The Ironclad Legion vs. the highway of blood

DIFFICULT DECISIONS: Israeli Archaeologists Beg State: Don't Build Road Over Only Roman Legion Camp Ever Found. The extant highway is deadly but new finds at Legio, the Roman Legion base at Armageddon, spur archaeologists to urge government: Consider other ways to save drivers from themselves (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

The Highway 66 expansion project is under the fief of Dima Pritsker, the manager of the northern district for Netivei Yisrael. "It's under execution by the Transport Ministry, for which Netivei Yisrael is the operational arm," he explains. "The project is in our 5-year plan." At this point they plan to begin the actual construction work in the third quarter of 2025, he adds.

The archaeologists, however, are horrified at the putative destruction of large swaths of the unmatched Roman camp, and the naturalists are no happier. The present road is no joy to behold, but in the parks authority's view, a four-lane, high-speed artery with drivers blaring their dissatisfaction at one another, right at the foot of the tell, would run counter to creating a park where nature, archaeology and religion meet, and where people could gather and experience the beauty of the landscape in quiet contemplation.

"But people keep getting killed there," sighs Dr. Kamil Sari, the archaeologist for the North (of Israel) with the IAA. Something had to be done.

The archaeologists hope the new finds will reopen the question of exactly what.

I have been following the excavation of the Legio VI Ferrata (6th Legion Ironclad) Roman camp near the site of Megiddo since it began in 2013. For the more recently discovered Megiddo Roman amphitheatre, see here and links. For more on the camp itself, start here and follow the links.

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Review of Smith & Landau, The Secret Gospel of Mark

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Controversial Scholar, a Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, and the Fierce Debate Over Its Authenticity (Andrew S. Jacobs).

Geoffrey S. Smith and Brent C. Landau. The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Controversial Scholar, a Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, and the Fierce Debate Over Its Authenticity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023.

... This is an excellent book, written with verve and wit, technical without being arcane, and accessible without shortcuts or shoddiness. Readers will learn a great deal from G. Smith and Landau about paleography, apocrypha, monasticism, the history of sexuality, and the strange academic environments in which all of these are explored: filled with curiosity, envy, ambition, and flashes of brilliance. It will find a place on professors’ library shelves, graduate student reading lists, undergraduate syllabi, and bedside tables of readers far outside our arcane scholarly worlds. ...

This review also amounts to a useful summary of the history of scholarship on the so-called Secret Mark manuscript since its publication.

One unspoken takeaway is that everyone now seems to have abandoned the possibility that the Secret Mark quotations could come from an actual first-century version of the Gospel of Mark. But perhaps that is what that the review's hypothetical "ingenuous undergraduate right now encountering Secret Mark for the first time" will be arguing in thirty year's time.

Be that as it may, after this much discussion I don't think we are ever going to settle the vexed question of whether that odd manuscript is an excerpt from a genuine work of Clement, a late antique forgery, or a modern forgery. Unless Oxyrhynchus or some other manuscript cache produces some portion of an ancient copy of it.

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Review of Runia, Philo of Alexandria: collected studies 1997-2021

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Philo of Alexandria: collected studies 1997-2021.

Philo of Alexandria: collected studies 1997-2021 David T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria: collected studies 1997-2021. Texts and studies in ancient Judaism, 187. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023. Pp. xiii, 555. ISBN 9783161618765.

Review by
John Dillon, Trinity College Dublin. dillonj@tcd.ie This mighty volume, covering just about a quarter-century of David Runia’s work on Philo, is a joy to have in hand, and a great resource for Philonists, adding up, as it does, to a fairly comprehensive discussion of all aspects of Philo’s work. ...

I noted the publication of the book here.

On a related note, the AWOL Blog notes that one of Runia's earlier bibliography volumes is available as an open access publication: Philo of Alexandria: An Annotated Bibliography 1987-1996, with Addenda for 1937-1986.

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