900-BCE Israelite inscription found at Abel Beth Maacah

NORTHWEST SEMITIC EPIGRAPHY: Hebrew Inscription on a 3,000-year-old Jar Could Redraw Borders of Ancient Israel. Archaeologists were surprised to find Hebrew writing in Abel Beth Maacah, which some don’t think was part of the ancient kingdom (Ariel David).

The basic story is that the Abel Beth Maacah excavation has turned up a jar fragment with an inscription on it that reads לבניו (belonging to Benayau). It is written in Hebrew letters and the readings are clear. Epigraphers date it to 900 BCE, give or take. I am not sure whether the script itself identifies the word as "Hebrew" rather than more broadly "Canaanite," but the name is certainly Israelite. It includes a form of the divine name YHWH. It means "YHWH has built." The spelling of the name is specifically Northern Israelite.

As usual with these things, the article tries to draw maximal historical inferences from this discovery. Not a criticism of the author of the article, who seems to be reporting faithfully the views of the archaeologists, with lots of useful background information.

The basic story is quite exciting. Israelite inscriptions, even with just once word, are exceedingly rare in this period. But inferences beyond that basic story are speculative, at least for now.

For some posts on another recent discovery at Abel Beth Maacah, see here and links.

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AJR on Fragments

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW has a new series on Fragments.

Panelists from the 2018 Religious World of Late Antiquity SBL section panel on “Fragments” offer close readings of a range of secondary or technical sources outside the field in order to investigate provocative problems, ideas, and disciplinary techniques for scholars who study the late ancient world. (Todd Berzon)

Two of the essays have been posted so far. They are ... something different.

Four Notes on Memory Theatre (Catherine Michael Chin)

A Garland of Fragments (Moulie Vidas).

UPDATE (21 January): The last two essays are:

Fragments and Absence (Elizabeth Castelli)

Fragment: Toward a Critical Trans History of Byzantium (Roland Betancourt)

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The Oxyrhynchus papyri scandal in the news

THE GUARDIAN: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel. What links an eccentric Oxford classics don, billionaire US evangelicals, and a tiny, missing fragment of an ancient manuscript? Charlotte Higgins unravels a multimillion-dollar riddle.

Regular readers are familiar with this ongoing story. I collected some relevant links (especially a post from Brent Nongbri) in my late November post from last year: 120 Oxyrhynchus papyri missing from the Egypt Exploration Society. Follow the links back from there for details. And subsequent relevant posts are here and here. And this post links to potentially relevant posts by Dr Nongbri at his Variant Readings Blog.

Brent also comments on highlights of the Guardian article, as does Peter Gurry at the ETC Blog. The article has some surprising revelations.

As I have said before, I am not going to offer an opinion on what happened. Nor do I endorse or reject anyone else's analysis. I blog and link and you decide. It sounds as though this situation is likely to end up in court. We will just have to see how it plays out.

Meanwhile, Michael Press uses the story as a launching point to discuss the problem of the overabundance of already excavated ancient texts and artifacts that remain neglected by scholars: The Perennial Problem With the Excavation of Ancient Sites. Why chase after unprovenanced — and likely looted or forged — material when so much excavated material lies waiting for study? Excerpt:

Admirable individual efforts to publish are nothing against the mountain of unprocessed material. We’ve known this for some time, and yet we have still failed to change course. More drastic measures are needed. Fields like Near Eastern studies, classics, and more should reevaluate what kind of scholarship they value. Universities and their hiring committees should reevaluate why and how they hire and promote scholars. National antiquities departments should consider tighter restrictions or even a moratorium on new excavations until more old excavations are published.

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Adam Kirsch's Daf Yomi column concludes.

THE FINAL DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Did ‘Daf Yomi’ Make Me a Better Jew?

The last Daf Yomi cycle began on 1 August of 2012. I noted it here with various links. On 9 August I noted the inception of Mr. Kirsch's column here. As far as I can recall, I linked to each of them through the whole cycle. The most recent one is here. Follow the links back for the rest, often with some comments by me.

Meanwhile, for the current cycle, which began on 4 January of this year, Tablet has a new Daf Yomi project. It is a daily podcast called Take One. It aims to comment on each page of the Talmud throughout the cycle. I don't have time to follow it, although I may dip into it now and again. I have linked to the first episode. You can find all the episodes listed, along with Adam Kirsch's columns, on Tablet's Daf Yomi page.

I am very grateful to Adam for all his hard labor over the last seven-and-a-half years in working through the entire Talmud in English and summarizing so many of the interesting parts for his readers. I am not a Talmudist and never will be, but I feel much better informed about the Talmud after following his column. I wish him the best for his future projects.

Bible Places top-10 discoveries of 2019

THE BIBLE PLACES BLOG: Top 10 Discoveries in Biblical Archaeology in 2019 (Todd Bolen). Todd provides us with a good list and lots of ancillary material, including the year's fake news, tourism news, losses of people, other top-10 (etc.) compilations, and links to his past annual top 10 lists. And in this post he notes the Top Ten Discoveries in Biblical Archaeology of the Decade (2010-2019) by Bryan Windle at the Bible Archaeology Report.

I also noted a couple of top-10 end-of-year lists here.

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A Judeo-Christian (?) bilingual exorcism in PGM IV

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Old Coptic Magical Texts IV: The Bilingual Exorcism of PGM IV.

This post is the fourth in a mini-series about bilingual recipes in Egyptian and Greek from the 3rd/4th century papyrus codex PGM IV (Greek Magical Papyrus 4) – the “Bilingual Exorcism” (PGM IV. 1227-1264). This practice is written upon pages 28 and 29 of the codex and departs considerably from the other practices in this mini-series because it seems to derive from a Judaeo-Christian, rather than Pharaonic or Graeco-Egyptian, cultural context. ...

Ritual magic tends to be theologically eclectic. For the magician, whatever works, works.

I wrote this post up some time ago, but evidently I forgot to post it. Fortunately, the topic is not time sensitive. Here it is now.

For some related thoughts, see the final links in this post.

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Kalman on Jewish timekeeping from antiquity to modernity

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Turning Clockwise: Jews and Timekeeping from Antiquity to Modernity | Dissertation Spotlight (David Zvi Kalman).

David Zvi Kalman, “Unequal Hours: The Jewish Reception of Timekeeping Technology from the Bible to the Twentieth Century” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2019).

This dissertation is a proof of concept for how Jewish history and the history of technology—fields which have traditionally interacted very little—can benefit from talking to one another.

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Sparse Persian-era sherds and coins (Temple Mount Objects #4)

THE TEMPLE MOUNT SIFTING PROJECT BLOG: THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPLE MOUNT IN 12 OBJECTS: #4 THE EARLY SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD.

For the earlier posts on objects 1-3, see here and links.

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Biblical Studies Carnival December 2019

BELATEDLY NOTED: Biblical Studies Carnival #167: December 2019, by Alex Finkelson at the Scribes of the Kingdom Blog.

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The Talmud on detecting puberty

THE MOST RECENT DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: GIRL, YOU’LL BE A WOMAN SOON. As the seven-and-a-half-year cycle of page-a-day ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study comes to a close, the ancient rabbis discuss when adolescence ends and compare female sexual maturity to ripening figs.

Each volume of the Koren Talmud Bavli comes in a dust jacket that bears an image related to its contents. Avoda Zara, about idol worship, features a marble bust of a Greek god; Menachot, about meal offerings, has an illustration of a sacred vessel full of flour. So I was curious, as Tractate Nidda approached, how the publishers would choose to illustrate a volume whose main subject is menstrual blood. Their clever solution was to use an image of figs, for reasons that Daf Yomi readers discovered in last week’s reading.

[...]

And then there's this:

It feels strange to say this, but after seven and a half years, this is the next to last column in my series about Daf Yomi. The cycle concludes on Jan. 4 with the last page in Tractate Nidda, before starting all over again the next day with the first page of Berachot. Next month, in my final column, I will reflect on my long talmudic journey and on the Siyum HaShas, which will bring together 90,000 Jews to celebrate the Daf Yomi experience on New Year’s Day.

The new Daf Yomi began yesterday on Sunday, 5 January. I will have a few more comments to go with Adam Kirsch's final Daf Yomi column in the coming week.

But meanwhile, you can hear an inverview with Adam about his seven-and-a-half-year Daf Yomi experience on Tablet's Best Food Forward podcast, Ep. 210. The interview begins around 16:20 and lasts 22 minutes.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Review of Coşkun and Engels (eds.), Rome and the Seleukid East

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Altay Coşkun, David Engels (ed.), Rome and the Seleukid East: Selected Papers from Seleukid Study Day V, Brussels, 21-23 August 2015. Collection Latomus, volume 360. Leuven: Peeters, 2019. Pp. 512. ISBN 9789042939271. €84,00 (pb). Reviewed by Michael J. Taylor, University at Albany, SUNY (mjtaylor@albany.edu).

The past decade has proven a heady time for Seleucid studies, which has metamorphosed from a marginalized sub-field marooned in the void between Ancient History and Near Eastern Studies to a vibrant locus of interdisciplinary study, a topic that unites specialists in the Hellenistic World, Republican Rome and Judaic Studies, where sources range from Classical and Biblical literature to Greek epigraphy to cuneiform tablets. Such interdisciplinary vitality is on full display throughout this excellent volume.

This volume includes essays involving Antiochus III, Antiochus IV (see last link), and Judaism of the Hasmonean period, all of interest to PaleoJudaica.

For more on the Seleucid dynasty and its importance for biblical studies, see here and links

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Professor Larry Hurtado PhD Scholarship Fund

LARRY HURTADO'S BLOG has an In memorandum posted by one of his children. It notes the founding of a scholarship fund in Larry's name.

Background here and links.

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Review of Piotrkowski, Priests in Exile

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period (Miguel Vargas).

Meron M. Piotrkowski. Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period. Walter de Gruyter, 2019.

From the conclusion:

In sum, one truly gets the sense that Piotrkowski addresses every issue related to Onias' Temple. Because of its breadth, Priests in Exile is bound to become essential reading, not only for those interested in Oniad history, but also for anyone interested in Egyptian Judaism or Hellenistic-Jewish literature. As commented above, it is true that the evidence leaves open the possibility of competing interpretations. This is especially the case for the literary material. Nevertheless, scholars should seriously consider Piotrkowski's individual claims. ...

Earlier PaleoJudaica posts on the Jewish Temple at Leontopolis, Egypt, are here, here, here, here, and here.

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The Sibyl's Pompeii prophecy

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: Could a Jewish author have been first to record destruction of ancient Pompeii? The Sibylline Oracles, likely written by a Jew post-Vesuvius eruption, ostensibly prophecy the city’s devastation as divine retribution for sacking of Second Temple 9 years prior (Julie Masis, Times of Israel).

If the fourth Sibylline Oracle was really written no later than 81 CE, it might predate by several decades the letters of Pliny the Younger, who survived the eruption when he was a teenager and wrote a lengthy account of the experience later on. Pliny published his letters between the years 100 and 109.

Still, the Sibylline Oracle cannot begin to compare with the details included in Pliny’s letters, which provide a first-person account of the disaster.

For more on Pliny's letter about the eruption of Pompeii, see here and here. And for still more posts on Vesuvius and Pompeii, follow the links in the latter post, plus see here. For a post on an apocryphal quote from the Sibylline Oracles on Pompeii, see here.

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LXX reading plans for 2020

NOW'S THE TIME TO START: READING THE SEPTUAGINT IN 2020 (William Ross, Septuagint &c.)

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2020!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Have a great 2020. I hope it will include frequent visits to PaleoJudaica.

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

Top-10s for 2019

RETROSPECTIVE: So far I have found two top-10 lists for 2019 of interest to PaleoJudaica.

From Jesus' Time: The 10 Most Interesting Biblical Discoveries of 2019 (Stephanie Pappas, Live Science).

Biblical Archaeology’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2019 (Gordon Govier, Christianity Today).

There is some overlap in the two lists.

If I get time (I didn't in 2019), I will post a list of top PaleoJudaica posts for the year (or two years) on the blog's anniversary in March.

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

Levine on The Jewish Origins of the Christmas Story

BELATEDLY FOR CHRISTMAS: The Jewish Origins of the Christmas Story (Amy-Jill Levine, TheTorah.com).

The narratives of Jesus’ conception and birth as presented in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke echo Jewish history and cite Jewish prophecy. In that sense, the Christmas story can be said to have Jewish origins.

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Hanukkah and Saturnalia?

BELATEDLY FOR HANUKKAH: Did Ancient Jews Change Hanukkah to One-Up the Competition? New research into the origins of Hanukkah shows that this joyful holiday developed and evolved alongside other gentile light-based festivals like Saturnalia (Candida Moss, The Daily Beast).

At the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature conference held in San Diego last month, Dr. Catherine Bonesho, an assistant professor in Early Judaism at UCLA, presented a paper on religious competition in the ancient world. In her research, Bonesho examined ancient traditions about Hanukkah preserved in the writings of rabbinic authors in order to see what ancient Jews thought the holiday was about. Bonesho told The Daily Beast that our traditions about Hanukkah started much later than most people know. After Josephus, “the ritual of lighting lamps does not appear in textual form until the Mishnah (200 CE), nor does the tradition of the miracle of oil appear until the Babylonian Talmud (edited between 5th-7th centuries CE),” Bonesho said.

For more Hanukkah-related legends, see the immediately preceding post here.

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Hasmonean essays from TheTorah.com

BELATEDLY FOR HANUKKAH: Channah, Daughter of Mattathias: Instigator of the Maccabean Rebellion (Prof.Rachel Adelman, TheTorah.com).

1 Maccabees recounts how Mattathias instigated a rebellion against the Greeks out of zealotry against Jewish idolatry. Later midrashim tell how Mattathias’ daughter Channah goaded her father and brothers into fighting the Greeks to protect her from being raped by the local governor.

Mariamme, the Last Hasmonean Princess (Dr.Malka Zeiger Simkovich, TheTorah.com).

The Hasmonean princess Mariamme is best known today for her tempestuous and doomed marriage to Herod the Great. During her lifetime, however, Mariamme was a Jewish celebrity in her own right. As a descendant of the Hasmonean family on both her maternal and paternal sides, Mariamme was the closest thing that Jews had to royalty.

For more on that disturbing legend involving Herod, his Hasmonean wife, and honey, see here, here, and here. And a couple of other posts involving the historical Mariamme (Mariamne, Marianne) are here and here.

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