Shavuot 2015

THE FESTIVAL OF SHAVUOT (Weeks, Pentecost) begins today at sundown. Best wishes to all those celebrating. Some biblical background is noted here.

Review of Secunda, The Iranian Talmud

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Review: The Iranian Talmud. By Geoffrey Herman at AJS Review.

Background here and links.

Early Islam: The Sectarian Milieu of Late Antiquity?

ENOCH SEMINAR CONFERENCE: Early Islam: The Sectarian Milieu of Late Antiquity? / Fourth Nangeroni Meeting (2015 Milan), conference. It meets on 15-19 June, just before the regular bi-annual meeting of the Enoch Seminar at the same venue. I shall be at the latter, presenting a main paper, but I am sorry to have to miss this Nageroni meeting.

Summer School on manuscripts, philology, and technology

DEADLINE LOOMING: manuSciences '15: Franco-German Summer School : Interdisciplinary approaches to manuscript studies combining philology, materials studies, computer science and digital humanities. Via the International Organization for Qumran Studies (IOQS) mailing list. In the the message, the following from the summer school organizer, Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra, is included:

Dear colleagues
Excuses for cross-posting. We call for applications to the manusciences '15 summer university organized by the Freie Universität Berlin and the Ecole pratique des hautes études on the beautiful island of Frauenchiemsee near Munich between September 6 and September 12, 2015. In presentations and practical exercises we will present the possibilities and limits in the application of CSI-style techniques from material sciences, imaging computational and digital humanities to manuscripts. MA students, PhD candidats, postdocs and colleagues from all countries dealing with any of the concerned disciplines or manuscript cultures may apply. We have numerous scholarships to cover the hotel and meal expenses.
Many further details can be found here: http://humanum.ephe.fr/en/manusciences-15
Deadline: May 26, 2015 (soon!).
Kind regards
Daniel

Corpus Avesticum conference

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Corpus Avesticum meeting: “Ḫorde Avesta.” A conference in Berlin which starts today, in which a group of specialists in a research network meet to discuss their work on producing a new, and much needed, edition of the Avesta.

Latest on Palmyra

PALMYRA WATCH: I can find no news about what has happened to the antiquities and ruins of Palmyra in the last day, since ISIS captured them. Probably no one knows. But here are a couple of relevant articles:

Ancient Palmyra Treasures at Risk From ISIS: Photos (Discovery);

After Palmyra, Islamic State said to control half of Syria (AFP/Times of Israel).

Background here and links.

More archaeological vandalism

Vandals Paint Palestinian Flags Over Israeli UNESCO World Heritage Site (David Daoud, The Algemeiner).

Inspectors from the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority filed a complaint on Wednesday with the Dimona police department over the vandalism at the ruins of the ancient city of Haluza, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Negev desert.

Haluza was one of four cities in the Negev on the Nabatean Incense Route.

Review of Satlow, How the Bible Became Holy

BOOK REVIEW: The authority of the written word (Rabbi James B. Rosenberg, The Jewish Voice).

Michael L. Satlow’s “How the Bible Became Holy” (Yale University Press, 2014) is an audacious book. Satlow, professor of Religious Studies and Judaic Studies at Brown, spells out his intentions in the introductory pages: “This book proposes a very different answer to the question of when and how the Bible gained authority. I will argue here that Jews and Christians gave to the texts that constitute our Bible only very limited and specific kinds of authority well into the third-century and beyond. The “peoples of the book” did not know their book very well.”

[...]

Earlier reviews etc. are noted here and links.

Maggie Anton profiled

Talmudic temptation (Linda Mothner, Jewish Journal).

From a glass-enclosed cabinet in her Westchester home office, historical novelist Maggie Anton removed a small clay pot. Indicating the Hebrew characters inscribed on the pot in the same Aramaic text as in the Talmud, she noted the rough outline of a demonic form inside the “incantation bowl.” She explained during an interview that during the fourth to sixth centuries, the same time that the Talmud was being created, the bowls, purchased in an antiquities store in Israel, were ubiquitous in Iraq — once known as Babylonia — the setting for Anton’s latest novel, “Enchantress.”

[...]

The Talmud also claimed a major presence in Anton’s earlier trilogy, “Rashi’s Daughters.” A former clinical chemist for Kaiser Permanente, Anton said that she never could have written “Enchantress” without first telling the story of the great scholar who lived in 11th-century France. The availability of historical documentation on Rashi helped greatly. Teasing out the basic information from just the Talmud about the characters in another book, “Rav Hisda’s Daughter,” was much trickier.

[...]

I have linked to numerous articles on Maggie Anton's novels about late-antique Judaism: start here and here and follow the links. And I have collected some posts on those ancient Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls here. This article is interesting because it tells about the unusual self-publishing route by which she started publishing her novels. If I knew that before, I had forgotten, and I'm pretty sure I've never highlighted it.

Many aspiring authors might have given up at this point. Not Anton. Hiring a literary shepherd, she and her husband, Dave Parkhurst, a patent attorney, became publishers themselves.

“I knew how to reach Jewish women, and I knew there was interest. I did a lot of cold calling of [synagogue] sisterhoods, Hadassahs and National Councils of Jewish Women chapters. Then I went all over the country and Canada and hit the Jewish talk circuit — sold books in the back of the room. They would tell their friends. There was buzz.” In 18 months, 26,000 books had sold.

Then the big publishers started a bidding war over her.

John Dee and the "Enochian" language

ENOCH WAS NOT JUST FOR THE SECOND TEMPLE ERA: Enochian: The Mysterious Lost Language of Angels (Bryan Hilliard, Ancient Origins).

In the year 1581, occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley, claimed to have received communications from angels, who provided them with the foundations of a language with which to communicate with ‘the other side’. This ‘angelic’ language contained its own alphabet, grammar and syntax, which they wrote down in journals. The new language was called "Enochian" and comes from John Dee's assertion that the Biblical Patriarch Enoch had been the last human to know the language.

[...]

The essays in Ancient Origins have been of mixed quality lately, but this one is a good summary of the story of John Dee, his "scryer" Edward Kelley, and their angelic revelations, which included the "Angelic" (later "Enochian") language; and also a good overview of the current state of the question in scholarship and among practicing magicians. Nice photos too. Dee's massive diary of his angelic séances has been useful in my own work on ancient revelatory praxis and experience (see my 2012 SBL paper here). And I have more on John Dee etc. here and links.

Palmyra falls

DISASTER: ISIS Fighters Seize Control of Syrian City of Palmyra, and Ancient Ruins (Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad, NYT).

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State militants swept into the historic desert city of Palmyra in central Syria on Wednesday, and by evening were in control of it, residents and the Syrian state news media said, a victory that gives them another strategically important prize five days after the group seized the Iraqi city of Ramadi.

Palmyra has extra resonance as home to some of the world’s most magnificent remnants of antiquity, as well as the grimmer modern landmark of Tadmur Prison, where Syrian dissidents have languished over the decades.

But for the fighters on the ground, the city of 50,000 people is significant because it sits among gas fields and astride a network of roads across the country’s central desert.

As they have swept across Syria and Iraq, Islamic State fighters have destroyed or damaged numerous ancient sites and sculptures, condemning them as idolatry in slickly produced recruitment films, even as they pillage and sell off more portable items to finance their activities. That has raised fears both locally and internationally that Palmyra, a United Nations world heritage site, could also be irrevocably damaged.

[...]

And, lest we forget:

At the same time, he lamented that more attention had been focused on the threat to the city’s ruins than to its residents. Islamic State fighters massacred captured soldiers and civilians in outlying villages last week, according to Mr. [Khaled] Homsi [a Palmyra resident and anti-government activist] and a government soldier whose comrades were killed. And Mr. Homsi said several civilians had been killed by government shelling in Palmyra, unable to get treatment at the hospital, which was being used solely for military casualties.

The AP/AFP has reports from locals indicating that as of this morning ISIS has not damaged the site.

More:

The cradle of civilization: What is Palmyra and why is it so significant? (Darren Mara, SBS);

To surrender Palmyra is to betray civilisation itself (Boris Johnson, Daily Telegraph/Time Live).

For some historical background on Palmyra, see here and links. And another post on recent events here.

Watermelon

YONA SABAR: Hebrew word of the week: avaTiyyiaH: אבטיח.

Aqueduct discovered in Jerusalem

EXCAVATION: Section of Ancient Jerusalem’s Lower Aqueduct Discovered (Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, Jewish Press).

A section of Jerusalem’s Lower Aqueduct, which conveyed water to the city more than 2,000 years ago, was exposed during the construction install a modern sewer system for Arabs in the villages of Umm Tuba and Sur Bahar, near HaHoma in southern Jerusalem.

The Israel Antiquities Authority conducted an archaeological excavation there following the discovery of the aqueduct.

[...]

Dig wrap-up

INTERVIEW: Homeland creator Gideon Raff talks Dig (Michael Idato, Sydney Morning Herald).

The series was created by Heroes writer Tim Kring and Homeland writer Gideon Raff, and while both may pour a sense of cinematic adventure into the framework, there is no doubt Raff's upbringing in Israel and his personal connection to the city play a big role in setting the series tone and texture.

"I wanted to tell a story about the city, but of course I am a fan of Indiana Jones," he says. "I grew up on those movies and I love archaeology, [the idea of the] archaeological thriller, but more than anything I think I wanted it to be timely. I wanted it to be relevant like my other shows.

"It was important, Raff says, that the series strike "a core in terms of the nowadays, the threats today and in that sense, Tim and I really wanted to make a show about fanaticism and faith. Everything I researched, everything unveiled in the conspiracy in Dig is real things that are happening right now, and in that sense it's a very relevant and timely thriller."

Well, sort of.

Background here and links. [Wrong link now corrected!]

Source criticism vindicated

REMNANT OF GIANTS: Illustrating The Benefits of Pentateuchal Literary Criticism: The David and Goliath Story. This is indeed a really striking case of where source critism not only works, but it can be established by a manuscript tradition that leaves out one of the sources.

I just found out that Remnant of Giants is back and I will have to catch up on it.

Review of del Olmo Lete, Incantations and Anti-Witchcraft Texts from Ugarit

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEWS:

Gregorio del Olmo Lete, Incantations and Anti-Witchcraft Texts from Ugarit. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER), 4. Boston; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. Pp. vii, 254, 23 p. of plates. ISBN 9781614516279. €99.95.

Reviewed by Bronson Brown-deVost, Brandeis University (bronson@brandeis.edu)

The remains of Ugaritic literature furnish a rich source for understanding the small but influential Mediterranean village of Ugarit in the late second millennium B.C.E. While one may think immediately of the colorful mythological narratives or even the cultic texts in this regard,1 del Olmo Lete tackles here the less well understood issue of magic at Ugarit.

A comprehensive study of anti-witchcraft literature from Ugarit, both in narrative settings and in stand alone rituals, forms the primary basis for del Olmo Lete’s approach to the topic. del Olmo Lete presents transliterations, translations, and discussions of nearly all anti-witchcraft incantations uncovered at Ugarit. This includes texts in the native Ugaritic language as well as Mesopotamian texts in the Akkadian and Sumerian languages (the Mesopotamian texts were prepared by Ignacio Márquez Rowe and receive less discussion than the Ugaritic ones).

[...]

Incidentally, in answer to a question in the review, del Olmo Lete did not use the Arslan Tash amulet inscriptions because he thinks (along with many but not all Northwest Semitic epigraphers) that they are forgeries.

Everett Fox profiled

BIBLE TRANSLATOR: Tinkering With the Word of God (Avi Steinberg, The New Yorker).

[Everett] Fox has dedicated his life to giving the Anglophone ear a hint of that Hebrew drama. Many translators have tried, in one way or another, to make the Bible do in English what it does in Hebrew, but few have given top priority to the sound and feel of the original language. Fox uses every poetic means at his disposal: phrase length, line break, puns. He has paid particular attention to the word repetitions that the Biblical narrator uses to develop the story’s themes. He scrupulously preserves ancient Hebrew’s doubled verbs, which themselves sometimes double up (“you will overtake, yes, overtake, and will rescue, yes, rescue”). Orality is key to understanding the story, Fox believes, because the Bible, like many ancient texts, was designed to be sung and performed aloud. For Fox, the standard continues to be musical performance, with its openness to interpretation.

His translations of the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History have been published so far.

Palmyra update

STILL IN PERIL: ISIS Attacks Druze Village, Aims for 'Victory Against the World.' Islamic State attacks Syria's Druze heartland before being forced out by pro-regime militia; clashes continue at ancient city of Palmyra. (Arutz Sheva).

Further north, fighting between IS jihadists and government forces continued outside Palmyra on Tuesday morning.

"There are clashes at the western entrance of Palmyra this morning, which lies on the road that leads to Homs city," provincial governor Talal Barazi told AFP.

On Sunday, regime forces pushed ISIS out of northern neighborhoods of Palmyra, which it had held for less than 24 hours.

Barazi said he visited Palmyra on Monday, "going through 60 percent of the city on foot," visiting the vegetable market and museum.

He said at least 40 rockets had struck Palmyra on Sunday, but that government forces maintained control over key points, including the Islamic citadel overlooking the city.

Background here and links.

Western Wall upgrade

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Israel’s 5-Year Upgrade Plan for Western Wall. Israel's new government has approved a five-year plan to upgrade and develop the area around the Western Wall (Hana Levi Julian, Jewish Press).

Israel plans to develop the area with upgraded infrastructure, improved archaeological activity and, further development of the Western Wall site, and underground tunnels that run along the length of the Wall.

Widows in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: For Jewish Widows, Like Modern Drug Offenders, Just How Much Matters. Why Talmudic law is precise, and how practical matters can test the moral foundations of the system.

The amount of attention that the Talmud devotes to the rights of widows in Tractate Ketubot is a direct reflection of their vulnerability in a patriarchal society. As a daughter, a Jewish woman is under the protection of her father; as a wife, she is under the protection of her husband; but as a widow, she is suddenly left to fend for herself. Some women might have felt this as a liberation, but it was also a position of economic and social peril. How is she to make sure that her husband’s heirs—who might not be her own children, but any of his relatives—will treat her fairly? What if they throw her out of her house? What if they refuse to give her money to live on?

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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.