Dr. Thamar E. Gindin has posted Hebrew summaries of a series of lectures that she gave on the historicity of the Scroll of Esther. The summaries can be found here. Also see this post (Hebrew) on the burial places of Esther and Mordechai by Orli Rahimian.
As a follow-up to this post on a recently discovered Hebrew epigraphical text and the problems of its interpretation, one of the more famous examples of interpreting epigraphical texts through potentially Biblically-biased eyes comes to mind. For some years people felt that an Ugaritic text describing the cooking of a kid in its mother’s [...]
(photo courtesy of the University of Haifa)
Never a dull moment for the history of the Hebrew language.
A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible was written. Prof. Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an [...]
Last year I bought Israel Knohl’s new book מאין באנו (“From Where did we Come?) which addresses the origins of the Israelites. I have just gotten around to reading it now and I wanted to post about Knohl’s main theses. He claims that the origins of the Israelites can be found in three [...]
INN is reporting that archaeologists have discovered a synagogue dating from the late second temple period in Migdal/Magdala, north of Tiberias. See this press release and these posts. Below are some pictures from the Antiquities Authority.
The article quotes Dina Avshalom-Gorni saying that this is the first time that a menorah decoration has been found [...]
It seems that another burial cave of a rabbi was discovered in Tzippori. (hat tip) See here for a previous post on epigraphical rabbis. Apparently this inscription is in Aramaic and says “This is the burial[place-MM] of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi ha-Kappar.” That he inscription says “Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi ha-Kappar” leads some to [...]
It seems that this summer has been rich with many important archaeological finds in Israel and the latest one is a Roman mansion found in the City of David. Dr. Doron Ben-Ami, the excavation’s director said that “[the] building most likely met its end during a massive earthquake that shook Jerusalem in 363 [...]
Not that anyone should think that I have some fixation about urination, but my previous post on “Urinating Rabbis” is still buzzing around my head. Being that no one took up the challenge of commenting on the text that I brought from the Talmud, I had to find something to say in addition to [...]
The classicist Lionel Casson has passed away at the age of 94. While much of his work dealt with issues relating to ancient maritime history, a number of years ago he wrote a book on libraries in antiquity, Libraries in the Ancient World. It is a relatively short book and an easy read, [...]
Menachem Butler has further clarification by Rachel Elior of her theory that the Essenes never existed. Money quote:
Why should we rely on the questionable testimony of Philo, Pliny and Josephus, written in Greek and Latin outside of the Land of Israel in the first century, about peaceful celibates who lived ideal lives in a [...]
You are currently browsing the archives for the Ancient History category.