More on that NYT article

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The blowback continues over last week's New York Times article whose original form indulged in explicit support for Jewish-Temple denial. And I have some new information to break as well below. My original post on the story is here.

Some of what has come out since yesterday:

NY Times Angers Historians, Archaeologists Over Article Questioning Jewish Link to Temple Mount (Sharona Schwartz, The Blaze). Archaeologist Gabriel Barkay adds his voice:

“It was based on ignorance, simple ignorance; you cannot ignore all the literary evidence” of the existence of Jewish temples on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount site, Prof. Gabriel Barkay, codirector of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, told TheBlaze by phone Sunday.

I think "ignorance" is generous. It is clear that the writer had the correct information available and presented the story the way he did nonetheless.

New York Times Amends Article Questioning Jewish Temples’ Existence on Temple Mount (JTA)

Jerusalem Through the Lens of the New York Times (Yarden Frankl, HonestReporting.com)

Also, the Irish Times has reprinted the NYT article, but it has reprinted the original, uncorrected version. The third paragraph appears as follows:

The question, which many books and scholarly treatises have never definitively answered, is whether the 37-acre site, home to Islam’s sacred Dome of the Rock shrine and al-Aqsa Mosque, was also the precise location of two ancient Jewish temples, one built on the remains of the other, and both long since gone.

(My bold emphasis.) And just in case readers miss the point, the IT has added its own very unhelpful subtitle to the article: "Did Temple Mount really contain King Solomon’s temple? No one really knows." I have a screen shot, in case any of this is changed. The damage of the New York Times article continues to propagate.

Then one Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss adds his take: Hectored by Zionist wannabe archaeologists, ‘NYT’ recasts article on Jewish temples. Yep, "wannabe archaeologists" like Leen Ritmeyer, Jodi Magness, and Gabriel Barkay. Oh, and mere experts in Second Temple Judaism like Michael Satlow and myself. In his essay Mr. Weiss makes the following very interesting observation: "But the crazy part– as many of Gladstone’s Zionist critics are also pointing out on twitter– is that the original question is the only one the article really deals with." He had earlier indicated that this original questions was "whether the temples were on the Temple Mount" (his emphasis).

He cites the quotations from Matthew J. Adams, Rivka Gonen, Wendy Pullan, and Jane Cahill and says, "Gladstone then cites several other authorities, questioning whether the temples were even on the site." He then adds:

Too bad the Times didn’t stick to its guns on the question. The appearance that it folded under pressure is confirmed by the fact that Gladstone tweeted his changes out to his assailants, Liebovitz and Goldberg. They are just performing a traditional Zionist role, in the tradition of Yigael Yadin and Moshe Dayan– archaeologists.

I have no idea where the temples stood; the issue is why the NYT would raise a question, presumably based on reporting, and then withdraw it under pressure from Zionists who hector you as a “truther.” And if it was really wrong, why not take down the whole article?

He has no idea where the temples stood, yet on the basis of his lack of knowledge of the whole subject he is sure the Times succumbed to political pressure. It doesn't seem to occur to him that the Times might have made the alteration because the article did not correctly reflect what specialists in the area actually think.

I do not know why the New York Times did not take down the article. They might have been wise to do so, because the problems with it just keep getting worse. Keep reading.

I cite Mr. Weiss not because his uninformed opinion counts for anything, but because it illustrates the harm the article has done. Note that he cites the quotations from Matthew J. Adams to demonstrate that the article cites experts "questioning whether the temples were even on the site."

With that as context, I can report that I received the following e-mail from Dr. Matthew J. Adams, Director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. (In my earlier post I referred to him as "Mr.," following the usage of the NYT article. I give his correct title here.) I reproduce his communication with his permission:

Dear Jim,

I saw your blog post from yesterday concerning the NYT article. Thanks for your good detective work!

Indeed, my comments had been separated from their context and redistributed into the NYT article according the author's intentions, not mine.

The academically complex question to which I referred was concerning the "First Temple" and the sources related to it. My first comment following "It's an academically complex question" was:

"First, it's pretty clear that the temple built (or restored) by Herod stood on the Haram/Temple Mount. Archaeological and Textual sources make this fairly certain."

I then proceeded to discuss the complexities of the source material for the "First Temple".

Thanks again for the hard work on this!
Matthew

So, I was correct in my inference in my original post. Indeed, Dr. Adams's comments were reordered out of context in the New York Times article contrary to his intentions. He was not saying that it was an academically complex question whether Jewish temples ever stood on the Temple Mount. He was saying that the source material for the First Temple is an academically complex issue, a correct point that I also made in considerable detail in my earlier posts, especially the one on the evidence for the First Temple.

This is turning into a real embarrassment to the New York Times. I don't think the story is quite over yet, so watch this space.

UPDATE (14 October): More here and here.

The NPAPH-project

PHOTOGRAPHS: Welcome to the NPAPH-project!

The Non-Professional Archaeological Photographs-project has the aim to preserve non-professional documentation of archaeological campaigns – prior to the 1980s – to the future and make it accessible to the public via digital archives. Furthermore, the project pleads for an international collaboration between archaeological institutions in order to connect these digital archives and bring them under the attention of the public by the use of this website.

[...]

There's a page for Khirbet Qumran (Grollenberg). Via Charlotte Hempel (via Joan Taylor) on the IOQS Facebook page.

A Columbus biography in a polyglot Psalter

NOTED FOR COLUMBUS DAY: ‘Catholics in the New World: A Selection of 16th-18th Century Texts’ and ‘Religious Liberty and the Founding of America’ Reviews (JULIA M. KLEIN, WSJ). Published on 21 September, but I've been saving it for today.

As this city prepares for Pope Francis’ Sept. 26-27 visit, the conversation has focused on security cordons, ticketing snafus, travel nightmares and commercial paralysis. But on a less apocalyptic note, the visit also is spurring museums to exhibit treasures appealing to religious tourists. Two modest displays illuminate the Western Hemisphere’s checkered history of evangelism and tolerance. “Catholics in the New World: A Selection of 16th-18th Century Texts” at the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia includes the oldest surviving book printed in the New World (the 1543/44 “Doctrina Breve,” from Mexico City) and the first book printed in South America (the 1584 “Doctrina Christiana” from Lima, Peru).

An even earlier Old World text—a 1516 Genoese book of psalms in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Aramaic and Latin—features the first biography of Christopher Columbus. It seems both quirky and fitting that it appears as a commentary to Psalm 19’s verse, “their words reach to the ends of the world.”

[...]

Past posts on Columbus and various PaleoJudaic matters are here and links.

Mroczek, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM OUP:

The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity

Eva Mroczek

Description

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed a world of early Jewish writing larger than the Bible, from multiple versions of biblical texts to "revealed" books not found in our canon. Despite this diversity, the way we read Second Temple Jewish literature remains constrained by two anachronistic categories: a theological one, "Bible," and a bibliographic one, "book." The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity suggests ways of thinking about how Jews understood their own literature before these categories had emerged.

Using familiar sources such as the Psalms, Ben Sira, and Jubilees, Mroczek tells an unfamiliar story about sacred writing not bound in a Bible. In many texts, we see an awareness of a vast tradition of divine writing found in multiple locations only partially revealed in available scribal collections. Ancient heroes like David are not simply imagined as scriptural authors, but multi-dimensional characters who come to be known as great writers and honored as founders of growing textual traditions. Scribes recognize the divine origin of texts like the Enoch literature and other writings revealed to ancient patriarchs, which present themselves not as derivative of material we now call biblical, but prior to it. Sacred writing stretches back to the dawn of time, yet new discoveries are always around the corner.

While listening to the way ancient writers describe their own literature-their own metaphors and narratives about writing-this book also argues for greater suppleness in our own scholarly imagination, no longer bound by modern canonical and bibliographic assumptions.

Shipping in April 2016.

From tablet to tablet

OUP BLOG: Words from books (Edwin Battistella).

October is an important month for book festivals—in Boston, Austin, Madison, Baton Rouge, and of course Frankfurt, Germany, which hosts the world’s oldest book festival. In honor of these book festivals, I want to delve a bit into the way that the language of books expanded the English vocabulary.

The earliest books were not books per se, but inscriptions on stone or wood. The term stele, for an upright stone, wooden slab, or clay, is still a very specialized term. Soon, however, clay, wooden tablets, and papyrus scrolls made writing more portable. Fast forward to today, when tablets now refer to computers and we scroll on our computer screens, tablets, and phones. The meaning of both words has been extended to follow changes in reading technology.

[...]

A nice, quick overview of the development of writing from antiquity to the present.

The NYT and Jewish-Temple denial

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Historical Certainty Proves Elusive at Jerusalem’s Holiest Place (RICK GLADSTONE, New York Times). I wrote a long post about this article on Friday. Then I reread the Times article and realized the problems with it were even more extensive than I had first thought and that more needed to be said. I had to get some other work done, so I set this post aside until I had more time, which is now.

Meanwhile the article's bogus historical assertions have been called out by many. A selection:

There Was a Temple on the Temple Mount (Michael Satlow)

The so-called “elusive” location of the Temple in Jerusalem (Leen Ritmeyer)

New York Times Gives Credence to Muslim Claims of No Jewish Temples Ever on Temple Mount (The Algemeiner)

The Temple, the Times and the BDS Supporter (Alex Safian, CAMERA)

The Times Declares History is Bunk (JONATHAN S. TOBIN, Commentary Magazine)

The blowback has been so great that the Times has had to revise the article a little and post the following:

Correction: October 9, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated the question that many books and scholarly treatises have never definitively answered concerning the two ancient Jewish temples. The question is where precisely on the 37-acre Temple Mount site the temples had once stood, not whether the temples had ever existed there.

I'm glad they posted the correction, but that doesn't let them off the hook for irresponsible journalism. The two questions are not hard to mix up: one is a real question and the other is made-up Palestinian propaganda. They should have known better.

The references above point to errors in the article, but problems remain that require further discussion and nuancing, so I have rewritten the earlier draft of this post to take into account new developments and make such points as I think remain to be made. The article originally began:

Within Jerusalem’s holiest site, known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims, lies an explosive historical question that cuts to the essence of competing claims to what may be the world’s most contested piece of real estate.

The question, which many books and scholarly treatises have never definitively answered, is whether the 37-acre site, home to Islam’s sacred Dome of the Rock shrine and Al Aqsa Mosque, was also the precise location of two ancient Jewish temples, one built on the remains of the other, and both long since gone.

(My bold emphasis.) The second paragraph has been rewritten as follows:

The question, which many books and scholarly treatises have never definitively answered, is where on the 37-acre site, home to Islam’s sacred Dome of the Rock shrine and Al Aqsa Mosque, was the precise location of two ancient Jewish temples, one built on the remains of the other, and both long since gone.

(My bold emphasis.) I have no problem with the second paragraph as it now stands. The third paragraph, which remains unchanged, is a different matter:

Those temples are integral to Jewish religious history and to Israel’s disputed assertions of sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. Many Palestinians, suspicious of Israel’s intentions for the site, have increasingly expressed doubt that the temples ever existed — at least in that location. Many Israelis regard such a challenge as false and inflammatory denialism.

Excuse me? "Many Israelis?" There is no historical debate whether Jewish temples stood on "the site," meaning somewhere on the Temple Mount. PaleoJudaica has endless posts on Jewish-Temple denial, which originates in Palestinian propaganda, is widely circulated in the Arab world, and is sometimes facilitated by the Western media. Start here and follow the links or, for more, run the terms "Jewish temple denial" through PaleoJudaica's search engine. It is disappointing to see the Times speaking so imprecisely, as though some Israelis and everybody else thought it was fine.

The fourth paragraph raises further concerns:

“This is a very politically loaded subject,” said Matthew J. Adams, Dorot director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. “It’s also an academically complex question.”

What's that? The director of the Albright Institute says that whether there were Jewish temples on the Temple Mount is "an academically complex question?" Not so fast. Scroll down well into the article and we read this:

“The sources for the first temple are solely biblical, and no substantial archaeological remains have been verified,” said Wendy Pullan, senior lecturer in the history and philosophy of architecture at the University of Cambridge, in the book “The Struggle for Jerusalem’s Holy Places.”

Mr. Adams said, “We just don’t have enough primary source data, textual or archaeological, to say where it was with any confidence.”

If you put Mr. Adams's two quotes together in this context, they say something rather different: that where the First Temple stood on the Temple Mount is an academically complex question and we don't have enough primary data to answer it confidently. Was he really talking about the question of there being ancient Jewish temples at all on the Temple Mount or was he talking about the location of one or both of the earlier temples? I don't have access to the full transcript, but reading the two quotations together in this context makes sense for what the director of the Albright Institute would likely have actually said. If so, the placement of the first quote in its current context in the article gives an incorrect impression of what he was saying.

CAMERA objects to Dr. Pullan's comments on the grounds of her political connections. These don't interest me one way or another, although the Times could have noted them in the interest of full disclosure. My concern is about the historical accuracy of her statement, which should be considered alongside the following two excerpts (the next three quoted paragraphs below), a little later in the article:

Jane Cahill, an expert on Jerusalem’s early history who was a senior staff archaeologist for Hebrew University’s City of David Archaeological Project, said “nobody knows exactly” where the temples once stood, although “pretty powerful circumstantial evidence” suggests they were on the site.

“Because there have been no organized excavations there, and not likely to be, circumstantial evidence is probably all we’re going to have,” she said.

Again, I would like to see Ms. Cahill's full quotation. I suspect she was saying that no one knows exactly where the temples stood on the Temple Mount, which is correct. As framed now, her statement could be taken to imply that there might have been Jewish temples somewhere or other, but not necessarily on the Temple Mount, which is a bizarre thought. The temples were somewhere else in the vicinity of Jerusalem but through some mixup everyone forgot about that and (understandably) got the erroneous idea that they stood on that big platform? I don't think so.

Archaeologists agree that far more information is known that corroborates the existence of the second temple at the site than the first.

That is true. It is almost correct that the only evidence for the First Temple is references in the Hebrew Bible, although I want to nuance that a bit, and it is true that there is no "substantial archaeological" (i.e. architectual) evidence so far for the First Temple. But there is good reason why there shouldn't be. A decade ago I collected the evidence for the existence of the Second and Herodian Temples and the existence of the First Temple, where I dealt with the questions in considerable detail.

But to recap briefly here: starting from first principles, other ancient Near Eastern peoples had their own national temples and it would be very notable anomaly if the late-Iron Age Judeans didn't. There is a clear, persistent, and consistent memory that there was such a temple and it stood on that site, and that's why the Second Temple was built there. And there is supporting epigraphic etc. evidence in addition, although the readings are sometimes unclear and one could interpret the Arad inscription in other (less convincing) ways.

I am aware of no peer-review publication that argues that there was no Iron Age Judean temple somewhere on the Temple Mount. Where exactly on the Temple Mount and when exactly in the Iron Age II it was built are more complicated problems on which there is debate.

Skipping a bit more:

Further corroboration of the temple’s existence is in the New Testament, based on its account of anger at Paul by Jews who accused him of having violated the trespass restriction: “He has brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place,” reads a passage from Acts 21:28.

The New Testament has many references to the Herodian Temple. See my post linked to above on the Herodian and Second Temple for some, not all, of them.

Finally, I note, as have others, that the Times mentions the Waqf administration of the Temple Mount, but fails to mention its destructive illicit excavations there and the efforts of the Temple Mount Sifting Project to recover what data can be recovered from the discarded rubble. See recently here and here and just keep following those links back.

Let us be clear: the New York Times published an article making seriously erroneous assertions about the scholarly state of the question regarding the evidence for Judean/Jewish temples on the Temple Mount. It was called out on them and published a retraction, although questions remain about the content that was left unchanged. The inspiration for the now-corrected historical mischaracterization was Palestinian propaganda about the Temple Mount. And the Times published the article just at a time when disputes over the Temple Mount are particulary intense in the region. I give them some credit for the correction, but the article was still exceedingly unhelpful. Many people will have read it and will never see the correction. The New York Times has not covered itself with glory on this one.

UPDATE: I have just received an e-mail from Joseph I. Lauer indicating that Jodi Magness, one of the specialists quoted in the article, has written to the Times protesting and correcting the misrepresentation of scholarship in this article. Her letter will be published by the Times. Watch this space.

UPDATE (14 October): More here, here, and here.

The Greek Bible in Spanish

THE SPANISH TRANSLATION OF THE SEPTUAGINT IS COMPLETE WITH THIS VOLUME: La Biblia griega - Septuaginta, IV. Libros proféticos. Natalio Fernández (dir.), María Victoria Spottorno (Ediciones Sígueme). HT Jay C. Treat at the IOCS Facebook page.

Jesus' wife — the novel

IN PROGRESS: Sue Monk Kidd Writing Novel on 'Jesus' Wife, Ana' (MICHAEL GRYBOSKI, The Christian Post)

Best-selling novelist Sue Monk Kidd is working on a book that will take place during the first century, and is expected to feature a married Jesus of Nazareth.

The author of such notable novels as The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings is working on a story whose narrator will be the wife of the Messiah.

"Monk has given the book the working title Ana, the Wife of Jesus. A release date hasn't been set," reported The Associated Press on Tuesday.

[...]

The CP article also places the announcement of recent stories (Dan Brown, Gospel of Jesus' Wife) pertaining to "Jesus' wife." She is very famous, considering that there is no historical evidence that she ever existed.

The DSS in Finnish

A NEW TRANSLATION OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS — IN FINNISH: Raija Sollamo & Mika S. Pajunen (toim.): Kuolleenmeren kadonnut kansa. HT Hanna Tervanotko at the IOQS Facebook page.

Syriac news

SYRIAC WATCH: Syriac Summer School (James McGrath, Exploring Our Matrix). The content of the post is broader than the title indicates. Some of the links have already been noted here, but many not. And this point is also well worth repeating: "If you are a grad student looking to set yourself apart, or a scholar looking to branch out into something new, diving into Syriac will be well worth your while."

Lyon, Qumran Interpretation of the Genesis Flood

NEW BOOK FROM WIPF AND STOCK:

Qumran Interpretation of the Genesis Flood
BY Jeremy D. Lyon

About

The Dead Sea Scrolls have opened up for modern readers the ancient world of Jewish interpretation of the Bible during the Second Temple period. Among these scrolls are several manuscripts dating to the first century BC, the oldest surviving texts dealing with interpretation of the Genesis Flood. A literary analysis of the four primary Qumran Flood texts (1QapGen, 4Q252, 4Q370, and 4Q422) reveals how ancient Jews interpreted and employed the Genesis Flood narrative. These texts contain commentary, paraphrase, and admonition, among other things, addressing issues such as the cause, chronology, and purpose of the Flood. In addition, these fragmentary treasures reveal such ancient understandings of the Flood as a reversal and renewal of creation, a restoration of Eden and anticipation of the Promised Land, and an archetype of eschatological judgment.

That menorah mosaic at Horvat Kur

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Magnificent Menorah Mosaic Found in Galilee (Megan Sauter).

Background on the excavation at Horvat Kur and the recent discovery of the menorah mosaic is here and here and links. More on ancient depictions of menorahs is here and here and links

Aviam on that "unique mikveh"

JIM WEST: A Critical Respond to: “A Unique Miqveh in Upper Galilee” (by Eldad Keynan) – A Guest Post by Mordechai Aviam. The critiqued essay was published in Bible and Interpretation and was noted here. This area is outside my expertise and I note the debate for information, without taking sides.

Published and unpublished homilies of Jacob of Serugh

SYRIAC WATCH: Four unpublished homilies of Jacob of Serugh, with a 19th-cent. image of the Golden Horn (Adam McCollum, hmmlorientalia blog).

Anxious prophecy

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Prophecy Without End? Philip Jenkins takes up the question of why, if prophecy ended with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, were there so many prophets running around in first century Palestine?

Destroying a manuscript to save manuscripts?

LET'S NOT MAKE A HABIT OF THIS: Destroying a Manuscript to Test Multispectral Imaging (Peter J. Gurry, ETC). I get why they did this and I assume they did it responsibly, but overall let's stick to non-destructive and non-invasive scanning technologies.

Recent somewhat relevant posts are here and here and links.

The International Qur'anic Studies Association

A NEW ACADEMIC SOCIETY: The International Qur'anic Studies Association. John F. Kutsko, Executive Director of the Society of Biblical Literature has e-mailed the following:

In 2012, SBL received a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation for a consultation to explore the formation of a learned society for scholars of the Qur’an. In May 2014, the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA) incorporated as a wholly independent organization, with a governance structure and programming to support a scholarly guild and its members. Following incorporation, IQSA filed for 501(c)(3) status as a tax-exempt, non-profit organization.

I am delighted to inform you that on 30 September 2015, your colleagues in Qur’anic studies received approval from the IRS. Our congratulations go to all involved in IQSA: Emran El-Badawi (executive director, University of Houston), Gabriel Said Reynolds (chair, University of Notre Dame), the IQSA board, and IQSA’s members.

Please visit IQSA’s website— iqsaweb.org —to learn more about its programs and services. Join IQSA members at their meeting, which affiliates with SBL at the Annual Meeting.

Please help support and encourage their mission to foster Qur’anic scholarship.

I am delighted to see this important development and am happy to add my congratulations. The academic study of the Qur'an has been around for a long time, but it is taking on new strides and there is much work to be done. I look forward to following the work and progress of IQSA.

Some related posts here and here and links.

Lieu on Marcion

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Marcion and the Idea of Heresy

Is not the task of the historian to judge whether certain views were or were not ‘heretical’; instead the ‘heretic’ has been defined as such by the styles of argument and ways of structuring truth adopted by those whose position ultimately came to dominate.

See Also: Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

By Judith Lieu
Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity
Faculty of Divinity
Cambridge
October 2015

Marcion will also be the subject of an SBL session next month, as noted in this unfortunately titled ETC post: Marcion Smackdown in Atlanta (SBL) (Tommy Wasserman). And Larry Hurtado discusses Marcionism briefly in his latest blog post in the context of early Christian diversity.

I noted a couple of recent related publications here and here.

Patmore, The Transmission of Targum Jonathan in the West

NEW BOOK FROM OUP:

The Transmission of Targum Jonathan in the West: A Study of Italian and Ashkenazi Manuscripts of the Targum to Samuel (Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement)
Paperback – 15 Oct 2015
by Hector Patmore (Author)

Targum Jonathan is one of our most important sources for understanding how Jews read, interpreted, and used the Hebrew Bible in Late Antiquity and in subsequent generations: it is cited widely in rabbinic literature and by medieval commentators (Rashi, Kimhi, etc.) and continued to play a role in synagogue liturgy and study. Through a detailed study of the extant medieval manuscripts of Targum Samuel that were produced in and around Italy, France, Germany, and England, this book explains how and why the text of Targum Jonathan changed over time. It explores the relationship of these manuscripts to the ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Septuagint, Vulgate, Peshitta) and to Hebrew manuscripts containing variant readings of the biblical text; it examines their unique exegetical variants, including the complex system of marginal notes in the famous Codex Reuchlinianus No. 3, and analyses the longer versions of the Targum found in liturgies and those designated Tosefta Targums, which incorporate a wealth of additional haggadic material. This volume will be of interest to anyone engaged in text criticism of the Hebrew Bible, the study of Jewish exegesis, liturgy, and manuscript production, or the development and use of Aramaic.

Review of Briant, Darius in the Shadow of Alexander

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Pierre Briant, Darius in the Shadow of Alexander (translated by Jane Marie Todd; first published in French 2003). Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. xvii, 579. ISBN 9780674493094. $39.95.

Reviewed by Jennifer Finn, Marquette University (Jennifer.Finn@marquette.edu)

Preview

To scholars of ancient studies, Pierre Briant will be undoubtedly be a recognizable name. His Histoire de l'empire perse: De Cyrus à Alexandre (translated into English in 2002) broke ground in historical studies as an exemplum for an egalitarian incorporation of Classical and Near Eastern source material, and its methods were at the forefront of a profusion of novel interpretations of cultural interaction in the ancient Mediterranean.1 Promised in this initial study was an evaluation of the source material related to Darius III, the much-beleaguered opponent of Alexander the Great. Briant delivered, with the publication of Darius dans l’ombre d’Alexandre in 2003. This edition, now translated into English, is unmodified, excluding the addition of a new preface. Briant maintains that the last sentence of the introduction to the first edition should be unchanged: the objective remains “to explain why Darius, along with so many others, is condemned to haunt the realm of historical oblivion” (x).

[...]

Not about ancient Judaism, but provides some rich material on the international historical and political context of Second Temple Judaism.

Review of Magness, Archaeology of the Holy Land

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note: Magness, Archaeology of the Holy Land (Brian Leport). I noted the book here back in 2012 when it was published.

Anxious Zechariah

PHILIP JENKINS has been posting lots of interesting things in recent months over at The Anxious Bench and I have fallen far behind in noting them. I'm going to try to keep better track and also, over time, to catch up with some of his past posts. For starters, I note his recent series on the Book of Zechariah:

Placing Zechariah

Zechariah's Apocalypse

Zechariah and Revelation

Zechariah’s Angels

Archaeology at Cartagena

PUNIC WATCH: Archaeologists unearth more of the history of Cartagena. Cartagena may have been a large Roman weapons factory (Murcia Today).

It sometimes seems that Cartagena has so much history that it’s hard to know what to do with it all, and more prime examples of the wealth of archaeological heritage in the city are currently being unearthed in the Plaza de la Merced.

The second dig in the Plaza de la Merced is only in its early stages, but already the Decumanus Maximus (the main east-to-west street) has been located and a possible monument to nymphs has been found. Below the nymphaeum are the remains of a Punic home, whose destruction is thought to date from the time of the Roman conquest of the city by Scipio Africanus in 209 BC.

[...]

The Spanish town of Cartagena does a commendable job of extracting the full tourism potential from its Punic heritage. They celebrate a Punic festival every year in September.

The birthday of the world

SEDER OLAM RABBA: This Day in Jewish History, 3761 BCE The World Is Created, According to the Hebrew Calendar and an Obscure Sage. Basing himself on no source but the bible, Rabbi Yose ben Halafta, who lived in the 2nd century CE, sat down and did the math (David B. Green, Haaretz).

October 7, 3761 B.C.E., is the date on which the world was created – according to the Hebrew calendar that governs the passage of time among the Jewish people.

The calculation of the year is fairly simple to understand; how the precise day and month were arrived at is a little more complicated.

[...]

It is generally accepted that the sage Rabbi Yose ben Halafta is one who made the calculation. He was a tanna, a sage of the Mishnaic period, who lived in Sepphoris, a town in the Galilee, in the 2nd century C.E.

Yose ben Halafta was one of the principal students of Rabbi Akiva, the most revered rabbinical figure of his time. Rabbi Yose was in turn the teacher of Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, who would become the chief editor of the Mishnah, one of whose most frequently cited rabbis is Ben Halafta. He is commonly accepted as the author of the book Seder Olam (“Order of the World,” sometimes called Seder Olam Rabba, the “Great Order of the World,” to distinguish it from a later work with the same name), a history that attempts to give dates to all of the people and events mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and up to Rabbi Yose’s time, which coincided with the Bar-Kochba Revolt of 132 C.E.

For Rabbi Yose, the only relevant source is the Bible. He does not attempt to reconcile it with any other chronology, but rather, to make sense of and quantify the chronology as it presented in Scripture.

[...]

The ascribed authorship of the tractate is traditional and should, as usual with these things, be taken with a grain of salt. Whatever its original date of composition, Seder Olam Rabba seems to have undergone a long process of editing. Its chronology is a bit dodgy in places: it makes the period of Persian domination between the building of the Second Temple (520 BCE) and Alexander the Great (c. 333 BCE) only 34 years.

The other Queen Helena

THE JERUSALEM POST: The Queen who Built a Palace in Jerusalem (ELAINE ROSE GLICKMAN, The Streets of Jerusalem Blog).

Actually, there are two Queen Helenas. One was an empress and the mother of Constantine the Great, who in the fourth century visited the Holy Land and – according to legend – located the tunic of Jesus, pinpointed the site of his resurrection, and even found the nails used in his crucifixion. When my family rented an apartment on Heleni Hamalka last summer, I assumed that was the Helena for whom the street was named. I didn’t realize until later that there was another Queen Helena, and I am sorry not to have fully appreciated her legacy while I was in Jerusalem.

Well, at least you’ll know better next time you are in town! And the Heleni Hamalka memorialized in Morasha is definitely worth knowing. An early-first century queen of Adiabene (a district in ancient Assyria with its capital in present-day Iraq), Helena became acquainted with Judaism through Jewish merchants who visited her country and – according to legend – hired a tutor in order to learn everything she could. Around the year 30 C.E., she turned her back on the dominant Ashurite religion and – along with her younger son Izates – formally converted to Judaism.

Queen Helena of Adiabene was a real historical person, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all the stories told about her in the rabbinic literature are historical. More on her is here and links.

Witte, Texte und Kontexte des Sirachbuchs

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

Texte und Kontexte des Sirachbuchs
Gesammelte Studien zu Ben Sira und zur frühjüdischen Weisheit

[Texts and Contexts of the Wisdom of Sirach. Collected Studies on Ben Sira und Early Jewish Wisdom Literature. Published in German.]

In the essays of this volume, Markus Witte focuses on text-critical and literary-historical problems of the book of Ben Sira, portrays its different theologies and determines its position in the context of the early Jewish wisdom.

Religious appropriation of Cyrus the Great

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Religious Appropriation of National Symbols in Iran: Searching for Cyrus the Great. An article by Menahem Merhavy published this year in Iranian Studies 48.

Background on Cyrus the Great is here and here and many links, in some of which I comment on anachronistic efforts by Iranians and others to present Cyrus as a tolerant, modern-minded, founder of human rights.

An hydraulic gardening system in Petra

NABATEAN WATCH: Meet 3 Erie women archaeologists (Marissa Orbanek. GoEirie.com). All three are doing interesting work, but I want to focus on that of Professor Leigh-Ann Bedal, who is excavating Nabatean (Nabataean) material in Petra, Jordan.

Bedal, an associate professor of anthropology at Penn State Behrend, directed an excavation of an ancient desert garden and pool complex that appeared in a documentary feature on PBS this past year. The program, "Petra: Lost City of Stone," uses computer reconstructions and hydraulic studies to explore the elaborate water systems in the capital city of ancient Nabatea, located in modern Jordan. The program is part of a three-episode series, "Building Wonders," produced by Nova. Other episodes explore the Roman Colosseum and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

"When I started this in 1997, I had no idea what I was getting myself into," Bedal said. "I had been digging in Petra for a few years and wanted to discover more history that would add to the Temple. But when I started digging, we uncovered so many features in just that one field season and realized that this wasn't a market place of the temple, but rather, it was a pool and a garden."

Bedal discovered evidence of an elaborate hydraulic system and a large garden terrace -- the only known example of a Nabatean garden.

Background on the Nabateans and Petra is here and many links.

Schiffman on Ir David

LAWRENCE SCHIFFMAN: Rediscovering Ir David. New Finds Revealed in an Ancient City.

The exciting results of archaeological excavations of ancient Yerushalayim have been coming to light steadily since the reunification of the city during the 1967 Six Day War. More recently, the area of Ir David, the City of David, to the south of Har Habayis (Temple Mount), has been yielding amazing discoveries.

A popular article published in Ami Magazine.

Reinhartz on JBL

THE EDITOR SPEAKS: The Journal of Biblical Literature and the Critical Investigation of the Bible (Adele Reinhartz). A fascinating history of JBL with reflections on its past and present roles.

HT Ancient Jew Review Twitter.

The recent history of the GJW

MORE IMPROBABILITIES: 'Gospel of Jesus's Wife': Records Hint at Improbable Journey of Controversial Papyrus (Owen Jarus, Live Science). Mr. Jarus has uncovered some sources about the life of the man who reportedly originally bought the Gospel of Jesus' Wife in the 1960s, Hans-Ulrich Laukamp. The current, anonymous owner claims to have bought the fragment from Laukamp. A couple of excerpts:

Laukamp died in 2002, and the claim that he owned the text has been strongly disputed by Rene Ernest, the man whom Laukamp and his wife Helga charged with representing their estate. Ernest told Live Science that Laukamp had no interest in antiquities, did not collect them and was living in West Berlin in 1963 and thus couldn't have traveled to Potsdam from across the Berlin Wall. (West Berliners were not allowed to visit Potsdam at that time.)

Similarly, Axel Herzsprung, Laukamp's friend and business associate, told Live Science that Laukamp never had an interest in antiquities and never owned a papyrus. Laukamp has no children or living relatives who could verify these claims.

[...]

If the "Jesus's Wife" papyrus is authentic, it would mean that Laukamp would have had to figure out a way to reach Potsdam in 1963. In that year, West Berliners could only travel to East Berlin at Christmas, and only if they had family on that side of the city, according to historical records from that time period. President John F. Kennedy himself protested these conditions, flying to West Berlin in 1963 to give his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

If Laukamp did try to reach Potsdam, he would have risked being caught and would have had to explain to East German, and possibly Soviet, authorities that the papyrus he was carrying, with the Coptic handwriting, was simply an ancient papyrus and not a coded message.

The story doesn't sound very likely. On the one hand, the history that actually happened frequently sounds pretty unlikely. But on the other, the problems with the story of the recent history of the GJW just add to the pile-on of unlikely things we have to believe if we take it to be a genuine ancient artifact. As I have said before, maybe we won the lottery this time, but I remain to be convinced.

The main significance of the material that Mr. Jarus has uncovered is that it provides lines of inquiry that could illuminate the story further, such as copies of Laukamp's signature that could be compared to the unpublished sale document bearing a signature that is supposed to be his.

Read it all. Background here and many links.

Textual criticism articles

ETC: Recent Journal Articles on Textual Criticism (Peter J. Gurry). Including a couple of new (small) Septuagint fragments of the Book of Job.

More on Tut's tomb

HIDDEN CHAMBERS? INTERVIEW: Egypt's antiquities minister speaks on the search for Nefertiti in Tutankhamun’s tomb. Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty tells Ahram Online his expectations and plans regarding Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves' theory on the location of Nefertiti’s crypt (Nevine El-Aref). Excerpt:

Ahram Online (AO): What is your opinion about Reeves' theory, and could it be true?

Minister: It is a respectable scientific theory that could prove right or wrong, and when examining the west and north walls of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber, I realised that all the evidence that Reeves mentioned regarding the existence of hidden chambers is true.

I also noticed an area on a wall where the type of stone used was different than that in other walls. It is covered in painted plaster with the purpose of hiding something.

I am 75 percent certain we will find chambers behind both walls, but not one containing Nefertiti.

If the theory proves true and we locate Nefertiti’s resting place, we would be facing a discovery that would overshadow the uncovering of the golden king himself. This would be the most important discovery of the 21st century.

However, if we find the tomb of another royal member or an extension of Tutankhamun’s tomb, the discovery would be on par with the original discovery of the king's tomb in the 20th century.

Oh. Well is that all?

Seriously, it is not time to get excited yet. Let's wait until they actually find a hidden chamber or two, if they do. But this could turn into a very important discovery and meanwhile I will be watching the situation closely.

For background and reasons why it matters to PaleoJudaica, see here. Cross-file under Technology Watch.

The Jehoash inscription, geology, and politics

THE ASOR BLOG: The Jehoash Affair: A Personal Recollection (Howard R. Feldman). I cannot judge the merits of the article by Prof. Feldman's team, both because I haven't seen it and because I would not be qualified to judge the geological analysis if I did. I certainly hope that politics did not play a role in its rejection by an unnamed geological journal in 2008. But I do know that if one has written an article one believes in, it may take a rejection or two to get it published. I am surprised that there is no mention of the article being submitted again to a different journal. I encourage them to do so.

Background on the Jehoash Inscription (Joash Inscription), which is still widely regarded to be a forgery, is here and here and many links

Palmyra, ISIS, and history

PALMYRA WATCH: IS ‘terrified by history,’ says UNESCO after Palmyra Arch blown up. UN’s cultural body says it will make every effort to ensure those behind the destruction are brought to justice (AFP). Well yes, I hope that happens. But I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, we can at least keep the real history of the region in the forefront, whatever ISIS does to try to eliminate it.

Background here with many links.

Shemeni Atzeret and Simchat Torah 2015

SHEMINI ATZERET began last night at sundown. In Israel, this is also the holiday of Simchat Torah (Simhat Torah). Outside of Israel, the latter holiday begins tonight at sundown. Best wishes to all those celebrating!

The biblical and other background is noted here.

Blaming "the Jews" for Middle East antiquities looting

OH DEAR: Jewish conspiracy looting Mideast antiquities, say Arab archaeologists. Prominent Iraqi, Syrian historians claim Jews seek to destroy region’s Arab heritage to avenge 2,500-year-old Babylonian exile (Tamar Pileggi, Times of Israel/AFP).

According to a prominent Iraqi historian and archaeologist and a Syrian director of the country’s famed Palmyra museum, an “international Jewish mafia” is plotting to loot Iraq and Syria of its most valued antiquities in an effort to prove the veracity of the Jewish Bible and eradicate evidence of Arab heritage in the Middle East.

“The Jews are always looking for antiquities – especially Middle Eastern ones, and particularly Iraqi ones – in order to prove that the Torah is true,” Ali al-Nashmi, the Iraqi archaeologist, said on the pan-Arab Mayadeen television channel earlier this month.

[...]

MEMRI has posted both interviews here with English subtitles. My spoken Arabic is not good enough to make out more than a word or two here and there. But MEMRI is good at providing reliable translations in the videos they post, so, along with the AFP, I am taking them at their word in what follows — with all the usual caveats about things I have not fully verified firsthand myself. The content reported in the video and the article is almost the same (see below).

Given Palestinian Jewish-Temple denial, widely repeated in the Arab world etc., and the depredations of the Waqf on the Temple Mount, it's hard not to see a certain amount of projection in the reported comments.

After some more comments on the same lines as those already quoted, we come to this:

Walid Al-As’ad, the director of the Palmyra Museum, spoke to the Mayadeen network in a similar vein, explaining that Jews are driven to “erase the Arab origins of these antiquities” – this time a reference to Syrian artifacts – and “destroy the city [of Palmyra] and wipe it off the face of the Earth, in order to erase the memory of their Babylonian exile,” an exile he said was abetted by archers from Palmyra who served in the army of Chaldean King Nebuchadnezzar II when he destroyed the First Temple and exiled the Jewish elite to Babylon.

Neither interviewee seems to have a very clear idea of what the "Torah" is. Palmyra (Tadmor) is not mentioned in the Pentateuch. The only biblical mentions of the site are in 1 Kings 9:18 and 2 Chronicles 8:4, with reference to the reign of Solomon. The story about the archers does not appear in the Bible at all. I don't know whether the Talmud mentions Tadmor. (The video does not show either speaker saying the phrase "in order to erase the memory of their Babylonian exile," although it appears — not as a quotation — in the caption below the video.)

Then we come to this:

In August, Islamic State jihadists beheaded Walid’s father, Khaled Al-As’ad, and hanged his mutilated body in public. The elder As’ad had served as director of the Palmyra Museum for 40 years until his retirement in 2003, when Walid took over the position.

Now I know the junior Mr. Asaad (As'ad) lives in a Baathist state and his government may have put him up to this, or he may be speaking out of fear of reprisal from ISIS. Or both. So I'm trying to cut him some slack. But this is just sad, and it brings shame to the memory of his father.

For reports on the destruction of Palmyra (by ISIS, not the Jews) and the murder of the senior Asaad (also by ISIS), see here, here, here, here, and many links. Some other relevant recent posts are here and here, and don't forget to follow those links.

Was Jesus a Phoenician?

SHORT ANSWER: NO. LAU lecture explores question: Was Jesus a Phoenician? (Lebanese Examiner).

(NEW YORK) — The Lebanese American University held a lecture Wednesday exploring evidence compiled by author Karim El Koussa, which suggests Jesus may be a Phoenician, according to his private studies.

The university hosted the Lebanese author at the LAU New York Academic Center, where university officials frequently host public forums and hold Arabic language courses, among others.

El Koussa said 40 people attended the lecture, which included a book signing for his publication “Jesus the Phoenician.” He admits the results of his studies often spark controversy because they contradict conventional beliefs that Jesus was a Jew.

“Some people are used to the traditional way of thinking that was imposed on them throughout their life and are definitely afraid to open their minds to controversial ideas in matter of religion and history,” El Koussa said, referring to points discussed in his book. “They usually react in a very fierce way as if they are threatened, although many of the reference I am using are coming from the New Testament itself.”

[...]

No actual arguments are included in the article, so there are none to reply to. But Jesus was a Galilean who self-identified as a Jew. The lecturer's credentials for his remarkable assertion are "a degree in communications from NDU." This notion is not one even noticed, let alone taken seriously or treated as a theory in the scholarly literature on the historical Jesus.

This is perhaps related to the notion that Jesus was a "Palestinian," on which I commented some years ago here and here.

More destruction at Palmyra

PALMYRA WATCH: Islamic State destroys Palmyra’s triumphal arch. Activists say jihadist group has destroyed the Arch of Triumph at Syrian archaeological site because of ‘idolatrous’ columns (AFP).

Background here and links.

Bar Kokhba-era site vandalized

ISRAEL HAYOM: Bar Kokhba-era antiquities site razed by Palestinian vandals (Efrat Forsher). Ancient city in Gush Etzion was site of first discovery of one of the caves Bar Kokhba used for concealment during his second century revolt against Roman rule • Students at the Kfar Etzion Field School come across irreparable damage during field trip.

An antiquities site that served as an encampment for Jewish leader Shimon Bar Kokhba during his revolt against the Romans from 132 to 136 C.E. has been destroyed by Palestinian vandals.

Discoveries made at the Kiryat Arabia site, located near the village al-Arub in Gush Etzion, have been a vital source of information about the period of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and its destruction is a blow to research efforts.

In 1968, a winding, branching cave was discovered at the site, the first of the system of caves where Bar Kokhba hid to be discovered. A few years later, the Kfar Etzion Field School began conducting excavations at the site under the guidance of Professor Yoram Tsafrir, which turned up exciting finds and shed light on the final days of the revolt.

The cave was originally dug beneath the ancient community of Kiryat Arabia, which is mentioned in scrolls found at Nahal Hever in the Judean Desert. The Nahal Hever scrolls also include military correspondence between Bar Kokhba and his fighters.

In one that apparently dates back to 134 C.E., Bar Kokhba orders a man named Yehuda Bar Menashe, who was in Kiryat Arabia, to supply him and his soldiers with the Four Species mandated by Jewish law (citron, palm, myrtle and willow) for the observance of the approaching Sukkot holiday. This demonstrates how strictly Bar Kokhba and his army followed the commandments of Jewish law, even under difficult circumstances.

[...]

The letter mentioned is P.Yadin 57. The location, vocalization, and meaning of the site named "Kiryat Arabia" is uncertain. It may or may not have to do with "Arabia" or "Arabs." It is also uncertain whether it is to be identified with the vandalized site. Also, the article does not make clear how the writer knows who did the vandalizing.

It is an ironic synchronicity that the vandalizing of a site that may be mentioned in P.Yadin 57, which letter also refers to preparations for the Festival of Sukkot, was discovered and announced during the Festival of Sukkot some nineteen centuries later.

Review of Quinn and Vella (eds.), The Punic Mediterranean

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Josephine Crawley Quinn, Nicholas Vella, The Punic Mediterranean: Identities and Identification from Phoenician Settlement to Roman Rule. British School at Rome studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xxvi, 376. ISBN 9781107055278. $125.00.

Reviewed by Carolina López-Ruiz, The Ohio State University (lopez-ruiz.1@osu.edu)

Preview

This important collection of essays explores current debates about Phoenician culture in its western Mediterranean aspects, a field of growing interest.1 Its authors examine what we call “Punic” culture, that is, the western Phoenician colonial world after the sixth century (all dates BCE), marked by the rise of Carthage. The contributors agree that the name Punic (from the Latin for “Phoenician,” or “Carthaginian,” poenus, punicus) does not correspond with a clearly defined and distinct identity, but should be treated as a subset of the broader “Phoenician world,” slippery, vague, and complex as that term might be in turn. The ultimate (and frustrating) difficulty for historians and archaeologists is how to discuss those cultures (Phoenicians, Sardinians, Iberians, Numidians, and others) who left little or no literary evidence and no surviving self-defining narratives, without creating artificial modern categories shaped by material evidence, institutional projects, and intellectual trends. How do we bridge the gaps and correct for the biases in the Greek and Roman sources in order to form a more authentic view of the “Phoenicians” that is not Hellenocentric or Romanocentric? Do the cultural differences reflected in material practices reflect a separate identity between western and eastern Phoenicians? In general, the chapters all build on current views of the construction of identities and postcolonial theory, offering a fresh perspective on old and recent archaeological materials and (in fewer cases) written materials.

[...]

Cross-file under Punic Watch.

More on the carbonized Leviticus scroll

THE SMITHSONIAN: 1,500-Year-Old Text Has Been Digitally Resurrected From a Hebrew Scroll. Special software helped reveal the words on a burned scroll found inside a holy ark near the Dead Sea (Devin Powell). HT Jim West, who notes that James Aitkin is quoted in the article. Nice video too.

Background here and links.

New chambers in Tut's tomb?

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Search for Nefertiti's burial chamber in Tutankhamun tomb (BBC).

While assessing the scans last February, Dr [Nicholas] Reeves spotted what he believed were marks indicating where two doorways used to be. The archaeologist from the University of Arizona says he believes Nefertiti may lie inside.

Egypt's Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty hopes that non-invasive radar equipment can be used in the tomb within the next three months.

"If it is true, we are facing a discovery that would overshadow the discovery of Tutankhamun himself," said Mr Damaty.

Radar equipment "will confirm whether there's something" there, he added.

No, this isn't about ancient Judaism. But since I am forever going on about the imminent promise of non-invasive and non-destructive scanning technologies, it seemed worthwhile to note a case where primitive forms of such technologies are already being used to solve an archaeological question. I hope they do find more chambers in Tut's tomb — preferably well stocked ones! But the real point is that the technology now exists either to find them or to rule them out.

CFP for digital editions conference

ETC: Call for Papers: Digital Editions: Academia, Society, Cultural Heritage (Peter J. Gurry). Note that the date of this conference is 16-18 March 2016, not the 2015 typo at the link. The deadline for submission of proposals is 16 October 2015.

Krasnowolska and Rusek-Kowalska (eds.), Studies on the Iranian World I. Before Islam

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Studies on the Pre-Islamic Iranian World. Notice of a new book: Krasnowolska, Anna & Renata Rusek-Kowalska (eds.). 2015. Studies on the Iranian World I. Before Islam. Krakow: Jagiellonian University Press. Nothing specific on ancient Judaism in the TOC, but the Manicheans (Manichaeans) come up a couple of times.

Review of Bradley, Smell and the Ancient Senses

BRYN MARY CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Mark Bradley (ed.), Smell and the Ancient Senses. The senses in antiquity. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. Pp. xii, 210. ISBN 9781844656424. $39.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Stuart Eve, University College London/L – P : Archaeology (s.eve@ucl.ac.uk)

Preview

Mark Bradley opens this collected volume of 13 essays by stating: “one of the most interesting things about smell is its very transitoriness and elision from the record, as well as its ambiguities and complexities” (p. 2-3). This sentence sums up the book as a whole and sets the stage well for what can be considered an excellent collection of work on smell in the ancient world.

[...]

The breadth of the different contributions means there is not room to discuss each one individually, but each certainly contributes something useful to the volume and as a whole they give a good overview of the current (and varied) thinking on the subject. The early chapters present excellent discussions of smell for both medical diagnosis and prognosis, along with a discussion of which herbs and trees may have been experienced and exploited for their smelly qualities. In some cases it seems as if the authors are perhaps 'tacking on' a discussion of smell to some of their previous research – this is particularly true of Koloski-Ostrow (with her focus on sewerage systems) and Potter (on Roman dining) – but the contributions don't necessarily suffer for this and indeed it can be taken as evidence of how pervasive the study of smell should be.

The choice of the contributions means interesting juxtapositions are sometimes presented, with Butler's exploration of the poetical creation of the sweet-smelling 'scent of a woman' being set against Bradley's discussion of the foul smells of the body. The chapters on the role of scent and smell in religious contexts, (Clements [on Greek ritual], Green [on smell in Rabbinic Jewish ritual], and Toner [on smell in Christianity]) work together very well to present three different ways in which smell can be used to appease or attract the gods. The exploration of the role of incense throughout these three chapters aptly demonstrates both the ethereal nature of smell, but also its politicisation to achieve one's own aims.3 As Clements says, “odour emerges as an experience of divinity, and divinity, in turn, as an experience of odour” (p. 59).

[...]

RevQ 105/27 (2015)

A NEW VOLUME IS OUT: Revue de Qumrân 105, tome 27 (2015). Follow the link for the TOC.

Thompson on "Biblical Archaeology"

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Biblical Archaeology: The Hydra of Palestine’s History

Both Israel Finkelstein and William Dever have allegedly distanced themselves from the kind of “biblical archaeology” of William F. Albright. Their own efforts, however, to relate Palestinian archaeology and biblical narrative not only reflect Albright’s earlier methods, they create a politically oriented incoherence. In three recent works, since the turn of the millennia, Finkelstein uses archaeologically based arguments primarily to resolve problems of biblical interpretation. Dever, who also has published three biblical-archaeological studies since 2001, concentrates, rather, on archaeological issues, while using biblical narrative for his underlying historical context. A discussion of the figures of Solomon and Josiah on the one hand and a discussion of “landscape archaeology” and site classification, on the other hand, illustrate the shortcomings of their methodology.

This article has been published as part of the Festschrift for Niels Peter Lemche, Teologi, historie og erindring, in the Dansk teologisk tidsskrift 78 (2015), 243-260.

By Thomas L. Thompson
Professor emeritus
University of Copenhagen
October 2015

ARTA

AWOL: Open Access Journal: ARTA: Achaemenid Research on Texts and Archaeology. Lots of good articles on Achaemenid Persia. I noted a recent one here.

The Mt Zion excavation

JAMES TABOR: Fabulous Coverage of our Mt Zion Dig! Professor Tabor links to a popular report on the Mt Zion excavation, headed by him and Shimon Gibson under the auspices of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. It will be running again in 2016.

Background on the excavation and its most famous discovery, the "Mt Zion cup," is here and links.

Dead Sea Scrolls workshop report

THE EUROPEAN QUMRAN NETWORK MEETING IN HELSINKI took place in September. Katri Antin and Jutta Jokiranta have a brief report at the Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions (CSTT) Blog: FROM TINY DOTS TO GLOBALIZATION.

Satlow on Ben Sira

MICHAEL L. SATLOW: The Wisdom of Ben Sira: How Jewish? (TheTorah.com).

Ben Sira will never replace Kohelet within the Tanak or as a synagogue reading on Sukkot. But although it is “outside the Bible,” it may still contain teachings and wisdom that remain relevant for us today. King Solomon, the reputed author of Kohelet, was said to have a capacious sense of wisdom. We might want to ask whether our tent, like those of the Talmudic and Geonic Sages, is large enough to include Ben Sira, even if the book is only just allowed to lurk at the entrance.

Cross-file under Old Testament Apocrypha Watch.

Research fellowship at the John Rylands Library

H-JUDAIC: Fellowships: Visiting Research fellowships at the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester.

For more on the John Rylands Research Institute, see here and links.

Fulton, Reconsidering Nehemiah's Judah

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

Reconsidering Nehemiah's Judah
The Case of MT and LXX Nehemia 11–12

[Neuauswertung des Juda bei Nehemia. Der Fall MT und LXX Nehemia 11–12.]
2015. XV, 258 Seiten.
Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe 80

Deirdre N. Fulton investigates the history of Judah during the late-Persian and Hellenistic Periods by analysing Nehemiah 11-12. These chapters exhibit changes in the lists and the procession narrative, preserved in two different traditions, within the MT (Masoretic Text) and the LXX (Greek Septuagint).

Gerim

YONA SABAR: Hebrew word of the week: Gerim — “alien residents; converts to Judaism.”

Virtual tour of biblical sites

POPULAR ARCHAEOLOGY: Website walks visitors on virtual tour of biblical archaeological sites.

Petra. Masada. Herodium. Jericho. Qumran.

These are “holy land” archaeological sites of which most of us have heard but comparatively few of us have actually visited in person. There are obvious reasons for that—cost, time, cost, other commitments, cost, other priorities, cost. For those of us who have a passion for things archaeological, especially as they apply to the biblical account and the Middle East in general, such places remain mostly uncrossed on the travel wish list.

But what if you were told that you could ‘visit’ these places without incurring the fortune of airfare, hotel expenses and food, without ever having to hassle with security check lines, step onto an airplane or ride a bus or take a taxi?

One website, called the Virtual World Project, can do that for us. Featuring archaeological sites from Abu Ghosh to Zohar, the website offers virtual grand tours of no less than 106 sites.

[...]

Nice website. It's not quite up to this level of virtual reality yet, but the images are high quality and the panorama effects are very good.

PSCO 53 (2015-16)

THE PHILADELPHIA SEMINAR ON CHRISTIAN ORIGINS: 2015–2016 Topic: Beyond “Greco-Roman Context”: Persian & Other Perspectives on Judaism & Christianity. Sounds like an excellent area to explore. Follow the link for details.

Canepa, "Text, image, memory, and performance"

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Epigraphic practices in Persia and the ancient Iranian world. Notice of a new article in a new book: Canepa, Matthew P. 2015. "Text, image, memory, and performance: epigraphic practices in Persia and the ancient Iranian world." In Antony Eastmond, Viewing Inscriptions in the Late Antique and Medieval World, 10-35. Cambridge University Press

Dennert, John the Baptist and the Jewish Setting of Matthew

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

John the Baptist and the Jewish Setting of Matthew

How does the Jewish figure of John the Baptist function within the Jewish setting of Matthew? Brian C. Dennert analyzes the Baptist's role in Matthew and draws upon his portrait in other texts, noting how Matthew's portrait and use of John strengthens the claims of Matthew's Jewish group over against other Jewish groups.

Aramaic and the Cellist

ARAMAIC WATCH: Cellist Maya Beiser takes cutting-edge approach to music (Colin Eatock, Chron).

For this kind of unorthodox programming, the Washington Post dubbed her "the reigning queen of the avant-garde cello."

Beiser was raised on a kibbutz and came to the U.S. in 1987. She soon made a name for herself as the cellist in the New York ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars, which is known for cutting-edge repertoire.

Her newest production, brought to the Wortham Theater Center by the Society for the Performing Arts, is called "All Vows." She says the title is inspired by the "Kol Nidre," a Jewish prayer written more than 1,000 years ago in the Aramaic language.

"I'm starting the second part of the show with 'Kol Nidre,' " she says. "I'll be playing the cello and singing in Aramaic. I'll perform a setting that was written for me by Mohammed Fairouz. It's a beautiful gift that he has created."

Fairouz is an American composer of Palestinian origin who is much feted in the classical music world.

Aramaic and music seem to go well together.

Sukkot priestly blessing at Western Wall

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: IN PICTURES: Thousands flock to Western Wall for traditional priestly blessing. The traditional priestly blessing is held anually in honor of Succot, Passover and Shavuot (Jerusalem Post).

Background on the Festival of Sukkot is here (cf. here) and links.

AJR interviews CBR editor

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Currents in Biblical Research: Interview with Editor Jordan Rosenblum.

“The Ancient Jew Review sat down with Jordan Rosenblum, editor of Ancient Judaism at Currents in Biblical Research. We discuss the scope of the journal, the peer review process, as well as Rosenblum’s advice for journal submissions.”

Egyptian street-map mosaic excavated in Israel

ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY PRESS RELEASE:

A Rare 1,500 Year Old Mosaic was Discovered that Depicts Ancient Streets and Buildings in Egypt

A 1,500 year old mosaic, depicting a map with streets and buildings, was exposed about two years ago in archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority conducted together with school children and employees from the Qiryat Gat Industrial Park. The excavation of the mosaic was generously underwritten by the Y.S. Gat Company–Qiryat Gat Industrial Park Management Company. This extraordinary mosaic served as the floor of a church dating to the Byzantine period. It was removed from the site for the purpose of conservation and was recently returned to its permanent location in the industrial park. The mosaic will be revealed to the public for the first time at the “Factories from Within” festival to be held October 1, during the Sukkot holiday.

According to archaeologists Sa‘ar Ganor and Dr. Rina Avner of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The appearance of buildings on mosaic floors is a rare phenomenon in Israel. The buildings are arranged along a main colonnaded street of a city, in a sort of ancient map. A Greek inscription preserved alongside one of the buildings exposed in the mosaic indicates that the place which is depicted is the settlement חורטסו, in Egypt. According to Christian tradition, the prophet Habakkuk was buried in חורטסו. The appearance of this Egyptian city on the floor of the public building in Qiryat Gat might allude to the origin of the church’s congregation”.

The mosaic pavement was part of the floor of a church that did not survive. Two sections of the mosaic were preserved; animals such as a rooster, deer and birds and a special goblet with red fruits are portrayed on one part of the pavement. According to Ganor, “The artist utilized tesserae of seventeen different colors in preparing the mosaic. The investment in the raw materials and their quality are the best ever discovered in Israel”. A Nile River landscape in Egypt consisting of a boat with a rolled-up sail, streets and buildings is depicted on the second carpet. The buildings are portrayed in detail and in three dimensions, and they have two–three stories, balconies and galleries, roofs, roof tiles and windows.

The “Factories from Within” festival will be held this year for the first time in the Qiryat Gat Industrial Park during the Sukkot holiday, in what will become an annual tradition. On October 1 the Qiryat Gat Industrial Park will be turned into an event-filled arena of one-time performances in unconventional locations, with rare visits inside some of the best known factories in Israel. The children will enjoy performances of Adon Shoko with songs by Arik Einstein, “Shukhnat Hop” and a variety of creative activities. A unique offering of events awaits adults with appearances by Shalom Hanoch and Moshe Levi in a performance of “Exit” that will be held in a printer factory, the singer Dikla will appear in the park, and Hemi Rudner will hold a fascinating master’s class in the Negev Beer brewery.

The project will give the general public a rare opportunity to peek into the hidden world of the factories in one of the country’s most modern industrial areas. The “Factories from Within” festival is the inaugural event slated to launch the 60th anniversary of Qiryat Gat, and the public is invited to enjoy the unique musical and visual experience.

The announcement has already received considerable media attention, for example, these LiveScience articles by Stephanie Pappas: 1,500-Year-Old Mosaic Shows Map of Ancient Egyptian Settlement and In Photos: Elaborate Mosaic Adorned Floor of Ancient Church.

Scanning the bodies from Pompeii

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Revealed - what's inside the Pompeii mummies: Incredible CT scans show bodies in unprecedented detail laying bare their bones, delicate facial features and even dental cavities (Victoria Woollaston, Daily Mail)

• Restorers are working on 86 preserved plaster casts of Romans who died when Mt Vesuvius erupted in 79AD
  
• Each of the victims have been entombed in ash and now plaster for more than 1,900 years
  
• Experts have spent the summer scanning these bodies using CT scanners at the Pompeii Archaeological Site
  
• They have now released the first results of these scans to show what lies beneath the plaster of the victims

Remarkable, if macabre, technological progress. Pompeii has featured from time to time on PaleoJudaica, notably here, here, here, and here and links. It has even occasionally come up in connection with ancient Judaism, such as here, here and here and links.

Cairo Geniza scholar receives MacArthur Fellowship

CONGRATULATIONS! Rustow receives MacArthur Fellowship (Daily Princetonian).

Marina Rustow, the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East at the University, is among the 24 scientists, artists, scholars and activists who received this year’s MacArthur Fellowship.

The distinction, sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, comes with $625,000 grants distributed in quarterly installments over a five-year period. ...

Rustow joined the University faculty this past July and specializes in Jewish studies of the medieval Middle East. Rustow has analyzed Cairo Geniza, a collection of more than 300,000 folio pages of legal documents, letters and literary materials once preserved in an Egyptian synagogue. These documents now reside in about 200 libraries and private collections.

Rustow explained that because of the complexity of their language, the Cairo Geniza texts are often difficult to understand and only a limited number of scholars have received sufficient training. The texts mostly include legal transactions and other day-to-day records preserved in a range of languages, particularly Judeo-Arabic ones.

Studying those texts, she said, provides a more insightful understanding of the Medieval Islamic state, especially the lifestyle of Jews, a minority in the empire that stretched from Egypt to Palestine.

“I am interested in the internal history of Jewish communities between the 11th and 13th centuries, a period that they documented so well,” she said. “Reading these accounts allow me to get a sense about the lives of Jews living under Islamic rule on every level from breakfast to poetry to marriage choices.”

[...]

This is later than PaleoJudaica's normal range of interest, but I always like to keep track of what is happening in Cairo Geniza studies. On which, more here with many, many links.

Christ Among the Messiahs in paperback

MATTHEW NOVENSON'S RECENT BOOK CHRIST AMONG THE MESSIAHS is now out in paperback with OUP.

A review of the book was noted here.

NaBuCCo

AWOL: Neo-Babylonian Cuneiform Corpus (NaBuCCo). Get it, get it, Nabucco?!

Review of Hoyos, Mastering the West

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Dexter Hoyos, Mastering the West: Rome and Carthage at War. Ancient warfare and civilization. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xxi, 337. ISBN 9780199860104. $29.95.

Reviewed by Fred K. Drogula, Providence College (fdrogula@providence.edu)

Preview

Dexter Hoyos is a leading authority on ancient Carthage and its wars with Rome, and his numerous works have advanced our understanding of these subjects.1 In Mastering the West: Rome and Carthage at War, Hoyos takes up the daunting tasks of giving a detailed narrative of the three Punic Wars and their intervening periods, of analyzing the catalysts and motives driving critical events in these wars, of drawing attention to problems in our evidence, and of working through those problems to present the best reconstruction possible. Hoyos also asks several larger questions in his work, such as why the three Punic Wars (and related Macedonian Wars) began, how Carthage and Rome were able to sustain the immense costs of the wars, and why winning the wars did not leave Rome enfeebled. In all of these areas he has succeeded admirably, and has produced an engaging and highly readable work that will attract a wide readership.

[...]

Cross-file under Punic Watch.

More on the renovation of the JTS Library

MARC GARY: The JTS Library for the 21st Century (Times of Israel blog).

Although nostalgia for a golden-hued past is a common emotional reaction to change, it cannot be a substitute for meeting the evolving needs of the future. The present JTS Library was built in the 1980s, which may seem not so long ago until you realize that 30 years ago the Internet revolution had not transformed the way we receive and disseminate information, digitization was not yet available, eBooks did not exist, and the numerous technological developments that allow rare books to be showcased and studied without harm to their fragile condition were not even considered. Perhaps even more importantly, 30 years ago libraries were mainly used as spaces for silent, individual scholarship, which is at odds with the advanced thinking of today that emphasizes the value of collaborative learning.

Had JTS merely decided to preserve the present Library and ignore these seismic changes—as some have suggested—we would have done a major disservice to the remarkable collection and the history it represents. Instead, the leadership of JTS—the Board of Trustees, the administration, and the leadership of the Library—embarked on one of the most exciting ventures in JTS history to ensure that the treasures of the Jewish people are better conserved, more widely disseminated, and more accessible to the world of scholars, students, and lay people with the purpose of enriching and inspiring new generations.

The author "is executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer of The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS)."

Background here.

Was Tischendorf a goodie or a baddie?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Tischendorf on Trial for Removing Codex Sinaiticus, the Oldest New Testament. Is Constantine Tischendorf a hero or thief? (Ellen White). The BAR article by Stanley Porter is summarized in this post, but its full text is behind a subscription wall.

Stanley Porter, the Dean of McMaster Divinity College, argues that many salient details are omitted from this all too common telling of the events. At the time of Tischendorf, there was nothing uncommon about removing, buying or gifting ancient manuscripts in this manner. He also demonstrates that from the beginning, there were discussions about donating the manuscript to the Russian Czar, as would be appropriate for an Eastern Orthodox monastery, but that the succession problems within the church leadership lead to a more complicated than normal process, which allowed allegations against Tischendorf to linger. Stanley Porter explains how newly revealed documents from the Russian archives exonerate Tischendorf and provide the rest of the story of Codex Sinaiticus’s long journey west.

More on Tischendorf is here and link. More on Codex Sinaiticus is here and links.

Regarding Codex Siniaticus, I can only repeat my view that antiquities are the heritage of humanity, not just treasures of particular nations or institutions, and they should be kept where they are safest. I realize that raises many moral and practical issues and, yes, let's talk about them. Meanwhile, I can't say I'm sorry that this manuscript is not at Saint Catherine's Monastery at present.

Kish

LET IT STAY BURIED FOR NOW: Iraq’s Ancient Kish City Lies Buried in Sand. Iraq’s Kish City has overcome natural disasters and neglect over the years, but it has now been turned into a desolate site covered in sand (Adnan Abu Zeed, Al-Monitor).

KISH CITY, Iraq — A British archaeological team from the Field Museum and Oxford University conducted excavations between 1923 and 1929 in Kish City, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad. Since then, no other excavations have been made in the city, which dates back 5,000 years. The visible ruins of the ancient site have been covered by sand dunes and mounds. According to archaeological records, Kish City survived the Great Flood that happened some 7,600 years ago and was mentioned in Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures.

Kish City is also well known because this is the site where the famous King Sargon of Akkad, with whom the Akkadian state was raised to the level of an empire, appeared. This brave king annexed the cities neighboring Kish to his kingdom and invaded the lands neighboring Iraq, such as Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Arab Gulf region.

Whoever visits Kish City, 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) east of Babil, will not find, for the time being, more than ruins buried underneath the sand.

[...]

Kish is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Saul's father's names is coincidentally similar) or the New Testament or, as far as I can recall, in the Qur'an. I don't know where the author got the idea that the name is mentioned in these scriptures. The Hebrew Bible does mention a number of very ancient Mesopotamian cities such as Babylon, Uruk ("Erech"), and Agade ("Akkad") in Genesis 10.

The Sumerian King list is the "archaeological records" that say that that the city-state of Kish survived the Great Flood.

There is already some local looting of the site, but I hope it remains relatively ignored until the political situation becomes more stable in Iraq.