In the Book of Samuel, no clear explanation is given as to why Uzza’s offense is so grave that it warrants instant death. The author of Chronicles, finding this unsatisfactory, rewrites parts of the story and provides a concrete explanation for Uzza’s fatal punishment.
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Roberta Mazza, Stolen fragments: black markets, bad faith, and the illicit trade in ancient artefacts. Stanford: Redwood Press, 2024. Pp. 272. ISBN 9781503632509.I have noted other reviews of the book here and here.Review by
Christos Tsirogiannis, Allard Pierson Museum, University of Amsterdam. christos.tsirogiannis@cantab.net... Overall, this book recounts the most recent major scandal concerning illicit antiquities—one that has profoundly impacted the antiquities market, the museum world, and academia, particularly the field of papyrology. ...
Roberta Mazza's blog is Faces and Voices: People, Artefacts, Ancient History.
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And a good, basic collection of DSS resources in general.
I have noted other posts in the series here and links.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Perrin, Andrew B. Lost Words and Forgotten Worlds: Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls. Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Academic, 2024. xxv+322 pp.; Hb.; $25.99. Link to Lexham PressI'm guessing that the mysterious references to a "parent" in this review are autocorrect relics.... Conclusion: Perrin states in his introduction that he is not writing for an academic audience. This is a presentation of the Dead Sea Scrolls for a general Christian readership. The book is easy reading, filled with good humor, personal anecdotes, and pop cultural references. The endnotes point the way for readers interested in more detailed, scholarly work. The book is richly illustrated with full-color photographs to enhance the reading experience. Your parent does not shy away from controversy. Chapter 3 discusses the problem of forgeries. Whenever money is to be made, quality forgers will find willing victims. He names, names, including the Museum of the Bible, the Schøyen Collection, and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Perrin’s Lost Words and Forgotten Worlds is an excellent introduction to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Cross-file under New Book.
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In a detailed review, Professor Ishay Rosen-Zvi of Tel Aviv University recently introduced Hebrew readers to The Writings of the New Testament as Jewish Literature, a new and exceptional book by Dr. Serge Ruzer, a leading scholar of comparative religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Ruzer’s work traces the profound ties between early Christian texts and Jewish tradition, shedding light on the rich presence of Hebrew and Jewish ideas within the New Testament.
According to Rosen-Zvi’s enthusiastic review, the book is not merely a valuable academic contribution but a true milestone in the field of Jewish studies. Rather than engaging in apologetics or polemics, Ruzer focuses on the theological ideas reflected in the various New Testament writings.
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This post is aimed at providing a guide for reading sequentally through ethnographic passages dealing with peoples other than Greeks or Italians in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. Books 3-6 are focussed primarily on geography and peoples, but there are other ethnographically important sections as well:includes that famous passage on the Essenes.
For more on this blog, see here and here and links.
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Understanding the Hebrew BibleEssays by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study
Edited by John Barton
£119.00
Hardback
Published: 27 February 2025
448 Pages
234x156mm
ISBN: 9780192845788Also Available As:
E-bookDescription
This is the latest in a series of volumes, published about every twenty-five years since 1924, surveying the current state of the academic study of the Old Testament—more often called the Hebrew Bible in scholarly contexts. It is written by leading members of the Society for Old Testament Study, the professional organization for scholars in that field in the UK and Ireland, but with international members too, some of whom have contributed to the volume. It provides academics, students of the Bible, clergy and rabbis, and intelligent general readers, with a snapshot of the main approaches and issues in the study of the Hebrew Bible since (approximately) the year 2000.
There are chapters on specific biblical books in their ancient context, grouped mainly by genre, but also on methodological aspects of biblical studies today, including interdisciplinary perspectives and contemporary questions, such as the Bible in sociological, theological, historical, archaeological, literary, and linguistic perspectives, and the influence of concerns about gender, race, visual culture, and psychology. A particular recent interest is represented by a chapter on the reception history of the Hebrew Bible in the visual arts, music, and literature (including drama and film). The concern throughout, is to encapsulate contemporary currents in interpretation, rather than to put forward the contributors' personal views, but also to suggest how biblical study may or should develop next in these areas. As with previous volumes, what is provided is a view of global scholarship as seen from these islands that will be useful to serious students of the Hebrew Bible throughout the world. As well as describing their field, the contributors also provide substantial bibliographies pointing readers to other modern discussions.
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Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan. Volume 1: Hebrew and the Wider Semitic World (many editors, see link)
The notice for both volumes:
Geoffrey Khan’s pioneering scholarship has transformed the study of Semitic languages, literatures, and cultures, leaving an indelible mark on fields ranging from Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic dialectology to medieval manuscript traditions and linguistic typology. This Festschrift, celebrating a distinguished career that culminated in his tenure (2012–2025) as Regius Professor of Hebrew in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, brings together contributions from a vast and representative array of scholars—retired, established, and up and coming—whose work has been influenced by his vast intellectual legacy.Reflecting the interconnected traditions that Khan has illuminated throughout his career, this volume presents cutting-edge research on Hebrew and Aramaic linguistics, historical syntax, manuscript studies, and the transmission of textual traditions across centuries and cultures. Contributors engage with topics central to Khan’s scholarship, including the evolution of the Biblical Hebrew verbal system, the intricacies of Masoretic notation, Geniza discoveries, Samaritan and medieval Judaeo-Arabic texts, and computational approaches to linguistic analysis.
As Khan retires from his role as Regius Professor, this collection stands as both a tribute and a continuation of his work, honouring his lifelong dedication to understanding and preserving the linguistic and literary heritage of the Semitic world.
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Including information on the Jewish materials now on display in the Ostia Museum.
Background here.
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Our first output is a tool that maps the similarity of word use in the tractates of both the Babylonian and the Palestinian Talmuds.Cross-file under Talmud Watch and Algorithm Watch.This is an experimental tool that uses machine learning techniques to show word similarities in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. It will also allow you to compare how specific tractates use a word. It works by first mapping phrases (the length of which is determined by the “Window”) into a multidimensional matrix, then computing the distance between those occurrences, and finally sorting these occurrences into clusters based on the distances. The parameters are explained further in the menu. You can hover over the points on the visualization to see more data.
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From Jonathan Valk (jonathan.valk@gmail.com):
====================The ERC-funded ARAMAIZATION project (The Aramaization of the Middle East: Revisiting the Fall and Rise of Written Traditions, 2025–2030, https://doi.org/10.3030/101163243) based in Madrid at the Spanish National Research Council’s (CSIC) Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East invites applications for a Postdoctoral position in Aramaic Studies. The appointment is for three years, starting in September 2025 or at a mutually agreed upon date.
Job description
The ARAMAIZATION project seeks to better understand the rise of written Aramaic across the ancient Middle East in the first half of the first millennium BCE. The successful applicant will work with Principal Investigator Jonathan Valk to collect, edit, and make available all Aramaic writing from the Assyrian world in the first half of the first millennium BCE within the broader cuneiform context in which this writing was produced. Publication of the Aramaic evidence will be both online and in print. The position comes with substantial freedom to shape the research process and with the resources required to ensure its successful implementation, including museum visits and research tools. Salary is set at the conditions for Personal contratado Doctor FC3 in the Spanish system, amounting to a total compensation package before tax and social security payments of 55,327.25 €
Eligibility
Candidates will possess expertise in Aramaic philology and a capacity to work directly with inscribed objects. Familiarity with Assyriology and broader comparative Semitics is desirable. Applicants should hold a PhD degree in a relevant discipline.
Applicants should possess an excellent command of written and spoken English, as well as excellent research and communication skills. The ability to work collaboratively with other members of the team is essential.
Application procedure
Applications should consist of the following:
· a curriculum vitae
· a cover letter explaining your motivation for applying for the position and demonstrating your capacity to fulfill the requirements successfully
· a writing sample (preferably published work)
· contact information (email) for two referees
Please merge these items into a single pdf file and submit them via email to jonathan.valk@gmail.com by 26 May 2025.
Please submit any questions about the position or the application process to the same address. Applicants will receive confirmation that their materials have been received and will be notified of any developments via email. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to an online interview.
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Ben Sira’s View of Women: A Literary Analysis (Warren C. Trenchard, 1982)
Sectarian Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Courts, Testimony and the Penal Code (Lawrence H. Schiffman, 1983)
Semites, Iranians, Greeks, and Romans: Studies in their Interactions (Jonathan Goldstein, 1990)
Some Jewish Women in Antiquity (Meir Bar-Ilan, 1998)
And for a bonus, here's another Project Muse reprint:
Rabbinic Judaism in the Making: The Halakhah from Ezra to Judah I (Alexander Guttmann, Wayne State University Press, 1970, rpt. 2018)
It is great to have these older volumes readily available again. But be aware that you may have to poke around a bit to find the original publication dates. They really should be listed at the top of the Project Muse page with the reprint date.
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Jim Caviezel is currently preparing to return to the role of Jesus Christ for the upcoming Passion of the Christ 2, and recently opened up about how he’s preparing.I noted a year ago that Passion of the Christ 2 was in the works. It was supposed to be out by about now, but it seems it is still at a preliminary stage. You can read about Caviezel's thoughts in this article, but what caught my eye was a detail from Mel Gibson's Joe Rogan interview from January of this year.
“I’m hoping next year sometime. There’s a lot required because it’s an acid trip,” he said. “My brother and I and Randall all sort of congregated on this. So there’s some good heads put together, but there’s some crazy stuff. And I think in order to really tell the story properly you have to really start with the fall of the angels, which means you’re in another place, you’re in another realm. You need to go to hell.”Sounds like the film will start with the fall of the angels, which may mean that Mel will be looking at legends of the fall of the watchers in 1 Enoch and related Second Temple Jewish texts. I hope he takes note of the Book of Giants as well, since it is effectively another Second Temple Enochic book and it covers that ground from its own perspective - that of the doomed giant offspring of the watchers.
All surviving translatable fragments of the Book of Giants are now available in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, volume 2, More Noncanoncial Scriptures. I may have mentioned this already, but its formal publication date is today!
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Now, a team of researchers has extracted the DNA of scores of people buried in ancient Punic settlements across the western and central Mediterranean, including Carthage itself, and has made a startling discovery.I have mentioned this story already here when the underlying article was at the prepublication stafe. I comment there on why the result is not all that surprising.... Instead, it seems the Punic people were exceptionally diverse, and derived most of their ancestry from a genetic profile similar to that of ancient people from Sicily and Greece. The second major ancestry component came from local North African populations and steadily grew as Carthage's political importance rose, the researchers report.
The finding is unexpected because, throughout the centuries, the Carthaginians maintained clear cultural links to their Levantine roots, speaking a semitic language, using the Phoenician alphabet and worshipping the Canaanite gods of their founders.
Now the article has been published the journal Nature. And, as usual for the Haaretz archaeological reporters, Ariel David provides useful background and commentary. The article:
Punic people were genetically diverse with almost no Levantine ancestorsThe Haaretz article does flag one result that I do find surprising:Harald Ringbauer, Ayelet Salman-Minkov, Dalit Regev, Iñigo Olalde, Tomer Peled, Luca Sineo, Gioacchino Falsone, Peter van Dommelen, Alissa Mittnik, Iosif Lazaridis, Davide Pettener, Maria Bofill, Ana Mezquida, Benjamí Costa, Helena Jiménez, Patricia Smith, Stefania Vai, Alessandra Modi, Arie Shaus, Kim Callan, Elizabeth Curtis, Aisling Kearns, Ann Marie Lawson, Matthew Mah, …David Reich
Nature (2025)
Abstract
The maritime Phoenician civilization from the Levant transformed the entire Mediterranean during the first millennium BCE1,2,3. However, the extent of human movement between the Levantine Phoenician homeland and Phoenician–Punic settlements in the central and western Mediterranean has been unclear in the absence of comprehensive ancient DNA studies. Here, we generated genome-wide data for 210 individuals, including 196 from 14 sites traditionally identified as Phoenician and Punic in the Levant, North Africa, Iberia, Sicily, Sardinia and Ibiza, and an early Iron Age individual from Algeria. Levantine Phoenicians made little genetic contribution to Punic settlements in the central and western Mediterranean between the sixth and second centuries BCE, despite abundant archaeological evidence of cultural, historical, linguistic and religious links4. Instead, these inheritors of Levantine Phoenician culture derived most of their ancestry from a genetic profile similar to that of Sicily and the Aegean. Much of the remaining ancestry originated from North Africa, reflecting the growing influence of Carthage5. However, this was a minority contributor of ancestry in all of the sampled sites, including in Carthage itself. Different Punic sites across the central and western Mediterranean show similar patterns of high genetic diversity. We also detect genetic relationships across the Mediterranean, reflecting shared demographic processes that shaped the Punic world.
The later and secondary addition of North African ancestry likely has to do with the rise to prominence of Carthage as the capital of the Punic empire, the researchers note. But what is unusual is that this "radical mix" occurred pretty homogenously across the empire: it's not that the Phoenicians in Sicily mixed with the local Sicilians and Greeks, while the ones in Tunisia intermarried with Africans. The genetic analysis shows that this population churn was constant and spread all over the empire. This is likely connected to the great mobility of the Carthaginians who created a "Mediterranean highway" of maritime trade, Ringbauer says.I would have expected the genetic diversity to be more tied to the local populations in the individual colonies.
At this post is a reminder why PaleoJudaica posts so frequently on Phoenician and Punic (Carthaginian) language and society.
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Late Antiquity (4th–7th centuries A.D.), saw a surge of private church construction in the land of Israel and the broader Near East, driven by Christian patrons’ desire for prestige and devotion to local saints, according to new research by Prof. Jacob Ashkenazi of Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee.Prof. Ashkenazi's article in the journal Levant, "Why so many? Analysing church multiplicity in Late Antique southern Levant," is behind the subscription wall, but you can read the abstract for free at the link above.Published in the Levant journal, Ashkenazi's findings also show a clear contrast with nearby Jewish communities, which focused their resources on single, centralized synagogues that served as village community centers.
[...]
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Alexander the Great in Jerusalem and the Origins of the Alexander RomanceFollow the link for more details.The ACE [Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology] department is thrilled to announce an Ancient History Seminar titled 'Alexander the Great in Jerusalem and the Origins of the Alexander Romance' delivered by Ory Amitay, (University of Haifa) on the 6 May 2025, Rendall Building, Lecture Theatre 7.
Tuesday 6 May 5pm (UK) | Rendall, Lecture Theatre 7 or online | Open to the public, and University of Liverpool staff and students
This is a hybrid event, we encourage in-person attendance which facilitates discussion. To join on zoom please click here.Abstract
The topics presented in this talk come from a comprehensive study of the tradition concerning the meeting between Alexander the Great and the Judeans of Jerusalem. Historically, even if Alexander did visit Jerusalem, it was essentially a non-event, nothing to write home about. The historical void provided an opportunity for consecutive Judean storytellers to fill it with political myths of their own creation.
The overall purpose of these myths—so I argue in my new book Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History (OUP, 2025) —was on the one hand to negotiate the installation of successive forms of foreign rule over Judea, and on the other to find room for these foreign rules within Judean sacred history. The earliest of these stories, scarcely discussed in previous scholarship, is preserved in the epsilon recension of the Alexander Romance (AR).
[...]
The abovementioned New Book just came out:
Alexander the Great in JerusalemFor many PaleoJudaica posts on Alexander the Great and his connection with ancient Jewish traditions, notably in the Alexander Romance, see here and links. There are lots of links there too to posts on books about Alexander and the Alexander tradition published in recent yearsOry Amitay
£84.00
Hardback
Published: 18 April 2025 (Estimated)
220 Pages
234x156mm
ISBN: 9780198929529Also Available As:
E-bookDescription
Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History discusses four different stories told in antiquity about the meeting between Alexander the Great and the Judeans of Jerusalem. In history, this meeting passed without noticeable events. Into the historical void stepped various Judean storytellers, who wrote not what was, but what could (or even should) have been.
The tradition as a whole deals with an issue that resurfaced time and again in ancient Judean history: conquest and regime installment by new foreign rulers. It does so by using Alexander as a cipher for a current Hellenistic and Roman foreign rule. The earliest version can be traced to the context of the Seleukid monarch Antiochos III "the Great", and postulates a Judean text from that time that has been hitherto unknown, and which survived in a Byzantine recension (epsilon) of the Alexander Romance. The second and third chapters turn to rabbinic sources, and deal with the Judean approaches and attitudes towards Roman occupation and rule, first at the advent of Pompey and then at the institution of Provincia ludaea at the expense of the Herodian dynasty. The final story is the most famous, previously considered the earliest, rather than the latest; that of Josephus.
Alexander the Great in Jerusalem demonstrates how the historical tradition consistently maintained the moral and sacral superiority of the Jerusalem temple and of Judaism, making Alexander either embrace monotheism or prostrate himself before the Judean high priest. This not only bolstered Judean self-confidence under conditions of military and political inferiority, but also brought the changing foreign rulers into the fold of Judean sacred history.
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The Descent of Heavenly Beings to Earth from the Book of GiantsAs promised earlier, more on the giants! And a free chapter from MOTP2! For you, special deal!The Book of Giants survives, in a highly fragmentary state, in two versions: the original, known from remnants of Dead Sea Scrolls written in Aramaic, and a later Manichean version, known from manuscript scraps found in Central Asia written in three old Iranian languages and in Old Turkic (Uigur). The Book of Giants recaps the story of the descent of the angelic watchers from heaven to mate with mortal women, who bore them giant offspring with catastrophic results (cf. 1 Enoch 1–36 and Genesis 6:1-4). The rest of the book tells the tragic story of these offspring from their own perspective.
Chapter from James R. Davila and Richard Bauckham (eds.), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol.2, More Noncanonical Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2025).
By James Davila
School of Divinity
Professor of Early Jewish Studies
University of St. Andrews
April 2025
The chapter includes a detailed summary of the reconstructed Book of Giants. But it does not include any translations of the actual surviving manuscripts. For that you need to buy the book. Official publication is tomorrow.
For many PaleoJudaica posts on the Book of Giants and some, relatedly, on the Rephaim, follow the links.
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How Rabbis Became Experts: Social Circles and Donor Networks in Jewish Late Antiquity. Princeton University Press, 2025.Cross-file under New Book.... In the book, I demonstrate how gifts for rabbis were situated amidst a broader landscape of Jewish piety and socialization. I examine major gift transactions alongside dinner parties, conversations between neighbors, and more in order to consider the everyday instances of mutual exchange that, I argue, lay at the heart of these gifts. ...
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Open for 2025: BIAJS 2025 Student Essay PrizeFollow the link for detailed application information.Deadline for Submissions: 16 June 2025
We are delighted to announce the BIAJS 2025 student essay prize details, which is now open for both the undergraduate and the postgraduate categories.
On behalf of the BIAJS committee, we are pleased to announce the launch of the 2025 BIAJS student essay prize. Two prizes of £400, ordinarily for one outstanding undergraduate and one postgraduate essay by students at institutions in the UK and Ireland, are awarded annually.
[...]
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Two hundred ancient coins, arrowheads, and pottery vessels were found in the home of a Dimona resident in part of a joint operation between the police and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), according to the agencies involved in the bust.[...]
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Lecturer in Hebrew BibleFollow the link for further particulars and application information.Employer
KINGS COLLEGE LONDONLocation
London (Greater) (GB)Salary
£44,105 - £51,485 per annum, including London Weighting AllowanceClosing date
27 Apr 2025... The Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London is seeking to appoint a permanent Lecturer in Hebrew Bible.
You will contribute to a department that has a long and distinguished tradition of contribution to Biblical and Jewish Studies and that is known for, among other things, its excellence in the integrated study of Theology, Religious Studies and the Arts. ...
This just came up in my searches. The closing date is soon. Don't dilly-dally.
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On March 3, 2025, we lost an understated and under-recognized giant in the field of biblical archaeology. Nancy Lapp (née Renn) was steadfast in her dedication to her family, to her scholarship, and to making the world a better place through her social justice efforts. ...Requiescat in pace.
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Davila, James R. and Richard Bauckham, eds. Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2: More Noncanonical Scriptures. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2025. ix+694 pp. Hb; $89.99. Link to EerdmansThis volume isn't officially published untilEerdmans published volume one of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (MOTP) in 2013. After a twelve-year wait, volume two of this important expansion of the original Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (1983, edited by James Charlesworth) adds another twenty-three texts to the collection. This valuable collection expands scholarship’s database of Jewish and Christian texts beyond the canonical Hebrew Bible and the Apocrypha to shed light on the history and culture of the Second Temple period.
[...]
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For nearly 2,000 years, Near East Christian communities have used Syriac, an Aramaic dialect, as their liturgical and cultural language. Over the centuries, they produced an extensive corpus of manuscripts that included passages from biblical texts, philosophical treatises, classical literature and theological commentaries, whose purpose often remains obscure to modern scholars.I have mentioned this research before here. But this article runs with the creative angle, in conversation with the researcher, of noting parallels in the Syriac material to the Talmud. Worth a read.Now, an Israeli researcher has harnessed computational technology to showcase how the scribes compiling the documents made active editorial choices, shaping the knowledge for future generations and serving a role comparable to that of the redactors of another foundational Aramaic work from Late Antiquity: the Jewish Talmud.
[...]
The caveats about AI in my earlier post still apply. There is no comprehensive catalogue of either Talmud comparable to Wright's catalogue of the Syriac material, so there is a long way to go before this computational technology can be applied to the Talmud(s).
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This is an old idea. I commented on it in one of my earliest blog posts. I was going to ignore this one, but when I saw how dreadful this article is, I thought I'd better comment on it.
The suggestion, which has been around for a very long time, is that the reported period of afternoon "darkness over the whole land" (or "earth") on the day of the crucifixion of Jesus (Mark 15:33 par. Matthew 27:45 and Luke 23:44-45) was due to a lunar eclipse of the sun. The third-century church father Julius Africanus argued that the lunar celestial configuration at Passover made this impossible. Briefly, if the moon is full, the sun is shining full on it from the perspective of the earth, which means the moon is on the opposite side of the earth from the sun. It is not in a position to occlude the sun.
Be that as it may, the Jerusalem post article consists largely of misconceptions.
NASA scientists believe that a lunar eclipse occurred during the crucifixion of Jesus, based on data from its astronomical models.The NASA article Eclipses: History does say that "Christian texts" (not "the Christian Bible") say that the moon turned to blood:An article from the space agency noted that the Christian Bible wrote that the moon turned to blood in the skies over Jerusalem after Jesus's crucifixion.
“From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land,” reads one iteration of Matthew 27:45.
Eclipses also appear in religious texts. Christian texts mention that the Moon turned to blood after Jesus’s crucifixion – potentially referring to a lunar eclipse, during which the Moon takes on a reddish hue. Using this textual source, scholars narrowed down a possible date of crucifixion to Friday, April 3, 33 C.E. because a lunar eclipse occurred that day.The passage in Matthew, quoted in the JP article, says nothing about the moon, only that there was darkness over the whole land.
Matthew's text is "one iteration" of the story, which also appears in Mark and Luke, as noted above. None of them mention the moon. The Gospel of John doesn't mention the darkness at all.
But there's more evidence, right? The JP continues:
Additionally, early Christian texts prophesied that on the day of Jesus's crucifixion, the sky would look eerie.Peter's reported speech took place on Pentecost (Shavuot), 50 days after the crucifixion. He is speaking about the end times.In a gathering 50 days before Jesus's death, the apostle Peter predicts in Acts 2:20: “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.”
But there's still more:
Supposed eyewitness events of the situation also note that the skies looked strange after Jesus died on the cross.This is not exactly wrong, but it's reproachably misleading. This "supposed eyewitness" account is from the Anaphora Pilati, a late work from the Pilate apocrypha cycle. J. K. Elliot thinks it is an expansion of the Letter of Pilate to Claudius, which he dates to the end of the second century. You can read it here. This account is a "Christian text," but it has zero eyewitness (or even living memory) value.“At his crucifixion the sun was darkened; the stars appeared and in all the world people lighted lamps from the sixth hour till evening; the moon appeared like blood,” notes Pontius Pilate's report of Jesus's crucifixion.
I have no view on the proposed date of the crucifixion. Most specialists seem to think that it was in 30, not 33, but we just don't know.
Enough. I didn't mean to spend so much time on this.
The darkness in Matthew's Gospel is a miraculous event, like the "walking dead" episode and, probably, the earthquake, both in the same passage. John doesn't refer to it and none of the other Gospels mention the other two. No need to look for naturalistic explanations, although one is possible for the last one.
Jerusalem Post, what happened? There is potentially a story here, but the treatment in this article is just careless.
I want to blame it on AI generated content, but the article doesn't give any indication of that. If it was actually produced by "Jerusalem Post Staff," the JP, which is usually good at articles about archaeology and history, should stop using them for those purposes and stick to named authors who know what they are talking about.
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The Easter post for 2023 is here with links. And a few loosely Easter-related posts from 2023-24 are here, here, and here.
My 2016 Easter post contains links leading to biblical and related passages concerning Easter and to correct information on the origin of the word. And this post gives biblical references for the Passion narrative.
I don't see any current stories of interest, but you can review some past Easter-related posts starting with the 2023 post and following the links back.
UPDATE (21 April): More here.
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Unruly BooksRethinking Ancient and Academic Imaginations of Religious Texts
Esther Brownsmith (Anthology Editor) , Liv Ingeborg Lied (Anthology Editor) , Marianne Bjelland Kartzow (Anthology Editor)
Hardback
£110.00£99.00Ebook (PDF)
£99.00£79.20Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
£99.00£79.20Product details
Published 23 Jan 2025
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 288
ISBN 9780567715685
Imprint T&T Clark
Dimensions 234 x 156 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury PublishingDescription
This volume explores the idea of the unruly book, from books now known by their titles alone to books that subverted structures of power and gender. The contributors show how these books functioned as “sticky” objects, and they examine the story of what such books signified to the people who wrote, read, discussed, yearned for, or even prohibited them. The books examined are those of the first millennium of the Common Era, and the writings of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and related traditions. In particular, the contributors examine the bounty of books within this period that are hard to pin down, whether extant, lost, or imagined-books that challenge modern scholars to reconceptualize our notions of books (biblical or otherwise), religion, manuscript culture, and intellectual history. Through the critical analyses presented in this volume, the contributors negotiate the diverse stories told by unruly books and show that by listening to the stories that books tell, we learn more about the worlds that imagined and discussed them.
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Parabiblica AethiopicaCross-file under Ethiopic Watch.Editiones et Studia
Edited by Jan Dochhorn[Parabiblica Aethiopica. Editiones et Studia.]
2025. IX, 211 pages.
Parabiblica (PBib) 4
Published in German.€119.00
including VATcloth
available
978-3-16-164189-3Also Available As:
eBook PDF
€119.00Summary
This volume deals with Ethiopian apocryphal/parabiblical literature. It consists of three editions and two studies. The edited texts are the Ethiopian version of the Historia de Melchisedech (ed. Jan Dochhorn), the Ethiopian version of the Revelatio Stephani (ed. Damien Labadie), and an Apocryphon about the binding of Isaac (ed. Ted Erho). The studies are devoted to the Ethiopian version of the Apocalypse of Peter (Mathew Goff) and the Andǝmta Tradition to 1 Enoch (Ralph Lee).
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As a result, the researchers found evidence connected to the production of the purple dye dating as early as 1,100 BCE and throughout the 6th century BCE. These are exactly the years in which many of the narratives included in the Bible are said to have taken place. In 586 BCE, for example, the Babylonian conquest completely destroyed the regional economy and Jerusalem’s First Temple.The underlying article has just been published in PLOS ONE, open access. It takes into account information from the most recent excavations at Shiqmona.“In the past, the assumption was that the first large-scale production facilities of purple dye were only established in Roman times, around the 1st century CE,” another author, Prof. Ayelet Gilboa from the University of Haifa, told The Times of Israel over the phone. “Tel Shiqmona offers evidence that already in the 9th century BCE, purple dye was produced at an industrial scale. It was not just one individual dyeing a garment for a king.”
Tel Shiqmona during the Iron Age: A first glimpse into an ancient Mediterranean purple dye ‘factory’I have noted previous reports on the Phoenician dye factory at Shiqmona (Shikmona) here and here. Follow the links at the latter (cf. here) for PaleoJudaica posts involving Tyrian purple dye and the Israelite telekhet dye, both made from the murex snail. For more on the early-tenth-century BCE dyed textile fragments excavated in the Timna Valley (and their implications), see here.Golan Shalvi , Naama Sukenik, Paula Waiman-Barak, Zachary C. Dunseth, Shay Bar, Sonia Pinsky, David Iluz, Zohar Amar, Ayelet Gilboa
Published: April 16, 2025
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0321082Abstract
Purple-dyed textiles, primarily woolen, were much sought after in the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean, and they adorned the powerful and wealthy. It is commonly assumed that in antiquity, purple dye—extracted from specific species of marine mollusks—was produced in large quantities and in many places around the Mediterranean. But despite numerous archaeological excavations, direct and unequivocal evidence for locales of purple-dye production remains very limited in scope. Here we present Tel Shiqmona, a small archaeological tell on Israel’s Carmel coast. It is the only site in the Near East or around the Mediterranean—indeed, in the entire world—where a sequence of purple-dye workshops has been excavated and which has clear evidence for large-scale, sustained manufacture of purple dye and dyeing in a specialized facility for half a millennium, during the Iron Age (ca. 1100–600 BCE). The number and diversity of artifacts related to purple dye manufacturing are unparalleled. The paper focuses on the various types of evidence related to purple dye production in their environmental and archaeological contexts. We utilize chemical, mineralogical and contextual analyses to connect several categories of finds, providing for the first time direct evidence of the instruments used in the purple-dye production process in the Iron Age Levant. The artifacts from Shiqmona also serve as a first benchmark for future identification of significant purple-dye production sites around the Mediterranean, especially in the Iron Age.
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The identification of the beings known as “Rephaim” in biblical and ancient Near Eastern sources has caused much bewilderment throughout the years. Biblical dictionaries and encyclopedias usually provide two main meanings for the word: (1) ghosts or shades of the dead, and (2) a mythical and ancient race of giants. These meanings are mostly derived from the mentions of the Rephaim in the Bible.This is a good brief survey of what we know about the ancient Rephaim. I noted Dr. Yogev's 2021 book on them here. I have also posted on them myself now and then, recently here, and here. Also relevant: here. And for posts on the biblical giant Og, perhaps the best-known of the Rephaim, see here and links, notably here, here, and here.[...]
This BHD essay is timely, since I will soon have something new for you about the giants, including the Rephaim. Watch this space!
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Three Harvard affiliates were awarded Guggenheim Fellowships this week, winning support for groundbreaking work in sociology, Jewish studies, and sculpture.Congratulations to all three recipients, but especially to:
Annette Yoshiko Reed, M.T.S. ’99, Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity and professor of New Testament and early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, will use the fellowship to complete a book exploring the cultural power of forgetting within Judaism, as well as a related project on Christian erasures of Jews and Judaism as epistemicide. This research will contribute to the theorization of forgetting in memory studies and Jewish studies by exploring the loss of the ancient Jewish literary heritage that was recovered during the mid-20th century with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.Professor Reed's work has been noted often at PaleoJudaica.
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What if the Earliest Extant Gospel Promotes a Form of JudaismI noted the publication of the book here.Add new comment
The reading that the Gospel of Mark’s vision of ideal practice, belief, and expectation is a form of Judaism, rather than something else, is able to better explain the full narrative of the Gospel and is fully comprehensible within the context of the first-century ancient mediterranean world.
See also The Gospel of Mark’s Judaism and the Death of Christ as Ransom for Many (Mohr Siebeck, 2025).
By John Van Maaren
University of Vienna
April 2025
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Date & Time: Apr 18, 2025 09:00 PM in [London, but you can reset to your time zone]Free, but requires registration at the link.Description: Join the Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies department at Penn State for the final lecture in the 2024/25 series “Connected Histories of the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East.”
Catherine Bonesho (UCLA) will deliver a talk entitled:
“The Rabbis' Queens: Cleopatra and Zenobia in Talmudic Literature”
Abstract:
The famous Egyptian queen Cleopatra and the Palmyrene queen Zenobia each ruled at and within the intersections of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. Polemical Roman sources like those of Cassius Dio and the Historia Augusta have loomed large in scholarship and in the public perception of the queens; however, they do not represent the only kinds of sources and approaches to the queens. Indeed, my analysis will focus on the handful of references to Zenobia and Cleopatra in the classical rabbinic texts of the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds and will emphasize the need of a large scope study that contextualizes the rabbinic passages in the rich afterlives of Cleopatra in the late antique world. Using the Palmyrene queen Zenobia as an exemplar, I show how those living under and responding to Roman rule in the third century CE and later appropriated Cleopatra and her persona. Similarly, the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud use Cleopatra’s portrait toward a variety of goals. First, they tell stories of Cleopatra’s knowledge of embryology and the human body to support certain rabbinic concepts, including resurrection and menstrual impurity. Second, they elevate and include the rabbis themselves in the famous struggle of Cleopatra versus Rome, East versus West, with the goal of further authorizing the rabbinic project itself.
Cross-file under Talmud Watch.
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An ambitious 10-day summer school program sponsored by Lausanne University and held in Venice this July. Taught in French. You pick your major and minor ancient language to study. You will struggle to come up with one that isn't covered. Follow the link for full details.
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H-Judaic is saddened to learn of the passing of Prof. Meir Lubetski (1938-2025), longtime professor of Literature and Languages at Baruch College, City University, New York.May his memory be for a blessing.Raised in Israel, Prof. Lubetski pursued his Ph.D. at New York University with Cyrus Gordon and spent his entire career at Baruch, where he focused on Biblical and Rabbinic Literature, Hebrew Language and Literature, Yiddish Language and Literature, and Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Literatures.
[...]
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Exodus instructs each family in Egypt to slaughter a paschal lamb and eat it at home, while Deuteronomy commands a community ritual, to take place at the central worship location, i.e., the Jerusalem Temple. These two conceptions cross-pollinate, first in the Torah and then in its early reception: Jubilees requires everyone to eat in the Temple as their home; the Mishnah requires everyone to slaughter together in three cohorts; most surprisingly, R. Eliezer claims that, in theory, all of Israel can share one paschal animal.
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In his classic study Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (rev. ed. 1977), A. Leo Oppenheim gave the section on religion the provocative title “Why a Mesopotamian Religion Should Not Be Written.” The reasons he adduced were of two orders. First, “the nature of the available evidence,” and second, “the problem of comprehension across the barriers of conceptual conditioning.” The same problems beset the study of Israelite religion. The nature of these difficulties is not such, however, as to render the entire venture completely impossible. On the contrary, the challenges of problematic and fragmentary evidence, on the one hand, and of the culture gap between them and us, on the other, are a stimulus to try and overcome them. ...I haven't seen the book, but this introductory statement is excellent.
Although the above is a "publication preview," according to the Yale University Press website it was published yesterday:
Israelite Religion
From Tribal Beginnings to Scribal Legacyby Karel van der Toorn
Series: The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library
432 Pages, 6.12 x 9.25 in, 40 b-w illus.
Hardcover
9780300248111
Published: Tuesday, 15 Apr 2025
$40.00eBook
9780300281620
Published: Tuesday, 15 Apr 2025
$40.00Description
A panoramic, thousand-year history of Israelite religion, from the Iron Age to the birth of Judaism, by a renowned biblical scholar
From its Iron Age beginnings to its aftermath in the Roman period, Israelite religion went through significant changes and transformations. As the Israelites responded to major historical events and political realities, their collective beliefs and practices evolved over time and developed new forms, even as earlier elements of religious culture remained an active substratum.
Weaving together biblical literature, archaeology, and comparative sources, award-winning author Karel van der Toorn tells the sweeping story of how Israelite religion evolved from a tribal cult honoring the ancestors and the “god of the fathers” to a scriptural religion practiced by an ethnic minority within the Roman Empire. He demonstrates how religion was integral to nation-building as Israel transitioned from a nomadic chiefdom to a monarchical state; how religious practices changed in response to the loss of political independence; and how in the final centuries before the Common Era, as Hellenistic culture permeated the Eastern Mediterranean, Israelite religion gave rise to a variety of reading communities committed to a body of sacred scripture, with the law of Moses at its core.
Combining literary studies, anthropology, linguistics, history, and more, this book tells the fascinating story of Israelite religion as it has never been told before.
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His daughter shared the very sad news about the passing of her father, Jack Sasson’s esteemed colleague, John Van Seters, just short of his 90th birthday.Jim and Jack Sasson on the Agade list have shared the daughter's message.
Known best for his revisionist approach to Pentateuchal research, Professor Van Seters was an influential contributor to biblical studies, especially in the latter part of the twentieth century. For more details, see his Wikipedia page here.
Reqiescat in pace.
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... What does this brief survey of figural synagogue art tell us? Foremost, and especially important today in the context of widespread efforts to detach the Jewish story from its indigenous connection to the Land of Israel, is the fact that the Jewish people continued to inhabit and prosper in the Holy Land for hundreds of years after the destruction of the Temple, even in the midst of a Christianized Roman Empire. In addition, there is the realization that Judaism has survived over the centuries because of its ability to balance Jewish particularism with the pressures of external cultures and religions.It is a good survey - of ancient synagogue art in the Land of Israel and the Diaspora, with some attention to some early modern Eastern European traditions too.
For the remarkable discoveries at Huqoq, not least those synagogues and their mosaics, see here and follow the many links. For many PaleoJudaica posts on other ancient synagogues in Israel, see here and links. For the question of pagan imagery in late-antique synagogues, see here and links. For many posts on the Dura-Europos synagogue and its decorative art, see here and links.
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A new study uses digital tools to analyze nearly 1,000 Syriac manuscripts from the British Library, focusing on how scribes and editors selected and rearranged parts of texts—a practice known as excerpting. Researcher Noam Maeir introduces a new measurement called Excerpts Per Manuscript (EPM) to track how often this happened. This approach reveals that the people who copied and compiled these manuscripts were not just preserving texts—they were actively shaping what future generations would read and remember.Manuscripts were expensive to copy! Sometimes scribes would just copy favorite passages, even compiling passages from different works into one new manuscript.[...]
Studying excerpting practices in the abundant Syriac manuscript tradition is bound to be illuminating. The digitization of Wright's nineteenth-century catalogue of the Syriac manuscripts in the British Library made the research possible.
The analysis in the article is of Wright's catalogue, not the manuscripts themselves, and it depends on his work for its accuracy. This could be made clearer in both the Phys.Org article and the PLOS ONE abstract. The technical article describes the methodology in detail.
AI isn't up to anything like identifying excertps from other works in a collection of exotic-language ancient and medieval manuscripts. We still need human researchers for that. I suspect it will be quite a while before that changes. Whether LLM AI will ever be up to it remains to be seen.
The underlying article at PLOS ONE is open access:
Material philology and Syriac excerpting practices: A computational-quantitative study of the digitized catalog of the Syriac manuscripts in the British LibraryNoam Maeir
Published: March 31, 2025
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320265Abstract
This study explores the literary practice of excerpting in Syriac manuscripts through a computational-quantitative analysis, contributing to the emerging field of Syriac material philology. The primary objective is to offer a “big picture” charting of Syriac excerpting as a non-authorial literary practice. Using digitized data from the British Library’s Syriac manuscript collection, the study analyzes nearly 20,000 excerpts, introducing the Excerpts Per Manuscript (EPM) metric to quantify and compare excerpting practices across manuscripts. The results reveal that most manuscripts contain fewer than 20 excerpts, but a small number show much higher levels of excerpting, highlighting the immense intellectual and literary activities implicated in their production. These high-EPM manuscripts appear across multiple genres, indicating that excerpting was a widespread and essential cultural activity rather than confined to specific literary types.
The study also finds that manuscripts with the highest EPM values are concentrated between the 6th and 9th centuries CE, corresponding with a period of intense literary compilation in late antiquity. This pattern reflects the importance of excerpting in knowledge organization, aligning with broader trends in the canonization of texts within Christian, Jewish, and Greco-Roman traditions. The research emphasizes the limitations of earlier cataloging approaches, which obscure non-authorial practices by focusing on authors and texts. By reorienting data through computational analysis, the study provides new insights into the role of excerpting in Syriac manuscript culture. This approach demonstrates the value of digital tools in material philology, uncovering patterns that bridge genres and timeframes, and identifying high-EPM manuscripts as key sites of intellectual and cultural activity in the Syriac literary tradition.
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John Van MaarenThe Gospel of Mark's Judaism and the Death of Christ as Ransom for Many
[Das Judentum des Markusevangeliums und der Tod Christi als Lösegeld für viele.] 2025. XVII, 293 pages.
Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament (WUNT I) 534€134.00
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Until recently, there has been a near consensus that the Gospel of Mark is an expression of a Gentile, post-Jewish, form of Christ adherence. In his book, John Van Maaren challenges the notion of »Gentile Mark« by developing the first narrative-wide reading of the Gospel as an expression of first-century Judaism. He consolidates insights from scattered studies and proposes new interpretations of specific texts and broader themes. He aims to lay the foundation for resituating the earliest extant account of Jesus within the history of early Christ-followers and first-century Judaism, re-examining the place of the law, the nations, the death of Jesus, and the expected kingdom of God.
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It’s a nice moment when you receive the first copies of a book you’ve written. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of opening the box of authors’ copies of Working with Manuscripts, written together with my colleague Liv Ingeborg Lied.Full details:[...]
Working with ManuscriptsThe formal publication date is tomorrow. Congratulations to both authors!
A Guide for Textual Scholarsby Liv Ingeborg Lied and Brent Nongbri
192 Pages, 5.50 x 8.50 in, 17 b-w illus.
Paperback
9780300264425
Published: Tuesday, 15 Apr 2025
$25.00eBook
9780300281477
Published: Tuesday, 15 Apr 2025
$25.00Hardcover
9780300264432
Published: Tuesday, 15 Apr 2025
$85.00Description
A first-of-its-kind handbook outlining best practices and common pitfalls for students and textual scholars interested in beginning to work with manuscripts
While manuscripts are rare in most of the world today, they were once ubiquitous. Before the printing press, literature was preserved and transmitted through handwritten copies containing variant readings, mistakes, corrections, and other unique features. Those who study premodern texts, however, often use as their primary sources not these diverse artifacts but critical editions that present a single convenient hybrid text.
Brent Nongbri and Liv Ingeborg Lied argue that knowledge of manuscripts is important for all interpreters of ancient texts, even if learning how to study them can be confusing and intimidating. In this book they draw on their decades of experience with Jewish and Christian manuscripts to demystify manuscript work. Combining their interests in manuscripts as material artifacts with the ethical issues surrounding the study of manuscripts, Lied and Nongbri guide students through the main phases of research, from considerations of provenance and access to the practicalities of on-site research, analysis, and publication. The book includes aids for locating manuscripts, helpful case studies, tips for organizing data, a glossary, suggestions for further reading, and more.
Written in an engaging style with students in mind, this handbook provides an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to study a manuscript for the first time.
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In my own personal study of Isaiah, I’ve come across a less known and less studied Dead Sea Scroll, 4QIsao (4Q68), that preserves some insightful, even peculiar details. It dates paleographically to 100-50 BC which makes it a little younger than the more popular 1QIsaa.Technical details follow, with a summary at the end of the post.[...]
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Author Response | Neis, When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven (Rafael Rachel Neis).
In the panel itself I began by asking those gathered to something a little different, something embodied and experimental.I noted the earlier essays in the series here and links.
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Ritual and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near EastEdited by Tzvi Abusch, Alan Lenzi and Jeffrey Stackert
[Ritual und Gesetz in der Hebräischen Bibel und im Alten Orient.]
2024. VIII, 265 pages.
Forschungen zum Alten Testament (FAT) 184€129.00
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€129.00Summary
The authors of this volume celebrate the contributions of David P. Wright to the fields of biblical studies and ancient Near Eastern studies. They place particular focus on topics of ritual and law, the major concerns of Wright's scholarship. The studies included deal with various texts and issues in the Hebrew Bible, Mesopotamian texts and material culture, Hittite cultic ritual, and comparative mythology.
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Last year's Passover post is here, with links. Subsequent Passover-related posts are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
UPDATE (21 April): More here.
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The Evolution of Jewish Monotheism
‘God is One,’ From Antiquity to ModernityAUTHOR: David Michael Grossberg, Cornell University, New York
DATE PUBLISHED: February 2025
AVAILABILITY: Available
FORMAT: Hardback
ISBN: 9781009569194£ 90.00
HardbackOther available formats:
Adobe eBook ReaderDescription
In this book, David Michael Grossberg offers a fresh and illuminating perspective on the three-thousand-year history of Jewish monotheism by narrating the history of 'God is one' as a religious slogan from the ancient to the modern world. Although 'God is one' has been called Judaism's primary testimony of faith, its meaning has been obscure and contentious from its earliest emergence. From the Bible's acclamatory 'the Lord is one' to Philo of Alexandria's highest Word just secondary to God; from the Talmud's rejection of 'two powers in heaven' to the philosophers' First Existent who is one beyond unity; from the Kabbalists' ten-fold Godhead to Spinoza's one substance, this innovative history demonstrates the remarkable diversity encompassed by this deceptively simple Jewish statement of faith. Grossberg demonstrates how this diversity is unified in a continuous striving for knowledge of God that has been at the heart of Judaism from its earliest beginnings.
- Presents a compelling narrative of the emergence of the expression 'God is one' in Greek in the classical and Hellenistic periods.
- Critically reexamines the scholarly controversy on “monotheism” as a pre-modern category by concentrating instead on the expression 'God is one' itself in historical usage
- Offers to scholars an innovative history of monotheism and to the non-specialist an accessible narrative of Judaism's three thousand year theological development
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Tony Burke is on research sabbatical for the 2024-25 academic year at the University of Regensburg in Germany.
This post includes concerts in Munich and Glasgow, Pilate's apocryphal uneasy resting place in (according to local legend) Lucerne, and Tony's lecture at the University of Glasgow on paratextual features in the Greek manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
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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As BAR’s Design Director for almost its entire history, I have been involved with the design of nearly every cover of every issue of the magazine—not to mention its sister publications, Bible Review and Archaeology Odyssey. Altogether, that makes more than 500 covers!For more on Biblical Archaeology Review's fiftieth anniversary, see here.From the beginning, we wanted to create covers that dramatically presented the amazing artistic, architectural, and cultural accomplishments of the peoples described in the Bible, with impressive images and provocative commentary. It is hard to pick favorites, but here I have selected a dozen, arranged chronologically—in my opinion the best examples of the types of covers that have made BAR so successful for so many years.
[...]
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This is a guide for reading ethnographic passages in Josephos (Flavius Josephus) on this website roughly sequentially:For more on the Ethnic Relations and Migrations blog, see here and here and links.
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Is “kingdom” in Biblical Hebrew, מַמְלָכָה mamlakha or מַלְכוּת malkhut? How does the Bible express that something is prohibited? Many linguistic scholars posit that it depends on the dialect, CBH or LBH. Does statistical analysis support this conclusion?Building on the work of scholars such as the late Avi Hurvitz.
Some PaleoJudaica posts on the vexed question of linguistic dating of biblical Hebrew are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
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With so many ancient texts around the world, you might wonder which alphabet was the first to be developed. In other words, what is the oldest confirmed alphabet in the world?PaleoJudaica has already posted on this story here, here, and here. This article notes responses from additional specialists. The mood still seems to be cautious.Experts told Live Science it was probably the proto-Sinaitic script, which was invented about 4,000 years ago by Canaanite workers at an Egyptian turquoise mine in the Sinai region. The proto-Sinaitic script developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which, in turn, inspired the early Hebrew, Greek and Roman alphabets.
However, a November 2024 discovery by researchers at Johns Hopkins University suggested that an alphabetic script was being used hundreds of years earlier, in what is now northern Syria. Their evidence is four clay cylinders, each about as long as a finger, from a Bronze Age tomb at Umm el-Marra, near Aleppo.
[...]
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I have noted other posts in the series here and links.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Part 1: Akhetaten, Egypt’s Ancient Capital: Records of Ancient Diplomacy
A cache of over 380 cuneiform tablets, written in Akkadian, the ancient international language, sheds light on the political realities of the Levant in late 14th century, more than 100 years before the appearance of Israel.Part 2: Suppiluliuma I of Hatti: Pharaoh’s “Brother” and Rival
Located in eastern Turkey, the kingdom of the Hittites competed with Egypt for control of Amurru and Mittani in modern-day Lebanon and Syria.Part 3: Kadashman-Enlil I of Babylon Feels Disrespected by Amunhotep III
The Kassite king of Babylonia accuses the pharaoh of insulting his sister, whom he had taken as a wife, and of sending him diluted gold.Part 4: Pharaoh and His Vassals in Canaan
Canaanite kings, such as Abimilki of Tyre, write to Pharaoh to ask for help and complain about rivals. Notable is Aziru, king of Amurru, who abandons his loyalty to Egypt in favor of the Hittites.Part 5: The ‘Apiru and Labʾayu Ruler of Shechem
Abdi–Ḫeba of Jerusalem, among other Canaanite rules, appeal to Pharaoh for help against the ‘Apiru, who are destroying towns. Some local rulers are even accused of being in league with the ‘Apiru, the most colorful and notorious of which was Labʾayu of Shechem.Part 6: Scribes: The Diplomats of the Amarna-Age
The Amarna letters are presented in the voice of various kings, but they are actually literary creations crafted by professional scribes who employ wordplay, parallelism, and other rhetorical techniques to make their patrons' messages as persuasive as possible.Part 7: The Scribal Team of Rib-Hadda of Byblos
As king of an important port city, Rib-Hadda employed at least ten scribes, who were trained in a certain rhetorical style, some of whom travelled with him north to Ṣumer and south to Beirut.Part 8: King Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem Commissions a Syrian Scribe
In the earliest texts from Jerusalem, dating to the 14th century B.C.E., the royal scribe peppers his Akkadian letters with Canaanite forms and expressions to defend Abdi-Heba against accusations of disloyal to the pharaoh.
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We’re pleased to announce that we have just updated the Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects, the first of many to come in the framework of the new Coptic Magical Formularies project.The new magical texts include Christian Apocrypha-like material on the Four Magi (yes, four), the birth of Jesus, and the Virign Mary.
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A brief overview of the different implications of the two terms.
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Rather than trying to amass oceans of scientific papers listing self-evident results and futile findings, instead of inserting AI and unnecessary technologies into the most human of activities, like teaching, universities and research institutions should value and support their people (something that, nowadays, happens more and more rarely) and be especially inclusive of the ones among them who are able to think outside the box, to go the extra mile towards the achievement of what is believed to be unattainable or, simply, impossible – like the decipherment of undeciphered writing systems.I agree with all of the above, not least the reservations about AI matching human creativity in the foreseeable future.There’s no question that challenges remain. Linear A, the Phaistos Disc, the Indus Valley script, the Rongorongo writing system, the Singapore Stone and many other mysteries still await their codebreakers. Their decipherment seems unlikely – especially for scripts with very few surviving texts – but so too did the breakthroughs in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Linear B.
This long article has a good discussion of the challenges of deciphering lost languages, a challenge that is more difficult today because most of the remaining lost-language remnants survive in such sparse samples. It also includes detailed accounts of Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian hierogyphics and Ventris's decipherment of Linear B.
The headline mentions the decipherment of cuneiform, but the article says little about it. For more, see here, here and (especially) here.
For a test-case of AI decipherment from some years ago, using Ugaritic, see here and here. For more comments on the use of AI for various aspects of ancient language decipherment and analysis, see here, here (especially), here, and here.
For the importance of the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian and cuneiform languages, see my post Why we need Akkadian (and the humanities!), again from some years ago, but still relevant. See also here.
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