The tool combines high-resolution drone imagery with machine learning to identify individual building stones and wall segments across archaeological sites. Within minutes, the system can map hundreds of thousands of stones and translate what looks like visual chaos into a detailed, measurable site plan. It was recently evaluated in the peer-reviewed Journal of Archaeological Science.
The article about this University of Haifa research is open access at JAS Volume 185, January 2026:
Detect stones and walls from drone imagery with deep learning.
Analyze archaeological sites using digitized stone and wall layers.
Provide open-source models and code for stone and wall detection.
Deliver an end-to-end workflow from drone images to GIS layers.
Abstract
This study presents a semi-automatic methodology for detecting building stones and wall segments in archaeological research, using drone imagery and deep learning algorithms. The immediate outputs of the methodology are a georeferenced stones layer, with each stone detected as a separate instance, and a site plan layer, composed of stones considered part of detected wall segments. We developed this model via nine sites of varying size with different vegetation coverage, ground color, and material composition, exemplifying the model's ability to perform successfully even in challenging conditions. The digital layers, along with additional attributes associated with each shape, provide a foundation for further analysis, such as identifying multiple construction styles and site organization patterns, with significant potential for large-scale multi-site studies. Evaluation results demonstrate good model performance under varied conditions. We also provide trained models, trained on data from multiple sites, for immediate use and further refinement.
Cross-file under Algorithm Watch.
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Price: 40 euro Year: 2025 Isbn: 9789042953802 Pages: XVI-172 p.
Summary:
Judith is one of very few ladies in the ancient biblical world whose life stories show us what important roles women can play in human history in addition to motherhood. Along with Ruth and Esther she is one of the only three women on whom a whole book was written. Her life story is attractive enough to be read in the Greek version, probably dating to the first century BCE, and its annotated English translation presented in this book.
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Series: New International Commentary on the Old Testament (NICOT)
Imprint: Eerdmans
960 Pages, 6.12 × 9.25 in
Hardcover
9780802875990
Publication Date: November 20, 2025v
$62.99 £48.99
eBook
9781467469753v
Publication Date: November 20, 2025
$62.99 £48.99
DESCRIPTION
An indispensable resource for preaching and teaching the book of Daniel
In this volume of the New International Commentary on the Old Testament, scholars Aubrey E. Buster and John H. Walton guide readers through chapters 1–6 of the book of Daniel. They provide historically informed, theologically sound interpretations of some of the most memorable stories and imagery in the Old Testament, including Daniel in the lion’s pit, the fiery furnace, the figure with feet of clay, and the writing on the wall. Buster and Walton also help readers understand the significance of the text’s composition, audience, historical context, genre, and structure. Accessible and insightful, this well-researched volume is an essential resource for preaching, teaching, and study of the book of Daniel.
All NICOT volumes combine superior scholarship, an evangelical view of Scripture as the Word of God, and concern for the life of faith today. Each volume features an extensive introduction treating the biblical book’s authorship, date, purpose, structure, and theology. The authors’ own translations of the original text and verse-by-verse commentary follow. The commentary itself carefully balances coverage of technical matters with exposition of the biblical text’s theology and implications. Readers who want to hear God’s voice anew through Scripture will find the New International Commentary on the Old Testament series to be a faithful, trustworthy guide.
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In a rare find, Israeli archaeologists recently uncovered the tools used some 1,400 years ago to make mementos for the travelers who made their way to the Land of Israel to visit the key sites associated with the life of Jesus and other saints as Christianity became firmly established as the Roman Empire’s dominant religion.
A Byzantine mold to craft small flasks featuring an elaborate cross and inscribed with the Greek words “Lord’s blessing from the holy places,” was among several notable artifacts recently unearthed at the Hyrcania archaeological site in the Judean Desert in the West Bank, researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told The Times of Israel on Thursday. The inscription was deciphered by Dr. Avner Ecker.
For more on the many discoveries at the Hyrcania excavation, see here and links.
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In 2010, the Israeli government adopted a decision to strengthen the enforcement and protection of antiquities in the West Bank, but it was an initial move with limited budgets and minimal attention from the military and government ministries. In July 2023, nearly a year after the current government was formed, a new government decision approved a multi-year plan to combat the destruction of antiquities and heritage sites in the West Bank. The decision, initiated by Heritage Minister Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Tourism Minister Haim Katz, allocated 120 million shekels over three years. The new budget fundamentally changed the work of the archaeology unit.
For more on the Sartaba-Alexandrium excavation, see here and links; on the Hyrcania excavation, see here and links (UPDATE: also the next two posts here and here); and on the new Sebastia excavation, here and links, here, here, and here; and on a recent academic boycott, here.
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I haven't really posted on Christmas this year, unless you want to count posts on the disappointing 2025 film The Carpenter's Son. I suppose we can count this one on Coptic magical infancy Christian apocrypha too. Otherwise, such Christmas stories that I've seen are recyclings of old ones that come up every year.
But just to make sure they are covered too, here are some old posts on perennial Christmas subjects. Each has plenty of links to follow.
DR. IRIVING FINKEL, well-known Assyriologist at the British Museum, was recently interviewed by Lex Fridman. In this clip, Dr. Finkel makes a couple of fascinating and somewhat controversial claims.
First, he notes that the Neolithic archaeological site at Göbekli Tepe, best known for its remarkable monolithic architecture bearing extensive artwork (noted here and here), has produced a small stone object that has the look of an administrative seal. The object has three marks on it that sure look like pictographic writing, possibly even phonetic writing. Dr. Finkel thinks that such a complex society would have needed at least pictographic writing for trade and administration and this artifact shows that they had it. Presumably they used it more extensively on perishable materials such as leaves.
Not noted in the clip, but similar decorated stone objects has been found at other Neolithic sites. An example from Jerf al-Ahmar in Syria is shown here. French scientists have already suggested a connection with pictographic writing. A cautious appraisal of the implications of such objects is in this open-access article. Note especially Fig. 3A‒D.
Finkel knows much more about early writing systems than I do, but I know enough to say that his proposal has some merit. Neolithic civilizations may well have already been working on pictographic writing systems in 9000 BCE. The earliest proto-cuneiform writing is from the late 3000s BCE, nearly six millenia later.
Pair that with this year's proposal that alphabetic writing was already underway in the third millennium BCE.
For another 2025 PaleoJudaica post on an intriging story about Neolithic archaeology, see here.
Second—and here Finkel speaks directly out of his expertise—he has an arresting take on Ashurbanipal's famed cuneiform library in the ruins of Nineveh, excavated in the nineteenth century. The Library of Ashurbanipal, some 30,000 tablets or so, is a major source for the Epic of Gilgamesh and other cuneiform literature. PaleoJudaica has posted on it here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Finkel's proposal, which I have not heard before, is that the Babylonian conquerers and their allies must have looted the library before they destroyed it. It would have contain vast amounts of important information in their own language which they would have wanted to keep. The huge "library" that was excavated consists only of the duplicates and the broken pieces that the Babylonians didn't bother carting off. If he's right—and as a curator of the cuneiform collection of the British Museum, where those tablets are housed, his opinion has credibility—the loss of the bulk of the original library of Ashurbanipal is a tragedy comparable to the loss of the Library of Alexandria.
Still, we are unimaginably fortune to have what we do have of it.
PaleoJudaica has noted Dr. Finkel in connection with a British Museum exhibition on Babylon here; his work on the Mesopotamian Noah's Ark story here, here, here, and here; his work on some new Cyrus Cylinder fragments here and here; an interview with him here; his comments on the completion of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary here; his work on the Babylonian World Map here; and a recent book he co-authored on Babylonian Chronographic Texts from the Hellenistic Period here.
If you're wondering, no, none of this has anything to do with Christmas. Except perhaps that Dr. Finkel does look a lot like Santa Claus.
UPDATE (28 December): Over at the Trowel and Pen Blog, archaeologist Jens Notroff—who specializes in the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods, who has acted as a staff member at the Göbekli Tepe excavation, and who has published on the site—has responded to Finkel's claims in the Fridman interview: Hidden in plain sight: Did archaeologists really overlook evidence for early writing at Göbekli Tepe?! It's brief, so read it all.
Mr. Notroff makes three points. First, he objects to Finkel's "subtle passive-agressive" tone toward archaeologists. Fair point. I think he was speaking tongue in cheek, but he could have skipped those opening comments.
Second, the artifact is not unique. It comes in an archaeological context of similar objects and iconography found at the site and elsewhere. Agreed. For example, I linked to a photo of the Jerf el Ahmar plaquette above.
Third, there is already a specialist literature on these objects and their iconography. Again, agreed. I cited a 2025 peer-reviewed article above as an example.
So is it proto-writing? Notroff concludes:
So, is it now writing or not? I’d still be hesitant, to be honest. These symbols are part of a communication system, I’m totally on board here. But in my humble opinion we’re not seeing phonetic values assigned to specific symbols representing spoken language here yet.
That doesn't sound far off from what Finkel (and I) said. It looks like some kind of pictographic communication. Whether it was "proto-writing," is certainly up for discussion. It could be phonetic, but need not be. We would need to know something about the language spoken by the Göbekli Tepeians to evaluate that.
If it is ever firmly established that they used (proto-)writing, that will only be through collaboration between experts on early writing systems like Dr. Finkel and specialist archaeologists like Mr. Notroff. I am glad that the latter weighed in on the subject.
I have not yet found any responses by other Assyriologists to Finkel's comments about Ashubanipal's Library.
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Megiddo, site of the biblical Armageddon and home of the discovery that capped off our top 10 list last year, continued to yield noteworthy discoveries in 2025.
This year’s archaeology stories highlight discoveries that have helped us learn more about the biblical world and the context that gave us the Bible. Some are controversial. Some are serendipitous.
The most important biblical archaeology discoveries of this year may not be known until months or years from now, as archaeologists study their findings in the lab, research them, and publish their reports in scientific journals. This list is the stories we learned about this year.
Another good list, with relatively little overlap with earlier ones.
PaleoJudaica has posted on almost all the stories: on Egyptians at Josiah's Megiddo, see here; on Jerusalem's Hasmonean-era city wall, see here and here; on that new map of Roman-era roads, see here; on the somewhat controversial new excavation at Samaria/Sebastia, see here (cf. here) and on the Civil Administration's expropriation of land in the area, see here; on Egypt's also-controversial nationalization of St. Catherine's Monastery, see here (cf. here); on the cuneiform late notice from the Assyrian taxman excavated in Jerusalem, see, here; on the AI redating of 4QDanielc, see here, here, and here; on the wildfire at Tel Araj (Bethsaida?), see here (cf. here); and on Jerusalem's Siloam dam, see here.
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A 1952 English book by Robert St. John, now out of print, offers incredible detail on this process and the man called Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. In Tongue of the Prophets, St. John conveyed what he learned from a biography written in Hebrew by Eliezer’s widow.
Ben-Yehuda’s work not only benefited the establishment of “Israel,” it also served as a mighty support to the archaeological work that would come in the years to follow. Biblical archaeology without a nation of Hebrew speakers seems impossible to imagine.
Additionally, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was himself an archaeologist—of a linguistic sort. The kind of rigorous work he did, the scientific standards to which he adhered, are relatable to anyone leading an excavation. And they make the product of his life’s devotion all the more worthy of the highest esteem.
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Archaeologists in Iran have identified a rare motif in Elymaean rock carving that may depict a scene closely resembling the famous myth of Hercules battling the Hydra, a story widely known across the Greek world and featured on coins dating to around 325 BC. ...
The relief is carved on a trapezoid-shaped rock surface measuring about 70 by 81 centimeters (2.29 to 2.65 feet). Although erosion and deliberate defacement have damaged parts of it, three figures remain visible.
On the left, a powerful nude male figure appears in three-quarter profile, lifting a large round object that may represent a ritual mace while gripping the central creature by the throat. Researchers say the carved muscles and movement stress heroic strength.
The central figure is a three-headed serpent-like being, about 83 centimeters (2.7 feet) long. Such imagery is extremely rare in Elymaean art and is key to interpretation. On the right, a man in Parthian-style clothing stands in a frontal pose, resembling priestly figures seen in other Elymaean reliefs, possibly suggesting a ceremonial role.
The relief certainly has parallels to the Heracles/Hercules myth, but it need not depict the Greek hero. Given its location, that seems less than likely to me.
The myth of a foundational battle between a god and a multi-headed dragon is much older than our Greek sources. A third-millennium BCE stamp seal depiciting a similar scene with a seven-headed dragon was excavated at Hazor last year. See here and here.
The myth is found in the ancient Near East and repeatedly in the Bible. It may well have come to this Elymais relief via ancient Near Eastern religious traditions.
For PaleoJudaica posts on Elymais, a region in the ancient Parthian Empire, see here, here, and here.
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Archaeology isn't an exact science of unearthing the past. Only so much is uncovered, much more is assumed to be lost and a geat deal is down to interpretation. But 2025 was a great year for cracking some of the mysteries that had been bedeviling archaeologists for decades.
A good list.
PaleoJudaica has posted on some, not all, of these stories. For the proposed decipherment of Cryptic B script and the Mount Zion stone cup's Cryptic A script, see here. The Magdala Stone has been around for a while, but a couple of 2025 posts on it are here and here. It's currently on display at the Museum of the Bible in D.C. Live Science also has a recent article on it by Kristina Killgrove here. For the pottery evidence for Egyptians at Megiddo in Josiah's time, see here. For the inferred different naming patterns in Judah and Israel, see here.
I didn't post on the Neolithic massebah at e-Tell, There is another recent Neolithic archaeology story worth mentioning, but it deserves a post on its own.
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British Dental Journal volume 239, pages 851–856 (2025)
Abstract
This paper – the first of two – explores the development of dentistry and dental care practices across diverse ancient civilisations. Evidence from prehistory, from a 13,000-year-old intervention at Riparo Fredian in northern Italy, to Neolithic findings in Pakistan and Slovenia, suggests that early populations attempted to alleviate pain and manage oral conditions. In Mesopotamia, cuneiform texts detail treatments for caries and periodontal disease, accompanied by recommendations and prescriptions for oral hygiene. Although these texts describe various therapeutic approaches, there is no mention of any operative procedures, and the sparse osteological record similarly offers no evidence of dental intervention. Biblical and Talmudic sources from ancient Israel emphasise the cultural significance of dental aesthetics, offering insights into remedies and practices intended to preserve the natural look of the teeth. Discoveries from Etruria and Phoenicia, dated to the first millennium BC, including dental bridges and gold-wire appliances, reveal intricate restorative and cosmetic techniques, particularly among elite women. In the Far East, ancient Chinese and Indian texts highlight preventive measures and herbal treatments, prioritising diagnostics and hygiene over operative procedures. Collectively, these findings illustrate a broad spectrum of early dental care strategies that evolved, alongside dietary shifts, cultural values, and technological innovations, providing fascinating insights into the origins and development of dentistry and dental care.
The article is open access. The section on ancient Israel is brief. It mostly has information from the Talmud.
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Thinking about the letters of Augustine reminds me of one of the more interesting manuscripts I encountered this year. Among the many remarkable manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah is Cambridge University Library ADD.4320. It’s a collection of fragments of a palimpsest with an upper text containing masoretic notes on various texts from the Hebrew scriptures and a lower erased text that has been identified as a collection of Augustine’s sermons.
The hand of the Latin script is a clear uncial that has been assigned to the sixth century, making these folia some of the oldest surviving copies of Augustine’s writings.
[...]
For more Cairo Geniza stories, start here and follow the many links. And for a recent book on Augustine, see here and here.
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Finally, standing alone in the tallest tower was a single figure. He’s the only individual in the entire city. And he’s holding a standard, suggesting royal status. If Slab 28 depicts a scene from King Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah, and if the city depicted was Jerusalem, then this lone royal figure had to be King Hezekiah!
Compton's JNES article is behind the subscription wall, but Nagtegaal gives a detailed summary.
If the depicted figure is King Hezekiah, that's a significant discovery. Alas, the stylized figure leaves us little the wiser about what the king actually looked like.
For PaleoJudaica posts on Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem, its archaeology, and what may have happened there, start with the links collected here.
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A naturally offensive stance earns him many critics, especially among the educated Romanised elites, each of them eager to turn his poor, provincial, Punic origins against him. Combined with his sexually liberal years as a Manichean cultist, there is no shortage of ammunition to use against him when he was ordained, in 391, as presbyter of Hippo. Allusions to his treacherous ‘Carthaginian’ nature punctuate the work of his opponents, from the biblical scholar Jerome to the excommunicated aristocrat, Bishop Julian, who readily derides him as a ‘Punic pamphleteer’ of oriental disposition.
The book under review is Catherine Conybeare, Augustine the African (Blackstone, 2025). I noted another review of it here.
Cross-file under (Neo-)Punic Watch.
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Raja, Rubina & Eivind Heldaas Seland. eds. 2025. Palmyra, the Roman Empire, and the Third Century Crisis: Zooming in and Scaling up from the Evidence. Stuttgart: Steiner.
Cross-file under Palmyra Watch.
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Maturity, Marriage, Motherhood, Mortality is a deft study of women's life-cycle rituals in ancient Israel. These include rituals that marked a young woman's coming of age (“maturity”) and her betrothal and wedding (“marriage”); rituals undertaken by women during pregnancy, parturition, and their first days and early years after giving birth (“motherhood”); and rituals that were enacted at the time of a woman's death and in the months and years that followed (“mortality”).
The book's aims are tripartite. The first is to sketch as fully as possible a picture of women's life-cycle events and rituals from preexilic and early postexilic Israel, using both evidence that can be gleaned from our primary source for the religious traditions of ancient Israel-the Bible-as well as extrabiblical data, including ancient Israelite archaeological data and archaeological, iconographic, and textual data that come from the many peoples of the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean by whom the Israelites were influenced or with whom they interacted.
The second is to highlight the several distinctive features that characterized women's life-cycle events and rituals: for example, the way women's life-cycle events can flow as a virtually uninterrupted ritual continuum, from, say, coming of age, to betrothal, to marriage, to motherhood, and also the ways in which Israelite women's experiences during life-cycle events and rituals differed from those of their male counterparts. The experience of a bride who is “given” to her prospective spouse during betrothal and wedding rituals is different, for example, than the experience of a groom who “takes” a woman in marriage. Finally, the book offers a six-part theoretical model that explains the distinctive features that appear within Israelite women's life-cycle rituals and that accounts for the differences between women's life-cycle rituals and men's.
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Series:
Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, Volume: 155
Author: Hanneke van der Schoor
Rewriting Generations of Truth takes the text and manuscript evidence of Words of Qahat (4Q542*) as a vantage point to assess editorial methods and textual classification of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Van der Schoor argues for a different distribution of 4Q542 and 4Q547 fragments, employing the resulting manuscript to consider writing and correction practices in scribal communities behind the Scrolls. Based on terminological similarities, she correlates textual traditions beyond linguistic boundaries and alleged provenance. Contextualising Words of Qahat within the Second Temple Period, particularly 4QApocalypse of Weeks, 4QTime of Righteousness and 4QLevi Apocryphon, highlights sapiential and eschatological elements in Words of Qahat.
Copyright Year: 2026
E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-74548-3
Publication: 24 Nov 2025
EUR €129.00
Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-74547-6
Publication: 27 Nov 2025
EUR €129.00
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The Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century B.C.E., reports that Egyptians would not kiss a Greek on the mouth or use any of their food implements—knife, fork, or pot—because Greeks ate cows, which Egyptians regarded as sacred. This background sheds light on the biblical account of Egyptians refusing to eat with Joseph’s brothers—or even with Joseph himself.
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Leslie Kelly, Philosophers, Jews, and Christians in the Roman empire: authority, text, and tradition. Routledge focus on classical studies. London: Routledge, 2025. Pp. 114. ISBN 9781032904214.
Review by
Mark Letteney, University of Washington. letteney@uw.edu
This slim book by Leslie Kelly aims to offer an overview and comparison of three groups as they existed in the first and second centuries of the Common Era, attending to their respective interactions with texts and authorities in their “traditions.” It succeeds in part. ...
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The code had been considered to be impossible to decipher, mainly because of the sheer paucity of Cryptic B material. All we have are isolated fragments from two scrolls called 4Q362 and 4Q363, and a few spots in other scrolls where scribes briefly introduced Cryptic B in the middle of a Hebrew text, Oliveiro explains, in the journal Dead Sea Discoveries in December.
Oliveiro's process was based on analysis and intuition, similar to the methodology the scholar Józef Milik used when deciphering Cryptic A in 1955. Both began with assuming that they were dealing with a mono-alphabetic substitution system– where each of the 22 letters of Hebrew or Aramaic is consistently replaced with a specific cryptic sign (as in – say A is always be replaced by $).
A simple alphabetic substituion code is easy to decipher—if you have a reasonable-sized corpus. But the tiny size of the surviving corpus written in the Cryptic B script presented a huge challenge. Epigrapher Christopher Rollston says that the proposed decipherment is plausible, but hard to confirm, since the corpus is so small. That sound about right to me.
The abovementioned advance-published DSD article is open-access, so you can decide for yourself.
Among the Qumran manuscripts, several enigmatic scripts, including Cryptic A and Cryptic B, have been discovered. While Cryptic A was deciphered in 1955, Cryptic B has until now remained undeciphered. This study offers the first decipherment, transcription and translation of two Cryptic B manuscripts, 4Q362 and 4Q363. Their content appears to reflect familiar biblical idioms and eschatological themes, and the findings provide a foundation for future inquiry into the variation within Cryptic B letterforms, its relationship to Cryptic A, its role within Qumran scribal practices, and the development of cryptic scripts.
We can only hope for the discovery of more texts in Cryptic B, so that this decipherment can be tested.
That's a more realistic hope than you might think. Cryptic A was known only in some Qumran texts, and Milik had a go at deciphering it from them. But then in 2009 an inscribed stone cup was recovered by the Mount Zion excavation. The inscription was written in, among other things, the Cryptic A script. It's decipherment remains in progress, but our previous knowledge of Cryptic A seems to have helped.
Whether the cup's inscription will in turn help with understanding the Cryptic A scrolls remains to be seen.
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Meanwhile, although the interministerial committee still has to formulate its recommendation regarding the future of the Rockefeller, the IAA told The Times of Israel that it has requested to be reassigned the responsibility for the facility.
“For the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Rockefeller Museum is the historic and symbolic home of the archaeology of the Land of Israel,” read a statement shared by an IAA spokesperson.
“The Authority has formally requested that the museum’s operation be returned to its hands, in order to promote its reopening,” the statement added, pledging that the IAA “will do everything possible to ensure that the Rockefeller Museum once again becomes a living museum, full of content, as it deserves to be.”
The title of the article is unfortunate, if attention grabbing. But it gives a good overview of the history of the museum, some of its key holdings, and the issues around its coming fate.
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From a previously unknown royal tomb to DNA revelations to a newly deciphered alphabet, here are our picks for some of the most interesting breakthroughs and discoveries in the archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa in 2025. ...
And so the 2025 listing begins. Most of the discoveries in this one are outside PaleoJudaica's interests. But a few have come up.
For "3. Evidence of the Egyptian Army at Megiddo in the Time of King Josiah," see here. For "4. DNA Evidence Suggesting Levantine Phoenician Contributions to Punic Settlements Were More Cultural Than Genetic," see here and here. And for "8. First Iron Age Shipwrecks from the Southern Levant Excavated," see here.
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TEHRAN – Iranian restoration teams have launched a new conservation program at the UNESCO-designated Persepolis and the nearby Naqsh-e Rostam site using advanced imaging, special material, and stone-analysis technologies, officials said on Saturday.
The project is being carried out by Iranian researchers with scientific support from international institutions. According to authorities, the work involves laser scanning, 3D imaging, detailed structural analysis of stone surfaces and the use of environmentally friendly protective materials aimed at slowing erosion.
Persepolis, founded by Darius the Great around 518 BC, served as the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550 – 330 BC). The terrace complex, about 60 km northeast of Shiraz, was largely destroyed by Alexander the Great in 330 BC. Its surviving palaces, stairways and cuneiform inscriptions are considered among the most significant archaeological remains of the ancient world.
[...]
For many PaleoJudaica posts on Persepolis, the ancient Achaemenid ceremonial capital city, see here and links.
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The Cyrus Cylinder is one of the best-known surviving texts from the Achaemenid Persian Empire (c. 550–332 BCE), due almost entirely to its proposed connection to the return of the Judean exiles and the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple as recorded in the Book of Ezra. However, beyond its biblical connection, the Cyrus Cylinder is a rather standard inscription, closely resembling many that came before it. So, what is the Cyrus Cylinder and how does it relate to the history and world of the Bible?
This is the second part of an exclusive Bible History Daily series on historical texts that are important for understanding the history and world of the Bible.
[...]
I noted the first part here. This essay gives a nice overview of the Cyrus Cylinder, taking into account the latest developments.
For many PaleoJudaica posts on Cyrus and the Cyrus Cylinder, start here and follow the links.
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The Huqoq Excavation Project will benefit from a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of State to the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research.
Huqoq, a UNC-Chapel Hill-led archaeological project in Israel’s Lower Galilee region, is revolutionizing our understanding of ancient Jewish religious and cultural life.
[...]
Congratulations to both.
For much more on the Huqoq excavation, start here (cf. here) and follow the many links.
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If I succeeded in showing that parataxis as Exhibit A for Semitism is not in fact a Semitism by any reasonable definition, then it stands to reason that the term Semitism itself deserves greater scrutiny for the sorts of assumptions it may smuggle into our discipline.
That could mess with some of my past research. I hope he continues to follow the question up.
I have noted previous posts in this series here and links.
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The miracle of the jug of oil lasting eight days is first narrated in the Babylonian Talmud, centuries after the establishment of Chanukah. In 1891 Poland, Chaim Zelig Slonimski, an observant, science-minded Jew, denied the historicity of this miracle, claiming that he was following in the footsteps of Maimonides. Some of his enlightened colleagues—and even some secular Zionists—thought he was endangering people’s connection to Judaism and providing antisemites a pretext to mock the Talmud.
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For a report of illegal construction at the site of the palace at Tel Aroma (Tel Aruma) in 2020, see here. In 2023 I noted the Israeli Government conservation project that included the Jericho palaces.
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The lamp, exposed during work led by the head of the unit, was found together with a Second Temple–period writing implement believed to have been used on wax tablets. According to the Civil Administration, the discovery offers fresh evidence of Jewish life and settlement continuity around Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago.
The artifacts were discovered at Nabi Samuel, a village in the West Bank.
Another Hasmonean-era oil lamp is nice to have, but it is not especially rare.
The stylus, however, is a rare find. Reportedly a (much older??) iron one was found a few years ago at Mount Ebal. No indication what the newly recovered one was made of.
Confusingly, they are not the objects in either photo. The lamp and coins in the top one came from Tel Yavneh (a.k.a. Yavneh Yam). The second photo is of a bronze half-face lamp discovered in 2021. See here, here, and here.
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As Jews around the world light Hanukkah candles to celebrate resilience and identity, the ruins of Apamea — an ancient city in modern‑day Syria — reveal a chapter of Jewish history that complicates common perceptions of Jewish life under Hellenistic influence.
Apamea was founded in the 3rd century BCE by Antiochus I Soter (280–261 BCE), the great‑grandfather of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid ruler whose later policies in Judea ignited deep conflict. Antiochus I established the city on the Orontes River as part of a broader strategy to strengthen Seleucid control across Asia Minor. Built on a plateau by the Marsyas River at a crossroads of trade and travel, Apamea became a major commercial and strategic centre on the Great Southern Highway linking inland Anatolia to Mediterranean ports.
[...]
It's the time of the year when journalists, bless their hearts, are scrambling to work Hanukkah into any story involving Judaism and archaeology. This article has to try pretty hard. But it's a good overview of the ancient Syrian city of Apamea and the Jewish presence there. Worth reading for that.
Both sides of the pendant depict a flaming seven-branched menorah in a circular frame. One side was preserved well, while the other became patinated. Analysis back at the IAA labs by artifact conservator Ilya Reznitsky found that the pendant was made of 99 percent lead. ...
Baruch suspects the owner, a Jew visiting Jerusalem, may have worn this crude, plain object beneath his or her clothing as a charm to protect them from evil, not as an ornament; not as a jewel.
Cross-file under "Apotropaic Artifact?"
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In an exclusive interview with TPS-IL, Dr. Dvir Raviv of Bar-Ilan University said that a survey at Horbat Bet Zecharia, in the Gush Etzion region south of Jerusalem, has uncovered objects that match both the date and the military profile of the famous battle described in the Book of Maccabees in 163 BCE.
The site, on a hill about seven kilometers southwest of Bethlehem, is widely identified with the ancient village of Bet Zecharia, where the Seleucid army and the forces of Judah Maccabee clashed in what is known as the fifth Maccabean battle.
The article does cite 1 Maccabees and Josephus for the information on the battle, but it would be nice if such pieces also gave the specific references. In this AI era, they aren't hard to find. (But double check them in the primary sources.)
The references are 1 Maccabees 6:32-47 and Josephus, Antiquities 12:369-74 and Jewish War 1:41-45. I have posted on the battle some years ago here. It would be asking a lot to hope to find elephant bones at the site, but who knows?
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The twilight of the Hasmonean dynasty does not remain solely in history books; it is clearly reflected in the soil of the Temple Mount, particularly in a special find: the bronze “Degraded Hasmonean Coins.” These coins, minted during the final decades of Hasmonean rule (~60-40 BCE), were previously misidentified as sloppy versions of the Royal coins of King Alexander Jannaeus who ruled from 104 to 76 BCE.
Tangentially Hanukkah related (Hasmonean finds). Cross-file under Numismatics.
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HAPPY HANUKKAH (CHANUKKAH, CHANUKAH, HANNUKAH) to all those celebrating! The eight-day festival begins tonight at sundown.
Last year's Hanukkah post is here. It links to earlier and some subsequent Hanukkah/Hasmonean-era-related posts. And see also here, here, here (follow-ups here and here), here, and here. And more is coming!
Posting was light last week because I've had the flu. I'm still a little under the weather, but I aim to catch up this week.
Reading Psalms with the Scribes argues for a new approach to the study of the Hebrew Bible, “reading with the scribes,” which puts variation in the ancient witnesses at the center of the endeavor. With a focus on texts from Psalms, Reading Psalms with the Scribes explores how ancient manuscript evidence can impact scholars' thinking about poetics, composition, and interpretation. Whereas most biblical scholarship keeps textual criticism distinct from other kinds of analysis — as a preliminary step that provides one correct version of the text to be studied, for example — the practice of reading with the scribes leverages moments of variation for their insights into the thoughts, practices, and work of scribes. The scribes of the Second Temple period were much more than copyists; they were practiced readers who paid close attention to the poetic features of psalms, competent editors who polished the existing strengths of psalms, talented authors who could add new elements to psalms without altering their compositional unity, and skilled interpreters with robust understandings of the text. Though current scholarship has extensive knowledge of these ancient texts in all their facets, there is much we can learn from the scribes of the Second Temple period. When we focus our attention on the places in the text where the scribes were at work and explore the elements of the text involved in that work — when we explore some of the paths that scribes have made in the text — we can glean methodological insights and consider psalms and other ancient Hebrew texts in new ways.
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Series:
Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism
Author: Rebecca L. Harris
For members of the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls movement, participation in the group would have granted an individual special privileges, including present, unmediated access to otherworldly realities. This understanding of the present as a type of liminal space is rooted in the group’s constructions of time and space. Drawing on theories of liminality and anthropological research on religious consciousness, this study seeks to demonstrate how sectarian identity and ritual and liturgical practice might have cultivated an experience of present communion with divine beings that was also aspirational and aimed to achieve the human worshiper’s permanent incorporation into the heavenly realm.
Copyright Year: 2026
E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-74804-0
Publication: 24 Nov 2025
EUR €121.00
Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-74803-3
Publication: 20 Nov 2025
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This is the first part of an exclusive Bible History Daily series on historical texts that are important for understanding the history and world of the Bible.
When discussing historical references to ancient Israel outside of the Bible, many note the famous Tel Dan Inscription or the Mesha Stele, but there are two important Assyrian texts that are often forgotten: the Kurkh Monolith and the Black Obelisk.1 These inscriptions contain not only two of the oldest mentions of ancient Israel, but also describe events not mentioned in the Bible.
[...]
The Kurkh Monolith recounts the Battle of Qarqar, on which a bit more is here.
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The Roman-Jewish historian of dubious reputation, Yosef ben Matityahu or Josephus, who would be captured by the Romans in the battle over Yodfat, wrote in detail about the mighty Jerusalem wall and its gates, calling it "impregnable" with no less than 60 guard towers along its length.
Maybe it was impregnable. "It is clear that it was systematically destroyed and razed to the ground. This is predetermined destruction – not the result of the ravages of time, nor of enemy attack," says [excavation director Dr. Amit] Re'em. "This raises questions about who was responsible for the wall's destruction."
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Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day was created in 2007 by Senna Diaz, author of the webcomic Dresden Codak, but the dream of the human race one day being able to travel through time is much older than that. The first known mention of such a concept is in ancient Hindu mythology.
Now an established annual tradition that I have egregiously neglected for some years.
One of the original announcements is here. The original Facebook page is long gone, but the X hashtage is #PretendToBeATimeTravelerDay.
Glass rings were popular in the Roman and Byzantine periods, roughly between the 1st and 7th centuries CE. They were often made by winding molten glass around a rod or using a mold, then smoothing the surface. These rings served as affordable decorative items compared to precious metal jewelry and were widely worn by different social classes.
Finding such an artifact at the Temple Mount Sifting Project reflects the everyday life and craftsmanship of people who lived in Jerusalem during these eras. For Irène, sifting through the soil of the Temple Mount is not just an archaeological act, it is a spiritual privilege touching the very center of Jewish and world heritage.
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English Translation by Philip Forness & J. Edward Walters; Text Prepared by George Anton Kiraz & Joseph Bali
Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC
Availability: In stock
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-0588-1
Formats *
Cloth (In Print) ISBN 978-1-4632-0588-1
Publication Status: In Print
Series: Surath Kthob 15
Publication Date: Sep 15,2025
Interior Color: Black
Trim Size: 7 x 10
Page Count: 0 [Sic!]
Languages: English
ISBN: 978-1-4632-0588-1
Price: $150.00 (USD) Your price: $120.00 (USD)
Overview
This volume is part of a series of English translations of the Syriac Peshitta along with the Syriac text carried out by an international team of scholars. Forness and Walters have translated the text, while Kiraz has prepared the Syriac text in the west Syriac script, fully vocalized and pointed. The translation and the Syriac text are presented on facing pages so that both can be studied together. All readers are catered for: those wanting to read the text in English, those wanting to improve their grasp of Syriac by reading the original language along with a translation, and those wanting to focus on a fully vocalized Syriac text.
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ISBN 9781914490705
Status Available
Publication Date June 2025
Hardback $85.00
Paperback $35.00
This reading of Proverbs 1–9 is unique in that it complements Israelite advice by setting alongside it Chinese examples of wisdom from the Confucian Analects, highlighting their fundamental similarity and affirming Wisdom’s human-derived instructions within two very different cultural worlds.
The reading uses the literary and rhetorical features of the Hebrew text to highlight the Sages’ advice encouraging audiences to accept and endorse that advice, emphasizing the potential benefit that Wisdom is able to grant those who follow its path.
The phenomenon of Wisdom is not exclusive to any one community; it is universal or ecumenical and embraces all levels of counsel – that of parents teaching children, of artisans teaching practical techniques to apprentices, of ‘professional’ Sages giving political and personal direction to rulers. Wisdom’s basic concern is for the individual and community to aspire to the highest of ideals, to find the ‘paths’ that lead to personal and communal well-being. Wisdom is never just an intellectual pursuit; it is intensely practical, an ideal manner of living and working within specific religious and cultural contexts. Ancient Israel and a contemporary China arrived at similar conclusions as to what constituted ‘wise living’, expressing their conclusions within their own social and cultural contexts and forms.
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The newly identified palace on the northwestern slope clarifies both the scale and splendor of the hilltop complex. Given Josephus's brief references to Alexandrium, physical evidence is essential for understanding how the Hasmoneans and Herod built and used the fortress.
According to Raviv, the architectural fragments uncovered so far allow archaeologists to reconstruct portions of the palace layout and better understand its function.
Early this year I noted the decipherment of an Aramaic ostracton excavated at Sartaba-Alexandrium in the 1980s. See here and here. Then a new exavation commenced at the site in March. Already it has discovered a major ancient architectural feature.
This site is also on the West Bank. The article discusses some of the arising issues and complications.
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Languages die all the time. Scholars estimate that one language disappears every two weeks.
Most vanish quietly, leaving little trace beyond memories held by the last speakers. But some dead languages cast shadows that stretch across centuries.
They influenced literature, law, religion, and entire ways of thinking about the world. You live in a culture shaped by languages nobody speaks anymore, and most people don’t realize how much these extinct tongues still matter.
[...]
As the article makes clear, "lost" in the headline means languages that no longer have native speakers. I assume that this was to avoid calling them "dead."
This is quite a good list of such languages, many well known (e.g., Sumerian, Akkadian, ancient Egyptian, Latin), others less so (e.g., Old Church Slavonic and Sogdian). All of them have come up from time to time in PaleoJudaica. Yes, even Etruscan and Gothic!
I could quibble about this or that detail in the descriptions, but they are generally good too.
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Lucian of Samosata is far more than a Greek satirist. He represents one of the earliest global voices from the Syriac–Aramaic world, navigating multiple linguistic and cultural spheres with insight and creativity. Restoring him to his proper historical and cultural context corrects longstanding misconceptions and reinforces a richer understanding of ancient intellectual history.
I have Lucian's De Dea Syria on my bookshelf, but I didn't realize how many surviving works he left us. They are all in Greek now, but some many have been composed in Aramaic.
This new Syriac Press has been publishing some good articles on the history of Syriac and Aramaic.
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It is plausible, but speculative, that the authors of P were close enough to the scribal and bureaucratic structures of the Babylonian administration that they would have been exposed to the 360 day administrative calendar. Whether or not they did know about this calendar, though, they may have been drawn ideologically, and independently, to their own schematized calendar, at least outside of cultic contexts.
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Iraq's ancient city of Ur, birthplace of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, is located in the country's south near the modern city of Nasiriyah in Iraq's Dhi Qar province.
It hosts numerous archaeological sites, the most famous of which is the Ziggurat of Ur, a stepped pyramid dating back 4,000 years that has the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The restoration of the site of Ur is good news.
The biblical references to Ur ("Ur of the Chaldeans") are in Genesis 11:28, 31; 15:7; and Nehemiah 9:7. They all involve Abraham's origin in that city. The reference to the Chaldeans is anachronistic in this context, but it perhaps gives insight into when the Abraham traditions were assembled.
The Chaldeans as an ethnic group only show up around the beginning of the first millennium BCE. Ur was under their rule only commencing with the Chaldean Neo-Babylonian dynasty in the seventh century BCE.
UPDATE (5 December): There is more on the Chaldean dynasty, and on later uses of the term Chaldean, here.
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An author's summary of Ian N. Mills, The Hypothesis of the Gospels: Narrative Traditions in Hellenistic Reading Culture. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2025.
We do not have to wonder whether early readers of the gospels used the same mental model to understand the pluriform narrative tradition about Jesus. Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, Epiphanius, and Eusebius make explicit use of hypothesis language to describe, limit, and legitimize the multiplicity of gospels. The same authors and other early readers, I argue, use the title “gospel” to refer to the narrative hypothesis that they imagined constituting the narrative tradition about Jesus.
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At the very end of that dynasty stood one extraordinary woman: Miriam, the last Jewish princess, the crown jewel of Judean royalty. Her life plays out like a Greek tragedy in Hebrew letters: heroic, dramatic, and ultimately heartbreaking, a portrait of Jewish dignity caught between the fading glory of the Hasmoneans and the rising shadow of Herod the Great.
This "Miriam" is better known as Mariamne, but also as Mariamme and even Marianne.
This biographical essay is based on Josephus' account of her life, which we should receive with some caution. Josephus tends to write from an omniscient narrator perspective, sometimes repeating news as fact which he couldn't possibly have checked. For example, I imagine he gives us a reasonably accurate account of the accusations against Mariamne and her sons, but he couldn't have known whether any of them were true. Granted, Herod was crazy enough that the distinction may not have made much difference to their fates.
For notice of another account of Mariamne's life which also takes into account Talmudic legends, see here. And there are some links to follow as well. For more on Herod's ancestral background and his religion, see here.
Mariamne's Hanukkah connection is that she was the last Hasmonean to have a royal role.
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Lost Words and Forgotten Worlds: Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls By Andrew Perrin
(Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2025), 348 pp., 66 figs. (color & b/w photos, maps); $28.99 (paperback), $25.99 digital)
The headline is potentially confusing, since the 2010 book edited by Maxine Grossman also has the title Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls. More on that one here and links.
From the current review of Perrin's book:
With a clear and pedagogical style, Perrin methodically explains and unpacks these ancient artifacts, equipping the reader with the tools to explore them further. He frequently includes excerpts from the documents themselves, accompanied by comprehensive explanations that contextualize the contents and elucidate their significance. Non-specialist readers are guided through the issues that have dominated scrolls scholarship in recent decades, including the stability of biblical texts through centuries of transcription, the social landscape the scribes inhabited, and the archaeology of the site of Qumran near where the scrolls were discovered.
The project extends beyond mere identification of textual parallels. We are conducting in-depth historical and philological analyses of how Christian authors integrated, modified, and appropriated Josephus' writings. This includes examining famous cases like the Testimonium Flavianum—a controversial passage in Jewish Antiquities that mentions Jesus—as well as countless other, less studied instances of Christian engagement with Josephus' texts. While recent scholarship has made great progress in understanding Josephus' Latin reception, the Greek tradition has received comparatively less attention.
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Why would God make righteous people suffer just to test their faithfulness? With Job, the Bible is explicit that it was in response to Satan’s challenge, but what about Abraham? Jubilees (2nd cent. C.E.), and later the Talmud and midrash, reimagine the Akedah to have been instigated by Mastema, the Satan, or jealous angels. The midrash goes further and envisions the demon Samael tempting Abraham to make him fail.
For many PaleoJudaica posts on the Aqedah (the binding of Isaac, Genesis 22), see here and links. For more on Abraham in the Book of Jubilees, see here and here. For a bit of background on Mastema, see here.
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Aitia. Regards sur la culture hellénistique au XXIe siècle 15 | 2025
ABSTRACT
The dream sequence found in the Exagoge of Ezekiel (68-89) has long captured the attention of scholars who have seen it as either typical of Greek tragedy, representative of an early merkavah tradition, engaging in haggadic midrash, an investiture story, or a polemic against Enochic traditions. Classicists also have pointed to numerous parallels from Greek and Jewish literary traditions that might have informed the play. However, what has hitherto gone unnoticed is that Raguel’s interpretation of Moses’ dream conforms to a number of conventions for reporting enigmatic dreams in ancient Near Eastern literature. Of specific interest is Ezekiel’s use of polysemy and paronomasia to tie the dream to its interpretation. In the wider Near East, this hermeneutical strategy derives from divinatory practice generally, and consequently features in dream omen manuals and literary reports of dream interpretation.
This peer-reviewed open-access article is technical (assumes you read Greek), but between the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion, you can get the gist of the argument. You also need to know what polysemy and paranomasia mean.
For PaleoJudaica posts on Ezekiel the Tragedian's Hellenistic-era play The Exagoge, see here and links.
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In his book A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig, author Jordan D. Rosenblum shares more than two decades’ worth of research. He explains that at the beginning of the Second Temple period, in the Persian era of the 4th to 5th centuries BCE, pigs did not have a unique status; other non-kosher items were viewed as non-kosher as the pig. But by the time of the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, the pig was king of non-kosher and had taken on its role as uber non-kosher.
English Translation by Professor John Healey; Text Prepared by George Anton Kiraz & Joseph Bali
Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC
Availability: In stock
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-4374-6
Formats *
Cloth (In Print) ISBN 978-1-4632-4374-6
eBook PDF (In Print) ISBN 978-1-4632-4817-8 on Gorgias Mobile App (Glassboxx)
Publication Status: In Print
Series: Surath Kthob 11
Publication Date: Sep 15,2025
Interior Color: Black
Trim Size: 7 x 10
Page Count: 300
Languages: English
ISBN: 978-1-4632-4374-6
Price: $150.00 (USD) Your price: $120.00 (USD)
Overview
This volume is part of a series of English translations of the Syriac Peshitta along with the Syriac text carried out by an international team of scholars. Healey has translated the text, while Kiraz has prepared the Syriac text in the west Syriac script, fully vocalized and pointed. The translation and the Syriac text are presented on facing pages so that both can be studied together. All readers are catered for: those wanting to read the text in English, those wanting to improve their grasp of Syriac by reading the original language along with a translation, and those wanting to focus on a fully vocalized Syriac text.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
