Report on 2nd year of the Coptic Magical Papyri Project

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: 2020 Review: The Kyprianos Database Launch and the Second Year of the Coptic Magical Papyri Project. Cross-file (of course) under Coptic Watch.

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Gilhooley, The Edict of Cyrus and Notions of Restoration in Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: The Edict of Cyrus and Notions of Restoration in Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles. Notice of a New Book: Gilhooley, Andrew M. 2020. The Edict of Cyrus and Notions of Restoration in Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press.

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On the Nag Hammadi Codices

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Nag Hammadi Codices. Critical editions available from two collaborative projects (Marek Dospěl).

There are lots of PaleoJudaica posts on the Coptic Gnostic library in the Nag Hammadi Codices. You can find some that supplement the essay above here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

There are also many posts on the Gospel of Thomas. Some recent ones are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

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JJS 71 (Autumn 2020)

H-JUDAIC: TOC: Journal of Jewish Studies | Autumn 2020. This issue of JJS has a number of articles and book reviews of interest for ancient Judaism. You can read the abstracts, but the site requires a personal or institutional subscription to access the full texts.

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Greek genres in ancient Jewish literature?

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Jewish-Greek Literature in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras: Some Findings from a Study of Genre

The most basic finding of studies into Hellenistic Judaism is the recognition that some Jewish authors adopted Greek genres and were widely influenced by Greek literary culture. Writing in Greek does not automatically imply the adoption of Greek genres or substantial influence of Greek writing practices (e.g., Jewish apocalyptic). Nevertheless, many texts display awareness of Greek compositional practices and participate, to varying degrees, in recognizable Greek genres. This engagement was not accidental, nor was it done subconsciously.

See Also: Greek Genres and Jewish Authors: Negotiating Literary Culture in the Greco-Roman Era (Baylor University Press, 2020).

By Sean A. Adams
University of Glasgow, UK
October 2020

Cross-file under New Book.

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A Temple music chamber on the Temple Mount?

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: New discovery on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem: Gate in the eastern wall of the Dome of the Rock plaza. Could this be the remnant of the gate to the southern underground Music Room? (Leen Ritmeyer).

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Was Noah a demigod?

DR. RABBI SAMUEL Z. GLASER (Z'L'): Demigods and the Birth of Noah (TheTorah.com).

The Sons of Elohim sleeping with women and producing demigods (Gen 6:1-4) is sandwiched between the birth of Noah and the flood. This juxtaposition of passages prompted 1 Enoch and Genesis Apocryphon to question whether Lamech was Noah's father or whether Noah was a demigod.

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HB/OT job at Aarhus University

H-JUDAIC: FEATURED JOB: Assistant or Associate Professor in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, Aarhus University. Ability to teach in Danish is a requirement. I can't find a specified application deadline.

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Poop analysis and community organization in the late-antique Negev

ARCHAEO-COPROLOGY: Byzantine—Early Islamic resource management detected through micro-geoarchaeological investigations of trash mounds (Negev, Israel) (Plos One).

Don H. Butler , Zachary C. Dunseth, Yotam Tepper, Tali Erickson-Gini, Guy Bar-Oz , Ruth Shahack-Gross Published: October 14, 2020https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239227

Abstract

Sustainable resource management is of central importance among agrarian societies in marginal drylands. In the Negev Desert, Israel, research on agropastoral resource management during Late Antiquity emphasizes intramural settlement contexts and landscape features. The importance of hinterland trash deposits as diachronic archives of resource use and disposal has been overlooked until recently. Without these data, assessments of community-scale responses to societal, economic, and environmental disruption and reconfiguration remain incomplete. In this study, micro-geoarchaeological investigations were conducted on trash mound features at the Byzantine—Early Islamic sites of Shivta, Elusa, and Nesanna to track spatiotemporal trends in the use and disposal of critical agropastoral resources. Refuse derived sediment deposits were characterized using stratigraphy, micro-remains (i.e., livestock dung spherulites, wood ash pseudomorphs, and plant phytoliths), and mineralogy by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Our investigations detected a turning point in the management of herbivore livestock dung, a vital resource in the Negev. We propose that the scarcity of raw dung proxies in the studied deposits relates to the use of this resource as fuel and agricultural fertilizer. Refuse deposits contained dung ash, indicating the widespread use of dung as a sustainable fuel. Sharply contrasting this, raw dung was dumped and incinerated outside the village of Nessana. We discuss how this local shift in dung management corresponds with a growing emphasis on sedentised herding spurred by newly pressed taxation and declining market-oriented agriculture. Our work is among the first to deal with the role of waste management and its significance to economic strategies and urban development during the late Roman Imperial Period and Late Antiquity. The findings contribute to highlighting top-down societal and economic pressures, rather than environmental degradation, as key factors involved in the ruralisation of the Negev agricultural heartland toward the close of Late Antiquity.

I know, the abstract is pretty impenetrable.

I think the point of the article is as follows.

The researchers analyzed organic remains from late antiquity in a number of sites in the Negev. They found that early on the residents of the sites burned a lot of animal dung for fuel. Later on the residents of at least one site just dumped and burned the dung without putting it to any practical use. The researchers infer that the change implies that agriculture because less centrally organized in the Negev over time. The result was that smaller agricultural units had less community organization and thus used their resources less sustainably.

HT UPI News.

The late-antique Negev has received a lot of archaeological attention recently. Another story on the archaeo-coprology of the region is here. And for more on the archaeology of the late-antique Negev, see here and links, plus here and here.

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Manuscript Man nominated for prize

RECOGNITION: Iraq: Rescuer of ancient books from ISIS/Daesh nominated for award (Independent Catholic News).

A bishop in Iraq has been nominated for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought for saving more than 800 historic manuscripts from destruction by the terrorist group Daesh (ISIS).

Archbishop Najeeb Michaeel of Mosul, who is one of three finalists on the shortlist for the award, oversaw the evacuation of Christians to Iraqi Kurdistan - and safeguarded manuscripts dating from the 13th to the 19th century - after Daesh took Mosul in June 2014.

[...]

This is a well-deserved honor for Archbishop Michaeel, one of the Manuscript Men who rescued precious Syriac, Arabic, and other manuscripts from Isis in 2014.

For the story of his and their work, see the links collected here. Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

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Stefan Reif honored

CAIRO GENIZA WATCH: Four Cambridge academics named in Queen’s Birthday Honours. Researchers have been recognised for work on Covid-19, genetics, and Jewish history (Alexander Shtyrov, Cambridge Varsity).

In the humanities, Professor Stefan Reif, Founder of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, was awarded an OBE. Professor Reif oversaw the significant expansion of the Cambridge Genizah Collection into a major scholarly resource.

The Collection is an archive of medieval manuscript fragments in Hebrew, Arabic, Judaeo-Arabic, and Aramaic. Professor Reif is himself an expert on the historical study of Jewish liturgy.

Congratulations to Professor Reif and to all the recipients of the Queen's 2020 Birthday Honours.

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Seeking the "original" Bible?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The “Original” Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Can the scrolls help expose the original Bible language within the Masoretic Text and Septuagint?. This BHD essay is a summary of an article by Emanuel Tov published in BAR in 2014, but it's worth reading on its own. Tov's article is behind the subscription wall. I didn't notice the BHD piece back then, so here it is now.

For my part, I am willing to talk about "original readings" or "more original readings." The idea of an "original Bible" has way too many assumptions that need unpacking.

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More on Cleopatra

CINEMA, HISTORY, AND GENEALOGY: Cleopatra and the Jews (Dr. Yvette Alt Miller, aish.com).

This is the legacy that’s come down to us: Cleopatra as an Eastern potentate, mysterious and sensual. Yet dismissing Cleopatra as some sort of cartoonish exotic Middle Eastern princess diminishes her real life historical role. Cleopatra VII was a remarkable woman living in a consequential, complicated era. She was the product of her times, and played a vital role in the ancient Middle East. She engaged with Jewish communities, and ensured that Egypt’s Jewish population became one of the ancient world’s most free and secure.

Instead of sparking arguments over who should depict her in a movie, it would be wonderful if the forthcoming blockbuster about Cleopatra’s life led us to learn more about this remarkable queen – and the complicated, real times in which she and her contemporaries lived.

Background here and links.

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Judaea Capta coins

NUMISMATICS: Judaea Capta: Subjugation and Defeat on Ancient Roman Coins (Tyler Rossi, CoinWeek). Some excellent photos with informative commentary.

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On transcendent taste

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: SBL 2019 Review Panel | Seeing or Tasting? Human’s Perception of the Heavenly World in Hellenistic Jewish Writings (Angela Standhartinger).

To me, the most important outcome of Warren’s survey of the hierophagic pattern of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian narratives is exactly this – her observation that myths and narratives indeed remove taste from the margins of the philosophical hierarchy of sense perception. Instead, in the texts she has examined, eating and tasting have become a vital part of the fictive characters’ appreciation of their world.[30] Contrary to leading philosophical traditions and their reception by Philo and other Jewish and Christian writers, in these six texts and traditions the corporeal act of eating as well as the corporeal sense of tasting mediates and conveys contact with the transcendent realm. By tasting food or other heavenly items, a given character is indeed transformed and acts with heavenly knowledge.

I noted the essay introducing this series on Dr. Warren's book, Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature here, the first essay here and the second here.

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Hempel, The Qumran Rule Texts in Context

RECENT BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

The Qumran Rule Texts in Context: Collected Studies
Charlotte Hempel

ISBN 9781628372625
Status Available
Price: $55.00
Binding Paperback
Publication Date November 2019
Pages 420

An essential collection for students of Qumran texts now available in an affordable paperback

Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Rule Texts have been at the forefront of the scholarly imagination, often thought to offer direct insight into life at Qumran. While the literary, scribal, and textual aspects reflected in the Rule texts have become clearer, the social and community realities remain fuzzy. To bring greater clarity to this picture, the studies by Charlotte Hempel collected in this volume deal with several core Rule texts from Qumran, especially the Community Rule (S), the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa), the Damascus Document (D), and 4Q265 (Miscellaneous Rules), with the goal of uncovering a complex network of literary and more murkily preserved social relationships. Several studies position the Rule literature within a shared context of wisdom, law, and the scribal milieu of the emerging scriptures. A previously unpublished, substantial final chapter explores the distinctive character of Qumran Cave 4 as an eclectic collection of ancient Jewish higher learning.

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Gal Gadot is playing Cleopatra

CINEMA, HISTORY, AND GENEALOGY: Woke warriors outraged over Gal Gadot being cast as Cleopatra because she is not black - are ridiculed for not knowing the Egyptian Queen was GREEK (Karen Ruiz, Daily Mail). Technically (as the article says later) she was substantially Macedonian (Greek), but the point pretty much stands.

I saw this story yesterday but didn't post on it because I was still trawling through Cleopatra's genealogy to try to sort out the claims. Meanwhile, the story has gotten a lot of press in the last day. Most of it seems to come down on Ms. Gadot's side. Most of the objections seem to come from a small number of tweets.

Be that as it may, I did learn something about the ancestry of Cleopatra. If anyone has corrections, please drop me a note.

Cleopatra (Cleopatra VII) was one of the later rulers in Egypt's Ptolemaic dynasty, descended from Alexander the Great's Macedonian general Ptolemy I. She also had some Seleucid (i.e., likewise Macedonian) ancestry, and a little Persian.

There is some ambiguity about her ancestry in the generations immediately before her. Her grandfather, Ptolemy IX Soter, was married twice to one sister and once to another sister. (The Ptolemaic dynasty was known for incestuous marriages.) However some ancient writers say that his son, Ptolemy XII Auletes, Cleopatra's father, was illegitimate. This has led to speculation that he was born out of wedlock to another woman. If so, she may have been Greek or Egyptian or whatever. We don't know. And we don't know what illegitimate means in this context. Other interpretations are possible.

Her father, Ptolemy XII, was married to Cleopatra V Tryphaena. We don't know much about her, including her ancestry. Again, she may have been Greek or Egyptian or whatever. Moreover, although we assume she was the mother of Cleopatra VII (our Cleopatra), no ancient source actually says this. If she wasn't, we have no idea who her mother was or what her mother's ancestry was.

In any case our Cleopatra was firmly Macedonian Greek culturally and at least substantially Macedonian Greek genetically. She may or may not have had some Egyptian blood. It is within the realm of possibility that she was 50% or more Egyptian, but positive evidence for any Egyptian ancestry is scarce.

(As I was getting ready to publish this post, I noticed this Newsweek article, which covers much the same ground as above, with some additional details: Was Cleopatra White? After Controversial Gal Gadot Casting, Experts Weigh In (Jon Jackson). On the question of the supposed tomb of Cleopatra's half-sister Arsinoë IV, see more here.)

I have spent enough time on this post. I leave it to you, my readers, to decide what all this means in terms of Ms. Gadot's casting as Cleopatra. I blog, you decide. For my part, I congratulate her and I look forward to seeing the film.

By the way, it's interesting to remember that Cleopatra spoke Hebrew.

Cleopatra (Cleopatra VII) does not appear in the Bible, but some of the earlier Ptolemies do. For more on them see here and links.

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Two-shekel weight excavated in Jerusalem

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Ancient two-Shekel weight discovered near Jerusalem's Western Wall. First Temple-era artifact used to measure two-shekalim unearthed near the Western Wall of Jerusalem (Arutz Sheva).

Archaeologists also discovered a half-shekel (beka) weight in the same vicinity in 2018.

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Rhiannon and the Shekhinah?

POP ROCK MUSIC MEETS KABBALAH? In her greatest hit, Stevie Nicks spun a Kabbalistic tale (Seth Rogovoy, The Forward).

If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, that’s because it is. The story of Rhiannon, both the Welsh goddess and the woman in Nicks’s song, has numerous affinities with the Kabbalistic entity called the Shekhinah. Rhiannon means “Great Queen,” and the Shekhinah is the closest thing Judaism has to a queen: If G-d is the King, then the Shekhinah is Queen. Like Rhiannon, the Shekhinah is the vessel of divine love between G-d and humankind.

Interesting. What do you think?

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Berkowitz, Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud

RECENT BOOK FROM CUP:

Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud

AUTHOR: Beth A. Berkowitz, Barnard College, New York
DATE PUBLISHED: April 2018
AVAILABILITY: This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
FORMAT: Adobe eBook Reader
ISBN: 9781108542739

$ 80.00 USD

Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud selects key themes in animal studies - animal intelligence, morality, sexuality, suffering, danger, personhood - and explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud. Beth A. Berkowitz demonstrates that distinctive features of the Talmud - the new literary genre, the convergence of Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian cultures, the Talmud's remove from Temple-centered biblical Israel - led to unprecedented possibilities within Jewish culture for conceptualizing animals and animality. She explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud, showing how it is ripe for reading with a critical animal studies perspective. When we do, we find waiting for us a multi-layered, surprisingly self-aware discourse about animals as well as about the anthropocentrism that infuses human relationships with them. For readers of religion, Judaism, and animal studies, her book offers new perspectives on animals from the vantage point of the ancient rabbis.

• Introduces animal studies to Jewish studies readers, showing them the important role played by animals within Judaism
• Offers coverage of a number of key areas within animal studies, giving readers an overview of major areas of interest in animal studies
• Highlights passages in the Babylonian Talmud that contribute surprising perspectives on animals, allowing readers of the Babylonian Talmud to see features in it that they never did before

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Lilith, the giants, and Narnia's witch-queen

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Lilith in the Bible and Mythology. Connections between Lilith, Adam’s first wife, and Jadis, the White Witch of Narnia (Megan Sauter).

For many PaleoJudaica posts on ancient and modern traditions about Lilith, start here and follow the links. And for another post on the mythology of Narnia, see here.

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

NEH grant for research on Ethiopic Bible

ETHIOPIC WATCH: Abilene Christian University project earns $300,000 to recreate Ethiopian Bible structure (Timothy Chipp, Abilene Reporter-News).

An Abilene Christian University research project got a little financial help recently from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Curt Niccum, associate director of the Center for the Study of Ancient Religious Texts, has spent several years reconstructing and studying early Christian writing in the ancient Ethiopian language known as Ge'ez.

The NEH granted his research, which he runs in collaboration with retired Portland Seminary professor Steve Delamarter and several others, $300,000 to "trace the broad history of the Old Testament, noting both its translation from the Greek and how it was modified over the years."

[...]

Congratulations to Professors Niccum and Delamarter and their team!

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More on hierophagy

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: SBL 2019 Review Panel | Food for Thought: Eating and Drinking with Meredith J. C. Warren” (Angela Kim Harkins).

I noted the essay introducing this series on Dr. Warren's book, Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature here and the first essay here.

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Burke on "Lost Gospels"

THE APOCRYPHICITY BLOG: “Lost Gospels” and Other Christian Apocrypha: New Discoveries and New Perspectives (Tony Burke).

On Wednesday, October 7 I delivered a virtual lecture for BASONOVA (Biblical Archaeology Society of Northern Virginia). They have granted me permission to share the text of that lecture (with some minor changes) on Apocryphicity.

Background here. Cross-file under New Testament Apocrypha Watch.

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Palmer et al. (eds.), Dead Sea Scrolls, Revise and Repeat

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

Dead Sea Scrolls, Revise and Repeat: New Methods and Perspectives
Carmen Palmer (Editor), Andrew R. Krause (Editor), Eileen Schuller (Editor), John Screnock (Editor)

ISBN 9781628372731
Status Available
Price: $54.00
Binding Paperback
Publication Date October 2020
Pages 424

A reexamination of the people and movements associated with Qumran, their outlook on the world, and what bound them together

Dead Sea Scrolls, Revise and Repeat examines the identity of the Qumran movement by reassessing former conclusions and bringing new methodologies to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The collection as a whole addresses questions of identity as they relate to law, language, and literary formation; considerations of time and space; and demarcations of the body. The thirteen essays in this volume reassess the categorization of rule texts, the reuse of scripture, the significance of angelic fellowship, the varieties of calendrical use, and celibacy within the Qumran movement. Contributors consider identity in the Dead Sea Scrolls from new interdisciplinary perspectives, including spatial theory, legal theory, historical linguistics, ethnicity theory, cognitive literary theory, monster theory, and masculinity theory.

Features

• Essays that draw on new theoretical frameworks and recent advances in Qumran studies
• A tribute to the late Peter Flint, whose scholarship helped to shape Qumran studies

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Does the Mesha Stele mention Moses' tomb-shrine?

DR. ALEXANDER ROFÉ: YHWH Is Enthroned at Gad’s Temple: The Site of Moses’ Tomb (TheTorah.com).

YHWH comes from the south to be enthroned by the tribes of Israel in Ashdot-hapisgah (Deut 33:2), a later name for the city of Nebo. The Mesha Stele records the existence of YHWH worship site, whose hieros logos is tied to the tomb of Moses, the "plot of the lawgiver" (v. 21) located in the territory of Gad.

For past posts involving the Mesha Inscription (Mesha Stele, Moabite Stone), start here and follow the links. For a nice introduction to the Mesha Inscription, see here.

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JNES 79.2

THE JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES has a new issue out: 79.2 (2020). Of particular interest for PaleoJudaica is this article:

The Literary Dynamic of Loyalty and Betrayal in the Aramaic Ahiqar Narrative

Saul M. Olyan
Brown University

and this review:

Between Greece and Babylonia: Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-Cultural Perspective. By Kathryn Stevens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xx + 443. $135 (cloth).

John O. Hyland
Christopher Newport University

The JNES requires a personal or institutional subscription to access the full articles. Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

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Ehrensperger & Sheinfeld (eds.), Gender and Second-Temple Judaism

NEW BOOK FROM FORTRESS ACADEMIC PRESS:

Gender and Second-Temple Judaism Illustrated Edition

by Kathy Ehrensperger (Editor, Contributor), Shayna Sheinfeld (Editor, Contributor), Francis Borchardt (Contributor), Sarah E.G. Fein (Contributor), Gabriella Gelardini (Contributor), Tal Ilan (Contributor), & 7 more

Hardcover $105.00
Kindle $99.50

Ancient literature was generally written by and produced for elite men. That fact creates specific challenges to modern interpreters of gender roles in the ancient world, especially once contemporary understandings of gender as construction and performance are embraced. In Gender and Second-Temple Judaism, world-renowned scholars take on these challenges with regard to ancient Judaism (here including early Christianity and early rabbinic Judaism as well), at once examining the ancient evidence and quite consciously addressing difficult methodological questions regarding gender. Taken together, these chapters further complicate discussions of the construction of identity (e.g., “who is a Jew?”) by inflecting them with questions of gender construction as well. Scholars of ancient Judaism and of gender alike will find much to grapple with in these pages.

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