(Modern) Phoenician metal sculpture

PHOENICIAN WATCH: In ancient Byblos, metal sculptures add a modern touch (Nohad Topalian, Al-Shorfa.com).

Lebanese artist Sami Khoury is lighting up the ancient walls of UNESCO's International Centre for Human Sciences in Byblos with 34 plaques sculpted out of aged metal which portray three-dimensional Phoenician figures.

The exhibition, titled "Ahiram: Metal and Light" after the Phoenician king of Byblos, will remain on display through August 20th.

Khoury, a well-known choreographer who is trying his hand at sculpture for the first time, spoke with Al-Shorfa about his new project.

[...]

Ahiram, King of Byblos c. 1000 BCE, and his inscribed sarcophagus are well known, at least to Northwest Semitic epigraphers.

Snowpiercer

GNOSTICISM WATCH: How an Obscure 2nd Century Christian Heresy Influenced Snowpiercer (Michael M. Hughes, io9).

Wilford, the creator of the eponymous Snowpiercer in Bong Joon-ho's visionary science fiction epic, has fabricated our world in microcosm. It's an enormous, interconnected ecosystem that — because of its function as an ark for the all that remains of humanity —truly is their only world (young Timmy calls it "the whole wide train"). Snowpiercer flips the Gnostic model of the cosmos sideways, however, and instead of moving vertically from the lower material world to the higher, more exalted spiritual realm, the tail-enders' quest takes them horizontally from the Dickensian hell of the caboose to the rarified heaven of the eternal engine.

Sounds like an interesting movie.

More on Gnosticism's influence on films and in other modern contexts here, here, and here, and links

Crowdfunding campaign for Third Temple

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Online Campaign Aims to Build Third Temple. The Temple Institute launches an indiegogo campaign to build the Third Temple, under the title: 'Don't make history, make the future' (Arutz Sheva). I say it again: no building or excavation on the Temple Mount unless and until it can be done using non-invasive and non-destructive scanning technologies.

More on the Temple Institute is here and links.

Destruction in Mosul

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: Does Jonah's tomb signal the death of Christianity in Iraq? (Joel S. Baden and Candida Moss, CNN). (The (traditional) Tomb of Jonah in Mosul was reportedly destroyed by ISIS last week. I have refrained from commenting until now to see if the story held up, but current indications are that it is true.) Excerpt:

Last week, ISIS reportedly issued an ultimatum to Christians that they must convert to Islam, flee or face the sword. Earlier this month ISIS had allowed Christians to pay a non-Muslim tax known as jizya. On July 17, Christians were notified that jizya was no longer an option. They must now convert, flee or die.

Among the last Christians to leave the city were monks – residents of the ancient Mar Behnam Monastery – who left behind them 1,400 years of rich Christian tradition, as ISIS refused to let the monks take any of their precious relics with them.

Despite its antiquity and rich tradition, Christianity in Iraq is on the brink of eradication.

The heirs to those who first discovered the tomb of Jonah, and those who helped to keep Greek philosophy alive in the medieval period, are being ejected from their homes and from a land they have held sacred for centuries. This is the face and reality of Christian persecution.

Jonah was one of the earliest symbols of the resurrection for Christians. Will Christianity ever rise again in Iraq?

Related: Trampled in Abraham’s dust: The destruction of Near Eastern Christianity (Franck Salameh, Jerusalem Post).

Background here and links.

Review of Marks, First Came Marriage

H-JUDAIC REVIEW:

Susan Marks. First Came Marriage: The Rabbinic Appropriation of Early Jewish Wedding Ritual. Judaism in Context Series. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2013. ix + 261 pp. $183.04 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-59333-585-4.

Reviewed by Jane Kanarek (Hebrew College)
Published on H-Judaic (July, 2014)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Ancient Jewish Weddings between Ritual and History

With the goal of uncovering practices that have heretofore been unnoticed in ancient Jewish weddings, Susan Marks sets her methodological task as negotiating between the poles of ritual and history. She contends that approaching the study of Jewish weddings from the perspective of ritual theory alone misleads, but so too does the sole perspective of history. ...

Review of Outside the Bible

THE SEFORIM BLOG: Review of Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture by Shaye J.D. Cohen. Excerpt:

The canonization of the Hebrew Bible was an enormous goad to Jewish creativity. Across genres, styles, and languages, the Jews of the second temple period reacted to, interacted with, interpreted and re-interpreted, the words of the Bible, especially the Torah, in an extraordinary variety of ways with an extraordinary variety of results. The words of the Bible, especially the Torah, seem to have consumed the Jews to such an extent that they produced little literature that did not somehow engage the Bible and its concerns. Outside the Bible is a good entry point for the study not just of ancient Bible interpretation but also of ancient Judaism as a whole.

There is also a favorable mention of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1.

For more on Outside the Bible see here and links.

Review of Swartz, The Ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad

KRISTA DALTON: Who Exactly Were The Ancient Jews? At least according to Seth Schwartz. Excerpt:

In a more condensed and perhaps more self-reflective form of his earlier chronology in Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE, Schwartz produces a succinct minimalist historical narrative, heavily nuanced by archeological evidence and Neusnarian skepticism.

Via Antquitopia. The Ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad was noted last month as forthcoming here. It's now out and already reviewed. Things move fast in the Blogosphere!

Bloomsbury books

THREE NEW BOOKS FROM BLOOMSBURY:

'I Lifted My Eyes and Saw'
Reading Dream and Vision Reports in the Hebrew Bible

Editor(s): Elizabeth R. Hayes, Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

Published: 31-07-2014
Format: Hardback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 272
ISBN: 9780567605665
Imprint: Bloomsbury T&T Clark
Series: The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies
Dimensions: 234 x 156 mm
RRP: £70.00
Online price: £63.00
Save £7.00 (10%)

About 'I Lifted My Eyes and Saw'

This volume addresses the rhetorical function and impact of vision and dream accounts in the Hebrew Bible. The contributors explore the exegetical, rhetorical, and structural aspects of the vision and dream accounts in the Hebrew Bible, focusing on prophetic vision reports. Several contributors employ a diachronic approach as they explore the textual relationship between the vision reports and the oracular material. Others focus on the rhetorical aspects of the vision reports in their final form and discuss why vision reporting may be used to convey a message. Another approach employed looks at reception history and investigates how this type of text has been understood by past exegetes. A few chapters consider the inter-textual relationship of the various vision reports in the Hebrew Bible, focusing on shared themes and motifs. There are also papers that deal with the ways in which select texts in the Hebrew Bible portray dream/vision interpreters andtheir activities.


Imagining the Other and Constructing Israelite Identity in the Early Second Temple Period

Editor(s): Ehud Ben Zvi, Diana Vikander Edelman

Published: 25-09-2014
Format: Hardback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 400
ISBN: 9780567248725
Imprint: Bloomsbury T&T Clark
Series: The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies
Dimensions: 234 x 156 mm
RRP: £70.00
Online price: £63.00
Save £7.00 (10%)

About Imagining the Other and Constructing Israelite Identity in the Early Second Temple Period

This volume sheds light on how particular constructions of the 'Other'contributed to an ongoing process of defining what 'Israel' or an 'Israelite'was or was supposed to be in literature taken to be authoritative in the latePersian and Early Hellenistic periods. It asks, who is an insider and who anoutsider? Are boundaries permeable? Are there different ideas expressed withinindividual books? What about constructions of the (partial) 'Other' frominside, e.g., women, people whose body did not fit social constructions ofnormalness? It includes chapters dealing with theoretical issues and casestudies, and addresses similar issues from the perspective of groups in thelate Second Temple period so as to shed light on processes of continuity anddiscontinuity on these matters. Preliminary forms of five of the contributions werepresented in Thessaloniki in 2011 in the research programme, 'Production andReception of Authoritative Books in the Persian and Hellenistic Period,' at theAnnual Meeting of European Association of Biblical Studies (EABS).


Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually

Editor(s): Katharine Dell, Will Kynes

Published: 25-09-2014
Format: Hardback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 344
ISBN: 9780567331250
Imprint: Bloomsbury T&T Clark
Series: The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies
Dimensions: 234 x 156 mm
RRP: £70.00
Online price: £63.00
Save £7.00 (10%)

About Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually

This volume continues the study of intertextuality in the ‘Wisdom Literature’ initiated in Reading Job Intertextually (Dell and Kynes, T&T Clark, 2012). Like that book, Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually provides the first comprehensive treatment of intertextuality in this wisdom text. Articles address intertextual resonances between Ecclesiastes and texts across the Hebrew canon, along with texts throughout history, from Greek classical literature to the New Testament, Jewish and Christian interpretation, and existential and Modern philosophy.

As a multi-authored volume that gathers together scholars with expertise on this diverse array of texts, this collection provides exegetical insight that exceeds any similar attempt by a single author. The contributors have been encouraged to pursue the intertextual approach that best suits their topic, thereby offering readers a valuable collection of intertextual case studies addressing a single text.

Follow the links for TOCs and ordering information.

The ANE and psychotropic drugs

ASOR BLOG: Psychedelics and the Ancient Near East (Diana L. Stein).

As courts today debate whether to legalize or regulate the use of drugs like cannabis, it is interesting to look at the history of man’s relationship with mind-altering substances.Several books, exhibits and catalogues have recently explored the topic. Yet, despite the consensus that “every society on earth is a high society,” the Ancient Near East is omitted from these surveys. Is it too remote? Do we know so little? Was it unique? The evidence suggests otherwise.

[...]

The Coinage of Carthage

PUNIC WATCH: The Coinage of Carthage (Mike Markowitz, CoinWeek).

Most of what we know about Carthaginians was written by their enemies–first the Greeks, then the Romans. They are described as greedy, treacherous and brutal. Yet even Cicero, a Roman politician born 40 years after Carthage was wiped out, grudgingly admitted that “Carthage would never have held an empire for six hundred years had it not been governed with wisdom and statesmanship.”

None of its literature, and very little of its art, architecture or material culture survives.

But we have the coins.

[...]

The article puts the coinage into a nice capsule history of Carthage.

Hurtado on Wright on Paul

LARRY HURTADO: Review of Wright Published. An early review of my St Andrews colleague N. T. Wright's magnum opus, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (SPCK, 2013).

Brill books

NEW BOOKS FROM BRILL:

Women in the Bible, Qumran and Early Rabbinic Literature
Their Status and Roles

Paul Heger

Women in the Bible, Qumran and Early Rabbinic Literature: Their Status and Roles portrays the tension between the unity of husband and wife and their different legal and social status from a wide range of perspectives, as deduced from the texts of the three corpora. The volume discusses the related topics of divorce, polygamy, woman’s obligations to fulfill precepts, membership in the community, genealogy and attitudes toward sex, such as rejection of asceticism. Women in the Bible, Qumran and Early Rabbinic Literature begins with an objective interpretation of the biblical narratives of the Creation and the Fall, the intellectual basis of Jewish attitudes toward women, and then analyzes the divergent interpretations of Qumran and the Rabbis, the grounds of their distinct doctrines and halakhot.


The Cave 4 Apocryphon of Jeremiah and the Qumran Jeremianic Traditions
Prophetic Persona and the Construction of Community Identity

Kipp Davis

The Cave 4 Apocryphon of Jeremiah C from Qumran survives in several copies, and presents significant links between the prophet Jeremiah, the scriptural book of Jeremiah, and the collectors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because the prophet is only occasionally named in the Scrolls, and there are only a few clear instances where the book is cited, Jeremiah appears to have had a limited impact on the imagination of the Qumranites. However, through a careful appraisal of the Apocryphon manuscripts, and a reconsideration of Jeremiah's influence in the Dead Sea Scrolls via his reputational authority, this study shows that clusters of traditions were tied to Jeremiah’s prophetic and priestly distinction, with an emphasis on matters of leadership and empire.


Psalmen oder Psalter?
Materielle Rekonstruktion und inhaltliche Untersuchung der Psalmenhandschriften aus der Wüste Juda

Eva Jain

Psalms or Psalter? This study creates a new, solid foundation for discussions on the psalm manuscripts found in the Judean Desert. A variety of explanatory models, statistics and synthetic hypotheses have already been produced in the course of numerous analyses and interpretations. However, the disparate and fragmentary character of the manuscripts has barely received any attention since the main focus has mostly been on discussions of the content. For the first time, the entire preserved fragment material of the psalm manuscripts from the Judean Desert is here being presented and edited as a whole. In this way, it can be defined and analyzed in future studies.
New ways of exploring the contents will particularly result with regard to the best preserved psalm roll, 11QPs a.

Psalmen oder Psalter? Die vorliegende Studie schafft eine neue, tragfähigere Basis für die Auseinandersetzung um die Psalmenhandschriften aus der Wüste Juda. Im Rahmen zahlreicher Analysen und Interpretationen wurden schon vielfältige Erklärungsmodelle, Statistiken und Gesamthypothesen zu den Psalmenhandschriften geliefert. Da das Hauptaugenmerk der meisten Untersuchungen bislang auf der inhaltlichen Auseinandersetzung lag, wurde der disparate und fragmentarische Charakter der Manuskripte kaum berücksichtigt.
Erstmals wird nun das gesamte erhaltene Fragmentenmaterial der Psalmenhandschriften aus der Wüste Juda umfassend dargestellt und aufbereitet. Auf diese Weise lässt es sich definieren und für weitere Untersuchungen auswerten.
Gerade in Hinsicht auf die besterhaltene Psalmenrolle 11QPs a ergeben sich so ganz neue Wege zur Erschließung der Handschrift.

And a couple other of tangential interest to ancient Judaism but which I find interesting for one reason or another:

Codex Schøyen 2650: A Middle Egyptian Coptic Witness to the Early Greek Text of Matthew's Gospel
A Study in Translation Theory, Indigenous Coptic, and New Testament Textual Criticism

James M. Leonard, Louisiana State University and Loyola University New Orleans

In 2001, the exciting but enigmatic 4th century Coptic Matthew text, Codex Schøyen, was introduced as an alternative, non-canonical Matthew. In this book, James M. Leonard refutes these sensational claims through fresh methodological approaches and easily accessible analysis. Leonard reveals that the underlying Greek text is one of great quality, and that Codex Schøyen can contribute to the identification of the earliest attainable text—but only with due concern for translational interference. Leonard shows how Codex Schøyen’s close alliance with Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus allows triangulation of the three to help identify an earlier text form which they mutually reflect, and how this impacts a dozen variant passages in Matthew.


Dark Enlightenment
The Historical, Sociological, and Discursive Contexts of Contemporary Esoteric Magic

By Kennet Granholm (Stockholm University, Sweden)

In Dark Enlightenment Kennet Granholm explores the historical, sociological, and discursive contexts of contemporary esoteric magic. The book is focused on the Sweden-originated Left-Hand Path magic order Dragon Rouge in particular, but through a detailed contextualizing examination of this case study it offers a broader visage of contemporary esotericism in general. The author takes cue from both the historiography of Western esotericism and the sociological study of new religions and religious change, aiming to provide a transdisciplinary framework for a comprehensive study of esotericism in late modernity.

Review of Jones, Between Pagan and Christian

BOOK REVIEW: Between Pagan and Christian, by Christopher P. Jones, by Candida Moss in the Times Higher. Excerpt:

This is important subject matter and a worthwhile read, and Jones is peerless in his discussions of the 4th century and beyond. For those interested in details as well as broad strokes, he is just the man to show us exactly how fuzzy the notion of paganism was in the ancient world. Engaging anecdotes - for instance about the conversion of various ancient figures - punctuate a book replete with linguistic definitions.

But when he refers to the world before Constantine, Jones’ erudition and constructivist interests seem to slip. Not only are the facts of the 1st century idealistically borrowed from traditional ecclesial histories and the Acts of the Apostles, his interests in historical constructivism evaporate. ...

Iraqi Christians expelled from Mosul

ARAMAIC WATCH: Purged by ISIS, Iraq's Christians appeal to world for help (Fox).

Iraqi Christians are begging for help from the civilized world after Mosul, the northern city where they have lived and worshiped for 2,000 years, was purged of non-Muslims by ISIS, the jihadist terror group that claims to have established its own nation in the region.

Assyrian Christians, including Chaldean and Syriac Catholics, Syriac Orthodox and followers of the Assyrian Church of the East have roots in present day Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran that stretch back to the time of Jesus Christ. While they have long been a minority and have faced persecution in the past, they had never been driven completely from their homes as has happened in Mosul under ISIS. When the terror group ordered all to convert to Islam, pay a religious tax or face execution, many chose another option: flight.

[...]

Mosul is home to some of the most ancient Christian communities, but the number of Christians has dwindled since 2003. On Sunday, militants seized the 1,800-year old Mar Behnam Monastery, about 15 miles south of Mosul. The resident clergymen left to the nearby city of Qaraqoush, according to local residents.

[...]

The BBC has a story about the monastery: Isis militants 'seize Iraq monastery and expel monks'.

Background on Mosul and on related issues in the Middle East is here and links.

The Talmud on the Book of Esther

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Is the Book of Esther—a Story Told In Human Terms, Not Miracles—a Holy Book? Talmudic rabbis, like us, can only study the course of history for the elusive signs of God’s intentions.

This week, Daf Yomi readers began a new tractate, Megilla, which deals with the holiday of Purim—the day on which we read the Megilla or Scroll of Esther. And in Megillat 7a, we learned a surprising fact about that scroll: “Rav Yehuda said that Shmuel said: The book of Esther does not render the hands ritually impure.” All the other books of the Bible transmit tumah, ritual impurity, to those who touch them: As the Koren Talmud explains, the sages instituted this rule in order to discourage people from handling the biblical books too casually. Why doesn’t the Book of Esther follow this pattern? “Is this to say,” the Gemara asks, “that Shmuel maintains that the book of Esther was not stated with the inspiration of the Divine Spirit?”

[...]

The rabbis went to quite a lot of effort to find God in the various lucky breaks in the book. The Book of Esther continues to get attention today, especially in international political contexts. See here and links. And yes, that link happens to be the post immediately after the one linked to in the post I just put up, and that's how I noticed it. Coincidence? Do you really think so?

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Canine Aramaic?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Talking to a dog in Aramaic (Adam McCollum).

As good as pirate Aramaic.

SBL program book

THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE has posted a searchable Preliminary Program Book for its upcoming annual meeting in San Diego on 22-25 November. I'm in the following session:

Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
11/25/2014
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: 500 (Level 5 (Cobalt)) - Hilton Bayfront (HB)

Theme: Early Judaism
Featuring reviews of James Davila, Hekhalot Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism (Brill, 2013)

M. David Litwa, University of Virginia, Presiding
Ra'anan Boustan, University of California-Los Angeles
Review of James Davila, Hekhalot Literature in Translation (20 min)
Rebecca Lesses, Ithaca College
Review of James Davila, Hekhalot Literature in Translation (20 min)
James Davila, University of St. Andrews, Respondent (25 min)
Discussion (10 min)
Ryan E. Stokes, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Reconsidering the Assumption of Moses (25 min)
Tom Hull, Monash University-Victoria Australia
Honest to God: Truth, theodicy and the heavenly law court in 3 Enoch (25 min)
INCHOL YANG, Claremont Lincoln University
The Influence of Ezek. 40-48 on 1Enoch 14:8-25 (25 min)

More on the third Huqoq mosaic

ELEPHANTS: Mystery Mosaic Discovered in Ancient Galilee Synagogue (Menachem Wecker, The Forward). Excerpt:

Although Zodiac signs are portrayed at the 6th-century Beit Alpha synagogue (Israel), [excavator Jodi] Magness stresses that the third Huqoq mosaic is the first non-biblical narrative in a synagogue, even though non-biblical imagery exists. “Helios and the zodiac cycle is not a story or narrative,” she says. “The other stories depicted in ancient synagogues (including at Dura Europos) are all taken from the Hebrew Bible.”

Given the dearth of elephants in the Hebrew bible, identifying the figures in the mosaic is difficult. Magness is quoted in the UNC release saying that battle elephants are associated with Alexander the Great and subsequent Greek armies. The depiction, she writes, could refer to the legend that Alexander met the Jewish high priest. Asked if the elephants (and lit oil lamps in the second register) could suggest the Hanukkah story and the Maccabean revolt, Magness said she and her colleagues had speculated about a Maccabean interpretation last year, but the newly uncovered mosaics defy that identification.

Background here and links.

No jail yet for Golb

RAPHAEL GOLB: Appeal of Conviction Delays Jail in Internet Forgery Case (AP).

Background on the Golb Dead-Sea-Scrolls internet-impersonation case is here and links.

Hobby Lobby museum

TO HOUSE THE GREEN COLLECTION: Bible museum planned for US capital (AFP).

Zoharic Aramaic website

The Aramaic Language of the Zohar: Resources for studying Kabbalah in the original language.

This site will provide resources for people interested in reading the Zohar, the text at the heart of the Jewish mystical tradition, in its original language, or who are interested in the Aramaic language more generally. It is part of a larger project by Judy Barrett and Justin Jaron Lewis, who are working on a beginner’s textbook and a practical dictionary of the Aramaic of the Zohar.

A few years ago I noted a course on Zoharic Aramaic, taught by Justin Jaron Lewis at the University of Manitoba. And recently Judy Barrett alerted us to Daniel Matt's online Zohar Dictionary. Background on Matt's Aramaic edition and English translation of the Zohar is also at that link.

Ronald Youngblood, 1931-2014

SAD NEWS: RONALD YOUNGBLOOD, WORKED ON TRANSLATION OF BIBLE (Christine Huard, San Diego U-T). Professor Ronald Youngblood died earlier this month at the age of 82 in San Diego, my home town. He is best known for his work on the New International Version of the Bible. I first met Ron in 1982, shortly after he had moved to Bethel Seminary West. I was a Master's student at UCLA looking to an academic career in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies and he graciously met with me a number of times to offer advice. He was a good guy. Requiescat in pace.

(Via the Agade List.)

Panel on Jewish and Talmudic medicine

H-JUDAIC: „Jewish Medicine“: One-day panel at Xth EAJS-Congress, Paris, 24.7.2014.

Evil lectures

BIBLICAL STUDIES ONLINE: Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity.

Videos are available of some of the speakers at the Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity conference, St Mary’s College, Twickenham, May 23-24, 2014.

Background here.

For what it's worth, let me encourage anyone who posts a lecture or podcast online to also post a transcript. Perhaps I'm a dinosaur, but I rarely sit through lengthy video or audio presentations. I haven't the time and I don't see the point of listening to something that I could read much more quickly, and I doubt that I'm alone in feeling this way. But I do read online papers and transcribed podcasts. So if you are presenting from a written text, posting the written form as well could enlarge your audience.

The Septuagint Sessions

REMINDER: Timothy Michael is doing a series of podcasts on the Septuagint. He is currently up to number eight. The RSS feed is here.

Noted earlier here.

The Studia Philonica Annual

WEBSITE: Philo of Alexandria - Studia Philonica Annual. It's been many years since I linked to the website of this important journal, so here it is again.

Brill Jewish Studies catalogue

RECENTLY RELEASED BY BRILL: Jewish Studies Catalog 2014.

Shanks on the GJW and the Jehoash inscription

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: First Person: Gold from the Temple? Hershel Shanks’s First Person in the July/August 2014 issue of BAR. Mr. Shanks notes Leo Depuydt's response to the Gospel of Jesus' Wife and then he (Shanks) comments on the authenticity of the Jehoash (Joash) Inscription, adding some additional information about the gold globules on it.

I have commented unfavorably on some of Depuydt's statements, but I'm not sure what the point was of quoting him in this essay. All he seems to be saying is that the papyrological evidence alone suffices to show that the text is a modern fake (albeit, using ancient materials). Given the recent advances in the discussion by Christian Askeland and Stephen Emmel,* that sounds about right to me. Although if Hershel is implying that the material tests ought to be applied nevertheless, I agree with him.

*I just discovered that my post of 23 June (linking to Alin Suciu's blog post about Stephen Emmel's new observations) apparently did not publish correctly. But it's there now, so go have a look at it. And further background on the GJW is here and links.

More on the new Huqoq mosaics

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: New Huqoq Mosaics. Huqoq synagogue in Israel reveals additional depictions of Samson in the Bible

New mosaics from the fifth-century C.E. Huqoq synagogue in Israel were found during the 2013 excavation season. Directed by Professor Jodi Magness of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Shua Kisilevitz of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Huqoq Excavation Project uncovered another mosaic depicting a scene of Samson in the Bible, as well as a mosaic that might depict a scene from the Apocrypha. ...

Background here and links.

Tenure at YU

CONGRATULATIONS TO RICHARD HIDARY (and his seven colleagues), who just received tenure at Yeshiva University: YU Grants Tenure to Eight Faculty Members Yeshiva University grants tenure to eight faculty members in fields ranging from art history to mathematics and Judaic studies (Arutz Sheva).

Hidary received his PhD from New York University, where his studies culminated in a book titled Dispute for the Sake of Heaven: Legal Pluralism in the Talmud (Brown Judaic Studies, 2010). At Stern, he teaches courses in Bible, Second Temple Jewish history and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Talmud and Midrash, and Jewish ethics.

He is currently working on his second book, which will explore the Greco-Roman context of the Talmud and Midrash, with particular focus on the relationship between the art of persuasive speaking that dominated the educational system of the Roman empire and the rabbis’ roles as preachers and teachers.

Restoration of Deir Al-Surian painting

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Which Macarius? A painting of Saint Macarius has been uncovered at the Deir Al-Surian Monastery in Wadi Al-Natroun, reports Sherif Sonbol (Al-Ahram).

The Deir Al-Surian Monastery in Wadi Al-Natroun boasts some gems of holy architecture and design, with the Church of the Holy Virgin, the Gate of Prophecies and the uniquely detailed gypsum altar. It also contains the relics of Mary Magdalen, and the famous Monk in a White Robe. Yet the newly discovered painting of “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in heaven with the souls of the blessed on their bosoms” — in its simple, comics-like style — is arguably the most striking object.

It was uncovered in 2000, and even then it could be seen that the art continued to the left, together with Syriac inscriptions. Last month restorers were finally completing work on removing the 18th-century plaster concealing The Three Fathers under the management of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo Professor Karel Innemée.

[...]

A representation of Saint Macarius, as Innemée explained, the new painting was found in nearly perfect condition by a conservation mission led by the Polish archeologist Cristobal Calaforra. To its right there is a small figure of a monk standing on a grapevine, with the contour of a head suggesting a second monk behind him, possibly a reference to Saint Macarius of Alexandria, who is cited in Volume XXIX of the Historia Monachorum: he is said to have refused the gift of a bunch of grapes on falling ill out of humility.

The painting to the left, however, suggests it might be a representation of Macarius the Great. It is a large cherubim with a human face and three other heads around his own: of a lion, a bird and a bull, a reference to the vision of Ezekiel. The cherubim has six green eye-covered wings, two of which cover his body: a possible reference to the Apocalypse of Sain John. With one hand he holds the arm of Macarius, perhaps guiding him to a new place to live in the Desert of Sketis.

Left of the painting there are inscriptions in Syriac and Coptic. The Syriac text is well preserved and speaks of the death of Mar Maqari of Takri, Abbot of the monastery, in AD 888. It wishes that he will join Saint Macarius in heaven and rest in the lap of Abraham (a clear indication that the text is in reference to the painting to its right).

[...]

Noted not only because of the cool cherub (not "cherubim," which is plural) and the Syriac and Coptic inscriptions, but also because the Deir Al-Surian Monastery is well known (at least to PaleoJudaica readers) for its remarkable collection of manuscripts in many languages, a catalogue of which has recently been published. Background on the manuscripts, catalogue, and Monastery is here and links.

Dovekeepers miniseries

THE DOVEKEEPERS, Alice Hoffman's novel about the fall of Masada, is being made into a 4-hour miniseries by CBS. The media are all over this one, now that they've heard that the cast includes a hot witch: Casting announcement: Cote De Pablo to star in THE DOVEKEEPERS (wusa9.com).

LOS ANGELES – Cote de Pablo will star in THE DOVEKEEPERS, a four-hour CBS miniseries event from executive producers Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, which will be broadcast in 2015. The project is based on Alice Hoffman's acclaimed historical novel about four extraordinary women whose lives intersect in a fight for survival at the siege of Masada.

De Pablo will play Shirah, one of the four women, who is a sensual, mysterious and fiercely independent single mother with uncanny insights and a quiet and mysterious power. She is derided by many as the 'Witch of Moab,' as she covertly practices forbidden ancient rites of magic and is keenly knowledgeable about herbal remedies. However, those in need don't hesitate to approach her for her help and generosity of spirit.

[...]

Elbadawi on the Qur'an and Aramaic

SYRIAC WATCH:

The Impact of Aramaic (especially Syriac) on the Qur'ān

Emran Elbadawi
Article first published online: 2 JUL 2014
DOI: 10.1111/rec3.12109
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Religion Compass
Volume 8, Issue 7, pages 220–228, July 2014

Abstract

The impact of Aramaic (especially Syriac) on the Qur'ān has long been a matter of debate among scholars, especially among those of the western academe but also within circles of traditional Muslim scholarship. Central to this discussion is the language and audience of the Qur'ān. Studies on the Qur'ān's foreign vocabulary gradually gave way to more in depth analyses on the text's relationship to Syriac Christian literature as well as debates surrounding the Jewish-Christian dimensions, the text's audience. The textual theories employed in studying the Qur'ān's relationship to the Syriac language and Biblical canon contain the strongest debate concerning the impact of Aramaic (especially Syriac) on the Qur'ān. These textual theories have been given consideration in recent scholarship, which reads the Qur'ān in light of the Aramaic translations of the Gospels, as well as the Syriac translation of the Didascalia Apostolorum.

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Prof. Elbadawi's book is noted here. For "Christoph Luxenberg," see here and here and links. And other relevant recent books are noted here and here.

Mazuz, Jews of Medina

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina

Haggai Mazuz, Bar-Ilan University

In The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina Haggai Mazuz offers an account of the halakhic character of the Jewish community of Medina in the seventh century CE. Making use of a unique methodology of comparison between Islamic and Jewish sources, Mazuz convincingly argues that the Jews of Medina were Talmudic-Rabbinic Jews in almost every respect. Their sages believed in using homiletic interpretation of the Scriptures, as did the sages of the Talmud. On many halakhic issues, their observations were identical to those of the Talmudic sages. In addition, they held Rabbinic beliefs, sayings and motifs derived from the Midrashic literature.

More on Golb ruling

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Son of Dead Sea Scrolls Scholar Is Sentenced to Two Months in Jail (James C. McKinley Jr.). Excerpt:

The sentencing of Raphael Golb, the son of a prominent Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, came two months after the Court of Appeals struck down the state’s aggravated harassment law under which he had been charged, ruling that it was unconstitutionally vague and broad. The law made it illegal to communicate with someone “in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm.”

But State Supreme Court in Manhattan upheld Mr. Golb’s convictions on criminal impersonation and forgery counts, for which he received the sentence of two months in jail and three years’ probation.

Justice Laura A. Ward ordered Mr. Golb to surrender on July 22.

Mr. Golb’s lawyer, Ron Kuby, said he had filed a new appeal of the jury’s verdict in light of the Court of Appeals decision, and said, in hindsight, that the original trial judge had made critical mistakes in instructing the jury.

Outside court, Mr. Golb said he had been sentenced to jail for what he considered at the time to be satire. He called the trial unfair. “It’s dangerous,” he said. “It could happen to anyone.”

Background here and links.

Exodus movie

HERE COMES ANOTHER BIBLICAL EPIC: First Look at Ridley Scott’s ‘Exodus’ (Anthony Weiss, The Forward). You can watch the trailer there. It would be cool if the angel of death looked like the Alien.

Perhaps another mention of Scott's Prada ad narrating the Gnostic text Thunder, Perfect Mind is called for (commentary here and links).

Brock interview

MARGINALIA: Coffee Table Talk with Sebastian Brock. Sebastian Brock on his life and work and the field of Syriac Studies. Timothy Michael Law interviews Dr. Brock in a podcast.

Christians and fasts in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Why Early Jews Didn’t Care at All About Christians. In a struggle against the idea of history, Jewish life strives to change as little as possible, even when new religions take over. Excerpt:

In Western culture, we tend to see Christian history as absolute history, and we learn about Jewish history largely in terms of its interactions with Christianity—whether that means persecution in the Crusades, or emancipation at the time of the French Revolution, or the failure of European assimilation in the 20th century. One reason I find it so illuminating to read the Talmud is that it presents an autonomously Jewish understanding of the world, in which Jews act rather than react. Indeed, the Talmud might even be said to struggle against the whole idea of history. Seder Mo’ed seems to inhabit a timeless time of ritual repetition, during which Jewish life strives to change as little as possible, keeping itself ready for the arrival of redemption.

The reference to Christianity in Ta’anit 27b comes during a discussion of fasting, which is this tractate’s main subject. In earlier chapters, we have heard about the procedures for fasting in response to drought and other calamities. Yet there are also certain fast days that are fixtures on the Jewish calendar, and the last chapter of Ta’anit explains their rationale. Some of these fasts remain central to Jewish practice—the 9th of Av, and to a lesser extent the 17th of Tammuz, which falls today, in a rare coincidence of the Daf Yomi calendar with the Jewish calendar. But the Talmud begins by talking about a whole category of fasts that disappeared from post-Temple Judaism: the fast of the “non-priestly watches.”

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Sanders on Balaam

SETH SANDERS: A Pagan “Prophet Like Moses”: Balaam and the Problem of Other People’s Revelation (TheTorah.com). Conclusion:

A careful look at the biblical account of Balaam shows that the same is true of this material: it too has a past of its own that we may begin to recover with the help of source criticism, a careful look at diverse rabbinic tradition, and the Deir Alla inscription. More specifically, the Balaam’s legend points to the diversity, and thus the threat, of prophetic and divine sources of knowledge. Parashat Balak presents him as such a powerful source of external authority because he is not one of us, capable of giving us truths from outside. Other parts of the Tanach present him as a seducer and an object of hate, perhaps for the very same reason. He is a symbol of the Torah’s disturbing but purposefully multiple sources, which Sifrei and Gittin so memorably pull apart but which are woven together in the Torah itself. As someone else’s revealer enshrined in our own scripture, he helps reveal the Old Testament of the Old Testament.

Also, I like this evaluation of the Deir Alla text:

It is not that the text is Aramaic, Canaanite, or some mishmash of the two, but that it represents an older stream of language from which the two had not yet diverged. From the viewpoint of Northwest Semitic dialects, Balaam in fact does speak from a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away. What connects these disparate linguistic observations is the words’ otherworldliness: Balaam’s language is just strange enough to evoke another space and time while being basically comprehensible.

Review of Satlow, How the Bible Became Holy

MARGINALIA: Timothy Michael Law on How the Bible Became Holy. The Timely History of a Timeless Story. The review concludes:

Satlow’s reconstruction often outruns the evidence and gives in to the temptation to narrate ancient religious history through the lens of political conflicts among the elites. How the Bible Became Holy is nonetheless a book that raises vital questions about one of the most important books in history. Satlow covers a span of history from the ancient Near East to Late Antiquity, and even though the Bible is his central concern, his command of the broad outline of ancient history in this region impresses. He successfully forces us to think about how authority developed and was not intrinsic to the writings that now make up the Bible. To articulate the intricacies of the Bible’s history would overwhelm most historians. It is a complex story, but one that Satlow narrates with bold ingenuity and conviction.

Earlier reviews etc. are noted here and links.

Robo-scribe

AUTOMATION: 'Robot sofer' writes down Torah (Press Association).

"Rock-Giants in Noah"

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Rock Giants in Noah: Can the Book of Enoch shed light on Noah the movie? The short answer, as regular PaleoJudaica readers already know well, is yes. The full BAR article by Ronald S. Hendel (summarized here) is available only to paid subscribers, but you can read about the relationship between Noah and 1 Enoch (etc.) here and links.

Reduced jail-time for Golb

THE RAPHAEL GOLB IDENTITY-THEFT CASE: After Appeal, Jail in NYC Dead Sea Scrolls Case (Jennifer Peltz, AP). He has been re-sentenced to a lesser jail term of two months (originally six months), although he can still appeal even this.

Background here and many links.

UPDATE: Lawrence Schiffman comments here.

Eighth Enoch Seminar

H-JUDAIC: CFP: Eighth Enoch Seminar: Apocalypticism and Mysticism (Milan, 21-26 June 2015). I will be there, giving a main paper.

Rosenfeld on the Israel Forgery Trial

AMNON ROSENFELD: The Antiquities Game - Behind the Trial of the Century (Bible and Interpretation)

The IAA rejected our conclusions out of hand and scolded the GSI for even allowing tests on unprovenanced antiquities. The major criticism was not against the scientific validity of our research, but that the very testing of unprovenanced items would encourage looting at many of Israel’s archaeological sites. We were accused of sensationalism, naivety, and branded as intruders into the domain of biblical scholars and archaeologists.

(As reported over the weekend by Jack Sasson and Joseph Lauer and noted at the link, tragically, Dr. Rosenfeld died in a car accident on the 10th of July. May his memory be for a blessing.)

This is a long article and I won't try to excerpt it. For my part, I remain unconvinced on philological grounds that the Jehoash (Joash) Inscription is genuine and I find persuasive the argument that the plentitude of unprovenanced biblical-era Hebrew inscriptions vs. the few in Aramaic, Ammonite, Moabite, etc., as well as in contrast to the paucity of inscriptions found in controlled excavations, is suspicious and points in the direction of a lot of those Hebrew inscriptions being forgeries.

More on the Jehoash Inscription and the Israel Forgery Trial here and links. Some years ago I linked to a summary article of the case made by Dr. Rosenfeld and his colleagues for the authenticity of the Jehoash Inscription, also at Bible and Interpretation. My thoughts on how to deal with unprovenanced inscriptions are collected here and here and links.

Also, I have said earlier that I have not yet encountered a peer-review publication defending the authenticity of the Jehoash inscription on philological grounds. That still stands, but I should flag the following article mentioned in Dr Rosenfeld's piece (and noted earlier here):

Cohen, C. ( 2007). “Biblical Hebrew Philology in the light of research on the new Yeho’ash Royal Building Inscription’ in: New Seals and Inscriptions: Hebrew, Idumean, and Cuneiform, Ed. by Meir Lubetski (Hebrew Bible Monographs, 8), Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, pp. 222-284 [I have corrected the page numbering, which is cited incorrectly in the article - JRD]

Cohen is agnostic about the authenticity of the inscription, but he does not think it can be demonstrated philologically to be a modern forgery.

Reviews of Satlow, How the Bible Became Holy

MICHAEL SATLOW'S HOW THE BIBLE BECAME HOLY (Yale University Press) has been reviewed twice recently.

By Sarah Ruden in the Wall Street Journal: Book Review: 'How the Bible Became Holy' by Michael L. Satlow. Jews cherished scripture as one of the few things that allowed them to endure and transcend alien hegemony. Excerpt:

The operative paradox that Mr. Satlow misses is that of popularity and adaptability. No words were more self-consciously and thunderously "holy" than the curses inscribed on pharaohs' tombs as warnings, but these must merely have entertained the robbers who sacked every funerary hoard they could find. What's at issue isn't a writer's intention that a text be holy, or any authority's treatment of it as holy, but the broad assent that the text can win for its holiness.

By Rathe Miller in Philly.com: Picking and choosing among sacred texts to make the Bible. Excerpt:

I would wager that the book's title is more a marketing ploy by Yale University Press than the author's choice - it is a misnomer. More accurate would be: How the Texts That Became the Bible Slowly Acquired Authority. Or perhaps: Canonicity Happens.

Earlier reviews etc. noted here, here, and here.

Miracle-working sages in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Why Even the Greatest Rabbis Can’t Be Trusted. Talmudic thinkers debate the ethics of winning God’s favor, and when a holy person can be too righteous.

In this week’s Daf Yomi reading, Chapter 3 of Tractate Ta’anit, the Talmud turned from the laws of fasting to give us a feast of aggadah. This chapter, I learned from the Koren Talmud, is known in early commentaries as the “Chapter of the Pious,” because it mostly consists of legends about the great sages and their ability to work miracles with God’s help. In telling these stories, however, the Talmud is also pursuing a serious ethical investigation: The rabbis are trying to determine exactly what qualities enable men to win God’s favor. Just as important, the Talmud insists that even the power of the pious is capable of being abused. The ability to coerce God can lead to hubris and vanity—the vices that lie in wait for people proud of their own sanctity.

[...]

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Review of Ehrlich, et. al. Purity, Holiness, and Identity in Judaism and Christianity

H-JUDAIC BOOK REVIEW: Klawans on Ehrlich, et. al. Purity, Holiness, and Identity in Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Memory of Susan Haber.

Crouch, The Making of Israel

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Making of Israel
Cultural Diversity in the Southern Levant and the Formation of Ethnic Identity in Deuteronomy

C.L. Crouch, University of Nottingham

In The Making of Israel C.L. Crouch presents the southern Levant during the seventh century BCE as a major period for the formation of Israelite ethnic identity, challenging scholarship which dates biblical texts with identity concerns to the exilic and post-exilic periods as well as scholarship which limits pre-exilic identity concerns to Josianic nationalism. The argument analyses the archaeological material from the southern Levant during Iron Age II, then draws on anthropological research to argue for an ethnic response to the economic, political and cultural change of this period. The volume concludes with an investigation into identity issues in Deuteronomy, highlighting centralisation and exclusive Yahwism as part of the deuteronomic formulation of Israelite ethnic identity.

Albertz and Wöhrle (eds.), Between Cooperation and Hostility

NEW(ISH) BOOK FROM VANDENHOECK & RUPRECHT:

Between Cooperation and Hostility
Multiple Identities in Ancient Judaism and the Interaction with Foreign Powers

Ed. Rainer Albertz and Jakob Wöhrle.

1. Auflage 2013
280 Seiten mit 16 Abb. gebunden
ISBN 978-3-525-55051-9
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Journal of Ancient Judaism. Supplements - Band 011
89,99 €

The question of why the cooperation of Jews with the Persian and Ptolemaic empires achieved some success and why it failed with regard to the Seleucids and the Romans, even turning into military hostility against them, has not been sufficiently answered. The present volume intends to show, from the perspectives of Hebrew Bible, Judaic, and Ancient History Studies, that the contrasting Jewish attitudes towards foreign powers were not only dependent on specific political circumstances. They were also interrelated with the emergence of multiple early Jewish identities, which all found a basis in the Torah, the prophets, or the psalms.

Wolter et al., The Quest for the Real Jesus

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Quest for the Real Jesus
Radboud Prestige Lectures by Prof. Dr. Michael Wolter

Edited by Jan van der Watt, Radboud University Nijmegen

The Radboud Prestige Lectures in New Testament 2010 were presented by Prof. Michael Wolter (University of Bonn). His prestige lecture was entitled: ‘Which is the real Jesus?’. In this lecture he challenged many of the current views within the historical Jesus research by critically evaluating the approaches in various categories. Afterwards this lecture was presented to a variety of scholars from different disciplines who approach the problem from their particular perspectives, thus bringing a rich texture of insights, apart from engaging critically with Wolter’s views. Thus one can appreciate the role the quest for the historical Jesus plays within a wider framework. This resulted in interesting articles that not only deal with historical, but also with philosophical and hermeneutical issues.

Fort William

I'M OFF TO THE HIGHLANDS to spend a few days in Fort William and its environs. I don't plan to do much blogging, but I have pre-posted things for the days that I am away, so do keep coming back as usual. Have a good week!

Bons et al. (eds.), The Reception of Septuagint Words in Jewish-Hellenistic and Christian Literature

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

The Reception of Septuagint Words in Jewish-Hellenistic and Christian Literature

Ed. by Eberhard Bons, Ralph Brucker and Jan Joosten

The projected Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint will offer historical studies of Septuagint words, retracing their usage from early Greek authors, over koine Greek and the Septuagint translation itself, into Jewish-Hellenistic and early Christian literature. The latter two of these phases were the object of a workshop held in Bühl (Germany) on January 21 and 22, 2011. The reception of the Septuagint in Greek-speaking Judaism and Christianity raises many questions touching the lexicon, such as: How do Jewish or Christian authors writing in Greek handle the difference existing for some words between the "biblical" usage created in the Septuagint and the usual meaning in Greek? To what extent is it possible to affirm that New Testament authors borrowed their religious terminology from the Septuagint? Which words of the Septuagint continue in later writings with their specific meaning, and which ones go out of use? Is it possible to observe further semantic developments in the use of "biblical" words by Jewish or Christian authors writing in Greek?
These and similar questions are of concern not only to the narrow fields of lexical semantics and philology. More often than not, they have important historical and theological implications. With help from some of the best specialists of Jewish-Hellenistic and early Christian texts, an effort will be made in this book to develop an adequate approach to the problems outlined. Papers will combine the analysis of selected words and word groups with considerations of method.

Follow the link for TOC and ordering information.

ISBL 2014

THIS YEAR'S INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE MEETING began yesterday in Vienna. I have other plans this week, but best wishes to all those attending. If Facebook is any indication, they are having a good time.

Reif and the Cairo Geniza

PROFESSOR STEFAN REIF: 'Indiana Jones' of the Cairo Genizah. As many as 200,000 Jewish manuscripts, some more than 1,000 years old, comprise the most important Jewish treasure of the century. Prof. Stefan Reif of the University of Cambridge, who exposed Cairo Genizah and its discoveries to the world, tells Ynet about the revolution it created in the perception of Judaism. (Ynet News, Tali Farkash). This is a long article that covers a lot of ground. Here are a couple of excerpts, but read it all.

Until his retirement, Prof. Reif was responsible for the huge archive, which is considered one of the most important archives in the world and includes as many as 200,000 rare Jewish manuscripts, some of them more than 1,000 years old.

Reif, who is considered one of the leading researchers in his field, has authored countless studies and many books. One of them, "Judaism and Hebrew Prayer," was also translated into Hebrew.

"It wasn't negligence," he says diplomatically about the seven decades in which the Cairo Genizah was abandoned. "They started to document and preserve, but a small part of it.

"When I was appointed to head the department, I didn't have any staff, budget, research or categorization means. I remember telling the university management, 'We need an organized research plan,' and they said, 'That's exactly what we brought you here for."

Prof. Reif dedicated 40 years of his life to the collection which is seen, and rightfully so, as his life's work. So far, researchers have managed to document and preserve 70% to 80% of the writings, but even today it's still possible that there are additional discoveries waiting to be made – ancient writings which the team of researchers has yet to study and categorize.

Talking to Ynet, Prof. Reif reveals the decision to start a new research department at the University of Haifa under his leadership, which will allow Israeli students to study more about the far-reaching implications of the Cairo Genizah findings, and explains why that collection of writings is responsible for the revolution in the way we perceive Judaism today.

[...]

"There is not a single field in which the genizah has not created a revolution. The Bible and the Hebrew, for example, today we are familiar with a certain kind of punctuation in Hebrew. In the past there were other types of punctuations which disappeared, and through the letters they are suddenly revealed again. Today we have the possibility of restoring them through the letters kept in the genizah.

"Another example, which is as important, is the Jerusalem Talmud. Usually when people talk about the Talmud, they mean the Babylonian Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud is perceived as difficult and incomprehensible, and people didn't know how to interpret it. Today we have complete writings about the Jerusalem Talmud which were written in the same periods, and we can understand a lot from them about what used to be inaccessible.

"These are just two direct implications on the two most important books in the Jewish world, but of course it doesn't end there. ..."

Congratulations to Professor Reif on the honorary degree and the new post at Haifa University. An SBL Forum article by him on the Geniza is noted here.

My own work on the Hekhalot literature and the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Aramaic Levi) has been much enriched by Cairo Geniza manuscripts. And over the years I have put up many, many PaleoJudaica posts on the Cairo Geniza. I don't have time to sort through them all, but you can find lots of them here, here, here, here, and here, and follow the links.

As I said in that last post, the Cairo Geniza is the philologist's gift that keeps on giving.

Khazars, Samaritans, Jews, and genetics

A COUPLE OF RECENT LINES OF RESEARCH have a bearing on the supposed relationship between Jews and the Khazars (and the Samaritans come in too). First, in The Forward there is an article on historical research by Prof. Shaul Stampfer of the Hebrew University: Why Ashkenazi Jews Are Not Descended From Khazars — and What It Means. Mass Conversion Claim Cast Doubt on Mideast Origins (Ofer Aderet). Excerpt:

Stampfer, an expert in Jewish history, analyzed material from various fields, but found no reliable source for the claim that the Khazars – a multiethnic kingdom that included Iranians, Turks, Slavs and Circassians – converted to Judaism. “There never was a conversion by the Khazar king or the Khazar elite,” he said. “The conversion of the Khazars is a myth with no factual basis.”

As a historian, he said he was surprised to discover how hard it is “to prove that something didn’t happen. Until now, most of my research has been aimed at discovering or clarifying what did happen in the past … It’s a much more difficult challenge to prove that something didn’t happen than to prove it did.”

That’s because the proof is based primarily on the absence of evidence rather than its presence – like the fact that an event as unprecedented as an entire kingdom’s conversion to Judaism merited no mention in contemporaneous sources.

“The silence of so many sources about the Khazars’ Judaism is very suspicious,” Stampfer said. “The Byzantines, the geonim [Jewish religious leaders of the sixth to eleventh centuries], the sages of Egypt – none of them have a word about the Jewish Khazars.”

The claim that Ashkenazi Jews descend from converted Khazars received wide attention after the publication of Shlomo Sands's controversial book The Invention of the Jewish People in 2008, which argued for this conclusion. For reviews etc. see here and follow the links.

Second, Prof. Steven Weitzman e-mails to alert PaleoJudaica to some relevant biological research:

May I call your attention to the following just published special volume of the journal Human Biology, which contains some very new genetics research of potential interest to your audience (including research bearing on the Samaritans, on the Khazar theory of Jewish origins, and other pertinent topics).

http://wsupress.wayne.edu/news-events/news/detail/announcing-special-issue-human-biology

The scientists involved, including colleagues at Stanford, are considered leading population geneticists and their publication reflects research only possible in the last 5-10 years (though there may be more they can learn from the relevant historiography). The volume represents an attempt to bridge between Jewish Studies and genetics, and the experience has taught me that the two fields still have much to learn from the other.

Here's the TOC of the issue:

Table of Contents

Introduction: From Generation to Generation: The Genetics of Jewish Populations

Noah A. Rosenberg and Steven P. Weitzman

Articles

Genetics and the History of the Samaritans: Y-Chromosomal Microsatellites and Genetic Affinity between Samaritans and Cohanim

Peter J. Oefner, Georg Hölzl, Peidong Shen, Isaac Shpirer, Dov Gefel, Tal Lavi, Eilon Woolf, Jona- than Cohen, Cengiz Cinnioglu, Peter A. Underhill, Noah A. Rosenberg, Jochen Hochrein, Julie M. Granka, Jossi Hillel, and Marcus W. Feldman

No Evidence from Genome-wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews

Doron M. Behar, Mait Metspalu, Yael Baran, Naama M. Kopelman, Bayazit Yunusbayev, Ariella Gladstein, Shay Tzur, Hovhannes Sahakyan, Ardeshir Bahmanimehr, Levon Yepiskoposyan, Kris- tiina Tambets, Elza K. Khusnutdinova, Alena Kushniarevich, Oleg Balanovsky, Elena Balanovsky, Lejla Kovacevic, Damir Marjanovic, Evelin Mihailov, Anastasia Kouvatsi, Costas Triantaphyllidis, Roy J. King, Ornella Semino, Antonio Torroni, Michael F. Hammer, Ene Metspalu, Karl Skorecki, Saharon Rosset, Eran Halperin, Richard Villems, and Noah A. Rosenberg

Commentary

Jewish Genetic Origins in the Context of Past Historical and Anthropological Inquiries

John M. Efron

Who Are the Jews? New Formulations of an Age-Old Question

Susan Martha Kahn

Letter to the Editor

Genetics and the Archaeology of Ancient Israel

Aaron J. Brody and Roy J. King

Some of Professor Weitzman's other work has also been mentioned in posts here and here.

Reviews of the Enoch Seminar latest

RECENT REVIEWS AT REVIEWS OF THE ENOCH SEMINAR:

Ryan Korstange reviews Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ

Amy-Jill Levine reviews Isaac W. Oliver, Torah Praxis after 70 CE: Reading Matthew and Luke-Acts as Jewish Texts

Eric R. Montgomery reviews Devorah Dimant, The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective: A History of Research

Gavin McDowell reviews Finn Damgaard, Recasting Moses: The Memory of Moses in Biographical and Autobiographical Narratives in Ancient Judaism and 4th-Century Christianity

Hurtado on Paul Seminar

CONFERENCE REPORT: Larry Hurtado reports on the recent Nangeroni Enoch Seminar in Rome on “Paul as a Second-Temple Jew” and summarizes his own paper. Two posts so far: Paul: The Second-Temple Jewish Apostle to the Gentiles and Paul and Gentile Circumcision.

Bible Odyssey

NOW UP AND RUNNING: Bible Odyssey.

New mosaic at Huqoq

BIBLE PLACES BLOG: New Mosaic Discovered in Huqoq Synagogue.

Background on the first Samson mosaic excavated at Huqoq, plus many other ancient mosaics in Israel (etc.), is here and links. Somehow I had missed the other Samson mosaic found there last summer, mentioned in the UNC press release that Todd Bolen quotes in the first link above.

An Atheist’s Case for Talmud

THE FORWARD: An Atheist’s Case for Talmud. Sating a New Hunger With an Ancient Book. Leah Vincent, a formerly ultra-Orthodox woman, rediscovers Talmud.

July 4th

HAPPY AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY to all those celebrating!

The Talmud, Judaism, and asceticism

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Better To Suffer or Better To Live? Eating—and Not Eating—as a Meritorious Jewish Act. Talmudic rabbis debate Jewish solidarity in the face of misfortune, a communal imperative that still holds today.. Two excerpts:

Despite all these specifications, however, the Talmud is by no means enthusiastic about fasting for its own sake. Indeed, the very strictness of the rules for declaring communal fasts is meant to control the ascetic impulse, not encourage it. Here as always, Judaism stands in sharp contrast to Christianity in its attitude toward asceticism: There is no Jewish imperative to scourge the body in order to elevate the soul. Celibacy has never been a Jewish virtue—all Jews are bound by the commandment to be fruitful and multiply—and while the holiest Christians are those who withdraw from the world, the holiest Jews, the Torah sages, were businessmen and family men. The Judaism we have come to know in the Talmud is emphatically a religion for living in the world, not for fleeing or disparaging the world.

I would nuance the part about celibacy never having been a Jewish virtue. The Essenes, according to Philo and Josephus, as well as the Egyptian Therapeutae according to Philo, seemed to feel differently. But they are perhaps the exceptions that prove the rule.

Elazar makes this point with a striking and powerful image: “A person should always consider himself as though a sacred object is immersed in his bowels.” There is something sacred literally inside of us; our bodies are not just envelopes for our souls, but a kind of holy cargo that we have to treat with decency and kindness. Accordingly, Elazar holds that if you are able to fast without causing yourself bodily harm, you are “sacred”; but if a fast would damage your body, you would be a “sinner” to undertake it.

That made me think of the Buddhist teaching in The Questions of King Milinda that ascetics should care for the body in the same way that one cares for a wound. Compare and contrast.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

About PaleoJudaica

ORIGINALLY AND FOR MANY YEARS I included an "About" page in the sidebar to introduce readers to me and to this blog. A few years ago when I had to update the Template (long story, which I'm not sure I even remember myself) the About page was automatically purged from the sidebar and later it evaporated entirely. I have always meant to put it up again, but have only just now gotten around to it. Look at the sidebar to the right where it says "Pages" in dark type. The first one, which just takes you to the front page, is "Home." The one below it, "About PaleoJudaica," will lead you to the blog's About page, newly revised, rethought, and updated. When you get a chance, go and have a look.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe's 20th yahrzeit

ANNIVERSARY: The Lubavitcher Rebbe Died 20 Years Ago Today. Who Was He? Two new biographies attempt to describe the Chabad leader, but can we ever fathom his ultimate aloneness? (Susan Handelman, Tablet Magazine)

PaleoJudaica has posted on many articles about the Lubavitcher Rebbe (start here and follow the links back to 2003) and noted his tenth yahrzeit here. My main interest has been phenomenological: here is a twenty-first century post-mortem Messiah, complete with rumors of an empty casket and resurrection appearances, as well as claims of occultation and apotheosis. This article touches on these issues, but it is mainly a personal account of the writer's interactions with the Rebbe and reflections on his life, while including in passing reviews of two new books about him. On the issue of messianism she writes:

The messianic idea indeed is one of the great gifts the Jews have given the world: an optimistic view of history; of the world, despite all its bloodshed and darkness, still moving forward toward a goal; of the human task as repair of the world in partnership with God. As Rabbi Léon Ashkenazi, a major postwar French Jewish thinker, put it: “Jewish history is dramatic, but not tragic.” But like all powerful ideas, messianism has also been twisted and distorted in dangerous ways.

The Rebbe’s entire life, I think, was a cry to God to bring the Redemption. For him, it had already been too long; there had been too much pain. As he got older and felt his own personal end coming, he further intensified that call, and a messianic controversy swirled around him. Some of his followers tried to proclaim him the Messiah, which pained him personally, and which he tried to stop time after time. A few months before his stroke, a Chabad rabbi sent him a letter referring to him as “King Messiah.” The Rebbe’s secretary witnessed him looking at the letter, throwing it down in frustration and writing on it, “Tell him that when the Messiah comes, I will give him the letter.” After his stroke, and the diminution of his physical and cognitive abilities, he was not able to control those extremists anymore.

Telushkin and Steinsaltz [the writers of the two abovementioned books] both spend considerable time discussing the controversy, explaining traditional Jewish notions of the Messiah, the Rebbe’s pronouncements, and how they were interpreted and misinterpreted. The key is the text the Rebbe himself often cited to define the Jewish Messiah, Maimonides’ authoritative Code of Jewish Law at the end of his “Laws of Kings.” Maimonides defines “possible candidates” in every generation. Someone from the lineage of the House of David, of great piety, Torah scholarship and observance, who prevails on all Israel to follow the paths of Torah and battles their oppressors can be “presumed” to be the Messiah [chezkat moshiach]. Nothing supernatural is needed. But only if such a candidate succeeds, goes on to rebuild the Temple on its ancient site, and the Exiles are gathered in, can he be confirmed as beyond all doubt the Messiah [moshiach vaddai]. Any “presumed Messiah” can fail or die and then is simply considered, in Maimonides’ words, like all the “wholehearted and worthy kings of the House of David who died”—but he is not the Messiah.

In this context, I, like Steinsaltz and Telushkin, and many others in the Chabad and non-Chabad world, considered the Rebbe as good a “candidate” as any for our generation. But he died, the Exile continues, the world still suffers. He was not the Messiah.

The Aleppo Codex, the Ezekiel Plates, and The Treatise of the Vessels

MATTI FRIEDMAN: The Continuing Mysteries of the Aleppo Codex. Developments in the saga of the missing perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible, whose future is still unknown (Tablet Magazine).

I am not sure I expected the story of the long-forgotten Aleppo Codex, the perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible, to occupy me for very long after the publication of my book on the subject in 2012. I thought I would soon be on to other things, which is the way journalism tends to work. But, as sometimes happens, the story has taken on a life of its own: a cover-up energized by the fallout from my book; the rejuvenated activities of a small group of codex loyalists ranging in age from 36 (me) to 82 (former Mossad case officer Rafi Sutton); and a recent edict issued against me by a prominent rabbi in New York. In short, the story of the Aleppo Codex is alive today as it has not been in many decades, and I believe an update on developments over the past two years is warranted for those who find themselves fascinated by the strange and ongoing saga of one of the most important manuscripts on earth.

[...]

I kept track of reviews etc. of Friedman's book and you can find the posts starting here and follow the links. The continuation of the story remains very interesting and this in particular caught my eye and made me think of another matter:

The second mystery, that of the missing pages, was long famous among a small number of people—Bible professors, Aleppo exiles, and a few others. The official version of the story, propagated by the academics in Israel who control the manuscript, claimed the pages vanished in Aleppo around the time of the 1947 riot. But we know now that the manuscript was seen whole as late as 1952, five years later. The first description of any significant damage to the codex dates, strikingly, only to 1958—after the manuscript reached the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem.

At around the same time, my investigation found, dozens of valuable books and manuscripts vanished from the library of the same institute. When I approached former officials at the institute with evidence of the other missing books, several went on record saying the man responsible for their disappearance was the institute’s director at the time, Meir Benayahu, a scholar who throughout a long and illustrious career studied, collected, bought, and sold rare Hebrew books. He left his post amid a legal battle over control of the institute in 1970.

Benayahu, who died in 2009, came from a powerful political family with roots in Iraq; he was the son of a Sephardic chief rabbi, Yitzhak Nissim, and brother of a senior Likud cabinet minister, Moshe Nissim. (As was common in those years, Benayahu adopted a more modern and Israeli-sounding last name.) This scandal has long been known in Israel’s small and insular academic world but was never made public. Legal proceedings were avoided at the time thanks to the direct intervention of Israel’s president, Zalman Shazar. Police were never summoned, no charges were filed, and no books were returned. Benayahu’s family denies any wrongdoing and says the accusations against him are a smear campaign aimed at covering up thefts by other people; they have asked, rightly, why no one went to the police at the time. Today Benayahu’s family owns a collection of Hebrew texts that is one of the world’s largest in private hands.

Whatever precisely happened at the Ben-Zvi Institute, the long-buried affair of the institute’s vanished books—whether it is connected or not to the disappearance of the codex pages—is arguably the worst corruption scandal in the history of the Israeli academy. Among the figures who have gone on record saying Benayahu was responsible for the institute’s missing books are Zvi Zameret, the institute’s longtime administrative director and subsequently one of the top officials in Israel’s Education Ministry; Joseph Hacker, professor emeritus at Hebrew University and a former deputy director of the institute; and the late Yom-Tov Assis, the professor who headed the Ben-Zvi Institute at the time of my own investigation.

Are the missing codex pages linked to the broader disappearance of books from the Ben-Zvi Institute? The scholars of the Ben-Zvi Institute have resisted any investigation while failing to produce any evidence to dispel the suspicion.

The so-called Ezekiel Plates, a series of many stone tablets with most of the text of Ezekiel engraved on them, are also held in the Ben-Zvi Institute. I noted and discussed a Jerusalem Post article on them three years ago in my post Ezekiel plates—and a legend of the Temple treasures. The article did not seem to realize that the set had originally included two more tablets on which was inscribed the concluding verse and a half of Ezekiel and then a version of The Treatise of the Vessels, a legendary account in Hebrew of the hiding of the Ark of the Covenant and other Temple treasures just before the Babylonian destruction of the Temple. I published the first complete English translation of this work in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures last year, and the text got some attention in the media and even led the Daily Mail to call me "a modern-day Indiana Jones."

Be that as it may, the interesting thing in this context is that the stone plates containing The Treatise of the Vessels are no longer with the Ezekiel Plates. I learned this in e-mail correspondence in February of 2008 with Michael Glatzer, the Academic Secretary of the Institute, who kindly checked the Ezekiel Plates housed there. The Jerusalem Post article linked to above gives the following background on the Ezekiel Plates:

In this case, the tiles were supposedly found over 100 years ago when visitors to the traditional tomb of Ezekiel in the small Iraqi town of Kfar al-Kafil, located about 50 miles south of Baghdad, noticed a stone tile had fallen off the inside of the burial chamber. Oddly, its back side contained an ancient lettering which had been deliberately hidden, facing the wall. Other tiles were removed and similar inscriptions were found on their back sides as well.

The entire set of Ezekiel plates were then taken to Lebanon, where decades later a Christian Arab widow, on the advice of her priest, wanted to place them in Jewish hands before she moved to France. She sold them for a mere two pounds sterling to businessman David Hacohen in 1947.

He smuggled the plates into Israel in 1953, and they were eventually acquired by Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel’s second president and a noted historian, who considered them a valuable national treasure.

After Ben-Zvi’s death, the Ezekiel plates became the property of the Institute in Jerusalem set up in his honor, which had them in storage until Zwebner convinced his wife’s parents, Max and Lombi Landau, to sponsor their public display.

The Ezekiel Plates were acquired by Ben-Zvi sometime after 1953 and became the property of the Institute after his death in 1963. The article does not say where they were housed during those ten years. At some undetermined point the plates containing The Treatise of the Vessels were separated from the Ezekiel Plates and vanished. As far as I could determine the missing plates were last seen by Jean Starcky, who photographed one of them in Beirut "a good number of years" before J. T. Milik published the photo in 1959. Now Friedman reports that sometime between 1952 and 1958 a large chunk of the Aleppo Codex also vanished, and around the same time "dozens of valuable books and manuscripts" also disappeared from the Institute. The timing is striking. Is the stone version of The Treatise of the Vessels one of these manuscripts? I don't know and I certainly am not making any assumptions or accusations. The plates could have been separated and lost before they came to the Ben-Zvi Institute. But still, the possibility of a connection between the missing stone plates and the other missing manuscripts is intriguing and potentially worth following up.

Another notable point is that journalist Owen Jarus has called into question the connection of the Ezekiel Plates with the Tomb of Ezekiel in Iraq and has indicated he has evidence that they were produced about a century ago in Syria.

It seems that we have not yet exhausted the mysteries surrounding the Aleppo Codex, the Ezekiel Plates, and The Treatise of the Vessels.

Schäfer to head Jewish Museum Berlin

CONGRATULATIONS TO PETER SCHÄFER:

Change at the Head of the Jewish Museum Berlin

As of 1 September 2014, Prof. Dr. Peter Schäfer will take over as new director of the Jewish Museum Berlin. The Museum's Board of Trustees today agreed unanimously to Schäfer's appointment. At the request of Federal Government Commissioner for Federal Culture Commissioner and the Media Monika Grütters and Peter Schäfer, Prof. Dr. Michael Blumenthal, the longstanding founding director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, will serve in an advisory capacity for a transitional period.

Federal Commissioner Monika Grütters: "I'm very happy that it was possible to gain Professor Schäfer, an internationally active and acclaimed expert of Judaism, as the museum's new director. I am confident in his commitment to continue the work of Professor Blumenthal and build upon the museum's success to date while making his own mark."

Commissioner Grütters emphasized further: "The unprecedented success of the Jewish Museum Berlin is a direct result of Professor Blumenthal's passion and energy. We are greatly indebted to him for his years of commitment – all the more so in light of his biography!"

During the meeting of the Board of Trustees, W. Michael Blumenthal explained that he had been asking himself for some time when would be the right moment to pass the baton to a successor. When it became clear that Peter Schäfer, following his retirement from academic life, would be available, he knew he had his answer. "I realized immediately that we had to get this outstanding and highly distinguished academic on board. And this was reaffirmed by Culture Commissioner Grütters and our friends in politics, business and society at large," explained Blumenthal. "He will be able to give the museum key impulses like no one else I know."

[...]

HT Lawrence E. Frizzell.

More recent news about Professor Schäfer is here and links.

Warburg Library update

THE TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION: Warburg Institute: library saved from Nazis awaits its fate (Jack Grove). The fate of the library is still up in the air:

Four years after Warburg’s death, the collection of about 80,000 books, many rare Renaissance volumes, was moved to London as Nazism took hold in 1930s Germany. However, the University of London is now seeking to challenge the status of the deed of trust it signed in 1944 when accepting the collection.

That document promised to maintain and preserve the collection “in perpetuity” as “an independent unit” – a pledge that now appears onerous as the Warburg runs a reported £500,000 annual deficit.

Representatives for both the university and the Warburg Institute were due to appear in a court in London’s Rolls Building this week after efforts to negotiate a compromise over the past five years have failed.

Last week I noted an article about this in the New Yorker which turned out to be several years old. But this Times Higher article was published this month and indicates that the case has yet to be resolved. There is also a petition to Save the Warburg Institute!, brought to my attention by Timothy Michael Law on Facebook.

The DSS and the text of the Bible

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The “Original” Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Can the scrolls help expose the original Bible language within the Masoretic Text and Septuagint?

Noah Wiener summarizes an article by Emanuel Tov in the current issue of BAR. The full text of the latter article is behind the subscription wall.

Schiffman on schisms

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: Schisms in Jewish History. In two parts: The Limits of Tolerance: Halakhah and History and The Samaritan Schism.