The Canaanite general Sisera is killed by Yael in her tent but in an older version of the story, he died in battle at the hands of the Israelite general, Barak. The story was revised as part of a broader theme in Judges, to weaken the image of male military heroes through women and give the power to God.Could be. Redaction criticism is fun too.
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The Voynich manuscript is famous for being indecipherable. The 240-page text is written in an unknown language, in an unknown script, scrambled by an unknown code, as CTVNews put it. It's a puzzle with no way in. Even the Bletchley Park cryptographers, renowned for cracking the Enigma code used by the Nazis during World War II, couldn't make any headway.Supposedly "carbon dating" places the manuscript in the early fifteenth century. But carbon dating would be pretty imprecise for such a recent manuscript. In any case, this is what the AI came up with:
Now, Greg Kondrak, a computer scientist in the AI lab at the University of Alberta—the same one behind the DeepStack system that made waves last year by beating professional poker players—claims he's begun to crack it open.
Step number one, Kondrak told CTVNews, was figuring out what the language is. The statistical algorithms he and his co-author designed proved about 97-percent accurate when translating the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (into 380 languages). The same process, applied to the Voynich manuscript, suggested the language was Hebrew. As for the code, they believe that it involves the letters in each individual word being shuffled, and their vowels dropped.The speculation is that the text deals with "women's health," partly, I guess, from the supposedly decoded text, and partly because of the many illustrations of naked women bathing.
According to their algorithms, the manuscript's first complete sentence reads, "She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people." They also believe the text includes the words "farmer," "light," "air" and "fire," according to CTVNews.
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Barclay, John M. G. Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2016. 454 pp. Pb; $48. Link to Eerdmans
This collection of essays published between 1992 and 2011 was originally published by Mohr Siebeck. Chapter 1 was written as an introduction to that volume and chapters 18 and 19 appeared for the first time. The remaining sixteen essays appeared in various journals and Festschrifts. The Eerdmans edition is essentially the same, only a few typographical errors have been corrected. The volume concludes with a bibliography, Indices of Sources, Authors and Selected Topics.
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DESCRIPTIONOut in April of 2018.
Basics of Greek Accents by John A. L. Lee is a compact, student-friendly, and practical guide to accents for students of both classical and biblical Greek. In eight simple lessons students will learn the basics of ancient Greek accentuation.
Ideal for beginners who are just learning the language or for intermediate students who have learned some Greek but are unsure of their accents, this handy resource avoids theory and concentrates on taking the learner through the essentials in a natural sequence and reinforces learning by means of simple exercises.
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We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Michael Lyons to a new lectureship in Old Testament / Hebrew Bible, starting September 2018.And yes, we are truly delighted to have Michael joining us in September.
Dr Lyons completed his PhD at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has held a position at Simpson University for the last ten years. His areas of research include the investigation of compositional strategies in the prophetic corpus of the Hebrew Bible and the dynamics of text-referencing in ancient Israel, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity. He is the author of several volumes on the book of Ezekiel, and has published in Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, and Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages.
He'll be working alongside Prof. Jim Davila, Dr Bill Tooman, and Dr Madhavi Nevader in our Old Testament / Hebrew Bible section.
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In January 2018, I had the privilege to interview Dr. Gabriele Boccaccini, director of the Enoch Seminar.This interview is illuminating and informative, not only about the Enoch Seminar and the current state of Second Temple Jewish studies and related fields, but also about Professor Boccaccini himself.
Even in the midst of a personal tragedy, Boccaccini was kind enough to give thoughtful consideration to a number of questions about his work and motives.
[...]
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We’re in Carthage, Tunisia’s best known and most visited Roman site. Perched on the Mediterranean coastline, a visit is worth it for the spellbinding views alone, but in truth, the development of the modern city, combined with centuries of neglect, hasn’t left Dido’s ancient citadel in its best possible state.Cross file under Punic Watch.
Instead, [tourguide] Chaouki [Latrache] wants to show me some of the country’s lesser known ruins, all within a couple of hours of Tunis, meaning you can comfortably manage them in day trips from the capital. We start with Dougga, a Unesco-designated site in the north-west of the country, and find we have the place almost to ourselves. Chaouki reckons it’s seven years since he last brought an English tourist here.
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The Syrian government is making efforts to promote the country as a tourist destination following a civil war that has devastated much of its area.And there's this too:
This week the Syrian government is publicizing Aleppo, along with other destinations in Syria, at the Fitur International Tourism Trade Fair in Madrid, AFP reported.
It is the first time Syria has attended the trade fair since 2011, before the war broke out.
Along with the ruins of Aleppo, it also encourages people to visit the ancient Roman-era ruins of Palmyra, the UNESCO-listed archeological site that was twice controlled by the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group.
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[Bassam Barsik, director of marketing at the Syrian Ministry of Tourism] argued that religious destinations, such as the historical Christian town of Maaloula, one of the last places on earth where Aramaic is still spoken, are still a draw to tourists.I don't think Syria will be my holiday destination this summer. Maybe someday. This promotion seems a bit premature, but things must be quieter if the Syrian government thinks it can even raise the subject. I hope this augurs some better things for the people of Syria.
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This volume contains 14 papers that were presented in 2014 at a conference in Tübingen on a variety of problems concerning Porphyry’s Kata Christianôn and its cultural context. The conference took place in the larger framework of the Sonderforschungsbereich 923, called ‘Bedrohte Ordnungen’ (hence the title of the book). In a short Introduction, the editor presents a concise overview of the recent spate of scholarly work on Porphyry’s polemical treatise 1 and outlines the contributions in the volume. In the compass of this short review it is impossible to discuss all contributions in detail and do justice to them. Hence I will briefly indicate their contents and conclude with some general remarks.Porphyry is of interest for PaleoJudaica because he was reportedly the first to dispute (correctly) the sixth-century authorship of the Book of Daniel. But the chapter by Aaron P. Johnson in the book under review may raise doubt that the passage actually comes from Porphyry. Porphyry also interacted with Christian Gnostics and refers to some Gnostic Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.
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In November 2017, the privately-funded, $500-million Museum of the Bible (MOTB) opened its doors to the public. Situated just blocks from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the MOTB is poised to wield unparalleled influence on the national and popular imagination of the Bible. Despite its connection to evangelical Christian funding, the MOTB officially eschews ties to any religious tradition. Yet, because of the nature of its subject matter, the museum cannot help but present a selective account of both Judaism and Christianity. In December 2017 at the annual meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies in Washington, D.C. a panel of scholars applied a critical analytical lens to the MOTB as a site of power and politics. The papers interrogated the MOTB and its discursive projects from the combined perspectives of critical biblical scholarship and museum studies with a view to articulating the assumptions guiding the MOTB’s construction of Judaica, the Jewish Bible, and the land of Israel.The first paper was published in AJR yesterday:
This panel sparked further discussion among scholars and the broader public, such as in a Washington Post article. In collaboration with AJR, scholars from this panel will be sharing their work with the larger scholarly community and the public.
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"While making pretenses to neutrality, the Museum of the Bible is fundamentally a political project attempting to define what the Bible is and who owns it."For past PaleoJudaica posts on the Museum of the Bible and related matters, start here and follow the many links.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Images of stunning mosaic panels, uncovered during excavations in Lower Galilee in Israel, are to be shared for the first time in the UK during a lecture at the University of Chester.For more on the Huqoq excavation and the mosaics found there, start here and follow the links. And while we're at it, for some images of the Roman ruins in Chester, see here.
The panels are part of the Huqoq Excavation Project - an astonishingly rare and hugely significant discovery of a late Roman/Byzantine synagogue, which has attracted widespread international media attention.
Archaeologist Dr Dennis Mizzi, from the University of Malta, will be unveiling photos of the panels, which depict an array of biblical scenes.
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Unfortunately, there still is no solid reason to connect this with the Parthenon.Background on the potsherd discovered at E-Tell is here.
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The black-and-white photograph is part of a treasure trove of ancient pieces of Judaica retrieved from the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's General Intelligence Service during the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq.The article has its own slant, as article on the subject usually do, but it also provides a useful update on where negotiations on the fate of the archive stand at present. I have presented some of my own thoughts on the subject at the links here.
The heirlooms include documents dating from the mid-16th century to the 1970s and more than 2,700 books in Hebrew, Arabic and Judeo-Arabic, a version of Arabic written in Hebrew letters and spoken by Iraqi Jews.
They cast invaluable insight on Iraq's ancient Jewish community, which dwindled from an estimated 130,000 people to fewer than five today.
But the rich collection is not without its share of controversy as Iraqis have criticised the delay in repatriating the archives to Baghdad and accused the US of benefitting from the spoils of the occupation of their country.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Archaeologists are excavating a newfound cave in Qumran, with the hope of finding new Dead Sea Scrolls.Presumably there was something about this cave that led the excavators to think it was likely to have more scrolls in it. I look forward to more details.
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Hebrew University archaeologist Oren] Gutfeld and Randall Price, of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, are now leading an archaeology team that is excavating this newfound cave.
"Dr. Gutfeld and I have been at Qumran since December, working with our team on excavating a new cave in the Qumran area," Price told Live Science in an email. No other details about this "new cave" have been released, but the team will release a statement soon, Price said.
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This week, Daf Yomi readers began Tractate Avodah Zarah, the section of the Talmud devoted to the laws forbidding idolatry. As we already learned in Tractate Sanhedrin, avodah zarah—literally, “strange worship”—is one of the most serious sins in Jewish law. Not only are Jews who worship other gods liable to be stoned to death, but Jews must avoid even mentioning the names of those gods, in accordance with Exodus 23:13: “Make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard out of your mouth.” In the Roman Empire, where images of gods were omnipresent and pagan festivals governed the calendar, this would have presented a constant challenge.Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.
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Truth, Lies, and Language in Ancient Mediterranean Religion
March 11 - 13, 2018
University of California, Davis
“Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech” (Gen. 11:7)
How did Jews, Christians, and others in the ancient Mediterranean world understand each other? What did they think about the possibilities of communication across the different languages and cultures around them? What made something true, believable—or suspect?
The Jewish Studies Program and the Department of Religious Studies at UC Davis are proud to host an international conference on concepts of religious language, particularly issues of credibility, propaganda, and translation between languages and cultures in the ancient world, with a focus on Jewish and Christian texts of the Hellenistic and Roman eras. Local faculty, graduate students, and invited guests will spend three days discussing the possibilities of communication and credibility—issues that seem particularly salient in today’s political climate, but were no less vital in the ancient world.
We would be happy if you would join us. The conference is free and open to the public. To view the list of attendees, find the conference schedule, or contact the organizers, please visit our website:
www.truthliesandlanguage.com
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
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They [the Qumran sect] wrote numerous scrolls, a small number of them in code – including the 60 relics on parchment that Dr. Eshbal Ratson and Prof. Jonathan Ben-Dov of Haifa University’s Department of Bible Studies were able to translate.The JBL article is available on JSTOR, but only to subscribers. The abstract is at the link.
The researchers spent a year painstakingly studying the tiny fragments from the second-to-last scroll, some which measured smaller than one square centimeter.
“The reward for their hard work is fresh insight into the unique 364-day calendar used by the members of the Judean Desert sect, including the discovery for the first time of the name given by the sect to the special days marking the transitions between the four seasons,” the university said in a statement on Sunday.
Although an earlier researcher who examined the 60 pieces postulated that they came from several different scrolls, Ratson and Ben-Dov proved in an article recently published in the Journal of Biblical Literature that the fragments actually constitute a single scroll.
A Newly Reconstructed Calendrical Scroll from Qumran in Cryptic ScriptBit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.
Eshbal Ratzon and Jonathan Ben-Dov
Journal of Biblical Literature
Vol. 136, No. 4 (Winter 2017), pp. 905-936
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The book focuses on a period later than my own competence, and so later than the stated focus of this blog site, but Kyle Harper’s most recent tome is just so good that I have to mention it: The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (Princeton University Press, 2017). The publisher’s online catalog entry here.Cross-file under New Book.
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Few military leaders hold as much allure for historians as Hannibal Barca of Carthage (today’s Tunisia). Born in 247 B.C., he is still studied today because of his unparalleled ability to strategize and get inside the mind of his opponent in battle. Archaeologist Patrick N. Hunt, who had been the director of Stanford’s Alpine Archaeology Project, has written a new book about the legendary figure that is simply titled Hannibal. He joined the Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM channel 111 to explain why Hannibal was so intriguing and why his story still endures. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.For more on Dr. Hunt's new book and his research, see here and links.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
2017.12.29 | Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Wolfgang Grünstäudl, and Matthew Thiessen, eds. Perceiving the Other in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. WUNT 394. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017.I noted the publication of the book here and here.
Reviewed by Max Botner, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main.
Scholars of religion are becoming increasingly attuned to the ways in which groups represent and conceive of the “other.”
As Johnathan Z. Smith notes, “While the ‘other’ may be perceived as being LIKE-US or NOT-LIKE-US, he is in fact most problematic when he is TOO-MUCH-LIKE-US, or when he claims to BE-US”.[1] The task of the present volume—which grew out of a colloquium at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev—is to explore this “problematic” space in the literary production of ancient Judaism and early Christianity.
[...]
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Tickets are now on sale for the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, which is coming to Denver on March 16, 2018, at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. ...And here's one bit of information about the exhibition:
For the first 10 scrolls [of 20 total that will be displayed], the one piece that has never been seen in public is scroll 4Q247 Tohorot (Purities) A. This scroll discusses purity and people in the Second Temple period and how they strove to preserve the community’s purity. The scrolls will be on display in a massive, dramatic exhibit case with carefully regulated individual chambers with a transcript of the scrolls in English (since the scrolls were originally written in Hebrew).The show opens on 16 March.
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Aims and ScopeThe TOC is here. For you, special deal!
Hebrew manuscripts are considered to be invaluable documents and artefacts of Jewish culture and history. Research on Hebrew manuscript culture is progressing rapidly and therefore its topics, methods and questions need to be enunciated and reflected upon.
The case studies assembled in this volume explore various fields of research on Hebrew manuscripts. They show paradigmatically the current developments concerning codicology and palaeography, book forms like the scroll and codex, scribes and their writing material, patrons, collectors and censors, manuscript and book collections, illuminations and fragments, and, last but not least, new methods of material analysis applied to manuscripts.
The principal focus of this volume is the material and intellectual history of Hebrew book cultures from antiquity to the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, its intention being to heighten and sharpen the reader’s understanding of Jewish social and cultural history in general.
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Askari Chaverdi, Alireza & Pierfrancesco Callieri. 2017. Persepolis West (Fars, Iran): Report on the field work carried out by the Iranian-Italian Joint Archaeological Mission in 2008–2009 (British Archaeological Reports International Series 2870). BAR Publishing.Follow the link for a description. Note that in this case "BAR" does not stand for Biblical Archaeology Review, which also uses that acronym.
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Archaeologists in northern Israel discovered an ancient Italian vase featuring an image originally found on the Parthenon in Athens. The location where it was unearthed was once the biblical kingdom of Geshur, according to Haaretz. The site might also correspond to a second biblical location—a mysterious town referenced in the New Testament.Classicist David Meadows is skeptical of the identification of the image with the one from the Parthenon: ‘Parthenon Pediment’ Image from Bethsaida: Yeah … about that. This is well outside my field of expertise, so I do not have a view myself.
The archaeologists discovered the ceramic artifact at e-Tell, which sits about a mile north of the Sea of Galilee. E-Tell is among the leading contenders to be the original site of the biblical town Bethsaida, purportedly the hometown of apostles Philip, Andrew and Peter, according to Haaretz.
[...]
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Published in German.
Nicole Rupschus touches upon classical and current issues in Qumran research relating to the community’s inhabitants, the intention of its texts, and the source value of the Essenes accounts to discover the role played by women. Her consideration of three important elements – the archaeology, the sectarian texts found in caves near and next to Qumran, and the ancient accounts of the Essenes – are vital in enabling her to draw conclusions about the skeletons of women and children found in burial grounds. Other focal points are the Damascus and Serekh texts as well as the Rule of the Congregation, the connections between them, and their assignments to the community. Together with a final content analysis of the ancient Essene texts, a fresh image of women is revealed that opens up new perspectives in Qumran research.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Inscribing Death: Memorial and the Transmission of Text in the Ancient World
Yale University, February 23, 2018
Cross-culturally, spaces of the dead have been productive places for considering the inherent difficulty of transmitting traditions and texts. This nexus between text, tradition, and death is seen across a range of genres including law, treaties, and wisdom sayings. Within these genres, the efficacious and correct reception of texts and traditions as lived by actual individuals is paramount. "Inscribing Death" brings scholars together to explore the dynamic connections between textual anxiety and anxiety about death in the ancient world, including ancient Mesopotamia and the Levant, Greco-Roman Egypt, and late antique Judaism and Christianity. It will also seek to integrate ongoing interdisciplinary work with ritual theory, sociolinguistic approaches to ancient textuality, linguistic anthropology, and, more broadly, the material turn in the study of the ancient world in order to further our understanding of ancient attitudes toward the nature of transmission and the reception of traditions and texts in the spaces of the dead.
We would be delighted if you would join us. Registration is free. To register and for a full schedule, please visit: www.inscribingdeath.com
For questions, please contact Mark Lester at mark.lester@yale.edu
Speakers:
Emily Cole, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Maria Doerfler, Yale University
Ellen Muehlberger, University of Michigan
Laura Quick, Princeton University
Annette Yoshiko Reed, New York University
Seth Sanders, University of California, Davis
Jeremy Smoak, University of California, Los Angeles
Kerry Sonia, Bowdoin College
Matthew Suriano, University of Maryland, College Park
Jacqueline Vayntrub, Brandeis University
*This conference is supported by the Kempf Fund, Yale Religious Studies, Yale Divinity School, and Archaia.
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Resurrection in Early JudaismCross-file under New Book.
While it remained popular within sectors of early Judaism, some writings clearly prefer the immortality of the soul, without particular regard for resurrection (Wisdom of Solomon, 4 Maccabees, Philo of Alexandria). Resurrection was also opposed or ignored by a significant proportion of the Jewish populace.
See Also: Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism, 200 BCE-CE 200 (Oxford University Press, 2017).
By C.D. Elledge
Gustavus Adolphus College
January 2018
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This is quite possible the biggest archaeological destruction in Israeli history. While the Temple Mount may be a more important site rich in antiquities from all different time periods, in size, the whole-sale destruction, covering about 100 dunams (about 25 acres of land) in Archelais is much larger than that of the south-eastern corner of the Temple Mount. We were shocked. We never saw such massive destruction, and we’ve been working with the Temple Mount material for 13 years. There were hundreds of pits, many trenches, and the entire site was turned over by bulldozers looking for archaeological “hot spots.” We could see many archaeological artifacts strewn across the site, including ashlar stones, pieces of architecture, column drums, and farming tools.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
What Did Jesus Look Like?Related post here.
By: Joan E. Taylor
Published: 08-02-2018
Format: Hardback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 288
ISBN: 9780567671509
Imprint: T&T Clark
Illustrations: 77 colour illus
Dimensions: 216 x 170 mm
About What Did Jesus Look Like?
Jesus Christ is arguably the most famous man who ever lived. His image adorns countless churches, icons, and paintings. He is the subject of millions of statues, sculptures, devotional objects and works of art. Everyone can conjure an image of Jesus: usually as a handsome, white man with flowing locks and pristine linen robes.
But what did Jesus really look like? Is our popular image of Jesus overly westernized and untrue to historical reality?
This question continues to fascinate. Leading Christian Origins scholar Joan E. Taylor surveys the historical evidence, and the prevalent image of Jesus in art and culture, to suggest an entirely different vision of this most famous of men.
He may even have had short hair.
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Jude on the Attack
A Comparative Analysis of the Epistle of Jude, Jewish Judgement Oracles, and Greco-Roman Invective
By: Alexandra Robinson
Published: 14-12-2017
Format: Hardback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 272
ISBN: 9780567678782
Imprint: T&T Clark
Series: The Library of New Testament Studies
Volume: 581
Dimensions: 234 x 156 mm
About Jude on the Attack
Alexandra Robinson examines the letter of Jude in the light of repeated scholarly references to this source as an invective, a polemic, and an attack speech, with a dependence on both Jewish and Greco-Roman sources. Moving beyond the 'Hellenism/Judaism divide', Robinson specifies what these elements are, and how they relate to the harsh nature of the discourse.
This study shows how, where, and why Jude borrows from these contemporary genres, with a detailed survey of Greco-Roman invectives and Jewish judgement oracles; comparing and contrasting them to the epistle of Jude with consideration of structure, aims, themes, and style. Robinson argues that Jude has constructed a 'Jewish invective,' and that his epistle is a polemical text which takes the form (structure, aims, and style) of a typical Greco-Roman invective but is filled with Jewish content (themes and allusions), drawing on Israel's heritage for the benefit of his primarily Jewish– Christian audience.
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Where, however, did this understanding of the term come from? Why was it so different from the understanding of the rabbis? One can only speculate—and though I am no Bible scholar, permit me to do so.I find his speculation implausible. I know of no parallel to the idea that the phrase "a son of Baal" would mean something like "an evil man" in biblical Hebrew. That doesn't sound right to me. And when the name is altered elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, it is altered to keep it from looking like a divine name. What would be the reason for the change in this idiom?
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In general, the mishna says, “one takes an oath only concerning an item that is defined by size, by weight, or by number.” That is, the dispute must be about the quantity of a substance, not about the substance itself. But the question of what defines a substance, what makes a thing the thing it is, is one that always creates problems for the rabbis. Thus the Gemara in Shevuot 43a asks about a situation where the plaintiff claims a large candelabrum from the defendant, and the defendant admits only to possessing a small candelabrum.Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.
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At the end of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. alludes to the apostle Paul’s words in Galatians 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (NRSV). In her Biblical Views column in the January/February 2018 issue of BAR, republished in full below, Biblical scholar Karin Neutel examines Paul’s vision for how we would live together in an ideal society.—Ed.
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Is there a genetic marker for cohanim (priests)? Are Ashkenazi Jews descended from Khazars? Why is there such a close genetic connection between Samaritans and Jews, especially cohanim? A look at what genetic testing can tell us about Jews.A careful and nuanced overview of the DNA evidence.
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Her approach to Talmud is personal and creative. For example, the talmudic volume, Sukkah, teaches that fixed meals have to be eaten in a sukkah but snacking, what the Talmud calls achilat aray, temporary eating, can take place anywhere. (Kurshan playfully calls it “achilat awry.”) At the time when she was studying Sukkah, she was recently divorced and felt that much of her life and even her eating patterns were aray. Furthermore, by definition, a sukkah is a temporary structure but it has to have a certain amount of stability. Kurshan compares this to her own personal status while she studied this volume, living a life that seems flimsy and temporary while trying to find permanence and stability.
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Leo Baeck College, based in North London, UK, is seeking to recruit a permanent Lecturer (Part-time 60%- 70%, teaching only, Open Rank) in Biblical Hebrew. The candidate should have teaching ability in a related area, such as Aramaic (Biblical, Targumic and/or Babylonian), Rabbinic Literature (Midrash, Talmud, Traditional Bible Commentaries) or other related areas such as Jewish History or Theology. The post entails teaching Introductory Biblical Hebrew Grammar in addition to modules in the candidate’s other area of specialty. For the right applicant this position has the potential to grow in the future depending on the candidate’s qualifications and experience. The candidate will be an active participant in the life of the College, including membership in academic committees and administrative contributions as relevant.Follow the link for further particulars. The application deadline is 15 February, 2018.
Leo Baeck College is a dynamic progressive rabbinical seminary in the vibrant Jewish community of North London with good library holdings. Most students at Leo Baeck College will be pursuing academic studies leading to degrees and rabbinic ordination.
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[Paolo] Visonà is a Mediterranean archaeologist and numismatist with expertise in the pre-Roman coinages of Punic North Africa and on the coinage of Issa, an ancient Greek city on the island of Vis in today’s Dalmatia, a region made famous by the filming of the “Games of Thrones” HBO series. He was invited by his Croatian colleagues to give a series of lectures and workshops on the monetary circulation in this area of the Adriatic before the Roman conquest.My bold-font emphasis. Cross-file under Numismatics.
Since the 19th century, an unusual concentration of finds of hundreds of bronze coins of ancient Carthage, Numidia and Ptolemaic Egypt in northern Dalmatia and northwestern Bosnia has puzzled archaeologists and historians. During his stay, Visonà was given unprecedented access to this material. In addition, he had the opportunity to discuss with Croatian students and scholars a new research methodology known as “coins in context,” which entails the study of all the datable evidence associated with the coins found in a stratigraphic excavation.
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The Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project team has just started working on five papyrus fragments, which are some of the earliest Hebrew texts we have at the British Library. The fragments are a fascinating mystery, one that we hope you can help us solve.It turns out there are a number of early Hebrew fragments from Oxyrhynchus:
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We are not able to precisely date these fragments, but the current consensus is that they are from the fourth century CE. Three of them (A, B and E) are poems, all written in Hebrew language and script. Fragment D is a Greek contract, with Hebrew text in the margins, which is probably also of a legal nature. Fragment C is written in Hebrew characters however the language – except the last three lines –is yet unidentified. This is where our mystery lies – and perhaps it is about to be uncovered by one of you.Have a look at Fragment C and see if you can decipher it!
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In an interview with Kalam Ennas, Professor Roland Tomb announced that the Medical School of the University of Saint Joseph (USJ) is offering the course “Introduction to the Phoenician Language.” Tomb, who is the Dean of the school, will be teaching Aramaic next semester.Well good, although I'm baffled as to why this is being offered in a Medical School. Actually, I can't recall ever hearing of a semester course that was only on the Phoenician language, although that doesn't mean there haven't been any. Usually, even in research programs in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Phoenician would be taught as part of a course on Northwest Semitic epigraphy or the like. But anyhow, more power to them.
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The genetic comparison showed evidence that some lineages of indigenous Sardinians continued after Phoenician settlement in Monte Sirai, Sardinia, which suggests that integration between Sardinians and Phoenicians occurred there. They also discovered evidence of new, unique mitochondrial lineages in Sardinia and Lebanon, which may indicate the movement of women from sites in the Middle East or North Africa to Sardinia and the movement of European women to Lebanon. Given their findings, the authors suggest that there was a degree of female mobility and genetic diversity in Phoenician communities, indicating that migration and cultural assimilation were common occurrences.The multi-author PLOS ONE article is Ancient mitogenomes of Phoenicians from Sardinia and Lebanon: A story of settlement, integration, and female mobility.
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here is a new tool in town for searching morphological analysis of 5 million words in the Duke Database of Ducmentary Papyri. I’ve only been able to have a brief play around so far (on αὐθεντέω which has only five occurrences [4 of which are very late]), but I thought you might be interested to hear about this and try it out.Sounds very useful.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
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“A large accumulation of bones belonging to Meriones tristrami, also known as Tristram’s jird, a species of gerbil common to the Middle East, which were found in the ancient Byzantine agricultural fields in the northern Negev, are the first biological evidence of thriving agriculture there some 1,500 years ago, according to a study of the University of Haifa (A glimpse of an ancient agricultural ecosystem based on remains of micromammals in the Byzantine Negev Desert, Journal of the Royal Society of Sciences).Good to know.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Ultimately, Quinn is surely right to resist an anachronistic nationhood foisted onto this ancient geographically and culturally diverse community. But one might argue that she is as insistent on a malleable, fluid identity today as the 19th-century European nationalists were with their definition of the Phoenicians as a people. Which is no more than to observe that we are all a product of our times — from the high-spirited Herodotus to today’s careful academics.This book just came out and I haven't mentioned it before, but I have noted a couple of essays by Professor Quinn here and here.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
From the shrine bathed in the early morning light, Father Justin lets his eyes linger on the arid peaks of South Sinai with contentment. “Can you see the sentry box at the top of the mountain? There is always someone guarding over there. It’s important to protect this place, but first and foremost to show that it is protected,” he says.I know we have seen many articles on Saint Catherine's Monastery, its manuscripts, and the Sinai Palimpsests Project. But this one gives a good overview, along with some details that I don't remember seeing before. It tells more about Father Justin, the monastery's librarian (mentioned before here and here) and about the recent reopening of the library. There are also some interesting details about the palimpsest manuscripts, for example:
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Double palimpsests, remarkably common in the library of St. Catherine’s Monastery, have also been studied. One of them is a 6th-century copy of the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy from the New Testament in Syriac translation. Phelps uses the term “jewels” when he speaks about the palimpsests, some of which have revealed nine layers of successively erased and rewritten texts.Worth reading in full.
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It may seem like historical detritus, but the discovery of any evidence of Judaism near the temple is a politically delicate matter.Background here with a relevant link.
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Reading the Hebrew Bible through Marginal/ized Female Characters
Reading women’s stories in the Hebrew Bible using feminist and womanist questions and perspectives reveals a Bible so different from the one with which readers have previously been acquainted that it may seem like a new book.
See Also: Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne (Westminster John Knox Press, 2017).
By Wil Gafney
Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible
Brite Divinity School
January 2018
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Chapter Four of Tractrate Shevuot focuses on a type of oath known as the “oath of testimony,” which can be administered to witnesses in a court case. Based on the name, one might think that this is an oath to give truthful testimony, along the lines of the one administered in American courts: “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” In fact, the oath of testimony functions differently: it is taken by potential witnesses who refuse to come to court to testify, on the grounds that they deny knowledge of the matter in question. ...Read on for the flying duck.
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The Tomb of Christ exhibit, which is located at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC, opened on November 15, 2017, and is set to close on August 15, 2018. A modest admission price of $15 also admits the visitor to the exhibit Wild by National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols.For more on the Tomb of the Holy Sepulcher (Holy Sepulchre) and the recent, archaeologically important, renovations on it, start here and follow the links.
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After commissioning Moses at the burning bush, God commissions Moses again in Midian, and then again on his way to Egypt. In this third commission, God instructs Moses to tell Pharaoh, “Let My son go, that he may worship Me, yet you refuse to let him go. Now I will slay your firstborn son” (Exod 4:22-23). How does this narrative fit into the exodus story?Pentateuchal source criticism is always fun.
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If you walk in thinking that the Bible has a single meaning, that the evidence of archaeology and history has served to confirm its truth, that it is the greatest force for good humanity has ever known and that it is the founding text of the American republic — well, then, you will leave with a smile on your face and a song in your heart.For past posts on the Museum of the Bible and related matters, see here and follow the many links.
The museum is a safe space for Christian nationalists, and that is the key to understanding its political mission. The aim isn’t anything so crude as the immediate conversion of tourists to a particular variety of evangelical Christianity. Its subtler task is to embed a certain set of assumptions in the landscape of the capital.
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Lawrence Stager, the Dorot Professor of the Archaeology of Israel, emeritus, at Harvard University, died on December 29, 2017, at the age of 74. Although he is no longer with us, his legacy of excellent scholarship and interdisciplinary work will live on. May he rest in peace.Background here.
Below, read a short biography of Stager from the September/October 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
The New York Times recently published a wonderful article entitled A Fragile Biblical Text Gets a Virtual Read, concerning the application of modern digital technology to reading an ancient Egyptian codex that includes the Book of Acts. The article itself is fascinating and informative, and the methodologies described are enormously promising. But I do have to quibble with its author, Nicholas Wade, for one remark.I noted the Times article here with some links. The remark referred to above has to do with Athanasias's comments on the biblical canon in his Paschal Letter. You can read Professor Jenkins's whole blog post yourself, but he concludes:
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Athanasius had his opinions, and they deserve full respect. But in matters of canon, they settled nothing. If his list prefigures the post-Luther Bible, that is mainly a matter of coincidence.Indeed.
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But having lain in obscurity for half a century, M.910’s day in the limelight has finally arrived. Last month, a television news crew documented every movement of the little codex and of its two new enthusiasts: Paul C. Dilley, an expert on early Christianity at the University of Iowa, and W. Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky.M.910 contains a Coptic translation of the Book of Acts and possibly something else. The results of the scans should be available later this month.
Dr. Seales has spent 14 years developing a technique for reading ancient scrolls that are too fragile to unwrap. Fine-detail CT scanners can visualize the ink of letters inside such scrolls, but the alphabet soup is unreadable unless each letter can be assigned to its correct position on a surface.
Dr. Seales has developed software that can model the surface of a contorted piece of papyrus or parchment from X-ray data and then derive a legible text by assigning letters to their proper surface.
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On the recent afternoon and early evening of New Year’s Eve many of us were shocked to learn the sad news that Jonathan Z. Smith, arguably the world’s most influential scholar of religion over the past fifty years, had died the previous day from complications due to lung cancer. He was 79 and had been undergoing treatments since his diagnosis last summer.What follows is a densely informative account of both. Worth a read.
As should be evident, there is a tremendous challenge to writing about Jonathan’s life and career. ...
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Khorikyan, Hovhannes. 2017. The Administrative Division of the 13th Satrapy of Achaemenid Persia in the Reign of Darius II. Metamorphoses of History, Scientific Almanac 10: 174-180.It's always good to keep an eye on current developments in the history of the Achemenid Period.
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