The daric

NUMISMATICS: The Daric: Persian Gold – CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series (Mike Markowitz).

As the article notes, the daric is mentioned in the Bible. The list of references is not quite complete. It should read Nehemiah 7:70, 71, 72.

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

Ben Zvi, Social Memory among the Literati of Yehud

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Ehud Ben Zvi
Social Memory among the Literati of Yehud

Series: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 509
De Gruyter | 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110547146

From £118.00
FORMATS
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-3-11-054638-5
Published: 22 Jul 2019
PDF
ISBN: 978-3-11-054714-6
Published: 22 Jul 2019
EPUB
ISBN: 978-3-11-054651-4
Published: 22 Jul 2019

OVERVIEW
Ehud Ben Zvi has been at the forefront of exploring how the study of social memory contributes to our understanding of the intellectual worldof the literati of the early Second Temple period and their textual repertoire. Many of his studies on the matter and several new relevant works are here collected together providing a very useful resource for furthering research and teaching in this area.
The essays included here address, inter alia, prophets as sites of memory, kings as sites memory, Jerusalem as a site of memory, a mnemonic system shaped by two interacting ‘national’ histories, matters of identity and othering as framed and explored via memories, mnemonic metanarratives making sense of the past and serving various didactic purposes and their problems, memories of past and futures events shared by the literati, issues of gender constructions and memory, memories understood by the group as ‘counterfactual’ and their importance, and, in multiple ways, how and why shared memories served as a (safe) playground for exploring multiple, central ideological issues within the group and of generative grammars governing systemic preferences and dis-preferences for particular memories.

I missed this one last year, so here it is now.

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

Dusinberre et al. (eds.), The Art of Empire in Achaemenid Persia

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: The Art of Empire in Achaemenid Persia. Notice of a New Book: Dusinberre Elspeth R.M., Mark B. Garrison & Wouter F.M. Henkelman (eds.). 2020. The Art of Empire in Achaemenid Persia: Studies in Honour of Margaret Cool Root (Achaemenid History 16). Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten & Leuven: Peeters.

The volume includes many articles on the Achaemenid ceremonial capital Persepolis. For many PaleoJudaica posts on Persepolis, start here (cf. here) and follow the links.

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

Altmann et al. (eds.), Food Taboos and Biblical Prohibitions

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Food Taboos and Biblical Prohibitions. Reassessing Archaeological and Literary Perspectives. Edited by Peter Altmann, Anna Angelini, and Abra Spiciarich. 2020. VI, 158 pages. Archaeology and Bible 2. 54,00 € including VAT. sewn paper ISBN 978-3-16-159355-0.

Published in English.
This volume presents contributions from “The Larger Context of the Biblical Food Prohibitions: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approaches” conference held in Lausanne in June, 2017. The biblical food prohibitions constitute an excellent object for comparative and interdisciplinary approaches given their materiality, their nature as comparative objects between cultures, and their nature as an anthropological object. This volume articulates these three aspects within an integrated and dynamic perspective, bringing together contributions from Levantine archaeology, ancient Near Eastern studies, and anthropological and textual perspectives to form a new, multi-disciplinary foundation for interpretation.

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

Was Genesis-2 Kings written in the Hellenistic period?

THE BIBLE AND INTEPRETATION:

Greek Literature and the Primary History

In recent years, however, a number of scholars have dated the biblical books in the Primary History (Genesis through 2 Kings) very late. Thus, they have raised the possibility that the authors of these books might have been very familiar with Classical Greek texts down to 300 BCE and Hellenistic Greek texts after 300 BCE, and perhaps they even used some Greek texts to craft plot-line and imagery in the books of the Primary History.

See Also: Hellenism and the Primary History. September, 2020 Forthcoming by Routledge.

By Robert Karl Gnuse
Chair of the Department of Religious Studies
Loyola University New Orleans
June 2020

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

Wickes, Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia

NEW BOOK FROM UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS:

Jeffrey Wickes
Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia
Ephrem's Hymns on Faith

Series: Christianity in Late Antiquity, 5

University of California Press | 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520972599

£113.00 PDF

FORMATS
PDF
ISBN: 978-0-520-97259-9
Published: 17 Sep 2019

OVERVIEW
Ephrem the Syrian was one of the founding voices in Syriac literature. While he wrote in a variety of genres, the bulk of his work took the form of madrashe, a Syriac genre of musical poetry or hymns. In Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia, Jeffrey Wickes offers a thoroughly contextualized study of Ephrem’s magnum opus, the Hymns on Faith, delivered in response to the theological controversies that followed the First Council of Nicaea. The ensuing doctrinal divisions had tremendous impact on the course of Christianity and led in part to the development of a uniquely Syriac Church, in which Ephrem would become a central figure. Drawing on literary, ritual, and performance theories, Bible and Poetry shows how Ephrem used the Syriac Bible to construct and conceive of himself and his audience. In so doing, Wickes resituates Ephrem in a broader early Christian context and contributes to discussions of literature and religion in late antiquity.

This volume was published in 2019, but it just came to my attention. Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

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

Gottlieb, Targum Chronicles and Its Place Among the Late Targums

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Targum Chronicles and Its Place Among the Late Targums

Series: Supplement to Aramaic Studies, Volume: 16
Author: Leeor Gottlieb

Targum Chronicles and Its Place Among the Late Targums heralds a paradigm shift in the understanding of many of the Jewish-Aramaic translations of individual biblical books and their origins. Leeor Gottlieb provides the most extensive study of Targum Chronicles to date, leading to conclusions that challenge long-accepted truisms with regard to the origin of Targums. This book’s trail of evidence convincingly points to the composition of Targums in a time and place that was heretofore not expected to be the provenance of these Aramaic gems of biblical interpretation. This study also offers detailed comparisons to other Targums and fascinating new explanations for dozens of aggadic expansions in Targum Chronicles, tying them to their rabbinic sources.

Prices from (excl. VAT): €192.00 / $231.00

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Not Yet Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-41763-2
Publication Date: 04 Jun 2020

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-41697-0
Publication Date: 04 Jun 2020

Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

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

Godfearers in Aphrodisias

THE HOLY LAND PHOTOS' BLOG: Jews, Proselytes, and God-Fearers at Aphrodisias (Carl Rasmussen). This is quite an interesting inscription. The relationship of its "godfearers" to the "godfearers" in Acts is unclear.

As usual, Carl provides some nice photos. He has other posts on Aphrodisias, an ancient city in Asia Minor (Turkey), here and here.

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

The Aramaic origins of the postal service

ARAMAIC WATCH: The Surprising Origins of the Postal Service. An ancient Persian institution served as the model and inspiration for the United States Postal Service and other such delivery services (Joobin Bekhrad, BBC).

According to Dr Lindsay Allen, a lecturer in ancient history at King’s College London, the Persian postal system was also impressive for its use of a standardised language across such a vast expanse, as well as its consistency in terms of message delivery and format. Although Old Persian was the Persians’ native tongue, the linguistically unrelated Aramaic was the administrative language of the empire and thus used in composing messages throughout it, much in the same way that English and Latin-alphabet transliterations are usually used on envelopes and parcels worldwide today.

“For long distances we’re looking at Aramaic on ink on prepared animal skin, folded up and sealed,” Allen said. “This was the first time that consistently formatted letters, folded and sealed, were used. Unfortunately, we have only a few surviving parchment letters written in Aramaic… [but] even these suggest there was shared administrative practice between letters sent to Egypt and those sent by a local governor in Bactria.”

This is a long article on how the ancient Achaemenid Persian empire developed a postal service that covered the whole empire. It served as the template for subsequent postal services, including the modern ones.

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

More on names in the Bible and in inscriptions

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Personal Names and Biblical Historicity. How do ancient Israelite and Judahite personal names—collected from archaeological materials—contribute to the study of the Bible’s historicity? (Megan Sauter).

I have noted Dr. Mitka R. Golub's recent work on the onomastic history of biblical and epigraphic names here and here. In the former post I noted her BAR article on her research. This BHD post summarizes it.

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

Online lectures on ANE languages in contact

THE AWOL BLOG: Ancient Near Eastern Languages in Contact –eLecture Series. These lectures take place in July and August. several of them are of interest for the study of ancient Judaism

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

The second angel

READING ACTS: The Message of the Second Angel – Revelation 14:8. Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation, concentrating on the seven sights of chapters 12-15. We are on the fifth sight: the three angels and their messages.

As I have noted here, the identification of Rome with the Babylonians in Jewish literature goes back to the pre-Christian period. We find it in the Habakkuk Pesher among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I have noted earlier posts in Phil's Revelation series here and links.

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

Supervision of specific West Bank archaeological sites

ARCHAEOLOGY AND POLITICS, CONTINUED: What happens to West Bank archaeological sites under Trump’s plan? Here are some of the archaeological sites located in the West Bank (Jerusalem Post). Rossella Tercatin follows up her earlier articles, noted here. This one gives some information on the plans for specific sites, including Qumran, Shiloh, and Herodium.

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

Gardner, The Founder of Manichaeism

BILIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Rethinking the Life of Mani. Notice of a New Book: Gardner, Iain. 2020. The Founder of Manichaeism: Rethinking the Life of Mani. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Some past PaleoJudaica posts on Mani are here and links, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Cross-file under Manichean Watch (Manichaean Watch).

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

Angel or eagle?

READING ACTS: The Message of the First Angel – Revelation 14:6-7. Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation, concentrating on the seven sights of chapters 12-15. We move to the fifth sight, the three angels and their messages.

I have noted earlier posts in Phil's Revelation series here and links.

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

Anderson (ed.), From Scrolls to Scrolling

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

From Scrolls to Scrolling

Sacred Texts, Materiality, and Dynamic Media Cultures

Series: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – Tension, Transmission, Transformation, 12

Edited by: Bradford A. Anderson
De Gruyter | 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110634440

The electronic version is (at least currently) Open Access.

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

Jan Joosten convicted for possession of child abuse media

THIS IS HORRIFIC: Oxford professor sentenced to jail in France over child abuse images. Former pastor Jan Joosten receives year’s sentence for downloading 28,000 images and videos (Archie Bland and Jon Henley, The Guardian).

Jan Joosten is Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University, one of the most prestigious chairs in the field internationally. Oxford has suspended him from his academic post, "pending further action." A statement from Christ Church College, Oxford, is here.

It is difficult to express how horrifying this story is. Appalling and disgraceful. The entire field of biblical studies is reeling from it. My heart goes out to the victims.

UPDATE (5 July): As of 3 July he is no longer affiliated with Oxford University in any way.

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

The Sifting Project's methodology

THE TEMPLE MOUNT SIFTING PROJECT BLOG: Our Excavation and Research Methodology. I have just noticed this informative post. It is undated, but I have not linked to it before.

It explains the wet-sifting process used by the project. It also covers the innovative strategies the project uses to study artifacts recovered outside of a stratigraphic archaeological context. Well worth reading.

For many, many PaleoJudaica posts on the Temple Mount Sifting Project, start here and follow the links.

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

AJR reviews catalogue for "The World Between Empires" Exhibition

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | The World Between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East (Alex Istok).

Blair Fowlkes-Childs and Michael Seymour. The World Between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019.

This catalogue was published in conjunction with “The World between empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East,” on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, from March through June 2019.

PaleoJudaica posts on this exhibition are here and here.

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

Michigan collection of Coptic manuscripts

THE AWOL BLOG: Written Culture of Christian Egypt: Coptic Manuscripts from the University of Michigan Collection. Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

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

McGrath on "The Shared Origins of Monotheism"

RELIGION PROF: The Shared Origins of Monotheism, Evil, and Gnosticism (Enoch Seminar 2020 Presentation). James McGrath shares his pre-recorded presentation for the upcoming online Enoch Seminar on Concepts of Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins. The Seminar begins a week from today. I am a respondent in one of the sessions.

Background here and links.

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

Supervision of archaeological sites on the West Bank

ARCHAEOLOGY AND POLITICS: In the Jerusalem Post, Rossella Tercatin has a couple of articles on the shifting political situation of archaeological sites on the West Bank:

Who is in charge of biblical sites in the West Bank? - Explainer. From the legal point of view, several stratifications of national and international law have been applied or partially applied to the matter since 1967.

Trump peace plan puts hundreds of biblical sites under Palestinian rule. There are about 6,000 sites of historical and archaeological importance in the parts of Area C that are supposed to transfer to the Palestinians on July 1.

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

Was Jesus middle class?

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Middle Groups in Jewish Roman Galilee and Jesus and his Disciples’ Social Location: New Insights

Like many revolutionaries, Jesus saw the attachment of the upper-middle class to money as responsible for their passiveness in spiritual commitment. Jesus’ philosophy developed from the perspective of the middle class, not from that of the poor. He was able to attract followers because he came from a solid background. “The poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard” (Eccl. 9:16, ASV). Had Jesus come from a poor background, it would have been difficult for him to become a leader.

See Also: Social Stratification of the Jewish Population of Roman Palestine in the Period of the Mishnah, 70-250 CE (Brill, 2020).

By Ben-Zion Rosenfeld
Department of Jewish History
Bar-Ilan University

By Haim Perlmutter
Jewish Studies
Bar Ilan University
June 2020

I noted the publication of the book a couple of days ago.

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

The Hanging Gardens of ... Nineveh?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Hanging Gardens of Babylon … in Assyrian Nineveh. Sennacherib’s garden without a rival (Noah Wiener).

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are one of the Seven Wonders of the World. But the archaeological excavation of ancient Babylon failed to find any trace of them. They would be hard to miss!

Instead, it seems that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are a prominent feature of what I like to call Greek Fantasy Babylon, the legendary and often imaginary version of Babylon transmitted by Greek writers. Berossus mentions the Hanging Gardens, as does Ctesias before him and various Greek and Latin writers after them. But they didn't exist. At least in Babylon.

As this BHD essay indicates, Stephanie Dalley has argued that the Hanging Gardens known by the Greek writers were in Nineveh, the capital city of ancient Assyria, not Babylon. Evidently the Greek writers got their ancient Mesopotamian capitals mixed up. For more on her case, see here.

For some past posts touching on Greek Fantasy Babylon, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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

Late-antique Christian town excavated in Galilee

EXCAVATION REPORT: Archaeologists unearth Galilee Christian town sacked by Persians in 7th century. Remains of affluent, rural community discovered at Pi Mazuva in 2007 include crosses, pagan-inspired mosaic; new publication illuminates the Christians who lived there (Luke Tress, Times of Israel).

The analysis of the remains of Pi Mazuva (Pi Metzuba) was published this month in the Hebrew-language journal Atiqot. You can download a pdf of the the article for free here.

Dwellings from the Byzantine Period at Pi Maẓuva in the Western Galilee (with a contribution by Danny Syon) (Hebrew, pp. 31*–39*; English summary, pp. 182–183)
Gilad Cinamon and Yoav Lerer
Keywords: Western Galilee, rural settlement, ṭabun, numismatics, cross, Christianity, ethnicity, villa, art, iconography, epigraphy, nomismata weight
The excavation at Pi Maẓuva revealed building complexes, some separated by an alley, dating from the Byzantine period. The finds at the site included a bronze cross, an ashlar limestone lintel with a cross engraving, and pottery dated to the sixth–seventh centuries CE, which comprised local types, alongside many imported ones, some adorned with crosses. An interesting find is a high-quality, colorful, seventh-century CE mosaic floor adorned with floral motifs, animal and human figures, and two fragmentary Greek inscriptions. The finds at the site point to the existence of a rural Christian settlement, probably destroyed during the Persian conquest of the region in 613 CE.

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

Birds in ancient Jerusalem

OSTEOLOGICAL ORNITHOLOGY: Bird study backs Bible: Pigeons, doves sacrificed in ancient Jerusalem. From the story of Noah and the dove in the Book of Genesis to the issues of ritual sacrifices and dietary restrictions, birds play a very important role in the biblical text (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post). It looks as though people ate chickens, but sacrificed pigeons and doves.

This article is based on a technical article in BASOR 383 (May 2020 - current issue), pp. 61-78: “Birds in Transition: Bird Exploitation in the Southern Levant During the Late Bronze Age, Iron Age I, and Iron Age II,” by Abra Spiciarich. It is behind the subscription wall, but you can read the abstract here.

Some past PaleoJudaica posts on pigeons and doves in biblical etc. antiquity are here, here, here, here, and here. And for one on ancient chickens, see here.

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

Most iconic archaeological sites in Israel?

TRAVEL: The 10 most iconic archeological sites in Israel (Abigail Klein Leichman , Israel21c). One can always debate top-ten lists. But most people would agree that most of these sites belong on this list. All of them have featured in PaleoJudaica, most of them many times.

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

More on the 144,000

READING ACTS: The Firstfruits of the Lamb – Revelation 14:4-5. Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation, concentrating on the seven sights of chapters 12-15. We are now on the fourth sight, the 144,000.

I have noted past posts in Phil's Revelation series here and links.

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