In Priestly law, impurity is stripped of its mythic origins in the demonic realm but still retains its dangerous, physical presence, and must be mitigated by specific acts of ritual cleansing and banishing, depending on the type of impurity. The final purification from skin disease, tzaraʿat (Leviticus 13–14), is the starkest example of such a ritual.
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First noted by AWOL, and then PaleoJudaica, in 2012. But a great many entries have been added since then, so a reposting is warranted.
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The debt to the Jewish rebels against Rome - part 2 - opinion. The journey of the First and Second Jewish Revolts through coinage. Both articles are by Robert Silverman. From part 2:
In part one, I described two rebel concepts broadcast to the ancient Jews through coins, which were the most effective mass media of the day.Cross-file under Numismatics.First, the rebels insisted on Hebrew as the language of the state and on their coins, at a time when Aramaic and Greek predominated. Second, the rebels named their new state Israel, though they lived in a Roman province called Judea. Israel was a connection to the First Temple and as the name for the entire people, was an attempt to internationalize the revolt and recruit Jews outside Judea in the rival Parthian empire.
Here we will discuss two other concepts on revolt coins. Together they define the political legacy of the rebels to all of us who live in modern Israel.
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The centrality of the twelve tribes tradition to the vision of Israel is indisputable. But did the twelve tribes actually exist? Well, it’s complicated.I noted the publication of Prof. Tobolowsky's book,The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, here (preview) and here.
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AJR is pleased to publish remarks delivered as part of a book review panel at the annual meeting of the 2022 Society of Biblical Literature in Denver. The panel was organized by members of the Religious Experience in Antiquity steering committee chaired by Frederick S. Tappenden (St. Stephen’s College, University of Alberta). The book is Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible: Possession and Other Spirit Phenomena (De Gruyter 2022) by Reed Carlson and the panelists were: Jutta Jokiranta (University of Helsinki), David Lambert (University of North Carolina), Ingrid Lilly (Wofford College), and Ethan Schwartz (Villanova University).So far, the essay by Ingrid E. Lilly has been posted:
The Critical Potential of Spirits: Hebrew Philology, the Poetics of Relation, and Unfamiliar Selves.
Reed Carlson’s book,Unfamiliar Selves, is hardly confrontational about its implications for Hebrew philology. And yet, in my view, Carlson’s philological project of comparative anthropology enters the inner-chambers of an academic assemblage where biblical philology has often figured as an unbiased epistemological practice that forms the lower-critical foundation for studying history and practicing historical criticism. These values are rather strange when you think about it: do objectivity and unbiased perception really best characterize communication in zones of language contact?I noted the publication of the book here.
UPDATE (26 April): More here.
UPDATE (2 May): More here. Also, I just realized that recently I noted a relevant essay by Carlson here.
UPDATE: (3 May): More here.
UPDATE (4 May): More here.
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I have already noted this story here. But this BHD essay has some background and additional details.
Cross-file under Nabatean (Nabataean) Watch and Marine (Maritime, Underwater) Archaeology.
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Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: the age of the great kings. New York: Basic Books, 2022. Pp. xiv, 431. ISBN 9781541600348I noted the publication of the book here.Review by
Farnoosh Shamsian, Leipzig University. farnoosh.shamsian@uni-leipzig.de... “Persians” is not a tedious history book full of lifeless descriptions. With his literary abilities, Llewellyn-Jones has created an entertaining narrative of Persian history, so that reading “Persians” feels more like reading a novel than history. Excerpts and quotations are, however, used sparingly and without precise referencing, making it difficult to locate the source of information. ...
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The Apocalypse of Paul (Visio Pauli) in Sahidic CopticCross-file under New Testament Apocrypha and Coptic Watch.Critical Edition, Translation and Commentary
Series: Vigiliae Christianae, Supplements, Volume: 178
Authors: Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta and Jacques van der Vliet
The apocryphal Apocalypse of Paul (Visio Pauli) plunges us right into the heart of early-Christian conceptions of heaven and hell. Its vivid eyewitness account of otherworldly punishment and reward was translated into many different languages and inspired numerous later authors, among whom Dante. This book offers a re-edition and English translation of the ancient Coptic version. An exhaustive commentary makes the text accessible and situates it in the time and place where it was written, fourth-century Egypt. As this new study shows, the Coptic version is by far the best available witness of the original Apocalypse of Paul.
Prices from (excl. shipping): €168.00
Copyright Year: 2023
E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-52647-1
Publication date: 28 Dec 2022Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-52646-4
Publication date: 22 Dec 2022
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Sieges of the Jewish War/Great Revolt (Jerusalem, Masada, Gamla) head the list.
For more on the Year 5 silver shekel, see here.
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AbstractRecent excavations of Late Antiquity settlements in the Negev Highlands of southern Israel uncovered a society that established commercial-scale viticulture in an arid environment [D. Fuks et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 19780–19791 (2020)]. We applied target-enriched genome-wide sequencing and radiocarbon dating to examine grapevine pips that were excavated at three of these sites. Our analyses revealed centuries long and continuous grape cultivation in the Southern Levant. The genetically diverse pips also provided clues to ancient cultivation strategies aimed at improving agricultural productivity and ensuring food security. Applying genomic prediction analysis, a pip dated to the eighth century CE was determined to likely be from a white grape, to date the oldest to be identified. In a kinship analysis, another pip was found to be descendant from a modern Greek cultivar and was thus linked with several popular historic wines that were once traded across the Byzantine Empire. These findings shed light on historical Byzantine trading networks and on the genetic contribution of Levantine varieties to the classic Aegean landscape.
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Başbük’s divine procession uniquely combined different elements. Inscriptions reveal their Aramaic names. Anatolian and Syrian divine motifs as well as their unique features underscore the cult’s local character. Anatomical elements in the depictions, including definition of their muscles, hair and profile point to the early Neo-Assyrian period. The ear-of-corn barley held by the leading Hadad-’Attar‘ata couple and the ear-of-corn imagery on Sîn and Šamaš’s headgears point to the importance of fertility represented in this complex at Başbük. These features differentiate the Başbük rock-panel from other Neo-Assyrian reliefs in the provinces ...I have posted on the discover of the Neo-Assyrian Aramean gods relief at Başbük, Turkey, here and here. Cross-file under Parietal Petroglyphs.
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Just noticed this blog post by Professor Schiffman from the beginning of February. It is in response to an archaeologist's claim to have discovered a number of hitherto unnoticed royal inscriptions by King Hezekiah in Hezekiah's Tunnel in Jerusalem.
Other archaeologist received the announcement with skepticism. I noted the story here.
To my knowledge, no evidence for the claims has yet received scholarly publication. Schiffman summarizes the case for skepticism in an article in Ami Magazine.
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In his article “Jeremiah’s Journey to Egypt,” published in the Spring 2023 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, James K. Hoffmeier finally confirms the route that brought the biblical prophet to Egypt.I noted the discovery of the second stele of Pharaoh Apries (Hophra) in 2021.
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This post is about "a single third/fourth century manuscript containing a translation of roughly two-thirds of the book of Proverbs (Papyrus Bodmer VI)." It includes a link to photographs and a preliminary edition of the text by the author.
Cross-file under Coptic Watch.
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The latest discovery in the city [of Pozzuoli] includes a temple and two marble altars that once belonged to the Nabataean people, the ministry said. Experts dated the altars to the first half of the first century.For more on the Nabateans, see here and here and many posts in the PaleoJudaica archive. They were a pre-Islamic, polytheistic Arab kingdom. They spoke Arabic, but wrote in a dialect of Aramaic.
For an ancient Jewish connection see the posts on the Babatha archive collected here (plus here), notably here and here.
Cross-file under Marine (Maritime, Underwater) Archaeology.
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Amsler, Monika. 2023. The Babylonian Talmud and late antique book culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
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Deuteronomy and Leviticus drew on common Vorlage (source text) to develop their regulations about the consumption of land, marine, and winged creatures. While Deuteronomy only lightly modifies this Vorlage, the editors of Leviticus expanded the text in several stages to align it with Priestly ideology.Could be. Some thoughtful redaction criticism for those who enjoy such things.
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At first glance, one may think this is simply an artifact discovered in the sifting, which may tell a single story from a single period, but one important part of this item isn’t a recovered artifact – the string. What we have in front of us are in fact 35 different beads, discovered separately, each telling the story of a different necklace or other pieces of jewelry and articles of clothing.Also, there is a specialist on the technology of drilling ancient beads? Of course there is.
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David Hendin, Guide to Biblical coins. 6th edition. New York: American Numismatic Society, 2022. Pp. 668. ISBN 9780897223706The review is in French. You can read a Google-Translate English version here. From the latter:Review by
Michaël Girardin, Université du Littoral – Côte d’Opale. michael.girardin@univ-littoral.fr
As we can see, the book is not a simple synthesis: it is innovative, well documented, very informed on many subjects. Thanks to this sixth update, it will accompany research for a long time to come and will remain one of the best books about the coins of Second Temple Judaism, to put in everyone's hands.
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Summarizes an article by Jordan J. Ryan in the current issue of BAR. The article itself is behind the subscription wall. But this essay does inclue a list of sixteen known synagogues from before the Bar Kokhba Revolt, with some information on most of them.
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