THE LATEST ISSUE OF BIBLICA ONLINE has the following articles and notes of interest:

John Sietze BERGSMA, �The Jubilee: A Post-Exilic Priestly Attempt to Reclaim Lands?�, Vol. 84(2003) 225-246.

Abstract: The article examines the hypothesis that the jubilee legislation of Lev 25 was a post-exilic attempt on the part of returning Judean exiles - particularly the priests - to provide legal justification for the reclamation of their former lands. This hypothesis is found to be dubious because (1) the jubilee did not serve the interests of the socio-economic classes that were exiled, and (2) Lev 25 does not show signs of having been redacted with the post-exilic situation in mind. A comparison with Ezekiel's vision of restoration points out the differences between Lev 25 and actual priestly land legislation for the post-exilic period.

Claude LICHTERT, �R�cit et noms de Dieu dans le livre de Jonas�, Vol. 84(2003) 247-251.

Abstract: The problem of the different names of God in the book of Jonah is regulary discussed by researchers. There have been attempts to resolve this question through diachronic hypotheses (as part of literary criticism), as well as by synchronic hypotheses which attribute the choice of different names for God to semantic associations or to the structure of the story as a whole. This study offers an interpretation which considers the changes in the name for God as a function of the narrative. Thus, the very act of naming God comes from the story itself and through the interaction of its characters. The analysis offered here, after a brief study of each chapter of the book, shows that the double divine name ("YHWH God") is the term that brings out the positive or negative twists and turns in the narrative. In brief, Jonah makes his way through the story with different names for God, each indicating how God's relation with others is positivie or not.

Joseph A. FITZMYER, �And Lead Us Not into Temptation�, Vol. 84(2003) 259-278.

Abstract: The sixth petition of the "Our Father" has been translated in various ways across the centuries. This article discusses its literal meaning and the permissive paraphrases of it, explaining the sense of "temptation" and God's activity in "leading" into it, as well as the various subterfuges adopted to avoid the obvious meaning of the Greek formulation, including its supposed Aramaic substratum. It concludes with a pastoral explanation of the petition.

COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM:

I'm marking exams right now and I can feel my brain melting and starting to drip out my ears. So, for a distraction, I've been poking around on the British Museum's website. Here are some paleojudaic coins (photos and commentary) therein:

Bronze coin of Herod I 'the Great', king of Judaea

Bronze coin of Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judaea

Silver shekel of the First Jewish Revolt from Rome

Silver shekel of the Second Jewish Revolt from Rome

IRAQI ANTIQUITIES WATCH: I haven't been blogging on Iraq lately, not because the antiquities problems have been resolved, nor because I am particularly pleased with the current situation, but because I've been busy and it hasn�t seemed worthwhile to spend time collecting news on it when other people are devoting whole sites to the issue. But I've now added a link to several such sites in the new links section to the right. I subscribe to the IraqCrisis list and have found it very helpful. The most comprehensive website is that of Francis Deblauwe, which is worth frequent visits. At present it appears that somewhere between thousands and tens-of-thousands of Iraqi antiquities were destroyed, damaged, or stolen during the war, but this is still a very rough guess. Even more worrying, there are reports that archaeological sites are being systematically looted by armed diggers (NYT via IraqCrisis list). But from now on, unless something really strikes my eye, I will leave it to these other sites to keep you informed about Iraq's antiquities.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Baltzer, Klaus
Peter Machinist, Editor
Margaret Kohl, Translator
Deutero-Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40-55

Barton, John
Joel and Obadiah: A Commentary

Briant, Pierre
Peter T. Daniels, Translator
From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire

Kohl, Margaret
Annette Steudel, Editor
Die Texte aus Qumran II: Hebr�isch / Aram�isch und Deutsch mit Masoretischer Punktation �bersetzung, Einf�hrung und Anmerkungen

MORE COURSE SYLLABI:

Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible
Professor: Daniel Falk
University of Oregon

The Intertestamental Period (NT/OT/CH 711) (PDF file)
Dr. David A. deSilva
Ashland Theological Seminary

JEWS AND GREEKS, JUDAISM AND HELLENISM
Shaye J.D. Cohen
Harvard University

UPDATED LINKS ETC.

Yesterday was a productive day.

I completely redid the links section to the right, breaking them down into categories and adding many, many new links. I intend to keep adding to them gradually as I find time and new material (for example, I've collected lots more course syllabi, which I'll post in small lots on the blog and add to the links in time).

Do have a look.

Also, thanks to some helpful advice from Glenn Reynolds, I have the PaleoJudaica.com archive up and running again. For now.

Plus my neighbor and I managed to get our broken microwave oven working again for the price of an 85 p. fuse rather than a �50 new oven.

All in all, a day of technological triumphs.

COPTIC DAVIDIC PSALTER NOT MISSING:

"Original David's psalms kept in Coptic museum" (Arabic News via Archaeologica News

The original copy of the Book of Psalms, which dates back to the 3rd
or 4th century AD is kept inside the Coptic Museum, said Zahi Hawas,
Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

In statements to MENA, Hawas dismissed the reports that the Psalms of
Prophet David were stolen from the Coptic Museum.

[...]

THE CIVIL RIGHT TO KLINGON AND ARAMAIC?

"Even Spock Would Be Amazed!"
By Paul M. Weyrich
CNSNews.com Commentary
May 19, 2003

I was never one for languages. But I set out to understand Klingon and I must say this is as difficult as Chinese.

[...]

Now why would I be interested in Klingon, which so far as I know, is spoken only in Star Trek episodes? Well, it seems that out in Oregon, the Multnomah County Department of Health Services actually advertised for a translator who can speak Klingon. Why? Well, believe it or not, one of the officials said they have to provide information in all the languages their clients speak.

And guess what? If there is anyone in Oregon who actually prefers to speak Klingon, Multnomah County is obligated to employ someone who can address them in their preferred language thanks to an Executive Order (E.O. 13166) signed by then-President Bill Clinton in August 2000. The news media paid it no notice because the order was issued during the time they were traveling to Los Angeles for the Democratic National Convention.

Multnomah County's solicitation did not escape attention, however. Eventually, the county health service backed off, calling it a mistake created by overzealousness.

[...]

Oh, by the way, I asked Boulet if my taxes were audited, could I have it done in ancient Aramaic since Jesus told us to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and as a practicing Christian, it would be nice to have that done in the same language my Lord actually used? Boulet replied that that was "an open question."

[...]

Unemployed Aramaists take note.

NEW ARTICLES FROM TC:

TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism

The current volume is volume 8.

Emanuel Tov, "Electronic Resources Relevant to the Textual Criticism of Hebrew Scripture"

Abstract: Numerous electronic resources of interest to text critics are now available, both commercially and free on the Web. This article gives an overview of these resources, then provides a list of currently available tools that the author considers the most valuable.

With lots of useful links.

Peter M. Head, "Fragments of Six Newly Identified Greek Bible Manuscripts in a Cambridge Collection: A Preliminary Report"

Abstract: Vellum fragments of seven different manuscripts, six of them identified as portions of the Greek Bible (five NT, one OT), have recently come to light. The author presents a description of the manuscripts, including the biblical passages the first six contain. He offers a full transcription of the seventh fragment, an unidentified Christian text, perhaps a list of offices.

BOOK REVIEWS GALORE!

From the Review of Biblical Literature:

Briant, Pierre
Daniels, Peter T., translator
From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire

deSilva, David A.
Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance

Pike, Dana M. and Andrew C. Skinner
Qumran Cave 4, XXIII: Unidentified Fragments

Court, John M. and Dan Cohn-Sherbok
Religious Diversity in the Graeco-Roman World: A Survey of Recent
Scholarship

Scarpat, Giuseppe
Parrhesia greca, parrhesia cristiana

Kalimi, Isaac
Early Jewish Exegesis and Theological Controversy: Studies in Scriptures in the Shadow of Internal and External Controversies

Also, some time ago I mentioned the review section of the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, but I don't think I had time to list specific reviews. So here are some paleojudaic ones from the 2002-2003 volume:

C. L. Seow, Daniel
John J. Collins

Charlesworth, James H. et al., eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations, vol. 6B Pesharim, Other Commentaries, and Related Documents
James C. VanderKam

Bruce Chilton, Redeeming Time: The Wisdom of Ancient Jewish and Christian Festal Calendars
Kim Paffenroth

Anderson, Robert T. and Terry Giles, The Keepers: An Introduction to the History and Culture of the Samaritans
Ingrid Hjelm

Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40-55
Aaron W. Park

Isaac Kalimi, The Book of Chronicles. Historical Writing and Literary Devices
Ehud Ben Zvi

Leda Ciraolo and Jonathan Seidel, eds., Magic and Divination in the Ancient World
Scott B. Noegel

Weitzman, M. P., The Syriac version of the Old Testament. An Introduction
Bruce Chilton

Francis I. Andersen, Habakkuk: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
Marvin A. Sweeney

Thiede, C. P. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish Origins of Christianity
Rob Kugler

Gabrielle Boccaccini, Roots of Rabbinic Judaism: An Intellectual History, from Ezekiel to Daniel
Martin S. Jaffee

Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W., Lamentations
Michael S. Moore

Bruce K. Gardner, The Genesis Calendar: The Synchronistic Tradition in Genesis 1-11
Heidi M. Szpek

Donald E. Gowan, Daniel
Bill T. Arnold

"THE LUNATIC THAT STOLE ZIONISM"

An essay on Shimon Bar Kokhba by Yehiam Sorek (Ha'aretz via Archeologica News)

Sadly, Bar Kochva became a brand name, a national legend, which served national-Zionist goals. He was internalized and absorbed into the national bloodstream, took on the same sanctity as the other myths - and anyone that tries to pose questions about the commander of the revolt, his character and path, is perceived as a saboteur, a vandal. Will this national phase obscure the historical truth?

Read it all.

"THOU SHALT COMMIT ADULTERY" - NOT!

This isn�t very relevant to PaleoJudaica (although it is the P Decalogue) but it�s funny, so I�ll post it. It�s from a review by Christopher Hitchens in the New York Times of Adam Nicolson's God's Secretaries, on the making of the King James translation (via Arts and Letters Daily):

"'God's Secretaries': Blessed Are the Phrasemakers"

This work was refined and prepared in order to be heard and memorized, by a congregation still largely illiterate, and to be recalled in time of trouble or of need. Print was secondary: no doubt the audience of the later misprinted 1631 edition, when instructed by Exodus 20:14 that ''thou shalt commit adultery,'' understood that a ''not'' had been omitted at the press rather than in Sinai.

I wouldn't be so sure�

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF PHILO ARE ONLINE!

Torrey Seland has kindly pointed me to Peter Kirby's website, which gives the complete works of Philo in the old Yonge translation, which indeed is now in the public domain. David T. Runia has reviewed the Hendrickson edition of Yonge for Ioudiaos Review. (I remember being very annoyed by the high density of typographical errors in the Hendrickson edition - Philo deserves better proofreading!) You can find lots more on Philo online at Torrey Seland's Philo page.

SAMARITAN ARABIC - A SAMARITAN RESPONSE:

Reader Harold Clumeck has forwarded the following letter from Benyamim Tsedaka in response to the UPI article I linked to last week (sorry, the @*$%^^! Blogspot archive is down as usual) and Mr. Tsedaka has kindly given me permission to publish it here.

Dear Mr. Uwe Siemon-Netto
United Press International
tips@upi.com

Dear Mr. Siemon-Netto,

My friend, Mr. Harold Clumeck from San Rafael/California has forwarded me to your article of May 8, 2003.

I have to make some corrections to your positive attitude article.

The Samaritans divide in two centers, 350 in Holon/Israel and 310 in Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim. Most of the Samaritans speaking Arabic in a special dialect of the Syrian Palestinian dialect of the Arabic. But this is third dialect to their original Ancient Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic that all of them learn in the ages 5-15 after school hours every day, and to the modern Hebrew that most of them speak as it is spoken in the State of Israel. I am speaking about the whole Israelite Samaritan people as one.

I had to make these corrections not to let the readers of your article to have the wrong impression that we are struggling to preserve a special Samaritan Arabic dialect. As far as I know it is only Syrian-Palestinian dialect with some different Samaritan Arabic idioms that spoken for the last 1200 years and never entered our ritual practices. It is naturally spoken but again it is only third to the Samaritan Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic we have preserved proudly for thousands of years and we still use it in our prayers and many new composition.

Dr. Arnold Werner is my close friend. I am sorry to say that some of his words were taken in the wrong way. In the contrary I have followed him to the all Samaritan personalities he spoke with for his research and we both never found any difficulty of these personalities in speaking the different languages.

Scholars and readers of your article are welcomed to visit the organized Israelite-Samaritan web-sites www.mystae.com/samaritans.html and www.the-samaritans.com and learn more about our current rich cultural activities.

We are keeping our survival and our own struggle to keep our original languages, the Ancient Hebrew and the Samaritan Aramaic, that according to scholars have never changed since Second Temple period, it is part of our survival. Come to visit us and enjoy the Ancient languages by the Samaritans. At present times that languages spoken by tens and hundreds of million peoples close to be dying before the English language influence the way we preserve our original languages without change and other language influence considered to be a great achievement.

Yours,

Benyamim Tsedaka
Head of the A.B. - Institute of Samaritan Studies
Co-editor of A.B. - The Samaritan News

I�ve corresponded a little more with Mr. Tsedeka about this and I think his main point is that he considers Samaritan Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic to be the real languages of his community, even though the community does use Palestinian Arabic and Modern Israeli Hebrew.

A DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBIT IN GRAND RAPIDS:

I think I may have already blogged on this exhibit in Michigan but, just in case, here's some information. This is the museum's website on the exhibit, and here's a sound bite from it:

"The Dead Sea Scrolls" exhibition will include fragments of 12 different scrolls, including fragments from the books of Exodus and Psalms. There are also numerous artifacts from Qumran, the ancient Judaean settlement located near the caves where the scrolls were discovered, including ancient coins, leather sandals, a scroll storage jar, and a pottery inkwell believed to be connected with the writing of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And here's an article from the Calvin College Spark with more information and links:

"Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in Grand Rapids Michigan"

The exhibit runs from February to June.

FROM THE JUNK ARCHAEOLOGY FILE:

(extracts from "Middle East Research Institute Special Report � No. 16" [my (bold font) emphasis])

"The Think Tank of the Arab League:
The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up (ZCCF)"

By: Steven Stalinsky

Since its founding in 1999, The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up has hosted events and produced studies on a variety of issues. The Zayed Centre has dealt with the September 11th attacks, arguing that they were perpetrated by Americans and Israelis. It has discussed "[The] Factual Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and has hosted Holocaust deniers. Dr. Umayma Al-Jalahma, known for her article explaining how Jews use the blood of non-Jews for pastries for the Jewish holiday of Purim, was a recent lecturer at the Centre. A report today suggested that the SARS virus could be a product of "an American war against the world."

[�]

"Al Buraq Wall Not Wailing Wall" is the title of a report released by the Zayed Centre on December 20, 2001. [36] The Zayed Centre website's summary of the report states: "This study is released in line with the Centre's message to serve Arab causes and refute the false Zionist allegations in regard to Palestine� and shows the falsehood of the Zionist religious claims and anthropological fabrications. The study gives a historical account of the Jews from the days of the Temple of Solomon, which was destroyed in 586 B.C., through their persecution under Roman rule, to the occupation� The study also underlines that Al Aqsa Mosque was built more than a thousand years before Solomon, giving evidence that refutes the Zionist allegations that the Mosque was constructed on the ruins of Solomon's Temple� all of which demonstrate that the Zionist alleged rights to the [Wailing] Wall are simply baseless."

The claim that the Al Aqsa Mosque pre-dates Solomon's temple is preposterous, as is obvious to anyone who knows anything about the history and archaeology of the region.

On January 27, 2002, Dr. Hassan Ali Khater, editor-in-chief of the Al Quds Al-Sharif Encyclopedia, spoke at the Zayed Centre. [37] A summary of his lecture on the Zayed Centre website states: "Dr. Hassan Ali Khater� added that Israelis are falsifying history by inscribing Jewish inscriptions on rocks [and] then calling international experts to re-discover [them] as Jewish monuments."

All I can say about this one is that I don't believe it and, if people want to make a serious accusation like this, they need to name names and inscriptions and call on the international community of scholars to expose the fakes. Also, in another report on the same website, Dr. Hassan Ali Khater is quoted as denying that Solomon's temple ever existed:

"Muslim�s First Qibla in danger. A report prepared by ZCCF to commemorate arson of Al Aqsa Mosque"

Dr. Hassan Ali Khater, the chief editor of �Encyclopedia of Al Quds Al Shareef� commenting on Israeli designs of Judaization of Jerusalem said, �There are 15 Israeli concepts to occupy Jerusalem. The Mosque is in danger to collapse due to underground diggings and use of acids to dissolve rocks. Nobody knows the degree of damage caused to the structure due to Israeli obsession with the idea of building The Solomon Temple, the foundation stone of which was laid down in the glare of media a few months ago in spite of the historical facts that deny existence of any such temple.

My emphasis.

MORE COURSE SYLLABI:

RELS 3000: Jewish Apocrypha & Pseudepigrapha
RELS 3000: Rewriting the Book of Genesis
RELS 4107: Varieties of Early Judaism
Dr. John C. Reeves
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

ANOTHER EMBARRASSING BANNER AD:

"Yeshua Ministries
What is Messianic Judaism? Conferences, Training & Support"

Can we please just go back to the one for the Iraqi-fugitive card decks?

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ANCIENT JUDAISM IN ITALY:

"Uncovering an ancient maze" (International Herald Tribune)

Andree Brooks NYT
Saturday, May 17, 2003
In the Italian dust, signs of a past Jewish life

VENOSA, Italy Amid rolling pastureland about 300 kilometers southeast of Rome, dust is flying. Workers carefully dig through crumbling sandstone deep beneath the surface of a grassy hillside. Stout wooden beams support a makeshift entrance and a labyrinth of newly exposed passageways that lead into an ancient underground maze. A loopy string of construction lamps illuminate the way.

An excited archaeologist leads a visitor to a wooden board protecting a discovery made just the previous afternoon. It is a seven-branched candelabra, the original symbol of the Jews, carved into a slab found at a burial niche. The carving is so sharp and clean, it might have been completed yesterday.
.
The quality and clarity foreshadow even more important finds likely to come. The catacomb is only one of dozens of Jewish sites, artifacts, documents, rare books and manuscripts being discovered, analyzed and restored in southern Italy and Sicily. This work by scholars and government authorities is beginning to flesh out the largely unknown story of vibrant yet long-lost communities of Jews that inhabited the region from Roman times to the end of the Middle Ages. Jews were expelled from southern Italy, known then as the Kingdom of Naples, in the 16th century. Few returned even after the ban was lifted in the 18th century.
.
Historians associated with the excavation believe the catacomb may be the largest ever found in Western Europe. Hundreds of niches have already been cleared, the bones either looted or reburied according to ritual law. What is striking is that the inscriptions on the burial slabs found thus far are almost all in Greek. There is little or no Hebrew. When Hebrew is used, the characters mostly spell out Greek or Latin words. Both Greek and Latin were commonly used in that part of Italy at the time. This suggests an assimilated life for the Jews who may have lived here outside Venosa between the third and seventh centuries. "Our Jews were not separated from everyone else in those early centuries," said Cesare Colafemmina, visiting professor of Hebrew and Hebraic literature at the University of Calabria.
.
Documents indicate that Emperor Titus brought 5,000 captives to the region after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Colafemmina said. But hundreds more are thought to have settled here before and after that, simply because it was a prosperous crossroads of maritime trade. And Jews played a vital role in Mediterranean commerce. By the end of the fourth century many towns were dominated by Jews. They even became political and community leaders, he said.

[�]

Read it all. The finds include a tombstone of a Jewish captive brought to Rome after the revolt in 70 C.E.

THE APOSTLE PAUL WAS A SHORT GUY!

"DISCOVERY: Apostle Paul a midget"(Lark News)

What can I say? We tend to be overachievers.

IRAQI ANTIQUITIES - STILL MORE CURIOUSER:

Over on the IraqCrisis list, Francis Deblauwe writes:

The media made a big deal about the 39,400 manuscripts that were found back in a bomb shelter in western Baghdad and said that they were from the National Museum in Baghdad. This greatly helped to fuel the impression that the losses at the Museum were nearly non-existent after all. Now, from all info I have and from Edouard M�t�nier's assessment, it sure looks like this is the Saddam House of Manuscripts collection instead (split off from the National Museum in the 1990s). My question is: why has the scholarly community, esp. the ACCICH, not checked this issue ASAP and then contacted the media to make sure this gets the proper attention? We can roll our eyes when the umpteenth journalist writes that only some tens of artifacts are still missing from the Museum, but don't we need to be more actively countering this intentionally- or unintentionally-spreading wrong perception?

[�]

Yet no less an authority than McGuire Gibson, who has now visited the Baghdad museum, proclaims that "We have dodged a bullet � Through some luck and some real preparations by the museum staff, we have saved a lot," and this article assures us that:

"Looting at Iraqi museum probably overstated" (SunSpot.net)

What exactly that means remains to be seen. We should keep an eye on Dr. Deblauwe's Best guess of the Damage box on his website, but ultimately this is no more than a well informed guess that may be far off. Given that there is still strident debate over the number of civilian casualties � actual human beings killed � during the war in Afghanistan, I can't say I'm optimistic about our ever figuring out the fate of all the cuneiform tablets and artifacts in Iraq's museums. We'll see�

Meanwhile, here's an article I'm still scratching my head over:

"Iraq museum chief accused of looting plot"
May 11, 2003 The Sunday Times of London
Matthew Campbell, Baghdad

THE furore over the looting of Iraq's national museum took an unexpected turn yesterday when workers accused their director of conniving in the theft of priceless antiquities during the chaotic collapse of the regime in Baghdad. Fifty museum employees staged a protest in which they waved placards under the noses of American investigators proclaiming that Jabir Khalil, chairman of the Iraqi state board of heritage and antiquities, was a 'dictator' and a 'thief'.

Is it just me, or is this starting to sound like that Pink Panther movie (was it A Shot in the Dark?) where all the main characters apart from Inspector Clouseau turn out to be the murderer?

PHILOLOGOS:
"The First and Last Drops" (Forward Magazine)

An essay on the meaning of the biblical Hebrew words for rain, citing the ancient "Gezer Calendar." Evidently Philologos is a regular column that sometimes deals with paleojudaic matters (e.g., "Fore and After"and "Dat's Dat!" in back issues.

MORE ON THE TALMUD THEY DIDN'T FIND:

A few days ago I noted the story of the failed search for a seventh-century Talmud in Iraq which led to the discovery of important intelligence documents. Here's more on those documents:

Report: Romanian intelligence foiled attack on Israeli target (Ha'aretz)

By Yossi Melman and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, and DPA

BUCHAREST - Romanian intelligence agency SRI has reported that terrorists and staff at the Iraqi embassy in Bucharest had planned to attack Israeli and Western targets in Romania before the Iraq war, the Romanian news agency Rompres said Thursday.

Last week, The New York Times reported that American troops in Baghdad found a collection of Iraqi intelligence documents related to Israel, including maps of terrorist strikes against Israel over the last 12 years, a satellite picture of the Dimona nuclear reactor and detailed mock-ups of the Knesset, downtown Jerusalem and other official Israeli buildings.

SRI claimed that, in cooperation with foreign partner intelligence agencies, it had prevented the terrorists' plans. The terrorists would have used AG 7 grenade-launchers, which were to be supplied by a colleague employed as a spy by the Iraqi embassy.

The existence of these plans had been confirmed by documents found by coalition forces searching the information ministry in Baghdad after the fighting had ended.

[...]

Soldiers from the MET Alpha unit, the "mobile exploitation team" responsible for the search for nonconventional weapons, discovered the documents in a flooded Baghdad basement while in pursuit of an unusual quarry: a copy of the Talmud said to date from the seventh century, which would make it one of the oldest Talmuds in existence.

[...]

I guess they still haven't found that Talmud.

IS A COLOR-CODED TALMUD WORSE THAN TERRORISM?

A holy war (Ha'aretz)

By Yair Sheleg

While the Israeli public focused on the war in Iraq, ongoing terror attacks and the economic crisis, those prominent in religious Zionism, or at least its rabbinic elite, have been agog over a different subject entirely: a new Talmud-study curriculum designed for the national-religious school system. The reactions? A free-for-all.

The "Revadim" ("Layers" in English) program is a method in which Talmudic tests are examined through a prism that differentiates between the various layers inherent in the text. A world war of sorts has erupted over the teaching method to the point that one of the critics of the curriculum proclaimed it worse and more dangerous than any act of terrorism.

Lest there be any doubt, the program is not the brainchild of secular Education Ministry officials. Nor was it spawned in a Conservative or Reform seminary. In fact, Revadim was devised in the very core of the national-religious establishment: the Department of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University.

The biography of the program's originator and designer, Rabbi Dr. Pinchas Hayman, 51, seems kosher. He was raised in an assimilated Jewish family in California and as a teenager became Orthodox. Hayman earned a bachelor's degree at the University of California in Los Angeles, in classical languages and philosophy. He then came to Israel, where he studied for two years at Jerusalem's Yeshivat Hakotel, in the Old City's Jewish Quarter.

Hayman then returned to the U.S., studying for the rabbinate at Yeshiva University, the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy in the United States. He also completed a master's and a doctorate in Talmud and Semitic languages at YU. Hayman then worked as a rabbi in Canada for seven years before immigrating to Israel in 1987. After living for several years in Ra'anana, he settled in Elkana, in western Samaria.

Four years ago, as a lecturer in the Department of Talmud at Bar-Ilan, Hayman established the "Program for Advanced Methodologies for the Teaching of Mishna and Talmud," which was intended to be an application-oriented research institute. The decision was prompted by the continuing crisis in the attitudes of national-religious youth to Talmud study. Numerous studies carried out by the Education Ministry's Religious Education Authority (which is responsible for curricular development in the national-religious sector), as well as those by independent scholars, indicated that for many religious young people, Talmud - a subject to which many hours are devoted each school day - is the most hated subject.

[�]

In order to adapt the method to the didactics of Israel's educational system, especially at the elementary-school level, Hayman has even "colored" the different layers in the text with different colors. He states that even before he had a chance to propose the method to the educational establishment, schools that had heard about it were asking to use it, as a means of contending with the crisis of Talmudic instruction. "I am not only talking about elementary schools, but religious high schools as well, such as the Bar-Ilan school in Netanya, and the technological high school on the Bar-Ilan University campus. Even a few yeshiva high schools, including the yeshiva in Kiryat Shmuel and yeshivas in Ra'anana and Tiberias, expressed interest in implementing the program," says Hayman.

[�]

[Rabbi Moshe] Bleicher [head of the Shavei Hebron Yeshiva] went so far as to assert that the dangers of the program were even worse that those of terrorist attacks: "All of the killing and the attacks initiated by all the terrorists from the outside against the Jewish People are nothing compared to the danger that is liable to develop from this act of terrorism being perpetrated from within our ranks. The terrorists kill and strike at our bodies, but here they are killing the Torah and the soul of the nation." Bleicher was unwilling to be interviewed for this article, and said that he had no interest in disclosing details of the debate to "an audience that in any event will not learn Talmud, not with Revadim, not without it."

[�]

Stratigraphic, historical-critical analysis of the Talmud is an extremely difficult but very important approach, and I commend Dr. Hayman for teaching it.

MORE ON THE ALLEGED GRAVE OF GILGAMESH:

"Experts search for grave of legendary Gilgamesh" (ABC News online, via Archaeologica News)

[...]

Ricardo Eichmann, of the German Archaeological Institute, swatted down suggestions that Gilgamesh's grave was about to be unearthed.

He said the "anomaly" pinpointed by studying the magnetisation of the soil was problematic.

He warned it was "pure speculation" to tie it to Gilgamesh, suggesting the structure could date from the millennium before Christ, some 1,500 years more recent.

He said it would be like asserting that King Arthur, the legendary lord of Camelot, really existed.

"We don't even know where the river ran at that time," he added, saying it had changed its course by as much as several kilometres over the centuries.

[...]

Oh well. I kind of figured...

THE ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS (from � and some still in � Iraq) have been in the news a fair bit lately, for obvious reasons. I haven't linked to the articles because they seemed outside even the very loose scope of this blog. But it's worth mentioning that they have provided various resources for learning their Assyrian dialect of Aramaic online. The Languages on the Web.com site has a page of Aramaic links, with the claim that, " Unlike many other web sites related to languages, only serious and useful sites are listed here." That's perhaps a bit of a stretch, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend every link on the page, but lots of them do look serious and useful. Add to them The Assyrian Aramaic Language website, which has a long series of graded lessons, and this site with the Syriac Peshitta in the original script and in translation.

IRAQI ANTIQUITIES UPDATE:

U.S. Scholarly Organizations Unite to Protect Iraqi Cultural Heritage (Ascribe)

ANN ARBOR, Mich., May 12 (AScribe Newswire) -- Representatives of major scholarly societies and research centers active in archaeological and cultural work in Iraq met on Tuesday, May 6 at the Institute for Fine Arts of New York University in conjunction with the opening ceremonies for the exhibition on the "Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus" organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

By unanimous consent, the 31 representatives created the American Coordinating Committee for Iraqi Cultural Heritage (ACCICH). The Coordinating Committee will represent the constituent organizations in response to the catastrophic harm suffered by Iraqi museums, libraries, archaeological sites, and cultural properties. It will coordinate activities to avoid duplication of efforts.

It will work with various agencies in the private and public sector to channel American fund-raising activities. It will represent American scholarly expertise to government and non-government agencies. It will facilitate liaison between American scholars and European colleagues as well as with international organizations responding to the Iraqi crisis. The committee will designate working groups and subcommittees for specific tasks, in consultation with constituent organizations.

The committee's first and most urgent concern is for the security of Iraqi cultural sites and properties. It is imperative that the authority structures in Iraq seal the borders to prevent cultural properties from leaving the country. It is also imperative that the same designated authorities establish and maintain guards at all museums, libraries, and archaeological sites to prevent further destruction.

It is also imperative that only competent scholars and experienced museum professionals supervise the handling of objects and records to prevent further harm to surviving or recovered materials.

[...]

COURSE SYLLABI FOR PALEOJUDAIC SUBJECTS: As regular readers (all 15 of them - I love you guys!) will know, I've been collecting online course syllabi for subjects of interest to PaleoJudaica. The more elaborate ones get their own entry, but quite a few are just an outline of the course, reading material, due dates for work - the things that we usually pass out on a handout at the beginning of the course, plus maybe a few handouts from later in the course. It's still interesting to see what other people are doing in their courses, so here are some of the short course syllabi I've run across.

The Dead Sea Scrolls
Prof. Tyler F. Williams
Taylor University College

ANE 3117 THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: THE INTER-TESTAMENTAL PERIOD
Professor Tzvee Zahavy
University of Minnesota

Teacher's Guide Based on CALLIOPE's Dead Sea Scrolls Issue, December 2001
Peggy Epstein
For use with CALLIOPE's December 2001 issue, Dead Sea Scrolls. This guide was prepared by Peggy Epstein, Language Arts Teacher with 25 years experience from Shawnee Mission High School, Overland Park Kansas; Ruskin High School, Kansas City, Missouri. Epstein has a Master's Degree in Instruction and Curriculum at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY
Prof C. T. R. Hayward
Durham University

DEAD SEA SCROLLS COMING TO CANADA:

Dead Sea Scrolls coming to capital
Exhibition starts in December at Museum of Civilization (Canada.com)


Paul Gessell
The Ottawa Citizen

Wednesday, May 07, 2003

Portions of three of the first Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 east of Jerusalem are coming to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in December along with 100 ancient Israeli-area artifacts, including an ivory carving from King Solomon's temple.

The scroll fragments and other artifacts will first be exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Archeology and History at Point-�-Calli�re in the Old Port area of Montreal from June 17 to Nov. 2 and then move to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau from Dec. 5 until April 12 next year.

Two of the three scrolls have never been exhibited outside Israel before, Stephen Inglis, the Gatineau museum's director of research, said in an interview yesterday.

Those two are: the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness (otherwise known as the War Scroll) and the Isaiah B. scroll. The third one, the Community Rule scroll, has not left Israel since 1954, when it was purchased from an American collector.

[...]

PRESERVING SAMARITAN ARABIC:

Feature: Preserving Samaritan speech

By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religion Editor
From the Life & Mind Desk
Published 5/9/2003 12:17 PM
View printer-friendly version

WASHINGTON, May 9 (UPI) -- The Samaritans, arguably the people with the best press in the New Testament, have a big problem: Not only have they shrunk to a minuscule community, but their language is threatened with extinction.

To preserve Samaritan Arabic for eternity, the Semitic languages department of Heidelberg University in Germany has recorded and archived a text spoken by a prominent member of this ethnic group. One text can now be heard in the department's Web site (semarch.uni-hd.de). The speaker is Benyamim Tsedaka, publisher of the magazine "A.B. -- The Samaritan News."

[...]

The Samaritans go back to the time period of this blog and their liturgy is still in Aramaic, but their spoken language is now Arabic.

A SEVENTH CENTURY TALMUD IN IRAQ?

Iraqi Documents on Israel Surface on a Cultural Hunt (Yahoo News)
Wed May 7, 8:59 AM ET

By JUDITH MILLER The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (news - web sites), May 6 What began today as a hunt for an ancient Jewish text at secret police headquarters here wound up unearthing a trove of Iraqi intelligence documents and maps relating to Israel as well as offers of sales of uranium and other nuclear material to Iraq.

[�]

The search began this morning when 16 soldiers from MET Alpha teamed up with members of the Iraqi National Congress, a leading opposition group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, to search for what an intelligence source had described as one of the most ancient copies of the Talmud in existence, dating from the seventh century. The Talmud is a book of oral law, with rabbinical commentaries and interpretations.

A former senior official of the Mukhabarat, Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s secret police, had told the opposition group a few days earlier that he had hidden the ancient Jewish book in the basement of his headquarters. The building had been badly damaged by coalition bombing, said the man, who is now working for the Iraqi National Congress, but he was still willing to take a group there to recover it. MET Alpha hesitated. Its mission was hunting for proof of unconventional weapons in Iraq, not saving cultural and religious treasures. But Col. Richard R. McPhee, its commander, decided that the historic Talmud was too valuable to leave behind.

Early this morning, a seven-vehicle convoy pulled out of the Iraqi Hunting Club, a former Baathist retreat that is now the headquarters for the Iraqi National Congress. Accompanied by members of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, MET Alpha's chaplain, who has a strong interest in religious texts, and a reporter, the group arrived at Mukhabarat headquarters only to find the section of the building in which the precious document was said to be stored under four feet of murky, fetid water. Dead animals floated on the surface. The stairwell down to the muck was littered with shards of glass, pieces of smashed walls and other bombing debris.

Temporarily daunted by the overpowering stench, MET Alpha's leader, Chief Warrant Officer Richard L. Gonzales, and two other MET Alpha soldiers eventually collected themselves and plunged into the mire in search of the holy text as the team chaplain shook his head in disbelief.

What they found instead of the precious book was what the former Iraqi intelligence official said was the operations center of the Mukhabarat's Israel-Palestine department. Two Iraqi National Congress members joined the soldiers in the water as they inched their way by flashlight through the 50-foot hallway to the rooms where they happened upon the intelligence documents.

Slogging down the dank hallway, the soldiers reached a room where they found hundreds of books floating in the foul water. There they rescued three bundles of older Jewish books, including a Babylonian Talmud from Vilna, accounting books of the Jewish community of Baghdad between 1949 and 1953 and dozens of more modern scholarly books mostly in Arabic and Hebrew "Generals of Israel," by Moshe Ben-Shaul; David Ben-Gurion's "Memoirs"; and "Semites and Anti-Semites," by the Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis.

But no seventh-century Talmud.

[�]

Bummer.

COURSE NOTES for Religious Studies 361: Post-Biblical Judaism, taught by Professor Eliezer Segal, are online. The notes are fairly sketchy, but include numerous excerpts from primary sources, and your undergraduates may find the site quite helpful. (Via the Rutgers University Virtual Religion Index)

GREEK ENOCH AT QUMRAN?

Here's a website on the alleged fragments of the Book of Enoch from Qumran Cave 7, in which Ernest A. Muro, Jr., has collected a number of articles from Revue de Qumran and some other things in support of the identification. When we were covering the Epistle of Enoch in the last (2002) Old Testament Pseudepigrapha online course, I floated the idea that the surviving recension of the EE was a Christian revision of the original, but this site pretty much convinced me I was wrong. The discussion is somewhere in the majordomo archives for that semester.

"THOUSANDS OF IRAQI ARTIFACTS FOUND"

Many items found in museum vaults

From Terry Frieden
CNN Washington Bureau
Thursday, May 8, 2003 Posted: 5:14 AM EDT (0914 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Customs agents, working with military and museum experts at the National Museum in Baghdad, have recovered nearly 40,000 manuscripts and about 700 artifacts, government officials announced in Washington Wednesday, leaving perhaps only a few dozen key pieces missing.

Well good!

SHANKS AND ALTMAN ON THE OSSUARY:

"The Ossuary Find: Was It Really from 'The Brother of Jesus'?
By Hershel Shanks (Beliefnet, via Bible and Interpretation News)

This is an excerpt from the book by Shanks and Witherington

The article by Rochelle I. Altman, with which Shanks disagrees can be found online here:

Official Report on the James Ossuary

MORE ON OIL MINISTRY: scroll down to the update on yesterday's post.

TODAY IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA, at least according to the Egypt State Information Service. They don�t give an ancient source and I have no idea if we actually know even the year it was founded, let alone the day, but this is a good excuse to round up some things on the Library. Here�s a great website on the Library of Alexandria for a course on Greek science at Tufts University. There is a new library in Alexandria meant to emulate the ancient one, and it is discussed in this National Geographic article. There is also an online Digital Library of Alexandria under construction. According to the legend in the Letter of Aristeas, King Ptolemy II (285-247 B.C.E.) ordered the librarian, Demetrius of Phalerum, to commission a translation of the Pentateuch in Greek. This was done by seventy-two translators from Palestine in seventy-two days. The story was written long after the fact, but most specials seem at least to accept the third-century date for the translation of the Pentateuch.

The main library was destroyed, apparently accidentally, by Julius Caesar in a battle with Pompey. The associated library of the Temple of Serapis may have survived much longer and there are various legends about its destruction. Evaluations of the evidence for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria can be found here, here, and here.

OIL MINISTRY NOT GUARDED?

An embedded reporter denies that the Ministry of Oil was protected by American troops while looting went on elsewhere.

"Bad Reporting in Baghdad" (The Weekly Standard)
From the May 12, 2002 issue: You have no idea how well things are going.
by Jonathan Foreman
05/12/2003, Volume 008, Issue 34

[...]

More irritating is the myth constantly repeated by antiwar columnists that the military let the city be destroyed--in particular the hospitals and the national museum--while guarding the Ministry of Oil. The museum looting is turning out to have been grotesquely exaggerated. And there is no evidence for the ministry of oil story. Depending on the article, the Marines had either a tank or a machine gun nest outside the ministry. Look for a photo of that tank or that machine gun nest and you'll look in vain. And even if the Marines had briefly guarded the oil ministry it would have been by accident: The Marines defended only the streets around their own headquarters and so-called Areas of Operation. Again, though, given the pro-regime sources favored by so many of the press corps huddled in the Palestine Hotel, it's not surprising that this rumor became gospel.

[...]

Jonathan Foreman is a correspondent for the New York Post, embedded with the Scout Platoon of the 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad.

UPDATE (7 May): Andras Reidlmayer has a post to the IraqCrisis list which collects photographs and evidence that the Oil Ministry was hit by a U.S. airstrike and then looted on 9 April but occupied from that afternoon on by U.S. Marines. There was at least one tank there sometime before Baghdad fell.

Sat Apr 12, 2:50 AM ET

US soldiers take up positions outside the burning Oil Ministry in Baghdad before the city fell to coalition forces(AFP/File/Ramzi Haidar )

THE WEB PAGE OF ROBERT DEUTSCH has lots of goodies including the texts of articles he has published in peer-review journals back as far as the 1980s. Some recent ones of interest include:

"A Lead Weight of Hadrian: The Prototype for the Bar Kokhba Weights" (originally published in Israel Numismatic Journal Vol. 14, 2000-2, Pp 125-128)

"A Lead Weight of Shimon Bar Kokhba"
(originally published in Israel Exploration Journal Volume 51, Number 1, 2001, Pp 96-9)

"Five Unrecorded 'Yehud' Silver Coins" (originally published in Israel Numismatic Journal #13, 1994-1999, Pp 25-6)

(via Bible and Interpretation)

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER:

"Most antiquities feared lost in looting found intact in museum" (Austin American-Statesman)

By Christine Spolar
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Sunday, May 4, 2003

BAGHDAD � The vast majority of the Iraqi trove of antiquities feared stolen or broken have been found inside the National Museum in Baghdad, according to American investigators who compiled an inventory over the weekend of the ransacked galleries.

A total of 38 pieces, not tens of thousands, are now believed to be missing. Among them is a single display of Babylonian cuneiform tablets that accounts for nine missing items.

As the byline says, the article originated in the Chicago Tribune (I've verified this from their website, although I'm not registered and so cannot actually access the article there). I hope this news is true, but I think it will be weeks or more before we get a clear idea of the damage and in the meantime we should be skeptical of all such reports, positive or negative.

UPDATE (3:02 pm): That was the positive; here's the negative. Same comments apply:

"Experts Despair of Iraq's Stopping Loss of Relics" (New York Times)

By ALAN RIDING

NASIRIYA, Iraq, May 4 � The ransacking of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad last month may have prompted urgent calls for a clampdown on trafficking in Iraqi antiquities, but Iraqi and American officials concede that it will be almost impossible to prevent the continued illegal export of treasures from ancient Mesopotamian sites.

The immediate focus is on trying to recover what was stolen from the museum, but in the rare roadblocks still operated by American and British troops here, the search is for weapons, not for antiquities. The only success to date came when a unit of the Iraq National Congress stopped a truck and found a steel case containing 453 small objects taken from the museum.

[...]

"What happened to the Iraq museum is only the tip of the iceberg," said Jean-Marie Durand, a French archaeologist. "For years, the whole country has been looted. At Larsa, the site was turned over by a bulldozer. It looked like the moon."

[...]

The resulting traffic, in the main in small pieces that generally sell for hundreds, or at most a few thousand, dollars, is profitable because the cost of looting is minimal, and a large turnover is possible. Mesopotamian antiquities of greater value, on the other hand, are more likely to be noticed by museums or archaeologists if they are put on sale publicly at, say, auctions.

The antiquities dealer in my banner ad was advertising a cuneiform tablet and an Aramaic incantation bowl.

THERE ARE STILL MANDEANS IN IRAQ:

�Sabean Mandeans pray for peace in Iraq" (Middle East Online, UK)

On banks of Tigris, Sabeans praying for suffering in war, for future Iraq that must retake path of unity, democracy.


By Beatriz Lecumberri - BAGHDAD
Just off the banks of the Tigris River in the heart of Baghdad's old city lies the temple of Sabean Mandeans, a tiny community that despite its reclusiveness has been hit hard by the war.

In a rite of purification, Sabean Mandeans with long beards, white tunics and rustic sandals immersed themselves up to their waists in water.

"Thirty-three of our followers were killed in the American air strikes. They were civilians who were at home," temple priest Ala Dehle Kama recalled with clear bitterness.

The dead, he explained, had parted the world without receiving their final baptism, a ritual of utmost significance as it is supposed to bring the follower out of suffering and into the light.

For Kama, the Sabean Mandeans are praying not only for their dead, but for all who suffered in the war, and for a future Iraq that must "retake the path of unity and democracy."

DOES A NATION OWN ITS OWN ANTIQUITIES?

"Collectors, archaeologists debate who should own nation's history" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Interesting article that discusses whether antiquities should be kept solely in their country of origin or dispersed for safety among many countries. Iraq is the focus, but many of the issues apply readily to biblical or ancient Jewish antiquities.

GUARANTEED ANCIENT ART?

Great. Now my blog is hawking antiquities in the banner ad. Please remember I have no control over these ads!

ONLINE LECTURES ON THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE HISTORY OF JERUSALEM:

Lehrhaus Judaica, an adult school for Jewish studies, has online courses (i.e., a series of written and illustrated lectures) on "Fifty Years of the Dead Sea Scrolls" and "A Journey Through Jerusalem," both by by Jehon Grist, Ph.D. I've skimmed through them and both look like useful resources for students and nonspecialists. (Via the Rutgers University Virtual Religion Index)

MORE ON ARAMAIC POP HITS:

I've already mentioned SAVAE, the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble, who have theories about ancient Jewish music and who have tried to recreate such music in their own CD, Ancient Echoes. Now National Public Radio has a piece on them (which our St. Mary's postgraduate Bruce Hansen was kind enough to point out to me):

Music from the Time of Jesus
Ensemble Recreates Sacred Songs of Ancient Times

The article includes a link to an audio interview that gives a taste of the music. (You may need to download the free software to hear the audio.) Some of it sounds more like church liturgical music than I would expect for the first century, but I can't claim to know anything about ancient Jewish musicology. Interesting stuff, anyway.

SADDAM AND BABYLON:

"Monuments Recall Another Empire That Ignored Writing on the Wall" (New York Times)

A thoughtful essay by Alan Riding on how ancient Babylon had become a symbol of Saddam's regime to the people of Iraq, including the looters.

RECENT BOOK REVIEWS:

An Introduction to Aramaic
Greenspahn, Frederick (Review of Biblical Literature)

Philip S. Alexander and Geza Vermes, Qumran Cave 4, XIX: Serekh Ha-Yahad and Two Related Texts (Dennis Pardee) p. 132

Frank Moore Cross, From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel (Dennis Pardee) p. 133

(both from the latest issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies. You have to open the PDF review file and then scroll down to the proper page.)

THE INSTITUTE OF MICROFILMED HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS has a website. In the past I have gotten microfilms of medieval Hekhalot manuscripts from them and Dr. Richler has always been very helpful. For those interested in such things, there is also an e-mail discussion list on Hebrew manuscripts to which I subscribe. Its message volume is low and generally pretty technical. It has a website and there is also an old page with an announcement of its inception which is a little more informative. (Scroll about three-quarters of the way down the page or do a page search for "Rabbi Yehoshua Scult".)

"TWENTY-FIVE PIECES IS NOT THE SAME AS 170,000."

"Loss Estimates Are Cut on Iraqi Artifacts, but Questions Remain" (New York Times via Iraqcrisis)

The bottom line is that fewer antiquites were lost from the Baghdad Museum (and elsewhere) than originally thought, although no one yet knows what the actual number is. Some items have been returned by looters and some were removed by staff before the war and are in safe hands. The actual number is somewhere between the extremes given above. I hope it turns out to be closer to the lower number!

Also, check out this site from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology:

The Cultural Heritage of Iraq

THE TOMB OF GILGAMESH?

"Gilgamesh tomb believed found" (BBC, via Archaeologica News)

Archaeologists in Iraq believe they may have found the lost tomb of King Gilgamesh - the subject of the oldest "book" in history.

The Epic Of Gilgamesh - written by a Middle Eastern scholar 2,500 years before the birth of Christ - commemorated the life of the ruler of the city of Uruk, from which Iraq gets its name.

Now, a German-led expedition has discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk - including, where the Euphrates once flowed, the last resting place of its famous King.

Maybe. I can't remember anything about Gilgamesh being buried in the Euphrates and I can't find anything about this in the Epic. But it sounds as though they're finding lots of interesting things anyway.

What, you ask, does this have to do with ancient Judaism? Well, the Gilgamesh Epic has a Flood story with parallels to both the J and P versions of the Flood, and the Priestly writer comes in the PaleoJudaic time period. Plus, a Sumerian Gilgamesh fragment quotes the same proverb as Qoheleth 4:4b, and Qoheleth's advice in 9:9-10 is strikingly similar to the advice of Siduri the barmaid to Gilgamesh in Tablet X iii, at least showing that some of Qoheleth's ideas have a background in Gilgamesh material. And Gilgamesh himself appears as a giant in the Aramaic Book of Giants from Qumran (for a summary of which, follow this link).

So there!

IRAQI ANTIQUITIES UPDATE:

"Art Experts Urge Sealing Iraqi Border" (Fox News)

ONCE AGAIN, ARAMAIC HITS THE BIG SCREEN!
�
If Stigmata wasn't enough for you, check this out:

"MEL'S RELIGIOUS VENTURE SPARKS ROW" (The Mirror, UK)

Apr 29 2003

Why Gibson is gambling �18m on movie epic about the last hours of Jesus... in Latin

From Kevin O'Sullivan In Los Angeles

ALL Hollywood worships at the altar of the almighty dollar. In the showbiz capital of the world the bottom line is money. Lots of it.

So you have to take your hat off to Mel Gibson for bucking the Tinseltown system in spectacular style.

Throughout his next not-so-eagerly awaited production, the characters speak only in two dead languages: Latin and Aramaic.

Plus he's making everybody mad at him. Well, what did he expect?

MORE ON DONALD D. BINDER'S WEBSITE on ancient synagogues, etc., which has an enormous collection of "NT Resources," most of which are of paleojudaic interest. These include links to a vast array of ancient literature online (biblical, extra-canonical, Judaica, early church fathers, etc.); an ancient languages page with links for Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Coptic; a papyrology page with links to lots of resources, including the Duke Databank, Oxyrhynchus Papyri sites, the Apis Collection, photos of and data on NT MSS, and other information; and a page with links to many archaeological sites from the NT period. A random sampling gives me the impression that most are useful and only a few have gone dead. An excellent site overall.

FROM THE POPULAR CULTURE FILE:

"'Scroll' stands again" (StarTribune)

"The Scroll," the sculpture that stood for 40 years in front of the downtown Minneapolis Public Library, was raised again Thursday at the headquarters of Veit Companies, a construction, demolition and disposal company in Rogers. It will be the centerpiece of a new plaza.

Chief Executive Officer Vaughn Veit said the project cost about $15,000. But Veit said that there's value in having a corporate symbol that was originally inspired by the Dead Sea Scrolls, an ancient collection of Biblical and historical writings.

"It's a reminder to our people of what it's all about -- that God is the answer to everything in this world, and that we're only here a very short time," Veit said.

(My emphasis.)

Well, any publicity is good publicity. Right?

IRAQI ANTIQUITIES UPDATE:

"Franks: Troops Locating Artifacts in Iraq" (The Guardian)

"Experts to Draft Iraq Antiquities Plan" (The Guardian)

FLYSERVER is working again, so the "About PaleoJudaica" link to the right is back online.

IRAQCRISIS MAILING LIST (via Ioudaios-L):

This is to announce a new mailing list:

Iraqcrisis: A moderated list for communicating substantive information on cultural property damaged, destroyed or lost from Libraries and Museums in Iraq during and after the war in April 2003, and on the worldwide response to the crisis:
https://listhost.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/iraqcrisis

IraqCrisis is a heavily moderated list, and traffic is not expected to be heavy. The moderator will not permit discussion or chatter - postings will be limited to items with substantive content. For a sample of the kinds of notices appropriate for distribution on IraqCrisis, please see the publicly accessible archives at: https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/iraqcrisis/

To subscribe, please use the form at the URL cited above.

Please repost this message wherever it might be useful.

-Chuck Jones-
--
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Charles Ellwood Jones
Research Associate - Bibliographer
The Oriental Institute - Chicago
1155 E. 58th St. Chicago IL 60637-1569
USA
Voice (773) 702-9537 Fax (773) 702-9853
ce-jones@uchicago.edu
http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/DEPT/RA/Research_Arch.html
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW now has its May-June issue out. Nothing in the online version is of immediate paleojudaic interest, but there are discussions of the "Jehoash Inscription," debates about the "minimalist" school of biblical studies, and an announcement of a $10,000 contest for a convincing forgery (really).

MORE ON THE MUSEUM PLUNDERING:

"Plunder of museums began a decade ago" (Gulf News via the Command Post)

This article by Paul Watson appears to have come out in the Los Angeles Times, which I'm not registered to access, and it has been picked up in a couple of other places. Lots of interesting rumors involving a belly dancer, gold artifacts, a chained skeleton, and the usual brutalities of Saddam's regime. I link, you decide.

FLYSERVER, where I keep my files for PaleoJudaica, is currently down - I presume temporarily! This means that you can't access the "About PaleoJudaica" link to the right. However, at this moment (no promises for the next moment), Blogger's archives are working, so any readers who are so moved can access the "About" file here in my first posting for this blog.

Technology. Bah!

THE DINUR CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN JEWISH HISTORY (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) has an online Jewish Resource Center with more that 6000 links to 30 areas of Jewish history, including:

Archaeology
Biblical History
The Second Temple Period
Online Texts
Journals Relating to Jewish History
Bibliographies

and more. Highly recommended.

LOST CUNEIFORM ARCHIVE:

"Looters May Have Destroyed Priceless Cuneiform Archive" (via the Biblical Archaeology Society)

Excerpt:

Looters at Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities pillaged and, perhaps, destroyed an archive of more than 100,000 cuneiform clay tablets -- a unique and priceless trove of ancient Mesopotamian writings that included the "Sippar Library," the oldest library ever found intact on its original shelves.

Experts described the archive as the world's least-studied large collection of cuneiform -- the oldest known writing on Earth -- a record that covers every aspect of Mesopotamian life over more than 3,000 years. The texts resided in numbered boxes each containing as many as 400 3-inch-by-2-inch tablets.

The Sippar Library, discovered in 1986 at a well-known neo-Babylonian site near Baghdad, was one of the archive's crown jewels. Dating from the sixth century B.C., it comprised only about 800 tablets, but it included hymns, prayers, lamentations, bits of epics, glossaries, astronomical and scientific texts, missing pieces of a flood legend that closely parallels the biblical story of Noah, and the prologue to the Code of Hammurabi, the ancient Babylonian lawgiver.

"This is the kind of discovery that one waits 100 years to see," said Yale's Benjamin Foster, curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection. "And now we'll never have another chance. It's a tragedy of the first order." Foster said only about two dozen of the Sippar Library tablets have been fully analyzed and published.

MORE ON IRAQI ANTIQUITIES

"Let the Market Preserve Art" (OpinionJournal, via the Arts and Letters Daily)

"Iraq's 'most wanted' stolen relics" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

"Chalabi's men hand 'rescued' artefacts back to museum" (The Independent)

"Barbarians at the gates" (The Guardian)


"Officials convinced museum was looted to order"(The London Times)

"Research in Iraq still a dubious possibility" (The Daily Northwestern)

"Ancient Samarra Stands Largely Untouched" (Newsday.com via Archaeologica News)

And from the satire file:

"Iraqi artifacts returned by Winona Ryder" (Tallahasse Democrat)

A WATERING SPOT FOR ANCIENT NAZARETH IS DRYING UP:

"Mary's Well waters down to a trickle" (Times Picayune)

NAZARETH, GALILEE -- After a bumper season of winter rains, the streams and rivers of Galilee are brimming with water for the first time in a decade. But there is one sacred and mysterious Galilee water source, Mary's Well in Nazareth, whose waters are a mere trickle of what they were in Jesus' time.

Nazareth is the Galilee town where Jesus grew to manhood, and the place from which he set out across the nearby hills and valleys in his brief but revolutionary ministry. Mary's Well marks the site in Nazareth where Orthodox Christians believe the Angel Gabriel announced the birth of Jesus. And it is undoubtedly a place Jesus often visited with his mother in his childhood.

This is a Christian pilgrimage site, but it seems there is some archaeological evidence that the pool does go back to the Roman era:

Yardena Alexandre, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, supervised two seasons of excavations at the site, undertaken during the renovations.

"We found remains from the Mameluke, Crusader and Roman period," she said. "The Roman finds were very minimal, remains of a few wall stubs and the remains of an ancient water channel. But from the Crusader period, there was an impressive structure, a well house built over the water cistern. Among the finds were hundreds of broken glass bracelets and hundreds of coins, which were most likely thrown into the well house by pilgrims and visitors. The coins indicate a presence at the well house from the Roman, Crusader, Mameluke and Ottoman period."

THE WEB PAGE OF THE JEWISH NATIONAL AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARY has an online searchable catalogue and displays of "ancient" (i.e., medieval to modern) maps of Jerusalem, a collection of ketubbot (marriage contracts) going back to the eleventh century, and an "Online Treasury of Talmudic Manuscripts." I can't get the last item to work. Your browser needs to be configured to handle Hebrew fonts, but mine is and that's not the problem.

TORAH SCROLLS IN THE BAGHDAD MUSEUM:

An article found in lots of places (I've taken this from CNN on 23 April: "TV employee charged with smuggling Iraqi art") has the following interesting photo and caption:

Civilians inspect Torah scrolls in a vault of Iraq's National Museum after looters broke in and went on a rampage.

Torah scrolls in the Baghdad Museum. And they seem to have survived. Wish I knew more about them.

IRAQ ANTIQUITIES ARTICLES:

"Iraqis say US ignored pleas to halt museum looting" (ReutersAlert)

(This is the first account I've seen of the looting of the Baghdad museum which takes testimony from the commanding officer in charge of securing the area. Despite the article's title, it sounds to me as though it will be pretty hard to maintain negligence.)

Lieutenant Colonel Eric Schwartz, commander of the tank battalion which fought Iraqi forces around the museum as Saddam Hussein's rule crumbled, said the U.S. military was "absolutely not" to blame for the thefts from the world-renowned museum.

[...]

The "Battle of the Museum" began on April 7 when U.S. forces took control of an intersection less than 500 metres (yards) away. They met fierce resistance and three days of fighting with Fedayeen militia and Special Republican Guard followed.

By the time it was over, looters operating right under the nose of U.S. forces had emptied the museum of priceless antiquities documenting the development of mankind in ancient Mesopotamia, one of the world's earliest civilisations.

[...]

"I was responsible for securing this site," Schwartz said outside the museum on Thursday. "But you can't just charge into a city straight to the museum, you have to secure the zone first, and we were taking some pretty heavy casualties."

Schwartz said he was aware the museum was a protected site and had orders to "identify it and ensure its integrity".

[Dr Donny] George [director-general of the Iraqi Department of Antiquities] said one of his staff had run to a U.S. tank to tell them about the looting, only to be told: "It is not our responsibility".

Schwartz recalled a similar incident but said the man had been suspected of belonging to the Fedayeen.

Schwartz said his men from the 3rd Infantry Division around the museum came under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. He said one U.S. soldier was killed and 35 wounded.

"There were 30 to 50 Fedayeen defending the compound. Once it was defended, it lost its protected status," he said.

In other words, the U.S. troops were under fire and facing "fierce resistence"- in which many were wounded and one died, and in the fog of combat they could not even be sure who were allies and who were enemies. If this account turns out to be accurate, I see no way they could be blamed for making the museum a low priority.

Another article:

"Iraq and Ruin" (Christian Science Monitor)

UPDATE (17 June): The URL for the first article has gone dead, so I have replaced it with the Google cache link.

"SECOND TEMPLE SYNAGOGUES" is a cool website owned by Donald D. Binder. It includes the full text of his book Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period (Atlanta: The Society of Biblical Literature, 1999), an image gallery of Second Temple synagogues, and many other goodies. I don't have time to profile his library of resources in detail right now, but I'll try to say more about parts of it later.

BY THE WAY, today is PaleoJudaica's one-month anniversary. Time flies and all that.

IRAQ ANTIQUITIES (ETC.) UPDATE:

"Some looted artifacts find way home" (San Mateo County Times)

"IRAQ MUSEUM LOOT SHOWS UP HERE" (New York Post)

"Assyrian statue, going cheap" (The Guardian)

"Iraq: The Next Adventure Travel Destination?" (Frommer's)


"Iraq's Dead Teacup" (Tech Central Station)

"Experts Call for Guards at Iraqi Museums" (The Guardian)

ARCHAEOLOGY ONLINE is a blog by Anita Cohen-Williams. There's an article on the blog and its owner in Archaeology Magazine.

HERSHEL SHANKS AND BEN WITHERINGTON III will be speaking about the "James Ossuary" on April 30th in Washington D.C.:

An evening with Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington III about the headline-making archaeological discovery, the "James ossuary," the oldest evidence of Jesus.

What: The authors of the new bestseller The Brother of Jeusus (Harper SanFrancisco, 2003), Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington III, will discuss major new archaeological evidence for Jesus at a talk Wednesday evening, April 30, at Washington National Cathedral.

Earlier I noted their new book on the ossuary. The $%&£(%^ Blogspot permalink isn't working at the moment, but it was on Monday, 21 April, so just scroll down.

TIME MAGAZINE has an article in its current issue on the Iraq antiquities lootings:

"The Taking of Iraq's Heritage"

Could the U.S. have stopped the looting of the country's priceless antiquities? The answer is not that simple

It's balanced and covers most of what we know or guess at present. Worth a read.

SOME OF THE LOOTED ANTIQUITIES ARE TURNING UP:

"FBI: Looted Iraqi Antiquities Surfacing" (ABC News)

MESOPOTAMIA AND THE BIBLE: I wasn't going to link to the two reviews of the following book in the Review of Biblical Literature because the book didn't seem particularly relevant to this blog. But after reading the reviews I see that it at least does move into the period of paleojudaic interest and the topic, after all, is very relevant to current events (and how often can you say that about Mesopotamian studies?). So here it is:

Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations
Younger Jr., K. Lawson and Mark W. Chavalas, editors

"CAESAR TO THEODOTUS: 'LET IT BURN'":
a survey of recent commentary on the Iraqi museum lootings from a Slate bulletin board. Is this looting like the burning of the library of Alexandria? Should Saddam's government have armed the museum staff? Should American soldiers have shot a few looters to maintain order? Scroll down to Friday, Apr. 18.

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION is a website on biblical studies which tracks breaking news daily and which also gets major scholars to contribute essays. Some recent examples of the latter include:


"Flavius Josephus and the Pharisees"
By Steve Mason

"Another look at the James Ossuary"
by Bruce Chilton


"Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity"
by Larry Hutado


"Petra"
by Philip Hammond


"The Myth of a Gentile Galilee"
by Mark A. Chancey

There's more, so do have a look.

"LOST TREASURES FROM IRAQ" - a slide show of looted antiquities, under construction on the website of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.

HIDDEN ARTIFACTS?

The article "U.S. Set to Rebuild Iraq Banking System" (the Mercury News, etc.) has the following intriguing paragraph:

One vault was in the Central Bank, which had caught fire before the looting. By some accounts, it holds some of Iraq's most precious items: ancient gold artifacts that were taken from the National Museum. It may also contain an accounting of Iraq's nebulous debt burden and possibly records of Iraq's overseas deposits or hidden accounts.

RECENT ARTICLES FROM NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS:

"Bible-Era Artifacts Highlight Archaeology Controversy" (on the "James Ossuary" and the "Joash Inscription")


"Jesus' Brother's 'Bone Box' Closer to Being Authenticated"

Also, on Ioudaios-L, Torrey Seland has noted the publication of The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story & Meaning of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus & His Family by Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington III

IRAQI ANTIQUITIES UPDATE:

"Iraqis return 20 looted treasures" (MSNBC)

"Iraq to rid ancient Babylon of Saddam brick by brick" (Reuters AlertNet UK)

"TREASURE HUNT HAS ITS REWARDS" (New York Post)

MORE ON BAR KOKHBA REVOLT COINS

Rare coins from second Jewish rebellion found (Atlanta Journal Constitution via Archaeologica News)

DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBIT IN TENNESEE:

"Dead Sea Scrolls fragments highlight Murfreesboro exhibit of historic biblical texts"

The Tennessee exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been mentioned off-and-on in the press recently. This article gives more detail on it than the others I've seen.

THE JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHA has a searchable website that has abstracts of articles but, alas, not the articles themselves.