Monday, February 10, 2025

Deciphering another Herculaneum scroll

VESUVIUS CHALLENGE SUBSTACK: Exciting news from Scroll 5!.
The scroll offers hints pointing to its likely author being our favorite philosopher in residence: Philodemus. There’s a bit of early evidence that points us in this direction: the letter-forms present in this book suggest it was written sometime in the first century BCE and are of similar shape to handwriting found in other books attributed to him, most of the books found thus far in the library are his, and the word ἀδιάληπτος (‘foolish’) found in this text is characteristic of his writing.
There are lots of technical details in this essay. For some background on it, see:

'Incredible moment in history:' Particle accelerator and AI offer first peek inside 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scroll (Patrick Pester).

A 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scroll buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is filled with lost words that scholars can now decipher thanks to AI and a particle accelerator.
For many PaleoJudaica posts on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and its destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and on the efforts to reconstruct and decipher the carbonized library at Herculaneum, start here and follow the links.

For works of the philospher Philodemus already recovered from the Herculanuem library, see the links in this post and also see here and here.

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

Review of Pothou, Thukydides second-hand bei Flavius Josephus

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Thukydides second-hand bei Flavius Josephus: zur Rezeption thukydideischer Motive im Bellum Judaicum.
Vassiliki Pothou, Thukydides second-hand bei Flavius Josephus: zur Rezeption thukydideischer Motive im Bellum Judaicum. Mnemosyne supplements, 473. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2023. Pp. xxvi, 255. ISBN 9789004545861.

Review by
Omar El Manfalouty, University of Zürich. omar.elmanfalouty@uzh.ch

Vassiliki Pothou has provided us with a comprehensive and immensely helpful overview of Thucydidean motifs in Josephus’s Judean War. That Josephus had read his Thucydides is, of course, not news, nor that he strove to emulate him. What Pothou’s study does offer is a valuable analysis of the means of such emulation, of the tangible philological traces of Josephus’s reception of Thucydides. ...

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

Kofsky & Ruzer, Late Antique Jewish and Christian Travelogues (de Gruyter)

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:
Late Antique Jewish and Christian Travelogues
Religious Aspects and Cultural Backgrounds

Reuven Kiperwasser , Aryeh Kofsky and Serge Ruzer
Volume 27 in the series Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – Tension, Transmission, Transformation
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111566191

Institutional price £110.00

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Copyright year: 2025
Audience: Scholars in the field of Jewish Studies, theology, comparative religion, and history of late Antiquity
Pages
Front matter: 6
Main content: 174
Illustrations
Illustrations: 0
Coloured Illustrations: 0
Keywords: Travel Fiction; migrating persona; early Christianity; Rabbinic Judaism.

eBook
Published: December 16, 2024
ISBN: 9783111566191

Hardcover
Published: December 16, 2024
ISBN: 9783111564685

About this book

Focusing on travel narratives as a setting for spelling out both cultural exchanges and identity building, the present volume maps a variety of strategies employed in travelogues by Christians and Jews in the late antique Roman East.
The first part sheds light on the shared cultural background – folkloric or mythic – reflected in late antique Jewish and Christian sea-travel stories, and the various attempts to adapt it to a specific religious agenda. While the comparative analysis of the sources from two textual communities emphasizes their different religious agendas, it also allows for restoring patterns of the broader background with which they converse. The second part highlights Christian perceptions of the Land of Israel in missionary enterprises and in the eschatological visions.
The travelogues offer a window on the interplay between shared inheritance and new agendas within the dialectical development of religious traditions in Late Antiquity.

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Sunday, February 09, 2025

T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism (2 vols.), paperback

THE TWO-VOLUME T&T CLARK ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM (published in 2019 and noted here), is now out in in a much less expensive paperback. See here and here.

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Saturday, February 08, 2025

Perspectives on Pseudepigraphy in Antiquity (Brepols)

NEW BOOK FROM BREPOLS:
Regards croisés sur la pseudépigraphie dans l’Antiquité / Perspectives on Pseudepigraphy in Antiquity

Anne-France Morand, Eric Crégheur, Karine Laporte, Gaëlle Rioual (eds)

Pages: 304 p.
Size: 156 x 234 mm
Illustrations: 2 b/w
Language(s): French, English
Publication Year: 2024

Buy print version
€ 70,00 EXCL. VAT
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ISBN: 978-2-503-60260-8
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Available

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ISBN: 978-2-503-60263-9
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SUMMARY

Whether under the names of Pythagoras, Orpheus, Pythia, Paul of Tarsus or Enoch, the Ancients wrote under famous names to express themselves. A fundamental phenomenon of Antiquity, pseudepigraphy only became the subject of a monograph in the 1970s, with Wolfgang Speyer’s Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum (1971) and the Hardt Foundation’s “Entretiens”, Pseudepigrapha I. Pseudopythagorica – Lettres de Platon – Littérature pseudépigraphique juive (1972). The publications attracted criticism from several scholars. More recently, Bart Ehrman’s book on the same topic, Forgery and Counterforgery (2013), has helped to revive the debate, generating both critical and very positive reactions. The aim of this volume is to revisit these important syntheses, looking at them from the perspective of specific figures, as well as different time periods, languages and regions. It also aims to broaden research by testing the various theories set out by the scholarly literature. It has now become essential to extend and reshape this notion of pseudepigraphy, which also relates the themes of authorship, poetic inspiration, the intention of ancient authors, and literary genres.

A couple of the essays are in English. The rest are in French.

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Friday, February 07, 2025

AJR review panel on Gross, Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity, part 3

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Beyond Influence: Simcha Gross’ Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Shai Secunda).
This is part of a 2024 Association for Jewish Studies panel celebrating the publication of Gross, Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge Press, 2024). Read the full forum here.

... Aside from the immense value of this book for the study of Jewish history (this is the first monograph on Babylonian Jewish history in decades), its dynamic mode of approaching Babylonian Jewry in the space of the Sasanian Empire has also been critical for someone like me —less a historian of Babylonian Judaism, and more, a student of the text of the Babylonian Talmud. ...

I noted the first two essays in the series here and here.

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

Video on the Sifting Project

THE TEMPLE MOUNT SIFTING PROJECT BLOG: WATCH/LISTEN TO THE TMSP STORY ON LET THE STONES SPEAK.
We were honored to be featured on the biblical archaeology series Let the Stones Speak, co-hosted by Christ Eames of the Armstrong Institute. In this first installment—part of a longer conversation—you’ll hear the Temple Mount Sifting Project’s detailed background story on video for the very first time in English. Many thanks to the hosts for helping to bring this story out.
Follow the link for a link to the YouTube video etc.

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

More on the "of the Sidonians" inscription

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Did a daring semiliterate sailor wreck a ship off the Israeli coast 2,400 years ago? Parts of two double-handled jugs were found in the waters near Tel Achziv in 2016. Scholars recently deciphered the etched writing on one of them (Rossella Tercatin, Times of Israel).

I posted on this inscription here a couple of days ago. This article includes material from interviews with two of the authors of the underlying article.

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

Thursday, February 06, 2025

Hasmonean-era coin hoard excavated at Khirbet el-Eika

NUMISMATICS: Hoard of coins illuminates triumphant Maccabee campaign in 2nd-century-BCE Israel. A rare intact Hellenistic estate at Khirbet el-Eika in Eastern Galilee was likely abandoned by its inhabitant as Yonatan Maccabee and his army drew nearer, new research shows (ROSSELLA TERCATIN, Times of Israel).
A hoard of bronze coins unearthed in the remains of a Hellenistic-era building offers new evidence for life in Israel in the tumultuous mid-2nd century BCE’s victorious military campaign led by Yonatan Maccabee, brother of the Hanukkah hero Judah, according to new research.

The cache of 26 coins was found in 2016 at the site of Khirbet el-Eika, on the top of a mountain overlooking the Eastern Galilee in Israel’s north. Its discovery was published for the first time in an academic paper in the American Journal of Numismatics last month. ...

While many sites in Israel were occupied during the Hellenistic period, most remained active in the Roman and Byzantine eras, making it harder for archaeologists to uncover the relevant layer.

Khirbet el-Eika, however, was abandoned around the mid-2nd century BCE, most likely due to a violent event, [Dr. Roi] Sabar pointed out. ...

Some of the coins in the hoard are of Demetrios (or Demetrius) II, one of the baddies in the book of 1 Maccabees.

A couple of corrections:

The Books of Maccabees are apocryphal works not canonized in the Hebrew Bible (while some are part of the Catholic and Protestant canons).
"Protestant" is clearly a typo. None of the Apocrypha are part of the Protestant biblical canon. I think "Orthodox" was intended. Also, the reference from 1 Maccabees should read 11:63-64.

The American Journal of Numismatics, which published the underlying journal article in vol. 36 (2024), appears only to be available in hard copy and by subscription or for a fee.

I noted another discovery at Khirbet el-Eika some years ago.

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Ancient caravan human-trafficking in the Negev? Maybe.

ARCHAEOLOGY: Ancient arrowheads in the Negev reveal human trafficking caravans from 2,500 years ago. Located near Tlalim Junction, the excavation site has revealed dozens of tombs containing a rich variety of artifacts (JOANIE MARGULIES, Jerusalem Post).
Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists have uncovered a previously unknown burial site in the Negev Highlands, shedding light on ancient trade networks spanning Arabia, Phoenicia, Egypt, and Southern Europe, the IAA said Wednesday.

Among their discoveries were 2,500-year-old arrowheads from Yemen, which suggested that the site had served as a burial ground for trade caravans traversing the desert.

[...]

The case for human trafficking being involved is inferential, but possible. The case made in the IAA video (linked in the article) sound more robust than the one made in the article.

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Review of Hezser (ed.), The Routledge handbook of Jews and Judaism in late antiquity

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: The Routledge handbook of Jews and Judaism in late antiquity.
Catherine Hezser, The Routledge handbook of Jews and Judaism in late antiquity. Routledge handbooks. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2024. Pp. 568. ISBN 9781138241220.

Review by
Elsa Laurenzi, Centro Cardinal Bea per gli Studi Giudaici, Pontificia Università Gregoriana. e.laurenzi@unigre.it

This volume brings together 34 papers by 31 contributors, in addition to the editor, to highlight the major issues and debates in the study of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity (from the third to the seventh century C.E.). It analyzes the relationship between Jews and non-Jews as well as internal Jewish developments, both in Roman Palestine and in the diaspora, and compares these two worlds. Its main purpose, as Catherine Hezser remarks in her introduction, is to integrate the study of Jews and Judaism into a more complex and balanced assessment of Late Antiquity, within the wider context of the late Roman, early Byzantine and Sasanian Persian empires, and of the Graeco-Roman, Christian and Zoroastrian cultures, whose interrelationships are based on exchange as well as on competition and conflict.

[...]

I noted the publication of the book here.

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

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

Review of Raja (ed.), The Oxford handbook of Palmyra

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: The Oxford handbook of Palmyra.
Rubina Raja, The Oxford handbook of Palmyra. Oxford handbooks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. Pp. 632. ISBN 9780190858117.

Review by
Marco Ferrario, Trento / Universität Augsburg. marco.ferrario@unitn.it

... It follows from the above that a synthetic work capable of presenting an accessible and, at the same time, a well-informed overview of the entire history of Palmyra and its oases from its early settlement phases to the conquest of Syria by the Caliphal army was urgently needed. The unprecedented destruction leveled on the site (and the country as a whole) by the civil war and its spillover in the form of the Islamic State (Dā‘iš) only made the matter more pressing. ...

I noted the publication of the book here. Subsequent posts on Palmyra are here, here, and here.

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Phoenician inscription recovered in IAA underwater survey

PHOENICIAN WATCH: “… Of the Sidonian[s]”: a Persian period inscription on a Phoenician amphora found underwater near Tel Achziv, Israel (Christopher A. Rollston, Jacob Sharvit, Meir Edrey, Paula Waiman-Barak, Assaf Yasur-Landau). Published (open access) in CARMEL: Studies in Archaeological Sciences and Conservation.
Abstract
This is the first publication of Persian period pottery found underwater near Tel Achziv, including a Phoenician amphora bearing a two-line inscription containing the phrase “of the Sidonian[s]”. The petrographic analysis of this amphora indicates an origin in the Lebanese coast between Tyre and Sidon. These finds may reflect a maritime itinerary along the Phoenician coast between Sidon, “a city with an enclosed harbor”, and Achzib, a city “with a river”, as mentioned in the 4th-century BCE Periplous of Pseudo-Skylax.
The inscription itself is unremarkable, but it is "the first Phoenician alphabetic inscription found underwater in Israel." Also, the possible connection with the Shavei Ẓion (Shavei Zion) finds is intruiguing. For more on the latter, see here, here, and here.

Cross-file under Marine (Maritime, Underwater) Archaeology and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy.

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The Musk Foundation is funding the Vesuvius Project

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Musk Foundation funds research on ancient Rome: what Musk wants to do with his $3 million (Finestre sull'Arte, with the help of an AI translator). HT Rogue Classicism.
The Musk Foundation has allocated $3 million to support archaeological and restorative studies focused on ancient Rome. Andrea Stroppa, an associate of Elon Musk, announced the funding, which also includes deciphering papyri from Herculaneum. Here's what Musk plans to do.
One million is to be disbursed by the American Institute for Roman Culture for "archaeological and Roman heritage conservation projects." There is a link with application information. Deadline 31 March 2025.

The remaining two million (amounts to each not specified) goes to the (AIRC-related) Ancient Rome Live educational platform – and to this:

The second part of the $2 million in funding is for a particularly fascinating project: the Vesuvius Challenge. The initiative, which aims to decipher papyri discovered at Herculaneum, focuses on texts written in Greek that date from the time of the 79 A.D. eruption. These papyri contain important writings by philosophers of antiquity, particularly Epicurus, whose thought had great influence on the Herculaneum school of philosophy. The new funds earmarked for the Vesuvius Challenge will be used to scan and decipher the papyri, work that will be done in collaboration with researchers and scientists from around the world.
For many PaleoJudaica posts on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and its destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and on the efforts to reconstruct and decipher the carbonized library at Herculaneum, start with this post, specifically the links on the new Plato biography from Herculaneum and on the Vesuvius Challenge. Follow the links from there.

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

Tuesday, February 04, 2025

AJR review panel on Gross, Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity, part 2

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Babylonian Rabbinic "Class Consciousness" and Competition for Social and Religious Influence in Sasanian Iran (Alyssa Gray).
This is part of a 2024 Association for Jewish Studies panel celebrating the publication of Gross, Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge Press, 2024). Read the full forum here.

How do we understand the social, religious, and political world in which late ancient Babylonian Jews lived and within which a group of religious virtuosi Simcha Gross identifies as “a select group. . . steeped in the contemplation, instruction, and practice of Jewish law and lore” (14)—the group we call the “Babylonian rabbis”—functioned? Gross’s project is to decisively revise how we think about this question. ...

I noted the first essay in the series here.

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Tony Burke's Regensburg Year: January

THE APOCRYPHICITY BLOG: My Regensburg Year Part 6: January 2025.

Tony Burke is on research sabbatical for the 2024-25 academic year at the University of Regensburg in Germany.

This post includes Tony's visit to Spain and updates on the apocryphal hypomnemata of Symeon Metaphrastes, the Pilate Cycle, and the Dream of Nero.

For earlier posts in the series and more on Tony's work, see here and links.

Cross-file under New Testament Apocrypha Watch.

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Limitied sifting continues ...

THE TEMPLE MOUNT SIFTING PROJECT BLOG: CONTINUATION OF THE SIFTING AT MITZPEH HAMASU‘OT (THE MASU’OT LOOKOUT) AND SOME UPDATES.
About two months ago, we announced financial difficulties that threatened the continued operation of the sifting site at Mitzpe HaMasuot. Fortunately, thanks to additional donations and significant processes initiated since then – including government funding and commitments from new supporters – the threat of the site’s closure has passed. However, until these funding processes are fully realized, we have resumed operations in a limited format ...
Background here.

The updates include notice of the discovery of a Second Temple-era stone seal.

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

Monday, February 03, 2025

Poirier, Aseneth and the Honeycomb (Peeters)

NEW BOOK FROM PEETERS:
Aseneth and the Honeycomb
Apicultural Keys to Joseph and Aseneth

SERIES:
Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology, 121

AUTHOR:
Poirier J.C.

PRICE: 68 euro
YEAR: 2024
ISBN: 9789042953338
PAGES: X-214 p.

SUMMARY:
Joseph and Aseneth is a fascinating writing, most likely composed in Egypt in the first century BCE. Often considered the world’s first romance novel, it survives both in its original Jewish form, and in several later Christian reworkings. Aseneth and the Honeycomb makes three major contributions to Joseph and Aseneth studies: (1) it examines the details of Aseneth’s encounter with the divine honeycomb and bees in the light of ancient apicultural beliefs and practices, (2) it uses the varying apicultural expertise displayed in the four main textual families to settle the heretofore intractable debate over which family preserves the earliest form of the work, and (3) it proposes a literary solution to a central concern of any attentive reader: the question of why Aseneth’s heavenly visitor calls her a “city of refuge”.

For PaleoJudaica posts on Joseph and Aseneth, see here and links, plus here.

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Profile of an IAA archaeologist

ARCHAEOLOGY: Benyamin Storchan: An archaeologist who really digs Israel. While fully employed at the IAA, he earned a master’s degree at Bar-Ilan University and is now a doctoral candidate at Ben-Gurion University (Abigail Klein Leichman, Jerusalem Post).

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Biblical Studies Carnival #224

THE RACHACK REVIEW: Biblical Studies Carnival #224 for January 2025 (Reuven Chaim Klein).

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Sunday, February 02, 2025

Jacobs (ed.), The Dynamics of Early Judaean Law (De Gruyter)

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:
The Dynamics of Early Judaean Law
Studies in the Diversity of Ancient Social and Communal Legislation

Edited by: Sandra Jacobs
Volume 504 in the series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110532807

Institutional price £110.00

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Copyright year: 2025
Audience: All those interested in Biblical Studies, Ancient Near East, Second Temple Judaism, Legal History, Aramaic
Pages
Front matter: 10
Main content: 353
Illustrations
Coloured Illustrations: 1
Keywords: Bible; Law; Judaean history

eBook
Published: December 30, 2024
ISBN: 9783110532807

Hardcover
Published: December 30, 2024
ISBN: 9783110529678

About this book

This collection of essays explores aspects of civil and criminal law in ancient Judaea. Whereas the majority of studies on Judaean law focus on biblical law codes (and, therefore, on laws related to sacrifice, cultic purity, and personal piety) this volume focus on laws related to the social and economic dealings of Judaeans in the Neo-Babylonian, Persian, and Greco-Roman periods and on the contribution of epigraphic and archival sources and to the study of this material.

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Saturday, February 01, 2025

Morrison, Retribution in Chronicles (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:
Neil J. Morrison

Retribution in Chronicles

Ideology and Reality

[Vergeltung im Buch der Chroniken. Ideologie und Realität.]
2025. XII, 230 pages.
Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe (FAT II) 155
€84.00
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sewn paper
available
978-3-16-163354-6

Also Available As:
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Summary

Neil J. Morrison seeks to clarify the nature and purpose of the theme of divine retribution in Chronicles. He contends that retribution represents a malleable motif which serves the ideological purpose of fostering religious commitment and bolstering the status of the Second Temple. Nevertheless, the outworking of retribution in the narrative has been constrained by other ideological commitments and the exigencies of the contemporary world. For example, the divine provision of the temple and God's irrevocable commitment to Israel often overshadow retribution. Similarly, the uncertainties of the late-Persian or early-Hellenistic setting necessitated a more flexible approach to retribution, underscoring the importance of human activity rather than waiting upon divine intervention. This theory explains how retribution serves a didactic purpose without representing a systematic theological dogma.

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Friday, January 31, 2025

Lorber, Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire, Part I (Brepols)

NEW BOOK FROM BREPOLS:
Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire, Part I: Ptolemy I through Ptolemy IV
Volume 1: Precious Metal, Volume 2: Bronze

Catharine C. Lorber

Pages: 2 vols, xxxiv + 836 p.
Size: 210 x 297 mm
Illustrations: 37 b/w, 122 plates
Language(s): English
Publication Year: 2024

Buy print version
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ISBN: 978-0-89722-398-0
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ISBN: 978-0-89722-399-7
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SUMMARY

Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire, Part 1, Volumes 1 and 2 (Precious Metal and Bronze) by Catharine Lorber, is the massive, long-anticipated catalogue of coins struck by the first four Ptolemaic kings. It essentially rewrites the sections on these rulers in J. N. Svoronos’ classic, but now much out of date, Ta Nomismata tou Kratous ton Ptolemaion (1904). The body of coinage catalogued by Svoronos is enlarged by more than 300 further emissions in precious metal and more than 180 emissions in bronze, recorded from subsequent scholarship, from hoards, from commercial sources, and from private collections, and constituting about a third of the total catalogue entries. Lorber’s attributions, dates, and interpretations rest on numismatic research since Svoronos, or on the latest archaeological and hoard information. She also provides extensive historical and numismatic introductions that give the coins deeper context and meaning. The coinage of Ptolemies I through IV is supplemented by a few issues possibly attributable to Cleomenes of Naucratis, the predecessor of Ptolemy I in Egypt, as well as by coinages of Ptolemy Ceraunus, Magas, and Ptolemy of Telmessus, members of the Lagid dynasty ruling their own kingdoms outside of Egypt.

I noted a publication announcement for Part II last year, with links. But it appears that the latter is still forthcoming, slated for this year. Cross-file under Numismatics.

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The Skirball Center is celebrating Tu B'Shevat early

EVENT: Celebrate the New Year of the Trees at the Skirball Cultural Center (BEVERLY PRESS AND PARK LABREA NEWS).

This year Tu B'Shevat, the New Year for Trees, take place from sundown 12 February to sundown on the 13th. If you want to celebrate early, this sounds like a nice event.

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The Tree of Life in the ANE

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Tree of Life Beyond the Bible. Explore the context of a timeless biblical symbol (Nathan Steinmeyer).
A central feature in the Garden of Eden story, the Tree of Life is one of the Hebrew Bible’s more memorable symbols. But this biblical symbol connects to a much larger ancient tradition, one whose roots extend across the ancient Near East and are reflected in numerous ways throughout the Bible.

[...]

This essay summarizes an article by Christian Locatell in the current issue of BAR. The article is behind the subscription wall.

The New Year for Trees (Tu B'Shevat) is coming up in a couple of weeks, but I imagine that is coincidental.

For more on the Tree of Life, see here, here, here, here and links.

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Thursday, January 30, 2025

More on that fraud-trial papyrus

UPDATE: Manuscript P.Cotton (background here) has been getting a lot of attention in the media. I have found two more articles worth flagging.

Explosive Legal Document Exposes Corruption and Conspiracy in Roman Era Judea (Ancient Origins). An English translation of the full text of the (linked) Hebrew IAA press release.

Fraud, forgery and sedition: 1,900-year-old papyrus records Roman trial against Jews. New research on the longest Greek papyrus from the Judean Desert ever discovered offers unprecedented insights into life in the Land of Israel in Bar Kochba era (ROSSELLA TERCATIN, Times of Israel). In addition to coverage of the press release, this article interviews Dr. Anna Dolganov, one of the editors of the manuscript.

UPDATE (31 January): Another:

Ancient Papyrus Found in Desert Describes Roman Case Against Jewish Crooks. Almost 2,000 years ago in Judea or maybe Arabia, two men allegedly sold a slave and didn't pay taxes to Rome. The papyrus makes the case against them (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz). Noted for its useful summary of the text.

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Comparing the Hebrew Bible with ancient Greek traditions

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:
Approaching Comparisons with Ancient Greek Traditions

In the corpus of Archaic and Classical Greece written at roughly the same time as the Hebrew Bible’s various compositions, there are a number of similar kinds of stories. In many cases, in fact, they are more similar than either is to Near Eastern compositions.

See also Ancient Israel, Judah, and Greece: Laying the Foundations of a Comparative Approach. (Sheffield Phoenix, 2024).

By Andrew Tobolowsky
William & Mary
January 2025

Cross-file under New Book.

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On the Great Isaiah Scroll and manuscript groupings

THE ETC BLOG: 1QIsaa and Shifting Categories ( Anthony Ferguson).
Many of us are aware that this text’s fame has recently been revived because of Wes Huff’s thrilling and helpful interview with Joe Rogan. Unfortunately, that conversation has stirred some controversy regarding the description “word-for-word”. I aim to provide some background information on this discussion, hoping it will bring greater clarity to this important topic.
In addition to discussing the textual character of 1QIsaa (the Great Isaiah Scroll), this post gives a helpful overview of current scholarly thinking about how to divide the surviving manuscript traditions of the Hebrew Bible into groups. The problem is complicated by an underabundance of data.

Some PaleoJudaica posts on the Great Isaiah Scroll are here, here, here, here, here, here, and links.

For that Joe Rogan episode, see here.

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

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

A tax-fraud and forgery trial recorded in a pre-Bar Kokhba Revolt papyrus

ANCIENT GREEK EPIGRAPHY: 1,900-Year-Old Papyrus Reveals Gripping Case About Roman Tax Fraud and Forgery. A newly-studied ancient papyrus is so detailed it could be an episode of Law & Order, Roman style (Margherita Bassi, Gizmodo).
Researchers in Austria and Israel have translated the longest Greek papyrus ever found in the Judaean Desert. Previously unearthed, misidentified, and then nearly forgotten, Hannah Cotton Paltiel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem rediscovered the papyrus in 2014. Now, Paltiel and her colleagues have translated the text, revealing it to be prosecutors’ notes for an ancient Roman trial from the early second century CE. The artifact provides unique insight into a case that dealt with tax fraud, forgery, and the fraudulent sale and freeing of enslaved people during a period of tension in the Roman province of Judaea.
As the article notes, the underlying, open-access, peer-reviewed article is published in the journal Tyche:
Forgery and Fiscal Fraud in Iudaea and Arabia on the Eve of the Bar Kokhba Revolt: Memorandum and Minutes of a Trial before a Roman Official (P.Cotton) [link now corrected!]

Anna Dolganov
Fritz Mitthof
Hannah M. Cotton
Avner Ecker

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25365/tyche-2023-38-5
Schlagworte: Papyrus, Iudaea, Arabia, Hadrian, trial, slaves, fiscus

Abstract

The Greek papyrus presented here is a memorandum for a judicial hearing before a Roman official in the province of Iudaea or Arabia in the reign of Hadrian, after the emperor’s visit to the region in 129/130 CE and before the outbreak of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132. The document also contains an informal record of the hearing in question. The trial concerns the prosecution of a number of individuals, including a certain Gadalias and Saulos, who are accused of forging documents relating to the sale and manumission of slaves in order to circumvent the imperial fiscus. The identity of the prosecutors remains unknown, but they seem likely to have been functionaries of the Roman fiscal administration. The text also mentions an informer who denounced the defendants to Roman authorities. This document offers a unique glimpse of local civic institutions and the workings of Roman provincial administration and jurisdiction in the Near East. It also sheds light on the elusive question of slave trade and ownership among Jews. At the same time, the papyrus provides insight into a cultural and intellectual environment in which Roman law, Greek rhetoric and Jewish life meet. We present an editio princeps with a translation and commentary, while acknowledging that the study of this document is far from exhausted.

The papyrus was not excavated scientifically. It sounds as though there is not a lot of information about its provenance.

UPDATE (30 January): More here.

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AJR review panel on Gross, Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Panel in Celebration of Simcha Gross's Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity.
A review panel from the 2024 Association for Jewish Studies featuring scholars engaging with Simcha Gross’s award winning Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity.
One paper has been posted so far:

A Radical Revision of Knowledge About Babylonian Jewish Society (Christine Hayes)

... Gross demonstrates that the static feudal paradigm and the binaries it generates are not supported by a wide array of material and textual evidence (Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Sasanian). He proposes instead an immanent and dynamic model of Sasanian rule in which little was fixed and much was in play, setting the stage for the empire’s different inhabitants to constantly negotiate and renegotiate their position, status, and communal identities. The result is a radical revision of what we thought we knew about of Babylonian Jewish society, the place of the rabbis, and the nature of their textual tradition, as illuminated by comparison with other similarly-situated minority communities who were also navigating the realities of empire and being formed and transformed in the process. ...
I noted the publication of the book here and here.

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Late-antique European silver ring excavated at Huqoq

ANCIENT ARTIFACT: Was an ancient European ring found in Israel used as a wedding band depicting the Temple? Unearthed at Huqoq, the artifact may represent the missing link between 1,300-year-old Merovingian rings and popular medieval Jewish nuptial bands, new research shows (ROSSELLA TERCATIN, Times of Israel).
A rare silver ring unearthed in Israel might represent the missing link between the so-called Merovingian architectural rings manufactured in the 6th-8th centuries CE in Western Europe and Jewish wedding bands featuring miniature buildings, which started to be popular in the late Middle Ages, Prof. Dennis Mizzi of the University of Malta told The Times of Israel.

[...]

Sounds as though it is a well-traveled heirloom preserved in a late medieval stratum.

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Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Inscribed ostracon from turn of the era excavated at Sartaba-Alexandrium

NORTHWEST SEMITIC EPIGRAPHY WATCH: Archeologists decipher 2,000-year-old Aramaic inscription in Israel. Experts use new scanning methods and AI analysis to inscription found on Second Temple era pottery shard mentioning 'Eleazar bar Ger' (Ynet News).
Researchers have deciphered a 2,000-year-old Aramaic inscription on a pottery shard discovered at the Alexandrium Fortress (Sartaba) in the Jordan Valley. The text reads: “Eleazar bar Ger… from Beit Akiman.” Bar-Ilan University scholars analyzed and deciphered the inscription using advanced imaging technology developed by Jerusalem’s Azrieli College of Engineering.

[...]

Cross-file under Technology Watch.

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Palmyra after Assad

PALMYRA WATCH: Syrians return to Palmyra amid hopes ancient city can attract tourists once again. ISIS blew up parts of the historic site when they took over the area in 2015 (Lizzie Porter, The National). Video with accompanying article. Excerpt:
Mr Al Raba came back to Palmyra after Bashar Al Assad’s government fell last month and pro-regime forces fled the city. He left his home city and joined rebel groups in northern Syria following government repression of protests that began in 2011 and led to civil war.

“I prefer this place to my own house – I sleep here, I eat here, I work here,” he said with a wistful smile. “I was working here for 15 years in this place so I know everything. When ISIS destroyed it, I was so upset.”

Upon his return he found the piles of ruins, a looted museum and holes in the ground where, returning residents claim that ISIS and pro-Assad forces had removed or stolen its valuable antiquities.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the ancient metropolis of Palmyra, its history and archaeology, the Aramaic dialect once spoken there (Palmyrene), and the city's tragic reversals of fortune, now hopefully once again trending for the better, start here and follow the links.

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Guide to ethnographic passages in the Pseudo-Clementine writings

ETHNIC RELATIONS AND MIGRATION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD: Guide to the Pseudo-Clementine writings (Philip Harland).
This post provides a guide for reading through ethnographic passages in the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, a novelistic story about the figure of Clement (second-fifth centuries CE): ...
Includes a passage on Jewish wisdom from a late-antique Jewish-Christian perspective.

For more on this blog, see here and here and links.

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Monday, January 27, 2025

More on that newly published boundary stone

ARCHAEOLOGY: Roman-era boundary stone hints at a political tiff described in the Jerusalem Talmud. Unearthed in Upper Galilee, 3rd century CE artifact might prove rumored tensions between Emperor Diocletian and local population; also mentions two hitherto unknown Golan villages (Rossella Tercatin, Times of Israel).

I have mentioned this story already here, but this article contains additional details and a link to the underlying technical article in PEQ. The latter is Open Access:

PALESTINE EXPLORATION QUARTERLY https://doi.org/10.1080/00310328.2024.2435218

Diocletian oppressed the inhabitants of Paneas’ (ySheb. 9:2): A New Tetrarchic boundary stone from Abel Beth Maacah

Avner Ecker and Uzi Leibner

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

ABSTRACT
Excavators of tell Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel uncovered a Tetrarchic boundary stone reused as a cover for a Mamluk-period grave. The inscription mentions a hitherto unknown imperial surveyor (censitor). It is suggested that this individual may have been a colleague of Aelius Statutus, the censitor recorded on the boundary stones of the province of Syria Phoenice. Additionally, the inscription reveals two new toponyms: ‘Tirthas’ and ‘Golgol’, which may correspond to preserved toponyms Kh. Turritha and Tell ʿAjul, respectively. These locations were last recorded by the Survey of Western Palestine (SWP). The paper places this discovery in the context of other boundary stones in the Paneas/Caesarea-Phillipi territory and attempts to explain their extraordinary concentration in light of Diocletianic tax reforms and rabbinic sources. The authors suggest that the territory was probably filled with fields and farms owned by small landholders who paid their taxes independently of the city, providing insight into the complex relationship between taxation, land ownership, and settlement history.

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"The Pleasures of Pseudepigraphy" Conference, March 30–31, Loyola University Chicago.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT:
The Pleasures of Pseudepigraphy: Authorship and Imagination in Ancient Epistolary Fictions

March 30–31, 2025
Loyola University Chicago | Lake Shore Campus

How should we understand fakes and forgeries, and what happens when they find their way into scriptural collections? This conference will examine the ancient and widespread practice of writing letters in the names of others (i.e., epistolary pseudepigraphy). Beginning with a graduate student symposium, the conference will welcome scholars of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian literatures to analyze fictional letters. This conference is sponsored by the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage, the Department of Classical Studies, and the Theology Department at Loyola University Chicago.

All are especially welcome for the plenary lecture on Sunday, March 30, at 4:00pm. Patricia Rosenmeyer, George L. Paddison Professor of Classics, UNC Chapel Hill, will give a lecture entitled, "Ancient Pilgrim or Armchair Traveler: the Curious Case of P. Lond. III 854."

Registration is free, and all are welcome!

For more information, see the link above. HT Dr. Mark Lester.

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Windle's 2024 biblical archaeology top 10

BRYAN WILDLE: Top 10 Biblical Archaeology Discoveries of 2024: Digging for Truth Episode 250. HT the Bible Places Blog.

Bryan Windle joins Henry Smith to count down the top ten biblical discoveries of the year. Bryan sifts through over 200 news reports per year for ABR's weekly Breaking News updates. This results in close to 50 updates each year, from which ten are selected as the most significant.

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Sunday, January 26, 2025

Basham, Paul, the Temple, and Building a Metaphor (T&T Clark)

NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY/T&T CLARK:
Paul, the Temple, and Building a Metaphor

David Anthony Basham (Author)

Hardback
$115.00 $103.50

Ebook (PDF)
$103.50 $82.80

Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
$103.50 $82.80

Product details

Published Dec 12 2024
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 184
ISBN 9780567718327
Imprint T&T Clark
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Series The Library of New Testament Studies
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

Description

David Anthony Basham argues that Paul and the Corinthians share a “system of associated commonplaces” about the Jerusalem temple. Basham proposes that when Paul applies temple language to the Corinthians by calling them naos theou (“God's temple”), he sparks a creative process of interaction between the temple and the Corinthian assembly - a process of selecting, emphasizing, and organizing information from the source domain (temple) to see the target domain (the Corinthians) in a new light.

Basham suggests that, in understanding Paul's fraught relationship with certain institutions of Second Temple Judaism and his conception of gentile inclusion, we can appreciate the creative ways in which he employs cultic imagery to describe his ministry and the ritual life of early gentile believers. By exploring the construction of metaphor, the depiction of the Jerusalem temple in Paul's letters, and Judaean religion among gentiles, Basham demonstrates that Paul's temple metaphor speaks to a new cultic reality for gentiles-in-Christ that is linked to Israel's worship, though detached from its actual expression in Jerusalem.

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Saturday, January 25, 2025

Burns Night, with an update

HAPPY RABBIE BURNS NIGHT, tonight, to all those celebrating!

No, this doesn't have anything to do with ancient Judaism. Except that some years ago I put up this post on Two Prophetesses for Burns Night. One was Mary the Prophetess, an ancient Jewish alchemist who reportedly invented the still.

The other was an unnamed prophetess on the Isle of Jura, Scotland. Tradition says she uttered a dire prophecy against the Campbells of Jura, which was later fulfilled. Story at the link. In her honor the Jura distillery created a brand of single malt whisky called Jura Prophecy. At the time I was planning a visit to Jura and I promised to get back to my readers if I could learn anything more about her story.

I did take that trip and an update is overdue. I couldn't find out much more. I met a local whose ancestor, if I remember correctly, reportedly witnesssed the departure of Charles. And there was an old plaque in front of the distillery which gave a few more details. Beyond that, I have not been able to verify anything about the story, so I make no historical claims. But here is the plaque. Click on the photo to expand it for easier reading.

Sadly, and unfathomably, Jura distillery stopped producing Jura Prophecy a few years ago. It was one of my favorites. It's hard now to find a bottle.

Anyway, enjoy Burns Night, if that is your thing. And always be polite to prophetesses!

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Crabbe & Lincicum, Divine and Human Love in Jewish and Christian Antiquity (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:
Divine and Human Love in Jewish and Christian Antiquity

Edited by Kylie Crabbe and David Lincicum

[Göttliche und menschliche Liebe in der jüdischen und christlichen Antike.]
2024. X, 359 pages.
Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament (WUNT I) 523
€149.00
including VAT

cloth
available
978-3-16-163462-8

Also Available As:
eBook PDF
€149.00

Summary

The centrality and significance of love for much of ancient Judaism and Christianity are clear. But if there is a broad, even if not universal, agreement on the importance of love, the singularity of the term »love« covers over a multitude of differences in how love is conceived and mapped onto the conceptual landscape of antiquity. In this volume, Crabbe and Lincicum assemble a set of essays that analyze the concept of love from the minor prophets to Methodius of Olympus, with a central focus on the texts that came to make up the New Testament.

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Friday, January 24, 2025

Review of Julius, Abraham: The First Jew

MOMENT MAGAZINE: Book Review | A Tale of Dueling Abrahams (ROBERT SIEGEL).
Abraham: The First Jew is [Anthony] Julius’s contribution to the Yale University Press Jewish Lives series, and it faces the challenges posed by biblical personalities that do not plague the biographer of Philip Roth or Hank Greenberg. Was there really an Abraham? If so, do the midrashim the rabbis wrote to fill the narrative gaps of Torah enjoy the same authority as the Torah narratives themselves, which are, after all, traditionally accorded divine authority?
I usually don't post on books before publication, but this detailed review is worth noting now. You can find the book here for pre-order at the Yale University Press website, with a projected 11 February publication date. Cross-file under New Book.

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How many plagues?

PROF. RABBI MARTY LOCKSHIN: Ten Plagues of Egypt? No, Eight Plagues and Four Warnings! (TheTorah.com).
The Bible never numbers the plagues of Egypt, but the number ten has been canonized in tradition, and a canonical list of the ten plagues appears in the Passover Haggadah. The 18th century enlightenment commentator Naftali Herz Wessely breaks free from the number ten, offering a more persuasive structure of twelve miracles.
The Book of Jubilees is the first source that specifies ten plagues. There is no one right answer to the question. It depends on what you want to define as a plague.

I suspect that tradition settled early-on on the number ten to go with the Ten Commandments, which are revealed next in the narrative. And in their case, the Bible does specify the number ten ("ten words" in Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 4:13 and 10:4). I am far from the first to notice this connection.

That said, specifying a number doesn't remove ambiguity. There are three lists of the Decalogue, in Exodus 20, Exodus 34, and Deuteronomy 4. They are all unnumbered. The list in Exodus 34 has somewhat different laws from the other two. There has been plenty of debate about how to divide them up. And then when you start looking at manuscripts and recensions and ancient translations, it gets even more complicated.

A couple of relevant PaleoJudaica posts on the plagues are here and here.

Relevant posts on the Ten Commandments are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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

Thursday, January 23, 2025

The Talmud Yerushalmi Bavot tractates project

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Rabbinic Civil Law in the Context of Ancient Legal History: A Legal Compendium to the Talmud Yerushalmi
Catherine Hezser and Constantin Willems introduce the AHRC-DFG Collaborative UK-German Research Project in the Humanities (2023-26) on Rabbinic Civil Law in the Context of Ancient Legal History.
Excerpt:
The ultimate goal of our project is to integrate the study of rabbinic law into ancient legal history, to break the traditional boundaries between academic legal studies’ predominant focus on western (Greek and Roman) legal traditions while rabbinic law is delegated to Religions departments. Everyone studying and researching ancient legal history should be invited and encouraged to take rabbinic private law (from antiquity to modernity) into account. ...

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RItual (im)purity and embodiment

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Decoding Biblical Impurity. Exploring the roots of the Bible’s emphasis on ritual cleanliness.
Taken as a whole, Feder’s presentation illuminates the ways in which notions of purity and impurity in the Bible are deeply rooted in embodied experience. In his conclusion, he observes that “this recognition allows us to appreciate that the notion of pollution is based on psychological intuitions that have facilitated human survival from prehistoric times until the present day.”
This essay summarizes a column by Yitzhaq Feder published in the current issue of BAR. The column itself is behind the subscription wall.

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Anti-scorpion amulets from Egypt

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Animals in Coptic Magic II: Archangels, Mustard, and Rabbi Judah – 1500 Years of Amulets against Scorpions.
The examples we will be discussing today, though, are much later [than the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts]. From between the fifth and twelfth centuries CE survive about three dozen amulets of a distinctive type, consisting of small pieces of papyrus, parchment, or paper on which a simple image of a scorpion has been drawn, and surrounded by text which invokes superhuman powers against these creatures, or commands them to leave. We find these written in all of the major languages used in Egypt in this period – Greek, Coptic, Arabic, and Hebrew – suggesting that the use of these amulets was a practice common to Egyptians of different faiths, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and perhaps, at the earliest stage, ‘pagans’ who did not belong to any of these religions. ...
The Hebrew amulets are from the Cairo Geniza. They date to the twelfth century, but their use of Greek terms (Aphrodite and Epicurus) implies influence from much earlier Greco-Egyptian magical traditions.

The first post in this series is: Animals in Coptic Magic I: The Blood of a White Dove. It deals mostly with a late-antique Coptic Christian amulet. It also links to the (open-access) technical scholarly article by Korshi Dosoo which underlies the posts in the series.

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Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Guide to ethnographic passages in Tacitus

ETHNIC RELATIONS AND MIGRATION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD: Guide to Tacitus. (Philip Harland).

Includes some substantial passages on the Judeans.

For more on this blog, see here and here and links.

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Septuagint Theology and Its Reception (SBL)

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:
Septuagint Theology and Its Reception: Stellenbosch Congress on the Septuagint, 2022
Johann Cook, Wolfgang Kraus, Martin Rösel, editors

ISBN 9781628375770
Volume SCS 78
Status Available
Publication Date November 2024

Paperback $79.00
eBook $79.00
Hardback $99.00

In this follow-up to Toward a Theology of the Septuagint: Stellenbosch Congress on the Septuagint, 2018 (2020), contributors demonstrate what a theology of the Septuagint should look like. Essays address questions of methodology, and case studies from different books show the relevance and benefits of a theological approach. Examples are drawn from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Proverbs, Job, Tobit, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Hosea, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Ben Sira. Contributors include Nicholas Peter Legh Allen, Bryan Beeckman, Alma Brodersen, Johann Cook, Beate Ego, Karin Finsterbusch, Pierre Jordaan, Wolfgang Kraus, Jean Maurais , Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé, Mogens Müller, Jacobus A. Naudé, Peter Nagel Larry Perkins, Martin Rösel, Barbara Schmitz, Frank Ueberschaer, Jan Willem van Henten, and Michael van der Meer

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Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Shocker: Jesus wasn't called "Jesus?"

ARAMAIC WATCH!! Scientists reveal Jesus' REAL name - and say it wasn't 'Jesus' after all (Wiliam Hunter, Daily Mail).

The Mail has noticed that the name "Jesus" would have been pronounced differently in first-century Aramaic:

Jesus, as we would say it today with a hard 'J', wasn't a name that existed at the time of Jesus' life.

Instead, Jesus himself would have used a name in his native language of Aramaic.

Professor Houtman says: 'His name would probably have been in Aramaic: Yeshua.

'It is likely that this is also how he introduced himself. Another possibility is the shorter form Yeshu which is the form used in later rabbinic literature.'

Yes, all well and good. And the article includes some useful background information.

The amusing part is the way the Mail, and the media who have picked up the story, are treating this as a groundbreaking new discovery. The headlines especially, but the articles themselves leave that impression.

Experts Have Discovered Jesus’ Real Name, Which Was Not Jesus (Nathan Falde, Ancient Origins)

Jesus’ real name wasn’t Jesus, scientists claim — here’s why (Ben Cost, New York Post)

Scientists claim to have discovered the real name of Jesus Christ and it's not what we thought. The real name, according to the language Jesus spoke, could be Yezhua (AUSTIN CALDWELL, Marca)

As I said, the information is generally accurate. But the media's sensationalist framing is both funny and sad.

UPDATE: Richard Bauckham has written to point out that I could have clarified that the name Jesus/Yeshua is Hebrew, not Aramaic, and that most ancient Aramaic-speaking Jews had Hebrew names.

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

Exodus and Atrahasis?

JOHANNA MARKIND: Exodus Reworks the Atrahasis Flood Epic (TheTorah.com).
The biblical authors polemicize against the Mesopotamian Atrahasis epic, not only in Noah’s flood story, but in the account of the exodus as well
Could be. The biblical authors were certainly aware of Mesopotamian Flood traditions.

I don't know of any evidence that the full story of the Atrahasis epic reached ancient Israel, but a Flood story fragment from Ugarit does name the Flood hero Atrahasis (rather than Utnapishtim, as in the Gilgamesh Epic, or Ziusudra, in the Sumerian Flood story). But the Ugarit tablet did not include the prequel material in the Atrahasis epic involving the creation of people and the plagues from the gods.

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The Lying Pen of Scribes Project

VARIANT READINGS: The Lying Pen of Scribes Project: An Appreciation (Brent Nongbri).
Over the last few years, I have had a number of occasions to mention The Lying Pen of Scribes, a project on the Dead Sea Scrolls funded by the Research Council of Norway. In fact, it may not be quite right to say “project on the Dead Sea Scrolls.” While the Scrolls have been the focus of the project, it has touched many wider issues: the trade in antiquities, fakes and forgeries, the relationship of the physical sciences to manuscript studies, and more.

[...]

I have had a number of occasions to link to the project's useful blog and otherwise to note Årstein Justnes's important work. I wish him the best for whatever comes next.

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

Monday, January 20, 2025

Stoutjesdijk, A Comparative Study of the Slavery Metaphor in Early Rabbinic and Early Christian Parables (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:
A Comparative Study of the Slavery Metaphor in Early Rabbinic and Early Christian Parables

Series:
Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series, Volume: 41

Author: Martijn J. Stoutjesdijk

Some of the slavery parables in the New Testament have been called “texts of terror,” as the slaves who are portrayed in them are beaten or even cut in two. Despite – or because – their violence, slavery parables are often used in early Christian and early rabbinic literature to illustrate the unique relationship between God and his people. This study investigates the reasons for and meaning of using the master-slave metaphor in the parables: what does it tell us about early Christian and early rabbinic theology, including possibilities for critique and resistance vis-à-vis the divine, and what does it say about slavery in the ancient world?

Copyright Year: 2025

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-71310-9
Publication: 16 Dec 2024
EUR €135.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-71309-3
Publication: 18 Dec 2024
EUR €135.00

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Inadvertent animal archaeologists

FAUNAL-ASSISTED ARCHAEOLOGY: 10 Animals That Made Archaeological Discoveries (Ben Gazur, Listverse). Apropos of nothing much, except that I am surprised I didn't know about any of these.

PaleoJudaica has noted such discoveries from time to time. These include two excavations by porcupines, a mole-rat archaeological survey, and an equine figurine recovery that involved heavy rain, and perhaps foxes or (again) porcupines.

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

Kudos for the team that raised the Mazzarón II

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Mazarrón places itself as world leader in underwater archaeology following extraction of Phoenician shipwreck. The regional president has highlighted the historical and scientific significance of the removal of the shipwreck from the seabed (Murcia Today).

Background here with many links. Note the variable spellings Mazzarón (Mazzaron) and Mazarrón (Mazarron).

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Sunday, January 19, 2025

Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry (Eisenbrauns)

NEW BOOK FROM EISENBRAUNS:
Classical Samaritan Poetry

Laura Suzanne Lieber

“Lieber’s informative and readable introductory surveys are groundbreaking.”—Christian Stadel, Bibliotheca Orientalis

$149.95 | Hardcover Edition
ISBN: 978-1-64602-182-6

$21.95 | Paperback Edition
ISBN: 978-1-64602-297-7

Available as an e-book v 250 pages
6" × 9"
2022

Description

This book introduces the evocative but largely unknown tradition of Samaritan religious poetry from late antiquity to a new audience. These verses provide a unique window into the Samaritan religious world during a formative period. Prepared by Laura Suzanne Lieber, this anthology presents annotated English translations of fifty-five Classical Samaritan poems. Lieber introduces each piece, placing it in context with Samaritan religious tradition, the geopolitical turmoil of Palestine in the fourth century CE, and the literary, liturgical, and performative conventions of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, shared by Jews, Christians, and polytheists. These hymns, composed by three generations of poets—the priest Amram Dara; his son, Marqah; and Marqah’s son, Ninna, the last poet to write in Samaritan Aramaic in the period prior to the Muslim conquest—for recitation during the Samaritan Sabbath and festival liturgies remain a core element of Samaritan religious ritual to the present day.

Shedding important new light on the Samaritans’ history and on the complicated connections between early Judaism, Christianity, the Samaritan community, and nascent Islam, this volume makes an important contribution to the reception of the history of the Hebrew Bible. It will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, early Judaism and early Christianity, and other religions of late antiquity.

Cross-file under Samaritan Watch.

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Saturday, January 18, 2025

From the Magdala Stone to the Syriac Bema (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:
From the Magdala Stone to the Syriac Bema

Mutual Influences between the Liturgical Space in the Early Synagogue and Church

Series:
Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, Volume: 218

Authors: Rina Talgam, Dina Avshalom Gorni, and Arfan Najar

This book sheds light on the reciprocal relations between liturgical performance and the physical spaces in which they took place in synagogues and churches in antiquity. The kernel of the manuscript revolves around a decorated stone that was found during the excavations of a synagogue dated to the first century CE at Magdala on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The book displays how this important archaeological discovery radically transforms our understanding of the changes in the shape of the liturgical space and the liturgical furniture in the places of assembly of the two sister faiths, Judaism and Christianity.

Copyright Year: 2025

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-70773-3
Publication: 04 Nov 2024
EUR €169.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-70772-6
Publication: 21 Nov 2024
EUR €169.00

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Friday, January 17, 2025

Becking, Identity in Persian Egypt (Eisenbrauns)

NEW BOOK FROM EISENBRAUNS:
Identity in Persian Egypt

The Fate of the Yehudite Community of Elephantine

Bob Becking

“A good and stimulating read. It represents an innovative approach to research on Elephantine. The most important strength—construing the ‘fate’ of the Yehudite community in light of the rise and fall of pax persica—makes the book a contribution to the Yehudite community’s history and a microhistorical contribution to Achaemenid studies. Both students and experts will gain from reading the book.”—Gard Granerød, Review of Biblical Literature

$90.95 | Hardcover Edition
ISBN: 978-1-57506-745-2

$34.95 | Paperback Edition
ISBN: 978-1-64602-244-1

224 pages
6" × 9"
2020

Description

In this book, Bob Becking provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the origins, lives, and eventual fate of the Yehudites, or Judeans, at Elephantine, framed within the greater history of the rise and fall of the Persian Empire.

The Yehudites were among those mercenaries recruited by the Persians to defend the southwestern border of the empire in the fifth century BCE. Becking argues that this group, whom some label as the first “Jews,” lived on the island of Elephantine in relative peace with other ethnic groups under the aegis of the pax persica. Drawing on Aramaic and Demotic texts discovered during excavations on the island and at Syene on the adjacent shore of the Nile, Becking finds evidence of intermarriage, trade cooperation, and even a limited acceptance of one another’s gods between the various ethnic groups at Elephantine. His analysis of the Elephantine Yehudites’ unorthodox form of Yahwism provides valuable insight into the group’s religious beliefs and practices.

An important contribution to the study of Yehudite life in the diaspora, this accessibly written and sweeping history enhances our understanding of the varieties of early Jewish life and how these contributed to the construction of Judaism.

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A mythic reading of anthropomorphic mountains?

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION: Rendered Relatable: Using Myth to (Re-)Read Hebrew Bible Landscapes.
Landscapes often appear as backgrounds in scenes that tend to be regarded as mythic. Applying our revised myth theory means that these landscapes can gain more “weight” and our reading can produce new insights that alternate models of myth previously obscured.

See also Personified Mountains in Ancient Canonical Narratives: Spatial and Mythic Studies of Mesopotamian, Greek, and Hebrew Bible Landscapes (Mohr Siebeck, 2024).

By Eric J. P. Wagner
Aquinas Institute of Theology
January 2025

Cross-file under New Book.

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JANES

THE AWOL BLOG: Open Access Journal: JANES - Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society.

I was surprised to see how long it's been since I mentioned this excellent journal. Lots of good articles, including one in the current issue (Vol. 37.1, 2024) on the possible influence of Bronze Age megalithic monumental ruins on the biblical giant traditions.

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Thursday, January 16, 2025

Diocletian-era boundary stone excavated in northern Galilee

ARCHAEOLOGY: Roman administrative practices revealed in boundary stone excavations. Archaeologists uncover Roman boundary stone in northern Galilee, revealing insights into Emperor Diocletian’s tax reforms during Tetrarchy; Greek inscription mentions unknown villages and imperial official, shedding light on Roman administrative practices and rural life (Yogev Israeli, Ynet News).
Excavations at Tel Avel Beit Ma'akha, located approximately 1.2 miles south of Metula in the northern Galilee, have revealed an extraordinary discovery—a Roman boundary stone from the Tetrarchy period. This ancient basalt stone, originally used to delineate agricultural lands between villages, was later repurposed in a structure from the Mamluk period.

[...]

Another Diocletian-era boundary stone was found in the northern Galilee in 2020. I noted it here and here.

Also the discovery of another, somewhat different, boundary marker here. And others elsewhere, but those links have all rotted.

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Michael V. Fox (1940–2025)

SAD NEWS: On the Agade list, Jack Sasson has reported that Michael V. Fox, the Jay C. and Ruth Halls-Bascom Professor of Hebrew Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has died at the age of 84 (as indicated by his son, Joshua Fox).

Professor Fox's Wikipedia page is here. He was known particularly for his work on biblical wisdom literature.

May his memory be for a blessing.

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Joe Rogan and P52

VARIANT READINGS: P52 on the Joe Rogan Experience: Fact Check. Brent Nongbri fact checks the Joe Rogan show on its coverage of P52, the fragment of the Gospel of John that has been called the oldest surviving fragment of the New Testament.

And see the comments for an interchange between Brent and the interviewee.

For PaleoJudaica posts on P52 and the problems with dating it precisely, see here and links, with some specifics here (final paragraph.)

UPDATE (21 January): the interviewee, Wesley Huff, has issued additional corrections. See here.

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Wednesday, January 15, 2025

A Syriac-Greek tombstone excavated at Edessa

SYRIAC WATCH: Excavations Reveal 2,000-Year-Old Tombs with Rare Inscriptions in Ancient Mesopotamian City. In Edessa, also known as Antioch, an ancient city of Mesopotamia located in present-day Şanlıurfa, Turkey, lies the Kizilkoyun necropolis. Recent archaeological excavations there have unearthed 2,000-year-old stone tombs. (GCT A, Greek City Times).
During the excavation, a significant discovery was made near the entrance of a burial chamber. A tabula ansata, a handled, inscribed tablet characteristic of the Roman Imperial era, bearing inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic, was unearthed. (The parenthetical phrase "May he rest in peace," likely referring to Jesus Christ based on the mention of a monogram, is grammatically misplaced and thematically unconnected, thus removed.) The ancient texts offer valuable insights into the cultural history of the region.

[...]

Follow the link for a photo of the tombstone.

I've been sitting on this one until I could dig up more information, since some of it didn't sound right.

For a detailed technical analysis, see this open-access article by in Anatolia Antiqua XXVIII (2020): New Inscriptions in Aramaic/Early Syriac and Greek from the Cemeteries of Edessa by Bekir Çetin, Müslüm Demir, Alain Desreumaux, John Healey et Peter Liddel., https://doi.org/10.4000/anatoliaantiqua.1384. Scroll down to the section "A Greek/Aramaic bilingual inscription on a broken stone stretcher (probably a lintel) from the doorway of Kızılkoyun Tomb M 54 (Figs. 3, 6)."

Back to the Greek City Times article.

First, for obvious reasons, a phrase "May he rest in peace" would scarcely refer to Jesus. In fact the Aramaic text should arguably (based on the Greek parallel) be restored as "This is the house of [eternity of]" (the occupants of the tomb). In other words, it is their resting place. There is a Christogram (chi-rho symbol) carved in the front lintel of the tomb and some crosses in the inscriptions, which indicate it is a Christian tomb. The texts of the inscriptions have no specific religious elements.

For translations of the Aramaic and Greek inscriptions, see the Anatolia Antiqua article linked to above.

As for the Aramaic text, it is actually in early Syriac script. The AA article dates it to the fourth or early fifth centuries.

If you're into it, the same article covers some other Aramaic and Greek epitaphs in this and another necropolis.

The Aramaic dialect of Edessa (modern Urfa; in antiquity a.k.a. Antioch on the Callirhoe) spread and developed into its own dialects and, as Syriac, became the most important language of Eastern Christianity. For more on Edessa/Urfa and the origins of Syriac, see here and links.

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The Canaanite lice comb is coming to the USA

EXHIBITION: Rare Inscribed Ivory Comb Artifact Coming To Southern Adventist University (Becky Brooks, Chattanooga Pulse).
In partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority and The Israel Museum, Southern Adventist University invites the public to see the ivory comb with the oldest deciphered complete alphabetic sentence in writing.

The rare object dating to 1700 BC and excavated in Israel will be on exhibit at the Lynn H. Wood Archaeological Museum in Hackman Hall on the university’s campus beginning on January 27.

[...]

For the discovery of the Canaanite lice comb, see here (cf. here, and here).

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Did Tertullian know any actual Jews?

DR. STÉPHANIE. É. BINDER: Tertullian, Father of Western Christianity’s “Answer to the Jews” (TheTorah.com).
​​In late 2nd century Carthage, Tertullian, the first church father to write in Latin, composed Adversus Iudaeos to argue that Christianity’s interpretation of the Hebrew Bible was better than that of the Jews. While his depictions of Jews deal only with biblical verses, from his comments elsewhere about veiled women, Nazarenes, fasting, etc., he was clearly familiar with Jewish practice of his day.

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

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

A worship building down the road from the First Temple?

ARCHAEOLOGY: Study: First Temple Era Structure in City of David Was Used for Ritual Practices (David Israel, the Jewish Press).
Excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority on the eastern slope of the City of David, within the Jerusalem Walls National Park, uncovered a unique First Temple period structure. This complex features eight rock-hewn rooms containing an altar, a standing stone (masseba), an oil press, and a winepress.

[...]

Used for (religious) ritual practices? Could be. If so, that was cheeky, running a cultic installation a few hundred meters from the Temple Mount.

The underlying article is published in the journal ‘Atiqot and is open access.

Shukron, Eli; Freud, Liora; Roth, Helena; Avisar, Reli; and Bocher, Efrat (2024) "Evidence of Worship in the Rock-Cut Rooms on the Eastern Slope of the City of David, Jerusalem," 'Atiqot: Vol. 116, Article 5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.70967/2948-040X.1126 Available at: https://publications.iaa.org.il/atiqot/vol116/iss1/5

Abstract
This paper presents the finds retrieved from a unique series of rock-cut rooms found on the eastern slope of the City of David. These rock-cut rooms stand out in terms of their architectural features, as well as the artifacts discovered within them, all of which reflect on their function as a cultic complex, likely constructed in the Middle Bronze Age, with its final stage in Iron Age IIB. This complex offers profound evidence for the diversity of cultic practices in the capital of the Kingdom of Judah.

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The Finger of Og or Herod's Pillar

ABANDONED ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE: The Finger of Og or Herod's Pillar? A Jerusalem archaeological mystery. The 12.15-meter-long and approximately 1.75-m -wide column is thought to have been quarried in order to decorate the Second Temple (Marion Fischel, Jerusalem Post).
Known both as the Finger of Og and as Herod’s Pillar, the 12.15-meter-long and approximately 1.75-m -wide column is thought to have been quarried in order to decorate the Second Temple as part of King Herod the Great’s 37-20 BCE restoration and renovation works, during which he also enlarged the Temple Mount.
That's one possibility, not the only one. But the chances that it is a finger of Og the giant seem remote.

I have mentioned Herod's Pillar/the finger of Og here, but the current article has more information. For much more on the traditions about the biblical giant Og, see there, plus here, and follow the links.

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

Genetic makeup of the Sogdians

ARCHAEOLOGY: Did this ancient Silk Road community secretly shape the cultures of East and West? The Sogdians were a vibrant community renowned for their trading expertise, artistic craftsmanship, and even performance skills (Ivan Petricevic, Curiosmos).
In a groundbreaking study, scientists have unveiled the complex origins of the Sogdians, a mysterious group of merchants who played a key role in the success of the Silk Road. Through advanced ancient DNA analysis, researchers have uncovered the genetic makeup of these Central Asian traders, shedding light on their extensive cultural interactions and their pivotal role in connecting East and West.

[...]

The underlying article has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, vol. 61: Unraveling the origins of the sogdians: Evidence of genetic admixture between ancient central and East Asians (Jiashuo Zhang, Yongdi Wang, Naifan Zhang, Jiawei Li, Youyang Qu, Cunshi Zhu, Fan Zhang, Dawei Cai, Chao Ning). It is behind the subscription wall, but you can read the abstract and excerpts for free.

The Sogdians are of interest to PaleoJudaica because they preserved the Book of Giants in one or more translations into their language. Fragments of the Sogdian Book of Giants survive today. For more on the Sogdians and their language ("Sogdian"), see here, here, here, here, and links. For more on the Book of Giants and the languages in which fragments of it survive, see here and links. These consist of Aramaic fragments from Qumran and Middle Persian, Parthian, and Old Turkic fragments, almost all from Turfan.

As the latter link notes, all surviving translatable fragments from the Book of Giants are translated in our forthcoming volume, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 2 (MOTP2). If you want to see what a Sogdian text looks like, the cover photo (follow the link) shows two leaves from a passage (7:KawH. So 14638) in which the prophet Mani relates stories from the beginning of the Book of Giants to "the King of kings" (King Shapur I?).

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