Hurtado on Stuckenbruck on 1 Enoch again

LARRY HURTADO: 1 Enoch: An Update on Manuscripts and Cautionary Notes on Usage.

At the meeting of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, 5 August 2019 in Aberdeen, Loren Stuckenbruck gave one of the main/plenary papers (co-authored with Ted Erho) that draws upon his extensive efforts to locate and classify Ethiopic manuscripts of 1 Enoch. I’m grateful to him for letting me see his paper: “The Significance of Ethiopic Witnesses for the Text Tradition of 1 Enoch: Problems and Prospects,” and with permission of the authors I cite some of the observations arising from the work of Stuckenbruck and his associates.

[...]

Related post here. I have heard similar cautions from Professor Stuckenbruck.

It has been good to see Larry blogging again lately.

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

CPF: Sensory And Emotional Approaches To Magic In The Roman World

THE NSEA BLOG: A CONFERENCE ON SENSORY AND EMOTIONAL APPROACHES TO ROMAN MAGIC (Earl Fontainelle).

There is a call for papers out for a one-day conference with the promising title Mind, Body, Magic: Sensory And Emotional Approaches To Magic In The Roman World, organised by the Open University, Milton Keynes, Friday 27th March 2020. Here is the information:

Follow the link for more.

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

Biblical Oxyrhynchus papyri stolen and sold?

WHAT A MESS: An Oxford professor allegedly stole ancient Bible fragments and sold them to Hobby Lobby (Katie Shepherd, Washington Post).

Since 2012, scholars and University of Oxford officials have been trying to trace a rumor that the oldest Bible fragment ever discovered not just existed but had been mysteriously stolen and sold to American arts-and-crafts giant Hobby Lobby.

Now, officials said they have finally cracked the case. The suspected thief at the center of the biblical controversy? Professor Dirk Obbink, one of the most celebrated classics professors in the world, a Nebraska native and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient who had long directed — and allegedly looted — Oxford’s Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project, a collection of centuries-old literature recovered from an ancient Egyptian garbage dump in 1896.

[...]

Read the whole article for details. These are serious accusations. So far, Professor Obbink has not responded to the most recent round of them. Some time ago he did deny that he sold a fragment of a manuscript of the Gospel of Mark.

We'll just have to see how this plays out.

Background here and links.

Also, here are some recent blog posts on the situation.

From Variant Readings (Brent Nongbri):

Breaking: EES Stolen Manuscripts Update

How Many Oxyrhynchus Papyri Have Been Sold?

From Evangelical Textual Criticism (posted by Tommy Wasserman):

NEWSFLASH: ‘Professor Obbink and Missing EES Papyri’ – MOTB returns 13 Papyri to EES!

News Statement: ‘Museum of the Bible Helps EES Recover Antiquities’

See also this Daily Beast essay by Professor Candida Moss:

INDIANA JONES BREAKS BAD. Hobby Lobby Scandal Widens as Museum of the Bible Admits Oxford Prof Sold Illicit Papyri to Green Family. The Museum of the Bible revealed today that at least 13 biblical fragments in its collection were illicitly sold by a Oxford professor to Hobby Lobby's Green family.

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

Review of Lord (et al.), The Singer of Tales (3rd ed.)

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Albert Bates Lord, David F. Elmer, The Singer of Tales. 3rd Edition. Publications of the Milman Parry collection of oral literature, 4. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. xlv, 338. ISBN 9780674975736. $24.50. Reviewed by Minna Skafte Jensen, University of Southern Denmark and Copenhagen University (minna.s.j@gmail.com).

This is the third edition of a monograph originally published 1960, an unusual fact in a time in which libraries are reduced in favour of digitized versions for online reading. What is so special about exactly this book?

The answer is, of course, that Lord’s Singer of Tales is a modern classic. Milman Parry’s sensational research which combined careful, even pedantic, studies of the Homeric poems with fieldwork investigation of oral epic in Yugoslavia was known to scholars working with archaic Greek poetry, but relatively unknown elsewhere. Had it not been for Lord’s book the situation might have remained like that. The Singer of Tales first describes the theory constructed from the fieldwork and next suggests how this theory changes our understanding of Homer. Lord was a charismatic author, and the enthusiasm emanating from every page makes his book a great read. It was received with admiration, and with it the ambitious project of defining the general characteristics of oral poetry became deeply influential not only in Homeric studies but in related fields as well, such as the philologies concerned with early poetry from other parts of the world, anthropology, folklore, and psychology, to mention only the most obvious. ...

Lord's book has also been influential on Hebrew Bible studies and Ugaritic studies.

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

The Divine Warrior

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

God in Conflict: Images of the Divine Warrior in Ancient Jewish and Early Christian Texts

In the ancient world, writers routinely appealed to martial motifs to express their beliefs and hopes related to the divine. Texts from the ancient Near East depict deities in conflict with one another over the rightful rule of the cosmos. Documents among the Hebrew Bible, which arose out the ancient Near Eastern context, continued to adapt images of divine conflict when describing the God of Israel; Jewish authors, however, showed much creativity in bending and shaping the traditional motifs for their rhetorical and theological purposes. This adaptation of divine war images endured into the first century CE among New Testament authors, who incorporated the person and work of Jesus Christ into traditional conflict motifs. This essay offers a brief overview of some key images and texts from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament that framed God as a warrior; it also gestures toward the varieties of ways authors expressed the hope that God would fight for God’s people, defeat their adversaries, and restore the chosen people.

See Also: Scott C. Ryan, Divine Conflict and the Divine Warrior: Listening to Romans and Other Jewish Voices, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019).

By Scott C. Ryan
Assistant Professor of Religion and Biblical Studies
Department of Humanities
Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina
October 2019

O worship the King all-glorious above is another well-know and frequently-sung hymn that draws deeply on the divine warrior tradition.

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

The Manichaeans of Kellis

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: The Manichaeans of Kellis: Religion, Community, and Everyday Life (Mattias Brand).

Mattias Brand, The Manichaeans of Kellis: Religion, Community, and Everyday Life (Leiden University PhD Dissertation, 2019).

For more on Kellis, see here and the relevant link here. Cross-file under Manichean Watch (Manichaean Watch) and Coptic Watch.

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

Sukkot 2019

THE FESTIVAL OF SUKKOT (BOOTHS, TABERNACLES) begins tonight at sundown. Best wishes to all those observing it.

Last year's Sukkot post was here with links. For the biblical background to Sukkot, see here and here.

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

Nongbri on problems with paleographic dating

WELL THAT'S A BIT AWKWARD: Palaeographic Dating: Graphic Difference Does Not Always Mean Chronological Difference (Brent Nongbri,Variant Readings).

The promised subsequent post on Codex Sinaiticus is here. And the immediately preceding post is also of interest: A New Article on Palaeographic Dating of Codices.

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

Jerusalem was not the same as Shalem?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: First Person: From Shalem to Jerusalem (Robert Cargill). Professor Cargill argues in his new book, Melchizedek, King of Sodom (OUP 2019), that Shalem in Genesis 14 was not the city of Jerusalem.

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

The Talmud on using Temple leftovers

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Ends With Benefits. This week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study debates the right way to use consecrated Temple leftovers without crossing holy lines.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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

Magness on the Masada myth(s)

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: The Masada Myth(s) (Jodi Magness).

Josephus’ account of the mass suicide at Masada is so compelling that after Israel was established in 1948, the slogan “Masada shall not fall again” became symbolic of the modern state. The example of Jews putting up a heroic resistance to the death instead of going meekly to their slaughter had great appeal in the wake of the Holocaust and at a time when Israel’s population felt embattled. However, times have changed, and with them, so have perspectives on Masada. For one thing, even those who embrace the mass suicide as a symbol of modern Israel must reconcile it with Judaism’s prohibition against taking one’s own life (although according to Josephus’ account, only the last man died by his own hand). More importantly, in today’s post-Zionist era the story of Masada has become a less compelling model for Israelis. And scholarly views have changed as well. For example, many scholars now believe Josephus’ description of the mass suicide (the only ancient account of this episode) is fabricated – that it never happened!

For more on Professor Magness's recent book, Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (Princeton University Press, 2019), see here. And for many other posts on the history and archaeology of, and revisionist views on, Masada, see here and links.

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

Tenure-track HB job at Harvard

HARVARD UNIVERSITY:

Tenure-track Professor of Hebrew Bible

School Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Department/Area Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Position Description
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations seeks to appoint a tenure-track professor at the assistant level in Hebrew Bible as of 1 July 2020. The successful candidate will be familiar with the Hebrew Bible in the original. Candidates are expected to be able to situate the Hebrew Bible within its ancient Near Eastern context and within the broader history of its interpretation. The tenure-track professor will be responsible for teaching and advising at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The tenure-track professor of Hebrew Bible will be appointed in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and will work with colleagues in the Committee on the Study of Religion, the Harvard Divinity School, and other departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Keywords:
assistant, faculty, instructor, tenure track
Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MA, Northeast, New England
Hebrew, Bible, biblical Hebrew, ancient near east, interpretation

Basic Qualifications
Doctorate or equivalent degree in Hebrew Bible or related discipline required by the time the appointment begins.

Additional Qualifications
Demonstrated commitment to excellence in teaching; evidence of intellectual leadership and potential for high impact on the field.

Follow the link for application instructions. Applicants are "encouraged" to apply by 1 November 2019.

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

The "Curse of the Dancer"

GREEK EPIGRAPHY: Ancient 'Curse of the Dancer' Deciphered, Revealing Backstabbing Rivals (Owen Jarus, Live Science).

A Greek engraving on a 1,500-year-old lead tablet discovered in the ruins of an ancient theater in Israel has finally been deciphered, revealing a curse that may rival the modern-day backstabbing between athletic opponents.

The curse calls upon numerous demons to inflict harm on a dancer named Manna, who likely performed at the famous Caesarea Maritima theater in Israel, which was built by Herod the Great.

[...]

Professor Attilio Mastrocinque has deciphered this long curse tablet using "Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI)." For more on that technique, see here and links. Cross-file under Technology Watch.

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

Review of Novenson, The Grammar of Messianism

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Matthew V. Novenson, The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xvi, 361. ISBN 9780190255022. $78.00. Reviewed by D. Clint Burnett, Johnson University (davidclintburnett@gmail.com).

His work is not based on new data, but on a new way of perceiving ancient Jewish and early Christian messianic texts, namely unencumbered by the messianic idea and with fresh contextual exegeses of messianic texts that probe their inner logic. He shifts the conversation about messianism from the general to the particular and from the realms of politics and history into that of particular texts, contexts, and exegesis. Adopting Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of language game—the “theory that human language is best conceived not as a set of symbols corresponding to things in the world, but rather as a set of rules for participation in various kinds of discourse” (12)—Novenson claims that words derive their meanings from context. Therefore, scholars must avoid preconceived notions or ideas about what words mean, especially in ancient texts. It is clear that Jewish and Christian authors’ use of messianic language is part of “one great Mediterranean language game” that can be traced to their contextualized interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. In short, Novenson concludes “ancient messiah texts constitute one example . . . of the vast, sprawling ancient Jewish and Christian project of scriptural interpretation” (17). The purpose of this book is to map the rules of this language game or the grammar of messianism. (21).

Past PaleoJudaica posts on the book are here and links.

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

On Abraham and the Aqedah

PROF. AARON KOLLER: Abraham Passes the Test of the Akedah But Fails as a Father (TheTorah.com).

The story of the Akedah appears to present Abraham’s actions in a uniformly positive light. However, Isaac’s absence at the end of the story, and Sarah’s death immediately afterwards, suggested to some traditional and modern commentators a criticism of Abraham.

For another ancient understanding of the Akedah — that Abraham actually sacrificed Isaac — see here and links.

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

Yom Kippur 2019

YOM KIPPUR, the Day of Atonement, begins this evening at sundown. An easy fast to all those observing it.

Last year's post on Yom Kippur is here (bonus post here). For background and previous posts, follow the link from there. Biblical etc. background is here.

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

Warren on transformational eating

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature (Meredith J C Warren).

Hierophagy is the word I chose to describe this genre of transformational eating.[3] I define hierophagy as a mechanism by which characters in narrative cross boundaries from one realm to another through ingesting some item from that other realm. Hierophagy results in three specific types of transformations: (A) the binding of the eater to the place of origin of the food; (B) the transformation of the eater either in terms of behaviour or physical appearance; and/or (C) the transmission of new knowledge.

This essay gives us a taste of Dr. Warren's new book, Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature (SBL Press, 2019).

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

Apocryphal gospels as fan fiction?

NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: Fan Fiction and Alternative Gospels (Philip Jenkins, The Anxious Bench). Excerpt:

Popular media tend to assume that there is an ancient era in which gospels were produced abundantly, presumably because the authors had some special knowledge or perception to share. In fact, such production carried on in high volume for much longer than this model suggests, at least through the sixth and seventh centuries, with many later contributions. At no point in history—say, around 400—did churches suddenly cease recording what they believed to be Christ’s authentic message, and certainly they did not do so because of the edicts of some all-powerful hierarchy. The Christian story is one of organic growth and development, from early times, through medieval, to modern, and beyond.

Related post here.

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

Frey, Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Jörg Frey. Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation. Kleine Schriften III. Edited by Jacob N. Cerone. 2019. XXI, 906 pages. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 424. 214,00 € including VAT. cloth ISBN 978-3-16-156015-6..

Published in English.
The articles collected here present the fruits of 25 years of scholarship on Qumran and the New Testament. The author situates the New Testament within the pluralistic context of Second Temple Judaism, presents detailed overviews on the discoveries from Qumran, the source value of the ancient texts on the Essenes, the interpretation of the archaeological site, the various forms of dualism within the texts, the development of apocalyptic thought, Qumran meals, and scriptural authority in the Scrolls. He evaluates the various patterns of relating Jesus and the apostles to the Scrolls or the Qumran community, presents methodological reflections on comparisons and detailed surveys of the most important insights from the Qumran discoveries for the understanding of Jesus, Paul, and the Fourth Gospel. This volume demonstrates how the discovery of the Scrolls has influenced and changed New Testament scholarship.

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

The Phoenicia is sailing to the Americas

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Who reached America first – Columbus or the Phoenicians? A replica Phoenician vessel made in Syria is sailing the Atlantic to prove the ancient civilisation did it 2,000 years before Columbus (Tom Westcott, Middle East Eye).

Philip Beale, the project’s leader, explained: “This expedition hopes to show that the Phoenicians could have been the first ancient seafarers to cross the Atlantic, well before Christopher Columbus.

“It’s not whether Christopher Columbus was the first to cross the Atlantic but actually that he was probably one of the last.”

As for their likely destination, Beale said that the idea is to not aim for anywhere in particular. Instead they will go where the winds and currents naturally take them, to best recreate the likely route of the Phoenicians.

This replica Phoenician vessel is, of course, the Good Ship Phoenicia. PaleoJudaica followed the ship's successful expedition to circumnavigate Africa from 2008 to 2010. Now she aims to cross the Atlantic to show that the Phoenicians could have reached the Americas. I noted the fundraising for the project back in 2013. And follow the links from there for many past posts on the adventures of the Phoenicia.

Perhaps Phoenicians could have reached the New World. Perhaps they even did. But I have reviewed all the evidence I can find for a Phoenician presence in the Americas and I have not found it credible. For past posts, see here, here, here, and many links. Cross-file under New World Forgery.

Be that as it may, I wish the Phoenicia a successful voyage. I look forward to following her new adventures.

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