Antiquities arrest in Ashkelon

APPREHENDED: Thousands of ancient coins recovered in raid on Ashkelon jewelry store Inspectors from Antiquities Authority's Robbery Prevention Unit used digital media to track down the man, whom they also suspect was carrying out illicit digs at archaeological sites (Israel HaYom). Cross-file under Numismatics.

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Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Volume 4 (T&T Clark)

NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY/T&T CLARK:

A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Volume 4

The Jews under the Roman Shadow (4 BCE–150 CE)

Lester L. Grabbe (Author)

Hardback
$200.00 $180.00

Ebook (PDF)
$180.00 $144.00

Product details

Published Aug 26 2021
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 664v ISBN 9780567700704
Imprint T&T Clark
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Series The Library of Second Temple Studies
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

Description

This is the fourth and final volume of Lester L. Grabbe's four-volume history of the Second Temple period, collecting all that is known about the Jews during the period in which they were ruled by the Roman Empire. Based directly on primary sources such as archaeology, inscriptions, Jewish literary sources and Greek, Roman and Christian sources, this study includes analysis of the Jewish diaspora, mystical and Gnosticism trends, and the developments in the Temple, the law, and contemporary attitudes towards Judaism. Spanning from the reign of Herod Archelaus to the war with Rome and Roman control up to 150 CE, this volume concludes with Grabbe's holistic perspective on the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period.

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Dochhorn, Der Adammythos bei Paulus und im hellenistischen Judentum Jerusalems (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: Jan Dochhorn. Der Adammythos bei Paulus und im hellenistischen Judentum Jerusalems. Eine theologische und religionsgeschichtliche Studie zu Römer 7,7–25. [The Myth of Adam in Paul and in the Hellenistic Judaism of Jerusalem. A Theological and Religious-Historical Study of Rom 7:7–25.] 2021. XVI, 722 pages. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 469. 184,00 € including VAT. cloth ISBN 978-3-16-160096-8.

Published in German.
Adam, sin, death and the law are the core elements of Paul's view of the pre-Christian history of humankind. Paul developed this view using the Apocalypse of Moses, with which he had become familiar in Jerusalem before he became a Christian, as his background. In this study, Jan Dochhorn reveals how the myth of Adam emerged among the Greek-speaking Jews in Jerusalem and identifies several parabiblical texts as products of this milieu, which probably had a greater impact on Pauline theology and early Christianity than other strands of ancient Judaism.

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Isaiah's super-power sighting of incognito, shape-shifting Jesus

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: What Does the Ascension of Isaiah Do? (Meghan Henning).

The audience then is not meant to identify with the angelic beings, or the righteous saints, but with Isaiah who while on earth received a special vision that enabled him to ascend.

This is the second essay in the BRANE forum on the Ascension of Isaiah.

I noted the introductory essay, with links, here.

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More gold-print, "1,000-year-old" Hebrew books from Turkey

HERE WE GO AGAIN: 1,000-year-old gold-embossed Jewish books seized in Turkey. Four books and a scroll written in Hebrew and embossed with gold leaf were seized by Turkish authorities from a smuggler (Tzvi Joffre, Jerusalem Post).

On the basis of the video these do not look like thousand-year-old Hebrew books. They give every appearance of being crude, modern, boiler-plate forgeries or tourist trinkets. Many such have turned up in Turkey in recent years.

The story links to a Reuters/Jerusalem Post article from March of this year which reports on a manifestly bogus "2,500-year-old golden Torah" siezed from someone's car. The object is a codex (i.e., a book with pages and a cover, a format that didn't exist 2,500 years ago) and the Hebrew has Masoretic vowel points (which were invented in the early Middle Ages). What I can make out of the Hebrew is gibberish.

The actual discovery of a complete 2,500-year-old Torah would be a massive international story, bigger than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I have said I was going to ignore the continued slew of Turkish fake Hebrew and Syriac manuscripts unless there was a good reason to mention them. But since the Jerusalem Post has fallen for these, I decided to comment on them.

The Jerusalem Post keeps embarrassing itself with these stories. They really should hand them over to someone like Rossella Tercatin, who knows what she is doing.

If there are reports of ancient Hebrew or Syriac books with gold fonts discovered in Turkey, they are probably modern fakes. You can safely bet they are not a thousand or thousands of years old and they are not worth millions. If (highly unlikely) there is an exception, you can be sure it will rapidly become an international story involving credible experts. If that were to happen, no one would be happier than I.

I have been collecting reports of such manuscripts for many years. The follow-ups I've seen generally conclude they are fakes. I have not seen a single case where one was verified to be a genuine ancient, or even 1,000-year-old, manuscript. See here, here, here, here and links, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And this post is also relevant to the topic of modern fake "historical" manuscripts.

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Review of Hay & Taylor, Philo of Alexandria “On the contemplative life”

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Philo of Alexandria “On the contemplative life”: introduction, translation, and commentary.

Joan Taylor, David M. Hay, Philo of Alexandria "On the contemplative life": introduction, translation, and commentary. Philo of Alexandria commentary series, volume 7. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020. Pp. xxviii, 427. ISBN 9789004438149 €155,00.

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How do you say "thank you" in ancient Babylonian?

TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN: Trinity academic provides Babylonian translations for Marvel Studios’ ‘Eternals’.

Marvel Studios’ Eternals, released last Friday, is the first major film to feature some characters speaking in Babylonian, a language of ancient Iraq that died out over two thousand years ago. Translations into the long-dead language were provided by Assyriologist Dr Martin Worthington, from Trinity College Dublin, and author of the book ‘Teach Yourself Complete Babylonian’.

[...]

One of the most challenging aspects of Dr Worthington’s work on the film was coming up with translations for everyday phrases such as ‘let me help you’ or ‘wait a moment’. Because our understanding of Babylonian comes from written, and often quite formal, documents, mostly clay tablets, much is still unknown about ‘chatty’ uses of the language, he explains.

Generally, the more colloquial the English phrase, the harder it was to translate, according to Dr Worthington. A really tough nut was the expression ‘thank you’. “It is ubiquitous today, but as far as we know it was not used in Ancient Mesopotamia, so I had to find workarounds – expressions such as ‘May the gods bless you’ (il? likrub?ki to a woman, il? likrub?ka to a man).”

Cross-file under Cinema and Philology.

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Forum on the Ascension of Isaiah

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: An Introduction to the Ascension of Isaiah (Jeremiah Coogan).This essay appears to be the introduction to a forum on the Ascension of Isaiah, with four more essays to come.

PaleoJudaic posts on the Ascension of Isaiah are here and here.

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Barbiero et al. (eds.), The Formation of the Hebrew Psalter (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: The Formation of the Hebrew Psalter. The Book of Psalms Between Ancient Versions, Material Transmission and Canonical Exegesis. Edited by Gianni Barbiero, Marco Pavan, and Johannes Schnocks. 2021. IX, 454 pages. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 151.154,00 € including VAT. cloth ISBN 978-3-16-160847-6.

Published in English.
This volume, which is based on the papers given at a panel at the 2019 SBL International Meeting in Rome, represents current discourses in Psalms research. The past decades have been marked by the paradigm shift from form criticism to different exegetical approaches which consider the Book of Psalms as the literary context of the individual Psalms. More recently, it has been pointed out that the complex evidence given by the manuscripts from antiquity to the Middle Ages does not support the notion of a fixed canonical text as presupposed by some approaches. The present volume combines contributions about such basic considerations with studies of individual groups of Psalms. With different methodological and hermeneutical approaches, they open up perspectives on the interrelation between the origin, composition and reception of the Psalms.

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Review of Estes, The Tree of Life

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Review: The Tree of Life: A Powerful Symbol (Ralph K. Hawkins).

The Tree of Life
Edited by Douglas Estes
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020), xxii + 469 pp., 44 illustrations, $298 (hardcover and eBook)
Reviewed by Ralph K. Hawkins

For more on the book, see here and here.

UPDATE (8 November): For reasons unknown to me, the BHD essay is no longer posted.

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Pilgrim's Road reopened in Jerusalem

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Now Open: Ancient Road up to the Temple Mount (Todd Bolen, Bible Places Blog).

One of our teammates who lives in Jerusalem, Christian Locatell, went for a walk with his kids through Hezekiah’s Tunnel, and on the way back he discovered that much of the “Pilgrim’s Road” between the Pool of Siloam and the Temple Mount is now open to the public. He sent a few photos. This walk on this 1st-century street is worth adding to your next itinerary.

For more on the Pligrim's Road to the Temple Mount, see here, here, here, and links.

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Review of Wasserman, Apocalypse as Holy War

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Review | Apocalypse as Holy War: Divine Politics and Polemics in the Letters of Paul (D. Clint Burnett).

Emma Wasserman. Apocalypse as Holy War: Divine Politics and Polemics in the Letters of Paul. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.

In Apocalypse as Holy War, Wasserman argues that the dominant scholarly approach to Jewish apocalypticism is uncritical and unsupported by our ancient Jewish sources, including Paul’s (undisputed) letters. ...

Related essay by the author of the book noted here.

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More on the Shavei Zion Phoenician figurines

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: The Shavei Zion Figurine Assemblage. A Cultic Site at Sea (Meir Edrey, Adi Erlich, and Assaf Yasur-Landau). Cross-file under Phoenician Watch. This essay is by the team who are currently working on the figurines.

The dispersal of the finds, the heterogenous nature of the associated amphoras, the figurines’ reproduction from preexisting terracottas over and over again, the varied origins of the clay, and their manufacturing techniques all suggest the Shavei Zion assemblage was accumulated over a long period of human maritime activities, indicating they were most likely not part of the cargo of a single 5th century BCE ship. So how did they get to the bottom of the sea?

Three takeaways from this essay.

1. The implication (I don't think this is said directly) is that this spot off of Shavei Zion was a Phoenician cultic site where people dropped the figurines over a period of centuries.

2. The ritual may have involved offering the figurines in place of a child. This would represent a watering down, so to speak, of the child sacrifice rites that continued to be rife at Carthage.

3. The figurines may have represented the Tanit (Tannit)/Baal Hamon Phoenician Tophet cult rather than Tanit herself. Does that confirm or weaken the case that Tanit was worshipped in Phoenicia as well as Carthage? I'm not sure. More on Tanit here and links. That post also links to previous posts on the Shavei Zion figurines.

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Interview with Annette Yoshiko Reed

HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL: The Art of the Forgotten (Amie Montemurro).

Annette Reed, MTS ’99, is currently a Professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Department of Religious Studies at New York University, where she has been a member of the faculty since 2017. Her research spans Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Jewish-Christian relations in late antiquity, with a focus on retheorizing religion, identity, and difference. She will join the HDS faculty as Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity when her appointment begins on July 1, 2022.

For more on Professor Reed's work, see here here, here, here, and links.

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Was David a nomad king?

ARCHAEOLOGY: What did King David’s Israel look like? The answer is not set in stone. Archeological investigation of King David's kingdom has been suffering from an inherent bias of the western world (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

As [Tel Aviv University archaeologist Prof. Erez] Ben-Yosef noted in a paper recently published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology, up until now, the consensus among scholars has been that before a society became sedentary, it could not be considered complex or evolved. For this reason, many have dismissed the notion that ancient Israel could be as powerful as described in the Bible.

However, in order to understand the Israel of King David and King Solomon, a new approach is required, one that leaves behind the need for remains of magnificent buildings but is able to ask the right questions and put archaeological and historical records in the right perspective.

As the Post article notes, you can read the underlying article by Professor Ben-Yosef and related work at his Academia.edu page here.

For more on the Timna Valley excavation, on which I have been keeping a close eye for my own reasons, see here and links.

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Gold coins of Carthage

NUMISMATICS: The Gold Coins of Ancient Carthage (Tyler Rossi). Cross-file under Punic Watch.

Other PaleoJudaica posts on Carthaginian coins are here, here, and here.

For the Punic goddess Tanit/Tannit (the "Snake Lady"), see here, here, and here. The last two links raise the question of whether she was also worshipped in Phoenicia proper. Current evidence is unclear. More on that soon.

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New PhD thesis on the Cave of the Patriarchs

A COMPREHENSIVE ACCOUNT: Secrets of the Cave of the Patriarchs exposed. Noam Arnon's comprehensive doctoral dissertation on the Cave of the Patriarchs proves there is much more to the ancient site than meets the eye (Nadav Shragai, Israel HaYom).

A 600-page doctoral thesis composed over the past eight years by Dr. Noam Arnon, reveals and explores the details of these visits, and much more. Arnon's research covers a period of 2,500 years in the history of the site, and, like his previous works on the Cave of the Patriarchs, deals with a broad complex of geographical, geological, archaeological, and Jewish and historical sources, that were not all available to those researching the cave in the past.

This sounds a bit dry and academic, but some of the "visits" involved clandestine operations more in the line of Indiana Jones.

For more on the archaeology of Hebron, mixed with some politics, see here, here, here, and links.

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Forthcoming: Minets, The Slow Fall of Babel (CUP via AJR)

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Publication | The Slow Fall of Babel: Languages and Identities in Late Antique Christianity (Yuliya Minets).

My book, The Slow Fall of Babel: Languages and Identities in Late Antique Christianity, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, explores early Christian ideas about foreign languages, linguistic history, and linguistic diversity. Over the course of six chapters, I investigate how language differences and language-related socio-cultural stereotypes were drawn into the process of constructing and negotiating distinctly Christian and specific confessional identities in the late antique Mediterranean.

The essay indicates that the book also gives attention to Jewish ideas about the same matters.

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Amethyst ring excavated at Yavneh

ANCIENT BLING WATCH: Ancient ‘hangover cure’ gold ring found at Yavne winery excavation. Band is adorned with semiprecious amethyst stone, which was believed to have power in dispelling the aftereffects of alcohol (Stuart Winer, Times of Israel).

For more on the Byzantine-era winery at Yavneh (Yavne), see here. The ring is from a seventh-century stratum, but it may be several centuries older than that.

Rossella Tercatin is the only one I have found who has noticed that this is the second ancient amethyst gemstone, possibly also from a ring, to be discovered recently. More on that here.

For more posts on ancient bling, follow the links at the last link above.

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Shaul Shaked (1933-2021)

SAD NEWS FROM H-JUDAIC: Passing of Professor Shaul Shaked.

H-Judaic is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Professor Shaul Shaked (1933-2021), Emeritus Professor of Iranian Studies, Religious Studies, Aramaic and Magic in Late Antiquity at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; winner of the Israel Prize; a member of the Israel Academy of Arts and Sciences; and one of Israel's most esteemed scholars. ...

Professor Shaked appeared from time to time in PaleoJudaica posts, mostly to do with the Aramaic incantation bowls and the Afgan geniza. A Festschrift for him was published in 2019. H-Judaic has another memorial note on him here.

I thanked him for his help with the Aramaic incantation bowls in the preface to my 2001 book Descenders to the Chariot. That was all by e-mail correspondence. But I finally did meet him in person in 2014 at the Iranian Kingship Workshop. There are photos of him at that post. He was a very gracious gentleman.

May his memory be for a blessing.

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