JQR 106.1 (2016)

A NEW ISSUE OF JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW (Volume 106, Number 1, Winter 2016) has been published. TOC:

Articles>

‘‘Cities Surrounded by a Wall from the Time of Joshua Son of Nun’’ as a Rabbinic Response to the Roman Pomerium
pp. 1-20
Eyal Ben-Eliyahu

Jewish Medieval Traditions concerning the Origins of the Kabbalah
pp. 21-41
Oded Yisraeli

Rabbi David Oppenheim on Trial: Turks, Titles, and Tribute in Counter-Reformation Prague
pp. 42-75
Michael Laurence Miller

Wreaking Judgment on Mount Esau: Christianity in R. Kook’s Thought
pp. 76-100
Karma Ben Johanan

Bibliographical Essay
A Century of Hebraica at the Library of Congress
pp. 101-129
Brad Sabin Hill

Contributors
p. 131

Recent Dissertations
pp. e1-e3
Bonnie L. Blankenship

The abstracts are free, but access to the articles require a paid personal or institutional subscription.

Another review of Kalmin, Migrating Tales

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS: Here, There, and Everywhere – By Amit Gvaryahu. Amit Gvaryahu on on Richard Kalmin’s Migrating Tales.

Richard Kalmin’s Migrating Tales is neither about ISIS nor about Palmyra but about similar pods of knowledge which were successfully able to traverse political and ethnic boundaries. The subtitle, The Talmud’s Narratives and their Historical Context, is slightly misleading. The book is not about the historical context of the narratives but rather about the historical context of their transmission and migration. That is, readers will not get to know the precise location of Alexander’s fountain of youth but they will learn something about the tribulations of the story of Alexander and fountain of youth. In this sense, the stories themselves are historic artifacts. In eight chapters, Kalmin shows how non-rabbinic traditions from the Roman East ended up in the most rabbinic of rabbinic works, the Babylonian Talmud, which was redacted beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.

And here I was looking forward to finding out the precise location of the fountain of youth.

Earlier posts relating to the book are here, here, and here.

More on "Sacred Journeys"

EXHIBITION: Gustavus professor helps open museum exhibit “Sacred Journeys” at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (Deven Kelley, The Gustavian Weekly).

Marcia J. Bunge, Professor of Religion and the Bernhardson Distinguished Chair of Lutheran Studies, was one of eight religious scholars invited to serve as a national advisor for a ground-breaking exhibit on world religions entitled “Sacred Journeys” held at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

The exhibit was created in collaboration with the National Geographic Society and funded by a 1 million dollar grant from the Lilly Endowment.

The exhibit highlights elements of the history, beliefs and practices of five major world religions.

“Sacred Journeys” features videos, photography, and some amazing artificats, such as fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, a large stone from the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a throne that had been built for the Dalai Lama, a piece of fabric from the Kaaba in Mecca, and a Hindu statue of Ganesh.

[...]

The exhibition has been running since late August. Still no word on which specific Dead Sea Scroll fragments are on display. I would think that would be important.

Noted just before the opening date here.

Christian Bale meets The Hymn of the Pearl

CINEMA: 'Knight Of Cups' Isn't A True Story, But The Christian Bale Drama Comes From An Unexpected Source (SAGE YOUNG, Bustle).

Christian Bale attended Sunday night's Oscars as a Supporting Actor nominee for the financial crisis drama, The Big Short, but the inspiration behind his next project is much more obscure than a recent economic meltdown with global repercussions. Although Knight Of Cups isn't a true story, Bale plays a screenwriter at a personal crossroads. Family drama and loss push Rick farther into the hedonistic playground occupied by industry elite, and he's driven to face some harsh internal truths and the objects of past mistreatment. Director Terrence Malick is infamous for both his unconventional methods and long stretches between film releases, but what drove this particular piece of work?

Rick is not based on one existing Hollywood screenwriter, and Knight Of Cups doesn't follow one real-life experience. The film has its roots in a couple of vintage morality tales, including the 1698 allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress From This World To That Which Is to Come; Delivered Under The Similitude Of A Dream. (A catchier title than Knight Of Cups? You be the judge.) Author John Bunyan composed the story of Christian (who is a Christian, because that's how allegory works), who seeks forgiveness for his sins on his journey to the afterlife. According to Yahoo, The Knight Of Cups script takes more than the human need for absolution and mercy from The Pilgrim's Progress; the script includes passages and quotes taken directly from the text. The movie also pulls from another quest narrative, the "Hymn Of The Pearl" from the Gnostic Acts Of Thomas. In those verses, a young boy on a mission is waylaid by seductive forces before he sets himself back on his righteous path. The shared theme is clear: life is full of temptations, and most aren't born with a perfectly calibrated moral compass. Choice reigns supreme.

[...]

My bold-font emphasis. More on The Acts of Thomas is here. You can read a couple of English translations of "The Hymn of the Pearl" here. Cross-file under Gnosticism Watch.

Beyond Authority

CONFERENCE: Beyond Authority: Composition and Transmission in Late Antiquity.

Princeton University
March 20-22, 2016

Beyond Authority will focus on the composition and transmission of texts and traditions in Late Antiquity. We intend to dismantle the regnant presumption that late antique tradents compose and transmit texts for the primary purpose of asserting and maintaining authority.

Follow the link for registration information and the schedule.

Ancient winery and Roman bathhouse found in Jerusalem

IAA PRESS RELEASE:

Surprising Finds in Jerusalem’s Legendary Schneller Compound: A Large Impressive Winery and a Roman Bathhouse were Exposed
In excavations of the Israel Antiquities Authority prior to the construction of residential buildings for the city’s ultra-orthodox population

Unexpected finds more than 1,600 years old were uncovered during archaeological excavations financed by the Merom Yerushalayim Company, which the Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out in Schneller Compound prior to the construction of residential buildings for Jerusalem’s ultra-orthodox population.

Schneller Orphanage operated in Jerusalem from 1860 until the Second World War. During the British Mandate, its German inhabitants were expelled and a military base was established there. After the British withdrawal in 1948 the compound was turned over to the Hagana and later served as an army base used by the Israel Defense Force until 2008.

Interesting and assorted finds from Jerusalem’s past were discovered in the archaeological excavation, most notably a large and impressive winery dating to the Roman or Byzantine period, some 1,600 years ago. The complex installation includes a pressing surface paved with a white mosaic. In the center of it is a pit in which a press screw was anchored that aided in extracting the maximum amount of must from the grapes. Eight cells were installed around the pressing surface. These were used for storing the grapes, and possibly also for blending the must with other ingredients thereby producing different flavors of wine. The archaeologists believe that this winery served the residents of a large manor house whose inhabitants made their living by, among other things, viticulture and wine production.

Evidence was unearthed next to the impressive winepress which indicates the presence of a bathhouse there. These finds included terra cotta pipes used to heat the bathhouse and several clay bricks, some of which were stamped with the name of the Tenth Roman Legion. This legion was one of four Roman legions that participated in the conquest of Jewish Jerusalem, and its units remained garrisoned in the city until c. 300 CE. Among the Roman legion’s main centers was the one in the vicinity of Binyanei Ha-Uma, located just c. 800 meters from the current excavation, where a large pottery and brick production center was situated. The archaeologists suggest that the Schneller site, in the form of a manor house, constituted an auxiliary settlement to the main site that was previously exposed at Binyanei Ha-Uma. As was customary in the Roman world, here too in the Schneller Compound, a private bathhouse was incorporated in the plan of the estate.

The current archeological exposure is actually a continuation of the salvage excavations that were carried out at the site half a year ago when evidence was uncovered there of a Jewish settlement that dated to the Late Second Temple period.

According to archaeologist Alex Wiegmann, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, "Once again, Jerusalem demonstrates that wherever one turns over a stone ancient artifacts will be found related to the city’s glorious past. The archaeological finds discovered here help paint a living, vibrant and dynamic picture of Jerusalem as it was in ancient times up until the modern era".

According to Amit Re’em, the Jerusalem district archaeologist, "This is an excellent example of many years of cooperation and deep and close ties with the Haredi community. The general public is used to hearing of the clashes between the archaeologists and the orthodox community around the issue of the graves, but is unaware of the joint work done on a daily basis and the interest expressed by the ultra-orthodox sector. The Israel Antiquities Authority is working to instill our ancient cultural heritage in this population, as it does with other sectors”.

Follow the link for a photo of the site. Articles by JNiMedia and Arutz Sheva have additional photos and the latter also has a video.

The ethnology of epigraphic Hebrew names

THE ASOR BLOG: What names teach us about Iron II society in the Land of Israel (Mitka Golub).

Names send messages about identity. Today, many African-Americans have first names that are totally different from those of white Americans. But until the early 1970s there was a great similarity between the two communities. Scholars who studied this phenomenon, Roland Fryer and Stephen Levitt, attribute this change to the Black Power movement of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. When black parents give their children distinctively black names, they declare and affirm their cultural identity.

Hebrew personal names from the Iron Age II bear witness to the important historical and ethnic changes of that period in much the same way: the interplay between polytheism and monotheism, the rise of Yahwism, and the evolution of ethnic identities. Hebrew personal names also shed light on the relationship between archaeology and the Bible.

[...]

Requires free registration to access the whole essay.

Review of Russell, Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms

THE MIDDLE EAST: Paperback non-fiction choice October: Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard Russell (William Dalrymple, The Guardian).

Russell takes us on a fascinating and timely journey through the beliefs and predicaments of seven fascinating but little-known religions; as well as the Mandeans and Yezidis, we meet the last of the Iranian Zoroastrians, the Druze and Samaritans lodged uneasily between Israel and the Arabs, the increasingly persecuted Coptic Christians of Egypt and the Kafir Kalash of the Hindu Kush. It’s a long time since I read a travel book that taught or illuminated so much, but its importance is greater than that. Tragically, this book puts on record for the last possible time a once-plural world that is on the verge of disappearing for ever.

This summary article on the book is from the Guardian's "Shelf Improvement newsletter" and it links to a full review by Dalrymple at the end of 2014, which I missed at the time. The book is more timely than ever. PaleoJudaica has been keeping some track of most of these groups in recent years. Recent posts on each: the Mandaeans (Mandeans), the Yazidis (Yezidis), the Druze, the Samaritans, and Coptic and the Copts. The past posts on the Zoroastrians have been on the ancient religion (most recently here), but I recently ran across this article on a Zoroastrian community in New York: Zoroastrians Build New Religious, Cultural Center In Pomona, N.Y. (Ela Dutt, News India Times).

Zoroastrians, or Zarathushtis as they are traditionally called, are fighting stereotypes about the community’s decline, opening a new religious and cultural center in Pomona, N.Y. this March, and counting a steady rise in their numbers. The new Dar-e-Mehr building is inspired by ancient Persian and Zoroastrian architecture of the fire temples of India.

The small community of 500 families of both South Asian and Iranian extraction, raised $5 million over a period of four years from local, national and international sources, to build a home for future generations, a press release from a group of organizations said. The current Zarathushti population in the Greater New York area is estimated at about one thousand and growing as the community becomes more culturally flexible and intermarriage is accepted.

[...]

UCSD updates the Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: UCSD Professor Works to Preserve Data from Middle East (Rebecca Chong, UCSD Guardian).

Two of UCSD’s professors in the anthropology department are working with the Israel Antiquities Authority to preserve archaeological sites in Israel that are threatened by both violence from extremist groups like ISIS and by development. Their collaborative efforts will update the Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land, the largest internet repository of archaeological data from Israel.

As the director of Qualcomm Institute’s Center for Cyber Archaeology and Sustainability, Professor Thomas Levy will lead the project alongside department research associate Steven Savage. Levy expressed enthusiasm for the unique opportunities that partnering with the IAA will foster.

“We want to work closely with the IAA and other scholars and institutions from around the Mediterranean world to share data and build scholarly bridges between communities,” Levy told the UCSD Guardian. “Having our students and faculty engaged with Israeli researchers and those from the neighboring lands in one of the most fascinating historical regions in the world is a great opportunity for them and the way forward to new discoveries and learning.”

Director of Communications at the Qualcomm Institute Doug Ramsey emphasized the CCAS’s creation as a way of advancing the innovative use of computing in the social sciences.

[...]

Director of Israel Museum to change roles

Israel Museum’s longstanding and well-connected director to step aside. In new role US-born James Snyder will continue to foster Jerusalem institution’s global relationships (JAVIER PES, The Art Newspaper ).

The Israel Museum will be seeking a new director as James Snyder announced that after 20 years at the helm of the Jerusalem institution he will become its international president. The US-born director, who arrived in Jerusalem in 1997 having worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is due to take up the new role in January 2017.

[...]

More on the Hadrian exhibition is here and links and more on the celebration of the Israel Museum's fiftieth anniversary is here and links.

9th Annual Coptic Studies Symposium

COPTIC WATCH:

9th Annual Coptic Studies Symposium: Coptic Heritage and Egyptology, Continuities and Particularities

Sponsored by The Canadian Society for Coptic Studies / Dept Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto

Saturday, April 2, 2016 - 9:00am
Saturday, April 2, 2016 - 5:00pm

Location:
Room 142, basement
5 Bancroft Ave
Toronto M5S 1C1
Canada

The annual Coptic Studies Symposium for 2016 focuses on the many areas of confluence and divergence between the fields of Coptic Studies and Egyptology. While the conquest of Alexander the Great delimits the usual parameters of Egyptology and subsequent periods fall within the purview of specialists in Coptic Studies, these different chronological phases are essentially points along a continuum of cultural development that has spanned more than 5000 years.

One of the most striking areas of continuity and particularity is linguistic - grammatical, phraseological and lexical. Both Coptic and pre-Coptic, in use over four millennia, have been prominent objects of scholarly attention for centuries; yet the present rift between Coptological and Egyptological linguistics seems to be deepening as years go by, to the fateful loss of both Coptologists and Egyptologists. The 2016 Coptic Studies Symposium will encourage discussion and exchange of ideas between scholars in both fields of study carrying out linguistic research, as well as those whose interests focus on other aspects of cultural production.

Follow the link for registration information and the program.

Conditional divorce in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: THE FINER POINTS OF TALMUDIC CONTRACT LAW CONTAIN TECHNICALITIES THAT PUT MODERN LEGALESE TO SHAME.

In this week’s Daf Yomi reading, in chapter 7 of Tractate Gittin, the Talmud addressed a new area of divorce law: conditional divorces. As we have seen over the past weeks, divorce in Jewish law is effected by delivery of a bill of divorce, or get, from husband to wife. (Wives cannot divorce their husbands—an inequality that persists in Jewish law to this day and accounts for the problem of agunot in the Orthodox community.) The name of the tractate, Gittin, comes from the term get, and it is well chosen: The rabbis’ focus is always on the document itself, how it is written, witnessed, signed, and delivered. So far, the assumption has been that a get takes effect immediately upon delivery from husband to wife, or from the husband’s appointed agent to the wife’s agent.

But what if a husband draws up a conditional get, one that effects a divorce only in certain circumstances? ...

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

"Shulamit"

OPERA: “Shulamit,” Opera Based On The Song of Songs, Returns (Caroline Lagnado, The Jewish Week)

Operas set in ancient times are rare, but Russian-Israeli musician Dina Pruzhansky has created “Shulamit,” whose story is based on the Song of Songs.

Taking place in ancient Jerusalem during the reign of King Solomon, Pruzhansky’s piece began as a song cycle that was commissioned by the Bacchanalia String Quartet and premiered at Bargemusic in 2013. The first iteration starred Israeli mezzo-soprano Maya Lahyani.

[...]

The opera will be presented in Hebrew with English supertitles. “I was completely captivated by the original Hebrew text and the beauty of this poetry,” remarked Pruzhansky. “I found the original Hebrew verse to be the most inspiring source for my music, both in terms of the rich imagery and layers of meaning that vividly come across only in the original Hebrew texts, and in terms of it's superb play on words and sounds. Only when you read the original Hebrew verse, you start to realize why it's called The Song of Songs -- it definitely was created by the poet of poets. I also wanted to show a wider audience what the original Biblical language sounds like.”

[...]

The video below has excerpts:

Fourth Ancient Judaism Regional Seminar

THIS WEEKEND: FOURTH ANCIENT JUDAISM REGIONAL SEMINAR (Penn).

The Ancient Judaism Regional Seminar is an annual event, held each spring, which brings together faculty and graduate students in Jewish Studies from Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, and other area universities. The seminar was founded in 2013 with the aim of building academic networks among faculty and students along the Northeast Corridor, sharing cutting-edge research in ongoing conversations between junior and senior scholars of Ancient Judaism, and providing opportunities for doctoral students to hone their dissertation ideas and presentation skills. The aspiration for the seminar, as articulated by Prof. Peter Schäfer, is to serve as “an informal and friendly environment for graduate students to share their dissertation research with others, to learn from each other, to receive constructive feedback from a range of students and scholars in the field, and most importantly for all of us to build bridges and help students beyond our universities in their work.”

The location of the event rotates between institutions, and in 2016, it is scheduled to be hosted by Penn. The event spans two days, and it features panels of presentations on dissertation research by ABD PhD students with faculty respondents and ample time for discussion and debate among the attendees, “lightning-round” sessions by pre-ABD PhD students, and meals and receptions oriented toward academic networking. The organizing committee at Penn plans to add a professionalization session in 2016, drawing on the resources of Penn’s Katz Center of Advanced Judaic Studies, which will host the event as well.

Ancient Judaism encompasses a large body of textual and material culture, spanning from the 6th century BCE to the 6th century CE and crossing vast empires (Persian, Greek, Roman, Parthian, Sasanian, and early Byzantine). Because of the diversity within Ancient Judaism, its study is necessarily interdisciplinary, incorporating the precision of philology and the theories and methods of history, religion, anthropology, and sociology, among other disciplines. By creating a supportive space for student mentorship and academic networking, Penn and other partnering institutions of the Ancient Judaism Regional Seminar aim to give the next generation of scholars in Jewish Studies the tools necessary to launch their careers and to further research in the field of Ancient Judaism. In the process, we hope to bring specialists in Second Temple Judaism and specialists in Rabbinic and late antique Judaism into further conversation with one another and to enhance the place of Ancient Judaism within Jewish Studies.

Organizers: Alex Ramos, Annette Yoshiko Reed, and Jill Stinchcomb

Follow the link for the schedule.

Review of Faraone, Vanishing Acts on Ancient Greek Amulets

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Christopher A. Faraone, Vanishing Acts on Ancient Greek Amulets: From Oral Performance to Visual Design. BICS supplement, 115. London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2012. Pp. xii, 105. ISBN 9781905670406. £38.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Katherine McDonald, Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge (km440@cam.ac.uk)

[The Table of Contents is listed at the end of the review.]

The ‘vanishing acts’ of the title refer to the ‘vanishing’ names or words on ancient amulets: these names are written over and over on magical amulets, one letter shorter on each repetition, so that the word ‘disappears’ by the end of the text. These texts were referred to in ancient times as ‘wing-shaped’ (if they made a right-angled triangle) and ‘heart-shaped’ (if they made an isosceles triangle, usually by deleting letters from both the beginning and the end of each line). In the early twentieth century, these were viewed as curative amulets which cured illness by gradually ‘deleting’ a disease or the demon who caused it, a process dubbed deletio morbi. More recent scholarship had moved away from this view of wing- and heart-shaped texts, noting that these ‘vanishing’ texts could be used to summon as well as banish — for example, to call on a demon in a love spell, or to encourage menstrual bleeding to start. In this short monograph Faraone seeks to revive the idea of deletio morbi by showing that it constitutes the earliest stage of an evolving magical tradition, while acknowledging the large degree of variation which exists within this small corpus.

[...]

Regarding the language of the amulets, Faraone shows that words which appear at first sight to be nonsense (and may, in some cases, have seemed to be nonsense even to the original users of the spell) can in fact be shown to have origins in understandable Greek words or names, often with a plausible connection to the disease which the charm was supposed to cure. In the examples from Aramaic and Coptic, for example, Greek words and names have often been transliterated into other writing systems; the Latin word morbus ‘disease’ also appears backwards on a number of Greek amulets as ΣΟΥΒΡΟΜ (p18). These transliterations quickly seem to become ‘nonsense’ magical words to the users of the spells, showing the important role of language contact in the creation of magical traditions in the Mediterranean. The author’s focus on the interplay between orality and writing throughout the book is thoughtful, and is present in all of his close readings. But he could go even further, since literacy probably also had an effect on the first, oral stage of the five-stage development he lays out. The practice of reciting names which reduce by one letter-sound each time must itself be heavily influenced by alphabetic literacy, since non-literate individuals do not usually segment words into phonemes in this way (Morais et al 1979; Manfrellotti 2001). It seems therefore that even the earliest oral stage of vanishing names may have been dependent on written versions in handbooks, or at least heavily influenced by the alphabetic literacy that was present in Greek society of the first century AD.

[...]

The Aramaic texts are Jewish Babylonian incantation bowls.

More on the mystery wall in Jordan

ARCHAEOLOGY: Baffling 150km-Long Wall in Jordan Is Pre-Roman, Say Archaeologists. The towers along the 'Khatt Shebib' don't seem to have served a military purpose: They may have been shelters from sandstorms (Philippe Bohstrom, Haaretz). Some new information:

The postulation that it was erected well before the Romans invaded the region is based on ceramic finds at some of the archaeological sites on or near the wall that pre-date the Romans. However, the pottery sherds found are too few to be clearly indicative of the period or periods the walls were in use. Fieldwork has yielded ceramics from almost all time periods. However, the ceramic evidence predominantly date to the Iron Age.

Most likely, says [David[ Kennedy, [head of the expedition and a researcher from the University of Western Australia] the wall was built in stretches, perhaps over a long period of time. “More fieldwork should be directed to some of the places where there is a settlement site associated with the wall. Dating the settlement and determining its exact relationship to the wall may provide a closer and more reliable guide to date. My best guess is that it is Iron Age or Nabataean.”

“We have known about this enigmatic wall feature for decades now, but the interesting contribution of the new research is the suggestion that it is pre-Roman," Erez Ben-Yosef from Tel Aviv University, who worked in southern Jordan and currently heads the Timna Valley Project, told Haaretz. "It might be related to the border administration of the Nabataeans or the Edomites, but as was stated by Kennedy and his colleagues, more definite answers should await field research.”

The wall and towers are just one of the many enigmatic features being found in the deserts of Jordan referred by the Bedouins as "The Works of the Old Men.” Giant geoglyphs and earthworks in the shape of rings, kites, and wheels, practically invisible on the ground but clearly evident from the air, have given rise to theories – some rather wacky - but very few answers.

Background here. The earlier article suggested the wall may have been built "sometime between the Nabataean period (312 B.C.–A.D. 106) and the Umayyad period (A.D. 661–750)." So the Nabataeans (Nabateans) are still in the running as possible builders, but it may have been built well before their time. It sounds as though we're still in the realm of speculation.

Dr. Ben-Yosef and the Timna Valley excavation were also in the news earlier this week.

Murdoch, The Apocryphal Adam and Eve in Medieval Europe

KIND OF AN OLD BOOK FROM OUP (BUT I'VE NEVER NOTED IT BEFORE):

The Apocryphal Adam and Eve in Medieval Europe
Vernacular Translations and Adaptations of the Vita Adae et Evae

Brian Murdoch

• Coverage of an wide range of apocryphal texts
  
• Primary material presented in European languages with English translations
  
• Analysis uses both a theological and a literary approach
  
• Places individual variants of the material in their geographical contexts

Description What happened to Adam and Eve after their expulsion from paradise?

Where the biblical narrative fell silent apocryphal writings took up this intriguing question, notably including the Early Christian Latin text, the Life of Adam and Eve. This account describes the (failed) attempt of the couple to return to paradise by fasting whilst immersed in a river, and explores how they coped with new experiences such as childbirth and death.

Brian Murdoch guides the reader through the many variant versions of the Life, demonstrating how it was also adapted into most western and some eastern European languages in the Middle Ages and beyond, constantly developing and changing along the way. The study considers this development of the apocryphal texts whilst presenting a fascinating insight into the flourishing medieval tradition of Adam and Eve. A tradition that the Reformation would largely curtail, stories from the Life were celebrated in European prose, verse and drama in many different languages from Irish to Russian.

Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch. The same sort of thing was going on with New Testament Apocrypha, as covered in Philip Jenkins's recent book The Many Faces of Christ.

Ed-Dur temple being rebuilt

ARAMAIC WATCH: UAE rebuilding region's sun temple, brick by brick (Sajila Saseendran, Khaleej Times).

The UAE is rebuilding the only sun temple discovered in the region, brick by brick, literally.

The remains of the temple used for worshipping the solar deity in the first century were discovered in the midst of the desert in Ed-Dur historical site in Umm Al Quwain in the late 1980s. Ed-Dur is one of the six historical sites the UAE has nominated as Unesco World Heritage Sites.

The Aramaic inscription found at the temple mentioned the name of the sun deity Shamash, throwing light on the fact that the deity was worshipped in the region some 2000 years ago.

[...]

Dr. Zaki Aslan, director of ICCROM-ATHAR Regional Conservation Centre in Sharjah, which is supervising and development and conservation of the temple in collaboration with other governmental agencies told Khaleej Times that efforts have been on to protect the temple from further deterioration and restore it to the state in which it was discovered.

The eagles and some other objects from the site have been moved to the museum while the rest of the temple structure is getting reconstructed using traditional methods and materials.

"We are trying to reproduce the temple as it was found in the 80s," said Dr Aslan.

[...]

More on this Aramaic inscription, and on Aramaic at Ed-Dur and in ancient Arabia in general, is here and links.

The Punic Wars in a nutshell

PUNIC WATCH: In a nutshell: the Punic Wars. For nearly 80 years, Rome and Carthage fought for supremacy at sea, on land and from the backs of elephants (Jonny Wilkes, History Extra. And a reminder of why it matters to PaleoJudaica is here.

Saadia Gaon and the Karaites

KARAITE WATCH: Fighting the Good Fight in Old Baghdad (Rabbi Richard Baroff, Atlanta Jewish Times).

Saadia is remembered as the greatest of the gaonim — those leaders of the Babylonian academies who added so much to the richness of Jewish life and thought. They were all great intellectuals, and Saadia, who flourished in the first half of the 10th century in Muslim Bagdad, was the greatest of them all.

[...]

Later in the article we get a correct account of Saadia's relationship with the Karaites, which handily offsets the incorrect one in the article noted here.

Saadia’s main intellectual and spiritual opponents were the Karaites. The Karaites rejected the rabbinic principle that two Torahs were given to Moses on Mount Sinai: the Written Law and the Oral Law. The Karaites held that only the Written Torah was given at Sinai. This smaller Torah is the sacred text of the Torah scroll. The Oral Torah became the basis for the Talmud and halacha, which the Karaites held was not divine.

(The ancient Sadducees also rejected the twofold Torah in favor of just the Written Law.)

Saadia became the great champion of rabbinic normalcy and defeated this great threat to Talmudic Judaism.

[...]

Of the three major arguments for which he is known, two of them bore important fruit. The theologian’s battle against the Karaites prevented a serious schism within the Jewish community, allowing rabbinic Judaism to flourish into modern times.

[...]

It should be clarified that this reflects the situation in the tenth century and for quite some time thereafter, but not in the present. In the present, the Karaites are still alive and well, and the State of Israel accepts Karaites as legitimate Jews at least to the point of permitting them to make Aliyah (immigrate to Israel). Background on the Karaites is here, here, here, and links.

Brady on 1 Maccabees 2 and Hebrews 11

TARGUMAN: Published: Article on 1 Maccabees 2 and Hebrews 11. Chris Brady shares the offprint of his article, "What Shall We Remember, the Deeds or Faith of Our Ancestors? A Comparison of 1 Maccabees 2 and Hebrews 11," just published in the Festschrift for Bruce Chilton, which I have already noted here.

Hugoye 19.1

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has published a new issue: Volume 19.1. Follow the link for the TOC and for links to the articles, etc., all online for free.

More on that army of amateur papyrologists

THE OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI: Finds in Ancient Egyptian rubbish dumps inspire "world's largest archaeological project" (Ben Miller, Culture24).

Touted as the world’s largest archaeological project, an online search for clues is crowd-sourcing the details of ancient lives in Egypt - from 19th century rubbish dumps

Going through bins has perhaps never proved as productive as it did for Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Sturridge Hunt more than a century ago. Rooting through a rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus (the name means “sharp-nosed”), in ancient Egypt, these light-suited, hirsute late-20s archaeologists litter-picked more than 500,000 papyrus fragments, initiating papyrology as a scientific form.

Deciphering these fragile little scraps can be enlightening. “For drunken headache: wear leaves of Alexandrian chamaedaphne strung together,” reads one papyrus cure for ulcers, haemorrhoids or poor eyes.

Juda, who is named as falling off his horse, apparently needed two nurses to turn him over, suffering injuries which sound worse than those afflicted by Sabina, who consigned a woman named Syra to four days in bed after hitting her with a key. Apollonius and Sarapias, more pleasantly, dispatched a thousand roses and 4,000 narcissi to the wedding of a friend’s son.

Brown and torn, the notes are as heavily open to interpretation as Morse Code muffled through a tin can. The Ashmolean Museum holds this avalanche of plays, letters, receipts, wills and government letters from the lives of people living between the 1st and 6th centuries, and a website where readers can match Greek letters to fragments has already attracted registrations from more than 250,000 volunteers who believe they have the definitive answers to these uncertain snapshots of ancient Egypt. Only 1.5 percent of the million-item collection has so far been transcribed and identified.

[...]

More on this crowdsourcing project is here and here, along with links to many, many past posts on the Oxyrhynchus papyri. And for more recent posts see here, here, and here and follow those links.

This current article has some personal information about the discoverers and lots of random details about the contents of the papyri. Plus there's this:

John Darlington, whose own story-driven interest is in the loose fragments of stained glass recovered from the destroyed St Michael’s cathedral in Coventry, will introduce Dr Dirk Obbink, the leader of the translation project, in a special event at the Royal Geographical Society next month.

“We simply couldn’t resist asking Dirk to come and tell his story,” says Darlington, who is part of the World Monuments Fund.

“It directly links people who might be sitting in their living rooms in London, Lima or Lusaka with a small fragment of the past – and then gets them to help.”

Heilig, Hewitt, and Bird (eds.) God and the Faithfulness of Paul

LARRY HURTADO: God and the Faithfulness of Paul. See what they did there? Cross-file under New Book.

Roma Subterranea Judaica online

AWOL: Open Access Monograph Series: Roma Subterranea Judaica.

THE FOLLOWING PDFS ARE PROVIDED AS A SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY BY THE INTERNATIONAL CATACOMB SOCIETY. ALL THE ITEMS ARE AUTHORED BY JESSICA DELLO RUSSO, ICS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & DOCTORAL CANDIDATE AT THE VATICAN'S PONTIFICIO ISTITUTO DI ARCHEOLOGIA CRISTIANA.

Ancient Jewish and modern Israeli law

POLITICS AND LAW: Bill Seeks to Increase Role of Jewish Law in Israel's Legal System. Justice Committee chair wants to set up an institute to 'translate' ancient Jewish legal literature into contemporary legal language accessible to judges and lawyers (Jonathan Lis, Haartez).

The chairman of the Knesset’s Justice Committee has drawn up a bill designed to increase the influence of Jewish religious law (halacha) in the rulings of judges.
In recent months MK Nissan Slomiansky (Habayit Hayehudi) has been promoting this legislation, which would set up an institute to “translate” ancient Jewish legal literature into contemporary legal language. This material would be available to judges when making their decisions, and also to lawyers.

[...]

Slomiansky is aware of concerns raised by the proposed bill. “The law doesn’t stipulate that everyone will have to go to the mikveh (ritual bath) or cover their head,” he said. “There is no intention of educating anyone to become religious and lay teffilin (phylacteries). There is an answer for everyone here. From a social standpoint old Hebrew law is more advanced than current enlightened systems. Social demands in Hebrew law are stricter.”

[...]

P. Wernberg-Møller, R.I.P.

SAD NEWS: Death of Dr Preben Wernberg-Møller (St Peter's College, Oxford University). He was reportedly 92 years old. He was known for important early work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially his commentary on the Community Rule: The Manual of Discipline. Translated and annotated with an introduction by P. Wernberg-Møller (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. vol. 1.; Leiden : Brill, 1957). Requiescat in pace.

Justice Scalia, St. Hubert, and the Manichaeans

SYRIAC WATCH ETC.: DECODING SCALIA’S SECRET HUNTING SOCIETY, FROM JÄGERMEISTER TO MEDIEVAL HERESY TO BUDDHIST LEGEND JOSEPH A. P. WILSON, Religion Dispatches).

The media is abuzz this week with the revelation that Justice Antonin Scalia died while on a hunting expedition with several prominent members of a 300-year-old Bohemian secret society, the Order of St. Hubertus. The owner of the hunting lodge where he passed away is a prominent member of this order, as was Scalia’s traveling companion.

[...]

I will leave the criticisms of this society and its pursuits to the author of the article and any readers who find them interesting. What I find interesting is the historical and philological background of the St. Hubert legend behind the society, some key elements of which I have bold-highlighted in the excerpt below.

Origins of the Hubert Legend

St. Hubert is the Germanic patron saint of hunters and fishers. He is perhaps most famous as the Jägermeister (“Master Hunter”)—the basis for the stag-crucifix emblem of frat-party legend. The legend of Hubert describes him as an impious eighth-century aristocrat who flouted religious duty by hunting on Good Friday. In pursuit of a magnificent stag, he is interrupted and admonished by the stern voice of Christ in the presence of the majestic deer, and witnesses a radiant vision of the crucifixion in the animal’s enormous horns.

In repentance for his sins, he renounces his worldly ambitions, is ordained, and subsequently lives a pious life of solitude in the forest where he then has his faith repeatedly tested.

Virtually the same legend is attributed to an earlier Roman saint, Eustace (née Placidus), set in the second century. In that version, the protagonist is a pagan general in Emperor Trajan’s army on the Asian frontier of the Roman Empire, likewise converted by Christ in the form of a fleeing deer.

But in an intriguing example of the migration of religious myth, the single biography of Hubert/Eustace is now believed by many scholars to be a Christianized synthesis of two famous Buddhist legends.

The first act of the story is based on an eighth-or-ninth century Syriac translation of the first-century Nigrodhamiga-Jātaka, the legend of King Brahmadatta of Benares and the Banyan Deer. Here the Hubert/Eustace character is the great King Brahmadatta. The Bodhisattva (future Buddha) is the majestic King of the Deer. The animal Bodhisattva’s horns radiate silver light and the deer’s eloquent speech compels this erstwhile hunter king to become a champion of the dharma of the Buddha.

The second act of both hagiographies is a Christianization of the Visvantara-Jātaka, with Hubert/Eustace now cast in the role of the Bodhisattva himself. (Visvantara is famously the penultimate incarnation of the historical Buddha.)

Some have raised the possibility that the Buddhist-Christian parallels are coincidental, insisting instead that the narrative is derived exclusively from the Book of Job. However, the strongest proof of the Indian origins of these texts is not merely the fact that they share a common plot. It is the telltale use of a South Asian place name: Hydapses (Jhelum in Panjab). It has been persuasively argued that the anachronistic setting of the Eustace legend far beyond the Syrian borders of Roman Asia links the narrative conclusively to the Buddhist originals.

Furthermore, there was a straightforward historical process for the synthesis of Christian and Buddhist canonical texts within classical Manichaean monasteries of the Silk Road.

Mani was a third-century ascetic Persian prophet who was born of a Christian family but regarded Gautama Buddha as a previous incarnation of Jesus Christ. Mani’s followers redacted Buddhist narratives under the rubric of Western theology. Saint Augustine was the most famous ex-Manichee, and Manichaeism for Western Christianity is regarded (since Augustine’s time) as a contemptible heresy. Nonetheless, Manichaeism was the most successful Gnostic Church in history, and enjoyed a degree of state support in Central Asia at precisely the right moment to act as a permeable “membrane” between Buddhist and Christian monastic cultures.

All this sounds speculative, but nonetheless entirely plausible. The Book of Giants underwent a somewhat parallel process, starting with a Second Temple-era Jewish Aramaic text, which Mani adopted as scripture in a Syriac version. This version was transmitted over a wide geographical area and freely adapted versions of it survive in fragments of medieval translations in Iranian and Turkic. Another version of the story was retold in Hebrew. The story was also known in Arabic-speaking circles and even in China. Manichaeism ultimately fizzled out as a religion, but it first spread far and wide for many centuries.

Cross-file under "Manichaean (Manichean) Watch." Run that search term through the PaleoJudaica search engine for endless relevant posts. Some recent past posts are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. For past posts on the Book of Giants, see here and here and links etc.

PhD fellowships at Groningen and Leuven

FUNDED DOCTORAL PROJECTS: PhD positions The Dead Sea Scrolls and Models of Textual Communities (2.0 fte) (216065-66).

Organisation
Within the framework of Cooperation Flanders, a joint initiative of FWO (the Research Foundation - Flanders) and NWO (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), the Faculties of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen and KU Leuven host the research project Models of Textual Communities and Digital Palaeography of the Dead Sea Scrolls. At each faculty a 4-years (1.0 fte) fully funded PhD position is provided.

The Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) provides a PhD position for the subproject Literary Heterogeneity and Religious Diversity in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the KU Leuven (Belgium) provides a PhD position for the subproject Diachronicity in the Dead Sea Scrolls Collections.

Both PhD projects will be supervised jointly by the Groningen and Leuven project leaders. Applicants can express interest in either or both positions.

Follow the link for further particulars.

SBL MEGA 2016 CFP — time is short

APRIL DECONICK: Call for papers in mysticism, esotericism and gnosticism in antiquity. I posted the CFP for this at the beginning of the month here, but the deadline (March 2nd) is looming and this is a good time to mention it again. Information on proposing a paper is here. I will be reviewing April D. DeConick's 2016 book, The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion From Antiquity to Today (Columbia University Press) in the book review session.

UPDATE: To clarify, as the SBL website has done, the deadline is 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time on 1 March.

Frankfurter on religious violence

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: "Religious Violence:" A Phenomenology (David Frankfurter).

So this is a call, not just to interpret “representations of violence” in our familiar canon of 2 Maccabees and Josephus, Luke-Acts and Perpetua, Tertullian and the Book of Judges, but to move out into the historical world in which representations inspired pogroms and people were actually burned or dismembered out of some mob’s religious conviction.

Earlier essays in the series are noted here.

Also, this recent post at the ASOR Blog is tangentially relevant to the discussion: Sacred Violence: When Ancient Egyptian Punishment was Dressed in Ritual Trappings [PODCAST].

There are still Jews in Kaifeng, China

AND SOME OF THEM ARE COMING TO ISRAEL: Five Chinese Jews come home after thousands of years. In first Aliyah from Kaifeng in seven years, five women who reconnected with their ancient Jewish roots have their 'prayers answered.' (Arutz Sheva).

After arriving in Israel, the five women plan to continue their Jewish studies at Jerusalem’s Midreshet Nishmat – The Jeanie Schottenstein Center For Advanced Torah Study For Women, with the support of Shavei Israel, which will also cover their living expenses and support them as they prepare to undergo formal conversion by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. After completing the conversion process, they will receive Israeli citizenship.

The last time Shavei Israel managed to bring Chinese Jews back from Kaifeng on Ailyah came in October 2009, when seven young men returned home.

The Kaifeng Jewish community is thought to have been founded by Iraqi or Persian Jewish merchants who went east in the 8th or 9th century CE.

Back in 1163 CE the community built a large and beautiful synagogue that was renovated over the years. The community may have numbered as many as 5,000 people during its peak in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE), but intermarriage and assimilation, together with the death of the community's last rabbi, led to the end of the community in the early 19th century CE.

Now, the community claims 500 to 1,000 members who are increasingly returning to their Jewish roots despite the pressure to assimilate.

More on the Jewish presence in Kaifeng, which goes back to the early Middle Ages and perhaps earlier, is here and links. Some comparably early evidence from the Taklamakan desert is noted as well.

Hebrew words of the week

CATCHING UP WITH YONA SABAR'S COLUMN:

Hebrew word of the week: Shoshannah (Lily or Rose)

Hebrew word of the week: Miriam

Regular readers will notice that I don't link to every word covered in Professor Sabar's column. Many of them, such as the two above, are from ancient Hebrew, and I try always to link to these. But some, such as February 17th's Hahpatsah, "objectification," are modern coinages. I link to these only when his discussion brings out something of interest for ancient Judaism.

Kalmin lecturing at Penn

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: Traditions that Travel: Jesus’s Descent to the Underworld in the Babylonian Talmud and in Christian Literature of the Roman East

Thursday, March 3, 2016 - 5:30pm - 6:30pm
Annenberg School for Communication, 
Room 111, 3620 Walnut Street
Prof. Richard Kalmin (Jewish Theological Seminary) will talk on his recently published book, Migrating Tales: The Talmud's Narratives and their Historical Context.

Follow the link for the abstract. As often with these things, I wish I could make it to this one. If you are in Philadelphia, don't miss it.

I noted a review of the book here.

Kulik and Minov, Biblical Pseudepigrapha in Slavonic Traditions

NEW BOOK FROM OUP:

Biblical Pseudepigrapha in Slavonic Traditions

Alexander Kulik and Sergey Minov

• The first collection of Slavonic pseudepigrapha translated into a western European language
  
• The commentaries provide a wide intercultural perspective based on the study of parallel material in ancient and medieval Jewish and Christian literature.
  
• The texts are accompanied by an extensive introduction providing a general methodological survey of the field

Early Slavonic writings have preserved a unique corpus of compositions that develop biblical themes. These extracanonical, parabiblical narratives are known as pseudepigrapha, and they preserve many ancient traditions neglected by the canonical scriptures. They feature tales of paradise and hell, angels and Satan, the antediluvian fathers and biblical patriarchs, kings, and prophets. These writings address diverse questions ranging from artistically presented questions of theology and morals to esoteric subjects such as cosmology, demonology, messianic expectations, and eschatology.

Although these Slavonic texts themselves date from a relatively late period, they are translations or reworkings of far earlier texts and traditions, many of them arguably going back to late biblical or early postbiblical times. The material in these works can contribute significantly to a better understanding of the roots of postbiblical mysticism, rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity, ancient and medieval dualistic movements, as well as the beginnings of the Slavonic literary tradition.

The volume provides a collection of the minor biblical pseudepigrapha preserved solely in Slavonic; at the same time, it is also the first collection of Slavonic pseudepigrapha translated into a western European language. It includes the original texts, their translations, and commentaries focusing on the history of motifs and based on the study of parallel material in ancient and medieval Jewish and Christian literature.

The aim of the volume is to to bridge the gap between the textual study of this corpus and its contextualization in early Jewish, early Christian, rabbinic, Byzantine, and other traditions, as well as to introduce these texts into the interdisciplinary discussion of the intercultural transmission of ideas and motifs.

Many more posts on Church Slavonic and Slavonic Old Testament pseudepigrapha are here and links. And a recently-published related book edited by Alexander Kulik is here.

3000-year-old textiles at Timna

TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY PRESS RELEASE: TAU Discovers Extensive Fabric Collection Dating Back to Kings David and Solomon.

Textiles found at Timna Valley archaeological dig provide a colorful picture of a complex society

The ancient copper mines in Timna are located deep in Israel's Arava Valley and are believed by some to be the site of King Solomon's mines. The arid conditions of the mines have seen the remarkable preservation of 3,000-year-old organic materials, including seeds, leather and fabric, and other extremely rare artifacts that provide a unique window into the culture and practices of this period.

A Timna excavation team from Tel Aviv University led by Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef has uncovered an extensive fabric collection of diverse color, design and origin. This is the first discovery of textiles dating from the era of David and Solomon, and sheds new light on the historical fashions of the Holy Land. The textiles also offer insight into the complex society of the early Edomites, the semi-nomadic people believed to have operated the mines at Timna.

The tiny pieces of fabric, some only 5 x 5 centimeters in size, vary in color, weaving technique and ornamentation. "Some of these fabrics resemble textiles only known from the Roman era," said Dr. Orit Shamir, a senior researcher at the Israel Antiquities Authority, who led the study of the fabrics themselves.

"No textiles have ever been found at excavation sites like Jerusalem, Megiddo and Hazor, so this provides a unique window into an entire aspect of life from which we've never had physical evidence before," Dr. Ben-Yosef said. "We found fragments of textiles that originated from bags, clothing, tents, ropes and cords.

"The wide variety of fabrics also provides new and important information about the Edomites, who, according to the Bible, warred with the Kingdom of Israel. We found simply woven, elaborately decorated fabrics worn by the upper echelon of their stratified society. Luxury grade fabric adorned the highly skilled, highly respected craftsmen managing the copper furnaces. They were responsible for smelting the copper, which was a very complicated process."

[...]

This is a very exciting discovery in itself, but it also has an implication that is not taken up in the press release. An environment that preserved 3000-year-old seeds, leather, and fabric is also an environment that could preserve 3000-year-old scrolls and papyri. Such conditions are very rare: you have them in Egypt, the Dead Sea valley, and in very few other places. For example, we know there was a large scribal output on parchment (leather) in ancient Babylonia, but it is (so far) entirely lost due to the humid climate. Luckily, we do have many cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia, since clay tablets survived readily in that environment, especially if they were fired, but much Aramaic literature on parchment was lost forever.

It is now established that Timna is an environment in which scrolls could have survived from even as far back as the tenth century BCE, so if we are really lucky, maybe we can recover some of that elusive Iron Age II Edomite literature from there.

Keep digging!

Scalia as a Talmudist

RABBINIC LAW: Justice Scalia As Talmudic Scholar (Nathan Lewin, The Jewish Press). Excerpt:

A decision Scalia wrote for a unanimous Supreme Court in April 1999 concerned the meaning of the word “gratuity” in a federal law that prescribes criminal punishment for bribery of non-judicial federal officials. The case concerned then-Secretary of Agriculture Michael Espy, but it is an important decision that could today affect, by analogy, the criminal convictions of former governor of Virginia Bob McDonnell and New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

The Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of California that a trade association that had given Espy tickets to the U.S. Open tennis tournament and treated him to meals and free luggage did not violate the federal prohibition against “gratuities” if the prosecution did not charge or prove that the gifts were “linked” to any official act performed by Espy.

The Supreme Court’s ruling was not remarkable or unexpected. Espy had been acquitted by a jury in a publicized trial, and the Sun-Diamond prosecution was an independent counsel’s last-ditch effort to justify charging as criminal any gift given to a federal public official by a lobbyist. No Supreme Court justice dissented from Scalia’s opinion. But the opinion revealed an interesting side of the justice. It began as follows (the text is at page 400 of volume 526 of the United States Reports):

“Talmudic sages believed that judges who accepted bribes would be punished by eventually losing all knowledge of the divine law.”

What fate awaited a judge who took bribes was not remotely relevant to the legal issue the Supreme Court decided in Scalia’s written opinion. But the controversy debated before him made Scalia think of a rabbinic dictum that he chose as a starting point for his legal analysis. Even more remarkable is that the teaching of the “Talmudic sages” that Scalia invoked is not a well-known Jewish proverb. It is known only to well-versed students of Rashi’s commentary on Torah.

Linguistic dating of Hebrew

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

An Unsettling Divide in Linguistic Dating and Historical Linguistics

See Also: Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts

Unhistorical Hebrew Linguistics: A Cautionary Tale

A Very Tall “Cautionary Tale”: A Response to Ron Hendel

By Martin Ehrensvärd
Associate Professor
Faculty of Theology
University of Copenhagen

Robert Rezetko
Research Associate
Radboud University Nijmegen & University of Sydney

Ian Young
Associate Professor
Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies
University of Sydney
February 2016

This is the latest instalment of a discussion that has been going on for some time in The Bible and Interpretation and to which I appear not to have linked before. So follow the links above to catch up. More to the point, the discussion is going on in the peer-review scholarly literature and it is there, if anywhere, that progress will be made. It is good to have these popular online pieces occasionally, but meanwhile, everyone keep publishing in the scholarly venues.

Museum of the Bible preview

EXHIBITION: Religious broadcasters take a peek at Museum of the Bible collection (Heidi Hall, RNS). Excerpt:

Backed by the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby craft store chain, the museum is set to open late next year in Washington, three blocks from the Capitol. At eight floors and 430,000 square feet, it’s a massive building to be packed with antiquities that are drawing increased attention from scholars.

Museum President Cary Summers, who shook hands and held meetings in a VIP room away from the exhibit floor, said the collection was acquired by Hobby Lobby and donated to the museum.

Museum officials offered a mini-preview of some of the items during the pope’s visit to Philadelphia in September, but they chose a full preview at the National Religious Broadcasters’ Nashville conference mostly for its timing, Summers said. In fact, the museum is the event’s platinum sponsor.

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

Review of Allen, The Splintered Divine

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Spencer Allen, The Splintered Divine: A Study of Ištar, Baal, and Yahweh Divine Names and Divine Multiplicity in the Ancient Near East. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 5. Berlin; Boston; Munich: De Gruyter, 2015. Pp. xxi, 457. ISBN 9781614512936. $154.00.

Reviewed by Gina Konstantopoulos, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University (gina.konstantopoulos@nyu.edu)

Preview

A revision of the author's doctoral dissertation, Spencer Allen's The Splintered Divine: A Study of Ištar, Baal, and Yahweh Divine Names and Divine Multiplicity in the Ancient Near East, is an ambitious undertaking in both its conceptual breath and the many sources with which the author engages on the way to his conclusions. Allen investigates the phenomenon by which a divine figure may be named with different, often geographically associated titles, when invoked in hymns, treaties, and other, often dedicatory, texts. Allen's work aims from the outset to be comparative, and he thus focuses his attentions on three divine figures that manifest this multiplicity: Ishtar, Baal, and Yahweh. Any one of these figures is complex enough that it could easily serve as the sole basis of a dedicated study, instead of occupying a single chapter within this work. The author first concerns himself with the question of divine multiplicity itself, a survey of the field as it were, and then proceeds to devote a chapter to broader comparative insights and exploration, before proceeding with his case studies and overall conclusions. The work closes with a long listing of the various god lists, excerpted from treaties and other, mostly political, texts, that serve as one of the major bases for Allen's analysis and his own attempts to create a grand unifying god list for the respective periods under review.

[...]

Dancing with Astarte

PERFORMING ARTS: The Canaanite spirit. Local choreographers and dancers Moran Yizhaky Abergel and Kim Taitelbaum unveil their latest work on the ancient Middle Eastern goddess Astarte (, Jerusalem Post).

The common conception of contemporary dance productions is that they are created in the studio. Long hours spent generating and revising movement phrases, perfecting each and every transition; nuance and gesture are a must for most dance artists. It is through these often-arduous sessions that the final product, what will go on stage, comes into focus. And while they certainly employed this tactic when developing the duet Astarte, choreographers and performers Moran Yizhaky Abergel and Kim Taitelbaum took many of the big leaps in their creative process over the breakfast table. The result of this omelet-driven process will premier this week at the Kelim Choreography Center in Bat Yam.

[...]

“The piece deals with lost gods, like Astarte, the god of feminine power and of a falling people,” says Abergel. “There is something very ancient about it, very Middle Eastern. We allowed ourselves to jump between dance styles throughout the work, to draw on a lot of different vocabularies and experiences as well as to touch on a lot of different concepts. The piece is timeless in a sense that it wants to go back in time and return to the present.”

Astarte, or Ashtoreth, was worshiped in Syria and Canaan in the first millennium BC. She represented power, femininity, fertility and sexuality.

“In this work, we go back to the mental place that is Canaan, which exists in every person that lives in the region that was once that land,” explains Taitelbaum. This notion, of Canaan-ism, affects the choreographers in their daily life as well as in the studio. “The local dance community is segregated from its neighbors. We are cut off from what’s around us and are constantly looking at Europe for influence. That alone creates a certain aesthetic here.”

“There is a very special energy and beauty of being here in this country. This piece is very much a reaction to everything that we have seen and how we think the dance medium should be. Dance has to affect a change in the cultural world.”

[...]

Sounds like an interesting production. Of course, the Deuteronomistic Historian is turning over in his grave (see 1 Kings 11:5, 33; 2 Kings 23:13). Just saying.

An ancient French restaurant and Passover

DINING OUT: Earliest Roman Restaurant Found in France: Night Life Featured Heavy Drinking. Tavern more than 2,100 years old featured same taboon oven used in Middle East today, and evidence of a Romanization process similar to what happened in ancient Israel (Philippe Bohstrom, Haaretz).

An ancient tavern believed to be more then 2,100 years old has been found in the town of Lattes, southern France, making it the oldest Roman restaurant found in the Mediterranean. They also found evidence that while Romanization changed the locals' dining habits, it didn't do much for the cuisine.

Evidently some things never change, though. The excavators in the town of Lattes found indoor gristmills and ovens for baking pita, each about one meter across. This oven, called a tabouna or taboon, is still used throughout the Middle East and Israel.

[...]

The article is interesting in itself for the history of dining out in the ancient Roman world, but it also introduces an ancient Jewish angle as an aside:

Emulating the Romans on Passover

The Celtic town of Lattara provide clues about Roman society - and also insights about how people in the provinces became Romanized.

“We do have interesting evidence of new changes in dining at Lattara, which seem to reflect more influence of Roman dining practices,” says Luley.

One is the existence of triclinium – a couch big enough to accommodate three, on which Romans typically dined while reclining.  In addition, the presence of the terra sigillata clayware in the late first century BCE suggests new practices, namely a new "fussy" emphasis on very small plates, cups, and goblets. Those would be ideal for diners who are reclining and drinking with one hand while taking food from small plates with the other hand, explain the archaeologists.

A similar assimilation of Roman customs occurred in Judaea during Roman rule. “The finds are interesting mainly for the a glimpse into the interaction process between the local Celtic population and the Romans,” says Guy Stiebel of Tel Aviv University. "The study of the material culture allows us to illustrate the process of cultural changes. One very important test case is food consumption, that is, not only what you eat and drink, but where and how you do it. In a somewhat similar manner to what we see in the French site, Judaism adopted Greco-Roman customs and incorporated it in religious traditions such as Pesach. Reclining together, eating and drinking  followed the symposia,” Stiebel says to Haaretz.

The Last Supper as Passover seder?

PERHAPS NOT: Was Jesus’s Last Supper a Passover seder? (Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, JNS.org). Excerpt:

[Professor Jonathan] Klawans notes that there are those who can cite no less than 14 parallels between the account described in Mark and the modern-day Passover seder. These include the bread and wine, the hymn or blessings that were recited, and the reclining diners. Jews at their seders discuss the symbolism of the Passover meal; Jesus at his Last Supper discussed the symbolism of the wine (“This is the blood of my covenant”) and the bread (“Take, eat; this is my body”).

Nonetheless, scholars Klawans, [Rabbi Raymond] Apple, and [Professor Michael J.] Cook all do not believe that Jesus’s Last Supper was the Passover seder, for several reasons.

For starters, the parallels that can be drawn seem to be those that are too general, rather than decisive. It would not be uncanny for Jesus to eat a meal with his disciples in Jerusalem. During that meal, they would have reclined, broken bread, drank wine, and possibly even sang a hymn.

“Such behavior may have been characteristic of the Passover meal, but it is equally characteristic of practically any Jewish meal [at the time],” says Klawans.

Some key Passover elements are missing from the Last Supper: the Passover lamb, references to matzah (unleavened bread), the bitter herbs, charoset, the four cups of wine, the recitation of the four questions, and the narrative retelling of the Passover story.

"Of Kings and Prophets" premiers on 8 March

TELEVISION: Scoop: OF KINGS AND PROPHETS - *Series Premiere* on ABC - Tuesday, March 8, 2016. The first episode is titled “Offerings of Blood.” A synopsis of the episode is at the link.

Background here and links.

Dead Sea Scrolls digitization

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Dead Sea Scrolls Puzzle Pieces to Be Matched via Digitizing (JNi.Media).

Computer scientists and Dead Sea Scrolls scholars are building a digital work environment for one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century. This will enable the virtual joining of the “puzzle pieces” of thousands of ancient scroll fragments found in Judean Desert caves.

The project is a German-Israeli research collaboration of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Israel Antiquities Authority, Haifa University and Tel Aviv University The $1,765,000 project is being funded by the Deutsch-Israelische-Projektförderung (DIP), and administrated by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

[...]

The dynamic research environment for studying the Dead Sea Scrolls will be achieved by linking the robust databases and resources of the project: the Qumran-Lexicon-project of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library of the IAA. The main outcomes of the project will be an enhanced, hands-on virtual workspace that will allow scholars around the world to work together simultaneously, as well as a new platform for collaborative production and publication of Dead Sea Scrolls editions.

[...]

Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.

More on the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is here and links. A couple of past posts that seem to relate to the Göttingen Qumran-Lexicon-project are here and here.

UPDATE: The full English version of the IAA press release is posted here and (probably more durably) here. HT Joseph Lauer.

Research Assistant in Rabbinics and ancient Judaism

THE ANCIENT WORLD PROJECT: Research Assistant Position in Rabbinic Literature and Ancient Judaism At the University of Michigan (Yaron Eliav, Academia.edu). The post is for 30 hours per week and it can last from three months to a couple of years.

Talmudic demonology and mythology

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Talmud’s Demonology Resembles the Schlocky Inventiveness of ‘Dune’ or ‘The Lord of the Rings.’Infused with magic—and ritual designed to conjure or contain magic—Jewish oral law remains a mix of jurisprudence and poetry.

One of the challenging things about the reading the Talmud is the way it combines the most painstaking rationality with the most florid superstition. Both of these qualities were on display in last week’s Daf Yomi reading, which encompassed chapters 6 and 7 of Tractate Gittin. Most of the text was occupied with technical questions about how a husband or wife can appoint an agent to deliver or receive a bill of divorce. But then the rabbis shift to telling tall tales about Ashmedai the king of the demons and his duel of wits with King Solomon. “There were three hundred types of demons in Shichin,” says Rabbi Yochanan, even as he acknowledges that “I do not know what a demon itself is.” If he had never seen a demon, why was Yochanan so sure they existed? How could the same mind be so exacting and so credulous at the same time?

[...]

I'm not going to hold Adam Kirsch responsible for the headline, but calling the inventiveness of Dune or LOTR "schlocky" is uncultivated.

A recent post with background to the demonology of b. Gittin is here. Meanwhile, here is some more of that mythology for you. To my surprise, I find that there are no previous PaleoJudaica references to Ashmedai or the Shamir worm.

This leads the Gemara to relate, starting in Gittin 68a, a long story about King Solomon’s encounter with Ashmedai, the king of the demons. Interestingly, though Ashmedai is a malevolent figure, he is also pious in his own way: “Every day he ascends to heaven and studies in the heavenly study hall and he descends to the earth and studies in the earthly study hall.” The idea that the king of demons is also a talmid hacham is fascinating. In a strange way it manages to domesticate the supernatural, bringing even demons under the wing of Jewish law.

We have read earlier in the Talmud about the shamir, the magical worm that has the power to bore through the hardest substance. The shamir was Jewish mythology’s answer to a dilemma regarding the building of the First Temple. According to the Bible, the stones of the Temple were so sacred that they could not be cut with iron, since iron is associated with weapons and thus with violence. But then how were the stones cut? The answer is that the shamir hewed them into shape. And how did Solomon get his hands on the shamir? We learn from the Gemara that he did so by kidnapping Ashmedai: Solomon tricked the demon into drinking wine, and when he got drunk the king subdued him with a magic chain that bore the name of God.

Read on for the rest of the story. Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Final reminder: St. Andrews Divine Sonship Symposium

ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT FOR EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION: Registration Open for Son of God: Divine Sonship in Jewish and Christian Antiquity - The St Andrews Symposium for Biblical and Early Christian Studies.

Conference: Christianity and Judaism in the Language of Islam

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UPPSALA:

Christianity and Judaism in the Language of Islam: A Conference on the Bible in Arabic and Cognate Fields
Preliminary Program (29 March – 1 April, 2016)

Christianity and Judaism in the Language of Islam: A Conference on the Bible in Arabic and Cognate Fields

The conference is hosted by the Department of Linguistics and Philology at Uppsala University and organized in cooperation with the DFG-funded Biblia Arabica project located at Tel Aviv University and at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. The aim of the conference is to foster an interest in Arabic Bible texts and cognate fields. Both senior scholars and PhD students will present their topics during the conference. The primary object of study is the processes of translation, reception, and transmission of Arabic Bible texts among Jews and Christians and the use of these texts by Muslim intellectuals. Papers on non-biblical texts composed in Arabic by Jews and Christians, on translation techniques, as well as on the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the Near East and in Byzantium will also be presented.

The conference is sponsored by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Vetenskapsrådet och Marcus Wallenbergs stiftelse för internationellt vetenskapligt samarbete

Follow the link for the conference program.

Mystery wall in Jordan

NABATEAN (NABATAEAN) WATCH? OR SOMETHING. 93-Mile-Long Ancient Wall in Jordan Puzzles Archaeologists (Owen Jarus, Live Science).

A new map of an ancient wall that extended 93 miles (150 kilometers) in Jordan has left archaeologists with a series of mysteries, including questions over when the wall was built, who built it and what its purpose was.

[...]

So far, the only dating information the scientists have comes from pottery found in the towers and other sites along the wall, Kennedy said. Based on the pottery found to date, the wall was likely built sometime between the Nabataean period (312 B.C.–A.D. 106) and the Umayyad period (A.D. 661–750), Kennedy said.

Though one of the kingdoms or empires that ruled Jordan in that long stretch of time could have built the wall, the structure might not have been constructed by a large state. "It is possible that local communities, seeing what neighbors have done and persuaded of its usefulness, simply copied the practice," Kennedy and Banks wrote.

The purpose of the wall is also a mystery. Its low height and narrowness indicate that it wasn't constructed for defensive reasons, said Kennedy and Banks. Traces of ancient agriculture are more visible to the west of the wall than to the east, suggesting the structure marked a boundary between ancient farmers and nomadic pastoralists, the researchers said. Or it may have marked a different type of boundary.

[...]

Eco and Foucault

LARRY HURTADO: Umberto Eco: RIP.

It has nothing to do with the ordinary focus of this blog site, but news today of the death of Umberto Eco makes me want to post briefly about how much I enjoyed his novel, Foucault’s Pendulum. It’s by turns funny, thrilling, demanding intellectually, and always creative in characters and plot. I know he achieved fame for The Name of the Rose, but Foucault’s Pendulum struck me as enchanting in its own way.

[...]

This is also outside PaleoJudaica's usual focus, except tangentially in terms of the ongoing battle with conspiracy theories. Personally, I found The Name of the Rose unreadable and I never made it through it, but I quite enjoyed Foucault’s Pendulum. The latter was a very entertaining, but dark take on where conspiracy theories lead. I am sorry to hear about Umberto Eco. Requiescat in pace.

UPDATE: An old post that involves Foucault's Pendulum is here.

Kushner, The Grammar of God

GRAMMAR MATTERS: What can we learn from translations of the Bible? An interview with Aviya Kushner, author of "The Grammar of God: A Journey Into the Words and Worlds of the Bible" (LEAH BARBER, THE NATIONAL BOOK REVIEW, via Salon).

Aviya Kushner’s book The Grammar of God: A Journey Into the Words and Worlds of the Bible is profoundly personal. Kushner grew up in a Hebrew-speaking, scholarly household in which the Bible—read in the original Hebrew—was often the center of conversation and debate.

She didn’t read the Bible in translation until her second year at the Iowa Writers Workshop, when she took a yearlong class with Marilynne Robinson that required reading the Old Testament in English.

Kushner was surprised at the differences between the Hebrew original she knew almost by heart and the nearly unfamiliar English translation she encountered.

From this experience grew an obsession. Kushner embarked on a ten-year project of reading and collecting different versions of the Hebrew Bible in English and traveling the world retracing the steps of the great biblical translators, searching for their motivations. It was a dangerous undertaking, considered heretical by some.

When Robinson read Kushner’s MFA thesis, which had grown out of notes taken in the Old Testament class, she told her: “this will be a book.” And so it is.

The Grammar of God is part memoir, part treatise. Kushner’s careful attention to historical, linguistic, and personal detail paints a story of universal importance, one realized through the sum of countless small, significant parts.

The interview follows. One excerpt:

Q: How do the technical and the personal coexist in The Grammar of God? How did you strike a balance between the two—and how did you manage to make grammar a personal issue?

I’m so glad you asked this question. I wanted to show English readers why ancient Hebrew grammar matters, and this meant I had to include some of the nitty-gritty; incredibly detailed passages about sentence structure, word structure, or grammatical structures like the cohortative mode—which exists in Hebrew but not in English.

But at the same time, I thought it was essential to show how ancient Hebrew is alive, how it’s talked about and argued about and laughed about, and how it is as deeply personal for me and for my family as the English is for so many others.

It wasn’t easy to balance the grammatical and the personal, but I felt both were essential, so I wove grammar and memoir together, sentence by sentence.

Recent essays by Aviya Kushner were noted here and here.

Who are the Yazidis? Part 2

YAZIDI WATCH: Who Are the Yazidi 'Devil Worshipers' and Why Is ISIS Trying to Slaughter and Enslave This Ancient Minority? Part Two (Brian Glyn Williams, HuffPo).

This was the background for our visit to the holy shrine of Lailish located to the east of Mount Sinjar safely behind Kurdish Peshmerga lines in northwestern Kurdistan.

To be continued in part 3, The Secrets of the Yazidi Faith.

Part 1 was noted here, with links to many past posts on the Yazidis.

DSS art theft

DOES THIS COUNT AS META-LOOTING? Stolen art in Wisconsin has link to San Diego. Art theft from governor’s mansion has local tie (Diane Bell, San Diego Union-Tribune)

It was with intense interest that a San Diego businesswoman read about the recent arrest of a former guard at the Wisconsin governor’s mansion for stealing a painting from the residence he oversaw.

The crime had gone undetected for nearly five years until a state archivist was doing an inventory of the mansion’s artwork. She discovered an oil painting by the late painter Aaron Bohrod was missing. He was artist in residence at the University of Wisconsin and a war correspondent for Life magazine, and has paintings in the White House and Pentagon collections as well as in the Harry S. Truman museum in Independence, Mo.

Bohrod was the San Diego woman’s father. Georgi Bohrod Gordon owns a downtown San Diego communications firm, GBG & Associates, and her daughter, Bohrod’s grandaughter, Rebeka Neubarth, lives in Escondido. One of his paintings, pictured on the cover of Time magazine, was on display here during the San Diego Natural History Museum’s “Dead Sea Scrolls” exhibit.

[...]

Follow the link for a photo of the painting. I vaguely remember it at the exhibition, which I reviewed back in 2007. The scroll in the painting is one of the pesharim, I think the Pesher to Habakkuk.

CFP on Aramaic incantation bowls

AAR/SBL 2016: Call for Papers on Aramaic Magical Bowls (James, McGrath, Exploring Our Matrix).

The American Academy of Religion’s Traditions of Eastern Late Antiquity program unit, and the Society of Biblical Literature Aramaic program unit and Religious World in Late Antiquity Section, are co-sponsoring a session on the Aramaic and Mandaic magical bowls.

We like Aramaic incantation bowls, on which much more here and links.

Buried bodies of giants?

REMNANT OF GIANTS: Believing the Giant Skeleton Myth. PaleoJudaica has noted one of the same giant hoaxes here. There's also the Cardiff Giant hoax, noted here and here. And Deane doesn't mention it, but the giant skeleton myth goes all the way back to Josephus.

Two more reviews of "Risen"

MARGINALIA: MRBlog | Two Reviews of Risen (2016) (Sarah E. Rollens and Daniel Ullucci).

Religious Studies professors at my institution (Rhodes College) were recently offered tickets to an advanced screening of Risen (Sony 2016). My colleague and I wrote the following two reviews afterward. Warning: there are many spoilers!

It sounds like an interesting film. One with the usual flaws of the Jesus movies and a fundamentally implausible premise, but perhaps with some new ideas.

An earlier review was noted here.

Hurtado on Wright on Jesus and Zion

LARRY HURTADO: YHWH’s “Return to Zion.”

Yesterday, I received the PDF of my contribution to a multi-author volume examining features of N.T. Wright’s massive book on Paul’s theology. My own piece is a critical study of Wright’s claim that the earthly ministry of Jesus was seen from the first as YHWH’s “return to Zion,” and that this conviction was the “key” to all of the rest of how Jesus came to feature so centrally in earliest devotional practice and beliefs in the young Jesus-movement.

[...]

The question is outside my expertise, but it is fascinating to observe this dialogue between two highly respected New Testament colleagues.

Book note: Evans, Jesus and the Remains of His Day

JIM WEST: JESUS AND THE REMAINS OF HIS DAY: STUDIES IN JESUS AND THE EVIDENCE OF MATERIAL CULTURE.