LUBAVITCHER MESSIANISM and its connections with anti-disengagement activism in Israel are explored in a long Jerusalem Post article:

The messianic temptation
By MATI WAGNER

'Long live our master, our rebbe, the king messiah forever," shouted hundreds of Chabad hassidim at the end of the evening prayer in the courtyard outside Beit Menachem, the main synagogue in Kfar Chabad, the town across the road from Ben-Gurion Airport, which serves as the Lubavitch movement's Israeli headquarters.

Inside the synagogue, a bulky TV perched on a cabinet showed old videos of the movement's revered sage, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994.

[...]

Messianists, known as mashichistim, also believe that the dissemination of the idea that Schneerson is the messiah helps prepare the world for the messianic era.

"The rebbe said that learning and teaching about the days of redemption help bring it closer," says [Rabbi Yigal] Pizam. "Understanding the concept that the rebbe is mashiach helps prepare a Jew for the messianic era, which is coming any minute now. Knowing that he is the mashiach makes the idea of redemption that much more real and, therefore, brings it closer."

Yet in addition to the evening's decidedly messianic message, there was another theme: "We express our protest against the government's dangerous policies in the Holy Land," read the flyer advertising the rally.

[...]

Unlike mashichistim, mainstream Chabadniks acknowledge the death of the rebbe, although many do not rule out the possibility that he could still be the rebbe once he is resurrected. But more importantly, unlike the mashichistim, mainstream Chabadniks tend to avoid talking about Schneerson's role in end-of-days redemption unless asked directly.

Aggressive Greater Israel activism seems to go hand in hand with rigorous messianism: mashichistim tend to be the same men in black suits and hats blocking roads, passing out anti-disengagement flyers and attending demonstrations. The way they see it, strong messianic beliefs go together with taking the disengagement struggle to the streets.

[...]

(Via Bible and Interpretation News.)

FALSE ALARM IN EDINBURGH:

Scottish police lower alert
07/07/2005 21:25 - (News 24, South Africa)

Gleneagles - Police on Thursday lowered their alert around a shopping area of the Scottish capital of Edinburgh after determining that a suspect package was harmless, police said.

Police had evacuated an area of Princes Street, a shopping district in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, after a suspect package was found on a bus, a spokesperson said.

She said a bomb disposal squad had carried out a controlled explosion and found no sign the package contained any explosives.

[...]

Oddly, although both the Scotsman and the BBC have the story, they have not yet posted anything about the package being harmless. In any case, the police are right to be taking no chances. With the British Open coming to St. Andrews next week, we need to be especially vigilant. And get on with the show.

APOCRYPHA NOW! No, not that Apocrypha. Film apocrypha. Here's a cinematic apocryphon that seems relevant:

Ben-Hur (1959)

The Legend: A stuntman was killed during the shooting of the famous chariot race sequence. The shot was left in the final cut over the protests of the stuntman's widow.

The Facts: No stuntmen died during the filming of the 1959 version of Ben-Hur. One stuntman was injured in a spectacular mishap during the chariot race, and that shot was left in the film, to the protestations of no one. This legend may have originated in rumors that surrounded the shooting of Fred Niblo's earlier 1926 version of Ben-Hur, during which at least one stuntman was indeed killed in an accident.

I had only heard the "legend" version of this story.

"INTEREST" OR "USURY"? How should the biblical terms be translated? Also in the Forward, Philologos has the story.

THE LOGIC OF IMPURITY: In the Forward, Professor David Kraemer has some interesting reflections on the theory behind the biblical system of ritual impurity. I'm not sure whether I buy his interpretation or not.

CYBER-ARCHAEOLOGY: I would have noticed the news much earlier today, but it chanced I took the day off and spent the morning at home helping my son and his friend dissect an old MacIntoshPlus computer excavated from our garage. They marveled at the primitive technology used by the ancients.



This is the first photo I've posted using Blogger's new image-uploading facility. I'm impressed: it's easy to use and they provide 300 megabytes of free space. Well done.

EXPLOSIONS IN LONDON: There have been seven explosions, six in the the London Underground and one on a bus. Happened about three and a half hours ago. According to the BBC (to which I'm listening at the moment) at least 95 casualties reported in the Royal Hospital, some serious and critical. Two confirmed dead. Rescue operations in progress, many more casualties likely. They're saying the attacks are not on the same scale as Bali or Madrid and were designed to shut down London transportation. I have no idea whether that evaluation will bear up. Looks like a coordinated terrorist attack timed alongside the G8 meetings. Early claims of Al Qaeda responsibility, but BBC saying we should keep an open mind for now on who did it. The Prime Minister just addressed the nation, but had little info. Ongoing updates on the TV networks and the Command Post. My heart goes out to the victims.

UPDATE: The police seem to be revising the number of explosions down to four. I'm not going to continue blogging this; you all have access to better sources for this than me. In the spirit of not permitting terrorist scum to disrupt our lives, blogging on ancient Judaism etc. will continue now as normally.

DAF YOMI BLOGGING: Over at Mystical Politics, Rebecca Lesses points to three blogs that follow and comment on the Daf Yomi cycle.

"CYRUS-THE-GREAT" FILMMAKER in detention in Iraq:

U.S. Holds Filmmaker in Iraq
* Family drafts suit to free L.A. man working on a Cyrus the Great project. Pentagon plans hearing to determine if director is a security threat.

By Henry Weinstein, [Los Angeles] Times Staff Writer

Cyrus Kar's family says he left his Los Feliz apartment for Iraq to make a documentary film about a Persian king who wrote the world's first charter of human rights. But now they fear he may never get home.

On May 17, Kar was stopped at a Baghdad checkpoint in a taxi allegedly packed with a common component for improvised explosive devices, according to a Defense Department spokesman. Since then, he has been in U.S. military detention outside Baghdad.

[...]

About three years ago, Kar became interested in the history of ancient Persia, particularly the story of King Cyrus the Great, founder of Persia. He went to Iraq, over his family's objections, to film near Baghdad. He also filmed in Iran, Tajikistan, Turkey and Afghanistan and consulted with scholars.

David Stronach, professor of Near Eastern archeology at UC Berkeley, has signed a sworn declaration to be filed with the [family's federal] lawsuit, stating that he has known Kar for more than two years and has "assisted him in making his documentary" about Cyrus the Great, whom he described as "one of history's most extraordinary figures."

Stronach said Cyrus "is mentioned many times in the Bible, not least because he liberated the captive Jewish community in Babylon � an event that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, rebuild the temple, and arguably, provide the conditions that permitted the birth of Christianity.

"It is impossible to tell the story of Cyrus without bringing in the subject of Babylon, his latest and greatest conquest, and one which had quite exceptional consequences. It is therefore unsurprising to me that Cyrus Kar thought it essential to go to Babylon � in present-day Iraq � to finish filming his documentary."

[...]

It's always difficult to judge such situations without access to all the information. But this one doesn't sound good.

ED COOK reports a recent telephone conversation with Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, about the problem of unprovenanced antiquities. Me, I still can't suggest any solution better than the one Joe Zias came up with on the ANE list in January (sorry, all the ANE links seem to have gone dead): flood the market with first-rate fakes so that no dealer or collector will trust the genuineness of any unprovenanced artifact and looters will give up and turn to more profitable lines of work. If you have a better idea, speak up!

UPDATE (6 July): No one has pointed out the main objection to Joe's proposal -- that it would be illegal. Let me clarify that I mean that if there is any campaign of forgeries to undermine the antiquities market, it should be coordinated with the authorities (IAA, police, etc.). It would, after all, save them a lot of trouble in the long run.

VIGILIAE CHRISTIANAE has a recent issue (59.2, 2005) with an article of interest:

"Content Divine Infinity in Gregory of Nyssa and Philo of Alexandria"
pp. 152-177
Author: Geljon, Albert-Kees

Requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access.

JEWISH STUDIES, AN INTERNET JOURNAL (JSIJ) has published several articles in this year's volume 4. For some reason these are listed on the page for forthcoming articles rather than the page for current articles. I haven't been keeping up as they've been posted, so here are abstracts of three that are of interest:

Judith Hauptman, "The Tosefta as a Commentary on an Early Mishnah" (English)

Recent scholarship has demonstrated that much of the Tosefta precedes the Mishnah and serves as its basis. However, this raises a fundamental question: how could the Tosefta have been a source of the Mishnah, if the Tosefta is essentially a wide-ranging commentary on and supplement to the Mishnah, as evidenced by the fact that numerous passages in the Tosefta make no sense on their own, and can only be understood when read together with the text on which they comment?

The author suggests that while the Tosefta often comments on a Mishnah, this was not *our* Mishnah, but rather some other, organized, older collection of tannaitic teachings. Numerous examples are adduced to prove this point, thereby providing evidence for the existence of a version of the Mishnah which preceded our Mishnah, which was used and modified by the redactor of our Mishnah.

Amram Tropper,"Yohanan ben Zakkai, Amicus Caesaris: A Jewish Hero in Rabbinic Eyes" (English)

In the foundation myth of Yavneh, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai flees besieged Jerusalem, surrenders to the Romans, predicts Vespasian�s promotion to emperor and is subsequently granted Yavneh as a new center for the rabbinic movement. This rabbinic story risks portraying Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai as a deserter, perhaps even as a traitor and it is puzzling that the rabbis would have depicted one of the most important sages of the formative period in rabbinic Judaism in such a potentially damaging fashion. Indeed, the nationalistic atmosphere that reigned in Judea during the late first and early second centuries would probably have discouraged contemporary rabbis from portraying a rabbinic hero in this manner, and accordingly, there is not even a hint of the escape story in tannaitic literature. I suggest, however, that later rabbis were comfortable depicting Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai in this potentially unflattering manner because of the precedent set by Jeremiah. Jeremiah�s experiences during the destruction of the First Temple, as narrated in the Bible, resemble those of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai at the end of the Second Temple period, and it seems that the rabbis typologically depicted Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai as the Jeremiah of the Second Temple.

Ronit Shoshany, "Rabbi Elazar ben Shimeon and the Thieves�A Story of Sin and Atonement" (Hebrew)

The story of R. Elazar and the thieves consists of two parts. The first part describes R. Elazar�s service under Roman rule as a thief-catcher (Bavli, Bava Metzi�a 83b). The story is interrupted by a sequence of short stories, concluding with the story of R. Yohanan and Resh Lakish (84a). This interruption is apparently an intentional editorial one, aimed at encouraging the reader to compare the stories of R. Elazar and R. Yohanan. There are several similar motifs, but there is an important difference between the two stories: R. Yohanan mourns for the dead Resh Lakish, but does not repent for having caused his death by his cruel behavior, whereas R. Elazar deeply repents of his misconduct. This repentance and self-punishment is described in the second part of the story (84b). In this article, I present a close reading of the two parts of the story of R. Elazar, and a detailed comparison between this story and that of R. Yohanan. I argue that the main theme of R. Elazar�s story is his sincere repentance and atonement, which eventually enables acknowledgment of his righteousness by readers of the story.

The full texts can be downloaded in Word or PDF format.

FONT MACBLEG: Can anyone out there explain to me -- as usual, in simple terms suitable for an idiot -- how to configure a blogspot blog to display Hebrew and Greek fonts? I can view them fine on other blogs, but haven't figured out how to embed them in blog posts myself. Perhaps the problem is that I'm using a Macintosh system (OS X 10.3.5 if it matters). I have already configured the International Input Menu to include Hebrew and Greek fonts and I can type these fonts with TextEdit. Any help would be much appreciated.

UPDATE: ?????? ??? ????? ?? ????? ??? ????

Problem solved. My thanks to Tyler F. Williams for sending me the solution. In case you're interested, this is his e-mail:

One thing I noticed about your blog is that you do not have a meta tag indicating what character set you want your page to be displayed in (so I imagine it is assuming ASCII or something like that).

Try including the following meta tag in the <*head> section of your blog template:

<*meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">

This will set your page to be able to display Unicode fonts (that is what the utf-8 indicates)

I have added an asterisk at the beginning of both tags so they show up. I have no idea why that meta tag wasn't there. Does everybody else just know to add these things?

The Hebrew font used above is from David Instone-Brewer's Tyndale Unicode Font Kit for Macs, available from the Tyndale House Fonts for Biblical Studies page.

UPDATE (5 July): Oh oh ... publishing a new post seems to have wiped the Hebrew from this one. Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do now?

UPDATE (6 July): I may have figured out the problem. Let's see if the Hebrew stays this time.

THE CITY OF ASHDOD is profiled in the Jerusalem Post. It was rebuilt on its current site only in 1957, but it goes back to the biblical period and even was home to some of our friends the giants.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY to American readers!

UPDATE: I finally broke down and turned on the space heater in my office. Think of me today while you're sunning on the beach, attending your picnic, and enjoying your Fourth of July barbecue.

UPDATE: Cold enough to turn on the heat in the morning, warm enough for a hay fever attack -- this is just wrong!

WATERSTONE'S UPDATE: Regular readers will recall my fulminations in January about Waterstone's bookstore's firing of Joe Gordon in Edinburgh for blog posts that criticized the company. I hadn't heard the result of his appeal until a short time ago and only yesterday did I have time to track down the details. In case you haven't heard, Joe's situation was resolved satisfactorily for all concerned. The publicity caught the attention of the Forbidden Planet book chain, they liked what they heard about Joe, and in February they hired him as a manager and the maintainer of their new blog. Meanwhile, the wheels of the appeal ground slowly until, in April, the case was resolved in Joe's favor. He was offered reinstatement, but since he now had a better and better-paying job elsewhere, "an amicable settlement was achieved in place of reinstatement" (which I take to mean that Waterstone's coughed up some monetary compensation). I haven't been in the vicinity of a Waterstone's for quite some time, but when I am again I will no longer be avoiding it (although between Amazon and the newish St. Andrews Ottakars, my book needs are pretty well served).

Lessons:

For bloggers: don't criticize your employer on your blog unless you have a durn good reason and you understand that you may have to deal with the consequences. There may be rare cases in which such criticism is justified, but a blog is not the place for grumbling about the pointy-haired boss.

For employers: if an employee says something intemperate on a blog, try to solve the problem with a private word to the blogger. Most people have sense enough to take down an unreasonable post if it's pointed out to them (Joe would have). And don't even think of firing the employee unless you can show that all reasonable steps short of that have been taken first.

Belated congratulations to both Joe Gordon and Waterstone's for coming to terms on this and getting it behind them.

BLOG WATCH: Jim West blogs on a seal inscription mentioning a Hananel whom Giovanni Garbini thinks was an Ammonite king of Jerusalem in the 7th century BCE. News to me. [LATER: More here.] Joe Cathey blogs on a new edition of Von Rad's The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, editied by K. C. Hanson. And Phil Harland picks up on my post "Giants, Aliens, and Josephus" from last month and discusses "Aliens, Fallen Angels, and Heaven's Gate."

UPDATE: Note also Michael Homan's entries on his archaeological work this season at Zeitah in Israel. Start here and keep moving forward. Note this one in particular. (I think there may be one or two earlier relevant posts, but I can't get Michael's archive to work.) Ron Tappy and I dug at the same time at Ashkelon when we were both lowly postgraduates, and I have fond memories of the Ashkelon beach.

WHAT DOES "ISCARIOT" MEAN? More good Aramaic philology from Ed Cook and a good example of why Jastrow's Dictionary must be used with caution.

HOW DO YOU SAY "BLOG" IN LATIN? Find out here.

THE AFTERLIFE OF THE TEMPLE: Here's an interview with Simon Goldhill, author of The Temple of Jerusalem (Wonders of the World; Harvard University Press, 2005):

Construction Site

A history of the Second Temple unearths an archaeology of fantasy and longing.

INTERVIEW BY Franklin Toker

Built by Herod 20 years before the Common Era, the Second Temple�a magnificent recreation of an earlier structure built by King Solomon and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.E.�stood in Jerusalem for less than a century. Despite its short life, the legacy of Herod's effort has lasted millennia, bolstered by the discovery of archaeological relics and by continuing discussions of its grandeur that date back to Josephus's histories, written in the first century C.E.. In The Temple of Jerusalem, Simon Goldhill, a fellow of King's College, Cambridge University, and author of Foucault's Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality, examines the Temple's endurance as an object of religious and political fascination. He discusses this architectural marvel and his book, part of Harvard University Press's Wonders of the World series, with Franklin Toker.

[...]

There are also some cool pictures of artistic representations of the Temple throughout the ages.

I hope the last paragraph of the interview is wrong.

"HOW MANY CONSONANTS DID HEBREW HAVE? This is a trick question." -- Seth Sanders at Serving the Word.

HISTORY CARNIVAL XI is up at the Siris blog. Both PaleoJudaica and Ralph the Sacred River are featured.

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ENOCH SEMINAR have been published by Eerdmans:

Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection
Gabriele Boccaccini (editor)

$40.00 Paperback

In stock (Usually ships within 3 business days)

472 pages; dimensions (in inches): 6.25 x 9.25; 2005

ISBN: 0-8028-2878-7

The rediscovery of Enochic Judaism as an ancient movement of dissent within Second Temple Judaism, a movement centered on neither temple nor torah, is a major achievement of contemporary research. After being marginalized, ancient Enoch texts have reemerged as a significant component of the Dead Sea Scrolls library unearthed at Qumran.

Enoch and Qumran Origins is the first comprehensive treatment of the complex and forgotten relations between the Qumran community and the Jewish group behind the pseudepigraphal literature of Enoch. The contributors demonstrate that the roots of the Qumran community are to be found in the tradition of the Enoch group rather than that of the Jerusalem priesthood.

Framed by Gabriele Boccaccini�s introduction and James Charlesworth�s conclusion, this book examines the hypotheses of five particularly eminent scholars, resulting in an engaging and substantive discussion among forty-seven specialists from nine countries. The exceptional array of essays from leading international scholars in Second Temple Judaism and Christian origins makes Enoch and Qumran Origins a sine qua non for serious students of this period.

Contributors:

William Adler
Matthias Albani
Jeff S. Anderson
Albert I. Baumgarten
Andreas Bedenbender
Stefan Beyerle
Gabriele Boccaccini
James H. Charlesworth
John J. Collins
Michael A. Daise
James R. Davila
Torleif Elgvin
Mark A. Elliott
Hanan Eshel
Peter W. Flint
Ida Fr�hlich
Florentino Garc�a Mart�nez
Claudio Gianotto
Lester L. Grabbe
Ithamar Gruenwald
Charlotte Hempel
Matthias Henze
Martha Himmelfarb
Michael A. Knibb
Klaus Koch
Helge S. Kvanvig
Armin Lange
Erik W. Larson
Timothy H. Lim
Corrado Martone
George W. E. Nickelsburg
Pierluigi Piovanelli
�mile Puech
Annette Yoshiko Reed
John C. Reeves
Henry W. Morisada Rietz
Paolo Sacchi
Lawrence H. Schiffman
Loren T. Stuckenbruck
David W. Suter
Shemaryahu Talmon
Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar
Patrick Tiller
Liliana Rosso Ubigli
James C. VanderKam
Jacques van Ruiten
Benjamin G. Wright III

MESSIANIC WOES FOR THE LUBAVITCHERS:

Lubavitch�s Open Wound At 770
Destroyed plaque honoring rebbe points to new round in battle over messianism and control of movement.
Debra Nussbaum Cohen - Staff Writer (Jewish World)

If ever an architectural feature of a building�s exterior stood as a symbol for the life within, then the defaced plaque honoring the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson at Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heigh ts is it.

Like the jagged fault line that eventually brings down the mansion in the famous Edgar Allan Poe story �Fall of the House of Usher,� the cornerstone � which has been vandalized many times over the past few months and was violently ripped out this week � has come to represent a movement bitterly split by those who believe Rabbi Schneerson is the messiah and those who do not.

The plaque was put up seven years ago by the anti-messianists and bears the inscription �of blessed memory� after the rebbe�s name, referring to him in past tense.

Apparently that was too much to bear for some messianists who began defacing it as soon as it was set in place.

[...]

For more on this movement see here and here.

This passage from the article is interesting from a history of religions perspective:

�I describe the rebbe as alive,� Rabbi Sokolovsky said in an interview. �The body of moshiach does not die, even if it appears to be so. A tzaddik [righteous person] can materialize himself in the world if he needs to. �Concealment does not mean that the rebbe has an invisible body,� he said. �It has to do with people�s readiness to see it. It�s people�s perception.�

Rabbi Sokolovsky said he has met people who have seen the rebbe in person since he died.

Messianic resurrection appearances in the twenty-first century.

NEPHILIM IN THE NEWS: Here's a review of The Fallen Ones a made-for-TV movies that was shown on the Sci-Fi Channel in May. Excerpt:

The Fallen Ones

Horror films, just like any film genre, seem to go through periods of topic convergence. Recently we've seen a resurgence of the zombie film, as well as animals-eating-people movies; a couple of years ago there was a slew of demonic possession and substantiation flicks; before that there was a slasher renaissance; and right around the millennium there were a number of supernaturally-caused apocalypse movies.

Another popular subject of late has been fallen angels, either with or without an accompanying war amongst the heavenly host. Some of these have focused, wholly or in part, on nephilim, which are the offspring of angels and human women and were, according to some of the apocrypha, giants. The Fallen Ones, another from the Sci-Fi Originals stable, follows the giant theory of nephilim, and also throws in an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it gambit for good measure.

The reviewer, Stephanie Star Smith, seems to think this one is a better-than-usual horror movie, "a notch or six above the formulaic." Plus, there are good explosions.

Given that it doesn't pretend to be real, it gets more points in my book than this.

SOME GOOD NEWS on the Israeli/Palestinian archaeology front. The US Department of State has posted the following article:

Palestinian, Israeli Scholarly Teams Preserve Shared Heritage Sites
Local communities encouraged to participate in site protection

By David C. Walsh
Washington File Special Correspondent

Washington -- Since 2001, two teams of scholars and scientists, one based in Israel, the other in the Palestinian territories, have worked on a cooperative project to preserve historical sites that are important to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions.

The project, called the People to People Exchange Program, was funded by a $400,000 Department of State grant as an outgrowth of the U.S.-brokered Wye River Accords, signed by Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland in 1998.

The Israeli team, from the Zinman Institute of Archaelogy at the University of Haifa, focuses on the historic and religious structures in Akko, northern Israel, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities. The Israeli team is led by Ann E. Killebrew of Haifa University. She is assisted by Mina Evron, head of the Zinman Institute and Wye Project co-coordinator. Participants on the Israeli team include Israeli Jews, Israeli Muslims, Israeli Christians, Germans and other Europeans, and Americans.

The Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE) team focuses on heritage initiatives in two important biblical sites in the West Bank: Beitin (old Bethel) and el Jib (old Gibeon). Team leader Adel Yahyeh, an archaeologist and PACE�s director, said, �Both were in a fragile state, threatened by roiling political currents and largely neglected.�

Rehabilitation was achieved �in close cooperation with the people of the two villages,� he said. The Palestinian cadre also was a diverse group, with Germans, Italian-Americans, and various university grad students and interns.

[...]

More please!

THE DISCOVERY OF THE CHESTER BEATTY PAPYRI: On the Textual Criticism list, Wieland Willker has posted a contemporary account of the discovery of these New Testament and Septuagint manuscripts in Egypt in the 1930s.

ELECTRONIC GREEK PHILO: Daniel Foster and Rick Brannan have e-mailed to alert me that Logos Software is offering the Greek text of Philo in a searchable electronic text. There's a special deal for pre-publication orders. Details here. The announcement begins:

Imagine being able to ask questions of a first-century Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, a contemporary of Jesus and Paul who worked to understand Mosaic thought in light of Greek ideals. What kinds of questions would you ask to better understand the theology, interpretive strategies, and historical context of the biblical writers, who often wrestled with the same task?

The writings of Philo Judaeus, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, between approximately 20 B.C. and A.D. 40, provide a fascinating glimpse into the world of Jesus and the Apostles. In fact, Philo�s works are a goldmine of information on Jewish exegetical methods, the worldview of the apostles, and theological matters of great importance for Christianity.

We are pleased to bring you the first electronic edition of the complete works of Philo in Greek, morphologically tagged. This resource is built upon the database compiled by the Norwegian "Philo Concordance Project," which published the first complete, printed concordance of Philo in 2000. The Logos Bible Software resource includes the complete works of Philo, in Greek, drawn from the same four text editions used to compile the concordance (Cohn & Wendland, Colson, Petit, and Paramelle). The lemmatization and morphology are also supplied by the Philo Concordance Project scholars.