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Saturday, May 30, 2020

Locating Pentecost?

SHAVUOT RELATED: Locating Pentecost – Part 1 (Chris McKinny, Bible Places Blog).

I do not insist that the Pentecost event narrated in Acts chapter 2 actually happened. It has some earmarks of being a midrashic composition. But neither do I exclude the possibility. The event may have been recalled and interpreted through a midrashic lens.

In any case, it is likely that the story was associated with a specific place, which makes this discussion of interest.

For lots more on the Jewish festival of Shavuot/Weeks (happening now) and the Christian festival of Pentecost (this Sunday), see here and links.

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Infancy Gospel of Thomas as late-antique travel guide?

APOCRYPHICITY: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas as Pilgrimage Guidebook (Tony Burke).
Of course, none of this is evidence that Infancy Thomas was composed in Nazareth or nearby, nor that it was written to capitalize on the pilgrimage industry—it seems to have been composed too early for that—but that does not mean it could not be used for this purpose in later centuries, particularly given the popularity of pilgrimage and the interplay between apocrypha and pilgrimage that is observable in texts, architecture, and artifacts ...
Cross-file under New Testament Apocrypha Watch.

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Obituary for Philip King

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: In Memorium: Philip J. King (1925-2019) (David Vanderhooft). Fr. King passed away in December of 2019. Requiescat in pace.

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Hebrew Ben Sira website

THE AWOL BLOG: The Book of Ben Sira. I noted this post a few years ago. It concerns a website on the Hebrew manuscripts of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus).

Chuck Jones has recently reposted it, so here it is again. This is a good opportunity to round up past PaleoJudaica posts on Hebrew Ben Sira. Many are collected here. And see also here and here (cf. here).

Cross-file under Old Testament Apocrypha Watch.

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Friday, May 29, 2020

They burned frankincense and weed at ancient Arad

FUMIGATION: New research reveals Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Biblical Arad (Phys.Org). The cannabis was mixed with animal dung to make it burn better. I doubt that improved the smell, though.

The site of Arad is well known for its pre-exilic Yahwistic sanctuary and, especially, for the many Hebrew ostraca discovered in the ruins of the fortress. See here (scroll down a bit) and here and links.

I still don't think that Jesus or Moses smoked weed. But this is the first evidence I know of that the ancient Israelites used psychoactive substances in their worship practices. See my comments in this post, which also, coincidentally, has a Shavuot connection.

Also, incidentally, for some reason the archangel Metatron has recently acquired a connection with cannabis.

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Ancient synagogue zodiac mosaics

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Jewish Worship, Pagan Symbols. Zodiac mosaics in ancient synagogues (Walter Zanger). This is a long, comprehensive, and well-illustrated article. The credit gives its publication in BHD as August 2012. But I linked to it in January of 2011 here. Apparently it was published as a Biblical Archaeology Review article then.

As I noted there, it is not correct to say that the "mystical Hellenistic-Byzantine Jewish tradition" represented by these synagogue mosaics left no literature. Read my post for details. And for some additional astrology-related ancient Jewish literature (among the Dead Sea Scrolls), see here and links.

Subsequent PaleoJudaica posts on the ancient zodiac synagogue mosaics are here, here, and here and links. The Helios mosaic at Huqoq was discovered after the BAR/BHD article was published.

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So many Syriac books online!

THE AWOL BLOG: The Syriac Studies Reference Library. Many, many critical editions of the works of prominent Syriac writers (Aphraates, Bar Hebraeus, Ephrem Syrus, Jacob of Serug, etc.), plus translated works and more. All online for free. For you, special deal!

Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

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War in heaven

READING ACTS: War in Heaven – Revelation 12:7-9. Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation, now concentrating on the seven sights of chapters 12-15. We are still on the first sight, the woman with the celestial accoutrements.

The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice refer to a "war of God" and a "war of heavenly clouds" in Song V.

I have noted previous posts in Phil's Book of Revelation series here and links.

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Thursday, May 28, 2020

Shavuot 2020

THE FESTIVAL OF SHAVUOT (Weeks, Pentecost) begins tonight at sundown. Best wishes to all those celebrating. For biblical background, see here. A couple of more recent posts on Shavuot are here and here.

For posts on the haftarah reading for the first day of Shavuot (Ezekiel 1, the merkavah vision) see here and links (related post here).

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A typo became an angelic liturgy?

PROF. CARL S. EHRLICH: Kedushah: Did the Angels Actually Say It? (TheTorah.com).
The Kedushah prayer is based on two quotes from angels: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts...” (Isa 6:3) and “Blessed be the Glory of the Lord from its place” (Ezek 3:12). However, Shadal, the 19th century polymath, explains that the second verse is not a quote by angels, but the result of a scribal error.
For more on Ezekiel's angelic visions, see here and links.

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Ezekiel's vision

FOR SHAVUOT: Ezekiel’s Shavuot mystery tour. From the imagination of the prophets came a new spiritual literature (Simon Rocker, Jewish Chronicle).

For much more on Ezekiel's merkavah vision, see here and links.

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On the (traditional) Tomb of Esther and Mordechai

ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE? Explore mausoleum of Esther and Mordechai (Afshin Majlesi, Tehran Times). Nice photo.

As I have noted in past posts, the connection of this structure with Esther and Mordechai is a tradition. Scholars regard the story in the Book of Esther to be a novel. We have no particular reason to think either protagonist existed outside the story.

But according to this article at least one archaeologist thought that this tomb existed as far back as late antiquity and had a Jewish connection.

The Tomb of Esther and Mordechai (or Mordechai and Esther) has been in the news lately. For past posts, see here and links.

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The woman flees

READING ACTS: Escape to the Wilderness – Revelation 12: 5-6. Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation, now concentrating on the seven sights of chapters 12-15. We are still on the first sight, the woman with the celestial accoutrements.

For more on the idea that this episode was a preexisting "Jewish apocalyptic fragment" used by John, see here. And follow the links from there for notice of earlier posts in Phil's series on the Book of Revelation.

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Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Heijmans (ed.), Studies in Rabbinic Hebrew

THE AWOL BLOG: Studies in Rabbinic Hebrew. An open-access online book edited by Shai Heijmans and published by Open Book Publishers.

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Barton on biblical criticism

PROF. JOHN BARTON: Biblical Criticism: A Common-Sense Approach to the Bible. (TheTorah.com).
Applying our critical faculties to study the Bible, asking questions about its origin, context, and genre
Welhausen was correct that the writing prophets show little knowledge of the Pentateuch. But it is also true that the Pentateuch shows virtually no knowledge of the writing prophets.

What does all that mean? I don't know.

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Lapsed bloggers, repent!

RELIGION PROF: A Call to New and Lapsed Bloggers. James McGrath is purging his Feedly feed. He calls on new bloggers to send in their addresses. He also exhorts lapsed ones to contact him to prevent being cast out by the three-month deletion tool. The hour is nigh!

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Andersen obituary

AT THE SBL SITE: Francis Ian Andersen, Singular Scholar: 28 July 1925 – 13 May 2020 (Dean Forbes).

Background here and links.

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The great red dragon

READING ACTS: The Dragon and the Stars – Revelation 12:3-4. Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation, now concentrating on the seven sights of chapters 12-15. We are on the first sight, the woman with the celestial accoutrements.

It has been argued that the episode involving the woman and the dragon in Revelation 12 is an earlier messianic-mythological tradition that John absorbed undigested into his book. That would make sense of many of the exegetical problems. The woman is the Jewish people. The baby is the messiah. The dragon is satan. But any connection with Jesus is a poor fit, because the tradition was originally about a generic messiah.

I don't have recent references or access to a library. But a century ago R. H. Charles explored the case in volume 1 of his International Critical Commentary on the Book of Revelation. You can read what he has to say by going to the section on chapter 12, starting on p. 298.

I think the basic concept is sound. I don't have a favorite version of the specifics.

I have noted previous posts in Phil's Book of Revelation series here and links.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Shavuot and Sinai?

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Of Weeks, Pentecost, and Giving the Law (Philip Jenkins).
So in 150 BC, say, Shavuot did not commemorate Moses at Sinai. By 150 AD, it definitely did. When is the transition? If it was indeed after 70, how soon after 70?

There is considerable doubt whether Luke, writing in the 90s, intended such a context for Acts. Significantly, Peter’s great speech on that occasion really contains no Law-, Sinai-, or Moses-appropriate echoes, as it could easily have done, if indeed Luke was thinking along these lines. The only marginal exception in that speech is that the men who handed Jesus over for death are “wicked” or rather “lawless,” anomon.
I agree with Professor Jenkins that Luke does not explicitly associate the festival of Shavuot (Weeks, Pentecost) with the revelation of the Torah at Sinai in Acts chapter 2. That said, there is a good argument that the story in Acts draws on midrashic exegesis of the Sinai event which appears in later rabbinic literature.

In any case, an exegetical connection of Shavuot with Sinai appears well before Luke's time.

The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, copies of which were found at Qumran and Masada, cover the first quarter of the sectarian solar year, with Shavuot occurring between Sabbaths 11 and 12. Songs 11 and 12 are influenced by the merkavah vision in Ezekiel 1 and by Psalm 68:17-20. The passage in Psalm 68 connects (at least in later exegesis) the merkavah vision with its mention of Sinai in v. 18.

At the time of Shavuot, the Songs draw on Ezekiel's merkavah vision (as does the later Jewish liturgy) and the Psalms passage that connects that vision with Sinai. That puts the connection easily as far back as the first century BCE.

I don't have a link for all of this, but I argue it in detail, with bibliography, in the "Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice" chapter in my book Liturgical Works (Eerdmans Commentaries on the Dead Sea Scrolls 6; Eerdmans, 2000). The original insights came from David Halperin and Carol Newsom.

The Christian celebration of Pentecost (inspired by Acts 2) is this Sunday, 31 May. The Jewish festival of Shavuot begins this year at sundown on Thursday, 28 May.

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New films on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

IT HAS REOPENED: Sacred and profane collide in two new films on Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Even as church reopens from coronavirus closure, two documentaries portray complex modern struggles at site where Jesus is believed to have been crucified, buried and resurrected (Renee Ghert-Zand, Times of Israel).

It was news to me that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Holy Sepulcher) reopened on Sunday. For past posts on the Church, with some attention to internal territorial disputes, see here and links.

For the Holy Fire Ceremony on Orthodox Easter, see here and links

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BASONOVA

THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY has begun a new paid-subscription lecture series called BASONOVA. They have announced three lectures so far:

BASONOVA–The First Diasporas: Egypt and Babylonia (3 June, Gary Rendsburg)

BASONOVA–Septuagint, Synagogue, and Symbiosis: The Jews of Hellenistic Egypt (10 June, Gary Rendsburg)

They also mention a third lecture by Steven Tuck on "Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Aftermath of Vesuvius" on 24 June, but it doesn't yet have its own page. Scroll down at either of the links above. For more on Steven Tuck's work, see there and here and links.

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We didn't mean to. It was an accident!

PROFESSOR JOAN TAYLOR: How my team and I accidentally discovered text on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The 2,000-year-old documents were thought to be blank – until recently (Scroll.in).

This is a firsthand account of the story I noted here.

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Congress volume for 16th IOSCS meeting, 2016

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:
XVI Congress Of The International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies: Stellenbosch, 2016

Gideon R. Kotze (Editor), Wolfgang Kraus (Editor), Michael N. Van Der Meer (Editor)

ISBN 9781628372403
Status Available
Price: $43.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date May 2019
Pages 276

Essays from experts in the field of Septuagint studies

This latest volume from the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS) includes the papers given at the XVI Congress of the IOSCS, South Africa, in 2016. The articles contribute to the study of the Septuagint and cognate literature by identifying and discussing new topics and lines of inquiry and developing fresh insights and arguments in existing areas of research. Scholars and students interested in different methods of studying the Septuagint corpora, the theology and reception of these texts, as well as the works of Josephus will find in this collection critical information for future work in Septuagint studies.

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Monday, May 25, 2020

The enigma of the late-antique Negev (with LBA bonus!)

ARCHAEOLOGY: The enigma behind the 1,500-year-old Christian communities in the Negev. Remains of over 180 houses were also revealed by the researchers, together with many agricultural installations including dams, cisterns, wine presses and a pigeon tower (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

Archaeologist Yotam Tepper:
“We are trying to understand why the settlements in the Negev collapsed at the end of the Byzantine period. We are considering several hypotheses, from a phenomenon of climate change to a plague, to the effects of the Arab conquest around 630-634 CE. However, it is hard to come to a definite conclusion, especially because different communities were abandoned in different times,” he explained.
Background on Shivta and the archaeology of the late-antique Negev is here and links.

Also, while we're on the subject of the ancient Negev, this discovery is outside PaleoJudaica's usual chronological horizon. But it's unusual and worth a mention here: 3,500-year-old plate depicting power struggle in ancient Negev discovered. Imri Elia, a resident of Kibbutz Niri, found the small engraved clay plate featuring two human figures near Tel Jemmeh (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

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More on the flooding of el-Araj

ARCHAEOLOGY UNDERWATER: Village Where Jesus’ Disciples May Have Lived Flooded by Rising Sea of Galilee. The putative Church of the Apostles is now in a lagoon peopled by catfish but the ruins where Jesus’ disciples may have lived haven’t been damaged, reassures archaeologist Motti Aviam (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz). HT the Bible and Interpretation.

Blogger Carl Rasmussen broke this story broke this story back in mid-May. I noted his post a week ago. But now the media is catching up. This article has some additional information on the situation and is worth reading.

As PaleoJudaica's regular readers already know, this site — el-Araj — is one possible location for the ancient city of Bethsaida. The other is et-Tell. For past posts on both, see my link in the previous paragraph.

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Funeral service for Francis Ian Andersen: 28 May

UPCOMING LIVESTREAM:

The Andersen family invites you to participate in the livestream of the funeral of Francis Ian Andersen, who is a highly regarded international Old Testament scholar. As part of your participation in the community of celebration of Frank's life please have a candle ready to be lit during the service . The service is approximately 2 hours. An order of service can be downloaded from this site from Monday 25th May.
HT Andrei Orlov.

The sevice is scheduled for 11:00 am on 28 May. I cannot find a time zone specified anywhere, but Professor Andersen's last residence was in Australia.

Background here.

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De Troyer et al. (eds.), Early Reception of the Torah

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:
The Early Reception of the Torah

Series: Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies, 39
Edited by: Kristin De Troyer, Barbara Schmitz, Joshua Alfaro and Maximilian Häberlein
De Gruyter | 2020

OVERVIEW

This volume contains the papers presented at the 2017 meeting of the SBL Program Unit on Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature in Boston, MA. The theme of the sessions was the interpretation of Torah in deuterocanonical literature. The contributions cover a variety of concepts and themes related to Torah and trace these through the Hebrew Bible, into the Septuagintal deuterocanonical books and other relevant and cognate literature.

From £91.00
Price including VAT

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Ruth consumes the bread of kinship

PROF. CYNTHIA CHAPMAN: The Substance of Kinship: How Ruth the Moabite Became a Daughter in Judah (TheTorah.com).
Ruth’s consumption of barley and wheat gleaned from the field of Boaz was an integral step in her transformation from a “foreigner” who arrived from the fields of Moab to a “daughter” in Judah.

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Sunday, May 24, 2020

Thiel on Josephus on "Galileans"

JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW: "The Use of the Term “Galileans” in the Writings of Flavius Josephus Revisited" (Nathan Thiel, JQR 110.2 [2020]: 221-44).
Abstract
Among the central players of Josephus’s autobiography are those he refers to as “the Galileans.” Patronized by their one-time general as a restive and emotional mob ready to ignite at the slightest indignation, “the Galileans” are of vital importance to Josephus’s imagined success as general of the Jewish forces in Galilee. Josephus’s condescension toward “the Galileans,” strange as it is, is compounded by the fact that he regularly contrasts them with the inhabitants of Galilee’s major cities, principally Sepphoris, Tiberias, and Gabara. This essay revisits the curious presentation of “the Galileans” in Josephus’s writings, picking up an inchoate suggestion of Shaye Cohen of a Galilean ethnos. I argue that Josephus does indeed view “the Galileans” as an ethnos of their own, distinguishable from the Jews of Galilee, who mainly reside in the region’s urban centers. That is, the term “Galileans” in Josephus’s works functions first as a marker of ethnic belonging and so is not equivalent to “an inhabitant of Galilee” tout court. Josephus’s presentation of “the Galileans,” moreover, is colored by an ethnic prejudice that essentializes a few traits and makes them foils for the virtues of Josephus and the Jews. The introduction to “the Galileans” in his Jewish War (J.W. 3.42), which portrays them as “pugnacious from infancy,” converges with their characterization in Life, written some two decades later. I briefly consider the historical implications that follow from this reevaluation of “the Galileans” in Josephus.

This article (and indeed the whole issue) is online for free until 30 June 2020, "in support of researchers impacted by the Covid-19 crisis." Also downloadable as a pdf file.

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Undisturbed Punic tomb discovered in Malta

PUNIC WATCH: Incredible undisturbed Punic tomb found in Tarxien (Albert Galea, Malta Independent).

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Digital Hammurabi

ENTREPRENEURIAL PHILOLOGY: Digital Hammurabi. Via the AWOL Blog.

Megan Lewis and Dr. Joshua Bowen also run the Humans Against Poor Scholarship charity.

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