JUDAS AS SNAPE?

Harry Potter and the Gospel of Judas

JAMES TABOR'S NEW BOOK, The Jesus Dynasty, is profiled by ABC News. According to the article, he says that Jesus and John the Baptist were the dual messiahs as per the expectations of the Qumran sect. He also accepts the second-century and later tradition that Jesus' father's name was Pantera. I always thought that ben Pantera was a corruption of the Greek "son of the parthenos (virgin)."

THE COPTIC GOSPEL OF JUDAS was published today (it's still today in California) by the National Geographic Society. You can download a translation of excerpts in PDF format here. And here's the website on The Lost Gospel, which has some images. There's good media coverage in:

"In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal" (New York Times)

"Judas: this is what really happened" (The Observer)

The title of the second is lame; the Gospel of Judas doesn't tell "what really happened." But otherwise the article is pretty good.

WALKING ON THIN ICE:

Jesus may have walked on ice, not water: study

By Jim Loney
Reuters
Tuesday, April 4, 2006; 6:22 PM

MIAMI (Reuters) - The New Testament says that Jesus walked on water, but a Florida university professor believes there could be a less miraculous explanation -- he walked on a floating piece of ice.

Professor Doron Nof also theorized in the early 1990s that Moses's parting of the Red Sea had solid science behind it.

Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, said on Tuesday that his study found an unusual combination of water and atmospheric conditions in what is now northern Israel could have led to ice formation on the Sea of Galilee.

[...]

I think this sort of approach is naïve. Miracle stories gather around charismatic intermediaries as a matter of course, even in their own lifetimes. There is no need to look for naturalistic explanations of the stories. I have commented at greater length on this issue here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Kotel Stability to be Checked Thursday
18:46 Apr 04, '06 / 6 Nisan 5766 (Arutz Sheva)

(IsraelNN.com) On Thursday this week, a crane will be placed in the plaza in front of the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem's Old City. It will be used in an architectural examination of the stability of the Wall's composite stones. ...

ART IMITATES TALMUD at the Center for Jewish History in New York:

Permanent Exhibit: Luminous Manuscript


Wednesday Apr 5 2006 Sunday Dec 31 2006 - 11 pm to - 3 pm

A permanent artwork commissioned by the Diane H. and Joseph S. Steinberg Charitable Trust. Pittsburgh artist Diane Samuels has created a 22-foot square mosaic tablet, laid out in a design reminiscent of a page of the Talmud. ....

AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PILLOW was preserved with Dead Sea wax:

Unusual Ancient Egyptian Pillow Analyzed
By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

April 5, 2006 — Most ancient Egyptian pillows were rather uncomfortable-looking headrests carved out of wood, ivory and stone, but scientists have just analyzed a 4,000-year-old Egyptian pillow made out of woven plant fibers that were encased in a wax coating.

The rare artifact, which dates to 2055-1985 B.C., suggests Cleopatra and other well-known ancient Egyptians may have snoozed on relatively fluffy pillows that perhaps biodegraded over time, leaving the hard headrests for modern archaeologists to find.

"If sleeping on fiber pillows and bedding occurred, it has not survived well or at all in the archaeological record of the ancient Near East," said Andy Gize, Judith Seath and Rosalie David, whose research will be published in next month's Journal of Archaeological Science.

Since the wax on the pillow appears to have come from a Dead Sea petroleum residue, the artifact also could indicate that a community of "foreigners" brought knowledge of petroleum processing and pillow making into the Sedment el-Gebel region of the western Nile Valley.

[...]

The wax was not scented. However, the coating may have been an attempt to preserve the pillow for the deceased, who was likely an adult female. ...

MORE ON THE NEW CAVE with Iron Age remains which has been found in connection with the "John the Baptist Cave" at the Suba Cave site. A press release by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte includes the following:

In the most recent excavations in March, 2006, a University of North Carolina at Charlotte student team, supervised by Gibson and Tabor, uncovered an outside corridor leading to what appears to be another cave. The corridor was filled with deposits that date to the Iron Age (within 100 years of the site's original construction) and leads directly into the steep hillside.

"Just last summer we found new pools outside up above the cave and a corridor, which our most recent dig shows is leading into what we now think is another chamber," said Tabor. "We're almost afraid to continue because it now looks like this is some huge complex, but now that we are into it, we can't stop."

"We're following the corridor on back and taken it up to a wall of fill – it is leading to something – maybe another cave. The corridor narrows as it approaches the cliff face and up above you can see bedrock, maybe a roof, but in front you can just see fill. It could just be a little enclave, but it just keeps going… it's going somewhere."

Read it all for more details.

(Via the Agade list.)

THE COPTIC GOSPEL OF JUDAS DOCUMENTARY premiers on 9 April on the National Geographic Channel. I'll be in transit that day, and don't subscribe to that channel anyway, but if anyone in St. Andrews does, I'd be grateful if I could borrow the video.

ARAMAIC WATCH: Well, sort of. Aramaic has now securely replaced Greek in popular culture as the language symbolic of utter obscurity. Here's an example, with reference to the script of the new Simpsons movie:

“We’ve taken script security to the point of lunacy, though it helped that we wrote it in Aramaic,” jokes Mike Scully ...

It's all Aramaic to me.

ARAMAIC WATCH - Syriac-speaking Christians in Turkey:

FEATURE - Ancient Christian sect prays for Turkey to join EU

Mon Apr 3, 2006 7:03 AM IST8

By Gareth Jones

MARDIN, Turkey (Reuters) - Like most Turkish men, Gabriel Oktay Cilli likes to drink tea with his mates and go to soccer matches.

However, one detail marks him out sharply in this overwhelmingly Muslim country: every Sunday he goes to church.

On the wall of his jewellery shop, next to the more familiar portrait of modern Turkey's founder Kemal Ataturk whose image decorates stores, restaurants and offices throughout the country, hangs a picture of Jesus Christ and his disciples.

Cilli belongs to one of Turkey's most ancient communities, the Syriac Christians, who still speak a form of Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. In Turkey they number barely 20,000, down from 250,000 when Ataturk founded the republic in 1923.

The 20th century was hard on the Syriacs, bringing religious persecution and economic hardship, but Cilli is confident about his future in a democratic Turkey that aims to join the European Union. He has no plans to follow relatives into exile.

[...]

THE "JOHN THE BAPTIST CAVE" is back in the news in a brief UPI piece, perhaps because of this tidbit:

The most recent excavations point to the possible existence of a second, still unexcavated cave at the site, suggesting that the location may have been a major complex of uncertain function during the Iron Age.

I don't remember hearing this before.

ANOTHER ARTICLE on the Cleveland exhibit and the Temple Scroll:

Early Christianity exhibit features pieces from Dead Sea scroll
M.R. KROPKO
Associated Press

BEACHWOOD, Ohio - Small, oddly shaped fragments of an ancient Hebraic scroll appear almost like the flames atop candles as they lay enclosed in a glass protective case with lighting that makes the handwritten text stand out.

The pieces are from the Temple Scroll, one of eight Dead Sea scrolls stored at the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. It's a commentary about ritual and rules at the second Temple, a place where many Jews from about 2,000 years ago would have visited and worshipped. It was a place key to the experiences of Jesus.

The newly restored scroll segments are on display for the first time. They have been added to the Israel Museum's early Christianity exhibit, which has only been on display previously in Jerusalem to mark the new millennium in 2000. The traveling exhibit, which is making its first stop in suburban Cleveland and will travel to Atlanta, seeks to document the historical linkage of early Christianity to the Jewish culture of Israel.

The "Cradle of Christianity: Treasures from the Holy Land" opened Saturday and continues until Oct. 22. It's the first major visiting exhibit for the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, which opened about six months ago.

[...]

THE CRADLE OF CHRISTIANITY EXHIBITION in Cleveland opens today. Here are two reviews:

Treasures gleaned from a shared past (The Plain Dealer)

Key Dead Sea Scroll Makes U.S. Debut (NPR)

CONGRATULATIONS to the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:

Hebrew and Semitic Studies to celebrate golden anniversary

March 24, 2006

by Barbara Wolff

The genesis of this anniversary began with another one:

Rabbi Joseph L. Baron suggested in 1954 that the 300th anniversary of the arrival of Jews in the American colonies might best be recognized with a special chair in Hebrew language and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Baron backed his commitment to that idea and $75,000 in private donations funded a faculty position occupied initially by the late Menachem Mansoor.

In 1954 Mansoor was a young scholar interested in the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls. His first course, Modern Hebrew Literature, enrolled 37 students. Hebrew and Semitic studies became an official department in 1956.

[...]

If you're in Madison this coming week, note the lecture series associated with the anniversary celebrations.

A NEW BOOK ON KABBALAH by Joseph Dan is reviewed in Commentary Magazine by Benjamin Balint. Excerpt:

Amid all the trendiness, one almost hesitates to ask the essential question: what is kabbalah? Joseph Dan of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who has reflected on the subject for some 50 years, offers a fascinating reply in his new book.

Kabbalah, which literally means “that which has been received,” refers broadly to a “hidden” doctrine that (along with the “Written” and “Oral” Torah) is said to have been given by God to Moses at Sinai and to have been privately transmitted ever since, often only in hints and allusions, from master to disciple. Throughout the medieval period and well into the early modern age, traditionalists took these teachings very seriously, although they were also regarded as an inherently dangerous subject matter that could lead all but a select few into heresy or madness. In later, post-Enlightenment times, many scholars and religious progressives came to consider these teachings a form of superstitious nonsense. Only in the last hundred years or so has kabbalah become a subject of academic study.

Dan’s book thus represents the fruit of a century’s worth of research and systematic analysis, much of it centered at the Hebrew University. Exquisitely attuned to the varied schools, streams, and shades of his subject, Dan begins on a note of caution: although the term “kabbalah” has never been so widely used as it is today, even in the past it did not have a single meaning. Having warned us that “there is no ‘kabbalah’ in the singular,” he proceeds to give us a nuanced chronological survey of kabbalah in the plural.

Read it all. Sounds like a very useful book.