Reading for Resonance

This article offers a hermeneutic approach attentive to the tangled idiomatic and literary interconnections among biblical texts and other Second Temple literature. It focuses on the expressions of divine presence in the Temple Scroll and their prepositions; the divine presence is ‘upon’ the temple and ‘in the midst’ of the people. This prepositional rhetoric engages recurrences and interconnections within and beyond the Hebrew Bible. It thus evokes multiple interlocking resonances and offers a window onto concepts of temple presence across biblical texts and traditions.

The Traces of Early Halakhot in the “Hava Amina” of the Sages in Second Temple Literature and the Ethiopian Halakhah

This essay seeks to add a further layer to the discussion of associations between ancient Halakhah and that of Beta Israel by examining correlations between halakhic traditions that were preserved among Ethiopian Jewish communities and the Hava Amina mentioned by the Sages. It demonstrates that opinions espoused by the sages’ opponents can be identified within the Hava Amina of the Talmudic discussion. The discussion presents three examples: The use of fire on Shabbat, Kosher slaughtering by someone other than a priest, and the status of an unborn child. The article concludes that the sages were familiar with ancient halakhic traditions parallel to those of the Ethiopian Halakhah, rejected these traditions from the accepted Halakhah, yet preserved traces of them in the Hava Amina of the Talmudic give and take.

A 360-Day Administrative Year in Ancient Israel: Judahite Portable Calendars and the Flood Account

Administrators in ancient Judah used schematic 30-day months and a 360-day year alongside other annual frameworks. This year was never practiced as a “calendar” for any cultic or administrative purpose, but rather served as a convenient framework for long-term planning, as well as for literary accounts that were not anchored to a concrete calendar year. Examples for such a usage are attested here from Mesopotamian texts. Material evidence for the 360-day year in Judah comes forth from a series of small perforated bone plaques from various sites in Iron Age Judah. One such item was recently unearthed in the city of David. These objects can reasonably be understood as reflecting a schematic 360-day year, serving as desk calendars for Judahite administrators. Several priestly pentateuchal texts are best understood against this background, such as the dating of some festivals and most notably the dates in the Flood narrative (Gen 7–8). The original dating system is best represented in LXX Gen 7:11, while the reading of MT is a late modification, inserted later, when calendar debates took a central place in the religious discourse. MT is thus a link in a chain of later reworking of this narrative in Second Temple literature. The 360-day year is thus a unique case where material culture dovetails with literary evidence, and may shed light on the material culture of priestly sources. This insight is significant for future studies of biblical time reckoning.

Review of: Aramaic Studies. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Vol. 14. 264 p. ISSN: 1477-8351

В предшествующем выпуске журнала «Библия и христианская древность» была опубликована рецензия на «Aramaic Studies» за 2015 г. Настоящий труд является своеобразным продолжением изучения журнала, посвящённого всестороннему исследованию арамейских языков. Как отмечает С. В. Лёзов, письменная традиция арамейских языков, в том числе и его современных бесписьменных идиом, носители которых постепенно по разным причинам переходят в вечность (а вместе с ними исчезают и диалекты арамейских языков), сопоставима по временным рамкам разве что с китайским и греческим. Несмотря на безусловную значимость арамейских языков, в том числе и для исторического языкознания, а также и для изучения Библии, литературы Второго Храма, таргумов, Талмуда и тому подобного, «история арамейского языка до сих пор остаётся неисследованной... “мы отвечаем за арамейский язык перед небытием”», поэтому отрадно видеть, что специальный журнал посвящён столь важной области семитских языков. The previous issue of The Bible and Christian Antiquity published a review of Aramaic Studies for 2015. The present work is a continuation of the journal's study of a comprehensive study of the Aramaic languages. As S. V. Lyozov points out, the written tradition of the Aramaic languages, including its modern unwritten idioms, whose speakers are gradually passing into eternity for various reasons (and with them the dialects of the Aramaic languages are disappearing), is comparable in time frame only to Chinese and Greek. Despite the undoubted importance of the Aramaic languages, including for historical linguistics, as well as for the study of the Bible, Second Temple literature, the Targums, the Talmud and the like, "the history of the Aramaic language is still unexplored... "we are responsible for the Aramaic language before nothingness", so it is encouraging to see a special journal devoted to such an important area of Semitic languages.

Cairo geniza

The Cairo geniza was a storeroom for no longer usable holy books in the synagogue of Fustat, Old Cairo, where for centuries, old Jewish manuscripts, mostly in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judeo- Arabic, including also secular documents and communal records, were deposited. In the 19th century, European scholars became aware of this collection and manuscripts were removed to a variety of libraries in Europe and the United States. This material provides those studying the ancient world and ancient Jewish texts in particular with an amazing treasure of documents, throwing light on the history of the biblical text and its interpretation, the Hebrew language, Greek and Syriac versions of the Bible, Second Temple and Rabbinic literature, Jewish liturgy and the later history—political, economic, and religious—of the Jews in the Mediterranean basin. This material has totally reshaped our understanding of these fields. In the area of Bible, these texts illustrate the manner in which the vocalization and cantillation symbols were developed. Hebrew versions of some important Second Temple literature, later found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, had earlier been discovered in the geniza. Many previously unknown Midrashim and rabbinic exegetical materials have become known only from this collection. This material has provided an entirely new corpus of liturgical poetry.