From God’s first command to Moses, through the story of Israel’s escape, the demand for a three-day festival in the wilderness plays a prominent role in the plague narrative. Part of this ruse was Israel’s request to “borrow” Egyptian finery for the festival. Why does God want the Israelites to use deception?Spoiler: source criticism is involved.
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Marshall, Mary. The Portrayals of the Pharisees in the Gospels and Acts. FRLANT 254; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. Hb; €89.99.Excerpt:
Too frequently it is assumed the Gospels and Acts have a uniform, negative view of Pharisees. On the contrary, Marshall contends the Gospels and Acts are complex and each writer has an individual view of the Pharisees. Her goal is not a “quest for the historical Pharisee,” but rather to fairly and accurately describe how each of the four Gospel author’s presented the Pharisee in the service of their own theological agendas.
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There are 4 main trails to reach the top of Masada. They vary greatly in length and difficulty, providing a solution for any taste and skill level.Pro tip: do not climb the Snake Path to Masada in July like I did.
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Alexander the GreatYou can read the Introduction to the book at the link.
From His Death to the Present Day
John Boardman
Editions
Hardcover 2019 29.95 24.00 ISBN9780691181752 176 pp. 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 8 page color + 36 b/w illus.
E-book ISBN9780691184043
An illustrious scholar presents an elegant, concise, and generously illustrated exploration of Alexander the Great’s representations in art and literature through the ages
John Boardman is one of the world’s leading authorities on ancient Greece, and his acclaimed books command a broad readership. In this book, he looks beyond the life of Alexander the Great in order to examine the astonishing range of Alexanders created by generations of authors, historians, and artists throughout the world—from Scotland to China.
Alexander’s defeat of the Persian Empire in 331 BC captured the popular imagination, inspiring an endless series of stories and representations that emerged shortly after his death and continues today. An art historian and archaeologist, Boardman draws on his deep knowledge of Alexander and the ancient world to reflect on the most interesting and emblematic depictions of this towering historical figure.
Some of the stories in this book relate to historical events associated with Alexander’s military career and some to the fantasy that has been woven around him, and Boardman relates each with his customary verve and erudition. From Alexander’s biographers in ancient Greece to the illustrated Alexander “Romances” of the Middle Ages to operas, films, and even modern cartoons, this generously illustrated volume takes readers on a fascinating cultural journey as it delivers a perfect pairing of subject and author.
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Just looking at the sober scholarly themes he addressed so meticulously, you would never guess the wonderful and playful sense of humor that so informed his life. As his department head in the mid-1990s, I remember putting together his file for tenure and promotion. He and I had a manic series of conversations about drafting a letter of evaluation for the college committee, but drawing the whole text from his particular field of study (“He is a mighty man of valor” … “There is none like unto him in the Land of Israel”….). Fortunately for his later career, I never dared submit it, and eventually decided to go with something more mainstream.Also includes a section by Deirdre Fulton on Gary's impressive contribution to biblical studies.
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Volume 16 (2018): Issue 2 (Nov 2018): Special Issue: Aramaic—Linguistic Diversity across Three MillenniaIt includes articles on Aramaic grammar, Samaritan Aramaic, Neo-Mandaic, and Neo-Aramaic.
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Armenia!As I have already mentioned, the exhibition covers the full span of Armenian history, with some attention to its connections with Jewish tradition. On the latter, Professor Brown mentions one example:
an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, September 22, 2018–January 13, 2019
Armenia: Art, Religion, and Trade in the Middle Ages
Catalog of the exhibition edited by Helen C. Evans
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 351 pp., $65.00 (distributed by Yale University Press)
[The fifth-century Battle of] Avarayr would never be forgotten. Heavily stylized, it was depicted as late as 1500, in manuscripts from the war-torn region of Lake Van. In one on view in the exhibition, the Persians advance behind a row of war elephants. This evoked a deep, pre-Christian past, for the original account of the battle drew heavily on the description of the confrontation between the war elephants of King Antiochus Eupator and the Jewish hero Judas Maccabaeus in the Book of Maccabees from the second century BC. Both battles were remembered as manifestations of heroic courage. Both showed a nation at war in defense of its religion. By following the Book of Maccabees, the Armenian writers found a way to express, for the first time in Christian history, the idea that an entire group of warriors could die in battle as martyrs for the faith.I noted another review of the exhibition here.
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Knoppers’ research specializations included Hebrew scriptures, ancient historiography, ancient Near Eastern and biblical law, inner-scriptural exegesis, textual criticism and the history of early Jewish and Samaritan relations.Background here.
“Gary is esteemed as a scholar and teacher,” said Timothy Matovina, chair of the Department of Theology. “But I think he will be missed most for his gentle and congenial humanity that helped make our department and the wider University a community of learning, compassion, and faith."
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Ariel Bloch, who used his career at UC Berkeley as a way to fuse Arab and Hebrew culture, died in Richmond on Dec. 14 at the age of 85 after a lengthy illness.
A professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Bloch specialized in Arabic linguistics, but he took on Hebrew and Aramaic as subspecialties and did what he could to encourage a multilingual balance of both of the languages and the cultures.
[...]
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Type: Call for PapersThis conference will cover a very wide range of concepts and categories over the whole range of Jewish history. The application deadline is 31 March 2019.
Date:
May 29, 2019 to May 31, 2019
Location: Russian Federation
Subject Fields: Philosophy, Humanities, Intellectual History, Jewish History / Studies
Saint-Petersburg State University.
[...]
Following the success of conferences on Jewish thought in 2017 and 2018 the Department of Jewish Culture of Saint-Petersburg State University, in collaboration with the International Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will host a three-day conference «Basic Concepts and Categories of Jewish Thought: Sources and Contexts».
[...]
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The exhibit does not include any of his manuscripts, but [the philosopher] David’s fellow Alexandrian, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, profoundly shaped the tradition of biblical interpretation in Armenia. Armenians translated many of his works; some of these are today extant only in Armenian.[4] A fifteenth century commentary on the psalms as well as some of the Old Testament manuscripts displayed here may very well carry glosses based on the Jewish exegete’s writings. Besides the intellectual legacy of Hellenistic Judaism, one can also discern some features of Armenian worship reminiscent of Jewish liturgical practices that entered Armenia mainly through Syriac mediation. A notable example in the exhibit is the altar curtain used to conceal the altar from the congregation during certain portions of the liturgy.[5] It is comparable in function to the Byzantine iconostasis, but the Armenian and Syriac rites sought to assert a more pronounced continuity with Judaism by retaining a curtain to recall that of the Jerusalem temple.The scope of the exhibition includes the whole history of Armenia to the present.
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In my last post, I highlighted a papyrus of Genesis mentioned by Scott Carroll in his 2011 lecture in the “Passages” speakers series. Later in that same talk, Carroll singled out two other pieces in the collection, a papyrus leaf from a codex of Exodus in Greek and a fragment of a papyrus copy of Hebrews.I noted that "last post" here. Past PaleoJudaica posts mentioning that Exodus manuscript are here, here (on seven additional fragments of the manuscript, also published by David DeSilva), here, here, and (noting another essay by Brent Nongbri) here.
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The project was initially slated to begin in 2016, but problems with funding from Israel's Defense Ministry delayed the start for two years. The demining efforts finally got underway this past spring. HALO Trust fundraised about $2.6 million, and the Defense Ministry is funding $2 million.That's a good beginning. For background on the de-mining project and on the site of Qasr Al-Yahud, start here and follow the links.
A team of 22 specialized bomb sappers from the country of Georgia, along with dozens of Palestinian support staff have cleared 1,500 landmines from three of the seven church compounds, officials announced in mid-December 2018.
Marcel Aviv, the head of the Israel National Mine Action Authority, a branch of the Defense Ministry, said he hopes they will finish the work in December 2019. There are still about 5,000 landmines left to clear.
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I continue to work through the “Passages” speakers series videos. During his talk in the 2011 sequence of lectures, Scott Carroll mentioned a number of literary papyri that the Green Collection had acquired.
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The thesis of my dissertation was as follows:Background here.
Contrary to Emanuel Tov’s analysis that fifty-five texts from Qumran are exclusively identified as textually non-aligned, a more cautious analysis of each text demonstrates that once the few ambiguous texts are excluded from the category, the remaining texts can reasonably be explained as belonging to the Masoretic tradition.
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Two new exhibits will open at the Hecht Museum in Haifa on January 24 featuring findings from a US archaeological expedition in the 1930s.For the ancient lamp wick, found by this expedition but only recently noticed, see here.
The H.D. Colt expedition to Shivta, a Byzantine-era town in the Negev highlands, uncovered a massive assortment of treasures. But due to the limited technology at the time, not all of the material could be sorted through and analyzed until recently.
[...]
A second exhibit of photography by Dror Maayan will also premiere then and will focus on the Negev travels of historic explorers E.H. Palmer and Charles Drake.For the late-antique etching of Jesus' baptism (with Jesus' face depicted), see here and links. And follow the links from there for more discoveries at Shivta.
Palmer was enlisted in 1869 to join the survey of Sinai, undertaken by the Palestine Exploration Fund, and followed up his work the following year by exploring the desert of El-Tih with Drake. They completed their journey on foot and without escort, making friends among the local Bedouin.
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How Old Is the Hebrew Bible?I noted a review of this new book here.
Many scholars, largely disregarding linguistic data, insist that most or all of the Hebrew Bible was written in the second half of the first millennium BCE, during the Persian and/or Hellenistic periods, and draw the inference that there is little or no historical content that predates this era….The ages of the books of the Hebrew Bible span a vast chronological range, from the early Iron Age to the Greek age, which we can discern at different degrees of focus. There is much that we can know about these topics, more than most scholars are willing to grant.
See Also: How Old Is the Hebrew Bible? A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study. (Anchor Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).
By Ronald Hendel
Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies
University of California, Berkeley
By Jan Joosten
Regius Professor of Hebrew
University of Oxford
January 2019
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A 2,300-year-old fortress that protected an ancient port called "Berenike" has been discovered in Egypt on the coast of the Red Sea by a Polish-American archaeological team.This ancient port was named after the Ptolemaic queen Berenice I. She was the wife of Ptolemy I. He is mentioned as "the king of the south" in Daniel 11:5.
Constructed at a time when Egypt was ruled by the Ptolemies, a dynasty of pharaohs descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals, the fortifications are sizable.
[...]
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The museum presents the long history of Egypt from ancient times to the Graeco-Roman period, through the Coptic period, to the Islamic period, and finally to the printing press that Napoleon Bonaparte brought to Egypt at the end of the 18th century.Some past PaleoJudaica posts on Alexander the Great are here here, here, here, here, here, and here. For more on Berenice II see here.
This article presents some of my favourite pieces from the amazing collection of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Antiquities Museum from ancient and Graeco-Roman Egypt.
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James C. VanderKam, Jubilees: A Commentary in Two Volumes (Hermeneia; Fortress, November 1, 2018)I'm delighted to see that this commentary is out. It is a landmark in the research on the Book of Jubilees.
Jubilees--so called because of its concern with marking forty-nine-year periods (or "jubilees") in Israel's history--is an ancient rewriting of Genesis and the first part of Exodus from the point of view of an anonymous second-century BCE Jewish author. Its distinctive perspective--as well as its apparent popularity at Qumran--make it particularly important for any reconstruction of early Judaism. James C. VanderKam, the world's foremost authority on Jubilees, offers a new translation based on his own critical editions of all the available textual evidence, including the Hebrew fragments preserved at Qumran (which he first published in Discoveries in the Judean Desert, vol. 13), as well as the first full running commentary on the book in the English language. Jubilees approaches the book as a rewriting of scripture but also as a literary work in its own right. The commentary explains the text and the teachings of the author with comprehensive coverage of the modern scholarship devoted to them. The introduction sets the book in its second-century BCE context, traces its sources in the Bible and in other early Jewish texts, and describes its influence on Jewish and Christian writers.
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Despite the agreement being that the archived items would be returned in September 2018, Mr Shuker told the audience, “We have been managing to delay the sending back by telling the US State Department, ‘We will hold you responsible if these archives go back to the same sewage waste that they came out of. What guarantee have we got that they are actually going to be treasured?’”So the latest is that there is an informal three-year extension to the deadline for the return of the archive to Iraq. Meanwhile, there is a lawsuit (Mr. Shuker is involved) and negotiations continue. Looks like I called it about right.
He confirmed that there had been a “three-year extension, which is not yet formal, you will not see it on the internet... to allow the Iraqis to come up with a proposal as to where are they going to keep it, how are they going to make it accessible — especially to the owners of those things, so that Edwin Shuker can take his son and say, ‘This is my certificate, this is the place they took from me’ — is that going to be open for us?”
However, Mr Shuker suggested that there were grounds for hope.
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The Samaritans in Historical, Cultural and Linguistic Perspectives
Ed. by Dusek, Jan
Series: Studia Samaritana 11 Studia Judaica 110
86,95 € / $99.99 / £79.00*
Hardcover
Publication Date: October 2018
ISBN 978-3-11-061610-1
Aims and Scope
The volume contributes to the knowledge of the Samaritan history, culture and linguistics. Specialists of various fields of research bring a new look on the topics related to the Samaritans and the Hebrew and Arabic written sources, to the Samaritan history in the Roman-Byzantine period as well as to the contemporary issues of the Samaritan community.
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Importantly, cats were never selected for a peculiar task by humans; they already possessed in their wild state the predatory skills that made them useful to human communities: hunting mice and other pests that infested human grain storages (or households, ships and so on). In the behavioural context of the Egyptian society cats developed a more tolerant attitude towards humans and became their companions, while maintaining their innate predatory skills and a sort of aloofness that is still a landmark of modern housecats. This is corroborated by the analysis of full genomes in modern cats, which recently suggested that the main differences between wild and domestic cats are at the level of behavioural traits.Almost. Wild cats are generally bigger than domesticated cats, sometimes much bigger. We clearly bred domesticated cats to be too small to be a threat. If your cat were bigger, it would eat you.
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God reveals his name to Moses as “I am,” from the Hebrew root ה.ו.י, “being.” The name YHWH, however, originates in Midian, and derives from the Arabic term for “love, desire, or passion.”I am not an expert on pre-Islamic Arabian language and culture, so I have no opinion about this proposal. It was published in 1956 and has not caught on, which is not a good sign. But perhaps someone will take it up again in a peer-review publication. We'll see.
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Mäkipelto, Ville
Uncovering Ancient Editing
Documented Evidence of Changes in Joshua 24 and Related Texts
Series: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 513
86,95 € / $99.99 / £79.00*
Hardcover
Publication Date: October 2018
ISBN 978-3-11-059811-7
Aims and Scope
The Hebrew Bible is a product of ancient editing, but to what degree can this editing be uncovered? “Uncovering Ancient Editing” argues that divergent textual witnesses of the same text, so-called documented evidence, should be the starting point for such an endeavor.
The book presents a fresh analysis of Josh 24 and related texts as a test case for refining our knowledge of how scribes edited texts. Josh 24 is envisioned as a gradually growing Persian period text, whose editorial history can be reconstructed with the help of documented evidence preserved in the MT, LXX, and other ancient sources.
This study has major implications for both the study of the book of Joshua and text-historical methodology in general.
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What’s in the datasets? The digitised manuscripts are provided as 300ppi JPEGs, divided into small datasets of around 50GB each, sorted alphabetically by shelfmark (20 to 30 manuscripts per dataset). They contain a huge variety of Hebrew manuscripts, including Kabbalistic works, linguistic works, prayer books, biblical texts and commentaries, marriage certificates, charters and scrolls. The manuscripts also contain texts in many different languages, including Latin, Greek, Yiddish, Persian, Italian, Arabic and Syriac. The catalogue records for all of these manuscripts can be found in dataset Heb1 (TEI XML files).
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At the end of the day, what we have is evidence of two strong quakes in the eighth century B.C.E., which support the biblical account in Amos, and Zechariah too. Not that he knew of what he spake, writing so long after the event, but still.For more on biblical earthquakes, see here.
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Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period: The Archaeology of Desolation
Avraham Faust
ISBN 9781589836402
Status Available
Price: $35.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date September 2012
The Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. was a watershed event in the history of Judah, the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the exilic period, during which many of the biblical texts were probably written. The conquest left clear archaeological marks on many sites in Judah, including Jerusalem, and the Bible records it as a traumatic event for the population. Less clear is the situation in Judah following the conquest, that is, in the sixth century, a period with archaeological remains the nature and significance of which are disputed. The traditional view is that the land was decimated and the population devastated. In the last two decades, scholars arguing that the land was not empty and that the exile had little impact on Judah’s rural sector have challenged this view. This volume examines the archaeological reality of Judah in the sixth century in order to shed new light on the debate. By expanding research into new avenues and examining new data, as well as by applying new methods to older data, the author arrives at fresh insights that support the traditional view of sixth-century Judah as a land whose population, both urban and rural, was devastated and whose recovery took centuries.
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The Sanhedrin is minting a commemorative coin in recognition of Nikki Haley’s exemplary service as the 29th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Haley tendered her resignation in October effective at the end of 2018.The Sanhedrin issued the commemorative coin in conjunction with an invitation for Haley to serve as the honorary president of a Biblically mandated organization of 70 Nations.Not only that:
Jews who purchase the coin can consider it as fulfilling the mitzvah (Torah commandment) of the half shekel. In the days of the Temple, every male in Israel was obligated to donate a half-shekel of silver at the beginning of the month of Adar which was used to pay for the operating expenses of the Temple for the entire year.This new Sanhedrin appointed itself back in 2005. More on it here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. They are proponents of rebuilding a third Temple on the Temple Mount. (For the record, I oppose any construction on the Temple Mount.) More on their revival of the half-shekel Temple tax is here. And more on their Donald Trump coin is here.
This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary – the shekel is twenty gerahs–half a shekel for an offering to Hashem. Exodus 30:13
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Hundreds of yeshiva students and rabbis from across the spectrum of the national religious community participated in a marathon Talmud study session on Sunday, and completed the 2,711 double-sided folio pages of the Babylonian Talmud over the course of the day.That's a lot of Talmud.
[...]
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A new hoard of 1,400 tablets from a lost city in Iraq, new clues to a massive void in the Great Pyramid and the discovery of an ornately decorated Easter egg that belonged to the Russian royal family are just some of the cool archaeological discoveries that we might see in 2019.Mr. Jarus also had a list of discoveries to look for in 2018. That list included a possible "13th Dead Sea Scrolls cave." In 2018 archaeologists did discover two(ish) new Qumran caves that had been used in antiquity. They are still hoping that more scrolls will turn up, but there's nothing so far. So I give his prediction partial credit.
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Set against the Pharaonic Solomon, Jeroboam frees Israel from servitude and founds the Northern Kingdom. Hadad plays a similar role on behalf of the Edomites. Why are these two “rebels” depicted as heroes?
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The 6th volume of DABIR is a Gedenkschrift to honour Hanns-Peter Schmidt (1930-2017), an excellent German scholar of Indo-Iranian studies, who mainly worked on the Vedas and the Gāθās, as well as Indian mythology and the Zoroastrian religion.When I was an undergraduate at UCLA I took two courses from Professor Schmidt: one on ancient Iranian culture and one on ancient Iranian religion. There were two or three of us in each course. But the material was fascinating and I still have the notes from those classes.
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The importance of the find of the wall painting in the Baptistery of the North Church at Shivta is enormous: it is a rare survival of early Byzantine iconography and an original wall painting in its architectural setting. This finding enriches our knowledge of subjects and techniques used to decorate early Byzantine churches, providing insight into the religious and the cultural life of Byzantine Shivta, and bringing us closer to early Christian representations of the Christ.Background here and links. And another recent discovery at Shivta is noted here.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical 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.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
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.
Four a.m. That’s the first thing anyone who has been on an archaeological dig in the Holy Land will tell you when you ask them what it’s like to be on an excavation.This brings back many memories of my field experiences at Tel Dor and Ashkelon in the 1980s. Good times!
“You get up at 4:00 a.m.!” they’ll say with equal parts pride and loathing in their voices. “The first two hours of your day are spent in the dark.”
[...]
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It took hours of intensive detective work, including patient surveillance, carefully planned ambushes, and nightly observations to intercept the thieves and retrieve these artifacts. The rescued objects have been carefully preserved and stored, and numerous looters operating in Judea and Samaria have been prosecuted. Over the last 50 years, 40,000 objects have been collected.I noted this story a couple of days ago, but this article has additional details.
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Family in the Early Jesus MovementThe historical Jesus clearly had family issues. But that's never been unusual. He also liked to use hyperbole. It's a good way of getting attention.
Why did the historical Jesus reject traditional family ties? There are a couple of possibilities. First, it is feasible that he did so because his family attempted to thwart his activities…. It is also possible that, regardless of his own family’s attitude, Jesus felt that traditional family ties were insignificant compared to proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom of God (which Jesus no doubt identified with the will of God). One was to make a choice: family or the kingdom.
See Also: Jesus Followers in the Roman Empire (Eerdmans, 2017).
By Paul B. Duff
Professor of Religion
The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
The George Washington University
December 2018
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Israel Antiquities Authority, JNF and Border Police stopped a band of thieves from stealing ancient coins from the Hukuk Synagogue archeological site in northern Israel on Thursday.Good.
[...]
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The story of Moses follows a pattern that is typical of ancient Near Eastern fugitive hero narratives. However, when Moses goes to Mount Horeb, the plot deviates from the usual “divine encounter” feature. What does this tell us about the composition of the story of Moses and the Burning Bush?This essay does not use the Rank-Raglan typology of the hero, but its fugitive-hero pattern has some similarities. For the Rank-Raglan typology and Jesus, see here, and on Abraham, see here. Also, Ron Hendel published a book quite a few years ago which looks at Jacob and Moses as epic heroes: The Epic of the Patriarch: The Jacob Cycle and the Narrative Traditions of Canaan and Israel (HSM 42; Brill, 1988).
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Ruins of an ancient camp that was possibly used by Persian ruler Cambyses II as a staging ground for the invasion of Egypt some 2,500 years ago were unearthed by archaeologists in northern Israel, Haaretz reports.The Haaretz article is in the premium section and I can't access the full text. But this article has a summary of it. Another summary (noted by Joseph Lauer) by Archaeology Magazine is here.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
ABOUTThe site also has a Blog.
Throughout history women have loved, studied, and taught the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Unfortunately, many of us have never heard of these biblical scholars and thinkers. Often they are left out of history books and classroom discussion. The goal of this blog is to draw attention to the works of women and discover what they contribute to our understanding of the biblical texts. With greater awareness, this scholarship can shape course curriculum, homilies, public discourse, and academia itself.
The blog includes profiles, interviews, book reviews, and other means to spotlight women biblical scholars. Of particular interest are scholars whose work contributes to the thriving of faith communities and advances helpful discussion of religion in our contemporary world. Check out the developing Index of Scholars for names and works of women across history. This makes it easy to find the primary texts you want. Also don’t miss seeing today’s women biblical scholars in action–our growing Video and Audio page gives you access to lectures, presentations, and interviews. Finally, if you are looking for a dictionary on women interpreters or want to read a memoir or biography of a female scholar be sure to stop by the Books page.
If you know of something that should be added to this site, would like to contribute a guest post, or help develop the index of scholars please e-mail: women.biblical.scholars@gmail.com.
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Chapter 4 focuses predominantly on Books One to Four of the Aeneid, which we are to view as a unit within the epic (if we assume a tripartite structure for the work). Throughout this chapter, Giusti offers examples of Virgil’s allusions to all three Punic wars, arguing that when read as a whole, Virgil’s Carthage episode serves an historical allegory for that conflict and thus looks beyond the obvious association between the pairing of Carthage and Dido with Egypt and Cleopatra. ...Cross-file under Punic Watch.
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In the eighties, archaeologist Adam Zertal excavated the site of El-Burnat on Mt. Ebal, and uncovered an enormous ancient altar from the early twelfth-century B.C.E. This archaeological find sheds light on the account of Joshua’s altar at Mt. Ebal as well as the famous story of Jacob crossing his arms to bless Ephraim over Manasseh with the birthright."Zvi Koenigsberg worked alongside the late Prof. Adam Zertal throughout the Ebal excavations (1982-88)." He gives an engaging account of the moment when they realized they could be dealing with an altar.
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It's annoying to lose your precious baubles in a public pool and probably was just as irksome 2,000 years ago too, when a ring seems to have slipped off the finger of an unwary bather in a mikveh. Or maybe it was taken off for the purposes of the ritual purifying bath, and was forgotten there."Precious?" Oh no.
[...]
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Hasmonean Realities behind Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives
Israel Finkelstein
ISBN 9780884143086
Status Available
Price: $47.95
Binding Hardback
Publication Date September 2018
Pages 222
A thorough case for a later date for of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles
In this collection of essays, Israel Finkelstein deals with key topics in Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles, such as the list of returnees, the construction of the city wall of Jerusalem, the adversaries of Nehemiah, the tribal genealogies, and the territorial expansion of Judah in 2 Chronicles. Finkelstein argues that the geographical and historical realities cached behind at least parts of these books fit the Hasmonean period in the late second century BCE. Seven previously published essays are supplemented by maps, updates to the archaeological material, and references to recent publications on the topics.
Features:
• Analysis of geographical chapters of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles
• Study of the Hasmonean period in the late second century BCE
• Unique arguments regarding chronology and historical background
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Thirty years ago there were 50,000 Christians in south-eastern Turkey speaking a dialect of Aramaic - the language of Christ. Now there are 2,500. Talking to one of them, the BBC's Jeremy Bristow learned that instead of Three Kings, there might actually have been 12.If we wanted to be pedantic, we could say that there weren't any kings. The Gospel of Matthew just refers to "magi." It doesn't say how many there were. We just infer there were three because they brought three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Their gender isn't even specified. "Magi" could be read as all male or as a mixed-gender group. (Past PaleoJudaica posts on Matthew's Magi are here and many links, plus here, here, and here.)
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
The Aggada of the Bavli and Its Cultural World
Geoffrey Herman (Editor), Jeffrey Rubenstein (Editor)
ISBN 9781946527080
Status Available
Price: $56.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date August 2018
Essays that explore the rich engagement of the Talmud with its cultural world
The Babylonian Talmud (Bavli), the great compilation of Jewish law edited in the late Sasanian era (sixth–seventh century CE), also incorporates a great deal of aggada, that is, nonlegal material, including interpretations of the Bible, stories, folk sayings, and prayers. The Talmud’s aggadic traditions often echo conversations with the surrounding cultures of the Persians, Eastern Christians, Manichaeans, Mandaeans, and the ancient Babylonians, and others. The essays in this volume analyze Bavli aggada to reveal this rich engagement of the Talmud with its cultural world.
Features:
• A detailed analysis of the different conceptions of martyrdom in the Talmud as opposed to the Eastern Christian martyr accounts
• Illustration of the complex ways rabbinic Judaism absorbed Christian and Zoroastrian theological ideas
• Demonstration of the presence of Persian-Zoroastrian royal and mythological motifs in talmudic sources
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Joining fragments is commonplace in Genizah research; less common is joining fragments with edited text.Three other sections of this codex survived in the Cairo Geniza:
The two folios in question, part of a larger manuscript that Sacha Stern is currently editing,[1] were torn horizontally, probably before they even left the Cairo Genizah. One of the lower fragments ended up in Cambridge, and the other in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The upper fragments have not survived, but they were seen by Israel Lévi at the great exhibition of Paris in 1900, at the stall of a merchant from Cairo. Lévi copied out the text and promptly published it, but without saying what happened to the fragments.[2] They may have remained in the hands of the merchant, or they may have been sold. Sacha Stern has searched for them in vain, in Paris and elsewhere; the assumption must be that they are lost. All that we have of them now is Lévi’s edition.
These three folios, thus joined, contain the copy of a Hebrew letter that was written in 922 by someone most likely in Syria or Palestine. This can be told by his dating from the destruction of the Temple, a chronological era which was never used in Babylonia or further east. The letter concerns the controversy about the calendar and dates of the festivals that was raging, in 921/2, between Palestinian and Babylonian Rabbanite leaders (a controversy that has been known until now as ‘between Saadya and ben Meir’; but the role of Saadya was actually marginal). Although a Westerner, the author of this letter sides with the Babylonians, and reproaches his correspondent for appearing to support the Palestinians.The subject matter of this correspondence is late for PaleoJudaica's usual interests. But this is worth a read just to follow the fascinating process of reconstructing the original layout of lost manuscript fragments using computer technology. So cross-file under Technology Watch.
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.