Interview with a Karaite

THE KARAITES ARE ALIVE AND WELL: Chatting with the Karaites (Sue Fishkoff, JWeekly.com).

You don’t hear much about the Karaites. That despite the fact that the only Karaite synagogue in America is right here in the Bay Area, B’nai Israel in Daly City. So when I got a call last week asking if I’d like to sit down with Rabbi Moshe ben Yosef Firrouz, the chief rabbi of the world Karaite community, I said sure.

I’ve long been fascinated by the Karaites, a community of Jews who follow the Torah but eschew the rabbinic writings, most notably the Talmud. Once spread throughout Iraq and Syro-Palestine, they co-existed with rabbinic Judaism until the time of Sa’adia HaGaon, the 10th-century sage who excoriated them as apostates and demanded they be excluded from mainstream Jewry. And so they have been ever since, much to their chagrin.

[...]

This article has a good overview of how the Karaites differ from Rabbinic Judaism and where they stand socially and legally today in Israel.

You can find lots of background on the Karaites in past posts here, here, and links

More on those cave wall paintings

NEWSER: Archaeologists Find Rare Writing, Then It Disappears. INSCRIPTIONS ON PLASTER IN RITUAL BATH HAVE NOW BEEN SEALED (Arden Dier). This report has some details that I have not seen before. Also, some statements that have already been circulated require some comment.

"The wall paintings are so sensitive that their exposure to the air causes damage to them," the IAA says, per Ynetnews. Crews quickly removed and sealed the plaster so the graffiti, along with a few carvings, can be preserved. Archaeologists say the Aramaic inscriptions are particularly special as few such writings have been found, though the script is hardly legible now. They guess at a few words, including what translates to "served" and the name "Cohen." Still, the inscriptions back up the argument that Aramaic was commonly used at the time and perhaps even the language of Jesus. The plaster also holds drawings of a boat, palm trees and other plants, and what might be a menorah—portrayals of which were then considered taboo.

My comments:

1. This is the first time I have seen references to specific words that are possibly in the Aramaic inscriptions: "served" and the name (name? title?) "Cohen" (the Hebrew word that means "priest"). I don't know where Ms. Dier got this information or how reliable it is. It seems as though it may be a bit garbled.

2. We already knew that "Aramaic was commonly used at the time" and that Jesus spoke Aramaic. That doesn't need any backing up. The point is that it is very exciting to have new Aramaic inscriptions from this period.

3. The contention that the portrayal of a menorah was " considered taboo" in this period is an overstatement. I might go with (as per earlier reports) "exceptional." For some portrayals of menorahs in the Second Temple period, see here, here, here, and here. They do seem to be more common in the Byzantine period.

4. Given that the ink started fading as soon as the cave was opened, I hope someone had the presence of mind to whip out their iPhone and take photos immediately. This article links to an Haaretz video that shows some of the drawings and inscriptions.

Background here. Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

UPDATE (10 August): Joseph Lauer points me to this Haaretz article, which seems to be the source of Ms. Dier's information (see #1 above): Mysterious Ancient Mikveh With Aramaic Graffiti Found While Building a School in Jerusalem (Nir Hasson and Ruth Schuster) [Dead link now fixed. Sorry!].

Cohen woz 'ere?

Finding a decently-preserved concentration of inscriptions and symbols from the Second Temple period is rare, the IAA notes, while admitting in the same breath – see the pictures – that the writing is not legible any more.

Some of the inscriptions might indicate names. Or they might not. One word might be the name "Cohen," suggests Prof. Hagai Misgav of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Another word looks like it might be "avad" (as in "served" - e.g., served the Lord, not "worked").

"The symbols we see are familiar to us from coins, sarcophagi and graves, but a concentration like this is certainly unusual," Re'em said. "It is possible that writing on mikveh walls was common, but was not usually preserved."

At this point the archaeologists have no theory as to who wrote and carved the words and images, or if there was a message the artist wanted to convey.

While the symbols that can be discerned are common elements in the visual arts of the Second Temple period, says the IAA – it adds that the drawing that might possibly be construed as a menorah is exceptional because back then, it was taboo to portray this sacred object located in the Temple.

Harvard fellowship on "Jews and the Classical World"

THE APA BLOG:

Henry Starr Fellowship: Jews and the Classical World

The Center for Jewish Studies and the Department of Classics Harvard University invite applications for the 2016-2017 Harry Starr Fellowship in Judaica on the theme “Jews and the Classical World”. Applications are welcome from candidates across the disciplines treating topics related to the intellectual, cultural, social, and political interactions of Jews and non-Jews in the ancient Mediterranean. Projects may engage with any relevant aspect of the classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and late antique worlds as well as the intellectual history of our modern academic disciplines.

The Starr Fellowship covers travel expenses and a stipend for a group of scholars from around the world to gather at Harvard to engage in full-time research in a designated subject area in Judaica. Junior faculty are especially encouraged to apply, the Ph.D. degree is required and Fellows must be in residence. The stipend is $40,000 for the spring semester or $50,000 for the full year.

Follow the link for application information. The deadline is 1 December 2015.

Incantation bowls in the National Syrian Museum?

ARAMAIC WATCH: How to stop Daesh from eradicating history? Iraq gets a digital library to preserve artifacts (albabwa.com). This article tells the important story of a project to digitize books and documents in the Baghdad National Library, which is good news, but is outside the scope of PaleoJudaica. That story is also covered by The Independent and the AP (follow the links in the piece linked to above).

But what caught my eye in the albabwa.com article was the photograph, the caption of which reads "A book, one of the 700 Iraqi antiquities, in the care of Syria authorities is on display at the National Syrian Museum in Damascus on April 23, 2008. (AFP/File)." The photo does indeed show an Arabic book, but in the foreground there is also a partial view of two bowls. The one on the right is unquestionably an Aramaic incantation bowl. I can make out some of the letters, but no connected sense. I suspect the bowl on the left is another of the same, but I can't see enough to be certain. So that tells us that the National Syrian Museum in Damascus has one and probably more Iraqi Aramaic incantation bowls in its collection. That is hardly a surprise, but it's an interesting little tidbit.

Yod

YONA SABAR: Hebrew word of the week: Yod, yud.

Professorship in Archaeology of Israel at Harvard

H-JUDAIC:

JOB: Harvard University, Professor of the Archaeology of Israel

Discussion published by Sarah Imhoff on Wednesday, August 5, 2015 0 Replies

Harvard University, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Senior Professorship of the Archaeology of Israel

Harvard University - Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Senior Professorship of the Archaeology of Israel

The NELC Department at Harvard invites applications for a senior Professorship of the Archaeology of Israel. The research and teaching of the successful candidate will focus on the peoples and lands of ancient Israel and its environs, their archaeological remains, culture, and history. The successful candidate will have proven scholarly excellence in archaeological methods and technology, and teaching excellence in the archaeology of Israel and the Levant in the periods between the third millennium BCE and the Roman era. Offering undergraduate surveys as well as doctoral seminars, the successful candidate will actively participate in the ongoing revitalization of NELC, and collaborate with colleagues in other disciplines and departments such as Anthropology, Classical Archaeology, History of Art and Architecture, Religion, and the Harvard Divinity School. The successful candidate will work closely with the director and collections of the Harvard Semitic Museum. Candidates are strongly encouraged to apply by September 30, 2015; applications will be reviewed until the position is filled.

Candidates are required to have a doctorate. Familiarity with the Hebrew Bible in the original is desirable. Candidates should be at the rank of associate professor or full professor, or a comparable rank, at the time of application.

Follow the link for application information.

Is Aramaic doomed?

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: The end of Aramaic. Descended from the tongue spoken by Jesus, an ancient language faces extinction as ISIS advances in Iraq and Syria (Tali Folkins, United Church Observer).

Now, as the war in Syria drags on and the Islamic State’s occupation of much of northern Iraq marks the end of its first year, worries are mounting about another slow death: that of modern-day Aramaic, a tongue that’s the closest living relative to the language of Jesus.

Although Jesus was a Jew, the language he spoke wasn’t Hebrew. By the time of Christ, Hebrew was spoken only by Jewish priests and perhaps nobles, says Amir Harrak, a professor of Semitic languages at the University of Toronto. As the spoken language of ancient Israel, Hebrew had almost entirely given way to Aramaic. A relative of both Hebrew and Arabic, Aramaic had become the common language of much of the ancient Middle East by around 500 BC; its origins go back at least another 500 years.

There is some debate over how widely Hebrew was spoken in the Palestine of Jesus' day, on which see more here and links.

That Aramaic is still spoken today — probably by somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 people — sometimes surprises his students, Harrak says with a laugh. “I’m not exaggerating: you have important towns, essentially Christian, and people have spoken that dialect since the first millennium BC.”

At least, until recently. Sectarian strife that broke out after the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq spurred another wave of emigration, and the arrival of the Islamic State in the country’s north seems likely to mean the end of Iraq’s Aramaic-speaking community. Confronted with threats to convert to Islam, an estimated 200,000 Iraqi Christians living in the plain of Nineveh fled eastward to Kurdish-held territory after the Islamic State swept into the area last summer. From there, they have been moving on to more distant places in the Middle East and around the world, including Canada.

To Harrak, whose own background is Iraqi Christian, this diaspora does not bode well for their language.

“It’s the end of Aramaic, basically,” he says. The descendants of these refugees, he believes, will eventually assimilate to the language and culture of their host countries. “We know that the Germans in the U.S., the descendants of Germans are very much attached to the language, the culture, but by the third generation they are Americans. That’s the danger. And it will happen here. There’s no question about it.”

The situations is indeed very grim, but we should not give up hope yet. As a more recent article by Pieta Woolley in the UC Observer points out, there are at least Five languages that have returned from the brink, Hebrew and Sanskrit among them. For some time I have been following the story of the persecution of Aramaic-speaking Christians in the Middle East as well as recent efforts internationally to keep Aramaic going as a spoken language. See here, here, here and follow the many links.

I will let Professor Harrak have the last word:

“You know, we talk about genocide,” Harrak says. “But linguists, they have another term — ‘linguicide.’ So we have genocide, linguicide and also culturcide. Because three millennia of culture is going.”

Interview with Ken Penner

CENTER FOR ANCIENT CHRISTIAN STUDIES BLOG: BRIAN W. DAVIDSON INTERVIEWS KEN PENNER ON THE HEBREW OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS. This with reference to Penner's new book, The Verbal System of the Dead Sea Scrolls, noted here.

Roman mansion in Jerusalem

EXCAVATION: UNCC archaeology team in Jerusalem unearths 1st-century mansion (REID CREAGER, Charlotte Observer)

• UNC Charlotte team unearths lavish, lower-level rooms from the time of Jesus
  
• Remains of early Roman mansion ‘extraordinarily well preserved,’ says dig director Shimon Gibson
  
• This summer’s find: a complete vaulted room

Shimon Gibson marvels at a depth of irony that’s borderline mythological: While digging up Jerusalem’s past, he’s also digging up his own.

The UNC Charlotte adjunct professor of archaeology has been co-directing an annual dig on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion that returns him to the historic, mysterious region he first explored as an 8-year-old. The UNCC team is using maps Gibson made in 1975 – at age 17 – as it uncovers unprecedented findings that provide important clues about life in first-century Jerusalem.

UNCC student Brijesh Kishan calculates elevations at the site of the Mount Zion dig. UNCC student Brijesh Kishan calculates elevations at the site of the Mount Zion dig. Rachel Ward UNCC “This dig is the only academic archaeological expedition currently working in Jerusalem,” said Gibson, 57, an English native. “UNCC did some probes in the early 2000s, but it was in 2006 and 2007 that we really started excavating.”

This summer his crew has continued to investigate a finished bathroom it discovered in 2013, on the lower levels of what it believes to be an early Roman mansion. The team also found another complete vaulted room, again easing decades of concerns by archaeologists that remains from first-century Jerusalem were poorly preserved.

[...]

HT Joseph Lauer.

British Library's Hebrew manuscripts going online

DIGITIZATION: World's oldest Hebrew Bibles, prayer books to go online (AP/Israel HaYom).

Project is part of National Library of Israel's million-dollar global initiative, together with British Library in London, to digitize tens of thousands of rare Hebrew manuscripts currently dispersed between hundreds of collections worldwide.

HT for this story, Gerald Rosenberg. For posts on many other manuscript digitization projects in recent years, see here and here and follow the links.

A report of more Jewish-Temple denial from the PA

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: PA Minister: Israel Steals Muslim Artifacts on Temple Mount. In absurd reversal of fact, religious affairs minister claims Israel trying to 'Judaize' Mount in 'carcinogenic plan' via 'desecration' (Dalit Halevy, Arutz Sheva).

The Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Holy Sites and Religious Affairs Sheikh Yusuf Idis has claimed that the Israeli government is spreading "lies" about the history of Jerusalem, the 3,000-year-old capital of the Jewish people.

According to the sheikh, the fact that the Al-Aqsa Mosque was built on the ruins of the First and Second Temple on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, and that Jews are forbidden from praying at the site by the Jordanian Waqf, is all just propaganda.

Idis said Israel is trying to give Al-Aqsa Mosque a "Jewish Talmudic" nature via daily "break-ins" by "settlers" to the Temple Mount, thereby causing a "desecration" to the site he says is holy to Muslims. He said Jewish visits to the site are meant to make the public think Jews have a connection to the site.

[...]

I believe the sheikh's name is "Idris," not "Idis." Similar complaints about the "Judaization" of Jerusalem have been around for a while. The accusations reported in this article sound like a classic case of projection.

UPDATE AND CORRECTION (6 August): The proper form of the sheikh's name seems to be "Ida'is," as correctly given in today's Arutz Sheva article: PA Incites Religious War Over Temple Mount.

Ancient ritual bath with inscriptions in Jerusalem

DISCOVERY: Ancient Mikveh With Rare Inscriptions Found in Jerusalem. Second Temple period ritual bath found during construction of kindergarten, with highly 'significant' wall paintings of Temple artifact (Arutz Sheva).

But the most unusual aspect of the mikveh was its walls, which were treated with ancient plaster and bore numerous wall paintings and inscriptions, written in mud, soot and incising.

As was customary at the end of the Second Temple period when the Romans occupied the Jewish state of Israel, the writing was in Aramaic and written in cursive Hebrew script. The symbols drawn on the wall include a boat, palm trees and various plant species, and what looks to be a menorah.

"There is no doubt that this is a very significant discovery," said Royee Greenwald and Alexander Wiegmann, excavation directors on behalf of IAA. "Such a concentration of inscriptions and symbols from the Second Temple period at one archaeological site, and in such a state of preservation, is rare and unique and most intriguing."

The inscriptions remain largely a mystery at this point, with some apparently indicating names. The drawing that might be a menorah is exceptional because in Second Temple days, Jews largely abstained from portraying the sacred object which was located in the Holy Temple.

UPDATE: The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs has posted the full IAA press release: Mystery in Jerusalem: Rare ancient message.

The Talmud on female beauty

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Talmud’s Guide to Jewish Feminine Beauty. The ancient text takes up the problem of ‘new circumstances’ in maintaining vows, and in so doing stumbles on what makes women attractive.

In a recent Daf Yomi column, we saw that the rabbis had a physical ideal for Torah scholars: They were supposed to be frail, emaciated by study. A Torah scholar with a ruddy glow was an anomaly that attracted attention and even insults, as when someone called Rabbi Yehuda a “pig-breeder” because he looked too well-fed. (Yehuda rebutted the charge by explaining that his health secret was not big meals, but regular bowel movements.) In this week’s Daf Yomi reading, in chapter 9 of Tractate Nedarim, we learned that there was a corresponding physical ideal for Jewish women. “Rabbi Yishmael wept and said: The daughters of Israel are beautiful, but poverty makes them ugly,” a flattering statement that earned him a reputation as a defender of women. But what did it mean for Rabbi Yishmael to call a woman beautiful?

[...]

It sounds as though her cooking ability was noticed as well.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Bird responds to Kok

MICHAEL BIRD: Michael Kok’s Questions on Early High Christology Club (Euangelion Blog).

Background here and links.

Discoveries at Horvat Kur

EXCAVATION: Wofford professor, students participate in archaeological find in Israel (Jenny Arnold, GoUpstate.com).

The excavations at the synagogue, which dates to the Byzantine period, at Horvat Kur in Israel are part of the Kinneret Regional Project. The project is an international research consortium sponsored by the University of Bern, Switzerland; University of Helsinki, Finland; Leiden University, The Netherlands; and Wofford.

Wofford religion professor Byron McCane and students Mason Cantey, Will Moseley and Phifer Nicholson participated in the dig, along with Wofford graduate James Ballard, who is now a student at Yale Divinity School.

On July 21, the researchers uncovered a partially preserved, colorful mosaic floor, showing the upper part of a menorah, along with inscriptions of the names of a man, El’azar; his father, Yudan; and grandfather, Susu or possibly Ooso.

“It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t happen every day,” said McCane of the find. “This is the third time in my career that we’ve found writing of some kind. A little shiver runs up your spine to see writing start to come out of the dirt. The inscriptions are acknowledgement of a gift that was made to finance the mosaic. This is typical in the ancient world, honoring prominent citizens who were generous in their community.”

Past posts on the archaeological work at Horvat Kur are here, here, and here.

If ISIS takes the Sinai

LET'S HOPE IT DOESN'T COME TO THIS: ISIS Threat to Archaeological Sites in the Sinai: Would They Rip Up the Burning Bush? If ISIS gains the foothold it wants in the Sinai, unique sites from the Moses shrines of Mt. Sinai to the mosquito shelters of the south could be in danger (Marty Friedlander, Haaretz).

As Islamic State has spread in parts of Iraq and Syria, it has been destroying irreplaceable pre-Islamic artifacts going back thousands of years. Based on this track record, if ISIS gains a substantial foothold in the Sinai Peninsula,  unique sites in this remote desert that mark the last remains of great ancient civilizations could be in danger. ISIS might find them offensive, but like the ancient cities of Nineveh and Nimrud, which are finally lost forever - their destruction would be mourned by the rest of the world.

[...]

Not least among these is St. Catherine's Monastery:

Lying at the foot of Jebel Musa is the Monastery of St. Catherine. Considered the world’s oldest continuously operating Christian monastery, Santa Katarina, as it is known locally, is unique.

Unlike practically every other church in the Holy Land, the Persians did not sack and destroy it when they attacked the Byzantine Empire in 614. Consequently, it boasts the world’s oldest and richest collections of both manuscripts and icons. The former include the 4th century Syriac Sinaiticus (a translation into Aramaic of the four gospels) and an authorized copy of the original Achtiname of Muhammed, in which the prophet personally granted protection to the monks at St. Catherine’s. Over 1,000 priceless documents are housed in its library.

And almost as an afterthought, a remote corner of the monastery features the supposedly original (and still blossoming) Burning Bush, where Moses encountered God in their first one-on-one meeting.

More on the assault of ISIS on the past in the Middle East is here, here, and here, with many links. More on St. Catherine's Monastery is here, here, here, and links. The monastery has not had an easy time in the last couple of years.

Aramaic children's camp

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: Israeli Christian Children Connect to Aramean Roots (Israel Today).

The Israeli Christian Aramaic Summer Camp began last Thursday under the auspices of the Israeli Aramaic Christian Association (ICAA) in the Galilee town of Kfar Baram.

[...]

As noted in the press release, the camp will be held in and with a focus on Kfar Baram, which is of great symbolic importance to the Israeli Christian community.

Kfar Baram was originally a Jewish village dating back at least till the time of Queen Esther. Remains of a large ancient synagogue are clearly visible. At some point between the 7th and 13th centuries AD, Jews abandoned the village for unknown reasons. Several centuries later, Kfar Baram had become a fully Christian village.

[...]

More on the Maronite revival of Aramaic is here and here and links. Another Aramaic children's education project, Keys Grace Academy in Michigan, was recently noted here. Today there's another article on this school in the Detroit News: Chaldean charter first of its kind in nation (Kim Kozlowski).

Although the school will welcome all children in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, it is expected that most will be Chaldean. Upon graduation, the students are expected to be proficient in at least three languages: English, Aramaic and either Spanish or French. Each student will be provided two uniforms, shoes, computers, breakfast and lunch, and free transportation.

UPDATE: Dead link now fixed! Sorry about that.

Hurtado responds to Kok

LARRY HURTADO: “Early High Christology”: Taking up a Dialogue. This in response to a recent Bible and Interpretation essay posted by Michael Kok and noted here.

Review of the Indy Exhibition

A RAMBLING REVIEW: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Jews (Menachem Wecker, The Forward).

Museums don’t typically take public, unequivocal stands on the question of the literal truth of the bible. But a National Geographic announcement of its exhibit “ Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology ” (on display through Jan. 3, 2016) refers to both the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail as “famous, fictional relics.”

But theological seminary scholars are hardly the only experts to believe the ark existed. Baruch Halpern , a University of Georgia Jewish studies professor, has said that the ark seems to have been “ a real article ,” and in an interview, Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, says, “There was certainly an ark in Solomon’s Temple. What was in it is another question.

[...]

I agree that there probably was an Ark in the First Temple. It was probably taken as loot for the gold by the Babylonians when that Temple was destroyed in 586 BCE. That said, certainly a lot of fiction has been produced about it. And I do agree with the exhibition that the Holy Grail is a fictional relic. The review moves from the Zohar to the Ark prop from the movie, which is on display in the exhibition. And a number of scholars are interviewed. More on the exhibition is here. And there are many, many past posts on the Ark of the Covenant here and links.

Moss on Alexander the Great

ASSESSMENT: Alexander the Great: Good for the Jews? (Candida Moss, The Daily Beast). With reference to the Huqoq mosaic that may show a scene of the legendary meeting of Alexander with Jewish leaders. Excerpt:

This happy scene, apocryphal though it may be, obscures a much more complicated and oppressive legacy. Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire in 333 BCE may have ousted another occupying power, but life in Israel was relatively peaceful under the Persians. They enjoyed relative political autonomy and were encouraged to construct and develop their religious institutions.

The inauguration of the Hellenistic age brought Greek culture, language, art, architecture, theatre, athletics, education, religion, and politics to the region, and Alexander was and continues to be a beloved figure among many Jews. But he also brought increased foreign control and, later, more tyrannical administrations were able to capitalize on his particular brand of cultural colonialism.

Background here.

Shlomo Moussaieff z'l'

A HARSH ASSESSMENT: The Antiquities Thief Who Became One of Britain's Richest Men. Shlomo Moussaieff, who died in July at 92, lived a life that could have been lifted straight from the pages of 'One Thousand and One Nights.' (Ofer Aderet, Haaretz). Excerpt:

He acquired his fondness for antiquities and commerce as a boy, while stealing coins from the Sanhedrin Caves in Jerusalem. He sold them, he said, to famous archaeologists, professionals and amateurs, including Eleazar Sukenik (Yigael Yadin’s father) and Moshe Dayan. On one occasion, he was caught and sent to an institution for young offenders. It wasn’t his only tangle with the law. In the 1950s, he was arrested on suspicion of stealing coins and seals from the Hebrew University. In the 1990s, he was prosecuted by the Iraqi government for holding an engraving that was stolen from the ruins of Nineveh.

“They hated me, calling me an antiquities thief. But what do all the museums in the world contain? Artifacts they find themselves?” he told Channel 2 in an interview. “I told them, ‘Blessed is the Arab farmer who brings our history out of the ground.’ So they’re angry at me? Let them be angry.”

A couple of past PaleoJudaica posts in which he speaks for himself are here and here. And Robert Deutsch has posted a more positive assessment of his life on Facebook here.

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

Archaeology of late-Second-Temple-era Jerusalem

INDIRECTLY, YES: Excavations reveal destruction of Second Temple (Yuval Avivi, Al-Monitor). This article discusses a number of archaeological discoveries pertinent to the end of the Second Temple Period. Excerpt:

Avi Solomon, archaeologist for the Western Wall tunnels on the Temple Mount, told Al-Monitor that the sword “is archaeological evidence of descriptions of the final days of the battle over Jerusalem, right after it was put to the torch and the Upper City fell. Jewish fighters entered the fetid drainage tunnels, filled with the feces and sewage of Jerusalem, in an attempt to flee for their lives. Some of them took valuables, including gold coins and jewelry. Roman legionnaires chased after them. They lifted the stone manhole covers, slaughtered the fighters, and seized their valuables.”

According to [archaeologist Eli] Shukrun, “Nothing can be compared to finding that sword and finding other pottery shards in that drainage canal. You are experiencing history, touching history. The last of the rebels descend into the sewers, which reaches to the Kidron Valley [on the eastern side of Jerusalem's Old City] and the Pool of Siloam, so they could escape into the Judean Desert. What were they feeling? They had no food. They had no water. It was pitch dark. While our finds show that they had clay lamps, their use must have been minimal because of a shortage of oil. It was the month of Av [in the summer]. It was very hot. The situation was very harsh. And what do they hear right above them? The sounds of destruction and the footsteps of Roman soldiers marching along the street right above them. What do they smell? The smoke coming from the burning of the temple. It is a terrifying situation. The more you dig, the more you find, the better you understand what you just touched.”

The sword was just one of the finds discovered in the past few years during excavations at the foot of the Temple Mount ongoing since 2006. They are part of the Antiquities Authority’s efforts in the area. When Israel marked the Fast of the Ninth of Av on July 26, commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples, thousands upon thousands of the Jewish faithful made their way to the Western Wall and the sacred sites on the Temple Mount, which was destroyed a second time in A.D. 70. They visited sites that confirm a Jewish presence in Jerusalem at the time, as the city stood on the cusp of inevitable destruction.

More on the discovery of that sword is here. There have also been numerous reports of the discovery of ancient mikvaot (ritual baths) in Jerusalem over the years, for example, here and here.

TC 20 (2015)

TC: A JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL TEXTUAL CRITICISM: Articles and Reviews in the TC Journal 20 (2015) (Tommy Wasserman, ETC Blog).

Hayes, What's Divine about Divine Law?

NEW BOOK FROM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS:

What's Divine about Divine Law?
Early Perspectives
Christine Hayes

Hardcover | 2015 | $39.50 | £27.95 | ISBN: 9780691165196

In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. What’s Divine about Divine Law? untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition—Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis—struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy.

Christine Hayes shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. Hayes describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. She shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. Hayes then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West.

A stunning achievement in intellectual history, What’s Divine about Divine Law? sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture.

HT The Talmud Blog on Facebook. Follow the link for further details, ordering information, and to read the introduction and TOC.

Kahana, Sifre on Numbers vol. 4

ANOTHER NEW BOOK (IN HEBREW) FROM MAGNES PRESS:

Sifre on Numbers: An Annotated Edition

Volume 4

By Menahem Izhak Kahana

Publisher: The Hebrew University Magnes Press
Categories:
Jewish Studies
Publish date: July 2015
Language: Hebrew
Danacode: 45-131133
ISBN: 978-965-493-790-0
Cover: Hardcover
Pages: 296
Weight: 2100 gr.

Sifre is a Tannaitic midrash on the book of Numbers, and is rightfully considered to be one of the fundamental assets of our ancient literature. Its previous edition was published about hundred years ago by R. Hayyim Shaul Horovitz. Since then, additional manuscripts have been discovered of Sifre, its first commentators, and medieval collections and midrashim that cite it. This was accompanied by the significant development of the methodological conceptions of the study of the Rabbinic literature, and of the ways to publish critical editions of this literature. All these factors justify the publication of a new scientific edition of this midrash.

The text of the new edition, that is based on MS. Vatican 32, includes many versions that differ from the earlier version, and that occasionally shed new light on the exegeses and halakhot of the Sifre. It is accompanied by the scholarly apparatus that lists and explains all of the edition's changes from the version of MS. Vatican. The number of direct and indirect textual witnesses presented in the "Textual Variants" section of the new edition is twice, and at times even triple, the number of textual witnesses that were available to Horowitz. In the detailed commentary on the expositions in Sifre, I made considerable use of all the Sifre commentators who preceded me, and who made a decisive contribution to the literal explanation of the midrash's exegeses and the clarification of their meaning. Thanks, however, to the diverse textual witnesses available to me and the great progress made in recent generations in the study of the language and teachings of the Tannaim, I believe that I have succeeded in recreating the original version of many expositions, in giving them a new and straightforward explanation, and in advancing the research of their redaction.

The edition is intended, first and foremost, for the scholars, in Israel and throughout the world, who are engaged in the research of all aspects of the Rabbinic literature. Additionally, the new edition will likely aid the community of Torah scholars who teach and study in yeshivot, and the educated public at large.

The first half of the work, comprising the portions of Naso and Beha'alotekha, was published by Magnes Press in 2011.

MacDonald, Priestly Rule

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

MacDonald, Nathan
Priestly Rule
Polemic and Biblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44

Series: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 476

Aims and Scope

Whilst prophetic oracles in late prophetic books evidence tensions about the Jerusalem temple and its priesthood, MacDonald demonstrates that the relationships between prophetic oracles have been incorrectly appraised. Employing an interpretative method attentive to issues of redaction and inner-biblical interpretation, MacDonald show that Ezekiel 44 is a polemical response to Isaiah 56, and not the reverse as is typically assumed. This has significant consequences for the dating of Ezekiel 44 and for its relationship to other biblical texts, especially Pentateuchal texts from Leviticus and Numbers. Since Ezekiel 44 has been a crucial chapter in understanding the historical development of the priesthood, MacDonald's arguments affect our understanding of the origins of the distinction between Levites and priests, and the claims that a Zadokite priestly sept dominated the Second Temple hierarchy.

Penner, The Verbal System of the Dead Sea Scrolls

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Verbal System of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Qumran Hebrew Texts

Ken M. Penner, St. Francis Xavier University

In Verbs in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Tense, Aspect, or Mood? Ken M. Penner determines whether Qumran Hebrew finite verbs are primarily temporal, aspectual, or modal.

Standard grammars claim Hebrew was aspect-prominent in the Bible, and tense-prominent in the Mishnah. But the semantic value of the verb forms in the intervening period in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were written has remained controversial.

Penner answers the question of Qumran Hebrew verb form semantics using an empirical method: a database calculating the correlation between each form and each function, establishing that the ancient author’s selection of verb form is determined not by aspect, but by tense or modality. Penner then applies these findings to controversial interpretations of three Qumran texts.

Friesen, Reading Dionysus

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

COURTNEY J. P. FRIESEN
Reading Dionysus
Euripides' Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians

Courtney J. P. Friesen explores shifting boundaries of ancient religions by way of the reception of a popular tragedy, Euripides’ Bacchae . As a play staging political crises provoked by the arrival of the “foreign” god Dionysus and his ecstatic cult, audiences and readers found resonances with their own cultural moments. This dramatic deity became emblematic of exuberant and liberating spirituality and, at the same time, a symbol of imperial conquest. Thus, readings of the Bacchae frequently foreground conflicts between religious autonomy and political authority, and between ethnic diversity and social cohesion. This cross-disciplinary study traces appropriations and evocations of this drama ranging from the fifth century BCE through Byzantium not only among “pagans” but also Jews and Christians. Writers variously articulated their religious visions over against Dionysus, often while paradoxically adopting the god’s language and symbols. Consequently, imitation and emulation are at times indistinguishable from polemics and subversion.

Brody, Mishna and Tosefta Ketubbot

NEW BOOK (IN HEBREW) FROM MAGNES PRESS:

Mishna and Tosefta Ketubbot

Text, Exegesis and Redaction

By Robert Brody

Publisher: The Hebrew University Magnes Press
Categories:
Talmud, Jewish Studies
Publish date: July 2015
Language: Hebrew
Danacode: 45-131136
ISBN: 978-965-493-814-3
Cover: Paperback
Pages: 328
Weight: 700 gr.

Mishnah and Tosefta Ketubbot: Text, Exegesis and Redaction includes new editions of tractate Ketubbot in the Mishnah and Tosefta and offers a new model for presenting these interdependent texts. After an introduction which deals at length with some central topics in Mishnah and Tosefta research, especially with regard to textual criticism, the two editions are presented in parallel; each edition is accompanied by selected variants and explanatory notes.

Genz, Jesaja 53 als theologische Mitte der Apostelgeschichte

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

ROUVEN GENZ
Jesaja 53 als theologische Mitte der Apostelgeschichte
Studien zu ihrer Christologie und Ekklesiologie im Anschluss an Apg 8,26-40

[Isaiah 53 as the Theological Center of Acts. Studies on its Christology and Ecclesiology after Acts 8:26-40.]

Published in German.

Rouven Genz presents a new approach to the research of the Acts of the Apostles. He states that the book of Acts qualifies not as a primarily historically but rather theologically motivated corpus and its author is appreciated as an exegete of scripture. Genz's main emphasis is on the examination of the reception of texts from the book of Isaiah. The focal point is the story of Philip and the Ethiopian treasurer in Acts 8, which manifests exemplarily Luke's interest with recourse to Isaiah 53. Beyond that, the Isaianic tradition in general, as well as the concept of the Servant of God in particular, also prove to be the hermeneutical key for the Lucan christology and ecclesiology: Luke regards Jesus as the Servant of God in the Isaianic sense and his followers as servants of the Servant. Moreover, Luke acquires his soteriological premises from the Isaianic texts as well: He conceives of Jesus' death as an atoning death.

Buth and Notley (eds.), The Language Environment of First Century Judaea

NEW(ISH) BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Language Environment of First Century Judaea
Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels—Volume Two

Edited by Randall Buth and R. Steven Notley
The articles in this collection demonstrate that a change is taking place in New Testament studies. Throughout the twentieth century, New Testament scholarship primarily worked under the assumption that only two languages, Aramaic and Greek, were in common use in the land of Israel in the first century. The current contributors investigate various areas where increasing linguistic data and changing perspectives have moved Hebrew out of a restricted, marginal status within first-century language use and the impact on New Testament studies. Five articles relate to the general sociolinguistic situation in the land of Israel during the first century, while three articles present literary studies that interact with the language background. The final three contributions demonstrate the impact this new understanding has on the reading of Gospel texts.

Noted by Dr. Buth here, where you can read on of his articles in the volume. Related PaleoJudaica posts are here and links.

UPDATE: Incorrect link now fixed!

The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek

Franco Montanari, Genoa. English Edition edited by Madeleine Goh and Chad Schroeder, under the auspices of the Center for Hellenic Studies. Advisory Editors: Gregory Nagy, Harvard, and Leonard Muellner, Brandeis

The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek is the English translation of Franco Montanari’s Vocabolario della Lingua Greca. With an established reputation as the most important modern dictionary for Ancient Greek, it brings together 140,000 headwords taken from the literature, papyri, inscriptions and other sources of the archaic period up to the 6th Century CE, and occasionally beyond. The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek is an invaluable companion for the study of Classics and Ancient Greek, for beginning students and advanced scholars alike.

Translated and edited under the auspices of The Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek is based on the completely revised 3rd Italian edition published in 2013 by Loescher Editore, Torino.

As the rest of the blurb notes, the book is also available online.

Questions for the Early High Christology Club

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION: Critical Questions for the Early High Christology Club (Michael Kok). Although I am the proud owner of an EHCC coffee mug, I think I will leave to to members of the club who work more on early Christology than I do to reply to Dr. Kok's questions.

Some links with some of my thoughts about the historical Jesus are collected here. And an old (and later published in revised form) essay of mine on ancient divine mediator figures is here. At present I am very sympathetic to Pieter Craffert's proposal that the historical Jesus was a shamanistic practitioner (but not technically a "shaman," which was an intermediary role in hunting cultures). A relevant post is here and there is a highly relevant SBL session coming up in November if you are interested in the subject.

Review of Yohanna, The Gospel of Mark in the Syriac Harklen Version

SYRIAC WATCH: Book Review: The Gospel of Mark in the Syriac Harklean Version (2015) (Peter J. Gurry, ETC Blog)

Metatron playing in Rio

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Festival Multiplicidade Returns to Rio de Janeiro Starting July 30th. The technology, music, art and design event Festival Multiplicidade returns this week for its eleventh edition entitled, Multiplicidade 2025 (Chesney Hearst, Rio Times). Metatron's band, or one of them at any rate, was there.

Emphasizing the theme of the future of art, music and technology, Multiplicidade 2025 will include many programs geared toward a younger audience. Bands Metatron and Codeclub will perform during the opening night on July 30th, with both groups featuring members aged fifteen through twenty.

Maybe he stayed in South America for a gig after the International SBL meeting last week in Buenos Aires.

More on the Church of Loaves and Fishes arson arrests

THE SUSPECTS HAVE BEEN NAMED: Two Jewish extremists indicted for vandalizing ancient church on Sea of Galilee (Catholic World News).

Two young men, Yinon Reuveni and Yehud Asraf, have been indicted for the crime. The prosecutors said that Reuveni was the driving force behind the attack, motivated by his belief that Christians are idol worshippers.

Background here and links.

Another looting arrest in Israel

BUSTED: Antiquities theft thwarted near Beit Shemesh in late night helicopter chase. 63 coins, 2000 years old, recovered (HAYAH GOLDLIST-EICHLER, Jerusalem Post).

The theft of a trove of ancient coins was thwarted by a joint force of the Antiquities Authority and Yehuda Region Border Police late Tuesday evening in the Beit Shemesh area.

The team of thieves was discovered by Antiquities Authority inspectors observing the area on Tuesday evening, digging and using a metal detector at the archeological site next to Taoz. The inspectors alerted the police who brought in a helicopter to apprehend the suspects.

One was arrested while a second managed to flee the scene, though police know his identity.

[...]

Other looting arrests in Israel this year have been noted here (also involving coins and Beit Shemesh), here, and here.

Review of The Vatican Tapes

THAT SOUNDS LIKE AN UNDERSTATEMENT: 'The Vatican Tapes' review: The movie could be better (Reagan Gavin Rasquinha, The Economic Times). I note the movie not for any cinematic merit, but because of this:

Angela's strange behavior starts manifesting just before she gets into a car accident. It takes months for her to wake up from a coma. She does so, strangely enough, when Father Lozano (Pena, suitably somber) blesses her with holy water. But all is far from well. Angela can speak in ancient tongues (Aramaic included), summon ravens (considered a symbol of death) and cause people to temporarily lose their minds and fatally injure themselves.

My bold-font emphasis. More evidence, I guess, that demons speak Aramaic.

Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

Another early Qur'an fragment?

PRESS RELEASE: Koran manuscript from early period of Islam. Tübingen University fragment written 20-40 years after the death of the Prophet, analysis shows.

A Koran fragment from the University of Tübingen Library has been dated to the 7th century - the earliest phase of Islam - making it at least a century older than previously thought. Expert analysis of three samples of the manuscript parchment concluded that it was more than 95 percent likely to have originated in the period 649-675 AD - 20 to 40 years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. Such scientific dating of early Koran manuscripts is rare.

The Tübingen fragment was tested by the Coranica project, a collaboration between the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Paris and the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Academy of the Sciences and Humanities, sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and France’s Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). The project investigates the Koran in the context of its historical background using documents such as manuscripts and information derived from archaeological excavations.

The project carries out palaeographic analyses to determine the age of a text via its special characteristics. The carbon-14 analysis of the Tübingen fragment was carried out by the Ion Beam Physics Laboratory at ETH Zürich.

[...]

(HT the Corpus Hellenisticum page on Facebook.) Like the recently announced results of the radiocarbon dating of the Birmingham Qur'an fragments (Mingana 1572a), discussed at length here and links, this is potentially a very exciting discovery. But there does seem to be some concern about whether the paleographical and codicological features in the Birmingham manuscript line up well with the early C-14 date. The Progressive Scottish Muslims Blog quotes (but gives no source or link for) skeptical comments by Professor Qasim al-Samarrai of Leiden, an expert in this area. His view is that the Birmingham fragments "belong to the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd century Higra if not later" (i.e., close to two centuries after the death of Muhammud), based on the script and other features of the manuscript. He refers also to the fragments of Tübingen (evidently the ones in this press release) and of Berlin. (I found this link somewhere on Facebook too, but I forget where. Sorry.)

If it turns out that there is a consistent conflict between the radiocarbon dates and the dates suggested by the script and layout of these Qur'an manuscripts, then there is more work to do.

Interesting times. Watch this space.

Report on the Fifth Enoch Seminar Nangeroni Meeting

CONFERENCE: ON JEWISH PAIDEIA IN NAPLES (Elisa Uusimäki, CSTT Blog).

Scholars from Europe, North America, and Australia gathered to Naples on 30 June – 4 July 2015 to participate in the Fifth Enoch Seminar Nangeroni Meeting ”Second Temple Jewish Paideia in its Ancient and Hellenistic Contexts”. The organisers of the conference – Jason Zurawski, Gabriele Boccaccini, and Luca Arcari – had compiled a fascinating programme of academic papers and field trips.

[...]

The website for this Nageroni meeting, which took place 30 June through 4 July, is at: Second Temple Jewish Paideia in its Ancient Near Eastern and Hellenistic Contexts / Fifth Nangeroni Meeting (2015 Naples), conference.

More on the Talmud and consent

POLITICS, SEX, AND THE TALMUD: What Michael Cohen Doesn't Understand About Rape — Or the Talmud (Melanie Landau, The Forward). Now let us be clear: PaleoJudaica does not regard American Presidential candidates or their lawyers to be part of its remit and it has no interest in commenting on them. Nevertheless, although Mr. Cohen did not himself mention the Talmud, this article includes another discussion of the issue of sexual consent in the Talmud, and this adds to the earlier discussion of the subject a while ago (here and links; note also here) raised by Dr. Ruth's comments. Eruvin 100b was already brought into that discussion but, as far as I can tell, the following was not:

However another Talmudic passage (Tractate Niddah 12a) raises serious questions at to whether the rabbis actually require married women to consent to sexual intercourse:

“The rabbis teach: Donkey drivers and workers and those who come from a mourning house and from a house of celebration - their women have a presumption of ritual purity. And they can come and be with them whether they are awake or asleep. What does this refer to? If he left them in a state of ritual purity, but if he left them in a state of ritual impurity then she is ritually impure until she says ‘I am ritually pure’.”

In this source we see that women’s ostensible personal consent is superseded by the category of her ritual purity and impurity. If he knows that she was ritually impure when he left then a husband assumes his wife is also in this state when he arrives home and that he can have sexual intercourse with her even while she is sleeping. She does not need to consent but she does need to have been ritually pure, at least when he left her. Later Talmudic commentators reconcile this source that seems to sanction sexual relations without consent with previous statements requiring of consent by developing the concept of “semi-sleeping” which still enables consent while not fully awake.

I am not a specialist in Talmud and will not try to offer an expert opinion on what the passage might mean, but I note it here as part of the discussion.

Iudaea recepta coin

NUMISMATICS: 2,000-Year-Old Coin Sheds Light on Important Role of Judea on Roman Psych (Raphael Poch, Breaking Israel News).

A rare coin minted almost 2,000 years ago during the conquest of Jerusalem was recently found at an auction in Zurich, NRG reported. The find has helped shed light upon the Roman attitude at the time over the conquest, resulting in a large commemoration of the Roman victory over the Judean rebels.

The coin depicts a Jewess standing and peering across a palm tree and bears the inscription “IUDAEA RECEPTA,” or “Judea is re-captured.” Coins bearing this inscription were used to publicize the news of a captured territory that had been part of the Roman Empire once before.

The newly discovered coin is unlike other numerous coins minted by the Romans after the conquest of Jerusalem and the Judean province between 67-73 CE. Those coins bear the inscription “IUDAEA CAPTA” and portray a woman sitting on the floor under a palm tree or a legionnaire resting on a spear while a Jewish slave is captive at his feet.

The slight changes make all the difference. Unlike the “CAPTA” coins, which were minted to proclaim Roman victory over a new province that was being absorbed into the empire, the “RECAPTA” [read "RECEPTA" - JRD] coin, marks a Roman conquest over a rebellion, rather than a war.

[...]

UPDATE: The following article, available at Academia.edu, seems to be the editio princeps for the coin: Gambash, G., Gitler, H., and Cotton, H. M. (2013), ‘Iudaea Recepta,’ Israel Numismatic Research 8: 89-104. Another article, in Hebrew, from the same source is: Gambash, G., Gitler, H., and Cotton, H. M. (2014), 'Iudaea Recepta,' New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem 8: 37-49 (Heb.). A third article, in German, has been published by Marco Vitale: "IUDAEA RECEPTA — EINE NEUE LEGENDE AUF GOLDMÜNZEN VESPASIANS, Ancient Society 44, 243-255. This is available at the Peeters website behind a subscription wall, but you can read the English abstract for free.

Hekhal

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

It is amazing how a word that signifies “holy of holies of the temple or tabernacle” is actually a loan word from a “pagan” language: the Sumerian word akkadian, which became e-kal or “big house, palace” (Isaiah 29:7; Daniel 1:4; 4:1).*

[...]

And let's not forget the Hekhalot literature, the mystical literature of the celestial "palaces."

Review of Stratton et al. (eds.), Daughters of Hecate

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Kimberly B. Stratton, Dayna S. Kalleres (ed.), Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xv, 533. ISBN 9780195342710. $39.95.

Reviewed by Maxwell Teitel Paule, Earlham College (paulema@earlham.edu)

Preview

An edited collection of fifteen articles, Daughters of Hecate: Women in Magic in the Ancient World follows in the footsteps of Brian Levack’s (1992) Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology series, Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki’s two volumes, Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (1995) and Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World (2002), and Gordon and Simón’s Magical Practice in the Latin West (2010). This particular volume – which is not a conference proceedings – focuses on women and magic and helps narrow the scope of a potentially broad field by purposefully avoiding treatments of the by-now familiar characters of Apuleius, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Chresimus, Zatchlas, and the like, in favor of exploring the roles of lesser-known, often anonymous women. (Circe and Medea, for example, are discussed at length in only one article [p. 42-52].) The result is a thorough collection that offers diverse perspectives on the roles of women and magic supported by evidence from the written and material records of numerous cultures.

[...]

I noted the publication of the book here.

Review of Seland, Reading Philo

BOOK REVIEW: (Ken Schenck, Common Denominator blog). A review in eight parts of Torrey Seland's Reading Philo: A Handbook to Philo of Alexandria. There's more on the book here and links.

Schmidt (ed.), Contextualizing Israel's Sacred Writings

NEW BOOK FROM THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Contextualizing Israel's Sacred Writings: Ancient Literacy, Orality, and Literary Production
Brian B. Schmidt (Editor)

ISBN 1628371188
Status Forthcoming
Price: $46.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date July, 2015
Pages 384

An essential resource exploring orality and literacy in the pre-Hellenistic southern Levant and the Hebrew Bible

Situated historically between the invention of the alphabet, on the one hand, and the creation of ancient Israel's sacred writings, on the other, is the emergence of literary production in the ancient Levant. In this timely collection of essays by an international cadre of scholars, the dialectic between the oral and the written, the intersection of orality with literacy, and the advent of literary composition are each explored as a prelude to the emergence of biblical writing in ancient Israel. Contributors also examine a range of relevant topics including scripturalization, the compositional dimensions of orality and textuality as they engage biblical poetry, prophecy, and narrative along with their antecedents, and the ultimate autonomy of the written in early Israel. The contributors are James M. Bos, David M. Carr, André Lemaire, Robert D. Miller II, Nadav Na'aman, Raymond F. Person Jr., Frank H. Polak, Christopher A. Rollston, Seth L. Sanders, Joachim Schaper, Brian B. Schmidt, William M. Schniedewind, Elsie Stern, and Jessica Whisenant.

Follow the link for further details and ordering information.

Are sources cited in the Hebrew Bible fabricated?

IT DID HAPPEN SOMETIMES: Ancient Historians Fabricating Sources (Neil Godfrey, Vridar Blog). Just ran across this interesting discussion of fabricated sources in works by ancient writers. The post opens:

Throughout the books of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian’s “Old Testament”) one finds assurances for readers that the stories (or histories) being told are detailed in other written sources. Readers are further assured in a number of cases in the books of Kings and Chronicles that even more details can be found in outside sources.

That sounds authoritative. Surely only a “hyper-sceptical” cynic would insist that such source citations were fabricated and the narratives have no credible foundation whatsoever.

But there is a more prudent alternative to having to choose between either/or. We have no independent evidence for the existence of these cited sources but of course that does not mean they never existed.

Are we going a step too far, however, to wonder if they never existed at all and that our biblical authors really did fabricate at least some of them? How could we possibly know?

No, of course there is no objection to inquiring whether some or all of the lost books cited in the Hebrew Bible are fabrications that never existed. Some people think that to be the case. But this post offers only one argument in favor of that conclusion: the fact that we can verify that some ancient authors fabricated sources that they cited. So the fact that an ancient author cites a source is not proof that the source existed. The discussion in the blog post of some of these fabrications is interesting and I commend it to you.

That said, there are also many, many examples of ancient authors citing works that we know existed, because we still have them. So each case has to be evaluated on its own merits. And there are a number of positive arguments in favor of at least some of those sources cited in the Hebrew Bible being genuine.

• In general the chronicles cited in 1-2 Kings seemed to have had the same format and interests as ancient Mesopotamian chronicles and likewise the same interests as ancient Northwest Semitic inscriptions that may have been derived from lost chronicles.

• The poetic texts cited in the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History have early features of grammar and vocabulary which are consistent with their being considerably older than the work that cites them. Moreover, the biblical authors sometimes misunderstood these sources, which strongly suggests that these sources had an independent and earlier existence. (We know they misunderstood them because, thanks to archaeology and philology, our understanding of the earlier forms of the language is actually better than the understanding of the biblical authors.)

• Once in awhile the cited source has details that can be confirmed archaeologically.

I do not think that every source cited in the Hebrew Bible was genuine. For example, I doubt very much that the author of the book of Esther actually had access to the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Media and Persia. Such chronicles doubtless did exist, but they are cited there as a device to advance the story. At the other extreme, I think it is difficult to regard the lament poem in 2 Samuel 1 as anything but a genuinely ancient text, one that may well have been composed by David. I also think that the case for the use by the Deuteronomist of a real Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and Chronicles of the Kings of Judah is pretty good.

This has been one of my areas of interest for a long time. Past posts on the subject are here and here. And for many other posts on ancient lost books, see here and here and links.

Outside of the blog, see my article "Quotations from Lost Books in the Hebrew Bible" in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 1 (ed. Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov; Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 673-84. This article cites the relevant scholarly literature and gives the positive arguments for many of the sources cited in the Hebrew Bible being genuine. Anyone who wishes to show otherwise needs to address these arguments.

Volume 2, now in progress, will also include a chapter on lost Old Testament pseudepigrapha known only by title.

Ashkelon 2015

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Wrapping Up Ashkelon’s 2015 Season (Tracy Hoffman).

The 2015 Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon field season is officially in the books. After six weeks of excavation, countless discoveries and more than a few surprises, the volunteers have returned home, and the grids stand empty. The once-bustling pottery compound echoes with bird calls and the sound of waves crashing on the beach. It’s hard to believe that only a week ago the field season was still in full swing. And what a season it was! From identifying the earliest human activity on site and learning more about the city that succumbed to Nebuchadnezzar in 604 B.C., to searching for the urban core of the Roman city, this summer was one to remember.

[...]

Another recent post on Ashkelon is here, with links. I worked on the Ashkelon dig in 1987-88 and I am sad to hear that next year will be the last season of excavation there.

Will carbon emissions interfere with radiocarbon dating?

OMINOUS: Fossil fuel emissions are making carbon dating more difficult (Sarah Kaplan, WaPo).

Carbon dating had never been, and likely never again will be, quite so glamorous — or so controversial [as when dating the Shroud of Turin]. And, thanks to atmospheric changes caused by the burning of fossil fuels, it could become even more complicated.

That’s according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published Monday. Physicist Heather D. Graven of Imperial College London found that carbon emissions from fossil fuels are artificially raising the carbon age of the atmosphere, making objects today seem older to a carbon dater. By 2050, new clothes could have the same radiocarbon date as something that’s ten centuries old.

You can read the new study here (but probably it's behind a subscription wall - I have an institutional subscription). The abstract is here.

If correct, this conclusion isn't very good news, but let's keep in mind that it is based on simulations, since there really isn't any way to conduct controlled, repeatable experiments for this type of question. Such simulations are far from infallible, so I think some degree of skepticism is warranted. We'll see.

Radiocarbon dating is an important, if sometimes less than straightforward, tool for historians. Some relevant posts are here, here, here (but see also here and links), and here (but follow the link at the bottom for follow-up posts).

Perqs for Torah study in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Do Torah Scholars Have the Right Not To Be Drafted by the Government? In rabbinic Judaism, learning replaces noble birth as a source of power and status—including the power to avoid state responsibility.

One of the most contentious issues in Israeli politics is the exemption of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from army service. The exemption dates back to the beginning of the state, when only a few hundred men were affected; today, as many as 50,000 choose to study Torah rather than serve in the IDF. A law was passed to limit this practice in 2014, but it was rolled back earlier this year as part of a deal between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox parties in the Knesset. To secular Israelis, the exemption is patently unfair, as well as an economic burden on the state. To the haredim themselves, on the other hand, the idea of tearing students away from Torah study represents on attack on their core values and on Judaism itself.

One of the compelling things about reading Daf Yomi is that, in the middle of seemingly arcane debates about, say, planting onions or grafting vines, you can suddenly come across a passage that directly addresses today’s headlines. That is what happened this week with the question of army exemptions; and it turns out that, unsurprisingly perhaps, the haredim have clear Talmudic support for their position. ...

Incidentally, the stories about R. Akiva and his wife noted earlier today also illustrate the special status of Torah study in the Talmud. Whether this high status was a social reality or a social aspiration in the time of the Talmud is an interesting question.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Temple denial from an MK

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Arab parliament member denies Jewish claim to Temple Mount, sparking Israeli outrage (Michele Chabin, Religion News Service).

JERUSALEM (RNS) An Arab-Israeli parliament member drew harsh criticism from Jewish Israelis on Monday (July 27) when he claimed that Jews have no religious ties to the Temple Mount, considered the holiest site in Judaism.

[...]

The remarks by Masud Ganaim of the Joint (Arab) List political party came a day after clashes between masked Muslim rioters and Israeli police marred the holy Jewish fast day of Tisha B’Av — a day when tens of thousands of Jewish worshippers pray at the Western Wall, which lies directly below the Temple Mount.

[...]

Ganaim told Israel Radio that “historically, religiously, it is a Muslim site, period. The State of Israel knows that Jews and Israel have no legitimacy to the site, except for their legitimacy as an occupier — a legitimacy (won) by force,” he said.

[...]

Sigh.

Another recently reported incident of Jewish-Temple denial is noted here.

Rabbi Akiva's wife

FOR TU B'AV: Loving A Potato, Loving A Woman (Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Jewish Week). Rabbi Steinsaltz illustrates the difference with the touching Talmudic story of Rabbi Akiva and his wife. More on her story here and (with textual references) here.

Editor’s note: Tu B’Av (literally, the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Av) is marked this weekend, a day that in ancient times was celebrated through matchmaking for unmarried women. It has been revived in modern Israel as a kind of Valentine’s Day, celebrating love.

As noted last year in this post, the ancient holiday of Tu B'Av (this year Sunset, July 30 - Nightfall, July 31) seems to be making a comeback.

The Prime Minister and the Dead Sea Scroll

A VISIT TO THE HEAD OF STATE: PM reads from ancient Bible scroll in honor of Tisha B'Av (Shlomo Cesana and Israel Hayom Staff).

Found in the Qumran Caves beside the Dead Sea, the 2,000-year-old scroll is the earliest known example of the Book of Lamentations • PM Benjamin Netanyahu: It is significant that this scroll has been brought to united capital of Jerusalem on Tisha B'Av.

I can see from the photographs that this was the same scroll as the one mentioned in this story.

Fisher (ed.), Arabs and Empires before Islam

NEW BOOK FROM OUP:

Arabs and Empires before Islam
Edited by Greg Fisher
608 pages | 89 black and white illustrations and 16 colour plates | 234x156mm
978-0-19-965452-9 | Hardback | July 2015 (estimated)
Also available as: eBook
Price: £120.00

• The only volume to provide a rich and detailed anthology of sources for the history of Arabs in the Near East and Middle East in the pre-Islamic period
  
• Features international contributors drawn from a broad range of academic disciplines, including archaeology, classics, ancient history, linguistics, philology, epigraphy, and art history
  
• Provides up-to-date, comprehensive coverage of over 250 individual translated sources, such as ancient texts, inscriptions, and discussions of archaeological and artistic material

Arabs and Empires before Islam collates nearly 250 translated extracts from an extensive array of ancient sources which, from a variety of different perspectives, illuminate the history of the Arabs before the emergence of Islam. Drawn from a broad period between the eighth century BC and the Middle Ages, the sources include texts written in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Persian, and Arabic, inscriptions in a variety of languages and alphabets, and discussions of archaeological sites from across the Near East. More than 20 international experts from the fields of archaeology, classics and ancient history, linguistics and philology, epigraphy, and art history, provide detailed commentary and analysis on this diverse selection of material.

Richly-illustrated with 16 colour plates, 15 maps, and over 70 in-text images, the volume provides a comprehensive, wide-ranging, and up-to-date examination of what ancient sources had to say about the politics, culture, and religion of the Arabs in the pre-Islamic period. It offers a full consideration of the traces which the Arabs have left in the epigraphic, literary, and archaeological records, and sheds light on their relationship with their often more-powerful neighbours: the states and empires of the ancient Near East. Arabs and Empires before Islam gathers together a host of material never before collected into a single volume — some of which appears in English translation for the very first time — and provides a single point of reference for a vibrant and dynamic area of research.

Readership: Scholars and students interested in the history of the Near East and Middle East before the emergence of Islam, including the politics, culture, and religion of the period, from archaeological, epigraphic, linguistic, philological, and art historical perspectives.

Timely, given recent developments noted, e.g., here.

ASOR Glueck Collection

AWOL: ASOR Archives: Nelson Glueck Collection Index. The link to Glueck Collection itself is here.

Alexander the Great in a Jewish mosaic?

HUQOQ AGAIN: Mosaic of Alexander the Great meeting a Jewish priest is the first ever non-biblical scene to be discovered inside a synagogue

• Artwork was uncovered in a fifth-century synagogue in Huqoq, Israel
  May depict Alexander the Great, based on the presence of elephants
  Scene is the first non-biblical story to be found in an ancient synagogue
  Depictions of Biblical hero Samson are also part of the decorative floor

(SARAH GRIFFITHS, Daily Mail)

Although I have mentioned this mosaic before, I don't think I have highlighted the details of this particular interpretation of it:

The largest top strip contains the scene showing a meeting between two men, who perhaps represent the legendary warrior and a Jewish high priest.

In the scene, a bearded soldier wearing battle dress and a purple cloak leads a bull by the horns, followed by other soldiers and elephants with shields tied to their sides.

He is meeting with a grey-haired, bearded elderly man wearing a ceremonial white tunic and mantle, accompanied by young men with sheathed swords, also in ceremonial clothes.

It's thought the warrior in the rare non-Biblical scene is Alexander the Great becaise of a procession of elephants (pictured). But Professor Magness said the identification of the figures in this mosaic is unclear because there are no stories in the Hebrew Bible involving elephants

Professor Magness said the identification of the figures in this mosaic is unclear because there are no stories in the Hebrew Bible involving elephants.

‘Battle elephants were associated with Greek armies beginning with Alexander the Great, so this might be a depiction of a Jewish legend about the meeting between Alexander and the Jewish high priest,’ she said.

‘Different versions of this story appear in the writings of Flavius Josephus and in rabbinic literature.’

HT Sarah Veale at Invocatio.

Josephus indeed tells a story about Alexander the Great meeting the Jewish High Priest, whom he had seen beforehand in a dream. In this story, the High Priest showed Alexander the biblical book of Daniel and Alexander, believing (correctly) that some of the oracles in the book were about him, was very pleased. It's a nice story (which you can read here along with some Livius commentary), but it's the sort of thing that someone would have come up with whether it happened or not, and there are historical problems. Not least of these, of course, is that the book of Daniel had not yet been written in Alexander's time.

Naturally, the historicity or not of the story has no bearing on whether it is depicted on this late-antique mosaic.

I don't know anything about the rabbinic versions of the story, so I won't try to comment on them here.

Background on Huqoq and its mosaics is here and many links.

UPDATE: Thanks to the readers who sent me the Talmudic reference b. Yoma 69a, which tells the story of Alexander's meeting with the High Priest Simon the Just. You can read a translation of the passage in a book edited by Lawrence Schiffman here. The passage by Josephus (Antiquities 11.321-47) is translated immediately before it.

Strange on Shikhin

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Shikhin Excavations with James R. Strange (Brian Leport).

The excavation at Shikhin is directed by Prof. James R. Strange of Samford University. In addition to Prof. Strange, Drs. Mordecai Aviam (the Associate Director), David Fiensy, Dennis E. Groh, and Prof. Strange’s father, the legendary James F. Strange, provided valuable oversight and insight into the work. Each of these individuals were informative, telling us anything we wanted to know about Shikhin, its significance, and how this site relates to nearby Sepphoris, the site that James F. Strange supervised for many years. When the editors of Ancient Jew Review asked me if I’d be willing to give a report on a couple of the sites I visited, Shikhin was one of the first to come to mind. I contacted Prof. Strange asking him if he’d be willing to answer some interview questions and he was happy to oblige. ...

Past PaleoJudaica posts on Shikhin are here and here.

More on the Smithsonian's Palmyra exhibition

PALMYRA WATCH: Palmyra: Ruins that inspired the architecture of power (Jane O'Brien, BBC News, Washington).

What do the ruins of an ancient Roman city in Syria and some of the most iconic buildings in Washington and London have to do with each other? A new exhibit aims to connect US audiences with antiquities under fire in Syria's civil war.

The Palmyra exhibition at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery was noted last month here. Additional background on Palmyra, its ancient history, and its current fate is here and links.

Panaino, Sidera Viva

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Ancient Iranian and Zoroastrian Astral Mythology, Astronomy and Astrology. Notice of a new book: Panaino, Antonio. 2014. Sidera Viva. Studi Iranici di Storia della Mitologia Astrale, dell’Astronomia e dell’Astrologia Antica. (Ed.) Andrea Gariboldi, Paolo Ognibene & Velizar Sadovski. . 2 vols. Milano: Mimesis.

Pluto and the Mandaeans

MANDAEAN (MANDEAN) WATCH: How 'Mordor' and 'Cthulhu' found their way onto Pluto and its moons (Andrew Freeman, Mashable). NASA has been getting some help from the public to name newly discovered features on Pluto and Charon. The rules:

According to official rules of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) — the governing body that assigns official scientific monikers to planets and other solar system bodies — land features on Charon will be named after "destinations and milestones of fictional space and other exploration," among other things.

FFeatures on Pluto itself, however, will earn monikers from the underworld, picked from among the world’s mythologies, including gods, goddesses and dwarfs associated with the underworld.

Tolkien and Lovecraft have been drawn on, but so has Mandaean mythology:

In addition, another land feature is known as Krun, named after an overlord of the Underworld in the Mandaean faith. According to the Our Pluto website, which was the venue for public voting on Pluto names, the Mandaeans are "the last surviving Gnostic group from late antiquity."

Some past posts on Mandaean and the Mandaeans are here, here, and here, and links.

UPDATE (28 July): James McGrath, expert in all things Mandaean, has additional information here.

The Lewis-Gibson Collection

CAMBRIDGE DIGITAL LIBRARY: Lewis-Gibson. 1,700 medieval fragments from the Cairo Geniza, now part of the collection jointly owned by the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford.

HT the Talmud Blog on Facebook.

There are endless past PaleoJudaica posts on the Cairo Geniza: see here, here, here, and link. And there is more on the Lewis-Gibson sisters (Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson) here and links.

More on McKendrick et al. (eds.), Codex Sinaiticus

MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS BLOG: Codex Sinaiticus: New Perspectives on the Ancient Biblical Manuscript. The book was also noted here.

Coins of Cyprus

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Ancient Coins of Cyprus (Mike Markowitz, CoinWeek). Cyprus had a significant Phoenician presence and this survey includes some interesting Phoenician coins with images of Astarte and Melqart.