Bible Places top-10 discoveries of 2019

THE BIBLE PLACES BLOG: Top 10 Discoveries in Biblical Archaeology in 2019 (Todd Bolen). Todd provides us with a good list and lots of ancillary material, including the year's fake news, tourism news, losses of people, other top-10 (etc.) compilations, and links to his past annual top 10 lists. And in this post he notes the Top Ten Discoveries in Biblical Archaeology of the Decade (2010-2019) by Bryan Windle at the Bible Archaeology Report.

I also noted a couple of top-10 end-of-year lists here.

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A Judeo-Christian (?) bilingual exorcism in PGM IV

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Old Coptic Magical Texts IV: The Bilingual Exorcism of PGM IV.

This post is the fourth in a mini-series about bilingual recipes in Egyptian and Greek from the 3rd/4th century papyrus codex PGM IV (Greek Magical Papyrus 4) – the “Bilingual Exorcism” (PGM IV. 1227-1264). This practice is written upon pages 28 and 29 of the codex and departs considerably from the other practices in this mini-series because it seems to derive from a Judaeo-Christian, rather than Pharaonic or Graeco-Egyptian, cultural context. ...

Ritual magic tends to be theologically eclectic. For the magician, whatever works, works.

I wrote this post up some time ago, but evidently I forgot to post it. Fortunately, the topic is not time sensitive. Here it is now.

For some related thoughts, see the final links in this post.

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Kalman on Jewish timekeeping from antiquity to modernity

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Turning Clockwise: Jews and Timekeeping from Antiquity to Modernity | Dissertation Spotlight (David Zvi Kalman).

David Zvi Kalman, “Unequal Hours: The Jewish Reception of Timekeeping Technology from the Bible to the Twentieth Century” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2019).

This dissertation is a proof of concept for how Jewish history and the history of technology—fields which have traditionally interacted very little—can benefit from talking to one another.

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Sparse Persian-era sherds and coins (Temple Mount Objects #4)

THE TEMPLE MOUNT SIFTING PROJECT BLOG: THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPLE MOUNT IN 12 OBJECTS: #4 THE EARLY SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD.

For the earlier posts on objects 1-3, see here and links.

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Biblical Studies Carnival December 2019

BELATEDLY NOTED: Biblical Studies Carnival #167: December 2019, by Alex Finkelson at the Scribes of the Kingdom Blog.

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The Talmud on detecting puberty

THE MOST RECENT DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: GIRL, YOU’LL BE A WOMAN SOON. As the seven-and-a-half-year cycle of page-a-day ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study comes to a close, the ancient rabbis discuss when adolescence ends and compare female sexual maturity to ripening figs.

Each volume of the Koren Talmud Bavli comes in a dust jacket that bears an image related to its contents. Avoda Zara, about idol worship, features a marble bust of a Greek god; Menachot, about meal offerings, has an illustration of a sacred vessel full of flour. So I was curious, as Tractate Nidda approached, how the publishers would choose to illustrate a volume whose main subject is menstrual blood. Their clever solution was to use an image of figs, for reasons that Daf Yomi readers discovered in last week’s reading.

[...]

And then there's this:

It feels strange to say this, but after seven and a half years, this is the next to last column in my series about Daf Yomi. The cycle concludes on Jan. 4 with the last page in Tractate Nidda, before starting all over again the next day with the first page of Berachot. Next month, in my final column, I will reflect on my long talmudic journey and on the Siyum HaShas, which will bring together 90,000 Jews to celebrate the Daf Yomi experience on New Year’s Day.

The new Daf Yomi began yesterday on Sunday, 5 January. I will have a few more comments to go with Adam Kirsch's final Daf Yomi column in the coming week.

But meanwhile, you can hear an inverview with Adam about his seven-and-a-half-year Daf Yomi experience on Tablet's Best Food Forward podcast, Ep. 210. The interview begins around 16:20 and lasts 22 minutes.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Review of Coşkun and Engels (eds.), Rome and the Seleukid East

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Altay Coşkun, David Engels (ed.), Rome and the Seleukid East: Selected Papers from Seleukid Study Day V, Brussels, 21-23 August 2015. Collection Latomus, volume 360. Leuven: Peeters, 2019. Pp. 512. ISBN 9789042939271. €84,00 (pb). Reviewed by Michael J. Taylor, University at Albany, SUNY (mjtaylor@albany.edu).

The past decade has proven a heady time for Seleucid studies, which has metamorphosed from a marginalized sub-field marooned in the void between Ancient History and Near Eastern Studies to a vibrant locus of interdisciplinary study, a topic that unites specialists in the Hellenistic World, Republican Rome and Judaic Studies, where sources range from Classical and Biblical literature to Greek epigraphy to cuneiform tablets. Such interdisciplinary vitality is on full display throughout this excellent volume.

This volume includes essays involving Antiochus III, Antiochus IV (see last link), and Judaism of the Hasmonean period, all of interest to PaleoJudaica.

For more on the Seleucid dynasty and its importance for biblical studies, see here and links

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