Illuminated leaf from the Book of Hosea | From a Bible made for the Teutonic Knights at Nieuwe Biesen, ca. 1300 | Image Source

On AJR

Long-form essay by James Redfield: “Curiouser and Curiouser: In Search of the Rabbis’ Ethnography”

Redfield: "Ploughing through the early Palestinian literature–Mishnah, Tosefta, works of legal exegesis, and parts of the so-called “minor tractates”– in search of organizing rubrics for the sages’ curiosity, I asked a question that my teachers and other mentors had asked in their own work. Where does the sages’ legal language become a theoretical “discourse”: a whole that is more than the sum of its parts, inasmuch as it ties together otherwise discrete areas of practice; maps meanings from one area onto another; and, through words, generates relations of power-knowledge between people, bodies, and things?"

Book Note: Rhiannon Graybill. Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Fein: “Graybill’s monograph provides a welcome addition to the field of masculinity and queerness in the Bible. As she notes in her introduction, the prophetic books have been underrepresented in these burgeoning fields. The exceptions, such as Susan Haddox’s Metaphor and Masculinity in Hosea (2011) and Stuart Macwilliam’s Queer Theory and the Prophetic Marriage Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible (2011) have largely focused on the use of rhetoric in the prophets. Her innovation is bringing the male prophetic body, not just prophetic words, under consideration.”

Articles and News

Nicola Denzey Lewis discusses the traditions linking the apostle Peter to Rome.
On one scholar’s trek to the study of classical antiquity.
Huge database for literary and sub-literary papyri launches.
Call for papers for the 13th biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity conference.
Terrific discussion of the recently published coded calendar Dead Sea Scroll.
At the British Library blog, a discussion of how to enhance digital display by preserving features of the material manuscript.
Debate over a seal claimed to show the signature of the prophet Isaiah.
Indiana University’s excellent site on the colors of classical art.

Twitter

Thanks to all who entered and voted in #EnochBookGiveaway--so many great submissions! I've storified the entries, and the result is a pretty entertaining GIF-commentary on 1, 2, and 3 Enoch - https://t.co/AaYYrH6Lk2
— Annette Yoshiko Reed (@AnnetteYReed) 19 February 2018

HAPPY 25th BIRTHDAY DSD To celebrate the 25th vol of Dead Sea Discoveries, 25 articles from the past 25 Vols will be available for free during 2018. The first 5 articles are now freely accessible until 15 April 1/6 @JewishStudiesUK @The_EAJS @E_A_B_S @PTRBirmingham @SBLsite
— Charlotte Hempel (@QumranRocks) 19 February 2018

Monumental public fountains are a common feature of the Roman Near East. They are often called “nymphaea” as they were thought to be imitations of the grottoes of the nymphs (though many from the 2ndC AD don't have a religious function). (1/5)
Jerash
More; https://t.co/M6IHoCesi4 pic.twitter.com/oyIpYikXAA
— Manar al-Athar (@ManarAlAthar) 19 February 2018