More on the Nazareth inscription

COUNTERPOINTS: Nazareth Inscription study questions link to Jesus’ tomb; not everyone agrees (Anugrah Kumar, The Christian Post). This article raises some points in favor of the inscription being produced in Nazareth rather than Kos, where the marble originated. I have no opinion on the question, but I will keep track of any interesting discussion.

In any case, the inscription does not prove the resurrection of Jesus. If the inscription does come from Nazareth, it is conceivable that it shows some awareness of the report that Jesus' body went missing from the tomb. But even this connection is very speculative.

Background here.

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Weisberg, Massekhet Menahot

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Dvora Weisberg. Massekhet Menahot. Volume V/2. Text, Translation, and Commentary. 2020. XII, 316 pages. 109,00 € including VAT. cloth ISBN 978-3-16-158332-2.

Published in English.
Tractate Menahkot in the Babylonian Talmud considers the proper composition, formation, and presentation of offerings of grain and flour brought to the Jerusalem Temple. Redacted centuries after the destruction of the Temple and the cessation of the sacrificial cult, the tractate focuses on the work of the priests and the centrality of intent in validating or invalidating offerings. There is minimal consideration of the role or experience of the men and women who brought offerings. The tractate also contains a detailed discussion of major ritual objects: Torah scrolls, mezuzah, tsitsit, and tefillin. Dvora Weisberg's commentary focuses attention on the tractate's treatment of women and gender issues, considering the ways that the Talmud presents women's engagement with the sacrificial system and with key religious symbols.

Cross-file under Talmud Watch.

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Hadrian's travel coinage

NUMISMATICS: CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series: Travels With Hadrian (Mike Markowitz). Hadrian sure did a lot of traveling, as this coin series illustrates. The section on "Judaea" is of most interest for PaleoJudaica.

Hadrian is known for his role in the Bar Kokbha Revolt and the events leading up to it. Also, past posts on Hadrian's Wall are here and links. There have been museum exhibitions on Hadrian at the British Museum and the Israel Museum. And for various other relevant posts, run "Hadrian" through the PaleoJudaica search engine.

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Did Iranian Jews buy the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai?

BELATEDLY FOR PURIM: The tomb of Esther and Mordechai (Chen Malul, National Library of Israel, via Intermountain Jewish News).

The archives, however, do include evidence that the purchase of the grounds of the tomb was completed, with final approval arriving on January 18, 1970. It appears that the land was transferred into the hands of the community — though it is difficult to say for certain as the documentation ceases at this stage.

The honeymoon period between the Jews of Iran and the state authorities would come to a quick, cruel end with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the rise to power of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Since then, the tomb of Esther and Mordechai has been the focus of bitter dispute.

Past PaleoJudaica posts on the (traditional) tomb of Esther and Mordechai in Iran are here and links.

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Israel's museums adjust

EXHIBITIONS: Israel’s museums stay open, but with limits; special events canceled. Local cultural institutions restrict number of visitors to 100 per gallery at any time, set up hygiene stands (Jessica Steinberg, Times of Israel).

As you might imagine, the media are not brimming with news about ancient Judaism right now. But I will continue to share with you what I find.

Courage, my friends. Take care and be well!

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Types of Coptic magic

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Looking at the Coptic Magical Papyri XIII: Types of Magic.

This week our project has hit another milestone – we now have all published Coptic magical texts (and a few unpublished ones) entered into our database. This is quite exciting for us, as it will make the process of editing and re-editing texts much faster, and we hope to make them available to the general public in the near future. Full information on the database will appear below, but in this post we’ll use the data we now have to explore the types of magic found in Coptic texts.

[...]

Cross-file under Coptic Watch. And congratulation to the Coptic Magical Papyri Project on achieving this milestone!

The genres and interests of ancient Coptic magic are quite similar to the genres and interests of both the somewhat earlier Greco-Roman magic corpus and the roughly contemporary ancient Jewish magic literature. I will have more to say about this soon.

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Welton, ‘He is a Glutton and a Drunkard’

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

‘He is a Glutton and a Drunkard’. Deviant Consumption in the Hebrew Bible

Series: Biblical Interpretation Series, Volume: 183

Author: Rebekah Welton

In ‘He is a Glutton and a Drunkard’: Deviant Consumption in the Hebrew Bible Rebekah Welton uses interdisciplinary approaches to explore the social and ritual roles of food and alcohol in Late Bronze Age to Persian-period Syro-Palestine (1550 BCE–400 BCE). This contextual backdrop throws into relief episodes of consumption deemed to be excessive or deviant by biblical writers. Welton emphasises the social networks of the household in which food was entangled, arguing that household animals and ritual foodstuffs were social agents, challenging traditional understandings of sacrifice. For the first time, the accusation of being a ‘glutton and a drunkard’ (Deut 21:18-21) is convincingly re-interpreted in its alimentary and socio-ritual contexts.

Prices from (excl. VAT): €121.00 / $146.00

E-Book
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-42349-7
Publication Date: 17 Feb 2020

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-42348-0
Publication Date: 20 Feb 2020

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Review of Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity (Candace Buckner).

David Frankfurter. Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

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BMCR’s New Site

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: BMCR’s New Site. FYI. I have updated the link in the PaleoJudaica blogroll. Links to earlier BMCR reviews seem to remain valid.

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Restitution for the death of a pregnant woman

DR. SANDRA JACOBS: Deathblows to a Pregnant Woman – What Restitution Was Required? (TheTorah.com).

The requirement of a “life for a life,” recalling the lex talionis, is provided when a man accidentally kills a pregnant woman in a brawl. While this consequence is generally explained as capital punishment or monetary repayment, its legal formulation in the Covenant Collection is suggestive of live, human, substitution.

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Review of Schniedewind, The Finger of the Scribe

H-JUDAIC REVIEW:

van der Toorn on Schniedewind, 'The Finger of the Scribe: The Beginnings of Scribal Education and How It Shaped the Hebrew Bible'

Author: William M. Schniedewind
Reviewer: Karel van der Toorn

William M. Schniedewind. The Finger of the Scribe: The Beginnings of Scribal Education and How It Shaped the Hebrew Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 248 pp. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-005246-1.

Reviewed by Karel van der Toorn (University of Amsterdam) Published on H-Judaic (March, 2020) Commissioned by Barbara Krawcowicz (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

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Kim, Multiple Authorship of the Septuagint Pentateuch

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Multiple Authorship of the Septuagint Pentateuch

The origin of the Septuagint

Series: Supplements to the Textual History of the Bible, Volume: 4
Author: Hayeon Kim

For hundreds of years, disputes on the origin of the Septuagint, a biblical text that was translated from Hebrew into Greek in the third century BCE, and the number of its translators have been ongoing. In Multiple Authorship of the Septuagint Pentateuch, Hayeon Kim provides a clear solution to the unsolved questions, using an objective and consistent set of translation-technique criteria, and traditional and computerized tools of analysis. According to the author, the translation of the Septuagint Pentateuch has two facets: homogeneity and heterogeneity. The common socio-religious milieu of the translators is apparent in the similar translation techniques, however, the individual characters of the five translators are also evident in their distinct translation styles.

Prices from (excl. VAT): €94.00 / $113.00

E-Book
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-42112-7
Publication Date: 17 Feb 2020

Hardback
Availability: Not Yet Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-42051-9
Publication Date: 27 Feb 2020

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Samuel Rolles Driver

PROF. MARC ZVI BRETTLER: S. R. Driver “Taught the Faithful Criticism, and the Critics Faith.” A reflection on the 106th yahrzeit of Samuel Rolles Driver (TheTorah.com).

Driver was the greatest British biblical scholar of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—one of the few scholars of that era whose work has endured. He is the “D” of the famed BDB Lexicon—the Brown, Driver, Briggs A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament—which is still widely-used more than a century after it was published, largely because of Driver’s role in the project. His 1892 book on the Hebrew tenses remains a classic.[6] But he was much more than a lexicographer and a grammarian.

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Purim 2020

HAPPY Purim to all those celebrating! The festival begins tonight at sundown.

Last year's Purim post is here, with links. Posts on Purim since then are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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"Yemen — from Sheba to Jerusalem"

EXHIBITION: Prophets, priests, Jewish kings: Ancient Yemen made vivid in Jerusalem exhibit. Bible Lands Museum tells the story of Jews in south Arabia, where they once ruled, made war, traded spice with Rome and longed for the Holy Land (AVIVA AND SHMUEL BAR-AM, Times of Israel).

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the Queen of Sheba, who may (or may not) have come from ancient Yemen, start here and follow those links. Other posts on Jews in ancient Yemen are here and here and links.

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Trinity Western's Aramaic DSS conference is canceled

PRUDENT: Canadian universities plan for video lectures, remote exams if coronavirus epidemic worsens (Joe Friesen, Globe and Mail). So far these are just contingency plans. But buried in the article is this, which I had not heard before:

Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C., announced Thursday that it’s cancelling a planned conference on the Dead Sea scrolls, scheduled for late March.

I noted the conference as upcoming here.

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Völkening, Imago Dei versus Kultbild

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Völkening, Helga

Imago Dei versus Kultbild
Die Sapientia Salomonis als jüdisch-hellenistischer Beitrag zur antiken Bilderdebatte
[Imago Dei versus Cultural Icon: The Wisdom of Solomon as a Jewish-Hellenistic Contribution to the Ancient Debate on Images]

Series: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 508

99,95 € / $114.99 / £91.00*
Hardcover
Publication Date: January 2020
ISBN 978-3-11-055315-4

Aims and Scope
The study spotlights the importance of ethical discourse on icons in the Book of Wisdom. Using structural, semantic, and topological analyses, it shows that parenesis about false and true images of God is an overarching theme, and contextualizes it in terms of tradition and cultural history. The text makes a unique contribution to the ancient debate on images by positing that they fulfill the imago dei invested in human beings.

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