A new LXX PhD thesis

WILLIAM ROSS: TWO RECENT PIECES OF LXX NEWS. I have already noted the book by Anna Angelini (L’imaginaire du démoniaque dans la Septante) here. But the PhD thesis by Anna Mambelli on the Old Greek of Daniel 2-4 is new to me.

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Kartzow (ed.), The Ambiguous Figure of the Neighbor in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Texts and Receptions (Routledge)

NEW BOOK FROM ROUTLEDGE:

The Ambiguous Figure of the Neighbor in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Texts and Receptions

Edited By Marianne Bjelland Kartzow

Copyright Year 2021

Hardback
£120.00

eBook
£33.29

ISBN 9780367637835
Published September 13, 2021 by Routledge
242 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
Available on Taylor & Francis eBooks

Book Description

This book examines an undertheorized topic in the study of religion and sacred texts: the figure of the neighbor. By analyzing and comparing this figure in Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts and receptions, the chapters explore a conceptual shift from "Children of Abraham" to "Ambiguous Neighbors."

Through a variety of case studies using diverse methods and material, chapters explore the neighbor in these neighboring texts and traditions. The figure of the neighbor seems like an innocent topic at the surface. It is an everyday phenomenon, that everyone have knowledge about and experiences with. Still, analytically, it has a rich and innovative potential. Recent interdisciplinary research employs this figure to address issues of cultural diversity, gender, migration, ethnic relationships, war and peace, environmental challenges and urbanization. The neighbor represents the borderline between insider and outsider, friend and enemy, us and them. This ambiguous status makes the neighbor particularly interesting as an entry point into issues of cultural complexity, self-definition and identity. This volume brings all the intersections of religion, ethnicity, gender, and socio-cultural diversity into the same neighborhood, paying attention to sacred texts, receptions and contemporary communities.

The Ambiguous Figure of the Neighbor in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Texts and Receptions offers a fascinating study of the intersections between Jewish, Christian and Islamic text, and will be of interest to anyone working on these traditions.

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Mosaic inscriptions found at the church at El-Araj (Bethsaida?)

PRESS RELEASE: 'Church of the Apostles' Mosaics Discovered in Biblical Bethsaida. Archeologists uncovered 1,500-year-old mosaics believed to be above Peter and Andrew's home.

Let's unpack this story.

First El-Araj is one of the two main contenders for the site of the city of Bethsaida in the time of Jesus. The other is et-Tell. Both have longstanding excavations and both excavation teams are fully confident that their site is the site of Bethsaida. I have been following the debate for years. Both cases sound completely convincing to me. I take no position on who is correct. For many posts on the subject, start here and follow the links.

The discovery of a Byzantine-era church building at El-Araj was announced in 2019. This discovery was important because an eighth-century writer mentioned a church built on the site of the house of Peter and Andrew located at Bethsaida. It is possible that this building is that church, although there was no specific evidence of its connection with Peter.

The new inscription is exciting. It clinches the identification of the building as a church. But as far as I am aware (fact check me on this), no one had disputed that.

Do the inscriptions prove that this was Church of the Apostles and that the site was actually Bethsaida? Nope.

We still have no proof of a connection of the church with Peter and Andrew. And even if it is that church, this would only tell us that people seven hundred years after the time of Jesus thought the site was Bethsaida. That's a long time for mixups to happen.

That said, the discovery of this church does add weight to the identification of El-Araj as Bethsaida - unless and until the excavators of et-Tell can produce a Byzantine-era church on their site.

As I have said before, I don't think that this debate will be resolved conclusively unless we find a first-century sign at one of them that says "Wecome to Bethsaida."

Meanwhile, both sites are uncovering important information about the area in the Roman era and other periods. The contribution of both excavations is signficant, whichever site is the real Bethsaida.

I wrote the above before seeing the Haaretz article by Ruth Schuster: ‘Church of the Apostles’ in Bethsaida Mysteriously Buried, Archaeologists Discover. Researchers at the Sea of Galilee find inscriptions proving they found a major church, shoring up their belief that this was the church of Jesus' disciples, the real Bethsaida (HT Rogue Classicism). It has a good account of the discovery, with more information than in the press release. It also gives a balanced assessment of the evidence from both sites.

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Dorival, The Septuagint from Alexandria to Constantinople (OUP)

NEW BOOK FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS:

The Septuagint from Alexandria to Constantinople

Canon, New Testament, Church Fathers, Catenae

Gilles Dorival

• An authoritative study of the reception of the Septuagint in Alexandria and in the Christian tradition, based on Gilles Dorival's Grinfield Lectures
• Explores the significance of the differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew Bible
• Investigates the development of the canon of the Hebrew Bible
• Examines the Jewish nature of the Deuterocanonical books and their importance to the study of early Judaism

Description

The Hebrew Torah was translated into Greek in Alexandria by Jewish scholars in the third century BCE, and other 'biblical' books followed to form the so-called Septuagint. Since the Septuagint contains a number of books and passages that are not part of the Hebrew Bible, the study of the Septuagint is essential to any account of the canon of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. However, the situation is complex because the Greek text of the Old Testament quoted in the New Testament and in the Church Fathers does not always match the Septuagint text as given by the earliest codices. Furthermore, it must be asked to what extent these texts of the Septuagint may have been Christianized.

Up until the fifth century, the Old Testament of the Church Fathers was exclusively the Septuagint—except in the Syriac area—either in its Greek form or in a language translated from this Greek form. The Septuagint thus formed a much more important role in the building of Christian identity than it is usually recognised. After Jerome's Vulgate prevailed in the West, the Septuagint remained the reference text of the catenae. These Byzantine compilations of extracts of Patristic biblical commentary were produced first in Palestine, then in Constantinople and its dependancies between the sixth and fifteenth centuries and became the most important media for the transmission of patristic commentary in these centuries. The patristic extracts in the catenae provide a remarkable witness to the text of the Greek Old Testament as it was known and used by the Church Fathers.

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Was Nimrod a goodie or a baddie?

PROF. CAROL BAKHOS: Nimrod: The Making of a Nemesis (TheTorah.com).

Genesis describes Nimrod as a great hunter before YHWH and a powerful king. In late Second Temple writings, Nimrod is connected to the Tower of Babel and seen as a rebel against God. This negative view of Nimrod persisted through the centuries in the writings of the Church Fathers, and was further expanded in rabbinic midrash and medieval Islamic literature.

Thanks to Bugs Bunny, he also has a reputation for being clueless.

Other PaleoJudaica posts on Nimrod are here and here.

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Amethyst seal engraved with balsam tree excavated in Jerusalem

ANCIENT BLING WATCH: Rare biblical ‘balsam tree’ found depicted on 2000-year-old amethyst seal. The small lilac stone featuring the engraving of a bird and a branch with five fruits had fallen in the main drainage channel of Jerusalem from the Second Temple period. (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

For more on the balsam vs. persimmon plants, see here.

For more posts on ancient bling, see here and links, here, and here.

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Exhibition: "The Sanhedrin Trail"

ARCHAEOLOGY AND RABBINICS: What was Jewish life in Israel like at the time of the Mishna and Talmud? A new exhibition by the Israel Antiquities Authority at the Yigal Allon Center in Kibbutz Ginossar offers a glimpse of the centuries when Jewish sages managed to rebuild a community in the Galilee (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

The Magdala Stone is on public display for the first time.

For more on the interactive hiking trail also called "The Sanhedrin Trail," see here and here.

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Samaritan Sukkot 2021

SAMARITAN WATCH: Samaritans gather at dawn to mark the start of Sukkot. A month after Jews celebrated the festival, members of the faith gathered at Mount Gerizim, near Nablus (Michael Daventry, Jewish News). The Samaritan celebration of Sukkot began yesterday.

For more on Samaritan Sukkot, see here and links.

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Review of Gottlieb, Targum Chronicles and its Place Among the Late Targums (Brill)

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Targum Chronicles and its Place Among the Late Targums. (A.J. Berkovitz).

Gottlieb, Leeor. Targum Chronicles and Its Place Among the Late Targums. Brill, 2020.

[...]

As the book’s name implies, Gottlieb offers a detailed study of Targum Chronicles. Targum Chronicles itself combines into one neat package two features: a verse-by-verse Aramaic translation of the Hebrew books of 1-2 Chronicles and an anthology of rabbinic exegesis, mostly from the Babylonian Talmud, on those biblical books. In his 518-page study of this text, Gottlieb develops two major claims. First, he attempts to definitively prove that sometime between the end of the twelfth and the late thirteenth century, a European Jew, who likely lived in Italy, composed this Aramaic edition of Chronicles as a tool for Jewish Bible study. Prior scholarship had, by contrast, dated Targum Chronicles to between the 4th and 8th centuries and set its context as the Land of Israel or its environs.

I noted the publication of the book here.

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Ben Gurion University has closed its Bible department

SURPRISE SHUTDOWN: Dropping Bible studies is highly problematic - opinion. Ben Gurion University closed the Bible department this academic year without making a public announcement (MORDECHAI COGAN, Jerusalem Post).

I don't know the back story here, but this is bad news. I hope ben Gurion will reconsider its decision.

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Seven sites in Israel

EXCAVATIONS: 7 Lesser-known Archaeology Sites in Israel. Archaeological sites in Israel you may not be aware of: An Assyrian stronghold in Tel Aviv port, the city that may or may not have been biblical Ziklag, where the Edomite gods met our Maker and more (Andrew Califf, Haaretz).

Israel is a small country that has been trodden for more than 2 million years by humans and their predecessors. This land of clashes between human species and in more modern times, between religions, is the archaeologist’s dream but not all sites are equal, or equally accessible to visitors. Here are seven of some lesser-known sites in Israel, listed from north to south.

[...]

For more on Ein Keshatot (Umm el-Kanatir, Keshatot Rechavam) and its ancient synagogue, see here and links. For more on Shivta, see here and links (cf. here). For more on the vicinity of Ein Hatzeva, see here.

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Remember that Irish bog Psalter?

VARIANT READINGS: The Faddan More Psalter (Brent Nongbri).

One of the most interesting manuscripts to come to light in recent years is the Faddan More Psalter, a parchment codex in a leather cover that contained the Psalms in Latin. It was discovered by a worker harvesting peat for fuel from a bog in central Ireland in 2006. The acidic environment of bogs, famous for preserving human bodies, also preserved parts of this codex in a remarkable way. ...

PaleoJudaica followed the story of the bog Psalter from the annoucement of its discovery. For posts, start here and follow the links back.

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Angelini, L’imaginaire du démoniaque dans la Septante (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

L’imaginaire du démoniaque dans la Septante

Une analyse comparée de la notion de “démon” dans la Septante et dans la Bible Hébraïque

Series: Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, Volume: 197

Author: Anna Angelini

This book offers a thorough analysis of demons in the Hebrew Bible and Septuagint in the wider context of the ancient Near East and the Greek world. Taking a fresh and innovative angle of enquiry, Anna Angelini investigates continuities and changes in the representation of divine powers in Hellenistic Judaism, thereby revealing the role of the Greek translation of the Bible in shaping ancient demonology, angelology, and pneumatology. Combining philological and semantic analyses with a historical approach and anthropological insights, the author both develops a new method for analyzing religious categories within biblical traditions and sheds new light on the importance of the Septuagint for the history of ancient Judaism.

Le livre propose une analyse approfondie des démons dans la Bible Hébraïque et la Septante, à la lumière du Proche Orient Ancien et du contexte grec. Par un nouvel angle d’approche, Anna Angelini met en lumière dynamiques de continuité et de changement dans les représentations des puissances divines à l’époque hellénistique, en soulignant l’importance de la traduction grecque de la Bible pour la compréhension de la démonologie, de l’angélologie et de la pneumatologie antiques. En intégrant l’analyse philologique et sémantique avec une approche historique et des méthodes anthropologiques, l’autrice développe une nouvelle méthodologie pour analyser des catégories religieuses à l’intérieur des traditions bibliques et affirme la valeur de la Septante pour l’histoire du judaïsme antique.

Prices from (excl. VAT): €134.00 / $161.00 Hardback

Copyright Year: 2021

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-46847-4
Publication Date: 06 Sep 2021

Hardback
Availability: Not Yet Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-46846-7
Publication Date: 20 Oct 2021

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Archaeological evidence for the United Monarchy?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: King David’s Judah Found? New study examines archaeological evidence for early Judahite state (Nathan Steinmeyer). This essay summarizes a recent article that you can read in full for free:

The 10th Century BCE in Judah: Archaeology and the Biblical Tradition

Citation:
Garfinkel, Y., 2021. The 10th Century BCE in Judah: Archaeology and the Biblical Tradition. Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology , 1 , pp. 126-154. Copy at http://www.tinyurl.com/yk6l8jpp

Abstract:
In the framework of the regional project in the Judean Shephelah, which started in 2007, four sites were investigated: Khirbet Qeiyafa, Khirbet el-Ra‘i, Socoh, and Lachish. The data for the 10th century is presented here together with the relevant biblical traditions. The data is analyzed according to an urban geography model and the gradual development and territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Judah is suggested.

Follow the link for a link to a pdf version of the full text.

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Was the Flood story added later?

PROF. DAVID M. CARR: The Original Primeval History of the Hebrews (TheTorah.com).

Before the flood story was added, the primeval history focused on human mortality, family relationships, and etiological explanations for human behaviors and professions. Only later did this primeval history develop into a broader narrative that included stories of the flood and the Tower of Babel.

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Levantine late-antique earthquakes

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM! AND I GOT TWO. Scholar explores impact of Levantine earthquake of 418/419 AD (Saeb Rawashdeh, Jordan Times).

AMMAN — Conclusions about an earthquake that damaged “many towns and villages in Palestine” in 418/419 AD came from the ancient chronicler, Marcellinus Comes, who died in 534 AD, noted an American archaeologist.

“The geological evidence is somewhat ambiguous, as well, in part because another large earthquake happened in 363 AD, and it’s difficult to distinguish geological [and archaeological] evidence from events only a half-century apart,” said Ian Jones from University of California, San Diego.

[...]

Both earthquakes caused a lot of damage to Jerusalem.

I have mentioned the earthquake of 363 CE here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The earthquake of 418 or 419 appears to be new to me, although this post seems to allude to it.

For posts on biblical-era earthquakes, start here and follow the links.

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The Sifting Project has found a Kufic inscription fragment

THE TEMPLE MOUNT SIFTING PROJECT BLOG: FIND AND FINDER OF THE MONTH: YARDEN SHOR DISCOVERED A FRAGMENT OF AN 8TH CENTURY CE ARABIC INSCRIPTION ENGRAVED ON A MARBLE TILE. There is probably not enough remaining of the inscription to decipher it. But wel'l see.

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