ASSYRIANS EXPERIENCE SLOW CULTURAL REVIVAL IN SOUTHEASTERN TURKEY
Yigal Schleifer 8/18/06

Filled with honey-colored stone homes with exquisite relief carvings, Midyat, located in southeast Turkey, is one of the country’s most beautiful ancient towns. It is also one of its most haunted.

Once almost exclusively populated by Assyrian Christians � an ancient sect that traces its roots back to the earliest days of Christianity and that still uses Aramaic, the language spoken during the time of Jesus, for its liturgy � the town is now almost completely devoid of its original inhabitants.

Caught up in the violence that resulted from the separatist war that was fought in the area in the 1980’s and 90’s between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkish security forces, Assyrians from Midyat and several other towns and villages in the area fled to Europe, particularly Germany and Sweden, leaving their ancestral homeland behind.

Some 30-40,000 Assyrians lived in the area around Midyat, known as the Tur Abdin Plateau, 40 years ago. Nobody is sure what the population is today, although in Midyat only 100 Christian families remain.

Still, there are signs of Assyrian life throughout the region. ...

What the Devil? Prince of Darkness Is Misunderstood, Says UCLA Professor
(PhysOrg)

He's not the enemy of God, his name really isn't Lucifer and he isn't even evil. And as far as leading Adam and Eve astray, that was a bad rap stemming from a case of mistaken identity.

"There's little or no evidence in the Bible for most of the characteristics and deeds commonly attributed to Satan," insists a UCLA professor with four decades in what he describes as "the devil business."

In "Satan: A Biography" (Cambridge Press), Henry Ansgar Kelly puts forth the most comprehensive case ever made for sympathy for the devil, arguing that the Bible actually provides a kinder, gentler version of the infamous antagonist than typically thought.

"A strict reading of the Bible shows Satan to be less like Darth Vader and more and more like an overzealous prosecutor," said Kelly, a UCLA professor emeritus of English and the former director of the university's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. "He's not so much the proud and angry figure who turns away from God as [he is] a Joseph McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover. Satan's basic intention is to uncover wrongdoing and treachery, however overzealous and unscrupulous the means. But he's still part of God's administration."

[...]

... Rabban Hormizd, the ancient stone monastery outside Alqosh on the Nineveh plain which was bombed so severely that many of its magnificent epigraphic memorials, dating from a hundred centuries ago, have been shattered. These memorials were some of the most precious classical Syriac stone carvings in the world. They lie in a makeshift museum in Alqosh in desperate need of restoration.

An appeal to the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for funding to preserve rare Syriac materials under the special funds for Iraq allocated by Congress has been refused on the grounds that these materials are of a religious nature and not held at “public” institutions.

Some of the edifices listed below, now turned to rubble, had considerable historic value due to their antiquity and continuous use by the members of the several indigenous Christian denominations in Iraq that have historically made up the ChaldoAssyrians. Readings of historical geographies, as well as the colophons of Syriac manuscripts, provide clues to the early dates of some of these religious buildings even when foundation or reconstruction inscriptions lie under rubble.

In the rush to destroy these churches, manuscripts of considerable antiquity may also have been destroyed. The history of the destruction needs to be collected from oral sources so that the whereabouts of the precious manuscripts may be retrieved. This is part of the history of Iraq and a witness to its diversity, no matter what forces of ethnic uniformity may arise.

These Campers Get a Chance to Grab a Shovel and Really 'Dig the Past'
August 17, 2006 - Bryan Schwartzman (Jewish Exponent)

Jacob Fischer and Jordan Baum were both hunched over the dirt, intensely examining the ground for hidden artifacts. The excavation had already proved fruitful; the pair of 11-year-olds had uncovered part of an oil lamp, bones (not real ones, Jordan pointed out), shards of pottery and tiles marked with ancient Hebrew script.

Other campers had managed to find charcoal from when the Romans burned down the home of a Jewish family nearly 2,000 years ago.

Not bad for a morning at Ramah Day Camp in Elkins Park.

Sharjah treasures its prehistoric links

By Mariam M. Al Serkal, Staff Reporter


The UAE has a long history that was shaped over the centuries by the waters of the Arabian Gulf and the sands towards Rub Al Khali, also known as the Empty Quarter.

Little archaeological research was conducted in the Arabian Peninsula before World War II and only the remains in Yemen and Bahrain were studied. The first excavations in the UAE originally began in the late 1950s, when a Danish team of archaeologists investigated sites at Al Ain Oasis.

In 1992, a local archaeological team from the Directorate of Antiquities in Sharjah launched its first excavation in Khor Kalba and other parts of the emirate that are currently displayed in the new Archaeological Museum, which was inaugurated in May 1997 by His Highness Dr Shaikh Sultan Bin Mohammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah.

The fourth stage covers the period from 300 BC-611 AD, where models of burial methods and housing units are on display.

Exhibits include samples of weapons used at the time, such as arrow heads, spears, daggers and ornamentation items.

This period marks the appearance of writing in the region, which is represented in the Southern Musnad calligraphy and Aramiac writings that are on display.

Also on display in the hall that covers this period are several ornamentation materials in use during the period. It records the beginning of the appearance of writing in the area represented in the Southern Musnad Calligraphy (Southern Arabian writing found mainly in the Kingdoms of Yemen and used by the people of North-Eastern Arabia) and some Aramaic writings which were in practice in Maleeha, a district of Sharjah, and finally replaced the Southern Arabian writing which apparently disappeared at the advent of Christianity.

Legal Help Opens Door to Scrolls

The San Diego Natural History Museum has secured $1.3 million in bond financing to buy special climate and ventilation systems to protect the fabled Dead Sea Scrolls — a major exhibit scheduled to be unveiled in 2007.

[...]

At the time of Jesus, Jews thought that friends of God became members of the heavenly court when they finished their work. The Hebrew Scriptures describe how holy people were “taken up” by God into heaven. One example is Elijah who rode to heaven in a chariot of fire (2Kgs2). Jewish narratives described the assumption of Moses, Isaiah and other prophets. The Jews believed that holy people are protected by the power of the Almighty. ...

Belief in the assumption of the Virgin Mary is attested in a number of books written after the year 300 AD. These books describe the death of Mary under various circumstances. Some claim that Mary was raised after three days, others that her body was taken up to heaven during the funeral procession. Other books claim that Mary’s tomb was opened and found to be empty. These writings claim that Mary died anywhere from three to 50 years after the death of Jesus.

But two Israeli archaeologists who have excavated the site on and off for more than 10 years now assert that Qumran had nothing to do with the Essenes or a monastery or the scrolls. It had been a pottery factory.

The archaeologists, Yizhak Magen and Yuval Peleg of the Israel Antiquities Authority, reported in a book and a related magazine article that their extensive excavations turned up pottery kilns, whole vessels, production rejects and thousands of clay fragments. Derelict water reservoirs held thick deposits of fine potters’ clay.

Dr. Magen and Dr. Peleg said that, indeed, the elaborate water system at Qumran appeared to be designed to bring the clay-laced water into the site for the purposes of the pottery industry. No other site in the region has been found to have such a water system.

By the time the Romans destroyed Qumran in A.D. 68 in the Jewish revolt, the archaeologists concluded, the settlement had been a center of the pottery industry for at least a century. Before that, the site apparently was an outpost in a chain of fortresses along the Israelites’ eastern frontier.

Despite the rising tide of revisionist thinking, other scholars of the Dead Sea scrolls continue to defend the Essene hypothesis, though with some modifications and diminishing conviction.

Muslim building projects on the Temple Mount and the expansion of a Muslim cemetery alongside the Mount have led to significant damage to the site in recent years and have created an unsightly hodge-podge of repairs and construction.

Imagine this. Let's say you died about 2,000 years ago, and your friends told their stories about you to their children and friends for approximately 100 years after you died. And then someone decides to write these stories down. And then they get translated from one language into another. And there's as many as 30 different versions written down. And someone picks just four as the only ones anyone should see, renounces the others, and all this happens approximately 150 years after you die.

Would you expect them to all be the same? Would you be happy with just those four that some person who didn't know you selected? Maybe, maybe not. But what about the other 26 versions of events? Maybe they were true, maybe not. Maybe they had other things in them that actually happened or that were important to you. No one really knows for sure. But odds are, there's something in the 26 that you might have supported, and maybe something from the four that you might not have. The key is in understanding the general tone and intentions of your life in all of them, and making some important observations from that.

I would respectfully suggest that it is not accurate to describe the Vindolanda tablets as "inscribed tablets" and therefore as "epigraphic" discoveries. They are predominantly written by pen in ink on the wood as discussed at the Vindolanda on-line site: "it is also misleading to categorise them, as is usually done, as 'incised' rather than `written' material." (http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/tablets/TVI-2-1.shtml)
[in a broader discussion]

Thanks for the photos

George E. Mendenhall, Prof. Emeritus, Univ. of Michigan. Dept. of
Near Eastern Studies, celebrates his 90th birthday, August 13,
2006, with the publication of his latest book,

Our Misunderstood Bible:
# Paperback: 64 pages
# Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (July 5, 2006)
# Language: English
# ISBN: 1419637223
List Price: $10.99

Book Description
Our Misunderstood Bible is a selection of some of the most
interesting and abused passages, and an examination of how they
came to be and how they evolved over time.