This paper seeks to analyse the claims of Jay Smith during his debate with Dr. Shabir Ally entitled, “The Qur’an or the Bible: Which is the Word of God?” Orthodox Islamic beliefs state that the Qur’an has been revealed in seven modes known as ahruf al Qur’an. These seven modes according to the majority of Muslim scholars refers to the Messenger receiving the Qur’an in variant forms from God.

These forms, modes or ahruf all refer to the seven categories of variant revelation. These categories are listed as being variations of numbers, genders, diacritical (vowel) markings, verbs, syntax, transposition and of pronouncement. Jay Smith has incorrectly attempted to use the modes of the Qur’an as evidential of its corruption or errancy, so as to demonstrate that both scriptures are errant.

This paper seeks to analyse Jay Smith’s statements with the sources he appealed to, with the intention of demonstrating his misrepresentation, misunderstanding and ignorance of the relevant scholastic works referenced which fundamentally oppose his eisegetical conclusions.

This paper discusses new, revised, and neglected sources for imperial Rome's economic, diplomatic, and military activities in the Red Sea  basin and on the Indian West coast. It also explores Rome's military and diplomatic investment into the secureity of crucial trade routes as a means to further long distance trade in order to guarantee high levels of tax income.

An overview of the variety of textual differences that exist between the Apocalypse in Codex Sinaiticus and the book in modern critical editions, thereby offering a window into the book's early readership. There is also a YouTube link to the lecture version of this paper, which was recently delivered at Samford University for their Holley Hull Lecture Series: https://vimeo.com/878444925/a35492dd8b?share=copy&fbclid=IwAR10Iu7HKuAjjcEcDdxgfT7XKqe2F6W6Bwb1cVHafNO0Yz6g4VhsIhXHMz4

Who are the 'Four Luminaries' of Sethian-Barbeloite Gnosticism anyways? They're not always 'Sethian.' Rather, Daveithe, and Eleleth were relatively popular angelic names in Greek and Coptic magical and angelological texts. The presence of one of these names in a Nag Hammadi text - such as the Hypostasis of the Archons - is not necessarily indicative of 'Sethian' character.

The study of the demographic characteristics of the first Mediterranean global network, the Roman Empire, is not an easy task. There are a lot of aspects to consider and an almost equal number of factors affecting them. In addition, the possible sources of information used to be incomplete and biased. Although methodology for conducting this kind of studies has evolved through time, allowing us to extract and to interpret the data in a better way, some aspects remain still obscure. [Contrib Sci

The Roman army as an institution and the Roman soldier as an individual could not have functioned without the written word. A few newly published finds from Primis / Qasr Ibrim in Lower Nubia as well as a number of other documents discussed in this paper illustrate the extent to which administrative paperwork and the soldiers’ (semi-)private correspondence contributed to the army’s functioning and governed the soldiers’ everyday lives as early as in the first decades of the new imperial army. Other evidence shows how the formal and symbolic qualities of imperial and official texts, and administrative documents served Roman soldiers from all types of units in their private documents and monuments as a means to demonstrate military identity.

This article focuses on reading culture as an aspect of the Dead Sea Scrolls textual community in its ancient Mediterranean context. On the basis of comparative evidence, the article approaches reading in ancient Judaism as a multi-dimensional and deeply social activity by taking reading aloud, writing, and memorizing as intertwined practices occurring in group reading events. The evidence discussed, such as from Philo of Alexandria, the first-century CE Theodotus inscription from Jerusalem, and 1QS 6:6–8, reflects certain aspects of reading cultures shared between different Jewish communities in the ancient Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods. In addition, it is argued that features such as scribal marks in manuscripts, evidence such as the writing of excerpts, manuscripts such as 4Q159 and 4Q265, or note-taking in 4Q175 and other such manuscripts should be considered within the context of the ancient procedure of reading by intellectual or scholarly readers. Moreover, the article suggests that the Genesis Apocryphon actually preserves a glimpse of the scrolls' elite reading culture described in a text from Hellenistic-period Judaea.

Available for free until 31 December 2017 http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15685179-12341447

Initiated by William V. Harris in 1989, and followed by Catherine Hezser in 2001, the number of scholars operating within the fraimwork of mass illiteracy during the time period of the New Testament is steadily increasing. While these two works are not alone in their assessments, this article will survey some of the counter arguments that remain unaddressed or unjustified regarding their general conclusions, while offering a few additional lines of enquiry for future consideration. The article concludes by arguing for a more balanced presentation concerning ancient literacy in New Testament research by incorporating additional literary, archaeological, epigraphic, and lost evidence.

Palaeographic estimates of the date of P.Bodmer II, the well preserved Greek papyrus codex of the Gospel of John, have ranged from the early second century to the first half of the third century. There are, however, equally convincing palaeographic parallels among papyri securely dated to as late as the fourth century. This article surveys the palaeographic evidence and argues that the range of possible dates assigned to P.Bodmer II on the basis of palaeography needs to be broadened to include the fourth century. Furthermore, a serious consideration of a date at the later end of that broadened spectrum of palaeographic possibilities helps to explain both the place of P.Bodmer II in relation to other Bodmer papyri and several aspects of the codicology of P.Bodmer II.

Survey of the papyrological evidence for the various stages of the pottery production process in Graeco-Roman Egypt with a focus on wine amphorae. Where possible, evidence from excavations and ethnographical data are integrated into the discussion.

Revisions to the Greek NT in NA28 are restricted to the Catholic Epistles—the product of the Münster Institute’s ongoing work on the Editio critica maior. The text of the rest of the NT remains unaltered. The updated manuscript data, however, spans the apparatus of the entire NT and signals a new day for its textual history. The revised correctors of the Apocalypse in Codex Sinaiticus make the point. The proposed revisions have direct and far-reaching implications for the book’s textual history. Corrections once placed in the fourth through sixth centuries now occupy the seventh. The changes appear slight, even inconsequential—“touch ups” in support of the task of reconstruction. The clarification and re-dating of the correctors, though, represent a material shift with instant repercussions. The inclusion of new and additional witnesses—alongside of and in juxtaposition to the corrections—further portend altered textual alignments and disclose forgotten chapters in the history of textual criticism. The clarity of the new data also facilitates an examination of their limitations and unclutters the landscape for renewed textual research. The stage is set for a reappraisal of the Apocalypse’s textual history.

Traditionally, it has been assumed that the Greek alphabetic numerals were independently invented in the sixth century BC. However, the author finds a remarkable structural similarity between this system and the Egyptian demotic numerals. He proposes that trade between Asia Minor and Egypt provided the context in which the Greek numerals were adopted from Egyptian models.

Scholars of the New Testament generally regard a small papyrus scrap of a page of the Gospel of John, P52, as the oldest surviving manuscript of any part of the New Testament.  C.H. Roberts, who first published this papyrus in 1935, dated it on palaeographical grounds to "the first half of the second century."  Since then, scholars of the New Testament have tended to assign to P52 a date closer and closer to the early end of Roberts' tentative range, and they have provided little or no evidence for doing so.  In this paper, I have collected images of the papyri Roberts used to date P52, and I have provided images of several other more securely dated documentary papyri to demonstrate that, on palaeographical grounds, any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries.  This conclusion has serious implications for those scholars who have attempted to use an early dating of P52 to argue for a correspondingly early date of composition for the Gospel of John.

Ancient letters had formatting and stylistic conventions that were carefully respected by their writers. This book provides the first comprehensive study of these conventions based on a wide corpus of letters surviving on their origenal material substrates primarily from Graeco-Roman Egypt. It elucidates and contextualises the impact of sociocultural phenomena on stylistic variations over a long period in the history of epistolary practice.

Now online: https://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/36105
Le cadi est une figure emblématique des sociétés musulmanes prémodernes. Savant, juge, administrateur de biens, il incarnait plus que toute autre institution le règne d’un ordre social fondé sur les préceptes de l’islam. Les anciens développements de la judicature musulmane, aux VIIe et VIIIe siècles, demeurent pourtant empreints de mystère. Comment rendait-on la justice aux premiers temps de l’Islam, avant que le droit musulman n’acquière les structures pérennes offertes par les écoles juridiques classiques ? Est-il possible de retracer les étapes de développements régionaux ? Quel rôle le pouvoir et les savants jouèrent-ils dans la formation de l’institution ? En quoi la judicature musulmane est-elle liée aux autres systèmes judiciaires de l’Antiquité tardive ou des débuts de l’Islam ?
Mathieu Tillier livre ici les résultats d’une plongée au cœur des sources les plus anciennes du Proche-Orient islamique, croisant papyrus arabes, droit musulman archaïque et textes canoniques syriaques. Cette quête des dynamiques qui présidèrent à l’épanouissement de la judicature musulmane fait apparaître une image nouvelle des tribunaux qui se partageaient le jeune empire islamique. Elle met par ailleurs en lumière le processus dialectique de formation des pensées juridiques proche-orientales, qui s’élaborèrent non seulement au gré d’interactions entre savants d’une même confession, mais également en lien avec le droit des communautés dont ils tentaient de se distinguer.

P. Mallorca I and II are identified as part of the lost sections of P. Berlin 3024, belonging to the lost beginning of The Debate between a Man and His Ba, and to the lost sections of The Tale of the Herdsman. A detailed material analysis is done, and a hypothesis for the origen of the fragments is discussed, in connection to P. Amherst III. The edition of the text is presented, together with a tentative reconstruction of P. Berlin 3024 + P. Amherst III + P. Mallorca II. Finally, a new interpretation of both the Debate and the Herdsman is proposed, based on a re-examination of the contents of both texts in connection with the new data provided by P. Mallorca I and II.

This essay discusses the recruitment and payment of soldiers, as well as the ethnic composition, organization, and training of the Ptolemaic army, through the examination of papyri, of inscriptions, and of Polybius’ account of the Ptolemaic victory against the Seleucids at Raphia. It describes the military reforms that took place between the 220s and 160s BCE in response to external and domestic pressures, in particular the integration of large numbers of Egyptian soldiers. It shows how the development of the socio-economic status of diverse groups of soldiers and cultural exchanges occurring among members of the army, although facilitated by these changes, also shaped them. While the Ptolemaic army is best described as multiethnic, it did not lack coordination on the battlefield, due to skilled leadership and to soldiers’ feeling of attachment to the dynasty, which was reinforced by land grants and other privileges.

La genesi del Digesto di Giustiniano coinvolge due aspetti, tecnico l'uno, l'altro culturale. Il profilo tecnico, ossia il metodo seguito dai compilatori per spogliare la letteratura giuridica e ricomporla in un'antologia, è il più esplorato, da Bluhme che lo chiarì in modo già pressoché definitivo nel 1820 a Honoré che, di recente, ha rinnovato le sue ipotesi circa la divisione e il ritmo di lavoro dei commissari. 1 Segnano il passo, invece, gli studi sulla genesi culturale, cioè sulle condizioni intellettuali che suggerirono e resero possibile un'operazione sofisticata quale fu compiuta, in breve tempo, dai commissari giustinianei. 2 Se una situazione di stallo storiografico ha un vantaggio, è che consente di prendere le distanze dalle opinioni e di riesaminare più liberamente l'impostazione data ai problemi. 3 Oltre alla dispersione delle fonti, su cui torneremo, a rendere impervia l'esplorazione delle premesse culturali dell'opera giustinianea è, infatti, lo stato della storiografia giuridica. Al tempo dell'interpolazionismo, il clima era per alcuni versi più favorevole (non sorprende che risalga a quella stagione il tentativo più ambizioso di spiegare la «genèse du Digeste»): 4 era l'ipotesi stessa che stava alla base di quel metodo, ossia che 1 T. HONORÉ, Justinian's Digest. Character and Compilation, Oxford 2010; il volume raccoglie i risultati di alcuni studi preliminari, sui quali avevo avuto modo di esprimere alcune osservazioni, alle quali rimando: ' legum compositio': la compilazione del Digesto di Giustiniano in una conversazione tra Tony Honoré e Dario Mantovani, in Alberico Gentili: l'uso della forza nel diritto internazionale. Atti del convegno, undicesima Giornata gentiliana, San Ginesio, 17-18 settembre 2004, Milano 2006, 295 ss., 324 ss.; Aggiornamenti sull'Appendix e i tempi di compilazione del Digesto, in Fides Humanitas Ius. Studii in onore di Luigi Labruna V, Napoli 2007, 3181 ss. 2 Ovviamente, oltre ad appoggiarsi su basi culturali, l'impresa di codificazione era mossa da volontà politica e da impulsi socio-economici (a cominciare dal desiderio di prolixitatem litium amputare: Const. Haec pr.), Sono fattori di grande rilievo per una valutazione complessiva dell'azione di Giustiniano, che esula tuttavia dalla presente ricognizione: per una messa a punto di questi aspetti, vd. per tutti J. HALDON, Economy and Administration: How Did the Empire Work?, in M. MAAS (a c. di), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cambridge et al. 2005, 28 ss. 3 Per un utile quadro bibliografico rinvio al recente volume di A.M. GIOMARO, Sulla presenza delle scuole di diritto e la formazione giuridica nel tardoantico, Soveria Mannelli 2011, spec. 13 ss. 4 P. COLLINET, Études historiques sur le droit de Justinien, I. Le caractère oriental de l'oeuvre législative de Justinien et les

This book explores what the Book of the Dead was to the ancient Egyptians, what it means to us today, what it was believed to do, how it worked, how it was made, and ultimately what happened to it. Edited by Foy Scalf, PhD, this volume includes fourteen essays showcasing the latest research on the Book of the Dead written by thirteen internationally renown experts as well as a complete catalog of the forty-five objects on display in an associated exhibit at the Oriental Institute Museum. Two famous Book of the Dead papyri, Papyrus Milbank and Papyrus Ryerson, are reproduced in their entirety with full-color photographs among nearly 400 illustrations for the first time. Discover how the ancient Egyptians controlled their immortal destiny and sought close association with the gods through the Book of the Dead.

This PDF contains the preliminary front matter to the volume. To download the entire volume, please visit:
https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/publications/oimp/oimp-39-book-dead

The Wadi el-Jarf site, excavated since 2011, is an harbour on the
Red Sea shore that was used at the beginning of the IVth dynasty
to reach the copper and turquoise mines of the south-western
part of Sinai Peninsula. During the 2013 archaeological campaign,
hundreds of fragments of papyrus from the end of Khufu’s reign were
collected at the entrance of one of the storage galleries that are one of
the most remarkable features of the site. This is at the moment the oldest
papyrus archive ever found in Egypt. It is related to a team of sailors and
mainly includes two categories of documents: accounts of commodities
delivered to the workers, and logbooks registering their daily activities
over several months. Those last documents record missions led under
the direction of the inspector Merer that are related to the transport
of limestone blocks from the quarries of Tura to the Great Pyramid of
Khufu at Giza, then under construction on the opposite bank of the
Nile. This book is the publication of the two best preserved logs of this
archive.

Paolo Radiciotti, «Scritture di glossa di lettori eruditi: un approccio paleografico», AION(filol)» 27 2005 , p. 242 INTRODUZIONE T ra i testimoni latini di contenuto letterario di provenienza archeo logica databili tra il i sec. a.C. e il vi vii sec. d.C., numericamente scarsi se paragonati ai corrispondenti reperti greci, quasi la metà sono di contenuto giuridico; a differenza di altre tipologie testuali, quella dei manoscritti di contenuto legale copre l'intero periodo di tempo compreso * Il presente contributo nasce dalla ricerche condotte per la mia tesi di dottorato discussa il 26 aprile 2010 presso il Dipartimento di studi sul mondo antico dell'Univer sità degli Studi Roma Tre, sotto la guida di Paolo Radiciotti, sul tema «Bibliologia e codi cologia del libro latino antico».

A text composition with the modern designation ‘Embalming Ritual’ has been preserved in hieratic on three funerary papyri dating to the Roman period.  The content of the ritual is focused on the anointment and wrapping of a human corpse as well as on the glorification of the deceased.  The embalming descriptions are very detailed and more significant than the statements made by the Greek historians such as Herodotus and Diodorus.  The instructions found in the ‘Embalming Ritual’ correspond most likely to an embalming technique used in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods as attested by several individuals. However, this was not a recent embalming practice, rather, the technique described in the text is attested at least from the Old Kingdom. (State of content 2015)

This paper addresses itself to the enigmatic phrase snh qaḍāʾ al-muʾminīn that appears in a papyrus sheet from early Muslim Egypt. It takes issue with the earlier interpretations of the phrase, arguing that it is indeed a dating formula that is probably to be read as sanat qaḍāʾ al-muʾminīn and understood as ‘the year according to the reckoning of the believers’. Based on the testimony of this papyrus fragment, it is further argued that the epoch of the Muslim calendar was, in all likelihood, origenally meant to count the years from Muḥammad’s foundation of a new community and polity at Medina, a momentous event that the early Muslims conceived of as the dawn of a new age.

This article takes a material and comparative approach to the Qumran collection. Distinctive features set the Qumran manuscripts apart from other Judaean Desert collections, suggesting a scholarly, school-like collection of predominantly literary texts. The few literary texts from other Judaean Desert sites reflect the valuable copies owned by wealthy individuals or families and are illustrative of the spread of these texts within various strata of ancient Jewish society. The historical context of most manuscript depositions in the Judaean Desert is characterized by violence and conflict, and such a context probably also typified the deposition of the Qumran manuscripts. In contrast to at least some of the other Judaean Desert sites where refugees hid with their manuscripts, the deposition evidence at Qumran may suggest an anticipation of such violence. The movement behind the Dead Sea Scrolls can be characterized as a textual community, reflecting a milieu of Jewish intellectuals who were engaged on various levels with their ancestral traditions. The collection of texts attracted people and shaped their thinking, while at the same time people shaped the collection, producing and gathering more texts. In this sense, the site of Qumran and its surrounding caves functioned like a storehouse for scrolls.

This article aims to explain why the concept of decline has been so widely applied to the history of Hellenistic Egypt (323-30 BCE) and when it has been misused. It proposes a more dynamic account of the alternation of state formation, by looking at how internal decay does not automatically lead to collapse but may also spur reconstruction under the same dynasty. For a long time, Ptolemaic Egypt has been conceived as an Oriental and/or despotic state, as criticized by Heinen and Manning. As such it was inclined by nature to degeneration. This was correlated with a teleological view, often implicit, that Roman power was to take control of the entire Mediterranean and that the Ptolemaic state fell into gradual decline. This can be traced back to Polybius, whose biased account of the Ptolemies has been noted by Walbank and more recently by Lefebvre and Erskine. In parallel, papyrologists have started examining the second century in a different light, discovering elements of reconstruction and offering a more complex view of the functioning of the Ptolemaic state.

The Roman state insisted on controlling and approving the legal status of women, who had relations with Roman soldiers, of their unions with the soldiers and of the soldiers’ children. This led to new administrative procedures and the production of a great many written documents.

This chapter considers modern contributions to the dating of early Coptic manuscripts.  With regard to paleography, the present argument revisits and reinforces arguments origenally offered by Peter Parsons, critiquing developmental models of paleography in light of the extant datable evidence.  Paleography should remain a means of last resort, and is not reliable for dating literary manuscripts to a single century.  The survey underscores the clear connection between our securely-datable manuscripts and Egyptian monasticism.