EXHIBITION: L.A.’s Getty Center re-creates ancient China Cave Temples. This sounds like a stretch for ancient Judaism, but the late-antique-to-early-medieval hoard of manuscripts found in the caves at the Silk Road site of Dunhuang did include Jewish and Christian materials, including (not mentioned in this article) Syriac texts. Past posts on the Dunhuang cave manuscripts and related matters are collected here.
The Silk Road site of Turfan (Turpan) is also in Northwestern China and it has come up as the place where medieval Manichaean (Manichean) manuscripts, including a version of the Book of Giants, were excavated at around the same time as the caves of Dunhuang. Past posts mentioning Turfan and its manuscripts are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Sunday, May 08, 2016
The Palmyra concert has happened
PALMYRA WATCH: Russian orchestra plays in Palmyra ruins. The performance in the same ancient amphitheater where ISIS militants carried out widely publicized killings was called 'A Prayer for Palmyra'; Putin also addressed the audience by video, saying he regards the concert "as a sign of gratitude, remembrance and hope." (AP). Good. But meanwhile the violence in Syria continues.
Background on this performance is here. And follow the links back from there for much more on the long sad story of Palmyra, its history, the ancient Aramaic dialect spoken there (Palmyrene), and the city's tragic recent fate in the hands of ISIS, followed by its retaking by the Syrian army with the help of the Russians. Let's hope there continue to be happier stories to report from now on.
Background on this performance is here. And follow the links back from there for much more on the long sad story of Palmyra, its history, the ancient Aramaic dialect spoken there (Palmyrene), and the city's tragic recent fate in the hands of ISIS, followed by its retaking by the Syrian army with the help of the Russians. Let's hope there continue to be happier stories to report from now on.
The Survivors' Talmud
TALMUD WATCH: See the Religious Text the U.S. Government Printed for Concentration-Camp Survivors. It's considered to be the only edition of the Talmud ever printed by a national government (Lily Rothman, Time Magazine).
The Survivors’ Talmud stemmed from reasons both practical and symbolic. Not only had the Nazis taken the homes, lives and livelihoods of the Jewish people of Europe, but they had also destroyed the artifacts of the religion. Just when many survivors felt they needed their faith or their culture more than ever, the sacred texts of Judaism were hard to come by. In 1946 a group of DPs ["displaced persons"] who were rabbis asked if the Army could help publish a Talmud, as they had no copies available for study. When the Army agreed, an edition had to be sent from New York to be copied, as no complete version of the Talmud could be found in all of Germany.Just ran across this one, with reference to Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah), which was last Thursday, 5 May.
The day the moon stood still revisited
ASOR BLOG: Does the Bible Claim that the Sun and Moon stopped in their Tracks? (Mark Chavalas). Requires free registration to access the full essay. The essay appeared in the LaCrosse Tribune last year, minus the concluding suggestions for further reading, and I noted it here with my own comments.
Saadia Gaon and the Arabic Bible
THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:
Saadia Gaon’s Bible Commentary and TranslationThere's more on Saadia Gaon here and more on Arabic translations of the Bible here, here, and here.
It was important to Saadia that his work became known to Muslims. It would have little polemical value if it simply remained a text used by the Jews. He had been educated in a Muslim environment and spent his life surrounded by Islamic culture; he knew how to make his translation acceptable to the aesthetic refinements of literary Arabic. His purpose may have been to rebut Muslim criticism of the Bible but he deferred to Islamic grammarians and philologists when it came to matters of style.
See Also: The Murderous History of Bible Translations (Bloomsbury Press, 2016)
By Harry Freedman
Author
April 2016
Saturday, May 07, 2016
Leibner and Hezser (eds.), Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context
NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:
Jewish Art in Its Late Antique ContextFollow the link for TOC and ordering information.
Ed. by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser
[Jüdische Kunst in ihrem spätantiken Kontext.]
2016. IX, 381 pages.
Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 163
159,00 €
cloth
ISBN 978-3-16-154388-3
Published in English.
The contributions to this volume examine the emergence of ancient Jewish art from the interdisciplinary perspective of scholars in Art and Archaeology, Ancient Judaism and Rabbinics, Patristics and Church History. They evaluate the manifold ways in which late antique and early Byzantine Jewish art was embedded in its Hellenistic and Roman cultural context by, at the same time, evincing specifically Jewish and local Near Eastern idiosyncrasies. Since the Graeco-Roman context was shared with early Christian art, some formal similarities are recognizable, whereas the meanings associated with the images would have differed. A study of the relationship between the literary sources (the Hebrew Bible, Jewish Hellenistic and rabbinic literature) and the artistic depictions is crucial for a proper understanding of ancient Jewish art. Similarly important are the artistic analogies appearing in Graeco-Roman and early Christian contexts. Of particular interest is the question why Jewish figurative art developed in the Land of Israel in late antiquity only: which political, social, economic, religious and cultural constellations may have led to the emergence of figurative art? How do these images relate to biblical commandments advocating aniconism and what would rabbis have made of them? Was Erwin Goodenough correct about a dichotomy between “popular” synagogue art and an aniconic rabbinic Judaism? The Jewish use of images with analogies in pagan (and sometimes also Christian) contexts is particularly striking: what led Jews to adopt images such as the zodiac and pagan mythological figures and scenes and how were they combined with images based on biblical narratives? The volume shows how an interdisciplinary approach leads to a better understanding not only of ancient Jewish, but of Graeco-Roman and Christian art as well.
New SBL books
FORTHCOMING BOOKS FROM THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:
Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism
Raymond F. Person, Robert Rezetko
ISBN 9781628371321
Status Forthcoming
Price: $51.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date May 2016
Pages 254
Cutting edge reflections on biblical text formation
Empirical models based on ancient Near Eastern literature and variations between different textual traditions have been used to lend credibility to the identification of the sources behind biblical literature and the different editorial layers. In this volume, empirical models are used to critique the exaggerated results of identifying sources and editorial layers by demonstrating that, even though much of ancient literature had such complex literary histories, our methods are often inadequate for the task of precisely identifying sources and editorial layers.
Negotiating Power in Ezra-Nehemiah
Donna Laird
ISBN 9781628371390
Status Forthcoming
Price: $55.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date July 2016
Pages 420
Donna Laird examines Ezra and Nehemiah in the light of modern sociological theorist Pierre Bourdieu. How did this context of hardship, exile, and return change what Ezra and Nehemiah viewed as important? How did they define who was a part of their community, and who was an outsider? It goes on to explore how the books engaged readers at the time: how it addressed their changing circumstances, and how different groups gained and used social power, or the ability to influence society.
The Vision of the Priestly Narrative: Its Genre and Hermeneutics of Time
Suzanne Boorer
ISBN 9780884140627
Status Forthcoming
Price: $89.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date July 2016
Pages 664
A fresh look at the Priestly narrative that places less weight on linguistic criteria alone in favor of narrative coherence
Boorer explores the theology of an originally independent Priestly narrative (Pg), extending through Genesis–Numbers, as a whole. In this book she describes the structure of the Priestly narrative, in particular its coherent sequential and parallel patterns. Boorer argues that at every point in the narrative’s sequential and parallel structure, it reshapes past traditions, synthesizing these with contemporary and unique elements into future visions, in a way that is akin to the timelessness of liturgical texts. The book sheds new light on what this material might have sought to accomplish as a whole, and how it might have functioned for, its original audience.
Review of Hayes, What’s Divine about Divine Law?
BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:
Christine Hayes, What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015. Pp. xv, 412. ISBN 9780691165196. $39.50..
Reviewed by Matthew V. Novenson, University of Edinburgh (matthew.novenson@ed.ac.uk)
Preview
In this impressive book, Christine Hayes—highly regarded for her Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds (1997) and Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities (2002), among other studies—undertakes to explain why various ancient Jewish thinkers conceive of the law of God in just the ways they do. In contrast to her earlier studies, here Hayes focuses not on particular points of halakhah but on the more basic question how the ancients understood the divinity of divine law. For all the significant differences among, say, the Qumran sectarians, Philo of Alexandria, the apostle Paul, and the rabbis in Palestine and in Babylonia, on Hayes’s account they are all wrestling with the dissonance between two inherited conceptions of law: the biblical and the classical. She summarizes, “It is the claim of this book that this incongruity between the biblical and the Greco-Roman conception of divine law was obvious and troubling to ancient Jews to different degrees and prompted three general categories of response” (4). Some Jewish thinkers (e.g., Philo) try to bridge the gap between biblical and classical conceptions of law, others (e.g., Paul) endorse the classical criticism of biblical law, while still others (e.g., the rabbis) internalise and invert that criticism, valorising the putative deficiency of biblical law.
[...]
Himmelfarb on the Virgin Mary and the mother of the seven martyrs
MARTHA HIMMELFARB: The Mother of the Seven Sons in Lamentations Rabbah and the Virgin Mary (Jewish Quarterly Review 22 [2015]: 325-351). Alas, requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access. HT John Penniman via AJR.
Friday, May 06, 2016
Did the Khazars convert to Judaism?
HEBREW UNIVERSITY PRESS RELEASE:
Did the Khazars Convert to Judaism? New Research Says ‘No’The theory that Askenazic Jews came from Khazar converts has come up from time to time on PaleoJudaica. I have collected the posts here in relation to the recent publication that claims that Ashkenazic Jews and Yiddish originated in Turkey. A followup to that post is here and includes input from Professor Stampfer.
26/06/2014
Hebrew University professor cites lack of reliable source for conversion story
Did the Khazars convert to Judaism? The view that some or all Khazars, a central Asian people, became Jews during the ninth or tenth century is widely accepted. But following an exhaustive analysis of the evidence, Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher Prof. Shaul Stampfer has concluded that such a conversion, “while a splendid story,” never took place.
Prof. Shaul Stampfer is the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Professor of Soviet and East European Jewry, in the department of the History of the Jewish People at the Hebrew University’s Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies. The research has just been published in the Jewish Social Studies journal, Vol. 19, No. 3 (online at http://bit.ly/khazars).
[...]
The Biblical Museum of Natural History
ZOOLOGY: Getting up close and personal with animals from the Bible (antonio marquez, israel21c/Jweekly.com).
Natan Slifkin wants people to know that animals they might typically see in the zoo once roamed the land of Israel.Somehow I missed the opening of the museum, but I have noted work by Dr Slifkin here and here.
He does this through the Biblical Museum of Natural History outside Jerusalem. Slifkin, who is the founder and director of the museum, opened this interactive “edutainment” initiative — part museum, part zoo — to inspire others about the animal kingdom from biblical times.
“It’s a completely unique experience where visitors see a perspective of the Bible and Israel they’ve not thought about before. Usually the Bible is thought about in relation to rituals and not how it relates to hyenas, chameleons and crocodiles,” says Slifkin, whose Ph.D. dissertation focused on rabbinic encounters with zoology. “Here, you get to interact with exotic animals from the Bible.”
In 2014, the Biblical Museum of Natural History opened its doors in a temporary rental location in a warehouse in the northern industrial zone of the city of Beit Shemesh, approximately 18 miles west of Jerusalem. In its first year, the museum counted 10,000 visitors.
[...]
Jewish-temple denial worse than Holocaust denial?
TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: 'UNESCO Temple Mount denial is worse than Holocaust denial.' Pro-Israel Christian groups head to UN to condemn UNESCO's resolution denying Jewish connection to Temple Mount (Ari Yashar, Arutz Sheva).
First, as far as I can tell (I have not been able to find the full text) the UNESCO resolution attempted to evade the Jewish connection with the Temple Mount and hinted at doubts about it, but it did not explicitly deny it. Often enough people do deny it, and I put a lot of effort into calling them on it, but let us be precise in our criticisms. I have criticized UNESCO on those terms. If someone wants to send me the complete resolution and show me that it was otherwise, please do so.
Second, I leave it to others to debate, if they must, whether Temple denial or Holocaust denial is "more grave." Both are blatant and shameless lies — denials of throughly documented historical facts for detestable political reasons — and both need to be called out and condemned.
Background on the UNESCO resolution is here and links.
Laurie Cardoza-Moore, Special UN Envoy for the World Council of Independent Christian Churches (WCICC) and President of Proclaiming Justice to The Nations (PJTN), is to take part in UN meetings where she will condemn UNESCO's shocking resolution last month, which recognized the Mount only as Al-Aqsa Mosque.I commend Ms. Cardoza-Moore and her organization for condemning UNESCO's deceptive presentation of the historical situation, but at the same time I don't find this kind of inflated rhetoric very helpful.
[...]
"Denying the Jewish people's connection to the Temple Mount is tantamount to denying the existence of the Jewish people and is therefore even more grave than Holocaust denial."
First, as far as I can tell (I have not been able to find the full text) the UNESCO resolution attempted to evade the Jewish connection with the Temple Mount and hinted at doubts about it, but it did not explicitly deny it. Often enough people do deny it, and I put a lot of effort into calling them on it, but let us be precise in our criticisms. I have criticized UNESCO on those terms. If someone wants to send me the complete resolution and show me that it was otherwise, please do so.
Second, I leave it to others to debate, if they must, whether Temple denial or Holocaust denial is "more grave." Both are blatant and shameless lies — denials of throughly documented historical facts for detestable political reasons — and both need to be called out and condemned.
Background on the UNESCO resolution is here and links.
Concert in Palmyra's theatre
PALMYRA WATCH: Russian maestro to hold concert in Palmyra's theatre. World-Russian conductor Valery Gergiev will conduct his orchestra in the ruins of ancient city after its recapture from ISIS (Arutz Sheva/ AFP). This is obviously a political move, but it's better use of the ruins than ISIS made of them.
Background on Palmyra is here with many, many links.
Background on Palmyra is here with many, many links.
Books, not relics, to be transferred from the Rockefeller
POLITICS: Antiquities Authority refutes NGO’s Rockefeller Museum transfer accusations. The IAA also denied Emek Shaveh’s claims that it also intended to transfer other historic relics to the new West Jerusalem facility (Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post).
The Antiquities Authority on Thursday refuted claims by left-wing NGO Emek Shaveh that it plans to transfer east Jerusalem’s Rockefeller Museum’s library and rare relics to the western portion of the capital.This is a development from a story that broke yesterday, but about which I didn't get around to blogging. To say "ancient books" is a bit misleading. These are just old books from the modern library which require special climate control to be conserved properly. They are not antiquities.
The response comes one day after Emek Shaveh, a consortium of European-funded archeologists and activists, filed a petition to the High Court of Justice in an attempt to prevent the alleged transfer.
According to the authority, the move has nothing to do with politics, but rather protecting the ancient books in a new state-of-the-art facility being built by the authority near the Israel Museum.
[...]
Thursday, May 05, 2016
Major grant for the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library
MANUSCRIPT DIGITIZATION: The Ahmanson Foundation Funds Project to Make Ancient Manuscripts Accessible (Kathy Brown, UCLA Library).
The Ahmanson Foundation has awarded a major grant to the UCLA Library to fund key aspects of the Sinai Library Digitization Project. This major project – initiated by the fathers of St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai, Egypt, and made possible through the participation of the UCLA Library and the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library (EMEL) – will create digital copies of some 1,100 rare and unique Syriac and Arabic manuscripts dating from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries.Past posts on the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library and its work at St Catherine's Monastery and elsewhere are here and here. For many other manuscript digitization projects, see here and here and links. And there's lots more on St. Catherine's Monastery, its manuscripts, and its current perilous circumstances here, here, and here and links.
A UNESCO World Heritage site located in a region of the Sinai Peninsula sacred to three world religions – Christianity, Islam, and Judaism - St. Catherine’s Monastery houses a collection of ancient and medieval manuscripts second only to that of the Vatican Library. Access to these remarkable materials has often been difficult, and now all the more so due to security concerns in the Sinai Peninsula.
[...]
Mysterious ancient smears
LIV INGEBORG LIED: Consider the most trivial mystery of all the mysteries of the Syriac Codex Ambrosianus solved.
In March, I spent a week in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana working on this codex, focusing in particular on codicological features, text layout and unit organisation, as well as signs of later use and reader engagement with the codex. One recurring feature caught my eye: it looked like someone had had “an accident” involving a pink highlighter while working on the codex. At least this was what I thought at the time. Something pink was smeared on the margins of a handful of the parchment folios. It made me shake my head, wondering who on earth would bring a pink highlighter to their desk when working on the codex. A special kind of “later reader engagement”, indeed. My imagination was certainly put to the test.Cross-file under Syriac Watch. More on Codex Ambrosianus B.21 is here and links (including more from Professor Lied and photos of her and yours truly with the manuscript).
David at Dura-Europos
ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: David as Warrior at Dura-Europos (Michael Peppard).
There are many, many past PaleoJudaica posts on Dura-Europos. Start here (with more from Michael Peppard) and follow the links.
It’s not surprising, then, that the oldest excavated Christian church – the third-century house-church from Dura-Europos, Syria – would have featured an image of David on its walls. The surprising part is which episode of David’s many-wiled life these Christians chose to depict: on the main panel of the southern wall of its baptistery, this community commemorated David by showing him poised to slay the fallen Goliath.That doesn't surprise me. Giants are cool. (But Professor Peppard's evaluation of the image is more sophisticated.)
There are many, many past PaleoJudaica posts on Dura-Europos. Start here (with more from Michael Peppard) and follow the links.
"Mary Magdalen" opens in Boston
NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: Ludovico Ensemble closes season with two sensitive premieres (Aaron Keebaugh, Boston Classical Review).
After a hiatus, the Ludovico Ensemble returned to action this season with several concerts that largely explored the music of Marti Epstein and Mischa Salkind-Pearl. Monday night at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline, the ensemble offered world premieres by both composers to conclude the season on a sensitive note.
[...]
The most ear-catching music of the evening came in the premiere of Epstein’s Mary Magdalen, also scored for cimbalom and soprano.
Cast in six movements, the piece is a setting of excerpts from the Gospel of Mary and other Gnostic Gospels that tell of Mary Magdalene’s important place among Christ’s disciples.
Epstein’s score is beautiful in its simplicity, with shimmering textures and a serene, slowly unfolding melodic line. Some of the most haunting music came in the sections where Mary is addressing the disciples. “The Nature of Wisdom,” whereby Mary explains her vision, was underscored by a series of ringing overtones.
Soprano Ashe sang the lines with a soft elegance and a distant radiance while Tolle produced a color wheel of sounds on the cimbalom to give Epstein’s piece a memorable first performance. One hopes it will have many more.
Darth Vader's breastplate?
EPIGRAPHY WATCH? Star Wars Day: Facts You Never Knew About The Saga. One of these caught my eye:
The most comprehensive discussion I could find of the writing on the chestpiece is here. And I see that, not surprisingly, James McGrath already discussed the topic several years ago, and his commenter Jason Staples noted the parallel with the High Priest's breastplate.
Darth Vader’s chestpiece is an ancient Hebrew writing which translates to “His deeds will not be forgiven, until he merits.”This sounded too good to be true, and a little checking indicates that it is only partly true. In the movies and elsewhere there are various versions of Darth Vader's chestpiece, most of which bear strings of Hebrew letters, sometimes upside-down and/or in odd fonts. But none of these make any sense. It looks as though random Hebrew letters were used to make the writing look exotic. It occurs to me also that the chestpiece may be intended to evoke the High Priest's breastplate in Exodus.
The most comprehensive discussion I could find of the writing on the chestpiece is here. And I see that, not surprisingly, James McGrath already discussed the topic several years ago, and his commenter Jason Staples noted the parallel with the High Priest's breastplate.
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
Bible-related digital mss and editions online
DREW LONGACRE (OTTC BLOG): Online Digital Manuscripts and Editions.
Last updated 28 April 2016
This page is a list of digital images of manuscripts and editions available online. This catalogue should be viewed as a work in progress, and I will continue to update it with new resources. It is by no means complete, but I hope it will be helpful for those looking for a one-stop portal for finding online primary resources that are significant for the study of the Old Testament text. Please post any additional sources you may be aware of in the comments, and I will incorporate them into the main list.
The 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1
THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:
The Mysterious Number 480 in 1 Kings 6:1Many people have tried to make the chronology of the earlier part of the Deuteronomistic History work, even though it is both internally inconsistent and inconsistent with what we know of the chronology of the period from outside sources. I don't find any of these efforts very persuasive.
There is a plausible option that 1 Kgs 6:1 and Judg 11:26 are parts of an ancient chronological scheme which was used in pre-exilic royal archives to connect the past history of Israel (the exodus and the settlement) to the chronology of the monarchy.
See Also: Guide to Biblical Chronology (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015).
By Antti Laato
Professor in Old Testament Exegetics with Judaic Studies
Åbo Akademi University, Turku Finland
April 2016
Steele (ed.), The Circulation of Astronomical Knowledge in the Ancient World
FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM BRILL:
The Circulation of Astronomical Knowledge in the Ancient WorldSecond Temple-era Jewish literature, notably the Astronomical Book in 1 Enoch, the book of Jubilees, and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, had a strong interest in astronomy.
Edited by John M. Steele, Brown University
Astronomical and astrological knowledge circulated in many ways in the ancient world: in the form of written texts and through oral communication; by the conscious assimilation of sought-after knowledge and the unconscious absorption of ideas to which scholars were exposed.
The Circulation of Astronomical Knowledge in the Ancient World explores the ways in which astronomical knowledge circulated between different communities of scholars over time and space, and what was done with that knowledge when it was received. Examples are discussed from Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Greco-Roman world, India, and China.
Challenges to that study on Askenazic genetics
RESPONSE: Prominent scholars blast theory tracing Ashkenazi Jews to Turkey (Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA).
In an interview with JTA, Sergio DellaPergola, a prominent demographer of the Jewish people from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, called the study, which was widely reported in mainstream media, “one of the big canards of the 21st century,” citing what he regarded as an exceedingly small study population and the absence of genetic analysis of Sephardic Jews, which he said would have undermined the findings.I thought something like this would be coming. As I said before, these genetic questions are outside my expertise, but the claims of this study didn't seem to correspond to other genetic studies I had heard about. As usual, this question will have to be decided in the specialist literature. Background here.
Shaul Stampfer, a professor of Soviet and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University, in an email to JTA said of Elhaik’s research: “It is basically nonsense.”
DellaPergola said that “serious research would have factored in the glaring genetic similarity between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, which mean Polish Jews are more genetically similar to Iraqi Jews than to a non-Jewish Pole.”
He noted the “great genetic similarity” between Ashkenazim and the Jews of Rome, who came from the Land of Israel and later from the Mediterranean. “In no way the explanation that Elhaik gives of the origins of the Jews in Europe can apply to the Jews of Rome. Therefore his explanation is wrong,” DellaPergola said.
Ezekiel's Exagoge to be performed
THEATRE: Ancient Greco-Jewish Play Telling Exodus Narrative to Premiere This Summer (The Jewish Voice).
I am delighted to see the play getting some attention. More on this production is here. I also like the name "Theatre dybbuk." More on the dybbuk traditions is here, here, here, and here. And, yes, cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.
Theatre dybbuk presents the world premiere of ‘exagoge’ in venues across Los AngelesWhat we have of the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian survives almost entirely in quotations in the works of later authors. It is a Hellenistic Jewish play written in Greek and, although it doesn't really fit the profile of an Old Testament pseudepigraphon, it was included in the Charlesworth Old Testament Pseudepigrapha volumes and so has an honorary place in the corpus. The play has been in the news recently, because new material from it has been discovered among the Oxyrhynchus papyri (see here and here).
Theatre dybbuk will premiere “exagoge,” inspired by the second century B.C. play by Ezekiel the Poet, at Temple Israel of Hollywood (June 18-19), Grand Park/The Music Center (July 23) and Fowler Museum at UCLA (Aug. 6). “Exagoge” is the first recorded Jewish play, thought to have been written in Alexandria and which tells the biblical Exodus narrative in the style of a Greek tragedy.
Although only 269 lines of the original play exist, the company and artistic director/playwright Aaron Henne have used this fragment as the starting point for a full theatrical work, rich in movement, music and poetry.
[...]
I am delighted to see the play getting some attention. More on this production is here. I also like the name "Theatre dybbuk." More on the dybbuk traditions is here, here, here, and here. And, yes, cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.
Tuesday, May 03, 2016
Bar-Ilan, Words of Gad the Seer
IN THE MAIL:
The Words of Gad the Seer has come up in past posts here and here. The text was inspired by the mention of a book with that title in 1 Chronicles 29:29-30, but it is not itself that book, if the latter ever existed as a separate work at all.
Meir Bar-Ilan, Words of Gad the Seer. Printed for the first time from Cambridge MS O0.1.20. Copied at Cochin, India in the 18th century. Israel: Shorashim, 2015.In Hebrew, with an English translation of the manuscript.The author sent me a copy a while ago and I've been meaning to mention it. Unfortunately, the book is not available on Amazon. The author is working on an introduction and translation of this text for volume 2 of the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project. As noted today in an earlier post, the first volume, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 1 (ed. Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila, and Alexander Panayotov), was published in 2013.
The Words of Gad the Seer has come up in past posts here and here. The text was inspired by the mention of a book with that title in 1 Chronicles 29:29-30, but it is not itself that book, if the latter ever existed as a separate work at all.
AJR news
CONGRATULATIONS TO ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: AJR NEWS | Welcoming a New Editor and AAJR Grant #2.
The Treatise of the Vessels in the news
REPRINT: Fate of Ark of the Covenant Revealed in Hebrew Text. A new media outfit that calls itself "Seeker" has shown up in the last few days and it seems to have assigned itself the task of reprinting online articles on every story relating to biblical studies over the last few years. Among these is Owen Jarus's January 2014 LiveScience article on the publication of my translation of The Treatise of the Vessels in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1 (Eerdmans, 2013). The Treaties is a legendary account of the fate of the treasures of Solomon's Temple when it was destroyed by the Babylonians, and it is replete with vast wealth, secret hiding places, angels, and heroic biblical and other characters. And, of course, it mentions the Ark of the Covenant. The LiveScience article produced a brief media feeding frenzy back in 2014. The text has continued to receive attention occasionally since then, and it is nice to see it in the news again.
Background on The Treatise of the Vessels is here (cf. here, here and here) with many links.
Background on The Treatise of the Vessels is here (cf. here, here and here) with many links.
Teenage vandals confess
UPDATE: Teens Promise to Clean Up 1,300 Year Old Fortress They Vandalized (Dror Halavi, Harmodia).
Background here.
YERUSHALAYIM - A group of teen vandals has ‘fessed up to damaging a 1,300 year old fortress in Ashdod, and has promised to clean it up. The youths said that they did not mean any harm, and were unaware of the historical significance of the site when they drew pictures on the walls of the structure for a party they were planning to hold there.That was pretty clueless. But this is a good opportunity for a teaching moment for the kids, their school, and teenagers in general. Again, the IAA seems to have handled it well.
[...]
Background here.
Monday, May 02, 2016
The provenance of the Lod Mosaics
BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Lod Mosaic—Jewish, Christian or Pagan? Who owned the magnificent Lod mosaics? (Robin Ngo). Summarizes an essay by Hershel Shanks which is behind the BAR subscription wall. For many past posts on the Lod Mosaics, start here and follow the links.
Notes on the DSS and Hellenism conference
CSTT BLOG: FROM SECTARIANISM TO EXPRESSION OF BROADER HELLENISTIC CULTURE: SOME NOTES FROM THE FIFTH GRONINGEN-LEUVEN MEETING ON THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS (RICK BONNIE). “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenism” conference was noted as upcoming here.
Trismegistos updated
AWOL: Open Access Library: Trismegistos.
Trismegistos [TM], called after the famous epithet of Hermes - Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom and writing who also played a major role in Greek religion and philosophy, is a platform aiming to surmount barriers of language and discipline in the study of texts from the ancient world, particularly late period Egypt and the Nile valley (roughly BC 800 - 800 AD).Keep reading at the link; there's more. The project has been much expanded since PaleoJudaica noted it in 2011 here and in 2013 here.
The core component of TM is Trismegistos Texts, currently counting 675313 entries. When the database was created in 2005, it focused on providing information (metadata) on published papyrological documents from Graeco-Roman Egypt. Chronological boundaries are always artificial, and the nature of the sources soon suggested that BC 800 and AD 800 were more suited. Since egyptology does not know a disciplinary boundary between papyri and inscriptions, TM also decided to expand by adding all epigraphic material as well. Papyrology on the other hand includes also writing tablets from outside Egypt, which led us to widen our geographical scope to the entire ancient world. Finally, since the distinction between published and unpublished is increasingly less productive in a digital environment, we now no longer discriminate in that respect either. In principle, however, we still provide only metadata.
This means that Trismegistos increasingly wants to be a platform where information can be found about all texts from antiquity, thus facilitating cross-cultural and cross-linguistic research. This will of course only be possible through cooperation with all players in the field, since our aim is to lead people to the partner websites, where more information, often including also photographs, transliterations and translations of the texts, can be found.
Mene mene tekel upharsin
THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:
The Scribal Background of the “Menetekel” in Daniel 5Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.
Since Aramaic was introduced as the standard administrative language in Achaemenid Palestine around 500 B.C.E. and dominated scribal training into the early Roman period, its influence on literary production is hardly surprising. Placing such key terms against their original background goes far beyond merely antiquarian interests; it helps uncover new literary subtleties in the biblical text and better assess their theological impact.
For Further Reading: Gzella, Holger (ed.). 2016. Aramäisches Wörterbuch (Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament, vol. IX). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, especially the articles jd, ktb, mnī, prq, and tql.
By Holger Gzella
Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic
Leiden University
April 2016
Biblioblog Carnival April 2016
THATJEFFCARTERWASHERE (BLOG): Biblioblog Carnival April 2016. Notes some interesting posts and is replete with cutesy headers.
Sunday, May 01, 2016
John Ma on the Maccabees and Religious Persecution
ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: John Ma | Part Two: The Maccabees and Religious Persecution.
Part one of the interview was noted here.
Part one of the interview was noted here.
Gemeinhardt (ed.), Zwischen Exegese und religiöser Praxis
NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:
Zwischen Exegese und religiöser PraxisFollow the link for TOC and ordering information.
Heilige Texte von der Spätantike bis zum Klassischen Islam
Hrsg. v. Peter Gemeinhardt
[Between Exegesis and Religious Practice. Holy Texts from Late Antiquity to Classical Islam.]
2016. VIII, 297 pages.
29,00 €
sewn paper
ISBN 978-3-16-153229-0
Published in German.
Holy texts shape the lives, thoughts and deeds of religious individuals and communities. This collection of essays highlights this fact from various angles, illuminating the exegesis of such texts as well as their practical application. What foundation exists for the authority of sacred texts? In what way do they communicate divine knowledge to human beings? And how can their messages be expertly revealed? The relationship of holy texts to literary, philosophical as well as scholarly writings and corpora also play a role in the process. Judaism, Christianity and first millennium Islam are all taken into account along with contemporary Greco-Roman religion.
Butts, Language Change in the Wake of Empire
NEW BOOK FROM EISENBRAUNS:
Language Change in the Wake of EmpireCross-file under Syriac Watch.
Syriac in Its Greco-Roman Context
by Aaron Michael Butts
Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic - LSAWS 11
Description
Just arrived, April 11
It is well documented that one of the primary catalysts of intense language contact is the expansion of empire. This is true not only of recent history, but it is equally applicable to the more remote past. An exemplary case (or better: cases) of this involves Aramaic. Due to the expansions of empires, Aramaic has throughout its long history been in contact with a variety of languages, including Akkadian, Greek, Arabic, and various dialects of Iranian. This books focuses on one particular episode in the long history of Aramaic language contact: the Syriac dialect of Aramaic in contact with Greek.
In this book, Butts presents a new analysis of contact-induced changes in Syriac due to Greek. Several chapters analyze the more than eight-hundred Greek loanwords that occur in Syriac texts from Late Antiquity that were not translated from Greek. Butts also dedicates several chapters to a different category of contact-induced change in which Syriac-speakers replicated inherited Aramaic material on the model of Greek. All of the changes discussed in the book are located within their broader Aramaic context and analyzed through a robust contact linguistic framework.
By focusing on the Syriac language itself, Butts introduces new – and arguably more reliable – evidence for locating Syriac Christianity within its Greco-Roman context. This book, thus, is especially important for the field of Syriac studies. The book also contributes to the fields of contact linguistics and the study of ancient languages more broadly by analyzing in detail various types of contact-induced change over a relatively long period of time.
Product Details
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
Publication date: 2016
Bibliographic info: Pp. xvii + 293
Language(s): English
Cover: Cloth
Trim Size: 6 x 9 inches
ISBN: 1-57506-421-9
ISBN13: 978-1-57506-421-5
Iranian Studies 49.2 (2016)
BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Iranian Studies: A volume in honour of Michael Morony. Notice of Iranian Studies, Volume 49, Issue 2, 2016. Special issue: “Sasanian Iran and beyond: A special volume in honour of Michael G. Morony and his contributions to late antique history“. Guest Editors: Touraj Daryaee and Khodadad Rezakhani.
Ancient Judaism makes an appearance.
Ancient Judaism makes an appearance.
ASJ Review 40.1
NEW ISSUE OF ASJ REVIEW: 40.1 (2016). Follow the link for TOC. Some of the articles and reviews have to do with ancient Judaism. You can view the abstracts for free, but the site requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to read the articles (or you can buy them individually).
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Granerod, Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period
BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period. Notice of a new book: Granerod, Gard. 2016. Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period: Studies in the Religion and Society of the Judaean Community at Elephantine. Walter De Gruyter.
Tropper, Rewriting Ancient Jewish History
FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM ROUTLEDGE:
Rewriting Ancient Jewish History: The History of the Jews in Roman Times and the New Historical Method (Routledge Studies in Ancient History)
by Amram Tropper (Author)
Half a century ago, the primary contours of the history of the Jews in Roman times were not subject to much debate. This standard account collapsed, however, when a handful of insights undermined the traditional historical method, the method long enlisted by historians for eliciting facts from sources. In response to these insights, a new historical method gradually emerged. Rewriting Ancient Jewish History critiques the traditional historical method and makes a case for the new one, illustrating how to write anew ancient Jewish history.
At the heart of the traditional historical method lie three fundamental presumptions. The traditional historical method regularly presumes that multiple versions of a text or tradition are equally authentic; it presumes that many ancient Jewish sources are the products of largely immanent forces of cloistered Jewish communities; and, barring any local grounds for suspicion, it presumes that most ancient Jewish texts faithfully reflect their sources and reliably recount events. Rewriting Ancient Jewish History unfurls the failings of this approach; it promotes the new historical method which circumvents the flawed traditional presumptions while plotting anew the limits of rational argumentation in historical inquiry. This crucial reappraisal is a must-read for students of Jewish and Roman history alike, and a fascinating case-study in how historians should approach their ancient sources.
Athas on the Bible and literacy in ancient Judah
WITH MEAGRE POWERS: No, those ancient Hebrew ‘sticky notes’ do not necessarily prove the Bible was written early (George Athas). In response to an article by Gordon Govier in Christianity Today on the recently published study on literacy in ancient Judah. One correction:
On the contrary, one of the documents in this collection includes a man protesting that he could read something for himself, which implies that literacy wasn’t widespread.I believe this is Lachish Letter 3 (on which more here), not on of the Arad ostraca. But aside from that, this is a very good discussion of the issues. Note especially the following paragraph:
The study itself states that the kind of literacy levels that the Arad documents demonstrate only occurs again in c. 200 BC. The implication seems to be that it’s unlikely the biblical documents were written in the intervening period (600–200 BC) when literacy levels were lower. But there are so many problems with this inference. First, the claim relates only to the region of Judah. It says nothing about literacy levels outside of Judah. Second, the claim uses blank evidence (little apparent writing in 600–200 BC) as a warrant for reaching a positive inference (it’s unlikely the biblical documents could have been written in this period). But logically this is unwarranted. To state it another way, a lack of evidence is not necessarily evidence of lack. It could be that we just haven’t found all the other document caches like the one from Arad that date to this period. We just don’t know! Third, you don’t need most of the elite, let alone most of the population, to be reading and writing to create conditions conducive to the writing of texts like the ones in the Bible. You just need one competent literate person who can ‘put pen to paper’. And that person could write for themselves, or even for a whole group of people. One person can pen the imagination of hundreds! And fourth, since there evidently were biblical texts that were written in Judah between 600 and 200 BC (e.g. Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Ezra, Nehemiah), the very low literacy levels actually count for nothing.Cross-file under Epigraphy. Background to the story is here and links.
More on Samaritan Passover 2016
ANOTHER PHOTO ESSAY: Samaritan Passover marked by slaughter of the lambs. The Samaritan sect celebrates the holiday of Passover in close adherence to biblical traditions such as sacrificing animals and donning long white robes (Haaretz).
More on Samaritan Passover is here and links.
More on Samaritan Passover is here and links.
Jewish catacombs in Rome
OPENING TOMORROW: They're not secret anymore! The ancient Jewish catacombs in Rome that have been off limits for decades will finally open to the public (JOHN HUTCHINSON, Daily Mail).
The Jewish catacombs in Rome are set to open to the general public for the first time this weekend, offering visitors a chance to explore the ancient underground tunnels and artwork.Not a new story, but this article has lots of good photos. Background here.
In a bid to highlight the diversity of Italy's cultural attractions, the ancient Jewish burial site at Vigna Randanini, will no longer be off-limits.
The well-known Christian catacombs of Rome, of which there are 40, attract thousands of visitors every year, whereas up until now only private parties have been permitted to explore the second century Jewish burial site.
[...]
Friday, April 29, 2016
Glenn Alexander Magee (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook on Western Mysticism and Esotericism
THE FORBIDDEN GOSPELS BLOG: Finally, the Cambridge Handbook on Western Mysticism and Esotericism is published (April D. DeConick). It includes numerous chapters on ancient Western mysticism and esotericism. Cross-file under New Book.
Marx-Wolf, Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority
NEW BOOK FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS:
Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority
Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century C.E.
Heidi Marx-Wolf
224 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth Jan 2016 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4789-3 | $55.00s | £36.00 | Add to cart
Ebook Jan 2016 | ISBN 978-0-8122-9244-2 | $55.00s | £36.00 | About | Add to cart
A volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series
"Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority is an original and thoughtful work, and one that will be of considerable interest to a range of scholars. Tracing the interactions among figures who have traditionally been perceived as operating within separate spheres—pagan Neoplatonists, Christian Platonists, Egyptian ritual experts, and gnostics—Heidi Marx-Wolf makes a persuasive and stimulating argument for how these thinkers used their expertise to establish their social authority."—James Rives, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
The people of the late ancient Mediterranean world thought about and encountered gods, angels, demons, heroes, and other spirits on a regular basis. These figures were diverse, ambiguous, and unclassified and were not ascribed any clear or stable moral valence. Whether or not they were helpful or harmful under specific circumstances determined if and what virtues were attributed to them. That all changed in the third century C.E., when a handful of Platonist philosophers—Plotinus, Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus—began to produce competing systematic discourses that ordered the realm of spirits in moral and ontological terms.
In Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority, Heidi Marx-Wolf recounts how these Platonist philosophers organized the spirit world into hierarchies, or "spiritual taxonomies," positioning themselves as the high priests of the highest gods in the process. By establishing themselves as experts on sacred, ritual, and doctrinal matters, they were able to fortify their authority, prestige, and reputation. The Platonists were not alone in this enterprise, and it brought them into competition with rivals to their new authority: priests of traditional polytheistic religions and gnostics. Members of these rival groups were also involved in identifying and ordering the realm of spirits and in providing the ritual means for dealing with that realm. Using her lens of spiritual taxonomy to look at these various groups in tandem, Marx-Wolf demonstrates that Platonist philosophers, Christian and non-Christian priests, and gnostics were more interconnected socially, educationally, and intellectually than previously recognized.
Zucker on the matriarchs of Genesis
THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:
The Matriarchs of Genesis: Seven Women, Five Views
Women’s voices in the Bible are limited, but they are not absent. Where they do appear they come in three forms. The most common is through the omniscient voice of the narrator, or where someone describes something about women, or women’s actions. “Sarah shall bear you a son” (Gen 17:19). “Then Rebekah and her maids rose up, mounted the camels, and followed the man” (Gen 24:61). Secondly, women speak, sharing basic factual information. “Rebekah said to her son Jacob, ‘I heard your father say . . .’” (Gen 27:6). Thirdly, and most infrequently, women describe their feelings. Sarah explains, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me” (Gen 21:6). When suffering through her pregnancy, Rebekah cries out, “If this is so, why do I exist?” (Gen 25:22). Later she will say to Isaac, “I abhor my life . . . if Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of the Hittites . . . what will my life be worth?” (Gen 27:46). Rachel plaintively says to Jacob “Let me have children; otherwise I am a dead woman” (Gen 30:1). Yet even with these examples, there remains the ultimately unanswerable question, are these women’s voices speaking, or are these examples of men representing women’s voices?
See Also: The Matriarchs of Genesis: Seven Women, Five Views (Wipf and Stock, 2015).
By David J. Zucker, PhD
March 2016
Hurtado videos on scrolls and codices
LARRY HURTADO: Codex & Bookroll: New Videos.
I announce two newly-produced, short videos in which I explain the basics of the ancient bookroll and the codex, and the curious early Christian preference for the latter bookform ...
Goliath's skull
REMNANT OF GIANTS: The Discovery of the Skull of Goliath: Scenes from Don Verdean. Important discovery.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Report: Palmyra can be restored
PALMYRA WATCH: Despite Islamic State plundering, ancient Palmyra can be restored (Riham Alkousaa and Rasha Faek, The Washington Times).
Background on Palmyra is here with many, many links.
AMMAN, Jordan — Images of Islamic State militants dynamiting irreplaceable Roman ruins in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra sparked anguish and outrage among scholars and archaeologists around the world.But the danger of an ISIS counterattack remains real.
But optimism is cautiously rising about the ability to restore the damaged sites despite the destruction of several World Heritage monuments in the complex, say some of the first outside specialists to reach Palmyra after Islamic State forces were wrested from the city.
“We still don’t know about the underground damage and the looting because of the mines planted by the Islamic State, but we can say that 80 percent of the archaeological architecture is undamaged,” Maamoun Abdulkarim, head of Syria’s Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums, said in an interview.
[...]
Despite the devastation, specialists say it could have been much worse.
“The photos of the archaeological site shows that we’ve been lucky,” said Amr al-Azm, an opposition-affiliated archaeologist and professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio. Mr. al-Azm also founded the The Day After Heritage Protection Initiative, a Syrian nongovernmental organization.
He pointed to the landmark Arch of Triumph — which was restored once before in the 1930s — as one monument that can be rebuilt using many of the original stones.
Mr. Abdulkarim, head of the state antiquities office, said he also believes damage to the castle and even the wrecked Temple of Bel can be restored without resorting to extensive rebuilding using modern materials that might destroy the character of the ancient ruins.
“We need to assess the status of the stones, how much could be restored and how much could be rebuilt,” he said. “We are not going to build a new temple. We will restore it.”
[...]
Background on Palmyra is here with many, many links.
Review of Bayley, Freestone, Jackson (eds.), Glass of the Roman World
BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:
Justine Bayley, Ian Freestone, Caroline Jackson (ed.), Glass of the Roman World. Oxford; Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2015. Pp. xxvi, 204. ISBN 9781782977742. $70.00.This was published before the recent discovery of the ancient glass kilns in the Valley of Akko near Mount Carmel, but the book does deal with ancient glass from the Land of Israel and it should provide useful background to the discovery. Another ancient glass exhibition was noted in yesterday's post here.
Reviewed by Thomas J. Derrick, University of Leicester (tjd14@le.ac.uk)
Preview
The volume reviewed is a Festschrift offered to Prof. Jennifer Price, an esteemed and respected scholar who has worked on glass from many regions of the Roman world and beyond (both temporally and geographically). In concordance with Prof. Price’s own wide-ranging publication history (listed xi-xxvi), the 18 contributions are on diverse and engaging topics. They are arranged in to three sections: 1. Technology and Production, 2. Vessels and their Forms, 3. Other Uses of Glass. Some papers present new material which adds to existing corpora, and others take more general approaches. The contributions are discussed in turn below, largely in the order they appear in the volume.
[...]
Teenage antiquities vandals out themselves
BUSTED: Teens vandalize ancient citadel for holiday ‘paint party.’ Israel Antiquities Authority gives high school students 48 hours to come forward before pressing charges.
Israeli high school students vandalized an ancient citadel in the coastal city of Ashdod during the Passover holiday this week.I suppose we should file this one under stupid teenage high spirits rather than anything worse. Presumably they would not have posted photos on social media if they had realized that they had committed a crime. Still, they deserve to have their little hands smacked and to have the fear put into them. News Israel Today has a follow-up report (HT Joseph Lauer):
The Israel Antiquities Authority on Wednesday said the 1,300-year-old citadel dating to the early Islamic period was defaced by colored paint leftover from a “paint party” thrown by a local high school. The damage is reversible, however, the IAA indicated.
Pictures of the party were uploaded to social media, allowing IAA investigators to identify the students responsible.
[...]
On the evening of 27 April, the 0404 website.co.il reported that the father of one of the pupils who participated in the «party of colors» in the fortress Ashdod Yam, contacted the antiquities authority.Yes. Now hand them some brushes and set them to work cleaning up. The IAA seems to have handled this well.
The man apologized for the incident. He said that his daughter and her friends were not aware that their actions cause damage to this historic structure. He expressed hope that this incident caused a great resonance, will serve as an example to other Teens.
[...]
John Ma on the Maccabees
ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: John Ma on the Maccabees.
The Ancient Jew Review interviewed Dr. John Ma of Columbia University about inscriptions and civic identity in ancient Judaea, specifically in relation to the accounts of the Maccabees. Dr. Ma is the author of the recent book Statues and Cities: Honorific Portraits and Civic Identity in the Hellenistic World (Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and Representation).
Mellon postdoc at Penn
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS: Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities (Penn Humanities Forum).
The Penn Humanities Forum awards five (5) one-year Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships each academic year to junior scholars in the humanities who are no more than eight years out of their doctorate and who are not yet tenured (may not be tenured during the fellowship year). Scholars are required to spend the year (September–May) in residence at Penn.This year's topic is "Afterlives." Note that this fellowship is for the 2017-18 academic year. Follow the link for further particulars.
[...]
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
New Jerusalem in Colorado?
OF COURSE HE DOES: Colorado man intends to build replica of Jerusalem. According to the report, the entrepreneur plans to include Jesus’ crucifixion site, Herod’s Temple and Palace, the Antonia Fortress, and the High Priest’s Palace (DANIEL K. EISENBUD, Jerusalem Post). Mind you, we're talking about a full-scale replica.
Cross-file under Can't Make It Up.
It remains unclear how he will garner the money necessary for the ambitious project.I dare say.
Cross-file under Can't Make It Up.
Research Projects Coordinator with the Museum of the Bible
JOB: Museum of the Bible Job Posting (ETC, Christian Askeland).
Research Projects CoordinatorFollow the link for further particulars. "Review of candidates will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled."
Beginning 01 August 2016, the research projects coordinator of the Scholars Initiative, located in Oklahoma City, OK, will coordinate with the executive and associate director to plan, implement and support collaborative work on innovative research projects, which advance the museum’s commitment to “invite all people to engage with the Bible through … scholarly pursuits.” In particular, the programming of the Scholar’s Initiative fosters research projects in which scholars include outstanding students in rigorous research projects relating to the languages and material culture of the New Testament and Hebrew scriptures.
The Scholars Initiative has previously organized collaborative research projects on Greek papyri from the Roman era, Dead Sea Scroll fragments and Medieval Latin manuscripts. Most recently, projects exploring the nature of the Old Greek tradition of the Psalter and the Greek minuscule tradition of the Pauline Corpus have been developed, with programs on Syriac patristic texts and the Lollard movement currently in active development. Where appropriate, participating scholars will publish their findings within a Brill series dedicated to the artifacts and research interests of the Museum of the Bible.
[...]
Samaritan Passover a century ago
PHOTO ESSAY: The Samaritans on Passover 100 years ago. The Samaritans still sacrifice the Pascal Lamb (Lenny Ben DAvid, Arutz Sheva). There are lots of interesting photos of Samaritans c. 1899-1900 in the article, but you have to follow the American Colony link for photos of them celebrating Passover.
More on Samaritan Passover is here and links.
More on Samaritan Passover is here and links.
An Egyptian archaeologist on the Exodus
APPARENTLY IN HONOR OF PASSOVER: Senior Egyptian archaeologist: Israeli claim that Pharaoh was Egyptian is a lie. According to Director General of Luxor's Antiquities, Mustafa Waziri, king Pharaoh belonged to the foreign Hyksos dynasty that invaded Egypt in the 15th century BCE and ruled northern Egypt (MAAYAN GROISMAN, Jerusalem Post).
In an unprecedented declaration that challenges the story told in the Passover Haggadah, a senior Egyptian archaeologist said that ancient king Pharaoh was not Egyptian, as claimed in the ancient Jewish text.The idea that the Hyksos dynasty is the historical reality behind the legend of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt is not new — a version of it goes back at least to the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and perhaps to the Hellenistic Egyptian writer Manetho. In itself the idea is not implausible, although the evidence for it isn't particularly strong. (More here.) And if it is correct, the legend is only a vague memory of the historical reality, and the point is that the Hyksos themselves were the primogenitors of the Israelites. The Theban Pharaoh who expelled the Hyksos, Ahmose I, was himself a native Egyptian.
In an interview with the Egyptian daily newspaper al-Youm al-Sabih, the director-general of Luxor's Antiquities, Mustafa Waziri, surprisingly argued that king Pharaoh belonged to the foreign Hyksos dynasty that invaded Egypt in the 15th century BCE and ruled northern Egypt.
"King Pharaoh who ruled Egypt during the epoch of our prophet Moses was not one of the kings who reigned in ancient Egypt as we tend to believe. He belonged to the Beduin Jabarin dynasty, which is called Hyksos," Waziri said.I don't know what the "Beduin Jabarin" are, but this seems garbled. See above.
"This foreign dynasty ruled only in a part of Egypt.Sort of. It's complicated.
One of its last kings was a dictator named Pharaoh, to whom Moses was sent by Allah to demand that he allow the sons of Israel to leave Egypt," Waziri explained.We seem to have moved now to the Exodus story as told in the Qur'an.
The Egyptian archaeologist added: "the prevailing thesis according to which the kings of ancient Egypt were named Pharaohs is a false thesis promoted by the Jews to stick false accusations on ancient Egyptians."This is just goofy. The term "Pharaoh" orignally meant something like "big house," referring to the royal palace, and it developed into a title for the king of Egypt. No individual was named Pharaoh.
"Due to his oppressive rule, the Jews have succeeded in transforming his name to a formal title of all Egyptians kings, which enables them to damage us by saying that we have raped women and slaughtered children. However, the Pharaoh title was never used to describe Egyptians, but was always attached to boorish people," Waziri said.
To prove his thesis, Waziri presented his conclusions from a study he conducted about the subject. He said that reviewing the Koran, he has not seen that the word "Pharaoh" is used to describe Egypt or Egyptians.The philological evidence from ancient Egyptian outweighs whatever the director-general's reading of the Qur'an is. I hope he is a better archaeologist than philologist. This is embarrassing to all of Egyptian archaeology.
According to Waziri, the Koranic evidence that "Pharaoh" is a private name and not a royal title, as Israel alleges, is the phrase "Oh, Pharaoh", that refers to Pharaoh as a private individual.
More ancient glass on display
EXHIBITION: Dale Chihuly Chandelier Ushers in the Summer of Glass at the Crocker (ArtfixDaily.com).
World-renowned glass sculptor Dale Chihuly’s “Golden Teal Chandelier” has been installed in the entryway of the Crocker Art Museum’s Teel Family Pavilion, setting the tone for the museum’s Summer of Glass, featuring three exhibitions highlighting glass from the ancient to the present.It is the third one that is of interest to us:
[...]
Finally, “The Luster of Ages: Ancient Glass from the Marcy Friedman Collection,” which runs July 17 through Oct. 16, explores the beauty of ageless glass from the 6th century BCE to the period of Roman rule in the eastern Mediterranean. The collection’s 50 pieces, which include brightly colored miniature amphorae and lustrous perfume bottles, reflect the forms and influences of Greek, Roman and Phoenician cultures in the Holy Land.Some past posts, most pretty recent, on discoveries of ancient glass and museum collections of ancient glass are collected here.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
The Talmud on mitzvot and theodicy
THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Crime and Punishment and Punishment and Punishment. The Talmudic system of laws assumes the adherent is eager to learn how to follow God’s commandment, not why to follow it—and that he has faith in an otherworldly justice not necessarily reflected in this life.
Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.
But in the Talmud, punishment is an elusive subject. Most of the time, the rabbis redefine the death penalty in terms of karet, the “cutting off” of the sinner from the world to come, thus turning a this-worldly punishment into a supernatural one. Often, when the Bible specifies a punishment that the rabbis seem to regard as excessive or barbarous, they will find a way to interpret the law so that it cannot be carried out. (One famous example concerns the biblical prescription for stoning a rebellious son.) We do hear about courts imposing fines and monetary settlements in civil cases. But in general, the question of punishment simply fails to arise in the Talmud: The same rabbis who spent many pages figuring out exactly what a law means have no interest in figuring out what to do with Jews who defy it.
Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.
Egyptian scarab discovered by birdwatcher
ARCHAEOLOGY: Birdwatcher discovers ancient Egyptian scarab seal in northern Israel.
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) A rare scarab seal belonging to a senior Egyptian official of the 13th Pharaonic Dynasty (18th-17th centuries BCE) has been found at the Tel Dor excavation site in northern Israel.A slightly younger Egyptian amulet bearing the name of Thutmose III was discovered recently by the Temple Mount Sifting Project.
The seal was discovered by Alexander Ternopolsky, an amateur birdwatcher, who handed it over to the archaeologists at the site.
[...]
Still more on the Bible and literacy in ancient Judah
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS (REALLY): From Tablet to Scroll: How Was the Bible Written? Many scholars believe the Jewish holy text was completed by the end of the fifth century B.C.E., but almost no manuscripts from the period survive (Philippe Bohstrom, Haaretz).
So how was the Jewish holy text first put in writing? What material was used and how did the text itself survive through the centuries to reach us?There follows a good survey of the Phoenician, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian writing systems. (A more or less related post is here.)
The material upon which books were copied at the time, mainly papyrus and leather parchment, is perishable and particularly sensitive to the humid climate in the Jerusalem area. That any fragments of biblical manuscripts from antiquity have survived is quite remarkable when you think of what happened to the writings of other civilizations.
All these methods would have been available to the early Israelite scribes of the Bible.This article is clearly inspired by the recent computer-aided study of Iron Age II Hebrew epigraphic texts, on which more here and links. More on the texts from Kuntillet Ajrud is here, here and here.
“The majority of writing would have been done on papyrus, leather and wax-coated wooden tablets. The recovery of numerous clay bullae, which once sealed the papyri, attests to their existence,” says Allan Millard, professor of Hebrew and ancient Semitic languages at Liverpool University.
Millard is convinced that writing was widespread across the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E. He argues that the number of sites, the quantity of ephemeral texts and the multitude of seals and impressions bearing owners’ names should dispel any notion that writing was rare. If scribes were employed for legal and administrative duties such as making lists, setting out legal deals and writing letters, he believes it is reasonable to expect some to have spent time writing other texts, as in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Compositions among Hebrew ostraca and graffiti prove they could do so. One ostracon found in the desert outpost of Arad bears part of a literary text and another from the fort at Hovrat Uza is of prophetic nature. There are lines of a prophetic verse painted on wall plaster at Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai from the early eighth century B.C.E.
Millard contends that some parts of the Bible could date as far back as the 13th century B.C.E.
While many scholars take a much more conservative approach, most believe that by the time of the Neo-Assyrian and Babylonian period (the eighth to sixth centuries B.C.E.), large parts of the Hebrew Bible had already been written down.
Speaking of Jewish-temple denial ...
TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: EXCLUSIVE – Islamic Scholar Claims Jews ‘Fabricated’ Ties to Temple Mount (AARON KLEIN AND ALI WAKED).
TEL AVIV – Ignoring the historical record and mainstream archeological evidence, an Islamic scholar tied to Hamas and speaking during a Breitbart Jerusalem exclusive interview, completely denied Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, considered the holiest site in Judaism.And so on. We've heard it all before, haven't we? For background, see here (immediately preceding post). Similar claims that the Jewish temple was actually in Nablus have been noted here, here, and here. I have not seen anyone try to place it in Beitin (Bethel) before this. For the Temple Mount Sifting Project, see here and many, many links. The illicit Waqf excavation on the Temple Mount in 2007 was noted here, here, and here (cf. here). And there's more on that UNESCO resolution here and links.
“The issue of Solomon’s Temple, or what the Jews call the Temple Mount, is nothing but a bundle of historically unfounded claims,” declared Khaled Elkhaldi, a professor at Gaza’s Islamic University.
“It’s a dream, a legend that the Jews made up to claim exclusive ownership of the land, which religion and history refute time after time,” added Elkhaldi, who serves on Hamas’s Shura Council (Majlis al-Shura), the terrorist group’s main consultative body.
“The historical and religious truth is that the Jews conquered Palestine as part of their religious perspective and so-called prophecy in the Torah around which the theory of the ‘Promised Land’ was built,” Elkhaldi claimed.
“The fabricated temple was invented to serve this narrative,” he stated, without a trace of irony.
Elkhaldi claimed, wrongly, that mainstream Jewish opinion is divided on the historic whereabouts of the Temple.
“Some say that it is in Nablus and not in Jerusalem, some say it’s in Beitin just north of Jerusalem, and others talk about other places. It only proves that all these claims are bogus.”
[...]
Priestly blessing at Western Wall
TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Worshipers and police crowd Western Wall for priestly blessing. Tens of thousands pack Jerusalem holy site for ceremony; security forces boosted amid holiday tensions (RAOUL WOOTLIFF AND TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF).
I was surprised to see this in the article:
The priestly blessing comes from Numbers 6:24-26. Incidentally, the oldest surviving copies (c. 600 BCE) of any biblical passage are the silver amulets from Ketef Hinnom which contain the text of this blessing.
Tens of thousands of people thronged to the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City under heavy police guard for a twice-annual mass blessing ceremony Monday morning.There's video at the link. For Nimoy's "Spock salute" see here and links.
Police said tens of thousands of people packed the Western Wall plaza, as security forces were bolstered amid sky-high tensions over a fresh outbreak of violence connected to increased Jewish visits to the nearby Temple Mount holy site for the Passover holiday.
The blessing ceremony, which sees male descendants of the Kohanim priestly caste gather to bestow benediction, involves the raising of hands in a form similar to the “Vulcan salute” which Leonard Nimoy borrowed from Judaism for his “Star Trek” role as Mr. Spock. Those conducting the blessing also cover their heads with prayer shawls.
[...]
I was surprised to see this in the article:
The Western Wall is the closest spot to the Temple Mount where Jews can pray. Though allowed to visit the Mount, where Jews believe the two ancient Jewish temples stood, Jews are not allowed to pray and increased Jewish visits often spark tensions.My bold emphasis. Who slipped that in? This is not just a matter of a religious belief. For the record, no one who has any understanding of the ancient history and archaeology of the site has any doubt that two ancient Jewish temples stood on the Temple Mount. This (non-)issue came up recently with regard to an unfortunate article in the New York Times which was eventually corrected. See here and links for the story. And I have documented a great deal of propaganda from the Palestinian and Arab worlds which denies that the temples ever existed. For recent examples, see here and links. I assume that the sentence quoted above is just worded poorly, but it is disappointing to see the Times of Israel appear to flirt with Jewish-temple denial.
The priestly blessing comes from Numbers 6:24-26. Incidentally, the oldest surviving copies (c. 600 BCE) of any biblical passage are the silver amulets from Ketef Hinnom which contain the text of this blessing.
Monday, April 25, 2016
Ilan on Jewish customs in Judith
BIBLE ODYSSEY: Jewish Customs in Judith (Tal Ilan).
The book of Judith was composed sometime after the Hebrew Bible was completed. It came into being, however, considerably earlier than the books that canonized rabbinic law (the Mishnah and the Talmud). Thus, Jewish customs recorded in Judith were influenced by the Hebrew Bible and reflect an earlier Judaism than that practiced today. The Jewish customs in Judith relate to fasting, widowhood, kosher food, immersion, conversion, and slavery.
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Syriac Summer School in Amsterdam
SYRIAC WATCH: On Academia.edu, Wido Van Peursen has posted the details of two study-abroad summer school courses on Syriac at VU Amsterdam.
The Bible in Syriac Tradition (16-23 July 2016)
Syriac Christianity in Context (23-30 July 2016)
The Bible in Syriac Tradition (16-23 July 2016)
Syriac Christianity in Context (23-30 July 2016)
More on ancient literacy in Judah
EPIGRAPHY AND LITERARY CRITICISM: Trying To Discover When The Good Book Was Written Is A Bad Idea (Ian Young, HuffPo). Perhaps not so much bad as just asking the wrong question. But Professor Young raises a very good point:
In fact, the whole discussion misses the really interesting breakthroughs scholars have made about the composition of the Bible since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.Background here and links.
Scholars have become aware that Old Testament books were not ever just written in one go. "When was the Bible written?" is the wrong question. Ancient books were fluid entities that were written and rewritten, each manuscript a different rendition of the community tradition that lay behind it.
We are used, in the modern world, to a book, once it is written, staying written. Also, modern books usually have an identifiable author or authors. The Bible is, on the contrary, community literature, reflecting community traditions that appear in different ways in different renditions of the same book or passage. Even within the Bible that we know, we find multiple versions of the same stories and traditions. Outside the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient texts, like the earliest translations into Greek, show us yet further variant versions, all of which were likely considered to be valid representations of the tradition about great Biblical themes like God's relationship with the peoples of the earth.
So, for many of the familiar texts of the Bible, the answer to the question about whether they were written in 600 B.C., or earlier than that, or at a later date, may simply be "yes".
When did sacrifice on Passover cease?
HISTORY AND POLITICS: Why Jews Stopped Sacrificing Lambs and Baby Goats for Passover. And why some have started trying to perform it on the Temple Mount again (Elon Gilad, Haaretz).
This ancient ritual [of sacrifice of Passover lambs in the Temple] abruptly came to an end in 70 C.E., when the Romans put down the Jews’ Great Revolt and destroyed the Temple. At this point, what remained of the Jewish population in Judea had to decide how Passover would be celebrated.The traditions about how exactly the Passover lamb ceased to be sacrificed were written down long after the event and should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt. But the sacrifice did indeed end sometime after the destruction of the Temple. As for the recent attempt to revive the practice, see here
The task of adapting Judaism to its new Temple-less reality fell to Rabban Gamaliel II, head of the Jewish Assembly – the Sanhedrin. With regard to the Passover sacrifice, Gamaliel decreed that the sacrifice should continue in family homes, with each family sacrificing its own goat or sheep.
However, other rabbis believed that the Passover sacrifice, like all the other sacrifices, could only be conducted by the priests in the Temple and that, like the other sacrifices, should not be conducted until the Messiah comes and the Temple is rebuilt.
Some Jews followed Gamaliel and continued to sacrifice goats and sheep in their homes on Passover; others didn’t and saw the practice as apostasy.
Within about two generations, the practice ceased when the anti-sacrifice camp assumed control and threatened to excommunicate those who practiced it. So, sometime in the second century C.E., Jews stopped the practice of sacrificing baby goats and sheep on Passover. Until recently, that is.
Ancient Jewish kingdoms in Babylonia
HISTORY: A Jewish kingdom in ancient Babylon. Least known is the kingdom of Mar Zutra, that rose to brief prominence in the period after the redaction and editing of the Talmud. (ELI KAVON, Jerusalem Post). Excerpt:
As for the article, which deals with three Jewish kingdoms from late antiquity: more on the Himyar kingdom is here, here, and here; and more on the Khazars is here and links. I can't find any past posts on the "least known" kingdom of Mar Zutra. And as for the political conclusions of the article, I leave it to you to do with them what you will.
In considerable territory of eastern and southern Arabia, before the rise of Islam, the elite of the Kingdom of Himyar converted to Judaism. This kingdom was powerful, twice succeeding in repelling domination by Ethiopia, and preventing the anti-Jewish Byzantines from passing through its territory to India to conduct trade. This Jewish kingdom came to an end with a final war with Ethiopia that resulted in its destruction.And all this, of course, has almost nothing to do with the cuneiform tablet used to illustrate the article. The tablet is from the recently published collection of cuneiform texts written by Judean exiles in Babylonia (on which, more here and follow the links back), but it was written many centuries earlier than the kingdoms discussed in the article and the writers did not have their own kingdom. They were in the thrall of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom that exiled them there.
A more well-known example of a Jewish Diaspora kingdom is the Khazars. Located in Eastern Europe, this kingdom’s leaders converted to Judaism and adopted the hallmarks of Jewish civilization.
The kingdom flourished from 650 CE to 1016 CE, but was eventually overrun by enemies and scattered. The Khazars were known as brave warriors and ignited the imagination of medieval Hebrew poet Judah Halevi, whose philosophical work, The Kuzari, uses the adoption of Judaism by the Khazar king as a launching point to delve into an analysis and understanding of Judaism, revelation and prophecy.
Least known, however, is the kingdom of Mar Zutra, that rose to brief prominence in the period after the redaction and editing of the Talmud.
As for the article, which deals with three Jewish kingdoms from late antiquity: more on the Himyar kingdom is here, here, and here; and more on the Khazars is here and links. I can't find any past posts on the "least known" kingdom of Mar Zutra. And as for the political conclusions of the article, I leave it to you to do with them what you will.
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Italian Talmud volume a bestseller
TALMUD WATCH: Italian translation of Talmud becomes instant bestseller. First volume of Italian translation of the Talmud sells out in three days. (Arutz Sheva/AFP).
Background here.
Background here.
A Gibeon bulla
BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: How Ancient Taxes Were Collected Under King Manasseh. Bulla inscribed in paleo-Hebrew provides evidence of Judah’s tax system. This was first posted back in 2012, but I seem to have missed it then. Cross-file under Epigraphy.
More on the Temple Mount Sifting Project is here with many links. The discovery of this bulla was noted here, also back in 2012.
More on the Temple Mount Sifting Project is here with many links. The discovery of this bulla was noted here, also back in 2012.
New Philo book
PHILONICA ET NEOTESTAMENTICA: A New German translation of Philo’s Quod omnis probus liber sit (Torrey Seland). A notice of:
Reinhard von Bendemann (Hg.), Philo von Alexandria – Über die Freiheit des Rechtschaffenen. Kleine Bibliothek der antiken jüdischen und christlichen Literatur –Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1. Auflage 2016. 89 Seiten kartoniert ISBN 978-3-525-53465-6. 10,00 €
Black & Cerone, The Pericope of the Adulteress
LARRY HURTADO: The Adulteress Narrative: New Book.
A new book is now the “go-to” resource on the text-critical question about the account of the adulteress brought to Jesus (in traditional texts, John 7:53–8:11): The Pericope of the Adulteress in Contemporary Research, eds. David Alan Black and Jacob N. Cerone (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016). The publisher’s online catalogue entry is here.And Tommy Wasserman also has a post on the book here at ETC.
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