Aries 19.1 (2019) on Practical Kabbalah

CURRENT ARIES (19.1, 2019) SPECIAL ISSUE: PRACTICAL KABBALAH. Contents:

Practical Kabbalah
Guest Editors’ Introduction
By: J.H. (Yossi) Chajes and Yuval Harari
Pages: 1–5
Publication Date: 02 Jan 2019

How Jewish Magic Survived the Disenchantment of the World
By: Gideon Bohak
Pages: 7–37
Publication Date: 02 Jan 2019

“Practical Kabbalah” and the Jewish Tradition of Magic
By: Yuval Harari
Pages: 38–82
Publication Date: 02 Jan 2019

Intentionality and Kabbalistic Practices in Early Modern East-Central Europe
By: Agata Paluch
Pages: 83–111
Publication Date: 02 Jan 2019

Kabbalah Practices / Practical Kabbalah
The Magic of Kabbalistic Trees
By: J.H. Chajes
Pages: 112–145
Publication Date: 02 Jan 2019

Review Essay
New Lights on Oracles, Platonists, and Esotericism in Late Antiquity
By: Dylan M. Burns
Pages: 147–158
Publication Date: 02 Jan 2019

The Siblys of London: A Family on the Esoteric Fringes of Georgian England, by Susan Mitchell Sommers
By: Christine Ferguson
Pages: 159–162
Publication Date: 02 Jan 2019

Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture, by Per Faxneld
By: Michele Olzi
Pages: 163–166
Publication Date: 02 Jan 2019

At the Brill website, but, alas, requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access. But I'm pretty sure you can see the abstracts without one.

HT Dylan Burns at the NSEA Blog.

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Koskenniemi, Greek Writers and Philosophers in Philo and Josephus

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Greek Writers and Philosophers in Philo and Josephus

A Study of Their Secular Education and Educational Ideals

Series:
Studies in Philo of Alexandria, Volume: 9
Author: Erkki Koskenniemi

In Greek Writers and Philosophers in Philo and Josephus Erkki Koskenniemi investigates how two Jewish writers, Philo and Josephus, quoted, mentioned and referred to Greek writers and philosophers. He asks what this tells us about their Greek education, their contacts with Classical culture in general, and about the societies in which Philo and Josephus lived. Although Philo in Alexandria and Josephus in Jerusalem both had the possibility to acquire a thorough knowledge of Greek language and culture, they show very different attitudes. Philo, who was probably admitted to the gymnasium, often and enthusiastically refers to Greek poets and philosophers. Josephus on the other hand rarely quotes from their works, giving evidence of a more traditionalistic tendencies among Jewish nobility in Jerusalem.

Publication Date: 26 February 2019
ISBN: 978-90-04-39192-5

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“The World Between Empires” at the Met

EXHIBITION: See Ancient Trade Route Treasures at the Met. “The World Between Empires,” linking present and past, celebrates the distinctive art from all the cultures of the Middle East (Holland Cotter, New York Times).

Finally, through their arrangement of those objects — around 190, which date roughly from 100 B.C. to 250 A.D. — the curators make clear why imperial Rome and Parthia were so invested on asserting control of the Middle Eastern “world between”: because one of the most extensive and lucrative trade routes on earth stretched across it, and, gallery by gallery, culture by culture, the exhibition traces its path.

This begins in Southwestern Arabia (modern-day Yemen) and moves north to the kingdom of Nabataea — an ally of the Roman Empire — with its rock-cut capital at Petra (now in Jordan). From there the route continues through the rebellious territory of Judaea (Israel and Palestine), to the ritual center of Heliopolis-Baalbek in present-day Lebanon. Finally come the route’s grand, easternmost cities, until very recently well-preserved ruins: Palmyra and Dura-Europos in Syria, and Babylon and Hatra in Iraq. In the art at each stop, imperial influence is evident, if only as an overlay, and local traditions hold their own.

The article has good photos of many of the remarkable objects in the exhibition. Looks well worth a visit.

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The architects side with the Karaites

KARAITE-AND-CABLE-CAR-CONFLICT WATCH: Internationally renowned architects add opposition to Jerusalem cable car plan. Ron Arad, Moshe Safdie, Santiago Calatrava among 27 figures charging that ‘powerful interest groups’ are putting tourism and politics above safeguarding cultural treasures (Sue Surkes, Times of Israel).

The article only mentions the opposition to the cable car plan by the local Karaite community at the very end. But more on that here.

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On mistranslations of biblical words

BELIEFNET: Biblical Translations We Keep Screwing Up. You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means (Stephanie Hertzenberg).

Two comments. First the section on the word Asherah is correct that it means more than just a "sacred pole" and that it is associated with the Canaanite goddess Asherah. But the Hebrew word is used with the definite article, which means it refers to an object rather than directly to the goddess herself. (Personal names cannot take definite articles.) So perhaps translate "Asherah's sacred pole" or some such?

For many past posts on Asherah and the asherah, see here and here and links.

Second, "Lo Tirtsah does mean "you shall not murder" in certain contexts, but the range meaning is wider than that. It also refers to when someone accidentally kills someone else (which we call "manslaughter"). The verb means something like "to kill without provocation" or "to kill in cold blood." Additional details are here.

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Opening Jerusalem's Nea Church to the public?

PETITIONED BY EMEK SHAVEH: Decades after discovery, Jerusalem’s Byzantine masterpiece may open to public (Ilan Ben Zion, Al-Monitor). The article reports that the Nea Church was founded by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. It was excavated in the 1970s by Nahman Avigad, but most of its subterranean vaults still remain closed to the public.

But Daniel Shukrun, secretary of the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter, told Al-Monitor that the Nea Church vaults are presently unsafe for the general public. In late 2017, the company conducted a major clean-up operation inside the subterranean chambers to clear out years of accumulated bat droppings and refuse, but the area remains unsuitable for tourists, he said.

“The sanitation problems were so severe down there that we couldn’t even understand what we were up against,” he added. Nonetheless, Shukrun said that in light of Emek Shaveh’s petition, the company has gotten the ball rolling on evaluating a development plan for the Nea Church ruins.

But he says that it would cost a lot of money.

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Halutza ("Elusa") inscription

EPIGRAPHY: Archaeological Excavations Reveal 1700 Year-Old Inscription of City Named ‘Elusa’ (Halutza) in the Negev (Jewish Press News Desk).

The name of the city of Elusa appears in a number of historical documents and contexts, including the Madaba mosaic map, the Nessana papyri and other historical references. However, this is the first time that the name of the city has been discovered in the site itself. The inscription mentions several Caesars of the tetrarchy which allow to date it around 300 CE.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Halutza is also one of two possible sites for the biblical city of Ziklag.

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Pi Day 2019

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Origins: 3.14159265… Why did the ancients invent increasingly subtle and ingenious methods to arrive at an exact value of pi? Human curiosity (Kim Jonas).

For more on Pi Day and Pi and Judaism, see here and here and links.

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Fishbane on poetics of the Zohar

THE BOOK OF DOCTRINES AND OPINIONS BLOG: Eitan Fishbane on The Art of Mystical Narrative: A Poetics of the Zohar.

Alan Brill interviews Professor Fishbane on his new book, The Art of Mystical Narrative: A Poetics of the Zohar (Oxford University Press, 2018). There is also a survey of recent scholarship on the Zohar. Excerpt from the long interview:

12) If this is the Zohar, then why read Zohar instead of Lord of Rings, Harry Potter, or Game of Thrones?

Certainly, it is a unique literary world unto itself, which is not reducible to these later instances of fantastic storytelling. But it does share certain features with the magical classics you mention here, the creation of a paranormal universe in which characters are transported beyond the bounds of our normal expectations within natural law.

I noted a panel discussion on the book here. And for many, many past posts on the Zohar, start there and follow the links. Cross-file under Zohar Watch.

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Judaism and Coptic Magic

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Religion in the Coptic Magical Papyri IX: Judaism and Coptic Magic (Korshi Dosoo). A wide-ranging post that starts with background on the history of Judaism in Egypt and goes on to specific magical traditions and texts, including a new Coptic magical papyrus involving Solomon.

I have noted the previous posts in the series here and here.

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Dos and don'ts: cooking for the Sabbath

DR. SARIT KATTAN GRIBETZ: Shabbat with Food: From Biblical Prohibitions to Rabbinic Feasts (TheTorah.com).

Biblical prohibitions against preparing food on Shabbat are further developed in the Second Temple and rabbinic periods. At the same time, a new emphasis emerges: celebrating Shabbat with festive meals.

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More on the Roman Temple of Peace

THE HOLY LAND PHOTOS' BLOG: Rome — Temple of Peace and a Map of Ancient Rome. Carl Rasmussen gives some further background on the Roman temple where the treasures of the Jerusalem Temple were kept after the Great Revolt of 70 C.E.

Background here and here, with Part 3 still to come.

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Purim was regulated in the Theodosian Code

PURIM IS COMING: The Romans tried to ban wild Purim parties in 408 CE – for a very good reason (Henry Abramson, JTA).

An unusual bit of the Theodosian Code (16.8.18) is apparently the first non-Jewish source to document the phenomenon of Purim parties that get out of hand. Specifically, the law prohibited Jews from burning Haman in effigy. For Jews, the practice of symbolically destroying the notorious villain of the book of Esther, the paradigm of anti-Semitism, was considered an aspect of the Purim commandment to “erase the name of Amalek,” Haman’s Jew-hating ancestor.

The issue seems to have arisen over a misunderstanding of the biblical account of Haman's death.

UPDATE (19 March): I see I noted another story on this topic here.

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Blank cartridges and a fake manuscript

APPREHENDED: Turkish police seize ancient manuscript stolen from Syrian museum (Anadolu Agency/Hurriyet Daily News). The Turkish authorities continue to round up fake ancient artifacts before they reach the antiquities market.

This codex bears the hallmarks of a crude modern fake. Most importantly, the writing on the page shown in the photo consists of lines of meaningless sequences of Hebrew letters with frequent repetition.

There are other suspicious features. The letters are written in gold leaf. The material and cut of the pages is similar to other fakes. There is a drawing, in this case of a wyvern-like creature. The drawing doesn't look very old to me, but I'm not an art historian.

The police also recovered (from the car of the suspects) a gun that fires blanks. Metaphor Watch?

The information that the book was stolen from a Syrian museum comes from the apprehended suspects, who may not be very reliable sources for provenance information. It would not surprise me, though, if it did come from Syria.

Many such artifacts have been apprehended recently in Turkey. The only ones I think are likely to be genuine are some coins. For past apprehensions, start here and keep following the links back. And this post on recent Hebrew forgeries from Arab countries seems relevant too.

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Some early Christian women

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY reposted some posts on women in the New Testament and the New Testament Apocrypha, leading up to International Women's Day, which was last Friday.

Anna in the Bible. Luke reveals the prophetess as a Biblical model for aging (Robin Gallaher Branch)

Who Was Thecla? The early Christian saint, rebel, and protagonist of the Acts of Thecla (Megan Sauter)

Some past PaleoJudaica posts on Thecla are here and links and here.

Lydia and Tabitha in the Bible. Women leaders in the early Christian church (Megan Sauter)

For more on Tabitha and Lydia follow the links for posts by Phil Long in his series on the Book of Acts at his Reading Acts Blog.

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The Seleucid coins, Part 3

NUMISMATICS: CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series – The Seleucids and Their Coins: Part III (Mike Markowitz, Coin Week). The Hebrew Bible does not mention any of these Seleucid kings. But all of those covered in this installment appear in 1 Maccabees and some also in 2 Maccabees.

I noted Part I of this series here. Also there, see a link for more on the Seleucids. And I noted part Part II here.

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How Old is the Hebrew Bible? - authors respond to Young and Rezetko

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Flawed Philology

Young and Rezetko’s whole discourse is oriented to the outcome, dictated from the start, that there is no historical linguistics of ancient Hebrew. This is a disingenuous procedure that makes for flawed philology.

See Also: Can the Ages of Biblical Literature be Discerned Without Literary Analysis?
How Old Is the Hebrew Bible?

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
March 2019

Background here. For other posts on the book that was under review (Hendel and Joosten, How Old is the Hebrew Bible?), follow the links there (cf. here).

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On Herod the Great

THE WORLD IS FULL OF HISTORY: Who Was the Real King Herod? (Owen Jarus, Live Science). An excellent capsule history of the life of Herod the Great.

The subheading "Did he kill Jesus?" is odd, because it doesn't fit the contents of what follows. Perhaps it should have read "Did he try to kill Jesus?"

For many past posts on Herod the Great, start here and just follow those links.

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On the Copper Scroll

ON THE SUBJECT OF TREASURE AGAIN: The Lost Treasure of the Dead Sea Copper Scroll (Joanna Gillan, Ancient Origins). As I have noted before, the quality of the essays in Ancient Origins is variable. This one is pretty good. It gives an accurate account of the discovery of the Copper Scroll, its contents, and some possible explanations of its contents. The essay could have added that one interpretation reads the amounts of treasure to be much smaller — and therefore more believable — than the traditional interpretation.

The essay concludes with the current efforts of one Jim Barfield to find the Copper Scroll treasures. I have commented on that here and links. For reasons explained there, I do not find Mr. Barfield's claims to be credible.

For many other past posts on the Copper Scroll, start here and follow the links.

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Feldman, Story and Sacrifice

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Dissertation Spotlight | Story and Sacrifice: Ritual, Narrative, and the Priestly Source.

Liane M. Feldman, “Story and Sacrifice: Ritual, Narrative, and the Priestly Source,” PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2018.

Excerpt:

With these questions in mind, my dissertation centered on the eight-day tabernacle inauguration episode in Exodus 40 through Numbers 8, with an eye to two interrelated issues: 1) the question of the relationship between ritual and narrative in pentateuchal literature, and 2) the issue of identifying stratification within a narrative text. This second issue prompted the development of a new narratologically-based approach for the analysis of composite narrative texts that I use throughout the dissertation, and which, I argue, would prove fruitful for the study of the Hebrew Bible and Pentateuch more generally.

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The latest on the Tomb of Ezekiel

AJAM MEDIA COLLECTIVE: A Jewish Shrine inside a Mosque: the History of Ezekiel’s Tomb in Iraq (Alex Shams). An impressive, comprehensive history of the (traditional) Tomb of Ezekiel in Al-Kifl, Iraq, with many excellent photographs. It includes an update on the restoration work, which was noted here in 2010. According to the article, the "compromise" involved erasing Hebrew inscriptions from the mosque section, which does not sound very satisfactory to me.

I have been following the fate of the (traditional) Tomb of Ezekiel for many years. For other past posts, start here and follow the links.

HT AJR.

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Najman on the DSS at 70

VIDEO: The Dead Sea Scrolls 70 Years On. A lecture by Professor Hindy Najman posted by Chabad at Oxford.

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CFP: ETS LXX 2019

WILLIAM ROSS: 2019 ETS SEPTUAGINT STUDIES CALL FOR PAPERS. The deadline for proposals is 29 March 2019.

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The Temple treasures and the Temple of Peace

THE HOLY LAND PHOTOS' BLOG: A.D. 70 The Destruction of the Temple — Where did the Temple Treasure Go? Part 2. In this installment, Carl Rasmussen tells us the fate of the Temple treasures in Rome. But for what happened to them after that, we have wait for Part 3.

Meanwhile, for Part 1 and additional coverage of the question, see here and links.

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Unpublished Oxyrhynchus biblical papyri

THE EGYPT EXPLORATION SOCIETY: Unpublished EES biblical papyri. In brief, among the unpublished papyrus fragments from Oxyrhynchus, there are 20 New Testament fragments, 80 Septuagint (i.e., Greek Old Testament) fragments, and 10 patristic fragments. Follow the link for a few more details.

I hope they publish a more detailed list of which books the fragments come from. Also, I wonder if they are aware of any unpublished fragments of Old Testament pseudepigrapha? The most recent volume included some of Jannes and Jambres.

HT Brent Nongbri at Variant Readings.

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Hannibal and the Second Punic War

PUNIC WATCH: Who was Hannibal? Sworn by his father to forever hate the Romans, Hannibal staged one of the most legendary attacks in the history of military warfare on the formidable army (National Geographic). Because you should know these things.

For past posts on Hannibal and his remarkably military campaign against Rome, see here and links. If Hannibal's luck had been a little better, the learned language of medieval Europe would have been Punic instead of Latin.

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T&T Clark Handbook to Early Christian Meals in the Greco-Roman World (ed. Al-Suadi and Smit)

NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY/T&T CLARK:

T&T Clark Handbook to Early Christian Meals in the Greco-Roman World

Editor(s): Soham Al-Suadi, Peter-Ben Smit

Published: 21-02-2019
Format: Hardback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 416
ISBN: 9780567666406
Imprint: T&T Clark
Series: T&T Clark Handbooks
Dimensions: 234 x 156 mm
RRP: £130.00
Online price: £117.00
Save £13.00 (10%)

About T&T Clark Handbook to Early Christian Meals in the Greco-Roman World
This handbook situates early Christian meals in their broader context, with a focus on the core topics that aid understanding of Greco-Roman meal practice, and how this relates to Christian origins. In addition to looking at the broader Hellenistic context, the contributors explain the unique nature of Christian meals, and what they reveal about early Christian communities and the development of Christian identity.

Beginning with Hellenistic documents and authors before moving on to the New Testament material itself, according to genre - Gospels, Acts, Letters, Apocalyptic Literature - the handbook culminates with a section on the wider resources that describe daily life in the period, such as medical documents and inscriptions. The literary, historical, theological and philosophical aspects of these resources are also considered, including such aspects as the role of gender during meals; issues of monotheism and polytheism that arise from the structure of the meal; how sacrifice is understood in different meal practices; power dynamics during the meal and issues of inclusion and exclusion at meals.

There is also a lot of discussion of meals in ancient Jewish contexts.

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Magic and the savage philosopher

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Anthropology of Magic I: Darwin, Tylor, and the Origins of Religion and Magic. The first in a new series on the history of modern scholarship on magic. Very informative.

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More on the new trilingual inscription from Iran

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: DNf: A New Inscription Emerges from the Shadow.

DNf is that trilingual inscription found recently near the tomb of Darius the Great, noted here. Follow the first link above for the article that published the inscription. I have only had time to skim it. It is technical, but a good bit of it is reader friendly.

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Did Exodus revise the Code of Hammurapi?

PROF. DAVID WRIGHT: How Exodus Revises the Laws of Hammurabi (TheTorah.com).

A close look at the laws of assault recorded in Exodus’ Covenant Collection demonstrates that the author knew the Laws of Hammurabi and revised them to fit with Israelite legal and ethical conceptions.

Could be. The question that occurs to me is could an Israelite legislator or scribe in the mid-monarchical period have had access to copies of the Code of Hammurapi (Hammurabi) and have read in it Assyrian Akkadian? Presumably Prof. Wright addresses that question in his 2009 book, which I have not seen.

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Was Jesus an entrepreneur?

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Fishing for Entrepreneurs in the Sea of Galilee? Unmasking Neoliberal Ideology in Biblical Interpretation

Rather than emphasize the fishermen’s moral decision to follow Jesus and its associated economic cost, I implore we instead read these narratives as embedded within a broader context of widespread social upheaval and as gesturing towards unrest among the lower classes.

Chapter in Class Struggle in the New Testament (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019), pp. 115-137.

By Robert J. Myles
Murdoch University
Perth, Australia

Jesus wasn't a capitalist. But he wasn't a Marxist either.

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The Talmud on same-day slaughter of related animals

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Offspring Fever. In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ prohibitions against slaughtering the young of sacrificed livestock reveal the thoroughness and complexity of Talmudic study of contingencies.

The first four chapters of Tractate Chullin went into great anatomical detail about the correct way to slaughter animals. But in Chapter 5, the focus shifted from sinews and windpipes to a seemingly simple rule that turns out to conceal a number of puzzles. Leviticus 22 lists several conditions that invalidate an animal for sacrifice, including this one: “And whether it is a bull or a sheep, you shall not slaughter it and its offspring both in one day.” It’s only a few words, but exploring their full implications turns out to take several pages of Talmudic debate.

[...]

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Cable car and Karaite conflict

KARAITE WATCH: Tiny Jewish sect protests controversial Jerusalem cable car project. Planned Old City tourist attraction draws further criticism as Karaites warn construction is insult to community’s ancient cemetery (Ilan Ben Zion, AP). Review: the Karaites are a non-rabbinic community of Jews whose origin goes back at least to the early Middle Ages. They reject the rabbinic concept of the Oral Torah.

It sounds as though there has been some miscommunication between the Jerusalem Development Authority and the Karaite community. I hope they are able to find a resolution.

For many past PaleoJudaica posts on the Karaites, start here and follow the links.

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Closing in on the lost tomb of Alexander the Great?

ARCHAEOLOGY: New clues to the lost tomb of Alexander the Great discovered in Egypt. Excavations in Alexandria's ancient royal quarter provide intriguing hints to the famous conqueror's final resting place (ERIN BLAKEMORE, National Geographic). Archaeologist Calliope Limneos-Papakosta has reached the earliest layer of ancient Alexandria's royal quarter and she is following leads that she hopes will take her to Alexander's tomb.

Ancient Judaism took an interest in Alexander the Great, in the Bible and elsewhere. So I like to keep track of news about him. For past posts see here and links.

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Thousands of ancient(?) coins seized in Turkey

APPREHENDED: Suspected smugglers of ancient coins nabbed. Suspects in western Kutahya province allegedly attempted to sell 5,000 Roman- and Byzantine-era coins (Anadolu Agency/Yeni Ṣafek). Noted for completeness. I have been following stories of the seizing of potentially interesting smuggled artifacts by the Turkish authorities. So far all of these have turned out to be of dubious authenticity or else genuine, but of recent vintage.

These coins could be ancient. They could also be forgeries or they could be genuine, but relatively recent. The photo in the article is uninformative. We may never know.

On balance, it hardly seems worthwhile to fake so many coins. Forgers would concentrate on faking a few valuable-seeming ones. So my assumption is that at least most of these coins are genuine, but (for whatever reason) of little market value.

This story is also covered by the Daily Sabah with a few more details.

Background here and many links. Cross-file under Numismatics.

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Studies in Honor of Professor Shaul Shaked (ed. Friedmann & Kohlberg)

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Studies in Honor of Professor Shaul Shaked. Notice of a New Book: Friedmann, Yohanan & Etan Kohlberg (eds.). (2019). Studies in Honor of Professor Shaul Shaked. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences.

Follow the link for the TOC. Looks like a great lineup of contributors and topics.

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Where Did the Temple Treasure Go?

MORE ON THE TEMPLE TREASURES: A.D. 70 The Destruction of the Temple — Where Did the Temple Treasure Go? Part 1 (Carl Rasmussen, the Holy Land Photos' Blog). Part 1 tells where the Romans deposited the Temple treasures, but not what happened to them after that. Maybe in Part 2?

The question becomes much harder to answer from that point. But there has been plenty of legend and speculation to fill in the gap.

Meanwhile, at PaleoJudaica, the post just before this one is relevant to the question, especially when you follow the links. And see also here and links.

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On the Ark of the Covenant

BECAUSE YOU SHOULD KNOW THESE THINGS: What Is the Ark of the Covenant? (Owen Jarus, Live Science). A nice summary of the biblical evidence for the Ark, along with some speculation about possible pre-biblical form(s) and a survey of post-biblical legends.

For past PaleoJudaica posts on the Ark of the Covenant, start here (cf. here) and follow the links.

For the legendary Treatise of the Vessels, which tells the supposed story of the fate of the Temple treasures and the Ark after the Babylonian destruction of the Temple, start here and follow the links.

I published the first complete English translation of the Treatise of the Vessels back in 2013. Then five years ago Mr. Jarus broke that story in the media. That led to the Daily Mail naming me a "real-life Indiana Jones."

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Museum of the Bible lecture series on Jerusalem and Rome

PROF. LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: JERUSALEM AND ROME SPECIAL SPEAKER SERIES. The first lecture is on 25 March. Follow the link for ticket information.

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JSJ 50th anniversary freebies

THE AWOL BLOG: 50 Years Journal for the Study of Judaism: Limited Open Access.

To celebrate the 50th volume of the Journal for the Study of Judaism, selected articles from the past 50 volumes will be available for free downloading during 2019. A new batch of 5 articles will become available every month)

For you, special deal!

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Concannon on "Goy"

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Paul, the Gentiles, and the Other(s) in Jewish Discourse (Cavan Concannon).

While I think that Ophir and Rosen-Zvi make as convincing a case as any modern Pauline scholar for how Paul might be read, I think that their reading is subject to the same problems that have long bedeviled modern (or, for that matter, ancient) readers who have tried to read Paul’s letters as though they were engaged in a systematic project. Like the biblical and Pauline conception of the “remnant” (164), there is always a remainder that escapes systematization. ...

Another installment in the AJR forum on Ophir and Rosen-Zvi, Goy, on which more here and links.

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The textual and linguistic history of Deuteronomy 33:2

THE ETC BLOG: Deuteronomy 33:2 in Textual and Linguistic Perspectives. John Meade interacts with some exegesis by Hendel and Joosten in How Old is the Hebrew Bible?

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Review of Furstenberg (ed.), Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Yair Furstenberg (ed.), Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World. Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, 94. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016. Pp. xi, 286. ISBN 9789004321212. $149.00. Reviewed by Bradley J. Bitner, Oak Hill College (bradb@oakhill.ac.uk).

This is a stimulating, well-edited volume and will be useful to a wide range of ancient historians and scholars of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. The range of methods, sources and macro-/micro-historical perspectives employed is admirably wide. An ancient sources index would have been most welcome alongside the author and general indexes.

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Law, Literature, and Society in Legal Texts from Qumran (ed. Jokiranta and Zahn)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Law, Literature, and Society in Legal Texts from Qumran

Papers from the Ninth Meeting of the International Organisation for Qumran Studies, Leuven 2016

Series:
Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, Volume: 128

Editors: Jutta Jokiranta and Molly Zahn

Reflecting the increasing recognition of the importance of legal texts and issues in early Judaism, the essays in this collection examine halakhic and rule texts found at Qumran in light of the latest scholarship on text production, social organization, and material culture in early Judaism. The contributors present new interpretations of long-lived topics, such as the sobriquet “seekers of the smooth things,” the Treatise of the Two Spirits, and 4QMMT, and take up new approaches to purity issues, the role of the maśkil, and the Temple Scroll. The volume exemplifies the range of ways in which the Qumran legal texts help illuminate early Jewish culture as a whole.

Publication Date: 11 February 2019
ISBN: 978-90-04-39338-7

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Baffling graffiti vandalism of Mount Meron synagogue

THIS IS STRANGE. AND SAD. Graffiti spray-painted on 1,800-year-old synagogue on Galilee’s Mount Meron. For the second time in four years, the 3rd-century house of prayer is vandalized by religious extremists near the tomb of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

One of the walls was sprayed — apparently without irony — with “This holy place will not be desecrated. You have been warned.” Other graffiti specifically targeted the IAA, stating, “There will not be an archaeological park here,” and “Mount Meron is not abandoned.”

The really baffling part is this:

The synagogue site, where no active digs are planned, is conserved as part of a government project and is part of a nature reserve. No archaeological park is planned for the area.

The article mentions the graffiti vandalism of the same synagogue in 2015, which I noted here. For more on Mount Meron in connection with Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Yohai) and the annual Lag B'Omer celebrations, see here and links. For the tomb of Rabbi Shimon, see here and here and links.

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DSS postdoc at Haifa University

RELIGION PROF: Scripta Qumranica Electronica Post-doctoral Fellowship at the University of Haifa (James McGrath). The deadline for applications is 25 March, 2019. Don't dawdle!

For more on the project, see here and links.

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More New Testament Apocrypha, volume 3!

THE APOCRYPHICITY BLOG: More New Testament Apocrypha vol. 3. Tony Burke announces plans for a third volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. Volume 2 is now in the hands of the publisher, Eerdmans. Both announcements are good news.

For a recent update on the progress of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 2 (MOTP2), see here. We have no plans for a third volume.

UPDATE: I meant to add that you can read my four-part review of MNTA1 here and links.

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Biblical Studies Carnival 156

THE DUST BLOG: Biblical Studies Carnival 156 February 2019 (Bob MacDonald). The Lego Edition?

Also see some comments on the Carnival by organizer Phil Long here.

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The Seleucid coins, Part 2

NUMISMATICS: CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series – The Seleucids and Their Coins: Part II (Mike Markowitz). Some of the Seleucids in this article are mentioned in the Book of Daniel, although not by name. Seleucid figures are in bold font in what follows.

There is an error at the beginning of the article: Antiochus III the Great was the brother of Seleucus III, not his son.

They both appear in Daniel 11:10 as "his [Seleucus II's] two sons. Then Antiochus III is the main subject of vv. 11-19 as "the king of the south."

Seleucus IV Philopater appears in Daniel 11:20 as the "one who shall arise in his (Antiochus III's) place." The "exactor of tribute" whom he sends is Heliodorus, on whom more here and here and links.

The "contemptible person" who follow in the succession (v. 21) is, of course, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the most (in)famous Seleucid figure in the Bible. He is the "little horn" in Daniel chapter 7. His decree outlawing the practice of Judaism led to the Maccabean Revolt in 167-164 B.C.E. Daniel 11:21-39 mostly describe actual events in his reign, but vv. 40-45 are predictions of how his end would come about. We know they are predictions because, like most predictions of the future, they are completely wrong. Those events never happened and Antiochus met his end in Persia, which does not figure at all in them. The Maccabean Revolt is chronicled in much more comprehensible form in the books of 1-2 Maccabees.

I noted Part I of this series here. Also there, see a link for more on the Seleucids. And also see another link there to an earlier series by the same author on the Ptolemaic coins, which covers some of the same history in the current article.

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Another "Hebrew book" seized in Turkey

APPREHENDED: 800-year-old Hebrew book seized in southeastern Turkey’s Diyarbakır (The Daily Sabah). Turkish security forces continue diligently taking fakes off of the antiquities market.

There are a couple of not-as-bad-as-usual photographs of this "book." The page containing Hebrew writing looks as though it came from somewhere else and has been cut down badly to fit as a page of the current book. The printed (! - not handwritten) Hebrew is vocalized. Thanks to detective work by Avi Kallenbach at the Hebrew Codicology and Paleography page at Facebook, the text can be identified as from a Hebrew translation (possibly the 1937 one by A. Kahana) of 1 Maccabees.

The drawings of the people in the other pages look vaguely to me like something in a Christian tradition. But I am not an art historian and my impressions are not authoritative. The Hebrew letters on the left side of the second photo look crudely handwritten.

I don't know where these articles get the supposed ages of these seized manuscripts. This is a modern fake, probably cobbled together out of a couple of different sources.

All commenters at the Hebrew Codicology and Paleography Facebook page agree it is a fake. This and the other recent Hebrew book surfacing in Turkey have generated a mixture of exasperation and mirth over there. You should join, if you are interested in such matters.

For other similar stories coming out of Turkey, start here and follow the many links.

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Hayes on "Goy"

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: The Goy: A Synchronic Proposal (Christine Hayes).

The authors have presented a linear development from an original pluriform conception of Israel’s others to Ezra’s generalized and essentialized collective Other, to its individuation by Paul, and finally to its consolidation in the legal texts of the early rabbis (Mishnah and Tosefta) where it functions as a stable binary that brooks no hybridity. However, as I pointed out in a response to Ophir and Rosen-Zvi’s earlier articles,[4] a review of the evidence suggests that the two concepts of the other identified by the authors do not represent consecutive stages in a diachronic development (one pre-1st century and the other post-1st century). Rather, the evidence indicates that the two concepts were synchronic phenomena found, albeit with important differences in detail and emphasis, in both biblical and rabbinic literature. ...

Another installment in the AJR forum on Ophir and Rosen-Zvi, Goy, on which more here, here, and here.

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Jesus vs. Apollonius

CANDIDA MOSS: Jesus v. Apollonius: The Ancient Debate Over the Real Son of God. The answer as to how many claimed to be the real son of God: more than you would think (The Daily Beast).

It’s easy to see the problem: one of the central claims of Christianity is that Jesus is unique. His birth was a one-time unprecedented event that began an extraordinary ministry on earth followed by a lowly painful death and a glorious resurrection. For many, it’s central that Jesus was one of a kind. Apollonius and Jesus lived around the same time, and there’s no reason to ever think that they met. The idea that there were other holy men wandering around the ancient Mediterranean invites the question: is it only the success of his followers that made Jesus special?

Posts on the recent (largely bogus) documentary that started this discussion are here and here. But it is good to be having the discussion.

The first century did not see off the last of the messianic figures in this mold. Think, for example, of the mystical messiah of sin, Shabbetai Zvi in the 1660s.

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Roman Jewish catacombs not yet opened

RENOVATION UPDATE: In Rome, spectacular ancient Jewish catacomb’s opening haunted by delays. Under the sprawling estate of Villa Torlonia, Mussolini’s home for 18 years, is a 4th century cemetery housing some 3,800 Jewish graves. The question now is, when can they be seen? (ROSSELLA TERCATIN, Times of Israel). Soon, I hope.

It was discovered that there are roughly 3,800 graves in the cemetery under the villa, which covers more that 13,000 square meters (140,000 square feet). It has been excavated over multiple levels and is one of the few Jewish catacombs in Rome among dozens of Christian subterranean tomb sites.

The cemetery also contains a treasure trove of information that unravels mysteries about what Jewish life looked like more than 1,500 years ago in a city that has had an organized Jewish presence for the last two millennia.

But as the excavations to explore it have progressed, the site also prompted complex questions as to how to preserve the peace of those buried there, as is stringently required by Jewish law.

The Chief Rabbi of Rome and an Israeli archaeologist were involved.

I have been following this story for years. For past posts on the Jewish catacombs at the Villa Torlonia (the subject of this article) and elsewhere in Rome, start here and follow the links.

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On natives burning ancient manuscripts

VARIANT READINGS: Burning Papyri (Brent Nongbri).

The line that “the natives burn the ancient manuscripts” surely serves American and European scholars and collectors in justifying their acquisition of ancient manuscripts (“rescuing” them, to use the standard terminology). That’s not to say that such burnings never happened.

Yes, that about sums it up. But read the whole post for some interesting, and even entertaining, specifics.

The trope is also found for more recent manuscripts. There was a story to the effect that in the 1640s the cook baked her pies on pages from some newly-rediscovered papers of the sixteenth-century English Renaissance polymath and visionary magician John Dee.

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Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature

THE AWOL BLOG: Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature. Cross-file under Social Geography.

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Prologtexte zu den Psalmen von Origenes und Eusebius (ed. Bandt et al.)

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Die Prologtexte zu den Psalmen von Origenes und Eusebius
[Prologue Texts to the Psalms of Origen and Eusebius]

Ed. by Bandt, Cordula / Risch, Franz Xaver / Villani, Barbara

Series: Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 183

Hardcover
Publication Date: December 2018
ISBN 978-3-11-055715-2

Aims and Scope
Together with the start of the earliest Christian psalm commentary, there arose a series of brief introductory texts to the psalter, which continued to have an impact until the modern era. The volume contains the texts by Origen and Eusebius, presented in a new critical edition with translation and commentary. Two essays and color illustrations augment this first-ever complete, compiled collection.

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On Cain

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY has posted some essays on the biblical character Cain:

Cain and Abel in the Bible..

Read Elie Wiesel’s essay on Cain and Abel in the Bible as it originally appeared in Bible Review, February 1998.—Ed.

What Happened to Cain in the Bible? Did Lamech kill Cain? (Megan Sauter). This one summarizes a 2014 BAR column by John Byron, which is behind the subscription wall.

The third one, "Who was Cain's Wife?" by Mary Joan Winn Leith, was published last year and I noted it here.

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Did Jesus really exist? Yes.

THE HISTORY CHANNEL: The Bible Says Jesus Was Real. What Other Proof Exists? Some argue that Jesus wasn't an actual man, but within a few decades of his lifetime, he was mentioned by Jewish and Roman historians (Christopher Klein). With interviews with Lawrence Mykytiuk and Bart Ehrman. There's nothing in this article which will be unfamiliar to regular PaleoJudaica readers, but it collects the main evidence conveniently in one place.

Past PaleoJudica posts on the subject are collected here and links.

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Review of Davies, The Bible for the Curious

BOOK REVIEW: The Bible for the Curious: A brief encounter, by Philip R. Davies. Anthony Phillips praises a scholar’s invitation to the reading of the Bible (Church Times). This is Professor Davies's final and posthumously-published book (Equinox).

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On the post-2002 DSS-like fragments

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: The Post-2002 Fragments and the Scholars Who Turned Them Into Dead Sea Scrolls (Årstein Justnes and Josephine Munch Rasmussen).

The most striking feature of the post-2002 Dead Sea Scrolls scandal is the pervading negligence. The trade in unprovenanced manuscripts is dependent on actors authenticating, introducing, marketing, facilitating sales, brokering, legitimizing dubious acquisition, defending illicit trade, lending professional authority, publishing, composing provenance narratives, and pumping up prices. Without scholarly involvement in these endeavors, the market in the post-2002 fragments would be unimaginable.

For the most part, I think the criticisms in this essay are fair. Some of them do involve seeing suspicious patterns in retrospect that would have been harder to see at the time.

It seems that many, perhaps most, of the unprovenanced, supposed, scroll fragments that surfaced during this period are fakes. But perhaps not all. For example, this apparent Bar Kokhba-era scroll was seized by the Israeli authorities in 2009. I've heard nothing about it since and Prof. Justnes does not mention it in his "Exhausting" Chronology. Is it genuine?

If there are genuine scrolls among the fakes, part of the conversation involves how to isolate them.

For some of my own thoughts on how to deal with unprovenanced antiquities, see here and links. For more on the subject see here and here and links.

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Halkin responds on Alter's Bible

MOSAIC MAGAZINE: The Necessary Bad Faith in Reading the Bible as Literature. For those who can’t say “I will obey,” but won’t say “I refuse to obey,” what other choice is there? (Hillel Halkin).

I thank Jon Levenson and Leonard Greenspoon for their kind responses to my essay on Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible. I’ll address their pieces in the reverse order of their appearance in Mosaic.

[...]

I noted Halkins's earlier Mosaic essay and the two responses here. And follow the links from there for more posts on Alter's translation of the Bible.

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Tracing the survivors of Vesuvius

SCHOLARLY DETECTIVE WORK: Archaeologist Finds New Evidence Of The Romans Who Escaped Mt. Vesuvius (Kristina Killgrove, Forbes).

[Miami University Historian Steven]Tuck's combination of history and archaeology has produced strong evidence that it is possible to trace Vesuvian refugees. He finds that many refugees settled on the north side of the Bay of Naples, and that families tended to move together and then to marry within their refugee community. These people probably "represent either those who fled at the first sign of the eruption," Tuck says, "or those who were away from the cities when the eruption occurred." But while this method seems to work for identifying reasonably wealthy citizens, Tuck knows that it is limited because it cannot help him discover non-Romans, slaves, or migrants who escaped Vesuvius.

Limited or not, the correlation of evidence from so many disparate sources is impressive. I imagine a project this ambitious has only become practical in recent years as the evidence has gone into searchable digital databases.

As for how the refugees survived, note also that Pliny the Elder led a daring rescue mission into the eruption zone. He himself perished, but the rescue ships may have saved up to a couple of thousand refugees, perhaps cutting the death toll of the eruption by half.

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"Biblical Archaeology"

LIVE SCIENCE: Biblical Archaeology: The Study of Biblical Sites & Artifacts (Owen Jarus). A good overview of the use of this not uncontroversial term.

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Kratz et al., Hebräisches und aramäisches Wörterbuch zu den Texten vom Toten Meer, vol. 2

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Multi-volumed work
Hebräisches und aramäisches Wörterbuch zu den Texten vom Toten Meer
Einschließlich der Manuskripte aus der Kairoer Geniza
Ed. by Kratz, Reinhard G. / Steudel, Annette / Kottsieper, Ingo

Band 2
Gimmel – Zajin

Ed. by Kratz, Reinhard G. / Steudel, Annette / Kottsieper, Ingo

Hardcover
Publication Date: December 2018
ISBN 978-3-11-060292-0

Aims and Scope
The manuscripts from Qumran and other sites offer unique insight into the Hebrew and Aramaic languages during the period of the Second Temple. For the first time, in the tradition of classical lexicology, this philological dictionary develops a non-Biblical lexicon from these sources (plus the Dead Sea scrolls and Cairo Geniza manuscripts), while also placing it in the context of the history of the Hebraic and Aramaic languages.

A couple of years ago I noted the publication of volume 1 here.

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Samaritan wine press and mosaic inscription excavated

SAMARITAN WATCH: Archaeologists Find Samaritan Lord’s Winepress in Central Israel. As the nearby mosaic says, in Greek: ‘Only God help the beautiful property of Master Adios, amen’ (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz). This is an exciting find. The article is also a good backgrounder on the Samaritans.

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New inscription found near tomb of Darius the Great

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Trilingual Inscription Surfaces Near Darius the Great’s Tomb (Megan Sauter). It pertains to a royal official whose name is lost. It is of some philological interest for Elamite, Old Persian, and Babylonian Akkadian.

As the article notes, the most famous trilingual inscription from Iran is the Behistun inscription, which (rather like the Rosetta Stone for Egyptian) was key to the decipherment of Akkadian. Past posts on it are here, here, here, here, and here.

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Creeping archaeological robotics?

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Tel Aviv, EU researchers set sights on robots that creep like ivy. Collapsed buildings, archaeological digs, even Mars are places where a robot that can negotiate difficult terrain by anchoring itself and shooting off tendrils would be useful (Shoshanna Solomon, Times of Israel).

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Looting arrests in eastern Samaria

APPREHENDED: IDF ARREST SIX ANTIQUITIES THIEVES IN WEST BANK. The IDF and the police have arrested six antiquities thieves in the last two weeks at two separate sites in eastern Samaria (Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post).

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Using lead isotopes to track Phoenician expansion westward

PHOENICIAN WATCH: The Silver Rush: New Technologies Remap Phoenician Expansion in the Mediterranean. Israeli scientists analyze lead isotopes in Phoenician hoards and discover that westward expansion began earlier than was previously believed (Asaf Ronel, Haaretz).

A combination of scientific techniques from a number of fields now enables scientists to solve these historical and archaeological mysteries. A new study using rare samples of ancient Phoenician silver items found in archeological digs in Israel proposes a route for their spreading westward – and even strengthens the theory that it was the search for sources of metals that pushed them farther and farther from their original region. The study, “Lead isotopes in silver reveal the earliest Phoenician quest for metals in the west Mediterranean,” was published on Monday in the prestigious scientific journal PNAS by scientists from Haifa University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The study focuses on three large caches of Phoenician silver found in Israel, at Tel Dor, Acre and Ein Hofez. It attempts to answer the question of where they came from, because the precious metal is not found naturally in the Mediterranean region. The research was part of the doctorate research conducted by Tzilla Eshel, the lead author from the archeology department at Haifa University.

This reminds me of another recent story about using ice cores from Greenland to track the state of Punic coin minting via traces of lead pollution.

Cross-file under Technology Watch and Material Culture.

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Review of Scribbling through History: Graffiti (ed. Ragazzoli et al.)

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Chloe Ragazzoli, Ömür Harmanşah, Chiara Salvador, Elizabeth Frood (ed.), Scribbling through History: Graffiti, Places and People from Antiquity to Modernity. London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2018. Pp. 244. ISBN 9781474288811. £73.44. Reviewed by Nikolaos Lazaridis, California State University, Sacramento (lazaridi@saclink.csus.edu).

This sounds like quite a comprehensive book that would make good reading alongside Karen Stern's work on ancient Jewish graffiti (on which more here and links). The volume under review includes an essay by her on that topic.

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More "Hebrew books" seized in Turkey

APPREHENDED: Police seize ancient handwritten Hebrew manuscripts in anti-smuggling op in southern Turkey (Daily Sabah).

Acting upon a tip-off, the provincial security directorate units carried out a raid on a minibus and seized three handwritten Hebrew manuscripts, nine coins and a small statue of a woman holding a water jug.

The anti-smuggling unit of the Turkish security forces has been working hard lately. These objects were seized from a group of Syrians, which perhaps points to an origin in Syria.

The twos photographs provide limited information, so I can't say much about the objects. None of the books are open, so we can't tell anything about their content. The two on the right are bound codices and possibly the pages are made of paper or parchment. The book on the left looks to me as though the pages are made of metal and it is held together with metal binding rings. Some fake metal codices were recovered in Turkey in 2017. This looks like another metal codex, although I don't recall seeing any before that have a heavy embossed design on the front cover like this one.

I have nothing interesting to say about the statuette or the coins.

Let's keep an eye on this one. I have yet to see any genuine ancient artifacts come out of these Turkish anti-smuggling operations, but I suppose there could always be a first time.

For other similar stories coming out of Turkey, see here and follow the many links. For my definitive (for now) evaluation of what we know about the metal codices recovered from Jordan and elsewhere, see here and links.

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The Gallio inscription

THE HOLY LAND PHOTOS' BLOG: NT Inscriptions — Gallio Proconsul of Achaia (Acts 18:12) (Carl Rasmussen). Gallio is mentioned in the Book of Acts chapter 18. This post has a couple of nice images of his inscription. The inscription helps to establish the chronology of the Apostle Paul's career according to Acts.

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Why did they build the Dome of the Rock?

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Israeli Researcher Proposes New Explanation to Why Dome of Rock Was Built on Temple Mount. It has dominated the Jerusalem skyline for 1,300 years, but there is no single accepted explanation for why it was built (Nir Hasson, Haaretz premium).

Several researches say that the Umayyad caliph, Abdel Malek Ben Marwan, decided to build the dome out of a need for a religious focal point outside of Mecca. During the period of his reign, Mecca was ruled by his rival, Abd Allah Ibn al-Zubayr, who had revolted against the Umayyads and conquered that holy city. Other researchers say Abel Malek needed a structure to compete with the palatial churches the Christians had built in Jerusalem, in order to reinforce Muslim rule in the city.

A recent article by Dr. Milka Levy-Rubin in the Cathedra journal published by Yad Ben-Zvi, says the Dome of the Rock was built in order to restore Jerusalem’s place on the regional map of holy sites, not vis a vis Mecca, but rather as a rival to Constantinople, the Byzantine capital. This is why the Muslims depended on the Jewish traditions at the site.

This discussion is well outside my own expertise. I have no opinion about it. But I thought you would find it interesting.

By the way, there is an odd misstatement just before this quote. The Dome was not "erected 691 years ago." It was erected (or completed) around the year 691 C.E. This was something over 1,300 years ago, as stated correctly in the headline and the first paragraph.

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The Reader's Digest Latin Iliad in the Cairo Geniza?

GENIZA FRAGMENT OF THE MONTH (FEBRUARY 2019): The Latin Iliad in the Cairo Genizah (T-S Misc. 27.2 c-e) (Gideon Bohak and Serena Ammirati).

How did these fragments of a Crusader-period copy of a first century CE Latin reworking of a Greek poem of the eighth or seventh century BCE end up in the Cairo Genizah?

I've said it before. The Cairo Geniza is the philologist's gift that keeps on giving.

Past posts noting Cairo Geniza Fragments of the Month in the Cambridge University Library's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit are here and links.

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Furstenberg on "Goy"

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Ethnic and Cultural Identities in the Rabbinic Goy Discourse (Yair Furstenberg).

This fascinating description of the novel rabbinic discourse leads to what is in my view one of the most significant contributions of the book to our understanding of Judaism in Antiquity: The rabbinic termination of separation technologies, so characteristic of pre-rabbinic Judaism.

Bold-font emphasis in the original.

Another installment in the AJR forum on Ophir and Rosen-Zvi, Goy, on which more here and here.

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Xeravits, From Qumran to the Synagogues

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Xeravits, Géza G.

From Qumran to the Synagogues
Selected Studies on Ancient Judaism

In collab. with Vér, Ádám

Series: Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies 43

Hardcover
Publication Date: 2019
To be published: March 2019
ISBN 978-3-11-061431-2

Aims and Scope
This volume collects papers written during the past two decades that explore various aspects of late Second Temple period Jewish literature and the figurative art of the Late Antique synagogues. Most of the papers have a special emphasis on the reinterpretation of biblical figures in early Judaism or demonstrate how various biblical traditions converged into early Jewish theologies. The structure of the volume reflects the main directions of the author’s scholarly interest, examining the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and Late Antique synagogues. The book is edited for the interest of scholars of Second Temple Judaism, biblical interpretation, synagogue studies and the effective history of Scripture.

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The latest on the Terra Sancta Museum

THE REBOOT CONTINUES: A 2000-year-old biblical treasure. Jerusalem’s Terra Sancta Museum, which displays ancient artefacts excavated by the Franciscan order over the past 100 years, offers insight into life in the Holy Land (Sara Toth Stub, BBC).

But a multi-year restoration project has made this underground labyrinth – built and rebuilt in several layers from the time of King Herod in the 1st Century to the Mamluk sultans in the medieval period – into a museum that tells not only the history of Jerusalem, but also the story of the Franciscan Order’s archaeological discoveries made throughout Israel, the Palestinian territories, Egypt and Jordan over the last century. For more than 100 years, Franciscan friars have carried out dozens of excavations at some of the region’s most famous Christian sites, including in Nazareth, Bethlehem and here in this sprawling Monastery of the Flagellation complex, which has been a pilgrimage site since at least the 4th Century.

Past posts on the recently renovated Terra Sancta Museum are here and here. It is currently undertaking a phased reopening.

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What was the "mercy seat" on the Ark of the Covenant?

DR. RACHEL ADELMAN: Atoning for the Golden Calf with the Kapporet (TheTorah.com).

Atop the kappōret, the ark’s cover, sat the golden cherubim, which framed the empty space (tokh) where God would speak with Moses. Drawing on the connection between the word kappōret and the root כ.פ.ר (“atone”), and noting how the golden calf episode interrupts the Tabernacle account, the rabbis suggest that the ark cover served as a means of atoning for the Israelites’ collective sin.

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Melville, Jonah, and a Coptic curse

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Giant Fish and Judicial Prayers: Jonah in Coptic Magic.

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Review of Goldsworthy, Hadrian's Wall

BRYN MARY CLASSICAL REVIEW: Adrian Keith Goldsworthy, Hadrian's Wall. New York: Basic Books, 2018. Pp. xx, 169. ISBN 9781541644427. $25.00. Reviewed by Michael J. Taylor, University at Albany, SUNY (mjtaylor@albany.edu).

While Goldsworthy does not make things as interesting as he might, what he does do he generally does well. He provides an overview of the Roman army of the principate, and a discussion of the complex construction and occupation history of the wall from A.D. 122 to the late fourth century. The last few chapters mostly follow the history of the Roman army in Britain, although these are sometimes more the history of emperors and pretenders than of the wall itself. The book ends with a brief guide on how to visit the wall. One disappointing aspect is the illustrations. There are plenty, to be sure, but all in black and white, and all printed directly on paper instead of plates, which inevitably reduces the sharpness and quality of the image. In many ways we get a coffee table book in terms of breezy content, but without the glossy pictures.

Under "interesting," the reviewer notes some cold-case murder scenes and other lurid finds associated with the wall.

Past posts on Hadrian's Wall (because I live in Scotland) are here and links.

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Well, Elijah, that's awkward.

DR. DAVID GLATT-GILAD: Was Elijah Permitted to Make an Offering on Mount Carmel? (TheTorah.com).

In a contest with the prophets of Baal, Elijah rebuilds an altar to YHWH that was on Mount Carmel and makes an offering. Later, he bemoans the destruction of other YHWH altars (1 Kgs 18–19). But doesn’t the Book of Kings clearly state that only the altar in Jerusalem was legitimate once Solomon built the Temple?

Sometimes a story is just too good to leave out.

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Gupta and Sanford, Intermediate Biblical Greek Reader

THE AWOL BLOG: Newly added in the Open Textbook Library. Notably, the following:

Intermediate Biblical Greek Reader: Galatians and Related Texts

Nijay Gupta, Portland Seminary
Jonah Sandford
Pub Date: 2018
ISBN 13: 9780999829233
Publisher: George Fox University Library

About the Book

After completing basic biblical Greek, students are often eager to continue to learn and strengthen their skills of translation and interpretation. This intermediate graded reader is designed to meet those needs. The reader is “intermediate” in the sense that it presumes the user will have already learned the basics of Greek grammar and syntax and has memorized Greek vocabulary words that appear frequently in the New Testament. The reader is “graded” in the sense that it moves from simpler translation work (Galatians) towards more advanced readings from the book of James, the Septuagint, and from one of the Church Fathers. In each reading lesson, the Greek text is given, followed by supplemental notes that offer help with vocabulary, challenging word forms, and syntax. Discussion questions are also included to foster group conversation and engagement. There are many good Greek readers in existence, but this reader differs from most others in a few important ways. Most readers offer text selections from different parts of the Bible, but in this reader the user works through one entire book (Galatians). All subsequent lessons, then, build off of this interaction with Galatians through short readings that are in some way related to Galatians. The Septuagint passages in the reader offer some broader context for texts that Paul quotes explicitly from the Septuagint. The Patristic reading from John Chrysystom comes from one of his homilies on Galatians. This approach to a Greek reader allows for both variety and coherence in the learning process.

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De Troyer and Schmitz (eds.), The Early Reception of the Book of Isaiah

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

The Early Reception of the Book of Isaiah

Ed. by De Troyer, Kristin / Schmitz, Barbara

Series: Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies 37

Aims and Scope
This volume brings together a lively set of papers from the first session of the Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature program unit of the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in 2016. Together with a few later contributions, these essays explore a number of thematic and textual issues as they trace the reception history of the Book of Isaiah in Deuterocanonical and cognate literature.

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David Brown et al., The Interactions of Ancient Astral Science

NEW BOOK FROM HEMPEN VERLAG:

The Interactions of Ancient Astral Science
with contributions by : Jonathon Ben-Dov, Harry Falk, Geoffrey Lloyd, Raymond Mercier, Antonio Panaino, Joachim Quack, Alexandra von Lieven, and Michio Yano

2018. 17x24cm, 916 Seiten, Hardcover
978-3-944312-55-2 118,00 € Inkl. 7% USt., zzgl. Versandkosten


Why and when did ancient scholars make the enormous effort to understand the principles and master the mathematics of foreign astral sciences? This work provides a detailed analysis of the invention, development and transmission of astronomy, astrology, astral religion, magic and medicine, cosmology and cosmography, astral mapping, geography and calendrics and their related mathematics and instrumentation in and between Mesopotamia, Egypt, the West Semitic areas, Greece and Rome, Iran, India and China. It considers the available textual evidence from the most ancient times to the seventh century CE. The author has worked the contributions of eight internationally renowned scholars into what amounts to a new history of the oldest sciences. The result is a challenging read for the layperson and a resource for the expert and includes an extensive index to the entire volume. It provides a new typology of cultural interactions and, by describing their socio-political backdrop, offers a cultural history of the region. In particular, astral science in the Hellenistic period west of the Tigris is completely re-evaluated and a new model of the interactions of Western and Indian and Iranian astral sciences is provided.

Not surprisingly, the calendrical traditions in 1 Enoch and the Dead Sea Scrolls receive a good bit of attention. Follow the link for the TOC.

HT the NSEA Blog.

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HB/OT job at Aarhus University

H-JUDAIC: Assistant or associate professor in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, Aarhus University.

Follow the link for extensive further particulars and application information. The deadline for applications is 4 April 2019.

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Hartvigsen, Aseneth's Transformation

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Hartvigsen, Kirsten Marie

Aseneth's Transformation
Series: Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies 24

Aims and Scope
The story of Joseph and Aseneth is a fascinating expansion of the narrative in Genesis of Joseph in Egypt, and in particular, of his marriage to the daughter of an Egyptian priest. This study examines the portrayal of Aseneth’s transformation in the text, focusing on three perspectives. How did Aseneth’s encounter with Joseph and her subsequent transformation affect various aspects of her identity in the narrative? In what ways do the portrayals of Aseneth, her transformation, and her abode relate to select metaphors and other symbolic features depicted in the Septuagint, the Hebrew Bible, and the Pseudepigrapha? And, how do the ritualized components through which Aseneth’s transformation occurred function in the narrative, and why are they perceived as effective? In order to shed light on these facets of Joseph and Aseneth, the author draws on the contemporary approaches of intersectionality, conceptual blending, intertextual blending, and the cognitive theory of rituals, using these theoretical frameworks to explore and illuminate the complexity of Aseneth’s transformation.

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Satlow on the "hasidim ha-rishonim"

MICHAEL SATLOW: THE HASIDIM HA-RISHONIM AND OTHER ANCIENT AND MODERN FANTASIES. Professor Satlow shares the abstract of his recent article in Historia Religionum.

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Anakim and Anakes?

REMNANT OF GIANTS: Ephraim Nissan: Hebrew Anakim related to Greek Anakes. Maybe. If you're not clear about what that means, read on at the link.

To avoid further confusion: it has nothing to do with Luke Skywalker's father.

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Baker on "Goy"

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: The Perils of Polarization (Cynthia Baker).

Although my work on the word Jew is never engaged by the authors (apart from an uncomfortable nod in an early footnote), it is clearly Jew that accounts for my invitation to contribute to this forum on a book devoted to Goy. I would be remiss, therefore, if I were to conclude my essay without at least some brief reflections on Goy through the lens of Jew.

Another installment in the AJR forum on Ophir and Rosen-Zvi, Goy, on which more here. For lots of past posts on Cynthia Baker's Jew, including a Marginalia forum, start here and follow the links.

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Iraq al-Amir

ATLAS OBSCURA: Iraq al-Amir. Just outside of Jordan's capital lies an ancient castle and intriguing caves dating back to the Copper Age (bexly104).

Nestled among hills just outside of Amman in Wadi Al-Seer is a quaint village filled with ancient stone secrets. Iraq al-Amir, which means “Caves of the Prince” in Arabic, is home to more than 10 caves that have been inhabited by various groups since the Copper Age, as well as the ruins of an Ozymandian castle.

The site is also of considerable interest for Second Temple-era Judaism. I posted on it years ago here.

Atlas Obscura is good at finding these interesting, out-of-the-way places.

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