Talmud Day: The BBC on the Talmud

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: The Talmud: Why has a Jewish law book become so popular?

The Talmud, the book of Jewish law, is one of the most challenging religious texts in the world. But it is being read in ever larger numbers, partly thanks to digital tools that make it easier to grasp, and growing interest from women - who see no reason why men should have it to themselves.

A nice article from the BBC.

For the ArtScroll/Schottenstein Talmud, see here and links. For the iPad Talmud ap, see here. The 2005 and 2012 conclusions of the Daf Yomi cycle are noted at the links. At Tablet Magazine, Adam Kirsch has been writing a weekly column on the readings in the current Daf Yomi cycle. And you can find more on MK Calderon's Talmud lesson here.

Talmud Day: Those money-changers in the Temple

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: There Are Thieves in the Temple. Or Are They Sacred Messengers? Daf Yomi: The Talmud provides the Jewish version of well-known Christian gospel about money-changers.. Excerpt:

Take, for instance, the story of Jesus throwing the money-changers out of the Temple. In Matthew 21:12, we read about how Jesus violently overturned the tables of the money-changers doing business on Temple grounds, rebuking them with the famous words: “It is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” This episode from the New Testament vividly frames the contest between Christianity and Judaism as a contrast of values—worldly Jews, obsessed with money and indifferent to holiness, are rebuked by Jesus, who cares only about purity of heart. It is such a famous story that I imagine many American Jews are familiar with it, even if they’ve never read the Gospels. But how many of us, I wonder, could explain what the money-changers were doing in the Temple in the first place? Were these people merely profiteers, defiling the Holy Temple, as we might assume—or were they actually serving a sacred purpose themselves? We know the Christian version of this story, but what is the Jewish version?

It is partly in order to be able to answer such questions that I have been reading Daf Yomi. The Talmud is a text much maligned in Western culture, both in its Christian and post-Christian phases. In English, the very word “talmudic” is pejorative, implying a needless and possibly corrupt complexity. Actually reading the Talmud, however, has allowed me to begin to understand why the rabbis thought and legislated as they did—to grasp the logic and the spirituality that guided their work. It helps me to see Judaism in its own historical terms instead of non-Jewish ones.

I had a similar experience, back as an undergraduate, when I started working with the Mishnah (in the Danby translation) for a research project.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Ken Johnson, Ancient Book of Enoch

BUYER BEWARE: Book review: Ken Johnson, “Ancient Book of Enoch” (reviewed by Mariano Grinbank in The Examiner). This 2012 ("AD") book seems to be a mixture of New Age mysticism and Christian Fundamentalist reaction to 1 Enoch. I wasn't aware of it until now but, especially thanks to this Examiner article, there is some danger that people will use it to learn about the book of Enoch, which would be a pity when there are far better resources available.

What Ken Johnson’s book Ancient Book of Enoch presents is some historical background, a translation of the entire Ethiopic Book of Enoch and concludes with points to ponder such as details about the Nephilim, “includes a previously unknown chapter from the Dead Sea Scrolls that actually explains how they did their genetic tampering” and actually offers, based on the premise that prophetic sections of Enoch are accurate, a chart whereby to ascertain the “window of time” of the Messiah Jesus’ return.

The material quoted in the review is a wild mixture of accurate information, misunderstandings, and the book's author's own idiosyncratic theological reflections. The translation in the book is not familiar to me. It may be a paraphrase of the Charles translation, which was good in its day, a century ago, but is now very outdated.

If you have come to this blog post through a search engine to find out more about the book of Enoch (1 Enoch), for heaven's sake, don't bother with Johnson's book. The place to start is with the recent translation of 1 Enoch by two of the top specialists in the field of Enochic studies. (Yes, there is a scholarly field of Enochic studies and many of the specialists meet every couple of years in the Enoch Seminar.) The translation is:

George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2012)

It also has an excellent introduction. Beyond that, have a look at VanderKam's An Introduction to Early Judaism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001) for more on 1 Enoch, its historical and cultural background, and related literature. Then go from there with more work by serious scholars.

Cross-file under "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch."

State Department on Iraqi Jewish archive

STILL GOING BACK TO IRAQ:

State Department Rebuffs Schumer On Iraqi Jewish Artifacts

10/25/13
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
The Jewish Week

The State Department has rebuffed the request of Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) not to return to Iraq the treasure trove of Jewish artifacts found by American troops in Baghdad in 2003. Schumer said the items were “stolen” from the Iraqi Jewish community.

Under an agreement with the Bush administration at the time, the more than 2,700 artifacts – including partial Torah parchments and ancient prayer books –were to be returned to Iraq in 2014 after being restored and preserved by the National Archives in Washington.

In response to Schumer’s letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, a State Department spokesman, Pooja Jhunjhunwala, told The Jewish Week in an e-mail that the Department would abide by its August 2003 agreement with Iraq.

[...]

The State Department spokesman in his e-mail said the primary reason for bringing the artifacts to the United States was so that they could be “preserved, conserved, and restored for the benefit of the Iraqi Jewish community, as well as posterity.”

[...]

Er ... Iraqi Jewish community?

Background here with many links.

Review of Cohn and Millar, Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity

BOOK REVIEW:

Eyal Ben-Eliyahu, Yehudah Cohn and Fergus Millar: Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity, 135–700 ce . xxv, 162 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, for the British Academy, 2013. £25. ISBN 978 0 19 726522 2.

Catherine Hezser (2013).
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Volume 76, Issue03, October 2013 pp 497-499

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=9035641

Looting indictments

JUST "GATHERING MEDICINAL PLANTS": Antiquities thieves who allegedly sneaked into Israel on donkeys to face indictment (Ben Hartman, Jerusalem Post)

The three men reportedly said in their defense that they were at the site gathering medicinal plants and not illegally digging in archeological sites.

In the coming days the Jerusalem District prosecutor's office plans to present an indictment against them the IAA said.

The IAA said Monday the three men, from Bethlehem and Kfar Nehilin snuck into Israel from the West Bank riding on donkeys through a mountainous area where the separation fence had still not been completed.

According to the IAA , the site where they were caught includes relics from the Hellenistic, Roman , and Byzantine eras.

Blog varia

NEWS YOU CAN USE, BIBLIOBLOGGER EDITION:

Alin Suciu: On Coptic Literary Fragments and the Principles of Editing Them. Editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls face some similar problems.

The Talmud Blog: Reading List. Some interesting-looking articles.

hmmlorientalia: Syro-Georgian trisagion. The concept of Syro-Georgian blows my mind.

Evangelical Textual Criticism: Blog Dinner SBL Baltimore 2013. Don't think I'll make it to this one. I usually scrounge food at the multitude of receptions on Sunday evening. But I hope it goes well.

Exploring Our Matrix: Jesus was NOT a Zombie. Oh no, no indeed. Some potentially relevant posts are collected here.

Okay, maybe I'm stretching the concept of "biblioblogger," but I believe in big tents.

Review of Michalak, Angels and Warriors in Late Second Temple Jewish Literature

DIGLOTTING (KEVIN BROWN): Book Review: Angels and Warriors in Late Second Temple Jewish Literature. Excerpt:

What I learned from this book is the (somewhat previously neglected) literary presentations of militaristic and warlike functions of angelic beings. Michalak presents his study in such a way so as to show how the growth of militaristic angelology may be the result of an increasing focus on particular biblical motifs, e.g. the divine council and the Divine Warrior depiction of Yahweh. The increasing representation of angels as warriors should not come as a major surprise, however, when one takes into account the trend in the Second Temple period of angels adopting functions that were originally ascribed to Yahweh. Thus, Yahweh’s role as the Divine Warrior gradually shifts onto his heavenly retinue.

I don't seem to have noted this Mohr Siebeck book. How on earth did I miss it?

(HT James McGrath on Facebook.)

Finishing Tractate Pesach

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: On the Origin of Passover’s Four Questions and the Renewal of Miracles. The Talmud is not a literary text, yet its role in maintaining the continuity of Jewish history is undeniable. Excerpt:

The last pages of Pesachim, I find, are suffused with a kind of celebratory, homecoming feeling, as the rabbis finally bring the discussion around to the Passover Seder—something that, after 1,500 years, is still familiar to every practicing Jew. In fact, it is thanks to the Haggadah that most Jews know at least a little bit of the Mishnah, though they may not recognize it as such. Not until I started reading Daf Yomi did I realize that the Haggadah passages that begin “Rabban Gamliel used to say,” or similar phrases, are actually quotations from the Mishnah, following the standard pattern for attributing opinions to a sage.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

More on Syriac Joseph and Aseneth

IS SYRIAC JOSEPH AND ASENETH A LOST GOSPEL? Mark Goodacre posts a note by Richard Bauckham on the possibility that Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson's announced "Lost Gospel" is none other than this: The Bride of God or the Lost Gospel of Joseph and Asyath, Richard Bauckham. Bauckham seems sympathetic to the possibility that Joseph and Aseneth (originally written in Greek) was intended as a Christian allegory and I would not rule this out either. But calling it a lost gospel, if that's what Jacobovici and Wilson are going to do, creates some genre confusion.

Bauckham has more to say in the comments section, where Goodacre also notes that the bibliography in his Joseph and Aseneth website has been updated.

Related recent post here.

Zenon archive update

WHAT'S NEW IN PAPYROLOGY: Trismegistos update on the Zenon archive, a third-century B.C.E. collection of documentary texts written by Zenon son of Agreophon, many of them in Palestine.

Curse Tablet excavated in Jerusalem

LIVESCIENCE: Ancient Magician's Curse Tablet Discovered in Jerusalem (Owen Jarus):

A lead curse tablet, dating back around 1,700 years and likely written by a magician, has been discovered in a collapsed Roman mansion in Jerusalem, archaeologists report.

The mansion, which is being excavated by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Givati Parking Lot, is located in what is known as the "City of David," an area that holds at least 6,000 years of human occupation. The mansion itself covers at least 2,000 square meters (about half an acre) and contains two large open courtyards adjacent to each other. It was in use between the late third century and A.D. 363, when it was destroyed in a series of earthquakes on May 18 or 19.

The text is written in Greek and, in it a woman named Kyrilla invokes the names of six gods to cast a curse on a man named Iennys, apparently over a legal case.

[...]

Another nice example of a real ancient inscribed lead tablet. Note that it has coherent text on it that can be translated reasonably readily. The wide-ranging cultural background is fascinating, but not untypical for magical traditions from late antiquity:

To obtain her goal Kyrilla combined elements from four religions, Robert Walter Daniel, of the Institut für Altertumskunde at the University of Cologne, told LiveScience in an email. Of six gods invoked, four of them are Greek (Hermes, Persephone, Pluto and Hecate), one is Babylonian (Ereschigal) and one, Abrasax, is Gnostic, a religion connected to early Christianity. Additionally, the text contains magic words such as "Iaoth" that have a Hebrew/Judaism origin.

(HT reader Gerald Rosenberg. Cross-file under not a fake metal codex.)

A Coptic Genesis fragment

ALIN SUCIU: A Fragment from Genesis in Sahidic Sold at Christie’s. "As I already said, manuscripts in private hands are sometimes as good as lost."

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Vol. 1

IN THE MAIL — AT LAST!

Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila, Alexander Panayotov (eds.), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Volume 1 (Eerdmans, 2013)

TOC and background information here.

UPDATE: Liv Ingeborg Lied has information on the upcoming SBL review session in Baltimore here.

Archaeology and the Bible again

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Has Archaeology Gone Overboard in Throwing Out the Bible? (Steven Collins, ASOR Blog).

A related recent post is here.

Israel Forgery Trial appeal latest

THE AFTERMATH OF THE ISRAEL FORGERY TRIAL JUST GOES ON AND ON: Supreme Court says Israel cannot hold Jehoash Tablet but challenges antiquities trade (Matthew Kalman, Bible and Interpretation).

The ruling says that Golan can have the Jehoash Tablet back, but the really important element of the ruling is that the Israeli Supreme Court seems to be laying the groundwork for a sustained campaign against the antiquities trade:

In an 8,000-word ruling handed down on September 29, a panel of three Supreme Court Justices rejected Golan’s appeal against his conviction and sentence on three minor charges and used the opportunity to declare war on the antiquities market. Branding the trade in antiquities “damaging” and motivated by “avarice,” the ruling authored by Supreme Court Justice Daphne Barak-Erez depicts “a world of collectors exchanging treasures teeming with trembling hands and heart - often within the law, and sometimes without,” and notes with approval that “in most countries of the world there is a general ban on the trade in antiquities, because of their recognition as a national resource.” She further observed, that this "conception also serves as the basis for the antiquities law” in Israel.

The ruling places the Supreme Court on a potential collision course with the Israel Museum and other major archaeological collections in the country, which all display items purchased from the market. Israel Museum curators and experts have described a complex and well-oiled procedure of verification and testing carried out in the museum laboratories to determine the significance and authenticity of items offered by dealers. Many of the Israel Museum’s most notable archaeological exhibits, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, royal seal impressions and coins were purchased on behalf of the museum from the antiquities market and not discovered in authorized archaeological excavations.

Barak-Erez excoriates the “loopholes” in the existing Antiquities Law, using the bully pulpit of Israel’s highest court, citing material not in evidence during the original trial, to propose a dramatic tightening of Israel’s antiquities trade. Her ruling should not be dismissed as the star-struck enthusiasm of an amateur touched by the magic of a rare antique treasure. Appointed to the Supreme Court in 2012 at the extraordinarily young age of 47, Barak-Erez is widely regarded as a legal genius, the leading Israeli juror of her generation and a future president of the court. If she has marked the antiquities trade as the target of a personal legal crusade, she has the authority and the stature to inspire extensive legal reform.

The issues are summarized pretty clearly near the end of the essay:

But Professor Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, Director of the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project, says the benefits of a general ban far outweigh the risks. “Illicit digs destroy archaeological sites,” he says, adding that the existence even of the regulated market fuels the robbery that is stripping antiquities from their context and greatly reducing their scientific value.

“One of the main reasons you have to deal with many of the inscriptions that are found on the antiquities market with suspicion is because we’ve been excavating non-stop for the last 150 years. In controlled excavations, very few inscriptions have been found. All these astounding inscriptions always appear on the market. That’s what rings the warning bells,” says Maeir. “Also we know that when something is found in excavations, very soon after, all kind of things like it start appearing.”

But Golan says the Israeli market is not the problem – it’s simply not large enough to make a difference. The demand for Middle Eastern antiquities comes from abroad. Banning the trade in Israel will merely ensure the immediate exodus of any important items. Nor will an Israeli public awareness campaign about “picking” treasures resonate with Palestinians in the West Bank, where the vast majority of antiquities are found. Golan says the best way forward is for the authorities to work alongside the collectors in a joint effort to preserve the natural heritage and ensure the most important discoveries remain in Israel.

This is a very complicated situation that Kalman lays out quite lucidly, so read it all.

On suspicion concerning the multitude of Iron Age Hebrew inscriptions, see here. I have very mixed feelings about the situation. I agree that unprovenanced artifacts create serious problems for archaeology and epigraphy and am on record saying that unprovenanced inscriptions should be regarded as fakes unless there is significant positive evidence for their authenticity. At the same time, adopting a zero tolerance stance toward the antiquities trade is likely only to create a thriving black market into which genuine antiquities disappear and never come to the attention of specialists.

For background on the Israel Forgery Trial, go here and follow the many years worth of links.

Hugoye conference

SYRIAC WATCH:

Hugoye Symposium III: Colophons in the Syriac Tradition
Call for Papers

May 16-17, 2014

Hosted by
Beth Mardutho Research Library, Piscataway, N.J.
Rutgers University Libraries
Rutgers Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literature
Rutgers Center for Middle Eastern Studies

Follow the link for details.

Free books on ancient Judaism!

AWOL: Open Access Books by Lawrence H. Schiffman.

Giants galore!

A MONSTER POST ON GIANTS: Giants in the Bible and Its Reception. A collection of many (all?) of the posts in the Renamnt of Giants blog.

As a bonus, there's a quote from Steven R. Donaldson's concluding Thomas Covenant novel, The Last Dark. It happens that most of the same passage is also quoted by Loren Rossen in his review of the latter at The Busybody. Well, it's a good quote.

Cuneiform inscriptions and Aramaic angels and giants

JONATHAN BEN-DOV has a very interesting article (unfortunately, requires subscription or registration) in Haaretz on the possible influence of Mesopotamian iconography in cuneiform inscriptions on ancient Jewish mythology about angels and giants: Turning to the angels to save Jewish mythology. Ancient Mesopotamian texts and images, although understandable to contemporary scholars, were entirely incomprehensible to readers in the Levant in Greek and Roman times. The creative imagination of those readers produced new mythologies in Aramaic, incorporating the ancient relics in a convoluted way. Excerpt:

A rare interpretation of such inscriptions was preserved in the Jewish literature of the Hellenistic period , opening a gateway to an entire world of mythology, sights and images.

A relevant passage is found in the Book of Jubilees, a Jewish text from the mid-second century B.C.E. whose Hebrew source was found in fragmented form at Qumran, but which circulated in various translations in the ancient world:

“... and he called his name Kainan. And the son grew, and his father taught him writing, and he went to seek for himself a place where he might seize for himself a city. And he found a writing which former ‏(generations‏) had carved on the rock, and he read what was thereon, and he transcribed it and sinned owing to it; for it contained the teaching of the Watchers in accordance with which they used to observe the omens of the sun and moon and stars in all the signs of heaven. ‏(English translation by R.H. Charles, 1913‏)

The ancient, engraved images looked to the later observer like a vestige from the world of the Watchers ‏(Aramaic: ‘irim‏), primordial angels who, according to popular mythology, descended to earth in hoary antiquity and bequeathed civilization to mankind. If you will, these are aliens, in a way resembling those recounted by Erich von Däniken in his pseudo-scientific book, “Chariots of the Gods.” In fact, Däniken’s idea − that extraterrestrial powers descended to earth and instructed mankind how to build the pyramids and other notable projects − mirrors various ancient mythologies like the one discussed in the present article.

Babylonian mythology already told of ancient sages who were half-man and half-fish who emerged from the sea and bequeathed civilization to mankind. This old myth was revived in new garb in Lebanon, Syria and the Land of Israel in the Hellenistic period. In its Jewish form, the myth bore a new aspect: the Watchers conveyed forbidden knowledge, brought to human beings in an original sin. The bearers of the knowledge in the present version were not ancient fish who emerged from the sea but the mysterious angels who descended from heaven.

A manual of divination

In the Apocryphal Book of Jubilees, we read a description of a stone inscription in an unclear language, which the writer understood as a manual of divination according to the sun, the moon and the stars. There is an amazing similarity between the fantastic description in the Book of Jubilees and actual stone inscriptions created by Babylonian kings, which have been preserved to this day in Jordan, Arabia and mainly Lebanon. The kings Nebuchanezzar and Nabonidus engraved their images on rock, and topped them with symbols of the sun, moon and stars − the protective deities of the neo-Babylonian dynasty. The scenes were accompanied by a long cuneiform text praising the king’s enterprises.

We, therefore, encounter a rare instance of coordination between a fantastic literary description and a material find that has survived to this day. In the absence of a chain of transmission, the explanation of the mysterious pictures etched in the rock was left to imagination. While the older traditions about the origin of knowledge persisted, they now found a new iconographic garb.

The Jewish writer of the Book of Jubilees considered the inscriptions vestiges from the time before the Flood, because he had no way of knowing that the inscriptions preceded him by about four centuries at most. The sun and moon appearing above the inscriptions are, as he understands them, the subjects of the scientific wisdom carved on the rock.

Accordingly, the giant figure engraved in the rock ‏(originally either Nebuchadnezzar or Nabonidus‏) is no more than the “Watcher,” the primordial angel who descended from heaven and bequeathed wisdom to human beings.

For more on the Watchers, the giants, the Book of Giants, and their Mesopotamian connections see this recent post and links. More on Erich von Däniken is here and links.

(HT Joseph I. Lauer.)

Fragments of ANE archive discovered

AN E-MAIL ARCHIVE, THAT IS: The Oriental Institute: Fragments for a History of an Institution | Old ANE Archive.

Zoroastrianism exhibition

IN THE BRITISH LIBRARY: New exhibition opens on Zoroastrianism. The Babylonian Talmud is (rightly) mentioned. On that, see related posts here and links.

Jenkins on The Cave of Treasures

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: THE CAVE OF TREASURES. A nice overview of this fascinating text.

Jenkins links to the old translation by E. A. Wallis Budge. A new translation by Alexander Toepel is coming out in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1, a copy of which I expect to hold in my hands in a matter of days.

UPDATE (18 October): I don't know why this pre-post decided to manifest itself early, even with its future posting date intact. Chalk it up to time travel.

Northwest Semitic epigraphy latest

ASOR BLOG: What’s New in Biblical Inscriptions? (George Athas). Quite a bit, it seems. But I'm not sure the word "biblical" is helpful in this context.

Report on Legio excavations

BAS PRESS RELEASE:

Legio Excavations Reveal the Camp of the Roman VIth Ferrata Legion in Israel

CONTACT: Noah Wiener
The Biblical Archaeology Society
Phone: 1.800-221-4644 ext. 241
Fax: 202-364-2636
E-mail: nwiener@bib-arch.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON, D.C. (October 18, 2013)—This summer, the Jezreel Valley Regional Project (JVRP) teamed up with Israeli archaeologist Yotam Tepper to expose a Roman camp just south of Tel Megiddo. The first archaeological investigation of a second-century C.E. Roman camp in the Eastern Empire uncovered remains from the legendary Roman VIth Ferrata Legion. In a free web-exclusive report, directors Matthew J. Adams, Jonathan David and Yotam Tepper share dramatic discoveries from the 2013 Legio excavations.

The legion was deployed during the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian (117–138 C.E.), and it remained stationed in Judea through most of the third century C.E. Based in the Jezreel Valley near Tel Megiddo, the Sixth Ironclad Legion was well situated to control important centers of the local Jewish population. Surveys conducted by Yotam Tepper clarified the location of the military base, and in the summer of 2013 Tepper and the JVRP excavated part of the long-lost camp of the Legio VI Ferrata.

In a free, web-exclusive report, the directors describe discoveries from test trenches excavated over an area of 295 by 16.5 feet. Finds include defensive earthworks, a circumvallation rampart, barracks areas and artifacts including roof tiles stamped with the name of the Sixth Legion, coins and fragments of scale armor.

The excavation of a Roman military headquarters with clear ties to major political and cultural events in the formative years of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity is exciting in itself, but Legio also provides a new window into the Roman military occupation of the eastern provinces. No military headquarters of this type for this particular period had yet been excavated in the entire Eastern Empire.

Legio and Tel Megiddo are identified with Biblical Har Megiddo, the gathering place for the armies before the Last Battle in the New Testament (Revelations 16:16), the origin of the modern term Armageddon. The Jezreel Valley Regional Project is only in its opening stages, but excavations at this theological and historical military gathering point have already yielded dramatic discoveries.

Click here to read the free online excavation report by Matthew J. Adams, Jonathan David and Yotam Tepper: www.biblicalarchaeology.org/legio

Fifth-century Jewish tombstone discovered in California —

— IN A MUSEUM.

An Ancient Gift, An Unlikely Friendship

10/15/13
Deena Yellin (The Jewish Week)

Steven Fine, a professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University and director of the school’s Center for Israel Studies, figured an article he published last year in Biblical Archeology Review about ancient tombstones in the Holy Land, would resonate with other archeology buffs.

But he never imagined that “Tales From Tombstones” would move a reader to give him one of those rare relics.

The reader, Pastor Carl Morgan of Woodland, Calif., curator of the Woodland Museum of Biblical Archeology, sent Fine a photo of a limestone gravestone in his collection. Yes, said Fine – it was undoubtedly one of the stones about which he had written.

[...]

Thus began a beautiful and unlikely friendship between the East Coast students and the West Coast pastor. The students called Morgan on a regular basis seeking information about the stone’s measurements, design and other details.
Although it was worn, the students, with Fine’s help, were able to decipher the text. They dated the stone to 430 C.E. — some 360 years after the destruction of the Second Temple, and reconstruct the name on the stone to be ‘Sa’adah, daughter of Pi[nchas].”

“Here’s a Jewish woman we never knew of before in a place were there weren’t likely any rabbis,” says Fine. “When it comes to ancient history, every little scrap of anything is worth something. We try to squeeze as much as we can out of every scrap. Each stone is another brick in our knowledge about Jews in the talmudic period — you never know what connects to what until we have it all together.”

[...]

As always with unprovenanced inscriptions, I would like to know more about the authentication process. But it does sound likely just from the story that this is a genuine ancient artifact.

Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.

(Via Joseph Lauer.)

UPDATE: Joe Lauer also circulated a couple of photographs of the tombstone, courtesy of Steven Fine. With Professor Fine's permission I post them here. For larger versions, click on the images.

George Smith and Gilgamesh

A MOVING STORY: The tragic tale of George Smith and Gilgamesh
In 1873, the Telegraph funded a groundbreaking expedition. Now, a new book by Vybarr Cregan-Reid tells the story of what happened when George Smith rediscovered The Epic of Gilgamesh. (Vybarr Cregan-Reid, The Telegraph).

Had he not died so young, Smith could have gone on to become the Darwin of archaeology. As it is, even the little work that he was able to do still refashioned the landscape of his own and other disciplines forever.

Man is snapped off like a reed in a canebreak.*

As regular readers know well, Gilgamesh resurfaced in Second Temple Judaism as a giant.

*X.301, Andrew George's Penguin translation, 1999.

Two Old Testament pseudepigrapha papers

LIV INGEBORG LIED: Two Papers: Pseudepigrapha, New Philology and Media Culture.

Still more on the York Christian Apocrypha Symposium

TONY BURKE:

The 2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium in Retrospect: Part Two.

The 2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium in Retrospect: Part Three.

Background here and links.

Defining the gospel genre

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: WHAT IS A GOSPEL? (Philip Jenkins). Not as easy to answer as you might think.

Postgraduate study at the University of British Columbia

FROM PROF. GREGG E. GARDNER:

Located in Vancouver, British Columbia - the 3rd best city in the world in which to live (Global Liveability Ranking – 2013), - the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia offers students the unique opportunity to conduct graduate level research in the classical texts, archaeology, and history of the entire Mediterranean world.

In our department, students can take a spectrum of courses from Roman and Greek archaeology, literature and history to Near Eastern languages (we offer Coptic and Akkadian as well as Hieroglyphs) to Christianity, Islam and Judaism. We are a student-centred department which seeks to enrich and nourish all of our MA and PhD students as a deeply held principle.

CNERS offers MA-level programs in

Classics
Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology
Religious Studies
Ancient Culture, Religion and Ethnicity (a unique MA-level interdisciplinary program that draws on the unique synergy of our department’s faculty)

There are two programs at the PhD level:

PhD in Classics (with possible specializations in Classics, Ancient History and Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology)
PhD in Religious Studies

The department is looking for committed, self-motivated students and anticipates being able to offer up to four financial packages to well-qualified PhD applicants (with a completed MA) valued at approximately $25,000 per year for four years (contingent upon academic performance).

Typical support for incoming MA students is around $20,000 per year for two years (contingent upon academic performance).

In addition, there is money earmarked for student travel and research abroad. Funding is also available for qualified international students.

Recent PhD graduates are teaching in leading Canadian and international universities, and our MA students have gone on to study at outstanding universities such as McGill, Yale, UC-Berkeley, Stanford, and Oxford.

Our departmental website: http://cnrs.ubc.ca

Our graduate programs: http://cnrs.ubc.ca/for-graduates/graduate-programs/

We encourage students to contact our Director of Graduate Studies [ubccner-g-dgs@mail.ubc.ca] – or any of our faculty (all of whom are interested in supporting graduate students) with questions about our program, courses, and living in Vancouver.

The deadline for applications is December 15th for PhD programs and January 15th for MA programs.

To apply: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/prospective-students/application-admission/apply-online

“Hot feces in torn date baskets in your mouth, witches.”

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN FROM ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Magical Thinking, Superstition, and Incantations in Jewish Oral Law. By elevating witches and demons to the level of gods, Talmudic rabbis diminished religious thought.

Kirsch's mind is kind of blown by finding this sort of thing in the Talmud, although he does his best to accommodate it:

The ease with which magic and witchcraft find a place in the Talmudic worldview is, to my mind, both illuminating and compromising. For it suggests that the Talmud’s general commitment to exact measurement and correct action—the need to find out exactly how to behave in order to please God, down to the order in which you put on your shoes in the morning—is itself a kind of magical thinking.

For the rabbis, Jews are the protagonists of a cosmic drama in which their every slightest action will be either rewarded or punished. There is something ennobling about this, but when the same kind of scrutiny is attributed not just to God but to demons and witches, it begins to seem oppressive and even absurd. What’s more, it impugns the authority of the rabbis themselves. If we have to listen to the Sages when they tell us about the 39 melachot of Shabbat, aren’t we just as bound to listen to them when they tell us that a “sorb tree that is close to the city contains no less than 60 demons?” And if they are wrong about the demons, mightn’t they also be wrong about the melachot?

Acceptance of the idea of the demonic (and angelic) supernatural is the norm for human societies and it is ours that is out of step with the rest of humanity. Not that we don't have good reason, but that supernatural idea does find a place for subterranean and often dark aspects of the human mind and gives them a coherent place in human society. There is a vast anthropological literature on this: off the top of my head, I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1971), comes to mind as an old classic.

It's not as though these aspects of human consciousness can be ignored. They will get our attention one way or another and I am far from convinced that replacing the old supernatural paradigm with some widely used modern ones, notably Freudian Psychoanalysis, represents much of an advance. On the latter, see Karl Popper's critique, which can be found, for example, summarized by Bryan Magee in Popper (Modern Masters; London: Fontana, 1973), chapter 3.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Syriac Seminar at the University of Iowa

ROBERT CARGILL: Announcing Spring 2014 Seminar in Syriac at the University of Iowa. An exciting course that will include readings from the Syriac version of Joseph and Aseneth. The Syriac text is the earliest extant version of this work, although it is a translation from Greek. Bob's post has also reminded me of Mark Goodacre's excellent Aseneth Home Page.

Cross-file under "Syriac Watch" and "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch."

Underwater archaeology at Tel Dor

NEW MARITIME CIVILIZATIONS MA: Underwater archaeologists: Unlocking the mysteries of an age-old port. Who sailed from the harbor - or harbors - at Tel Dor? Haifa University students find clues on the Mediterranean floor (Alona Ferber, Haaretz). Excerpt:

It's cold. It's silent. It's murky. It's the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea and it's the hangout of choice for students of maritime archaeology, seeking clues to the dawn of modern man. Or in the case of participants on Haifa University’s new English MA in Maritime Civilizations, signs of a harbor at the ancient site of Tel Dor.

The Tel Dor expedition, some 30 kilometers south of Haifa, is a collaboration between Dr. Assaf Yasur-Landau and Dr. Ayelet Gilboa of the University of Haifa, and Prof. Ilan Sharon of the Hebrew University. Students of the new English-language program, which started its second year this fall, take part in underwater surveys of Tel Dor mostly in shallow waters but also at depths of up to 10 meters of water.

The documented history of Tel Dor begins in the the 13th century BCE and continues through to the Crusader era. Excavators are seeking evidence of the location of a harbor or harbors at the site that are documented in written sources.

During the Roman and later Crusader periods the harbor seems to have been in the town's northern bay– but earlier, during the Iron Age, and perhaps even in the Bronze Age, it seems to have been located in Tel Dor’s south bay. Researchers still don’t know for sure why the harbor moved.

I was as an assistant square supervisor at Tel Dor back in the 1980s, but that work was strictly above ground.

Gold cuneiform tablet update

A MESSY CASE: Dispute over ancient gold tablet goes to US court (AP). The tablet was excavated by German archaeologists, looted from a German Museum in 1945, and bought by a Holocaust survivor. Now the museum wants it back, but the heirs of the late most recent owner want it to go to a Holocaust museum.

I have been following the case, which has had a number of twists and turns, for a while. Background here and links. There's a photograph here and more photos in this video from June 2012.

CSM on the Bible and archaeology

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR has a couple of interesting articles by Christa Case Bryant on the Hebrew Bible and archaeology, with emphasis on the current debate between the "minimalists" and the "maximalists" regarding the historicity of the United Monarchy (Saul-David-Solomon).

What archaeology tells us about the Bible
A contentious dig in Israel delves into the kingdoms of David and Solomon, stirring a debate over the veracity of the biblical record. Excerpt:

For the past 20 years, a battle has been waged with spades and scientific tracts over just how mighty David and the Israelites were. A string of archaeologists and Bible scholars, building on critical scholarship from the 1970s and '80s, has argued that David and his son Solomon were the product of a literary tradition that at best exaggerated their rule and perhaps fabricated their existence altogether.

For some, the finds at Qeiyafa have tilted the evidence against such skeptical views of the Bible. [Archaeologist Yosef] Garfinkel says his work here bolsters the argument for a regional government at the time of David – with fortified cities, central taxation, international trade, and distinct religious traditions in the Judean hills. He says it refutes the portrayal by other scholars of an agrarian society in which David was nothing more than a "Bedouin sheikh in a tent."

"Before us, there was no evidence of a kingdom of Judah in the 10th century [BC]," says Garfinkel. "And we have changed the picture."

But critics question his methods on the ground and his interpretations in scholarly journals.

The dispute transcends the simple meaning of ancient inscriptions found at Qeiyafa, or the accuracy of carbon-dating tests on olive pits. It highlights the whole dynamic between archaeology and the Bible – whether science can, in fact, help authenticate the Scriptures.

"If you are in the trenches of what's going on today, the battle for Qeiyafa looks very important," says Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University and one of Garfinkel's most prominent critics. "But if you are zooming out, you see that all this is another phase in a very long battle for the question of the historicity of the biblical text, for understanding the nature of the Bible, for understanding the cultural meaning of the Bible."

More on the archaeology and inscriptions of Khirbet Qeiyafa is here with many links.

In Jerusalem, the politics of digging up the past
As a nexus of religions, and archaeology, Jerusalem inspires intense fights over moving even a single 'grain of dirt.' Excerpt:

While the debate over the extent of King David's realm has focused heavily on Khirbet Qeiyafa to the southwest, archaeological work in Jerusalem also offers evidence about David and the biblical record – but in an even more fraught environment. Gabriel Barkay, who has worked as an archaeologist in the city for decades, says that even moving a single "grain of dirt from one place to another is political."

"It is a boiling caldron, the stew of which is stirred up by so many spoons," says Dr. Barkay. He cites the Chief Rabbinate of Israel (the supreme spiritual authority for Jewish people in the country), the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, UNESCO, the city of Jerusalem, the Israeli Antiquities Authority, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and the Vatican.

"The Temple Mount is the soul, heart, and spirit of Jewish history ... [and of events] in Islamic periods, also in medieval periods, and up to our day," says Barkay. "It is a focal point in the understanding of what goes on here. And the Temple Mount is a black hole in the archaeology of Jerusalem. It was never, ever excavated."

So it's perhaps not surprising that he fought a prolonged battle to reclaim hundreds of truckloads of dirt that he calls "saturated with the history of Jerusalem." In 1999, Palestinians began removing the material from the Muslim-controlled Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif, and dumping it in the Kidron Valley at night.

The Palestinians said they were simply trying to build an emergency exit at a mosque. But the dirt included material that archaeologists determined was from the First and Second Temple periods, vital to Jewish history, and the project expanded beyond what Israeli authorities were expecting. Five years later, Barkay managed to reclaim it and established the Temple Mount Sifting Project to find artifacts among the rubble.

Palestinian leaders have increasingly refrained from acknowledging the existence of a Jewish temple in Jerusalem – and some outright deny it. Meanwhile, those seeking to shore up the Jewish nation's ties to the city have largely ignored the legacy of centuries of Muslim presence as well as that of early ethnic groups such as the Canaanites, believed by some to be the ancestors of Palestinians.

More on the Temple Mount Sifting Project is here, again with many, many links. More on the Palestinian Authority and its Jewish Temple denial is, for example, here and here and links.

Boustan et al., Hekhalot Literature in Context

IN THE MAIL:

Ra'anan S. Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb, Peter Schafer (eds.), Hekhalot Literature in Context: Between Byzantium and Babylonia (TSAJ 153; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013)

A review copy from the Journal for the Study of Judaism.

More details here.

Iraqi Jewish Archive debate heats up

THIS IS BECOMING A CONTENTIOUS ISSUE: Plan to ‘return’ Jewish artifacts to Iraq sparks outrage (dan pine, JWeekly.com). Excerpt:

The United States agreed to return the materials to Iraq in 2014 in exchange for a promise that the Iraqi antiquities ministry would take good care of them.

But the Iraqi Jewish community in the United States is having no part of it.

In advance of the exhibition, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) and Jews Indigen-ous to the Middle East and Africa (JIMENA) have launched a campaign to prevent the archives from returning to Iraq where, they believe, the materials will either rot or be destroyed.

“The archives were looted by the Iraqi government from the Jewish community,” said Gina Waldman, executive dir-ector of the S.F.-based JIMENA. “We hope the U.S. government will bar the return of the archives to Iraq, and do everything possible to [reach] a mutually agreeable, fair and just agreement so that the Iraqis are encouraged to hand the archives to the rightful Jewish owners.”

Stanley Urman, executive vice president of JJAC, cites the legal principle “jus ex injuria non oritur,” which in international law means that a state cannot assert legal rights to property illegally obtained. “[The materials] were seized from Jewish institutions, schools and the community. There is no justification or logic in sending these Jewish archives back to Iraq, a place that has virtually no Jews, no interest in Jewish heritage and no accessibility to Jewish scholars.”

But others disagree. No word on whether the U.S. Government is taking any notice of the objections.

Background with, for what it's worth, my own commentary on the situation is here and links.

More on the York Christian Apocrypha Symposium

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE WOMAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN. She just makes everything work.

Sarah Veale: Behind the Ivory Curtain: Working on the York Christian Apocrypha Symposium. With links to symposium posts by organizer Tony Burke and by Mark Bilby. Student conference assistants are invaluable.

Background here and here and links.

Hurtado on "Covert Christianity"

WHAT HAVE THE ROMANS DONE FOR US? Now there's some guy saying they invented Jesus. Larry Hurtado replies: FlimFlam of the Month: “Covert Christianity.”

"Not our egomaniac"

HAARETZ: Archaeological stunner: Not Herod's Tomb after all?
While attention is focused on a blockbuster exhibition purporting to display the tomb of Herod the Great, two archaeologists claim there's no way the egomaniac king was interred there.

Now, two archaeologists, Prof. Joseph Patrich and Benjamin Arubas, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, are raising serious questions about the identification of the structure as the burial site of the king. They contend that there is no possibility that the mausoleum Netzer and his students uncovered could actually be the royal tomb in which Herod was interred after his death, in 4 B.C.E.

The structure is not in keeping with Herod’s other construction projects or his personality, they say.

“I feel like the boy in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’” says Patrich. “It's so obvious that it is surprising people can’t see it.”

The pair presented their main reservations yesterday at the seventh annual “Innovations in Archaeology in Jerusalem and the Surrounding Area” conference, organized by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University.

There have always been doubts about the identification of the site as Herod's tomb, so it is not that much of a stunner. I have been putting caveats in my posts about the site for a long time, most recently here (leading to many links on the subject). But it is interesting to have archaeologists now actively offering a rebuttal.

UPDATE: Bad link now fixed. Sorry about that!

New blog on manuscripts

ASSIMILATED TO THE BLOGOSPHERE: Religion - Manuscripts - Media Culture (Liv Ingeborg Lied).

"I once promised myself that I would never start blogging."

Masada in the news

TWO ITEMS PERTAINING TO MASADA:

First:

An American in King Herod's Court

By ARIEL DAVID (NYT)
Published: October 9, 2013

MASADA, Israel — This ancient fortress, towering above the lunar landscape on the shores of the Dead Sea, is many things to many people: natural treasure, archaeological wonder, national icon. For Eitan Campbell, Masada is all that and more — it is home.

Mr. Campbell started working at the site when he was 17 and never left. Forty-one years later, he is the director, after holding almost every job available — including sitting at the cashier’s window and driving an ambulance for tourists felled by the desert heat.

[...]

Second: Dr. Jodi Magness to Present ‘Masada: Last Stronghold of the Jewish Resistance Against Rome.’ At the University of North Carolina, today.

Did Melchizedek go Green?

PHILIP JENKINS: THE GREEN MAN AND THE KING OF SALEM. Is al-Khidr in the Qur'an a late reflex of the patriarch Melchizedek? Maybe. I have argued for something similar in the Hekhalot traditions about the Youth. See my "Melchizedek, the Youth, and Jesus" in The Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity: Papers from a Conference at St. Andrews in 2001 (STDJ 46; Leiden: Brill, 2003) , 248-74.

More on the Syriac Manichaean fragments

ALIN SUCIU: Guest Post: Nils Arne Pedersen & John Møller Larsen – Syriac-Manichaean fragments.

Background here and here. Related post on non-Syriac Manichaean (Manichean) manuscripts here.

Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni

BOOK REVIEW: New fantasy novel draws on that old Jewish black magic.
When a female Golem from 19th century Poland and Jinni from Ancient Syria accidentally meet one another, all sorts of mayhem ensues (Renee Ghert-Zand, The Times of Israel).

I don't think golem creation would count as black magic, but I imagine the reviewer didn't write the headline. A couple of small excerpts:

Critics and the reading public alike have been captivated by Wecker’s creative narrative, which has two supernatural creatures from different historical eras and parts of the world arriving separately (the Golem by ship and the Jinni by copper flask) in New York in 1899. Eventually, the Golem from 19th century Poland and the Jinni from Ancient Syria accidentally meet one another. They bond and then separate after a terrifying incident, only to later reunite to fight a power bent on destroying them both.

While readers may be familiar with the mythic Golem of Jewish lore, a clay figure brought to life by Kabbalistic charms, it is unlikely they have ever encountered one quite like the one in this novel. This is because the Golem conjured by Wecker’s imagination is female, and her name is Chava.

[..]

Although her novel’s two protagonists are drawn from myth, the idea for “The Golem and the Jinni” stems from Wecker’s real life. The 38-year-old Jewish author is married to an American man of Syrian descent whom she met in college. However, while most of the characters in Little Syria are Christian, Wecker’s husband’s family is of Muslim background.

Earlier reviews noted here and link. And for many, many additional golem links, go here.

Rabbinic Shabbat dinner etiquette etc.

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: When the Rabbis Got Together for Shabbat Dinner, Drama—and Law—Ensued. In the Talmud, examples of real-life rabbinic behavior and the intensely personal nature of lawmaking.

Even so, most of this week’s reading managed to stay far away from the concrete details of Passover. The mishna on Pesachim 99b begins with a brief sentence about eating on the day of the Seder: “On the eve of Passover, adjacent to mincha time, a person may not eat until dark.” These few words are the springboard for eight full pages of Gemara, in which the rabbis talk primarily not about Passover at all, but about Shabbat. In the process, the text gives several examples of real-life rabbinic behavior, dramatizing the intensely personal nature of Talmudic lawmaking.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Brooten on ancient Jewish and Christian women

BERNADETTE BROOTEN INTERVIEWED: Documents from Dead Sea Scrolls era show diversity of women’s roles (BrandeisNow).

Related posts at my old Qumranica blog here and here.

"Methuselah" still going strong

THE DATE PALM grown from an ancient seed excavated at Masada is still alive and well: Ancient Date Palm Tree Flourishes Again (Popular Archaeology). Excerpt:

During excavations by the late Ehud Netzer in 1973 at the site of Herod the Great's fortified mountaintop palace at Masada in Israel, archeologists uncovered a cache of seeds stowed away in a clay jar about 2,000 years ago. For decades, the ancient seeds were stored in a drawer at Tel Aviv's Bar-Ilan University. But in 2005, in collaboration with the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Center at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, botanical researcher Elaine Solowey received one of them for an experimental planting.

"When we asked if we could try and grow some of them, they said, 'You're mad,' but they gave us three seeds," she said. "Lotus seeds over 1,000 years old have been sprouted, and I realized that no one had done any similar work with dates, so why not give it our best shot -- and we were rewarded."*

Solowey planted a seed in a pot at Kibbutz Ketura in January, immediately after receiving them. Since then, it has sprouted into a seedling, produced its first blossom in 2011, and now flourishes as a young date palm. It has been nick-named "Methuselah", after the oldest person who ever lived, according to the biblical account.

Background here. Dr Solowey also recently had a similar success with growing the ancient Frankincense plant.

Dead Sea Scrolls concert

IN BOSTON: In the caves of Qumran, with electronics (Jeremy Eichler, The Boston Globe).

... In their day, the scroll texts were most likely chanted out loud, writes the Brandeis scholar Marc Brettler in a program note for Saturday’s Dinosaur Annex concert, though he conceded we don’t have any idea how that chanting might have sounded.

At a guess, probably not much like the modern electro-acoustic soundscapes created by Eric Chasalow for his new work, “Where It Finds Nothing But the Wind,” a setting of selections from the scroll texts that received its premiere on Saturday’s concert. Chasalow, a Brandeis-based composer, freely admits he came to the Scrolls with no previous knowledge about their origins or content. His work also makes no claim to any informed guesswork about the sound world of ancient liturgical traditions. Brettler, who assisted Chasalow on his project, pointed out in a preconcert lecture that even the pronunciation of the texts themselves is speculative since they predate the creation of the system of vowels that inform the speaking of Hebrew and Aramaic today.

So what we have in Chasalow’s new work is a purely contemporary fantasy on these texts, scored for soprano, percussion, guitar, flute, and electronics. The texts used here were culled by Chasalow from across the different scrolls, and include biblical passages, texts from the Qumran Psalms scroll, and even an extraordinary passage from the Book of Enoch that describes “the sons of the sky” siring a race of evil giants with the “daughters of men.” Chasalow’s musical response is an ever-shifting kaleidoscope that moves seamlessly from tonal music to abstract electronic noise and back. ...

The story of Enoch was also the subject of an opera earlier this year.

Background on the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the Boston Museum of Science is here and links.

Iraqi Jewish achive latest

THEY WERE ALREADY STOLEN BEFORE THE AMERICANS GOT TO THEM: Iraqi Jewish Treasures Displayed in D.C. Before Being Shipped Back to … Iraq
In the chaos of the 2003 war, remnants of a once-thriving Jewish past were saved (or stolen?) by America. Where do they belong? (Lisa Leff, Tablet Mgazine).

In this sense, the exhibit sidesteps the question that has made the Iraqi Jewish archive such a hot topic in the Jewish press for the last 10 years: Should the United States honor its agreement to return these things to Iraq, or should they instead be sent to Israel, where most Iraqi Jews fled and many of their descendants still live? While international law may be clear—belligerent troops may not cart away the cultural treasures of a conquered nation—for many Jews, the law doesn’t seem to serve justice in this particular case.

On one level, this is a question of access. If these materials return to Iraq, it’s hard to imagine that Israeli scholars will be able to travel to Iraq to consult them. But this is a practical problem, to which American authorities are offering a technical solution. As part of the restoration process, NARA’s staff will be carefully digitizing every book and every document in the collection that cannot be found elsewhere. NARA’s Doris Hamburg promises that the rare materials will be made available for free on NARA’s website, and they will be word-searchable, with annotations by experts. Ironically, the massive digitization project that is intended to accompany the return of Jewish cultural treasures to Iraq will make the archive more widely and easily available to Jewish scholars from around the world than it would have been if NARA had kept the collection in Washington. Astoundingly, much of the Iraqi Jewish archive—once-secret trove hidden away by a police state, unknown and far from the public’s reach—is about to become one of the most easily accessible collections of Jewish materials in the world.

As the article makes clear, the Iraqi secret police confiscated the manuscripts after the Jewish owners were driven out of Iraq, which rather reduces the moral urgency of Iraq's claims to them.

Be that as it may, one question that is not raised in the article (and seems, as far as I can tell, not to be of much concern to international law), is where the archive will be safest and best cared for. I have been belaboring this concern with reference to this and related stories for a long time. It seems a shame that a political tug-of-war over who should get the archive overshadows that concern.

Background on the Iraqi Jewish archive is here with a decade's worth of links.

I am glad to hear about the digitization. For more such digitization projects, see the immediately preceding post and links.

Digitizing Hebrew manuscripts

INL AND PALATINA: Rare Hebrew manuscripts to go online
Israel's National Library signs agreement with leading Italian collection to digitize about 1,600 documents dating to Middle Ages, including one of oldest existing copies of Mishna (AP).

Much more on Hebrew and other manuscript digitization projects here and links.

DSS at Boston Museum of Science

ASOR BLOG: An Afternoon at the Museum – The Dead Sea Scrolls (Kaitlynn Anderson).

Background here and links.

Calaway on 1 Maccabees

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Does 1 Maccabees Critique the Hasmoneans? (Jared Calaway).

Shai Secunda interviewed

THE BOOK OF DOCTRINES AND OPINIONS: An Interview with Dr. Shai Secunda about The Iranian Talmud (Alan Brill).

Background here.

Dirk Smilde Scholarship

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Dirk Smilde Scholarship 2013-2014.

In addition to the Dirk Smilde Fellowship, the Qumran Institute of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies (University of Groningen) is delighted to present the Dirk Smilde Scholarship for excellent PhD students and postdocs in the fields of Hebrew Bible, early Judaism and Dead Sea Scrolls.

The scholarship amounts to € 1,000 a month. Regarding the duration of the scholarship, we offer a range between a minimum of three and a maximum of six months. This should start January 2014 at the earliest and end July 2014 at the latest.

Simultaneously, the 2013-2014 Dirk Smilde Fellow Prof. Dr. Steve Mason (University of Aberdeen) will also reside at the Qumran Institute of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies from January to May 2014.

The proposed research should fit within the Qumran Institute’s research theme “Cultural Encounters in the Ancient World”.

Awards are made on academic merit, evaluated by an academic committee.

The deadline is 31 October. Follow the link for application details. More on the Dirk Smilde Fellowship here.

Anxious Ezra varia

THE ANXIIOUS BENCH: FORGETTING EZRA. Philip Jenkins relates some interesting information on 2 Esdras/ 4 Ezra.

I have some old essays on the ancient Ezra literature posted at my Old Testament Pseudepigrapha website:
4 Ezra
The Apocalypse of Sedrach

The following are by Ted Bergren:
5 Ezra
5 Ezra translation
6 Ezra

Some past posts on PaleoJudaica are also relevant:

• Eagle Vision of 4 Ezra
  
• Enoch Seminar: Response to Najman
  
• Columbus, the size of the earth, and 4 Ezra
  
• Off to the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense (with a summary of my paper "Seven Theses Concerning the Use of Scripture in 4 Ezra and The Latin Vision of Ezra")
  
• SBL 2012. Includes background material for my paper The Ninety-four Books of Ezra and the Angelic Revelations of John Dee.
  
• The legend of the ten Lost Tribes

St. Andrews symposium on ancient readers and their scriptures

CALL FOR PAPERS: The St Andrews Symposium for Biblical and Early Christian Studies. The Symposium takes place on 2-3 June 2014 and the subject is Ancient Readers & Their Scriptures: The Texts, Reading Strategies, and the Versions of the Hebrew Bible in Second Temple and Early Judaism. Follow the link for information on submitting a paper proposal (deadline 1 February 2014).

Talmudic cosmology and the scientific method

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: We No Longer Live in the World of Talmudic Rabbis. What’s a Modern Jew to Do? In the Bible, the rabbis had the most accurate possible description of the world—a flawed and limited cosmology. Excerpt:

Just about every page of Talmud I read makes clear to me that the rabbis lived in a different world than we do. But this week’s Daf Yomi reading showed that this was true in the most literal sense: The world, for the rabbis, was not our planet Earth, a small blue planet orbiting the Sun in the vastness of empty space. To them, as to all educated people of their time, the Earth was the center of the universe, surrounded by a series of concentric spheres, the outermost of which was studded with stars. “The Jewish Sages,” according to Pesachim 94b, “say the celestial sphere is stationary, and the constellations revolve in their place within the sphere.” In this they differed from the Gentile sages, who “say the entire celestial sphere revolves, and the constellations are stationary within the sphere.”

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and here and links.

Embodying the ancestors

SERVING THE WORD: "I am Adapa, Sage of Eridu" How and Why did Mesopotamian Exorcists Embody their Ancestors? A forthcoming paper by Seth Sanders. As Seth observes on Facebook, there is an interesting conversation to be had about the relationship between these Mesopotamian traditions and the much later (but still ancient) Jewish pseudepigrapha attributed to Enoch and others.

UPDATE (2 October): Jared Calaway comments with reference to the Greek Magical Papyri etc.

Mor Gabriel Monastery update

PROGRESS:

Turkey: Syriacs to regain Mor Gabriel’s land in ‘democratization package’
Tuesday 1 October 2013

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

The land of the historic Mor Gabriel Monastery will be returned to the Syriac community in Turkey as part of the “democratization package” announced by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan today, while the package fell short of meeting the expectations that the Halki Seminary could be reopened.

[...]

Background here and links. Cross-file under "Syriac Watch."

York Symposium

THE YORK CHRISTIAN APOCRYPHA SYMPOSIUM concluded on Saturday. The organizer, Tony Burke, promises a post mortem at his Apocryphicity blog, but meanwhile, there was lots of realtime commentary, often with photographs, at the #yorkca twitter feed.

A tale of stolen Torah scrolls

PHD DIVA: One Of Our Torahs Is Missing ... Two very old Samaritan Torah scrolls, in fact. Since 1995. Dorothy King has the story at the link.

Jesus the tweeter

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Was Jesus the first person to tweet? (Mark Goodacre).

Oldest Jewish prayer book?

PRESS RELEASE:

Green Scholars Discover World’s Oldest Jewish Prayer Book

840 C.E. Discovery from The Green Collection is Important Link between Time of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Medieval Judaism

OKLAHOMA CITY, Sept. 26, 2013—The Green Collection, one of the world’s largest collections of rare biblical texts and artifacts, announced today that it has identified what is likely the oldest Jewish prayer book ever found, dated by both scholars and Carbon-14 tests to circa 840 C.E. The artifact may well be the earliest connection today’s practicing Jews have to the roots of their modern-day rabbinic liturgy.

The complete parchment codex is in its original binding, containing Hebrew script so archaic that it incorporates Babylonian vowel pointing (akin to Old or Middle English for the English language). That vowel pointing has led researchers to place the prayer book in the times of the Geonim (Babylonian, Talmudic leaders during the Middle Ages).

“This find is historical evidence supporting the very fulcrum of Jewish religious life,” said Dr. Jerry Pattengale, executive director of the Green Scholars Initiative, the research arm of The Green Collection. “This Hebrew prayer book helps fill the gap between the Dead Sea Scrolls and other discoveries of Jewish texts from the ninth and 10th centuries.”

The announcement by The Green Collection comes just months after scholars in Italy identified the oldest-known Torah scroll from the 12th and 13th centuries; this Jewish prayer book dates some 300-400 years earlier.

Research on the prayer book—perhaps the Christian equivalent of a complete, early edition of the Book of Common Prayer—will be released in late 2014 or early 2015 by the Green Scholars Initiative in its upcoming Brill Series on Early Jewish Texts and Manuscripts edited by Pattengale and Dr. Emanuel Tov. The series will feature in-depth examination of some of the world’s oldest and most rare biblical texts, including portions from the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Jonah, Ezekiel, Micah, Daniel and the Psalms.

Dr. Stephen Pfann, a senior scholar with the Green Scholars Initiative and president of The University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, along with his students participating in the research project, made the initial discovery among other items from The Green Collection.

“The public will have the opportunity to witness the prayer book, along with the findings from The Green Scholars Initiative’s initial round of research, at a new museum, expected to open in Washington in early spring 2017,” said Steve Green, president of the national arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby. Green oversees support for the collection on behalf of his family.

“The research conducted by Green scholars the world over will bring to light the contents of valuable early Jewish texts—from Dead Sea Scrolls and Cairo Genizah leaves to rare manuscripts still being identified,” said Pattengale.

About The Green Collection:

Called “a sampler of Jewish, Roman Catholic and Protestant treasures” that span from ancient times to the digital age (USA Today), The Green Collection is comprised of over 40,000 ancient texts and artifacts that have spanned the ages and together weave a story of history’s most tenacious book. Whether called ancient literature, a work of art or the living Word of God, no other book has persevered the ages, endured such turmoil, is as hated and beloved as the Bible.

One of the world’s largest private collections of biblical texts and artifacts, the collection is named after the Green family, owners of national arts-and-crafts retailer Hobby Lobby. The collection will be permanently located in a yet-to-be-named national Bible museum in Washington, D.C., that will illustrate how the Bible as we know it came to be, the impact the Scriptures have had on the world and the story told in history’s No. 1 best-seller.

This press release does not have a photo, but an article on the discovery in Christianity Today (sent to me by reader Ted Olsen, CT Managing Editor, News & Online Journalism) does.

This sounds like it could be an exciting discovery. As always, I would like to know more about the provenance of the artifact.

Much more on the Green Collection is here and follow the links. Also, for more on that oldest Torah scroll see here and links.

Abegg interview

LXXI: Interview with Martin G. Abegg on Electronic Dead Sea Scrolls

Shemeni Atzeret and Simchat Torah

HAPPY SHEMENI ATZERET AND SIMCHAT TORAH (Simhat Torah) to all those celebrating! The former began on the sunset of the 25th. In Israel, Simchat Torah was on the same day, but elsewhere it began on the evening of the 26th. More here.

A Jewish holiday for Cyrus?

COUNTERFACTUAL HISTORY: What if Cyrus had not freed the Jews? (Roger Price, Jewish Journal).

Yet if it is true that but for Cyrus there would be no Judaism and no Jews today, why is not more attention paid to him? The man was extolled in the Hebrew Bible by the well regarded prophet Deutero-Isaiah and the esteemed priest Ezra, and more recently by Israeli founder and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion on the 2500 anniversary of the Cyrus Cylinder, but Cyrus is hardly remembered, much less honored , today in the Jewish community.

Part of the answer may be that the ancient sages did not want to attribute such momentous consequences to a mere mortal, preferring to see the return from exile and the rebuilding of the Temple as evidence of God’s intervention and grace. But then, how do you justify the inclusion of the Purim story in the canon and the celebration of that holiday? Jews of all stripes seem to love the fictional story set in Shushan in modern day Iran and the holiday that celebrates it, even though God is never mentioned. And who can resist? You get to wear costumes, eat some triangular cookies, drink a lot of wine and cheer as the pretty Jewish girl and her uncle save the Jews who were threatened with extinction. But, again, why is a true story of Jewish emancipation, set in a similar geographic locale, given no recognition? Sure, Cyrus was an emperor, not a paragon of modern democratic values, but the failure to designate a time to honor Cyrus is a serious omission in the Jewish calendar.

Lots more on Cyrus the Great and the Cyrus Cylinder here and links. Also, more on counterfactual history here and links.

The Talmud on the benefits of exile

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: In the Talmud, Jews in Exile Are Considered Defenseless Before Their Enemies. Daf Yomi: The one protection God granted the Jews was to scatter them, so that no single enemy could destroy them all at once.

Then the Amoraim perform a remarkable and moving feat of interpretation. If God loves Israel, they reason, then even when he punishes Israel he must manifest that love. The Exile cannot be all bad; it must have redeeming features, which prove that God had the welfare of his people in mind, even as he condemned them to dispersion. Indeed, Rabbi Oshaya says, the dispersion itself is a blessing in disguise. By scattering the Jews around the world, God made sure that their enemies could not exterminate them at one blow. Oshaya once argued this very point with a Roman: If the Romans had not managed to annihilate the Jews after so many years, it was not because they were well-disposed to the Jews, but “because you do not know how to do it.”

Plus advice on how to deal with a glutton.

Reed address at York symposium

TOMORROW: Keynote Address for 2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium: Annette Yoshiko Reed.

Background here and links.

More Syriac Manichaeana

IN THE BRITISH LIBRARY: Some Syriac Manichean Treasures in the British Library.

HT Emmanouela Grypeou on Facebook. Recent related post here.

Anxious Enochiana

PHILIP JENKINS has been publishing many interesting posts recently over at The Anxious Bench. Here are a few about Enoch:

THE MYSTERY OF ENOCH. Excerpt:

1 Enoch in particular was enormously influential in its time. Generations of New Testament scholars have been intrigued by the book’s use of the “Son of Man” terminology, recalling Jesus’s own use of that phrase. For centuries, the book’s most intriguing section was the so-called Book of the Watchers, which described how the Sons of God descended to Earth to breed with human women, producing a range of bizarre and frightening monsters. 1 Enoch also gave scriptural foundation for the fascination with angels and archangels like Michael and Gabriel.

LOSING ENOCH. Excerpt:

Even so, and despite the condemnation of such ecclesiastical giants as Origen and Augustine, we can trace the influence of the Enochic books for centuries afterwards. That survival is a powerful commentary on the durability of texts, especially when they were read so widely across the very broad canvas of a transcontinental Christian world.

ENOCH ABIDES. Here he suggests that Grendel's name in Beowulf was inspired by the names of the watchers and giants in 1 Enoch. Maybe, but no giants are named in 1 Enoch, and they are the closest analogues with Grendel, although this may have been a fine distinction to our medieval clerical readers. Some version of the Book of Giants may also have been circulating in clerical circles (see the Book of Ogias the Giant, mentioned in the Gelasian Decree, noted here). But as far as I can recall, none of the giants named in the Book of Giants had an "-el" name.

Meyers, Rediscovering Eve

IN THE MAIL FROM OUP:

Carol Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (2012)

This groundbreaking study looks beyond biblical texts, which have had a powerful influence over our views of women's roles and worth, in order to reconstruct the typical everyday lives of women in ancient Israel. Carol Meyers argues that biblical sources alone do not give a true picture of ancient Israelite women because urban elite males wrote the vast majority of the scriptural texts. Also, the stories of women in the Bible concern exceptional individuals rather than ordinary Israelite women. Drawing on archaeological discoveries and ethnographic information as well as biblical texts, Meyers depicts Israelite women not as submissive chattel in an oppressive patriarchy, but rather as strong and significant actors within their families and in their communities. In so doing, she challenges the very notion of patriarchy as an appropriate designation for Israelite society.

Jon Ma on Hanukkah

REVISIONIST HISTORY: Re-Examining Hanukkah: John Ma deconstructs the Maccabean History (Marginalia).

For more on the Heliodorus inscription, see here and links.

Orlov, Heavenly Priesthood in the Apocalypse of Abraham

NEW BOOK:

Andrei A. Orlov, Heavenly Priesthood in the Apocalypse of Abraham (CUP, September 2013.

The Apocalypse of Abraham is a vital source for understanding both Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism. Written anonymously soon after the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple, the text envisions heaven as the true place of worship and depicts Abraham as an initiate of celestial priesthood. Andrei A. Orlov focuses on the central rite of the Abraham story - the scapegoat ritual that receives a striking eschatological reinterpretation in the text. He demonstrates that the development of the sacerdotal traditions in the Apocalypse of Abraham, along with a cluster of Jewish mystical motifs, represents an important transition from Jewish apocalypticism to the symbols of early Jewish mysticism. In this way, Orlov offers unique insight into the complex world of the Jewish sacerdotal debates in the early centuries of the Common Era. The book will be of interest to scholars of early Judaism and Christianity, Old Testament studies, and Jewish mysticism and magic.

New early Manichaean fragments

SOME (SORT OF) NEW MANICHAEAN (MANICHEAN) FRAGMENTS IN SYRIAC have been recovered by Cambridge University: The Allberry fragments: Manichaean texts rediscovered.

The Allberry fragments contain portions of a Manichaean text, written in Syriac and in a form of Aramaic script often referred to as Manichaean script. Only a small number of such tiny fragments seem to be preserved worldwide. In fact Mani (c. 216-277 AD), the founder of the Manichaean world-religion, wrote his oeuvre in Syriac, but the huge Manichaean literature which in the 20th century has been found in Central Asia and Egypt, and which is of great interest for the history of religions, theology, and many philologies, is not in Syriac. Many scholarly efforts are invested in reconstructing the original Syriac terminology of Mani and the first Manichaeans.

These fragments pre-date, by a couple of centuries, the only other material written in this script, which are on incantation bowls from Mesopotamia, though there are a few other fragments of Proto-Manichaean in existence. These particular fragments appear to have come from the Manichaean communities in Egypt and represent the most western location for the spread of this Syriac font which originated in Mesopotamia.

Even though the fragments are small, this is an exciting discovery.

HT Adam McCollum on Facebook.