Roberts, Memory Formation in Isaiah 40–55 (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Memory Formation in Isaiah 40–55

Poetic Reimagination that Accomplishes Comfort

Series: Biblical Interpretation Series, Volume: 233

Author: Megan C. Roberts

While scholars recognize that comfort and memory are dominant, interconnected themes in Isaiah 40–55, the phenomenon of collective memory itself has not received specific attention to clarify why memory is connected to comfort. Sociological memory studies and trauma theory fill this methodological gap by explaining the nature of memory framework formation within Second Isaiah. Jacob/Israel and Zion, as poetic figures, exemplify the broken memory frameworks of exilic Judeans that do not lead to comfort. This analysis of Isa 40–55, then, reveals Yahweh’s poetic process by which he re-forms his people’s memory frameworks so that they can receive comfort.

Copyright Year: 2025

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-73411-1
Publication: 11 Aug 2025
EUR €129.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-70804-4
Publication: 21 Aug 2025
EUR €129.00

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Kalimi on the interpretation history of Esther

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: The Book of Esther Between Judaism and Christianity (Isaac Kalimi).

The Book of Esther Between Judaism and Christianity presents the book of Esther within its own merits, context, and complexity. It shows its literary features and virtuosity; historical background and the extent of its historical plausibility; and its key theological position, as well as its various difficulties. Furthermore, it discusses the place of the book and its figures in the sister monotheistic religions and cultures of Judaism and Christianity. It demonstrates how and why different Jewish denominations have approached the book, and how its story and characters have been used throughout the centuries as models for their own reality and destiny. It is my hope that readers come away from the book not only with a better understanding of this unique biblical book and its reception history in Judaism and Christianity, but also with better understanding of Jewish-Christian relationship.

This essay is a summary of Prof. Kalimi's recent monograph. I noted its publication here.

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Starts today: The Carthaginians and Romans Festival of Cartagena

PUNIC WATCH: The Carthaginians and Romans fiestas, a legacy of the rich past of Cartagena. Few cities can match the heady mix of history, culture and tradition in the September fiestas of Cartagena! (Murcia Today)

Every year in September, when the heat of summer is beginning to die down, the city of Cartagena goes back to a time more than 200 years before the birth of Christ when in the space of a few years it was known first as Qart-Hadast and then as Carthago Nova, as it celebrates the annual fiestas of the Carthagineses y Romanos.

[...]

Background on the festival is here and links.

The Spanish city of Cartagena was an important player in the Second Punic War. It was founded by Hannibal Barca's brother-in-law, Hasdrubal the Fair. Hannibal commenced his march across the Alps from Cartagena.

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Continued contention over the Siloam Tunnel Inscription

HEBREW EPIGRAPHY AND POLITICS: Netanyahu repeats push for Siloam Inscription from Türkiye to back Jerusalem claim (Newsroom, Türkiye Today).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reopened a decadeslong dispute over the Siloam Inscription, a 2700-year-old limestone tablet displayed at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums.

Speaking in Jerusalem on Monday, Netanyahu said he had asked then Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz to return the artifact during a 1998 visit but was turned down.

His comments have once again brought attention to the tablet’s history and its significance to both Israel and Türkiye.

[...]

Not surprisingly, this article supports the official Turkish view that the inscription should remain in Turkey. But it gives a good description of it and surveys the debate over repatriating it to Israel. My favorite episode in this saga is when the Israeli government offered to trade elephants for the artifact.

PaleoJudaica has been following the back and forth over the Siloam Inscription, and other discussions of it, for many years.

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Late antique coins discovered at Huqoq

ARCHAEOLOGY AND NUMISMATICS: Galilee cave yields 4th-century coin hoard tied to Jewish resistance under Rome. The coins were unearthed in Hukok, an ancient Jewish settlement near the Sea of Galilee associated with Jewish resistance under Roman rule (PESACH BENSON, Jerusalem Post).

A rare hoard of 22 copper coins dating back more than 1,600 years has been uncovered in a hidden underground complex in the Lower Galilee, offering a tangible link to the region’s Jewish history under Roman rule, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Thursday.

... Originally carved during the Great Revolt of 66–70 CE and expanded for the Bar-Kochba Revolt of 132–136 CE, the tunnels were expected to yield artifacts from those periods. Instead, the coins bore the images of Emperors Constantius II and Constans I, dating them to the 4th century CE, during the lesser-known Gallus Revolt of 351–352 CE—the last Jewish rebellion under Roman rule.

I noted the discovery of this underground complex back in 2024.

For more on the Gallus Revolt, see here and links.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the archaeological discoveries at Huqoq (Hukok), including the synagogue and the mosaics, see here and links, plus here.

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

Biblical archaeology expanded

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Expanding World of Biblical Archaeology. How fresh perspectives are reshaping the past (Clinton J. Moyer).

Since the first issue of Biblical Archaeology Review was published 50 years ago, the landscape of biblical archaeology—both literal and figurative—has expanded in remarkable ways. From the ever-broadening conception of “biblical lands” to increasingly expansive ideas about who participates in the archaeological process, Erin Darby’s article “Forging Ahead: Biblical Archaeology’s Expanding Frontier,” which appears in the Fall 2025 issue of BAR, explores how such developments help to foster a dynamic and sustainable future for the field.

[...]

This essay summarizes the BAR article. The latter is behind a subscription wall.

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Preview of Herman, After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Publication Preview | The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World (Marc Herman).

Marc Herman, After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025).

... Starting in the tenth century with the later geonim, Jews in the Islamic world began to ask “big” questions about rabbinic literature, its authority and its authenticity. Where did it come from? How did it work? And why should it matter? Both Qaraites (who rejected rabbinic authority) and Rabbanites (who championed it) pondered such problems. But the nature, scope, and function of Oral Torah did not stem only, or even primarily, from the Qaraite-Rabbanite debate; instead, constructions of the sages were central to Jewish self-understanding and even, one might say, to imaginings of “Judaism” itself. ...

Cross-file under New Book.

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More on that rescue of Gaza artifacts

GAZA ARCHAEOLOGY: Saving Gaza's past. The frantic race to save historic treasures from Israeli bombs (Yolande Knell, BBC News).

After international experts pressed Israel to give an extra day for the evacuation, Fadel and others remotely guided Palestinian volunteers and aid workers through an incredible feat. Racing against the clock, they moved away six lorryloads of artefacts – including fragile ceramics, mosaics and centuries-old skeletons – to a safer place across the bombed-out city.

Some items had previously been damaged by nearby Israeli shelling and break-ins at the site, but Fadel had left boxes of artefacts carefully packed and inventoried on the shelves.

He estimates that 70% of the contents of the ground-floor storeroom were successfully removed. They included many rare finds.

But all items left behind were crushed when rockets destroyed the 13-storey al-Kawthar building on Sunday. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was targeting “Hamas terrorist infrastructure.”

Thousands of archaeological relics rescued in Gaza ahead of IDF strike. Army says Hamas was using warehouse that contained artifacts from over 25 years of excavations, including some of the oldest known evidence of Christianity in Gaza (Melanie Lidman, Times of Israel).

The warehouse contained artifacts from over 25 years of excavations, including items from a 4th-century Byzantine monastery designated as a World Heritage Site by the UN cultural organization UNESCO, and some of the oldest known evidence of Christianity in Gaza. The Israeli military said the building housed Hamas intelligence installations and planned to demolish it as part of their expanded military operation in Gaza City.

I have posted on this story already here, but these articles give additional details and the BBC article includes some background.

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Shepherd on "Ancient Interpretation of the Prophets"

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Ancient Interpretation of the Prophets

The ancient interpreters were in many cases very careful readers who paid close attention to the details of the words. While these interpreters are commonly thought to be innovators who transformed the meaning of the biblical text, they were just as capable of providing remarkable insight into the text’s meaning.

See also How Did They Read the Prophets? Early Jewish and Christian Interpretations (Eerdmans, 2025).

By Michael B. Shepherd
Professor of Biblical Studies
Cedarville University
September 2025

I noted the publication of the book here.

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Review of A century of James Frazer's The Golden Bough

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: A century of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough: shaking the tree, breaking the bough.

Stephanie Lynn Budin, Caroline J. Tully, A century of James Frazer's The Golden Bough: shaking the tree, breaking the bough. London: Routledge, 2024. Pp. 354. ISBN 9781032695631.

Review by
Craig R. Davis, Smith College. cradavis@smith.edu

... The Golden Bough popularized a set of tenacious hypotheses about ancient myth and ritual which the contributors to this volume hope to conjure back into the light of day for closer scrutiny, some of them hoping to expose and exorcize these persistent half-truths from academic discourse and their reflexive acceptance which has inspired a number of contemporary religious movements as well. ...

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Portier-Young responds to the reviewers

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW concludes its review series on Anathea Portier-Young’s The Prophetic Body: Embodiment and Mediation in Biblical Prophetic Literature with a response by Portier-Young:

Awakening Awareness of the Body

May conversations such as these prompt experiences of embodied connection, even across digital spaces, and help us to recover a bodily awareness so often buried beneath reams of paper. May we be mindful of the care and feeding not only of the prophet (and sometimes the deity), but also of the scholar, the student, the writer, and the reader. Have a snack. Stretch. Take a walk. May this bodily awareness shape the questions we bring to our research and renew us for that work.

Previous posts on the series are here and links.

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Clues to the actual Exodus from Josephus?

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: Moses’ Other Names: A Clue to the Biblical Exodus During Egypt’s Civil War? (Thomas Schneider).

Within the final phase of the civil war — Queen Tewosre’s conflict with Setnakhte — we would thus have to search for another individual labelled by the two sides of the conflict, Osarsēph, “Osiris is in his appearance!” and Tisithén, “The enemy from the cliff”. While this interpretation is clearly speculative at this point, it may vindicate historiographically extra-Biblical traditions about Moses: whereas the Biblical story does not allow to pinpoint a precise historical context for the exodus event, the tradition preserved by Manetho and Chairemon might provide precisely that nexus. If so, Setnakhte’s “cleansing” of Egypt of enemies from Canaan could indeed be regarded as evidence of an actual exodus – reflected in the Biblical exodus account – in Setnakhte’s 2nd year, 1198 BCE.

This is quite an interesting argument. But I am skeptical. There are a lot of "could be"s in the essay. And using Manetho and Chairemon, as filtered through Josephus, to reconstruct an actual Exodus sounds speculative.

That said, I am not an Egyptologist. I don't have the training to evaluate the case properly. I look forward to hearing the reaction of Egyptologists to the formal publication. It is scheduled to come out next year.

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Rubio and Huckabee help open the Pilgrimage Road

ARCHAEOLOGY AND POLITICS: Rubio, Netanyahu, and Huckabee inaugurate fully exposed Pilgrimage Road in Jerusalem. Rubio called it “an extraordinary archaeological site,” framing his appearance as a celebration of shared heritage (Jerusalem Post Staff).

After years of excavation, Israel on Monday unveiled the fully exposed Pilgrimage Road in the City of David, a circa first-century route linking the Pool of Siloam to the foot of the Temple Mount. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the evening ceremony alongside US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

[...]

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the Jerusalem Pilgrimage Road excavation and its discoveries, see here and follow the links.

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

Algorithm and multispectral imaging meet the DSS

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Computers taught to read Dead Sea Scrolls in hunt for clues hidden from human eyes. By combining multispectral imaging with computer vision methods, Tel Aviv University researchers give scholars new tools to read, match, and study the 2,000-year-old artifacts (Rossella Tercatin, Times of Israel).

The researchers tested their method on a dataset of twenty fragments, including pieces from several notable scrolls. These included 4Q393, containing a liturgical text known as the “communal confessions” from the Herodian period (1st century BCE–1st century CE); 4Q26, featuring sections of Leviticus from the Hellenistic–Roman period (4th century BCE–2nd century CE); and 4Q270, also called the Damascus Document, a key text of the Qumran sect from the Herodian period.

Kurar-Barakat and Dershowitz found that while the computer could tease out all sorts of data, it had trouble distinguishing between written letters and holes in the parchment, due to similarities between the black ink and the black stone background as seen through the tears.

They overcame this challenge by leveraging another observation: the contours of the ink in the multispectral images were distinct from both the surrounding ink regions and the holes.

The analysis tool is open source, which is good. The report is still under publication review, but it sounds promising.

Photos of the scrolls are very useful, not infrequently more useful than looking at the actual scroll (because infra-red photography brings out the ink more clearly on darkened leather). But directly viewing the scrolls is sometimes still important. Example discussed here.

Shadowed holes in the leather can sometimes look like ink, so if this new tool can distinguish the two reliably, that alone is progress.

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A hieroglyphic copy of Ptolemy III's Canopus Decree

EGYPTIAN EPIGRAPHY: Archaeologists Discover Unique Hieroglyphic Version of Ptolemy III’s Canopus Decree.

The Canopus Decree was originally issued in 238 B.C. by a synod of priests convened in the city of Canopus, east of Alexandria. The priests gathered to honor King Ptolemy III, his wife Queen Berenice, and their daughter.

According to Dr. Hisham Hussein, Head of the Central Administration for Lower Egypt, the inscriptions celebrate the king and queen as “the beneficent gods” and detail their contributions to the Egyptian state and religion. ...

There are lots of Ptolemies and Berenices!

This Ptolemy, Ptolemy III, is mentioned in the Book of Daniel as "the branch from her roots." He was the brother of Berenice Syra, also referred to in Daniel 11. His wife, mentioned in the Canopus Decree, was Berenice II, who is not in the Bible.

They also had a daughter named Berenice! She also appears in the Canopus Decree, but not in the Bible.

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Philo of Alexandria, On the Life of Abraham (SBL paperback)

NOW IN PAPERBACK FROM SBL PRESS:

Philo of Alexandria, On the Life of Abraham: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary
Ellen Birnbaum, John M. Dillon

ISBN 9781628376920
Volume 6
Status Available
Publication Date June 2025
Paperback $95.00

In this sixth volume of the Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series, originally published by Brill in hardcover, Ellen Birnbaum and John Dillon translate and comment on Philo's On the Life of Abraham. By interweaving literal, ethical, and allegorical interpretations, Philo presents the life and achievements of Abraham, founder of the Jewish nation, in the form of a Greco-Roman biography. Birnbaum, a scholar of Second Temple Judaism, and Dillon, a specialist in Platonic philosophy, explain how and why this treatise is important within the context of Philo's own work, early Jewish and Christian exegesis, and ancient philosophy. Their detailed analysis illuminates Philo's philosophical, exegetical, and literary genius for scholars and students of religion, philosophy, and antiquity.

I noted the publication of the Brill hardback in 2020.

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