Noah is released

THE NOAH MOVIE comes out today and there are endless reviews up online. I don't have time to look at more than a representative sampling, all of which were more or less positive, of which the following are worth noting.

In the New York Times by A. O. Scott: Rain, Heavy at Times. Russell Crowe Confronts Life’s Nasty Weather in ‘Noah’. Excerpt:

But even though the scale of this film — the size of its budget and the breadth of its themes — is larger than anything this director has attempted before, “Noah” is less an epic than a horror movie. There are some big, noisy battle scenes and some whiz-bang computer-generated images, but the dominant moods are claustrophobia and incipient panic. The most potent special effects are Mr. Crowe’s eyes and the swelling, discordant strains of Clint Mansell’s score. Once the waters have covered the earth and the ark is afloat, a clammy fear sets in, for both the audience and the members of Noah’s family: We’re stuck on a boat full of snakes, rats and insects, and Dad’s gone crazy.

In the Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan: Review: Energetic 'Noah' goes overboard — to riveting effect. Darren Aronofsky, a director known for excess, finds the perfect story for his brand of grand filmmaking with the biblical tale of 'Noah.' Excerpt:

This is what moviegoers thought they'd be getting, but there is more going on here, a whole lot more. Aronofsky's "Noah" includes not-so-covert messages about despoiling the planet, a bemused Anthony Hopkins as oldest-man-ever Methuselah, an unlooked-for villain played by Ray Winstone, plus romantic Sturm und Drang about finding appropriate wives for Noah's three sons. And don't forget the Watchers, a bunch of giants who look and act like Stone Age Transformers but are apparently fallen angels marooned on Earth (don't ask.) This is one busy movie.

In The Wire by Esther Zuckerman: Why Emma Watson Is the Secret Key to 'Noah'. This one has a lot of spoilers about Watson's character, "Ila," and her adventures. Excerpt:

While, yes, Aronofsky does stage an impressive battle pitting the people who are destined not to make it onto the arc against giant Watchers, fallen angels made out of stone, once everyone is one the ark the movie turns into a story about a family dealing in an apocalyptic scenario.

In The New Republic by Brook Wilensky-Lanford: The Big New 'Noah' Movie Is Closer to the Bible Than its Christian Critics Will Admit. Excerpt:

The Watchers, as this movie calls these stone giants, have a direct biblical inspiration, the Nephilim. These larger-than-life creatures, part human, part divine, are described in Genesis 6:4. The exact lineage of the Nephilim is hotly debated in creationist circles. Were they descendants of Adam’s other son, Seth, or were they fallen angels, or some combination thereof? Aronofsky’s interpretationis that they were the beings, made of light, that God created to protect humanity from sin; and when they failed, God punished them by turning them into stone giants. Incidentally, creationist Ken Ham says that this interpretation has “some biblical support.” It is a testament to the creative possibilities of the Bible that two people whose larger visions disagree so sharply could sometimes coincide on the small stuff.

And how could I omit the review in the tradition of patristic allegory by Peter K. Rosenthal in The Onion?


The Onion Reviews 'Noah'

I am especially interested in the presentation of the Watchers and giants. There's a pretty good discussion of the issues by Steven D. Greydanus in The ‘Noah’ Movie Controversies: Questions and Answers (National Catholic Register). From the reviews it sounds as though Aronofsky gives a rather confusing account of the two. Or perhaps some of the reviewers are confused, which is likely enough in itself. Or both. In any case, according to the myth in the Book of the Watchers, the Book of Giants, and off and on in the rest of the Enochic literature (and clearly alluded to in Genesis 6:1-4), the Watchers were fallen angels who came to earth, revealed various technologies to human beings, and seduced mortal women. The children who were a result of these unions were cannibalistic giants sometimes called the Nephilim. Evidently the Watchers appear in the movie as fallen angels who are exiled to earth as six-armed stone giants. It has been suggested that the six arms come from the six wings of the seraphim in Isaiah 6. There seems to be nothing specific about the giants/Nephilim. They are either implicitly identified with the Watchers (against all the earlier traditions) or ignored.

This doesn't sound like a cinematic masterpiece, but I suppose I shall have to get around to seeing it and posting my own review.

Background here and links.

Finkel, Aronofsky, and the Ark

A MISLEADING HEADLINE: How Darren Aronofsky and 'Noah' Got The Ark Wrong.
And So Did Just About Everyone Else (Benjamin Ivry, The Forward).

Darren Aronofsky’s $130 million Hollywood epic “Noah” starring Russell Crowe has displeased Christian fundamentalists with its non-literal approach to the Old Testament story. Jewish moviegoers might also find it irksome that Aronofsky and his team of designers probably got the shape of the ark wrong. Irving Finkel’s “The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood” was published too late for the filmmakers to revise their design.

[...]

The Ark Tablet describes the god Enki declaring: “Pay heed to my advice, that you may live forever! Destroy your house, build a boat; despise possessions/ And save life! Draw out the boat that you will build with a circular design.” Instructions are given to build the ark so that it is 220 feet wide and 20 feet high, in the shape of a coracle, a round boat familiar in Iraq, where the Ark Tablet originates. Since the main goal of the ark was keeping afloat and not going anywhere, much of the usual ship-like design would have been superfluous.

[...]

No, Aronofsky is (freely) retelling the biblical version of the story, not the cuneiform one, so there is no reason for him to use the cuneiform account of the ark's shape and size. Actually this article is mostly a reviewish thingy on Dr. Finkel's new book on the cuneiform version, with lots of interesting background on Finkel himself. The author should not be blamed for the headline, but he does make the same misleading assertion in the article itself.

Background on the new cuneiform Flood text and on Irving Finkel is here and links. More on the Noah movie is here and links.

Report on Golb's appeal hearing

THE APPEAL HEARING ON RAPHAEL GOLB'S IDENTITY-THEFT CONVICTIONS is summarized by John Leland in the NYT: Court Hears Appeal by Son of Scholar on Dead Sea Scrolls. Excerpt:

What would make it illegal? [Golb's lawyer] Mr. Kuby was asked.

Economic benefit, he said. Merely getting “psychic joy” and “savage pleasure” did not count. “Intent to annoy, intent to be obnoxious — that, in and of itself, cannot be criminalized.”

Mr. Rivellese [representing the state] countered that Mr. Golb’s behavior was clearly malicious and criminal, intended to mislead recipients and damage Dr. Schiffman’s career.

Judge Eugene F. Pigott Jr. pushed the point with Mr. Kuby, asking whether it would be all right for someone to pretend to be Alex Rodriguez and confess to using banned steroids, which Mr. Rodriguez has denied.

“I don’t actually see a criminal problem with that,” Mr. Kuby said.

Background here and just keep following the links back.

Review of The Story of the Jews

ALYSSA ROSENBERG: How Simon Schama wants us to think about Jewish history, and a Jewish future (WaPo). Excerpt:

If only disrupting the established narratives about Jewish identity and politics was as simple as presenting the evidence and getting a community that understands argumentativeness to be a core part of its identity to agree. Schama’s project in the five episodes of “The Story of the Jews” and two accompanying books is about history, of course. But as Schama and I discussed in two conversations, the first in January and the second earlier this week, Schama hopes to mine that history not just for under-discussed facts, but to advocate for a different framework for public discussions of Jewish identity and politics. In focusing on entries in that history that emphasize the integration of Jews in communities of other believers, and on cultural and artistic cross-pollination, Schama pushes not just for new answers to political questions, but urges us to consider whether cultural conversations might get us closer to the core of Jewish identity than political contests.

Earlier reviews etc. here and links.

Pink in Hebrew

JUST GIVE ME A REASON: Word of the Day / Varod: Pink, or, a rose by any other ancient Persian name. How the island of Rhodes and the Hebrew for rose came from the same word. (Elon Gilad, Haaretz). Excerpt:

At the end of the 19th century, Eliezer Ben Yehuda was busy coming up with a variety of words Hebrew was missing, not only for print in his publications but also for his day-to-day use, as he and his family had vowed only to use Hebrew at home. One of the words the family needed, probably for the dresses of his wife Hemda or one of their daughters, was a word for pink.

Ben-Yehuda simply decided to adopt the French practice of calling the flower (the rose) and the color (pink) by the same name. As we said, the Hebrews had adopted the ancient Persian word for rose in the form vered. Ben-Yehuda took that root, v-r-d, and created varod. And thus Hebrew got a word for pink.

Houtman et al., A Jewish Targum in a Christian World

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

A Jewish Targum in a Christian World

Alberdina Houtman, Protestant Theological University, Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman, VU University and Hans-Martin Kirn, Protestant Theological University

What is the use of a Targum in a cultural setting where Aramaic is not a common language anymore? And why would Christians be interested in a typically Jewish text in an otherwise anti-Jewish milieu? These and related questions have served as guides for Alberdina Houtman, Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman and Hans-Martin Kirn in bringing together the articles for the present book, which consists of three parts: 1. Uses and Functions of Targum in Europe; 2. Editing Targums and their Latin Translations; 3. Targums and Christianity. A number of the articles deal with the codicological and paratextual aspects of the relevant manuscripts and editions as witnesses of their cultural historical situations. The intended readership includes specialists in Targum, Jewish and medieval studies, (church) historians, codicologists and (Christian) theologians.

Review of Neis, The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture

THE TALMUD BLOG: Outside Aphrodite’s Bathhouse: On Rachel Neis’ ‘The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture’- Guest Post by Zachary Braiterman.

Golb appeal

THE RAPHAEL GOLB IDENTITY-THEFT CASE: New York court to hear Dead Sea Scrolls first amendment case. Case centres around man who argues that mocking scholars in academic debate about Scrolls is protected by first amendment (AP).

Background here and here and many links. In 2011, after the original convictions, I wrote an article on the case for Religion in the News which is noted here.

Sad News: The Syriac Orthodox Patriarch has died

AINA: Assyrian Orthodox Patriarch Dies in Germany. Cross-file under "Syriac Watch." More here (scroll down to message).

Apollo of Gaza: no news is news

HAARETZ: Whereabouts and future of Gaza Apollo still unclear. The Louvre denies reports that it will be restoring and exhibiting the statue, which was found off the Gaza coast last summer. Okay, not quite no news, but not much. The article also indicates that Hamas hopes to use the statue and its restoration to gain some political acceptance in the West.

Background (including concerns about the authenticity of the statue) here and links.

Eleventh anniversary

HAPPY ELEVENTH BLOGIVERSARY TO PALEOJUDAICA! It's been a busy year for me and a good one, with two big books that were long-term projects finally published. Below I have listed some of my favorite PaleoJudaica posts from the last twelve months. Also, it's worth noting that this year PaleoJudaica passed the 10,000-post mark and the current count as of this post is 10,348. Past anniversary posts are here and links.

Update on Davila's forthcoming books
Conference reports
7th Enoch Seminar
Enoch Seminar, Camaldoli, La Verna, and Rome
BNTC wrap-up
Search engine referrals
Anxious Ezra varia
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Vol. 1
EerdWord post on MOTP
SBL 2013
SBL 2013 highlights
Brannan's tweets on MOTP1 collected
Treatise of the Vessels interview
Treatise of the Vessels update
Treatise of the Vessels latest
MOTP1 reviews online
Raphael Patai Prize winner

Thanks for reading PaleoJudaica! Please keep coming back and keep bringing your friends.

More from Doudna on Qumran and the DSS

GREG DOUDNA: The Sect of the Qumran Texts and its Leading Role in the Temple in Jerusalem During Much of the First Century BCE: Toward a New Framework for Understanding (Bible and Interpretation).

The revival of Israel like a dead plant coming back to life of CD 1.5-8 is usually understood in terms of some sectarian phenomenon, which may not be entirely inaccurate, but another possibility, not necessarily in contradiction, is that the dead plant returning to life could allude to the conquests and expansions of Alexander Jannaeus viewed favorably by the authors of the Qumran texts—a reversal of the conquest of Nebuchadnezzar, Israel at last come ‘back to life’ as a serious and formidable entity on the map as it once had been in a golden age long ago.

See Also: D. Stacey and G. Doudna, Qumran Revisited: A Reassessment of the Archaeology of the Site and its Texts (Archaeopress, 2013)

More on Greg Doudna's controversial but interesting theories about Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls is noted here and links.

Schiffman on the DSS and the Jewish book

ANOTHER BLOG SERIES BY LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of the Jewish Book (5 posts).

The complicated process whereby the biblical books took shape and were copied and transmitted in biblical times can only be partly reconstructed based on biblical evidence, with the help of ancient Near Eastern parallels. Clearly, the biblical era constitutes the first stage in the history of the Jewish book, or more correctly, The Jewish book, par excellence. However, for the period immediately following, the Second Temple period, the level of documentation for creating, editing/redacting, and copying and disseminating Jewish books is now enormous due to the discovery, publication and analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls.[1] While this information relates directly to the period in which the Scrolls were copied, from the last part of the third century BCE through the early first century CE, it does allow us a model with which to supplement our understanding of the biblical period, and much of it is directly relevant to the rabbinic period in which most of the same scribal conventions were in use.

New JSTOR journals online

AWOL: New Ancient World Content in JSTOR. Including The Hebrew College Annual.

Boccacinni and Zurawski (eds.), Interpreting 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch

NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY: Interpreting 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. International Studies (Editor(s): Gabriele Boccaccini, Jason M. Zurawski).

In this volume Gabriele Boccaccini and Jason M. Zurawski collect together essays from leading international scholars on the books of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. The literature of the Second Temple Period has become increasingly studied in recent years as scholars have begun to recognize the importance of these texts for a developed understanding of Rabbinic and Christian origins.

Through close readings of the texts themselves, examining the books in comparison with other Jewish apocalyptic literature and early Christian materials, and reading the texts in light of their social and historical settings, the fifteen papers collected herein significantly advance the current scholarly conversation on these defining Jewish apocalypses written at the end of the first century CE, and they shed light on the everlasting legacy of apocalyptic ideas in both Christianity and Judaism.

Follow the link for TOC and ordering information. These essays are short papers from the 2011 Enoch Seminar. Another volume of essays from that Seminar is noted here.

LXX podcasts

TIMOTHY MICHAEL LAW is doing a series of podcasts on the Septuagint. Access and subscription information is at the following: The Septuagint Sessions #2 – Shoddy Greek? On the Language of the Septuagint I.

Interesting articles

PETER M. HEAD: Some interesting articles. Text-critical and related articles pertaining to the New Testament, 1 Enoch, and an Hebreo-Greek Pentateuch.

The Story of the Jews comes to America

TELEVISION: Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews is showing on PBS in the USA beginning next week. Adam Kirsch has a review in Tablet: Simon Schama Moderates a Moderate History of Moderate Jews ‘The Story of the Jews’ is the most important TV documentary about Jewish history since Abba Eban’s famous ‘Heritage’ series. Excerpt:

The difficulties begin with what might seem like the simplest question of all: Where does the story of the Jews start? The answer is much more elusive than it might appear. Do you begin with Abraham, the father of the chosen people and the first recipient of God’s covenant? Or with Moses, the lawgiver, who first instituted the religion and practices of Judaism? Or with Saul and David, who gave the Jews political existence in the form of the Kingdom of Israel? Any one of these potential starting points implies a whole interpretation of what Jews and Judaism really are. The question is complicated by the fact that none of these people can be confidently said to have existed at all: They are mythic figures, not historical actors. Yet how can you begin to tell the story of the Jews without them?

Schama's answer is to begin with the Judean exiles at Elephantine Island in Egypt in the fifth century BCE and their Deuteronomically unauthorized temple. Of course.

Not least important, for Schama’s purposes, is the fact that the Jews of Elephantine did something that the Bible absolutely and repeatedly forbids: They built their own Temple, far from Jerusalem, where they offered up sacrifices to God. Thus we have, in this historically rather unimportant Jewish outpost, a potent combination of symbols and significances. Judaism, Elephantine tells us, has always been just as much at home in Diaspora as in Zion; it has been an affair of ordinary people, as well as of sages and martyrs; it has resisted religious authority and invented many modes of worshipping God. It has even, for long stretches anyway, enjoyed harmonious and mutually enriching relations with its gentile neighbors. The Elephantine papyri are, for Schama, a life-giving anti-Bible, not “the epic of the treaty-covenant with Israel” but “the quotidian record of the lives of the expat Judeans and Israelites with whom we can keep company as naturally … as if we were living in their neighborhood.”

The series is also coming out in book form and I noted a review of volume 1 here. Links there deal with the BBC documentary and the Elephantine papyri.

The latest on the Noah movie

CINEMA: Noah Comes To The Big Screen With Help From A Dallas Rabbi (Jonathan Mark, The Jewish Week). Some enlightening background to the movie:

Around two years ago, Rabbi [Geoffrey] Dennis, 54, who leads a Reform synagogue in the Dallas suburbs and teaches Jewish studies at the University of North Texas, received a call from Ari Handel, the executive producer of such films as “Pi,” “Black Swan” and “The Wrestler.” Handel was, along with director Darren Aronofsky, co-writing and producing “Noah,” the film coming to theaters next week. As a Manhattan Beach seventh grader, young Aronofsky wrote a poem about Noah, “The rain continued through the night and the cries of screaming men filled the air.”

Now, Paramount was giving him $130 million to tell the story, with Russell Crowe and Emma Watson (and Aronofsky was giving his seventh-grade teacher a walk-on in the movie). Aronofsky has admitted that “Noah” was being written by “two not very religious Jewish guys,” so Handel was calling Rabbi Dennis, author of the “Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism” (Llewellyn Publications), and a 2007 National Book Award finalist, to give a Jewish sense of the story.

I've not yet seen the movie yet, of course, but early indications are that the Noah mythology used in it is nothing if not eclectic. That make sense if Rabbi Dennis was their consultant. I noted a review of his Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism a few years ago and on that basis put it in the "use with caution" category. There's not much point in carping about the historical accuracy of a movie about Noah's Flood, but it interesting to get a sense of where the traditions used in this version of the story came from. Rabbi Dennis adds:

If you want to see Aronofsky’s original vision, says Rabbi Dennis, “You need to see his French comic book of Noah [available on Amazon]. It’s a storyboard for a movie.” There is a reference, said the rabbi, to six-winged angels in Isaiah. The film refers to the Tzohar, the gemstone given by an angel to Adam, and used by Noah for illumination in the ark. Watchers (thought to be the Fallen Angels), is found in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, written by Noah’s great-grandfather.

Rabbi Dennis adds, “In the Dead Sea Scrolls, there’s a version of a book called the Book of Giants. In each one of these books there is more elaborate narrative about who the Fallen Angels were, what they did, and how they corrupted the earth. It’s so dualistic that it became problematic for the rabbis. Judaism developed a theology of angels in which angels have no free will. If angels have no free will, angels can’t rebel.”

In related news, Egyptian Islamists are proactively calling for the movie to be banned: Egyptian Islamists say no to ‘Noah’. But the call for a ban is getting some pushback from the (coolly named) Creativity Front: "Noah" triggers a storm in Egypt: The Creativity Front rains down their Al Azhar-opposing opinion.

There has also been proactive Christian criticism of the film, which is noted in the first article linked to above.

Additional PaleoJudaica posts on Noah, the movie, are here and links.

UPDATE: More on Christian objections to the movie (HT Akma Adam on Facebook): Russell Crowe film ‘Noah’ edited to appease Christians upset by ‘historical inaccuracies’ (Scott Kaufman, The Raw Story).

According to The Wrap, Paramount Pictures has edited Darren Aronofsky’s Noah — which stars Russell Crowe in the titular role — in order to avoid offending Christian viewers.

Aronofsky allegedly told an associate that he was “not happy” when he learned that Paramount had appended a disclaimer to both the film and promotional materials for it.

At the request of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), Paramount added a disclaimer which reads, in part, that “[t]he film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values, and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis.”

NRB board member Phil Cooke told The Wrap that the disclaimer was necessary because the film is “historically inaccurate.” It is, Cooke said, “more of an inspired movie than an exact retelling.”

[...]

Historically inaccurate. You don't say?

UPDATE: St. Andrews PhD student Raymond Morehouse puts this latter controversy into context. Somewhat related anecdote at the end of this post.

Heavenly Lights exhibition

ART: Lights of heaven: Jerusalem artist Yoram Raanan exhibits at the Heichal Shlomo Museum of Jewish Art.

Aramaic bedtime story

LITERATURE: The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been translated into Aramaic.

Exhibition on ancient commemmoration of the dead

AT THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE MUSEUM: Exhibit at UChicago to Show How Ancient Cultures Commemorated the Dead. "In Remembrance of Me" at Oriental Institute opens April 8. Excerpt from the press release:

The exhibit, “In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East,” opens to the public April 8. The show is built around two themes: the regular offering of food and drink to nourish the dead in the afterlife, and the use of two- or three-dimensional effigies of the dead, often made of stone, to preserve their memory and provide a means of interaction between the living and the dead.

The Oriental Institute’s Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli, Turkey in 2008, during which an inscribed funerary monument was discovered, inspired the exhibit. The monument, which dates to about 735 B.C, is carved with an image of a man named Katumuwa seated before a table heaped with offerings and with a lengthy inscription in Aramaic—a language widely used in the ancient Middle East. The text proved to be the longest-known memorial inscription of its type.

Until the discovery of the stela, scholars did not know about the practice of enacting annual sacrifices for the soul of the deceased. The discovery also revealed that the people of Zincirli, located in the ancient Syro-Hittite region of southeastern Turkey, believed Katumuwa’s spirit resided in the monument.

“The text gave us a whole new understanding of the ancient belief system in eastern Turkey and northern Syria. Although Katumuwa knew that the realm of the dead could be a cruel and lonely place, the rituals he describes that his family would enact on his behalf would give him a happy afterlife,” said exhibit curator Virginia R. Herrmann, PhD’11. Herrmann, now a visiting professor at Dartmouth College, was part of the team that discovered the stela and co-curated “In Remembrance of Me.”

Before the discovery of the stela, it was not understood that, in eastern Turkey and northern Syria, such banquet scenes depicted on other monuments were special pleas to the viewer to make annual offerings of animal sacrifices and grapes or wine. Those offerings were directed not only to the deceased, but also to local gods. The biblical commandment to “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long” (Exodus 20:12), is rooted in the tradition expressed by the Katumuwa text.

The text also revealed that the rituals took place not just at the grave or in the home, but in a private mortuary chapel next door to a temple—exactly the setting where the Katumuwa stela was discovered. The stela itself is in the Gaziantep Museum in eastern Turkey, but a precise facsimile of its front has been produced for the exhibit.
The exhibit also features a video produced by video artist Travis Saul, MFA’12, in collaboration with Herrmann and her colleague and exhibit co-curator, Oriental Institute Associate Professor David Schloen. It provides background on the site of Zincirli, the discovery of the stela, a recreation of the rituals enacted to commemorate the soul of Katumuwa, and a recitation of the text in Aramaic and English.

Earlier PaleoJudaica posts on the Katumuwa (Kuttumuwa) inscription are here, here, and here and links. Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."

New archaeology library and archive in Jerusalem

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Antiquities Authority to build in Jerusalem largest archeology library in Mideast. Library, to be called The Mandel National Library for the Archeology of Israel, is to house nearly 150,000 volumes. (Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post).

The Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday that it would construct the Middle East’s largest archeological library in Jerusalem.

The library, to be called The Mandel National Library for the Archeology of Israel, is to house nearly 150,000 volumes, including 500 rare books and over 1,000 periodicals, the authority said.

The adjacent Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel National Archeological Archives is to contain the authority’s archive as well as maps, permits, plans and publications of excavations from the British Mandate period through today, serving researchers and the public.

[...]

The AP (here in The Guardian) also has the story: Israel to build national centre for ancient artefacts. Centre will showcase Israel's rich collection of 2m artefacts including world's largest collection of Dead Sea scrolls.

Restoration of the Temple in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Talmud Is a Training Manual for Jews Preparing for the Next Holy Era. For a hundred generations Jews lived in anticipation of redemption, a historical tension that continues to define Judaism. Excerpt:

This way of thinking only makes sense if you believe, as Yochanan did, that “soon the Temple will be rebuilt”—and not just soon, but suddenly, without preparation. In other words, the Third Temple is not going to be a massive, long-term construction project, like the First Temple that Solomon built, and the Second Temple that Ezra and Nehemiah built. It is going to spring up or descend from heaven all at once, intact—and in that moment, Jews will suddenly have to go back to obeying a whole host of laws that currently seem obsolete. For this reason, Jews have to remain in training, ready to resume Temple life when the need arises; and the Talmud, one might say, is their training manual.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature

EXCITING NEW PROJECT: Announcing METI’s new Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature (Morgan Davis).

On behalf of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, I am pleased to announce the addition of an important new series to our Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI). The series, to be called the Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature (LJAL), will publish works written by Jewish authors living within the Islamic world of the Middle Ages. At the invitation of James T. Robinson, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and David Sklare, of the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, an international team of scholars have come together to edit, translate, and publish these texts in the same dual-language format as other METI publications like the Islamic Translation Series and Eastern Christian Texts. The bilingual format makes primary texts and expert translations simultaneously available to experts, students, and general readers alike. Texts will be selected from across the entire range of genres represented in Judeo-Arabic literature, including philosophy, theology, Biblical interpretation, history, and many other genres.

Follow the link for more information. I have a number of the Arabic/English volumes from the Islamic Translations Series on my bookshelves and have even read some of them to help maintain my Arabic. They are excellent, and I very much look forward to this new series.

Schiffman on the Rabbis and early Christianity

ANOTHER BLOG SERIES BY LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: The Halakhic Response of the Rabbis to the Rise of Christianity (5 posts).

The Jewish-Christian schism in Late Antiquity has been studied from numerous points of view. This paper will approach these events by investigating the manner in which halakhic issues (questions of Jewish law) motivated the approach of the early Rabbis to the rise of the new faith, and the manner in which Rabbinic legal enactments expressed that approach as well. The eventual conclusion of the Rabbis and the Jewish community that Christianity was a separate religion and that Christians were not Jews, was intimately bound up with the Jewish laws and traditions governing personal status in the Jewish community, both for Jews by birth and proselytes. These laws, as known today, were already in full effect by the rise of Christianity. ...

Veale video

SARAH VEALE IS TOTALLY PROMOTING THE STUDY OF ANCIENT LANGUAGES. Well done, Sarah.

Enochic radio?

THERE'S A RADIO SHOW IN LAS VEGAS CALLED "THE TEACHINGS OF ENOCH." Who knew?

Interview with Helene Wecker (The Golem and the Jinni)

MARGINALIA: The Golem and the Jinni: A Conversation with Helene Wecker. Phillip Sherman talks with Helene Wecker about incorporating Jewish and Muslim traditions into her debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni.

It was like I was telling these old stories I’d heard a million times, and they sort of lay there on the page. I was complaining about it to a friend in the workshop, who knew what I liked to read, and asked me why I wasn’t doing something fantastical instead of this straight-up realist fiction. And instantly, it was like this side door opened that I hadn’t seen before but had always been there. I thought, what if, instead of the Jewish girl and Arab-American boy who’d been the two characters who threaded through the stories, I swapped in a female golem and a male jinni?

For reviews of The Golem and the Jinni, as well as much more on golems, go here and just keep following the links back.

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.