However, as one audience member was overheard commenting regretfully to his companion, "Too bad it was a fake. Just think how many millions of Christian tourists would start visiting the Israel Museum were it real."

There seems to be a widespread assumption that academics who speak publicly about religion should keep their views to themselves if they might be unsettling to the beliefs of mainstream Christians. For whatever reason, as a guild we biblical scholars have shirked our responsibility to participate in our culture as public intellectuals. That is why most Americans seem to regard the likes of Jerry Falwell as spokesmen for �the biblical perspective� on issues of public interest. As individuals, most scholars may well be content with being irrelevant to the larger culture, but the resulting impoverishment of public discourse on religion has real consequences. One example is that it is now a viable possibility that the teaching of evolution will disappear or be trivialized as �just a theory� in the public school curricula in certain places. Why have biblical scholars stayed out of this fight and left it up to scientists alone to battle creationism in the public forum? Shame on us.

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What the Seminar has done (and what every scholar who communicates with the public has the responsibility to do) is to inform its audience that certain of its positions are shared by most biblical scholars. While the Seminar does not claim that most scholars agree with its specific presuppositions or conclusions, not even members of the Seminar agree on those, its fundamental understanding that some of the words attributed to Jesus were not actually spoken by him and that the gospels are a complex blend of fact and fiction does represent the consensus of critical scholarship.

While this is not news to scholars, it is news to the American public. A huge number of Americans believe that inerrancy is the only legitimate approach to the Bible and that to take the Bible seriously is to take it literally. Critics are right to protest that many scholars disagree with the Seminar's results, but they do a disservice if they perpetuate the impression that doubts about the historical accuracy of significant portions of the gospels are confined to some radical �faction� with �idiosyncratic opinions.� To help us think concretely about this problem, let�s move beyond general views about the gospels and consider some specific conclusions about their historicity. A survey of the Seminar�s results comes up with the following partial list of negative findings:


� Jesus did not claim to be the messiah or to be divine.
� Jesus did not demand that people �believe in� him or worship him.
� Jesus did not intend to establish a church or found a new religion.
� Jesus did not believe that his death would be a sacrifice for sins.
� There is no historical evidence that Jesus had no human father.
� There is no historical evidence that Jesus� corpse came back to life.


Those findings would surprise, even shock, most churchgoers, would they not? Yet how many critical scholars, indeed how many critical scholars who are Christians, would argue the opposite position on any of those assertions? Most of the Seminar�s positions that are perceived by the public as controversial or objectionable are actually well within the broad consensus of mainstream critical scholarship.

Archaeology / When Golan worshipers faced south (Ha'aretz via Archaeologica News

By Ran Shapira

Zvi Maoz says that every day excavations at a synagogue among the ruins of the village of Dir Aziz force him to rip another page from his doctoral thesis on synagogues in the Golan Heights. Dir Aziz synagogue, next to Moshav Kanaf, has been excavated over the last five seasons and differs in many respects from other synagogues in the area.

Until excavations began here, archaeologists had speculated that in Golan Heights synagogues the Ark was adjacent to the western wall, one of the two shorter sides of the rectangular-shaped structure. This would allow believers to face the general direction of Jerusalem while praying.

In Dir Aziz, however, the worshipers faced south toward the long wall of the structure, not the one along the width. This is indicated by a space that juts out from the southern lengthwise wall of the synagogue, where the Ark apparently was located.

In this respect, the structure of the Dir Aziz synagogue resembles that of synagogues in the southern Hebron hills. The special niche for the Ark found in the Golan Heights' synagogue is also typical of synagogues in the southern Hebron hills, and especially those found in Susiya and Eshtamoa. Another unique feature of the Dir Aziz synagogue is the bas-reliefs of animals in the stone and wreath designs drawn on the whitewash.

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From p. 214 of the review by N. Na'aman of N.S. Fox, In the Service of the King. Officialdom in Ancient Israel and Judah, Cincinnati 2000, in Zion 67 (2002), pp. 213-218 [Hebrew]. The following section was translated by C. Edenburg, who apologizes if any misrepresentation has resulted.

"Fox discusses the epigraphic sources, and rightly emphasizes the grave dangers involved in depending upon materials found in the antiquities market. It should be stressed that a large part of the epigraphic findings surfaced first on the market, and it is extremely difficult to validate the authenticity of such articles. Anyone who has participated in excavations and knows how few epigraphic finds are uncovered during them, cannot help but being amazed at the endless number of findings which derive from unknown sources, and wonder what at the magic touch of antiquities robbers and dealers, into whose hands epigraphic finds fall repeatedly. It seems to me that only in a few cases, when the forgers were not adequately adept, have scholars succeeded in uncovering the forgery, but it is doubtful whether this is always possible. The antiquities market is very profitable, therefore skilled people have learned the 'secrets of the trade', and they can churn out articles whose recent provenance cannot be proven. I shall point to one example to illustrate how implausible is the picture arising from the findings amassed by now, but one could add many more cases. According to N. Avigad and B. Sass, Corpus of West-Semitic Stamp Seals published recently (1997), the number of seals and sealings identified as Hebrew is drastically greater (711) than the number of items identified as Aramaic (107), Ammonite (149), Moabite (59) or Phoenician (38). Even if we add to this number a few dozen Aramaic cylinder seals, the ratio of Hebrew items to all the others still remains unfathomable. However, we may find a self-evident solution to this puzzle, if we consider that the origin of most of the seals and sealings is on the antiquities market. "Due to these doubts, Fox decided to refrain from discussion of unprovenanced epigraphic sources. She mentions them in footnotes, but refrains from using them as a basis for any of her conclusions. In this, her approach differs from that of Y. Avishur and M. Helzer (Issues in Royal Administration in Israel according to Pre-exilic Epigraphic Sources, Jerusalem 1996 [Hebrew]), who relied heavily on materials originating on the antiquities market. Fox's cautious approach on this sensitive issue is commendable, and it supplies a stronger documentary foundation for her study than that employed by the other studies published so far."

DNA could help date ancient manuscripts (Cambridge News via Archaeologica News)

By Rose Taylor

A TECHNIQUE being developed in Cambridge could help identify the date and place of origin of ancient manuscripts.

Biochemist Christopher Howe and colleagues are working on a method that will reveal which species of animal a particular parchment comes from.

By extracting the DNA of a parchment, using a technique called polymerase chain reaction, amplifying it and studying the sequence, the scientists hope to find the skin used to produce it.

Dr Howe, who works at Cambridge University's Department of Biochemistry, said: "Once you know which species of animal the parchment comes from, you might be able to see if other sheets of parchment came from the same animal using genetic finger-printing.

"Then, if you had a book whose origins you are not sure about, you could show it had similar DNA as the other parchment and you could say it came from a similar flock.

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Experts, dealer clash over James Ossuary's authenticity (The Globe and Mail, Canada)

Associated Press and Canadian Press

Jerusalem � Is an inscription linked to James, the brother of Jesus, authentic or fake? Tempers flared over the question at the showing of a documentary about the case and a new interview dismissing an Israeli finding that led to the arrest of an antiquities dealer on suspicion of forging sacred artifacts.

Dealer Oded Golan, out on bail, was at the Jerusalem Cinematheque on Sunday night, defending his relics and his honour. Toronto filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici was there to back him up.

But Israeli experts dismissed the show with a wave of the hand, pointing to their own findings that indicated that someone forged the James inscription for profit.

The ill will between the two sides overflowed several times, as each blamed the other of conspiracy, misdeed and bad faith.

The Jerusalem screening of the Discovery Channel documentary James, Brother of Jesus and the heated panel discussion that followed provided plenty of fireworks but no clear answers.

Mr. Golan was arrested last week. Police showed items they said they found at his house, including stencils, stones and utensils.

Mr. Golan said the items weren't his. He also said that the burial box, or ossuary, that carried the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," had been in his house since the 70s, when he acquired it, and claimed he didn't know how important it was.

In June, a 14-member panel from the Israeli Antiquities Authority declared the inscription on the ossuary a clever modern day forgery. The body also labelled as fake a tablet purporting to contain instructions for maintaining the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and police suspect Golan crafted both artifacts. No charges have been filed.

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French town hopes an anniversary will spur interest in a famous son (JTA News)

By Philip Carmel

TROYES, France, July 27 (JTA) � The project is still in the initial planning stages, but the birthplace of the medieval biblical commentator Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac is determined not to miss out this time.

In 2005, Troyes, the ancient capital of the Counts of Champagne in northern France, will celebrate the 900th anniversary of the death of its most famous son, known to the Jewish world by his acronym of Rashi.

The author of the monumental commentary on the Talmud and the Torah, Rashi was born in Troyes in 1040, and although his grave has never been found, scholars believe he died there in about 1105.

For obvious reasons, the town missed out on the anniversary of Rashi�s birth in 1940. The Champagne region around Troyes had as its prefect Rene Bousquet, who later headed the Vichy police and was responsible for numerous roundups of Jews during the Nazi occupation of France.

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Rashi�s family probably came to Troyes from across the Rhine in Germany, and he himself spent some 10 years studying in the Rhineland at Worms in the famous Yeshiva of Mainz, founded by Rabbeinu Gershom, the �Light of the Diaspora.�

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Across the narrow street from the synagogue is the Rashi Institute, which provides courses in Jewish studies and regularly stages conferences.

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By the 13th century, his commentaries on the Bible were being quoted by Christian theologians in Paris. Because Rashi wanted his work to be understandable for the Jews he knew and lived with in Troyes, the style and language of his writings earned him the sobriquet �Hatzarfati,� or �the Frenchman.�

As a result, wherever there is a need to explain a difficult word in the text of the Hebrew or Aramaic in his Torah or Talmud commentaries, Rashi does not hesitate to use his own language. There are therefore almost 3,000 words of 11th-century Champenois French inserted into Rashi�s writing, a valuable source for researchers of the development of the French language.

Despite the fact that Rashi both taught and wrote in Troyes, Samoun said he was almost certainly not the city�s rabbi.

Rather, Rashi, like other medieval scholars, was strict in upholding the talmudic injunction against earning one�s living from teaching the Torah.

In fact, he owned vineyards and was a winemaker � very much in keeping with the Champagne region in which he lived.

CATHEDRAL DEANERY � A musical project has become an avenue of expanded spirituality for the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble (SAVAE), which recently performed at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains. Their latest CD, "Ancient Echoes," is a collection of music from Jerusalem�s Second Temple era (after about 540 B .C.) and the time of Christ. Saying prayers in the language Jesus spoke, said artistic director Christopher Moroney, "is a way to understand Jesus in a more authentic way."

They also had to learn about the anthropology, sociology, religion and language of the time, he said. Although he and his wife, Covita, SAVAE�s general manager, had talked about the project for 20 years, they couldn�t proceed because they couldn�t find anyone to teach them Aramaic.

In some instances, the English translation can be almost opposite the original. The couple offered as an example the word "Abwoon," from the Lord�s Prayer, which emphasizes the relationship between the Creator and the created rather than the masculine connotations of the word "Father."