AN EXHIBITION ON SOME ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CITIES is opening in Berlin. Dr. Gabriele Faßbeck e-mails the following:

Today I would like to draw your attention to an exhibition that will open tomorrow [i.e., today, Saturday] for the public in Berlin´s Martin-Gropius-Bau ... The exhibition features rather spectacular finds from the ancient Egyptian cities of Alexandria, Thonis-Heraklion and Kanopus, dating from 700 BCE to 800 CE. Possibly this is an event worth mentioning onthe Palaeojudaica blog?

Indeed it is.

A PUBLICATION OF CHARLES CLERMONT-GANNEAU, Victorian explorer and Northwest Semitic epigrapher, has been digitized and placed online by David Q. Hall. Stephen C. Carlson reports. It's a book chapter on ancient ossuaries from Jerusalem.

MORE ON THE MAJOR GRANT received by the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection for the cataloguing and online release of the Cairo Geniza manuscripts. The Cambridge Evening News has a nice article:

Medieval documents get £475,000 grant

PRECIOUS documents which offer a window on the world of the 10th-13th Centuries have received a major grant towards their upkeep.

The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection is regarded as the largest and most important collection of medieval Jewish, Hebrew and Arabic documents in the world, and was entrusted to Cambridge University more than 100 years ago by the Chief Rabbi of the 1,000-year-old Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo.

Now the 140,000 fragments, housed at Cambridge University Library, will be described, catalogued and digitized, making them accessible worldwide, thanks to a £475,000 grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Prof Stefan Reif, founder director of the collection, said the collection was at least equal in importance to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[...]

Bring on the army of philologists!

APRIL DECONICK responds to my bleg for Coptologists's comments on the supposed mistranslation of the Gospel of Judas. She writes that someone

showed me your posting this morning, about a Canadian professor who was quoted saying that the line from the Gospel of Judas "you will sacrifice the man that clothes me" is wrong because of an incorrect future tense. I checked the Coptic transcription and I'm not sure what the professor was referring to, or maybe the reporter got it wrong. The line in Coptic is very straightforward with a simple future. The word that Kasser-Meyer translate "clothes" is a Greek idiom (phoreo), which means "to bear" or "carry" or "wear." So as it is transliterated, it can be read very woodenly: "For the man who carries (or: clothes) me, you will sacrifice him."

Now I haven't been able to check the photographs (none of us have), so the transliteration has not been confirmed. It should be noted that we do not have a critical edition yet, nor has the critical edition been reviewed. Just from my cursory reading of the translation compared to the transcription, there are interpretative problems. Does Judas really have a "spirit" (as Kasser-Meyer translate it) or a "demon" (as I would translate line 44:21, "daimon")?

I guess what I'm saying is that until the photographs are released, none of us can confirm the transliteration and offer alternative translations and solutions to the problems. It is a frustrating position to be in because the popular book is being treated by the media as academically definitive, when in fact this couldn't be further from the truth.

The media's lack of perspective in such matters is a challenge we frequently face.

UPDATE (14 May): And their lack of comprehension too! Professor Gagné corrects the record here.

THE ALEPPO CONFERENCE ON EPHRAM THE SYRIAN HAS OPENED.

LANE'S ARABIC LEXICON -- all eight volumes of it -- can be downloaded as single-volume PDF files here. (Via the What's New in Abzu blog.)

HAS THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS BEEN MISTRANSLATED?

[Professor André] Gagné, both an expert on ancient Christian writings and the Coptic language, offered his interpretation of the controversial Gnostic text written in ancient Coptic.

Armed with a laser pointer, he highlighted the Coptic text projected on the screen, “This line says ‘…for you (Judas) will sacrifice the man that bears me.’ It’s saying Judas already had in his mind to sacrifice Jesus, and Jesus is aware of this. He (Jesus) is just prophesizing what Judas is going to do and had already stated. This reflects the Gnostic view of Christianity.”

National Geographic, which has rights to publish the gospel, has reported the Judas gospel says Jesus asked Judas to betray him.

Gagné disputes this and maintains this is not a matter of semantics but one of grammar.

“They’ve mistranslated the tense. It was done too quickly. It lacks the accuracy necessary for interpretation in my opinion.”

Any thoughts about this one from Coptologist readers?

UPDATE (13 May): A Coptologist responds.

UPDATE (14 May): Professor Gagné corrects the record here.

ARAMAIC WATCH:

Monica Bellucci launches the new Dior lipstick


Sultry Italian actress and model Monica Bellucci, who topped AskMen's 100 Most Beautiful Women in 2004, is the new muse for Dior's lipstick Rouge Dior. She appeared at the Place Vendome in Paris on Tuesday, May 10, 2006 for the launch of the new product.

Monica who can speak Italian, French, English and Aramaic fluently, made a notable appearance in The Passion of the Christ as Magdalen. ...

I like Monica, but I don't believe that she speaks fluent Aramaic.

ALAA has sent a message from prison. There is also now an online Free Alaa petition that is very easy to sign. And today the New York Times has published an article on the mistreatment of protesters in Egypt: "Police Beat Crowds Backing Egypt's Judges."

THE SOURCES CRÉTIENNES commentary series is going on sale at half price for each volume in honor of the publication of the 500th volume of the series. Roger Pearse posted details last weekend on the Textual Criticism list. Despite the title, the series also includes volumes (original text, translation, commentary) of important Jewish pseudepigrapha such as 2 Baruch, Pseudo-Philo, and ancient Jewish sermons on Jonah and Samson preserved in Armenian.

A NEW EDITION OF THE SAMARITAN LITURGY is in the works at Tel Aviv University. Shai Heijmans has the details over at the Hebrew and Aramaic Philology blog. He also has the Aramaic text of a sample poem, complete with with an audio-file recitation.

SHORING UP MASADA -- I noted this story a couple of years ago, but the Jerusalem Post now has a new, long article on it:

Could Masada fall again?
By SUE FISHKOFF / JTA

Masada is one of the most renowned symbols of Jewish endurance.

Rising 230 meters above the Dead Sea valley, the site of a mass suicide of Jewish Zealots in 73 CE, it is, next to Jerusalem, Israel's most popular tourist site. Elite units of the Israel Defense Forces hold ceremonies atop its heights, pledging, "Masada shall not fall again."

But it might.

Not today, not tomorrow, but one day. Seismic tremors, climatic change and, inevitably, gravity continue to threaten the stability of the historic remains and the mountain that supports them.

Engineering professors from Beersheba's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the University of California-Berkeley have teamed up to make sure that doesn't happen.

Using state-of-the-art monitoring devices and advanced computer modeling techniques, and armed with a four-year grant from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation, Beersheba's Yossi Hatzor and Berkeley's Steven Glaser are breaking new ground in geological engineering.

Masada is their test case.

[...]

ESTHER -- THE GRAPHIC NOVEL:

Graphic novels drawing the young to faith
BY MARK I. PINSKY
The Orlando Sentinel

For more than 2,500 years, Jews have been telling their faith's sacred stories, in written words on parchment and the page, and through the oral tradition of rabbinical debate.

Now they're trying something new: a graphic novel.

The Jewish Publication Society, a venerable group that is the closest thing to an official press for all the religion's denominations, is turning to a very modern way to reach young Jews. "Megillat Esther" is a graphic novel - an extended, black-and-white comic book - based on the holiday of Purim, and probably rated PG-13 for a few borderline racy drawings.

[...]

PETER FLINT IS LECTURING IN CHARLOTTE:

• Peter Flint will talk at 7 p.m. Monday in Jubilee Hall at Myers Park United Methodist Church. Flint will speak on "The Dead Sea Scrolls, Jesus and the Da Vinci Code." The church is at 1501 Queens Road.

A LECTURE ON THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS at Stanford is reported on in the Stanford Daily:

Judas’ gospel reconsidered

By Rahul Kanakia
Opinions Columnist
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
last updated May 10, 2006 2:17 AM

Two religious studies professors painted a fantastic picture of the Gospel of Judas and the early Christians who wrote it — now labeled heretics by some — at the Stanford Humanities Center last night. Using examples from the text itself, they outlined some of the Gospel’s more outrageous claims; including the notion that Judas is destined to ascend to the kingdom of heaven and return one day to rule the Earth.

The heavily attended talk was conducted by Emeritus Religious Studies Prof. Robert Greggand and Wabash College Prof. Robert Royalty, who was a professor of religion at Stanford from 1993 to 1999.

[...]

A SYRIAC CONFERENCE IN ALEPPO:

11th Conference of Syriac Heritage to Opens in Aleppo
Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 02:50 PM

DAMASCUS, (SANA)-

The 11th Conference for Syriac Heritage titled " Mar Ephraim the Syriac- a Poet of Our Days" is due to open in the northern city of Aleppo on Thursday.

The Conference is dedicated to commemorate the 1700th anniversary of the birth of the Poet Mar Ephraim the Syriac.

[...]

APRIL DECONICK is publishing away on the Gospel of Thomas:

Touching the past

By ARLENE MANNLEIN, Staff Writer (Journal Gazette and Times-Courier, IL)

April DeConick held in her hands something few people in the world will ever touch, let alone read.

“When I held the papyrus in my hand (encased in glass), it was overwhelming, the feeling of a pilgrim touching gently a relic,” said the associate professor of religion at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington. She was explaining her feelings about her opportunity to read the Gospel of Thomas.

DeConick continued, “There is a power in the antiquity of the document alone, but also in its ‘hiddenness.’

“For almost 2,000 years, it was buried beneath the sands of Egypt. The knowledge that I am one of only a few people in history who have touched and read the original pages of this sacred book was staggering, a moment of reverence for sure.”

[...]

She has published a recent monograph on the Gospel of Thomas and she has a new translation and a popular book on it in the works. She also takes apart The Da Vinci Code in this interview.

THE DA VINCI CODE MOVIE is not listed to be shown in Egypt, and the Sandmonkey smells a rat. (Although one of the commenters to the post thinks it's just a distribution issue. I hope so.) The Arabic translation of the book is reportedly banned there as well. Once again, I find myself willy-nilly on Dan Brown's side. The book is entertaining rubbish and the movie will doubtless be the same only more so. But governments have no business messing with people's access to books or movies, rubbish or not. We can make up our own minds, thank you, whatever country we live in.

THE JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES has a new issue out (65.2, 2006). It has an article on late-antique Egypt which looks timely, given all the recent Gospel of Judas etc. hype:

CAROLINE T. SCHROEDER. Prophecy and Porneia in Shenoute's Letters: The Rhetoric of Sexuality in a Late Antique Egyptian Monastery

It can be downloaded in PDF format. Requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access. The issue also has some relevant book reviews.

THE SITE OF JERUSALEM had a Middle Paleolithic settlement:

Prehistoric site found in Jerusalem

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

Jerusalem, it appears, was a popular place even during prehistoric times.

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a large concentration of stone utensils on the southeastern rim of the city which were used by prehistoric man hundreds of thousands of years ago, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday.

[...]