Once again, stay safe and be well! There is still danger and there are still setbacks, but there is progress too. Be encouraged.
Last year's pandemic Passover post is here. It has many Passover links. Subsequent Passover-related posts are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Relevant biblical texts are collected here.
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I do not have a view on whether Emmaus and Bethel were (more or less) the same place. Place names are malleable. The proposed transformation of Oulammaous to Emmaus does require a good bit of kneading.
I do not find the proposed parallels between Jesus and Jacob convincing. A couple of them have to introduce outside passages that Luke would not have seen. The connections in some others are too imprecise. Being asleep is not the same has having one's eyesight overridden. Waking up is not the same as listening to someone expounding scripture.
But have a look at Leen's post and see what you think.
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Ancient Iran had a pivotal role in world history, spanning parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa at its height and contributing to global literature, technology, and religion. Unfortunately, Ancient Iran receives only a fraction of the time and resources devoted to the study of Greece and Rome. In the spring of 2018, a group of faculty, students, and community members convened at the University of Washington to address this problem by designing a major public event to explore Ancient Iran's place in global history.[...]
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Other PaleoJudaica posts on Parthia and the ancient Parthians are collected here, plus see here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Beyond Orality
Biblical Poetry on its Own TermsBy Jacqueline Vayntrub
Copyright Year 2019
Paperback
£36.99ISBN 9780367731571
Published December 18, 2020 by Routledge
260 PagesBook Description
Central to understanding the prophecy and prayer of the Hebrew Bible are the unspoken assumptions that shaped them—their genres. Modern scholars describe these works as “poetry,” but there was no corresponding ancient Hebrew term or concept. Scholars also typically assume it began as “oral literature,” a concept based more in evolutionist assumptions than evidence. Is biblical poetry a purely modern fiction, or is there a more fundamental reason why its definition escapes us?
Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its Own Terms changes the debate by showing how biblical poetry has worked as a mirror, reflecting each era’s own self-image of verbal art. Yet Vayntrub also shows that this problem is rooted in a crucial pattern within the Bible itself: the texts we recognize as “poetry” are framed as powerful and ancient verbal performances, dramatic speeches from the past. The Bible’s creators presented what we call poetry in terms of their own image of the ancient and the oral, and understanding their native theories of Hebrew verbal art gives us a new basis to rethink our own.
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The Seleucid empire is important for biblical studies (notably in the Book of Daniel) and the study of Second Temple Judaism. For some of the Seleucid kings mentioned in this article and (always with secret code names) in the Book of Daniel, see here and here. For a bit more on Antiochus XIII, see the article linked to here. For many other PaleoJudaica posts on the Seleucid Empire, start here and follow the links, with subsequent posts here, here, and here.
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The Cenacle stands tall indeed, nesting above David’s tomb on the heights of Mount Zion. But who knew that Mount Zion’s Christian claim to fame has a competitor—in a basement?The Monastery of St. Mark is the central church for the Syrian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem. ...
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For many PaleoJudaica posts on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Holy Sepulcher), see here and links and here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Before the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, Ezekiel condemns Judah's alliance with Egypt, depicting Egypt and its pharaoh as a monster that YHWH will destroy. The prophet accuses Judah of harlotry with Egypt and blames their foolish alliance on their resurgent worship of the Egyptian gods they adopted during their sojourn there.
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Its overlap with PaleoJudaica's interests is tangential, so I don't link to their posts often. But it is worth noting that one of the new texts is based on material in the Testament of Solomon and another is a Coptic fragment of the apocryphal Letter of Jesus to King Abgar. I didn't know that the latter existed in Coptic. There is also a prayer attributed to the Virgin Mary.
For more on the Testament of Solomon see here and here and links. For more on the real King Abgar V and his fake correspondence with Jesus, see here and links.
Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch, New Testament Apocrypha Watch, and Christian Apocrypha Watch.
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Every Biblical word condemns her: Jezebel is an outspoken woman in a time when females have little status and few rights; a foreigner in a xenophobic land; an idol worshiper in a place with a Yahweh-based, state-sponsored religion; a murderer and meddler in political affairs in a nation of strong patriarchs; a traitor in a country where no ruler is above the law; and a whore in the territory where the Ten Commandments originate.The reframing of Jezebel in this article raises many valid points. Elijah and Jehu certainly do not come out looking better than she.Yet there is much to admire in this ancient queen. In a kinder analysis, Jezebel emerges as a fiery and determined person, with an intensity matched only by Elijah’s. She is true to her native religion and customs. She is even more loyal to her husband. Throughout her reign, she boldly exercises what power she has. And in the end, having lived her life on her own terms, Jezebel faces certain death with dignity.
Many of the commenters to the article disagree with me. Cross-file under Cognitive Dissonance. (Mine and theirs.)
Other PaleoJudaica posts on Jezebel are here and links and here.
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For PaleoJudaica posts on the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE and its destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii, start here and here and follow the many links. For more on the pyroclastic surge that killed the people of Pompeii, start at the latter post and follow the links.
The emergency resue operation lead by Pliny the Elder, in which he himself perished, may have saved a couple of thousand people from the eruption. See the links above.
For the carbonized library at Herculaneum and the ongoing efforts to recover it, see here and links. For some possible connections between the eruption, Pompeii, and ancient Judaism, see the links collected here plus this post.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Music in Religious Cults of the Ancient Near EastBy John Arthur Smith
Copyright Year 2021
Hardback
£120.00eBook
£33.29ISBN 9780367486334
Published November 10, 2020 by Routledge
220 Pages 9 B/W IllustrationsBook Description
Music in Religious Cults of the Ancient Near East presents the first extended discussion of the relationship between music and cultic worship in ancient western Asia. The book covers ancient Israel and Judah, the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Elam, and ancient Egypt, focusing on the period from approximately 3000 BCE to around 586 BCE. This wide-ranging book brings together insights from ancient archaeological, iconographic, written, and musical sources, as well as from modern scholarship. Through careful analysis, comparison, and evaluation of those sources, the author builds a picture of a world where religious culture was predominant and where music was intrinsic to common cultic activity.
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Brian R. Doak. Heroic Bodies in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.For more on this book, see here.Over the past three decades, the body has come increasingly into focus in biblical studies, providing a material dimension to interpretations of biblical texts. Brian Doak’s Heroic Bodies in Ancient Israel contributes a new angle to this illuminating trend. ...
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Some related posts are here, here, here, here, and links. Cross-file under News You Can Use.
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By Christian David Ginsburg - The British Library; Additional manuscripts 41294 “Papers Relative to M.W. Shapira’s Forged MS. of Deuteronomy (A.D. 1883–1884).”, folio 33, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67064589
This one has a lot of glare and poor resolution. It may be clipped from a larger photo that includes both sides and part of another strip. You can see it here on Wikimedia Commons. I don't know whether there are others.
The problem with these images, of course, is that the leather is blackened and the writing is invisible. In the nineteenth century people could see the writing on close inspection of the originals. That's how we got the drawings of the inscriptions.
The poor quality of the photos means our access to the Hebrew writing is only through bad hand drawings of it by people who were not twenty-first century paleographers. They did not know what to look for. Efforts to authenticate the texts though paleography founder, because we don't know how close the drawings are to the actual Hebrew script. Likely, not close.
But a thought occurs to me. I may as well share it here.
Those nineteenth-century photographs surely contain a lot more information than is obvious to the naked eye. Has anyone ever tried applying computer enhancement to them? Could someone, say the West Semitic Research Project, get in touch with JPL and see what they can do with the photo(s)? If we could get clear images of some words or partial lines of the text, paleographers could decide pretty rapidly whether the script was ancient or fake.
As far as I know, no one has suggested this before. Perhaps it's worth a try.
For background on the Shapira affair and the two recent books arguing for the authenticity of the Shapira Scroll fragments, start here and follow the links.
UPDATE: Thanks to James Tabor, I have seen some of the other images in British Library; Additional manuscripts 41294. They were taken with different exposures. At least one (page 83) shows considerable readable Hebrew text as is. I'm sure it could be enhanced to bring out more.
CORRECTION (26 March): It develops that the image on page 83 with readable Hebrew text is of a drawing by Christian Ginsburg. It is not a readable photograph. Please excuse the mixup.
My original point stands: it may be worth applying computer enhancement to the photographs of the Shapira Scroll in the archives of the British Library. They look completely illegible, but there may still be important information in them.
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Many academics only write about their teaching at three key moments: composing application dossiers, writing course syllabi, and perhaps when reflecting for annual reviews or tenure submissions. But there are many venues that, with the right framing, could showcase how you translate your expertise for students and what you have learned from the trial-and-error repetition of activities, paper prompts, and entire courses.This is a thoughtful essay full of good advice.
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It is liberating to realize that other people live in a very different reality from one's own. For more on that, see here and (especially) here. Cross-file under Cognitive Dissonance.
For more on the book behind this BHD post, see here.
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With articles involving involving many subjects of interest to PaleoJudaica, including Persepolis, Cambyses in Egypt, Arameans in the Achaemenid Empire, Ashoka, Alexander the Great, and the Nabonidus Chronicle.
Follow this link for more on the Achemenet Program.
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A preliminary study carried out on the Coptic tombstone recently discovered in Luxor reveals that it belonged to a little girl named "Takla," who died at the age of ten sometime between the 7th and 10th centuries AD.The inscription contains five additional damaged lines of Coptic text. Researchers are still deciphering them.[...]
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A bronze figurine of a bull believed to be at least 2,500 years old has been unearthed in Greece following heavy rain near the ancient site of Olympia. HT Archaeologica News.There are photos at the link. The statuette is a fine specimen.Burn marks on the statuette suggest it may have been one of thousands of offerings to the Greek god Zeus.
[...]
I post this because when I saw the article I thought, "Hmmm ... bronze bull ... golden calf." It seems there was an iconographic tradition involving little (or even big) metal statues of bulls across the Mediterranean.
Remember the story of Gozo's golden calf in eighteenth-century Malta? The one in which the the supposed discovey of a statuette of a golden calf led to betrayal and butchery? Malta is not very far from Greece. Could a discovery like the recent one at Olympia be behind the story?
I don't recall that a gold or gold-plated bull figurine has ever been found, apart from the one associated with the gold and lead codices seized in Turkey. That one seems fairly modern and to be based on the biblical golden calf story. But we do have a silver-plated one from Ashkelon and now this bronze one.
Could that Gozian farmer have dug up a gold-filigreed one? Or perhaps a bronze or silver one whose value grew in the telling and led to the unfortunate misunderstanding with the Grand Master of Gozo?
Maybe. Who knows? It's fun to speculate. But like its predecessor, this post is for entertainment only.
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I posted about the Egyptian fortress-city of Berenike (Berenike Trogodytika) here. It was a port on the coast of the Red Sea in Ptolemaic times. It is named after Queen Berenike I, the wife of Ptolemy I. The latter appears under the code name "king of the south" in Daniel 11:5.
This article gives some new information about possible reasons for the temporary abandonment of the city toward the end of the third century BCE.
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I have mentioned Lepidina's birthday party invitation here. It was excavated at the Roman fort at Vindonlanda, near Hadrian's Wall. I have visited Vindolanda twice and blogged on it repeatedly. It has no direct connection with ancient Judaism, but there many indirect connections, especially with the vast archive of documentary texts found there. For PaleoJudaica posts and many photos, start here and follow the links.
The other inscription is a late-antique epitaph for a Jewish child in Rome. It is written in Latin and Hebrew. The photo in the Senteniae Antiquae post seems to be glitched.
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Background here. And this seems relevant too.
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Mar. 20—Hershel Shanks began his career in the law, but found worldwide renown as a pioneer in the field of biblical archeology, a passion that traced its roots to his childhood in Sharon.Background here and links.[...]
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The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew BibleEdited by Susanne Scholz
Oxford Handbooks
Description
- Outlines new directions for the field, simultaneously remaining connected to biblical texts and to broader discussions on culture, politics, and religion
- Conceptualizes feminist biblical studies beyond essentializing notions about “woman” by including essays on gender, queer, and trans studies in biblical interpretation
- Advances feminist, womanist, queer, and gendered interpretations with critical analyses into racism, ethnocentrism, colonialism, and other forms of “othering”
The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible brings together 37 essential essays written by leading international scholars, examining crucial points of analysis within the field of feminist Hebrew Bible studies. Organized into four major areas - globalization, neoliberalism, media, and intersectionality - the essays collectively provide vibrant, relevant, and innovative contributions to the field. The topics of analysis focus heavily on gender and queer identity, with essays touching on African, Korean, and European feminist hermeneutics, womanist and interreligious readings, ecofeminist and animal biblical studies, migration biblical studies, the role of gender binary voices in evangelical-egalitarian approaches, and the examination of scripture in light of trans women's voices. The volume also includes essays examining the Old Testament as recited in music, literature, film, and video games. The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible charts a culturally, hermeneutically, and exegetically cutting-edge path for the ongoing development of biblical studies grounded in feminist, womanist, gender, and queer perspectives.
£97.00
Hardback
Published: 01 March 2021
696 Pages
248x171mm
ISBN: 9780190462673
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The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla is a fascinating read that enjoyed wide popularity for centuries. It presented Thecla as a powerful figure who overshadows Paul. Thecla made an unexpected decision which meant that through Christianity she was actually liberated from the concerns of the body and from the dominion of a future marriage.Thecla's (traditional) grave is in Maaloula (Ma'aloula, Malula), Syria. It was reportedly desecrated by ISIS in 2014.
Maaloula was long famous as one of the last towns in which Aramaic was spoken as a native language. It was devastated during the war, but has made a comeback since. See here, here, here, and here. (Cross-file under Maaloula Watch.)
More recently there has been speculation that Thecla may be the "glorious martyr" mentioned in a late-antique church mosaic in Ramat Beit Shemesh. Other PaleoJudaica posts on Thecla are here and here.
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