PaleoJudaica.com

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

ROCHELLE ALTMAN, who has been in the news lately about the "James Ossuary," has a new book coming out in July. You can order it now through Amazon:

Absent Voices: The Story of Writing Systems in the West

A LATE ANTIQUE CONVENT in Jerusalem is being investigated by archaeologists, reportedly with the usual interference from the Ultra-Orthodox:

Israeli archaeologists uncover nearly intact convent (Catholic News Briefs)

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a monastic complex believed to be a convent used from the fifth to eighth centuries. "We have found a lot of monasteries, and many we don't know if monks or nuns lived there," said Uzi Dahari, deputy director of archaeology for the Israel Antiquities Authority. "Here we know for sure this was a convent because of an inscription we found in honor of the mother superior and the female skeletons we found in the underground crypt." The inscription was written in Greek as was the custom of the time, he said. Archaeologists believe that some 20 nuns and novices lived in the convent, Dahari said. He said archaeologists found "many skeletons" in the crypt, but they were prevented from continuing with the excavations by a group of Orthodox Jews, who, because of religious reasons, oppose disturbing the graves and bones of the dead.

ANTIQUITIES IN THE HOLY LAND - at last, some coverage of their current plight:

Holy Land turmoil puts cultural heritage at risk
War imperils evidence of historic land claims

By MIKE TONER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

WASHINGTON -- While Israeli and Palestinian officials spar over the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the past that both sides share is rapidly being lost to neglect, looting and development.

[�]

While the search for historic truths has been clouded by modern politics, it has been thoroughly stymied by the current conflict. Recent cultural tragedies include the abandonment and burning of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus during the early days of the intifada, the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and charges by Israel that the Palestinians are destroying archaeological evidence of Jewish temples as they renovate and expand the Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem.

The civil unrest last year prompted 22 archaeological teams to cancel excavations, reducing the usual force of international volunteers and researchers who dig in Israel by about 1,000.

The cutbacks even halted work at what many believe is the ancient site of Armageddon, the scene of cultural clashes for thousands of years and, according to the Book of Revelations, the site of the final climatic battle between good and evil in the world.

[�]

I'm glad all this is finally receiving some attention but - dammit! - it's the Book of Revelation, not "Revelations"! Why can't reporters ever get this right?

Monday, June 23, 2003

McGUIRE GIBSON, in an interview with Archaeology Magazine, has the following exchange with the interviewer:

In your meeting with Department of Defense officials on January 24, what did you tell them about protecting Iraq's heritage and what did they say to you?
We pointed out the importance of Mesopotamia. It's not just a desert. Iraq is not just a desert. It's the place where civilization began, it's the longest surviving continuous tradition of civilization in the world, it's earlier than Egypt, it's earlier than any place else. And that it is the foundation of all ideas of civilization, for Western civilization as well as Eastern. And that we trace our own cultural roots back to Mesopotamia.
We also talked about the great number of sites in Iraq, that every hill in southern Iraq is artificial, there are no natural hills, these are ancient sites, 99 percent would be ancient sites. That there's very great danger in war that sites would be disturbed and destroyed, especially if armies dig-in on the high points, which these would be. And I told them we could supply them with the exact coordinates of several thousand sites. I was able to deliver, I think it was the next day, a list of 4,000 sites. We later sent another 1,000. I know they put those into their computers, into their mapping systems. And I know they made an effort not to destroy sites. They had a special list of 150 sites on a "do not target" list that included all the famous sites one would think of and a lot of others. I came away from that meeting and subsequent email messages with various people in the military that they were aware of ancient sites, they were aware of the importance of the museum. In fact, I made the point the museum was the single most important archaeological location in the country, and they said we are aware of it and it would be heavily safeguarded and it won't be targeted. My understanding was they were going to take it and safeguard it.

Obviously that didn't happen. Where did things break down?
I think it had to do with the fact that they just had too few troops on the ground, and the commander of the troops in Baghdad has said that. They just didn't have the people to do it.

[...]

My bold-font emphasis.

(Via Archaeologica News)

UPDATE: Scroll down to the bottom of yesterday's "About That Hague Convention" post for some comments on a specific accusation of American war crimes against the Baghdad Museum.

HERSHEL SHANKS:

Why I Am Not Yet Convinced the Ossuary Inscription Is a Forgery (Beliefnet via Bible and Interpretation News)

[...]

The recent conclusion of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is essentially the view of one person, Professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University. The decision of the IAA purports to be by unanimous agreement of a 15-person committee, each of whom had been named by the IAA. It appears, however, that the only one on the committee with any geological and chemical knowledge on which the conclusion is based is Yuval Goren. He managed to convince the rest of the five-person (sub-)committee of his scientific conclusions based on materials in which they are not expert and which they have no more than a laypersons' knowledge. This (sub-)committee convinced the other scholars of the conclusion of the five-person scientific committee. The committee of other scholars has even less scientific expertise.

[...]

All this is not to say that the IAA's conclusion is incorrect. What it says is that we must be patient and see what evaluations can be made of the IAA report when it comes out.

Yuval Goren replies here:

Shanks' Assertions are Simply Incorrect and Misleading
(Bible and Interpretation News)

[...]

The patina sub-committee included at least one more member whose knowledge in geology and geochemistry was by far greater than mine. Dr. Amos Bein, Director of the Geological Survey of Israel (GSI), appointed Dr. Avner Ayalon to officially represent the GSI in this special committee. In his letter to the IAA dated March 9, 2003, Bein declares: �by your request, I appoint Dr. Avner Ayalon as a member of the scientific committee for the examination of the [James] ossuary. Dr. Ayalon has broad expertise in the operation of the equipment required for the examinations, and long experience in the application of the geochemical and petrographic methods that are required for the identification and characterization of materials�. Hence Shanks� assertion that �the committee never called in the scientists from the two other teams � the Geological Survey of Israel and the Royal Ontario Museum�� is simply incorrect and misleading.

[...]

FRANK CROSS (my doctoral supervisor) weighs in on the "James Ossuary": "If this is a forgery, the forger was a genius." (Time Magazine)

Sunday, June 22, 2003

ROCHELLE ALTMAN thinks that the "James Ossuary" is not just a modern forgery, it's a twenty-first century one. An essay that takes no prisoners.

"Updates on the Ossuary of Ya'acob bar Yosef and the Temple Tablet"
(Bible and Interpretation News, via Jim West on Ioudaios-L)

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK:

ABOUT THAT HAGUE CONVENTION

This is a follow-up to my post last week, "When Scholars Cry Wolf." I'm assuming you've read this and will not include here every link that you can find there. I was intending for this to be just a few short remarks but I'm afraid it has turned into another editorial. My comments apply in the first instance to the Baghdad Museum, but I also deal with the cultural looting in general later in the essay.

This is the opening text of a resolution passed by MELCOM (via the Iraqcrisis list):

MELCOM, the European Association of Middle East Librarians, assembled in Beirut at its 25th annual conference, unanimously

Deplores the destruction and theft of Iraqi libraries, archives and their contents following the US and British led invasion and occupation of Iraq in April 2003. This occurred in breach of the United Nations Convention on the protection of cultural property of countries under military occupation.

[�]

My emphasis. Well, I deplore it too, but I suggest that people who want to assert a "breach" of international law by allied forces read the U.N. Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict a little more carefully. Here is my reading of it.

Article 4, on Respect for Cultural Property, says:

1. The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect cultural property situated within their own territory as well as within the territory of other High Contracting Parties by refraining from any use of the property and its immediate surroundings or of the appliances in use for its protection for purposes which are likely to expose it to destruction or damage in the event of armed convict [sic: read "conflict"?]; and by refraining from any act of hostility directed against such property.

2. The obligations mentioned in paragraph 1 of the present Article may be waived only in cases where military necessity imperatively requires such a waiver.

3. The High Contracting Parties further undertake to prohibit, prevent and, if necessary, put a stop to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed against, cultural property. They shall refrain from requisitioning movable cultural property situated in the territory of another High Contracting Party.

4. They shall refrain from any act directed by way of reprisals against cultural property.

5. No High Contracting Party may evade the obligations incumbent upon it under the present Article, in respect of another High Contracting Party, by reason of the fact that the latter has not applied the measures of safeguard referred to in Article 3.

My emphasis. It is well established that Iraqi forces used the Baghdad Museum grounds as a base from which to fight U.S. forces from 7 April for three days. This is a case of imperative military necessity and the U.S. forces could not have been expected to protect the site during this period (when, evidently, some looting was already going on). (It may be that the Museum would count as a site put under "special protection," in which case Articles 8-11 apply, which say much the same thing.) It isn't clear to me exactly when the situation in Baghdad moved from "warfare" to "occupation" � I imagine it varied from location to location. The crucial period from about 10-12 April (after which, remember, the report for some time was that the Museum had been completely gutted) could be argued to fit either. If there were still hostilities going on in the immediate vicinity, paragraph 2 may still apply. (Paragraph 3 is obviously trumped by paragraph 2: if the parties to the conflict are allowed to use cultural property for purposes that might expose it to damage if it is a case of imperative military necessity, they can hardly be expected to protect it from theft, pillage, or vandalism under the same circumstances.) If not, and the area was now "occupied," the relevant part of Article 5, on Occupation, reads:

1. Any High Contracting Party in occupation of the whole or part of the territory of another High Contracting Party shall as far as possible support the competent national authorities of the occupied country in safeguarding and preserving its cultural property.

2. Should it prove necessary to take measures to preserve cultural property situated in occupied territory and damaged by military operations, and should the competent national authorities be unable to take such measures, the Occupying Power shall, as far as possible, and in close co-operation with such authorities, take the most necessary measures of preservation.

My emphasis. The occupying power should take measures for preservation as far as possible. It is not enough simply to show that some antiquities were looted or destroyed, which is not in doubt here. To assert violation of the Hague Convention it is necessary to show that the occupying troops did not take whatever steps were reasonable given the situation, the whole array of things that were calling for their attention, and the manpower and resources they had available. This, I submit, has by no means been demonstrated.

(I don't have the patience for a detailed exegesis of the 1999 Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention and I doubt that many would have the patience to read it if I did. Suffice to say that Chapter 2, Articles 6-9, and all of Chapter 3 cover the same ground in more detail and build on the 1954 Protocol without changing anything I have said above. By the way, I am aware that the United States has not ratified either the Convention or the Protocol, but it has gone on record as recognizing much of the Convention as "customary international law." For a primer on archaeological ethics and international law, go here.)

In the case of the Baghdad Museum it is unrealistic to suggest, as it was by a museum official on the day the looting was announced, that one tank and two soldiers could have kept away the looters. A commander with any sense would not place two of his men in so vulnerable a position to secure an important site. There were still bands of Fedayeen loose in Baghdad and there was the danger of a determined mob of looters. Two men and a tank would not have been a sufficiently intimidating presence to be sure of keeping looters at bay, which meant the soldiers might have had to fire on the looters in contravention of the rules of engagement. It would have taken a large contingent of troops occupying the museum to secure it. I pointed this out on 13 April.

Was there such a contingent to spare during the crucial days of 10-12 April? I don't know. But I bet you don't either. It is clear that the troops were mopping up armed resistance, securing the Ministry of Interior and the Oil Ministry, being called upon to help figure out if their were prisoners underground dying of thirst, and (at the same time or shortly thereafter) trying to keep a zoo full of animals alive while they got a supply line of food going. Not to put too fine a point on it, but all of these actually were a higher priority than securing the Museum. The decision to allot resources to them makes sense. We do need all the military intelligence we can get: we're fighting a war on terrorism and, although Saddam had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks, he was in bed with a number of terrorist groups. We needed to keep as much information as possible which would help us preserve the oil infrastructure for the rebuilding of Iraq. And can you imagine the condemnations we'd still be hearing today if we'd let all the zoo animals starve or if there had been underground prisons and we'd let the prisoners die? And I don't know what other urgent needs were present, but I bet there were quite a few. Robert Fisk makes much of the ministry buildings that were not protected, but doesn't their number indicate that troops and resources for protecting them were rather scarce in comparison to the need? Were there indeed other resources that were wasted? Again, I don't know. Maybe there were units off wasting time somewhere who should have been protecting the Museum and all those other ministry buildings and hospitals, etc. But if so, I'd like to see the evidence. Remember, Baghdad was not yet "secured." I would like an account of what Lieutenant-Colonel Schwartz's men were doing after the Battle of the Museum. If it can be shown that were doing things that were obviously less important than securing the Museum and that the things they were doing were unreasonable choices by comparison at the time, then there may be a case for saying they violated the Hague Convention. If ASOR or MELCOM want to present evidence that this is so, I am willing to listen.

This is obviously just the most publicized and best-known site that suffered some looting or destruction. There were reports early on that the Mosul Museum was seriously looted but it seems these were exaggerated. Various libraries and archives were burned or looted or both. The most recent information I can find on these is here. (pointed out to me by Francis Deblauwe). About these I will say just two things. First, we know even less at present about exactly what was lost in them than we know about the Baghdad Museum and about what was happening at the same time in the same vicinities. There is at least one report that some of the holdings of the National Library and Archives had previously been removed to safety. Given that a good bit of what was originally reported destroyed in other collections had actually been saved earlier (such as the majority of the holdings of the Ministry of Endowments & Religious Affairs Central Library), I'm hoping that most or all of the old and rare holdings in the National Library and Archives will turn up safe too. Second, there are certainly an awful lot of libraries and archives. Is it really realistic to argue that they all should have been heavily guarded? Again, I don't know whether it was feasible to put a heavy guard around the National Library and Archives on 14 April. I'm not sure it would even have occurred to me that the Iraqis themselves would burn it down. And once Robert Fisk reported to the U.S. troops that the Koranic Library was burning, with flames shooting a hundred feet into the air, what were they supposed to do? Did they have fire-fighting equipment? Would even that have made a difference at that point?

I am not trying to support anyone's agenda or propose a simplistic interpretation of very complex and confusing events. I want to know what happened too and if it can be shown that there was negligence on the part of the troops and the occupying powers, then they should be called to justice. But the point I am making is that we still know very little about what actually happened and that negligence has by no means been established and it can only be established by a full accounting not only of what the troops didn't do, but also what they did instead and why. If allied forces had gone to the Baghdad Museum, packed up its contents and sent them back to museums in the States, we would all be talking about violations of the Hague Convention. If they had burned down the National Library, we would all be talking about war crimes. They did no such thing and no one claims that they did. They are being accused, rather, of neglecting to prevent looting and burning by the local population, a much more nebulous charge that is correspondingly harder to prove and that should be advanced with due caution. If ASOR, MELCOM, etc. think they can make a case for negligence, let them speak up. Let them call for a formal investigation. Let them present a full array of evidence to the public. If the case is strong, there will be support for an investigation. But so far it looks to me as though the Hague Convention is being invoked purely on the grounds that antiquities were looted. This is not adequate, based on what the Convention actually says. Accusing someone of a war crime is a serious matter and ought to be done only if the accuser offers a detailed and convincing case. In the meantime, the accused should be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. ASOR, MELCOM and others have jumped to conclusions and are embarrassing us all in the public arena as a result. This was not necessary. You have only to look at the Statement of Concern of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (which invokes the Hague Convention in a sensible way) and the Statement on destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq by the World Archaeological Congress to see that it was perfectly possible to express concern about the situation and to call for action without resorting to overblown rhetoric and unsupported accusations.

UPDATE (23 June): In this article (originally published 7 May in German, English translation via Francis Deblauwe's website), Professor Walter Sommerfeld makes some specific and serious accusations that, if true, would indicate that American troops blatantly violated the Hague Convention and committed war crimes. According to the article, after the fighting around the Baghdad Museum the troops broke into the Museum and brought out unidentified objects, then incited the crowd to loot the treasures of the Museum. However, the account is presented as based on anonymous reports by Museum staff and local residents, "as they are afraid of repercussions and will be forced to work with the Americans in the future." There are also alleged quotations from three local residents who say not only that the American troops looted the Museum, but that they brought Kuwaitis with them and together they carried off seven truckloads of artifacts while protected by armored cars! Certainly Americans as well as anyone else would want to know if all this is true. I have to say that at this point I am not inclined to give great weight to anonymous accusations. If there had been blatant looting by American troops on this scale, surely the newspapers would have been all over it - it could hardly have been covered up or escaped their attention. The National Geographic report on Iraq's antiquites deals at length with the Iraq Museum and shows no awareness of any accounts or rumors of this kind. Nor does Professor McGuire Gibson, one of the team members who visited the Museum in May, say anything about any such rumors in his interview in the current (July/August) issue of Archaeology Magazine, even when asked how the looting happened. So we have some specific and serious accusations but no verification or indication that people in the know or with the means of finding out are taking them seriously. I remain to be convinced.

UPDATE (26 June): Roger Atwood has published an article in ARTnews online, "Inside Iraq�s National Museum," (via the Iraqcrisis list and Francis Deblauwe) which gives a detailed account of what happened in and around the Museum during the crucial days before, during, and after the looting, based on interviews with museum workers, U.S. troops who were present, and eyewitness bystanders. The Museum was "turned into a major military defensive position by Iraqi forces."

Three U.S. Army platoons, with four tanks and 16 soldiers each, rolled into the immediate vicinity of the museum that day under heavy fire. It was a big force, attesting to the importance of the junction and the strength of Iraqi resistance. The commander of the operation was Captain Jason Conroy.

I asked Conroy why his troops didn�t make more of an effort to guard what he must have known would be a tempting target for looters.

"That building was being used as a defensive position. They were fighting out of it. It wasn�t like you came here and there was no enemy. The area was completely saturated by enemy positions, and they weren�t abiding by the rules we were abiding by," he said. An engaging, articulate man, Conroy seemed more bewildered than angry at the charges that his troops could have stopped the plunder. "I mean, you�re talking about one little building. Yes, it�s an important building, but you have to think back to what point we were at. We were just moving into Baghdad, and just to get to this area was a major undertaking."

[...]

Behind the battle lines, looting was well under way by Thursday, April 10. According to Abbas, a group of seven men smashed open the museum�s glass front door and went inside. Most of the shelves were empty, but there were still some choice works, like the Warka Vase, a copper bull from the Tell Ubaid site, and a 4,400-year-old diorite statue of an early Babylonian king.

[...]

More looters had gotten in through a back entrance.

By Saturday, April 12, other employees began returning to the museum and chased out some of the looters. Abbas put up a large sign in the entrance saying in Arabic: "The American army is in control of the museum. Those who enter will be killed." It was a lie, of course, but it helped. They were able to block the doors and hold looters at bay.

George and Khalil, meanwhile, were getting nowhere in their efforts to gain U.S. military protection for the museum, they said later. On Sunday, April 13, they ventured out of their homes and went to the Palestine Hotel, where there was a U.S. command post, and got what they thought was a commitment from a U.S. Marine colonel to get troops to secure the building. None came. By then, the marines had largely withdrawn from the west side of the Tigris, where the museum was located, and the U.S. Army had taken over all operations in that area.

Conroy said his forces took sporadic fire for four more days, until Tuesday, April 15, when they withdrew to refuel. The next day, with news of looting all over the world�s media, he finally received orders to return and "secure" the museum, but by then the battle was over and the pillage had ended. They returned expecting to find Iraqi armed defenders and instead found only reporters. Conroy told me that he had no idea the museum had been looted. He, George, and Khalil inspected the museum for booby traps, finding none but coming across discarded Republican Guard uniforms.

[...]

This is an extremely important account, so please do follow the link and read it all. Needless to say, it bears no resemblance to the version published by Walter Sommerfeld and commented on in the previous update. Also, David Nishimura (Cronaca) comments briefly on my posting and discusses the same ARTnews article here.

Saturday, June 21, 2003

I'VE CONTACTED TLG-L about the seemingly dead archive link. They reply that no one has posted to the list yet and this may be the reason, but they'll look into it.

SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT AN IRAQI MUSEUM FOR A CHANGE:

Marines volunteer to restore Babylon treasure (Henderson Hall News)

by Sgt. Mike Sweet
367th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

AL HILLAH, Iraq - Pitching in with brooms and good old Yankee know-how Marines and sailors are working to rehabilitate the Nebuchadnezzer Museum on the grounds of the ruins of Babylon.

Volunteers spent the afternoon June 7 cleaning the museum. Technical experts now plan to help make the museum better than it was before the war.

[�]

Looters tried to ravage the grounds of the ancient ruins before the Marines arrived in Babylon and secured the international treasure.

Whether they were taking out vengeance on Saddam Hussein or were just opportunists wanting to steal whatever they could get there hands on, looters demolished the museum located inside the ancient walled city, said Mohammed Taher, the museum's director.

"Fortunately we did not have any original artifacts on display," Taher said. "I do not understand how they could have done this to their own heritage."

[�]

The Mesopotamian empire of Babylon dates back thousands of years and is recognized by experts as one of the most important cities of ancient times. It is the second most noted city in the Bible after Jerusalem, according to Army Capt. Avroham Horovitz, a Jewish chaplain supporting troops serving with the First Marine Expeditionary Force.

[�]

The Museum rehabilitation project is important to the Marines. They are investing more than $35,000 to protect the artifacts said Rivas.

"I am please with the people who we are working with," said [Marine Capt. Gavino] Rivas. "They are professional and have a lot of pride in protecting the artifacts. His goal is to have the rehabilitation project completed in time for the annual Babylonian festival that is scheduled for September 22.

"This is a cooperative effort," said Rivas who before becoming a civil affairs officer flew CH-46 helicopters. "Marines, Seabees, soldiers, Iraqis; everyone is working together to make this work."

CAESAREA IN LATE ANTIQUITY:

Israeli professor to spend one-year studying Caesarea (Kansas City Jewish Chronicle)

By Scott Factor, Staff Writer June 20, 2003

An Israeli professor at the University of Kansas has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays research grant for her project "Conflicts and Concord: A History of Palestine in Late Antiquity."
With the grant, Hagith Sivan, associate professor of history, will spend one year in Israel studying the late antiquity period (early 4th to early 7th century) in Caesarea Maritima, the ancient Roman capital of Palestine, to study how the current situation in the region has its roots in history, especially this period.

Sivan is planning to write a book, which will be completed following her year in Israel and bear the same name as her project.

[�]

"In the beginning of the period, the territory was largely Pagan, with some Jewish presence. Than Christianity comes in a big way, with the Emperor Constantine and major Christian building projects," Sivan said. "The Muslim conquest of the early 7th century brought about the Islamicization of the region. In this time period of 300 years, you had a complete change in the area."

[�]

Discovering how people of all faiths lived together then is crucial, not only for her project, but for bridging some of the gaps that exist in the region today.

"I would like, when I look at what happened there, to bring to life an understanding of how it worked then ... what made people live in harmony, but also what distracted them," Sivan said. "It is useful to pinpoint certain periods where you are able to see ... trends and types of personalities that shaped the agendas. Late antiquity is a very important time for this."

[�]

Sivan said her book will have an entire chapter that will be devoted to Jerusalem, which has its "own history."

"All you have to do is look at the skyline of Jerusalem. When Constantine becomes interested in Christianizing the Holy Land, churches were put everywhere you looked," Sivan said. "The Dome of the Rock now highlights it because it really is an expression of the victory of Islam. The expression is that we are now higher than the highest church. A small indication of the city now is that in the Jewish corridor in the Old City, some of the yeshivas are either at the same height as the dome or a bit higher. It is as if they are saying "We are here now."

Congratulations Professor Sivan!

Friday, June 20, 2003

"HOW TO CREATE A GOLEM from the comfort of home" (via Baraita).

Some assembly required. Batteries not included. The product is supplied as is and with no warranties and the supplier shall not be liable for any damages or personal injury.

WITHERINGTON AND SHANKS ARE HOLDING FIRM:

Late Breaking News
June 19, 2003 - Scholars defend authenticity of ossuary (Church Executive Magazine)

By United Methodist News Service

A United Methodist pastor and prominent biblical scholar defends the authenticity of an inscribed, first-century ossuary believed to provide the oldest archaeological evidence of Jesus Christ, after claims by Israel's Antiquities Authority that the box is a fake.

"What you have here is a case of dueling scholars," said the Rev. Ben Witherington III, New Testament professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., and a United Methodist pastor in the Kentucky Annual Conference.

[...]

Witherington and Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, took part in announcing the discovery of the box last year. They have written a book, The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story & Meaning of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus & His Family, about the discovery of the ossuary.

"Some of the world's greatest paleographers, and two teams of rigorous scientists that have tested the inscription, have found nothing to question as to its authenticity," Shanks said. "All indicate a first-century date. There is too much evidence in favor of the inscription's authenticity that the IAA announcement has not yet addressed. It's premature to make such an announcement without an accompanying scientific report. When that comes out, paleographers and scientists can then assess it. In the end, if the inscription is indeed proven to be a fake perpetrated by a modern forger, then I hope that the forger will be caught and put in jail."

"The IAA findings are, at the very least, incomplete if not incorrect," Witherington said. "Their yet-to-be-released report could not have taken into account the new tests performed on the inscription in Toronto by scholars at the Royal Ontario Museum."

Witherington says the report did not address several crucial points:

� In conducting its tests, Israel's Antiquities Authority did not take into consideration earlier findings by the Israeli Geological Survey and the Royal Ontario Museum, which contradict the IAA results.
� The Israeli Geological Survey found conclusively that the ossuary stone and the dirt found in the ossuary both came from the Silwan area of Jerusalem. How did dirt from Silwan get encrusted in a box that Israel's Antiquities Authority claims is from Cyprus or northern Syria?
� No paleographer or Aramaic specialist in the world has suggested that a modern forger tried to imitate an older Aramaic style prior to the report by Israel's Antiquities Authority.
� The evidence from the mass-spectrometry test (the ultraviolet test) performed at the Royal Ontario Museum and featured on the Discovery Channel special "James, Brother of Jesus" is "the most rigorous scientific test there is." There was no evidence of modern tampering with the box or the inscription.

[...]

JEWISH STUDIES: AN INTERNET JOURNAL is a new, free online journal from Bar Ilan University which has just published its second issue. Articles of Paleojudaic interest include:

ISSUE 2

Shamma Friedman, The Talmudic Proverb in Its Cultural Setting (Hebrew)

ISSUE 1

David Henshke, �From Usha to Yavneh��The Transformations of a Tradition (Hebrew)

Adiel Schremer, The Text-Tradition of the Tosefta: A Preliminary Study in the Footsteps of Saul Lieberman (Hebrew)

Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Rise of the Babylonian Rabbinic Academy: A Reexamination of the Talmudic Evidence

The Hebrew articles require Hebrew fonts but the site also includes English summaries of all articles.

Thursday, June 19, 2003

TLG-L is a new, archived e-mail discussion list for users of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. At the moment the archive link is dead. (Via the H-NET Jewish Studies List.)

HOW MANY MORE FORGERIES?

"What 'Jesus hoax' could mean for Mideast antiques" (Christian Science Monitor)

[...]

"How many more items are in museums that are not authentic, items from the antiquities market and not from archaeological sites?" asks Gideon Avni, director of the Excavations and Surveys Department at the IAA.

"It's the most serious question that this incident should raise," adds Dr. Avni, "that of forgeries getting into museums upon which research is based and conclusions are drawn."

[...]

ARAMAIC ON THE SMALL SCREEN:

Readers in Britain take note: this coming Saturday, 21 June, BBC One will be showing the movie Stigmata at 10:30 pm.

IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY, scroll down to yesterday's entry on the "James Ossuary" and check the updates for more information. There's a new article in Archaeology Magazine, plus more discussion on Ioudaios-L. For the latter, follow the link to Rochelle Altman's message (the one where she asks that the subject be closed on the list!) and follow the message links chronologically from there. And congratulations to Rochelle, who seems to have been vindicated. But I still want to see that final report.

MINIMALISM AND MAXIMALISM AGAIN:

Iain Provan, "(Perhaps the) Last Comments on the Davies-Dever Exchange" (Bible and Interpretation)

Aw come on, Iain, do you really think so?

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

THE WARKA VASE WAS DAMAGED:

Iraqi museum to repair broken 5,000-year-old vase

By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY

BAGHDAD � A priceless vase returned to the Iraqi National Museum is damaged but can be repaired, the museum's director said Tuesday.

[�]

The 3-foot-tall, Warka Vase is in pieces after being stolen during looting.

PALEOJUDAICA IS THE PLACE TO GO for Iranian prostitute bloggers - at least according to Google. (Discovered when I checked my counter log this morning to see who's been referring to me.) For the original post go here and scroll up.

Evidently there really is an Iranian blogger who is a former prostitute but I'm afraid I don't have her URL. Sorry.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS from the Review of Biblical Literature:

Mein, Andrew
Ezekiel and the Ethics of Exile

Miller, Douglas B.
Symbol and Rhetoric in Ecclesiastes: The Place of Hebel in Qohelet's Work

Polaski, Donald C.
Authorizing an End: The Isaiah Apocalypse and Intertextuality

THE "JAMES OSSUARY" A FAKE TOO?

First the "Joash Inscription" and now this:

Israeli Antiquities Authority says 'James Ossuary' deemed a fake (CNews)
JERUSALEM (AP-CP) - An ancient burial box purported to have held the bones of Jesus' brother, James, is a fake, Israel's Antiquities Authority said Wednesday.
The ossuary, which bore the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," had been touted by some scholars as the oldest archeological link to New Testament figures. But Israeli officials described that inscription, as well as another purported archeological marvel, the "Yoash inscription," as "forgeries." "The inscriptions, possibly inscribed in two separate stages, are not authentic," the Antiquities Authority said in a statement. The officials reached their conclusions after intensive exams by several committees of experts.
Oded Golan, the Israeli owner of the "James ossuary," dismissed the officials' findings.
[�]

Bummer. Nothing yet on the Israel Antiquities Authority website (whose news page hasn't been updated since the fall of 2001). I'm reserving judgment until I see a full publication.

UPDATE: More in the Jerusalem Post (requires free registration; via Rochelle Altman in Ioudaios-L).

UPDATE: Reader Justin Winger notes this article in the online edition of Archaeology Magazine:

"GOLD DUST AND JAMES BOND: Israel Antiquities Authority declares James Ossuary and Jehoash Inscription Fake"

It gives much more information than the press releases and promises a full article in the September/October issue. Bottom line: the committee agrees that the object is a genuine ancient ossuary but the inscription was incised much later. The epigraphers were divided on whether the inscription was genuine but the geologists agree that the patina on the letters is fake. Also, the "Joash Inscription" was rejected as fake both by epigraphers and geologists on the grounds of language and letter-shape errors and another fake patina on the letters.

SPEAKING OF THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM, the Council of Europe is currently considering a "right of reply in the on-line environment." In other words, if you mention someone in any online publication, including a blog, you will have to grant space to or link to their reply if they wish to give one. This article by Declan McCullagh in News.Com tells all about it. An excerpt:

Why Europe still doesn't get the Internet (again, via Andrew Sullivan)

[�]

The all-but-final proposal draft says that Internet news organizations, individual Web sites, moderated mailing lists and even Web logs (or "blogs"), must offer a "right of reply" to those who have been criticized by a person or organization.

With clinical precision, the council's bureaucracy had decided exactly what would be required. Some excerpts from its proposal:

� "The reply should be made publicly available in a prominent place for a period of time (that) is at least equal to the period of time during which the contested information was publicly available, but, in any case, no less than for 24 hours."

� Hyperlinking to a reply is acceptable. "It may be considered sufficient to publish (the reply) or make available a link to it" from the spot of the original mention.

� "So long as the contested information is available online, the reply should be attached to it, for example through a clearly visible link."

� Long replies are fine. "There should be flexibility regarding the length of the reply, since there are (fewer) capacity limits for content than (there are) in off-line media."

[�]

I didn't want to believe it was true, but here is the actual document from the Council of Europe website. Regular readers will be aware that I am very careful to link to sites that comment on what I say here when I become aware of them and either to make corrections or to explain why I disagree with the comment. But that's what I do because I want to maintain my own credibility. If someone wants to exercise their freedom of speech and not acknowledge criticism or corrections on their own private site, they should be able to do that - and to live with what it does to their credibility. And there are cases where I might not link. If, say, the Iranian mullahs said something bad about me, I would probably only link to it if I happened to feel like making fun of them. And I would not link to a Neo-Nazi site under any circumstances. And I generally won't bother to link if I think a comment is frivolous.

The opportunities for abuse are staggering. If an individual blogger expressed an unpopular view or one that disagreed with the government, opponents - government or otherwise - could bury that person in demands for reply until they shut down the blog.

So I strongly encourage the British Government to ignore this recommendation to pass such laws.

And I strongly encourage the Council of Europe to go to hell.

Sorry for all the politics this morning. I'll try to get back to ancient Judaism later today.

JULY 9TH is to be a day in the blogosphere devoted to supporting the struggle for freedom in Iran. See Andrew Sullivan here - and you are cordialy invited whatever your political views on other things.

Be there. I intend to be.

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

DONNY GEORGE HAS BEEN ACCUSED of ordering Museum staff to fire on American troops:

Staff revolt at Baghdad museum (The Guardian via IraqCrisis and Francis Deblauwe)

Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Tuesday June 17, 2003
The Guardian

Empty shelves in Baghdad museum
Iraq's national museum, home to many priceless artefacts which were thought to have been looted after the fall of Baghdad, has been plunged into a new crisis because of a revolt by staff.

More than 130 of the 185 staff of Iraq's state board of antiquities office in Baghdad, which runs the museum, have signed a petition demanding the resignation of its directors.

Staff said they believed that some of the thefts from the museum were an inside job. They also accused Dony George, the board's head of research, of arming them and ordering them to fight US forces.

Mr George admitted to the Guardian that he armed staff but denied instructing them to shoot US troops. He said none of the directors had a hand in the looting.

The row came after weeks of confusion about the artefacts apparently stolen from the museum under the gaze of US troops. At first Mr George and other directors accused the US military of failing to protect the building. But in the past two weeks many of the most precious pieces, including the golden treasures of Nimrud and the Sumerian vase of Warka have been returned.

One employee said: "We want elections for new directors and we want an investigation into what happened at the museum."

[�]

Staff also described how Mr George gathered employees in the museum for a meeting in the early days of the war at which he ordered them to fight US troops or face the sack. One employee who was present at the meeting said: "He [Mr George] said: 'If the Americans come you have to fight.' They never mentioned thieves once."

[�]

Mr George, who has worked for the board for 26 years and is known internationally, admitted he had been at the meeting and that guns were distributed but said he told staff only to guard the museum against looters.

[�]

He said he had been a member of the Ba'ath party, but not a senior one. Refusal to join, he said, would have meant "troubles in my position here [at the museum] and at home".

A spokesperson for the US-led coalition provisional authority (CPA), which is running Iraq, said Mr George's Ba'ath party membership had been investigated and he had been cleared. "All other allegations are just hearsay," the spokesperson said. Elections have been organised by the CPA in the ministry of culture, which oversees the museum, to choose new directors. But staff from the antiquities board are unlikely to take part. "It is not the way it works," the spokesperson said.

Also, regular readers might want to recheck the end of Saturday's post, "When Scholars Cry Wolf," which has been updated to interact with those who have commented on it.

Memo to future self: always compose entries on Word, then transfer to Blogger, in case the Blogger posting function eats them!

Monday, June 16, 2003

ISAIAH SCROLL ON DISPLAY IN MONTREAL:

Montreal museum to exhibit pieces of never-displayed Dead Sea Scrolls
(Buffalo News via Archaeologica News)
By INGRID PERITZ
Toronto Globe and Mail
6/15/2003
MONTREAL - With its tattered and darkened edges, the animal skin covered in indecipherable writing hardly looks like one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries of modern times.

Yet museum workers donned white gloves and spoke in reverential tones last week as they unveiled the centerpiece of an exhibit that opens in Montreal this week: pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Offering a brief glimpse, officials from Montreal's Pointe-a-Calliere museum and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem literally lifted the lid on a section of the Isaiah scroll, one of the original seven scrolls discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea in 1947.

Deemed too fragile, it has never before been exhibited anywhere, including Israel. "It's one of the most important" of the Dead Sea Scrolls, said Michal Dayagi-Mendels, senior curator of archaeology of the Israel Museum.

[...]

It appears that three more of the original seven scrolls from Cave One are on display as well, but the article doesn't say which three.

UPDATE: Carla Sulzbach (McGill University) writes:

In reference to your posting on the DSS exhibit in Montreal I would like to add to following, from the press release of the museum:

"The portions of three scrolls that will be presented in Canada come from the first group of scrolls discovered in 1947. They are among the most symbolic manuscripts in this incomparable collection: the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness (War Scroll), the Community Rule and Isaiah B. This is the first time that the War Scroll and the Isaiah scroll will leave Israel. The Community Rule scroll has not left Israel since 1954, when it was purchased from an American collector."

Also on display are the presumably First Temple [inscribed ivory] pomegranate as well as the Tel Dan stele. The exhibit runs from June 17 to Nov 2, 2003 after which it will move to Ottawa.

For more info please go to the museum's website and follow the links.

TWO JOSEPHUS PAGES:

josephus.yorku.ca (Professor Steve Mason, York University)

Current information on scholarly projects and series on Josephus and on online materials, including the searchable Josephus bibliography at Muenster.

Flavius Josephus Home Page

A page by "independent scholar" G. J. Goldberg (Ph.D. in Physics, autodidact in Greek and Josephus). I haven't had the chance to go through the site carefully, but it seems to have a lot of interesting material.

MEL GIBSON denies being an anti-Semite:

Gibson slams anti-Semitic claims (NEWS.com.au)
From correspondents in Los Angeles
June 14, 2003

HOLLYWOOD star and filmmaker Mel Gibson has hit out for the first time at claims that either he or his controversial new film about the death of Christ was anti-Semitic or anti-Catholic.

The comments, in an exclusive statement to entertainment industry bible Daily Variety today, mark the first time that the star, a strict Catholic, has spoken out about the furore.

"To be certain, neither I nor my film is anti-Semitic," Gibson said following an outcry sparked by fears that the movie - The Passion - which is still in production, might portray both Jews and Catholics in a negative life.

"If the intense scrutiny during my 25 years in public life revealed I had ever persecuted or discriminated against anyone based on race or creed, I would be all too willing to make amends. But there is no such record.

"Nor do I hate anybody - certainly not the Jews," Gibson wrote, adding that many of his friends and business associates were Jewish.

"Anti-Semitism is not only contrary to my personal beliefs, it is also contrary to the core message of my movie," he said.

The statement came after the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which with the Jewish Anti-Defamation League had also criticised the movie after obtaining a copy of the script, apologised for its stance.

"The Passion is a movie meant to inspire not offend," Gibson said of the film that portrays the last hours in the life of Christ and parts of which are played in the ancient tongues of Latin and Aramaic.

[...]

The controversy continues. I'm baffled, by the way, about how the film could portray Catholics in any sort of light. Personally, I'm going wait to decide what I think of the movie until after I've seen it.

Sunday, June 15, 2003

THE GREAT ISAIAH SCROLL DIRECTORY (1QIsaiah^a) by Fred P Miller includes a photographic plate of each column of the scroll with a line-by-line translation and a detailed analysis of physical characteristics and textual variants. Cool!

ONLINE COURSES FOR CREDIT:

The Quartz Hill School of Theology offers a group of short online courses (optionally for credit - $50 a pop). The following by Dr. Jim West (well know from the Ioudaios-L discussion list) are of interest:

B243 Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
Mostly involves assignments from Charlesworth

B451 Introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls
Includes lecture material, some scroll photos, and essay questions.

B461 Apocalyptic Literature
Includes brief lectures on OT, noncanonical, and NT apocalyptic texts.

Saturday, June 14, 2003

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK:

WHEN SCHOLARS CRY WOLF

Someone needs to say this, so I guess it may as well be me.

The tone of the press has changed during the last week regarding the Iraq antiquities looting. An example is David Aaronovitch's editorial in the Guardian from 10 June, "Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth," which you should read in its entirety if you haven't already. In it he says,

So, there's the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks.

He closes,

Furious, I conclude two things from all this. The first is the credulousness of many western academics and others who cannot conceive that a plausible and intelligent fellow-professional might have been an apparatchiks of a fascist regime and a propagandist for his own past. The second is that - these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed.

I passed the article onto the IraqCrisis list and it generated some other references and some discussion (follow the links for the next couple of days after my message). Francis Deblauwe wrote:

Now that the media are again running with a minimalist version of what happened in Baghdad ("only 33 artifacts still missing," as in Nightline (ABC) last night), I want to return to the urgent need for media relations by the ANE academic community. I think it's not enough to tape interviews with the various news outlets and educate and give interviews to journalists, and just hope that they'll quote us in the correct context. As I already hinted at on May 15 ([Iraqcrisis] media slipping into 'only tens of artifacts missing still' ), we really need to be smarter than this and get out of this purely reactive mode. Wasn't, for instance, the ACCICH set up for this kind of purpose? Please, I know we are all very busy coordinating assitance to Iraq but if we let public opinion, Congress and other legislative bodies get the impression that it wasn't so bad after all, then the funding could become much more problematic, no matter what the reality on the ground in Iraq is!

Worried and feeling powerless out here in the Midwest US,

Francis Deblauwe

And Cindy Ho wrote:

We are all thankful that many objects from Baghdad have indeed been spared. But isn't it true that the Warka Vase and the Warka face are still missing? [The Warka Vase has since been returned but is damaged. � JRD] Weren't the ceramic lions smashed? Didn't we see pictures of broken statues strewn all over the floors of the Museum along with archival documents and files? Aren't archaeological sites being looted? Can anyone consider this less than a tragedy?

Regardless of the magnitude of the loss, everything the scholars said about the importance of the collections is still true. Present day Iraq is still the cradle of civilization. The illicit antiquities trade is still thriving. If anything, this near catastrophe only underscores the vulnerability of cultural treasures.

Let's not allow media confusion detract us from the real issue: looting goes on every day, all over the world. We must not allow the recent report of the "exaggerated" loss comfort us into complacency. If the events in Iraq were a near catastrophe, it is a wake-up call, an unfortunate window of opportunity to bring some attention to an age-old and ongoing problem.

As an ordinary citizen who is concerned about our collective heritage, I ask the academic communities to unite together and join forces with the media and advertising industries to create a global awareness campaign. Tell the world about the importance of preserving cultural antiquities. Only our collective action can keep this tragic situation alive in the minds of everyone, from government and law enforcement officials, and to the perpetrators themselves.

Cindy Ho
SAFE (Saving Antiquities For Everyone) www.Safenow.net

Both Francis and Cindy make some important points, but they skirt around something that needs to be faced. The academic world blew it in response to the looting in Iraq. Too many people cried wolf too soon and they have seriously undermined our credibility with the outside world. A case in point (one that could be multiplied) is the ASOR (American Schools of Oriental Research) Statement on Baghdad Museum, 4/16/03. It begins:

The looting of the Iraq Museum (Baghdad) is the most severe single blow to cultural heritage in modern history, comparable to the sack of Constantinople, the burning of the library at Alexandria, the Vandal and Mogul invasions and the ravages of the conquistadors.

This rhetoric is not only inflated, it is over the top and embarrassing. It appears likely that some thousands of artifacts from the museum were looted or destroyed, perhaps as many as ten thousand. This is a terrible tragedy, but a Mogul invasion it is not, and exaggerating its scale like this can lead to no good. There were hints days before this statement - indeed on the very day the looting was announced - that the scale of the looting might be less than the initial reports, but this information is ignored. The invoking of Alexandria, Constantinople, etc. is not only overblown, it compares like with unlike in that these other lootings were by the invaders whereas it was the people being invaded who carried out the looting in Iraq. The statement goes on to say:

It took place under the eyes of U.S. military forces in contravention of the Hague Convention on the preservation of cultural property in time of war and the stated policy of the Department of Defense, which had written to the Society for American Archaeology regarding the safeguarding of cultural property in Iraq that "U.S. armed forces... conduct all their operations in accordance with the law of armed conflict, including those provisions of the 1954 Convention and 1999 Protocol that reflect customary international law."

Again, this is based on early reports by Robert Fisk and others to the effect that the allied troops just stood by and let the looting happen. But when reporters spoke to the commander of the tank battalion that actually fought in the area, it came out that Fedayeen had been holed up around the museum, and perhaps in it, and were shooting from it, and the U.S. soldiers took considerable casualties fighting them. Support for this version of the story has been offered by architectural historian Dan Cruikshank (see Aaronovitch's article above) and Fisk's original report even hints at evidence for it. According to this account of events, the troops had other things to worry about than museum looting, like being shot at. Why did ASOR uncritically take the initial, unverified reports as true? Why didn't they say that if it was at all possible the troops should have defended the museum, but it may not have been possible, and that the events needed to be investigated? Come to think of it, two days earlier (14 April) some of us did say that. Was it really prudent to hint that the U.S. forces had committed a war crime? Is this really likely to increase sympathy for our cause among the public or with the government?

This is one example. There were other academics who also responded publicly in this way to the looting of the museum. Aaronovitch quotes some but not all of them. It is true that they were misinformed and misled by the press reports, but they are not innocent. It was clear from the beginning that a large portion of the press wanted the invasion of Iraq to fail and were desperate to find something going wrong. The same press that spread outrageously inaccurate information about the looted antiquities had all but declared the war a Viet Nam quagmire ten days before Baghdad was liberated. Why would anyone believe what the media said from that point on? Perhaps these academics were against the war too. Fine: that was a defensible moral position. But even if they were, they should have been able to evaluate the antiquities situation objectively. Whatever anyone thought of the war, it would have been perfectly possible to take the line that the looting is a terrible thing, but in the fog of war and its aftermath we would do well to be cautious about mapping out its scale or assigning blame for it until we have solid information. I know it was possible because it's what I did, as you can see in the public archive of this blog.

The looting is a tragedy, but the jumping of some on the hysteria bandwagon has superimposed another on top of it: the academic world has played Henny Penny and the public and the press are responding by treating the original disaster as though it were trivial. The new line is that only a few dozen items were lost, so big deal. (Aaronovitch does not go this far but he does not mention thousands of items either.) If academics had taken a prudent position on the scale and blame for the looting we might now be able to point to the actual damage on the scale of thousands of artifacts and to get some real sympathy and concern from the public. But now everything we say will be diluted by the "twenty-five is not 170,000" meme. If you don't believe me, have a look at the blog of Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit - do a search of the word "looting"), which both reflects and drives a large sector of public opinion, and check out these comments by Howard Kurtz and these in the Charlotte Observer.

Worse yet, I fear that the current looting of archaeological sites in Iraq (and cultural looting elsewhere) may not get the attention it deserves. The early reports are that looting of sites in Iraq is widespread and serious, but could you really blame the public for not bothering about it very much? The war wasn't a quagmire and there weren't 170,000 artifacts looted from the Baghdad Museum. Why should anyone believe that the sky is falling this time? I'm not condoning this attitude and the evidence for the current looting is pretty persuasive, but this is what we're up against.

Iraq's history and antiquities are important to me: they figure in a fair bit of my published work. I hope very much that I'm wrong and that the academic community will get the support it needs from the public and the occupying governments to clean up after the museum lootings and to stop the site lootings. I am encouraged by the positive steps being taken, such as the National Geographic expedition I just linked to. (Note to the expedition: get lots of photographs of the sites that are being reduced to swiss cheese by illicit diggers and get those pictures in the papers and maybe send them to Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds too!) But I also hope that academics will be more careful in the future when faced with similar situations (and there may well be similar situations in coming years) and take a more cautious line until they know what's really going on. I hope ASOR will take down that web page and publish a retraction and correction. And I hope a number of scholars (I won't mention names, but they know who they are and their words are archived) feel a little ashamed of themselves for their premature and overblown public statements. They did neither themselves nor us, their colleagues, nor the ancient heritage of Iraq any favors.

UPDATE: The Washington Post now reports that, contrary to earlier rumors, the Warka Vase has been returned undamaged. (Via IraqCrisis and Francis Deblauwe.) UPDATE (17 June): Maybe not.

UPDATE (15-16 June): Welcome Instapundit and other referred readers. The "About PaleoJudaica.com" page (also linked on your right) tells about this site. The main page is here. If you are interested in ancient history, please visit again.

UPDATE (16 June): Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) comments on this essay here. Andrea Harris (Spleenville) comments on it here. Some clarifications: first, I am a philologist and ancient historian, not an archaeologist (and there's only one of me); second, I don't agree with the "twenty-five is not 170,000"/"the museum looting that wasn't" memes for reasons explained above.
David Appell (Quark Soup) comments here.

UPDATE (17 June): Francis Deblauwe comments here. No permalinks, but once the post moves from "Latest Additions" it should end up archived permanently under "Archive 5, second 1/2 of June 2003." (Note to Francis: how about changing to blog format? A Blogger account is easy to set up.) He writes: "however, in retrospect, it is clear that whatever skirmish�yes, that's what it was�took place at the Museum compound, the US military didn't protect the Museum after this skirmish was long over, and that's the problem, not the initial phase." A skirmish? Okay, but it was a skirmish that lasted three days and left one marine dead and 35 wounded. And Fisk reports that bullets were still flying when he visited the museum on the 12th. It's a fair question to ask what the troops were doing from the 10th to the 12th and I don't know the answer. Lieutenant-Colonel Schwartz's troops were in charge, for example, shortly thereafter of securing the Baghdad Zoo, feeding the animals, and getting a supply line of food to them before they all starved. And during the period in question there were (we now know mistaken) urgent reports by Iraqis of underground prisons full of starving prisoners which had to be investigated. I am willing to consider claims that the troops should have set their priorities differently or that the priorities they did set were clearly unreasonable - bearing in mind they were operating in the fog of war and having to make snap decisions. But I would like a clear accounting of what they actually did and what precisely they should have done instead. (More on along these lines in my original posting on the day the looting was announced.) Until and unless this is provided, they deserve the benefit of the doubt. ASOR jumped to conclusions.

Friday, June 13, 2003

YET ANOTHER TECHNOLOGICAL TRIUMPH:

PaleoJudaica.com now has a search engine, which you can find to the right under the links. I'm too embarrassed to say how many hours I spent getting the durn thing to work, but I hope you find it useful. And I'd like to thank the support staff of www.atomz.com for help in setting it up.

While I was at it, I also got the little "Powered by Blogger" icon to behave. It's been there in the HTML code, but you can now actually see it. I hope the Powers of Blogger are happy.

MYSTICAL POLITICS is a new weblog by academic Rebecca Lesses, another specialist in ancient Judaism. She blogs on early Jewish mysticism and modern politics. Really. Also about her cat, Zachary.

Kol HaKavod, Rebecca!

ALEXANDER THE NOT-SO-GREAT?

How great was Alexander? (UCBerkeleyNews)

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 12 June 2003

BERKELEY � Alexander the Great may not have been so great after all.

A University of California, Berkeley-led group of researchers is challenging the common history that credits the Macedonian king with initiating the spread of ancient Greek culture throughout the Middle East during his conquest of the region during the 4th century B.C.

Backed by a nearly $234,000 collaborative research grant from the Getty Foundation, the team over the next two years will try to document a thriving Hellenized culture in the city of Dor, Israel, at least 100 years before Alexander marched in.

The birth of the Hellenistic period, when Greek culture began to spread far beyond its native territory, has long been set around 334 B.C. to 323 B.C., when Alexander and his troops began their 20,000-mile conquest, thundering from Macedonia south through what is now Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt. The troops then set off for Persia and India.

"Our hunch is that at Dor, Hellenization - the wholesale importation of Greek material culture - begins in the 5th century B.C. and goes into high gear around about 400 B.C. So, it precedes Alexander," said Andrew Stewart, a UC Berkeley professor of art history and classics in the College of Letters & Science. He also is the project's principal investigator.

"There is, as far as we can tell, no boost given to this process by Alexander's conquests," said Stewart. "So, immediately we are challenging the view that it was Alexander who principally spread Greek culture throughout the Middle East."

[�]

The researchers will investigate what has been uncovered that reflects the efforts of inhabitants of Dor in adopting Greek culture, resisting it, or combining it with their own to form something new. They will look at these interactions in terms of material culture at various levels of society, throughout time.

[�]

Thursday, June 12, 2003

SYMPOSIUM ON RABBINIC LITERATURE AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS:

The Orion website has a page of past symposia associated with the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The most recent symposium was:

Eighth Orion International Symposium

RABBINICAL PERSPECTIVES: RABBINIC LITERATURE AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

7-9 January, 2003 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mt. Scopus Campus

The page contains abstracts or full (unrevised prepublication) texts of papers for the conference. The papers with full texts are listed with their authors' names in capitals on the page. These are:

"Law, Authority and Writing"
Cana Werman

"Things of Specified Measure"
Ahron Shemesh

"Reconstructing Qumranic and Rabbinic Halakhic Worldviews: Dynamic Holiness vs. Static Holiness"
Eyal Regev

"Tannaitic Halakha and Qumran: A Re-Evaluation"
Joseph Baumgarten

Some of them require you to download Hebrew fonts before you can read them fully.

The full page of past Orion symposia leads to pages for each symposium which also have abstracts and prepublication versions of papers. Many of these have since been published.

You can also access a list of all the papers and abstracts on the Orion website.

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

THE LATEST ON THE "JOASH INSCRIPTION":

Tablet Is A Fake (Arutz Sheva)

The "Yehoash Tablet" is a forgery - at least according to a board of experts convened by the Antiquities Authority. The panel included archaeologists and ancient Hebrew script experts, whose findings will be published next week. [...]

ON GEMATRIA:

Games with Gematria
Llewellyn Journal

Is gematria a valid and useful technique for investigating anything, or is it nothing but mental exercise? If it is useful, can it apply to anything other than Hebrew scripture? Is it even taking things too far to apply it to the Aramaic of the Zohar? How about non-Hebraic names, such as Bill Jones or Aleister Crowley? How seriously should you take correspondences that you happen upon in your reading and investigations?

[...]

Not very.

New Age, but sensible and worth a read.

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

NEW BOOK REVIEWS from the Review of Biblical Literature:

Crown, Alan D.
Samaritan Scribes and Manuscripts

Goodblatt, David, Avital Pinnick and Daniel R. Schwartz, eds.
Historical Perspectives: From the Hasmoneans to Bar Kokhba in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated
Literature, 27-31 January, 1999

Gropp, Douglas M., Moshe J. Bernstein, Monica L. W. Brady, James H.
Charlesworth, Peter W. Flint, Stephen J. Pfann, Eileen Schuller, Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar and James C. Vanderkam
Wadi Daliyeh II: The Samaria Papyri from Wadi Daliyeh and Qumran Cave 4, XXVIII: Miscellanea, Part 2

Kr�ger, Thomas
Kohelet (Prediger)

Crossan, John, and Jonathan Reed
Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts

Bauckham, Richard
Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels

NEW BOOK ON 2 BARUCH:

Rivka Nir, The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Idea of Redemption in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (Early Judaism and Its Literature, SBL and Brill: 2003) ISBN #1589830504

The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch is a pseudepigraphic apocalyptic work ascribed to Baruch son of Neriah, the scribe of Jeremiah. Its overt content concerning the last days of the First Temple period disguises a description of the fall of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. Contrary to the general scholarly view, this book attempts to show that the internal structure and central ideas of II Baruch must be understood in a Christian context. This theological identity is reflected mainly in traditions which describe the destruction of Jerusalem and the three apocalyptic visions which depict the coming of the Messiah and the eschatological redemption. The author�s conclusion may shed light on the Christian character of other Pseudepigraphic and apocalyptic books.

How interesting! Thanks to Cynthia Edenburg for drawing it to my attention.

THE CURRENT ISSUE OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches (requires paid institutional or personal subscription), vol 11.2, is devoted to the family in the NT period. Note the following articles of paleojudaic interest:

"Epsilon, upsilon, sigma, epsilon, beta, epsilon, iota, alpha: Roman Imperial Family Values and the Sexual Politics of 4 Maccabees and the Pastorals"
Mary R. D'Angelo

"Gender, Judaism, and Literature: Unwelcome Guests in Household Configurations"
Amy-Jill Levine

Monday, June 09, 2003

VENICE CONFERENCE ON JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN MESSIANISM:

This conference will immediately follow the July Venice conference on Enoch, to which I am going. Thanks to Gabriele Boccaccini for passing on this announcement.

IL MESSIA FRA MEMORIA E ATTESA

Convegno internazionale, Venezia 4-6 luglio 2003

Che sappiamo del Messia?Quanti sanno che "Cristo"�

� la traduzione greca della parola ebraica mashiach = "unto"?

Gli ebrei lo aspettano ancora e lo interpretano in vari modi:�

una persona? un'epoca di pace? un impegno umano o un dono divino?�

Un rabbino dell'800 diceva: "Il Messia non � venuto e non verr�, sta venendo".

I cristiani lo identificano con Ges� di Nazaret.�

Ma dove sono oggi i segni della sua presenza?�

� per questo che i cristiani aspettano la sua seconda venuta?

Gli studiosi hanno scoperto le radici del pensiero messianico�

in correnti poco note (Enoch, Qumran): sono solo studi eruditi�

o servono a capire davvero la figura del Messia?

Oggi, il Messia pu� essere ancora un nome per le nostre speranze?

Un gruppo internazionale di esperti (cristiani, ebrei e laici) affronter� questi temi al convegno di Venezia: TI ASPETTIAMO�
Se vuoi saperne di piu'clicca qui
http://www.biblia.org/mesmemoat.html

Dal 22 al 30 agosto 2003, a Fognano RV, due seminari estivi sullagiustizia sociale nella Bibbia

(Amos e Lettera di Giacomo).�
Per programma ed eventuale iscrizione clicca qui
http://www.biblia.org/seminest2003.html
Puoi divulgare questo messaggio ai tuoi amici in rete? Grazie!

By the way, the archive is back.

ARCHIVE PROBLEMS: Blogger is currently being upgraded, which, of course, means everything is going wrong. After it recovered from yesterday's outage, it deleted most of the PaleoJudaica archive. Presumably the archive still exists on the server somewhere, but the usual republishing fix isn't working. Bear with me; I'll keep trying.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND OTHER HEBREW MSS PROJECT:

This site contains articles by Norman Golb of the University of Chicago on the Dead Sea Scrolls and related matters from the nineties and early naughties. I am not persuaded by Golb's theory that Qumran was a military fortress to which sectarian and non-sectarian literary archives from Jerusalem were brought during the first revolt against the Romans, but I find his work very stimulating and it has influenced my views in a number of areas. Here is the summary of a student paper on Golb's work from my 2001 Qumran course, and pasted below is my summary of the seminar discussion (from the majordomo archives, 30 April 2001).

NORMAN GOLB AND THE ARCHIVES OF JERUSALEM

We made list of Golb's strongest arguments, and there seemed to be a general consensus that his objections to the Essene hypothesis, or at least its traditional formulation, were more persuasive than his attempt to formulate a positive theory of his own. The strong arguments included:

* the very large number of scribal hands in the manuscripts;
* the lack of manuscripts that bear the normal physical characteristics of scribal autographs;
* the lack of documentary records (note that 4Q342-58 are probably texts of the Bar Kokhba period recovered from Nahal Hever, not Qumran texts);
* The large textual and redactional variations in the supposedly Essene foundation documents--actually, I believe Golb doesn't mention this, but it does support his theory inasmuch as it points away from the library being gathered by a single, well-defined group;
* the confusion in Pliny over whether the Essenes were still living at the mentioned site near the Dead Sea after the Roman conquest in CE 68-70;
* the finding of a copy of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (perhaps a sectarian text, but not certainly) at Masada;
* the debunked scriptorium in the Qumran ruins;
* the lack of explicit mention of celibacy in the sectarian texts and its incompatibility with most (all?) of them;
* the evidently allegorical interpretation of Isa 40:3 in 1QS 8.14-16, which weakens the supposed explicit mention of the group going out into the desert.

We noted, however, that his contention that the Qumran library was too varied in content to be a sectarian/Essene collection could be turned on its head, in that most of the caves had sectarian works in them and that there was a curious lack of texts that espoused obviously different viewpoints. Where, for example, are copies of works like 1 Maccabees?

Sunday, June 08, 2003

AAAHHHHH! Blogger has been down since this morning and I've been having withdrawal pangs.

Here are some MORE COURSE SYLLABI:

Religion 326: Religion - Ancient Judaism
Professor Jack Lightstone
Concordia University
Includes a course syllabus, lecture outlines, and translated excerpts of rabbinic texts.

Religious Studies 3DD3/History 3DD3: The Jewish World in New Testament Times
Dr. Eileen Schuller
McMaster University

TH 9990, Dead Sea Scrolls
Professor George Brooke
University of Manchester

We have year-end examiners' meetings etc. for the next couple of days, but I'll try to slip in a post or two, Blogger etc. willing.

UPDATE (9 May): I've corrected the bad link to the Lightstone course.