I didn't have high expectations when I started reading this piece. But once I started, I couldn't stop. It is actually quite a good summary of the books of 1-2-3 Enoch by someone who has read them carefully.
The essay does concentrate on the weird and lurid aspects of the books. But that adds up to summarizing their main points. Worth a read.
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Dr Clint Burnett is Lecturer of New Testament at Johnson University in Knoxville, Tennessee USA, and has just published Studying the NT Through Inscriptions: An Introduction (Hendrickson, 2020), and I had previously heard him present some of his research at the annual Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) conference. I asked him about his research, and why inscriptions provide important practical information in reading the New Testament.I have corrected the dead link to the book title. Cross-file under New Book.
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A wife who intervenes in a fight to save her husband by grabbing his opponent’s testicles is punished by having her hand cut off (Deut 25:11–12). What is the nature of her offense? Why isn’t her intent to save her husband a mitigating factor? What is the relationship between the punishment and the crime?
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All of that said, I’m a scholar—in particular, one who works with literary criticism and textual criticism—so I am compelled to pore over Sabar’s book and find problems, inconsistencies, and errors of fact. Maybe this is just my defensive reaction to his attack on “elite” scholarship, or more specifically, his unfavorable depiction of one of our own (Karen King, well-regarded for her work on the Gospel of Mary and her book What is Gnosticism?); maybe I just need a break from trying to figure out how to teach my courses over Zoom. Regardless, for anyone interested, here are some of my thoughts on Veritas.
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Melvin Sensenig
Jehoiachin and his Oracle
A Jeremianic Scribal Framework for the End of the Deuteronomistic History
Series: Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures and its Contexts, 31
Gorgias Press | 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463240448
£89.00 PDF
FORMATS
ISBN: 978-1-4632-4044-8
Published: 15 Jan 2020
OVERVIEW
King Jehoiachin, the last Judahite king exiled to Babylon, became the focus of conflicting hopes and fears about a revived Davidic kingship after the exile. As Sensenig demonstrates, this conflict stemmed from a drastic oracle from Jeremiah that seemed to categorically reject Jehoiachin, while the canon records that he not only survived but thrived in exile.
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NE: You are absolutely right. Coins are magnificent objects. They often bear the portrait of a certain ruler and we can frequently associate them with specific events and vibrant periods of history. When holding an ancient coin, you think not only about the imagery on it and what it meant in the social and political contexts at the time it was struck, but you also think about the lives of those who handled them thousands of years ago, who they were, and what they thought about those images on the coins that are so intriguing—but foreign—to us today. I understand the allure.
The answer to those questions we like to speculate about when holding a coin can only be answered by attention to context. ...
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Humanity has confronted pandemic events many times before. An examination of our current state through a historical lens can perhaps offer us another adjective: hopeful.There are various stories of plagues in the Bible, but this article does not cover them. It limits itself to plagues in antiquity for which we have eyewitness accounts. The essay doesn't have a direct connection to ancient Judaism. But I note it for its relevance to current events.
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Published in English.William A. Ross also celebrates the volume's publication here. Some years ago I noted a prequel volume here.
The Hebrew Bible has played an important part in the development of Western culture. However, its central ideas – such as monotheism, the demythologization of nature or the linearity of time – had to be taken out of the national and linguistic milieu in which they had developed if they were to to become fertile on a wider scale. They also needed to be rendered palatable to a mentality that had experienced the scientific, rationalist revolution prepared by the Greeks. The Septuagint – the oldest Greek translation of the Jewish Bible, produced over the third and second centuries BC – is the first important step in this process of acculturation.
Over the last twenty years the Septuagint has come out of the shadow of its Hebrew source. Historians of Judaism, linguists, and biblical scholars have come to view the Septuagint as a significant document in its own right. As the discoveries in Qumran have shown, the Hebrew source text of the Septuagint was not identical to the traditional text received by the synagogue (the Masoretic Text). Also, the translators appear to have taken a degree of liberty in interpreting the text. Dominique Barthélemy used the term 'aggiornamento': the Septuagint is a kind of update of the Jewish scriptures.
This large-scale collective and interdisciplinary project aims to produce a new research tool: a multi-volume dictionary providing a comprehensive article (around 500 articles in all) for each important word or word group of the Septuagint. Filling an important gap in the fields of ancient philology and religious studies, the dictionary is based on original research of the highest scientific level.
The dictionary will be published in English. The first volume contains over 160 articles on words with the letters Alpha to Gamma.
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“The Talmud is the central pillar of Jewish knowledge, important for the overall understanding of what is Jewish,” Rabbi Steinsaltz once told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But it is a book that Jews cannot understand. This is a dangerous situation, like a collective amnesia. I tried to make pathways through which people will be able to enter the Talmud without encountering impassable barriers. It’s something that will always be a challenge, but I tried to make it at least possible.”Background here and here.
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Before writing my doctoral thesis two decades ago, the only Pella that I knew about was a small town in south central Iowa famous for its windows and doors. But in the course of my research, I discovered fascinating data about another Pella located in the Perean foothills of the Jordan River. In March I finally had the opportunity to visit the Pella located in northwestern Jordan.I lived for several years in that Pella in Iowa. It's a nice town. I haven't visited the ancient Pella, but you can learn more about it at the link.
[...]
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Not everyone is convinced. Some believe that it is indeed a message between two lovers, others that is more like a playful love poem. Others claim that the writer was a sex worker, sarcastically warning a client to come back and pay her.Inscriptions involving people's private affairs are typically very hard to understand. Inevitably, much background is unstated. That is one reason why ancient letters (epistles) are difficult to decipher.
CORRECTION: Apart from a few Greek letters and numbers, those bullae were uninscribed. But another excavation at Maresha did produce a lot of Aramaic ostraca.
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Some of the oracles sound bizarre, but not too bad. Others are just bizarre. On "the end of days":
- Engineered programmed AI by feeding it the entire King James Bible
- The system, dubbed 'AI Jesus,' has produced 30,000 words as of yet
- The AI wrote about three topics: 'the plague,' Caesar' and 'the end of days'
- Although much of the text resembles that of the bible there are many glitches
And the AI gave its own take on the topic.Why, you ask, is PaleoJudaica devoting a post to this nonsense? Because the name of the engineer caught my attention. The article names him as "George Durendal."‘And he that was dead, the servant of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, speak unto you all that dwell in the wilderness and they shall be saved by the border of the LORD and his priests and his sons, and on the seven lambs, and of the seven places of the beast, and the other on the sabbath days.
But again, throughout the text a number of glitches appear such as:‘And when he was come into the house of God, which said unto the chief captain, and the gates of the brook, and the priests, and the fat that was made priest, and there was given him a wife, and his work was cast into the sea.’
Alert readers will notice that the surname is the name of Count Roland's sword in the Crusader-era chansons de geste. It may be a surname too. I don't know.
But at the bottom of the article the link gives the name "George Davila." That is the name used on the project's GitHub website. His profile link gives all three names. Perhaps Durendal is a pen name. I don't know.
As far as I know, the author is no relation. But I couldn't resist reading about his computer-generated revelations. Now you can too.
Mr. Davila Durendal's project is entertaining. And some of the other apocryphal scriptures, and even some biblical passages, are nearly as incoherent. But I think the Bible is safe from competition from AI scriptures for now.
Cross-file under Just For Fun.
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The body of an executed criminal is hanged but must be buried on the same day, כִּי קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים תָּלוּי, “because a hanged body is a cursing of God” (Deut 21:23). What does this phrase mean?
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But rather than focus solely on cognition, I wanted to emphasize the embodied role of the ritual expert. This inspired me to bring incantation bowls into the classroom.For many PaleoJudaica posts on Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls, see here and links, here, and here. For another make-your-own project involving such bowls, see here
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Deuteronomy promises the Israelites that God will continue sending prophets “like Moses.” But if the Torah’s legislation cannot be adjusted, what is the role of later prophets? And how can all the changes to Torah law made by the rabbis be justified?
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The Fascination, Challenges, and Joys of Being a Historian of Ancient Israelite ReligionCross-file under New Book.
What is entailed in writing a history of ancient Israelite religion? How might the concept of divinity be used as an organizing principle to explore the wide variety of religious experiences? What skill-set is needed for such an undertaking, and what is the nature of our dataset? What can we conclude with any confidence when we acknowledge that we stand at such a vast distance?
See Also: The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Theodore J. Lewis
Blum-Iwry Professor of Near Eastern Studies
Johns Hopkins University
August 2020
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The Cave 3 Copper Scroll: A Symbolic JourneyFor many, many PaleoJudaica posts on the mysterious Copper Scroll, start here and just follow those links.
Series:
Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, Volume: 132
Author: Jesper Høgenhaven
In The Cave 3 Copper Scroll: A Symbolic Journey, Jesper Høgenhavn presents a reading of the Copper Scroll as a literary text. For more than 60 years, scholars have debated whether or not the treasures recorded here reflect historical realities. This study argues that the dichotomy between “facts” and “fiction” is inadequate for a proper understanding of the Copper Scroll. The document was designed to convey specific images to its readers, thus staying true to the format of an instruction for retrieving hidden treasures. Yet, the evoked landscape is dense with symbolical associations, and the journey through it reflects deliberate narrative patterns. The scroll was written against the background of the social and political turmoil of Jewish Palestine in the 1st century CE, and reflects contemporary concerns and interests.
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E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-42958-1
Publication Date: 13 Jul 2020
Hardback
Availability: Not Yet Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-42855-3
Publication Date: 19 Aug 2020
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Ahab’s 400 court prophets all assure him that he will defeat Aram, but the prophet Micaiah tells him that these prophets are being enticed by a lying spirit, sent by YHWH himself, for the purpose of destroying Ahab. If Ahab had been willing to face his own position vis-a-vis God honestly, he would have known who was telling the truth.
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Published in English.
Recent scholarship on the history of the biblical canons has increasingly recognised that the Jewish and Christian Bibles were not formed independently of each other but amid controversial debate and competition. But what does it mean that the formation of the Christian Bible cannot be separated from the developments that led to the Jewish Bible? The articles in this collection start with the assumption that the authorization of writings had already begun in Israel and Judaism before the emergence of Christianity and was continued in the first centuries CE by Judaism and Christianity in their respective ways. They deal with a broad range of sources, such as writings which came to be part of the Hebrew Bible, literature from Qumran, the Septuagint, or early Jewish apocalypses. At the same time they deal, for example, with structures of authorization related to New Testament writings, examine the role of authoritative texts in so-called Gnostic schools, and discuss the authority of late antique apocryphal literature.
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The Early Middle AgesThe volume focuses on Christian women and Christian reception, but it includes an article by Martha Himmelfarb on "The Virgin Mary and Ancient Jewish Literature."
Franca Ela Consolino (Editor), Judith Herrin (Editor)
ISBN 9781589835757
Status Available
Price: $59.00
Binding Paperback
Publication Date July 2020
Pages 420
Examine the creative, profound dialogue between medieval women and biblical traditions
The latest volume in the Bible and Women series examines the relationship between women and the Bible’s reception during the early Middle Ages (500–1100 CE) in both the Greek East and the Latin West. Essays focus on interactions between women and the Bible through biblical precepts on women and for women, biblical women as the subjects of action or objects of discussion, and writings by women that refer to the Bible as a moral authority. The women discussed in the volume range from the well-known—including the nuns Kassia in Byzantium and Hrosvita in the West; the aristocrat Dhuoda, author of a moral guide for her son; Gisela, the sister of Charlemagne and abbess of Chelles; and her niece Rotrude—to those who remain anonymous. Contributions also explore how the Old and New Testaments exercised influence on emerging Islam.
Features:
- Analysis of images of the Virgin Mary as a means of tracing the spread of her cult and feast days from East to West
- Exploration of the significance of classical culture for medieval women who composed poems for a Christian audience
- Evaluation of art as a means of establishing devotional relationships not necessarily mediated by the voices of preachers or the reading of texts
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Ilana Pardes. The Song of Songs: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. 296 pp. $24.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-691-14606-5.
Reviewed by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (Eastern University)
Published on H-Judaic (August, 2020)
Commissioned by Barbara Krawcowicz (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
... Pardes does not adhere to the over‐ simplified historical narrative that the Song began as a collection of literal love poems and was then subjected to allegorical readings by well-meaning (but misled) Jewish and Christian interpreters until intrepid nineteenth- and twentieth-century schol‐ ars recovered its (original) literal meaning from beneath layers of sacred accretions. Instead, she demonstrates that the line demarcating literal and allegorical readings of the Song has always been ambiguous.
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Gnostic CounterculturesI noted the 2015 conference here and the publication of the 2016 Gnosis volume here.
Terror and Intrigue
Editors: April DeConick and Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta
In Gnostic Countercultures, fourteen scholars investigate countercultural aspects associated with the gnostic which is broadly conceived with reference to the claim to have special knowledge of the divine, which either transcends or transgresses conventional religious knowledge. The papers explore the concept of the gnostic in Western culture from the ancient world to the modern New Age. Contributors trace the emergence, persistence, and disappearance of gnostic religious currents that are perceived to be countercultural, inverted, transgressive and/or subversive in their relationship to conventional religions and their claims to knowledge. The essays represent a selection of the papers delivered at the international congress Gnostic Countercultures: Terror and Intrigue convened at Rice University, March 26-28, 2015. The essays were originally published in Gnosis 1.1-2 (2016) and are available for the first time under separate cover.
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Paperback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-43698-5
Publication Date: 23 Jul 2020
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Martin Worthington, Ea's duplicity in the Gilgamesh flood story. The ancient word. London; New York: Routledge, 2019. xxxii, 489 p.. ISBN 9781138388925 $140.00.PaleoJudaica has posted many times on Gilgamesh, his Epic, and his importance for the study of ancient Judaism. See here and follow the links for many posts. Also, here, here and links, and here.
Review by
Andrea Seri, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. andreaseri@ffyh.unc.edu.ar
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Deuteronomy’s requirement to destroy a city whose inhabitants worship another god and to leave it as an eternally desolate mound, can be understood in the context of ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties. Specifically, Hittite texts describe how kings dealt with rebellious vassal cities, by destroying them utterly and dedicating their land to the gods.
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Published in English.
J. Thomas Hewitt examines Paul's development and uses of the expression »in Christ,« or »in messiah,« with reference to conventions of ancient Jewish messiah discourse. While messiah speculation in antiquity does not evince a widespread, coherent messianic ideology, ancient Jewish messiah texts do share a common trait – the creative reappropriation of scripture for portraying messiahs. Ancient Jewish messiah discourse is thus both traditional, being shaped by the idioms and imagery of scripture, and innovative, as those materials are recast in novel depictions and expressions. As a participant in this interpretative enterprise, Paul found resources in scriptural traditions concerning Abraham's seed and Daniel's heavenly man for generating his own distinctive conceptions of messiahship, conceptions he often articulated with his hallmark expression »in Christ.«
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This is a developing list of open access journals currently reviewing papers for publication. It is intended to offer opportunities for scholars interested in publishing openly. ...Chuck Jones has compiled a very long list.
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Rahab: Between Faith and Works
Although widely viewed, especially by its Christian interpreters, as scripture for an emerging religious sect, the Hebrew Bible has, I maintain, a much more ambitious agenda, serving as the blueprint for a new kind of nationhood. The New Testament authors adopted and adapted this blueprint in keeping with their own interest in creating a spiritual community of faith. To state the difference simply: The Hebrew Bible is a project of creating one nation, while the New Testament is a project of creating a community whose members hail from all nations. Likewise, the Hebrew Bible is about creating an identity that is capable of withstanding national defeat, while the New Testament is about creating an identity capable of withstanding Jesus’s death and delayed return.
See Also: War, Memory, and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
By Jacob L. Wright
Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible
Emory University
August 2020
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Published in English.
A constant re-evaluation of the new archaeological and textual material unearthed and edited in recent decades is a recurrent duty of ancient and modern scholars. Since the overwhelming amount of available data and the complexity of new methodologies can be competently handled only by specialized scholars, such a re-evaluation is no longer possible for a single scholar. For this reason, archaeologists, cuneiform and biblical scholars as well as classicists joined forces at an international conference in Rome in May 2017 to share their accumulated knowledge. The results of the proceedings are presented here in the oral stage along with the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Greco-Roman periods.
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The Agrarian Priesthood of Second Temple JudaismI noted the publication of the book here.
Most Judean priests of the Second Temple period lived dispersed throughout the region, coming to Jerusalem for weekly service periods throughout the year. The patterns of social and economic interaction that governed their relationships with villagers resulted from the failures of the temple to adequately provide for them, pushing them into land ownership. The biblical ideal of a priesthood free from the responsibilities of the farming life or working as if in quarantine within the confines of the sacred precinct in the city gives a false impression. These priests were fully entrenched in the Judean landscape.
See Also: Land and Temple: Field Sacralization and the Agrarian Priesthood of Second Temple Judaism. Studia Judaica 87 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2020).
By Benjamin D. Gordon
Department of Religious Studies
University of Pittsburgh
August 2020
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Matthew within Judaism: Israel and the Nations in the First Gospel
Anders Runesson (Editor), Daniel M. Gurtner (Editor)
ISBN 9781628372779
Status Available
Price: $77.00
Binding Paperback
Publication Date July 2020
Pages 600
In this collection of essays, leading New Testament scholars reassess the reciprocal relationship between Matthew and Second Temple Judaism. Some contributions focus on the relationship of the Matthean Jesus to torah, temple, and synagogue, while others explore theological issues of Jewish and gentile ethnicity and universalism within and behind the text.
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Published in English.
In this volume, Francesco Arena investigates false prophecy and prophetic conflicts, taking Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Micah as the three books in the Bible most concerned with prophesying falsehood and false prophets. By building on the studies of G. Auld, R. Carroll, and G. Garbini, who first posited that the Writing Prophets were not prophets at all, but rather intellectuals or poets, the author puts the vexed question of false prophecy into a new perspective. If we accept that Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Micah were not originally true prophets (or prophets at all) what should we do with their quarrels with the alleged false prophets? Can we still consider prophetic conflicts as expressions of a socio-religious phenomenon? Or should we instead consider them as some later creations to serve ideological purposes?
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I asked Sabar some questions with a view to posting them this morning when the book became available to the public, to highlight why academics should read it, since I have no real doubt that the public in general will do so.Background on Sabar's new book and on the long story of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is here and many links.
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The Judeo-Christian God on ScreenI noted a review of the book here.
How do filmmakers go about depicting God on screen? How does one present a non-anthropomorphic god in the visual medium while still maintaining his lack of physicality? Although Christianity does allow for an element of anthropomorphism in the figure of Jesus, the issue is not without complication, for it necessitates making visually clear the idea that this is a divinity made flesh. A range of techniques has been used to show both God and Jesus over the years, with some fascinating changes in the portrayal of these figures on screen in recent depictions.
See Also: Screening Divinity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
By Lisa Maurice
Associate Professor
Department of Classical Studies
July 2020
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Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Mighty BaalCongratulations to Professor Smith!
Essays in Honor of Mark S. Smith
Series: Harvard Semitic Studies, Volume: 66
Editors: Stephen C. Russell and Esther J. Hamori
Mighty Baal: Essays in Honor of Mark S. Smith is the first edited collection devoted to the study of the ancient Near Eastern god Baal. Although the Bible depicts Baal as powerless, the combined archaeological, iconographic, and literary evidence makes it clear that Baal was worshipped throughout the Levant as a god whose powers rivalled any deity. Mighty Baal brings together eleven essays written by scholars working in North America, Europe, and Israel. Essays in part one focus on the main collection of Ugaritic tablets describing Baal’s exploits, the Baal Cycle. Essays in part two treat Baal’s relationships to other deities. Together, the essays offer a rich portrait of Baal and his cult from a variety of methodological perspectives.
The Harvard Semitic Studies series publishes volumes from the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East. Other series offered by Brill that publish volumes from the Museum include Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant and Harvard Semitic Monographs, https://hmane.harvard.edu/publications.
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E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-43767-8
Publication Date: 13 Jul 2020
Hardback
Availability: Not Yet Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-43766-1
Publication Date: 16 Jul 2020
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JERUSALEM, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Israeli archaeologists have discovered an ancient stone table with decorations on its side, the Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank said Thursday.So we now know that it is a decorated stone table.
[...]
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Tibåt MårqeCross-file under Samaritan Watch
The Ark of Marqe Edition, Translation, Commentary
Series: Studia Samaritana, 9
Edited by: Abraham Tal
De Gruyter | 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110436433
From £109.00
FORMATS
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-3-11-044232-8
Published: 21 Oct 2019
ISBN: 978-3-11-043643-3
Published: 21 Oct 2019
EPUB
ISBN: 978-3-11-043484-2
Published: 15 Jan 2021
OVERVIEW
Tibåt Mårqe is a collection of midrashic compositions, which, in the main, rewrites the Pentateuch, expanding its sometimes laconic presentation of events and precepts. Most of it aims at providing the reader with theological, didactic and philosophical teachings, artistically associated with the passages of the Torah. Here and there poetic pieces are embedded into its otherwise prosaic text. Tibåt Mårqe is attributed to the 4th century scholar, philosopher and poet, Mårqe. This publication of Tibåt Mårqe follows the monumental Hebrew edition of Ze’ev Ben-Hayyim, Tibåt Mårqe, a Collection of Samaritan Midrashim (Jerusalem 1988), based on a 16th century manuscript. Though he recognized the precedence of an earlier manuscript, dated to the 14th century, Ben-Hayyim was compelled to prefer the former, given the fragmentary state of the latter. He printed its fragments in parallel with the younger one, to which his annotations and discussions chiefly pertain. With the recent discovery of a great portion of the missing parts of the 14th century manuscript, this edition endeavors to present the older form of the composition. The present book may be relevant to people interested in literature,language, religion, and Samaritan studies.
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James K. Aitken, James Carleton Paget, The Jewish-Greek tradition in antiquity and the Byzantine Empire. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. xxii, 359 p.. ISBN 9781107001633 $112.00.
Review by
Robert A. Kraft, Emeritus University of Pennsylvania. kraft@sas.upenn.edu
[...]
Despite such caveats, this is an excellent work, highly recommended to serious students of the subjects covered. That it is not perfect is no surprise, but many of the shortcomings can be overcome by informed/experienced use of the internet. It greatly advances our knowledge, and suggests many new avenues to explore.
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Johannine Christology
Series: Johannine Studies, Volume: 3
Editors: Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts
Johannine Christology provides a snapshot of the foremost investigations of this important topic by a selection of scholars representing a range of expertise in this field. The volume is organized into four major parts, which are concerned with the formation of Johannine Christology, Johannine Christology in Hellenistic and Jewish contexts, Christology and the literary character of the Johannine writings, and the application of Christology for the Johannine audience and beyond.
The fifteen contributors to this volume comprise an international set of Johannine scholars who explore various ways of both describing and then pursuing the implications of Johannine Christology. Their contributions focus primarily upon the Gospel, but involve other key texts as well.
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E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-43561-2
Publication Date: 13 Jul 2020
Hardback
Availability: Not Yet Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-42736-5
Publication Date: 16 Jul 2020
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
“Archaeology is not just an academic issue, it has to be part of the society, of the heritage, of the city’s life,” he concluded. “I think the way people are looking at it is completely changing.”
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
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While drafting the syllabus of my course “Death and Afterlife in Early Judaism and Christianity,” I started to brainstorm ideas for experiential learning components. This course introduces students to images of death and afterlife in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. ... Therefore, I decided to take the students to a site visit in a local cemetery where they could compare the ideas reflected in the ancient texts to contemporary traditions and material artifacts.This is a good idea.
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Benedikt Eckhardt, Private associations and Jewish communities in the Hellenistic and Roman cities. Supplements to the Journal for the study of Judaism, 191. Leiden: Brill, 2019. 227 p.. ISBN 9789004405370 €105,00.
Review by
Ryan Boehm, Tulane University. rboehm@tulane.edu
This volume offers a fresh reappraisal of a longstanding debate: did Jewish collectivities in the Hellenistic and Roman periods belong to the wider phenomenon of Greek and Roman private/voluntary associations or were they sui generis? ...
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Volume 96, issue 2 (2020) of Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses is dedicated to the subject of Zoroastrian dualism in Jewish, Christian, and Manichaean perspectives.Follow the link for the ToC.
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When objects containing magnetic minerals burn at a very high temperature, those minerals are re-magnetized and therefore record the direction and the magnitude of the field in that precise moment. Artifacts like pottery, bricks and tiles, which are fired in furnaces, ovens and kilns, can all provide these records. However, as precise as their dating can be, it usually spans of at least a few decades. On the contrary, if documented by historical records, destruction lawyers can be pinned down to a very specific moment – in the case of Jerusalem in 586 almost to the date - providing a unique opportunity.According to the Bible (2 Kings 25:3-4), the wall of Jerusalem was breached on the ninth day of the fourth month. This is the basis for the holy day the Ninth of Av. Traditionally other days of the disaster for the Jewish people took place on the same date, including the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE and the fall of Betar, the center of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, in 135 CE.
Abstract
Paleomagnetic analysis of archaeological materials is crucial for understanding the behavior of the geomagnetic field in the past. As it is often difficult to accurately date the acquisition of magnetic information recorded in archaeological materials, large age uncertainties and discrepancies are common in archaeomagnetic datasets, limiting the ability to use these data for geomagnetic modeling and archaeomagnetic dating. Here we present an accurately dated reconstruction of the intensity and direction of the field in Jerusalem in August, 586 BCE, the date of the city’s destruction by fire by the Babylonian army, which marks the end of the Iron Age in the Levant. We analyzed 54 floor segments, of unprecedented construction quality, unearthed within a large monumental structure that had served as an elite or public building and collapsed during the conflagration. From the reconstructed paleomagnetic directions, we conclude that the tilted floor segments had originally been part of the floor of the second story of the building and cooled after they had collapsed. This firmly connects the time of the magnetic acquisition to the date of the destruction. The relatively high field intensity, corresponding to virtual axial dipole moment (VADM) of 148.9 ± 3.9 ZAm2, accompanied by a geocentric axial dipole (GAD) inclination and a positive declination of 8.3°, suggests instability of the field during the 6th century BCE and redefines the duration of the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly. The narrow dating of the geomagnetic reconstruction enabled us to constrain the age of other Iron Age finds and resolve a long archaeological and historical discussion regarding the role and dating of royal Judean stamped jar handles. This demonstrates how archaeomagnetic data derived from historically-dated destructions can serve as an anchor for archaeomagnetic dating and its particular potency for periods in which radiocarbon is not adequate for high resolution dating.
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In celebration of the OI’s centennial year, over sixty different authors and contributors have come together to provide a personalized history of the OI’s work past and present. In these pages we invite you to join us on an adventure. Explore the legacy of James Henry Breasted and the institute he founded. Discover the inner workings of the OI and its museum. Travel across multiple continents to learn about groundbreaking research. Enjoy a unique collection of nearly six hundred images, all in one publication for the first time. Learn the story of the institute’s development—from being one man’s dream to becoming one of the world’s preeminent authorities on over ten thousand years of human civilization.You may download a free copy for your personal use.
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Published in German.
Messianic expectations in Second Temple Judaism included not only human, but also very different kinds of superhuman aspects. Ruben A. Bühner discusses all relevant early Jewish sources and offers the basis for new approaches for conceptualizing the origin and development of early Christology.
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