Elior's Hekhalot Zutarti now an eBook

MAGNES PRESS has just announced that some of its older publications are now being re-released as eBooks. Prominent among them is:

HEKHALOT ZUTARTI
Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought supplement A (1982)

By Rachel Elior

Purchase options: Price Site price
Online book & PDF download $ 10.50
Online book for libraries
Total $ 10.50

Publisher: The Hebrew University Magnes Press
Series:
Jerusalem Studies In Jewish Thought
Categories:
Jewish Mysticism
Publish date: January 1982
Language: Hebrew

Danacode: 45-141002
ISSN: 0333-7081
Pages: 98

Hekhalot Zutarti or 'Lesser Hekhalot' is one of the fragmentary mystical documents of the various texts comprising the Hekhalot literature and indeed has long been considered one of the earlier examples. The first reference to this text which until now has never been completely published, is found in the tenth century 'Responsum' of Rav Hai Gaon, the head of a Babylonian academy, citing the well known Talmudic fragment of the Treatise Hagigah relating to the dangers of mystical practice . Hai Gaon has written:
"There are two myshnayot that the Tanaim are teaching in that matter and they are called Hekhalot Rabbati and Hekhalot Zutarti and that is well known. About these contemplations said the Tana, "four entered the orchard" it is also explained in that Baraita, Rabbi Akiva spoke to them "When you come to the place of the pure marble plates then do not say: Water, Water'. In Hekhalot Zutarti it is said: the entrance of the sixth palace looks like thousands and ten thousands of waves of water but there is not one drop of water only an air of splendor from the pure marble paving stones with an appearance like unto water".

Except for this quote relating to the gate of the sixth palace which gives us our only textual touchpoint as to the indentity of the text, we possess no further positive evidence as to its contents, its beginning or its end, its character or its form.

In the principal manuscripts of the Hekhalot Literature we do not find a text entitled Hekhalot Zutarti. The true identity of the text should be questioned since its existance is based on such slender evidence.
A. Jellinek was the first to suggest that certain fragments of Oxford manuscript 1531 is Hekhalot Zutarti. This identification together with its parallels in other manuscripts, has been accepted in a l l subsequent research. The survey of the manuscripts containing the Hekhalot tracts does not verify this arbitrary assumption since the passages containing Hekhalot Zutarti, according to Jellinekfs suggestion , do not present a continuous composition or a textual unit but rather a conglomeration of somewhat related bits and pieces .
In the Hekhalot Zutarti as identified by Jellinek there are several different strata of Merkaba tradition unrelated as to author, chronological date of writting , and of form. We find about ten non successive passages a l l beginning with the words ״Rabbi Akiva spoke:" There is no continuous plot to bind these fragments as a whole and further in the Hekhalot literature we find many other and similar paragraphs which are also attributed to Rabbi Akiva.

There are other portions of Hekhaloth Zutarti which can be found in some texts comprising the Hekhalot literature such as: "Shiur Quoma", Sar Torah", "Metatron", "Ezekiel's Chariot" and the long lists of secret names of the Deity and his wardens. The editorial considerations, therefore , for including each particular passage in Hekhalot Zutarti are not readily appearent and the compilation of these fragments in to a structural whole must seriously be questioned.

This author sees them as most probably representing various mystical traditions from different circles of Yordi Merkava, copied in a haphazard manner with no attempt to attain textual unity .
Hekhalot Zutarti should not be considered as an unfolding narrative or book but rather different forms of literature which grew from a nucleus of idea , situation , or perhaps a true mystical experience and to which has been grafted, with the passing o f time, other similiar traditions and new material.

If these passages must be seen- as a unit, then their nucleus must be the well known archtypical mystical experience of Rabbi Akiva - the four who entered the orchard - since their uniqueness is obviously founded on the visionary experience.

However, it is doubtful that at any time these parts were truly compiled together in a more coherent manner than we now possess.

It has been accepted in previous research that Hekhalot Zutarti is the oldest text of this literature , however, no philological analysis has ever been attempted to prove this the thesis.Taking into consideration the nonhomogeneous character o f the text as described above, no generalization as to the antiquity of the text as a whole should be made.

Several negative generalizations can be infered , to wit: Hekhalot Zutarti does not reflect a specific time or historical occurance; it is lacking any eschatological orientation or apocalyptical characterizations as found in other texts of Hekhalot literature; and, it is lacking any literary framework binding its various parts. Perhaps the only true connecting link , excepting the central position of Rabbi Akiva, is the importance stressed on the mystical meaning inherent in the secret and sacred names of the Deity.

This critical edition of Hekhalot Zutarti is based on the Jewish Theological Seminary manuscript 8128 and the different variations as found in the other major manuscripts, it also contains the abridged contents and detailed notes, and includes an introduction dealing with the various aspects and problems as outlined in this summary.

Elior's critical edition of the Hekhalot Zutarti was published before Schäfer's Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur and it remains an important resource, albeit one that had become hard to find. It is good news that Magnes Press is making it available again, and at a very reasonable price.

Other newly re-released Hebrew Magnes eBooks include:

Shulamit Elizur, Rabbi Eleazar be-rabbi Qilar Liturgical Poems

Ephraim E. Urbach From the World of the Sages

Israel Knohl, THE SANCTUARY OF SILENCE. A study of the priestly strata in the Pentateuch

Has Dig been reading The Treatise of the Vessels?

TELEVISION: TV’s ‘Dig’ unrolls a Dead Sea Scroll to unravel a conspiracy (Kimberly Winston, Religion News Service).

Key to the advancing of the already complicated “Dig” plot is something referred to as the “war tablet.” Supposedly written by the Essenes, the tablet is supposed to be stored at Jerusalem’s Israeli Museum and is said to contain a code that will reveal the hiding places of 12 precious stones.

That's "Israel Museum," as given correctly later in the article. And as Ms. Winston also says, the account of the Essene "war tablet" looks, at least initially, like a combination of the Qumran War Scroll and the Qumran Copper Scroll. But I think something more is going on. In 2013 I published a translation of a Hebrew text of uncertain date called The Treatise of the Vessels in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 1, pp. 393-409. This text is a collection of entertaining legends about how and where the treasures of the First Temple were hidden by "Shimmur the Levite and his companions" before the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in 586/87 BCE. The Treatise says that the list of treasures was written down on a "tablet" (not a scroll), and one version adds "of bronze" (II 11). The Qumran Copper Scroll does not mention any specific collection of twelve precious stones, but The Treatise of the Vessels does:

(XII) And in addition twelve fine stones were transmitted by the hand of Heleq son of Shimmur the Levite, by his hand to preserve them and to return them to the tribes, those on which the names of the tribes were engraved, which used to shine over the heads of the tribes, increasingly outstanding and precious in their value, vying with one another. And no king or prophet or man knew in which place these were hidden, except Heleq son of Shimmur the Levite.

It looks to me as though the writers of Dig have read this and have incorporated it into their storyline. This should be fun to follow.

More on Dig is here and link. More on the Copper Scroll is here and links. My translation of The Treatise of the Vessels received some media attention early in 2014 when someone noticed that it claimed to tell the hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant. You can read about that and lots of additional background on the text here and links.

Another looting arrest in Israel

CAVE RAIDER: Man arrested for attempting to loot antiquities from northern underground cave. Extensive, irreversible damage caused to site carrying remains from Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman eras (Daniel K. Eisenbud Jerusalem Post).

According to spokeswoman Yoli Schwartz, the incident took place near Afula, in the Jezreel Valley, on Tuesday night when the suspect, in his 50s and from a nearby Arab village, was found by Border Police and IAA officers with digging tools at the ancient ruins site.

“The suspect dug deep underground from 2,000-year-old holes in an attempt to get to an area below the hole that probably served as a storage unit in ancient times to find remnants that could be sold on the black market,” Schwartz said on Thursday.

R.I.P. His Holiness Khanania Dinkha IV, 1935-2015

SAD NEWS: Assyrian Patriarch Passes Away (AINA).

Chicago (AINA) -- The Patriarch of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, His Holiness Khanania Dinkha IV, died Thursday at 10:04 AM at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The cause of death was a virus infection and pneumonia. The Bishop of India, Mar Aprim Mooken, will serve as acting patriarch until a new patriarch is elected.

[...]

Requiescat in pace.

Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

What was the afikoman originally?

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS (PASSOVER EDITION): Where does the afikoman come from? Surprisingly to modern Jews who assume it's a half-piece of matza, we do not know what the original intention was: interpretations range from roast pigeon to afterparties (Elon Gilad, Haaretz).

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the afikoman, a half-piece of matza that gets "stolen" and hidden during the Seder ceremony and then is found and ritually eaten for dessert, is that its origin is a dictate in the Mishnah, which explicitly states: "One should not have any afikoman after the Passover sacrifice" (Pesahim 10:8). So how did one rabbi's "don't" become everyone's "do"?

But actually there is no consensus on what was the afikoman actually was. Some think the original reference was to a dessert after the Passover meal, while others believe it refers to Grecian post-feast debauchery.

It seems that even the students of Rabbi Judah the Prince, who compiled the Mishnah in approximately 200 CE, didn’t know what he meant either, as the Talmud (500 CE) preserves the answers of three of his students to the question “What is an afikoman?

[...]

The Babylonian Talmud was redacted somewhat later than that, and there is no guarantee that its traditions about R. Judah's disciples, who lived centuries earlier, are accurate. But by the time of the Talmud's traditions it seems that that there was no longer a clear memory of the meaning of the word in the context of Passover. Read the whole article for the history of the development of the modern custom.

Reminder: with free registration you can read the full text of a limited number of Haaretz articles each month.

Tunisian museum reopens

NOT LETTING THE TERRORISTS WIN: Why Terrorists Attacked Tunisia’s Museum Extremists are afraid of the country’s democracy (Yassine Brahim, Wall Street Journal).

When violent minorities seek to undermine peaceful majorities, the best response is to not change course. That’s why in Paris, the Charlie Hebdo magazine defiantly published another edition soon after the attack on their offices, and thousands marched in solidarity with them. In Ottawa, after a soldier was killed at Canada’s national war memorial, other soldiers swiftly took his place on ceremonial duty. And in Boston, the first marathon after the bombing was one of the biggest ever.

In the same spirit, the Bardo museum that was attacked has re-opened its doors. This museum reflects the melting pot of civilizations that have influenced our nation, including the Greek, Punic, Roman and Islamic. One of the most popular exhibits is an ancient mosaic depicting Virgil with the muses History and Tragedy standing to either side of him. It is a fitting symbol. We can continue to make history, or succumb to tragedy. I know what choice Tunisians will make, but we will need continued support at this challenging time.

Background to the Tunisian attack and the other recent militiant-Islamist assaults on the past is here and links.

Agade List archive

AWOL: Agade List Archive at the SBL. The posts in Jack Sasson's prolific Agade e-mail list are being collected and archived by the Society of Biblical Literature from now on. The archive will eventually include all postings back to 2010. Chuck Jones also notes that Agade posts going back to 2011 are available on Twitter.

More on the Temple Institute's altar

BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS: New Details Emerge on Rebuilt Altar of Jewish Holy Temple [PHOTOS] (Ahuva Balofsky). Some additions and corrections to the earlier announcement that the Temple Institute has built an altar it says is suitable for use in an actual Temple. Background, commmentary, and additional links here.

The Index of Bibliographic References to Talmudic Literature

H-JUDAIC: Internet Resource: Index of Bibliographic References to Talmudic Literature.

The Index is a comprehensive online research tool directing the user to discussions and interpretations of Talmudic passages found in both modern academic research and medieval Talmudic scholarship (Geonim and Rishonim). By clicking any Talmudic passage, the user will receive a list of specific books and page numbers within them discussing the selected passage.

Gnostic Countercultures

EXPLORING OUR MATRIX: Redeeming Gnosticism. James McGrath notes the "Gnostic Countercultures: Intrigue and Terror" conference at Rice University, which begins today. He also has links to various Gnosticism posts, including one from yours truly.

Patriarchal injustice in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: When Jews Were Like ISIS. We, too, stoned our women for infidelity. Patriarchal injustice persists in Orthodoxy. What’s a modern Talmud reader to do? Excerpt:

The idea that Jewish law can be unjust, that we have evolved a moral sense more complex and advanced than biblical codes can contain, is not at all a modern invention. Two thousand years ago, Philo of Alexandria was already reading the Exodus story as a philosophical allegory of individual spiritual liberation. Eight hundred years ago, Maimonides theorized that many Jewish laws were instituted solely to distinguish Judaism from paganism, not because they were inherently moral. Yet Philo and Maimonides were equally quick to insist that their revisionist explanations of Jewish law did not compromise the authority of that law: Whatever the reasons for the law, it had to be obeyed to the letter. What is modern is the idea that we have the right to legislate for ourselves. Secure in that freedom, I think it is possible to read the Talmud with the necessary combination of respect and distance.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Congratulations to AJR

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: AJR receives American Academy for Jewish Research Grant.

Porcupine archaeology

EXCAVATION: Porcupine unearths 1,400 year old oil lamp at archaeological site in Emek Hefer (Jerusalem Post).

Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) have uncovered a 1,400 year-old ceramic oil lamp with the help of an unlikely aide – a porcupine.

Last week, during a routine patrol at the Horbat Siv ancient ruins – a Roman-Byzantine site near Emek Hefer in central Israel, anti-antiquities theft inspectors found the oil lamp on top of a pile of dirt that a porcupine had unearthed while digging a burrow.

[...]

The BBC, Jubilees, and Noah's wife

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: David Threlfall's Noah Begs Modern Questions (Jonathan Romain, Huffington Post). It seems the BBC has a documentary about Noah airing on 30 March and those responsible have been reading their pseudepigrapha.

The first [novelty about the documentary] is that it answers one of the great mysteries about the Noah story. We know who was in the ark; Noah and his wife, along with his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet and their wives...so, the names of all the men, but what was Noah's wife called? If Mrs Noah was one of the few people righteous enough to be saved in an otherwise wicked world, then surely she is important enough to have a name?

The BBC have come up with an answer, based on the Book of Jubilees (4.33) in the Apocrypha - a collection of books from the biblical period that were not included in the Bible itself, and so are regarded as interesting but not sacred. Apparently, her name was Emzara, which - in husband and wife shorthand - becomes 'Emmy' and so along with other famous biblical couples such as Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah, we can now add Noah and Emmy.

Emmy.

Twelfth anniversary

HAPPY TWELFTH ANNIVERSARY TO PALEOJUDAICA! Below is a list of my favorite PaleoJudaica posts from the last twelve months. Some are just notices of important stories, but most involve more of my own commentary than usual. And when there are links, be sure to follow them for more information. Past anniversary posts are here and links.

Is Noah Gnostic?
Random thoughts on the Noah movie
Blood moon tetrad, the Talmud, Passover, and Thallus
GJW: conclusively a forgery? (Yep, pretty much.)
About PaleoJudaica
Middle East: Aramaic speakers and Yazidis
Beelzeboul
The Shapira scrolls again (updated 9/17/14)
Esoteric and mystical traditions in b. Hagigah
New Jesus document? Sadly, no.
Was Isaac sacrificed?
A new Syriac Gospel in which Jesus married Mary Magdalene? I don't think so.
McGrath on Jesus as hero
"Greek" amulet bleg
Posts on the Babylonian-Judean cuneiform tablets: start here and follow the links.
An Ethiopic manuscript of Jannes and Jambres
SBL paper 2015
Posts on ISIS's desecration of Jewish, Christian, and Pagan historical heritage in the Middle East: start here and follow the links.
Could the ancients see blue?

As always, thanks for reading PaleoJudaica! Please keep coming back and keep bringing your friends.

Pardes

YONA SABAR: Hebrew word of the week: Pardes (Jewish Journal).

The Hebrew word pardes has come up in PaleoJudaica off and on with reference to the Story of the Four Who Entered Paradise (see here and here and links) and also with reference to the concept of "Paradise" in general. Note also the synchronicity of the book My Father's Paradise by Ariel Sabar, Yona's son (see here and links).

Kolbet and Daley (eds.), The Harp of Prophecy

NEW BOOK:

The Harp of Prophecy: Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms

Edited by Paul R. Kolbet, lecturer in Early Christianity, and Brian E. Daley, S.J., the Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame

(University of Notre Dame Press)

Follow the link for a description. Posted by Yale News.

Workshop on Studying Ancient Magic

IN OSLO IN JUNE: STUDYING ANCIENT MAGIC: Categorisation – Comparison - Materiality. Follow the link for a call for papers.

Reviewlet of Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament (3rd ed.)

EUANGELION: Book Notice: The Text of the OT.

Ernst Würthwein
The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica. 3rd Edition.
Revised and expanded by Alexander Achilles Fischer. Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. 363 pages.
Available at Amazon.com.

By Jill Firth

Jealous girlfriend erases Metatron

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Jealous girlfriend erases game from boyfriend’s phone, destroys relationship in process (Evie Lund, RocketNews24).

Today we’d like to bring you the comic tragedy of a ridiculous couple in Japan whose relationship ended up in the toilet, all over something as simple as a mobile game…

It all started with the mobile game Puzzle & Dragons, aka Pazudora. Apparently, the jealous girlfriend of this story just couldn’t handle her boyfriend paying so much attention to something other than her when in her company, so while he was in the bathroom, she DELETED the app from his phone. But let’s not judge her before we’ve heard her account of the story, okay?

[...]

The chief point of dissension seems to have been the character Metatron in the game. To be fair to the girlfriend, the Metatron in question is very female and very pneumatic.

I've relayed many strange Metatron stories over the years, but this one is certainly a contender for the strangest.

Hatra Image Gallery

ASOR BLOG: Hatra Image Gallery.

Please take a look at the bellow photo gallery of Hatra circa 2009 and 2010. Brought to you by The Ancient Near East Today. With a special thank you to the photographers, Suzanne Bott and Col. Mary Prophit, US Army.

Background here and links.

On ancient Palmyra

ARASH ZEINI: Palmyra: Trade families, city and territory. An article by Leonardo Gregoratti.

More on Palmyra here and links.

More from Doudna on Qumran

BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

A Narrative Argument that the Teacher of Righteousness was Hyrcanus II

In what may come to be regarded as one of the more unusual, indeed astonishing, oversights in the history of Qumran scholarship, so far as is known it seems no previous scholar has proposed that Antigonus Mattathias, the last Hasmonean king of Israel, executed by the Romans in 37 BCE, might be the figure underlying the Wicked Priest of Pesher Habakkuk or the doomed ruler of Pesher Nahum.

(Excerpted from pp. 95-107 of Gregory Doudna, “The Sect of the Qumran Texts and its Leading Role in the Temple in Jerusalem During Much of the First Century BCE: Toward a New Framework for Understanding” in D. Stacey and G. Doudna, with a contribution from G. Avni, Qumran Revisited: A Reassessment of the Archaeology of the Site and its Texts [Oxford: Archaeopress, 2013].)

See Also: Article Archives - Dead Sea Scrolls.

By Greg Doudna
March 2015

More on Doudna's theories, which so far have not found much acceptance among Qumranologists, is here and links.

The Jordan metal codices as modern amulets?

FAKE METAL CODICES WATCH: Dr. Samuel Zinner, an independent scholar who specializes in indigenous and comparative religious studies with a special interest in Judaism, has posted a paper at Academia.edu on the Jordan metal codices: The Jordan Lead “Codices”: Ancient Amulets, Modern Forgeries, or Something Else? The Jordan Lead Tablets as Early Modern Zionist Lag BaOmer Amulets. (HT Daniel McClellan.) Excerpt (from pp. 4-5):

Personally I think it unfortunate that the Jordan tablets were so soon overly associated with Christian origins and claims to antiquity, because together these seem, at least in large part, to have fated the objects to scorn and perhaps eventual oblivion, certainly to enduring controversy. The claim that the tablets might be Jesus’ diaries, for instance, means that the artefacts would be of virtually no value if not truly ancient. By contrast, if the artefacts had been presented as what they appear at face value to be (in my opinion at least), namely, basically modern vintage Jewish amuletic art inspired by traditional Jewish coinage, synagogue art, mysticism, and religious identity in early modern Zionist modes, then the objects could have been more calmly assessed as works of Jewish art and possible ritual (“possible” because we may here be dealing with an idealized depiction of kabbalah of past ages), whose intrinsic value (or lack thereof) would not in the least have hinged upon the question of ancient origins.

The parallel that springs to mind in this context, and which surprisingly was never referenced after the Jordan “codices” story emerged, is the early twentieth-century Zionist Bezalel school of art, whose metal products (Hanukkah menorahs, Passover plates, etc.) and arts and crafts in other media regularly incorporated motifs from ancient Jewish coinage, especially that of the Jewish War and the Bar Kokhba Revolt, which is incidentally also often the case with the Jordan lead tablets’ images. ...

Dr. Zinner criticizes me at the beginning of the paper for assuming that the only two possibilities were that the objects were either ancient artifacts or modern objects and therefore necessarily forgeries. That is a fair point. In my defense, in the blog post Dr Zinner cites (here) I agreed with Philip Davies that the codices were in principle worthy of further study, so it is not quite true that I found them "unworthy of any serious attention at all":

I agree that it is worthwhile for someone to try to track down how, where, and when the codices were made. If Philip wants to spend his time doing this, more power to him. But I doubt very much that this will lead to significant evidence that they are ancient productions.

Dr Zinner and I agree on the last point: the codices are modern artifacts, not ancient ones. But in any case, he has taken the discussion in a very interesting direction, exploring the possibility that the codices are modern productions that were only later misunderstood to be ancient, and later still further misunderstood to have some early Christian connection. I have read his paper (quickly) and his theory involves many matters about modern Jewish art history that are outside my own expertise. I should add that he reports that Mr. Elkington has cooperated fully with his research, making photographs of all the objects available for it, which is to Elkington's credit.

A few preliminary observations. Ironically the report that at least one of the codices (or amulets or whatever) is made from ancient lead is a significant problem for this theory. If these are modern artifacts that are merely evoking ancient iconography and themes without intention to deceive, why did the artisan go to the trouble of manufacturing them from ancient material? Also, Dr. Zinner offers some intriguing decipherments of the letters on the objects, which, however depend frequently on letters being transposed, written backwards, and omitted. That doesn't make him wrong: as he observes, such things did happen. But every time one has to invoke such irregularities, the proposed decipherment becomes more speculative and less persuasive. And I can't say that I find the proposed parallel with the angel name in the ancient magical treatise Sepher HaRazim persuasive either. Nevertheless, I encourage Dr. Zinner to submit his research for peer-review publication so that it can be properly evaluated by the relevant experts. I am skeptical, but I will watch with interest for any further developments.

Background here with many, many links going back to March of 2011.

Numerology in Dig?

TELEVISION: ‘Dig’ TV series starts adding up: Watch the numbers (Kimberly Winston, Religion News Service). Interesting observations. It does sound as though something is going on with the number 19, although not, strictly speaking, involving gematria. The latter involves adding up the numerical value of the letters in a word and then connecting it with other words whose letters add up to the same value.

Background here.

Mar Behnam Catholic monastery in Iraq destroyed?

REPORT: ISIS CONTINUES ITS ATTACK ON THE PAST: Isis 'blows up famed 4th-century Mar Behnam Catholic monastery' in Iraq (Gianluca Mezzofiore, International Business Times).

Islamic State (Isis) militants have allegedly blown up parts of the ancient monastery of Mar Behnam near the predominantly Christian town of Qaraqosh, south-east of Mosul, according to pictures from IS media shared on twitter and a Kurdish media report.

The photos, released by IS members, show the 4th-century monastery's tomb complex of Mar (Saint) Behnam and Mart (Saint) Sarah reduced to rubble.

Dr Nicholas al-Jeloo, an expert on Assyrian monasteries in Iraq from the University of Melbourne, visited the monastery, previously run by the Syriac Catholic Church, in January 2010 and confirmed the authenticity of the pictures to IBTimes UK.

[...]

The monastery is known for its carvings and features, including "very intricate inscriptions in Syriac, in Armenian and in Uygur, a Turkic language from Western China" said Al-Jeloo.

"The place is a major site of pilgrimage, at the very origins of Christianity in the region, and it links us to our ancient Assyrian heritage - being only a stone's throw from the ruins of Nimrud, also destroyed by Isis. The only way I could describe it is as a work of art. It was one of the most richly carved monastery complexes in northern Mesopotamia up until today," he said.

[...]

The monastery also had a huge collection of manuscripts dating back centuries. "Luckily, all of them have been digitised," he said.

[...]

Does that mean that the manuscripts themselves are now lost? I hope not. The expulsion of the monks from this monastery was noted here and here last July.

Cross-file under "Syriac Watch." More on recent militant Islamist attacks on the past here and links.

A Centre for the Study of the Jordanian Lead Books

FAKE METAL CODICES WATCH: The still-anonymous Erasmus blog at The Economist notes (A chink of light) a very interesting development regarding the Jordan metal codices:

Yesterday an initiative was launched in London which should improve the chances of the codices being seriously investigated: something that everybody, including the most hardened sceptics, must presumably want. Under the benign gaze of Richard Chartres, who as bishop of London is the third-ranking hierarch in the Church of England, it was announced that a Centre for the Study of the Jordanian Lead Books has been established (as a not-for-profit limited company) with some distinguished figures lending their weight to the project. The centre's board includes two veteran British politicians, Sir Tony Baldry and Tom Spencer; an "evaluation panel" will be headed by Professor Robert Hayward of Durham University; and a Jordanian professor, Fayez Khasawneh of Yarmouk University, has agreed to chair an "advisory council".

Perhaps the most urgent need now is for some independent, peer-reviewed metallurgical analysis. One test found that the lead could indeed be ancient, but a sceptic would immediately retort that ancient lead can be re-fashioned by modern forgers. On the other hand, the objects show an extraordinary variety of forms of corrosion; a forger would have needed to be extraordinarily diligent and energetic to tailor-make all these effects. It's also worth stressing that even if some of the objects in this collection are proved to be forgeries, that doesn't mean they all are. Another possibility is that they will prove to be relatively old copies of a prototype that is much older still; that would still be of great interest.

A brief article on the announcement of the founding of the Centre is here.

The really good news is that Professor Robert Hayward is heading the "evaluation panel." He is an expert in Second Temple and Late Antique Judaism and an eminently appropriate person for the job.

My most recent substantive post on the fake metal codices (and, yes, I still think they are fakes) is here from two years ago, in reply to "B.C." of the Erasmus blog. A couple of other relevant posts since then are here and here.

Regarding B.C.'s comments quoted above, I note first that he or she says "even if some of the objects in this collection are proved to be forgeries, that doesn't mean they all are." That is a bit disingenous, given the undisputed fact that the copper codex featured in the original announcement was shown almost immediately to be a crude fake that used (incompetently) a Greek inscription published in the 1950s and that everyone acknowledges that many of the codices currently circulating are fakes. (To be fair, the latter are supposed to be forged copies of the original lot of codices.) It would have been considerably clearer, especially to readers new to the story, to say "even though some of [or even "one of ... has"] the objects in this collection have been proved to be forgeries ..."

I don't know what the last sentence quoted means, so I will refrain from commenting.

Later in the article, B.C. says, "Perhaps the newly-established Centre should take heart from the fact that it took quite a few years for the importance of Dead Sea Scrolls to be widely realised." Well, it took some years for them to be widely known at all, but when Israeli biblical scholar Eliezer Sukenik saw one of them, shortly after its discovery, he immediately realized it was genuine. And years later when some of the scrolls were, as B.C. observes, put up for sale in America in the Wall Street Journal, Sukenik's son, Yigael Yadin (himself a biblical scholar), quickly made arrangements to buy them on behalf of the State of Israel. It may be that buyers were wary because of the high price and the not-entirely-clear ownership status of the scrolls rather than doubts about their genuineness. (You can read most of this in the link that B.C. provides, with some more at the one I've given.)

That doesn't sound very much like the story of the Jordan codices to me.

I have been saying for years (e.g., here) that the current evidence is very strong that the whole lot of metal codices are modern fakes (with at least one apparently made from ancient lead), but if someone wants to make a real case that some of them are genuine, they need actually to argue it. If I may quote myself:

Bottom line: such evidence as we now have, which is not inconsiderable, indicates that the Jordan metal codices are fakes. I am prepared to consider any new, reputable (especially peer-reviewed) evidence to the contrary, but failing that, I see no reason for scholars to be concerned about them.

We now have the good news that a panel of specialists is going to examine the codices. Very early on I offered a list of conditions that needed to be fulfilled to demonstrate that some of them are genuine. And I underline that any such case needs at least to make the cut of being published in peer-review journal articles or monographs. I look forward to hearing more about the membership of the evaluation panel and to seeing what they produce in due course.

Review of Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS:

Questioning Categories and Shifting Paradigms in the Study of Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins – By Simon J. Joseph
March 17, 2015
Simon J. Joseph on George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam’s 1 Enoch 2

The review, which is also a wide-ranging discussion of the case for the existence of an ancient "Enochic" Judaism, concludes:

The task of the historian is to avoid (re)inscribing orthodoxies where they are historically anachronistic and to recognize the diversity, fluidity, and interactivity of ancient Judaism and Christianity. Fortunately, our knowledge of the ancient past — in particular, the Enochic literature, the Qumran manuscripts, and the earliest Christian writings, authors, and communities — is currently expanding into a far more complex pattern of interrelationships within Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity than previous generations recognized. The publication of 1 Enoch 2 by Nickelsburg and VanderKam represents a significant milestone in this rediscovery of Early Christianity-within-Early Judaism.

And now Tunisia

MORE SLAUGHTER AND ANOTHER ATTACK ON THE PAST: Gunmen storm Tunisian museum, kill two Tunisians, 17 foreign tourists (Tarek Amara, Reuters/Jewish Journal).

Gunmen in military uniforms stormed Tunisia's national museum, killing 17 foreign tourists and two Tunisians on Wednesday in one of the worst militant attacks in a country that has largely escaped the region's "Arab Spring" turmoil.

Visitors from Italy, Germany, Poland and Spain were among the dead in the noon assault on the Bardo museum near parliament in central Tunis, Prime Minister Habib Essid said.

Security forces stormed the former palace around two hours later, killed two militants and freed other tourists held hostage inside, a government spokesman said. One policeman was killed in the police operation.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Islamic State militants, who have become particularly active in neighboring Libya, were behind the attack. "The EU is determined to mobilize all the tools it has to fully support Tunisiain the fight against terrorism," she added.

[...]

The museum is known for its collection of ancient Tunisian artifacts and mosaics and other treasures from classical Rome and Greece. There were no immediate reports the attackers had copied Islamic State militants in Iraq by targeting exhibits seen by hardliners as idolatrous.

[...]

Background here and links.

AJS call for papers on ancient Jewish medical knowledge

H-JUDAIC: CFP: AJS, Boston 2015 - Jewish medical knowledge and rabbinic discourse(s) in Late Antiquity. Follow the link for details. The deadline for submission of paper proposals is 7 April 2015.

The Copper Scroll

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Column: Scroll: Treasure map or ancient hoax? (Don Knebel, Current in Westfield)

A pretty good, brief, popular account of the Copper Scroll. Excerpt:

Scholars are divided about who made the Copper Scroll and what, if any, treasures it describes. Some believe the scroll identifies items from the Second Temple in Jerusalem, hidden before the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. Others argue the items were accumulated by first century Essenes living in Qumran, near where the scroll was found. Still others claim the treasures came from the First Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. Finally, some scholars believe the Copper Scroll repeated an ancient fable. Fable or not, explorers from around the world have sought fame and fortune using the ambiguous descriptions in the Copper Scroll, so far digging up only dirt.

As far as I know, no scholars think that the Copper Scroll describes treasures from the First Temple, although a legendary list of such treasures and their hiding places does survive in The Treatise of the Vessels. There is no confirmed case of any of the Copper Scroll treasures actually being found, although one site at Nahal Hever, excavated by archaeologists, does have at least a superficial similarity to one of the treasures described in the document. In any case, few, if any, specialists now think that the treasures listed in the Copper Scroll are just legendary.

Lots more on the Copper Scroll etc. is here and links.

DSS Ponzi scheme?

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS IN A MANUSCRIPT SCANDAL: French police widen net in manuscripts investigation. In case against dealer charged with fraud, authorities are now looking at suppliers and other booksellers (Vincent Noce, The Art Newspaper).

The scandal in France involving manuscripts’ dealer Gérard Lhéritier and his company Aristophil is growing daily. Earlier this month, he was charged with fraud, money laundering, creating false accounts and embezzlement. Bail was set at €2m. His accountant and his daughter were also indicted, as well as his main supplier, one of the most important Parisian booksellers, Jean-Claude Vrain. A prominent Sorbonne law teacher, Jean-Jacques Daigre, who was Aristophil’s legal council, was held by police but released without being charged.

[...]

Hundreds of investors bought shares in each of Aristophil’s historic manuscripts (see below for details on the collection). They say they were led to believe their investment would bring a profit of 40% or more over five years. According to state prosecutors, there was no way they could recoup their money. Investors were thus persuaded to sign a new contract with a new fund, or paid with fresh money brought in by newcomers, in what authorities describe as a Ponzi scheme. Lhéritier categorically denies this, saying he was following normal business practices, on the rise of an underestimated market.

[...]

And the details on the collection?

Lhéritier has amassed one of the world’s most important private manuscripts collections, containing documents, books, photographs, drawings and watercolours. It includes such treasures as fragments from the Dead Sea scrolls, Medieval illuminated manuscripts, the Marquis de Sade’s infamous The 120 days of Sodom written while he was a prisoner in the Bastille, Louis XVI’s address to the French public before his execution, Romain Gary’s novels and the two Surrealist manifestos written by André Breton, as well as thousands of documents signed by Balzac (including his journal, nicknamed le garde-manger), Baudelaire, Vigny, Flaubert, Apollinaire, Verlaine, Cocteau and the like.

Hmm ... I suppose the moral is that you shouldn't try to get rich off of the Dead Sea Scrolls. You are warned.

Tekhelet in the news

RESURRECTED? Feeling Blue, in The Biblical Sense: Return of Tekhelet Dye Revives Lost Mitzvah (Deborah Fineblum Schabb, The Jewish Voice).

The Talmud defines the tekhelet dye as derived from the “blood” of a rare amphibious snail known as the chilazon. The mitzvah to wear a thread of that dye on one’s tallit is mentioned multiple times in the Torah. But the tekhelet supply ground to a complete halt following the Muslim conquest of the land of Israel in 638 CE, when Jews were cut off from their local source of the chilazon. Though many theories surfaced over the years, even the most educated Jews had no concrete proof of which modern-day creature the Talmud’s chilazon actually was. Due to that mystery, the mitzvah of tekhelet was largely lost, becoming a source of puzzlement for centuries.

Now, thanks in large part to a few enterprising individuals and some enthusiastic rabbis, what appears to be original chilazon has been found—and tekhelet strings are being dyed in a fashion much like the process performed by our ancestors.

Interesting. So someone has figured out how to make bluish-purple dye from powdered snails that could be the ones used in antiquity to make the tekhelet dye. That is encouraging, but not in itself convincing. It seems that some material actually dyed with tekhelet survives from antiquity (see here). What would be convincing if a chemical analysis of that dye showed that the modern reconstructed dye has the same composition. I don't know how close we are to being able to make such comparisons, which ideally would involve non- – or at least minimally – destructive chemical analysis, but this sounds like a desideratum for the future.

Additional background in the last link above, as well as here and here and links.

Review of Levine, Short Stories by Jesus

ON THE PARABLES: Sure, Jesus Was Son of God. But How Was His Fiction? Amy-Jill Levine Makes Contribution to Jewish New Testament Lit (Jerome A. Chanes, The Forward)

● Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi
By Amy-Jill Levine
HarperOne, 320 pages, $25.99

Levine’s exploration of first-century Judea is splendid; tax collectors, judges, merchants, widows and mustard trees provide the interstitial tissue for the historical context of the parables. But Levine goes well beyond context. She thoroughly — and wittily — rips the parables from the hands of the “domesticated” interpreters and re-reads them to us in the form that Jesus may very well have intended. In the process, we learn what Judaism could well have been about in Temple times.

The cost of rape in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Talmudic Rabbis Debated the Cost of Rape—In Terms of the Woman’s Market Value. Reading the oral law today forces Jews to reconcile repellent, outdated legal views with modern morals.

The rabbis of the Talmud, living as they did in the first centuries C.E., did not share our modern intuitions about these subjects. Under Jewish law, rape is indeed a serious crime, with penalties laid out in detail in the Book of Deuteronomy. But in this week’s Daf Yomi reading, as the rabbis explored the penalties for rape of a virgin, it became clearer than ever that rape was not the same crime to them as it is to us. Today, we consider it a crime of violence against an individual; for the rabbis, it was more significantly a crime against a woman’s reputation, which had serious effects on her social standing and her marriage prospects. Their remedy for rape, then, was not to imprison or execute the rapist, but to insist that he make reparation to the victim’s family—either by paying a fine or by offering to marry his victim.

As I have remarked before, the world of the ancients was a very different world from ours.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Forum on the Babylonian Talmud

THE TALMUD BLOG: What is Bavli: A Forum.

In light of the recent publication of four books on the Bavli, a session (modeled after a predecessor on What is Mishnah) entitled “What is Bavli” was organized this past December at the annual Association of Jewish Studies conference. The panel considered recent developments in scholarship on the literary structure and cultural context of the Bavli, and discussed the possibilities opened by these developments; the broad historical, literary, methodological, and conceptual questions which they raise or imply; and the problems which the field currently confronts. ... The Talmud Blog will be publishing the papers of this session over the next two weeks, and a PDF of the entire forum will be available for download when the forum is completed. ...

The first installment is I. Approaching the Bavli’s Structure (Pt. 1/3): papers by Michal Bar-Asher Siegal and Shai Secunda.

Curzon's Greek mss at the BL

ETC: The Greek Manuscripts of Robert Curzon (Peter M. Head). The ones listed so far by the British Library are mostly of the Septuagint and the New Testament.

Background on Robert Curzon is here and links.

Shanks on BAR's 40th

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: First Person: BAR’s 40th Birthday As published in the March/April 2015 Biblical Archaeology Review. Editor Hershel Shanks reflects on 40 years of BAR. I still have my copy of the first issue.

Background here.

Roma Downey on The Dovekeepers

BACKGROUND: Roma Downey says she was 'profoundly moved' by 'The Dovekeepers' novel. "I was so profoundly moved by it that I was weeping openly on the plane," Downey says of reading Alice Hoffman's novel (Karen Butler, UPI).

LOS ANGELES, March 13 (UPI) -- Producer Roma Downey says she was determined to bring The Dovekeepers to the screen after falling in love with Alice Hoffman's historical novel on an airplane.

Downey and her husband Mark Burnett eventually adapted the book as a miniseries, which is set to air on CBS March 31 and April 1. ...

More background on the forthcoming miniseries and the novel is here and many links.

Essene séance?

SIMON SAYS: AN INTERESTING PLAY NOW SHOWING IN BOSTON: Simon Says See Schaffer's Séance (Jules Becker, MySouthEnd.com). Excerpt:

Speaking through James, Simon describes the soul as "a suit of clothing" and speaks of having arthritis in a previous life. Tellingly, he calls up details about the Essenes, the tightly structured groups associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls-Jews described here as "under but not with the Romans." To hear Simon, he himself was an Essene cared for by a surrogate mother named Rachel. As he continues, he identifies Essene prophet Nathan as the greatest of all, but not false at first. Murder mystery elements include the possibility that Nathan murdered Rachel's late husband Aaron.

Josephus mentions a dream interpreter named Simon the Essene in Jewish War 2.113. But I can't find any reference to an Essene prophet named Nathan.

Pi and Judaism

BELATEDLY FOR PI DAY 2015: The Secret Jewish History of Pi. Examining the Allure of a Magic Number From the Talmud to Maimonides to Mr. Spock (Seth Rogovoy, The Forward). Only it isn't actually secret. Excerpt:

The relationship between a circle’s diameter — a line running straight through cutting it into two equal halves — and its circumference — the distance around the circle – was originally mentioned in the Hebrew Book of Kings in reference to a ritual pool in King Solomon’s Temple. The relevant verse (1 Kings 7:23) states that the diameter of the pool was ten cubits and the circumference 30 cubits. In other words, the Bible rounds off Pi to about three, as if to say that’s good enough for horseshoes and swimming pools.

Later on, the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud, who knew that the one-third ratio wasn’t completely accurate, had a field day with the Bible having played fast and loose with the facts, arguing in their characteristic manner that of course it depended on whether you measured the pool from the inside or the outside of the vessel’s wall. They also had fun with some of the Gematria – the numerical value – of the words in the original passage, which when you play around with them a bit indeed come a lot closer to the value of Pi, spelling it out to several decimal points.

Last year's Pi Day post, which covers some of the same ground, is here. And more on Aronofsky's movie Pi is here.

Pan mask found at Hippos-Sussita

DISCOVERY: Rare bronze mask of god Pan found at Golan dig. Larger than a human head, the mask of the half-human, half-goat god was discovered by chance at the Sussita archaeological site (Nir Hasson, Haaretz).

An extremely rare bronze mask of the ancient Greek deity Pan has been unearthed in an excavation at the Sussita archaeological site on the Golan Heights.

The mask, which dates back to the Hellenistic period, is larger than a human head and is made of bronze. It is extremely rare, because most ancient bronze statues and masks were melted down in later periods.

The mask was discovered two weeks ago by a University of Haifa archaeological team, headed by Dr. Michael Eisenberg. The team had returned to the site several weeks ago to examine several structures that had been found outside the city area last summer.

While using a metal detector to find coins, team member Dr. Alexander Yarmolin discovered a mass of earth, which, when cleared away, revealed the mask. The features of the ancient deity Pan were instantly recognizable — long, sharp ears and goat horns. Pan, the half-human, half-goat god of shepherds, also represented music and amusement.

The location of the mask, so far outside the ancient city, was unusual. The researchers believe that the building where it was found may have been a shrine on the main road to the city.

[...]

The Jerusalem Post also has a story on the find, with video, here.

Past posts about the site of Hippos-Sussita are here and links. It has been a significant source of ancient pagan artifacts.

Hurtado on the REF

LARRY HURTADO: REF Results and Research in the UK. Some commentary by someone who knows the British Government's system of evaluating academic research well and who is now free of it.

Zoroastrian eschatological seers

ARASH ZEINI: Eschatological seers.

BABELAO

FREE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL: BABELAO: Electronic Journal for Ancient and Oriental Studies.

Le nom BABELAO signifie « Bulletin de l’ABELAO », plus précisément « Bulletin de l’Académie Belge pour l’Etude des Langues Anciennes et Orientales ». L’ABELAO est une association sans but lucratif qui veut promouvoir l’enseignement et la recherche dans le domaine des cultures et des langues anciennes et orientales, notamment par l’organisation de sessions de cours d’été sur le site de l’Université de Louvain, à Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgique).

Son bulletin, le BABELAO, est conçu comme une revue à vocation scientifique. La revue couvre le domaine de l’Orientalisme sous ses différentes facettes : philologie, paléographie, histoire du monde ancien et oriental, histoire des langues et des littératures comparées, édition des textes, etc. Son Comité de rédaction dont le recrutement est international regroupe des chercheurs qui sont à même d’assurer une expertise dans tous les domaines requis. ...

Follow the link for instructions for submission of articles etc.

HT Jean-Claude Haelewyck.

More on Hatra

ASOR BLOG: Hatra, The Lesser Known Splendors of a Parthian Frontier Town (Lucinda Dirven). Excerpt:

The combination of spectacular architectural remains, about 300 sculptures, over 500 Aramaic inscriptions, and numerous graffiti and small finds dating from the fairly short period between 100-240 CE, provide a truly exceptional insight in daily life in a Parthian city in northern Mesopotamia during the first three centuries of the Common Era. The Parthian period is a fairly unknown era in the history of Mesopotamia and material from Hatra provides unique possibilities for a better understanding of Parthian society, culture, art and religion. Culturally, Hatra is closest to other famous cities in the Syrian-Mesopotamian desert, such as Palmyra, Edessa and Dura-Europos. But whereas these were at some point in their history incorporated in the Roman Empire, Hatrene rulers were allies of the Parthian king of kings until the Sasanians replaced the Arsacid rulers in the East.

Background here and links.

Lombatti on CNN on the Shroud of Turin

BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

The CNN Shroud of Turin

See Also:Relics Still Potent: The Shroud of Turin

Scholars, Frauds, the Media and the Public

By Antonio Lombatti
http://www.antoniolombatti.it
Università Popolare
Parma, Italia
March 2015

Excerpt:

In short, not a single (professional) physicist who performs C14 has ever doubted the medieval date of the Turin Shroud. Not a single (professional) Biblical Archaeologist, who has dug Second Temple tombs in Israel, is convinced that the Turin Shroud is a Jewish funerary cloth from the time of Jesus. Such scholars didn’t, unfortunately, find a place in the CNN documentary.

See also Mark Goodacre's comments at the end of the essay.

Daniel Boyarin profiled

JWEEKLY.COM: Daniel Boyarin — the Talmudist, feminist, anti-Zionist, only-in-Berkeley Orthodox Jew (Alix Wall). Excerpt:

Today Boyarin, 68, is a world-class authority in his field — one of the true giants, in this country as well as in Israel. But he’s far from the typical Talmud scholar. He has a kippah on his head, yes, and is shomer Shabbos, but he’s also a confirmed anti-Zionist, a serious collector of fine kosher wines, and has an abiding interest in feminism and queer theory.

Daniel Boyarin is, in short, quite the iconoclast, even in a city that prides itself on defying the mainstream.

Boyarin has been on the U.C. Berkeley faculty since 1990 and is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the departments of Near Eastern studies and rhetoric. He has written 12 books, ranging from rabbinic ideas about sexuality to the relationship between psychoanalysis and Judaism; he has another book in the works and two more in contract; and he has co-edited five others, including one with his brother Jonathan, a professor of Jewish studies at Cornell University.

His scholarship is so vast that practically every graduate student in his field encounters it at some point, and he is so well-known in academia that a discussion about his views on a particular talmudic point was a running joke in the 2011 Israeli film “Footnote.”

A long and interesting article. More on Professor Boyarin's work is here and links.

Docherty on the Pseudepigrapha

ASOR BLOG: Introducing the Pseudepigrapha (Susan Docherty).

In my recent book The Jewish Pseudepigrapha: An Introduction to the Literature of the Second Temple Period I introduce the general reader to the world of the pseudepigrapha, a collection of early Jewish religious writings which have links with the scriptures but which are not included in the canon of the bible. The name “pseudepigrapha” indicates that the authors generally used a pseudonym, attributing their work to some revered figure from Israel’s past, like Abraham, Moses or Ezra.

I noted the book last year here.

ISIS bulldozing Khorsabad?

RECENT REPORTS indicate that ISIS is now destroying Khorsabad: Isis attacks on ancient sites erasing history of humanity, says Iraq. Antiquities ministry reiterates calls for international community to intervene after reports of new attack on ancient city of Dur Sharrukin (Kareem Shaheen, The Guardian).

The Iraqi antiquities ministry has acknowledged reports of a new attack by Islamic State militants on an ancient Assyrian city north-east of Mosul, reiterated calls for the international community to intervene and condemned the jihadi group for “erasing the history of humanity”.

There have been reports that Isis bulldozed landmarks in the ancient city of Dur Sharrukin, now called Khorsabad. The ministry said it was in keeping with the militant group’s “criminal ideology and persistence in destroying and stealing Iraq’s antiquities”.

Dur Sharrukin is a former capital of the Assyrian empire in Nineveh that dates back to the 8th century BC.

[...]

And some analysis by Aziz Abu Sarah in Haaretz: Why is ISIS destroying Iraq's historical heritage? No ethnic cleansing is complete without the removal of the historical roots from which a people emerged. In order to dictate the future, ISIS is destroying the past. Excerpt:

Yet, for ISIS, destroying Assyrian archaeology represents more than an attack on idolatry. In order to remain the only ruling religious body in Iraq and Syria, ISIS is going beyond ethnically and religiously cleansing the population to erasing any historical traces of the displaced people.

The archaeological sites it destroys are from the Babylonian, Persian and Roman Empires. These eras represent a pluralistic past that legitimizes the presence of Chaldeans, Yazidis and other minorities in the region, with whom ISIS does not share a human heritage. ISIS' interpretation of history maintains that there are two historical eras: Jahiliyah (the time of ignorance) and, the later era, Islam (the time of enlightenment). The presence of sites from the Babylonian, Persian and Roman Empires harks back to a golden age before Islam. ISIS is thus working to erase any trace of those eras, for it thinks it cannot control the future until it controls the past.

What ISIS is doing is not a new strategy; conquering dynasties throughout history have employed similar tactics. ...

Background here and links.

Exhibition: 'Judaea in the Age of Nero'

MERCER UNIVERSITY: Jack Tarver Library to Host Exhibit of Ancient Artifacts from 'Judaea in the Age of Nero'.

MACON – Mercer University's Jack Tarver Library will open its fifth Holmes Holy Land Ancient Artifact Collection on March 16. The exhibit, titled "Judaea in the Age of Nero," will be available to the public for viewing through spring 2016.

Four days of events are planned to celebrate the debut of the exhibit, which provides a look at the Roman province of Judaea during a time when Rome was ruled by perhaps its most infamous emperor, Nero Claudius Caesar, from 54 A.D. until his death by suicide in 68 A.D. Dr. Eric Klingelhofer, professor of history, serves as curator of the exhibit.

[...]

Review of Bryce, Ancient Syria

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Trevor Bryce, Ancient Syria: A Three Thousand Year History. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv, 379. ISBN 9780199646678. £25,00.

Reviewed by Matteo Vigo, University of Copenhagen (jlg904@hum.ku.dk)

Preview

Trevor Bryce’s book under review structurally conforms to his previous books on the civilizations of the ancient Near East.1 The book is divided into five sections, each of which mostly covers the traditional historical periods.

[...]

Part 3 is the richest of the whole volume. Thanks to the abundance of sources, Bryce gives a detailed outline of the history of the Seleucid Empire, one of the greatest of the ancient Near East, from the rise of the Seleucids, soon after the death of Alexander to the advent of the Roman control over Syria with Pompey the Great.

Part 4 concerns Syria under Roman rule. Chapter 13 explores the Roman campaigns against the Parthians, in which Syria actually played a crucial role, being the solid Roman outpost from which military operations were led. Chapter 14 briefly sketches the world of the Nabateans and their involvement in Syrian trade and policies. Chapter 15 focuses on the great Syrian Emperors namely Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus II, alias Elagabalus, and Severus Alexander. Chapter 16 introduces the Sasanians, who invaded the Roman territories in Mesopotamia and upheld the end of Roman supremacy in the Near Eastern territories (3rd century AD).

Part 5 is an excursus on the reign of Palmyra and the half-legendary figure of Queen Zenobia. The book ends with the Muslim occupation of Damascus in 661 AD.

[...]

C14 dating of The Gospel of Judas

ETC: Radiometric Dating of the Gospel of Judas (Christian Askeland).

My estimation following Peter Head’s thesis leaves a radiometric result in the late third through the end of the fourth century. ...

Background on The Gospel of Judas is here and links.

Ancient Galilean tombs

ASOR BLOG: Tomb Tracking: A New Burial Survey of Roman Galilee (1st-6th cent. CE) (Jessica Dello Russo). Requires free registration to access the full essay.

SBL paper 2015

MY PAPER PROPOSAL for the 2015 Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in Atlanta has been accepted by the Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity Section. This is welcome news, but not a surprise, because the paper is part of a planned session on shamanism to be held jointly with the Religious Experience in Antiquity Group. Here is the abstract:

Hekhalot Mysticism and Jewish Shamanism: Where Do We Stand Now?

In 2001 my monograph Descenders to the Chariot: The People Behind the Hekhalot Literature was publish by Brill. The Hekhalot literature is a corpus of Jewish mystical texts composed mainly in Babylonia and Palestine in the Geonic era, but which drew on traditions from late antiquity and perhaps earlier, and which continued to be shaped when transmitted to Europe in the Middle Ages. The texts present Tannaitic rabbis as practitioners of a form of mysticism (“Merkavah mysticism”) in which they undertook ritual and ascetic practices that led them into visionary states in which they could ascend to heaven to see and participate in the angelic liturgy around God’s throne-chariot (the Merkavah) or call down angels from heaven who could reveal the secrets of Torah and other mysteries to the practitioners. The meaning of this literature was and is debated, with some taking it as entirely fictional exercises in scriptural exegesis and others arguing that it (also) described an actual visionary praxis. Descenders to the Chariot presented a case for the latter viewpoint. In this volume I drew on anthropological data concerning Siberian, Inuit, Native American, and Japanese shamans, as well as the anthropological theoretical literature on shamanism, to argue that the descenders to the chariot — the practitioners described in the Hekhalot literature — displayed significant parallels to the shamans of other cultures and could be profitably compared to them. I argued that like shamans, the descenders to the chariot (1) were elected at least partly through their heredity; (2) engaged in a recognizable complex of ascetic and ritual techniques that promoted altered states of consciousness; (3) endured an experience of initiatory disintegration and reintegration; (4) traveled to a multi-tiered otherworld via a world tree or world ladder; (5) focused much of their efforts on the control of helping spirits; and (6) served their human community by various means. I found an especially useful typology of practitioners in the work of Michael Winkelman and concluded that the descenders to the chariot were very similar to his “shaman/healer,” a type of shamanic practitioner found in complex agricultural and pastoral societies. My central conclusion was that the instructions and rituals in the Hekhalot literature were recognizably of the type used by shamans to generate visionary experiences and that the visions described in the Hekhalot literature were of the type reported by shamans. Although the literature is pseudepigraphic and the illustrative stories it tells are fictional, it is a literature of instruction that preserves rituals that were used by actual magico-religious practitioners.

In the fourteen years since the publication of this volume a number of scholars have engaged with the arguments and conclusions of Descenders to the Chariot. The purpose of this paper is to review the responses, along with my own reflections, and evaluate where the case for the Hekhalot literature as the literary residue of a quasi-shamanic intermediary movement stands today.

Temple Institute builds Temple altar

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH (SORT OF): Jewish Temple Altar Rebuilt, Ready for Use (Ahuva Balofsky, BreakingIsraelNews).

The Temple Institute in Jerusalem has announced that it has finished building an altar suitable for the Temple service. The altar, which took several years to build, can be operational at little more than a moment’s notice, reported Matzav Haruach magazine.

[...]

For background on the Temple Institute (and why no one should go digging up the Temple Mount for the foreseeable future), see here and links.

Jerusalem 3D

DOCUMENTARY: 'Jerusalem 3D' zooms in on power of ancient city with Imax intensity (Susan King, L.A. Times). Excerpt:

The story of Jerusalem is seen through the eyes of three teenage girls — one Christian, one Jewish and one Muslim — and their families. Archaeologist Jodi Magness guides viewers through the rich history of the city. The 45-minute documentary also visits such religious sites as the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Shot over three years, producer Davies said, "Jerusalem 3D" is a film "that shouldn't have happened by all accounts. In the land of miracles, it was a miracle."

Writer-director Daniel Ferguson called it "an epic production."

"I was initially terrified of cramming 5,000 years of human attachment to this place in 45 minutes, and, obviously, the political minefield of this place," Ferguson said. "It was sheer folly. I made my first trip in 2009. I made 14 trips, and 11 of those were just to get permission and gain trust. I ended up being enamored of the city."

The film opened yesterday at the California Science Center in Los Angeles along with with the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition.

Storm unearths more Ashkelon relics

I HOPE SOMEONE COMES: Ancient artifacts found on Ashkelon beach. Man finds rare mosaic and pottery fragments while running on beach; says that despite reporting it, the Antiquities Authority sent no one to collect artifacts (Itay Blumenthal, Ynet News).

For that statue of a woman found at Ashkelon in 2010 (mentioned in the article), see here.

Le Donne on The Lost Gospel

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS: Anthony Le Donne on The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene. Gronking Jesus.

The Lost Gospel by Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson is not the worst book ever written. After all, I have heard remarkable accolades for A Gronking to Remember. But The Lost Gospel is perhaps the worst book ever written about Jesus.

I dunno, that's raising the bar awfully high.

Background here and links.

The Talmud on double jeopardy (sort of)

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Incestuous Rapists Get What They Deserve. Talmudic rabbis believe ‘the hand of Heaven’ makes sure that the punishment fits the crime.

Tractate Ketubot, which Daf Yomi readers have been exploring over the last month, is traditionally known as the Shas katan, the “little Talmud,” because it touches on such a wide range of legal subjects that it seems to encapsulate the whole Talmud. This week’s reading, in chapter 3, offered a good example of that comprehensiveness. The main subject of the chapter is the law regarding compensation for rape: In which cases does a rapist have to pay restitution to his victim, and when is he punished with the death penalty? But in the Gemara, the rabbis use these particular laws to explore much more general principles of punishment, in cases ranging from Shabbat desecration to the eating of consecrated produce by a non-priest.

At the center of these discussions is the question of whether it is permitted to punish someone twice for the same crime. ...

[...]

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

NYU conference on ancient Judaism and Christianity

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: Integrating Judaism and Christianity into the Study of the Ancient World

The NYU Center for Ancient Studies in conjunction with the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, the Global Network for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies, the Religious Studies Program, the Department of Classics, the Department of History, the Dean of the College of Arts and Science, and the Dean for the Humanities announces the

Ranieri Colloquium on Ancient Studies

INTEGRATING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY INTO THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

Thursday and Friday, March 26-27, 2015
Hemmerdinger Hall
Silver Center for Arts and Science
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair accessible)

Follow the link for the schedule.

Yadin-Israel replies to Gvaryahu

THE TALMUD BLOG: Right of Reply: Azzan Yadin-Israel Responds to Amit Gvaryahu’s review.

My thanks to The Talmud Blog for inviting me to respond to Amit Gvaryahu’s review of Scripture and Tradition: Rabbi Akiva and the Triumph of Midrash. I find myself in the odd position of responding to a review that is generally positive and in certain passages very generous in its praise. Nonetheless, in what follows I will address some of the points Gvaryahu raises in his review, and, more importantly, those that he does not. ...

I noted the original review here.

Dig

THE NEW TELEVISION SERIES DIG has been getting some attention in the media. Here are a couple of recent reviews.

Review: On USA’s ‘Dig,’ a Murder Investigation Takes an Apocalyptic Turn. (Mike Hale, NYT).

A red calf is born in Norway, an eerie 12-year-old boy is raised in captivity in New Mexico and a young American archaeologist is murdered in Jerusalem. The connection? Too early to tell, but all signs point to the world being saved 10 weeks from now.

“Dig,” a new series starting Thursday night on USA, is the latest post-“Da Vinci Code” thriller that combines a murder mystery with an ancient-history primer. Conspiracies are afoot, and prophecies are finally coming true. The show, an American-Israeli coproduction, kicks off with a quote from the Torah (“Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect”) and encompasses squads of rabbis, a desert Christian cult, Essenes (kind of like biblical ninjas), tunnels under the Temple Mount and the breastplate of a high priest.

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Apocalypse, Now: Dig's Surprisingly Relevant Doomsday Drama. USA's new outlandish murder-mystery miniseries offers a smart portrayal of religious fanaticism that has real-world resonance. (Katie Kilkenny, The Atlantic). Excerpt:

The question remains whether a conspiracy-theory show airing on a network best-known for its “blue skies” comedies can actually prompt viewers to both enjoy and do their research. I found Dig equally addictive before and after knowing that the Essenes were an apocalyptic, survivalist cult whose numbers have dwindled considerably, or that the Urim and Tummim is an actual, sacred object. And though it engages with the relevant larger themes of fanaticism, the End of Times, and land ownership that are spurring international turmoil at the moment, Dig is cautious when it comes to political commentary. It makes no mention of the Palestinian territories aside from its thinly-sketched villain—nor does it touch on Iran or ISIS.

The URL header to the Atlantic review refers to "the not entirely stupid escapism of Dig," which sounds about right. Although Essenes who are "kind of like biblical ninjas" take us into the realm of the entirely stupid.

Porten on Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea

ASOR BLOG: Presenting a Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea (TAO) Bezalel Porten's 2014 SBL presentation.

Garber, "Teaching Jewish Studies"

BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Teaching Jewish Studies, Hebrew Scriptures, and the Historical Jesus in the Context of Jewish Studies at a Two-Year Public College

Rationale, Objectives, Evaluation

Article from Teaching the Historical Jesus (Routledge, 2015).

By Zev Garber
Professor Emeritus and Chair of Jewish Studies
Los Angeles Valley College
March 2015

Los Angeles DSS exhibition

OPENS TODAY AT THE CALIFORNIA SCIENCE CENTER: The Dead Sea Scrolls: An Exhibition of Biblical Proportions. The largest exhibition of its kind outside of Israel features over 600 artifacts and the stunning IMAX film 'Jerusalem 3D' (Mike Ciriaco, Frontiers Media).

Background here and links.

Trolls

LIV INGEBORG LIED: Trolls at my door: reflections on the occasion of the International Women’s Day 2015 (8 March). Unfortunately there are a lot of losers online who do such things.

Anothe cache of ancient coins found in Israel

Hikers Find Cache of Rare Coins from 2,300 Years Ago. Three Israeli Caving Club hikers found the cache in a stalactite cave in northern Israel. (The Jewish Press).

Three hikers have discovered a cache of rare coins and silver and bronze objects 2,300 years old in a cave in one of the important discoveries in northern Israel in recent years, according to Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

[...]

The youngest member of the group, Hen, 21, says he forced his way into one of the narrow niches when he suddenly caught sight of a shining object. He discovered two ancient silver coins, which it later turned out had been minted during the reign of Alexander the Great who conquered the Land of Israel at the beginning of the Hellenistic period (late fourth century BCE).

Several pieces of silver jewelry were found alongside the coins, among them rings, bracelets and earrings, which were apparently concealed in the cave, together inside a cloth pouch some 2,300 years ago.

“The valuables might have been hidden in the cave by local residents who fled there during the period of governmental unrest stemming from the death of Alexander, a time when the Wars of the Diadochi broke out in Israel between Alexander’s heirs following his death,” IAA archaeologists said.

[...]

This would be not long after, and perhaps even in the same general region as when the Samaria Papyri were left in a large cave — but in that case because their owners were also in the cave and were suffocated when Alexander's army lit a fire in front of the cave mouth.

UPDATE (10 March): You can read the IAA press release here (HT Joseph Lauer).

ISIS continues its desecration of the past

THE ANTIQUITIES DEPREDATIONS OF ISIS IN IRAQ are coming so fast now that they are hard to keep up with. Here are some recent articles.

ISIS' destruction of biblical Iraq: A bitter irony of history. Nineveh has come full circle: After 2,700 years, the gleeful destroyer was itself destroyed. And now Hatra and Nimrud are gone too (Julia Fridman, Haaretz).

Within days, militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria destroyed three extraordinary cultural heritage sites in Iraq going back thousands of years: Nineveh, Hatra and Nimrud. For the ancient Assyrian capitals, their wanton destruction was a tragically ironic turn of events, given that their rulers, some 2,700 years ago, had been among the most brutal and destructive the region had known.

The destruction of cultural heritage by an occupier is nothing new. There is even a term for it: Urbicide, the destruction of an urban center in order to erase its memory for future generations.

The rulers of Nineveh, which fell first, then Nimrud and now, Hatra had done their share of destruction – records of which they proudly left behind, including in the form of wall art.

Though while ISIS seems to be following the Assyrians' rule book, whether in ignorance, irony or specifically to mimic long-gone great rulers, they do not cavil at selling antiquities they loot. In fact this is apparently a major source of funding for the group.

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UNESCO: ISIS Antiquities Destruction in Iraq a 'War Crime.' UNESCO calls on ICC, UN Security Council to prosecute ISIS over destruction of antiquities in Nimrud, Iraq as 'war crime' (Arutz Sheva).

The head of UNESCO condemned on Friday the destruction of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq by the Islamic State group, saying it amounted to a "war crime."

"I condemn with the strongest force the destruction of the site at Nimrud," Irina Bokova said in a statement.

[...]

Islamic State militants bulldoze ancient Nimrud ruins as idolatrous (Reuters).

Islamic State fighters have looted and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Iraqi government said, in their latest assault on some of the world’s greatest archaeological and cultural treasures.

A tribal source from the nearby city of Mosul told Reuters the ultra-radical Sunni Islamists, who dismiss Iraq’s pre-Islamic heritage as idolatrous, had pillaged the 3,000-year-old site on the banks of the Tigris river, once capital of the world’s most powerful empire.

[...]

Hatra, city featured in The Exorcist, destroyed by ISIS (Leslie Eastman, Legal Insurrection Blog). I didn't know about the connection with The Exorcist, but I have noted Hatra's importance in late-antique Aramaic-speaking Silk Road culture here and here.

And finally, what might come next:

Libyan Antiquities Feared as Next ISIS Target (Susan Raab,Nonprofit Quarterly). Excerpt:

Stating that “ISIS holds an intolerance towards items that are deemed jahili (pre-Islamic) and antiquities that depict humans,” Dr. Hafed Walda, the pending deputy ambassador to the permanent Libyan delegation at UNESCO, has said “Their eyes are on big museums which have fine collections of Greek and Roman sculptures…. This, coupled with the fact that ISIS’s power has grown substantially in Libya, particularly along the Mediterranean coastline, has brought the group closer to sites of historical significance.”

Among the sites cultural and government leaders believe are most vulnerable in Libya are the ancient Roman theatre, Leptis Magna, just outside of Tripoli; the coastal town of Sabratha, a former Phoenician trading post with the remains of an amphitheater, temples and a basilica; and the archaeological site of Cyrene, considered one of the most impressive Greco-Roman sites in the world. ISIS militants have also proclaimed the city of Misrata, which houses a museum, a Roman forum, and a great basilica, as one of their primary targets.

Background here and here and links.

UPDATE: Judith Weingarten has more on Hatra: ELEGY FOR HATRA: The City of the Sun God.

More on the Sixth Legion excavation

POPULAR ARCHAEOLOGY: Archaeologists Return to Unearth Base of the Roman Sixth Legion. Remains of walls, barracks and artifacts testify to a major 2nd-3rd century CE Roman military presence near ancient Megiddo, Israel. Excerpt:

But real validation didn’t come until 2010, when Tepper began focused archaeological investigations at el-Manach using a variety of remote sensing techniques. This, along with data acquired through preliminary archaeological and historical work, led to the first full-scale excavation at el-Manach in 2013, employing a team of archaeologists, American and European students, and participants from local youth and community groups under co-directors Tepper and Matthew J. Adams of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and Jonathan David of Gettysburg College.

What they found at the site, now referred to as Legio after an associated ancient place name, was nothing short of reaffirming.

“The data gathered so far in survey, research, and excavations shows a complex and unexpected settlement scenario at Legio,” wrote Tepper, et al. in a project summary soon to be published in Popular Archaeology Magazine. “At its heart is a large legionary base of the Sixth Legion, perhaps accommodating the full legion of nearly 5,000 soldiers from all over the empire. Nearby would have been a vicus, an ad hoc civilian settlement providing entertainment, commercial support, and other services for the men of the legion. At Kefar ‘Othnay, just south of the base, was a Jewish-Samaritan village in which there is evidence for an early Christina gathering place, dedicated in part by a Roman centurion.”

Background here.

Ethio-Hebrew

ADAM MCCOLLUM: Ethio-Hebrew Psalms (BL Add. 19342). Because it turns out that Ethio-Hebrew is a thing. I didn't know that.