Review of Hoffman & Cole, "Sacred Trash"

HOFFMAN AND COLE, SACRED TRASH, is reviewed in Haaretz by Avi Steinberg. Excerpt:

As they approach the end of their book, the authors admit that they haven’t even begun to begin. They haven’t, they write, adequately dealt with Biblical literature. “Another Geniza book, or three,” they admit, “could be written around what we’ve left out.” This confession turns out to be a lesson: that the problem of what has been left out of “Sacred Trash” is not truly a problem but rather the unavoidable consequence of dipping into the Geniza’s seemingly fathomless ocean of possibilities. Apparently the deeper one swims in this ocean, the sharper this lesson becomes. Of “A Mediterranean Society,” the multi-volume, several-thousand-page scholarly masterpiece that emerged over decades from Geniza sources, S.D. Goitein, its author, said it was “only a sketch.”

There is a tendency among the obsessed to speak in occult terms about the Geniza, about specters and miracles. “Suddenly,” wrote scholar Ezra Fleischer, “with the Geniza’s discovery, [tens of thousands of recovered lost poems were] released like spirits or ghosts through the square opening of that sealed room at the end of the women’s gallery of the Ben Ezra synagogue.” With the Cairo Geniza, it is difficult to avoid the uncanny, disorienting experience of encountering lost memory − it is a testament to Cole and Hoffman that they have fleshed out these ghosts, and patiently constructed a vivid, human saga every bit extraordinary as a miracle.

Earlier reviews noted here and links. And another recent post on the Cairo Geniza is here.

More on the Miriam Ossuary

MORE ON THE MIRIAM OSSUARY: Ossuary Yields New Detail of Gospel Story (The Media Line). This covers the story as already reported, but includes new details here and there. Excerpt:

Assahel Lavi, a former member of the government’s unit for the prevention of the theft of antiquities, said the Judean hills are riddled with thousands of ancient graves, many containing ossuaries and other items spanning the millennium.

“But what attracts the grave robbers the most are the artifacts from the Second Temple period,” Lavi told The Media Line. “Grave robbers want anything with a Jewish symbol on it, like a menorah, from that period because it fetches a lot more money than from other periods.”

Lavi said items with crosses and other symbols from latter times, such as the Byzantine period, were much more common.

“This is one of the leading drivers for grave robbers seeking out ancient Jewish sites from the time of Second Temple,” he said.

Zissu, who was once the commander of the anti-grave robbing unit, said he was very disappointed that the ossuary had not been found in situ, which prevented him from examining it in its archaeological context.

“Sadly, the robbers’ desire of monetary gain has erased entire pages of the country’s cultural history,” Zissu said. “But I’m sure there is more to discover. This land is still full of surprises.”

Indeed and indeed.

International SBL and KJB@400

TODAY BEGINS the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in London and its celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. Wish I could be there. Oh well, maybe in 2111 ...

Happy Independence Day

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY to my American readers.

Samaritan astrologers

SAMARITAN ASTROLOGERS: West Bank: ancient priesthood predicting future (AFP).

Latest Calaway Hekhalot exegesis

MORE HEKHALOT EXEGESIS from Jared Calaway at Antiquitopia:

• Daily Hekhalot: Hekhalot Zutarti §420c (A Universal Vision of the Angelic Throne Keeper)
  
• Daily Hekhalot: §420 Synthesized and Revised
  
• Daily Hekhalot: Hekhalot Zutarti §421a (Anafiel Speaks)
  
• Daily Hekhalot: Hekhalot Zutarti §421b (Defending the Mystic Against Slander)

Tombouctou Manuscripts Project

TIMBUKTU ARCHIVES UPDATE: Tombouctou Manuscripts Project.

The Tombouctou Manuscripts Project
Timbuktu has often been invoked as a symbol of the most distant place on Earth, as a mysterious and exotic, but unreachable, attraction. Yet, it is a real city with a history.

Indeed, it has a rich and diverse heritage and a fascinating past. The city and its desert environs are an archive of handwritten texts in Arabic and in African languages in the Arabic script, produced between the 13th and the 20th centuries. The manuscript libraries of Timbuktu are significant repositories of scholarly production in West Africa and the Sahara. Given the large number of manuscript collections it is surprising that Timbuktu as an archive remains largely unknown and under-used. Timbuktu’s manuscript collections deserve close study. It is a significant starting-point for reflecting on Africa’s written traditions.

Recognising its significance as a site of African architecture and of its scholarly past, Unesco declared Timbuktu a World Heritage Site in 1990.

A South Africa-Mali Timbuktu Manuscripts Project was officially launched in 2003 and a major achievement of this project was the new library-archive building, which was inaugurated in Timbuktu in January 2009.

The Tombouctou Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town (UCT) is dedicated to research various aspects of writing and reading the handwritten works of Timbuktu and beyond. Training young researchers is an integral part of its work.

Background here and links.

Biblical Studies Carnival

THE LATEST BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL has been posted by Christian Brady at Targuman.

Aramaic cuneiforms?

ARAMAIC WATCH?

Important Archeological Discoveries in Hasaka for the Current Excavation Season Jun 29, 2011 HASKA, (SANA) - The excavation works conducted by the national, foreign and joint expeditions in Hasaka Province have unearthed several important archeological monuments dating back to different ages. In a statement to SANA, Director of Hasaka Antiquities Department, Abdul-Masih Baghdou said that the researches conducted by the national archeological expedition in Tal Mabtouh Sharqi indicated that Mabtouh City includes tracks for the streets and spillways which indicates the progress of the social life in it. Baghdou indicated that during the current season, four archeological levels were unearthed at the site including the level of metal clay which dates back to the Akkadian era, inside the level walls and floors were found, in addition to a squeezer consisting of a basin. [...] He added that inside the level which dates back to the Ancient Babylonian Era, the expedition unearthed a number of the brick-made buildings and tombs including human skulls and funerary materials such as bronze-made tool and spear blades, in addition to Aramaic cuneiforms dating back to the Ancient Babylonian era. [...]

Aramaic cuneiforms? Aramaic written in cuneiform script is not unknown (one example is the Uruk incantation), but it is extremely rare. If that is really what these tablets are, it is quite an exciting discovery. But given SANA's track record for garbling in these articles (see here, here, and here), I suspect the original announcement said something different, perhaps that Aramaic and cuneiform texts had been discovered. That's still good, though. UPDATE: If "the Ancient Babylonian Era" means the Old Babylonian period, there could be cuneiform tablets, but Aramaic did not yet exist. Then again, perhaps they mean the Neo-Babylonian era, in which case Aramaic inscriptions are possible. But the indications of periods are very unclear. The "Akkadian era" seems to be distinguished from the "Ancient Babylonian Era" and the "Modern and Middle Assyrian Age." Perhaps this is a garbled way of referring to the Old Babylonian, Neo-Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, and Middle Assyrian periods? As I said, it's very unclear. UPDATE (2 July): Duane Smith comments at Abnormal Interests.

ILAB profiles the Cairo Geniza

THE CAIRO GENIZA is profiled briefly by Linda Hedrick at the International League of Antiquitarian Booksellers website: Buried Books - The Cairo Genizah.

More recently on the Cairo Geniza here.

Mughrabi Gate bridge controversy once again

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The latest on the Mughrabi (Mugrabi) Gate bridge:

Israel furious with Jordan over condemnation of Jerusalem's Old City renovation

Ambassador Barkan says Israel is upset over the Jordanian about-face concerning the Mughrabi renovations near the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

By Danna Harman

ATHENS - Israel is furious with Jordan, Israel's ambassador to UNESCO said yesterday.

Nimrod Barkan said Israel is shocked that Amman had led a successful effort within the international body to condemn Israel over the renovations planned for the Mughrabi Gate Bridge - after signing an agreement with Israel to allow the work to go ahead.
kotel - Daniel Bar-On - June 28 2011

"The Jordanians lied in a way that cannot be believed, both to us and to the Americans," Barkan said in a phone call from Paris. "They lied all along the way. They wanted to get it both ways."

[...]

Background here.

Miriam Ossuary

THE OSSUARY OF A DAUGHTER OF THE CAIAPHAS FAMILY has been getting lots of attention while I was away. Here's the IAA press release:

Ossuary Belonging to a Daughter of the Caiaphas Family of High Priests was Discovered (JUNE 2011)

Three years ago the Israel Antiquities Authority Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery acquired a decorated ossuary bearing an engraved inscription. The ossuary was discovered by antiquities robbers who plundered an ancient Jewish tomb of the Second Temple period. During the course of the investigation it was determined that the ossuary came from a burial cave in the area of the Valley of ’Elah, in the Judean Shephelah.

To check the authenticity of the artifact and the significance of the engraved inscription, the Israel Antiquities Authority turned to Dr. Boaz Zissu of the Department of the Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology of Bar Ilan University and Professor Yuval Goren of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations of the Tel Aviv University.

This week, the two scientists published the results of their research, which summarize the importance of the find and confirm its genuineness. The study appears in the Israel Exploration Journal (Volume 61) published this week by the Israel Exploration Society.

Ossuaries are small stone chests that Jews used for secondary burial of bones; they were quite common in tombs in Israel from the late first century BCE until the beginning of the second century CE. The front of the ossuary that was found is decorated with a stylized floral motif above which is a long Aramaic inscription engraved in Jewish script:

‘Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priests [of] Ma'aziah from Beth ’Imri’
(or, an alternative reading:
‘Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priest of Ma'aziah from Beth ’Imri’)

In the conclusion of their study Dr. Boaz Zissu and Professor Yuval Goren write, “the prime importance of the inscription lies in the reference to the ancestry of the deceased – Miriam daughter of Yeshua – to the Caiaphas family, indicating the connection to the family of the Ma'aziahcourse of priests of Beth ’Imri”. Caiaphas is the name of Yeshua’s father, and Miriam‘s grandfather. From the wording of the inscription we learn that he belonged to a famous family of priests that was active in the first century CE. One family member, the high priest Yehosef Bar Caiaphas, is especially famous for his involvement in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus.
Ma'aziah /Ma'aziahu is the last of the twenty four priestly courses that served in the Temple in Jerusalem. The list of courses, which was formulated during King David’s reign, appears in the Bible in I Chronicles (I Chronicles 24:18). The signatories to the pledge in the days of Nehemiah include among others, “Maʽaziah, Bilgai, Shem'aiah; these are the priests” (Nehemiah 10: 9). This is the first reference to the Maʽaziah course in an epigraphic find from the Second Temple period. For the first time we learn from an inscription that the Caiaphas family was related to the Ma'aziah course.
The names of other courses, such as Abijah, Eliashib, Bilgah, Delaiah, Hakkoz, Shecaniah, Hezir, Jehoiarib, Jakim (Jakin) and Jeshebeab, are known from historical and epigraphic texts from the Second Temple period, including inscriptions discovered in tombs.
The ending “from Beth ’Imri” can be interpreted two ways:
The first possibility is that Beth ’Imri is the name of a priestly family – the sons of ’Immer (Ezra 2: 36-37; Nehemiah 7:39-42) whose descendents include members of the Maʽaziah course.
The second possibility is the place of origin of the deceased or of her entire family.The name of the ancient settlement was probably preserved in the name Beit ’Ummar, a village in the northern Hebron Hills. In that village and in nearby Khirbet Kufin, remains of a Jewish settlement were identified from the Second Temple period and the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt.


In view of the inscription on the ossuary it is worth examining the linguistic relationship between the names Caiaphas – a prominent family that seems to have lived in Beth ’Imri/ Beit ’Ummar – and Khirbet Kufin, which perhaps preserves the name of the Caiaphas family.

Since the ossuary in question was not found in a controlled archaeological excavation and because of its special scientific importance, it was subjected to microscopic examinations using an environmental scanning electron microscope/energy dispersive spectrometer (ESEM/EDS), the purpose of which was to evaluate its authenticity.The patina covering the sides was checked, with emphasis on the patina covering the inscription. The examinations determined that the inscription is genuine and ancient.

The Israel Antiquities Authority is distressed by the fact that this important find, which was plundered from its original provenance, was removed from its archeological context, thus it will never be possible to know the full story of the burial cave. Sadly, the robbers’ desire of monetary gain has erased entire pages of the country’s cultural history

Todd Bolen has links to media articles and blog commentary at his Bible Places blog. Joseph Lauer has also been sending out good collections of links on his e-mail list.

UPDATE: Also, a good post from Robert Cargill.

Enoch Seminar: Response to Najman

MY RESPONSE TO HINDY NAJMAN'S PAPER at the Sixth Enoch Seminar generated enough discussion (and amusement) in the session and afterwards that it seems worth it to post it here. Professor Najman's paper is unpublished, but you can get the gist from my summary at the beginning. (Warning: my response contains a few spoilers for the series Lost.)

Response to Hindy Najman, "Con-figuring 4Ezra"
James R. Davila, University of St AndrewsI am very happy to have this opportunity to respond to Hindy's very rich paper in which she develops some of her earlier reflections on the implications of pseudepigraphy in the sorts of works to which this conference is devoted. John Collins has advanced the figure of Ezra in 4 Ezra as a counterexample to her paradigm of pseudepigraphy as the tying of a discourse to a great founding figure so as to emulate that figure in a way that authorizes the new discourse. Drawing on reflections on the Homeric problem by Nietzsche, Hindy highlights his proposed reconstruction of the development of the concept "Homer" as the retrospective reframing of the Iliad and the Odyssey as the genuine and only works by the author Homer as constructed by the Alexandrian grammarians. The importance for 4 Ezra is that in terms of the perception of time Nietzsche's approach exemplifies "the very fact that there are alternatives, that both the subject matter and the philological approach can instantiate a variety of complex temporal patterns." In the case of 4 Ezra, "it creates its own precursors." It retroactively intensifies the traumatic character of the destruction of the First Temple, especially by viewing it implicitly through the lens of the author's own experience of the destruction of the Second Temple. The Ezra figure of Ezra-Nehemiah is reimagined as a prophet and as an angelically glorified being who ascends to heaven. 4 Ezra also redirects other figures to become his precursors, notably Job, Moses, Daniel, Ezekiel, and in some ways Zion herself. The old figure of Ezra in the earliest texts is thus enveloped retroactively in a web of associations which gives the figure and his context an entirely new meaning.

In the few minutes I have here to respond, I want to develop Hindy's core insight that "philological work may exhibit varying patterns of temporality." In a sense this can be taken as one aspect of Kristeva's intertextuality: any text can be brought into conversation with any other text and in some cases unexpected conversation partners can produce philologically interesting results. Hindy challenges us to explore how employing variations in temporal perception can create useful textual conversations. The cases that occurred to me as I pondered Hindy's paper involved cinematic techniques of manipulating time for dramatic effect, and so I ask you indulgence when I use those techniques as framing categories here. Moreover, all three of these cinematic categories are well exemplified by their use in the six seasons of the television series Lost, so I will draw even further on your indulgence, hopefully not exhausting it entirely, by using this series alongside Hindy's paper to structure my discussion.

The first technique is the venerable one of the "flashback." The first three seasons of Lost include frequent flashbacks of the past history of the individual survivors of the Oceanic Flight 815 crash and these flashbacks place the characters into contexts that gives us insights into their current behavior on the Island, which insights would otherwise be unavailable to us. There is nothing particularly innovative about the use of flashbacks in the series.

Flashbacks correspond to the standard historical-critical method used by philologists. The center is typically a text, such as Ezra-Nehemiah (or perhaps a figure, such as Ezra, in the text), and the frame is the historical background in the form of archaeology and other texts of the same period or earlier which place the center text or figure in a historical context so that their meaning can be better understood. This is the most traditional temporal framework associated with philology, so much so that it tends to be taken for granted as the default framework.

In the fourth and fifth seasons of Lost, the series shifted its backgrounders from flashbacks to "flashforwards." The efforts of the survivors of Flight 815 to escape from the Island were periodically interrupted with scenes from three years in the future, which gradually reveal that a handful of them had escaped, that the consequences for those left behind on the Island had been catastrophic, and that those who had escaped were coming to terms with the fact that they had to go back to repair the damage. Now we learn more about the characters not by seeing their backgrounds, but rather by seeing the future consequences of what they are doing in the present. Lost is not the first film project to employ flashforwards, and they have been used as a literary technique for a long time, but Lost pioneered the use of the cinematic technique over an extended story-arc.

What Hindy is doing in this paper bears a striking resemblance to the flashforward. The center is again, the book of Ezra-Nehemiah or the figure of Ezra in that book, but the frame is now the much later book of 4 Ezra. Her prospective approach produces a retrogressive reading in which the future history of the figure of Ezra as presented in 4 Ezra gives a new, retrospective context and meaning to Ezra and the original Ezra texts, one quite different from its "original" meaning in the historical-critical sense.

These two temporal frameworks by no means exhaust the possible varying patterns of temporality. The final season of Lost uses another such pattern, which has come to be called the "flashsideways" by fans. The "Oceanic six" returned to the Island in season five, where they were caught up in waves of temporal shifts and they resorted to extreme measures to try to cancel out their own past history and replace it with a timeline in which Flight 815 never crashed and, indeed, in which the work of the Dharma Initiative was annihilated thirty years before the crash. Unbeknownst to them, they succeed—or initially appear to, in that the final season alternates between the plight of the crash victims still trapped on the Island and an alternate timeline in which none of the contributing factors to the crash—going back many years—happened, and so the crash itself did not happen. In this new timeline the characters live different lives in which they face challenges that force them to confront personal weaknesses already revealed in the crash timeline, sometimes successfully overcoming them and sometimes not.

Hindy hints at the possibility of the philological flashsideways when she calls on us to "use our historical ability to understand without anachronism, our ability to imagine pasts that differ radically from our present, in order to imagine alternative futures." Here we have yet another potential frame for the philological enterprise. Its most obvious application is in "counterfactual history," in which a historical event or a text is placed in an alternate historical context different from our timeline, which new context gives us insights, for example, into the nature and transmission of the text which we would not otherwise have. This method has not been applied often in our field, but, for example, in 1994 Abraham Terian published an article that reflected wistfully on how much more attention the works of Philo would receive today had they been discovered recently like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library, and last year I published an article that explored what we could learn about the transmission of Jewish pseudepigrapha in Christian circles by following a counterfactual transmission of the Qumran Hodayot by the ancient Syriac-speaking church. In this article I also offered methodological reflections on how counterfactual history might profitably be more widely applied in the fields of ancient history and philology.

A less stark application of the flashsideways by literary critics is the widespread practice of bringing one or more ancient documents into dialogue with other documents from roughly the same time in order to enrich our understanding of these texts, even though we cannot establish that the authors ever met or knew each other's work. A good example involving one of the two documents we are here this week to study is the 1995 book by Edith Humphrey, The Ladies and the Cities: Transformation and Apocalyptic Identity in Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Ezra, The Apocalypse and the Shepherd of Hermas.

I am not aware of the flashsideways being used by any ancient documents in the Western tradition and it may be that the concept of parallel mutually counterfactual timelines was too alien to their worldview. But that said, ancient Hinduism and Buddhism has a much more supple conception of time, and it would surprise me if no texts in those traditions ever explored such notions.

As well as thanking Hindy for a very thought-provoking paper, I will conclude with two brief questions for her. First, are my reflections here anything like what you had in mind when you said that philological work may exhibit varying patterns of temporality and do you find my extended framework potentially useful? And second, do you have in mind other temporal patterns whose instantiation can enrich our philological approach?

Works Cited
James R. Davila, "Counterfactual History and the Dead Sea Scrolls," in Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls: An Assessment of Old and New Approaches and Methods (ed. Maxine L. Grossman; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010), 128-44.

Edith McEwan Humphrey, The Ladies and the Cities: Transformation and Apocalyptic Identity in Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Ezra, The Apocalypse and the Shepherd of Hermas (JSPSup 17; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).

Abraham Terian, "Had the Works of Philo Been Newly Discovered," BA 57 (1994): 86-97.

You can read an early draft of my counterfactual history article here and a related piece here.

Also, at the Enoch Seminar a couple of people pointed out that the book of 4 Ezra arguably contains flashessideways when Ezra tells God how he ought to have done things differently, for example, in 7:46[116]:

I answered and said, "This is my first and last word, that it would have been better if the earth had not produced Adam, or else, when it had produced him, had restrained him from sinning. (RSV)

Another post on the Sixth Enoch Seminar, with photos, is here.

Back in St. Andrews

BACK IN ST. ANDREWS. More on the Enoch Seminar when I get a chance.

UPDATE: I have added a photo of 4 Ezra to the At the Biblioteca Ambrosiana post.

Index to Hugoye

NEW BOOK:

Walters, J., and Logan Wilmoth. Index to Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies

Title: Index to Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Subtitle: Volumes 1-10
Series: Gorgias Handbooks 22
Availability: In Print
Publisher: Gorgias Press
Edited by J. Walters
Edited by Logan Wilmoth
ISBN: 978-1-4632-0078-7
Availability: In Print
Publication Date: 6/2011
Language: English
Format: Paperback, Black, 6 x 9 in
Pages: 72

This index provides an index to the contents of Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, Volumes 1-10, organized into five parts. Part I provides the article titles, authors, abstracts, and page numbers organized by volume. Part II is an index of all articles organized alphabetically by article title. Part III is an index of all articles organized alphabetically by the last name of the author. Part IV is an index of all the books reviewed in Hugoye and presents this material in two sections: 1) alphabetically by author of the book reviewed, and 2) alphabetically by author of the review. Part V provides a subject index in five sections: manuscripts, ancient texts, people, places, and keywords.

Table of Contents

* Index to Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies Volumes 1-10 by J. Edward Walters and Logan Wilmoth (page 5)
* Introduction (page 5)
* I. Index of Volume Contents (page 7)
* II. Index by Article Titles (page 36)
* III. Index by Author (page 44)
* IV. Book Reviews (page 53)
* V. Subject Index (page 65)



Walters, J., and Logan Wilmoth. Index to Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
ISBN: 978-1-4632-0078-7
Weight: 1 LBS.
Price: $30.80

BMCR: Ulrich et al, "Continuity and Discontinuity in Early Christian Apologetics"

BMCR REVIEW:

Jörg Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, Maijastina Kahlos (ed.), Continuity and Discontinuity in Early Christian Apologetics. Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity 5. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009. Pp. 130. ISBN 9783631579763. $33.95.

Reviewed by E. J. Hutchinson, Hillsdale College (ehutchinson@hillsdale.edu)

Table of Contents

Continuity and Discontinuity in Early Christian Apologetics is a collection of seven essays presented in a workshop organized by German, Finnish, and Danish scholars at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies at Oxford in 2007. The goal of the editors in publishing the papers is "to reach a larger audience and…to further the discussion" (3) of early Christian apologetics. The papers cover the second to the fifth centuries and include analysis of both Latin and Greek apologists (a category which is defined—rightly, in my view—rather broadly).

[...]

These apologetics were aimed, of course, at both contemporary pagans and contemporary Jews.

At the Biblioteca Ambrosiana

AT THE BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA, MILAN

Click on the images to see a larger version.

Codex Ambrosianus B.21, the earliest complete Syriac Bible (background here, with images from a photolithographic facsimile), open to 2 Baruch. This is the actual manuscript, on display for the Enoch Seminar yesterday.


Liv Ingeborg Lied

L->R: Gianantonio Borgonovo (Ambrosian Library), Liv Ingeborg Lied, Ted Erho, Bob Kraft, Jim Davila


Codex Ambrosianus B. 21, open to the beginning of the biblical book of Ezra (red ink)


Codex Ambrosianus B. 21, colophons page (notes of its transmission history at the end of the codex)

UPDATE (30 June): One more:

The beginning of 4 Ezra (red ink, middle of page, below the blank spot)
UPDATE (1 July): More on the Sixth Enoch Seminar here.

UPDATE (2 July): Another photo:


2 Baruch 21:1, the prayer of Baruch (red ink)
Note (4 July): I have corrected two text attributions above after having a chance to look more closely at the texts.

BMCR: O'Loughlin, "The Didache"

BMCR REVIEW:

Thomas O'Loughlin, The Didache: A Window on the Earliest Christians. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010. Pp. xvii, 185. ISBN 9780801045394. $24.99 (pb).

Reviewed by Vincent Hunink, Radboud University Nijmegen (v.hunink@let.ru.nl)

Ever since its discovery in 1873, the Early Christian Greek text known as the Didache has stirred controversy on numerous points. Is this an authentic document from the earliest times of Christianity or a later forger? Does it confirm modern theological views, whether Catholic or Protestant, or threaten to undermine them? Does the text represent early Christians at large or merely a minority limited in time and place?

Some of these issues seem to have been settled by now: scholars generally agree that the text is authentic and must be considered very early. Doctrinal debates, however, remain very much alive.

[...]

City events today and manuscript

WE'RE HEADING INTO MILAN today for city events and to see that manuscript at the Ambrosian Library.

Another fake metal codex photo?

FAKE METAL CODICES WATCH: Looks like another photo and some more plates gossip. (HT Thomas Verenna.)

Background here.

Garber, "The Jewish Jesus" at Bible and Interpretation

ESSAY AT BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

The Jewish Jesus
Revelation, Reflection, Reclamation

(Purdue University Press: 2011)

Part I: Introduction
Part II: The Jewish Jesus: A Partisan’s
Imagination

My Jewish reading of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels puts him in history and not in divinity. The Jesus of different Christologies could never find support in Judaism, since the God-man of the “hypostatic union” is foreign to Judaism’s teaching on absolute monotheism. As the promised Messiah, he did not meet the conditions which the prophetic-rabbinic tradition associated with the coming of the Messiah. Indeed, there was no harmony, freedom, peace and unity in the land of Israel—signs of the messianic age—and enmity and strife abounded everywhere. Not a false but failed Redeemer of the Jews, as witnessed by the words of the “King of the Jews” at the cross: Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani (“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me”)?


By Zev Garber
Professor Emeritus and Chair of Jewish Studies,
Los Angeles Valley College
June 2011

Follow the link to download the PDF file.

A review of the book is noted here.

More Hekhalot exegesis from Jared Calaway

MORE HEKHALOT EXEGESIS from Jared Calaway: Daily Hekhalot: Hekhalot Zutarti §420b (Burning the Hands).

In Milan

IN MILAN. More later.

Conference: Ancient Jewish Texts and the ‘Literary’

CONFERENCE:

From Karolien Vermeulen (Karolien.Vermeulen@ugent.be):
===========================================

Ancient Jewish Texts and the ‘Literary’
14,15 March 2012
Institute of Jewish Studies (University of Antwerp)

The Institute of Jewish Studies (University of Antwerp) in collaboration with Ghent University is happy to announce an international seminar on Ancient Jewish Texts and the ‘Literary.’ The aim is to bring together scholars working on various ancient Jewish
texts and their distinct textual – often called literary - features. The goal is to exchange ideas on the ‘literary’ in these works and stimulate future research and collaboration.

Invited keynote speakers:
Prof. Dr. Scott Noegel, University of Washington (United States of America) (confirmed)
Prof. Dr. Ellen Van Wolde, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Wilfred Watson, Newcastle University (United Kingdom)
Prof. Dr. Robert Gordon, Cambridge University (United Kingdom)


Since the 60s and 70s of the previous century the form and exact wording of ancient Jewish texts has been the focus of attention of a literary approach within biblical/Jewish studies. This subfield relies on the insights of narratology on the one hand and rhetoric on the other. Resulting from this approach any research involving the creative use of language, e.g. in the Hebrew Bible, is considered literary.

In recent years this term has increasingly been questioned as being a presupposition rather than the result of research. ‘Literary’ therefore should be understood as the common though not necessarily apt umbrella term for all studies focusing on the form of ancient texts. Contributors are encouraged to interpret the term either in defense of literariness or against it.

We invite participants from all related fields: Jewish studies, biblical studies, ancient Near Eastern studies, classical studies, literary studies, and stylistics. Possible approaches include among others analyses of the Hebrew Bible, its old translations, early commentaries and retellings, as long as they can be considered ancient (i.e., pre-medieval) and Jewish (i.e., written by Jews or in a Jewish setting).

Proposals up to 300 words can be submitted no later than July 31 2011, to Karolien Vermeulen (karolien.vermeulen@ua.ac.be or karolien.vermeulen@ugent.be).

(From the Agade list.)

Sixth Enoch Seminar

I'M OFF TO MILAN for the Sixth Enoch Seminar. I'm not giving a paper myself, but I am responding to one by Hindy Najman. But since her paper is not yet published, I'm not going to post my response here. I should note, though, for James McGrath's attention in particular, that my response makes considerable use of the series Lost.

I am looking forward very much not only to the many excellent papers, but also to the opportunity to get a direct look at manuscript Codex Ambrosianus B.21. And to the weather in Milan.

I will probably have some Internet access and will do some blogging if I can. I have also pre-posted some items. There will be something new each day, so do keep coming by this week. I expect to be back in St. Andrews on Thursday evening.

More on the fake metal codices from Daniel McClellan

FAKE METAL CODICES WATCH: Daniel O. McClellan has More Jordan Lead Codices Photos and Info, from someone who claims to be Ilan Shibli. Lots of interesting new information, none of which gives us any reason to think the codices are genuine. Daniel comments:

That the images on these plates are modern productions is, in my opinion, pretty much beyond dispute. Dr. Northover’s analysis supports an ancient provenance for the lead, but as others have pointed out, and as he stated in a note to me, there is quite a bit of ancient lead lying around, and the composition of the lead does not necessarily indicate the antiquity of the codices.

He also notes that Mr. Elkington is offering photos for sale and Russian site has some good preview images. Note especially this scroll image, which is the first decent image of one of the lead scrolls I have seen. I allowed the possibility here that the scrolls could be something different from the main cache and could conceivably even be genuine. But this photo shows this scroll to have a menorah like the ones on the plates of the main cache (Elkington notes this too in his rambling, odd "report" to which Daniel links), which means it is probably fake too.

Background here and follow the many links back.

Ophel excavation controversy

OPHEL EXCAVATION CONTROVERSY:

Politics get mixed up with archaeology in dispute over Solomon's Silwan wall

The excavations near the Temple Mount's eastern wall in an area known as the Ophel continued on and off for decades.

By Nir Hasson Tags: Jerusalem Palestinians (Haaretz)

An archaeological site dedicated in Jerusalem this week consists of a section of an ancient wall built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C.E., says the archaeologist who dug up the wall. Other archaeologists, however, disagree with the date and implications and object to what they call the political use of archaeology.

Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who dug up the site, hopes opening it to the public will be a turning point in the debate about whether David and Solomon's Kingdom of Israel existed or not.

[...]

Mazar, Israel Finkelstein, and Yoni Mizrachi weigh in.

I'm not an archaeologist and don't really have a horse in this race. But if I were, I think my normal caution would keep me from saying a whole lot about Solomon until we find a royal inscription at the site which mentions him. Then again, I suppose that's the epigrapher in me talking.

(HT Joseph Lauer).

Background here.

SBL session on the future of biblical studies

AN SBL SESSION ON The Future of Biblical Studies: What Research Still Needs to Be Done? has been organized by Patrick George McCullough for the November meetings in San Francisco.

Good question! Reception history is very big right now. And there is a surprising amount of basic textual criticism that still needs to be done, although this involves very technical work. Some of it involves working with Armenian or Ethiopic or the like, but there's quite a lot of work still to do on the Greek Septuagint. And as for cognate fields dear to my heart, the Dead Sea Scrolls are fully published, but critical analysis of them still has a long way to go, and many Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and New Testament Apocrypha still cry out for good critical editions, let alone further study.

I'm sure there's much more, but that's what occurs to me off the top of my head.

Duane Smith on Jerusalem/Salem.

DUANE SMITH challenges the view that Jerusalem was once called "Salem." And he has some interesting philology on his side.

This in reference to yesterday's story involving the recently discovered Jerusalem cuneiform tablet.

UPDATE (6/24/11): John Hobbins: Jerusalem was called Salem. Well it was!

Hebrew and the NT scholar

KEVIN BROWN reflects on John Byron's post on Hebrew and the New Testament Scholar. Kudos to John for keeping his Hebrew up. Now, guys, what about Aramaic?

CAL back online

THE COMPREHENSIVE ARAMAIC LEXICON is back online. The site was hacked some time ago.

Denial of Jewish history by former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem

JEWISH-TEMPLE (ETC.) DENIAL WATCH: The former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is currently indulging in wholesale denial of Jewish history in Palestine, evidently in response to the recent opening of the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park:

Not one stone found relating to Jerusalem’s alleged Jewish history

Chairman of the Suprerme Islamic Council in Jerusalem Dr. Ekrima Sabri has declared that after twenty-five years of digging, archaeologists are unanimous that not a single stone has been found related to Jerusalem’s alleged Jewish history.

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Chairman of the Suprerme Islamic Council in Jerusalem Dr. Ekrima Sabri has declared that after twenty-five years of digging, archaeologists are unanimous that not a single stone has been found related to Jerusalem’s alleged Jewish history.

Sheikh Sabri said Israel’s opening of a Biblical park south of Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem was only a further attempt to erase the Arab-Islamic identity of the region, Sabri said.

Israeli authorities have been building the Biblical park atop the Umayyad palaces in Jerusalem. But Sabri said that archaeologists agree that the stones along the southern wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque are remains of the Umayyad palaces, proving that the entire area is an Islamic endowment.

“We do not recognize any change to the status of Jerusalem, and we reserve our religious, historic, geographic, and cultural heritage in the city, no matter how long or how many generations succeed,” Sabri said.

[...]

More on Dr. Ekrima Sabri here and here and links.

I have responded to these bogus historical claims here and here and often elsewhere in PaleoJudaica.

Cross-file under "Junk History."

UPDATE (6/24/11): Todd Bolin has some trenchant commentary.

Conference: Family and Kinship in the Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature

CONFERENCE (starts on 27 June): Family and Kinship in the Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature, in Palermo, Italy. Papers on the Old Testament Apocrypha, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

SBL 2011 preliminary program book now available

THE PRELIMINARY PROGRAM BOOK for the November meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Francisco is now available in searchable format.

(Via kata ta biblia.)

New archaeological displays in Jerusalem

NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISPLAYS IN JERUSALEM:

First Temple period archeological site unveiled in J'lem

By MELANIE LIDMAN
06/21/2011 17:25

Scholars believe area is the Water Gate mentioned in the Bible; activists denounce site's focus on Israeli history only.

A large complex of ruins from the First Temple period called the Ophel City Walls Site was inaugurated on Tuesday in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park, showcasing one of the most complete excavations from the First Temple period and the area believed to be the Water Gate mentioned in the Bible.

The site, which was uncovered by Hebrew University’s Dr. Eilat Mazar, contains mikvaot (ritual baths), store rooms, a watchtower, and royal buildings, where archeologists found dozens of large clay pots of various sizes.

[...]

Also on Tuesday, a fragment of the earliest written document ever discovered in Jerusalem was unveiled. The two-centimeter fragment was discovered by Mazar’s team in the area, and dates from the late Bronze Age. Experts believe that the fragment, written in Akkadian cuneiform script, seems to be a copy of a letter sent from the city to an Egyptian King, when the city was still called Salem. The fragment was unveiled at its permanent exhibit in the Davidson Center.

[...]

More on that cuneiform fragment and the Ophel excavation here and here and links.

Also, Arutz Sheva has video of the Ophel Wall site at New: Walk Through the Digs Under the Old City. For that hoard of 264 gold coins, also excavated in Jerusalem (but not at the Ophel site), see here and links.

UPDATE (23 June): The former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem has a predictable response, plus Duane Smith raises a philological challenge to the comment above on the name "Salem" for Jerusalem.

Ed Cook on the structure of the Hebrew verbal system

ED COOK has posted one of his rare philology posts: Notes on the Structure of the Hebrew Verbal System . Keep 'em coming, Ed.

SOTS Booklist 2011

IN THE MAIL:

Deborah W. Rook (ed.) with C. A. Strine, Society for Old Testament Study Book List 2010 (London: Sage, 2011)

More Hekhalot exegesis from Jared Calaway

MORE HEKHALOT EXEGESIS from Jared Calaway. Once I get a few other things out of the way, I hope by early July, I should be able to turn my attention back to my translation of the Hekhalot texts. Then I may be able to join in sometimes.

Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia

AWOL: Open Access Encyclopedia: Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia. Looks like a very useful resource.

New book: Morgenstern, "Studies in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic ..."

NEW BOOK:

Studies in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Based Upon Early Eastern Manuscripts

by Matthew Morgenstern
Harvard Semitic Studies - HSS 62

Eisenbrauns, 2011

List Price: $44.95
Your Price: $41.80
You save: $3.15


This book is the first wide-ranging study of the grammar of the Babylonian Aramaic used in the Talmud and post-Talmudic Babylonian literature (henceforth: Rabbinic Babylonian Aramaic) to be published in English in a century. The book takes as its starting point the long-recognized problem of the corrupt nature of the later textual witnesses of Babylonian Rabbinic literature and seeks both to establish criteria for the identification of accurate textual witnesses and describe the grammar of Rabbinic Babylonian Aramaic. The book is both programmatic and descriptive: it lays the foundations for future research into the dialect while clarifying numerous points of grammar, many of which have not been discussed systematically in the available scholarly literature.

Following a critical survey of the currently available scholarly tools, the book considers the rôle of the Yemenite textual and reading traditions in the study of Rabbinic Babylonian Aramaic. While some previous authorities have regarded this tradition as a primary source for grammatical study of the dialect, by comparing the data of the earliest manuscripts to the forms employed in the Yemenite traditions, the present book demonstrates that the Yemenite traditions have been subject to secondary changes. Accordingly, it is concluded here that only the early eastern manuscripts preserve the dialect in its original form.

The next chapter considers the problem of linguistic variation within the corpus. It is well established that the Talmudic literature employs a wide range of alternative grammatical forms. Several explanations have been proposed for this phenomenon. Some authorities have suggested that it arises from dialectal differences, while others have proposed that it represents the use of different literary registers. An alternative explanation is that the language was altered during the course of textual transmission. This study shows that none of these explanations can account for the wide extent of the phenomenon, which is found in the best textual witnesses and in ostensibly uniform contexts. It is argued that all of proposed explanations may partially account for the interchanges but, ultimately, the lack of a literary standard leads to the use of different forms.

Syntax is often regarded as being one of the linguistic areas least affected by textual transmission. However, the early manuscripts show that Rabbinic Babylonian Aramaic employs a defined series of syntactic structures to mark the direct object. This clearly defined complimentary distribution is lost in the later textual witnesses, which use the structures interchangeably. It is thus shown that, for syntactic study, too, only a small group of textual witnesses can be regarded as reliable.

Product Details

Publisher: Eisenbrauns
Publication date: 2011
Bibliographic info: xx + 289 pages
Language(s): English


Cover: Cloth
Trim Size: 6 x 9 inches
ISBN: 1-57506-938-5
ISBN13: 978-1-57506-938-8

Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."

Conference on Targums & Second Temple Period

CONFERENCE: The Targums in light of Traditions of the Second Temple Period; 27-28 June, University of Strasbourg.

Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."

An English-to-Akkadian dictionary

THERE'S NOW AN ENGLISH-TO-AKKADIAN DICTIONARY:

An English to Akkadian Companion to the Assyrian Dictionaries
[9781934309360]

By Mark E. Cohen

This reference book is an English-to-Akkadian dictionary of the Assyrian and Babylonian language, based on the entries in the three published Akkadian dictionaries: "The University of Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, " "A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian," and the "Assyrian-English-Assyrian Dictionary." Entries are organized also by synonym and category.

Pages: 250

Price: $50.00

This will be handy for your Akkadian composition course.

(Via the Agade list.)

UPDATE (20 June): Pete Bekins comments at balshanut. I think I have that older English-Akkadian index somewhere in my files too.

Ancient graffiti in Israel

ARAMAIC WATCH: Aramaic is "the little black dress of Semitic languages."

Archaeologists Unscramble Ancient Graffiti In Israel

by Jacki Lyden (NPR)

June 19, 2011

Aramaic is the lingua franca of the ancient Middle East, the linguistic root of modern day Hebrew and Arabic.

"Once you understand Aramaic," says Karen Stern, "you can read anything. You can read Hebrew, you can read Phoenician. I always call it the little black dress of Semitic languages."

Stern, 35, is an archaeologist and an assistant professor in the history department at Brooklyn College. Her passion is the tomb graffiti of the ancient Jews in what was then Roman Palestine. Graffiti has been "published, but sort of disregarded," she says. "Whereas I think it is intimate, vocal and spontaneous, and adds to the historical record."

In this, Stern seems to be supported by scholars: She is completing a yearlong fellowship at the W.F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.

[...]

Nitpick: Aramaic is cognate with Hebrew and Arabic but is not ancestral to either. It is a linguistic branch on the same tree, not the root.

On Prof. Stern's work at the site of Beth She'arim:

Listening To The Dead

It's in the Cave of Coffins that Stern points to two inscriptions in ancient Greek. They are tiny and clustered near niches once holding oil lamps.

One says, "Take courage, Holy Parents of Pharcitae, udes adonitas — no one is immortal." Stern explains that the dead who are being brought into the catacombs shouldn't feel that they are weak just because they've passed on.

She reads aloud the other inscription: "Good luck on your resurrection."

"Of course, resurrection is not in the Jewish tradition," says Emma Maayan Fanar, a professor of Byzantine art at the University of Haifa, who has teamed up with Stern. "It's very uncommon."

Tiny menorahs are scattered as engravings throughout the tomb, a symbol of the Temple in Jerusalem and a symbol of the endurance of the Jewish faith.

There are magical spells in Greek. There are also curses in Aramaic that threaten a bad fate to the tomb robber. Those seem to have been ignored, as only the graffiti and heavy stone coffins are left.

In the dark, the effect — particularly in these tiny messages — is to hear the dead speaking. It's peaceful, but lively. One gets the sense of a giant Facebook page of the ancient world.

Read it all. This is important work. Only rarely to we get to hear the voices of the regular people of antiquity, since most of what was passed down in writing was produced by the elite.

(Via Tom Verenna on Facebook.)

UPDATE (20 June): Jared Calaway brings in the zombies.

Also, in an e-mail, Joseph Lauer comments: "As some reader's comments following the article noted, the following sentence is not accurate: 'Of course, resurrection is not in the Jewish tradition,' says Emma Maayan Fanar, a professor of Byzantine art at the University of Haifa, who has teamed up with Stern. 'It's very uncommon.'" Perhaps it's uncommon in Jewish graffiti of the period; I don't know. But it is certainly a widespread idea in Jewish literature of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Targuman interviewed by Chronicle of Higher Education

DEAN CHRISTIAN BRADY, a.k.a. Targuman (cited in immediately preceding post) is interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education about his use of blogging and Facebook:

'It's Not Schizophrenic'

Christian Brady, an associate professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University, has split his social-media identity, as Ms. Feal does. "It's not schizophrenic and it's not to hide anything," he said. Both of his Twitter feeds are public, and he expects that someone who searches for his name on Google will quickly find both his personal feed, @targuman, and the one he uses for his role as dean of the university's Schreyer Honors College, @shcdean.

Deciding which account to post to is a matter of considering his audience, he says. Those looking to hear from the honors-college dean may have no interest in his research into Targums (ancient Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible), or in his collection of comic books. "I wouldn't call them multiple identities, but views or perspectives on yourself," is how he puts it.

Though Facebook was born only a few years ago, Mr. Brady says scholars have long made adjustments in their public personae: "If you're writing an op-ed piece for the local newspaper, you're going to use a different tone than if you're writing for a journal in your discipline."

A lot of my Facebook posts are just notices of interesting PaleoJudaica posts. Others note ancient history or technology items not directly relevant to PaleoJudaica. Most of the rest have to do with zombies. But then the article does point out that zombies can be a problem on Facebook.

Targuman posts translation of Targum Ruth

TARGUMAN has posted a draft of his new translation of the Targum to Ruth.

Leptis Magna used as archaeological shield by Gaddafi

PHOENICIAN AND PUNIC WATCH: Col. Gaddafi is reported to be using at least one archaeological site as a shield for armaments:

A petty tyrant hides behind the relics of a magnificent civilisation

Historian Bettany Hughes worries for the future of Leptis Magna, as Colonel Gaddafi moves his tanks among the treasures.

By Bettany Hughes (The Telegraph)

7:00AM BST 18 Jun 2011

... Rebel forces in Libya reported this week that Colonel Gaddafi is using the site as an archaeological shield. Missiles, launchers and troops are, they say, snuggled among columns, corridors and archways. Nato forces – in Gaddafi’s reckoning – won’t bomb them, or his men. Clever. They won’t. But if Gaddafi is holding explosives in this World Heritage Site, a single stray cigarette butt could kick start a sequence that sends it all up in smoke.

The loss of Leptis would be unthinkable. Founded by Phoenician traders in the Bronze Age, the city-complex has been a theatre of power and pleasure, of indulgence and intellect for more than 3,000 years. It is one of the best-preserved ancient sites in the Mediterranean. Ruled by Carthage for centuries, the Romans quickly conquered it. Recent discoveries include an eye-wateringly exquisite series of Roman-period mosaics, where warriors hound animals and a spent gladiator lords it over the corpse of his sparring partner. It was a local boy, Septimius Severus, who in the 2nd century AD really made Leptis roar, rebuilding the forum and the port – as Roman emperor he promoted the city to the premier league. Leptis is a megalithic incarnation of this region’s high-octane, personality-driven history.

[...]

Aerial bombardment of the site with water balloons filled with refined liquid putrescine would clear it pretty quickly of people, and then the weaponry wouldn't matter much. The ruins wouldn't mind. No one ever listens to me about these things.

A little daily Hekhalot is good for you

A LITTLE DAILY HEKHALOT is good for you and helps keep the dangerous angels at bay. I hope Jared Calaway makes this a series. With MOTP volume one out of the way, I begin a year of research leave soon in which I aim to finish my translation of the Hekhalot literature.

More on the completion of the CAD

MORE ON THE COMPLETION OF THE CHICAGO ASSYRIAN DICTIONARY from Chuck Jones at the Oriental Institute blog.

Background here.

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron coming to the West

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron is being released in North America on 26 July and in Europe on 9 September. This demo review has a detailed description and lots of images. I can't play the video here, but it may work where you are.

Background here.

Reveiw of Garber, "The Jewish Jesus"

BOOK REVIEW:

Jesus for Jews

By Eve Levavi Feinstein (Jewish Ideas Daily)

That Jesus lived and died a Jew would hardly be regarded as news by most educated Jews and Christians today. Still, while the historical Jesus is ever-elusive, the figure of Jesus, for Jews, has become more accessible. The pronounced decline of Christian anti-Semitism in our day has allowed for more freedom to discuss not only the tortuous and changing relationship of Jews to the Church, but also to its founder and the central figure of its concern: namely, Jesus.

The past half-decade has seen a spate of books on the topic written by Jews, with titles like The Misunderstood Jew and From Rebel to Rabbi. In 2007, the Christian scholar Peter Schafer published a challenging study on the place of Jesus in the Talmud. The newest entry in the field is a collection of essays edited by Zev Garber, The Jewish Jesus: Revelation, Reflection, Reclamation.

While the collection is composed in part of papers presented at a 2009 symposium, the word "reclamation" is a tip-off that the editor's interest in the subject is not merely academic. The Church's task, as represented in this volume, is to foster a more positive and respectful relationship with those who, according to the book's dedication, "practice the faith of Jesus." For Jews, acknowledgment of Jesus' Jewishness opens the door to a deeper and more constructive relationship with those who, in turn, "believe by faith in Jesus." In short, reflection on the Jewishness of Jesus promises to serve as the basis for enhanced Jewish-Christian dialogue.

[...]

Antiquities looters caught

BUSTED:

Antiquities Robbers Caught Red Handed

by Hebrew site (Arutz Sheva)

The Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Theft in the Antiquities Authority has staged a successful operation in which Arab antiquities robbers were caught red-handed while digging at an archaeological site, where they were attempting to plunder archaeological findings.

[...]

The action was taken following a severe wave of theft digs in the area of the Elah Valley near Beit Shemesh. According to archaeologist Alon Klein, who commanded the operation, the gang had been digging in at least three other sites that all contain Jewish artifacts from the 2nd Temple, up to 70 C.E. and Bar-Kochba Rebellion, ca. 132 C.E. periods.

[...]

Quotations from Lost Books in the Hebrew Bible

HERE'S MY HANDOUT for my keynote paper at the St Andrews Graduate Conference, being presented even as this post appears:

QUOTATIONS FROM LOST BOOKS IN THE HEBREW BIBLE

Lost Books Cited in the Pentateuch

• The Book of the Wars of YHWH plus a work song (Num 21:14-18a)
  
• Excerpt from an Amorite Victory Song (Num 21:27-39)
  
  Lost Books Cited in The Deuteronomistic History
  
• The Book of the Righteous (The Book of Jashar) or The Book of the Song (Josh 10:12-13a; 2 Sam 1:17-27; 1 Kgs 8:12-13 MT // 1 Kgs 8:53a LXX)
  
• A book on the conduct of the kingship (1 Sam 10:25)
  
• The sapiential works of Solomon (1 Kgs 5:12-13 [Evv 4:32-33])
  
• The Book of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kgs 11:41)
  
• The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel (1 Kgs 14:19; 15:31; 16:5, 14, 20, 27; 22:39; 2 Kgs 1:18; 10:34; 13:8, 12; 14:15, 28; 15:11, 15, 21, 26, 31)
  
• The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah (1 Kgs 14:29; 15:7a, 23a; 22:46; 2 Kgs 8:23; 12:20 [Evv 12:19]; 14:18; 15:6, 36; 16:19; 20:20; 21:17, 25; 23:28; 24:5)
  
  Lost Books Cited in 1-2 Chronicles
  
• The Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah (2 Chr 27:7; 35:26-27; 36:8a)
  
• The Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel (2 Chr 16:11; 25:26; 28:26; 32:32)
  
• The Book of the Kings of Israel (1 Chr 9:1a; 2 Chr 20:34)
  
• The Midrash of the Book of Kings (2 Chr 24:27a)
  
• The Acts of the Kings of Israel (2 Chr 33:18)
  
  
• The Acts of Samuel the Seer, The Acts of Nathan the Prophet, and The Acts of Gad the Visionary (1 Chr 29:29-30)
  
• The Acts of Nathan the Prophet, The Prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and The Visions of Jeddo the Visionary Concerning Jeroboam Son of Nebat (2 Chr 9:29)
  
• The Acts of Shemiah the Prophet and Iddo the Visionary for Enrollment by Genealogy (2 Chr 12:15a)
  
• The Midrash of the Prophet Iddo (2 Chr 13:22)
  
• The Acts of Uzziah (2 Chr 26:22)
  
• The Words of the Visionaries (2 Chr 33:19)
  
  The Chronicler's sources as a single digest of The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?
  
  
• The Book of the Chronicles of King David (1 Chr 27:23-24)
  
• King David's plan from YHWH for the Temple (1 Chr 28:19)
  
• Writings of David and Solomon on the divisions of the Levites (2 Chr 35:4)
  
  
• The Laments of Jeremiah and the singers over King Josiah (2 Chr 35:25)

Just to get you thinking. You will have to wait until Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures volume one comes out to read the full article.

Test results on the new Jordan metal codices

FAKE METAL CODICES WATCH: News from the Jordan Times:

Tests support 'Jordan texts' authenticity

By Taylor Luck

AMMAN - Preliminary lab results indicate that a collection of metal books unearthed in northern Jordan may indeed represent the earliest Christian texts ever discovered, according to experts.

According to the Department of Antiquities (DoA), initial carbon tests to determine the authenticity of lead-sealed metal books billed as the greatest find in biblical archaeology since the Dead Sea scrolls have been “encouraging”.

“We really believe that we have evidence from this analysis to prove that these materials are authentic,” DoA Director Ziad Saad told The Jordan Times.

The tests, carried out at the Royal Scientific Society labs, indicate that the texts may date back to the early first century AD, at a time when Christians took refuge from persecution on the east bank of the Jordan River.

The codices, which were retrieved by Jordanian security services from the black market last month, are believed to be part of a greater cache of 70 lead-sealed books allegedly uncovered in Jordan and smuggled across the River Jordan into Israel.

[...]

Efforts to repatriate the texts from Israel are pending the final results of the carbon dating, currently being carried out at the University of New Mexico, the Getty Conservation Institute and Sheffield University.

This needs to be taken apart piece by piece.

1. The claim is that the new metal codices in the hands of the Jordanian Government are part of the same cache as those announced back in March. I take them at their word, but no proof has yet been advanced.

2. What's this about "carbon tests" and "carbon dating" on metal plates? Carbon-14 dating is applied to organic material. Is there organic material, such as leather scroll, associated with these plates? Or, more likely, has someone made a careless mistake here?

3. Assuming the latter, it appears that the current tests indicate that the metal of the plates is ancient. It has been known for a long time that the fake metal codices may be made of genuinely ancient metal. The first report, on 3 March, in the Jewish Chronicle (cf. here), reported this:

Undeterred, Mr Feather instead cites the findings of Peter Northover, a metals analyst at Oxford University. Conducting tests on two samples of metal from one book, Dr Northover concluded that their composition was "consistent with a range of ancient lead," and that it was clear from the surface corrosion that the book was "not a recent production".

The IAA remains unconvinced, arguing that the metal could have been taken from an ancient coffin while the messages could have been fabricated later.

This test was done privately and has not been published. The IAA has replied adequately: such ancient metal is available and could be used for such forgeries, so the new test does not tell us anything very interesting.

4. As has been noted here and elsewhere many times, one of the codices in the original cache is a clumsy, transparent fake. Some of the other codices in this cache have their own problems that cast serious doubt on their authenticity and most or all of them have stylistic and iconographic features that tie them closely to each other and to the obvious fake codex. In other words, at least most of them are fakes, although quite possibly fakes inscribed in the modern period on ancient metal.

5. If the current reports that these new codices are from the same cache is correct (and aside from this vague assertion we have been told nothing else about them), all indicators are that they are fakes too.

6. I have summarized the case against the authenticity of the first set of metal codices here. It is telling that no one defending the authenticity of these texts has made any effort to reply to these problems. Mr. Elkington did make the ridiculous assertion that Dr. Thonemann was not qualified to comment because he is a Greek classicist rather than a biblical scholar. In case you're wondering, Greek classicists are generally considered qualified to comment on (purportedly) ancient Greek texts. Also, biblical scholars mainly take interest in texts that have some clear connection with the Bible, which these metal codices do not. Oh, and Mr. Elkington also said that the photographs are not very good. And whose fault is that? In any case, the forged Greek text is entirely readable, despite the forger's poor knowledge of Greek.

So, to sum up, the fake metal codices are still fake (see the first link in point 6 above for nuancing), and if the new discoveries are part of the same cache, it is likely that they are fakes as well, albeit fakes inscribed on ancient metal.

Recent background here, here, and here and follow those links.

UPDATE: Tom Verenna fills out the point about C-14 dating. His link to "Jona" is here. He also notes that Jim West and Robert Deutsch have new photographs that raise further doubts about the authenticity of the plates.

At St Andrews Graduate Conference

I'M AT THE 1ST ST ANDREWS CONFERENCE FOR BIBLICAL AND EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES today and tomorrow. Probably won't have much time for blogging.

News on the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project

NEWS ON THE MORE OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA PROJECT: I am very happy to announce that the first volume of texts edited for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project has been sent to the publisher (Eerdmans) and we anticipate its publication within the next year. Below is a flier being circulated at the conference tomorrow which gives some additional details, and below that is a list of the table of contents of the volume.

A second volume is underway, but it will be some time before it comes out.


THE MORE OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA PROJECT
The More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha project at the University of St. Andrews (http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/divinity/rt/moreoldtestamentpseudepigrapha/) has assembled an international team of scholars to translate a new collection of Old Testament pseudepigrapha. The project is headed by Professor James R. Davila and Professor Emeritus Richard Bauckham, with Dr. Alexander Panayotov as co-editor. The "Old Testament pseudepigrapha," as the term is now commonly used, are ancient books that claim to be written by a character in the Old Testament or set in the same time period as the Old Testament and recount narratives related to it, but which do not belong to the Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant biblical canons. The Project is publishing two new volumes of pseudepigrapha, most of which were not included in the massive two-volume collection edited by James H. Charlesworth or the important collection edited by H. F. D. Sparks, both published in the 1980s. (The few overlaps are cases where we have significant new manuscript data or we believe that a text requires a new treatment for other reasons.)

Our new corpus consists of about 100 documents, about two-thirds of which are complete and the rest are fragments or quotations. They include apocalypses—angelic revelations to prophets and sages such as Elijah, Ezra, and Daniel; magical, oracular, exorcistic and mantic works attributed to prophets and sages such as Moses, David, Solomon, the Sibyl, and Jeremiah; songs and poetry attributed to Old Testament characters, especially David; "rewritten scripture" that retells stories known from the Old Testament from the fall of Adam and Eve to the deaths of the Maccabean martyrs; legends and tales set in the Old Testament period and usually, although not always, involving Old Testament characters such as Enoch, Melchizedek, Levi, and even the antediluvian giants; and various other obscure and intriguing works, including a legendary account of the hiding places of the Temple treasures, lost pre-exilic oracles of the seer Balaam, and a legend of how all human knowledge was preserved in the Great Pyramid during the Flood. The first volume of texts is now in press with Eerdmans and is slated to be published by mid-2012 under the title Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures.

The Old Testament pseudepigrapha are an important and much neglected part of the biblical tradition. The earliest were written down at the same time and in the same geographic area as the Hebrew Bible, and some are even cited therein. They continued to be composed and copied throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages and, indeed, new pseudepigrapha are still being written in the modern era. The corpus being published in these two volumes adds a great many texts to those already known from the earlier collections and together with them provides the reader with virtually all known surviving pseudepigrapha written before the rise of Islam. Some of these compositions provide us with fascinating background material to the New Testament. Others are a rich source of information on the reception history of the Hebrew Bible by Jews, Christians, and pagans through late antiquity. They frequently give us different perspectives from those found in writings of the same period which later acquired an authoritative status in Judaism (the rabbinic literature) and Christianity (the patristic literature). Together they present us with the sacred legends and spiritual reflections of numerous long-dead authors whose works were lost, neglected, or suppressed for many centuries. By making these documents available in excellent English translations and authoritative but accessible introductions we aim both to promote more scholarly study of them and to bring them to the attention of the vast lay audience who appreciate such treasures.


Table of contents of volume one:

Preface
James H. Charlesworth

Introduction
Richard Bauckham and James R. Davila

Abbreviations

I. TEXTS ORDERED ACCORDING TO BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY

Adam Octipartite/Septipartite
Grant Macaskill with Eamon Greenwood

The Life of Adam and Eve (Coptic Fragments)
Simon J. Gathercole

The Book of the Covenant
James VanderKam

The Apocryphon of Seth
Alexander Toepel

The Book of Noah
Martha Himmelfarb

The Apocryphon of Eber
James VanderKam

The Dispute over Abraham
Richard Bauckham

The Inquiry of Abraham
Richard Bauckham

The Story of Melchizedek
with the Melchizedek Legend from the Chronicon Paschale
Pierluigi Piovanelli

The Syriac History of Joseph
Kristian S. Heal

Aramaic Levi
James R. Davila

Midrash Vayissa‘u
Martha Himmelfarb

The Testament of Job (Coptic Fragments)
Gesa Schenke

The Tiburtine Sibyl (Greek)
Rieuwerd Buitenwerf

The Eighth Book of Moses
Todd E. Klutz

The Balaam Text from Tell Deir ‘Allā
Edward M. Cook

Eldad and Modad
Richard Bauckham

Songs of David
G. W. Lorein and E. Van Staalduine-Sulman

The Aramaic Song of the Lamb (Dialogue between David and Goliath)
C. T. R. Hayward

Exorcistic Psalms of David and Solomon
Gideon Bohak

The Selendromion of David and Solomon
Pablo A. Torijano

The Hygromancy of Solomon
Pablo A. Torijano

Questions of the Queen of Sheba and Answers by King Solomon
Vahan S. Hovhanessian and Sebastian P. Brock

The Nine and a Half Tribes
Richard Bauckham

The Heartless Rich Man and the Precious Stone
William Adler

Jeremiah's Prophecy to Pashhur
Darrell D. Hannah

The Apocryphon of Ezekiel
Benjamin G. Wright III

The Treatise of the Vessels (Massekhet Kelim)
James R. Davila

The Seventh Vision of Daniel
Sergio La Porta

A Danielic Pseudepigraphon Paraphrased by Papias
Basil Lourié

The Relics of Zechariah and the Boy Buried at His Feet
William Adler

Sefer Zerubbabel: The Prophetic Vision of Zerubbabel ben Shealtiel
John C. Reeves

Fifth Ezra
Theodore A. Bergren

Sixth Ezra
Theodore A. Bergren

The Latin Vision of Ezra
Richard Bauckham

II. THEMATIC TEXTS

The Cave of Treasures
Alexander Toepel

Palaea Historica ("The Old Testament History")
William Adler

Quotations from Lost Books in the Hebrew Bible
with an Excursus on Quotations from Lost Books in the New Testament
James R. Davila

Hebrew Visions of Hell and Paradise
Helen Spurling

Origen's Hexapla online

ORIGEN'S HEXAPLA, or what was left of it in 1875, is online:

Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt
sive, Veterum interpretum Graecorum in totum Vetus Testamentum fragmenta. Post Flaminium Nogilium, Drusium, et Montefalconium, adhibita etiam versione syro-hexaplari, concinnavit, emendavit, et multis partibus auxit Fridericus Field.
Published 1875 by E typographeo Clarendoniano in Oxonii .

Table of Contents
I. Prolegomena. Genesis-Esther.
II. Jobus-Malachias. Auctarium et indices.

(HT James Harding on FB.)

The Hexapla Institute is currently working on a new edition of the Hexapla which contains material discovered after Fields's time.

James McGrath: Harmonizing Judas with Doctor Who

JAMES MCGRATH is Harmonizing Judas With Doctor Who and he has tagged me on Facebook to participate. I'm pretty busy with two conferences in the next fortnight, but I'll see if inspiration strikes me.

Duane Smith on the philology of the serpent's craftiness

DUANE SMITH looks at the philology of the serpent's craftiness over at Abnormal Interests:

ערום In Old Greek And Even Older Greek

Targum Onkelos for Genesis 3:1a Reads Something

Sex in the OT Pseudepigrapha

WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS? Tablet Magazine has a reviewlet of a new book on sex in the Old Testament pseudepigrapha:

Modern ideas about Jews’ and women’s sexuality can be complex and strange, but some of the images that circulated in antiquity were downright bizarre. William Loader demonstrates this in The Pseudepigrapha on Sexuality (Eerdmans, March), the third installation in his vast five-volume project “exploring attitudes toward sexuality in Judaism and Christianity during the Greco-Roman era.” In The Testament of Solomon, a pseudepigraphical text believed to have been composed sometime in the first four centuries of the common era, the notoriously polygamous Jewish monarch encounters a group of demons. One of them, named Onoskelis, is “a female demon of mixed form, a human woman with the legs of an ass,” who gleefully explains, “Sometimes I strangle men; sometimes I pervert them from their true natures.” Just imagine how much more trouble Weiner might have gotten himself into if she were still around.

The BBC on the CAD

THE COMPLETION OF THE CHICAGO ASSYRIAN DICTIONARY is celebrated by the BBC:

Dictionary of dead language complete after 90 years

By Cordelia Hebblethwaite BBC News

Five volumes of 21 volumes of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. Photo by Jason Smith The first volumes of the dictionary were published in the 1950s

A dictionary of the extinct language of ancient Mesopotamia has been completed after 90 years of work.

Assyrian and Babylonian - dialects of the language collectively known as Akkadian - have not been spoken for almost 2,000 years.

"This is a heroic and significant moment in history," beamed Dr Irving Finkel of the British Museum's Middle East department.

As a young man in the 1970s Dr Finkel dedicated three years of his life to The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary Project which is based at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

That makes him something of a spring chicken in the life story of this project, which began in 1921.

[...]

Background here. More on Dr. Finkel here.

Photo: Samaritans Celebrate The Festival Of Shavuot In The West Bank

PHOTO: Samaritans Celebrate The Festival Of Shavuot In The West Bank.

A Byzantine-era building at Acre

A BYZANTINE-ERA BUILDING AT ACRE:

Archaeologists unearth Acre church from the Byzantine Period

Discovery of public structure in north Israel city is breakthrough, first time Christian structure has been unearthed in Acre, a city said to have been highly influential in early years of Christianity.

By Jack Khoury (Haaretz)

The headline pretty much says it. But an earlier IAA press release was more cautious about calling it a church.

BMCR: Mason, Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins

BMCR REVIEW:

Steve Mason, Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins: Methods and Categories. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009. Pp. xx, 443. ISBN 9781598562545. $34.95.

Reviewed by Livia Capponi, Newcastle University (livia.capponi@ncl.ac.uk)

This book collects various papers that were previously published in not easily accessible places. These papers have been rearranged by Mason in three parts, the first on the interpretation and historical use of Josephus, the second on Judean society, and the third on Christian origins and the Gospels. The concern for method and categories is present throughout the book. It is a lucid reappraisal of the earlier scholarship on these subjects, and its clarity and lucidity make it an extremely useful tool for both students and scholars in ancient history.

[...]

Happy 30th to Raiders of the Lost Ark

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK turns 30 today. In honor of the anniversary, Brian Mciver gives us Raiders of the Lost Archives - 30 things you didn't know about Indiana Jones. Note that number 7 has missing bits of number 14 in it.

UPDATE: The original cinema trailer for Raiders is here. And here's another Indiana Jones tidbit: Archaeology's Tech Revolution Since Indiana Jones. Cross-file under "Technology Watch" and take the part about the 17 pyramids with a grain of salt.

St Andrews Conference on Authoritative Texts and Reception History

CONFERENCE REMINDER: The 1st St Andrews Graduate Conference for Biblical and Early Christian Studies: Authoritative Texts and Reception History: Aspects and Approaches is on Wednesday and Thursday of this coming week at the Divinity School of the University of St Andrews. Follow the link for the schedule. I am one of the plenary speakers, as are Professor Kristin De Troyer, Professor N. T. Wright, and Dr. Mark Elliott.