Deluty, Prophet, Intermediary, King (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Prophet, Intermediary, King

The Dynamics of Mediation in the Biblical World and Old Babylonian Mari

Series:
Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, Volume: 137

Author: Julie B. Deluty

In Prophet, Intermediary, King: The Dynamics of Mediation in the Biblical World and Old Babylonian Mari, Julie B. Deluty investigates the mediation of prophecy for kings in biblical narratives and the Old Babylonian corpus from Mari. In many cases, the prophet’s message is delivered through a third party—sometimes a royal official or family member—who may exercise a degree of autonomy in the transmission of the words. Drawing on social network theory, the book highlights the importance of third-party intermediaries in the process of communication that lies at the core of biblical and ancient Near Eastern prophecy. Recognition of the place of non-prophetic intermediaries in a monarchic system offers a new dimension to the study of prophecy in antiquity.

Copyright Year: 2024

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-69077-6
Publication: 02 Apr 2024
EUR €126.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-69076-9
Publication: 03 Apr 2024
EUR €126.00

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Review of Dugan, The apocalypse of the birds

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: The apocalypse of the birds: 1 Enoch and the Jewish revolt against Rome.

Elena L. Dugan, The apocalypse of the birds: 1 Enoch and the Jewish revolt against Rome. Edinburgh studies in religion in antiquity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023. Pp. 280. ISBN 9781399508650.

Review by Tony Keddie, University of Texas at Austin. tony.keddie@austin.utexas.edu

... Dugan’s book focuses on the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85–90). Based on material analysis of manuscripts from Qumran and literary and other considerations, Dugan argues that the Animal Apocalypse comprises two subsidiary works, neither of which likely emerged from the Maccabean Revolt as per scholarly consensus. The later of these, dubbed the Apocalypse of the Birds, is absent from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Internal and external factors lead her to propose a new provenance: the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. ...

I noted a thematically related essay by Dugan here.

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On Marta, the Daughter of Boethus

TALMUD WATCH: The Inspiring Teaching of the Talmud’s Tragic Woman. As analyzed by Gila Fine in her recently published "The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud," Marta’s ancient story offers a surprising sliver of hope amidst despair. (Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern, Jewish Journal).

At first glance, Marta’s undoing reads like that of so many other delicate prima donnas getting their just desserts — a talmudic Marie Antoinette ending up without her cake and without her life. But as Fine astutely notes, one can see in the story a determination to overcome her horrific circumstances that inspires others even if Marta herself does not recover.

I guess she should have kept her shoes on.

You can read the full text of the story of Marta, the Daughter of Boethus, in b. Gittin 56a.11 at the Sefaria website. Sefaria also collects additional sources on Marta here.

For more on Fine's book, The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic, see here and links.

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More on Jerusalem's Har Hotzvim quarry excavation

ARCHAEOLOGY: Israeli Archaeologists Reveal Huge Stone Quarry in Jerusalem From King Herod's Time. Dated to the Late Second Temple period, the quarry at Har Hahotzvim may have produced the slabs used in the Temple and ancient Jerusalem's streets, archaeologists say (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

I noted this story yesterday. There are many more articles on it now, but most of them seem just to be based on the original IAA press release. Ms. Schuster interviewed IAA excavation co-director Michael Chernin and her article has some additional details.

Background here and links.

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More stone vessels from Jerusalem's Har Hotzvim quarry excavation

ARCHAEOLOGY: Hidden for millennia: Enormous quarry find illuminates Jerusalem's past. In one corner of the quarry, archaeologists made a surprising discovery: an intact stone vessel. Hidden for two millennia, the vessel was found almost by chance (Israel HaYom).

A vast quarry dating back to the late Second Temple period has been unearthed in Jerusalem's Har Hotzvim Hi-Tech Park, offering new insights into the city's ancient construction industry. The excavation, led by the Israel Antiquities Authority, has yielded rare stone vessels and enormous building blocks, potentially linked to King Herod's ambitious architectural projects, including the expansion of the Temple Mount.

[...]

There is a YouTube video on the discoveries:

For more on the quarry excavation at the Har Hotzvim Hi-Tech Park, see here. And see the links collected there for some other Second Temple-era quarries in the vicinity of Jerusalem. See also some of the articles noted here.

Also, for more on ancient Jewish stone vessels and their purity implications, see here and links.

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Were the Biblical Authors “Elites”?

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Were the Biblical Authors “Elites”?

...Biblical texts are invariably anonymous, undated and unprovenanced. If we do not know who wrote the text, and if we are unable to compellingly demonstrate when or where the text was written, it follows that we can hardly expect to know very much at all about the social position the author occupied in the community within which he was embedded

See also The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal (Yale University Press, 2022).

By Yonatan Adler
Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology
Ariel University
July 2024

Interesting question. The answer, of course, could vary from book to book, or even within a book. The prophet Isaiah is certainly presented as one of the elite. But much of his book is clearly not by him and we don't know who the other authors were or who originally circulated whatever he did write.

It's also true that we have very little evidence for knowledge of the laws of the Mosaic Torah before the Hasmonean period. But we have very little written evidence at all before that period. And what we do have does contain the odd hint, such as the apparent allusion to a Torah law in the late-seventh-century BCE Yavneh Yam (Mesad Hashavyahu) ostracon or the (reconstructed but arguable) reference to Passover observance in the fifth-century BCE "Passover papyrus" from Elephantine.

Ultimately, as Adler indicates, with our current evidence we just don't know when the biblical texts were written, let alone who wrote them.

For more on Alder's book, see the posts collected here.

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Are Harding's 1Q excavation photos at the École Biblique?

VARIANT READINGS: Gerald Lankester Harding’s Qumran Cave 1Q Excavation Photos.

I think a copy of Gerald Lankester Harding’s photographs of the Cave 1Q manuscripts as they were being excavated in 1949 may be at the École biblique in Jerusalem.

[...]

Brent Nongbri continues to excavate the earliest photos of the Qumran cave excavations.

Can anyone confirm or disconfirm the possibility that a set of Harding's excavation photos of Cave One are deposited with the École Biblique? If this is correct, the photos could offer some material evidence that Muhammad ed-Dhib recovered scrolls from Cave One.

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Albright, Delitzsch, and Methodism

THE INSTITUTE OF HISTORY, ARCHAEOLOGY AND EDUCATION BLOG: The State of Biblical Archaeology and Literature. Albright and Delitzsch: Their Pre-Academic Relationship (Peter Feinman).

One may see in this debate over Babylonia, the first attempt to create a secular synthesis that encompassed Egypt to Elam and the many millennia of the pre-Greco-Roman world: that unity would have been appealing to William in the library of his parents constructing imaginary worlds in his mind (Cross 1973:4). Regardless of whether Pan-Babylonianism was right or not, it represented the attempt by an individual to bring order to this newly revealed ancient universe, precisely as Albright himself would do in From the Stone Age to Christianity in 1940. It was the effort and not the merit of the claim which warrants attention.

This is the second IHARE essay by Peter Feinman on the influence of Methodism on the biblical-scholarly ambitions of the young William Foxwell Albright . I noted the first one here.

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Burnet (ed.), The Letter to the Hebrews (Peeters)

NEW BOOK FROM PEETERS PUBLISHERS:

The Letter to the Hebrews

SERIES:
Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 335

EDITOR:
Burnet R.

PRICE: 126 euro
YEAR: 2024
ISBN: 9789042950528
PAGES: XVI-447 p.

SUMMARY:

The 70th Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense was the first in the history of the colloquium to be dedicated exclusively to the Letter to the Hebrews. It indicates the growing scholarly interest in the Letter, which occupies a special place in the Pauline corpus and in the canon because of its literary sophistication and intricate and profound theology. Moving beyond the old debates about its authorship, the colloquium focused on a number of other questions, including the Letter's contextual meaning, its roots in a Jewish context, its innovative use of intertextuality, in which Scripture is used not only as divine narrative, but also as a dynamic tool for exploring and formulating new forms of theological discourse, and the political dimensions of the text playing on the contrast between imperial discourse and a vision of heavenly citizenship. In addition, one will find essays on the Letter's complex portrayal of God, its peculiar stylistic and text-critical features, the significance of the figure of Melchizedek, reflections on the balance between divine wrath and mercy, and chapters from its ancient reception history. This wide-ranging approach illustrates the Letter's historical importance in the development of earliest Christian theology and its impact on Christian theology through the ages.

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How To Fuse Metatron

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Persona 3 Reload: How To Fuse Metatron (Joshua Leeds, Game Rant).

Now you know.

The archangel Metatron has been around in gaming for a long time. This is the first I've heard of this one. Background here and many links.

Cross-file under Gaming News.

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Sifting out a holey stone vessel fragment

THE TEMPLE MOUNT SIFTING PROJECT BLOG: FIND AND FINDERS OF THE MONTH — THE GROSS FAMILY FOUND A PIERCED STONE VESSEL FRAGMENT.

Pierced stone vessels are uncommon, so why did someone drill through this one?

For more on ancient Jewish stone vessels and their purity implications, see here (cf. here) and links, notably here. The Sifting Project found more stone vessel fragments a couple of years ago.

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The Hazor dragon seal again

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Hazor and the Seven-Headed Serpent (Nathan Steinmeyer).

What do a Mesopotamian cylinder seal, a Greek vase, and the Book of Revelation have in common? Seven-headed serpents. The only issue is that scholars are not certain why. ...

I have already noted coverage of this story here and here. But this essay has a good overview and includes some new details about the earliest dragon-battle traditions for those who can't access the original peer-review article.

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

Speeding through the Talmud

TALMUD WATCH: Teenage girl goes through entire Talmud in 2.5 years, breaking gender and speed norms. Amid an upswell of women in a typically male pursuit, Elke Bentley took advantage of newly available resources and a changing landscape to achieve her goal (JACKIE HAJDENBERG, JTA via ToI).

Studying the Talmud at this fast pace, called bekiut, or surface-style learning, has its benefits and drawbacks. (Bentley began learning at this pace when she was 16, utilizing the skills from her father’s Zoom class.)

“What it gives you is scope: It gives you a sense of all the different stuff that’s in the Talmud,” explained Rabbanit Leah Sarna, director of high school programs at Drisha, an institute for advanced Jewish learning that was initially just for women when it was founded in 1979 in New York. “I think it gives you access to a lot of vocabulary and concepts that other people who go at a slower pace might not access.”

“On the flip side, you’re not learning all of the classic commentaries and questions and things like that,” she added. “But when you do this at a young age, what you’ve gained is scope. And then you go back and you do it more slowly, and you read all the commentaries and ask all the questions and you bring that whole scope into those questions. So it all just builds on each other.”

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Tiberius Julius Alexander

PROF. JACOB L. WRIGHT: Tiberius Alexander: The Jewish General Who Destroyed Jerusalem (TheTorah.com).

The most powerful Jew in antiquity, Tiberius Julius Alexander, served as procurator of Judea, governor of Egypt, and general in the Roman army. Without his support, Vespasian wouldn’t have become emperor, and his son Titus wouldn’t have led the siege of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Though his uncle Philo and Josephus Flavius may have disapproved of some of his choices, Tiberius acted out of loyalty to Rome, not apostasy from Judaism.

For a somewhat different understanding of Tiberius Julius Alexander, see the links here.

For more on Julia Berenice (Berenike), see here and links.

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Saint Hilarion Monastery now on UNESCO's endangered site list

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR: UNESCO puts monastery in Gaza, one of Middle East’s oldest, on endangered site list. UN’s World Heritage Center says fourth-century site faces risk of destruction amid ongoing war between Israel and Hamas (AFP/Times of Israel).

For more on the Saint Hilarion Monastery, see here and links. The site was already under UNESCO's provisional enhanced protection.

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Muhammad ed-Dhib...?

VARIANT READINGS: Another Photo of Muhammad ed-Dhib (Brent Nongbri).

Background here. To continue the theme: we're not even certain of the correct name of the discoverer of the first Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s. Yet we think we can figure out the sobriquets in the Qumran pesharim? Well, maybe.

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Golb, The Qumran Con (Archway)

NEW BOOK FROM ARCHWAY PRESS:

The Qumran Con

A Dead Sea Scrolls Memoir

by Raphael Golb

Formats

E-Book $3.99

Softcover $35.99

Hardcover $56.99

Book Details

Language : English Publication Date : 6/17/2024

Format : E-Book Dimensions : N/A Page Count : 524 ISBN : 9781665758284 Format : Softcover Dimensions : 6x9 Page Count : 524 ISBN : 9781665752848 Format : Hardcover Dimensions : 6x9 Page Count : 524 ISBN : 9781665758291

About the Book

Why did Professor Norman Golb of the famed Oriental Institute need to be silenced? Why did a small clique monopolize access and publication rights to the Dead Sea Scrolls for more than four decades? Why does the truth matter about where the scrolls came from?

And what do these questions have to do with scholarly ethics, freedom of speech, and the criminal justice system?

In this documented memoir, Raphael Golb exposes the inside story of the Dead Sea Scrolls controversy and its scandals. He describes how he himself became involved in the controversy—and ended up fighting to stay out of Rikers Island.

For over seventy years, the true historical significance of the scrolls has been obscured by the institutional influence of a threatened scholarly establishment. Never were the stakes made clearer than when powerful Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau took action to protect the reputation of well-connected scroll figures, both in New York and across the United States.

Raphael Golb’s memoir of his journey through the system—in a case that almost reached the Supreme Court—poses the question of where we stand with the First Amendment today. While reigniting the great debate over who wrote the scrolls, Golb’s account also sheds light on broader issues involving academic revolutions, censorship, and how easily power can be abused in a democratic society.

“Institutions and museums, international conferences and books may ostracize the scholar who transmits a new message … A crisis emerges … Eventually … the new paradigm gradually gains adherents and replaces the old.” — Joel Kraemer (2012 essay on Norman Golb)

HT Todd Bolen at the Bible Places Blog.

I followed the developments in the Raphael Golb internet impersonation case for years and years, because of its sad connection with the Dead Sea Scrolls. For the many posts, start here and follow the links.

In 2011, shortly after Golb's conviction and before his appeal (which I noted was in planning), I published an essay on "The Golb Affair" in Religion in the News. It gives background to the case and my own analysis of the situation at the time. For a legal analysis of the case which came near the end of the appeals process, see here. Over the years I linked to other legal analyses from time to time.

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