Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Jordan Penkower z"l

On 19 September 2025, Michael Avioz informed via Agade of the sad passing of Jordan Penkower as attached below. Penkower was a prolific scholar of the late-antique and medieval Jewish Bible, whose works are of critical importance for the study of the biblical text.

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Prof. Jordan S. Penkower z"l (1943–2025)

The Department of Bible, together with the Penkower family, regret to announce the death of Prof. Jordan S. Penkower z"l.

Prof. Jordan S. Penkower was a world-renowned expert on the history of the Hebrew Bible’s textual transmission. He served for many years as a member of the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University, where he made pioneering contributions in three principal areas of research:

Transmission of the Hebrew Bible and the Masorah – investigating manuscripts and printed editions, with special attention to their textual history.
The Bible in Rabbinic Interpretation – exploring how rabbinic literature received and reinterpreted biblical texts.
Medieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis – with a particular focus on Rashi’s commentary and its place in Jewish intellectual history.

In addition to numerous scholarly articles, Prof. Penkower published several influential books in these fields. A full list of his publications is available here.

Prof. Penkower is survived by his brother, Prof. Monti Noam Penkower, and by his sisters and brothers-in-law, Dr. Andrea and David Rosen, and Dr. Sharon and Joseph Kaplan.

He was buried today in Beit Shemesh.

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HT Agade

Yiftah 2025 - The Taxonomy of the Legal Document

Uri Yiftah has published online here a very useful book on the typology of language in ancient Greek legal documents.

Monday, September 22, 2025

Public Domain Loeb Volumes

The public domain Loeb library volumes are now all available here. I think they had all been previously available elsewhere, but this is a nice, convenient site to access and download them all.

Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Conference on the Ezekiel Papyrus

The recording of a recent conference on the famous Chester Beatty Ezekiel Papyrus (Ra 967) has been uploaded here. They have lots of interesting material about the purchasing and history of the papyrus, as well as some discussions of its format and text.

Monday, September 8, 2025

Johnson and Wagner on Material and Scribal Features of Greek Bookrolls

William Johnson and Nicholas Wagner have published their curated dataset of material and scribal features of early Greek bookrolls (3rd cent CE and earlier) at https://ancientbooks.papyrology.org/. They expect to supplement this and add their work on early codices in 2026. This is an extremely valuable database for those interested in the study of early scroll formats and scribal practices. Congratulations to both for seeing their hard work come to fruition, and thanks for making it so easily accessible!

Thursday, September 4, 2025

Sikes' Catalogue of Early Greek Psalms Fragments

Ryan Sikes has uploaded an updated version of his catalogue of early Greek Psalms fragments here. This is a very helpful resource with links to images and editions, which I use regularly.