Carthaginian child sacrifice

PUNIC WATCH: Carthaginians sacrificed own children, archaeologists say.
Graves holding tiny cremated bones confirm accounts dismissed as Greek or Roman black propaganda, study shows (Maev Kennedy, The Guardian). Oxonian lecturer in ancient history, Josephine Quinn:

The inscriptions are unequivocal: time and again we find the explanation that the gods 'heard my voice and blessed me'. It cannot be that so many children conveniently happened to die at just the right time to become an offering – and in any case a poorly or dead child would make a pretty feeble offering if you're already worried about the gods rejecting it."

"Then there is the fact that the animals from the sites, which were beyond question sacrificial offerings, are buried in exactly the same way, sometimes in the same urns with the bones of the children."

Although hundreds of remains were found, there were far too few to represent all the stillbirth and infant deaths of Carthage. According to Quinn, there were perhaps 25 such burials a year, for a city of perhaps 500,000 people.

[...]

Past coverage of this debate is here, here, and here. As for this:

Quinn said many of her academic colleagues were appalled by her conclusions.

"The feeling that some ultimate taboo is being broken is very strong. It was striking how often colleagues, when they asked what I was working on, reacted in horror and said, 'Oh no, that's simply not possible, you must have got it wrong.'"

"We like to think that we're quite close to the ancient world, that they were really just like us – the truth is, I'm afraid, that they really weren't."

I think anyone familiar with the carnage that is the history of the last century will agree with me that, yes, they were.

HT Francesca Stavrakopoulou on Facebook.

More mosaics excavated in Israel

LIVESCIENCE:

Ancient Church Mosaic With Symbol of Jesus Uncovered in Israel

By Megan Gannon, News Editor | January 22, 2014 10:09am ET

Update: The article was updated on Jan. 23 at 9:55 a.m. ET to include comments from an archaeologist at the site.

Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered intricate mosaics on the floor of a 1,500-year-old Byzantine church, including one that bears a Christogram surrounded by birds.

The ruins were discovered during a salvage excavation ahead of a construction project in Aluma, a village about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Tel Aviv, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced Wednesday (Jan. 22). ...

For many other mosaics discovered in Israel, see here and links.

News on that other Ark

IRVING FINKEL'S NEW BOOK, THE ARK BEFORE NOAH, gets extensive coverage in two articles in The Telegraph.

Irving Finkel: reader of the lost Ark
Tom Chivers meets the man who deciphered a 4,000-year-old blueprint – for the original Noah’s Ark

By Tom Chivers

7:00AM GMT 19 Jan 2014

Four thousand years ago, a millennium and a half before the first Jewish scholars put pen to parchment on the Book of Genesis, a scribe in what is now Iraq carved the story of a great flood on to a clay tablet, in the strange and beautiful script known as cuneiform. The story told of how a god came and warned a great man to build a boat, and to take his family on that boat, and two animals of every kind, because the world was to be cleansed with a flood.

About 30 years ago, one Douglas Simmonds wandered in to the British Museum, and handed the tablet to a man called Irving Finkel, who immediately recognised it as one of the most important archaeological finds of recent years. Dr Finkel, an Assyriologist or student of the civilisations of ancient Mesopotamia, begged Simmonds to leave it with him, but he would do no such thing. It took him until 2009 to convince Simmonds to let him have it; when he did, what he discovered was a piece of the flood story – the Assyrian story of the Ark, centuries before Noah.

[....]

Dr. Finkel himself also has written an article that tells the story of acquiring the tablet and deciphering it, as well as what it says and why it is important: Noah's Ark: the facts behind the Flood. A recently discovered Babylonian tablet is a blueprint for a round-shaped ark that animals could board two by two . The headline sums up the unique information in the tablet: it gives detailed instructions for building a gigantic round boat, or coracle, and it has the animals enter the boat "two by two," the latter point paralleling the biblical account. The parallel is interesting, because it has not shown up in a cuneiform text until now, although, really, how else were they supposed to go in?

George Smith, the original discoverer of the cuneiform Flood story, is mentioned in both articles. More on his sad story here. This new tablet also appeared briefly in the news several years ago.

Irving Finkel is looking as iconically scholarly as ever. More on Dr. Finkel here, here, here, here, and here.

Hugoye previews 17.1

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES: "The preview drafts for Hugoye 17.1 are now published online. These papers come from the 2013 Hugoye Symposium ("Garshunography in the Syriac Tradition")." You can read them at Hugoye Preview Drafts. Current TOC:

Neo-Aramaic Garshuni: Observations Based on Manuscripts
Emanuela Braida, University of Toronto

Greek and Latin in Syriac Script
Sebastian P. Brock, University of Oxford

A Kurdish Garshuni Poem by David of Barazne (19th Century)
Mustafa Dehqan, Independent Scholar, Iran
Alessandro Mengozzi, University of Turin, Italy

Armenian Garshuni: An Overview of the Known Material
Hidemi Takahashi, University of Tokyo

Jobar Synagogue update

THE ANCIENT JOBAR SYNAGOGUE in Damascus is back in the news. Regular readers will recall that it was reported destroyed in the civil war back at the end of March, but a day or two later the reports were corrected to say that it had been damaged but not destroyed. Now Adam Blitz has a detailed status update in the Times of Israel: The case for Jobar: Syria, synagogues and subterfuge. As a matter of urgency regard must be made to Jobar synagogue’s many artefacts should they soon find their way into the antiquities market….

Jobar synagogue, two kilometres North East of Damascus’ Old City, has not been far from the News. Headlines fell during Passover of this past year and culminated in a dramatic story of a synagogue “burned to the ground” (“Historic Damascus Synagogue looted and burned” JTA Jewish Telegraph Agency 31 March 2013). Immediately before Christmas the converse was stressed with a different story of a cryptic message from the Free Syrian Army rebels (F.S.A) to a certain individual named “Moti” (“Syria’s ‘Destroyed’ Ancient Synagogue is Still Intact” The Times of Israel, 22 December 2013). This coverage, together with Sotheby’s recent sale (17th December 2013) of an item purported to be a “rare surviving artifact of the Jewish community at Jobar [which] may be all that remains of this ancient and venerable community” [1], guaranteed Jobar’s place in the annals of 2013.

[...]

More updates are to follow.

“Matters that Satan challenges”

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Some Jewish Acts Seem Meaningless. The Talmud Says You Should Do Them Anyway. Illogical Jewish laws are ‘matters that Satan challenges’: raising doubts for enemies of Judaism and skeptical Jews
.

To counter this skepticism, the rabbis drew what would become a tremendously important distinction in Jewish thought, between the rationally justifiable commandments and the mysterious, seemingly inexplicable ones. In Leviticus 18:4, God commands the Israelites to follow both his “ordinances” [mishpatim] and his “statutes” [huqqim], and in Yoma 67b the rabbis turn these into two different categories of mitzvot. Ordinances include “matters that had they not been written it would have been logical that they be written,” such as the prohibitions on “idol worship, prohibited sexual relations, bloodshed, theft.” These are what might be called natural laws, which any human community might institute without divine guidance.

Statutes, on the other hand, are “matters that Satan challenges”—that is, the laws that enemies of Judaism, and perhaps skeptical Jews themselves, raise doubts about, since they seem to have no logical basis. This category includes the ban on pork and on wearing mixed garments, and also the ritual of the scapegoat. It’s easy to be skeptical about these commandments, but the rabbis insist that they, too, are absolutely essential to Judaism. “Lest you say these are meaningless acts, the verse states: ‘I am the Lord,’ to indicate, I am the Lord, I decreed these statutes, and you have no right to doubt them.” Perhaps the statutes are even more crucial than the ordinances, since they are a pure test of Jewish faith: There is no reason to perform them other than submission to God’s will.

Plus sealing up the inclination to commit idolatry and gouging out the eyes of sexual desire.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Doudna on Qumran

THE ASOR BLOG: Qumran Revisited: a Reassessment of the Archaeology of the Site and its Texts (Gregory L. Doudna).

More on Greg Doudna's theories about Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls here, here, here, here, here, and here. More on David Stacey's views about the site of Qumran here, here, here (this link also has more links on the archaeology of Qumran in general), and here, and here. And still more on the archaeology of Qumran here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Two NT jobs

LARRY HURTADO: Two Jobs in NT (with impending closing dates). I was going to post on these, but I see Larry has already done so. One is at Groningen and the other at Durham. The latter includes expertise in Second Temple Judaism as a desideratum.

Jihadis desecrated St. Thecla's grave in Maaloula?

MODE OF LIFE: Pillager of Monasteries in Maaloula Found Dead.

With news of [Abu Jafar's] death, other news has come to light. The Lebanese Calam reported on January 13 that “jihadists plundered the grave of Saint Thekla”. According to Father Makarios Gulwma, secretary of the Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East for the Catholic Melkites told RIA Novosti: “The fighters of Al-Nusra and Free Sham removed the bells of the churches of historic Maaloula, torched the iconostasis of the Orthodox Monastery of St Thekla as well as the Melklite Catholic Monastery of Saint Sergius, and they plundered the grave of St. Thekla after digging it up. They burned all the crosses and destroyed them.” The same witness complained that they stole the bronze statue of the enthroned Jesus adorning the Monastery erected by the Orthodox Foundation of Saint Paul of Syria.

HT Akma Adam on Facebook. Much more on Maaloula (Ma'loula, Malula) here and here and many links. Until its recent plundering by Jihadis in the Syrian civil war, it was known as one of the last places where Aramaic was still a spoken language.

Thecla is best known through the stories in the Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla. More on her and the Acts here.

Cross file under "Aramaic Watch."

Review of Schniedewind, A Social History of Hebrew

FRED REISS: Book Review: ‘A Social History of Hebrew’ (San Diego Jewish World).

A Social History of Hebrew: Its Origins Through the Rabbinic Period by William M. Schniedewind; Yale University Press, New HavenISBN 978-0-300-167668-1 ©2013, $45.00, p. 261, including notes, bibliography, and index

WINCHESTER, California–William Schniedewind, UCLA professor of Mediterranean studies, Near Eastern languages, and the Bible, and author of A Social History of Hebrew explains that his motivation for writing this book is based on a statement he heard at a lecture many years ago: “I am only interested in the languages, not the people who spoke them.” For Schniedewind the purpose of studying languages is “to understand people, their societies, and their culture.”

[...]

Lod Mosaic heading to Russia

THE JERUSALEM POST: Unique 1,700-year old Lod mosaic from Israel to visit Russia. A tractor building a road serendipitously uncovered a tiger's tail, leading to a stone menagerie. (Ariel David).

Not only rock stars go on global tours. Great works of art do so too, and after being buried for 1,700 years, the Lod mosaic is taking the world by storm.

The ancient masterpiece, one of the largest and best-preserved Roman mosaics ever found, will be exhibited at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, starting December.

It is the first joint archeological exhibition of Israel and the Hermitage, renowned for its vast collections of antiquities and paintings, say the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Hermitage.

[...]

Much background on the Lod Mosaic and its recent international tour of museums is here and links. The post also contains links to coverage of many other ancient mosaics.

Talmud scholar wins Israel Prize

CONGRATULATIONS TO SHAMMA FRIEDMAN: How Shamma Friedman, Winner of This Year’s Israel Prize, Revolutionized Talmud Study: Meet the American-born JTS professor who modernized an ancient pursuit (Shai Secunda, Tablet).

A few earlier PaleoJudaica posts involving Professor Friedman are here, here, and here.

New book on text of NT Apocrypha

TONY BURKE: Book Note: Thomas Wayment, The Text of the New Testament Apocrypha.

Palindromes!

PHDIVA: Sarah Bond: Power of the Palindrome. I like the skull.

Via Invocatio.

A Hodayot hymn translated

JOEL M. HOFFMAN: Translating an Ancient Hebrew Prayer of Thanks from the Dead Sea Scrolls. The hymn is from 1QH^a Column 10.

HT James McGrath on Facebook.

The Indy Exhibition

FORT WORTH MUSEUM: Indiana Jones™ and the Adventure of Archaeology: The Exhibition.

Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology, opening March 8, 2014, uses the Indiana Jones™ film series as both a starting point and a backdrop for an exciting and entertaining introduction to the real science of field archaeology. Showcasing items from four different collections, Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology is far more than a static display of movie props. Museum-goers learn how archaeology has changed from the mid-20th century, when Indy’s adventures took place, until the present day.

Well, okay. I guess if there's a scholarly conference on The Life of Brian, there can be a museum exhibition on Indiana Jones and archaeology.

Masada at 50

FROM DAVID STACEY:

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Masada excavations Guy Stiebel of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and currently the archaeologist in charge of Masada, will give a lecture Past, Present and Future - The Excavations at Masada, between 4-6 p.m. on Wednesday 12th February in the Jewish Museum, 129-131 Albert Street, London NW1. The lecture will take into account excavations undertaken at Masada during the past 25 years and is being partially sponsored by the British Friends of Hebrew University.

Also marking 'Masada at 50' - The Observer will be holding a Masada Exhibit which will run from Tuesday 21 January to Friday 21 February in the foyer of its HQ at Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU. The exhibition concentrates on the Observer's role in championing the excavations and includes testimonies and memorabilia from some of the volunteers. Access is free, 10am to 6pm each day, 7 days a week.

"Biblical Studies Online"

NEW WEBSITE: Biblical Studies Online. Created by Sheffield blogger James Crossley and Antipodean giant-hunter Deane Galbraith. HT Mark Goodacre. Looks like a great site, but the lack of a "Pseudepigrapha" listing in the sidebar needs to be remedied.

UPDATE (22 January). Two things. First, the dead link has been fixed. Sorry about that. Second, Deane Galbraith e-mails:

I have just added an online pseudepigrapha site to Biblical Studies Online. The sidebar won't list a separate pseudepigrapha category, because we're avoiding (as far as one can) the canonical/non-canonical distinction. Instead, ancient Jewish and Christian literature (itself a problematic distinction, as you well know) is listed under each genre - whether canonical or non-canonical.

Article on the Geniza Aquila manuscripts

ETC: The religious provenance of the Aquila manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah. An article by Edmon L. Gallagher in JJS asks whether the manuscripts are really of Jewish provenance.

New Philology and grimy manuscripts

LIV INGEBORG LIED: Dirt, fingerprints and wax stains (or: meet some "real readers" of 2 Baruch). Spit too. Grody.

A new Aramaic fragment of 1 Enoch!

MICHAEL LANGLOIS: An Unpublished Aramaic Manuscript of the Book of Enoch. This is apparently a Qumran manuscript and it comes from the Schøyen Collection. Like most Qumran "manuscripts," not much of it survives; only 1 Enoch 7:1-5. But the Aramaic text has some features of interest in relation to the Greek and the Ethiopic texts. Prof. Langlois has published the fragment in the current issue of Semitica and he has also posted the French article as a PDF file: Un manuscrit araméen inédit du livred’Hénoch et les versions anciennes de 1 Hénoch 7,4.

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

More on the Schøyen Collection here, here, and links.

"Rust" in Hebrew

HAARETZ WORD OF THE DAY: Khaluda: The word for rust that suddenly appeared in the Mishna. It has the same root as 'dig' and 'naked molerat' but derives from a different Aramaic source. Which maybe comes from Greek. It's good to know these things.

AncientThought.com

A NEW WEB VENTURE CALLED ANCIENTTHOUGHT.COM has issued a call for contributors for articles pertaining to early Christian history. Many of the topics involve Second Temple Judaism.

More on that column capital and tunnel near Jerusalem

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Proto-Aeolic Capital Associated with Judah’s Longest Spring Tunnel. Partly in proactive response to the reported announcement tomorrow about "King David’s Castle."

Background here and links.

Fixed-term post in Rabbinic/Medieval Jewish Studies

REPOSTED (original post here) with updates and more details, kindly supplied by Vadim Putzu:

Rabbinic/Medieval Judaic Studies: The Judaic Studies Program at Franklin & Marshall College invites applications for a Visiting Assistant Professor, beginning Fall 2014. The position is in pre-modern Judaism with possible subfields in rabbinics, medieval philosophy, or Kabbalah. The appointment is renewable for a second year on evidence of good teaching and administrative approval. Appointment will be at the Visiting Instructor or Visiting Assistant professor level depending on qualifications; teaching experience highly desirable. The successful candidate will teach introductory courses in Hebrew Bible and Classical Jewish Texts as well as upper-level courses in his/her specialty; the teaching load is 3/2 and includes teaching at least one course each year in the College’s general education Connections program.

Candidates should submit the following materials as PDF files (searchable preferred) to:

Tami.Lantz@fandm.edu: letter of application, curriculum vitae, graduate transcript, three letters of recommendation, teaching statement, and teaching evaluations. Hard copies are also acceptable, and may be sent to Professor Maria Mitchell Chair, Judaic Studies Program, Franklin & Marshall College, Box 3003, Lancaster PA 17604-3003. The deadline for receipt is February 14, 2014. Franklin and Marshall College is a highly selective liberal arts college committed to having an inclusive campus community where all members are treated with dignity and respect. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, the College does not discriminate in its hiring or employment practices on the basis of gender, race or ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, age, disability, family or marital status, or sexual orientation.


https://netforum.avectra.com/eWeb/DynamicPage.aspx?Site=AJS&WebCode=positions#fm

http://www.aarsbl.org/listing/rabbinicmedieval-judaism-visiting

Graffiti epigraphy

BROOKLYN COLLEGE: History Professor Studies Ancient Graffiti in Late Antiquity Burials.

For Karen B. Stern, making her way through the ancient tunnels and caves of ancient mortuary complexes in Israel is all in an ordinary day's research. Her goal is to find and study carvings—pictures and texts—inscribed at the burial sites, carvings that the history professor calls graffiti, because unlike epitaphs, the inscriptions were made after the tombs or monuments were finished. Some of these carvings date back more than 2,000 years. Many are crudely executed. Still, they are no less important to the field of archeology.

Considered, until recently, a form of defacement or desecration, the graffiti in mortuary complexes were part of a more acceptable and widespread cultural practice than archaeologists originally suspected, contends Stern, who obtained her Ph.D. in religious studies from Brown University in 2008.

"Had they been considered a defacement by the people of that era they could've been easily removed." Instead they went untouched, leaving to posterity dedications that memorialize the dead, curses inscribed as warning to people who wanted to pillage or desecrate tombs, and even the names of rabbis mentioned in both Jewish and early Christian writings.

While her interest was originally sparked by graffiti found at the synagogue discovered at the Roman outpost of Dura-Europos in today's Syria, Stern, who has received a 2014 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities—has done much of her research at Beth She'arim, a vast necropolis carved in the hills near Haifa, in northwest Israel. Its subterranean chambers, once accessed by steps and pathways, contain hundreds of burials from Roman Palestine and its surroundings.

[...]

For an article by Prof. Stern on her work at Dura Europos, see here. And for an interview with her and more on her work at Beit She'arim, see here.

Back to Lachish

MORE OSTRACA PLEASE: Archaeologists Return to Ancient City of Lachish. Following the spectacular discoveries made at Khirbet Qeiyafa, the archaeological team turns its sights on the 10th - 9th century BC layers of a famous ancient Judahite stronghold. (Popular Archaeology).

[Prof. Yoseph] Garfinkel and colleagues are heading a new team that will begin re-exploring and excavating Lachish in 2014. It is a site that has already been the subject of several historic excavation expeditions but, as is common with many archaeolgical sites, remains unfinished business. And within the context of acquiring a better understanding of the early Judahite State, they are drawing a research connection between their completed excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa and re-newed excavations at Lachish.

This is an exciting development. Lachish is a critically important site for late Iron Age II Judah. More on Prof. Garfinkel and Khirbet Qeiyafa here with many links. More on the Lachish letters (ostraca), alluded to above, is here.

A treasure trove of pottery from the sea

BASEMENT EXCAVATION: Galilee woman delivers archaeological treasure from the depths. (Roz Wolberger, Jerusalem Post)

It all began with a phone call to the authority: “In my basement, there are full boxes of ancient vases and pottery that a member of my family, a fisherman, left before he died... I want to pass the pottery on to the state, and I want my grandchildren to know where to see them in the future.”

[...]

The pieces in [Osnat] Lester’s home, according to the archeologists, are from a wide range of time periods, the cargo of many sunken ships from ancient times, and once carried oils, food and sometimes wine.

One beautiful vase with a tall frame and high handles was immediately recognized as being from the time of the Biblical period, about 3,000 years ago. Another remarkable piece was reported to be from the Roman period, some 2,000 years ago, and a round urn was dated to the Byzantine period, about 1,500 years ago.

To the expert eye, the cargo of a sunken ship is a message from the past. Just from studying the artifacts, an archeologist can conclude the type of ship, the time period, what the merchandise included and more.

Tu B'Shevat

TU B'SHEVAT, the New Year for Trees, begins tonight at sundown.

Once again, that cuneiform schedule of rites from a Larsa temple, now held in the Bible Lands Museum, is mentioned in connection with the month of Shevat: Ancient calendar offers glimpse of biblical times (Israel HaYom). More on that here.

Doubts about Herod's Tomb again

THE GUARDIAN has noticed that some archaeologists are skeptical that the finds at Herodium include Herod's tomb: Doubts grow in Israel over the true whereabouts of 'Herod's tomb.' Mausoleum unearthed near Jerusalem in 2007 not grand enough for megalomaniacal biblical king, claim some experts . Although the article refers (correctly) to "experts," it only interviews one, Joseph Patrich. For more information, see this post on an Haaretz article in October of 2013.

Remember that First-Temple-era column near Jerusalem?

TODD BOLEN: Royal Water System Excavated in Judean Hills. This post sums up nicely the current status of that Iron Age II proto-Aeolic capital found in a tunnel between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, a discovery first noted by the media last year. As Todd observes, the really interesting thing is the tunnel itself, which is comparable in some ways to Hezekiah's Tunnel (minus, alas, a parallel to the Siloam Tunnel Inscription). This is not entirely new information, but it's worth underlining it in contrast to some sensational reports about the site, and Todd has a very helpful discussion of the discovery and its implications.

HT Joseph Lauer.

Background here and links.

Quantum scapegoat entanglement in the Talmud?

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: What Happens When the Talmud Asks, ‘What If?’ Probing hypothetical, metaphysical problems was the rabbis’ way of defining what matters most in Judaism. Excerpt:

I’ve found it useful, in the course of reading Daf Yomi, to think of these kinds of questions as the rabbis’ indirect way of asking about definitions and essences. In laying down the Shabbat laws, for instance, one rabbi asks whether transporting saliva in one’s mouth is considered “carrying,” in which case one would have to spit it out every few paces. The point of the question, it seems to me, is not whether a Jew should go around spitting all the time, but exactly how to define a substance: Is matter within the body a separate entity, or part of the body itself? This kind of speculation about substances and their qualities was central to classical and medieval thought, including Jewish thought. Because Jewish law deals with everyday matters, it produces a kind of everyday metaphysics.

For the title of this post, follow the link and read the whole essay.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

More dig opportunities

BAS: Find A Dig 2014.

Dozens of archaeological digs throughout Europe and the Middle East are looking for volunteers this summer to help them excavate history. Whether you’re interested in the worlds of Kings David and Solomon, want to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and the apostles, or search for the heroes of the Trojan War, we’ve got an archaeological dig for you. For each dig, we provide an in-depth description including location, historical and Biblical significance, and what the goals are for the season. You can also learn all about the dig directors and professors who will lead your summer adventure.

Related article in the current issue of BAR: Digs 2014: Layers of Meaning (Noah Wiener).

Treatise of the Vessels latest

THE TREATISE OF THE VESSELS NEWS FRENZY seems to be quieting down. Lots of places republished the Livescience article over the weekend. USA Today has reprinted a Newser piece based on the Daily Mail article: In ancient text, a prophecy about Ark of the Covenant. And a number of bloggers took note of the story, for example, Thomas L. MacDonald here. And I've received various communications, including a visit to my office, to give me tips on where to find the Ark and other lost treasures. It's been an interesting week.

Background here and links.

CRASL excavation opportunity

EXCAVATE LEGIO: Organization offering trips to excavate ancient Roman fortress in Israel.

Rylands Papyri conference

CALL FOR PAPERS: From Egypt to Manchester: unravelling the John Rylands papyrus collection.

This conference aims to bring together scholars who are working or have recently worked on the John Rylands papyri. We welcome papers from any period and perspective based on papyri from our collection in any of the languages and scripts attested from the Ptolemaic to the early Arab period.

Follow the link for registration information. It takes place at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, 4-6 September 2014. As it happens, the British New Testament Conference is taking place at Manchester University on exactly those dates, which creates both a conflict and an opportunity. I plan to attend the latter, and I hope there might be scope for a joint session or something with the former. The last time the BNTC was at Manchester (in 2001), I was among the delegates who enjoyed a tour of the Rylands Library and a viewing of some of their important Greek papyri.

HT Peter Head at the BNTS page on Facebook. Peter also noted the scheduling conflict and floated the possibility of a joint session.

Nag Hammadi texts at Early Christian Writings

PETER KIRBY'S USEFUL EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITINGS WEBSITE has been updated to include a lot more texts from the Coptic Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library: Now with More Nag Hammadi.

(HT James McGrath on Facebook.)

Treatise of the Vessels update

THE TREATISE OF THE VESSELS continues to get media attention. The article by Owen Jarus, noted here, has been republished a good many times, including by Yahoo News, Fox News, Discovery, and NBC News.

Also, yesterday I had phone interviews with a couple of journalists about the Treatise and one of these has resulted in an article in the Daily Mail:

King Solomon's treasures revealed: Newly translated Hebrew text lists legendary riches - including the Ark of the Covenant

• 'Treatise of the Vessels’ suggests artefacts were hidden in the Middle East
• Text was meant for entertainment rather than a guide to treasure's location
• Treasures mentioned include musical instruments made of gold, ornaments from the Garden of Eden and various precious religious stones

By Ellie Zolfagharifard

PUBLISHED: 16:41, 9 January 2014 | UPDATED: 17:14, 9 January 2014

A modern-day Indiana Jones has uncovered details about King Solomon's riches in a newly translated Hebrew text.

But treasure hunters may have to wait a bit longer as, unlike the film ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ details about the exact location of these treasures are unclear.

Rather than a guide to lost treasure, the newly translated ‘Treatise of the Vessels’ was a legendary story written in Biblical times that was meant to entertain.

[...]

It's a good article, which quotes me correctly and makes the text interesting without distorting the fact that it's just a collection of legends. I think that's the first time I've been called "a modern-day Indiana Jones." Maybe that should go in the masthead.

Payne Smith's Syriac Lexicon

SYRIAC WATCH: "The clergyman and scholar Robert Payne Smith’s Syriac Lexicon was signed up in 1859. Peter Sutcliffe in his 'Informal History' of Oxford University Press says that it was 'thirty-three years in the press and the death of thirty-one compositors' ..." (Are we there yet?, Elizabeth Knowles, OUPblog)

GJW: test results still not in

MARK GOODACRE: Skepticism about Jesus' Wife Papyrus in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article in the CHE is behind a subscription paywall now, but Mark excerpts some of it. Bottom line: we're still waiting for the results of those tests on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife fragment and no one seems to know when they will come in. These are the tests that were supposed to take "several weeks, if not months" back in October of 2012. In December of that year, I wrote "I hope this does not deteriorate into an endless round of delays ..."

I'm still hoping.

Background here and links.

Syriac now an official language in Iraq

SYRIAC WATCH: Three more languages recognized officially in Iraq: Turkmen, Syriac and Asuri have been added to the official languages of Iraq (World Bulletin). That's a little progress. The other two are Arabic and Kurdish.

News on the Temple Mount and the Waqf

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Arutz Sheva reports that the Waqf is engaged in unauthorized digging again: Exposed: Waqf Illegally Drilling on Temple Mount. Temple Mount activist catches Waqf officials vandalizing Judaism's holiest site. (Tova Dvorin).

Muslim worshippers don't just have more freedom to pray on the Temple Mount, a recent investigation reveals: they apparently also have permission to drill.

An investigation Monday by Yehuda Glick, Director of the Haliba organization for Jewish freedom on the Temple Mount, caught Waqf officials red-handed in the act of drilling through the ancient stones.

Vandalizing the Mount - Judaism's holiest site and a national landmark for people of all religions - violates the law; when caught in the act on film, the perpetrators quickly tried to conceal their actions.

[...]

Regular readers will be aware that there is a long history of this sort of problem. Background here and links.

Also, the Jewish Voice has an article on media responses to the document they have leaked as that classified Comptroller's Report: Media Reacts to JV Exclusive on Secret Temple Mount Report. The story does not seem to have been picked up so far by major international news outlets.

Background here and links.

Treatise of the Vessels interview

THE TREATISE OF THE VESSELS is the subject of a LiveScience article by Owen Jarus in which I am interviewed: Fate of Ark of the Covenant Revealed in Hebrew Text. Not the best title, but the article itself is factually correct and correctly identifies the text as legendary. And there's this:

The study of the treatise is ongoing, and discoveries continue to be made. For instance, in the mid-20th century a copy of it (with some variations) was discovered and recorded in Beirut, Lebanon, at the end of a series of inscribed plates that record the Book of Ezekiel.

Those plates are now at the Yad Ben Zvi Institute in Israel, although the plates containing the treatise itself are now missing. Recent research has revealed, however, these plates were created in Syria at the turn of the 20th century, about 100 years ago, suggesting the treatise was being told in an elaborate way up until relatively modern times.

Before this, the most recent information was that these plaques had been removed from the (traditional) Tomb of Ezekiel in Iraq over a century ago. I would be interested in hearing more about this recent research that suggests otherwise.

I have recently published the first complete English translation of The Treatise of the Vessels (Massekhet Kelim) in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Volume 1 (TOC here). I have also published an article on it, "Scriptural Exegesis in the Treatise of the Vessels, a Legendary Account of the Hiding of the Temple Treasures," in With Letters of Light, the Festschrift for Rachel Elior.

More on the legends and theories about the Ark of the Covenant here and follow the links. More on The Treatise of the Vessels, the Copper Scroll, and legends and theories about the lost Temple treasures here and here and again follow those links.

BAS archaeological top 10 for 2013

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Top 10 Archaeological Finds in 2013: Take a look at the year's most important Biblical archaeology discoveries.

There is some overlap with Todd Bolen's top ten, noted here, but less than you might expect. It was a busy year.

More on Bible Secrets Revealed

ROBERT CARGILL: Summaries and expanded discussions of Bible Secrets Revealed Episodes 1-4 available at Bible History Daily. The links are in his post.

Also, a while ago Tony Burke posted a review of the third episode: Bible Secrets Revealed Episode 3: The Forbidden Scriptures.

Background here and links.

Update on the More Christian Apocrypha Project

TONY BURKE: More Christian Apocrypha vol. 1: Update. I'm pleased to hear that volume 1 is getting close to completion.

Since he mentions the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project and Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1, ordering information for the latter is here and here.

Talmudic halakhah as technology?

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Talmud Pays Little Attention to What Jews Believe, Yet Asks Them To Have Faith. Judaism’s manual of sacred technology prizes holiness over beauty, action over thought, and ritual over belief. Excerpts:

Yet choreography is not quite the right metaphor here, since the goal of the rabbis is not to produce a graceful or beautiful life, but a holy one. So, Jewish observance can also be likened to a technology—a series of tools that, if used correctly, will produce the desired result, which is to please God and win his blessing. The Talmud, then, would be a manual of sacred technology, showing how to calibrate every prayer, ritual, and action so that it will be most effective. Fundamental to this idea is that the Jewish God is not content with pious thoughts but demands the necessary sequence of actions—just as an airplane won’t fly unless the pilot turns on the engine, even if everyone on board wishes it up into the air.

Interesting metaphor.

Nothing could be more important to the rabbis than to get it right. Yet the Talmud was compiled centuries after the Temple was destroyed, and as every page of Yoma attests, they had no certain knowledge of what went on there, or even of how the building was laid out. They were forced to bring together a rabbinic tradition here and a biblical description there, supplemented by a great deal of logical deduction and simple guesswork. What this means is that even the simplest action of the high priest becomes, in the Talmud, the occasion for extremely complicated debates.

Again, some earlier posts on that absent Ark of the Covenant are noted here.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Top Bible/ancient Israel & archaeology stories of 2013

THE BIBLE PLACES BLOG reviews its Top Stories of 2013 and More Top Stories of 2013. Good stuff.

Elad's visitor center

HAARETZ: Legal challenges mounted against planned visitor center in East Jerusalem. Proponents say it will bring much-needed development to Arab neighborhood, while critics argue plan could hurt residents, alter city's character and ignite religious tensions (Nir Hasson). Excerpts:

The complex will include an entire floor to display antiquities from the City of David digs, including some of the most ancient Jewish artifacts unearthed in Jerusalem. It will come complete with classrooms, exhibition halls, an auditorium, a gift shop, a restaurant and a 250-car garage. The structure will provide access to the ancient underground street dating the time of King Herod that runs between the City of David and the Western Wall plaza .

Opponents of the plan, including architects, archaeologists, writers, academics and public figures, say that the project would alter cityscape – and character – around the iconic Old City walls. They are also wary of Elad's involvement in the project. The organization already administers the dig, though under the mandate of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The opponents say a private entity should not be handed the reins when an archaeological site of supreme scientific importance hangs in the balance.

[...]

Elad is reviewing the objections and has yet to respond and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority says project will not harm the archaeological remains lying underneath.

“The Israel Antiquities Authority has been digging at the site for more than eight years in order to understand and carry out archaeological research [and] to enable the building to be integrated with the antiquities," the parks authority said in a statement. "The building was planned in a manner that fully relates to archaeological finds discovered [there]. In addition, the plan for the building particularly and meticulously relates to the Old City walls so as not to harm the landscape’s sight lines and the majesty of the Old City walls. The building does not rise more than one story higher than the road separating the building and the [Old City] walls.”

Much background on Elad and its involvement with archaeology is here and links.

Ezekiel's bread

YES, DO SKIP THE HUMAN DUNG: Ancient Hebrew recipe you could make today: Ezekiel's bread. But you may want to leave out one ingredient God commanded Ezekiel to use, to remember that exile is foul (Miriam Feinberg Vamosh, Haaretz).

The story in Ezekiel 4 is an acted-out oracle describing how awful the siege of Jerusalem will be: there will be so little grain that people will have to consolidate all they have just to make up a loaf of bread. And the animals will already have been eaten, so there won't be any animal dung to use for a cooking fire. This bread is not meant as a health food.

Ghostly inverted Talmud

OOPS! BBC's upside-down Talmud

M. R. James, who is also well known for his work on biblical apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, wrote some excellent ghost stories, and the BBC adaptations are usually pretty good. But it sounds like they messed up on this one.

BAS on Galil on the Jerusalem inscription

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: King Solomon’s Two-Buck Chuck (Noah Wiener).

Background here.

BAS on Tekhelet

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Scholar’s Study: The Great Tekhelet Debate.

Background here and links.

A bibliography for New Philology

LIV INGEBORG LIED: A New Philology reading list. Looks useful. I have an essay on "Translating the Hekhalot Literature: Insights from New Philology" going into the mentioned forthcoming volume Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology, which she and Hugo Lundhaug are editing.

Talmud-Era Jewish Community at Elad?

ARUTZ SHEVA: Talmud-Era Jewish Community at Elad? Archaeologists are confident the findings point to a Jewish population, probably 1,600 years ago.

HT Joseph I. Lauer.

Online resources for biblical studies, Egyptology, etc.

FREE BOOKS ONLINE, many of which are directly or indirectly relevant for ancient Judaism:

First, an excellent website by Mischa Hooker at Loyola University, Chicago: BIBLE, JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY via Google Book Search. Most of the books are quite old, but some remain very useful. And there are some (generally, I think, incomplete) recent books listed as well, including my 2005 monograph, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha. HT the Agade list.

Second, Egyptology Books and Articles in PDF online. Included are quite a few of the older Oxyrhynchus papyri volumes, some other papyri resources, and some Coptic texts. HT Paula Tutty on Facebook.

Jerusalem inscription deciphered - again

THAT 10TH CENTURY BCE HEBREW INSCRIPTION FROM JERUSALEM is back in the news, with a new proposal from Gershon Galil for its decipherment: Inscription on jar from time of King Solomon may refer to cheap wine. Biblical scholar Gershon Galil proposes an interpretation for the oldest inscription ever discovered in Jerusalem. (Nir Hasson, Haaretz). Excerpt:

But in a recent article in the journal “New Studies on Jerusalem,” Prof. Gershon Galil, of the Bible Department at the University of Haifa, proposed a new interpretation. Galil suggested that the letters were early Hebrew and identified the key word as "yayin", meaning wine.

Of all the region’s languages, Galil noted, only southern Hebrew wrote the word yayin with two instances of the letter yod, rather than one.

According to Galil’s interpretation, the inscription describes the wine that was in the jar bearing the inscription. The first letter is a final mem, which could be the end of the word "esrim" (twenty) or "shloshim" (thirty,) referring to either the twentieth or thirtieth year of Solomon’s reign. Next comes the word "yayin" (wine) followed by the word "halak", and then the letter mem, the first letter of the wine’s place of origin.

"Halak" is an oenological term from the Northern Syrian language of Ugarit. It referred to the lowest of three types of wine – “good wine,” “no good wine” and lowly "halak". Galil speculated that the poor-quality wine was drunk by the king's conscript labor force working on various building projects.

That is the core of the argument. The proposal looks possible to me, but pretty speculative given how much reconstruction is involved. The speculations about connections with Solomon and his kingdom are just that, speculations. I think it's probable enough that there was an Israelite king in the tenth century named Solomon who had a pretty impressive kingdom, but this inscription doesn't mention any of that and any such connection is entirely inferential. When they dig up a 10th century Hebrew inscription in Jerusalem that actually mentions King Solomon, then we can talk directly about epigraphic support for a Solomonic kingdom.

The story is also covered in less detail by Marissa Newman in the Times of Israel:
Decoded: Jerusalem’s oldest Hebrew engraving refers to lousy wine. Researcher says ancient inscription describes low quality of jug’s contents, served to King Solomon’s laborers and soldiers.

HT reader David Schottenfels, who alerted me to the story in the Hebrew press a few days ago. I noted the discovery of the inscription back in July here. Earlier attempts at decipherment, including another from Prof. Galil, are noted here.

Speakers of Aramaic in the Middle East

ARAMAIC WATCH: At the beginning of the year, spare a thought for the speakers of Aramaic in the Middle East and their plight:

Disciples of St John the Baptist under attack. One of the Middle East's oldest religious communities is on the verge of disappearing amid Iraq violence (Karlos Zurutuza, Al-Jazeerah)

Baghdad, Iraq - As on every Sunday, Mandaeans gather by the west bank of the Tigris River, dressed in plain white clothes. All of them wear wooden clogs and some boast long, white beards. Were it not for the barbed wire around them and the fumes from Baghdad's Dora refinery on the opposite bank of the river, it could be a scene from 2,000 years ago. In fact, many say it is a miracle that the Mandaean community is still alive in Baghdad in 2013.

[...]

More on the Mandaeans (Mandeans) here, here, here, here, here, and links.

Will Middle East’s Aramaic language survive? (Dina al-Shibeeb, Alarabiya News)

The survival of Aramaic, once the Middle East’s lingua franca, is in jeopardy amid regional turmoil.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has listed it as an endangered language in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

[...]

Some relevant recent posts regarding the revival of Aramaic and Aramaic in the Middle East and Turkey are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Cross-file under Syriac Watch and Ma'loula (Maaloula, Malula).

It's 2014 ...

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all PaleoJudaica readers! Wishing you a happy and prosperous 2014, one which includes lots of ancient Judaism.

Brannan's tweets on MOTP1 collected

STILL AT IT: As noted a few weeks ago, Rick Brannan is tweeting his way through Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Volume 1, text by text. He collects all of these tweets to date on his blog here, with one more posted since: "Apocryphon of Ezekiel: Lots of folks through history attribute Bibleish Ezekiely-type stuff to Ezekiel. Here it is, collected." This puts him a little over halfway through the volume in pages and also in texts - the latter if he puts up individual posts for the texts translated by Helen Spurling in the last chapter, "Hebrew Visions of Hell and Paradise."

The fall of the Temple priesthood in the Talmud

LAST WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: In the Talmud, the Fall of a Priestly Upper Class Is Just Deserts. Biblical examples of righteousness and wickedness show that in Judaism, goodness remains possible and divine.

This anecdote suggests, though obliquely, what an enormous upheaval the destruction of the Temple must have created in Judean society. The priestly hierarchy was large and well-established, constituting the upper class of the nation; now they were suddenly rendered useless, like aristocratic émigrés during the French Revolution. There is even a hint of satisfaction in Yishmael’s words. The Talmud makes no secret of the fact that the priests’ ostentation and hunger for prestige sometimes made them unpopular. The fall of the House of Avtinas must have looked to some people like their just deserts.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Sartorial news from ancient Israel

HAARETZ has a couple of recent articles on clothing and its coloring in ancient Israel. First: Pink wool to ponchos: What people in ancient Israel really wore. The man in the dusty street wore a tunic and sandals. The rich could dress so splendidly that they risked being struck down by divine anger (Miriam Feinberg Vamosh).

The wealthy could afford to expand the repertoire of colors in their closet from the earthy tones of the original sheep and goat coats to a rainbow of raiment.

The most costly dye was purple manufactured from the murex snail. But imitation purple for clothing could come from the hyacinth flower, for example. Textiles discovered at Masada included cream, pink and purple, and other colors mentioned in Roman sources include gold, walnut and yellow, all of which came from plants. Scarlet dye came from an insect, the kermes vermilio.

“Costly garments” (Ezekiel 16:10) are mentioned in the Bible – Queen Esther had one (Esther 5:1), and so did Tamar, Amnon’s ill-fated sister (2 Sam. 13:18). The noblewoman mother of the Canaanite general Sisera wore colorful embroidered garments (Judg. 5:30). A wedding dress, according to Psalm 45:13–14, was "embroidered with gold.”

The article is chronologically eclectic, combining information from the Bible, Josephus, the Mishnah, etc., with archaeological evidence from Masada and Qumran. And speaking of that dye from the murex snail ...

Second: Rare find || Fragment containing ancient 'tekhelet' dye discovered near Dead Sea. The precious blue dye, derived from snail glands, was used in ancient times to color the tassels of the four-cornered garment worn by men; this is only the third time such fabric has been found (Judy Maltz).

Announcing the discovery, Dr. Na'ama Sukenik, a curator at the Israel Antiquities Authority, said the tiny piece of fabric had been discovered in the 1950s in a cave at Wadi Murba’at, where Jewish fighters hid during the Bar Kokhba revolt in the second century. As part of her doctoral dissertation at Bar Ilan University, Sukenik recently tested the color found in the fabric and was able to determine that it was derived from the Murex trunchular, a mollusk widely believed to be the marine animal known as the khilazon in the Talmud -- the source of the rare blue dye.

More on the ancient tekhelet dye here and links. Also, lots more on ancient bling (mentioned in the first article) here and links and (sort of) here.

Comptroller's Report leaked?

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: That classified 2010 Israeli State Comptroller's Report on the Waqf's unauthorized excavations on the Temple Mount has reportedly been leaked to The Jewish Voice, which has published the Hebrew original and also an English translation. So far the Israeli Government has declined to comment on its authenticity. The Jerusalem Post summarizes the summary in Classified comptroller report on Temple Mount slams government for failing to protect area from Wakf.

Background here and links.

Dreams, visions, Aramaic, DSS

ANDREW PERRIN: The Dynamics of Dream-Vision Discourse in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls (ASOR Blog).

In my McMaster University doctoral dissertation, “The Dynamics of Dream-Vision Discourse in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls,” I explore the form and function of revelatory dream-vision accounts that are interspersed throughout approximately twenty of these texts.

Selwood, The Sword of Moses, and the Templars

DOMINIC SELWOOD: Forget The Da Vinci Code: this is the real mystery of the Knights Templar (The Telegraph). Excerpt:

We simply do not know the answers. But the chapel at Montsaunès is proof, in its own enigmatic way that the religious life of the Templars was not as straightforward as we have perhaps come to believe. As Umberto Eco’s lunatics, and a growing swathe of more ordinary people, prepare to mark the anniversary of Jacques de Molay’s death, there will be discussions about individual freedom and the abuse of power, about political show trials and miscarriages of justice, and about Europe’s transition from theocracy to autocracy. But there will also be time to think again about what knowledge went up in flames with Jacques de Molay, and to the grave with the other knights.

The little-known chapel at Montsaunès reminds us that there is much we still do not know about the Templars, who increasingly baffle us the more we discover about them.

Dominic Selwood's new thriller The Sword of Moses features the Templars, Montsaunès and a number of the themes discussed in this article.

(HT Dorothy Lobel King.)

My reviews of The Da Vinci Code novel and film are here and here. My visit to Rosslyn Chapel is described here. The Sword of Moses is also the title of a late-antique magical treatise in Hebrew and Aramaic. It has recently been translated into English by Yuval Harari and his translation is also forthcoming in volume 2 of the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project.

HB/OT postdoc at Uppsala

STEPHEN C. CARLSON: Uppsala Post-Doc in Hebrew Bible. Knowledge of Swedish is desirable. The application deadline is 15 January.

Zosimus/Rechabites project at Leuven

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: Zosime (Réchabites) is a project on The Story of Zosimus/The History of the Rechabites at the Catholic University of Leuven headed by Prof. Jean-Claude Haelewyck. It includes French translations of the Greek text and two Syriac versions.

I have a couple of relevant conference papers from 2003 online: The Rechabites in Patristic and Parabiblical Literature and Is the Story of Zosimus Really a Jewish Composition?

J. Wright on the birth of Moses

DR. JACOB L. WRIGHT: The Birth of Moses: Between Bible and Midrash: A Supplementary Approach (TheTorah.com).

What we witness in this brief study is the extent to which rabbinic tradition stands in direct continuity to the formation of the biblical text. The earliest biblical account of Moses’s birth responds to questions about his origins. A later preface responds to the problems posed by the older account, and both texts in turn provoked new attempts by the rabbis to solve the remaining problems in the text. In this way we can trace how the multilayered pearls of our tradition evolved from the agitating sands of time.

SBL 2014

ALREADY?! CALL FOR PAPERS: SBL 2014 ANNUAL MEETING IN SAN DIEGO, CA.

Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all those celebrating!

Posts of Christmases past are collected here and links.

Oliver, Torah Praxis after 70 CE

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

Isaac W. Oliver

Torah Praxis after 70 CE
Reading Matthew and Luke-Acts as Jewish Texts

Many consider the gospel of Matthew to be one of the most "Jewish" texts of the New Testament. Luke-Acts, on the other hand, has traditionally been viewed as a very "Greek" and Gentile-Christian text. Isaac W. Oliver challenges this dichotomy, reading Matthew and Luke-Acts not only against their Jewish "background" but as early Jewish literature. He explores the question of Torah praxis, especially its ritual aspects, in each writing. By assessing their attitude toward three central markers of Jewish identity - Sabbath, kashrut, and circumcision - Oliver argues that both Matthew and Luke affirm the perpetuation of Torah observance within the Jesus movement, albeit by differentiating which Mosaic commandments are incumbent upon Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus. Luke proves to be just as "Jewish" as his cousin Matthew in so far as his affirmation of the Mosaic Torah is concerned. The evidence in both Matthew and Luke-Acts suggests that Jewish practices such as the Sabbath and even circumcision continued to enjoy a prominent status in the Jesus movement even after 70 CE, and that Jewish followers of Jesus played an important and integral role in the formation of the ekklesia well throughout the latter third of the first century CE.

Reviews of Olson on the Animal Apocalypse and Martone on the Bar Kokhba letters

TWO NEW BOOK REVIEWS AT THE ENOCH SEMINAR WEBSITE:

1. Andrew Perrin reviews Daniel Olson, A New Reading of the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch: ‘All Nations Shall be Blessed.’

2. Juan C. Ossandón reviews Corrado Martone, Lettere di Bar Kokhba.

The two books have also been noted here and here.

El-Badawi, The Qur'an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions

NEW BOOK FROM ROUTLEDGE:

The Qur'an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions
By Emran El-Badawi

This book is a study of related passages found in the Arabic Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospels, i.e. the Gospels preserved in the Syriac and Christian Palestinian Aramaic dialects. It builds upon the work of traditional Muslim scholars, including al-Biqa‘i (d. ca. 808/1460) and al-Suyu?i (d. 911/1505), who wrote books examining connections between the Qur’an on the one hand, and Biblical passages and Aramaic terminology on the other, as well as modern western scholars, including Sidney Griffith who argue that pre-Islamic Arabs accessed the Bible in Aramaic.

The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions examines the history of religious movements in the Middle East from 180-632 CE, explaining Islam as a response to the disunity of the Aramaic speaking churches. It then compares the Arabic text of the Qur’an and the Aramaic text of the Gospels under four main themes: the prophets; the clergy; the divine; and the apocalypse. Among the findings of this book are that the articulator as well as audience of the Qur’an were monotheistic in origin, probably bilingual, culturally sophisticated and accustomed to the theological debates that raged between the Aramaic speaking churches.

Arguing that the Qur’an’s teachings and ethics echo Jewish-Christian conservatism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Religion, History, and Literature.

Review of Norton, Contours in the Text

BOOK REVIEW: Jonathan D. H. Norton. Contours in the Text: Textual Variation in the Writings of Paul, Josephus and the Yahad. Library of New Testament Studies 430; London: T&T Clark, 2011. xiii + 210 pages (PB). ISBN 9780567521996. Reviewed by Garrick V. Allen for Reviews of Biblical and Early Christian Studies. Excerpt:

Overall, Norton interacts with the numerous textual, exegetical, historical, and social issues related to his primary question in a capable manner. The discussion is sophisticated and he is careful to distinguish between concerns that are often conflated in similar studies. Also, his textual acumen and attention to detail are impressive and necessary for a study of this complexity. Norton is also careful to define terms in a way that allows the reader to follow his complex textual reasoning. He is successful in articulating his primary argument and leading his reader through the voluminous textual data that he has accumulated. The coherence of this volume in the face of its complexity is admirable. The most valuable contribution of this volume, however, is Norton’s ability to interact with the textual data while, simultaneously, taking account of the scholarly discussion of Paul’s reuse of scriptural traditions that often minimizes this essential facet.

Review of Lapin, Rabbis as Romans

BOOK REVIEW of Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100-400 CE, by Nathan Schumer (Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization, YU).

HT the Talmud Blog on Facebook.

Earlier review etc. noted here.

Celebrating a "ginourmas" Talmud manuscript

THE TALMUD BLOG: A Post for the 17th of Tevet (Yitz Landes).

Today’s Hebrew date, the 17th of Tevet, marks the 671st anniversary of the completion of the talmudic section of Munich, Cod. hebr. 95, more commonly referred to as “The Munich Manuscript,” by the scribe R. Shlomo the son of R. Shimshon. ...

Conference on the reception of Philo

CONFERENCE AT YALE UNIVERISITY: Philo's Readers: Affinities, Reception, Transmission and Influence

Philo's Readers: Affinities, Reception, Transmission and Influence" will center around the Jewish philosophical exegete, Philo. A member of the Jewish elite in early Roman Alexandria, Philo explored the meaning of Torah by uniting Second Temple interpretations and traditions with a Greek philosophical orientation. Philo's interpretations, interpretive strategies, and philosophical explanations provide us with a glimpse into ancient Judaism, particularly the world of Alexandria in the first century CE. This conference will situate Philo in his geographical, philosophical, and ideological context, looking for affinities and precursors in other ancient texts. But Philo does not just offer a glimpse into the past. He also provided a framework and a collection of hermeneutical tools that would prove invaluable to future readers. This conference will thus examine Philo's reception and influence, particularly among Jewish and Christian readers.

It takes place on March 30-April 1, 2014. Follow the link for registration information.

Herculaneum in the news

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Unlocking the scrolls of Herculaneum (Robin Banerji, BBC)

A long and very good article on the scrolls recovered from Herculaneum. Much of it is summary rather than anything new, but it is very thorough. It discusses early, largely futile efforts to unroll and read the carbonized scrolls in the 1980s, technological advances that made the ink visible, more recent advances that have made the lettering much clearer, and promising very recent advances that can map the contours of unrolled carbonized "logs" of scroll and that someday may permit non-invasive and non-destructive scanning of the text. Regarding the latter:

Not all of the villa's scrolls have been unrolled though - and because of the damage they suffer in the unwinding process that work has now been halted. Might it be possible to read them by unrolling them not physically, but virtually?

In 2009 two unopened scrolls from Herculaneum belonging to the Institut de France in Paris were placed in a Computerised Tomography (CT) scanner, normally used for medical imaging. The machine, which can distinguish different kinds of bodily tissue and produce a detailed image of a human's internal organs could potentially be used to reveal the internal surfaces of the scroll.

The task proved immensely difficult, because the scrolls were so tightly wound, and creased.

"We were able to unwrap a number of sections from the scroll and flatten them into 2D images - and on those sections you can clearly see the structure of the papyrus: fibers, sand," says Dr Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, who led the effort.

But the machine could not distinguish "the chemistry of the ink from the chemistry of the paper," he says. It is unfortunate that ancient ink contains no metal.

Seales is continuing to analyse the data produced by the 2009 scan. He has also begun testing a new way of reading the scrolls, using a beam from a particle accelerator.

There is also good reason to believe that some of the library, perhaps most of it, remains buried and waiting to be recovered.

Some lost works of the minor philosopher Philodemus have been recovered so far (it may have been his "working library") as well as part of a lost composition by the philosopher Epicurus, but there may be a whole Rule of Four-magnitude library of ancient Classical works still buried there.

I suppose it's too much to hope for some Enochic books in Greek as well, but it perhaps seems just possible that a Septuagint manuscript or two might be included.

Past posts on Herculaneum and its scrolls and other relevant things are collected here.

DSD 20.3

A NEW ISSUE OF DEAD SEA DISCOVERIES (20.3) has been published. This is a special issue on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Bible edited by Mladen Popović and Reinhard Kratz. TOC:

Editorial Note

Authors: Reinhard Kratz ; Mladen Popović
pp.: 347–348 (2)

The Hebrew Bible and/as Second Temple Literature: Methodological Reflections

Author: Andrew Teeter
pp.: 349–377 (29)
The Redaction History of the Sinai Pericope (Exod 19–24) and its Continuation in 4Q158

Author: Christoph Berner
pp.: 378–409 (32)
Torah for “The Age of Wickedness”: The Authority of the Damascus and Serekh Texts in Light of Biblical and Rewritten Traditions*

Author: Molly M. Zahn
pp.: 410–432 (23)
Jeremiah between Destruction and Exile: From Biblical to Post-Biblical Traditions

Author: Ronnie Goldstein
pp.: 433–451 (19)
From the Book of Jeremiah to the Qumranic Apocryphon of Jeremiah

Author: Devorah Dimant
pp.: 452–471 (20)
Attitudes to Gentiles in the Minor Prophets and in Corresponding Pesharim*

Authors: Anselm C. Hagedorn ; Shani Tzoref

Requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access.

Abraham and the Torah

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Which Came First: Abraham and the Patriarchs or Moses and the Torah?A Talmudic problem: Abraham lived before the law was given, so how can his actions be used to interpret the law? Excerpt:

This dual founding creates a number of ambiguities in Judaism, one of which came to the fore in this week’s Daf Yomi reading. To the rabbis of the Talmud, the service of God was defined as the study of Torah. As we have seen much earlier in the Daf Yomi cycle, they imagined even a warrior-king like David as a Torah scholar at heart, and they described his feats of military conquest as feats of learning. Naturally, the rabbis want to think about Abraham, the first Jew, in the same way. But Abraham, by any reckoning, lived many generations before Moses received the Torah. What, then, could Abraham have studied, and how did he know how to live?

The book of Jubilees also deal with this problem for the pre-Mosaic patriarchs and invokes the "heavenly tablets" as part of the solution (e.g., 6:17-18).

Beal (ed.), Illuminating Moses

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Illuminating Moses
A History of Reception from Exodus to the Renaissance

Edited by Jane Beal, Colorado Christian University

In Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception, readers discover the roles of Moses from the Exodus to the Renaissance--law-giver, prophet, writer--and their impact on Jewish and Christian cultures as seen in the Hebrew Bible, Patristic writings, Catholic liturgy, Jewish philosophy and midrashim, Anglo-Saxon literature, Scholastics and Thomas Aquinas, Middle English literature, and the Renaissance.

Contributors are Jane Beal, Robert D. Miller II, Tawny Holm, Christopher A. Hall, Luciana Cuppo-Csaki, Haim Kreisel, Rachel S. Mikva, Devorah Schoenfeld, Gernot Wieland, Deborah Goodwin, Franklin T. Harkins, Gail Ivy Berlin, and Brett Foster.

Rethinking the “Qumran Community”

ASOR BLOG: Rethinking the “Qumran Community”: Recent Approaches (C.D. Elledge with Olivia Yeo).

Some of my thoughts on the subject are here, here, here, and here.

Enoch Conference

HAPPENING NOW: Enoch Conference, Berlin, December 17-19, 2013 (Andrei Orlov).

More Masada revisionism

HAARETZ: No more heroes? Digging deeper into the Masada myth. 50 years after the first archaeological digs, mystery remains: Did any battle happen there at all? (Moshe Gilad). Excerpts:

According to Josephus, 967 people who fled the Romans to Masada committed suicide, choosing to die rather than be taken captive.

There are differences of opinion, however, about exactly what happened on the site overlooking the Dead Sea, and the controversy about what took place some 2,000 years ago still prompts heated debate among academics. Participants at a recent conference held in Jerusalem, Ein Gedi and at Masada itself, to mark the 50th anniversary of the excavations, spoke with movingly about their experiences at the time, which however shed little light on persisting mysteries.

Regarding the question of whether "any battle happened there at all" in the headline, the article says:

There are currently two researchers at the center of the archaeological controversy over Masada – Haim Goldfus and Benny Arubas, who have argued for years that the Masada story has been distorted. Many people, Goldfus maintains, “choose not to look reality in the eye.”

The Masada story as told by Josephus didn’t really happen that way, Goldfus insists, claiming that Josephus himself was in Rome when Masada fell.

“In reality, a different [series of] events took place at Masada, and apparently there was no war there at all,” says Goldfus. “There is no evidence at all at the site of blood being spilled in battle. The famous battery [at a site commonly referred to as the Roman ramp] couldn’t have fulfilled the role attributed to it in breaking through the wall, because it was too narrow and small and couldn’t have been used by the Roman army to position a battering ram. In light of the finds in the area where the [Romans] broke through, we understood that nothing happened there. There are no arrowheads, as one finds at other sites. There is no evidence of fires. The indications are that the battery structure was mostly naturally occurring.

“In addition,” he continues, “there are no mounds from walls that had been destroyed, or other evidence of a battle.”

Goldfus says he has no interest in either dispelling the Masada myth or confirming it. “I am also not claiming that [the Jews at the site] didn’t commit suicide. Maybe it did happen. Perhaps the Romans entered the site in a commando raid, but for 50 years they have been portraying a false picture of a heroic battle that didn’t take place. In reality, other things happened there, and I don’t know what they were.”

There's lots more, so read it all before it goes behind the pay wall.

Earlier posts dealing with post-Yadin revisionist interpretations of Masada etc. are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

More on the Sa’adah tombstone

ARAMAIC WATCH: The story of the Sa’adah tombstone is covered in the NYT: Chasing 5th-Century Clues From a Woman’s Tombstone (James Barron). Excerpt:

Dr. Fine recalled their conversation. “He said, ‘This is a Talmudic object, it should be at Yeshiva.’ I said, ‘O.K.’ He said, ‘Do you have any money?’ I said no” — a similar tombstone offered for sale was listed for $2,500 to $3,000 in Israel, Dr. Fine said. “He said, ‘Do you have anything to trade?’ I said no. He said, ‘Why don’t you come out and give a lecture and take it home?’ I did everything I could to convince him that he shouldn’t give it to us. He kept saying, ‘No, no, this is something that should be with you.’ So I went there.”

Another interesting point that had not registered with me before is that the inscription is "sandstone with paint on it." I don't know how common painted tombstones in Jordan from the fifth century are, but this brought to mind the Gabriel Revelation, which is also an inscription, possibly from Jordan, composed with ink on stone, although it is composed in Hebrew rather than Aramaic and (if genuine) it is several centuries older. My impression is that ink-on-stone is quite unusual, so I would interested in knowing more about these late antique tombstones.

And it perhaps does bear repeating that both inscription are unprovenanced.

Background on the Sa’adah tombstone, with photographs, is here.

Minimalism draft-summary

LAWRENCE J. MYKYTIUK E-MAILS:

In an article series I am writing, a subset of three articles completed last Nov. 26th might be of interest to some members of PaleoJudaica. These three introduce and attempt a representative sample of methodological developments for writing ancient Israel’s history in the era of biblical minimalism, beginning with 1992 publications.

These article are a “first pass” over the literature in an effort that I hope eventually to develop into an summary overview. Such an overview should define areas of agreement, usually qualified agreement, and the parameters within which the various positions fall. The twenty-four scholars whose works are sampled and summarized come from outside the minimalist camp. Their methodologies permit or promote a positive view of historicity in the Hebrew Bible. I do not necessarily agree with any given scholar whose work I summarize or cite.

Scholars, librarians—and those who, like me, may wish to function as both—occasionally write bibliographic essays and review articles which seek to track directions of movement within a field. I hope that scholars who hold a variety of positions regarding the controversy might profit from the bibliographic essay that is found in this article series.

The Author’s Accepted Manuscripts of all three appear on an open-access web site. Each open-access article has a link to the publisher’s Official Version of Record:

Strengthening Biblical Historicity vis-à-vis Minimalism, 1992-2008, Part 1: Introducing a Bibliographic Essay in Five Parts (November 2010)

Strengthening Biblical Historicity vis-à-vis Minimalism, 1992-2008 and Beyond, Part 2.1: The Literature of Perspective, Critique, and Methodology, First Half (November 2012)

Strengthening Biblical Historicity vis-à-vis Minimalism, 1992-2008 and Beyond, Part 2.2: The Literature of Perspective, Critique, and Methodology, Second Half (November 2013)

Earlier PaleoJudaica mentions of Professor Mykytiuk are here, here, and links.

Modern Syriac colophons

LIV INGEBORG LIED: Colophons delight! There are modern Syriac colophons? Who knew?

Secret Mark

LOREN ROSSEN III: Secret Mark Still Fools People.

UPDATE (17 December): Tony Burke responds at Apocryphicity and offers some corrections: Loren Rosson III: “Secret Mark Still Fools People.”

McGrath on Vinklat on Mandaean (Mandean)

ARAMAIC WATCH: Unpublished Mandaean Texts (James McGrath, leading to work by Marek Vinklat).

Wold on 4QInstruction

BENJAMIN WOLD (NEH FELLOW): The Mystery of Existence: The Construction of Authority in 4QInstruction (ASOR Blog). Excerpt:

Studies on 4QInstruction have often been shackled by perceptions of particular genres, and yet even after it has been recognized that our categories are in conflict, there has been little done to break away entirely from an approach that is tethered to this beginning point. The book that I am bringing to completion at the end of my time at the Albright Institute is an investigation of 4QInstruction that considers the individual who moved among these genres. My questions relate to how authority is constructed in the document. At stake in the way that we understand the boundaries between “wisdom” and “apocalyptic” are our assessments of ancient Jewish thought and practice and the origins of Christianity.