Old Church Slavonic inscription

THE SOPHIA GLOBE: Archaeological roundup: Finds in Bulgaria include ancient coins, a basilica and an inn in Philippopolis. One of the finds mentioned in this article sounds like an important discovery for Slavonic philology:

Also on September 23, it was announced that an inscription in Cyrillic script had been found on an architectural element at the residence of the ruler of one of Bulgaria’s ancient former capitals, Preslav. The inscription shows the name Karmih (Кармих) which archaeologists believe may have been the name of the builder.

Although in the middle of the ninth century the use of the Church Slavonic alphabet was widespread, archaeologists rarely encounter such surviving inscriptions.

Follow the link for a photo. For lots more on Old Church Slavonic and why it matters to PaleoJudaica, see here, here, here, and links.

$100K raised for Third Temple plans

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Temple Institute Raises $100k for Third Temple Plans. The Temple Institute’s crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for architectural plans for the Third Temple has raised $100,000 (Yaakov Levi, Arutz Sheva).

The Temple Institute’s crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the modern architectural plans for the Third Holy Temple in Jerusalem came to a close on Rosh Hashanah after surpassing its $100,000 goal in 60 days. The initiative began on the first day of the month of Av, when Jews commemorate the destruction of the ancient Holy Temples. Almost 900 pledges have come in from more than 30 countries worldwide.

[...]

Plan away, but don't get any ideas about doing any actual digging. Background and further commentary here and links.

Dovekeepers filming in Malta

Dovekeepers’ CBS Mini-series lands in Malta with filming to start shortly (Gozo News).

4-hour CBS Mini Series ‘The Dovekeepers’ is due to start shooting in Malta shortly. ‘The Dovekeepers’ is a CBS mini-series event from executive producer Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, which will be broadcast in 2015.

‘The Dovekeepers’ 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. Set in ancient Israel, ‘The Dovekeepers’ is based on true events of Masada in 70 CE. After being forced out of their home in Jerusalem by the Romans, 900 Jews were ensconced in a fortress at Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert.

[...]

Loosely based. Background here and links.

Herodian public buildings under Western Wall plaza

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Western Wall plaza dig reveals structures dating back to Herod. ‘Significant, beautiful’ remains, including lavish public buildings, found by archaeologists 20 meters from — but not under — Temple Mount. (The Times of Israel).

The ongoing excavations, which are taking place beneath the Western Wall plaza in the former Mughrabi Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, feature a Mamluk-era caravansary dating to the Middle Ages and remains of lavish public buildings from the Herodian period, over 2,000 years ago, some 20 meters (65 feet) from the Temple Mount.

Reflections on the Babylonian New Year

THE AKITU FESTIVAL: Slapping the king on the cheek in ancient Babylon. The humiliation of the king during the New Year ritual served a double purpose. (Alexander Zvielli, Jerusalem Post). Excerpt:

It was only after the king finished this list of assurances, well prepared ahead of time, that the chief priest struck him hard upon the cheek, with an open hand but as strongly as he could. The blow had to be decisive and hard, for according to tradition tears had to flow from the king’s eyes as an indication that Bel (and his wife Beliya) were friendly, an omen which purported to assure king’s future success and the prosperity of the country. If there were no tears, this signified that Bel was angry, and thus that enemies were expected to rise up and bring about the king’s downfall. It is not known whether the rite could be repeated if tears failed to appear at the first stroke. But if the performance was satisfactory, and there was a steady flow of tears, then the arms, the scepter and the crown were restored to the king, who was now expected to be prosperous and could rule safely for another year.

The priests of the huge Assyrian or Babylonian temples were rather a sophisticated lot. Their knowledge of writing, astronomy and the basic rules of a prosperous religious establishment, their role as teachers, top officials in a good and efficient government, secured for them the top position on the social scale. They were the real power behind the throne and could postpone a new king’s official coronation and recognition for several years, until he had proved himself successful in battle, in the taxation of his own people and the well-organized armed plunder of foreign lands. The priests and their temples were the first to receive a share (the largest) of the tribute and plunder: innumerable slaves, gold, silver, wood, concubines and singers brought to them by the king’s conquests and robberies of the foreign lands. The priests taught the king and his chosen ancestors how to discipline the people and the army, all for their own benefit.

However, the humiliation of the king during the New Year ritual served a double purpose: It demonstrated to the king that without his crown, sword and scepter he was just another ordinary mortal, whose fate depended on the mighty gods and their humble servants.

He might have been all-powerful, ruling over the entire world, but the pain of being hit in the face in this manner was meant to make him humble, more aware of his duties and obligations, inspiring him to take care of his promises, or face consequences.

As for the political reflections, we've all encountered bureaucrats and politicians whom we thought could benefit from slapping, but it doesn't seem to have made the ancient Mesopotamian rulers notably more humble.

UPDATE: A couple of earlier posts on the Akitu Festival are here and here.

UPDATE (1 October): More here.

Hugoye 17.2

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has published a new issue: Volume 17.2 (Summer 2014). Follow the link for the TOC and for links to the articles, etc., all online for free. This one has articles on Garshuni, plus the usual conference and project reports and book reviews.

Congratulations to Eelco Glas

FELLOWSHIP: Eelco Glas new Florentino García Martínez Research Master Scholar.

The Qumran Institute of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen is delighted to announce that the second Florentino García Martínez Research Master Scholarship for excellent students has been awarded to Eelco Glas. Prof. Mladen Popovic presented him with the scholarship during the opening of the Academic Year in the Der Aa-kerk in Groningen on 3 September 2014.

Plus you get flowers with this one!

Follow the link for more information. And note this: "The call for applications for the Florentino García Martínez Scholarship for next year’s cohort in the Faculty’s Research Master in Religion and Culture will be published soon."

Last year's winner was noted here.

Sarshar, The Jews of Iran

NEW BOOK FROM I. B. TAURIS:

The Jews of Iran: The History, Religion and Culture of a Community in the Islamic World
Houman Sarshar (author)

Hardback | In Stock | £60.00

Description
Living continuously in Iran for over 2700 years, Jews have played an integral role in the history of the country. Frequently understood as a passive minority group, and often marginalized by the Zoroastrian and succeeding Muslim hegemony, the Jews of Iran are instead portrayed in this book as having had an active role in the development of Iranian history, society, and culture. Examining ancient texts, objects, and art from a wide range of times and places throughout Iranian history, as well as the medieval trade routes along which these would have travelled, The Jews of Iran offers in-depth analysis of the material and visual culture of this community. Additionally, an exploration of more modern accounts of Jewish women’s experiences sheds light on the social history and transformations of the Jews of Iran from the rule of Cyrus the Great (c. 600–530 BCE) to the Iranian Revolution of 1978/9. This long view of the Jewish cultural influence on Iran’s social, economic, and political development makes this book a unique contribution to the field of Judeo-Iranian studies and to the study of Iranian history.

Review of Calderon, A Bride for One Night

H-JUDAIC:

Ruth Calderon. A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales. Trans. Ilana Kurshan. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press; Jewish Publication Society, 2014. xx + 163 pp. ISBN 978-0-8276-1209-9; ISBN 978-0-8276-1164-1; ISBN 978-0-8276-1165-8; ISBN 978-0-8276-1163-4.

Reviewed by Daniel Rosenberg
Published on H-Judaic (September, 2014)
Commissioned by Matthew A. Kraus

Excerpt:

Her retellings are often gems, consistent with the best art of modern midrash of biblical texts, and compelling literary works in their own right. Her writing shows her to be a consummate and sensitive teacher who is deeply learned: in every paragraph of her retellings, explicit references to the full breadth of traditional Talmud study and history resonate to the mind’s ear of the classically and academically trained reader, and yet are presented accessibly and gently to the reader for whom this is the first encounter with them.

But the reviewer does have some reservations about the book from an academic perspective.

More on Ruth Calderon and her book is here and links.

The Cairo Geniza at JTS

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Cairo Geniza, Under Piecemeal Restoration (Eve M. Kahn).

Experts at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan are puzzling over curly bits of ancient paper recovered from a closet in a Cairo synagogue. Boxfuls of the formerly soggy and bug-infested fragments are undergoing delicate repairs and digitization in the hope that the texts can be reunited, at least virtually, with the rest of their manuscript pages, which are scattered at institutions worldwide.

In the late 1800s, European and American scholars, dealers and curiosity seekers took home parts of the trove, known as the Cairo Geniza, a Hebrew word for treasury. No one knows why Jews then did not follow the custom of burying their ruined paperwork. The material may have been torn apart intentionally, to prevent non-Jews from desecrating it, or accidentally, through mishandling.

The documents date to the ninth century and contain a babel of poetry, prayers, recipes, legal and family correspondence, doodles and accounting tallies, in languages including Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic and Judeo-Arabic. The layers of multicultural handwriting represent centuries of peaceful relations among Muslims and Jews in Arab lands.

[...]

The article has some interesting details about the conservation and digitization process. The Times also had a piece on work on the Cairo Geniza at Tel Aviv University last year, noted here. There is more on digitization of the Geniza fragments in the links in that post too. And for more on the Cairo Geniza, see here and oh so many links.

Also, a small correction to the above article. The final quoted paragraph implies that all the documents from the Cairo Geniza date to the ninth century. In fact, only a few are that early. The date range of the fragments is from about the ninth century or a little earlier all the way up to when the Geniza was cleared out in the late nineteenth century. But despite their relatively late date, some of the fragments are of comparatively very early manuscripts of classic Jewish texts such as the Mishnah, Talmud, Midrashim, Piyyutim, etc.

CORRECTION (15 October): The date range of manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza actually extends earlier than I implied above. Several years ago I noted a seventh-century biblical fragment that seems to come from there. And more recently, Larry Hurtado has noted some New Testament and Septuagint (Aquila) Geniza palimpsests that may go back as early as the fifth or sixth century.

Phoenician alphabet sculpture

PHOENICIAN WATCH: One woman’s quest to bring the Phoenician alphabet to life (Elise Knutsen, Lebanon Daily Star).

BEIRUT: If identity crisis is among the most common pathologies suffered by Lebanese, Nayla Romanos Iliya has found the remedy, or at least the one for her. After living abroad for more than 20 years, Romanos Iliya rekindled an appreciation of her Lebanese heritage by creating sculptures based on the Phoenician alphabet. Born and raised in Beirut, Romanos Iliya was educated in French schools during the Civil War, before choosing to study architecture and design at the American University of Beirut.

[...]

It's good to have a hobby.

Astronomical discovery

CODEX CLIMACI RESCRIPTUS: Scholars Discover Early Astronomical Drawings. Undergraduate Students with Green Scholars Initiative Find 1,500-Year-Old Drawings of Constellations Hidden in Ancient Biblical Manuscript.

OKLAHOMA CITY, Sept. 19, 2014—

Museum of the Bible announced today that undergraduate students with its Green Scholars Initiative have discovered what may be among the earliest-known classical drawings of celestial constellations hidden under a layer of Greek text in a 1,500-year-old biblical manuscript. Additionally, the student-scholars at Tyndale House, an institution associated with the University of Cambridge, found the earliest manuscript attributed to Eratosthenes in the same document. The Greek mathematician, geographer and astronomer was the first to calculate the Earth’s circumference, the tilt of its axis and the inventor of geography.

The research, conducted in 2012 and 2013 at Cambridge, also uncovered the earliest copy of the opening of a work by Aratus, a Greek poet who was one of the first to write about constellations and other celestial phenomena.

The discoveries were made as students used high-tech, multispectral imaging on the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, an ancient codex purchased in 2009 as part of the Green Collection, one of the world’s largest private collections of rare biblical texts and artifacts. This is a palimpsest manuscript, meaning the writing underneath was rubbed out and written over as ancient scribes repurposed costly parchment in order to create a new document.

[...]

Follow the link for more details. Regular readers will recall that this manuscript is a palimpsest (i.e., a lower layer of writing has been erased and then over-written with new text). The top layer of writing has biblical texts in Greek, but the erased writing is gradually being recovered and includes biblical and other material in Aramaic, and now this. Background on the Codex Climaci Rescriptus is here and links. It was bought at auction in 2009 for the Green Collection (but cf. also here), about which there has been much controversy recently. I blog, you decide.

Esoteric and mystical traditions in b. Hagigah

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Talmud’s Mysticism Is Too Mindblowing Even for Its Students. Tread carefully, the rabbis warn, when seeking to understand creation or envision God.

Last week, Daf Yomi readers made the acquaintance of two angels: the Angel of Death, who shepherds the generations to the grave, and Duma, who rules over souls in the underworld. But this week, as we started chapter 2 of Tractate Chagiga, we plunged much deeper into the murky realms of the supernatural, as the rabbis pondered the two great secrets of Jewish mysticism: the account of Creation and the account of the Chariot. These subjects, the Talmud warns, are not to be taught promiscuously; they are so profound, and so potentially disturbing, that they can only be studied under strict limits. The “act of Creation,” we read in Chagiga 11b, can be taught only to one student at a time, and the Chariot—the name for the prophet Ezekiel’s baroque vision of the Godhead—cannot be taught at all. It must be studied alone, and then only if the student is “wise and understands on his own.”

[...]

There follows a good summary of the esoteric and mystical material in tractate Hagigah. Kirsch concludes:

Reading these pages, I couldn’t help wondering what the effect of reading Chagiga must have been on generations of Talmud students. Almost all of the Talmud, at least all that I’ve read so far, is extremely rational, lucid, and mundane. It approaches law with the tools of logic and strrives relentlessly for clear, full explanations of problems. No one could read, say, Tractate Eruvin and get carried away by spiritual raptures: You’re too busy trying to visualize right angles and calculate distances. Imagine spending years of your youth learning to think in this way and then coming upon Chagiga: It would be like entering a different world, in which logic flies out the window and all is allegory, vision, and dream. The accounts of the Creation and the Chariot feed a religious appetite that most of the Talmud seems designed to starve. What excitement these pages must have offered, what stimulus to imagination!

Too much stimulus, in fact—which is why the rabbis insisted so much on the need to restrict mysticism to the most sober and mature students. In Chagiga 14b, we read one of the most famous anecdotes in the whole Talmud, the one about the four sages who “entered the orchard”—that is, delved into supernatural mysteries—and what happened to them. Ben Azzai “glimpsed” God and immediately died; Ben Zoma glimpsed God and lost his mind; Elisha ben Avuya “chopped down the shoots,” meaning that he became an apostate. (His name is never mentioned in the Talmud, where he is referred to only as Acher, “the other.”) Only “Rabbi Akiva came out safely,” able to live with the divine knowledge he had gained. Clearly, the odds are stacked against the Jewish mystic. But in a tradition built around the pursuit of knowledge, it’s no wonder that so many generations of Jews refused to remain content with ignorance and made their ways, in fear and trembling, into the orchard.

It is likely that the compilers of the Babylonian Talmud were familiar, and not entirely comfortable with, some of the mystical traditions now preserved in the Hekhalot literature, on which more here and links, and more recently here, here, and here. There is a vast secondary literature on the subject, some recent volumes of which are noted here, here, here, and here. And I have some posts involving the story of the Four Who Entered Paradise here, here, here, and here and links.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Postdocs at the Hebrew University

H-JUDAIC: JOB: Hebrew University, Postdoctoral Fellowships.

Mandel Postdoctoral Fellowships in Humanities and Jewish Studies for 2015-2018

The Mandel Fellowships are intended for scholars, from Israel and abroad, who have shown exceptional excellence, depth, and originality, and whose research may enrich academic and cultural discourse.

Follow the link for details and application information.

New edition of Qalliri's piyyutim for Rosh HaShanah

NEW BOOK FROM MAGNES PRESS:

Rabbi El'azar Berabbi Qillir Liturgical Poems for Rosh Ha-Shana

Edited by: Shulamit Elizur, Michael Rand

Purchase options: Price Site price
Printed book $ 46.00 $ 41.40
Total $ 41.40

Publisher: World Union of Jewish Studies
Series:
Sources for the Study of Jewish Culture
Categories:
Prayers, Poetry and Piyutim
Publish date: September 2014
Language: Hebrew

Danacode: 45-131134
ISBN: 978-965-7418-03-1
Cover: Hardcover
Pages: 734
Weight: 1400 gr.

Rosh Hashana, the Day of Judgment, has been embellished with numerous fascinating liturgical poems (piyyutim). This book is devoted to the compositions that were written for Rosh Hashana by the illustrious poet R. El‘azar berabbi Qillir, who was active in the Land of Israel at the beginning of the seventh century. The piyyutim for Rosh Hashana are many and varied, and they adorn all of the special prayers for the festival. A number of these piyyutim are known and recited to this day in Ashkenazi congregations, while others are published here for the first time. Even those piyyutim that are known from the festival prayer books (mahzorim) are presented here in a new light. The present edition is primarily based not on European mahzorim, but on earlier fragments from the Cairo Genizah; on the basis of such early sources the editors have succeeded in adding new, original material to the known compositions—there is not one famous composition to which heretofore unpublished material has not been added, in some cases throwing new light on the entire work. Even in such cases, therefore, we are not merely offering old wine in new wineskins, but presenting a new blend that confers on the poetic compositions novel aspects, not previously brought to light.

This edition has been prepared on the basis of close to 400 manuscripts, and all of the variant readings have been given in the margins. An extensive commentary aids the reader in understanding the difficult idiom of the payyetan, identifying the many scriptural and midrashic sources that are woven into the piyyutim, and following the development of their themes. A general introduction treats various questions connected to the poems, from their attribution to the author and the reconstruction of the component parts of each composition, to the literary shaping of the material. In his piyyutim, R. El‘azar berabbi Qillir treats Rosh Hashana in all of its aspects: the Day of Judgment, the blowing of the shofar; the malkhiyot, zikhronot, and shofarot verses; the merit of the Fathers; and more. A number of compositions are specially intended for when Rosh Hashana falls on the Sabbath. Qillir’s unique method in the shaping of each of these themes is also clarified in the introduction. The complex web of interrelations between the piyyutim and their literary sources is elucidated as well; thus it has become clear, for example, that one of the piyyutim edited here for the first time throws new light on the famous poem, U-netane toqef qedushat ha-yom. “O King, Remember [the ram] caught [by its] horn!” These few words from one of the piyyutim published in the book reveal the genius of the great payyetan. Here, R. El‘azar berabbi Qillir has succeeded in encapsulating in four words the three great themes that lie at the heart of the benedictions that are unique to Rosh Hashana—kingship, remembrance and the ram’s horn (shofar)—all in the form of a prayer that beseeches God to remember for our sakes, on the Day of Judgment, the Binding of Isaac, symbolized by the ram whose horns are caught in the thicket. And if in four words the payyetan has managed to encapsulate such far-flung meanings, one can only imagine the riches contained in this enormous collection of R. El‘azarʼs writings for the Day of Judgment, which we now have before us.

Shofars

ROSH HASHANAH: A World Of Shofars: The Ancient Musical Instrument That Will Sound For Rosh Hashanah (Antonia Blumberg, The Huffington Post). With cool pics.

Rosh HaShanah

HAPPY ROSH HASHANAH (Jewish New Year 5775) to all those celebrating! The holiday begins this evening at sundown.

Biblical background here. And some relevant historical background and related information is collected here.

The Hebrew Calendar

IN HONOR OF ROSH HASHANAH (TOMORROW): The Hebrew Calendar: A marvel of ancient astronomy and math. The biggest marvel is how Iron Age Jews managed to adjust the lunar calendar to the solar one. (Elon Gilad, Haaretz).

Israel's official calendar is the Hebrew one. According to Jewish counting,
this Wednesday we will be starting Year 5775, that is - the supposed 5775th year since the world was created on Saturday night, October 6, 3761 BCE.

This reckoning was instituted by Maimonides in the 12th century, in the stead of the previous system Jews had used before, which counted from the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

Moving onto today: Israel's official calendar is the Hebrew one. Under law, official Israeli documents must have the Hebrew date on them. Moreover, holidays in Israel are determined according to the Jewish calendar, not the Gregorian one. Thus a given fest – say, Rosh Hashanah – will happen on the same date each year according to Jewish reckoning, but on a different day each year according to the Gregorian calendar. That is because the Gregorian and Jewish calendars don't coincide.

[...]

Read it fast, before it vanishes behind the paywall!

There's lots of historical information here, including a discussion of the Gezer Calendar. But, surprisingly, there is no reference to the solar calendar used by the Qumran sectarians, the book of 1 Enoch and the book of Jubilees, on which more here and links.

Also, Philologos had a column some time ago on Jewish calendars. The link has rotted, but the excerpt gives an overview.

And, tangentially related, a while ago my colleague Grant Macaskill sent me this article from 2005, which tells how a physicist seems to have unwittingly reinvented the Enochic solar calendar, or at least something pretty close to it, and was trying to persuade people to adopt it: Novel calendar system creates regular dates (Maggie McKee, New Scientist).

A US physicist is lobbying for people to adopt his novel calendar in which every date falls on the same day of the week each year.

The current calendar, which runs for 365 days, was instituted by Pope Gregory in 1582 to bring the length of the year in line with the seasons. But because the Earth actually orbits the Sun every 365.24 days, a 366-day "leap year" must be added every four years to account for the extra fraction of a day. In this Gregorian system, a given date (such as New Year's Day) falls on different days of the week in different years because 365 is not evenly divisible by seven.

That means new calendars must be printed every year, and the dates for recurring events constantly recalculated. "For many years, I've had to make up a new schedule to tell my class when homework is due," says Dick Henry, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, US. "Here I am putting all this totally unnecessary work in and I decided I better do something about it."

So Henry designed a calendar that uses 364 days, which breaks down evenly into 52 weeks. In his so called "Calendar-and-Time" (C&T) plan, each month contains 30 or 31 days. He decided on each month's length by forbidding the new calendar to differ from the old one by more than five days and by setting Christmas Day, 25 December, to always fall on a Sunday.

[...]

Dr. Henry adds an intercalated week ("Newton Week") every five or six years. It isn't clear exactly how the Enochic Jews and Qumran sectarians dealt with the slight discrepancy between the 364-day solar calendar and the actual 365-and-a-quarter-day solar year. Like the Enochic calendar, his calendar has the advantage of keeping all the holidays on the same day of the week every year. This was more important for the Jewish calendar, since if holidays did not have a stable spot in the week (as they don't in the modern Jewish calendar), when a major holiday falls on the sabbath it can cause halakhic complications.

Not the oldest Jewish prayer book after all?

SKEPTICISM: World's oldest siddur or overpriced patchwork? Jerusalem's Bible Lands Museum unveils what they suggest is the world's oldest siddur. But is it really? (I24News). Excerpt:

"I believe the Green Foundation acted in good faith based on the information they received when they purchased the book," Matthew Morgenstern, a professor of Hebrew at Tel Aviv University, told i24news.

Nevertheless, there are many questions as to the book's provenance.

"No one is casting doubt that the actual pages in the book are authentic," says Morgenstern.

"But the book was written by a number of different scribes, many of the texts are incomplete and the pages are of slightly different sizes. Is what we're seeing actually a book that was bound in the Middle Ages?"

Morgenstern says it is not impossible that the ancient fragments, while genuine, could have been bound together in modern times by an antiquities dealer looking to fetch a higher price.

Also, Dr. Ben Outhwaite, head of the Cambridge Genizah Research Unit, thinks it looks later than the ninth century and wants more information on how the C-14 tests were carried out. And they are not alone with their concerns. Officials from the National Library in Israel are also expressing some doubts to the AP: 'Oldest Jewish Prayer Book' Donated To Jerusalem's Bible Lands Museum. Haggai Ben Shammai, academic director of the National Library, thinks that another siddur in Germany could be the oldest, and Aviad Stollman, curator of the Judaica collection, is, like Morgenstern, skeptical both of the date and that the siddur is even a single document.

Background here and links.

Battir security fence update

HAARETZ: Cabinet postpones decision on controversial route of West Bank barrier. Ancient terraces in Battir were designated Unesco World Heritage Site in bid to change route of Israeli wall. (Nir Hasson).

Israel’s cabinet on Sunday put off making a decision on the route of the West Bank separation barrier in the area of the Palestinian village of Battir while it discusses the issue further and examines alternatives.

The cabinet had been widely expected to approve a route for the barrier that was opposed by villagers, preservationists, environmentalists, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and even residents of Jewish settlements in the Etzion Bloc.

[...]

The story is also covered in the Jerusalem Post: West Bank Battir barrier off the table for now (Tovah Lazaroff).

Background on the controversy surrounding Battir (Betar) and its recent naming by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site is here and links.

Dura Europos and Amphipolis

TWO FROM THE PHDIVA:

It just gets worse: ISIS Seize Dura-Europos

Background on Dura Europos and on its current fate is here and links.

The latest: Amphipolis: More Questions, More Answers ...

Background here and links. Dorothy King's blog is the place to go to keep updated on this story.

Iranica

THREE FROM ARASH ZEINI:

Conference: The visual world of Persianate culture
A promising and interesting conference hosted by the University of Edinburgh coinciding with the launch of their Masters in Persian Civilization. ...

Book Review: Review: The transmission of the Avesta
Piras, Andrea. 2014. Review of Alberto Cantera (ed.): The transmission of the Avesta. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 104. 365–368.

New Book: Intangible spirits and graven images
Shenkar, Michael. 2014. Intangible spirits and graven images: The iconography of deities in the pre-Islamic Iranian world. Leiden: Brill.

Docherty, The Jewish Pseudepigrapha

NEW BOOK FROM SPCK:

The Jewish Pseudepigrapha
An introduction to the literature of the Second Temple period

Author
Susan Docherty

ISBN
9780281064823

Publisher
SPCK Publishing

Additional information
224 pages. Paperback. (234 x 156 mm)

Our Price
£16.99

Description

This is a concise yet comprehensive guide to the Pseudepigrapha: the Jewish texts of the late Second Temple Period (circa 250BCE–100CE) that are not included in the Hebrew Bible or standard collections of the Apocrypha. Each chapter deals with a specific literary genre (e.g. apocalyptic, testaments, rewritten Bible), encouraging readers to appreciate the texts as literature as well as furthering their understanding of the content and significance of the texts themselves

As well as providing helpful introductions to the different genres, the book surveys key issues such as: date, authorship, original language; purpose; overview of contents; key theological themes and significance.

The publisher kindly sent me an advance electronic copy a while ago.

Strassman, DMT and the Soul of Prophecy

IN THE (E-)MAIL:

DMT and the Soul of Prophecy
A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible

By (author) Rick Strassman, M.D.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59477-342-6
ISBN: 1-59477-342-4
Quality Paperback — 9/18/14
Page Count: 352; 6.00 (width) x 9.00 (height)
Imprint: Park Street Press

Availability: Usually ships within 1-2 business days.
Price: $19.95

An advance electronic copy kindly sent me by the author. Looks like the publisher is just beginning to ship. Dr Strassman is the last researcher in the U.S.A. (in the 1990s) to be permitted by the U.S. Government to undertake clinical research on an hallucinogenic drug - DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine). He and I have been in informal dialogue for some years about his research (especially in his earlier book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule) and my research on visionary practice and experience in ancient Judaism. I haven't seen anything in advance from his new book, so it will be interesting to see what he has to say.

Sheinfeld, "Oral Performance and the Function of 4 Ezra"

SBL PAPER FROM 2012 BY SHAYNA SHEINFELD: Oral Performance and the Function of 4 Ezra, posted at the Biblical Performance Criticism website.

Lots more on 4 Ezra is here, here, here, here, and links.

Conversations with two DSS scholars

TWO INTERVIEWS with specialists in the Dead Sea Scrolls:

Eileen Schuller: Five questions for McMaster’s Dead Sea Scrolls expert (Dave Churchill, Hamilton Spectator).

McMaster professor and renowned Dead Sea Scrolls expert Eileen Marie Schuller has been named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

It's considered Canada's highest academic honour.

Schuller is one of only a handful of international researchers responsible for the scrolls' initial deciphering and publication. She is also author of "The Dead Sea Scrolls: What Have We Learned?" published in 2006.

Schuller belongs to the Ursuline Sisters, an order of Catholic nuns who work in education and health care. She has earned the moniker "the flying nun" among her McMaster colleagues because of all the travelling she does for her Dead Sea Scrolls work.

Her specialty within the scrolls is psalms, hymns and poetry, which she has translated extensively.

Here are five questions for Schuller.

[...]

Background on her election to the RSC is here.

Charlotte Hempel: Coffee Table Talk with Charlotte Hempel (podcast with Marginalia).

In this interview with MRB’s editor-in-chief Timothy Michael Law, Charlotte Hempel discusses how she began her career of study in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where the current challenges and prospects in the field lie, the new interdisciplinarity in Scrolls research, what we know and don’t know about the community at Qumran, her current research project on the diversity of literatures in the Second Temple period, and more.

[...]

Byzantine monastery near Beit Shemesh?

EXCAVATION: Israeli archaeologists said to have uncovered monastery in dig near Beit Shemesh. Archaeologists said that the compound is divided into an industrial area and a residential area, leading them to believe that it may have been a monastery (Jerusalem Post)

Israeli archaeologists on Thursday announced the discovery of a Byzantine-era oil and wine press near Beit Shemesh.

The Israel Antiquities Authority said that an excavation along the hills south of Beit Shemesh revealed a number of interesting findings, including blocked cisterns, a cave opening, and the tops of several walls.

Archaeologists said that the compound is divided into an industrial area and a residential area, leading them to believe that it may have been a monastery.

[...]

But there's no sign of a church there.

Israeli Arameans

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: Israel Officially Recognizes Nationality of ‘Aramean.’ Arameans are now recognized as a distinct nationality in Israel (Lori Lowenthal Marcus , The Jewish Press).

The subset of Middle Eastern Christians who define themselves as “Aramaic” will nw be able to register as belonging to that nationality in legal documents in Israel, Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on Wednesday, Sept. 17.

The Interior Ministry received a number of requests from Israeli Christians who sought recognition as Aramaic. Those who seek to register as such must be able to prove several factors. They must be able to prove that they come from the Middle East, that they are conversant in the language and a member of one of the following Christian denominations: Maronite, Orthodox Aramaic, Syriac Catholic, Greek Orthodox or Greek Catholic.

[...]

Death and sex in Tractate Hagigah

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: If Even the Angel of Death Makes Mistakes, Where Is There True Justice? The Talmud imagines the world as organized for the benefit of Torah sages, even in matters of sex and death. Excerpt:

As Daf Yomi readers began a new tractate this week—Tractate Chagiga, which deals with the procedures for Temple worship on the three annual festivals—the rabbis once again took up the question of death and punishment. In Chagiga 4b, Rav Yosef quotes a verse from Proverbs, “But there are those who are swept away without justice,” and questions it: “Is there one who goes before his time?” Doesn’t God decide on each death individually, so that we all die exactly when we are supposed to? Apparently not, the Gemara answers—just look at the case of Miriam the “raiser of babies,” or nurse. One day, the Angel of Death told his “agent”—for apparently the business of death involves many angels and spirits—to bring him a woman named Miriam who was a braider of women’s hair. But the agent made a mistake and brought him Miriam the nurse instead, for which the Angel of Death scolded him. “If so,” the agent pleaded, “return her to life.” But the Angel of Death was casual about the mistake: “Since you have already brought her, let her be counted” toward the quota of the dead, he replied.

That's harsh. There's lots of interesting stuff about angels, the Merkavah, and Ma'aseh Bereshit (the Matter of Creation) in Tractate Chagiga (Hagigah). Cant wait.

As for the sex:

Indeed, the rabbis list a number of sins that can bring judgment, even though they may seem trivial. One of these, in Chagiga 5b, is talking “frivolously” to your spouse before sex: Even at such a moment, the rabbis rule, speech should be grave and mindful. This is surely a harsh and puritanical rule, so it is comforting, in a way, to read that even Rav himself did not always obey it. On one occasion, Rav Kahana was lying underneath Rav’s bed—why, and how he got there, the Talmud doesn’t say—and “he heard Rav chatting and laughing with his wife, and performing his needs,” that is, having sex. When Kahana upbraided him for idle talk, Rav replied, “Kahana, leave, as this is not proper conduct.” Indeed, eavesdropping on someone from under their bed seems much more objectionable than talking before sex. And in any case, Rav had an excuse for chatting: It is permitted when a man has to “appease” his wife. One hopes that Rav and his wife were not the only couple to take advantage of this loophole to enjoy a little light-hearted intimacy.

In b. Berakhot 62a, there is a version of this story in which R. Kahana replied, "It is a matter of Torah and I must learn."

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

The Shapira scrolls again (updated 9/17/14)

MICHAEL PRESS: “The Lying Pen of the Scribes”: A Nineteenth-Century Dead Sea Scroll (The Appendix). A long and interesting article on the Shapira affair which is worth reading in full. Dr. Press does not dispute that the Shapira scrolls were forgeries, rather he mostly attempts to psychologize the specialists at the time and up to the present who rejected the authenticity of the scrolls. This is worth trying, I suppose, but a little of it goes a long way. One excerpt:

We see the potential, realized with [nineteenth-century scholar Konstantin] Schlottmann, for even scholarly response to be entangled with religious belief. This should not be surprising: modern biblical scholarship has been overwhelmingly Protestant, both in its origins and in its practitioners. Its roots are found in the two towering movements of the Renaissance and the Reformation, with their mottos ad fontes (“to the sources”—not only classical antiquity but also biblical antiquity) and sola scriptura (“by scripture alone”). The Protestant background of biblical scholarship has been long acknowledged. But this is mostly a neutral observation, or a positive praise of its critical tools; it has rarely been acknowledged that this origin might have a negative side.

The development of historical context and perspective, from the perspective of “to the sources” and “by scripture alone,” has led to a near obsession with origins, and specifically with origins of Scripture. Discovering the original documents behind the Pentateuch, establishing the (single) original form of the biblical text, reconstructing the (single) source (Vorlage) of a biblical translation—these have been among the most important goals of modern scholarship. Perhaps this may explain how, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were first brought to the attention of scholars, before archaeological excavations at Qumran confirmed their authenticity, they were generally accepted by scholars: unlike the Shapira scroll, they did not claim to be original versions of biblical books but part of a later stage in the process of transmission. Consider the reaction of biblical scholar Harry Orlinsky to the Dead Sea Scrolls: he believed them to be of limited importance for biblical studies, because they had little bearing on the original form of the biblical text.

There is certainly validity to this criticism of modern Biblical Studies (I have made it myself in print), but it applies much less to the field in the last generation. First, the attempts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to reconstruct original sources behind the biblical documents have come up against limitations that are very hard to overcome. There is, for example, broad agreement that the Pentateuch includes a Deuteronomic stratum and a Priestly stratum, plus some other stuff, but attempts to refine these generalizations has led to a welter of mutually incompatible theories each held by only one scholar. And second, on the positive side, reception history has become one of the most productive sub-fields in biblical studies in recent years.

As for the Shapira scrolls, they are lost now and probably destroyed, but we still do have quite a bit of information about them. This has been weighed by scholars many times and always found wanting. If someone wants to make a new case for their authenticity, that option always remains, but the current state of the question is certainly still that they are forgeries. Dr. Press would not, I think, disagree with me here. I see that I have made the same point here in greater detail, with links to more background.

UPDATE (17 September): Reader Matthew Hamilton in Sydney Australia e-mails the following:

Some content in the article “The Lying Pen of the Scribes”, was out of date as of 1 August. On that date there was the first screening in Israel of the documentary film “Shapira & I” by Yoram Sabo. The documentary includes in part a short interview of myself by Yoram where the claim of Alan David Crown that Sir Charles Nicholson purchased the Shapira Scroll is debunked. The actual purchaser of the Shapira Scroll was a Philip Brookes Mason (1842-1903), a doctor and amateur naturalist from Burton-on-Trent, and he exhibited the Scroll before the Burton-on-Trent Natural History and Archaeological Society on 8 March 1889.

The whereabouts of the Scroll after 1889 is still being investigated, but it was certainly not in the possession of Sir Charles Nicholson who was the owner of 3 and perhaps 4 other scrolls that had been owned by Shapira. These other scrolls and Crown’s hypothesis are the subject of a paper I’m currently preparing.

This is important and exciting news. If Sir Charles Nicholson did not have this Shapira scroll, then it wasn't destroyed in the fire in Sir Charles's study in 1899 and it may still survive somewhere today. If so and if it can be tracked down, it can be analyzed and its date established definitively. I look forward to seeing Matthew Hamilton's paper when it its finished.

Schuller elected to RSC

CONGRATULATIONS TO EILEEN SCHULLER: Two McMaster faculty named Royal Society Fellows.

Two McMaster professors – one Canada’s pre-eminent scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the other a world leader in polymer reaction engineering - have been named Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, the country’s highest academic honour.

Eileen Schuller is a professor in McMaster’s department of Religious Studies and also the Senator William McMaster Chair in Social Sciences.

Schuller is “one of only a handful of international researchers responsible for the Scrolls’ initial decipherment and publication,” reads the citation from the Royal Society. “She has been instrumental in educating other scholars and the general public about the Scrolls and their significance.”

[...]

And to her colleague in Chemical Engineering as well.

Apocryphicity update

APOCRYPHICITY HAS MOVED: The new address for Tony Burke's blog on the Christian Apocrypha and related matters is http://www.apocryphicity.ca/.

Jobs in Judaic Studies

FROM H-JUDAIC:

JOB: Stanford University, Jewish Studies

Sarah Imhoff
Thursday, September 11, 2014
H-Judaic
0 comments

Stanford University, Religious Studies

Full Professor in Jewish Studies

The Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University invites applications and nominations in the area of the study of Jewish religion and/or thought for the Daniel E. Koshland Chair in Jewish Religion and Culture.

We seek a senior scholar of distinction in the field of Jewish Studies, with an outstanding record of research and scholarship and a demonstrated commitment to excellence in teaching and advising students at both graduate and undergraduate levels. The successful candidate may specialize in any area or period of the study of Jewish religion and/or thought.

The appointment will be at the full professor level, but scholars at the advanced associate level are also encouraged to apply.

For full consideration, applications must be received by October 31, 2014. The term of appointment would begin September 1, 2015 or as soon as practicable thereafter.


JOB: UC Davis, Premodern Judaism

Sarah Imhoff
Thursday, September 11, 2014
H-Judaic
0 comments

University of California - Davis, Religious Studies

Assistant Professor - Premodern Judaism

POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT
Premodern JudaismDepartment of Religious Studies
University of California, Davis

The Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Davis invites applicants for a tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant Professor level in Premodern Judaism, from the postbiblical to late medieval period effective July 1, 2015. Research specialization within this area is open, and may include areas such as Second Temple Judaism, the formation of rabbinic literature, Judaism in the later Roman or Sasanian world, the reception of the Hebrew Bible in ancient and medieval Judaism, Judaism in medieval Europe and the medieval Mediterranean. Candidates with an interest in interdisciplinary work in areas already represented in the UC Davis program will be preferred. The successful candidate will be able to teach undergraduate courses in the Hebrew Bible and its reception, the history of Judaism, and Religious Studies broadly conceived, as well as specialized courses in premodern Judaism at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level. A Ph.D. in Religious Studies or related field must be in hand by the first day of classes, September 21, 2015. Preliminary interviews will be held at the Annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, CA on November 22-25, 2014 and the Association for Jewish Studies in Baltimore, MD on December 14-16, 2014. The position will remain open until filled.

Follow the links for further particulars.

Two women and the Talmud

CALDERON AND ANTON: Two articles have come up which highlight the recent contribution of two women to popular awareness of Talmudic and related themes. The first is a specialist with a PhD in Talmud, and also an Israeli politician. The second is a well-informed nonspecialist and author. Both have published well-received historical fiction inspired by the Talmud.

The first: How Ruth Calderon Transforms Israeli Politics — and Talmud. Ruth Calderon Gives Voice to Characters Who Have Been Excluded (Jay Michaelson, The Forward). Excerpt:

It was a surprise when Calderon was elected to the Knesset in 2012. She was 13th on a list (Yesh Atid) that was expected to win half a dozen. Yet it won 19, and there she was, one of us.

It was an even bigger surprise when Calderon’s inaugural speech, in February 2013, included a lesson in Talmud (Ketubot 62b, if you wanted to follow along). Most freshman politicians would have given the pat, expected talk, full of vague and lofty rhetoric. But this was Calderon as Calderon, wasting no time confounding expectations of what a member of Knesset could be.

[...]

Interestingly, her first book since this ascendancy is neither a cultural manifesto nor a political memoir; it’s a small collection of tales from the Talmud, clearly Calderon’s first (literary) love. Each excerpt is followed by an expansive retelling by Calderon, filling in the gaps in midrashic style, as well as favoring points of view different from those of the primary narrative. Also following is a reflection on the story from Calderon’s perspective.

For those unfamiliar with this mode of relating to Talmud — and that is, of course, 99% of the world — this slim anthology is an excellent introduction to the literary excavation of classic texts. Not in the scholarly sense; “A Bride for One Night” does not spend much time with the layers of authorship and editing that academics have discovered within the Talmud. Rather, Calderon’s is a literary-personal-philosophical-political project, reclaiming texts that had been kept semi-secret and finding within those texts personalities, voices and themes that are fully three-dimensional, and often heterodox.

The first time one makes this discovery, the thrill can be exhilarating. Many of us encounter Judaism as a set of inexplicable rules: do’s and don’ts, sits and stands. When I was immersed in Talmud study, this superficial Judaism seemed, indeed, like the thin, often dead skin atop a thriving organism. Calderon here focuses on Aggadic material — the narratives of the talmudic rabbis — rather than on the legal, halachic material. But for me, both were revelations, the polar opposite of the bland certitudes with which I had grown up.

More on MK Calderon and her book here and links.

The second: Scholar and bestselling author Maggie Anton to visit Pepper Pike's B'nai Jeshurum Congregation Nov. 3 (Kyla Price, cleveland.com). Excerpt:

Bestselling author Maggie Anton, winner of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, weaves her tale of magic, love, and faith in her latest book, Enchantress. She will be visiting Pepper Pike Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. to give a presentation about her work at B'nai Jeshurum Congregation, located at 27501 Fairmount Blvd.

A religious history scholar with expertise in Jewish women's history, Anton spent numerous years studying ancient religious texts and artifacts to discover the role of magic in the ancient world.

Anton is the award-winning author of historical fiction series "Rashi's Daughters" and "Rav Hisda's Daughter." In addition, she is a Talmud scholar with expertise in Jewish women's history. She was born Margaret Antonofsky in Los Angeles, Calif., where she still resides. Raised in a secular household, she reached adulthood with little knowledge of her Jewish religion.

[...]

Anton explained the difference between Enchantress and supernatural novels like Harry Potter, Witches of Eastwick, and the Twilight series is that the magic in those stories is clearly fictional. "I use actual, historical, spells and procedures from incantation bowls, amulets, magical instruction manuals, and the Talmud," Anton said.

More on Maggie Anton and her books is here and links.

Oldest Jewish prayer book heading to Israel

FROM THE GREEN COLLECTION: Oldest siddur headed to Israel. 1,200-year-old text, which includes Sabbath prayers and Passover Haggadah, to go on display at the Bible Lands Museum (Times of Israel).

The oldest book of Jewish liturgy, dating back to the ninth century, was en route to Israel Sunday, and will be on display at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem until late October.

The 50-page text is written on parchment in archaic Hebrew, and includes portions of the Sabbath morning prayers, liturgical hymns, and the Passover Haggadah.

The 1,200-year-old book was traced back to the Geonic period in Babylon, and is on loan from the Green Collection, a vast collection of biblical artifacts owned by the founders of Hobby Lobby.

“We are very excited about the arrival of the prayer text to the museum,” Amanda Weiss, director of the Bible Lands Museum, told Yedioth Ahronoth. “This is a real treasure for the Jewish people, proof of the communal and cultural life 1,200 years ago, and we are honored to have it displayed at the Book of Books exhibit.”

[...]

More on this oldest Jewish prayer book is here and links. Much more on the Green Collection here and links. And more on the Book of Books exhibition here.

And, relatedly, Dorothy King has some trenchant criticisms of the Green collections in a recent PhDiva post: I come to bury Green, not to praise him.

Crowdsourcing the Scriptures

CHALDEAN WATCH: 475 Families of Mar Aprem Church to Bring out Handwritten Bible (Shalet Jimmy, The New Indian Express).

KOCHI: After the Catholic Church, now it is the turn of the Chaldean Syrian Church, one of the four archbishoprics in the Assyrian Church of the East, to transcribe the Bible. The 475 families under the Mar Aprem Church, a parish of the Chaldean Syrian Church in Thrissur, are currently engrossed in transcribing the Bible.

It has been two months since they started the work. Once completed, the manuscript would be worthy of being added to the 100-odd ancient manuscripts - all written in Aramaic -stored at the Chaldean Metropolitan Palace in Thrissur. The transcription is being done as part of the Platinum Jubilee Celebrations of the Mar Aprem Church.

Members of each of the families will write the chapters assigned to them. Thus, their combined effort will bring out a handwritten Holy Bible. They are transcribing the Bible published by the Bible Society of India, which is called the ‘Sathyaveda Pusthakam’ in Malayalam.

[...]

Evidently, both male and female amateur scribes will participate:

Riju A Mannukkadan, a parishioner, said that his whole family was involved in the project. “My children would read the assigned chapters aloud. Everyone in the family, except my little daughter, contributes,” he said. The Sacred Heart Church, Kumbalangi, and the Cruz Milagres Church, Vypeen, are the catholic churches that have transcribed the Bible earlier.

"Oriental" Jones, Philologist

REVIEW IN THE WASHINGTON POST: ‘Philology’ by James Turner explains what happened to a discipline that flourished.

PHILOLOGY

The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities

By James Turner

Princeton Univ. 550 pp. $35

What do such disparate fields as linguistics, archaeology, religion, anthropology, classics and English literature have in common? Each commands its own academic department; each abounds in specialties and sub-specialties, professional societies, conferences and journals. (Not to mention junior faculty straining for tenure.) If anything else unites these disciplines, it’s the tag “humanities” — and the frequent rumor that they’re in crisis.

That’s not all they share, Notre Dame professor James Turner reveals in his deft intellectual history. These disciplines, and many more, sprang from the same scholarly impulse: philology, defined broadly as a penchant for close reading of texts, for discerning patterns and relationships across languages and cultures and for illuminating the historical milieu that produces a work of art or literature.

What became of this zest? Philology literally means, after all, “love of words” or “love of learning.” How did it survive from antiquity to the mid-1800s, morph into the modern humanities, and why, according to Turner, has the practice of philology gone “underground” in our day?

[...]

"Underground" can be cool.

And yes, there really was a guy they called "Oriental" Jones and, according to this review, he was the first one to come up with the concept of Proto-Indo-European, which is quite important:

Bentley’s prophecy bore partial fruit in the work of Sir William Jones, known in his day as “Persian” Jones or “Oriental” Jones. When, in 1783, he arrived in India to take a Calcutta judgship, Jones commanded 11 ancient and modern languages, and had a smattering of “about fifteen others.” Jones hypothesized that there once existed a single, ancestral language, which scholars since have dubbed Proto-Indo-European. The daring of this concept had huge implications for philologists. Grammarians “no longer analyzed only the histories of individual languages or closely related ones, seen in isolation,” Turner explains. “They now also began to contrast grammatical and lexical change over time in quite diverse languages believed to be related over vast spans of time and space.” ...

Review of Hoffman, The Bible’s Cutting Room Floor

JAMES MCGRATH: The Bible’s Cutting Room Floor. Review of Joel M. Hoffman's new book, The Bible’s Cutting Room Floor: The Holy Scriptures Missing From Your Bible (St. Martin's Press, 2014).

SBL books

NEW BOOKS FROM THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity: A Conversation with Barry Schwartz
Tom Thatcher (Editor)

ISBN 1589839528
Status Available
Price: $40.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date September, 2014
Pages 372

Essential reading for scholars and students interested in sociology and biblical studies

In this collection scholars of biblical texts and rabbinics engage the work of Barry Schwartz, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Georgia. Schwartz provides an introductory essay on the study of collective memory. Articles that follow integrate his work into the study of early Jewish and Christian texts. The volume concludes with a response from Schwartz that continues this warm and fruitful dialogue between fields.

Features:

• Articles that integrate the study of collective memory and social psychology into religious studies
  
• Essays from Barry Schwartz
  
• Theories applied rather than left as abstract principles

Tom Thatcher is Professor of Biblical Studies and Chief Academic Officer at Cincinnati Christian University. He is the author or editor of numerous books and articles on the Johannine literature and early Christian media culture, including Why John Wrote a Gospel (Westminster John Knox, 2006), Jesus, the Voice, and the Text (Baylor University Press, 2008), and the co-edited The Fourth Gospel in First-Century Media Culture (T&T Clark, 2011).

The Old Greek of Isaiah: An Analysis of Its Pluses and Minuses Mirjam Van Der Vorm-Croughs ISBN 1589839781 Status Available Price: $75.95 Binding Paperback Publication Date August, 2014 Pages 590

A concise study of a large number of examples of pluses and minus providing insight into translation from Hebrew to Greek

Van der Vorm-Croughs focuses this translation study on the processes leading to pluses and minuses including linguistic and stylistic aspects (i.e., cases in which elements have been added or omitted for the sake of a proper use of the Greek language), literary aspects (additions and omissions meant to embellish the Greek text), translation technical aspects (e.g., the avoidance of redundancy), and contextual and intertextual exegesis and harmonization. This work also covers the relation between the Greek Isaiah and its possible Hebrew Vorlage to try to determine which pluses and minuses may have been the result of the translator’s use of a different Hebrew text. Features:

• Eleven categories for the pluses and minuses of the Greek Isaiah
  
• Examination of translation techniques and translator errors
  
• Use of Joseph Ziegler’s critical edition

Mirjam van der Vorm-Croughs was a junior researcher at the Faculty of Theology at Leiden University on “The Septuagint of the Book of Isaiah” project from 2004–2010. As a translator and author at the Dutch Bible Society in Haarlem, the Netherlands, she is currently involved in production of a new translation of the Bible in simple Dutch.

Follow the links for ordering information and additional details.

National Treasures

WEBSITE: National Treasures from Israel Antiquities Authority Now Accessible Via Internet. The archeological treasures in the Rockefeller Museum of Jerusalem can now be accessed online (Jewish Press Staff).

Thousands of archeological artifacts presently stored in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem will be made available online through a new initiative called the National Treasures Online project. This new project and the Rockefeller Museum Online project are just two online projects undertaken by the Israel Antiquities Authority. These new ones join the Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, the National Archives and the Survey Maps online.

The National Treasures Online site includes objects from collections of the National Treasures, from prehistoric periods through to the Ottoman period. It currently includes 5,700 artifacts and is continuously updated.

[...]

For the Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, see here and links.

Jerusalem of Gold exhibition

GOLDEN, GET IT, GET IT? Biblical Archaeology Sees Golden Age in Israel, Dark Age in Rest of Middle East (Sean Savage/JNS.org/BreakingIsraelNews).

At a time when many archaeological sites and antiquities throughout the Middle East are being looted and destroyed, the City of David Foundation on Sept. 4 hosted its annual conference to enable the general public to experience some of the most important archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem in recent years.

A special portion of this year’s conference was devoted to the theme “Jerusalem of Gold,” highlighting several never-before-seen golden artifacts.

“The people in ancient times, like today, used gold for the most important things in life. It shows what they held dear and what was most important to them,” Ahron Horovitz, senior director of Megalim, the City of David’s Higher Institute for Jerusalem Studies, told JNS.org.

[...]

The artifacts mentioned in the article have been covered previously by PaleoJudaica. For the Byzantine-era coin hoard, see here. For the golden medallion, see here. For the golden earring, see here. And for the golden bell, see here and links.

Another Copper Scroll facsimile

READER PETER ZAAS E-MAILS:

Another copy of the Copper Scroll exists, although I’m not sure exactly where, somewhere in the bowels of the University of Chicago. David Wilmot, of blessed memory, prepared a copy as part of his dissertation research (see Michael O. Wise, “David Wilmot and the Copper Scroll,” in G. J. Brooke and P. R. Davies, Copper Scroll Studies (London, T & T Clarke, 2002) 291ff.) His students and friends were treated to a play-by-play description of the vicissitudes of this construction; Allegro had described the gauge of the copper as being that of three British postcards, so there was a lot of measurements of late-40’s postcards, that kind of thing. Wilmot received his PhD posthumously, and I don’t know what happened to his replica; it might be in the collection of the Oriental Institute, although his PhD was, I believe, in the Humanities Division.

Can any other readers shed light on the fate of Dr. Wilmot's replica?

Background here.

Susannah in SF

APOCRYPHA WATCH: Opera Review: 'Susannah' a marvel too often overlooked (Joshua Kosman, SFGate). Excerpt:

This bleak and brilliant production marked the first time any of Floyd's operas have been offered as part of the San Francisco Opera's regular season, and the only possible response was, "What on Earth has taken so long?" The composer's first mature opera, and still his best known, is a small marvel of ferocity and compassion, and Saturday's performance - with the indomitable soprano Patricia Racette in the title role - made a superb case for it.

To call "Susannah" small is a testament to its scale and efficiency rather than its emotional impact. Floyd's piece runs scarcely over two hours, but it packs enough moral indignation and theatrical fervor for a piece twice its length.

Background here and links.

Haircuts, mourning, and theodicy in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Rules for Hair Cutting and Rending Garments—and Exceptions for Newborns. Daf Yomi: The Talmud’s ruling principle is that there is always a correct course of action, since God is watching. This one covers a lot of ground and is hard to excerpt, but it concludes:

But then, at many points in the Talmud we read about a father being chastised by the loss of his children, or a husband by the loss of his wife. A family, in the Talmudic view, was not a collection of individuals but a man’s possession, which could be taken from him if he sinned. In this way, the rabbis tried to find some modicum of logic, of cause and effect, to loss. If you are punished, it must be because you deserved it. Likewise, in Moed Katan 18b we read that a person is never accused of a crime unless he is at least somewhat guilty: “A man is suspected of having done something wrong only if he has indeed done so. And if he did not do it wholly, he did it partly. And if he did not do it even partly, he thought in his heart to do it. And if he did not think to himself to do it, he saw others doing it and was happy.” To the rabbis, anything seemed preferable to acknowledging that life, with all its grief and suffering, might simply be random.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

R. Hananiah ben Teradyon

A MEDITATION ON THE STORY OF THE TEN MARTYRS: For These We Cry: Rabi Chananya ben Teradyon (Libi Astaire, The Jewish Press). In advance of Yom Kippur, this article retells the moving story of one of the Ten Martyrs. Excerpt:

Rabi Yosi ben Kisma was very ill. Yet, when Rabi Chananya ben Teradyon came to visit him, Rabi Yosi took the opportunity to strongly admonish his colleague for disobeying the Roman edicts.

“Don’t you know that Heaven has decreed that Rome shall reign?” he told Rabi Chananya. “True, this nation has destroyed the Beit Hamikdash and killed Hashem’s Sages, but Rome is firmly established! Yet, what do you do? You sit and occupy yourself with Torah, gather people together and publicly teach them Torah, and even keep a sefer Torah close to your heart.”

“Hashem will have mercy on us,” replied Rabi Chananya.

“I am speaking rationally and you answer me with ‘Hashem will have mercy on us’? I wouldn’t be surprised if the Romans burned you together with a Torah scroll” (Avodah Zarah18a).

As we know, Rabi Yosi’s words were fulfilled. Both the Talmud and the medieval piyyut Eleh Ezkerah, which we read on Yom Kippur during Mussaf, describe the fiery death of Rabi Chananya, one of the Ten Martyrs, at the hands of the Romans. Yet, this same Rabi Chananya, who fearlessly defied the edict of the Romans that forbade the teaching and studying of Torah, understood that not every Jew could be expected to have his courage. He therefore encouraged those who were afraid to learn Torah in public to at least learn in private.

The various recensions of the Story of the Ten Martyrs have been collected in an excellent German edition by Gottfried Reeg: Die Geschichte von den Zehn Märtyrern: Synoptische Edition mit Überstezung und Einleitung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987). And I have noted another book on the subject here.

As I have mentioned before, an alternate, subversive, and macabrely upbeat version of the Story of the Ten Martyrs is found in the Hekhalot Rabbati (§§107-121). In this version R. Chanaya (Hananiah) was shapeshifted, terminator-like, to take over the identity of the evil (and entirely legendary) Roman Emperor Lupinus. R. Hananiah then spent six months terrorizing the Roman army, after which Lupinus was miraculously transformed to have the appearance of each of the ten martyrs successively, in order that the execution of each could be inflicted on him while they were all spared. You can read this story on pages 66-77 of my translation of the Hekhalot literature or you can read an earlier draft of the translation which I circulated with an SBL paper back in 2008. And Ra‛anan Boustan has published a very interesting book on the Hekhalot Rabbati which focuses on this story: From Martyr to Mystic: Rabbinic Martyrology and the Making of Merkavah Mysticism (TSAJ 112; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).

Martínez & de Vaan, Introduction to Avestan

ARASH ZEINI: Introduction to Avestan.

Martínez, Javier & Michiel de Vaan. 2014. Introduction to Avestan (Brill Introductions to Indo-European Languages I). Leiden/Boston: Brill. Translated from Spanish by Ryan Sandell.

More details at the link.

Unauthorized Mughrabi Bridge construction halted

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: PM orders halt to Temple Mount bridge construction (Shlomo Cesana, Times of Israel).

Two weeks ago, construction work began on new bridge connecting Western Wall plaza to Temple Mount's Mughrabi Gate • Work started "without coordination with or approval from the prime minister, and therefore it was stopped," PMO officials say.

It's been a couple of years since the last installment of the Mugrabi (Mughrabi, Moghrabi) Gate Bridge saga. Apparently someone lost patience and took matters into their own hands. But now the status quo of doing nothing has been restored.

Background here with links going back a decade to the embankment collapse that led to the building of the temporary and now unusable bridge.

Reed lectures on Aramaic 1 Enoch

ARAMAIC DAY: Annette Yoshiko Reed, “From Didactic List to Long-Duration Literature: The Enochic Astronomical Book and Aramaic Jewish Scribalism in the Early Hellenistic Age.” History of Material Texts Workshop / 8 September 2014 5:15pm, Class of 1978 Pavilion, Kislak Center Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, University of Pennsylvania.

Follow the link for the abstract. Wish I could go. Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."

The Zohar meets Daf Yomi

ARAMAIC DAY: Zohar Ammud Yomi: A Daily Page of Zohar. Daniel Matt on Facebook:

As many of you know, there is a custom of studying a daily page of the (Babylonian) Talmud. This is known as daf yomi, “a daily daf.” A daf is two sides of an Aramaic or Hebrew page (front and back). If you study a daf yomi of the Talmud every single day, you can complete the entire Talmud in about seven-and-a-half years. (For more info, see the entry on Daf Yomi in Wikipedia.)

This October we are beginning a similar custom of studying a daily page of the Zohar. We have decided to study an ammud yomi, “a daily ammud” of Zohar. An ammud is half of a daf, that is, a single side of an Aramaic page of Zohar (such as Zohar 1:1a or Zohar 1:1b). The reason we are planning on studying a daily ammud rather than a daily daf is that the Zohar is so dense and demanding that a single page (that is, one side of a page) is challenging enough.

We are beginning Zohar Ammud Yomi (A Daily Page of Zohar) on the 20th of Tishrei 5775 (the 6th day of the festival of Sukkot), which corresponds to Monday night, October 13 – Tuesday, October 14, 2014. We have prepared a calendar for the first month, covering Zohar 1:1a-16b, running from October 13/14 through November 14. This calendar (posted below) lists each daily ammud (according to the traditional Aramaic pagination) and the corresponding English pages in The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume 1. We estimate that we will complete the first volume (of the Pritzker Edition, which extends through the Torah portion Noah) in early 2015, following which we will proceed with Volume 2 (which opens with the Torah portion Lekh Lekha).

Daniel Matt and Rabbi Elie Spitz are coordinating Zohar Ammud Yomi. Rabbi Spitz and a number of others have committed themselves to this daily practice of study, and more folks will soon join. Rabbi Spitz has graciously agreed to occasionally post comments (relating to some of the daily Zohar passages) to this Zohar Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/theZohar/. Daniel Matt will also contribute occasionally. Members of this Facebook group are invited to join Zohar Ammud Yomi (A Daily Page of Zohar) and to participate in the online discussion. For now, this Zohar Facebook Group will serve as the hub of Zohar Ammud Yomi (A Daily Page of Zohar).

The schedule of the discussion, commencing on 13 October, follows.

To follow the postings you must be on Facebook, where you can join the Zohar group. Should be very interesting.

HT Judy Barrett. Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch." More on the Zohar, and on Daniel Matt's Aramaic edition and English translation of it, here with many links.

Idumean Aramaic ostraca

ARAMAIC DAY: Ancient Aramaic Business Records: Fourth-century B.C.E. ostraca from Idumea (Bible History Daily). Robin Ngo summarizes an article by Ada Yardeni in the current issue of BAR. Excerpt:

We have about 2,000 ostraca with inscriptions in Aramaic, the language the Jews brought back from Babylon following the end of the Babylonian exile in 538 B.C.E. Many of the ostraca record the delivery of products to and from storehouses and include the year of the present ruler’s reign. Idumea and Judea were under Persian rule at this time until the empire fell to Alexander the Great around 333 B.C.E.

The article itself is behind a subscription wall. Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."

Syriac in Supernatural

ARAMAIC DAY: Supernatural Syriac (Exploring Our Matrix). James McGrath noticed that a Syriac manuscript has a cameo in Supernatural and he promptly went and identified the manuscript, which, of course, has nothing to do with the storyline in the episode. I haven't watched Supernatural myself, but I have noted that the archangel Metatron is one of the characters in it.

Cross-file under "Syriac Watch" and "Metatron Watch."

8th World Syriac Conference

ARAMAIC DAY: I have a huge heap of links from the last week or so, to which I will get as I find time. Today I have gathered up some that deal with Aramaic (in all its dialects). First: 8th World Syriac Conference Opened (AINA).

Kottayam, India -- The 8th World Syriac Conference got under way at St Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute (SEERI) at Baker hills near here on Monday.

[...]

Cross-file under "Syriac Watch."

Amulet at the Rylands Library, plus news on P52

MORE FROM MANCHESTER: One of world’s earliest Christian charms found. A 1,500 year old papyrus fragment found in The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library has been identified as one the world’s earliest surviving Christian charms.

The remarkable document uniquely contains some of the earliest documented references to the Last Supper and ‘manna from heaven’. It is the earliest surviving document to use the Christian Eucharist liturgy - which outlines the Last Supper - as a protective charm.

Dr Roberta Mazza, a Research Fellow of the recently established John Rylands Research Institute came across the Greek ‘amulet’ while working on thousands of fragments of unpublished historical documents that are kept in the library’s vaults.

[...]

Dr Mazza said: “The amulet maker would have cut a piece of the receipt, written the charm on the other side and then he would have folded the papyrus to be kept in a locket or pendant. It is for this reason the tax receipt on the exterior was damaged and faded away.”

The document had been held at the library since around 1901, but its significance had not been realized until Dr Mazza spotted it. She said: “This is an important and unexpected discovery as it’s one of the first recorded documents to use magic in the Christian context and the first charm ever found to refer to the Eucharist – the last supper – as the manna of the Old Testament. The text of the amulet is an original combination of biblical passages including Psalm 78:23-24 and Matthew 26:28-30 among others.

“To this day, Christians use passages from the bible as protective charms so our amulet marks the start of an important trend in Christianity.

[...]

As I just noted, I was in Manchester last Thursday through Saturday for the BNTC. On Friday I was able to attend a couple of papers of the From Egypt to Manchester: Unravelling the John Rylands Papyrus Collection Conference, which was organized by Dr. Mazza and which took place at the same time as the BNTC. The BNTC people only ended up with about an hour's time in the Rylands, but I used that hour to hear:

2:00-2:30
AnneMarie Luijendijk (Princeton):
Unravelling the Oldest Septuagint Manuscript (P.Ryl. III 458)

2:30-3:00
Brent Nongbri (Sydney):
Palaeography, Precision, and Publicity: Some Further Thoughts on P52

I saw Dr Mazza in the audience, and Hannah Cotton was sitting directly behind me, but I didn't get a chance to introduce myself to either of them or to thank Dr. Mazza for organizing the conference (so let me do the latter here and now). Both papers were excellent. Dr. Nongbri's paper will be of special interest to New Testament scholars. P52 is reputedly the oldest fragment of the New Testament, specifically of the Gospel of John. It is generally accepted to have been written during the first half of the second century CE, some would say around 125, which would put it within living memory of the composition of the Gospel of John itself. In his presentation Dr. Nongbri added additional evidence to his already-published arguments that the date of the papyrus is much harder to pin down and that manuscripts with comparable scripts which bear dates in their text range from the time of Hadrian to the early third century CE and that P52 could have been copied anytime during that date range. If he is correct, P52 would still be one of the earliest surviving fragments of the New Testament, but not necessarily the earliest or copied within living memory of the original manuscript of John.

Copper Scroll Facsimiles

THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: Copied copper scroll is one to treasure (Simon Rocker).

A couple who have made high-quality facsimiles of illustrated medieval manuscipts and even of the Dead Sea Scrolls have embarked on their most difficult challenge yet - to make a replica of the mysterious Copper Scroll.

The 2,000-year-old metal object, discovered in one of the Dead Sea Scroll caves in Qumran in 1952, appears to be a treasure map giving clues to the location of precious artefacts from the Temple in Jerusalem.

After two years of trial and error since beginning their attempt, Michael and Linda Falter of Facsimile Editions, London believe they have at last cracked it.

[...]

HT David Meadows. This is an interesting project, but neither the author of the article nor the Falters indicate any awareness that a facsimile of the Copper Scroll already exists. The Copper Scroll was originally opened at the College of Technology in Manchester, by cutting it into strips, a project organized by John Allegro. Regular readers will recall that I was just at the University of Manchester for the annual meeting of the British New Testament Conference. While I was there I learned from Professor George Brooke that Allegro had a facsimile of the Copper Scroll made while it was in Manchester. George brought it by my table during one of the meals and even let me heft it. Photographic proof:

Click on the image for a larger view.

UPDATE (11 September): News of yet another Copper Scroll facsimile here.

Secunda's stray thoughts

THE TALMUD BLOG: Stray Thoughts on Art History and Talmudic Philology (Shai Secunda).

New Reviews of the Enoch Seminar

RECENT REVIEWS AT REVIEWS OF THE ENOCH SEMINAR:

John F. Healey reviews Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme, Before the God in this Place for Good Remembrance. A Comparative Analysis of the Aramaic Votive Inscriptions from Mount Gerizim

Matthew Thiessen reviews Christian Frevel and Christophe Nihan (eds.) Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean World and Ancient Judaism. Noted earlier here.

JQR 104.3 TOC

H-JUDAIC: TOC: Jewish Quarterly Review - ToC Vol. 104.3 Summer 2014.