Friesen, Reading Dionysus

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

COURTNEY J. P. FRIESEN
Reading Dionysus
Euripides' Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians

Courtney J. P. Friesen explores shifting boundaries of ancient religions by way of the reception of a popular tragedy, Euripides’ Bacchae . As a play staging political crises provoked by the arrival of the “foreign” god Dionysus and his ecstatic cult, audiences and readers found resonances with their own cultural moments. This dramatic deity became emblematic of exuberant and liberating spirituality and, at the same time, a symbol of imperial conquest. Thus, readings of the Bacchae frequently foreground conflicts between religious autonomy and political authority, and between ethnic diversity and social cohesion. This cross-disciplinary study traces appropriations and evocations of this drama ranging from the fifth century BCE through Byzantium not only among “pagans” but also Jews and Christians. Writers variously articulated their religious visions over against Dionysus, often while paradoxically adopting the god’s language and symbols. Consequently, imitation and emulation are at times indistinguishable from polemics and subversion.

Brody, Mishna and Tosefta Ketubbot

NEW BOOK (IN HEBREW) FROM MAGNES PRESS:

Mishna and Tosefta Ketubbot

Text, Exegesis and Redaction

By Robert Brody

Publisher: The Hebrew University Magnes Press
Categories:
Talmud, Jewish Studies
Publish date: July 2015
Language: Hebrew
Danacode: 45-131136
ISBN: 978-965-493-814-3
Cover: Paperback
Pages: 328
Weight: 700 gr.

Mishnah and Tosefta Ketubbot: Text, Exegesis and Redaction includes new editions of tractate Ketubbot in the Mishnah and Tosefta and offers a new model for presenting these interdependent texts. After an introduction which deals at length with some central topics in Mishnah and Tosefta research, especially with regard to textual criticism, the two editions are presented in parallel; each edition is accompanied by selected variants and explanatory notes.

Genz, Jesaja 53 als theologische Mitte der Apostelgeschichte

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

ROUVEN GENZ
Jesaja 53 als theologische Mitte der Apostelgeschichte
Studien zu ihrer Christologie und Ekklesiologie im Anschluss an Apg 8,26-40

[Isaiah 53 as the Theological Center of Acts. Studies on its Christology and Ecclesiology after Acts 8:26-40.]

Published in German.

Rouven Genz presents a new approach to the research of the Acts of the Apostles. He states that the book of Acts qualifies not as a primarily historically but rather theologically motivated corpus and its author is appreciated as an exegete of scripture. Genz's main emphasis is on the examination of the reception of texts from the book of Isaiah. The focal point is the story of Philip and the Ethiopian treasurer in Acts 8, which manifests exemplarily Luke's interest with recourse to Isaiah 53. Beyond that, the Isaianic tradition in general, as well as the concept of the Servant of God in particular, also prove to be the hermeneutical key for the Lucan christology and ecclesiology: Luke regards Jesus as the Servant of God in the Isaianic sense and his followers as servants of the Servant. Moreover, Luke acquires his soteriological premises from the Isaianic texts as well: He conceives of Jesus' death as an atoning death.

Buth and Notley (eds.), The Language Environment of First Century Judaea

NEW(ISH) BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Language Environment of First Century Judaea
Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels—Volume Two

Edited by Randall Buth and R. Steven Notley
The articles in this collection demonstrate that a change is taking place in New Testament studies. Throughout the twentieth century, New Testament scholarship primarily worked under the assumption that only two languages, Aramaic and Greek, were in common use in the land of Israel in the first century. The current contributors investigate various areas where increasing linguistic data and changing perspectives have moved Hebrew out of a restricted, marginal status within first-century language use and the impact on New Testament studies. Five articles relate to the general sociolinguistic situation in the land of Israel during the first century, while three articles present literary studies that interact with the language background. The final three contributions demonstrate the impact this new understanding has on the reading of Gospel texts.

Noted by Dr. Buth here, where you can read on of his articles in the volume. Related PaleoJudaica posts are here and links.

UPDATE: Incorrect link now fixed!

The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek

Franco Montanari, Genoa. English Edition edited by Madeleine Goh and Chad Schroeder, under the auspices of the Center for Hellenic Studies. Advisory Editors: Gregory Nagy, Harvard, and Leonard Muellner, Brandeis

The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek is the English translation of Franco Montanari’s Vocabolario della Lingua Greca. With an established reputation as the most important modern dictionary for Ancient Greek, it brings together 140,000 headwords taken from the literature, papyri, inscriptions and other sources of the archaic period up to the 6th Century CE, and occasionally beyond. The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek is an invaluable companion for the study of Classics and Ancient Greek, for beginning students and advanced scholars alike.

Translated and edited under the auspices of The Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek is based on the completely revised 3rd Italian edition published in 2013 by Loescher Editore, Torino.

As the rest of the blurb notes, the book is also available online.

Questions for the Early High Christology Club

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION: Critical Questions for the Early High Christology Club (Michael Kok). Although I am the proud owner of an EHCC coffee mug, I think I will leave to to members of the club who work more on early Christology than I do to reply to Dr. Kok's questions.

Some links with some of my thoughts about the historical Jesus are collected here. And an old (and later published in revised form) essay of mine on ancient divine mediator figures is here. At present I am very sympathetic to Pieter Craffert's proposal that the historical Jesus was a shamanistic practitioner (but not technically a "shaman," which was an intermediary role in hunting cultures). A relevant post is here and there is a highly relevant SBL session coming up in November if you are interested in the subject.

Review of Yohanna, The Gospel of Mark in the Syriac Harklen Version

SYRIAC WATCH: Book Review: The Gospel of Mark in the Syriac Harklean Version (2015) (Peter J. Gurry, ETC Blog)

Metatron playing in Rio

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Festival Multiplicidade Returns to Rio de Janeiro Starting July 30th. The technology, music, art and design event Festival Multiplicidade returns this week for its eleventh edition entitled, Multiplicidade 2025 (Chesney Hearst, Rio Times). Metatron's band, or one of them at any rate, was there.

Emphasizing the theme of the future of art, music and technology, Multiplicidade 2025 will include many programs geared toward a younger audience. Bands Metatron and Codeclub will perform during the opening night on July 30th, with both groups featuring members aged fifteen through twenty.

Maybe he stayed in South America for a gig after the International SBL meeting last week in Buenos Aires.

More on the Church of Loaves and Fishes arson arrests

THE SUSPECTS HAVE BEEN NAMED: Two Jewish extremists indicted for vandalizing ancient church on Sea of Galilee (Catholic World News).

Two young men, Yinon Reuveni and Yehud Asraf, have been indicted for the crime. The prosecutors said that Reuveni was the driving force behind the attack, motivated by his belief that Christians are idol worshippers.

Background here and links.

Another looting arrest in Israel

BUSTED: Antiquities theft thwarted near Beit Shemesh in late night helicopter chase. 63 coins, 2000 years old, recovered (HAYAH GOLDLIST-EICHLER, Jerusalem Post).

The theft of a trove of ancient coins was thwarted by a joint force of the Antiquities Authority and Yehuda Region Border Police late Tuesday evening in the Beit Shemesh area.

The team of thieves was discovered by Antiquities Authority inspectors observing the area on Tuesday evening, digging and using a metal detector at the archeological site next to Taoz. The inspectors alerted the police who brought in a helicopter to apprehend the suspects.

One was arrested while a second managed to flee the scene, though police know his identity.

[...]

Other looting arrests in Israel this year have been noted here (also involving coins and Beit Shemesh), here, and here.

Review of The Vatican Tapes

THAT SOUNDS LIKE AN UNDERSTATEMENT: 'The Vatican Tapes' review: The movie could be better (Reagan Gavin Rasquinha, The Economic Times). I note the movie not for any cinematic merit, but because of this:

Angela's strange behavior starts manifesting just before she gets into a car accident. It takes months for her to wake up from a coma. She does so, strangely enough, when Father Lozano (Pena, suitably somber) blesses her with holy water. But all is far from well. Angela can speak in ancient tongues (Aramaic included), summon ravens (considered a symbol of death) and cause people to temporarily lose their minds and fatally injure themselves.

My bold-font emphasis. More evidence, I guess, that demons speak Aramaic.

Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

Another early Qur'an fragment?

PRESS RELEASE: Koran manuscript from early period of Islam. Tübingen University fragment written 20-40 years after the death of the Prophet, analysis shows.

A Koran fragment from the University of Tübingen Library has been dated to the 7th century - the earliest phase of Islam - making it at least a century older than previously thought. Expert analysis of three samples of the manuscript parchment concluded that it was more than 95 percent likely to have originated in the period 649-675 AD - 20 to 40 years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. Such scientific dating of early Koran manuscripts is rare.

The Tübingen fragment was tested by the Coranica project, a collaboration between the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Paris and the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Academy of the Sciences and Humanities, sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and France’s Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). The project investigates the Koran in the context of its historical background using documents such as manuscripts and information derived from archaeological excavations.

The project carries out palaeographic analyses to determine the age of a text via its special characteristics. The carbon-14 analysis of the Tübingen fragment was carried out by the Ion Beam Physics Laboratory at ETH Zürich.

[...]

(HT the Corpus Hellenisticum page on Facebook.) Like the recently announced results of the radiocarbon dating of the Birmingham Qur'an fragments (Mingana 1572a), discussed at length here and links, this is potentially a very exciting discovery. But there does seem to be some concern about whether the paleographical and codicological features in the Birmingham manuscript line up well with the early C-14 date. The Progressive Scottish Muslims Blog quotes (but gives no source or link for) skeptical comments by Professor Qasim al-Samarrai of Leiden, an expert in this area. His view is that the Birmingham fragments "belong to the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd century Higra if not later" (i.e., close to two centuries after the death of Muhammud), based on the script and other features of the manuscript. He refers also to the fragments of Tübingen (evidently the ones in this press release) and of Berlin. (I found this link somewhere on Facebook too, but I forget where. Sorry.)

If it turns out that there is a consistent conflict between the radiocarbon dates and the dates suggested by the script and layout of these Qur'an manuscripts, then there is more work to do.

Interesting times. Watch this space.

Report on the Fifth Enoch Seminar Nangeroni Meeting

CONFERENCE: ON JEWISH PAIDEIA IN NAPLES (Elisa Uusimäki, CSTT Blog).

Scholars from Europe, North America, and Australia gathered to Naples on 30 June – 4 July 2015 to participate in the Fifth Enoch Seminar Nangeroni Meeting ”Second Temple Jewish Paideia in its Ancient and Hellenistic Contexts”. The organisers of the conference – Jason Zurawski, Gabriele Boccaccini, and Luca Arcari – had compiled a fascinating programme of academic papers and field trips.

[...]

The website for this Nageroni meeting, which took place 30 June through 4 July, is at: Second Temple Jewish Paideia in its Ancient Near Eastern and Hellenistic Contexts / Fifth Nangeroni Meeting (2015 Naples), conference.

More on the Talmud and consent

POLITICS, SEX, AND THE TALMUD: What Michael Cohen Doesn't Understand About Rape — Or the Talmud (Melanie Landau, The Forward). Now let us be clear: PaleoJudaica does not regard American Presidential candidates or their lawyers to be part of its remit and it has no interest in commenting on them. Nevertheless, although Mr. Cohen did not himself mention the Talmud, this article includes another discussion of the issue of sexual consent in the Talmud, and this adds to the earlier discussion of the subject a while ago (here and links; note also here) raised by Dr. Ruth's comments. Eruvin 100b was already brought into that discussion but, as far as I can tell, the following was not:

However another Talmudic passage (Tractate Niddah 12a) raises serious questions at to whether the rabbis actually require married women to consent to sexual intercourse:

“The rabbis teach: Donkey drivers and workers and those who come from a mourning house and from a house of celebration - their women have a presumption of ritual purity. And they can come and be with them whether they are awake or asleep. What does this refer to? If he left them in a state of ritual purity, but if he left them in a state of ritual impurity then she is ritually impure until she says ‘I am ritually pure’.”

In this source we see that women’s ostensible personal consent is superseded by the category of her ritual purity and impurity. If he knows that she was ritually impure when he left then a husband assumes his wife is also in this state when he arrives home and that he can have sexual intercourse with her even while she is sleeping. She does not need to consent but she does need to have been ritually pure, at least when he left her. Later Talmudic commentators reconcile this source that seems to sanction sexual relations without consent with previous statements requiring of consent by developing the concept of “semi-sleeping” which still enables consent while not fully awake.

I am not a specialist in Talmud and will not try to offer an expert opinion on what the passage might mean, but I note it here as part of the discussion.

Iudaea recepta coin

NUMISMATICS: 2,000-Year-Old Coin Sheds Light on Important Role of Judea on Roman Psych (Raphael Poch, Breaking Israel News).

A rare coin minted almost 2,000 years ago during the conquest of Jerusalem was recently found at an auction in Zurich, NRG reported. The find has helped shed light upon the Roman attitude at the time over the conquest, resulting in a large commemoration of the Roman victory over the Judean rebels.

The coin depicts a Jewess standing and peering across a palm tree and bears the inscription “IUDAEA RECEPTA,” or “Judea is re-captured.” Coins bearing this inscription were used to publicize the news of a captured territory that had been part of the Roman Empire once before.

The newly discovered coin is unlike other numerous coins minted by the Romans after the conquest of Jerusalem and the Judean province between 67-73 CE. Those coins bear the inscription “IUDAEA CAPTA” and portray a woman sitting on the floor under a palm tree or a legionnaire resting on a spear while a Jewish slave is captive at his feet.

The slight changes make all the difference. Unlike the “CAPTA” coins, which were minted to proclaim Roman victory over a new province that was being absorbed into the empire, the “RECAPTA” [read "RECEPTA" - JRD] coin, marks a Roman conquest over a rebellion, rather than a war.

[...]

UPDATE: The following article, available at Academia.edu, seems to be the editio princeps for the coin: Gambash, G., Gitler, H., and Cotton, H. M. (2013), ‘Iudaea Recepta,’ Israel Numismatic Research 8: 89-104. Another article, in Hebrew, from the same source is: Gambash, G., Gitler, H., and Cotton, H. M. (2014), 'Iudaea Recepta,' New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem 8: 37-49 (Heb.). A third article, in German, has been published by Marco Vitale: "IUDAEA RECEPTA — EINE NEUE LEGENDE AUF GOLDMÜNZEN VESPASIANS, Ancient Society 44, 243-255. This is available at the Peeters website behind a subscription wall, but you can read the English abstract for free.

Hekhal

YONA SABAR: Hebrew word of the week: Hekhal (Jewish Journal).

It is amazing how a word that signifies “holy of holies of the temple or tabernacle” is actually a loan word from a “pagan” language: the Sumerian word akkadian, which became e-kal or “big house, palace” (Isaiah 29:7; Daniel 1:4; 4:1).*

[...]

And let's not forget the Hekhalot literature, the mystical literature of the celestial "palaces."

Review of Stratton et al. (eds.), Daughters of Hecate

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Kimberly B. Stratton, Dayna S. Kalleres (ed.), Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xv, 533. ISBN 9780195342710. $39.95.

Reviewed by Maxwell Teitel Paule, Earlham College (paulema@earlham.edu)

Preview

An edited collection of fifteen articles, Daughters of Hecate: Women in Magic in the Ancient World follows in the footsteps of Brian Levack’s (1992) Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology series, Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki’s two volumes, Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (1995) and Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World (2002), and Gordon and Simón’s Magical Practice in the Latin West (2010). This particular volume – which is not a conference proceedings – focuses on women and magic and helps narrow the scope of a potentially broad field by purposefully avoiding treatments of the by-now familiar characters of Apuleius, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Chresimus, Zatchlas, and the like, in favor of exploring the roles of lesser-known, often anonymous women. (Circe and Medea, for example, are discussed at length in only one article [p. 42-52].) The result is a thorough collection that offers diverse perspectives on the roles of women and magic supported by evidence from the written and material records of numerous cultures.

[...]

I noted the publication of the book here.

Review of Seland, Reading Philo

BOOK REVIEW: (Ken Schenck, Common Denominator blog). A review in eight parts of Torrey Seland's Reading Philo: A Handbook to Philo of Alexandria. There's more on the book here and links.

Schmidt (ed.), Contextualizing Israel's Sacred Writings

NEW BOOK FROM THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Contextualizing Israel's Sacred Writings: Ancient Literacy, Orality, and Literary Production
Brian B. Schmidt (Editor)

ISBN 1628371188
Status Forthcoming
Price: $46.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date July, 2015
Pages 384

An essential resource exploring orality and literacy in the pre-Hellenistic southern Levant and the Hebrew Bible

Situated historically between the invention of the alphabet, on the one hand, and the creation of ancient Israel's sacred writings, on the other, is the emergence of literary production in the ancient Levant. In this timely collection of essays by an international cadre of scholars, the dialectic between the oral and the written, the intersection of orality with literacy, and the advent of literary composition are each explored as a prelude to the emergence of biblical writing in ancient Israel. Contributors also examine a range of relevant topics including scripturalization, the compositional dimensions of orality and textuality as they engage biblical poetry, prophecy, and narrative along with their antecedents, and the ultimate autonomy of the written in early Israel. The contributors are James M. Bos, David M. Carr, André Lemaire, Robert D. Miller II, Nadav Na'aman, Raymond F. Person Jr., Frank H. Polak, Christopher A. Rollston, Seth L. Sanders, Joachim Schaper, Brian B. Schmidt, William M. Schniedewind, Elsie Stern, and Jessica Whisenant.

Follow the link for further details and ordering information.

Are sources cited in the Hebrew Bible fabricated?

IT DID HAPPEN SOMETIMES: Ancient Historians Fabricating Sources (Neil Godfrey, Vridar Blog). Just ran across this interesting discussion of fabricated sources in works by ancient writers. The post opens:

Throughout the books of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian’s “Old Testament”) one finds assurances for readers that the stories (or histories) being told are detailed in other written sources. Readers are further assured in a number of cases in the books of Kings and Chronicles that even more details can be found in outside sources.

That sounds authoritative. Surely only a “hyper-sceptical” cynic would insist that such source citations were fabricated and the narratives have no credible foundation whatsoever.

But there is a more prudent alternative to having to choose between either/or. We have no independent evidence for the existence of these cited sources but of course that does not mean they never existed.

Are we going a step too far, however, to wonder if they never existed at all and that our biblical authors really did fabricate at least some of them? How could we possibly know?

No, of course there is no objection to inquiring whether some or all of the lost books cited in the Hebrew Bible are fabrications that never existed. Some people think that to be the case. But this post offers only one argument in favor of that conclusion: the fact that we can verify that some ancient authors fabricated sources that they cited. So the fact that an ancient author cites a source is not proof that the source existed. The discussion in the blog post of some of these fabrications is interesting and I commend it to you.

That said, there are also many, many examples of ancient authors citing works that we know existed, because we still have them. So each case has to be evaluated on its own merits. And there are a number of positive arguments in favor of at least some of those sources cited in the Hebrew Bible being genuine.

• In general the chronicles cited in 1-2 Kings seemed to have had the same format and interests as ancient Mesopotamian chronicles and likewise the same interests as ancient Northwest Semitic inscriptions that may have been derived from lost chronicles.

• The poetic texts cited in the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History have early features of grammar and vocabulary which are consistent with their being considerably older than the work that cites them. Moreover, the biblical authors sometimes misunderstood these sources, which strongly suggests that these sources had an independent and earlier existence. (We know they misunderstood them because, thanks to archaeology and philology, our understanding of the earlier forms of the language is actually better than the understanding of the biblical authors.)

• Once in awhile the cited source has details that can be confirmed archaeologically.

I do not think that every source cited in the Hebrew Bible was genuine. For example, I doubt very much that the author of the book of Esther actually had access to the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Media and Persia. Such chronicles doubtless did exist, but they are cited there as a device to advance the story. At the other extreme, I think it is difficult to regard the lament poem in 2 Samuel 1 as anything but a genuinely ancient text, one that may well have been composed by David. I also think that the case for the use by the Deuteronomist of a real Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and Chronicles of the Kings of Judah is pretty good.

This has been one of my areas of interest for a long time. Past posts on the subject are here and here. And for many other posts on ancient lost books, see here and here and links.

Outside of the blog, see my article "Quotations from Lost Books in the Hebrew Bible" in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 1 (ed. Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov; Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 673-84. This article cites the relevant scholarly literature and gives the positive arguments for many of the sources cited in the Hebrew Bible being genuine. Anyone who wishes to show otherwise needs to address these arguments.

Volume 2, now in progress, will also include a chapter on lost Old Testament pseudepigrapha known only by title.