eye of Roberta Mazza, a papyrologist from the University of Manchester. Although this was the first public display of the papyrus, Mazza had seen it before: it had been offered for sale on eBay less than two years earlier.

[...]

This article is adapted from the authors' new book, Bible Nation, on which more here and links. For many past posts on the Museum of the Bible, Hobby Lobby, and the Green Collection, see here and here and follow the links.

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

A political science professor looks at the Talmud

TALMUD WATCH: Talmud as seen by a political scientist (Ira Sharkansky, San Diego Jewish World).

JERUSALEM — For something like 15 years, I’ve been studying Talmud Shabbat mornings for an hour or so with a religious (i.e., Orthodox) neighbor. We’ve been friends for more than 40 years, since we were both at the University of Wisconsin.

I’ve commented several times, perhaps not to his delight, and to other religious friends, also not to their delight, that the experience has made me more Jewish but less religious.

The short explanation is that I perceive what is trivial and even ridiculous in the holy text, along with considerable wisdom and much to admire intellectually.

[...]

A thoughtful and wide-ranging overview of the topic by a nonspecialist.

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Whales during the Flood

TALMUD WATCH: Was there room for whales in the ark? The rabbis wondered how the majestic sea-creatures survived the Flood (Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum, The Jewish Chronicle). Noted because the article cites passages from the Babylonian Talmud and Midrash Genesis Rabbah about the fate of aquatic creatures during the Flood. The author gives specific references, which is helpful. I have not checked the references myself, but there you have them.

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