New movie on the Great Revolt

CINEMA: New film portrays Jewish revolt against Romans in vivid, gripping detail. ‘Legend of Destruction’ is filmmaker Gidi Dar’s latest masterpiece, an eight-year project, now in theaters for Tisha B’Av (Jessica Steinberg, Times of Israel).

“Legend of Destruction” is filmmaker Gidi Dar’s latest creation. Made entirely of still drawings, the movie was written by Dar and actor Shuli Rand, and drawn by Michael Faust and David Polonsky of “Waltz with Bashir” fame. Actors Moni Moshonov, Yael Abecassis, Igal Naor and Amos Tamam also provide voices in the film.

The 90-minute film tells the story of the Jewish revolt against Rome in 70 CE, from the perspective of Ben Batiach, a good-hearted scholar who turns zealot, leading to the Roman siege on the city and the destruction of the Second Temple.

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Review of Price & Berthelot (eds.), The Future of Rome

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: The future of Rome: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian visions

Jonathan Price, Katell Berthelot, The future of Rome: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian visions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. ix, 315. ISBN 9781108494816 $99.99.

Review by
Michael Girardin, Université du Littoral – Côte d’Opale. michael.girardin@univ-littoral.fr

I noted the publication of the volume here.

The volume itself is in English, but the review is in French.

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More on that unbreached wall in Jerusalem

THE BIBLE PLACE BLOG: Ancient City Wall Discovered in Jerusalem. Todd Bolen summarizes the story. He also offers a detailed refutation of the suggestion that the discovery contradicts the account in 2 Kings of the Babylonian destruction of the wall.

Background here and here.

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Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 8 (2021)

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History (vol. 8).

Volume 8 of Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History (2021) is just published. This is a special issue entitled “Scholars, Priests, and Temples: Babylonian and Egyptian Science in Context.” It consists a handful of papers falling in the scope of ancient Iran.

There are lots of other papers in the volume too. Many are of background interest to ancient Judaism. One involves Talmudic traditions directly.

You can read the abstracts for free. Most of the articles are behind a subscription wall.

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The Newark holy stones are on display

NEW WORLD HEBREW FORGERY (OR SOMETHING) WATCH: Bush: The battle over the Newark holy stones' story (Jennifer Bush, The Newark Advocate via MSN).

For more than 160 years people have disagreed over whether the Newark Holy Stones are authentic. These carved stones engraved with Hebrew letters were found in and near the Newark Earthworks in the 1860s. Two of the Stones are in the collections of the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton.

[...]

No specialist argues today that the Newark Stones are genuine ancient artifacts. They may have been created in the mid-nineteenth century as emancipationist propaganda aimed at preventing a civil war. It has also been suggested that they are stolen European medieval Jewish artifacts. To my knowledge, no peer-reviewed study has been published defending either hypothesis.

In any case, they are remarkable objects. They are on display at present at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, Ohio. If you happen to be in the vicinity, do go and have a look.

For PaleoJudaica posts that go over this ground in much more detail, start here and follow the links.

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So many open-access journals!

THE AWOL BLOG: Active Open Access Journals (Chuck Jones). This is a long list.

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Judging a scroll by its cover?

OVER AT VARIANT READINGS, Brent Nongbri continues to explore the ancient vocabulary pertaining to scrolls.

More Papyrus Roll Vocabulary: frons, cornua, umbilicus. The terms seem to refer, respectively, to the decorated top and bottom borders of a scroll and the wooden rod the scroll was wrapped around.

Stands for Holding Open Papyrus Rolls? The title is self-explanatory.

I noted an earlier post in this series here.

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Virtual Madaba

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: A Virtual Visit to the “City of Mosaics.” New project brings biblical Madaba to life (Nathan Steinmeyer).

Madaba is, of course, the home of the famous late-antique Madaba Map mosaic of the Holy Land. More on it here and links.

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Tisha B'Av 2021

TISHA B'AV (THE NINTH OF AV) begins this evening at sundown. An easy fast to all those observing it.

The Ninth of Av is not specifically a biblical holy day. Rather, it commemorates a number of disasters that happened to the Jewish people, traditionally all on that same day. These include the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Babylonians, the destruction of the Herodian Temple by the Romans, and the fall of Betar during the Bar Kokhba revolt.

Last years Tisha B'Av post is here, leading to many links. Subsequent Tisha B'Av-related posts are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE (19 July): More here and here.

UPDATE (20 July): More here.

UPDATE (26 July): More here.

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Festschrift for François de Blois

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: The Roar of Silence. Notice of a New Book (in the form of a journal issue): Benkato, Adam & Arash Zeini (eds.). 2021. The roar of silence: Festschrift for François de Blois. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 31(3). Follow the link for the TOC.

The volume includes an article on Judeo-Persian literature and another on the oldest dated document in the Cairo Geniza (dated according to the Seleucid era).

You can read the abstracts for free, but the full articles are behind a subscription wall.

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Lawrence, Egg Whites or Turnips? (Wipf & Stock)

NEW BOOK FROM WIPF AND STOCK:

Egg Whites or Turnips?
Archaeology and Bible Translation

by Paul J. N. Lawrence
Imprint: Wipf and Stock
178 Pages, 5.00 x 8.00 x 0.00 in

Paperback
9781725260351
Published: June 2020
$23.00 / £18.00 / AU$32.00

Hardcover
9781725260344v Published: June 2020
$43.00 / £33.00 / AU$59.00 v eBookv 9781725260368
Published: June 2020
$23.00 / £17.00 / AU$34.00

DESCRIPTION

Why are Bible translations so different from each other in places? Don't Bible translators know whether it was peacocks or baboons that King Solomon brought into Israel? Why has "sapphire" been replaced by "lapis lazuli" in some more modern versions? What animal provided the leather for the tabernacle? A badger? A sea cow? Or did the term in question simply mean "leather"? Can archaeology tell us what David's harp looked like? What is the evidence for leprosy in Bible times? Is there evidence for cotton, silk, and chickens at the time of the Bible? Answers to these and many other questions are given in this book. But how are such questions to be answered? Essentially the answer is "from the ground"--what can be called "archaeology." This book explores how, over the past two centuries, archaeology has shed its light on the text of the Bible.

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Pig skeleton excavated in First-Temple-era Jerusalem building

OSTEOLOGY: Cryptic 2,700 year-old pig skeleton found in Jerusalem’s City of David. The remains of the animal were found in a luxurious First Temple Period building. Was it there to be eaten? (Rosella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post). Pig bones are rare in First-Temple Jerusalem excavations, but they do show up once in a while.

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Maier, Das Glück im antiken Judentum und im Neuen Testament (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Daniel Maier. Das Glück im antiken Judentum und im Neuen Testament. Eine Untersuchung zu den Konzepten eines guten Lebens in der Literatur des Zweiten Tempels und deren Einfluss auf die frühchristliche Wahrnehmung des Glücks. [Happiness in Ancient Judaism and the New Testament. A Study of the Concepts of a Good Life in Second Temple Literature and Their Influence on the Early Christian Perception of Happiness.] 2021. XIX, 520 pages. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 552. 114,00 € including VAT. sewn paper ISBN 978-3-16-159864-7.

Published in German.
Daniel Maier examines concepts of happiness in Second Temple literature. By analyzing different traditions of understanding the good life in Ancient Judaism, he opens up fresh perspectives on concepts of happiness in the New Testament that cannot be identified without their Jewish background and have been largely overlooked in the scholarly study of this field so far. This work was awarded the Manfred Görg Juniorprize 2021.

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A career all around late antiquity

PROF. HAGITH SIVAN: From the Visigoths to the Bible. Another essay in the On Becoming a Jewish Bible Scholar series at TheTorah.com. I have noted others here and here.

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Bethsaida Excavations Project website

THE AWOL BLOG: Bethsaida Excavations Project. This is an impressive website!

This Bethsaida is the site of et-Tell. Regular readers will be aware that there are two main contenders for the site of the ancient city of Bethsaida near the Sea of Galilee. The other is el-Araj. Both excavations seem confident of their identification and they tend to call their site "Bethsaida" with little qualification. That can be confusing.

For the ongoing controversy over which site is the actual ancient city of Bethsaida, start here and follow the many links.

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Hyperbolic wall destruction in the Bible?

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE: First Temple-era walls, razed in biblical account, found unbreached in Jerusalem. Missing section of 8th-7th century BCE fortification puts in question narrative of 2 Kings in which conquering Babylonians ‘tore down Jerusalem’s walls on every side’ (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

At most this is hyperbole, which everyone uses. It is unremarkable.

That said, I think "on every side" is an over-translation of סביב, whose basic meaning is "around." As the article indicates, it is reasonable to read the verse in a way that does not imply that all the wall was broken down everywhere.

It's also worth highlighting the small finds of the excavation. The article has nice photos.

Inside a building abutting the new wall section, remains of rows of smashed storage jars were discovered, bearing “rosette” stamped handles, indicative of the final years of the Kingdom of Judah. Also near the wall, a stone Babylonian stamp seal was found etched with a figure standing in front of symbols of the two Babylonian gods Marduk and Nabu.

Likewise, the team discovered a clay bulla (stamp seal impression) inscribed with the Judaean personal name “Tsafan.” It is one of dozens of seal impressions and seals from this era uncovered in Jerusalem.

One of the jar handles was also inscribed with LMLK, "For the king."

The name Tsafan appears in other bullae (see the article for details) but not in the Bible. But it looks like a short form of the biblical name Zephaniah.

Background here. Also relevant for Tisha B'Av.

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Lamentations and inner-biblical exegesis

FOR TISHA B'AV: Reading Lamentations with Inner-Biblical Exegesis (Prof. Rabbi Reuven Kimelman, TheTorah.com).

By identifying biblical intertexts and parallel phrases, we can better understand the flow, the imagery, and even the core message of Eichah, Lamentations.

Reminder: Tisha B'Av (the Ninth of Av) begins on the evening of 17 July.

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Review of Spanu, Proclus and the Chaldean oracles

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Proclus and the Chaldean oracles.

Nicola Spanu, Proclus and the Chaldean oracles: a study on Proclean exegesis, with a translation and commentary of Proclus' Treatise on Chaldean philosophy. Routledge monographs in classical studies. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2020. Pp. viii, 199. ISBN 9780367473143 $124.00.

Review by
Graeme Miles, University of Tasmania. graeme.miles@utas.edu.au

For readers of late-antique Platonism the Chaldean Oracles are both inescapable and, in their details at least, often mysterious. The approximately two hundred fragments of the Oracles which survive come to us through their citations by Platonists for whom they were an authoritative text. The most fertile source of fragments, and the subject of this monograph, is Proclus, who makes frequent use of these verses to connect his own arguments with the words, as he sees them, of the gods themselves. ...

The goal of Spanu in the current work is not to produce a new edition of the fragments, though he does consider this a desiderandum, but rather to determine the extent to which Proclus alters the Chaldean Oracles in integrating them into his own philosophical system. ...

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Podcast interview with Ariel Sabar

PODCAST: On Contact: Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man & the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to journalist and author, Ariel Sabar, about his new book Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. Sabar’s book exposes much about the bankruptcy of contemporary theology and the yearning by academics to be lionized by the mass media and popular culture, even at the expense of truth.

I don't have time to listen to this. (I rarely listen to podcasts. Even at double speed they are too slow.) But perhaps you will want to.

For PaleoJudaica posts on Sabar's book and the whole Gospel of Jesus' Wife saga, start here and follow the many links.

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

Coins found from both revolts against Rome.

NUMISMATICS: Bar-Ilan U. Archaeologist Discovers Two Rare Coins Dating Back to Jewish Revolts Against Rome (Jewish Press).

Coins bearing the inscriptions “Herut Zion” (Freedom for Zion) and “LeHerut Yerushalayim” (To the Freedom of Jerusalem) were recently discovered during an archeological survey conducted in Wadi er-Rashash in eastern Binyamin by the Institute of Archeology at Bar-Ilan University.

One coin, from the Great Revolt, was discovered on the ground at Hirbet Jib’it and the second, from the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, was found in a cave on the nearby Wadi er-Rashash cliffs about a kilometer north, according to Dr. Dvir Raviv, who heads the survey on behalf of the Bar-Ilan Institute.

[...]

This discovery also relates indirectly to the upcoming commmemoration of the Ninth of Av (Tisha B'Av) (see the two preceding posts). According to tradition, the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans on the Ninth of Av and Bar Kokhba's stronghold Betar fell on the same date. The dates of these events may be approximate, but that is the tradition.

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