The Talmud on flogging

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: To Flog or Not to Flog. Which sinners are to taste the lash, how many strokes of it, in what circumstances, with what intention, and as just punishment in which cases, and with what exceptions: As always, the Talmud leaves no contingency unaccounted for.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Review of Ker and Pieper (eds.), Valuing the past in the Greco-Roman World

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Valuing the past in the Greco-Roman World (Kelsi Morrison-Atkins).

James Ker and Christoph Pieper, eds. Valuing the past in the Greco-Roman World: Proceedings from the Penn-Leiden Colloquia on Ancient Values VII. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

The review concludes:

Valuing the Past in the Greco-Roman World asks how the past was defined, accessed, and valued in that period of time so often considered “our” antiquity (18) and provides an array of fascinating examples that work together to undercut notions of the value of the past in the past as in any way uniform or monolithic. This range of historical perspectives calls for further reflection on the ethics and politics underlying our own individual and institutional practices of valuing the past in the present and contributes much to our understanding of the range of values ascribed to the past in the past.

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Sinai palimpsests on display in Athens

EXHIBITION: Ancient hidden texts from St Catherine’s Monastery in Mt Sinai displayed in Athens (video) (Tornos News).

Ancient texts from St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, Egypt, that were kept secret for centuries under other texts until they were revealed through the use of state-of-the-art technology will go on display for four days starting on Monday at the Greek Foreign Ministry.

The texts will be showcased as part of an international conference titled “The Other Voice of the Desert: The palimpsest manuscripts of the Sinai Monastery, new technologies for reading, discovery of unknown texts, prospects for research,” at the ministry’s Yiannos Kranidiotis Auditorium.

[...]

For more on the palimpsests from St. Catherine's Monastery, see here and links.

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Magness lectures at the University of Pittsburgh

EVENT: Professor unearths Israeli heritage (The Pitt News).

Pitt’s Jewish Studies program and Nationality Rooms program came together Monday night to host [Professor Jodi] Magness and celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Israel Heritage Classroom — the 20th Nationality Room constructed in the Cathedral.

Magness — a University of North Carolina professor with a bachelor’s in archaeology and history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — shared the current status of the excavation site at the Late Roman-era synagogue with more than 80 people during her lecture, “More than Just Mosaics: the Huqoq Synagogue,” in the Cathedral of Learning.

Magness and her excavation team have gone out every summer digging season since 2011 and unearthed a variety of partial and complete mosaic scenes throughout the stone foundations of the Jewish synagogue.

More on Professor Magness is here and links. This article could have mentioned that she also has a Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania. For past PaleoJudaica posts on Huqoq and its mosaics, start here and follow the links.

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Replicas of Palmyrene objects on display in New York

PALMYRA WATCH: DUBAI COMBATS ISIS DESTRUCTION WITH 3D PRINTED ARTEFACT RECONSTRUCTIONS AT UN HQ (Rushabh Haria, 3D Printing Industry).

When the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) wreaked havoc across regions of Syria and Iraq, they also destroyed countless Assyrian, Greek and Roman artefacts in museums and on site.

In an effort to preserve the cultural heritage and archaeological sites of the region, institutes such as the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF) are 3D printing some of the destroyed objects. Some of the foundation’s work is to be displayed at the “The Spirit in the Stone” digital archaeology exhibition at the UN New York headquarters, inaugurated this week.

[...]

The printed objects include the Arch of Triumph and a statue of Athena. More on the replicas of the Arch of Triumph is here and links. Related post here. For many other past posts on the site of Palmyra, its Aramaic language, its artifacts, and its tragic fate while in the hands of ISIS, start here and follow the links. Cross-file under Technology Watch.

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Review of Carrara et al. (eds.), Die Weltchronik des Johannes Malalas

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Laura Carrara, Mischa Meier, Christine Radtki-Jansen (ed.), Die Weltchronik des Johannes Malalas: Quellenfragen. Malalas-Studien, 2. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017. Pp. 409. ISBN 9783515116442. €68.00. Reviewed by Geoffrey Greatrex, University of Ottawa (greatrex@uottawa.ca).

The first two chapters consider the early books of Malalas, in which myths and history are blended into a euhemerising account of early times. Both articles, by William Adler and Umberto Roberto, emphasise Malalas’ debt to Julius Africanus, direct and indirect; they both also discuss his use of traditions found in the Book of Jubilees. Each article has interesting things to say about Malalas’ adaptation of this material, making it more Roman, but it is puzzling how little cross-referencing there is between them, especially since they cover such similar ground (e.g., at 34-5, 58-9).

The sixth-century chronographer Malalas makes use of other ancient Jewish sources as well, directly or indirectly. And I have mentioned before that he preserves an alternative account of the Maccabean Revolt which may give a Seleucid perspective.

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Review of a new novel on Judas

(MODERN) NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: Real 'Book of Judas' inspires journalist's novel (Rev. Alexander Santora, Jersey Journal/nj.com).

[Linda Stasi's] sixth book and second novel, "Book of Judas," manages to display her wicked use of words wrapped around a gospel few of us ever heard of, "The Gospel of Judas," a Gnostic gospel that has seen renewed interest over the last decade.

The article displays an outdated understanding of the Gospel of Judas. Hopefully the novel does not, but its hard to tell.

Past posts on the Gospel of Judas are here and follow the many links.

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PGM online

THE AWOL BLOG: Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae. All three volumes of Preisendanz's edition of the Greek Magical Papyri are now online for free. They can be downloaded as PDF files.

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On the Arch of Titus replica

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Life-size relief replica stars in Arch of Titus show in New York. Massachusetts sign carver uses 3-D scans and and hi-tech machinery to make striking copy of famous 'Spoils of Jerusalem' bas-relief (Renee Ghert-Zand, Times of Israel).

Lindsay Neathawk first saw the Arch of Titus on a visit to Rome in 1998. A teenager at the time, she could not have imagined that two decades later she would make the first hi-tech replica of the ancient monument’s famous “Spoils of Jerusalem” panel commemorating Roman forces’s capture of Jerusalem and destruction of the Holy Temple in 70 CE.

Using cutting-edge digital tools, Neathawk, a graphic designer and owner of a sign carving business in Williamstown, Massachusetts, spent a straight 49 days last summer creating the replica.

It was carefully transported in late August to New York City, becoming the centerpiece of the current “The Arch of Titus – from Jerusalem to Rome, and Back” exhibition at Yeshiva University Museum.

[...]

Nice work.

Background on the Arch of Titus exhibition at YU is here and links. Follow the links from there also for many past posts on the Arch of Titus itself.

I've also been following the story of the 3-D replicas of the Arch of Triumph from Palmyra (also known - incorrectly! - as the portal of Baal). See here and links.

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New volume of TC

TC: A JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL TEXTUAL CRITICISM (VOLUME 22, 2017) is now out, with lots of biblical text-critical goodness.

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Maimonides's little brother, David

REVIEW OF A NEW BOOK FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS: The brothers Maimonides. New book shines light on the relationship between law, business, and family (Larry Yudelson, Jewish Standard/Times of Israel).

This saga had an impact on Jewish law, Dr. Mark R. Cohen argues. Dr. Cohen, professor emeritus at Princeton, is an expert on the Cairo Geniza. That’s the hoard of a thousand years worth of old books, letters, and contracts that provides a unique window on Jewish life in the Middle Ages. Among its treasures are letters between the Maimonides brothers.

His most recent book, “Maimonides and the Merchants,” zooms in on the legal rulings of Moses Maimonides, as he is known in English — or Rambam, which is short for Rav Moshe ben Maimon, his Hebrew name — and in particular on how he modified talmudic commercial law to account for the way international business worked in the twelfth century.

Dr. Cohen will talk about his book at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan next month. (See below.)

For more on the book, see here. For many, many past posts on the Cario Geniza, start here and here and follow the links.

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Review of Pummer, The Samaritans

READING RELIGION: The Samaritans. A Profile (Matthew Chalmers).

Reinhard Pummer

Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., February 2016. 376 pages. $30.00.Paperback. ISBN 9780802867681. For other formats: Link to Publisher's Website.

From the review:

The Samaritans is the book which the study of the Samaritans needed. It distils an unwieldly mass of scholarship into a concise, accessible form. Where there are omissions, they indicate fertile ground yet to explore, rather than any failure on the part of Pummer. In The Samaritans, one of the most erudite scholars of Samaritanism has given to us—scholars researching Samaritans like myself, scholars with general interests, and a reading public to whom the Samaritans are a fuzzy but fascinating overheard name—a wide-ranging, clear, and perhaps most importantly, intellectually generous overview.

HT AJR. Past PaleoJudaica posts on the book are here and here.

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Deir Aziz Synagogue

HOLY LAND PHOTOS' BLOG: Deir Aziz Synagogue (Golan Heights) (Carl Rasmussen).

Deir Aziz (“Monastery of Aziz”) is a site located 4 mi. [6.5 km.] east of the Sea of Galilee on the north side of a wadi that flows into the Nahal Qanaf. There is a very powerful spring at Deir Aziz and the remains of a prominent synagogue that dates to the Talmudic/Byzantine Period.

With photos, of course.

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The first owners of the Leningrad Codex (of the Hebrew Bible)

GENIZA FRAGMENT OF THE MONTH: The first owners of the Leningrad Codex: T-S 10J30.7 (Ben Outhwaite).

The question of ownership is a significant one, since it speaks to the wider context of the book’s intended use and potential audience, an aspect of the research on the biblical text which is often overlooked. Within which tradition or for which Jewish confessional congregation was this Bible produced? This is the sort of information that is not usually explicitly stated in colophons, but must be gleaned from our knowledge of the people involved, again relying on the Genizah documentary manuscripts to fill out the picture. ...

So, Codex Leningrad was produced for, most likely, a Persian Karaite, and was subsequently acquired by a Persian Karaite, who sold it to Maṣliaḥ ha-Kohen b. Solomon, Gaʾon (head) of the Jerusalem Yeshiva. Maṣliaḥ was the highest intellectual authority in Palestinian Judaism and ‘Head of the Jews’ (Raʾīs al-Yahūd) in the Fatimid Empire. That such a powerful and senior figure should acquire the Bible strongly attests to the value ascribed to it in its day (today’s critics of Samuel b. Jacob’s work should take note). In addition, evidently its Karaite provenance did not devalue it in Maṣliaḥ’s eyes and deter him from purchasing it.

Ben Outhwaite's earlier FOTM post on the author of the Leningrad Codex (a very old and important copy of the Hebrew Bible) was noted here. Other past posts noting Cairo Geniza Fragments of the Month in the Cambridge University Library's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit are here and links. That post will also lead you to many past posts on the Karaites. Cross-file under Karaite Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Juel, Messianic Exegesis

REISSUED IN PAPERBACK BY BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Title: Messianic Exegesis
Sub-title: Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament in Early Christianity
Series: (Library of Early Christology Series)
By (author): Donald H. Juel
ISBN10-13: 1481307959 : 9781481307956
Format: Paperback
Size: 230x155mm
Pages: 205
Weight: .348 Kg.
Published: Baylor University Press (US) - August 2017
List Price: 28.99 Pounds Sterling
Availability: In Stock Qty Available: 9
Subjects: History of religion : Church history : New Testaments : Biblical studies & exegesis : Christian theology

While the relationship between Second Temple Jewish exegesis and early Christian exegesis as demonstrated in the New Testament is universally recognized, the reasons for their similarities and differences are often elusive. Donald H Juel in Messianic Exegesis seeks to unknot this tangled web of interpretation. Juel's thesis is simple: Christianity's origins are rooted in the earliest Christian interpretations of Israel's Scriptures. The difficulty resides in showing how these distinctive interpretations arose. Juel argues that the events of Jesus' life form the fulcrum for the Christian re-reading of Jewish Scripture. In particular, Juel shows how Christian belief in a crucified and risen Messiah guided both the selection and appropriation of Old Testament texts -- texts like 2 Samuel 7, Daniel 7, and Psalms 2 and 110. With the confession "Jesus is the Messiah" as the central claim of Christianity, Juel is able to show the fluidity of contemporary Jewish exegesis while also making the anomalous uses of Scripture within the early Christian community understandable. Christians proclaimed Jesus as Messiah throughout their exegesis and thereby defined their emerging community through the way they read Scripture.

Another in Baylor's new Library of Early Christology reprint series, on which more here and links.

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Oppenheimer, Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: AHARON OPPENHEIMER. Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi. Statesman, Reformer, and Redactor of the Mishnah. [Rabbi Jehuda ha-Nassi. Staatsmann, Reformer und Redaktor der Mischna.] 2017. XIV, 291 pages.

Published in English.
The patriarch Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi headed the independent Jewish leadership institutions in Roman Palestine at the turn of the second and third centuries CE. He conducted the affairs of the patriarchate with a high hand, was renowned for his learning and behaved like a kind of anointed king. He was also incredibly rich, a consummate politician, and close to the Roman authorities. He made taqqanot (reforms) in the light of circumstances, and tried to cancel mitzvoth (religious regulations), such as the regulations about shemita (not using the land in the sabbatical year), which entailed hardship for the Jews of his time. He was ahead of his times in his humane and liberal decisions. Rabbi completed the redaction of the Mishnah and thus gave the Jewish people the work that is second in importance only to the Torah, although by so doing he put a brake on the development of the oral law. Aharon Oppenheimer attempts to present Rabbi Jehuda ha-Nassi's character and his life as well as examining the significance of his work for his own generation and succeeding ones.

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Karaite and ancient sectarian halakhah

GENIZA FRAGMENT OF THE MONTH: OCTOBER 2017: Early Karaite Halakha according to Karaite Commentaries to the Bible (T-S 16.316) (Yoram Erder).

The Genizah documents are essentially fragmentary. In order to understand the Karaite halakha in these documents in its broad context, one needs to read the extensive corpus of early Karaite commentaries, which are mostly found in manuscripts in western libraries and in the Firkowitcz Collection in Russia. These commentaries are written in Judaeo-Arabic and most of them were not in the hands of the first scholars. Not only that, but the first scholars did not trouble themselves to compare their Genizah documents with the early Karaite commentaries available in their time, and instead they made do by reading late Karaite commentaries to the Bible written in Hebrew in the later Middle Ages, since these were readily available in print. The Karaites that wrote these later books did not, in their writings, present the halakhic controversies of their predecessors.

The first scholars studied the early Karaite halakha in the light of poor remnants of sectarian halakha they found in the Talmudic literature. From 1910 they had at their disposal the Damascus Covenant scroll that was discovered in the Genizah. When and where it was written was still then in debate. Nowadays, of course, we can examine early Karaite halakha in the light of the entire corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Past PaleoJudaica posts noting Cairo Geniza Fragments of the Month in the Cambridge University Library's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit are here and here and links. For many past PaleoJudaica posts on the Karaites, start here and follow the links. Cross-file under Karaite Watch.

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Morris, Warding Off Evil

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: MICHAEL J. MORRIS. Warding Off Evil. Apotropaic Tradition in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Synoptic Gospels. [Das Böse abwehren. Apotropäische Überlieferungen in den Schriftrollen vom Toten Meer und den synoptischen Evangelien.] 2017. XV, 296 pages. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 451.

Published in English.
In this study, Michael J. Morris examines aspects of synoptic gospel demonology; specifically, human responses to demonic evil. It is clear that early Christian demonology can be more fully understood against the background of early Jewish traditions. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, there are two fundamental ways by which protection against demons is sought. The first anti-demonic method is “exorcism,” and the second is characterized by its preventative nature and is typically referred to as “apotropaism.” Although many contributions have been made on the topic of exorcism in the gospels, less attention has been paid to the presence of apotropaic features in the gospel texts. Therefore, Michael J. Morris offers a timely examination of apotropaic tradition in early Judaism and its significance for demonological material in the synoptic gospels. He shows how the presence of apotropaisms not only shape conversations about early Christian demonology, but also have broader implications for the understanding of evil, eschatology, and the depiction of Jesus in relation to each gospel.

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Jacob, Leah, and Rachel

DR. RABBI ZEV FARBER: How Is It Possible that Jacob Mistakes Leah for Rachel? (TheTorah.com).

“When morning came, there was Leah!” (Genesis 29:25). Could Jacob not tell the difference between his beloved of seven years and her sister, for a whole night? Commentators have long tried to make sense of the story by adding extra details, but perhaps we need to rethink the nature of Jacob and Rachel’s relationship during those years.

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More on the Tyndale House NT

ETC BLOG: Initial thoughts on the Tyndale House Greek New Testament (Peter Gurry).

These are some initial impressions, then. Overall, the edition is refreshing in its visual simplicity and some of the novelties such as paragraphing are a nice change. I will still use my NA, of course, for serious work but I expect to be reading the THGNT devotionally in 2018 and perhaps as my new church NT.

Past posts on the new Tyndale House New Testament are here and here.

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