GJW latest

TWO NEW PIECES ON THE GOSPEL OF JESUS' WIFE:

First, Andrew Bernhard piles it on with yet another blog post, this one on Bart Erhman's blog: Back to the Forgery of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.

Second, Joel Baden and Candida Moss step back to reflect on some of the larger implications of the GJW debate: Why Scientists and Scholars Can't Get Their Facts Straight. The ongoing dispute over the authenticity of a scrap of papyrus from the ancient world highlights a larger question of how history is established (The Atlantic).

It may seem as if the cottage industry of debate surrounding this papyrus—which has now produced multiple funded lab reports, a slew of scholarly articles, and innumerable blog posts—is self-sufficient to the point that each side would continue to work irrespective of whether anyone continued to argue back. But perhaps debating against an opponent isn’t really anyone’s goal here. It is the nature of scientific inquiry to find the next frontier: These latest lab reports were generated not by interest in the GJW in particular, but by the development of new technology in ink analysis more generally. And scholarship in the humanities is virtually defined by the belief that every question can be reopened for discussion, even to reinforce a preexisting consensus.

I certainly agree with the last sentence.

The arguments of King et al. for authenticity are based on the antiquity of the materials used - the papyrus and perhaps the ink. But not only is it possible in principle to use old materials for a forgery, there are cases of it having been done as far back as the nineteenth century. The forger Constantine Simonides produced a fake palimpsest (a manuscript whose writing has been erased and written over with a new text) using an authentic ancient manuscript for the upper text. He also produced a fake ancient manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew using a genuine ancient hieratic manuscript whose text he had (imperfectly, it developed) erased. I don't know of a verified case of ancient ink being used in a forgery, but we know that ancient ink has been recovered and in principle it could be reconstituted with distilled water. In any case, let's see those tests of the ink published in peer-review publications before we start worrying about them.

These considerations seem to me to weaken the arguments for authenticity based on material factors. No corresponding considerations that I know of weaken the many compelling arguments against authenticity based on literary analysis and manuscript layout. Not that one can't come up with a response individually to each argument, but the cumulative effect is to argue that in the case of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife we won the lottery. People sometimes do win the lottery, but that doesn't make for a persuasive scholarly case.

Review of Marks and Taussig (eds.), Meals in Early Judaism

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Susan Marks, Hal Taussig (ed.), Meals in Early Judaism: Social Formation at the Table. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. xii, 204. ISBN 9781137372567. $90.00.

Reviewed by Raphael Magarik, University of California, Berkeley (rmagarik@berkeley.edu)

Preview

In studies of late Second Temple and Tannaitic period Judaism, interpreting formal ritual meals has led to important arguments about cultural difference and interchange. Was the Passover Seder, for instance, heavily influenced by Hellenistic symposia, as Seigfried Stein argued, or, as Baruch Bokser claimed, did it derive primarily from the elaboration of biblical traditions in the wake of the destruction of the Second Temple?

The edited collection Meals in Early Judaism: Social Formation at the Table reframes this argument about ritual origins and influence. Its essays argue that we should adopt an expansive approach to Jewish ritual meals, comparing them to Greco-Roman parallels but also viewing rabbinic texts together with Philo as components of a broader culture. Meals in Early Judaism also shifts the focus of ritual study from text to context. Rituals are embodied, physical processes which happen in specific times and places, the authors argue. Studying them as such contributes to our understanding of how early Jews used meals to construct their social identities.

[...]

Kabbalah 33 (2015)

H-JUDAIC: TOC: new Kabbalah studies. KABBALAH: JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF JEWISH MYSTICAL TEXTS, VOLUME 33 (2015) 320 pages. Good stuff.

Syriac words for rocky places where monks live

SYRIAC WATCH: Where do solitary monks live? Or, how to name various rocky places in Syriac (Adam McCollum, hmmlorientalia blog). It's good to know these things.

Mesopotamian chronicles

AWOL: Mesopotamian chronicles. Livius pages, now updated. Ancient Mesopotamian chronicles are sometimes of interest for ancient Judaism and ancient Israel, for example, here.

Free book on the Coptic LXX

ALIN SUCIU: Volume in Honour of Peter Nagel. For you, special deal!

Review of Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS: Marcion and the Ideology of Texts – By Judith Lieu. Judith Lieu on Dieter Roth’s The Text of Marcion’s Gospel

On this account Marcion’s literary activity is little more than a curiosity, perhaps of rather less interest than the newly-found or rediscovered other Gospels that have attracted scholarly and popular attention. But suppose, however, that rather than being a corrupt version of (canonical) Luke, Marcion’s Gospel was in fact an earlier precursor to it, perhaps producing the corollary that canonical Luke was to some extent a corrective to it. ...

Down the rabbit hole of Marcion. Fascinating stuff.

Conference on ancient Babylonian medical knowledge

H-JUDAIC: Conf: Medical Knowledge from Ancient Babylonia to Talmudic Babylonia. In Jerusalem on Sunday, September 20th, 2015.

Review of Studia Philonica Annual XXVI

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

David T. Runia, Gregory E. Sterling (ed.), Studia Philonica Annual: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, Volume XXVI. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014. Pp. ix, 274. ISBN 9781628370195. $51.95.

Reviewed by Matthew Kraus, University of Cincinnati (matthew.kraus@uc.edu)

Table of Contents

The Studia Philonica Annual celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary last November, a fitting indication of the flourishing state of Philonic studies and a far cry from the short-lived and less polished Studia Philonica of the 1970s. The annotated (2011) and provisional (2012-2014) bibliographies of works directly or significantly addressing Philo and eight book reviews are preceded by eight articles. The articles reflect a range of interests: philosophical/theological issues, Philo’s patristic Nachleben, and a Special Section on non-biblical Hellenistic Jewish and non-Jewish sources. The conceptual and methodological sophistication of these articles appears throughout.

[...]

Related posts here and here.

Is the GJW debate over?

ONE HOPES: The End of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Forgery Debate (Andrew Bernhard, NT Blog). I've been of the view that the GJW has been conclusively debunked for a long time, but a few still seem to want to keep the debate going, which is their prerogative. We'll see.

Background here with many links.

Of cows, doors, and Nazirites

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Do Cows Speak? And Other Problems of the Nazirite Vow. In this week’s Talmud study, debates over swearing out of pique or spite—that is, in the wrong frame of mind.

Why would a Jew decide to become a nazirite? Naziriteship involves some significant sacrifices—a person who has taken the vow cannot cut his hair or drink wine—so, it’s natural to assume that it is an act of exceptional piety: You become a nazirite because you want to take up a heavy burden on God’s behalf. In Tractate Nedarim, however, the Talmud showed that people often took vows for less elevated reasons—out of pique or spite, or a rash desire to punish someone. And the same holds true, we learned this week in Tractate Nazir, of nazirite vows. Take, for instance, the rather odd scenario envisioned in Nazir 10a: “If one said: This cow said: I am hereby a nazirite if I stand up; or if he said: This door says: I am hereby a nazirite if I am opened, Beit Shammai say he is a nazirite, and Beit Hillel say he is not a nazirite.”

What does this enigmatic mishna mean? ...

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

An attempt to revive the half-shekel tax

THE OLD BECOMES NEW AGAIN? Modern Revival of Lost Biblical Commandment Paving the Way for the Third Jewish Temple (Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Breaking Israel News).

“Everyone who is numbered, from twenty years old and over, shall give the contribution to the Lord. The rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than the half shekel, when you give the contribution to the Lord to make atonement for yourselves.” (Exodus 30:15)

Biblical commandments not practiced for thousands of years are slowly returning to life. One such commandment, known as the Machatsit HaShekel, or half-shekel, is making a comeback thanks to a simple Jewish tailor in Jerusalem.

The half-shekel, one of the more obscure commandments found in the Bible, played an important role in Jewish history. Every year, each Jewish male over the age of 20 was obligated to give a compulsory donation of half of a shekel (Exodus 30:15). Regardless of status or wealth, the same amount was given by each man. Since it is forbidden by Torah law to actually count Jews, counting the coins took place of a national census. The half-shekels that were collected were used as a form of tax to support the Jewish Temple.

The nation of Israel continued to observe the commandment even after the First Jewish Temple was destroyed until it was outlawed by Roman Emperor Hadrian in the year 135 CE. Even Jews who lived outside of Israel continued to donate the half-shekel, despite the Roman Senate forbidding the export of gold and silver.

Reuven Prager, a tailor specializing in Biblically-styled clothing, is responsible for today’s revival of the lost commandment of the half-shekel. Prager’s passion for Biblical authenticity led him to investigate the commandment of the half-shekel. Being a practical-minded artisan, he began to mint his own half-shekel in March 1997 with a run of 1,000 coins. Today, Prager continues to mint a new half-shekel coin every year with a new design based on a Temple vessel or tool that has actually been reproduced.

[...]

Just for the record, I oppose any construction projects that involve tearing down ancient monuments or excavation on the Temple Mount. Even any archaeological exploration of the area should wait until we have non-intrusive and non-destructive technologies to do the work.

There is more on the ancient half-shekel coin and its tax use here, here, and here. But this turned out not to be relevant. Incidentally, the half-shekel tax is mentioned in the New Testament in Matthew 17:24-27.

Hurtado on first-century Christian languages and texts

LARRY HURTADO: On Linguistic and Textual Complexity in First-Century Christianity. The first report I've seen on BNTC 2015. If you find others, please let me know.

More from Bernhard on the GJW

ANDREW BERNHARD: The Forger and the “Translator” (The NT Blog).

Since the recent release of the “translation” that the owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife gave Karen King and the revelation that it is directly dependent on the English of Grondin’s Interlinear, a few questions have been asked about whether someone might have used Grondin’s Interlinear to translate an authentic ancient papyrus fragment. The answer is, quite simply, “No.” The person responsible for the owner’s “translation” must have been involved in forging the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus fragment (either as the actual forger or by working very closely with the person who was).

[...]

Background here and here and links.

More from Lied on Syriac 4 Ezra

LIV INGEBORG LIED: 4 Ezra in Syriac lectionary manuscripts – three points for further reflection.

I noted the pre-publication of Alin Suciu's article on Copto-Arabic 4 Ezra here. More from Professor Lied on 4 Ezra in Syriac lectionaries etc. is noted here and here.

Papyrus Amherst 63

EPIGRAPHIC NEWS FROM THE COMMENTATOR:

Dean Koller on Sabbatical
Yeshiva College Associate Dean Aaron Koller went on Sabbatical this year as his time in the administration came to an end. After what he dubbed as “fulfilling but consuming administrative work at YU,” Dr. Koller is in Israel for the year with his family. Primarily, he will be serving as the Lady Davis Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, where he will be teaching a graduate seminar on the history of the alphabet in the Department of Hebrew Language. He was also granted a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship at the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, where he will be preparing an edition of part of Papyrus Amherst 63, an ancient Aramaic text written in Demotic (Egyptian) script. (This fascinating but challenging text was deciphered decades ago by Prof. Richard Steiner, professor emeritus at the Revel Graduate School, but has never been fully published.) ...

Papyrus Amherst 63 is an extraordinarily important and extraordinarily difficult text that merits much more attention than it has yet received. The papyrus seems to have come from Elephantine and is the work of Aramaic-speaking worshippers of the god Betel (Bethel). It includes three Israelite hymns, one of which is a Canaanite version of Psalm 20, and a legendary account of an unsuccessful revolt of Babylon against Assyria around 650 BCE. There have been efforts to decipher some of it, but a great deal of work remains to be done. I knew that Professor Tawny Holm of Penn State was working on an edition, but this is the first I have heard of Dean Koller's work. I look forward to seeing more published on this remarkable text.

Cross-file under Aramaic Watch, although the papyrus also includes material in Hebrew/Canaanite.

Church mosaic looted in the Galilee

ARRESTS: Arab Thieves Damage Ancient Church Mosaic. Several Galilee Arabs were arrested after they were caught trying to dismantle a sixth-century mosaic floor from an ancient church (Moshe Cohen, Arutz Sheva). There were large pieces of the mosaic in the trunk of the vehicle of the arrested suspects.

More on the D.C. Museum of the Bible

THE GREEN COLLECTION: Critics call it evangelical propaganda. Can the Museum of the Bible convert them? (Noah Charney, Washington Post).

To many in the scholarly community, the museum seems like an oversize piece of evangelical claptrap. Some academics and curators also worry about the origins of its collection — the more than 40,000 biblical artifacts were amassed in a remarkably short time by Hobby Lobby President Steve Green. But the museum is trying to pitch itself as deserving of its spot. Last month, it inked a deal to display a selection of objects from the Israeli government’s eminent Antiquities Authority. And it has hired David Trobisch, a prominent liberal academic, to head its collection. It will be up to Trobisch to win over skeptics and transform this intriguing assembly of artifacts into an institution that brings a bit of church to a secular state.

At the heart of the Museum of the Bible is the Green Collection, a huge, disjointed assemblage that includes pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a Gilgamesh tablet, Elvis Presley’s Bible and about 850 manuscripts, 12 of which are in Hebrew and come from China’s Jewish population. A third of the material may be considered Judaica, related to Judaism and the Old Testament, including torahs that survived the Spanish inquisition and the Nazis. Many of the objects are more important than beautiful, more interesting than spectacular.

I am reserving judgment on the museum until I see what it does once it is actually built and in operation.

More on the Museum of the Bible and on the Green Collection is here and many links.

ISIS and the Waqf

DISTURBING PARALLELS: ISIS to Temple Mount - 'Barbaric' Islamist War on Antiquities. At annual Jerusalem conference, world experts lament ISIS funding war via illegal antiquities trade, Waqf barbaric Temple Mount destruction (Eliran Baruch, Arutz Sheva).

Thursday saw the 16th annual conference of archaeological experts convene in Jerusalem's City of David.

Entitled "From Jerusalem to Babylon and Back," the conference had an extra significance this year with the unprecedented, public destruction of ancient antiquities by the brutal Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group in both Iraq and Syria.

[...]

There is a video interview with Matthew Bogdanos and Dr. Donald Sanders. Background on the assault of ISIS on the past and its caretakers is here and here and links.

And there is also this:

Also at the conference was leading Israeli archaeologist and Israel Prize winner Dr. Gabi Barkai, who noted that destruction of non-Muslim antiquities by Islamist extremists was not confined to ISIS.

The Islamic Waqf authorities on the Temple Mount were mounting an equally "barbaric" campaign to destroy any Jewish artifacts which conflict with their narrative of the site as a Muslim one.

"The Muslims are responsible for the destruction that's going on on the Temple Mount - a barbaric destruction," he said. "The Waqf is destroying everything, even Muslim antiquities, just like ISIS."

Background on Dr. Barkai (Barkay), his Temple Mount Sifting Project, and the damaging illicit digging by the Waqf on the Temple Mount is here and links.

UPDATE: Related, a quick overview by Noam Matas of the Temple Mount excavations: Israel’s Top Archaeological Sites- Temple Mount Excavations (Jewish Press). Cross-file under Temple Mount Watch.

A chapel of the first Roman Christians?

ARAMAIC WATCH: Roman Christians’ first church found in Diyarbakır, southeast Turkey. Excavations at the ancient Roman military outpost of Zerzevan Castle in the Çınar district of Turkey’s southeastern province of Diyarbakır have uncovered a chapel belonging to the very first Romans who converted to Christianity (BGNNews.com).

“We can say it’s the first place of worship from when the Romans transitioned from polytheism to Christianity,” Dicle University Archeology Faculty Assistant Professor Aytaç Coşkun said referring to the recently uncovered underground chapel in Diyarbakır’s Zerzevan Castle.

Pointing out that they discovered several crosses as well as Aramaic script on the chapel’s walls, Coşkun says they have invited an Aramaic expert to decipher the writing.

“It seems they also made a baptismal pool out of the parent rock,” Coşkun added. “It is a rather large baptismal pool. Since the first converts to Christianity were older, they built a large baptismal pool outside.”

“This chapel was built when the number of Christian converts rose,” he said. “A larger church where soldiers and civilians could all worship was built on the same spot about 150 years later.”

[...]

I don't know what the evidence is for the extraordinary claim made in the first sentence of this article, but I am skeptical. It does not help that no absolute date for the earlier discoveries is given, or for the church that was built "about 150 years later." The end of the article does specify that the castle was still in use up to 639 CE, but that doesn't clarify the dates of the earlier discoveries. But in any case, I would like to hear more about the Aramaic inscriptions (if that's what they are) on the walls of the underground chapel.

Gog, Magog, and the Possessor of Two Horns

LEGENDARY NAMES THAT KEEP COMING BACK: A wall of iron built to keep out Gog and Magog. The two giants in London's Lord Mayor's Show surprisingly figure in the Koran too (Christopher Howse, The Telegraph).

The 14ft-high wicker figures of the giants Gog and Magog are being spruced up for the Lord Mayor’s procession, which they will lead in a few weeks’ time.

Sticklers insist that they should be called Magog and Corineus, placing their confidence in the 12th-century account by Geoffrey of Monmouth of the fight between those two heroic figures. But the City of London giants are carefully labelled Gog and Magog.

The names are found in the Bible, though it is unforthcoming about their nature. “Son of man,” says the prophet Ezekiel, “direct your face against Gog, of the land of Magog.”

Gog and Magog first appear in Ezekiel 38-39.

The last book of the Bible, Revelation, takes up the names when it says that at the end of the world, after Satan has been bound for 1,000 years, he will be loosed and will “deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog”.

Revelation 20:7-8.

What surprised me was to find Gog and Magog in the Koran. Muslims regard the Koran as the uncreated word of God. That need not present difficulties for the tales found in Sura 18 of the book, even though they bear similarities to folklore from other sources.

Sura 18 narrates briefly the travels of Dhu l-Qarnayn. The name means Two Horned, but it does not refer to Moses (who is often depicted with horns of power). Dhu l-Qarnayn has rather been taken to mean Alexander the Great. The name is explained in a narrative found in a sixth-century Syriac version and known as the Alexander Romance. “Thou has caused horns to grown upon my head,” Alexander says to God, “so that I may crush the nations of the world.”

Actually the phrase "possessor of two horns" comes originally from the biblical book of Daniel and it seems to be applied to Alexander through a mixup, or at least some lateral thinking. See this post for details. The Alexander Romance, of which I was not aware, may be the missing link between Daniel and the Qur'an.

Keep reading for the story about Gog and Magog in the Qur'an.

Review of Avidar, Ictus

BOOK REVIEW: A Jewish Slave in the Roman Empire. The unique relationship between a Galilean Jew and a third-century Roman officer is the focal point in Eli Avidar's new novel (Yaron Avitov, Haaretz).

Ictus,” by Eli Avidar, Prague Publishing House (Hebrew), 339 pages, 79 shekels

[...]

One would expect that an Israeli-authored novel about the Roman era would engage in the Jewish revolt against the Romans, but Avidar chooses to veer away from that subject: His first novel takes place in the Roman Empire at the start of the third century C.E., about 130 years after the Temple’s destruction. The rebellion that takes place in this novel is that of the Dacians and Carpis, two tribes from which sprang the Romanian people of our times. The earlier revolt might have attracted more of the Hebrew reader’s attention, but in this case revolt is not the main story. The core of “Ictus” is the relationship between the Jewish slave and his Roman master, an officer in the Legion, and the book succeeds in attracting our interest and enlivening a period that Hebrew literature barely touches.

[...]

“Ictus” delves into the relationship between a Jewish slave named Yoir and the Roman officer Yarenis, a brave fighter who is deft with both sword and pen – and who, with the help of his astute slave, manages to rise to greatness and teach innovative fighting techniques that differ from those formerly practiced in Rome. The techniques are designed to respect the dignity of the enemy without seeking to humiliate or torture him. For instance, Yarenis instructs his troops how to put their enemies to death with a single thrust of the sword – a thrusting maneuver called Ictus.

[...]

Chaldeans in El Cajon

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: New Documentary Explores Chaldean Experience in El Cajon (Times of San Diego). The article and video do not mention it, but Chaldeans speak a modern Eastern dialect of Aramaic. The expatriate Chaldean community in Southern California has also been mentioned here. They also have a large expatriate community in Michigan, on which more here, here, here, here, here, here, and links.

August Biblical Studies Carnival

DUST: The August Carnival for Biblical Studies CXIV (Bob MacDonald).

Azzoni and Stolper, "The Aramaic Epigraph ns(y)h ̇"

AWOL: New in ARTA: From the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, 5: The Aramaic Epigraph Ns(y)h on Elamite Persepolis Fortification Documents. Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch." Lots more on the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project and its tempestuous political history in recent years is here and links.

Betsworth, "Children in the Gospels"

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Children in the Gospels

Often, 21st century people think that Jesus is saying that we need to become innocent like children or just have faith like children. But his first century audience would have thought about the vulnerability, dependence, and marginal status of children in their world. They wouldn’t have thought of an idealized view of children and childhood, but rather that Jesus was telling them to become among those of low status.

See Also: Children in Early Christian Narratives (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).

By Sharon Betsworth
Director of the Wimberly School of Religion
Oklahoma City University
September 2015

Strange on Shikhin

ASOR BLOG: Shikhin Between Jews and Romans (James Strange).

We can now say with great confidence that Shikhin is the site of the northern lamp workshop, or one such workshop. This fact opens up whole new set of questions, not only about Jewish identity and commerce, but also about the migration of Judeans northward as refugees after these two devastating wars with Rome. The idea of refugees, in turn, raises questions about the stability of the Galilee and economic stresses born from the upheavals of war. Preserving, strengthening, and expressing identity through material culture, food, language, and styles of dress (among other things) would have enhanced stability. Material culture is virtually the only one of these left for us to find, but it still speaks powerfully about the ability of Galilean Jews to hold on to their identity in the wake of catastrophe.

Satlow on the carbonized Leviticus scroll

MICHAEL SATLOW: The Ein Gedi Scroll: What We Could Potentially, Maybe Learn. It may not have been a Torah scroll for public recitation.

Background here.

Perrin, The Dynamics of Dream-Vision Revelation in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls

NEW BOOK FROM VANDENHOECK AND RUPRECHT:

Andrew B. Perrin
The Dynamics of Dream-Vision Revelation in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls

With a foreword by Florentino García Martínez

1. Edition 2015
312 pages
ISBN 978-3-525-55094-6
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Journal of Ancient Judaism. Supplements -

99,99 €

Andrew B. Perrin contributes to the ongoing debate over whether the Aramaic texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls are a cohesive corpus or accidental anthology. Paramount among the literary topoi that hint at an inherent unity is the pervasive usage of the dream-vision in a constellation of at least twenty writings.
The author demonstrates that the literary convention of the dream-vision was employed for scriptural exegesis, to endorse particular understandings of the origins and functions of the priesthood, and as an ex eventu historiographical mechanism for revealing aspects or all of world history.

HT Shayna Sheinfeld on Facebook.

Let's just stick to "GJW"

I DON'T THINK THIS NEW TITLE WILL FLY: The Gospel of Grondin’s Interlinear (The Papyrus Formerly Known as the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”) (James McGrath, Exploring Our Matrix). Not that it isn't accurate. I kind of like the second part: "The Papyrus Formerly Known as the 'Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.'" But it's a bit wordy, even though the concept seems to have worked for Prince.

Jeremiah and the bullae

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Jeremiah, Prophet of the Bible, Brought Back to Life. Clay bullae from the City of David, Jerusalem, provide new evidence for Biblical figures. This is an old article, but I didn't note it the first time around and it says it has been updated.

A "bulla" is a clay impression of a stone seal. These often contained people's names and had the legal function of signatures in ancient Israel. More on the exhibition of the two bullae at Armstrong College is here and links. As noted in that post, these bullae were recovered in a controlled excavation. The "Baruch bullae," which refer to Jeremiah's scribe and assistant, were not and are probably forgeries (see here and here and links).

The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library

ASOR BLOG: Hill Museum & Manuscript Library: Working to Preserve the Manuscript Heritage of Syria and Iraq (Columba Stewart, OSB). And also at the ASOR Blog: Hill Museum & Manuscript Library: Manuscripts Image Gallery.

Some past posts on the important work of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library are here, here, here, here, and here. Also Adam McCollum, lead cataloger of Eastern Christian manuscripts at the HMML, blogs at the hmmlorientalia blog and PaleoJudaica often links to his posts.

Podcast on Maggie Anton

WALTER BINGHAM: All About Rashi's Daughters. One Person's View of Rashi's Life and Times. (Arutz Sheva). Includes an edited (but still over 40-minutes long) public address by Ms. Anton.

More on Maggie Anton and her novels about late-antique and medieval Jewish women is here and links.

McGrath on Carrier's mythicism

BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Mythicism and the Making of Mark

Carrier’s approach allows him to say that every single thing he finds in the relevant sources is “exactly what we’d expect” if mythicism is true – “as symbolic myth, every oddity is explained, and indeed expected.” This is because “they made this up” is compatible with everything that any text says – especially if one excludes in advance the possibility of using traditional critical methods and criteria for determining that some details may reflect actual historical events.


By James F. McGrath
Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature
Butler University
August 2015

McGrath invokes Karl Popper: "the appropriate scholarly response to this approach is to set it aside as 'not even wrong.'"

Zenobia weighs in, plus more Palmyra photos

PALMYRA WATCH: Happier Days in Palmyra. This post is dedicated to the memory of Dr Khaled al-Assad, a good and gentle man (Judith Weingarten, Zenobia).

Also, many more photos of Palmyra: The Photo Archive of the Syrian-Norwegian research project Palmyrena: City, Hinterland and Caravan Trade between Orient and Occident (AWOL).

Background here and links.

Shanks on the James Ossuary

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Is the “Brother of Jesus” Inscription on the James Ossuary a Forgery? Hershel Shanks doesn't think so.

Lots of background on the James Ossuary and its inscription is here and oh so many links!

Sheinfeld dissertation

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Dissertation Spotlight: Shayna Sheinfeld.

Sheinfeld, Shayna. Crises of Leadership in the Post-Destruction Apocalypses 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. Ph.D. Dissertation. McGill University, 2015.

Noted earlier here.

BNTC 2015

I'M OFF TO EDINBURGH FOR THE BRITISH NEW TESTAMENT CONFERENCE. For the first time in many years I am neither chairing a session nor presenting a paper. I will still be attending the New Testament and Second Temple Judaism Seminar, which has a very good lineup of papers scheduled. Otherwise, I plan to devote myself fully to "networking."

This year's Twitter hashtag seems to be #bntc2015.

Last year's BNTC posts are collected here.

I have pre-posted a lot of things over the next few days, so do keep coming back as usual. If I can, I will try to post news items now and again, but my time for blogging will be limited.

Sarcophagus at Ashkelon

DISCOVERY: Unique 1,800-Year-Old Sarcophagus Found at Ashkelon Building Site. An extremely rare sarcophagus has been uncovered at a building site in Ashkelon (Hana Levi Julian, The Jewish Press).

The find is among the rarest sarcophagi ever discovered in Israel. The coffin, made of hard limestone, weighs approximately two tons, is 2.5 meters long, and is sculpted on all sides. A life-size figure of a person is carved on the lid of the sarcophagus.

The unique artifact was repeatedly struck by a tractor in different places, scarring the stone and damaging the decorations sculpted by an artist on its sides. The irreparable damage was caused by the contractors who encountered the impressive sarcophagus during the course of their work.

They decided to hide it, pulling it out of the ground with a tractor while aggressively damaging it, and then concealing it beneath a stack of sheet metal and boards. They poured a concrete floor in the lot so as to conceal any evidence of the existence of the antiquities site.

A couple of contractors and others could be in a good deal of legal trouble over this.

Hughes on the Birmingham Qur'an fragments

MARGINALIA: MRBlog | The Birmingham Quran and the Palimpsest of History (Aaron W. Hughes). An essay that encourages us not to accept over-interpretation of the evidence in any direction. One comment:

Third, it should not be a political act to claim that parts of the Quran — given the two points above — might well have predated Muhammad. We do not yet have that evidence, despite what the “experts,” whom the media frequently drags out in front of us, say. Yet I see no reason to think that what became the final version of the Quran — again comparing it to the Old and New Testaments — recycled earlier materials and oral traditions. One has to be able to say this and not be accused of “undermining” Islam.

As it stands, the flow of thought in this paragraph does not work very well. I wonder if the word "not" was accidentally left out before "to think that." That is the sentence I would agree with: there is no reason not to think that the Qur'an recycled earlier materials and oral traditions. In fact there is good reason to think that it did. But, as I observed earlier (as a non-specialist), the style of the Qur'an seems very uniform to me, which makes me think that earlier traditions were throughly reworked and re-thought when they were used rather than being copied verbatim. For more on the story, see that post and follow the links.

Palmyra photos and al-Asaad obituary

PALMYRA WATCH: The female solo backpacker who braved civil war to capture breathtaking images of Syria's magnificent Palmyra temples, now being systematically destroyed by ISIS ( BECKY PEMBERTON, Daily Mail)

• Traveller Teo Jioshvili, 29, was determined to photograph Syria's magnificent ancient city of Palmyra
  
• She captured sites such as Temple of Bel and Baal Shamin, which have been destroyed by ISIS
  
• The traveller hopes her photographs will serve as a record of the heritage in Syria that's being wiped out

Despite the outbreak of civil war, traveller Teo Jioshvili was determined to photograph Syria's magnificent ancient city of Palmyra - a Unesco site now being systemically destroyed by Isis.

The 29-year-old, from Georgia, visited the site in 2010 and 2011 as fighting broke out, despite the warnings. Most people, after seeing these images, will be glad that she was so brave.

[...]

Yes.

And from the Telegraph: Khaled al-Asaad, curator - obituary. Scholar and director of antiquities at Palmyra in Syria

Background here with many links.

Bogdanos on ISIS and antiquities

COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Artifact rescuer says world must protect antiquities. US Marine Corps colonel says Mideast archaeological sites must be defended from extremists like the Islamic State (Daniel Estrin, AP).

Background here and here and links.

Col. Bogdanos is well known for his earlier work regarding Iraqi antiquities after the Iraq War (see here and here - the links have rotted but there are excerpts). He has also written more recently about the new situation with ISIS (see here).

Iraqi Jewish archive in L.A.

STILL GOING ON: Custody battle over rare Iraqi-Jewish historical documents (Tom Tugend, Jewish Press).

On Sept. 4, an exhibition including 23 of the recovered items, along with videos of the painstaking restoration effort, will open at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda.

The 2,000-square-foot exhibition, “Discovery and Recovery: Preserving Iraqi Jewish Heritage,” will continue through Nov. 15 at the Orange County site.

Among the show’s highlights are a Hebrew Bible with commentaries published in 1568, a Babylonian Talmud from 1793, a hand-lettered and decorated haggadah, and a lunar calendar in Hebrew and Arabic.

One section of the exhibition shows how the moldy mass of material was saved by the National Archives experts. “Every page had to be vacuumed, freeze-dried, preserved and digitized,” Hamburg said. On the Sept. 4 opening day, Hamburg will give a free public lecture at 10 a.m. at the Nixon Library.

The politics of dealing with the Iraqi Jewish archive have not grown less complicated over the years. This article covers local politics in the Los Angeles area, plus this report on the current views of the State Department:

The Journal asked the State Department for its view, and the same day received a lengthy response from spokesman Michael Lavallee, who made the following points:

As agreed to by the Iraqi government, the Iraqi Jewish Archive (IJA) is in the temporary custody of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for conservation, preservation, digitization and exhibition in the United States.

In May 2014, the Iraqi government extended IJA’s stay in the United States to allow its exhibition in more cities. After its Nixon Library display, the exhibit is due at the Jewish Museum of Florida in Miami Beach in December.

There are no definite plans for subsequent exhibits, but the United States “remains committed to the return of the IJA to Iraq, as per prior agreement,” Lavallee stated.

To the Journal’s question regarding the security of the IJA material should it be returned to Iraq, Lavallee responded diplomatically: “We will continue to partner with the Government of Iraq in countering the threat that [Islamic State] poses to the Iraqi people and heritage. Iraqi forces continue to make progress against [Islamic State] and it is impossible to speculate what the security situation would be at the point in the future when the collection would return to Iraq.”

Background here with links going back to the recovery of the archive in 2003. I have given my own thoughts at that link and here and here, and I have nothing to add at present.

Resurrecting antiquities with 3D printing?

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: 3D Printers Could Save ISIS-destroyed Treasures, Archaeologists Believe. Institute of Digital Archaeology announces $3.1 million project aimed at flooding Middle East with 3D cameras. and cataloging items endangered by jihadist militants (Haaretz).

A team of archaeologists from the Oxford-based Institute of Digital Archaeology have launched a project aimed at preserving Middle Eastern historical sites at risk from jihadist militants based largely on 3D printing.

According a report from British daily The Times, experts behind the $3.1 million project hope to "flood the Middle East with 3D cameras" and catelogue every threatened item, including but not limited to artifacts, buildings and monuments

The archaeologists believe they can recreate and reconstruct items  destroyed by militants with the high-tech yet relatively new printing technology.

[...]

This would be a poor substitute, but I suppose better than nothing.

Background here and links.

On to the Nazirites

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Tracing the Way of the Nazirites. An ancient vow—no wine, no hair-cutting, no contact with the dead—and its demands and sins are the subject of the new tractate in our ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study.

Last week, Daf Yomi readers began a new section of the Talmud, Tractate Nazir, which is entirely dedicated to a particular kind of vow—the nazirite vow. Naziriteship is an ancient Jewish institution, established in the Bible in Numbers 6, where it is stated that a person who vows to become a nazirite is subject to three restrictions: He or she cannot drink wine (or anything “that is made of the grape-vine, from the pressed grapes even to the grapestone”), cut his or her hair, or come into contact with a dead body. (The prohibitions are similar to those binding on priests, so a nazirite can be seen as a kind of temporary, voluntary priest.) A person usually becomes a nazirite for a fixed period of time; when the term expires he brings a particular kind of sacrifice, then cuts off his hair and burns it in the sacrificial fire.

Before we even begin reading the tractate, however, its placement in Seder Nashim raises an obvious question. This order of the Talmud is supposed to include laws dealing specifically with women and sexual relations. But there is nothing gender-specific about naziriteship; men and women are equally able to become nazirites. This anomaly bothered the rabbis themselves, so much so that the very first issue raised in the Gemara, in Nazir 2a, has to do with the placement of the tractate ...

Related post here. Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

"Vagina" in Hebrew

EQUAL TIME: How the Prophet Isaiah Gave Hebrew Its Word for Vagina. If St Jerome and other experts are right, Israelis may have thought that 'pot' meant vulva, but actually they were saying cup. Or forehead. Or maybe something else (Elon Gilad, Haaretz).

But the “official” word, used in sex-ed classes, textbooks and in awkward conversations with the gynecologist, is pot. With a long "o" (as in "note").

Technically that means “vulva” but it has come to be used more generally to mean “lady parts”. For this, Israelis can thank the Prophet Isaiah and his obtuse prophesies. That is the only place the word 'pot' appears in the bible.

But there's some question as to what it means.

The Lord will do something

Out of the eight Hebrew words in Isaiah 3:17, only five are clear.

An honest reading admitting our ignorance would render the verse as “The Lord will do something to the tops of the heads of the daughters of Zion and The Lord will do something else to their somethings.” The last of these blanks is the noun pot.

This ambiguity led to quite divergent interpretations and translations over the ages, starting with translators into Greek and Aramaic, who simply glossed over the words they didn’t know.

After a long and convoluted history of interpretation, this became the "official" word for "vulva" in 1939.

Mr. Gilad's parallel article on words for "penis" is noted here. Related posts in the link there and also here.

Cave art at Petra

NABATEAN WATCH: Discovery of ancient cave paintings in Petra stuns art scholars. Exquisite artworks hidden under 2,000 years of soot and grime in a Jordanian cave have been restored by experts from the Courtauld Institute in London (Dalya Alberge, The Guardian).

Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti.

Experts from the Courtauld Institute in London have now removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose "exceptional" artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art.

Virtually no Hellenistic paintings survive today, and fragments only hint at antiquity's lost masterpieces, while revealing little about their colours and composition, so the revelation of these wall paintings in Jordan is all the more significant. They were created by the Nabataeans, who traded extensively with the Greek, Roman and Egyptian empires and whose dominion once stretched from Damascus to the Red Sea, and from Sinai to the Arabian desert.

[...]

Three different vines, grape, ivy and bindweed – all associated with Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of wine – have been identified, while the birds include a demoiselle crane and a Palestine sunbird with luscious colours. The scenes are populated by putti-like figures, one winged child playing a flute while seated in a vine-scroll, others picking fruit and fighting off birds pecking at the grapes. The paintings are exceptional in their sophistication, extensive palette and luxurious materials, including gold leaf.

[...]

For some past posts on the Nabateans (Nabataeans) and the Nabatean (Nabataean) language, see here and links. For lots more on Petra see here and links.

Manuscript conservation with solar energy

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Disappearing Ancient Texts Could Be Saved by Solar-Powered Device (Owen Jarus, Live Science).

TORONTO — A 13th-century text recording the discoveries of a medieval polymath, a handwritten dictionary that may help decipher ancient texts, a magical text dating back hundreds of years and writings etched on palm leaves that record centuries of history. All of these and many more are in danger of being lost to the elements.

In this race against time, a team of engineers and archivists are developing a solar-powered device to safeguard historical treasures in India.

These documents are written on organic materials that become increasingly fragile over time. Exposure to humidity, sunlight and insects can ravage the texts, while storing them at temperatures that are too high or low can speed up the documents' decay.

What librarians, archivists and conservators try to do is preserve the most fragile texts in areas where humidity and temperature can be easily controlled, taking them out briefly to be put on display or for study. However for facilities in the developing world this can be a problem as the energy needed to power dehumidifiers and air-conditioning equipment may not be available or affordable.

The new solar-powered device that researchers are developing may help solve this problem. The machine itself is remarkably simple: Texts are placed in an insulated container with a dehumidifier and temperature-control mechanism. Solar cells power the equipment, while batteries store power when there isn't enough sunlight.

Additionally, when conditions in the container are just right, the device will automatically power down, conserving energy so that it can automatically turn on when the humidity and temperature rise.

[...]

The examples are mostly Syriac manuscripts in Kerala. Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

Mystery "podium" in Jerusalem

IAA PRESS RELEASE: Has a 2,000 Year Old Podium Been Found in the City of David? (August 2015).

An intriguing find consisting of an impressive pyramid-shaped staircase constructed of large ashlar stones was uncovered in an archaeological excavation currently conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority. The excavation is located in the Jerusalem Walls National Park in the City of David, site of ancient Jerusalem, and is being carried out in cooperation with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the City of David Foundation.

This structure, situated alongside the 2,000 year old Second Temple stepped street, which carried pilgrims on their way from the Shiloah (Siloam) Pool to the Temple, which stood atop the Temple Mount. The street, a section of which was excavated in the past, is remarkably well-preserved and is built of enormous stone slabs. The street most likely runs above the 2,000 year old drainage channel, discovered a number of years ago, which carried rain water out of the city. It was constructed sometime in the fourth decade of the first century CE, and was one of the largest construction projects undertaken in Jerusalem during the Second Temple period. Dozens of whole pottery vessels, stone vessels and glassware were found at the foot of the pyramid-shaped staircase.

According to archaeologists Nahshon Szanton and Dr. Joe Uziel, who direct of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, "The structure exposed is unique. To date such a structure has yet to be found along the street in the numerous excavations that have taken place in Jerusalem and to the best of our knowledge outside of it. For this reason, its exact use remains enigmatic. The structure is built along the street in a place that is clearly visible from afar by passers-by making their way to the Temple. We believe the structure was a kind of monumental podium that attracted the public’s attention when walking on the city’s main street. It would be very interesting to know what was said there 2,000 years ago. Were messages announced here on behalf of the government? Perhaps news or gossip, or admonitions and street preaching – unfortunately we do not know. Bliss and Dickie, two British archaeologists who discovered a small portion of this structure about 100 years ago, mistakenly thought these were steps that led into a house that was destroyed. They would certainly be excited if they could come back today and see it completely revealed”.

We know from rabbinic sources there were “stones” that were used for public purposes during the Second Temple period. For example, one source cites the “auction block” in connection with the street: “[a master] will not set up a market stand and put them (slaves) on the auction block” (Sifra, BeHar 6). In the Mishnah and Talmud the “Stone of Claims” is mentioned as a place that existed in Jerusalem during the Second Temple period: “Our Rabbis taught: There was a Stone of Claims in Jerusalem: whoever lost an article repaired thither, and whoever found an article did likewise. The latter stood and proclaimed, and the former submitted his identification marks and received it back. And in reference to this we learnt: Go forth and see whether the Stone of Claims is covered” (Bava Metzia 28:B).

On Thursday (3.9), at the City of David Studies of Ancient Jerusalem’s 16th Annual Conference that will be open to the public, Nahshon Szanton and Dr. Joe Uziel will present their findings from the excavation and the different interpretations regarding the nature of the podium. According to them, “Given the lack of a clear archaeological parallel to the stepped-structure, the purpose of the staircase remains a mystery. It is certainly possible the rabbinical sources provide valuable information about structures, such as this, although for the time being there is no definitive proof.”

Information about the conference can be found on the City of David website: www.cityofdavid.org.il

Follow the first link above for a photo. The full press release is also posted at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. HT Joseph I. Lauer.

The Temple of Bel seems to have been leveled

PALMYRA WATCH: UN: Satellite images show Temple of Bel in Syria 'destroyed' (AP). As noted yesterday, there were conflicting reports on how badly the Temple of Bel in Palmyra had been damaged. The current satellite-image evidence indicates that the temple building and a related row of columns have been destroyed.

Background here and links.

UPDATE: The Guardian has satellite photos: The destruction of Palmyra's Temple of Bel: before and after – in pictures. Satellite images confirmed the Isis destruction of the most important historical site in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. Yes, it looks leveled to me. Just an archway is left standing.

The Qur'an before Muhammad?

THE BIRMINGHAM QUR'AN FRAGMENTS AGAIN: UK researchers say Quran fragments could predate Muhammad. Historians say carbon dating on recently discovered text could ‘destabilize’ views on who compiled the Islamic holy book, and when (Times of Israel).

Fragments of an ancient Quran discovered in Birmingham University in July may predate the prophet Muhammad, thus undermining core beliefs of Islam, UK researchers told The Times on Monday.

Scientists at the University of Oxford carbon dated the artifact and found it to have been created between 568 AD and 645 AD. Muhammad is believed to have lived between 570-632 AD. So while the dating process does not necessarily contradict Islamic tradition, it does raise the possibility that the book, or parts of it, was written before the prophet was even born, or during his infancy.


“It destabilizes, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Quran emerged,” Historian Tom Holland told the Times. “And that in turn has implications for the historicity of Muhammad and [his followers].”

Oxford’s Keith Small added: “This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Quran’s genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven.”

[...]

This article is based on one in the London Times which is not available to me. I am skeptical of this suggestion, at least for the reasons given here. In the first place, radiocarbon dating is an inexact science that only gives a range of dates and the range given for this manuscript goes to later than the lifetime of Muhammad, so there is no necessary conflict with the traditional story of the the origins of the Qur'an. Second, the new evidence could also suggest that the dates of the lifetime of Muhammad need to be adjusted rather than that some of the Qur'an was written before his time. Third, there is some reason to think that the radiocarbon dates of early Qur'an manuscripts are coming out systematically too early, in which case the issue does not arise.

I would certainly not exclude the possibility that the Qur'an incorporates earlier sources, although it seems quite stylistically uniform throughout, which would make me think that any earlier material has been reworked thoroughly when incorporated. But this is not my area of expertise and I am open to any amount of correction. But that should be on the basis of more convincing evidence than the speculation being presented in the articles above.

On a side note, a number of people on Facebook have pointed out that in its coverage of this story, the Daily Mail manages to interview Professor Nadir Dinshaw, who died in 2002.

Professor Nadir Dinshaw, who studies interreligious relations at the University of Birmingham, described the discovery as 'startling'

In reality this was a quote from "Professor David Thomas, Professor of Christianity and Islam and Nadir Dinshaw Professor of Interreligious Relations at the University of Birmingham."

Background on the Birmingham Qur'an fragments and related matters is here and links.

Hebrew priestesses

INNOVATION: Boulder Rabbi Ordained as Hebrew Priestess. Kohenet Institute Ordains Nine Hebrew Priestesses. Graduating Class of 2015 Serve As Jewish Ritual Leaders and Educators (Boulder Jewish News).

On Friday, July 24, 2015, the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute gave smicha, ordination, to nine women at a ceremony at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Connecticut. The nine new Kohanot, Hebrew Priestesses, constitute the fourth graduating class since Kohenet started 10 years ago. One of the nine women is Boulder Rabbi Sarah Bracha Gershuny of Congregation Nevei Kodesh. Under the guidance of Kohenet co-founders Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD and Taya Shere, the nine have been trained as ritual leaders in an earth-based, embodied, feminist Jewish paradigm that honors the history of women’s spiritual practices and the sacred feminine. They are from three countries: the US, England and Ireland.

[...]

The priesthood as presented in the Hebrew Bible is entirely male: the word kohenet, "priestess," does not occur at all. We have no way of knowing, of course, how much about the First-Temple priesthood was suppressed by the Priestly writer and the Deuteronomists; the picture of the priesthood in the book of Ezekiel leads me to infer that quite a bit may have been. But, as far as I know, no positive evidence of Israelite priestesses survives in any of our sources and there may never have been any. The Mishnah does use the term kohenet, but only to refer to the wife or daughter of a male priest. It never means priestess.

Whether these twenty-first-century Hebrew priestesses are a complete innovation is not entirely clear. Several years ago I noted the story of a seventh-century CE Jewish Berber queen who may have also been a priestess, although this is not at all certain and the meaning of the term is ambiguous. In any case, this current effort is the first attempt I know of to establish Jewish priestesses as an institution. The matter is not made less complicated by the lack of a Jewish Temple in which any kind of priest or priestess might serve.

This interview with one of the new priestesses (Rabbi Sarah Bracha Gershuny) reflects on the biblical, rabbinic, and ancient Near Eastern backgrounds of priesthood and how the new institution is intended to fit into the picture: 4 Questions for Boulder’s Newest Hebrew Priestess (Bounder Jewish News).

Mystery tunnel near the Rockefeller

STRANGE: Jerusalem Police Suspect Tunnel Dug Under Museum to Steal Antiquities. Entrance to the 30-meter long tunnel discovered at a private home near the Rockefeller Museum, but an antiquities authority official casts doubt that it was to be used to steal from the museum (Nir Hasson, Haaretz).

From their initial investigation, police have been told that several months ago strangers approached the home’s owner, an elderly woman who lives alone adjacent to the museum, representing themselves as working for the Jerusalem municipality and the municipal water company. They claimed that they needed to drill the hole to fix a water leak. They then returned to the site on a daily basis.

Temple of Bel in Palmyra blown up

PALMYRA WATCH: Wiping yet more history off the face of the earth: ISIS blow up 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel in Palmyra in latest outrage at the ancient Syrian city ( TIM MACFARLAN, Daily Mail)

• Cultural atrocity reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
  
• It was feared it would be next to be blown up at Unesco World Heritage Site
  
• Temple of Baal Shamin, also from Roman era, was dynamited last week
  
• It has been claimed Islamic State will take Palmyra down piece by piece

A Palmyra resident, who goes by the name of Nasser al-Thaer, said IS militants set off a huge blast at 1.45 pm on Sunday.

'It is total destruction,' he said of the scene of the explosion. 'The bricks and columns are on the ground.'

'It was an explosion the deaf would hear,' he added.

The resident said only the outer wall surrounding the Temple of Bel remains.

Constructed in 32AD, the temple was dedicated to gods worshipped by the Semites - a group of different cultures in the Ancient Middle East including Assyrians, Phoenicians, Hebrews and Arabs.

It stood on an artificial hill which dates back more than 2,200 years and lavish carvings of the then-known seven planets, zodiac signs and Makkabel the fertility god adorn the monolithic ceiling of its northern chamber.

The remains of a basin, altar and even a dining hall can be made out inside the temple. On the north-west corner is a ramp where sacrificial animals were once led into the building.

This is potentially a little confusing. The term "Baal" is the name of one of the high gods of the Canaanites (Phoenicians), the storm god, but the name itself just means "Lord." "Baal Shamin" is Aramaic for "Baal of the heavens." The name "Bel" is the Akkadian equivalent of Canaanite "Baal" and Bel was the title of Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonians, and also a storm god. So at Palmyra there were two temples to the "Lord," the storm god, in two different ancient Near Eastern religious traditions.

Dr Robert Bewley, Project Director at the School of Archaeology at Oxford, has predicted Palmyra will be razed to the ground 'monument-by-monument' by ISIS to wring every last propaganda opportunity out of the destruction.

He claimed the terror group is determined to destroy Palmyra piece by piece, known as 'the oasis in the desert' was a jewel of the ancient world and is revered because its Greco-Roman ruins are so well preserved.

Dr Bewley told MailOnline this week: 'One fear is that ISIS will do piecemeal damage over the coming weeks to keep the publicity machine running, so it will be a slow but equally destructive approach.'

It doesn't sound good, does it?

Related news item here: Satellite images confirm Palmyra temple razing. UN training and research agency photos show ancient Baalshamin site vanished after Islamic State demolition (AFP).

Background here and links.

UPDATE: Palmyra's Temple of Bel 'still standing.' Palmyra's ancient Temple of Bel is still standing despite an attempt by Islamic State (IS) militants to blow it up, Syria's antiquities chief has said. (BBC).

Maamoun Abdulkarim confirmed there was a large explosion within its perimeter but said the basic structure of the 2,000-year-old site was intact.

But the extent of the damage is unclear with witnesses unable to get close to the temple. [...]

Hmmm ...

A Center for Judaic Studies in Qoms, Iran

THE FORWARD: Reading the Talmud in a Most Unlikely Place — Iran's Holy City (Larry Cohler-Esses).

The Shia holy city of Qom teems with mosques, mullahs and madrassas. So, it was a little surprising to hear Qom religious scholar Hossein Soleimani’s response when I asked him to name his favorite writers.

“Adin Steinsaltz, for his translation of the Talmud,” he responded promptly. “And also Martin Buber.”

Soleimani was one of several senior faculty members from Qom’s University of Religions and Denominations whom I met during my recent visit to Iran. Soleimani’s field is comparative religions, and he is affiliated with the school’s center devoted entirely to Judaic studies.

Soleimani’s area of specialty is the study of sects in Jewish history — especially during the talmudic period, from about 70 B.C.E. to 500 C.E. Another area of interest, he said, is corporal punishment in the various religions.

[...]

The Center's existence is almost entirely unknown in the West. With additional specialists in Zohar, Midrash, and Jewish philosophy.

Scotland vs. the looters

A WORLDWIDE PROBLEM: Scotland's elite archaeologists target global tomb raiders (Judith Duffy, The Herald)

N ELITE team of Scottish academics is at the forefront of tackling the global trade in priceless artifacts like those looted by Daesh from ancient cities such as Syria's Palmyra.

The team of archaeologists, lawyers, criminologists and anthropologists from Glasgow University - the only academic team on the planet devoted to studying the illicit trafficking in antiquities - has warned that while atrocities committed in Palmyra has focused global attention on the loss of precious heritage sites, the scale of the problem is far bigger than what is happening in Syria alone, with temples being looted every single day in some countries.

The global fight against the looting and selling of ancient artifacts will be high on the agenda when more than 2,000 delegates from 80 countries come to Glasgow this week to take part in the annual European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) meeting.

Dr Donna Yates, of the Trafficking Culture research programme, said: “People are thinking about heritage destruction now because it is on the news – but I don’t think they are getting anything close to the whole story. The story is way bigger.

[...]

I believe it.

Recent related post here.

Bernhard on the GJW: tl;dr

THE NT BLOG: The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: “Patchwork Forgery” in Coptic . . . and English (Recap). Guest post by Andrew Bernhard. A short version of the post noted here.

UPDATE: Christian Askeland comments.

Temple Mount unrest

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: On Temple Mount, some see a dome and imagine an altar. More and more religious Jews are visiting the holy site, part of a movement defying a centuries-old rabbinic ban and stoking tension with Muslims who also lay claim to the esplanade (ELHANAN MILLER, Times of Israel).

The night before she visited Temple Mount for the first time last year, Aviya Fraenkel was so excited she couldn’t sleep a wink.

“I remember climbing the Mughrabi Bridge [leading to the Temple Mount] and seeing the Western Wall beneath me, so small, and and all these different Jews way down there,” Fraenkel told The Times of Israel recently, standing at the bottom of the same bridge and waiting to enter. “You ask yourself: ‘Hold on, what was I doing down there all these years? It just isn’t interesting. I’m up here now!’ That’s a feeling you can never take back.”

“We still go to the Western Wall and love it, but you suddenly realize the difference. Why settle for so little? Why settle for imitations when we have the real thing?”

Fraenkel, a 29-year-old doctoral student in Assyriology and Bible studies at Bar-Ilan University, is part of a new revival movement sweeping Israel’s national religious community. Defying a centuries-old rabbinical ban on entering the 35-acre compound — considered the holiest site in Judaism where the first and second temples stood — Fraenkel, who created a special tour guides’ course last summer tailored for Temple Mount visitors, now tries to go up every week.

“It was brewing in me for many years,” Fraenkel recalled. “So I took the ritual bath and went up. I can’t completely explain it. Part of it has to do with the belief that there’s a next stage, that our ideals aren’t limited to a state — which is a lot — but that the state must manifest our religious yearnings of the past 2,000 years.”

Aviya Fraenkel, a volunteer tour guide on Temple Mount, stands in Jerusalem's Old City following a visit to the site, August 25, 2015 (Elhanan Miller/Times of Israel)
Aviya Fraenkel, a volunteer tour guide on Temple Mount, stands in Jerusalem’s Old City following a visit to the site, August 25, 2015 (Elhanan Miller/Times of Israel)

“I’ve made a decision that my Judaism isn’t just about the past, it’s an expectation for the future,” she said. “I’m tired of apologizing about this. If others want to apologize, they’re free to do so.”

Fraenkel is not alone. ...

This article documents a lot of Jewish unrest regarding the current political status quo on the Temple Mount. It concludes:

“Our ultimate goal on Temple Mount is to build the Third Temple and renew sacrifices,” he said. “It’s not a distant goal but an aspiration. First we need to accompany the people and help them understand the significance of the place.”

But what about the Dome of the Rock, a monumental structure build by the Umayyad Caliph Abdul Malik in the year 691 over the Foundation Stone, where Jews and Muslims believe the earth was created?

[Student activist Elishama] Sandman replied with a metaphor.

“If a burglar entered your home and told you that you don’t own it, you wouldn’t think about getting along with him,” he said. “You’d remove him and take the place. It’s the same here: the people of Israel own this place and it’s not our duty to consider those who stole it from us.”

We don't need any destruction of ancient monuments on the the Temple Mount, ever, for any reason. Leave that sort of thing to ISIS. I hope Mr. Sandman agrees, but his comments, at least as quoted here, could be taken differently and he needs to say it.

Related thoughts here and links.

Review of Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity

H-JUDAIC REVIEW:

Bregman on Levine, 'Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art'

Author: Lee I. Levine
Reviewer: Marc Bregman

Lee I. Levine. Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Illustrations. x + 582 pp. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-300-10089-1.

Reviewed by Marc Bregman (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
Published on H-Judaic (August, 2015)
Commissioned by Matthew A. Kraus

Jewish History in Late Antiquity through the Prism of Visual Culture

As the title suggests, in this imposing work, Lee I. Levine of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem presents, through the prism of visual culture, a broad survey of Jewish history from biblical times (circa 1200 BCE) until the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE. In the preface, Levine surveys previous related research organized according to various methodological approaches to the history of Israelite-Jewish art and alerts the reader to the structure of his own discussion. The first four parts of his presentation proceed in chronological order, while the remaining two parts deal with art-historical and sociological issues. ...

Hugoye 18.2

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has published a new issue: Volume 18.2 (Summer 2015). Follow the link for the TOC and for links to the articles, etc., all online for free.

Daf Yomi: Nazir

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Daf Yomi: Nazir.

One of the most prominent examples of the relevance of and enduring interest in ancient texts is the daf yomi cycle, in which participants read a folio (or daf) of the Babylonian Talmud a day for more than 7 years, until they complete the entire Babylonian Talmud.

The number of daf yomi participants has grown exponentially in the last few decades, and has also expanded demographically beyond Orthodox Jewish men to women and people of all denominations (and faiths). To aid them in their lengthy and dedicated journey, we produce a brief bibliography of major academic reference works and secondary works a few weeks before one tractate is completed and participants move on to the next.

Tractate Nazir is up next.

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