Recently Announced Books

Not just your everyday cereal bowl. From the Bible Lands Museum's exhibit on Jewish Magic.

Eisenbruans has announced a new volume of editions of magic bowls. Aramaic Bowl Spells: Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Bowls Volume One will include bowls from the very important Schøyen Collection, and is being edited by Shaul Shaked, J.N. Ford, and Siam Bhayro. Shaked is one of the foremost authorities on the bowls, and his work has culminated in a slew of articles, two volumes, and numerous lectures. I had the pleasure of hearing Ford give a talk at a conference that Shai organized last May in which he highlighted many Mesopotamian motifs that he found in the bowls. To top it off, Bhayro brings his expertise on the heterogeneity of pre-Islamic Mesopotamia and on magic texts from the genizah to the volume, which indeed promises to fill a very big gap in printed scholarship.

It goes without saying that the bowls are of utmost importance to the study of Talmud, and especially of the Bavli. Besides the linguistic importance, noted decades ago by Epstein and others, the bowls represent an important window on “the everyday beliefs and practices of the Jewish, Christian, Mandaean, Manichaean, Zoroastrian and Pagan communities on the eve of the Islamic conquests.” For some free content on the topic see here (profile from the Stanford Archaeological Center), here (an article by bowl expert Dan Levine), here (a summary by Shai of a lecture given by Shaked on rabbinic bowls), and here (another summary at the old Talmud blog, of a lecture by Bhayro on divorce motifs in the bowls).

Eisenbraun’s also announced the third edition of Emanuel Tov’s “Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible“. In its newest edition, the book, published originally in Hebrew as part of the “אנציקלופדיה מקראית”,

has incorporated the insights of the last ten years of scholarship, including new perspectives on the biblical texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, all of which have now been published. Here are expanded discussions of the contribution of textual criticism to biblical exegesis and of the role of scribes in the transmission of the text. The introduction and references throughout the book have been thoroughly revised with the beginning student of textual criticism in mind.

Many of Prof. Tov’s articles, and even some of his books, are available on his personal website.

Members of the Hebrew University Bible Project at work. Note the Talmud scholar in the red shirt.

Although this may sound a little too biblical for readers interested mainly in the Talmud, textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible is an invaluable tool for understanding exegetical moves made by the rabbis. There are many instances in which midrashim were based on a text different than that which is before us today in most editions of the Tanakh. Additionally, scholars of rabbinic literature have a lot to bring to textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, and the volumes of the Hebrew University Bible Project even have a dedicated apparatus of quotes from rabbinic literature.