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Saturday, November 04, 2023

4 Enoch; 2nd Revised Edition

FROM THE ENOCH SEMINAR NEWSLETTER (OCTOBER 2023):
4 Enoch: 2nd Revised Edition

We are very pleased to announce the online publication of the second revised edition of Gabriele Boccaccini (ed.), 4 Enoch: The Encyclopedia of Second Tempe Temple Judaism and Christian and Islamic Origins. The website (freely accessible) provides a comprehensive survey of the history of research in Second Temple Judaism, century after century and then decade after decade, from 1450 to the present, including thousands of books, edited volumes, works of art and fiction, as well as biographies of authors, and much more.

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Onuorah, Social Memory in Ex 16 and the Identity of Exilic/Post-Exilic Israel (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Ogochukwu Daniel Onuorah. Social Memory in Ex 16 and the Identity of Exilic/Post-Exilic Israel. 2023. XV, 321 pages. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe 146. 99,00 € including VAT. sewn paper ISBN 978-3-16-162406-3.
Published in English.
The destruction of the Temple and the humiliation of the exile not only shook the foundations of Israel's pride as God's chosen people, but also brought about the danger of losing their identity as a people. To survive this, the people had to develop and highlight an identity-reinforcing theology built upon the collective memory of their constitutive past. Ogochukwu Daniel Onuorah applies the tools of the social memory theory to the exegetical analysis of Ex 16, an approach which necessarily entails both synchronic and diachronic inquiries. In six chapters, the author argues that the collective memory of the manna-experience as recounted in Ex 16 served as a socio-theological tool of identity-preservation in the difficult exilic/early post-exilic period. Succinctly noted also are the implications of this for the discussion on the composition of the Pentateuch.

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Friday, November 03, 2023

CFP: Seminar on the use of Jewish Scriptures in Earliest Christianity

FROM THE BRITISH NEW TESTAMENT SOCIETY:
Call for Papers: Seminar on the use of Jewish Scriptures in Earliest Christianity (formerly the use of the OT in the NT)
Queen's Foundation, Birmingham
Thursday 21st March – Saturday 23rd March 2024

Date clarification: The conference is earlier than usual this year, happening in March.

The 2024 meeting of the “Seminar on the use of Jewish Scriptures in Earliest Christianity” (formerly the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament) will take place at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, from Thursday 21st March – Saturday 23rd March 2024

Paper proposals are warmly invited on all aspects of the use of Jewish Scriptures in Early Christianity, from both established scholars and PhD students.

Please email David Allen (d.allen@queens.ac.uk) with a provisional title and a short abstract by Friday 5th January 2024. All proposers will be informed whether or not their paper has been accepted by 12th January 2024.

Papers are normally 20-25 minutes with a further 15-20 minutes for questions. If you wish to request a different amount of time, please let us know in your proposal so that we can see whether this can be accommodated within the programme.

Email from the BNTS Secretary, Michelle Fletcher.

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The Bible and Animal Studies

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Moses Was an Animal, and Other Insights from Animal Studies (Beth Berkowitz).
Moses Was an Animal, and Other Insights from Animal Studies:
Beth Berkowitz Interviews Sébastien Doane and Suzanna Millar,
Co-Chairs of the New Bible and Animal Studies Unit of the Society for Biblical Literature

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Fountains of Wisdom (Charlesworth Festschrift; T&T Clark)

NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY/T&T CLARK:
Fountains of Wisdom

In Conversation with James H. Charlesworth

Gerbern S. Oegema (Anthology Editor) , Loren T. Stuckenbruck (Anthology Editor) , Henry W. Morisada Rietz (Anthology Editor)

Paperback
$47.95 $43.15

Hardback
$200.00 $180.00

Ebook (PDF)
$43.15 $34.52

Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
$43.15 $34.52

Product details

Published May 18 2023
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 592
ISBN 9780567701312
Imprint T&T Clark
Illustrations 11 bw illus
Dimensions 10 x 7 inches
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

Description

Leading international contributors on biblical texts, including the New Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls, intersect with the work of James H. Charlesworth and examine Charlesworth's vast contribution to the field of biblical studies, honoring the work of one of the most significant biblical scholars of his generation.

Divided into five sections, this volume begins with a section on the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament texts, with particular focus on the Gospel of John and Jesus studies. The contexts of these texts are considered, with a focus on the Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds, and the varying intersections between texts and the worlds that created them. The contributors then focus on the most significant body of Charlesworth's work, the apocrypha/pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the journey concludes with an assessment of the history of scholarship on the core areas addressed across the book.

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Thursday, November 02, 2023

AJR is still thinking about the Roman Empire

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Materials That Make Difference (Sarah E. Rollens).
Nicola Denzey Lewis. The Early Modern Invention of Late Antique Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

... Though I will offer a basic overview of the book’s main goal, I want to focus my review closely on her discussion of the so-called Jewish catacombs. The case of the Jewish catacombs exemplifies how scholars of the ancient world have long worked with undertheorized ideas about religious identities, religious communities, and the relationship between material culture and lived religion, among other things. Denzey Lewis’ even-handed interrogation of this particular example underscores the need for more sophisticated, theoretically informed, treatments of ancient religion. ...

I guess this is a review series. I noted the first review of the book here.

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A "biblical fake?"

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: How to Spot a Biblical Fake. Think this image of an ancient goddess looks genuine? Think again! (Jonathan Klawans).
The museum is to be commended for putting this interesting object on display, with a helpful and straightforward description. I just hope they won’t remove it after I suggest that the object is most certainly a forgery! But before I make the case that the object is forged, let’s probe its biblical connections.
I'm not an art historian, but it looks fake to me too. I think Klawans's analysis is spot on.

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Biblical Studies Carnival 211

ZWINGLIUS REDIVIVUS: The October Carnival: The Very Scary Minimalist Edition (Jim West).

This one is indeed minimalist, but PaleoJudaica is well represented.

In case you missed them, here are a few longer PaleoJudaica posts from October which might interest you:

The courtesan story has jumped the shark

A new Book of the Dead manuscript excavated in Egypt

A Yahwistic curse amulet from Elephantine?

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Wednesday, November 01, 2023

ChatGPT translates Old Church Slavonic? (With bonus anecdote on Judeo-Arabic)

OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC WATCH: Another AI Translation Experiment: Old Church Slavonic (Scott Cooper, Three Pillars Blog). HT Roger Pearse, with some commentary.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on (Old) Church Slavonic, start here and follow the links. Church Slavonic preserves some ancient literature that otherwise would have been lost, including some intriguing Old Testament pseudepigrapha.

As noted in the Three Pillars post, the "other" AI translation experiment involved medieval Latin. That first post above also links to other blog posts about Google Translate and Latin.

I have a story about Google Translate. Some years ago when I was plowing through the important Judeo-Arabic manuscripts of Sefer ha-Razim, I used Google Translate to help me with some of the more difficult words.

Judeo-Arabic is medieval Arabic written in the Hebrew alphabet. Since the sound repretoire of the two languages does not overlap completely, Judeo-Arabic can be challenging to decipher.

I would take an uncertain word, do a provisional retroversion of the Hebrew script into Arabic, then run the word through Google Translate Arabic. If a first try didn't produce anything that made sense, I would try a slightly different retroversion. Frequently this process would turn up the correct Arabic word within a few iterations.

I could have done the same thing with an Arabic lexicon, but Google Translate saved me a good deal of time and effort.

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Review of Denzey Lewis, The Early Modern Invention of Late Antique Rome

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW IS THINKING ABOUT ANCIENT ROME: The Early Modern Invention of Late Antique Rome (Roberto Alciati).
Nicola Denzey Lewis. The Early Modern Invention of Late Antique Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

At first glance, the book under discussion appears to be a survey of the ways modern amateurs, historians, and archaeologists have shaped—author Nicola Denzey Lewis would perhaps say ‘fabricated’—the history of the city of Rome in late antiquity. In fact, the book is much more than that. The Early Modern Invention of Late Antique Rome is a lesson on method and the urgent need for scholars to reflect on the assumptions and practices animating their research.

[...]

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Aitken reception at SBL 2023

WILLIAM A. ROSS: 2023 SBL RECEPTION IN MEMORY OF JAMES K. AITKEN.
Right around this time of year, biblical scholars around the world start getting serious about their papers and activities for the annual Society of Biblical Literature conference held in November. I for one am certainly starting to plan things out in more detail, and (of course) getting my presentations on paper. I’ll be involved in a variety of activities in my various groups in linguistics, Septuagint, and lexicography. But I wanted to be sure to draw attention to an event that my readers might be interested in attending.

[...]

Background here and links.

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Spooky Psalm 91

FOR HALLOWEEN, Philip Jenkins has a post on Psalm 91 at the Anxious Bench, based on material from his recent book on that psalm. Follow the links from there (plus here) for more PaleoJudaica posts on Psalm 91.

Walking in Darkness: How a Psalm Shaped Horror Fiction

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The Metatron in Good Omens

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Who The Metatron Is In Good Omens – The Voice Of God Explained. Is The Metatron in the Bible? Good Omens season 2 brings back Derek Jacobi as The Metatron, an important figure known as the Voice of God (Emma Wagner, Screen Rant).

As far as it goes, this article gives an accurate account of the Talmudic background of the Metatron tradition. But, surprisingly, it does not mention the book of 3 Enoch.

Jacobi gives an entertaining performance, but the Metatron of Good Omens has very little to do with the traditional Metatron.

That said, I quite enjoyed Good Omens. All of it was good. The episode retelling the Book of Job is a small masterpiece.

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Hamori, God's Monsters (Broadleaf)

NEW BOOK FROM BROADLEAF:
God's Monsters
Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible

By Esther J. Hamori (Author)

$28.99

The Bible is teeming with monsters. Giants tromp through the land of milk and honey; Leviathan swims through the wine-dark sea. A stunning array of peculiar creatures, mind-altering spirits, and supernatural hitmen fill the biblical heavens, jarring in both their strangeness and their propensity for violence--especially on God's behalf.

Traditional interpretations of the creatures of the Bible have sanded down their sharp, unsavory edges, transforming them into celestial beings of glory and light--or chubby, happy cherubs. Those cherubs? They're actually hybrid guardian monsters, more closely associated with the Egyptian sphinx than with flying babies. And the seraphim? Winged serpents sent to mete out God's vengeance. Demons aren't at war with angels; they're a distinct supernatural species used by Satan and by God. The pattern is chilling. Most of these monsters aren't God's opponents--they're God's entourage.

Killer angels, plague demons, manipulative spirits, creatures with an alarming number of wings (and eyes all over)--these shapeshifters and realm-crossers act with stunning brutality, each reflecting a facet of God's own monstrosity. Confronting God's monsters--and the God-monster--may be uncomfortable, but the Bible is richer for their presence. It's not only richer; the stories of the monsters of the Bible can be as fun, surprising, and interesting as any mythology. For anyone interested in monsters, myths, folklore, demons, and more, God's Monsters is an entertaining deep dive into the creaturely strangeness of the Bible.

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Monday, October 30, 2023

A Yahwistic curse amulet from Elephantine?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: A Jewish Curse Text from Elephantine. Evidence of Yahweh worship from Late Period Egypt (Nathan Steinmeyer).
While the Hebrew Bible provides a great deal of information on ancient Israelite religion and Yahweh worship, there are very few extrabiblical texts that inform us about Israel’s religion prior to the Hellenistic period (c. 332–37 BCE). According to Gad Barnea, a scholar of biblical history at the University of Haifa, a new text from Elephantine might finally provide a glimpse of how Israelite religion developed after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.

[...]

The underlying article is open-access in the journal Religions:
Justice at the House of Yhw(h): An Early Yahwistic Defixio in Furem

by Gad Barnea

Department of Jewish History and Bible, University of Haifa, Haifa 349883, Israel

Religions 2023, 14(10), 1324; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101324

Received: 2 July 2023 / Revised: 19 October 2023 / Accepted: 19 October 2023 / Published: 22 October 2023

Abstract

What was the nature of ritual in ancient Yahwism? Although biblical sources provide some information about various types of cultic activity, we have thus far lacked any extra-biblical ritual texts from Yahwistic circles prior to Greco–Roman times. This article presents such a text—one that has been hiding in plain sight for almost a century on a small ostracon found on the island of Elephantine. It has variously been interpreted as dealing with instructions regarding a tunic left at the “house of Yhw”—the temple to Yhw(h) that flourished on the island from the middle of the sixth to the end of the fourth century BCE. While there is little debate regarding the epigraphic reading of this text, it has hitherto failed to be correctly interpreted. I present an entirely new reading of this important document, revealing it to be written in poetic form and to match the characteristics of a “prayer for justice” curse ritual. It is, in fact, the oldest known example of this genre; its only known specimen in Aramaic, its unique witness in a Yahwistic context, and the sole record of any ritual performance at a temple to Yhw(h). Significantly, it is administered by a priestess.

This new interpretation of a long-known inscription is filled with cool things: The Temple of YHW (i.e., YHWH), an early Aramaic curse rite, YHWH as a lion, and even a Yahwistic priestess. That makes me wary.

I take it that everyone agrees that the Temple of YHWH appears in the text, and possibly some reference to a lion. But the rest is new.

I am reminded of the dictum of my teacher, Frank Moore Cross: "The more banal reading is to be preferred." Or, to put it another way, the more exciting the interpretation of an ancient text, the more cautious we should be.

Let's see what Northwest Semitic epigraphers like Christopher Rollston make of the new interpretation. I would be delighted if it turns out to be convincing and widely accepted.

This does sound rather early for an Aramaic curse amulet. See my reflections here on the supposed Mount Ebal Amulet.

On the question of Yahwistic priestesses in antiquity, see here, here, and here. There are no priestesses of YHWH in the Bible. Most of our very limited evidence for them comes from Egypt.

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LIST: 25 best movies set in antiquity

CINEMA: The 25 best movies set in the ancient world (Thomas West, Yardbarker).
From the very beginning, Hollywood has been fascinated with ancient cultures, repeatedly drawing from biblical stories and cultures of Greece and Rome for inspiration. Given how foundational these tales have been to Western civilization, it makes sense that the movie industry would want to tap into the audience’s awareness of them. Time and again — notably during the 1950s, '60s, and early 2000s — antiquity has flourished in popular cinema. Often, films set in antiquity are epics, which lend them a power and a gravitas that matches the weightiness of their subject, so it is worth looking at the best the genre has to offer.

[...]

As the intro paragraph indicates, many of these are Bible-inspired.

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The Power of Psalms in Post-Biblical Judaism (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:
The Power of Psalms in Post-Biblical Judaism

Liturgy, Ritual and Community

Series: Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, Volume: 118

Volume Editors: Claudia Bergmann , Tessa Rajak , Benedikt Kranemann , and Rebecca Ullrich

The powerful poetry of the Hebrew Psalms articulates a unique range of experience, even in translation. They explore the deepest concerns of individuals and communities. They are central to the performance of religion for both Jews and Christians. New discoveries, such as the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, have transformed our view of their role in Judaism, as has modern re-evaluation of the complicated relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Here a group of leading scholars sheds fresh light on the uses of the Psalms in post-biblical Jewish life in a multi-cultural world.

Copyright Year: 2023
E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-67828-6
Publication: 14 Sep 2023
EUR €110.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-67827-9
Publication: 25 Sep 2023
EUR €110.00

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Sunday, October 29, 2023

Journal issue on Phoenician studies

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies.
The latest issue (11/2-3) of Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies is devoted to Phoenician studies. Among other interesting contributions, a handful of papers interest scholars of Iranian history and culture.
Be sure to click through to the full ToC, which has many more articles than those listed in the BI post.

Cross-file under Phoenician Watch.

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Review of Camassa, Statuto del corpo e annuncio di salvezza

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Statuto del corpo e annuncio di salvezza: dalla Grecia di età classica alla Palestina nel momento di Gesù.
Giorgio Camassa, Statuto del corpo e annuncio di salvezza: dalla Grecia di età classica alla Palestina nel momento di Gesù. Problemi e ricerche di storia antica, 36. Rome: L'Erma, 2022. Pp. 238. ISBN 9788891326027

Review by
Luca Lorenzon, F.R.S.-FNRS, Université de Liège. luca.lorenzon@uliege.be

The Greek Soteria has been the subject of particular scholarly interest throughout the year 2022. Theodora Jim’s book “Saviour gods and Soteria in ancient Greece”, for example, addresses similar issues to the ones tackled in this book.[1] The aim of Camassa’s work is nevertheless different. The author focuses on the role of the body as a beneficiary or an agent of a salvific action in the complex process of soteriological intervention in ancient societies. While the book does not aim to constitute a comprehensive study of the notion of salvation through the ages, its chronological range is quite wide, from the 5th century BC to the early Christian era. A second volume, in preparation, will cover later periods, with a particular focus on the authors of Late Antiquity.

[...]

For a review of the above-mentioned book by Jim, see here.

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