And let's not forget ...

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: The Plight of the Middle East's Christians (Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, reprinted by AINA).

The Christian communities of Syria and Iraq have survived 2,000 years of tumult and war. In some of them, prayers are still said in Aramaic, the language that Jesus used in daily life. These communities now tremble on the brink of destruction.

The numbers are stark. Almost 1.5 million Christians lived in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Between the U.S.-led invasion that toppled his regime in 2003 and the rise of Islamic State, three-fourths of the country's Christians are believed to have fled Iraq or died in sectarian conflict. The carnage continues. Of the 300,000 Christians remaining in 2014, some 125,000 have been driven from their homes within the past year, according to a March report on "60 Minutes."

[...]

A long, informative article. The media are not ignoring this situation, or I would not have articles to link to like the one above. But at the same time there is not the outrage in the West that one routinely finds for much less momentous problems happening to Westerners. This is unfortunate.

Related article: An Assyrian Woman's Struggle for Her People's Future (Diana Darke, www.alaraby.co.uk, reprinted by AINA).

A Syriac [Assyrian] Christian woman is challenging sexual and religious discrimination in conservative southeastern Turkey and building bridges with her co-religionists fleeing persecution at the hands of the Islamic State group in Syria.

In the southeastern Turkish municipality of Mardin, the 26 year-old co-mayor, Februniye Akyol, is a local girl from the Syriac Christian minority.

Despite the nearby border with Syria having existed for nearly a century, those in her Syriac community retain close ties with family members on the other side.

[...]

Never had she envisaged a political career. As the first local Syriac Christian woman to leave her home and go to university in Istanbul, everyone assumed she would use her education as an escape route to Europe, like many Syriac graduates before her.

Instead Februniye returned and began an MA at Mardin's Artuklu University in Syriac cultural studies, the only such course on offer in Turkey.

Then, with only two months to go until local elections scheduled for 30 March 2014, Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), made the radical suggestion that a Syriac woman should run for co-mayor alongside Ahmet Turk, the respected 72 year-old Kurdish candidate.

[...]

I have been following the Syriac Studies program at Mardin's Artuklu University since it was announced in 2009. See here and follow the links. It sounds as though it has been pretty successful.

Recent posts on modern Aramaic-speaking Christians and their current persecution in the Middle East are here, here, and here, with many links.

Palmyra latest

UPDATE: UNESCO calls for Palmyra protection as ISIL withdraws from city (Alexander Aucott, Euronews.com).

UNESCO has said the historic city of Palymra in Syria must be protected.

The call comes after intense fighting between forces loyal to President Assad and ISIL militants already caused some damage.

The militants reportedly withdrew from the site on Sunday after seizing it a day earlier.

[...]

The reports are conflicting on whether ISIS actually seized the site or only got close to it. I hope the latter. In any case, they have been repelled for now.

Related, a photo gallery: Palmyra - An oasis of cultural history (Deutche Welle).

Palmyra was an important ancient Aramaic-speaking city. Some historical details are given here and information on Palmyrene Aramaic is collected here. And for these and more posts on Palmyra and on the recent threats to its ruins, start here and follow the links. Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

Teaching Syriac

R.P. NETTELHORST: SYRIAC (Through a Glass Darkly, Jerusalem Post).

As part of my graduate program at UCLA I was required to learn several dialects of Aramaic, including Syriac. Since that time, I had not done much work with the language. However, one summer a few years ago I was approached by an old Orthodox priest and one of his deacons. They asked me if I could offer a class in Syriac, since their church uses the language in its liturgy, but they didn’t even know the alphabet and had to do the liturgy each Sunday by reading it in transliteration.

A rambling essay on the Syriac language and its long history up to the present.

Cross-file under, you guessed it, Syriac Watch.

A fragment of 4 Ezra in Coptic and Arabic

A PRE-PRINT FROM ALIN SUCIU: On a Bilingual Copto-Arabic Manuscript of 4 Ezra and the Reception of This Pseudepigraphon in Coptic Literature (forthcoming in Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha).

Abstract
The text of 4 Ezra has survived in many ancient languages. Among these, the Sahidic Coptic version is the most poorly attested. The focus here is to introduce a new Sahidic fragment of this Jewish pseudepigraphon, which is preserved in a bilingual Copto-Arabic manuscript from the Monastery of Apa Shenoute. This hitherto unknown fragment is datable to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The article provides an edition of the newly identified fragment, together with a paleographical description, an analysis of the text, and a survey of the relevant sources pertaining to the reception of 4 Ezra in Coptic and Copto-Arabic literature.

Alin shared the article with me last year. I am pleased to see that it is now available online.

Princeton Fulbright fellows

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THREE: Three Princeton Theological Seminary Students Named Fullbright Fellowship Winners, notably (for the purposes of PaleoJudaica) to Philip Forness:

At the University of Munich, Forness will research Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic languages and cultures in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. His project will focus on Thomas the Apostle.

Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

Why is Jerusalem called Jerusalem?

FOR JERUSALEM DAY (YESTERDAY): Why is Jerusalem called Jerusalem? From its earliest name Ursalim, Jerusalem's name has mirrored the city's conquerors, passing through Jebus to the Roman Aelia Capitolina to al-Quds - and back to the ancient Israelite Yerushalayim. (Elon Gilad, Haaretz).

A good, accurate account of the names of the city from antiquity to the present. One small correction: Arabic and Ethiopic are South Semitic, not West Semitic. The author was perhaps thinking of Proto-Semitic, which is ancestral to all the Semitic languages.

The mystery of the Byzantine-era winepress

JUST LIKE THAT: 1,400-Year-Old Wine Press Mysteriously Appears in Jerusalem (Michael Zeff, Tazpit News Agency/Jewish Press).

The mystery kept bothering IAA officials, until the IAA team who took over maintenance of the site discovered that the ancient wine press had been discovered and excavated by local children.

The neighborhood kids, it appears, are avid archaeology fans and at first were simply “playing pretend” in the forest surrounding the neighborhood, until their game turned into reality.

There are additional details in this premium Haaretz article by Ruth Schuster: Boy digs up 1,400-year old wine press in Jerusalem. A jogger stumbled upon an unmarked dig and smelled a rat – which turned out to be an unkosher archaeological dig of wine press from the 6-7 century ADE (sic).

Keeping a close eye on the site paid off: lo and behold, shortly the inspectors noticed a Haredi boy of "bat mitzvah age" – around 13 – loitering by the site. Not just loitering: he was watching closely.

"Before we could even ask what he was doing there, the boy ran up and openly and proudly told us that he and his friends were archaeology buffs and had done this excavation," says Amit Ram, the IAA archaeologist in charge of the Jerusalem district.

So the "children" were teenagers and apparenly had at least some idea what they were doing. The IAA is in a rather awkward spot, but is handling the situation sensitively:

It bears saying that unauthorized digs are against the law in Israel, pure and simple. "On the one hand it's a crime," Ram told Haaretz. "On the other hand I realized it was done in innocence, and I was touched to the core by the boy's story – which reminded me of my boyhood, at age 12 or 13. We suggested that the boy and their friends channel their energies to works for the community," he said.

The IAA does beg to point out however that unprofessional archaeological mucking about can lead to the loss of precious information and citizens uncovering some historic find should contact it.

As for teenagers with archaeological interests, they can indeed participate in digs – coordinated with the IAA, which suggests they get in touch through its website.

ISIS repelled from Palmyra

SAFE FOR NOW: Syrian army pushes back Islamists from ancient Palmyra.
World Heritage Site rocked by fighting between Islamic State and forces loyal to the government; 76 reported killed (AFP). But ISIS got to within a kilometer of the site.

Background here and links.

The Golem

ANCIENT ORIGINS: The Golem: Talmudic Legend of a Clay Beast Created to Protect the Jews (Ḏḥwty). Interesting post that seems more or less accurate, but suffers from the lack of primary references. If you are going to write about ancient texts, always include specific references so people can look the passages up themselves. A very old Philologos column on the Golem legend is noted here. The link has rotted but the excerpt is informative and at least gives general references.

For many more Golem posts, see here and links.

AWDL of ISAW at NYU

BIBLIOGRAPHICA IRANICA: Ancient World Digital Library (AWDL). An important collection of digitized secondary literature from the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.

Review of Breed, Nomadic Text

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Breed, Nomadic Text: A Theory of Biblical Reception History (Krista Dalton).

Nomadic Text: A Theory of Biblical Reception History
Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (2014), by Brennan W. Breed.

... Readers may differ with Breed about the mutual exclusivity of his approach and standard reading practices of the Bible and also may be left wanting a lengthier illustration of method than 3 verses from Job. Nevertheless, Nomadic Text offers an innovative poststructuralist theory of textual reception that dismantles the typical tools of textual work in order to deflate the prestige of the “original” and instead consider nomadic potential.

I haven't read the book, but the review does make it sound as if its approach goes too far in dismissing attempts to get at something resembling an "original" text or meaning. Such things are unattainable ideals, but are still worth trying to approximate as one aspect of the scholarly study of ancient texts.

More on Oslo Ancient Magic Workshop

LIV INGEBORG LIED: Updated program: Studying Ancient Magic: Categorisation - Comparison - Materiality. Background here.

Parthian Sources Online

AWOL: Parthian Sources Online. "This website is a digital collection of texts from the Parthian empire, one of the biggest and longest-lasting empires of antiquity."

Hebrew tattoo disaster

JAMES MCGRATH: Bad Hebrew = Free Advertising.

This tattoo reminds me of a Punic inscription (R 1534, el Ḥofra, Algeria) engraved on stone by an illiterate stonemason who accidentally included the instructions with the inscription: "and you will write 43 letters!" (וכתבת מספרמ ארבעמ ושלש).* (Cross-file under Punic Watch.)

Over the years I have collected various stories about tattoos in ancient languages (here and follow the links), some done correctly, but others with unfortunate results like this one.

*Segert, A Grammar of Phoenician and Punic, 16.151.1.

Gabbay and Secunda (eds), Encounters by the rivers of Babylon

BIBLIOGRAPHICA IRANICA (NEW BOOK): Encounters by the rivers of Babylon.

Report from Jews visiting the El Ghriba Synagogue

TRAVEL VIDEO: El Ghriba Festival in Tunisia (Natalie Jacobs, San Diego Jewish Journal). Judie Fein reports from Tunisia.

Background on Jewish pilgrimage to this ancient synagogue and on the current situation in Tunisia is here and links.

A new threat to Palmyra

BARBARIANS AT THE GATES: Monitor: IS threatening Syria’s ancient Palmyra. As jihadists near UNESCO world heritage site that tradition says was built by King Solomon, experts warn of imminent destruction (AFP).

Palmyra has also been under threat from the Syrian civil war but, at least until relatively recently
and in no small part thanks to the efforts of what sounds like a local militia, the site has remained relatively unscathed. I hope it is spared the depredations of ISIS.

More background on Palmyra is here and links. And more on ISIS's assault on the past is here and links.

Another DSS party

DISCOVERY BALL: Malibu Seen: Having a Ball with History (Kim Devore, Malibu Times).

After last year’s super successful exhibit Pompeii, you’d think the California Science Center would be hard pressed to top itself, but it did with another fascinating look back at the past. To kick things off, the institution hosted its annual Discovery Ball.

The numbers are in and it turns out that the mesmerizing showcase of the Dead Sea Scrolls proved the Center’s most successful fundraiser yet.

Eight hundred black tie and well-heeled guests arrived at the annual Discovery Ball, which went all out and raised a whopping $1.5 million!

Guests enjoyed a lavish cocktail party in an unusual setting, reminiscent of the caves of Qumran where the ancient scrolls were discovered.

[...]

The ball actually took place on 7 March, well before the Israel Independence Day party at the same venue, so I'm not sure why this article is coming out so late. But it sounds like everyone had a good time. Background on the exhibition is in that last link and the links therein.

Encyclopedia Talmudit

PROJECT: The “Encyclopedia Talmudit” is a monumental labor of love and learning (Jonathan Kirsch, Jewish Journal).

A vast body of Jewish writing rooted in distant antiquity is headed for cyberspace, thanks to the visionary efforts of an Israeli rabbi who comfortably straddles the worlds of science, faith and scholarship.

Rabbi Avraham Steinberg is chief executive officer of the “Encyclopedia Talmudit” (Talmudic Encyclopedia), a work-in-progress that began in 1942 as an audacious effort to rescue and preserve the writings of Jewish sages even as the Jewish people itself faced extinction at the hands of Nazi Germany and its allies. Thanks to the work of its founding editors, the Talmudic Encyclopedia now consists of 33 volumes and some 1,200 entries that summarize and explain the wisdom of the Talmud in a series of short topical entries.

Given the vast scope of the Talmud, it is not surprising that 33 volumes represent about half of the work in its entirety. Steinberg aspires to complete the print version of the Talmudic Encyclopedia within 10 years, which is why he is traveling widely in the United States to raise funds in support of the enterprise. The campaign was jump-started with a generous contribution from Dov Friedberg, whose matching gift is conditional on the publication of the Talmudic Encyclopedia in its entirety within a decade.

[...]

The project, which is staffed by "strictly Orthodox" writers, is written in a Classic-Modern form of Hebrew and is also slated to go online.

Sources for Judeans in the Babylonian Exile

ASOR BLOG: New Sources and Insights on Judeans in the Babylonian Exile (Yigal Bloch). A survey of both long-known cuneiform references to Judean exiles in Babylon (the Murashu texts etc.) and the newly published Babylonian Judeain cuneiform tablets.

Access to the full essay requires free registration.

Historical war crimes?

UNESCO DIRECTOR-GENERAL: Demolition of historical sites called war crime (AP). This at a conference being held in Egypt in response to ISIS's depredations against archaeology and history in the Middle East.

Related: Iraq: IS demolishes ruins to cover up looting. New evidence shows Islamic group’s destruction of historical treasures hides its theft of priceless artifacts (Paul Schemm, AP).

Background here and links.

Ancient Jewish finds in Sinop?

IN TURKEY: Ancient necropolis found during construction (Hurriet Daily News).

The traces of an ancient necropolis have been unearthed during the construction of a culture center in the northern province of Sinop’s Gelincik neighborhood. The construction has been halted and excavation work has begun with the permission of the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums.

Sinop Museum Director Hüseyin Vural said many artifacts dating back to the 4th century B.C. have been found through the eastern border of the necropolis.

“There are tombs and amphora among the artifacts as well as tomb gifts such as various types of Greek pottery, scent bottles and coins. We have also unearthed findings related to the Jewish faith in the west of the necropolis area. Works have been continuing,” he said.

[...]

Details are scarce so far, but this is worth keeping an eye on.

Via Mark Miller at Ancient Origins. There was also a report yesterday, but the English was so bad it was very hard to follow, so I decided to wait for something clearer. The Governor of Sinop, if he is being quoted correctly and in context with the "6,000 years," seems to be confused about the chronology.

On scholarship and mainstream consensus

PHILIP JENKINS has a new series at the Anxious Bench on distinguishing scholarship in biblical studies from pseudo-scholarship. The first essay deals with Jacobovici's and Wilson's The Lost Gospel and the second on scholarship and science.

I Want to Believe

I have no wish to waste any more time on the book itself, but the whole phenomenon does raise some important points about the nature of fringe and controversial scholarship, and its relationship to the mainstream, or the scholarly consensus. Even as I write the words, I know that “mainstream” and “consensus” are both words to raise hackles, and many lay readers have a natural preference for those they see as courageous entrepreneurs, as scholarly heretics. The problem, though, is that most non-specialists simply do not understand the assumptions from which scholars work. In my next few columns, I want to suggest just why that scholarly consensus matters, whether we are dealing with alternative scriptures, bizarre historical claims, or pseudo-archaeology. I’ll also try to explain how we can tell the difference between real scholarship and fringe speculations.

Outliers and Iconoclasts

At this point, you might be objecting that this represents an “argument from authority,” which in certain circumstances can lead to a kind of logical fallacy. But in most instances, basing yourself in scholarly authority and consensus is emphatically not a fallacy. Whenever I hear that objection, the other person is commonly deploying what I call the “argument from lack of authority,” namely that something is likely to be true precisely because it breaches the consensus. If someone presents a wildly unorthodox idea (Serapis was the first Christ; the Sphinx is twelve thousand years old), they scorn scholarly assaults. Did not the scholars of the day mock at iconoclastic pioneers like Copernicus and Galileo, who would be triumphantly vindicated?

More on The Lost Gospel here and links. Past discussions of the idea and value of scholarly consensus at PaleoJudaica etc. are collected here.

Mammon

YONA SABAR: Hebrew Word of the Week: Mammon.

Judeo-Arabic Psalter

AT HEBREW BOOKS: THE BOOK OF PSALMS IN JUDEO-ARABIC. Judeo-Arabic is Arabic written in Hebrew letters. This 1898 edition of the Book of Psalms in a Judeo-Arabic translation can be downloaded for free at the link. It gives no information on where the translation comes from, and I doubt that many scientific text-critical and philological principles were at work in the production of the edition, but it gives you the Psalms in Judeo-Arabic. For readers looking for a familiar text to read, as one does, for brushing up on or improving their Judeo-Arabic, this looks like a useful resource.

More on Judeo-Arabic here and here.

Bibliographia Iranica

NEW BLOG: Bibliographia Iranica, "A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies."

This is a reboot and expansion (with more contributors) of Arash Zeinis blog, to which I link often. He gives full background to the new blog here.

A couple of interesting posts on the new blog include:

A grammar of early Judaeo-Persian

Judeo-Persian manuscripts in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America

A recent PaleoJudaica post on Judeo-Persian, with links to more, is here.

Aramaic-speaking-Christian unity

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: Chaldean, Assyrian, Syriac unity pivotal to survival of Iraqi Christians (Natasha Dado, Arab American News).

DETROIT — “To the Chaldean and Assyrian community of Michigan, enough with the division,” said Noor Mattr, a young Iraqi Christian activist at a rally for Iraq’s religious minorities in August. “You will never agree on everything. However, I beg you guys to unite for the sake of our people back home. Our survival back home depends on your unity here.”

Many Chaldean, Assyrian and Syriacs agree with Mattr’s message of unity and believe the future of Iraq’s Christians depends on it.

"If we do not unite now, say goodbye to our history,” said Olivia, a local Chaldean who chose not to use her real name. “No more of our history. No more Chaldeans, Assyrians and Syriacs."

[...]

Chaldeans, Assyrians and Syriacs are all the indigenous peoples of Iraq and Christians who speak Aramaic— the language of Christ.

They all trace their roots back to the Nineveh plains of northern Iraq and a time long before the establishment of the Republic of Iraq.

[...]

Background here and links.

SPEAR award

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL SIX: Six Texas A&M Faculty Members Named Arts & Humanities Fellows, notably to:

• Daniel L. Schwartz, assistant professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts, specializes in late Roman history, with a focus on culture, religion and education. His forthcoming projects include an edited volume on conversion to Christianity and Islam during Late Antiquity and an article on religious violence in fifth and sixth century Roman Syria. Of particular interest to him is Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic that flourished among Middle Eastern Christians, but which is generally neglected by today’s ancient and medieval scholars. For his Arts & Humanities Fellowship, Schwartz will develop a digital publication called SPEAR: Syriac Persons, Events and Relations, to advance the study of Syriac.

Each fellowship comes with $15,000 for the project. Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

Review of Hannibal books

PUNIC WATCH: The Lion of Carthage. What Hannibal could not overcome was the Roman willingness to sustain mass casualties and raise new legions (Michael Kulikowski, WSJ). This essay surveys the story of Hannibal using these two books as his launching point:

Mastering the West
By Dexter Hoyos
Oxford, 337 pages, $29.95

Hannibal
By Eve MacDonald
Yale, 332 pages, $38

Conclusion:

Every decade brings us a dozen or more books on the Punic Wars, and few can say anything that is both new and true. Carthaginian silence—“Roman ownership of Hannibal’s story,” as Ms. MacDonald aptly terms it—leaves us free to shuffle the same pieces into faintly new patterns time and time again. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people’s favorite book on the Punic Wars tends to be the first one they read. Mr. Hoyos’s venture is clear and competent, good on disputed analyses and contradictory evidence. Ms. MacDonald, for her part—relying on a lot of plausible speculation, argument by analogy and the occasional leap of analytical faith—succeeds in placing Hannibal firmly in the world of Hellenistic warlords from which he sprang: Her Hannibal is no alien semitic creature atavistically hostile to the Mediterranean civilization of Greece and its satellites but instead a stunningly successful product of that civilization, using its political repertory and military technology at a level that no contemporary could match, at least at first. The books offer different things, one unexceptionable and a bit dull, the other enthralling but sometimes beyond historical proof. Tastes vary, and neither will steer the newcomer wrong, but I suspect most will prefer the speculative provocations of Ms. MacDonald to the bloodless certainties of Mr. Hoyos.

More on Hannibal and the Punic Wars here and links.

Syriac post at Vanderbilt

H-JUDAIC: JOB: Vanderbilt University, Divinity School, VAP in Syriac and Digital Humanities. A one-year, renewable post. "The committee will begin review of applications immediately, with priority given to those applications received by May 22. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled." So don't dawdle.

Sage-shopping in the Talmud?

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Marriage: A Math Problem. Studying who’s owed what, when, and how much in cases of divorce, widowing, and inheritance.

In practice, however, it’s easy to imagine that this open-ended legal system could present some problems. If two Sages followed different legal traditions, rival litigants could easily engage in “sage-shopping,” finding the one who would be most sympathetic to their claim. And if rabbis of equal sanctity made opposite rulings in a case, whose view would prevail? Exactly this problem came up in this week’s Daf Yomi reading, in Ketubot 94b. Chapter Ten of Ketubot deals with complex issues of inheritance and debt, one of which is how to deal with rival deeds to the same property that were issued on the same date. Say that Yaakov owns a house, and he signs a deed giving it to Reuven, but later the same day he signs another deed giving it to Shimon. Who gets the house?

Marital financial law is complicated. Especially financial law for polygamous marriages.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Jewish weddings

EXHIBITION: CT Humanities provides funding for wedding exhibit at Jewish Historical Society (West Hartford News).

WEST HARTFORD >> The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford recently received a grant from Connecticut Humanities to partially support its upcoming new exhibit, “Breaking The Glass: The American Jewish Wedding.”

This grant will be used to help design and fabricate text panels detailing the history of the Jewish wedding. The catalogue accompanying the exhibit will also contain information on the wedding rituals and traditions of several other faiths to provide further insight into the importance of the wedding ceremony throughout the world..

A highlight of the exhibit will be antique wedding gowns from the UCONN Historical Costume and Textile Collection, and reproductions of ancient ketubot (marriage contracts) from the Beinecke Library Judaic Collection at Yale University. ...

More on Jewish marriage contracts (ketubot/ketuvot) here and links.

Bar Kokhba papyri

ANNIVERSARY: This Day in Jewish History / Archaeologist announces finding 2,000-year old letters by Bar Kochba in desert cave. The letters presented by Yigael Yadin were signed by Bar Kochba, the man revered by modern Israelis — but who led the Jewish nation to disaster (David B. Green, Haaretz).

On May 12, 1960, archaeologist Yigael Yadin, appearing at the Jerusalem residence of President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, announced the astounding discovery of a cache of 2,000-year-old letters.

The letters had been signed by the legendary Jewish warrior Shimon Bar Kochba, leader of a devastating second-century revolt against Rome, and had been found high up in a cave overlooking the Nahal Hever canyon, west of the Dead Sea.

[...]

JTA has posted the original announcement of the find here. More on the Bar Kokhba revolt is here and links.

Cyril and Methodius Day, round one

SAINTS' DAY: Bulgarian Orthodox Church commemorates Saints Cyril and Methodius (FOCUS News Agency). There is much celebrating in the Eastern Orthodox Churches of these two saints and their invention of the Old Church Slavonic alphabet, with key dates ranging from February to July. Technically Saints Cyril and Methodius Day is on 24 May in the Gregorian Calendar, but that translates to 11 May in the Julian calendar, and so it was also celebrated yesterday. Background on the day and why it matters to PaleoJudaica (hint: Slavonic Old Testament Pseudepigrapha) is here.

Review of Edelman and Ben Zvi (eds.), Remembering Biblical Figures

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Edelman and Ben Zvi, Remembering Biblical Figures in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods: Social Memory and Imagination (Nathan Schumer).

Edelman, Diana and Ehud Ben Zvi, editors. Remembering Biblical Figures in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Period: Social Memory and Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Remembering Biblical Figures in the Later Persian & Early Hellenistic Periods is a new edited volume examining the biblical texts through the theoretical lens of social or collective memory. Social memory suggests that groups form shared memories as part of their constitution of group identity. Thus, such shared memories of the past (in this case, the Biblical past) should be interrogated in order to see what they can tell us about the group that treats them as memories rather than what they can tell us about the Biblical period itself. Epistemologically, memory studies claims that while depictions of the past may not be true in a conventional historical sense, they were true for the people who remembered them. The book incorporates recent research on the neuroscience of memory in order to show that this theoretical lens is widely applicable, but also draws on the traditional canon of memory studies, including the influential scholars and theorists Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora.

[...]

Arcosolium robbers thwarted in the Galilee

MORE LOOTING ARRESTS: Israeli Antiquities Squad Stops Wannabe’ ‘Tomb Raiders’ at Ancient Roman Catacomb (Tazpit News Agency/The Jewish Press).

By Michael Zeff In a dramatic ambush operation, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) officials caught two would-be grave robbers red-handed as they tried to pilfer an ancient Roman period burial site in the Galilee today.

IAA anti-theft task force officials apprehended the duo moments before they breached the burial chamber on Sunday, task force chief Nir Distelfeld told the Tazpit News Agency “We managed to prevent severe desecration and irreversible damage to a beautiful and important catacomb,” Distelfeld said.

The burial chamber, called an Arcosolium, was part of a larger set of underground catacombs located on a preservation site of ancient Roman and Byzantine ruins in the upper Galilee. The suspects managed to dig their way into the main cave but were stopped by task force members before they succeeded in damaging or stealing any antiquities.

[...]

Dig episode 10

KIMBERLY WINSTON: ‘Dig’ ends its TV run not with a bang but a flood. For the blood moon tetrad see here and links. Ms. Winston concludes:

“Dig” has been both lauded and condemned by critics. Most lamented its borrowing of plot elements from better known — and more widely consumed — pieces of pop culture like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Da Vinci Code.” But the creators of “Dig” delivered what they advertised — a fast-paced puzzle of a story that entertained. And they did it with a heavy dose of religious history, imagery and themes that — to their credit — were almost entirely based on fact.

Well, sort of. And not including the ninja Essenes.

Background here and links.

Pseudo-Dionysius - the journal

AWOL: Open Access Journal: Pseudo-Dionysius. The current volume includes articles on Maimonides and Philo of Alexandria.

Versions of the Gospel of John online

AWOL: Electronic Editions of the Gospel According to John in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Coptic.

Herod's architecture

ASOR BLOG: BASOR Article Preview: Fit for a King: Architectural Decor in Judaea and Herod as Trendsetter.

Menorah Coin Project

THE ISRAELI NUMISMATIC SOCIETY: MENORAH COIN PROJECT. "13,000 Judaean coins classified die per die."

HT Explorator 18.01.

Ancient lifespans

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Did Ancient People Really Have Lifespans Longer Than 200 Years? (Tara MacIsaac, Epoch Times - rprt. Ancient Origins). Most people died in childhood in antiquity, but even those who survived childhood illnesses very frequently died young - in childbirth, if women, or in warfare, if men. The ancients were doing very well to make it to 50. To date, there are no verifiable cases of anyone living past the age of 120, but hopefully technology and medical science are about to change that, probably for some people alive today.

Journal of Jewish Lore and Philosophy

AWOL: Open Access Journal: Journal of Jewish Lore and Philosophy. Just the 1919 volume. This journal developed into the Hebrew Union College Annual and it is primarily of historical interest, but it's good to have it online anyway.

Dig interlude

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: TV Series “Dig” Delivers Drama. New archaeology TV show captures the excitement of discovering the Biblical world (Ellen White).

The archaeology TV show is to Biblical archaeology what Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code is to church history. Some of the names, places, dates and even methods are correct, but the writers and producers do not let themselves get bogged down by facts and accuracy. They are telling a story, and it is pure fiction. An enjoyable, if convoluted, mystery, but not the place to go looking for a documentary.

Indeed not.

"Interlude" because I'm still waiting for Kimberly Winston's history-based review of the final episode (10), which aired yesterday. Background here and links,

Vandalism near Mount Meron

THIS IS SAD: 2,000-year-old synagogue near Mount Meron vandalized. Religious graffiti sprayed on ancient walls of recently renovated historic site (Itay Blumenthal,Ynet News).

Students from the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva in Meron were shocked on Wednesday when they discovered graffiti on 2,000-year-old walls near the ancient synagogue on Mount Meron.

The walls were sprayed with large, colorful letters that spelled out "Na Nach Nachma Nachman MeYerushalayim" – a reference to a slogan widely used by a subgroup of haredi Jews.

The students informed inspectors from the Antiquities Authority, who arrived quickly. Further damage to the site was discovered when the Nature and Parks Authority found similar graffiti at the Hurbat Sheva ruins south of Meron.

Gnostic music

AT THE MET: Johann Johannsson’s ‘Drone Mass’ Bridges Ancient and Modern at Temple of Dendur (Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim NYT).

In program notes for the Met performance, Mr. Johannsson acknowledges the new resonance that the term has gained recently as public fascination — and anxiety — with the airborne drone has grown. The text of his Mass is that of an ancient Egyptian Coptic hymn that consists of only free-floating vowels. “Putting these Gnostic texts in the context of the Temple of Dendur, with the title ‘Drone Mass,’ creates some kind of poetic resonance, which I can’t quite explain, either,” he said in an interview.

HT Sachyn Mital's review notice of the performance at PopMatters: Jóhann Jóhannsson - "Drone Mass" Met Museum World Premiere, which quotes the Met with the additional information that "'Drone Mass' [is] a contemporary oratorio which fuses the sounds of string quartet, electronics, and vocals, and uses texts based on the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians."

Penn's 2015 student marshals

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THE FOLLOWING AT PENN STATE UNIVERSITY: College of the Liberal Arts selects spring 2015 student marshals - and in particular to this budding young ancient historian:

Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies

Maria Andrews is the daughter of Steven and Barbara Andrews of Spring Mills. She is graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and minors in ancient Greek, Latin, anthropology and Jewish studies. She has pursued the study of ancient languages and cultures of Greece, Rome, the ancient Near East and Egypt, among others. Andrews also studied Arabic and was awarded the Robert E. Dangler Classics Prize given to the outstanding student majoring in classical studies. She will pursue graduate work in classical studies at the University of Alberta. Christopher Moore, lecturer in philosophy, will escort her as the faculty marshal.

Grooms at Lag B'Omer

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Watch: Grooms Revive 3,000-Year-Old Tradition on Temple Mount. Grooms visit Mount on Lag B'Omer ahead of wedding night, in tradition dating back to First Temple times 3,000 years ago. (Ari Yashar). I will take the word of Arutz Sheva that this custom is mentioned in the Talmud and is therefore ancient (although, typically for the media, no specific reference is given). But there is no evidence that it goes back three thousand years.

The demolition of Susya

DUELING NARRATIVES: Everyone agrees that a Palestinian settlement built on an archaeological site in the south Hebron hills (mentioned briefly in passing at PaleoJudaica here, here, and here) is facing demolition. Beyond that:

ARUTZ SHEVA: Arab Settlement on Ancient Jewish Village to be Demolished. Supreme Court throws out petition of Arab squatters allowing demolition of 80 illegal buildings on site of ancient Susya (Ari Yashar).

+972: Palestinian village of Susya faces imminent demolition. Since the Israeli army evicted residents of Susya from their village in order to establish an archeological site in its place, the Israeli military has refused to issue the Palestinians any building permits. Now, the High Court has given the army a green light to demolish the village and forcefully transfer its residents (Mairav Zonszein).

I blog, you decide.

Lag B'Omer celebrations

ANNUAL EVENT: Tens of Thousands Celebrate Lag B'Omer in Meron. Largest annual Jewish celebration begins at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. Watch it happen live on Arutz Sheva.

Tens of thousands of Jewish worshippers are converging on the town of Meron in northern Israel to celebrate Lag B'Omer at the Tomb of the ancient Jewish scholar and mystic Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.

The yearly mountaintop gathering at the tomb of the Jewish leader, seen by many as the father of the kabbalistic movement, is believed to be the largest Jewish festive gathering in the world.

[...]

Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai - also known as "Rashbi" - was a tannaitic sage who lived during the second century in ancient Israel. One of the most eminent disciples of Rabbi Akiva - a leading scholar who also served as spiritual leader of the Bar Kochba Revolt against Roman occupation - Rashbi was himself forced into hiding by Israel's Roman occupiers after criticizing the regime.

[...]

He is also the traditional author of the Zohar (actually a medieval work). More on him and the legends about him here and links.

Final volume of Matt's Zohar translation

COMING IN DECEMBER: The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume Nine. Translated by Daniel C. Matt. SERIES: Zohar: The Pritzker Editions.

Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Radiance) has amazed readers ever since it emerged in medieval Spain over seven hundred years ago. Written in lyrical Aramaic, this masterpiece of Kabbalah exceeds the dimensions of a normal book; it is virtually a body of mystical literature, comprising over twenty sections. The bulk of the Zohar consists of mystical interpretation of the Torah, from Genesis through Deuteronomy.

The ninth volume of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition completes this running commentary on the Torah. ...

Daniel Matt's edition and translation of the Zohar is a massive project whose progress I have been following since 2003 and which began some years before that. A couple of early posts that give background are here and here. (The links have rotted in both, but the excerpts are reasonably informative.) For more, start here and just keep following the links back. It will be good to have this important project completed.

The El Ghriba Synagogue in Tunisia

THAT'S THE SPIRIT! Hundreds of Jews Make Pilgrimage to Ancient Tunisian Synagogue, Despite Terror Threats.

(JNS.org) Hundreds of Jews are making a pilgrimage to the ancient Tunisian synagogue of El Ghriba on the island of Djerba, despite warnings of a possible terror attack against Jewish targets.

“There is a lot of security, there are soldiers and police everywhere and that is very reassuring to us,” French-Jewish tourist Lorine Bendayan told AFP.

[...]

I can't find any clear information on exactly how old this synagogue is, but people seem to think it was founded in antiquity. The current structure dates to the nineteenth century.

Background on the situation in Tunisia is here and links.

Dig and the Temple Institute

TELEVISION: 'Dig' isn't wrong: People really are trying to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. But they're not evil like the Order of Moriah in 'Dig.' Not that they're any closer to building the Third Temple than their fictional counterparts. (Elon Gilad, Haaretz).

Currently airing around the world, the television series "Dig" tells the story of a ruthless international conspiracy to build a Third Temple in Jerusalem, and bring about the end of days. The show is fictional - but there really is an organization dedicated to bringing about the Third Temple in Jerusalem. It's a non-profit called the Temple Institute and is a lot less menacing than the organization in the show.

Like its sinister fictional counterpart, the real-life Temple Institute, which was established in Israel in 1987, is doing, or trying to do, the groundwork for rebuilding the Temple. But unlike the show’s "Order of Moriah," they don't run around openly waving guns, covertly breeding future high priests and murdering red-cow breeders, Norwegian or otherwise. Their work centers on benignly researching Judaism's ancient texts in the hope of uncovering the lost secrets of the Temple, and on recreating various objects associated with Temple worship.

[...]

Also, there really aren't any ninja Essenes. Never were.

As for the Temple Institute, no, they aren't evil, but I stil don't want anyone digging around on the Temple Mount. As I keep saying, leave it as it is until we can study what's buried there using non-invasive and non-destructive technologies, probably not very long from now.

This is a nice article summarizing the agenda of the Temple Institute and what they think they have accomplished so far. As an historian I remain skeptical of some of their claims to have reconstructed vestments, architecture, etc. associated with the Temple cult.

There's more on Dig here and links, and more on the Temple Institute here and links.

Coinage of Kyrene

COIN WEEK: Coinage of Kyrene: A Greek City in Libya. There is an ancient Jewish connection:

During the Roman period, the Jewish population of Cyrenaica grew. In the Gospels, Simon of Cyrene, perhaps visiting Jerusalem, was forced by Roman soldiers to carry the Cross on which Jesus was crucified[8]. Growing tensions between Jews and Romans in Cyrenaica erupted in rebellion in 115 CE. Known as the “Kitos War”[9] this revolt dragged on for two years, with massacres and atrocities that shocked even Roman historians. The province was virtually depopulated, and Emperor Trajan resettled it with Greek-speaking colonists brought in from other provinces. This may have been the occasion for an extensive coinage of silver drachms (3.2 grams) and hemidrachms (1.6 grams) bearing the stern face of Trajan obverse, and Zeus Ammon reverse.

The oldest (complete) copy of the Ten Commandments

EXHIBITION: Ten Commandments Dead Sea scroll to go on display for two weeks in Israel. World’s oldest complete copy of Ten Commandments has only previously been displayed overseas, but will be at Israel Museum for first time (AP).

You can read more about the exhibition in the Wall Street Journal: The Israel Museum Presents ‘A Brief History of Humankind.’ Inspired by a book by Yuval Noah Harari, Jerusalem’s Israel Museum is celebrating its first half-century with a look at humankind, from ancient artifacts to contemporary works (Jessica Dawson).

Technically the oldest copy of the Ten Commandments is the Nash Papyrus (second century BCE), which was found well before the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is not quite complete, though: a few letters are missing here and there, so the carefully phrased headline of the AP article is correct. The article does not specify which Qumran manuscript is on display, but I can see from the photo that it is 4QDeuteronomyⁿ (late first century BCE).

Bar Kokhba's pyrrhic victory

ELON GILAD: The Bar Kochba revolt: A disaster celebrated by Zionists on Lag Ba'Omer. On Lag Ba'Omer, Israeli children celebrate the Jewish rebels' victory over the Romans 2,000 years ago. Yet as victories go, Simon Bar Kochba's was a Pyrrhic one (Haaretz).

While many view the Bar Kochba Revolt as a tale of heroism, - it is equally a case study in the folly of religious and nationalistic fanaticism. Either way, it is a seminal moment in Jewish history.

Some past discussions of the Bar Kokhba revolt, many in the context of Lag B'Omer, are noted here, here, here, here, here, and here. And the site of Betar (Battir) has been in the news a lot lately.

Remember, with a free registration you can read a limited number of Haaretz premium articles each month.

Ashkelon travelogue

TRAVEL: At Ashkelon tel, they’ve found clay tickets but no theater — yet. British PM William Pitt the Younger’s niece started the treasure hunting in this unique southern Israeli city, and it continues to this day (Aviva Bar-Am, The Times of Israel).

Finally, in 1985, archeologist Lawrence Stager arrived from Harvard, and with the blessing of the Israel Antiquities Authority has been digging Tel Ashkelon ever since. Among the site’s most exciting discoveries are a forum, fabulous statues, massive fortifications, and one of the only two bronze-era gates found in Israel. Today, Ashkelon’s ancient gate – the oldest in the country – is the only one that visitors can walk right through.

The first National Park in Israel was established in Ashkelon. Named for Yigael Yadin, the first Israeli to insist on physical preservation of our heritage, this is a unique and remarkable site. But the antiquities in Ashkelon reach well beyond the borders of the official venue. Indeed, any visit to Ashkelon should include, besides the park itself, several exciting attractions located well inside the modern city. Summer visitors take note: an excellent beach is accessible from the park. (From the first of April, Ashkelon National Park is open from 8:00-20:00 – and you can stay until 22:00.)

As I've mentioned before, I was on the Ashkelon excavation staff as a lowly assistant square supervisor for a couple of years in the late-80s. But most of the really interesting discoveries came after my time. The article keeps it upbeat and neglects to mention the infamous ruins of a brothel at the site.

Ashkelon is very much worth a visit if you have the chance.

Lag B'Omer 2015

LAG B'OMER: THE COUNTING OF THE OMER begins tonight at sundown. Best wishes to all observing it.

2015 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium

COMING IN SEPTEMBER: 2015 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium Details. Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions: Writing Ancient and Modern Christian Apocrypha (Tony Burke, Apocryphicity). Looks like an excellent lineup.

Marriage inheritance and financial documentation in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Divorce Court: Talmud. Settling scores, carving up estates, negotiating claims, in biblical law. Plus: A virgin is worth twice as much as a widow or divorcee.

Tractate Ketubot has ranged widely over many aspects of the laws of marriage, in the process revealing some of the rabbis’ key assumptions about gender relations and sexuality. But the name of the tractate comes from the actual contract, the ketubah, that makes a Jewish marriage official; marriage law, in the Talmud, is a subset of contract law. In Chapter 9, which Daf Yomi readers covered this week, the fine points of that contract were at issue, as the rabbis determined how to deal with the tricky property claims that can arise in the context of marriage and inheritance. This chapter shows the Talmud as a code of civil law, rooted in the Bible but worldly in its distinctions and concerns.

[...]

More on Jewish marriage contracts (ketubot/ketuvot) here.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Caesarea travelogue

TOURISM: Caesarea: Herod's city by the sea. Travel writer Vivienne Mackie describes her trip to Caesarea for the News Gazette.

Report of Jewish-Temple-denying Palestinian website

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: New Arab Site Erases Temple Mount's Jewish Nature. Website by Palestinian Arab journalists warps history from Islamic perspective to claim Mount is exclusive property of Islam. (Dalit Halevy, Ari Yashar, Arutz Sheva).

The site includes pictures of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and sites adjacent to it, along with an explanation of their history from an Islamic perspective trying to claim the site is exclusively Muslim, and denying the Jewish nature of the ancient site.

This could be another case of Jewish-Temple denial, but the article doesn't give a URL for the website and my modern Arabic is probably not good enough to read it anyway, so I can't check the evidence and the exact wording for myself.

Rounded or rectangular Decalogue?

ART HISTORY: Squaring the Circle. The Israeli Chief Rabbinate has cut the arches off the 10 Commandments (Shalom Bear, The Jewish Press).

In the Israeli Rabbinate's new logo, the McDonald's arches have been excised from the 10 Commandments.

There is a controversy over what the stone tablets on which the 10 Commandments were written actually looked like.

Artistically, the tablets are almost always drawn as two rectangles with McDonald’s-like arches on top.

But the Gemorah (Baba Batra 14a) describes the two tablets as rectangular, and doesn’t mention any arches, McDonald’s or otherwise.

[...]

The Israeli Rabbinate, not unreasonably, is going with the Talmud on this one. But there's a complication in that the closest ancient Near Eastern analogue, the Code of Hammurapi stele, has the rounded top.

Samaritan Passover 2015

Members of the Samaritan sect in Israel skewer sheep for the traditional Passover ceremony in West Bank city of Nablus (Khaleda Rahman, The Daily Mail)

• Passover is a commemoration of when the children of Israel were freed from slavery and led out of Egypt by Moses
  
• Some Jews practiced animal sacrifice for Passover in ancient times, but today it is only done by the Samaritans
  
• They were descended from the ancient Israelite tribes, but broke away from mainstream Judaism 2,800 years ago
  
• Because of a less than strict adherence to Judaism and part-pagan ancestry, they were despised by ordinary Jews

With lots of photos. On the last bullet point, it depends on what you mean by a "less than strict adherence to Judaism." I think the Samaritans would say that that they held a strict adherance to Samaritanism. But yes, until recently, there was considerable hostility between Samaritans and Jews. Past posts on the Samaritan Passover, which comes a little after the Jewish Passover, are here and here and links.

Epigraphy cycling

Cycling, history and Independence. A guided family bike tour on Israel's Independence Day. (Joanna Shebson, Jerusalem Post). The epigraphic part comes at the end of the article:

At the end of our tour [apparently in the vicinity of the the ruins of Etri], my 11-year-old son picked up an old piece of pottery and screamed with excitement. This might sound like it’s right out of a movie, but it’s true! He recognized ancient Hebrew writing on the back, and our guide pulled out an iPhone to Google the ancient Hebrew alphabet.

With bated breath, we waited to see if the message was legible. Sure enough, it spelled “Michael Ben- Baruch.”

The guide explained to us that the artifact we had found might not be authentic, but the “thrill of the find” kept my boys smiling for the rest of the day.

We carefully wrapped the piece and left a message for the Israel Antiquities Authority to set up a time to come and see it. They will be able to tell us if it’s authentic or if it was placed on the scene recently.

Here is the inscribed ostracon:



Alas, it appears to be a fake. The lettering looks freshly inscribed and the plene spellings of "Michael" (with a yod) and "Baruch" (with a vav) are anachronistic for the paleo-Hebrew script.

Orlov, Divine Scapegoats

NEW BOOK FROM SUNY PRESS:

Divine Scapegoats
Demonic Mimesis in Early Jewish Mysticism



Andrei A. Orlov - Author
Price: $95.00
Hardcover - 352 pages
Release Date: May 2015
ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-1-4384-5583-9

Summary

Explores the paradoxical symmetry between the divine and demonic in early Jewish mystical texts.

Divine Scapegoats is a wide-ranging exploration of the parallels between the heavenly and the demonic in early Jewish apocalyptical accounts. In these materials, antagonists often mirror features of angelic figures, and even those of the Deity himself, an inverse correspondence that implies a belief that the demonic realm is maintained by imitating divine reality. Andrei A. Orlov examines the sacerdotal, messianic, and creational aspects of this mimetic imagery, focusing primarily on two texts from the Slavonic pseudepigrapha: 2 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Abraham. These two works are part of a very special cluster of Jewish apocalyptic texts that exhibit features not only of the apocalyptic worldview but also of the symbolic universe of early Jewish mysticism. The Yom Kippur ritual in the Apocalypse of Abraham, the divine light and darkness of 2 Enoch, and the similarity of mimetic motifs to later developments in the Zohar are of particular importance in Orlov’s consideration.

Semitics post at Yale

FULL-TIME JOB: Yale University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Humanities), Religious Studies: Lector or Senior Lector in Semitic Languages.

Location: New Haven, CT

Closes: Nov 1, 2015 at midnight Eastern Time (GMT-4 hours)

YALE UNIVERSITY, the Department of Religious Studies, is seeking to make a full-time appointment of a Lector or Senior Lector whose teaching responsibilities may include Aramaic, Advanced Syriac, Ugaritic, and additional Semitic languages, such as Ethiopic, beginning July 1, 2016. Ph.D. preferred but not required. Interest in the use of technology in teaching desirable. Rank dependent on qualifications and experience. Initial appointment will be up to three years, with possible renewal. Yale University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Yale values diversity among its students, staff, and faculty and strongly welcomes applications from women, protected veterans, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities. Please submit a detailed letter of application, curriculum vitae, evidence of effective teaching, a sample of scholarly or pedagogical writing, and three letters of reference. Review of applications will begin November 1, 2015.

Epiphanies of the Divine in the Septuagint and the NT

CONFERENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM: Epiphanies of the Divine in the Septuagint and the New Testament: Mutual Perspectives. NCTL Learning and Conference Centre, Nottingham 14-16 May 2015.

The Department of Theology and Religious Studies in collaboration with the Centre for Bible, Ethics and Theology (CBET) will host the V. International Symposium of the Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti.

The Corpus aims to improve the understanding of individual New Testament writings as an integral part of the culture of Hellenistic Judaism. Drawing on a rich history of scholarship, the project seeks to provide an innovative tool that gives a single overview of the Jewish-Hellenistic parallels that have been put forward for the understanding of a given text in the New Testament.

Via the BNTC list.

Biblical texts on wood and bark

ETC: Texts on wood and bark (Peter M. Head). Peter mentions the documents recovered at Novgorod and the possibility of Christian texts being among them. The Ostromir Gospels, although not excavated, come from there. But more directly relevant, among the excavated items is the Novgorod Psalm Book (same link, plus here), also written in wax on a wooden tablet.

Also, there's lots more on Vindolanda and its texts here and links.

Cross-file under Church Slavonic Watch.

Another review of Houston, Inside Roman Libraries

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

George W. Houston, Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and Their Management in Antiquity. Studies in the history of Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Pp. xvi, 327. ISBN 9781469617800. $59.95.

Reviewed by Scott G. Bruce, University of Colorado at Boulder (bruces@colorado.edu)

Preview

George Houston’s primer to the contents and organization of Roman libraries from the late Republic to the time of Constantine is a valuable work of scholarly outreach intended for students and scholars new to the study of ancient book culture. More expository than argumentative, it discusses in clear and accessible prose “everything that one might find in a Roman library” (p. 1) from the book rolls themselves to the furniture, storage containers, buildings, and personnel that facilitated their use by Roman readers. The introduction to the book lays out basic information on the physical characteristics of papyrus scrolls in antiquity and provides the reader with a vocabulary of technical terms used throughout the study, including opisthograph (a scroll with writing on both sides), sillybon (a tag denoting the author and title of a work, usually attached to the end of a scroll), and stichometric counts (evidence for the enumeration of lines copied by professional scribes, perhaps to calculate their rate of pay). There follow six chapters on the assembly of Roman book collections, the papyrological evidence for ancient book lists, two case studies of the physical remains of book collections from Herculaneum and Oxyrhynchus, the storage facilities that housed ancient libraries, and the personnel who worked in them.

[..]

An earlier review with commentary on the book's relevance for ancient Judaism is noted here.

The youngest Aramaist

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: Hamilton’s Assyrians have youngest church reader in world (Carmela Fragomeni, Hamilton Spectator).

At Hamilton's St. Mari Assyrian Church, parishioners endearingly call George Hashimoto, 13, their "small deacon."

"We're proud of him," says Evette Haddad. "He's unique, so we gave him that little title."

George is the church's "Old Testament Reader." It's a distinguished position requiring investiture by the Assyrian bishop in Toronto — an honour bestowed when George was only seven.

St. Mari's priest, Father Younan Marwan, says George is very smart and was "the youngest in our church in the world, I'm sure, when he started reading."

George, whose mother is Assyrian from Iraq and father is Japanese, has spoken and read Assyrian fluently since an early age.

[...]

He was seven when he started. Maybe there is hope for Aramaic as a living language.

von Soden's Akkadian dictionary

AWOL: Wolfram von Soden: Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. Now badly out of date, especially after the completion of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, but still a useful resource for Assyriologists.

More looting arrests in Israel

Police arrest alleged antiquities thieves for stealing 2,000-year-old coins. The arrests were part of a joint effort staged by the Border Police and the Israel Antiquities Authority. (Jerusalem Post).

Authorities said that the men had stolen ancient coins from the Roman and Byzantine periods that are believed to be over 2,000 years old.

The police said that the suspects were caught in the act of digging for more artifacts in the Tel Ma’aravim site.

There have been an awful lot of these arrests lately. I hope it is doing some good.

Day on the Serpent in Eden

BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

The Serpent in the Garden of Eden and its Background

The serpent in the Garden of Eden is popularly equated with the Devil. However, modern scholars agree that this was a later identification and not the original meaning, but there is no consensus as to what the original background of the serpent was. This brief article critiques a number of the proposals that have been made and suggests a possible background for the serpent. More generally it also discusses other questions of interpretation that have arisen in connection with the serpent in Genesis 3, in particular the suggestion that the serpent should be viewed more positively than has been customary and questions associated with the so-called Protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15.

Adapted and expanded from: John Day, From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (LHBOTS 592; London/New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 35-37.


By John Day
Emeritus Professor of Old Testament Studies
Lady Margaret Hall
Oxford University
April 2015

Judeo-Persian manuscripts

ADAM MCCOLLUM: Some Judeo-Persian manuscripts at the BnF.

The Judeo-Persian (etc.) manuscripts found in a cave in Afghanistan were a big story some years ago.

A letter by Schechter on the Cairo Geniza

GENIZA FRAGMENT OF THE MONTH (OCTOBER 2014): Add.6463(e)3416: Breathing the 'dust of centuries' (Melonie Schmierer-Lee).

This letter was written three weeks after Solomon Schechter arrived in Egypt. He writes to Francis Jenkinson, the University Librarian, describing his work in the Genizah chamber and his dealings with the local men who were assisting him. His main purpose, however, is to notify Jenkinson that he plans to send the first batch of manuscripts on ahead, and, as he intends to offer the manuscripts to the Library, would the Library look after them until Schechter’s return. The letter was preserved among Jenkinson’s papers, and eventually deposited in the University Library itself.

N=1 classes at Harvard

SYRIAC WATCH: Center of Attention. Students pursue one-person classes (Lara C. Tang, Harvard Crimson).

Peaking out between the enormous enrollments of the CS50s and Ec10s of the Q guide sits NEC91r, a supervised research tutorial in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department. Its sole student in the fall of 2013, Christian G. Sidak ’17 was the only undergraduate to study Syriac-Aramaic at the time.

Sidak decided to attend Harvard with every intention of pursuing Aramaic. However, upon his arrival in Cambridge, he learned that the professor who taught Aramaic A, the beginner Aramaic course, was absent on sabbatical.

Unfazed, Sidak approached the director of undergraduate studies for NELC and petitioned for a class in Syriac-Armaic. According to Sidak, the petition process presented no challenges, as the department easily found a professor who was willing to teach a one-person seminar in the ancient language.

[...]

In my time at UCLA I was the only undergraduate taking the Biblical Studies degree and I took a number of courses on my own with Stanislav Segert, including Biblical Aramaic. If memory serves, he told me to go and read Rosenthal's grammar and all the Aramaic texts in the Bible and then come tell him when I was done so he could give me a final exam.

Likewise, when I was a doctoral student at Harvard in the 1980s, I was the only registered student in a Sumerian reading class with Piotr Steinkeller, although there were also auditors in that case. Ec10, by the way, is an introductory Economics class at Harvard that is famous for its gigantic enrollments. For a while I dated one of the several secretaries who worked full time just for that one class.

A couple of times over the years I have taught a Hebrew seminar here with just one student, but my Aramaic class has, for some reason, always been well attended. And our Hebrew enrollments are considerably stronger now than back then.

DSS party

ON ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY: Moving and Shaking: Dead Sea Scrolls, Yom HaAtzmaut and The Women’s Guild (Ryan Torok/Tess Cutler, Jewish Journal).

Blue tablecloths decorated tables, Israeli music played, and Hebrew-speaking security personnel were on guard as the local Israeli consulate held an upbeat Yom HaAtzmaut celebration at the California Science Center on April 23.

The crowd of 500 mixed and mingled, enjoying food and cocktails, while dignitaries posed for photos and many people ventured upstairs to the museum’s second floor to tour the museum’s current Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition.

The event drew a slew of influential and diverse personalities, including politicians, astronauts and clergy. They included Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles David Siegel and Israeli-American Council (IAC) Board Chairman Shawn Evenhaim.

[...]

Background on the California Science Center's exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Los Angeles is here and links.

Dig Episode 9

KIMBERLY WINSTON: TV’s ‘Dig’ goes to the gates of hell — and hopefully, back. We'll see. For more on the the tradition of the 36 righteous or "lamed vovniks," see here and links.

More on Emek Shaveh vs. Elad

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Archeological activists: Elad must cede control of Temple Mount tunnel. Excavation of the tunnel, which extends from the Silwan parking lot opposite the Dung Gate to the Western Wall, commenced in 2009 by the IAA. (Jerusalem Post).

During a Thursday morning press tour of a contested tunnel being excavated under the Temple Mount, Yonathan Mizrachi stopped to explain why his archeological NGO submitted a petition to the High Court requesting that a right-wing NGO cease managerial oversight of the project.

“We don’t think any private organization should operate an archeological site, but especially one with a political agenda in a place that is important to everybody who cherishes the history of Jerusalem – including Jews, Muslims, Christians, and non-religious people,” said Mizrachi, executive director of Emek Shaveh, a left-wing, European- funded consortium of archeologists.

[...]

Asked to respond to Emek Shaveh’s petition, Ze’ev Orenstein, the organization’s director of international affairs, issued a strongly worded statement defending Elad’s current role and its right to manage the tunnel.

“Both Israel’s government and Supreme Court confirmed the Elad Foundation’s operation of the City of David National Park,” the statement said. “Furthermore, no other national park has grown as rapidly as the City of David – growing from having only a few thousand annual visitors a decade ago to over half a million visitors each year today – and benefiting people of all faiths and backgrounds.”

[...]

Background here and links. Cross-file under Politics.

New Hebrew biography of Scholem

MASTER OF MYSTICISM: Finally, this author puts the great Gershom Scholem in context. A new Hebrew biography of is the first to place the philosopher-historian’s remarkable breadth in a historical light, while offering a coherent understanding of his professional and political development. (Nitzan Lebovic, Haaretz). “From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back: Gershom Scholem Between Israel and Germany,” by Noam Zadoff (in Hebrew), Carmel Books, 119 shekels.

Excerpt:

The biography focuses less on Scholem’s personal life – it ignores, for example, the story of his wife’s affair – but develops a coherent understanding of his professional and political development. For Zadoff, Scholem’s story leads “From Berlin to Jerusalem,” as Scholem titled his own autobiographical account of his life and of his friendship with Walter Benjamin, but also along a path that led back to Berlin (hence the title of the book). His story leads from his political commitment, during the 1920s, to Brit Shalom – the first peace organization in the Middle East, which called for a binational state in Palestine – to his commitment to the search for lost Jewish libraries after the Holocaust. The biography also explores his friendships and rivalries with well-known intellectuals, and devotes much attention to Scholem’s involvement with the Eranos Circle in Switzerland, which brought him together with a small group of thinkers who were interested in similar topics. They included C.G. Jung, Karl Kerényi, Mircea Eliade, as well as Scholem’s colleague Martin Buber, and his protégé Yosef Weiss (Zadoff edited the correspondence between Scholem and Weiss, in Hebrew).

The narrative, even beyond the biographical details, is shaped by the history and rhetoric of spiritual Zionism and the hope for the revival of an ancient and secret language; Scholem extended his understanding of kabbala to Hebrew as a whole.

Zadoff follows Scholem through his endeavors to institutionalize his philosophy of language and history of kabbala. Scholem did both as a leading scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where his influence and reputation grew exponentially following his appointment, but nevertheless failed to cross the intellectual-political Rubicon and win adherents among the political elite. Being unable to cross that threshold, and watching helplessly the rise of messianic forms of Zionist nationalism, convinced Scholem that his intellectual path should turn back to Europe.

And this conclusion is intriguing:

Undoubtedly, Scholem’s powerful impact and intellectual contributions will continue to occupy us, even haunt us. This exceptionally tall man with protruding ears called himself “a metaphysical clown,” and prepared his own legacy by planting hints and secrets in his own texts, thereby promising a wealthy suggestive world to his followers “[or at least ] those of them who have a sixth bibliographical sense which is a must for the keepers of secrets.” After all, he admitted to Weiss (in a letter written March 31, 1960), [“I have] planted signs like one of the figures hiding in the well-known paintings.”

What is that about?

Ramelli and Perkins (eds.), Early Christian and Jewish Narrative

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
The Role of Religion in Shaping Narrative Forms
Ed. by Ilaria Ramelli and Judith Perkins

The authors of this volume elucidate the remarkable role played by religion in the shaping and reshaping of narrative forms in antiquity and late antiquity in a variety of ways. This is particularly evident in ancient Jewish and Christian narrative, which is in the focus of most of the contributions, but also in some "pagan" novels such as that of Heliodorus, which is dealt with as well in the third part of the volume, both in an illuminating comparison with Christian novels and in an inspiring rethinking of Heliodorus's relation to Neoplatonism. All of these essays, from different perspectives, illuminate the interplay between narrative and religion, and show how religious concerns and agendas shaped narrative forms in Judaism and early Christianity. A series of compelling and innovative articles, all based on fresh and often groundbreaking research by eminent specialists, is divided into three large sections: part one deals with ancient Jewish narrative, and part two with ancient Christian narrative, in particular gospels, acts, biographies, and martyrdoms, while part three offers a comparison with "pagan" narrative, and especially the religious novel of Heliodorus, both in terms of social perspectives and in terms of philosophical and religious agendas. Like the essays collected by Marília Futre Pinheiro, Judith Perkins, and Richard Pervo in 2013, which investigate the core role played by narratives in Christian and Jewish self-fashioning in the Roman Empire, the present volume fruitfully bridges the disciplinary gap between classical studies and ancient Jewish and Christian studies, offers new insights, and hopefully opens up new paths of inquiry.

Incantation Bowls and Jewish practice

ARAMAIC WATCH: Relics, writings show non-Jewish influences on Jewish practices. Rabbi Josef Davidson launches a homily with the ancient Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls. Really.

PA TV and The Protocols

OH DEAR: Palestinian Authority TV Presents Anti-Semitic ‘Protocols’ as True. "Even in their Protocols [of the Elders of Zion] and even in their bible [it says], ‘Don't live in Gaza,'" says Fatah spokesman. (Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, The Jewish Press).

A dozen years ago I had a little run-in with the new Egyptian Library of Alexandria over a display of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. My PaleoJudaica posts made enough of an impact that the Library sent me the press release when they removed the exhibit. You can read about it here, here, here, here, and here.

Bons and Pouchelle (eds.), The Psalms of Solomon

NEW BOOK FROM THE SBL:

The Psalms of Solomon: Language, History, Theology
Eberhard Bons (Editor), Patrick Pouchelle (Editor)

ISBN 1628370424
Status Available
Price: $34.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date April, 2015
Pages 228

A fresh analysis of that sheds new light on the Psalms of Solomon [Sic]

Researchers whose work focuses on the Psalms of Solomon, experts on the Septuagint, and scholars of Jewish Hellenistic literature take a fresh look at debates surrounding the text. Authors engage linguistic, historical, and theological issues, including the original language of the psalms, their historical setting, and their theological intentions, with the goal of expanding our understanding of first-century BCE Jewish theology.

Easter

SHORED FRAGMENTS: The name 'Easter' and internet misinformation. My St. Andrews colleague Steven R. Holmes has researched the origins of the word "Easter." Short version: It's not from Bede's (otherwise unknown) goddess Eostre, it's the Indo-European word for April, the month when the "dawn" comes earlier.

Via James McGrath: Myths, Messiahs, and Minimalisms.

Some Armenian Philo

ADAM MCCOLLUM: The wise king: A passage from Philo’s Questions on Genesis (4.76) in Armenian. Unusually for Philo's Quaestiones in Genesim, the original Greek survives and can be compared to the Armenian.

Performance of ancient music

CONCERT IN YORK TONIGHT: Swimming Between Shores & The Flood. Draws on, among other things, late antique Aramaic, Byzantine (Greek?), and Coptic music, as well as ancient Akkadian and Sumerian music. I'm not sure exactly how the latter was reconstructed, but it sounds interesting.

Robo-scribe

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Robot takes on ancient ritual of Torah writing in museum installation (FoxNews.com). I noted this story back in July of 2014, when the Berlin Museum exhibition (which ran into April) was opening. But the link has rotted, so now you can read about it here.

Qumran video

ISRAEL TODAY: VIDEO: Israel's Amazing Qumran Caves. An unnarrated flyover video by Amir Aloni. Cool.

AJS paper-proposal deadline looming

H-JUDAIC: CFP: AJS 47th Annual Conference: Proposal Submission Deadline May 6, 2015.

A reminder that Wednesday, May 6, 2015 is the deadline for submitting proposals to the Association for Jewish Studies 47th Annual Conference. The conference will be held December 13-15, 2015 at the Sheraton Boston, in Boston, Massachusetts. The AJS Conference is the largest annual gathering of Jewish Studies scholars worldwide, with more than 170 sessions on the latest research in Jewish Studies, an exhibit of major publishers, professional development and digital humanities workshops, cultural events, receptions, and more.

Follow the link for the relevant links. CFPs for specific sessions of the conference have already been noted here and here.

Honorary doctorate for the other Collins at Zurich

CONGRATULATIONS TO ADELE YARBRO COLLINS: Ehrenpromotion 2015 der Theologischen Fakultät: Prof. Dr. Adela Yarbro Collins.

Die Theologische Fakultät der Universität Zürich verleiht die Würde einer Doktorin ehrenhalber an Frau Prof. Dr. Adela Yarbro Collins für ihre methodisch innovativen Arbeiten zur frühchristlichen Apokalyptik und zur Johannesapokalypse sowie ihre wegweisenden Arbeiten zum Markusevangelium und zur frühchristlichen Christologie. Sie verbindet religionsgeschichtliche Weite, philologische Solidität und methodische Innovation mit einem steten Engagement zur Förderung internationaler Kooperation und der kommenden Generation von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern weit über ihren

Well deserved.

The announcement of John Collins's honorary doctorate at the same institution was noted here.

Again, via the Agade List.

Oxford Hebrew job

POSTDOC: Kennicott Research Fellow - Classical Hebrew. University of Oxford - Faculty of Oriental Studies.

Applications are invited for a fixed-term fellowship in Classical Hebrew or closely related disciplines, from an ambitious academic at an early stage of his or her career, the appointment to commence on 1 October 2015. This is a fixed-term junior research position that may also involve some teaching for the Hebrew and Jewish Studies courses of the Faculty of Oriental Studies. For 2 years initially, the appointment may be extended for a further year subject to satisfactory progress and the availability of funding.

Follow the link for further particulars and application information. The deadline for application is 22 May.

Via the Agade List.