Mystic golem in Berlin

GOLEM WATCH: Mystic golem spotlighted in Berlin Jewish Museum exhibit. New show links Jewish mud man to artificial intelligence in metaphor for scientific advancement spiraling out of control(KIRSTEN GRIESHABER, AP/Times of Israel).

The golem in the top photo looks a bit like Laa-Laa.

Earlier PaleoJudaica posts on past and present manifestations of the Golem legend are here and many links.

More on the Ein Gedi Leviticus scroll

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Modern Technology Unlocks Secrets of a Damaged Biblical Scroll (Nicholas Wade, NYT). This scroll is back in the news, with massive coverage in the last day. This NYT article is representative.

Nearly half a century ago, archaeologists found a charred ancient scroll in the ark of a synagogue on the western shore of the Dead Sea.

The lump of carbonized parchment could not be opened or read. Its curators did nothing but conserve it, hoping that new technology might one day emerge to make the scroll legible.

Just such a technology has now been perfected by computer scientists at the University of Kentucky. Working with biblical scholars in Jerusalem, they have used a computer to unfurl a digital image of the scroll.

It turns out to hold a fragment identical to the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible and, at nearly 2,000 years old, is the earliest instance of the text.

[...]

Most of this is old news from 2015, but the last quoted paragraph brings us to something new:

The date of the En-Gedi scroll is the subject of conflicting evidence. A carbon-14 measurement indicates that the scroll was copied around A.D. 300. But the style of the ancient script suggests a date nearer to A.D. 100. “We may safely date this scroll” to between A.D. 50 and 100, wrote Ada Yardeni, an expert on Hebrew paleography, in an article in the journal Textus. Dr. [Emanuel] Tov said he was “inclined toward a first-century date, based on paleography.”

The original reports said that the carbon dating indicated a sixth-century CE date. I don't know how we get from there to 300. And this is an interesting case where the results of materials-science testing conflict with results from a more traditional method of dating — paleography. This sort of mixed result is a reminder that we can't always take evidence from materials science as decisive. And so here is where we currently stand regarding this scroll:

Both Dr. Tov and Dr. [Michael] Segal said that scholars might come to consider the En-Gedi manuscript as a Dead Sea scroll, especially if the early date indicated by paleography is confirmed.

“It doesn’t tell us what was the original text, only that the Masoretic text is a very ancient text in all of its details,” Dr. Segal said. “And we now have evidence that this text was being used from a very early date by Jews in the land of Israel.”

The original report was noted by PaleoJudaica here, with past links on the use of non-invasive technologies and on the work of Professor Brent Seales, who accomplished the virtual opening of the scroll and who is also working on the carbonized Herculaneum scrolls. Subsequent posts mentioning the Ein Gedi Leviticus scroll are here, here, and here.

Incidentally, the assertion quoted above in the current NYT article that the manuscript "at nearly 2,000 years old, is the earliest instance of the [Masoretic] text" is open to debate. I edited a manuscript of Genesis called 4QGenesis^b (mentioned here) for DJD 12 which has a text (of fragments of Genesis 1, 2, 4, and 5) which is perfectly identical to the Masoretic Text apart from one tiny spelling difference and which dates paleographically to around the same time as the Ein Gedi Leviticus scroll. I believe that the biblical manuscripts found in the Bar Kokhba-era caves (placed there c. 132-135 CE) also consistently agree with the Masoretic Text. So there was already evidence that it was very old.

Menorah engraving found in Abila, Jordan

ARCHAEOLOGY: Archaeologists Find First Sign of Jews in Ancient Abila, Jordan. A menorah carving found in a church provides the first physical evidence of a long-assumed Jewish population in the Hellenistic city (Philippe Bohstrom, Haaretz).

A menorah carved on a stone block, found in a 1400-year-old Byzantine church in Abila, Jordan is the first tangible evidence of a Jewish presence in the ancient Hellenistic city that been assumed, but not proven.

There is ample evidence of Jewish presence in the region, such as an ancient synagogue discovered in nearby Jerash. But in 36 years of excavations at Tell al-Abila, also known as Selukeia, no traces of Jews living in the Roman trading hub had been found before.

The depiction of the seven-branched menorah, with a branching three-legged base, was found on a stone in the second tier of a wall, near the floor, while excavating a Byzantine church from the 6th or 7th century CE.

[...]

The menorah stone is in a secondary context, but it must be at least somewhat older than the church into which it was built. More on the Arch of Titus and its menorah is here (scroll down for photos) and here and links. Some other past posts involving ancient menorahs are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and links.

Gardner on charity in ancient Judaism

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Charity in Ancient Judaism: Problems and Prospects (Gregg Gardner). Past posts on the writer's book, The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism, are here and here. Another relevant recent AJR essay is also noted here.

The Son of David in Romans

READING ACTS: Is Jesus the Son of David? – Romans 1:3. With background from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple-era literature.

An earlier post in Phil Long's Romans series was noted here.

Tarbiz 84.1-2

THE HEBREW-LANGUAGE JOURNAL TARBIZ HAS NEW ISSUES OUT: Tarbiz Vol 84, No 1-2. From Magnes Press. TOC:

Shlomo Naeh - שם משמר and שם שבת : A Further Study of the Temple ‘Seals’

Menahem Kahana - The Relations between Exegeses in the Mishnah and Halakhot in the Midrash

Shimon Fogel and Uri Ehrlich - On the History of the Ancient Version of the ‘Hashkivenu’ Blessing

Eran Viezel - Medieval Bible Commentators on the Question of the Composition of the Bible: Research and Methodological Aspects

Aviram Ravitsky - Saʿadya Gaʾon and Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī on the Logical Structure of the Rational and Traditional Laws: Logic and Kalām in the Karaite-Rabbanite Controversy

Avishai Bar-Asher - Kabbalah and Minhag: Geonic Responsa and the Kabbalist Polemic on Minhagim in the Zohar and Related Texts

Review of Milgram, From Mesopotamia to the Mishnah

THE BIBLICAL REVIEW BLOG: “From Mesopotamia to the Mishnah” by Jonathan S. Milgram (William Brown).

Jonathan S. Milgram. From Mesopotamia to the Mishnah: Tannaitic Inheritance Law in its Legal and Social Contexts. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 164. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2016, 201 pp.

Excerpt:

As a result of Milgram’s study, we more clearly observe the relationship between Roman, Greek, and ancient Near Eastern laws and tannnaitic traditions. He does this by revealing various tannaitic traditions throughout his work, traditions previously unobserved. In short, he allows us to better understand tannaitic law within its ancient, legal context. Hopefully future scholars will further elucidate the complex web of laws from Jewish traditions and other ancient legal tradition and how they possibly influence each other. For the scholar who does this, Milgram’s monograph is an importance reference.

I noted the book when it came out this summer. More on Jonathan Milgram is here.

British Library Greek Manuscripts online

AWOL: Launched Today: British Library Greek Manuscripts. Ancient Judaism is represented (at least) by this 16th-century manuscript of the Letter of Aristeas. The website was launched on Monday 19 September.

Lied on the media and the Gospel of Jesus' Wife

LIV INGEBORG LIED: The Gospel of Jesus's Wife saga and the role of the media. Professor Lied has posted her paper for the recent Fragments of an Unbelievable Past Conference, "Media Dynamics and Academic Knowledge Production: Tracing the Role of the Media in the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife Saga," at Academia.edu. Background on the conference is here and links.

David's commander in the Qeiyafa inscription?

EPIGRAPHY AND THE BIBLE? ’Eshbaʿal Son of Bdʿa Whose Name Found at Qeiyafa Identified as the Commander of the First Platoon of the Heroes of David (Prof. Moshe Garsiel, posted in the blog of Dr. Lea Mazor, About Bible, Teaching and Education). An interesting argument that involves considerable speculative reconstruction. It would be extraordinarily lucky if we happened to find a tenth-century BCE Hebrew inscription that mentioned a minor biblical character, but I can't say it's impossible.

HT reader Yoel.

Past posts on Khirbet Qeiyafa and the inscription are here , here, here, and here.

Review of Stuckenbruck and Boccaccini (eds.), Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels

ATHEOLOGY BLOG: An Important New Book on the Background of the Biblical Gospels (Stewart James Felker).

An important new volume of essays, Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality, is being released this week. (Table of contents and relevant links can be found at the end of this post.) This is the first volume to collect some of the papers given at the 2013 Enoch Seminar conference, and is to be followed next year by the volume The Early Enoch Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels.

[...]

The book was noted as forthcoming here. I was at the 2013 Enoch Seminar and posted on it here and here and links.

Repentance of thieves in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Smoothing the Path to a Sinner’s Repentance. In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ ancient oral law makes it easier for thieves to regain spiritual balance with their victims—a reminder of the kinship of all Jews. Excerpt:

This week’s reading returned to the question of the barriers to repentance. This time, the problem had to do with how much effort should be required of a thief to locate the person from whom he had stolen. According to the mishna in Bava Kamma 103a, the burden on the thief is virtually unlimited: a robber must bring the money to his victim “after him to Medea.” Medea or Media was a region of northwestern Iran, thus quite distant from the Babylonian heartland where the Bavli was composed. The implication is that even a very long journey should not be a deterrent to repentance.

But in the Gemara, we find that the rabbis modified this law in the direction of greater leniency, or perhaps greater realism. The Sages “instituted a great ordinance stating that if the expense required to return a stolen item to the victim is greater than the principal,” then the thief does not have to track down the victim. Instead, he can make restitution to a court. The Talmud does not go on to say what the court does with the money—does it have an obligation to send it on to the victim, or does it use the money for communal purposes?

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Mazza reports on the "Unbelievable Past" conference

FACES AND VOICES BLOG: Fragments of an Unbelievable Past? Constructions of Provenance, Narratives of Forgery. A Report (Roberta Mazza). A detailed report. Background on the conference is here, here, and here.

Romans and the messianic son of God

READING ACTS: The Messianic Son of God – Romans 1:3. Phil Long has a new series running on Paul's Letter to the Romans. I'm not going to follow it closely, but when a post impinges on ancient Judaism, as here, I will note it. I have more on 4Q426 (the so-called Aramaic "Son of God" text) here.

Interview with Daniel Matt on the Zohar

AUDIO INTERVIEW: Zohar translation revives poetry and nuance of Jewish mystical text (KALW Radio, San Francisco).

Western literature’s most important books have been translated, not once, but many times. The book at the top of the charts is the Bible: more than 100 and that’s just in English.

Why so many? It’s hard to capture all the nuances of meaning and style from the original. Which is why a recently completed translation of the Zohar—the book at the bedrock of the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah—is so important. Scholars say its poetic interpretation captures the original 13th century prose. Berkeley scholar Daniel Matt spends almost two decades doing the translation and writing commentary that goes with it. That’s a long time, but the Zohar is a massive book. When complete, the new work will total 12 volumes, each hundreds of pages long. Matt is responsible for most of it.

[...]

Past posts on the Zohar, and Daniel Matt's translation of it, are here with many, many links.

Jordanian inscriptions

EPIGRAPHY: Ancient texts offer wealth of information for archaeologists, local epigrapher says (Saeb Rawashdeh, The Jordan Times).

AMMAN — Ancient texts and inscriptions are among archaeologists’ most valuable finds, offering direct insights into the remains where they are found, according to Omar Ghul, an associate professor at the Yarmouk University’s faculty of archaeology.

Epigraphy — the study of inscriptions found on various materials like stones, metal, papyri, clay, parchment or wood — analyses the links between the texts, their authors and their civilisations.

[...]

From Late Bronze Age cuneiform tablets to Moabite and Ammonite texts to late antique Nabatean (Nabataean), Greek, and occasionally Arabic inscriptions. Cool.

Past posts on Nabatean and the Nabateans (Nabataeans) are here, here, and here, with many links. See also the blog search engine and the archives. And there's more on the Balaam inscription from Tel Deir 'Alla here and links.

Scientific American on the Temple Mount floor tiles

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Archeologists Restore Flooring that Adorned the Second Temple of Jerusalem. The finding gives a glimpse of the majestic detail of this long-lost edifice central to Jewish and Christian history (Debbie Ponchner). I don't think there's anything new in this article, but it covers what we know in an organized and clear way. I found this paragraph on how they identified the date and provenance of the tiles particularly helpful.

Besides coming from sediments taken from the Temple Mount, these floor tiles all display three characteristics that suggest they were part of the Second Temple complex, says Gabriel Barkay, cofounder and director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project. “First of all, all the measurements of the flooring tiles are following the fractions of the Roman foot (about 29.6 cm) and follow precisely that widely-used dimension that was in fashion at that time. Second, we have parallels, exact parallels, to these floors—and even to the individual stones and the stone formations—in Herod’s palaces in Masada, Herodium, in Jericho and elsewhere. That is quite firm. Third, the material of the stone tiles was imported from Italy, Greece, Tunisia and Asia Minor. These are colorful marbles with colored veins and patches, and this material was not imported to this land neither before nor after Herod the Great. The dating is secure.”

Cross-file under Temple Mount Watch. Background here and links.

On procrastination and Gnosticism

PHILOSOPHY: Why Do Anything? A Meditation on Procrastination (Costica Bradatan). The New York Times has published an Opinion piece on ancient Gnostic theology and its modern philosophical heirs.

Gnostic thinking takes us to a privileged ontological realm: the state of perfection that precedes actualization. That which is yet to be born — be it the world, a person, a piece of furniture or a piece of writing like this one — may be nothing, but at this stage it is at its utmost. Its nothingness is fuller and richer than any ordinary existence. To fall into existence is to enter time, and with time comes decay, aging and death.

Cross-file under New Testament Apocrypha Watch. Some past posts on ancient Gnosticism and modern popular culture and philosopy are here, here, here, here, here and here and links.

"Women in Judaism"

AWOL: Open Access Journal: Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal. Many of the articles deal with ancient Judaism.

Virtual Temple tour

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH (VR EDITION): A virtual reality visit to the Second Temple. he Western Wall Heritage Foundation is offering a virtual-reality tour of the Temple Mount as it was two millennia ago, based on historical data (Yael Freidson, Jewish World). There's a brief video sample, but, unlike the tour, it is not immersive.