The Babylonian-Judean cuneiform tablets and looting

A COMPLICATION? Ancient Tablets Displayed in Jerusalem Fuel Looting Debate (AP). The article says that suspicion has been raised that the tablets may have been looted in the 1990s, but the owner says that they were originally acquired legally in the 1970s. Whatever the merits of this particular case (and I do not have sufficient information to form an opinion), the whole issue of what to do about looted antiquities is fraught and difficult.

Background on the Babylonian-Judean cuneiform tablets is here and links. Some old posts dealing with the question of scholars using unprovenanced antiquities are here and here. See also these two essays in Bible and Interpretation:

New Policy on Cuneiform Texts from Iraq (ASOR, November 2004)
Should Scholars Authenticate and Publish Unprovenanced Finds? (Eric M. Meyers, February 2005)

UPDATE: The author attribution for the 2004 Bible and Interpretation essay was originally incorrect. I have corrected it above. Apologies for the error.

"Leviathan" excavated

"LEVIATHAN THAT CROOKED SERPENT": Ancient Leviathan Fossils Found in Arava Valley. Archaeologists and scientists have found remains of what may have been an ancient Leviathan in the Arava Valley, not far from the Dead Sea (Hana Levi Julian, The Jewish Press). Actually its a plesiosaur (kind of an aquatic dinosaur) called Elasmosaurus, not Leviathan. Leviathan is a mythological sea dragon mentioned in the Bible (e.g., Isaiah 27:1, whence the quotation), the Ugaritic texts, etc. Any connection between the two is extremely hypothetical. For example it is possible that ancient peoples occasionally dug up plesiosaur bones and that was the origin of the worldwide dragon myths. But there is no proof of this and I am skeptical.

There's lots more on ancient dragon traditions here, here, and links.

The Babylonian-Judean cuneiform tablets exhibition

BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON: Remembering Babylon: New Exhibit Explores Roots of Jewish Life in Iraq (The Jewish Press: Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency).

The only museum in the world, dedicated to the history of the Ancient Near East from a biblical perspective, has a new exhibition examining the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people as never seen before. The Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem has amassed a collection of over 100 cuneiform tablets, original documents from the Judean community, which are now on display to the public for the first time.

[...]

The latest announcements include some new information about the contents of the tablets:

By the Rivers of Babylon, which also features innovative multi-media, original animations and local archeology from the First Temple, traces the family tree of fourth-generation Judean exile, Hagai Ben Ahiqam, all the way back to his great-grandfather, Samak Yama, who was born in Judah. One tablet describes the division of inheritance among Haggai and his brothers in Bablyon – the kind of information that Dr. Vukosavović says that one could find in a lawyer’s file cabinet today.

Hagai’s family lived in the Babylonian city known as Al-Yahudu, an important city, among many cities, which were settled by Judean exiles over 2,500 years ago, following Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple in 586 BCE.

Background here and links.

BAR's 40th

CONGRATULATIONS TO BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW: Storied and Controversial Biblical Archaeology Magazine Turns 40. They do manage to keep things interesting.

The Israel Museum's 50th

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE ISRAEL MUSEUM: Israel Museum kicks off 50th anniversary celebrations. Exhibits include contemporary Israeli artists, the country as it was in 1965, exhibit on the Shrine of the Book, and the history of humankind (Judy Maltz, Haaretz).

The Israel Museum will kick off its 50th anniversary celebrations this week, with exhibits including contemporary artists and the country as it was in 1965.

Over the years, the country’s leading cultural institution has collected more than 500,000 objects and now serves nearly one million visitors a year.

It houses huge holdings of biblical and Holy Land archaeology, among them the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts ever found.

[...]

More on the renewal of the Israel Museum here and links. And a post on the Museum's 40th anniversary is here.

More on Flesher's award

PAUL FLESHER e-mails the following:

Several people have expressed interest in knowing more about the research project I will be conducting in my term as the Gitin Professor at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research. It has mistakenly been reported that my project encompasses the Huqoq mosaics. I wish to clarify that my research concerns not the Huqoq synagogue but the mosaics of other synagogues. To date there has been significant scholarly attention given to the zodiac cycles decorating the floors of ancient Galilean synagogues, but less attention to the other images. I intend to bring a ritual studies analysis to the floors of the synagogues at Sepphoris and Beth Alpha, looking especially at the images of the Temple/Torah Shrine, the lions, and sacrificial acts and implements. By combining information from the mosaics with interpretations found in the Palestinian Targums and the Palestinian rabbinic literature, where my expertise lies, I hope to reconstruct the sabbath liturgy and the meaning it was given in these sites.

Background here. I did not quote the full press release, relying on interested readers to follow the link. Apologies if this caused any confusion.

Hurtado on new Coptic text

LARRY HURTADO: Newly-Identified Coptic Text. The text is The Gospel of the Lots of Mary, which I have also discussed here.

By the way, this week looks increasingly busy and I may get little, if any, chance to blog during it.

On Kulp and Rogoff, Reconstructing the Talmud

EVENT IN MODIIN THIS SATURDAY: Reconstructing the Talmud: A Talmud Blog Event. In honor of the new book by Joshua Kulp and Jason Rogoff, Reconstructing the Talmud: An Introduction to the Academic Study of Rabbinic Literature (Mechon Hadar, 2014). An uploaded recording is promised for those who cannot attend.

HUCA 82-83

H-JUDAIC: TOC: Hebrew Union College Annual.

Volumes 82-83 of the Hebrew Union College Annual are now available in print and electronically.

Just to be clear, although the date of the volume is 2011-12, it just came out. Follow the link for the TOC, which includes a number of articles on ancient Judaism.

Lied on manuscript digitization

LIV INGEBORG LIED: Digitization and manuscripts as visual objects: effects of a media change.

So, how will the transformation of manuscripts into visual objects online change scholarship on texts and manuscripts? As has also been pointed out in the above mentioned research on media shifts, there is no one-to-one relationship between technological change on the one hand and change in social practices (what people do with media [Kratz 1959]) on the other. Until someone decides to answer the question based on actual empirical research we don’t yet know how this shift influences scholarly practices. For now, all answers will necessarily be hypothetical and suggestive, and I’ll phrase them in the form of follow-up questions.

PaleoJudaica has been following many different manuscript digitization projects over the years. Start here and follow the links.

Abraham and Nimrod

ARASH ZEINI: Abraham and Nimrod. Zarathustra too!

More on the new Ben-Hur movie

NOW FILMING: Morgan Freeman to star in Kazakh director's Ben-Hur (Dinara Urazova , Tengrinews).

Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov has begun to film an epic historical drama Ben-Hur, produced by Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Tengrinews reports citing the press release posted on the official website of Bekmambetov’s film company Bazelevs.

The role of Judah Ben-Hur in the new movie will be played by Jack Huston. Morgan Freeman will perform the role of Ilderim, while Rodrigo Santoro will take the role of Jesus Christ.

The plot of the new film is based on a classic of American literature - the novel by Lew Wallace "Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ," first published in 1880. The novel takes place in Palestine under Roman rule at the time of Jesus Christ. In the story, the young and wealthy Jew Judah Ben-Hur looses everything as he is betrayed by his best friend, ending up in slavery. On his journey Ben-Hur meets Jesus, an event which helps him find his path in life.

[...]

Background here. Past posts on the 2009 live O2 production (in Aramaic and Latin) of Ben-Hur are here and here and links, and past posts on the classic 1959 movie are here and here.

The Gospel of the Lots of Mary

NEW COPTIC TEXT: Newfound 'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' Discovered in Ancient Text (Owen Jarus, Live Science).

A 1,500-year-old book that contains a previously unknown gospel has been deciphered. The ancient manuscript may have been used to provide guidance or encouragement to people seeking help for their problems, according to a researcher who has studied the text.

Written in Coptic, an Egyptian language, the opening reads (in translation):

"The Gospel of the lots of Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, she to whom Gabriel the Archangel brought the good news. He who will go forward with his whole heart will obtain what he seeks. Only do not be of two minds."

[...]

This looks like a good popular treatment of what looks like a very interesting new text that was published by AnneMarie Luijendijk last year. The text classes itself as a "gospel" in its own title, but by our genre classifications it is not one. Rather it sounds like an example of "Sortilege," a text that uses biblical verses and phrases to give its readers divinatory guidance — sort of a Bible-inspired I Ching. Jeff Childers gave a very interesting paper on some of these texts at the Bible as Notepad Conference last December. In the little I have seen there is not much information on the biblical passages used in this text, but the blurb for the monograph confirms that it is "replete with biblical phrases."

So no, this is not a new apocryphal gospel. But it is a new late antique Coptic text of considerable interest for ancient divinatory practices, and it is always good to have new texts.

Tu B'shevat 2015

TU B'SHEVAT, the New Year for Trees, began last night at sundown.

This year Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz has an article on The Evolution Of Tu b’Shvat for The Jewish Week.

Also inspired indirectly by today's holiday, Elon Gilad asks Did ancient Jews worship trees? in Haaretz, with the sub-heading "The Hebrew words for 'oak' and 'terebinth' seem to derive from the ancient word for 'god - el."

Regarding the latter, I would not make too much of an apparent similarity between these tree names and the word for "god" in Canaanite; this could just be a coincidence. But it would not surprise me if ancient Israelites practiced divination by dendrology. Various forms of divination have existed in Israelite and Jewish circles from antiquity to the present and the practitioners did not and do not think of this as worship of anyone other than God.

But one ancient Israelite custom which was pretty close to tree worship and is only hinted at in this article, is the worship of the Canaanite goddess Asherah (see here and here) as consort to the God of Israel. The Deuteronomistic Historian complained about this (e.g., 1 Kings 16:33; 2 Kings 21:7, 23:14-15) and there is epigraphic evidence for it as well. It appears to have been a fairly widespread practice in some circles, and her symbol seems to have been a sacred pole or tree used in her cult. But this would not have been tree worship; rather the tree or pole would have been considered a receptacle for the essence of the goddess and it would have been she who was being worshipped.

But none of this has anything directly to do with Tu B'Shevat; it only arises because trees are also involved.

Jenkins on a Zoroastrian inscription

ALEITIA: The Forgotten First Eastern Christians. History has neglected these early Christians outside Europe and the Mediterranean. Philip Jenkins turns to a third-century Zoroastrian inscription for a snapshot of early Eastern Christianity. Excerpt:

The leading figure in Persia’s Zoroastrian priesthood was one Kartir (or Kerdir), a revolutionary figure who departed from the standard imperial model of wide-ranging cultural tolerance. In the 270s, at Naqsh-e Rajab near Persepolis, Kartir commissioned some immodest inscriptions that vaunted his services to this faith and his empire. Among these very informative words, we find a boast of his intolerant and persecuting activities, and how he had “smitten” various minority religions:

“The heresy of Ahriman [the Devil] and the demons departed and was routed from the empire. And Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and Nazarenes and Christians and Baptists and Manicheans were smitten in the empire, and idols were destroyed, and the abodes of the demons disrupted and made into thrones and seats of the gods.”

Interesting commentary follows. Professor Jenkins has been discussing early Eastern (mostly Syriac) Christianity and related matters quite a bit over at The Anxious Bench.

Flesher receives Gitin Award

CONGRATULATIONS TO PAUL FLESHER: UW’s Flesher Receives Distinguished Professorship Honor.

February 2, 2015 — Professor Paul Flesher of the University of Wyoming’s Department of Religious Studies has received a prestigious award that includes funding for a four-and-a-half month residency in Jerusalem in spring 2016.

The Seymour Gitin Distinguished Professorship award is given by the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (AIAR) in Jerusalem.

[...]

Flesher is internationally known for his research on the Jewish Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Targums, as well as his work on early synagogues, from their origins into the Rabbinic period. Since 2011, he has been part of an archaeological team that is unearthing a late Roman (fifth century) synagogue at Huqoq in Israel’s lower Galilee which has a floor covered in mosaics. The site has already become famous for its depictions of the Samson story (Judges 13).

[...]

Professor Flesher has been quoted often on PaleoJudaica, mostly, but not exclusively, regarding the James Ossuary (most recently here). More on the Huqoq mosaics here with many links.

UPDATE (12 February): More here. Note that the full press release makes clear that his research project involves mosaics other than the ones at Huqoq. Also, I have fixed a dead link above.

Power, Authority and Canon

DAY CONFERENCE:

Power, Authority and Canon
6 May 2015
New College, University of Edinburgh
The theme of the conference revolves around the issues of historical and theological ramifications of canonization. Why were some texts and not others elevated to the status of “holy scriptures”? What are the effects in conferring authority on these texts? Website: http://conferences.hss.ed.ac.uk/power-authority-canon/

0900-0915 Welcome

0915-1000 John Collins (Yale University), “Uses of Torah in the Second Temple Period”

1000-1045 Michael Satlow (Brown University), “Bad Prophecies”

1045-1100 Coffee

1100-1145 Manfred Oeming (Universität Heidelberg), “The Way of God: Ethicsand Ritual as Birthplaces of Canonicity”

1145-1230 Timothy Lim (University of Edinburgh), “The Insufficiency of Divine Inspiration”

1230-1330 Lunch

1400-1445 John Barton (University of Oxford), “How far does the content of canonical texts matter?

1445-1530 Walter Moberly (University of Durham), “Canonicity and Religious Truth: What Role, if any, Should Traditional Canon Play Today?”

1530-1615 Craig Evans (Acadia Divinity School), “Jesus and the Beginnings of the Christian Canon of Scripture”

1615-1700 Tea

1700-1745 Shaye Cohen (Harvard University), “Some Reflections on the Canon”

1745-1800 Closing Remarks

A Special Event:
On 5 May, Professor Shaye Cohen will give a Gunning lecture on “The Bible and the Mishnah”, Martin Hall, New College, 5pm

Registration at www.bit.ly/GunningConf

Day fee: £30 (concession £15) includes conference attendance, refreshments and lunch. Contact: Jean Reynolds, School of Divinity, New College, Mound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LX, Tel: 44-(0)131 650 8948. Email: J.Reynolds@ed.ac.uk

E-mailed by Timothy Lim. Looks very interesting.

Still more on the Babylonian-Judean cuneiform tablets

PHILOLOGY! ‘By the rivers of Babylon’ exhibit breathes life into Judean exile.
Never-before-showcased clay tablets documenting the first diaspora go on display at Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum (Ilan Ben Zion, Times of Israel). Another article that gives still more details about this important discovery. Read it all, but I will just comment on two passages.

“It puts a face on the real people who went through these fateful events,” Dr. Filip Vukosavović, curator of the exhibit, told The Times of Israel. The tablets preserve a wealth of Judean names — including the familiar Natanyahu — of the exilic community, and even include a handful of Aramaic inscriptions.

This is easy to miss, but, if accurate, it's very important. We have almost no Babylonian Aramaic from this period. We know plenty of Aramaic was written in Babylonia in the Second Temple Period; there is even a special Akkadian word for an Aramaic scribe (sepīru), distinguished from a scribe who copied cuneiform tablets (tupsharru). But Aramaic was normally written on perishable materials and almost none of it survived the humid Babylonian climate. To have even a little Babylonian Aramaic from the period of the Exile is in itself a major discovery. (Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch.")

Each document catalogs when and where it was written and by whom, providing scholars with an unprecedented view into the day-to-day life of Judean exiles in Babylonia, as well as a geography of where the refugees were resettled. The earliest in the collection, from 572 BCE, mentions the town of Al-Yahudu — “Jerusalem” — a village of transplants from Judea.

This is a bit garbled. The phrase Al-Yahadu is Akkadian for "town of Judea," which makes sense as a name for a village of exiled Judeans. It doesn't have anything directly to do with Jerusalem. This article from the 2011 Story of Iran and the Jews Exhibition (noted here) discusses the correct meaning of the phrase.

Background here and links.

Ashkelon looting arrests

AND AGAIN: Tomb raiders arrested in Ashkelon National Park for looting, damaging ancient site. Three suspects found with metal detector and digging equipment claim they were looking for "worms to go fishing" (, Jerusalem Post).

Three Beduin men were arrested Friday night for breaking into and attempting to loot an ancient burial site in Ashkelon National Park, the Israel Antiquities Authority Robbery Prevention Unit announced on Sunday.

According to an IAA spokesman, the suspects, all in their 30s, drove an SUV from their village outside Beersheba to the Byzantine-era tomb equipped with a sophisticated metal detector and digging equipment.

“They broke into the ancient tombs and during their digging caused irreparable damage to gravestones, ancient pottery, and coffins,” said IAA robbery unit inspector and archeologist Guy Fitoussi.

[...]

Other recent looting arrests in Israel are noted here and links.

Happy bicentennial to the CMS College, Kottayam, Kerala

SYRIAC WATCH: Kerala college oldest in India, set to turn 200 in February (Vinod Nedumudy, Deccan Chronicle).

Kochi: One of the most prestigious colleges in Kerala, the CMS College, Kottayam, is set to turn 200 next month, becoming the oldest Indian college.

Associate professor of Malayalam, Dr Babu Cheriyan, who has chronicled the history of the college Towards Modernity: The story of the first college in India, found references from various historians that suggest that the college was started in 1815, March with 25 students, mainly belonging to Syriac studies, and not in 1817 as widely believed.

[...]

There's lots more on the study of Syriac in Kerala here (cf. here) and links.

Punic moat in Spain

PUNIC WATCH: 2,200-Year-Old Moat Discovered in Spain (Archaeology Magazine). Better yet, the moat had Carthaginian artifacts in it.

More details here: Found in Spain: traces of Hannibal's troops. Spanish archaeology students have discovered a 2,200-year-old moat in what is now the Catalan town of Valls, filled with objects providing evidence of the presence of troops of the Carthaginian general Hannibal in the area (Jessica Jones, The Local).

Coptic summer school

ALIN SUCIU: International Summer School “The Coptic Bible and Coptic Literature in the Digital Age” (Göttingen/Hamburg, July 20 – August 1, 2015).

The Institute for Egyptology and Coptic Studies at the University of Göttingen and the Corpus of Coptic Literary Manuscripts (CMCL) at the Hiob-Ludolf-Institute for Ethiopian Studies, University of Hamburg, will be offering a two-week summer school “The Coptic Bible and Coptic Literature in the Digital Age”. The summer school will focus on cataloguing and editing Coptic manuscripts – Biblical and literary – using both traditional scholarly techniques and new methods in the Digital Humanities (DH).

The Summer School is associated with two major projects, the ”Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament“ in Göttingen and the “Corpus of Coptic Literary Manuscripts (CMCL)” in Hamburg, and will profit from the expertise of the staff members as well as that of international experts.

Interview with the archangel

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Curtis Armstrong nostalgic about past movie career (Calla Camero, Golden Gate Express).

Along with three seasons of “King of the Nerds”, Armstrong continues to act in other television roles, like Principal Foster in “New Girl” and Metatron in “Supernatural.” Since his first film “Risky Business” in 1983, Armstrong has had acting roles every year.

There's been a lot in the media about Armstrong's Metatron character in Supernatural. It would have been monotonous to follow the story consistently, but I do have posts mentioning it here, here, and here.

You too are being assimilated.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK: Nation’s Historians Warn The Past Is Expanding At Alarming Rate (The Onion).

More on saving Iraqi manuscripts

SYRIAC WATCH: Iraqi Priests Protect Historic Christian Writings From Islamic State. Dominican Father Najeeb Michaeel rescued 1,300 manuscripts from Mosul last summer, as it was being overrun by the Islamist militants (ANDREA GAGLIARDUCCI/CNA/EWTN NEWS). More on Father Michaeel's daring manuscript rescue. Excerpt:

Father Michaeel collected some 1,300 manuscripts from the 14th to the 19th centuries and put them in two large trucks in the early morning, transferring them to a secret location in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, where they have been kept safe. They include not only Christian works but manuscripts on the Quran, music and grammar.

“We passed three checkpoints without any problem, and I think the Virgin Mary [had] a hand to protect us,” Father Michaeel said Jan. 26 in an interview with National Public Radio.

The library of 50,000 modern books was left behind in Bakhdida, and the city was seized by the Islamic State on Aug. 7.

Father Michaeel has been joined in Erbil by Benedictine Father Columba Stewart, who is executive director of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, which is participating in the preservation of the Syriac manuscripts.

I inferred in my earlier post that the manuscripts were in Syriac and Arabic. The above implies that I was not far off.

More on those Babylonian-Judean cuneiform tablets

ON DISPLAY AT THE BIBLE LANDS MUSEUM IN JERUSALEM: Ancient tablets disclose Jewish exiles’ life in Babylonia. 2,500-year-old said to be the most important ancient Jewish archive since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. (Nir Hasson, Haaretz).

A little known collection of more than 100 clay tablets in Cuneiform script, dating back to the Babylon Exile some 2,500 years ago, was unveiled this week, allowing a glimpse into the everyday life of one of the most ancient exile communities in the world.

Prof. Wayne Horowitz, one of the archaeologists who studied the tablets, says this is the most important ancient Jewish archive since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[...]

It's rare to see a sentence like the last one in the quote, and rarer still for it to be true, but in this case it sounds like a fair assessment. Some information on the contents of the tablets:

Until now very little had been known about the life of the Judean community that had been uprooted from Jerusalem and deported to Babylon. The collection also corresponds with the Biblical text in which the prophet Ezekiel writes “as I was among the captives by the river Chebar” (chapter 1, verse 1). The “river Chebar” or “river Chebar village” appear several times on the tablets.

The tablets reflect trade transactions, leasing houses and fields, addresses, inheritances, etc. Certificate 31, for example, is of a deal between Yirpa Ben Dohah and Ahikam Ben Refa’iyahu, in which the former trades a “trained, five-year-old bull” for “one gray jennet.” In certificate 52 a man called Ikisha sold his female slave for “three pieces of silver.” In another document, Neriayu Ben Ahikam rents a house for “10 silver shekels ... half given at the beginning of the year and the rest in the middle of the year.” The tenant undertook in the agreement to pay for damages, if any, from the foundations to the roof.

On some tablets, ancient Hebraic letters appear beside the Akkadian details. The researchers assume these were intended for cataloging and tracing. On tablet 10, for example, which deals with a bond for barley, the name Shalemiyahu appears in Hebraic. “These are the most ancient Hebraic letters from the Babylonian exile,” says Horowitz.

Read it all. Unfortunately the tablets were bought on the antiquities market rather than being scientifically excavated. Background here.

Review of Hoff, Friedman, Chazan, The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240

H-JUDAIC REVIEW: Jean Connell Hoff, John Friedman, and Robert Chazan. The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012. ix + 182 pp. $19.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-88844-303-8.

Reviewed by
Piero Capelli
Published on
H-Judaic (January, 2015)
Commissioned by
Jason Kalman

Disputation and Desecration: The Talmud Trial of 1240.

This volume is an excellent and up-to-date tool (esecially convenient for classes) on the Paris Talmud trial and its aftermath and on Jewish-Christian polemics in the Middle Ages in general, for both an academic and a nonacademic readership. In particular, we still have much to learn from research on the events of 1240 and the related Hebrew account.

A Lambdin etymology

ARAMAIC WATCH: Anatoly Lieberman a post at the OUP Blog has an interesting tidbit about Thomas Lambdin which I didn't know:

Latin antiquus

Thomas Lambdin, Professor in Harvard Department of Near Eastern Studies, once suggested that the Latin adjective antiquus “old, ancient” was a borrowing of Aramaic attiq “old.” ...

Professor Lambdin is an expert in Semitic linguistics and, naturally, receives impulses from the material he knows best. I happen to be well-acquainted with his books and even reviewed the etymologies offered in his untraditional manual of Gothic. It is true that that the etymology of antiquus entails several difficulties, but, in my opinion, suggesting that that adjective came from Aramaic is hard to justify. As usual, the closeness of forms is not a sufficient argument. We would like to know why such a basic concept had to be taken over from a foreign language, under what circumstances the borrowing took place, and whether it filled a lacuna in Latin or superseded a native synonym. In the absence of additional arguments I would stay away from such a bold hypothesis.

It is pretty bold, but Professor Lambdin generally has good reasons for his suggestions. It would have been awfully helpful to have an indication of where exactly Lambdin said this. Was it an off-the-cuff comment after a class or was it in a publication? If the latter, what is the reference, so we can and go evaluate his arguments ourselves if so inclined? In the absence of that information, I will keep an open mind.

Aramaic in ancient Arabia

ARAMAIC WATCH: A forest of crosses and names of martyrs in the desert of Saudi Arabia (AsiaNet.it). A Franco-Saudi archaeological team is responsible for the discovery. Prof Frédéric Imbert dated the graffiti to 470-475, a time when anti-Christian persecution began, culminating under the usurper Yusuf. Even the Qur'an refers to it indirectly. The findings show how far Christianity had spread at the time, until the arrival of Islam.

The area is called Bi'r Hima or Abar Hima, names "that refer to places with wells known since ancient times." According to Imbert, an epigrapher, the area is located on the route "that connected Yemen to Najran" where caravans could be resupplied in water.

Inscriptions were found with crosses, scattered over a one-square kilometre. Some inscriptions appear to be in a local version of Aramaic, a pre-Islamic form of Arabic, Nabataean-Arabic to be more precise.

The inscriptions have been dated to the reign of Shurihbil Yakkuf, who controlled southern Arabia in 470-475. The persecution of Christians appears to have started under his rule.

I have more on the slightly later history of this region here. There are past posts on Aramaic in ancient Saudi Arabia here, here, and (maybe) here and the ancient UAE here and here. And there are many more posts on Nabataean (Nabatean) and the Nabataeans in PaleoJudaica's archives.

The sage and the snowstorm

SPECIFICALLY, HILLEL THE ELDER: Talmudic Rabbis Were Totally Badass in Blizzards (Sigal Samuel, The Forward). Unfortunately, but all too typically, the specific Talmudic reference is not given.

UPDATE: Reader Yehoshua Rabinowitz e-mails that the story appears in the Babylonian Talmud, Yoma, 35 B.

Hurtado on the "first-century" Mark manuscript

LARRY HURTADO: Early Manuscripts of Biblical Writings? What’s at Stake?

Background here and links.

More Talmudic marriage law

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Juliet’s Dilemma: Seduced Unmarried Minors Engaging in ‘Licentious Sexual Intercourse.’ Talmudic rabbis ask what agency young women have in determining their fate in sex, marriage, and divorce.

When it comes to marriage, American law is straightforwardly binary: You can be married or you can be unmarried. A wedding moves you from one group to the other, and a divorce moves you in the opposite direction, but there is no status in between. As we have seen over the last several months of reading Tractate Yevamot, however, Talmudic law is not so simple. Marriage itself is a two-stage process: A couple is first betrothed, and then, once they have sexual relations or undergo a marriage ceremony, they become fully married. Then there is levirate betrothal: If a man’s brother dies childless, he is bound to his widowed sister-in-law unless and until they either get married or perform the ceremony of chalitza.

[...]

Actually, I think that American (and British) marriage law is a little more nuanced than that. For example, from what I understand (and I am not a lawyer) most American States, England, and Scotland now regard cohabitation beyond a certain length of time as legally equivalent to marriage in terms of at least most rights and responsibilities. But, yes, Talmudic marriage law is still more nuanced.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Helios on the synagogue floor

MOSAICS: Pagan deities in ancient synagogues. What is the sun god doing on the floor of ancient synagogues? Doesn't that violate the second commandment? (Mike Rogoff, Haaretz).

“Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness…” proclaimed the Voice out of the fire and smoke at Mount Sinai. Yet ancient craftsmen, working in the biblical Land of Israel almost two millennia after Moses, were apparently undeterred by the Divine injunction. Their synagogue mosaic floors, unearthed by modern archaeologists, boast human images and – yes – even pagan deities. Such as the Sun God.

The two best-preserved of the synagogue mosaics are the exquisite figures in Hammat Tiberias (4th century C.E.), overlooking the Sea of Galilee, and the child-like but charming art of Beit Alfa (6th century C.E., shown above), at the foot of Mt. Gilboa.

[...]

More on representations of Helios and the Zodiac in ancient synagogue mosaics here and here.

Review of Gardner, Beduhn, and Dilley, Mani at the Court of the Persian Kings

PHILIP JENKINS has an inform review, in two parts, of a new book on Mani over at The Anxious Bench:

Mani and the Persian Kings

I have been reading an excellent new scholarly book on the Manichaean religion: Iain Gardner, Jason BeDuhn and Paul Dilley, Mani at the Court of the Persian Kings: Studies on the Chester Beatty Kephalaia Codex (Brill 2015). This post is not intended as a serious academic review, but rather as a series of thoughts and impressions that this fine book provokes. I will divide my comments into two separate posts.

It is astonishing that scholars of religion refer so little to the Manichaean faith, which in its day – roughly from the third century AD through the fourteenth century – was a fully fledged world religion, which interacted with Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. At various times, its adherents could be found across the whole of Eurasia, from France to China. It also created a substantial body of scriptures and commentaries, most of which are now lost.

[...]

Mani the Prophet

So what kind of literature was the Kephalaia, into what genre did it fall? As Paul Dilley shows, the dialogues with their question-and-answer formats could equally well be read in very different ways – “as a modified example of Greco-Roman erotapokrisis, Iranian frashna or Buddhist sutra.” For our purposes, the technical terms don’t matter, but think of the implications – that this movement was writing in ways intelligible to civilized people from the Ganges to the Tiber. Hardly less open to universal translation was the movement’s use of Wisdom, a concept deeply rooted in Judaism and early Christianity. In the same vein, Jason BeDuhn offers a mind-stretching comparison between the Kephalaia materials found in Egypt and the comparable texts from Turfan, in Western China.

The book was noted here last month. And for lots more on Mani and Manichaeism (Manicheism), see here and here and links.

Ancient selfies?

ASOR BLOG: Graffiti—the ‘Selfies’ of the Ancient Near East? Dr. Karen B. Stern, known to PaleoJudaica readers for averring that Aramaic is "the little black dress of Semitic languages," is back with more on her work on ancient graffiti.

But ancient and medieval people were also deeply concerned with their self-documentation, self-representation and self-promotion. They, too, registered their presence at tourist destinations, participation in life events, and positions amidst friends and peers. In place of iPhones and Facebook, they took styluses, nails, and paint to copy words and images to stone and plaster to broadcast their sentiments and images to the world. Their ‘selfies’ were graffiti.

Earlier posts dealing with Dr. Stern's work are here, here (the source of the quote above), and here.

New issue of Aries

HETERODOXOLOGY: Esotericism in Antiquity: An Aries special issue.

Now, fresh off those unobtanium-coated Brill printers is a new special issue of Aries (15.1) focusing on esotericism in antiquity, and edited by Dylan Burns. With no less than eight articles – including a few shorter ones – it is another good step in the direction of putting ancient esotericism back on the map of those esotericism researchers who have been living mostly in modern times (well, at least not much earlier than the 15th century). Articles cover some of the usual suspects, including Hermetism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, pseudepigrapha and Hekhalot mysticism, but several of the articles also come with a quite deliberate theoretical edge. This special issue in the leading esotericism journal, then, is a sign that perhaps we can stop worrying that the field is neglecting antiquities. At least there are very healthy signs for the dialogue between specialists to continue.

The TOC of this issue looks promising. More on the work of Dylan Burns is here and here.

Call for journal papers on Manichaeism

OPEN THEOLOGY:

Topical Issue on Manichaeism

COORDINATING EDITORS:

John C. Reeves,
Blumenthal Professor of Judaic Studies
Department of Religious Studies
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

DESCRIPTION

We invite submissions which explore any aspect of the Manichaean religion and its various cultural settings, including but not limited to the history of the study of Manichaeism, assessment of recent advances in research on Manichaeism, biographical or hagiographical studies of Mani or other personalities associated with his movement, essays which focus on one (or more) of the religion’s regional expressions, expositions of its key vocabulary, concepts, motifs, themes, and texts, and comparative studies which examine such items alongside analogous materials from other West, Central, South, or East Asian religious traditions.

Follow the link for information on submitting an article. Some pasts posts involving Manichaeism are here and here and links.

Baden and Moss on "first-century" Mark

CNN: Was oldest gospel really found in a mummy mask? (Joel Baden and Candida Moss).

Essentially, this papyrus is the scholarly equivalent of "my girlfriend who lives in Canada."

As we've come to expect from these two, this is a thoughtful and clear evaluation of the current situation. And yes, with a bit of good snark.

Background here (where I made some parallel comments before I had seen this piece) and links.

Anxious Adam

PHILIP JENKINS AT THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Enter Adam.

In the mid-first century AD, St. Paul wrote some hugely influential words about Adam, the Fall, and original sin. As I have argued, these ideas seem at variance with earlier Biblical traditions and Jewish thought, in which Adam’s story made little impact. Around Paul’s time, though, that saga was attracting increasing interest. Paul, oddly, was riding a fashionable wave.

[...]

Professor Jenkins continues his segue from Satan to the Fall and Adam. By the way, I am very skeptical about there ever having been Jewish originals of either The Life of Adam and Eve or The Apocalypse of Adam. I think they were both probably Christian compositions.

Khirbet Summeily and those tenth-century bullae

ASOR BLOG: Iron Age Bullae from Officialdom’s Periphery: Khirbet Summeily in Broader Context. James W. Hardin, Christopher A. Rollston, and Jeffrey A. Blakely provide lots of interesting background on the site where those tenth-century BCE anepigraphic (i.e. without writing) bullae were excavated and why they are important. Excerpt:

We believe that the remains discovered at Summeily demonstrate a level of politico-economic activity that has not been suspected for the late Iron Age I and early Iron Age IIA. This is especially the case if one integrates data from nearby Hesi. Taken together, we contend these reflect greater political complexity and integration across the transitional Iron I/IIA landscape than has been appreciated. Many scholars have tended to dismiss trends toward political complexity (that is, state formation) occurring prior to the arrival of the Assyrians in the region in the later eighth century BCE. However, based on our work in the Hesi region, we believe these processes began much earlier.

Background here.

Marcus Borg 1942-2015

SAD NEWS: RIP: Marcus Borg, theologian and historical Jesus expert, dies at 72.

[Episcopal News Service] Marcus J. Borg, a New Testament scholar, theologian and author who was associated for years with the search for the historical Jesus and who sought to put the New Testament in what he believed was its proper context, died Jan. 21.

[...]

Requiescat in pace.

More on that "first-century" Mark fragment

P. J. WILLIAMS: Questions about "First Century Mark." (ETC Blog). Good questions, all. It is difficult to imagine how exactly either paleography or C-14 dating could establish that a manuscript was written "during the first century - before the year 90." Neither is that precise, and normally such things are dated something like 100 CE plus or minus 50 years, or maybe 50 CE plus or minus 50 years. And even this level of precision is often not possible. I also wonder how soaking the manuscript with soapy water might corrupt the C-14 dating, but I don't know whether it does or not.

The bottom line is that we have reports of a very early manuscript fragment of the Gospel of Mark, but we are expected for now to take everything about it on faith. We don't know how extensive it is. We don't know if it has interesting textual variants. We don't have a photograph. We have not been presented with scientific data regarding any C-14 dating or paleographical arguments about the date of its script. Now it is certainly possible that this really is a roughly first-century manuscript of Mark. The consensus is that Mark was written around 70 CE, so there is no reason in principle why a fragment of a manuscript copied within twenty or thirty years of the composition of the book couldn't have survived. That would be very lucky indeed, but sometimes we are lucky. But until we have a full publication of the manuscript with all the information listed above, it's just unverified talk. Once we do, if specialists in the relevant areas come to a consensus that it really is a first-century manuscript, no one will be happier than I. But meanwhile I am ... you guessed it ... skeptical.

Just as I was about to press publish, I saw this blog post by Roberta Mazza, which raises additional concerns. Background to the story is here and links.

Progress in reading the Herculaneum scrolls

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Words emerge from ancient scrolls charred during eruption of Vesuvius. Powerful x-ray technique reveals letters and words on two fire-damaged scrolls from Herculaneum and provides clues to the author of one (Ian Sample, The Guardian). For some time I have been following efforts to recover the text of the carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum. The latest media reports seem to indicate that there has been a little progress.

Scientists at the National Research Council in Naples found they could read some of the scrolls without opening them by peering inside with x-rays. The procedure they developed, called x-ray phase contrast tomography (XPCT), could pick out the black ink against the charred papyrus sheet because of a tiny but distinct difference in the way the two materials refracted the x-rays.

Using XPCT, Vito Mocella and others revealed letters from the Greek alphabet and several distinctive words on two fire-damaged scrolls, one rolled, the other unrolled. The scrolls had been handed to Napoleon Bonaparte as a gift in 1802 and now belong to the Institute of France.

X-ray images taken of the unrolled scroll identified two words written in a hidden layer of the payrus. On one line, the researchers spotted Greek capital letters spelling out a word meaning “would fall”. On the next line, they found another Greek word meaning “would say”.

The rolled-up scroll was badly damaged and flattened from the blast of the eruption, making it tougher to read out the words on the papyrus. But Mocella said they could make out several letters from incomplete words. Some letters might have spelt out Greek words meaning “to deny” or “for”, with other letters resembling the word for “the”.
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The images produced by the x-ray machine gave the scientists rare clues to the author of the scrolls. On close inspection, they found that the handwriting style of the rolled-up scroll was similar to that of another Herculaneum papyrus written by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, who may have written the text in the first century BC.

As I have said before, non-destructive and non-invasive scanning technologies are the way of the future. Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.

Some past posts on the Herculaneum scrolls and efforts to recover their texts are here, here, and links.

Orna Amrani

ART: Amrani's Judaica available at show (Randall P. Lieberman, South Florida Sun-Sentinel).

Israeli-born Orna Amrani, a mixed media artist from Fort Lauderdale, has gained international acclaim for her innovative, three-dimensional creations. These creations are exhibited in galleries throughout the United States and abroad.

Amrani's art — which reflects her Jewish heritage — may be seen in the traditional designs, themes and motifs that echo her love of Jerusalem and Israel. Her creations demonstrate a lifelong interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the scrolls of the ancient Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews.

Amrani is just one of many artists who will be displaying their work at the sixth annual Boca Raton Fine Art Show, which will take place outdoors from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Jan. 24-25 in downtown Boca Raton in Sanborn Square Park (71 N. Federal Highway — at the corner of Palmetto Park Road and Federal Highway).

[...]

South Florida seems to be a happening place for matters PaleoJudaic. This article doesn't show much of Ms. Amrani's work, but you can find lots more in the galleries at her website.

The afterlife in Judaism

IT'S COMPLICATED: What is the Jewish afterlife like? From dark netherworld populated by ghosts to reincarnation to multiple souls: The Jewish concept of the afterlife has been to hell and back. (Elon Gilad, Haaretz).

There's a Jewish joke that says there's no Heaven or Hell: we all go to the same place when we die, where Moses and Rabbi Akiva give constant and everlasting classes on the Bible and the Talmud. For the righteous this is eternal bliss, while for the wicked this is eternal suffering.

But that's a joke. What do Jews actually believe happens to them after death?

There is no simple answer: at different times and in different places, Jews had different ideas. These varying thoughts were never reconciled or canonically decided. Thus, even today, Jews believe in different, often irreconcilable, theories of what life after death is like.

[...]

This or that detail could be tweaked or added (for example, there is some evidence that Philo of Alexandria believed in reincarnation), but overall this is a good summary of the history of beliefs about the afterlife in Judaism.

Read it fast before it goes behind the subscription paywall. You can also read up to 6 Haaretz articles per month with a (free) registration.

Maggie Anton's gigs

NOVELIST MAGGIE ANTON, who writes about ancient Jewish characters and themes, is lecturing in Florida this month: Author fuses interests in magic and Talmud (Marvin Glassman, South Florida Sun-Sentinel).

Author Maggie Anton has fused her interests in magic and Talmudic thought through her six books set in ancient Babylon. Anton will be discussing her latest book "Enchantress," a novel recreating the life of Rav Hinda's daughter, at ten venues from Jan. 23-Feb. 1 in South Florida.

[Stuff regular readers of PaleoJudaica already know, and which can be found in greater detail here and links.]

Anton's talks in South Florida include the following dates and locations:

Jan. 23-24 Anton featured in Scholars Weekend at Temple Beth Shmuel, 1700 Michigan Ave. in Miami Beach.

Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. at Congregation Kol Tikvah, 6750 N. University Dr. in Parkland.

Jan. 27 at 7 p.m. at Miami Beach Jewish Community Center, 4221 Pine Tree Dr. in Miami Beach.

Jan. 30-31 at Sisterhood Shabbat Weekend at B'nai Torah Congregation, 6261 SW 18 St. in Boca Raton.

For other locations with dates and times to hear Anton discuss "Enchantress," go to http://www.maggieanton.com

Postdoc and PhD positions for "Reconfiguring Diaspora"

THE UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT:

Job description

You will work within the framework of a project entitled Reconfiguring Diaspora. The Transformation of the Jewish Diaspora in Late Antiquity. The project has been funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (N.W.O.). The project’s director is Prof. dr. Leonard V. Rutgers. You will be based at Utrecht University. There you will be part of the Department of History and Art History, Section Ancient History and Classical Civilization.

The prime objective of the research project is to reconfigure the classical notion of Diaspora by studying the massive social and cultural changes that affected Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean during the transitional period that saw the demise of the classical world and the rise of medieval society. This project places special emphasis on the phenomenon of linguistic change as it seeks to come to a new understanding of the larger social and cultural patterns at play in named process. Questions to be addressed include: why and how were the Jewish communities of the Diaspora marginalized, how did this affect their Diasporic self-consciousness, and what factors explain why intragroup relations in Europe have developed along the lines laid down during precisely this period?

Within the project, two PhD positions and one Postdoc position are available for the following projects:

The Renaissance of Hebrew among the Jewish communities of the West (PhD)
The Renaissance of Hebrew and Aramaic among the Jewish communities of the East (PhD)
The Construction of Eretz Israel in Rabbinic Literature (postdoc)

The project has been structured in such a way that PhD and the postdoc candidates are expected to cooperate closely and intensively with one another and with the project leader. You must be willing to do some research travel and are also expected to participate in the organization of several international conferences and in the writing of occasional blogs for the project’s website.

Here are the two advertisements:

Job - Postdoc 'Reconfiguring Diaspora, the Transformation of the Jewish diaspora in Late Antiquity' (0,8 - 1,0 fte)

Job - 2 PhD researchers 'Reconfiguring Diaspora, the Transformation of the Jewish Diaspora in Late Antiquity' (1,0 fte)

Follow the links for further particulars. The adverts say to apply within twelve days, so don't dawdle.

Thanks to Prof. dr. Leonard V. Rutgers for drawing the project and positions to my attention.

Interview with Maggie Anton

MAGGIE ANTON, author of a number of novels about PaleoJudaic women, is interviewed by David Crumpler at jacskonville.com: Author of historical novels to speak at Jacksonville Jewish Center. Maggie Anton's 2 most recent books inspired by ancient Jewish magic. Excerpt, with reference to one of her earlier books, Rav Hisda's Daughter:

The daughter’s name is Hisdadukh [in the novel].

The Talmud just calls her Rav Hisda’s daughter. … One of the things I found from looking at these incantation bowls where they all name the clients was that a lot of the women, maybe a quarter or a third of the female clients, their name was something or other “dukh,” which is ancient Persian for daughter. They were named after their father, so I thought Hisdadukh was actually her name.

My daughter said, “Oh, that’s a terrible name, nobody can pronounce it, you’ve got to give her a nickname.” But I said that’s probably her name. I try to be really accurate and authentic. I did give her a nickname at my daughter’s insistence. I called her “Dada,” which is also a name I saw on an incantation bowl. Anyway, that’s what I ended up having the family call her, just to make it easier on my poor readers.

For much more on this and her other novels, go here and follow the links all the way back to 2006.

Uber, chalitza, and the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: In Matters of Divorce, as in Uber’s ‘Surge Pricing,’ What’s Unjust Isn’t Always Illegal. This week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ probes the connection between the magical thinking of the Bible and the rational concerns of the Talmud. Excerpt:

This surprisingly contemporary point of law came up during the rabbis’ discussion of an extremely ancient ritual—a combination of the remote and the familiar that feels characteristic of the Talmud. Since the beginning of Tractate Yevamot, which deals primarily with levirate marriage, we have heard that although a man is legally obligated to marry his dead brother’s widow, there is an escape clause. If either party doesn’t want to go through with the marriage, they can perform the ceremony called chalitza, or “removal.” The form of this ceremony is spelled out in Deuteronomy: In front of a court of elders, the woman must remove the man’s shoe and spit in front of him, while saying, “So shall it be done to the man who does not build his brother’s house.”

The passage in question is Deuteronomy 25:5-10. I don't know what the rabbinic rule was, but the rule in Deuteronomy is rather more confrontative, in that the woman spits not in front of the man, but in his face. (The two Hebrew expressions are almost the same, but the only reason for reading the specific wording of the passage as "in front of him" is to try to tone down its most natural meaning.) That said, in the only place in the Hebrew Bible when the rule is actually implemented, Ruth 4:1-12, the sandal transfer is between the two men and there is no spitting involved. So it looks as though even the ancient Israelites may have thought that Deuteronomy's version was over the top.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Anxious Satan

PHILIP JENKINS AT THE ANXIOUS BENCH has been giving the Devil his due and more with a series of posts on Satan and the Fall. Links below with opening excerpts.

The Rise of Satan

The story of Satan is one of remarkable upward mobility. Let me tell that story in barebones form here, and then discuss it in more detail in subsequent posts.

The Devil’s Progress

I remarked that Satan is difficult to trace in the canonical Old Testament, but that he becomes prominent in later centuries, in the so-called Inter-Testamental period (a phrase I hate, but let that pass).

Creating Satan

In the last centuries before the Christian Era, the Devil enjoyed an impressive rise both in his professional status and his assigned areas of responsibility.

From being a minor official at the Heavenly Court, he rose to become a fully-fledged adversary of God, almost an anti-God, and like the deity he acquired his own institutional hierarchy of inferior angels. Many of those operatives also bore individual names and titles. Satan’s authority extended to the material world, and he could rely on the faithful service of significant numbers of the human population. As part of his professional advancement, his career history was retroactively written to build up his role in historic events, especially the Fall of Man.

In Search of the Fall

The two centuries or so before Jesus’s time were a wildly productive era in terms of Jewish thought. It is in this time for instance that we find the full development of such ideas as Satan and angels, the afterlife and the apocalypse. I have been pursuing one concept in particular that would have enormous consequences for Christian thought, namely the hereditary taint of original sin traceable to Adam’s Fall. It’s a tough quest, and we must follow a route that is, well, serpentine.

Lots more on the Devil/Satan (etc.) here and links.

Kotker, The Inner Sea

NEW(ISH) NOVEL: The Inner Sea: A Novel of the Year 100 by Zane Kotker.

Kotker returns this September with The Inner Sea: A Novel of the Year 100. A globalizing Rome has taken nations and tribes by force, and the loss of national and tribal identity leaves people adrift in an indifferent empire. To whom does one belong? An aging widow sends her former slave across the sea to fetch her granddaughter. A silver merchant dispatches his son on a trading journey around the Mediterranean, where Jews and Christians are pulling apart from each other. The Jews find themselves without their centralizing Temple and the Christians without their Son of God. Fatalists trust to the stars; Stoics and Epicureans to themselves. The two young people cross paths, bringing down the worlds of their parents and ultimately testing the wisdom of the man whom Rome calls Son of God-the emperor, Trajan.

Recommended on Facebook by Bob Kraft, who reports that he gave some feedback to an early draft.

TC 19

ONLINE JOURNAL: TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism vol. 19 (2014) (Tommy Wasserman, ETC). The post includes links, titles, abstracts, and books reviewed.

Art meets ANE epigraphy

EXHIBITION: A Steady, Confident Hand: Bell's Drawings on Display at Ithaca's Handwork (Cassandra Palmyra, ithaca.com).

[Rhiannon] Bell visited the Johnson Museum at Cornell to draw Sumerian cuneiform tablets, some of them from 3350 BCE. Both pictographs and the wedge-shaped impressions that give the system its name have been imprinted on the older clay slabs. More recent (but still very old) tablets are covered only with lines and wedges.

Bell renders these artifacts as three-dimensional objects (“illusionism”) as if they were lighted from all sides, except directly beneath the tablet. The depictions are so precise and accurate that even the varying states of preservation can be detected. It is impressive to stand four feet away and have your brain fooled quite completely, and then to move in on the surface and have the deft crosshatches emerge.

The artist would seem to have seen the work documents of an archeologist or a paleo-philologist and noticed the beauty inherent in careful recordkeeping. Several drawings recreate pages from notebooks or journals where an alphabet is being presented letter by letter, the glyphs arranged in a column with explanatory text penned in neat letters next to each one. The text about Sumerian, Hebrew and Phoenician languages is written in various modern languages.

Bell is exploring the relationship between drawing and writing. Each letter in our alphabet began as a picture of an object. The sound of that letter is matched to the sound of the first syllable in the spoken name for the object. For example, the Phoenician word aleph means “ox” and the pictograph for the first letter of their alphabet looks like a horned ox head.

The photo doesn't show her work clearly, but you can see a nice example here.

Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Text of Marcion’s Gospel

Dieter T. Roth, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

In The Text of Marcion’s Gospel Dieter T. Roth offers a new, critical reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel including various levels of certainty for readings in this Gospel text. An extensive history of research, overview of both attested and unattested verses in the various sources, and methodological considerations related, in particular, to understanding the citation customs of the sources set the stage for a comprehensive analysis of all relevant data concerning Marcion’s Gospel. On the basis of this new reconstruction significant issues in the study of early Christianity, including the relationship between Marcion’s Gospel and Luke and the place of Marcion in the history of the canon and the formation of the fourfold Gospel, can be considered anew.

Articles on the Yazidis

GORGIAS PRESS has recently released a 1961 article about the beliefs and customs of the Yezidis (Yazidis). It is by Thomas Bois, O.P., it was published in al-Machriq, and is in French: LES YEZIDIS: ESSAI HISTORIQUE ET SOCIOLOGIQUE SUR LEUR ORIGINE RELIGIEUSE.

Also, related, a recent article by Gerard Russell in the Washington Post: The Middle East is full of ancient, mysterious religious sects. The Islamic State is wiping them out.. Excerpt:

Yazidis like Mirza don’t know even the basic tenets of their faith. These groups’ holy books are carefully hidden from lay people; the priests who read them must promise never to reveal their contents. Entering these leadership ranks isn’t easy, either. Among the Mandaeans of southern Iraq, for example, a people who revere John the Baptist and believe in a colorful array of demons and planetary angels, a would-be priest must spend seven days without food or sleep.

There are at least half a dozen groups in the Middle East which follow this code of secrecy. Their adherents number more than 5 million in Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Iraq. They include Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect, and also the Yazidis.

Background here and links.

Taking the red pill

TONY BURKE: Reflections on Teaching Gnosticism Week 1: Who Will Take the Red Pill?

More on modern reflections of Gnosticism, including Gnostic readings of The Matrix, here and links.

New books on Christian Palestinian Aramaic

NEW BOOKS FROM PEETERS (ARAMAIC WATCH):

A Dictionary of Christian Palestinian Aramaic

Series:
Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 234

Authors: Sokoloff M.

Year: 2014
ISBN: 978-90-429-3183-1
Pages: XLII-466 p.
Price: 90 EURO

Summary:
Christian Palestinian Aramaic is the name of the Aramaic dialect spoken and written by the Melkite community in Palestine during the first millennium CE. Nearly all of the texts that have survived in this dialect are translations of religious texts originally composed in Greek for the use of members of this community whose only language was Aramaic.
The only complete dictionary of this dialect was published over a century ago by Fr. Schulthess in 1903. However, since then, many new texts have been published and many previously known ones have been restudied and republished more accurately by various scholars.
The present work has taken into account all of the existing texts as well as the secondary literature in order to make this new dictionary an essential tool for Aramaic scholarship.


Texts of Various Contents in Christian Palestinian Aramaic

Series:
Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 235

Authors: Sokoloff M.

Year: 2014
ISBN: 978-90-429-3184-8
Pages: X-247 p.
Price: 70 EURO

Summary:
This book has been planned to be used together with the author's Dictionary of Christian Palestinian Aramaic. The texts which form the basis of this volume were originally published in a large number of scattered publications making both their citation in the dictionary and their use by the reader difficult. The purpose of the present work has been to gather all of these texts into one convenient volume and to republish them in the original Palestinian Aramaic script and format. Additionally, a number of Appendices dealing with this Aramaic dialect have been added to clarify other issues concerning the dictionary.

Reviewlet of Porter, Constantine Tischendorf

LARRY HURTADO: Constantine Tischendorf: New Book. I noted this book when it came out from Bloomsbury late last year.

Biblical sayings in Modern Hebrew

FOR HEBREW LANGUAGE WEEK: 4 Biblical Sayings That Spice Up Today’s Hebrew (P. David Hornik, PJMedia). The third one is my favorite. I have found it useful in many circumstances.

Background here.

Special issue of Iraninan Studies

ARASH ZEINI: Religious trends in late ancient and early Islamic Iran. This special issue of Iranian Studies includes some relevant articles involving Judaism.

The earliest manuscript of the NT?

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What is the Oldest Manuscript of the New Testament? (Dirk Jongkind, ETC).

More on recent developments regarding P52 here.

Also, possibly related, Dorothy Lobel King asks: Is this More of the "First Century" Gospel of Mark? I haven't been following this story very carefully, but I have some background here and here and links. I am not a Greek epigrapher and I have no view about any possible relationship of these fragments to one another.

MNTA1 goes to press

TONY BURKE ON TWITTER:

New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures Vol. 1 is off to the publisher. Now for vol, 2.

I know the feeling. Congratulations, Tony and Brent.

Huehnergard on Cross

JOHN HUEHNERGARD: The Contributions of Frank Moore Cross to Semitic and Hebrew Philology (BASOR 372 [2014] via Academia.edu). Abstract:

Frank Moore Cross’s contributions to Semitic and Hebrew philology were both direct and indirect: direct, in his publications on aspects of Hebrew, Phoenician, and Aramaic grammar; and indirect, in his insistence on the rigorous use of philological method in the study of ancient texts, whether those were Ugaritic inscriptions, or Aramaic papyri, or the Hebrew Bible. Te application of historical and comparative Semitic linguistics not only pervades his many publications, but was something that Cross taught his students to apply in their research as well. While Cross was better known for his contributions to biblical history, epigraphy, and Qumran studies, his deep knowledge of Semitic philology, and his meticulous use of it in his research, also marked him as one of the foremost philologists of the 20th century.

Yes. I am very fortunate to have learned philology and epigraphy from Cross and Comparative Semitics and the historical grammar of Hebrew from Huehnergard. Lots more on Frank Cross here and links.

Award for Outside the Bible

THE ARTY SEMITE: National Jewish Book Award Winners Are Here (Anne Cohen, The Forward). Under Scholarship the Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award has been given to:

“Outside the Bible, 3-Volume Set: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture”
Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel and Lawrence H. Schiffman, eds.
Jewish Publication Society

Background here and here and links.

Roman-era glass

EXHIBITION: Met Museum Exhibit Features Ancient Roman Glass on Loan from Israel (The Jewish Voice).

In the early first century A.D. the most outstanding examples of Roman mold-blown glass were made by a craftsman called Ennion, and products of his workshop are the focus of the exhibition Ennion: Master of Roman Glass, opening December 9 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is the first exhibition of ancient glass organized by the Metropolitan, which has one of the finest collections of this material in the world.

The dangers of buying antiquities in Israel

A TRICKY QUESTION: Can you buy genuine antiquities in Israel? Even If you're getting a real artifact from Israelite history, chances are it's not kosher (Marty Friedlander, Haaretz). The basic answer is in this excerpt:

An artifact of "unknown provenance" can be sold; one from Tel Maresha or any other specific place will go to a museum collection or basement.

Which brings us back to the original question: Is that Persian period juglet in the store window genuine?

The shopkeeper will say yes. And most likely, it is. There’s such an abundance of genuine material available that it makes no sense to start making counterfeit pots and vessels.

Ah, but was it robbed as part of an illegal excavation? This is a far tougher question, one that if asked is liable to have you thrown out of the store. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is the byword of this business.

Coins are different. They are more likely to be counterfeit, several Old City antiquities dealers admitted to this reporter. Archaeologists concur.

Then there is this way to acquire a genuine antiquity, which is win-win all around:

An alternative to acquiring antiquities in the somewhat unsavory retail marketplace is to burrow through the stockpile of less-significant shards at an actual dig site. For instance, at Israel’s most popular hands-on archaeology-for-a-day program, “Dig for a Day” at Tel Maresha, the staff scrubs, examines and catalogs all of the shards found by the volunteers, and then offers the diggers a chance to take home the discards, which consist mainly of shards that lack identifying features.

For the archaeologist, the piece may be no more than a discard. But when the tourist sees it on her coffee table back home, it conjures up the memory of that day when she felt such a strong physical connection to an ancient culture, that is still very much alive.

More on the discovery of the fragments of the Heliodorus stele is here and links.

Repetition and Difference Exhibition

YAREAH MAGAZINE: New York exhibitions. The Jewish Museum Presents Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Collection Objects that Explore Repetition and Difference in Art With Over 350 Works of Contemporary Art, Judaica, and Archaeological Objects.

Repetition and Difference will feature works from the Museum’s collection—one of the largest and most comprehensive Judaica collections in the world—that have never before been exhibited in such profusion. Among the highlights are 45 examples of seemingly identical 18th-and 19th-century Hanukkah lamps from Eastern Europe that, on closer observation, display a multitude of motifs as well as small differences due to model condition or casting flaws. A group of 100 silver coins from 126/25 B.C.E. to 58/59 C.E. provide a rare opportunity to examine the contrast between the remarkable consistency in imagery over time and their variations due to human involvement in the minting process. The exhibition will also include boldly patterned 19th-century German Torah binders, enigmatic Judahite pillar figurines from ancient Israel, ornately decorated 19th-and-20th century Iranian marriage contracts, elegant silver spice containers, mezuzah cases, and more.

Ben Hur "reboot"

VARIETY MAGAZINE: Rodrigo Santoro to Play Jesus in ‘Ben-Hur’ (Dave McNary). Actually the article says that Mr. Santoro "is in negotiations to portray Jesus" in the new production of the 1880 novel. The new film is slated for release in 2016.

Jesus Spoke Aramaic

ARAMAIC WATCH: JesusSpokeAramaic.com, A New WebSite for Learning Aramaic. Technically, Jesus spoke first-century Galilean Aramaic (about which we know all too little) but this website seems mostly to teach Syriac. But that is a good thing too. I don't know enough about it to endorse it or not, but the price is right. So you might want to have a look.

The Dovekeepers trailer

THE UPCOMING MINISERIES THE DOVEKEEPERS has now had its first trailer released:



Background here and links.

Jack Sasson retires

VANDERBILT NEWS: Listen: Renowned scholar of Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East retires from teaching.

Although Sasson, the founding director of Vanderbilt’s Program in Jewish Studies, has taught his last class, he will continue his scholarship in Assyriology and Hebrew Bible. Last May, Yale University Press published Sasson’s Judges: 1-12, A New Translation, with Introduction and Commentary. “That book ended up only covering the first 12 chapters of Judges because I had so much material,” Sasson said. “Now I need to start with Samson and focus on chapters 13-21.

Sasson has just now completed a volume that translates and annotates more than 700 letters and administrative documents from the clay tablets found at the Middle-Euphrates town of Mari. Information gleaned from the tablets provides an informed perspective on life in Mesopotamia in 18th century B.C.E.

Best wishes to Jack for a long, happy, and productive retirement. And if we thought the Agade List was active before, well, just wait ...

More on Jack Sasson here and links.

Glory and discomfiting sex in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Let’s Talk About Sex With Minors, Rape, and ‘Uncovering the Nakedness’ of Sisters. Talmudic rabbis, gladiators of the mind, sought glory and eternal fame—but also pondered the mundane side of being human.

Glory is not usually considered an important Jewish value. The ancient Greeks and Romans built whole cultures around the pursuit of individual glory and eternal fame, and much of the Western ethos of competitive individualism can be traced back to those classical sources. The biblical kings of Israel, too, were no strangers to the desire for glory: David strove to kill more Philistines than Saul, an achievement the people celebrated in the song, “Saul has killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.” The Temple that Solomon built was in honor of God, but also in honor of Solomon himself, a demonstration of his wealth and power.

In rabbinic Judaism, on the other hand, such considerations are virtually absent. This was for a good reason: In the centuries after the destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kochba revolt, there was simply no worldly arena in which Jews could win the old-fashioned kind of military or political glory. But as Daf Yomi readers saw in a telling passage this week, this does not mean that Jews stopped dreaming of achievement and reputation. Instead, the rabbis, the elite of the Jewish community, imagined a different kind of fame: the reputation of being a subtle and penetrating interpreter of Torah. And when it came to this kind of fame, the Talmud makes clear, the rabbis were every bit as competitive as any Greek wrestler.

[...]

More on the theme of rabbinic scholarship and martial glory here.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Metatron meets the guardians of the gates

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Guards Gun Down Four Angels Escaping From Heaven (The Onion).

A statement provided to the press identified the four dead angels as Zophiel, Jehoel, Shamsiel, and Metatron.

Somebody who knew a lot about angels in Western traditions put some thought into this one. But normally it's the job of the guardians of the gates to keep people out, not angels in.

HT James McGrath.

Hebrew words in English

HEBREW LANGUAGE WEEK: Hebrew words in English you didn't even know you knew. How Bugs Bunny forever changed the meaning of an ancient Hebrew word and six-winged chimeras morphed into cherubs. (Elon Gilad, Haaretz).

It's Hebrew Language Week in Israel, which is an apt time to consider Hebrew words you didn't even know you know – because they have become embedded in the English language.

[...]

Most regular PaleoJudaica readers will be familiar with most of these, but here's one I didn't know and had always wondered about:

Nimrod: This has meant "moron" since the 1940s, before which it meant "mighty hunter," from the name of Nimrod, a biblical character reputed to be a great hunter. For that one can thank Bugs Bunny, who called the inept Elmer Fudd “poor little nimrod.” Fudd’s two attributes – fool and hunter - got confused in the minds of viewers, forever changing the meaning of the word.

More on the word "cherub" in English here.

Aramaic in Austraila

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: The Assyrian Diqlat School in Fairfield celebrates 40 years of teaching (Jennine Abdul Khalik, Fairfield Advance).

THE Assyrian Diqlat School, a community language school based at Fairvale High School, recently celebrated its 40th anniversary.

Principal Carmen Lazar, who is also the manager of the Assyrian Resource Centre, said she was proud to have celebrated 40 years of keeping the Assyrian language alive among community members.

[...]

A royal escape tunnel from the Exile?

POPULAR ARCHAEOLOGY: Archaeologists Uncover Possible Royal Escape Tunnel at Biblical Site Tunnel may have been used by royal inhabitants of ancient city of Geshur near Sea of Galilee.

A team of archaeologists excavating at the ancient site best known as Bethsaida not far from the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee have encountered what they suggest may be what is left of an escape tunnel that was used by the city’s royal elite during the times of ancient Israel and Judah.

Though it is still very early in the investigation process, one entrance of the tunnel has been located, and collapsed structural debris and ground penetrating radar images have indicated possible evidence of the suspected tunnel area extending from an ancient palace structure out to an outer city wall. Similar features have been found at other ancient sites, and the biblical account, for example, documents such an escape route used by King Zedekiah and others when Jerusalem was being besieged by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar.

[...]

The article also has more on the excavations of the first-century CE city of Bethsaida and the Iron-Age II city under it. There is a large cave under Jerusalem which is known as "Zedekiah's Cave," now used for speed dating, but its connection with Zedekiah's escape route seems to be legendary. The Bethsaida excavations have also come up in past posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The Punic Wars meet Italian football

PUNIC WATCH: Lotito: 'Lazio's Punic Wars' (Football Italia).

Lazio President Claudio Lotito said his team goes into “three Punic Wars” against Sampdoria, Roma and Napoli.

[...]

Yadin-Israel, Scripture and Tradition

NEW BOOK FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS:

Scripture and Tradition
Rabbi Akiva and the Triumph of Midrash
Azzan Yadin-Israel

336 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth Dec 2014 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4643-8 | $75.00s | £49.00 |
Ebook Dec 2014 | ISBN 978-0-8122-9043-1 | $75.00s | £49.00 |
A volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series

"Conceptually sophisticated and wonderfully erudite, Scripture and Tradition touches on the most fundamental questions of the Midrashic project."—Moshe Halbertal, New York University

The earliest rabbinic commentary to the Book of Leviticus, the Sifra, is generally considered an exemplum of Rabbi Akiva's intensely scriptural school of interpretation. But, Azzan Yadin-Israel contends, the Sifra commentary exhibits two distinct layers of interpretation that bring dramatically different assumptions to bear on the biblical text: earlier interpretations accord with the hermeneutic principles associated with Rabbi Ishmael, the other major school of early rabbinic midrash, while later additions subtly alter hermeneutic terminology and formulas, resulting in an engagement with Scripture that is not interpretive at all. Rather, the midrashic terminology in the Sifra's anonymous passages is part of what Yadin-Israel calls "a hermeneutic of camouflage," aimed at presenting oral traditions as though they were Scripture-based injunctions.

Scripture and Tradition offers a radical rereading of the Sifra and its authorship, with far-reaching ramifications for our understanding of rabbinic literature as a whole. Using this new understanding of the Sifra as his starting point, Yadin-Israel demonstrates a two fold break in the portrayal of Rabbi Akiva: hermeneutically, the sober midrashist who appeared in earlier rabbinic sources is transformed into an inspired, oracular interpreter of Scripture in the Babylonian Talmud; while the biographically unremarkable sage is recast as a youthful ignoramus who came to Torah study late in life. The dual transformations of Rabbi Akiva—like the Sifra's hermeneutic of camouflage—are motivated by an ideological shift toward a greater emphasis on scriptural authority and away from received traditions, an insight that sheds new light on the vexing question of midrash and oral tradition in rabbinic sources. Through this close examination of a notoriously difficult text, Scripture and Tradition recovers a vital piece of the history of Jewish thought.