Purim

HAPPY PURIM to all those celebrating! The festival begins tonight at sundown.

Or perhaps some will be celebrating, or also celebrating, the Ancient Judean Holiday: Yom Nicanor – 13th of Adar? Or even a Jewish holiday for Cyrus?

Here's a good article on Purim in Modern Iran by Shai Secunda in Tablet: Reading Megillah in Tehran: How Iranian Jews Celebrate Purim. As Jews around the world commemorate the rescue of Persian Jewry, how do those who live where the story took place mark the day? It includes lots of historical background on how the celebration of Purim developed. Excerpt:

I recounted some of this history to the Iranian rabbi I spoke to, hoping to cut through some of the banality of Purim, as I saw it, in today’s Islamic Republic. I repeated my questions: “Are you sure that Iranian officials took no real interest in a holiday with violent depictions of Persian-Jewish tensions? Were you never concerned about publicly announcing Megillah-reading times?” Apparently, I was fishing for a story that was not to be found. Without skipping a beat, the rabbi responded to my question by making a point of his own: “I don’t understand. The Purim story is not about a Persian threat against the Jews. It is about what happens when a non-Iranian character like Haman the Aggagite infiltrates a ruling Iranian government and tries to turn everything upside down.” Indeed. Every generation and its seekers. Every generation and its interpreters.

Related: a Talmud Blog post by Prof. Secunda about stableboys, barbers, and Purim: Shave and a Hair Cut.

Tangentially related: a review of his book, The Iranian Talmud by Raphael Magarik in The Forward. Excerpt:

Secunda’s book refuses both polemic and easy answers. It continually disrupts static categories, pushing us to imagine a Jewish mage or a Zoroastrian reader of scripture. In other words, Talmudo-Iranica offers what initially made academic scholarship both exciting and threatening: the ability to make the Talmud strange again.

More on this book here and here.

Some past Purim-related PaleoJudaica posts are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE: Haman the Barber- Some Addenda (Yitz Landes, The Talmud Blog).

Review of Sæbø (ed.), Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of its Interpretation, Vol. III/1

MARGINALIA: Angela Roskop Erisman on Magne Sæbø, ed. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of its Interpretation, Volume III/1: The Nineteenth Century — a Century of Modernism and Historicism.

The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of its Interpretation, edited by Magne Sæbø, is a comprehensive reference series that covers biblical interpretation from antiquity through the twentieth century. Part 1 of volume III focuses on one chapter of that history, providing us with glimpses of the story of how biblical studies emerged as a professional academic discipline in the nineteenth century. It’s a story that reveals why we think the way we do about the Bible in the twenty-first century and the origins of some of the controversies in which we find ourselves mired.

Dogs and cats in ancient Judaism

IN TABLET MAGAZINE: Are Jews a Dog People or a Cat People? Yet another difficult internal and ancient debate that modern Jews are unlikely to resolve (Joshua Schwartz). The headline is broader in scope than the article, which deals with dogs and cats in biblical to Talmudic times. It concludes:

What seems clear is that the Jewish attitude toward both dog and cat is ambivalent. A basically negative attitude to dogs in biblical times underwent some rehabilitation after changes in the non-Jewish world helped the dog become popular due to their increased use and functionality, though Jews were not enamored with their dogs and never forgot that there could be both good dogs and bad dogs: The good dog was treated well and respected and perhaps even occasionally loved. The relationship to the cat was almost entirely functional. Few people liked them, even if they liked vermin less.

A very interesting article from which I learned a lot. The most disturbing new fact I learned was that there were people in antiquity who walked their cats on leashes. I had thought that was a modern weird thing.

Aramaic in popular culture

RALPH THE SACRED RIVER: You Won't Believe These Unbelievable Aramaic Expressions!! (Ed Cook). You've heard of eschatological Aramaic? Well here's some scatological Aramaic. Warning: strong language at the link (but only in the service of philology).

In earlier posts I have reviewed Gibson's Passion of the Christ, and Stigmata, and there are numerous posts on the former in the archive. I've also noted reviews of Constantine by others here and here.

More on those new DSS fragments

THE TIMES OF ISRAEL: Uncovered in Jerusalem, 9 tiny unopened Dead Sea Scrolls. Researcher finds tantalizing tefillin parchments from Second Temple era, overlooked for decades and unread for 2,000 years (Ilan Ben Zion).

They’re not much larger than lentils, but size doesn’t minimize the potential significance of nine newfound Dead Sea Scrolls that have lain unopened for the better part of six decades.

An Israeli scholar turned up the previously unexamined parchments, which had escaped the notice of academics and archaeologists as they focused on their other extraordinary finds in the 1950s. Once opened, the minuscule phylactery parchments from Qumran, while unlikely to yield any shattering historic, linguistic or religious breakthroughs, could shed new light on the religious practices of Second Temple Judaism.

The Israel Antiquities Authority has been tasked with unraveling and preserving the new discoveries — an acutely sensitive process and one which the IAA says it will conduct painstakingly, and only after conducting considerable preparatory research.

[...]

A thorough article with lots of new details about the find and its background.

Original story noted here. The Daily Mail also has a briefer article on the find here. Also, an earlier post on the Qumran tefillin (phylacteries) is here.

Fast of Esther

TODAY IS THE FAST OF ESTHER (in anticipation of Purim). An easy fast to all those observing. More here.

Good news from Maaloula

FREED: Syria: Abducted Maaloula nuns released in prisoner exchange (Christian Today).

Thirteen Greek Orthodox nuns and their three helpers, who had been held by Syrian rebel forces since December 2013, have been released in exchange for female prisoners held by the Syrian regime.

[...]

Mother Superior Pelagia Sayyaf, head of Maaloula convent, told a press conference: “God did not leave us. The (Nusra) Front was good to us...but we took off our crosses because we were in the wrong place to wear them.” The group of mainly Syrian and Lebanese nuns has been held since December 2013, when forces from Jabat Al-Nusra and other jihadi militias overran the ancient Christian town of Maaloula and abducted the women from the Mar Takla Greek Orthodox Convent. Reports indicate the group was subsequently taken to the town of Yabroud, a rebel stronghold that is currently the target of heavy government bombardment.

[...]

More on Maaloula (Ma'aloula, Malula) here and links. Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."

Reymond, Qumran Hebrew

NEW BOOK FROM SBL:

Qumran Hebrew: An Overview of Orthography, Phonology, and Morphology
Eric D. Reymond


ISBN 1589839331
Status Available
Price: $52.95
Binding Hardback
Publication Date February, 2014
Pages 328

A unique study of the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls

In Qumran Hebrew, Reymond examines the orthography, phonology, and morphology of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Short sections treat specific linguistic phenomena and present a synopsis and critique of previous research. Reymond’s approach emphasizes problems posed by scribal errors and argues that guttural letters had not all “weakened” but instead were “weak” in specific linguistic environments, texts, or dialects. Reymond illustrates that certain phonetic shifts (such as the shift of yodh > aleph and the opposite shift of aleph > yodh) occur in discernible linguistic contexts that suggest this was a real phonetic phenomenon.

Features:

• Summary and critique of previous research
  
• Discussion of the most recently published scrolls
  
• Examination of scribal errors, guttural letters, and phonetic shifts

Eric D. Reymond is Lector in Biblical Hebrew at Yale Divinity School. He is the author of Innovations in Hebrew Poetry: Parallelism and the Poems of Sirach and New Idioms within Old: Poetry and Parallelism in the Non-Masoretic Poems of 11Q5 (=11QPsa) (both from Society of Biblical Literature).

Follow the link to order.

Epigraphy survey

SURVEY: Epigraphy - who cares? Take it and show that you care.

ASOR journal issues for free

FOR YOU, SPECIAL DEAL: Free Online Access to Current Issues of ASOR Journals!

Nabatean archaeoastronomy

PAST HORIZONS: Petra monuments orientated according to celestial events.

During the winter solstice, the sun is filtered into the Monastery at Petra, Jordan, illuminating the podium of a deity. Just at this moment, the silhouette of the mountain opposite draws the head of a lion, a sacred animal. These are examples from a study where researchers from Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias and CSIC (Spain) showed how celestial events influenced the orientation of the great constructions of the Nabataeans.

[...]

Lots more on Petra here and links.

Oxford Professorship

JOB: Oriel and Laing Professorship of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture
University of Oxford. Faculty of Theology and Religion in association with Oriel College.

Start date: 1 October 2014, or as soon as possible thereafter.

The University of Oxford is seeking a leading scholar of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible to fill the Oriel and Laing Professorship of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture. This is one of two full professorships in the Faculty of Theology and Religion devoted to Biblical Studies, the other being held by a scholar of the New Testament. The Oriel and Laing Professor plays a significant role in the promotion of the study of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible both nationally and internationally. In making this appointment, the faculty seeks to build on its traditional strength in this field, developing the subject in explicit dialogue with cognate studies both of its ancient setting and of its formative role and influence over the centuries.

The successful candidate will have an international reputation and a record of high-level critical scholarship in an aspect of the study of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, including its impact on later history; there are no prescriptions relating to the religious or confessional position of the holder. She or he will be expected to provide leadership in research in this field, developing existing interdisciplinary connections within Oxford and beyond to enhance the faculty’s research momentum and global profile. The professor will take a central role in graduate teaching (for both taught and research degrees) and will continue existing efforts to increase the strength of the cohort of graduates working on aspects of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Within a multi-disciplinary framework, the successful candidate will make a major contribution to the teaching of all mainstream and compulsory elements of the undergraduate syllabus. The faculty welcomes applications from candidates who enjoy working in an interdisciplinary way and who value reflection on the place of their work within the larger field of Theology and Religion.

Deadline for applications: Monday 14 April 2014. For more details about the post and full application instructions, see http://www.ox.ac.uk/about_the_university/jobs/fp/.

Applications are particularly welcome from women and black and minority ethnic candidates, who are under-represented in academic posts in Oxford.

Hugoye 17.1

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has published a new issue: Volume 17.1 (Winter 2014). Follow the link for the TOC and for links to the articles, reviews, etc., all online for free. Drafts of some of the articles were published in advance in Hugoye previews.

The Talmud and the external culture

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Jewish Culture Was Not Always a Response to Non-Jewish Culture. Why read the Talmud as a secular Jew? In part, for its expression of an independent Jewish creativity and spirituality.

The Talmud, on the other hand, is not reactive, not a negotiation. It is an expression of an independent Jewish creativity and spirituality—informed by surrounding cultures, as everything human must be (just look at all the loanwords from Persian and Greek), but not primarily addressed to those neighbors. It is remarkable, for instance, how little the Talmud has to say about Christianity, which was starting to dominate the world of the rabbis just at the time the text was being compiled. Reading the Talmud is a reminder that Judaism is not historically a mere guest or victim of other religions, the way we tend to learn about it in school and in history books, but an autonomous tradition, with its own values and achievements. You don’t have to “believe” in the Talmud, in a religious sense, to draw strength from the sense that Judaism rests on its solid foundation.

Plus why eclipses were a bad omen and when theft was property.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

50 biblical persons mentioned in inscriptions

BAR: 50 People in the Bible Confirmed Archaeologically: A web-exclusive supplement to Lawrence Mykytiuk's “Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible” feature in the March/April 2014 issue of BAR.

In “Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible,” in the March/April 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Purdue University scholar Lawrence Mykytiuk lists 50 figures from the Hebrew Bible that have been confirmed archaeologically. The 50-person chart in BAR includes Israelite kings and Mesopotamian monarchs as well as lesser-known figures.

There's more on Professor Mykytiuk's work here and links.

Female scribes in Syriac and Hebrew manuscript traditions

LIV INGEBORG LIED: Women scribes and copyists: a note on Syriac manuscripts on the occasion of the International Women's Day (8 March).

I have posted occasionally on the question of female Jewish scribes. Go here and follow the links. The earliest soferet I know of is Hannah bat Menahem Zion in the thirteenth century, noted by Hebrew-manuscript expert Collette Sirat. (Via Aviel Barclay-Rothschild, modern soferet-blogger.) Barclay-Rothschild also quotes a note by an anonymous female scribe who seeks indulgence for any errors in her work, because she was distracted during it by having a baby. Sirat refers to "fewer than ten" named medieval female scribes, while Manuscript Boy comes up with more than twenty "pre-modern" ones at Hagahot. These posts were back in 2004-5, and I imagine the question has advanced since then.

I am especially curious about evidence for female scribes in antiquity (say, before 600 C.E.) in any manuscript tradition in the Middle East or Europe. I don't know of any, but I haven't made any serious effort to look. If you have information, please drop me a note so I can share it.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Lyons refers me to Kim Haines-Eitzen, "Girls Trained in Beautiful Writing": Female Scribes in Roman Antiquity and Early Christianity." Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 6, Number 4, Winter 1998, pp. 629-646. The full text of the article is available at the link through Project Muse, but it's behind a subscription wall. The article's launching point is Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History 6.23.1-2, but it touches on ancient Near Eastern evidence and surveys evidence from Greco-Roman and Christian monastic literature. The passage by Eusebius reads:

1. At that time Origen began his commentaries on the Divine Scriptures, being urged thereto by Ambrose, who employed innumerable incentives, not only exhorting him by word, but also furnishing abundant means.

2. For he dictated to more than seven amanuenses, who relieved each other at appointed times. And he employed no fewer copyists, besides girls who were skilled in elegant writing. For all these Ambrose furnished the necessary expense in abundance, manifesting himself an inexpressible earnestness in diligence and zeal for the divine oracles, by which he especially pressed him on to the preparation of his commentaries.

(Translation by Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 1.)

UPDATE: Mladen Popovic e-mails to alert us to Haines-Eitzen's more recent book, The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (OUP, 2011).

More on the Apollo of Gaza

ROGUE CLASSICISM: The “Apollo” of Gaza ~ Part II: Questions of Condition and Authenticity. David Meadows concludes:

Which brings us to the bigger question: is the Gaza “Apollo” genuine or is it a clever fake? It’s interesting, I think, to note that the head from Herculaneum and the Piombino Kouros are considered in the category of ‘ancient fakes’ (I.e. Fakes/replicas made in antiquity to appeal to a contemporary market). Even so, I keep hemming and hawing on this issue and I still can’t come down firmly on one side or the other. The provenance strikes me (and most critical observers, it appears) as obviously manufactured. The weight, the face, and the survival of the base of the statue also combine to lead me to think there’s something very much amiss with this one. I’m still not too sure about the hair treatment either. Why Hamas (or whoever is in possession of it) is not giving scholars access to it to do some basic conservation and examination is puzzling and doesn’t lend any confidence to claims of authenticity. Despite all those considerations, it still seems possible that it is genuine and perhaps an archaizing sort of thing like the head from Herculaneum or possibly simply the product of a crappy artist. The whole situation is clearly being mishandled and I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t hear anything more about this one for a year or two, if at all.

His earlier posts on the subject are noted here.

Color perception in antiquity

HAARETZ: Word of the Day / Yarok: Ancient Hebrew for green, and yellow and everything in between. How the ancients distinguished between the bright yellow of gold and deep green of frogs is a mystery. (Elon Gilad). Excerpt:

What this variation seems to imply is that in Proto-Semitic the root y-r-k meant both vegetation and the color of vegetation, ranging from dark green to yellow to pale brown. As time progressed each language developed different distinctions, giving specific meanings to the root and to the words derived from it.

In the case of Biblical Hebrew, we can find the yarok only once: “The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing.” (Job 39:8) and though the King James translator translated the word as “green thing” - it is generally believed that the word in this case was a noun meaning vegetable or vegetation.

Related: The Wine-Dark Sea: Color and Perception in the Ancient World (Erin Hoffman, Clarksworld). Excerpt:

This suggests the possibility that not only did Homer lack a word for what we know as “blue”—he might never have perceived the color itself. To him, the sky really was bronze, and the sea really was the same color as wine. And because he lacked the concept “blue”—therefore its perception—to him it was invisible, nonexistent. This notion of concepts and language limiting cognitive perception is called linguistic relativism, and is typically used to describe the ways in which various cultures can have difficulty recalling or retaining information about objects or concepts for which they lack identifying language. Very simply: if we don’t have a word for it, we tend to forget it, or sometimes not perceive it at all.

The prophet Mani

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Hamblin & Peterson: Ancient Persian prophet gained following (Deseret News).

Although Manicheism — the religion founded by the Mesopotamian prophet Mani — is dead, its influence still continues in subtle and indirect ways.

A nice summary of the career and influence of Mani. Mani, incidentally, included a version of the Book of Giants among his scriptures and we have fragments of it in translations into various medieval Manichean (Manichaean) languages.

Some past posts involving Mani and (mostly) Manichaeism are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity

IN THE MAIL (from the publisher):

K. L. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: A Textbook on History and Religion: Second Edition (London: Boomsbury T&T Clark, 2013)

This comprehensive classic textbook represents the most recent approaches to the biblical world by surveying Palestine's social, political, economic, religious and ecological changes from Palaeolithic to Roman eras. Designed for beginners with little knowledge of the ancient world, and with copious illustrations and charts, it explains how and why academic study of the past is undertaken, as well as the differences between historical and theological scholarship and the differences between ancient and modern genres of history writing. Classroom tested chapters emphasize the authenticity of the Bible as a product of an ancient culture, and the many problems with the biblical narrative as a historical source. Neither "maximalist" nor "minimalist" it is sufficiently general to avoid confusion and to allow the assignment of supplementary readings such as biblical narratives and ancient Near Eastern texts. This new edition has been fully revised, incorporating new graphics and English translations of Near Eastern inscriptions. New material on the religiously diverse environment of Ancient Israel taking into account the latest archaeological discussions brings this book right up to date.

To any publishers who are regular readers: I am always happy to mention any book you may send me as long as it is directly relevant to ancient Judaism. Sometimes publishers send me things about, say, the modern Diaspora or modern Jewish ethics or the like. I don't post such things here, because this blog is about ancient Judaism.

Schiffman on Eruv and Sectarianism

ANOTHER BLOG SERIES BY LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: Eruv and Sectarianism in Ancient Judaism (8 posts).

The purpose of the presentation that follows is to argue that the Qumran sectarians, usually identified as the Essenes described by Josephus and other Greek-writing authors, prohibited carrying from domain to domain on the Sabbath, basing themselves on certain biblical passages, and that these ancient Jewish sectarians did not have an institution such as the eruv to mitigate the difficulties caused by this prohibition. ...

Schama, The Story of the Jews, vol. 1

BOOK REVIEW: "Surrender to our verbosity!" Or at least read Simon Schama's history of the Jews In his brilliant new book, the unconventional scholar somehow manages to be simultaneously sentimental and subversive, consensual and contrarian (Stuart Schoffman, Haaretz). A few excerpts:

“The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC – 1492 AD,” by Simon Schama; Ecco/HarperCollins, 496 pages, $40

Jerusalem, Vilna, Babylon, Brooklyn: historic wellsprings of Jewish life and lore. But Elephantine Island? Who ever heard of Elephantine Island, also known as Yeb, in the Nile River in Upper Egypt, the site of today’s Aswan? Who knew that an Aramaic-speaking colony of Jews, in the military service of imperial Persia, lived there in the 5th century B.C.E., the period of Ezra and Nehemiah, and built their own temple, complete with animal sacrifices?

[...]

Throughout the book, Schama draws impressively on cutting-edge academic studies. In the first chapter, his main source is “The Elephantine Papyri in English,” by Bezalel Porten, et al. (1996). The papyri, written in Aramaic and discovered in 1893 by an amateur Egyptologist, testify to Sabbath and Passover rituals as well as the prevalence of intermarriage. “The Elephantine Yahudim,” Schama pointedly writes, “were Yahwists who were not going to be held to the letter of observance laid down by Jerusalemites any more than, say, the vast majority of Jews now who believe themselves to be, in their way, observant, will accept instruction on what it means to be Jewish (or worse, who is or isn’t a Jew) from the ultra-Orthodox.”

Schama calls the Elephantine story the “first” because, unlike the biblical accounts of Moses and the Exodus, or David and Solomon – stories that the author aptly characterizes as a poetic “echo” of what actually happened – this one (which ended when Egypt overthrew Persian rule) is based on hard archaeological findings.

[...]

Schama has a special fondness for the Dead Sea Scrolls, a corpus that also lies outside the official canon. “Some of it is mesmerizingly, crazily, wordy,” he writes. He takes special note of the apocalyptic War Scroll, which describes “exactly what must be inscribed on trumpets, banners and even weapons in the battle array of the Sons of Light ... We are going to write the enemy into capitulation! Surrender to our verbosity or else!”

Plus Josephus gets "valorized."

The book is based on Schama's BBC documentary, on which more here and links. And there's lots more on the Elephantine papyri here.

The Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History

NEW JOURNAL:

We are very pleased to announce the publication of the first issue of the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History.
The first issue is available for free and articles can be downloaded at the following link:

http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/janeh.2014.1.issue-1/issue-files/janeh.2014.1.issue-1.xml

Contents of JANEH Volume 1 Issue 1:
Editorial Introduction to JANEH

Daniel Fleming, Chasing Down the Mundane: the Near East with Social Historical Interest

Niek Veldhuis, Intellectual History and Assyriology

Francesca Rochberg, The History of Science and Ancient Mesopotamia

Seth Richardson, Mesopotamian Political History: The Perversities

JANEH is published twice per year online and in print. The next issue will appear in October. We are committed to best practices for the consideration, review, and publication of contributions. Manuscripts should be submitted electronically through the JANEH website (http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/janeh) and can be written in in English, French, or German. The style guide for the journal is also available on the website. The international Editorial Board oversees a double-blind peer review process. Under normal circumstances, authors can expect to wait no more than 10 weeks from initial submission to final decision. Moreover, for all subsequent issues of JANEH, articles that have received final approval will be published immediately online and will enter the queue for the next available print issue.

We look forward to your readership and we hope you will consider supporting JANEH by submitting your work for our consideration. Please address any questions to: steven.garfinkle@wwu.edu.

Marc Van De Mieroop and Steven Garfinkle
Editors of JANEH

(HT Michael Helfield.)

A Canaanite sage and mystical rabbis

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Rationalism, Mysticism, Slaves, and a Sukkah Made From an Elephant The Talmud describes rabbis who were not just judges and legal analysts, but magicians as well.

This law applies only to Jews, of course; a Canaanite slave like Tavi was not obligated to follow the rules of Sukkot. Yet Tavi was learned enough in the Torah to know the rules he was not supposed to follow—Rabban Gamliel even calls him a “Torah scholar,” a talmid hakham—so he demonstratively slept under a bed in the sukkah. In doing so Tavi taught two laws by example: that a Jew cannot sleep under a bed in the sukkah, and that a Canaanite is not obligated to follow all the mitzvot binding on a Jew. There is a fascinating kind of ambiguity in this gesture of Tavi’s. He was simultaneously dramatizing that he was just like the rabbis, in his knowledge of law, and totally unlike them, because the law was not his. If you had to choose one person from the Talmud to bring back to life and interview, Tavi might not be the obvious choice, but he could be the most revealing witness to how the rabbis actually lived their Judaism.

More on Merkavah Mysticism and Hekhalot literature here and links (shameless self-promotion alert).

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Hebrew Studies

AWOL: Open Access Journal: Hebrew Studies. This one is chock full of goodies. I'm going to have to go through it carefully.

Golan's other ossuary

OH NO! Oded Golan had another ossuary (Hershel Shanks, BAR). Excerpt:

Perhaps not many of our readers will be excited to learn that there was a significant Jewish diaspora in Syria while the Temple still stood in Jerusalem. But it nicely illustrates the difference between the scholarly and the popular mind. Both are legitimate and to be respected.

The James Ossuary allows us to connect with extraordinary historical events—to touch the past, as it were. The Apamea and Palmyra ossuary allows the scholar to add one more bit of information about the spread of Judaism in the first century C.E. before the fall of Jerusalem.

HT the Bible Places Blog. For the Israel forgery trial, see here and follow the many, many links. For more on Oded Golan and the James Ossuary, go here and, again, follow the links. More on Palmyra is here and links.

Schiffman series on body and soul, purity and impurity

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN has been posting some thematic series of blog posts at his blog and I've been remiss about keeping up with them. So I'm going to start catching up today with his four posts on Body and Soul, Purity and Impurity.

Morphing Nag Hammadi traditions

MAKR GOODACRE: Another retelling of the Nag Hammadi discovery story.

The Talmud and Islam

THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: The Talmud and Islam. In an extract from his new book, The Talmud – A Biography, Harry Freedman looks at the influence of Jews and Muslims on each other. Excerpt:

Talmudic and Islamic scholars cross-fertilized in legal matters because they lived in the same mercantile society. But the two traditions didn’t just overlap when it came to the law. Story telling was an art in the folklore-rich Arabian world.

Amongst the few things that the patchwork of Jewish sects in the Arabia Peninsula had in common was a repository of folklore. The Talmud had drawn on some of it, but there was much more which it did not absorb, including literature linked to the secessionist priestly sect at Qumran, who are best known as the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Early Islam had drawn in Jewish converts who recounted these Dead Sea tales along with everyone else, based on their memories of legends they had heard as Jews.

Sounds interesting, although if early Islamic lore incorporates demonstrable material from Dead Sea Scrolls traditions, I have not heard of it.

UPDATE: A reviewlet of Freedman's book by Rabbi Harvey Belovski has also been posted at the Jewish Chronicle: The book they couldn't suppress. The story of the classic text that shaped Judaism - the Talmud.

St Andrews Symposium update

THE ST ANDREWS SYMPOSIUM FOR BIBLICAL AND EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES: Schedule and Continuing Registration.

Background here and links.

Pi and the Diaspora in the Talmud

THE LAST TWO WEEKS OF DAF YOMI COLUMNS BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Math Problem for Talmudic Rabbis: Building the Right Size Sukkah. Pi, irrational numbers, and squaring the circle are all brought to bear to find justifications for tradition

For a thousand years, traditional Jewish education was focused on learning the Talmud. But as I’ve often found in reading Daf Yomi, learning the Talmud also requires mastering secular arts and sciences such as mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. In fact, a complex geometry problem came up early in this week’s reading in Tractate Sukka, raising the question: How well did the rabbis know the value of pi?

In practice, they seem to reckon it as three and a bit, which is not too far off. Cross-file under "Asking the Important Questions."

In the Talmud, Jews Losing Touch With the Everyday Words of the Holy Land In staking claims about the validity of Jewish identity, the rabbis show that the Diaspora has existed for nearly as long as Judaism.

At this point, Reish Lakish—who was born in Syria but moved to Palestine as an adult—offers a brief but pointed statement about the relationship between Babylonia and Israel. “Initially, when Torah was forgotten from the Jewish people in Eretz Israel, Ezra ascended from Babylonia and reestablished it,” he explains. When the Torah was “again forgotten, Hillel the Babylonian ascended and reestablished it.” And when the law was forgotten for a third time, in the Tannaic period, “Rabbi Chiyya and his sons ascended and reestablished it.” Reish Lakish goes on to cite the teaching of Chiyya on the question of reed mats.

This little genealogy of Diaspora relations sends a powerful message, reminding us that the question of the Diaspora has existed for nearly as long as Judaism itself. ...

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Deed to Mor Gabriel Monastery land restored

AINA: Assyrians in Turkey Receive Deed for Lands of St. Gabriel Monastery (by Okan Konuralp, originally in Hurrieyet Daily News, but I seem to have missed it there).

The lands of the historic Mor Gabriel Monastery located in Turkey's southeastern province of Mardin have been returned to the Syriac community, completing an important step in the slow-running restoration of the group's property.

"The process regarding the 12 parcels of land of 244,000 square meters has been finalized. We are happy to receive back the deed of the land without coming to the European Court of Human Right phase," said the president of the Mor Gabriel foundation, Kuryakos Ergun.

[...]

A remaining dispute about another parcel of land is mentioned in the article as an aside, but few details are given. It took the specter of the ECHR, but the Turkish Government appears to be doing the right thing now, and I give them credit for that.

Background here with many links. Cross-file under "Syriac Watch."

The Greek Isaiah

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: Isaiah and the Greek Septuagint. This post is primarily about the relationship between the Greek translation and the surviving Hebrew texts of Isaiah. But, as Larry notes in passing, many of the differences are due to later interpretations (and misunderstandings) of the Greek translator. But these later interpretations and misunderstandings are also important, first, because they tell us about the translator and the translator's milieu and, second, because they were of some importance in the developing theology of early Greek-speaking Christians. For some bibliography see this post by Abram K.-J. at Words on the Word, and also note the upcoming symposium in Salmanca, Spain, on Isaiah and the Beginnings of Christian Theology, noted by T Michael Law.

Secunda on Secunda, The Iranian Talmud

THE TALMUD BLOG: Difference and the Iranian Talmud. Shai Secunda reflects on the implications of his recent book, The Iranian Talmud.

Conference on New Philology and the DSS

LIV INGEBORG LIED: Material (New) Philology and the Dead Sea Scrolls: conference in Copenhagen. In early April. Follow the link for for program, abstracts, and registration information.

Street, The Vine and the Son of Man

NEW BOOK FROM FORTRESS PRESS:

The Vine and the Son of Man: Eschatological Interpretation of Psalm 80 in Early Judaism

by Andrew Streett

Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars have traced out the rich and complex traditions of biblical interpretation in Second Temple Judaism. Little attention has been given to Psalm 80, however. Andrew Streett demonstrates that this psalm, which combines the story of Israel as a vine ravaged by others with hope for a “son” of God who will restore the people’s fortunes, became a rich trove for eschatological hope.

This study traces interpretations of Psalm 80 through many texts and argues that the psalm was an important biblical text through which early Christians understood the Christ event.

McGrath on Secret Scriptures Revealed

JAMES MCGRATH: Secret Scriptures Revealed Reviewed.

I highly recommend this volume. It really should be read by, and available on the shelf as a reference volume for, anyone who works on or is interested in early Christianity and its literature.

UPDATE: Earlier review etc. here.

McCollum on language learning

HMMLORIENTALIA: The tipping point of textual expertise (Adam McCollum). "How much reading do you have to do in a language until you read smoothly, without having to stop often and ask yourself about morphology or syntax, or to consult the dictionary?"

My advice? I adapted this approach from accounts by Cyrus Gordon and C. S. Lewis of how they learned ancient languages and it worked for me. If you're at the intermediate stage of learning a biblical language, such that you know basic grammar and vocabulary, and you want to reach an advanced level, read a biblical chapter in that language every day without fail. When you come to the last chapter, do it again. Don't obsess over detail: have an English translation open at the same time so you can check vocabulary you don't know and get the sense of unfamiliar grammar. (There are also very useful word lists available of rare vocabulary in New Testament Greek and Biblical Hebrew.) Over time you will absorb the language as an actual language in which you can think, not just a puzzle to be solved with a lexicon and a grammar. How much time depends on how seriously you keep to the program, but you will see steady progress over a period months and will feel confident at a fairly advanced level within a year or two. Real mastery takes years.

You can do the same with Classical languages using Loeb editions with facing-page English translations. I find these useful rather than decadent. Read a page every day.

Note well that this approach is only for language learning. Serious exegesis of any ancient text should involve a critical text, lexicons, grammars, and (especially) a concordance.

Cross-file under "Asking the Important Questions."

Conspiracy theory

TIMOTHY MICHAEL LAW: A Conspiracy Against the Apocrypha?

Cross-file under "Old Testament Apocrypha Watch" and "Asking the Important Questions."

Luke, Philo, angels, and resurrection

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Are the Dead Raised as Angels? (Phun with Philo) (Daniel R. Street, καὶ τὰ λοιπά).

Anyone who has seen It's a Wonderful Life knows that the dead are raised as angels.

Is the Apollo of Gaza a fake?

ROGUE CLASSICISM: The “Apollo” of Gaza ~ Part I: Fishy Tales and Timelines. The story gets fishier and fishier. Stay tuned ...

Background here.

UPDATE (26 February): At Rogue Classicism, David Meadows has an update: The “Apollo” of Gaza ~ Part Ia: Fishy Tales and Timelines.

UPDATE: Still more: The “Apollo” of Gaza ~ Part Ib: Implications of the Arabic Press Coverage.

UPDATE (11 March): Conclusion of the series noted here.

New Qumran fragments

ANTONIO LOMBATTI: Trovati nuovi manoscritti di Qumran. The gist of the Italian article he cites (Ritrovati nuovi manoscritti di Qumran) is that it has been announced in a Swiss research seminar on the Dead Sea Scrolls that some phylacteries (tefillin) from Qumran have been found among the materials excaved by De Vaux in the 1950s in Caves 4 and 5 and that these phylacteries, as normally, contain (nine total?) slips on which are inscribed biblical quotations. Good news.

UPDATE: Dr. Lombatti translates the excerpt from the Tio article into English here (via Joseph Lauer).

Wright on David

JACOB L. WRIGHT: Remembering King David (ASOR Blog). "Why didn’t the biblical authors present a more flattering image of King David, and why did they make his stories so complex?"

Kalimi (ed.), Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem
Story, History and Historiography

Edited by Isaac Kalimi, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and Seth Richardson, University of Chicago

Sennacherib and his ill-fated siege of Jerusalem fascinated the ancient world. Twelve scholars—in Hebrew Bible, Assyriology, archaeology, Egyptology, Classics, Aramaic, Rabbinic and Christian literatures—examine how and why the Sennacherib story was told and re-told in more than a dozen cultures for over a thousand years. From Akkadian to Arabic, stories and legends about Sennacherib became the first vernacular tales of the imperial world. These essays address outstanding historical issues of the campaign and the sources, and press on to expose the stories’ theological and cultural roles in inner-cultural dialogues, ethnic origin stories, and morality tales. This book is the first of its kind for readers seeking out historical and historiographic bridges between the ancient and late antique worlds.

Jude bibliography

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Bibliography for Epistle of Jude (Peter Head at ETC).

Jewish mosaics aren't just ancient

SCHOOL PROJECT:

Solomon Schechter kids revive art of mosaics

David Lazarus, Staff Reporter [The Canadian Jewish News], Friday, February 7, 2014

MONTREAL — Solomon Schechter Academy students are reviving the ancient Jewish art of mosaics, head of school Shimshon Hamerman says.

[...]

At Solomon Schechter, Judaic studies director Chani Cohen’s Jewish art classes in the school’s “SMART floor” recently created their own mosaic with 250 kids from grades 2, 4 and 6 participating. The 4-by-10-foot work now hangs on the ground floor of the school’s main campus.

The students’ most recent collaborative mosaic shows the two tablets of the Ten Commandments embedded in the trunk of a Tree of Life, with a boy and a girl holding hands on either side of the tablets under the shade of the tree. The Hebrew quotation states: “It is a tree of life to all who hold on to it,” “Eitz Chayim hi lamachazikim bah,” words we recite about the Torah after the scroll has been read. The boy and girl holding hands symbolize that “the ways of the Torah are pleasantness.”

[...]

A photo of the latter with some of its creators is at the link. I think Solomon Schechter would be pleased.

For much more on ancient mosaics found in Israel and nearby, see here and follow the many links back.

Review of Burke, Secret Scriptures Revealed

BRANDON W. HAWK: Review of Tony Burke’s Secret Scriptures Revealed. Excerpt:

As a medievalist, I greatly appreciated Burke’s sensitivity to studies of apocrypha that look beyond the first four centuries of Christian history. Like recent collaborative projects that eschew chronological boundaries (More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and More Christian Apocrypha [co-edited by Burke]), several sections of Secret Scriptures Revealed demonstrate the benefits of including later apocrypha, transmissions, and witnesses for understanding the subject. The most poignant considerations to bring this out are in Burke’s discussions of different attitudes toward biblical canon and apocrypha across time and cultures (e.g. 14-16), and his emphasis on the importance of manuscript libraries (32-6). Burke’s claims about the significance of apocrypha nod toward the long history of Christianity, not just their role in late antiquity but also through the medieval, early modern, and modern periods, right up to the present day.

Via Apocryphicity. Just to be clear, Tony Burke is co-editor of the More Christian Apocrypha Project but not the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project. And regarding the latter, we don't eschew chronological boundaries, but we have a later one than the Charlesworth and Sparks pseudepigrapha volumes and we try to explain clearly why we go beyond it when we do.

More on Secret Scriptures Revealed and related matters here, here, here, and links.

Two Magnes books

NEW BOOKS FROM MAGNES PRESS:

David Golan, Soldier Caesars (in Hebrew)

The Biographies of this volume comprise the concluding part of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae.
Their main subjects are the events of the Roman Empire during the years 235-284.
These were the days of the so called Illyrian Caesars on the throne of Rome. The Empire was compelled in those days to face too often and too dangerous incursions of barbarians, as well as tireless efforts of various provincials trying to free themselves from Roman mastery.
Rome was forced to recruit more and more barbarians to fill up the ranks of her soldiery and even officer staff. Rome even experienced a strong shortage of silver and gold metals to coin her Denarii and Aurei. These deficiencies revealed Rome's weakness abroad and caused disquiet and instability within the borders of the Empire.
However in spite of inflation, overtaxing and blackmailing bureaucracy the people of Israel in their country managed to continue their recovery due to the failed uprising in the century passed.

The author-editor of these biographies remains anonymous. Although on may presume he had been a fifth century Roman of the senatorial circles. The author-editor did not pretend to be a professional biography writer. Nevertheless it is clear that he had been a man of letters who made great efforts to provide a vivid and reliable account of those stormy days, the last generations of pagan Rome.

Daniel Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism (2nd edition)

Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory uncovers the unstated assumptions and expectations of scribes and scholars who fashioned editions from manuscripts of Jewish mystical literature. This study offers a theory of kabbalistic textuality in which the material book – the printed page no less than handwritten manuscripts – serves as the site for textual dialogue between Jewish mystics of different periods and locations. The refashioning of the text through the process of reading and commenting that takes place on the page – in the margins and between the lines – blurs the boundaries between the traditionally defined roles of author, reader, commentator and editor. This study shows that kabbalists and academic editors reinvented the text in their own image, as part of a fluid textual process that was nothing short of transformative.

Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory was first published in 2010 and is reissued in this revised edition with a new chapter:

Textual Fixity and Textual Fluidity

Kabbalistic Textuality and the Hypertexualism of Kabbalah Scholarship
1. Hypertextualism and the Study of Jewish Mysticism

2. Recent Debates on Textual Methodology in Kabbalah Research

3. Kabbalists as Literary Critics: An Undocumented History

4. Re-Editing as a Religious Imperative: A Psychological Appreciation of the Theurgic Justification of Editorial Practice

5. The Cultural Agendas and Assumptions of the Methodologies Kabbalah Scholarship

6. Epilogue: Kabbalah as Textual Process

"This book is certainly monumental, offering in its seven hundred pages a wealth of documentation and distilled argument that manages to be both comprehensive in its materials and transparent in its critical insights. It is rare indeed that a work of such formidable scholarship can actually be a pleasure to read and convincing in its elucidation of what are often extremely complex documentary circumstances and editorial traditions."
– From the foreword by David Greetham

Wikipedia on Alexandrinus

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Bad is Wikipedia? Codex Alexandrinus as a test case (Peter Head at ETC).

That is ten problems in the first half of the entry. And there are many more in the second half. I can see why many people advise students to avoid wikipedia. Wikipedia is quite bad. Facts are wrong, correct facts are placed in the wrong context, incorrect conclusions are drawn. Some of these errors would seem to have been deliberately inserted (either that or very stupid people are getting things badly wrong and adding them in). The best and most recent scholarship is cited the least. Evidence is not routinely provided. And the overall style is dreadful.

That's bad. But maybe the entry was edited by bots.

The machines still need us. For now.

Second Temple-era village excavated

BIBLE PLACES BLOG: Hellenistic Village Discovered Near Burma Road.

Martin Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise

LARRY HURTADO: Martin Lautenschlaeger Award Deadline. If you are a scholar aged 35 or under and you have published a book (with some connection to "God and Spirituality") in the last three years, you should read this.

More on Rollston at GW

CHRISTOPHER ROLLSTON: Classics scholar, fired from last college for criticizing Bible, will help plan new major at GW. "GW" being George Washington University.

As a member of GW’s faculty, Rollston will lead planning for the classics departments’ third major, in addition to Arabic and Classics, which includes studying one or two ancient languages.

GW added a major and minor in Arabic in 2012. Prior to that, students had been able to declare a minor in Hebrew and Arabic.

The classics department had been looking to add a Near Eastern studies major, Eric Cline, chair of the classics department, said. But Cline said he urged GW to hire Rollston, an acquaintance of about 20 years, to help speed up the process.

“We weren't even able to consider doing it without the addition of someone like Dr. Rollston,” Cline added.

The new major will bring GW in line with departments at John’s Hopkins and Princeton universities.

Rollston will provide the department with the necessary expertise in near eastern languages and religions to round out course offering for the new major in the subject, Cline said.

“In addition to his languages, his breadth of knowledge stretches from the religions of the ancient Near East to early Christianity and its interactions with Greece and Rome. He not only can teach Akkadian and Ugaritic, if anyone ever wants to takes those languages, but he can also teach New Testament Greek and Biblical Hebrew,” Cline said.

It speaks well for the Classics Department that George Washington is expanding its Near Eastern Studies into a major in this time of economic retrenchment, and it also speaks well for Chris that he was chosen to spearhead the effort. I am very pleased but not at all surprised.

Background here and links.

Kairite Archives

NEW JOURNAL: Kairite Archives.

KARAITE ARCHIVES is a peer-reviewed print journal which appears annually and which focuses on the literature, languages, history and culture of the Karaites in Eastern Europe. It is designed as a forum for specialists in Karaite studies to promote research and exchange ideas. The journal was established on the initiative of a group of European and Israeli scholars. Although formally connected with the Department of Asian Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, scholars from other academic institutions are also involved in its editing.

While we're on the subject of the war in Syria

MORE BAD NEWS FROM SYRIA:

The destruction of the idols: Syria’s patrimony at risk from extremists

The country’s wealth of archaeological treasures is under threat both from iconoclastic Islamic fundamentalists and looters operating amid the lawlessness of war

Patrick Cockburn (The Independent) Damascus

Tuesday 11 February 2014

Islamic fundamentalists in Syria have started to destroy archaeological treasures such as Byzantine mosaics and Greek and Roman statues because their portrayal of human beings is contrary to their religious beliefs. The systematic destruction of antiquities may be the worst disaster to ancient monuments since the Taliban in Afghanistan dynamited the giant statues of Buddha at Bamiyan in 2001 for similar ideological reasons.

In mid-January the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), an al-Qa’ida-type movement controlling much of north-east Syria, blew up and destroyed a sixth-century Byzantine mosaic near the city of Raqqa on the Euphrates. The official head of antiquities for Raqqa province, who has fled to Damascus and does not want his name published, told The Independent: “It happened between 12 and 15 days ago. A Turkish businessman had come to Raqqa to try to buy the mosaic. This alerted them [Isis] to its existence and they came and blew it up. It is completely lost.”

Other sites destroyed by Islamic fundamentalists include the reliefs carved at the Shash Hamdan, a Roman cemetery in Aleppo province. Also in the Aleppo countryside, statues carved out of the sides of a valley at al-Qatora have been deliberately targeted by gunfire and smashed into fragments.

[...]

And along with the ideological destruction comes the looting. Reportedly the sites of Ebla, Mari, and Dura Europos (et al.) are being devastated. The looting has been going on for some time. Here's an article from last May which just came to the attention of Judith Weingarten on Facebook: Lebanon seizes artifacts smuggled from Syria (Lebanon Daily Star). "They said the artifacts were looted from cemeteries in Palmyra and churches in Homs." This news is from last spring, but it's the first either of us have heard about it.

All this in addition to the appalling suffering and loss of life the war has brought.

Background, with more on Palmyra and Dura Europos, is here and here and links. Related posts are here and here. A more recent post on Palmyra is here. And a couple of more recent posts on Dura Europos are here and here.

Belated recognition for Maaloula

IN DAMASCUS: Photo exhibition showcasing town of Maaloula and Aramaic music concert at Opera House (Syria TV).

Culture Minister Dr. Lubana Mashouh, who attended the exhibition, told SANA that this exhibition’s importance lies in the fact that it showcases a part of Syria’s cultural and Christian heritage, as the town of Maaloula is a symbol of coexistence of Syria.

She said that this exhibition also underlines Syria’s values of love and fraternity, representing a response to those who hate life and adopt the language of murder and animosity.

For his part, photographer Shammas said that this exhibition represents Syria’s suffering, particularly Maaloula, due to terrorism, and that he worked for two years to document the town with his photographs which depict various locations such as St. Serkis Convent and St. Thecla Convent as well as the people of Maaloula and their traditions.

Better late than never, I suppose. But it would have been nice if Maaloula had received this kind of attention before militant Islamists had devastated the town and desecrated the grave of St. Thecla in the civil war. Better still, if it had received some protection from the Syrian Government before that happened. Or at least the Government could have refrained from closing Maaloula's Aramaic Institute because idiots had noticed that the Aramaic script looks like Hebrew.

Cross file under "Aramaic Watch" and "Ma'aloula, Malula." Follow the links in my comments above for much background on Maaloula.

The Deir al-Surian Library in the news

THE MONASTERY AT DEIR AL-SURIAN is profiled in an article by Teresa Levonian Cole in Spear's Magazine, reprinted by AINA: Egypt's Mysterious Monastery Hides Ancient Secrets. I don't see anything in it that hasn't been covered in previous posts, but it's a nice overview of the Monastery, the recent renovation of its library, and the precious Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Syriac manuscripts that have been preserved in it for many centuries. Excerpt (but worth reading in full):

The sprawling suburbs of Cairo have encroached upon much of the surrounding wilderness. But follow the Desert Highway for a 90-minute drive north-west from the capital and you will reach a timeless oasis that lies behind Deir al-Surian's 40-foot blush-coloured walls.

Above these 10th-century defences peep the domes of churches, whose treasures -- including magnificent frescoes dating from the 7th century -- most visitors have come to see. Also visible are palm fronds, spires and, in the north-west corner, a squat tower complete with drawbridge, which is where this story begins.

The tower, built around AD 850, contained the monastery's original library. It might have remained a library like any other, had it not been for a decision by the new vizier to tax the monasteries in Egypt. To plead exemption for Deir al-Surian, Abbot Mushe of Nisibis made his way to the Abbasid capital of Baghdad in 927, and, while awaiting the Caliph's decision (it was favourable), embarked on a five-year spree that would yield a cache of 250 manuscripts from Syria and Mesopotamia.

This would form the core of his monastery's collection which, over the years, increased to number Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic and Christian-Arab texts, dating from the 5th to the 18th centuries. They would include biblical, Patristic and liturgical writings, as well as early translations of philosophy, medicine and science, many of whose original Greek texts have been lost.

Of these treasures, the most ancient are the writings in Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Christ), which include the earliest dated Old and New Testament manuscripts ever found in any language: part of the Book of Isaiah, dated AD 459/60, and a Gospel of AD 510.

Lord Curzon visited the library in the early nineteenth century and came away with some manuscripts. The British Museum purchased many of the rest, but quite a few are still there. I hope they stay safe.

Past posts on the Monastery of Deir al-Surian and its library are here, here, here, here, and here. And two posts deal with that single page recently recovered from a Syriac manuscript dated to 411 C.E. (here and here).

UPDATE (20 February): Tony Burke comments.

DSS purchase in 1955

ANNIVERSARY: On This Day: Israel reveals it has all the Dead Sea Scrolls after secretly buying them from Arabs (Julian Gavaghan, Yahoo News). Cool contemporary newsreel.

The article is a little confused toward the end: the Dead Sea Scrolls are the (roughly) 972 scrolls found in the eleven caves near Qumran and are widely believed to be a library left by a single sectarian Jewish group that was probably related in some way to the Essenes. The "letters hidden by those fleeing Roman forces" are from the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt, a couple of generations later, found in other caves in the area.

Reconstructing a Phoenician

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: WHAT DID ANCIENT PHOENICIANS LOOK LIKE? (Culturekiosque).

The American Univerisity of Beirut Archaeological Museum opened a special exhibition recently, showcasing a reconstruction of a Phoenician man, whose 2500-year-old skeleton was discovered in Tunis, in 1994.

So actually he was a Carthaginian. But close enough.

Albeck, Introduction to Jewish Law in Talmudic Times, on sale now

FOR YOU, SPECIAL DEAL: Introduction to Jewish Law in Talmudic Times, by Shalom Albeck (Bar-Ilan University Press) is available at 30% off until 20 February.

The 10 coolest dead languages?

BUZZFEED: The 10 Coolest Dead Languages. Via Christopher Rollston on Facebook.

Now Jessica Misener has produced a nice list and there is nothing wrong with the dead languages in it. I myself read (or at least have at one time been able to read) six of the ten. But as commenters on Chris's post point out, many worthy ancient languages are omitted. What about Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Sumerian, not to speak of Syriac, Hittite, Linear B, and Avestan? And those are just well deciphered ones. Etruscan, Proto-Elamite, Linear A, and Olmec are cool too, even if we don't really know what they say. There is much coolness here, and I would be hard pressed to pick a top ten myself. But points to Ms. Misener for trying.

Harkins et al. (eds.), The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions

NEW BOOK: Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, John C. Endres (eds.), The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (Fortress, 2014).

At the origin of the Watchers tradition is the single enigmatic reference in Genesis 6 to the "sons of God" who had intercourse with human women, producing a race of giants upon the earth. That verse sparked a wealth of cosmological and theological speculation in early Judaism. Here leading scholars explore the contours of the Watchers traditions through history, tracing their development through the Enoch literature, Jubilees, and other early Jewish and Christian writings. This volume provides a lucid survey of current knowledge and interpretation of one of the most intriguing theological motifs of the Second Temple period.

As noted on Friday, Dr. Harkins is coming soon to the University of Birmingham for a two-year fellowship on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Aramaic Lord's Prayer bracelet

ARAMAIC WATCH: Independent entrepreneurial Aramaist Steve Caruso has a Kickstarter project: The Galilean Aramaic Lord's Prayer Bracelet Project.

Unprovenanced in Gaza

TODD BOLEN: Apollo Statue Discovered in Gaza. With what some think is a fishy story about its discovery.

The label "magic" in antiquity

SARAH VEALE: On the Arbitrary Appellation of Magic in Antiquity – "what is labelled magic is a moving target" (Invocatio).

New Jewish Babylonian Aramaic grammar

NEW BOOK: Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal, Introduction to the Grammar of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (Lehrbücher orientalischer Sprachen - LOS III / 3, 2013).

The dialect spoken and written by the Jews of Babylonia from the third century CE onwards is known as "Jewish Babylonian Aramaic". This is the first comprehensive description of this dialect since Levias' "Grammar of Babylonian Aramaic" of 1930. The current book offers a thorough reexamination of the grammar on the basis of a large corpus in its manuscript witnesses. It not only synthesizes the results of recent scholarship but introduces original insights on many important questions. The book is designed to appeal to readers of all backgrounds, including those with no prior background in Babylonian Aramaic or the Babylonian Talmud. The discussion frequently makes reference to parallels in other Semitic languages and in other Aramaic dialects, as well as to a variety of topics in linguistics . The book is structured as a textbook: it introduces topics in an order determined by pedagogical considerations, and offers vocabulary notes and translation exercises at the end. At the same time, the book can be used as a reference grammar.

(Via the Talmud Blog on Facebook. Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch.")

Harkins coming to Birmingham

CHARLOTTE HEMPEL posts the following on the SOTS Facebook page:

NEW DEAD SEA SCROLLS APPOINTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

Dr. Angela Kim Harkins, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT, USA, has been awarded a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship (IIF) from the 7th Framework Programme for Research funded by the European Commission for 24 months of continuous research at the total sum of 309,000 Euros. Dr. Harkins will conduct research at the University of Birmingham in collaboration with Dr. Charlotte Hempel on a project entitled, “The Teacher of Righteousness and Religious Experience in the Dead Sea Scrolls.” The proposed project is an interdisciplinary and comprehensive assessment of the evidence for the figure known as the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ in the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Khirbet Qumran. Dr. Harkins will use integrative approaches to understanding the body and its experiences, with special attention to how the instrumentalization of emotions can shed light on the experience of religion during this time. While emotion’s role in the construction and reconstruction of memory has long been acknowledged, this study examines how the strategic arousal of affect generated by texts that mention the Teacher of Righteousness serves to reinvigorate and intensify his memory among his followers.

Marie Curie Incoming International Fellowships (IIF) are individual fellowships that aim to attract top-class researchers from outside Europe to undertake innovative research in Europe from 1 to 2 years (incoming phase), with a view to developing mutually-beneficial research co-operation. Proposals from all areas of scientific and technological research of interest to the European Community are accepted and there are no pre-defined priority areas.

This is excellent news. Congratulations to Dr. Harkins, to the University of Birmingham, and to Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship on this side of the pond.

Iraqi Jewish Archive - some progress?

UNANIMOUS SENATE RESOLUTION: Senate bids to save ancient Iraqi Jewish archive. Time is running out for State Dept. to renegotiate the status of the massive collection before it’s returned to Iraq in June (Rebecca Shimoni Stoil, Times of Israel).

The resolution “strongly urges the Department of State to renegotiate with the Government of Iraq the provisions of the original agreement that was signed between the National Archives and Records Administration and the Coalition Provisional Authority in order to ensure that the Iraqi Jewish Archive be kept in a place where its long-term preservation and care can be guaranteed.”

It also implies that the archives, now in the US, should not be returned to Iraq, stipulating that “the Iraqi Jewish Archive should be housed in a location that is accessible to scholars and to Iraqi Jews and their descendants who have a personal interest in it.” Only a handful of Jews remain in Iraq, and their descendants are scattered across the world, with large numbers living in Israel and the United States.

Renegotiation sounds good to me. I could get behind that. But the question is whether the State Department and Iraq can. Stay tuned ...

Background here and links.

Happy Valentine's Day!

PALEOJUDAIC EROTICA: Ancient Jewish Aphrodisiacs Can Spice Up Valentine’s Day—or Any Shabbat Dinner. Whatever holiday you’re celebrating, put romance on the menu by taking some advice from everyone from Maimonides to Dr. Ruth (Merissa Nathan Gerson in Tablet).

Should unprovenanced cuneiform tablets be published?

ASOR BLOG: Cuneiform Exceptionalism: An Argument for Studying and Publishing Unprovenanced Tablets (Jerrold S. Cooper).

I don't have a great deal at stake in this particular debate, but I find Professor Cooper's arguments pretty persuasive. I have taken a similar position about certain types of antiquities here (see my point (3) in my comments under the quote of Larry Stager) and my arguments would apply likewise to cuneiform texts. A follow-up post to that one is here. Additional relevant comments are here and links. In the case of Northwest Semitic inscriptions, unprovenanced texts should be regarded as fake until shown convincingly to be otherwise.

The Lexam English Septuagint

BRIAN W. DAVIDSON: Interview with Two Editors of the Lexham English Septuagint

Rick Brannan and Ken Penner were kind enough to sit down and talk with me about a recently published English translation of the LXX, the Lexham English Septuagint (LES). I shared an early draft of these questions with a few friends who are involved in Septuagint studies, and couple of them had questions of their own. I have included these below.

The machines still need us. For now.

A little-known Syriac fragment of 4 Ezra

LIV INGEBORG LIED: Recycling 4 Ezra: 4 Ezra 8:33-41a and 41c-48 in the covers of an Arabic codex. The codex is written in Arabic, but the papyrus fragment of 4 Ezra was incorporated as part of the codex cover and is in Syriac.

UPDATE: I have collected a lot of background information on 4 Ezra and related texts here, and note also here.

Coming back to Talmud

ONE MAN'S ODYSSEY: Reading David Foster Wallace Led Me Back to Studying the Talmud. The late author’s work was Talmudic in nature. That’s why his books made me miss the Jewish texts I’d left behind (Joseph Winkler in Tablet).

After a torrid and heady five-year relationship with Talmud, first in yeshiva in Israel then at Yeshiva University, I had given up the Talmud and left Orthodoxy about three years before the event. But speaking about Wallace, I suddenly realized that I couldn’t really ever leave the rigors, pains, and joys of a Talmudic mindset. It marked me for life.

(HT reader Yehoshua Rabinowitz.)

When is a sukkah not a sukkah?

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: How Large Must a Sukkah Be To Be Called a Sukkah—And Yet Still Be Far From Heaven? In dissenting opinions, Talmudic rabbis propose and debate every detail of Sukkot’s booth and, in so doing, measure God

Unusually, a Talmudic sage appeals to the praxis of a woman to decide the halakhah. Plus, why Elijah didn't really ascend to heaven.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

News on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife

LARRY HURTADO: “Jesus’ Wife” Fragment: Latest Developments.

Maybe we're finally getting somewhere with the GJW.

Background here and links.

UPDATE (12 February): Rumors are flying that the ink has tested as ancient. If so, that will be interesting, although the various literary problems with the text need to be addressed as well. But in any case it will very encouraging to have one of these controversial texts being published properly in a peer-review journal.

JSIJ: Brody, "Petoterot and Benot Shuah"

JEWISH STUDIES, AN INTERNET JOURNAL has published a new article: Robert Brody, "Petoterot and Benot Shuah." Click on the latter link to download the article as a pdf file. Abstract:

This article discusses Mishnah Avodah Zarah 1:5, which lists items which Jews are forbidden to sell to pagans, apparently because they were likely to be used in idolatrous worship. These include pine cones "and/with their petoterot" and benot shuah; "and" is the reading of the so-called Babylonian manuscripts of the Mishnah while "with" is the reading of the so-called Palestinian manuscripts. The author argues that "and" is the more original reading and that the traditional understanding of petoterot as stalks is correct. He further contends that Lieberman's identification of benot shuah needs to be corrected slightly: this term should be understood as referring specifically to the fruit of a certain variety of pine tree and not to the tree itself, which was called simply shuah.

The Digital Loeb Classical Library®

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS: Forthcoming in Fall 2014: The Digital Loeb Classical Library®.

The Loeb Classical Library®, founded by James Loeb in 1911, has from the very beginning fostered its stated mission to make classical Greek and Latin literature accessible to the broadest range of readers. The digital Loeb Classical library extends this mission for readers of the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press is honored to renew James Loeb’s vision of accessibility and with the introduction of the digital Loeb Classical Library presents an interconnected, fully searchable, perpetually growing, virtual library of all that is important in Greek and Latin literature. Epic and lyric poetry; tragedy and comedy; history, philosophy, and oratory; the great medical writers and mathematicians; those Church fathers who made particular use of the Classics—in short, our entire Greek and Latin Classical heritage is represented here with up-to-date texts and accurate and literate English translations. 523 volumes of fully searchable Latin, Greek, and English texts are available in a modern and elegant interface, allowing readers to browse, search, bookmark, annotate, and share content with ease.

Follow the link for a video and more information.

This might not be the most tactful time to bring this up, but many of the Loeb volumes are out of copyright and are available for free as digital scans. But this new version is much spiffier and has better features.

Other past posts on the LCL are here and here.

An Iraqi Jew on the Iraqi Jewish Archive

THE FORWARD: Send Iraqi Jewish Archive Back Where It Belongs. Priceless Trove Will Serve Vital Educational Role in Baghdad. Sigal Samuel's core arguments are here:

The three main arguments for keeping the trove here go something like this. First, Iraq stole these artifacts from the Jews; that makes these Jews (or their descendants) their rightful owners. Second, Iraq persecuted its Jews to the point of extinction; why should they get to keep our things? Third, nowadays only about five Jews remain in Iraq, a country that most of world Jewry cannot easily visit; shouldn’t the artifacts be kept someplace accessible?

My response? No, no and no.

However much we as Iraqi Jews may resent having had this property stolen from us (and believe me, I’m not pleased about it), the only reason we’re seeing it now is because the State Department got it out of Iraq by promising, ultimately, to send it back there. There’s a word for people who take stuff, promise to return it, and then don’t. It’s called stealing.

It’s also called cultural imperialism. Hauling these precious artifacts out of Iraq and into an American gallery brings to mind the Egyptian artifacts that were taken out of their native country to fill the display halls of the British Museum. After all that the U.S. forces did in Iraq — including creating the unstable conditions that led to the plundering of that country’s National Museum in 2003 — we should blush at the thought of expropriating this archive for our own museums.

This is a difficult one. In practical terms, the most important consideration is what the State Department decides to do with the archive. It has the power to do pretty much what it wants. A closely related issue is, of course, international law, on which I am not qualified to comment.

In moral terms, the following considerations seem to me to be the most important (your mileage may vary).

1. Personal effects, such as report cards, should be returned to living owners or the immediate families of dead ones, if they want them.

2. Centuries-old Torah and Talmud manuscripts and the like should be kept wherever they are safest and they should be available for scholars to study. I am not sure Iraq is the best place for either desideratum. They are the heritage of humanity, not just of Iraq and not just of Jews, although if specific owners can be established, I suppose they would have a claim on them too, as per point 1 above.

3. The claim of Iraq to the archive is tenuous at best. If the manuscripts had been looted from a museum, there would be a much stronger case for their return to that museum. (Parallel case here.) They were not. They were recovered from the offices of the Iraqi secret police, who looted them from Jews who were expelled from Iraq. The analogy of returning art stolen by Nazis to Germany has some force to it. And this is not the best time to bring up Egyptian artifacts.

4. It's generally a good idea for the State Department to keep its promises or, if not, to have a compelling reason for breaking them.

Whether all that adds up to a solution, I leave up to you. I blog, you decide.

Follow the link to this most recent post on the Iraqi Jewish archive, which has links leading back to 2003.

Schachter on Talmudic layout

THE TALMUD BLOG: The Flow of Things: Ruminations on Talmudic Layout (Ben Schachter).

In celebration of The Talmud Blog’s redesign, I have been invited to offer some observations on the layout of the Talmud inspired by my background as a practitioner and scholar of the visual arts. This is a double honor for me as this is also my inaugural post. Thank you for the invitation.

Seland, Why Read Philo?

FORTHCOMING BOOK: Why Read Philo? And How! Handbook to Philo of Alexandria, Torrey Seland (Eerdmans).

Guidebook par excellence to a significant ancient Jewish scholar

A contemporary of both Jesus and the apostle Paul, Philo was a prolific Jewish theologian, philosopher, and politician — a fascinating, somewhat enigmatic figure — who lived his entire life in Alexandria, Egypt. His many books are important sources for our understanding of ancient Judaism, early Christianity, and the philosophical currents of that time.

Why Read Philo? And How! is an excellent introductory guide to Philo's work and significance. The contributors — all well-known experts on Philo of Alexandria — discuss Philo in context, offer methodological considerations (how best to study Philo), and explore Philo's ongoing relevance and value (why reading him is important). This practical volume will be an indispensable resource for anyone delving into Philo and his world.

Due out in the Autumn. Cross-file under "Asking the Important Questions."

Daniel J. Harrington, S. J., 1940-2014

SAD NEWS, POSTED BY GABRIELE BOCCACCINI ON THE ENOCH SEMINAR FACEBOOK PAGE:

The rector of Faber Jesuit Community at Boston College announced this evening [Friday] that Dan Harrington, S.J., passed away at 6:30 pm Friday evening.

The wake will be at 5:00 pm on Wednesday, February 12, at St. Ignatius Church, 28 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. The funeral will follow the wake at 7:00 pm.

Daniel Harrington (1940-2014) was one of the most distinguished specialist in Second Temple Judaism, author of numerous books and articles.

May his memory be for a blessing / Requiescat in pace.

Indeed.

Jack Sasson also links to Fr. Harrington's Wikipedia page here and his Boston College page here. Not mentioned in any of the above is his extensive, important work on Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (Biblical Antiquities), for example, here, here, and here.

2014 Gorgias book grant

GORGIAS PRESS:

Welcome to the Gorgias Book Grant Program

As part of our efforts to provide resources to graduate students in the humanities, Gorgias Press is announcing its annual book grant. Every year, Gorgias chooses two graduate students for its Gorgias Book Grant, an award of $500 worth of Gorgias titles (each) to outstanding students in their fields.

2014-2015 Grant Field: Any field within the scope of Gorgias Publications
Application Deadline March 1, 2014
Grant Date March 31, 2014

Follow the link for application details