Back from Hadrian's Wall

I'VE BEEN ON HOLIDAY for the last week, including a stay around Hadrian's Wall. I visited Vindolanda again, of course, and also other Roman sites. I will report in due course.

Meanwhile, there's a lot of blogging to catch up with in the coming days.


Hadrian's Wall, behind the Roman Fort at Housesteads.

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More mosaics from Huqoq!

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Huqoq Mosaic Depicts Israelite Spies from Numbers 13 (Robin Ngo). There is also a Hebrew quotation from Isaiah 11:6 and another fragmentary Hebrew inscription.

The excavation of the late-antique synagogue at the site of Huqoq continues to produce remarkable mosaics, year after year. For past posts on the excavation of the site and the remarkable discoveries there, start here and just follow those links back.

Cross-file under Decorative Art.

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The Talmud on disqualified sacrifices

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Suited to the Fire. In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ Talmudic rabbis continue their investigations into sacrificial offerings and remain dispassionate in their analysis of sexual sins. Plus: the origin of the word ‘treyf.’

The general hermeneutic principle of the Talmud is that every Torah verse comes to teach a point of law. Understanding the Torah requires parsing the verse very carefully, paying attention to each word and even to pronouns and articles. If two authorities disagree on the law, therefore, they also disagree on the interpretation of the Torah verse.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Olyan and Wright, Supplementation and the Study of the Hebrew Bible

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

Supplementation and the Study of the Hebrew Bible
Saul M. Olyan, Jacob L. Wright

ISBN 9781946527059
Status Available
Price: $30.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date April 2018

Explore the role supplementation plays in the development of the Hebrew Bible

This new volume includes ten original essays that demonstrate clearly how common, varied, and significant the phenomenon of supplementation is in the Hebrew Bible. Essays examine instances of supplementation that function to aid pronunciation, fill in abbreviations, or clarify ambiguous syntax. They also consider more complex additions to and reworkings of particular lyrical, legal, prophetic, or narrative texts. Scholars also examine supplementation by the addition of an introduction, a conclusion, or an introductory and concluding framework to a particular lyrical, legal, prophetic, or narrative text.

Features:

• A contribution to the further development of a panbiblical compositional perspective
• Examples from Psalms, the pentateuchal narratives, the Deuteronomistic History, the Prophets, and legal texts

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A letter from Claudius

BRICE C. JONES: Roman Emperor Claudius' Letter to the Alexandrian Embassy. This is a papyrus found in Egypt which contains the text of a letter sent by Claudius to Alexandria in 41 C.E. in response to a letter sent to him by the Alexandrians. In it he tells the Alexandrian gentiles and the local Judeans to just get along. Or else.

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Online Digital Manuscripts and Editions updated

THE OTTC BLOG: Online Digital Manuscripts and Editions. Last updated 3 July 2018 (Drew Longacre).

This page is a list of digital images of manuscripts and editions available online. This catalogue should be viewed as a work in progress, and I will continue to update it with new resources. It is by no means complete, but I hope it will be helpful for those looking for a one-stop portal for finding online primary resources that are significant for the study of the Old Testament text. Please post any additional sources you may be aware of in the comments, and I will incorporate them into the main list.

Last updated two years ago, so worth a look again. It's a good list. The focus is Hebrew Bible, but it has lots of cognate material (LXX, Targums, NT, rabbinics, etc.) as well.

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Tomás García-Huidobro's blog

BLOG OF NOTE: Tomás García-Huidobro. Tomás García-Huidobro Misticismo judío y orígenes del cristianismo. I have mentioned this blog a couple of times in the past, but it has moved to a new address. So here it is again. I generally only link to English-language blogs, but I do keep an eye on this Spanish one and I have recently added it to my blogroll. It often deals with matters of interest to PaleoJudaica. If you read Spanish, it's worth keeping an eye on.

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Interview with Batsheva Goldman-Ida (Hasidic Art and the Kabbalah)

THE BOOK OF DOCTRINES AND OPINIONS BLOG: Interview with Batsheva Goldman-Ida-Hasidic Art & the Kabbalah (Alan Brill).

In the past, Jewish ceremonial art was treated as decorative and functional. This book, in contrast, explicitly investigates the symbolism and theological meanings of the objects. It is as if we merged the studies of Moshe Idel with art history. Hasidic Art and the Kabbalah presents eight case studies, almost as exhibits, of manuscripts, ritual objects and folk art developed by Hasidic masters in the mid-eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries. Goldman-Ida investigates the sources for the items in the Zohar, German Pietism, Safed Kabbalah and Hasidism. She shows Kabbalah embodied in material culture, not just as abstract ideas. In addition, we are treated to discussions of magical theory from James Fraser and on the subjective experience of the user at the moment of ritual using the theories of Wolfgang Iser, Gaston Bachelard, and Walter Benjamin.”

This is on a period later than PaleoJudaica's usual interests, but I try to keep an eye on the full range of developments in the study of Jewish mysticism. There is lots of room for this sort of groundbreaking work in earlier periods too, even if the surviving artifacts are fewer.

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Reed, Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Annette Yoshiko Reed. Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism [Judenchristentum und die Geschichte des Judentums.] 2018. XXX, 505 pages. forthcoming in July. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 171. 174,00 €. ISBN 978-3-16-156060-6.

Published in English.
“Jewish-Christianity” is a contested category in current research. But for precisely this reason, it may offer a powerful lens through which to rethink the history of Jewish/Christian relations. Traditionally, Jewish-Christianity has been studied as part of the origins and early diversity of Christianity. Collecting revised versions of previously published articles together with new materials, Annette Yoshiko Reed reconsiders Jewish-Christianity in the context of Late Antiquity and in conversation with Jewish studies. She brings further attention to understudied texts and traditions from Late Antiquity that do not fit neatly into present day notions of Christianity as distinct from Judaism. In the process, she uses these materials to probe the power and limits of our modern assumptions about religion and identity.

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Did Jesus really say "Render unto Caesar ... ?"

NUMISMATICS MEETS THE HISTORICAL JESUS: Numismatic Evidence that Corroborates Suetonius’ Life of Otho and Contradicts the Gospels (Matthew Ferguson, Κέλσος Blog). I'm not a coin specialist, or, for that matter, a Historical Jesus specialist. So I won't take a position on the argument. But I thought it was interesting enough to mention.

A couple of past posts on the numismatics of the relevant New Testament passage (Mark 12:13-17 and parallels) are here and here.

By the way, Matthew has been blogging since 2012. I know I have seen his blog before, but I don't seem to have linked to it. It looks like it has some stimulating posts. Cross-file under Assimilated to the Blogosphere (Belatedly Noted).

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Meiser et al. (eds.), Die Septuaginta – Geschichte, Wirkung, Relevanz

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Die Septuaginta – Geschichte, Wirkung, Relevanz. 6. Internationale Fachtagung veranstaltet von Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), Wuppertal 21.-24. Juli 2016. Hrsg. v. Martin Meiser, Michaela Geiger, Siegfried Kreuzer u. Marcus Sigismund. [The Septuagint – History, Impact, Relevance. 6 thInternational Conference held by the Septuaginta Deutsch Project (LXX.D), Wuppertal July 21–24, 2016.] 2018. XII, 947 pages. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 405. 219,00 € cloth. ISBN 978-3-16-155638-8.

Published in German.
As the central biblical reference text for ancient Greek-speaking Judaism and Christianity alike, the Septuagint both aids and challenges expressions of Jewish and Christian identity. The diversity of its current debates are reflected in this volume, which brings aspects of textual criticism, textual history, philology, theology, reception history, and Jewish identity in the Second Temple period together to provide an up-to-date overview of the latest in international research.

Published in German, but many of the articles are in English.

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Patrologia Blog

THE AWOL BLOG: Patrologia: Latina, Graeca & Orientalis. This is notice about a blog (with this title) which is new to me:

Hints, resources, links and information about the Patrologia Latina and the Patrologia Graeca, both edited by J.-P. Migne and reprinted later by the Garnier Brothers, and the Patrologia Orientalis, edited by R. Graffin and F. Nau.
This website and it’s blog aims to inform and study. All studies in this blog are the property of the authors, and publishers. The administrator of this blog or its readers have no commercial right. Copying for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited.

It has information about Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Syriac sources.

I would say Assimilated to the Blogosphere, but its assimilation took place long ago. The blog has been running since the beginning of 2008. I'm glad to have finally run across it.

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Bortz, Identität und Kontinuität

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Bortz, Anna Maria

Identität und Kontinuität
Form und Funktion der Rückkehrerliste Esr 2

[Identity and Continuity. Form and Function of the List of Returnees in Ezr 2]
Series:Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 512

Aims and Scope
The character of the list of returnees in Ezra 2 has been a subject of ongoing scholarly controversy. This study offers a thorough examination of the list in terms of form and content and of its placement and function in the narrative context of Ezra 1-3. The list itself gives insight to the continuities and discontinuities in the construction of post-Exile Jewish identity.

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Davies's Qumran slide collection

RETRO-QUMRANICA: Philip R. Davies Qumran Slide Collection (1970-71). The slides are posted by the Leverhulme International Network Project for the Study of Dispersed Qumran Cave Artefacts and Archival Sources.

DQCAAS is extremely grateful to the late Prof. Philip R. Davies for generously making available to us his slide collection of Qumran. These slides were taken in 1970-71 when he was a doctoral student in Jerusalem, working on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Travelling Scholar at the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (now the Kenyon Institute). These slides include a remarkable picture of Fr. Roland de Vaux explaining how the people of Qumran washed their laundry.

[...]

HT Jim West. More on the late Philip R. Davies is here and links.

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Review of Brannan, Greek Apocryphal Gospels, Fragments, and Agrapha

NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: Book Review: Rick Brannan, Greek Apocryphal Gospels, Fragments, and Agrapha (Phil Long, Reading Acts).

Brannan, Rick. Greek Apocryphal Gospels, Fragments, and Agrapha. Lexham Classics; Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2017. 193 pp.; Pb. $14.99 Link to Lexham Press

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New critical edition of the Samaritan Pentateuch

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

The Samaritan Pentateuch
A Critical Editio Maior

Ed. by Schorch, Stefan

6 volumes
Volume III
Leviticus
Ed. by Schorch, Stefan

Aims and Scope
A critical edition of the Samaritan Pentateuch is one of the most urgent desiderata of Hebrew Bible research. The present volume on Leviticus is the first out of a series of five meant to fill this gap. The text from the oldest mss. of SP is continuously accompanied by comparative readings, gathered from the Samaritan Targum and the oral reading, as well as MT, the DSS, and the LXX, creating an indispensable resource for Biblical research.

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Eaten by worms!

THE CSCO BLOG: Eaten By Worms: Comparison between Acts 12:23 and Death of the Persecutors 33-35 (Gianna Zipp). That's in the Bible. And elsewhere:

In quite a few ancient sources a bad emperor gets eaten alive by worms and in most of them it is made clear from the beginning that a god or God is punishing some impious tyrant by these means. There is already some work on the topos of worms as a disease naming numerous examples.[i] I want to compare the descriptions by Lactantius and Luke in Acts to see how they differ and why that may be ...

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Zealot Pinhas' act of zealous zealotry

DR. DAVID BERNAT: Pinchas’ Extrajudicial Execution of Zimri and Cozbi.

Pinchas is portrayed as a hero in the Torah and Second Temple sources for killing Zimri and his Midianite lover, Cozbi. Rabbinic sources struggle with the absence of any juridical process or deliberative body, which contravenes their own judicial norms, and therefore recast or minimize his act in subtle ways.

And there's a similarly awkward story about Moses too.

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On the Afghan "Geniza"

The Afghan ‘Genizah’ and Eastern Persian Jewry (Aram Yardumian, Science Trends).

A portion of this collection consists of an 11thcentury private archive belonging to a Jewish family from the town of Bamiyan. These manuscripts, 29 of which were purchased by the National Library in 2013, and 250 more in 2016, were reported at the time as resembling the finds of the Cairo Genizah, and the light they shed on Jewish life during the first half of the 11thcentury in this once diverse and thriving region, and now we are beginning to know why.

The documents are written in six languages, Early Judaeo-Persian, Early New Persian, Judaeo-Arabic, Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic, and range in genre from Islamic legal instruments to personal correspondence, civil contracts to biblical commentary, debt lists to poetry. The most celebrated manuscript so far is a page of 10thcentury exegete Saadia Gaon’s commentary on Isaiah 34, otherwise absent from the rebbe’s corpus, and yet this is hardly the most revelatory document to emerge from the cave in Afghanistan.

Although it will take years, perhaps decades, before all the text is analyzed, important progress has already been made. ...

It's been close to a couple of years since we've had any news on these important manuscripts. They were found in a cave in Afghanistan. They first surfaced in the news at the end of 2011. This article gives a convenient summary of the latest work on them, notably the ambitious master's thesis of Ofir Haim at the Hebrew University.

Background here and follow the links.

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Feldmeier, Der Höchste

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Reinhard Feldmeier Der Höchste Studien zur hellenistischen Religionsgeschichte und zum biblischen Gottesglauben [The Most High. Studies on the Hellenistic History of Religion and Biblical Deism. Student edition.] Unchanged student edition 2018; first edition 2014. XIII, 561 pages. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 330. 39,00 € sewn paper. ISBN 978-3-16-156331-7..

Published in German.
This collection of Reinhard Feldmeier's essays is linked by a common theme: the question about God, posed repeatedly by Jews, Christians and Gentiles. The author shows how the biblical belief in God is discussed again and again in the context of ancient religiosity and philosophy in a perpetual process of assimilation and delimitation, rejection and appropriation, surpassing and transformation and in this way how the examination of the history of religion helps raise our awareness of the biblical discourse on God. In the first part, Feldmeier deals with the history of ancient religion in the Roman Empire and in the second part he traces how in this context Jews and Christians reflected on their belief in the God of Israel and the father of Jesus Christ and created a new awareness of this. In the third part he focuses on the connection between the belief in God and Christology.

I missed the 2014 publication of this book, but here's the student-edition reprint.

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A Coptic codex of Proverbs

VARIANT READINGS: Another Book Biography: The Berlin Akhmimic Proverbs Codex.

It is a single-quire papyrus codex containing the book of Proverbs in the Akhmimic dialect of Coptic. It’s generally assigned to the fourth century, although earlier and later dates have been proposed. It was purchased in Cairo by Bernhard Moritz with the help of the Coptologist Carl Schmidt in 1905, and it was in a remarkable state of preservation at that time.

This story illustrates the importance of preserving — and keeping track of! – every scrap of evidence from antiquity.

Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

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Wajsberg, Babylonian Aramaic and the Talmudic Text Traditions (Hebr.)

NEW BOOK FROM THE ACADEMY OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE: Babylonian Aramaic and the Talmudic Text Traditions by Eljakim H. Wajsberg (in Hebrew). There is no description, but this is the cover:

That's an Aramaic incantation bowl. Don't judge a book by its cover, but from the title I would guess that the incantation bowls have a place in the book.

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A Phoenician minute

PHOENICIAN WATCH: The Colorful Lives of the Phoenicians (Inside Higher Ed).

Excavation is telling us new stories about an old civilization. In today's Academic Minute, part of University of Missouri week, Benton Kidd explores the colorful lives of the Phoenicians. Kidd is a researcher and associate curator of ancient art at Missouri.

Dr. Kidd is excavating a Phoenician site at Tel Anafa in northern Israel.

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Anderson and Widder, Textual Criticism of the Bible (rev. ed.)

FORTHCOMING BOOK: New Introduction by Anderson and Widder: Textual Criticism of the Bible (Tommy Wasserman, ETC Blog). Updated with more on the New Testament. Coming in October.

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Artichokes and ancient Judaism

THE SEPHORIM BLOG: The Not-So-Humble Artichoke in Ancient Jewish Sources.

The Not-So-Humble Artichoke in Ancient Jewish Sources
Susan WeingartenSusan Weingarten is an archaeologist and food historian living in Jerusalem. This is an adapted extract from her paper 'The Rabbi and the Emperors: Artichokes and Cucumbers as Symbols of Status in Talmudic Literature,' in When West met East: the Encounter of Greece and Rome with the Jews, Egyptians and Others: Studies presented to Ranon Katzoff on his 75th Birthday. Edited by D. Schaps, U. Yiftach and D. Dueck. (Trieste, 2016).

The earlier Sephorim post, on a recent ruling on artichokes by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, is here: The Humble Artichoke.

Cross-file under Culinary History.

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On Larry Stager

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Giant of Iron Age Research. Lawrence E. Stager (1943–2017) (Daniel M. Master).

It is hard to overestimate the influence that Larry had on the field of Biblical archaeology; he revolutionized the field. To get a sense of his contribution, it is worth reviewing the scholarly landscape of the 1970s. After the death of William F. Albright, unexpectedly followed by the death of G. Ernest Wright, Biblical archaeology as a discipline was no longer fashionable. Archaeology in the United States was in the midst of a revolution, throwing off past ways in favor of new “scientific” methods. In such a context, admitting to being a “Biblical archaeologist” was a bit like walking into a chemistry lab and admitting to practicing alchemy. This same American revolution in archaeology also looked askance at archaeologists around the world (including those in Israel) who were not up-to-date on the latest archaeological theory or jargon.

From the beginning, Larry stood above these trends. He was secure enough in himself that he did not feel the need to limit what he could study or from whom he could learn. ...

Past PaleoJudaica posts on Professor Stager are here and here and links. I was a doctoral student at Harvard when Larry arrived. I was not an archaeologist, but I sat in on some of his classes and worked at the Ashkelon excavation for a couple of seasons. Reminiscences are at the links.

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Garazim and Jerusalem

SAMARITAN WATCH: Is a qibla a qibla? Samaritan Traditions About Mount Garizim in Contact and Contention (Stefan Schorch, Institute for Advanced Study). Excerpt:

Thus, while Samaritans and Jews share the concept of one holy center, the respective cultural semantics connected to that concept are completely different. This rupture is intensified by one element inherent to the concept itself: Since the latter requires that there is only one holy center, there cannot be two, and no way for mediation or compromise exists: The shared concept, together with two mutually exclusive cultural semantics, creates a sharp line of distinction between the two communities. And while not only the general concept is shared, as well as many motifs related to it, the latter inevitably acquire a completely different meaning once they travel across this border. Thus, while from the Jewish perspective the Jerusalem Temple is situated on Mount Moriya (see 2 Chronicles 3:1), the latter is a site on Mount Garizim, according to the Samaritans. Similarly, Jewish eschatology is closely tied to Jerusalem, and not to Mount Garizim.

HT AJR.

For past PaleoJudaica posts on Mount Gerizim/Garazim, including on work by Stefan Schorch, start here and follow the links.

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Beyond the Golem

ASSIMILATED EPHEMERALLY TO THE BLOGOSPHERE: Beyond the Golem: Adventures in Jewish Mysticism. This blog, by one daselkin, was devoted to collecting and retelling stories associated with Jewish mysticism and esotericism. (Details here.) Sadly, it only ran briefly in 2010 to 2011. But there are some interesting posts there.

The concept was excellent. It would be nice if the author started it up again.

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The Damascus Geniza

GENIZA FRAGMENT OF THE MONTH (JUNE 2018): A Muslim Genizah in Damascus (Ronny Vollandt). A small fraction of the Qubbat al-Khazna manuscript hoard was catalogued by a Prussian scholar named Bruno Violet at the turn of the twentieth century. He had access only to the non-Islamic fragments, but these were of varied background and of considerable interest:

Another irāda of Abdul Hamid II gave permission for the collection to be sent to Berlin on loan. Before the fragments were dispatched, however, the whole batch was inventoried and photographed by the Ottoman authorities. The number of fragments at this time was given as 1558. The collection arrived in Berlin on June 17, 1902, and was deposited at the Royal Museums; in 1904, it was moved to the State Library. It consisted mainly of Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan texts, in a variety of scripts and languages: Greek, Hebrew, Samaritan, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, and even Armenian. Among the fragments, many were palimpsests or had been re-used as the bindings of books. Unexpectedly after six years, in December 1908, the Ottomans demanded the return of the fragments. A prioritized list of 54 fragments, prepared by von Soden, and an almost complete Syriac codex was all that could be photographed before the collection was sent back in its entirety.[2] The Ottomans confirmed that the collection reached Istanbul; however, its current whereabouts remain a matter of conjecture since then.

Violet’s collection consists of a small though significant fraction of the Damascus Genizah. The larger part, which amounted to perhaps 99.5% of the Qubba’s contents, was transferred to Istanbul. The majority of the fragments were housed eventually at the Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi, the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum, where the collection was called şâm evrakları “Damascus papers”. An inventory made in 1955 numbers 13,882 items, with a total of 211,603 pieces.

The surviving photographs contain Jewish fragments. Among these are a ketubba, a Judaeo-Arabic glossary of the Mishna and a commentary on Leviticus. A number of folios contain the Hebrew Bible, Job 31, with full Tiberian vocalization and accents, overwritten with an unidentified Syriac text.

Also an Aramaic magical handbook.

Past posts noting Cairo Geniza Fragments of the Month in the Cambridge University Library's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit are here links.

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