Friday, November 09, 2018

Shoemaker, The Apocalypse of Empire

NEW BOOK FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS:
The Apocalypse of Empire
Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam


Stephen J. Shoemaker


272 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth Nov 2018 | ISBN 9780812250404 | $59.95s | Outside the Americas £46.00

In The Apocalypse of Empire, Stephen J. Shoemaker argues that earliest Islam was a movement driven by urgent eschatological belief that focused on the conquest, or liberation, of the biblical Holy Land and situates this belief within a broader cultural environment of apocalyptic anticipation. Shoemaker looks to the Qur'an's fervent representation of the imminent end of the world and the importance Muhammad and his earliest followers placed on imperial expansion. Offering important contemporary context for the imperial eschatology that seems to have fueled the rise of Islam, he surveys the political eschatologies of early Byzantine Christianity, Judaism, and Sasanian Zoroastrianism at the advent of Islam and argues that they often relate imperial ambition to beliefs about the end of the world. Moreover, he contends, formative Islam's embrace of this broader religious trend of Mediterranean late antiquity provides invaluable evidence for understanding the beginnings of the religion at a time when sources are generally scarce and often highly problematic.

Scholarship on apocalyptic literature in early Judaism and Christianity frequently maintains that the genre is decidedly anti-imperial in its very nature. While it may be that early Jewish apocalyptic literature frequently displays this tendency, Shoemaker demonstrates that this quality is not characteristic of apocalypticism at all times and in all places. In the late antique Mediterranean as in the European Middle Ages, apocalypticism was regularly associated with ideas of imperial expansion and triumph, which expected the culmination of history to arrive through the universal dominion of a divinely chosen world empire. This imperial apocalypticism not only affords an invaluable backdrop for understanding the rise of Islam but also reveals an important transition within the history of Western doctrine during late antiquity.

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Supernatural conference CFP

THE ESEA BLOG: CFP: THE SUPERNATURAL FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD.
Not Yet Understood:
The Supernatural from Antiquity to the Medieval Period

*Graduate Student Conference*
Where: Brandeis University (Massachusetts)
When: April 13, 2019
Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2019.
Follow the link for details.

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Bibliography of the Arabic Bible

THE AWOL BLOG: Bibliography of the Arabic Bible: A Classified and Annotated History of Scholarship. This is associated with the Biblia Arabica project, which I mentioned a while ago here.

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Silver as money before coins

TZILLA ESHEL: How Silver Was Used for Payment (TheTorah.com).
Abraham purchases the cave of Machpelah for 400 silver shekels. Biblical phrases, archaeological finds, and chemical analysis come together to paint a portrait of how early trade using silver functioned before the invention of coins.

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Thursday, November 08, 2018

Nautical and animal engravings found in Beer Sheva cistern

GRAFFITI ART: ANCIENT ENGRAVINGS OF SHIPS AND ANIMALS UNCOVERED IN BEERSHEBA. Excavators discovered large cistern while preparing for a new neighborhood (Tamara Zieve, Jerusalem Post).
In the plaster covering the cistern walls, the excavators, Dr. Davida Eisenberg-Degen and Avishay Levi-Hevroni of the authority, spotted thinly engraved lines. Though many of the lines have become less visible over time, they could make out the depictions of boats, a sailor and animals. Thirteen ships were engraved in the plaster of the cistern walls.

According to Eisenberg-Degen, a specialist in rock art and graffiti at the authority, the ships include technical details and present proportions which suggest that the artist was knowledgeable in ship construction.
The cistern was constructed in the first or second century C.E. The IAA announcement implies that the graffiti are the same age as the cistern.

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Jesus, the Essenes, and modern esotericism

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:
Jesus and the Essenes: An Esoteric History

Like the historical Jesus, “the Essenes” can easily become a screen upon which one projects one’s own interests and ideological location(s), whether that be Jesus’ “hidden years,” a window into the “secret history” of early Christianity, or an historically non-existent fabrication by Philo, Josephus, and Pliny.

See Also: Jesus, the Essenes, and Christian Origins: New Light on Ancient Texts and Communities (Baylor University Press, 2018).

By Simon J. Joseph
University of California, Los Angeles
www.simonjjoseph.com
November 2018
Cross-file under New Book. For past PaleoJudaica posts on Szekely's modern apocryphal gospel, The Essene Gospel of Peace, see here and here. And for more on the use of ancient esotericism in Blavatsky's Theosophy, see here.

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Picus on rabbinic reading practices

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Dissertation Spotlight | Daniel Picus.
“I argue that that the rabbis are deeply concerned with the form, format, and divisions of the biblical text, and that these aspects of the text have a crucial role in rabbinic understandings of the formation and transformation of the reader.”
This sounds like an interesting dissertation. It would be good to know its title too!

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Judean and related coins going to auction

NUMISMATICS: Extremely Rare Judaean and Related Roman Coins Featured in Goldberg’s New York Sale (Goldberg Coins, CoinWeek). The auction takes place in New York on 8-10 January 2019. As always, I hope that the collectors who buy them will make them available to scholars for study. Meanwhile, this article has some excellent photos of a wide range of coins of interest for the study of ancient Judaism

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Wednesday, November 07, 2018

Hygoye 21.2 (2018)

A NEW ISSUE: Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 21.2 (2018). This is a high-quality, peer-review, open-access journal. Issue 21.1 was noted here. Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

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Hurtado on Goodman on Paul as persecutor

LARRY HURTADO: Saul/Paul the “Persecutor” and Jewish Tolerance of Diversity.
On Monday of this week ([October] 22nd) the esteemed scholar of ancient Judaism in the Roman world, Professor Martin Goodman, delivered the 2018 Kennedy-Wright Lecture, sponsored by our Centre for the Study of Christian Origins: “The Jewish Paul and the History of Judaism.”

[...]
It's good to see Larry blogging frequently again.

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Lectures on the Jewish communities of Qumran and Alexandria

PROF. LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: SECTS AND THE CITY: THE JEWISH COMMUNITIES OF QUMRAN AND ALEXANDRIA.
Co-sponsored by Drisha, The Jewish Publication Society and Sixth Street Community Synagogue
November 29th, 7:00 PM
Sixth Street Community Synagogue
325 East Sixth Street

$10/students free of charge.

Please join us for an evening to celebrate the publication of Dr. Malka Z. Simkovich’s new book, Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2018).
Follow the link for further details and registration information. And cross-file under New Book. I have noted essays by Dr. Simkovich here, here, and here.

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‘Atiqot 92 (2018)

THE AWOL BLOG: Now online: ‘Atiqot 92 (2018). You can see the abstracts straightaway, but full access to the articles requires free registration. This issue has many articles of interest for ancient Judaism.

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Tuesday, November 06, 2018

The Talmud on sacrificial oil

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Oil Change. In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study, discussion of proper meal offerings displays the circularity and uncertainty of rituals recreated from a destroyed culture.
One of the things that makes studying Talmud difficult is that the text takes a lot of prior knowledge for granted. After all, the Talmud was not written as a manual of Judaism, designed to instruct people how to reconstitute it from scratch. Rather, it takes the form of questions and debates that arose from daily practice. In the case of Tractate Menachot, for example, priests in the Temple did not need to consult a text to learn how to bring meal offerings; they saw it happening every day and learned by doing. It follows that the tractate does not begin by explaining what a meal offering consists of, how it is prepared, or how it is sacrificed.

[...]
Yes. More on the mindset of rabbinic literature here. And Adam is quite right in his conclusions. The Talmud, and even the Mishnah, were composed long after living memory of the Temple service had passed away. A lot of what they say is inference and guesswork.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Review of Blanton, A Spiritual Economy

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | A Spiritual Economy: Gift Exchange in the Letters of Paul of Tarsus (Jennifer Quigley).
Thomas R. Blanton, IV. A Spiritual Economy: Gift Exchange in the Letters of Paul of Tarsus. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017
Excerpt:
A Spiritual Economy is a helpful addition to recent studies in gifts in the letters of Paul, and its multidisciplinary engagement contributes to the study of religion in antiquity and to broader conversations in history, sociology, and anthropology about gift exchange.

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Bauckham (ed.), Magdala of Galilee

IN THE MAIL:
Magdala of Galilee
A Jewish City in the Hellenistic and Roman Period

by Richard Bauckham [ed.]

[Baylor University Press]
460 pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in

HARDCOVER
ISBN: 9781481302937
PUBLISHED: OCTOBER 2018
$79.95

Magdala of Galilee for the first time unifies the results of various excavations of the Galilean city. Here, archaeologists and historians of the Second Temple Period work together to understand the site and its significance to profile Galilee and the region around the lake in the Early Roman period.

After a comprehensive overview of the history and character of the city, the volume details the harbor, the domestic and mercantile sectors, the Jewish ritual baths, and the synagogue, with its unique and remarkable engraved stone. There is also a full study of Magdala’s fishing industry, which dominated fishing on the lake, and the production of salted fish. The rabbinic traditions about Magdala are fully investigated for the first time, and a study of Josephus’ account of the city’s role in the Jewish revolt is also included. The in-depth archaeological, historical, and literary analyses are enriched by a wealth of on-site photographs, regional maps, and excavation plans.

Edited by Richard Bauckham, this cutting-edge synthesis of international field work and scholarly study brings the City of Fish and its place in Jewish history and culture into sharp relief, providing both specialists and general readers with a richer understanding of the background of early Judaism and Christianity.
A copy kindly sent to me by the editor. I mentioned the book as forthcoming last year.

For many past PaleoJudaica posts on the site of Magdala, especially the famous Magdala Stone, start here and here and follow the links.

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70 ancient coins seized at Allenby Bridge crossing

APPREHENDED: Smuggling Reportedly Thwarted at Allenby Bridge (reported by TPS / Tazpit News Agency via the Jewish Press).
Among the items recovered were Roman coins, coins from the Bar Kochba Revolt and gold coins from the early Islamic period.

According to an expert, it’s estimated that these ancient coins were minted in the 5th or 6th century BCE in Greece, Cyprus and Antalya, and are among the first in the world.
The coins mentioned would not be that old by some centuries or more. And the Bar Kokhba coins were minted in Israel. Either there is a misunderstanding about what the expert said, or he or she was referring to other coins in the hoard, not mentioned above.

Cross-file under Numismatics.

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Monday, November 05, 2018

Bodmer Papyri online

VARIANT READINGS: Images of the Bodmer Papyri Online (Brent Nongbri).
I’m happy to announce that as part of the ongoing work of the Bodmer Lab, images of the Greek and Coptic manuscripts from Egypt held at the Fondation Martin Bodmer are now available online. The website remains a work in progress, but the bulk of the images are now available, and the site is live.
I had a quick look at the current image archive. It includes Coptic fragments from the New Testament, Old Testament, and the Gnostic Zostrianos text, plus Greek fragments from the New Testament and Homer. And more.

One suggestion. It would be really helpful to have a brief contents description with each thumbnail photo.

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More on that earliest abcedary(?) ever

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:
As Easy as ABC?: A Review of Thomas Schneider’s Study of the TT99 Ostracon

Schneider’s work advances the discussion of the TT99 ostracon in several important ways. His suggestion that the entries on the ostracon formed a mnemonic verse that could contain grammatical elements is both persuasive and helpful. But, at the same time, his claim that the back of the ostracon lists Semitic words arranged according to the abgad alphabetic sequence suffers from several problems.

By Aren M. Wilson-Wright
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Zurich
October 2018
This discussion is outside my expertise and I take no position on who, if anyone, is right. The main takeaway for me is that this inscription is so difficult that experts can propose that one side contains two rather different alphabetic sequences of words.

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Oaths by and on Scripture

DR. MOSHE BILDSTEIN: Taking an Oath While Holding a Torah Scroll (TheGemara.com).
In late Second Temple times, a person would take an oath by verbally invoking the Torah. Over time, with the emergence of the Torah as a sacred object for Jews and Christians alike, Torah scrolls began to be used in court-administered oaths.

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You didn't know this about Freddie Mercury

ANCIENT, BUT STILL AROUND: Freddie Mercury’s family faith: The ancient religion of Zoroastrianism (Vasudha Narayanan, The Conversation).

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Sunday, November 04, 2018

SBL Christian Apocrypha sessions

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Christian Apocrypha at SBL 2018 (Tony Burke, Apocryphicity Blog). The papers are mostly on New Testament Apocrypha. But the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha receive some attention.

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

Oqimta CFP

H-JUDAIC: CFP: Oqimta Online Journal for Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature.
Oqimta centers on the classical rabbinic corpus (Tannaitic and Amoraic literature), but we also welcome contributions on other aspects of late ancient Jewish culture and history (e.g., piyyut, magical texts, art, inscriptions), as well as on the reception of rabbinic literature in the medieval and modern periods. We are committed to the highest academic standards, and at the same time we believe that the field can be studied productively with a variety of perspectives and methods – philological or historical; employing literary theory, anthropology, or intellectual frameworks through which the field has not yet been explored; focusing on rabbinic texts themselves or working across the different traditions and cultures of antiquity.
Oqimta: Studies in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature is a free, open-access, peer-review journal that has been running since 2009. I noted its inception here and have also mentioned it here and here. Cross-file under Talmud Watch.

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A day-trip in the Judean hills

TRAVEL: Ancient springs and stunning vistas: A desert day trip just outside Jerusalem. Biblical history and vibrant nature abound in the Judean hills, where visitors can bathe in an ancient oasis and walk in the footsteps of the Good Samaritan (AVIVA AND SHMUEL BAR-AM, Times of Israel). Be aware that these sites are on the West Bank, with the attendant political complications and controversy.

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Review of Kutz and Josberger, Learning Biblical Hebrew

READING ACTS: Book Review: Karl V. Kutz and Rebekah Josberger, Learning Biblical Hebrew (Phil Long).
Kutz, Karl V. and Rebekah Josberger. Learning Biblical Hebrew: Reading for Comprehension: An Introductory Grammar. Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2018. 417 pp.; Hb. $39.99
Excerpt:
Kutz is professor of Biblical Languages and Josberger is an associate professor of Old Testament, but at Multnomah University. Their collaboration for a new first year biblical Hebrew primer reflects their experience in the classroom. As they say in the preface, this grammar is “aggressive” and assumes the use of Hebrew resources available to students of the Old Testament. ...
I'm not sure what an "aggressive" Hebrew grammar means. But I think I like it.

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