Jonathan Ben-Dov

Why and when did ancient scholars make the enormous effort to understand the principles and master the mathematics of foreign astral sciences? This work provides a detailed analysis of the invention, development and transmission of astronomy, astrology, astral religion, magic and medicine, cosmology and cosmography, astral mapping, geography and calendrics and their related mathematics and instrumentation in and between Mesopotamia, Egypt, the West Semitic areas, Greece and Rome, Iran, India and China. It considers the available textual evidence from the most ancient times to the seventh century CE. The author has worked the contributions of eight internationally renowned scholars into what amounts to a new history of the oldest sciences. The result is a challenging read for the layperson and a resource for the expert and includes an extensive index to the entire volume. It provides a new typology of cultural interactions and, by describing their socio-political backdrop, offers a cultural history of the region. In particular, astral science in the Hellenistic period west of the Tigris is completely re-evaluated and a new model of the interactions of Western and Indian and Iranian astral sciences is provided.

Time has always held a fascination for human beings, who have attempted to relate to it and to make sense of it, constructing and deconstructing it through its various prisms, since time cannot be experienced in an unmediated way. This book answers the needs of a growing community of scholars and readers who are interested in this interaction. It offers a series of innovative studies by both senior and younger experts on various aspects of the construction of time in antiquity. Some articles in this book contain visual material published for the first time, while other studies update the field with new theories or apply new approaches to relevant sources. Within the study of antiquity, the book covers the disciplines of Classics and Ancient History, Assyriology, Egyptology, Ancient Judaism, and Early Christianity, with thematic contributions on rituals, festivals, astronomy, calendars, medicine, art, and narrative.

Contents:
1. Introduction Lutz Doering and Jonathan Ben-Dov
2 Time and natural law in Jewish-Hellenistic writings Jonathan Ben-Dov
3. Calendars, politics, and power relations in the Roman Empire Sacha Stern
4. Doubling religion in the Augustan Age: shaping time for an empire Jörg Rüpke
5. Real and constructed time in Babylonian astral medicine John Steele
6. The intellectual background of the Antikythera mechanism Robert Hannah
7. Divine figurations of time in Ancient Egypt Alexandra von Lieven
8. The moon and the power of time reckoning in Ancient Mesopotamia Lorenzo Verderame
9. Toward a phenomenology of time in ancient Greek art SeungJung Kim
10. Women's bodies as metaphors for time in biblical, second temple, and rabbinic literature Sarit Kattan Gribetz
11. The beginning of sabbath and festivals in ancient Jewish sources Lutz Doering
12. Seasoning the bible and biblifying time through fixed liturgical reading systems (lectionaries) Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra
13. The Roman ember days of September and the Jewish New Year Robert Hayward
14. Celebrations and the abstention from celebrations of sacred time in Early Christianity Clemens Leonhard.

The present study offers a new edition of Serekh ha-'Edah, the Rule of the Congregation from Cave 1 of Qumran (1QSa). Although this text has been the subject of several editions and studies since its original publication in 1955, a new edition is required in light of recent findings. Those include the identification and reconstruction of a copy of the Rule of the Congregation in Cryptic script from Cave 4, as well as new methods for working with the available images. The reconstruction of lacu-nas in this edition has been carried out using digital tools, on the basis of actual letters preserved in the same scroll. We survey previous scholarship on 1QSa and provide a new edition (transliteration, translation and commentary), including several new readings, some changes in the placement of small fragments, as well as several new textual reconstructions. RÉSUMÉ La présente étude offre une nouvelle édition du Serekh ha-'Edah, la Règle de la Congrégation de la grotte 1 de Qumrân (1QSa). Bien que ce texte ait fait l'objet de plusieurs éditions et études depuis sa publication originale en 1955, une nouvelle édition est nécessaire à la lumière des découvertes récentes. Cela comprend l'iden-tification et la reconstruction d'une copie de la Règle de la Congrégation en écriture cryptique de la grotte 4, ainsi que des nouvelles méthodes de travail avec les images disponibles. La reconstruction des lacunes dans cette édition a été réalisée à l'aide d'outils numériques, sur la base de lettres conservées dans ce même rouleau. Nous examinons les études antérieures de 1QSa et fournissons une nouvelle édition (trans-littération, traduction et commentaire), incluant plusieurs nouvelles lectures, quelques changements dans le placement de petits fragments, ainsi que plusieurs nouvelles reconstructions textuelles.

This article investigates the linkage between two Jewish Palestinian liturgical customs, a millennium apart: a collection of psalms attested among the Dead Sea Scrolls, best preserved in the scroll 11Q5 or 11QPs a ; and the practice of Tefillat ha-Shir ("the Song"), added to Pesukei deZimrah in the Palestinian prayer books from the Cairo Genizah. Two main elements are examined: the use of the Songs of Ascent, and the emphasis on the Davidic authorship. We conclude that there is no genetic link between the two collections. Their typological resemblance, however, demonstrates the shared themes and motifs of Qumran and rabbinic prayer.

In this article we offer a reconstruction and edition of one of the last unpublished
Dead Sea Scrolls. It is an extremely fragmentary calendrical scroll written in the
Cryptic A code. While images of 4Q324d were included in the DJD series, no

formal edition of it exists. The suggested jigsaw-puzzlelike reconstruction inte-
grates forty-two extremely small fragments into a stretch of five consecutive col-
umns of what we consider to be one continuous scroll (pace earlier preliminary

editions). In terms of its content, the calendar contained in this scroll resembles
the one found at the top of 4Q394 3–7 (a copy of 4QMMT) and in 4Q394 1–2.
An intriguing interlinear gloss in both shape and content offers a ruling on the
Festival of Wood Offering that follows the halakic rulings of the Temple Scroll.

Herein, we offer an edition of fourteen fragments in cryptic A script, reconstructed into a single copy of the Cave 4 Serekh haEdah scroll. We assign to this scroll the designation 4Q249a pap cryptA Serekh haEdah.  Together with new readings based on images kindly supplied by the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, we suggest new joins and a fresh configuration of the fragments. The rigorous methodology whereby these fourteen fragments (4Q249a 1-14) were selected is outlined below; other fragments previously attributed to 4Q249a-i are treated as additional fragments (designated herein 4Q249a A-I). While three of the latter probably also belong to 4Q249a, we only include those whose identity is absolutely certain. Following the reconstruction of the five columns of 4QSE, we deal with the text-critical implications of the fourteen clearly-identified fragments for Serekh haEdah.

http://megillot.haifa.ac.il/index.php/en/2014-12-15-18-50-57/publication

Two cryptic A fragments of Serekh haEdah from cave 4 are hereby physically joined, and a third one constitutes a distant join. The composite text parallels 1QSa 1: 8–12 albeit with significant variants. The join is proven here in terms of the continuity of papyrus fibers and partial letters, as well as by the coherent composite text. The join requires separating a fragment that had been assembled by Milik. Substantially, although the joined fragments had been assigned in DJD 36 to different copies, they
evidently constitute one and the same fragment. This join thus calls into question the classification of 8–9 different copies of the Serekh in cryptic script.

Currently (nov 2014) in the free part of DSD . Hurry up! I uploaded here only p. 1. This article proves that the title “Midrash Sepher Moshe,” written in Jewish square characters on the verso of the cryptic scroll 4Q249, is the product of a correction. Initially it had been “Sepher Moshe” which was subsequently corrected to “Midrash Moshe.” This is therefore a rare attestation of canonical awareness on the part of Qumran librarians. The terms “midrash” and “sepher” are discussed accordingly. In addition, the paleography of this title is submitted to close scrutiny, proving that the dating of these words to the early second century B.C.E. is not substantiated. Rather,both the first and second hands should be dated to around 100 B.C.E. like many other scrolls. This fresh analysis has important consequences for the dating of the entire cryptic corpus, which is not as early as previously suggested.

The three calendrical scrolls from Qumran, 4Q320, 4Q321, and 4Q321a, contain diverse calendrical materials, including a system for dat-ing lunar phenomena over a triennial cycle of months.2 These scrolls, known for some time now, were published in their official editions re-cently ...

Online versions (YouTube files) of the Lectures presented at the 2nd day of the 2nd Annual Conference of the RIAB Minerva Center, which took place at the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies (on the Givat Ram Campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on March 2nd, 2017), can now be watched online.

Rock-cut monuments are a unique type of archaeological object. From the moment those monuments were carved people have asked themselves who made them, when, and why? Often highly visible and long-lasting, they demand attention. They are part of the natural landscape, yet are conspicuously anthropogenic. Many of them became part of the regional and cultural memory of their environs. They almost invariably remain in the exact place where they were first designed to be, allowing generations of people to interact with them in their original context. They traverse cultural and chronological boundaries. Texts regularly accompany their carved images spurring in observers the desire to understand the precise motives of their makers. (In fact, many such texts have been crucial in the decipherment of ancient writing systems.)

Much scholarly attention has been paid to the moment of production of rock-cut monuments. Our purpose, by contrast, is to study their successive re-interpretations and manipulations, their cultural recycling. Rock-cut monuments incite passions: many rulers have been inspired by the endeavors of their predecessors to engage in monumental dialogues on cliff faces, sometimes doing so across centuries or even millennia. Others have sought to deface or obliterate them, outraged by what they imagine their images and texts to represent. Travelers and scholars have been drawn to them repeatedly, often leaving behind traces of themselves, their inquiries, and their interpretations. The history of their re-interpretations exemplifies the intricate interaction of ancient cultures with their own, even more ancient, past. The result is a layered landscape of cultural meaning and natural transformations (e.g. erosion) that can furnish precious evidence about the pre-modern archaeological imagination.

We aim to bring diverse specialists on the ancient world to Brown University to tackle the following questions: who in the pre-modern period was interested in rock-cut monuments? How did ancient interpreters make sense of their images and texts? What did those people think the monuments represented? In what way were conflicts resolved between conflicting interpretations? And, finally, how can we as contemporary scholars, begin to address such questions?

Felipe Rojas (Brown University)
Jonathan Ben Dov (University of Haifa)