Review of Wasserman, Apocalypse as Holy War

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Review | Apocalypse as Holy War: Divine Politics and Polemics in the Letters of Paul (D. Clint Burnett).

Emma Wasserman. Apocalypse as Holy War: Divine Politics and Polemics in the Letters of Paul. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.

In Apocalypse as Holy War, Wasserman argues that the dominant scholarly approach to Jewish apocalypticism is uncritical and unsupported by our ancient Jewish sources, including Paul’s (undisputed) letters. ...

Related essay by the author of the book noted here.

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More on the Shavei Zion Phoenician figurines

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: The Shavei Zion Figurine Assemblage. A Cultic Site at Sea (Meir Edrey, Adi Erlich, and Assaf Yasur-Landau). Cross-file under Phoenician Watch. This essay is by the team who are currently working on the figurines.

The dispersal of the finds, the heterogenous nature of the associated amphoras, the figurines’ reproduction from preexisting terracottas over and over again, the varied origins of the clay, and their manufacturing techniques all suggest the Shavei Zion assemblage was accumulated over a long period of human maritime activities, indicating they were most likely not part of the cargo of a single 5th century BCE ship. So how did they get to the bottom of the sea?

Three takeaways from this essay.

1. The implication (I don't think this is said directly) is that this spot off of Shavei Zion was a Phoenician cultic site where people dropped the figurines over a period of centuries.

2. The ritual may have involved offering the figurines in place of a child. This would represent a watering down, so to speak, of the child sacrifice rites that continued to be rife at Carthage.

3. The figurines may have represented the Tanit (Tannit)/Baal Hamon Phoenician Tophet cult rather than Tanit herself. Does that confirm or weaken the case that Tanit was worshipped in Phoenicia as well as Carthage? I'm not sure. More on Tanit here and links. That post also links to previous posts on the Shavei Zion figurines.

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Interview with Annette Yoshiko Reed

HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL: The Art of the Forgotten (Amie Montemurro).

Annette Reed, MTS ’99, is currently a Professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Department of Religious Studies at New York University, where she has been a member of the faculty since 2017. Her research spans Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Jewish-Christian relations in late antiquity, with a focus on retheorizing religion, identity, and difference. She will join the HDS faculty as Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity when her appointment begins on July 1, 2022.

For more on Professor Reed's work, see here here, here, here, and links.

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Was David a nomad king?

ARCHAEOLOGY: What did King David’s Israel look like? The answer is not set in stone. Archeological investigation of King David's kingdom has been suffering from an inherent bias of the western world (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

As [Tel Aviv University archaeologist Prof. Erez] Ben-Yosef noted in a paper recently published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology, up until now, the consensus among scholars has been that before a society became sedentary, it could not be considered complex or evolved. For this reason, many have dismissed the notion that ancient Israel could be as powerful as described in the Bible.

However, in order to understand the Israel of King David and King Solomon, a new approach is required, one that leaves behind the need for remains of magnificent buildings but is able to ask the right questions and put archaeological and historical records in the right perspective.

As the Post article notes, you can read the underlying article by Professor Ben-Yosef and related work at his Academia.edu page here.

For more on the Timna Valley excavation, on which I have been keeping a close eye for my own reasons, see here and links.

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Gold coins of Carthage

NUMISMATICS: The Gold Coins of Ancient Carthage (Tyler Rossi). Cross-file under Punic Watch.

Other PaleoJudaica posts on Carthaginian coins are here, here, and here.

For the Punic goddess Tanit/Tannit (the "Snake Lady"), see here, here, and here. The last two links raise the question of whether she was also worshipped in Phoenicia proper. Current evidence is unclear. More on that soon.

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New PhD thesis on the Cave of the Patriarchs

A COMPREHENSIVE ACCOUNT: Secrets of the Cave of the Patriarchs exposed. Noam Arnon's comprehensive doctoral dissertation on the Cave of the Patriarchs proves there is much more to the ancient site than meets the eye (Nadav Shragai, Israel HaYom).

A 600-page doctoral thesis composed over the past eight years by Dr. Noam Arnon, reveals and explores the details of these visits, and much more. Arnon's research covers a period of 2,500 years in the history of the site, and, like his previous works on the Cave of the Patriarchs, deals with a broad complex of geographical, geological, archaeological, and Jewish and historical sources, that were not all available to those researching the cave in the past.

This sounds a bit dry and academic, but some of the "visits" involved clandestine operations more in the line of Indiana Jones.

For more on the archaeology of Hebron, mixed with some politics, see here, here, here, and links.

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Forthcoming: Minets, The Slow Fall of Babel (CUP via AJR)

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Publication | The Slow Fall of Babel: Languages and Identities in Late Antique Christianity (Yuliya Minets).

My book, The Slow Fall of Babel: Languages and Identities in Late Antique Christianity, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, explores early Christian ideas about foreign languages, linguistic history, and linguistic diversity. Over the course of six chapters, I investigate how language differences and language-related socio-cultural stereotypes were drawn into the process of constructing and negotiating distinctly Christian and specific confessional identities in the late antique Mediterranean.

The essay indicates that the book also gives attention to Jewish ideas about the same matters.

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Amethyst ring excavated at Yavneh

ANCIENT BLING WATCH: Ancient ‘hangover cure’ gold ring found at Yavne winery excavation. Band is adorned with semiprecious amethyst stone, which was believed to have power in dispelling the aftereffects of alcohol (Stuart Winer, Times of Israel).

For more on the Byzantine-era winery at Yavneh (Yavne), see here. The ring is from a seventh-century stratum, but it may be several centuries older than that.

Rossella Tercatin is the only one I have found who has noticed that this is the second ancient amethyst gemstone, possibly also from a ring, to be discovered recently. More on that here.

For more posts on ancient bling, follow the links at the last link above.

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Shaul Shaked (1933-2021)

SAD NEWS FROM H-JUDAIC: Passing of Professor Shaul Shaked.

H-Judaic is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Professor Shaul Shaked (1933-2021), Emeritus Professor of Iranian Studies, Religious Studies, Aramaic and Magic in Late Antiquity at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; winner of the Israel Prize; a member of the Israel Academy of Arts and Sciences; and one of Israel's most esteemed scholars. ...

Professor Shaked appeared from time to time in PaleoJudaica posts, mostly to do with the Aramaic incantation bowls and the Afgan geniza. A Festschrift for him was published in 2019. H-Judaic has another memorial note on him here.

I thanked him for his help with the Aramaic incantation bowls in the preface to my 2001 book Descenders to the Chariot. That was all by e-mail correspondence. But I finally did meet him in person in 2014 at the Iranian Kingship Workshop. There are photos of him at that post. He was a very gracious gentleman.

May his memory be for a blessing.

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Price et al. (eds.), Rome: An Empire of Many Nations (CUP)

NEW BOOK FROM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Rome: An Empire of Many Nations
New Perspectives on Ethnic Diversity and Cultural Identity

EDITORS:
Jonathan J. Price, Tel-Aviv University
Margalit Finkelberg, Tel-Aviv University
Yuval Shahar, Tel-Aviv University
DATE PUBLISHED: September 2021
AVAILABILITY: In stock
FORMAT: Hardback
ISBN: 9781108479455

£ 90.00 Hardback

Description

The center of gravity in Roman studies has shifted far from the upper echelons of government and administration in Rome or the Emperor's court to the provinces and the individual. The multi-disciplinary studies presented in this volume reflect the turn in Roman history to the identities of ethnic groups and even single individuals who lived in Rome's vast multinational empire. The purpose is less to discover another element in the Roman Empire's “success” in governance than to illuminate the variety of individual experience in its own terms. The chapters here, reflecting a wide spectrum of professional expertise, range across the many cultures, languages, religions and literatures of the Roman Empire, with a special focus on the Jews as a test-case for the larger issues.

• Provides a vigorous new perspective of Empire and imperialism, from the point of view of ethnicity and the subjects of the Empire
• Demonstrates the benefits of adopting a multi-disciplinary approach to the issues
• Includes numerous new insights from a wide range of distinguished contributors

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Stromberg & Hibbard (eds.), The History of Isaiah (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: The History of Isaiah. The Formation of the Book and its Presentation of the Past. Edited by Jacob Stromberg and J. Todd Hibbard. 2021. IX, 590 pages. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 150. 164,00 € including VAT. cloth ISBN 978-3-16-156097-2.

Published in English.
The book of Isaiah is a product of history. The nature of that history and what it means that Isaiah is a product of it are hardly matters of consensus in the field. Nonetheless, Isaianic scholarship has put its collective finger on the crux of the methodological problem. At the heart of an historical understanding of this prophetic book lies a consideration of the word »history« in two distinct but related applications. First, what historical processes led to the book's final form? How did Isaiah become a book? And second, what kind of historical representation does the book offer to the reader? How does Isaiah present the past? For most scholars, answering either question involves asking the other. To understand better the history of Isaiah, this volume of essays devotes itself to these two lines of inquiry and their relationship.

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Fragment of a Canaanite god relief in the Tel Motza temple?

ICONOGRAPHY? Judahite Temple by Jerusalem May Have Housed Statue of Canaanite God A relief fragment found in a shrine similar to Solomon’s Temple looks suspiciously like a Canaanite deity, suggesting the cult of images and multiple gods was alive and well in biblical Judah (Ariel David, Haaretz).

I will leave it to experts on the iconography of Canaanite gods to take positions on whether this stone fragment is a relief representation of one of them. At minimum I would like to see some complete parallel stone reliefs.

There is no reason in principle why a Yahwistic temple in the Iron Age could not have included representations of other gods. According to the Deuteronomistic Historian, King Manasseh of Judah put altars to other gods in the Jerusalem Temple (2 Kings 21:4-5). Of course, Dtr disapproved, but still acknowleged it happened.

For PaleoJudaica post on the Iron-Age temple at Tel Moza (Tel Motza, Tel Moẓa, Tel Moẓah), see here and links.

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Biblical Studies Carnival 188

ZWINGLIUS REDIVIVUS: The October “Very Scary” Biblical Studies Carnival (Number 188). Jim West was kind enough to mention PaleoJudaica twice in the current Carnival. But he accidentally repeated the first link in the second. The correct link is here.

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Monstrous biblical translations

HAPPY HALLOWEEN: The Satyr Shall Cry to His Fellow: Bible Translation and Weird Fiction (Philip Jenkins, The Anxious Bench).

For More on M. R. James, his work on biblical apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, and his excellent ghost stories, see here and links (cf. here and here). For many PaleoJudaica posts on Lilith in the Bible and in legend, see here and links and here. For the case that the Lilith of Isaiah 34 was a cat, see here.

Professor Jenkins also has a follow-up post on bizzare Bible translations of animal names: Dragons, Jackals, and Bible Translators.

While we're on the subject, let's not forget the unicorn.

The Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, and the King James Bible have provided readers with a nice menagerie of monsters.

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Barclay & White (eds.), The New Testament in Comparison (T&T Clark)

NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY/T&T CLARK:

The New Testament in Comparison

Validity, Method, and Purpose in Comparing Traditions

John M.G. Barclay (Anthology Editor), Benjamin G. White (Anthology Editor)

Paperback
$39.95 $35.95

Hardback
$115.00 $103.50

Ebook (PDF)
$35.95 $28.76

Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
$35.95 $28.76

Product details

Published Sep 23 2021
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 216
ISBN 9780567702159
Imprint T&T Clark
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Series The Library of New Testament Studies
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

Description

The nine essays in this volume, written by leading international scholars in New Testament studies, examine in new depth the method of comparison so frequently deployed in the study of the New Testament. They raise and reflect on deep questions on the possibility and validity of such comparative exercise, on the methods that are most effective and intellectually defensible, on the purpose of such comparison, and on the perils and pitfalls in such exercises. Addressing these questions at both a theoretical, hermeneutical level, and through case-studies of actual examples, the book provides a much needed and up-to-date methodological resource for the numerous comparative projects spawned by New Testament studies throughout the world.

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