Legal contracts carved on palm-leaf stalks, correspondence laid down on cigar-shaped sticks? The mode of writing used in Ancient South Arabia, the legendary realm of the Queen of Sheba, was especially unique. The Sabaeans and their neighbours did not write on common materials such as leather or papyrus but rather on something surprisingly simple: branches of fresh wood just cut off the tree.[...]
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Ancient Israel’s NeighborsI noted the publication of the book here.
By Brian R. Doak
(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2020), x + 212 pp., 24 figures (maps and drawings), $99.00 (hardcover); $24.95 (paperback); $17.99 (ebook).
Reviewed by Ann E. KillebrewDuring the past 30 years, several multi-author volumes have addressed peoples of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) from the broader ancient Near East.1 Brian Doak’s book is different in that it is authored by a single scholar (hence more cohesive) and focuses on Israel’s immediate neighbors. These include the Canaanites, Arameans, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Philistines, and Phoenicians, presented in separate chapters according to the chronological order in which they appear in the Hebrew Bible.
[...]
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Arleta Kowalewska, Bathhouses in Iudaea, Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia from Herod the Great to the Umayyads. Oxford: Oxbow, 2021. Pp. 176. ISBN 9781789256574 $60.00.Review by
Stefanie Hoss, University of Cologne. shoss0@uni-koeln.de... The book under review analyses the development of bathhouses in the Near East, focusing on the architectural history of the buildings (building, rebuilding or disuse of rooms), their technical installations (hypocaust, water installations) and the various embellishments (marble incrustations, mosaics, wall painting) of the architecture. ...
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A Kabbalist in Montreal: The Life and Times of Rabbi Yudel RosenbergFor many PaleoJudaica posts on the golem tradition, start here and follow the links. Despite the relatively recent origin of the Golem of Prague, the concept of the golem developed out of ideas in the Talmud.
Ira RobinsonTouro University Press
314 pp., $119... The sixteenth-century “Golem of Prague,” the giant human-shaped lump of clay who was mystically activated by the Maharal every week to defend the Jews and then deactivated every Shabbat, was not really created until the early twentieth century—and even then only on paper, in a book of tales culled from imaginary manuscripts by the most prolific rabbinic plagiarizer of the modern era.
Ira Robinson’s new biography paints a rich and extensively researched portrait of Yudel Rosenberg, the deeply learned but highly eccentric chief rabbi of Montreal, who moonlighted as a faith healer, magical amulet salesman, oracle, halakhic innovator, Hasidic storyteller, and the most aggressively enterprising kosher chicken slaughterhouse supervisor in Canadian Jewish history.
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British Library, LondonI noted the coming of this exhibition here. It opens tomorrow. For many PaleoJudaica posts on Alexander and his connection with ancient Jewish traditions, notably in the Alexander Romance, follow the links from there.
This infuriating show shoves Scrooge McDuck next to Plutarch in a postmodern take on history which seems to forget that the Macedonian warlord was a real, live person
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The Department of History at North Carolina State University invites applicants for a tenure track appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor in the history of the Ancient Mediterranean World, beginning August 2023. We seek to identify a candidate who has strong promise as a scholar and teacher and whose research engages with the period from c. 1000 BCE to 600 CE.Follow the link for further particulars. Review of applications begins on 1 November 2022.
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The manuscript came from the Greek Orthodox St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, but most of its 146 leaves, or folios, are now owned by the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. The pages contain the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, a collection of Syriac texts written in the tenth or eleventh centuries. But the codex is a palimpsest: parchment that was scraped clean of older text by the scribe so that it could be reused.For the recovery of the Erastosthenes material in 2017, see here. For other PaleoJudaica posts on the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, see here and here and links.The older writing was thought to contain further Christian texts and, in 2012, biblical scholar Peter Williams at the University of Cambridge, UK, asked his students to study the pages as a summer project. One of them, Jamie Klair, unexpectedly spotted a passage in Greek often attributed to the astronomer Eratosthenes. In 2017, the pages were re-analysed using state-of-the-art multispectral imaging. Researchers at the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library in Rolling Hills Estates, California, and the University of Rochester in New York took 42 photographs of each page in varying wavelengths of light, and used computer algorithms to search for combinations of frequencies that enhanced the hidden text.
Cross-file unde Syriac Watch, Palimpsests, Algorithm Watch, and Lost Books.
UPDATE: The underlying article in the Journal for the History of Astronomy is accesible for free: New evidence for Hipparchus’ Star Catalogue revealed by multispectral imaging.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
The school of religion at the University of Southern California invites applications and nominations for a position in ancient Judaism, to begin in the fall semester of 2023. Rank is open to assistant professor, associate professor and full professor candidates. We seek candidates who can teach broadly across Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at the undergraduate and graduate levels. We conceive of ancient Judaism broadly, from the biblical through the late ancient period.Follow the link for further particulars and application information. The deadline for first consideration of applications is 15 November 2022.
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The story deals with a Dead Sea Scroll of the Book of Isaiah and with papyri from Roman-era Egypt.
For more on the AI work on the Isaiah Scroll, see here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) in the School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Hebrew Bible and ancient Israelite history and culture. We seek candidates who demonstrate a broad knowledge of relevant Near Eastern contexts of the Bible and of post-biblical interpretive traditions; proficiency in relevant research languages; and promise of excellence in research and teaching. We also seek candidates who will play an active role in the life of the department and in Penn’s Jewish Studies Program.Follow the link for further particulars and application information. Review of applications begins on 1 November 2022.
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By the 1st century C.E., observance of Torah laws is abundantly evident in Judean society. But how far back does this widespread observance go?
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New Perspectives on Ritual in the Biblical WorldLaura Quick (Anthology Editor), Melissa Ramos (Anthology Editor)
Hardback
$115.00$103.50Ebook (PDF)
$103.50$82.80Product details
Published Jul 14 2022
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 296
ISBN 9780567693372
Imprint T&T Clark
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Series The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies
Publisher Bloomsbury PublishingDescription
This volume presents a range of methodologically innovative treatments on ritual action in the Hebrew Bible. They treat a diverse range of ritual phenomena, including space, blessings and oath-taking, from the world of ancient Israel and Judah.
The introduction engages with the dominant scholarly models drawn from ritual theory, and the volume explores their applicability to ancient textual material such as the Hebrew Bible. The chapters reflect high-level specialized engagement with specific ritual phenomena through the lens of appropriate theoretical and methodological approaches.
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Last year's Shemini Atzeret post is here. Biblical etc. links are here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Reading, Writing, and Bookish Circles in the Ancient MediterraneanJonathan D.H. Norton (Anthology Editor), Garrick Allen (Anthology Editor), Lindsey A. Askin (Anthology Editor)
Hardback
$115.00$103.50Ebook (PDF)
$103.50$82.80Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
$103.50$82.80Product details
Published Jul 28 2022
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 272
ISBN 9781350265028
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Series Education, Literary Culture, and Religious Practice in the Ancient World
Publisher Bloomsbury PublishingDescription
By integrating conversations across disciplines, especially focusing on classical studies and Jewish and Christian studies, this volume addresses several imbalances in scholarship on reading and textual activity in the ancient Mediterranean. Contributors intentionally place Jewish, Christian, Roman, Greek and other reading circles back into their encompassing historical context, avoiding subdivisions along modern subject lines, divisions still bearing marks of cultural and ideological interests.
In their examination, contributors avoid dwelling upon traditional methodological debates over orality vs. literacy and social classifications of literacy, instead turning their attention to the social-historical: groups of people, circles and networks, strata and class, scribal culture, material culture, epigraphic and papyrological evidence, functions and types of literacy and the social relationships that all of these entail. Overall, the volume contributes to an emerging and important interdisciplinary collaboration between specialists in ancient literacy, encouraging future discussion between two currently divided fields.
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