Ben Dov on the Watchers and Mesopotamian inscriptions

REMNANT OF GIANTS: Is the Watcher/Fallen Angel Myth a reinterpretation of Mesopotamian inscriptions?

Jonathan Ben-Dov (University of Haifa) has developed a very interesting theory about the origin of the early Jewish tradition of the Fallen Angels and Giants. He presented it at Boston College on November 20, 2013, in a paper entitled “Iconography and Myth: From Nebuchadnezzar to the Fallen Angels”.

[...]

Follow the link for the video. A past post on Ben Dov's theory is here.

Punic death metal

PUNIC WATCH: KATAKLYSM Frontman's EX DEO Project To Release 'The Immortal Wars' Album In February 2017 (Blabbermouth.net).

EX DEO, the reactivated Ancient Roman-themed arsenal fronted by KATAKLYSM singer Maurizio Iacono, will release its new studio album, "The Immortal Wars", in February 2017 via Napalm Records. The CD's main concept will deal with Punic Wars, a series of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage from 264 B.C. to 146 B.C. The epic legendary wars will come to life and bring the showdown between two of the greatest generals that ever walked the earth, Hannibal and Scipio Africanus, both of whom rewrote the rules of war and strategies. The album will also feature other unexplored subjects on Ancient Rome surely to raise the epic level to the maximum.

[...]

There's more on KATAKLYSM here.

Announcement: T. J. Lang

NEW APPOINTMENT AT THE FACULTY OF DIVINITY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS:

The School of Divinity is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr T.J. Lang as Lecturer in New Testament, starting in August 2016.

Dr Lang comes to St Andrews from Durham University, where he was Lecturer in New Testament Studies. Dr Lang's PhD is in New Testament and Early Christianity from Duke University. He is the author of Mystery and the Making of a Christian Historical Consciousness: From Paul to the Second Century (de Gruyter, 2015) and articles published or forthcoming in journals such as Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Biblical Interpretation, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Journal of Theological Studies, and New Testament Studies.

Dr Lang is interested in supervising PhD students in a range of areas related to the New Testament and early Christianity and is happy to discuss proposals with potential students. The focus of his research, however, has been on Paul and the reception history of Pauline traditions, the Synoptic Gospels and John, and second-century Christianity. His current research is on Paul’s conception of time and history and broader issues of Christian epistemology. We look forward to welcoming him here in the summer.

Very good news indeed.

Laser preservation

UNFORTUNATELY THIS DOESN'T INVOLVE RAY GUNS: Using Lasers to Preserve Antiquities Threatened by ISIS (STEPHEN FARRELL, NYT).

Cultural organizations are working with Iraqi and Syrian experts, drawing on local knowledge and providing equipment and training, to create digital records of endangered ancient sites.

Cross file under Technology Watch. Background here and here and links.

Review of Gager, Who Made Early Christianity?

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Gager, Who Made Early Christianity? (Brian Leport).

Past posts on the book are here and links.

What will happen to the Iraqi Jewish archive?

STILL IN LIMBO: Who should keep Iraqi Jewry’s archives, saved from Saddam, now on tour in US? The future of a unique collection, salvaged in a ‘Monuments Men-style’ rescue from a secret police HQ in Baghdad, 2003, is up for grabs (Rich Tenorio, Times of Israel).

The collection was waterlogged and damaged, and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq placed an urgent call to the United States National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland. With permission from local officials, the treasures were soon airlifted to the US in a special rescue operation.

At a cost of $3 million, the collection of over 2,700 books and tens of thousands of documents dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries has been preserved, cataloged and digitized. Today, some are being shown in an exhibition touring the US until they are ultimately to be returned to the Iraqi National Archives in Baghdad.

“There is no date,” said US National Archives exhibit director Lisa Royse about the exact time the collection is to be returned to Iraq. “[For now] they are willing to let us extend the archive’s time in the US.”

[...]

A long article that covers the story in detail from its beginning to the present. And the following is noteworthy:

Several individuals who were present when the collection was discovered during the Iraq War, however, have voiced concern over what will happen once the tour ends.

The US tour is scheduled to end in the summer of 2016 and at some point following, the exhibition is planned to be shown at the Iraqi National Archives in Baghdad. “That’s its final venue,” exhibit director Royse said.

Some have called for a permanent destination outside Iraq — either in the US or Israel.

“To whom does it belong?” asked Rhode, who has grappled with this question ever since he navigated in waist-deep waters to rescue a floating Torah scroll in Iraq over a decade ago. “The answer, to me, is that it belongs to the people who used it, the Jews of Iraq… It belongs to them, not the Iraqi government.”

‘When you take over a country, you can’t steal its treasures’
Rhode and others believe the time is ripe to reexamine the terms of the agreement under which the artifacts arrived in the US.

[...]

It seems to me that the material ought to belong to the Jewish community, the Iraqi Jewish community,” Miller said, adding that there are more Iraqi Jews now in the US than in Baghdad.

Former Pentagon official Harold Rhode studies an artifact from the Jewish community of Iraq in the basement of Saddam Hussein's secret police headquarters on May 6, 2003, Baghdad, Iraq. (Courtesy: Richard Gonzales)
Former Pentagon official Harold Rhode studies an artifact from the Iraqi Jewish community cache on May 6, 2003, Baghdad, Iraq. (Courtesy: Richard Gonzales)

In Rhode’s opinion, the ideal destination for the collection is the Museum of Babylonian Jewry outside Tel Aviv. “It’s the only museum of Iraqi Jewish heritage that exists,” he said.

[...]

Background here, with links going back to the discovery of the archive in 2003. And I have given some of my own reflections on how to proceed at the links at the bottom of this post.

Good going, ancient Romans!

THE GOOD OLD DAYS: What Did the Ancient Romans Do for Us? They Gave Us Parasites. 'Clean' ancient Romans were crawling with worms, lice and fleas despite their baths, sewage systems and toilets, study proves (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

The people of ancient Rome were famed not only for their licentiousness but for their sanitation. Public baths were legion throughout the Roman Empire, and the Romans are also credited with introducing toilets and sewers to European towns some 2,000 years ago. Yet the Romans turn out to have been even more worm-infested than their unwashed peers, and also compared with earlier peoples, say archaeologists.

At least they probably smelled better, says Piers Mitchell of the Cambridge Archaeology and Anthropology Department.

The reasons for the pest infestations were apparently not that they didn’t know how to bathe, but they didn't realize the way they did it and other habits of theirs supported the life-cycle of parasites.

[...]

A review of Mitchell's book is noted here. Some past posts of related interest are here, here, here, and here. And, of course, there is this.

As I have said before, the ancients lived in a world whose casual degradation and brutality is hard for us to imagine.

More 2015 archaeology lists

BIBLE PLACES BLOG: Top Biblical Archaeology Discoveries of 2015 (Todd Bolen). The post includes the Christianity Today top 10 list and the Haaretz list, but also others that have not been noted by PaleoJudaica.

More on Schechter's centennial yahrzeit

CONFERENCE REPORT: Schechter kin observe scholar’s yahrtzeit. At Cambridge seminar, local rabbi is reminded of ancestor’s impact (Robert Wiener, NJJN Staff Writer).

A century after the death of Solomon Schechter, the Judaics scholar who revitalized Conservative Judaism, his descendants paid homage to his memory at Cambridge University in England.

Among them was his great-grandson, Rabbi John Schechter of Congregation B’nai Israel in Basking Ridge, who earned his ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where Solomon Schechter served as president from 1902 to 1915.

Along with his wife, Cantor Erica Lippitz of Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange, John Schechter attended the second of two conferences observing his forebear’s 100th yahrtzeit.

The day-long gathering in England, held Nov. 22 at the Divinity School at St. John’s College, featured presentations on Solomon Schechter’s impact on the study of Jewish antiquity and on contemporary scholarship and religious thought. Arriving in the United States in 1902, Schechter transformed JTS into a locus for Jewish scholarship and rabbinic training.

For John Schechter and Lippitz, the highlight of the visit was examining some of the 193,000 sacred and secular texts and documents that the elder Schechter shipped to Cambridge from among the 300,000 items he famously explored in 1896-97 after their discovery in the Cairo Geniza.

[...]

Background here and links.

Neshech

HEBREW ETYMOLOGY: Bernie Sanders Takes a Bite out of Bible With Attack on 'Usury' (Aviya Kushner, The Forward).

Masters of magic?

YES. NEXT QUESTION? WERE CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND JEWS MASTERS OF MAGIC? (ELISA MEYER, World Religion News). Some of them were. A few of them — and others — still are.

Background here and here. And on my last point see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Ten years of ETC

CELEBRATION: Happy New ETC Year! (Tommy Wasserman).

Welcome to a new year with the ETC blog and lots of textual criticism!

At the SBL meeting in Atlanta, we celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the blog at the annual ETC blogdinner, and the founding father Peter Williams held a speech looking back at the ten years and ahead into the future. Incidentally, we celebrated the 5-year anniversary at the SBL meeting 2010, held in Atlanta too.

We did not make much of the 10-year anniversary here on the blog, but I thought it would be nice to note a few things (better late than never):

[...]

Interview with Lawrence Schiffman

BERNARD STARR: Bible Expert's Surprising Findings About Jews and Judaism Revealed in the New Testament (HuffPo).

It's well known that Christianity sprang from a Jewish context. While there may be controversy about Jesus' Judaism vs. the traditional Judaism of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Judaism in the first century, there's no doubt that Jesus, his family, and followers were practicing Jews, as recorded in the New Testament.

Biblical scholar Lawrence H. Schiffman, Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Director of the Global Network for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies at New York University (NYU), takes this understanding to a new level. He identifies citations in the New Testament that others have glossed over without recognizing their unique significance. On March 26-27, 2015, at a conference at NYU, "Integrating Christianity and Judaism into the Study of the Ancient World," Professor Schiffman delivered a talk titled "The New Testament as a Source for the History of the Jews and Judaism."

I interviewed Professor Schiffman to gain further insight into his perspective on this fascinating subject.

The text of the interview follows. The conference was noted as upcoming here.

More on Rosh HaAyin

LIVESCIENCE: Photos: Ancient Farmhouse and Church Uncovered in Israel (Mindy Weisberger).

As the city of Rosh Ha-'Ayin in central Israel expands, excavation in preparation for new construction revealed ancient buildings in the surrounding area. Structures with colorful mosaic floors and dozens of rooms hint at how people may have lived and worked in centuries gone by.

Background here.

The Samaritans in Recent Research

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

The Samaritans in Recent Research

We now know from the Dead Sea discoveries that texts similar to the Samaritan Pentateuch were circulating together with texts that foreshadow the Masoretic text and the Septuagint. No “sectarian” differences are present in these manuscripts, which means that the so-called pre-Samaritan texts were used side by side with the other versions. Thus, in its substance, the Pentateuch was common to Yahwistic Samarians and and Yahwistic Judeans long before the Samarian Yhwh worshipers parted company with the latter.

See Also: The Samaritans: A Profile (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2016).

By Reinhard Pummer
Department of Classics and Religious Studies
University of Ottawa
December 2015

PaleoJudaica has endless posts on both the ancient and the modern Samaritans. See, for example, here and here and follow the links. Or, for much more, run "Samaritans" through the search engine.

Helmut Koester, 1926-2016

SAD NEWS: Preeminent New Testament Scholar Helmut Koester Passes Away at 89 (Harvard Divinity School).

Helmut Koester, John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Emeritus, died on New Year’s Day, 2016, at age 89.

Koester was a leading scholar in the history of Christianity, New Testament exegesis and theology, the religions of the ancient Roman world, and archeology.

[...]

Requiescat in pace.

Burials at a construction site in Jerusalem

AGAIN, A GRAVE MATTER: Israel Nixes Excavation of Ancient Jerusalem Burial Site in Area Slated for Homes. Antiques Authority forced to leave site after Shas leader Arye Dery raised issue with Netanyahu, who ordered that work be stopped (Yair Ettinger, Haaretz).

Under pressure from the ultra-Orthodox Knesset factions, the Israel Antiquities Authority on Tuesday stopped its excavation of ancient burial caves in an area slated for a new residential neighborhood in south Jerusalem. The caves were discovered in the neighborhood of Gilo, in an area where 708 apartments are to be built, about half of them for ultra-Orthodox families.

[...]

The halakhic and financial issues are complex and contentious:

Out of the 708 apartments, 354 have been allocated to ultra-Orthodox associations. According to ultra-Orthodox sources, a compromise was suggested by which the developers would forego the apartments on the first floor and the buildings would be built on pillars, which is an acceptable solution under Jewish law. The developers reportedly agreed to the idea, on condition that they be compensated by the Construction Ministry. The Construction Ministry meanwhile has refused to compensate the developers.

According to officials familiar with the details, the antiquities authority decided to leave the site Tuesday due to Dery’s request from Netanyahu, which led to the latter ordering that work be stopped in an attempt to reach a compromise.

Past posts on similar situations are here, here, and here. And there's this. We're clearly dealing with some historically crowded real estate. And this seems relevant too.

Implications of Hezekiah's bulla

EPIGRAPHY: Hezekiah Seal Proves Ancient Jerusalem Was a Major Judahite Capital. Similar seal impressions had already been found – by thieves. This one uniquely found in situ proves King Hezekiah’s connection to the LMLK symbols and the existence of an advanced Judahite administration (Julia Fridman, Haaretz).

The uniqueness of the seal impression announced in December lies in its being a rare solid piece of evidence that Jerusalem housed a major Judahite royal administration. Almost all other seals and bullae from the Judahite era had been illegally dug up and sold by antiquities thieves, rendering them valueless to archaeologists because of their uncertain provenance and questionable authenticity.

Although, as the article observes, the iconography of the seal doesn't offer any great support to the biblical picture of Hezekiah as an anti-idolatry reformer.

Background here and links.

Encyclopedia Talmudit anniversary

EVENT: Encyclopedia Talmudit celebrates 70 years. Ceremony to mark one of the greatest contributions of modern society to the continuation of Jewish and halachic literature (Orli Harrari, Arutz Sheva).

A special ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the publication of the Encyclopedia Talmudit will take place at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Monday.

Seventy years ago, Rabbi Meir Bar Ilan and Rabbi Shlomo Zevin created the Encyclopedia Talmudit. More than 1 million editions have been published and it comprises 1,300 entries. The encyclopedia is one of the more important publications in the Jewish tradition and even high-ranking judges have used it and quoted it while formulating their legal decisions.

Event organizers have stated that the encyclopedia is a work that is unlike any other in halachic literature in its explanation and summarization of the large body of knowledge of halachic literature from the time period of the Tanach until modern times.

[...]

More on the Encyclopedia Talmudit is here.

The Talmud says that God studies Torah

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Talmud: God Studies Torah, Too. From a single biblical verse about divorce is spun an edifice of legal wrangling, including a first discussion of what, geographically, constitutes ‘the Land of Israel.’ There's a lot going on in the current readings.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

New Ethiopic program at Toronto

ETHIOPIC WATCH: Launch of Ethiopic Studies Program at the University of Toronto (Alpha Abebe, Tadias Magazine). They are still raising support for the program, but the University will be offering Ge'ez (Old Ethiopic) next year. That's a good start.

December Biblical Studies Carnival

JENNIFER GUO: Biblical Studies Carnival – December 2015. Goodbye 2015.

More on Eve and Adam's penis-bone

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS: A Flaccid Interpretation of Eden – By Joseph Ryan Kelly. This is a review of Ziony Zevit's book, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?, which has recently been receiving some media attention. The attention focuses on Zevit's theory that, according to the Garden of Eden story, Eve was created from Adam's penis-bone rather than his rib. This review was published last March, but I did not note it at the time. It covers a range of things in the book, but gives considerable space to the question of that bone and the reviewer is not convinced by the theory. Excerpt:

Has Zevit pulled back the curtain on these early chapters of Genesis? While his use of philology and historical criticism forces us to reconsider interpretations often taken for granted, his approach does not produce confident conclusions. Does God really create Hawwa, Eve, out of Adam’s penile bone? Genesis 2:21 describes God removing one of Adam’s ribs or ṣelaot. To incorporate this detail into his interpretation, Zevit translates the term ṣela as “lateral bone.” Imagining the baculum as belonging to a category of lateral bones strikes me as a specious argument. But perhaps more pressing is the way this proposed etiology differs from other etiologies involving humans in the Hebrew Bible. Elsewhere, biblical texts use past events to explain cultural institutions or customs.

Worth reading in full. Background here.

Magic and that silver scroll

CANDIDA MOSS: When Christians, Muslims, and Jews Loved Magic. A silver scroll found in Jordan is a reminder of how big the market for ‘magic’ objects was in ancient Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. (The Daily Beast).

The newly discovered scroll may well suggest that Arabs in 8th century Jerash were adopting the religious practices of their Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Roman neighbors. But it also reminds us that one woman’s magic is another woman’s religion.

The discovery of this silver scroll was recently noted and commented on here.

The Study Quran

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: The Study Quran (John Turner).

Thus, I’m extremely pleased by the appearance of HarperOne’s The Study Quran, a project headed by Seyyed Nasr. One of my colleagues at George Mason, Maria Dakake, is one of the contributing editors.

The publication of The Study Quran is a landmark. It contains an original translation of the Quran, which is also very readable. It also contains an extensive scholarly apparatus, pointing readers to the ways that Quranic verses have been interpreted, especially during the first several centuries after the life of the Prophet Muhammad. This is enormously useful, as are the topical essays, which discuss everything from Sufism to Islamic art to “Death, Dying, and the Afterlife in the Quran.” The careful introductions to hadith sources at the back of the volume are also very helpful.

Unlike the Harper Collins Study Bible, at least as far as I can discern, The Study Quran is less concerned with introducing students to critical (i.e., non-Muslim or very progressive Muslim) scholarship on the Quran, so it is not an exact parallel. Nevertheless, I’m very grateful to have something to assign for my introductory students that will help them make better sense of the Qur’an and how Muslims have interpreted it.

I've been meaning to note this important publication for some time, so this is a good opportunity. I haven't yet seen it myself, but I'm looking forward to hearing more about it.

Daniel Matt reads the Idra Zuta

ZOHAR WATCH: Daniel Matt reads his Idra Zuta Zohar translation.

Near the very end of the Zohar on the Torah comes the remarkable section known as Idra Zuta (The Small Assembly). This dramatic narrative describes the last gathering of Rabbi Shim'on and the Companions before his death. Here the master reveals profound mysteries of divine being, and then departs from this world to unite ecstatically with the Divine Feminine, Shekhinah. ...

Background on the Zohar and on Daniel Matt's edition and translation of it is here with many, many links. The Shekhinah figures in that post as well.

More on Marshak, The Many Faces of Herod the Great

EUANGELION BLOG: A Great New Book About Herod the Great (Joel Willitts). A brief notice with additional references. I noted the book earlier here and here.

The state of the question on the Son of Man

REMNANT OF GIANTS: The assured results of Son of Man scholarship. Yep, that about sums it up.

'ezrah

YONA SABAR: Hebrew word of the week: Citizen - In Hebrew: EzraH. It means a "native-born" Israelite in biblical Hebrew.

Goff, "Ben Sira and the Giants"

RECENTLY UPLOADED TO ACADEMIA.EDU: "Ben Sira and the Giants of the Land: A Note on Ben Sira 16:7" (Matthew Goff, JBL 129, no. 4 (2010): 645–655).

In this short note I address the common claim that Sir 16:7 alludes to Gen6:1–4. I argue that understanding the verse in this way is not unreasonable but thatthis position needs to be qualified. The primary reference of the line is not the floodstory but archaic peoples of the land. Genesis 6 and early Jewish traditions that per-tain to this chapter influence Ben Sira’s description of archaic Canaanite rulers.

More on YU's Arch of Titus MOOC

ONLINE EDUCATION: YU Joins World of Online Education with Arch of Titus Class (Eitan Lipsky, The Commentator).

Although Chanukah has concluded, Yeshiva University is still trying to spread its light as far as it can. In early December, the university took a big step in expanding its global impact by releasing a course entitled, “Arch of Titus: Rome and the Menorah,” on Coursera, a company that works with top universities to make some of their courses available online as massive open online courses (known colloquially as MOOCs).

[...]

This Yeshiva University online course has already been noted here, but this article has additional background and information. Follow the latter link for lots more on the Arch of Titus, and see also here.

Jason, Repentance at Qumran

NEW BOOK FROM FORTRESS PRESS:

Repentance at Qumran: The Penitential Framework of Religious Experience in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Author: Mark A. Jason (Author)
Series: Emerging Scholars

Description
Mark A. Jason offers a detailed investigation of the place of repentance in the Dead Sea Scrolls, addressing a significant lacuna in Qumran scholarship. Normally, when the belief system of the community is examined, “repentance” is usually taken for granted or relegated to a peripheral position. By careful attention to key texts, Jason establishes the importance of repentance as a fundamental way of structuring and describing religious experience within the Qumran community. Repentance was important not only for entry into the community and covenant but also for daily governance and cultic activities, and even for authenticating understanding of the end times. Jason shows, then, that repentance was a central and decisive element in shaping that community’s identity and undergirded its religious experience from the start. Further, comparison with relevant texts from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha shows that the Qumran community represented a distinctive penitential movement in Second Temple Judaism.

Paperback
ISBN: 9781451485301
Price: $59.00
Release date: February 1, 2015
Pages: 208
Width: 6
Height: 9
Emerging Scholars: Bible

Ebook
ISBN: 9781451494273
Price: $59.00

HT the IOQS Facebook page.

The Tiburtine Sibyl

ANCIENT ORIGINS: The Terrifying Doomsday Prophecy of the Tiburtine Sibyl (NATALIA KLIMCZAK). A pretty good essay on the ancient sibylline traditions, but it could be a little more lucid in places. As it says, the Sibyl was a legendary pagan Greek prophetess (or prophetesses). She was co-opted and multiplied by the Romans, still pagan, then adopted as a prophetess in Jewish tradition, then in turn by Christians. There are many ancient books of Sibylline Oracles, but these are all written by Jews or Christians. Nothing remains of the original Roman Sibylline Oracles except the odd quotation.

One important omission in this essay is information on where to read the various books of Sibylline Oracles in English translation. The bulk of them was translated with introduction by John Collins in volume one of Charlesworth's Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Doubleday, 1983). (I don't have the page numbers handy.) The Tiburtine Sibyl has been translated into English with introduction recently by Rieuwerd Buitenwerf in volume one of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (ed. Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov; Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 176-88. And another translation of the same work, this one by Stephen Shoemaker, is coming out in August of 2016 in volume one of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (ed. Tony Burke and Brent Landau). Enjoy.

The Cotton Genesis on display at the BM

HIGHLIGHT FROM EGYPT: FAITH AFTER THE PHARAOHS: Abraham and the Angels: The Cotton Genesis at the British Museum (British Library Medieval manuscripts blog).

The miniature of Abraham and the angels from the Cotton Genesis is one of the first items on display in the exhibition Egypt: faith after the pharaohs currently taking place at the British Museum. The Cotton Genesis is a landmark in the history of biblical illustration. Produced probably in Egypt during the 5th or 6th century, it contains a copy of the Book of Genesis written in Greek. This extensively illuminated codex once contained a sequence of over 300 illustrations, but tragically it was severely damaged in the fire of 1731 at Ashburnham House, where it was stored together with the rest of the library of Sir Robert Cotton. In the fierce heat of the fire, the parchment leaves shrank and were partly burned or charred. Despite its poor state of preservation, the Cotton Genesis remains an exceptional witness of early biblical illustration and of the highly accomplished technique of late antique book painting.

[...]

Background on the exhibition is here and links.

Journal of Late Antiquity 8.2 (2015)

THE JOURNAL OF LATE ANTIQUITY has a new issue out (8.2, 2015) devoted to Religion, Medicine, Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity. A couple of the articles deal with rabbinic Judaism.

The circumcision of Jesus

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: On the Eighth Day of Christmas… (Andrew Jacobs).

And the eight days were fulfilled for circumcising him, and he was called by the name Jesus, which he was called by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. - Luke 2:21

Since antiquity Christians have imagined Jesus as an infant, circumcised according to Jewish Law on the eighth day of his life: the paradigmatic mark of the Jewish covenant on the Christian savior's body. While modern Christians may derive an irenic interfaith message from this image, this sign had quite a different significance in the first Christian centuries.

[...]

Somewhat related posts are here and here.

Mor, Judean Hebrew

NEW BOOK FROM THE ACADEMY OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE: Judean Hebrew: The Language of the Hebrew Documents from Judea Between the First and the Second Revolts, Uri Mor (in Hebrew).

HT the IOQS Facebook page.

Hillel and Shammai have their own streets

THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM: On Hillel Street (ELAINE ROSE GLICKMAN).

Hillel Street veers off from King George Street, running near Mamilla Cemetery, Independence Park, and the pedestrian mall known as Ben Yehuda. But my favorite thing about Hillel Street is the fact that it runs parallel to – wait for it – Shammai.

If this fact does not fill you with as much delight as it does me, that’s either because I need to get out more – or, to give myself the benefit of the doubt, perhaps because you have not been acquainted with the great stories of this sage. And just in case it’s the latter, please let me fill you in!

[...]

And so she does. As usual with these things, the rabbinic stories she re-tells about Hillel the Elder may often tell us more about the late antique rabbis and what they believed than correct details about the historical Hillel.

Some past posts on Hillel the Elder are here, here, here, and here.

Arava aqueduct

ARCHAEOLOGY: Roman Aqueduct Excavated in Arava Region. The discovery of an ancient aqueduct reinforces the theory that agriculture in the Arava dates back thousands of years. (JNi.Media).

An aqueduct which transported water into agricultural land was excavated at the “Biblical Tamar” site near Ein Hatzeva, a cooperative village in the central Arava valley. According to legend Tamar, which is mentioned as part of the southern border of the Promised Land, was built by King Solomon.

The ancient aqueduct is more than 1,000 years old, and it is possible that it was built as far back as the Roman period (63 BCE to 324 CE). It was discovered during archaeological excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority at the Biblical Tamar site in the Arava in recent weeks. The aqueduct was initially uncovered during works by the Arava Drainage Authority to regulate the flow of the Hatzeva spring.

[...]

Glimpses of Jesus Through the Johannine Lens

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

“Glimpses of Jesus Through the Johannine Lens—An Introduction and Overview of John, Jesus, and History, Volume 3”

This essay is a slightly expanded version of Paul Anderson, Felix Just, and Tom Thatcher. eds. John, Jesus, and History, Vol. 3: Glimpses of Jesus Through the Johannine Lens, scheduled for publication early in 2016 by SBL Press.

See Also: The John, Jesus, and History Project-New Glimpses of Jesus and a Bi-Optic Hypothesis.

By Paul N. Anderson
George Fox University
https://georgefox.academia.edu/PaulAnderson

By Jaime Clark-Soles
Associate Professor of New Testament
Southern Methodist University
December 2015

Sanders, Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought

JESUS CREED BLOG: The New Perspective is Now Complete (Scot McKnight).

What we needed from Sanders was something more than the last sections of P&PJ and more than we got in his little book on Paul in the Past Masters series. I’m happy to announce we have that book now. To use the words of my father in law, it’s a “ming” (his term for something big and heavy). It’s got to be connected to the Ming dynasty but I don’t find this meaning in urban dictionaries. Anyway, E.P. Sanders now has a book called Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought (Fortress, 2015). The book was pressed between our two front doors on Christmas Eve Day so it is my Christmas present.

It’s 862 pages, but the font is unusually large (nice for this reader’s eyes) and there’s plenty of white space and, even more, Sanders has great prose — he is crystal clear. He doesn’t care about the old perspective, new perspective and apocalyptic Paul debate. He simply lays out what he thinks Paul means in all his (authentic) letters, paragraph by paragraph. Which is, as the title of his post suggests, the completion of the new perspective on Judaism by forging an interpretation of Paul.

2016

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Have a great year and please keep visiting PaleoJudaica.

New Year's Eve

AS 2015 COMES TO AN END, PaleoJudaica has tallied up 1534 posts for the year, considerably more than any previous year since it began back in 2003. It has received something on the order of half a million page views in 2015. As usual, I will save my list of top posts of the year for the blogiversary notice in March.

I have been putting more effort into the blog and I hope you've been enjoying it. Thanks for visiting. I will do my best to keep up the pace and quality in the coming year.

A New Year's message from ...

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Getting Ready for the New Year: A message from Archangel Metatron.

Another 2015 Biblical Archaeology top ten

CHRISTIANITY TODAY: Biblical Archaeology’s Top Ten Discoveries of 2015. A glimpse at the important work that took place at excavations this year (Gordon Govier). This list overlaps considerably with the list published in Haaretz earlier this week, but is not quite the same and is more oriented to epigraphic discoveries. For the Haaretz list and background to the stories, see here. As for this one, background on the Horvat Kur mosaic is here and links; on the Davidic-era seal is here; on the Eshba'al (Ishba'al) seal from Khirbet Qeiyafa is here and links; on the new Lachish ostracon is here; and on the carbonized Leviticus scroll is here and links. I did not post on the Beit Shemesh idol head or the Iron Age gate at Gath.

Interview with Louis Feldman

THE JEWISH PRESS: On The Bookshelf (Elliot Resnick).

Professor Louis Feldman received his PhD from Harvard University in 1951 and recently retired after teaching Latin and Greek at Yeshiva University for close to 60 years. A proud Orthodox Jew, Feldman is considered the world’s expert on Josephus and is the author of such works as “Jew & Gentile in the Ancient World” and “Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible.”

The interview follows.

Tzoref, Selavan (eds.), Eshel, Exploring the Dead Sea Scrolls

NEW BOOK FROM VANDENHOECK AND RUPRECHT:

Shani Tzoref, Barnea Levi Selavan (Hg.), Hanan Eshel
Exploring the Dead Sea Scrolls
Archaeology and Literature of the Qumran Caves
1. Auflage 2015
314 Seiten with 9 fig. gebunden
ISBN 978-3-525-55096-0
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Journal of Ancient Judaism. Supplements - Band 018

120,00 €
Bei Abnahme der Reihe: 110,00 €

Among the most prominent hallmarks of the late Prof. Hanan Eshel (1958–2010) were his generosity, passion, and integrative approach. The eighteen essays in this volume were selected by Prof. Eshel shortly before his untimely death, to be printed as a collection aimed at contextualizing the textual finds of the Dead Sea Scrolls within their archaeological settings and within the contours of contemporary scholarship.
The Qumran texts that stand at the center of these articles are correlated with archaeological and geographic information and with a variety of textual sources including epigraphic evidence and, especially, the Hebrew Bible, Josephus, and rabbinic texts. The essays are organized according to the provenance of the discovered material, with sections devoted to the Damascus Document and the scrolls from Caves 1, 3, 4, and 11, as well as a final more general chapter.
Half of the essays have been previously published in English, while the other half have been translated from Hebrew here for the first time. The book includes essays that have been co-authored with Esther Eshel, Shlomit Kendi-Harel, Zeev Safrai, and John Strugnell.

Discoveries at Rosh HaAyin

EXCAVATION: Farmhouse From First Temple Era, Byzantine Church Found in Central Israel. Vast 2,700-year old farmstead featured 24 rooms around a courtyard - and 1,500-year old church featured credit: 'Built under Theodosius the priest' (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz)

Was Eve made from Adam's penis-bone?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Adam and Eve Story: Eve Came From Where? Somehow I missed this one when it came out last September. It seems that Professor Ziony Zevit published an article then in Biblical Archaeology Review asking “Was Eve Made from Adam’s Rib—or His Baculum?” (i.e., his penis-bone - which human males do not have). At the moment I don't have access to the BAR article, which is behind a subscription wall, but the BHD article summarizes it. The case also seems to have been argued in his 2013 book, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? (Yale University Press). For some reason the BAR article and the theory seem suddenly to be getting a lot of attention in the media. The Daily Mail reports in detail and notes the predictable outrage the notion is receiving from some BAR readers. And in Haaretz, Elon Gilad expresses considerable skepticism. (As noted here, he has already done some research on the general subject.)

I haven't seen the full argument, so I won't offer a view. I will say, first, that it seems to depend on the assumption that a removal of Adam's rib would have been taken as a etiological change such that all men subsequently would have been missing a rib. That's a reasonable reading, but it is open to debate. The story could have assumed that a rib was removed from Adam without it having any effect on his descendants, in which case his odd number of ribs would not have been an exegetical problem. Second, as Gilad observes at the end of his article, it is not clear how closely ancient Israelites attended to details of skeletal anatomy. Details of human anatomy only began to be studied systematically by the Alexandrian anatomists. But I concede that counting up how many ribs people have seems like an obvious thing to do.

Divine Sonship Symposium

CONFERENCE REMINDER: Son of God: Divine Sonship in Jewish and Christian Antiquity - The St Andrews Symposium for Biblical and Early Christian Studies. Noted earlier here. The symposium takes place on 6-8 June 2016 St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews. Garrick Allen has posted a flier here at Academia.edu. The call for papers is open until 15 February and the Early Bird registration fee is available until 29 February. Follow the links for further particulars

Exhibition on John Dee's library

REMINDER: Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee. Coming soon: An exhibition exploring one of Tudor England's most extraordinary and enigmatic figures. 18 January - 29 July 2016. More information on this exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians, Regent's Park, London, is here. You will also find links there to other posts about John Dee and about my own research on his angelic séances in relation to ancient Jewish visionary traditions. Related post here.

Interview with James K. Aitken

WILLIAM ROSS: LXX SCHOLAR INTERVIEW: DR. JAMES K. AITKEN

Today I have the pleasure of posting an interview with my doctoral supervisor, James K. Aitken, as a part of my ongoing series of LXX Scholar Interviews. Jim is lecturer in Hebrew, Old Testament, and Second Temple Studies at the University of Cambridge (and currently taking doctoral students). We have been working together since October 2014 and I have benefited immensely from his supervision, despite the various logistical problems we’ve had in the meantime!

As you will read about below, Jim is also quite active in the Septuagint guild and has contributed several key publications in the last few years. He brings a unique set of interests and expertise to the field and is in the midst of producing work that will certainly generate significant discussion within both Septuagint and Second Temple scholarly circles.

The interview follows.

Review of Olyan (ed.), Ritual Violence in the Hebrew Bible

THE BIBLICAL REVIEW: “Ritual Violence in the Hebrew Bible” edited by Saul M. Olyan (William Brown).

Saul M. Olyan (editor). Ritual Violence in the Hebrew Bible: New Perspectives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015, 190 pp., $74.00 (hardcover).

Excerpt:

I highly recommend Ritual Violence in the Hebrew Bible because it is exactly what it says it is: new perspective on the Hebrew Bible through a theme that is extremely underexplored, namely ritual violence. Students and scholars alike will find this volume valuable as it aids in moving forward scholarly studies into realms that have the potentials to shift the current ideas within scholarship. Without a doubt, this volume marks a major shift in how we read violence in the Hebrew Bible.

Reprinting Palmyra's arch

PALMYRA WATCH: Ancient arch of Palmyra which was destroyed by Isis will be recreated in Trafalgar Square and Times Square using the world's largest 3D printer (James Dunn, Daily Mail).

• Arch is the only remaining part of Temple of Bel, razed by Isis in August
  
• Institute of Digital Archaeology will recreate arch in London and New York
  
• Made in Shanghai, finished in Italy then built like Lego in Trafalgar Square
  
• On show for a week but Mayor Boris Johnson could consider keeping it
  
• See full news coverage on ISIS at www.dailymail.co.uk/isis

The 2,000-year-old arch of an ancient site destroyed by Isis is to be recreated in Trafalgar Square and Times Square as a 'call to action' over the militants' destruction of antiquities.

The famous arch is all that remains of the Temple of Bel in Syria, which was reduced to rubble by Isis militants in August, who murdered its curator and packed the site with explosives. But the 15-metre arch, which many fear will soon be destroyed, is to be recreated in London and New York, using the world's largest 3D printer.

[...]

Cross-file under "Techology Watch." Background on the whole sad story of Palmyra is here with many links.

That "Jesus was a Palestinian" meme again

IT'S SAD THAT THIS NEED TO BE NEWS: Australian Church Denies Belief That Jesus Was Palestinian (JTA).

Jesus was not Palestinian, a major church denomination in Australia said after the Executive Council of Australian Jewry challenged an article in a political publication in which the birthplace of Jesus Christ was named as Palestine.

[...]

In the article, Samah Sabawi and Bassam Dally wrote: “An official delegation representing our country in Israel has added fuel to the flames of extremism abroad by applauding proven human rights violators and insulting the living descendants of Christ in his home of birth in Palestine.”

[...]

Kudos to the Church for responding appropriately. Some related posts are collected here.

A graphic novel on the Maccabees?

KICKSTARTER: Maccabaeus: The War for Judea.

A graphic novel about the Hasmonean Revolt (the backstory to the Jewish festival of Hanukkah). Think "300" with yarmulkes.

Have a look and, if such things appeal to you, you can contribute. They have a long way yet to their goal and not a lot of time remaining.

No digging allowed in the walls of Tut's tomb

MORE FROM ZAHI HAWASS: Egyptian expert disputes new theory that Queen Nefertiti is in Tutankhamun's tomb. British expert's tomb theory 'baseless', says leading Egyptologist (Magdy Samaan, The Telegraph).

Nicholas Reeves, a British Egyptologist now at the University of Arizona, believes that he has found the answer. Last month, he announced that Queen Nefertiti's tomb probably lay behind one wall of King Tutankhamun's tomb.

But Zahi Hawass, a leading archaeologist and formerly Egypt’s minister of antiquities, told the Telegraph that Mr Reeves was peddling a “baseless” theory.

We already knew that, but now Dr. Hawass has gone on record that no damage to the tomb walls will be permitted to test Dr. Reeves's theory:

Mr Hawass promised that Mr Reeves would not be allowed to test his idea. "I will not allow - neither would any archaeologist allow - making a hole in Tutankhamun's tomb,” he said. “The tomb is very vulnerable; any hole may expose the paintings to complete collapse."

He believes that the question of where Nefertiti is buried can be resolved with DNA analysis and concludes:

These tests would reveal the truth, said Mr Hawass, and there was no point in pursuing Mr Reeves’s theory and risking damage to Tutankhamun’s tomb.

"There is nobody in Egypt - whether the minister of archaeology or anyone else - who can take the responsibility for making a scratch in Tutankhamun's tomb,” said Mr Hawass.

“So that is why I think that the idea was born dead."

Cross file under "Technology Watch." Additional background here, here, here, and here.

Ram statue excavated in Caesarea

ARCHAEOLOGY: Beautiful ancient ram statue unearthed near Byzantine church. Christmas Eve discovery in Caesarea excites archaeologists; beautiful sculpture was almost perfectly preserved (Arutz Sheva).

An impressive, nearly full-preserved ancient statue of a ram was discovered by archaeologists near an ancient church in Caesarea that dates to the Byzantine period.

The discovery was made last Thursday morning in an archaeological excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting in the Caesarea Harbor National Park, at the initiative of the Caesarea Development Corporation.

[...]

Nice piece. They're not sure yet whether it is of Byzantine-era or Roman-era origin and it sounds as though so far they are guessing about its purpose.

Award for the NYT

A WELL-DESERVED HONOR: HONEST REPORTING GIVES THE NEW YORK TIMES A 2015 DISHONEST REPORTING AWARD.

5. Most Unholy Row: New York Times

When the Palestinian Authority accused Israel of altering the status-quo arrangements on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the New York Times weighed in with an article questioning whether the ancient Jewish Temples were located in the contested area. The Times ignored the consensus among leading historians that the Temple Mount was indeed the location (hence the current name “Temple Mount,”) for these structures, but seemed oblivious to the damage that the inaccurate article’s timing would cause.

[...]

HT Breaking Israel News. The PaleoJudaica coverage of the story is here and links.

Biblical Archaeology 2015

HAARETZ: Biblical Archaeology in 2015: King Hezekiah's Seal and Other Exciting Discoveries. And some maybes: Archaeologists think they may have found where Jesus lived in Nazareth and was tried in Jerusalem (Ruth Schuster).

Is the bible literally true? Are at least parts of it plausible? In digs throughout the region, biblical archaeology sets out to shed light on these questions. It is a difficult task made all the harder by the pull of our deepest wishes: Even artifacts found in situ, exactly where they had been left thousands of years ago, can be of controversial origin, let alone purpose.

[...]

Background on that New-Age gold object is here; on Ben Carson's Egypt gaffe is here; on the possible discovery of the Acra is here and links; on the Hezekiah bulla is here, here, and here; on the discovery of a first-century CE house (rather than "Jesus' house") in Nazareth is here; on the possible discovery of Herod's palace in Jerusalem is here and here; and on the possible discovery of Sodom is here. I didn't post about the stories on the Philistines mentioned in this article, but instead see this year's post Psychedelic Philistines.

UPDATE (31 December): Another list is noted here.

Circumcision

CANDIDA MOSS: Male Circumcision: What Would Jesus Do? On the eighth day of his life, before the Wise Men visited, Jesus was circumcised. What would he make of the debate raging today over male circumcision? (The Daily Beast). Excerpt:

It’s true that the Christmas story is more babe in a manger than bris in the synagogue, but as a Jewish male infant Jesus was circumcised and, chronologically speaking, on the eighth day—and thus before the appearance of any wise men from the east. And yet somehow with all the food, presents, and Santa-fetishizing, the circumcision of Jesus doesn’t get a look in. But as debate about the ethics of circumcising children rages on, perhaps it really should.

The only biblical evidence for Jesus’s circumcision comes from the infancy narrative found in the Gospel of Luke. On the eighth day, we are told, he was circumcised and officially given the name Jesus (although Gabriel had called it at the Anunciation).

Two thoughts.

First, it is interesting and entertaining to compare the debate about circumcision among first-century Jesus followers to the current debate about it, but they are really very different and I do not see that the first sheds any useful light on the modern discussion. The first-century issue was whether gentile followers of Jesus needed to keep the ritual law, particularly circumcision. The present debate is about hygienic matters and the right of patients to make informed decisions.

Second, we should be careful not to draw a moral equivalence between male circumcision and female "circumcision" (better, female genital mutilation). (Professor Moss mentions this position, but frames it hypothetically and refrains from endorsing it.) There is a debate on the costs and benefits of male circumcision and people of goodwill disagree about it. Female genital mutilation is a horrific and barbaric practice that inflicts serious damage on a woman's body and it cannot be justified. The two are not comparable.

Some posts about the present-day debate over male circumcision are here and links. And this debate is not about circumcision per se, but rather about a particular traditional method of circumcision (metzizah b’peh) that poses some significant health risks.

Jewish-Temple denial from an Egyptian newspaper

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Egyptian paper claims Jewish Temple was never in Jerusalem. Article seeks to deny Jewish connection to ‘Al-Quds’, says Jews’ place of worship was actually a converted Egyptian building in the Galilee (LEE GANCMAN, Times of Israel). Here we go again.

An Egyptian newspaper claimed Wednesday that the Jewish First Temple was in actual fact an Egyptian temple that the Jews took over, and that it had never been located in Jerusalem at all.

Sprawling over almost a full page of the daily newspaper “al-Youm al-Saba’a,” the article presented an elaborate theory based partly on analyses of Jewish sources, with assistance from Dr. Iman Tayyeb, an Egyptian professor of Talmud and the Old Testament at the University of Assiut.

While Tayyeb conceded that the Jewish temple may have existed in a place called “Jerusalem,” she said that the city wasn’t located in the same place as Israel’s modern capital. Citing Jewish texts, she claimed it was unclear where the ancient temple stood, but that there was ample evidence that it could not have been at the Temple Mount.

[...]

I don't think I've heard this particular goofy "theory" before, but it seems there's always a new one. You can read about it in detail at the link. It has no basis in reality. Some other recent cases of Temple denial are here, here, and links. And there's more on that early-twentieth-century guide to the Temple Mount by the Supreme Muslim Council here, here, and here.

The AJS annual meeting

REPORT: Connecting the dots. Association for Jewish Studies convention offers food for thought (Larry Yudelson, Jewish Standard/Times of Israel).

If your idea of a good time is hearing someone explain at length the connections between the treasures of King Tut’s tomb and the biblical ark of the covenant, you should have been in Boston last week for the annual convention of the Association of Jewish Studies.

I was there. And yes, I had a blast.

[...]

The meeting was held in Boston on December 13-15. This is a long report by a well-informed nonspecialist on some papers on Rabbinic and Second Temple Judaism. Excerpt:

A key difference between academic Jewish studies — a field barely 200 years old — and traditional yeshiva studies is that academics look not just at what the texts (the Torah, the Talmud, the midrashim) say but asks: How did those texts fit into the broader picture of the Jewish community of that era? How much do they represent the reality of their era, as opposed to what the authors wanted to be true? How does other historical evidence mesh with those texts? And when were those texts written anyway?

The central problem in these lines of inquiry is there isn’t all that much other evidence. Like paleontologists deducing a species of dinosaur from the shape of a fossilized jawbone, academic Jewish scholars are trying to recreate a world from bits and pieces (and sometimes, in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, actual scraps of parchment). If you visualize pre-modern Jewish history as a timeline, then you might put 1500 B.C.E. on the far left — that’s about when the Bible dates the Exodus — and the invention of printing around 1500 C.E. on the right. For most of this period, scholars have occasional points of evidence, but there are huge gaps. Some of the points on the timeline are the traditional Jewish texts: biblical books, Mishna, Talmud, medieval responsa. Other points are archaeological evidence: ancient inscriptions, buildings, utensils, animal bones. (The latter show, among other things, whether the inhabitants of a certain place at a certain time did or did not eat pork.) Then there is the evidence of books and texts that didn’t become part of the Jewish tradition. Some of those were written but not preserved by Jews — this includes books kept as part of Christian editions of the Bible; writers like the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, who didn’t write in Hebrew, and those texts that happened to be preserved alongside Biblical scrolls in the dry caves of Qumran at the shores of the Dead Sea. And finally, there are those books written by non-Jews that give insight into Jewish histories, whether they are Christian church fathers describing their debates with Jews or Babylonian books from the time of the Talmudic sages.

Faced with three or four dots that more or less line up, the temptation is to connect them into a pretty picture. For a professor seeking renown and career advancement, that’s pretty mandatory. The danger, though, is that someone will discover a dot that was overlooked — and that shows the pretty picture didn’t capture all the dots; a theory that overlooked the evidence. So there is a tension between the desire to innovate and the fear of sticking out your not-yet-tenured neck.

Nag Hammadi Seminar

ANDRÉ GAGNÉ: Activities of the NH Seminar for 2015-2016. At Concordia University.

Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project

THE BRITISH LIBRARY: Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project. The Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project has been digitising items from the British Library's significant collection of Hebrew hand-written books, charters and scrolls, in order to make them available online.

Coming towards the end of this phase of our project, we have almost finalised the digitisation of 1,255 manuscripts selected for this phase, with the total of approximately 430,000 digitised images. These are mainly manuscripts catalogued and published by George Margoliouth at the end of the 19th century, but some of these have never been published. At this point, several manuscripts still await more thorough conservation treatments. In addition, four of our Torah scrolls included textile covers (mantles), made of silk brocade and linen. These are undergoing conservation treatment by a textile conservator prior to imaging.

So far, 748 digitised manuscripts have been uploaded and can be viewed on the Library’s Digitised Manuscripts site, and the remainder is expected to be fully accessible by the end of June 2016.

Background on the project, which is also associated with the Israel National Library, is here. For many other manuscript digitization projects, go here and just keep following the links.

The aftermath of 4 BCE

PHILIP JENKINS: After the Crisis (The Anxious Bench).

I have sketched the political and social meltdown that Palestine suffered in the terrible year of 4 BC. Wars and insurrections were by no means unusual anywhere in the ancient world, and Palestine was no exception. But this particular crisis was unusual in its severity, and several features make it worthy of special notice, especially for anyone interested in Christian origins.

[...]

Background here.

Lied on Syriac and Coptic fragments of 4 Ezra

LIV INGEBORG LIED: Two forgotten sources to 4 Ezra.

In the last few years, I have mentioned on two occasions manuscript witnesses to 4 Ezra that have apparently been left out of scholarly discussions focusing on this writing. In this post, I propose two possible reasons for this omission, and discuss why these manuscript sources to 4 Ezra deserve our attention. My interest here is not the decisions made by individual scholars, but rather the assessment schemes embedded in philological paradigms and the structuring effects of disciplinary borders to research practices.

[...]

Background here and links. Cross-file under "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch."

Explorator

AWOL: Open Access Journal: Explorator. It's good to see this weekly column of news on archaeology and antiquity by David Meadows. And let me take this opportunity also to mention David's blog on Classical Studies, Rogue Classicism. Both are well worth reading and PaleoJudaica links to both from time to time.

A Coptic Christmas story

'TIS THE SEASON: Putting Together the Puzzle of a Christmas Story: A Coptic Document in Princeton and Its Related Fragments. Alin Suciu discusses a Coptic text about the birth of Jesus.

Goodacre on the Magi

'TIS THE SEASON: NT Pod 76: This year's Christmas episode (Mark Goodacre). The subject of Mark's Christmas podcast this year is "The Magi in Matthew's Gospel."

Past PaleoJudaica posts on the Magi are here, here, here (and links), here, and here. And past posts on the Star of Bethlehem story are here, here, and links.

Forensic reconstruction of Jesus' face? No.

'TIS THE SEASON: Jesus Christ’s ‘face’ recreated utilizing Semite skulls by Richard Neave.

Is this the REAL face of Jesus? Forensic experts use ancient Semite skulls to reveal what Christ may have looked like

He may be shown as a Caucasian man with long, flowing light brown hair in many religious artworks, but Jesus would have likely had a darker complexion and short, dark, curly hair, a forensic expert claims.

Retired medical artist Richard Neave has recreated the face of ‘Jesus’ by studying Semite skulls using modern-day forensic techniques.

[...]

This is an old story that is obviously being recycled for Christmas, but I don't think I have noted it before. The actual story is this:

The team analysed skeletal remains of Semite men from the time of Jesus to come up with the average build of a Jewish man living in Galilee.

So this is an interesting project of forensic reconstruction that gives us a vaguely averaged idea of what an ancient Galilean man might have looked like (assuming the skulls were from the Galilee, which is implied but not stated). Only vaguely averaged, because any averaging of this type that would have statistical significance would need a lot more than three samples. There is no particular reason to think that their reconstruction looks very much like Jesus looked. We already knew he wasn't blond with blue eyes. Related thematic and seasonal post here.

And now after the above was composed, Professor Joan Taylor has published the following with the BBC: What did Jesus really look like? That forensic reconstruction comes up briefly, but she also discusses his likely hair and beard style and clothing style, as well as the origins of the idea of Jesus as the bearded longhair wearing a long robe.

Apocryphal Christmas revisited

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Christmas Stories in Christian Apocrypha. The birth of Jesus in the apocryphal gospels (Tony Burke). Also noted last year, but 'Tis the Season and it has been updated, so noted again.

Christmas 2015

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all those celebrating!

Posts of Christmas past are collected here and links. A couple of recent seasonal posts are here and here. And I have some more Christmas posts coming today.

Another review of "Egypt: Faith After the Pharaohs"

THE ART NEWSPAPER: One God to rule them all: Garry Shaw on Faith After the Pharaohs at the British Museum. The exhibition beautifully captures how religion shaped the region.

In the British Museum's latest exhibition, Egypt: Faith After the Pharaohs, there is a long fragment of papyrus, one of many on display, written in Greek and called the Gospel of Thomas. What is striking about this fragment is not its beauty or penmanship, but the era in which it was written. In Oxyrhynchus, an Egyptian city, the scroll’s Christian owner had copied the text less than 300 years after the death of Jesus, a time when the ancient Egyptian gods were still widely worshipped, before the acceptance of Christianity across the Roman Empire and before the appearance of Islam. To many of his contemporaries in Egypt, this ancient copyist—a man simply trying to preserve his messiah's sayings—would have been a rebel. He could not have predicted how Egypt, and the whole world, would change over the coming centuries, or that the church would forbid Christians fr om reading the very text he was copying once the contents of the New Testament had been agreed upon.

[...]

Past posts on the Egypt: Faith After the Pharaohs Exhibition at the British Museum are collected here and links.

Books on the Persian Empire and Hebrew philology

AWOL: Two new volumes in the ANCIENT NEAR EAST MONOGRAPHS Series.

Political Memory in and after the Persian Empire
edited by Jason M. Silverman and Caroline Waerzeggers, ANEM 13, 2015

Epigraphy, Philology, and the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological and Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett
edited by Jeremy M. Hutton and Aaron D. Rubin, ANEM 12, 2015

Follow the link for downloading and ordering information. And congratulations to Professor Hackett on the Festschrift!

Sidnie White Crawford on canon

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Canon Forum: A Response. Sidnie White Crawford responds to the three essays in the recent AJR Forum on the biblical Canon, on which see here and links.

Mystery golden object identified

AN "ISIS BEAMER HARMONIZER": It Took Israeli Authorities Months to Identify This Strange, Gold Object (Danny Lewis, Smithsonian.com). Sorry, no Temple treasure this time.

Talmudic and Gnostic Star Wars?

IT'S COME TO THIS: How 'Star Wars' Became America's Talmud [SPOILER ALERT!] (Jay Michaelson, The Forward).

And if that weren't enough, there's this: The religious case for ignoring Star Wars Episodes I, II and III (Bob Smietana, WaPo).

There won’t be any “Attack of the Clones” at our house this Christmas.

No “Revenge of the Sith.”

And definitely no “Phantom Menace.”

Instead, we’ll sing carols, decorate the tree, exchange presents, all while watching the original three “Star Wars” movies.

Then we’ll head out for a late afternoon showing of “The Force Awakens” on Christmas Day.

At our house the prequels are like the gnostic Gospels of “Star Wars.” They exist, but we don’t watch them. Why?

Like the gnostic Gospels, the prequels aren’t true. Or to put it another way, they aren’t the same story as the originals. Something about the essential nature of “Star Wars” was lost along the way.

[...]

Again, the first article above has SPOILERS, so don't click in the link if that matters to you.

Both articles have quite a few assumptions built in, but these are interesting to explore. For my part, I ignore the second-made trilogy because it was awful. I'll take the Gnostic gospels over them any time.

I saw The Force Awakens on Monday and, frankly, was not much impressed. But your mileage may vary.

More on the Israel Museum's Hadrian exhibition

ANOTHER REVIEW: Busting Out All Over: Hadrian 'Conquers' Jerusalem Once Again. A new Israel Museum show, centering around 3 bronze portraits, takes on yet another controversial figure in Jewish history, addressing the paradox between his image as a 'bone-grinder' and as enlightened Roman ruler (Nir Hasson, Haaretz).

In Jewish historiography, the Roman emperor Hadrian – or, "Hadrian the bone-grinder,” as traditional religious sources called him – has a “place of honor” on the list of those considered to be the most hated and bitter enemies of the Jewish people over the generations.

Publius Aelius Hadrianus Augustus, as he was known, was emperor from 117 to 138 C.E., and is best remembered in Israel for crushing the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans and for the ensuing holocaust, including destruction of the Jewish community in Judea and the razing of Jerusalem, upon whose ruins he built a pagan city named Aelia Capitolina.

In world historiography, however, Hadrian has a completely different image: He is considered to be one of the most enlightened and important of Roman rulers, the man responsible for the golden age of the empire. He is said to have been a gifted general and politician, a patron of the arts and a man of letters, as well as a builder who left important monuments behind in his wake.

In a new exhibition opening on Tuesday, the Israel Museum is attempting to present – and possibly resolve – this paradox.

[...]

Background here.

As the article and the one noted previously mention, this exhibition is the final one associated with the celebration of the Israel Museum's 50th anniversary, on which more here and links.

Inscribed silver amulet found in Jordan

EPIGRAPHY: Mysterious 'Jewish spell' found in ancient amulet: Scans reveal 'magical symbols' inscribed on 1,300-year-old silver scroll (SARAH GRIFFITHS, The Daily Mail).

• Lead amulet containing a silver scroll was found in Jerash, Jordan
  
• Scientists used CT scanning and computer models to reveal scroll's text
  
• Revealed it contains magical letters and a mixture of language
  
• It was likely written by a 'Jewish magician', around 1,300 years ago

A silver scroll discovered hidden in an ancient amulet has revealed what appears to be a magical spell that has remained a secret for 1,300 years.

The mysterious inscription is thought to have been made by a Jewish 'magician' living in the Muslim town of Jerash in Jordan in around 750AD.

Although the silver scroll is too delicate to unfurl, CT scans of the relic have revealed 17 lines of text in an unknown language, alongside what the researchers call 'magical symbols.'

The outside lead casing was cracked and corroded, but experts managed to extract the fragile rolled silver scroll from inside it.

[...]

Some details of the discovery are given:

The Jerash amulet was discovered in 2014 among the ruins of a house destroyed by an earthquake in 749AD.

Glass bottles, ceramics, jewellery and coins were also found along with the scroll inside a small metal cylinder measuring 2-inches (5cm) long.

So it is an excavated object and presumably it can be regarded as genuine.

A sidebar gives details on the inscription:

A total of 17 lines of text were revealed using CT scans. The first line is said to consist of magical spells written in a form of Greek, while the text is written in an indecipherable form of Arabic.

According to the researchers, ancient 'magicians' were known to have made up languages, and as many people couldn't read or write, they could get away with creating nonsensical messages.

The text also contains signs which clearly are not Arabic or imitate Arabic letters.

Most of these occur in line one, but a few further signs are found in the following lines.

Leading researcher Dr Rubina Raja explained: 'We've sent it out to the world's leading philologists, and all came to the conclusion they can't read it, it must be pseudo-Arabic.

'Collectively, it has not been possible to assign these signs to a known alphabet.

'Since we presume the artefact is an amulet, and since the main text seems to be in pseudo-script, it is reasonable to view the signs as "magical".'

That sounds reasonable, although I would like to compare the signs to magical signs in things like the Greek Magical Papyri and later Arabic magical documents. The headline and one of the bullet points quoted above suggest that the text is Jewish, but later the article more cautiously states "'Since it was not possible to read the 'text' we cannot identify the religious affiliation of the amulet's owner,' the researchers wrote." I would leave it there. Even if we could read the text, late antique magic was religiously eclectic and it is frequently difficult to be sure of the religious background of a specific text.

Inscribed metal amulets are well known from antiquity. The Ketef Hinnom silver amulets with a Hebrew text found also in the Bible have been come up many times in PaleoJudaica. See here and follow the links. Other Jewish amulets made of silver and other metals are noted here. Inscribed lead curse tablets are noted here and here.

The faux-Arabic writing has an analogy in magical texts from around the same period (in Iraq rather than Jordan). Some of the Babylonian incantation bowls have similar meaningless inscriptions/squiggles meant to look like Hebrew/Aramaic writing. These have been mentioned here and here.

The text of this new amulet was recovered with some of that promising non-destructive and non-invasive technology that I keep going on about. Related stories here, here, and here and links. Cross-file under "Technology Watch."

Nebuchadnezzar tablet on display

EXHIBITION: Artifact Of Nebuchadnezzar Displayed In J’slm On Tenth of Tevet (JONATHAN BENEDEK, The Jewish Voice).

A very unique and ancient artifact of the famous Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II went on display on Tuesday, in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem. The artifact, borrowed by the Museum from the David Sofer Collection, is a barrel-shaped cuneiform cylinder with an inscription from Nebuchadnezzar.

“It expresses a completely different perspective of Nebuchadnezzar than the way Jewish people have thought of him for the past 2,000 years,” said Dr. Filip Vukosavović, chief curator of the Bible Lands Museum, to Tazpit Press Service (TPS).

On the inscription, Nebuchadnezzar refers to himself as a leader who “likes truth and justice.”

“It is of interest to recognize how Nebuchadnezzar is depicted in the inscription,” Vukosavović said to TPS.

[...]

The Tenth of Tevet marks the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem. More on it is here. Background on the By the Rivers of Babylon exhibition is here and links (cf. also here).

Review of three books on Herod

NOT SO MUCH, ALTHOUGH IT'S COMPLICATED: Herod the Hero? Three recent books portray Herod more positively than he is generally depicted. But Matthew 2 is still important (Alexander Stewart, Christianity Today).

In terms of wealth, power, and influence, Herod the Great rivaled King Solomon as the greatest king in the history of the Jews. Most Christians, however, know little more about Herod than what is reported in Matthew 2: his interaction with the Magi and the slaughter of Bethlehem’s infant boys. Far beyond the significance of those isolated incidents, Herod powerfully shaped the world in which Jesus and the earliest Christians lived.

The collective historical opinion—colored by Matthew’s account—has viewed Herod as a paranoid, cruel, and murderous tyrant. Several historians, however, have recently sought to rehabilitate Herod’s image. Norman Gelb’s Herod the Great: Statesman, Visionary, Tyrant (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), Geza Vermes’s The True Herod (Bloomsbury, 2014), and Adam Kolman Marshak’s The Many Faces of Herod the Great (Eerdmans, 2015) all seek to positively reassess his reign. Gelb and Vermes provide accessible accounts of Herod’s life, while Marshak provides an academic appraisal of Herod’s rule in terms of the ancient political, cultural, and religious expectations of a good king.

It is too strong to claim that these recent books indicate a sweeping renaissance in the study of Herod’s life. Nevertheless, they represent a growing interest in the historical Herod fueled by a desire to look afresh at Herod’s life apart from Matthew’s Gospel.

[...]

The book by Vermes was noted here (and note also here) and the book by Marshak was noted here. The one by Gelb is new to me. Past posts on Herod the Great and Herodium are collected here, and see also here.

Talmud sells for $9.3m

THE VALMADONNA LIBRARY: 16th-Century Talmud Sells for $9.3 Million at Sotheby’s.

JNi.media) Sotheby’s set a new world auction record for any piece of Judaica on Tuesday in New York, when one of the finest copies of Daniel Bomberg’s Babylonian Talmud sold for $9.3 million According to Tablet Magazine, the buyer is Leon Black, a New York businessman, founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

The extraordinary volume was purchased by Stephan Loewentheil for the 19th Century Rare Book & Photograph Shop. The Bomberg Talmud led the sale of a selection of extraordinary items from The Valmadonna Trust, which totaled $14.9 million and became the most valuable auction of Judaica ever held. Together with the auctions of Important Judaica and Israeli & International Art, Sotheby’s annual December sales of Judaica and Israeli Art totaled $22.6 million.

[...]

This is sad. Background on the breakup and auction of the Valmadonna Library is here and here and links. The Tablet article mentioned above is here.

CFP: The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine

CSTT BLOG: CALL FOR PAPERS: “THE SYNAGOGUE IN ANCIENT PALESTINE” (HELSINKI, 22-24 SEPT 2016) (Rick Bonnie). The deadline for submission of an abstract is Tuesday 15 March 2016.

Marshall tributes

TWO MORE TRIBUTES TO THE LATE I. HOWARD MARSHALL:

The Eerdword Blog: I. Howard Marshall: In Memoriam;

Larry Hurtado: Professor I. Howard Marshall.

Background here.

Winter Solstice 2015

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE to all those celebrating!

From now on each day will be getting a little bit longer, which is always a particularly welcome development in Scotland.

Happy Saturnalia also (see the above link, scroll down) and happy conclusion of Yalda. The latter is a winter solstice festival celebrated yesterday on the 21st, but this year the actual solstice is unusually late on the 22nd.