Short answer:
The answer seems to be that “pascha” is actually a Greek word, and basically indeclinable, and therefore weird stuff can happen.For the long answer, follow the link. For hardcore philologists.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
An international team of archaeologists and paleontologists has announced the discovery of physical evidence unique in Europe: an elephant bone dated to the Second Punic War (218–201 BC). The find, a small but revealing bone fragment, was made during an emergency excavation at the Colina de los Quemados site in Córdoba (Spain), identified with the ancient Iberian city of Corduba.The artifacts in the same stratum confirm the likelihood that the elephant was one of those used by the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War.[...]
On an unrelated note, this is perhaps of interest:
Given the exceptional nature of the find, an attempt was made to obtain an absolute date through radiocarbon analysis. Although the collagen in the bone had not been sufficiently preserved, scientists dated the mineral fraction (bioapatite). The result placed the sample between the late 4th century and the 3rd century BC, a range that, although slightly broader and earlier than expected, is consistent with the period of the Second Punic War.Compare this range with the new C-14 dating range for 4QDanc of 230-160 BCE, with a composition date for the Book of Daniel of c. 165. The fighting in Spain in the Second Punic War occurred between 219 BCE (the siege of Saguntum) and 206 BCE (the Battle of Ilipa), so the early end of the C14 date range is about a century too early. The early end of the new C-14 date range for 4QDanc is only about 60-70 years too early.
So it is fair to say that this dating has "a range that, although slightly broader and earlier than expected, is consistent with the period of the" composition of Daniel. If we accept this range as pretty firm (2-sigma = 95%), 4QDanc is quite an early copy of Daniel. But the book easily could have been circulating widely in Palestine within a few years or less of its composition.
More on the redating of 4QDanc, and the associated Enoch AI dating tool, is here and links.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Reza Shaghaghi Zarghamee, Myth and history in ancient Persia: the Achaemenids in the Iranian tradition. Edinburgh studies in ancient Persia. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2025. Pp. 376. ISBN 9781399530989.I noted the publication of the book here.Review by
Rhyne King, University of Toronto. rhyne.king@utoronto.caThis ambitious book aims to bring the field of Achaemenid history into conversation with Zoroastrian studies and the study of early Islamic literature. As Reza Shaghaghi Zarghamee notes, Achaemenid historians have rarely engaged with sources in Avestan, Middle Persian (also known as “Pahlavi”), and New Persian, and the author seeks to rectify that. ...
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Jona Lendering has visited Cartagena, Spain, too, and he has posted a report here in Dutch. Google Translate can easily produce an English version if you want one.
Jona has photos and commentary that nicely complement my posts on my own recent visit to Cartagena.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Among the treasures broken in the terror group’s campaign of destruction was a slab of stone that had adorned Sennacherib’s opulent throne room, which scholars long ago concluded depicts the Assyrian siege of the Philistine city of Eltekeh.I have already noted this story here. For more on Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem, its archaeology, and what may have happened there, follow the links from there.But new research analyzing photographs and drawings of the largely overlooked bas-relief before its destruction suggests that it actually shows Jerusalem, making it the oldest-known depiction of the city.
Current scholarship holds that the Madaba map, a mosaic found in a sixth-century CE Byzantine church in modern-day Jordan, is the oldest rendering of Jerusalem to survive to modern times. But the study, published in October in the prestigious Journal of Near Eastern Studies by University of South Africa researcher Stephen Compton, suggests that the southwest palace in Nineveh was home to a depiction 1,200 years older than the one in Madaba.
This ToI article includes an interview with the researcher, responses from other specialists, and an update on the ongoing reconstruction of Nineveh's antiquities after the desecration by ISIS.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
The people of the past were human beings as we are, but they lived much different lives and saw the world much differently than we do. We would seem very strange to them, and, if we really want to understand the past, we need to recognize their strangeness for us.Cross-file under New Book: Joel S. Baden Lost in Translation: Recovering the Origins of Familiar Biblical Words (Fortress Press, 2025).That recognition is at the heart of Lost in Translation: Recovering the Origins of Familiar Biblical Words by Yale Divinity School professor Joel S. Baden. The book, published by the Minneapolis-based Fortress Press, is a nuanced look at more than three dozen words and phrases that appear often in the Hebrew Bible of Judaism, called the Old Testament in Christianity.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
When an academic study earlier this year applied artificial intelligence to the science of Biblical manuscript dating, mainstream media reported it as a curious development. But what many missed at the time was how the new AI technique might lend unexpected credence to Biblical apologetics.When I first noted the reports of the redating of some Dead Sea Scrolls, notably 4QDanielc (4Q114), by the "Enoch" AI, I commented, "I can't wait to see how this will be deployed by the early daters of the Book of Daniel." And so we have it deployed in this article.
I have further discussion of the AI redating here and here [link corrected].
For more detailed comments defending the late dating of the Book of Daniel, see here, here, and here.
UPDATE (27 January): My comments above needs correction. There is new dating of some Dead Sea Scrolls by the Enoch AI, but the redating of 4QDanielc involves C-14 dating. More on that here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Hebrew Philology, Hebrew Lexicography
David J. A. ClinesISBN 9781914490903
Status Available
Publication Date October 2025
Hardback $95.00This edited collection, from world-leading philologist and lexicographer of Classical Hebrew, David J. A. Clines (1938–2022), demonstrates how his motivations for philological and lexicographical work sat in contrast to each other. These articles and papers, published and unpublished, show Clines’s efforts in each direction.
As Clines explains a “philologian is a ‘lover of words’ […] a hunter, imbued with the spirit of the chase […]. A lexicographer is by contrast a shepherd, gathering a flock together […], big words and little words, common words and rare words […]. To the lexicographer, all words are equally deserving of respect and nurture; a lexicographer cannot afford favourite love objects. […] A philologian can polish off an article in 50 or 100 hours—or less–but a lexicographer must be long-lived, immune to boredom, and possessed of an addictive personality.”
In the first section, Philology, there are eight chapters, mostly on individual words. In the second section, Lexicography, there are eighteen chapters, dealing first with Clines’s Dictionary of Classical Hebrew in general (Chapters 9-14), then with features of the Dictionary that call for exposition and justification (Chapters 15-21), and finally with some individual studies arising from the lexicographical work (Chapters 22-26).
Via these articles and papers, Clines seeks to counter the lack from editors of earlier Hebrew dictionaries, which left scholars with little explanation of their methods and procedures. By explaining himself Clines wishes that present and future users of the dictionary would know the conception of his intentions for the project. This Clinesian imperative means his views are explained, in general, about byforms, synonyms, semantic fields, definitions and suchlike, so readers are not left with only his conclusions.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Ittai Gradel, Nils Arne PedersenFor PaleoJudaica posts on the Testament of Solomon and related artifactual material, see here and links. This is the first I've heard of any Solomonic ring artifacts, aside from the fictional one in the 2010 children's novel by Jonathan Stroud.The Lost Novel of King Solomon and the Demons
New Evidence on the Testament of Solomon in Antiquity
2025. 344 pages.
Parabiblica (PBib) 5€99.00
including VATcloth
available
978-3-16-200066-8Also Available As:
eBook PDF
€99.00Summary
In this study, Ittai Gradel and Nils Arne Pedersen develop a new approach to the apocryphal Testament of Solomon by combining archaeology and textual analysis. The starting point is a group of ten 3rd-century rings, each inscribed in Greek: »Solomon says: 'Watch out!'« The phrase, puzzling as an apotropaic formula, makes sense only in light of the Testament of Solomon, where the king, empowered by a divine ring, subjugates demons. In a climactic episode, Solomon orders two demons to support a massive column until the Day of Judgment - precisely with the words »Watch out!« This unique command, permanently binding the demons, explains its adoption in everyday magical practice.
The rings, securely dated, establish a 2nd-century date for the original version of the text and invite new reflections on its literary shape and development. While the preserved Testament alternates between first-person and third-person narration, the inscriptions suggest that the original form was a longer third-person narrative later abbreviated and reworked. From this basis, the authors develop a theory of its redactional history. The evidence points toward popular Christianity distinct from the patristic mainstream. Several rings display Christian iconography, one was linked to the pilgrimage site of Abu Mena, and parallels to Jewish Solomonic traditions are also apparent. Alexandria emerges as a plausible place of origin. The interdisciplinary synthesis - archaeology, history of religions, apocryphal studies, and folklore - generates fresh perspectives. The appendices enrich this contribution with translations of previously inaccessible versions of the Testament of Solomon, including one that contains a newly attested agraphon ascribed to Jesus, as well as a new edition and translation of a Syriac narrative. In this way, the authors significantly reposition the Testament of Solomon within the history of ancient religion and literature.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Woman Zion, Out of HandA New Materialist Investigation of Zion's Movement
Cindy Dawson
£64.00
Hardback
Published: 18 November 2025
262 Pages
235x156mm
ISBN: 9780197817223Also Available As:
E-bookDescription
In this groundbreaking work, Cindy Dawson maps and investigates Woman Zion through texts and time as a premiere example of a body's agency. The personification of the city of Jerusalem in biblical and Early Jewish texts, Woman Zion appears in 30 texts over 800 years, during which time her body undergoes remarkable change. Dawson begins in the preexilic years of Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, and Jeremiah, descends with Woman Zion to her exilic nadir in Ezekiel and Lamentations, then watches her remarkable rise in Isaiah and the texts of Early Judaism, including 1 Baruch, 4 Ezra, Galatians, and Revelation. Building upon the insight of New Materialism, this study defines agency as the ability to intra-act, to act upon and be acted upon by the world around it. Agency is not limited by something (i.e., "intention" or "will") that someone (i.e., a human) possesses but simply by some ability to enact change, an ability possessed by humans and nonhumans alike.
Woman Zion is therefore more than a way for authors to think, more than a mere tool by which those authors assert their agenda and their agency — her body is in fact an art object, and at that, one with agency. This agency is ontological and furthermore demonstrable, evident in how her body gets out of hand, outlasts her creators, and does things they would never intend her to do. This study therefore provides a new way to track a tradition, without succumbing to the limitations of form criticism and, by definition, its tie to forms that face eventual extinction. Here, Cindy Dawson reformulates a long-time interest of biblical studies, to show how Woman Zion's body becomes the new form.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
The Historical Location of P
Reconsidering the Priestly Texts in Light of Material Culture and Geographical Indications
Edited by Jürg Hutzli and Jordan Davis2026. 260 pages.
Archaeology and Bible (ArchB) 10€89.00
including VATsewn paper
available
978-3-16-164623-2Also Available As:
eBook PDF
€89.00Summary
Although there is an enduring, general consensus regarding the identification of the Priestly Writings (P), there are nonetheless several open questions related to this important literary stratum in the Pentateuch. One of these crucial and debated questions is the dating and location of the Priestly texts. The contributors of this collected volume seek to better situate the Priestly Writings both temporally and geographically. In doing so they pay attention to the choice of pertinent criteria for this task and recall those that have been neglected in the recent past, such as geographical indications and references to material culture provided by the Priestly texts.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Sahidic Coptic LeviticusCross-file under Coptic Watch.Its Manuscript Witnesses and Its Text
Series:
Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity, Volume: 30Author: Antonia St Demiana
Until recently, the Sahidic Old Testament has received little attention. In Sahidic Coptic Leviticus, Antonia St Demiana fully documents, for the first time, the manuscript evidence of Sahidic Coptic Leviticus and offers a full codicological investigation and reconstruction of its codices and fragments. By surveying the dispersed Sahidic Leviticus fragments and folios, codices formerly considered to be independent of one another are reconstructed and unified, and new Leviticus fragments are identified and virtually assigned to their original codices. A semi-diplomatic edition of the most complete witness of Sahidic Leviticus, MLM M566, with the variae lectiones from the other Sahidic Leviticus witnesses is provided with a critical apparatus and English translation. A commentary including an introductory textual study and translation analysis of the text is also presented. In addition, this volume offers new and conclusive observations on the nature of the Sahidic version of Leviticus, and the relationship between the text of Sahidic Leviticus and its Greek Vorlage.
Copyright Year: 2025
E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-54589-2
Publication: 25 Nov 2024
EUR €250.00Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-54588-5
Publication: 05 Dec 2024
EUR €250.00
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Ashurbanipal, the most powerful king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the mid-seventh century B.C., was known for his ruthless military prowess, his incredible lion-hunting skills—and for being a librarian.This is a long, informative article on Ashurbanipal's library. It focuses on its discovery and excavation, but gives some attention to its contents; notably the first-discovered fragments of the Epic of Gilgamesh.“Palace of Ashurbanipal, King of the Universe, King of Assyria” reads an inscription denoting his ownership on one of over 30,000 clay tablets and fragments from the magnificent library he maintained at his capital, Nineveh, today in northern Iraq.
[...]
I was wondering if it would interact with Irving Finkelman's proposal, covered in a recent interview with Lex Fridman, that the 30,000 recovered tablets are just duplicates and discarded broken pieces, while the Babylonians and their allies carried off the bulk of the library.
The article does not mention Dr. Finkel's idea, but it does make an intriguing comment that could be relevant:
Recent analysis of the corpus of Nineveh tablets by a German-British team is producing interesting insights. For example, it was initially thought that reconstructing the tablets would be just a matter of time and effort. Now, even with all the pieces digitally cataloged, it has only been possible to reconstruct about 200 tablets, and even these are missing large sections. It has also been established that many tablets were marked with colophons (notes placed at the end of text) of different types. These identified the kind of text they contained or the period in which they were made. Some were even signed by individual scribes. The conclusion is that the rest of the fragments have been lost or have yet to be found in Nineveh.Are these indeed just the broken pieces left by the Babylonians when they looted the library?
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Joseph L. JustissScribal Change and Strategic Sequencing in the Hebrew Source of G Proverbs
2026. 276 pages.
Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe (FAT II) 168€99.00
including VAT
sewn paper
available
978-3-16-164864-9Also Available As:
eBook PDF
€99.00Summary
Joseph L. Justiss examines the variant sequences of large text-blocks as found in the ancient Greek version of Proverbs (G Proverbs) and the Masoretic version of Proverbs (M Proverbs) to determine whether G's translator or G's source is the cause of the variant orders. Additionally, he examines how the different sequencing impacts the interpretation of the juxtaposed units. The author proceeds from a diachronic to a synchronic analysis of these units. Diachronically, textual and editorial criticism shed light on scribal changes at the edges and sometimes within juxtaposed units. Synchronically, topic analysis, dialogic analysis, and literary analysis reveal scribal motivations and compositional strategies inspiring the sequencing of units. Drawing on the main results of his study, Joseph L. Justiss argues that a variant Hebrew recension caused G's variant sequences and that the scribe of G's source expanded texts to emphasize wise speech and reverence in the presence of high authorities.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Now, excavations in southern Egypt have revealed how some of Christianity’s earliest monastic communities pursued religious practice in the desert. At the site of Al-Qariya bi-Duwayr in the Sohag region, Egyptian archaeologists with the Supreme Council of Antiquities have uncovered one of the most complete ancient monastic complexes yet discovered in the country.The discoveries reportedly include Coptic inscriptions.
For more on Egypt's Sohag region and its archaeology and history, some of which is of interest to PaleoJudaica, see here and links. For posts on Akhmim, see here and links. For posts on Shenoute and the White Monastery, here and links.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
For this year’s first blog post, we start a new series looking at angels in Coptic Magic. As an introduction, this first post provides a brief discussion of the concept of angels and their importance in various ritual and literary traditions, as well as an overview of the main groups of angels found in Coptic magical texts. The following posts in this series will focus on specific groups of angels and individual angels, discussing their roles, names, and descriptions. ...For more on the Talmudic-era Hebrew magical tractate Sefer Ha-Razim (Sefer HaRazim), see here and here and various other mentions in the archives.While Coptic magical texts are witnesses to some new and original traditions about angels, they also drew upon, and evolved together with, older and contemporary traditions, including the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri, Jewish private ritual, orthodox Christian liturgical practice, and Christian literature. It is therefore important to mention these briefly before moving on to the Coptic magical material.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
A nice overview of this important archive.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
A nice overview of Abgar V and his apocryphal correspondence with Jesus. Eusebius preserves the letters in a Greek translation, but they also survive in the original Syriac, notably in the Doctrine of Addai.
For PaleoJudaica posts on the Agbarid dynasty and the Abgar letters, as well as on ancient Edessa, start here and follow the links. Cross-file under Syriac Watch.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Four suspected antiquities robbers were caught “in the act” Sunday afternoon digging inside an ancient Roman‑era burial cave near the Nabi Shu’aib/Chitin archaeological site in the Arbel Ridge area, on the outskirts of the Jordan Valley near the Sea of Galilee.For more on the Talmudic gladiator-sage Reish Lakish (Resh Lakish), who lived in the region, see here, here, here, here, and here.[...]
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
The Beginnings of Christianity as an Integral Part of Early JudaismCross-file under New Book. You can download it for free at the link.Jesus and his first followers were Jews who never intended to form a new religion apart from Judaism. The so-called “parting of the ways” between Jews and Christians was long and by no means monolinear. Rather, it was a complex process that stretched over five hundred years, occurring in different places at different speeds and under a variety of circumstances. What we today call the “beginnings of Christianity” was in fact an integral part of multifaceted Judaism.
See also Early Judaism and the Beginnings of Christianity: Common Roots and the Parting of the Ways (Kohlhammer, 2026; open access).
By Markus Tiwald
Professor of New Testament
Faculty of Catholic Theology
University of Vienna
January 2026
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.