There are, notoriously, a number of general literary observations on the large number of Christians in Caesar's household and in Caesar's employ in the late second and in the third centuries A.D. but there are remarkably few particular examples to substantiate these general claims. Particularly rare (for reasons of security?) are traces of such individual Christians outside the literary remains. C.I.L. 6.8987 (= Diehl I.L.C.V. 3872) would appear to be an exception and to record two such Christians of Caesar's household. It thus provides welcome attestation, though, curiously, the inscription has seldom been exploited for this information.

The bull was known in Cyprus as the symbol of the god of fertility already in the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium B.C.). The bucranium, which is the most characteristic part of this animal, appears as a religious symbol on a number of religious documents from Cyprus, namely, models of sanctuaries where bucrania are represented on wooden poles, forming the centre of worship (Fig. 1). In the Aegean world, particularly in Minoan Crete, the head of the sacrificed bull played an important part in religious ritual, especially during the second millennium B.C. In the Near East the idea of fertility impressed most profoundly prehistoric man, and consequently the bull appears in the religious iconography as early as the 7th millennium. The idea of entering into a direct association with the god by putting on the divine image led to the invention of masks which were worn during religious rituals. Monsters with bull's heads appear both in Oriental and Aegean religions already in prehistoric times. The “bull-man” in the Near East and the “Minotaur” in the Aegean dominated for centuries the religious scenes as they appear in both regions, particularly in glyptic. This conception is more evident in later dramatic performances, which succeeded ritual, where the mask was of primary importance.

I have chosen this subject for my contribution to the memorial volume to Paul Lapp since I feel he would have been interested in it. I would have enjoyed discussing it with him. His methods might in detail have differed, and we could have had plenty of arguments, but he would have taken the points. We shared a knowledge of the problems of excavating a Palestinian tell. It is in part because of this that I have a special personal sense of loss at his untimely death. I should have very much valued his appreciation and criticism of the publications of the tell of Jericho and of Jerusalem when they in due course appear.

Influences, interrelationships, call them what one may, have long provided a topic for stimulating discussion, – an exercise in which Paul Lapp excelled. With this in mind I offer this brief essay involving discernible influences that reached Palestine during the Pottery Neolithic. It is an outline, in date limited to between 6000 and 4000 B.C., and in space bounded by Mersin, Hassuna, and southwards to Palestine, including the East Bank of Jordan.

Im Sommer 1968 hatte ich erstmals Gelegenheit, eine Reihe von antiken Ortslagen im westlichen Untergaliläa und in der Šefēlāh, dem westlichen Hügelland von Juda, aufzusuchen, die für die Lokalisierungsprobleme von Jos. 19, 24–31 und Jos. 15, 33–36 von Interesse sind.

In a collection of essays dedicated to the memory of Paul Lapp it is fitting that one of them should deal with the lmlk or royal jar stamps to the study of which he made such an important contribution. It is our purpose here not to emulate his example nor to present a full review of the many problems associated with the interpretation of these stamps but to deal with the question of their date and to make some suggestions about the historical implications of the pattern of their geographical distribution.

Les morceaux des rouleaux de peau appartenant aux écrits hénochiques qui proviennent de la Grotte 4 de Qumrân se répartissent en onze manuscrits, dont sept portent les sigles 4QHena,b,c,d,e,f,g et les quatre autres, représentant l'ouvrage astronomique attribué à Hénoch, sont marqués par 4QHenastra,b,c,d. Aucun fragment manuscrit qui puisse correspondre d'une façon quelconque à la deuxième section de l'Hénoch éthiopien, à savoir les chapitres 37 à 71, ou “livre des Paraboles,” n'a été identifié dans la masse innombrable des fragments de 4Q (restes de la bibliothèque centrale du monastère essénien du Ḫirbet Qumrân) ni non plus dans les lots plus réduits de manuscrits retrouvés dans dix autres grottes de la région qumranienne. Cet indice négatif, mais assez éloquent aux termes du calcul des probabilités, en faveur de la date post-qumranienne de ce livre se laissera facilement renforcer par des considérations d'ordre littéraire.J'ai pu, par contre, identifier tout récemment une composition hénochique fort importante qui, au IIIe siècle de notre ère, a été admise dans le canon des livres saints manichéens sous le titre de “livre des Géants.” J'en ai répéré une dizaine, sinon une quinzaine, de manuscrits très fragmentaires parmi les lots des grottes de Qumrân publiés ou inédits. Les onze manuscrits mentionnés, de même que 4QHen-Géantsa, seront édités intégralement par moi, avec la collaboration de Matthew Black, dans la monographie The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4.

Ideally, textual criticism should precede literary criticism, because the objectivity of the latter is compromised if variants are selected on the basis of their contribution to the literary analysis. In some instances, however, a rigid separation of the two disciplines defeats its own purpose. The Damascus Document (CD) provides a case in point. To date the application of purely textual criticism to 7:9–8:2 = 19:5–14 has yielded no satisfactory and generally accepted solution. In this study I hope to show that the recognition of one paragraph as a secondary insertion simplifies the textual problem to the point where it can be resolved by a simple and plausible hypothesis. The distinction of different levels in a text is one of the many analogies between literary criticism and archaeology, and to this extent makes this contribution an appropriate one in a volume designed to honour the memory of Paul Lapp.

Since the publication of a first century A.D. witness to the first half of this composition, found in 11Q Pssa, col. 21, lines 11–17, it has seemed to the present writer that a textual study of the whole poem is called for which, among other things, will reappraise its relationship to the book of Sirach, to which it regularly forms an appendix. The text as given here is necessarily to some extent reconstruction, primarily in the second half (of which only the last two words are preserved at the beginning of IIQ Pssa, col. 22). It is hoped that the notes given below to the individual lines of the poem will both identify and explain the elements of reconstruction, along with the medieval Hebrew evidence and that of the versions. The translation provided has as its primary purpose to show in small compass how the Hebrew text is being read and understood; it is approximately the rendering contained in the New American Bible (Paterson, N.J., and elsewhere, 1970).

La traduction de la quatrième demande du Pater a toujours été laborieuse, et la dernière en date chez les Chrétiens francophones frise la tautologie: Donne-nous anjourd'hui notre pain de ce jour. En mars 1966, dans une lettre à une haute personnalité religieuse où j'exprimais mes réserves sur le texte de ce Pater oecuménique, j'attribuai ces diffcultés à une méconnaissance du substrat sémitique, que je supposais être quelque chose comme , , autrement dit un hébraïsme qui se réduit à: Donne nous notre pain quotidien

The more complete of modern lists of ancient Jewish Pseudepigrapha include the 4th and 7th Epistles of Heraclitus. The suggestion that these are of Jewish origin goes back to Jacob Bernays; it met with little favour among classical philologians, who preferred to see in these letters typically Cynic or Stoic documents, but historians of the pseudepigraphical literature of early Judaism, though they sometimes take note of this rival explanation, continue to list these works in their uncanonical canon.

Il y a plus d'un siècle, H. Ewald avait rassemblé, à propos des douze fils de Jacob, les mentions de douze tribus, peuples ou cités qu'on trouve dans la Bible et dans les littératures grecques et latines, et il avait envisagé la possibilité d'un groupement analogue dès l'époque patriarcale. Plus récemment, le sociologue M. Weber a défini Israël à l'époque des Juges comme une confédération guerrière dont Yahweh garantissait l'ordre social et assurait la prosperity; “Israël“aurait été le nom d'une ligue cultuelle qui avait, peut-être, des rites “amphictyoniques.” Employé pour la première fois, semble-t-il, dans ce contexte, le terme fut repris par A. Alt, qui parla d'une “amphictyonie” de Mambré.

For many years the writer has wondered about the ancient Israelite claim to a town as far out in the coastal plain as Tell el-Ḥesi, if that town is correctly identified with Biblical Eglon. During 1964–65, when with graduate students I was able to explore the area in person, thus supplementing the study of maps, my puzzlement with the historical topography and archaeology of the area deepened. It is a disappointment that there never was an opportunity to discuss the matter with Paul W. Lapp, in whose honor this issue is published, because his interest in such topographical matters had been whetted by the same teacher as my own, William Foxwell Albright.