New films on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

IT HAS REOPENED: Sacred and profane collide in two new films on Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Even as church reopens from coronavirus closure, two documentaries portray complex modern struggles at site where Jesus is believed to have been crucified, buried and resurrected (Renee Ghert-Zand, Times of Israel).

It was news to me that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Holy Sepulcher) reopened on Sunday. For past posts on the Church, with some attention to internal territorial disputes, see here and links.

For the Holy Fire Ceremony on Orthodox Easter, see here and links

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BASONOVA

THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY has begun a new paid-subscription lecture series called BASONOVA. They have announced three lectures so far:

BASONOVA–The First Diasporas: Egypt and Babylonia (3 June, Gary Rendsburg)

BASONOVA–Septuagint, Synagogue, and Symbiosis: The Jews of Hellenistic Egypt (10 June, Gary Rendsburg)

They also mention a third lecture by Steven Tuck on "Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Aftermath of Vesuvius" on 24 June, but it doesn't yet have its own page. Scroll down at either of the links above. For more on Steven Tuck's work, see there and here and links.

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We didn't mean to. It was an accident!

PROFESSOR JOAN TAYLOR: How my team and I accidentally discovered text on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The 2,000-year-old documents were thought to be blank – until recently (Scroll.in).

This is a firsthand account of the story I noted here.

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Congress volume for 16th IOSCS meeting, 2016

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

XVI Congress Of The International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies: Stellenbosch, 2016

Gideon R. Kotze (Editor), Wolfgang Kraus (Editor), Michael N. Van Der Meer (Editor)

ISBN 9781628372403
Status Available
Price: $43.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date May 2019
Pages 276

Essays from experts in the field of Septuagint studies

This latest volume from the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS) includes the papers given at the XVI Congress of the IOSCS, South Africa, in 2016. The articles contribute to the study of the Septuagint and cognate literature by identifying and discussing new topics and lines of inquiry and developing fresh insights and arguments in existing areas of research. Scholars and students interested in different methods of studying the Septuagint corpora, the theology and reception of these texts, as well as the works of Josephus will find in this collection critical information for future work in Septuagint studies.

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The enigma of the late-antique Negev (with LBA bonus!)

ARCHAEOLOGY: The enigma behind the 1,500-year-old Christian communities in the Negev. Remains of over 180 houses were also revealed by the researchers, together with many agricultural installations including dams, cisterns, wine presses and a pigeon tower (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

Archaeologist Yotam Tepper:

“We are trying to understand why the settlements in the Negev collapsed at the end of the Byzantine period. We are considering several hypotheses, from a phenomenon of climate change to a plague, to the effects of the Arab conquest around 630-634 CE. However, it is hard to come to a definite conclusion, especially because different communities were abandoned in different times,” he explained.

Background on Shivta and the archaeology of the late-antique Negev is here and links.

Also, while we're on the subject of the ancient Negev, this discovery is outside PaleoJudaica's usual chronological horizon. But it's unusual and worth a mention here: 3,500-year-old plate depicting power struggle in ancient Negev discovered. Imri Elia, a resident of Kibbutz Niri, found the small engraved clay plate featuring two human figures near Tel Jemmeh (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

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More on the flooding of el-Araj

ARCHAEOLOGY UNDERWATER: Village Where Jesus’ Disciples May Have Lived Flooded by Rising Sea of Galilee. The putative Church of the Apostles is now in a lagoon peopled by catfish but the ruins where Jesus’ disciples may have lived haven’t been damaged, reassures archaeologist Motti Aviam (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz). HT the Bible and Interpretation.

Blogger Carl Rasmussen broke this story broke this story back in mid-May. I noted his post a week ago. But now the media is catching up. This article has some additional information on the situation and is worth reading.

As PaleoJudaica's regular readers already know, this site — el-Araj — is one possible location for the ancient city of Bethsaida. The other is et-Tell. For past posts on both, see my link in the previous paragraph.

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Funeral service for Francis Ian Andersen: 28 May

UPCOMING LIVESTREAM:

The Andersen family invites you to participate in the livestream of the funeral of Francis Ian Andersen, who is a highly regarded international Old Testament scholar. As part of your participation in the community of celebration of Frank's life please have a candle ready to be lit during the service . The service is approximately 2 hours. An order of service can be downloaded from this site from Monday 25th May.

HT Andrei Orlov.

The sevice is scheduled for 11:00 am on 28 May. I cannot find a time zone specified anywhere, but Professor Andersen's last residence was in Australia.

Background here.

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De Troyer et al. (eds.), Early Reception of the Torah

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

The Early Reception of the Torah

Series: Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies, 39
Edited by: Kristin De Troyer, Barbara Schmitz, Joshua Alfaro and Maximilian Häberlein
De Gruyter | 2020

OVERVIEW

This volume contains the papers presented at the 2017 meeting of the SBL Program Unit on Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature in Boston, MA. The theme of the sessions was the interpretation of Torah in deuterocanonical literature. The contributions cover a variety of concepts and themes related to Torah and trace these through the Hebrew Bible, into the Septuagintal deuterocanonical books and other relevant and cognate literature.

From £91.00
Price including VAT

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Ruth consumes the bread of kinship

PROF. CYNTHIA CHAPMAN: The Substance of Kinship: How Ruth the Moabite Became a Daughter in Judah (TheTorah.com).

Ruth’s consumption of barley and wheat gleaned from the field of Boaz was an integral step in her transformation from a “foreigner” who arrived from the fields of Moab to a “daughter” in Judah.

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Thiel on Josephus on "Galileans"

JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW: "The Use of the Term “Galileans” in the Writings of Flavius Josephus Revisited" (Nathan Thiel, JQR 110.2 [2020]: 221-44).

Abstract
Among the central players of Josephus’s autobiography are those he refers to as “the Galileans.” Patronized by their one-time general as a restive and emotional mob ready to ignite at the slightest indignation, “the Galileans” are of vital importance to Josephus’s imagined success as general of the Jewish forces in Galilee. Josephus’s condescension toward “the Galileans,” strange as it is, is compounded by the fact that he regularly contrasts them with the inhabitants of Galilee’s major cities, principally Sepphoris, Tiberias, and Gabara. This essay revisits the curious presentation of “the Galileans” in Josephus’s writings, picking up an inchoate suggestion of Shaye Cohen of a Galilean ethnos. I argue that Josephus does indeed view “the Galileans” as an ethnos of their own, distinguishable from the Jews of Galilee, who mainly reside in the region’s urban centers. That is, the term “Galileans” in Josephus’s works functions first as a marker of ethnic belonging and so is not equivalent to “an inhabitant of Galilee” tout court. Josephus’s presentation of “the Galileans,” moreover, is colored by an ethnic prejudice that essentializes a few traits and makes them foils for the virtues of Josephus and the Jews. The introduction to “the Galileans” in his Jewish War (J.W. 3.42), which portrays them as “pugnacious from infancy,” converges with their characterization in Life, written some two decades later. I briefly consider the historical implications that follow from this reevaluation of “the Galileans” in Josephus.

This article (and indeed the whole issue) is online for free until 30 June 2020, "in support of researchers impacted by the Covid-19 crisis." Also downloadable as a pdf file.

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Undisturbed Punic tomb discovered in Malta

PUNIC WATCH: Incredible undisturbed Punic tomb found in Tarxien (Albert Galea, Malta Independent).

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Digital Hammurabi

ENTREPRENEURIAL PHILOLOGY: Digital Hammurabi. Via the AWOL Blog.

Megan Lewis and Dr. Joshua Bowen also run the Humans Against Poor Scholarship charity.

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Egypt in Scotland

THEY BELONG IN A MUSEUM! AND THAT'S WHERE THEY ARE: Scotland's Ancient Egyptian Collections.

I have not been to all of these, but I have visited and enjoyed the Egyptian collections at the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, and the McManus Art Gallery and Museum in Dundee.

I have given a few links above to online tours of Scottish Egyptian collections. Many of the Scottish museums featured in the first link have such tours. It sometimes requires some poking around to find the Egyptian material, but you are likely to find other interesting exhibits from antiquity while you're looking.

Something for your lockdown museum experience.

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Bowie, Longus. Daphnis and Chloe (new commentary)

BYRN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Longus. Daphnis and Chloe

Ewen Bowie, Longus. Daphnis and Chloe. Cambridge Greek and Latin classics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. x, 338 p.. ISBN 9780521776592 $45.95 (pb).

Review by
Lucia Floridi, Università di Bologna. lucia.floridi2@unibo.it

The hellenistic Greek novel Daphnis and Chloe is of interest to PaleoJudaica because the genre of ancient novel was also in use in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. One example (debatable whether Jewish or Christian) is Joseph and Aseneth, on which more here and links.

For more on Daphnis and Chloe and the ancient Greek novel in this context, see here and here.

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John the Baptist and ancient social distancing

RELIGION PROF: Was John the Baptist a Hermit? James McGrath is not convinced that he was.

For more on John the Baptist, see here (cf. here) and links. For more on Qasr al-Yahud, see here and links.

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Cargill on unprovenanced antiquities

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Unprovenanced Antiquities: Learning the Hard Way (Robert R. Cargill).

Background here and here and links.

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Job and God vs. truth decay

PROF. EDWARD L. GREENSTEIN: Speaking Truth to Power, Job Accuses God of Being Unjust (TheTorah.com).

Job's friends piously justify God's actions and challenge Job to accept that he has done wrong. Yet God sides with Job and rebukes the friends for not “speaking about me in honesty as did my servant Job”.

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Lost texts of terror?

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: I Gave Them Laws Through Which They Could Not Live (Philip Jenkins).

Let me offer one interpretation that fits the evidence as we have it, although it is certainly not the only possible explanation. Hypothetically, let’s suppose that there once circulated stories or texts that were read, with whatever justification, as legitimizing or commanding child sacrifice. During the time of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, those supposed texts were forcefully condemned, and they have simply vanished from view. The Hebrew Old Testament canon was not defined until the fourth century BC at the very earliest, and there was still considerable latitude and debate for several centuries after that point. Prior to the fourth century BC, it is far from clear that the notion of a canon even existed, and the frontiers separating scriptures and non-scriptures were highly fluid. It is perfectly possible that in Ezekiel’s time, around 600 BC, at least some people in Israel venerated particular texts and regarded them as authoritative or inspired, even attributing words to God himself, although these writings have now been lost irretrievably. Might these have been the “statutes and judgments” in question?

For the evidence that some circles in ancient Israel engaged in child sacrifice, see here.

For books mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, but now lost, see here and here and links.

Shalom Spiegel's book, The Last Trial, argued that there was a lost version of the Aqedah (Genesis 22) in which Isaac was actually sacrificed. A recently discovered Coptic magical papyrus provides evidence for such a tradition.

Cross-file under Lost Books?

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Plague and biblical history

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Pandemic, Plague, and Biblical History. A collection of BHD articles looking at the role of widespread disease in the Bible and in early Christian history. Plague and disease figure quite a bit in biblical history.

Relevant posts on Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem are here (about halfway in) and here.

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Sharvit & Goetschel (eds.), Canonization and Alterity

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Canonization and Alterity

Heresy in Jewish History, Thought, and Literature

Series: Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts, 14

Edited by: Gilad Sharvit and Willi Goetschel
De Gruyter | 2020

OVERVIEW
This volume offers an examination of varied forms of expressions of heresy in Jewish history, thought and literature. Contributions explore the formative role of the figure of the heretic and of heretic thought in the development of the Jewish traditions from antiquity to the 20th century. Chapters explore the role of heresy in the Hellenic period and Rabbinic literature; the significance of heresy to Kabbalah, and the critical and often formative importance the challenge of heresy plays for modern thinkers such as Spinoza, Freud, Kafka, and Derrida, and literary figures such as Kafka, Tchernikhovsky, and I.B. Singer. Examining heresy as a boundary issue constitutive for the formation of Jewish tradition, this book contributes to a better understanding of the significance of the figure of the heretic for tradition more generally.

From £91.00
Price including VAT

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