Annese & Berno (eds.), Gnosticism and Its Metamorphoses (Brepols)

NEW BOOK FROM BREPOLS:

Gnosticism and Its Metamorphoses
Dynamics of Development and Reworking of Gnostic Texts and Motifs from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century

Andrea Annese, Francesco Berno (eds)

Pages: 252 p.
Size: 156 x 234 mm
Illustrations: 1 b/w, 2 tables b/w.
Language(s): English, Coptic, Greek
Publication Year: 2025

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ISBN: 978-2-503-61699-5
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The essays gathered in this volume study selected examples of the development and reworking of Gnostic texts and ideas from antiquity to the twentieth century

Summary

The complex and multifaceted religious phenomenon called Gnosticism continues to fascinate both specialists and the wider audience. This volume explores the “metamorphoses” of Gnosticism, through the analysis of selected examples. Late antique Gnostic groups and schools of thought developed and even changed their ideas when interacting with other religious groups and with various sources. Confrontation and polemics with the so-called “Great Church” and with other Christian groups were crucial to doctrinal elaboration of all parties involved. On a different side, one can trace the metamorphoses of Gnostic ideas through the centuries, as these ideas influenced, and were reinterpreted by, other religious and cultural traditions and currents, from Manichaeism to medieval dualistic movements, modern esotericism, and even contemporary literature.

The essays gathered in this volume focus on two main topics, namely how ancient Gnostic groups developed their doctrines by interpreting and reworking their wide range of sources (Jewish, early Christian, Platonic ones, etc.), and how ancient Gnostic ideas and motifs survived – with new forms – in later philosophical, religious, and literary works, up to the twentieth century.

The volume consists of three sections, the first being dedicated to early anti-Gnostic controversy in texts embedding Jewish-Christian and Petrine traditions and using Gnostic motifs for polemical purposes; the second to some treatises from the Nag Hammadi corpus and other Gnostic manuscripts (plus Epiphanius’ Panarion) so as to provide fresh insights into late antique Gnostic texts and groups; and the third to three case studies of the modern reception and reworking of Gnostic writings and ideas.

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Is President Trump going to rebuild the Temple?

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH?! 'Is Trump planning on building Jerusalem's Third Temple?' Haredi correspondent asks press sec. Mishpacha's Jake Turx asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about the possibility of Trump rebuilding the Holy Temple in Jerusalem during a discussion on the new White House ballroom (Jerusalem Post Staff).

"To your knowledge, has the topic of rebuilding the Holy Temple in Jerusalem ever come up?" Turx asked.

"It has not. No it hasn't. I'm sorry, Jake," Leavitt responded

Good! For my view on rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple or on any kind of excavation or construction on the Temple Mount, see here, with links.

As it happens, that post is also about Trump and the Temple. A few more-recent relevant posts are here, here, and here.

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

When did they start calling it "Hebrew?"

PROF. ABRAHAM TAL: The Bible’s Language: What Is It Called? (TheTorah.com).

The language of Canaan, שׂפת כנען, Judahite, יהודית, Hebrew, עברית, or the holy language, לשון הקודש—what name did Jews and Samaritans use?

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

Review of Chapman, The Victorians and the Holy Land

READING ACTS: Allan Chapman, The Victorians and the Holy Land: Adventurers, Tourists, and Archaeologists in the Lands of the Bible (Phil Long).

How did all this impact the study of the Bible? Chapman traces the development of biblical higher criticism, which often suggested the Bible was full of folktales and mythology. Certainly, there was skepticism about the details, but as these nineteenth-century explorers brought back reports from Egypt, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, it was clear that the overall context of the Bible is credible. This transformed archaeology from antiquarian collecting into a scholarly science. Chapman suggests that Sir Flinders Petrie was the first scientific archaeologist to explore the holy lands.

I noted the publication of the book here.

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

A late notice from the Assyrian taxman excavated in Jerusalem

CUNEIFORM EPIGRAPHY: Biblical tax notice: 1st-ever Assyrian inscription found near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. 2,700-year-old fragment of pottery suggests Judeans delayed paying their tributes to the empire, echoing the events described in the book of II Kings (Rossella Tercatin, Times of Israel).

Inscribed on a pottery fragment 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in size, the writing mentions a delay in payment, the first day of the month of Av, and the title of an Assyrian officer, the “holder of the reins,” a position connected to the royal court known from Assyrian historical records. The words are written in cuneiform script in the Akkadian language. Scientific analysis of the clay confirmed that it came from the Tigris basin region, where several Assyrian centers were located.

This is an exciting discovery indeed. I hope they can find the rest of the tablet.

Ruth Schuster also covers the fragment in Haaretz, with additional details and informed speculation from a phone interview with the excavation director: Assyrian Cuneiform Hinting at Tax Dodging Found in First Temple Jerusalem. Sealing fragment from Assyria found in Jerusalem for the first time. Assyriologists believe it's a complaint.

This is the only cuneiform text from the Neo-Assyrian period excavated in Jerusalem. Eliat Mazar exavated a much older cuneiform fragment (14th century BCE) in Jerusalem in 2010. See here, here, here, and here.

The Haaretz article mentions a "similar artifact" found in Samaria. I'm not certain what that is. A Persian-era cuneiform text mentioning a slave sale was found in Tel Mikhmore, which is on the coast about 50 miles from Samaria, in 2018. Cuneiform texts were also discovered by the Harvard Samaria expedition in 1908-1910, the same expedition that found the Hebrew Samaria Ostraca. A summary is here, although I can't confirm the details. An example is here.

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

Two people named Benaya

HEBREW EPIGRAPHY AND ONOMASTICS: A Tale of Two Benayas—3,000 Years Apart. A story of ‘a place and a name’ on Israel’s northernmost border (CHRISTOPHER EAMES, Armstrong Institue of Biblical Archaeology).

From the September-October 2025 Let the Stones Speak Magazine Issue

Yad Vashem (יד ושם) is the name of Israel’s Holocaust memorial center, located on the western edge of Jerusalem. The name is derived from Isaiah 56:5, where the Hebrew phrase is rendered as “a place and a name” (King James Version).

I want to share here a story of a “place and a name”—or more specifically, one place, one name, but two individuals, 3,000 years apart—on Israel’s northernmost border.

[...]

Three, actually. See the end of the article.

I noted the discovery of the Benayau (Benaya) seal at Abel Beth Maacah in 2020 here.

For another ancient Benaya (Benayahu), see here.

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

On the evolution of Israeli archaeology

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: From National Hobby to Scientific Profession. Charting historical trends in Israeli archaeology (BAS Staff).

In the Fall 2024 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Hayah Katz provides a historical overview of Israeli archaeology with particular attention to how archaeology served the social and political agendas of a changing society.

The BAR article is behind the subscription wall, but this BHD essay gives you a taste of it.

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

The Seventh International Symposium of Turfan Studies

THE LATEST ON TURFAN: Global scholars hail Turfan studies as cultural bridge connecting civilizations (Malaysia Sun/Xinhua).

From Oct. 18 to 20, nearly 200 experts and scholars from over 70 universities and research institutes across 16 countries and regions -- including Germany, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States and Japan -- gathered in Turpan for the Seventh International Symposium of Turfan Studies. The topics ranged from heritage conservation to the evolution of Silk Road culture.

One of the contributors to MOTP2 is mentioned:

Peter Zieme, a professor at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany, conducted a philological study on a manuscript fragment from Turpan now kept in Berlin. The fragment contains texts in both Old Uygur language and Chinese.

Prof. Zieme translated the Old Turkic fragments of the Book of Giants for MOTP2.

A couple of years ago I saved an article on the Sixth International Symposium of Turfan Studies, but didn't get around to posting it: Experts share new achievements in Turfan studies (huaxia, Xinhua).

URUMQI, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- A conference on the inheritance and development of Turfan studies has attracted over 100 domestic and foreign scholars to the city of Turpan in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The sixth International Conference on Turfan Studies was held from Monday to Wednesday, during which experts shared their latest findings and visited archaeological sites.

[...]

While I'm at it, here's a 2023 post from the Religious History Nerd's Blog which deals with a closely related discovery: The Ancient Secret Of The Dunhuang Cave.

The discovery of a long-hidden library in a cave near Dunhuang, China, was one of the great archaeological finds of all time. And if you’ve never heard of it, you aren’t alone.

[...]

I've been waiting a long time for an excuse to post those links.

The Turfan and Dunghang manuscript discoveries are comparable in significance to the Dead Sea Scrolls for medieval Manichean (Manichaean) studies and (I know less about this) medieval Central Asian Buddhism.

PaleoJudaica is interested in them for the Manichean angle, but mostly because the discoveries included substantial fragments of Mani's version of the the Second Temple Jewish work, the Book of Giants. Fragments of the Aramaic original also survive among the Dead Sea Scrolls. These manuscripts constitute an epic jigsaw puzzle with lots of missing pieces, but all surviving translatable fragment of the book have now been translated into English in MOTP2. Follw the links in this paragraph for lots more on the Book of Giants.

PaleoJudaica posts on the Turfan discoveries are here and links (cf. here and links). For the Dunhuang cave discoveries, follow the links from here.

Cross-file under Manichean (Manichaean) Watch.

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

What happened to the Library of Alexandria?

LOST LIBRARY: What really happened to the Library of Alexandria? These are the theories. The loss of the ancient world's greatest repository of knowledge has been mourned for centuries—but Julius Caesar may not really be to blame (Erin Blakemore, National Geographic).

Did Julius Caesar really burn down the Great Library of Alexandria? Or was it Islamic scholars? Or the library’s patron himself? Here are all the leads historians have about the library’s destruction.

This is a good summary of the issues. I've posted before on the Library of Alexandria and its fate. See here, here, here and links. But the topic comes up occasionally, recently here. So it's as well to post an overview now and again.

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

Reviewlet of Barton (ed.), Understanding the Hebrew Bible

THE CHURCH TIMES: Book review: Understanding the Hebrew Bible, edited by John Barton. Study of the Old Testament is still moving on, says Anthony Phillips.

I noted the publication of the book here.

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

What is the agenda of the Aramaic DSS?

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: The Hellenistic Context of the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls (Robert E. Jones).

... What I am suggesting is that, given what we know of the third century BCE, members of the Judean priesthood likely had to negotiate their role in Jewish society and the broader Hellenistic world by establishing popular support in Palestine and beyond, and by successfully navigating the imperial administration. The scribes responsible for the Aramaic Levi Document, and the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls more broadly, may have felt a need to advocate for the legitimacy of priestly authority in a time when the priesthood was a powerful yet precarious institution.

Note also the author's 2023 book on this subject. Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

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

Late-antique Greek mosaic inscription excavated at Edessa

INSCRIBED DECORATIVE ART: Archaeologists working at Urhoy Castle find fifth century mosaic floor with Greek inscription (SyriacPress).

URHOY, Turkey — Archaeologists working at Urhoy (Şanlıurfa) Castle have unearthed a fifth century floor mosaic bearing Greek inscriptions and decorated with plant and animal figures alongside intricate geometric motifs.

[...]

The Greek inscription reportedly mentions a "Rabulas," who may be the fifth-century Bishop Rabulla of Edessa. A Syriac biography of him survives. He opposed Nestorianism, promoted the Four Gospels over Tatian's synoptic Diatesseron version, and some have argued that he was involved with the production of the Peshitta Syriac translation of the Bible.

Orhoy/Urhoy and Urfa are names of the modern city in Turkey that was known as Edessa in antiquity. The Edessen dialect of Aramaic became Syriac, the language of the Eastern Church.

For PaleoJudaica posts on Edessa and its history and archaeology, see here and links, here, here, and here. Cross-file under Syriac Watch (maybe).

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

On marine archaeology

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Advancing Marine Archaeology. Cutting-edge tech reveals new insights into ancient past (Thomas E. Levy, Gilad Shtienberg, Assaf Yasur-Landau).

The oceans and seas are the last great frontier for Near Eastern archaeology. Year after year, the Mediterranean Sea yields rich new data from prehistory to late antiquity: ports and harbors, maritime facilities, and shipwrecks that make global headlines, such as the 14th-century BCE Uluburun shipwreck and its precious cargo discovered in 1982 off the coast of Turkey.1 These discoveries require scholars to employ a special set of tools and methodologies that characterize a specialized subfield—marine archaeology.

[...]

Some recent PaleoJudaica posts on Maritime (Marine, Underwater, Nautical!) Archaeology are here, here, here, here, and here. With lots of links for you to follow.

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

Is Allegro's mushroom Jesus back in fashion?

PSYCHOACTIVE CONCLUSIONS: Jesus Was a Psychedelic Mushroom, a Controversial Theory Suggests. Could It Reshape Christianity Forever? An eccentric idea from the 1970s may rewrite everything we believe we know about the New Testament (Elana Spivack, Popular Mechanics).

In The Sacred Mushroom, Allegro departed from this expertise and turned to the original text of the New Testament. By poring over the roots of key words in a discipline known as philology, Allegro posited that the New Testament’s authors used encoded language to invoke a secret fertility cult hearkening back to ancient Mesopotamia. The group heavily used psychedelic substances, most notably the Amanita muscaria mushroom. This is the Christ-mushroom at the crux of his book.

Allegro arrived at this conclusion by using Sumerian, the language of ancient Mesopotamia, as a key to understanding root words that signaled the civilization’s fertility cults. ...

I'm going to have to actually read Allegro's book. But if his argument for the psychedelic rise of Christianity is based on Sumerian words, he has already lost me. And he would have to work hard to get me back.

Why? Sumerian was the language of Mesopotamia before the rise of the Babylonians and Assyrians. They spoke their own dialects of Akkadian and they used Akkadian as their official language. Even in the time of Hammurapi, Sumerian had the status of an elite, no-longer-spoken, scribal language, like Latin in the Middle Ages. By the time of the New Testament even Akkadian was largely forgotten, known mainly by a few Babylonian scribes. I can't see any way that there was direct influence of Sumerian on the Aramaic- and (largely) Greek-speaking world of the New Testament and early Christianity.

But I do agree with Qumran scholar Matthew Goff's assessment, quoted in this article:

But Allegro certainly wasn’t out of line questioning the role psychedelics may have played in Christianity’s formation. “It’s a legitimate academic question in terms of religions of the Near East of the time,” Goff says. “Were there rituals that were using some sort of substances? That’s not a bad academic question.”

There is evidence for the use of psychoactive drugs in the religious world of and around ancient Israel. See here, here, here, here.

That said, such evidence is scarcer and less direct for Second Temple and Hellenistic/Roman-era Judaism. Ezra's eating of "flowers" before a vision in 4 Ezra 9:26 is perhaps one such place. But elsewhere in the book Ezra achieves his traces through ritual means, such as prayer and fasting.

I think there was ecstatic visionary activity in ancient Israel, Second Temple Judaism, and later Judaism, but this too involved ritual activity rather than the use of psychoactives. I have noted a couple of place where I have argued this at length here. See also here.

For more on John Allegro and his ideas, see here and here.

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

In defense of Ge'ez

ETHIOPIC WATCH: Geʽez And The Politics Of Cultural Erasure In Contemporary Ethiopia – Analysis (Girma Berhanu, Eurasia Review).

This paper challenges the classification of Geʽez as a “dead language,” arguing instead that it remains vital within Ethiopian society through its ongoing use in liturgy, legal traditions, scholarship, and cultural identity. By tracing the historical evolution of Geʽez from a vernacular language to a sacred and scholarly medium, this study illustrates the broader phenomenon of ancient languages that persist beyond everyday speech. Geʽez serves as a powerful case study of how language can function as a living archive—preserving religious doctrine, ethical frameworks, historical knowledge, and cultural memory across generations.

I don't know who the individual was who declared Ge'ez to be a dead language, but this article appears to be related to the current debate in Ethopia over the reintroduction of the teaching of Ge'ez in Ethiopian schools. For some discussion of the issues, see here. Also, Bahir Dar University launched a Ge'ez study program in 2018 at the postgraduate and then undergraduate level, on which more here. The current article summarizes the cultural importance of Ge'ez in Ethiopia. Excerpt:

Geʽez is an ancient African language with roots dating back to the first millennium BCE in what is now southern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. It has served as a scholarly and liturgical language since at least the sixth century CE and remains in use today within the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches. Thousands of texts in history, theology, philosophy, and literature have been composed in Geʽez, including the earliest known versions of the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. These texts offer unparalleled insight into the religious, intellectual, and cultural life of the region.

Ancient languages are often labeled “dead” because they are no longer used as the vernacular of a community. However, this term can be misleading. Languages such as Geʽez continue to live in profound ways—through institutions, rituals, texts, and scholarly practices. Far from being obsolete, Geʽez remains a vibrant part of Ethiopia’s cultural and intellectual landscape.

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

Grand Egyptian Museum's grand opening

OFFICIAL INAUGURATION ON 3 NOVEMBER: Grand Egyptian Museum to open to public after official inauguration (Daily Sabah).

The museum opens Nov. 4 near the Giza Pyramids, exhibiting more than 100,000 artifacts, including Tutankhamun’s full treasure collection, in a modern space designed to showcase Egypt’s ancient heritage

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

Sembiante, La versione siriaca del "De cohibenda ira" di Plutarco (Peeters)

NEW BOOK FROM PEETERS PRESS:

La versione siriaca del "De cohibenda ira" di Plutarco
Edizione critica, traduzione e commento

Series:
Publications de l'Institut Orientaliste de Louvain, 76

author: Sembiante A.S.

price: 125 euro
year: 2025
isbn: 9789042952249
pages: XVIII-322 p.

Summary:

The present volume examines the Syriac version of Plutarch’s treatise De cohibenda ira. In the Introduction, after a brief overview on the fortune of the Moralia in Late Antiquity, the author focuses on the reception of Plutarch within the Syriac-speaking world. The general characteristics of the extant translations are outlined, namely, the De cohibenda ira and De capienda ex inimicis utilitate, as well as De exercitatione, a work of dubious authenticity, of which the Greek original is lost. The problems of authorship of these translations and their historical context within Syriac literature are explored. Then this volume focuses specifically on De cohibenda ira, reviewing the Syriac manuscripts and analysing the relationships between the Syriac translation and the textual tradition of the Greek model. This is followed by the edition of the Syriac text and its first complete translation into Italian along with a commentary and a synoptic comparison between the Greek original and the Syriac translation in order to fully assess the textual peculiarities of the latter and the translation techniques employed by the translator.

Le présent volume propose aux lecteurs une édition et une étude de la version syriaque du traité De cohibenda ira de Plutarque. Dans l’Introduction, l’auteur étudie d’abord la réception des Moralia de Plutarque durant l’Antiquité tardive et dans le monde syriaque. Il y décrit ensuite les versions syriaques des trois textes de Plutarque parvenus jusqu’à nous: le De cohibenda ira, le De capienda ex inimicis utilitate et le De exercitatione, écrit d’authenticité douteuse dont l’original grec demeure inconnu. Il y aborde enfin les questions de l’identification des traducteurs et de la place de ces versions dans la littérature syriaque, avant de conclure par l’examen des traditions manuscrites de la version syriaque du De cohibenda ira et de son modèle grec. L’édition critique du texte syriaque – accompagnée de la première traduction complète en italien – est suivie d’un commentaire qui décrit de manière synoptique la relation entre la Vorlage grecque et la version syriaque. L’enjeu est d’évaluer les particularités textuelles de cette dernière et de comprendre l’usus uertendi du traducteur.

Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

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