Solomon's mines at Timna

ARCHAEOLOGY: Preserved fortification, donkey stables dating to King Solomon discovered at TAU's Timna Valley excavations (Tel Aviv University/PhysOrg).

Some believe that the fabled mines of King Solomon were located among copper smelting camps in Israel's Timna Valley. The arid conditions at Timna have seen the astonishing preservation of 3,000-year-old organic materials, which have provided Tel Aviv University archaeologists with a unique window into the culture and practices of a sophisticated ancient society.

An advanced military fortification—a well-defined gatehouse complex—unearthed recently at Timna, including donkey stables, points to the community's highly-organized defense system and significant dependence on long-distance trade. The research was recently published in The Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The fortification dates to the reigns of Kings David and Solomon in the 10th century BCE.

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In the remarkably intact two-room fortification, located in one of the largest smelting camps in the Timna Valley, the researchers also found evidence of a complex long-distance trade system that probably included the northern Edomite plateau, the Mediterranean coastal plain and Judea. The complex featured pens for draught animals and other livestock. According to precise pollen, seed, and fauna analyses, they were fed with hay and grape pomace—high-quality sustenance that must have been delivered from the Mediterranean region hundreds of miles away.

"The gatehouse fortification was apparently a prominent landmark," says Dr. Ben-Yosef. "It had a cultic or symbolic function in addition to its defensive and administrative roles. The gatehouse was built of sturdy stone to defend against invasion. We found animal bones and dung piles so intact, we could analyze the food the animals were fed with precision. The food suggests special treatment and care, in accordance with the key role of the donkeys in the copper production and in trade in a logistically challenging region."

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I'm keeping a special eye on the Timna excavation, because of the abundant organic remains that have been found there. The arid climate seems ideal for their preservation and the discoveries have included textiles from the 10th century BCE. If there is any place where Solomonic-era scrolls or papyri might have survived, it is Timna. Let's hope that we get lucky and some turn up.

Warlord and Scribe

ASSIMILATED TO THE BLOGOSPHERE: Warlord and Scribe: Northwest Semitics in Context. A new blog by Nathaniel E. Greene, who is a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The opening post is Sinai 115 and Historical Canaanite Phonology.

Welcome, dear reader, to the first entry of Warlord and Scribe: Northwest Semitics in Context. I’ll have a post up soon about the name of the blog and, for those of you who stick around for that, I hope you enjoy it. Keep an eye out, too, for my forthcoming article on the Qubur al-Walaydah bowl in BASOR 377.

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The Sinai 115 inscription has been in the news lately regarding a theory being promoted by Douglas Petrovich. See here and links. Mr. Greene agrees with the skepticism already expressed by other philologists about Prof. Petrovich's theory, and he adds additional arguments against it.

Cross-file under Philology.

Yom Tov

YONA SABAR: Hebrew Word of the Week: Yom Tov “(Jewish) Holiday (on which work is forbidden).” This column is from back in September of 2016, but I missed it then, so here it is. It looks as though I have missed a few (perhaps I need to refine my Google searches), so I will catch up in the coming days.

Bockmuehl, Ancient Apocryphal Gospels

READING ACTS: In Today’s Mail: Markus Bockmuehl, Ancient Apocryphal Gospels.

Thanks to WJKP for sending along a review copy of this new textbook by Markus Bockmuehl. This is the latest in the Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church series, which is itself a subset of the Interpretation commentary series.

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I look forward to Phil Long's review in due course. Meanwhile, the publisher's blurb reads as follows:

In this reader-friendly guide, Markus Bockmuehl offers a sympathetic account of the ancient apocryphal Gospel writings, showing their place within the reception history and formation of what was to become the canonical fourfold Gospel. Bockmuehl begins by helping readers understand the early history behind these noncanonical Gospels before going on to examine dozens of specific apocryphal texts. He explores the complex oral and intertextual relationships between the noncanonical and canonical Gospels, maintaining that it is legitimate and instructive to read the apocryphal writings as an engagement with the person of Jesus that both presupposes and supplements the canonical narrative outline. Appropriate for pastors and nonspecialists, this work offers a fuller understanding of these writings and their significance for biblical interpretation in the church.

Cross-file under New Book and New Testament Apocrypha.

Strategic move for Metatron

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Metatron, Inc. Announces Strategic Move into the Areas of Mobile Encryption, and Virtual Reality for its Mobile Development Business.

The Company will embark on re-branding Metatron mobile development business in the specific areas of mobile encryption and security, and applications for the growing market in virtual reality. Under this new goal, the Company will keep its focus on a couple of dynamic concepts within the mobile market, and will look to reduce or shelve other projects to the back burner so as to keep our core focus on these market segments to better execute our projects to market.

[...]

The archangelic company Metatron.inc has been busy since its founding in 2009. It has slain a giant, engaged in due diligence, gotten pumped and crashed horribly, and still managed to recover and make a foray into the cannabis sector.

Pocket Change Blog

NUMISMATICS: Pocket Change: The Blog of the American Numismatic Society. I just discovered this blog. Its most recent post deals with, inter alia, a theme of ancient Jewish coinage from the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt: THE SECRET CHORD: HARPS AND LYRES ON ANCIENT AND MODERN COINS.

Gematria galore

APOCALYPSE WATCH: Biblical Numerology Reveals Stunning Connection Between Paris Conference, Gog and Magog (Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Breaking Israel News).

The Paris conference on Sunday, in which representatives from 70 nations met to sign an anti-Israel agreement, brought together many factors, all pointing at a final showdown that pits the 70 sons of Jacob against the 70 nations under Gog in a pre-Messianic war.

As the 70 nations gathered in Paris, many people were aware that the concept of 70 nations has its source in the 70 grandsons of Noah listed in the Bible.

[...]

Many of the usual suspects for the Apocalypse are here: Gog and Magog, Rosh, the Messiah, etc. And all of them are justified with gematria, the process of adding up the numerical value of names spelled in Hebrew and then associating them with other Hebrew words and names that have the same numerical value. For more on the ancient Jewish tradition of the seventy nations, see here.

Breaking Israel News seems to represent a Jewish movement that occupies a parallel theological space to Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth Christian movement in the [edit: 1970s and] 1980s. Both expect the imminent apocalyptic end of this age and the coming of the Messiah and both justify these expectations by exegesis of scripture in light of current events. And both have similarities to the Qumran sectarian movement which gave us the Teacher of Righteousness and pesher exegesis as preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I hope I don't have to repeat that my interest here is sociological and historical, not theological, and my citation of this and related stories is not an endorsement of their content.

Did an eclipse save Joshua's army?

MORE ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA: Eclipse ‘stopped the sun’ for biblical Joshua, Israeli scientists say. Researchers claim to pinpoint the exact date — October 30, 1207 BCE — and explanation for an astounding event in the Battle in Gibeon (Times of Israel).

According to the biblical story, Joshua got help from the sun to earn the Israelites one of their most epic victories. Now, a team of Israeli scientists say they’ve figured out how: The battle coincided with a solar eclipse.

Using NASA data, three scientists from Beersheba’s Ben Gurion University, in a newly published paper, dated the eclipse and the battle to October 30, 1207 BCE.

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Nope, not buying it. It doesn't make a great deal of sense. The point of the poetic quotation is that whatever happened with the sun and moon led to the Israelites winning the battle at Gibeon. I don't see how a lunar eclipse that made everything dark would have been much use to anyone at any battle.

The prose text following the poetic quote in Joshua 10:12-13 says that the sun stayed in the sky for a full day until the Israelites won, which at least makes some sense. Nevertheless it too is probably wrong, a guess at the meaning of a piece of poetry that was already archaic when the book of Joshua was written. The actual meaning of the poetic passage probably involved a propitious arrangement of the sun and moon in the sky that gave the Israelites an omen of success for the battle. More on that interpretation here and here.

Balaam's star in 2022?

APOCALYPSE WATCH: New Star to Appear in Night Sky, Heralding Balaam’s Prophecy of Messiah (Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Breaking Israel News).

Five years from now, the light from the ancient collision of two stars will reveal a brand-new star in the night sky. According to Jewish esoteric sources, this is precisely the celestial phenomenon which will accompany the arrival of the Messiah.

The new star, expected to appear in 2022 in a blaze of light called a nova, will be the brightest heavenly body visible in the nighttime sky for six months. It will be the first time in recorded history that a celestial event of this kind will be witnessed by the naked eye.

Beyond its scientific uniqueness, the appearance of the new star could have much bigger implications for the earth-bound, one prominent rabbi told Breaking Israel News, pointing to a Biblical prophecy of Balaam which hails the appearance of a new star as the precursor to Messiah.

[...]

The passage in question is, of course, Numbers 24:17. Maimonides and the Zohar are also invoked. As always, my interest here is sociological and historical, not theological, and my citation of this and related stories is not an endorsement of their content.

The astronomical prediction, however, is real. If it turns out to be correct, any alien civilizations that were in the vicinity of this star-pair 1800 years ago really did have an apocalypse: the gamma-ray blast from the stellar collision would have been an extinction level event. I hope they had enough warning to get away. For similar scenarios in science fiction, see Arthur C. Clark's classic story "The Star" and Stephen Baxter's more recent "Traces."

For more on the messianic connotations of Numbers 24:17, see here.

Epic Aramaic

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: In England, An Effort To Preserve Ancient, Epic Assyrian Poetry (Alice Fordham, WXPR).

[Nineb] Lamassu became an academic researcher and now travels among the Assyrian diaspora recording the epics as told by men he calls bards — including the storyteller he loved listening to in the refugee camp, whose name is Khananya Zayya. Years later, Lamassu tracked him down living in New Zealand.

"It almost felt I was back in the refugee camp, right in that tent on that cold winter night with him. He had not changed" — aside from a little artificial help keeping his mustache black, he says.

Lamassu tells me there's a bard living close by in Southall, London, so of course I travel to meet him.

With an audio report. And here's a summary of the article and audio file from a reprint by the Unrepresented Peoples and Nations Organization: Assyria: A Cambridge Researcher’s Efforts to Preserve Assyrian Poetry.

Cambridge University researcher Nineb Lamassu was recently interviewed by a British journalist about his efforts to preserve epic Assyrian poems. Because of the current situation in the Middle East and particularly in Iraq, Assyrian traditions and culture are slowly disappearing and being destroyed by ISIS. Lamassu met with several members of the Assyrian diaspora to record their voices and will make these recordings available on a Cambridge University online database.

Eyes like dark wine

PROF. AARON DEMSKY: The Color of Judah’s Eyes (TheTorah.com).

חכלילי עינים מיין (Gen 49:12) is an obscure phrase. In contrast to the standard interpretation, Nachmanides’ offered an original interpretation, which finds support in modern linguistic analysis and an archaeological find.

Cross-file under Philology and Epigraphy.

Dever Fellowship report 2016: Shikhin

ASOR BLOG: My Time at a Roman-Era Jewish Settlement.

By: Jill Marshall, 2016 William G. Dever Fellowship Recipient

Thanks to ASOR’s William G. Dever Fellowship for Biblical Scholars, in Summer 2016, I traveled to Israel to participate in the Shikhin Excavation Project and to conduct research at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem. Since my research is in New Testament and early Christianity, I chose Shikhin because it is a Roman-era Jewish settlement that gives scholars insight into the socio-economic landscape of the Galilee. Directed by James R. Strange of Samford University and Mordechai Aviam of Kinnaret Academic College, the excavation reveals interesting details about ceramic production and the interactions between cities (Sepphoris) and villages (Shikhin) in the Roman period.

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CFP: Horizons in Textual Criticism

ETC BLOG: Call for Papers: Horizons in Textual Criticism (Peter Gurry).

On 10-11 May, 2017, the University of Oxford will host a colloquium devoted to methodologically new and unique work in textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible and related texts.

Interview with Maggie Anton

THE TEL AVIV REVIEW: MISSIONARY POSITIONS: WHAT THE TALMUD SAYS ABOUT SEX (Gilad Halpern).

Maggie Anton, a Talmud scholar and historical fiction writer discusses her new book Fifty Shades of Talmud: What the First Rabbis Had to Say about You-Know-What.

Audio interview. Background on Maggie Anton, her recent book on sex in the Talmud, and her earlier novels, is here and links.

Congratulations to Professor Elton Daniel

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Center for Iranian Studies and the Encyclopædia Iranica.

Many congratulations to Professor Elton Daniel, who has been appointed the Interim Director of the Center for Iranian Studies and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopædia Iranica. See below for the full text of the announcement:

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I'm surprised that its been nearly a decade since I've mentioned the Encylopaedia Iranica. I know I have consulted it more often than that. It now goes up to Z.

Putthoff, Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology
The Malleable Self and the Presence of God

Tyson L. Putthoff, Trinity College Dublin
In Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology, Tyson L. Putthoff explores early Jewish beliefs about how the human self reacts ontologically in God’s presence. Combining contemporary theory with sound exegesis, Putthoff demonstrates that early Jews widely considered the self to be intrinsically malleable, such that it mimics the ontological state of the space it inhabits. In divine space, they believed, the self therefore shares in the ontological state of God himself. The book is critical for students and scholars alike. In putting forth a new framework for conceptualising early Jewish anthropology, it challenges scholars to rethink not only what early Jews believed about the self but how we approach the subject in the first place.

Dreams in the ANE and the Joseph story

PROF. JACK M. SASSON: Joseph and the Dreams of Many Colors. Understanding the practice of dream interpretation in the Joseph story by using the ANE interpretive traditions as background (TheTorah.com).

Dreams across Centuries

Millennia before Sigmund Freud penned his classic work Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899) and long before the 2nd century CE professional diviner, Artemidorus of Daldis, distilled centuries of traditions on dream interpretation into his Oneirocritica,[1] people in the Ancient Near East had cultivated a strong interest in dreams and their interpretations. From the Freudian perspective, dreams are an expression of a person’s subconscious, and they teach us about a person’s inner life.

In antiquity, however, a dream was understood as a message from a deity, often reflecting an issue of importance to an entire community. In fact, in the conception of the ancients, a dream could affect many people beyond its recipient. Thus, in the ANE, a process of evaluating dreams developed, which included the following investigations: their viability, their veracity, their import, and their fulfillment.

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Some background on dreams and dream interpretation in antiquity is in yesterday's post here (and links) and also here, here, here, here, and here. And then there's the story of my own revelatory dream here.

Batten on honor and shame in the NT

BIBLE ODYSSEY: Honor and Shame in the New Testament (Alicia J. Batten).

Q. We are told that ancient societies like those of Israel were "honor-shame cultures," and see various examples of that in biblical stories. My question is more about NT theology. How do the honor-shame cultural values of New Testament authors inform and shape their theology, especially Christology?

Reminder: BIOSCS is now JSCS

AWOL: Open Access Journal: The Journal of Septuagint and Cognate Studies (JSCS) formerly, The Bulletin of the International Organization of Septuagint and Cognate Studies (BIOSCS). The change in title was noted earlier here in 2015, but it's always good to post reminders when AWOL takes something up.

BI Blog 2016 statistics

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Statistics for 2016. It provides lots of good content and is doing well for such a specialized blog. PaleoJudaica links to it frequently for information on ancient Persia and Zoroastrianism.