Solomon Schechter at work, in Cambridge, on the Cairo Genizah fragments | Cambridge, 1898 | Original photograph image — Solomon Schechter at work, in Cambridge, on the Cairo Genizah fragments | Cambridge, 1898 | Original photograph image

On AJR

Book Note: Richard A. Payne, A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015)

Walters: "Payne's use of a wide array of sources in Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, Middle Persian, and New Persian is impressive, and the expertise necessary to cover such a linguistic span demonstrates why a comprehensive study of this topic has remained a desideratum for so long. As such, Payne's work is a service to the field, opening up new lines of inquiry and making possible new questions and new answers to old questions."

SBL Forum on Paul and Law continues: "Description, Redescription and Textual Practices: Thiessen's and Kaden's Critical Interventions"

Young: "Description and Redescription - the classical interrelated activities that animate critical scholarship on religion. This roundtable affords the chance to examine two books that push the descriptive and redescriptive envelopes in their sectors of biblical studies. Matthew Thiessen's Paul and the Gentile Problem rigorously describes Paul's discourses about the Jewish law and Gentiles, while David Kaden's Matthew, Paul, and the Anthropology of Law innovatively redescribes Paul and Matthew's discourses about the Jewish law..."

Articles and News

Almost 4000 records from the personal archive of pioneering archaeologist of Rome, Rudolfo Lanciani, online.
Johanna Steibert writes at the Shiloh Project about the restoration of Artemisia Gentileschi's Susanna and the Elders.
New History of Religions issue on "Violence and Collective Identity" dedicated to the late Thomas Sizgorich includes his piece on the "Abbasid postcolonial."
On how graffiti can help reconstruct social history at Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Sarah Bond on the Neronian fire of July 18, 64CE, and ancient Roman firefighting.
Manuscript digitization continues apace at the Bodleian Library's Polonsky Project, the Vatican Library, and the British Library.
Jeffrey Rubenstein on the Talmudic version of Herod's renovation of the Second Temple, and possible Persian influences.
Brandon Hawk talks historical anti-Judaism, histories of diversity, and the present.
Updated call for papers for the XIth Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies (15-18 July, 2018).

Twitter

That feeling of glee when one accidentally comes across one's forthcoming book on Amazon! https://t.co/1YClc5vjAD
— Annette Yoshiko Reed (@AnnetteYReed) 20 July 2017

Where do Green papyri come from? https://t.co/4R3AeSYP3S
— Roberta Mazza (@papyrologyatman) 20 July 2017

A giraffe, from a copy of Sir John Mandeville's Travels made in England, c. 1410-1420 https://t.co/3b8ZZCvmFX pic.twitter.com/473bEHVKiL
— Medieval Manuscripts (@BLMedieval) 20 July 2017