Categories
Books

Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period

Granerod, Gard. 2016. Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period: Studies in the Religion and Society of the Judaean Community at Elephantine . Walter De Gruyter.

The book argues that the Aramaic documents from Elephantine dating to the Achaemenid period offer not only important glimpses of Judaean religion in the Persian period but that the religion of the Judaeans in Elephantine is among the best historically verifiable cases of Persian period Yahwism. The documents have the potential of functioning as an archive that can revise the canonised image of the Judaean religion in the Persian period.

Categories
Books

The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud

Geller, Markham J. (ed.). 2015. The archaeology and material culture of the Babylonian Talmud (IJS Studies in Judaica 16). Brill.

The Babylonian Talmud remains the richest source of information regarding the material culture and lifestyle of the Babylonian Jewish community, with additional data now supplied by Babylonian incantation bowls. Although archaeology has yet to excavate any Jewish sites from Babylonia, information from Parthian and Sassanian Babylonia provides relevant background information, which differs substantially from archaeological finds from the Land of Israel. One of the key questions addresses the amount of traffic and general communications between Jewish Babylonia and Israel, considering the great distances and hardships of travel involved.

Markham J. Geller, Ph.D (1974), Brandeis University, is Professor of Semitic Languages and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at University College London, currently on secondment to the Freie University Berlin as Professor für Wissensgeschichte. He is Principal Investigator of BabMed, an Advanced ERC Project.

 

Table of contents

-Acknowledgements
-The Contributors
-Introduction: The Archaeology and Material Culture of the -Babylonian Talmud, Markum. J. Geller
-Land behind Ctesiphon: the Archaeology of Babylonia during the Period of the Babylonian Talmud, St John Simpson
-‘Recycling economies, when efficient, are by their nature invisible.’ A First Century Jewish Recycling Economy, Matthew Ponting and Dan Levene
-The Cedar in Jewish Antiquity, Michael Stone
-Since when do Women go to Miqveh? Archaeological and Rabbinic Evidence, Tal Ilan
-Rabbis in Incantation Bowls, Shaul Shaked
-Divorcing a Demon: Incantation Bowls and BT Giṭṭin 85b, Siam Bhayro
-Lilith’s Hair and Ashmedai’s Horns: Incantation Bowl Imagery in the -Light of Talmudic Descriptions, Naama Vilozny
-The Material World of Babylonia as seen from Roman Palestine: -Some Preliminary Observations, Yaron Eliav
-Travel Between Palestine and Mesopotamia during the Hellenistic and Roman Periods: A Preliminary Study, Getzel Cohen (z’’l)
-Shopping in Ctesiphon: A Lesson in Sasanian Commercial Practice, Yaakov Elman
-Substance and Fruit in the Sasanian Law of Property and the Babylonian Talmud, Maria Macuch
-Rabbinic, Christian, and Local Calendars in Late Antique Babylonia: -Influence and Shared Culture, Sacha Stern
-‘Manasseh sawed Isaiah with a Saw of Wood:’ an Ancient Legend in -Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Persian Sources, Richard Kalmin
-Biblical ‘Archaeology’ and Babylonian Rabbis: On the Self-Image of Jews in Sasanian Babylonia, Isaiah Gafni
-Loanwords in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: Some Preliminary Observations, Theodore Kwasman
-The Gymnasium at Babylon and Jerusalem, Markham J. Geller and D. T. Potts
-Index

 

 

Categories
Articles

An Aramaic epigraph

Azzoni, Annalisa & Matthew Stolper. 2015. From the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, 5: The Aramaic Epigraph Ns(y)h on Elamite Persepolis Fortification Documents. Achaemenid Research on Texts and Archaeology (ARTA) 004. 1–88. – via Charles Jones.

Persepolis Fortification tablets with cuneiform texts in Achaemenid Elamite sometimes also bear short texts in Aramaic script and language. The word ns(y)ḥ appears in more than a third of them, on documents produced in the latest attested stages of information handling that are represented by the excavated form of the Persepolis Fortification Archive. These notations, we propose, refer to a further stage, one that produced documents that are no longer extant.
Categories
Journal

Studies on Aramaic Magic Bowls and Related Subjects

Aramaic Studies, Volume 13, Issue 1, 2015. Special issue: “Studies on Aramaic Magic Bowls and Related Subjects”.

The special issue of the Journal of Aramaic Studies, guest-edited by Siam Bhayro is devoted to the Aramaic magic bowls.

 

 

Table of Contents

Peter T. Lanfer: Why Biblical Scholars Should Study Aramaic Bowl Spells

Ortal-Paz Saar: A Study in Conceptual Parallels: Graeco-Roman Binding Spells and Babylonian Incantation Bowls

Siam Bhayro: On Early Jewish Literature and the Aramaic Magic Bowls

Avigail Manekin Bamberger: Jewish Legal Formulae in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls

Marco Moriggi: Jewish Divorce Formulae in Syriac Incantation Bowls

Harriet Walker: Possible Psychological Roles of the Aramaic Incantation Bowls: Therapeutic Functions of Belief in Demons and the Practice of Incantations

Categories
Books

Vom Aramäischen zum Alttürkischen

J. P. Laut, K. Röhrborn (eds.). 2014. Vom Aramäischen zum Alttürkischen: Fragen zur Übersetzung von manichäischen Texten (Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften Zu Gottingen. Neue Folge, Band 29). De Gruyter.

Manichaeism claimed to be a world religion. Thus, the problem of translating the Holy Scriptures was of paramount importance. The twelve studies in this volume examine the linguistic and cultural diversity and unique features of the translated texts of Eastern Manichaeism. This book will be of great interest to scholars of religious studies and to researchers in the fields of cultural history and language contact.

For more information, see the ToC of this volume.