Beth Mardutho website and Hugoye journal

THE BETH MARDUTHO SYRIAC STUDIES WEBSITE (http://www.bethmardutho.org/) has been renovated and reformatted and is looking spiffy. Also, the associated (free!) online journal, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, has just published a new issue (14.2). TOC:

Volume 14 Number 2 (Summer 2011)

Papers

A Light from "The Dark Centuries": Isḥaq Shbadnaya's Life and Works
Thomas Carlson, Princeton University

A Note on Jacob of Sarug's Memre on Joseph
Kristian S. Heal, Brigham Young University

'Cast out Hagar and Ismael Her Son from Me': Text and Intertext in Eutychius of Alexandria's Annals
Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, University of Cordoba

Interpreting the Ninevites' Repentance: Jewish and Christian Exegetes in Late Antique Mesopotamia
Christine Shepardson, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Book Reviews

Ignacio Carbajosa, The Character of the Syriac Version of the Psalms: A Study of Psalms 90-150 in the Peshitta
Richard A. Taylor, Dallas Theological Seminary

Daniel M. Gurtner, Introduction to Syriac: Key to Exercises & English-Syriac Vocabulary
Kristian S. Heal, Brigham Young University

Naomi Koltun-Fromm, Hermeneutics of Holiness: Ancient Jewish and Christian Notions of Sexuality and Religious Community
Yifat Monnickendam, Johns Hopkins University

Brent Landau, Revelation of the Magi: The Lost Tale of the Wise Men's Journey to Bethlehem
Kristian S. Heal, Brigham Young University

Serge Ruzer and Aryeh Kofsky, Syriac Idiosyncracies: Theology and Hermeneutics in Early Syriac Literature
J.W. Childers, Abilene Christian University

Bas Snelders, Identity and Christian-Muslim Interaction: Medieval Art of the Syrian Orthodox from the Mosul Area
Emma Loosley, University of Manchester

Reports

An Early Aramaic (Syriac) Word Processor under DOS
Sunil Sivanand and Daniel Benjamin

Baptists, El Shaddai, and 1 Enoch

EL SHADDAI: ASCENSION OF THE METATRON is getting Baptists to take a second look at the book of 1 Enoch, which is all to the good as far as I'm concerned.

Lauren’s Lab: Biblical story makes rare appearance in video game

Posted by admin

By LAUREN SCHOENEMANN (The Houston Baptist University Collegian)

It’s good versus evil, taken to new levels.

“El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron” took inspiration from a source rarely consulted within the video game industry – the Bible.

The game is loosely based on the legend of Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah who, according to the book of Genesis, never died but was taken by God directly into heaven. It draws more heavily from the Ethiopic Bible’s Books of Enoch, according to which Enoch becomes chief of the archangels and protector of heaven’s treasures.

Whether the game assumes a ministerial role or simply serves to entertain, players may feel challenged to look beyond the anime-themed action-adventure elements to discover the original scripture that inspired the plot of “El Shaddai” instead of merely playing a game that encourages no further investigation into its origins. They could even become more enthusiastic about playing it after learning more about the story.

[...]

Background here.

Cross file under "Archangel Metatron Watch" and "Pseudepigrapha Watch."

Mel Gibson interviewed about Maccabean movie

MEL GIBSON is interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic about Mel's Maccabean movie project: "Mel Gibson on Judah Maccabee, Christopher Hitchens, and Circumcision." Excerpt:

Let me dispense first with the famous anti-Semitic blow-up. I asked him why it happened, and he answered me directly: "I was loaded, and some stupid shit can come out of your mouth when you're loaded."

But from what dark corner of his soul did this terrible accusation -- that Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world -- emanate? He said, "That day they were marching into Lebanon. It was one of those things. It was on the news."

The "they" in question is the Israel Defense Forces. I found this answer to be proof, of course, of Gibson's anti-Semitic tendencies. Most drunk people, when stopped by the police, don't launch into tirades against Jews. He was obviously preoccupied with the putative sins of Jewish people, which raised the obvious question, why would he seek to make a film about one of the great Jewish heroes of history? Money, he said, was not a motivator.

"If you're looking to make money out of this, forget it," he said, citing the costs of staging period spectaculars. "Even Braveheart didn't make much money."

His interest stemmed, he said, from the simple fact that the Book of Maccabees (I and II, he said) are "ripping good reads."

"I just read it when I was teenager, and it's amazing. It's almost like" -- here, he grabbed my digital recorder, held it to his mouth, and spoke in a portentous movie-announcer voice -- "They profaned his Temple. They killed his father. They... all kinds of stuff. In the face of great odds for something he believed in" -- here he switched out of movie-announcer voice -- "Oh, my God, the odds they faced. The armies they faced had elephants! How cinematic is this! Even Judah's dad -- what's his name? Mattathias? -- you kind of get this guy who more or less is trying to avoid the whole thing, but he just gets to a place where had enough, and he just snapped!"

In other words, Judah Maccabee, his father, and his brothers, are like the heroes of every Mel Gibson movie.

Worth reading in full, but if you are fainthearted, be warned that there is strong language as well as a discussion of epispasm that may involve too much information.

Via Cinema Blend. Background here.

More from Tom Verenna on the fake metal codices

FAKE METAL CODICES WATCH: Thomas Verenna has posted an update on the current state of play at the Bible and Interpretation website: Brief Update on the Lead Codices.

Background here and links.

Blogcritics article on Metatron

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Blogcritics has a "culture" post up on Metatron:

Kabbalah: Archangel Metatron - Divine Ruler of Evil

Part of: Kabbalistic Offshoots and Mystical Bends

Author: michal Schwartz — Published: Sep 09, 2011 at 3:42 pm 1 comment
BC Culture Premium

“Every Angel is terrifying.”
Rilke, Duino Elegies

Metatron is the highest angel in Jewish angelic lore, second to God only. This position has made him an ambivalent figure; is he God’s servant or rival?

Jewish angelology has ascribed him many titles like: Prince of the World, the lesser YHWH, Prince of the Countenance.

[...]

The article is mostly on Kabbalistic traditions, which are outside my expertise, and I can't speak for its accuracy on these. The comments on the Hekhalot and magical texts are more or less correct, although the texts are from much later than the first century and they don't confuse Metatron with God. They do give the former a very exalted place and they do tell the Talmudic story of Elisha Ben Abuyah's confusion over the matter (I have translated the version in 3 Enoch here).

Talmud Blog: new books and web synopsis

NEW BOOKS are noted by Yitz Landes at the Talmud Blog:

Shaul Shaked, J.N. Ford, and Siam Bhayro, Aramaic Bowl Spells: Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Bowls Volume One (EIsenbrauns). The post has many useful links. Unfortunately, Eisenbrauns seems to have adjusted the URLs to both of the actual books and the links are dead at the moment. The page for this book is here.

The corpus of Aramaic incantation bowls from Sasanian Mesopotamia is perhaps the most important source we have for studying the everyday beliefs and practices of the Jewish, Christian, Mandaean, Manichaean, Zoroastrian and Pagan communities on the eve of the Islamic conquests. The bowls are from the Schøyen Collection, which has some 650 texts in different varieties of Aramaic: Jewish Aramaic, Mandaic and Syriac, and forms the largest collection of its kind anywhere in the world. This volume presents editions of sixty-three Jewish Aramaic incantation bowls, with accompanying introductions, translations, philological notes, photographs and indices. The themes covered include the magical divorce and the accounts of the wonder-working sages Hanina ben Dosa and Joshua bar Perahia. It is the first of a multi-volume project that aims to publish the entire Schøyen Collection of Aramaic incantation bowls.

Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (3rd ed., Eisenbrauns). Again, the post has some good links. The link to the Eisenbrauns page is here.

Since its initial publication, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible has established itself as the indispensable authoritative textbook and reference on the subject. In this thoroughly revised third edition, Emanuel Tov has incorporated the insights of the last ten years of scholarship, including new perspectives on the biblical texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, all of which have now been published. Here are expanded discussions of the contribution of textual criticism to biblical exegesis and of the role of scribes in the transmission of the text. The introduction and references throughout the book have been thoroughly revised with the beginning student of textual criticism in mind.

Yitz Landes has also posted news of a new synopsis of Midrash Qohelet Rabbah.

September 11th

BMCR review of Cotton et al., "Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae. Volume 1: Jerusalem, Part 1"

BMCR REVIEW:

Hannah M. Cotton (ed.), Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae. Volume 1: Jerusalem, Part 1: 1 - 704. Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palestinae. A multi-lingual corpus of the inscriptions from Alexander to Muhammad. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010. Pp. xxiv, 694. ISBN 9783110222197. $182.00.

Contributors: Additional editors: Leah Di Segni, Werner Eck, Benjamin Isaac, Alla Kushnir-Stein, Haggai Misgav, Jonathan Price, Israel Roll and Ada Yardeni.

Reviewed by Hagith Sivan (dinah01@ku.edu)

Preview

This is the first volume in a projected series of nine volumes dedicated to the classical epigraphy of Israel, a modern state with somewhat fluctuating borders that do not, however, correspond to either ancient Judaea or to Roman Palestine. The corpus's uniqueness, according to the brief introduction, resides in its multi-lingual aspect. Its chronological spectrum embraces nearly a millennium (c. 300 BCE to c. 640 CE), and the editors ought to be commended for attempting to break away from the traditional chronologies that have dominated the field of Jewish studies. Thus, instead of "Second Temple" and the "Mishnah" and "Talmud" eras (c. 450 BCE to 70 CE; c. 70 to c. 200 CE; and c. 200 to 400/600 CE, respectively), the editors have adopted the conventional classical boundaries of the "Hellenistic" period (which they do, however, terminate with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE); the "Roman Period" (from 70 to Constantine), and "Late Antiquity" (from Constantine to the Arab Conquest). The inscriptions themselves do not appear to lend support to these temporal divisions, at least not in part 1 of volume 1 which, according to page 39, solely covers "inscriptions from the Hellenistic period up to the destruction of the Second Temple." Perhaps, for the sake of clarification, this important piece of information should have been placed on the title page.

[...]

Mentioned earlier here. Another project to collect ancient Jewish inscriptions from outside Palestine was noted here some years ago.

Jewish reactions to Gibson's Maccabee film

JEWISH REACTIONS to Mel Gibson's involvement in a movie about Judah the Maccabee have not been enthusiastic. Jennifer Lipman has a roundup at the Jewish Chronicle ("Mel Gibson to film story of Jewish hero Judah Maccabee"):

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Museum of Tolerance, said Mr Gibson should not be cast in the film or involved in it in any way.

"He has shown nothing but antagonism and disrespect to Jews," said Rabbi Hier. "There were the antisemitic remarks he made, his portrayal of Jews in The Passion of Christ.

"He's had a long history of antagonism with Jews. Casting him as a director or perhaps as the star of Judah Maccabee is like casting Madoff to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or a white supremacist as trying to portray Martin Luther King Jr.

"It's simply an insult to Jews."

The Anti-Defamation League also expressed regret that "someone better" could not be found to film the story.

"As a hero of the Jewish people and a universal hero in the struggle for religious liberty, Judah Maccabee deserves better," said national director Abraham Foxman. "It would be a travesty to have the story of the Maccabees told by one who has no respect and sensitivity for other people's religious views.

"Not only has Mel Gibson shown outward antagonism toward Jews and Judaism in his public statements and actions, but his previous attempt to bring biblical history to life on the screen was marred by antisemitism," he added.

"While we do not argue with Mel Gibson's right to make this film, we still strongly believe that Warner Bros. should reconsider Gibson's involvement in this project."

In the Independent, Rob Sharp covers some of the same ground more briefly and also gives a British reaction ("First he ranted against Judaism, now he's making a film about it"):

British Jewish groups have reacted with anger to the news. "It is astonishing, frankly, that he should choose to take this story on," said Dave Rich, a spokesman for the Jewish charity Community Security Trust, which seeks to protect Britain's Jewish community from "bigotry, anti-Semitism and terrorism". "You have to question what his motivation is. On the surface of it, it's as inappropriate as it gets for him to make a film about of the great heroes of Jewish history."

Background here.

Senior post in Judaism at Barnard College

JOB AT BARNARD COLLEGE—Jared Callaway has details: Senior Position in Judaism at Barnard. This is to fill the late Alan Segal's now vacant chair. He will be a hard act to follow.

Haredi conference on "Torah archaeology"

HAREDI CONFERENCE ON "TORAH ARCHAEOLOGY":

'Torah archaeology' sheds light on ancient Talmudic dispute

First Haredi conference on "Torah archaeology" held in Jerusalem.

By Yair Ettinger (Haaretz)

Tags: Orthodox Jews Israel archeology Jewish law

In the heart of ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem two weeks ago, an unwritten taboo was shattered in broad daylight: The first Haredi conference on "Torah archaeology" - having been boldly advertised in the Haredi daily Hamodia, and approved by several leading rabbis - drew a packed audience.

The opening speaker, Chabad Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch, brought several ancient coins to the conference, held in the Beit Bracha hall near Jerusalem's Mea She'arim neighborhood. Deutsch, who flew in from Brooklyn for the event, runs a museum that displays artifacts he acquired on the private market from the time of the Mishna. Also among the artifacts, he displayed an intact scale that he said had been recovered several weeks earlier from a sunken ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

The scale, he said, settled once and for all a dispute that has raged among Torah scholars for centuries: How much did the litra, a Talmudic measure, actually weigh? The answer: 354 grams, just as the 11th-century commentator Rashi claimed, and contrary to the opinion of other great medieval commentators such as the Rambam.

This, as all the speakers agreed, is the purpose of Haredi archaeology: using ancient artifacts to shed light on religious texts - as long as they don't undermine the traditional reading of the texts, of course. Thus, when Deutsch showed the scale to Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, leader of the Lithuanian (non-Hasidic ) Haredim, Elyashiv "said it was really a wonder of wonders," Deutsch related.

[...]

The Monastery of Mar Musa al-Habashi

ARAMAIC WATCH: SANA profiles a Syriac monastery founded in the eleventh century:

Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi, Religious Tourist Destination

Sep 08, 2011

DAMASCUS COUNTRYSIDE, (SANA) – There, in a rugged valley within al-Qalamoun Mountains, stood the Monastery of Mar Musa al-Habashi as a witness on the Syriac civilization and a tourism destination for those who seek peace, contemplation, calmness and beauty.

According to local inhabitant Abdo Khenshat, the Monastery was named after St. Moses the Abyssinian, the son of a king of Ethiopia who left his country looking for the kingdom of God. He traveled to Egypt and then to the Holy Land in Palestine before he became a monk and lived in Qara, to the north of al-Nabk region in Damascus Countryside, and then as a hermit not far from there in the valley of what is today the monastery. He was martyred by Byzantine soldiers.

The Arabic inscriptions on the Monastery walls indicated that the church was built in the Islamic year 450 (1058 AD). In the fifteenth century the monastery was partly rebuilt and enlarged, he added.

[...]

This is late for PaleoJudaica coverage, but two points are of interest. First, there is Syriac inscribed on the walls, and I like to keep track of such things:

Great icons and images covered the church walls such as the image of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the four evangelists are painted above the four columns looking upwards to copy a heavenly page with Syriac letters, ten virgins carrying lamps, in addition to images of Jesus Christ, Virgin Mary and John the Baptist.

Then there's this:

The monastery includes a huge library rich of Arabic, Syriac and religious books, manuscripts and rare heritage books.

Tell us more.

More SANA coverage of Syrian archaeological and antiquities sites is noted here with links.

Mel Gibson meets Judah the Maccabee

MEL GIBSON MEETS JUDAH THE MACCABEE:

Mel Gibson and Warner Bros. developing Jewish hero epic

September 8, 2011 | 4:48 pm (LA Times)

Mel Gibson, the Oscar winner who has defended himself against accusations of anti-Semitism, is developing a film for Warner Bros. about the life of Judah Maccabee, the warrior whose ancient victory is celebrated by Hanukkah.

There was a rumor back in 2004 that this might be his next project, but nothing came of it at the time.

It gets better:

Gibson's Icon Productions has closed the producing deal with Warner Bros., and Joe Eszterhas will write the screenplay. Gibson's camp said the filmmaker will decide if he's directing after the script is done and that he has not ruled out the possibility that he could act in the film.

Maccabee ("Maccabee?"—Ed.), his four brothers and his father led the Jewish revolt against the Greek-Syrian armies. The role of his father, the priest Mattathias, might be a logical one for the 55-year-old Gibson if he does opt to appear in the film.

[...]

He's also about the right age for Antiochus Epiphanes. Just a thought.

This should be entertaining. Watch this space.

Recent news from AWOL

RECENT NEWS FROM AWOL:

JSTOR News: Free Access to Early Journal Content and Serving “Unaffiliated” Users

JSTOR Hebrew Journals Pilot Project

The Hebrew Journals Pilot Project is the result of an extensive collaboration with the University of Haifa Library and the National Library of Israel to digitize, test and make available the complete back runs of four core journals published in Hebrew. This Pilot represents an effort to preserve and expose these critical materials to a broader audience. The University of Haifa has collaborated with the National Library of Israel and other organizations in a set of projects to preserve and widely disseminate scholarship in Hebrew, of which the Hebrew Journals Pilot Project is one.

[...]

Open Access Journal: RAMBI

"Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day": Building a Cyberinfrastructure for Digital Classicists

12th Annual City of David Archaeology Conference

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS (no, really this time):

What’s new with ancient Jerusalem?

By LOREN MINSKY/ ITRAVELJERUSALEM.COM TEAM (Jerusalem Post)
09/07/2011 15:52

The Annual City of David Archaeology Conference will reveal the newest research and discoveries on ancient Jerusalem and the City of David.

The 12th Annual City of David Archaeology Conference, the largest of its kind in Israel, is set to take place this Thursday at the City of David. This open-air conference is dedicated entirely to current research about Jerusalem and the City of David and will bring together world renowned experts and 1,400 fans of Jerusalem and its antiquities.

The conference takes place in Hebrew but many Anglos are expected to attend.
In honor of the event, the excavation sites at the City of David will be open, and conference-goers will be given the rare opportunity to take a peek at the rigorous field work.

[...]

Also, Arutz Sheva has a longer and more detailed article: City of David Conference Slated to Overturn Popular Theories.

Review of "Footnote"

FOOTNOTE is reviewed in TIFF reviews:

Footnote
Directed by Joseph Cedar

TIFF Sep 06 2011
Footnote - Directed by Joseph Cedar
By Manori Ravindran

For most people, no matter how extravagantly we screw up, our families usually have our backs. And if that's not the case, even a well meaning, "I told you so" can be comforting. In Joseph Cedar's Footnote, a father and son, both Talmudic scholars at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, are bitter rivals, and a relationship held sacred in most cultures reaches a frenzied, yet intensely entertaining, breaking point.

[...]

Earlier reviews noted here.

Enoch, Leviathan, Behemoth, and hurricane politics

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: The book of 1 Enoch is cited in the St. Louis Jewish Light in connection with recent hurricane politics. You don't see that every day.

Editorial: Kookie Monster

Posted: Wednesday, September 7, 2011 11:54 am

In the Book of Enoch, a second century BCE Jewish Apocrypha, the Behemoth (who is also referenced in the Book of Job) is the land monster and Leviathan the sea monster (there's also Ziz, the sky monster, but we'll save him for another day).

Last week on the East Coast, Behemoth and Leviathan squared off, as the latter tried to rip the shreds out of the former with his proxy, Hurricane Irene. Behemoth stood his ground, despite taking on some fairly significant damage.

But another couple forces of nature, both Jews, faced off in the aftermath of the fierce land-water battle, albeit somewhat indirectly. In Leviathan's corner stood United States Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), defiant in the face of disaster relief, suggesting that additional assistance for storm-ravaged places and people be contingent on removing dollars from elsewhere in the budget.

Standing up for those on land was Paul Krugman, noted leftist, Nobel-winning Princeton professor and New York Times columnist. Krugman flung back on Cantor like a whirling earthen dervish, calling Cantor out as both hypocritical and callously indifferent to the plight of the suffering. Hypocritical because Cantor supported an Iraq war of almost a trillion dollars without raising revenue to pay for it, and because he voted against a similar pay-as-you-go bill in 2004 when his Virginia was hit by an earlier tropical storm.

[...]

The reference to Leviathan and Behemoth is found in 1 Enoch 60:7-8. It is in the part of the book known as the Similitudes or Parables of Enoch, which dates to the first century BCE or the first century CE. Behemoth and Leviathan are also mentioned at greater length in Job 40-41.

How many languages?

TARGUMAN: How many languages does it take to get to the center?

How many you got?

Postgrad conference on lost texts at JTA

POSTGRADUATE CONFERENCE:

The Graduate School Student Organization at the Jewish Theological Seminary in NYC will be organizing and hosting a graduate student conference for this spring. Below is the call for papers. We encourage any interested graduate students to apply. For more information, questions, or concerns please email Maria Junttila Carson at macarson@jtsa.edu

Lost Texts: A Graduate Student Conference
April 29th, 2012 - New York, NY
The Graduate School of the Jewish Theological Seminary

Much of Jewish history can be viewed as a struggle between competing textual traditions, often motivated by the reintroduction and reappropriation of lost texts. The redacted texts of the biblical and rabbinic canons; the revelations of the Genizah and the Dead Sea Scrolls; the invention and revision of Jewish literary traditions by the scholars, writers, artists and thinkers of Jewish modernity - each of these discoveries of lost texts has served to complicate and expand the borders of Jewish life in the past and in the present.

We invite papers from graduate students that explore lost texts - broadly defined - as central objects of inquiry in Jewish studies as well as submissions that reflect on how Jewish Studies itself is a site where forgotten or marginalized traditions become present through the mediation of academic discourse. Papers from a wide variety of methodological approaches and time periods will be considered.

Follow the link for details (again, from the H-Judaic list).

Lost texts are one of my areas of interest, although the conference seems to be mostly focused on texts that were lost and then recovered and reappropriated, whereas I think of lost texts as books that remain entirely or mostly lost today. See my Lost Books posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Review of Magness, "Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit"

H-JUDAIC BOOK REVIEW:

Jodi Magness. Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2011. Illustrations. xv + 335 pp. $25.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8028-6558-8.

Reviewed by Joshua Schwartz (Bar-Ilan University)
Published on H-Judaic (September, 2011)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

A Life Worth Living Is More Than Spit

The origins of this book are in Qumran. Jodi Magness, one of the foremost scholars today of the archaeology and history of the Land of Israel and especially of Qumran, had hoped to write a book on the archaeology of purity, correlating the literary and archaeological evidence for the purity practices of the major Jewish groups and sects of the late Second Temple period. As she wrote her drafts, it expanded beyond purity to deal with aspects of Jewish daily life in late Second Temple period Palestine. The book she wrote seeks to identify and correlate evidence of Jewish “footprints” in the archaeological record and literary sources. The footprints relate to a broad spectrum of activities, from dining practices to toilet habits to Sabbath observance to burial customs.

The work contains twelve chapters. The first is an introductory chapter that sets the stage for uncovering the footprints. The first step is to discuss what distinguished Jews from other peoples of the Roman Empire. Much of this related to religion and the observance of laws, but some distinctions reflected socioeconomic realities, i.e., material culture. This chapter discusses sectarianism in general, purity and holiness, ruling classes, urban and rural elites, agrarian society, and the settlement at Qumran. The following chapters deal with purification of the body and hands, creeping and swarming things, household vessels, dining customs, Sabbath observance and fasting, coins, clothing and tzitzit (fringes), oil and spit, toilet and toilet habits, and tombs and burial customs. The final chapter is a short epilogue dealing with the immediate post-70 CE period.

[...]