Antiquitopia

I am sure most people have noticed this, but for those who haven't, evidence of a shrine and cult objects including figurines of human heads and horses from Iron Age IIA at Tel Motza outside of Jerusalem.  See further information here .

You can now read the newest Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament (number 28) online here .  The only problem is that it does not show the critical apparatus on the bottom of each page nor the cross-references in the margins.

As it seems with most bibliobloggers, I haven't had time to post in quite a while between the SBL conference, teaching, research, and other academic duties.  Nonetheless, I just noticed Larry Hurtado is talking about his hobby horse of early high Christology on his blog .  He lengthily and substantively engages with an article by Andrew Chester on the topic, and it is well worth the read to see a rather comprehensive survey of the issue.

So last year to wish all a happy All Hallow's Eve, I posted the earliest reference to a zombie in the world .  So this year I thought I would post on a rather recent poem on my favorite undead creature, the vampire: The Vampire Sudden as a knife you thrust into my sorry heart and strong as a host of demons come, gaudy and libertine, to make in my corrupted mind your bed and bedlam there; --Beast, who bind me to you close as convict to his chains, as gambler to his winning streak, as drunkard to his wine, close as the carrion to its worms-- I curse you!  Be accursed! I begged the sword by one swift stroke to grant me liberty; nor did my cowardice disdain less clear-cut remedies. Poison and steel, as with one voice, contemptuously refused; "You are not worthy to be free of your enslavement, fool! Suppose we saved you, even now, from her supremacy-- your kisses would resuscitate your vampire's waiting corpse!" (Baudelaire, "The Vam...

I am thinking of compiling some bibliography for my "God and the Senses" series.  And to start things off, I just read the following article:  Arie Shifman, "'A Scent' of the Spirit:  Exegesis of an Enigmatic Verse (Isaiah 11:3)," JBL 131:2 (2012):  241-9.  In it, he discusses whether an enigmatic word should be read as "spirit" (רוח) or "scent" (ריח), noting that though most commentators either omit translating completely to avoid the issue or prefer "spirit," while "scent" would complete a highly sensual passage that also refers to sight and sound.  If "spirit," it is noteworthy that this word actually appears in verb form as a hiphil, and that would make it a hapax legomenon.  On the other hand, the hiphil of "scent" is well-attested.  In any case, whether or not breath/spirit or inhalation through the nose is what is being captured in this verse, what caught my attention in the reading was ho...

I just saw the Frank Moore Cross died .  As anyone even barely acquainted with biblical studies knows, he was a giant in the field.  While he specialized in Hebrew Bible, his influence rippled and reverberated throughout biblical studies.  My copy of Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic , which has become a classic in the field, is so worn out that the cover has fallen off.  I remember the first time I read his analysis of the "Song at the Sea," I was mesmerized. Jim Davila, who was Cross's student, has a nice reminiscence here . The New York Times also has an obituary here . Photo from HDS .

Michael Satlow has an interesting idea for those who study Rabbinics:  to kill it.  He writes: The fundamental problem is that “rabbinics” implies both a body of literature and a distinctive methodology or approach to that literature.  In some quarters in Israel this perhaps accurately describes, for good or bad, how rabbinic literature is studied (e.g., philologically in a “department” of Talmud).  In the American academy, however, “rabbinics” is not a discipline.  Those of us who primarily use rabbinic literature are situated in departments of religious studies (most frequently), language and culture, and history.  We are scholars trained in a particular discipline who use rabbinic texts for our data.  I do not “do rabbinics.”  I “do” Jewish history in antiquity, using rabbinic texts as one (even if it is the primary) set of sources. From there, he thinks Rabbinics scholars could take a lesson from scholars of Christianity in late a...

There may be more evidence pointing to the Coptic fragment concerning "Jesus' wife," that it is a forgery.  And what gave it away?  I rare transcription error found in the first line that otherwise only occurs in a modern interlinear edition of the Gospel of Thomas.  See discussion by Mark Goodacre here .

Alin Suciu reports on newly found Coptic fragments that appear to belong to Codex Tchacos, especially its Allogenes!  (or the "other" Allogenes).  This is exciting because, in my opinion, that treatise is by far the most interesting from Codex Tchacos.  The Gospel of Judas is ok, but when I first read the published codex, I was enthralled by this Book of Allogenes.

Larry Hurtado has posted that he has received the newest Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament--now the 28th edition.  While, it seems, the number of textual emendations are minimal except for the catholic epistles, the critical textual apparatus and the marginal cross-references have been revised.

I just saw this website by Laval in Quebec for the study of the Nag Hammadi Library.  Begun in 1974 at Université Laval (Quebec, Canada), the project of editing the Nag Hammadi Coptic library is the only important francophone initiative devoted to these manuscripts; its goal is to produce critical editions of these texts, accompanied with French translations and explanatory commentaries. The manuscripts, which are kept at the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo, are available in a photographic edition produced under the authority of UNESCO and of the Antiquities Service of the Arab Republic of Egypt; this edition reproduces the papyrus leaves as they are. In order for these texts to be used with profit, specialists must first provide critical editions of them, where possible restoring damaged passages, as well as providing a translation into a modern language accompanied with an explanatory commentary. I have also posted this resource on the side column under "Coptic Resourc...

While I will return, as promised , to the full exposition of the sensuous language in the Gospel of Philip, I just came across this rather succinct note on the sensuous language in the Epistle to the Hebrews by Luke Timothy Johnson in his commentary on Hebrews: Readers quickly become aware of Hebrews' appeal to the senses of readers/auditors.  The smell of sacrifices is only implied (13:16), touch appears by way of contrast (12:18, 20), and taste is metaphorical (6:5).  But the author constantly appeals to the hearing of his listeners (2:1; 3:7; 4:7; 5:11; 12:19).  Most of all, the sense of sight is invoked, as the readers are asked to "behold," "consider,"  and "see" what the author seeks to convey (2:9; 3:1; 7:4; 12:3; 12:21).  Using oral discourse to portray visual scenes (in "word-pictures") is a common rhetorical technique ( ekphrasis ), and Hebrews uses it effectively, especially in 9:1-5 and 12:18-24. (8-9) I had been slowly compil...

In my next installment(s) of the God and the Senses series, I will be taking a look at the emergent Christian text, the Gospel of Philip.  I do not have the time, at the moment, to work through all of it because emphases on different senses and using the senses as a means of spiritual transformation, permeates throughout the Gospel.  For now, therefore, I will list the sources where you can find them if anyone would like to look them up, and I will begin to work through the different senses as I find time.  1.  Taste and Transformation (Sayings 21, 73, 81, 82) 2.  Vision and Transformation (Sayings 23, 38; cf. 59, 90, 107) 3.  Touching/Kissing (27, 48) 4.  Smelling (94) 5  Hearing (and Naming?) (7, 8, 9, 17, 29, 40, 42, 46, 51) From the listing, at least, it appears that hearing receives the most attention of all of the senses in Philip.  The passages on vision are themselves also quite stunning--which would come as no surprise to...

Here is my newest painting, "Discovery."  I just put on the last touches tonight.  It is a gift for my niece, who loves fairies and who turns four very soon.

It has been a while since I have written a bit on God and the Senses; that is, a turning from the typical focus on divine vision and audition to a fuller expression through all five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.  I have discussed the multiple sensations in an inset hymn in the Acts of Thomas , Hekhalot Rabbati , a fascinating occurrence of "synesthesia" or seeing speech in Philo's writings , and the coming to the (spiritual senses) or overcoming spiritual anesthesia in Augustine 's prose poem from the Confessions .  This, then, is the fifth installment.  Much like our previous authors, Origen in his Homilies on the Song of Songs, uses the sensual language allegorically (in fact, Origen strictly forbids the literal senses).  Nonetheless, especially his first homily engages all five senses, overwhelms them with inviting, exciting, embracing language.  When I teach this work, I call this section the "parade of the senses."  Firstly, th...

Let me state this baldly:  the portion of New Testament scholarship that I hate reading the most is historical Jesus scholarship.  I like most of the scholars themselves, but I came to the conclusion early on (as an undergraduate when I took a class on Jesus and the Gospels at Illinois Wesleyan University--a class I will teach next semester at the same institution) that much of the criteria used pulled themselves apart, cancelled each other out, and most scholars chose criteria based upon what Jesus they wanted to reconstruct (something noted more recently by Dale Allison that our methods bend to our predisposed wills).  I generally have operated with the view that historical Jesus research had run its course and we could focus on other things.  That's probably one reason why I like to stick to Hebrews.  Typically, I pick up a book on the historical Jesus with trepidation; I usually find that I put it down every few pages.  It is just an area of scholarship...

There is currently the major stirring around a Coptic fragment of an ancient Gospel (see my posts here , here , and here ).  But most have overlooked another report that came out this week on a major undertaking of compiling a 2000-page dictionary of the other late-antique Egyptian language:  Demotic (from the Greek "Demos" meaning "of the people" or the "common speech").  I only saw it because my spouse pointed it out (in the Science Section of the New York Times).  The New York Times reports here : Demotic was one of the three scripts inscribed on the Rosetta stone, along with Greek and hieroglyphs, enabling European scholars to decipher the royal language in the early 19th century and thus read the top-down version of a great civilization’s long history.  Now, scholars at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago have completed almost 40 years of research and published online the final entries of a 2,000-page dictionary that more ...

It is quite a week of discoveries!  First, the papyrus that has Jesus referring to a wife (should it prove to be authentic--see here ) and now this very large geometric design Mosaic from an ancient bath in Turkey (discovered when a farmer started plowing his field). 

I want to proceed with some preliminary notes.  They are basic, foundational, but lead to a working hypothesis of this fragment that, I hope, will help lead to a particular social context.   First, here is a reiteration of my translation from my previous post : Line 1:  ...my mother gave me li[fe]... Line 2:  ...the disciples said to Jesus... Line 3:  ...deny.  Mary is worthy of it.... Line 4:  ..........Jesus said to them, "My wife.... Line 5:  ....... she will be my disciple and.... Line 6:  ...Let wicked people.... Line 7:  ...I dwell with her because... Line 8:  .....................an image................ The first note is literary genre (or at least micro-genre).  This is a dialogue form.  In line 2, we have the introductory formula for speech--here, the disciples' speech to Jesus.  The fourth line, then, shows Jesus' response.  This fragment, therefore, presents us with a glimpse of a dialogue ...

Image of Papyrus: (Photo:  Papyrus Fragment; Recto; Karen King 2012) Coptic Transcription: (Key:  {reconstruction from corrupt letter}; [reconstruction from missing letters]); Additional Note:  I have been notified that not everyone can read the transcription--that the letters appear as boxes instead of letters.  I am not sure why this is happening since I used a unicode based font, but I'll see what I can do. Line 1:  ⲛⲁ]ⲉⲓⲁⲛⲧⲁⲙⲁⲁⲩⲁⲥϯⲛⲁⲉⲓⲡ{ⲱ}[ⲛϩ Line 2:  ]{ⲥ}ⲡⲉϫⲉ︦ⲙⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲏⲥ︦ⲛ︦ⲓⲥϫⲉ{ⲥ}[ Line 3:  ] ̣ ⲁⲣⲛⲁⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁⲙ︦ⲙⲡϣⲁ︦ⲙⲙⲟⲥⲁ[ Line 4:  ] ̣  ̣  ̣  ̣  ̣ ⲡⲉϫⲉ︦ⲓⲥⲛⲁⲩⲧⲁϩⲓⲙⲉⲙ{︦ⲛ} Line 5:  ] ̣  ̣  ̣  ⲥⲛⲁϣ︦ⲣⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲏⲥⲛⲁⲉⲓⲁⲩⲱ[ Line 6:  ]{ⲓ}ⲙⲁⲣⲉⲣⲱⲙⲉⲉⲑⲟⲟⲩϣⲁϥⲉⲛⲉ[ Line 7:  ] ̣ ⲁⲛⲟⲕϯϣⲟⲟⲡⲛⲙⲙⲁⲥⲉⲧⲃⲉ{ⲃ}[ Line 8:                 ]ⲟⲩϩⲓⲕⲟⲛ[ The verso has far less that is legible, but notably has the word ⲧⲁⲙⲁⲁⲩ in the first line...

Breaking News:  At the 10th International Congress of Coptic Studies (meets every four years), Karen King has revealed the possible existence of a new gospel, of which only a fragment (in Coptic) survives, that says, "...Jesus said to them, My wife..."  Initial testing has suggested it is, indeed, ancient.  See discussion here , which contains a further link to King's paper. April DeConick has a short comment on it here .  See more here and here , leading to other sites. DeConick has a fuller translation of the fragment with discussion here .

As I envision it, my spring course on Jesus and the Gospels will have two (rather traditional) components and a third contemporary component.  The first part will be on methods, using the historical Jesus as sort of a coda.  (I've noticed the suggested readings for my previous post tend to be more on issues surrounding the historical Jesus.  These are important, but I would like to hear other types of gospel approaches that people have found successful in a classroom setting).  Then I want to go through different gospels, whether canonical or extra-canonical, to discuss differing portrayals of Jesus (varying Christologies) as a means to discuss the diversity of emergent Christianity.  Finally, I wanted to apply this idea (basically, Jesus as the ultimate Rorschach test) and apply it to modern portrayals of Jesus:  that is, the rewriting of the Gospels or the portrayal of Jesus in modern culture.  This could be in any medium, really:  literature, f...

I am preparing to teach a course on "Jesus and the Gospels" next Spring.  It is a course that, in the Illinois Wesleyan Curriculum, focuses on scholarly methods.  I was hoping to take a survey on the best recent books, whether for an undergraduate audience or for my own reading to make sure I am representing the latest research, on the following topics: (1) Methods and the Gospels (whether focusing on "classical" methods such as textual, form, source, etc., or contemporary methods of post-colonial, social scientific, etc.); (2) issues relating to the "historical Jesus"--recent treatments, problems, etc., including the recent spate of works on Jesus mythicism; (3) canon and extra-canonical gospels; (4) works on the perspective of particular gospels, whether canonical or extra-canonical; (5) and anything else I am missing. What recent works are the best or most representative, in your opinion, in these categories? If you are a reader, have a suggestion, ...

I just noticed that Chris Keith and Anthony LeDonne--both formerly of Lincoln Christian University--have started a blog dedicated to historical Jesus research, called " The Jesus Blog ."  Both are smart and engaging scholars--in person and in writing--and so their posts should make for interesting, thoughtful reading.

I just saw that a friend of mine, David Freidenreich at Colby College, received the American Academy of Religion Book Award for Textual Studies.  Award for Excellence in Religion: Textual Studies David M. Freidenreich, Colby College Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law . University of California Press, 2011. Check out the book here .  It looks like it is available in hardback and kindle.  Congrats David!

I just saw the following is coming out from Mohr Siebeck sometime this month via Brian Small at polumeros kai polutropos , who seems to be becoming a full-time Hebrews bibliographer.   Jody A. Barnard The Mysticism of Hebrews Exploring the Role of Jewish Apocalyptic Mysticism in the Epistle to the Hebrews Jody A. Barnard examines the role of Jewish apocalyptic mysticism in the epistle to the Hebrews. Jewish apocalyptic mysticism is defined as a phenomenon occurring in late Second Temple Judaism (including early Christianity), which finds literary expression in the apocalypses and related literature, and exhibits a preoccupation with the realities of the heavenly realm, and the human experience of this realm and its occupants. The author demonstrates that there are numerous apocalyptic and mystical themes appropriated in Hebrews, and that there is evidence to suggest that this is not merely a conceptual and literary phenomenon, but is born out of, and infor...

I have just heard of the passing of Marvin Meyer from a melanoma.  He was an influential scholar on those religious movements that so often fall through the cracks of history (most notably "Gnosticism" and "magic"), popularizing and publicizing them to make them more widely known in several scholarly and trade publications.  Several people more intimate with Marvin Meyer have noted his passing.  Please see their comments here , here , and, here . 

A friend of mine from graduate school, Jodi Eichler-Levine, now assistant professor of religion at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh has an op-ed piece for Religion Dispatches concerning the events of the past twenty-four hours on the shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the landing of the Martian Rover, and how we use aliens and monsters to define ourselves and others.  The following lines caught my attention in particular: Religionists can quickly rattle off myriad global, historical sites of contested holy space. But there is still something deeply nauseating, unhomed, un-everything, about attacks on vulnerable human beings at prayer, or about to pray. We want to believe in religious spaces as safe dwellings , as sanctuaries in the most literal sense of the word—but they have also long been targets for Americans who fear change. See the entire piece here .  John Hobbins has some further discussion here .  I also just saw a case of violence (this time ars...

I just finished reading Caroline Walker Bynum's Metamorphosis and Identity .  It is a good read--I finished it in a day.  It is a smart collection of essays. Although somewhat disparate (as is typical of collections of essays), she has some especially interesting historiographical reflections when delineating the problems surrounding the endurance of the self through different forms of change from quotidian aging and social changes to Ovidian metamorphosis, given primarily through the prism of werewolves.  Yes, werewolves!  Whatever one thinks of each individual essay, it is worth taking a look to see one of the better historians of the medieval period talk about werewolves to open up important insights into the 12th and 13th centuries.  Why werewolves?  The strange, the weird, and the awe-inducing are, in fact, important historiographical and, what is more, pedagogical tools that reveal and engage us and our students: ...we write the best history...

I just picked up the now-decade-old volume by the eminent medieval historian Caroline Walker Bynum called Metamorphosis and Identity .  It is a collection of somewhat disparate essays spun together by the Ovidian thread of metamorphosis in 12th and 13th century Europe.  She uses the resurgent medieval fascination with concepts of the perduring individual identity among changes and transformations (including the quotidian aging, social changes, etc., but also the Ovidian radical changes in werewolf stories, the Eucharist, and so forth).  She uses these stories that challenge social structures and established boundaries, these stories that suggest fluidity and chaos, as a means to discuss the historian's task.  In an interesting historiographical reflection, she writes: The history we attempt to write is always metamorphosis--a flux to which we have access only through texts and objects that bear vestiges of past lives to us from across time.  To historians as t...

Well...sort of...at least according to this Huffington Post article by Michael Gilmour.  Zombie imagery and resurrection imagery often do have quite an uncanny resemblance.  Here are three of my favorites from Gilmour's list: 2. The Book of Revelation: "the sea gave up the dead that were in it" (Revelation 20:13). John the Seer's creepy statement reminds me of a scene in George A. Romero's "Land of the Dead" (2005) that features slow-moving corpses walking out of the surf, and Max Brooks' "World War Z" with its account of the boy returning from a swim with a bite mark on his foot. He also describes the zombie hoards roaming the world's oceans: "They say there are still somewhere between twenty and thirty million of them, still washing up on beaches, or getting snagged in fisherman's nets." ..... 5. The Gospel of Matthew: "The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep we...

It appears that Jodi Magness's team has unearthed a high-quality Mosaic of Sampson tying torches to foxes in a late-antique synagogue. See the news article and some initial photos here and here .

In an earlier post , I had noted Moses' importance in Greco-Egyptian magic, riffing off of a statement that John Gager made.  I wrote: The Moses of the magical papyri provides another piece of the puzzle of what Jews, Christians, and others on the ground thought, what they did, and, again, reasons for his exaltation and, just as often, suppression.  It is a clear example, here, of exaltation.  I wonder, what Christians did with this view of Moses as magician?  Does his exaltation here mirror his exaltation in contemporary Christian sources of the mid-second to fourth centuries?  How does it compare with contemporary Egyptian Christian sources of different opposing parties of the hierarchy, the monks, and the traditions of Nag Hammadi?  Indeed, it is fascinating territory into which the magical Moses takes us.  It is a messy, difficult terrain, but ultimately a fruitful one. In this post, I would like to delve a little deeper in the Mose...

The qualities of religious experience mirror those of poetry--and, indeed, some of the best accounts of religious experience are related through poetry (think of St. John of the Cross); as one bends and bursts beyond the typical conventions of language, so does the other.  The most engaging poetry pulls at all five senses.  So too, the expression of religious experience.  I realize that what follows may not be technically be poetry in the sense of ancient meter and verse (though it has some of those things!), but one could easily consider it "prose poetry."  Indeed, St. Augustine of Hippo, trained as a rhetor and as a professor of rhetoric, was a master of style, and his Confessions is a masterwork on many levels including its means of expression.  Late have I loved you, Beauty so old and so new: Late have I loved you. And see, you were within And I was within the external world And sought you there, And in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovel...

            Continuing my pursuit of ancient quirks, I want to discuss the strange first-century interest in Moses’ beauty.   I have discussed it in Hebrews 11 and Acts 7, in Philo of Alexandria’s recounting, and now that other prominent first century Jewish writer: Josephus. Josephus picks up on this broader first-century promotion of the fine physique of Moses, but there are some major alterations, dislocations, and expansions.               To briefly recap, previous traditions directly relate Moses’ beauty at birth as the reason why his parents, particularly his mother, decided to save him from infanticide.   Although Acts 7:20 merely notes that Moses at birth “was beautiful (ἀστεῖος) before God,” Hebrews 11:23 reasons that, “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful (ἀστεῖον)...

Today (June 13) marks five years that I have been blogging.  My inaugural post marked the beginning of my dissertation writing--in June of 2007 I would have been working on my proposal.  2007 was an interesting year.  I went to Italy, and now realizing that it has been five years think I should go back soon!  In the fall of 2007 I met my wife.  Much has changed over the years.  Last year my academic adviser, Alan Segal, passed away.  He saw me to completion, but will never see the book that comes from my research.  There are some continuities.  I am still living with the project that I proposed then, although extraordinarily transformed from proposal to dissertation and transformed greatly again from dissertation to monograph.  I am now thinking of developing my next major project.  I have a lot of the interests I noted then: The name of my blog reflects a combination of interests. I study antiquity, but I am also fascinated by...