Paul Davidson has a long essay summarizing the current scholarly state of the question concerning the aptly-termed "literary phantom" of Melchizedek (Genesis 14, Psalm 110). That state of the question has been very much a moving target over the last century. Most of what has been written on him, including by me, is speculative.
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Tony Burke is on research sabbatical for the 2024-25 academic year at the University of Regensburg in Germany. This is his latest update. It includes lots of information on apocrypha pertaining to St. Stephen, who apparently was a changeling. Who knew?
Also, unrelated to New Testament apocrypha, Tony witnessed a dachshund parade. I approve.
I noted the first post in this ongoing series here.
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The Bible Among RuinsI noted the publication of the book here and a related essay by its author here.
Time, Material Remains, and the World of the Biblical Writers
By Daniel Pioske
(Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2023), 308 pp., 50 b/w figs.; $110.00 (hardback and eBook)Reviewed by Aaron A. Burke
... While it is relatively easy to recognize that ruins were a part of ancient landscapes, Pioske challenges us to recognize that ruins were perceived quite differently by ancient peoples, who had an entirely different conception of time than do people of the modern world. He highlights, for example, the lack of interest shown in the biblical text for the exploration of the past, despite an awareness of the antiquity of ruins that surrounded ancient writers. ...
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There were a few archaeologists among the reservists serving in the search unit, and they quickly realized that if Israel hoped to locate the missing — and Israel has historically gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure its dead a proper burial — they would need to marshal skills intrinsic to archaeology: the ability to identify human remains that have been so badly damaged by fire and fighting that, to the untrained eye, it appears as if there is nothing left.Excellent article. Hard reading. Those archaeologists have done heroic work.
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Unlike other books, Magness explains, her book is not only a history of the city – up to and including the Crusader period – but also integrates more than a century of archaeological discoveries. A virtual encyclopedia of information, the book includes many details that she and others have revealed.I noted the publication of the book here and another review of it here. And see also here and here.
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I've noted this journal before. But since it's come up again at AWOL, it's worth flagging that the current volume (7, 2024) has lots of interesting-looking articles on Iron Age Hebrew epigraphy.
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Qumran and the New TestamentThe articles are in German, English, and French.SERIES:
Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 340EDITOR:
Frey J.PRICE: 100 euro
YEAR: 2024
ISBN: 9789042953550
PAGES: XXVI-484 p.SUMMARY:
The volume Qumran and the New Testament comprises the papers read at the 71st meeting of the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense, which was held in 2022 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the textual discoveries at Qumran, and to reflect on the relevance of the Scrolls for the understanding of the New Testament, now based on the knowledge of the complete Qumran corpus and recent research trends. The topics discussed in this volume go far beyond the previous habit of compiling parallels and the question of possible dependencies. They include sociological issues of comparable group identity, questions of halakhah and liturgy, perspectives of performance criticism, and new historical insights into the growth of texts applied to the Synoptic tradition. Characterized by historical sobriety and caution, as well as hermeneutical awareness, the articles in this volume take the practice of textual comparison and the contextualization of the New Testament within the Scrolls to a promising new level.
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The Prophetic BodyEmbodiment and Mediation in Biblical Prophetic Literature
Anathea E. Portier-Young
£78.00
Hardback
Published: 29 August 2024
344 Pages
235x156mm
ISBN: 9780197604960Also Available As:
EbookDescription
Biblical prophecy involves more than words: it is always also embodied. After assessing the prevalence, implications, and origins of a logocentric model of biblical prophecy, Anathea E. Portier-Young proposes an alternative, embodied paradigm of analysis that draws insights from disciplines ranging from cognitive neuroscience to anthropology.
Portier-Young provides a new, embodied paradigm of analysis for biblical prophecy, offering tools for academics and students to study a wide range of texts with new emphasis on the body. If offers a broadly-based account of prophetic embodiment. The author first assesses the prevalence, implications, and origins of a logocentric model of biblical prophecy, then proposes an alternative, embodied, and interdisciplinary paradigm. She argues that embodied religious experience and affect are not merely antecedent or coincidental to prophetic mediation but are both means (how mediation occurs) and objects (part of what is mediated).
While Portier-Young's primary aim is to intervene in how biblical scholars understand and talk about prophecy, it has broader implications for how we map the relationships between spoken and written word(s) on one hand and body and praxis on the other. The author provides a game-changing reframing of prophecy that not only changes how we read biblical texts but also funds and energizes our understanding of prophetic witness in the contemporary world.
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With sadness, we are writing to share the news that Walter “Wally” E. Aufrecht passed away in Calgary, Canada the morning of Saturday, September 21, 2024.Requiescat in pace.... Wally was perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the Ammonite language, encapsulated by the second edition of his A Corpus of Ammonite Inscriptions, published by Eisenbrauns in 2019. His chapters on Ammonite religion, texts, and language in MacDonald and Younker’s Ancient Ammon are good summations of his larger body of work on those topics. His contributions were not limited to the Transjordanian languages, however. ...
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I argue that three broad avenues for seeking miracles can be identified in Palestine, and indeed across the ancient Mediterranean world: person, place, and object. People were believed to transmit cures by their own intrinsic power or through the use of prescribed words and actions; sacred places hosted incubation rituals where the sick and injured awaited healing in their dreams; and objects inscribed with powerful texts and images were attached to the body as amulets to ward off present and future ailments.As the essay notes, most of the published late-antique amulets from Palestine are unprovenanced (cf. here). As I've said many times, my methodological principle is that we should assume an unprovenanced artifact is a forgery unless someone makes a credible positive case for its authenticity.
In the case of these artifacts, we should draw initial conclusions based on the minority of amulets that come from controlled archaeological excavation. It is a judgment call on what to do with the unprovenanced ones, but if they are going to be used, their evidence should generally be given less weight than the provenanced ones.
With that out of the way, read the esssay, which takes a sophisticated cross-cultural contextual approach to the data. I have noted a review of Professor Nutzman's book, Contested Cures: Identity and Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine, here.
Outside the scope of this essay and her book, but the late-antique Hebrew magical tractate Sefer HaRazim includes ritual healing spells for generic healing, recovery from stroke, protection during childbirth, and curing migrane headaches and cataracts. It seems to have been composed roughly in the Talmudic era. Its provenance is unknown, but Egypt or Palestine are plausible.
Sefer HaRazim was translated by Michael Morgan in 1983 (details here). I have translated it again, forthcoming (April 2025!) in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 2, drawing on much more manuscript information than was available to Morgan.
For addition posts on Sefer HaRazim see here and follow the links from here. Note also today's post here.
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Independent art historian and curator Rachel Schmid will explore the presence of ancient art and ritual in Jewish worship practices during the Porterville College Cultural and Historical Awareness Program presentation of “Representing the Divine: Late Antique Jewish Art and Ritual.” The event will take place on Friday, October 11 at 7 p.m. at the PC Theater.The presentation is free. Follow the link for details.For centuries, the prohibition against graven images in Jewish tradition has led to the misconception Jewish places of worship were always devoid of figurative art. However, recent discoveries have revealed a stunning array of beautifully decorated synagogues dating back to the 3rd-7th centuries CE.
[...]
For many (but by no means all) PaleoJudaica posts on ancient synagogues, follow the links from here. For pagan imagery in late-antique synagogues and in the late-antique magical tractate Sefer HaRazim, see here and links. There are many other posts on mosaic art in various ancient synagogues in Israel. See the archives.
Cross-file under Ancient Decorative Art and Iconography.
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aron Z. Eliav, A Jew in the Roman bathhouse: cultural interaction in the ancient Mediterranean. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. Pp. 392. ISBN 9780691243436.I noted the publication of the book, and a related essay by the author, here.Review by
Eleanor J. F. Martin, Yale University. eleanor.martin@yale.edu... What truly sets Eliav’s work apart, however, is the way in which he goes about developing and validating the model of “filtered absorption”: his focus is not only on one particular group (the Jews, specifically those living in Judea/Syria Palaestina), but also on their engagement with one particular cultural institution (the public bathhouse). In doing so, he reconciles rabbinic literature—so often neglected by classicists working on the imperial Mediterranean—with the wealth of written, visual, and archaeological evidence for bathing culture in Roman Palestine and beyond, thereby putting in conversation two fields that have been kept distinct in unnecessary and unproductive ways. ...
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Christine Hayes, The literature of the sages: a re-visioning. Compendia rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, 16. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2022. Pp. xi, 660. ISBN 9789004515420.I noted the publication of the book here.Review by
Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Tel Aviv University. rosenzvi@tauex.tau.ac.il... The majority of the articles serve as concise summaries of monographs by the aforementioned scholars, effectively capturing the key theses. Maintaining a commendable equilibrium between primary sources and the current state of research, these articles meticulously distinguish between Babylonia and Roman Palestine, as well as between Tanaim and Amoraim. ...
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Alas, this is not the first vandalism episode for this late-antique synagogue.
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Pray for peace in the coming year.
Last year's Rosh HaShanah post, with links, is here. For biblical background, see here.
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Long story short, apparently Palous' village was near the paleolake Moeris, separate work suggests, and he and a fellow villager were engaged in an argument – involving sheep – bitter enough to be brought before the mightiest one in the land. How was the dispute resolved? We do not know.The underlying article in the current issue of the Journal of Jewish Studies (75.2) is behind the subscription wall: A Ptolemaic petition from a ‘Judeo-Egyptian’ (Ἰουδαιοαιγύπτιος). The abstract is free.
This papyrus intriguingly contains a very early use of some form of the Greek word for "Jew," ioudaios. I wrote some comments on the nuances of the word ioudaios some years ago here. And for more on that subject, see Paula Fredriksen's review of Steve Mason's recent book, Jews and Christians in the Roman World, noted today here.
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Formerly, the Harvard Semitic Museum. On the name change in 2020, see here. A couple of related posts are here and here.
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Steve Mason, Jews and Christians in the Roman world: from historical method to cases. Ancient Judaism and early Christianity, 116. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2023. Pp. x, 691. ISBN 9789004543874.I noted the publication of the book here.Review by
Paula Fredriksen, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. augfred@bu.edu... “This is not a dump of stray essays,” Mason tells his reader in the introduction (1). It is, rather, a gathering of articles published in hard-to-access places—conference volumes, Festschriften, and various volumes of collected essays—that cohere around certain themes central to Mason’s work. A premier theme is historiography, modern no less than ancient. “What is historical method?” (1). ...
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This long and informative article includes information I have not seen before. On that basis, I need to revise my previous conclusions about the manuscript.
When Steve Green, the president of Hobby Lobby, presented the book in 2013 at a Religion Newswriters Association conference, the founder of the museum and its board chair said that the manuscript dated to the ninth century.(Original emphasis.) This paragraph establishes that the manuscript was first presented in 2013. That must mean that it is the "Hebrew siddur" noted at the time here. The discovery of its actual Afghani provenance in 2017 led to a new C-14 dating which established it eighth-century date.
As for its layout, the book currently on display seems to combine two originally independent quires, with more writing added after they were combined. Herschel Hepler, "associate curator of Hebrew manuscripts at the Museum of the Bible":
“I think there were two quires that had independent lives from this manuscript in the eighth century. One the Haggadah. One the beginning of a poem” about Sukkot, Hepler said. “Someone came into possession of these two different quires of four sheets of parchment and wanted to combine them, and I think this is the person who wrote the Sabbath morning prayers.”Thus the codex appears to have inconsistent layouts. One widely posted photo of it (see links here) has 14-15 lines. The available photos I have seen of the 2013 book (e.g., here) have 11 lines. But a more recent photo of the current book also has 11 lines. And a photo in the Israel Today article shows 12 lines, one blank.
I conclude therefore that there is only one book, first presented in 2013 and now on display in the MOTB with new information. Please pardon the confusion.
Background here and links.
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