CFP: Conference on Cosmic Ascent in Theory and Practice

THE NSEA BLOG: CONFERENCE ON COSMIC ASCENT IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: CALL FOR PAPERS

A conference in June of this year at Trinity College, Dublin on all aspects of cosmic ascent narratives. Papers are very welcome from scholars working on any aspect of this subject (in antiquity or later), viewed phenomenologically, comparatively, cognitively, narratologically, ritually …

Here is the call for papers ...

The conference takes place on 19-20 June, 2020. The deadline for paper proposals is 13 March, 2020.

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Beruria in the Talmud

TALMUD WATCH: The Sense of a Woman. Fighting her way into the male-dominated world of the Talmud, Beruria challenged the orthodoxy with her wit and learnedness (Richard Hidary, Tablet Magazine).

While a learned woman named Beruria likely did exist in second-century Eretz Yisrael, most of the narratives about her appear only later in the Babylonian Talmud and midrash, which lends doubt to their biographical value. Nevertheless, the literary persona of Beruria captured by these vignettes certainly reveals a great deal about the Talmudic storytellers and their anxieties about their own cultural and gender boundaries.

Many today look to Beruria as a proto-feminist who proved herself equal to her rabbinic colleagues in knowledge of Torah tradition and biblical interpretation. However, the debate continues among scholars as to whether the ancient rabbis themselves viewed her as an exceptional ideal or as a threat to their hegemony.

It was likely a paradoxical combination of both. ...

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Review of van der Toorn, Becoming Diaspora Jews

THE BIBLICAL REVIEW BLOG: Review: “Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine” by Karel van der Toorn (William Brown).

Karel van der Toorn. 2019. Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine. Yale: Yale University Press.

Excerpt:

In conclusion, van der Toorn’s Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine is an excellent and needed historical re-construction of the Jewish Elephantine community. More importantly, he draws into the conversation Papyrus Amherst 63, providing innovative and important insights to the Jews at Elephantine prior to their being in Egypt. Frankly, Becoming Diaspora Jews is a must-read for students and scholars of Jewish studies (broadly construed) and Egyptian history.

Cross-file under New Book and Aramaic Watch.

I have noted Professor van der Toorn's recent edition of Papyrus Amherst 63 here and links. For many other PaleoJudaica posts on Elephantine Island in Egypt and on the Elephantine Aramaic papyri, start here and follow the links.

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Daniel and the king's food

READING ACTS: Daniel 1:8-16 – What was Wrong with the King’s Food? (Phil Long).

Phil mentions several possibilities. Here is another.

Later in the book, Daniel's ritual preparations for invoking angelic revelations include dietary restrictions. See 9:3 and 10:3. Chapter one emphasizes that Daniel only ate vegetables and drank water. Verse 17 specifies that his abilities included understanding visions and dreams. Is his diet meant to be a relevant factor? Maybe.

As a side note: 10:3 says that Daniel went for "three whole weeks" without eating delicacies or meat or drinking wine.

Wait, what?

That implies he normally ate and drank those things. I thought he only ate vegetables and drank water. Did Daniel's king's-food-free diet go the way of all diets?

I have collected and commented on the previous posts in Phil's new series on the Book of Daniel here.

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A gift for President Putin

NUMISMATIC DIPLOMACY: Putin Receives 2,000-Year-Old Coin Uncovered in Jerusalem (TPS / Tazpit News Agency via the Jewish Press).

Putin is in Israel together with 45 global leaders and royals to attend the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

[...]

The coin is an original, inscribed with the ancient Hebrew words “Liberty of Zion.” On the other side of the coin are the words “year two” and refer to the second year of the Great Revolt during the years 66–73 CE.

Another "year two" coin from the Great Revolt (or possibly even the same one) was in the news a few years ago.

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Niehoff and Levinson (eds.), Self, Self-Fashioning and Individuality in Late Antiquity

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Self, Self-Fashioning and Individuality in Late Antiquity. New Perspectives. Ed. by Maren R. Niehoff and Joshua Levinson. Culture, Religion, and Politics in the Greco-Roman World 4. 174,00 € including VAT. cloth ISBN 978-3-16-158990-4.

Published in English.
This collection of articles places the frequently discussed question of the introvert Self into a new interdisciplinary context: rather than tracing a linear development from social forms of life with an outward orientation to individual introspection, it argues for significant overlaps between interior and exterior dimensions, between the Self and society. A team of internationally renowned experts from different fields examines Pagan, Jewish and Christian voices on an equal basis and explores the complexity of their messages. Philosophical texts are analyzed next to letters, legal sources, Bible interpretation and material evidence. Not only is the experience of individuals examined, but also instructions from authoritative figures in a position to shape constructions of the Self. The book is divided into three parts; namely, »Constructing the Self«, a field usually treated by philosophers, »Self-Fashioning«, generally associated with literature, and »Self and Individual in Society«, commonly the domain of historians. This volume shows the complexity of each category and their overlaps by engaging unexpected sources in each section and interrogating internal as well as external dimensions.

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Reading Acts takes up Daniel

AT THE READING ACTS BLOG, Phil Long has begun a series on the Book of Daniel. It happens that I just taught my honours (i.e., upper division) undergraduate course on the Book of Daniel last semester. The book is thus fresh in my mind. I look forward to noting Phil's posts and commenting when I have time. Thus far:

When was the Book of Daniel Written?
The key evidence for the date of the book is that it contains very detailed predictions about the future (from the perspective of the sixth-century BCE character Daniel) which are uncannily correct up to a certain point in the Maccabean revolt. Then they go wildly wrong. Case in point: Daniel 10-11 review Seleucid and Ptolemaic history in detail up to the desecration of the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes. But then 11:40-45 has him undertaking a campaign in Egypt and Palestine and dying there. There was no such campaign. And our other sources - which granted are inconsistent in details - agree that he died in Persia.

It certainly looks as though an author during the Maccabean revolt wrote up predictions after the fact (vaticinia ex eventu), but then ventured some actual predictions about the future. The latter turned out wrong, as they usually do.

This feature of correct predictions after the fact, then wrong actual predictions, is typical of historical apocalypses, including the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85-90), 4 Ezra, and The Seventh Vision of Daniel. In all three, as in the Book of Daniel, the wrong actual prediction include the coming of the final judgement, which has not happened yet!

The stories in Daniel 2-6 may have their origins in Aramaic folk traditions of the Persian Period, but the book as we have it in our Bibles (the Masoretic Text) was put together during the Maccabean Revolt, and chapters 7-12 were written then.

Main Themes of Daniel

Daniel and the End of the Ages

Daniel 1:1-7 – Why was Daniel Taken to Babylon?
Daniel 1 serves as an introduction to chapters 2-6, for which it may have been written. It sets out the themes that will be important in the stories (e.g., introduces the main characters, the training of the four friends in wisdom, Daniel's mantic talents, and the temptation to assimilation) and to some degree in the visions in 7-12.

The meaning Phil gives for the name Belteshazzar is a bit confused. The name could mean "Guard the life of the king!" or "Guard his life!" depending on how you reverse-transcribe it into Akkadian. The divine name "Bel" is not involved. Phil's translation mixes in "Bel" from the similar-looking name of King "Belshazzar" of chapter 5, which means "Bel, guard the king!"

I would be cautious about the meanings of the Babylonian names assigned to the the three friends. These, especially the first two, are more or less garbled. They certainly don't look like transcriptions of Babylonian names made in the sixth century.

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Algorithms are coming for Hebrew paleography!

NORTHWEST SEMITIC EPIGRAPHY: Algorithmic handwriting analysis of the Samaria inscriptions illuminates bureaucratic apparatus in biblical Israel (Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, Arie Shaus, Barak Sober, Eli Turkel, Eli Piasetzky, Israel Finkelstein, Plos One).

Abstract

Past excavations in Samaria, capital of biblical Israel, yielded a corpus of Hebrew ink on clay inscriptions (ostraca) that documents wine and oil shipments to the palace from surrounding localities. Many questions regarding these early 8th century BCE texts, in particular the location of their composition, have been debated. Authorship in countryside villages or estates would attest to widespread literacy in a relatively early phase of ancient Israel's history. Here we report an algorithmic investigation of 31 of the inscriptions. Our study establishes that they were most likely written by two scribes who recorded the shipments in Samaria. We achieved our results through a method comprised of image processing and newly developed statistical learning techniques. These outcomes contrast with our previous results, which indicated widespread literacy in the kingdom of Judah a century and half to two centuries later, ca. 600 BCE.

This story has received some attention in the media, but I think it is all based on the Plos One article and the following Tel Aviv University press release. It gives additional commentary by the authors: Study Reveals Two Writers Penned Landmark Inscriptions in Eighth-Century BCE Samaria. Discovery illuminates bureaucratic apparatus of ancient kingdom of Israel, say TAU researchers. A key point:

"If only two scribes wrote the examined Samaria texts contemporaneously and both were located in Samaria rather than in the countryside, this would indicate a palace bureaucracy at the peak of the kingdom of Israel's prosperity," Prof. Finkelstein explains.

"Our results, accompanied by other pieces of evidence, seem also to indicate a limited dispersion of literacy in Israel in the early eighth century BCE," Prof. Piasetzky says.

I noted the previous research mentioned in the abstract above here.

In the past, the media published some overblown claims about algorithms applied to ancient languages. But the algorithms keep getting better. Recent studies like this one look cautious and credible. Background here, here, here, here, and links.

We may have reached the point when algorithms can outdo humans at Hebrew paleography.

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7th-grader finds late-antique tombstone in Caesarea

FUNERARY EPITAPH: 1,500-year-old Greek inscription uncovered by 13-year-old in Caesarea. "I immediately recognized that it was something ancient," the seventh-grader from Caesarea said (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

The white slab protruding from the ground uncovered by the boy turned out to be part of a burial inscription, Peter Gendelman, an IAA researcher in Caesarea, said in the press release. The inscription indicates the name of the deceased and the location of the grave within the cemetery, he said.

“The grave of.... and of Anastasius, or Anastasia…,” the inscription read, the IAA said.

The IAA has given the discoverer, Stav Meir, some well-deserved recognition for his sharp eye and good citizenship.

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The Demon Epilepsy Tablet

CANDIDA MOSS: The Mysterious Case of the Demon Epilepsy Tablet (The Daily Beast).

The earliest image of the ancient demon believed to cause epilepsy has been discovered in the archives of a museum in Berlin. The 2,670-year-old tablet, which was originally part of the library of a family of exorcists, shows the demon with curvy horns, a long tail, a serpent’s tongue, and what might be a reptilian eye. Not that different, in other words, than some Christian depictions of the Devil.

[...]

This text is early, but Professor Moss broadens the discussion to include the history of the religious and medical understanding of epilepsy from antiquity (with mention of ancient Judaism and Jesus) to the present.

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Coins of the Nabataeans

NUMISMATICS: CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series: Coins of the Nabataeans (Mike Markowitz).

This article gives a detailed survey of Nabatean coins, with good photos. It also amounts to a brief history of the Nabatean kingdom, whose spoke language was pre-Islamic Arabic, but whose written language was Aramaic.

Kings Obodas II and Aretas IV come up in a past PaleoJudaica post here. Obodas I (I think) comes up in this post.

Cross-file under Nabatean Watch (Nabataean Watch). For many past posts on the Nabateans and their language, see here, here, here, and here, and follow the links. For still more, search the PaleoJudaica archive.

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Reviewlet of Orlov, The Glory of the Invisible God

FORBIDDEN GOSPELS BLOG: Book Note: The Glory of the Invisible God by Andrei Orlov (April DeConick). I noted the publication of the book here.

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On Berenice, Titus, and "replacement theory"

TABLET MAGAZINE: Berenice, the Jewish Queen of Rome, and the Origins of Replacement Theory. How fear that a single Jew could transform Western society into a Jewish empire led to a broader anti-Semitism (Fredric Brandfon).

Past PaleoJudaica posts involving Julia Berenice, sister of Herod Agrippa II and lover of the Emperor Titus, are here and here.

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2020 archaeology scholarships available from BAS

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Dig Scholarships Available in 2020 (Michele Barasso).

The Biblical Archaeology Society, publisher of BAR, offers dig scholarships of $2,000 each to people who wish to participate in a dig and demonstrate financial need. ...

Cross-file under News You Can Use.

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Aramaic DSS conference

CONFERENCE AT TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY: SCRIBES BETWEEN SOURCES AND SCRIPTURE: ANCIENT JEWISH TRADITIONS IN AND AFTER THE ARAMAIC DEAD SEA SCROLLS.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) provided both new texts and fresh contexts to explore the formation, transmission, and reception of ancient Judaism’s literary heritage. Ongoing studies on these materials revealed that the scribal cultures represented among the Qumran collection both drew upon and contributed to developing authoritative traditions. They navigated and reinvigorated ancestral discourses, encountered and integrated traditions of their larger cultural contexts, and updated and extended a broad set of scriptures for new generations and ever-changing communities. The conference program includes an international group of scholars who will use the Aramaic DSS as a launching point to discover what these writings reveal about the scope of sources at play in the pre-canonical period, gain new insights into the scribal strategies used to adapt and develop them, and rethink the evidence for reception of Aramaic traditions in other literatures or movements.

The event is funded by the Canada Research Chair in Religious Identities of Ancient Judaism at Trinity Western University.

The conference takes place on 23-24 March 2020. The lineup of speakers is impressive. Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

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Electrum 2019

ELECTRUM: JOURNAL OF ANCIENT HISTORY, an open-access, peer-reviewed, online journal, has a new issue with many articles of interest to ancient Judaism: ELECTRUM, 2019, VOLUME 26, JERUSALEM AND JUDAEA. STUDIES ON HISTORY, ARCHEOLOGY, AND NUMISMATICS. Follow the link for the TOC and the full text of the articles and reviews.

HT Todd Bolen at the Bible Places Blog.

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When were Herod's death and Jesus' birth?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Herod’s Death, Jesus’ Birth and a Lunar Eclipse. Letters to the Editor debate dates of Herod’s death and Jesus’ birth.

Both Luke and Matthew mention Jesus’ birth as occurring during Herod’s reign (Luke 1:5; Matthew 2:1). Josephus relates Herod’s death to a lunar eclipse. This is generally regarded as a reference to a lunar eclipse in 4 B.C. Therefore it is often said that Jesus was born in 4 B.C.

But physics professor John A. Cramer, in a letter to BAR, has pointed out that there was another lunar eclipse visible in Judea—in fact, two—in 1 B.C., which would place Herod’s death—and Jesus’ birth—at the turn of the era. Below, read letters published in the Q&C section of BAR debating the dates of Herod’s death, Jesus’ birth and to which lunar eclipse Josephus was referring.

The astronomical matters are outside my expertise. But I found this interchange very interesting.

Very belatedly for Christmas.

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JSTOR journals on antiquity

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Ancient World in JSTOR. This is the full list of journals in JSTOR with substantial focus on the Ancient World (Chuck Jones, The AWOL Blog).

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Colloquium on Origen as Philologist.

THE ETC BLOG: Origen as Philologist: Inaugural Text & Canon Institute Colloquium (John Meade).

We have assembled a stellar group of scholars for this colloquium to describe classical philology in the Alexandrian tradition and its reception and use by Origen and others of the Caesarean Library. As you make plans to attend conferences in 2020, please consider attending this one in Phoenix. The weather promises to be wonderful and the conversation over Origen to be even better!

The colloquium takes place on 18-10 November 2020. For details, follow the link.

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Sigvartsen on Second Temple afterlife and resurrection beliefs

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Afterlife and Resurrection Beliefs in the Second Temple Period

A comprehensive list and description of every resurrection and afterlife belief in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha has been a much-lamented gap in contemporary scholarship. While death and the afterlife are popular topics among biblical scholars and students, given the enormous undertaking such a landmark study would be, it becomes understandable why it has not been done - until now.

See also Afterlife and Resurrection Beliefs in the Apocrypha and Apocalyptic Literature, Jewish and Christian Texts (29) (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019)

Afterlife and Resurrection Beliefs in the Pseudepigrapha, Jewish and Christian Texts (30) (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019).

By Jan A. Sigvartsen
Dozent of Old Testament
Theologische Hochschule Friedensau, Germany
January 2020

Cross-file under New Books, Old Testament Apocrypha Watch, and Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.

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First-century stone table and weights excavated in Jerusalem

ARCHAEOLOGICAL ARTIFACTS: City of David archaeologists say 2,000-year-old central Jerusalem market found. Stone table top used to measure liquid volumes located in large courtyard in City of David’s Stepped Street, which archaeologists believe was the central market (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

The measuring table was found in a broad paved central square still undergoing excavation, alongside dozens of stone measurement weights. The sum of the parts has led the IAA archaeologists to conclude that this area of the Stepped Street, a paved 2,000-year-old pilgrims’ path that connects the Siloam Pool with the Temple Mount, would have served as ancient Jerusalem’s main market.

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900-BCE Israelite inscription found at Abel Beth Maacah

NORTHWEST SEMITIC EPIGRAPHY: Hebrew Inscription on a 3,000-year-old Jar Could Redraw Borders of Ancient Israel. Archaeologists were surprised to find Hebrew writing in Abel Beth Maacah, which some don’t think was part of the ancient kingdom (Ariel David).

The basic story is that the Abel Beth Maacah excavation has turned up a jar fragment with an inscription on it that reads לבניו (belonging to Benayau). It is written in Hebrew letters and the readings are clear. Epigraphers date it to 900 BCE, give or take. I am not sure whether the script itself identifies the word as "Hebrew" rather than more broadly "Canaanite," but the name is certainly Israelite. It includes a form of the divine name YHWH. It means "YHWH has built." The spelling of the name is specifically Northern Israelite.

As usual with these things, the article tries to draw maximal historical inferences from this discovery. Not a criticism of the author of the article, who seems to be reporting faithfully the views of the archaeologists, with lots of useful background information.

The basic story is quite exciting. Israelite inscriptions, even with just once word, are exceedingly rare in this period. But inferences beyond that basic story are speculative, at least for now.

For some posts on another recent discovery at Abel Beth Maacah, see here and links.

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AJR on Fragments

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW has a new series on Fragments.

Panelists from the 2018 Religious World of Late Antiquity SBL section panel on “Fragments” offer close readings of a range of secondary or technical sources outside the field in order to investigate provocative problems, ideas, and disciplinary techniques for scholars who study the late ancient world. (Todd Berzon)

Two of the essays have been posted so far. They are ... something different.

Four Notes on Memory Theatre (Catherine Michael Chin)

A Garland of Fragments (Moulie Vidas).

UPDATE (21 January): The last two essays are:

Fragments and Absence (Elizabeth Castelli)

Fragment: Toward a Critical Trans History of Byzantium (Roland Betancourt)

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The Oxyrhynchus papyri scandal in the news

THE GUARDIAN: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel. What links an eccentric Oxford classics don, billionaire US evangelicals, and a tiny, missing fragment of an ancient manuscript? Charlotte Higgins unravels a multimillion-dollar riddle.

Regular readers are familiar with this ongoing story. I collected some relevant links (especially a post from Brent Nongbri) in my late November post from last year: 120 Oxyrhynchus papyri missing from the Egypt Exploration Society. Follow the links back from there for details. And subsequent relevant posts are here and here. And this post links to potentially relevant posts by Dr Nongbri at his Variant Readings Blog.

Brent also comments on highlights of the Guardian article, as does Peter Gurry at the ETC Blog. The article has some surprising revelations.

As I have said before, I am not going to offer an opinion on what happened. Nor do I endorse or reject anyone else's analysis. I blog and link and you decide. It sounds as though this situation is likely to end up in court. We will just have to see how it plays out.

Meanwhile, Michael Press uses the story as a launching point to discuss the problem of the overabundance of already excavated ancient texts and artifacts that remain neglected by scholars: The Perennial Problem With the Excavation of Ancient Sites. Why chase after unprovenanced — and likely looted or forged — material when so much excavated material lies waiting for study? Excerpt:

Admirable individual efforts to publish are nothing against the mountain of unprocessed material. We’ve known this for some time, and yet we have still failed to change course. More drastic measures are needed. Fields like Near Eastern studies, classics, and more should reevaluate what kind of scholarship they value. Universities and their hiring committees should reevaluate why and how they hire and promote scholars. National antiquities departments should consider tighter restrictions or even a moratorium on new excavations until more old excavations are published.

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Adam Kirsch's Daf Yomi column concludes.

THE FINAL DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Did ‘Daf Yomi’ Make Me a Better Jew?

The last Daf Yomi cycle began on 1 August of 2012. I noted it here with various links. On 9 August I noted the inception of Mr. Kirsch's column here. As far as I can recall, I linked to each of them through the whole cycle. The most recent one is here. Follow the links back for the rest, often with some comments by me.

Meanwhile, for the current cycle, which began on 4 January of this year, Tablet has a new Daf Yomi project. It is a daily podcast called Take One. It aims to comment on each page of the Talmud throughout the cycle. I don't have time to follow it, although I may dip into it now and again. I have linked to the first episode. You can find all the episodes listed, along with Adam Kirsch's columns, on Tablet's Daf Yomi page.

I am very grateful to Adam for all his hard labor over the last seven-and-a-half years in working through the entire Talmud in English and summarizing so many of the interesting parts for his readers. I am not a Talmudist and never will be, but I feel much better informed about the Talmud after following his column. I wish him the best for his future projects.

Bible Places top-10 discoveries of 2019

THE BIBLE PLACES BLOG: Top 10 Discoveries in Biblical Archaeology in 2019 (Todd Bolen). Todd provides us with a good list and lots of ancillary material, including the year's fake news, tourism news, losses of people, other top-10 (etc.) compilations, and links to his past annual top 10 lists. And in this post he notes the Top Ten Discoveries in Biblical Archaeology of the Decade (2010-2019) by Bryan Windle at the Bible Archaeology Report.

I also noted a couple of top-10 end-of-year lists here.

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A Judeo-Christian (?) bilingual exorcism in PGM IV

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Old Coptic Magical Texts IV: The Bilingual Exorcism of PGM IV.

This post is the fourth in a mini-series about bilingual recipes in Egyptian and Greek from the 3rd/4th century papyrus codex PGM IV (Greek Magical Papyrus 4) – the “Bilingual Exorcism” (PGM IV. 1227-1264). This practice is written upon pages 28 and 29 of the codex and departs considerably from the other practices in this mini-series because it seems to derive from a Judaeo-Christian, rather than Pharaonic or Graeco-Egyptian, cultural context. ...

Ritual magic tends to be theologically eclectic. For the magician, whatever works, works.

I wrote this post up some time ago, but evidently I forgot to post it. Fortunately, the topic is not time sensitive. Here it is now.

For some related thoughts, see the final links in this post.

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Kalman on Jewish timekeeping from antiquity to modernity

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Turning Clockwise: Jews and Timekeeping from Antiquity to Modernity | Dissertation Spotlight (David Zvi Kalman).

David Zvi Kalman, “Unequal Hours: The Jewish Reception of Timekeeping Technology from the Bible to the Twentieth Century” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2019).

This dissertation is a proof of concept for how Jewish history and the history of technology—fields which have traditionally interacted very little—can benefit from talking to one another.

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Sparse Persian-era sherds and coins (Temple Mount Objects #4)

THE TEMPLE MOUNT SIFTING PROJECT BLOG: THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPLE MOUNT IN 12 OBJECTS: #4 THE EARLY SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD.

For the earlier posts on objects 1-3, see here and links.

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Biblical Studies Carnival December 2019

BELATEDLY NOTED: Biblical Studies Carnival #167: December 2019, by Alex Finkelson at the Scribes of the Kingdom Blog.

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The Talmud on detecting puberty

THE MOST RECENT DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: GIRL, YOU’LL BE A WOMAN SOON. As the seven-and-a-half-year cycle of page-a-day ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study comes to a close, the ancient rabbis discuss when adolescence ends and compare female sexual maturity to ripening figs.

Each volume of the Koren Talmud Bavli comes in a dust jacket that bears an image related to its contents. Avoda Zara, about idol worship, features a marble bust of a Greek god; Menachot, about meal offerings, has an illustration of a sacred vessel full of flour. So I was curious, as Tractate Nidda approached, how the publishers would choose to illustrate a volume whose main subject is menstrual blood. Their clever solution was to use an image of figs, for reasons that Daf Yomi readers discovered in last week’s reading.

[...]

And then there's this:

It feels strange to say this, but after seven and a half years, this is the next to last column in my series about Daf Yomi. The cycle concludes on Jan. 4 with the last page in Tractate Nidda, before starting all over again the next day with the first page of Berachot. Next month, in my final column, I will reflect on my long talmudic journey and on the Siyum HaShas, which will bring together 90,000 Jews to celebrate the Daf Yomi experience on New Year’s Day.

The new Daf Yomi began yesterday on Sunday, 5 January. I will have a few more comments to go with Adam Kirsch's final Daf Yomi column in the coming week.

But meanwhile, you can hear an inverview with Adam about his seven-and-a-half-year Daf Yomi experience on Tablet's Best Food Forward podcast, Ep. 210. The interview begins around 16:20 and lasts 22 minutes.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Review of Coşkun and Engels (eds.), Rome and the Seleukid East

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Altay Coşkun, David Engels (ed.), Rome and the Seleukid East: Selected Papers from Seleukid Study Day V, Brussels, 21-23 August 2015. Collection Latomus, volume 360. Leuven: Peeters, 2019. Pp. 512. ISBN 9789042939271. €84,00 (pb). Reviewed by Michael J. Taylor, University at Albany, SUNY (mjtaylor@albany.edu).

The past decade has proven a heady time for Seleucid studies, which has metamorphosed from a marginalized sub-field marooned in the void between Ancient History and Near Eastern Studies to a vibrant locus of interdisciplinary study, a topic that unites specialists in the Hellenistic World, Republican Rome and Judaic Studies, where sources range from Classical and Biblical literature to Greek epigraphy to cuneiform tablets. Such interdisciplinary vitality is on full display throughout this excellent volume.

This volume includes essays involving Antiochus III, Antiochus IV (see last link), and Judaism of the Hasmonean period, all of interest to PaleoJudaica.

For more on the Seleucid dynasty and its importance for biblical studies, see here and links

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Professor Larry Hurtado PhD Scholarship Fund

LARRY HURTADO'S BLOG has an In memorandum posted by one of his children. It notes the founding of a scholarship fund in Larry's name.

Background here and links.

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Review of Piotrkowski, Priests in Exile

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period (Miguel Vargas).

Meron M. Piotrkowski. Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period. Walter de Gruyter, 2019.

From the conclusion:

In sum, one truly gets the sense that Piotrkowski addresses every issue related to Onias' Temple. Because of its breadth, Priests in Exile is bound to become essential reading, not only for those interested in Oniad history, but also for anyone interested in Egyptian Judaism or Hellenistic-Jewish literature. As commented above, it is true that the evidence leaves open the possibility of competing interpretations. This is especially the case for the literary material. Nevertheless, scholars should seriously consider Piotrkowski's individual claims. ...

Earlier PaleoJudaica posts on the Jewish Temple at Leontopolis, Egypt, are here, here, here, here, and here.

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The Sibyl's Pompeii prophecy

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: Could a Jewish author have been first to record destruction of ancient Pompeii? The Sibylline Oracles, likely written by a Jew post-Vesuvius eruption, ostensibly prophecy the city’s devastation as divine retribution for sacking of Second Temple 9 years prior (Julie Masis, Times of Israel).

If the fourth Sibylline Oracle was really written no later than 81 CE, it might predate by several decades the letters of Pliny the Younger, who survived the eruption when he was a teenager and wrote a lengthy account of the experience later on. Pliny published his letters between the years 100 and 109.

Still, the Sibylline Oracle cannot begin to compare with the details included in Pliny’s letters, which provide a first-person account of the disaster.

For more on Pliny's letter about the eruption of Pompeii, see here and here. And for still more posts on Vesuvius and Pompeii, follow the links in the latter post, plus see here. For a post on an apocryphal quote from the Sibylline Oracles on Pompeii, see here.

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

LXX reading plans for 2020

NOW'S THE TIME TO START: READING THE SEPTUAGINT IN 2020 (William Ross, Septuagint &c.)

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2020!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Have a great 2020. I hope it will include frequent visits to PaleoJudaica.

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

Top-10s for 2019

RETROSPECTIVE: So far I have found two top-10 lists for 2019 of interest to PaleoJudaica.

From Jesus' Time: The 10 Most Interesting Biblical Discoveries of 2019 (Stephanie Pappas, Live Science).

Biblical Archaeology’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2019 (Gordon Govier, Christianity Today).

There is some overlap in the two lists.

If I get time (I didn't in 2019), I will post a list of top PaleoJudaica posts for the year (or two years) on the blog's anniversary in March.

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

Levine on The Jewish Origins of the Christmas Story

BELATEDLY FOR CHRISTMAS: The Jewish Origins of the Christmas Story (Amy-Jill Levine, TheTorah.com).

The narratives of Jesus’ conception and birth as presented in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke echo Jewish history and cite Jewish prophecy. In that sense, the Christmas story can be said to have Jewish origins.

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Hanukkah and Saturnalia?

BELATEDLY FOR HANUKKAH: Did Ancient Jews Change Hanukkah to One-Up the Competition? New research into the origins of Hanukkah shows that this joyful holiday developed and evolved alongside other gentile light-based festivals like Saturnalia (Candida Moss, The Daily Beast).

At the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature conference held in San Diego last month, Dr. Catherine Bonesho, an assistant professor in Early Judaism at UCLA, presented a paper on religious competition in the ancient world. In her research, Bonesho examined ancient traditions about Hanukkah preserved in the writings of rabbinic authors in order to see what ancient Jews thought the holiday was about. Bonesho told The Daily Beast that our traditions about Hanukkah started much later than most people know. After Josephus, “the ritual of lighting lamps does not appear in textual form until the Mishnah (200 CE), nor does the tradition of the miracle of oil appear until the Babylonian Talmud (edited between 5th-7th centuries CE),” Bonesho said.

For more Hanukkah-related legends, see the immediately preceding post here.

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Hasmonean essays from TheTorah.com

BELATEDLY FOR HANUKKAH: Channah, Daughter of Mattathias: Instigator of the Maccabean Rebellion (Prof.Rachel Adelman, TheTorah.com).

1 Maccabees recounts how Mattathias instigated a rebellion against the Greeks out of zealotry against Jewish idolatry. Later midrashim tell how Mattathias’ daughter Channah goaded her father and brothers into fighting the Greeks to protect her from being raped by the local governor.

Mariamme, the Last Hasmonean Princess (Dr.Malka Zeiger Simkovich, TheTorah.com).

The Hasmonean princess Mariamme is best known today for her tempestuous and doomed marriage to Herod the Great. During her lifetime, however, Mariamme was a Jewish celebrity in her own right. As a descendant of the Hasmonean family on both her maternal and paternal sides, Mariamme was the closest thing that Jews had to royalty.

For more on that disturbing legend involving Herod, his Hasmonean wife, and honey, see here, here, and here. And a couple of other posts involving the historical Mariamme (Mariamne, Marianne) are here and here.

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Vision, Narrative, and Wisdom in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran (Bundvad and Siegismund eds.)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Vision, Narrative, and Wisdom in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran

Essays from the Copenhagen Symposium, 14-15 August, 2017

Series:
Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, Volume: 131
Editors: Mette Bundvad and Kasper Siegismund

The Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran have attracted increasing interest in recent years. These texts predate the “sectarian” Dead Sea scrolls, and they are contemporary with the youngest parts of the Hebrew Bible. They offer a unique glimpse into the situation before the biblical canons were closed. Their highly creative Jewish authors reshaped and rewrote biblical traditions to cope with the concerns of their own time. The essays in this volume examine this fascinating ancient literature from a variety of different perspectives. The book grew out of an international symposium held at the University of Copenhagen in August 2017.

Hardback: €99.00/$119.00
E-Book: Open Access

E-Book
Status: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-41373-3
Publication Date: 24 Sep 2019

Hardback
Status: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-41370-2
Publication Date: 26 Nov 2019

I noted the CFP for the Copenhagen Symposium here. Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

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Geniza Fragments 78

GENIZA FRAGMENTS, the Newsletter of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library has published its October 2019 Issue. Topics include "The Genizah as an untapped source of Geonic responsa" and "The Sisters of Sinai in Jerusalem." For past posts on Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson, the "Sisters of Sinai," start with "The Incredible Lady Bible Hunters" of St Andrews! and follow the links.

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Children in the ANE

ANCIENT FAMILY: Children in the ancient Middle East were valued and vulnerable — not unlike children today (Shawn Flynn and Kristine Garroway, The Conversation). But for children today (thank goodness!), the child mortality rate is no longer 50%.

An informative, wide-ranging, popular article. I have noted Professor Garroway's work, including her book, Growing Up in Ancient Israel (SBL Press, 2018), here, here, here, here, and here.

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Christmas 2019

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all those celebrating!

This is a good opportunity to mention two New Books of seasonal interest, both from Wiqf and Stock (Cascade Imprint):

The Protevangelium of James
BY Lily C. Vuong

About

The Protevangelium of James tells stories about the life of the Virgin Mary that are absent from the New Testament Gospels: her miraculous birth to Anna and Joachim, her upbringing in the temple, and her marriage at the age of twelve to the aged widower Joseph. The text also adds significant details to the well-known stories of Jesus’ conception, birth, and escape from the slaughter of innocents perpetrated by Herod the Great. Despite its noncanonical status, the Protevangelium of James was extremely influential in churches of the East, and since its publication in the West in the sixteenth-century has captured the imagination of readers all over the world. This study edition presents a fresh, new translation of the text with cross-references, notes, and commentary. The extensive introduction makes accessible the most recent scholarship in studies on Mary in Christian apocrypha, offers new insights into the text’s provenance and relationship to Judaism, and discusses the text’s contributions to art and literature.


The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary
BY Brandon W. Hawk

About

The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew is one of the most important witnesses in Western Europe to apocryphal stories about the lives of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and Mary’s parents, Anna and Joachim. This apocryphon was also used as the basis for another, the Nativity of Mary, which gained equal popularity. As bestsellers of medieval Christianity, these Latin apocrypha are major witnesses to the explosion of extra-biblical literature in the Western Middle Ages. Despite their apocryphal status, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary proved influential throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, as their popularity and influences may be traced in Christian literature, visual arts, liturgy, and theological perspectives still revered by Roman Catholic theologians. These apocrypha also remain significant works for considering the history of monasticism and the cult of the Virgin Mary. This book draws upon a range of manuscript sources to present comprehensive English translations of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary with full introductions and commentaries, as well as translations of related works with accompanying commentaries.

Cross-file under New Testament Apocrypha Watch.

For posts of Christmas past, see my 2018 Christmas post and links. A Christmas-related post from the last year is here.

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Review of Ameling et al., Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae. Volume IV

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Walter Ameling, Hannah M. Cotton, Werner Eck, Avner Ecker, Benjamin Isaac, Alla Kushnir-Stein, Haggai Misgav, Jonathan Price, Peter Weiß and Ada Yardeni (ed.), Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae. Volume IV: Iudaea/Idumaea Part 1, 2649-3978. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. Pp. xxvi, 1580 (2 vols.). ISBN 9783110543643/4. $345.98. Reviewed by Benedikt Eckhardt, University of Edinburgh (b.eckhardt@ed.ac.uk).

It will not be necessary to once again sing the praise of the CIIP project as a whole; suffice it to point to the reviews of Volume I, II and III on this platform.1 However, Volume IV, covering Judea proper and Idumea, is exceptional even by CIIP standards: its 1580 pages require two separate books, and add more than 1300 items from 172 locations to the Corpus.

[...]

For more on the Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae (CIIP), including reviews of earlier volumes, see here and follow the links

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Biale, Gershom Scholem (in Hebrew)

NEW BOOK FROM MAGNES PRESS:

Gershom Scholem
Master of the Kabbalah

By: David Biale
Translation: Amotz Giladi

Synopsis
David Biale’s Gershom Scholem traces Scholem’s tumultumous life, tying together his scholarly studies with his political activism and cultural criticism. By mining a rich trove of diaries, letters and other writings, Biale shows how Scholem’s inner life must be understood as the necessary background to understanding his most important writings. Far from a dry, ivory-tower scholar, Scholem emerges as a passionately engaged man of his times, whose life encompassed the most significant events of the Jewish twentieth-century: World War I, the rise of Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust, and the creation of the state of Israel.

More details
Publisher: Magnes Press
Year: 2019
Catalog number: 45-531013
ISBN: 978-965-7008-31-7
Pages: 214
Language: Hebrew
Weight: 400 gr.
Cover: Paperback
Series: Bridges

For other recent books and posts on Scholem, the renowned twentieth-century scholar of Kabbalah, see here (cf. here) and links.

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Hanukkah 2019

HAPPY HANUKKAH (CHANUKKAH, CHANUKAH) to all those celebrating! The eight-day festival begins tonight at sundown.

Last year's Hanukkah post is here. It links to past Hanukkah posts with additional historical background. For PaleoJudaica posts in the last year that relate to Hanukkah, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (but I'm not sure why).

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Another review of Moss, Divine Bodies

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Candida R. Moss, Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp. 208. ISBN 9780300179767. $45.00. Reviewed by Harry O. Maier, Vancouver School of Theology (hmaier@vst.edu).

... Paul speaks of a glorified resurrected body, she succinctly summarizes, not a glorious one. Following Troels Engberg-Pedersen’s analysis of Stoic influences on Paul’s ideas, Moss agrees that Paul is talking of the (transformed) stuff of what resurrected bodies are made, not their qualities (p. 13). The script risks taking leave of the teachings of the apostle upon which it purports to rest: “Onto Paul’s assertion that the resurrected body will be heavenly, two thousand years of interpreters have mapped their own culturally informed values about bodily perfection” (p. 14). They have largely ignored what the New Testament sometimes does say about Jesus’ resurrected body as touchable, scarred, and perhaps hungry and thirsty. Moss seeks a complicated and non-systematic early Christian view of the resurrected body that attends to the hypothetical nature of early Christian speculation on the topic and its debt to larger currents of its cultural world.

I noted another review of the book here.

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Review of Moss, Divine Bodies

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity (Thomas McGlothlin).

Candida R. Moss. Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity. Yale University Press, 2019.

The conclusion:

This book raises an important question. If, according to Paul, resurrection involves transformation, and that transformation is for the better (at least for Christians), then by what standard—or, better, whose standard—is “better” defined? Moss does not argue that there can be no such standard beyond each individual’s own desires. Rather, she shows that, in the absence of a clear standard, the temptation to substitute culturally-conditioned standards that favor those high on cultural hierarchies, such as the wealthy and the able, is extremely powerful. This is an important caution.

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Ancient Judean Technology

ANCIENT HISTORY ENCYCLOPEDIA: Ancient Judean Technology (William Brown). The article deals with Town Planning & Urbanization, Industry, and Writing.

This is the same William Brown who runs the Biblical Review Blog, to which PaleoJudaica links from time to time.

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On the Gospel of Barnabas and Divine fibs

OVER AT THE ANXIOUS BENCH BLOG, Professor Philip Jenkins has returned to the apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas:

Nicodemus and the Secret Scriptures
For more on the Sacromonte lead plates (the fake lead books found in Granada, Spain, in the late sixteenth century), see the comments and links here.

Micaiah and Divine Deception. This post also has an interesting discussion of the awkward throne vision oracle in 1 Kings 22.

The Gospel of Barnabas is a medieval forgery, but for various reasons it has come up here before.

I noted an earlier post by Professor Jenkins on the Gospel of Barnabas here. And for other PaleoJudaica posts on it, see here and links.

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Jost, Communion with Angels in Earthly Worship

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Michael R. Jost. Engelgemeinschaft im irdischen Gottesdienst. Studien zu Texten aus Qumran und dem Neuen Testament. [Communion with Angels in Earthly Worship. Studies on Qumran and New Testament Texts.] 2019. XVI, 454 pages. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 505. 104,00 € including VAT. sewn paper ISBN 978-3-16-156740-7.

Published in German.
The motif of liturgical communion with angels appears in early Jewish and New Testament texts. Michael R. Jost offers the first exegetical analysis of all relevant passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament and places them within traditio-historical developments from the Hebrew Bible to rabbinical and patristic texts. By giving special consideration to the respective performances of liturgical texts, the author reconstructs each groups' experience of angelic communion. In his analysis of the liturgical communion of the yaḥad, Jost presents new insights not only for Qumran researchbut also for New Testament scholarship and the understanding of the early Christian communities and communal liturgies.

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Fish sauce and wine production at ancient Ashkelon

CULINARY ARCHAEOLOGY: Ancient Roman culinary preferences revealed in Ashkelon excavation (IAA press release, via Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

Archaeological excavations conducted by the IAA near Ashkelon uncovered an ancient industrial area with winepresses and rarely discovered installations for producing a popular fish sauce, the preparation of which involved strong odors.

​​(Communicated by the IAA Spokesperson)

Vats used to produce fish sauce (garum) that are among the few known in the Eastern Mediterranean, were recently uncovered by the Israel AntiquitiesAuthority in Ashkelon. The excavation, underwritten by the Municipality of Ashkelon and the Ashkelon Economic Co. in preparation for the establishment of the Eco-Sport Park, has revealed evidence of 2000-year old Roman and Byzantine culinary preferences. Youths of the Kibbutz Movement from Kibbutz Yad Mordecai and pupils from the Makif Vav middle school located next to the project participated in the excavation.

[...]

The Roman site was eventually abandoned but the conditions that favored viticulture remained and in the Byzantine period in the 5th c. CE a monastic community began to thrive there, making a living from wine production: three winepresses were built next to an elaborately decorated church. Little of the church has survived but architectural fragments found at the site show that it was decorated with impressive marble and mosaics. A large kiln complex was located nearby that produced wine jars. These appear to have been used for exporting wine, which was the primary income for the monastery.

[...]

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Cuneiform studies at Leiden University

Cuneiform reveals shared birthplace (Merijn Van Nuland, Leiden University/Phys.org).

However, the future is not always certain, says [Professor of Assyriology Caroline] Waerzeggers when we are back in her office. "A discussion is raging about whether Dutch universities offer too many small degree programs. And Assyriology of all programs is often used as the proverbial example of this. It sometimes seems as though people think we're odd bods or übernerds with no relevance to society. But cuneiform isn't a curio. It was used for longer than the current era."

A nice capsule history of Assyriology at Leiden University.

Every so often I like to link again to my 2010 post Why we need Akkadian (and the humanities!). This is a good excuse to do so. Other relevant posts are here and here.

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M Adryael Tong on circumcision as "bodily discourse"

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: “Given as a Sign”: Circumcision and Bodily Discourse (M Adryael Tong).

M Adryael Tong. “Given as a Sign”: Circumcision and Bodily Discourse in Late Antique Judaism and Christianity. Ph.D. Dissertation, Fordham University, 2019

The essay opens:

My dissertation argues that understanding circumcision as a bodily discourse, rather than exclusively as a bodily practice, illuminates a surprising number of similarities in early Christian and rabbinic Jewish texts, in addition to their often more obvious differences. Following an examination of circumcision discourse in Hebrew biblical and pre-rabbinic Jewish sources, I focus on three topics—genealogy, gender, and the composition of the body—wherein rabbinic and patristic authors discuss circumcision as a means to explore theological anthropology.

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Memorial service for Larry Hurtado

THE MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR LARRY HURTADO took place yesterday afternoon at St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh. Sarah Whittle and I were there, representing St Andrews.

The service was led by Jolyon Mitchell and Paul Foster, both colleagues of Larry at the Divinity School of the University of Edinburgh (New College). The opening reading was by Larry's granddaughter, Karina Hurtado-Cerasoli. There were memorials given by his son, Jesse Hurtado, his daughter, Tiffany Hurtado-Cerasoli, and his New College colleagues, Helen Bond and David Fergusson. His New College colleague Matt Novenson read an excerpt from the Preface to Larry's magnum opus, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (2003).

The music was lovely. A couple of the more ambitious hymns were led by Suzanne Butler, the Director of Music at Larry's church, St James Scottish Episcopal Church in Leith.

The service was well attended. Many of Larry's colleagues and friends came from around Scotland. I saw some from as far away as Durham, Manchester, and Chester. Many others from around the world who could not attend sent in their condolences and good wishes.

It was a moving goodbye to Larry. I think he would have been pleased.

Background here and links.

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Coptic manuscripts, published or with problems

VARIANT READINGS: Recently Emerged Coptic Manuscripts of Dubious Origins: A Working List (Brent Nongbri). The list includes Old Testament, New Testament, Patristic, and documentary texts.

This is a follow-up to Dr. Nongbri's post, The Coptic Material from Oxyrhynchus from November. This list includes Old Testament, New Testament, NT Apocryphal, Classical, other literary, magical, and documentary material.

Cross file under Coptic Watch.

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A visit to the "real" Bethsaida?

HOLY LAND PHOTOS' BLOG: A Visit to the “real” Bethsaida — el-Araj (Carl Rasmussen). As usual, with some nice photos.

I take no position on whether ancient Bethsaida was at the site of el-Araj or et-Tell. But Carl has an opinion. For past PaleoJudaica posts on Bethsaida and both sites, start here and follow the links.

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

Classical vs. Late Biblical Hebrew

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Biblical Hebrew Phases: A Case Study. (Ronald S. Hendel and Jan Joosten).

The contrast between Classical and Late Biblical Hebrew is best illustrated by juxtaposing two extracts of biblical prose narrative, one from each corpus.

It is a challenge to make this case in a popular essay using very little Hebrew. But I think Hendel and Joosten do a pretty good job.

See here for another brief presentation of their case, which is given fully in their book, How Old Is the Hebrew Bible? A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study (Yale University Press, 2018). For more online discussion and reviews, start here and follow the links.

Cross-file under Philology.

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Judean coins in Wacks collection going on auction

NUMISMATICS: Wacks Collection Includes Rare Roman Related Judaean Coins (Goldberg Auctioneers, CoinWeek). The auction takes place in New York on 14-16 January 2020. As always, I hope that the collectors who buy them will make them available to scholars for study. Meanwhile, this article has some photos and descriptions of the coins, which are of interest for the study of ancient Judaism.

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Burke's SBL diary

OVER AT THE APOCRYPHYCITY BLOG, Tony Burke has published his annual SBL diary in three parts:

2019 SBL Diary: Day One. In all three posts, Tony mostly reports on the Christian Apocrypha sessions. But he also has a paragraph in this post on the Postmortem on the So-called First-Century Mark Fragment session. More on that here.

2019 SBL Diary: Day Two. For more on M. R. James and his ghost stories and his apocrypha, start here (cf. here) and follow the many links.

2019 SBL Diary: Day 3. In which Tony consumes "edibles," because California.

Cross-file under New Testament Apocrypha Watch and #AARSBL19.

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Review of Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (Jennifer Quigley).

Paula Fredriksen. Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017

I noted an earlier review of the book here.

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Fourth-century church excavated in Aksum

ARCHAEOLOGY: Buried Christian (and Pagan) Basilica Discovered in Ethiopia's 'Lost Kingdom' of Aksum (Tom Metcalfe, Live Science).

"The basilica that we have found is quite important," Harrower said. "There have been other fourth-century basilicas that are known, but most of them were discovered a long time ago and some of them just without a lot of artifacts or information to be had."

In contrast, the early church at Beta Samati holds a trove of ancient artifacts, including early Christian religious artifacts, bronze coins, clay figurines and large pottery amphoras that were used to store either imported wine or olive oil.

"This is telling you that whoever is using this basilica has access to imported luxury trade goods and is quite interconnected into the ancient world and the trade networks," he said.

Some of the ancient bronze coins from the basilica confirmed its age: A coin from the early reign of Aksum's fourth-century King Ezana is decorated with a crescent moon symbolic of the southern Arabian god Almaqah, Harrower said.

Aksum (Axum) has a number of legendary and historical connections with ancient Judaism and early Christianity. I have summarized them here with links. More recent posts on Aksum are here and links.

The following detail in this article caught my eye:

One of the most striking finds is a black stone pendant, decorated with a Christian cross and the motto "venerable" in Ethiopia's ancient Ge'ez script. "This is about the size that you could hang around your neck," he said, "so maybe a priest would have worn this."

The ancient Jewish books of 1 Enoch and Jubilees survive complete only in translations in the ancient Ethiopic language Ge'ez. I do not know Ge'ez, so I can't comment authoritatively. But I do know that a fourth-century inscription in Ge'ez is quite early. The earliest manuscripts in Ge'ez, the Garima Gospels, date from the fourth to seventh centuries. All other manuscripts in Ge'ez come from many centuries later.

This pendant only has one word on it, but it sounds like an exciting discovery.

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Report on the SBL "First Century Mark" Session

VARIANT READINGS: Recap of the SBL “First Century Mark” Session (Brent Nongbri). For background on this rather complicated story and its ramifications, see here and many links. I have not been directly involved with it and I take no position on the various claims and accusations. I keep up with the story for your information. You decide what to make of it.

I am still looking for reports on #AARSBL19 sessions relevant to the interests of PaleoJudaica. If you have written one or found one, please drop me a note.

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Masada essays in the JP

MASADA WATCH: In anticipation of Hanukkah, the Jerusalem Post has published four essays on Masada:

The symbol of Masada. The adoption of Masada as a modern symbol for the State of Israel, however, is controversial because of what Josephus wrote took place there. (Steve Linde). Introductory to the other three.

Masada and Jewish heroism: A new perspective. The most important question is why the Jews at Masada stopped fighting (Moshe Dann). Most of this essay is behind the subscription wall.

The fall of Masada. Two thousand years ago, 967 Jewish men, women and children reportedly chose to take their own lives rather than suffer enslavement or death at the hands of the Roman army (Jodi Magness). For more on Professor Magness's recent book, Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (Princeton University Press, 2019), see here and here. And for many other posts on the history and archaeology of, and revisionist views on, Masada, follow the links at the latter post.

Masada and its scrolls. Masada was first built as a fortress by a Hasmonean priest Jonathan, either the brother of Judah the Maccabee (152–143 BCE) or Alexander Janneus (103–76 BCE) (Lawrence H. Schiffman). Professor Schiffman is a prominent specialist on the Dead Sea Scrolls. I link to his his blog from time to time.

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Nazoreans (and Nazareth) and Enochic Judaism?

THE RELIGION PROF BLOG: Nazoreans and Enochic Judaism at #AARSBL19. There are many interesting blog posts on the goings on at the AAR/SBL meeting in San Diego last month. This one by James McGrath caught my eye. If I get around to it, maybe I will link to some others.

Cross-file under Mandean (Mandaean) Watch.

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Sabar, Veritas

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM DOUBLEDAY:

Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife Hardcover – August 11, 2020
by Ariel Sabar (Author)

Kindle
$15.50

Hardcover
$29.95

From National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Ariel Sabar, the gripping true story of a sensational religious forgery and the scandal that engulfed Harvard.

In 2012, Dr. Karen King, a star professor at Harvard Divinity School, announced a blockbuster discovery at a scholarly conference just steps from the Vatican: She had found an ancient fragment of papyrus in which Jesus calls Mary Magdalene "my wife." The tattered manuscript made international headlines. If early Christians believed Jesus was married, it would upend the 2,000-year history of the world's predominant faith, threatening not just the celibate, all-male priesthood but sacred teachings on marriage, sex and women's leadership. Biblical scholars were in an uproar, but King had impeccable credentials as a world-renowned authority on female figures in the lost Christian texts from Egypt known as the Gnostic gospels. "The Gospel of Jesus's Wife"--as she provocatively titled her discovery--was both a crowning career achievement and powerful proof for her arguments that Christianity from its start embraced alternative, and far more inclusive, voices.

As debates over the manuscript's authenticity raged, award-winning journalist Ariel Sabar set out to investigate a baffling mystery: where did this tiny scrap of papyrus come from? His search for answers is an international detective story--leading from the factory districts of Berlin to the former headquarters of the East German Stasi before winding up in rural Florida, where he discovered an internet pornographer with a prophetess wife, a fascination with the Pharaohs and a tortured relationship with the Catholic Church.

VERITAS is a tale of fierce intellectual rivalries at the highest levels of academia, a piercing psychological portrait of a disillusioned college dropout whose life had reached a breaking point, and a tragedy about a brilliant scholar handed an ancient papyrus that appealed to her greatest hopes for Christianity--but forced a reckoning with fundamental questions about the nature of truth and the line between faith and reason.

Available for pre-order.

I noted Mr. Sabar's important 2016 article in the Atlantic on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife here. And for some follow-up, see here. This book on the same story is coming out in August of next year.

For many, many other posts on the GJW, see here and links. My first post on the subject, back in 2012, is here. And for more on Ariel Sabar's other work, see here and links.

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Review of Aufrecht, A Corpus of Ammonite Inscriptions (2nd ed.)

THE BIBLICAL REVIEW BLOG: Review: “A Corpus of Ammonite Inscriptions, Second Edition” by Walter E. Aufrecht (William Brown). Cross-file under Northwest Semitic Epigraphy.

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Scroll residue in a Dead Sea jar lid?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Decayed Papyrus Hints that More Dead Sea Scrolls Remain. Analysis of a jar lid from the region suggests it once held one or more scrolls (Jonathan Laden).

A few thoughts.

Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written on parchment (animal skin), not papyrus (crushed reed). A jar containing papyrus documents would be unusual, but entirely possible. A reed mat was also found in Cave 10. Just to be difficult, I wonder if we can rule out the possibility that the jar held another reed mat.

The jar lid is unprovenanced. John Allegro bought it. He concluded that it was from a Qumran cave, but not from one of the eleven that we already knew held scrolls. Could be. But I would keep an open mind about its provenance.

As Professor Taylor says in a comment to the DQCAAS article, this find doesn't necessarily imply that more scrolls remain. Just that some once did, but they are now decayed and gone.

For hope of finding more scrolls (possibly very early ones) see here and links. It seems unlikely. But I am an optimist.

Cross-file under Ancient Material Culture and Techology Watch.

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Babylon now

TWO NEW PHOTO ESSAYS cover current conditions in the ancient city of Babylon:

Inside the Abandoned Babylon That Saddam Hussein Built. “If I could, I would go without shoes here, because it’s a holy place,” says a guide to the ancient site (Pesha Magid, Atlas Obscura)

FIT FOR A TYRANT. Inside abandoned Babylon built by Saddam Hussein who thought he was reincarnation of ancient king Nebuchadnezzar (Nicola Stow, The Sun)

The first story has better text and the second better photos. The second seems to be inspired by the first.

One of the first PaleoJudaica posts, way back in 2003, dealt with some related themes: SADDAM AND NEBUCHADNEZZAR. Unfortunately, none of the links remain active. So much the durability of the Internet. Clay tablets had their virtues. The posts here and here are also relevant.

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Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day 2019

IT'S THAT DAY AGAIN: Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day. Have fun, but be good.

One of the original announcements, with some instructions, is here. The Twitter hashtag is #PretendToBeATimeTravelerDay.

Past posts on the day and related are here (first post) and here and links.

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Bonesho on foreign holidays in rabbinic literature

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Foreign Holidays and Festivals as Representative of Identity in Rabbinic Literature: a Dissertation Spotlight (Catherine Bonesho).

Catherine Bonesho, “Foreign Holidays and Festivals as Representative of Identity in Rabbinic Literature” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2018).

Excerpt:

... I argue that rabbinic discussions of foreign holidays show three primary interests. First, interactions with non-Jews on foreign holidays were prohibited because of the prohibition against idolatry. Second, the rabbis allowed for some interactions with non-Jews in order to benefit from involvement in the imperial economy. Thirdly, and most prominently, through tales about the various origins of Roman holidays, the rabbis used holidays to simultaneously index the identities of Self and Other.

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Ancient Jordanian rock art

NABATEAN (NABATAEAN) WATCH: In Jordan’s desert, ancient rock art finds modern defenders (Taylor Luck, Christian Science Monitor).

The carvings of Wadi Rum are as diverse as the history of these rugged sandy crossroads between Arabia, the Mediterranean, and North Africa.

Much of the art and inscriptions are in Thamudic, or Safaitic; the script, of Bedouin tribes who lived in northern Arabia over 3,000 years ago, a presumed precursor to Arabic and Aramaic.

Then came the Nabataeans, who built an empire from their third-century B.C. capital of Petra, and carved pictures and script in their own language that derived from Thamudic.

Cliff walls here also include messages and Koranic verses in Kufic – an early Arabic script. Then there are the primitive petroglyphs, stick men, women, animals and undecipherable symbols that predate all those civilizations by thousands of years.

For more on the ancient North Arabian dialects as well as on the Nabatean language, see here (cf. here) and follow the links.

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