Shavuot 2022

THE FESTIVAL OF SHAVUOT (Weeks, Pentecost) begins tonight at sundown. Best wishes to all those celebrating.

Last year's Shavuot post, with links, is here. Subsequent Shavuot-related posts are here and here.

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McCarter Festschrift (SBL)

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of P. Kyle McCarter Jr.

Christopher Rollston, Susanna Garfein, Neal H. Walls, editors

ISBN 9781628374056
Volume ANEM 27
Status Forthcoming [No, it's out!]
Publication Date May 2022
Paperback $99.00
Hardback $119.00

This collection of thirty-one essays by colleagues, students, and friends of P. Kyle McCarter Jr. covers a range of topics of interest to McCarter. Essays approach the Hebrew Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Septuagint using various methods, including philology, narrative criticism, and political theory. Contributions on epigraphy cover a range of inscriptions, including Phoenician, Aramaic, and Ugaritic. A final section on archaeology covers sites, architecture, and artifacts. Contributors include Adam L. Bean, Joel S. Burnett, Aaron Demsky, Heath D. Dewrell, F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Daniel E. Fleming, Erin E. Fleming, Pamela Gaber, Yosef Garfinkel, Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo, Jo Ann Hackett, Baruch Halpern, Ronald Hendel, John Huehnergard, Yoo-ki Kim, Andrew Knapp, André Lemaire, Theodore J. Lewis, Steven L. McKenzie, Christopher A. Rollston, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Joe D. Seger, Hershel Shanks, Mark S. Smith, Ron E. Tappy, John Tracy Thames Jr., Eugene Ulrich, James C. VanderKam, Erin Guinn Villareal, Roger D. Woodard, and K. Lawson Younger Jr.

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The Mandean Book of Kings

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: A Universal History from the Late Sasanian Empire. Notice of a New Book: Häberl, Charles G. The Book of Kings and the Explanations of This World. A Universal History from the Late Sasanian Empire. Liverpool University Press, 2022.

Cross-file under Mandean (Mandaean) Watch.

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Second Temple Mikveh excavated at Western Wall plaza

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Ancient Mikveh Discovered While Excavating Foundation for Western Wall Elevator (Jewish Press).

Excavation and construction work is currently being undertaken at the Kotel (Western Wall) plaza, as they build an elevator to provide easier access from the upper Old City area to the holy site.

Archaeologists discovered steps and an archway while digging the foundations for the elevator. The steps led down to a kosher Mikveh (ritual bath) from the Second Temple period.

Cross-file under Ancient Architecture.

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BAR Summer 2022 Issue

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY (VIDEO): Preview the Summer 2022 Issue. Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Glenn Corbett, highlights articles in the newest issue of BAR. Bibical Archaeology Review, that is.

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Biblical Studies Carnival 195

THE DUST BLOG: Biblical Studies Carnival 195 - May 2022 (Bob MacDonald).

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A first-century Galilean fortress

ARCHAEOLOGY: Galilee fort part of string of forts made to fortify Hasmonean territory. Finds at Horvat Tefen also shed light on the little-known material culture of the Hasmonean period in the Galilee (Judith Sudilovsky, Jerusalem Post).

The massive fortification ruins of Horvat Tefen are located in a secluded spot on a prominent hilltop in the Western Galilee overlooking Acre. It is very likely hikers trekking along the path across the ruins are completely unaware that they may well be walking past a unique part of Galilee history: a military fortress built by Hasmonean King Alexander Jannaeus in the early first century BCE.

[...]

As the article notes, the underlying technical article is in the current issue of BASOR (387, May 2022). The full text is behind the subscription wall. The abstract:

Pp. 55–85: “Ḥorvat Tefen: A Hasmonean Fortress in the Hinterland of ʿAkko-Ptolemais,” by Roi Sabar

Ḥorvat Tefen is located on a prominent hilltop in the Western Galilee, overlooking ʿAkko-Ptolemais and its vicinity. The remains of several rectangular towers, curtain walls, a single gate, and reservoirs are well discernible and suggest it was a military post. This article describes the results of the first excavation undertaken at the site, conducted in 2019 on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The excavations in four of the towers uncovered accumulations above floors as well as the foundations of the walls. The finds indicate this was a short-lived military site that was apparently founded by Alexander Jannaeus in the last years of his reign and abandoned shortly thereafter. The finds are unique in their well-defined chronological range and shed important light on the material culture of the early 1st century b.c.e. Galilee—the heyday of the Hasmonean territorial expansion. Two appendices present the coins and the amphorae finds, both crucial for dating the foundation of the fortress and identifying it as a Hasmonean initiative. In this context, the location of Ḥorvat Tefen suggests it was built to defend a sensitive part of the northwestern border of the Hasmonean state facing ʿAkko-Ptolemais.

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A proselyte's "hex" tombstone at Beit She’arim

FUNERARY EPIGRAPHY: Convert’s ‘Bloody’ Curse Against Robbers Found in Ancient Galilee Grave. The first inscription to be found at Beit She’arim, Israel in over six decades warns would-be thieves that Jacob the Proselyte will curse them (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

About 1,800 years ago, a convert to Judaism named Yaakov died and was interred in a cave at Beit She’arim, with a hex designed to deter grave robbers that looks like it was scrawled on the limestone slab in blood.

It wasn’t. It was scribbled in uneven Greek writing in scarlet paint. We know he was a convert to Judaism because the full reference to the deceased is “Yaakov HaGer” – Jacob the Proselyte. We may also surmise that he died at age 60.

[...]

Other red-painted epitaphs from a century or two later are known from Zoar, in southern Jordan near the Dead Sea. An unprovenanced one, reportedly also from Zoar, turned up some years ago in California. It is now, I believe, at Yeshiva University. These other painted gravestones are written in Aramaic.

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Hakola et al. (eds.) Scriptures in the Making (Peeters)

NEW BOOK FROM PEETERS PUBLISHERS:

Scriptures in the Making
Texts and Their Transmission in Late Second Temple Judaism

SERIES:
Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology, 109

EDITORS:
Hakola R., Orpana J., Huotari P.

YEAR: 2022
ISBN: 9789042946798
E-ISBN: 9789042946804
PAGES: XXII-405 p.
PRICE: 110 euro

SUMMARY:
The volume examines how the making and the transmission of scriptures was shaped and influenced by major changes in the Second Temple societies. The book contains both detailed readings of biblical and related texts (the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, Qumran Scrolls, and the New Testament) and analyses of what can be known about the societal preconditions of their emergence and use. Many essays discuss the theoretical and methodological premises of our knowledge regarding various social, material, and religious aspects of life in the Eastern Mediterranean in the first centuries before and after the turn of the Common Era. The book offers critical and up-to-date insights into such questions as textual plurality, cultural interaction, the nature of scribal culture and spatial contexts of textual transmission. The essays clarify how the texts and their transmission became an integral part of religious and communal identity building strategies during the Second Temple period.

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Ancient Roman amphitheatre near Megiddo

ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE: First Roman military amphitheater in Southern Levant revealed at excavations near Megiddo. Less lavish than amphitheaters for the civilian population, the military amphitheaters were used for training and entertainment by the troops (Judith Sudilovsky, Jerusalem Post).

Their work has been made more difficult, noted Tepper, because the stones from the structure were used as building material by the subsequent inhabitants of the area, including residents of a nearby Ottoman-era village on to personnel of a British military camp.

“The main question we were looking to answer was if the bowl shape we were seeing on the ground was actually an amphitheater, and basically we have proved it,” said Adams. “We have determined the shape is artificially made... it looks like they flattened the entire area down to a natural clay source that was already there. Just today we are starting to see monumental stones from the entrance into the amphitheater gate, which is nice and promising because it is clear that at least the foundation of the wall is there.”

It sounds as though this amphitheatre is basically ghost architechture: most of the stones are missing, leaving a bowl-shaped depression in the ground.

For more on the remains of the Sixth Legion Roman camp ("Legio") and on the Megiddo excavation in general, start here and follow the links.

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

Moore, New Aramaic Papyri from Elephantine in Berlin (Brill, open access)

NEW OPEN-ACCESS BOOK FROM BRILL:

New Aramaic Papyri from Elephantine in Berlin

Series: Studies on Elephantine, Volume: 1

Author: James D. Moore

The famous German excavations between 1906 and 1908 of Elephantine Island in Egypt produced some of the most important Aramaic sources for understanding the history of Judeans and Arameans living in 5th century BCE Egypt under Persian occupation. Unknown to the world, many papyri fragments from those excavations remained uncatalogued in the Berlin Museum. In New Aramaic Papyri from Elephantine in Berlin James D. Moore edits the remaining legible Aramaic fragments, which belong to letters, contracts, and administrative texts.

Copyright Year: 2022

€99.00 / $119.00 Hardback

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-50556-8
Publication Date: 20 May 2022

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-50557-5v Publication Date: 19 May 2022

HT the AWOL Blog.

For technological efforts to recover illegible text from Elephantine papyri in Aramaic, Coptic, and other languages, see here and here. I don't know whether this volume has any relation to that project.

For many, many additional PaleoJudaica posts on the Elephantine Papyri and the site of Elephantine, see here and links. Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

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

Muraoka, The Books of Hosea and Micah in Hebrew and Greek (Peeters, open access)

NEW OPEN-ACCESS BOOK FROM PEETERS PUBLISHERS:

The Books of Hosea and Micah in Hebrew and Greek

SERIES:
Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, 294

AUTHOR:
Muraoka T.

YEAR: 2022
ISBN: 9789042944732
E-ISBN: 9789042944749
PAGES: XIV-277 p.
PRICE: 85 euro

SUMMARY:
This is a verse-by-verse, text-critical study of two important books out of the Minor Prophets. An English translation by the author is provided alongside its Hebrew original as found in Biblia Hebreaica. The Septuagint text studied is the edition prepared by Ziegler. The main purpose of the monograph is not to discover evidences which could be valuable for reconstructing the original Hebrew text of these books, but to read the LXX as a Greek document of its own, not merely as a translation. Much attention has been directed to a whole range of linguistic issues relating to the Greek and Hebrew grammar and lexicography. Ancient fragments found in the Judaean Desert and Qumran caves of these books in Hebrew and Greek have also been looked at.
The book of Hosea has been published in the series La Bible d'Alexandrie, but not that of Micah yet. Unlike this series we have paid only minimum attention to documents such as patristic commentaries from which one can learn how the LXX was interpreted without reference to its Semitic original.

Follow the link for the link to the free, open-access version.

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New segment of Lower Aqueduct to Jerusalem uncovered

ANCIENT INFRASTRUCTURE: New segment of Jerusalem’s 2,000-year-old Low-Level aqueduct revealed. Excavations in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood uncover a 40-meter piece of the capital’s main water carrier, 21 kilometers long, which was used until British Mandate (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

[IAA archaeologist Yaakov] Billig said that the new excavations are not being conducting merely for the sake of nostalgia, however. Rather, researchers are still amazed and even somewhat mystified by the precision technology constructed in antiquity without the aid of GPS or modern computation methods.

The story is also covered by Judith Sudilovsky in the Jerusalem Post: New segment of Hasmonean aqueduct to Jerusalem exposed in capital neighborhood. An engineering feat of ingenuity allowed the aqueduct that served as Jerusalem's main water supply to be in use for 2000 years. A new section of it was found in Armon Hanatsiv.

For more on the Lower Aqueduct to Jerusalem, see here and here.

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

Restoration of Hasmonean-era fortress near Jerusalem

ARCHAEOLOGY: Remains of a 2,200 year old outpost found near Jerusalem hospital. The outpost, called Ma'ale Romaim, was built during the Hasmonean period, near the road that led to Jerusalem (Jerusalem Post).

In the area of ​​the Herzog Medical Center in Givat Shaul, Jerusalem, the restoration of an ancient archeological outpost was completed this month.

The outpost, called Ma'ale Romaim, was built during the Hasmonean period, near the road that led to Jerusalem.

[...]

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

Archaeologists on archaeology for Jerusalem Day

ARCHAEOLOGY AND POLITICS: Archaeologists speak against misuse of history on Jerusalem Day. “The history of Jerusalem is much more complicated and more complex than anyone wants to admit in the present day” (Judith Sudilovsky, Jerusalem Post).

On Jerusalem Day, three archaeologists spoke to The Jerusalem Post about what it is like to work in a city with so much history underground and so much politics above ground.

Jerusalem Day was yesterday, 28-29 May. The three archaeologists are Ronnie Reich, Matthew Adams, and Zachi Dvira. A fuller quotation from Adams:

“So archaeologists end up being the bad guy unless [the finds] confirm someone’s narrative and it almost never confirms anyone’s narrative. The history of Jerusalem is much more complicated and more complex than anyone wants to admit in the present day.”

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Adams, Performative Dimensions of Rhetorical Questions in the Hebrew Bible (T&T Clark)

NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY/T&T CLARK:

The Performative Dimensions of Rhetorical Questions in the Hebrew Bible

Do You Not Know? Do You Not Hear?

Jim W. Adams (Author)

Paperback
$39.95 $35.95

Hardback
$130.00 $117.00

Ebook (PDF)
$35.95 $28.76

Product details

Published Apr 21 2022
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 312
ISBN 9780567697899
Imprint T&T Clark
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Series The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

Description

This book sets out to describe the multi-dimensional nature and function of rhetorical questions in the Old Testament. Biblical scholars have previously analyzed the use of rhetorical questions in both Testaments, but consistently describe their function in persuasive terms. While this understanding is appropriate in a number of instances, many rhetorical questions do not operate this way, and Jim W. Adams focuses in particular on rhetoric expressing the self-involvement of both the speaker and hearer.

Among linguistic philosophers, speech act theory has illuminated the fact that uttering a sentence does not merely convey information; it may also involve the performing of an action. The concept of communicative action provides additional tools to the exegetical process as it points the interpreter beyond the assumption that the use of language is merely for descriptive purposes. Language can also have performative and self-involving dimensions. In relation to speech act theory, linguistic specialists continue to research the nature of rhetorical questions.

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Keefer, Ecclesiastes and the Meaning of Life in the Ancient World (CUP)

NEW BOOK FROM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Ecclesiastes and the Meaning of Life in the Ancient World

AUTHOR: Arthur Keefer, Eton College
DATE PUBLISHED: April 2022
AVAILABILITY: Available
FORMAT: Hardback
ISBN: 9781009100250

£ 75.00
Hardback

Description

In this book, Arthur Keefer offers a timely assessment of Ecclesiastes and what it has to do with the meaning of life. Drawing on recent psychological research, he argues that this Hebrew Bible text associates the meaning of life with various types of suffering in life. Keefer here situates Ecclesiastes within its ancient intellectual world. Offering an analysis of contemporary texts from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, he demonstrates that concerns about meaning and suffering were widespread in the greater Mediterranean world. Ecclesiastes, however, handled the matters of suffering and meaning in an unprecedented way and to an unprecedented degree. With its rigorous commitment to precise definitions of life's meaning, Keefer's book provides a comprehensive set of definitions for “the meaning of life” as well as a conclusive point of reference for interpreters of Ecclesiastes. It also opens avenues for the interdisciplinary interpretation of texts from the ancient world.

• Provides a clear and comprehensive set of definitions for “the meaning of life”
• Draws definitions of life's meaning from psychological research
• Interprets Ecclesiastes within various intellectual contexts: Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek

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