Epicurus wasn't so bad?

CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY: Epicurus was not as bad as he is portrayed (Israel Drazin, Times of Israel Blogs). The rabbinic literature has a negative view of the "Apicorus" ("Apikoros") — a term derived from "Epicurean."

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Bar Kokhba coin found in Jerusalem

ARCHAEOLOGICAL NUMISMATICS: ‘Year 2 of freedom’: Ancient coin from Bar Kochba revolt found near Temple Mount. Israel Antiquities Authority reveals the coin, one of only four from the era to be discovered in the area, to mark Lag B’Omer holiday (Times of Israel).

This holiday is traditionally associated with the early second-century Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Yohai). He is the traditional (but pseudepigraphic) author of the Zohar. Lag B'Omer is also associated with the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

In recent years the IAA has saved up archaeological treats for Lag B'Omer: in 2017 the public opening of a complex of caves used by the Bar Kokhba rebels and in 2018 announcement of the discovery of another Bar Kokhba coin, this one recovered in a cave in Modi'in.

Another coin from year two of the Bar Kokhba revolt was found in the Lachish area in 2019.

As the article notes, very few Bar Kokhba coins have been discovered in Jerusalem. This is one of a number of reasons for concluding that the rebels never re-took the city. This Jerusalem Post article by Rossella Tercatin has additional details: Ancient coin tied to Jewish rebellion against Romans found in Jerusalem. Out of 22,000 ancient coins found in the Old City, only four can be traced back to Bar Kochba rebellion.

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Online Enoch Seminar on the origin of evil

RELIGION PROF: Enoch Seminar Online 2020: The Origin of Evil in Second Temple Judaism. I am pleased to hear that James McGrath is involved with this groundbreakingly fully-remote Enoch Seminar too.

You can consult the regularly updated schedule for the conference at: 2020 Enoch Seminar Online.

The conferences takes place from 29 June to 2 July. The lineup is impressive and is still developing. As you can see from the current schedule, I am a respondent in session 7: "How is the problem of evil and its origin addressed in the Parables of Enoch and the Synoptics?"

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Geniza Fragments 79

GENIZA FRAGMENTS, the Newsletter of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library has published its April 2020 Issue. Topics include fragments of an important Hebrew prayerbook, fragments from Maimonides and his circle, a vertical parchment scroll (rotulus) containing material from the Tosefta, and a review of Geoffrey Khan's open-access book The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew (on which more here).

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Lag B'Omer and the coronavirus

CHANGE: Taking the fire out of Lag Ba'omer amid coronavirus in Israel. Just as COVID-19 put a crimp in Passover Seders, Remembrance Day grieving of bereaved families, and Independence Day celebrations, so too is it altering the Lag Ba'omer celebrations this year (Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post). Lag B'Omer is celebrated today.

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Scroll indigestion

READING ACTS: Eating the Little Scroll – Revelation 10:8-11. Phil Long continues his blog series on the seven angels of the Book of Revelation and their seven trumpets. We are still on the events of the sixth trumpet.

I have noted earlier posts in the series here and links.

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Lag B'Omer 2020

LAG B'OMER, the 33rd day of the Counting of the Omer, begins tonight at sundown. Best wishes to all observing it.

My 2018 Lag B'Omer post is here. Follow the links there for the biblical and rabbinic background of the holiday and collected previous posts of interest. I missed Lag B'Omer 2019, due to circumstances beyond my control. But there are additional posts on the subject here, here, and here.

Like everything else, the observation of Lag B'Omer has been affected by the coronavirus. Normally a crowd of up to five-hundred-thousand people celebrate with bonfires on Mount Meron. But this year the observations are massively scaled down.

If you are celebrating, however you go about it, please celebrate safely!

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C-14 D-REAMS

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: The Israeli lab keeping cultural heritage alive. We take a tour of a special laboratory in Rehovot that is focused on preserving and dating history – and has even rewritten it (STEPHEN ORYSZCZUK, Jewish News/Times of Israel).

D-REAM stands for the Dangoor Research Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, inaugurated in 2012 by British Jewish philanthropist David Dangoor and his wife Judy, both scientists.

The lab is run by Italian-born Elisabetta Boaretto – described as “one of the rock-stars of archaeology” – together with her colleague Lior Regev, and they gave me a tour just before the country began closing its borders.

This is a place of work and study. Give them a viable organic sample, such as a bone fragment, and the team gets pre-screening, pre-treating, CO2 extracting, graphitising, pressing and AMS-ing to work out its age. It is a world of catalyst weights, cathode locations, infrared analysis, field calibration, cellulose fractions, oxelate peaks, “probable absolutes” and something intriguingly called a “wiggle model”.

It sounds as though this lab, which is new to me, has been making important advances in archaeology and even history.

Cross-file under Carbon-14 Dating and Material Culture. Some relevant PaleoJudaica posts are here and links.

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A Hellenistic-era temple of Baal in Syria

ARCHAEOLOGY: Baal Shamin temple… Beauty, creativity in architectural, engineering decorations (SANA).

Sweida, SANA_ Baal Shamin Temple, which is located in the archaeological site of the eastern countryside of Sweida, is distinguished by the beauty of its geometric and architectural decorations that are carved as plant shapes, especially vine in addition to the figures carved within the Acanthus leaves that decorate the Corinthian crowns of the columns.

[...]

Sweida (As-Suwayda/Suada) was founded as an ancient Nabatean city. Other PaleoJudaica posts on the archaeology of the Sweida region are here and here.

This Temple of Baal Shamin is not to be confused with the one at Palmyra (a.k.a. the Temple of Bel), which was destroyed by ISIS in 2015. More on it here, here, here and links.

Cross-file under Nabatean Watch (Nabataean Watch).

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Report: destruction at Tel Aroma

THIS SOUNDS BAD: Palestinian Authority paves over Hasmonean fortress, destroying remains of ancient wall. After declaring ancient Hasmonean fortress a 'Palestinian Heritage Site', PA paves over the fortress, destroying remains of wall, cisterns (Arutz Sheva).

The name of the site is Tel Aroma/Tel Aruma.

As usual with such things, I am not there and have only some media reports to go on. The information seems to come from the "Preserving the Eternal" (Shomrim Al Hanetzach) Project (on which more here and links) and the Shomron Regional Council.

There is video footage of the site in this article and here. I am not qualified to evaluate it, but perhaps some readers are.

There is another article here, but it adds no additional information. This is all I have been able to find on the story.

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Orion Greenfield Scholars Lectures

THE ORION CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: Jonas C. Greenfield Scholars- Seminar 2019 - 2020. There are two lectures scheduled for June, both available on Zoom:

June 2, 2020
International Greenfield Scholars Seminar
Zoom meeting
Dr. Oren Abelman, Israel Antiquities Authority and Orion Matlow Scholar,
Topic: “The Kittim and the Historical Context of the War Scroll” (In English)
18:00-19:30 Israel time; 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. EST
(Zoom meeting ID to be announced)

June 17, 2020
International Greenfield Scholars Seminar
Zoom meeting
Avigail Aravna, doctoral student, Department of Bible, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Orion scholarship recipient
Topic: “Exegesis and Reception of Isaiah 24-27 in the Bible and in Postbiblical Literature” (In Hebrew)
12:30-14:00 Israel time
(Zoom meeting ID to be announced)

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Coptic magical papyri series completed

THE COPTIC MAGICAL PAPYRI BLOG: Looking at the Coptic Magical Papyri. I have linked to and commented on some of the posts (here, here, here, and here) in this fourteen-part series. But now you can find links to all of them in the post above.

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Shavit, An Imaginary Trio

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Yaacov Shavit
An Imaginary Trio

King Solomon, Jesus, and Aristotle

Translated by: Chaya Naor
De Gruyter | 2020

OVERVIEW

This book focuses on places and instances where Solomon's legendary biography intersects with those of Jesus Christ and of Aristotle. Solomon is the axis around which this trio revolves, the thread that binds it together. It is based on the premise that there exists a correspondence, both overt and implied, between these three biographies, that has taken shape within a vast, multifaceted field of texts for more than two thousand years.

From £39.00
Price including VAT

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Čapek & Lipschits (eds.), The Last Century in the History of Judah

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

The Last Century in the History of Judah: The Seventh Century BCE in Archaeological, Historical, and Biblical Perspectives
Filip Čapek (Editor), Oded Lipschits (Editor)

ISBN 9781628372526
Status Available
Price: $44.00
Binding Paperback
Publication Date October 2019
Pages 324

An incomparable interdisciplinary study of the history of Judah

Experts from a variety of disciplines examine the history of Judah during the seventh century BCE, the last century of the kingdom’s existence. This important era is well defined historically and archaeologically beginning with the destruction layers left behind by Sennacherib’s Assyrian campaign (701 BCE) and ending with levels of destruction resulting from Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian campaign (588–586 BCE). Eleven essays develop the current ongoing discussion about Judah during this period and extend the debate to include further important insights in the fields of archaeology, history, cult, and the interpretation of Old Testament texts.

Features

• A new chronological frame for the Iron Age IIB–IIC
  
• Close examinations of archaeology, texts, and traditions related to the reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah
  
• An evaluation of the religious, cultic, and political landscape

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Tyrell, Strategies of Persuasion in Herodotus’ Histories and Genesis–Kings

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Strategies of Persuasion in Herodotus’ Histories and Genesis–Kings

Evoking Reality in Ancient Narratives of a Past

Series: Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, Volume: 195

Author: Eva Tyrell

In Strategies of Persuasion in Herodotus’ Histories and Genesis–Kings, Eva Tyrell comparatively analyzes narrative means in two monumental ancient texts about the past. Combining a narratological approach with insights of modern historical theory and biblical scholarship, she investigates patterns of narrative persuasion as a trans-cultural phenomenon and their connection with ancient concepts of reality and truth. The study contrasts differences in fundamental narrative structures of both narratives, such as mediacy and discursive versus diegetic text portions. It explores the role of material remains mentioned in the accounts to evoke or even create the reality of a past.

Prices from (excl. VAT): €116.00 / $140.00

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-42797-6
Publication Date: 14 Apr 2020

Hardback
Availability: Not Yet Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-42796-9
Publication Date: 14 May 2020

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Review of Nongbri, God's Library

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: God’s library: the archaeology of the earliest Christian manuscripts.

Brent Nongbri, God's library: the archaeology of the earliest Christian manuscripts. . New Haven: Yale University Press, . xi, 403 p.. ISBN 9780300215410 $35.00.

Review by
Donatella Tronca, University of Verona. donatella.tronca2@unibo.it

Excerpt:

Although Nongbri sometimes leaves the reader feeling that the only certainty is that there are no certainties, regarding both dating and information about the provenance of manuscripts, this apparent sense of defeat can be countered by adopting his approach: analysing and reconstructing all the available data about the manuscripts, the history of the collections, the cataloguing, the analytical description and—hopefully—the open access digitisation.

For earlier reviews etc. of the book, see here and links.

Brent Nongbri runs the Variant Readings blog, to which PaleoJudaica links frequently.

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Moscicke, The New Day of Atonement

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Hans M. Moscicke. The New Day of Atonement. A Matthean Typology. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 517. 84,00 € including VAT. sewn paper
ISBN 978-3-16-159393-2.

Published in English.
In this work, Hans M. Moscicke investigates the influence of the Day of Atonement on Matthew’s passion narrative. The author argues that the First Evangelist crafts a sustained Yom Kippur typology in the twenty-seventh chapter of his Gospel and then remodels the Barabbas episode (Matt 27:15–26) as a Yom Kippur lottery between two “goats”. Pilate acts as high priest, designating Jesus as the immolated goat and Barabbas, along with the crowd, as a sin-bearing scapegoat. Matthew also casts Jesus as a scapegoat in the Roman-abuse scene (Matt 27:27–31), in which he depicts Jesus as physically receiving the sins of the world upon himself. Finally, the author suggests that Matthew, in his death-resurrection narrative (Matt 27:50–54), conceives Jesus as offering his life-force to God as the sacrificial goat for YHWH and descending to the realm of the dead as the goat for Azazel.

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The sealed thunders

READING ACTS: What are the Seven Thunders in Revelation 10? Phil Long continues his blog series on the seven angels and their trumpets in the Book of Revelation. We are still on the sixth trumpet, which has a lot going on.

I have noted previous posts in the series here and links.

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

Carthage

PUNIC WATCH: Carthage – Capital of the Carthaginian Empire (Heritage Daily). A nice capsule history.

Every so often I like to mention again why "Punic Watch" is a feature of PaleoJudaica.

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Virtual DSS conference at NYU

THE AWOL BLOG: [VIRTUAL] The Dead Sea Scrolls in Recent Scholarship: A Public Conference, Day 1 [May 17 - 20, 2020]. Despite the headline, this post gives the schedule for all four days of the conference.

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