Another review of Kosmin, The Land of the Elephant Kings

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Paul J. Kosmin, The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2014. Pp. xv, 423. ISBN 9780674728820. $49.95.

Reviewed by Laurent Capdetrey, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne (laurent.capdetrey@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr)

Preview

Dans un style stimulant et suggestif, qui fait la part belle aux formules percutantes et aux expressions souvent heureuses, P. J. Kosmin s’attaque avec des outils conceptuels en partie nouveaux à une question ancienne : comment les rois séleucides ont-ils pu faire tenir ensemble, et aussi longtemps, des régions si diverses – de l’Égée à l’Asie Centrale - et les intégrer à un véritable territoire impérial ? Et - question connexe - dans cette entreprise, quelle fut la part d’innovation et d’invention des rois séleucides ? D’autres avaient tenté d’apporter leur réponse, mais l’approche de P. J. Kosmin témoigne d’une réelle capacité à tenir, avec un savoir faire certain, les deux bouts de la démarche historique : l’analyse des sources et le recours à une indispensable conceptualisation. Pour trouver un point de comparaison dans le cadre des études séleucides, on pourrait dire que si le livre de J. Ma sur Antiochos III et les cités d’Asie Mineure occidentale1 pouvait être lu comme un produit du linguistic turn, l’ouvrage de P. J. Kosmin s’inscrit pour sa part, et délibérément, dans le contexte du spatial turn.2 En effet, loin de proposer une histoire générale du royaume séleucide, l’auteur l’aborde de façon résolue sous l’angle des processus de spatialisation du pouvoir, à toutes les échelles. C’est là, à coup sûr, son originalité principale.

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Earlier posts on the book are here and here.

Le Boulluec and Le Moigne, Vision que vit Isaïe

A NEW TRANSLATION OF THE SEPTUAGINT OF ISAIAH IN THE BIBLE D'ALEXANDRIE SERIES:

Vision que vit Isaïe

d' Alain Le Boulluec , Philippe Le Moigne
Collection La Bible d'Alexandrie [Éditions du Cerf]
368 pages - nov. 2014 - Disponible
30,00€

Un texte fondamental revisité. Cette nouvelle traduction de la Septante, accompagnée d’un index et d’un glossaire, offre à tous la possibilité de (re)lire l’œuvre du prophète Isaïe, souvent considérée comme le cinquième évangile, précurseur des quatre autres. La version grecque d’Isaïe se distingue de son modèle hébraïque par une grande originalité mue et voulue par un projet littéraire et théologique. S’intéressant davantage à l’esprit du texte qu’à sa lettre, l’auteur possède une vision propre et réfléchie de son œuvre. Une découverte, parfois avec étonnement, toujours avec joie, de ce texte sacré.

Jubilees in Hebrew

THE BOOK OF JUBILEES has been translated into Hebrew by Kana Werman (ספר היובלים מבוא, תרגום ופירוש - The Book of Jubilees: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary) and is available from the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute. This Second Temple Jewish work was originally composed in Hebrew (we have fragments of the original among the Dead Sea Scrolls), then translated into Greek. The Greek is now almost entirely lost, but in antiquity it was translated into Ethiopic (Ge'ez) and it survives complete only in that language. It was also translated into Latin and we have some, but not all of the Latin text, as well as bits of it in Syriac translation. Now all of these resource have been used to translate it back into Hebrew. A remarkable history of textual transmission.

New book on the Bible, Classics, and ancient Persian culture

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Assessing Biblical and Classical Sources for the Reconstruction of Persian Influence, History and Culture. New book: Fitzpatrick-McKinley, A. (ed.). (2015). Assessing Biblical and Classical Sources for the Reconstruction of Persian Influence, History and Culture. Classica et Orientalia 10. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

ASOR’s Cultural Heritage Initiatives Weekly Reports

AWOL: ASOR’s Cultural Heritage Initiatives Weekly Reports.

The church historian, the rabbi, and everything

MARGINALIA: Late Ancient Judaism: Beyond Border Lines – By Mira Balberg.

Yet if fourth-century Caesarea is a quintessential locale in which the transformations and developments pertinent to late antiquity are both reflected upon and manufactured, why are Rabbi Abahu’s teachings usually not of interest for understanding these transformations? Why, more broadly, are the teachings of the greater circle known in Palestinian rabbinic sources as “the rabbis of Caesarea” (rabbanin dekisrin) not brought into this conversation, as well as the teachings of the circles that often position themselves against the rabbis of Caesarea — the rabbis who dwell in the Galilee? And if we’re already at it, where are the Babylonian rabbis, many of whom have emigrated to and from Palestine and transmitted various teachings between the two Jewish centers of learning of the third to the sixth centuries? In short, why is the vast Jewish literature of late antiquity so rarely considered a part of “late antiquity”?

The answer to this question has to do in part with conventions of archiving and classification — which, as Ellen Muehlberger powerfully argues in this forum, determine our ways of approaching and assessing our materials more than we tend to realize. First, the “late ancient” library is still conceived almost exclusively as a Greek and Latin library. Only fairly recently have Syriac, Coptic, and to some extent Armenian claimed a place on this library’s shelves; Hebrew and Palestinian/Babylonian Aramaic, however, have not been introduced to this library at all (as is the case with Pahlavi, Arabic, and other non-European languages). ...

I think the part about Hebrew and Aramaic in that last sentence is an overstatement, but certainly the work is in its early stages and much remains to be done.

This is the second essay in a series of five coming in the Late Antiquity and the New Humanities Forum.

More on the Sacred Writings exhibition

THE PENN CURRENT: Exhibit highlights scope of biblical texts (Heather A. Davis).

I have already noted two of the highlights of the Sacred Writings exhibition, now showing at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia: the third century fragment of the Gospel of Matthew and the clay tablet containing the Sumerian Flood story (the "Eridu Genesis"). But this is worth mentioning as well:

One item that speaks to the worldwide appeal of these biblical stories is a polyglot New Testament Bible compiled by German scholar Elias Hutter and printed in Nuremberg in 1599. That volume contains 12 languages printed side-by-side: Syriac, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, Czech, Italian, Spanish, French, English, Danish, and Polish.

Background here.

CFP: EABS Graduate Symposium

EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION OF BIBLICAL STUDIES: Eighth Graduate Symposium: March 18-20, 2016 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Call for Papers

EABS is excited to announce its eighth Graduate Symposium, which will take place in Cluj-Napoca, March 18-20, 2016. The symposium, which seeks to engender a supportive atmosphere for dialogue across a variety of biblical studies fields and subfields (Hebrew Scriptures, OT, NT, DSS, early Christianity, Septuagint studies, second temple Judaism, Rabbinics, reception history, methodologies, etc.), welcomes PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers to present on a topic related to their research area(s).

[...]

Follow the link for further particulars. The deadline for submission of proposals is 1 November 2015.

Very, very ancient Georgian?

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Ancient Script Spurs Rethinking of Historic ‘Backwater.’ At a temple site in the Republic of Georgia, letters carved in stone could change the way we see the development of writing (Tara Isabella Burton)

Georgian is a little-known Indo-European language that sometimes preserves literary artifacts that are important for the history of biblical interpretation. It comes up in PaleoJudaica from time to time, for example, here, here, here, here, and here. And Adam McCollum has posted a lot on Georgian over at the hmmlorientalia blog. So it is of at least tangential interest to note that written Georgian (or proto-Georgian?) may go back much earlier than had hitherto been suspected.

The script as a whole bears no relation to any other alphabet, although [chief excavator Vakhtang] Licheli detects similarities to letters in ancient Greek and Aramaic.

He says there’s no doubt that the carvings are part of an alphabet rather than a decorative pattern.

“In a decoration you see repetition every two, four, six times. Here there’s no repetition.” He notes the skill of the carver in smoothing the design. “He was very comfortable doing this—this was not his first time.”

Licheli says it’s reasonable to assume that the writing dates to the seventh century B.C., when the temple is believed to have been built.

UPDATE: Adam McCollum e-mails:

I hope you don’t mind my writing with a correction. In your post on the Nat. Geo. story about the inscription found in Georgia, you introduce Georgian as „a little-known Indo-European language“. That’s only partly right: it’s little-known, but it is not Indo-European. It and a few other languages of the area belong to Kartvelian, genetically unrelated to other language families.

I don't know Georgian myself and this time I cut corners and didn't double check my memory. That'll larn me. Many thanks, Adam, for the correction.

The John Rylands Research Institute

NATURE: (Peter E. Pormann).

Productive interaction between the arts and sciences is at the heart of the John Rylands Research Institute at the University of Manchester, UK. Founded in April 2013, the institute (which I direct with associate director and head of special collections Rachel Beckett) now has a staff of more than two dozen. It brings together scientists, conservators, curators, digital-imaging specialists and humanities scholars to unravel, reveal and realize the research potential of the University of Manchester Library's special collections. These run from clay tablets to e-mail archives. Highlights include Greek, Coptic and Arabic papyri, medieval Hebrew and Persian manuscripts and early-modern printed books — such as one of the world's finest collections of volumes printed by Renaissance humanist Aldus Manutius. The institute was established in response to the rise of digital humanities, a field that enables the study of books and manuscripts in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago.

An interesting report on the work of the John Rylands Research Institute, on which more here, here, and here. But you need a personal or institutional subscription to Nature to read the whole article.

Imagining late antiquity

MARGINALIA: Pro nobis fabula narratur: Late Antiquity as Art and Fantasy – By Catherine M. Chin

Historians of all periods face this dilemma: how can we engage the past without being in the past? Attending to the somatic and aesthetic responses that we ourselves have to materials from the past, and elaborating those responses in new forms, might allow us to create new modes of experiencing and engaging past worlds in an intellectually rigorous and yet creative manner. This practice can lay open to us the experience we have of simultaneous temporalities, of worlds tenuously coexisting — perfect, but impossible. The appearance of an unexpected late antiquity might be, in this way, much like a forest making its way through a forest.

An interesting literary thought experiment. The essay doesn't deal directly with ancient Judaism, but the approach would certainly be applicable to it.

This is the first of five essays scheduled for Marginalia's new Late Antiquity and the New Humanities Forum. HT Ancient Jew Review Twitter.

Tashlich

YONA SABAR: Hebrew word of the week: Tashlich.

Archaeological looting "on industrial scale" in Syria

THIS BEARS REPEATING. AND REPEATING: Syria archaeological sites looted ‘on industrial scale,’ UN says. Satellite photos show sites pocked with illegal excavations; UNESCO accuses Islamic State group of using stolen artifacts as piggy bank (AFP).

Background here and links

Wikimedia competition in Israel

PHOTOGRAPHY: Wikimedia tells Israelis to photograph heritage sites. For 4th year in a row, Wikimedia Israel is hosting competition in which both amateur and professional photographers can win prizes for pictures of any national heritage site in Israel.. (Jerusalem Post).

Working in partnership with Wikimedia Israel is the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Council for Conservation of Heritage Sites in Israel, the Galitz School for Photography and World Jewish Heritage. Several organized tours to heritage sites around Israel associated with the contest will take place over the next month, with details available on the Wikimedia Israel website in both Hebrew and English.

If you're in Israel, please do go and take lots of photos of archaeological sites and antiquities.

Renovation of the Israel National Library

THE JEWISH JOURNAL: Reimagining Israel’s new national library (Tom Teicholz).

These are but two of the treasures of the library’s collection, which includes more than 5 million items, among them the archives of leading Jewish and Israeli figures such as S.Y. Agnon, Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem. There are some 35,000 rare books, 10,000 Hebrew manuscripts and 74,000 rolls of microfilmed manuscripts (comprising 90 percent of all known Hebrew manuscripts and including photos of segments from the Cairo Genizah).

The Islam and Middle East collection has 2,400 manuscripts in Arabic script and more than 100 manuscripts of the Quran dating back to the ninth century. There is a collection of rare and ancient maps dating back to the 15th century, and 30,000 hours of recorded songs related to Jewish traditions in communities all over the world.

The new National Library will be housed in a gleaming, state-of-the-art building by Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron. The design, simulations of which can be seen on the National Library website (web.nli.org.il), is a modernist wedge atop a glass core, in which the library’s vast holdings can be seen. It also features indoor and outdoor community spaces for cultural events.

There will be a central reading room with a giant oval skylight, which speaks to both the serious scholarship and openness the library hopes to foster. For the library’s invaluable collections, there will be a secure, climate-controlled, underground storehouse.

Finally, for those who can’t visit the library in person, there will be multi-language access to the library’s digitized collections as well as related collections held in institutions all over the world.

I was aware of the INL digitization project, on which more here and here and links, but as far as I can recall this is the first time I've heard about the renovation of the Library itself. It sounds like an exciting project.

Iraq's Christians

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: Iraq's Christians. More than 125,000 of Iraq's Christians have been forced to flee the homeland they have lived in for nearly 2,000 years because of ISIS violence and threats (Lara Logan, CBSN).

On the side of a mountain, overlooking the Nineveh Plains of ancient Mesopotamia, is the Monastery of St. Matthew. It's one of the oldest on earth.
The voices of its monks have echoed here since the fourth century, uttering prayers that have not changed.

Lara Logan: You do the service in Aramaic?

Father Joseph Ibrahim: Yes.

Lara Logan: Which was the language of Jesus.

Father Joseph Ibrahim: Yes.

Lara Logan: Are you among the last people on earth to speak this language?

Father Joseph Ibrahim: We think so because we kept this language through the language of prayers.

Ms. Logan also interviews Nicodemus Sharaf, the Archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Mosul, and Bashar Warda, the archbishop of the Erbil diocese, and others.

Background on the plight of modern Aramaic speakers in the Middle East and on the modern Aramaic-speaking diaspora is here, here, here, and links. Background on the Monastery of St. Matthew is here; on the destruction of a church in Mosul is here; and on the situation in Erbil is here and here.

Is Aramaic dying out?

NOT DEAD YET! Where Do Languages Go to Die? The tale of Aramaic, a language that once ruled the Middle East and now faces extinction (JOHN MCWHORTER, The Atlantic).

If a Middle Eastern man from 2,500 years ago found himself on his home territory in 2015, he would be shocked by the modern innovations, and not just electricity, airplanes, and iPhones. Arabic as an official language in over two dozen countries would also seem as counterintuitive to him as if people had suddenly started keeping aardvarks as pets.

In our time-traveler’s era, after all, Arabic was an also-ran tongue spoken by obscure nomads. The probability that he even spoke it would be low. There were countless other languages in the Middle East in his time that he’d be more likely to know. His idea of a “proper” language would have been Aramaic, which ruled what he knew as the world and served, between 600 and 200 B.C.E., as the lingua franca from Greece and Egypt, across Mesopotamia and Persia, all the way through to India. Yet today the language of Jesus Christ is hardly spoken anywhere, and indeed is likely to be extinct within the next century. Young people learn it ever less. Only about half a million people now speak Aramaic—compared to, for example, the five and a half million people who speak Albanian.

How does a language go from being so big to being on the verge of dying out entirely?

[...]

A nice summary history of the Aramaic language. One point deserves some nuancing:

Here is also why Jesus and other Jews lived in Aramaic, and why goodly portions of the Hebrew Bible are actually in Aramaic. The two languages are part of the same Semitic family, but still, when the Book of Daniel switches into Aramaic for five chapters because Chaldeans are being addressed, it’s rather as if Cervantes had switched into Italian in Don Quixote for the tale of the Florentine nobleman.

The "Chaldeans" (and I could get sidetracked on a long discussion of the development of that word) would have spoken Babylonian Akkadian rather than Aramaic, and the writer of Daniel probably would have been aware of this. No one is quite sure why the middle of the book of Daniel (2:24b through chapter 7) is written in Aramaic (with 1:1-2:4a and chapters 8-12 in Hebrew), but it doesn't seem to have to do with a change in the language of the speakers in the story. True, the Masoretic text may imply this when it says "(in?) Aramaic" in 2:4a, but this could just be an addition to mark the change in language in the book. The only Qumran Daniel manuscript that contains this passage is damaged at just this point and it is unclear if it contained the word "Aramaic." Daniel converses with Babylonians in chapter 1 and chapter 8 as well, with no indication of a language change.

As for the future of Aramaic, I hope it doesn't die out. A vast Aramaic literature survives and there are dispersed Aramaic-speaking communities that are trying to maintain their traditions. We'll see. I wish them the best. Cross-file under Aramaic Watch and Modern Aramaic Watch.

Damage to the Al Aqsa Mosque

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Clashes Damage Al Aqsa Mosque at Jerusalem, and Jordan Warns Israel (DIAA HADID, NYT).

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian youths and the Israeli police clashed again Tuesday at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and King Abdullah II of Jordan issued a rare warning to Israel that the fighting could weaken relations between the two countries.

Concerns are growing that the clashes over Jewish visits to the contested holy site, which began on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, could set off wider violence.

[...]

In Tuesday’s fighting, Palestinian youths, some masked, took up positions in Al Aqsa Mosque, where they had built barricades from wood and iron rods, and from the closets where worshipers leave their shoes before entering the holy site, said Luba Samri, an Israeli police spokeswoman.

Omar Kiswani, the director of Al Aqsa Mosque compound, said centuries-old woodwork, windows and doors had been damaged in the violence. “We are making calls for intervention,” Mr. Kiswani said. “We hope these problems won’t continue. We want quiet, to preserve the lives of the worshipers.”

The youths pelted police officers, who used sound grenades in an effort to quell the demonstrators. A small fire erupted on some of the wooden panels being used as barricades.

I've been watching this story for some time, but haven't posted on it. But damage to one of the ancient monuments on the site brings it into the area of PaleoJudaica's concerns. Not surprisingly, the cause of the damage is disputed:

Ms. Samri said the blaze was ignited by Palestinians who threw firecrackers. But a mosque official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared arrest, said Israeli forces were to blame because they fired stun grenades that burned holes in the mosque’s carpet and probably ignited a wooden panel.

I hope things settle down without any more harm to the site or anyone in the area.

The Book of Giants in art

EXHIBITION IN MINNEAPOLIS: MICHAEL THOMSEN EXPLORES HIS TIES TO THE OCCULT THROUGH ART (SHEILA REGAN, City Pages).

Michael Thomsen's interest in secret societies, mythologies, and the occult stems from his grandfather, an auctioneer who belonged to the Blue Lodge of the Masonic Temple.

"I was really flipped out by that as a kid," Thomsen recalls.

When Warren (Barney) Thomsen, the Master Mason, passed away in the early 1990s, Michael Thomsen was given some of his jewelry and other items from the lodge. In recent years, he's researched the Masons and other secret groups.

"It all goes back to pre-religions," he says. "Religions came out of cults, and cults were secret societies of some sort."

For "Mystery School," Thomsen's solo show at Public Functionary, he not only dives into Masonic imagery, but also takes bits from the Bible, Greek and Roman mythology, and an assortment of esoteric narratives, including angel-descended mutant giants, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and third eyes that see beyond ordinary sight.

[...]

It seems the Enochic giants feature in one of his works:

While he's creating the work, Thomsen admits that he can sometimes get a little spooked by the imagery. "[The Dead Sea Scrolls' Book of Giants piece] kind of gets underneath my skin at certain points," he admits.

Unfortunately, I can't find an image of this piece. Such images of his work that I can find online look interesting.

Past posts relating to the Book of Giants are here and here and links

George Brooke in Australia

LECTURE: Dead sea scrolls come to life with Professor George J. Brooke (IAN KIRKWOOD, Newcastle Herald).

VISITING British academic Professor George J. Brooke unlocked some of the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls to a rapt audience of about 250 at the annual Morpeth Lecture at Christ Church Cathedral on Tuesday night.

Professor Brooke, Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis and Early Judaism at the University of Manchester, spoke for almost an hour on the ‘‘Dead Sea Scrolls and the authority of the Bible’’, before taking questions.

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