Fragments of Byzantine-era oil jar found in Israel

DISCOVERY:

Remnants of Byzantine-era oil jar discovered along Netanya shore

(Israel HaYom)

Large olive oil jar dating back 1,500 years found along Netanya beach • City resident who found pottery shards in shallow waters passed them on to the Israel Antiquities Authority • Relic pieces attest to bustling ancient trade between Israel and Europe.

Syriac and modern politics

SYRIAC WATCH: Stories on political challenges faced by modern speakers of Syriac.

At Christmas, a Maronite Christian Village in Israel Revives the Language Spoken by Jesus Christ

Turkey’s waning Syriac Christian community to submit report to EU

Alaa votes

EGYPTIAN BLOGGER UPDATE: Jailed Egypt blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah casts vote.

Simon Holloway on Hanukkah

THESE LIGHTS: Over at Davar Akher, Simon Holloway collects and comments on the ancient references to Hanukkah. And for a bonus he links to a humbugging essay on Hanukkah by the late Christopher Hitchens, on whom be peace.

Review of Rizzi (ed.), "Hadrian and the Christians"

BMCR REVIEW:

Marco Rizzi (ed.), Hadrian and the Christians. Millennium-Studien = Millennium studies Bd. 30. Berlin; New York: De Gruyter, 2010. Pp. vi, 186. ISBN 9783110224702. $98.00.

Reviewed by Benjamin Garstad, MacEwan University (garstadb@macewan.ca)

Table of Contents

The papers in this volume have been collected with the laudably sensible, but regrettably rare, purpose of testing an hypothesis. As the editor puts it in his introduction, the “cultural effervescence” of Hadrian’s reign and the contemporaneous diffusion and institutionalization of Christianity are to be examined “in order to figure out whether any specific factor within this broader context eased or accelerated the affirmation of Christianity in the Second century Roman world.” It is suggested that Hadrian’s reconfiguration of the Roman Empire as a polity which tolerated or even encouraged a plethora of distinct ethnic, local, cultural, religious, and philosophical identities in the interest of fostering “direct loyalty to the emperor” (rather than the institutions of Republican government or the apparatus of imperial control) opened up a space in which the Christians could engage in “self-definition and external self- definition.” This thesis is pursued by directing an often narrow spotlight on various aspects of Hadrian’s reign.

[...]

Jews figure prominently in some of the essays as well.

Coolest holiday card of the year

COOLEST HOLIDAY CARD OF THE YEAR, from the Yale University Library.

Aramaic as the mother tongue of Jesus

ARAMAIC WATCH: Aramaic would have been the mother tongue of Jesus (John Arnott, King Township Sentinel). A refreshingly accurate sketch of the Aramaic language in a local newspaper.

Although today, tiny, widely-scattered Jewish and Christian communities in the Middle East (some in Syria and southern Turkey, but mostly in Iraq) speak dialects of Aramaic as their first language. This ancient tongue, like Latin, is now mainly used in church services by some Syrian Christians and Iraqi Chaldo-Assyrian Christians.

Even though the earthly Jesus never attended service in a Christian church, he would feel almost at home in one of these Oriental Christian churches, where the language at least used would be familiar to him.

That would be something like putting Shakespeare in a modern church service in English. He would understand a fair amount of what was said but he would still be pretty confused.

On the trail of the Maccabees

HANUKKAH AND HISTORY: On the trail of the Maccabees (Lisa Alcalay Klug, Jewish Journal). Alas, the traditional trail peters out and the archaeological trail has some bumps in it.

It’s impossible to conclude the accuracy of the enduring folk legend around the location of the graves. But excavations dating from the 19th century suggest the traditional site misses the mark and that Midya, a nearby Arab village, more closely fits the ancient description instead. Meanwhile, the experts qualified to actually determine the veracity of the myth are archaeologists, who remain unwilling to excavate the graves due to the sensitivity of the religious community. With the popular fervor for strong Jewish heroes so attached to the current site, the mystery of the Maccabee graves is likely to endure.

More on the mystery of the site of the Maccabean tombs here.

Dura-Europos documents online

AWOL: New at ARTStor: Dura-Europos Documents.

Now available: Images of parchment and papyrus documents from Dura-Europos (Syria) from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University

Much more on Dura Europos here and links.

Happy Winter Solstice and Yalda

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE to those celebrating. And a slightly belated happy Yalda also.

On Hanukkah and Piyyut

THE TALMUD BLOG: Hanukkah and Piyyut (Part I) (Ophir Münz-Manor).

More on the piyyut here.

Jewish themes in an ancient curse tablet

JEWISH THEMES in a recently translated curse tablet:

Deciphered Ancient Tablet Reveals Curse of Greengrocer

Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor
Date: 21 December 2011 Time: 11:37 AM ET

A fiery ancient curse inscribed on two sides of a thin lead tablet was meant to afflict, not a king or pharaoh, but a simple greengrocer selling fruits and vegetables some 1,700 years ago in the city of Antioch, researchers find.

Written in Greek, the tablet holding the curse was dropped into a well in Antioch, then one of the Roman Empire's biggest cities in the East, today part of southeast Turkey, near the border with Syria.

The curse calls upon Iao, the Greek name for Yahweh, the god of the Old Testament, to afflict a man named Babylas who is identified as being a greengrocer. The tablet lists his mother's name as Dionysia, "also known as Hesykhia" it reads. The text was translated by Alexander Hollmann of the University of Washington.

[...]

I agree with Professor Hoffman that the text is not necessarily Jewish. Ancient magic in the Near East and Mediterranean was extremely eclectic and often drew on Jewish themes alongside Classical, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Christian ones.

On editions and translations

ADAM MCCOLLUM: Editions, or editions and translations? As a general rule I agree: both are good, but editions first.

Metatron is bored

METATRON IS BORED. Graffito found at a construction site in Dubai. Banksy watch out.

London Times on "The Revelation of the Magi"

THE REVELATION OF THE MAGI has also been covered by the London Times:

Ancient text brings the Three Wise Men to life

by: Simon de Bruxelles, London
From: The Times
December 22, 2011 12:00AM

AN ancient document found in the Vatican archives casts new light on the story of the Nativity and the Three Wise Men who came to offer gifts to the infant Jesus, according to researchers.

The Revelation of the Magi, reputedly a first-hand account of their journey to pay tribute to the son of God, only now has been translated from ancient Syriac.

Brent Landau, professor of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma, spent two years deciphering the fragile manuscript.

It is an eighth-century copy of a story first written down nearly half a millennium earlier, less than 100 years after the Gospel of Matthew, the original source of the Bible story.

The newly translated tale differs in major respects from Matthew's very brief account.

[...]

The Times is behind a subscription wall, but this article has been reprinted in The Australian.

Background here (immediately preceding post).

The Daily Mail on "The Revelation of the Magi"

'TIS THE SEASON: The Daily Mail takes up Brent Landau's translation of The Revelation of the Magi. And for a holiday miracle, the article (despite the headline) makes some effort toward a critical nuancing of the import of the document: Forget the Three Wise Men… DOZENS flocked to see Jesus, ancient document reveals.

HT Nicola Denzey Lewis on FB.

Background on The Revelation of the Magi is here with links.

More on the burning of the Institute d'Egypt

MORE ON THE BURNING OF THE INSTITUTE D'EGYPT:

Jason Boog: Egyptian Activists Hurt Defending Library.

And at Transparency Revolution, Phil Bowermaster reflects on this tragedy in the context of the burning of the Library of Alexandria in antiquity: Backing up Civilization.

Background here. Background on the destruction of the Library of Alexandria here and links

Hanukkah and counterfactual history

HANUKKAH AND COUNTERFACTUAL HISTORY:

Imagining a world without Hanukkah

Detour into science fiction helps illuminate what festival celebrates

By: Lawrence M. Pinsker (Winnipeg Free Press)

Posted: 12/20/2011 1:00 AM

Growing up as an avid science fiction reader, I fell in love with a particular sub-genre of the field called "alternate history," which asks how the world would have changed if some historical event had gone differently.

For example, both Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee and Winston Churchill's If the South Had Won the Civil War -- yes, that Winston Churchill -- ask readers to imagine life after the South won the American Civil War.

And Sarban's The Sound of His Horn, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, and Keith Roberts' Weihnachtabend explore the world after Hitler and the Axis won the Second World War.

Hundreds of science fiction novels and short stories ask "What if the outcome had been different?" about other crucial moments in history as well.

For example, in Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna, the author asks how the world would have changed if the Hebrew exodus from Egypt had ended not in liberation from bondage but in the deaths of Moses and the other Hebrew leaders.

In Silverberg's alternate history, the Hebrews continue as a sparse slave population in Egypt. They never reach the Promised Land, so there is no ancient Judaea with a capital in Jerusalem whose citizens wage war against Roman authority and whose descendants are scattered throughout the empire as punishment for their rebellion.

The term "Jew" never even arises, because there is never a geopolitical entity called Judaea. Instead, the Hebrews quietly cultivate their particular ethical and theological genius only within their tiny ghetto in Egypt.

Without the dispersal of a captive Jewish people throughout the Roman Empire, Rome's political and cultural philosophies are neither challenged nor changed in an encounter with the fruits of independent Jewish thought concerning human ethics and morals.

[...]

I've read some of these, but I don't recall seeing Silverberg's book. He's an excellent writer and I'll have to look it up.

Which brings us to another such pivotal moment in history, one celebrated by the Hanukkah festival observed in Jewish homes beginning this year tonight, Dec. 20, and continuing for eight days. The Hanukkah candles are lit to commemorate the victory of Judah Maccabeus and his siblings over the armies of Antiochus Epiphanes IV.

We may miss the connection between this war and the history of later western religion. What would the world have been like if those small bands of shepherds and townspeople in ancient Judea had not heard the pleas to defend religious freedom spoken by a family of priests from the village of Modin?

What if they had not rebelled against a totalitarian empire, and instead accepted the systematic destruction of their rights to worship as their religion required, to teach about the universe as they understood it, and even to follow dietary commands as instructed by God?

We forget that there once was a time when the ancient kingdom of Judea was a unique spiritual oasis in the midst of the corrupt, warring remnants of Greek culture left by the death of Alexander the Great.

[...]

This is an idealized perspective on ancient Hellenism and the Maccabean revolt, but the reflections that follow are interesting nonetheless. For a more harshly critical perspective, along with some of my own reflections, see here. My own work on counterfactual history favors the microhistorical approach rather than one that tackles the broad sweep of history. See here and links.

Visit the tombs of the Maccabees?

HANUKKAH AND HISTORY:

This Hanukkah, take a tour to the real graves of the Maccabees There is no dispute today that the 'official' location of the Maccabean graves, near Modi'in, is not the real site; come and see for yourself where these heroes were actually buried. By Moshe Gilad (Haaretz)

Maybe.

Saul Lieberman apocryphon?

SAUL LIEBERMAN APOCRYPHON? The book under review in this article sounds interesting, but what caught my eye was the anecdote about the renowned scholar of ancient Judaism, Saul Lieberman:

100 great Jewish books presented in one volume

By Rabbi Jack Riemer
Florida Jewish Journal
2:33 p.m. EST, December 20, 2011

ONE HUNDRED GREAT JEWISH BOOKS, by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Blue Bridge, 352 pages, paperback, $16.95.

There is a story — perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not — that is told about Professor Saul Lieberman that came to my mind as I read this book.

The story is that a reporter came to interview him after he won some academic prize. The reporter noticed a book on his desk and asked him what it was. The professor answered: "That's a copy of the Bible." Then the reporter saw another book and asked what it was. Lieberman said: "That's a Mishnah." The reporter asked what a Mishnah was and Lieberman explained that it was a commentary on the Bible." Then the reporter noticed another book and asked what it was. "That's the Talmud," said Lieberman. "What's a Talmud?" asked the reporter and the professor explained that the Talmud is a commentary on the Mishnah. The reporter then asked what the writing on one side of the Talmud was and Lieberman explained that that was the commentary on the Talmud by Rashi. The reporter then asked what the writing on the other side of the Talmud was and Lieberman said that that was the Tosafot. The reporter asked what the Tosefot was and Lieberman explained that the Tosafot were a commentary on Rashi. This went on for a while longer, until the reporter exclaimed: "Now I get it. Judaism is a conversation between the generations."

Lieberman said afterwards that this was the shortest, simplest definition of Judaism that he had ever heard, and that he learned it from a non-Jew.

I thought of this story because of what this book sets out to do. Rabbi Hoffman has chosen the hundred books that have formed Judaism and then he has responded to each of them with a thoughtful two or three page review. You can quibble if you wish over which books were included or about which ones were left out, but if you read these hundred essays you will have a pretty good idea of what Judaism is all about. I have some reservations. There could have been more of the Bible included. There could have been less of some modern Jewish writers who do not have lasting significance. There are some — particularly in the modern fiction section — that I don't think deserved to make the cut. But all the basic books that have formed us are here and Rabbi Hoffman talks to them and about them with great respect.

[...]