What? This is completely how I remember it. The guy on the street doesn't notice anything different either...
Recently in Semitics Category
One of the more mysterious objects found in the excavations of Ur by Leonard Woolley was found in the site labeled Private Grave 779 (PG 779). It's a trapazoidal box with mosaic on 4 sides, and not obvious function. Woolley named it the "Standard of Ur" assuming it was some sort of military banner, but there's been little support for that since. People have conjectured it as a cash-box, a musical instrument and other vaguely-plausible ideas. Over at the Sumerian Shakespere blog though there's a good defense of the original explaination, based partly of the iconography of the decorations themselves, and some good pictures of the standard as well. Have a read.
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I know, I know those words make no sense, neither does the phrase "video game based on the book of Enoch". I can't deny the reality of "El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron" but I can share the confusion
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Horbet Midras is a site in the Judean Sheplelah (lowlands), and was an active settlement during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Due to looter activities, the IAA has been excavating and have uncovered both Jewish artifacts from this period and later Byzantine work, including a large Basilican church, with lovely mosaics.
According to tradition, this area holds the burial of the prophet Zachariah, and the presence of a large crypt under the church indicates that this was possibly built as a memorial church, but that is still a supposition. As in some of the other sites in the area, there are a series of underground rooms, including store rooms, that were used as refuges during the 2 Judean revolts. In these have been found artifacts and coins of that period.
Below is a picture of a large section of the site as it has been excavated. It will be recovered to stabilize the remains until permanenet coverings can be built
According to tradition, this area holds the burial of the prophet Zachariah, and the presence of a large crypt under the church indicates that this was possibly built as a memorial church, but that is still a supposition. As in some of the other sites in the area, there are a series of underground rooms, including store rooms, that were used as refuges during the 2 Judean revolts. In these have been found artifacts and coins of that period.
Below is a picture of a large section of the site as it has been excavated. It will be recovered to stabilize the remains until permanenet coverings can be built
King Herod the Great gets somewhat of a bad rap, not helped by the portrayal of him in the Gospels as a murderous maniac, with a creepy dancing step-daughter. A recent article by Geza Vermes, perhaps the living authority on the late Second Temple period tries to put some actual history around the name.
Also out recently is the last article by Ehud Netzer, the leader of the excavations at Herodium, on the hunt for the tomb of Herod.
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Also out recently is the last article by Ehud Netzer, the leader of the excavations at Herodium, on the hunt for the tomb of Herod.
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Christopher Rollstone, a well regarded professor of Old Testament at Emmanuel School of Religion, has published a comprehensive, though short, article on his current theory as to the origins of the alphabet. There has been some argument for the origins being in the lower classes, that is miners, working in the Egyptian mines in the Sinai, but Rollstone defends the theory that the inventory were more likely upper class members of the Egyptian govenrmental apparatus there. The pivotal discoveries in this area are inscriptions at Serabit el-Khadem and the slightly later ones at Wadi El Hol(see below), Worth a read on the ASOR blog.
Rollstone's drawing of part of the Wadi El Hol inscription
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Rollstone's drawing of part of the Wadi El Hol inscription
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Schniedwind, William M. How the Bible Became a Book. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2004
This is not a full review, since it has been too long since I finished the book to give it proper thought, so this'll be a brief intro. The underlying concept is not how the disparate books of the Bible became canonized into the modern Bible, but how oral tradition modified and adapted to the growing power of the written word. Schniedwind traces the threads of Biblical narrative from emphasis entirely on tradition and the word to more power being assumed by text and the written word. This is woven with archaeological evidence for growing literacy in the Israelite world, especially fueled by the rise of Aramaic with the Assyrian Empire.
The impact of exile and the return to Judea is covered and the book closes with the Dead Sea Community, one known almost entirely from their textual output. It was an good read, but alas enough time has passed that I cannot give a fuller account
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This is not a full review, since it has been too long since I finished the book to give it proper thought, so this'll be a brief intro. The underlying concept is not how the disparate books of the Bible became canonized into the modern Bible, but how oral tradition modified and adapted to the growing power of the written word. Schniedwind traces the threads of Biblical narrative from emphasis entirely on tradition and the word to more power being assumed by text and the written word. This is woven with archaeological evidence for growing literacy in the Israelite world, especially fueled by the rise of Aramaic with the Assyrian Empire.
The impact of exile and the return to Judea is covered and the book closes with the Dead Sea Community, one known almost entirely from their textual output. It was an good read, but alas enough time has passed that I cannot give a fuller account
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The Griffith Institute at Oxford has put some of its collection of the photographs of Reginald St. Alban Heathcote, taken in Egypt and Sudan between 1922 and 1933, online. A subset is in a searchable DB, but most are only available as thumbnails on a collection of 20 PDFs from which higher-resolution copies can be ordered.
A sample image, showing an offering relief from the Temple of Isis and some later Demotic graffiti
Copyright Griffith Institute, University of Oxford (source)
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A sample image, showing an offering relief from the Temple of Isis and some later Demotic graffiti
Copyright Griffith Institute, University of Oxford (source)
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From Christopher Rollstone comes more information about the Jerusalem 1 fragment (previously referenced). I recommend the entire article though I've excerpted a few salient points:
So basically we are sure it's a tablet, pretty sure it is from the late bronze-age and from Jerusalem, and not sure of much else...
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- The clay from which the tablet was made matches the soil of Jerusalem, so the tablet was probably made locally
- The signs use partially match several tablets from the Amarna corpus that come from King Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem, but there are a number of differences
An additional factor is that the reading of line 2 as tab-ša 'you are' is problematic. The traces of the signs as copied don't conform well to the reading. If the tablet was written in Amarna Canaano-Akkadian (which is not certain given the fragmentary state of the text), the reading is also unlikely grammatically: all examples of the verb bašû listed in the Knudtzon glossary are based on the durative ibašši, none on the preterite ibši; further, 1st- and 2nd-person forms of bašû in such Amarna texts are what are called mixed forms: the base is the durative ibašši but the person is marked by suffixes, as in i-ba-ša-ta 'you are' in EA 73:40. So I doubt that line two has a form meaning 'you are'; and that leaves us even less on which to judge what type of text it is.
So basically we are sure it's a tablet, pretty sure it is from the late bronze-age and from Jerusalem, and not sure of much else...
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