More on the Diaspora

A couple of reviews on the BrynMawr Classical Review site may be interesting to students of Philo and of his Diaspora world. The volumes do not seem to contain chapters explicitlyu devoted to Philo, but are nevertheless relevant for studies of his social world:
Jas Elsner, Ian Rutherford (edd.), Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity. Seeing the Gods. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 532. ISBN 0-19-925079-0. $125.00. Reviewed by Laura Nasrallah, Harvard University Divinity School.

The Reviewer says, inter alia, Part III of the volume addresses Jewish and Christian Pilgrimage. While this section makes a strong contribution in addressing literary texts, it does not present the rich analysis of material culture found in
previous sections of the volume.

"David Noy's "Rabbi Aqiba Comes to Rome: A Jewish Pilgrimage in Reverse?" uses a story from the Talmud -- the accounts of four rabbis who traveled to Rome perhaps at the end of the first century CE -- to "throw some light on what it was like for influential people from Palestine to travel to Rome" (376). Ancient sources assume that regular contact existed between Jews in Palestine and in Rome. Noy interprets such travel not as simple tourism to the center of empire, but as Jewish pilgrimage to see cult objects captured from Jerusalem in 70 CE, placed in Vespasian's Temple of Peace. Such travel, he argues, substituted for pilgrimage to the now-destroyed Jerusalem temple; it was a "pilgrimage in reverse" "(385).

This part also contain articles as Wendy Pullan's "'Intermingled Until the End of Time': Ambiguity as a Central Condition of Early Christian Pilgrimage" and David Frankfurter's "Urban Shrine and Rural Saint in Fifth-Century Alexandria".
Another relevant volume is Ardle MacMahon, Jennifer Price (edd.), Roman Working Lives and Urban Living. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2005. Pp. 223. ISBN 1-84217-186-0. GBP 20.00. Reviewed by Miko Flohr, Radboud University Nijmegen.The reviewer introduces his review thus: "This volume is a collection of twelve papers written by eleven British scholars and advertises itself as being devoted to issues concerning
the life and work of craftsmen in the cities of the Roman world. While this is not completely true, the book contains some very interesting papers offering new insights into the social and spatial contexts of urban production and touches on several topics that are in desperate need of attention by archaeologists and historians. The internal cohesion of the book, however, is rather weak: a good introduction to
the overall theme is lacking and some of the contributions seem to be out of place. There is little interplay between the individual articles. As most authors concentrate on either Roman Britain or central Italy, other urbanized areas, such as Roman Africa, Egypt or Asia Minor, are mostly neglected. Thus, readers should not expect a coherent volume that constitutes a systematic contribution to the discussion about urban craftsmen in the Roman world. Nevertheless, on the basis of the individual papers, the book deserves a place in many university libraries."

Half dead?

People may wonder if I - or the blog - am/is half dead since there has been so little blogging for several months. Well, some time I have asked myself if the blog should be totally dead, but it turn out to be still opposed to such thoughts...

The problem is frankly a question of time. Moving to Stavanger and taking up a new position has made me more occupied than expected with lecture preparations and teaching, and even the books on Philo have had a quiet time on my shelves. Looks like my co-blogger Kåre has similar problems, since he hasn't been blogging for a long time ...

Recently, however, I have had to deal with some books on mission in the NT, and several of them also try to look into the works of Philo for some possible background material... I intend to present some of these works here, so stay tuned. Something may turn up before you change your shirt....

Then I am to pay a visit to a dr.student of mine in Cameroon; that will be exciting, as I have never been in Africa before. Have you...?..

The Reception of Gen 6.1-4

SBL Bookreview.org has another title among its most recently published reviews that also has a chapter dealing with the works of Philo:Wright, Archie T., The Origin of the Evil Spirits: The Reception of Gen 6.1-4 in Early Jewish Literature. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe, 198 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005, pp. xvi + 260. €49.00. Paperback. According to the reviewer (Grant Macaskill), "Chapter 7 turns to the writings of Philo of Alexandria as a counterpoint to the interpretative strategy of the Book of the Watchers. Wright discusses at some length Philo’s concepts of the human soul, including the extent to which the idea is influenced by the Platonic World of Forms." You can read the rest of the review here: Read the Review.

It turns out that Archie T. Wright also has a quite new article out dealing with Philo that might be very much comparable to Chapter 7 in the volume mentioned above. Consider this: Archie T. Wright, 'Some observations of Philo’s De Gigantibus and evil spirits in Second Temple Judaism,' Journal for the Study of Judaism Volume 36, Number 4 / December, 2005, pp. 471-488.

According to the summary provided, "The following discussion delineates Philo’s interpretation of Genesis 6:1–4 in his various treatises. The presentation provides a brief description of his understanding of the journey of the soul, which includes the origin of the soul, its place in the heavens, its time on earth, and its eventual return to the divine realm. Throughout the discussion, I will introduce various points of the interpretation of the Genesis passage found in the Watcher tradition of 1 Enoch and its adaptation in various documents in Second Temple Jewish literature. In doing so, I will highlight the similarities and differences between the interpretations which suggest Philo had knowledge of some form of the Watcher tradition and was perhaps attempting to write a corrective of its understanding of the problem of evil and the cause of human suffering in the first century C.E."

The Slavonic Pseudepigrapha

This site is developed by the scholars from the Theology Department at Marquette University (Milwaukee, USA). The resource provides original manuscripts, translations, and extensive bibliographies to the following pseudepigraphical materials preserved in Slavonic language.

Have a look at The Slavonic Pseudepigrapha.

The site contains an Introduction, and links to Bibliographies, Texts, Translations, and some other relevant information. Thansk to Andrei A. Orlov for the information.

Among the links on this site, I also found another interesting one I hadn't yet discovered:
Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism The interdisciplinary seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism is designed as the internet version of an ongoing research seminar of graduate students at the department of theology of Marquette University (Milwaukee, USA). The seminar is directed by Alexander Golitzin, a professor of eastern Christian theology (Marquette University) and Andrei Orlov, an assistant professor of Christian Origins (Marquette University). The seminar started in March 2002 as an attempt to investigate Jewish mystical traditions in the eastern Christian theological and liturgical texts. It was thought that the seminar would help initiate and inspire the discussion about the Jewish influences on eastern Christian mysticism among a broader audience. The web site has a lot of interesting links to further material.

The Roman Collegia

My review of
Jonathan S. Perry, The Roman Collegia. The Modern Evolution of an Ancient Concept. Mnemosyne Supplement 277. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Pp. xii, 247. ISBN 978-90-04-15080-5. $129.00.
is now available at BrynMawrReview.

The autorship of De Aeternitate Mundi

My co-blogger Kåre Fuglseth was a participant at a conference in Denmark a couple of years ago, and the papers from this conference have now been published in a nice volume:
David Brakke, Anders-Christian Jacobsen & Jörg Ulrich (eds.), Beyond Reception. Mutual Influences between Antique Religion, Judaism, and Early Christianity (Peter Lang, 2006),

Two of the papers, now articles, dealt explicitly with Philo, and are to be found in this volume as

Maren Niehoff, ‘Philo’s Contribution to Contemporary Alexandrian Metaphysics,’ pp. 35-56,

and

Kåre S. Fuglseth, ‘The Reception of Aristotelian Features in Philo and the Authorship Problem of Philo’s De Aeternitate Mundi,’ pp. 57-67.
The first of these two papers, the one by Maren Niehoff, is a critical examination of what appears to be an Aristotelian, non-Jewish feature in De Aeternitate Mundi, namely the indestructibility of the world. Niehoff here tries to locate Philo’s presentation in the philosophical traditions at the time, and thus deals with the influence of the Romans on Philo. The study of Niehoff lends support to the idea that Philo is a Platonist standing midway between Platonism and Neo-Platonism, perhaps a kind of Middle-Platonist.

Fuglseth’s paper is in fact a response to Niehoff’s contribution. Arguing that in the Philonic treatise here dealt with there are many statements that are clearly non-Philonic, Fuglseth wants to review the question of authorship. According to Fuglseth, “substantial divergences between De Aeternitate Mundi and other Philonic writings argue in favour of either a non-Philonic origin or that he is paraphrasing and/or quoting other authors.” In the rest of his article, he to a large extent presents some of the main problems of a Philonic authorship as set forth in a Norwegian phd dissertation, written in Norwegian, by Roald Skarsten.

This dissertation has been presented earlier on this blog both by me and Fuglseth, and Fuglseth has also a brief presentation of the main arguments on his own webpage; hence interested readers may read more on the links provided here.

Fuglseths own conclusion runs thus in this article : “If we accept the stylistic and substantial arguments of Skarsten, and I believe that we should; and conclude that the author of De Aeternitate Mundi and De Opificio Mundi cann be the same person, it is then necessary for us to find another way of reading the De Aeternitate Mundi. We must concede that it is not a Philonic compilation, but a work of an unknown editor who gathered the ancient arguments of antique metaphysics in order to support his own agenda. Then we can study the writing along the lines that Niehoff presents, as a very interesting theological blend, typical for the Hellenistic period and Middle Platonism, but not as a Philonic one.”

Biblical Studies Carnival - Best of 2006

Tyler Williams, Chair of the Religion & Theology Department and Assistant Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Taylor University College in Edmonton, Alberta, has gathered what he calls Biblical Studies Carnival - Best of 2006 over at his blog Codex. It's a subjective, but nevertheless a very interesting collection of what he considers to be the best blog postings in 2006. Have a look.
In addition, on the same page, you also have a listing of the monthly collections of the best postings on the various biblical blogs out there.

Exil und Diaspora

We start the the new year with a pointer to a review of a book highly related to the Diasporajudaism at the time of Philo, recently reviewed on www.Bookreviews.org: Jörn Kiefer,
Exil und Diaspora: Begrifflichkeit und Deutungen im antiken Judentum und in der hebraischen Bibel (Arbeiten zur Bibel und ihrer Geschichte, 19; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2005).Hardcover. €88.00. pp. 760 + CD-ROM. We snip from the introduction of the review by Klaus-Peter Adam:"The intention of Kiefer’s study is to develop an understanding of the terms and interpretations for exile and diaspora in the Hebrew Bible and in ancient Judaism, focusing on relevant biblical and early Jewish texts up to the second century C.E. Kiefer’s book provides a most readable and a stimulating companion to everyone working on exile and diaspora, indicating the shifts in interpretation of these historical facts and displaying the strong links of biblical to postbiblical texts and interpretations." You can read more of the review here. You can also find a list of the contents of the book here (Eisenbrauns, link updated Jan 3.)