Books by Jan Safford
Papers by Jan Safford
Journal of Ancient Judaism, 2024
The importance and observance of the Sabbath within the Judean exilic communities has often been ... more The importance and observance of the Sabbath within the Judean exilic communities has often been the subject of debate. Recent studies have argued that the exiles in Elephantine, Egypt, observed the Sabbath but the exilic Judean communities in Babylonia did not. New evidence – in the form of names derived from “Sabbath” among the exiles during the Achaemenid period – seems to reflect a shift in the importance of the Sabbath within Judean identity. In this article we review the occurrences of the name Shabbataya (Šabbatāya) in extrabiblical material and explore possible parallel phenomena in Elephantine and biblical texts, ultimately drawing a picture of an Achaemenid-era evolution in the attribution of significance to the Sabbath. This transformation is evident in Ezra Nehemiah and corroborated by new evidence; extrabiblical and biblical
sources demonstrate that names relating to the Sabbath began to appear at the time.
186-84) Two Unpublished Sumerian Letters from the Iraq Museum-The following two tablets are house... more 186-84) Two Unpublished Sumerian Letters from the Iraq Museum-The following two tablets are housed in the Iraqi Museum. They were confiscated. The first tablet, with an illegible museum number, records an amount of 20 liters of dates as a daily offerings from the gardeners for the sowing festival. Obv.1. lugal-nig₂-lagar-e Lugalniglagare u₃-na-a-du₁₁ tell him: 0.0.2 zu-lum [x] 20 li. dates nig₂-dab₅ ezem šu-numun offerings of sowing festival 5. u3 sa2-du11 šu-a gi-na and daily offerings ki šandana(GAL.NI)-ke₄-ne [ta] from the gardeners Rev. Lost lines he₂-na-ab-sum-mu let him give. Commentary: The term (šu-a gi-na) is a type of offering that was delivered daily to a deceased king (Sallaberger, 1993, 83). While Sigrist does not consider it as a religious term, he prefers to give it an accounting meaning, "expected",
Conference Presentations by Jan Safford
In this talk I will present evidence from cuneiform sources in which Judeans both integrate into ... more In this talk I will present evidence from cuneiform sources in which Judeans both integrate into the Babylonian religious and political culture spere while managing to preserve their ethnic identity. For the purpose of this talk, I define a Judean as an individual with a distinctly Hebrew or Yawistic name or a first degree relative of such an individual. By this definition, Judeans appear in Babylonian cuneiform sources from 592-411 BCE.
Evidence of Judeans preserving their ethnic identity while in exile include: Judeans who lived in Al-Yahudu “Judah-town” Babylon where up to five generations of Judeans are documented giving their children Hebrew names. In the Al-Yahudu corpus 88 distinct Yahwistic names are attested and at least three cuneiform tablets contain Hebrew epigraphs on the sides, indicative of some level of linguistic preservation. In the Persian period, contemporaneous with the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, names such as Šabbataya (born on the Sabbath) suddenly appear and become very common. While we have no indication that Judeans in Babylon were observing the Sabbath (indeed, approximately 1/10th of the cuneiform tablets with preserved dates record that the action transpired on a Sabbath) the sudden appearance of the name Šabbataya in the Persian period indicates that the concept of Sabbath was as least known in the diaspora and important enough to name a child after this special day.
Some examples of integration include: Akkadian Marriage contracts between Judeans and Babylonians; Judean “royal merchants” doing business with the Ebabbar temple of Šamaš in Sippar; Judeans functioning as alphabetic scribes for Persian officials; Judeans who give half of their children nice Babylonian names and the other half traditional Hebrew names or even hybrid Hebrew-Akkadian names; Judeans who adopt Beamtennamen (presumably upon entering into service for the King); Judeans who appeal directly to the Persian king in judicial matters; Judeans who serve in the military and in bureaucratic positions such as tax-collectors.
In the month of Addar in 673 BCE an Aramaic scribe living along the Ḫabur river made a mistake an... more In the month of Addar in 673 BCE an Aramaic scribe living along the Ḫabur river made a mistake and accidently wrote in Hebrew. The river Ḫabur (along with Gozan and Halach) is mentioned three times in the Bible as one of the places where the exiled Israelites were settled by the Assyrians. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that various individuals bearing Hebrew names appear in a corpus of Akkadian Cuneiform tablets from a city along the Ḫabur which dates to the 7th century.
In this paper I will give a brief history of the three (or possibly four) exiles of Israel and Judah by the Assyrian Empire. I will summarize the current state of research on the Assyrian Exiles of the Lost Tribes of Israel and give a few examples of individuals bearing Hebrew names who appear in Akkadian cuneiform tablets found in the following places: Halach, Gozan, Nineveh, Nimrud, Ashur and the Habur. I will briefly mention what we can know about the general situation of the exiles from their economic documents. Finally, I will focus on one cuneiform tablet in particular from the ancient city of Dūr-katlimmu on the Ḫabur river. I will provide the first English translation of this tablet and argue that one of the witnesses in the witness list is an Israelite (or Judean) and what was originally identified as a bad error laden Aramaic epigraph is a perfectly good Hebrew inscription
The Āl-Yahudu tablets are a collection of a just over 200 Akkadian cuneiform tablets which were ... more The Āl-Yahudu tablets are a collection of a just over 200 Akkadian cuneiform tablets which were written between 572 to 477 BCE and pertain to an exilic Jewish/Judean community in the Babylonian (and subsequent Achaemenean) empire.
There are 24 women in the Āl-Yahudu corpus mentioned by name.
-Seven of those women were slaves, but others had more liberty and economic freedom; as is evidenced by women who jointly ran business ventures or invested their private money in them.
One woman, presumably while her husband was away, paid his ilku-tax of 5 shekels of silver to the summoner. Other women appear in legal contracts as guarantors (essentially co-signing) for their husbands. Most importantly, there is a marriage contract in which a mother consents to give her daughter away in marriage. All the witnesses have Hebrew names, but the bride and groom (Nanaya-Kānat & Nabû-bān-aḫi) bear Babylonian names. While other scholars (most notably Kathleen Abraham) have conducted important research on this Qetuba, Abraham analyzed and published this marriage contract before the publication of the rest of the Āl-Yahudu tablets. She did not have the ability to see how this contract, and the persons mentioned there-within, are connected to the rest of the Āl-Yahudu corpus. Because of this, she concluded that it is impossible to demonstrate that either the bride or groom is Judean. In my paper & presentation, I demonstrate through prosopographical evidence that the bride is most probably the granddaughter of Danaya and great-granddaughter of Shealti-El, who are prominent Judean figures in the Āl-Yahudu corpus. In this paper, I also compare and contrast the status of Judean women with that of “native” Babylonian women and women from other minority backgrounds living in the peripheries of the Neo-Babylonian empire.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (between 1946-1956 in the eleven caves of Qumran along with... more The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (between 1946-1956 in the eleven caves of Qumran along with the discoveries at Murabba'at in 1951, Wadi Seiyal and Nahal Hever in 1952, and Masada between 1963-65) inaugurated a new era in the study of Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew language, late 2nd Temple Judaism and early Christianity. One of the most important impacts of this prolific profusion of information has been in the area of textual criticism. Text critical scholars used to have to rely on a hypothetical reconstructed vorlage of the various LXX codices along with early Latin, Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopic translations, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Peshitta and various medieval era tomes in order to analyze variant manuscripts and readings of the Massoretic Texts (MT).1 These treasure troves of Judean Desert texts (which date from approximately 250 BCE to 135 CE) suddenly provided the earliest Hebrew witnesses (by over 1,000 years)2 to the most ‘original’ Biblical texts which no longer exist today.3 Whatever information that might be gleaned through reconstructing a hypothetical Hebrew vorlage from ancient translations pales in comparison to the attestation and witness the scrolls found in Qumran can provide for attestation to the best reading of the Biblical Hebrew texts.
However, despite the proliferation of data which the Dead Sea Scrolls provide, scanty attention has been bestowed upon their potential instrumentality in dealing with problems of textual criticism. Instead, most scholars who engage with the Dead Sea Scrolls use them to prove the reliability of the transmission of the Massoretic Texts, the translation of the LXX, or to understand the historical sitz im leben and theological trends in Second Temple Judaism.4 While scholars have produced monolithic catalogues of textual variants amongst the DSS texts themselves (and in comparison with the MT texts),5 the time has now come to critically examine each of these variants and systematically determine if each bona fide alternative tradition is superior to, inferior to, or equal in quality to the MT texts and subsequently to use the best reading to further our understanding of the most original reading of the text. The purpose of this paper is to make slight headway in the vast ocean of unchartered waters of textual criticism through a punctilious examination of Isaiah chapter 9 serving as a test-pilot example.
Book Reviews by Jan Safford
Alphabet Scribes in the Land of Cuneiform: Sēpiru Professional in Mesopotamia in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Periods., 2018
Writing in cuneiform in Mesopotamia existed for over 1000 years before the development of the alp... more Writing in cuneiform in Mesopotamia existed for over 1000 years before the development of the alphabet around 2000-1800 Bce. Bloch traces the spread of the West Semitic alphabet from Wadi el-Ḫol to Mesopotamia, where as early as the sixteenth century Bce some clay tablets have been found to contain short alphabetic inscriptions (epigraphs) on their edges. After discussing bilingualism and the important status of Aramaic in the Assyrian empire, Bloch then focuses primarily on alphabetic scribes (henceforth sēpirus) in the Babylonian and Achaemenid empires. Bloch discusses the disputed view that sēpirus were so called "interpreter-scribes" (i.e., scribes who could translate from Aramaic to Akkadian and vice versa). He provides sixteen texts that support the view that "of all the professions attested in the Babylonian society of the sixth-fifth centuries Bce, the profession of sēpiru appears to be almost the only one suited for reading and writing in several scripts and languages" (p. 98). One poignant example of this is a court case involving the litigation over ownership of a slave-woman. The slave's arm is inscribed in alphabetic script "to (the goddess) Nanaya." One of the litigants is a cuneiform-scribe in the Eanna temple. The witness list also mentions three other scribes and six judges. However, none of these cuneiform scribes or judges appears to be capable of reading the alphabetic script on her arm, so that a sēpiru has to be summoned, and based on his testimony alone the verdict is rendered. Of particular interest regarding the ability to speak and read multiple languages is a writing exercise in which a student wrote out, in traditional order, the twenty-two letters of the NorthWest Semitic (NWS) alphabet but in phonetic cuneiform script. This demonstrates that the student and (most certainly) the teacher had a working knowledge of Mesopotamian cuneiform (and presumably the Akkadian language) as well as a NWS language and its alphabet. The alphabetic epigraph on this tablet reads מפי mpy ('from/by my mouth'), which suggests that a teacher dictated an exercise orally to a student. All scholars prior to Bloch asserted that the transcribed alphabet here must be Aramaic. However, Bloch points out that in all dialects of Aramaic, the word for 'mouth' is פם\פום pm/pwm instead of py. Furthermore, Bloch notes that even with pronominal suffixes added, the final m is preserved in Aramaic. Therefore, Bloch concludes that, linguistically, the alphabetic epigraph must belong to a NWS language of the Canaanite branch, such as Hebrew or Phoenician rather than Aramaic. It is indeed quite possible that the teacher and student were Israelite or Judean exiles. The earliest mention of a sēpiru working in the state administration for a king probably involves a Judean (or perhaps Israelite) in the service of Nebuchadnezzar II. In Nebuchadnezzar's southern palace a large archive of cuneiform texts was found in a basement storeroom. Many of the tablets were records of state dependents who received regular rations from the court of Nebuchadnezzar. A few of these texts (the so-called Weidner Texts) record King Jehoiachin as receiving one-half pānu of sesame oil a month and his five sons receiving two and a half qû of sesame oil a month. One of these texts states that there were eight other Judeans who received one-half qû each. Still another mentions a few of these Judeans by name, including a sēpiru whose name might be read Dānī-Yāwa, who is responsible for overseeing delivery of oil rations to captives from Cilicia. Bloch writes, "It is reasonable to suppose that Dānī ?-Yama had served at Jehoiachin's court in Jerusalem where he specialized in writing in Aramaic for the purposes of international communication. .. " (p. 230). Bloch states that any attempt to identify the ethnic background of sēpirus must be based entirely on the individual's personal name or the personal name of a first-degree blood relative. He cautions that
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sources demonstrate that names relating to the Sabbath began to appear at the time.
Conference Presentations by Jan Safford
Evidence of Judeans preserving their ethnic identity while in exile include: Judeans who lived in Al-Yahudu “Judah-town” Babylon where up to five generations of Judeans are documented giving their children Hebrew names. In the Al-Yahudu corpus 88 distinct Yahwistic names are attested and at least three cuneiform tablets contain Hebrew epigraphs on the sides, indicative of some level of linguistic preservation. In the Persian period, contemporaneous with the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, names such as Šabbataya (born on the Sabbath) suddenly appear and become very common. While we have no indication that Judeans in Babylon were observing the Sabbath (indeed, approximately 1/10th of the cuneiform tablets with preserved dates record that the action transpired on a Sabbath) the sudden appearance of the name Šabbataya in the Persian period indicates that the concept of Sabbath was as least known in the diaspora and important enough to name a child after this special day.
Some examples of integration include: Akkadian Marriage contracts between Judeans and Babylonians; Judean “royal merchants” doing business with the Ebabbar temple of Šamaš in Sippar; Judeans functioning as alphabetic scribes for Persian officials; Judeans who give half of their children nice Babylonian names and the other half traditional Hebrew names or even hybrid Hebrew-Akkadian names; Judeans who adopt Beamtennamen (presumably upon entering into service for the King); Judeans who appeal directly to the Persian king in judicial matters; Judeans who serve in the military and in bureaucratic positions such as tax-collectors.
In this paper I will give a brief history of the three (or possibly four) exiles of Israel and Judah by the Assyrian Empire. I will summarize the current state of research on the Assyrian Exiles of the Lost Tribes of Israel and give a few examples of individuals bearing Hebrew names who appear in Akkadian cuneiform tablets found in the following places: Halach, Gozan, Nineveh, Nimrud, Ashur and the Habur. I will briefly mention what we can know about the general situation of the exiles from their economic documents. Finally, I will focus on one cuneiform tablet in particular from the ancient city of Dūr-katlimmu on the Ḫabur river. I will provide the first English translation of this tablet and argue that one of the witnesses in the witness list is an Israelite (or Judean) and what was originally identified as a bad error laden Aramaic epigraph is a perfectly good Hebrew inscription
There are 24 women in the Āl-Yahudu corpus mentioned by name.
-Seven of those women were slaves, but others had more liberty and economic freedom; as is evidenced by women who jointly ran business ventures or invested their private money in them.
One woman, presumably while her husband was away, paid his ilku-tax of 5 shekels of silver to the summoner. Other women appear in legal contracts as guarantors (essentially co-signing) for their husbands. Most importantly, there is a marriage contract in which a mother consents to give her daughter away in marriage. All the witnesses have Hebrew names, but the bride and groom (Nanaya-Kānat & Nabû-bān-aḫi) bear Babylonian names. While other scholars (most notably Kathleen Abraham) have conducted important research on this Qetuba, Abraham analyzed and published this marriage contract before the publication of the rest of the Āl-Yahudu tablets. She did not have the ability to see how this contract, and the persons mentioned there-within, are connected to the rest of the Āl-Yahudu corpus. Because of this, she concluded that it is impossible to demonstrate that either the bride or groom is Judean. In my paper & presentation, I demonstrate through prosopographical evidence that the bride is most probably the granddaughter of Danaya and great-granddaughter of Shealti-El, who are prominent Judean figures in the Āl-Yahudu corpus. In this paper, I also compare and contrast the status of Judean women with that of “native” Babylonian women and women from other minority backgrounds living in the peripheries of the Neo-Babylonian empire.
However, despite the proliferation of data which the Dead Sea Scrolls provide, scanty attention has been bestowed upon their potential instrumentality in dealing with problems of textual criticism. Instead, most scholars who engage with the Dead Sea Scrolls use them to prove the reliability of the transmission of the Massoretic Texts, the translation of the LXX, or to understand the historical sitz im leben and theological trends in Second Temple Judaism.4 While scholars have produced monolithic catalogues of textual variants amongst the DSS texts themselves (and in comparison with the MT texts),5 the time has now come to critically examine each of these variants and systematically determine if each bona fide alternative tradition is superior to, inferior to, or equal in quality to the MT texts and subsequently to use the best reading to further our understanding of the most original reading of the text. The purpose of this paper is to make slight headway in the vast ocean of unchartered waters of textual criticism through a punctilious examination of Isaiah chapter 9 serving as a test-pilot example.
Book Reviews by Jan Safford
Book Sections by Jan Safford
sources demonstrate that names relating to the Sabbath began to appear at the time.
Evidence of Judeans preserving their ethnic identity while in exile include: Judeans who lived in Al-Yahudu “Judah-town” Babylon where up to five generations of Judeans are documented giving their children Hebrew names. In the Al-Yahudu corpus 88 distinct Yahwistic names are attested and at least three cuneiform tablets contain Hebrew epigraphs on the sides, indicative of some level of linguistic preservation. In the Persian period, contemporaneous with the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, names such as Šabbataya (born on the Sabbath) suddenly appear and become very common. While we have no indication that Judeans in Babylon were observing the Sabbath (indeed, approximately 1/10th of the cuneiform tablets with preserved dates record that the action transpired on a Sabbath) the sudden appearance of the name Šabbataya in the Persian period indicates that the concept of Sabbath was as least known in the diaspora and important enough to name a child after this special day.
Some examples of integration include: Akkadian Marriage contracts between Judeans and Babylonians; Judean “royal merchants” doing business with the Ebabbar temple of Šamaš in Sippar; Judeans functioning as alphabetic scribes for Persian officials; Judeans who give half of their children nice Babylonian names and the other half traditional Hebrew names or even hybrid Hebrew-Akkadian names; Judeans who adopt Beamtennamen (presumably upon entering into service for the King); Judeans who appeal directly to the Persian king in judicial matters; Judeans who serve in the military and in bureaucratic positions such as tax-collectors.
In this paper I will give a brief history of the three (or possibly four) exiles of Israel and Judah by the Assyrian Empire. I will summarize the current state of research on the Assyrian Exiles of the Lost Tribes of Israel and give a few examples of individuals bearing Hebrew names who appear in Akkadian cuneiform tablets found in the following places: Halach, Gozan, Nineveh, Nimrud, Ashur and the Habur. I will briefly mention what we can know about the general situation of the exiles from their economic documents. Finally, I will focus on one cuneiform tablet in particular from the ancient city of Dūr-katlimmu on the Ḫabur river. I will provide the first English translation of this tablet and argue that one of the witnesses in the witness list is an Israelite (or Judean) and what was originally identified as a bad error laden Aramaic epigraph is a perfectly good Hebrew inscription
There are 24 women in the Āl-Yahudu corpus mentioned by name.
-Seven of those women were slaves, but others had more liberty and economic freedom; as is evidenced by women who jointly ran business ventures or invested their private money in them.
One woman, presumably while her husband was away, paid his ilku-tax of 5 shekels of silver to the summoner. Other women appear in legal contracts as guarantors (essentially co-signing) for their husbands. Most importantly, there is a marriage contract in which a mother consents to give her daughter away in marriage. All the witnesses have Hebrew names, but the bride and groom (Nanaya-Kānat & Nabû-bān-aḫi) bear Babylonian names. While other scholars (most notably Kathleen Abraham) have conducted important research on this Qetuba, Abraham analyzed and published this marriage contract before the publication of the rest of the Āl-Yahudu tablets. She did not have the ability to see how this contract, and the persons mentioned there-within, are connected to the rest of the Āl-Yahudu corpus. Because of this, she concluded that it is impossible to demonstrate that either the bride or groom is Judean. In my paper & presentation, I demonstrate through prosopographical evidence that the bride is most probably the granddaughter of Danaya and great-granddaughter of Shealti-El, who are prominent Judean figures in the Āl-Yahudu corpus. In this paper, I also compare and contrast the status of Judean women with that of “native” Babylonian women and women from other minority backgrounds living in the peripheries of the Neo-Babylonian empire.
However, despite the proliferation of data which the Dead Sea Scrolls provide, scanty attention has been bestowed upon their potential instrumentality in dealing with problems of textual criticism. Instead, most scholars who engage with the Dead Sea Scrolls use them to prove the reliability of the transmission of the Massoretic Texts, the translation of the LXX, or to understand the historical sitz im leben and theological trends in Second Temple Judaism.4 While scholars have produced monolithic catalogues of textual variants amongst the DSS texts themselves (and in comparison with the MT texts),5 the time has now come to critically examine each of these variants and systematically determine if each bona fide alternative tradition is superior to, inferior to, or equal in quality to the MT texts and subsequently to use the best reading to further our understanding of the most original reading of the text. The purpose of this paper is to make slight headway in the vast ocean of unchartered waters of textual criticism through a punctilious examination of Isaiah chapter 9 serving as a test-pilot example.