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ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: The Historical Talmud (Simcha Gross).

Curiously, however, modern scholarship has largely proceeded as though the Talmud lies beyond the reach of historical inquiry. Even as contextual approaches to the Talmud – especially attention to its religious and cultural milieux – have attracted a growing community of scholars and incorporated an expanding range of comparanda, the historical study of the Talmud continues to be treated as a topic of interest rather than as an essential methodological orientation. It occupies a position not unlike that of studies of rabbinic conceptions of the afterlife or angelology: a legitimate subject of inquiry, yet not a foundational point of departure. Historical analysis is thus rarely regarded as indispensable to Talmudic study in the way that philology is; instead, it remains a specialized line of investigation within the broader field. ...

The historical study of the Bavli can therefore no longer be treated as a secondary pursuit. Like any other literary work, the Talmud must also be read within its political, social, and cultural ambit. Such an approach corrects for latent – and ultimately unsubstantiated – historical assumptions that continue to shape many aspects of the field. At the same time, it offers new lines of approach to familiar questions and opens novel avenues of inquiry. I will conclude by sketching four such directions:

I noted the first three essays in this series here and links.

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ARCHAEOLOGY AND POLITICS: Israel digs up the West Bank – and reignites a battle over history. As Israel expands excavations in the West Bank, ancient ruins become entangled in a modern political struggle over land, history, and identity (RUTH MARKS EGLASH, The Jerusalem Report).

While such dramatic ancient archaeological sites are located across this region, which Israelis call by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria, Alexandrion/Sartaba is now one of a handful of places where active excavations are taking place – for the first time in 40 years.

However, the renewed excavation here is not unfolding in isolation from modern events. It comes amid a sweeping Israeli government initiative to expand archaeological activity across the West Bank – territory Palestinians seek for a future state; territory which much of the international community considers “occupied.”

For more on the political situation with archaeology on the West Bank, and more on the Sartaba-Alexandrium excavation, see here and links. And for a post on the site of Archelais, see here.

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BIBLE HISTORY DAILY:

The Bible’s First Kings

A fresh look at the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon

The Bible’s First Kings: Uncovering the Story of Saul, David, and Solomon
By Avraham Faust and Zev I. Farber
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2025), 464 pp., 30 figs. (photos, plans, and maps); $49.99 (hardback & digital)

Reviewed by Michael G. Hasel

... This period of ancient Israel’s history, and its first kings, has become the most contested area of research over the past 40 years. It is into this quagmire of history, archaeology, and faith that archaeologist Avraham Faust and biblical scholar Zev Farber offer a new synthesis titled The Bible’s First Kings, which offers a dense but engaging discussion of the various biblical and archaeological issues.

Cross-file under New Book.

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HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION: What Caused History's 'First Pogrom'? New Study Points to a Lurid Personal Rivalry. The destruction of the temple of Yahweh at Elephantine 2,400 years ago may have been the first anti-Semitic act in history, but new research suggests a more mundane motive was behind the devastation (Ariel David, Haaretz).

The destruction of the Jewish temple on the Egyptian island of Elephantine some 2,400 years ago is considered by some scholars to be the first recorded manifestation in history of religious and ethnic hatred toward Jews in the diaspora. But a recently published study claims that the true motive behind this 'proto-pogrom' was a personal rivalry between powerful local officials, on the background of a broader struggle for control over Egypt under Persian occupation.

The research sheds new light on the complex cultural and political dynamics that affected the life of early Jews in the Persian Empire, which may have had significant influence on the development of later Judaism as we know it, says Dr. Gad Barnea, a lecturer in Jewish history and biblical studies at Haifa University.

[...]

This article summarizes Dr. Barnea's interesting, if rather complicated and speculative, reconstruction of the events surrounding the destruction of the Elephantine Temple.

For the full technical and philological reconstruction, his open-access peer-review JAOS article is available here:

Khnum Is Against Us”: The Rise and Fall of Ḥananiah and the Persecution of the Yahwists in Egypt (ca. 419–404 BCE).

December 2025Journal of the American Oriental Society 145(4)
DOI:10.7817/jaos.145.4.2025.ar029

Authors:
Gad Barnea
University of Haifa

Abstract and Figures

According to the Elephantine Yahwists’ own dramatic portrayal, the figure of a certain Ḥananiah played a key role in the misfortunes they experienced following his arrival in Egypt in or around 419 bce. Therefore, understanding who this person was and how he might have helped cause these calamities can provide important context to the analysis of the final decades of this community. This article looks at all available evidence—textual, linguistic, and archeological data, both internal and external to Egypt—and comes to the conclusion that Ḥananiah was, in all probability, a scion of the Sanballat dynasty, an aristocrat and future governor of Samaria, who is known from various mid-fourth-century BCE documents discovered in Palestine. The identification of this eminently unique and dramatic character in Egypt at an exceptionally critical time in the satrapy has important implications, regarding which some speculative options are offered. The article also provides a new perspective on the overarching context of the events endured by the Yahwists in Elephantine, as well as on the general state of Yahwism in the Achaemenid period. Specifically, it offers a new hypothesis regarding the reasons for the persecution of the Yahwists and the destruction of their temple.

Other articles on the ancient Judean community at Elephantine by Dr. Barnea are noted here and here.

For many, many PaleoJudaica posts on the Elephantine Papyri and the site of Elephantine, see here and links, plus here, here, here, here, and here. Perhaps also here. Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

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MARINE ARCHAEOLOGY: Iron from a 2,600-year-old shipwreck off Israeli coast may rewrite the history of war. The first evidence that iron was traded as a semifinished product has been found off the coast of nor (Rosella Tercatin, Times of Israel).

It was against the backdrop of this upheaval that a ship sank just meters from the ancient harbor of Dor, on the Carmel Coast in northern Israel (also known as Tantura Lagoon). Over two and a half millennia later, as maritime archaeologists retrieved some of its cargo, they made an unprecedented discovery, which changes the understanding of ancient metal production, trade routes, and possibly war supplies in the Iron Age (1200-586 BCE), a crucial time in the region’s history when most of the biblical narratives took place.

These "iron blooms" were found in the remains of Dor L2, one of the cargoes excavated at three shipwreck sites in Dor Lagoon. They have been in the news recently. See here.

The underlying open-access peer-review article in Heritage Science:

Article Open access Published: 13 March 2026

Earliest iron blooms discovered off the Carmel coast revise Mediterranean trade in raw metal ca. 600 BCE

Tzilla Eshel, Andrei Ioffe, Dafna Langgut, Yoav Bornstein, Zachary C. Dunseth, Marko Runjajić, Shmuel Ariely, Thomas E. Levy & Assaf Yasur-Landau
npj Heritage Science volume 14, Article number: 155 (2026)

Abstract

The discovery of exceptionally well-preserved iron blooms during underwater excavations in the Dor Lagoon provides a rare and transformative window into southern Levantine Iron Age metallurgy and trade. For the first time, unworked iron blooms, still encased in protective slag, have been recovered, representing the earliest securely dated industrial iron products identified to date. Radiocarbon modeling of an embedded charred oak twig, together with additional short-lived carbon samples, dates the blooms to the late 7th–early 6th centuries BCE. These findings challenge assumptions that iron blooms were typically forged immediately after smelting. Instead, the Dor blooms demonstrate that raw iron was transported in its as-smelted state, with adhering slag protecting the metal from corrosion during shipment. Results suggest that Iron Age urban centers focused on smithing rather than smelting activities, while raw iron circulated as a traded commodity, possibly under Saitic-Egyptian rule following the Neo-Assyrian withdrawal from the region.

Cross-file under Maritime (Underwater) Archaeology.

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TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Ancient alphabets, new insights: Researchers uncover hidden links among the letters. SDSU researchers used AI to compare writing systems across distant regions (San Diego State University).

With artificial intelligence (AI) as an essential tool, San Diego State University researchers have discovered surprising similarities among ancient writing systems from Africa and the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Their study suggests the Armenian alphabet may be more closely related in structure to the ancient Ethiopic writing system than linguists and historians previously thought.

For many years, historians noticed some Armenian, Georgian and Caucasian Albanian letters look similar to letters from Ethiopic, also known as Ge’ez, a writing system developed in the Horn of Africa more than 1,600 years ago. ...

One of the most surprising findings was that the Armenian alphabet appeared almost as similar to Ethiopic as Ethiopic is to its own earlier version. That suggests the resemblance may not be accidental.

That is an interesting discovery. It raises the question whether any cultural influences accompanied the script influence. Not my area, though.

This press release gives a brief, accessible summary of the underlying open-access peer-review article just published in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. If you're feeling ambitious, you can read the whole, rather technical, article:

Machine learning techniques for exploring influence, commonalities, and shared origin of scripts: cases of Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, and Caucasian Albanian scripts

Daniel Zemene, Esatu Zemene, Atharv Sankpal, Eskinder Sahle, Vyshak Athreya Bellur Keshavamurthy, Samuel Kinde Kassegne
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, fqag029, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqag029
Published: 25 March 2026

Abstract

The morphological similarities between the Armenian, Georgian, and Caucasian Albanian scripts and the Ethiopic script have long intrigued both casual observers and scholars. However, prior studies have relied primarily on qualitative or historical analysis, often lacking objective or computational rigor. This study addresses that gap by applying machine learning and deep learning methods to explore potential structural relationships among these scripts. Using over 28,000 images of Ethiopic characters, we trained a deep convolutional neural network and augmented the dataset to enhance generalization. The resulting model, FeedelLigence, analyzes cross-script similarities through transformation-invariant distance measures, cosine distance (CD), and mutual information (MI). Our findings indicate notable structural and symbolic proximity between Ethiopic and the three comparison scripts. Armenian showed the strongest similarity, with the highest MI (0.7428 bits) and the lowest CD (0.0774). Georgian and Caucasian Albanian followed, with MI scores of 0.6843 and 0.6561 bits, and CDs of 0.1558 and 0.2498, respectively. These results provide computational evidence of significant structural overlap, suggesting possible historical connections or shared influences. In a broader cultural context, such affinities align with historical patterns of script evolution and cross-civilizational exchange. By combining artificial intelligence with comparative script analysis, this study offers a novel, quantitative perspective on the relationships among ancient writing systems—advancing our understanding beyond traditional human-centered approaches.

Cross-file under Paleography, Ethiopic Watch and Armenian Watch.

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COPTIC WATCH: Archaeological discovery from the 5th century in the Nile Delta: the second-largest monastic complex in the history of Egyptian Christianity (Guillermo Carvajal, LBV).

The excavation campaign carried out by the Egyptian archaeological mission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in the area of Al-Qalaya, located in the center of Hosh Issa, in the Beheira governorate, has culminated in the discovery of a monumental structure that specialists link to the earliest manifestations of Coptic monasticism.

[...]

Lots of architectual and artifactual discoveries at this site. The latter include a grave stone and fragmentary ceramic vessels inscribed in Coptic.

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NOW OUT, OPEN ACCESS: Israel Museum Studies in Archaeology Volume 12 • 2025

Contents

Dudi Mevorah, Ruth E. Jackson-Tal 4 In Memoriam Yael Israeli, 1933–2025

Arlette David 8 Amenhotep IV’s Large ‘Commemorative’ Scarabs

Eran Arie 24 Five Statuette Heads from the Warschaw Collection at the Israel Museum: Tracing Gaza’s Role in the Distribution of Cypriot Statuary in the Persian-Period Southern Levant

Shimon Gibson, Rafael Y. Lewis, Yarden Pagelson, Dudi Mevorah, Hadas Seri 44 A Roman Spatha Sword and Scabbard from Excavations on Mount Zion in Jerusalem

Ofer Pogorelsky 66 “An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife” A Greek Funerary Inscription in the Collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Ohad Abudraham, Ofer Pogorelsky 74 A Forgotten Nabataean Inscription from the Moshe Dayan Collection at the Israel Museum

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ARAMAIC WATCH? Word of the Day: ‘Abracadabra’; Check its Meaning, Origin, Phonetic, IPA & More. Abracadabra is a historic magical word linked to ancient healing beliefs, now widely used by magicians to symbolize mystery and transformation (Shubhi Kumar, The Sunday Guardian).

The origin of “Abracadabra” dates back nearly 2,000 years. It first appeared in the writings of a Roman physician named Serenus Sammonicus in the 2nd century. People believed that writing the word in a triangular pattern and wearing it as an amulet could cure diseases, especially fever. Some scholars think it comes from the Aramaic phrase meaning “I create as I speak,” while others link it to ancient Hebrew expressions.

Abracadabra comes up now and then in the media, and it's fun to review it when it does. It does have connections with both Aramaic and Hebrew, although the specifics are indeed debated.

For PaleoJudaica posts on the word and its possible etymology, start here and follow the links. I discuss the philological problems in detail here.

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APPREHENDED NUMISMATICS: Ancient coins from Hasmonean kingdoms, Jewish revolts seized after suspected smuggling. Police say they found the artifacts last month as they inspected a vehicle belonging to a Palestinian doctor as he crossed the Hizma checkpoint north of Jerusalem into Israel (Rossella Tercatin, Times of Israel).

A collection of dozens of ancient coins was seized after a suspected smuggling attempt from the West Bank into Israel last month, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Monday.

Most of the coins date back approximately 2,000 years. Some were minted by Hasmonean kings (in the second or first centuries BCE), others by Jewish rebels during the Great Jewish Revolt (66-73 CE) or the Bar Kochba Revolt (132-136 CE). The collection also includes many Roman coins.

[...]

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ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Historical Bavli Questions (Yitz Landes).

Thus, from the vantage point of the History of the Jewish Book, the study of the Talmud’s reception can focus on many things, but there are two main questions that it must deal with: One, which I just alluded to, is a question for the historian of the modern era, or perhaps even for the ethnographer, and this is the question of how the Talmud became a popular text after many centuries of it being a text of the elite.

The book historical question that I will focus on here is the question of the Talmud’s initial reception, of what we may call its canonization. And I mean this not in the sense of its coalescing as a work, though that is still profoundly unclear, but in the sense of how the Talmud became the most central work for defining what Judaism is and should be—well before, even a millennium before, it became a popular book and a part of popular piety.

I noted the first two essays in this series here and here.

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WELL THAT'S A NEW ONE: Local religious movement claims the Ark of the Covenant is in the Solomon Islands. Among the To’abaita people in the north of Malaita, a deeply rooted belief holds that they descend from the “Lost Ten Tribes of Israel” (Jerusalem Post Staff/AI).

A new theory is drawing attention to Malaita Island in the Solomon Islands as a potential hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant. Local accounts point to a lost temple deep in the jungle that was modeled on King Solomon’s Temple to safeguard the sacred chest. ...

No, I don't take this seriously, but it's fun to keep track of all the places where the Ark is supposed to be. Once someone even visited my office to tell where it was buried in Scotland.

To the Solomon Islanders and anyone else who proports to know where the Ark of the Covenant is, I say, I am fully prepared to be convinced when you produce the Ark and it is properly authenticated by professional archaeologists and specialists.

For a great many posts on the Ark of the Covenant and the many places where it's claimed to be, start here and just follow those links. For some background links, see here.

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THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: The Myth of the Servant: A New Tale of Kingship from the Ancient Near East (Christopher Metcalf).

This is where the mythical element becomes relevant: the central claim of the “Myth of the Servant,” I argue, is that the newcomer originally served as a servant of the existing king. This claim is embedded in a longer story-pattern, which in its fullest version extends all the way back to birth. To summarise in abstract terms: the future ruler is born in a situation of tension, and is separated from his natural parents; he is then rescued and adopted by a palace servant, and begins a career at court that eventually introduces him to the immediate entourage of the existing king; in the end, the new man takes the throne himself, typically with divine support. One notable feature is that the incumbent king (the future ruler’s master) is usually an invented figure, in the sense that we rarely possess independent historical evidence for his existence.

Cross-file under New Book:

Christopher Metcalf, Three Myths of Kingship in Early Greece and the Ancient Near East: The Servant, the Lover, and the Fool (CUP, 2026)

The book title sounds Jungian.

Our first surviving exemplar of the ANE Myth of the Servant is for the third-millennium BCE founder of the Old Akkadian empire, Sargon of Agade (Akkad). But the myth applies to a greater or lesser degree for many other ancient figures, including biblical figures, among them Jesus.

This myth has some similarities to Lord Raglan's old typology of the Myth of the Hero. On that, see here. Unfortunately, the original article is no longer up, but for more on his typology, see here and for a post on other hero typologies, see here.

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THE IS THAT IN THE BIBLE? BLOG: Why Scholars Date the Book of Daniel to the Second Century BCE (Paul D.).

Is That in the Bible? is back with a comprehensive post on the arguments for a late dating of the Book of Daniel. Long, but well worth a read.

I have commented myself on key reasons for the late dating of the book in the links collected here.

Also, some years ago, Phil Long posted a series on the Book of Daniel at Reading Acts. I noted it as it came out and I commented on many of the issues covered in Paul D.'s new esssay. See here and here and follow the links back.

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NEW OPEN-ACCESS VOLUME BY DE GRUYTER:

The Ancestors of Genesis and the Exodus Traditions

A Festschrift for Thomas Römer

Published by De Gruyter

Book 568 in the Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft series

Christophe Nihan, Jean-Daniel Macchi (eds.)

The volume comprises various studies about Israel’s origins in Genesis and Exodus by a broad range of international scholars. The volume is divided into five parts of similar length. Parts One and Two are devoted to the stories about Abraham, Jacob and Joseph in Genesis from a literary and historical perspective. Part Three deals with the connection between Genesis and Exodus. Part Four is devoted to the Book of Exodus and includes contributions dealing with the origins of the Exodus traditions as well as various key themes and figures found in this book. The final section addresses the early reception of Genesis and Exodus outside of these books, in the Prophets, the Psalms, Chronicles and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Overall, the volume opens several new perspectives for the discussion on Genesis and Exodus and their significance for the construction of Israel’s origins. Combining archaeological, historical and textual perspectives, it provides in-depth discussion of a wide range of key topics, including the composition of these books, their social, historical and religious background, as well as their overall role in the shaping of the Hebrew Bible.

HT the AWOL Blog.

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NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Sing and Rejoice, O daughter of Zion (Zechariah 2:14)

Studies in Pesiqta Rabbati

Series:
The Brill Reference Library of Judaism, Volume: 80

Author: Rivka Ulmer

Pesiqta Rabbati is a midrashic collection of homilies derived from the Hebrew bible related to Jewish observance of festivals, fast days, and special Sabbaths. The book underscores the importance and purpose of Pesiqta Rabbati: to explain the centrality of midrash in the life, culture, and ethnicity of Jewish belief and practice, as well as the importance of practice sustaining the continuity of Jews and their identity. Textual details are drawn from contemporary events (5th- 11th century) and Jewish ethics. Topics include apocalyptic thought, the suffering Messiah ben Ephraim, the Jerusalem Temple, and reactions to Christianity and Islam. Methods applied are text linguistics, borderland theories, halachic discourse analysis, semiotics, and literary criticism.

Copyright Year: 2026

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-74830-9
Publication: 26 Jan 2026
EUR €199.00

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-74829-3
Publication: 26 Feb 2026
EUR €199.00

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NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY/T&T CLARK:

When Israel Was Young

A History of the Jewish People from the Beginnings to the Roman Conquest of Jerusalem

Lester L. Grabbe (Author)

Paperback
$34.95 $31.45
Hardback
$100.00 $90.00
Ebook (PDF)
$31.45 $25.16
Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
$31.45 $25.16

Product details

Published Oct 30 2025
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 432
ISBN 9780567714329
Imprint T&T Clark
Dimensions 10 x 7 inches
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

Description

The traumatic history of Israel in the past 2000 years is widely known, but the Jews of ancient Israel and the Mediterranean world also have an exciting history that is less well known. It includes the first references to Israelites in an early Egyptian inscription, the kings of Israel, the Persian province of Yehud, the Greek and Roman rule of Judah, the kingdom of the Maccabees, and the Jewish diaspora in Babylonia and the Greco-Roman world.

Lester Grabbe brings together all the historical information and synthesizes it in an understandable way for those with an interest in the early history, culture, and religion of the Jews. Grabbe also explains what has been discovered by archaeologists, Egyptologists, and Assyriologists that is important for understanding the history of ancient Israel. This is not a brief survey, rather an in-depth overview of the history of Israel from one of the most significant scholars of his generation. Serious readers and history and students alike will find this a helpful pathfinder through the history of one of the most fascinating and influential regions in the world.

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