Interview with John Meade on Hexaplaric Job

WILLIAM ROSS: JOHN MEADE’S NEW EDITION OF THE HEXAPLARIC EVIDENCE FOR JOB.

I noted a publication announcement for the book here and two related ETC blog posts by Dr. Meade on the subject here and here.

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Botched bookroll bureaucracy

PAPYRUS STORIES: Law and the Art of Bookroll Maintenance (guest post by Mark De Kreij).

What a mess! More than a half century of rotting scrolls and bureaucratic incompetence. HT Roger Pearse, who offers a summary: How papyrus rolls lost their tops and bottoms – from Oxyrhynchus.

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The Temple Mount Sifting Project and the Coronavirus

THE TEMPLE MOUNT SIFTING PROJECT: SPECIAL UPDATE FOLLOWING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC CRISIS.

UPDATE: For many, many past posts on the project, start here and follow those links.

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The Coronavirus, the Bible, and the ANE

DR. YITZHAQ FEDER: Coronavirus: What We Can Learn from the Bible and the ANE. An expert in ancient Near Eastern contagious diseases reflects on living through a modern one (TheTorah.com).

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Happy Spring Jewish New Year!

THAT'S TONIGHT AT SUNDOWN: “May this coming year come upon us in peace”; The Ancient 1st of Nisan Celebration (Joel Davidi Weisberger, Times of Israel Blog).

The celebration of the first of Nisan as the beginning of the new year is rooted both in Biblical, extra-Biblical and Talmudic sources. Exodus 12:1-2 states that Nisan is the first month in the setting of the new year. The book of Ezekiel (45:18-19) says: “Thus saith the Lord God: In the first month, in the first day of the month, thou shalt take a young bullock without blemish; and thou shalt purify the sanctuary.”

Ezekiel contains many laws and festivals that are not found in the Pentateuch. Many interpret these as being meant for a future (third) Temple. Ezekiel does not explicitly describe the first of Nissan as a celebration of the new year per se but this description is nonetheless the earliest evidence of the day having special significance.

We find a similar reference in the Temple Scroll (11Q19) of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Temple Scroll describes the ideal Temple of the Qumran sectarians. The Festival of the first day of the first month (Nissan) is one of three additional extra-biblical festivals that are mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls: ...

If the first of Nisan is such an important date to both the Bible and Talmud then, why is the day celebrated today only by this small Jewish community? To answer this question we must look to the Geonic period of Jewish history, corresponding roughly to the second half of the first millennium. ...

The celebration began on the Sabbath last week in that Egyptian-Jewish rite.

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The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is closed.

ANOTHER CLOSURE: Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre closes amid coronavirus fears (Reuters/Yahoo). Initially for a week, starting yesterday.

For many past PaleoJudaica posts on the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (Holy Sepulchre), see here, here, and here, and follow the links.

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Another fake Torah in Turkey

APPREHENDED: Turkish police nab 3 suspects trying to sell ancient Torah for $1.25M (Daily Sabah). These forgers don't give up, even during a pandemic.

If they were really trying to sell this thing for $1.25 million, they are epic optimists. It isn't a Torah scroll. The writing isn't Hebrew. It might be bad Syriac, or Syriac-inspired squiggles.

For many past reports of apprehensions of manuscripts etc. in Turkey, start here and follow the links. I was getting bored with these stories and was going to stop noting them. But the news is pretty quiet right now for some reason, so here you are.

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A digitized national emergency library

THE AWOL BLOG: Announcing a National Emergency Library to Provide Digitized Books to Students and the Public.

[Though not specifically antiquity facing, I include this new tool from the Internet Archive because it will be useful to the many teachers and students who use AWOL]

Thanks Chuck.

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Geography and Religion - and three mysterious holy men

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Geography and Religion

Geography, and the geological formations and climatological effects derived thereby, have a distinct shaping influence on the everyday lives of people who live in particular areas. This shaping influence extends naturally to the religious traditions that develop in certain places, affecting the figures, metaphors, motifs, and physical structures that are relevant in certain areas of the world. To be meaningful, of course, something must be relevant. The Eastern Mediterranean was shaped by certain geographical and climatological forces that enabled life, through rainfall agriculture, but that also limited life, due to a lack of largescale irrigative rivers, constant aridity, and the blight of frequent drought. Geographical and agricultural motifs developed in the region that both were relevant and meaningful in such a setting. Such agricultural motifs earliest were associated with the figure of the ancient storm-god, and then became associated with his subsequent regional manifestations and alternatives, in the figures of Jewish Elijah, Christian St. George, and Muslim al-Khiḍr. Investigating this particular example offers a good case study for the usefulness of geography of religion as both a theory (geography shapes religions) and as a method (geographical contextualization allows us to see that religious traditions always are a product of both place and time).

See Also: Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean (Routledge, 2020).

By Erica Ferg
Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
Regis University
March 2020

Cross-file under New Book.

There are too many past PaleoJudaica posts on Elijah to link to here. If you are interested, run "Elijah" through the blog's search engine. Past posts on St. George (the patron saint of England and late-antique Palestinian reputed dragon-slayer) are here and links. Past posts involving the Qur'anic figure Al-Khidr are here and here.

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Traditions of Eastern Late Antiquity at AAR/SBL 2019

RELIGION PROF: TELA at #AARSBL19. James McGrath gives us a belated, but welcome report on a session of the Traditions of Eastern Late Antiquity Group at the AAR/SBL meeting in San Diego in November of 2019. As James notes, I presented a paper at a joint session of TELA and MEGA. My paper was presented in absentia, for reasons having nothing to do with the current concerns.

At present, the AAR/SBL meeting is still scheduled to occur in Boston in November of 2020. But the International Meeting of the SBL, scheduled for July at the University of Adelaide in Australia, has been canceled. We will just have to see how things look as November approaches. If we don't meet in Boston, I agree with James that we should aim for remote delivery.

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TWU LXX Summer School to go online

WILLIAM ROSS: UPDATED INFORMATION: 2020 TWU SEPTUAGINT SUMMER SCHOOL. I saw his earlier posting on the Summer School, but I held off on linking to it, since the information was likely to change. I'm glad the event is proceeding by remote delivery.

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More on those fake DSS fragments

THAT'S A REASONABLE QUESTION: After Dead Sea Forgeries Exposed, How Do We Know the Scrolls in Israel Are Authentic? All scroll fragments at the Museum of the Bible in Washington turn out to be fakes: Experts explain how we know the massive trove of scrolls held in Jerusalem is genuine (Ariel David, Haaretz premium; HT Joseph Lauer). Yes, we do know that with a high degree of confidence.

Also have a look at Drew Longacre's post at the OTTC Blog: Loll et al. 2019 - Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scroll Collection Scientific Research and Analysis: Final Report. This discusses and has a link to the publication that debunked the Museum of the Bible's Dead Sea Scroll-like fragments. And see also the links to essays by Rollston (who offers an FBI-style profile of the forger), White Crawford, and Langlois.

Background here and follow the many links.

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BMCR reviews of two books on ancient magic

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Guide to the study of ancient magic.

David Frankfurter, Guide to the study of ancient magic. Religions in the Graeco-Roman world, volume 189. Leiden: Brill, 2019. xx, 797 p.. ISBN 9789004171572 €249,00.
Review by
Markham J. Geller. m.geller@ucl.ac.uk

This volume gives plenty of attention to ancient Jewish magic, among many other magical traditions. For more on the Mesopotamian āshipu practitioner (also mentioned in the biblical book of Daniel as "enchanter") see here and here.

Magic in ancient Greece and Rome

Lindsay Watson, Magic in ancient Greece and Rome. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. x, 248 p.. ISBN 9781788312981 £21.59 (pb).
Review by
Adam Parker, Open University. adam.parker@open.ac.uk

Excerpt:

The main strength of this book lies in its concise introduction of different facets of ancient magical practices, drawing on a broad (although exclusively textual) evidence base, predominantly informed by the PGM, the corpus of curse tablets, and the writings of Pliny the Elder, Dioscorides, Theophrastus, and Ovid. This focus is surprising when the recent ‘material turn’ in ancient magical studies has helped to develop a deeper understanding of the nature and scale of such practices.

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Activities for the Apocalypse

IF YOU ARE CONFINED TO QUARTERS and seeking diversion, here are a couple of activities that (resources/expertise permitting) you can do at home.

First, from the Archaeological Institute of America: 2020 AIA Photo Contest. The deadline for submission is 29 March 2020.


Second, the Hugoye list (devoted to Syriac studies) has remained active through all the excitement this month. I can't figure out how to link to this recent post, but I will copy it here in case any Syriac scholars haven't seen it.

([hugoye-list] Sheltering at Home & Deduping SEDRA - Monday, 23 March 2020 at 9:48 pm)

Dear Friends of Beth Mardutho,

We hope that you are keeping safe during this difficult time. As many of you are likely sheltering at home, you may find yourselves with extra time on your hands. Therefore, we at Beth Mardutho have decided to put out a call to those of you who know Syriac and are interested in volunteering some of your free time. As most of you are aware, SEDRA is a database of the Syriac language. Currently, it contains 4,264 duplicated lexemes. We would like to merge these duplicates. If you are interested in helping dedupe SEDRA and you know Syriac (2 years University level experience), please contact Shelby Loster at shelby@bethmardutho.org for more information.

Thank you. We look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,
The Beth Mardutho Team

Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

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Review of Schniedewind, The Finger of the Scribe

THE BIBLICAL REVIEW BLOG: Review: “The Finger of the Scribe: How Scribes Learned to Write the Bible” by William M. Schniedewind (William Brown).

William M. Schniedewind. 2019. The Finger of the Scribe: How Scribes Learned to Write the Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Excerpt:

Schniedewind’s The Finger of the Scribe provides an insightful and unique approach the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions. By drawing from Near Eastern scribal curriculum, he effectively demonstrates that the early Israelite scribal curriculum—as evidenced at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud—may have been heavily influenced by the Mesopotamian scribal curriculum. Surely, scholars exploring literacy and scribal practices in the Levant should engage with this volume. That said, as Schniedewind occasionally suggests, many of his arguments rely on conjecture and extrapolative thinking.

I noted another review of the book here.

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Nabatean travel and trade

NABATEAN (NABATAEAN) WATCH: The Ancient Nabataeans of Jordan Travelled All The Way to Yemen and Oman. Inscriptions found in Yemen and Oman dating back to the Nabataean period point to the prevalence of frankincense trade between southern Arabian centres and the Levant, according to a Greek archaeologist. (Jordan Times/albawaba). The lecture was by Konstantinos Politis at the American Centre of Oriental Research earlier this month. Back when there were still public lectures.

For many past posts on the Nabateans and their language, see here and follow the links. For still more, search the PaleoJudaica archive.

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

Persepolis

ANCIENT URBAN GEOGRAPHY: Persepolis: Symbol of Ancient Iran. TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, was once known as the richest city under the sun. A nice little photo essay.

Persepolis does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. But it is mentioned in 2 Maccabees 6:2 as the site of the downfall of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

It was an important Achaemenid Persian site and also is of interest for that reason. And the Persepolis Fortification Archive has produced an important corpus of Persian-era Aramaic and other texts. See here (related post here) and follow the many links.

Bible Places also has lots of good material and links on Persepolis.

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Vashti wasn't summoned to appear naked

THAT'S NOT IN THE BIBLE: The Bible Says What? Did Vashti appear naked before her husband? Rabbi Debbie Young-Somers takes a controversial topic from Jewish texts and looks at a progressive response (Jewish News).

The Book of Esther 1:10-11 says that Vashti was summoned to appear "with her royal crown" to display her beauty in public. Apparently the Midrash inferred that the crown was all she was supposed to wear.

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Temple Mount closing(s)

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Al-Aqsa mosque shut amid coronavirus outbreak. Prayers suspended after Wakf holds emergency meeting in Jerusalem (Aness Suheil Barghoti, Anadolu Agency). Effective this morning.

Sadly, even this notice could not resist insinuating some political fake news:

Al-Aqsa Mosque is the world's third holiest site for Muslims. Jews refer to the area as the "Temple Mount," claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.

"claiming"

Also note this: Israel, Jordan said discussing possibility of closing Temple Mount (Times of Israel).

UPDATE: See also here from last week.

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Zeini, Zoroastrian scholasticism in late antiquity

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Zoroastrian Scholasticism in Late Antiquity. Notice of a New Book: Zeini, Arash. 2020. Zoroastrian scholasticism in late antiquity. The Pahlavi version of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

The Zoroastrian texts in Pahlavi often contain much earlier material and are of some interest as background for Second Temple Judaism.

Arash Zeini is founder of and contributor to the Bibliographia Iranica Blog. Some years ago he was at the University of St. Andrews on a fellowship. For more about him, see here and here and links.

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