Lim on contemporary significance of DSS

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The contemporary significance of the dead sea scrolls (Timothy Lim, OUP Blog).

Many people have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but few know what they are or the significance they have for people today. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it gives us an opportunity to ask what are these scrolls and why they should matter to anyone.

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Kalimi, Fighting Over the Bible

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Fighting Over the Bible
Jewish Interpretation, Sectarianism and Polemic from Temple to Talmud and Beyond

Isaac Kalimi, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Fighting over the Bible explores the bitter conflicts between main stream Jews and their internal and external opponents, especially between particular Jewish groups such as Pharisees, Sadducees, Qumranites, Samaritans, Rabbanites and Karaites, as well as with Christians and Muslims regarding their interpretations of Jewish Scripture. The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament is an important sacred text for all branches of the Abrahamic faiths, but it has more often divided than unified them. This volume explores and exemplifies the roots of these interpretive conflicts and controversies and traces the rich exegetical and theological approaches that grew out of them. Focusing on the Jewish sources from the late Second Temple period through the high Middle-Ages, it illustrates how the study of the Bible filled the vacuum left by the Temple’s destruction, and became the foundation of Jewish life throughout its long conflicted history.

The Roman Imperial Cult

READING ACTS: What is the Roman Imperial Cult?

Past posts in Phil Long's series on the Greco-Roman world are noted here and here. And, again, last year's Divine Sonship Symposium at the University of St. Andrews is very relevant to this post.

CSCO Easter Roundtable

LARRY HURTADO: Easter Roundtable.

A roundtable discussion on Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection led by Professor Helen Bond, with Dr. Sara Parvis and me participating is available now here. Bond commences with queries about how Jesus’ corpse was handled after his crucifixion, whether it was in fact buried or simply discarded, and whether figures such as Joseph of Arimathea may have been involved.

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Cross-file under CSCO Easter Series.

Pilate and the Son of God

THE HOLY LAND PHOTOS BLOG: Another Son of God? Pilate’s Tiberieum at Caesarea Maritima. This inscription is known best because it mentions Pontius Pilate by name. But a closer look makes it even more interesting:

Thus it should be noted that at Caesarea Maritima the imperial cult founded by Herod the Great was still being practiced AND that Pilate as a good governor was also promoting the Imperial Cult—adding a structure for the worship of the ruling Roman emperor, Tiberius (14–37). All of this going on during the time of Jesus’ public ministry (ca. 26–30)!

I can't remember if this inscription came up during the St. Andrews Symposium on Divine Sonship last June, but it certainly would have been of interest. Cross-file under Easter is Coming.

What would Jesus eat?

MEREDITH WARREN: What Would Jesus Eat This Easter? A First Century Menu For The Last Supper (History Matters Blog, University of Sheffield). Cross-file under News You Can Use.

Let me also take this opportunity to congratulate Dr. Warren, whose temporary post at the University of Sheffield was recently made permanent. It's great to have her settled now on this side of the pond. For more on her work, see here and links.

Lim on Resurrection in Judaism

CSCO EASTER SERIES: Resurrection in Judaism (Video; Professor Timothy Lim).

Review of Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud (Yale UP, 2017)

BOOK REVIEW: Rabbi Akiva Made the Jews Who They Are Today, Says Biographer (David Holzel, The Jewish Exponent).

What we think of as Judaism today — from the religion practiced by the haredi Orthodox in contemporary B’nai Brak, Israel, to the lack of religion of secular Jews — was created by the rabbis in the centuries following the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the year 70. If there was a quintessential rabbi in the group, said [Barry] Holtz, a professor of education at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, that man was Akiva.

“He was the smartest one in the room,” he said.

Holtz has written what he calls an “imagined biography” of Akiva, who lived in the first and second centuries CE.

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Four entered the orchard. While one looked and died, another looked and was stricken, a third looked and cut down the shoots, only Rabbi Akiva “went up in peace and came down in peace.”

This enigmatic story became part of the foundation of the Jewish mystical tradition. In his exploration of the “Orchard Story” or the “Pardes Story,” Holtz looks at what the four were doing, and why only Akiva seems to have returned unscathed.

“Akiva,” Holtz writes, “becomes the ultimate model of the Jewish mystic — gaining mystical knowledge and power and seeing the face of the divine.”

He became the model of the Jewish martyr as well, being executed by the Romans for violating a ban on teaching and learning Torah, a policy whose actuality Holtz called “murky.”

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The book was noted as forthcoming here. For more on the Story of the Four Who Entered Paradise, see here and links.

Marx-Wolf, Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority

IN THE MAIL:

Heidi Marx-Wolf, Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority: Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century C.E. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2106)

A review copy kindly sent to me by the publisher. I will be reviewing the book in the Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism (MEGA) Section at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston in November of this year.

I noted the publication of the book last year here.

The site of Jesus' crucifixion?

THE HOLY LAND PHOTOS BLOG: Site of Crucifixion of Jesus?

Probably the most sacred place in the whole of Christendom is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (aka Church of the Resurrection) in the Old City of Jerusalem. Since the first half of the fourth century a church has encased both the places of crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

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Since today is Good Friday. As generally with such things, this place enshrines a tradition about the site where Jesus was crucified. It's a comparatively old tradition, but one warranting some skepticism. Whether or not there was a genuine memory of the actual site of the event, inevitably someone would have come up with one.

For the question of the site of Jesus' burial, see here and links.

Ancient economics

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Theorizing “the Ancient Economy”: Three Paradigms (Thomas R. Blanton IV).

It would seem that the study of “the ancient economy” is in a period of ferment. Three new SBL program units have been added since 2004 that treat aspects of the ancient economy: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy, Economics in the Biblical World, and Poverty in the Biblical World. In the field of classical studies, the 2008 publication of The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World has effectively ushered in a post-Finleyan era in the study of Greco-Roman economies by incorporating methods developed in the field of New Institutional Economics. In what follows, we examine representative samples of three emergent methodological trends: (1) the turn toward New Institutional Economics in studies of Greece and Rome; (2) Roland Boer’s model of the economy of ancient Israel; and (3) K. C. Hanson and Douglas Oakman’s social-scientific approach in New Testament studies. These models differ significantly from each other and are drawn from what are often treated as three distinct fields: classics, Hebrew Bible, and New Testament studies. It is precisely the differences between the models that are most illuminating, however, and juxtaposing them quickly reveals the emphases—and omissions—that are specific to and that characterize each model.

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Proto-Siniatic "Hebrew" again

THE ASOR BLOG: Hebrew as the Language behind the World’s First Alphabet? (Douglas Petrovich).

To be honest, I am surprised that ASOR published this essay. Dr. Petrovich's theory has never been published in a peer-review venue and it has nevertheless been refuted informally in detail by specialists in Northwest Semitics and Egyptology. The very statement that the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were written in "Hebrew" doesn't make any sense to specialists. There was no "Hebrew" in the early second millennium BCE. There were various dialects of Northwest Semitic, some of which would someday develop into Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, Moabite, etc.

Past PaleoJudaica posts on Douglas Petrovich's claims are here, here, here, and here.

Passover priestly blessing at Western Wall

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Watch: Priestly blessing at Western Wall. Thousands attend special annual Passover 'Birkat Kohanim' service at Western Wall in Jerusalem (Arutz Sheva).

Thousands flocked to the Western Wall Plaza in the Old City of Jerusalem Thursday morning for a special holiday service of the Priestly Blessing (Birkat Hakohanim) for the Passover festival.

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With video. For biblical and epigraphic background on the priestly blessing, see last year's post here and last year's post on the Sukkot priestly blessing here.

Lawrence Frizzell honored

CONGRATULATIONS TO FATHER FRIZZELL: Father Lawrence Frizzell, Luna Kaufman, Pearl Randall Lehrhoff and Hattie Segal honored at 24th Evening of Roses on May 7; Special Appearance by Scholar Amy-Jill Levine (Laurie Pine, Seton Hall University).

Father Lawrence E. Frizzell will be honored for a lifetime of work and scholarship, receiving the first ever Sister Rose Thering Fund Award in Jewish Christian Understanding on Sunday, May 7, at the 24th annual Evening of Roses fundraiser. Father Frizzell is Director and Associate Professor of the Jewish-Christian Studies Graduate Program in the Department of Religion.

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Father Frizzell, D.Phil. (Oxford University), S.S.L. (Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome), S.T.L. (University of Ottawa) is a priest of the Edmonton Archdiocese in Alberta, Canada. He came to Seton Hall University in 1974 to help found the master's program, which in 1979 became the Department of Jewish-Christian Studies. He was also Associate Director of the Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies, founded in 1953 by Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher. Since 1993, he has served as director of this Institute, which promotes understanding of the Christian roots in the Jewish matrix of the Second Temple period and, through lectures and publications, strives to increase understanding and amity between Jewish and Christian communities.

Principles of Jewish-Christian dialogue may be applied to other communities seeking justice, peace and greater mutual understanding. For decades Father Frizzell has developed a personal interest in peace studies and, in a limited way, an appreciation of the cultures of East and South-East Asia. His doctoral dissertation was on the theology of the community that produced the Dead Sea (Qumran) Scrolls. Besides publications in biblical and Jewish studies, he wrote entries for the World Encyclopedia of Peace (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1986, revised 1999) and the Dictionary of Christian-Jewish Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

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And congratulations also to the three trustees who are being honored.

A Caiaphas-family ossuary

THE HOLY LAND PHOTOS BLOG: Bone Box of Caiaphas the High Priest.

Caiaphas, the High Priest, is mentioned 9 times in the Gospels and is one of those before whom Jesus appeared before being condemned to death by Pilate (Matthew 26; John 18). A few years ago a “bone box” (ossuary) was found, along with 11 others, in a Second Temple tomb located two miles south of Jerusalem on a hill that today is called “the hill of Evil Counsel” (John 11:49–50). On it the name “Joseph “son” of Caiaphas” was inscribed!

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I noted the discovery of this ossuary back in 2008 here. Also, in 2011, the IAA announced the recovery (from looters) of an ossuary that was inscribed "Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas Priest of Ma'aziah from Beth ’Imri.’" (The punctuation is uncertain.) The IAA has judged it to be genuine. More on that ossuary is here and links. Cross-file under Easter is Coming.

Seminar on Greco-Roman apocalyptic

AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY: Craven Seminar: 'Eschatology and Apocalypse in Graeco-Roman literature.'

Craven Seminar, 1-3 June 2017 ‘Eschatology and Apocalypse in Graeco-Roman literature’ G.21 Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge

Unlike other ancient traditions, the literature of Greece and Rome does not develop a mythology of the End of Days. Its few philosophical texts that explicitly address the question of whether the world will end, and the place of humans in such scenarios, are, however, only one part of the story of eschatological thinking in antiquity. Images of our collective future, like images of our past, are motivated by constructions of the present, and may be spun different ways to make different points, with explicit or implied consequences for our current place in the world. Various rhetorical functions of adopting an 'apocalyptic' mode, such as consolation for death, subversion of tyrannical powers, revelation of 'scientific' truths, or satire of religious clichés, emerge through framing and form as well as content. They contribute not so much to a thesis as to a discourse.

This conference aims to explore such a discourse in Graeco-Roman literary culture, focusing on ancient texts in which a revelation of a collective destiny plays a significant role. We shall consider both 'cosmic revelations' and 'looking to the end of history' as aspects of apocalyptic eschatology in material from the Greek and Roman worlds; through highlighting such rhetoric, we aim to shed fresh light on a variety of ancient authors, from Aeschylus and Plato to Lucretius and Seneca; we will also consider Jewish pseudepigraphical texts and early Christian expositions which thrive on tensions between the working out of divine plans already made and semi-revealed to mortals, and the irruption of the heavenly into the earthly world.

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Follow the link for further particulars and a provisional schedule of papers. The relevance of the topic for anyone interested in Jewish and Christian apocalypses and apocalyptic eschatology is obvious.

HT Paul Middleton on the BNTC List.

So the demons don't know Aramaic either?

PHILOLOGOS: Why the Beginning of the Haggadah Is in Aramaic. It’s because of demons (Mosaic Magazine).

What, then, is the reason for the Aramaic of the ha laḥma anya? The only one given by Jewish tradition that I know of first appears in the 13th-century Maḥzor Vitry, an all-year-’round prayer book with extensive commentary attributed to the French rabbi Simḥah ben Shmuel of Vitry, a student of Rashi. Writing about the Haggadah’s opening lines, he says:

Aramaic was ordained because were one to say in Hebrew “Let whoever is hungry come and eat,” it would be as though also inviting the evil spirits. . . . But the evil spirits do not know Aramaic.

We do not welcome strangers to our seder in Hebrew, in other words, because the world’s demonic legions, who understand Hebrew and Hebrew alone, might then decide to crash the party. What a charming but strange notion! Where does it come from?

It seems to be an inference based on the Talmud's statement that angels don't know Aramaic. Cross-file under Passover.

By the way, it is good to see Philologos active again. He was last noted by PaleoJudaica back in 2014. It seems he has moved from The Forward to Mosaic Magazine, which is news to me.

A rolling stone and a crucified skeleton

EASTER IS COMING: At the Holy Land Photos Blog, Carl Rasmussen is posting lots of Easter-related photos. Here are a couple of his recent posts:

The Best Rolling Stone Tomb in Israel — Khirbet Midras

Crucified Man from Jerusalem

It is well–known from literature that the Romans crucified rebels and criminals. In 1968, an ossuary (bone box; see below) was found, among others, in a tomb in north Jerusalem in which were the bones of a 28 year old man and those of a child.

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Past posts on the crucified man skeleton and related matters are collected here (cf. here).

More on Greco-Roman Religion

READING ACTS: Characteristics of Greco-Roman Religions.

Past posts in Phil Long's series on the Second Temple Period are noted here and links. But we seem now to have moved on to the Greco-Roman world, which is still interesting for ancient Judaism.

At the Chester Beatty Library

EXHIBITION: Manuscripts shed light on early days of Christianity (, Belfast Telegraph).

Some of the oldest surviving biblical manuscripts are on display in Dublin.

The texts, which caused a global sensation in 1931 when they were bought by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, contain both Old and New Testament books and date from 200 to 400AD.

And as Easter approaches, the library named in the collector's honour is showing St Paul's Letter To The Corinthians, which recounts how Jesus Christ died, was buried and rose again.

Jill Unkel, curator of the Western Collection at the Chester Beatty Library, said: "It's a very, very significant collection.

"It's the earliest collection of Pauline epistles on book. There are surviving fragments dated earlier but it's the earliest known collection.

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And lest we neglect the Septuagint:

Among them are The Book Of Numbers, which was the oldest surviving book of the Bible until the Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed.

I'm skeptical of this claim, but I would have to see the details.

As I have mentioned before, I am very much looking forward to visiting the Chester Beatty Library in September during BNTC 2017. Background on the Chester Beatty Library is here and links.