Gittin (ed.), The Ancient Pottery of Israel and Its Neighbors

NEW BOOK FROM THE ISRAEL EXPLORATION SOCIETY:

We are very pleased to announce the publication of the first two volumes of the long-awaited ANCIENT POTTERY OF ISRAEL AND ITS NEIGHBORS FROM THE IRON AGE THROUGH THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD

Seymour Gitin, Editor

Published by:

Israel Exploration SocietyW.F.

Albright Institute of Archaeological Research

Israel Antiquities AuthorityAmerican Schools of Oriental Research

Follow the link for a PhD file with book description and order form.

HT A.D. Riddle at the Bible and Interpretation Blog: New Reference Work for Pottery from the Holy Land.

Fishbane, Jewish Hermeneutical Theology

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Michael Fishbane: Jewish Hermeneutical Theology

Edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Arizona State University and Aaron W. Hughes, University of Rochester. With an Introduction by Sam Berrin Shonkoff, University of Chicago Divinity School.
Michael Fishbane is Nathan Cummings Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Trained in biblical studies and the ancient Near East at Brandeis University, he has written on rabbinic interpretation, medieval Jewish philosophy and mysticism, Hasidism, modern Jewish philosophy, and Hebrew poetry. His earlier groundbreaking historical work has provided the foundation for his more recent constructive hermeneutic theology. Among his numerous books are the award-winning Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (1985) and Kiss of God (1994), Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (2003), and Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology (2008). He is, in addition, an elected member of the American Academy of Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The TOC of the volume is as follows:

The Contributors
Editors' Introduction to the Series
Michael Fishbane: An Intellectual Portrait, Sam Berrin Shonkoff
Modern Jewish Theology and Traditional Hermeneutics, Michael Fishbane
Midrash and the Nature of Scripture, Michael Fishbane
Five Stages of Jewish Myth and Mythmaking, Michael Fishbane
The Bible in the Jewish Mystical Tradition, Michael Fishbane
A Jewish Hermeneutical Theology, Michael Fishbane
Biblical Hermeneutics and Philosophical Theology, Michael Fishbane
Interview with Michael Fishbane, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson
Select Bibliography

Fiensy and Strange (eds), Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods

NEW BOOK FROM FORTRESS PRESS:

Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods: Two-Volume Set
by David A. Fiensy (Author, Editor), James Riley Strange (Editor)

ISBN-13: 978-1506405124
ISBN-10: 1506405126

Paperback
$95.98

In this two-volume set, David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange have invited an international cast of experts to provide a comprehensive analysis of past and current research on Galilee and up-to-date commentary regarding ongoing site excavations. The articles are filled with supporting photographs, maps, and diagrams to help both experts and nonexperts visualize this important period in the history of Galilee and make it come to life. Each volume contains extensive bibliographies at the end of chapters for further study and reading.

The two volumes consolidate a great deal of information that has been brought to light in various journals, field reports, and essays over the past thirty years. The editors have intentionally invited the voices of Christian and Jewish archaeologists, historians, biblical scholars, and social-science interpreters to present their varied findings and opinions. The resulting wealth of information in one single source provides rich opportunities for conversation and for further research by students and scholars of all levels.

Crawford and Wassen (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library

Edited by Sidnie White Crawford, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Cecilia Wassen, Uppsala University
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Concept of a Library presents twelve articles by renowned experts in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran studies. These articles explore from various angles the question of whether or not the collection of manuscripts found in the eleven caves in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran can be characterized as a “library,” and, if so, what the relation of that library is to the ruins of Qumran and the group of Jews that inhabited them. The essays fall into the following categories: the collection as a whole, subcollections within the overall corpus, and the implications of identifying the Qumran collection as a library.

Some potentially related past posts on ancient libraries are here and here and links.

Lieu, Neither Jew Nor Greek

NEW BOOK FROM T&T CLARK/BLOOMSBURY:: Neither Jew Nor Greek by Judith Lieu.

A ground-breaking study in the formation of early Christian identity, by one of the world's leading scholars. In Neither Jew Nor Greek, Judith Lieu explores the formation and shaping of early Christian identity within Judaism and within the wider Graeco-Roman world in the period before 200 C.E.

[...]

Antiquities dealer charged with looting thousands of coins

ARREST: Cops bust antiquities dealer with over 3,000 ancient coins. Suspect admits to illegal sale and export of artifacts he illicitly collected in fields near Beit She’an (Ilan Ben Zion, Times of Israel).

Police and Israel Antiquities Authority agents on Tuesday arrested an art dealer from northern Israel after finding him with over 3,000 illegally obtained ancient coins — valued in the tens of thousands of dollars.

The suspect, a resident of Kibbutz Beit Hashita and a licensed antiquities dealer, was charged with attempting to sell the objects he illegally acquired to buyers abroad, and to do so without an export permit. The IAA said in a statement on Thursday that investigators found over 3,000 coins — some over 2,000 years old — and lead and ceramic objects in the man’s home.

[...]

Most of the coins in the man’s collection dated from the Byzantine period, but the trove included rarer items from the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome — the Bar Kochba Revolt of 132-135 CE — and Roman coins celebrating the crushing of the Jewish Revolt in 70 CE bearing the words “Judaea Capta” — Judea Conquered. Other coins were from the later Muslim era.

[...]

Women and Torah study in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Talmud’s Deep Misogyny: No Women Allowed. There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Talmudic rabbis think women are dangerous sex fiends who should avoid Torah study—and as a consequence prescribe humiliating guilty-until-proven-innocent public shaming ceremonies.

Should women study Torah? Today, most Jews would answer that question with a resounding yes—and not only Reform and Conservative Jews. Even Chabad, on the evidence of its website TheJewishWoman.org, sees the rise in women’s Torah study as an unambiguously good thing, evidence of “women’s deep desire to achieve spiritual fulfillment through talmud Torah.” (The same source offers a reassurance that a woman’s desire to study Torah is not necessarily a product of “contentious motives,” such as feminism.) But ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, Jews still exclude women from Torah study, and in this week’s Daf Yomi reading, we saw that the rabbis themselves were divided on the issue. The basic rule is that the mitzvah of Torah study, like many mitzvot, is not binding on women the way it is on men; when women study Torah, they are not fulfilling a commandment but doing so voluntarily.

[...]

Again and again and again: the ancients lived in a very different world from ours. One that by the standards of our time was often brutal and degrading.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links. The first post at this link also includes some additional information about the use of the Sota (Sotah) ritual in the post-Temple period.

Sanders, Comparing Judaism and Christianity

FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM FORTRESS PRESS:

Comparing Judaism and Christianity: Common Judaism, Paul, and the Inner and the Outer in Ancient Religion

Author: E. P. Sanders

Description
Few scholars have so shaped the contemporary debate on the relation of early Christianity to early Judaism as E. P. Sanders, and no one has produced a clearer or more distinctive vision of that relationship as it was expressed in the figures of Jesus of Nazareth and Paul the apostle.

Gathered for the first time within one cover, here Sanders presents formative essays that show the structure of his approach and the insights it produces into Paul's relationship to Judaism and the Jewish law. Sanders addresses matters of definition ("common Judaism," "covenantal nomism"), diversity (the Judaism of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Diaspora), and key exegetical and historical questions relative to Jesus, Paul, and Christian origins in relationship to early Judaism.

These essays show a leading scholar at his most erudite as he carries forward and elaborates many of the insights that have become touchstones in New Testament interpretation.

Paperback
ISBN: 9781506406077
Price: $39.00
Ebook
ISBN: 9781506406084
Release date: March 1, 2016
Pages: 526
Width: 6
Height: 9

Quotation from Isaiah found in ancient mosaic in Turkey

EXCAVATION: Mosaic with Bible inscription found in Adana (Daily Sabah).

A 120-square-meter mosaic with a quotation from the Bible in Greek has been recently found in Turkey's Adana province. It reads, ‘The wolf and the lamb will feed together, the lion will eat straw like the ox and dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy on my holy mountain, says the Lord'

A new mosaic inscribed with quotes from the Bible has been discovered in the southern city of Adana during excavations jointly undertaken by the Culture and Tourism Ministry's Cultural Heritage Department and the Provincial Directorate of Museums. The 120-square-meter mosaic was found on private property located in the Karlık neighborhood of Adana's Sarıçam district. According to archaeologists, the Eastern Roman-era mosaic dates back to between the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.

[...]

As the article notes, the quotation is from Isaiah 65:25. There is no indication of what the building that housed the mosaic was used for or what its cultural context was.

Brill's Handbook of Jewish Languages

NEW BOOK: Brill Publishes Handbook of Jewish Languages.

Publishing
2015, November 06
Leiden (NL) / Boston (MA) – 6 November 2015

Brill, the international scholarly publisher, has published an exciting new reference work for the study of Jewish Languages, the Handbook of Jewish Languages.

The Handbook of Jewish Languages is an introduction to the many languages used by Jews throughout history, including Yiddish, Judezmo (Ladino), and Jewish varieties of Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Berber, English, French, Georgian, Greek, Hungarian, Iranian, Italian, Latin American Spanish, Malayalam, Occitan (Provençal), Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Syriac, Turkic (Karaim and Krymchak), Turkish, and more. Chapters include historical and linguistic descriptions of each language, an overview of primary and secondary literature, and comprehensive bibliographies to aid further research. Many chapters also contain sample texts and images.

This book is an unparalleled resource for anyone interested in Jewish languages, and will also be very useful for historical linguists, dialectologists, and scholars and students of minority or endangered languages.

[...]

Thanksgiving

HAPPY AMERICAN THANKSGIVING to all those celebrating!

What is Coptic?

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: What Is Coptic and Who Were the Copts in Ancient Egypt? A short history of ancient Egyptian language (Megan Sauter). This essay introduces a BAR article by Leo Depuyt which is behind the subscription wall, but the essay is informative in itself.

Cross-file under "Coptic Watch" and "Asking The Important Questions."

The future of archaeology

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: The Future Of Archaeology Is Not Digging Anything Up. The 2016 TED Prize winner is reinventing how we discover—and preserve—the past (Jessica Leber, Fast Company).

Most archaeologists can be happy to uncover a small handful of important ancient sites in their careers. Sarah Parcak, a young professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has already pinpointed thousands, making her among the most productive archaeologist working today.

How is this possible? She hunts for evidence of buried civilizations from the vantage of space. Using satellite imagery, she can see traces of underground artifacts that no one on Earth could ever spot without a shovel. In Egypt alone, where there are 138 known pyramids, she’s identified 17 potential new ones, as well as 1,000 tombs and 3,100 unknown settlements. All of this won her this year’s TED Prize, a $1 million award announced last week, along with countless comparisons to Indiana Jones.

[...]

An example of practical application of the new technologies:

Once potential sites are identified, of course, they must be verified by humans on the ground—so most of her potential sites have yet to be explored. As a result, she collaborates with many archaeologist all over the world. She describes one recent discovery made in Tunisia: Next to a Roman-era fort from 2,000 years ago, imagery showed something unusual was nearby. Upon further investigation, they encountered dense concentrations of slag—the evidence of burning.

"What we found was a massive pottery production center," she says. The site was actually a settled center of trade, not just another of the typical forts that would have defended the ancient road in Roman times.

And this prediction:

Parcak sees a trend where the digging—can expose safely buried antiquities to looting and other dangerous becomes less necessary. "Technology is improving. At what point can we zoom in from space and see a tiny pot shard from a site? I think we’ll be there in 10 years," she says.

In 20 or 30 years, she imagines archaeologists may stop excavating entirely and send tiny robots to explore underground—-leaving the treasures undisturbed for the benefit of future generations.

What I've been saying. Non-invasive and non-destructive technologies are the way of the future. And the future is coming soon.

More on Professor Parcak's work is here.

On the history of parchment

(ANCIENT) TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Written on Beasts (Bruce Holsinger, NYR Daily).

Parchment, a medium that came into widespread use beginning in late antiquity, has for many centuries held a special place in the cultural imagination. “When you want to have the love of whatever woman you wish,” advises a medieval necromancer’s manual, “first you must have a totally white dove and parchment made from a female dog that is in heat.” In the Talmud parchment comes in for extended discussion, much of it devoted to the ritual treatment of animal skins. Tractate Shabbath, the Talmudic book that deals with rules for the Sabbath, contains rigorous rabbinical debates over the suitability of certain kinds of membranes for sacred use: the perforated skins of birds, the split hides of cows and sheep. “Can teffilin be written on the skin of a clean fish?” a rabbi asks at one point. No, answers another—but only because of the smell.

The ancient Jewish community at Djerba

HISTORY: Ancient Jewish community endures on Tunisian isle (Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff).

The Jewish community on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba traces its roots back to the Babylonian exile of 586 B.C.E., and is one of the few communities of its kind to have survived the turmoil around the creation of Israel.

Background here and here.

Spiró, Captivity

REVIEW OF A NEWLY TRANSLATED NOVEL: Zelig in Jerusalem. Uri dines with Pontius Pilate and is thrown into a cell with a certain Galilean rabble-rouser (WSJ).

Hungarian novelist György Spiró’s monumental “Captivity” (Restless Books, 860 pages, $29.99) begins in Rome’s Jewish enclave during the reign of Tiberius (A.D. 14-37). This oversized book has an undersized hero: Gaius “Uri” Theodorus, a moody, reedy 19-year-old dreamer. His prospects seem inauspicious at best until his father pulls some strings to have him included in a delegation bringing tithes to Jerusalem in time for the Passover celebration.

What follows is a case of mistaken identity. His fellow delegates, baffled by the presence of such an unimpressive figure, assume Uri is an agent and courier for Agrippa, the free-spending friend of Tiberius who is openly angling to be named King of Judaea. (Known to history as Herod Agrippa, he really did gain control of the kingdom in A.D. 41.) “Captivity” takes us from Rome to Jerusalem, Alexandria and back again during an especially fragile and eventful period of the Pax Romana.

[...]

Home

I'M BACK IN ST. ANDREWS. More tomorrow.

Abegg et al., The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance, vol. 2

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance, Volume 2

The Non-Qumran Documents and Texts

Martin G. Abegg, Jr. , James E. Bowley and Edward M. Cook in consultation with Emanuel Tov

The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance, Volume 2, presents for the first time an index to the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek text of the non-biblical, non-Qumran Judaean Desert documents in one publication. The contents of this volume are defined by E. Tov’s Revised Lists (Brill, 2010). In the main the Concordance serves as an index for volumes II and III of the Judean Desert Studies (JDS), volumes II, XXVII, XXVIII, and XXXVIII of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD), and volumes I, II, and VI of Masada: The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963-1965, Final Reports.

Although this is volume 2, volumes 1 and 3 are already long since published:

The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance, Volume 3 (2 vols) TThe Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert (2009)

The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance, Volume 1 (2 vols) The Non-Biblical Texts from Qumran (2003)

Review of Jacobson, The Lost Codex

BOOK REVIEW (NOVEL): ‘The Lost Codex’ (Elise Cooper, Military Press).

“The Lost Codex” by Alan Jacobson blends realism with a riveting story. Besides a thriller, readers will gain an understanding of the geo-political climate and the historical significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Anyone familiar with Jacobson’s characters will enjoy the return of the Operations Support Intelligence Group: FBI profiler Karen Vail, Special Forces veteran Hector DeSantos, and Aaron Uziel, the FBI Joint Terrorism Chief.

As with the real world, the government leaders appear weak, hesitant, and inept. Set in Washington DC, New York, Paris, England, and Israel, the Operations Support Intelligence Group must uncover and thwart an international terrorist plot. Their mission is to find the stolen Dead Sea documents and those responsible for unleashing coordinated and unprecedented attacks on US soil.

[...]

That's an ambitious mission.

Weiss, Cutting the Shoots

NEW BOOK FROM MAGNES PRESS:

Cutting the Shoots

The Worship of the Shekhinah in the World of Early Kabbalistic Literature

By Tzahi Weiss

Publisher: The Hebrew University Magnes Press
Categories: Jewish Mysticism, Jewish History, Jewish Studies, Religions
Publish date: October 2015
Language: Hebrew
Danacode: 45-141028
ISBN: 978-965-493-838-9
Cover: Paperback
Pages: 170
Weight: 400 gr.

The feminine divine presence, the Shekhinah, has received detailed description in the Kabbalistic literature from the time of its inception at the end of the 12th century. The present book pursues the tracks of the belief in the Shekhinah and demonstrates that the main motive of the Kabbalists was not to disseminate the belief in Her but rather to restrain and to supervise this belief which had evolved outside the Kabbalists’ sphere or in its margins.