The watermelon and ancient Judaism

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: The 5,000-Year Secret History of the Watermelon. Ancient Hebrew texts and Egyptian tomb paintings reveal the origins of our favorite summertime fruit. (Mark Strauss).

Much of this epic history has been lost to antiquity. But Harry Paris, a horticulturalist at the Agricultural Research Organization in Israel, has spent years assembling clues—including ancient Hebrew texts, artifacts in Egyptian tombs, and medieval illustrations—that have enabled him to chronicle the watermelon’s astonishing 5,000-year transformation.

There is lots of information about the early cultivation of the watermelon, including more from late-antique Israel, so read it all, but the section on Hebrew texts is as follows. It would have been nice to have chapter and verse references, but at least some specific texts are mentioned.

Paris confirmed that the ancient Hebrew name for watermelons was avattihim. He found a trove of clues in three codices of Jewish Law that were compiled millennia ago in Israel: the Mishnah, Tosefta, and the Jerusalem Talmud. “The rabbis back then didn't sit in the Yeshiva all day,” says Paris “They were out with the people. They knew agriculture.”

The texts on tithing—the mandated practice of putting aside a portion of crops for priests and the poor—were especially informative. For instance, farmers were instructed not to stack avatttihim, but lay them out individually. That’s a key indicator that avattihim were watermelons, since the rinds were notoriously fragile.

The most exciting reveal in the Hebrew writings was a tract, written around 200 A.D., which placed the tithed watermelons in the same category as figs, grapes, and pomegranates.

And what do all of those fruits have in common? They’re sweet. By the third century, the watermelon had graduated from desert crop to dessert. And if sweet watermelons were in Israel, they had likely spread across the Mediterranean.

The modern Hebrew word is the same: אבטיח. More on that here.

Syrian vs. Syriac

SYRIAC WATCH: 42 easily confused English terms that make global travelers look ridiculous (Jake Flanagin, Quartz). This piece explains lots of useful subtleties. I was pleased that the following was among them:

Syrian vs. Syriac

“Syrian” refers to anyone from the modern state of Syria. “Syriac” is a language spoken by groups from Iraq and the Levant known as Assyrians, Arameans, or Chaldeans, who are descended from ancient Mesopotamian peoples. Most Syrians are ethnic Arabs, though some may be Kurdish or Armenian, and most Syrians do not speak Syriac.

It would have been useful to specify that Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic.

Irina Bokova on ISIS

THAT ABOUT SIZES IT UP: UN culture chief: IS systematically destroying heritage sites. Scope of jihadist group’s ‘brutal’ campaign to demolish antiquities unparalleled ‘since the Second World War,’ UNESCO head Irina Bokova says (KARIN LAUB AND ALBERT AJI, AP).

Background here and here and many links.

Gregory et al. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha

NEW BOOK FROM OUP:

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha
Edited by Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett
Tobias Nicklas and Joseph Verheyden
Oxford Handbooks in Religion and Theology
496 pages | 246x171mm
978-0-19-964411-7 | Hardback | 13 August 2015
Also available as: eBook
Price: £95.00

Description

• Consists of 25 authoritative essays by leading scholars in the field.
  
• Addresses issues and themes that arise in the study of early Christian apocryphal literature.
  
• Surveys of the main branches of apocryphal literature, such as gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypses, considering keys issues that they raise.
  
• Contemplates questions such as which ancient readers read early Christian apocrypha, their place in Christian spirituality, and their place in contemporary popular culture and contemporary theological discourse.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha addresses issues and themes that arise in the study of early Christian apocryphal literature. It discusses key texts including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Peter, letters attributed to Paul, Peter, and Jesus, and acts and apocalypses written about or attributed to different apostles. Part One consists of authoritative surveys of the main branches of apocryphal literature (gospels, acts, epistles, apocalypses, and related literature) and Part Two considers key issues that they raise. These include their contribution to our understanding of developing theological understandings of Jesus, the apostles and other important figures such as Mary. It also addresses the value of these texts as potential sources for knowledge of the historical Jesus, and for debates about Jewish-Christian relations, the practice of Christian worship, and developing understandings of asceticism, gender and sexuality, etc. The volume also considers questions such as which ancient readers read early Christian apocrypha, their place in Christian spirituality, and their place in contemporary popular culture and contemporary theological discourse.

Readership: Students and scholars of biblical studies, particularly New Testament; of early Christianity.

Larry Hurtado, who notes the book here, has posted his essay in it at his blog: “Who Read Early Christian Apocrypha?”

The above HT Tony Burke on Facebook.

Mandsager on Rabbinic agricultural spaces

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Dissertation Spotlight: John Mandsager.

Mandsager, John. To Stake a Claim: The Making of Rabbinic Agricultural Spaces in the Roman Countryside. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2014.

Tekhelet promotional raffle

TRY YOUR LUCK: ‘Ptil Tekhelet’ Renews Monthly Tallit Raffle for Engaged Couples. Engaged Jewish couples can enter to win a prayer shawl tied with the ancient "ptil tekhelet" blue woolen thread (Hana Levi Julian, JewishPress.com).

Are you engaged to be married, or perhaps there is an upcoming nuptial in your family? If so, the happy couple is eligible to enter a contest to win a prayer shawl tied with the ancient “ptil tekhelet” sky-blue woolen thread.

To enter, just send a wedding invitation to the Ptil Tehkhelet [Sic] organization at info@tekhelet.com. The Israeli nonprofit group promotes, educates and produces what is believed to be the authentic “tekhelet” of the ancient Hebrews.

[...]

Much more on the ancient biblical tekhelet dye is here and links. As you can see at the link, it seems that the modern attempts to reconstruct the dye are not unproblematical. I mentioned the Ptil Tekhelet Foundation (also spelled P'til Tekhelet) here back in 2003.

More on Khaled al-Asaad

OBITUARY: Khaled al-Asaad: Authority on the antiquities of the Syrian city of Palmyra who was devoted to studying and protecting its treasures (OMAR WARAICH, The Independent). Many additional details about the life and death of this brave man.

When Isis snatched control of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, the man who had devoted his life to protecting its treasures refused to leave. Khaled al-Asaad rebuffed appeals from friends and family concerned about his safety. "Whatever happens," he told his friend, Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria's minister of antiquities, "I cannot go against my conscience."

Al-Asaad ended up paying for his devotion to the ruins of Palmyra with his life. Isis operatives had arrested him twice. The second time, they held him for a month and tried to force him to disclose where the city's treasures were hidden. He steadfastly refused, and was executed with the brutality that has made Isis so globally notorious. They dragged him into a public square before a masked man beheaded him.

Isis did not disclose that al-Asaad had thwarted their attempts at thievery. Instead, they put up signs over his dead body, accusing him of having been the "director of idolatory" and an "apostate" who "attended infidel conferences".

His nephew, Khaled al-Homsi, said the family had tried to convince Asaad to leave Palmyra when Isis seized the site. "We knew they would not leave him alone," he said. "We used to stand together and watch the trenches and the barricades go up … he couldn't stop his tears."

[...]

Background here and links.

UPDATE: The New York Times also has an obituary: Syrian Expert Who Shielded Palmyra Antiquities Meets a Grisly Death at ISIS’ Hands (BEN HUBBARD).

Report that Mar Elian monastery has been destroyed

AINA NEWS: ISIS Destroys 5th Century Assyrian Monastery in Syria.

(AINA) -- Photos posted on ISIS social media sites show the destruction of Mar Elian monastery in Qaryatain, Syria, which is near Homs. Qaryatain fell to ISIS on August 6 (AINA 2015-08-07). An estimated 1,400 Syriac Orthodox and 400 Syriac Catholic Assyrians lived in Qaryatain before it fell to ISIS.

Related: Attacks on Assyrians in Syria By ISIS and Other Muslim Groups
The Assyrian monastery was founded in the 5th century A.D. as a Syriac Orthodox Monastery. In the 17th century it became a Syriac Catholic monastery. It was renovated by the head of the ancient Mar Musa al-Habashi monastery, the Jesuit Fr. Paolo Dall'Oglio, ten years ago.

[...]

I don't know this monastery by sight, but the photos certainly show a substantial building being demolished.

More on the assault of ISIS on the past — and its representatives — is here and here and links. And with special reference to speakers of Aramaic, here. Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

UPDATE: The Daily Mail (John Hall) reports the destruction by ISIS of another ancient Syriac monastery, this one in Iraq:

Another blow to Christianity and civilisation: ISIS destroy 4th Century Mar Benham monastery in Iraq

• Jihadis used explosives to destroy Mar Benham monastery in Bakhdida
  
• Blast reduced the ancient building to rubble according to local residents
  
• ISIS seized control of the monastery last summer, expelling resident monks
  
• The ancient building was built by Assyrian king Senchareb 1,600 years ago

Khaled al-Asaad

PALMYRA WATCH: The murder of archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad (Asa'ad) by ISIS in Palmyra has been getting more media attention than I expected or even dared to hope. Many articles have come out in the last day. I will just flag these three:

ISIS Tortures, Beheads Chief Archaeologist of Palmyra. ISIS beheaded the chief archaeologist of the ancient city of Palmyra and hung his headless body there (Hana Levi Julian, JewishPress.com).

A Syrian source told Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, that Da’esh had interrogated Asa’ad about the located of the treasures from Palmyra. The terrorists murdered him when he refused to cooperate, the source told Doyle, according to a report by The Guardian.

The SANA news agency reported that Asa’ad had discovered several ancient cemeteries, caves and a Byzantine graveyard in the garden of the Palmyra museum. He was also a scholar of Aramaic, the local language before the rise of Islam in the seventh century.

ISLAMIC STATE EXECUTES ANTIQUITIES CHIEF OF PALMYRA, HERITAGE UNDER THREAT (The Citizen, India).

Graphic images posted by IS affiliated social media accounts seem to show the decapitated body of 82-year-old Khaled Asaad, his trademark glasses still visible on his head on the ground.

The head of the Syrian department of antiquities said that the militants took Assad’s dead body from the square and hung it from a Roman column that the former antiquities chief had dedicated his life to restoring.

A sign attached to the pictures being circulated online states that Asaad was executed for overseeing “idols” in Palmyra, attending “infidel” conferences and for staying in touch with his brother and palace officials even after IS took over.

Asaad, it appears, had been taken captive by the militants who had been interrogating him for at least the past month. Media reports indicate that the militants tried to furnish information from Asaad about Palmyra’s hidden treasures, and his refusal to provide this information is what prompted his sudden execution.

This article continues with many photos of the ancient site of Palmyra.

Khaled al-Asaad profile: the Howard Carter of Palmyra. The historian beheaded by Isis was a key figure in Syrian archaeology and has been compared with the discoverer of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt (Caroline Davies and Kareem Shaheen, The Guardian).

Asaad was involved in early excavations of Palmyra and the restoration of parts of the ancient city. The 82-year-old played a role in evacuating the contents of the city museum ahead of Isis taking control, which, Azm said, meant he faced certain arrest when the militants arrived.

[...]

[Khalil] Hariri, who is married to Asaad’s daughter, Zenobia, said his father-in-law had been a member of Bashar al-Assad’s ruling Ba’ath party since 1954. He is survived by six sons and five daughters, he said.

In general I have no love for Baathists, but this one died with honor.

Background here and links.

Hazzay

YONA SABAR: Hebrew word of the week: Hazzay (weather) forecaster. From the same Hebrew root as a biblical term for "seer" or "visionary." Cool.

More on that ancient Hebrew (?) seal from Russia

MOSAIC MAGAZINE: An Ancient Warrior Woman in Southern Russia with a (Possibly) Hebrew Seal. Someone else has been reading PaleoJudaica. I wonder when the mainstream media is going to catch on to the remarkable story they have sitting in front of them.

HT Aviv Benedix on Facebook. Background here and here.

Graffiti galore in Elijah's cave

Ancient Inscriptions in Elijah the Prophet's Cave Are in Danger. The Haifa grotto, sacred going back to the days of Baal, had been so neglected it even became a venue for bar mitzvahs. Only now is Israel starting to consider protecting it (Ran Shapira, Haaretz).

A small cave sacred from the time of Baal, where Elijah the Prophet is believed to have spent the night before going into battle, boasts inscriptions carved into its walls over millennia – which are in imminent danger of disappearing forever.

"The place should be favourable to my son Kyrillos, who will not be affected by fever anymore," wrote Elios, apparently an official living in Acre during the Roman era (first or second century BCE). The "fever" may have meant malaria, and the "place" in question was the Cave of Elijah the Prophet, a grotto some 40 meters up the slope of Mount Carmel, smack in the middle of the city of Haifa.

While about it, writing in Greek, Elios added a strict injunction against desecrating the cave.

Neither prior nor subsequent generations evidently thought much of that exhortation. Elios' inscription, a dedication to his son, is just one of about 180 Greek inscriptions, as well as 44 Hebrew, two Arabic, and one Latin, carved into the stone walls of Elijah's Cave. The youngest writing is modern and the oldest apparently dates from the late Roman era of control over the Holy Land.

[...]

And there are some late antique carvings of menorahs as well. The connection with Elijah himself is a Byzantine tradition and should be taken with a grain of salt, but the inscriptions and carvings are real enough. Some of the material remains there may also have a connection with Baal worship.

For another traditional cave of Elijah, this one in Syria, see here.

The Ark of the Covenant and the Rastafarians

THIS IS A NEW ONE: The Rastafarian Messiah Guarding the Ark of the Covenant.

The Rastafarian connection to the Jewish nation goes even deeper with their more surprising claim of knowing the location of the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Followers of Selassie in Ethiopia claim they are in possession of the Ark, which they describe as an acacia wood box covered in gold, originally taken by Queen Makeda, also known as the Queen of Sheba, and Menelik, her son by King Solomon. They allegedly removed the Ark from the Temple without Solomon’s knowledge.

The whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant have been unknown since the destruction of the Temple, leaving room for even this Rastafarian theory to be true. Since its abduction by Makeda and Menelik, the Ark is believed to be protected by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which preserves it in the famous cathedral of Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, originally built in the 4th century CE.

I knew about the claims of the Ethiopian Church to have the Ark of the Covenant (see, e.g., here, here, and here), but I did not know of any specific Rastafarian claim on the Ark. A little Googling produces the following. The old Church of St Mary of Zion in Axum goes back to the fourth century, although it has been repeatedly rebuilt. It is where the Ark of the Covenant resides according to the traditions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In 1955 the Emperor Haile Selassie built the new Church of St. Mary of Zion next to the old church. More details here. So there is a Rastafarian connection to the Ark tradition, albeit a somewhat indirect one.

More on Rastafarianism is here and here and links. More on Axum (Aksum) is here and links. And more on the Ark of the Covenant is here and links.

Review of Rabbinic Judaism 18.2

NEW JOURNAL ISSUE: REVIEW OF RABBINIC JUDAISM 18.2 (2015). TOC:

Research Article
Rabbinic Literature and the Christian Scriptures
Author: Jacob Neusner
pp.: 177–191 (15)

Research Article
“And It Was in the Dwelling of Rabbi Joshua bar Peraḥiah”
Author: Daniel J. Frim
pp.: 192–226 (35)

Research Article
The Halakhic Validity of Israel’s Judicial System among Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Halakhic Decisors
Author: Ron S. Kleinman
pp.: 227–259 (33)

Research Article
R. Hayyim Soloveitchik and Academic Talmudic Hermeneutics
Author: Yuval Blankovsky
pp.: 260–280 (21)

Research Article
Visiting Graves of Ẓaddiqim in Yemen
Author: Aharon Gaimani
pp.: 281–300 (20)

Other
God Willing: Im Yirẓeh Hashem—In Sha Allah
Authors: Raphael Jospe and Yonatan Milo
pp.: 301–302 (2)

Book Review
The Marrakesh Dialogues: A Gospel Critique and Jewish Apology from the Spanish Renaissance, written by Carsten L. Wilke
Author: Phillip Bell
pp.: 303–304 (2)

You can read the abstracts for free, but access to the articles is by paid personal or institutional subscription only.

ISIS beheads Syrian archaeologist in Palmyra

PALMYRA WATCH: Islamic State militants behead archaeologist in Palmyra: Syrian official (Reuters).

Islamic State (IS) militants beheaded an antiquities scholar in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and hung his body on a column in a main square of the historic site, Syria's antiquities chief said on Tuesday.

IS, whose insurgents control swathes of Syria and Iraq, captured Palmyra in central Syria from government forces in May, but are not known to have damaged its monumental Roman-era ruins despite their reputation for destroying artifacts they view as idolatrous under their puritanical interpretation of Islam.

Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said the family of Khaled Asaad had informed him that the 82-year-old scholar who worked for over 50 years as head of antiquities in Palmyra was executed by Islamic State on Tuesday.

Asaad had been detained and interrogated for over a month by the ultra-radical Sunni Muslim militants, he told Reuters.

[...]

Barbarians.

Background on Palmyra and its fate in the hands of ISIS is here and links. This is not the first time they have used the ruins at the site for execution theatre. And more on ISIS's assault on the past — and its representatives — is here and here and links.

UPDATE: The ASOR Blog has some additional background on the actions of ISIS: Iconoclasm in the ‘Islamic State’ (Lucinda Dirven). (Requires free registration to read in full.)

The D.C. Bible Museum and the IAA

ALLIANCE: D.C. Bible Museum To Borrow Ancient Artifacts From Israel. First displays, when museum branch goes live in 2017, will include glassware, stoneware and a Philistine altar from the Canaanite period (Jewish Business News).

“The Israel Antiquities Authority is thrilled and proud to partner with the Museum of the Bible on this landmark project. Making the archaeological heritage of the Land of Israel and the vital archaeological work conducted by the IAA available and accessible to people around the world is our mission. The rare opportunity to have a long-term exhibition in the U.S. Capital of a large selection of archaeological treasures that were excavated in Israel and illuminate the story of the Bible is remarkable. We hope that the many expected visitors will enjoy the archaeological exhibits and learn about the periods and descriptions of the Bible and the rich and diverse history and the archaeology of the Holy Land,” said Israel Hasson, Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

More on the Museum of the Bible (currently under construction in Washington D.C.) and the Green Collection is here and links.

"Four Species" economic woes for Sabbatical year

BUY LOCAL: Despite Rabbinic Support, Israeli ‘Four Species’ Business Anticipates 50% Loss over Shmita Issues (JNi Media/Jewish Press).

(JNi.media) In advance of the upcoming Sukkot holiday season, Israeli distributors of the four species—Etrog (citrus fruit), Lulav (date palm), Hadas (myrtle) and Arava (willow) are expecting the current shmita (fallow) year will take a significant toll on their sales. This is despite well-known and commonly accepted halachic adjudications that allow for the purchase of Israeli-grown produce on the shmita year.

Despite the religious mandate which requires that farming be curbed during this year, leading religious authorities have approved legalistic measures to allow for the purchase of four species grown in the holy land and in so doing limit the economic damage to local Jewish growers and distributors.

[...]

More on this year's Shmita (Sabbatical year) is here and links.

BNTC 2015 is coming

IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN: British New Testament Conference 2015 (Larry Hurtado). It's happening this year at the University of Edinburgh on 3-5 September. See you there.

More on that mysterious Russian seal

THE TIMES OF ISRAEL: Mysterious Biblical Seal found in Russia! Top Find of 2015? (Aviv Benedix). Someone else has finally noticed what an important discovery this is. Fortunately, Mr. Benedix was able to turn to PaleoJudaica for the initial decipherment and approximate dating of the inscription.

Disappointingly, after a quick Google Search, I found very little on the topic published in the past few days since news of the incredibly discovery were announced. Most news articles found were just recycling the Daily Mail article and were not interested or didn’t know about its possible Biblical connection.

Not being an expert myself in ancient Semitic languages, I was very happy to find Jim Davila’s fantastic Paleo-Judaica Blog, where Mr. Davila confirms that it is a stone seal written in ancient Hebrew script.

(HT reader Gerald Rosenberg.)

This find is calling out for more attention. Northwest-Semitic epigraphers, where are you?

Last week's PaleoJudaica post, which links to Daily Mail article that announced the find in English, is here and is quoted extensively by Mr. Benedix.

UPDATE (19 August): Victar Josef Mas, commenter to the Times of Israel article, reminds us that the commander of the seventh-century BCE military fortress excavated at Arad was also named Elyashiv. We have many inscriptions from Arad that mention him (cf., e.g., here and here), including three of his seals, one of which you can see here. The name does not seem to have been uncommon, so I doubt that there is any direct connection between Elyashiv of Arad and the Elyashiv of the Russian woman's inscription.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I have not been able to find the name in any of the other languages. That's not conclusive, but it points to the likelihood that the seal bears a Hebrew name.

The Rhetoric of Paul

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Convincing Early Christians: The Rhetoric of Paul

Uses of emotion in Paul are usually less extensive, but his descriptions of his hardships at times function to evoke pity or love. His descriptions of those he considers dangerous intend the opposite; they evoke revulsion or at least make them so unattractive (perhaps untrustworthy or selfish) that his readers will not want to associate with them. So arguments that rely on emotion play an important role in his letters. This is not a reason to dismiss them. Rhetoricians of the time regularly noted that arguments from emotion are often the most persuasive.

See Also: Paul: Apostle and Fellow Traveler (Abingdon Press, 2014)

By Jerry L. Sumney
Professor of Biblical Studies
Lexington Theological Seminary
August 2015

Bergerhausen, Digitale Keilschrift | Digital cuneiform

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: From Babylonian to Old Persian Cuneiform. Notice of a new-ish (2014) book.

Blumell and Wayment, Christian Oxyrhynchus

New Book on Christian Oxyrhynchus Texts (Peter J. Gurry, ETC). The book sounds very interesting, but note this:

We asked the publishers for a review copy so that we could report as to whether the book was any good or not, but they said, “Due to the size and cost of this book, we are not able to mail physical copies for review in Britain.” So we don’t know at this point of time whether this book is any good or not. Hence: caveat emptor.

An earlier book on the Oxyrhynchus papyri by L. H. Blumell was noted here a few years ago. Many, many other past posts on the Oxyrhynchus papyri etc. are here and links.

Perrone, Origenes Die neuen Psalmenhomilien

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Band 13
Origenes
Die neuen Psalmenhomilien
Eine kritische Edition des Codex Monacensis Graecus 314
[The New Homilies on the Psalms: A Critical Edition of Codex Monacensis Graecus 314]
Ed. by Perrone, Lorenzo
Series: Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte NF 19

Aims and Scope

The editio princeps of Codex Monacensis Graecus 314, the collection of Origen's Homilies on the Psalms was discovered by Marina Molin Pradel in april 2012. The Munich manuscript is the major text discovery on Origen, seventy years after the find of the Tura papyri in 1941. The 29 homilies provide the original Greek text of four Homilies on Psalm 36, translated by Rufinus into Latin at the beginning of the fifth century, together with twenty-five new sermons. Only parts of them were known through tiny excerpts preserved in the exegetical anthologies of the catenae. The list of the sermons essentially corresponds to the catalogue of Origen's Homilies on the Psalms in Jerome's Letter 33. It includes two homilies on Ps. 15, four on Ps. 36, two on Ps. 67, three on Ps. 73, one on Ps. 74, one on Ps. 75, four on Ps. 76, nine on Ps. 77, two on Ps. 80, and one on Ps. 81. Beyond recovering for us Origen as the great interpreter of the Psalms, the sermons throw new light on his life and thought, and provide insights into the situation of the Church in the third century CE.

The critical text has been edited by Lorenzo Perrone in cooperation with Marina Molin Pradel, Emanuela Prinzivalli and Antonio Cacciari.

Via What's New in Papyrology. PaleoJudaica had several posts on the discovery of the manuscript back in 2012: here, here, here, and here.
.

Review of McLean, Hellenistic and Biblical Greek

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Bradley H. McLean, Hellenistic and Biblical Greek: A Graduated Reader. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xxxiv, 509. ISBN 9781107686281. $39.99 (pb).

Reviewed by Mark Glen Bilby, Claremont School of Theology (mgb8n@virginia.edu)

Preview

This text fills a major gap in the available scholarly literature for the pedagogy of Hellenistic Greek, especially for students of Judaism and Christianity in antiquity. While numerous Greek readers, extracts, selections, chrestomathies, and anthologies have appeared over the past few hundred years, none explores the breadth of Jewish and Christian Hellenistic Greek literature more ably, thoroughly, and expertly than does this one. Many readers simply provide excerpts with little in the way of historical and literary introduction, grammatical notes, or vocabulary lists, but McLean provides these for every text. (Indeed, these supplements are so well-written that this reader could easily double as a sourcebook for the study of ancient Judaism and Christianity!) Though many Greek readers are not structured or populated with developmental educational concerns in mind, this one is carefully constructed to start simple, work gradually up to much more difficult samples, and build cumulative vocabulary competency throughout. And while other readers typically select from a narrow range of texts, whether in terms of canonicity, authorship, or genre, McLean’s selections prove diverse in all of these respects.

[...]

Werlin, Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300-800 C.E.

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300-800 C.E.
Living on the Edge

Steven H. Werlin
Following the failure of the Bar-Kokhba revolt in the second century, the majority of the Jewish population of Palestine migrated northward away from Jerusalem to join the communities of Jews in Galilee and the Golan Heights. Although rabbinic sources indicate that from the second century onward the demographic center of Jewish Palestine was in Galilee, archaeological evidence of Jewish communities is found in the southern part of the country as well.

In The Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300-800 C.E., Steve Werlin considers ten synagogues uncovered in southern Palestine. Through an in-depth analysis of the art, architecture, epigraphy, and stratigraphy, the author demonstrates how monumental, religious structures provide critical insight into the lives of those who were strangers among Christians and Muslims in their ancestral homeland.

Mathys et al. (eds.), Neue Beiträge zur Semitistik

NEW BOOK FROM UGARIT-VERLAG:

Hans-Peter Mathys, Viktor Golinets, Hanna Jenni and Samuel Sarasin (Eds.)
Neue Beiträge zur Semitistik
Fünftes Treffen der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Semitistik in der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft vom 15.–17. Februar 2012 an der Universität Basel
AOAT 425

Printed edition 2015 (ISBN: 978-3-86835-163-7): 352 pages, 98.00 €
Printed edition + e-book in production

This volume contains part of the lectures given at a conference for Semitic languages held at the University of Basel, February 15th to 17th 2012. The articles deal with Akkadian, Amharic, Ancient North and South Arabic, Classical and Modern Arabic, Argobba, Classical Ethiopic, Modern Aramaic, Hebrew and Phoenician. The topics discussed are phonology and lexicography, verbal syntax, epigraphy and literary studies.

Via the Agade list.

Video on the Herculaneum library

WHAT'S NEW IN PAPYROLOGY: Video: Herculaneum's Lost Library. It is unfortunate that the video opens asserting of the Herculaneum scrolls that "The only library ever recovered from antiquity comes to light in a new day." Ahem ... the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Some past posts on the Herculaneum library are here and links. Related post here.

Review of Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel

JAMES MCGRATH: Review of William Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel.

Dever’s book is actually something much more significant than the title may actually reveal: it is the first attempt to write about the way of life of ancient Israel (focusing in this instance on the 8th century BCE) initially based on archaeology alone as the primary data, and then and only then to bring the Biblical texts into the picture.

Database for Verbs in the Dead Sea Scrolls

MUCH DATA: Database for Verbs in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This looks like an important and useful collection of information on the verbs used in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is supplemental to Ken Penner's new book (noted here, cf. here), The Verbal System of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and is probably best used in conjunction with it.

New Reviews of the Enoch Seminar

RECENT REVIEWS AT REVIEWS OF THE ENOCH SEMINAR:

Eliza Rosenberg reviews Susan Marks, First Came Marriage

Kenneth Bergland reviews Kenneth A. Kitchen and Paul J. N. Lawrence, Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East

Isaac W. Oliver reviews George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch 1 & 2 (Hermeneia Series)

Dereck Daschke reviews Hindy Najman, Losing the Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of 4 Ezra

Morna D. Hooker reviews Eve-Marie Becker, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, and Mogens Muller (eds.), Mark and Paul: Comparative Essays Part II for and against Pauline Influence on Mark

Nathalie LaCoste reviews Sarah J. K. Pearce, The Words of Moses Studies in the Reception of Deuteronomy in the Second Temple Period

Augusto Cosentino reviews Gary N. Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of Their Early Relations

Patrick Pouchelle reviews David Hamidović (ed.), Aux origines des messianismes Juifs: Actes du colloque international tenu en Sorbonne, à Paris, les 8 et 9 juin 2010

Review of Honigman, Tales of High Priests and Taxes

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Sylvie Honigman, Tales of High Priests and Taxes: The Books of the Maccabees and the Judean Rebellion against Antiochos IV. S. Mark Taper Foundation imprint in Jewish studies. Oakland: University of California Press, 2014. Pp. ix, 554. ISBN 9780520275584. $95.00.

Reviewed by Linda Zollschan (zollschan@yahoo.com)

Preview

Honigman presents a radical historical reconstruction of the causes of the Maccabaean revolt and a new reading of the First and Second Books of Maccabees. The book begins with a general introduction that provides an overview of the subject matter, the purpose of the authors of the First and Second Books of Maccabees and the problems with older research on the Maccabaean revolt, namely that of Bickerman and Tcherikover.1 She criticises their positivist reading of the sources, the framing of the relationship between the Jews in Judaea and the Seleucid empire in terms of a legalistic conception of institutions, and their views regarding the Hellenization of Jerusalem. She then outlines how she intends to proceed.

[...]

Some topically related posts are collected here and links.

Review of Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire

THE TWO CITIES: Review of Apocalypse against Empire by Anathea E. Portier-Young (Max Botner).

Bottom Line: This book represents an important contribution to our understanding of (1) Judean history during the Seleucid and Hasmonean period, (2) the functions of apocalyptic literature within that period, and (3) the ways in which scripture can provide counter-liturgies to the claims of empires. I would highly recommend this book to all who are interested in this area—seasoned scholars and neophytes alike.

I noted the book when it came out here. Earlier reviews are noted here and here.

Elul

YONA SABAR: Hebrew word of the week: Elul.

The Hebrew exiles in Babylonia remained loyal to Judaism but were also influenced by the Babylonian culture, including borrowing the names of the months from the Babylonians.* Indeed, the names don’t have any Hebrew etymology. ...

Old Sumerian in New Zealand

IN A MUSEUM, THAT IS: Inscription one of five known (John Gibb, Otago Daily Times).

Otago Museum staff long suspected that an ancient cuneiform inscription in a polished brick-like rock in their collection was something special.

But it was only after assyriologist Prof Wayne Horowitz, of Jerusalem, visited the museum in 2013 and made a careful study, that the truth about this 3500-year-old inscription has become known.

And the museum now realises that it is home to one of only five known cuneiform inscriptions linked to Hasmar-Galsu, a ruler in the ancient Sumerian civilisation, in the ancient equivalent of southern Iraq.

[...]

No, this doesn't have anything to do with ancient Judaism. It just goes with a recent theme of ancient inscriptions showing up in unexpected places.

Ethiopic manuscripts at Princeton

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Ethiopic Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library (Don Skemer).

The Princeton University Library is fortunate to have one of the largest collections of Ethiopic manuscripts outside Ethiopia, including nearly 180 codices and more than 500 magic scrolls, as they are called.

One of them is a manuscript of 1 Enoch used by R. H. Charles in his 1893 edition.

HT Ancient Jew Review. For more on the ancient Ethiopian city of Axum (Aksum) see here and links. Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.

Eshel on the Decalogue

ESTHER ESHEL: The Oldest Known Copy of the Decalogue? A careful examination of the three oldest copies of the Decalogue—4QDeutⁿ, 4QPaleoExodus^m, and the Nash Papyrus—surprisingly shows that none of them reflects the Masoretic Text (TheTorah.com)

HT Ancient Jew Review.

St Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai

NEW (?) BOOK:

St Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai: Its Manuscripts and their Conservation PAPERS GIVEN IN MEMORY OF PROFESSOR IHOR ŠEVČENKO

Available from the Saint Catherine's Foundation website but not, apparently, from Amazon. While you're at the link, look to the right to see the Featured Manuscript of the Month link. So far two very interesting Syriac manuscripts from the Monastery are featured: Sinai Syriac 16 and Sinai Syriac 30.

HT Alin Suciu on Facebook. More on St. Catherine's Monastery and its precious repository of manuscripts is here and links.

Passages

EXHIBITION: Passages is a traveling museum exhibition featuring "biblical artifacts depicting the history of the Bible." It is associated with the Green Collection's Bible Museum, which is currently under construction in Washington D.C. The exhibition is currently running in Santa Clarita, California. The Los Angeles Daily News reports that some Dead Sea Scroll fragments are included, but I cannot find any further specifics.

Past posts relating to the Green Collection are here and links.

Review of Alter, Strong As Death is Love

A NEW VOLUME OF ALTER'S TRANSLATION: Found in translation: giving voice to those who wrote ‘Hebrew Bible.’ In his work on many books, Robert Alter aims to translate not just the poem but the poet (Eavan Boland, The Irish Times).

For almost two decades Alter has pushed ahead, bringing out volumes of this translation with dizzying speed. In 1999 it was The David Story, a translation of the first books of Samuel, offering the powerful narrative of a Biblical anti-hero. In 2004 it was The Five Books of Moses; in 2007 The Book of Psalms; in 2009 The Book of Genesis. With hardly time to draw breath in 2010 he added The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. And now comes this new title. Strong As Death is Love covering the books of Ruth, Esther, The Song of Songs, Jonah and Daniel. All the volumes carry as their sub-title A Translation with Commentary.

And the role of the translator? In an interview Alter said, “I want to try to
convey in English what I think were the actual values and mind-sets of the ancient Hebrew writers, which is also, in the poetry, inseparable from the concreteness of their language and the compactness and rhythmic force of the poetry they wrote.”

Background on Professor Alter and his translation of the Hebrew Bible is here with many links.

Schwartz on ancient Jewish History, part three

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW VIDEO: Seth Schwartz | Part Three: Criticism. Part one is noted here and part two here.

Dead Sea Scrolls in a cellar in Massachusetts

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Worcester West Side Secret (Joshua Lyford, Worcester Magazine). A detailed account of a little-known episode in the early history of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Worth a read.

There are many footnotes to a fascinating story like that of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the journey they embarked on is interesting from start to finish, but a particularly thoughtful note should be made of the years before the scrolls became so renowned. While their owner tried to drum up interest to sell them, four of the most crucial Dead Sea Scrolls spent five years locked in a safe, housed in the cellar of a quaint, tidy home on Worcester’s west side. From this home, in the shadow of Bancroft Tower, those four scrolls would prove to be just as ancient and intriguing as Samuel believed, and eventually captured world’s imagination.

More on Mar Samuel is here and more on Kando is here and links.

A Northwest-Semitic seal excavated in ... Russia?

THE DAILY MAIL (WILL STEWART): Treasure trove of warrior jewellery unearthed in Russia: Ancient grave belongs to woman who worshipped fire 2,000 years ago

• The woman was a Sarmatian from the first century AD in southern Russia
  
• More than 100 arrowheads and a horse harness confirm she was a warrior
  
• A gem with an ancient inscription in Aramaic was found buried with her
  
• A hiding place in the grave contained a collection of knives and a sword

A stunning trove of ancient jewellery has been found in the grave of a noble warrior woman dating back to the first century AD.

The female fighter was a Sarmatian - a group of people who worshipped fire and whose prominent role in warfare was seen as an inspiration for the Amazons of Greek mythology.

And the discovery of the intact burial mound in Russia has been described as 'priceless' by archaeologists.

The Sarmatians were nomadic people who migrating from central Asia to the Ural mountains between the 6th and 4th century BC.

[...]

Next to her skull, gold earrings with pendant chains were found, while a bronze mirror was close to her shoulder.

'The collar of her dress was decorated with stamped buckles of gold leaf in the form of a stylised ram's head,' he said.

'Her sleeves were embroidered with colourful beads combined with gold triangular and hemispherical plaques.

'On each hand - a gold bracelet. On her breasts were various beads, among which was a gem with a single-line Phoenician or early Aramaic inscription. At her pelvis lay a gold vial.'

[...]

Below is the photo of the seal. The caption reads "The female fighter was a Sarmatian, a people who worshipped fire and whose prominent role in warfare was seen as an inspiration for the Amazons of Greek mythology. A gem with a single-line Phoenician or early Aramaic inscription was found buried with her (pictured), placed on her chest."

This is a stone seal written in the Paleo-Hebrew script. As far as I know, this type of seal was only made between the eighth and fifth centuries BCE. (But my knowledge of the subject is not particularly up to date.) It is in one of the Northwest Semitic languages, but I don't know enough about the paleography of this period to identify whether it is Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, Ammonite, Edomite, or Moabite. Someone who knows the scripts better than I do could probably discern the national origin of this one and its date to within a century or so.

The letters are inscribed backwards on the seal so that the mirror-image imprint it leaves will read in the right direction. This is normal for such objects. The first letter of the inscription was inscribed last and it looks squashed, probably because the stonemason miscalculated and didn't leave enough room for it. The seal reads לאלישב (l’lyšb), "belonging to Elyashiv." Elyashiv (Eliashib) is attested as a man's name in the Hebrew Bible in Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, and on at least a couple of 7th-century BCE Hebrew seals. I can't find it in any of the other languages, but I haven't looked comprehensively and some of them may well have used it too.

The big question is, what was this turn-of-the-era Sarmatian woman in Russia doing with a Northwest Semitic seal from four to eight centuries before her time? The report is that it was scientifically excavated, so forgery or salting seem exceedingly unlikely. I guess it could have been a family heirloom. It certainly raises other questions about trade between Eastern Europe and the Middle East from the late Iron Age to the Hellenistic period. Assuming this report is accurate in its particulars, this is an extraordinary discovery and I think we shall be hearing more about it.

UPDATE (19 August): More here.

UPDATE (22 August): Still more here and here.

Google Alphabet

PHOENICIAN WATCH: ‘Alphabet,’ From Ancient Greece to Google. By betting on ‘Alphabet’ as the name for its new parent company, Google is relying on a word that has only existed in English for about five centuries (BEN ZIMMER, WSJ).

By betting on “Alphabet,” Google is relying on a word that we all learn as children but has only existed in English for about five centuries. In Old English, if you wanted to refer to the alphabet, you would use a word formed from the first four letters: “a-be-ce-de.” In Middle English this was shortened to “a-be-ce,” or as we would now spell it, “ABC.”

Around 1500, when classical scholarship was all the rage, English borrowed the Latin “alphabetum,” which in turn came from the Greek “alphabetos,” derived from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, “alpha” and “beta.”

Those names can trace their lineage back to the ancient Phoenician writing system. The “alpha” equivalent was shaped like a cow’s head, named after the Phoenician word for “ox.” Similarly, “beta” meant “house” and was shaped like one. In the alphabetic system, those characters came to stand for the initial sounds of the pictured words.

I think the name "Google" is more clever, but we'll see.

The Jews of Kaifeng

TRAVEL: Tracing ancient Jewish influences in China (Eileen Wingard, San Diego Jewish World).

SAN DIEGO — A highlight of my recent trip to China was in Xian, once the largest city in the ancient world and capital of China throughout 11 dynasties. After arriving by bullet train from Beijing, we had dinner at a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant and spent the evening listening to three speakers whose subject was the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng, a city on our original itinerary, but cancelled due to security reasons.

Professor Xu Xin , China’s leading scholar on the Jews of China, as well as the founder and director of the Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute for Jewish and Israel Studies at Nanjing University, gave us an overview of the history of the Jewish community of Kaifeng. Although historians may differ on the exact beginning of Jewish immigration to China, some dating the first arrival of Jews as far back as 220 BCE, what is definitely known is that during the Tang Dynasty, 618-906 CE, a poem and other records confirm the presence of Jews. Also, it is known that the Jews came on the Silk Road as traders.

In fact, a document, written on paper in a Judeo-Persian language, using Hebrew characters, was found on the Chinese-Tibet border. At that time, paper was only produced in China, so the Jewish trader had obviously been to China. These were Mizrahi Jews from Persia and Babylon. Some may also have come from India. Keifeng was then the major metropolis at the beginning of the Silk Road.

[...]

I would take that 220 BCE arrival date with a grain of salt, but the Jewish community in Kaifeng does seem to have been there by around 900 CE and it still exists today. Ms. Wingard heard a lecture by one of its leaders when she was in Xian. Past posts on the Jews of Kaifeng are here, here, and here. And there's more on that Chinese Judeo-Persian text here.

More on the floorboard mikveh

SOME BACKGROUND: Ein Karem: One village, three religions (Mordechai Goldman, Al-Monitor).

In early July, an ancient mikveh, a ritual bath in which observant Jews dip to purify themselves, was discovered in the pastoral Jerusalem neighborhood of Ein Karem. The 2,000-year-old mikveh, which would have been filled with rainwater, was found during renovation work on a home in the neighborhood. It was well preserved, down to some stone and clay tools on the pool floor, and probably served its owners at the time of the Second Temple. The unearthing of the mikveh strengthens the evidence of a Jewish link to ancient Ein Karem, the Arab-Palestinian and Christian links having already been established.

[...]

Archaeological evidence of the Jewish connection to Ein Karem has only been found in recent years, beginning with the 2004 discovery of a mikveh in the village. Amirav had found a cistern in the John the Baptist Church that turned out to be a purification bath. That discovery drew international attention and was the first evidence of a Jewish link to ancient Ein Karem, a connection that until then had only been cited in texts.

Now a second mikveh, large and impressive, has been found. “We were very excited by this discovery,” said Uriyah, a poet who lives with her partner, Tal, and their six children in the house where the mikveh was found. Requesting that her full name not be divulged to avoid droves of curious tourists, she told Al-Monitor, “This connected me very much to our Jewish heritage. For us, every descent into the space of the mikveh is a kind of descent through the tunnel of time.”

Tal, on the other hand, is unmoved by the Jewish aspect of the finding. “Religion doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said. “There’s an archeological find here, and that’s what’s important.”

[...]

I noted the discovery here back in early July. This article doesn't add a great deal, apart from the mention of the 2004 discovery and the brief interview with the owners of the house. But it did not register with me at the time that the find was in the neighborhood of Ein Karem (Ein Kerem). Back in 2011 this area was in the news concerning a controvery over the handling of Second Temple-era architecture at a building site. And some shadowy rumors involving treasure from the Copper Scroll were also involved. See here and here for the story.

I seemed to have missed the reports of the discovery of a mikveh in Ein Kerem in 2004.

Schwartz on ancient Jewish History, part two

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW VIDEO: Seth Schwartz | Part Two: 70 C.E. For part one, etc., see here.

New AWOL index

AWOL: New Index of Online Publications: The AWOL Index. Looks very useful.

Nearly $33K for sacred cow

RED HEIFER PROJECT UPDATE: Jewish Temple group raising $125K online to breed sacred cow (Brian Schaefer, JTA).

It’s been nearly two millennia since the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, bringing to an end the priestly period of Jewish history and commencing the Diaspora.

A third Temple has been prophesied, and in preparation for the messiah, nonprofit Jewish group The Temple Institute wants to build it.

Last month, the institute launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo with the goal of raising $125,000 to breed a red heifer, a requirement for Temple purification rituals. It has already raised nearly $33,000 from some 500 donors.

[...]

That's close to $20,000 raised in the last four weeks. Additional background on the project can be found here and links.

Obituary for Patricia Crone

THE TIMES HIGHER: Patricia Crone, 1945-2015. A scholar who transformed our understanding of early Islam has died (MATTHEW REISZ).

In her first book, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (with Michael Cook, 1977), Professor Crone drew on archaeological discoveries and contemporary Aramaic, Armenian, Greek and Syriac sources to cast a critical light on traditional Muslim accounts of the origins of the religion. This led to a view of early Islam as a form of tribal rebellion, deeply linked to Judaism, against the surrounding Byzantine and Persian empires – a controversial interpretation which has been debated and developed ever since.

Background here. And some other recent indications that our understanding of the earliest history of Islam may be due for revision are noted here and links.

Bloggers’ meet-up at AAR/SBL

JAMES MCGRATH: Bloggers’ Dinner at AAR/SBL in Atlanta. The proposed date and time are Sunday evening November 22nd, around 5pm. That probably works for me, but I haven't sorted out my exact schedule for Sunday evening yet. I will stop by if I can.

Schwartz on ancient Jewish History, part one

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW VIDEO: Seth Schwartz | Part One: Making the Case for Ancient Jewish History. I noted his recent book here.

Archaeological sites to see in Israel

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES IN ISRAEL WORTH VISITING are the subject of two recent articles. First:

Israel’s Top Archaeological Sites (Jewocity.com). A top-ten list containing many of the usual suspects. No doubt other slightly different top-tens are possible, but all of these are indeed worth seeing.

Time travel: 10 Israeli archeological sites you should visit this summer. From ancient ruin to medieval forts, these sites are full of history and breathtaking views (Yeruham Kantman, YnetNews).

A 2,000 year-old mikveh, discovered recently during construction work done on a new children's playground in Jerusalem, gave us a rare peek into the Second Temple era (1st century AD). But the many archeological sites scattered around Israel aren't just the purview of historians and archeologists – they hide within them a chance for the public at large to explore the past and get a glimpse of what life was like in the land of Israel hundreds, and even thousands, of years ago.

The guides at Keshet Yonatan, a center dedicated to educating the public about historical travel in Israel, in cooperation with the Eshkolot forum, have gathered a list of archeological sites open to the public. Family, groups, and individuals can all take trips to these sites.

[...]

This is a more creative list and most people will not be familiar with many of the sites, but they all sound interesting.

Oh, and more on that recently discovered mikveh is here and links.

Trump, menstruation, and ancient Judaism

CANDIDA MOSS: Weak Men Like Trump Have Always Feared Menstruation (The Daily Beast). Mr. Trump obligingly continues to provide fodder for PaleoJudaica posts. His recent comment about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, whatever its original authorial intent may have been, has brought menstruation some media attention. Professor Moss now provides us with one of her informative essays on attitudes toward it in world religious traditions, including ancient Judaism. Excerpt:

In the Jewish religious imagination, blame for what is actually the primordial “curse” is often placed squarely on Eve. Eve is seen as responsible for all of the unpleasantness of the reproductive process: menstruation and childbirth included.

Is this really true? Eve is not mentioned outside of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. Christianity certainly makes much of this curse and Eve's part in it in Christian interpretation of the "Fall" of humanity (see already 1 Timothy 2:11-15), but I am not familiar with ancient Jewish texts that explicitly blame Eve for the unpleasantness of things like menstruation and childbirth. There is, of course Life of Adam and Eve 33-35 and Apocalypse of Moses 25, but I do not accept these Adam and Eve pseudepigrapha to be Jewish works and in this I am in good company. I am not saying that Professor Moss is wrong, but I know of no such ancient and persuasively Jewish texts and I would like to see specifics. Anyhow, to continue:

In the ritual regulations that make up the book of Leviticus, menstrual blood turns out to be something of a problem. According to the book’s priestly author, menstruation is a cause of ritual impurity. Not only is a menstruating woman impure for seven days, but anyone who touches her is unclean “until the evening” (Lev. 15:19). Sex is squarely out of the question (unless you want to bring seven days of impurity on yourself) and, in the meantime, everything she sits or lies on also becomes unclean. The impurity associated with menstruation—much like the impurity associated with skin diseases or emissions of semen—was communicable through touch.

The prohibition on contact with menstruating women is not found only in Judaism. The Koran prohibits intercourse during menses (2:222) and the Hindu Laws of Manu indicate that a woman becomes purified from menstruation when she bathes at the conclusion of her period (6:66). Bathing post-period appears to have been the cross-cultural cure-all, but until menses were over women were contagious. Until 2005, Hindu women in Nepal were forced to live in cow-sheds during their period. To this day some traditional members of Orthodox Christianity abstain from receiving Holy Communion during menstruation.

But this is about more than either cleanliness or ritual purity. The idea that menstrual blood poses a health risk is evident in a variety of cultures. The ancient Jewish collection of rabbinic opinions known as the Talmud reads, “If a menstruant woman passes between two [men], if it is at the beginning of her menses, she will slay one of them, and if it is at the end of her menses, she will cause strife between them” (b. Pesaḥ. 111a). Watch out, Chris Wallace and Brett Baier.

Another exhibition in Philly

FROM THE GREEN COLLECTION: Rare biblical artifacts coming to Pa. Convention Center (Alison Burdo, Philadelphia Business Journal).

Pilgrims heading to Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families and papal visit will have a chance to see fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other rare biblical artifacts dating back hundreds of years at an exhibit at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

The display, Verbum Domini II: God's Word Goes Out to the Nations, will be free to the public and available at the Convention Center from Sept. 21 through Sept. 26, which is the day Pope Francis is set to arrive in Philadelphia.

The exhibit showcases more than 80 items from one of the world's largest private collections of rare biblical texts and artifacts, which are a part of the Museum of the Bible's Green Collection and were originally shown at the Vatican, according to World Meeting of Families organizers.

[...]

The following are among the items to be displayed:

• Fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls
  
• Five pages from the Bodmer Psalms Codex, a near-complete copy of the book of Psalms in Greek on papyrus from the third to fourth century CE
  
• Pages from the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, which contains Christian texts from the sixth to eighth century

More on the Bodmer Psalms Codex is here. More on the Codex Climaci Rescriptus is here and links. And follow the links in those posts for more on the Green Collection. Another museum exhibition of Bible-related artifacts opening in Philadephia, also in honor of the Pope's visit, is noted here.

New AOS website

AWOL: New Website of The American Oriental Society.

Aleppo Codex online

WEBSITE: The Aleppo Codex Online (Ben-Zvi Institute, Jerusalem).

HT reader Gerald Rosenberg. There are many past posts on the Aleppo Codex, whose fortunes have been tied to the Ben Zvi Institute during the manuscript's turbulent history. It is now in the Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum. Background here and links.

More on those "early" Qur'an manuscripts

GABRIEL SAID REYNOLDS: Variant readings. The Birmingham Qur’an in the context of debate on Islamic origins (TLS). A very interesting essay on the implications of the recently announced Birmingham fragments of the Qur'an and their early radiocarbon date. I will restrict myself to a couple of excerpts, but it's worth reading in full.

Yet the very early dating of the Birmingham manuscript (568–645) – almost certainly before the reign of Uthman – casts doubt on the traditional story. The Birmingham manuscript does not appear to be a scrap, or a variant version kept by some companion, which somehow escaped the Caliph’s burning decree. It appears to be the standard Qur’an which Muslims attribute to Uthman. In other words, the dates of the Birmingham manuscript are not simply early. They’re too early. Instead of rejoicing, the news about this manuscript should lead to head-scratching.

Moreover, the extremely early date range of the Birmingham text (most of which is before even the date when Muhammad is said to have begun his preaching) seems to confirm the early dating of other manuscripts. Among the manuscripts that were discovered in 1972 when repair work was being done on the ceiling of the Great Mosque of Sanaa in Yemen was a rare Qur’anic palimpsest – that is, a manuscript preserving an original Qur’an text that had been erased and written over with a new Qur’an text. This palimpsest has been analysed by a German husband and wife team, Gerd and Elisabeth Puin, by Asma Hilali of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and later by Behnam Sadeghi of Stanford University. Sadeghi benefited from the use of X-Ray fluorescence imaging to render certain leaves of the lower (that is, original) text of the Qur’anic palimpsest visible. What all of these scholars have discovered is remarkable: the earlier text of the Qur’an contains numerous variants to the standard consonantal text of the Qur’an.

[...]

The upshot of all of these early dates is that the Qur’an may very well date earlier than Uthman, possibly much earlier. It may be time to rethink the story of the Qur’an’s origins, including the traditional dates of Muhammad’s career. In other words, what observers have celebrated as something like evidence of the traditional story of Islam’s origins (the New York Times article argued that the manuscript “offered a moment of unity, and insight, for the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims”) may actually be, when considered carefully, evidence that the story of Islam’s origins is quite unlike what we have imagined.

If a prominent specialist like Professor Reynolds wants to rethink the dates of Muhammad's career, it sounds as though there is considerable work left to do on the history of the origins of Islam. And the relationships of late-antique Judaism, Eastern Christianity, and Byzantine Christianity to Islamic origins remain pieces of the puzzle. Watch this space.

Background here and links. Related post here.

Lyons on reception history

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Some Thoughts on Defining Reception History and the Future of Biblical Studies

The task of the biblical scholar is to read a given interpretation with a degree of empathy, a certain amount of humility, and, if appropriate, with a willingness to interact critically and/or polemically with what they find. We should accept that the biblical scholar offering an interpretation of how, say, Paul and his audience understood Romans in their context is as enmeshed as the biblical scholar attempting to account for, say, Johnny Cash’s interpretation of the Bible, or the story of Jephthah’s daughter’s reception by the AmaNazaretha in South Africa.

See Also: Reception History and Biblical Studies (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015).

By William John Lyons
University of Bristol
August 2015

Women's vows in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Jewish Legal Basis for Male Dominion Over Vows by Women? It’s in the Bible. Bridging the abstract simplicity of divine pronouncements to the practical mess of everyday life.

This week’s Daf Yomi reading answered a question that I have been wondering about ever since we began reading Tractate Nedarim two months ago: Why is this tractate part of Seder Nashim, the division of the Talmud whose name means “women”? The reason was perfectly clear for the first two tractates in Nashim: Yevamot, which dealt primarily with levirate marriage, and Ketubot, which focused on marriage contracts. Both of those areas of law were directly concerned with the relationships between women and men. But the subject of Nedarim is vows—how to take them and how to dissolve them—and so far there has been nothing obviously gendered about this topic. The assumption governing the Talmudic debates has been that both men and women can and do take vows; so, why is Nedarim part of this section of the Talmud?

Chapter 10 of the tractate, which Daf Yomi readers explored this week, suggests the connection between vow-taking and marriage. It is not, as we might expect, that marriage itself is a vow. Though we speak of “wedding vows” in English, under Jewish law it is clear that marriage is not a vow or oath, but a contract between two parties. Rather, the key point is that husbands have the legal power to annul vows made by their wives. ...

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Ancient milestones

ASOR BLOG: Milestones in Late Antique Palaestinae and Arabia (Marlena Whiting).

Burke (ed.), Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier

TONY BURKE: 2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium Papers Now Available.

The proceedings from the 2013 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium—Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier: The Christian Apocrypha from North American Perspectives—is now available for order from Wipf and Stock Publishers. The book can be purchased from other retailers (Amazon and even on Kindle) in a few months. Copies will be available also at the 2015 Symposium in September. My thanks go out to all the contributors for their work in getting the papers to press. The table of contents is as follows: ...

I noted the conference back in 2012-2013 here, here, here, here, and here.

Cross-file under New Book.

DABIR launched

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Newly launched peer-reviewed journal for Iranian Studies. I noted back in the spring that DABIR was being launched soon. The first issue is now available. Follow the link for TOC and (free) access information.

Mussolini's catacombs in the news

UPDATE: Mussolini's bunker opens to the public (The Straits Times).

ROME • Deep beneath the historic Villa Torlonia, where Benito Mussolini lived for nearly two decades, a wine cellar repurposed in 1941 as a bunker to protect the Fascist leader was recently opened to the public.

Even in a city stratified with centuries of history, the damp underground space is a telling sign of how deeply Italy's relatively recent past can stay buried.

The opening of the bunker last autumn was the latest step in the ongoing restoration of the spraw- ling villa compound, which the aristocratic Torlonia family rented to Mussolini and his family from 1925 until his arrest and death in 1943.

[...]

I note this story because there are ancient Jewish catacombs underneath Mussolini's villa and since at least 2004 there have been plans to restore them and open them to the public alongside a Holocaust museum. It's been more than two and a half years since I heard anything about them, but this article says the following:

The villa's grounds also contain ancient Jewish catacombs discovered in 1918 and not open to the public. It was at Villa Torlonia in 1938 that Mussolini announced racial laws stripping Jews of citizenship and removing them from many professions.

The Casino Nobile now features a small museum dedicated to the Roman School of anti-Fascist artists active between the 1920s and 1940s, including the writer and painter Carlo Levi.

Today, plans are in the works to build a Holocaust museum in a lot adjacent to the villa.

So the Holocaust museum is still planned, but I've not heard anything about the opening of the catacombs for some time. As I said before, I hope they are still on the agenda.

Background here and links.

Brill MyBook

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: “Brill MyBook” – Print-on-Demand from Brill (Tommy Wasserman, ETC Blog). This seems like both a welcome development and the way of the future.

Mapping the Ancient Jewish Diaspora

AWOL: Mapping the Ancient Jewish Diaspora: 117-650 ce. A project at Haifa University.

Wolfe, The Fabric of Religious Life in Medieval Ashkenaz

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Fabric of Religious Life in Medieval Ashkenaz (1000-1300)
Creating Sacred Communities

Jeffrey R. Woolf, Bar Ilan University
In The Fabric of Religious Life in Medieval Ashkenaz, Jeffrey R. Woolf presents the first integrated presentation of the ideals and beliefs that comprised the self-image and worldview of Ashkenazic Jews in the Central and High Middle Ages (900-1300). Through careful examination of a wide range of sources (legal, customal, liturgical, artistic), Woolf shows how religious practice played a dual role in creating and sustaining Jewish life in a hostile environment. They instilled these values, and recast religious traditions to reflect them.

The author demonstrates how hitherto underappreciated ideals such as Purity, Sanctity, and a palpable sense of Divine In-Dwelling played a central role in Ashkenazic religiousity and merged to form the texture, or the "Sacred Canopy," of their lives.

A little outside the usual range for PaleoJudaica, but the period and region do come up from time to time.

Smoak, The Priestly Blessing in Inscription and Scripture

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM OUP:

The Priestly Blessing in Inscription and Scripture
The Early History of Numbers 6:24-26

Jeremy D. Smoak

Offers a new theory on the meaning and significance of the instructions for the priestly blessing in the book of Numbers
Represents the first major attempt to present a synthesis of the inscriptions from Ketef Hinnom with the biblical text of Numbers 6:24-26 in English

Coming out in October.

There are many past posts on the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets. Start here and follow the links.

Mazdapour et al., The Religions of Ancient Iran

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: The Religions of Ancient Iran. Notice of a new book.

New issue of The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy

JUST OUT: The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Volume 23, Issue 2, 2015. A couple of the articles deal with the period relevant for PaleoJudaica. The articles themselves are behind a subscription wall.

"Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions" Symposium at York University

TONY BURKE: 2015 YORK CHRISTIAN APOCRYPHA SYMPOSIUM UPDATES. I noted the symposium already back in May, but Tony's latest posts has some updates in the lineup of speakers and he also announces a new symposium website.

Taylor (ed.), Jesus and Brian

NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY T&T CLARK: Jesus and Brian: Exploring the Historical Jesus and His Times Via Monty Python's Life of Brian by Joan E. Taylor.

Monty Python's Life of Brian film is known for its brilliant satirical humour. Less well known is that the film contains references to what was, at the time of its release, cutting edge biblical scholarship and Life of Jesus research. This research, founded on the acceptance of the Historical Jesus as a Jew who needs to be understood within the context of his time, is implicitly referenced through the setting of the Brian character within a tumultuous social and political background.

This collection is a compilation of essays from foremost scholars of the historical Jesus and the first century Judaea, and includes contributions from George Brooke, Richard Burridge, Paula Fredriksen, Steve Mason, Adele Reinhartz, Bart Ehrman, Amy-Jill Levine, James Crossley, Philip Davies, Joan Taylor, Bill Telford, Helen Bond, Guy Steibel, David Tollerton, David Shepherd and Katie Turner. The collection opens up the Life of Brian to renewed investigation and, in so doing, uses the film to reflect on the historical Jesus and his times, revitalising the discussion of history and Life of Jesus research. The volume also features a Preface from Terry Jones, who not only directed the film, but also played Brian's mum.

- See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/jesus-and-brian-9780567658326/#sthash.RanAHdRM.dpuf

The conference was noted here.

Biblical Studies Carnival

AT MY DIGITAL SEMINARY: JULY BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL (Lindsay Kennedy).

Review of Upson-Saia et al. (eds.), Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEWS:

Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes, Alicia J. Batten (ed.), Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Pp. xvi, 293. ISBN 9781472422767. $129.95.

Reviewed by Karel C. Innemée, Leiden University (K.C.Innemee@arch.leidenuniv.nl)

[...]

The book as a whole presents an interesting and kaleidoscopic view on a number of aspects of the language of the human body and its adornments in ancient Judean and Christian culture. In some contributions the aspect of dress is remotely present or almost absent, but each shows that understanding the grammar and vocabulary of the language of the human body is an undeniable but sometimes still underestimated part of human culture.

The publication of the book was noted here.

Royalty on ancient heresy

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Heresy in Earliest Christianity

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul faces disagreements on a wide range of issues such as factions over leadership according to who baptized whom, women’s leadership in prophecy and prayer, eating meat purchased from temples, the most important spiritual gifts, and the existence and meaning of the resurrection. The divisions in the community are most likely social, between wealthier and better educated members (the “strong”) and those with less education and social status (“the weak). Paul responds in this letter with appeals to unity (homonoia or concordia), often acknowledging differences in belief on these topics. But in Galatians, faced with the schism with Peter and others over circumcision and eating with Gentile believers, he demonizes difference, “a different gospel” (1:6) as part of the sinful sphere of the flesh (5:17–21). Then, in a later response to continuing divisions in Corinth, Paul goes on full heresiological attack against his rivals there, the so-called “super-apostles” (2 Cor 11:5). Whereas he had earlier sought homonoia or unity with these opponents (which meant in many ways that they should agree with him, 1 Cor 4:14–21, 15:1–8), here he attacks them as satanic, seducing the Corinthians just as the serpent led Eve astray (2 Cor 11:2–3, 13–15). While not using the word heresy, Paul demonizes his apostolic with two dominant tropes of Christian heresiology, satanic influence and sexual impurity, while building on ideologies of tradition, apostolic witness, and apocalyptic dualism.

See also: Robert M. Royalty, Jr. The Origin of Heresy: A History of Discourse in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity (Routledge, 2013; pb. 2015).

By Robert M. Royalty, Jr.
Wabash College
July 2015

I noted the book when it came out a few years ago. And Larry Hurtado has commented recently on the book here.

Shanks, paleographers, and the James Ossuary

JAMES MCGRATH: Hershel Shanks: The World’s Best Paleographers Will Declare the James Ossuary Authentic. More specifically, the full inscription on the James Ossuary. Everyone already agrees that the ossuary itself is a genuine ancient artifact. This should be interesting.

There are numerous past posts on the James Ossuary. Start here and just follow those links.

Annotated Syriac bibliography

SYRIAC WATCH: syri.ac:An annotated bibliography of Syriac resources online. Scott Johnson has some additional information on the site in a Hugoye post here.

Another, unrelated, online Syriac bibliography was noted here.

Sacred Writings at the Penn Museum

COMING SOON: Sacred Writings: Extraordinary Texts of the Biblical World.

In honor of the first visit by Pope Francis and the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, the Penn Museum offers a special focus on the ancient Near East, Egypt, and the Bible Lands—with a limited-time-only display of rare artifacts from the collections of the University of Pennsylvania, on view August 15 through November 7, 2015.

A centerpiece exhibition, Sacred Writings: Extraordinary Texts of the Biblical World, highlights the many ways the Bible—and stories akin to those in the Bible—have been represented over time and across continents.

[...]

The exhibition includes a third-century Greek fragment of the Gospel of Matthew and the so-called Eridu Genesis, the tablet containing the Sumerian Flood story (pictured).

The Museum also has a large collection of Aramaic Incantation Bowls. See here for a 1910 article about them in the Museum Journal by James Montgomery. I think it would be cool if they got some of these out too, but maybe that's just me.

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