AJR reviews Schniedewind, The Finger of the Scribe

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | The Finger of the Scribe: How Scribes Learned to Write the Bible (Ki-Eun Jang).

William M. Schniedewind, The Finger of the Scribe: How Scribes Learned to Write the Bible. Oxford University Press, 2019.

... Through his new interpretation of the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions, Schniedewind argues that ancient scribes who wrote the Hebrew Bible were trained according to an Israelite alphabetic scribal education, which emerged out of an earlier cuneiform scribal curriculum during a transitional period between the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age. ...

I have noted other reviews of the book here and here.

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PhD diss on Ancient Synagogue Coins

THE AWOL BLOG: Ancient Synagogue Coins: A Digital Dissertation Project.

ABSTRACT

Tine Rassalle: Coin Deposits from Ancient Synagogues in Late Antique Palestine
(Under the Direction of Dr. Jodi Magness)

During archaeological excavations over the last century, fifty-seven separate coin deposits have been found in ancient synagogues from Late Antique Palestine and the Diaspora. This project provides an overview of these deposits, the buildings they were discovered in, and the specific coins they contained. Based on their archaeological contexts and an analysis of the Jewish religious and socio-economic circumstances of Late Antiquity, I argue that there are seven possible reasons for why these deposits were placed inside a synagogue building. This dissertation project gives an overview of these categories and explores the different economic and symbolic functions coins in sacred spaces could have had in ancient Jewish society.

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Review of Adams, Greek genres and Jewish authors

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Greek genres and Jewish authors: negotiating literary culture in the Greco-Roman era.

Sean A. Adams, Greek genres and Jewish authors: negotiating literary culture in the Greco-Roman era. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2020. Pp. xi, 430. ISBN 9781481312912 $79.99.

Review by
Robert Kugler, Lewis and Clark University. kugler@lclark.edu

I noted the book and a related essay by the author here.

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Hobbyist recovers lost secret of Tyrian purple?

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Biblical royal purple dye from snails recreated by Tunisian enthusiast. So expensive was the color even in ancient times that the Romans restricted its use to the elite, whose purple fringed robes became the mark of the Mediterranean's most powerful dynasty (Reuters via the Jerusalem Post).

Mouhamad Ghassen Nouira works from a hut in his garden to process murex snails using techniques first developed by the Phoenicians to produce a dye known as Tyrian purple that sells online for about $2,500 a gram.

Everyone needs a hobby. This one sounds lucrative. But also work intensive:

Nouira spent 14 years working out how to produce the dye from nets of murex he buys from a local fisherman, extracting the glands, crushing the shells, fermenting and cooking them and eventually producing tiny amounts of purple powder.

It takes 54 kilograms (119 lb) of murex shells to produce a single gram of Tyrian purple, making it hard to be economically viable. Huge mounds of broken shells from the dye industry of centuries past are still found near great Phoenician centers.

For PaleoJudaica posts involving Tyrian purple dye and the Israelite telekhet dye, both made from the murex snail, start here and follow the links.

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

International LXX Day 2022 (belatedly)

INTERNATIONAL SEPTUAGINT DAY WAS ON 8 FEBRUARY. I missed it again. Fortunately, William Ross was on the case: INTERNATIONAL SEPTUAGINT DAY 2022: A ROUNDUP.

Previous posts on the day are collected here.

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

Looting arrest near Nablus

APPREHENDED: Man suspected of selling antiquities is arrested. Man suspected of stealing thousands of archaeological artifacts from various periods is arrested near Shechem. 'An important and significant operation (Arutz Sheva/Israel National News).

The individual is suspected of stealing and selling thousands of rare antiquities, worth hundreds of thousands of shekels.

[...]

Among the findings confiscated were archaeological items from the Persian period, the Hellenistic period, and coins from the period of the Great Jewish Revolt, along with equipment which the suspect [allegedly] used to steal the antiquities.

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

Is Jesus, Hermes, or Orpheus on that ring?

ICONOGRAPHY: Does an Ancient Ring Found in a Shipwreck Depict Jesus Christ? The “Good Shepherd” ring caused a stir when it was unveiled last month, but things may not be so clear-cut (Candida Moss, Daily Beast).

The similarities between the bucolic images and the fact that the shepherd was a pagan motif meant that the ring’s interpretation was very much in the eye of the beholder. One person could look at it and see the Jesus of the Gospels, another might see Hermes. It’s a flexible and multivalent image. What this means of course, is that we cannot be certain that the ring’s owner was Christian we can only be sure that they were wealthy enough to purchase such an expensive luxury item.

For more on the Caesarea shipwrecks and the "Good Shepherd" ring, see here and here.

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SBL Panel on Leviticus 10

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Leviticus 10: an SBL 2021 Panel (Angela Roskop Erisman).

The papers that constitute this forum first appeared as a conference panel at the 2021 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. They discuss several different issues that are relevant to questions of the relationship between ritual and narrative, ritual innovation in both practice and ideal, and the historical development of the priesthood in ancient Israel, including its intersection with political power. The place of Leviticus 10 in the development of priestly literature in the Torah bears at every turn on how these issues are understood. ...

The first essay in the series is now posted: Error and Response in Leviticus 10 (Nathan MacDonald).

The main problems that the text of Lev 10 confronts the modern interpreter with are not primarily compositional, but exegetical. There are two intractable problems. First, what precisely was the error in vv. 1–2 that led to Nadav and Avihu being consumed by divine fire? Edward Greenstein memorably described this incident as ‘a punishment in search of a crime’.[1] Secondly, why does Aaron’s enigmatic response in v. 19 mollify Moses and allow an irregular practice to be permitted? I don’t think I misrepresent scholarship when I say that we have not find a compelling solution to either problem. ...

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Midrash Volume 9 (2021)

H-JUDAIC: TOC: Midrash Volume 9 (2021). The link to the volume at Gorgias Press is here.

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

Tekoniemi, The Textual History of 2 Kings 17 (De Gruyter)

NEW BOOK FROMDE GRUYTER:

The Textual History of 2 Kings 17

Timo Tapani Tekoniemi

Volume 536 in the series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110720792

PDF & EPUB £79.00
Hardcover £79.00

eBook
Published: September 7, 2021
ISBN: 9783110720792

Hardcover
Published: September 7, 2021
ISBN: 9783110720761

About this book

The textual history of the Books of Kings forms one of the most complex and debated issues in the modern text-historical scholarship. This book examines and reconstructs the textual history of 2 Kings 17 in light of the preserved textual evidence. The analysis of textual differences between the LXX, the Old Latin, and the MT allows the reconstruction of the oldest text attainable. The Old Latin version appears to have in many cases best preserved the Old Greek edition of the chapter, now lost in the Greek witnesses due to Hebraizing revisions. The Old Greek version of 2 Kings 17 evidences a Hebrew Vorlage often radically differing from the MT. In most cases the MT exhibits signs of later editing. The LXX can thus help the scholars reconstruct multiple text-historical layers previously out of our reach, as well as shed new light on certain historiographical details recounted in 2 Kings 17. As supposed by the literary critics for well over a century, the textual data shows beyond doubt that there happened vast editing and rewriting of the Books of Kings even at very late date. Text-critical considerations are therefore not only useful, but invaluable to all scholarly work on 2 Kings 17, and the Books of Kings as a whole.

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Becking, Israel's Past (De Gruyter)

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Israel's Past
Studies on History and Religion in Ancient Israel and Judah

Bob Becking

Volume 535 in the series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717266

PDF & EPUB £79.00
Hardcover £79.00

eBook
Published: October 4, 2021
ISBN: 9783110717266

Hardcover
Published: October 4, 2021
ISBN: 9783110717143

About this book

This collection of essays gives an insight into the problems that we encounter when we try to (re)construct events from Israel's past. On the one hand, the Hebrew Bible is a biased source, on the other hand, the data provided by archaeology and extra-biblical texts are constrained and sometimes contradictory. Discussing a set of examples, the author applies fundamental insight from the philosophy of history to clarify Israel's past.

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