Curtis et al. (eds.), The Parthian and Early Sasanian Empires

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: On Parthian and Sasanian Empires. Notice of a new book: Sarkhosh Curtis, Vesta, Elizabeth Pendleton, Michael Alram & Touraj Daryaee (eds.). 2016. The Parthian and early Sasanian Empires: Adaptation and expansion (The British Institute of Persian Studies Archaeological Monographs Series V). Oxbow Books: Oxford.

Muraoka, A Biblical Aramaic Reader

NEW BOOK FROM PEETERS PUBLISHERS (ARAMAIC WATCH):

A Biblical Aramaic Reader
With an Outline Grammar

Authors: Muraoka T.

Year: 2015
ISBN: 978-90-429-3276-0
Pages: X-83 p.
Price: 19 EURO

Summary:
This reader is for anyone very eager to read the story of Daniel in the lions' den and many other fascinating stories in their original language, Aramaic.
A brief outline of Biblical Aramaic grammar is followed by a verse-by-verse grammatical commentary on the Aramaic chapters in the books of Daniel and Ezra. Both the outline grammar and the grammatical commentary presuppose basic knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew. Constant references are made in the commentary to relevant sections of the outline grammar. The commentary is written in a user-friendly, not overtly technical language. Some grammatical exercises with keys and paradigms conclude the Reader. Also suitable for self-study.

More on that John papyrus on eBay

ETC: A New Papyrus of the Gospel of John (Tommy Wasserman). Photos and detailed technical information for those interested.

Background here.

JSQ 22.4

A NEW ISSUE OF JEWISH STUDIES QUARTERLY (22.4) HAS BEEN PUBLISHED. TOC:

The Midrash of Jesus and the Bavli's Counter-Gospel
pp. 303-324(22)
Author: Furstenberg, Yair

CThe Mother of the Seven Sons in Lamentations Rabbah and the Virgin Mary
pp. 325-351(27)
Author: Himmelfarb, Martha

From Census to Atonement: Parshat Shekalim in Pesikta de Rav Kahana and Pesikta Rabbati
pp. 352-376(25)
Author: Atzmon, Arnon

Literary Devices in the Psalms: The Commentary of Ibn Ezra Revisited
pp. 377-402(26)
Author: Seidler, Ayelet

Requires a personal or institutional subscription to access the articles.

HT the Talmud Blog on Facebook.

Kiel, "Creation by Emission"

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Adam & Eve in Zoroastrian and Manichaean Literature. Notice of new article: Kiel, Yishai. 2015. "Creation by Emission. Recreating Adam and Eve in the Babylonian Talmud in Light of Zoroastrian and Manichaean Literature." Journal of Jewish Studies 66(2). 295–316.

Bond and Hurtado (eds.), Peter in Early Christianity

LARRY HURTADO: Peter in Early Christianity: New Book.

I’m pleased to announce the new multi-author volume: Peter in Early Christianity (Eerdmans, 2015), eds. Helen K. Bond & Larry W. Hurtado. The online catalogue entry is here. This volume arose from our conference on Peter held here in Edinburgh under the auspices of our Centre for the Study of Christian Origins in July 2013.

[...]

The book was noted as forthcoming here and the conference that produced the papers for it was noted here, here, and here.

Meir and Edith Lubetski, Recording New Epigraphic Evidence

NEW BOOK FROM LISHON LIMUD:

Recording New Epigraphic Evidence; Essays in Honor of Robert Deutsch, ed. Meir and Edith Lubetski.

The books [sic] presented in honor of Dr. Robert Deutsch deals with ancient inscriptions from the first millennium BCE found on ostraca, seals, bullae and other artifacts.

Early marriage in Talmudic times?

EARLY MARRIAGES SEEN IN TALMUDIC TIMES, EXPERT SAYS (Jodie Shupac, Canadian Jewish News).

Marrying off young girls occurred among Jewish families in the mishnaic and talmudic periods.

Tirzah Meacham, associate professor of near and Middle Eastern civilizations at the University of Toronto, made the point Nov. 10 at a conference titled “The Jewish Family,” sponsored by the Jewish Law Association, U of T’s Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and York University’s Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies. It was held at U of T and attended by several dozen people.

Meacham’s was among the handful of presentations by academics from around North America who gathered to discuss intersections between Jewish and civil law, including gender relations, marriage and divorce.

Meacham, whose research includes talmudic and rabbinic literature, and Judaism and feminism, discussed conflicts between Halachah and civil law on the age of marriage.

She countered an argument made by Bar-Ilan University professor Adiel Schremer, who claimed that in Jewish Palestine of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, girls married well into their teens, while in surrounding cultures, such as Babylonia, they married around age 13.

Meacham said Schremer’s study relied on tombstone inscriptions found in Rome, Hellenistic Egypt and Palestine, which noted a woman’s marital age. This evidence is problematic, Meacham argued, because graves of middle and lower class Jews were likely marked with less detail, limiting the “sample size” to wealthy families.

[...]

She said the typical age of betrothal, if not marriage, was probably before 12-1/2. After that age, a father lost the authority to annul his daughter’s vows and the legal right to her handiwork or profits she brought to the household, including the bride price.

[...]

More on Schremer's work is here.

Very early marriage (in the early teens) was not unusual in antiquity in general, in no small part because the average lifespan was considerably shorter than ours. As I have remarked repeatedly, the world of the ancients was a very different world from ours. That said, it should be clarified that betrothal was legally equivalent to marriage, but did not involve consummation, which was to occur only after the marriage.

NT papyrus on eBay

ATTIC ARCHAEOLOGY: Greek New Testament papyrus is discovered on eBay (JENNIFER SCHUESSLER, NYT).

Last January, Geoffrey Smith, a scholar of early Christianity at the University of Texas, noticed something startling: an eBay listing for an ancient Greek papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John — with an opening bid of only $99.

“I thought, This can’t be allowed to sell on eBay,” Dr. Smith said. “It will just disappear into a private collection.”

Dr. Smith contacted the seller and urged him to halt the online auction — apparently the first on eBay for a Greek New Testament papyrus, he and other scholars said — and let him study the fragment. The seller agreed, and now, on Saturday, Mr. Smith will present his research at the annual conference of the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta.

The credit-card-size papyrus, which Dr. Smith dates from around A.D. 250 to A.D. 350, contains about six lines of the Gospel of John on one side and an unidentified Christian text on the other. If Dr. Smith’s analysis is correct, it is the only known Greek New Testament papyrus from an unused scroll rather than a codex, the emerging book technology that early Christians, in sharp contrast to their Jewish and pagan contemporaries, preferred for their texts.

[...]

Dr. Smith declined to identify the seller. But in the text of the listing copied on Dr. Jones’s blog, the seller said the papyrus had been in the private collection of Harold R. Willoughby, a professor of early Christianity at the University of Chicago who died in 1962.

The seller, who identified himself in the listing as a relative of Mr. Willoughby, told Mr. Smith that he had found the papyrus only recently, after opening a suitcase of Mr. Willoughby’s possessions that he had acquired in 1990 and stashed in his attic.

[...]

And if the story is true, and it does seem to be verified, then the selling of the papyrus would be legal.

Interesting article. I didn't see any obvious errors on scholarly matters, but I do note that Larry Hurtado is not a professor at the University of St. Andrews. He is a retired professor from the University of Edinburgh, as he says at his blog, to which the article links.

UPDATE (22 November): More here.

Oh ... and I'm in Atlanta

GOT IN LAST NIGHT. I'm pretty jet-lagged and woke up very early, but that at least leaves plenty of time for blogging. I've seen a few SBL people already and am looking forward to seeing more soon. Now it's time to go investigate the gym.

Bautch and Knoppers (eds.), Covenant in the Persian Period

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Biblical Covenant in the Persian Period. Notice of new book: Bautch, Richard J. & Gary N. Knoppers (eds.). 2015. Covenant in the Persian Period: from Genesis to Chronicles. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.

Geller (ed.), The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud

Edited by Markham J. Geller, University College London
The Babylonian Talmud remains the richest source of information regarding the material culture and lifestyle of the Babylonian Jewish community, with additional data now supplied by Babylonian incantation bowls. Although archaeology has yet to excavate any Jewish sites from Babylonia, information from Parthian and Sassanian Babylonia provides relevant background information, which differs substantially from archaeological finds from the Land of Israel. One of the key questions addresses the amount of traffic and general communications between Jewish Babylonia and Israel, considering the great distances and hardships of travel involved.

Levine on ancient synagogues

LECTURE IN PITTSBURGH: Israeli professor describes autonomy in antiquity, locally controlled synagogues (Adam Reinherz, Jewish Chronicle)

On a cool Sunday evening in November, nearly 75 people gathered at a historic synagogue in Shadyside to learn about ancient synagogues in Israel. The event, which was a collaboration among Classrooms Without Borders and five area synagogues, featured Lee Levine, an expert on ancient Judaism and professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Throughout Levine’s hourlong lecture in Freehof Hall at Rodef Shalom, he discussed how and why the synagogue became a central institution in late antiquity.

Early on in his remarks, Levine stated the historic uncertainty surrounding synagogues.

“We have no idea when, where or why it started,” he said. “It’s strange for an institution to percolate and know nothing about its origins.”

[...]

Follow the link for a detailed summary of the lecture and discussion.

Jesus and same-sex relations

THELOGY IN THE RAW: Jesus Was a Jew: Understanding Jesus and Same-Sex Marriages in His 1st Century Jewish (Not Our 21st Century Western) Context.

This is an ETS paper that was presented on Wednesday. It indicates that same-sex relations were condemned without exception in Second Temple Judaism whenever it was (rarely) mentioned, and as far as I can recall (never having thoroughly checked), this sounds right. (As often happens with these things, I am not certain that all the texts cited in this paper are actually Jewish.) There is nothing in the texts about Jesus to indicate he might have thought otherwise. Beyond this, I have very serious reservations about trying to figure out what Jesus might have thought about any modern hot-button issue. The texts give us very little information about the historical Jesus and there remains considerable debate even about what his major teachings and actions were, so we're not likely to get very far on what he thought about things that the texts don't even mention.

Final SBL Blogger session

JAMES MCGRATH: The Last Blogger Session #AARSBL15.

This year’s session of the SBL Blogger and Online Publication program unit will be the last ever, and we will be going out with a bang.

If you would like to go, here is the information on the date and location:

Blogger and Online Publication
11/22/2015
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: A701 (Atrium Level) - Marriott
Theme: Blogging Comes of Age
This session will feature two papers, followed by a panel of blogging scholars who will share their thoughts about the benefits and challenges, rewards and hardships, of academic blogging. The panelists will then participate in a Q&A with the audience.

James McGrath, Butler University, Presiding
Rick Brannan, Faithlife
From Blog, to Book, to the Larger Scholarly Discussion (20 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Christian Brady, Pennsylvania State University
The Life of a Blog from Cradle to Maturity (?) (20 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Panel Discussion
Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Panelist (10 min)
Wil Gafney, Brite Divinity School (TCU), Panelist (10 min)
Lawrence Schiffman, New York University, Panelist (10 min)
Discussion (60 min)
Business Meeting (10 min)

I have meetings that morning and will probably not be able to get to this one, but I hope it goes well.

SBL 2015

I'M OFF TO ATLANTA for the 2015 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. This year I am presenting a paper that looks at the response to my 2001 book Descenders to the Chariot: The People Behind the Hekhalot Literature.

Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity; Religious Experience in Antiquity
Joint Session With: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity, Religious Experience in Antiquity
11/21/2015
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: 404 (Level 4) - Hilton
Theme: Revisiting Shamanism
This session is dedicated to Daniel Merkur, PhD whose scholarship on mysticism and friendship has inspired and continues to inspire us.

Celia Deutsch, Barnard College, Presiding
April D. DeConick, Rice University, Introduction (5 min)
April D. DeConick, Rice University
Shamanism and Gnostic Ritual (25 min)
James R. Davila, University of St. Andrews
Hekhalot Mysticism and Jewish Shamanism: Where Do We Stand Now? (25 min)
Jeffrey Pettis, Fordham University
Shamans in the Desert: Mark 1:12-13 Jesus and the Spirit World (25 min)
Pieter F. Craffert, University of South Africa
Shamanism as a Cross-Cultural Interpretive Tool: Jesus, Paul, and Early Christianity (25 min)
Michael Winkelman, Arizona State University, Respondent (20 min)
Discussion (25 min)

I have already posted the abstract for my paper here. I hope to see lots of PaleoJudaica readers there.

I have pre-posted lots of interesting items already and I shall post on current news etc. during the conference as time permits. There will continue to be something new on PaleoJudaica every day, so do keep coming back as usual.

Archaeological Excavations in Israel 2016

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Archaeological Excavations in Israel 2016 (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

Cuneiform tweets

CAN'T MAKE IT UP: Dumb Cuneiform. They will take your tweet, transliterate it into Old Persian cuneiform, inscribe it on a clay tablet, and send it to you in the mail. All for 20 bucks. Or at least so they claim. I can't vouch for them, but if you give it try, let me know how it works out.

Coffee shop Latin

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

What I Learned While Translating Medieval Latin Commentaries in Coffee Shops

Now, instead of poring over an ancient tome or bringing the blurry image into focus on the microfilm reader screen, I can view Latin scripture commentary on my tiny laptop. I do not know what the medieval authors whom I have been translating would make of my experience. I expect that these scholarly biblical commentators would covet the enormous treasure trove of texts so readily accessible to me. After all, most of these authors were compilers, sorters, arrangers, and distributors of massive amounts of information. They wrote reference works, concordances, and study aids. I imagine they might be chagrined to learn that when they introduced a quotation with the words, “As blessed Augustine said,” I often Googled the Latin phrase they quoted. This sometimes yielded the footnote information I needed, though search engines are not yet a substitute for familiarity with the primary sources, especially when “blessed Augustine” wasn’t really the source of that quotation!

See Also: The Book of Genesis (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2015)

By Joy A. Schroeder
Bergener Professor of Theology and Religion
Capital University and Trinity Lutheran Seminary
October 2015

Although Latin was the language of the Roman Empire and the Western Church, it is sometimes quite important for the study of ancient Judaism, such as when dealing with the book of 4 Ezra or with Pseudo-Hegesippus. And, of course, there's St. Jerome.

BAJS Conference, July 2016

CONFERENCE: British Association for Jewish Studies (BAJS) Conference 2016: The Texture of Jewish Tradition: Investigations in Textuality, 10-12 July 2016, The University of Birmingham.