Thursday, November 09, 2017

Zurawski and Boccaccini (eds.), Second Temple Jewish “Paideia” in Context

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER: Second Temple Jewish “Paideia” in Context. Ed. by Zurawski, Jason M. / Boccaccini, Gabriele. Series: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 228.
Aims and Scope
Despite the impressive strides made in the past century in the understanding of Second Temple Jewish history and the strong scholarly interest in paideia within ancient Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, and late antique Christian cultures, the nature of Jewish paideia during the period has, until recently, received surprisingly little attention. The essays collected here were first offered for discussion at the Fifth Enoch Seminar Nangeroni Meeting, held in Naples, Italy, from June 30 – July 4, 2015, the purpose of which was to gain greater insight into the diversity of views of Jewish education during the period, both in Judea and Diaspora communities, by viewing them in light of their contemporary Greco-Roman backgrounds and Ancient Near Eastern influences. Together, they represent the broad array of approaches and specialties required to comprehend this complex and multi-faceted subject, and they demonstrate the fundamental importance of the topic for a fuller understanding of the period. The volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the history and culture of the Jewish people during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, ancient education, and Greek and Roman history.

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

Wednesday, November 08, 2017

More on Christians in the late-antique Galilee

ARCHAEOLOGY: 1,600-year-old church mosaic puzzles out key role of women in early Christianity. Female donor memorialized in one of seven Greek inscriptions found recently in Byzantine village churches in the Galilee (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).
A newly uncovered mosaic in the western Galilee speaks to the relatively high status of women in the early Church. Dating to the 5th century, a Greek-language inscription memorializes one “Sausann” (or Shoshana) as a donor for the construction of a village church. It is one of seven inscriptions — including a massive five-meter long text — which were found in three Byzantine churches during this summer’s excavations by Kinneret College archaeologist Mordechai Aviam and historian Jacob Ashkenazi.

Unusual in a patriarchal society, the donor Sausann is credited in the inscription independently of any spouse or male guardian. This Sausann is thought to have been a woman of some standing, perhaps following in the footsteps of her presumed namesake, the female disciple Susannah, who was among the women named in Luke 8:3 who provided for Jesus “out of their resources.”

[...]
I noted another article on these finds a few days ago here. But this article has some more details and, unlike the Haaretz premium article, it will not vanish behind a subscription wall.

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

Salvage archaeology in a West Bank military-fire zone

ARCHAEOLOGY: IDF combat soldiers make exciting archaeological discovery in West Bank military fire zone. Over the past nine days, hundreds of soldiers from the IDF's elite 'Duvdevan' unit participated in archeological excavations in a military fire zone in the West Bank. During their excavations, the soldiers uncovered an ancient and magnificent structure that was likely served as a palace during the Byzantine period (Jerusalem online). The site is called Horkania. The article reports that the salvage operation was undertaken because of heavy looting at the site.

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Günzburg Hebrew Collection going online

DIGITIZATION: Soon We'll Be Able to Look at a Treasure That the Russians Have Kept From Israel for 100 Years. The Günzburg collection contains over 14,000 items, including thousands of rare Hebrew books, as well as manuscripts in Hebrew and many other languages (Ofer Aderet, Haaretz).
The Günzburg Collection, one of the most important collections of Jewish books and manuscripts in the world, which is kept in the Russian State Library in Moscow, will be digitized and made accessible to the general public by the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

On Tuesday, a historic agreement will be signed between the National Library and its counterpart in Moscow. The agreement is a significant milestone in the contacts between the two institutions, which began exactly 100 years ago, when the National Library was still the Beit Hasfarim Haleumi.


[...]

The Günzburg collection is a rich and unique collection of books and manuscripts that contains over 14,000 items, including thousands of rare Hebrew books, as well as manuscripts in Hebrew and many other languages. It includes medieval works in science, philosophy and Jewish studies, midrashim, copies of the writings of Maimonides and the Rashba (Rabbi Shlomo ibn Aderet), biblical commentaries, books of Hebrew grammar and halakha (religious law), medieval poetry, Kabbalistic and medical texts.

[...]

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

Pajunen and Penner (eds.), Functions of Psalms and Prayers in the Late Second Temple Period

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER: Functions of Psalms and Prayers in the Late Second Temple Period.. Ed. by Pajunen, Mika S. / Penner, Jeremy. Series: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 486.
Aims and Scope
When thinking about psalms and prayers in the Second Temple period, the Masoretic Psalter and its reception is often given priority because of modern academic or theological interests. This emphasis tends to skew our understanding of the corpus we call psalms and prayers and often dampens or mutes the lived context within which these texts were composed and used. This volume is comprised of a collection of articles that explore the diverse settings in which psalms and prayers were used and circulated in the late Second Temple period.

The book includes essays by experts in the Hebrew bible, the Dead Sea scrolls, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and the New Testament, in which a wide variety of topics, approaches, and methods both old and new are utilized to explore the many functions of psalms and prayers in the late Second Temple period. Included in this volume are essays examining how psalms were read as prophecy, as history, as liturgy, and as literature. A variety methodologies are employed, and include the use of cognitive sciences and poetics, linguistic theory, psychology, redaction criticism, and literary theory.

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Tuesday, November 07, 2017

The Talmud, the Messiah, and the World to Come

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Peeking Into the World to Come. In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ Talmudic rabbis delve into the practical questions around the Jewish afterlife. Like: will it be here on Earth? Will the Messiah be there, or will we be led there by his arrival? And what does redemption look like? Also, is the food kosher there?
As we saw last week, the final chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin is concerned with the World to Come. But what exactly is the World to Come, olam haba? Is it heaven, or the afterlife, or the end of the world, or the resurrection of the dead, or the messianic era? Will we all get to see it, or does it require extraordinary spiritual merit? These are the kinds of questions the rabbis ask in Chapter 11 of Sanhedrin. At the center of their speculations is the figure of the Messiah, whom the rabbis refer to simply as the Son of David, ben David, since he will be a descendant of the biblical king. At some point in the future, the rabbis are sure, the Messiah will come to redeem the Jewish people. But what exactly will this involve, and when is it going to happen?

[...]
Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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

Some useful links

THE BIBLICAL REVIEW BLOG: Weekly Digest (October 27, 2017). William Brown has collected some useful links, including to articles on Northwest Semitic epigraphy and a bibliography for ancient Jewish magic, posted on Academia.edu.

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Festschrift for Ross Shepard Kraemer

NEW BOOK FROM THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:
A Most Reliable Witness: Essays in Honor of Ross Shepard Kraemer
Susan Ashbrook Harvey (Editor), Nathaniel Desrosiers (Editor), Shira L. Lander (Editor), Jacqueline Pastis (Editor), Daniel Ullucci (Editor)

ISBN 9781930675940
Status Available
Price: $59.95
Binding Hardback
Publication Date October 2015
Pages 324

Celebrate a trailblazer in the areas of women and religion, Jews and Judaism, and earliest Christianity in the ancient Mediterranean

Ross Kraemer is Professor Emerita in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. This volume of essays, conceived and produced by students, colleagues, and friends bears witness to the breadth of her own scholarly interests. Contributors include Theodore A. Bergren, Debra Bucher, Lynn Cohick, Mary Rose D’Angelo, Nathaniel P. DesRosiers, Robert Doran, Jennifer Eyl, Paula Fredriksen, John G. Gager, Maxine Grossman, Kim Haines-Eitzen, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Jordan Kraemer, Robert A. Kraft, Shira L. Lander, Amy-Jill Levine, Susan Marks, E. Ann Matter, Renee Levine Melammed, Susan Niditch, Elaine Pagels, Adele Reinhartz, Jordan Rosenblum, Sarah Schwarz, Karen B. Stern, Stanley K. Stowers, Daniel Ullucci, Arthur Urbano, Heidi Wendt, and Benjamin G. Wright.

Features:
  • Articles that examine both ancient and modern texts in cross-cultural and trans-historical perspective
  • Twenty-eight original essays on ancient Judaism, Christianity, and women in the Greco-Roman world
Congratulations to Professor Kraemer on this well-deserved honor.

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A Greek-Aramaic-Middle Persian text from the Cairo Geniza

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Trilingual Greek-Aramaic-Middle Persian Pharmaceutical Lexical List. This is a very early (9th-10th century) text from the Cairo Geniza. It is published in an article by Christa Müller-Kessler in the journal Le Muséon. It looks as though you need a paid subscription to access the whole article. I can't tell for sure, because I have a subscription automatically through the University of St. Andrews.

For many, many past posts on the Cairo Geniza, start here and follow the links.

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Monday, November 06, 2017

Late-antique chicken-shaped relic from the Sea of Galilee

DISCOVERY: Woman Goes Swimming in the Kinneret, Stumbles on Priceless 1,500-Year-Old Relic. The chicken-shaped object was probably used in early Christian funerary rituals (Liel Leibovitz, Tablet Magazine). Click through to the Hebrew article for some better photos of the object.

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Lion helmet from the Battle of the Egadi Islands

PUNIC WATCH: Diving Archaeologists Find Unique Lion Helmet From Punic Wars 2,300 Years Ago. Carthage fought the Roman Navy with ships captured from them in previous battle, but lost anyway, which explains why the Sicilian seafloor is littered with remains of ships built by the side that won (Philippe Bohstrom, Haaretz).
A unique bronze helmet discovered in the deep by marine archaeologists off the Sicilian coast, which they have dated to a sea battle of 241 B.C.E. may have been a precursor of the lion-themed helmets used by Rome's Praetorian Guards, the personal bodyguards of the Roman emperors.

The corps of the Praetorian Guards were established more than two centuries after that battle, by Emperor Augustus. Praetorian helmets also sported a lion-shaped relief, and were sometimes adorned with real lion skin.

The helmet's dating is based, among other things, on pottery jars and other debris discovered on the sea floor at the site.

Recovered from the site of the Battle of the Egadi Islands (Aegadian islands), northwest of Sicily, the helmet is a Montefortino, a Celtic style-helmet that had been worn across Europe, also popularly known as a "Roman helmet". These are easily identified: they look like half a watermelon with a knob on top and cheek flaps down the sides that tie at the chin. But this one had a difference: the lion decoration.

[...]

Cross-file under Marine Archaeology.

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

Terahertz imaging

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Examining Hidden Text in a New Light (Kendra Redmond, Physics Central).

Regular readers will be familiar with the X-ray technology used to read the Ein Gedi Leviticus scroll (on which more here and links). But the new terahertz imaging technology also sounds promising. It was recently used in an experiment to read the text on nine pages of stacked paper.
This technique is still being refined, but the team anticipates that it could be applied to ancient books too fragile to open and other artifacts as well. As technology improves so that we can measure smaller and smaller differences in the arrival time of terahertz pulses, the quality of the images should get better and better. This work was published in September 2016 in the journal Nature Communications.

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Lim (ed.), When Texts Are Canonized

NEW BOOK FROM THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:
When Texts Are Canonized
(Timothy H. Lim [Editor]).
ISBN 9781946527004
Status Available
Price: $29.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date April 2017
Pages 200

How did canonization take place, and what difference does it make?

Essays in this collection probe the canonical process: Why were certain books, but not others, included in the canon? What criteria were used to select the books of the canon? Was canonization a divine fiat or human act? What was the nature of the authority of the laws and narratives of the Torah? How did prophecy come to be included in the canon? Others reflect on the consequences of canonization: What are the effects in elevating certain writings to the status of “Holy Scriptures”? What happens when a text is included in an official list? What theological and hermeneutical questions are at stake in the fact of the canon? Should the canon be unsealed or reopened to include other writings?

Features:
  • Essays that contribute to our understanding of the complex processes of canonization
  • Exploration of early concepts of canonicity
  • Discussion of reopening the New Testament canon

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

Sunday, November 05, 2017

Christians in the late-antique Galilee

ARCHAEOLOGY: Pagans in Northern, late-Roman Palestine Embraced Christianity Early, Archaeologists Say. By the fifth century, some Galilean villages had at least one church with elaborate mosaics and a bishop, and at least one had a female donor (Nir Hasson and Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).
Excavations in western Galilee villages dating to about 1,600 years ago show that Christianity won over the pagan locals very fast, and strongly, archaeologists say.

A little more than a century after the Roman Empire converted from paganism to Christianity, each of the villages in the western Galilee explored so far had at least one church and its own bishop, excavator Mordechai Aviam told Haaretz.

Aviam and Jacob Ashkenazi, both of Kinneret College, uncovered a previously unknown church. That and two churches discovered earlier all had elaborate mosaic floors on which the two researchers found seven new inscriptions.

[...]
Many interesting finds.

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

Hawass on that "void" in the Great Pyramid

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Egypt archaeologist criticizes pyramid void ‘discovery.’ Zahi Hawass, who heads the ScanPyramids science committee overseeing the project, says the find is not new (AFP). I noted a possibly related story a couple of years ago here.

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

Foreskin as defect?

DR. DAVID BERNAT: Circumcision: Interpreting the Foreskin as a Defect (TheTorah.com).
Genesis 17 states that circumcision will be a sign of the covenant, but is silent about the significance of the act itself. Some Jewish interpreters filled this gap by constructing orlah, possession of a foreskin, as a physical defect or disability, and circumcision as an act of healing or perfection.

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“Kadesh Shalem”

ART EXHIBITION: BETWEEN THE HOLY AND THE MYTHOLOGY. This year’s Bezalel prize winner for photography, Barak Rubin, presents his solo show that explores the creation of myths (SARAH LEVI, Jerusalem Post).
Barak Rubin, a Tel Aviv-based artist and photographer, is the latest recipient of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design’s prize for photography.

The prize is awarded annually and the winner receives a NIS 12,000 grant plus a solo show held in Bezalel’s photography department gallery.

Using the First Temple as his inspiration, Rubin’s show, “Kadesh Shalem,” which opened last week, is a part of an ongoing body of work that explores the creation of myths.

In this work, he delves into his own Jewish history and identity and attempts to take an unconventional and unbiased look at the artifacts of a time and place that no longer exists, and examines the remnants in a historical, archeological and religious framework.

[...]

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

Saturday, November 04, 2017

Goodman, A History of Judaism

NEW BOOK FROM ALLEN LANE: A history of Judaism: Charting our history, texts — and disputes (Simon Rocker, The Jewish Chronicle).
In the first century BCE, the Hasmonean King of Judea, Alexander Jannaeus was conducting sacrifices in the Temple of Jerusalem during Succot.

But some of his subjects were less than convinced about his High Priestly credentials and they conveyed disapproval in a novel form of protest: they pelted him with etrogs.

Judaism has “a rich history of rifts,” observes Professor Martin Goodman in A History of Judaism, published this week. But while there may have been controversy and confrontation down the ages, that is not the central theme of his 650-page book.

“It is easy to write a story of conflicts,” says the 64-year-old president of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, “but that would be terribly misleading”.

[...]

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Briquel Chatonnet et Debié, Le Monde syriaque

NEW BOOK FROM LES BELLES LETTRES, PARIS:
FRANÇOISE BRIQUEL CHATONNET, MURIEL DEBIÉ
Le Monde syriaque

Sur les routes d'un christianisme ignoré


ACHETER 25,50 €
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PRÉSENTATION

Le syriaque a été une langue de culture majeure en Syrie-Mésopotamie du IIe au XIIIe siècle de l’ère chrétienne. Fruit des contacts et du métissage à la frontière des Empires romain et parthe, cette forme d’araméen n’était la langue ni d’un État ni d’un peuple particulier. Mais avec la christianisation, le syriaque a connu un développement exceptionnel. Il s’est répandu de la Méditerranée à l’Asie orientale et constitue aujourd’hui encore la langue classique, littéraire et religieuse de plusieurs Églises orientales.

Le syriaque est à côté du latin et du grec la troisième composante du christianisme ancien, ancrée dans l’hellénisme mais également descendante de l’antiquité proche-orientale et sémitique. Dès les premiers siècles, dans un mouvement symétrique à celui de la tradition chrétienne gréco-latine vers l’ouest, le christianisme syriaque s’est développé vers l’est, jusqu’en Inde et en Chine. Il a aussi été la branche du christianisme la plus en contact avec l’islam au sein duquel il a continué à vivre.

Avec plus de 100 illustrations, 11 cartes en couleurs, une chronologie et de nombreux textes des différentes époques cités en encarts, cet ouvrage sans précédent invite à la découverte de plus de 2000 ans d’histoire et de culture syriaques.
Follow the link for TOC etc. and ordering information. And some additional information is here.

Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

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Fraade Festschrift

NEW BOOK FROM VANDENHOECK AND RUPRECHT: Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Tzvi Novick, Christine Hayes (Ed.). The Faces of Torah. Studies in the Texts and Contexts of Ancient Judaism in Honor of Steven Fraade.
1. Edition 2017
660 pages
ISBN 978-3-525-55254-4
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Journal of Ancient Judaism. Supplements. - Band 022

This volume is a festschrift in honor of Steven Fraade, the Mark Taper Professor of the History of Judaism at Yale University. The contributions to the volume, written by colleagues and former students of Professor Fraade, reflect many of his scholarly interests. The scholarly credentials of the contributors are exceedingly high. The volume is divided into three sections, one on Second Temple literature and its afterlife, a second on rabbinic literature and rabbinic history, and a third on prayer and the ancient synagogue.Contributors are Alan Applebaum, Joshua Burns , Elizabeth Shanks Alexander , Chaya Halberstam , John J. Collins, Marc Bregman, Aharon Shemesh, Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Vered Noam, Robert Brody, Albert Baumgarten, Marc Hirshman, Moshe Bar-Asher, Aaron Amit, Yose Yahalom, Lee Levine, Jan Joosten, Daniel Boyarin, Charlotte Hempel, David Stern, Beth Berkowitz, Azzan Yadin, Joshua Levinson, Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal, Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Tzvi Novick, Devora Diamant, Richard Kalmin, Carol Bakhos, Judith Hauptman, Jeff Rubenstein, Martha Himmelfarb, Stuart Miller, Esther Chazon, James Kugel, Chaim Milikowsky, Maren Niehoff, Peter Schaefer, and Adiel Schremer.

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Profile of a Phoenician scholar

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Ancient histories and new arrivals (Caroline Maas, Wofford Old Gold and Black).
Dr. Helen Dixon is one of around five Ancient Phoenician scholars in America. She is also the newest addition to Wofford’s religion department.

[...]
Dr. Dixon's Academia.edu page is here.

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

Friday, November 03, 2017

Bauckham book and book-launch lecture

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: RICHARD BAUCKHAM, The Christian World Around the New Testament Collected Essays II. [Die Christliche Welt und das Neue Testament. Gesammelte Aufsätze II.] 2017. X, 757 pages. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 386, 259,00 €, cloth, ISBN 978-3-16-153305-1.
Published in English.
Most of these thirty-one essays by Richard Bauckham, a well-known New Testament scholar, were first published between 1979 and 2015 in journals and multi-authored volumes. Two are previously unpublished and one has not been published in English before. They range widely over early Christianity and early Christian literature in both the New Testament period and the early patristic period, reflecting the author's conviction that the historical study of early Christianity should not isolate the New Testament literature from other early Christian sources, such as the apostolic fathers and the Christian apocryphal literature. Some of the essays develop further the themes of the author's books on aspects of the Gospels, such as the intended audiences of the Gospels, the way in which Gospel traditions were transmitted, the role of the eyewitnesses in the origins of the Gospels, the importance of Papias's evidence about Gospel traditions, and the relationship between canonical and Gnostic Gospels. Some of the essays relate to important persons, such as Peter, Barnabas, Paul and James. These include a full investigation of the evidence for the martyrdom of Peter and an attempt to locate the estate of Publius where Paul stayed on Malta. There are studies of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day in both the New Testament and patristic periods. There are studies that survey most of the main categories of apocryphal Christian literature, including apocryphal Gospels and Acts, and with a special focus on the non-canonical apocalypses, such as the Apocalypse of Peter and the Latin Vision of Ezra.
It happens that Professor Bauckham retired from his position at the University of St. Andrews ten years ago this week. And he is back in St. Andrews today. This afternoon he is giving a lecture on "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses Ten Years Later." This is to launch the new edition of his book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, which was also originally published ten years ago. I'm looking forward very much to his lecture.

UPDATE: Oh, yes, I also meant to link to this description of Richard's forthcoming book on Magdala.

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Nahash the Ammonite in the DSS

TEXTUAL VARIANT: The Most Important Dead Sea Text: A Lost Paragraph From the Book of Samuel (Mitchell First, Jewish Link of New Jersey).

I wouldn't necessarily consider this fragment the most important Dead Sea text, but it is an interesting one. Most scholars seem to regard it as more original that what we have in the Masoretic Text. I did once hear a paper arguing that it is secondary, but I don't know whether that was ever published.

Last year I noted another essay by Mr. First in which he mentioned this fragment, but this essay goes into more detail.

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Isaac’s Divine Conception?

DR. RABBI SAMUEL Z. GLASER: Isaac’s Divine Conception? (TheTorah.com).
“The Lord visited Sarah” (Gen 21:1) – When God (and his angels) appears to Abraham to announce the birth of Isaac, the text implies a hidden visit to Sarah. Does this mean, as both Philo and Paul claim, that Isaac was born from a divine conception?

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Dever, Beyond the Texts

THE ASOR BLOG: Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah. William Dever introduces his new book of the same title.
Countless books have been written about ancient Israel. But this work is the first mainstream history of ancient Israel to be published in English in 40 years. It also differs from previous scholarship by attempting to prove an alternative, archaeological based history, or as the title has it, a “portrait.” I am a veteran of more than 50 years of fieldwork and research in the archaeology of Israel, with hundreds of publications. Even so, I believe that a portrait is the best that I, or anyone, can offer.

The distinguishing feature of this book is the employment of a rich array of archaeological data on ancient Israel and her neighbors as the primary evidence for illustrating the origins, the settlement horizon, and the monarchy, ca. 1300-586 BCE. In each chapter the biblical texts are brought into the picture only secondarily, and then only to compare and contrast their idealistic narratives with the “real-life” portrait that archaeology now provides.

[...]

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

Thursday, November 02, 2017

Rollston again on the Jerusalem Papyrus

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The King of Judah, Jars of Wine, and the City of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Papyrus and the forged words on it (Christopher Rollston).
Ultimately, the case against the Jerusalem Papyrus is pretty strong. To be sure, there are, and will continue to be, people who believe that it’s ancient. But for my money, I think that it’s of recent vintage. And the modern forger is pretty good at his craft, but not perfect. And, as I mentioned, I suspect that the forger of this inscription is studying up on construct forms right now.
If Professor Rollston thinks the Jerusalem Papyrus is a forgery, that possibility needs to be taken very seriously. For concerns he raised about it last year, see here and here.

For past PaleoJudaica posts on the Jerusalem Papyrus, see here and here and links.

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

Orlov, "The Greatest Mirror," now out

NEW BOOK FROM SUNY PRESS:
The Greatest Mirror
Heavenly Counterparts in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha


Andrei A. Orlov - Author
Price: $95.00
Hardcover - 318 pages
Release Date: November 2017
ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-1-4384-6691-0

Summary

A wide-ranging analysis of heavenly twin imagery in early Jewish extrabiblical texts.

The idea of a heavenly double—an angelic twin of an earthbound human—can be found in Christian, Manichaean, Islamic, and Kabbalistic traditions. Scholars have long traced the lineage of these ideas to Greco-Roman and Iranian sources. In The Greatest Mirror, Andrei A. Orlov shows that heavenly twin imagery drew in large part from early Jewish writings. The Jewish pseudepigrapha—books from the Second Temple period that were attributed to biblical figures but excluded from the Hebrew Bible—contain accounts of heavenly twins in the form of spirits, images, faces, children, mirrors, and angels of the Presence. Orlov provides a comprehensive analysis of these traditions in their full historical and interpretive complexity. He focuses on heavenly alter egos of Enoch, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, and Aseneth in often neglected books, including Animal Apocalypse, Book of the Watchers, 2 Enoch, Ladder of Jacob, and Joseph and Aseneth, some of which are preserved solely in the Slavonic language.
Follow the link for ordering information, TOC, and further particulars.

I noted the book as forthcoming back in February. Follow the links there for related posts.

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Biblical Studies Carnival 10/17

THE BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL FOR OCTOBER 2017 has been posted by Doug Chaplin. PaleoJudaica is well represented this month.

I should mention that October's most popular PaleoJudaica post (by far) is not included. That one was Metal codices seized in Turkey on 6 October. So far it has received over 1000 individual views.

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

The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge

IN THE MAIL:
The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge (Crossway, 2017)
The publishers have kindly sent me a complimentary, advance copy. The publication date is 15 November 2017. For more on the volume, see the The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge Blog.

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Wednesday, November 01, 2017

Schiffman on the DSS at 70

ANNIVERSARY ARTICLE: SEVENTY YEARS OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1956. After an initial flurry of excitement, the scrolls went into a period of quiet withdrawal (Lawrence Schiffman, Jerusalem Post).
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1956. After an initial flurry of excitement, the scrolls went into a period of quiet withdrawal. When I entered the field in the 1960s, only a few of the scrolls had been published. Those were the ones that were preserved in the Israel Museum that, in 1965, built a home for them known as the Shrine of the Book. A small number of the many texts discovered in the early 1950s while the West Bank was under Jordanian administration had also subsequently appeared. I was fascinated by the study of the scrolls, a then little-known and under-appreciated group of documents.

Since then, everything has changed. The full corpus of materials found at Qumran has been released. Anyone can consult the full set of volumes, with English translations, or get digital images online of all the scrolls. If you want to see the scrolls in person without traveling to Israel, look out for an exhibit coming soon to your neighborhood. The enormous number of visitors to these exhibits throughout the world and the tremendous public interest testify to the way in which the Dead Sea Scrolls have become part of our public culture.

[...]
This long article is a good summary of the history of the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls up to their full public release in 1991. It also gives a good overview of the current scholarly understanding of them. My one criticism is that the mention of John Strugnell's infamous Haaretz interview in 1990 should have added that he suffered from bipolar disorder and that he gave the interview during a manic episode. I have commented at greater length here.

Some other PaleoJudaica posts possibly relevant to the article are collected here. A couple of other recent articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls at 70 were noted here and here.

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

Pregnant woman's body excavated at Timna

ARCHAEOLOGY: Archaeologists Startled to Find Remains of Pregnant Woman Buried in King Solomon’s Mines. Women hadn't been expected to make the arduous trek to the copper mine in the heart of the desert, but this one did, and she must have been important (Ariel David, Haaretz).

This story is a little early for PaleoJudaica, but I've been keeping a close eye on the Timna Valley excavation, for reasons explained here and links.

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

The Akeda: history of interpretation

DR. DEVORAH SCHOENFELD: Akedah: How Jews and Christians Explained Abraham’s Faith (TheTorah.com).
God promised Abraham that Isaac would be his heir, yet God asked Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. What did Abraham believe that allowed him to reconcile this divine contradiction?
A nice overview of the pre-critical history of interpretation of one of the most theologically difficult passages in the Bible.

A couple of past PaleoJudaica posts on the Aqedah are here and here.

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

An ancient Jewish art cabaret. Really.

PERFORMANCE ART (OR SOMETHING): LABA At The 14th Street Y presents DRUNK, A Night Of Art, Drinking, And Torah, 11/18 (Broadway World News Desk).
LABA, the international incubator of Jewish art and culture, presents DRUNK, its annual wine-soaked celebration of new art inspired by ancient texts. The evening will feature readings and performances by LABA fellows and a five-course wine tasting. DRUNK is a unique way to experience Jewish culture - and did we mention wine? - in a cabaret setting.

[...]
I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't April 1st, but no, this appears to be a real thing. I hope they have a good time. Cross-file under Can't Make It Up.

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

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

The Talmud and heresy

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Talmud and the Thought Police. ‘Daf Yomi’: Do heretical Jewish thinkers have a say in the World to Come?
Still, the Mishna in Sanhedrin 90a makes clear that there are a handful of crimes so terrible that they can cause a person to forfeit his share in the World to Come. Significantly, these are not crimes against fellow human beings or infractions of Torah law; rather, they are what George Orwell called thought-crimes. Specifically, they involve dissent from what the rabbis regarded as the core doctrines of Judaism: “And these have no share in the World To Come: One who says, There is no resurrection of the dead derived from the Torah, and one who says, the Torah is not from Heaven, and an epikoros.” An epikoros is a mocker of religion, someone who denies honor to God and to the rabbis, God’s representatives. It’s not clear whether the truly culpable thing here is holding these heretical opinions or “saying” them aloud, trying win adherents for them. But in any case, the rabbis make clear that a person who believes these things is in some essential way not a Jew.
Incidentally, the debate about whether the doctrine of resurrection is found in the Torah (it isn't, although there have been many efforts to read it in) also comes up implicitly in a discussion between Jesus and the Sadducees in Mark 12:18-27 and parallels.

Also, as this essay goes on to note, Rabbi Akiva is reported to have classed reading "external literature," that is biblical apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, as heretical.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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

The origins of BAR

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: (Hershel Shanks).
In 1972 Hershel Shanks took a sabbatical from his legal practice in Washington, D.C. He and his family went to Jerusalem for a year. Once there, the Shanks family became part of a network of friends and colleagues who comprised some of the archaeological luminaries in the Holy Land at the time. That year proved to be the catalyst for the creation of the Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) and its flagship publication, Biblical Archaeology Review. Hershel reflects below on the birth, evolution and legacy of BAR.

[...]
This is an old essay: I linked to it back in 2009. But it seems worth reviving now as Hershel Shanks steps down as editor of Biblical Archaeology Review and Robert Cargill takes up the mantle.

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

Gallagher and Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity

NEW BOOK FROM OUP: New Book: The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity (John Meade , ETC Blog).
Our purpose for writing The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis is to return this evidence set to the prominence we believe it deserves in the conversation so that readers can rediscover its significance for the formation of the canon. To that end, after a substantial opening chapter in which we survey the early history (through 400 CE) of the canons of the Old and New Testament, we present the early canon lists in the original language (Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac) with a parallel English translation, notes, and further commentary. The lists of Athanasius, Jerome, Eusebius, Baba Batra (yes, we include the Jewish lists of Josephus, more of a discussion than a list, and Baba Batra) et al. are all finally available in one volume. We also include a chapter on select manuscripts of the first millennium. The book concludes with a major Appendix summarizing the evidence of reception for the more popular Antilegomena and Apocrypha.
I cited some of these canon lists in an old Wish List of Lost Books.

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Review of Jenkins, Crucible of Faith

BOOK REVIEW: 'Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution that Made Our Modern Religious World': the making of the modern religious mind. A religious historian explores ancient non-canonical texts (REBECCA DENOVA, Pittsburg Post-Gazette).
A recent spate of scholarly texts explores both the Jewish and Greco-Roman context of early Christianity. While many of them focus on the internal debates within the communities (orthodoxy vs. heresy), Philip Jenkins, author of “Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution That Made Our Modern Religious World” (Basic Books, $30), takes us back to what he terms an earlier, “crucible” era that actually created much of the template for our modern Western religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

[...]
Past PaleoJudaica posts on the book are here and here.

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

Monday, October 30, 2017

Provenance evidence for those dubious DSS fragments

THE LYING PEN OF SCRIBES BLOG: “American Priest, later serving in Switzerland”: On Provenance (Årstein Justnes and Ludvik A. Kjeldsberg).
Most of the post-2002 Dead Sea Scrolls-like fragments come with stories. The following list presents information that we have been able to gather about their alleged provenance.
It seems that PaleoJudaica is a source of information for one of them.

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That eclipse and Joshua again

ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA: Biblical Record of Eclipse 3,200 Years Ago May Rewrite Pharaonic Era in Ancient Egypt. Joshua said the sun and moon stood still: Now archaeologists think he recorded an annular eclipse in 1207 B.C.E. (By Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

I note this story because it's cool that astronomers can date an ancient eclipse so exactly that we can celebrate its 3200-year anniversary today. But for reasons I have explained here and links, I do not think that a credible case has been made that Joshua's stopped sun and moon were an eclipse.

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Coptic metal icon seized in Egyptian airport

APPREHENDED: Hurghada airport officials foil attempt to smuggle 18th-century Coptic icon. The antique religious object was seized at Hurghada International airport as a passenger attempted to smuggle it to Germany (Nevine El-Aref, ahramonline).

This story caught my eye because this triptych icon has images and (Coptic) writing on it and is made of metal — copper, but it looks like gold in the photos.

Someone tried to smuggle it out of Egypt. I wonder if the recent recovery of smuggled metal codices in Turkey has any connection. There is certainly an antiquities market for metal books.

This object has no direct connection with the metal codices and the similarities are superficial. But I thought the incident worth flagging anyway.

Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

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Honor Frost

ARCHAEOLOGICAL PIONEER: Honor Frost: a legacy in the field of underwater archaeology (Fabian Mangion, Times of Malta).
Honor Frost’s death on September 12, 2010, brought an end to an era. She represented the heroic period of aqualung diving and was the first person to marry it to archaeology – a double pioneer. She was also the first to promote underwater archaeology as a serious discipline and to introduce it to the world.

Frost saw aqualung-diving and the archaeological method as a necessary balance and was fond of quoting “si le plongeur savait – si l’archeologue pouvait…” (if the diver knew – if the archaeologist could) and in herself combined the two in style.

[...]
She did underwater archaeology in many places, including Tyre and Sidon. She excavated a Punic shipwreck off the coast of Sicily. She also worked with Kathleen Kenyon at the ground excavation at Jericho. Saturday was the centenary of her birth.

Cross-file under Phoenician Watch and Punic Watch.

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Sunday, October 29, 2017

Shelling near the (traditional) Tomb of Nahum

MORE FIGHTING: ANCIENT TOMB OF JEWISH PROPHET 'IN DANGER' AMID IRAQ-KURDISH TENSIONS. The origin of the tomb is often said to date back 2,700 years (Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post).
The tomb of the Prophet Nahum, which overlooks the Nineveh plains in northern Iraq, is now near the forefront of tensions between the Iraqi federal government and Kurdistan Regional Government.

Since last week Iraqi forces, including Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, have been fighting with Peshmerga in an attempt by Baghdad to push Kurdish forces out of disputed areas and take oil fields and strategic border areas from the Kurds. Although a cease-fire took effect on Friday, tensions remain high.

Shelling in a Christian town near the Jewish tomb is the latest in years of turmoil that have affected the site.

The tomb is in the ancient Christian town of Al-Qosh, inside a complex that also served as a synagogue and has partly collapsed over the years. The Jewish community of this area of northern Iraq and Kurdistan left in the 1940s and 1950s.

[...]
I am sorry to hear that, even with ISIS now in retreat, there is still fighting in the region.

Background on the (traditional) Tomb of Nahum and its precarious situation is here and links

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

Stone, Secret Groups in Ancient Judaism

NEW BOOK FROM OUP: Secret Groups in Ancient Judaism.
Were there groups in Ancient Judaism that cultivated esoteric knowledge and transmitted it secretly? With the discovery and burgeoning study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and particularly of the documents legislating the social structure of the Qumran group, the foremost paradigm for analysis of the group's social structure has become the "sect." This is still dominant, having replacing the monastic paradigm used by some of the earliest scholars of the Scrolls.

But after studying what has been written on secret societies more generally, Michael Stone has concluded that many known ancient Jewish groups-the Qumran covenanters, Josephus's and Philo's Essenes, and Philo's Therapeutae-should be viewed as societies at the heart of whose existence were esoteric knowledge and practice. Guarding and transmitting this esoteric knowledge and practice, Stone argues, provided the dynamic that motivated the social and conceptual structure of these groups. Analyzing them as secret societies, he says, enables us to see previously latent social structural dimensions, and provides many new enriching insights into the groups, including the Dead Sea covenanters.

By examining historical and literary sources, Stone uncovers evidence for the existence of other secret groups in ancient Jewish society. This line of study leads Stone not only to consider the "classical" Jewish apocalypses as pseudo-esoteric, but also to discern in them the footsteps of hidden, truly esoteric traditions cultivated in the circles that produced the apocalypses. This discovery has significant implications, especially considering the enormous growth of study of the apocalyptic in the Judaism of the Second Temple period and in nascent Christianity over the last seventy years.

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

Review of Fritze, Egyptomania

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Ronald H. Fritze, Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy. London: Reaktion Books, 2016. Pp. 444. ISBN 9781780236391. $35.00. Reviewed by Maya Muratov, Adelphi University (mmuratov@adelphi.edu).
Ronald Fritze’s book joins a plethora of publications dedicated to the fascination with ancient Egypt, which fall under the wide term Egyptomania.1 The book is substantial in size and broad in scope. It is apparent that the author is much more at ease with the texts, hence the book’s emphasis on literary sources, and not on the (equally) rich visual and material culture of Egyptomania, the focus of the majority of works on the subject. Therefore it is not surprising that the illustrations are few and their selection at times seems random.

In the introduction, the author underscores the difference between Egyptomania and Egyptology2—and it is important to realize that this book deals with the former. Egyptomania is a social phenomenon that has very little to do with actual Egypt and more often than not belongs to the realm of popular culture; it is related to Egyptology only inasmuch as when new and fascinating finds or scholarly discoveries stir up the popular imagination. This particular focus on misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Egypt and its culture is undoubtedly related to Fritze’s interest in the history of pseudo-science, the subject of his earlier publication.3

The book consists of 12 chapters arranged in two parts. Part one “Egyptomania through the Ages,” comprises eight chapters, arranged in chronological order. It begins with a chapter on “The Real Egypt,” which covers the basics —geography and the environment — followed by a brief overview of Egyptian history. Chapter Two, “Ancient Egyptomania: Hebrews, Pharaohs and Plagues,” treats the Hebrew accounts of ancient Egypt, from the earliest biblical reference in Genesis through the works of Josephus.

[...]
And so on.

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Review of Vance, Athas, and Avrahami (eds.), Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: A Reader’s Edition

THE JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL STUDIES: REVIEW OF BIBLIA HEBRAICA STUTTGARTENSIA: A READER’S EDITION EDITED BY VANCE, ATHAS, AND AVRAHAMI (David M. Smiley).
Overall, I believe that this should be the standard HB that instructors use in an intermediate Hebrew course. The information given can be understood by anyone who has had two semesters of Hebrew, and it is nearly perfect for sight reading and translating. Unlike most electronic software, this book does not enable habits that undermine the learning process. This does not, however, mean that one will lose time translating in comparison to software, especially once the parsing system is mastered. Any student of the HB will want this book on his/her shelf.
The Biblical Aramaic reader mentioned in the review was noted here.

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

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Who Were the Phoenicians?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Who Were the Phoenicians? Exploring the Phoenician empire (Megan Sauter).
Who were the Phoenicians?
Where did they come from? Where did they live? With whom did they trade?

Ephraim Stern addresses these questions—and much more—in his article “Phoenicia and Its Special Relationship with Israel,” published in the November/December 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. He explores the rise and fall of the Phoenician empire and highlights the special relationship that the Phoenicians had with their neighbors, the Israelites.

[...]
The article by Stern is behind a subscription wall, but the BHD essay is interesting in itself.

Now and again I like to remind readers why PaleoJudaica takes an interest in Phoenician and Punic, with a link to this post.

Cross-file under Phoenician Watch.

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

Another review of Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink

TALMUD WATCH: Getting Personal About The Talmud. Ilana Kurshan’s memoir about her journey through the ancient tractates (SANDEE BRAWARSKY, New York Jewish Week).
“If All the Seas Were Ink” by Ilana Kurshan (St. Martin’s) recounts the 7 ½-year period in which she participated in daf yomi, learning a page a day of Talmud. The details of her life unfold, not in a linear way, but through her engagement with all the tractates of the Talmud, the vast compendium of Jewish religious and commercial law and legends. Kurshan, who grew up on Long Island and now lives in Jerusalem, writes beautifully about the complexities of love, loss, shame, growth and the things that matter. Her voice is refreshingly modest, gently confident and profound.

Other works with fresh literary takes on the Talmud include “Six Memos from the Last Millennium: A Novelist Reads the Talmud” by Joseph Skibell and Jonathan Rosen’s “The Talmud and the Internet,” both memorable and original works. Kurshan’s is the most personal; her entry into the world of daf yomi was sparked by grief over her divorce after less than a year of marriage. While running the hills of Jerusalem, she learns that her running partner, who is not particularly observant, has just begun day yomi.
Earlier PaleoJudaica posts on the book are here and here.

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

Sahidic Coptic intensive course at Wuppertal

COPTIC WATCH: Wuppertal Coptic Intensive 2018 (Christian Askeland, ETC Blog). Christian is teaching the course in February of 2018. Follow the link for details.

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

Friedman et al., The Trial of the Talmud

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS: The Trial of the Talmud Anti-Judaism and the Talmud in Medieval French Society (Sarah Ifft Decker).
The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240, ed. John Friedman, Jean Connell Hoff, and Robert Chazan. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2017, 182 pp., $19.95
Excerpt from the review:
Gregory’s letters set into motion the series of events that have been termed “the Trial of the Talmud.” Nicholas Donin, a convert to Christianity who had received an extensive Jewish education, claimed that the Talmud was a human creation that the Jews valued over the Torah, and that it moreover contained blasphemous and anti-Christian teachings. If proved true, such accusations would justify banning the Talmud—a major blow to Jewish religious practice. Despite the efforts of Rabbi Yehiel of Paris, a scholar who acted as the chief Jewish representative, Donin proved his charges to the satisfaction of a hostile Christian jury, and copies of the Talmud were burned in 1241 or 1242.

The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240 brings together in English translation the primary source texts essential to understanding this series of events.These sources include a series of Latin letters, sent by and addressed to two popes, the Latin text of the accusations brought forth against the Talmud, and Latin records of the testimony of two learned Jews, as well as the substantial Hebrew account penned by Rabbi Yehiel and a Hebrew lament on the burning of the Talmud.

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Friday, October 27, 2017

Bauckham (ed.), Magdala, Jewish City of Fish

RICHARD BAUCKHAM has kindly sent me details of his forthcoming book, which I mentioned recently. For other past posts on Magdala, start there and follow the links.
MAGDALA, JEWISH CITY OF FISH

Edited by Richard Bauckham
Baylor University Press, autumn 2018

Contents

Chapter 1 Magdala As We Now Know It: An Overview

Richard Bauckham

Chapter 2 The Harbour
Anna Lena

Chapter 3 Domestic and Mercantile Areas
Marcela Zapata-Meza

Chapter 4 The Domestic Miqva’ot
Ronny Reich and Marcela Zapata-Meza

Chapter 5 The Synagogue
Mordechai Aviam

Chapter 6 The Synagogue Stone
Mordecai Aviam and Richard Bauckham

Chapter 7 Magdala and Trade

Santiago Guijarro

Chapter 8 Magdala and the Fishing Industry
Richard Bauckham

Chapter 9 Magdala and the Jewish Revolt
Morten Hørning Jensen

Chapter 10 Magdala in the List of the Twenty-Four Priestly Settlements
Richard Bauckham

Chapter 11 Magdala in Rabbinic Literature
Richard Bauckham

Chapter 12 The Prosopography
Richard Bauckham

Magdala Bibliography

Comprehensive Bibliography

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Reviews of books on ritual purity

BOOK REVIEWS: Purity and Obscurity (Shai Secunda, Jewish Review of Books). Dr. Secunda reviews three books on ancient Jewish ritual purity:
Taharah u-kehilla ba-eit ha-atikah: mesorot ha-halakhah ben Yahadut Bayit sheni la-Mishnah (Purity and Community in Antiquity: Traditions of the Law from Second Temple Judaism to the Mishnah)
by Yair Furstenberg
The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 479 pp., $42

Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature
by Mira Balberg
University of California Press, 262 pp., $90

At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity Among the Jews of Roman Galilee
by Stuart S. Miller
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 423 pp., $188
Posted online by Magnes Press, the publisher of the first book on the list.

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Besler, Rabbinic Tales of Destruction

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Disability Studies and Rabbinic Resistance to the Roman Conquest of Jerusalem (Julia Watts Belser).
Roman conquest leaves its mark on Jewish flesh. Whether through the physicality of war itself, the privations of famine, or the brutalities of sexual violence and enslavement, imperial dominance has powerful effect on the bodies of the conquered. In my new book, Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem, forthcoming in November 2017 from Oxford University Press, I argue that disability is central to the Jewish experience of conquest in late antiquity. I read rabbinic texts through the prism of disability studies theory, in order to probe the cultural and political significance of physical and mental difference in early Jewish culture. Rather than taking disability as a straightforward medical category, disability studies hones critical tools to analyze how societies construct and contest notions of normativity and deviance, illuminating the way disability becomes a site for negotiating stigma and social power. In rabbinic accounts of the destruction of Jerusalem, the disabled Jewish body serves both as a visceral occasion for lament and a potent site of protest against empire.

[...]

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

Scholz on Reading the Bible in a Feminist Key

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:
Reading the Bible in a Feminist Key: Three Challenges for Feminist Biblical Interpretation Today

Yet despite these and many other scholarly accomplishments, feminist biblical interpreters face several cultural-intellectual challenges. They pertain to the pervasive ignorance about feminist biblical studies among lay and scholarly Bible readers, the persistence of essentialist views about gender in (feminist) biblical studies, and the overall lack of engaging feminist theories and practices in feminist biblical exegesis.

See Also: Introducing the Women's Hebrew Bible (Bloomsbury T&T Clark; 2 edition, 2017).

By Susanne Scholz
Professor of Old Testament
Southern Methodist University
October 2017

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

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Kalimi on Fighting Over the Bible

THE ASOR BLOG: Fighting Over the Bible: Jewish Interpretation, Sectarianism and Polemic from Temple to Talmud and Beyond (Isaac Kalimi).
The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament stands as an important sacred text for all branches of the Abrahamic faiths, although these maintain fundamentally different attitudes towards it. Nonetheless, far from unifying Jews, Christians and Muslims, the biblical texts divided them, and have regularly been used as weapons to condemn opponents – insiders and outsiders – rather than as tokens of unification and reconciliation.

Fighting Over the Bible, explores the roots of those interpretive conflicts, especially as they are reflected in pre-modern Jewish literature. It addresses the place of the Bible in Judaism, and the rich Jewish interpretative and theological methods that grew out of internal and external controversies in the Land of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. It illustrates how the study of the Scriptures filled the vacuum left by the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), and became the foundation for Jewish life and existence at all times and places.

The focus, however, is on Jewish texts from the late Second Temple, talmudic and medieval periods, that is from ca. the 2nd century BCE to the 16th century CE. The creative intellectual and spiritual activities of the Jews – including their Scriptures – are explored within the historical, political, social, economic, religious and academic circumstances of the societies among whom they lived.

[...]
I noted the publication of the book here earlier this year. This essay provides a useful summary of it.

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

Inscribed Coptic tombstone partially deciphered

COPTIC WATCH: Newly discovered Coptic tombstone in Luxor belonged to a child: Study. The medieval headstone has been partially deciphered as studies continue (Nevine El-Aref, ahramonline).
A preliminary study carried out on the Coptic tombstone recently discovered in Luxor reveals that it belonged to a little girl named "Takla," who died at the age of ten sometime between the 7th and 10th centuries AD.

[...]
Stay tuned!

Background here.

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

Lecture on Armenian-Syriac relations

SYRIAC WATCH AND ARMENIAN WATCH: Ararat-Eskijian Museum Present a Lecture on Armenian-Syriac Relations (Asbarez).
MISSION HILLS, Calif. – Ararat-Eskijian Museum presents a talk by Onnik Kiremitlian entitled “Armenia-Syriac Cultural Relations and Armenian Translation of Syriac Literary Works” to take place on Sunday November 5 at 4pm at the Sheen Chapel of Ararat-Eskijian Museum (15105 Mission Hills Road, Mission Hills, Calif., 91345).

[...]
Even if you can't make it to the lecture, the rest of the article is informative and worth reading.

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

Stephen Greenblatt on Adam and Eve

INTERVIEW: Stephen Greenblatt On How The Story Of Adam And Eve Shaped History (Talya Zax, The Forward).
Has there been a more consequential story to the history of humanity than that of Adam and Eve?

In the assessment of Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare scholar and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Swerve,” probably not. But for Greenblatt, the significance of the origin story of Abrahamic religions ranges past its tangibly profound impact on the course of western society, presenting an unmatched opportunity to explore the elusive yet absolute power of stories.

“This is fiction at its most fictional, a story that revels in the delights of make-believe,” Greenblatt writes in the introduction to his new book “The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve.”

“Yet millions of people, including some of the subtlest and most brilliant minds that have ever existed, have accepted the Bible’s narrative of Adam and Eve as the unvarnished truth.”

Greenblatt and I met to discuss the book. Read excerpts of that conversation, below.

[...]
Cross-file under New Book.

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

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Abraham as a hero?

PROF. EVERETT FOX: What Kind of Hero is Abraham? (TheTorah.com).
The lack of details surrounding God’s first call to Abram—לך לך, “go forth”—or about Abram’s trip to Canaan contrasts starkly with other biblical figures, highlighting that Abraham is not a typical hero.
A past post on Lord Raglan's typology of the Hero is here.

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

Review of Brooke and Feldman (eds.), On Prophets, Warriors, and Kings

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | On Prophets, Warriors, and Kings Former Prophets through the Eyes of Their Interpreters (Joshua Matson).
George J. Brooke and Ariel Feldman eds., On Prophets, Warriors, and Kings: Former Prophets Through the Eyes of their Interpreters (BZAW 470), VI + 268 p., € 99,95, Berlin: De Gruyter 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-037738-5.
Excerpt:
When pieced together, these essays create a mosaic about biblical interpretation that is illuminating, challenging, insightful, and beneficial for any scholar related to the texts or reception of the Hebrew Bible.

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

Blade Runner 2049, the Bible, and Gnosticism

CINEMA: Forget it, Kinbote, it’s Chinatown: A Blade Runner 2049 reference guide (Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club).
Call it the ultimate tribute to the original’s religion-obsessed atheist director, Ridley Scott, a hodgepodge of crypto-Judeo-Christian references: the Nicene Creed, The Epistle To The Galatians, contrasting artificial women named Joi (Ana De Armas) and Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), a flight into the desert. And then there’s the successor to Tyrell’s fallen replicant-making empire, the aforementioned Niander Wallace, who took over the business after making a fortune on synthetic food. A very literal life-giver, feeding the huddled human masses trying to weather the global flood, hidden in his fortress headquarters (lit by reflections off pools of water, of course), where he tends and is tended to by his “angels,” the superhuman replicants.

Wallace speaks of battles at the gates of heaven and the wombs of Old Testament prophets’ wives as though narrating portentously. It should be noted that like Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost by dictation, he is blind. But this pseudo-poetic, antagonist world-builder isn’t very redolent of a personal Christian god, is he? He’s more like the demiurge of gnosticism, an old religious philosophy that obsessed Dick, the author of Blade Runner’s source novel, in his later years.
This is from a long review of the film that discusses the influences behind it, including biblical influences, in great detail. Worth reading in full, if you're interested in the film.

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Is the Bible true?

ARCHAEOLOGY: Is the Bible a True Story? Despite feverish searching with Scripture in one hand and cutting-edge technology in the other, evidence backing the Bible remains elusive. But there are some surprising anomalies (Nir Hasson, Haaretz).
Beauty and biblical evidence both lie in the eye of the beholder, it seems. No evidence of the events described in the Book of Genesis has ever been found. No city walls have been found at Jericho, from the appropriate era, that could have been toppled by Joshua or otherwise. The stone palace uncovered at the foot of Temple Mount in Jerusalem could attest that King David had been there; or it might belong to another era entirely, depending who you ask.

Archaeologists always hope that advances in technology will shed fresh light on at least part of this ancient mystery: Did the Bible really happen? So far, what discoveries there are, tend to indicate that at the least, the timelines are off.

[...]
In general, the writers of the Bible were not very interested in the sorts of historical questions that interest us. And archaeology is often not well suited to answer our historical questions either. So much of the actual (in our terms) history of ancient Israel remains a mystery and it is likely only loosely related to the biblical narratives.

In any case, go get your favorite beverage and sit down and read this long, balanced, and informative article before it vanishes behind the subscription wall.

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Tuesday, October 24, 2017

The Museum of the Bible is opening soon

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Museum of the Bible in the Spotlight. Washington, D.C. Bible museum invites dialogue (Robin Ngo and Megan Sauter).
A new museum dedicated to the best-selling book of all time will open next month in Washington, D.C.—just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. The Museum of the Bible is large and impressive. With a total square footage of 430,000, the museum boasts six floors, including part of a recreated first-century C.E. Jewish village, a ballroom, a performing arts hall, a rooftop garden with Biblical plants, and a 140-foot-long LED screen on the ceiling of the museum’s lobby. It would take a visitor 72 hours to see every artifact, read every placard, and participate in all of the museum’s activities.

[...]
Some of the material in this essay is reproduced from the earlier BHD essay noted here. But some of the information is new. For other past posts on the Museum of the Bible, Hobby Lobby, and the Green Collection, start here and follow the many links.

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Magdala

ARCHAEOLOGY: Magdala (Rhona Lewis, The Jewish Press).
If you haven’t heard of Magdala, it’s where you can find out about the unearthing of an ancient fishing port on the edge of the Kinneret and a first-century synagogue, one of only seven synagogues in the world from this period of time.

[...]
This is a nice overview of the fascinating discoveries at this site.

By the way, Richard Bauckham is editing a new book on Magdala and the ancient Galilean fishing industry, which is coming out soon. I will keep you posted as more information becomes available.

For many past PaleoJudaica posts on the discoveries at Magdala, start here and follow the links.

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

Library of Congress given Italian Talmud

TALMUD WATCH: Rome’s rabbi gifts Talmud to Library of Congress (Chris Mathews, Religion News Service).
WASHINGTON (RNS) — The Library of Congress got an Italian-Jewish present, brought all the way from Rome by its chief rabbi.

Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni of the Roman Jewish community on Monday (Oct. 23) presented the library the first volume of the first Talmud to be printed in Italy in 500 years.

[...]
For more on the recent translation of the Babylonian Talmud into Italian, see here and here.

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Inscribed Coptic tombstone excavated at Luxor

COPTIC WATCH: Coptic tombstone unearthed at Sphinxes Avenue in Luxor. The object is carved of limestone and decorated with a cross and Coptic texts (Nevine El-Aref, ahramonline).
Egyptian archaeologists in Luxor have stumbled upon a decorative Coptic tombstone buried on the eastern side of the Sphinxes Avenue, under Al-Mathan Bridge.

The tombstone is carved of limestone and decorated with a cross and Coptic texts, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Ahram Online.

The exact date of the object has not yet been ascertained, nor the identity of the deceased. However, Mostafa Al-Saghir, director of the Sphinxes Avenue, said experts are now studying the tombstone find out.

[...]
The photographs are good enough for the surviving text to be readable. Enterprising Coptologists can have a go at deciphering it.

UPDATE (26 October): More here.

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Monday, October 23, 2017

Review of Wilke, Farewell to Shulamit

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Carsten Wilke, Farewell to Shulamit: Spatial and Social Diversity in the Song of Songs. Jewish thought, philosophy and religion, 2. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2017. Pp. viii, 170. ISBN 9783110500547. $91.99. Reviewed by Susan Sorek, Oxford Continuing Education (suzor16@hotmail.co.uk).
The Song of Songs has long been the focus of various conflicting debates amongst Old Testament scholars. Is it theological allegory, a story, or a compilation of erotic folksongs? There is only one constant throughout the Song, the central female character Shulamit, who appears to embody an ideal ‘norm’ of womanhood. Wilke examines the text in terms of spatial diversity and finds that the Song displays a discontinuous cycle of personal encounters within urban, rural and pastoral scenes. Then he attempts to contextualise the Song by comparing it with the conventions of Hellenistic love poetry and with the ritual symbolism of Dionysian cult, within the historical framework of the multiethnic borderland east of the Jordan.

[...]

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Septuagint Studies Supervision (3)

WILLIAM ROSS: SUPERVISORS & PROGRAMS FOR SEPTUAGINT STUDIES – PART III. Part three in a three-part series. I noted part one here and part two here.

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The Shekel Prize

NUMISMATICS: New book prize created by AINA (Numismatic News).
A new award called the Shekel Prize has been created by the board of directors of the American Israel Numismatic Association.

It is to be given annually to the author of the best book published on the subject of Ancient Judaea, Holy Land, Israel or Jewish Numismatics.

[...]

The first prize winner is Yoav Farhi, author of “Khirbet Qeiyafa Vol. 5: Excavation Report 2007–2013, The Numismatic Finds: Coins and Related Objects.” Other contributors to this volume are C. Lorber, S. Shalev and S. Shilstein. The Shekel Prize medal will be presented later this year in a ceremony in Israel.

[...]
It is good to hear of this new award. Congratulations to Yoav Farhi and colleagues.

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Penn State acquires Eisenbrauns

CHANGE: Penn State University Press acquires Eisenbrauns as new imprint. Eisenbrauns has been a major publisher for scholarly books on the Bible and the Ancient Near East for a long time.

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Sunday, October 22, 2017

Aramaic "Pseudo-Daniel"

IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: What the Bible Doesn’t Tell You About Daniel (Exclusive) (Andrew Perrin, Christian Week).
Most would know Daniel as a sage, courtier, dream interpreter, and lion tamer. If you’ve read sections of the Apocrypha you’ll also know him as a dragon slayer. Yet Daniel’s resume in the Dead Sea Scrolls was even broader. We gain glimpses of this from a newly discovered Aramaic text suitably called Pseudo-Daniel.
All of the Danielic material is pseudepigraphic, including the biblical Book of Daniel. So "Pseudo-Daniel" isn't a very descriptive title. But the text gives us some new legends about the figure of Daniel.

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Provenance issues with a Coptic Galatians manuscript

THE BIBLE NATION: Is An Ancient Text In The Museum of the Bible Real Or Fake? Sketchy doesn't even begin to describe the controversy surrounding artifacts in the new Museum of the Bible, which is backed by evangelicals investigated for illicit artifacts (Candida Moss and Joel Baden, The Daily Beast).
In 2014, an exhibit of biblical artifacts was displayed with great fanfare at the Vatican. Called “Verbum Domini,” or “The Word of the Lord,” it featured items from the Green Collection, which had been amassed by the owners of Hobby Lobby, the Green family of Oklahoma City. That collection of artifacts amassed by the evangelical family is part of the controversial soon to be opened Museum of the Bible.

Along with rare fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a first edition of the King James Bible were lesser-­known items, including some never-­before-­seen ancient biblical manuscripts.

Among the two hundred artifacts was a papyrus fragment of the New Testament. Its edges are frayed, but it is clearly decipherable: the text is from the second chapter of the book of Galatians. It is written in Coptic, the language of Egyptian Christianity for much of the first millennium. While visually it looks like Greek, because it uses many Greek letters, the script hints at the papyrus’s origins in the arid climate of late antique Egypt. Given its small size—­about four inches by four inches—­most visitors probably gave it little more than a passing glance. But it immediately caught the eye of Roberta Mazza, a papyrologist from the University of Manchester. Although this was the first public display of the papyrus, Mazza had seen it before: it had been offered for sale on eBay less than two years earlier.

[...]
This article is adapted from the authors' new book, Bible Nation, on which more here and links. For many past posts on the Museum of the Bible, Hobby Lobby, and the Green Collection, see here and here and follow the links.

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A political science professor looks at the Talmud

TALMUD WATCH: Talmud as seen by a political scientist (Ira Sharkansky, San Diego Jewish World).
JERUSALEM — For something like 15 years, I’ve been studying Talmud Shabbat mornings for an hour or so with a religious (i.e., Orthodox) neighbor. We’ve been friends for more than 40 years, since we were both at the University of Wisconsin.

I’ve commented several times, perhaps not to his delight, and to other religious friends, also not to their delight, that the experience has made me more Jewish but less religious.

The short explanation is that I perceive what is trivial and even ridiculous in the holy text, along with considerable wisdom and much to admire intellectually.

[...]
A thoughtful and wide-ranging overview of the topic by a nonspecialist.

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Whales during the Flood

TALMUD WATCH: Was there room for whales in the ark? The rabbis wondered how the majestic sea-creatures survived the Flood (Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum, The Jewish Chronicle). Noted because the article cites passages from the Babylonian Talmud and Midrash Genesis Rabbah about the fate of aquatic creatures during the Flood. The author gives specific references, which is helpful. I have not checked the references myself, but there you have them.

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Saturday, October 21, 2017

More on the recent discoveries at the Western Wall

ARCHAEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS: As the Romans did: discoveries show Jerusalem’s transformation after destruction (Adam Abrams, JNS.org).
Israeli archaeologists this week unveiled the results of large-scale excavations that lend unprecedented insight into the transformation of Jerusalem around the time of its destruction during the Second Temple period more than 2,000 years ago.

The discoveries—including massive portions of the Western Wall unseen for 1,700 years and an ancient Roman theater—were made in excavations conducted during the past two years in Jerusalem’s Old City. The findings were disclosed at a press conference held by the Israel Antiquity Authority (IAA) beneath Wilson’s Arch in the Western Wall Tunnels.

The newly revealed eight stone courses of the Western Wall had been hidden beneath 26 feet of earth and were perfectly preserved after being excavated. The Roman theater contains approximately 200 seats and, according to archaeologists, required a “great deal” of investment in its construction.

[...]
Background here. Cross-file under Temple Mount Watch.

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Spellbinding music

VIDEO ART: Israeli video artist Victoria Hanna brings spells ancient and modern to Berkeley (Laura Paull, The Jewish News of Northern California).
Hanna today is a singer, composer, teacher and video artist who performs in Israel onstage, at schools, official ceremonies and important national occasions, and for international audiences at festivals. Her unique angle is that she creates songs from modern and ancient Hebrew texts, adapting musical styles from traditional Jewish music to new music and hip-hop.

[...]

With support from the Schusterman program, UC Berkeley students and the public will be able to participate in a collaboration that explores new territory in Jewish culture. As the Magnes’ fall 2017 resident artist, Hanna will co-teach Spagnolo’s new course, “Jewish Nightlife: Poetry, Music, and Ritual Performance from Renaissance Italy to Contemporary Israel.” The course explores the cultural impact of the arrival of both Kabbalah, a branch of Jewish mysticism, and coffee, of all things, to Venice “in the roaring 1570s,” Spagnolo said.

“Coffee allowed people to stay up at night, and propelled the invention of new Jewish rituals based on the nighttime singing of Hebrew poetry, that have impacted many ideas and practices to this very day,” he said.

As the course’s music lab component, Hanna and the students will develop a performance series that will be open to the public. It was Spagnolo’s idea that Hanna use some of the Hebrew amulets held in the Magnes collection as a creative source.

[...]
What an interesting project. Be sure and watch the video at the link.

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

Museum of the Bible press conference

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Museum of the Bible in the Spotlight. Washington, D.C. Bible museum invites dialogue (Robin Ngo and Megan Sauter).
Chances are you’ve heard some of the controversy surrounding the Museum of the Bible in the months leading up to its opening. Rather than hide or pretend such issues don’t exist, the museum chose to address them directly. On October 17—one month before its opening day—the Museum of the Bible held a press conference featuring a panel of the museum’s leaders and academic consultants to “outline the rigorous process used to create content displayed throughout the museum and answer questions about the museum’s collection practices, some of which have been challenged.” In the first half of the press conference, the panel members addressed a variety of topics on the museum’s approach and exhibit content.

[...]

When the panel took questions from the media, one word dominated the conversation: provenance. An artifact’s provenance is its record of ownership. Such a record can provide information on its place of origin and corroborate its authenticity.
I received an invitation to apply to attend the press conference, but I was unable to be in Washington D.C. for it. It's good to have this report from BAS.

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