The Archaeology of Mithraism (ed. McCarty & Egri)

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: The Archaeology of Mithraism. Notice of a new book: McCarty, Matthew & Mariana Egri (eds.). 2020. The Archaeology of Mithraism: New Finds and Approaches to Mithras-Worship (Babesch Supplements 39). Leuven: Peeters.

For PaleoJudaica posts on the Mithras cult (Mithraism), see here, here, here, here, here, and links.

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Kemp, Ezekiel, Law, and Judahite Identity

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Joel B. Kemp. Ezekiel, Law, and Judahite Identity. A Case for Identity in Ezekiel 1–33. 2020. XI, 195 pages. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe 123. 59,00 € including VAT. sewn paper ISBN 978-3-16-156579-3.

Published in English.
The consistent presence of juridical diction, legal metaphors, and courtroom imagery reveals that Ezekiel 1–33 is set within a precise juridical framework. In this study, Joel B. Kemp argues that focusing upon these legal elements has two primary benefits for our understanding of the book. First, the juridical framework provides greater clarity and coherence to some passages within Ezekiel 1–33. Second, the book (especially Ezekiel 16) uses its legal elements to articulate a version of Judahite identity under Neo-Babylonian hegemony. To connect these legal elements to identity development, the author uses some insights from the works of Erik Erikson and Urie Bronfenbrenner. According to his analysis, Ezekiel 16 equates the legal status of the city with Judahite identity to prove that the experiences of Neo-Babylonian domination did not nullify or rescind the legal agreement ( ברית) between the deity and Judahites. Rather, the punishment this chapter describes demonstrates the continuing validity of the contract and the version of Judahite identity rooted in it. Consequently, the Judahites' acceptance of the legal appropriateness of Neo-Babylonian domination is the sine qua non for remaining in the legal relationship that defines Judahite identity.

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Frankenstein's Golem?

GOLEM WATCH: The Mighty Golem and Mary Shelley (Peter R. Fernandez, Times of Israel Blogs). With speculation about Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's awareness of the Golem legend, plus a survey of Golem traditions over the centuries.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the Golem tradition, start here and follow the links.

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Coptic Scriptorium News

COPTIC WATCH: Coptic Scriptorium News Summer 2020 Corpora Release 4.0.0 (Chuck Jones, The AWOL Blog). With lots of new goodies for Coptologists.

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The Usha excavation

ARCHAEOLOGY: The rich history of Usha – an ancient city now in ruins - Anat Harrel (ILTV).


The city of Usha in the Galilee was a critical center of the rabbinic movement in the late second century CE, a generation or two before the consolidation of the Mishnah.

This video explores the excavation's olive press and wine press from this period, each of which was associated with its own ritual bathing pool (mikveh).

Last year I noted a discovery from the Usha excavation.

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Magnificent First-Temple-era palace inferred near Jerusalem

ARCHITECTURAL FRAGMENTS: At popular Jerusalem promenade, archaeologists find a First Temple-era palace. Rare column heads located at Armon Hanatziv walkway, indicating residents of ancient city found their fortunes outside the walls after easing of Assyrian siege 2,700 years ago (Times of Israel).

It's entertaining to compare the headlines for this story to the articles. The Times of Israel, above, is fairly restrained. Others are less so:

Rare ancient royal mansion unearthed in Jerusalem. Magnificent, rare remains of residential structure from the time of the Kings of Judah discovered in excavation by Israel Antiquities Authority (Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel21c)

Mystery of 'magnificent palace' found in Jerusalem (BBC/MSN)

It took me a while to work out that there is no magnificent, mysterious, lavish First-Temple-era palace. That is, there is no surviving ground architecture with foundation and walls and such.

The actual news is that archaeologists found some quite important stone fragments, including three capitals of Proto-Aeolian columns. From the stone fragments they infer, I'm sure correctly, that there was once a magnificent palace in the area.

Alas, it is long gone, destroyed, apparently, by the Babylonians in 586/87 BCE. But the capitals are very impressive. Todd Bolen has a post on their importance at the Bible Places Blog.

Some headlines do reflect the situation more clearly. For example: Limestone artifacts from ancient royal mansion unearthed in Jerusalem (Brooks Hays, UPI). Good for them.

Never assume that a headline tells you the story accurately.

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Butts & Gross (eds.), Jews and Syriac Christians

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Jews and Syriac Christians. Intersections across the First Millennium. Edited by Aaron Michael Butts and Simcha Gross. 2020. XII, 350 pages. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 180. 149,00 € including VAT. cloth ISBN 978-3-16-159134-1.

Published in English.
Scholarly interest in intersections between Jews and Syriac Christians has experienced a boom in recent years. This is the result of a series of converging trends in the study of both groups and their cultural productions. The present volume contributes to this developing conversation by collecting sixteen studies that investigate a wide range of topics, from questions of origins to the development of communal boundaries, from social interactions to shared historical conditions, involving Jews and Syriac Christians over the first millennium CE. These studies not only reflect the current state of the question, but they also signal new ways forward for future work that crosses disciplinary boundaries between the fields of Jewish Studies and Syriac Studies, in some cases even dismantling those boundaries altogether.

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Deuteronomy's rules for marrying a captive woman

PROF. RABBI SHAYE J. D. COHEN, DR.RABBI ZEV FARBER: Marrying a Beautiful Captive Woman (TheTorah.com).

If an Israelite wishes to marry a woman taken captive in war, she becomes part of the Israelite polity and is protected from future re-enslavement. Uncomfortable with the Torah’s permitting this marriage, the rabbis declare it to be a compromise to man’s “evil impulse,” an idea reminiscent of Jesus’ claim that the Torah allows divorce as a compromise to humanity’s “hard heart.”

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The Sifting Project on the Temple Mount mystery hole

THE TEMPLE MOUNT SIFTING PROJECT BLOG: OUR COMMENTS ON THE UNKNOWN UNDERGROUND CISTERN THAT WAS DISCOVERED ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT. Who better to comment on this story?

The hole probably opened into a late Second Temple-era drainage channel or passageway. Blocking it without letting archaeologists examine it is a lost opportunity. The Waqf deserves all the bad publicity it gets for this.

Background here and here.

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Ultra-Orthodox protests over grave excavations

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THEOLOGICAL POLITICS: Ancient Graves Discovered Outside Jerusalem Spark Battle Over Roadworks. Ultra-Orthodox activists protest removal of skeletons, dismantling of 1,900-year-old graves – despite the fact they're probably not Jewish (Nir Hasson, Haaretz premium).

The discovery of ancient graves outside Jerusalem has led to a fight that threatens the construction of the new main road entrance to Jerusalem.

Archaeologists discovered the graves during an excavation ahead of the paving of a new route from Motza, a suburb north-west of Jerusalem, to the center of the city. They believe they were part of a Roman colonial settlement dating back 1,900 years. This would mean the graves did not belong to Jews, who did not live in this area after the destruction of the Second Temple.

[...]

A large Canaanite-era temple has also been excavated at Tel Motza (Tel Moza, Tel Moẓa, Tel Moẓah). For more Iron-Age discoveries there, see here and links. Motza may also be the site of New Testament-era Emmaus.

The article also reports that there has been recent protesting in Tel Aviv over ancient graves found during digging associated with the light rail.

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Rosen-Zvi, Between Mishna and Midrash

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Mishnah, Midrash, and How to Read Tannaitic Literature (Ishay Rosen-Zvi). Notice of a New Book:

Between Midrash and Mishna*: Reading Tannaitic Literature (the Open University, 2019) [Hebrew]

[*The title should read Mishna and Midrash. - JRD]

Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Tel-Aviv University

Excerpt:

Between Mishna and Midrash is a new introduction to these two compositions. It is based on two courses (Intro to Mishnah and Tosefta and Intro to Tannaitic midrash) I have been teaching at Tel-Aviv University since 2006. I had many years of tweaking and revising the material, and so could try out several organizing principles. Ultimately, I decided that the most useful (and, as student feedback affirmed - stimulating) manner of organizing these two introductions is to tackle the puzzles that lie at the core of each of the compositions – that of the Mishna as a new Torah and that of the uniquely innovative hermeneutics of the Midrash. And there is of course a third puzzle – that of the relationship between the two works ...

This sounds like a really useful book. I hope the author and the publisher will consider an English translation.

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Greenspoon, Jewish Bible Translations

THE BIBLE AND INTEPRETATION:

Jewish Bible Translations and Translators

By the last decades of the nineteenth century, American Jews became more centrally organized and more numerous. Among the institutions founded beyond any single denomination was the Jewish Publication Society (JPS), headquartered in Philadelphia. At a time when Jewish biblical scholarship and interpretation were not highly regarded in academic circles, avenues for publishing Jewish works were similarly constrained. To fill this gap, the JPS was organized. Its first major project was an English-language version of the Bible. As mentioned earlier, it was essentially a Judaized version of KJV, which retained as much of the classic’s style and cadence as possible. It was also formatted and printed to look very much like editions of KJV in appearance. It brought together the rabbinic and lay leadership of most American Jewry, including its editor-in-chief Max L. Margolis, and was very well received. It has functioned with this status for over fifty years.

See Also: Jewish Bible Translations: Personalities, Passions, Politics,
Progress (Jewish Publication Society, 2020).

By Leonard J. Greenspoon
Creighton University
September 2020

Cross-file under New Book. The scope of the book is wider than the summary implies. It starts with the Greek Septuagint in antiquity and moves chapter-by-chapter to the modern era.

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The mystery hole is memory-holed

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Waqf fills hole on Temple Mount, possibly hiding archaeological treasures. “The finds on the mountain reflect 3,000 years of Jewish activity at the site, and every pit dug in the site could shed light on thousands of years of Jewish history” (Tzvi Joffre, Jerusalem Post).

I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, I don't want to make a mountain out of a mole-hole. The hole was only three cubic feet in size. It probably didn't hide any significant archaeological treasures. The Waqf says it was probably a hole in a water conduit. Could be. And it is entirely possible that the best way to maintain the area's structural integrity was to fill it in with concrete.

On the other hand, we don't know what was in the hole. There may have been something interesting. Artifacts do show up in such places. And we don't get a chance to see inside the Temple Mount platform very often.

It would have been little trouble to bring in archaeologists to have a look. Now we will never know.

At minimum, the story has bad optics. The Waqf gave itself some easily avoided bad publicity.

Background here.

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Grunge Enoch

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: MESSED UP STORIES FROM THE BOOK OF ENOCH [link corrected) (Benito Cereno, Grunge).

I didn't have high expectations when I started reading this piece. But once I started, I couldn't stop. It is actually quite a good summary of the books of 1-2-3 Enoch by someone who has read them carefully.

The essay does concentrate on the weird and lurid aspects of the books. But that adds up to summarizing their main points. Worth a read.

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A response to Garfinkel about his God figurines

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Facing the Facts about the “Face of God.” A Critical Response to Yosef Garfinkel (Shua Kisilevitz, Ido Koch, Oded Lipschits, and David S. Vanderhooft). Quite a long critical response.

Background here. Cross-file under Iconography.

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Biblical Studies Carnival 174

READING ACTS: Biblical Studies Carnival 174 for August 2020 (Phil Long).

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Some assembly required

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Make Your Own Magical Papyrus (Geoffrey Smith).

Cross-file under News You Can Use (?) and Pedagogy.

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Clint Burnett on the NT and inscriptions

INTERVIEW: How do inscriptions help us read the New Testament? (Ian Paul, Psephizo).

Dr Clint Burnett is Lecturer of New Testament at Johnson University in Knoxville, Tennessee USA, and has just published Studying the NT Through Inscriptions: An Introduction (Hendrickson, 2020), and I had previously heard him present some of his research at the annual Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) conference. I asked him about his research, and why inscriptions provide important practical information in reading the New Testament.

I have corrected the dead link to the book title. Cross-file under New Book.

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Schiffman on 2020 discoveries

PROFESSOR LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: 2020 DISCOVERIES. While the world was in lockdown, excavators and archaeologists were still busy discovering new worlds beneath the surface. A new article by Professor Schiffman in Ami Magazine.

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An undersea Tanit sanctuary?

MARINE ARCHAEOLOGY: From the Seabed, Figures of an Ancient Cult. A trove of Phoenician artifacts was long ascribed to a single shipwreck. More likely they were tossed overboard, and over centuries, a new study suggests (Joshua Rapp Learn, NYT).

The site is "Shavei Zion, off the coast of western Galilee."

I am confused about whether this sanctuary was for Phoenician traders (i.e., from roughly the coast of Lebanon) or Punic traders (from Carthage and its satellites in North Africa) or both.

The site is near the Phoenician coast, but as far as I know, Tanit was a Punic goddess. There is very little evidence that she was worshipped on the mainland.

Cross-file under Phoenician Watch and Punic Watch and Not a Shipwreck. Past PaleoJudaica posts on marine (maritime, underwater) archaeology are here and links.

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Temple Mount mystery pit

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Mystery: New Pit Opens in Temple Mount Floor (David Israel, JewishPress.com). Developing ...

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Painful for all involved

DR. HILARY LIPKA: A Woman Who Seizes a Man’s Testicles During a Fight, Her Hand Is Cut Off (TheTorah.com).

A wife who intervenes in a fight to save her husband by grabbing his opponent’s testicles is punished by having her hand cut off (Deut 25:11–12). What is the nature of her offense? Why isn’t her intent to save her husband a mitigating factor? What is the relationship between the punishment and the crime?

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Burke reviews Sabar, Veritas

THE APOCRYPHYCITY BLOG: Some Reflections on Ariel Sabar’s Veritas.Tony Burke gives us a thorough review of Ariel Sabar's new book about the Gospel of Jesus' Wife affair.

All of that said, I’m a scholar—in particular, one who works with literary criticism and textual criticism—so I am compelled to pore over Sabar’s book and find problems, inconsistencies, and errors of fact. Maybe this is just my defensive reaction to his attack on “elite” scholarship, or more specifically, his unfavorable depiction of one of our own (Karen King, well-regarded for her work on the Gospel of Mary and her book What is Gnosticism?); maybe I just need a break from trying to figure out how to teach my courses over Zoom. Regardless, for anyone interested, here are some of my thoughts on Veritas.

Background here and links.

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The many-crowned rider

READING ACTS: The Rider on the White Horse – Revelation 19:11-16. Phil Long is back after hiatus in August. I hope he was off having a nice break.

He continues his blog series on the Book of Revelation, now on the final seven visions. We have jumped from the second vision in chapter 18 to the fourth vision, the second one in chapter 19.

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

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