Lyon, Qumran Interpretation of the Genesis Flood

NEW BOOK FROM WIPF AND STOCK:

Qumran Interpretation of the Genesis Flood
BY Jeremy D. Lyon

About

The Dead Sea Scrolls have opened up for modern readers the ancient world of Jewish interpretation of the Bible during the Second Temple period. Among these scrolls are several manuscripts dating to the first century BC, the oldest surviving texts dealing with interpretation of the Genesis Flood. A literary analysis of the four primary Qumran Flood texts (1QapGen, 4Q252, 4Q370, and 4Q422) reveals how ancient Jews interpreted and employed the Genesis Flood narrative. These texts contain commentary, paraphrase, and admonition, among other things, addressing issues such as the cause, chronology, and purpose of the Flood. In addition, these fragmentary treasures reveal such ancient understandings of the Flood as a reversal and renewal of creation, a restoration of Eden and anticipation of the Promised Land, and an archetype of eschatological judgment.

That menorah mosaic at Horvat Kur

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Magnificent Menorah Mosaic Found in Galilee (Megan Sauter).

Background on the excavation at Horvat Kur and the recent discovery of the menorah mosaic is here and here and links. More on ancient depictions of menorahs is here and here and links

Aviam on that "unique mikveh"

JIM WEST: A Critical Respond to: “A Unique Miqveh in Upper Galilee” (by Eldad Keynan) – A Guest Post by Mordechai Aviam. The critiqued essay was published in Bible and Interpretation and was noted here. This area is outside my expertise and I note the debate for information, without taking sides.

Published and unpublished homilies of Jacob of Serugh

SYRIAC WATCH: Four unpublished homilies of Jacob of Serugh, with a 19th-cent. image of the Golden Horn (Adam McCollum, hmmlorientalia blog).

Anxious prophecy

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Prophecy Without End? Philip Jenkins takes up the question of why, if prophecy ended with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, were there so many prophets running around in first century Palestine?

Destroying a manuscript to save manuscripts?

LET'S NOT MAKE A HABIT OF THIS: Destroying a Manuscript to Test Multispectral Imaging (Peter J. Gurry, ETC). I get why they did this and I assume they did it responsibly, but overall let's stick to non-destructive and non-invasive scanning technologies.

Recent somewhat relevant posts are here and here and links.

The International Qur'anic Studies Association

A NEW ACADEMIC SOCIETY: The International Qur'anic Studies Association. John F. Kutsko, Executive Director of the Society of Biblical Literature has e-mailed the following:

In 2012, SBL received a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation for a consultation to explore the formation of a learned society for scholars of the Qur’an. In May 2014, the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA) incorporated as a wholly independent organization, with a governance structure and programming to support a scholarly guild and its members. Following incorporation, IQSA filed for 501(c)(3) status as a tax-exempt, non-profit organization.

I am delighted to inform you that on 30 September 2015, your colleagues in Qur’anic studies received approval from the IRS. Our congratulations go to all involved in IQSA: Emran El-Badawi (executive director, University of Houston), Gabriel Said Reynolds (chair, University of Notre Dame), the IQSA board, and IQSA’s members.

Please visit IQSA’s website— iqsaweb.org —to learn more about its programs and services. Join IQSA members at their meeting, which affiliates with SBL at the Annual Meeting.

Please help support and encourage their mission to foster Qur’anic scholarship.

I am delighted to see this important development and am happy to add my congratulations. The academic study of the Qur'an has been around for a long time, but it is taking on new strides and there is much work to be done. I look forward to following the work and progress of IQSA.

Some related posts here and here and links.

Lieu on Marcion

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Marcion and the Idea of Heresy

Is not the task of the historian to judge whether certain views were or were not ‘heretical’; instead the ‘heretic’ has been defined as such by the styles of argument and ways of structuring truth adopted by those whose position ultimately came to dominate.

See Also: Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

By Judith Lieu
Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity
Faculty of Divinity
Cambridge
October 2015

Marcion will also be the subject of an SBL session next month, as noted in this unfortunately titled ETC post: Marcion Smackdown in Atlanta (SBL) (Tommy Wasserman). And Larry Hurtado discusses Marcionism briefly in his latest blog post in the context of early Christian diversity.

I noted a couple of recent related publications here and here.

Patmore, The Transmission of Targum Jonathan in the West

NEW BOOK FROM OUP:

The Transmission of Targum Jonathan in the West: A Study of Italian and Ashkenazi Manuscripts of the Targum to Samuel (Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement)
Paperback – 15 Oct 2015
by Hector Patmore (Author)

Targum Jonathan is one of our most important sources for understanding how Jews read, interpreted, and used the Hebrew Bible in Late Antiquity and in subsequent generations: it is cited widely in rabbinic literature and by medieval commentators (Rashi, Kimhi, etc.) and continued to play a role in synagogue liturgy and study. Through a detailed study of the extant medieval manuscripts of Targum Samuel that were produced in and around Italy, France, Germany, and England, this book explains how and why the text of Targum Jonathan changed over time. It explores the relationship of these manuscripts to the ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Septuagint, Vulgate, Peshitta) and to Hebrew manuscripts containing variant readings of the biblical text; it examines their unique exegetical variants, including the complex system of marginal notes in the famous Codex Reuchlinianus No. 3, and analyses the longer versions of the Targum found in liturgies and those designated Tosefta Targums, which incorporate a wealth of additional haggadic material. This volume will be of interest to anyone engaged in text criticism of the Hebrew Bible, the study of Jewish exegesis, liturgy, and manuscript production, or the development and use of Aramaic.

Review of Briant, Darius in the Shadow of Alexander

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Pierre Briant, Darius in the Shadow of Alexander (translated by Jane Marie Todd; first published in French 2003). Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. xvii, 579. ISBN 9780674493094. $39.95.

Reviewed by Jennifer Finn, Marquette University (Jennifer.Finn@marquette.edu)

Preview

To scholars of ancient studies, Pierre Briant will be undoubtedly be a recognizable name. His Histoire de l'empire perse: De Cyrus à Alexandre (translated into English in 2002) broke ground in historical studies as an exemplum for an egalitarian incorporation of Classical and Near Eastern source material, and its methods were at the forefront of a profusion of novel interpretations of cultural interaction in the ancient Mediterranean.1 Promised in this initial study was an evaluation of the source material related to Darius III, the much-beleaguered opponent of Alexander the Great. Briant delivered, with the publication of Darius dans l’ombre d’Alexandre in 2003. This edition, now translated into English, is unmodified, excluding the addition of a new preface. Briant maintains that the last sentence of the introduction to the first edition should be unchanged: the objective remains “to explain why Darius, along with so many others, is condemned to haunt the realm of historical oblivion” (x).

[...]

Not about ancient Judaism, but provides some rich material on the international historical and political context of Second Temple Judaism.

Review of Magness, Archaeology of the Holy Land

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note: Magness, Archaeology of the Holy Land (Brian Leport). I noted the book here back in 2012 when it was published.

Anxious Zechariah

PHILIP JENKINS has been posting lots of interesting things in recent months over at The Anxious Bench and I have fallen far behind in noting them. I'm going to try to keep better track and also, over time, to catch up with some of his past posts. For starters, I note his recent series on the Book of Zechariah:

Placing Zechariah

Zechariah's Apocalypse

Zechariah and Revelation

Zechariah’s Angels

Archaeology at Cartagena

PUNIC WATCH: Archaeologists unearth more of the history of Cartagena. Cartagena may have been a large Roman weapons factory (Murcia Today).

It sometimes seems that Cartagena has so much history that it’s hard to know what to do with it all, and more prime examples of the wealth of archaeological heritage in the city are currently being unearthed in the Plaza de la Merced.

The second dig in the Plaza de la Merced is only in its early stages, but already the Decumanus Maximus (the main east-to-west street) has been located and a possible monument to nymphs has been found. Below the nymphaeum are the remains of a Punic home, whose destruction is thought to date from the time of the Roman conquest of the city by Scipio Africanus in 209 BC.

[...]

The Spanish town of Cartagena does a commendable job of extracting the full tourism potential from its Punic heritage. They celebrate a Punic festival every year in September.

The birthday of the world

SEDER OLAM RABBA: This Day in Jewish History, 3761 BCE The World Is Created, According to the Hebrew Calendar and an Obscure Sage. Basing himself on no source but the bible, Rabbi Yose ben Halafta, who lived in the 2nd century CE, sat down and did the math (David B. Green, Haaretz).

October 7, 3761 B.C.E., is the date on which the world was created – according to the Hebrew calendar that governs the passage of time among the Jewish people.

The calculation of the year is fairly simple to understand; how the precise day and month were arrived at is a little more complicated.

[...]

It is generally accepted that the sage Rabbi Yose ben Halafta is one who made the calculation. He was a tanna, a sage of the Mishnaic period, who lived in Sepphoris, a town in the Galilee, in the 2nd century C.E.

Yose ben Halafta was one of the principal students of Rabbi Akiva, the most revered rabbinical figure of his time. Rabbi Yose was in turn the teacher of Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, who would become the chief editor of the Mishnah, one of whose most frequently cited rabbis is Ben Halafta. He is commonly accepted as the author of the book Seder Olam (“Order of the World,” sometimes called Seder Olam Rabba, the “Great Order of the World,” to distinguish it from a later work with the same name), a history that attempts to give dates to all of the people and events mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and up to Rabbi Yose’s time, which coincided with the Bar-Kochba Revolt of 132 C.E.

For Rabbi Yose, the only relevant source is the Bible. He does not attempt to reconcile it with any other chronology, but rather, to make sense of and quantify the chronology as it presented in Scripture.

[...]

The ascribed authorship of the tractate is traditional and should, as usual with these things, be taken with a grain of salt. Whatever its original date of composition, Seder Olam Rabba seems to have undergone a long process of editing. Its chronology is a bit dodgy in places: it makes the period of Persian domination between the building of the Second Temple (520 BCE) and Alexander the Great (c. 333 BCE) only 34 years.

The other Queen Helena

THE JERUSALEM POST: The Queen who Built a Palace in Jerusalem (ELAINE ROSE GLICKMAN, The Streets of Jerusalem Blog).

Actually, there are two Queen Helenas. One was an empress and the mother of Constantine the Great, who in the fourth century visited the Holy Land and – according to legend – located the tunic of Jesus, pinpointed the site of his resurrection, and even found the nails used in his crucifixion. When my family rented an apartment on Heleni Hamalka last summer, I assumed that was the Helena for whom the street was named. I didn’t realize until later that there was another Queen Helena, and I am sorry not to have fully appreciated her legacy while I was in Jerusalem.

Well, at least you’ll know better next time you are in town! And the Heleni Hamalka memorialized in Morasha is definitely worth knowing. An early-first century queen of Adiabene (a district in ancient Assyria with its capital in present-day Iraq), Helena became acquainted with Judaism through Jewish merchants who visited her country and – according to legend – hired a tutor in order to learn everything she could. Around the year 30 C.E., she turned her back on the dominant Ashurite religion and – along with her younger son Izates – formally converted to Judaism.

Queen Helena of Adiabene was a real historical person, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all the stories told about her in the rabbinic literature are historical. More on her is here and links.

Witte, Texte und Kontexte des Sirachbuchs

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

Texte und Kontexte des Sirachbuchs
Gesammelte Studien zu Ben Sira und zur frühjüdischen Weisheit

[Texts and Contexts of the Wisdom of Sirach. Collected Studies on Ben Sira und Early Jewish Wisdom Literature. Published in German.]

In the essays of this volume, Markus Witte focuses on text-critical and literary-historical problems of the book of Ben Sira, portrays its different theologies and determines its position in the context of the early Jewish wisdom.

Religious appropriation of Cyrus the Great

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Religious Appropriation of National Symbols in Iran: Searching for Cyrus the Great. An article by Menahem Merhavy published this year in Iranian Studies 48.

Background on Cyrus the Great is here and here and many links, in some of which I comment on anachronistic efforts by Iranians and others to present Cyrus as a tolerant, modern-minded, founder of human rights.

An hydraulic gardening system in Petra

NABATEAN WATCH: Meet 3 Erie women archaeologists (Marissa Orbanek. GoEirie.com). All three are doing interesting work, but I want to focus on that of Professor Leigh-Ann Bedal, who is excavating Nabatean (Nabataean) material in Petra, Jordan.

Bedal, an associate professor of anthropology at Penn State Behrend, directed an excavation of an ancient desert garden and pool complex that appeared in a documentary feature on PBS this past year. The program, "Petra: Lost City of Stone," uses computer reconstructions and hydraulic studies to explore the elaborate water systems in the capital city of ancient Nabatea, located in modern Jordan. The program is part of a three-episode series, "Building Wonders," produced by Nova. Other episodes explore the Roman Colosseum and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

"When I started this in 1997, I had no idea what I was getting myself into," Bedal said. "I had been digging in Petra for a few years and wanted to discover more history that would add to the Temple. But when I started digging, we uncovered so many features in just that one field season and realized that this wasn't a market place of the temple, but rather, it was a pool and a garden."

Bedal discovered evidence of an elaborate hydraulic system and a large garden terrace -- the only known example of a Nabatean garden.

Background on the Nabateans and Petra is here and many links.

Schiffman on Ir David

LAWRENCE SCHIFFMAN: Rediscovering Ir David. New Finds Revealed in an Ancient City.

The exciting results of archaeological excavations of ancient Yerushalayim have been coming to light steadily since the reunification of the city during the 1967 Six Day War. More recently, the area of Ir David, the City of David, to the south of Har Habayis (Temple Mount), has been yielding amazing discoveries.

A popular article published in Ami Magazine.

Reinhartz on JBL

THE EDITOR SPEAKS: The Journal of Biblical Literature and the Critical Investigation of the Bible (Adele Reinhartz). A fascinating history of JBL with reflections on its past and present roles.

HT Ancient Jew Review Twitter.