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Of the estimated 900 documents that comprise the Dead Sea Scrolls, two remain unpublished—until now. ...Background here.
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Thanks to Lithodomos VR, who have generously provided the museum with a perpetual licence, the Jewish Museum of Australia is the first to display this fascinating content, transporting visitors back through an ancient and holy landscape.Background on the Lithodomos VR app for ancient Jerusalem is here and links.
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Of potentially even more interest than the beautifully formed images is a long inscription in ancient Greek. It was unfortunately damaged by the Byzantine building constructed on top of it, but is being studied now by epigrapher Dr. Leah Di Segni from the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology.Many years ago Carol Newsom suggested (humorously) in an article that there was an angel whose job it was to damage the really interesting readings in the Dead Sea Scrolls. She named the angel Lacunael. It looks like Lacunael has been at work here.
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“Sadly, the inscription is very harmed [by the construction],” said Gendelman. While the team is still awaiting Di Segni’s expertise to decipher the ancient Greek text, he said that there are several visible letters of what appears to be a very long, multiword inscription.
Di Segni told The Times of Israel that she has sent a tentative reading to the excavators, but needs more information before making public any hypothetical reading.
“It is very hard to read the inscription, for lots of letters are missing and many of those that are not, are unclear,” said Di Segni.
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It’s not every day that scholars discover new Bible manuscripts from the ancient world. It’s even rarer to discover ones endowed with luxurious painted images. Yet this is precisely what has happened over the past decade thanks to groundbreaking research into three ancient codices from Ethiopia, the earliest surviving copies of the Gospels in Ethiopic.The book under review is:
The manuscripts, which were produced and are still housed at the Monastery of Abba Garima in Ethiopia’s northern highlands, were not completely unknown to experts before, having been published for the first time in the 1960s. But recent work by Judith McKenzie and Francis Watson—published in a spectacular new book—has led to a radical reassessment of their dates and significance. Through radio-carbon testing and fresh analysis of their iconography and texts, we now know that the three Abba Garima Gospels were copied not in the tenth or eleventh centuries, as once thought, but between the fifth and seventh centuries at the zenith of Ethiopia’s ancient Christian civilization. For anyone interested in the history of the Bible, late antiquity, or Ethiopia itself, this is very big news.
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Judith S. McKenzie and Francis Watson. The Garima Gospels: Early Illuminated Gospel Books from Ethiopia. Oxford: Manar al-Athar, 2016. ISBN: 978-0-9954946-0-2. £49.95For past PaleoJudaica on the Garima Gospels, see here, here, and here. For some past posts on ancient Ethiopic (Ge'ez), see here and links. And for past posts on the ancient Ethiopian Kingdom of Axum (Aksum) see the posts collected here.
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In the museum store, on the way to the exit, a boy about 6 years old sat on the floor and screamed: “I want a Bible! I want a Bible!” His mother mumbled something in an attempt to calm him down but he continued shouting, “I want a Bible! Nowwww!”For other past PaleoJudaica posts on the Museum of the Bible and related matters, including many reviews of the Museum, start here and follow the many links
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
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A rare 1,800-year-old Byzantine-era Roman mosaic from the 2nd-3rd centuries CE bearing an inscription in ancient Greek was recently discovered at Caesarea National Park, on the coast of Central Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Thursday.There's a description of the mosaic, which was under a Byzantine-era building. The article gives no further details about the inscription. The video gives a drone's-eye-view of the excavation.
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Research specialization for this position is open, but candidates should be able to teach at least one course on modern Israel broadly defined. Preference will be given to candidates who can offer engaging undergraduate courses on various topics of Jewish history, religion, and/or foundational texts (Tanakh, Mishnah, and Talmud). The ideal candidate would also be able to teach courses that would be accessible to a broad range of undergraduate students (e.g., courses on modern Middle East, north Africa, greater Mediterranean, and so forth). Candidates must have PhD in hand at the time of appointment in August 2018.This is an open-rank, tenure-track position. The closing date for applications is 1 May 2018. Follow the link for further particulars.
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The professor of Christian origins and Second Temple Judaism and author of ‘What Did Jesus Look Like?’ on puzzles, a chance encounter with ‘Jesus the Jew’ and 1st-century fashionMore on Professor Taylor's new (publication date — today!) book, What Did Jesus Look Like?," is here/
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Christianity emerges in the second century as a family of warring sects comprised almost exclusively of ex-pagan gentiles. As they faced off against each other, each claiming to be the true community of revelation, these gentile sects derided their Christian rivals by accusing them of being “Jews,” of being “like the Jews,” or of being “worse than the Jews.”[i] It was in this period that “thinking with Jews” became hard-wired into Christian theology, thus Christian identity. The intra-Christian exchange of anti-Jewish insults became one of the drive wheels of patristic theology.
[...]
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DANIEL BOYARIN
The Talmud – A Personal Take
Selected Essays
Ed. by Tal Hever-Chybowski
[Der Talmud – eine persönliche Interpretation. Ausgewählte Aufsätze.]
2017. X, 499 pages.
Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 170
169,00 €
cloth
ISBN 978-3-16-152819-4
Published in English.
This collection of Daniel Boyarin's previously uncollected essays on the Talmud represents the different methods and lines of inquiry that have animated his work on that text over the last four decades. Ranging and changing from linguistic work to work on sex and gender to the relations between formative Judaism and Christianity to the literary genres of the Talmud in the Hellenistic context, he gives an account of multiple questions and provocations to which that prodigious book gives stimulation, showing how the Talmud can contribute to all of these fields. The book opens up possibilities for study of the Talmud using historical, classical, philological, anthropological, cultural studies, gender, and literary theory and criticism. As a kind of intellectual autobiography, it is a record of the alarums and excursions of a life in the Talmud.
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The Program in Jewish Studies and co-sponsors at CU Boulder welcome award-winning author and journalist Ariel Sabar, who will host a public lecture titled “Paradise Lost and Found,” focusing on his best-selling book My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq.The lecture is tomorrow, 8 February.
[...]
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Things were very different in the Talmudic period, in the first centuries CE, when Jews were subject to terrible persecution by the Roman authorities. As Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon is quoted as saying in Avoda Zara 18a, it was Rome that “destroyed God’s Temple, and burned His sanctuary, and killed His pious ones, and destroyed His best ones.” Yet somehow, “it still exists,” which suggested to Chanina that God must have “given reign” to Rome for inscrutable reasons of his own. This combination of resignation and resistance was dramatized this week in several stories about confrontations between Jewish sages and Roman power.Also, there is a rare reference to Jesus of Nazareth in this week's Talmudic reading.
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What did ancient Jews know? Well, they knew that according to Mishnah Avodah Zarah 2:2 “one may accept their [non-Jewish] healing related to one’s property/money, but not healing related to life/ soul.” In the third installment for PSCO 2017-8, Lennart Lehmhaus (Freie Universität Berlin) explored the category of Talmudic medicine through this passage and through rabbinic commentary on it. In the process, he invited us to take seriously the epistemological implications of discrete bits of data, especially on medicine, midwives, and healing experts, for our understanding of the context of Talmudic discourse.A summary of the lecture follows.
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Israel is developing archaeological and tourism sites to legitimise illegal settlements in Palestinian neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, European Union diplomats in the city have warned.The full text of the report has not bee released.
A leaked report acquired by the Guardian cited projects in parts of East Jerusalem – occupied by Israel since 1967 – that are being used “as a political tool to modify the historical narrative and to support, legitimise and expand settlements”.
[...]
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Museo delle Religioni “Raffaele Pettazzoni”Follow the link for further particulars. The deadline for paper proposals is 1 April 2018.
Religions and Medicine
From Antiquity to Contemporary Age
June 5-6-7-8-9, 2018
Velletri (Rome)
Call for Papers
In the contemporary Western world, medicine constitutes a specific branch of
knowledge, with its own characteristics and methods of cure and research, and it’s
tendentially autonomous, not linked with religious or folklore beliefs, even though
there are still some contacts, reciprocal influences and conflicts. In the past, however,
these spheres were more reciprocally interconnected than it appears to us nowadays.
The conference aims to investigate this interconnection in a multi-disciplinary
perspective, as regards both medical procedures and the definition of human body. ...
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Why did many languages only have a single word to designate both ‘green’ and ‘blue’? What does it mean when a language like Akkadian does not have an abstract word for the color ‘blue’? Could Akkadian-speakers nonetheless see and conceptualize ‘blueness’? Equally puzzling was the contrast between the ubiquitous use of colorful substances and objects and the relative dearth of terms or expressions for color. Ethnological data combined with research in cognitive sciences eventually demonstrated that color was a culturally determined and culturally constructed phenomenon. In many societies, words for things like luminosity, transparency, the contrast between wetness/desiccation, patterns and even psycho-emotional values are considered color terms. Different cultures make sense of color differently.PaleoJudaica has noted past articles on this subject here and here. This one gives lots of illustrated examples from the ancient Akkadian language.
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Last week, I posted on a small part of Origen's Hexapla in Job 24:25, and before writing further posts on the matter, readers should be aware of the modern editions of the Hexapla. There is a lot to say about the history of the Hexapla and research into its primary sources, but the greatest benefit to the student of the Bible is access to the modern editions and collections of its fragmentary remains.Immediate background here. Other past PaleoJudaica posts on Origen's Hexapla are here, here, here, and here.
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Traditional commentators endued certain Torah references with midrashic or esoteric purport in an effort to counteract those who mocked them. But in so doing, they were conceding the mockers’ evaluation of these texts as being, prima facie, inconsequential. Fortunately, source criticism helps us accept these texts without discomfort, obviating the compulsion to interpret them away.There is a fascinating history of midrashic discussion of the quotidian details in the Pentateuch.
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Type: Call for Papers
Date: July 30, 2018 to August 3, 2018
Location: Finland
Subject Fields: Cultural History / Studies, Digital Humanities, Jewish History / Studies
Dear Colleagues,
We are excited to present to you a new unit: The Biblical World and Cultural Evolution which is part of the joint conference of the Internations SBL and EABS taking place in Helsinki, Finland from July 30th until August 3rd this year
The definite deadline is Feb. 14th, so don’t hesitate...
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
In English, to covet means to desire (someone or something) obsessively, wrongfully, and/or without due regard for the rights/feelings of others. It is a strong emotion, to be avoided. But does “covet” capture the meaning of the Hebrew verb חמד?
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"When the Morning Stars Sang"
Essays in Honor of Choon Leong Seow on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday
Ed. by Jones, Scott C. / Yoder, Christine Roy
Series:Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 500
Aims and Scope
During a moment of exponential growth and change in the fields of biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies, it is an opportune time to take stock of the state wisdom and wisdom literature with twenty-three essays honoring the consummate Weisheitslehrer, Professor Choon Leong Seow, Vanderbilt, Buffington, Cupples Chair in Divinity and Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University.
This Festschrift is tightly focused around wisdom themes, and all of the essays are written by senior scholars in the field. They represent not only the great diversity of approaches in the field of wisdom and wisdom literature, but also the remarkable range of interests and methods that have characterized Professor Seow's own work throughout the decades, including the theology of the wisdom literature, the social world of Ecclesiastes, the history of consequences of the book of Job, the poetry of the Psalms, and Northwest Semitic Inscriptions, just to name a few.
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Citrus was first cultivated by humans at least four thousand years ago in Southeast Asia, and all cultivated species derive from a handful of wild ancestors. Several years ago I found the earliest archaeobotanical evidence of citrus within the Mediterranean in a royal Persian garden near Jerusalem dating to the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. In the course of research I traced the spread and diversification of citrus through a variety of historical information, including ancient texts, art, and artifacts such as wall paintings and coins, and by gathering all the available archaeobotanical remains: fossil pollen grains, charcoal, seeds, and other fruit remains.Background here and links.
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The major challenge facing current research on the Pentateuch is outlined in the introduction: “In the three major centers of research on the Pentateuch-North America, Israel, and Europe-scholars tend to operate from such different premises, employ such divergent methods, and reach such inconsistent results that meaningful progress has become impossible. The models continue to proliferate but the communication seems only to diminish” (p. 3). Thus the lofty aim of the volume, “to further the international discussion about the Pentateuch in the hope that the academic cultures in Israel, Europe, and North America can move toward a set of shared assumptions and a common discourse” (p. 4).I noted the publication of this book here.
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Michael Herren contends that the greatest contribution of Greek thought to Christianity was not philosophical principles but the critical reading of Scripture “as a pagan Greek might read Homer” (p. viii). Central to his thesis is the claim that the transmission of myths included strategies of how to interpret them. Approaching his subject as a history of ideas, he divides myths and their interpretations into periods corresponding to three “shifting paradigms in ancient thought and culture” (p. vii): (1) the Poets (ca. 800-600 BCE), (2) Physis (600-350 BCE) and (3) Theos (350 BCE onward). Jews and Christians adopted Greek methods of criticizing myth which ultimately benefitted the reading of religious texts. “Classical exegesis” prevented fundamentalist reading of Scriptures and protected pagan Classics from overzealous Christians. Hoping to appeal to students, Herren includes a glossary of names and terms in the back and draws connections to contemporary culture wars, maintaining that the open-minded and skeptical interpretive methods of the ancient Greeks might restrain the irrational fundamentalism that tragically colors twenty-first century discourse and ideologically driven violence. The bulk of the book, wherein lies its primary value, is dedicated to tracing the treatment of myth in antiquity. These sections, in which Herren displays his learned expertise, are especially convincing. When he casts his net beyond the traditional Classical world to Jewish and Christian literature with occasional nods to our own context, the results are less satisfying. Nonetheless, this barely detracts from the work’s core elements.
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Gorgias Press academic publisher in the United States has published the English translation of the manual, entitled Introduction to Aramean and Syriac Studies, by Yerevan State University lecturer, philologist Arman Akopian.Cross-file under New Book.
[...]
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Yesterday's article mentioned the pools as "the most significant finding," but then said very little about them. Today's Mail article gives more details. Background here.
- Archaeologists believe the Byzantine-era pools may have been the site of a storied baptism by St. Philip the Evangelist, as described in the New Testament
- It remains unclear why the pool was built, but researchers believe it may have been part of a royal estate and used for irrigation, washing or landscaping
- Images of nymphs are inscribed on the fountain, making it the 'first of it's kind'
- The site was unearthed between 2012 and 2016 but is now being made public
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Interest in the subject of demonology in ancient Israel-Judah/early Judaism has grown in recent years, and the present work represents the most recent monograph contribution to the conversation. In Materiality Brian Schmidt, who has already made significant forays into relevant topics such as Israelite mortuary cult and religion at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (KA), returns to build upon and nuance his earlier work with a special focus on apotropaic magic as evidenced in archaeological, epigraphic, and biblical sources. The stated goal is ambitious, to establish based on historical and comparative analysis the “survival and viability of a previously unidentified, yet extant pandemonium in preexilic Israelite magic” (p. 13).
[...]
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Dr. Mazar is currently leading another excavation on the Ophel. As is now custom, Eilat is supported by Armstrong students and alumni: 11, to be exact. I visited Dr. Mazar and the students in Jerusalem last weekend. During the visit, we broke out the microphone and I sat down with Dr. Mazar to discuss the Ophel dig, as well as some of our fondest memories from the past 50 years.The "Ophel" is an elevated area in Jerusalem between the City of David and the Temple Mount. The 2018 season will be fairly short and will focus on excavating a cave (date not specified), the "medallion house," and a Byzantine-era building. Dr. Mazar hopes to return to the Iron Age remains in a future season.
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Israeli authorities inaugurated a nature park on Wednesday near Jerusalem after five years of archaeological excavations at Ein Hanya, the second-largest spring in the Judean Hills and a key site in the history of Christianity. Along with an announcement that the park will open to the public free of charge within months, the Israel Antiquities Authority revealed some major findings at the site, including a column capital typical of royal structures from the First Temple era and one of the oldest coins ever discovered in the Jerusalem area.There is also a complex of pools from the Byzantine period, which is reportedly "the most significant finding." More on the coin:
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It said that another significant find from that period was a rare silver coin, described as one of the most ancient discovered so far in the Jerusalem area. It is the ancient Greek currency drachma, with the coin “minted in Ashdod by Greek rulers between 420 and 390 BCE.”Cross-file under Numismatics.
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What is a Jew?For past posts on Professor Weitzman's new book and his research in general, see here and links.
Where did we come from?
Who am I?
Such existential questions not only keep us up at night, they deeply interested author Steven Weitzman — so much so that he set out to research questions of identity and origin in a book.
The result was The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age, which was named the winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in the Education and Jewish Identity category.
[...]
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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.
It should, in sum, be possible for a museum to promote to a high degree an understanding of the Bible as a central item in American culture, as a source of truth and authority for Christians and Jews in their different ways, and as the object of enormously productive (and, for some, challenging) academic study in the modern mode. How well the MOTB does this now, I cannot say. But Diana Muir Appelbaum’s splendid essay makes me eager to find out for myself.The Impact of the Bible. What better explains the sudden rise of republican government in the 16th and 17th centuries than the new and widespread availability of the Bible? And that’s not all. (Diana Muir Appelbaum)
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According to Nir Distelfeld, head of the Israel Antiquity Authority’s theft prevention unit in the northern region, the strong weekend rains in the Beit She’an region must have turned up earth at the vessel’s site of origin.I noted a recent similar discovery in the same region here. But that one was a case of excavation by porcupine.
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In preparation of my critical edition of the Hexaplaric fragments of Job 22-42 for the Hexapla Project, I am noticing again some of the gems among the texts of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion that Origen once assembled in full parallel columns but now come down to us mainly in fragmentary, marginal notes in Christian MSS. The text of Job 24:25b is such a text. ...Cross-file under Septuagint (LXX).
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Throughout the Talmud, it is clear that the rabbis wanted Jews to live apart from gentiles as much as possible. For instance, Jews are not permitted to eat food prepared by gentiles, nor to live among gentile neighbors. In Tractate Avoda Zara, this message becomes still more pointed. Jews cannot do business with gentiles on their festival days, or for three days before or after, lest they “place a stumbling block before the blind”—that is, assist an idol-worshipper in his sin. This week, we learned that there is a catalog of items that Jews could never sell to pagans at any time because they were commonly used in pagan rites. These include various kinds of herbs, as well as white roosters, which apparently were popular for sacrifices.And read on for some unlikely legends about a certain Emperor Antoninus.
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These particular bronze coins, now held as evidence in court, could date from circa the 1st century CE or slightly earlier to the 6th century CE, said Erickson-Gini.Cross-file under Numismatics.
Their impressive age, however, doesn’t mean they are valuable: Fitoussi would estimate the entire trove to be worth only a few hundred dollars. Their value is in their worth as research aids — at excavation sites.
“The minute they’re found outside of their context, we have no idea where they came from. Coins can give researchers a lot of information. It’s possible to learn a lot about places from them, but since we don’t know from where they came from exactly, the coins’ historical worth is devalued,” said Fitoussi.
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It’s important to note that with all three methods, researchers were only able to determine the presence of different inks within the dense cartonnage; they could not glean enough information to read the texts. Their study is just the first step in what will surely be a long trajectory of research—but it is a significant first step.Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
To sum up, at the AiG venues Jews and their history are little more than pawns in the ideological struggle with religious plurality, the forces of secularism, and liberal Christianity. AiG’s Bible is not the pluralistic one of scholarship and interreligious dialogue. As one sign in the Creation Museum puts it, “The Prophets, the Apostles, and Jesus Christ proclaimed one truth.” Anyone who objects to their evangelical and young Earth creationist Christian statement of faith will not be hired.[27] The Museum of the Bible has included rabbis and Jewish scholars in their International Advisory Council.[28] But it is hard to see how an honest desire to be inclusive of Jews would permit association with ministries like Answers in Genesis. And so, I must ask whether Answers in Genesis is an organization that the Museum of the Bible, with its interest in the history of the Bible as a cultural artefact and a stated desire for inclusivity, should continue to partner with.The issue here is that the Green Collection and the Museum of the Bible have lent artifacts to Creationist museums belonging to Answers in Genesis (AiG).
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Sweet Dreams? Interpreting Food in the Dreams of Pharaoh’s Cupbearer and Baker
So…once I started thinking about the role of food and drink in this story, I realized that I’d stumbled across a tool that could help uncover what was going on behind the scenes.
See Also: From Forbidden Fruit to Milk and Honey: A Commentary on Food in the Torah (Urim Publications: 2018).
By Diana Lipton
January 2018
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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.
Syriac, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians—their chosen name varies by denomination, but most recognize themselves as part of the same ethnic group—originally hail from the Middle East, where their Aramaic dialects were once the dominant language. Forced into diaspora by both ethnic and religious conflicts, the Syriac Christians in New Jersey, who number about 2,000 families and are mostly members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, have created Syriac establishments ranging from language schools to restaurants. They are now attempting to balance the American Dream with preserving their faith and reviving their ancient culture.A detailed account of the current fate of Aramaic-speaking Christians in the Middle East — and in New Jersey.
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(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, JANUARY 22 - A new exhibition showing at the Carthage National Museum highlights the links between the Carthaginian and Etruscan civilisations before the Mediterranean came under Roman dominion. 'Carthage et les Etrusques, une si vieille amitié' presents a selection of over 2,000 Etruscan archaeological items from the 4th to the 7th century BC and the oldest existing 'passport', used by a Carthaginian travelling to Etruria (Italy).
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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.
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.
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.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
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
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.
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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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
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.
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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