Liber Annuus

Elihu is a young friend of Job who, different from the other three older friends, offers a very important contribution to the solution of Job’s problem, especially in chap. 33. The chapters regarding Elihu (32-37) constitute a decisive element in the development of Job’s drama and they contribute to opening the way to God’s final revelation and to Job’s acceptance of his God (chaps. 38-42). The article begins with the text and translation, syntactic analysis, composition and exegesis of Job 33, and continues with an evaluation of the two main theological themes: first that of the “angel / intermediary” in 33:23 and in related texts (9:33, 16:19-21, 17:3, and 19:25) and a synthesis of these texts in comparison with chap. 33; second that of God’s praise after the revelation of his infinite mercy on Job’s personal event, especially in 33:27. I conclude that this is the fundamental value of chaps. 32-37, although for some authors Elihu is a secondary addition to the book by an author who was unsatisfied of the friends’speeches and also of God’s final theophany.

The levitical Psalm 73, like any other poem, must be divided in strophes and (if possible) stanzas. In this paper the following outline is proposed: 1st stanza (vv. 2-12), exposition of the problem (the prosperity of the wicked) which seems to contradict the goodness of God; 2nd stanza (vv. 13-20), a sudden change in the spiritual experience of the psalmist which takes place in the “sanctuaries” (miqdāšîm) of God; 3rd stanza (vv. 21-28), a description of this change of the inner self or of the “heart” (lĕḇāḇ) as a “nearness to God” (qirḇat ’ĕlōhîm), or a being “with you” (‘immākh). This religious experience is supposed to be the true “good” (ṭôḇ) for the believer; it overcomes the wisdom problem, as is previously posed in the Psalter (e.g. Ps 1; 37). For that reason, we agree with Walter Brueggemann that Ps 73 is a turning point in the book of Psalms.

Jeremiah 2:1-4:4 consists of oracles belonging to the first predication of the prophet. Although its temporal limits and identification are still debatable, they present some of the connections with the matured theology of Jeremiah, centred on the New Covenant. In these oracles, the prophet is more concerned to convince the nation the necessity of conversion. Through rhetorical means, which he uses to communicate the message and to reinforce his argumentation, the prophet outlines the image of Judah strongly characterized in a sexual sense. Lopasso here concentrates on the religious message, explaining the scope for which some of the figures and rhetorical means are used and examines the original life-setting (background) of some of the oracles.

In his Gospel Mark extends the idea of the sonship of God and its related authority to the earthly Jesus and his deeds and words. Against this background the gospel can be interpreted as a new aspect, which complements and emphasises the kerygma of Christ already found within Mark’s community. In this respect the Gospel of Mark provides a theological interpretation of the life of Jesus by integrating a kerygma of the risen Christ as υἱὸς θεοῦ that amongst his recipients already existed. Mark finished his Gospel in 16:8 without providing accounts of the Epiphany of Christ for two reasons. Firstly, in order to avoid impact on the integration and readjustment of the kerygma of Christ he intended to achieve with his gospel; secondly, he assumed that his readers both believed in the risen Christ to be the υἱὸς θεοῦ and already knew about his return to his disciples. The evangelist intended 16:1-8 to be a connecting passage between the new aspect of the kerygma of Christ as implied by his work and the kerygma known by the community receiving the gospel because he was not able or did not wish to display the latter explicitly in his work due to the fact that by doing so would have run contrary to his actual theological and literary intentions.

The author proposes that the Greek tripartite expression 153 (ἑκατόν πεντήκοντα τριῶν) in John 21:11 contains a notarikon of ἑπτά, which is necessarily incomplete by the determinant of the corresponding Greek number and implies the fullness of the mission entrusted by the Risen One. He also proposes that the number 153, within a community that was originally pagan, refers to foreigners who contributed to the building of the Solomonic Temple (there were 153,600 foreign workers when Solomon’s Temple was built). The foreigners who now form part of the new Israel, the new Temple, are integrated in it and should contribute to its development.

This article intends to verify which boasting is meant by Paul in Rom 2:17-3:27. First of all, three prophetic texts (Mic 3:11; Isa 48:1-2; Jer 7:4.8-10) which are, as it seems, in the background of Rom 2:17-23 are studied. The certainty of divine salvation is condemned by the three prophets, because of the transgression of the Mosaic Law. Second, this form of hypocrisy between faith and praxis is at best illustrated in the Gospels and especially in Matt 23:23-28, Mark 7:8-13 and Luke 18:9. These NT texts help to enlighten Paul’s parody against the Jew in Romans and, above all, the boast condemned, that is an attitude of arrogance before God. Third, the comparison between 1 Cor 1:29 and Rom 3:20 (and related contexts) confirms this evaluation of the boast meant, so that 1 Cor 1:29 and Rom 3:20 seem to be “interchangeable”: to glory before God = to be justified (by the deeds of the Law) before God. In sum, the “self meritorious legalism” is not to be excluded, but it needs to be integrated into a larger “crater”as the so-called Torah-centric legalism.

Paul’s reflection on God is inevitably conditioned by his euaggélion; and from this he reaches the conclusion of the inaccessible, even scandalous dimension of God in the christian faith by way of human reason/wisdom. Three texts in particular will be examined: 1 Cor 1:18-25; Rom 11:33 and 10:20. Together they converge towards the idea of a God that is not at all imaginable through logic. These three texts encompass respectively the three aspects of the divine mystery: that which is directly christological, that is his hidden presence at the Cross; that which is historico-salvific, that is consistent with the fact that God accepts Gentiles together with Israel; and that which is soteriological, which is a variant of the previous point and which constitutes access to God without following the more rational way of observing the Law.

The article focuses on the presence and on the value of the participle in the exordium of the Letter to the Colossians (Col 1:3-23). The detailed reading of the text allows us to understand the syntactic semantic multiplicity/richness of this verbal adjective and to detect its rhetorical function in the argument. The abundant use of its aspectual and temporal dimensions shows an emphatic amplified style of the Letter, but always at the service of the narrative. The long syntactic phrases seem well-constructed and held together by the presence of the participle which has the “responsibility” to bind the different parts of the proposition and to bring forward the argument. The participle contributes to better define not only Paul’s identity/mission and his co-workers, but also that of the recipients. There is no clear separation between the interested parties, but there is a kind of analogy that the apostle establishes with the believers of Colossae: what regards the apostle is equally applicable to its recipients. From the point of view of their rhetorical function, the participles, which refer to the sender and to the recipients, assume the value of loci rhetorici (a nostra persona and ab auditorum persona).

The 20th century saw a significant growth of the corpus of Old Aramaic inscriptions. Several of the discovered texts contain a series of curses which show a significant degree of similarity. The present contribution aims at a comparative analysis of the curses found in the Tel Fekheriye inscription (KAI 309), the Bukan inscription (KAI 320) and the Sefire treaties (KAI 222-224) as well as at their interpretation in the larger context of the West Semitic literary tradition attested in the Hebrew Bible and in the Phoenician epigraphs. The shared stock of expressions and images employed in the curses clearly points to the existence of a common tradition. This tradition goes back to the rural and pastoral lifestyle as it is revealed by the imagery of the curses (famine, infertility). Its distinct character is apparent when compared with the Phoenician curses that use a set of images such as a broken scepter and an overturned throne that betray a royal ideology. The level of literary sophistication of the curses indicates their transmission and subsequent elaboration in scribal circles. The occurrence of the same motifs in the Old Aramaic inscriptions and in a few passages of the Hebrew Bible hints at the common cognitive environment shared by the Aramaeans and Israelites and possibly the existence of a shared tradition. The scribal nature of this tradition is, however, evident only later, as in the case of Tobit and Ahiqar or Amherst papyrus 63 and Psalm 20, when it is possible to speak about knowledge of literary works by the scribes and not just stock phrases and formulas as is the case with the curses.

The epigraphic corpus comprises a rich and impressive onomasticon, most of it consisting of Greek personal names well known throughout the Greek, Roman and Byzantine worlds. The 148 Greek inscriptions in Elijah’s Cave, discussed in the present article, have yielded an onomasticon of 59 additional Greek, Latin and Semitic proper names. Together with those 30 names that were engraved in the 22 inscriptions discussed in the previous article, the total number is 89 masculine and feminine proper names, some of which are unfamiliar. Some of the Greek inscriptions can be attributed to the Roman era, when the Cave was used as a pagan cult place or shrine to the god Ba‘al Carmel, with Pan and Eros as secondary deities, and others to the early Byzantine period, being a pilgrimage site dedicated to the Prophet Elijah (Elias). The large number of personal names engraved on the walls of the Cave, attest to the many visitors/ pilgrims to the Cave during the Roman and early Byzantine periods. They also indicate the socio-cultural and religious aspects of the people, whether pagans, Jews or Christians, who visited the Cave and engraved their names and other personal details in the hope of commemoration, prosperity and good fortune.

This review article presents and critically discusses the book by Zdzisław J. Kapera and Robert Feather, Doyen of the Dead Sea Scrolls. An in depth biography of Józef Tadeusz Milik (1922-2006), published in 2011 by The Enigma Press. It is “a twin book”, written by two authors who shed light from different perspectives the life and work of renown Polish epigraphist and paleographist Józef Tadeusz (Joseph Thaddée) Milik. The biography proper, with abundant notes at the bottom of each page, is the work of Z.J. Kapera, while the other author, a journalist and metallurgist-engineer R. Feather, proposes to uncover various less noted aspects of Milik that emerge from a series of interviews and private conversations with him and those close to him. This second contribution proves to be very disappointing in terms of content and deficient from the point of methodological terms. Indeed, Feather, who is fascinated by mysteries especially those of Qumran, skillfully exploits the “unpublished thoughts” of Milik, which Feather attributes an absolute value and which forms the foundation of his fantastical and baseless hypotheses and conjectures.

A long time ago, a very thin copper sheet was found nicely folded into a square about 1.5 by 1.5 cm. Once opened, an engraved inscription in Christo-Palestinian writing was revealed. During the unfolding process many squares of the outer part had been lost, probably due to the advanced corrosion of the outer surface and to the difficulty to unfold it. The pieces presented to me were very difficult to read because of the numerous folds and light engraving. A precise observation of the folded squares made it possible to recover the shape of the original sheet. This was the first important step before deciphering the content. It then became clear that at least the right part containing the beginning of all the lines was definitively lost. The engraved remains belong to an amulet to be read to expel evil from a person under a spell whose name has disappeared. The exorcism is performed in the name of the Lord and of Jesus as is usual among the Christians. The proposed restoration only aims to help to understand the content as much as possible. Be that as it may, this amulet enriches both the Christo-Palestinian vocabulary and the number of the amulets in this language, following the practices of the apostolic generations.

Dr. Richard Carrier has recently argued that the historian Thallus, of whom much is unknown, should not be included among the ancient testimonia for the historical Jesus. Julius Africanus claims Thallus called the darkness which befell the world during Jesus’ crucifixion an eclipse. Eusebius speaks of the 2nd century historian Phlegon and “(an)other Greek compendium(s)” mentioning an eclipse in the 30’s AD. Carrier believes that Eusebius is quoting Thallus. In the present article the author argues that Eusebius could be refering only to Phlegon, and that Africanus, possibly, confused Thallus with Phlegon. Thus, Thallus could have been a 1st century BC historian, writing nothing about events during the crucifixion.

This article publishes one sheet of an ashkenazic Talmud manuscript, containing fol. 12b-14a of the tractate Yoma. The parchment was reused in the early 17th century as a cover of a book produced in Frankfurt, which is found today in the library of the Franciscan monastery of St. Anne, Munich, Germany.

This short supplementary note studies a Rabbinic text, Abot de Rabbi Natan (A) 2:7 which presents a parallelism with another text analyzed before: Tosephta Hulin 2:22-24. All the Rabbinic texts from the tannaitic period dealing with the Minim present an interest for the research on Early Christianity, since they are witnesses to the polemic context in which Judaism and Early Christianity lived. It does not mean that all the texts dealing with Minim are concerned with Christians. But Abot de Rabbi Natan (A) 2:7 could probably speak about some Jewish Christians.

Standard gazetteers and geographies of Roman and Byzantine Palestine typically include a short reference to a Roman and Byzantine village named Yagur, located on the outskirts of Ashkelon and identified with the Arab village of El Jura. The references to this purported village cite as evidence a passage in the Tosefta (tAhil. 18:15). However, Yagur is nowhere mentioned in the Tosefta; it first occurs in an emended quotation of this passage by the medieval French rabbi Rash, in his Mishnah commentary. This article demonstrates that there is no evidence to support the Rash’s emendations as the original readings of the passage, and therefore removes all evidence for the existence of a Roman/ Byzantine Yagur.

In a minor excavation at Shave Zion, the remains of a small structure with color mosaic floor were discovered. It was dated according to the pottery to the Byzantine period. As this is an isolated building atop a small hill, and as the direction of the mosaic decoration is facing east, it was suggested that these are remains of an ecclesiastic building, probably a monastery.

At the edge of the site, a large portion of a stone reliquarium was discovered. Its small size, the decorations on its sides and the hole in its short side, point to the type of a “portable” reliquarium, which was carried by hands to enable pouring the oil from its interior into small bottles or ampoules.

The most recent intervention of the archaeological service of Cafarnao’s site allowed the recovery of 6 coins. It is relevant to stress the substantial correspondence of these new relics with what was highlighted in the general study of the town’s coin data: considerable circulation in the Late Antiquity with prolonged emission from the 4th century up to, at least, the middle of the 6th century. Their presence in the same area and in the top layers of the site, together with Byzantine age coins of the 6th century, proves their use as lower value currency, probably because their weight and module were compatible with the smallest fractions of the follis of Anastasius and Justinian I.

Interdisciplinary research shows that the Constantinian complex of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, consisting of the Basilica (martyrium) and Rotunda (anastastis) were oriented according to the rising sun. The results are based on a precise survey carried out by the University of Florence, which provided the basis for the building analysis and the astronomical examination. The results of the research are: - Orientation day of the Basilica: 8 April, 326 (Preparation or day before the Sabbath/Good Friday/Passion and Death) -Orientation day of the Rotunda: 10 April, 326 (first day of the week/Easter Sunday/Resurrection). Both orientation days refer to the memory of the passion and resurrection of Jesus. Consequently this Christian shrine can be understood as a projection of the Creed as formulated at the Council of Nicea.