Skjærvø, Achaemenid Religion

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Achaemenid Religion. New book article: Skjærvø, Prods Oktor. 2014. Achaemenid Religion. Religion Compass. 8(6), 175-187.

Maarav supplementary data

AWOL: Maarav Supplementary data online. Maarav: A Journal for the Study of the Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures is an important journal edited and published by Bruce Zuckerman.

Segal and Stuckrad (eds.), Vocabulary for the Study of Religion

FORTHCOMING MULTI-VOLUME WORK FROM BRILL:

Vocabulary for the Study of Religion (3 Vols.)

Edited by Robert A. Segal (University of Aberdeen) and Kocku von Stuckrad (University of Groningen)

The academic study of religion has been an interdisciplinary endeavor since its inception at the end of the nineteenth century. Much of the theoretical vocabulary that is needed to study religion has been imported from adjacent disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, historiography, theology, philology, literary studies, psychology, philosophy, cultural studies, and political sciences. It is the strength of the academic study of religion to bring these approaches into conversation with one another. The Vocabulary for the Study of Religion provides an excellent platform to sustain this conversation. Written by experts with a background in a variety of disciplines, over 400 entries collected in the Vocabulary offer a unique overview of critical terms in the study of religion(s), as well as the themes and issues that have to be addressed in future research. This is the first dictionary in English that covers such a broad spectrum of theoretical topics. The Vocabulary is an indispensable tool for all students of religion and it will influence the academic discussion for many years.

Conference in honor of Sasson

AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: Ranieri Colloquium on Ancient Studies, “Telling Mesopotamian History"—October 22-23.

New York University’s Center for Ancient Studies will host “Telling Mesopotamian History: Bringing to Life the Stories of Cuneiform Writing,” the Ranieri Colloquium on Ancient Studies, on Thurs., Oct. 22 and Fri., Oct. 23 in NYU’s Hemmerdinger Hall, Silver Center for Arts and Science, 100 Washington Square East (enter at 32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place [wheelchair accessible]).

The conference will be held in honor of Jack Sasson, a professor at Vanderbilt University whose work has focused on two disciplines: Assyriology, specializing on the archives found at the Middle Euphrates town of Mari in Syria, and Hebrew Scripture, with interest on its narrative prose.

This event will bring together nine scholars to “tell” Mesopotamian history through the medium of the story. Participants include a range of scholars drawn together by friendship with Sasson, who has for more than 40 years been one of the most prominent and important figures in ancient Near Eastern studies. The speakers will join with Sasson in presenting a wealth of ancient Mesopotamian history as compelling stories and commentary.

[...]

Follow the link for the full program. Congratulations to Jack Sasson (of Agade List fame) for this well deserved honor.

The DSS leave Los Angeles

IT'S WHAT THEY DO: DEAD SEA SCROLLS: THE EXHIBITION CLOSES AS ONE OF THE MOST VISITED EXHIBITS IN CALIFORNIA SCIENCE CENTER HISTORY.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 11, 2015 /satPRnews.com/ — “Dead Sea Scrolls: The Exhibition” ended a successful run as one of the highest attended traveling exhibitions in California Science Center history on Monday, September 7, 2015, after a full week of sold out crowds. Lines wrapped around the Science Center building on Saturday, and guests arrived before 6 am in hopes of getting the last tickets available without a reservation for a small time slot in the afternoon. Extended hours were offered the last three weekends the exhibit was open, and sold out well in advance for each day the late hours were available.

“We are thrilled so many people were able to see this remarkable blend of science and history during its time with us,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, Science Center President and CEO. “The attendance exceeded our expectations, and it ranks with some of the most-visited exhibitions we have presented.”

The exhibition, featuring over 600 ancient artifacts, opened in March. It sold out most weekends during its six-month long stay, drawing both local crowds and out-of-state visitors.

[...]

Compare the past posts on Dead Sea Scrolls exhibitions here, here, here, here, here, here, here,

Graduate seminar on Textuality & History in Jewish Studies

H-JUDAIC: CFA: AAJR - Graduate Student Seminar. The topic is "From Text to Context, from Context to Text: Textuality & History in Jewish Studies" and it runs on 22-24 May, 2016, at Columbia University. The application deadline is January 25, 2016.

Did Jesus speak Greek?

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Did Jesus Speak Greek?

Contrary to contemporary scholarship, I find that Greek was more widely used in both written and oral form by Jesus, his disciples, and the Jews who inhabited first-century Palestine. Interestingly, the evidence reveals that Greek became the dominant language spoken among Jews and Gentiles in Galilee in the first century CE.

See Also: Did Jesus Speak Greek? (Pickwick Publications, 2015).

By G. Scott Gleaves
Dean and Associate Professor
Kearley Graduate School of Theology
Faulkner University
Montgomery, AL
September 2015

Related posts here and here and links.

UPDATE: Larry Hurtado also has recent related comments noted here and see also here.

JQR 105.3 (2015)

H-JUDAIC: TOC: Jewish Quarterly Review - Summer 2015 Vol. 105.3.

GJW latest

TWO NEW PIECES ON THE GOSPEL OF JESUS' WIFE:

First, Andrew Bernhard piles it on with yet another blog post, this one on Bart Erhman's blog: Back to the Forgery of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.

Second, Joel Baden and Candida Moss step back to reflect on some of the larger implications of the GJW debate: Why Scientists and Scholars Can't Get Their Facts Straight. The ongoing dispute over the authenticity of a scrap of papyrus from the ancient world highlights a larger question of how history is established (The Atlantic).

It may seem as if the cottage industry of debate surrounding this papyrus—which has now produced multiple funded lab reports, a slew of scholarly articles, and innumerable blog posts—is self-sufficient to the point that each side would continue to work irrespective of whether anyone continued to argue back. But perhaps debating against an opponent isn’t really anyone’s goal here. It is the nature of scientific inquiry to find the next frontier: These latest lab reports were generated not by interest in the GJW in particular, but by the development of new technology in ink analysis more generally. And scholarship in the humanities is virtually defined by the belief that every question can be reopened for discussion, even to reinforce a preexisting consensus.

I certainly agree with the last sentence.

The arguments of King et al. for authenticity are based on the antiquity of the materials used - the papyrus and perhaps the ink. But not only is it possible in principle to use old materials for a forgery, there are cases of it having been done as far back as the nineteenth century. The forger Constantine Simonides produced a fake palimpsest (a manuscript whose writing has been erased and written over with a new text) using an authentic ancient manuscript for the upper text. He also produced a fake ancient manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew using a genuine ancient hieratic manuscript whose text he had (imperfectly, it developed) erased. I don't know of a verified case of ancient ink being used in a forgery, but we know that ancient ink has been recovered and in principle it could be reconstituted with distilled water. In any case, let's see those tests of the ink published in peer-review publications before we start worrying about them.

These considerations seem to me to weaken the arguments for authenticity based on material factors. No corresponding considerations that I know of weaken the many compelling arguments against authenticity based on literary analysis and manuscript layout. Not that one can't come up with a response individually to each argument, but the cumulative effect is to argue that in the case of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife we won the lottery. People sometimes do win the lottery, but that doesn't make for a persuasive scholarly case.

Review of Marks and Taussig (eds.), Meals in Early Judaism

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Susan Marks, Hal Taussig (ed.), Meals in Early Judaism: Social Formation at the Table. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. xii, 204. ISBN 9781137372567. $90.00.

Reviewed by Raphael Magarik, University of California, Berkeley (rmagarik@berkeley.edu)

Preview

In studies of late Second Temple and Tannaitic period Judaism, interpreting formal ritual meals has led to important arguments about cultural difference and interchange. Was the Passover Seder, for instance, heavily influenced by Hellenistic symposia, as Seigfried Stein argued, or, as Baruch Bokser claimed, did it derive primarily from the elaboration of biblical traditions in the wake of the destruction of the Second Temple?

The edited collection Meals in Early Judaism: Social Formation at the Table reframes this argument about ritual origins and influence. Its essays argue that we should adopt an expansive approach to Jewish ritual meals, comparing them to Greco-Roman parallels but also viewing rabbinic texts together with Philo as components of a broader culture. Meals in Early Judaism also shifts the focus of ritual study from text to context. Rituals are embodied, physical processes which happen in specific times and places, the authors argue. Studying them as such contributes to our understanding of how early Jews used meals to construct their social identities.

[...]

Kabbalah 33 (2015)

H-JUDAIC: TOC: new Kabbalah studies. KABBALAH: JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF JEWISH MYSTICAL TEXTS, VOLUME 33 (2015) 320 pages. Good stuff.

Syriac words for rocky places where monks live

SYRIAC WATCH: Where do solitary monks live? Or, how to name various rocky places in Syriac (Adam McCollum, hmmlorientalia blog). It's good to know these things.

Mesopotamian chronicles

AWOL: Mesopotamian chronicles. Livius pages, now updated. Ancient Mesopotamian chronicles are sometimes of interest for ancient Judaism and ancient Israel, for example, here.

Free book on the Coptic LXX

ALIN SUCIU: Volume in Honour of Peter Nagel. For you, special deal!

Review of Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS: Marcion and the Ideology of Texts – By Judith Lieu. Judith Lieu on Dieter Roth’s The Text of Marcion’s Gospel

On this account Marcion’s literary activity is little more than a curiosity, perhaps of rather less interest than the newly-found or rediscovered other Gospels that have attracted scholarly and popular attention. But suppose, however, that rather than being a corrupt version of (canonical) Luke, Marcion’s Gospel was in fact an earlier precursor to it, perhaps producing the corollary that canonical Luke was to some extent a corrective to it. ...

Down the rabbit hole of Marcion. Fascinating stuff.

Conference on ancient Babylonian medical knowledge

H-JUDAIC: Conf: Medical Knowledge from Ancient Babylonia to Talmudic Babylonia. In Jerusalem on Sunday, September 20th, 2015.

Review of Studia Philonica Annual XXVI

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

David T. Runia, Gregory E. Sterling (ed.), Studia Philonica Annual: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, Volume XXVI. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014. Pp. ix, 274. ISBN 9781628370195. $51.95.

Reviewed by Matthew Kraus, University of Cincinnati (matthew.kraus@uc.edu)

Table of Contents

The Studia Philonica Annual celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary last November, a fitting indication of the flourishing state of Philonic studies and a far cry from the short-lived and less polished Studia Philonica of the 1970s. The annotated (2011) and provisional (2012-2014) bibliographies of works directly or significantly addressing Philo and eight book reviews are preceded by eight articles. The articles reflect a range of interests: philosophical/theological issues, Philo’s patristic Nachleben, and a Special Section on non-biblical Hellenistic Jewish and non-Jewish sources. The conceptual and methodological sophistication of these articles appears throughout.

[...]

Related posts here and here.

Is the GJW debate over?

ONE HOPES: The End of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Forgery Debate (Andrew Bernhard, NT Blog). I've been of the view that the GJW has been conclusively debunked for a long time, but a few still seem to want to keep the debate going, which is their prerogative. We'll see.

Background here with many links.

Of cows, doors, and Nazirites

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Do Cows Speak? And Other Problems of the Nazirite Vow. In this week’s Talmud study, debates over swearing out of pique or spite—that is, in the wrong frame of mind.

Why would a Jew decide to become a nazirite? Naziriteship involves some significant sacrifices—a person who has taken the vow cannot cut his hair or drink wine—so, it’s natural to assume that it is an act of exceptional piety: You become a nazirite because you want to take up a heavy burden on God’s behalf. In Tractate Nedarim, however, the Talmud showed that people often took vows for less elevated reasons—out of pique or spite, or a rash desire to punish someone. And the same holds true, we learned this week in Tractate Nazir, of nazirite vows. Take, for instance, the rather odd scenario envisioned in Nazir 10a: “If one said: This cow said: I am hereby a nazirite if I stand up; or if he said: This door says: I am hereby a nazirite if I am opened, Beit Shammai say he is a nazirite, and Beit Hillel say he is not a nazirite.”

What does this enigmatic mishna mean? ...

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

An attempt to revive the half-shekel tax

THE OLD BECOMES NEW AGAIN? Modern Revival of Lost Biblical Commandment Paving the Way for the Third Jewish Temple (Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Breaking Israel News).

“Everyone who is numbered, from twenty years old and over, shall give the contribution to the Lord. The rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than the half shekel, when you give the contribution to the Lord to make atonement for yourselves.” (Exodus 30:15)

Biblical commandments not practiced for thousands of years are slowly returning to life. One such commandment, known as the Machatsit HaShekel, or half-shekel, is making a comeback thanks to a simple Jewish tailor in Jerusalem.

The half-shekel, one of the more obscure commandments found in the Bible, played an important role in Jewish history. Every year, each Jewish male over the age of 20 was obligated to give a compulsory donation of half of a shekel (Exodus 30:15). Regardless of status or wealth, the same amount was given by each man. Since it is forbidden by Torah law to actually count Jews, counting the coins took place of a national census. The half-shekels that were collected were used as a form of tax to support the Jewish Temple.

The nation of Israel continued to observe the commandment even after the First Jewish Temple was destroyed until it was outlawed by Roman Emperor Hadrian in the year 135 CE. Even Jews who lived outside of Israel continued to donate the half-shekel, despite the Roman Senate forbidding the export of gold and silver.

Reuven Prager, a tailor specializing in Biblically-styled clothing, is responsible for today’s revival of the lost commandment of the half-shekel. Prager’s passion for Biblical authenticity led him to investigate the commandment of the half-shekel. Being a practical-minded artisan, he began to mint his own half-shekel in March 1997 with a run of 1,000 coins. Today, Prager continues to mint a new half-shekel coin every year with a new design based on a Temple vessel or tool that has actually been reproduced.

[...]

Just for the record, I oppose any construction projects that involve tearing down ancient monuments or excavation on the Temple Mount. Even any archaeological exploration of the area should wait until we have non-intrusive and non-destructive technologies to do the work.

There is more on the ancient half-shekel coin and its tax use here, here, and here. But this turned out not to be relevant. Incidentally, the half-shekel tax is mentioned in the New Testament in Matthew 17:24-27.