Peterson, Qoheleth and the Philosophy of Value (CUP)

NEW BOOK FROM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Qoheleth and the Philosophy of Value

Author: Jesse M. Peterson , George Fox University
Published: July 2025
Availability: Available
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 9781009513258

£85.00 GBP
Hardback

£85.00 USD
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Description

The book of Ecclesiastes is the Bible's problem child. Its probing doubts, dark ruminations, self- reflexive dialogues, and unflinching observations have simultaneously puzzled and fascinated readers for over two millennia. Some read the book's message as hopelessly pessimistic, while others regard the text as too contradictory to bear any consistent message at all. In this study, Jesse Peterson offers a coherent portrait of the book and its author-the early Jewish sage known as Qoheleth-by examining both through a philosophical lens. Drawing from relevant contemporary philosophical literature on meaning in life, death, well-being, and enjoyment, Peterson outlines a clear and compelling portrait of Qoheleth and his philosophical assumptions about what is good and bad in the human experience. As Peterson argues, Qoheleth's grievances concerning the pursuit of meaning in life are paired with a genuine affirmation of life's value and the possibility of a joy-filled existence.

• Provides original translation and interpretation for many of the book's most central passages
• Sets the book of Ecclesiastes in dialogue with contemporary philosophies of value
• Presents a comprehensive understanding of Qoheleth's system of values

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A wildfire at Tel Araj (Bethsaida?)

BLAZING ARCHAEOLOGY: Wildfire Unveils Lost Biblical Village of Bethsaida. The fire that scorched the Betiha nature reserve exposed mounds all over el-Araj: These were the homes of Bethsaida, archaeologists say. And there was a public building too (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

A wildfire along the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee in late July endangered bathers, shut down Highway 87 in both directions, and as the lakeside vegetation burned to a crisp, unveiled the missing town of Bethsaida.

It isn't that the ancient homes had been covered with foliage, only to be suddenly revealed as 2,000-year-old stone walls when the flames engulfed them. The village from the time of Jesus was – and remains – buried in the sands of time, and now ash as well.

But bared by the conflagration that consumed the Betiha Nature Reserve, small mounds are now exposed, scattered all over the archaeological site of el-Araj, sprawling over hundreds of meters.

[...]

It sounds like no one was injured by this fire, which is good.

I have been following the debate over the original site of New Testament Bethsaida for some years. The other contender is nearby et-Tell/e-Tel. So far, the evidence seems to me to be weighing in favor of el-Araj. But I am not an archaeologist, and I haven't seen a defense recently from the et-Tell proponents. For past posts on the two sites and the debate, start here and follow the links.

Once again, a fire spared church ruins. The current article attributes the el-Araj fire to careless cigarette disposal. It's worth noting that wildfires are not always caused by deliberate arson. As I've said before, I don't know what caused the Tabyeh fire. I haven't seen any updates on the question.

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Hugoye 28.1 (2025)

A NEW ISSUE: Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 28.1 (2025).

Note in particular:

More Readings from 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch in the Konat Collection
By Florian Neitmann and Liv Ingeborg Lied
Source: Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 28.1 (2025): 155-180.
URI: https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv28n1neitmann-lied

ABSTRACT

This article presents three liturgical manuscripts containing passages from 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch which have thus far been overlooked in the scholarship on these two books. The study begins with a summary of the previous history of scholarship on Syriac lectionaries containing readings from 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. This is followed by a description of the three manuscripts, all three of which are preserved in the Konat Collection in Pampakuda, Kerala (India). One of them, Ms. 208, is a lectionary, while the two others, Mss. 91 and 354, are lectionary indices. They were produced in the years 1892– 94, which shows that the reception of readings from 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch in Syriac liturgical manuscripts continued for much longer than previously thought. This continued reception was enabled by the faithful preservation of— and engagement with—the lectionary Ms. 77 in the Konat Collection, which, as argued in this article, is the source of the three nineteenth-century manuscripts preserved in the same collection.

This brings the liturgical citation of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch as scripture up to the end of the nineteenth century, adding another 500 years to their Syriac reception history. That is not to say that the scribes had access to the full books in Syriac. One of the manuscripts notes that the Ezra quote is not in the current printed Syriac Old Testament.

Hugoye is a high-quality, peer-review, open-access journal, which I should keep better track of. I last noted volume 25 (2022) (2021) here. And for more, follow the links from there. Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

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Sexy kissing in the Bible

OSCULAR HISTORY: When did lovers start kissing in ancient Israel? A new study looks to the Bible for clues. Research based on textual analysis traces the rise of ancient Israelites’ snogging to post-exilic times, likely influenced by Babylonian culture (Rossella Tercatin, Times of Israel).

Intimate kissing only became prevalent in Ancient Israel after the Babylonian exile, or in the 6th century BCE, a recent study based on biblical textual analysis has suggested.

[...]

The underlying article is published in JBL, behind a subscription wall:

A History of Kissing in Ancient Israel: Evidence from the Hebrew Bible

Rachelle Gilmour

Journal of Biblical Literature (2025) 144 (1): 21–41.
https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1441.2025.2

Abstract

In this article I investigate when sexual mouth-to-mouth kissing was introduced and rose in prevalence in ancient Israel. Anthropological research shows that the practice of kissing is not universal across cultures, and it is thought to be transmitted to social groups through cultural contact. The presence of kissing in a culture often correlates with social stratification and political centralization. In conversation with these broader findings, and with a focus on textual evidence, I will examine sexual kissing in ancient Israel to evaluate whether there is diachronic change in the absence and presence of sexual kissing in biblical texts. In light of the limited evidence, and difficulties in textual dating, I will consider a range of factors, including texts where sexual kissing is expected but not present, and linguistic phenomena related to the formulations of non-sexual kissing. I will conclude that mouth-to-mouth sexual kissing is evidenced in the postexilic period, with a further argument that the practice was introduced to ancient Israel or rose in prevalence around the sixth century BCE.

As both articles note, the evidence is very limited and some of the argument is inevitably from silence. But this sounds like a good effort to collect all the evidence and draw what conclusions can reasonably be drawn from it.

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Jenkins on The First Discovery Of The Lost Scriptures

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: The First Discovery Of The Lost Scriptures (Philip Jenkins).

Some years back, I published a lot at this site on the general subject of Alternative Scriptures, and their rediscovery in modern times. I found a lot to say that was new and counter-intuitive, and the whole subject really cried out to be a book. At the time, I was focused on other topics, but my recent work on the 1890s really makes me think that the time has come to develop that. I will use my next couple of posts to expand on those ideas, but at every point, I will be harking back to those original posts with their extensive quotations, bibliographies and so on, and it would be helpful to follow those links as you go What follows here will be a bare bones summary.

[...]

This bare bones summary is a long and salutary reminder that a number of formerly lost apocryphal scriptures had come to the attention of scholars and the public even back in the nineteenth century and certainly by the early twentieth. Long before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Coptic Gnostic Library and the Dead Sea Scrolls. For early Christianity, notably the Pistis Sophia and the Greek fragments of the at-the-time unidentified Gospel of Thomas. For the Old Testament, notably the texts collected by Charles in his Pseudepigrapha volume.

Such collections go back much earlier, of course. Johann Albert Fabricius published the foundational volumes of apocryphal scriptures in the early 1700s. But either side of the turn of the twentieth century was another period of considerable activity.

I look forward to hearing more about Professor Jenkins's work on this new book.

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On those ten not-so-lost tribes

PROF. MARY-JOAN LEITH: The Ten Lost Tribes: A Myth to Delegitimize the Samarians (TheTorah.com).

The book of Kings recounts how all Ten Tribes were exiled by the Assyrians and replaced by foreigners, and Ezra–Nehemiah rejects them as non-Israelites. Yet other biblical and Second Temple texts, along with the archaeological record, show that northern Israelites continued to live in Samaria well into the Second Temple period. Far from vanishing, the northern tribes maintained a temple and priesthood that cooperated with their southern neighbors and played a role in shaping the Pentateuch.

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Operation "Rising Lion" and Balaam's oracle

THAT'S IN THE BIBLE: 'Rising Lion': How an Ancient Blessing Became Modern Israel's Battle Cry. The 12-day war between Iran and Israel was dubbed Am KeLavi in Hebrew, an example of linguistic archaeology in action (Ariel David, Haaretz).

The name Am KeLavi derives from Numbers 23:24, where the prophet Balaam declares: "הן עם כלביא יקום ומצא כליש ישתה" ("Behold, a people rises like a lion, and lifts itself up like a young lion"). ...

The operation's name illustrates Hebrew's unique capacity to collapse temporal boundaries. Languages typically evolve through gradual change, with ancient vocabulary becoming archaic and eventually unintelligible. Hebrew's peculiar history – its suspension as a spoken language for nearly 17 centuries followed by systematic revival – created different possibilities. Contemporary Hebrew speakers can employ biblical vocabulary with the same immediacy their ancestors used, creating what linguists call "synchronic archaism" – the use of genuinely ancient language in thoroughly modern contexts.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the Balaam inscription from Tel Deir 'Alla (Deir Alla), see here and links.

Balaam's biblical oracles have been influential. For use in the Dead Sea Scrolls, see here. For Balaam's influence generally in antiquity, see here. And the star that the magi followed to Bethlehem in the Gospel of Matthew arguably arose (so to speak) from a midrashic intepretation of Balaam's oracle in Numbers 24:17, "A star shall come forth (or *"rise") out of Jacob." See here and links, plus here, and here.

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200K visitors to Reagan Library's DSS exhibit

EXHIBITION: Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in Ventura County welcomes 200,000th visitor (Lance Orozco, KCLU).

The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition opened at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley last November and will close on September 2. It’s the first time the scrolls have been in the U.S. in more than a decade.

The Dead Sea Scrolls always draw a lot of visitors.

For PaleoJudaica posts on this exibition, start here and follow the links.

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Candido, Studies on the Old Latin of the Book of Esther (Peeters)

NEW BOOK FROM PEETERS PRESS:

Studies on the Old Latin of the Book of Esther

SERIES:
Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology, 102.2

AUTHOR:
Candido D.

PRICE: 65 euro

YEAR: 2025
ISBN: 9789042955233
PAGES: VI-170 p.

SUMMARY:

The book of Esther is a kind of ‘laboratory’ for the study of the Textual Criticism of the Old Testament because of the diversity and complexity of its ancient textual witnesses. This volume complements the Synopsis of the Book of Esther (CBET 102.1), which presents a parallel comparison between the Masoretic Text, the Old Greek, the Alpha Text, the Old Latin, the Vulgate and Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities. Referring to the readings highlighted in the synopsis, the essays in this volume focus on the Old Latin in order to show its distinctive features and its role in the history of the transmission of the book of Esther.

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"What is a god ..." series

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY has been running an informative series by Michael B. Hundley on what a god is in the ancient Near East. I noted the first essay here, then lost track of the series. The remaining essays are as follows:

What is a God in the Hebrew Bible? Part I: The Divine Cast of Characters

What is a God in the Hebrew Bible? Part 2: Characteristics and Hierarchy

From Monolatry to Monotheism: The Changing Face of the Biblical Pantheon

This series is a thoughtful and wide-ranging account of divinities in the ancient Near East and in the Hebrew Bible. Well worth the read.

The series ends with the New Testament period. There's more to say about the development of divinities in the Second Temple era. Notably, there is the origin of demons as the disembodied spirits of the giants killed in Noah's Flood. These giants in turn were the hybrid divine-human offspring of the mating of the angelic Watchers with human women (cf. Genesis 6:1-4 and the story in the Book of Watchers in 1 Enoch 1-36).

The category of fallen angels, such as the Watchers (also cf., e.g., Matthew 25:41, Revelation 12:4, 7), is a different one from the demons.

I discuss the Watchers-giants-demons tradition in detail in my article introducing the ancient Book of Giants, published in MOTP2 and reprinted online here. And for some addition informed speculation about the use of ancient Near Eastern divinity traditions (about Baal) in this late period, see here.

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People re-inhabited post-eruption Vesuvius

VESUVIUS WATCH: Life After Vesuvius: Archaeologists Uncover Post-eruption Return to Pompeii. The ancient Romans attempted to rebuild after the disaster of 79 C.E., and continued to eke out a post-apocalyptic living among the ruins of Pompeii for centuries, archaeological finds show (Ariel David, Times of Israel).

In the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E., the once-bustling city of Pompeii was a smoldering landscape of ash covering wrecked buildings and decomposing corpses. But life, as the saying goes, found a way.

Either by choice or because they had nowhere else to go, people returned and continued to live for at least four centuries among the ruins of Pompeii, Italian archaeologists say. A new dig at the magnificently preserved Roman site has uncovered evidence of this post-eruption existence, showing that Pompeii never went near its former grandeur, but also didn't completely disappear.

[...]

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and its destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and, notably, on the efforts to reconstruct and decipher the carbonized library at Herculaneum, start here and follow the links. For posts that are more archaeology and history related, see here and links.

For more research on the survivors of the eruption, see here and here.

The 1946th anniversary of the eruption of Vesuvius will be on 26th August 2025. For more on Pliny the Elder's daring rescue mission, which may have cut the death toll at Pompeii by as much as half, see there and here and links.

For evidence for a Jewish presence at ancient Pompeii, see here and follow the links.

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Deuteronomy's antecedents and influences

PROF. TAMAR KAMIONKOWSKI: Deuteronomy: Canonizing Interpretation (TheTorah.com).

Deuteronomy describes itself as the words of Moses expounding upon revelation. At the same time, it commands that all Israelites—including the king—learn Moses’ words exactly and never add to or subtract from them, even though Deuteronomy itself reworks earlier texts such as the Covenant Collection in Exodus. Despite this attempt to establish final authority, Deuteronomy undergoes the same process it models: it is combined with other texts and reinterpreted by later works such as Ezra–Nehemiah.

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Zoom course: The Land of Israel in the Religious Imagination

MICHAEL L. SATLOW: The Land of Israel in the Religious Imagination.

This fall I will be teaching the course “The Land of Israel in the Religious Imagination: From Antiquity to the Present” as a continuing education course. It is open to all and will have a hybrid format. You can attend in person in Providence or over Zoom from elsewhere. It is open to all. To register, follow the instructions on the flyer.

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Tu B'Av 2025, belatedly

THE FESTIVAL OF TU B'AV was on the 8th-9th of August this year. Best wishes to all those who celebrated.

Tu B'Av (which just means the 15th day of the month of Av) is an ancient matchmaking festival. Its first mention is in the Mishnah (Ta’anit 4). It has been revived in recent years as a kind of Jewish Valentine's Day.

For past posts on it, see here and links.

Excuse my tardiness. The holiday overlapped with birthday celebrations and I was distracted.

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Leung Lai, Ecclesiastes (SBL)

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

Ecclesiastes
Barbara M. Leung Lai

ISBN 9781914490484
Status Available
Publication Date October 2024
Hardback $70.00

For readers of Ecclesiastes, the first impressions of the book can be perplexing, paradoxical, elusive and pessimistic. First-time readers may be discouraged to engage in understanding this difficult and strange book. Yet, against our collective lived experience under the sun, there are others who find this book ‘on the meaning of life’ exceptionally intriguing and inviting. The ‘search’ for a fitting reading strategy to unpack the complexity of the book; and a logical structure amidst the fragmented, thinking-out-loud mode of expressions presents a great challenge to all commentators.

To address these challenges, this commentary distinguishes itself on three grounds. First, Barbara Leung Lai intentionally hammers out a five-fold interconnected perspectival reading strategy toward interpretation: as a ‘Grand Narrative’ of all humanity; as a multi-voiced book; as a dialectic composition; as an enriched whole through reading ‘cross the grains’; and as a ‘memoir’. This approach to reading Ecclesiastes opens an expanded window of perception toward interpretation.

Second, she foregrounds the five identifiable voices embedded in this polyphony: i.e. the voice of the narrator, the ‘I’-voice of the Preacher/Qohelet, Qohelet’s ‘inner voice’, the collective voice of wisdom, and the voice of the epilogist. The result of this innovative task provides for us a comprehensive, sensible, and cohesive analytical outline demonstrating the trajectory of the flow of thought within the twelve chapters.

Third, in keeping with the objective of the Readings series (for first-time commentary readers of Ecclesiastes), Leung Lai invites all readers to read and practise hearing this polyphonic text self-engagingly. Be encouraged and empowered to develop our own readerly interpretive voice.

In terms of the originality of its five-fold approach to reading and its structural outline based on multi-voice analysis, this commentary is a groundbreaking endeavour—a fresh and invigorating read for all readers.

SBL Press is the North American distributor for Sheffield Phoenix Press. Customers outside of North America can purchase this book directly from Sheffield Phoenix by clicking here.

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