Saturday, December 31, 2022

Haaretz's Jewish archaeology stories for 2022

END OF YEAR LIST: King Solomon’s ‘Throne’ and Other Biblical Jewish Archaeology Stories of 2022 (Ruth Schuster).
Jews take collective pride in having sustained their faith over some 2,000 years in the Diaspora, and in sharing rituals the world wide. In fact, we aren’t sure when Judaism as we think of it was born, and many of the rituals taken for granted today also began in the shadows of history. Which means we no longer know when or how. The year 2022 was rich in new theories of old finds and new finds too – including a second administrative center in Iron Age Jerusalem. Why they needed one remains a mystery. Still, at least we now know where King Herod bought his bathroom.

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Thursday, December 29, 2022

Allen et al. (eds), New Approaches to Textual and Image Analysis in Early Jewish and Christian Studies (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:
New Approaches to Textual and Image Analysis in Early Jewish and Christian Studies

Series: Digital Biblical Studies, Volume: 5

Volume Editors: Garrick V. Allen , Sara Schulthess , Paul Dilley , and Peter Phillips

The digital world pervades the everyday lives of most people, and online tools have become an essential part of academic research in many disciplines. This reality is true also for biblical studies and related disciplines, areas that work with complex literary traditions, multiple manuscript cultures, and many methodological approaches to the problems at the centre of our discussions. This book shines a light on multiple new and emerging approaches to big disciplinary questions in biblical studies and beyond by highlight projects that are using digital tools, crafting computer-assisted approaches, and re-thinking the resources fundamental to the history of research.

Copyright Year: 2022

Prices from (excl. shipping): €123.00

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-51511-6
Publication date: 17 Oct 2022

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-51813-1
Publication date: 27 Oct 2022

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Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Blogging

THINGS HAVE GOTTEN BUSIER, rather than less busy. I will blog when I can. Posting may be irregular for some time. Thanks for your patience.

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Sensational claims about new inscription discoveries

I'M SKEPTICAL TOO: Bible scholar’s sensational Hezekiah inscription claims prompt researchers’ outcry. Academics publish open letter calling for scientific treatment of ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ claims after new round of unsupported popular press headlines regarding Jerusalem ‘discovery’ (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).
[Prof. Emeritus Gershon] Galil’s most recent announcement, first published in a television report 12 days ago, says he has successfully deciphered five new royal inscriptions of King Hezekiah of Judah, including hundreds of letters and dozens of lines of text. According to Galil, the inscriptions he found alongside archaeologist Eli Shukron are etched into the walls of the City of David’s Hezekiah Tunnel in Jerusalem.

Galil’s announcement has brought a flurry of media headlines in some publications — and a deafening silence in others that generally cover Israeli archaeological finds. (The Times of Israel, which has covered some of Galil’s findings in the past, did not report on his latest Hezekiah inscription claims, among other of his recent claims, because they were not peer-reviewed and lacked accompanying scientific documentation.)

I saw this announcement on Facebook and elsewhere when it came out. Like most others, I decided not to comment on it in the absence of good photographs or peer-reviewed scholarly studies.

I refer you to my longstanding Lottery Rule. If a reported new discovery is the scholarly equivalent of our having won the lottery, we should be skeptical of it unless and until we have strong evidence that it is real.

So far, such evidence for these claims has not been produced. Should more be advanced, the scholarly world will certainly consider it.

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Monday, December 26, 2022

Wigand, Achikar in Elephantine (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Ann-Kristin Wigand. Achikar in Elephantine. Die aramäische Achikarkomposition im Kontext des perserzeitlichen Elephantine. [Achikar in Elephantine. The Aramaic Achikar Composition in the Context of Persian Period Elephantine.] 2022. XII, 268 pages. Orientalische Religionen in der Antike 50. 119,00 € including VAT. cloth ISBN 978-3-16-161021-9.
Published in German.
Ann-Kristin Wigand interprets the Aramaic Achikar composition against the background of Persian Egypt. She combines historical-critical methods with an intertextual approach in order to work out under which conditions the text can be read and understood in its Egyptian setting and which function the text assumes in its multi-ethnic context.
The English spelling of Achikar is Ahiqar (Aḥiqar) or Ahikar. More on him here and links, plus here, here, and here.

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Sunday, December 25, 2022

Christmas 2022

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all those celebrating!

For posts of Christmases past, see my 2021 Christmas post and links.

More recent Christmas-related posts are here, here, and here.

I have been really busy and have had little time to blog. I hope to get back to it more regularly sometime next week.

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