The Talmud on white roosters, idolatry, and the Emperor "Antoninus"

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: THOU SHALT SELL NO WHITE ROOSTER AND BOW TO NO IDOLS. Daf Yomi: How could Jews live as a minority among peoples, the Romans and the Persians, whose religion they considered sinful?

Throughout the Talmud, it is clear that the rabbis wanted Jews to live apart from gentiles as much as possible. For instance, Jews are not permitted to eat food prepared by gentiles, nor to live among gentile neighbors. In Tractate Avoda Zara, this message becomes still more pointed. Jews cannot do business with gentiles on their festival days, or for three days before or after, lest they “place a stumbling block before the blind”—that is, assist an idol-worshipper in his sin. This week, we learned that there is a catalog of items that Jews could never sell to pagans at any time because they were commonly used in pagan rites. These include various kinds of herbs, as well as white roosters, which apparently were popular for sacrifices.

And read on for some unlikely legends about a certain Emperor Antoninus.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Coin-looting arrest in the Negev

APPREHENDED: Negev antiquities robber nabbed with trove of 150 Byzantine-era coins. Antiquities authority's theft prevention unit discovers resident of Bir Hadaj using a metal detector at the Haluza UNESCO World Heritage Site (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

These particular bronze coins, now held as evidence in court, could date from circa the 1st century CE or slightly earlier to the 6th century CE, said Erickson-Gini.

Their impressive age, however, doesn’t mean they are valuable: Fitoussi would estimate the entire trove to be worth only a few hundred dollars. Their value is in their worth as research aids — at excavation sites.

“The minute they’re found outside of their context, we have no idea where they came from. Coins can give researchers a lot of information. It’s possible to learn a lot about places from them, but since we don’t know from where they came from exactly, the coins’ historical worth is devalued,” said Fitoussi.

Cross-file under Numismatics.

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BHD on the Ketef Hinnom silver amulet inscriptions

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Miniature Writing on Ancient Amulets. Ketef Hinnom inscriptions reveal the power of hidden writing (Robin Ngo). As usual, the BAR article (Jeremy D. Smoak, "Words Unseen: The Power of Hidden Writing") is behind the subscription wall. But this essay gives an overview of it.

For many past PaleoJudaica posts on the silver amulets excavated at Ketef Hinnom, start here and follow the links. The amulets contain the earliest surviving copies of a biblical text, the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24-26. Jeremy Smoak's work on them has been noted here and links.

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More on reading the papyri in mummy masks without destroying them

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: We’re One Step Closer to Non-Invasively Reading Ancient Papyri Hidden in Mummy Masks. Researchers at the University College of London are working to find a way to read the ancient scraps without destroying the artifacts in the process (Brigit Katz, The Smithsonian). I noted this story earlier, but this article gives more detail, or perhaps updated information. The earlier article covered the analysis of the coffin lid, but not the tests on simulated cartonnage or the test of the fragment of an actual mummy mask.

It’s important to note that with all three methods, researchers were only able to determine the presence of different inks within the dense cartonnage; they could not glean enough information to read the texts. Their study is just the first step in what will surely be a long trajectory of research—but it is a significant first step.

Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.

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Syrian Neo-Hittitle Temple damaged by Turkish air strikes

THIS IS WAR: Ancient Syrian temple damaged in Turkish raids against Kurds. '3,000 years of civilization destroyed in an airstrike,' ex-head of Syria's antiquities department says of destruction at Ain Dara (AFP). I'm sorry to hear this. It looks as though Syria has more work to do before its tourism industry makes a comeback.

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The Museum of the Bible and Creationist museums

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: The Creationist MOTB: Judaism and Judaica at the Answers in Genesis Creationist Facilities (James Linville).

To sum up, at the AiG venues Jews and their history are little more than pawns in the ideological struggle with religious plurality, the forces of secularism, and liberal Christianity. AiG’s Bible is not the pluralistic one of scholarship and interreligious dialogue. As one sign in the Creation Museum puts it, “The Prophets, the Apostles, and Jesus Christ proclaimed one truth.” Anyone who objects to their evangelical and young Earth creationist Christian statement of faith will not be hired.[27] The Museum of the Bible has included rabbis and Jewish scholars in their International Advisory Council.[28] But it is hard to see how an honest desire to be inclusive of Jews would permit association with ministries like Answers in Genesis. And so, I must ask whether Answers in Genesis is an organization that the Museum of the Bible, with its interest in the history of the Bible as a cultural artefact and a stated desire for inclusivity, should continue to partner with.

The issue here is that the Green Collection and the Museum of the Bible have lent artifacts to Creationist museums belonging to Answers in Genesis (AiG).

This essay is a continuation of the series being published by AJR. They were originally presented as papers at the Association for Jewish Studies meeting in Washington D.C. in December of 2017. Background here.

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On food in the Torah

THE BIBLE AND INTEPRETATION:

Sweet Dreams? Interpreting Food in the Dreams of Pharaoh’s Cupbearer and Baker

So…once I started thinking about the role of food and drink in this story, I realized that I’d stumbled across a tool that could help uncover what was going on behind the scenes.

See Also: From Forbidden Fruit to Milk and Honey: A Commentary on Food in the Torah (Urim Publications: 2018).

By Diana Lipton
January 2018

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A New NRSV

THE ETC BLOG: Plan to Review and Revise the New Revised Standard Version (Peter Gurry). A lot of philology has happened in the last thirty years.

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Roman-era (?) tombs found in Gaza backyard

EXCAVATION BY EROSION: Heavy rain unearths ancient graves in backyard in Gaza. Local archaeologists believe the site is about 2,000 years old, dating back to the Roman era (AP via Times of Israel).

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5 books not included in the Bible (sort of)

YOU'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BIBLE: 5 Books That Are Not Included in the Bible. The Bible once looked very different (Stephanie Hertzenberg, Beliefnet). I don't think that "the Bible once looked very different" quite captures the issue. There was a time when there was a still imperfectly-defined set of prophetically-inspired scriptures. As these settled down into fixed canons of scripture at various times and various places, the resulting "Bibles" had overlapping but somewhat different contents. This is still true today for the Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Bibles. This is pretty much what the article says, and the author should not be held responsible for the sub-heading.

The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) is actually part of the Bible for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. None of the other four are in any major formal canon. That said, as the article observes, many people today prefer to mix and match from inside and outside the canons to form their own personal set of scriptures.

I could quibble over some of the other details in the article. But I fully agree that everyone interested in the Bible (not just Christians) should read all five of these books: the Gospel of Thomas, 1 Enoch, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Acts of Paul and Thecla.

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Aramaic in the world today

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: Aramaic, the language of Jesus, comes to New Jersey (Matthew Petti, America Magazine).

Syriac, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians—their chosen name varies by denomination, but most recognize themselves as part of the same ethnic group—originally hail from the Middle East, where their Aramaic dialects were once the dominant language. Forced into diaspora by both ethnic and religious conflicts, the Syriac Christians in New Jersey, who number about 2,000 families and are mostly members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, have created Syriac establishments ranging from language schools to restaurants. They are now attempting to balance the American Dream with preserving their faith and reviving their ancient culture.

A detailed account of the current fate of Aramaic-speaking Christians in the Middle East — and in New Jersey.

HT Joseph Lauer.

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Exhibition on Carthage and the Etruscans

PUNIC WATCH: Exhibition highlights links between Carthage and Etruria. 2,000 artefacts on show at Carthage National Museum.

(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, JANUARY 22 - A new exhibition showing at the Carthage National Museum highlights the links between the Carthaginian and Etruscan civilisations before the Mediterranean came under Roman dominion. 'Carthage et les Etrusques, une si vieille amitié' presents a selection of over 2,000 Etruscan archaeological items from the 4th to the 7th century BC and the oldest existing 'passport', used by a Carthaginian travelling to Etruria (Italy).

[...]

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Subversion of male leadership in Judges?

PROF. JACOB L. WRIGHT: Yael and the Subversion of Male Leaders in Judges (TheTorah.com).

The Canaanite general Sisera is killed by Yael in her tent but in an older version of the story, he died in battle at the hands of the Israelite general, Barak. The story was revised as part of a broader theme in Judges, to weaken the image of male military heroes through women and give the power to God.

Could be. Redaction criticism is fun too.

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Was the Voynich manuscript written in Hebrew?

DECODED? FAMOUSLY INDECIPHERABLE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT THAT BAFFLED EVEN NAZI ENIGMA CODE BREAKERS TRANSLATED BY AI (Kastalia Medrano, Newsweek).

The Voynich manuscript is famous for being indecipherable. The 240-page text is written in an unknown language, in an unknown script, scrambled by an unknown code, as CTVNews put it. It's a puzzle with no way in. Even the Bletchley Park cryptographers, renowned for cracking the Enigma code used by the Nazis during World War II, couldn't make any headway.

Now, Greg Kondrak, a computer scientist in the AI lab at the University of Alberta—the same one behind the DeepStack system that made waves last year by beating professional poker players—claims he's begun to crack it open.

Supposedly "carbon dating" places the manuscript in the early fifteenth century. But carbon dating would be pretty imprecise for such a recent manuscript. In any case, this is what the AI came up with:

Step number one, Kondrak told CTVNews, was figuring out what the language is. The statistical algorithms he and his co-author designed proved about 97-percent accurate when translating the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (into 380 languages). The same process, applied to the Voynich manuscript, suggested the language was Hebrew. As for the code, they believe that it involves the letters in each individual word being shuffled, and their vowels dropped.

According to their algorithms, the manuscript's first complete sentence reads, "She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people." They also believe the text includes the words "farmer," "light," "air" and "fire," according to CTVNews.

The speculation is that the text deals with "women's health," partly, I guess, from the supposedly decoded text, and partly because of the many illustrations of naked women bathing.

We'll see. I am skeptical, but let's keep an eye on the story.

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Review of Barclay, Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews

READING ACTS BLOG: Book Review: John Barclay, Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews (Phil Long).

Barclay, John M. G. Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2016. 454 pp. Pb; $48. Link to Eerdmans

This collection of essays published between 1992 and 2011 was originally published by Mohr Siebeck. Chapter 1 was written as an introduction to that volume and chapters 18 and 19 appeared for the first time. The remaining sixteen essays appeared in various journals and Festschrifts. The Eerdmans edition is essentially the same, only a few typographical errors have been corrected. The volume concludes with a bibliography, Indices of Sources, Authors and Selected Topics.

[...]

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Lee, Basics of Greek Accents

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM ZONDERVAN: Basics of Greek Accents Eight Lessons with Exercises Author: John A. L. Lee.

DESCRIPTION

Basics of Greek Accents by John A. L. Lee is a compact, student-friendly, and practical guide to accents for students of both classical and biblical Greek. In eight simple lessons students will learn the basics of ancient Greek accentuation.

Ideal for beginners who are just learning the language or for intermediate students who have learned some Greek but are unsure of their accents, this handy resource avoids theory and concentrates on taking the learner through the essentials in a natural sequence and reinforces learning by means of simple exercises.

Out in April of 2018.

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Welcome to Michael Lyons

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE SCHOOL OF DIVINITY, UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS:

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Michael Lyons to a new lectureship in Old Testament / Hebrew Bible, starting September 2018.

Dr Lyons completed his PhD at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has held a position at Simpson University for the last ten years. His areas of research include the investigation of compositional strategies in the prophetic corpus of the Hebrew Bible and the dynamics of text-referencing in ancient Israel, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity. He is the author of several volumes on the book of Ezekiel, and has published in Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, and Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages.

He'll be working alongside Prof. Jim Davila, Dr Bill Tooman, and Dr Madhavi Nevader in our Old Testament / Hebrew Bible section.

And yes, we are truly delighted to have Michael joining us in September.

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Boccaccini interview

FROM THE DESK OF KURT MANWARING: 10 questions with Gabriele Boccaccini.

In January 2018, I had the privilege to interview Dr. Gabriele Boccaccini, director of the Enoch Seminar.

Even in the midst of a personal tragedy, Boccaccini was kind enough to give thoughtful consideration to a number of questions about his work and motives.

[...]

This interview is illuminating and informative, not only about the Enoch Seminar and the current state of Second Temple Jewish studies and related fields, but also about Professor Boccaccini himself.

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Tunisian tourism

TRAVEL: TUNISIA HOLIDAYS: WHY TOURISTS SHOULD LOOK BEYOND THE BEACH AND DISCOVER ITS ANCIENT ROMAN HERITAGE. After terrorist attacks scared away the sun lounger crowd, visitors to Tunisia are now rediscovering its rich Roman history (NICK REDMAYNE, The Independent).

We’re in Carthage, Tunisia’s best known and most visited Roman site. Perched on the Mediterranean coastline, a visit is worth it for the spellbinding views alone, but in truth, the development of the modern city, combined with centuries of neglect, hasn’t left Dido’s ancient citadel in its best possible state.

Instead, [tourguide] Chaouki [Latrache] wants to show me some of the country’s lesser known ruins, all within a couple of hours of Tunis, meaning you can comfortably manage them in day trips from the capital. We start with Dougga, a Unesco-designated site in the north-west of the country, and find we have the place almost to ourselves. Chaouki reckons it’s seven years since he last brought an English tourist here.

Cross file under Punic Watch.

Some past posts on Phoenician and Punic antiquities in Tunisia, and the current dangers there, are here and here and links. I don't think I'll take my holiday there this summer either, but maybe someday.

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Syria as a tourist destination?

TRAVEL: Syria Publicizing Aleppo, Palmyra at Fitur Fair (Financial Tribune).

The Syrian government is making efforts to promote the country as a tourist destination following a civil war that has devastated much of its area.

This week the Syrian government is publicizing Aleppo, along with other destinations in Syria, at the Fitur International Tourism Trade Fair in Madrid, AFP reported.

It is the first time Syria has attended the trade fair since 2011, before the war broke out.

Along with the ruins of Aleppo, it also encourages people to visit the ancient Roman-era ruins of Palmyra, the UNESCO-listed archeological site that was twice controlled by the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group.

[...]

And there's this too:

[Bassam Barsik, director of marketing at the Syrian Ministry of Tourism] argued that religious destinations, such as the historical Christian town of Maaloula, one of the last places on earth where Aramaic is still spoken, are still a draw to tourists.

I don't think Syria will be my holiday destination this summer. Maybe someday. This promotion seems a bit premature, but things must be quieter if the Syrian government thinks it can even raise the subject. I hope this augurs some better things for the people of Syria.

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. And for past posts on Maaloula (Ma'aloula, Malula), which also suffered much during the war, start here and follow the links.

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