Pleins with Homrighausen, Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary by Conceptual Categories

RELIGION PROF: Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary by Conceptual Categories (James McGrath). Looks useful.

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Women scholars etc. - Jewish-Christian-Islamic Origins

NEW AT 4 ENOCH (THE ENOCH SEMINAR'S ONLINE ENCYCLOPEDIA): Category:Women Jewish-Christian-Islamic Origins -> Women.

The page: Women, includes (in chronological order) biographical information about Women Scholars, Authors, & Artists who have contributed to the study of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Origins, from the mid-15th century to the present. It also provides access to scholarly and fictional works authored by Women, by the time and by the language of their composition.

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What happened at Pentecost?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Speaking in Tongues in the Bible. What happened at Pentecost? (Megan Sauter). This essay is an introduction to Ben Witherington's 2015 BAR article, "Speaking in the Tongues of Men or Angels?" The article itself is behind the subscription wall.

Also, here's a PaleoJudaica post from some years ago which also deals with the speaking in tongues at Pentecost.

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Should Moses have shattered those tablets?

RABBI UZI WEINGARTEN: Moses Shatters the Tablets – in Anger (TheTorah.com).

The Talmud famously has God congratulating Moses for shattering the Tablets. A midrash, quoting the verse, “Anger resides in the bosom of fools” (Ecclesiastes 7:9), criticizes Moses. Tosafot take this a step further and suggests Moses had a better option.

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Purim in the Thedosian Code

SOCIETY FOR CLASSICAL STUDIES: Blog: The Jewish Holiday of Purim in the Late Roman Empire (Catherine Bonesho).

In her monthly column, Catherine Bonesho will feature discussions of Greco-Roman age Judaism, the Roman Near East, as well as the American Academy in Rome. For her first monthly column, she explores the Roman context for the Jewish holiday of Purim.

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John William Wevers LXX Prize 2018

COMPETITION: The John William Wevers Prize in Septuagint Studies (IOSCS).

The International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS) offers an annual prize of $350 to be awarded to an outstanding paper in the field of Septuagint studies. The prize has been named in memory of John William Wevers to honor his many contributions to Septuagint studies.

Follow the link for further particulars. The submission deadline is 15 August 2018.

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Conference on transmission of Oral Law at Bar Ilan

COMING SOON: Bar-Ilan University Talmud Conference - "Transitions": Exploring Transmission of the Oral Law from the Tannaitic Period to the Present (H-Judaic).

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Trump and Cyrus - the coin

NUMISMATICS? Israeli group mints Trump coin to honor Jerusalem recognition. Mikdash Educational Center creates 1,000 coins with US president's image alongside King Cyrus, in move likely to rile Iranians (AP/Times of Israel). Probably not only them.

Note that this is an AP story. It is also running in Newsweek and it has been around for a while. It isn't a Purim joke.

Various people have compared President Trump to Cyrus the Great at one time or another (cf., e.g., here). I haven't noted any of those stories in past posts, but I did link to a reference to Cyrus by the White House last year. See the links at that post for some reservations about invoking Cyrus in modern political contexts.

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Reviewlet of Gallagher and Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists

LARRY HURTADO: Biblical Canon Lists: A New Book. I noted the publication of the book last year here. And, by the way, it's not too late to win a free copy of the book.

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Did Purim come from an Assyrian calendrical ritual?

MORE SERIOUSLY FOR PURIM: On the Origins of Purim and Its Assyrian Name (Dr. Amitai Baruchi-Unna, The Torah.com).

In the book of Esther, the name for the holiday Purim derives from Haman’s pūr (פּוּר, “lot”) to determine what day to attack the Jews. The name Purim predates the story of Haman’s lot, and may originate in a forgotten Assyrian calendrical celebration, when the new year was named with a pūru.

Could be.

And least serious of all, TheTorah.com also provides this for Purim.

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Newly deciphered Esther scroll from Qumran! (Purim edition)

DR. RABBI ASHER TOV-LEV Newly Deciphered Qumran Scroll Revealed to Be Megillat Esther (TheTorah.com).

The discovery upends decades of research addressing the question of why the Book of Esther is missing from Qumran.

I remember Professor Frank Moore Cross once commenting that there were so many Qumran fragments that consisted of just one letter, you could reconstruct any text you wanted from them.

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Purim 2018

HAPPY PURIM to all those celebrating! The festival begins tonight at sundown.

Last year's Purim post is here, with links. Posts on Purim since then are here, here, here, and here, plus more today.

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Another review of Pachoumi, The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Eleni Pachoumi, The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum, 102. Tübingen​: Mohr Siebeck, 2017. Pp. xvi, 258. ISBN 9783161540189. €79.00 (pb).Reviewed by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Bryn Mawr College (redmonds@brynmawr.edu).

Pachoumi’s study of The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri adds to the growing number of recent works that probe in detail the fascinating and mysterious collection of papyrus texts from Roman Egypt known (somewhat misleadingly) as the Greek Magical Papyri.1 Building upon a number of articles she has published in the last few years, Pachoumi assembles a set of analyses of specific spells within this collection of magical recipes that illuminate the underlying understanding of divinity within the ritual recipes. While Pachoumi claims that the overall picture reveals a basic consistency of ideas across the corpus, it is the rich diversity of concepts of the divine that emerges from her analysis that makes the study appealing. In the chapters of the book, Pachoumi analyzes three kinds of characterizations of divine figures within the Greek Magical Papyri: the personal daimon, the paredros divinity, and the assimilations of deities with one another. The book concludes with a wealth of appendices, indices, and bibliography, and Pachoumi provides an introductory treatment of the corpus of the Greek Magical Papyri and the study’s approach to the concepts of the divine within the syncretic context of magical ritual practice. ...

I noted the publication of the book here and another review of it here.

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Interview with Eilat Mazar

ARCHAEOLOGY: OPHEL EXCAVATION DIRECTOR DISCUSSES BIBLICAL DISCOVERIES, TEMPLE MOUNT. “The Ophel was built by King Solomon in the 10th century, and it was the biblical equivalent of an acropolis in Jerusalem where royalty ruled from” (Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post).

Days after announcing the discovery of what may be a seal impression from Prophet Isaiah unearthed at the foot of the Temple Mount, the archeologist in charge of the Ophel excavations discussed her find, as well as the politics that surround her field in Jerusalem.

Dr. Eilat Mazar, a senior researcher from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s department of archeology, has been involved in the Ophel excavations since 1981, where she initially worked under the supervision of her grandfather, former Hebrew University president Dr. Benjamin Mazar.

[...]

Past posts on the bulla of (possibly the prophet) Isaiah are here and links. For earlier posts on discoveries at the Ophel excavation, see the links here.

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The Talmud on assimilation

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: On the Perils of Assimilation. In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study, patrolling the boundaries between Jewish and pagan society.

As a result, Tracate Avoda Zara is really less about idol-worship than it is about how Jews should relate to pagans in general. Idol-worship is one of the worst sins in Judaism, but in this section of the Talmud, the rabbis don’t seem much disturbed by the possibility that a Jew might be tempted to commit it. Rather, they are concerned with patrolling the boundaries between Jewish and pagan society, using idol-worship as a kind of all-purpose excuse to enforce Jewish self-segregation. At moments, however, the excuse wears thin and the rabbis’ real concerns can be glimpsed: not just idol-worship, but what we now call “assimilation,” the possibility that a Jew would become so well-integrated into gentile society that he would stop being Jewish.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Medieval St. Nicholas ring found in Galilean garden

DISCOVERY: Israeli Gardener Born on Christmas Day Finds 700-year-old Ring With Image of St. Nicholas. Artifact may date from after the Crusader period and could have been worn by a pilgrim hoping for the saint’s protection during a quest to the Holy Land (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

A gardener weeding a lot in northern Israel has found a bronze ring from the Middle Ages bearing the image of St. Nicholas, the bishop of ancient Myra, Turkey, and the inspiration behind the tradition of Santa Claus. Nothing quite like it has been found in Israel before.

In one of those bizarre coincidences, the finder, Dekel Ben Shitrit, 26, was born on Christmas Day. His girlfriend’s name is Nicole, he adds.

[...]

Naturally he posted a photo on Facebook.

This is the most comprehensive article on this story, but it is a premium piece in Haaretz, so when you get to it it may not be available anymore. But here are a couple more articles.

Galilee gardener digs up medieval ring bearing smiling St. Nicholas. 700-year-old bronze band is emblazoned with image of patron saint of pilgrims, whose reputation for gift-giving turned him into Santa Claus in Christian West (SUE SURKES, Times of Israel)

Found: A 700-Year-Old Ring Adorned with St. Nicholas. It was probably lost by a medieval pilgrim on his way to the Holy Land (Vittoria Traverso, Atlas Obscura)

I know this ring isn't ancient, but it's old and very cool.

Some past posts on St. Nicholas are collected here.

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New stretch of ancient incense route found in Negeb

NABATEAN (NABATAEAN) WATCH: Previously Unknown Stretch of 2,500-year-old Incense Route Found in Israel's Negev Desert. The path of the overland trading route from southern Arabia to Gaza was known to researchers, but they thought this 7-kilometer stretch lay elsewhere (Nir Hasson and Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

A section of the ancient Incense Route, stretching seven kilometers and marked with weather-beaten Roman-era milestones, has been discovered in the barren heart of Israel’s Negev desert.

The path of the trading route has been known all along, mainly from remnants rather than well-preserved tracks and signage. The exception was the section in the Negev – it was assumed that it had been destroyed by modern development. It turns out this was not the case. Surveyors now realize they had been looking for it in the wrong place.

[...]

The overland Incense Route was plied by the Nabateans, who were initially disorganized nomadic tribes roaming northern Arabia and the southern Levant and later became a slightly more organized kingdom, which never had clear boundaries.

From around the 3rd century B.C.E. to the 2nd century C.E., Nabatean traders, often on camels, transported incense from Arabia to the Mediterranean Sea coast, and returned with other merchandise.

[...]

Some past PaleoJudaica posts on the Nabatean incense route are here, here, here, and here.

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

BHD on the Golb case

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: SCOTUS Declines Dead Sea Scroll Case. Is the son of a University of Chicago professor off to jail for impersonating Dead Sea Scroll scholars?

Background here and many links.

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BHD on the Isaiah bulla

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Isaiah’s Signature Uncovered in Jerusalem. Evidence of the Prophet Isaiah? (Megan Sauter).

Excavations in Jerusalem have unearthed what may be the first extra-Biblical evidence of the prophet Isaiah. Just south of the Temple Mount, in the Ophel excavations, archaeologist Eilat Mazar and her team have discovered a small seal impression that reads “[belonging] to Isaiah nvy.” The upper portion of the impression is missing, and its left side is damaged. Reconstructing a few Hebrew letters in this damaged area would cause the impression to read, “[belonging] to Isaiah the prophet.”

[...]

Maybe. This essay is a good quick summary of a Biblical Archaeology Review article that, unusually, is available in full online for free (here). But do also read the additional discussion here and links. So far epigraphers are not convinced that the Isaiah of the seal is the same as Isaiah the prophet, although most do not rule it out either.

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Briant, From Cyrus to Seleukos

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: From Cyrus to Seleukos: Studies in Achaemenid and Hellenistic History. Notice of a new book: Briant, Pierre. 2018. From Cyrus to Seleukos: Studies in Achaemenid and Hellenistic History (Ancient Iran Series). UCI Jordan Center for Persian Studies.

Follow the link for TOC etc.

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Review of Roberts, Hannibal's Road

BOOK REVIEW: Hannibal's Road: The Second Punic War in Italy 213-203 BC, by Mike Roberts (A. A. Nofi, The Strategy Page).

Barnsley, Eng.: Pen & Sword / Philadelphia: Casemate Publishers, 2017. Pp. xxvi, 262. Illus., maps, notes, bibio., index. $39.95. ISBN: 1473855950.

Hannibal’s Italian Campaign

One would think that the Hannibalic or Second Punic War (218-201 BC) had been well covered, but in this book Roberts, who has written on Alexander’s “Successors”, the Hellenistic age, and other subjects in Classical Antiquity, shows that operations in Italy from 216 BC – not, as the title indicates 213 – onwards have been largely over-looked, but demonstrate the Carthaginian’s remarkable abilities and help explain his ultimate failure.

[...]

Cross-file under Punic Watch.

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Bloggers on the Isaiah Bulla

THE ISAIAH BULLA has gone under the scrutiny of Hebraist and epigrapher bloggers since the announcement of its discovery last week. Here are some recent blog posts on it.

ROLLSTON EPIGRAPHY: The Isaiah Bulla from Jerusalem: 2.0 (Christopher Rollston)

In any case, within this post, I wish to emphasize certain things that I mentioned in the previous post and also especially to flesh out some of the possibilities for the second word, that is, word, or word fragment, that is present on the third register: nun, bet, yod. As with my previous post, this will be done in brief. I will publish a full journal article on this bulla at a later date in the near future. In any case, my view is that this second word could be a patronymic (in which case this bulla is certainly not Isaiah the Prophet’s as his father was Amoz), a title, or a gentilic.

WITH MEAGRE POWERS: Have we found the seal of the prophet Isaiah? (George Athas)

t’s possible, and certainly plausible that this is Isaiah’s seal. But I don’t think it’s probable. I think it’s the second most likely explanation. I believe in this case we simply have the seal of another, less historically illustrious Isaiah, who was the son of Nabiah.

REMNANT OF GIANTS: Why “Isaiah” of the Isaiah Bulla is not the Prophet Isaiah (Deane Galbraith)

Therefore, given the evidence of Bulla #693, the better conclusion is that the ‘Isaiah’ of the Isaiah bulla is “Isaiah [son of] Nobai”, possibly a brother of “‘Oreb [son of] Nobai”, and not “Isaiah the prophet”.

I think two points from these posts are especially worth underlining. First, none of the above sees a compelling case for this seal being the signature of Isaiah the son of Amoz, the eighth-century Judean prophet. At best this is a possibility. And all three bloggers see pretty much the same problems with the identification.

Second, Dr. Galbraith's (unprovenanced) Bulla #693 appears to provide us with a contemporary son of NBY whose signature may have iconographic connections with the seal of Isaiah. If Deane's conclusions are upheld, it become much more likely that our Isaiah is a relative of the owner of the Oreb seal and had nothing to do with the prophet.

Interesting times. Watch this space.

Background here and here.

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Who was Hannibal?

PUNIC WATCH: THE ELEPHANT HAN Who was Hannibal, when did he cross the Alps with his elephant army and where was Carthage? He is seen as one of the greatest commanders in military history and famously marched across the Alps and into Italy (David Hughes, The Sun). This isn't the Sun's usual fare. But for some reason they have taken an interest in Hannibal Barca. The wordplay in the headline is commmendably dreadful.

There are many past posts on Hannibal in PaleoJudaica's archives.

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That first-century Mark manuscript again

THE ETC BLOG: Gary Habermas on First-Century Mark (Peter Gurry). I agree with Professor Gurry that the proposed date range is too narrow to be credible. If the claim was that the manuscript had been paleographically dated to, say, 50-150 CE, I would take it more seriously. And more seriously still if someone would publish the manuscript.

There's nothing new here, but as long as the claim about the early date continues to be repeated, we should continue to respond to it. The fragment was supposed to have been published five years ago.

It is not promising that the dating of this Mark manuscript to 80-110 CE appears alongside that claim that the Rylands fragment of the Gospel of John (P52) dates to c. 125 CE. On that, see here, here, and here, and links.

For more on the supposedly first-century manuscript fragment of the Gospel of Mark, see here and links.

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Seleucid Bibliography 1870-2017

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Seleucid Research Bibliography, 1870-2017.

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The Babatha archive

SCROLLS FROM THE JUDEAN DESERT: Babatha & the Role of Women in the 2nd Century. Exploring the mysterious 2nd-Century find in the Cave of Letters (Dr. Henry Abramson, Aish.com).

Nearly two thousand years ago, a Judean woman hiding from Roman soldiers buried her most precious legal documents in a cave. Discovered by an Israeli archaeologist, Babatha's archive reveals a vivid portrait of the life of a second-century woman.

[...]

For past PaleoJudaica posts on the Bar Kokhba Revolt and the scrolls discovered in the Judean Desert which date to that approximate period, see here and links. These include links to posts on Babatha and her archive, not least Philip Esler's recent book, Babatha's Orchard.

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The first philologists

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: EVA CANCIK-KIRSCHBAUM / JOCHEM KAHL, Erste Philologien. Archäologie einer Disziplin vom Tigris bis zum Nil. Unter Mitarbeit v. Klaus Wagensonner. [First Philologies. Tracing a Discipline between Tigris and Nile.] 2018. XVI, 471 pages. 29,00 €. sewn paper. ISBN 978-3-16-155425-4.

Published in German.
As complex notation systems or script emerge in Egypt and Mesopotamia both cultures develop large bodies of written lore over the millennia addressing various areas of knowledge. Compilation, care, and transmission of these texts between 3000 BC until the turn of the eras required a high degree of specialisation. Minute familiarity with the script(s) and language(s), their structure and characteristics, as well as the methods of compilation represent the foundation of philological work. These involve, for instance, techniques for transferring knowledge over time, comparing texts and reassembling knowledge into new editions, or interpreting and commenting on texts in circulation. A main goal of this study is to make available vantage points, which allow glimpses into the primary sources, where actors, institutions, and methods engage systematically with the written lore. In doing so, the book aims to illuminate first philologies in the ancient civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

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INL manuscripts at NYU

EXHIBITION: National Library of Israel brings rare, ancient manuscripts to New York University (JTA).

Two dozen rare manuscripts from the collections of the National Library of Israel are on display in New York.

The illustrated and illuminated manuscripts in Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Hebrew include a Royal Quran from the personal library of an Ottoman sultan. It is the largest ever display of National Library of Israel artifacts outside of the country.

The works will be on display as part of the exhibit “Romance and Reason: Islamic Transformations of the Classical Past,” at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World through mid-May.

[...]

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Update on medical school Phoenician

PHOENICIAN WATCH: For Doctors in Training, a Course on Phoenician (Edward Fox, Al-Fanar Media).

Last fall, the medical school of Saint Joseph University of Beirut offered, for the first time, a course in a subject not usually associated with the study of medicine: an introduction to written Phoenician, an ancient Semitic language from a region that includes the modern state of Lebanon.

“The first semester has been a real success,” said Maroun Khreich, the professor teaching the course, “and registration has opened for the spring semester.” He said that 35 people enrolled for the first semester, among them medical students, professors and alumni.

Offering the course was the personal initiative of Roland Tomb, dean of the medical school and a man with wide interests: he is a specialist in dermatology but also has a doctorate in philosophy and ethics, and has studied theology and ancient languages.

[...]

This article explains the background of this surprising course of study for a medical school. It seems that medical students have to take electives too in order for them to be well rounded individuals. Ancient Phoenician is an unusual elective, but it makes some sense in Lebanon. The Lebanese are interested in the ancient Phoenicians. People like to learn about the history and ancient culture and language of their country. More power to them.

Background here.

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Rollston on the Isaiah bulla

CHRISTOPHER ROLLSTON: The Putative Bulla of Isaiah the Prophet: Not so Fast.

In sum, in light of the fact that there almost twenty people mentioned in the Bible whose names are based on the same root word as the name “Isaiah” (and thus plenty of people walking around with that name or its basic equivalent); and in light of the fact that the word being read as “prophet” is lacking the critically important letter (the alep); and in light of the fact that there are plenty of names in the Bible that begin with nun and bet (and so that second word could be a lot of different things); and in light of the presence of a yod and the absence of the article on this new bullae…I feel obliged to state that we had better be cautious about assuming too much. Of course, the assumption that this is a bulla of Isaiah the prophet is scintillating, but it is certainly not something that we should assume is at all certain. It’s not.

There have been many article on this story since it came out yesterday. I'm not going to try to round them, because they are mostly very repetitive. But Professor Rollston is a professional Northwest Semitic epigrapher and paleographer. His view carries special weight, so read the whole essay.

I am pleased to see that he has come to the same conclusion that I reached yesterday and that he brings in some additional evidence. This bulla may preserve the signature of the prophet Isaiah, but then again it may not. The evidence is not conclusive.

Background here.

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Divination and the Torah

DR. JONATHAN STÖKL: Ancient Israelite Divination: Urim ve-Tummim, Ephod, and Prophecy (TheTorah.com).

In the Prophets, Israelite leaders such as Joshua, Saul, David, and Ahab use divination to help them make decisions, just as their ancient Near Eastern counterparts did. Why then, does the Torah sidestep the divinatory character of these objects and practices, and instead, emphasize their ritual and religious character?

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Tophets and child sacrifice

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: Understanding Tophets: A Short Introduction (Adriano Orsingher).

Few historical issues are as controversial as child sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean and Biblical worlds. The Biblical term Tophet is conventionally used to refer to a type of open-air cremation sanctuary. The common element characterising Tophets is the presence of an open space where urns containing cremated remains of animals and/or children were deposited.

[...]

It seems that specialists are still debating whether Tophets involved child sacrifice. For past posts on the issue, see here and links. Cross-file under Punic Watch.

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Tarbiz 85.1 (2018)

NEW ISSUE OF THE HEBREW JOURNAL TARBIZ: Vol. 85, No. 1. TOC:

Ronnie Goldstein | YHWH’s Inheritance and His Enthronement

Shraga Bar-On and Yakir Paz | The Land of God to the Sons of God: Deuteronomy 32: 8-9 and the Inheritance of the Land of Israel

Shlomi Efrati | A Quire of Chapters of Sanhedrin and Megillah, Part 1: A Unique Textual Tradition of the Babylonian Talmud

Mordechai Akiva Friedman | The Shabbat Evening Prayer in the Palestinian Congregation of Fustat in Abraham Maimonides’ Times

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A bulla of Isaiah (the prophet?)

EPIGRAPHY: In find of biblical proportions, Prophet Isaiah’s seal claimed to be unearthed. Chanced upon near a seal identified with King Hezekiah, a tiny clay piece may be the first-ever proof of the prophet, though a missing letter leaves room for doubt (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

Mazar’s team uncovered the minuscule bulla, or seal impression, during renewed excavations at the Ophel, located at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The discovery was published on Wednesday in an article, “Is This the Prophet Isaiah’s Signature?” as part of a massive March-June issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review dedicated to its recently retired founding editor, Hershel Shanks.

The clay impression is inscribed with letters and what appears to be a grazing doe, “a motif of blessing and protection found in Judah, particularly in Jerusalem,” according to the BAR article.

The oval-shaped bulla, however, is not intact. On its legible portion, there is an inscription with First Temple Hebrew letters that seem to spell out the name l’Yesha’yah[u] (Belonging to Isaiah). On a line below, there is the partial word nvy, which presumably spells out “prophet.”

“Because the bulla has been slightly damaged at the end of the word nvy, it is not known if it originally ended with the Hebrew letter aleph, which would have resulted in the Hebrew word for ‘prophet’ and would have definitively identified the seal as the signature of the prophet Isaiah,” Mazar said.

That is the central discovery, although there are other inscribed bullae and much additional information in the article. So read it all. And the BAR article is even more informative, so ditto.

Past PaleoJudaica posts on the Hezekiah bulla, which was found less than ten feet from this one, are here, here, here, here, and here.

Just a few observations on this latest discovery:

1. These inscribed bullae (seal impressions) are very important discoveries, no matter who is mentioned on them. I believe this is the first time the name Isaiah has appeared in an epigraphic discovery, although readers should fact-check me on that.

2. The angel Lacunael, has been hard at work on this discovery and he must be very proud of himself.

3. I do not yet have a view on whether the bulla belonged to the prophet Isaiah or to someone named Isaiah (son of) NBY. But a couple of observations point more in the direction of the latter possibility, but not decisively so.

First, there is the principal of banality. If we have two possible interpretations of a new inscription and one is very exciting and ties it directly to the Bible, while the other is more humdrum, the humdrum interpretation is probably right. Because very exciting finds are very rare. But to balance that point, it would be quite a coincidence if some other Isaiah in Jerusalem c. 700 BCE had a father whose name happened to look rather like the word "prophet."

Second, and more substantively, there is an orthographic issue. The spelling of Hebrew c. 700 BCE did not usually mark internal long vowels with consonants. So I would expect the word "prophet" to be spelled nb' (as it is spelled twice in the Lachish ostraca a century later) rather than nby'. The articles mention this point, but I would underline it a little more.

I hope the bulla does turn out to preserve the signature of the prophet Isaiah, but we'll just have to see. Or maybe we won't. We may never know.

UPDATE (25 February): More here and here.

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Supreme Court rules on Persepolis archives

THE PERSEPOLIS ARCHIVES CASE: US Supreme Court blocks Hamas bomb victims’ claim to Iran artifacts (Mark Sherman, AP).

For the basics of the Persepolis archives case, which has been going on for years, see here. Subsequent related posts are here and here. The archives are not directly relevant to ancient Judaism, but they provides us with background information on scribal practice and Aramaic in Iran in the Persian Period. And the case has raised some difficult questions about balancing the rights of terrorism victims to compensation with our obligation to preserve records from antiquity as responsibly as possible.

Follow the links here (cf. here) for many past posts on ancient Persepolis, as well as on the archives case and my own comments on it.

The Supreme Court has been busy lately. As before, I assume this is the end of this case, but I am not a lawyer and I don't know for sure.

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The Mithraeum at Caesarea

ATLAS OBSCURA: Caesarea Maritima Mithraeum. An ancient underground cultic temple where sunlight penetrates on the summer solstice.

In the 1970s, an underground vaulted room near the port was discovered by a team of archaeologists—one of several similar structures that were probably originally built as warehouses. This one, however, was special: During the end of the first century or beginning of the second century CE, it was converted into the temple of the god Mithras.

As usual with Atlas Obscura, there are some nice photos for the essay.

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The Hannibal's bell in Hannibal

PUNIC WATCH (TIDBIT): USS Hannibal served in three wars (Danny Henley, Hannibal Courier-Post).

The bell of a ship that saw action in three wars will be the centerpiece of a planned memorial when Hannibal’s riverfront is renovated.

[...]

"Hannibal" in this case is Hannibal Missouri.

[Mary Lynne] Richards [of the Hannibal Parks and Recreation Department] reported to the Park Board during its Thursday, Feb. 15, meeting that the bell had at one time sailed aboard the USS Hannibal (AG-1). It was reportedly one of only a handful of ships to see action in the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II, for which it received a handful of commendations.

Decommissioned for the final time in August 1944, it was sunk in the Chesapeake Bay in March 1945 for use as a bombing target.

“Before they did (sink the Hannibal) they took the bell off of it and sent it to the city of Hannibal, although it was not named for the city, but the general,” said Richards, referring to Hannibal Barca, a Carthaginian general known for leading an army that featured elephants across southern Europe and the Alps Mountains against Rome in the Second Punic War. “It’s kind of neat that we got this bell.”

Indeed.

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Redfield on Rabbinic ethnography

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Curiouser and Curiouser: In Search of Rabbinic Ethnography (James Redfield).

The essay is on the genesis and development of his PhD dissertation: "The Sages and the World: Categorizing Culture in Early Rabbinic Law." Stanford University (Religious Studies), 2017.

Excerpt from the essay:

The Mishnah, in its typically terse and declarative style, does not develop this description of wedding practices. Nor does it portray villagers called to testify that they remember the crunch of roast wheat, the hymn at a bridal procession, or the sheen of a bride’s hair. Yet as the text reading evoked those images, it expanded my preconceptions of “law” to a far wider variety of things, people, practices, and modes of thought. If legal language falls on a spectrum from purely normative to thickly descriptive–from Do’s & Don’ts, on one end; to what we really do, on the other–then I came to see rabbinic law as closer to the latter (especially in the associative, generically hodgepodge Tosefta; the Talmuds; and “minor tractates”; not to mention the rabbinic “wisdom” traditions of sayings, exempla, and anecdotes). Early rabbis did not simply lay down rulings by fiat or tradition, but cited real-world evidence to prove or exemplify their propositions. On the contrary, as they debated what one should (not) do, they took many roundabout detours to study, describe, and classify what people were actually doing; driven by a desire to develop their normative theories, of course, but also by a degree of curiosity in its own right.

Are there patterns among these descriptive detours, the rabbit-holes of the rabbinic imagination? Do they point to consistent interests? Retrace stock motifs and techniques? How can we map their interconnections, and how are they linked to normative projects–broadly defined–at the nerve-center of this rabbinic canon?

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Supreme Court declines to hear Golb case

THE RAPHAEL GOLB CASE: Supreme Court Won't Take Case of Dead Sea Scrolls Defendant. The Supreme Court won't take up the case of a blogger convicted of criminally impersonating his father's academic rivals on the subject of the Dead Sea Scrolls (AP/US News).

HT Jim West.

I have been following the Raphael Golb internet impersonation case for years, because of its (sad) connection with the Dead Sea Scrolls. I suppose this means the appeals stop here. But I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know for sure.

Recent posts on the case are here, here, and here. And follow the links in those for many earlier posts.

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Excerpt from Goodman, A History of Judaism

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS: Judaism Without a Temple: An Excerpt from Martin Goodman’s “A History of Judaism.”

I noted the publication of the book last year here.

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Hempel on that coded Qumran calendar

THE CONVERSATION: Dead Sea Scrolls deciphered: esoteric code reveals ancient priestly calendar (Charlotte Hempel).

Past PaleoJudaica posts on this story are here and here.

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

Review of "Early Jewish Literature: An Anthology"

READING ACTS BLOG: Book Review: Early Jewish Literature: An Anthology (Phil Long).

Wright, Archie T., Brad Embry and Ronald Herms. Early Jewish Literature: An Anthology. 2 Volumes. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2018. 728, 256 pp. $125.00, Hb.

The conclusion:

Early Jewish Literature is a major contribution to the ongoing study of the literature of the Second Temple period. Students and scholars alike will benefit from this collection of a wide range of material. The literature collected in these two volumes are sufficiently different from the now venerable Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the inclusion of Dead Sea Scroll material makes these useful volumes indeed.

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New book on the scholarship of the KJV

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord
Scholarship and the Making of the King James Version of the Bible

Mordechai Feingold, California Institute of Technology
The centrality of the King James Bible to early modern culture has been widely recognized. Yet for all the vast literature devoted to the masterpiece, little attention has been paid either to the scholarly scaffolding of the translation or to the erudition of the translators. The present volume seeks to redress this neglect by focusing attention on seven key translators as well as on their intellectual milieu. Utilizing a wide range of hitherto unknown or overlooked sources, the volume furnishes not only precious new information regarding the composition and early reception of the King James Bible, but firmly situates the labours of the translators within the broad context of early modern biblical and oriental scholarship and polemics.

Contributors are James P. Carley, Mordechai Feingold, Anthony Grafton, Nicholas J. S. Hardy, Alison Knight, Jeffrey Alan Miller, William Poole, Thomas Roebuck, and Joanna Weinberg.

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Josephus and Sir Roger L’Estrange

HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION: Josephus in the hands of Sir Roger L’Estrange (Roger Pearse).

Sir Roger L’Estrange is probably mainly remembered today for his activities as a journalist and violent pamphleteer for the court during the reign of Charles II.[1] As with others of Charles’ partisans, there was a strong element of ingratitude in all this. L’Estrange had fought for Charles I in the civil war, but had received a pardon in 1653 from Oliver Cromwell, after which he had prospered under the commonwealth. He was made surveyor of the press by the king in 1662, although the king did not see any reason to pay him a salary.

But how many of us are aware that this controversial figure was also a translator, and produced a translation of the works of Josephus?

[...]

The seventeenth century was a busy time.

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Herodium architecture at the Israel Museum

AT THE HOLY LAND PHOTOS' BLOG Carl Rasmussen has a couple of posts on architecture fragments from Herodium on display at the Israel Museum:

Herodium Display in Israel Museum

King Herod’s Tomb at the Israel Museum

For many past posts on Herod the Great and Herodium, start here (cf. here) and follow the links.

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Assyrian inscriptions under Jonah's (traditional) Tomb

ASSYRIOLOGY: Beneath Biblical Prophet's Tomb, An Archaeological Surprise (Owen Jarus, Live Science).

Deep inside looters' tunnels dug beneath the Tomb of Jonah in the ancient Iraq city of Nineveh, archaeologists have uncovered 2,700-year-old inscriptions that describe the rule of an Assyrian king named Esarhaddon.

The seven inscriptions were discovered in four tunnels beneath the biblical prophet's tomb, which is a shrine that's sacred to both Christians and Muslims. The shrine was blown up by the Islamic State group (also called ISIS or Daesh) during its occupation of Nineveh from June 2014 until January 2017.

[...]

Past posts on the (traditional) Tomb of Jonah and its sad fate under the regime of ISIS are here and links. This post noted the announcement of discovery of the Assyrian palace underneath the tomb. The current article gives new information on the inscriptions.

HT Joseph I. Lauer.

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Review of Goldbeck and Wienand (eds.), Der römische Triumph in Prinzipat und Spätantike

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Fabian Goldbeck, Johannes Wienand (ed.,) Der römische Triumph in Prinzipat und Spätantike​. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2017. Pp. xii, 595. ISBN 9783110445688. €99,95 (hb). Reviewed by Christian Rollinger, Universität Trier​ (christian.rollinger@uni-trier.de).

With renewed interest in the subject booming since the early 2000’s, the body of literature on the Roman triumph and its many different facets has become so vast as to be almost bloated and, at first glance, it could conceivably seem that there can scarcely be anything more to add.1 That this impression is as unfortunate as it is mistaken is clearly demonstrated by this timely book, the result of a conference held in 2012 in Berlin. With few exceptions (which look to the late republican and the early medieval period), all the papers collected in this volume concern themselves with the Roman triumph as it presented itself in many hues and variations to the contemporaries of the early, high, and late Roman empire. No fewer than eighteen chapters attempt to analyse a variety of aspects relating to the triumph ritual itself, to its literary descriptions, its representation in various media, and the concomitant architectural elements that came to litter the main metropolises of the empire. The result is a sturdy volume of almost 600 pages and a veritable kaleidoscope of different perspectives and methodologies that significantly expand our understanding of the dynamic evolution of what was and was always to remain a singularly Roman ritual.

[...]

Naturally Josephus's account of the Roman triumph over Judea receives attention.

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Another review of Graybill, Are We Not Men?

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (Sarah Fein).

Graybill, Rhiannon. Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets. Oxford University Press: New York, 2016.

I noted another review of the book here.

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

The Hexapla

THE ETC BLOG: What was the Hexapla? (John Meade).

Background here and links.

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What did the Romans do with executed bodies?

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

The Final Days of Jesus and the Realities of Roman Capital Punishment: What Happened to All Those Bodies?

What is the probability that the body of someone who had suffered capital punishment for offenses against the Roman state would be buried? The results of this inquiry indicate that the Gospel accounts of the execution and burial of Jesus comport well with Roman law and Roman practice in a time of relative peace.

See Also: The Final Days of Jesus: The Thrill of Defeat, The Agony of Victory: A Classical Historian Explores Jesus’s Arrest, Trial, and Execution (Lutterworth Press, 2018).

By Mark D. Smith
Professor of History
The College of Idaho
Board of Directors: Bethsaida Excavations Project
February 2018

Past PaleoJudaica posts on the crucified man skeleton are here and links.

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Høgenhaven et al. (eds.), Rewriting and Reception in and of the Bible

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

Rewriting and Reception in and of the Bible
Ed. by. Jesper Høgenhaven, Jesper Tang Nielsen, and Heike Omerzu

[Redaktion und Rezeption (in) der Bibel.]
2018. IX, 411 pages.
Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 396
159,00 €
cloth
ISBN 978-3-16-155006-5

Published in English.
The contributions in this volume critically engage with Mogens Müller's work on ancient Judaism, the Septuagint, the New Testament gospels, and the reception history of the Bible, covering a variety of topics within the field of biblical rewriting and reception. Rewriting and reception are parts of a continuous process that began within biblical literature itself and have continued in the history of interpretative communities where the Bible has been received and cherished in innumerable ways until today. The present volume aims to further the scholarly debate on important topics within biblical studies. It demonstrates that the notion of reception can be addressed from very different angles and from diverse hermeneutical and methodological viewpoints, all of which offer fresh insights into ancient texts and their afterlife.

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James and Sirach (Ben Sira)

READING ACTS BLOG: James and the Wisdom of Sirach. Phil Long has an ongoing series of posts on the New Testament Epistle of James. This seems like a good opportunity to mention it.

Cross-file under Old Testament Apocrypha Watch.

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Who did Jesus look like?

REMNANT OF GIANTS: Joan Taylor knows what Jesus looks like: he is basically Bret from Flight of the Conchords (Deane Galbriath). Now you know.

For more on Joan Taylor's new book, What did Jesus Look Like?, see here and links.

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

On the Israeli Academy of the Hebrew Language

LEXICOGRAPHY: THE ISRAELI ACADEMY CONTINUING THE UNPRECEDENTED REVIVAL OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE. In Biblical Hebrew, there were approximately 7,000 words. Modern Hebrew has approximately 33,000 words (Eytan Halon, Jerusalem Post).

Established by the Israeli government in a 1953 law, the academy is split into two divisions. The first division is a scientific undertaking termed the Historical Dictionary Project, initiated soon after the academy's birth and which seeks to produce an academic Hebrew dictionary, documenting and defining every Hebrew word from all periods and evolutions of the language.

The academy’s second division has a more practical, normative role. Its task is to coin new words and inform people how to speak and write. Since its inception, the academy has published countless dictionaries of new words in different technical fields, including psychology, banking, physics and mathematics.

According to the 1953 law, all Israeli state and governmental institutions are bound by the Hebrew language decisions adopted by the academy.

The success and breadth of the academy's historical dictionary project is clear to see by looking at one of [Dr. Gabriel] Birnbaum's many bookshelves. The project, initiated by Ben-Yehuda, counted five volumes by the time of his death in 1922. Today, there are 16 volumes taking pride of place in the researcher's office.

Some past posts on the Academy of the Hebrew Language and its Historical Dictionary Project are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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Esler, God's Court and Courtiers in the Book of the Watchers

NEW BOOK FROM WIPF AND STOCK:

God's Court and Courtiers in the Book of the Watchers
Re-Interpreting Heaven in 1 Enoch 1-36

BY Philip F. Esler

Imprint: Cascade Books
Category: Biblical Studies
paperback-logo
PAPERBACK
ISBN: 9781625649089
Pages: 246
Publication Date: 11/6/2017
Retail Price: $30.00
Web Price: $24.00

About
First Enoch is an ancient Judean work that inaugurated the genre of apocalypse. Chapters 1–36 tell the story of the descent of angels called “Watchers” from heaven to earth to marry human women before the time of the flood, the chaos that ensued, and God’s response. They also relate the journeying of the righteous scribe Enoch through the cosmos, guided by angels. Heaven, including the place and those who dwell there (God, the angels, and Enoch), plays a central role in the narrative.

But how should heaven be understood? Existing scholarship, which presupposes “Judaism” as the appropriate framework, views the Enochic heaven as reflecting the temple in Jerusalem, with God’s house replicating its architecture and the angels and Enoch functioning like priests. Yet recent research shows the Judeans constituted an ethnic group, and this view encourages a fresh examination of 1 Enoch 1–36. The actual model for heaven proves to be a king in his court surrounded by his courtiers. The major textual features are explicable in this perspective, whereas the temple-and-priests model is unconvincing. The author was a member of a nontemple, scribal group in Judea that possessed distinctive astronomical knowledge, promoted Enoch as its exemplar, and was involved in the wider sociopolitical world of their time.

Professor Esler kindly gave me a copy a few weeks ago.

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Vashti's Persian insult

DR. GEOFFERY HERMAN: Ahasuerus, the Son of a Stable-Master (TheTorah.com).

Vashti insults Ahasuerus by calling him “the son of my father’s stable master” (b. Megillah 12b). Persian sources, including the story of King Ardashir I, shed light on the origin and significance of this calumny.[

A reminder that Purim is coming soon.

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The Song of Songs

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Song of Songs: Love Is Strong as Death. Philip Stern’s Biblical Views column on the Song of Songs.

The poet’s aim, I would posit, is to sing of love with all the power of the Hebrew tongue.

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Review of Collins, The Invention of Judaism

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | The Invention of Judaism (Krista Dalton).

John J. Collins. The Invention of Judaism: Torah and Jewish Identity from Deuteronomy to Paul. University of California Press, 2017.

Last year I noted an essay on the book by Professor Collins himself here.

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Brooke lecture on "Comparing Methods and Theories"

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN, Dirk Smilde Research Seminar:
Professor George Brooke on "Comparing Methods and Theories." This is a video of a recent lecture by Professor Brook. It is posted at Facebook page of the Groningen Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies. I noted awhile ago that his inaugural lecture at Groningen was upcoming. It happened at the beginning of this month and was livestreamed, but I can't find the video anywhere. If you find it, please send me the link.

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Review of Graybill, Are We Not Men?

H-JUDAIC: Sweeney on Graybill, 'Are We Not Men?: Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets'.

Author: Rhiannon Graybill
Reviewer: Marvin A. Sweeney

Rhiannon Graybill. Are We Not Men?: Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 200 pp. $78.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-022736-4.

Reviewed by Marvin A. Sweeney (Claremont School of Theology)
Published on H-Judaic (February, 2018)
Commissioned by Katja Vehlow

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=51533

Rhiannon Graybill’s monograph on unstable masculinity in the prophets is based on her recent University of California Berkeley PhD dissertation supervised by Robert Alter, Daniel Boyarin, Chana Kronfeld, and Celeste Langan. I normally do not mention full committees in reviews, but this committee includes no full Bible scholars, even if some of them, for example, Alter, have extensive experience with Bible. Alter is a comparative literature scholar; Boyarin is a Talmudist; Kronfeld is a scholar of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature; and Langan in a specialist in English literature. But Graybill’s research is frequently limited by her selection of often out-of-date scholarly literature and her failure to contextualize many of the Bible passages that she studies. Although she raises appropriate questions, her discussions often do not provide full consideration of the biblical and scholarly literature that such a project demands.

[...]

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BHD on Ein Hanya

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: A First Temple Period Palatial Estate Near Jerusalem? Discoveries at Ein Hanniya and their Iron Age palatial context (Samuel Pfister).

By the seventh century B.C.E., Jerusalem was a bustling capital city of the Kingdom of Judah. Just outside of the city limits in the Valley of Rephaim National Park, archaeologists have discovered the location of a rural estate occupied for more than a thousand years, from the seventh century B.C.E., the First Temple period, to the early Byzantine period, around 500 C.E. After six years of excavation and restoration, Ein Hanniya Park was dedicated with a festive tree-planting ceremony last week and attended by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) Director General Israel Hasson, and others.

Background on the recent discoveries at Ein Hanya (Ein Hanniya) is here and here.

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The Voynich Manuscript has not been deciphered

PHILOLOGOS: No, the Mysterious Voynich Manuscript Is Not Written in Hebrew Despite the silly claims of two computer scientists (Mosaic Magazine).

At this point, it must be said, Hauer and Kondrak’s paper descends into silliness. Quite apart from the unlikelihood of even the most esoteric of manuscripts beginning in such a manner, one can only compliment Google Translate on its ingenuity. She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house, and me and people? Even after “spelling corrections,” the Hebrew words in question mean no such thing. In fact, they mean nothing at all. Translating them without Google’s finessing, one comes up with something like “And he made her the priest each man to himself to his house and on me his people the commandments.” If this was the winning entry in the trial-decipherment round of competition, one can only imagine its rivals.

This is spot on, as is the rest of Philologos's analysis. I came to the same conclusion a couple of weeks ago, after reading (well, skimming) Hauer and Kondrak’s academic paper. It didn't take any more than skimming, because the supposedly deciphered (by an AI!), so-called Hebrew is simply not credible.

Background here.

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Ancient cupids in Israel

BELATEDLY FOR VALENTINE'S DAY: When Cupid paid Israel a visit, 2,000 years ago. The mischievous imp keeps popping up throughout the Holy Land (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

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

Laughter in the Bible

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Laughter in the Bible? Absolutely! (Robin Gallaher Branch).

As I study and teach, I find I read the Bible ever more slowly, and as I do, I smile more and more frequently. I listen for its humor. My emotions span sorrow, understanding or joy as I empathize with the characters who cross its pages. I chuckle at many passages, even while acknowledging the sadness they may contain. Consequently, I believe it’s possible to read many verses, stories and even books through the lens of humor, indeed to see portions of the Bible as intended to be very funny. An appropriate response is laughter. I’ve come to this conclusion: Humor is a fundamental sub-theme in both testaments.

Probably, although it's hard to tell. This is a good bit of laughter in the Bible, but people can laugh out of scorn, nervousness, delight, etc., and not just because they think something is funny. And humor is very difficult to detect cross-culturally. Even within the same culture, one person's joke is often not funny to someone else. Still, I would say that Dr. Gallaher Branch's first example, 2 Chronicles 21:20, is a clear example of humor in the Bible.

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Qumran anniversary

TODAY IN HISTORY: Feb. 15 (Robert Joseph Baker, Manning Live).

1949 – Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux begin excavations at Cave 1 of the Qumran Caves, where they will eventually discover the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls.

Bonus anniversary:

590 – Khosrau II is crowned king of Persia.

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February 14th

OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC WATCH: Today is the Feast Day of Saints Cyril and Methodius as celebrated by the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion: Feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Feb. 14 (Catholic News Service). They lived in the ninth century and were the creators of the Cyrillic alphabet. Their work is of interest to PaleoJudaica because many Old Testament pseudepigrapha survive in Old Church Slavonic or Church Slavonic. This is just the first round of celebration. Their day is also celebrated on 24 May in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Russia, and on 5 July in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Background on Cyril and Methodius, their alphabet, and Slavonic pseudepigrapha, is here and links.

Oh, and if you must have something for that other celebration today, see this post from a couple of years ago: Solomonic Valentine's Day cards.

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Monerie, L’économie de la Babylonie à l’époque hellénistique

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Monerie, Julien
L’économie de la Babylonie à l’époque hellénistique (IVème – IIème siècle avant J.C.)

Series:Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER) 14

Aims and Scope
Despite the interest that has been shown by classicists and assyriologists in the economy of Lower Mesopotamia during the two centuries of Macedonian rule over the region (331-129 B.C.), no synoptic study has previously been published, even though abundant sources are available: several thousand cuneiform tablets survive from this period, as well as more than 25,000 Greek seals, not to mention the testimony of classical sources and rich numismatic and archaeological materials. This book aims to present an accessible synthesis of the topic, in the form of a regional study that takes into account all available sources as well as the weight of Mesopotamia’s heritage. The reader will find not only clear overviews of complex questions (including the impact of Alexander’s reign, the nature of Seleucid policy, the evolution of prices, and the development of banking) but also new research on issues such as the 'Diadochi crisis', the introduction of coinage, the evolution of the prebendary system, and the disappearance of local temples, shedding new light on the economy of one of the most richly documented parts of the Hellenistic World.

Some past PaleoJudaica posts on why knowledge of late ancient Babylon is important for understanding ancient Judaism are here, here, here, and links.

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De-mining Qasr al-Yahud

PILGRIMAGE MINEFIELD: Israel will soon clear 4,000 landmines at Qasr al-Yahud baptism site. (MELANIE LIDMAN, Times of Israel).

Christians believe that Qasr al-Yahud, located about 10 kilometers east of Jericho, is the spot on the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized. But there are an estimated 4,000 landmines in the area, which contains seven churches along with chapels and monasteries, each belonging to a different denomination of Christianity. For decades, these bullet-pocked churches have remained abandoned, as some are booby-trapped.

[...]

The Qasr al-Yahud site is also holy to some Jews. Qasr al-Yahud translates as “The Castle of the Jews,” and some believe was the spot where the Jewish people crossed into Israel for the first time after leaving Egypt. It is also believed to be the site of Elijah’s ascent into heaven in a “chariot of fire” and the place where Elisha performed miracles.

This is one possible site for Jesus' baptism. As the article notes, and as PaleoJudaica noted here, the plans to de-mine the area go back to 2016. Other past posts on Qasr al-Yahud are here, here, and here.

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Looted ancient millstones

APPREHENDED: Police find antiquities worth NIS 200,000 in Palestinian man’s home. Raid on house in northern West Bank turns up ancient millstones (Stuart Winer, Times of Israel). The one in the photo has Greek letters inscribed on it.

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Maltese coin exhibition

AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY IN MALTA: Counting on 16,000 coins for a historic exhibition. Coins from every era have gone on permanent display (Times of Malta).

The National Numismatic Collection consists of over 16,000 coins and medals, the earliest of them dating back to the Punic period in the fifth century BC.

Other sections of the display include the Romans, the Medieval Millennium, the Order of St John and the French and the British, as well as parts of the exhibition featuring medals, dies, proofs and an audio-visual explanation of the minting process.

The article has a nice photo of some coins of Marcus Aurelius. Cross-file under Numismatics and Punic Watch.

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The Talmud on pagan gentiles

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Immoral, Weak, Abusive, Untrustworthy, and Murderous. What Talmudic sages thought of the pagan gentiles of their day is disturbingly paranoid and hostile.

Should Jews be afraid of non-Jews? To the rabbis of the Talmud, the answer was obvious: They should be very afraid, since every pagan could be expected to seize any opportunity to harm a Jew. For instance, in Avoda Zara 25b, the Gemara says that, if a Jew encounters a gentile on the road, he should make sure to walk on the gentile’s left side. This way, the Jew’s right hand is closer to the gentile, so he can more easily draw a weapon to defend himself if necessary. In addition, the Jew should never “bend down before him,” because this would give the gentile the chance to “break his skull.”

[...]

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Variant Readings

ASSIMILATED TO THE BLOGOSPHERE: Dr. Brent Nongbri, whose work on paleography I have noted here and links, has a new blog, Variant Readings. It has been running since July of 2017. Here are some interesting posts in it:

Provenance and The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. This in response to a post by David Meadows at the Rogue Classicism blog, which I noted here.

The Yale Genesis

Among the ancient Greek manuscripts in the Beinecke Library at Yale University is a fragment of a leaf of a papyrus codex containing the book of Genesis. It constitutes another interesting case of palaeographic analysis, both for the variety of opinions among experts and the changing of opinions by individual palaeographers. Yale purchased the piece (P.CtYBR inv. 419, LDAB 3081) as part of a lot of a few hundred papyri in February of 1931 from the Cairo dealer Maurice Nahman, but it was not published until the 1960s.

[...]

Codices Made from Reused Documents

In the case of the Chester Beatty tax codex, the reuse of the codex was of a documentary nature. There are, however, some examples of Christian literary works that were preserved in this type of codex composed of reused documentary materials. I will discuss them in future posts.

Periodically I hear people say that blogging is an outdated medium that is on its way out. I don't believe it. In any case, PaleoJudaica's fifteenth anniversary is coming soon. More on that in due course.

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Syriac exhibition at Vanderbilt

SYRIAC WATCH: Role of Syriac culture in religious history focus of exhibit (Ann Marie Deer Owens, Research News @Vanderbilt).

Syriac: Preserving an Endangered World Culture' on display through March 2 at Cohen Hall
Family collection of priest of first Indian Orthodox parish in Tennessee part of Syriac exhibit

The rich Syriac culture, which has faced continued threats of extinction due to ongoing strife in countries such as Syria and Iraq, is featured in an exhibit at Vanderbilt’s Cohen Memorial Hall.

“Syriac: Preserving an Endangered World Culture,” which is free and open to the public through March 2, showcases the presence of Syriac culture around the globe.

The Syriac language is a dialect of Aramaic used extensively by Christians in the Middle East.

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Review of Knapp, The Dawn of Christianity

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Robert Knapp, The Dawn of Christianity. People and Gods in a Time of Magic and Miracles. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. xvi, 303; 16 p. plates. ISBN 9780674976467. $29.95 (hb). Reviewed by Giovanni Alberto Cecconi, Università degli Studi Firenze (giovannialberto.cecconi@unifi.it).

Already the author of a volume on the lives of ordinary people and those in the lowest social ranks during the Empire from Augustus to Constantine (Invisible Romans, Cambridge MA), Robert Knapp continues to examine ordinary people, refocusing his attention on a completely different historical topic. Here he sketches a broad outline of religious life and attitudes toward the divine in Jewish, Christian, and polytheist individuals and communities (Knapp opts for the systematic use of the word “polytheists”, cf. especially chap. 5 "Polytheists in their World", 59-87; 59: “Polytheists… had a panoply of attitudes and approaches to the supernatural which the term ‘polytheism’ encapsulates”). The book considers the preexisting conditions for the formation and spread of Christianity from the Late Hellenistic period to the 1st century C.E. The author highlights common ground and points of divergence between the various contexts and traditions mentioned above, laying the basis for a more suitable knowledge and a clearer interpretation of the first “dawn of Christianity” and equally of historical-religious processes that are chronologically later, and which in this book are left undertreated or not treated at all, e.g., Christianization after Constantine (defined as “top down”).

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Nabatean seafaring

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: Echoes of Nabataean Seafaring (Ralph Pedersen).

When one thinks of the Nabataeans, the desert comes to mind, with wind-blown sands, the red rock-cut architecture of their capital of Petra, and trade routes carrying incense from Arabia to the Mediterranean. There is, however, another aspect of the Nabataeans, one that is only now coming into focus: Seafaring.

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I didn't know that seafaring was so important for the Nabateans. In fact, it seems they were also pirates:

Examining the literary sources, we find that the Greek geographer Strabo (XVI.4, 18) states that the Nabataeans used crude rafts in their initial maritime activities. But the Greek historian and geographer Agatharchides (5.90), writing in the mid-second century BCE, stated that Nabataeans were known for attacking passing ships. Clearly, their piratical ventures quickly earned the Nabataeans a sordid and dangerous reputation.

Does that mean they spoke pirate Aramaic?

Cross file under Nabatean (Nabataean) Watch. The Nabateans actually spoke Arabic but wrote in a dialect of Aramaic. For many past posts on the Nabateans and their language, start here and follow the links or search the PaleoJudaica archive.

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No Ten Commandments on the tablets of stone?

DR. RABBI DAVID FRANKEL: What Did God Write on the Tablets of Stone? (TheTorah.com).

“YHWH said to Moses: ‘Come up to me on the mountain and stay there so that I might give you the tablets of stone and the teaching and the commandment that I have written to teach them.’”—Exodus 24:12

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"The multiplicity of voices in our sources"

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Voices, Fragments and Selves: Preserving Ancient and Contemporary Multi-vocality in Our Classrooms (Sarit Kattan Gribetz).

The underlying lessons of this opening exercise – about the fragmentary nature of our sources, about the voices that are present and absent, about the methods we can use to answer important questions about the past, about the impact of our own perspectives and biases on our interpretation of this material – then guide our subsequent study for the remainder of the semester, as my students learn to analyze ancient sources both for what they reveal and what they conceal about the past, and as they learn to listen to the voices from the past as well as the voices of their classmates.

Cross-file under Pedagogy.

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What did Jesus ...?

PROFESSOR JOAN TAYLOR has published a couple of popular articles to publicize her new book, What did Jesus Look Like (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark), which came out last week:

What did Jesus really look like, as a Jew in 1st-century Judaea? We don’t notice the Gospels’ failure to describe Jesus because we ‘know’ what he looked like thanks to all the images we have. But how accurate is that depiction? (Irish Times)

With a close reading of the Gospels, it turns out that Jesus’s appearance coheres perfectly with his teaching. In advocating his disciples give away all but their essentials to the needy (Matt. 19:20-22), he practised what he preached. I wonder if we would recognise him, as he really looked, if we met him on the way.

What did Jesus wear? (The Conversation)

Background here and links.

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The Torah on charging interest

PROF. MICHAEL L. SATLOW: What Is Wrong with Charging Interest? (TheTorah.com).

The Torah prohibits lending to poor people with interest. Why did Jewish law include business loans and how did this effect the law’s original purpose?

Some blog posts etc. by Professor Satlow on related topics are noted here, here, and here.

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Ritmeyer on the Antonia Fortress

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The Antonia Fortress. A guard to the real Temple Mount in Jerusalem (Leen Ritmeyer).

... As promised, I now hope to deal with yet another aspect of the Temple Mount that proponents of the City of David location often bring up in support of their theory, i.e. the Antonia Fortress.

These theorisers have a problem with the existing walls of the Temple Mount and have therefore suggested that they must have belonged to the Antonia Fortress that stood north of the Temple. Such a suggestion shows ignorance of and contradicts the historical sources and archaeological evidence. ...

Background here. Jerome Murphy O'Connor agreed with Dr. Ritmeyer about the Antonia Fortress. The Fortress has been in recent news noted here and here.

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Excavating children's toys

ARCHAEOLOGY: Ancient kids’ toys have been hiding in the archaeological record (Bruce Bower, ScienceNews). Real, ancient toys, not like this and this.

Unusual finds in Israel dating to around 3,000 years ago also represent children’s early attempts to mimic adult craftwork, Garroway said in a November 18 presentation in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Numerous rounded clay disks, each pierced with two holes, have mystified investigators for nearly a century. As early as 1928, an archaeologist suggested that these button-sized objects were toys.

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