Columbus Day varia

OH, YES — COLUMBUS DAY: Columbus, the size of the earth, and 4 Ezra. An appropriate post from a few years ago. Also, more recently, this: Hebrew, pepper, and Columbus. On the actual discovery of America, see the comments at the bottom of this post.

Incidentally, it has also been argued in recent years that Christopher Columbus was secretly Jewish. For this reason, Barbara Aiello thinks that The Jews can save Columbus Day (Times of Israel Blog). I blog, you decide.

I know Columbus Day was officially yesterday, but I just remembered to post on it now.

Zohar Ammud Yomi

REMINDER: "Zohar Ammud Yomi (A Daily Page of Zohar) begins at sundown in your location. Monday night, October 13 – Tuesday, October 14, 2014 (20 Tishrei 5775)." Background here. It is currently taking place on the The Zohar Facebook page.

Also, here's an audio file that I haven't had the chance to listen to yet: Daniel Matt on Translating the Zohar.

Roman and Late Antique "Assyrians" and "Syrians"

THE CURRENT ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES has an article on the ancient use of the terms "Assyrian" and "Syrian" which complicates and enriches the historical background of the current political discussion on whether modern Aramaic-speaking Christian groups in the Middle East constitute an ethnic identity.

Nathanael Andrade, Assyrians, Syrians and the Greek Language in the late Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Periods (JNES 73 [2014]: 299-317)

The analysis is complicated and there is no abstract, but here's an excerpt from the conclusion:

As stated in the analysis above, Greeks first began to distinguish between Syrians and Assyrians during the classical period. According to their perspective, the Syrians lived in the Levant west of the Euphrates river, and the Assyrians lived in the region of Mesopotamia extending east of it. The Greeks conceived of Syrians and Assyrians as sharing the same ethnic descent and cultural features, most notably the Aramaic language, but they arbitrarily placed them in regional categories. When the Hellenistic Greek kingdoms and (eventually) the Roman empire asserted authority over the Near East, they made this conceptual partitioning into a social fact maintained by imperial infrastructure. While they perceived Syrians and Assyrians (and Arameans) to be the same people, the Seleucids nevertheless defined Syria as a region west of the Euphrates and divided it into administrative districts. Roman authorities recognized this territory as the land inhabited by the Syrian ethnos, a social category distinct from the Assyrians who dwelled in Parthian and then Sasanian Mesopotamia.

Such modes of differentiation were durable. During the mid-third century ce, one of the compilers of the Thirteenth Sibylline Oracle, himself a Syrian, lamented in Greek how Syrians had suffered the invasions of “Assyrian” hordes who had fought in the Persian ranks. This could have been an archaizing reference, but it also reflects the belief that Syrians lived in Roman territory and Assyrian counterparts in Persian ones.91 Sharing the same ancestral legacy, they nonetheless belonged to different social categories. Syrians were Assyrian, but they were a discrete, specific subset of them.

Despite such differentiation, Syrians of the Roman empire still could meaningfully conceive of themselves as Assyrians. While encapsulating a heterogeneous array of individuals who alternatively traced Greek, Assyrian, and other Near Eastern genealogies, they could emphasize how their ethnos in aggregate constituted the social legacy of the same ancient people from whom the Assyrians of the Parthian and Sasanian empires claimed to have originated. They could also reckon “Aramean” to be the common name for such Assyrians in the Aramaic language and not just for the inhabitants of the Sasanian Persian region called bēth Arāmāyē (otherwise known as Babylonia or Asūrestān). Even as Syria’s local cultures underwent tremendous cultural transformation, integrated Greek idioms, or generated “hybrid” cultural forms, Syrians still could produce narratives of an “Assyrian” past and vaunt Assyrian self-definition in ways that embedded their innovative and dynamic cultural expressions in a venerable pre-Hellenistic origin. Syrians adopted and adapted new practices amid imperial pressure, but they could continue to see themselves as traditional, as Assyrian, by constantly producing new perspectives on the history of the Assyrians, and reconceiving what Assyrian traditions were. Being Syrian and Assyrian was not a static phenomenon. It was a process of cultural creativity and productive memory, of forging links to a common Assyrian heritage while also identifying with a specific social unit to which many fellow Assyrians did not belong: the Roman imperial Syrian ethnos. How Syriac-speaking Christians fashioned distinct yet intersecting identifications as Syrians, Assyrians, or Arameans in late antiquity is a complex issue that cannot be explored here. But as this article has hopefully shown, how Greek-writing Syrians, or Assyrians, did so during the high Roman imperial period is a complex issue too.

Requires a JSTOR subscription to access the full article. Cross-file under "Modern Aramaic Watch," sort of.

Weitzman at Penn

CONGRATULATIONS TO STEVEN WEITZMAN,* who has just been appointed to a named chair at the University of Pennsylvania.

Steven Weitzman, who came to Penn in July from Stanford University, has been appointed Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literature in the department of religious studies. He is also the new Ella Darivoff Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Dr. Weitzman is a scholar of biblical and Jewish studies. He applies insights from the study of religion, literary theory, anthropology and other fields to understand the origins of Jewish culture, the formation of the Bible and other ancient texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the history of how the Bible has been reimagined in later cultural traditions. Among his recent projects is a collaboration with a Stanford geneticist that aims to bridge Jewish studies and population genetics.

As director of the Katz Center, Dr. Weitzman will lead this distinguished research institute into its third decade of post-doctoral research on Jewish civilization in all its historical and cultural manifestations.

Dr. Weitzman received his PhD from Harvard after completing his BA at UC Berkeley, and had previously spent several years teaching in the department of religious studies at Indiana University where he served as director of its Jewish Studies program for six years.

The Abraham M. Ellis chair was created in 1954 by the Abraham M. and Rose Ellis Foundation. The Ella Darivoff Director was established in 2001 by Philip M. Darivoff, W’79, WG’85 and Betsy Marks Darivoff, C’79.

For more on the genetics research mentioned above, see here.

*And also to his Penn colleague Eve Troutt Powell, who has also just been appointed to a named chair at Penn.

Virtual Magic Bowl Archive Project relocated

THE VMBA: VIRTUAL MAGIC BOWL ARCHIVE was noted here back in 2011 when it was a project of Southampton University. The old website is still there, but the project is now at Exeter University and there's a new and updated website there (the first link above).

The aim of the VMBA is to provide online resources for those engaged in the study of Aramaic incantation bowls from Sasanian Mesopotamia, perhaps the most important primary 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.

While we envisage more features being added over time, the initial resources will focus on some 650 texts that comprise part of the Schøyen Collection, which are currently being prepared for publication by an international team of scholars under the supervision of Professor Shaul Shaked.

Via AWOL. More on Professor Shaked here, here, here, and links.

The "Roman Ascent" to Jerusalem

RUINS: Ancient road into Jerusalem lies buried under construction debris. Historic pilgrims’ route known as the Roman Ascent now passes through sewage main and firing range.

The outskirts of Jerusalem, like the rest of the city, are a combination of the ugly and the beautiful. After Har Hamenuchot cemetery, under a heap of construction debris dozens of meters high, between a gigantic sewage main and the police firing range is a green valley though which the historic road to Jerusalem once ran. Very little has survived – a few curbstones, hints of ancient paving and archaeological remains at either end. The rest has been swept away over the years or disappeared under the cemetery, the range and the sewage main.

In honor of Sukkot, we took a walk along the ancient pilgrims’ route to Jerusalem, known as the Roman Ascent.

[...]

Even though it may actually be a Hasmonean rather than a Roman road.

Four Who Entered Paradise reloaded

THE FORWARD: Mysticism, Heresy and Multimedia Art (Michael Kaminer).

In the Talmudic legend called “Four Entered the Orchard,” a quartet of wise men who explore Jewish mysticism meet severe ends: One dies, one loses his mind, and one forsakes Jewish tenets altogether. Only one leaves intact.

Here’s hoping that the artists in “Pardes,” a new exhibition at Toronto’s Koffler Centre of the Arts, meet gentler fates. Inspired by the ancient tale, the exhibition “brings together four Israeli sound and multimedia artists to investigate notions of mysticism, heresy and the occult from secular perspectives, as they relate to contemporary society,” according to Mona Filip, the Koffler’s director.

The Talmudic story “becomes an overarching metaphor and theme of research for the show,” Filip said.
Pardes is also “a metaphor for the transcendent,” according to Toronto-based curator Liora Belford, who organized the exhibition. ”Where traditional transcendent and institutionalized religions are waning, alternative forms of non-physical yet non-transcendent ‘spirituality’ are emerging.”

[...]

Sounds interesting, but be careful not to ask where the drinking fountain is while you're visiting the exhibit.

Past references to the story of the Four Who Entered Paradise are collected here.

Jenkins on "the outside books"

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: In Many Tongues. Philip Jenkins comments on Outside the Bible. I hope at some point he will also have a look at Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. I think he will like it.

Yee et al. Fortress Commentary on the Bible: The Old Testament and Apocrypha

NEW BOOK:

Fortress Commentary on the Bible: The Old Testament and Apocrypha

by Gale A. Yee (Editor); Hugh R. Page Jr. (Editor); Matthew J. M. Coomber (Editor)

Availability: In stock.

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 1,050
ISBN: 9780800699161
Height: 9.25
Width: 7.5
Item No: ED015737
Release Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2014

$70.00

The Fortress Commentary on the Bible: Old Testament and Apocrypha presents a balanced synthesis of current scholarship, enabling readers to interpret Scripture for a complex and pluralistic world.

The contributors bring a rich diversity of perspectives to the task of connecting solid historical critical analysis of the Scripture with sensitivity to theological, cultural, and interpretive issues arising in our encounter with the text. The contributors represent a broad array of theological commitment—Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and others.

The introductory articles and section introductions in the volume discuss the dramatic challenges that have shaped contemporary interpretation of the Old Testament and Apocrypha. Individual book articles provide an introduction and commentary on key sense units that are explored through the lenses of three critical questions:

• The text in its ancient context. What did the text probably mean in its original historical and cultural context?
  
• The text in the interpretive tradition. How have centuries of reading and interpreting shaped our understanding of the text?
  
• The text in contemporary discussion. What are the unique challenges and interpretive questions that arise for readers and hearers of the text today?

The result is a commentary that is comprehensive and useful for preaching, teaching, and research.

Reviews of books on Jewish and Iranian studies

ARASH ZEINI: Two reviews. The reviews, neither of which is online, are both in Zion and are of Secunda, The Iranian Talmud (background here, here, and links) and Secunda and Fine (eds.): Shoshannat Yaakov, Jewish and Iranian studies in honor of Yaakov Elman (background here).

Wells, Grace and Agency in Paul and Second Temple Judaism

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Grace and Agency in Paul and Second Temple Judaism
Interpreting the Transformation of the Heart

Kyle B. Wells, Westmont College, Santa Barbara

Following recent intertextual studies, Kyle B. Wells examines how descriptions of ‘heart-transformation’ in Deut 30, Jer 31–32 and Ezek 36 informed Paul and his contemporaries' articulations about grace and agency. Beyond advancing our understanding of how these restoration narratives were interpreted in the LXX, the Dead Sea Literature, Baruch, Jubilees, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and Philo, Wells demonstrates that while most Jews in this period did not set divine and human agency in competition with one another, their constructions differed markedly and this would have contributed to vehement disagreements among them. While not sui generis in every respect, Paul's own convictions about grace and agency appear radical due to the way he reconfigures these concepts in relation to Christ.

Was Isaac sacrificed?

TZEMAH YOREH: The Sacrifice of Isaac in Context. Recovering a Lost Ending of the Akedah (TheTorah.com).

HT Seth Sanders on Facebook. An interesting article that takes up and develops a case made by Shalom Spiegel in The Last Trial (see n. 26) that in the original story of the Aqedah (the Binding of Isaac) Isaac was not only bound, he was actually sacrificed by Abraham. Indeed there is a good case that there is more going on in the Akedah (Genesis 22:1-19) than first meets the eye. But that said, there is a piece of evidence missed by Dr. Yoreh which partly supports his argument, but overall raises serious difficulties for it. He accepts a source division of the passage based on the use of divine names: Elohim ("God," used by the E source or Elohist) throughout the narrative except in vv. 11 and 14-15, where YHWH ("the LORD," typical of the J source or Yahwist) is used instead. Then by omitting vv. 12b and 13-14 (and presumably vv. 15-18 also) as Yahwistic additions, he reconstructs an original Elohistic story in which no angel intervened and Isaac was sacrificed.

The piece of evidence I mentioned is literally a piece, a fragment of Genesis 22 preserved in our earliest surviving manuscript of Genesis, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and called 4QGenesisExodus^a.* This fragment has just a bit of v. 14 on it: אלהים יראה אשר יאמר. (Some of the letters are damaged or missing, but the readings are not in doubt.) So the place name in v. 14 is called "Elohim Yir'eh; as it is said ... ." The Masoretic text here reads "YHWH Yireh," so this fragment supports the suggestion that the original version had Elohim. Indeed, this phrase refers back to the beginning of the verse where Abraham uses the phrase "YHWH Yir'eh," translated something like "YHWH will see to it." The implication is that the original of that phrase also used Elohim. Moreover, the reference to "the"Angel of YHWH" in v. 11 is read in the Syriac version as "the Angel of Elohim." So we see a pattern, enough of one to suspect that the use of YHWH in "the Angel of YHWH" in v. 15 is also secondary and it originally read "the Angel of Elohim."

In other words, the fragment from the Dead Sea Scrolls gives us very good reason to infer that the whole passage originally read Elohim throughout.

So far, so good. The problem with Dr. Yoreh's theory is that v. 14, which he wants to delete as a secondary addition by the Yahwist, also originally read Elohim and therefore was probably part of the original E story. Or at least the original use of the divine name gives us no reason to suspect that the Yahwist has added the passage.

One could still argue that the verses he deletes are secondary additions and that still gives us an Aqedah in which Isaac wasn't saved, but the argument is much weaker without the change in divine names.

I still suspect that an earlier version of the Aqedah did involve the actual sacrifice of Isaac, although what happened next is far from clear. Did Isaac die and rise again like Baal? I don't know. Yoreh suggests (n. 33) that in E Abraham was not the ancestor of Jacob, which is also possible. But any such speculative reconstructions have to proceed without the help of traditional source criticism based on the use of the divine names.

*I published the fragment in "The Name of God at Moriah: An Unpublished Fragment from 4QGenExod^a" in JBL 110 (1991): 577-82. The entire manuscript was later published in DJD 12. Incidentally, the handwriting of this fragment is the same as in the rest of the manuscript. And I reconstructed the whole manuscript and discovered that 22:14 came right at the top of a column, and the fragment does show the top margin of a column, so despite it's small size it is clearly a fragment from this part of Genesis in this manuscript.

UPDATE: I see I have an earlier post from many years ago which refers to Spiegel's reading of the Aqedah.

More on the INL's Hebrew manuscript digitization project

MANUSCRIPTS GALORE: In Jerusalem, a glimpse of Newton’s apocalypse, smuggled Syrian bibles, Kafka’s Hebrew As it pioneers a worldwide initiative to digitize every Hebrew manuscript in existence, Israel’s National Library offers a rare and tantalizing sight of its most prized treasures (Daniel Estrin, AP).

HT Gerald Rosenberg.

For the recently destroyed Jobar Synagogue, see here and links. For more on two of the "crowns of Damascus," see here. More on Isaac Newton's theological views and writings is here, here, and here. There's more on the Israel National Library's Hebrew manuscript digitization project here and here. And there is much more on many other manuscript digitization projects here, here, and here, and links.

Daf Yomi interim reflections

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Study of Law as a Spiritual Act: Finding Truth and Meaning in the Talmud. Two years and 100 columns in to the Daf Yomi cycle, our critic pauses to reflect on its intellectual challenges and delights.

This week, punctuated for all Jews by Yom Kippur, also marks a particular transition for Daf Yomi readers. After two years, we have finally come to the end of Seder Moed, the division of the Talmud that deals with Jewish holidays. In that time, we have read hundreds of pages on the laws of Shabbat, in Tractates Shabbat and Eruvin, and learned the laws of most of the other major Jewish holidays—Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Pesach and Sukkot and Purim. We’ve learned about laws that apply to all festivals, in Tractate Beitzah, and those that apply only to the intermediate days of festivals, in Tractate Moed Katan. And we’ve read about rituals from Temple times that have not been practiced for almost 2,000 years—such as the collection of tithes, in Tractate Shekalim, and pilgrimages to Jerusalem, in Tractate Chagigah—but have remained a subject of study for all that time.

As it happens, this week also marks the 100th installment of my Daf Yomi column. These two milestones have led me to step back from the daily routine and reflect on what I have learned over the past two years of exploring the Talmud. I’ve been further prompted in this direction by reading a new book, The Talmud: A Biography, by Harry Freedman, which offers a brief history of the Talmud and the role it has played in Jewish thought and practice. So important is that role, so ubiquitous is the Talmud in Jewish culture, that the later parts of Freedman’s book tend to blur into a history of Judaism in general, taking in everything from Spinoza’s secularism to the miracle-working of the Baal Shem Tov.

[...]

Insofar as I know about the subject (and it is by no means my specialty), this column seems to be a nice brief summary of the current state of Talmudic studies. Freedman's book has also been mentioned here.

I don't have the time to participate in Daf Yomi, but I have learned a lot just from reading Mr. Kirsch's columns. I look forward to five more year of them.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Sukkot 2014

THE FESTIVAL OF SUKKOT (BOOTHS, TABERNACLES) begins this evening at sundown. Best wishes to all those observing it.

Biblical background to the festival is found in Leviticus 23:39-43 and Deuteronomy 16:13-15, with mentions also in Deuteronomy 31:10, Zechariah 14:16-18, Ezra 3:4, and 2 Chronicles 8:12-13. And there is one mention in the New Testament in John 7:2.

Past posts dealing with the historical background of the festival are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Herman, "The Babylonian Talmud and the Paikuli inscription"

ARASH ZEINI: The Babylonian Talmud and the Paikuli inscription. A new article in Zion by Geoffrey Herman.

New Jesus document? Sadly, no.

BOGUS: Newly-Found Document Holds Eyewitness Account of Jesus Performing Miracle.

In case you happened to see this article, which has been making the rounds on social media, it is a rather well-done, playful hoax on a site that likes to publish playful hoaxes. That pretty much sums it up, but Snopes has some more details: Miracle Witness.

Anyone who knows about Historical Jesus research would have been pretty sure it was a hoax as soon as they saw it. A real thing like this would have been all over the media with extensive responses from specialists. Think of the response to the Gospel of Jesus' Wife back in 2012, only more so.

Shanks on the Ivory Pomegranate inscription

HERSHEL SHANKS: First Person: A New Target (BAR). That target being Mr. Shanks himself. Paleographer Ada Yardeni has convinced him that the Ivory Pomegranate inscription may be a forgery. Most specialists think that, although the artifact itself is a genuine antiquity, the inscription is a modern forgery.

Background here, here, and links.

"Four species" coin on display

FOR SUKKOT: Rare ‘Four Species’ Coin from Bar Kochba in Display in Israel. The exhibition includes the largest gold medallion with Judaic symbols known in existence (The Jewish Press).

A rare silver coin with an inscription from the period of the Bar Kochba revolt is on display at the Israel Museum through the week-long Sukkot holiday, which begins Wednesday night.

The rare cache of Byzantine-era antiquities discovered in 2013 will be on display through the Sukkot holiday.

The writing on the coin with a depiction of the Four Species used on Sukkot indicates that it was written by Bar Kochba or in his name and illustrates the effort spent to supply the Four Species to Bar Kochba’s soldiers in the rebellion against the Roman conquerors.

The exhibition includes the largest gold medallion with Judaic symbols known in existence. Among the archaeological finds on view are gold coins and silver and gold jewelry, in addition to the sizable medallion, measuring four inches in diameter.

[...]

The report of the discovery was noted here last year. The gold medallion was also recently on display in the Jerusalem of Gold exhibition, noted here.

"When the Greeks Ruled Egypt"

EXHIBITION: Multiculturalism: Nothing New.‘When the Greeks Ruled Egypt’ Highlights the Diversity of Cultures in Ptolemaic Egypt (John Noble Wilford, NYT).

For the three centuries from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, Greeks ruled Egypt not so much as foreign conquerors but as the next dynasty in the long line of pharaohs. It was not out of character for Alexander himself to assume the power and status of a pharaoh, not to mention the promised fringe benefit of a grand afterlife and kinship to the Egyptian gods.

[...]


Their overriding policy was not to demand assimilation but to accept many ways of life. No official language was imposed for all purposes. Government affairs were often conducted in Greek, but also in Demotic, the local everyday language derived from the more formal hieroglyphs. Jewish and other immigrants often spoke and wrote Aramaic.

[...]

The diversity of cultures in Ptolemaic Egypt is the subject of an exhibition opening Wednesday at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, affiliated with New York University. Curators said the exhibition, “When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra,” from 323 B. C. to the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 B.C., “shines a light on the fluidity of the very idea of specific cultural identity.”

[...]

There is a certain amount of idealization and cultural projection here. Ptolemaic Egypt did not lack for Greek cultural imperialism, but the rulers were also very pragmatic and they accepted a great deal of cultural variety as long as the taxes got paid.

In any case, sounds like an interesting exhibition.