CLASSES START TODAY and summer is well and truly over. Wow, that went fast! I read lots of Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Latin, and Arabic; finished a draft translation of my eclectic reconstructed Aramaic and Greek text of Aramaic Levi for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project; made some overall progress in setting up the MOTP Project now that Richard Bauckham and I have our research fellowship grant; wrote most of an article on the Hekhalot literature and ancient Jewish apocalypses; did some work on my upcoming paper on the history and politics of the Temple Mount; made notes on some other projects; got page proofs and indices done for The Book; and managed to get to the beach on most of the (rare) nice days we had in this end of Fife.

This semester I'm teaching biblical Hebrew; supervising a couple of new postgradutes along with the two I already have; continuing to run our postgraduate program (which looks to have a record intake this year); and I'm hoping to get caught up on some of the articles I've promised to write. The MOTP Project will be keeping us busy too, and I hope at least to start thinking about my translation of the Hekhalot texts. And, of course, there's blogging.

Best wishes for a good academic year.