I used to give an annual list of top PaleoJudaica stories in my anniversary posts, but in recent years I have been too busy in March to get around to it. So ...
Below is my own list of PaleoJudaica's top ten stories/posts for 2023. My criterion is stories that I found most interesting. They are in no particular order.
• The Mount Ebal tablet was in the news a lot, either as an important inscription or a comparatively insignificant fishing weight. I am not persuaded that there is any writing on it. Start at Latest on the Mount Ebal curse tablet / fishing weight and follow the links back.
• The "Vesuvius Challenge" competition (for deciphering a carbonized Herculaneum scroll) has produced an early winner. Start at Profile of the Vesuvius Challenge prizewinner and follow the links.
• The Egyptian Book of the Dead was also in the news, not least with reports of two new manuscripts discovered at Saqqara. Follow the links from The Egyptian Book of the Dead at the Getty Museum. An ancient mummification workshop was also excavated in Saqqara this year. See the links.
• The Codex Sassoon, roughly the oldest nearly complete Hebrew Bible, was auctioned by Sotheby's in May: Oldest Hebrew Bible up for auction. I suggested that the owner should donate it to a museum in Israel. The new owner, former US Ambassador to Romania Alfred H. Moses, dutifully did so: Codex Sassoon sold for $38.1M, is going to Israel. Well done. For all the 2023 posts on the Codex, start at Codex Sassoon is in Israel and work back through the links.
• A tomb was excavated in Israel which may have been of a courtesan around the time of Alexander the Great. The headlines kept getting better and more unlikely: The courtesan story has jumped the shark.
• A very important announcement: News about the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project. Cf here and here. Look for MOTP volume 2 by early in 2025. Watch here for updates in the meantime.
• My post about The Coronation of King Charles III is among the (all time) top five most-read PaleoJudaica posts. See also here.
• The initial authentication of the fake showpiece Darius ostracon was and remains a serious challenge to the credibility of lab tests for authenticating unprovenanced ancient artifacts. See Lessons from the fake Darius ostracon and follow the links.
• Yonatan Adler's book, The Origins of Judaism, with its late dating of those origins, received a good bit of attention this year. I have interacted with it and Adler's work in a few posts. See Adler on the origins of Judaism and Passover, Review of Adler, The Origins of Judaism and When did the Qumran sectarians observe the Day of Atonement?
• The report of the discovery of what appears to be an Old Bablyonian-era Amorite-Akkadian glossary made a splash early this year: An Amorite glossary from the time of Hammurapi? But the tablets are unprovenanced, which raises some concerns which I touched on in my post. See also here. As I noted in another 2023 post, we are seeing an increasing debate over how, if at all, scholars should deal with unprovenanced artifacts.
Bonus stories:
• Late-antique underworld portal excavated near Jerusalem? and More on that "underworld portal" cave.
• Tony Burke's SBL paper gave us The latest on Christian Apocrypha studies.
Have a good and safe New Year's Eve 2023!
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
