James, Learning the Language of Scripture (on Origen) (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Learning the Language of Scripture

Origen, Wisdom, and the Logic of Interpretation

Series: Studies in Systematic Theology, Volume: 24

Author: Mark Randall James

In Learning the Language of Scripture, Mark Randall James offers a new account of theological interpretation as a sapiential practice of learning the language of Scripture, drawing on recently discovered Homilies on the Psalms by the influential early theologian Origen of Alexandria (2nd-3rd c. C.E). Widely regarded as one of the most arbitrary interpreters, James shows that Origen’s appearance of arbitrariness is a result of the modern tendency to neglect the role of wisdom in scriptural interpretation. James demonstrates that Origen offers a compelling model of a Christian pragmatism in which learning and correcting linguistic practice is a site of the transformative pedagogy of the divine Logos.

Prices from (excl. VAT): €59.00 / $68.00

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-44854-4
Publication Date: 18 Jan 2021

Paperback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-44853-7
Publication Date: 21 Jan 2021

PaleoJudaica posts on Origen's recently rediscovered Homilies on the Psalms are here and links and here. Posts on Origen's Hexapla are here and links, here, here, here, and here. Some other posts on Origen, his work and his theology, are here, here, here, and here.

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Hasler, Archival Historiography in Jewish Antiquity (OUP)

NEW BOOK FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Archival Historiography in Jewish Antiquity

Laura Carlson Hasler

• Argues that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah help reveal how the Bible received its unusual form
• Suggests that the concept of archival historiography makes sense of Ezra and Nehemiah's unusual format and place in the Bible
• Integrates archaeology, postcolonial theory, and archive studies into the reading of the text

Description

The question of how the Bible received its unusual form has been a question addressed by scholars since critical study of the text began. Early attention focused on the Pentateuch and the Primary History. Archival Historiography in Jewish Antiquity argues that Ezra and Nehemiah, late texts sometimes overlooked in such discussions, reveal another piece of this longstanding puzzle. Laura Carlson Hasler suggests that the concept of archival historiography makes sense of Ezra and Nehemiah's unusual format and place in the Bible. Adapting the symbolic quality of ancient Near Eastern archives to their own purposes, the writers of these books found archiving an expression of religious and social power in a colonized context. Using the book of Esther as a comparative example, Carlson Hasler addresses literary disruption, a form unpalatable to modern readers, as an expected element of archival historiography. This book argues that archiving within the experience of trauma is more than sophisticated history writing, and in fact served to facilitate Judean recovery after the losses of exile.

£64.00

Hardback
Published: 12 March 2020
240 Pages
235x156mm
ISBN: 9780190918729

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What did that voice say at Sinai?

PROF KENNETH SEESKIN: What Did the People Hear at Mount Sinai? (TheTorah.com).

The answer, or lack thereof, teaches us something important about the meaning and limits of divine revelation.

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

Online resources for biblical material culture

THE DIGITAL ORIENTALIST: Biblical Studies: Material Culture Online and in the Classroom (Jonathan Robker). With useful advice and links.

HT the AWOL Blog.

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Review of Grogan, Beyond Greece and Rome

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Beyond Greece and Rome: reading the ancient Near East in Early Modern Europe.

Jane Grogan, Beyond Greece and Rome: reading the ancient Near East in Early Modern Europe. Classical presences. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xiii, 341. ISBN 9780198767114 $105.00.

Review by
Raphael Magarik, University of Illinois Chicago. magarik@uic.edu

The book deals with the early modern reception of the Persia, Assyria, and Babylon of the Classical Greek writers, holy land pilgrimage, Alexander the Great, Zenobia of Palmyra, etc.

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Who is buried in St. James the Younger's tomb?

RADIOCARBON DATING: Scientific investigations of believed remains of two apostles (Press release, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN DENMARK).

In Rome lies the Santi Apostoli church, cared for by Franciscan brothers for more than 500 years. For more than 1500 years, this site has held the believed remains of two of the earliest Christians and Jesu apostles: St. Philip and St. James the Younger - relics of the Holy Catholic Church.

[...]

The researchers considered the remains of St. Philip too difficult to de-contaminate and radiocarbon date, and their age thus remains unknown so far. But the femur, believed to belong to St. James, underwent several analyses. Most importantly, it was radiocarbon dated to AD 214-340.

Thus, the preserved relic, the femur, is not that of St. James. It originates from an individual some 160-240 years younger than St. James, explains Professor Kaare Lund Rasmussen, University of Southern Denmark, adding:

- Though the relic is not that of St James, it casts a rare flicker of light on a very early and largely unaccounted for time in the history of early Christianity.

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The morality of Judith

READING ACTS: The Ethics of Judith: Sex, Lies, and Murder (Phil Long).

Again, Judith is a story. To follow up my earlier comment, do people who root for Indiana Jones when they watch the films take him as a moral example?

Earlier posts in Phil's Judith series are here and here.

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Thelle, Discovering Babylon (Routledge)

RECENT BOOK FROM ROUTLEDGE:

Discovering Babylon

By Rannfrid Thelle

Copyright Year 2019

Paperback £36.99

Hardback
£120.00

eBook
£33.29

ISBN 9780367496753
Published February 25, 2020 by Routledge
206 Pages

Book Description

This volume presents Babylon as it has been passed down through Western culture: through the Bible, classical texts, in Medieval travel accounts, and through depictions of the Tower motif in art. It then details the discovery of the material culture remains of Babylon from the middle of the 19th century and through the great excavation of 1899-1917, and focuses on the encounter between the Babylon of tradition and the Babylon unearthed by the archaeologists. This book is unique in its multi-disciplinary approach, combining expertise in biblical studies and Assyriology with perspectives on history, art history, intellectual history, reception studies and contemporary issues.

The book includes a chapter on Babylon in the Bible and a chapter on what I like to call Greek Fantasy Babylon.

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More on the gold-tongued mummy

UPDATE: Archaeologists Find a Mummy With a Golden Tongue. The tongue, found at a temple on the outskirts of Alexandria, Egypt, was probably meant to help the deceased speak in the afterlife, experts said. (Jacey Fortin, NYT). This article has new details. It is worth a read.

Were there multiple gold-tongued mummies or just one? This article preserves the ambiguity.

Archaeologists working at a temple on the outskirts of the Egyptian city of Alexandria have found 16 human burial chambers there, the government’s ministry of tourism and antiquities announced on Friday.

At least one contained a human skull with a golden tongue nestled in its jawbone.

"At least one." It seems the writer doesn't know either. This shouldn't be hard. Would someone associated with the excavation please tell us how many mummies excavated at the site had a gold tongue? I would be happy to post the clarification here.

The article does confirm that the excavators came to Taposiris Magna looking for Cleopatra's tomb, but so far they have not found it.

Background here and links.

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Virtual Palmyra exhibition

THE AWOL BLOG: Online Exhibition: Return to Palmyra. By the Getty Research Institute. Looks excellent.

Cross-file under Palmyra Watch. For many PaleoJudaica posts on Palmyra, its history, the ancient Aramaic dialect spoken there (Palmyrene), and the city's tragic reversals of fortune, which more recently seem to have been trending for the better, start here (cf. here) and follow the links.

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Survivals from Israelite religion?

RELIGION PROF: Religion in Galilee and Judaea (James McGrath).

One of the ideas I am exploring in connection with my research on the historical John the Baptist, and which I already make some reference to in my book What Jesus Learned from Women, is the persistence of Israelite traditions of a variety of sorts in a range of places including Galilee as well as Egypt and Mesopotamia.

[...]

I think this idea has some mileage to it. I have commented further here.

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New BAR editor revealed

DRUM ROLL ... BAS Names New Editor. Glenn J. Corbett returns as editor of Biblical Archaeology Review (Bible History Daily). Congratulations and best wishes to Dr. Corbett and to the Biblical Archaeology Society.

Background here.

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Gold-tongued mummies, but no Cleopatra

ARCHAEOLOGY: Mummy with a gold tongue found in Egypt. Could they speak to the gods? (Owen Jarus, Live Science).

Archaeologists have found a 2,000-year-old mummy with a gold tongue at an ancient Egyptian site called Taposiris Magna.

Embalmers perhaps placed the golden tongue on the mummy to ensure that the deceased would be able to speak in the afterlife, the Egyptian antiquities ministry said in a statement released Jan 29.

[...]

Most of the articles on this story, like this one, refer to a single gold-tongued mummy. But a couple published in the last day (by the BBC and the Telegraph) mention multiple mummies. Perhaps they have more recent information. I don't know.

The site of Taposiris Magna was in the news last summer, with reports that it was being excavated as the possible site of Cleopatra's tomb. The current articles mention a hoard of Cleopatra coins found at the site, but nothing about looking for her there. Perhaps the excavators have decided she wasn't buried there after all. Again, I don't know.

Cleopatra VII, the famous Cleopatra, has been in the news lately. She has been of interest to PaleoJudaica for a long time. For posts on her, start here and follow the links.

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

The Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim

LEEN RITMEYER: The Jerusalem Temple on Mount Gerizim. A Brief Visual History of the Sacred Mount.

For PaleoJudaica posts involving the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim, see here and links.

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

JSIJ 19 (2021): Josephus volume

JEWISH STUDIES, AN INTERNET JOURNAL has published a new volume devoted to Josephus. The TOC:

• Michael Avioz and Meir Ben Shahar, Editors’ Preface
• Kenneth Atkinson, Josephus's Use of Scripture to Describe Hasmonean Territorial Expansion
• Meir Ben Shahar, Dating the Destruction of the First Temple: Tradition and Interpretation in Josephus
• Silvia Castelli, Between Tradition and Innovation: Josephus's Description of the Tabernacle (Ant. 3.108-150) as an Improved Alternative to the Greek Bible
• Jonathan Klawans, Heresy, Forgery, Novelty: Condemning and Denying Innovation in Josephus
• Étienne Nodet, Josephus, 1 Maccabees, and Hanukkah
• Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Between Ethnos and Nomos: Josephus and the Goyim
• Daniel R. Schwartz, Hellenism, Judaism, and Apologetic: Josephus's Antiquities According to an Unpublished Commentary by Abraham Schalit
• Jan Willem Van Henten, Herod's Law Against Theft in its Literary, Legal, and Historical Contexts

HT the AWOL Blog.

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Almond, The Antichrist (CUP)

NEW BOOK FROM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS:

The Antichrist
A New Biography

AUTHOR: Philip C. Almond, University of Queensland

DATE PUBLISHED: September 2020
AVAILABILITY: This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
FORMAT: Adobe eBook Reader
ISBN: 9781108847643

Description

The malign figure of the Antichrist endures in modern culture, whether religious or secular; and the spectral shadow he has cast over the ages continues to exert a strong and powerful fascination. Philip C. Almond tells the story of the son of Satan from his early beginnings to the present day, and explores this false Messiah in theology, literature and the history of ideas. Discussing the origins of the malevolent being who at different times was cursed as Belial, Nero or Damien, the author reveals how Christianity in both East and West has imagined this incarnation of absolute evil destined to appear at the end of time. For the better part of the last two thousand years, Almond suggests, the human battle between right and wrong has been envisaged as a mighty cosmic duel between good and its opposite, culminating in an epic final showdown between Christ and his deadly arch-nemesis.

• The first full treatment for 25 years of a subject that continues to generate enormous interest
• Offers new interpretations of the continuing significance of the Antichrist in popular culture
• The author's earlier book on the Devil (IB Tauris) was a widely reviewed academic bestseller

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Schiffman on John the Baptist and the DSS

PROF. LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: JOHN THE BAPTIST AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: PURITY PERSPECTIVES. Professor Schiffman posts the text of his paper for the recent Enoch Seminar on John the Baptist.

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

CFPs for 2020 language-related sessions

WILLIAM ROSS: 021 BIBLICAL STUDIES CONFERENCE CALLS & INVITED SESSIONS. These are the sessions with which Dr. Ross is invovled as a planner. They concentrate on linguistics and the Septuagint.

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

Magness to lecture on Huqoq Synagogue

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Synagogue at Huqoq in Israel’s Galilee. An online lecture by Professor Jody Magness on 5 February at 4:30 pm (I assume EST). The event seems to be free, but it requires advance registration. Follow the link for details.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the archaeological discoveries at Huqoq, including the synagogue and the mosaics, see here and links (cf. here).

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

Biblical Studies Carnival 179

ZWINGLIUS REDIVIVUS: 2021: The ‘Let’s Hope It’s Not Another 2020, but it Started Off Pretty Horribly And Ended Better’ Edition of the Biblical Studies Carnival (Jim West).

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

Review of Trotter, The Jerusalem Temple in Diaspora

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | The Jerusalem Temple in Diaspora: Jewish Practice and Thought during the Second Temple Period (Jocelyn Burney).

Jonathan R. Trotter. The Jerusalem Temple in Diaspora: Jewish Practice and Thought during the Second Temple Period. Brill, 2019.

Excerpt:

Trotter has tackled the difficult topic of ancient Jewish identity using two sets of evidence that reflect parallel, but distinct discourses of identity: one centered in lived practices (pilgrimage and donation) and one constructed by a group of texts from the late Second Temple Period. In other words, The Jerusalem Temple analyzes both what people did to connect to the temple and what they said about it.

I noted the publication of the book here.

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Review of Coulter, How dead languages work

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: How dead languages work.

Coulter George, How dead languages work. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. viii, 224. ISBN 9780198852827 $25.00.

Review by
Audrey Mathys, Chargée de recherches F.R.S.-FNRS, Université Libre de Bruxelles. audreymathys@gmail.com

The book under review is an introduction to seven Ancient and Medieval languages which are culturally relevant for English native speakers. Six of them are Indo-European—Ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Old English, Old Irish and (Middle) Welsh—and the last one, Hebrew, belongs to the Semitic language family. As hinted by the title, the author aims at providing information on how these languages “work”, that is to say, how each of them is phonologically, morphologically and syntactically structured, and how this contrasts with Modern English.

[...]

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Leibner, Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Galilee (Mohr Siebeck)

THE AWOL BLOG: Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Galilee: An Archaeological Survey of the Eastern Galilee. A new open-access book by Uzi Leibner from Mohr Siebeck.

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

More on the MOTB manuscripts returned to Egypt

VARIANT READINGS: Museum of the Bible Papyri in Egypt. Brent Nongbri shares some images of and information about MOTB manuscripts that have just been returned to Egypt. He promises more commentary soon.

Background here.

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Botner, Jesus Christ as the Son of David in the Gospel of Mark (CUP)

NEW BOOK FROM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Jesus Christ as the Son of David in the Gospel of Mark

Part of Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series

AUTHOR: Max Botner, Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, Michigan
DATE PUBLISHED: October 2020
AVAILABILITY: Available
FORMAT: Paperback
ISBN: 9781108702140

Description

This study contributes to the debate over the function of Davidic sonship in the Gospel of Mark. In contrast to William Wrede's paradigm, Max Botner argues that Mark's position on Jesus's ancestry cannot be assessed properly though isolated study of the name David (or the patronym son of David). Rather, the totality of Markan messiah language is relevant to the question at hand. Justification for this paradigm shift is rooted in observations about the ways in which ancient authors spoke of their messiahs. Botner shows that Mark was participant to a linguistic community whose members shared multiple conventions for stylizing their messiahs, Davidic or otherwise. He then traces how the evangelist narratively constructed his portrait of Christ via creative use of the Jewish scriptures. When the Davidssohnfrage is approached from within this sociolinguistic framework, it becomes clear that Mark's Christ is indeed David's son.

• Scrutinizes the plight of Davidic messianism in Markan studies
• Adopts a sociolinguistic approach to ancient messianism to provide a new paradigm for assessing how ancient authors deployed traditions about David and his descendants
• Will appeal to those who are interested in intertextuality in early Jewish literature in general and in the New Testament Gospels in particular

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