Those Nephilim again

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Nephilim and the Sons of God. Unlike Hercules, Achilles, and Perseus, demigods were seen more negatively by ancient Israelites (John Drummond). As usual this essay is a summary of a longer article behind the subscription wall: Jaap Doedens, “Exploring the Story of the Sons of God,” in the current issue Biblical Archaeology Review. But the BHD essay is a decent overview of the topic.

PaleoJudaica has lots of posts on the Nephilim. Their mythical background is fascinating. And their mythology lives and grows to this day. Background here and links, plus here and here.

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New series - Gorgias Coptic Studies

THE NSEA BLOG: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS, NEW SERIES – GORGIAS COPTIC STUDIES. This announcement is from early April, but I only noticed it recently. Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

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Crabbe, Luke/Acts and the End of History

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Kylie Crabbe
Luke/Acts and the End of History

Series: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 238

De Gruyter | 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615197

From £79.00

FORMATS
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-3-11-061455-8
Published: 18 Nov 2019
PDF
ISBN: 978-3-11-061519-7
Published: 18 Nov 2019
EPUB
ISBN: 978-3-11-061475-6
Published: 18 Nov 2019

OVERVIEW
Luke/Acts and the End of History investigates how understandings of history in diverse texts of the Graeco-Roman period illuminate Lukan eschatology. In addition to Luke/Acts, it considers ten comparison texts as detailed case studies throughout the monograph: Polybius's Histories, Diodorus Siculus's Library of History, Virgil's Aeneid, Valerius Maximus's Memorable Doings and Sayings, Tacitus’s Histories, 2 Maccabees, the Qumran War Scroll, Josephus's Jewish War, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch. ...

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A froggy interlude?

READING ACTS: What are the Three Evil Spirits in Revelation 16:13-14? Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation. We are on the seven bowls of wrath now, between bowls six and seven.

For notice of previous posts in Phil's series on Revelation, see here and links.

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More questions about the Cave One scrolls

VARIANT READINGS: Qumran Cave 1 Questions, Part 6: 1QSa and 1QSb. Brent Nongbri continues his excavation of old records of the acquisition of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The post is technical, but has significant implications that Brent does not spell out.

If he is correct, a set of fragments from the Rule of the Congregation (1QS^a), The Rule of the Blessing (1QS^b), 1QIsaiah^b (1Q8), and the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen) were bought from Kando. They were not, after all, recovered by excavation.

1QSa and 1QSb are both part of the same manuscript as 1QS, the only (more or less) complete copy of the Community Rule/Manual of Discipline.

Does that mean those important works didn't come from Qumran Cave One after all? I doubt it. But it does mean that some (all? I don't know) of the physical proof of their provenance has evaporated.

I think I have that right! If I have misunderstood something, someone please correct me.

I have noted earlier posts in the series here and links

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Guess where "Alexandrian" glass came from?

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Hafnium Isotopes Confirm Origin of Roman Glass (Michelle Taylor, Laboratory Equipment).

Indeed, the Roman glass industry was prolific, mass producing wares for drinking and dining, window panes and wall mosaics. One of the most outstanding achievements, though, was “Alexandrian” glass—a colorless glass favored for high-quality drinking ware. The name of the glass, as declared by Roman Emperor Diocletian in the fourth century, led researchers to believe it had Egyptian origins. However, large amounts of Roman glass are known to have been made in Palestine, where archaeologists have uncovered furnaces for colorless glass production. But, no such furnaces have been found in Egypt.

So, despite archeologists’ best efforts, the origins of Alexandrian glass have been muddled—until now. Researchers with Aarhus University (Denmark) employed an ion chromatography-based method that revealed a high level of the rare isotope hafnium in the glass, providing compelling evidence that the glass was indeed made in Egypt.

Cross-file under Material Culture.

For notice of the discovery of an ancient glass kiln in Israel in 2016, see here. And for many other PaleoJudaica posts on ancient glass, see the links there, plus here, here, here, here, and here.

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Job sues God. God wins.

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Job Challenges God by Suing: God Responds. When Job questions God, Edward L. Greenstein finds precedence in Near Eastern legal texts. As usual, this BHD essay summarizes an article in Biblical Archaeology Review which is behind the subscription wall.

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Seven bowls of wrath

READING ACTS: The Bowls of God’s Wrath – Revelation 16:1-12. Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation. We start a new series of seven: the pouring out of the seven bowls of wrath. The first six come at a fast pace. This post covers them.

For notice of previous posts in Phil's series on Revelation, see here and links.

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Teixeira, Poetics and Narrative Function of Tobit 6

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

José Lucas Brum Teixeira
Poetics and Narrative Function of Tobit 6

Series: Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies, 41

De Gruyter | 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615074

From £79.00
FORMATS
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-3-11-061296-7
Published: 04 Jun 2019

PDF
ISBN: 978-3-11-061507-4
Published: 04 Jun 2019

EPUB
ISBN: 978-3-11-061342-1
Published: 04 Jun 2019

OVERVIEW
Tobiah’s travel with the angel in Tobit chapter six constitutes a singular moment in the book. It marks a before and after for Tobiah as a character. Considered attentively, Tobit six reveals a remarkable richness in content and form, and functions as a crucial turning point in the plot’s development. This book is the first thorough study of Tobit six, examining the poetics and narrative function of this key chapter and revisiting arguments about its meaning. A better understanding of this central chapter deepens our comprehension of the book as a whole.

Cross-file under Old Testament Apocrypha Watch.

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Update on the "Ben Padiah Scroll" (a.k.a. "Angel Scroll")

THE LYING PEN OF SCRIBES BLOG: The Angel Scroll: A Fragmentary Chronological Bibliography [Link now corrected!]. Årsten Justnes provides a pretty full bibliography for this dubious, supposed scroll discovery.

Years ago I mentioned the "Ben Padiah Scroll" or "Angel Scroll" a few times here, here, and here.

The links to Stephen Pfann's original post have rotted, but the Wayback Machine seems to preserve it here. The most recent discussion of it in Professor Justnes's bibliography is Michael Heiser's A WORD ABOUT THE ANGEL SCROLL from five years ago. If you read those two, you should be pretty fully informed.

The text sounds quite interesting. However, the actual scroll has never been produced and there are not even any photographs of it. The text that was released could have been forged by anyone reasonably competent. Unless we see the scroll, we should assume the document is an unimpressive fake.

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Bellis (ed.), Jerusalem's Survival, Sennacherib's Departure ...

NEW BOOK FROM GORGIAS PRESS:

Jerusalem's Survival, Sennacherib's Departure, and the Kushite Role in 701 BCE
An Examination of Henry Aubin's Rescue of Jerusalem

Series: Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures and its Contexts, 32

Edited by: Alice Bellis
Gorgias Press | 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463241575

£115.00 PDF
FORMATS
PDF
ISBN: 978-1-4632-4157-5

OVERVIEW
What saved Jerusalem from destruction by the Assyrian army in 701 BCE? The seemingly invincible Assyrians — the only superpower of the day — had been about to assault the city when they suddenly departed. The Bible says the “angel of the Lord” swept down on the Assyrian camp, killing 185,000 troops as they slept, obliging the survivors to retreat to their homeland in present-day Iraq. Historians for more than a century have generally agreed that if Jerusalem — the only Hebrew city that the invaders had not destroyed — had been seized and the survivors deported (as per imperial policy in such cases), Hebrew society could have been permanently extinguished. Judaism would therefore never have evolved several centuries later and neither of its two kindred monotheisms, Christianity and Islam, would have developed. As if to underscore the event’s importance to Hebrew society, the Bible tells the story of Jerusalem’s miraculous deliverance, three times — in the books of Second Kings, Isaiah and Second Chronicles. The Old Testament/Tanakh/Hebrew Bible presents no other story so often. Modern historians have proposed more down-to-earth explanations for the failure of the Assyrian emperor, Sennacherib. These include an epidemic that caused him to flee, a crisis elsewhere in the empire with which he had to deal, and a simple surrender by Jerusalem’s King Hezekiah. But now another theory — advanced in a 2002 book, The Rescue of Jerusalem: The Alliance between Hebrews and Africans in 701 BC, by a Canadian journalist, Henry Aubin — is rallying new respectability: an army led by Africans from present-day Sudan repelled the Assyrians. The army’s commander would have been a young Kushite, Taharqo, who later became Pharaoh. After 18 years of the book’s obscurity, the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, is breathing new life into it, commissioning eight specialists in this period of history to judge the theory’s plausibility. The verdict: six of the scholars tilt in favor of the theory, one is undecided, and only one rejects it.

I noted Aubin's theory about Taharqa (Taharqo) back in 2008, in connection with a movie that Will Smith was reportedly planning. It has not yet come out.

For more on Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem, see here and here and follow the links.

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Was the Tomb of the Patriarchs a pre-exilic pilgrimage site?

CERAMIC INFERENCES: Tomb of Patriarchs pilgrimage site in First Temple times, pottery suggests. No archaeological excavation has ever been conducted at the site (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

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Seven angels with seven plagues

READING ACTS: God’s Wrath is Completed – Revelation 15:1-8. Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation, concentrating on the seven sights of chapters 12-15. We come to the last sight: the seven angels with the seven plagues.

And that, of course, leads to another round of seven ...

For notice of previous posts in Phil's series on Revelation, see here and links.

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Finding a lost town in a lost book?

DR. DAVID BEN-GAD HACOHEN: Waheb in Suphah, the Forgotten “Town in the Stream” (TheTorah.com).

Describing the Israelites crossing the Arnon Stream into Amorite territory, the Torah quotes the Book of YHWH’s Battles that speaks of “Waheb in Suphah,” a phrase that appears nowhere else in the Bible. Many creative explanations have been given, but based on a survey on the ground we can identify it as the “Town in the Stream,” an ancient biblical town whose name had long been forgotten.

The "Book of the Wars of the Lord" is one of the lost books quoted in the Hebrew Bible. For more on it, see here and here. Dr. Ben-Gad HaCohen believes he has found the location of "Waheb in Suphah," which looks like a place name in the quotation from the book. He may be right.

Cross-file under Historical Geography.

For additional posts on lost books mentioned or possibly alluded to in the Hebrew Bible, see here and links. For ancient Lost Books in general, follow the links above and add here, here, here, here, and here.

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Upcoming: T&T Clark Handbook of Septuagint Research

WILLIAM A. ROSS: BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF SEPTUAGINT RESEARCH. Co-edited by William Ross and W. Edward Glenny. Forthcoming in early 2021. Follow the link for description and TOC.

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The clandestine origins of 1Q5 fragment 13

VARIANT READINGS: Qumran Cave 1 Questions, Part 5: The Strange Case of 1Q5 Fragment 13. Brent Nongbri searches arcane tomes and cryptic photographs to present us with yet another Dead Sea Scrolls mystery.

I have noted earlier posts in the series here and links and here.

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A hyperbolic river of blood?

READING ACTS: What is the Winepress of God’s Wrath? Revelation 14:17-20. Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation, concentrating on the seven sights of chapters 12-15. We continue with the sixth sight: one like a son of man and three more angels. This post is on the second and third of those angels.

For notice of earlier posts in Phil's Revelation series, see here and links.

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Enochic Art

EXHIBITION: Enoch: Heaven’s Messenger. An exhibition of twelve paintings on 1 Enoch and an illuminated model of an Ethiopian church by Angus Pryor. Philip Esler has e-mailed to alert us to this on-site (in due course) and (currently) virtual exhibition. He writes:

This is just a note, given your interest in 1 Enoch, to let you know that a colleague of mine at the University of Gloucestershire, Angus Pryor, head of our School of Arts and a practicing artist, has over the last few years painted twelve 2m x 2m paintings on scenes from 1 Enoch and created a large-scale, illuminated model of an Ethiopian church. This is the outcome of a collaboration that Angus and I have been working on since 2015, beginning in a British Academy funded program the results of which were published as The Blessing of Enoch: 1 Enoch and Contemporary Theology in 2017.

These works were going to be exhibited in Gloucester and Canterbury Cathedrals in May and September 2020, but those dates were vacated due to Covid-19.

But, as of 3 July 2020, we have taken the exhibition, Enoch: Heaven’s Messenger, online at: https://www.bookofenoch2020.com/

I hope you will be able to see it and enjoy it. If you feel like telling others about it, that would be greatly appreciated.

We also have an article on the whole project coming out in the Biblical Theology Bulletin in August 2020: Philip Esler and Angus Pryor, ‘Painting 1 Enoch: Biblical Interpretation, Theology and Artistic Practice.’

Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch and Decorative Art.

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What is the oldest Hebrew inscription?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Oldest Hebrew Script and Language. Christopher Rollston examines the Qeiyafa Ostracon, Gezer Calendar and other candidates for the oldest known Hebrew inscription. As usual, this BHD essay summarizes a Biblical Archaeology Review essay that is behind the subscription wall. The article itself is from 2012, but I haven't noted it before.

The question of the earliest Hebrew inscription is more complicated than it sounds.

For past posts on Khirbet Qeiyafa and its inscription, see here and links and here and links. For the Eshba'al inscription subsequently discovered there, see here and links. For posts on the Gezer Calendar, see here and links. For the Tel Zayit abecedary, see here and links. And for other very early Hebrew (?) inscriptions, see here (final paragraph) and links.

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Ashoka's Aramaic

ARAMAIC WATCH: The Edicts of Ashoka the Great (Joshua J. Mark, Ancient History Encyclopedia).

The Edicts of Ashoka are 33 inscriptions engraved on pillars, large stones, and cave walls by Ashoka the Great (r. 268-232 BCE), the third king of the Mauryan Empire (322-185 BCE) of India. One set, the so-called Major Rock Edicts, are consistent in their message that the people should adhere to the concept of Dhamma, defined as “right behavior”, “good conduct” and “decency toward others”. The edicts were inscribed throughout Ashoka’s realm which included the areas of modern-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan and most were written in Brahmi Script (though one, in Afghanistan, is also given in Aramaic and Greek). ...

It's been quite a while since I have posted on ancient Buddhist Aramaic. This new article gives me an excuse to do so again.

The inscriptions of the third-century BCE Indian emperor Ashoka the Great are mostly written in his native Pratkit (related to Sanskrit). But one of his early "Minor Rock Edicts" is a bilingual inscription in Greek and Aramaic: Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription. It recounts what a fine ruler Ashoka has been and how everyone has prospered under him. For a wider-ranging account of his reign, and for his "Major Rock Edicts" in Pratkit, see the first article above.

Once again, the influence of Aramaic in antiquity was vast. It was important enough to be used alongside Greek on a royal inscription in Afghanistan in the early Hellenistic period.

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An Aramao-Protosogdian inscription in Kazakhstan

ARAMAIC (SCRIPT) WATCH: Archaeologists discover new findings in the Great Steppe (Kazakh TV).

For the first time in Kazakhstan, a complete specimen of ancient writing was found in Kultobe settlement, Turkistan region. The age of the inscription is almost 2,000 years. The find is a clay brick of three fragments, on which seven lines of 218 characters in the ancient Aramaic alphabet are carved. A great find for paleolinguists was already partially deciphered by Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams at Cambridge University.

“The piece is about the creation of a city by the leader of the Chach army named Sapadani, who came here to create a city on the area of gardens and tents where nomads lived. ...

The inscription is indeed in the ancient Aramaic alphabet, but not in the Aramaic language:

The writing is done in the ancient Iranian dialect, which scientists call the Protosogdian or Kangui language, since the city was founded during the Kangui state in the first centuries A.D.

There is a good photo of the inscription. The Hebrew/Aramaic script is very clear.

The inscription is a good illustration of the widespread influence of the Aramaic language, which was the diplomatic language of the Persian empire. Its script was still in use many centuries later for an unrelated language.

I'm not sure if "Aramao-Protosogdian" is the right descriptive term. I made it up. But you get the idea.

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Gordon, Land and Temple

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Benjamin D. Gordon
Land and Temple
Field Sacralization and the Agrarian Priesthood of Second Temple Judaism

Series: Studia Judaica, 87

De Gruyter | 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110421026

From £79.00
FORMATS
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-3-11-042546-8
Published: 06 Apr 2020
PDF
ISBN: 978-3-11-042102-6
Published: 06 Apr 2020
EPUB
ISBN: 978-3-11-042116-3
Published: 06 Apr 2020

OVERVIEW
This exploration of the Judean priesthood’s role in agricultural cultivation demonstrates that the institutional reach of Second Temple Judaism (516 BCE–70 CE) went far beyond the confines of its houses of worship, while exposing an unfamiliar aspect of sacred place-making in the ancient Jewish experience. Temples of the ancient world regularly held assets in land, often naming a patron deity as landowner and affording the land sanctity protections. Such arrangements can provide essential background to the Hebrew Bible’s assertion that God is the owner of the land of Israel. They can also shed light on references in early Jewish literature to the sacred landholdings of the priesthood or the temple.

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Upcoming online: Myths in the Archaeology of Jerusalem

ONLINE SYMPOSIUM: Myths in the Archaeology of Jerusalem [Virtual Public Conference] Wednesday 8 July 2020. Chaired by by David Gurevich, Ph.D. With some good topics. Some presentations are in Hebrew and others in English. Follow the link for the schedule and Zoom signup information.

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How many harvests?

READING ACTS: What is the Harvest of the Earth in Revelation 14:15? Phil Long continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation, concentrating on the seven sights of chapters 12-15. We continue with the sixth sight: one like a son of man and three more angels.

For notice of earlier posts in Phil's Revelation series, see here and links.

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Joosten is gone from Oxford

RIGHTLY AND AS WE EXPECTED: Update regarding Professor Jan Joosten (Christ Church College, Oxford).

We can confirm that as of Friday 3 July 2020, Professor Jan Joosten will no longer be employed by the University of Oxford, and he will no longer be a trustee of Christ Church or be in any way affiliated with the institution. ...

Background here.

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