Podcast on Christian and Jewish Magic

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Podcast #11: Intersection between Christian and Jewish Magic with Joseph Sanzo.

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Salvage archaeology in Israel

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Salvage Excavation in Israel. BAR Interviews IAA’s Head Archaeologist, Gideon Avni (Nathan Steinmeyer). Unusually for BHD, this essay contains the full text of the interview.

For more on the recent excavations at Yavneh Yam, mentioned in the essay, see here and links.

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Everyday life for the Babylonian exiles

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: Everyday Life in Exile: Judean Deportees in Babylonian Texts (Tero Alstola).

All the Babylonian texts discussed above are legal and administrative documents that were written by Babylonian scribes. They allow a detailed study of the socioeconomic status of Judeans and an investigation of the Babylonian and Persian policies towards them. At the same time, questions related to religion, identity, and exilic experience remain mostly unanswered.

I noted a review of Dr. Alstola's book, Judeans in Babylonia, here. And for many posts on the (unprovenanced) Babylonian-Jewish cuneiform archive of Al-Yahudu, start there (cf. here) and follow the links.

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Interview with James VanderKam

THE SECOND EDITION, THAT IS: An Introduction to Early Judaism (Frank Viola).

James C. Vanderkam has written An Introduction to Early Judaism.

I caught up with James recently to discuss his book.

Enjoy!

I noted the publication of the revised edition of this book here.

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Ross, Postclassical Greek and Septuagint Lexicography (SBL)

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

Postclassical Greek and Septuagint Lexicography

William A. Ross

ISBN 9781628374209
Volume SCS 75
Status Available
Publication Date March 2022
Paperback $45.00
Hardback $65.00
eBook $45.00

A long-standing tradition within biblical scholarship sets the Greek text of the Septuagint constantly in relationship with its supposed Hebrew or Aramaic Vorlage, examining the two together in terms of their grammatical alignment as a standard. Yet another tradition frames the discussion in different terms, preferring instead to address the Septuagint first of all in light of its contemporary Greek linguistic environment and only then attempting to describe its language and style as a text. It is this latter approach that William A. Ross employs in this textually based study of the Greek versions of Judges, a so-called double text in the textual history of the Septuagint. The results of his study offer a window into the Old Greek translation and its later revision, two distinct stages of Greek Judges with numerous instances of divergent vocabulary choices that reflect deliberateness in both the original selection and the subsequent change within the textual development of the book. Ross’s study illustrates the practicalities and payoff of a Greek-oriented lexicographical method that situates the language of the Septuagint squarely within its contemporary historical and linguistic context.

William A. Ross runs the Septuaginta &C. Blog to which PaleoJudaica links from time to time.

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Deadly Dead Sea Scrolls?

NEW NOVEL: 'Deadly Scrolls': Jewish mystery book takes place in Jerusalem, Qumran. Ellen Frankel’s new novel, The Deadly Scrolls, book one in the “Jerusalem Mysteries” series, may be the first Jewish contender for the crown (Haley Cohen, Jerusalem Post).

Since The Da Vinci Code hit shelves nearly two decades ago, publishers have eagerly proclaimed a number of titles “the next Da Vinci.” But Ellen Frankel’s new novel, The Deadly Scrolls, book one in the “Jerusalem Mysteries” series, may be the first Jewish contender for the crown.

Set in modern Jerusalem and the desert ruins of Qumran, an American professor’s murder reveals his discovery of a lost Dead Sea Scroll, whose text encodes the secret hiding places of the lost Second Temple treasures. Meanwhile, the protagonist, Israeli intelligence agent Maya Rimon, races against the clock to stop a religious extremist from launching a deadly terrorist attack at the next Blood Moon, bringing the apocalypse to Jerusalem.

[...]

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Lafitaga, Apocalyptic Sheep and Goats in Matthew and 1 Enoch (SBL)

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

Apocalyptic Sheep and Goats in Matthew and 1 Enoch

Elekosi F. Lafitaga

ISBN 9781628373073
Volume ESEC 24
Status Available
Publication Date March 2022
Hardback $80.00
Paperback $60.00
eBook$60.00

An alternative understanding of apocalyptic eschatology in the Gospel of Matthew

Matthew’s eschatological imageries of judgment are often identified as apocalyptic and referred to as Matthew’s apocalyptic discourses. In this volume Elekosi F. Lafitaga reexamines Matthew’s vision of the sheep and goats in the judgment of the nations, which are often interpreted as metaphors for the saved and the condemned. Lafitaga views these images in the wider context of the rhetoric of apocalyptic communication stretching back to Matthew 3. This broader context reveals that the vision of Matthew 25 serves to exhort Israel in the here and now according to the torah, with salvation for Israel involving an indispensable responsibility to love and serve humanity. Central to Lafitaga’s analysis is the highly probable scenario that the material in Matthew is dependent on the Book of Dreams (1 Enoch 83–90).

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Getty Exhibition: Persia and the Classical World

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Persia and the Classical World.

Through August 8, 2022
The Getty Villa
Pacific Palisades, California
www.getty.edu

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Nero - convert to Judaism??

ANOTHER NERO STORY: The Surge of Converts to Judaism in Ancient Rome (Rabbi Pinchas Landis, Aish.com).

According to a legend in the Talmud, Nero converted to Judaism!

The passage is b. Gitten 56a.

No, I'm not proposing that this really happened. But it's entertaining to look at the ancient stories about Nero that don't fit the narrative. I noted another one here.

The question of the historical Nero is instructive, because it confronts us with how little we actually know about ancient history. The recent British Museum exhibition on Nero was sympathetic to the idea that he may not have been as bad as the mainstream narratives (all in sources hostile to him) portrayed him. And the narrative about his death is not credible. Did he really kill himself? Or did he go into hiding and later try and fail to make a comeback? Who knows?

Cross-file under Talmud Watch.

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Graves (ed. & trans.), Jerome, Epistle 106 (On the Psalms) (SBL Press)

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

Jerome, Epistle 106 (On the Psalms)

Michael Graves

ISBN 9781628374193
Volume WGRW 47
Status Available
Price $56.00
Publication Date May 2022
Paperback $56.00
Hardback $76.00
eBook $56.00

A fresh interpretation of the nature, purpose, and date of Jerome’s Epistle 106

In this volume of the Writings from the Greco-Roman World series, Michael Graves offers the first accessible English translation and commentary on Jerome’s Epistle 106, an important work of patristic biblical interpretation. In his treatise Jerome discusses different textual and exegetical options according to various Greek and Latin copies of the Psalms with input from the Hebrew. Epistle 106 provides insightful commentary on the Gallican Psalter, Jerome’s translation of Origen’s hexaplaric edition. Jerome’s work offers a unique window into the complex textual state of the Psalter in the late fourth century and serves as an outstanding example of ancient philological scholarship on the Bible. Graves’s translation and commentary is an essential resource for scholars and students of patristic exegesis, biblical textual criticism, and late antique Christianity.

HT the ETC Blog.

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

The Arabic Bible

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: The Bible in Arabic (Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala).

The earliest references to Arabic translations of the Bible date back to the pre-Islamic period, although at the present time we have no textual evidence that can prove this hypothesis. The first known evidence would date, according to some authors, to the end of the 8th century CE. This is the case of a fragment of Psalm 78 (Septuagint 77) from the Qubbet el-Khazneh (a repository located in the courtyard of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus) specifically verses 20-31 and 51-61, taken from a Greek text of the LXX, together with the corresponding Arabic translation in Greek script.

[...]

Some PaleoJudaica posts on the Bible in Arabic are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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

Jewish catacomb inscriptions and literary manuscripts

VARIANT READINGS: The Inscriptions of the Jewish Catacomb at Vigna Randanini (Brent Nongbri).

While the texts are familiar from publications, the inscriptions themselves as material artifacts are something else altogether. For instance, I did not realize how much similarity exists between the scripts used to copy literary manuscripts and the writing used in these inscriptions.

Cross-file under Paleography.

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Review of Wilson, Ancient Wisdom

READING ACTS: Walter T. Wilson, Ancient Wisdom: An Introduction to Sayings Collections. (Phil Long).

Wilson, Walter T. Ancient Wisdom: An Introduction to Sayings Collections. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2022. 321 pp. Hb; $34.99.

... Wilson’s Ancient Wisdom is an excellent introduction to non-biblical wisdom literature found in the ancient world. Each chapter provides sufficient background material to place the wisdom collection into a historical context and examples to illustrate the interests of the author. ...

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Foster, The Semantics of רע (bad) in Ancient and Mishnaic Hebrew (Peeters)

NEW BOOK FROM PEETERS PUBLISHERS:

The Semantics of רע (bad) in Ancient and Mishnaic Hebrew

SERIES: Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology, 106

AUTHOR: Foster P.D.

YEAR: 2022
ISBN: 9789042946668
E-ISBN: 9789042946675
PAGES: XIV-336 p.
PRICE: 89 euro

SUMMARY:

In this monograph, the semantics of the word רע (bad) is examined across the corpus of Ancient Hebrew and the Mishnah. The study takes cognitive linguistic theories as its theoretical base and proceeds by first examining the schematic content that רע tends to modify (as an adjective). It moves on to map the lexical semantic domains of רע and then examines רע with reference to some major terms within these domains. The study concludes by presenting a thorough description of רע derived from the analysis. It relates these findings to the previous studies on רע as well as the lexica before suggesting how a new entry on רע might be written. In addition to the important findings on רע, the study points to what is likely an important difference between עון and און which requires further investigation.

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God's body in the news

DIVINE ANATOMY: Is God circumcised? How people in ancient times viewed the Heavenly Body. In new book, Francesca Stavrakopoulou displays God as portrayed by His early worshipers: with genitals, passions, powers – and a penchant for the monstrous (Rich Tenorio, Times of Israel).

The book touts itself as an “astonishing and revelatory history” that “represents God as he was originally envisioned by ancient worshippers — with a distinctly male body, superhuman powers, earthly passions, and a penchant for the fantastic and monstrous.”

“By mapping God’s body, rather than the Bible itself, we can better navigate the transformation of this ancient southern Levantine deity into the God with whom we are now culturally more familiar,” Stavrakopoulou writes.

The article also touches on Asherah and the goddess tradition in ancient Israel.

The book is God: An Anatomy (Picador, 2021).

For another recent book edited by Professor Stavrakopoulou, see here. For more about her work on Asherah, see here.

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Kutash on goddesses and cultural memory

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: Goddesses of Myth and Cultural Memory (Emilie Kutash).

Goddesses, it seems, are still among us today. The contemporary goddess movement reflects a quest for an antidote to male divinity and a means to enact a woman-centered religious practice. But goddesses are far more pervasive and far older. Goddesses of Myth and Cultural Memory documents the presence of goddesses in a wide range of literature, philosophy and theology across the centuries. They appear in such divergent contexts as Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, Medieval allegory, and in our time, feminist and psychoanalytic literature.

[...]

I noted the publication of the book last year.

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Were ancient Israelite women in charge of beer?

ALE AGENCY AND ARCHAEOLOGY? PODCAST: In ancient Israel, a woman’s place was in the home making beer. Through careful analysis of oven placement and grindstones, archaeologist Prof. Jennie Ebeling shows how women in antiquity had much more agency than previously thought (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

I noted a recent essay by Prof. Ebeling here. For more on her work on the Jezreel Expedition, see here.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on ancient beer, see here and links (cf. here).

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

Shavuot and Pentecost

FOR SHAVUOT: Between Shavuot and Pentecost (Prof. John Barton and Dr. Rabbi Michael C Hilton, TheTorah.com).

Both Shavuot and Pentecost celebrate the culmination of a fifty-day season in the spring, after Passover and Easter respectively.

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Raja, ... A History of Palmyra (OUP)

NEW BOOK FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Pearl of the Desert

A History of Palmyra

Rubina Raja

$29.95
Hardcover
Published: 25 January 2022
248 Pages | 38 illustrations
6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
ISBN: 9780190852221

Description

Palmyra has long attracted the attention of the world. Well before its rediscovery in the seventeenth century, the ancient city gained legendary status because of its Queen Zenobia, who in the third century CE rebelled against Rome and expanded Palmyra's territory into what is now modern Turkey and Egypt. Even though Zenobia's empire was a fairly short interlude and the Romans struck back hard, devastating the city, her path to imperial power was one which tells us much about Palmyrene identity in the period before the defeat. While Zenobia has gained renewed interest among both scholars and the press, and while she has served as a political symbol for Syria's president Assad--a statue of her was recently erected in Damascus--the time leading up to her reign still remains underexplored.Â

Pearl of the Desert is the most comprehensive history of this fabled ancient city in English. Assimilating the rich archaeological and literary evidence, Rubina Raja unfolds the story chronologically, from the earliest evidence of settlement in the Bronze Age to Palmyra's rise as an urban center in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods, its destruction by Rome in 273 CE, and its survival in the Byzantine and medieval Islamic periods. The book ends with a discussion of Palmyra's modern rediscovery and, more recently, its chaotic misfortunes during the Syrian civil war when it was used as a symbol of, alternately, the resistance of the rebels, the power of ISIS, and the supremacy of the Syrian state. After several years of destruction and looting, securing of the site has begun as well as planning for its restoration. At this turning point in Palmyra's long history, there is no better time to assess the past, present, and future of this remarkable city.

Cross-file under Palmyra Watch. HT the Bible Places Blog.

For many posts on the ancient metropolis of Palmyra, its history and archaeology, the Aramaic dialect once spoken there (Palmyrene), and the city's tragic reversals of fortune, now trending for the better, start here and follow the links.

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