Syfox, Constructing Femininity in the Book of Jubilees (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Constructing Femininity in the Book of Jubilees

Series: Biblical Interpretation Series, Volume: 230

Author: Chontel Syfox

A striking feature of the book of Jubilees is the visibility it gives to women in comparison to Genesis, with the matriarchs especially seeming to play an outsized role in the rewriting. Utilising approaches drawn from the fields of gender and feminist studies, Constructing Femininity in the Book of Jubilees interrogates the motives and priorities that guided the rewriter in his re-presentation of the matriarchs, asking to what extent the treatment of these characters was unique to this text and its author’s attitude towards women or typical of the then literary Zeitgeist.

Copyright Year: 2025

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-73483-8
Publication: 21 Jul 2025
EUR €109.00

Hardback
Availability: Not Yet Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-73482-1
Publication: 24 Jul 2025
EUR €109.00

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The history of Paradise

HORTICULTURAL PHILOLOGY: Almost unimaginable beauty and opulence: the paradise pleasure gardens of ancient Persia (Peter Edwell, The Conversation). HT Rogue Classicism

Some of the most enduring ancient myths in the Persian world were centred around gardens of almost unimaginable beauty and opulence.

The biblical Garden of Eden and the Epic of Gilgamesh’s Garden of the Gods are prominent examples. In these myths, paradise was an opulent garden of tranquillity and abundance.

But how did this concept of paradise originate? And what did these beautiful gardens look and feel like in antiquity?

[...]

The subject is near to my heart, so I will comment a bit.

The Garden of the Gods in the Epic of Gilgamesh doesn't have any direct linguistic connection to the much later Persian paradise gardens.

The Garden of Eden is called paradeisos in the ancient Greek translation of Genesis (the Septuagint). The Greek work is an attempt at transcribing the Persian word.

An Aramaic transcription of the word also appears in the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 28:3) referring to a place to the far east containing "the tree of wisdom," from which Adam and Eve ate. In other word, the Garden of Eden again.

In the Talmud there is a story, the story of the Four Who Entered Paradise, in which four Tannaitic rabbis enter the "pardes" (same Persian word in Hebrew transcription) and three of them come to a bad end. There is debate about whether the use of pardes is metaphorical or mystical, The Jewish Hekhalot mystical literature retells the story and elsewhere uses the word to refer unambiguously to the the celestial Garden of Eden.

Even as far back as the Second Temple period, the Garden of Eden sometimes received a mystical, celestial locus (notably 1QHodayot^a 16.4-26).

Some PaleoJudaica posts on the term paradise and its biblical and Jewish connections are here, here, here, and here. For posts on the story of the Four Who Entered Paradise, start here and links, notably here.

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They thought the Shroud of Turin was fake in the Middle Ages too

CONTROVERSIAL MATERIAL CULTURE: Newly uncovered medieval document adds evidence that Shroud of Turin is fake. Medieval theologian Nicole Oresme claims Shroud is deception by ‘clergy men’ (Vishwam Sankaran, The Independent). HT Archaeologica News.

A newly uncovered medieval document is the earliest known to suggest that the Shroud of Turin, widely believed to have been used to wrap Jesus’ crucified body, is not authentic.

The findings, published in the Journal of Medieval History, add evidence that even in the Middle Ages, people knew that the Shroud was fake.

[...]

The underlying article is open-access:

A New Document on the Appearance of the Shroud of Turin from Nicole Oresme: Fighting False Relics and False Rumours in the Fourteenth Century
Nicolas Sarzeaud
Received 27 Nov 2024, Accepted 01 Feb 2025, Published online: 28 Aug 2025
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2025.2546884

ABSTRACT

For over a century, the debate surrounding the appearance of the Shroud of Turin has revolved around documents produced in Champagne in 1389–1390, when this now-controversial relic was already caught up in a polemic between supporters and detractors of its cult. This article is the result of the discovery of a new, older source: in a treatise on unexplained phenomena (mirabilia) dated between 1355–82, the Norman scholar Nicole Oresme (d. 1382) refers to the Shroud as a ‘patent’ example of clerical fraud, prompting him to be more broadly suspicious of the word of ecclesiastics. After showing how this new document sheds light on the case for the Shroud’s appearance in Lirey in Champagne, and confirming the thesis corroborated by other fourteenth-century sources that the Shroud is a medieval artifact, the article uses the example of the Shroud to interrogate the role assumed by scholars of the period as verifiers of dubious opinions, and the methods they used.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the Shroud of Turin, some of which note arguments in favor of or against its authenticity, start here and follow the links. The vast majority of scholarship views it as a medieval forgery.

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Forgetting about the rediscovered lost gospels

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: The Rediscovery, And Re-Forgetting, Of The Lost Gospels (Philip Jenkins).

To return to a question I have raised here before. Given this profusion of sources and speculation that was already circulating by 1910 or so, it really is amazing that later generations were so amazed and entranced by the new outpouring of Gnostic- and heresy-related material (and new gospels) from the 1970s onward. It was almost as if the Lost Gospels were lost and forgotten once again. What on earth was happening?

Perhaps amnesia really is an integral part of the popularization of scholarship.

There is nothing new under the sun. That's in the Bible.

For lots more on those increasingly not-so-lost gospels, see here and links.

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Chilton on Aramaic Jesus

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Aramaic and the Making of the Gospels

Recent discoveries of first-century Aramaic texts and advances in linguistic analysis have revolutionized the study of the New Testament. By tracing transliterations, reconstructing possible Aramaic antecedents, and comparing themes with contemporary Jewish Aramaic literature, we see that the Gospels reflect diverse oral traditions shaped by both Aramaic and Greek cultural contexts. Rather than pointing to a single “Aramaic Jesus,” the evidence reveals multiple streams of memory and identity that influenced how Jesus was remembered and written into history.

See also Aramaic Jesus: Tradition, Identity, and Christianity’s Mother Tongue (Baylor University Press, 2025; use promo code 17PROMO for a discount).

See also Writings of Bruce Chilton.

By Bruce Chilton
Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion
Bard College
August 2025

The elusive Aramaic Jesus remains an object of fascination.

Cross-file under Forthcoming Book and Aramaic Watch.

There are many relevant PaleoJudaica posts. Some highlights are here, here (and links), here, here, here, and here. Some of the embedded links have evaporated, but there are lots of others to follow.

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

Carvalho on Portier-Young, The Prophetic Body

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW continues its review series on Anathea Portier-Young’s The Prophetic Body: Embodiment and Mediation in Biblical Prophetic Literature with an essay by Corrine Carvalho:

Whose Body Is It Anyway: A Response to The Prophetic Body

As I have written these descriptions, however, I remain conflicted about whose embodiment we are talking about with prophetic collections. I do not accept that we are describing the embodiment of historical people identified as prophets. These figures function as characters in their texts. So, if they are characters who may or may not replicate the experiences of a tangible historical person, then do they have a body? Are their imagined or projected bodies actual bodies that can be psychoanalyzed or engaged as if they were human? Is a character’s fictional embodiment part of its function as avatar for the audience? ...

Previous posts on the series are here and here.

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The first archaeologist?

HISTORY: The World’s First Archaeologist Was a Babylonian King (Philip Chrysopoulos, Greek Reporter). HT Rogue Classicism.

Honorable mention should also go to the Neo-Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (ruled 669-631 BCE), who was not exactly an archaeologist, but he was an enthusiastic antiquarian. He collected a vast library of texts, some already ancient in his time, in his capital city Nineveh. He proudly proclaimed, "I read the inscriptions from before the Flood."

We should also mention Nabonidus's daughter, Ennigaldi-Nanna, who herself was a keen archaeologist.

For more on all that, see here.

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Sasson, Judges 13-21 (Yale ABC)

NEW BOOK FROM YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Judges 13-21
A New Translation with Commentary

by Jack M. Sasson

Series: The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries

480 Pages, 6.12 x 9.25 in

Hardcover
9780300278132
Published: Wednesday, 27 Aug 2025
$85.00

eBook
9780300283723
Published: Wednesday, 27 Aug 2025
$85.00

Description

The second volume of Jack M. Sasson’s authoritative commentary on the book of Judges

The second half of Judges is set when “there was no king in Israel; anyone could do whatever felt right.” It narrates the tale of Samson, the would-be liberator of Israel who comes to a violent end; the conquest of the land of Laish; and a vicious rape that, when followed by a shocking dismemberment, ignites a war among the tribes. In the second installment of his authoritative two-volume commentary, Jack M. Sasson invites his readers to ponder the many levels of meaning in the Hebrew text through a careful survey of its contents, evolution, and reception.

By situating the text alongside its earliest translations into Greek, Aramaic, and Latin, Sasson offers compelling observations on the characters, action, pacing, and style of the narrative, focusing on the characterization of Samson as a resourceful avenger of Philistine cruelties and as an instrument of God intended to humiliate false divinities. Sasson draws widely on comparative literature from Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia to enrich our understanding of how biblical writers adapted older regional sagas; and he derives insights from Hellenistic and rabbinic sources to re-create how Judges was understood by its earliest readers. Comprehensive and engagingly written, Judges 13–21 is an invitation to readers to rediscover these ancient stories and, in so doing, gain a greater appreciation for the art of Hebrew storytelling.

Still advertised for preorder, but I have it on good authority that some copies are already shipping.

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Siloam dam dated to reign of Jehoash?

MONUMENTAL ARCHITECTURE: Biblical Kings in Jerusalem May Have Built Monumental Dam to Deal With Climate Change. A controversial dig in the City of David uncovers a First Temple Period dam. Researchers link the 2,800-year-old structure to efforts to face increased drought and flash floods (Ariel David, Haaretz).

The dam is only the latest in a slew of recent discoveries in Jerusalem that can be linked to this part of the First Temple Period, and attest to a time of early expansion of the city at the turn of the 9th-8th century B.C.E., possibly under the rule of King Jehoash. Specifically, the construction of the dam may have been triggered by a greater need to store and control Jerusalem's key water supply in a time of climate change that brought longer dry periods, the researchers speculate.

The article links to the underlying open-access artice just published in PNAS:

Radiocarbon dating of Jerusalem’s Siloam Dam links climate data and major waterworks

Johanna Regev https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2171-7452 johanna.regev@gmail.com, Nahshon Szanton, Filip Vukosavović, Itamar Berko, Yiftah Shalev https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4969-531X, Joe Uziel https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9795-3980, Eugenia Mintz, Lior Regev https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5558-4117, and Elisabetta Boaretto https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8320-6228 elisabetta.boaretto@weizmann.ac.il
Edited by Melinda Zeder, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC; received April 29, 2025; accepted July 9, 2025
August 25, 2025 122 (35) e2510396122 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2510396122

Abstract

Using well-established microarchaeological sampling methods, we reached a precise radiocarbon date of 800 BC for the Siloam Pool’s monumental water dam in Jerusalem. This date is a critical link connecting several imposing waterworks constructed at that time. Climate data pointing to droughts and flash floods during the last decades of the 9th century BC provide a logical framework for the reasons behind such endeavors. These included the fortification of the city’s primary water source, the Gihon Spring, and the redirection of the water into the city through a channel to an artificial reservoir created by building the Siloam Dam at the end of the Tyropoeon Valley, which blocked the drainage of rain and redirected spring waters.

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

BHD on pilgrimage to the Jerusalem Temple

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Pilgrimage to the Jerusalem Temple. (BAS Staff).

In the Fall 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, archaeologists Uzi Leibner and Orit Peleg-Barkat examine the latest finds from the Ophel excavations in Jerusalem and what they reveal about pilgrimage to the Holy City during the late Second Temple period. Here, we highlight Bible History Daily articles that report on recent discoveries in Jerusalem and beyond that further inform our understanding of how early Jewish pilgrims experienced the journey to Jerusalem and Temple-related rituals during the first centuries BCE and CE. In addition, we list recent academic articles and book publications that present detailed discussions of the latest scholarly findings concerning Jerusalem pilgrimage.

One of the linked-to BHD essays is new:

Pilgrimage Pit Stop. Who used the ritual baths at Jerusalem’s Tomb of the Kings? (Omri Abadi and Boaz Zissu )

The others have been published before. I have linked to some of them.

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

Flannery on Portier-Young, The Prophetic Body

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW continues its review series on Anathea Portier-Young’s The Prophetic Body: Embodiment and Mediation in Biblical Prophetic Literature with an essay by Frances Flannery:

Towards Divine Embodiment and Biblical Animism: A Review and Suggestion for Anathea Portier-Young’s The Prophetic Body

... Reading an embodied and animistic divine in biblical prophetic texts challenges the very foundations of religious studies, which were long predicated on making “animism” a dirty word. ...

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Review panel on Portier-Young, The Prophetic Body

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: The Prophetic Body: A 2024 SBL Review Panel.

SBL Review Panel for Anathea Portier-Young’s The Prophetic Body: Emodiment and Mediation in Biblical Prophetic Literature
Co-Sponsored by the Religious Experience in Antiquity and Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds Program Units of the Society of Biblical Literature November 23, 2024

The initial book summary at the link is by Reed Carlson.

I noted the publication of the book here.

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IAA not keen on expanding its authority into West Bank

ARCHAEOLOGY AND POLITICS: Archaeologists dig in against antiquities bill aiming to deepen Israel’s hold on West Bank. A push to shift oversight of excavations in the territory to a civilian authority sparks worries of creeping annexation, with researchers fearing they’ll bear brunt of any backlash (Rossella Tercatin, Times of Israel).

A long and detailed article on a very complicated situation.

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Forthcoming: The Authority of the Septuagint

WILLIAM A. ROSS: BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: THE AUTHORITY OF THE SEPTUAGINT.

I’m excited to announce a new book coming out this October with IVP Academic, entitled The Authority of the Septuagint: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Approaches. This is a project that I have been working on with my friend and colleague, Gregory R. Lanier, who is a professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. Greg and I have worked on a number of projects together by now, all of them related to the Septuagint in some way or another.

[...]

The post includes a preview. And Peter Gurry posts the TOC over at the ETC Blog.

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Is It Good to Be Rich? (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

Is It Good to Be Rich?
Answers from the Bible and Antiquity
Edited by Peter Altmann, Nadine Ueberschaer and Frank Ueberschaer

[Ist es gut, reich zu sein? . Antworten aus Bibel und Antike]
2025. IX, 583 pages.
Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament (WUNT I) 532

€169.00
including VAT

cloth
available
978-3-16-160849-0

Also Available As:
eBook PDF €169.00

Summary

Biblical and extra-biblical sources provide a variety of insights into human approaches to the acquisition of and relation to riches in antiquity. For, while every person and society require certain provisions for survival, humans mostly desire to have more. In this volume, the contributors unpack the ambiguous approaches to wealth and riches in texts from the Hebrew Bible, Greco-Roman Jewish texts, Greek philosophical discourses and poetry, the New Testament, and the Early Church.

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