JeruZalem

CINEMA: It’s the Talmud — with zombies! — in new Israeli horror film. Cinema royalty, the Paz brothers say their English-language ‘JeruZalem’ is the culmination of a childhood of ‘killing off’ friends ( LAURI DONAHUE, Times of Israel).

JeruZalem (the “z” is for you-know-what) world-premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal in July and had its US premiere as the closing night selection at Bruce Campbell’s Horror Film Festival in Chicago on August 23. As a work-in-progress, it won the Audience Award and the Best Editing Award at this summer’s Jerusalem Film Festival.

The film, by brothers Yoav and Doron Paz, is about two young American women vacationing in Israel. The women follow a cute anthropology student to Jerusalem on the eve of Yom Kippur – when all hell breaks loose. (One of the women is played by Yael Grobglas, on track to becoming the scream queen of Israeli horror cinema.)

No, there aren't zombies in the Talmud — as far as I know. The Talmudic connection is this:

“JeruZalem” was inspired by a line from the Talmud (Eruvin 19a): “There are three gates to hell, one in the desert, one in the ocean and one in Jerusalem.”

The brothers also disclaim any allegorical political message in the film.

Aramaic fairy tale

EXPLORING OUR MATRIX: A Neo-Mandaic Story. Sweet.

Cross-file under Modern Aramaic Watch.

More evidence that the GJW is a forgery

NT BLOG: The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: “Patchwork” Forgery in Coptic . . . and English (Guest post by Andrew Bernhard).

With the now overwhelming evidence that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is dependent on Grondin’s Interlinear in Coptic . . . and English, I think it is now reasonable to assert simply that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was forged using Grondin’s Interlinear. Given this assumption, the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus fragment must have been forged sometime after November 2002 (when the PDF version of Grondin’s Interlinear containing the typographical/grammatical error also found in line 1 of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was put online) and before the Summer of 2010 (when it was first brought to the attention of Karen King).

This looks convincing to me.

Background here and links.

UPDATE (31 August): More here.

McCollum on Judeo-Persian, part two

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: On Judeo-Persian Language and Literature | Part Two: Texts and Bibliography (Adam McCollum).

Part one and some background were noted here.

More on the Egypt After the Pharaohs exhibition

BROADWAY WORLD: British Museum to Display EGYPT: FAITH AFTER THE PHARAOHS Exhibit, October 29. I have already mentioned this exhibition in connection with its displaying of the Codex Sinaiticus, but there is much more in it of interest to ancient Judaism:

The Victories hold a jewelled cross flanked by Christian nomina sacra, showing the interaction between classical and Christian motifs. The expansion of the Roman Empire saw the development of Judaism and the emergence of Christianity. In Egypt, the iconography of these religions fused. Sculpture shows the adoption of Roman symbols of power to articulate authority - such as a statues of the falcon-headed ancient Egyptian god Horus wearing Roman armour. Magical texts on papyrus and so-called magical gems show the layering of aspects of deities especially from the Egyptian, Greek, Roman pantheons. In this period the God of the Jews and Christians is one among many.

Greco-Egyptian magical texts draw lots of motifs from Judaism.

The rubbish heaps of ancient and medieval towns in Egypt have preserved the earliest fragments of scripture, legal documents, letters, school exercises and other texts showing how religion was lived. Their survival is treasure from trash providing unparalleled insight into everyday society. There are copies of official letters, including one from the emperor Claudius (r. AD 41-54) concerning the cult of the divine emperor and the status of Jews in Alexandria, and another from a mosque to the half-sister of the Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim (r. AD 985-1021), demonstrating relationships between the state and religion.

The exhibition finishes with the astonishing survival of over 200,000 texts from Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, where they were keep in a genizah (a sacred storeroom) for ritual disposal. By an accident of history they were not destroyed. Mainly dating to the 11-13th centuries AD and written in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Aramaic and Arabic, they show a thriving Jewish community with international links extending from Spain to India. Together the collection is not only the best evidence for the daily lives of Jews in Medieval Cairo, but for the wider Medieval Mediterranean society including Muslims and Christians.

The best-known Egyptian papyri corpus is the Oxyrhynchus papyri, on which much more here and links. But I don't know where in Egypt the papyri on display in this exhibition are from. Also, much more on the Cairo Geniza is here and links.

The FBI takes an interest in ISIS's looted artifacts

IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP: FBI: Don't Accidentally Buy Artifacts Stolen By ISIS (Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, Gizmodo).

But the FBI isn’t just interested in stopping the outpouring of cultural heritage from countries under the control of ISIS—they’re warning US-based dealers because there are serious criminal penalties involved. Buying a piece, even inadvertently, from ISIS could be prosecuted as aiding a terrorist organization here in the US. And member countries of the UN must, under a new resolution, “take steps to prevent terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria from receiving donations and from benefiting from trade in oil, antiquities, and hostages.”

"“[I]ndustrial-level looting at Syrian and Iraqi archaeological sites.”

Background here and links. And more on Dura Europos and Mari is here and here and links

Aristophil's manuscripts to be sold

ALLEGED DSS PONZI SCHEME UPDATE: Rare manuscripts to be sold as world’s largest private collection is liquidated. Bank gets €28m from sale of Paris mansion (VINCENT NOCE, Art market news).

Aristophil, the scandal-hit French company that amassed the world’s largest private collection of manuscripts, has been liquidated and its stock will be put up for sale. The 5 August judgment in the Commercial Court, Paris, was based on its “complete insolvency”.

The company’s accounts were frozen in November 2014 by state prosecutors, who described Aristophil as a type of Ponzi scheme (in which existing investors are paid by new investors, rather than out of profits). A mansion owned by the company in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, was sold in July for around €28m, the proceeds of which went to Aristophil’s bank, Société Générale.

[...]

Aristophil has an inventory of 54 manuscript collections (around 135,000 documents), in which nearly 18,000 investors bought shares. These include fragments from the Dead Sea scrolls, medieval illuminated manuscripts and the Marquis de Sade’s 120 days of Sodom (1785).

[...]

Background here.

Review of Horsley, Jesus and Magic

DANIEL N. GULLOTTA: Review: Jesus and Magic: Freeing the Gospel Stories from Modern Misconceptions (Wipf and Stock, 2014).

I haven't read this book, but it sounds like I need to have a look. Some related thoughts are here and links

Payne, A State of Mixture

NEW BOOK FROM UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS:

A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity (Transformation of the Classical Heritage) Hardcover – September 1, 2015
by Richard E. Payne (Author)

Christian communities flourished during late antiquity in a Zoroastrian political system, known as the Iranian Empire, that integrated culturally and geographically disparate territories from Arabia to Afghanistan into its institutions and networks. Whereas previous studies have regarded Christians as marginal, insular, and often persecuted participants in this empire, Richard Payne demonstrates their integration into elite networks, adoption of Iranian political practices and imaginaries, and participation in imperial institutions.

The rise of Christianity in Iran depended on the Zoroastrian theory and practice of hierarchical, differentiated inclusion, according to which Christians, Jews, and others occupied legitimate places in Iranian political culture in positions subordinate to the imperial religion. Christians, for their part, positioned themselves in a political culture not of their own making, with recourse to their own ideological and institutional resources, ranging from the writing of saints’ lives to the judicial arbitration of bishops. In placing the social history of East Syrian Christians at the center of the Iranian imperial story, A State of Mixture helps explain the endurance of a culturally diverse empire across four centuries.

Review of MacDonald, Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life

PUNIC WATCH: Hannibal' holds readers' interest (Richard D. Weigel, Bowling Green Daily News).

“Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life,” by Eve MacDonald. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. 352 pages, $38 (cloth).

Hannibal still has a reputation as one of the greatest military strategists in history. One of the problems in trying to get an accurate picture of his life and career is that virtually all of the sources about him were written by Romans, the people who persisted against his serious threat to their continuance as a Mediterranean power and eventually defeated him, or by others influenced by Rome. Eve MacDonald, an archeologist and lecturer at the University of Reading, produced an excellent biography that attempts to understand Hannibal both within and outside the Roman context.

[...]

An earlier review of the book etc. is noted here and links.

Review of Stoneman, Xerxes

BOOK REVIEW IN THE TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION: Xerxes: A Persian Life, by Richard Stoneman. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones appreciates a nuanced biography of a complex ruler whose achievements are often ignored.

Xerxes has had bad press. The louche tyrant of the Greek sources and a dupe and comic stooge in the Hebrew Book of Esther would become, in the preposterous Hollywood movie 300: Rise of an Empire, a satanic entity, a proto-Islamic State fanatic. Even in Iran his reputation is, at best, ambiguous. I have met many young Iranians whose names, Kourosh and Dariush, are proudly sported in emulation of the ancient greats, Cyrus and Darius. But I know only one Khashayar, Xerxes. He runs a bookshop in Isfahan. Next time I’m there, I’ll give him a copy of Stoneman’s rewarding life (and afterlife) of Xerxes. I want Khashayar to be proud of his namesake.

The book is:

Xerxes: A Persian Life
By Richard Stoneman
Yale University Press, 288pp, £25.00
ISBN 9780300180077
Published 13 August 2015

More on Horvat Kur

A VOLUNTEER AT THE HORVAT KUR EXCAVATION: Moseley can dig that! (Herald Independent).

NEWBERRY — Newberry native Will Moseley recently took part in an excavation in the ancient synagogue at Horvat Kur in Israel, uncovering a partially preserved colorful mosaic floor.

Moseley was working the Horvat Kur excavation site with Wofford Professor of Religion Byron McCane, four other Wofford students, a Wofford graduate and a host of other college and university students from all over the world who are part of the Kinneret Regional Project.

[...]

Background here.

No, no one thinks the Gospel of Jesus' Wife proves that Jesus was married

TOO MUCH OF THE MEDIA just doesn't get the current scholarly discussion about the Gospel of Jesus' Wife. The issue, insofar as it is an issue at all, is whether the fragment is a modern forgery or the remains of an ancient manuscript dating to centuries after the time of Jesus which tells a legendary story that involves Jesus having a wife. If the fragment is authentic, it has been suggested that the original text of which it is a copy could date to as early as the second century. I have seen that asserted, but never argued. Still, this is long after any living memory of Jesus.

The current very strong consensus is that it is a modern forgery. I think this is correct beyond any reasonable doubt. But evidently Karen King still wants to defend the authenticity of the fragment — that is that it is an ancient account of an otherwise lost apocryphal legend involving Jesus' wife. We will all be happy to consider any peer-review publication that wants to make that argument, but in the meantime just about all specialists find the case for it being a modern forgery convincing.

Be that as it may, no one, and I mean no one, thinks that this text, even on the remote contingency that it is genuine, provides any information about any putative wife or marriage of the historical Jesus. It's not an issue. Not at all.

Why is that so hard? Yet note the headlines of the following articles on the recent discussion.

Was Jesus Married? Tests On ‘Gospel Of Jesus’ Wife’ Hint It Is Real. The Messiah may have been married to Mary Magdalene (Yahoo News, UK). Not just the headline: the reporting is pretty bad too. "Many believe that this shows Jesus was married instead of celibate - which could impact religions such as Catholicism, where priests are required to be celibate."

Jesus had wife: Gospel origins begin to emerge (Yahoo/News7). The article is more nuanced than the headline, but the accompanying ABC News video segment ("Was Jesus Married? An intriguing clue") completely missed the point, has many inaccuracies, and gives a very misleading presentation of the current discussion.

New Study On Controversial Papyrus Fragment Suggests Jesus Had A Wife (Guneet Bhatia, International Business Times). The article is more nuanced than the headline, but has some garbling.

This is even more evidence that Jesus may have had a wife (Herb Scribner, Deseret News). The accompanying article proceeds as badly as the headline, although it makes a small effort toward the end to nuance its treatment.

Jesus May Have Had a Wife: Origins of 'Gospel of Jesus' Wife' Emerge (Science World Report). I don't know anything about Science World Report, but their name is pretty grand for the quality of reporting in this case.

Did Jesus Have a Wife? Controversial 'Gospel of Jesus' Wife' Papyrus Is Being Investigated (STOYAN ZAIMOV, Christian Post. The actual article is not bad, but it doesn't make clear the preponderance of current scholarly opinion.

Ink In Papyrus Revealing Christ's Marriage May Be Authentic (R. Siva Kuvar, NewsEveryDay). The article makes some effort to present the actual situation.

JESUS MARRIED? GOSPEL OF JESUS'S WIFE IS REAL (Sumayah Aamir, I4U News). The article isn't entirely consistent, but some of it is as bad as the headline. I hope the I4U News articles on technology are more accurate.

Is this proof that Jesus was married? New tests hint that ancient note could be real (Ollie McAteer, Metro.co.uk). Seems to be based on the Yahoo UK article quoted above.

Now I grant you two things. First, sometimes the articles above are less misleading than the headlines. This might exonerate the writers of the articles, but the headlines are still inexcusable. People often learn about news stories just by a quick glance at a headline, and countless people will have come to the conclusion that the Gospel of Jesus' Wife has something to do with whether Jesus actually was married thanks to these headlines.

Second, many of these headlines come from smaller outfits that perhaps don't have the editorial standards of the major mainstream media. Nevertheless, I expect better, for example, from Yahoo, ABC News, and the International Business Times.

So, three lessons here. First, never, ever trust a headline. Second, anyone can set up a "news" site on the Internet, so don't believe anything you read there unless you know the source is reliable. And third, and most disquieting of all, do not trust even the mainstream media about anything they say. There are notable exceptions, but too often their coverage is lazy, sensationalistic, and garbled.

Background here and oh so many links.

Palmyra: commentary

PALMYRA WATCH: no new developments today, but some commentary and background are worth noting.

Historical background: How Ancient Palmyra, Now in ISIS's Grip, Grew Rich and Powerful. A distinctly multicultural trading center grew rich on trade between east and west, until it rebelled against its most powerful customer. (Kristin Romey, National Geographic).

In Palmyra, history is literally written on the walls: across temples and above doorways, encircling funerary monuments and snaking up the towering limestone columns that rise above the Syrian desert some 134 miles (215 km) northeast of Damascus.

These inscriptions were often written both in Greek and Palmyrene Aramaic, a bilingual phenomenon unique to Palmyra. The site is a UNESCO World Heritage site that has been a focus of international attention since May, when the Islamic State (ISIS) seized the territory around the ancient ruins.

The inscriptions provide unique insight into life in a distinctive frontier city where, for centuries, local merchants controlled trade between the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia.

[...]

An editorial: The Crimes of Palmyra (NYT).

Yet it is impossible to read Sunday’s reports of the demolition of one of the best-preserved and grandest relics in the ancient ruins of Palmyra, the Temple of Baalshamin, and not feel anguish at the loss of another irreplaceable monument of our shared past. True, the temple stood near a Roman amphitheater where ISIS is reported to have executed 25 prisoners last month. But to grieve at the loss of a great work of art does not diminish the horror at the loss of human lives, and in tandem they amount to a unified and barbaric attempt to erase not only whole peoples but also their religions, cultures and histories.

[...]

However daunting the struggles of the Middle East, ISIS stands out in the threat it poses to humanity. But for all its well-publicized atrocities, it is neither all powerful nor immune to military and economic pressures from the West. It can and must be stopped, and the United States and its allies cannot relent in their efforts toward that end.

Historical background on cultural destruction: Islamic State's war on antiquities takes leaf out of ancient book (Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff).

Destruction unleashed by jihadi group on historic sites in area it overruns has not been seen in decades, archeologists say, warn of potential ramification to heritage research • But Islamic State is only following the footsteps of other fanatics.

Background here and links.

The Codex Sinaiticus is going on display at the BM

THIS WILL BE WORTH SEEING: British Library will lend world's oldest bible to British Museum. British Museum exhibition, Egypt after the pharaohs, will feature the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the most important books in the world (Mark Brown, The Guardian).

The British Library is to lend one of its greatest treasures, the world’s oldest bible, to the British Museum for an ambitious and groundbreaking exhibition exploring 1,200 years of Christian, Islamic and Jewish faith in Egypt after the pharaohs.

The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world and has only been lent once, in 1990 – also to the British Museum – when both collections shared the same building.

“It is quite phenomenal they they are able to lend it to us,” said Elisabeth O’Connell, assistant keeper in the British Museum’s department of ancient Egypt and Sudan. “We are absolutely thrilled.”

The codex dates back to the 4th century AD. Handwritten in Greek, not long after the reign of the Emperor Constantine the Great, it contains the earliest complete manuscript of the New Testament.

[...]

Not to take away from the importance of this marvelous manuscript or of the exhibition, but I want to nuance the headline of this article a little. The Codex Sinaiticus once contained the entire Bible and a few other things, but a considerable portion of the Old Testament is now missing. The oldest surviving complete Bible is Codex Ambrosianus B.21, from the late sixth or early seventh century CE.

Some past posts on the Codex Sinaiticus are here and here and links.

DSS coming to children's exhibition

PRESS RELEASE: National Geographic Partners with The World’s Largest Children’s Museum to Create Sacred Journeys Exhibit.

The United States is home to followers of hundreds of religious faiths, yet few know much about their neighbors’ beliefs, practices or traditions. National Geographic Sacred Journeys, a new exhibit, will change that. It opens Aug. 29, 2015 at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

[...]

Among the artifacts featured in the 7,000-square-foot exhibition are fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls from Qumran, Israel, a large 1,300 pound stone from the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Jewish devotional objects taken into space by former astronaut David Wolf, the trunk Brigham Young carried from New York to Utah, a piece of the Kiswah (a gold-embroidered fabric, which drapes the Kaaba in Mecca), a throne built for the Dalai Lama’s U.S. visit in 2010, a sand mandala created by Buddhist monks at the museum, a replica of the Shroud of Turin, and Ganesh statue (Hindu god of good fortune).

[...]

No word yet on which Dead Sea Scroll fragments will be on display.

About that broken vase ...

THIS ODD STORY IS NOW ODDER: Israel Museum changes account on broken artifact. After initially claiming girl accidentally smashed ancient glass object, officials now say cause of mishap unknown (AP and Times of Israel/Josefin Dolstein).

Background here.

Latest on Palmyra

PALMYRA WATCH: Lots of new articles over the last couple of days. Here is a selection:

Witness confirms IS destruction of ancient Syria temple (AP).

UNESCO: Palmyra temple destruction a ‘war crime.’ Irina Bokova laments ‘immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity,’ says perpetrators must be held accountable (AFP). Not their first or their least.

Watch: What Palmyra looked like in the 1800s, and how the Islamic State is destroying it (Ishaan Tharoor, WaPo).

Images of the Ancient City of Palmyra, the "Pearl of the Desert" ISIS is Destroying (Patrick Sisson, Curbed.com).

Palmyra: Destruction of an oasis of cultural history. Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is considered one of the most beautiful ruined cities in the Middle East. Now the "Islamic State" has seized the area and started destroying these ancient structures (dw.com). A photo gallery.

Background here and links.

Lied blog renovation

LIV INGEBORG LIED is shaping up her blog:

Religion - Manuscripts - Media Culture
A blog on the transmission, use, and transformation of the so-called Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, with a particular focus on the manuscripts containing them, practices and media cultures framing their use in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the scholarly paradigms that shape the way we study them today

With a preview of upcoming posts. Watch that space.

Not mainly peasants?

ASOR BLOG: They Were Not Mainly “Peasants.” Towards an Alternative View of Village Life in Greco-Roman Palestine and Egypt (Sharon Lea Mattila). Good. I was getting tired of peasants.

Askeland on the GJW

CHRISTIAN ASKELAND: The Gospel of Jesus Wife — the saga continues ... (ETC). Excerpt:

I have expressed my opinion that the GJW has been so exhaustively proved a forgery, that the matter could be laid to rest. With regard to provenance documents and the identity of the present owner, I had surmised that King had legal or ethical reasons for withholding these. After all, what more could be gained from identifying the forger when everyone knows that the GJW is a fake? Her suggestion that the GJW could be authentic has caused me to reconsider. I would suggest that, if she considers the debate “ongoing,” then she should without hesitation produce the relevant materials. Furthermore, I would suggest that it would be disingenuous of King to conduct further Raman-spectroscopy testing (or the like) in highly-speculative support of authenticity and to simultaneously withhold documents which would almost certainly demonstrate forgery.

He also responds to claims about the ink used on the GJW fragment and the Harvard Lycopolitan John.

Background here and links.

Broken ancient vase better than ever

OOPS! Young Israeli Girl Breaks 2,000-year-old Vase, Museum Says Thanks. The museum said the object has now been repaired and is in better shape than it was before. (Nir Hasson, Haaretz). But please don't do it again.

Oh well. These things happen.

UPDATE (27 August): Curiouser and curiouser.

Barton on how to write a book review

MARGINALIA: The Art of the Book Review: John Barton. How writing reviews is like writing references.. Includes some very entertaining but cruel lines that you shouldn't use.

Editing Coptic manuscript fragments

NEWS YOU CAN USE: On Coptic Literary Fragments and the Principles of Editing Them (Alin Suciu). Scholars who edited the Dead Sea Scrolls faced some similar problems.

Bausi (ed.), Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction

NEW BOOK ONLINE: Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction. This looks like an excellent resource. You can read it for free online or order a printed copy if you want one. It is published by the COMSt Network:

The cooperative network Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies is dedicated to academic dialogue in the field of Oriental manuscript studies with the focus on the Mediterranean and North African cultural areas.
It organizes conferences and workshops; publishes journals and monographs; issues a regular mailing list; and facilitates exchange and cooperation in related fields.

HT the What's New in Papyrology Blog.

Saxby, James, Brother of Jesus, and the Jerusalem Church

NEW BOOK FROM WIPF AND STOCK:

James, Brother of Jesus, and the Jerusalem Church
A Radical Exploration of Christian Origins

BY Alan Saxby
FOREWORD BY James Crossley

Imprint: Wipf and Stock
Category: Biblical Studies

About

James, Brother of Jesus, and the Jerusalem Church opens fresh ground in our understanding of Christian origins through an exploration of the role of James in the founding of the church. Based on the author's doctoral research, that first Christian church, with its roots in the Baptist movement, is shown to be part of the broad contemporary Judaic movement for the restoration of Israel. The events surrounding the death of Jesus (their leader's brother) both confirmed their commitment to Judaic reform and transformed their understanding of it. Despite the impact of that experience, they seem to have had neither knowledge nor interest in the teaching and ministry of Jesus in Galilee.
Set in the world of James, this careful study of the difficulties and opportunities facing Judaic peasants in first-century Palestine proposes that James and his other brothers moved to Jerusalem (where work was available) several years before the final visit of Jesus and, under James's leadership, became the kernel of a growing group of followers of the Baptist that would later emerge onto the page of history as the Jerusalem Church.

The ink of the GJW and the signature of Hans-Ulrich Laukamp

HERE'S HOPING: Origins of 'Gospel of Jesus's Wife' Begin to Emerge (Owen Jarus, LiveScience).

The truth may be finally emerging about the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife," a highly controversial papyrus suggesting that some people, in ancient times, believed Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. New research on the papyrus' ink points to the possibility that it is authentic, researchers say, while newly obtained documents may shed light on the origins of the business-card-sized fragment.

[...]

If the tests show the ink to be ancient, that is interesting, but it doesn't necessarily prove anything. Ancient ink sometimes survives in inkwells and such (see the second update to the post). Add distilled water and you have ancient ink.

This new modern paleographic evidence is potentially important:

After searching public databases in Florida a Live Science reporter uncovered seven signatures signed by Laukamp between 1997 and 2001 on five notarized documents. Anyone can search these databases and download these documents. These signatures can be compared with the signature recording the sale of the Gospel of Jesus's Wife — providing another way to verify or disprove the story of how the "gospel" made its way to Harvard.

And this (for context see the article and this post) strikes me as a very unconvincing argument:

King objected to this conclusion in her Biblical Archaeology Review letter, noting that the John fragment could have been copied in ancient times, long after Lycopolitan went extinct, from a text that had similar line breaks.

But this is more interesting:

"In our first exploration, we did state that the inks used for the two documents of interest [the John papyrus and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife] were quite different. The more recent results do confirm this observation strongly," Yardley told Live Science.

We'll have to see what the peer-reviewed publications have to say. As it stands, the consensus is very much that the Gospel of Jesus' Wife fragment is a modern forgery and many arguments have been advanced to support that conclusion. If Professor King or anyone else want to show otherwise, those arguments will all need to be addressed.

As I've said before, it's always possible that we won the lottery this time and the fragment is genuine. But I don't like to play the lottery.

Background here with many, many links. On the above story, see also Mark Goodacre's NT Blog: The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: A Call for Closure. Guest post by Andrew Bernhard.

Qumran as a meat processing plant?

BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Although de Vaux Was a Divine, He Was Not Infallible

An example of de Vaux’s fallibility is still conspicuously visible at Qumran.

By David Stacey
Field Archaeologist (1975-1987), Jericho Excavations
August 2015

The 2013 book that Dr. Stacey mentions is noted here, with links to additional posts on his counter-narrative work on the archaeology of Qumran.

Interview with Helen Bond

ADVICE FOR FUTURE BIBLICAL SCHOLARS: Student and Scholar Spotlight: Dr. Helen K. Bond (Daniel N. Gullotta). Professor Bond offers lots of good advice for PhD students in this interview.

Palmyra's Temple of Baal destroyed

PALMYRA WATCH: Islamic State destroys temple at Palmyra ruins in Syria (AP).

The Daily Mail (JAY AKBAR and TOM WYKE) also covers the story, with more photos and lots of additional background on recept ISIS archaeological depredations in the Middle East:

ISIS destroy ancient temple in Palmyra using dynamite as jihadi group continue their destruction of Syria's heritage

• ISIS thugs used dynamite to destroy the ancient temple of Baalshamin
  
• The beautifully preserved temple had been there for nearly 2,000 years
  
• The news comes after the demolition of the ancient Mar Elian monastery

An old post on the archaeology of Palmyra is here with links. And much more on Palmyra and its recent fate is here here and here and links. For more on the assault of ISIS on the past and its caretakers follow the links in those posts and see also the (immediately preceding) related post here.

Report of another archaeologist killed in Syria

COUNTERPUNCH: Two More ‘EverySyrian’ Heroes Murdered While Protecting Our Shared Cultural Heritage (FRANKLIN LAMB).

Curating antiquities or attending international conferences on archaeology have become capital offenses, according to some who claim to be “religious purists.” Two more Syrian nationalists who have served all of us by protecting and preserving our global cultural heritage in this cradle of civilization were murdered within the past two weeks, just six days apart.

Qassim Abdullah Yehya 37, and Khaled al-Assad 83, were two of the 14 committed professionals serving their country and all of humanity through current and past associations with Syria’s renowned Directorate General of Antiquities & Museums (DGAM). As with a dozen of their DGAM colleagues before them, Mssrs. Yehya and al-Assad have also [sic; add "been" - JRD] murdered in the line of duty since the March 2011 Syrian crisis erupted. According to today’s latest UN statistics, more than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives, utterly devastating their families and loved ones, over the past 53 months of nearly unimaginable carnage.

[...]

According to Dr. Lamb, Qassim Abdullah Yehya was killed in August by "rebels near Douma, a close-in eastern Gouta superb of Damascus." No further information about them is given. The article also contains further details on the death of Khaled al-Assad. Dr. Lamb appears to be in a position to know this sort of information, but I have no verification at this point.

Related post here. More on the murder of Khaled al-Assad by ISIS is here and links.

Sebastia

ARCHAEOLOGICAL POLITICS: At ancient Israel’s capital, politics and neglect squelch historical resonance. For half a century, while quibbling over whose heritage it is, Israel and the Palestinians have both ignored a historical gem at Sebastia (Ilan Ben Zion, Times of Israel). Excerpts:

The entire saga of preserving and showcasing ancient Sebastia unfolds like a comedy of errors which could only occur in the Wild West Bank. Israel controls the park containing the ancient finds, which is in Area C, but does nothing with it. The Palestinians say they want to control it, but lack the resources to develop it. And while both sides lay claim to the site as their exclusive cultural heritage, it lies neglected, underdeveloped, unexcavated.

[...]

The PA’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities brochure avoids any mention of Israel or a Jewish connection to the site. It notes that Sebastia was “an important administrative and political regional capital during the Iron Age II and III” and was “a major urban center during the Hellenistic period,” but makes no reference to the Israelite Kingdom or the Hasmoneans.

A Palestinian description of Sebastia in a bid to have it listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site goes to even greater lengths to omit references to the city’s Jewish history, referring to it as the former “capital of the northern kingdom during the Iron Age II,” and alluding to Jewish figures such as Omri and John Hyrcanus without explanation.

On the other hand, the Nature and Parks Authority’s site makes no reference whatsoever to the village, home to 3,000 Palestinians, in which the church-turned-mosque is located, to the Church of St. John the Baptist located in the ruins, or to the former Crusader presence in Sebastia.

Mokhtarian, Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran. A new book from University of California Press.

Eyewitness accounts

YOU'D BE SURPRISED. Are Firsthand Accounts More Reliable? (Anthony Le Donne, The Jesus Blog). Josephus was an eyewitness to much of what he wrote about, but contradictory versions of the same events in his works show him not to be a particularly reliable eyewitness. It is often (not necessary always) wiser to use circumstantial evidence and multiple accounts of similar events and situations to make generalizations about the past than to trust the veracity of any single account — even an eyewitness one — of any given event.

The perils of archaeology

BARBARIANS AT THE GATES: Archaeologist's Execution Highlights Risks to History's Guardians. A scholar's brutal death at the hands of ISIS is a reminder that archaeologists can find themselves on war's front lines, protecting artifacts (Mark Strauss, National Geographic).

Asaad’s death is the latest tragedy in a war that, with each passing day, manages to push the boundaries of brutality. And it highlights an aspect of archaeology that is often lost amid accounts of the looting of antiquities: Around the world, in lawless and war-torn regions, archaeologists and museum staffers frequently risk their lives to protect artifacts that have endured for centuries.

Background here and here and links.

Review of Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit

JAMES MCGRATH: Review of Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit.

Earlier reviews of the book are noted here and here.

Those Temple treasures again

STILL LOOKING: Finding the Holy Vessels – Is NOW the Time? (Harry Moskoff, Jerusalem Post).

In the late 1920’s, a Jewish farmer discovers a pit/cave as he is plowing his field in Israel. He is startled, but manages to identify the golden items as the holy vessels as used in the First Temple of Solomon. He draws a makeshift map and travels to New York with all the information on his findings. There he tracks down a certain Rabbi Herman (from the famous book: ALL FOR THE BOSS) and asks him what to do with his new secret. The Rabbi cross-examines the farmer in order to verify the story, then sends his son (from the Mir Talmudic Yeshivah in Poland) over to a great Jewish sage living in Radin with a confidential letter and map, asking his coveted opinion on what to do next. The sage firstly confirms the site and states that the time has not yet arrived to reveal these Temple items, and in fact, all parties will forget the whole thing until many years later, on the day that this Israeli farmer dies.

The fascinating story continues. While studying in Lakewood, New Jersey, Herman’s son suddenly remembers the whole episode in Poland, including the map, and passes everything on to another prestigious member of his family. One thing led to another, and believe it or not, there are those living in Israel today that know approximately where this underground cave lies, the very same one that is part of this authentic story!

Too good to be true? Not at all.

[...]

It's a good story, but until I see some actual golden vessels from the First Temple era, it's just a story. Elements of it remind me of The Treatise of the Vessels, on which you can find many posts here and links.

That ancient Hebrew (?) seal from Russia again

AVIV BENEDIX: Mysterious Biblical Hebrew Seal Found in Russia with a Name Mentioned 17 Times in the Bible: Elyashiv – Part 1. Mr. Benedix has another Times of Israel blog post summarizing some of what can now be said about that stone seal bearing a Northwest Semitic inscription which was excavated in Russia in the grave of a first-century Sarmatian woman. Two more posts are promised. This post is a bit tongue in cheek, but the facts are correct. He concludes:

So there we have it. We can now confirm that archaeologists in Russia, excavating the 2,000 year old tomb of a female Sarmatian fighter found an ancient seal written in Ancient Hebrew inscribed with the name of an individual with the exact same name mentioned 17 times in the Holy Bible! ‘But what’, you asked cynically, is this not good enough for you? Do you want to know more? Do you want to know if there is a way of accurately dating the seal using archaeology and linguistics? Do we have any scientific or archaeological evidence or sources of the name Elyashiv? And what the Hell was an ancient seal that originated in Biblical Judea doing in Southern Russia anyways? Find out more in the near future in Part 2 and 3.

As I have already noted, I agree that the seal is probably written in Hebrew. And, yes, a close paleographic analysis could certainly determine the date to within a century and probably also its national origin.

Although I was trained as a Northwest Semitic epigrapher and I still follow the field in a general way, it is not my immediate field of interest and I don't have the time to do the work (script charts and such) myself. Like Mr. Benedix, who emphasizes that he is no expert on this material, I certainly hope someone who specializes in such inscriptions will take some serious interest in this remarkable find soon. There is at least a peer-review article begging to be written on it.

Background here, here, and here.

6 Ezra in Greek

CROSSING BORDERS: FRAGMENT OF EARLY CODEX IN GREEK: BOOK 4(6) EZRA. Greco-Roman Egypt, 4th century CE, found at Oxyrhynchus, 4 x 3 in. (10.2 x 7.6 cm), MS. Gr. bib. g. 3(P)r,. This is part of the Crossing Borders exhibition at the New York Jewish Museum. The manuscript fragment is from the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

HT Shayna Sheinfeld and Liv Ingeborg Lied on Facebook.

For more on 6 Ezra, and on this manuscript, see here. Apart from this Greek fragment, which seems to have circulated as an independent work, and a couple of early Latin quotations, the text of 6 Ezra survives only in a Latin translation attached to the Latin text of 5 Ezra and 4 Ezra as the larger work 2 Esdras. On these see this post.

Some recently discovered or little-known fragments of 4 Ezra in various languages are noted here, here, and here.

And by the way, congratulations to Dr. Sheinfeld, who recently successfully defended her PhD dissertation, "Between Destruction and Community: Crisis of Leadership in Life and Literature after 70," supervised by Gerbern Oegema at McGill University.

McCollum on Judeo-Persian, part one

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: On Judeo-Persian Language and Literature | Part One: State of the Field (Adam McCollum).

“In a two-part series, Dr. Adam McCollum addresses the possibilities for the field of Judeo-Persian language and literature. Part One addresses the state of the field and Part Two includes a helpful bibliography and four text samples.”

Past PaleoJudaica posts dealing with Judeo-Persian are here and here and links.

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.