Jack Miles at BC

ANNOUNCEMENT: Distinguished Professor emeritus Jack Miles to be Boston College visiting chair (UCI News).

John R. “Jack” Miles, UCI Distinguished Professor emeritus of English and religious studies, has been appointed the 2018-19 Corcoran Visiting Chair in Christian-Jewish Relations at the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College.

[...]

Congratulations to Professor Miles and to Boston College. I note with particular interest his current project:

During his tenure as the Corcoran Chair, Miles will complete a book, The Greatest Translation of All Time, about the original translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek.

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

The DSS exhibition in Denver

OPENS TODAY: Dead Sea Scrolls on Purity, Morals on Display for First Time, in Denver. Vast Israeli antiquities exhibit showcasing Temples era and the start of the great religions visiting Denver Museum of Science and Nature for six months (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz). PaleoJudaica readers are familiar with this story, but today there is some news on which specific scrolls will be on display:

For the sake of their preservation, the first 10 scrolls displayed in Denver will return to Israel after three months and will be replaced by 10 other scrolls, the IAA explains.

Also among the Dead Sea Scrolls on exhibit in Denver in the two rounds are biblical, extra-biblical and sectarian scrolls found in Qumran.

These are the two scrolls that will go on public display for the first time ever:

Infectious impurity

The scroll on rules of ritual purity and impurity, called Tohorot (Purities) A, dates from the late 1st century B.C.E., says the IAA.

Only the ritually purified were allowed to handle sacred matters. Purification included immersion in the ritual bath (mikveh) and in some cases, even isolation, if the spiritual blemish was caused by illness.

[...]


Secret of existence
The other scroll going on display for the first time in Denver is called Musar Le'Mevin – to "he who understands" lectures on morality for learned disciples. It is also known as the Sapiental Work Scroll.

The messages are presented as information coming directly from God, conveyed through sages to their followers. It too dates to the late 1st century B.C.E. and is rather like an apocalyptic book of Proverbs.

Read the article for more details about both and about the exhibition in general.

According to the Jerusalem Post (Sarah Levi), the Tohorot scroll is in the first round of scrolls and Musar Le'Mevin is in the second.

The first round of display will feature scrolls that deal with ritual purity and impurity. The second round will feature part of the scroll called Musar lemevin, “Instructions to those who understand,” which contains apocalyptic prophecies.

Background on the Denver exhibition is here and links. And there's more on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Denver here.

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That other DSS project in Denver

IT'S A GOOD JOB: That's a Job?: This Denver woman translates the Dead Sea Scrolls. A DU professions is one of three editors working on a new translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls - manuscripts dating back over 2,000 years, which include laws, poetry and some of the earliest biblical documents (Erin Powell, 9news.com).

For more on the work of Professor Alison Schofield, see here. And for the now-opening Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in Denver, see the next post today and also here and links.

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The oldest Torah scrolls

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: The World’s Oldest Torah Scrolls (Gary A. Rendsburg).

A recent announcement by the Library of Congress regarding the purchase of a single Torah scroll sheet dating from approximately 1000 C.E. has generated great interest in the topic of old Torah scrolls. Just what are the world’s oldest Torah scrolls and where does the Library of Congress scroll fit in?

[...]

This announcement is news to me, but good news.

For more on the carbonized Leviticus scroll fragment, see here, here, and here and links. For more on the Ashkar and London fragments of Exodus, see here and links. For more on the first Cairo Geniza Genesis fragment (T-S NS 3.21), see here. And more on that Italian oldest complete Torah scroll is here and here.

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Josephus for Christians

JOSEPHUS HAS SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE: Why Should Christians Read Josephus? Josephus’ writings have unique value for Christians (Stephanie Hertzenberg, Beliefnet).

“Antiquities” contains two references to Jesus Christ, one in Book XX and one in Book XVIII. The latter is blatantly Christian and is believed by scholars to have been inserted into the work later. The reference in Book XX, however, is believed to have been written by Josephus himself. The mention is short, just one line, but it supports the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth “who was called Christ.”

Josephus was not a Christian, yet he wrote about events that were incredibly important to Christians: the life and death of John the Baptist, the existence of Christ, the growth of early Christianity and the fate of some of the apostles. The descriptions of these events as written by an outsider show Christians a new perspective on familiar stories.

One of the apostles - James, Jesus' brother.

There is debate on whether Josephus' longer passage about Jesus (the "Testimonium Flavianum") is partly genuine and partly interpolated or entirely a later addition. See here and links.

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The Library of Alexandria

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Ancient Library of Alexandria. The West’s most important repository of learning (J. Harold Ellens).

Such scientific and philosophical enterprises were not new or surprising in Hypatia’s Alexandria, which already boasted a 700-year-old, international reputation for sophisticated scholarship. Founded in 331 B.C.E.9 by command of Alexander the Great, the city contained almost from its beginnings an institution that would remain of immense importance to the world for the next 2,300 years. Originally called the Mouseion, or Shrine of the Muses, this research center and library grew into “an institution that may be conceived of as a library in the modern sense—an organization with a staff headed by a librarian that acquires and arranges bibliographic material for the use of qualified readers.”10

Indeed, the Alexandria Library was much more. It “stimulated an intensive editorial program that spawned the development of critical editions, textual exegesis and such basic research tools as dictionaries, concordances and encyclopedias.”11 The library in fact developed into a huge research institution comparable to a modern university—containing a center for the collection of books, a museum for the preservation of scientific artifacts, residences and workrooms for scholars, lecture halls and a refectory. In building this magnificent institution, one modern writer has noted, the Alexandrian scholars “started from scratch”; their gift to civilization is that we never had to start from scratch again.

This long essay is the most fulsome account I have seen, short of a monograph, of the ancient Library of Alexandria and its influence.

Some past PaleoJudaica posts on the Library of Alexandria (and other ancient libraries) are here and here and links. Past posts on Hypatia, about whom the movie Agora was made in 2011, are here and here. And more on the Neoplatonists and their libraries is here.

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AJR reviews Stang, Our Divine Double

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Our Divine Double (Nathan Tilley).

Charles M. Stang. Our Divine Double. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. 309. ISBN 9780674287198. $49.95.

Excerpt:

Stang’s argument successfully and elegantly traces the motif of the divine double throughout these 2nd and 3rd century texts. He offers mostly close readings of these texts in ways that echo ancient Aristarchean criticism and “New Criticism,” and, as one can see in the introduction and the philosophical conclusion, he sees these texts in light of perennial questions of selfhood (77-78). The book, however, goes well beyond close reading, as Stang takes up numerous historical, cultural, and literary questions along the way, lightly wielding his masterful command of a formidable range of literature from Plato to contemporary continental philosophy.

Past PaleoJudaica notices of the book (with some comments of my own on the divine double tradition) are here and here.

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More on the Denver DSS exhibiton

VIDEO: Ancient Manuscripts, Artifacts On Display In Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit (CBS4 Denver). The exhibition opens tomorrow. No word yet on which specific scrolls will be on display. You can see some of them in the video, but I wasn't able to identify any of them.

Background here and links.

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Hurtado on those dubious DSS fragments

LARRY HURTADO: Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments of Dubious Authenticity

In November last year, the popular press featured news of scholarly doubts about the authenticity of many of the numerous putative scroll fragments from the Dead Sea area that had come on the antiquities market in the last fifteen years or so: e.g., here, and here. Yesterday, I finally got around to perusing the published scholarly studies that generated these news stories. The key publications are two lengthy articles in the journal Dead Sea Discoveries, which I heartily recommend to anyone seriously interested in the topic: ...

Background here and follow the links

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Progress on the Galen Syriac palimpsest

SYRIAC WATCH: ANCIENT TRANSLATION OF HISTORIC GREEK MEDICAL TEXT REDISCOVERED USING X-RAY VISION (Meghan Bartels, Newsweek).

There are lost ancient texts hiding before our very eyes. Writers weren't always intending their words for long-term preservation, and the need to reuse precious resources, like animal hide, sometimes meant erasing an old text to make room for the new.

But modern technology can recover these secret texts, as research taking place this week at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), an instrument housed at a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory in California, shows. The payoffs are worth it: a team began their analysis on Friday and have already identified a previously unreadable page as part of a preface.

[...]

The process is explained most clearly in a Live Science article by Rafi Letzter: Blasting This Old Book with X-Rays Could Reveal Greek Physician Galen's Ancient Words.

That's according to a news release emailed to Live Science yesterday (March 12). The earlier, sixth-century ink reacts a bit differently to X-ray light than the later, 11th-century ink. Under the extreme energies of the lab's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), those differences are significant enough that, according to the statement, the researchers hope to parse the remnants of the original text despite the scraping, the additional ink and the centuries of age.

They are currently working on 26 pages of the manuscript.

Background on the Galen Syriac palimpsest is here and links. And for many past PaleoJudaica posts on palimpsest manuscripts, start here and follow the links.

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AJR on PSCO: Belser, Snakes in the Garden

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: PSCO 2017-18: Snakes in the Garden: Sexuality, Animality, and Disability in the Rabbinic Garden of Eden (Matthew Chalmers). A report on Philadelphia Seminar of Christian Origins 2017-18, Meeting #4, Julia Watts Belser (Katz Center/Georgetown): Snakes in the Garden: Sexuality, Animality, and Disability in the Rabbinic Garden of Eden.

Past posts on Rabbi Dr. Belser's work are here and links.

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Comparing the MT and the Jewish LXX revisions

ETC BLOG: Textual Examples Wherein MT and the Jewish Revisions Differ (John Meade).

In this post, I give a few examples wherein Theodotion, Aquila, or Symmachus reflect a different vocalization of the consonantal text than what the later Masoretes recorded as the traditional reading. The issue is this: how closely do the Three (1–2 century Jewish revisers of the Greek Jewish Scriptures) mirror the Masoretic Text (9–10 century)?

Dr. Meade continues his interesting series on Hexaplaric readings of the Septuagint.

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Park of Wonders theme park in Israel

PROPOSAL: Developers plan Jewish theme park in desert town of Dimona. Pla'im Park -- 'Park of Wonders' -- is conceived as Israel's first real theme park, with educational value to boot (Jessica Steinberg, Times of Israel).

Project CEO Lea Malul told Walla news the park was envisioned as a Jewish “Magic Kingdom” — a reference to one of the four Disney World parks outside Orlando, Florida.

It is set to include 16 major rides. Plans include a water ride touching on the days of the week (with the Sabbath an island of tranquility in the hectic affair), a Jacob’s Ladder attraction and a roller coaster passing through gigantic tomes — representing Jews as the people of the book.

My first thought was to check to see if the date of the article was April 1st. But no, this is a real project - although it doesn't seem to have any actual funding yet.

Perusing the PaleoJudaica archives, I see this is not the first Jewish-history theme park proposed or built in Israel. See here, here, here and here.

On related notes, there is the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, Florida (see here and here). There are Phoenician theme parks in Lebanon and Tunisia. And how could I omit Erich von Däniken's Mysteries of the World theme park in Switzerland?

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A Festschrift for Hershel Shanks

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: First Person: Festschrift: A Celebration of Hershel Shanks. From the March/April May/June 2018 Biblical Archaeology Review (Robert Cargill). The current double-issue of Biblical Archaeology Review is a festschrift for Mr. Shanks. (Congratulations, Hershel!) The links in Professor Cargill's essay give free access (unusually) to the full text of the articles. They look very interesting.

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

A disquieting case of scholarly forgery?

POSTHUMOUSLY DETECTED: Famed Archaeologist 'Discovered' His Own Fakes at 9,000-Year-Old Settlement (Owen Jarus, Live Science).

A famed archaeologist well-known for discovering the sprawling 9,000-year-old settlement in Turkey called Çatalhöyük seems to have faked several of his ancient findings and may have run a "forger's workshop" of sorts, one researcher says.

James Mellaart, who died in 2012, created some of the "ancient" murals at Çatalhöyük that he supposedly discovered; he also forged documents recording inscriptions that were found at Beyköy, a village in Turkey, said geoarchaeologist Eberhard Zangger, president of the Luwian Studies Foundation. Zangger examined Mellaart's apartment in London between Feb. 24 and 27, finding "prototypes," as Zangger calls them, of murals and inscriptions that Mellaart had claimed were real.

[...]

If all this is true and is verified, it looks as though the field of Luwian studies had a very close call.

The 1995 letter to Zangger shows both the depth of Mellaart's historical knowledge and imagination. It provides a detailed description of what the Beyköy texts say, naming numerous ancient places, people and events. Mellaart created an elaborate backstory for the texts, getting around his false claim that he couldn't read Luwian by saying that the texts had been partially deciphered by other researchers who were all dead by 1995. "Fred Woudhuizen and I identified about 260 people and place names. It is much like a Harry Potter kind of world. The names are consistent and apparently make sense. Mellaart was evidently a genius in some ways. But he misused his talents, thereby causing tremendous damage to the field," Zangger said.

If I understand the article correctly, some of the iconographic material that Mellaart published over the decades may have been forged too.

This story, of course, is not about ancient Judaism. But it is an important cautionary tale. There is always the danger of unscrupulous scholars who go rogue and produce forgeries that are very difficult to detect. It sounds like this is one such case. The worst damage was averted this time. But how many cases have gone undetected?

Some relevant past posts are here, here, here, here, here, and here. The messy matter of the Israel Forgery Trial, which didn't really settle matters one way or the other, deserves a mention of its own. See here and here and follow the many links. And finally, there is the infamous case of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife. See here (cf. here) and many links.

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The Talmud on statues and related problems

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Statue of Limitations. This week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study considers how Jews can avoid idolatry and still live in a public space full of graven images.

Take statues, which today we tend to think of as merely art objects—the kind of thing you find in the Greek and Roman galleries of a museum. To the rabbis, however, these statues were not meant for aesthetic admiration; they were images of gods like Apollo or Jupiter, and so they were abominations. “All statues are forbidden,” says the Mishna in Avodah Zarah 40b, “because they are worshipped once a year”—presumably on the holy day of the god they represent. Still, the rabbis realized that many statues were meant for ornamental purposes, not religious ones, and so they try to find a rule of thumb to tell these categories apart. The Mishna goes on to say that, in fact, a statue is prohibited only if it “has in its hand a staff, a bird, or an orb.” The Gemara explains that these were typical attributes of gods, meant to express their power: “A bird represents dominion as the idol grasps … the entire world the way one grasps a bird.”

Actually, statues are controversial again these days, but for other reasons.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Berlejung and Filitz (eds.), The Physicality of the Other

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: The Physicality of the Other. Masks from the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean. Ed. by Angelika Berlejung and Judith E. Filitz. [Die Leibhaftigkeit des Anderen. Antike Masken aus dem Vorderen Orient und dem östlichen Mittelmeerraum.] 2018. X, 570 pages. Orientalische Religionen in der Antike 27. 149,00 €. cloth. ISBN 978-3-16-155513-8.

Published in English.
This volume comprises the conference proceedings of the international and interdisciplinary meeting held in Leipzig from November 9 to 11, 2015. Scholars from different research areas present masks from Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Greece, mainly from the third to the first millennium BCE. The masks are analyzed from archaeological, iconographical, anthropological, philological, and theological perspectives. In many cases, the masks refer to gods, ancestors, spirits, and are used as a means to communicate between human beings and supernatural powers. Masks belong to the human condition and seem to be the international and intercultural answer to one of the most existential questions of human life. In addition, the volume includes an archaeological catalogue of the masks from Israel/Palestine of the Neolithic Age until the Persian Period.

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On Schumer, "The Memory of the Temple in Palestinian Rabbinic Literature"

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Dissertation Spotlight | Nathan Schumer.

Schumer, Nathan Still. "The Memory of the Temple in Palestinian Rabbinic Literature." PhD diss., Columbia University, 2017.

Excerpt:

The main intervention of my dissertation is to attempt to account for what rabbinic literature gets right about the past. It is just as historiographically significant that the rabbis are right about the Temple some of the time as it is that they are wrong. We need models that are able to account for both aspects of rabbinic literature.

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Review of Zollschan, Rome and Judaea: International Law Relations, 162-100 BCE

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Linda Zollschan, Rome and Judaea: International Law Relations, 162-100 BCE. Routledge studies in ancient history. London; New York: Routledge, 2016. Pp. 350. ISBN 9781138932913. $149.95. Reviewed by Walter Ameling, Universität zu Köln (walter.ameling@uni-koeln.de).

The political relations between Rome and Judaea are frequently studied, especially the first ties between the Jews and Rome, documented in 1 Macc 8,23-32. Zollschan is the first to write an entire book on the subject (some of her findings were published in earlier articles), and she presents her results in a clear, succinct way, never leaving any doubt about the line of thought she is pursuing.

[...]

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The Tabernacle in ANE context

PROFESSOR MICHAEL M. HOMAN: The Tabernacle in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (TheTorah.com).

The parallels between the Tabernacle and ANE structures such as Rameses II’s military tent shed light on what the meaning and function of this ancient structure might have been.

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JQR 108.1 (Winter 2018)

HERBERT D. KATZ CENTER BLOG: New Issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review: Winter 2018 // JQR Blog. The first article is relevant to ancient Judaism: "'The Daughters of Israel': An Analysis of the Term in Late Ancient Jewish Sources," by Mika Ahuvia) and Sarit Kattan Gribetz.

HT AJR.

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Netanyahu opens UN exhibition on Jewish history

ARCHAEOLOGY AND POLITICS: NETANYAHU OPENS U.N. EXHIBIT HONORING 3,000 YEARS OF JEWISH HISTORY. "There is a long history that is being cherished by us and by the friends of the Jewish people and the friends of truth and is being denied by those who seek to erase the history of our people" (Daniel J. Roth, Jerusalem Post).

NEW YORK – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened an exhibit at the United Nations on Thursday that presents historical evidence of the Jewish people’s presence in Jerusalem centuries before the Christian era.

Titled “3,000 Years of History: Jews in Jerusalem,” the exhibit was initiated by Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon and Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin.

Among the archeological finds on display at UN headquarters are a 1,700-year-old seal “belonging to the governor of the city” found in the Western Wall Plaza, a seal bearing the name of King Hezekiah from the eighth century BCE, and a seventh century BCE seal with the inscription “the fifth to Netanyahu, his sons and his relatives.”

[...]

Dead Sea Scrolls too. And also the Tel Dan Stele.

For the Hezekiah seal, see here and links. For more on the Tel Dan Stele see here and here.

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Dunhuang manuscripts in France

DIGITIZATION: Dunhuang relics 'return' to China in digital form (China.org.cn).

More than 5,300 pieces of Dunhuang manuscripts have been "returned" from France in digital form and are available online, according to the National Library of China.

These digital resources are provided by France's national library, which holds more than 7,000 original copies of Dunhuang manuscripts.

The Dunhuang manuscripts are documents discovered in the Mogao Grottos in China's Gansu Province in the early 20th century. There are more than 50,000 of them, featuring history, linguistics, art and religious documents.

Dating from the 5th to 11th centuries, the majority are in Chinese, but some are represented in other languages such as Khotanese and Hebrew.

[...]

This manuscript hoard found near the Gobi Desert seems like an unlikely source for Jewish and Christian manuscripts, but some were found there. I hope some new and interesting things show up in these newly digitized fragments.

Background on the manuscripts recovered from Dunhuang and Turfan in the early twentieth century are here and here and links.

For many other manuscript digitization projects, see here and here and just follow those links.

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More debunking of that Voynich manuscript "translation"

STILL NOT CREDIBLE: Did Artificial Intelligence Really Decode the Voynich Manuscript? Some Leading Scholars Doubt It. Scholars questioned the methodology of the paper that sparked the reports (Henri Neuendorf, artnet News).

Speaking to The Verge, professor Shlomo Argamon, a computational linguist at the Illinois Institute of Technology, concluded that “their method… gives them huge latitude in doing this sort of impressionistic interpretation. They take this decoded sentence, squint at it through thick eyeglasses, and say that’s good enough for us.” Nick Pelling, a Voynich expert who’s written several books on the mysterious document goes even further, saying that the paper’s likelihood of being correct is “So close to 0% as makes no practical difference.”

Background here and here.

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Reading from Calderon, A Bride for One Night

PODCAST FOR PURIM: “A Bride for One Night”: A Talmudic Tale by Ruth Calderon (TLV 1).

In honor of the Purim custom of reading the Book of Esther, this episode features an excerpt from Ruth Calderon’s short story “A Bride for One Night”. It is the title story in her collection of Talmudic tales, published in Ilana Kushan’s English translation in 2014. Calderon has a doctorate in Talmud from Hebrew University and was elected to the Israeli Knesset in January 2013. She is founder and former director of Elul Beit Midrash in Jerusalem and founder and chair of Alma: Home for Hebrew Culture in Tel Aviv.

More on MK Calderon and her book is here and links. Cross-file under Talmud Watch.

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On Weitzman, The Origin of the Jews

REVIEW AND INTERVIEW: To dig up genesis of the Jewish people, a scholar goes back to the sources. National Jewish Book Award winner Steven Weitzman's 'The Origin of the Jews' is an odyssey into a nation's most basic need: To understand where it comes from (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

It was time to get to the root of the matter. Faced with conflicting narratives and dueling creation stories for the Jewish people, Prof. Steven Weitzman began an academic odyssey, going back to beyond the start of the Bible, to explore the Jews’ actual genesis.

The twists and turns found in Weitzman’s “The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age” at once entertainingly educate — and shake up centuries of charged beliefs and scholarship.

With dense, informative chapters, Weitzman takes a multi-disciplinary approach in his quest, delving into genealogy, linguistics, archaeology, psychology, sociology and genetics. In eight chapters, he deftly gives a wide-ranging overview of both traditional and irreverent thinking on the origins of the Jews.

[...]

The article also includes a long interview with Professor Weitzman. And this is worth noting and worth congratulations:

The synthesis of academia and the personal has proven successful: On March 6, Weitzman, the University of Pennsylvania’s director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, was honored by the Jewish Book Council as its winner in the category of Jewish Education and Identity.

This is not the first award the book has received. Background here and links.

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Language enrollments drop in USA

THE DOWNWARD SLIDE CONTINUES: Foreign Language Enrollments Drop Sharply. From 2013 to 2016, enrollments fell 9.2 percent. Declines include Spanish, still the most commonly taught language (Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed). Ancient Greek and biblical Hebrew have now slipped behind Korean. Latin is the only ancient language still in the top ten (9th place).

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Frey et al. (eds.), Dualismus, Dämonologie und diabolische Figuren (forthcoming)

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Dualismus, Dämonologie und diabolische Figuren. Religionshistorische Beobachtungen und theologische Reflexionen. Hrsg. v. Jörg Frey u. Enno Edzard Popkes unter Mitarb. v. Stefanie Christine Hertel-Holst. 2018. Ca. 530 Seiten. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. ca. 90,00. ISBN 978-3-16-155811-5.

[Dualism, Demonology and Devilish Figures. Observations from the History of Religion and Theological Reflections.]
2018. Approx. 530 pages.
forthcoming in May

Published in German.
Dualistic worldviews and demonic or devilish figures make frequent and varied appearances in both early Jewish and early Christian texts. By setting out the background and charting the development of these notions in Second Temple Judaism, this volume explains New Testament traditions within early Jewish contexts, focusing on issues of the origins of evil and its eschatological removal, the role of eschatological opponents and the function of demons. Textually, the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple texts are highlighted alongside the Jesus tradition. Four concluding contributions reflect the place of demonological ideas in present theological thought and problems of handling them in church practice.

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Schiffman on what the DSS say

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Lawrence H. Schiffman on the Dead Sea Scrolls’ History. What do the Dead Sea Scrolls say? (Robin Ngo). As usual, the actual article by Professor Schiffman is behind the subscription wall. But this essay does give you a taste of it.

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Special Report on the Ain Dara Temple

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Special Report: Current Status of the Tell Ain Dara Temple. ASOR Cultural Heritage Initiatives (Michael D. Danti, Darren P. Ashby, Marina Gabriel, and Susan Penacho).

ASOR CHI geospatial analysis indicates that an explosion damaged the Ain Dara temple in northwest Syria on or before January 22, 2018. The Ain Dara temple is the best-preserved example of Syro-Hittite religious architecture from the late second and early first millennia BCE. It is elaborately decorated with basalt sculpture and reliefs. Larger-than-life human footprints carved into the temple’s stone thresholds are unique to the building. It is also considered to be a close parallel to the contemporary Temple of Solomon, which is known from descriptions in the Old Testament.

[...]

Background on the Ain Dara Temple is here and, sadly, here.

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Reed on forgotten Jewish History

LECTURE SERIES AT BERKELEY: Series on forgotten Jewish history coming to Magnes (The Jewish News of Northern California)

How texts can be lost, found, mistranslated, abandoned and put aside — thus changing the course of history — is a topic professor Annette Yoshiko Reed will tackle at the upcoming 2018 Taubman Lectures at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley.

The program is titled “Forgetting: The Jewish Past between Rupture and Renewal,” and the three lectures are slated to take place in a four-night period starting Monday, March 12.

[...]

This history has been forgotten by some, but not by PaleoJudaica readers. This sounds like an excellent series and if you are in the Berkeley area, be sure to attend.

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New Year in Nisan

FESTIVAL: The First of Nisan, the Forgotten Jewish New Year (Joel S. Davidi Weisberger, Jewish Link of New Jersey). It does look as though a spring New Year was once a thing in ancient Israel. But I didn't known about the Seder Al-Tawhid rite. Some somewhat related posts (on the Akitu, the Babylonian spring New Year festival) are here and links.

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Syriac Christians in the US and Mexico

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: If Trends Hold, There May Be More Syriac Christians in US and Mexico Than in Iraq. Trends generally don't hold, and I hope conditions in Iraq improve. But meanwhile, I'm glad they're somewhere.

On improving trends in Iraq, see Friar trains Iraqis to preserve 'treasures' rescued from IS (Sammy Ketz, AFP). Background here and links.

On Aramaic-speaking Christians in New Jersey, see Talkin' Aramaic in New Jersey: The Strength of an Ancient Faith. How cool would it be to walk into a church filled with worshipers all speaking the same language that Jesus and His apostles spoke? Take a drive up the New Jersey Turnpike to find out! (Eric Metaxas and Roberto Rivera, The Christian Post). And some related posts are here and here and links.

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

The history of BAR

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Raising the BAR. The history of the Biblical Archaeology Society (Susan Laden). Excerpt:

The article on the incised handle was eventually published in the Israel Exploration Journal. Hershel also wrote a short guidebook on the City of David. Most important, he developed the idea for contributing a column on Biblical archaeology to a magazine in the U.S. The column was to be his reason for returning to Jerusalem and maintaining a relationship with the archaeological community there.

The column proposal was rejected. Never one to take rejection, Hershel morphed his archaeology column concept into an archaeological newsletter, and then into an archaeology magazine, before pen ever hit paper. Hershel had originally planned to call his publication Biblical Archaeology Newsletter. But one evening in the living room of scholars Carol and Eric Meyers, Carol objected to the negative acronym—BAN—created by Biblical Archaeology Newsletter. She countered that because Hershel was a lawyer, there was obviously only one choice for the title—Biblical Archaeology Review, or BAR. Just like that, a magazine was born!

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Paul, boxing, and Vindolanda

THE HOLY LAND PHOTOS' BLOG: Beating the Air — 1 Corinthians 9:26 (Carl Rasmussen). On the background of Paul's use of martial imagery.

This is a good excuse to flag the recent discovery of a pair of ancient Roman boxing gloves at Vindolanda: Roman boxing gloves unearthed by Vindolanda dig (BBC).

A great many Roman-era documentary texts in Latin have been excavated at Vindolanda, the site of an ancient Roman fort in northern England. I have mentioned Vindolanda from time to time and visited it back in 2006. In July of this year I'm planning to visit it again. I'll post on that in due course.

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144th Biblical Studies Carnival

THE PURSUING VERITAS BLOG: February 2018 Biblical Studies Carnival (Jacob J. Prahlow). And congratulations to the Biblical Studies Carnival on its twelfth anniversary!

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The Denver DSS exhibition is coming very soon

REMINDER: "Dead Sea Scrolls" Coming To Denver.

DENVER, March 5, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "Dead Sea Scrolls," the exhibition that has captivated millions around the world, will open at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science on March 16. The presenting sponsor is the Sturm Family Foundation, with major support from Henry and Lorie Gordon, and GHP Investment Advisors.

The regional premiere of this exhibition is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see authentic Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient manuscripts that include the oldest known biblical documents dating back over 2,000 years. Ten scrolls will be displayed when the exhibition opens. Due to strict preservation requirements, 10 different scrolls will arrive halfway through the run to replace the 10 initial scrolls. This will make it possible to see a total of 20 scrolls while the exhibition is in Denver. Each rotation includes a scroll that has never before been on public display.

[...]

Background here and links.

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Looters of Horbat Mishkena sentenced

CONSEQUENCES: Antiquities robbers sentenced to jail for destroying 2,000-year-old graves. In light of irrevocable damage to Second Temple Jewish settlement, Israel Antiquities Authority hopes prison terms will prove a deterrent (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

Three antiquities robbers were sentenced to four to nine months’ jail time by the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court last week for destroying 2,000-year-old burial caves in an ancient village located in the Lower Galilee between Tzippori and Tiberias.

On March 14, 2017, three adults and two minors were discovered using a backhoe to dig into graves at Horbat Mishkena, a ruined Jewish settlement that dates from 1st-6th century CE, in search of potentially valuable burial objects.

[...]

I noted the report of the apprehensions in this incident here. Horbat Mishkena (Horvat Mishkena) has not had an easy time of it. There were also looting apprehensions there in January 2017 and in December 2016. I hope these prison terms etc. do deter further looting.

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The women, their mirrors, and the Tent of Meeting

DR. RACHEL ADELMAN: A Copper Laver Made from Women’s Mirrors (TheTorah.com).

Who were these women and what were these mirrors used for? Reconstructing the narrative: the historical-critical method vs. midrash.

There have been lots of explanations from antiquity to the modern era.

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Preliminary report on the Megiddo Prison excavation

LARRY HURTADO: The Megiddo Mosaics and “Prayer Hall”: The Preliminary Report. The link to the report posted at Academia.edu is here.

Background here and links.

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Coffee makes everything better

THE ETC BLOG: Coffee and Origen’s Hexapla at Southeastern (John Meade). Some recent posts on Dr. Meade's work on the Hexapla are here and links. If you happen to be in this part of North Carolina on 22 March, his lecture would be worth attending.

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Review of van Bladel, From Sasanian Mandaeans to Ṣābians of the Marshes

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | From Sasanian Mandaeans to Ṣābians of the Marshes (Jae H. Han).

In his recent book From Sasanian Mandaeans to Ṣābians of the Marshes, Kevin T. van Bladel reopens old questions on the origins of Mandaeans and, armed with his characteristic erudition, fixes the topic on more secure historical and social footings. He has three major arguments: 1) the Mandaeans emerged as a distinct community in fifth-century Sasanian Persia not in the third century, as is widely assumed; 2) Mandaeans not only absorbed earlier teachings and texts from an earlier group called the Nazoreans, but they also distinguished themselves from a rival “sister” community called the Kentaeans; 3) The Sasanian emperors had a habit of pillaging pagan temples, which led to their decline and the emergence of Mandaeans, Kentaeans, and other types of “Syro-Mesopotamian” groups. Methodologically, van Bladel breaks with other scholars of Mandaeism by moving away from a “comparative religions” approach that approaches the emergence of Mandaeism through other “Syro-Mesopotamian” religions in favor of a historical approach that tracks the development of Mandaeism “with respect to larger social contexts situated in specific times” (4). Van Bladel thus works from within the Mandaean tradition and with a careful eye to external references to uniquely Mandaean ideas in order to tease out a reliable historical scaffolding for the emergence of Mandaeism.

[...]

I noted the publication of the book here in 2016.

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Newsweek on Taylor, What Did Jesus Look LIke?

BOOK REVIEW: WHAT DID JESUS LOOK LIKE? POPULAR IMAGES OF WHITE SAVIOR ARE WRONG, NEW BOOK CLAIMS (Melissa Matthews, Newsweek).

Background here and links.

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De Gruyter and Gorgias collaborate

PUBLISHING NEWS: De Gruyter and Gorgias Press enter partnership.

Gorgias Press and De Gruyter have formed an editorial and commercial partnership for Gorgias Press titles. Through this agreement, eBook versions of all Gorgias Press titles will be available on degruyter.com.

Gorgias Press has published over 3,000 titles in history, language and religious studies, with specific areas of expertise in the Ancient Near East, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Archaeology, Biblical Studies, Classics, Early Christianity, Jewish Studies, Linguistics, and Syriac. Gorgias Press is based in Piscataway, NJ, USA.

[...]

Congratulations to Gorgias and De Gruyter on what I trust will be a fruitful collaboration. Cross-file under Syriac Watch.

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Latest on the Sarajevo Haggadah

THE SARAJEVO HAGGADAH is now on permanent display in the National Museum of Bosnia: An ancient holy book symbolizes the fate of Sarajevo's Jews (AFP).

The Sarajevo Haggadah is a 14th century manuscript with a long and variegated history. It survived the Bosnian war in the 1990s. In 1992 it was rescued by a Muslim librarian named Enver Imamovic. He and some police officers recovered it from the museum, under gunfire and at great personal risk. You can read that story here. The Haggadah became well know, not least due to a 2007 historical novel by Geraldine Brooks, The People of the Book.

Much additional background is here and here and links.

The National Museum of Bosnia was closed for a while due to lack of funding. I'm glad to hear it's open again and that this precious manuscript is on display.

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Goliath's skeleton? No.

SNOPES: Is This 'Goliath Skeleton' Real? Some of the images in a collage purporting to show the discovery of a "Goliath skeleton" date back to a 1993 tabloid article. I've seen such images over the years and have posted on them occasionally. (See the links here and the "not so much" link here.) Snopes gives a detailed account of the origins of one group of images which has been circulating lately.

I know of no credible reports of the excavation of skeletons of giants. Big guys maybe, but no giants.

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Hurtado on the Megiddo Prison mosaics

LARRY HURTADO: The Megiddo Mosaics . . . Again? He is skeptical that the much publicized mosaic that refers to Jesus as God is as early as the third century.

Background here and links

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Latest on the THEOT Project (Ethiopic manuscripts)

ETHIOPIC WATCH: Garry Jost Presents at International Conferences. Dr. Garry Jost presented at the International Society of Biblical Literature Meeting in Berlin, Germany, and in Boston at the Annual Meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion in 2017 (Marylhurst University).

Dr. Jost’s research is part of the Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament (THEOT) project comprised of colleagues in North America, Africa and Europe. This project analyzes manuscripts written in Ge`ez, which is the ancient language of Ethiopia and the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The manuscripts date from the 14th through 20th centuries.

Background on the THEOT Project is here and links.

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The Megiddo Prison site is becoming an archaeological park

THIS HAS BEEN IN THE WORKS FOR A LONG TIME: A Jew, an Early Christian and a Roman Meet in Archaeological Park to Be Built on Evacuated Prison. ‘God Jesus Christ’ mosaic, ancient Jewish-Samaritan village of Othnay and Roman command center in Galilee park replacing Megiddo Prison; inmates to move to huge new facility (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

A prison built by the British on an archaeological site in northern Israel in the 1940s is finally going to be evacuated. The walls and barbed wire of Megiddo Prison will be replaced with an archaeological park featuring one of the earliest-known houses of Christian worship, which was found in the ancient Jewish village of Kefar Othnay (a.k.a. Kfar Otnai), as well as the remains of a vast Roman army base across the Qeni river, Megiddo Regional Council announced this week.

The new park will also encompass seven Ottoman-era flour mills built along a stream, the council says.

[...]

Background here and links.

UPDATE (5 March): Bad background link now fixed. Sorry about that. For a note of skepticism about the early date of the above-mentioned mosaic, see here.

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How many times did the rooster crow?

THE ETC BLOG: A Rooster Crowing Once and Twice - Mark 14 (Dirk Jongkind). Some years ago I went through the variants in this story. I remember concluding that the most likely original text of Mark was one in which Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times before the rooster crowed twice. But then Mark only mentioned one crowing after Peter's third denial. There's no particular reason why it couldn't have happened that way, and technically Jesus' prediction would have been correct. But the mention of "twice" was a messy loose end.

This was unsatisfactory to Matthew and Luke, who both omitted the reference to "twice." That left Jesus predicting that Peter would betray him three times before the rooster crowed. Peter did so and then the rooster crowed. This is a tidy story.

Some of the scribes who copied Mark also found Mark's story to be messy. They tidied it up either by omitting any mention of a second crowing (Matthew's and Luke's solution) or else by expanding with a reference to a first and second crowing in the event. The latter solution is implausible, because we are supposed to believe that the rooster crowed just after Peter denied Jesus the first time, Peter didn't notice and he went on to deny Jesus twice more, then the rooster crowed a second time. Only then did Peter remember Jesus' prediction. This is psychologically unlikely. But it at least removes the original loose end of "twice" in Jesus' prediction.

As the text of Mark continued to be copied, other scribes corrected it back and fourth, making the manuscript tradition a bit messy again.

I don't know if my reconstruction is correct. But it is tidy.

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New series of Arabic biblical and apocryphal texts

GORGIAS PRESS: BIBLICAL AND APOCRYPHAL CHRISTIAN ARABIC TEXTS SERIES.

Gorgias Press is delighted to launch its latest series: Biblical and Apocryphal Christian Arabic Texts (BACA). The series brings to the scholarly world reliable editions of unpublished texts based on a single manuscript. The series will prooduce edited volumes on Biblical and Apocryphal literature of the various Christian-Arabic ecclesiastical traditions, preceded by substantial introductory studies covering the socio-historical, theological, literary and linguistic aspects connected to the texts. Ultimately, this series seeks to present a varied and comprehensive map of texts that represent the rich and vast field of biblical and apocryphal literature in one of the Christian languages, Arabic.

This looks like a promising series. The forthcoming biblical volumes include the Book of Ezekiel and the Book of Isaiah. Old Testament pseudepigrapha include the History of Adam and Eve and the History of Joseph, son of Jacob.

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Review of Imhausen and Pommerening (eds.), Translating Writings of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East ...

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Annette Imhausen, Tanja Pommerening (ed.), Translating Writings of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece and Rome: Methodological Aspects with Examples. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, 344​. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. Pp. x, 611. ISBN 9783110447040. $168.00. Reviewed by Jan P. Stronk, Universiteit van Amsterdam (j.p.stronk@uva.nl).

In summary, Imhausen and Pommerening and the other contributing authors (in collaboration with the series-editors and De Gruyter, I presume) have created a book that deserves to be on the desk of anyone working in the field of translating ancient texts—not merely texts on astronomy/astrology, arithmetic, or medicine.

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Review of Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent

CENTER FOR ANCIENT CHRISTIAN STUDIES BLOG: BOOK REVIEW: REDISCOVERING THE APOCRYPHAL CONTINENT: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON EARLY CHRISTIAN AND LATE ANTIQUE APOCRYPHAL TEXTS AND TRADITIONS (Shawn Wilhite).

In 2004 and 2006, three conferences were held in Groningen, Edinburgh, and Ottawa. Both Groningen and Edinburgh were part of the SBL International Meetings; whereas the meeting in Ottawa was a funded event. Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent is the product of such meetings. Editors, Pierluigi Piovanelli and Tony Burke, helpfully gathered and edited such ad hoc papers from these gatherings to highlight methodological and literary studies on Christian Apocrypha (hereafter CA). Seasoned and nascent scholars convened to present a host of papers—of which, Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent is a by-product.

[...]

I noted the publication of the book here. As I mentioned there, I have an article in it.

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

Review of new Mary Magdalene film

CINEMA: 'Mary Magdalene': Review. Rooney Mara plays a rehabilitated Mary Magdalene opposite Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus (FIONNUALA HALLIGAN, Screen Daily). Excerpt:

On viewing this clearly well-intentioned, attractive, wistful-to-the-point-of-inertia film, it’s easy enough to see why Mary Magdalene has languished: if it’s not exactly a hot-ticket for the Catholic faithful, neither is it something the arthouse might yearn to see. And if the casting of Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus seems odd, well, it is odd and hard to move past the casting as a glassy-eyed Phoenix looks to the heavens for inspiration, delivering sermons in his unmistakable American-accented voice. Rooney Mara - the palest fisherwoman the Middle East is ever likely to see - puts her all into playing Mary Magdalene as a drippy doe-eyed empath, awarded a stock-issue back-story in which her desire not to marry puts her at odds with her loving but uncomprehending family.

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Report on the Beit She'arim excavation

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: The New Excavations of Beth She’arim (Adi Erlich).

The origin and decline of the Jewish Galilee is the subject of considerable debate. Some scholars see a period of decline in the mid-4th century CE (whether the 351 Gallus revolt or the 363 earthquake), while others maintain there was no crisis and that it continued to flourish throughout the Byzantine period. The story emerging at Beth She’arim offers a middle way; the settlement recovered for a short time, but no longer flourished after the mid-5th century, and probably was small and insignificant in the Late Byzantine period. The cemetery was probably still in use, but the town no longer existed.

But Beth She’arim also stands out in the Jewish Galilee with its large public buildings decorated with marble slabs and well-planned town, atypical for Galilean towns. The large gate we have discovered, probably the town’s main gate, is also unique in Roman Galilee, attesting to the high status of Beth She’arim. Other features are unique to Beth She’arim, such as the double cisterns and large reservoirs. The special place of Beth She’arim as a living Jewish town, the home of Rabbi Judah and the Sanhedrin, is now coming into better focus.

For past PaleoJudaica posts on Beit She'arim (Beith Shearim) see here and links.

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

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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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