I'M STILL ALIVE, but still very weak. While I'm recovering, go have a look at the Temple Mount Blogburst over at Kesher Talk.

EVIDENCE FOR THE FIRST ("SOLOMONIC") TEMPLE: This is my second post for the Temple Mount blogburst. The first dealt with evidence for the Second Temple and the Herodian Temple.

The main source for such information as we have on a Temple in Jerusalem in the Iron Age II (c. 1000-586/587 BCE) is the account of it in the so-called Deuteronomistic History (the books of Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings) which is widely regarded as a work completed around the end of the Iron Age II (but see below). (No archaeological evidence for the Temple has been recovered so far. Herod's extensive rebuilding of the Second Temple and his expansion of the Temple Platform may have obliterated all such evidence.) The relevant books are 1-2 Kings. We are told the King Solomon built the Temple around 960 BCE (1 Kings 6:1, 37). We are given details of the building in this chapter and chapter 7, and its dedication by Solomon is described in chapter 8. Much of the remaining material in 1-2 Kings is devoted to the northern kingdom of Israel, but Solomon's Temple is next mentioned in the reign of Jehoash in the late ninth century in 2 Kings 12:4-16, which describes arrangements for the refurbishment of the Temple. The Temple was looted by Jehoash King of Israel (a different Jehoash) according to 2 Kings 14:14 in the early eighth century and was looted again by King Ahaz in the late eighth century to bribe the king of Assyria to come to his aid against Aram (2 Kings 16:8). Ahaz also installed some cultic innovations in the Temple which were abhorrent to the author of 1-2 Kings (2 Kings 16:10-18). The Temple also figures in the time of King Hezekiah, later in the same century (2 Kings 18:23, 19:1), and in the reign of his son Manasseh in the early and middle part of the seventh century (2 Kings 21:4-9). Manasseh too made innovations to the Temple cult. King Josiah refurbished and made changes to the Temple c. 621 BCE (2 Kings 22:3-9; 23:11-12). The Temple was plundered by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, during the brief reign of Jehoiachin c. 598 (2 Kings 24:13), and Nebuchadnezzar burned down the Temple in 586/587 BCE (2 Kings 25:9).

The Temple also figures in some of the books of prophecies attributed to the pre-exilic prophets. See, for example, Isaiah 6, Micah 4:1, and Jeremiah 7.

As I said, it is widely, but not universally accepted that the Deuteronomistic History (Dtr) was written, perhaps in two editions, during the reign of Josiah or within a few decades of the destruction of Jerusalem. This is the view I accept. A minority viewpoint, but an important one, thinks that it was written considerably later, in the late Persian Period (c 500-300 BCE) or even in the Hellenistic Period in the third or second centuries BCE. I find the last view very hard to defend. The Hebrew of the Dtr looks to me to be much more like that of the pre-exilic inscriptions than that of Hellenistic Hebrew. (I think there is a doctoral dissertation to be written on this.) The Dtr is also entirely lacking in the sort of anachronisms we would expect from a Hellenistic text. It contains no Persian words, no Greek words, and no mention of persons or events later than the early part of the exile.

But whenever we date it, there remains the question of how reliable the information in it is. To give a heuristic context, is the Dtr more like Geoffery of Monmouth's account of Aurthurian "history" in the History of the Kings of Britain, which mentions many historical personages but is rife with anachronisms, and full of historical errors, and largely legendary; or is it more like Book 2 of Herodotus' Histories, which gives an account of Egyptian history that gets the outline, order, and players in the story pretty much right, but which has a good bit of legendary material and whose contents are very much selected for Greek interest and slanted with a Greek viewpoint.

The evidence seems pretty clear to me that the Dtr is more like Herodotus' work than Geoffrey's. There is good reason to doubt much of the account of the United Monarchy under David and Solomon. Archaeological survey points toward a small population in Judah and against a state apparatus that could have supported the sort of empire described for David and Solomon. (The new excavation in Jerusalem may or may not change this perspective. It's too early to tell.) If there was a Temple built in the time of Solomon, it probably was a more modest building than what is described and which seems to have been the template for the later temples in Judah, Elephantine, and perhaps Samaria. The Aramaic Tel Dan inscription does refer to the "House of David" (בית דוד) in the ninth century BCE, so the dynasty isn't likely to be entirely legendary. (The genuineness of this inscription has been questioned, but it was dug up in a scientific excavation, and the type of extraordinary proof one would need to show an inscription to be a forgery in such a situation has not yet been advanced, in my opinion.)

All this said, the writer of the Dtr did have some good information. Quite a number of the kings of Israel and Judah are mentioned in outside sources, and in the Dtr they always appear in the proper order, at the proper time, and in relation to the proper figures in the larger ancient Near Eastern world. A few of the episodes, such as the Egyptian King Shishak's invasion of Judea in the time of Rehoboam; the destruction of Samaria by the Assyrian King Sargon II; the Assyrian King Sennacherib's invasion of Judea in the time of Hezekiah; and the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of Jerusalem, receive independent verification from extrabiblical inscriptions. And the writer knows a good many details that show that some of the sources used were pretty good. For example, the denominations of weights used for commerce which are mentioned casually in the Dtr do correspond closely to the (sometimes inscribed) weights actually excavated in Judah, only in the late Iron Age II.

The episode involving Hezekiah (2 Kings 18 and 19, paralleled in Isaiah 36 and 37) is illuminating for what it tells us we can expect from the Dtr. The Dtr gives us the proper players in the proper time and place and tells us correctly that Sennacherib invaded Judah and conquered its cities but failed (or neglected) to take Jerusalem. Some of the rest is legendary. It may be that Sennacherib's army encountered some difficulty during the campaign (Herodotus also hints at this in 2:141), but we can dismiss Dtr's report that the angel of the Lord smote 185,000 men in the Assyrian army: armies this large were not fielded until much more recent times. And the picture in the Dtr is misleading in places, if not exactly wrong. The destruction of the strategically critical city of Lachish is hinted at but never actually mentioned. It may be that when the latter was accomplished, Sennacherib did not feel that Jerusalem was important enough to take, which would explain why it was not captured. The last part of chapter 19 does not make clear that some twenty years passed between Sennacherib's withdrawal from Judah and his assassination.

In other words, the Dtr gives us the general flow of actual history, but mixed in with lots of legends, distortions, and spin. Much like Herodotus on Egypt.

If the Dtr was, as I and most scholars think, either written in the late seventh century and updated in the early sixth or written entirely in the early sixth century, it is simply unfathomable that the story of a royally sponsored Temple in Jerusalem was entirely made up. Too many people were around who were alive in the time and would have known better.

If the Dtr was written some centuries after this, it is still very difficult to imagine that the Temple was entirely made up and was an innovation of the Persian Period. The Temple is a feature that figures importantly in the narrative not only in the time of Solomon, but throughout the Judean monarchy and especially in the last century of the Iron Age. It is the sort of thing that might be made up in the Camelot of Geoffrey, but not in a work like the Dtr. It may well be that a smaller sanctuary in Solomon's time or later was expanded over time into the relatively large edifice at the end of the Iron Age (Herod's Temple would be an analogy), but the testimony of the Dtr combined with the consistent testimony of explicitly post-exilic literature makes a compelling case that a royal Temple stood in Jerusalem in the Iron Age II.

Some other considerations offer ancillary support. A temple designed roughly on the model of the First Temple (same dimensions and oriented in the direction of Jerusalem) was built in Elephantine, Egypt, by Aramaic-speaking Judean (the "Judean garrison" [חילא יהודיא]) worshippers of YHWH (YHW). It was destroyed in the late fifth century and then rebuilt. The petitioners for rebuilding reported that Cambyses had already found the Elephantine Temple present when he came to Egypt in 525 BCE, which means it was built before the Judean Second Temple in 520 BCE. (The petitioners were writing to the Judean governor and representative of the Persian Empire who would have been in a position to check their claim and who would have been informed by the rather hostile Judean priestly authorities if there had been any doubt about it. The petitioners would have had every incentive not to make claims that could be challenged.)

Here we have an interesting situation. In the sixth century BCE two temples were built by worshippers of YHWH, each on very similar lines. The earlier of the two was built by an expatriated Judean community in southern Egypt. The consistent Judean tradition about the later one, built in Jerusalem, was that it was built on the same site and along the same lines as an Iron Age-II temple destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar. Which makes more sense: (a) both Temples just happened to be so similar; (b) the Jerusalemite Judeans actually imitated the Temple in Elephantine; (c) both temples were inspired by an earlier, Iron Age Temple, as the Judean returnees from exile claimed? You decide.

There is also some epigraphic evidence that is worth mentioning. It is interesting but not decisive. One of the late-seventh-century Hebrew ostraca excavated in Arad (#18) mentions that someone is in "the House of YHWH" (בית יהוה). It is likely that this refers to the First Temple in Jerusalem. There was also a Yahwistic sanctuary in Arad, so this could be a reference to it as well. But the latter sanctuary may have been destroyed by this time, in which case the reference is probably to the Jerusalem Temple. In any case, as Ed Cook points out in his good post on this ostracon, "there seems to be no reason why Eliashib, who was presumably in Arad, would need to be informed about the welfare of the temple there." Ed also makes the important point that

regardless of how Arad 18 is interpreted, the mention of this temple should remind us that the temple of the national deity was not an optional institution in the ancient Near East; it was an absolute religious and political necessity for any state. Those who deny the existence of a "First Temple" in ancient Judah, standing in the national capital Jerusalem, find themselves in defiance, not only of the biblical record, but of all historical analogy, and must be suspected of having something on their agenda other than an interest in history.

This is spot on, and I would add that the location of holy sites has always been a very conservative matter, and the consistent, longstanding tradition that the First Temple stood on the Temple Mount makes it very probable that that is indeed where it stood.

Two Hebrew graffiti excavated in an ancient burial cave at Khirbet Beit Lei, near Lachish, may also be relevant. The first editor, Joseph Naveh, found graffito A to refer to YHWH as the "God of Jerusalem" (אלהי ירשלם) and graffito B to refer to "Moriah" (מוריה; a biblical name of the Temple Mount [2 Chronicles 3:1]) as "the dwelling of YH YHWH" (נוה יה יהוה). He dated the inscriptions tentatively to the reign of Hezekiah in the late eighth or early seventh centuries BCE. There are two problems, however. The wall-scratched graffiti are extremely difficult to read, and none of the key words is certain, apart from the name "Jerusalem" in the first. Second, the date of the inscriptions has been challenged and at least one scholar, John Gibson, would date them between the late seventh and early sixth centuries, in which case any possible reference to the Temple could refer to the Second Temple.

While I am discussing inscriptions, it is worth noting that the epigraphic evidence makes it clear that speakers of Hebrew engaged in a monumental building project in Jerusalem around 700 (the Siloam Tunnel inscription). Other excavated Hebrew inscriptions in Jerusalem around this time include the Silwan tomb inscription, the Ophel ostracon, and an ostracon from Arad that mentions "the king of Judah." Substantial corpora of Judean Hebrew correspondence by worshipers of YHWH were found on ostraca from the end of the Iron Age (late 600s to 586/87) at Lachish and Arad. The Lachish letters mention "the king" (##3, 5), "the prophet" (#3), and possibly (the reading is damaged) "Jerusalem" (#5). The Arad ostraca also refer to "the king" (#24). These are all excavated inscriptions whose genuineness is not in doubt.

As I have said before, I am not aware of any serious publication (by which I mean peer-reviewed journal articles and monographs) which argues that there was no Iron Age-II Temple in Jerusalem. Nor have any specialists who publish on the Dtr, Iron-Age II history or archaeology, etc., responded to my invitation to send me a case for this position. The main purpose of this post is to reply to the claim (never actually defended with evidence) in Palestinian and Arab circles that there was no Solomonic Temple, or indeed no Judean/Jewish Temple at all in Jerusalem. I leave it to others to discuss any further political implications of these two posts.

CORRECTION: Herodotus is a poorer historical source than I indicated above. For example, he dates the building of the Pyramids more than a millennium too late, evidently due to a misunderstanding of his Egyptian sources. The Deuteronomist did make some chronological errors, but nothing on anything like this scale.

FOR THE TEMPLE MOUNT BLOGBURST, timed to coincide with Tisha B'Av this year, I've decided to put up two posts on the historical and archaeological evidence for the existence of ancient Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. I do this not because there is any controversy about the subject in serious literature by actual historians -- there isn't -- but in response to ideological denials in Palestinian and Arab circles that Jewish Temples ever stood there. Also, I'm presenting a paper on "Archaeology, History, Politics, and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem" in the Seminar of the Centre for the Study of Politics and Religion in October here in St. Andrews, and this is a good excuse to collect some of the raw material I will be using. The first post, this one, is on the Herodian and Second Temples. The second post, to be put up later, will be on the First ("Solomonic") Temple. Thus, I will start with the more recent period and work backwards.

HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE HERODIAN TEMPLE

We are told in contemporary sources that Herod the Great (37-4 BCE) rebuilt the Second Temple and substantially expanded the Temple Platform, in effect erecting a Third Temple. Josephus gives us many details of the project in Antiquities 15.11 and a description of Herod's Temple in Jewish War 5.5. Josephus wrote near the end of the first century CE as a priest and eyewitness to the Temple. Philo of Alexandria led a delegation of Jews to Rome in 39/40 CE to persuade the Emperor Gaius Caligula not to set up an image of himself in the Temple (Embassy to Gaius). The New Testament also mentions the Temple, notably in Mark 13 and John 2:19-21.

Unlike the earlier Temples, some archaeological evidence survives for the Herodian Temple. The Temple itself was destroyed by the Romans and its rubble was hauled away centuries later when the mosques that now stand on the spot were built. But much of Herod's expanded Temple Platform has survived and has been thoroughly studies by archaeologists. Various other architectural features and fragments survive around the Platform. Most of the evidence they have found supports Josephus' description of the site. Two Greek inscriptions were recovered in the nineteenth century which warn gentiles not to stray into the Temple compound beyond the Court of the Gentiles, on pain of death.

I could give more details, but let this suffice.

HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SECOND TEMPLE

Because of Herod's extensive rebuilding of the Temple Mount, archaeological evidence for earlier Temples, if it exists at all, is incorporated into his work and could only be recovered by a politically impossible, extensive excavation of the site. I have in the past expressed the hope that someday nonintrusive scanning technology may let us get at the information buried there without disturbing it. Assuming the Waqf does not continue to destroy what is there. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of textual evidence that demonstrates the existence of the Second Temple.

In Antiquities 11.1-5 Josephus summarizes the canonical account of the rebuilding of the Temple. Whatever we make of this, it is clear enough from his testimony that Herod tore down a much older Temple when he built the Third Temple.

The Dead Sea Scrolls give us our earliest fragments of important biblical texts. The scroll of the Twelve ("Minor") Prophets survives in a number of copies going back to the pre-Herodian period and perhaps back to the second century BCE. Fragments of the books of Haggai and Zechariah, which tell of the rebuilding of the Temple in 520-516/515 BCE, and of the book of Malachi, which describes the Second Temple as a longstanding institution, are among them (4QXII^{a, b}). A Herodian manuscript containing fragments of Haggai and Zechariah also survives (4QXII^e), as does a fragmentary manuscript of the book of Ezra (4QEzra) from perhaps a little earlier. So the Second Temple is directly attested, along with the traditional story of its origins, well before the Herodian era. It is generally agreed that the book of Haggai and the relevant part of Zechariah (chapters 1-8) were actually written at the time of the events they describe, although some scholars have expressed general skepticism about the early composition of prophetic books.

One of the noncanonical Enochic books, the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 83-90) gives us additional important evidence. Fragments of the Animal Apocalypse were recovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls and at least one manuscript (4QEn^f) is dated to the second half of the second century BCE. Internal evidence within the book itself points to its composition a little before 160 BCE (when its apocalyptic, after-the-fact "prophecies" start to go wildly wrong). The Animal Apocalypse purports to reveal the future course of history to the antediluvian patriarch Enoch up to the End Time, scheduled just after the Maccabean Revolt of 167-165 BCE. 1 Enoch 89:73 describes (in veiled apocalyptic language) the rebuilding of the Temple ("Tower") immediately after the return from the Exile, but claims that the offerings of this Temple were polluted and impure. In other words, the Animal Apocalypse is a work that rejects the validity of the Second Temple, but accepts the traditional account of its rebuilding after the Exile. If this tradition were regarded as at all debatable in the second century BCE, surely the writer of this work would have denied the connection with the early exiles.

Still earlier evidence survives in material from the Egyptian Elephantine archives (on which more in the second post). A letter (Cowley 30/31) from 407 BCE by Judean expatriates long-settled in Elephantine petitions the Persian governor of Judea for support in rebuilding a Temple to Yaho (i.e., YHWH) which local Egyptians had destroyed. It mentions that the petitioners had already written some time before "to Jehohanan the High Priest and his companions the priests who are in Jerusalem." A High Priest in Jerusalem? A High Priest of what? It is pretty difficult not to infer the existence of the Jerusalem Temple here, especially inasmuch as the Judeans in Elephantine are asking him to support the rebuilding of their own Temple.

In short, we have good evidence for the Second Temple going back to the fifth century BCE. I could marshal more evidence, but I think this suffices. The consistent story, traceable at least to the middle of the second century BCE and accepted by both friend and foe, is that this Temple was rebuilt by the exiles who returned from Babylon in the late sixth century BCE.

UPDATE (12 August): for the second instalment go here or scroll up to the next post.

CHILLS AND FEVER: They started yesterday evening. I thought I was better this morning, but trying to have a normal day was a mistake. I've taken aspirin and and feel okay at the moment, but until I'm sure that I'm not spouting fever delirium, blogging is on hiatus.

UPDATE (a little before 10:00 pm): Well, I do feel better, but it's probably just the medication masking my symptoms. In any case, I need to publish the next post for the Temple Mount Blogburst, which I've been working on for some time. I think it's okay, but I reserve the right to clean up any incoherent bits I find later when I've recovered!

ANOTHER MOTP PROJECT ARTICLE, this one from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The reporter interviewed me a while ago and she's done a good job.

Jewish texts to be translated highlight some ancient curiosities

THE BRITISH NEW TESTAMENT CONFERENCE, which is to be held in Liverpool on 1-3 September, now has the full schedule of seminars and short papers posted online. You can read the program for the NT & Second Temple Judaism Seminar here.

UPDATE: The short papers are actually those of last year, but should be updated before long.

MANDAIC will be listed in the "Unesco Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing," thanks to the efforts of Sheikha Mozah, wife of the Emir of Qatar. Hopefully this will raise its profile and bring in some support to help preserve it. More details here.

MORE ON ANCIENT WATER SYSTEMS: An article by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs notes that an eighth-century-BCE lapidary water system has recently been excavated and the cave that has been associated with John the Baptist is part of the system. There is also some additional information of the Pool of Siloam excavation.

POOL OF SILOAM DISCOVERED! After well over a year, the Los Angeles Times notices:

Biblical Pool Uncovered in Jerusalem
# The reservoir served as a gathering place for Jews making pilgrimages and is said in the Gospel of John to be the site where Jesus cured a blind man.

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer

Workers repairing a sewage pipe in the Old City of Jerusalem have discovered the biblical Pool of Siloam, a freshwater reservoir that was a major gathering place for ancient Jews making religious pilgrimages to the city and the reputed site where Jesus cured a man blind from birth, according to the Gospel of John.

The pool was fed by the now famous Hezekiah's Tunnel and is "a much grander affair" than archeologists previously believed, with three tiers of stone stairs allowing easy access to the water, said Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, which reported the find Monday.

[...]

UPDATE: Todd Bolen comments on the article at Todd's Place. And at Cronaca, David Nishimura noted the recycled news too. The trigger for the resurfacing of the old story seems to have been an article in Bibical Archaeology Review.

THE CALIPH OMAR ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT: Can anyone point me to verification of this very interesting claim? It's in an editorial by
Jonathan Lincoln in the Middle East Times ("Next year, Jerusalem?").

That Al Aqsa sits where it does today is also perfectly reconcilable with Jewish belief and tradition. According to documents found in the Cairo Geniza, an archive of ancient Jewish manuscripts, the Caliph Omar asked the Jewish community to ensure that the shrine he erected on the Temple Mount, later to become the Al Aqsa Mosque, be built over the Temple's foundation.

In return, the Caliph allowed Jews to return, establish houses of worship and rebuild their community -- rights not accorded to them by their former Christian rulers. This history makes it particularly disheartening to hear some Palestinian religious and political leaders deny Jewish connections to the city.

Which Cairo Geniza document are they and where are they published?

UPDATE: David Stacey e-mails:

Check Moshe Gill's 'A History of Palestine 634-1099' sections 84-85 (pp70-71 in the English edition).

Thanks. I'll do so when I get a chance.

RASHI UPDATE: the proceedings of a Jerusalem conference on Rashi (in Hebrew) can be found online here.

(Heads up, Manuscript Boy.)

HUGOYE: A JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has published a new issue (8.2, July 2005) online. Table of contents:

Papers

Revisiting the Daughters of the Covenant: Women’s Choirs and Sacred Song in Ancient Syriac Christianity.
Susan A. Harvey, Brown University

Septuaginta and Peshitta. Jacob of Edessa quoting the Old Testament in Ms BL Add 17134.
Andreas Juckel, University of Münster

Nisibis as the background to the Life of Ephrem the Syrian.
Paul Russell, St. Joseph of Arimathea Anglican Theological College

Publications and Book Reviews

Emma Loosley. The Architecture and Literature of the Bema in Fourth- to Sixth- Century Syrian Churches.
Marica Cassis, University of Toronto

Peter J. Williams, Early Syriac Translation Technique and the Textual Criticism of the Greek Gospels.
Jan Joosten, Marc Bloch University, Strasbourg

F. Briquel Chatonnet, M. Debié and A. Desreumaux, eds., Les inscriptions syriaques..
Andrew Palmer

Pauline Allen and C. T. R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch.
Lucas Van Rompay, Duke University

Robert A. Kitchen and Martien F. G. Parmentier. The Book of Steps: The Syriac Liber Graduum.
Anne Seville, The Catholic University of America

Mar Aprem Mooken. The Assyrian Church of the East in the Twentieth Century.
Alexander Toepel

Announcements

Dorushe Conference on Syriac Pedagogy at CUA.

Advertisements

Beth Mardutho Amazon Associates

Journal of the Canadian Society of Syriac Studies

Gorgias Press

THANKS to all those who e-mailed or blogged their good wishes. The weather could have been better, but it was nice to get out of town and drive down the coast. The best birthday presents were some Doctor Who tapes from the Jon Pertwee era and my son's drawing of Rocket Ship Galileo. The latter is the title of a 1947 book by Robert Heinlein, which we're currently reading at bedtime. Teenage boys and their scientist uncle soup up a rocket with a nuclear drive and take the world's first trip to the moon, where they fight Nazis! What could be better?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! I'm spending the day out, and blogging will not be a high priority.

THE GILGAMESH MOVIE now has a web page on the Internet Movie Database. The cast includes Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole, which is an interesting reunion. Max Ryan plays Gilgamesh. The producers did not take up my suggestion to cast Monica Bellucci as Ishtar, but Leonor Valera played Cleopatra in the miniseries and she looks like she'll do all right. Curiously, the Harlot is not listed in the cast. They could hardly leave her out, could they? Maybe they've given her a name.

It's hard to imagine that Hollywood won't botch this completely, and the early signs are not particularly promising, but I suppose I should try to keep an open mind.

(Heads up, Chuck Jones on the ANE List.)

A UNICODE HEBREW-TRANSLITERATION FONT FOR THE MAC has been created and posted online by Danny Zacharias. I haven't had a chance to download and install it yet, but it looks very useful. Thanks Danny!

THERE'S A CLOSEUP PHOTO OF THE JEHUCAL BULLA posted by the Taipei Times. A nice one in which the readings are quite clear. (Noted by Joseph I. Lauer on the ANE List where there's been some discussion as well.) These things tend not to last long, so if you are interested, I would advise you to download a copy for your own use. Ed Cook has some good philological commentary, as usual.

PROFESSOR MARK CHANCEY calls for real biblical scholarship to be taught in U.S. public schools. See his letter posted on the Bible and Interpretation website:

Help protect the Bible and our public schools!

His report on The Bible in History and Literature curriculum is very disturbing.

A CONFERENCE ON PTOLEMY II PHILADELPHUS was held at Auckland University last month. Report here. You may recall that the Greek translation of the Pentateuch is traditionally assigned to the reign of this Ptolemy (e.g., in the Letter of Aristeas). Can anyone explain to me what this paragraph means?

Greeks in fact created the chronology of the Hebrew scriptures as they were translated into Greek by 70 or so scholars brought from Jerusalem for the job, asserted French-born, Swiss resident Philippe Guillauime of the Near East School of Theology at Beirut (who put himself up at a city backpackers' hostel for the privilege of attending the event). His novel account of the Septuagint translation raised eyebrows, but his insight into Semitic mentality earned judicious respect.

(Via Archaeologica News.)

THE ".IQ" DOMAIN HAS BEEN REACTIVATED FOR IRAQ. Details here.

LATIN IS ALIVE AND WELL, and Aramaic isn't doing too badly either:

Latin lovers flock to Missouri for national convention

ALAN SCHER ZAGIER

Associated Press

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Latin, the dead tongue? Hardly.

Just ask members of the National Junior Classical League, which for more than 50 years has preached a love of the classical language among American teens and their teachers. The league now has 50,000 members nationwide, nearly 2,000 of whom gathered this week on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus for an intense spell of academic competitions, pep rallies, mythology-themed costume pageants and Olympic-inspired athletic contests.

[...]

Alvin Duggan, a 68-year-old retired Lutheran pastor from Eden, Minn., took the frenetic scene in stride. As the first NJCL president in 1953-54, he presided over a group that numbered just over 100 students.

"Latin is alive and well," he said. "Classics are anything but dead."

Duggan went on to study Hebrew and Aramaic in the seminary, a scholarly asset he regularly relied upon when crafting weekly sermons.

"Understanding these ancient languages gives you a concept of where we've come from - and where we could go if we understood where we came from," he said.

[...]

A MESSIANIC BILLBOARD:

Billboard latest sign of Messianic fervor among some

BY CAROL EISENBERG
STAFF WRITER

August 7, 2005

A new billboard on the West Side Highway and 44th Street proclaims "Moshiach," or Messiah, "Is Here" under a picture of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Crown Heights -- the charismatic Jewish leader known as the Rebbe who died 11 years ago.

The billboard, put up Tuesday and paid for by a group called Jewish Women United for the Redemption, is the latest sign of the messianic fervor continuing to grip parts of the Lubavitch community that Schneerson once led.

[...]