The upright remained stationary and the victim carried the crossbeam to his execution. Once the crossbeam was affixed to the upright, the victim would be nailed or tied to the cross. In the case of nailing, the nail would be driven through the wrist rather than the palm.

``You cannot crucify a person through the hands because there is nothing there but skin and muscle. It will tear. It has to be through the wrist,''

Baghdad, Jerusalem, Aachen � On the Trail of the White Elephant (Deutsche Well)

1,200 years ago three men set off on a journey from Europe to the Middle East and back. Today their trip across three cultures and religions is recreated in the Aachen exhibit "Ex oriente: Isaac and the white elephant."

Baghdad and Jerusalem. Today the cities conjure up images of armed conflict and religious strife. For many they are the epitome of the collision between the Orient and Occident, the battlefields of global interests, where the foreign other is so different and distant from Europe. But a thousand years ago the cities represented the pinnacle of cultural and religious symbiosis and were the choice destination for one of history�s lesser-known but certainly more interesting journeys.

The year was 797 in the Christian calendar (4557 in the Jewish and 175 in the Muslim dating system). Charlemagne, King of the Francs, had sent forth two of his envoys and the Jewish merchant Isaac to the court of Harun al Rashid, Caliph of Baghdad. Their mission: establish contact with the ruler of the Abbasids and observe the ways of the city on the Euphrates. Compared to the town of Aachen with its 400 some residents, Baghdad was a flourishing metropolis, a renowned place of learning and a melting point for various cultures and religions.

When the envoys departed from Charlemagne�s court in western Germany, the distant lands of the Orient were still largely unknown and exotic. The envoy�s route led them first to upper Italy, then by ship to the holy city of Jerusalem, and from there to Baghdad, the seat of the Abbasid Caliph. All in all, the men traversed a good portion of the known world at the time, passing through the territories of the three great monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

After several months in Baghdad, the men embarked on their return journey, laden with gifts, the most impressive of which was a white Indian elephant, Abu Abbas � a symbol of friendship from the Muslim caliph to the Christian king. But because the pachyderm was so much slower than a horse, the return voyage turned into an arduous four-year adventure along the southern Mediterranean from Jerusalem to Carthage, where Isaac � who was now traveling alone � and Abu Abbas set sail to Italy. In the spring of 802, Isaac crossed the Alps on elephant-back and rode on to Aachen in the Kingdom of the Francs.

We are saddened to learn of the passing, in Jerusalem, of Prof. Shmuel Safrai, Emeritus Professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University, and one of the world's greatest experts on the era of the Second Temple. His numerous publications on the Temple, the Mishnah, the liturgy, the early synagogue, and more stand as a monument to his many decades of productive scholarship. Prof. Safrai passed away in his sleep in Jerusalem at age 84.

Jonathan D. Sarna
Chair, H-Judaic

House Votes To Save Jobs Of Park Service Archaeologists

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 19, 2003; Page A04

The House of Representatives has voted overwhelmingly to block the Bush administration from privatizing two National Park Service archaeological centers and firing the archaeologists who work there.

The action late Thursday was a setback for the administration's "competitive sourcing" initiative, which seeks to submit 15 percent of all government jobs to private competition. The Interior Department has targeted the Midwest Archaeological Center, in Lincoln, Neb., and the Southeast Archaeological Center, in Tallahassee, as part of its quota under the plan.

Late Thursday, the House voted 362 to 57 to cut off funding of efforts to put the jobs of the 100 archaeologists at the centers up for bid. The measure was attached to the Interior Department spending bill, which passed late Thursday, 268 to 152.

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NEARLY 200 museums and archaeological sites across Britain will be open this weekend to celebrate National Archaeology Days.

Student of early Christianities:

Karen L. King doesn't want to rewrite the Bible. But she does want people to take another look at the parts that got left out.
By Ken Gewertz
Gazette staff



King, the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the Divinity School, is the author of a new book, "What Is Gnosticism?" (Harvard University Press, 2003), which offers a provocative look at Christianity during its formative centuries and the heterogeneous array of groups, doctrines, and beliefs that all claimed to be inspired in some way by Jesus.

At the beginning, each of these groups claimed to represent the true Christianity, although they disagreed over basic issues. It wasn't until later that one group succeeded in labeling the others as heretics and driving them out of the fold.

"I wanted to rewrite the history of early Christianity without writing backwards, without looking at it as a process that culminated inevitably in the Christianity we know today. How did things look to the people who were around at that time? How do you go about inventing a new religion?"

It is a book King has been thinking about and working on for at least 20 years, ever since she was a graduate student in Germany studying under Hans-Martin Schenke, one of the first editors of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts.

[...]

"Gnosticism is a blanket term that covers a lot of early Christian movements. There wasn't a distinct religion called Gnosticism. It only existed as a tool of orthodox identity formation."

[...]

"Now this one group defines itself as orthodox, and all the rest get lumped together as heretical. Modern scholars then divide them up into two groups, Jewish Christians if they stay too close to Judaism, and Gnostics if they seem to reject Judaism and move toward Greek philosophy and mysticism. It gives each an identity and a unity they never actually had."

While King questions the existence of an early Christian sect identifying itself as Gnostic, her research does show that a wide diversity of groups flourished in the early Christian era. The picture contradicts long-cherished assumptions that early or "primitive" Christianity possessed a salutary purity and simplicity.

[...]

If such doctrinal diversity existed among early Christians, how is it that the version of the religion we call orthodox eventually vanquished its rivals? While the answer is extraordinarily complex, King believes a crucial factor was the influence of one man - the emperor Constantine.

[...]

"Constantine picked the kind of Christianity that best suited his political needs," King said. "He had a huge influence on the subsequent development of the religion."

[...]

But now that 1,500 years have passed, King suggests it may be time to reconsider some of the writings that the early Fathers of the Church decided were noncanonical.

"Are those choices that were made in the fourth and fifth centuries the right ones for Christians living today? Maybe we should go back and look at those early choices. As a feminist theologian, I think there are some texts that it would be good to recover."

The texts King has her eye on include "The Gospel of Mary," in which Mary Magdalene plays a prominent role as an apostle in spreading the faith; "The Gospel of Thomas," which leaves out traditional features of the Jesus story like the virgin birth and the resurrection but portrays Jesus as a divine teacher of wisdom; and "The Secret Book of John," which criticizes the violence, deceit, and materialism of society.

King doesn't expect or want these texts to achieve biblical status, but she thinks they are worth studying for a sense of the alternative voices that are still part of the Christian heritage.

"All religions have within them plural possibilities, which means we are always selecting materials to apply to the situations in which we find ourselves, and so people are responsible for what they appropriate and how they interpret tradition."

Students who are committed to particular Christian traditions sometimes find King's probing, questioning attitude toward scripture disturbing. For them she has a message that is part reassurance, part challenge.

"I'm not trying to take the canon away from them, but to bring it to their attention. I believe that if these texts are important to you, then you need to know what theological controversies and political events shaped them, and who decided that they should be authoritative for you."

Dear Colleagues:

I have been asked by my university to post the following job opening in my unit. Please direct any enquiries about (not to me but) to the person named in the ad. Please feel free to circulate it further.
SM

____________________________________________

CHRISTIAN ORIGINS/NEW TESTAMENT LITERATURE �

The Division of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, York University, invites applications for a tenure-stream appointment at the Assistant Professor level in the field of Christian Origins and New Testament Literature. The appointment, to commence July 1, 2004, is subject to budgetary approval.

We seek a candidate with a completed PhD at the time of appointment, evidence of a vigorous research agenda with scholarly interests in the Jewish, Greek, and Roman contexts of early Christianity, and promise of excellence in teaching. Other requirements include the ability to teach broad undergraduate courses in Christian studies from an interdisciplinary perspective in the first- and second-year Foundations programme, as well as ancient Greek language. The successful candidate must also have the potential to undertake graduate teaching and supervision. The successful candidate will join the Programmes in Religious Studies and in Classical Studies within the interdisciplinary Division of Humanities; membership in the Centre for Jewish Studies is also possible.

A letter of application, curriculum vitae, three confidential letters of recommendation and a sample of the applicant�s written work (no longer than 20 pages) should reach the Chair by 31 October 2003: Professor Doug Freake, Division of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada (email: dfreake@yorku.ca; phone: 416-736-5158; fax: 416-736-5460).


York University is an Affirmative Action Employer. The Affirmative Action Program can be found on York�s website at http://www.yorku.ca/acadjobs or a copy can be obtained by calling the affirmative action office at 416 736-5713.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and Permanent Residents will be given priority.

Sacred Text Site Explains World Faiths (from Editor and Publisher)
A Wonderful Resource for Religion Journalists

Finding the actual texts that are sacred to specific religions around the world can be a daunting task, even when you have access to a world-class library. How many libraries can provide precious shelf space, for instance, for the Akaranga Sutra and Kalpa Sutra of Jainism or the Zend-Avesta of Zoroastrianism, the Kitab-i-Aqdas of Baha'i, or even the early books of Christianity?

Fortunately, because of an important Web site called Internet Sacred Text Archives, you no longer have to hunt those dusty shelves. Calling itself "a quiet place in cyberspace devoted to religious tolerance and scholarship," the Sacred Text Archives is the brainchild of J.B. Hare. Working with a number of colleagues and volunteers, Hare has compiled and preserved a vast reservoir of religious and philosophical texts from a number of public domain sources.

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Decalogue or Eleven-alogue? (from Forward Magazine)

The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments � so a federal court has decided, citing the Constitution's separation of church and state � must be removed from the rotunda of the Alabama State Judicial Building in Montgomery, together with the granite monument on which they were carved.

Or is it the Eleven Commandments? Anyone counting the number of commandments appearing in photographs of the monument's two tablets of the Law � something that, to the best of my knowledge, no one but the author of this column has bothered to do � can't help blinking. Nine....ten....eleven. You can count them from top to bottom or bottom to top, left to right or right to left; they still come out the same.

That's right, Eleven: Five on the left-hand tablet and six on the right-hand one. On the left we have, "I am the Lord thy God"; "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me"; "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image"; "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," and "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." And on the right, "Honor thy father and thy mother"; "Thou shalt not kill"; "Thou shalt not commit adultery"; "Thou shalt not steal"; "Thou shalt not bear false witness," and "Thou shalt not covet."

Eleven.

What gives?

A Quest for the Lost Hebrew Gospel
by David Bivin

The True Cross
Separating Myth from History

Jan Willem Drijvers

In the days of Constantine the Great, the cross on which Jesus died was �rediscovered� in Jerusalem. Tradition gives Constantine�s mother, Helena, full credit for the find. Today, visitors to Jerusalem are shown the very spot, in a cistern beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the empress is said to have unearthed not only the true cross, but the nails that punctured Jesus� hands and feet, the crosses of the two thieves who died beside Jesus, and the plaque, naming Jesus �King of the Jews,� that hung on his cross.

For her efforts, Helena was named a saint by the Roman Catholic and Eastern churches; in art, the cross became her symbol. In more recent times, she has been hailed as the first biblical archaeologist. But did Helena actually find the true cross? And if not, how did this legend, kept alive in Renaissance paintings and today�s popular press, arise?

[...]

One last item, vis a vis the inscriptions atop Absalom. While the inscriptions are 4th century they are based on earlier writings which suggest that Zach. James and Simon may be buried there in the valley. We have just finished some more casting and preliminary results show that there are more inscriptions there. We will present these at the SBL meetings in Atlanta. What is of interest is that no one has challenged the finding, prob. because no dealers nor is Shanks involved, also Puech is one of those rare scholars who seldom 'gets it wrong. Secondly, as the insc. is 1.5 meters long one has to ask about literacy among the 'people of the book' it was def. meant to be seen from a distance.

Basically I'm presently contemplating that that the (1st century AD?) "pillar" mentioned by Hegesippus in the 2nd (quoted by Eusebius)�may be identical to the "Absalom" monument.

"...and they buried him [in the valley?] on the spot [where he was killed] and the [nearby but not same spot?] pillar [="Absalom"?] erected to his memory still [according to Hegesippus and/or Eusebius?] remains..."

I'm writing to you about the following from your blog:
"two ancient temples once stood.
''And that, please God, is where the temple shall rise again,'' he said.

Although I strongly support the right of people of all religious faiths
(or none) to visit the Temple Mount, I don't find that last quotation
very encouraging."


Whenever I read anything like this it reminds me of my first visit to the western wall. There, as a religious Jew, I faced the extraordinary reality of the dome of the rock - one of the most beautiful and revered buildings in the world. One can't help noticing that it is, shall we say, in the way of rebuilding the Jewish Temple.

Traditionally religious Jews must believe that the third temple will be built in that location, unless we receive a clear divine command to build it elsewhere, but most of us believe the rebuilding will happen, at that very site, only when the Messiah comes. When the Messiah comes anything can happen, so - who knows - perhaps the dome of the rock and the Jewish temple will superimpose.

There are definitely Jews (not a large number) who want to rebuild that temple as soon as possible, and to them the Dome of the rock is an immediate annoyance. Please do not assume that the person you quoted belongs to that minority. He may just, like me, long for a time in the future when religious hatred will be completely resolved and there will be no impediment to rebuilding.

�Bush spoke during the Aqaba meeting on June 4 about sharing the holy land between Israelis and the Palestinians. What Bush meant found expression in the Zionist decision allowing Jews to enter the Islamic shrine, because historians do not recognize the existence of any holy place for the Jews in Jerusalem,� the statement said.

The IAF cautioned that allowing Jews to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque had the aim of �demolishing the Islamic shrine and rebuilding the alleged biblical temple in its place�.

Maybe time travel could be possible (USA Today)

Q: I believe Einstein's General Relativity Theory mathematically proved that time travel into the past is impossible. Do the recent experiments showing that light can be slowed, then returned to its normal speed, have any theoretical implications for time travel?

A: Yes, according to Ronald Mallett, theoretical physicist and professor at the University of Connecticut, recent experiments slowing light's speed may make time-travel feasible. Mallet thinks he can harness slow-light energy and turn the future into the past.

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Mallett thinks time travel is not merely theoretically possible but doable , given the speed-of-light breakthrough. He and a group of scientists at University of Connecticut are designing the first experiment to test Mallett's ideas. They plan to build a time-travel device.

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Music taps roots of religion (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Defender of 1st-century Jesus inscription fight back following Israeli fraud charge (Dodge City Daily Globe)