On Satan

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Who Is Satan? The many forms of the devil in the Bible (John Gregory Drummond). This is a good brief treatment of the topic.

There are many past PaleoJudaica posts on Satan/the Devil. Start here and follow the links. He is also sometimes known as Azazel or Belial.

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

Miller, The dragon, the mountain, and the nations

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: The Dragon, the Mountain, and the Nations. Notice of a new book: Miller II, Robert D. 2018. The dragon, the mountain, and the nations: An Old Testament myth, its origins, and its afterlives. Eisenbrauns. Follow the link for a description and ordering information.

Fun fact: "The dragon is always conquered."

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

Neis on likeness and reproduction in the Mishnah

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: When Species Meet in the Mishnah (R.R. Neis).

In what follows, I highlight several sources that point to a rabbinic theory of reproduction that has a weak commitment to the dictates of mimetic resemblance. This theory accommodates -- if uneasily-- non-like progeny as members of their parents’ kind. It does this, in part, by recognizing likeness across kinds. Moreover, it embeds humans among other kinds, not only conceptually or comparatively but also gestationally, into the heart of the reproductive process.

This is the first essay in the new AJR Animal Forum.

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

Dangerous old books

THE NSEA BLOG: DANGER! BOOKS! Notice of a new thematic issue of the journal Henoch on the subject of "Dangerous Books."

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

Mary Douglas and Leviticus

PROF. GARY A. RENDSBURG: Leviticus as a Literary Tabernacle (TheTorah.com).

The late British anthropologist Mary Douglas proposed that Leviticus was designed to reflect the structure of the Tabernacle, which in turn reflects the division of space during the revelation at Mount Sinai. In this reading, the two screens or curtains that divide the Tabernacle are represented by Leviticus’ only two narratives.

I have a couple of posts on the work of Dame Mary Douglas here and here.

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

Josephus and the archaeology of Jerusalem

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

New Archaeological Data from The Great Revolt in Jerusalem Raise New Questions on Josephus

The last decades yielded many new findings from the First Jewish Revolt in Jerusalem: rebels’ coins of “year 4”, water systems installed by the defenders, broken flagstones that testify for Romans hunting Jewish refugees, and even a battle scene that recorded the use of ballistae. Today we know much more than we did thirty years ago. It is the time to raise new questions on the correlation between Josephus and archaeology.

By Dr. David Gurevich
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem;
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University
Research Fellow, The Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology, Hebrew Union College Jerusalem
May 2018

This essay flags the questions, and advertises for financial backing, rather than attempting to answer them. But they are important questions.

For more on those bronze coins from the Great revolt which were found recently in Jerusalem, see here. For the excavation that possibly involves Jerusalem's ancient "third wall," see here. For the excavation of that Jerusalem drainage canal used at the end of the revolt as a hiding place, see here. And for some additional thoughts on Josephus and archaeology, see here and links.

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

Schiffman on the Hezekiah and Isaiah bullae

PROF. LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: JEWISH CONNECTION TO JERUSALEM.

The ongoing excavations of Jerusalem never seem to stop yielding amazing treasures that bring to life the Bible and the history of the Jewish people in its holiest of cities. This latest discovery comes on the heels of the disgraceful UNESCO resolution that by implication seeks to deny the historic relationship of the city to the Jews and their history.

The recent discovery of what may be the personal seal impression of Isaiah the Prophet, coming soon after the discovery close by of the seal impression of Hezekiah the King, serves as a welcome affirmation of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, something we thought would have been self-evident to Jews, Christians, and even Muslims.

Follow the link for the rest of this article reprinted from the Jewish Tribune.

For more on the Hezekiah and Isaiah bullae, see here and links. I am still skeptical that the Isaiah on the bulla was the prophet. But the connection Prof. Schiffman mentions remains self-evident either way.

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

Xena and Goliath

REMNANT OF GIANTS Xena, Warrior Princess and Goliath (Deane Galbraith). It seems they were old friends.

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

NIS 60 million for the archaeology of Jerusalem

ARCHAEOLOGY, POLITICS, AND MONEY: Culture Ministry earmarks NIS 60m for Jerusalem archaeology digs, preservation. Excavations in and around the City of David to be bolstered by two-year government grant (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

According to the Israel Hayom report, the Culture Ministry says it aims, with this grant, to “empower Jerusalem as an international center of religion, heritage, culture and tourism” through the excavation, research and development of ancient Jerusalem archaeology.

“For the first time in decades, the Israeli government has initiated excavations that will expose ancient Jerusalem’s antiquities and will express the history of the Jewish people 3,000 years ago,” said [Cultural Minister Miri] Regev.

Reportedly, the Israel Antiquities Authority is pleased.

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

A late-antique Aramaic funeral liturgy

GENIZA FRAGMENT OF THE MONTH (APRIL 2018): Mourning in Late Antiquity: T-S NS 148.58 (Laura Lieber).

We know little of the lived experiences of the majority of Jews in the world of Late Antiquity. The Genizah can however provide a glimpse, albeit partial and blurry, of Jewish life in the Land of Israel in the 4th to the 7th centuries CE. This period, which encompassed the consolidation of Jewish textual traditions, the rise of imperial Christianity, and the arrival of Islam, also witnessed the birth of a literary tradition that crossed many of the boundaries of the period: religious, or liturgical, poetry. Alongside this body of work is a small, precious collection of poems in the vernacular of the Jews of Late Ancient Palestine: Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (JPA) poetry. These poems are of a popular character and were composed not only for holidays but also lifecycle events, and so they offer a rare window through which Jews’ routine, lived experience during this obscure time can be perceived.

This fragment, T-S NS 148.58 folio 1v, illustrates one way in which the death of an individual was marked by the community. ...

Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

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

Review of Wilson, Kingship and Memory in Ancient Judah

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Kingship and Memory in Ancient Judah (Chance McMahon).

Just as the memorialization of figures in U.S. history speak to larger social issues in the present, Ian D. Wilson’s Kingship and Memory in Ancient Judah argues that the Judean literati during the Persian Period negotiated various viewpoints about kingship in Israel’s past.

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

A Coptic fragment of Genesis

ALIN SUCIU: High-Resolution Images of London, BL Or. 5287(3) = Genesis 3:16-4:4 (Sahidic version). The fragment was recently published in the Journal of Coptic Studies.

Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

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

Of Chinese gruel and Byzantine parrotfish

MORE CULINARY ARCHAEOLOGY! The Archaeologists and Chefs Recreating the World's Oldest Recipes. In Byzantine times, parrotfish was considered was considered a great delicacy from Constantinople to the Negev. Scholars and chefs are trying to learn why (Ronit Vered, Haaretz). The first half of the article, quite interesting in itself, is about cooking in ancient China. It take to the second half to get to the parrotfish, in relation to a recent conference at NYU:

The first day of the conference was devoted to lectures, and the second day to the cooking and tasting of the recipes and the ancient foods. A delegation from Yale University – which included the curator of the university museum, an expert on hieroglyphics, a chemist and a culinary historian – looked for the origin of the cooking techniques that have been preserved to this day in an ancient Babylonian codex of recipes, which is considered the oldest cookbook in the world.

A group of British, Spanish and American scholars examined garum sauce – a fermented fish sauce that was one of the most important cooking ingredients of the ancient world – was served. Someone studied the origin and evolution of blancmange, a dairy dessert based on almonds and spices, in medieval Europe. The Israeli delegation from the University of Haifa presented the story of the parrotfish, the caviar of the Byzantine era, in the ancient cities of the Negev.

Cross-file under Osteology.

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

Israel's biblical diet

CULINARY ARCHAEOLOGY: Israel's Millenia-Old Biblical Diet. A new generation of academics and chefs are cooking with ancient grains and herbs, using ‘original recipes’, to help work through Israel’s long-unresolved legacy of trauma. (Shira Rubin, BBC).

Between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv lies a man-made Garden of Eden, dotted with imported Lebanese cedar trees, reconstructed olive and wine presses and reproduced ancient gardens of wild sage and edible flowers. But the nature reserve, known as Neot Kedumim, is more than just a recreation of the landscape of biblical times. Since the 1990s, Israel’s foremost food archaeologist Tova Dickstein has been cultivating it as an open-air laboratory to examine the millennia-old ‘biblical diet’ and the ingredients that are making a comeback in Israeli nouvelle cuisine.

[...]

This article has lots of details about biblical food and the history behind the modern Israeli diet. For example:

But Dickstein says that while hummus was compelling and convenient for the early Israeli narrative, because it tied an already-popular dish to the supposedly ancient Jewish tradition of hummus consumption, the Bible does not actually depict the ancient Israelites as hummus enthusiasts. She estimates that hummus in its current form was likely popularised during the Crusader period from 1099 to 1291 AD, as consequent Holy Land conquerors continued traditions of cultural exchange between the country’s many ethnic groups. But for her, correcting anachronisms, such as hummus’ exclusively Israeli origins, is not meant to change Israeli eating habits, but rather demonstrate their evolutions.

To make her case, Dickstein relies on the Hebrew Bible, a labyrinthine piece of literature teeming with ambiguity. To interpret the recipes, she cross-checks the Bible with modern people who are replicating or producing some version of the biblical diet. For example, Ezekiel bread features as a rare example of a biblical recipe, in the Book of Ezekiel. There, God instructs the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel: “Take you also to you wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make you bread thereof...”

In context, I think "Ezekiel bread" was a prophetic statement rather than a real recipe. At least I hope no one followed the original baking instructions.

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

Novenson on discussion of The Grammar of Messianism

THE CSCO BLOG: The Grammar of Messianism in Recent Discussion. Matthew Novenson responds to reviews of his 2017 book. Past PaleoJudaica posts on the book are collected here.

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

Is a festival in Nehemiah's Torah missing in ours?

DR. ALEX P. JASSEN: The Wood Offering Celebration – “As Written in the Torah” (TheTorah.com).

Bringing wood for the altar was an important celebration in Second Temple times. To ground this practice in the Torah, Nehemiah (10:35) describes it as a Torah law, while the Temple Scroll (11Q19) and the Reworked Pentateuch (4Q365) include it in their biblical festival calendar.

This is one of the times that the Hebrew Bible cites a passage in the Torah of Moses that isn't in our version. Another is Ezra 6:18, concerning the priestly divisions and the Levitical courses. Did the writers cite nonexistent passages to lend authority to the topic? Or were they working with a Pentateuch that contained material not in ours? Either is possible. I blog, you decide.

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

The Talmud on the bygone priesthood

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: On Priestly Perfection. In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ how ancient Talmudic rabbis recreated and understood the lost religious culture of the First Temple.

The priesthood, like animal sacrifice, is one of those Jewish institutions that were once centrally important, but have been basically defunct for the last 2,000 years. People of priestly descent—often designated by the last name Cohen, which is the Hebrew word for priest—still offer a special benediction for the congregation on certain Jewish holidays. But this is a mere relic of the glory that belonged to the priesthood in Temple times. In the Torah, it is clear that only the correct performance of sacrificial rites by the priests—the descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses—allows the Jewish people to enjoy God’s favor.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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

Big bucks (£££) for the Qur'an-Coptic palimpsest

SOLD! Outstanding Auction Result for an Unrecorded Qur’an Palimpsest Copied on an Earlier Coptic Bible (Fine Books & Collections).

London--Christie’s is pleased with the results achieved for the palimpsest of a Qur’an copied onto a Christian text, realising £596,790 during the Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets auction, which is still ongoing. ...

Background here and here. Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

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

The Wisconsin Palmyrene Aramaic Inscription Project (update)

PALMYRA WATCH: Blog: Preserving The Words Of Ancient Palmyra Through Digital Humanities (Catherine Bonesho, Society for Classical Studies Blog). I noted this project a few years ago here. But this blog post gives a good, updated overview, with a detailed description of the cutting-edge RTI technology they are using. So cross-file under Technology Watch and Digitization.

HT AJR.

For many other past posts on the site of Palmyra, its Aramaic language, its artifacts, and its tragic fate while in the hands of ISIS, start here and follow the links. And this post (and links) is also relevant to ancient Palmyra (but you have to follow the link there for details).

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

Altered festivals in the Temple Scroll

PROF. MARVIN A. SWEENEY: How the Temple Scroll Rewrote the Festival of Bikkurim (TheTorah.com).

Throughout the Bible, we find that the land of Israel is blessed with grain, wine, and oil (דגן, תירוש, ויצהר). In the Torah, however, the festival of Bikkurim, “First Produce,” only celebrates the wheat harvest. In Qumran, the Essenes rewrote the biblical festival calendar to include two further bikkurim festivals to celebrate wine and oil.

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

When does Counting the Omer begin?

NOTED BELATEDLY FOR LAG B'OMER: When Does Counting the Omer Begin? (Prof. Marvin A. Sweeney and Dr. Rabbi Zev Farber, TheTorah.com).

The omer or “sheaf” offering takes place ממחרת השבת, “after the Shabbat” (Leviticus 23:15). Jewish interpreters have debated the exact meaning of this phrase for two millennia, resulting in all four possible dates being adopted by one Jewish sect or another.

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

Forthcoming: "Septuaginta: A Reader's Edition"

WILLIAM ROSS: BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT – SEPTUAGINTA: A READER’S EDITION.

The basic idea behind a reader’s edition is to provide an edition of the ancient text – in our case Rahlfs-Hanhart’s – annotated with running footnotes with lexical information. Since most students and scholars of biblical studies are most familiar with New Testament vocabulary, picking up a Septuagint can make for a challenge. Our reader’s edition seriously reduces that challenge by providing the footnotes for rarer vocabulary, thereby making the reading experience much more seamless and less intimidating.

This sounds extraordinarily useful. Look for it in November.

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

Review of Drake, A Century of Miracles

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: H. A. Drake, A Century of Miracles: Christians, Pagans, Jews, and the Supernatural, 312-410. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xvi, 312. ISBN 9780199367412. $35.00. Reviewed by Michael Stuart Williams, Maynooth University (Michael.Williams@mu.ie).

his book by H. A. Drake is aimed at a semi-popular audience, and is a showcase for his most valuable qualities: an engaging style, a patient awareness of the complexity of the evidence, and a desire to recapture the human element of late-antique Christian belief. It will appeal to anyone wanting to know why fourth-century Christianity is worth studying. Drake does an excellent job of showing how Christianity was remade in this period by the pressures of imperial and episcopal politics. His focus is on a particular Christian rhetoric of legitimation which explained the achievements of Constantine and his successors by the interest of God in their affairs; which permitted the apostate emperor Julian to be written off in hindsight as no significant threat; and which proffered the minor miracles performed by ascetics as proof of God’s presence in the world. But it is not strictly a book about miracles; and for me it fails to capture what is distinctive about miracles in the fourth century.

[...]

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

Biblical Studies Carnival 146

AYUDA MINISTERIAL BLOG: Biblical Studies April Carnival (Rubén de Rus).

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

Achaemenid influence on the concept of Mosaic Torah?

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Reinventing Mosaic Torah in the Light of the Law of Ahura Mazdā and Zarathustra. Notice of a recent article by Yishai Kiel in the Journal of Biblical Literature, available at JSTOR.

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

Two 2019 conferences on Mandaeism

RELIGION PROF: Mandaeism ARAM Conference July 2019 (James McGrath). Cross-file under Mandean (Madaean) Watch.

Who are the Mandeans, you ask? Some background is here.

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

Proof of David's biblical kingdom? Not yet.

ARCHAEOLOGY: Does This 3,000-Year-Old House Confirm King David's Lost Biblical Kingdom? (Owen Jarus, Live Science).

Archaeologists have discovered a sprawling, possibly 3,000-year-old house that suggests a biblical kingdom called the United Monarchy, ruled by King David and later Solomon according to the Hebrew Bible, actually existed.

The archaeologists who excavated the house, at a site now called Tel Eton, in Israel, said in an article published online March 13 in the journal Radiocarbon that the date, design and size of the house indicates that a strong organized government existed at Tel Eton around 3,000 years ago. They added that this government may be the United Monarchy. The site is located in the central part of Israel in a region called the Shephalah.

[...]

As you might guess, it takes a lot of inference to get us from finding a big, tenth-century BCE(-ish) house to having proof of the United Monarchy. Nevertheless, this is an important discovery, even if its exact date and implications are debatable.

To my mind, the existence of the Davidic dynasty is demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt by the Tel Dan Inscription. But whether a Davidic dynasty adds up to anything like the United Monarchy of the Bible is another matter. So far the archaeological record appears to be inconclusive. I am not an archaeologist, but when I see credible archaeologists on both sides of the debate, that tells me that the evidence is inconclusive.

It would be nice to find some royal inscriptions from David and Solomon. Or any substantial Israelite documents from that period. But even those might not solve the broader question of the historicity of the biblical United Monarchy.

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

Looting arrest at Akeldema

APPREHENDED: Attempted antiquities looting at site linked to blood money of Judas Iscariot. 30-year-old Jerusalem man nabbed with excavation tools at ancient Christian graveyard in Jerusalem (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

Israeli Border Police arrested a 30-year-old on suspicion of antiquities looting in the ancient Christian pilgrim graveyard at Akeldama, located in Jerusalem’s Hinnom Valley and associated with one of Jesus’s 12 apostles, Judas Iscariot.

Akeldema is Aramaic for Field of Blood. There are a couple of different stories in the New Testament which associated the site with the suicide of Judas Iscariot. More on the site:

From the 4th through 7th century, Byzantine monks and hermits lived on the site, which is still occupied by a Christian monastery built on the spot where Judas is meant to have hanged himself, the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St Onuphrius, built in 1874. The monastery includes two ancient tombs, an altered burial cave called “Refuge [or Retreat] of the Apostles” and a subterranean Second Temple-period tomb whose roots may stretch even to the First Temple, according to scholars.

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