AJR on Brown-deVost, Commentary and Authority in Mesopotamia and Qumran

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | Commentary and Authority in Mesopotamia and Qumran (Emily Branton).

Bronson Brown-deVost. Commentary and Authority in Mesopotamia and Qumran. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019.

I noted another review of the book here.

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

Was Sodom destroyed by a "cosmic airburst?"

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM. AND I GOT ONE: Did the destruction of this Middle Bronze Age city inspire the story of Sodom? Archaeologists investigated the destruction of Tel el-Hammam and discovered an event similar to the description of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (ARIELLA MARSDEN, Jerusalem Post).

This story has been around since 2018. I noted it here. But now the technical article is published in Nature.

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea

Ted E. Bunch, Malcolm A. LeCompte, A. Victor Adedeji, James H. Wittke, T. David Burleigh, Robert E. Hermes, Charles Mooney, Dale Batchelor, Wendy S. Wolbach, Joel Kathan, Gunther Kletetschka, Mark C. L. Patterson, Edward C. Swindel, Timothy Witwer, George A. Howard, Siddhartha Mitra, Christopher R. Moore, Kurt Langworthy, James P. Kennett, Allen West & Phillip J. Silvia Scientific Reports volume 11, Article number: 18632 (2021)

A Tunguska-sized airburst is a significant event: "The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb."

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

A.-J. Levine appointed to named chair at Hartford

CONGRATULATIONS TO PROFESSOR LEVINE: Dr. Amy-Jill Levine is named Hartford Seminary’s first Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor (Stacey Dresner, CT Jewish Ledger).

HARTFORD – Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, a foremost scholar in the study of Judaism, the Tanakh (Jewish scriptures), and the New Testament has been named the Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at The Hartford Seminary. The first person to fill this post, Levine arrives from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where she is professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies Emerita.

[...]

The article includes an interview.

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

Gilgamesh dream tablet returing to Iraq

REPATRIATION IMMINENT: US to hand over 3,500-year-old 'Gilgamesh' tablet to Iraq (AFP via MSN). The tablet goes back to Iraq this week.

Background here and links.

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

Sukkot 2021

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

Last year's Sukkot post was here. More recent relevant posts are here and here. For the biblical background to Sukkot, see here and here.

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

The archaeology of Sukkot

ARCHITECTURE AND NUMISMATICS: How did Jews celebrate Sukkot 2,000 years ago? Archaeology offers answers. While no traces survive of the ancient booths Jews built to celebrate the holiday, archaeology provides important evidence of the centrality of Sukkot (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

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

Israeli archaeology in a plague year

PANDEMIC ARCHAEOLOGY: What were Israel's archaeological advances during COVID? A 6,000-year-old skeleton of a child, a near-3,000-year-old natural disaster and ancient churches, including advancements in the legendary Dead Sea Scrolls, are among this year's finds (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

PaleoJudaica has posted on most of these stories. For the new Minor Prophets scroll fragments from the Cave of Horror, see here, here, here, here, and follow the links in-between. For the fragmentary capitals found at Armon Hanatziv, see here and here. For the new evidence for Amos' earthquake, see here. For the Iron-Age temple at Tel Moza (Tel Motza, Tel Moẓa, Tel Moẓah), see here and links. For the Jerubbaal (?) jug, see here and links. Posts on ancient Caesarea are here and here. For the early church with the Pan altar in the Banyas Springs Nature Reserve, see here. For the suspended excavations at Huqoq, see here and links.

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

Ancient Jewish texts on abortion

ROGER PEARSE: Ancient references to Jewish attitudes to abortion. HT Rogue Classicism.

I discuss some of this material in an old post from 2004. And for the Talmud, see here and here.

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

Suh, Power and Peril: Temple Discourse in 1 Corinthians (De Gruyter)

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Publication | Power and Peril: Temple Discourse in 1 Corinthians (Michael K.W. Suh). A summary by the author.

Cross-file under New Book (De Gruyter, 2020).

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

Layer-cake cities

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: How to Tell a Tell. Uncovering buried cities of the biblical world (Oded Borowski). Cross-file under Archaeology and News You Can Use.

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

The Cartagena Festival 2021

PUNIC WATCH: Cartagena, Spain, is celebrating its annual Romans and Carthaginians Festival from today through 26 September.

Cartagena was a Punic town founded in the third century B.C.E. For more on its historical importance, notably in the Second Punic War, see here. Follow the links from there for more on the archaeology of the site and notices of past festivals.

The festival doesn't seem to be very visible in the current news. But the Cartagena Museum is offering free entry through 30 September. And a (pictured) ancient graffito from Cartagena figures in a story about an intriguing bit of "pop culture" Greek poetry.

Now and then I like to include this link to explain why PaleoJudaica is interested in Phoenician and Punic matters.

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

Confession of sin as preventative medicine

ONE MORE FOR YOM KIPPUR: Confessing Sins You Didn’t Commit (Dr. Yitzhaq Feder, TheTorah.com).

The few examples of confessions in the Bible use only generic language about sin. In contrast, the post-biblical Yom Kippur liturgical confessions, written as long alphabetical lists, include detailed admissions about specific sins, many of which the petitioner likely never committed. This kind of confession goes back to the second millennium B.C.E. ancient Near Eastern texts for people suffering from illness.

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

Saving the Tomb of Nahum in Iraq

RESTORATION COMPLETED: Saving Iraq’s Tomb of Nahum, a secret mission resurrects Kurdistan’s Jewish past. With IS just miles away, a US army vet, 2 Israeli engineers and the head of a preservation group carried out an audacious plan to restore an ancient shrine of the biblical prophet (TAL SCHNEIDER, Times of Israel).

This is that story, told for the first time. It included sneaking Israelis into Iraq to assess the damage to the building’s roof and the best way to restore it. It also involved tapping into the deep knowledge of the Kurdish-Jewish community and its unofficial doyen Mordechai Zaken, a scholar who was instrumental in planning the restoration of the tomb and who passed away just a few months ago.

It features the people of Alqosh, who safeguarded the tomb after the area’s Jews fled the pogroms that followed the creation of the State of Israel, along with the tomb’s modern benefactors: a small group of donors, including oil and energy companies from Norway, the local Kurdish government, the US embassy in Iraq and a few private donors who raised $2 million.

Behind it all was ARCH, a nonprofit started by national security expert Cheryl Benard, an expert on national security and post-war rebuilding efforts. Benard, whose husband Zalmay Khalilzad has led US diplomatic efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, was impressed in her travels around the world by the resilience and creativity of individuals and groups trying to safeguard their national treasures, even under the most trying circumstances.

The restoration was completed in the spring of 2021.

Read the whole story.

I have been following the fate of the (traditional) Tomb of Nahum in Alqosh (al-Qosh, Al Qosh, Al-Quosh) for years. For past posts, start here and follow the links.

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

Ancient Jewish Rome

Ancient Jewish Rome. An interview with Micaela Pavoncello (Brenda Lee Bohen, Wall Street International).

Entrepreneur Micaela Pavoncello is an art historian and a local licensed tour guide from Europe's oldest Jewish community in Rome.

She is a Roman Jew who can trace her heritage to the period when Titus conquered Judea and brought Jewish slaves to Rome.

Twenty years later, Pavoncello continues to take tourists on an incredible, spiritual and passionate 'storytelling' journey about her ancestors – the Jews of Rome.

In this brief interview, Micaela Pavoncello shares with me some of the most important highlights about her Ancient Jewish Rome tour.

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

Yom Kippur 2021

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

Last year's post on Yom Kippur is here, with links to previous posts. See also here. More recent posts are here, here, here, and here. Biblical etc. background is here.

UPDATE (17 September): Also here.

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

Does Yom Kippur atone for the sale of Joseph?

PROF. JASON RADINE: Shoeless on Yom Kippur (TheTorah.com).

The book of Jubilees claims that the brothers sold Joseph on Yom Kippur. Amos accuses the wealthy of selling the righteous for shoes. Reading this as a reference to the sale of Joseph, Eleh Ezkarah tells how Caesar fills his palace with shoes, and executes ten sages as a punishment for this crime. Is this connected to the prohibition to wear shoes on Yom Kippur?

For more on the story of the Ten Martyrs, which also appears in the Hekhalot literature and elsewhere, see here, here, and here. In the story as told in the Hekhalot Rabbati (§108), a textual variant refers to the selling of Joseph as the reason that Samma’el, the evil angelic prince of Rome, received permission to kill the ten martyrs. But there is no reference to shoes.

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

Versatile Azazel

DR. ANNA ANGELINI: Is Azazel a Goat, Place, Demon, or Deity? (TheTorah.com).

Azazel plays the role of a deity in the biblical ritual of Yom Kippur, and in early interpretation, he played a central role as the initiator of sin and even the devil, or alternatively, as a protective figure. Later tradition obscured his identity, presenting Azazel as the name of a demon, as the scapegoat itself, and even as a place name.

So the answer to the question in the title seems to be "Yes." This essay gives a good summary of the ancient evidence.

For more on Azazel, see here and here.

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

Ben Sira, the High Priest, and the Yom Kippur liturgy

PROF. RABBI DALIA MARX: Mareh Kohen: Ben Sira’s Description of Simon the High Priest (TheTorah.com).

Written while the Second Temple was standing, and the Yom Kippur sacrificial service still performed, Ben Sira’s poem traces the history of the world through Simon son of Johanan, the High Priest in his time, thus expressing the cosmic importance of the Temple and its priesthood. The poem appears to be the antecedent or literary inspiration of the Yom Kippur Seder Avodah’s framing liturgy.

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

Forthcoming book on the Septuagint

WILLIAM ROSS: BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: THE SEPTUAGINT (CROSSWAY 2021).

I’m excited to announce this morning my newest book that will hit shelves in early November: The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters, which is being published with Crossway. It’s great to see this project come to fruition. Here are the details.

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

Not as fraudulent as they thought

ARTIFACT VINDICATED? SORT OF. Tempest Over a “Cheater’s Weight” (David Hendin, Coin Week). Noted by various people over the weekend.

I noted the story of the supposed highly fraudulent First-Temple-era weight here. The claim here is that the archaeologists were reading it sideways!

All the same, the weight of the object comes somewhat under the labeled weight as revised. So it may have been fraudulent in the other direction.

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