Performing the banquet shifted their analysis from the realm of the academic into the realm of something that is socially functional, assisting with student thinking about the ancient texts as representative of real people and their actions and beliefs.This is one of the essays in AJR's current pedagogy series.
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Rod Bryant and Jerry Gordon interviewed Dr. Harold Rhode while he was in Macedonia lecturing on the Iraqi Jewish archives and the importance of Jewish identity. Rhode was able with both Iraqi opposition and Washington connections to miraculously retrieve the Iraqi Jewish archives found in the flooded basement of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in 2003 that were eventually and wonderfully restored by the US National Archives and Records Agency. The archives are awaiting a Trump White House decision to determine whether the Archives remain in the US or go to Israel, instead of Iraq.Dr. Harold Rhode has been involved with the archives from the beginning. I have mentioned him in this connection here, here, here, and here.
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Scholarly advances in rescuing Hellenistic culture from narratives of decline have often focused on Hellenistic literature and art, explaining form and content in terms of social and political contexts. Marquis Berrey offers in this monograph instead a reconsideration of modern ways of thinking about Hellenistic science. His central questions are: "What was the relationship between science and monarchy in the third century BCE in the Hellenistic world? And why does it matter?" (p. 1). This book thus looks not to poets such as Callimachus, Apollonius and Theocritus, but the works – both material and textual – of scientists such as Archimedes, Eratosthenes and Andreas of Carystus.The Letter of Aristeas is a major source for his "thick description" of the Hellenistic royal court.
In the Introduction, Berrey presents the methodological frameworks he will adopt in the book. The first and most important is the concept of the court. ...
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To learn more about what the renewed excavation at Masada unearthed, including what the oblong shape in the ground—which had planted the seed for the project—was covering, read the full article “Masada Shall Never Fail (to Surprise) Again” by Guy Stiebel and Boaz Gross in the September/October 2018 issue of BAR.For past PaleoJudaica posts on the history and archaeology of, and revisionist views on, Masada, see here, here, and here, and follow the links.
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This week, Daf Yomi readers began a new tractate, Menachot, which continues the Talmud’s analysis of the Temple service. Where the previous tractate focused on slaughtered offerings, however—the sacrifice of animals, ranging from bulls to birds—Menachot deals with meal offerings—the offering of flour, which is often accompanied by oil and frankincense. The tractates are clearly parallel, since many of the same questions that arose with regard to slaughtered offerings are also pertinent to meal offerings. Thus Menachot begins, like Zevachim, by considering the problem of offerings sacrificed with improper intent—that is, when one type of offering is made for the sake of a different type.Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and here and links.
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Jordan D. Rosenblum. The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World. Cambridge University Press, 2016.Excerpt:
In The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World, Rosenblum is meticulous in contextually analyzing his evidence, from Hellenistic Jewish sources such as Philo of Alexandria, who overwhelms with allegorical readings of these laws, while continuing to recommend their practice, to Christians such as Clement, who “is more interested in teasing out the moral application of the laws than in the literal practice thereof” (153). Rosenblum’s thorough approach to his sources, coupled with his tight focus on questions of justification of these laws, make this book invaluable as both a reference for the varieties of interpretive approaches to Jewish eating in Antiquity and as a methodological model for comparative analysis of quite disparate materials, across Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian sources.I noted an earlier review of the book here.
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AbstractHT AJR.
This article calls for an integration of the study of the Bible into the Humanities, taking into account the extensive knowledge we now possess of the traditions of the Hebrew Bible and deuterocanonical traditions in the light of the discoveries from the Cairo Geniza and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Instead of studying the Bible cut off from the Humanities and the critical engagement with Classics and medieval philology, the goal is to bring the study of the Bible back into the centre along with classical and modern writers. These later writers draw on the Bible but also, and reciprocally, use contemporary thinking about philology and critical theory, and current work on reading practices and the transformation of the self. There are paths that were not taken over two centuries ago when classical philology and Hebrew philology were bedfellows. Since that time biblical philology has in many ways been frozen in the search for the original text. This article advocates studying the Bible and biblical tradition in a dynamic and forward-moving context where texts are being rewritten and transformed in a variety of ways in linguistic and cultural contexts. It returns to paths that were not taken and reconnects with figures such as Peter Szondi, Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gershom Scholem, and Goethe. Biblicists, classicists, and scholars of literature are urged to engage and re-engage with the traditions in ways that are creative and field-changing for the composition and reception of the textual traditions. The Bible is an evolving collection of texts which is transformed not only through translation and interpretation but also through reading and the transformation of the self. We are drawn out of our own time, out of the present, and towards the past.
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Archaeologists excavating the ancient Jewish village of Shikhin in the Galilee encountered a mystery: a strangely large proportion of the animal bones were from wild gazelles. It was far greater than the proportion of gazelle remains found at any other archaeological site in Israel, from that time of about 1,900 years ago, or earlier. Or later. What was the strange predilection the ancient Jews of Shikhin had for gazelles?Speculative, but certainly possible. I would be very cautious about using the Mishnah, let alone the Talmud (Gemara) to infer what the customs were in Shikhin nineteen hundred years ago. The rabbinic texts were written long after this. And we don't know how much authority the rabbinic movement had in the first and early second centuries C.E. The rabbinic texts imply that the movement had a lot of authority in the Galilee then. But that may be anachronistic.
Some were surely eating of the gazelle, which is perfectly kosher when slaughtered by ritual. But the people of Shikhin also had plenty of domestic flocks: sheep, goats and cows. It seems, the archaeologists concluded, that the Jews of Shikhin had developed a robust industry of curing gazelle hide for parchment, including for Torah scrolls.
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It’s important to emphasize how arbitrary and intellectually weak our approach to these issues looks when compared to the rest of our philological method. While we have laser-precise ways of thinking about the relationship between two written texts within the same tradition, outside of it our approach seems to resemble the old story about the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight because it’s the only place he can see. The vast majority of ancient materials come from outside this one-channel world of direct textual transmission. Indeed, the fresh, unexampled instance is one of the most essential qualities of an interesting discovery! But the very phenomena of creativity and change remain in the mist, obscure areas we have trouble theorizing.With examples taken from the Gilgamesh tradition. And more is promised on "Hebrew 'Sources' from Josephus to Nachmanides."
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If a corpse is found in a field, and the killer is unknown, Deuteronomy 21 requires the elders of the closest city to break a heifer’s neck by a stream and declare that they did not spill “this blood.” How does this ritual of eglah arufah, “broken-necked heifer,” atone for Israel’s bloodguilt?
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Harvard Semitic Museum Publications E-Book CollectionIt's yours for only EUR €6,050.00 or USD $7,260.00. Alternatively, maybe your local research library will be interested.
This is an online collection of all published volumes from the Harvard Semitic Studies, Harvard Semitic Monographs, and Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant series. Including volumes from the early 20th century through the present, the collection includes over 100 volumes that have never appeared in digital format. The entire collection will be full-text searchable.
ISBN: 9789004365230
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As we say goodbye to summer and welcome in the fall, check out the September/October 2018 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Start with an inside look at the renewed excavation at Masada, where Herod built a palace-fortress and where Jewish Zealots made their last stand against the Romans. Move on to a textual deep-dive and discover the lost world of the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls and their importance in elucidating the literary, societal, political, and religious contexts of ancient Judaism and nascent Christianity. Next, learn about the many techniques archaeologists use to date sites, people, objects, and historical events in the first article of a new series called Biblical Archaeology 101. Finally, read all about the first-ever excavation at the Jezreel Valley site of Tel Shimron, which appears in the Hebrew Bible, Josephus’s writings, the Mishnah, and other sources.
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Hermetica IIFollow the link for details.
The Excerpts of Stobaeus, Papyrus Fragments, and Ancient Testimonies in an English Translation with Notes and Introduction
EDITOR AND TRANSLATOR: M. David Litwa, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
DATE PUBLISHED: June 2018
AVAILABILITY: In stock
FORMAT: Hardback
ISBN: 9781107182530
NOTE (9 July 2026): I have changed the link above. The old one was flagged by my antivirus software as leading to an unsafe site. This one is safe.
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History of VolubilisIt sounds like it was a busy place. Follow the link for some more details and some nice photos of the ruins and an ancient mosaic.
Located between the imperial cities of Fez and Meknes, the city of Volubilis was seen as the administrative centre of the kingdom of Mauretania and also one of the most remote cities within the Roman Empire. It was also home for over 20 000 residents.
It is one of the richest sites of this period in North Africa for the great wealth of architectural innovation and influence from the Romans, Libyan and Moor, Punic, and Arab-Islamic cultures as well as African and Christian cultures.
When the Arabs arrived in 708 A.D. they found it populated with Greeks, Berbers, Christians and Jews – many of them descendants of those who fled the persecutions and heavy taxes of the late Roman Empire, with Latin as the main language of communication.
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In this context I can mention that I’ve begun work on one of my next big book projects, which relates to the historical John the Baptist and the question of whether we can usefully bring the Mandaeans and their texts into the picture. I think that the answer to that question is yes, but obviously will need to make that case in detail. Some of the groundwork, however, has already been laid in a work that is soon to appear, and I think that scholars of ancient religion (as well as Semitic linguistics) are going to be blown away by some of the things that I believe will become clear as a result of the publication of the two-volume Mandaean Book of John critical edition, translation, and commentary.His emphasis. To be clear, these are the details:
The Mandaean Book of JohnForthcoming from De Gruyter in December of 2018. Cross-file under Forthcoming Book, Mandean (Mandaean) Watch, Aramaic Watch, and Syriac Watch.
Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary
Ed. by Häberl, Charles G. / McGrath, James F.
Aims and Scope
Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.
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According to Henry Lee, a 19th-century naturalist who wrote rather extensively on the vegetable lamb, the woolly plant first appeared in literature around 436 A.D., in the Jewish text, Talmud Hierosolimitanum. According to Lee, Rabbi Jochanan included a passage detailing the plant-animal that is “in form like a lamb, and from its navel grew a stem or root by which this zoophyte … was fixed … like a gourd, to the soil below the surface of the ground.”
But there was a more sinister version of the narrative. Lee includes a passage from Rabbi Simeon, who hints that the zoophyte was not a lamb-plant hybrid, but rather a human-plant hybrid. He claims that, according to the Jerusalem Talmud, the ‘Jadua,’ was a plant found in the mountains that grows “just as gourds and melons,” but in the form of a human—with a face, body, hands, and feet. Similar to the vegetable lamb, it was connected at the navel to the stem, which, if cut, would cause the Jadua’s demise. “No creature can approach within the tether of the stem, for it seizes and kills them,” he wrote. ...The article gives no specific reference in the Talmud. Mr. Lee's book is available on Google Play (see link in the quote), but I am disinclined to pay money to read it, especially since I have no confidence that he gave a reference either.
There is a source, although it is rather speculation about the meaning of words in the Mishna and Yerushalmi. Kilayim 8:5 and the following Yerushalmi associated with this Mishna (73b and 74a) list animals that are either categorized as wild or domesticated. These classifications are needed to differentiate between laws that are different between the 2 groups. The Mishna says the ‘Adnei HaSadeh’ is wild. Rabbi Yosi says that a dead one imparts ‘tumah’ (ritual uncleanliness) like a dead human. According to the logic of it, and most commentaries say that it is a gorilla or orangutan. Some Medieval commentaries speculate (likely based local legend) that it can be a creature that fits the description that you described.Thanks for that!
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John Jarick (ed.) with Jelle Verburg, Society for Old Testament Study Book List 2018 (= JSOT 42.5) (London: Sage, 2018).
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Copper has been mined in the Timna Valley since the 5th millennium B.C.E. Recent excavations reveal that the height of activity in the region dates to the 10th century B.C.E. and thus domination of this remote region during this period would have meant control of the lucrative copper industry. Could this be the unwritten backdrop to the Bible’s account of David’s conquest of Edom and Solomon’s great wealth?This is a nice, accessible report on the important archaeological work in the Timna Valley.
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Metallurgy, the Forgotten Dimension of Ancient YahwismFor my part, I find the argument in this essay to be very speculative. The five key points involve indirect connections with metallurgy that could add up to some primal connection with YHWH. Or the apparent connections could just be confirmation bias. They don't seem compelling to me. But read it and see what you think.
The Israelite religion appears to be an attempt to extend to an entire nation (and, subsequently, to the whole world) values originally belonging to a small congregation of Canaanite metalworkers and threatened by the rise of a new epoch in which metallurgy lost its prestige and even sustained a demotion. From a theological perspective, the birth of Israel represents the democratization of esoteric traditions founded on a close relationship with the divine reality that was experienced around the furnace.
By Nissim Amzallag
Department of Bible, Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheba, Israel
August 2018
Nissim Amzallag recently argued that words from the Biblical Hebrew root קנא have very different meanings depending on whether they are used in the human or divine context. While “jealousy” is an acceptable translation in the human sphere, Amzallag claims that in the divine sphere these words refer to furnace remelting, signaling that Israel's God was viewed as a smelting deity. There are several problems with Amzallag's argument. By paying closer attention to linguistic evidence and methodological considerations, one finds that in both human and divine contexts words from the root קנא are best understood with the traditional translation “jealousy,” an emotion closely related to anger, rather than the elaborate metallurgical imagery that Amzallag proposes.As I commented in my earlier blog post, the only way to prove an early connection between YHWH and metallurgy would be to find early texts that made the connection clear. For some thoughts on how that might happen, see that post and the one on Timna that I am going to post immediately after this one.
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But, as I see it, “collective Jewish memory” and “the sages’ approach” operate on a paradigm that is incommensurable with “scholarly Jewish history” and with secularity in general, Zionist or otherwise. What I would propose instead is an approach that is dialectical rather than integrative.This essay is in response to an earlier one by Eric Mechoulan: “What Is the Meaning of Jewish History?" You can find it on the Mosaic website. But be forewarned that Mosaic has changed its access rules. Non-subscribers can now only read three articles per month for free. Choose wisely!
That is, rather than imagining a reconciliation of these very different paradigms for relating to the past, we should recognize that there are both gains and losses that come from examining any historical phenomenon as either a committed insider or a disinterested outsider (so far as the latter is possible). Neither discourse in the first person nor discourse in the third person tells the whole story. In matters like those Mechoulan discusses, both unqualified identification and unqualified objectification have their limitations. The whole truth is larger than either traditional memory or modern critical historiography can accommodate alone.
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From the comfort of your home, you can virtually explore archaeological objects that shed light on Biblical history with the click of a button. Check out the virtual collections below and start your journey today!The six projects are as follows. Go to the BHD link above for links.
These digital projects were made possible with the support of George S. Blumenthal.
Visualizing IsaiahI have mentioned the Victor Adda Coin Collection here and the Digital Dead Sea Scrolls project many times, such as here.
Pharaoh in Canaan: The Untold Story
Ashkelon: A Retrospective
Faces of Power: Roman Gold Coins from the Victor Adda Collection
Biblical Archaeology Exhibits: From the Copper Age to the Present
The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls
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The UCLA Library and Early Manuscripts Electronic Library have partnered with St. Catherine’s Monastery to digitize and publish online on an open access basis some 1,100 rare and unique Syriac and Arabic manuscripts dating from the fourth to the 17th centuries.Cross-file under Syriac Watch.
A UNESCO World Heritage site located in a region of the Sinai Peninsula sacred to Christianity, Islam and Judaism, St. Catherine’s Monastery houses a collection of ancient and medieval manuscripts second only to that of the Vatican Library. Some 400,000 images will be created, including of works from Syriac literate culture, which flourished between the third and eighth centuries, and Christian Arabic literature, which appeared in the eighth century as Christian communities adapted to the spread of Islam.
This extensive collection of manuscripts becoming accessible to scholars around the world is thanks to the support of a $980,000 grant from the Arcadia Fund.
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The rabbis claim that a “subverted” or “apostate” city, which Deuteronomy (13:13-18) condemns to destruction, “never was and never will be” (t. San. 14:1). Yet the account in Judges 19-21 of the destruction or ḥerem of Gibeah, its inhabitants, animals, and property, suggests that such “internal ḥerem” was an Israelite practice, and that Gibeah is being presented as a subverted city.Or, more precisely, the story suggests that the Deuteronomistic Historian thought that it had once been an Israelite practice.
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The DNI project is interdisciplinary in its approach, and focuses on the nature images encapsulated within the literary compositions of the Hebrew Bible. The Dictionary is easily searchable by the name of the item in Hebrew characters, in transcription, and by its English translation. Each item takes its place within one of the five ecological fields: fauna, flora, landscape characteristics, climate systems, water sources.The project is based at Tel Aviv University. It is just getting started, but it looks promising.
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We did it! Thanks to our three benefactors donors who setup the matching fund, and to all our supporters through our crowdfunding website, we’ve managed to secure our budget for the rest of 2018 and the beginning of 2019. This will allow us to continue the research, complete several research topics and send more articles for publication.This is very good news. That said, they still need money to complete the project (which they estimate involves five more years of work) and to publish their findings. There is still hope that the Israeli Government will help. I very much encourage them to do so.
We are thrilled by the support we received from many return donors. This continual support really means a lot and encourages us to keep on going.
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The ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies is seeking presenters for its upcoming conference on Ancient Gnostics in the Near East. This conference aims towards a “small g” gnosticism, and will explore not only the Nag Hammadi literature, but also related current of Hermetism, mystery cult, and other phenomena.At the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, on 8-10 July 2019. Follow the link for details.
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What if there was a high-quality full-text edition of Tischendorf’s Evangelia Apocrypha available? Not just available, but openly available for scholars to use in whatever research or digital humanities projects they were involved in? And not just the Latin and Greek text, but the apparatuses too?His work is online. Go and have a look. The OCR version looks pretty good, but it has many small glitches. There are especially many in the Greek texts. If you are so minded, you are invited to make as many corrections as you want.
We’re closer to that than we have ever been. If you’ve worked with Evangelia Apocrypha, you know that the Greek text uses a distinctive font. This font makes optical character recognition (OCR) difficult because it isn’t like other Greek fonts. However, Bruce Robertson of Mount Allison University in New Brunswick has been working on the problem of Greek OCR ...
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Now I, nearly 2,000 years later, stood at the entrance to the mikvah.
My ancestors had wandered Europe for hundreds of years, but they always looked east, towards the Holy Land and their history.
I knew my companions would be coming to look for me. But I wanted to remain, to communicate with the generations who had gone before me.
My mother had survived Auschwitz; my father,It had endured and endured. Just like the Jewish people. Siberia and Tajikistan. Dozens of their family members were sent to Belzec and Majdanek. Some were killed in cemeteries after having been forced to dig their own graves.
And yet, here I was.
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Deuteronomy 13 discusses the case of a false prophet who does not have a message from God, but advocates worshiping other gods. Oddly enough, the false prophet can successfully perform miracles, or is able to predict the future. How is this possible?Not surprisingly, this question bothered rabbinic commentators.
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Karanis is located in the Fayum and was excavated between 1924 and 1935 in a project run by the University of Michigan. In a decade of work, some 4,000 papyri and 6,000 ostraca (inscribed ceramic fragments) were uncovered. The excavated materials are now divided between Ann Arbor, Cairo, and regional museums in Egypt. The Psalms fragments are among the pieces now in Cairo.The stratigraphy is complicated.
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This post was originally published on Leen Ritmeyer’s website Ritmeyer Archaeological Design. It has been republished with permission. Visit the website to learn more about the history of the Temple Mount and follow Ritmeyer Archaeological Design on Facebook.Regular readers of PaleoJudaica will be familiar with Dr. Ritmeyer, his blog, and his expertise in all things pertaining to the Temple Mount and the Jerusalem Temples.
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Haim Weiss and Shira Stav, The Return of the Missing Father: A New Reading of a Chain of Stories from the Babylonian Talmud (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2018) – Review by Mira BalbergExcerpt:
But The Return of the Missing Father (in Hebrew: שובו של האב הנעדר), co-authored by Haim Weiss and Shira Stav and recently published by Mosad Bialik, shows just how much we have missed, and how valuable a fresh perspective on a seemingly well-trodden set of texts can be. This small and unpretentious book offers a new reading of the seven said stories in Kettubot (alongside multiple relevant intertexts), and it succeeds in uncovering aspects of these stories that went unnoticed so far. This may sound like a rather modest contribution – providing some compelling nuggets of insight on familiar passages – but in my view this book does much more than that. In its unassuming way, it urges us to reassess some of our most established habits when reading rabbinic literature, and to be much more courageous, methodologically and analytically, in reading Talmudic texts as literature.HT AJR. It's good to see more activity on the Talmud Blog lately.
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Aramaic Magic Bowls in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin
Descriptive List and Edition of Selected Texts
Series:
Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity, Volume: 7
Authors: Siam Bhayro, James Nathan Ford, Dan Levene and Ortal-Paz Saar
The collection of Aramaic magic bowls and related objects in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin is one of the most important in the world. This book presents a description of each object and its contents, including details of users and other names, biblical quotations, parallel texts, and linguistic features. Combined with the detailed indices, the present volume makes the Berlin collection accessible for further research. Furthermore, sixteen texts, which are representative of the whole collection, are edited. This book results from an impressive collaboration between Siam Bhayro, James Nathan Ford, Dan Levene, and Ortal-Paz Saar, with further contributions by Matthew Morgenstern, Marco Moriggi, and Naama Vilozny, and will be of interest for all those engaged in the study of these fascinating objects.
Publication Date: 19 July 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-34447-1
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A 2,200-year-old gold earring has been unearthed near the site of the ancient Jewish temples in Jerusalem, providing rare evidence of Hellenistic influence on the region.Another ancient gold earring was found in Jerusalem ten years ago, but it appears to be from the Roman era. See here, and here. Another Roman-era gold earring was found at e-Tell/et-Tell (Bethsaida?). See here and here. And possibly one was found associated with the Bar Kokhba revolt, although that link has rotted. See here.
The four centimetre (1.5 inch)-long filigree hoop was discovered during excavations outside Jerusalem's walled Old City, and is adorned with a horned animal that is believed to be an antelope or deer.
The 'unique' find is the first earring found in Jerusalem that dates to the Hellenistic period around the third or early second centuries BC, researchers aid.
[...]
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What does the Talmud say about commemorating an anniversary? Something in great and elaborate detail, no doubt, perhaps touching on the necessary benedictions, fabrics considered kosher for use as tablecloth, and precautions regarding menstruating women.It's been a good six years. With a little less than a year and a half to go.
Six years ago, Tablet’s Adam Kirsch began his reading of Daf Yomi, the page-a-day cycle of oral law and rabbinic exegesis that covers all 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud. The current cycle is the 12th Daf Yomi. It will be completed in January 2020. The 13th begins the following day. As it never ends, we only pause here, as on the banks of a great river, to take stock.
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Magdala's Stone of ContentionFor many past posts on the important discoveries at the site of Magdala – not least the Magdala Stone – see here, here, and here, and follow the links.
Since we do not have any art guidebook, which survived from the Late Second Temple period, we should approach the topic with caution.
The Menorah was definitely an important as a symbol in the Jewish art and it does refer to the Temple; but the Menorah was also a symbol of Judaism and Jews in the ancient world. It is just as reasonable to find a Menorah decorating a place where a Jewish community gathers to learn their Scriptures. This does not necessitate that every single ornament on the stone ought to be linked the Jerusalem's Temple cult.
See Also: New Archaeological Data from The Great Revolt in Jerusalem Raise New Questions on Josephus
Did the Fortified Jerusalem of the Middle Bronze Just Vanish, and What Does This Say About King David?
By Dr. David Gurevich
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University
August 2018
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This book provides a useful introduction to digital papyrology for scholars interested in digital humanities and papyrologists looking to extend their knowledge of our digital tools. Apart from offering an overview of the state of the art within the field and a start to the epistemology of a new discipline, Reggiani’s main contribution to the future of digital papyrology lies in highlighting the fortunate and unfortunate detours of history and the methodological challenges and interesting opportunities ahead.N.b., this a De Gruyter open access book. For you, special deal!
This is a field that moves too fast to produce a monograph with lasting accuracy. As Reggiani admits “I am quite sure that within one year, if the world still exists, many of the links I recorded here will be broken” (p. 170), but this is not the point. Once one is aware of the existence of these resources, there are other ways to find them. The main pitfall of increasing digitalization in the field is that people are not aware of existing projects and things are done twice rather than in collaboration. Although the form of a printed book may seem odd for a survey of a digital field, a monograph in open access could be a fitting compromise for making a wide range of resources and methodologies known and accessible to all.
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Now, after years of legal and bureaucratic delays, the prison is to be relocated, freeing up the site for further exploration potentially as early as 2021.The prison is being moved because of new regulations to alleviate overcrowding, but the move is a bonus for archaeology. The move has been in the works for some time, but plans seem to be firming up. This is the first time I have heard that the site may be available for archaeology "as early as 2021."
The prospect already has archaeologists excitedly talking about an area they have started to call “Greater Megiddo”.
“When the Christian prayer hall was first found beneath the prison, we were all excited for one minute,” said Matthew Adams, director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, who has spent years excavating at Megiddo.
“And then we realized, “Oh, it’s in a maximum security prison, so we’ll never actually be able to do anything with it.”
“Now that the government has decided to move this prison, we can explore this really amazing and interesting part of the development of early Christianity in a way that we didn’t think we’d be able to.”
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Charges were filed for damage to antiquities and unauthorized excavation at an antiquities site. The three suspects were sentenced to 36 months in prison, nine months probation and each were fined NIS 4000 to be paid over the course of three years.I don't know which is correct.
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Netanyahu called Azoulay some three weeks ago and thanked her for her efforts to stop what he called the discrimination against Israel in the UN agency, Channel 10 reported Wednesday, citing a senior Israeli official.Good. It sounds as though there has been progress, not least due to the work of Ms. Azoulay.
The official was quoted as saying one of the ideas being examined in Jerusalem was not to cancel the withdrawal, instead delaying it by several months to check on the changes in the organization.
Netanyahu praised Azoulay for the fact that no anti-Israel resolutions have been passed at UNESCO for nearly a year, the report said. Shama-Hacohen also said Jerusalem recognized Azoulay’s efforts in this respect.
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Moshe Lavee. The Rabbinic Conversion of Judaism: The Unique Perspective of the Bavli on Conversion and the Construction of Jewish Identity. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018.Excerpt:
Lavee’s clarity of writing, especially his explicit explanation of methods and readings of texts, make this an accessible work. His interpretation of the development of conversion practices, the construction of rabbinic authority, the determination of Jewish identity, and influences from Greco-Roman and Persian cultures are valuable contributions to the field and of interest to a wide array of scholars both within and outside the field of rabbinic literature.Early this year I noted the publication of this book here.
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Lebanon is full of Phoenician ruins! One of the most important sites in Lebanon is the Temple of Eshmun which is located in Sidon. Built in the 7th century BC, this temple is dedicated to Eshmun which is the Phoenician god of healing and renewal of life.I have not been to Lebanon, but I would love to see this temple.
Historical background
The Sidonian king Eshmunazar II constructed the temple to celebrate the city’s recovered wealth. He also built numerous temples to Sidonian divinities.
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The Origins of the Canon of the Hebrew Bible
An Analysis of Josephus and 4 Ezra
Series:
Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, Volume: 186
Author: Juan Carlos Ossandón Widow
In The Origins of the Canon of the Hebrew Bible: An Analysis of Josephus and 4 Ezra, Juan Carlos Ossandón Widow examines the thorny question of when, how, and why the collection of twenty-four books that today is known as the Hebrew Bible was formed. He carefully studies the two earliest testimonies in this regard—Josephus’ Against Apion and 4 Ezra—and proposes that, along with the tendency to idealize the past, which leads to consider that divine revelation to Israel has ceased, an important reason to specify a collection of Scriptures at the end of the first century CE consisted in the need to defend the received tradition to counter those that accepted more books.
Publication Date: 26 September 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-38160-5
Hardback:
EUR €110.00 / USD $132.00
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How was the Bible written during and after the Babylonian Exile? Did the Biblical authors continue to use the Hebrew language even though they were living in lands where Hebrew was no longer the common language? In his article “How Hebrew Became a Holy Language,” published in the January/February 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Jan Joosten explains that Biblical Hebrew did not go out of use. Rather the Jewish population continued to use it—and even attached a new reverence to it.The article by Jan Joosten is behind the subscription wall. But the BHD essay gives a summary of it.
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This month marks an anniversary for Daf Yomi readers: It has been six years since we began studying the Talmud. Since the cycle began in August 2012, Daf Yomi readers have explored the laws of Jewish holidays in Seder Moed, the laws of marriage and divorce in Seder Nashim, and civil and criminal law in Seder Nezikin. Now we are embarked on the last major division of the Babylonian Talmud, Seder Kodashim, which deals with the “holy things” of the Temple service. This will be our subject for most of the remaining year and a half of the Daf Yomi cycle, which concludes in January 2020.Happy anniversary, Adam. As I have said before, I have learned a great deal from your columns.
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Archaeologists are planning an unprecedented survey of Jerusalem’s Western Wall after a large slab of stone fell and landed near worshippers.There is genuine reason for concern here. It does look as though the IAA is taking appropriate steps.
There are concerns for the safety of the thousands of pilgrims who visit Judaism’s oldest standing relic after the stone fell feet away from a woman praying at the wall. A small part of the prayer area near the wall has been closed off since the incident two weeks ago. Experts are divided on whether more stones are about to fall or if it was a one-off occurrence. Archaeologists and engineers who have been called in are stumped.
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Seeking out the Land: Land of Israel Traditions in Ancient Jewish, Christian and Samaritan Literature (200 BCE - 400 CE)
Series:
Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series, Volume: 32
Author: Ze'ev Safrai
Seeking out the Land describes the study of the Holy Land in the Roman period and examines the complex connections between theology, social agenda and the intellectual pursuit. Holiness as a theological concept determines the intellectual agenda of the elite society of writers seeking to describe the land, as well as their preoccupation with its physical aspects and their actual knowledge about it.
Ze'ev Safrai succeeds in examining all the ancient monotheistic literature, both Jewish and Christian, up to the fourth century CE, and in demonstrating how all the above-mentioned factors coalesce into a single entity. We learn that in both religions, with all their various subgroups, the same social and religious factors were at work, but with differing intensity.
Publication Date: 19 July 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-33479-3
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Psalm of Solomon 17 is by far the most significant section of the collection. The Psalm describes a Davidic, messianic figure who will purge Jerusalem of Gentiles, gather the exiles and lead them in righteousness and shepherd the Lord’s flock in righteousness. This lengthy Psalm draws on the canonical Psalm 72 and is witness to fervent messianic hopes among some strands of early Judaism. The belief a messiah would soon appear and liberate Jerusalem from their Roman oppressors ultimately culminates in the first Jewish Revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. See also my post on Messianic Hopes and the Jewish Revolt.Plus - Who is the lawless one?
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Until the 21st century, and thus for most of the history of Tibetan Studies as a discipline, most Western scholars generally accepted that all treasures were apocrypha, with their claims to ancient origins mere fabrications to be skeptically dismissed. Given that virtually no first-millennium manuscripts remained extant and available, comparative analysis of early treasure documents against imperial-era exemplars was simply not possible. Only recently have contemporary scholars begun to forward convincing evidence that at least some of the earliest revealers’ claims were true––that some new treasure collections made use of much old material, and so preserved authentic fragments of the empire. This is due solely to a most fortuitous find in 1900, over a thousand years after the fall of the empire, when a massive cache of manuscripts from that era and its aftermath was discovered near a Chinese city whose cosmopolitan grandeur and long-held economic and political relevance had largely been forgotten.The manuscript discoveries at Dunhuang and nearby Turfan included material of interest for Syriac Christianity and even ancient Judaism. Notably, fragments of the Book of Giants were first recovered from Turfan in Turkic and Manichean Iranian translations. Fragments of the original Aramaic were only found among the Dead Sea Scrolls decades later.
Indeed, the Birmingham Qur’ānic manuscript is old – one of the oldest to our knowledge – representing a precious detail of a larger corpus of early Qur’ānic manuscripts. Nevertheless, it is incorrect to present any of the known Qur’ānic manuscripts as holding the record as the oldest. If the reader compares the message of the BBC headline with the actual content of the scholarly article itself, the contrast will be evident between the enthusiasm in the former and the cautiousness of the statements about the dating from various scholars mentioned in the latter.PaleoJudaica has been following the story of the Birmingham Qur'an fragments since the announcement of their (re)discovery three years ago. For the full discussion, start here and follow the links.
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When I came to look at St George, my intention was to arrange for the translation of one or two versions of his Life. What I had not anticipated was to find a mess, where there is still basic scholarly work to do in identifying and classifying versions of the Lives. Originally I had hoped to list all the texts which contained versions of the martyrdom of St George; or at least the earliest ones. But this quickly proved futile. So here is what I was able to work out.St George – the main post! What do we know about him, and how do we know it?
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In short, we are dealing with fictional material about a figure for whom we have no evidence whatever, and no factual material whatever. Hagiography as a genre runs across a spectrum, all the way from historical accounts, down through fictionalised or “improved” versions of the facts, until we end up with wholly imaginary saints and wholly fictional Lives. St George is at the far end of that spectrum.That's too bad. I'd always been a little skeptical about the dragon, though.
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Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective
Series:
IJS Studies in Judaica, Volume: 17
Editor: Lily Kahn
Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective is devoted to the diverse array of spoken and written language varieties that have been employed by Jews in the Diaspora from antiquity until the twenty-first century. It focuses on the following five key themes: Jewish languages in dialogue with sacred Jewish texts, Jewish languages in contact with the co-territorial non-Jewish languages, Jewish vernacular traditions, the status of Jewish languages in the twenty-first century, and theoretical issues relating to Jewish language research. This volume includes case studies on a wide range of Jewish languages both historical and modern and devotes attention to lesser known varieties such as Jewish Berber, Judeo-Italian, and Karaim in addition to the more familiar Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish, and Ladino.
Publication Date: 19 July 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-37232-0
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
August 3, 2018I noted this as forthcoming last year. Now it's out and The Forward has had a look at it.
With the onslaught of a new-age movement, where religion can be cool and believing in a superior power higher than thyself is deemed the bee’s knees, millenials have taken to Instagram to showcase their love for religion through art.
One such artist, who combines Jewish principles with graphic art, is Jessica Tamar Deutsch. Her book, “The Illustrated Pirkei Avot: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Ethics,” gives traditional Jewish texts a more contemporary (and female) voice in the art world.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
I teach biblical studies at Heritage Christian University in Florence, Alabama. I have a PhD in the History of Biblical Interpretation from Hebrew Union College, and my research interests revolve around the reception of the Hebrew Bible in ancient Judaism and Christianity, especially in terms of textual and canonical issues.I don't think I've seen this blog before, but it has been around since 2007. The content is as indicated in the subtitle above. Dr. Gallagher posts infrequently, but the posts I've looked at are good, and many will be of interest to PaleoJudaica readers. So go and have a look.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
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