Sins coming in fractions

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN by Adam Kirsch in Tablet: Intention Versus Action: This week, the rabbis ask if two half-sins equal a whole one. In what part of a sin is sinfulness located?

... We are not even given the satisfaction of a resolution to Rava’s problems! This is frustrating and casts further doubt on the practical application of everything that’s gone before: If the rabbis are willing to leave these questions unanswered, they couldn’t be very relevant to actual Jewish practice.

However, the Talmud is also sending a powerful implicit message. The act of thinking about law, of reasoning out its most distant ramifications, is itself sacred and pleasurable to the rabbis, regardless of its practical application. To read the Talmud at all, I’m finding, it’s necessary to be able to share at least their pleasure, if not their sense of sanctity.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are collected here and links.

Samaritan Ukrainian brides

SAMARITAN GENETICS: 'Good Samaritans' seek Ukrainian wives: In the West Bank, the world's few remaining Samaritans are starting to marry women from outside to expand the gene pool (Jane Ferguson, Al Jazeera).

The tiny population, however, is something of a double-edged sword. While the community is naturally close-knit, the next generation runs the risk of birth defects from such a small gene pool. There is a particular shortage of women, they told Al Jazeera.

That's where Tanya comes in. The community's religious elders got together a few years ago and decided they had no choice but to let some of the men marry foreign women, provided they convert. The marriage agency Tanya was working for would help make those crucial matches.

"When they came, we would show them the pictures of the women, tell them some information about them and if they want, they could have a date," Tanya explained. Eleven Ukrainian women, including Tanya, have moved into the community in recent years.

More on Samaritan genetic issues and Ukrainian brides is here and links.

Political implications of Afghan manuscripts?

I DOUBT IT: Expert: New Ancient Hebrew Manuscripts Could Have Major Impact on Taliban (The Algemeiner).

[Journalist and author Jere] Van Dyk says that if it could ever be proven that the papers date back to before the founding of the Muslim religion, or if it became evident that there was a Jewish community there at that time, then it could change the region.

“The Taliban, who are deracinated – cut off from their culture – are deeply politicized and have been for decades by Pakistan, which has its own agenda in Afghanistan. They are deeply religious – ‘We are Muslim; We want to rid our land of the infidels; We want a pure Islamic government,’ not unlike the one Mohamed is said to have created in Medina – now if it becomes clear, if there’s an increasing amount of information, and the Taliban begin to hear that, wait a minute, ‘We are descended from those who are at war with the Arabs, and our allies here Al-Qaeda’ – then it could possibly change how they look at everything.”

I just don't see this happening; I can't see the Taliban taking that much interest in what secular historians are saying. But I'll be very happy if I'm wrong.

Background on the Afghan "geniza" is here and links.

Ben Yehuda's birthday

YESTERDAY: Israelis offer a 'Yom Huledet Sameach' to Ben Yehuda, resurrector of Hebrew language: Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who transformed Hebrew from the rusty language of ancient Israel and the Bible into the dynamic, dominant language of modern-day Israel, would be 155 years old today (CSM Global News blog).

Of course, Hebrew was the language of the Torah – the biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – as well as other religious writings. So many Jews were familiar with it. But they didn’t use it to talk about things like grocery shopping or even politics.

Not so fast. Those "other religious writings" often had a lot to say about daily life and all the little halakhic details pertaining thereto. Politics certainly featured in them sometimes and I would be very surprised if the Talmud and the Responsa literature didn't discuss grocery shopping from time to time. See also my post on Hebrew as a dead language from five years ago.

Collins, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography

NEW BOOK (Yale News):

The Dead Sea Scrolls:
 A Biography


John J. Collins, the Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation

(Princeton University Press)

The Dead Sea Scrolls — discovered in caves at Qumran in 1947 — appear to have been hidden in the Judean desert by the Essenes, a Jewish sect that existed around the time of Jesus. They continue to inspire veneration and conspiracy theories to this day. John Collins tells the story of the bitter conflicts that have swirled around the scrolls since their discovery, and sheds light on their true significance for Jewish and Christian history.

Collins recounts how a Bedouin shepherd went searching for a lost goat and found the scrolls instead. He offers insight into debates over whether the Essenes were an authentic Jewish sect and explains why such questions are critical to our understanding of ancient Judaism and to Jewish identity. Collins explores whether the scrolls were indeed the property of an isolated, quasi-monastic community living at Qumran, or whether they more broadly reflect the Judaism of their time. And he unravels the impassioned disputes surrounding the scrolls and Christianity. Do they anticipate the early church? Do they undermine the credibility of the Christian faith? Collins also looks at attempts to “reclaim” the scrolls for Judaism after the full corpus became available in the 1990s, and at how the decades-long delay in publishing the scrolls gave rise to sensational claims and conspiracy theories.

Gold coins found in Iraq

66 SASSANID-ERA COINS have been discovered in Iraq in a town called Aziziyah: Iraq unearths ancient gold coins (AFP). The same article appears here with another photo of some of the coins after they had been cleaned, giving a much better view of their iconography.

Archaeology in Gaza

THE GAZA STRIP'S ARCHAEOLOGY has fared no better in the recent conflicts than in earlier ones: Gaza's archaeological treasures at risk from war and neglect (BBC). The article notes in passing the recent discovery of a Byzantine-era church and mosaic.

Related posts here and links.

Hurtado on the Son of Man in 1 Enoch

LARRY HURTADO has two new posts up on the figure of the Son of Man in 1 Enoch: Enoch & the “Son of Man” and More on “son of man”: The Nickelsburg/VanderKam Commentary.

Earlier PaleoJudaica posts on the figure of the (one like a) Son of Man in Daniel etc. are collected here.

AWOL is four

HAPPY FOURTH BLOGIVERSARY TO AWOL - The Ancient World Online.

Talmud-page "art" in Tel Aviv

ART CONTROVERSY:

Gallery threatened over Talmud artwork

Rabbinate vows to stop exhibition of works created by French artist, using pages of ancient rabbinic writings. Display 'desecrates Holy Scriptures,' says Chief Rabbi Metzger

Kobi Nahshoni
Published: 01.03.13, 15:47 / Israel Jewish Scene (ynetnews)

Israel's Chief Rabbinate has threatened to stop an art gallery in Tel Aviv from exhibiting works using original Talmud pages "sacrilegiously."

Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said he hoped someone would purchase the artwork for thousands of shekels – so that they would be removed from the gallery.

[...]

I think this "art" project is pretty tacky, but I don't think the artist should be prevented from doing it or persecuted. And despite the lurid headline of this article, the only specific "threat" seems to amount to hoping that someone buys the offending artwork. Oh and there were two (she counted them) protesters outside her gallery once. I bet we don't see this artist doing the same thing with pages from the Qur'an.

A novel about Aher

AS A DRIVEN LEAF: Studying a classic novel of Judaism. The novel involves the heretic Elisha Ben Avuyah and Rabbi Akiva.

Epiphany and The Revelation of the Magi

HAPPY EPIPHANY to all those celebrating. In related news, Brent Landau was recently interviewed about his work on the The Revelation of the Magi:

Background here and links.

Botta (ed.), In the Shadow of Bezalel

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

In the Shadow of Bezalel. Aramaic, Biblical, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Bezalel Porten

Edited by Alejandro F. Botta, Boston University

Twenty nine scholars from Israel, Europe and the Americas came together to honor and celebrate Prof. Bezalel Porten's (Emeritus, Dept. of History of the Jewish People, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) academic career. Covering a wide variety of topics within Aramaic, Biblical, and ancient Near Eastern Studies, In the Shadow of Bezalel offers new insights and proposals in the areas of Aramaic language, paleography, onomastica and lexicography; ancient Near Eastern legal traditions, Hebrew Bible, and social history of the Persian period.

UPDATE: Dead link now fixed. Sorry about that.

Afghan manuscripts now in Israel

29 MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE AFGHAN "GENIZAH" have been purchased by the Israel National Library: Israeli library unveils ancient Afghan manuscripts (AP).

The INL website also has a "New Acquisitions" entry at its News page: Afghan Genizah.

About a year and a half ago, the National Library got word regarding the existence of a stash, a genizah, of Jewish manuscripts from Afghanistan. The news was back by numerous photographs. The manuscripts left Afghanistan and reached antiquaries in different countries, bound together in bundles of varying sizes.

The material includes many dozens of fragments in Hebrew, in Judeo-Arabic, in Judeo-Persian and in Muslim Arabic. The documents written in Muslim Arabic are dated and their content is of a legal nature. Based on these items, we can date the Afghan genizah to approximately the first half of the 11th century. The National Library has now purchased 29 of these fragments. This lot has fragments of commentaries by Rav Sa'adia Gaon in Judeo Arabic, letters and other documents in Judeo-Persian and legal documents in Arabic. This is an extremely important finding, being a unique testimony, both in nature and in volume, of the cultural history of a Jewish community in an area which in the 11th century included highly important political, cultural and economical centers. To this day we have not seen Jewish findings of such magnitude and importance from this area. Everything indicates that the findings are authentic, as attested by the experts consulted by the National Library. The National Library of Israel places the utmost importance in having all the findings of this unique genizah form part of its collection, since by law its mandate is to preserve the national memory of the Jewish People. The present purchase is a first step in this direction. Several of the items can now be viewed online in the gallery included here.

Background here and links.

GJW update

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS' WIFE is the subject of a post at the CNN Belief Blog. I don't see any new information, but it's a pretty good summary of the current state of play.

'Jesus Wife' fragment gets more testing, delays article

By Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Editor

(CNN) - One of the most anticipated articles in religion circles will be absent from the pages of the January edition of the Harvard Theological Review. Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King's final article on the "Jesus wife" fragment did not make the scholarly journal because further testing on the Coptic papyrus fragment has not been finished.

[...]

As for this,

"We're moving ahead with the testing, but it is not yet complete, and so the article will await until we have the results," King said in an email to CNN.

"The owner of the fragment has been making arrangements for further testing and analysis of the fragment, including testing by independent laboratories with the resources and specific expertise necessary to produce and interpret reliable results. This testing is still underway," Kathyrn Dodgson, director of communications for the Harvard Divinity School, said in a email to CNN.

I don't think I'm the only one who has wondered why the owner is arranging the tests rather than Professor King or specialists designated by Harvard University. Does the owner have the expertise to make such arrangements? And, not to put too fine a point on it, how do we know that tests have actually been arranged? Have King or Harvard been involved at all or do we just have the word of the anonymous owner? The reports I have seen are vague on this point and it would be helpful to hear some specifics. Trust, but verify.

Background here.

UPDATE: David Meadows comments.

John William McKenzie Brady, 16 January 2004–31 December 2012

TRAGIC NEWS: A Moment of Silence, A Day of Support for Dr. Christian Brady and his Family, 10 am Friday.

Dr. Christian Brady of Penn State University is well known to readers of this blog. At the beginning of this week Dr. Brady and his family suffered the utterly unexpected loss of their son, John William McKenzie. The funeral begins in five minutes. Our hearts go out to Chris and his family in this time of unimaginable grief.

Chris has a post up at his blog, Targuman: John William McKenzie Brady – Mack, the best boy ever.

Review of Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire

H-JUDAIC BOOK REVIEW:

Anathea Portier-Young.Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism. Grand Rapids W. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.,
2011. xxiii + 462 pp. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8028-6598-4.

Reviewed by John C. Reeves (The University of North Carolina,
Charlotte)
Published on H-Judaic (January, 2013)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Rethinking the Imperial Context for Early Jewish Apocalypticism

This impressive monograph, a thoroughly revised version of the
author's doctoral dissertation carried out under the direction of
James L. Crenshaw at Duke University almost a decade ago, provides a
new reading of the cultic crisis purportedly threatening the
Jerusalem Temple in Judea during the first half of the second century
BCE, a cultural schism whose main events are known almost exclusively
from later apocryphal sources like 1 and 2 Maccabees or allegedly
contemporary visionary (that is, "apocalyptic") compositions like the
biblical book of Daniel, or early portions from what would later
figure within the parascriptural collection of writings known by
modern scholars as _1 Enoch_. ...

Terrace farming at Petra

PETRA IN THE NEWS:

Terrace Farming Unearthed at Ancient Desert City of Petra

(ScienceDaily)

Jan. 2, 2013 — A team of international archaeologists including Christian Cloke of the University of Cincinnati is providing new insights into successful and extensive water management and agricultural production in and around the ancient desert city of Petra, located in present-day Jordan. Ongoing investigations, of which Cloke is a part, are led by Professor Susan Alcock of the Brown University Petra Archaeological Project (BUPAP).

[...]

Some of the many stories about Petra noted in PaleoJudaica are here, here, and links.

Goldenberg, Semitic Languages

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM OUP:

Semitic Languages
Features, Structures, Relations, Processes
Gideon Goldenberg

ISBN13: 9780199644919ISBN10: 0199644918 Hardback, 416 pages
Jan 2013, In Stock
Price:
$135.00 (06)
Shipping Details

Description
This book offers a thorough, authoritative account of the branches of Semitic. These include some of the world's oldest attested languages, among them Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic, as well as various modern languages. Gideon Goldenberg describes their history, geographical distribution, writing systems, and genetic classi?cation. He examines their main features and distinctive characteristics, including their phonology, morphemes, derivational morphology, verbal systems, syntactic relationships, and their typological signi?cance. He also discusses the pioneering work and achievements of medieval Arabic and Hebrew scholars in theoretical and descriptive aspects of grammar, lexicography, and philology. Professor Goldenberg's balanced, undogmatic account presents the fruits of a lifetime of original research: it will be widely welcomed by scholars and advanced students of the Semitic languages and linguistic typology.

Features
Pioneering account of one of the oldest attested language families
Written by one of the world's leading authorities
Covers the history of Semitic from ancient origins to the present
Wide-ranging, undogmatic, and accessible

Product Details
416 pages; Tables, Line Drawings, Maps; 9.7 x 6.7; ISBN13: 978-0-19-964491-9ISBN10: 0-19-964491-8

About the Author(s)
Gideon Goldenberg is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has been a Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 1996 and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy since 1999. He has published extensively on Neo-Ethiopian languages, Syriac, Hebrew, and Neo-Aramaic, syntactic relations and typology, and on the history of linguistics in the Middle East.

Via Adam McCollum on Facebook.

December Biblical Studies Carnival

THE DECEMBER 2012 BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL has been posted by Abram K-J at the Words on the Word blog.