Review of Weiss and Stav, The Return of the Missing Father

THE TALMUD BLOG: Weiss and Stav’s “The Return of the Missing Father”.

Haim Weiss and Shira Stav, The Return of the Missing Father: A New Reading of a Chain of Stories from the Babylonian Talmud (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2018) – Review by Mira Balberg

Excerpt:

But The Return of the Missing Father (in Hebrew: שובו של האב הנעדר), co-authored by Haim Weiss and Shira Stav and recently published by Mosad Bialik, shows just how much we have missed, and how valuable a fresh perspective on a seemingly well-trodden set of texts can be. This small and unpretentious book offers a new reading of the seven said stories in Kettubot (alongside multiple relevant intertexts), and it succeeds in uncovering aspects of these stories that went unnoticed so far. This may sound like a rather modest contribution – providing some compelling nuggets of insight on familiar passages – but in my view this book does much more than that. In its unassuming way, it urges us to reassess some of our most established habits when reading rabbinic literature, and to be much more courageous, methodologically and analytically, in reading Talmudic texts as literature.

HT AJR. It's good to see more activity on the Talmud Blog lately.

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Cook on supposed archaisms in Mishnaic Hebrew

EDWARD COOK: 2018 ON SOME SUPPOSED ARCHAISMS IN MISHNAIC HEBREW (MAARAV 22.1–2 (2018): 11–20, posted on Academia.edu). This is full-on philology, for those, like me, who enjoy such things.

Regular readers may recognize Ed as the owner of the Ralph the Sacred River Blog. Sadly, nowadays he posts on it very infrequently.

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Bhayro et al., Aramaic Magic Bowls in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Aramaic Magic Bowls in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin
Descriptive List and Edition of Selected Texts

Series:
Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity, Volume: 7

Authors: Siam Bhayro, James Nathan Ford, Dan Levene and Ortal-Paz Saar

The collection of Aramaic magic bowls and related objects in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin is one of the most important in the world. This book presents a description of each object and its contents, including details of users and other names, biblical quotations, parallel texts, and linguistic features. Combined with the detailed indices, the present volume makes the Berlin collection accessible for further research. Furthermore, sixteen texts, which are representative of the whole collection, are edited. This book results from an impressive collaboration between Siam Bhayro, James Nathan Ford, Dan Levene, and Ortal-Paz Saar, with further contributions by Matthew Morgenstern, Marco Moriggi, and Naama Vilozny, and will be of interest for all those engaged in the study of these fascinating objects.

Publication Date: 19 July 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-34447-1

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The Temple Mount floor

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: What the Temple Mount Floor Looked Like. As published in Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2016 (Frankie Snyder, Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Dvira). The full text of the BAR article, which was published soon after the Temple Mount Sifting Project published fragments of floor tiles that are arguably from the courtyard of Herod's Temple. See here and links.

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A Hellenistic-era gold earring excavated in Jerusalem

ANCIENT BLING WATCH: Always the way... you can only find one ear-ring! 2,200-year-old gold jewellery is unearthed in Jerusalem - but archaeologists can't find its pair (Phoebe Weston, Daily Mail).

A 2,200-year-old gold earring has been unearthed near the site of the ancient Jewish temples in Jerusalem, providing rare evidence of Hellenistic influence on the region.

The four centimetre (1.5 inch)-long filigree hoop was discovered during excavations outside Jerusalem's walled Old City, and is adorned with a horned animal that is believed to be an antelope or deer.

The 'unique' find is the first earring found in Jerusalem that dates to the Hellenistic period around the third or early second centuries BC, researchers aid.

[...]

Another ancient gold earring was found in Jerusalem ten years ago, but it appears to be from the Roman era. See here, and here. Another Roman-era gold earring was found at e-Tell/et-Tell (Bethsaida?). See here and here. And possibly one was found associated with the Bar Kokhba revolt, although that link has rotted. See here.

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Taking stock of Kirsch's Daf Yomi column

TALMUD WATCH: Six Years of Farts, Magic, and Misogyny. Celebrating Adam Kirsch’s tour of the Talmud (Jacob Siegel, Tablet Magazine).

What does the Talmud say about commemorating an anniversary? Something in great and elaborate detail, no doubt, perhaps touching on the necessary benedictions, fabrics considered kosher for use as tablecloth, and precautions regarding menstruating women.

Six years ago, Tablet’s Adam Kirsch began his reading of Daf Yomi, the page-a-day cycle of oral law and rabbinic exegesis that covers all 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud. The current cycle is the 12th Daf Yomi. It will be completed in January 2020. The 13th begins the following day. As it never ends, we only pause here, as on the banks of a great river, to take stock.

[...]

It's been a good six years. With a little less than a year and a half to go.

Background here, with links going all the way back to the first column.

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On the Temple Mount Sifting Project

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Sifting Antiquity on the Temple Mount Sifting Project. Temple Mount Sifting Project investigates Temple Mount soil. It's always good to see this Project getting some press. They are still looking for funding!

For many, many past PaleoJudaica posts on the Temple Mount Sifting Project, see here and here and follow the links.

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"Holistic symbology" and the Magdala Stone?

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Magdala's Stone of Contention

Since we do not have any art guidebook, which survived from the Late Second Temple period, we should approach the topic with caution.

The Menorah was definitely an important as a symbol in the Jewish art and it does refer to the Temple; but the Menorah was also a symbol of Judaism and Jews in the ancient world. It is just as reasonable to find a Menorah decorating a place where a Jewish community gathers to learn their Scriptures. This does not necessitate that every single ornament on the stone ought to be linked the Jerusalem's Temple cult.

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

Did the Fortified Jerusalem of the Middle Bronze Just Vanish, and What Does This Say About King David?

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
August 2018

For many past posts on the important discoveries at the site of Magdala – not least the Magdala Stone – see here, here, and here, and follow the links.

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Review of Reggiani, Digital Papyrology I

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: .Nicola Reggiani, Digital Papyrology I: Methods, Tools and Trends. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2017. Pp. 318. ISBN 9783110538519. €89,95. Reviewed by Joanne Vera Stolk, Ghent University; University of Oslo (joanne.stolk@ugent.be).

This book provides a useful introduction to digital papyrology for scholars interested in digital humanities and papyrologists looking to extend their knowledge of our digital tools. Apart from offering an overview of the state of the art within the field and a start to the epistemology of a new discipline, Reggiani’s main contribution to the future of digital papyrology lies in highlighting the fortunate and unfortunate detours of history and the methodological challenges and interesting opportunities ahead.

This is a field that moves too fast to produce a monograph with lasting accuracy. As Reggiani admits “I am quite sure that within one year, if the world still exists, many of the links I recorded here will be broken” (p. 170), but this is not the point. Once one is aware of the existence of these resources, there are other ways to find them. The main pitfall of increasing digitalization in the field is that people are not aware of existing projects and things are done twice rather than in collaboration. Although the form of a printed book may seem odd for a survey of a digital field, a monograph in open access could be a fitting compromise for making a wide range of resources and methodologies known and accessible to all.

N.b., this a De Gruyter open access book. For you, special deal!

Cross-file under Technology Watch.

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Update on moving the Megiddo prison

RELOCATION: Israeli prison to join Armageddon's list of ancient ruins (Stephen Farrell, Reuters). That's not a very lucid headline, but the point is here:

Now, after years of legal and bureaucratic delays, the prison is to be relocated, freeing up the site for further exploration potentially as early as 2021.

The prospect already has archaeologists excitedly talking about an area they have started to call “Greater Megiddo”.

“When the Christian prayer hall was first found beneath the prison, we were all excited for one minute,” said Matthew Adams, director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, who has spent years excavating at Megiddo.

“And then we realized, “Oh, it’s in a maximum security prison, so we’ll never actually be able to do anything with it.”

“Now that the government has decided to move this prison, we can explore this really amazing and interesting part of the development of early Christianity in a way that we didn’t think we’d be able to.”

The prison is being moved because of new regulations to alleviate overcrowding, but the move is a bonus for archaeology. The move has been in the works for some time, but plans seem to be firming up. This is the first time I have heard that the site may be available for archaeology "as early as 2021."

For past posts on the archaeology of the Megiddo area, including the "God Jesus Christ" inscription and the remains of the Sixth Legion Roman camp ("Legio"), see here and here and follow the links

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Sebastia looters sentenced

APPREHENDED, TRIED, AND SENTENCED: Three Palestinians caught attempting to rob ancient Sebastia. Palestinians were caught in the act damaging the Samaria archeological site and in possession of a metal detector and excavation equipment; court sentences them to 36 days in prison, 9 months suspended sentence, and gives them NIS 4,000 fine. (Yoav Zitun, YnetNews). I don't recall seeing any media reports at the time of the arrests, but you can read the whole story here. But the Jerusalem Post says that they were sentenced to 36 months in prison:

Charges were filed for damage to antiquities and unauthorized excavation at an antiquities site. The three suspects were sentenced to 36 months in prison, nine months probation and each were fined NIS 4000 to be paid over the course of three years.

I don't know which is correct.

Some past PaleoJudaica posts on Sebastia are here and here.

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UNESCO asking Israel to stay?

POLITICS: UNESCO said pushing for Israel to rethink exit, citing work to end bias. Audrey Azoulay invites Netanyahu to meet next month in New York to discuss a possible delay in Jerusalem leaving body after efforts to improve treatment of Israel (Raphael Ahren and Michael Bachner).

Netanyahu called Azoulay some three weeks ago and thanked her for her efforts to stop what he called the discrimination against Israel in the UN agency, Channel 10 reported Wednesday, citing a senior Israeli official.

The official was quoted as saying one of the ideas being examined in Jerusalem was not to cancel the withdrawal, instead delaying it by several months to check on the changes in the organization.

Netanyahu praised Azoulay for the fact that no anti-Israel resolutions have been passed at UNESCO for nearly a year, the report said. Shama-Hacohen also said Jerusalem recognized Azoulay’s efforts in this respect.

Good. It sounds as though there has been progress, not least due to the work of Ms. Azoulay.

I think that if UNESCO makes a genuine effort to address the problems, there is a good chance they can persuade both Israel and the U.S.A. to stay. We'll see.

Background here and links.

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Review of Lavee, The Rabbinic Conversion of Judaism

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | The Rabbinic Conversion of Judaism (Yoni Nadiv).

Moshe Lavee. The Rabbinic Conversion of Judaism: The Unique Perspective of the Bavli on Conversion and the Construction of Jewish Identity. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018.

Excerpt:

Lavee’s clarity of writing, especially his explicit explanation of methods and readings of texts, make this an accessible work. His interpretation of the development of conversion practices, the construction of rabbinic authority, the determination of Jewish identity, and influences from Greco-Roman and Persian cultures are valuable contributions to the field and of interest to a wide array of scholars both within and outside the field of rabbinic literature.

Early this year I noted the publication of this book here.

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The Temple of Eshmun in Sidon

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Temple of Eshmun: a Phoenician site you must visit in South Lebanon. This temple holds a great historical, archaeological, and cultural significance (Grace H., The961).

Lebanon is full of Phoenician ruins! One of the most important sites in Lebanon is the Temple of Eshmun which is located in Sidon. Built in the 7th century BC, this temple is dedicated to Eshmun which is the Phoenician god of healing and renewal of life.

Historical background

The Sidonian king Eshmunazar II constructed the temple to celebrate the city’s recovered wealth. He also built numerous temples to Sidonian divinities.

I have not been to Lebanon, but I would love to see this temple.

Eshmunazar (better, Eshmunazor) II also left behind an important biographical Phoenician inscription on his tomb. It is now in the Louvre. You can read more about it here, and, for enthusiastic philologists, here.

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

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Ossandón Widow, The Origins of the Canon of the Hebrew Bible

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Origins of the Canon of the Hebrew Bible
An Analysis of Josephus and 4 Ezra
Series:
Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, Volume: 186

Author: Juan Carlos Ossandón Widow

In The Origins of the Canon of the Hebrew Bible: An Analysis of Josephus and 4 Ezra, Juan Carlos Ossandón Widow examines the thorny question of when, how, and why the collection of twenty-four books that today is known as the Hebrew Bible was formed. He carefully studies the two earliest testimonies in this regard—Josephus’ Against Apion and 4 Ezra—and proposes that, along with the tendency to idealize the past, which leads to consider that divine revelation to Israel has ceased, an important reason to specify a collection of Scriptures at the end of the first century CE consisted in the need to defend the received tradition to counter those that accepted more books.

Publication Date: 26 September 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-38160-5
Hardback:
EUR €110.00 / USD $132.00

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Joosten on how the Bible was written

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: How Was the Bible Written During and After the Exile? Biblical Hebrew in a changing world (Megan Sauter).

How was the Bible written during and after the Babylonian Exile? Did the Biblical authors continue to use the Hebrew language even though they were living in lands where Hebrew was no longer the common language? In his article “How Hebrew Became a Holy Language,” published in the January/February 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Jan Joosten explains that Biblical Hebrew did not go out of use. Rather the Jewish population continued to use it—and even attached a new reverence to it.

The article by Jan Joosten is behind the subscription wall. But the BHD essay gives a summary of it.

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The Talmud, the Torah, and "the language of men"

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: In the Language of Men. ‘Daf Yomi:’ How modern Jews misinterpret another key philosophical phrase, and why religious fanatics will find no Talmudic argument in support of their dream of building a Third Temple on the mount.

This month marks an anniversary for Daf Yomi readers: It has been six years since we began studying the Talmud. Since the cycle began in August 2012, Daf Yomi readers have explored the laws of Jewish holidays in Seder Moed, the laws of marriage and divorce in Seder Nashim, and civil and criminal law in Seder Nezikin. Now we are embarked on the last major division of the Babylonian Talmud, Seder Kodashim, which deals with the “holy things” of the Temple service. This will be our subject for most of the remaining year and a half of the Daf Yomi cycle, which concludes in January 2020.

[...]

Happy anniversary, Adam. As I have said before, I have learned a great deal from your columns.

Incidentally, the modern use of the phrase tikkun olam has received some attention, and criticism, in a recent book by Jonathan Neumann, called To Heal the World. See, for example, here and here.

But that isn't the key philosophical phrase that is the subject of this week's column.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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No, the Western Wall isn't "falling apart."

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Western Wall is falling apart after 2,000 years (Anshel Pfeffer, London Times).

Archaeologists are planning an unprecedented survey of Jerusalem’s Western Wall after a large slab of stone fell and landed near worshippers.

There are concerns for the safety of the thousands of pilgrims who visit Judaism’s oldest standing relic after the stone fell feet away from a woman praying at the wall. A small part of the prayer area near the wall has been closed off since the incident two weeks ago. Experts are divided on whether more stones are about to fall or if it was a one-off occurrence. Archaeologists and engineers who have been called in are stumped.

[...]

There is genuine reason for concern here. It does look as though the IAA is taking appropriate steps.

It's good that the Times has taken up the story. But it's disappointing to see their editors garnish it with a tabloid, clickbait headline. As usual, let me underline that I do not hold the reporter responsible for the headline.

Background here and links.

This article is behind the subscription wall. But if you register with the Times, you can read two articles per week for free.

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Safrai, Seeking out the Land

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Seeking out the Land: Land of Israel Traditions in Ancient Jewish, Christian and Samaritan Literature (200 BCE - 400 CE)

Series:
Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series, Volume: 32

Author: Ze'ev Safrai

Seeking out the Land describes the study of the Holy Land in the Roman period and examines the complex connections between theology, social agenda and the intellectual pursuit. Holiness as a theological concept determines the intellectual agenda of the elite society of writers seeking to describe the land, as well as their preoccupation with its physical aspects and their actual knowledge about it.
Ze'ev Safrai succeeds in examining all the ancient monotheistic literature, both Jewish and Christian, up to the fourth century CE, and in demonstrating how all the above-mentioned factors coalesce into a single entity. We learn that in both religions, with all their various subgroups, the same social and religious factors were at work, but with differing intensity.

Publication Date: 19 July 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-33479-3

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Psalms of Solomon 17

READING ACTS: The Context of Psalm of Solomon 17.

Psalm of Solomon 17 is by far the most significant section of the collection. The Psalm describes a Davidic, messianic figure who will purge Jerusalem of Gentiles, gather the exiles and lead them in righteousness and shepherd the Lord’s flock in righteousness. This lengthy Psalm draws on the canonical Psalm 72 and is witness to fervent messianic hopes among some strands of early Judaism. The belief a messiah would soon appear and liberate Jerusalem from their Roman oppressors ultimately culminates in the first Jewish Revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. See also my post on Messianic Hopes and the Jewish Revolt.

[...]

Plus - Who is the lawless one?

Another installment in Phil Long's current summer series on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Past posts in the series, including many on the Psalms of Solomon, have been noted here and links.

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

Origin Stories - Part 4: the Dunhuang manuscripts and the Birmingham Qu'ran

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS has its third installment of essays in its series Origin Stories: A Forum on the “Discovery” and Interpretation of First-Millennium Manuscripts. The first set of essays in the series was noted here, the second here, and the third here. There are two new essays:

Language Scattered, Treasures Revealed: Tibet’s First Millennium Manuscripts A Most Fortuitous Find at Dunhuang, China (1900 C.E.) (Daniel A. Hirshberg).

Until the 21st century, and thus for most of the history of Tibetan Studies as a discipline, most Western scholars generally accepted that all treasures were apocrypha, with their claims to ancient origins mere fabrications to be skeptically dismissed. Given that virtually no first-millennium manuscripts remained extant and available, comparative analysis of early treasure documents against imperial-era exemplars was simply not possible. Only recently have contemporary scholars begun to forward convincing evidence that at least some of the earliest revealers’ claims were true––that some new treasure collections made use of much old material, and so preserved authentic fragments of the empire. This is due solely to a most fortuitous find in 1900, over a thousand years after the fall of the empire, when a massive cache of manuscripts from that era and its aftermath was discovered near a Chinese city whose cosmopolitan grandeur and long-held economic and political relevance had largely been forgotten.

The manuscript discoveries at Dunhuang and nearby Turfan included material of interest for Syriac Christianity and even ancient Judaism. Notably, fragments of the Book of Giants were first recovered from Turfan in Turkic and Manichean Iranian translations. Fragments of the original Aramaic were only found among the Dead Sea Scrolls decades later.

Past PaleoJudaica posts on the Dunhuang and Turfan manuscripts are here and here and links.

Collective Enthusiasm and the Cautious Scholar: The Birmingham Qur’ān. The Case of the Discovery of the “Birmingham Qur’ān” (Dr. Alba Fedeli).

Indeed, the Birmingham Qur’ānic manuscript is old – one of the oldest to our knowledge – representing a precious detail of a larger corpus of early Qur’ānic manuscripts. Nevertheless, it is incorrect to present any of the known Qur’ānic manuscripts as holding the record as the oldest. If the reader compares the message of the BBC headline with the actual content of the scholarly article itself, the contrast will be evident between the enthusiasm in the former and the cautiousness of the statements about the dating from various scholars mentioned in the latter.

PaleoJudaica has been following the story of the Birmingham Qur'an fragments since the announcement of their (re)discovery three years ago. For the full discussion, start here and follow the links.

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On St. George

ROGER PEARSE has been blogging on St. George, the late-antique Palestinian dragon slayer and patron saint of England.

Texts of the “Life” of St George

When I came to look at St George, my intention was to arrange for the translation of one or two versions of his Life. What I had not anticipated was to find a mess, where there is still basic scholarly work to do in identifying and classifying versions of the Lives. Originally I had hoped to list all the texts which contained versions of the martyrdom of St George; or at least the earliest ones. But this quickly proved futile. So here is what I was able to work out.

[...]

St George – the main post! What do we know about him, and how do we know it?

In short, we are dealing with fictional material about a figure for whom we have no evidence whatever, and no factual material whatever. Hagiography as a genre runs across a spectrum, all the way from historical accounts, down through fictionalised or “improved” versions of the facts, until we end up with wholly imaginary saints and wholly fictional Lives. St George is at the far end of that spectrum.

That's too bad. I'd always been a little skeptical about the dragon, though.

Past posts on St. George are here and links.

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Kahn (ed.), Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective

Series:
IJS Studies in Judaica, Volume: 17

Editor: Lily Kahn

Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective is devoted to the diverse array of spoken and written language varieties that have been employed by Jews in the Diaspora from antiquity until the twenty-first century. It focuses on the following five key themes: Jewish languages in dialogue with sacred Jewish texts, Jewish languages in contact with the co-territorial non-Jewish languages, Jewish vernacular traditions, the status of Jewish languages in the twenty-first century, and theoretical issues relating to Jewish language research. This volume includes case studies on a wide range of Jewish languages both historical and modern and devotes attention to lesser known varieties such as Jewish Berber, Judeo-Italian, and Karaim in addition to the more familiar Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish, and Ladino.

Publication Date: 19 July 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-37232-0

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Brisson et al. (eds.), Neoplatonic Demons and Angels

NSEA BLOG: NEOPLATONIC DEMONS AND ANGELS. Notice of a new book: Neoplatonic Demons and Angels. Edited by Luc Brisson, Seamus O’Neill and Andrei Timotin. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Follow the link for details.

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Sea monsters in the news?

CANDIDA MOSS: Did Researchers Just Solve the Jonah and the Whale Puzzle? Even if you grant the existence of miracles, where did the whale (people almost always think the fish is a whale) in the Mediterranean come from? (The Daily Beast). There have been attempts to drag the Bible's Jonah and the whale story into the announcement of the recent discovery that there used to be whales in the Mediterranean, but the Romans hunted them to extinction.

Up to now I have found these attempts far fetched and have not mentioned them. But Professor Moss succeeds in connecting Jonah's whale – and Leviathan! – to the new story in a credible and interesting way.

Incidentally, the Jonah story does not explicitly mention a "whale." I don't think ancient Hebrew had a specific word for whale. It says Jonah was swallowed by "a big fish." But a fish big enough to swallow a man whole and not even notice for a few days is a very big fish. It's hard to think of anything but a whale that would fit the description.

(Yes, I know that whales are mammals, not fish. I don't think the distinction would have mattered to an ancient Israelite.)

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Pirkei Avot: the graphic novel

MISHNAH WATCH: Translating The Ancient ‘Ethics Of Our Fathers’ Into A Graphic Novel (Bonnie Azoulay, The Forward).

August 3, 2018
With the onslaught of a new-age movement, where religion can be cool and believing in a superior power higher than thyself is deemed the bee’s knees, millenials have taken to Instagram to showcase their love for religion through art.

One such artist, who combines Jewish principles with graphic art, is Jessica Tamar Deutsch. Her book, “The Illustrated Pirkei Avot: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Ethics,” gives traditional Jewish texts a more contemporary (and female) voice in the art world.

[...]

I noted this as forthcoming last year. Now it's out and The Forward has had a look at it.

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Golem Chaise

GOLEM WATCH: Barberini & Gunnell’s Sculptural Golem Chaise Channels Jewish Mystical Origins (Interior Design). It's been a while since the golem has been in the news. It seems a bit of a stretch (heh) to say this is golem inspired, but that's what they say. The video is cool.

"Available in a signed and numbered limited edition."

For earlier PaleoJudaica posts on past and present manifestations of the Golem legend, start here (cf. here) and follow the many links.

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The "Our Beans" blog

LONG SINCE ASSIMILATED TO THE BLOGOSPHERE, BELATEDLY NOTED: Our Beans Biblical and Patristic Studies, especially dealing with the reception of the Hebrew Bible in Early Christianity is a blog run by Dr. Ed Gallagher, who tells us:

I teach biblical studies at Heritage Christian University in Florence, Alabama. I have a PhD in the History of Biblical Interpretation from Hebrew Union College, and my research interests revolve around the reception of the Hebrew Bible in ancient Judaism and Christianity, especially in terms of textual and canonical issues.

I don't think I've seen this blog before, but it has been around since 2007. The content is as indicated in the subtitle above. Dr. Gallagher posts infrequently, but the posts I've looked at are good, and many will be of interest to PaleoJudaica readers. So go and have a look.

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