Jassen, Violence, Power, and Society in the Dead Sea Scrolls (CUP)

NEW BOOK FROM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Violence, Power, and Society in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Author: Alex P. Jassen, New York University
Published: October 2025
Availability: Available
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 9781009609081

£90.00 GBP
Hardback

£90.00 USD
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Description

Violence is one of the key themes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It captured the imagination of the Sectarians who wrote these scrolls, and who saw themselves as victims of persecution. Their vision for the end of days included fantasies of revenge against their enemies. In this volume, Alex P. Jassen explores the intersection of violence and power in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ancient sectarian movement which generated and preserved these texts. Bringing a multidisciplinary approach to this topic, he offers insights into the origins and function of violence for the people behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. He demonstrates how they positioned themselves in a world dominated by more powerful Jews and the overwhelming might of foreign empires. Jassen addresses the complex relationship between violence, power, and social groups by drawing on cross-cultural examples of sectarianism, millennial movements, and disempowered groups, with particular emphasis on New Religious movements such as the Branch Davidians.

• Explains the origin and rhetorical function of violent language and imagery behind the Dead Sea Scrolls
• Employs a multidisciplinary approach by utilizing social-scientific approaches
• Addresses the complex relationship between violence, power, and social groups in an ancient society by drawing on cross-cultural examples of sectarianism, millennial movements, and disempowered groups

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Maier on Shaphan the scribe

HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION: Shaphan the Scribe and the Jewish Question: Or, How Not to Find the Elephant in the Room. The claim was made that Shaphan 'invented' Judaism as we know it, and that the only real find in ancient Jerusalem was a toilet. An archaeologist answers (Aren Maeir, Haaretz).

In a recent article in Haaretz, Ofri Ilany argued that Shaphan the Scribe, a figure who lived during the region of Josiah, King of Judah in the late 7th century BCE, is perhaps the most important figure in Jewish history, and in fact invented Judaism as we currently know it.

The mentioned article is in Hebrew and behind the subscription wall. (And I haven't read it.) I noted another reply to it, by journalist Ariel David, here. Prof. Maier also replies to Mr. David in this article. Back to Prof. Meier:

I would like to point out several extremely problematic aspects of his proposal, with a particular emphasis on the archaeological evidence, which unfortunately was poorly represented, and even misconstrued.

I have only one comment on his discussion.

As for the supposed cultic reform during the reign of Josiah, the historicity of this reform is not only questionable from the perspective of biblical scholarship. Archaeologically, there is no clear-cut evidence of it, despite more than a century of archaeological research.

There is very little clear-cut archaeological evidence for most things in the Bible. But the Yavneh Yam ostracon provides some quite suggestive evidence for Josiah's reforms and even the elusive rediscovered Book of the Law. It is an employee complaint dating to roughly Josiah's reign. It may refer to a law in that law book. Some substantive posts on it are here, here, here, and here.

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Open Access Monographs from the Institute for the Study of the Ancient Cultures

THE AWOL BLOG: Open Access Monograph Series: Institute for the Study of the Ancient Cultures Miscellaneous Publications.

There are some classics here; out of date, but still worth a read. And some interesting newer volumes, including some for children.

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On Garshuni

SYRIAC WATCH: Garshuni: The Enduring Script Bridging Syriac and Arabic Heritage (SyriacPress).

BEIRUT — Garshuni, a unique method of writing the Syriac language using the Arabic script, continues to thrive among members of the Syriac community in their daily lives, correspondence, and even in the liturgies of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Arabic-speaking countries, as well as the Syriac Maronite Church in Lebanon. Yet for many Syriacs, the origins, meaning, and historical adoption of this writing system have long remained obscure.

[...]

Garshuni comes up occasionally in PaleoJudaica. Search the archives for the posts. Unfortunately, many of the links have rotted.

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Apocalyptic masculinity?

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Apocalyptic Masculinity (Megan Wines).

Megan Wines, “Apocalyptic Masculinity: Messiahs, Monsters, and Men Out Of Time” (PhD Dissertation, Loyola University Chicago, 2025).

... Taken together, these themes illuminate the fluidity and instability of the depictions of masculinity in apocalypses. Rather than depicting one sole model of masculinity to aspire to, the apocalypses instead depict masculinities that exist at either end of a spectrum, with hypermasculine traits at one end and emasculating traits at the other. Yet rather than having different figures for the two poles, apocalypses instead often have a sole figure exhibit traits from either end of the spectrum. This then causes a dissonance in the presentation of masculinity, one not resolved by the individual apocalypses. Rather, this dissonance, I argue, is a staple for how masculinities are depicted in apocalypses, the essential element of “apocalyptic masculinity.” ...

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Lied on the imaginary Book of Noriah

PROF. LIV INGEBORG LIED: The Book of Noriah (Noah’s Wife) and Other Pre-Flood Books (TheTorah.com).

Why did ancient Jewish and Christian authors attribute books, both real and imagined, to Adam and Eve, their daughters, Seth, Enosh, Kainan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Lamech, Noah, and Shem?

Prof. Lied also discusses the general subject of such books in an essay with Matthew P. Monger in MOTP2, pp. 635-49: "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Known Only by Title." Sadly, she does not cite it here. 😢

There are many PaleoJudaica posts on Lost Books (also here and here), some of which were real and some imaginary. Often it is debatable which are which. I mention a couple of other lost books of Noriah (with different spellings of the name) here.

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Review of Philo of Alexandria and philosophical discourse

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Philo of Alexandria and philosophical discourse.

Michael Cover, Lutz Doering, Philo of Alexandria and philosophical discourse. Ioudaioi, 14. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2024. Pp. 397. ISBN 9783525500972.

Review by
Sean A. Adams, University of Glasgow. Sean.Adams@glasgow.ac.uk

The individual chapters in this volume do not really engage with each other. However, the composite whole provides an interesting and needed consideration of Philo’s pluriform engagement with different philosophical schools. The primary thesis developed in the volume is that Philo engaged widely with contemporary philosophical schools, and each study reinforces Philo’s creative and complex participation in intellectual debate and the development of ideas. ...

The book is open-access. I noted it publication here. And the workshop that led to it here.

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Shaphan and the origins of Judaism?

HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION: Was Judaism Really Invented by an Obscure Scribe Named Shaphan? Shaphan, scribe to King Josiah, may have launched a reform, but the religion we call Judaism was born later – out of exile, loss, and reinvention in Babylon (Ariel David, Haaretz).

The Judaism that conquered the ancient world and survives today bears little resemblance to the temple cult of Josiah's reform. It is instead the child of exile – brilliant, adaptive, and endlessly creative. Those forgotten Babylonian innovators, not Shaphan in Jerusalem's temple, were the true inventors of Judaism. The weekly Sabbath stands as their most enduring monument – not merely a day of rest, but a complete reimagining of how humans mark sacred time. Through their genius, catastrophe became creativity, loss became law, and exile became the birthplace of a faith that could thrive anywhere. They gave us the supreme irony of religious history: the most radical revolution ever achieved by presenting itself as the recovery of ancient tradition.

For more on the Shaphan ostracon from Lachish, see here. And follow the links from there for more on Shaphan himself.

For more on the Elephantine "Passover Papyrus," which does not actually have the word Passover in the surviving text, see here and links.

The Sabbath is mentioned in the Elephantine texts. See here. If Papyrus Amherst 63 came from the Elephantine Judean community, they had access to Babylonian traditions. See here. Whether they knew about Babylonian ideas that turned into exilic innovations is not clear, at least to me.

For more on the reconstructed origins of the Sabbath, see here.

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Dr. Stephen J. Pfann (1952-2025)

SAD NEWS: I am hearing from various Facebook sources that Dr. Stephen J. Pfann passed away a couple of weeks ago. The University of the Holy Land (which he and his wife founded) has a post with details here.

Dr. Pfann is known particulary for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran. His his Academia.edu page is here. There is a brief 4 Enoch entry for him here. The Wikipedia entry for the University of the Holy Land is here.

Stephen showed up from time to time in PaleoJudaica. I reported on a conversation I had with him about the Mount Zion Cup and its inscription here. For a recent follow-up of that, see here. For his early report about the rather doubtful "Ben Padiah Scroll," see, most recently, here. For other posts on his involvement with, e.g., the Afghan Liturgical Quire, the Talpiot tombs, the Ezekiel Plates, the Logos Dead Sea Scorlls Database, etc., see the archives.

Requiescat in pace.

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Review of Gathercole, The Genuine Jesus and the Counterfeit Christs

NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: Simon J. Gathercole, The Genuine Jesus and the Counterfeit Christs: New Testament and Apocryphal Gospels (Phil Long, Reading Acts).

Gathercole has two propositions for this study. First, the four New Testament Gospels share key elements of theological context that mark them out from most of the non-canonical gospels. Second, the reason why the four New Testament gospels are theologically similar to one another is that they—unlike most others—follow the existing gospel message of the apostles. Essentially, the canonical Gospels are based on apostolic preaching and aim to preserve it; the non-canonical gospels “have a clear desire to distance themselves from key elements” of the apostolic preaching (109).

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On the recovery of 30 looted Carthaginian coins

PUNIC WATCH DAY: Carthaginian bronze coins from a hoard found off the coast of Tunisia (Håkon Roland and Paolo Visonà, Lybian Studies; published online by Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Core) on 10 October 2025). HT Rogue Classicism.

Abstract

In 2022, a Tunisian citizen was arrested in Oslo when he tried to sell 30 Carthaginian bronze coins to a local antiques dealer. The dealer had previously alerted the police after receiving an email inquiry asking him whether he was interested in buying a ‘large number’ of Punic coins from an alleged underwater find, presumably a hoard, off the coast of Tunisia. The University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, which cooperates with law-enforcement agencies and the authorities in cases involving illicit cultural artefacts, assisted with the identification of the coins. Eventually, the latter were returned to Tunisia, and Norwegian prosecutors dropped the charges against the Tunisian national. This article discusses the relevant legal framework of the case and the process that unfolded from the time when an attempt was made to sell the coins until they were returned to their country of origin. The broader numismatic implications of this find are also examined.

This long article gives extensive legal background to the situation and extensive details about the 30 recovered bronze coins, which were minted in Carthage during the Second Punic War.

Cross-file under Numismatics and Apprehended.

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The Punic Wars meet Snopes

PUNIC WATCH DAY: Did Rome and Carthage sign 1985 peace treaty for wars that began more than 2,000 years earlier? The two ancient cities fought a series of wars, known as the Punic Wars, between 264 B.C. and 146 B.C. (Emery Winter, Snopes).

Rated Mostly True:

While the mayors of the cities did sign a peace treaty in 1985, it was a symbolic gesture. In reality, the wars between the two ancient civilizations ended more than 2,000 years prior when Rome destroyed Carthage.

I've posted on this treaty before, but there are more details here. The Snopes article also re-posts an amusing, if historically garbled meme. It seems to go back to Reddit. See Snopes for the links.

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

Review of McCarty, Religion and the making of Roman Africa

PUNIC WATCH DAY: Religion and the making of Roman Africa: votive stelae, traditions, and empire (Bryn Mayr Classical Review).

Matthew M. McCarty, Religion and the making of Roman Africa: votive stelae, traditions, and empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 482. ISBN 9781107020184.

Review by
Thelma Beth Minney, Stanford University. teminney@stanford.edu

... In sum, this book provides an archaeological and historical catalog of religious practices alongside an investigation into how religious materials—specifically stelae—participated in the creation of social communities and the understanding of Roman imperial power in North Africa. Throughout, religion is written as constitutive of political, economic, and social discourses, instead of as ancillary to them.

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Tomb of Assyrian official excavated in Northern Israel?

ARCHAEOLOGY: Archaeologists Stunned by Lavish Assyrian-period Tomb in Northern Israel.Hundreds of luxury artifacts accompanied the 2,700-year-old burial. Could these be the remains of an Assyrian governor who ruled over the vanquished Kingdom of Israel? (Ariel David, Haaretz).

Furthermore, in the Assyrian period, the fields around Tevet continued to be royal lands as they had been under the Israelites, so they belonged to and served the empire. The deceased was most likely a high-ranking official in the Assyrian administration, if not the provincial governor himself, [Dr. Omer] Sergi suggests. The tomb's unusual location may have served a political purpose. In ancient times, ancestral graves were often used to claim ownership of land, so the lavish burial of an Assyrian official may have been a way to link the fertile lands of the Jezreel Valley to their new overlords.

"If you consider that the body was coming from Megiddo, then you should immediately imagine also the procession," Sergi says. "This funeral must have been a really big event, with lots of people walking from Megiddo to Horvat Tevet, and by this also marking the connection between the two places."

This was a salvage excavation and they almost didn't explore this part of the site. That was close!

This has been a week for ancient Assyrian artifacts in Israel.

The underlying article is open-access in the current issue (52.2 2025) of Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University.

A Unique Assemblage of Cremation Burial from Ḥorvat Tevet and Assyrian Imperial Rule in the Jezreel Valley

Omer Peleg, Karen Covello-Paran, Hannes Bezzel, Yuval Gadot & Omer Sergei Pages 217-255 | Published online: 23 Oct 2025 https://doi.org/10.1080/03344355.2025.2550116

Abstract

The excavation at Ḥorvat Tevet revealed a unique cremation burial assemblage, dating to the Iron IIC. This diverse assemblage, richer than comparable burials throughout the Levant, includes unparalleled pottery objects and luxury items that reflect extensive trade networks across the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia and emphasise the high status of the deceased and the community that carried out the burial. The opulence of the burial contrasts sharply with meagre findings in the site’s Iron IIC occupational level. In this article, we present the assemblage and discuss the practice of cremation burials in the Iron Age Levant. In this light, we then demonstrate how this assemblage may contribute to the ongoing discussion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire’s socio-economic dynamics and territorial strategies in the Jezreel Valley and beyond.

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The Bible and northern Hebrew?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Did Northern Scribes Help Write the Bible? The evidence for scribal refugees in the Jerusalem court (Clinton J. Moyer).

In the late eighth century BCE, the Assyrian Empire conducted a series of military campaigns that devastated the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The onslaught drove huge numbers of refugees southward, with many resettling in Judah and its capital city, Jerusalem. Judah’s new residents doubtless hailed from all walks of life: farmers, laborers, artisans, and even scribes who took up work in the royal court. In his article entitled “Samarian Scribes in King Hezekiah’s Court,” published in the Fall 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, William M. Schniedewind probes the available evidence to see who these scribes were and what their lives in the burgeoning capital city may have been like.

[...]

This essay is a fairly detailed summary of the BAR article. To move from there being northern scribes in the Jerusalem court (likely) to northern scribes helped write the Bible is a leap. But it's possible. It's been argued, for example, by me and others before me, that the narratives about Elijah and Elisha came from northern traditions and even show traces of a northern dialect of Hebrew.

The Bible has the Hebrew language being called both "the language of Canaan" and Yehudit, Judahite, in the time of Isaiah the prophet. That doesn't seem to prove anything one way or another.

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(Temporarily) free book ! Alder, Between Yahwism and Judaism (CUP)

FOR YOU, SPECIAL DEAL:

Between Yahwism and Judaism

Judean Cult and Culture during the Early Hellenistic Period (332–175 BCE)

This Element is free online from 22nd October 2025 - 5th November 2025

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2025

Yonatan Adler

Summary

This Element seeks to characterize key aspects of the cult and culture of the Judean populace at large, in Judea and the diaspora, during the Early Hellenistic period (332–175 BCE). It asks if this period signals cultural continuity with the Yahwism of the past, or cultural rupture with the emergence Judaism as known from later times. It investigates: administrative structures, whether Torah was widely observed, how and where Judeans performed cultic worship of YHWH and if this had become exclusive of other deities, adoption of Greek cultural elements and what literature was well-known and influential, including “Biblical” literature. It concludes that while no rupture is evident, and the Early Hellenistic period marks a strong degree of continuity with the Yahwism of Persian times, in some senses the era paved a way for the subsequent transition into the Judaism of the future.

Cross-file under New Book.

This short (75-page) book is downloadable for free through 5 November. After that, Paperback £18.00; Hardback £55.00. Don't dilly-dally!

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Shemesh, Elisha: The Holy Man of God (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Elisha: The Holy Man of God

Series:
Vetus Testamentum, Supplements, Volume: 200

Author: Yael Shemesh

Unlike Elijah's stories, Elisha’s, especially the short legends, have received little scholarly attention or deep analysis. Though this is changing, recent research often views them as critical of Elisha. This book aims to highlight their richness and complexity through literary analysis and to establish them as the earliest example in Israelite literature of Saint’s legends or prophetic hagiography.

Copyright Year: 2025

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-73766-2
Publication: 22 Sep 2025
EUR €119.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-73041-0
Publication: 02 Oct 2025
EUR €119.00

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