Britain’s Sephardi leader Rabbi Joseph Dweck has revealed he chatted to the Archbishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Aramaic — the language spoken by Jesus — as they were waiting for the coronation to begin.You never know when your Aramaic will come in handy.
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This essay is a re-run, which I linked to a few years ago, but it's worth mentioning again. For more on the Larsa tablet, see here and here.
You will recall the fake dated inscription of Darius I. This museum has a real one.
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(JNS) A lead tablet found at a site where it is believed the Israelite leader Joshua built an altar, contains the oldest Hebrew text ever found in the Land of Israel as well as the name of God, an academic article published Friday concludes.This popular article will give you the background from the last year or so.[...]
The academic article has been published in a journal called Heritage Science, which I have not heard of before. It is an open-access, peer-review journal with publications paid for by author subvention (which is not unusual for open-access publishing). Its focus is material science in relation to cultural artifacts (my paraphrase). The article:
“You are Cursed by the God YHW:” an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal (Scott Stripling, Gershon Galil, Ivana Kumpova, Jaroslav Valach, Pieter Gert van der Veen & Daniel Vavrik, Heritage Science volume 11, Article number: 105 [2023])The main area of interest is the supposedly-inscribed inner surface, "Inner B." Due to deformations in the shape of the object, it was not possible to produce a single image of that surface. Instead, the researchers took scans of 46 "planar tomographic slices" of it. There are thus images of many individual supposed letters and a drawing of the whole surface.Abstract
In December 2019, an expedition on Mt. Ebal to examine the discarded material from Adam Zertal’s 1982–1989 excavation yielded a small, folded lead tablet. The east dump pile, from which the object emerged, contained the discarded matrix from two structures that he interpreted as altars dated to the Late Bronze Age II and Iron Age I. The earlier and smaller round altar lay underneath the geometric center of the later and larger rectangular altar. The tablet could not be opened without damaging it. A team of scientists performed X-ray tomographic measurements with different scanning parameters. The tomographically reconstructed data were subjected to advanced processing to reveal the hidden text. Epigraphic analysis of the tomographic data revealed a formulaic curse written in a proto-alphabetic script likely dating to Late Bronze Age II. The inscription falls within the literary genre of Chiastic Parallelism and predates any previously known Hebrew inscription in Israel by at least 200 years.
When I look at the photos, I sometimes think I can see the "letters," sometimes not. In the best-case scenario, the bits add up to a reconstructed inscription. In the worst case, natural irregularities in the surface are providing a Rorschach test of the epigraphic imagination of the observer. In other words, there are no letters. I honestly don't know which or where in between.
It seems like it would help to see the 46 slices assembled into a single image, but I don't know how possible that is. But looking at individual letter images and trying to place them on the drawing makes it hard to judge whether there is a real inscription there. It doesn't help that the lines of the supposed inscription go right to left, left to right, up to down, down to up, and "boustrophedon" (back and forth in alternate lines, "ox plow" direction).
One point that bothers me a lot is the spelling of "cursed," ארור, = 'rwr = (vocalized) 'arȗr. The spelling I would expect in this period is ארר, 'rr. The vav/w should not be there. Internal long vowels were not spelled out in the Canaanite languages until many centuries later. They appear late in the First Temple period sporadically and only become normal after the Babylonian Exile. I think they may appear earlier in Aramaic, but not that much earlier. I don't think the article addresses this problem adequately.
Anyway, that's my first impression as a rusty epigrapher who is not an expert in the script period in question. I am keeping an open mind at present. I look forward to hearing the judgment of experts like Christopher Rollston.
Meanwhile, I congratulate the authors for getting the first peer-review publication out. Now the conversation can start.
For PaleoJudaica posts on the Mount Ebal tablet, start here and follow the links.
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Hannah M. Cotton, Ofer Pogorelsky, Roman rule and Jewish life: collected papers. Studia Judaica, 89. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2022. Pp. xxxii, 607. ISBN 9783110191448I noted the publication of the book here.Review by
Shoni Lavie-Driver, Jesus College, Cambridge. sbl31@cam.ac.uk... Overall, this book contains something to appeal to scholars of many different interests—the relationship everyday subjects of the Roman Empire had to the imperial system and its treatment of them; the relationship between culture, language and empire; the legal and administrative functioning of the empire; the evolution of Jewish law; and the history of Roman Judaea and Nabataea-Arabia specifically. None of the papers have been superseded, but some have arguably received less attention than is due. ...
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The debate over how, if at all, scholars should handle unprovenanced artifacts is not going away. There are signs that it is just getting going.
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(May 9, 2023 / JNS) The Israeli Cabinet approved a nearly $9 million budget on Sunday for the restoration and development of Sebastia, a major archaeological site that served as the capital of the Kingdom of Israel nearly three millennia ago.[...]
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Two visitors and two security guards were killed in a shooting near the ancient El Ghriba Synagogue (also known as the Djerba Synagogue,) in the city of Djerba in Tunisia on Tuesday. It is as of yet unclear if the visitors were worshipers taking part in a pilgrimage at the synagogue.Reports are still coming in. They currently conflict on how many people were killed and wounded. The most recent information I can find:[...]
At least three killed in attack near synagogue in Tunisia (By Eyad Kourdi and Hande Atay Alam, CNN)
Tunisia: Five people shot dead near synagogue. Israel said one of the two civilians killed in the attack near Ghriba synagogue held Israeli citizenship (Middle East Eye)
The reports agree that the shooter (who was killed by police) was a naval installation security guard.
There have been longstanding concerns about terrorism in Tunisia, including at Djerba in connection with Lag B'Omer. That seems likely here, but it's too early to be sure yet what happened.
For the Ghriba Synagogue at Djerba and the annual pilgrimage associated with it, see here and links.
UPDATE (11 May): More information here:
Djerba Tunisia: Worshippers killed near Africa's oldest synagogue (BBC News)
Tunisia’s Jewish pilgrimage and Tuesday’s shooting, explained (Ben Sales, JTA)
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My 2022 Lag B'Omer post is here with links.
For the biblical and rabbinic background of the holiday, see here and here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Radiocarbon dating, or carbon-14 dating, is a scientific method that can accurately determine the age of organic materials as old as approximately 60,000 years. First developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby, the technique is based on the decay of the carbon-14 isotope. Radiocarbon dating has been used for historical studies and atmospheric science, and triggered archaeology’s “radiocarbon revolution.”This is a good, reader-friendly introduction to radiocarbon dating. Not surprisingly, the Dead Sea Scrolls are mentioned.[...]
For PaleoJudaica posts on C-14 dating, start here (cf. here) and follow the links.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
1 MaccabeesCame out this time last year, but I've only just noticed it.
A New Translation with Introduction and Commentaryby Daniel R. Schwartz
Series: The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries
504 Pages, 6.12 x 9.25 in, 2 b-w illus.
Hardcover
9780300159936
Published: Tuesday, 26 Apr 2022
$85.00A new translation and commentary on I Maccabees that offers a fresh interpretation of the author’s values and purpose
First Maccabees, composed in the second century BCE, chronicles four decades of clashes between Hellenistic Syria and Judea, from Antiochus Epiphanes’s ascent to the throne in 175 BCE to the Hasmoneans’ establishment of an independent Judean state, ruled by Simon and his sons.
In this volume, Daniel R. Schwartz provides a new translation of the Greek text and analyzes its historical significance. In dialogue with contemporary scholarship, the introduction surveys the work’s themes, sources, and transmission, while the commentary addresses textual details and issues of historical reconstruction, often devoting special attention to the lost Hebrew original and its associations. Schwartz demonstrates that 1 Maccabees, despite its Hebraic biblical style and its survival within the Christian canon, deviates from biblical and Judaic works by marginalizing God, evincing scorn for martyrs, and ascribing to human power and valor crucial historical roles. This all fits its mandate: justification of the Hasmonean dynasty, especially the Simonides.
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After stops in London, Tel Aviv and other locales, the world’s oldest nearly complete Hebrew Bible will be on view in New York City beginning on Sunday.For background on the Codex Sassoon, the Sassoon family and their antiquarian collections, and the upcoming sale, see here and links.Known as the Codex Sassoon, the book — which was written by a single Jewish scribe on 400 pages of parchment about 1,100 years ago — will be on view at Sotheby’s auction house (1334 York Ave.) by appointment through Tuesday, May 16. The following day, it will be sold at auction and is estimated to fetch between $30 million to $50 million — possibly making it the most expensive book or document ever sold.
[...]
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Warrior, King, Servant, SaviorMessianism in the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Texts
Torleif ElgvinHARDCOVER; Published: 8/4/2022
ISBN: 978-0-8028-7818-2
Price: $ 44.99
383 Pages
Trim Size, in inches: 6 x 9DESCRIPTION
An exegetical and diachronic survey of messianic texts from the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition up through the first millennium CE.
Jewish messianism can be traced back to the emerging Kingdom of Judah in the tenth century BCE, when it was represented by the Davidic tradition and the promise of a future heir to David’s throne. From that point, it remained an important facet of Israelite faith, as evidenced by its frequent recurrence in the Hebrew Bible and other early Jewish texts. In preexilic texts, the expectation is for an earthly king—a son of David with certain ethical qualities—whereas from the exile onward there is a transition to a pluriform messianism, often with utopic traits.
Warrior, King, Servant, Savior is an exegetical and diachronic study of messianism in these texts that maintains close dialogue with relevant historical research and archaeological insights. Internationally respected biblical scholar Torleif Elgvin recounts the development and impact of messianism, from ancient Israel through the Hasmonean era and the rabbinic period, with rich chapters exploring messianic expectations in the Northern Kingdom, postexilic Judah, and Qumran, among other contexts. For this multifaceted topic—of marked interest to Jews, Christians, and secular historians of religion alike—Elgvin’s handbook is the essential and definitive guide.
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Archaeology of Mind in the Hebrew Bible / Archäologie alttestamentlichen DenkensEdited by: Andreas Wagner , Jürgen van Oorschot and Lars Allolio-Näcke
Funded by: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110742428eBook
Published: April 27, 2023
ISBN: 9783110742428Hardcover
Published: April 27, 2023
ISBN: 9783110742183OVERVIEW
About this bookOpen Access
Research into the Hebrew Bible, Ancient Near East, Philosophy and History have long considered whether thought in the cultural area of the ancient Middle East differs from that in the western Mediterranean. The inclusion of neurobiology, psychology, brain research and evolutionary research will widen this horizon and allow new approaches. This volume provides in depth insides into this Archaeology of Mind in 22 contributions.
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The Jewish traditions behind pomp of Charles III’s big day. The coronation of King Solomon provides the template for Saturday's ceremony (Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, The Jewish Chronicle).
The coronation this Saturday will no doubt be seen around the world as an example of British pageantry and pomp at its best. But few will realise its quintessential Jewish roots.
From Saul to David, Jews always did a good coronation. Charles will emerge, as did King Saul, no longer the man he was (Howard Jacobson, The Jewish Chronicle).
Long live the King… of Kings! Accession ritual in ancient Persia. As we look towards the coronation ceremony that will unfold in Westminster Abbey on Saturday 6 May, Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones considers how other monarchs in history have been ordained and explores the enthronement rituals of ancient Persia (The British Museum Blog; for the author, cf. here and here).
The Christian symbolism in the coronation regalia is laid out in detail here:
Coronation rite imbued with ancient symbolism. William Gulliford explains the significance of the coronation regalia (Church Times)
Congratuations and best wishes to King Charles and the British people.
UPDATE (13 May): More here. Aramaic at the coronation.
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Seeds that provide a genetic link between two modern varieties of red and white grapes cultivated over 1,100 years ago – and apparently were mentioned in two different books of the Bible – have resulted in an “extraordinary and thrilling discovery” by archaeologists at Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the University of Haifa.I noted the underlying article here. This Jerusalem Post article is more reader friendly. For more on the same archaeo-botany project, see here.[...]
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late AntiquityFor Pseudo-Hegesippus' De excidio Hierosolymita see here, as well as here and here.
The Historiography, Exemplarity, and Anti-Judaism of Pseudo-HegesippusAUTHOR: Carson Bay, Universität Bern, Switzerland
DATE PUBLISHED: November 2022
AVAILABILITY: Available
FORMAT: Hardback
ISBN: 9781009268561£ 90.00 Hardback
Description
In this volume, Carson Bay focuses on an important but neglected work of Late Antiquity: Pseudo-Hegesippus' On the Destruction of Jerusalem (De Excidio Hierosolymitano), a Latin history of later Second Temple Judaism written during the fourth century CE. Bay explores the presence of so many Old Testament figures in a work that recounts the Roman-Jewish War (66–73 CE) and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. By applying the lens of Roman exemplarity to Pseudo-Hegesippus, he elucidates new facets of Biblical reception, history-writing, and anti-Judaism in a text from the formative first century of Christian Empire. The author also offers new insights into the Christian historiographical imagination and how Biblical heroes and Classical culture helped Christians to write anti-Jewish history. Revealing novel aspects of the influence of the Classical literary tradition on early Christian texts, this book also newly questions the age-old distinction between the Christian and the Classical (or 'pagan') in the ancient Mediterranean world.
- Offers extensive English translations of key portions of Pseudo-Hegesippus (De Excidio Hierosolymitano) with extended analysis and comparison with source texts and comparanda from Biblical, Classical, early Christian, and Jewish literature (all for the first time)
- Provides a comprehensive analysis and exhaustive overview of the Old Testament figures in a rarely-studied Latin history from late antiquity
- Shows how the Christian appropriation of biblical figures could and did fuel anti-Jewish history-writing in the first century of Christian empire
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It is impressive for an algorithm to produce even approximate translations of Akkadian into English. But this one still requires significant human intervention:
When they developed the new machine-learning model, they trained two versions – one that translates the Akkadian from representations of the cuneiform signs in Latin script and another that translates from unicode representations of the cuneiform signs. The first version, using Latin transliteration, gave more satisfactory results in this study, achieving a score of 37.47 in the Best Bilingual Evaluation Understudy 4 (BLEU4), which is a test of the level of correspondence between machine and human translation of the same text.Trust me, that first stage of transliterating the cuneiform signs, or even identifying them for unicode, would be a lot of work.
This is amusing:
The program is most effective when translating sentences of 118 or fewer characters. In some of the sentences, the program produced “hallucinations” – output that was syntactically correct in English but not accurate.Back in my postgraduate days, my fellow students and I were well acquainted with Akkadian translation "hallucinations."
I have noted other algorithm projects for cuneiform studies here and here.
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Published in English.
Cian J. Power explores how the biblical authors viewed and presented a fundamental human reality: the existence of the world's many languages. By examining explicit references to this diversity – such as the ambivalent account of its origins in the Tower of Babel episode – and implicit acknowledgements that included the use of strange-sounding speech to portray alien peoples, he illuminates ideas about Aramaic, Egyptian, Akkadian, and other ancient languages. Drawing on sociolinguistics, Power detects a consistent link between language and – ethnic, political, religious, and divine/human boundaries, and argues that changing historical circumstances are key to the Bible's varying attitudes. Furthermore, the study's findings regarding the biblical authors' ideas about their own language and its importance challenge our very notion of Hebrew.
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Response to the Forum on Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible (Reed Carlson)I noted the earlier essays here and links.... The respondents made many more excellent points, not all of which I have the space to address and contemplate here. I can say with complete honesty, however, that this panel has given me yet more to think about on this topic, which has been, for me at least, an unending well of delightful curiosity. ...
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