The Talmud on the art (and problem) of forgery

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Art of Forgery. In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study, the rabbis attempt to imagine every possible way to alter a legal document, and a coinciding method to thwart each of them.

At 176 folio pages, Tractate Bava Batra is the longest in the Babylonian Talmud; in the Daf Yomi cycle, it takes six months to complete. Over the last two weeks, Daf Yomi readers began the 10th and final chapter of the tractate, in which the rabbis take up a very practical question: How is a valid legal document prepared? Throughout Bava Batra, we have learned about many kinds of transactions that involve written documents, including promissory notes, deeds of sale, deeds of gift, and wills. In modern society, such transactions usually leave a long documentary trail, because they involve lawyers, registrars, and probate courts. In Talmudic-era society, however, the physical possession of a signed piece of paper was the standard way to prove a claim of ownership or a debt. Such documents would ordinarily be written by professional scribes, who knew the legal formulas involved. But how should a document be composed to assure its authenticity and minimize the opportunity for forgery?

[...]

There is a lot of indirect information about the material culture of ancient documents in this passage.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Brady moves to the University of Kentucky

CONGRATULATIONS TO CHRISTIAN BRADY: First Lewis Honors Dean Named (Jay Blanton, University of Kentucky Campus News).

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 10, 2017) – University of Kentucky Provost Tim Tracy announced today that the former head of one of the most highly regarded honors programs in the country will be the first dean of the Lewis Honors College.

Christian Brady for 10 years — from 2006 to 2016 — served as dean of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State University. Previously, he directed the honors program at Tulane University. At Penn State, Schreyer — under Brady’s leadership — raised more than $80 million to enhance honors education, developed a renowned leadership academy, and tripled applications to the college while also increasing selectivity.

[...]

Chris Brady is a longstanding blogger at the Targuman Blog. His work on the Aramaic Targumim, especially the Targum of Ruth, is well known to PaleoJudaica readers. Start here and follow the links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

More looting arrests in the West Bank

APPREHENDED: Antiquities thieves nabbed with artifacts from Byzantine-era church. Civil administration says it has opened an investigation after columns from West Bank structure seized from robbers (Times of Israel).

Israeli authorities arrested two antiquities thieves in the West Bank who were attempting to make off with artifacts dating back to the Byzantine era, the IDF’s Civil Administration said on Monday.

A spokesperson for the Defense Ministry agency — which oversees Israeli civilian activity in the West Bank — said that the two Palestinian suspects were arrested between the West Bank city of Bethlehem and the settlement of Tekoa with three columns from a nearby Byzantine church inscribed with pseudo-Greek text in the back of their work truck.

[...]

Smugglers stole columns from a church? Good grief!

Other recent looting arrests in Israel and the West Bank have been noted here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Canon Deck

RELIGION PROF: New Canon Deck Available: Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (James McGrath).

A while back, Jim Davila asked whether the card game included certain extracanonical Jewish texts, and I told him that if he gave me a list, I could make a deck with whatever works he wishes. Some of the ones he mentioned were already in the Old Testament/Jewish Bible deck, and so he substituted a few others.

[...]

The new deck is now available. Follow the link for ordering information.

Background here and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Squitieri, Stone Vessels in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian Period

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Stone Vessels in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian Period. Notice of a new book: Squitieri, Andrea. 2017. Stone Vessels in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian Period. (Archaeopress Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology 2). Oxford: Archaeopress.

Stone vessels were important for Jews in the late Second Temple period, because such vessels did not transmit ritual impurity. This is not my expertise, but the ones I have heard of date to the Hasmonean and Roman periods, so that may be why Judean stoen vessels are not mentioned in the description of this book. Still, it would provide useful background on the production of such objects.

For some background on stone vessels in the Roman world and ancient Judaism, see here and here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

JQS 24.2 (2017)

THE JEWISH STUDIES QUARTERLY has a new issue out (Volume 24, Number 2, 2017). One of the articles involves ancient Judaism:

Meir Ben Shahar, "A Future and a Hope" in Babylonia: Three Sayings of Rav as a Diasporan Manifesto; pp. 101-121(21)

Abstract:
The Jewish Diaspora is often viewed as the paradigm of exile, which implies longing for a place from which a people has been forcibly expelled. This article interprets three sayings by Rav in the Babylonian Talmud as reflecting an alternative ideology, in which living outside the Holy Land is not seen as regrettable or shameful, for God is revealed through the Jewish people's observance of the Torah and the commandments everywhere. Although the relevant sugya in BT Ta'anit 29a–b opens with catastrophe – the destruction of the Temple – Rav's three sayings here exude optimism, implying that a good life is attainable wherever Jews reside. Every moment of Torah study is the realization of the "future and hope" promised by the prophet Jeremiah.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Lawrence, Jethro and the Jews

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL: Jethro and the Jews. Jewish Biblical Interpretation and the Question of Identity. Beatrice J.W. Lawrence, Seattle University.

In Jethro and the Jews, Beatrice J. W. Lawrence examines rabbinic texts that address the biblical character of Jethro, a Midianite priest, Moses’ advisor and father-in-law, and the creator of the system of Jewish jurisprudence. Lawrence explores biblical interpretations in Midrash, Targum and Talmud, revealing a spectrum of responses to the presence of a man who straddles the line between insider and outsider. Ranging from character assassination to valorization of Jethro as a convert, these interpretive strategies reveal him to be a locus of anxiety for the rabbis concerning conversion, community boundaries, intermarriage, and non-Jews.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Candida Moss

CONGRATULATIONS TO PROFESSOR CANDIDA MOSS, who has joined the faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham as Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology.

Her essays, often co-written with Joel Baden, at the Daily Beast and elsewhere have helped keep PaleoJudaica readers informed about many news stories involving biblical studies and related matters, most recently here.

She describes her research specialties as follows:

My work primarily focuses on ideas about martyrdom, death, suffering, and afterlife in the New Testament and literature of Early Christianity. I have additional interests in disability theory and theology, religion and public life, the Bible and education, and cultural heritage.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Golem sculptures, sort of

GOLEM WATCH: The golem in a London garden. Sculptor David Breuer-Weil 's huge sculptures are on show in London this summer.

How fitting that sculptor David Breuer-Weil’s Philosopher — a mammoth bronze head assembled from smashed-up and reconstituted plaster — should be made following his discovery that he is a direct descendant of philosopher Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the celebrated Maharal of Prague.

“You can imagine my surprise when I learned in a recently published book that the Maharal was my great-grandfather 14 generations down,” he tells me. “It puts a different emphasis on making figurative sculptures if you are related to the Maharal who, according to legend, made the ‘Golem of Prague’.”

[...]

In spite of a very busy schedule, he is committed to his daily study of the Talmud, which he says is filled with “the most tremendous imagery” of every aspect of life. He credits the Talmud with fuelling his creativity, resulting in paintings with “multiple layers of meaning and complex imagery”.

Breuer-Weil’s art constitutes “ways of philosophising about life in a visual way”. In recent years, this has culminated in a series of monumental sculptures, themed around the human body, be it through the creation of feet, a head, or the body in its entirety. Although all are colossal in size, their fragility and vulnerability is rendered through texture and context.

The sculptures apparently are not intended to depict golems, but some of them could certainly could pass for golems.

For earlier PaleoJudaica posts on past and present manifestations of the Golem legend, start here and follow the many links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Report on Brussels Coptic conference

ALIN SUCIU: Guest Post: Julien Delhez – A Successful Conference for French-Speaking Coptologists. The report includes summaries on many papers covering many topics. These include Sheoute's unfortunate anti-Jewish writings, the use of apocryphal traditions about Jesus in Coptic magical texts, a new edition of the Coptic version of the Apocalypse of Paul, a touching graffito by a man who lost his cat, and much more.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

If you like OT Pseudepigrapha, please help! (bumped)

DEAR READERS,

Many of you have heard of the book I co-edited with Richard Bauckham and Alexander Panayotov:

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Volume 1 (Eerdmans, 2013).

If any of you have used the book for your research, teaching, or other creative projects, I would be grateful if you would give me a little information about how you used it.

Many of you have told me over the years that you have found my blogging at PaleoJudaica valuable. This is your chance to give me something back.

I have enabled comments on this post, so you can reply below.

Here's what I need:

1. If any academic colleague has cited the book in any publication, whether published or in press, would you please tell me what part of the book you cited and give me the full reference for your publication? I am interested both in scholarly and popular publications.

2. If any reader has used the book in teaching at any level — postgraduate, undergraduate, adult education, high school, etc. — would you please let me know what course or class you have used it in, the level of the class, and which specific part of the book you used? Any comments on how useful you found the material and how your students responded to it would be welcome as well.

3. If any reader has drawn on the book for a creative project other than academic research or teaching, would you please tell me about it? Has it influenced any literary work you have written, any artistic work you have produced, any theatrical production, any television or cinematic production, any musical production, etc.? I also would be grateful to know of any publications, exhibitions, performances, screenings, etc. which have resulted.

4. If have any friends who you know have used the book in any of the three ways above, please alert them to this post and encourage them to contact me.

Why do I want to know all this?

I am currently collecting information on the influence of this book in the years since it has been published. This is partly for an article on the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project that I am writing. It is for the 50th anniversary of the SBL's Pseudepigrapha Section which comes in 2019. (But the article is due in 2017.)

Some of the information is also for a file I'm keeping on "impact," which involves the influence of academic research on people's lives. The British Government likes us to keep track of impact.

I will use the information for the two purposes given above.

In due course I will also give a general summary of what I learn in a PaleoJudaica post.

Many thanks for your help, which is very valuable to me. I look forward to hearing from you.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

More on the Leningrad Codex scribe

PALEOGRAPHY: Author of 10th-century Hebrew biblical text is identified (Madeleine Buckley, USA Today).

The ancient text, known to scholars as Codex L17, contains only Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings and 2 Kings. Researcher Kim Phillips wrote in an article the Tyndale Bulletin that he determined that the author was the scribe Samuel ben Jacob, or “Samuel, son of Jacob,” and that it was written around the year 975.

Samuel ben Jacob also wrote The Leningrad Codex, the earliest known complete copy of the Hebrew Bible, completed in the year 1008 and the basis for many modern biblical translations.

This story reached the blogosphere late last week. I noted it here. But it's good to see the mainstream media taking some notice.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Hannibal's trail of poop?

PUNIC WATCH: How (and Where) Did Hannibal Cross the Alps? He pulled off one of the greatest military feats ever. Now new scientific evidence points to Hannibal’s legendary route to Rome (Franz Lidz, The Smithsonian).

A relative newcomer to the debate, [microbiologist Chris] Allen insists that until now no hard material evidence has been presented that would indicate the most likely path. “Nada, zero, zip, zilch,” he says. “Everything has been guesswork based on readings of the classical texts.” He believes that he and his team of collaborators—led by Canadian geomorphologist Bill Mahaney—recently unearthed the first compelling clues, thanks to a massive patty of ancientmanure.

Embedded 16 inches deep in a bog on the French side of the Traversette is a thin layer of churned-up, compacted scat that suggests a large footfall by thousands of mammals at some point in the past. “If Hannibal had hauled his traveling circus over the pass, he would have stopped at the mire to water and feed the beasts,” reasons Allen. “And if that many horses, mules and, for that matter, elephants did graze there, they would have left behind a MAD.” That’s the acronym for what microbiologists delicately term a “mass animal deposition.”

By examining sediment from two cores and a trench—mostly soil matted with decomposed plant fiber—Allen and his crew have identified genetic materials that contain high concentrations of DNA fragments from Clostridia, bacteria that typically make up only 2 or 3 percent of peat microbes, but more than 70 percent of those found in the gut of horses. The bed of excrement also contained unusual levels of bile acids and fatty compounds found in the digestive tracts of horses and ruminants. Allen is most excited about having isolated parasite eggs—associated with gut tapeworms—preserved in the site like tiny genetic time capsules.

Allen's theory that this is the trail left by Hannibal's army during his crossing of the Alps in the Second Punic War. But it is controversial. I have already noted the theory here, but this Smithsonian article is a very detailed treatment of it and is worth reading.

For past PaleoJudaica post on Hannibal and the Punic wars, start here and follow the many links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Tesher

YONA SABAR: Hebrew Word of the Week: tesher "tip (to a waiter, driver, etc.); gratuity" תשר. The first attested use of (a form of) the word involves Saul preparing a tip for the prophet Samuel for divining the fate of some lost donkeys.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The rivers of Israel

GEOGRAPHY: In Photos: The Rivers of Israel (Brandon Marlon, Jewish Breaking News). A nice photo essay for a Sunday morning.

The Bible mentions many, but not all, of these rivers. Fun fact: According to 1 Enoch 13, Enoch had his Merkavah vision at the waters of Dan:

And I went off and sat down at the waters of Dan, in the land of Dan, to the south of the west of Hermon: I read their petition till I fell 8 asleep. And behold a dream came to me, and visions fell down upon me, and I saw visions of chastisement, and a voice came bidding (me) I to tell it to the sons of heaven, and reprimand them.

(Charles translation)
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Review of two books on Paul (etc.) and the Law

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Two Approaches to Pauline Discourse (J. Albert Harrill).

2016 SBL Pauline Epistles Panel Book Review Session

Matthew, Paul, and the Anthropology of Law, by David A. Kaden

Paul and the Gentile Problem, by Matthew Thiessen

The essay opens:

We have an opportunity to discuss two new Paul books in tandem. So, departing from common practice of our SBL Program Unit on the Pauline Epistles, which examines each book separately, I propose taking them as a pairing. It would be fruitful to have both books and their authors––who are together for the first time on one stage––engage one another. While both authors tackle the same problem of “Paul and the Law” and both authors frame the issue as a question of discourse, each goes in a different direction to find a solution––one global and the other local. These books offer an instructive contrast in opposing methodologies.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Is the Talmud's Herod based on a Persian story?

DR. JEFFREY L. RUBENSTEIN: Herod’s Renovation of the Temple – Uncovering the Talmud’s Persian Influences (TheGemara.com).

In “Herod’s Renovation of the Temple – The Talmudic Version”, I explored the Bavli’s account of how the first century BCE king, Herod, rose to power, violently solidified his rule, and rebuilt the Temple. I demonstrated how the rabbis thematized issues of sight and blindness in their telling of the tale in order to explain how a wicked king ended up building the holy Temple. In this piece, I look at the Persian sources of the story, which provide a further layer of understanding.

I noted Dr. Rubenstein's earlier essay, on Herod's renovation of the Temple, here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Another manuscript by the scribe who wrote the Leningrad Codex

ETC BLOG: Sister of Leningrad Codex Discovered! (Peter Williams). This is a roundabout way of saying:

Congratulations to Kim Phillips, Tyndale House Research Associate, for discovering a manuscript of the Former Prophets by Samuel ben Jacob the scribe of the Leningrad Codex. This should make a significant difference to our understanding of the main manuscript used for the study of the Hebrew Bible today.

This sounds important for Masoretic studies and, in a considerably more indirect way, textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Follow the link for more.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

More on Aramean land seizure in Turkey

ASSYRIAN (MODERN SYRIAC) WATCH: Turkish authorities confiscate 50 properties from one of world's oldest Christian communities which fears it is being driven into extinction (Rory Tingle, Daily Mail). This is confusing. As I noted yesterday, according Hurriyet Daily News this decision has been canceled. Specifically:

On July 3, the liquidation committee said the allocation decision was cancelled but the properties were still registered with the Treasury.

Officials noted that the use of the monasteries and churches would continue “as it stands,” adding that a legal amendment would be needed for the cancellation of the registration decision.

I don't know why the Mail article does not mention that development. But whether or not the story is up to date, it is now on the Mail's radar. And if the story is covered by the Daily Mail, you can be sure the world is watching.

I look forward to the speedy and full resolution of this situation in Turkey.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Still more mosaics from the Huqoq synagogue

THE SITE THAT KEEPS ON GIVING - MOSAICS: Excavations by UNC-Chapel Hill archaeologist continue to yield stunning mosaics in ancient Galilean synagogue. Seventh season of Huqoq excavations brings to light the richest, most diverse collection of mosaics ever discovered in an ancient synagogue (UNC press release).

(Chapel Hill, N.C.— July 6, 2017) – A team of specialists and students led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Jodi Magness has uncovered additional mosaic scenes in the Late Roman synagogue at Huqoq, an ancient Jewish village in Israel’s Lower Galilee. The new finds provide insight about daily life in the fifth century C.E. and expand the rich repertoire of mosaics already discovered decorating the floors of the building.

[...]

On the newly found mosaics:

A medallion in the center of the uppermost (northern) panel depicts the Greco-Roman sun god Helios in a quadriga (four-horse chariot) surrounded by personifications of the months and the signs of the zodiac, contained within a square frame with personifications of the four seasons in the corners.

The second panel shows the biblical story of Jonah and the whale with a twist: Jonah’s legs are shown dangling from the mouth of a large fish, which is being swallowed by a larger fish, and the larger fish is being swallowed by an even larger fish. This is the first time the story of Jonah has been discovered decorating the mosaic floor of an ancient synagogue in Israel.

The third (southernmost) panel contains a detailed scene of men at work constructing a stone tower, apparently the Tower of Babel.

“The Huqoq mosaics are unusually rich and diverse,” said Magness. “In addition, they display variations on biblical stories which must represent oral traditions (midrashim) that circulated among the local Jewish population.”

There is a photo showing one of the workmen in the third panel. This photo appears with another in this tweet.

For previous PaleoJudaica posts on the finds at the Huqoq excavation — especially the mosaics, start here and follow the many links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Implications of the Hobby Lobby case

ANALYSIS: Hobby Lobby’s Black-Market Buys Did Real Damage (Candida Moss and Joel Baden, NYT). Moss and Baden discuss the settlement of Hobby Lobby with the U.S. Department of Justice over improper acquisition of antiquities. The settlement was announced earlier this week.

Although we can now point to a large number of items in the collection that were illicitly acquired, there remain thousands and thousands more about which we can say nothing: not because their provenance is clean, but because it is unknown. Though scholars have been pleading for years with the Greens and the Museum of the Bible to provide all of the information for all of their artifacts, there has been no transparency whatsoever.

If the Museum of the Bible truly wants to distance itself from the illicit antiquities dealings of Hobby Lobby, it should make available to the public the full provenance of every item it displays, and of all those that are not visible to the public. If there are more artifacts that were purchased from the black market, they should be forfeited or repatriated—voluntarily.

As the essay indicates, this story brings up difficult wider issues regarding the acquiring and use of unprovenanced artifacts that may have come from the black market. Background here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The Talmud on Herod the Great

DR. JEFFREY L. RUBENSTEIN: Herod’s Renovation of the Temple – The Talmudic Version (TheGemara.com).

In their discussion of King Herod’s reconstruction of the Second Temple, talmudic storytellers emphasize themes of sight, blindness, and illegitimate rule. They also make a surprising suggestion about who really should get credit for this renovation.

The Talmud has a long, very legendary, and rather creepy, account of the reign of Herod. I have commented on part of it in an earlier post here. This post may be relevant too, although it cites a different Talmudic passage that seems to cover the same ground.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Update on Aramean land seizure in Turkey

ASSYRIAN (MODERN SYRIAC) WATCH: Decision to allocate Syriac churches, monasteries to Turkish religious directory cancelled (Hurriyet Daily News).

The governor’s office in the southeastern province of Mardin has cancelled its decision dating back to 2014 to allocate churches and monasteries belonging to Syriac Christians to the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), Doğan News Agency reported on July 5.

In its decision on July 3, the Mardin Governor’s Office’s Liquidation Committee said a legal amendment was necessary “for the problem’s exact solution” and until the legal amendment went into force, “the current situation was intact.”

The Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation’s head Kuryakos Ergün, who was present at the committee’s meeting on July 3, confirmed to Doğan News Agency that it had made the cancellation decision.

However, he also said the case was still unsolved for them until ownership of the properties is transferred to the foundation, and vowed that the foundation’s legal fight would continue until then.

[...]

This sounds like constructive progress. But the problems are not yet fully resolved. It never hurts to mention that the world is watching. We will continue to watch the situation closely.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Hobby Lobby settles case with Justice Department

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: United States Files Civil Action To Forfeit Thousands Of Ancient Iraqi Artifacts Imported By Hobby Lobby. Cuneiform Tablets Were Falsely Labeled as Product “Samples” and Shipped to Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., and Two Corporate Affiliates.

Earlier today, the United States filed a civil complaint to forfeit thousands of cuneiform tablets and clay bullae. As alleged in the complaint, these ancient clay artifacts originated in the area of modern-day Iraq and were smuggled into the United States through the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel, contrary to federal law. Packages containing the artifacts were shipped to Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (“Hobby Lobby”), a nationwide arts-and-crafts retailer based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and two of Hobby Lobby’s corporate affiliates. The shipping labels on these packages falsely described cuneiform tablets as tile “samples.”

The government also filed a stipulation of settlement with Hobby Lobby, in which Hobby Lobby consented to the forfeiture of the artifacts in the complaint, approximately 144 cylinder seals and an additional sum of $3 million, resolving the civil action. Hobby Lobby further agreed to adopt internal policies and procedures governing its importation and purchase of cultural property, provide appropriate training to its personnel, hire qualified outside customs counsel and customs brokers, and submit quarterly reports to the government on any cultural property acquisitions for the next eighteen months.

[...]

The languages is a little convoluted, but this seems to be saying that the Department of Justice has filed the civil action and Hobby Lobby has settled with them by agreeing to forfeit all of the cuneiform tablets and clay bullae, plus about about 144 cylinder seals, plus pay $3 million in fines. It also agreed to implement various procedures to keep such problems from happening again.

Altogether there are about 5500 artifacts, among which are 1000 clay bullae (seal impressions) from Israel. No word on whether any of the bullae bore inscriptions. The two pictured bear designs, but I see no writing.

There is lots of media coverage. See, for example, this Reuters article by Dan Whitcomb: Hobby Lobby to Forfeit Ancient Iraqi Artifacts in Settlement With DOJ.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby has agreed to forfeit thousands of illegally smuggled ancient Middle Eastern artifacts obtained from antiquities dealers for a Bible museum headed by its president, the company and U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

The forfeiture will include some 5,500 artifacts purchased by Hobby Lobby Inc that originated from the region of modern-day Iraq and were shipped under false labels, as well as an additional $3 million to settle the civil charges, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

[...]

The article also has a response from Hobby Lobby.

This looks pretty bad.

I noted a report in 2015 that a federal investigation of these matters was underway. Now it has been resolved. The story turned out to be worse than indicated in the earlier report. It referred to hundreds of tablets and didn't mention any bullae.

The Green family, who founded Hobby Lobby, also own the Green Collection of antiquities. The Museum of the Bible is also a Green family project. For past posts on both, start here and follow the links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Very old Jewish inscribed copper plates from India

NOT THE COPPER SCROLL, BUT STILL PRETTY INTERESTING: Modi's Gift to Netanyahu: Ancient Jewish Relics From Kerala.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gifted his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu replicas of two sets of relics from Kerala, regarded as key artifacts of the long Jewish history in India.

[...]

They comprise two different sets of copper plates that are believed to have been inscribed in 9-10th Century, the Prime Minister's Office said.

[...]

The plates are written in the ancient Tamil script, but one or two bear Hebrew writing (apparently Judeo-Persian) as well. The first pair contains a royal charter. The second pair concerns local trade and tax issues.

Some past PaleoJudaica posts on the history of Judaism in India are here, here, and here and links. And for past posts on Judeo-Persian, see here and links. Kerala also has a long history of Syriac-speaking Christianity, on which more here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Conviction and acquittal in church arson case in Israel

THE CHURCH OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES: Israeli found guilty of church arson attack (Middle East Monitor).

Yinon Reuveni set light to the Church of Multiplication at Tabgha, on the Sea of Galilee, a site where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. Another defendant, 21-year-old Yehuda Asraf was acquitted of all charges in court.

Although the Catholic church’s 5th century mosaic floor was not damaged, “Idols will be cast out or destroyed” was daubed on the walls. The church reopened in February after renovation costing $1 million.

The arson attack happened in June of 2015. I noted it here and here, and noted the arrests here and here. Another post on the story is here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Yet another UNESCO resolution on Jerusalem

AN EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Unesco resolution on Jerusalem under fire. The world heritage body passes a ruling condemning Israel for archaeological excavations in the Old City (Lianne Kolirin, Jewish Chronicle).

Unesco has once again inflamed passions in the Jewish world after ruling that Israel is the “occupying power” of the Old City of Jerusalem.

The resolution, put forward by various Arab states, also condemned Israel for archaeological excavations in the Old City and reaffirmed previous UN resolutions denying the country’s claims to East Jerusalem.

Though the proposal was passed, the decision was not unanimous. Ten countries voted in favour while three opposed it and eight abstained.

[...]

I have not seen the latest resolution and I don't have time to dig it up now, so I will not comment further.

For past UNESCO resolutions on Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, start here and follow the links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Klawans receives BU fellowship

CONGRATULATIONS TO JONATHAN KLAWANS: BU Center for Humanities Names New Fellows. Research interests range from religious forgeries to food production (Rich Barlow, BU Today).

As is another 2017–2018 fellow, Jonathan Klawans, a CAS religion professor. He’d already planned a fall sabbatical, and “the BUCH fellowship makes an enormous difference, by expanding the time frame of my sabbatical from one semester to a full year and by putting me in conversation with an interdisciplinary group of humanities scholars to discuss our works-in-progress.” Klawans plans a monograph on Heresies, Forgeries, and Novelties: Constructing and Crossing the Boundaries of Ancient Judaism, premised in part on the idea that scholars continue to be fooled by ancient Jewish and Christian forgeries. (For example, he’ll disagree with what he calls a scholarly consensus that one ancient text, “Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides,” was written by a Jew; Klawans believes it the work of an early Christian.)

I agree with Professor Klawans that there is no compelling case that Pseudo-Phocylides is of Jewish origin and that it may well be a Christian composition. See, for example, here, here, and here. I look forward to his monograph.

Congratulations also to the other new BUCH fellows.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Bar-Asher Siegal et al., Perceiving the Other in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Perceiving the Other in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. Ed. by Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Wolfgang Grünstäudl, and Matthew Thiessen. 2017. Approx. 250 pages. forthcoming in October. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament. approx. 115,00 € cloth. ISBN 978-3-16-154962-5.

Published in English.
The present volume reexamines both ancient Christian and Jewish portrayals of outsiders. In what ways, both positive and negative, do ancient writers interact with and relate to those outside of their ethnicity or religious tradition? This volume devotes itself to the methodological questions surrounding the use of diverse ancient sources for the construction of the other. The goal is to shed new light on ancient interactions between different religious groups in order to describe more accurately these relationships.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Cyril and Methodius Day 2017

OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC WATCH: Ss Cyril and Methodius are revered not just by Slovaks but also by other Slavonic nations. The day commemorating the arrival of evangelists from Constaninople, the Saints Cyril and Methodius – July 5 – has been pronounced a state holiday (The Slovak Spectator). The day is celebrated on 24 May in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Russia, and on 5 July in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The Roman Catholic Church celebrates their saints' feast day on 14 February. It is celebrated on other days in other churches.

Cyril and Methodius brought literacy to the Slavic world by creating an alphabet for the Slavic language. It was based on their own Greek alphabet and is the ancestor of the Cyrillic alphabet.

They arrived in Greater Moravia in 863 AD and although they left after three years, they continued their work to codify Slavonic as another liturgical language alongside Latin. Cyril, (Constantine) died in 869 in Rome but Methodius returned to Greater Moravia as a teacher and was later pronounced Pannonian Archbishop. After his death in 885 AD, the Latin clergy gradually became the decisive power in the empire and the successors of Methodius were exiled mostly to the historical territories of Bulgaria.

Some important literature, especially Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, is preserved in Old Church Slavonic.

Background here and here and links. For other posts on Church Slavonic and Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, start here and follow the links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Czachesz on Cognitive Science and the New Testament

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION: Cognitive Science and the New Testament.

Since the early 2000s, a handful of biblical scholars started to turn to scientific explanations of human thought and behavior to understand cognitive processes behind the creation and use of biblical texts, including the biblical concepts of the divine, the rituals of the first Christ-believers, and the social interactions that influenced the formation and growth of their communities.

See Also: Cognitive Science and the New Testament: A New Approach to Early Christian Research (Oxford University Press, 2017).

By István Czachesz
Professor of Biblical Studies
University of Tromsø
July 2017

Cognitive science has opened up an important new realm of research questions and tools for the study of antiquity. It is an area worth watching in biblical studies and the study of ancient Judaism.

I noted a recent review of this book here. And this post is also relevant to the subject.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Journal of Persianate Studies 10.1 (2017)

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Journal of Persianate Studies – Volume 10, Issue 1. A couple of the articles are on ancient Iran, notably:

Jason M. Silverman: “Achaemenid Creation and Second Isaiah“

Abstract
For many years, scholars have entertained the idea that monotheism appeared in Second Isaiah as a result of Zoroastrian influence. Since the issue of monotheism is inappropriate for either the Persian or the Judaean contexts, this paper argues that a more fruitful angle to pursue the Persian context of Isaiah is through analysis of the concept of creation. This paper takes the Achaemenid creation prologues in the Old Persian inscriptions as a comparator for the use of creation in Second Isaiah, and places these two in a broader ancient Near Eastern context of creation mythology. It is argued that both share distinctive features in the way creation is presented and understood. Given the novel and similar concepts visible in both corpora, it is argued that the vision of creation and form of YHWH as creator are the earliest attested instance of “Iranian influence” on the Judaean tradition.

A paid subscription is necessary to access the full text of the articles.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Hunt, "Hannibal"

NEW BOOK FROM SIMON AND SCHUSTER: Hannibal. Hardcover – July 11, 2017
by Patrick N Hunt.

One of the greatest commanders of the ancient world brought vividly to life: Hannibal, the brilliant general who successfully crossed the Alps with his war elephants and brought Rome to its knees.

Hannibal Barca of Carthage, born 247 BC, was one of the great generals of the ancient world. His father, Hamilcar, was also a great strategist and master tactician who imposed Carthaginian rule over much of present-day Spain. After Hamilcar led the Carthaginian forces against Rome in the First Punic War, Hannibal followed in his father’s footsteps, leading Carthage in the Second Punic War.

From the time he was a teenager, Hannibal fought against Rome. He is famed for leading Carthage’s army across north Africa, into Spain, along the Mediterranean coast, and then crossing the Alps with his army and war elephants. Hannibal won victories in northern Italy by outmaneuvering his Roman adversaries and defeated a larger Roman army at the battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Unable to force Rome to capitulate, he was eventually forced to leave Italy and return to Carthage when a savvy Roman general named Scipio invaded north Africa. Hannibal and Scipio fought an epic battle at Zama, which Hannibal lost. The terms of surrender were harsh and many Carthaginians blamed Hannibal, eventually forcing him into exile until his death.

To this day Hannibal is still regarded as a military genius. Napoleon, George Patton, and Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. are only some of the generals who studied and admired him. His strategy and tactics are still taught in military academies. He is one of the figures of the ancient world whose life and exploits never fail to impress. Historian Patrick N. Hunt has led archeological expeditions in the Alps and elsewhere to study Hannibal’s achievements. Now he brings Hannibal’s incredible story to life in this riveting and dramatic book.

Ten years ago I noted that Dr. Hunt was investigating Hannibal's route through the Alps. This new biography will doubtless tell us about what he found in the interim.

Some past posts on Hannibal and the Punic Wars are collected here and here and links. Cross-file under Punic Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Marinus De Jonge (1925-2016)

BELATED SAD NEWS: In memoriam Marinus de Jonge (1925-2016) (Henk Jan de Jonge, SNTS).

Marinus (Rien) de Jonge, Professor of New Testament Exegesis and Early Christian Literature at Leiden University from 1966 to 1990, passed away on 26 December 2016. He had turned 91 on 9 December of that year.

[...]

I just found out about the passing of Professor De Jonge a few days ago. I never met him, but I followed his work, especially his many contributions to the study of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Requiescat in pace.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

July 4th!

HAPPY AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY to all those celebrating!

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Vridar on Mroczek, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity

THE VRIDAR BLOG: Divine Revelation Not Limited to the “Bible Canon.” Neil Godfrey discusses Eva Mroczek's recent book The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity, on which more here and links.

If you scroll down to the comments in the post, you will see that Dr. Mroczek liked his discussion.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

A conference on the Temple Mount

PROFESSOR LAWRENCE SCHIFFMAN: A MEETING ABOUT THE MOUNT. His reprinted article in Ami Magazine gives an account of a recent meeting at Providence College in which Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars discussed the history of the Temple Mount.

Put simply, the scholars at our conference never doubted nor disputed that there had been a Jewish Temple on today’s Har Habayis [Temple Mount] in antiquity, up until 70 CE. Rather, they argued consistently, with no exception, that the religious traditions and texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam solidly recognize this reality.

Cross-file under Temple Mount Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

U.S. Supreme Court hears case on terrorism compensation with Iranian artifacts

PERSEPOLIS ARCHIVES UPDATE: High Court Takes Up Assets Case Involving Iranian Artifacts (KEVIN LESSMILLER, Courthouse News Service).

(CN) – The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether Americans injured in a 1997 Hamas suicide bombing can seize Iranian artifacts from the University of Chicago to satisfy a $71 million judgment.

The high court’s decision will resolve a circuit split over whether U.S. victims of state-sponsored terrorism have a freestanding right to collect on judgments against foreign countries, even if the targeted assets would be otherwise protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA.

[...]

Regular readers of PaleoJudacia will remember this case, which involves ancient Iranian artifacts held by the Oriental Institute. It has been going on for a long time.

The artifacts include about 30,000 clay tablets of some of the oldest writings in the world, which Iran loaned to the Institute in 1937, known as the Persepolis Collection.

Also at issue are Dr. Ernst Herzfeld’s collection of about 1,200 prehistoric artifacts found in Persia in the early 1900s, which the Field Museum bought in 1945, as well as clay seal impressions from the ancient Chogha Mish settlement, which the Institute acquired in the 1960s.

The most recent previous development of the legal case of which I am aware was in 2014 (see here. Follow the link there for past posts on the legal case, my own comments on it, and past posts on the Persepolis Fortification Archive. For more recent posts on Persepolis and this archive, start here and follow the links. The Persepolis Fortification Archive Project Blog notes the latest developments here

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

T. Abraham: a face-off with Death

READING ACTS: The Death of Abraham – Testament of Abraham 15-20.

Past posts in Phil Long's series on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (recently focusing on the Testamentary literature) are noted here and links. He is now posting on Ephesians. I don't know if he will be coming back to the OTP. Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Another review of Stronk, Semiramis’ Legacy

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Review of Semiramis’ Legacy. Notice of Safaee, Yazdan. 2017. “[review of] Semiramis’ Legacy: The History of Persia According to Diodorus of Sicily“, Iranian Studies 50:5, 752-754.

Past posts on Stronk, Semiramis’ Legacy etc. are here and here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The Lebanese are mostly Phoenician

PHOENICIAN WATCH: New Study Proves Lebanese Ancestry Is Mostly Phoenician (ByAnthony B. Kantara, The961).

The latest study led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England and in collaboration with universities from around the world, including Lebanon, Switzerland, and New Zealand, proves that most of the Lebanese ancestry is Phoenician.

In fact, they argue that the links go further back to the Canaanites, the historic and biblical people – who include the Phoenician people.

[...]

This is not a surprising result, but genetic studies are still important even when they tell us what we thought we already knew. And this one also told us that there were Eurasians in Lebanon in antiquity, which we might have guessed, but now we know.

Sometimes the results are surprising. For example, this recent study of the DNA of ancient Egyptian mummies: DNA discovery reveals genetic history of ancient Egyptians (CNN).

Researchers from the University of Tuebingen and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, both in Germany, have decoded the genome of ancient Egyptians for the first time, with unexpected results.

Publishing its findings in Nature Communications, the study concluded that preserved remains found in Abusir-el Meleq, Middle Egypt, were closest genetic relatives of Neolithic and Bronze Age populations from the Near East, Anatolia and Eastern Mediterranean Europeans.

Modern Egyptians, by comparison, share much more DNA with sub-Saharan populations.

The findings have turned years of theory on its head, causing Egyptologists to re-evaluate the region's history while unlocking new tools for scientists working in the field.

For past posts on Phoenician and Jewish DNA studies, see here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Rahab's sisters in parallel timelines?

DR. SHIRA GOLANI: Were Rahab’s Sisters Saved? Making sense of small differences between biblical lists: a look at the merit of different reading strategies (TheTorah.com).

We find potential parallel universes in the story of Rahab the prostitute in Joshua 2 and 6. The Hebrew Masoretic Test (MT) and the translations of the Syriac Peshitta and the Greek Septuagint (LXX) tell the story somewhat differently.

Did the spies refuse to spare them? Did they not make it to the house in time? Did she not have sisters in the first place? Or are we just dealing with different ways of saying that her whole family was saved?

For a similar, but less ambiguous, case in which King Zedekiah finds himself in two parallel timelines in the MT and LXX of Jeremiah, see here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Greek Apocalypse of Peter

NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: Apocalypse of Peter (Greek text) (Mark Goodacre, NT Blog). Professor Goodacre has updated his transcription of the Greek Akhmim fragment. I don't seem to have noted the original transcription when he posted it back in 2005. I am happy to do so now.

A couple of past PaleoJudaica posts on the Apocalypse of Peter are here and here. Incidentally, the Akhmim manuscript (P.Cairo 10759) also contains most of the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36) in Greek. The manuscript has 19:3-21:9 plus 1:1-32:6a.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Immersion pools exavated at Machaerus

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: King Herod’s Ritual Bath at Machaerus. Ritual purification high above the Dead Sea (Robin Ngo). As usual, this essay summarizes an article in the current issue of BAR: Győző Vörös, "Machaerus: A Palace-Fortress with Multiple Mikva’ot."

I noted the recent discovery of the large mikveh (immersion pool) at Machaerus here. Follow the links there for past posts on the site.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Novenson on The Grammar of Messianism

THE CSCO BLOG: The Grammar of Messianism, PT. 1. A video of Dr. Matthew Novenson of the University of Edinburgh. He speaks about his new book with the same title.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Ancient Ethiopic is alive in Israel

ETHIOPIC WATCH: Israel's Ethiopian Jews keep ancient language alive in prayer (Mordechai Goldman, Al-Monitor).

On June 7, another group of about 70 Falash Mura (people of Jewish origin) immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia. Their arrival revived discussions of the preservation of Ethiopian Jewry's ancient traditions, particularly their language, Ge'ez.

Ge'ez is an ancient Semitic language with its own unique alphabet. It served as the national language of the Ethiopian Empire until about one thousand years ago. It is survived by its close relatives, the contemporary Semitic languages of Ethiopia: Tigre, Tigrinya and Amharic. With the penetration and growth of Amharic, Ge'ez was increasingly marginalized. Now, it is only used as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Church, the Eritrean Church and the Ethiopian Jewish community.

[...]

Ge'ez is best known, at least in my circles, as the only language in which the full text of 1 Enoch survives. Some recent past PaleoJudaica posts about Ge'ez and Ge'ez literature are here, here, here, here, and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Church Slavonic for children?

CHURCH SLAVONIC WATCH: Russian Orthodox Church thinks kids should have to learn Church Slavonic (The Calvert Journal). This sounds like a good idea to me, but then I also think that children in the West should have to learn Latin. I'm not sure that either idea is going to catch on right away.

For many past posts on (Old) Church Slavonic, Slavonic philology, Slavonic Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, etc., see here and here and follow the links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The Talmud on when he's getting better

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: What Happens When a Dying Man Doesn’t Die? A question of morals for a loopy Coen-brothers script, in this week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study.

But what happens, the Talmud asks, if a man makes a gift thinking he is about to die, and then he recovers? He is placed in an awkward position: He may have given away all his property on the assumption that he wouldn’t need it anymore, and when he recovers he is destitute. To prevent this outcome, the Mishna in Bava Batra 146b explains that a gift from a dying man who recovers “does not stand.” But this is the case only if it was a gift of everything he owned because a person presumably would not give away all his property unless he believed he was going to die. If, on the other hand, he reserved for himself “any amount of land,” the assumption is that this provision was meant to suffice for him in case he recovered, so that the rest of his gift remains in force.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

T. Abraham: evading death

READING ACTS: “No One Escapes Death” – Testament of Abraham 1-9. Phil Long continues his series on Testamentary literature as part of his longer series on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. For notice of past posts see here (also on the Testament of Abraham) and follow the links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Lambdin on Egyptian loan words in Hebrew

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Egyptian Loanwords in Tanach (Mitchell First, Jewish Link of New Jersey).

Did you ever wonder which words in Tanach are not Hebrew but are Egyptian? Others have been wondering as well! In 1953, the classic article on this topic was published by Thomas Lambdin in the Journal of the American Oriental Society. Lambdin was a professor of Semitic languages at Harvard for many years. (His “Introduction to Biblical Hebrew” is used as a textbook at YU.)

Of course, identifying Egyptian loanwords in Tanach is not an exact science. We must distinguish between: 1) words that are definitely or almost certainly of Egyptian origin, 2) words that have a significant possibility of being of Egyptian origin, and 3) words for which an Egyptian origin has been suggested but the suggestion is very unlikely. For the most part, Lambdin’s article avoids words in the third category.

I am going to present to you the words that Lambdin included. Usually, the suggested original Egyptian word does not completely match the Hebrew word. But scholars are capable of making educated guesses about which discrepancies are to be expected, and which discrepancies indicate that the supposed word-borrowing should be rejected altogether.

Cross-file under Philology.

That JAOS article was written a long time ago and I don't doubt that there have been advances on this question — one that is outside my expertise. But Professor Lambdin's research has always been impeccable and I imagine it would have stood the test of time well.

Incidentally, Professor Lambdin is still alive as far as I know. A past post on him is here. He retired from Harvard in 1983, the year I began my PhD studies. He was the teacher of John Huenhergard, from whom I learned Comparative Semitics and the historical grammar of Hebrew.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The Schneerson Library goes online but stays in Russia

PROGRESS OF A SORT: Look, but don’t touch: Moscow’s Schneerson Collection goes online. Russian government continues to hold the Chabad dynasty’s seized collection of ancient books, but is opening it to public viewing on the web (Juile Masis, Times of Israel).

MOSCOW — In 1922, a few years before he fled the Soviet Union, the sixth Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson petitioned the Russian government to return 35 crates of books they had seized years earlier.

[...]

The Soviet government did not return the books, and for almost a century they remained on the shelves of the Lenin public library in Moscow. But this month the Russian State Library will finish scanning and putting online the more than 4,500 books in the Schneerson Collection, making them accessible to everyone in the world at the click of a mouse.

[...]

I have been following the dispute over these books and papers of the Lubavitcher Rebbes for some years. Background here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Ezekiel's Merkavah anniversary is today

TODAY IS THE 5TH OF TAMUZ, the anniversary of Ezekiels Merkavah vision as described in Ezekiel chapter 1. This was Ezekiel's prophetic call. This chapter also is the central inspiration for later Jewish and Christian mysticism. I have commented more about Ma‘aseh Merkavah ("the working of the Chariot," the traditional name of the chapter) and its influence in last year's post here.

I've been saving up a treat for you for this year's post. The Visual Midrash from the Tali Education Fund website has an article by Jo Milgrom and Yoel Duman on Ezekiel the Prophet: Dura Europos and beyond . It has a detailed discussion of the two scenes about Ezekiel in the murals that came from the third-century CE synagogue from Dura-Europos in Syria. It includes some later iconographic context.

The scenes do not have to do with the Merkavah vision, but they involve suitably visionary themes. The first is of the national resurrection in the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37. The second is of angelic slaughter of the sinful inhabitants of Jerusalem in the vision of Ezekiel 9. The latter takes place just before Ezekiel's second Merkavah vision in chapter 10.

Happy anniversary, Ezekiel!

For the many past PaleoJudaica posts on Dura-Europos, start here and follow the many links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Newsweek on the Zohar

ZOHAR WATCH: ZOHAR'S TRANSLATION UNLOCKS THE SECRETS OF JEWISH MYSTICISM IN AN AGE OF EXTREMISM (ALEXANDER NAZARYAN, Newsweek). Despite the clickbaitish title (for which I do not hold the author responsible), the article is good and is worth reading in full.

If you haven’t read Hebrew since the rite-of-passage ceremony known as the bar mitzvah, customarily conducted at the age of 13, then a willfully obscure text of ancient Jewish mysticism is probably not the best means to reacquaint yourself with the language of the Old Testament. Yet there I was in a Northern California synagogue, trying to remember my alefs and daleds, less out of the famous guilt of my tribe than a curiosity about that text—the Zohar—and, more specifically, about the man who has done more than any other alive today to unlock its secrets.

Knowing Hebrew is of relatively little help for reading the Zohar in the original. The author does note later that it is written in the cognate language Aramaic. A particularly uncooperative medieval Aramaic, at that.

Each month, the scholar of Jewish mysticism Daniel Matt holds a study session on the Zohar, among the most beautiful yet impenetrable works of Jewish spirituality. Matt’s authority on the subject is unrivaled: He is the only person to have translated the entirety of the Zohar into English. The effort spanned two decades and ran to 12 volumes (he had help on the last three). When I visited him in May at his house in Berkeley, California, the last of these had just been published. “For the English-speaking world, the Zohar's gates are now opening even wider,” declared Judy Silber on NPR.

I knew about the Daf Yomi Zohar study group (cf. here) on Facebook, but I didn't know about this group. It sounds fascinating.

The following is a great description of the content of the Zohar. But I would go easy on any comparisons to quantum physics.

The Zohar—central to the mystical strain of Judaism known as Kabbalah—is a 13th-century commentary primarily on the first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah. That might make it sound dull; it is anything but. Imagine the Old Testament as written by H.P. Lovecraft, Bible stories tripping on acid, rendered in difficult-to-decipher Aramaic, full of wisdom and beauty but shrouded in obscurity, a 1,900-page text written more than 700 years ago whose teachings have been embraced by celebrities like Madonna but not fully understood even by most scholars of Judaism.

The Zohar serves as “the ur-text of the mystical Jewish imagination,” explains Shaul Magid, the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein professor at Indiana University, where he teaches Jewish and religious studies. Magid calls it a “kind of ‘mystical Jewish Bible,’ refracting the Hebrew Bible through its particular cosmological lens,” which includes a complex schema of 10 dimensions, or sefirot, that constitute reality. Some have even compared the cosmology of the Zohar to the conception of the universe suggested by quantum physics, string theory in particular.

Again, read the whole article.

For background on the Zohar and on Daniel Matt's translation of it, start here (cf. here) and follow the many, many links. Or run the term "Zohar Watch" through the blog search engine.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Dyed textiles from Solomonic-era Timna

ARCHAEOLOGY: ARCHEOLOGISTS FIND EVIDENCE OF PLANT DYES FOR CLOTHING DATING TO SOLOMON. Joint study concludes 3,000-year-old dyed textiles found in Timna Valley used by ‘fashion elite’ (Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post).

According to the authority, the excavations, directed by [Dr. Erez] Ben-Yosef, recovered dozens of fragments of 3,000-year-old textiles, which were preserved due to the region’s extremely arid climatic conditions.

“The textiles date to King Solomon’s reign, in the Iron Age [11th-10th centuries BCE]*, and some are decorated with a red-and-blue bands pattern,” he said. “These are the earliest examples to have been found in the country and in the Levant [the eastern Mediterranean] of the remains of plant-based dyes.”

I am keeping an eye on the Timna Valley excavation. It is one of the few sites in Israel that has a dry enough climate to preserve organic remains for 3,000 years. So far they have found animal dung and textiles. The textiles are fragmentary, but survive well enough to preserve some of the colored dye on the fabric. This is an environment in which inscribed papyrus documents and parchment scrolls could conceivably survive. They haven't found any inscribed materials yet, but it is possible they are there. Keep digging!

Background here, here, and here.

*The second bracketed phrase is in the original paragraph.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The Testament of Abraham - introductory matters

READING ACTS: What is the “Testament of Abraham”? (Phil Long). Last year I commented on the Testament of Abraham with reference to a post in Phil's series on Romans. I have nothing to add here.

I have been following Phil Long's blog series on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha here and links. Lately he has been posting on the Testamentary literature. Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Remembering Nahum Sarna (1923 – 2005)

HIS YAHRZEIT WAS 16 SIVAN (10 JUNE): Nahum M. Sarna (TheTorah.com).

A Biography by Prof. Marc Zvi Brettler and Eulogy (delivered at the funeral) by Prof. Lawrence Schiffman.

I noted his passing in 2005 here, here, here, and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Digital language database job

RELIGION PROF: Digital Humanist Wanted. James McGrath shares a job announcement. If you are good at digital language research, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic, and if you also want to live in Vienna, this could be the job for you.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

T. Job: executive summary

READING ACTS: The Testament of Job. A chapter-by-chapter summary.

For past posts in Phil Long's blog series on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, see here and links. He has been posting on Testaments recently. Yesterday's post was the first on the Testament of Job. Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Latest on Emek Shaveh's tunnel petition

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: LEFT-WING NGO PETITIONS HIGH COURT TO HALT WESTERN WALL TUNNEL EXCAVATIONS. ‘According to law, a ministerial committee must convene and decide whether to approve the archaeological excavations carried out in the tunnel,’ says Emek Shaveh (Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post). I have been following Emek Shaveh's litigation about the Western Wall tunnel excavation for some time. The details are technical and I'm not sure I follow all of them.

Background to the story is here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Reactions to suspension of Western Wall plan

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Some critics of Western Wall plan still unhappy after freeze. Archaeologist says expansion of pluralistic prayer site may still harm antiquities; feminist religious activist who opposed agreement finds little joy in reversal (Melanie Lidman, Times of Israel).

The government decision to suspend a plan creating a pluralistic prayer space at the Western Wall brought little satisfaction to two non-Orthodox groups that opposed the original proposal: archaeologists and religious activists who had sought greater gains than the compromise afforded.

On Sunday, the government suspended a plan it had previously approved for a pluralistic prayer area, following calls by Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition allies to scrap the deal. The plan would have seen the establishment of a properly prepared pavilion for pluralistic prayer — as opposed to current temporary arrangements — under joint oversight involving representatives of all major streams of Judaism.

The government has said despite the deals being canceled, it will continue to expand the prayer space at Robinson’s Arch south of the main Western Wall plaza, leading to continued concerns over archaeological damage to antiquities there.

[...]

I have been following this controversy for some time, with particular attention to the concerns of archaeologists. Background here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Review of Maltominiand Slattery (eds.), Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume LXXXII

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: N. Gonis, F. Maltomini, W. B. Henry, S. Slattery, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume LXXXII [Nos. 5290 - 5319]. Edited with Translations and Notes. Graeco-Roman memoirs, 103. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2016. Pp. xii, 176; 12 p. of plates. ISBN 9780856982309. £85.00. Reviewed by Michael Zellmann-Rohrer, Oxford (michael.zellmann-rohrer@classics.ox.ac.uk).

This new volume includes fragments of Classical works, some new Greek fragments of Jannes and Jambres, a fragment of Philo, some new Greek magical papyri, and more.

Another new manuscript of Jannes and Jambres was noted here. Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.

The Testament of Job

READING ACTS: What is the “Testament of Job”? (Phil Long). I cannot rule out that the Testament of Job is a first-century Jewish work, but I do not assume that it is. It makes good sense as a late-antique Christian work. That is the first social context in which we find it.

The Testament of Job was composed in Greek. A fragmentary fourth-century Coptic manuscript is our earliest witness to it. We have published a translation by Gesa Schenke ("The Testament of Job: Coptic Fragments") in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (Ed. Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov; Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 160-175. So you should buy this book.

For Phil Long's blog series on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha start here and follow the links. He is currently working through the Testaments and he just finished the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.

Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz z'l'

SAD NEWS: Artscroll Founder Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz Dead at 73 (David Israel, The Jewish Press).

Rabbi Zlotowitz et al’s most ambitious endeavor was the publication of the Schottenstein English Edition of the Talmud. This monumental, 73-volume work was published one tractate at a time, and completed in 2005 after fifteen years of painstaking labor. The worldwide impact of the Schottenstein Talmud has been unprecedented, offering thousands of Jews access to the Talmud.

May his memory be for a blessing.

For more on the ArtScroll/Schottenstein Talmud, start here and follow the links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.

More Assyrian land woes in Turkey

ASSYRIAN (MODERN SYRIAC) WATCH: Turkey Seizes Assyrian Monastery Property (Ygar Gültekin, http://www.agos.com.tr via AINA).

After Mardin became a Metropolitan Municipality, its villages were officially turned into neighbourhoods as per the law and attached to the provincial administration. Following the legislative amendment introduced in late 2012, the Governorate of Mardin established a liquidation committee. The Liquidation Committee started to redistribute in the city, the property of institutions whose legal entity had expired. The transfer and liquidation procedures are still ongoing.

In 2016, the Transfer, Liquidation and Redistribution Committee of Mardin Governorate transferred to primarily the Treasury as well as other relevant public institutions numerous churches, monasteries, cemeteries and other assets of the Syriac community in the districts of Mardin. The Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation appealed to the decision yet the liquidation committee rejected their appeal last May. The churches, monasteries and cemeteries whose ownerships were given to the Treasury were then transferred to the Diyanet.

Inquiries of the Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation revealed that dozens of churches and monasteries had been transferred to the Treasury first and then allocated to the Diyanet. And the cemeteries have been transferred to the Metropolitan Municipality of Mardin. The maintenance of some of the churches and monasteries are currently being provided by the Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation and they are opened to worship on certain days. Similarly, the cemeteries are still actively used by the Syriac community who visits them and performs burial procedures. The Syriacs have appealed to the Court for the cancellation of the decision.

[...]

Oh dear. I had thought that the complications regarding the lands associated with the Mor Gabriel Monastery (whose claim on them reportedly goes back many centuries) had all been resolved. I guess there is more to be sorted out.

The Turkish Government will want to take a close look at this one. They will want to ensure that everything proceeds transparently and according to the law and natural justice. The world, including the ECHR, is watching.

Background on this story is here and many links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.

The SBL Handbook of Style on MOTP

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Citing Text Collections 4: MOTP. The SBL Handbook of Style Blog tells you how to cite Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume one (ed. Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov; Eerdmans 2013). Their abbreviation is different from the one we use in the volume. We'll have to sort that out in volume two.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.

Trolls threaten a Classics professor

THIS IS APPALLING: UI prof's post on ancient statues, white supremacists elicits death threats. PaleoJudaica has mentioned Professor Sarah Bond's work from time to time. I am sorry to hear that this has happened to her.

Idiot trolls who threaten people are a growing plague on the internet. They come from all sides and they obstruct discussion of important topics. Everyone should condemn, shun, despise, and ridicule them.

Seidman on Cynthia Baker’s "Jew"

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS:
Jewish Identity as a Psychic Wound? Naomi Seidman on Cynthia Baker’s Jew. This is the fifth essay in Marginalia's Forum on Cynthia Baker’s book Jew.

This essay doesn't have anything particular to do with ancient Judaism, but I note it for the sake of completeness. For past essays in the series and more information about the forum, see here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.

T. Benjamin: Being good.

READING ACTS: Testament of Benjamin.

For Phil Long's blog series on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha start here and follow the links. His current series on the Greek Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs has come to Benjamin, who is number twelve. Now Phil is off to Zambia for a pastors' Bible conference. But his series on the OTP Testaments will continue while he is away.

Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.

Menorah engravings at Hierapolis

HOLY LAND PHOTOS' BLOG: Jewish Presence at Hierapolis (Menorahs) Carl Rasmussen has photos of ancient menorah engravings on tombs in Hieropolis (cf. Colossians 4:12-13).

For past PaleoJudaica posts on ancient menorahs and representations of menorahs, see here, here, and here and follow the many links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.

Holtz, Die Nichtigkeit des Menschen und die Übermacht Gottes

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: GUDRUN HOLTZ, Die Nichtigkeit des Menschen und die Übermacht Gottes Studien zur Gottes- und Selbsterkenntnis bei Paulus, Philo und in der Stoa. [Human Nothingness and the Supremacy of God. Studies on Divine and Self Knowledge in Paul, Philo and the Stoa.]. 2017. XIV, 471 pages. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 377.

Published in German.
Regard for the self has recently been rediscovered as one of the central themes of Hellenistic philosophy. Taking the Jewish theologian Philo of Alexandria and the Apostle Paul as her main examples, Gudrun Holtz shows how theological anthropology was developed in contrast to contemporary philosophical conceptions of the self, particularly to the Stoa. The common core of the theological-anthropological conception of both authors can be captured in the phrase “not of people, but of God”. The Pauline doctrine of justification proves itself to be a reification of this shared essence. Other than has been repeatedly assumed lately, the

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.

Tolan et al. (eds.), Religious Minorities in Christian, Jewish and Muslim Law

NEW BOOK FROM BREPOLS: Religious Minorities in Christian, Jewish and Muslim Law (5th - 15th centuries). J. V. Tolan, C. Nemo-Pekelman, N. Berend, Y. Masset (eds.).

The fruit of a sustained and close collaboration between historians, linguists and jurists working on the Christian, Muslim and Jewish societies of the Middle Ages, this book explores the theme of religious coexistence (and the problems it poses) from a resolutely comparative perspective. The authors concentrate on a key aspect of this coexistence: the legal status attributed to Jews and Muslims in Christendom and to dhimmīs in Islamic lands. What are the similarities and differences, from the point of view of the law, between the indigenous religious minority and the foreigner? What specific treatments and procedures in the courtroom were reserved for plaintiffs, defendants or witnesses belonging to religious minorities? What role did the law play in the segregation of religious groups? In limiting, combating, or on the contrary justifying violence against them? Through these questions, and through the innovative comparative method applied to them, this book offers a fresh new synthesis to these questions and a spur to new research.

I can't find anything in the TOC that deals with anything as early as the fifth century. The title does say that, though, so I assume such matters come up somewhere.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.

A fourth review of Glinert, The Story of Hebrew

BOOK REVIEW: The story of Hebrew. A look at Lewis Glinert’s wonderful new book (CURT LEVIANT, The Jewish Standard).

Every page of “The Story of Hebrew” is packed with information about the language, from its beginnings through post-1948 Israel. In addition to this longitudinal approach, Lewis Glinert, a professor of Hebrew and linguistics at Dartmouth, also approaches his subject laterally, focusing on various lands where Jewish or Hebrew life and culture thrived, including early Palestine, Babylonia, North Africa, Spain, Europe, Russia, the United States, and Israel.

[...]

Earlier reviews of the book have been noted here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and its world.