MORE ON ODED GOLAN. Excerpts from an article, with my commentary interspersed.

Relic's owner under cloud of suspicion (Boston Globe, sent by Stephen Goranson)

By Dan Ephron, Globe Correspondent, 8/3/2003

JERUSALEM -- Oded Golan shunned publicity when a 2,000-year-old artifact he owns was made public last year and dubbed one of the most striking archeological finds of the 20th century.

In fact, for a short time, the Israeli antiquities collector managed to keep his name out of the many newspapers and journals that wrote about the relic -- a burial box with an inscription indicating it once contained the remains of Jesus' brother, James. But nearly a year later, Golan is being investigated, not only on suspicion of forging the inscription, but also for allegedly counterfeiting a series of other artifacts that fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars on an antiquities black market.

Police allege he did it not just for the money, but for public exposure.

''He has aspirations in the field of archeology and maybe even religion. He wants to make a name for himself,'' said Yoni Pagis, the Israeli police officer leading the investigation.

The 52-year-old collector has not been indicted and denies any wrongdoing. And although a team of specialists assembled by the Israel Antiquities Authority ruled last month that the ''James ossuary'' inscription is a forgery, many distinguished archeologists and experts still believe it is genuine.

One of them, Gabriel Barkay of Hebrew University, said at a panel discussion last week that all great archeological finds are disputed for a time, and that questions about their authenticity are resolved only through the scholarly discourse in scientific journals.

I made the same point the other day.

He says he bought the ossuary with the James inscription in the early 1970s from a Palestinian dealer in the Old City for a few hundred dollars. Police believe Golan acquired the ossuary more recently and is lying about its origins.

As I mentioned the week before last, Shimon Gibson thinks it was looted from the "shroud tomb" in 1998. (This is not to say that he made any accusation about who took it. The tomb was looted, but we don't know by whom.)

Pagis, who dabbles in archeology, says his team confiscated tools from Golan's warehouses that could be used to create forgeries, along with relics he described as sophisticated counterfeits. Another official involved in the investigation said other burial boxes were discovered in Golan's collection with sham inscriptions.

Now that is the most interesting paragraph in the whole article. More details, photographs, etc., please!

But in an interview screened alongside the documentary this week, the director of the Geological Survey, Amos Bein, said the chemical tests did not necessarily prove the ossuary was a fake, because even something as simple as a rigorous cleaning of the box over the years could have skewed the results.

''I don't think these things should be decided on by a committee,'' said Barkay, who took part in the panel discussion after the film. ''In due time, people come to the proper conclusions and they are convinced either by one side or another in the debate.''

In due time. This is a good point that we all need to keep in mind.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC JOINS THE LARA CROFT DISSING-FEST. Poor Lara: not only is her archaeology all wrong, her technology is out of date. This article has lots of interesting information on the latest archaeological hi-tech. (Via Archaeologica News).

MORE ON THE ZACHARIAH INSCRIPTION AT ABSALOM'S TOMB (Ha'aretz, via Bible and Intepretation News). In this long article, Joe Zias tells about the two years of work it took to get adequate photographs of the inscription, about his work on the DNA of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and about 9000-year-old lice found on ancient combs in caves. Emile Puech tells about the inscription's decipherment. There's also information about research on the tomb itself. Plus much more. I won't excerpt anything, because you should read it all.

WAQF MAY REOPEN TEMPLE MOUNT TO ALL VISITORS (Jerusalem Post; requires free registration; via Bible and Interpretation News).

Wakf to deliberate reopening of Temple Mount to non-Muslims
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS


The director of the Wakf said Thursday that members of the Islamic Trust will meet next week to deliberate the possibility of completely reopening Temple Mount to visitors in the near future for the first time in nearly three years.

"A new evaluation to the situation will be made very soon," Wakf Director Adnan Husseini said in a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post Thursday. His comments came just a day after Jerusalem police suspended the limited visits of non-Muslims to the site, just weeks after it was reopened to Jewish and Christian visitors. Police said Wednesday that the decision to again close off Judaism's holiest site to non-Muslims was made for "operational reasons," and declined to say when the visits would be renewed.

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"ANCIENT ART AT MET RAISES OLD ETHICAL QUESTIONS" (New York Times). Should scholars use and publish or ignore and boycott unprovenanced ancient artifacts obtained from antiquities dealers and collectors? A very controversial topic among specialists. Via David Nishimura at Cronaca, who also cites my earlier post on problems with unprovenanced inscriptions (but note my comments to his post).

THE TOP TEN BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES, as ranked by New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan and archaeologist Jonathan Reed, are given in this Washington Post article (requires free registration). It has a heavy bias toward discoveries that illuminate the New Testament: Qumran, with Madasa, only comes in at number 8 and there is no mention at all of the Ugaritic texts or the Iron Age epigraphic finds. I wonder if the book this comes from didn't make clear that this was about New Testament-related finds and this article missed that point. The "James Ossuary" comes in at number one, which, despite the rationale given, seems to me to be overdoing it. Even if it turned out to be genuine it wouldn't tell us much new. The Dead Sea Scrolls (which I would rank as number one) and the Ugaritic texts (which I would rank as second) both give us vastly more new information. And the major excavations, such as Caesarea and Jerusalem (number 6) and Sepphoris and Tiberias (number 7) add much more cumulative data too.

ANOTHER ACCOUNT OF THE PREMIER OF THE "JAMES, BROTHER OF JESUS" DOCUMENTARY appears in the Jerusalem Post (requires free registration; via Bible and Interpretation News). There was a panel of experts, Oded Golan was present, and questions were taken from the audience. I always try to be wary of press reports, but if this version is accurate, the authenticity of the "James Ossuary" is still up in the air. Ultimately, this is going to be decided, if at all, in the realm of scholarly journals and monographs, and it's likely to take time.

My favorite quotation:

However, as one audience member was overheard commenting regretfully to his companion, "Too bad it was a fake. Just think how many millions of Christian tourists would start visiting the Israel Museum were it real."

Yes, quite.

THE TEMPLE MOUNT has again been closed to non-Muslim visitors.

THE JEWISH MUSEUM IN NEW YORK HAS REDESIGNED ITS WEBSITE. Note in particular its antiquities collection and its numismatics collection, both of which have items of paleojudaic interest. (If when you click on the individual items you get a larger photograph but black background with no text, try selecting the black area to the right; that made the text visible for me.) There is also a profile of their children's exhibition "Camels and Caravans: Daily Life in Ancient Israel" (Grades K - 3) which tells about life in first-century C.E. Jerusalem and which includes lesson plans with more photos of ancient artifacts.

The new website is profiled in detail by the Art Museum Network News.

A MEMBER OF THE JESUS SEMINAR TELLS US ABOUT IT.

Robert J. Miller, THE JESUS SEMINAR AND THE PUBLIC (Bible and Interpretation News)

Miller describes the Seminar's methods and replies to its critics. Some excerpts:

There seems to be a widespread assumption that academics who speak publicly about religion should keep their views to themselves if they might be unsettling to the beliefs of mainstream Christians. For whatever reason, as a guild we biblical scholars have shirked our responsibility to participate in our culture as public intellectuals. That is why most Americans seem to regard the likes of Jerry Falwell as spokesmen for �the biblical perspective� on issues of public interest. As individuals, most scholars may well be content with being irrelevant to the larger culture, but the resulting impoverishment of public discourse on religion has real consequences. One example is that it is now a viable possibility that the teaching of evolution will disappear or be trivialized as �just a theory� in the public school curricula in certain places. Why have biblical scholars stayed out of this fight and left it up to scientists alone to battle creationism in the public forum? Shame on us.

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What the Seminar has done (and what every scholar who communicates with the public has the responsibility to do) is to inform its audience that certain of its positions are shared by most biblical scholars. While the Seminar does not claim that most scholars agree with its specific presuppositions or conclusions, not even members of the Seminar agree on those, its fundamental understanding that some of the words attributed to Jesus were not actually spoken by him and that the gospels are a complex blend of fact and fiction does represent the consensus of critical scholarship.

While this is not news to scholars, it is news to the American public. A huge number of Americans believe that inerrancy is the only legitimate approach to the Bible and that to take the Bible seriously is to take it literally. Critics are right to protest that many scholars disagree with the Seminar's results, but they do a disservice if they perpetuate the impression that doubts about the historical accuracy of significant portions of the gospels are confined to some radical �faction� with �idiosyncratic opinions.� To help us think concretely about this problem, let�s move beyond general views about the gospels and consider some specific conclusions about their historicity. A survey of the Seminar�s results comes up with the following partial list of negative findings:


� Jesus did not claim to be the messiah or to be divine.
� Jesus did not demand that people �believe in� him or worship him.
� Jesus did not intend to establish a church or found a new religion.
� Jesus did not believe that his death would be a sacrifice for sins.
� There is no historical evidence that Jesus had no human father.
� There is no historical evidence that Jesus� corpse came back to life.


Those findings would surprise, even shock, most churchgoers, would they not? Yet how many critical scholars, indeed how many critical scholars who are Christians, would argue the opposite position on any of those assertions? Most of the Seminar�s positions that are perceived by the public as controversial or objectionable are actually well within the broad consensus of mainstream critical scholarship.

An interesting supplement to my comments below on historical Jesus scholarship. (Sorry, it's interesting in itself too. I just happened to be thinking about my last post when I read it.)

I think a fair number of scholars would have reservations about the first item in the bulleted list. There were other guys running around at the time who were regarded to be the messiah and such, so I would not rule out Jesus making such a claim. And Enoch and Melchizedek were human beings regarded to be gods or divine, so the concept of apotheosis was there in the first century. Whether Jesus made those claims (as he is represented to have in the Gospels) would have to be established on the basis of arguments from the surviving evidence, but the Jesus Seminar has never persuaded me to rule out the possibility.

Read it all.

THERE IS AN ESSAY ON MEL GIBSON'S THE PASSION by Professor Paula Fredriksen in New Republic Online. Unfortunately, it requires paid registration. But members of the ad-hoc committee called together by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Anti-Defamation League have posted some information on the Boston College website, based on the draft of the script they saw.

Me, I haven't seen the script or the movie and, although I'm not encouraged by the trailer, I'm going to wait to form an opinion until the movie is out and I've seen it. The problems in principle with this sort of project are, first, that the four Gospels are themselves internally inconsistent and, second, they were written long after the events they describe. There is much debate on how historical their accounts of the Passion are, and serious views range from taking them to be fairly accurate to taking them to be almost entirely made up. Doing any kind of artistic account of the Passion will involve a good deal of picking and choosing, not only among the Gospels but also among the available historical-critical reconstructions.

Also, if you mix in bits of things like the Emmerich visions (and I reserve judgment on whether Gibson has or not), then any claim to be trying to present a historically plausible account goes out the window.

You can find discussion of Fredriksen's piece in Andrew Sullivan's blog here (with the full text of the letter here - and keep scrolling up for more), in David Nishimura's blog Cronaca, in Pro Deo et Patria, in a press release by William Donohue on the Catholic League website, and in Rebecca Lesses's blog Mystical Politics. Some of these commentators obviously have very strong views on the matter! I'm sure there's more, but this is all I've been able to find (and I do have other things to do).

As for my humble opinion, all I have to say is that this is a movie, everybody. It's entertainment, and there's a long tradition of movies playing fast and loose with history, science, and pretty much anything else important. Movies aren't important: they're fun, but they rot your brain. They are usually not harmless but they are trivial. If you're working on this movie (or if you think you will like it when it comes out), don't be pretentious and take it personally when people point all this out. If you're not working on this movie but you don't like what you've seen of it, don't get upset. It's not worth it. It won't bring down civilization and it probably won't cause riots. At worst it may confirm a few idiots in idiotic opinions they already hold. At best it may give a lot of people a few hours of good gross entertainment. It doesn't matter. If you want something that matters, read a good book.

UPDATE: David Klinghoffer comments on Fredriksen's essay in the August issue of Forward Magazine.

UPDATE: Upon reflection, "usually not harmless" is an exaggeration. Many movies are harmless, I suppose. What I meant is that if they deal with anything important, where facts matter, they tend to be careless and to get a lot of things wrong. But they are trivial, so let's not take them too seriously.

UPDATE (1 August): Leon Zizter comments on Fredriksen's essay in his Historical Jesus blog (permalink not working at the moment, but scroll down to the 7/26 entry).

UPDATE (2 August): David Nishimura at Cronaca (same link as above but updated), disagrees with me about the importance of movies and offers the 1915 Klan revival hit "Birth of a Nation" as evidence. Point taken. Let's hope that The Passion does not turn out to be as destructively idiotic or have such a large concentration of idiots receptive to it if it is. I think both are unlikely, myself. And I still think the best response here is to say, "It's a Hollywood movie; of course it's going to be silly." Not that I wouldn't be pleased if Mel Gibson proves me wrong.

TC HAS AN OBITUARY OF THEODORE CRESSY SKEAT (15 February 1907 - 23 June 2003), Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum until 1972. He was involved in the conservation of the Codex Sinaiticus when it was acquired and he was an authority on ancient Greek paleography, manuscripts, and codices. Requiescat in pace.

ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE DISSES LARA CROFT.

Okay, so it's a slow news day.

(What does this have to do with matters paleojudaic? Well, Lara has explored the Tomb of Ezekiel, you know. If you insist on something more serious, check out this article on "Petra's Great Temple" from a few years ago. Be sure to follow the link at the bottom of the page to the Brown University site on the excavation of the temple. As far as I know, Lara hasn't been to Petra, although Indiana Jones has.)

A BYZANTINE-ERA SYNAGOGUE IN THE GOLAN HEIGHTS has some surprises for excavators:

Archaeology / When Golan worshipers faced south (Ha'aretz via Archaeologica News

By Ran Shapira

Zvi Maoz says that every day excavations at a synagogue among the ruins of the village of Dir Aziz force him to rip another page from his doctoral thesis on synagogues in the Golan Heights. Dir Aziz synagogue, next to Moshav Kanaf, has been excavated over the last five seasons and differs in many respects from other synagogues in the area.

Until excavations began here, archaeologists had speculated that in Golan Heights synagogues the Ark was adjacent to the western wall, one of the two shorter sides of the rectangular-shaped structure. This would allow believers to face the general direction of Jerusalem while praying.

In Dir Aziz, however, the worshipers faced south toward the long wall of the structure, not the one along the width. This is indicated by a space that juts out from the southern lengthwise wall of the synagogue, where the Ark apparently was located.

In this respect, the structure of the Dir Aziz synagogue resembles that of synagogues in the southern Hebron hills. The special niche for the Ark found in the Golan Heights' synagogue is also typical of synagogues in the southern Hebron hills, and especially those found in Susiya and Eshtamoa. Another unique feature of the Dir Aziz synagogue is the bas-reliefs of animals in the stone and wreath designs drawn on the whitewash.

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NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Fisk, Bruce Norman
Do You Not Remember?: Scripture, Story and Exegesis in the Rewritten Bible of Pseudo-Philo

Azevedo, Joaquim
A Simplified Coptic Dictionary (Sahidic Dialect)

Sandberg, Ruth N.
Development and Discontinuity in Jewish Law

THE CURRENT ISSUE OF NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY has the following article:

S. W. Crawford,
"The Dead Sea Scrolls: Retrospective and Prospective"

Most of this issue is dedicated to the legacy of W. F. Albright. Unfortunately, the link to the current issue is dead.

I AM URGED TO BE CAUTIOUS about unprovenanced inscriptions such as those found in the Moussaieff collection. Cynthia Edenburg sends the following:

From p. 214 of the review by N. Na'aman of N.S. Fox, In the Service of the King. Officialdom in Ancient Israel and Judah, Cincinnati 2000, in Zion 67 (2002), pp. 213-218 [Hebrew]. The following section was translated by C. Edenburg, who apologizes if any misrepresentation has resulted.

"Fox discusses the epigraphic sources, and rightly emphasizes the grave dangers involved in depending upon materials found in the antiquities market. It should be stressed that a large part of the epigraphic findings surfaced first on the market, and it is extremely difficult to validate the authenticity of such articles. Anyone who has participated in excavations and knows how few epigraphic finds are uncovered during them, cannot help but being amazed at the endless number of findings which derive from unknown sources, and wonder what at the magic touch of antiquities robbers and dealers, into whose hands epigraphic finds fall repeatedly. It seems to me that only in a few cases, when the forgers were not adequately adept, have scholars succeeded in uncovering the forgery, but it is doubtful whether this is always possible. The antiquities market is very profitable, therefore skilled people have learned the 'secrets of the trade', and they can churn out articles whose recent provenance cannot be proven. I shall point to one example to illustrate how implausible is the picture arising from the findings amassed by now, but one could add many more cases. According to N. Avigad and B. Sass, Corpus of West-Semitic Stamp Seals published recently (1997), the number of seals and sealings identified as Hebrew is drastically greater (711) than the number of items identified as Aramaic (107), Ammonite (149), Moabite (59) or Phoenician (38). Even if we add to this number a few dozen Aramaic cylinder seals, the ratio of Hebrew items to all the others still remains unfathomable. However, we may find a self-evident solution to this puzzle, if we consider that the origin of most of the seals and sealings is on the antiquities market. "Due to these doubts, Fox decided to refrain from discussion of unprovenanced epigraphic sources. She mentions them in footnotes, but refrains from using them as a basis for any of her conclusions. In this, her approach differs from that of Y. Avishur and M. Helzer (Issues in Royal Administration in Israel according to Pre-exilic Epigraphic Sources, Jerusalem 1996 [Hebrew]), who relied heavily on materials originating on the antiquities market. Fox's cautious approach on this sensitive issue is commendable, and it supplies a stronger documentary foundation for her study than that employed by the other studies published so far."

Interesting. I recall that Robert Deutsch took us in detail through his authentication procedure for the bullae he was discussing, so the people working with this material are not unaware of the problem. This issue is, of course, quite relevant for the "James Ossuary" at the moment and it even arises for the Dead Sea Scrolls (which, of course, were mostly recovered by the Bedouin, not archaeologists). There is, for example, some doubt of the provenance of 4QGenesisb, which I published in DJD 12. It is supposed to come from Cave 4, but we weren't able to locate any fragments of it among the bits excavated from the cave, and its script and text leaves open the possibility that it actually came from one of the finds of texts from the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Likewise, some documentary texts originally assigned to Cave 4 now seem actually to have come from Bar-Kokhba-era finds. But in these cases the issue is provenance and date, not authenticity.

NEW TECHNOLOGY: DNA PROFILING AND DATING OF PARCHMENT MANUSCRIPTS.

DNA could help date ancient manuscripts (Cambridge News via Archaeologica News)

By Rose Taylor

A TECHNIQUE being developed in Cambridge could help identify the date and place of origin of ancient manuscripts.

Biochemist Christopher Howe and colleagues are working on a method that will reveal which species of animal a particular parchment comes from.

By extracting the DNA of a parchment, using a technique called polymerase chain reaction, amplifying it and studying the sequence, the scientists hope to find the skin used to produce it.

Dr Howe, who works at Cambridge University's Department of Biochemistry, said: "Once you know which species of animal the parchment comes from, you might be able to see if other sheets of parchment came from the same animal using genetic finger-printing.

"Then, if you had a book whose origins you are not sure about, you could show it had similar DNA as the other parchment and you could say it came from a similar flock.

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The potential applications to the Dead Sea Scrolls and related manuscripts are obvious.

THE LATEST ON THE "JAMES OSSUARY":

Experts, dealer clash over James Ossuary's authenticity (The Globe and Mail, Canada)

Associated Press and Canadian Press

Jerusalem � Is an inscription linked to James, the brother of Jesus, authentic or fake? Tempers flared over the question at the showing of a documentary about the case and a new interview dismissing an Israeli finding that led to the arrest of an antiquities dealer on suspicion of forging sacred artifacts.

Dealer Oded Golan, out on bail, was at the Jerusalem Cinematheque on Sunday night, defending his relics and his honour. Toronto filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici was there to back him up.

But Israeli experts dismissed the show with a wave of the hand, pointing to their own findings that indicated that someone forged the James inscription for profit.

The ill will between the two sides overflowed several times, as each blamed the other of conspiracy, misdeed and bad faith.

The Jerusalem screening of the Discovery Channel documentary James, Brother of Jesus and the heated panel discussion that followed provided plenty of fireworks but no clear answers.

Mr. Golan was arrested last week. Police showed items they said they found at his house, including stencils, stones and utensils.

Mr. Golan said the items weren't his. He also said that the burial box, or ossuary, that carried the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," had been in his house since the 70s, when he acquired it, and claimed he didn't know how important it was.

In June, a 14-member panel from the Israeli Antiquities Authority declared the inscription on the ossuary a clever modern day forgery. The body also labelled as fake a tablet purporting to contain instructions for maintaining the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and police suspect Golan crafted both artifacts. No charges have been filed.

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This doesn't add up. How could he be required to post bail if no charges were filed?

THE FRENCH CITY OF TROYES is gearing up to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the death of Rashi in 2005.

French town hopes an anniversary will spur interest in a famous son (JTA News)

By Philip Carmel

TROYES, France, July 27 (JTA) � The project is still in the initial planning stages, but the birthplace of the medieval biblical commentator Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac is determined not to miss out this time.

In 2005, Troyes, the ancient capital of the Counts of Champagne in northern France, will celebrate the 900th anniversary of the death of its most famous son, known to the Jewish world by his acronym of Rashi.

The author of the monumental commentary on the Talmud and the Torah, Rashi was born in Troyes in 1040, and although his grave has never been found, scholars believe he died there in about 1105.

For obvious reasons, the town missed out on the anniversary of Rashi�s birth in 1940. The Champagne region around Troyes had as its prefect Rene Bousquet, who later headed the Vichy police and was responsible for numerous roundups of Jews during the Nazi occupation of France.

[...]

Rashi�s family probably came to Troyes from across the Rhine in Germany, and he himself spent some 10 years studying in the Rhineland at Worms in the famous Yeshiva of Mainz, founded by Rabbeinu Gershom, the �Light of the Diaspora.�

[�]

Across the narrow street from the synagogue is the Rashi Institute, which provides courses in Jewish studies and regularly stages conferences.

[�]

By the 13th century, his commentaries on the Bible were being quoted by Christian theologians in Paris. Because Rashi wanted his work to be understandable for the Jews he knew and lived with in Troyes, the style and language of his writings earned him the sobriquet �Hatzarfati,� or �the Frenchman.�

As a result, wherever there is a need to explain a difficult word in the text of the Hebrew or Aramaic in his Torah or Talmud commentaries, Rashi does not hesitate to use his own language. There are therefore almost 3,000 words of 11th-century Champenois French inserted into Rashi�s writing, a valuable source for researchers of the development of the French language.

Despite the fact that Rashi both taught and wrote in Troyes, Samoun said he was almost certainly not the city�s rabbi.

Rather, Rashi, like other medieval scholars, was strict in upholding the talmudic injunction against earning one�s living from teaching the Torah.

In fact, he owned vineyards and was a winemaker � very much in keeping with the Champagne region in which he lived.

MORE ON THE SAN ANTONIO VOCAL ARTS ENSEMBLE (SAVAE) and their ancient Aramaic CD.

This Catholic Telegraph article begins:

CATHEDRAL DEANERY � A musical project has become an avenue of expanded spirituality for the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble (SAVAE), which recently performed at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains. Their latest CD, "Ancient Echoes," is a collection of music from Jerusalem�s Second Temple era (after about 540 B .C.) and the time of Christ. Saying prayers in the language Jesus spoke, said artistic director Christopher Moroney, "is a way to understand Jesus in a more authentic way."

They also had to learn about the anthropology, sociology, religion and language of the time, he said. Although he and his wife, Covita, SAVAE�s general manager, had talked about the project for 20 years, they couldn�t proceed because they couldn�t find anyone to teach them Aramaic.

Twenty years? I can't imagine that they tried that hard. There are plenty of hungry Aramaists out there, I regret to say.

Anyhow, toward the end, there is this odd paragraph:

In some instances, the English translation can be almost opposite the original. The couple offered as an example the word "Abwoon," from the Lord�s Prayer, which emphasizes the relationship between the Creator and the created rather than the masculine connotations of the word "Father."

The word "Abwoon" sounds to me like some dialectal variant of Aramaic for "our father." Unless I'm missing some deep philological subtlety, the rest is New Age, P.C. claptrap.

Ah well, at least their music is kind of interesting.

THERE IS A SUMMARY OF THE IAA REPORT ON THE "JOASH INSCRIPTION" AND THE "JAMES OSSUARY on the Biblical Archaeology Society website (URL sent to me by reader Stephen Goranson). It looks to me as though the final verdict on the ossuary inscription will come down to how convincing geologists and materials scientists overall find the reports of the Materials Committee. Everyone agrees that the "Joash Inscription" is a fake.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS from the Review of Biblical Literature:


Dimant, Devorah
Qumran Cave 4, XXI: Parabiblical Texts, Part 4: Pseudo-Prophetic Texts


Roukema, Reimer, and John Bowden
Gnosis and Faith in Early Christianity: An Introduction to Gnosticism


Sim, David
The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social
Setting of the Matthean Community


Boccaccini, Gabriele
Roots of Rabbinic Judaism: An Intellectual History, from Ezekiel to Daniel


Jaffee, Martin S.
Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200
B.C.E.-400 C.E.

ODED GOLAN HAS BEEN RELEASED UNCHARGED.

Forgery mystery creates a Pandora's Box (The Globe and Mail, Canada)

[�]

The dispute [over the authenticity of the "James Ossuary"] has already besmirched the reputation of [Oded] Golan, the ossuary's owner. Yesterday, the middle-aged Israeli entrepreneur, an important collector of biblical artifacts, was released from an Israeli jail, where he had been questioned for five days on suspicion of forgery. No charges were laid.

Police officials said they had found the ossuary, said to be worth as much as $2-million (U.S.), sitting on a toilet in a shed on the roof of Golan's modest Tel Aviv apartment. They also claimed to have found forging tools on the premises and several semi-completed forgeries.

"I do not know whether Oded Golan is a forger," said Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review and a champion of the ossuary's legitimacy. "What I do know is that the police, pressured by the IAA, have been sweating him to confess.'' Golan's release is unlikely to end the controversy.

His detention followed a report earlier this month by the IAA concluding that both the ossuary, and another controversial relic to which Golan has a middleman connection -- the so-called Yoash tablet, dating from the ninth century BC -- are frauds.

The IAA report was signed by 14 prominent Israeli academics. One has since defected, saying the oxygen isotope test on which the IAA based its conclusion was flawed. Even more problematically, Amos Bein, director of the Geological Survey of Israel, which conducted the test, is now saying he's agnostic on the question of the box's legitimacy.

[�]

Another very distinguished scholar, Israeli paleographer Ada Yardeni, has also cast a vote in favour of authenticity. The problem with trying to determine whether the ossuary is real or a fabrication is that for every analysis pointing in one direction, there are counter-indications and arguments. Neither geology nor epigraphy seems capable of providing a definitive answer.

[�]

Reading the IAA report with all its appendices for the first time this week, Royal Ontario Museum archeologist Ed Keall said that, considered in isolation, some of the evidence of forgery seems persuasive.

"I am open to the idea that I have been duped by an extremely clever forger," Keall wrote in a formal response. But "there may be other explanations for the isotope readings," he added in an interview. "We really don't know the circumstances of the ossuary's life. For scientific data to be statistically valid, the physical history of the object must be the same as that of the others. And I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that the authenticity of the artifact is being determined by machines.''

[�]

Meanwhile, the debate continues. Tomorrow night in Jerusalem, voices on either side of the issue will square off in a public forum. The discussion will follow the screening of Toronto filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici's hour-long documentary on the ossuary, James, Brother of Jesus. Unless he is arrested, Oded Golan has said he will attend.

The IAA report is out? Is it available online? Anybody know?

IN RESPONSE TO MY CONFERENCE PAPER, Meredith Scheck writes in the COMMENTS section at the bottom of the following Protocols post: "It�s things like this that remind me why I�ll never again live with a Bible critic."

Don't flatter yourself, Meredith.

UPDATE: Sorry about that one. Full apology here.

"THE JAMES OSSUARY YET AGAIN" (Bible and Interpretation News)

Eric Meyers told us so! Excerpt:

What I would like to reiterate once again, as I did in my Toronto presentation, when a supposedly important artifact comes to light in an unusual way and its provenance is unknown or its owner refuses to share information about it, scholars, journalists, religious leaders, and publishers should be wary. Scientific confirmation should proceed in an unbiased and unfettered way and the host country from whence the artifact derives should be fully involved from the outset. A report should be commissioned by the Antiquities Authority as it ultimately was in Israel, and their findings should now be respected and not attacked.

Nevertheless, "Jesus ossuary' promoters unfazed by forgery arrest" (Jerusalem Post). Also, according to this article an "an elaborate archeological forgery lab" was discovered in Golan's home.

MORE ON THE BACKGROUND OF THE ZACHARIAH INSCRIPTION on Absalom's Tomb.

Jewish Yad Avshalom revealed as a Christian shrine from Byzantine era (Ha'aretz via Archaeologica News)
By Amiram Barkat

The historic Yad Avshalom monument in Jerusalem's Kidron Valley, revered for centuries as a Jewish shrine, was also a Christian holy place in the fourth century, new evidence has revealed.

A fourth-century inscription on one of the walls near the monument, recently uncovered by chance, marks the site as the burial place of the Temple priest Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist who baptized Jesus.

Scholars believe the monument was built in the first century, making it possible that figures holy to Christians could be buried there. According to Jewish belief, Yad Avshalom was named for Absalom, the son of King David, since Samuel II relates that Absalom built a memorial in "the valley of the king" which lies below the Temple Mount. Absalom died more than 1,000 years earlier.

[�]

According to Hebrew University expert Prof. Gideon Foerster, the inscription tallies with a sixth century Christian text that says Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, was buried with Simon the Elder and James, the brother of Jesus. Foerster believes the document and inscription are historically authentic.

[�]

I'M HOME!

There's a new exhibit of Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient biblical manuscripts in Fort Worth and then Dallas:

"From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Forbidden Book."

Good night.

G-MEGILLOT is a new scholarly discussion list on the Dead Sea Scrolls. For more information, follow the link. (Via Jim West on Ioudaios-L.)

MANUSCRIPTS, MANUSCRIPTS, MANUSCRIPTS! Yesterday evening, Dirk Jongkind, a Cambridge doctoral student (who, bless his heart, gave me coffee in the Divinity Faculty building this morning) gave a paper on his research on the physical features of the Codex Sinaiticus (see online abstracts). Fun fact I learned: 1-4 Maccabees were already labeled numerically as such in this period (4th century-ish) and 1 and 4 Maccabees appear in Sinaiticus labeled as such. His project is good news, because this sort of thing desperately needs to be done.

This morning John W. Welch gave a paper on "The Use of Multispectral Imaging in Working with New Testament Manuscripts." He started out with a Qumran Scroll (4QGenb) which is so blackened that it is almost totally illegible to the naked eye and on a normal photograph, but which can be read easily from an infra-red photo. As it happens, I published that manuscript and worked closely with the original in the Rockefeller Museum. For some of the other Genesis/Exodus scrolls I published, it was helpful to see the original in person and I was even able to establish one or two important readings from a naked-eye examination. But not for 4QGenb: most of it is unreadable and the infra-red photograph is effectively the primary evidence for its text. In my popular lectures on the Scrolls I use slides of it to illustrate the same point made in Professor Welch's lecture.

Professor Welch's project also is working with the carbonized manuscripts of the Petra Papyri and the Herculaneum library, and other texts as well. They are able to make the invisible text on many of these blackened manuscripts stand out so that it is easily readable on their photographs.

In the discussion someone asked if we even need the manuscripts any more after this sort of imaging has been done to them. Everyone agreed that we do, if only for their sentimental value! I think a more important reason, which didn't come up in the discussion, is that we need the manuscripts because new technologies (e.g., the burgeoning field of molecular technology) will allow us to extract new information from them which we can't even imagine now.

Professor Welch also commented to me afterwards that DNA analysis has established that the parchment of the Dead Sea Scrolls were mostly made from the hide of ibexes, which I hadn't know before.

Excellent conference.

OKAY, I LIED. BLogging has not been "very light." But I'm in a hurry tonight: I need to get across town to hear a lecture on the sociology of scribal practices in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Go to the Geniza Online Database to see images of the Damascus Document ("Zadokite Fragments") and a Ben Sira fragment. I got to see them both in person today, along with the other CD manuscript and the Nash Papyrus. Made me feel like I should take my shoes off or something. Also some cool medieval things such as a letter in Maimonides's own handwriting. This online database has images of 500 manuscripts from the Cambridge Geniza collection. Pretty good: only 139,500 to go.

[There was a typo in the last number, which I have corrected.]

ODED GOLAN HAS BEEN ARRESTED. Details here. Gotta run to the next paper.

I REALLY WISH I COULD BLOG AT LENGTH on all the papers I've heard at this conference. But time and energy limits are forcing me to focus my comments on the papers I find most interesting and stimulating. I can't mention every paper I've heard and I can't comment fully on most of them, but I've heard a great many worthwhile ones and I've had to miss a number I really wanted to hear. Thanks, everyone, for all your work, and thanks especially to those who have given me permission to quote from and interact with their papers.

Some highlights from today:

Shimon Gibson spoke on "A First-Century Burial Shroud at Akeldama in Jerusalem, the Turin Shroud, and the So-Called 'James Ossuary.'" (See abstract at SBL site - see Saturday's last post for a link.) Read the abstract, but note the following additional items. Gibson reports that he has reason to believe that the "James Ossuary" was looted from this tomb in 1998. (Incidentally, I hear from more than one source that Mr. Golan, the owner, has been arrested.) He also reports that the shroud is quite different from the Shroud of Turin, but matches the description of Jesus' shroud in one of the Gospels (John, I think).

Deborah Cantrell spoke on "Ritualistic Aspects of Horses and Chariots in the Jerusalem Temple: Akitu Festival?" Again, read the online abstract. I'll just add that she referred to the many small clay horse figurines discovered in Jerusalem and other Iron-Age Israelite cities, always broken, evidently deliberately, which she thinks may have had a ritual use. I found one of these figurines at Tel Dor in around 1984 when I was a lowly assistant there.

Two papers today deal with matters related to mine. Albert Hogeterp (who was also at the St. Andrews conference a couple of weeks ago) presented on "Paul and Palestinian Jewish Culture: Semiticisms in Paul's Letters and in Greek Texts from the Judaean Desert," (no abstract, at least in the paper program book) and we had an interesting conversation on how many of his semitisms may actually be septuagintalisms. A nice tie-in with my paper. Tonight, Laurens Geeraert presents on"Semitisms in the New Testament: A Problematic Research Topic." (See online abstract.) Yep, it is. We've alread started talking.

I presented my paper this morning and got some very useful feedback and bibliography. I was asked to comment on what I mean by the "LXX," a term that tends to fall apart as soon as you poke it. Explaining what is meant by interference by THE "LXX" is not as easy to do as it might seem at first. A listener suggested that I should refer to "sub-bilingual interference" rather than "bilingual interference," since a truly bilingual writer would not show interference in his or her writings. Fair point, although another participant thought that in recent work "bilingual" could be used for a sliding scale of competency. It was pointed out that interference from the LXX could come not only in the author's work, but also in the scribal tradition: scribes could - deliberately or unconsciously - correct the language of the texts they copied toward the Greek of the LXX. Also, finding the right Semitic dialect to retrovert is not only a matter of finding the dialect of the right period, because synchronic dialect variation existed too (Qumran Hebrew, proto-Mishnaic Hebrew, Galilean Aramaic, etc.)

Tomorrow, along with more papers, is a tour of the Geniza Exhibit of the Taylor-Schechter Unit. See the Unit's web page in the links section to the right.

Incidentally, thanks to those who have e-mailed me with more information on matters I raised in the conference posts of the last few days. I will try to digest these and update the entries accordingly after I get home.

Also, a small suggestion to the conference organizers. You guys are doing a great job and we do appreciate your hard work. It has been very helpful to have a plentiful supply of water in the reception area. But having a supply of coffee there too next year would be excellent. We have to walk 20 minutes into town to find any.

Blogger already gobbled up this message once and I had to reconstruct it. So I'd better post it fast.

THE KARAITES ARE ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN LITHUANIA. At least a few of them, according to this article (Radio Free Europe - Czech Republic). They have their own Turkic language called Karaim.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO THE SABAEAN MANDEANS. But they have a long and rocky road ahead of them in postwar Iraq.

UPDATE: Uday and Qusay are dead. A good omen for the day.

AT 12:48 A.M. LAST NIGHT the fire alarm went off in my hotel. I got up, threw on some clothes, grabbed my wallet and brief case, and got out in a few minutes. It took ten or fifteen minutes to get the all clear from the fire service and they said it was a false alarm, even though I and others smelled smoke in the lobby. Maybe some one on the night staff burned their toast.

Anyhow, I went to the Judaica session last night and heard two papers on a project collecting the poetic fragments in the Talmud. I look forward to the book. Today I've been running from room to room, Hermione-like, trying to be two places at once. (Okay, I skipped half the morning for a gym session, but after that, I mean.) I heard some good papers on the Syriac lexicography project. Peter Williams presented on elements in the Greek New Testament that don't match well in the Syriac translation, pointing to some phenomena that I''m also going to mention in my paper tomorrow when talking about the Septuagint translation.

James K. Aitken gave a paper on his way cool Database of Septuagint Greek, which you can look at yourself.

Today's Apocrypha session dealt with "Gnosticism." I heard Tuomas Rasimus speak on "Who Founded Gnosticism" and Ky-Chun So speak on "Jewish Influences on Gnosticisim in the Apocalypse of Adam." The abstracts are online at the SBL site (see Saturday's post for the link - I don't have the time to put links in now). Rasimus passed out a detailed handout and So gave us his whole paper. I have both in front of me and, herewith, some friendly, polemical comments that I also made, more or less, in the session.

1. The Nag Hammadi texts (and all Gnostic texts) were transmitted by Christians in the form we have them. The burden of proof lies on anyone who wishes to assert that we need to move backwards to a pre-Christian (in these cases, Jewish) origin for any of the documents. Bob Kraft has made this point in his paper "The Pseudepigrapha in Christianity," and I have developed it further in my online essay "Jewish Pseudepigrapha and Christian Apocrypha: (How) Can We Tell Them Apart?." The latter is an early draft of a chapter of the book I'm writing on Christian transmission of Jewish Pseudepigrapha. You can find both by going to the links section to the right, clicking on the "Courses Online" link, then clicking on the link to my Old Testament Pseudepigrapha site. Again, I don't have time to put in the links myself right now.

2. "Heresy" in ancient Judaism, insofar as we can use the term at all, revolved around disagreements about ritual praxis rather than about beliefs or theology. By and large, ancient Jews argued about praxis, not beliefs.

3. The biblical demiurge myth has profound implications for Jewish ethnic/national identity issues and issue of halakhah, Torah observance, and ritual purity and praxis. These issues are entirely ignored, not only in the Apocalypse of Adam, but in the corpus of Gnostic texts as a whole. This is a very serious problem for anyone who wishes to assert a Jewish origin for Gnosticism.

4. The ApocAdam has elements that can be read most naturally as Christian: a suffering redeemer, baptism, and even (if memory serves - I don't have the text in front of me) a play on the name "Jesus of Nazareth" near the end: Yesseus Nazareus or Mazareus or the like. It is possible to find ways to read these in ways not involving Christianity, but this is specious and unnecessary. The ApocAdam makes perfectly good sense as a document by Christians who believed in the biblical demiurgic myth.

5. The paper on ApocAdam cited no Jewish primary sources to support its assertion that the ApocAdam used Jewish sources that could not have been available to Chrisitians. Even if it could be shown that the work uses Jewish midrashic or apocalyptic sources, as it may well have, this proves nothing unless it addresses Jewish issues (such as ethnic identity or halakhah) which were mostly not of interest to Christians.

6. The argument appears to be that Jewish apocalyptic exegetical techniques could only have been used by Jews, since only Jews knew them. But the Jewish apocalypses that have come down to us were transmitted by Christians, not Jews.

7. I believe it was Jack Neusner who said "What we cannot show, we do not know." It applies here. The case for Jewish origins of Gnosticism has not been made and I myself doubt that it can be, given the evidence we have available at present.

I let Dr. So know that I would be blogging on this and I will e-mail him and Dr. Rasimus and invite them to send me any comments in response which they wish me to post.

I spent 45 minutes waiting in line to get to this computer and I don't intend to do that again. More blogging in Cambridge (after this session) depends on a short queue in future. If not, look for me on Saturday. Again, apologies for any hasty typos and half-digested thoughts.

INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE MEETS THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS? Would new scanning technology for reconstructing shredded documents help us reconstruct the Dead Sea Scrolls? I don't know. Interesting question.

ARCHAEOLOGY IS GETTING MORE DANGEROUS. Religious and nationalist concerns are leading people to take it personally. The Temple Mount is a premier example. Indiana Jones, move over.

HERE I AM IN CAMBRIDGE, blogging from an Intenet Cafe. Only they don't seem to serve coffee. Yesterday in the opening session of the International SBL meeting, Steve Mason gave a stunning lecture on "Rediscovering Josephus." He decried the usual approach of using Josephus as "background" to NT or rabbinic studies without taking him first on his own terms. My favorite sound bite was when he said that scholars try to make Josephus disgorge undigested chunks of history by performing a kind of historical Heimlich maneuver on him, or words to that effect. I've been making similar points about the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha for some time (without the Heimlich maneuver), so I found his presentation especially welcome. He also doubts the widely accepted connection between Josephus' Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls. He said that Josephus speaking so positively on the Qumran group would be like President Clinton praising the Branch Davidians during his 1994 State of the Union address.

This morning I went to the session on Hebrew seal inscriptions in the Shlomo Moussaieff collection. Dr. Moussaieff (who was present) is a private collector who has made his huge collection of Hebrew and Aramaic epigraphic material freely available to scholars for study and publication. All the papers were interesting but I'll just note Robert Deutsch's, since I have his handout in front of me. He spoke on royal bullae (clay seal impressions). I won't repeat specifics, but I'm sure he won't mind if I say that he displayed and commented on numerous bullae that included names of kings and names of royal officials of various types, and that this material gives us lots of new details about the Judean royal court in the monarchical period. His paper will be published in Shlomo: Studies in Epigraphy, Iconography, History and Archaeology in Honor of Shlomo Moussaieff (Tel Aviv-Jaffa) later this year. If you're into Hebrew seals, look for it.

Please excuse typos; the conditions here are a little primitive. I'm going to poke around on the Web now to see if there's anything interesting worth noting and, if so, I'll post it. Otherwise, I'll try to blog again in the next few days, but no promises.

I'M OFF TO CAMBRIDGE early tomorrow morning for the International Society of Biblical Literature conference. As promised, I have posted my paper "(How) Can We Tell if a Greek Apocryphon or Pseudepigraphon Has Been Translated from Hebrew or Aramaic?" online, along with the handout that goes with it. It replaces an earlier version that was an online lecture for my Old Testament Pseudepigrapha course in 2002 and is a short and preliminary version of a chapter in the book that I intend to finish next year while on research leave. Comments welcome, as always.

The conference starts tomorrow evening and goes until Friday morning. I will try to catch a few minutes here and there to let you know how things are going, but blogging is likely to be very light until Saturday the 26th.

Meanwhile, I encourage you to visit the sites I mentioned when I left for the Enoch Seminar. (And by the way, Avraham, if Naomi Chana was there, she didn't reveal herself to me and I can't think of any likely candidates unless she's fiddled her biographical details.) Readers should also keep an eye on Bible and Interpretation News, which invariably has interesting online stuff pertaining to the Bible.

Want more? Then have a look at The Sch�yen Collection:

This is a huge private collection of manuscripts (ancient to modern) including Qumran and later Hebrew Bible manuscripts, NT and LXX manuscripts, Latin Bible fragments, Coptic Bible fragments, biblical and Christian Ethiopic MSS, Bible fragments in other languages, other Qumran texts and materials, and much more, ranging from Sumerian tablets to Shakespeare fragments, with good photographs of most of it. The collection is located mostly in London and Oslo and most of the manuscripts are not yet published, although publication of much of it is underway.

I'm not sure our server problems are entirely over, so if you want to e-mail me about something it would be a good idea to wait until I'm back home. Have a good week, I'll blog if and when I can, and I expect to be back at my desk on Saturday, 26 July.

ANDREW SULLIVAN IS WONDERING ABOUT THE NAILS IN THE PALMS IN THE TRAILER FOR THE PASSION (scroll up for more). He cites two web pages, one of which is by a medical doctor and which includes some dodgy references (e.g., studies of the Shroud of Turin and stuff from Josh McDowell). The other is an article by Joseph Zias, who is perhaps the world's expert on the subject. In another article Zias said:

The upright remained stationary and the victim carried the crossbeam to his execution. Once the crossbeam was affixed to the upright, the victim would be nailed or tied to the cross. In the case of nailing, the nail would be driven through the wrist rather than the palm.

although he doesn't say why he concludes this. But elsewhere he is quoted as explaining:

``You cannot crucify a person through the hands because there is nothing there but skin and muscle. It will tear. It has to be through the wrist,''

So, sorry Mel Gibson, but physiology requires that crucifixion by nailing (as opposed to tying, which also happened � see both articles just quoted) was through the wrists, not the palms.

UPDATE: Sullivan cites an unnamed reader who says that a "newer theory holds that indeed the hands and feet were entry points, but that wooden washers made from the cut trunk of young trees were used for additional support." I've never heard of this and no reference is cited. Would this prevent the palms from ripping? Is there any evidence for it? In any case, no wooden washers are visible in the trailer. Sullivan also notes that Pilate speaks Latin with the ecclesiastical pronunciation.

UPDATE (21 July): Okay, the trailer does show ropes holding him to the cross. I doubt this would work (i.e., keep the hands from ripping through) but at least they're acknowledging the problem. And the Aramaic pronuciation sounds all right (Elohi rather than Matthews Eloi).

SOME PEOPLE COUNT THE REIGN OF CHARLEMAGNE AS THE END OF ANTIQUITY, so on that theory I'll link to the following story, which involves the king, a Jewish merchant, the Caliph Harun ar-Rashid, and a white elephant named Abu Abbas.

Baghdad, Jerusalem, Aachen � On the Trail of the White Elephant (Deutsche Well)

1,200 years ago three men set off on a journey from Europe to the Middle East and back. Today their trip across three cultures and religions is recreated in the Aachen exhibit "Ex oriente: Isaac and the white elephant."

Baghdad and Jerusalem. Today the cities conjure up images of armed conflict and religious strife. For many they are the epitome of the collision between the Orient and Occident, the battlefields of global interests, where the foreign other is so different and distant from Europe. But a thousand years ago the cities represented the pinnacle of cultural and religious symbiosis and were the choice destination for one of history�s lesser-known but certainly more interesting journeys.

The year was 797 in the Christian calendar (4557 in the Jewish and 175 in the Muslim dating system). Charlemagne, King of the Francs, had sent forth two of his envoys and the Jewish merchant Isaac to the court of Harun al Rashid, Caliph of Baghdad. Their mission: establish contact with the ruler of the Abbasids and observe the ways of the city on the Euphrates. Compared to the town of Aachen with its 400 some residents, Baghdad was a flourishing metropolis, a renowned place of learning and a melting point for various cultures and religions.

When the envoys departed from Charlemagne�s court in western Germany, the distant lands of the Orient were still largely unknown and exotic. The envoy�s route led them first to upper Italy, then by ship to the holy city of Jerusalem, and from there to Baghdad, the seat of the Abbasid Caliph. All in all, the men traversed a good portion of the known world at the time, passing through the territories of the three great monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

After several months in Baghdad, the men embarked on their return journey, laden with gifts, the most impressive of which was a white Indian elephant, Abu Abbas � a symbol of friendship from the Muslim caliph to the Christian king. But because the pachyderm was so much slower than a horse, the return voyage turned into an arduous four-year adventure along the southern Mediterranean from Jerusalem to Carthage, where Isaac � who was now traveling alone � and Abu Abbas set sail to Italy. In the spring of 802, Isaac crossed the Alps on elephant-back and rode on to Aachen in the Kingdom of the Francs.

[�]

PROFESSOR SHMUEL SAFRAI has passed away.

(Via H-Judaic Digest)

We are saddened to learn of the passing, in Jerusalem, of Prof. Shmuel Safrai, Emeritus Professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University, and one of the world's greatest experts on the era of the Second Temple. His numerous publications on the Temple, the Mishnah, the liturgy, the early synagogue, and more stand as a monument to his many decades of productive scholarship. Prof. Safrai passed away in his sleep in Jerusalem at age 84.

Jonathan D. Sarna
Chair, H-Judaic

May his memory be for a blessing.

THIS IS OFF TOPIC, but it's good news for archaeologists and, I think, for the American public as well.

House Votes To Save Jobs Of Park Service Archaeologists

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 19, 2003; Page A04

The House of Representatives has voted overwhelmingly to block the Bush administration from privatizing two National Park Service archaeological centers and firing the archaeologists who work there.

The action late Thursday was a setback for the administration's "competitive sourcing" initiative, which seeks to submit 15 percent of all government jobs to private competition. The Interior Department has targeted the Midwest Archaeological Center, in Lincoln, Neb., and the Southeast Archaeological Center, in Tallahassee, as part of its quota under the plan.

Late Thursday, the House voted 362 to 57 to cut off funding of efforts to put the jobs of the 100 archaeologists at the centers up for bid. The measure was attached to the Interior Department spending bill, which passed late Thursday, 268 to 152.

[�]

BAGHDAD MUSEUM LOOTING UPDATE:

Roger Atwood's account of the looting of the Baghdad Museum has been reprinted by the Wall Street Journal (via Jack Sasson on the IraqCrisis list). Walter Sommerfeld's version of the same events (noted in the 23 June update here) has been reprinted by Counterpunch and Countercurrents and some similar sites. Which is more likely to be reliable? I blog, you decide.

There's lot's more in the news about the looting of Iraqi antiquities but I don't have time to track it all. The current estimate is that about 10,500 artifacts were taken from the Baghdad Museum. And serious looting continues in many ruins. (I wish someone would take up my proposal to douse the looters with liquid putrescine from the air. Anyone know who I could suggest this to?). Anyhow, I encourage you either to subscribe to the IraqCrisis list and/or to watch its archive and Francis Deblauwe's site.

ACADEMIC TALMUD STUDY is listed as #4 in Jewsweek's list of not-quite-60 hottest people and things in the Jewish universe this year. Torah is #48, God is #52.5, and Alicia Silverstone is #1. But the list isn't ranked.

LOCAL NEWS: BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGICAL WEEKEND (via Archaeology Magazine News). The London Times reports:

NEARLY 200 museums and archaeological sites across Britain will be open this weekend to celebrate National Archaeology Days.

There's more information here. This ties in nicely with the Scotsman's report of two important Neolithic finds (via ditto) in the Kingdom of Fife, where St. Andrews is located.

Let's party!

THE HARVARD GAZETTE INTERVIEWS KAREN KING ABOUT HER BOOK WHAT IS GNOSTICISM?:

Student of early Christianities:

Karen L. King doesn't want to rewrite the Bible. But she does want people to take another look at the parts that got left out.
By Ken Gewertz
Gazette staff



King, the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the Divinity School, is the author of a new book, "What Is Gnosticism?" (Harvard University Press, 2003), which offers a provocative look at Christianity during its formative centuries and the heterogeneous array of groups, doctrines, and beliefs that all claimed to be inspired in some way by Jesus.

At the beginning, each of these groups claimed to represent the true Christianity, although they disagreed over basic issues. It wasn't until later that one group succeeded in labeling the others as heretics and driving them out of the fold.

"I wanted to rewrite the history of early Christianity without writing backwards, without looking at it as a process that culminated inevitably in the Christianity we know today. How did things look to the people who were around at that time? How do you go about inventing a new religion?"

It is a book King has been thinking about and working on for at least 20 years, ever since she was a graduate student in Germany studying under Hans-Martin Schenke, one of the first editors of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts.

[...]

"Gnosticism is a blanket term that covers a lot of early Christian movements. There wasn't a distinct religion called Gnosticism. It only existed as a tool of orthodox identity formation."

[...]

"Now this one group defines itself as orthodox, and all the rest get lumped together as heretical. Modern scholars then divide them up into two groups, Jewish Christians if they stay too close to Judaism, and Gnostics if they seem to reject Judaism and move toward Greek philosophy and mysticism. It gives each an identity and a unity they never actually had."

While King questions the existence of an early Christian sect identifying itself as Gnostic, her research does show that a wide diversity of groups flourished in the early Christian era. The picture contradicts long-cherished assumptions that early or "primitive" Christianity possessed a salutary purity and simplicity.

[...]

If such doctrinal diversity existed among early Christians, how is it that the version of the religion we call orthodox eventually vanquished its rivals? While the answer is extraordinarily complex, King believes a crucial factor was the influence of one man - the emperor Constantine.

[...]

"Constantine picked the kind of Christianity that best suited his political needs," King said. "He had a huge influence on the subsequent development of the religion."

[...]

But now that 1,500 years have passed, King suggests it may be time to reconsider some of the writings that the early Fathers of the Church decided were noncanonical.

"Are those choices that were made in the fourth and fifth centuries the right ones for Christians living today? Maybe we should go back and look at those early choices. As a feminist theologian, I think there are some texts that it would be good to recover."

The texts King has her eye on include "The Gospel of Mary," in which Mary Magdalene plays a prominent role as an apostle in spreading the faith; "The Gospel of Thomas," which leaves out traditional features of the Jesus story like the virgin birth and the resurrection but portrays Jesus as a divine teacher of wisdom; and "The Secret Book of John," which criticizes the violence, deceit, and materialism of society.

King doesn't expect or want these texts to achieve biblical status, but she thinks they are worth studying for a sense of the alternative voices that are still part of the Christian heritage.

"All religions have within them plural possibilities, which means we are always selecting materials to apply to the situations in which we find ourselves, and so people are responsible for what they appropriate and how they interpret tradition."

Students who are committed to particular Christian traditions sometimes find King's probing, questioning attitude toward scripture disturbing. For them she has a message that is part reassurance, part challenge.

"I'm not trying to take the canon away from them, but to bring it to their attention. I believe that if these texts are important to you, then you need to know what theological controversies and political events shaped them, and who decided that they should be authoritative for you."

As an experiment, I'm blogging from our local Internet cafe this morning. My coffee is finished and I think I've had enough for now, so I'm headed back to my office.

SPEAKING OF BOB KRAFT, "'Parabiblical Literature' in Early Judaism and Early Christianity" is a course taught by Professor Kraft at the University of Pennsylvania last (2002-03) academic year in tandem with the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, which was devoted to the same topic. These course notes are just one of the pages on Bob's extraordinarily useful website.

THE JEWISH STUDIES QUARTERLY (Princeton University) is looking for a part-time managing editor (via Robert Kraft on the PSCO list).

BELIEFNET HAS AN INTERVIEW WITH ELAINE PAGELS about her new book Beyond Belief (via Bible and Interpretation News).

STEVE MASON ANNOUNCES A NT JOB OPENING AT YORK UNIVERSITY (via Ioudaios-L):

Dear Colleagues:

I have been asked by my university to post the following job opening in my unit. Please direct any enquiries about (not to me but) to the person named in the ad. Please feel free to circulate it further.
SM

____________________________________________

CHRISTIAN ORIGINS/NEW TESTAMENT LITERATURE �

The Division of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, York University, invites applications for a tenure-stream appointment at the Assistant Professor level in the field of Christian Origins and New Testament Literature. The appointment, to commence July 1, 2004, is subject to budgetary approval.

We seek a candidate with a completed PhD at the time of appointment, evidence of a vigorous research agenda with scholarly interests in the Jewish, Greek, and Roman contexts of early Christianity, and promise of excellence in teaching. Other requirements include the ability to teach broad undergraduate courses in Christian studies from an interdisciplinary perspective in the first- and second-year Foundations programme, as well as ancient Greek language. The successful candidate must also have the potential to undertake graduate teaching and supervision. The successful candidate will join the Programmes in Religious Studies and in Classical Studies within the interdisciplinary Division of Humanities; membership in the Centre for Jewish Studies is also possible.

A letter of application, curriculum vitae, three confidential letters of recommendation and a sample of the applicant�s written work (no longer than 20 pages) should reach the Chair by 31 October 2003: Professor Doug Freake, Division of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada (email: dfreake@yorku.ca; phone: 416-736-5158; fax: 416-736-5460).


York University is an Affirmative Action Employer. The Affirmative Action Program can be found on York�s website at http://www.yorku.ca/acadjobs or a copy can be obtained by calling the affirmative action office at 416 736-5713.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and Permanent Residents will be given priority.

HERE'S AN ARTICLE ON THE INTERNET SACRED TEXTS ARCHIVE, which I've been blogging on during the last week.

Sacred Text Site Explains World Faiths (from Editor and Publisher)
A Wonderful Resource for Religion Journalists

Finding the actual texts that are sacred to specific religions around the world can be a daunting task, even when you have access to a world-class library. How many libraries can provide precious shelf space, for instance, for the Akaranga Sutra and Kalpa Sutra of Jainism or the Zend-Avesta of Zoroastrianism, the Kitab-i-Aqdas of Baha'i, or even the early books of Christianity?

Fortunately, because of an important Web site called Internet Sacred Text Archives, you no longer have to hunt those dusty shelves. Calling itself "a quiet place in cyberspace devoted to religious tolerance and scholarship," the Sacred Text Archives is the brainchild of J.B. Hare. Working with a number of colleagues and volunteers, Hare has compiled and preserved a vast reservoir of religious and philosophical texts from a number of public domain sources.

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Read it all. The site has just added a section on Kwakiutl Tales. Cool.

PHILOLOGOS ON THE DECALOGUE:

Decalogue or Eleven-alogue? (from Forward Magazine)

The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments � so a federal court has decided, citing the Constitution's separation of church and state � must be removed from the rotunda of the Alabama State Judicial Building in Montgomery, together with the granite monument on which they were carved.

Or is it the Eleven Commandments? Anyone counting the number of commandments appearing in photographs of the monument's two tablets of the Law � something that, to the best of my knowledge, no one but the author of this column has bothered to do � can't help blinking. Nine....ten....eleven. You can count them from top to bottom or bottom to top, left to right or right to left; they still come out the same.

That's right, Eleven: Five on the left-hand tablet and six on the right-hand one. On the left we have, "I am the Lord thy God"; "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me"; "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image"; "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," and "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." And on the right, "Honor thy father and thy mother"; "Thou shalt not kill"; "Thou shalt not commit adultery"; "Thou shalt not steal"; "Thou shalt not bear false witness," and "Thou shalt not covet."

Eleven.

What gives?

To find out, read the rest of it.

HERE IS A MIDRASH BIBLIOGRAPHY compiled by faculty at HUC-JIR. Searchable and annotated with useful comments but does not seem to have been updated since 1997.

I'VE UPDATED YESTERDAY'S POST ON THE ZECHARIAH INSCRIPTION with a note from Joe Zias on those "earlier writings."

A NEW ARTICLE IN THE JERUSALEM PERSPECTIVE PIPELINE:

A Quest for the Lost Hebrew Gospel
by David Bivin

I've recommended articles on this site in the past, so I should note that this is a very weak piece on the Semitic language background of the Gospels, which pretty much ignores the secondary literature (on the NT and on retroversion) over the last century. It also mixes up the question of reconstructing Q (composed in Greek) with the quite separate question of retroverting a Hebrew or Aramaic original from a Greek translation. Rather than trying to evaluate the piece at length (which I don't have time to do), I'll refer you to my paper on the latter problem for the Greek Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. I'm writing it now for presentation next week at the International Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Cambridge and, as usual, I'll post it before I go. Read it and you should be able to see why I'm so disappointed with this article, even as a popular presentation.

Watch this space.

HERE'S A NEW ARTICLE IN BIBLE REVIEW:

The True Cross
Separating Myth from History

Jan Willem Drijvers

In the days of Constantine the Great, the cross on which Jesus died was �rediscovered� in Jerusalem. Tradition gives Constantine�s mother, Helena, full credit for the find. Today, visitors to Jerusalem are shown the very spot, in a cistern beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the empress is said to have unearthed not only the true cross, but the nails that punctured Jesus� hands and feet, the crosses of the two thieves who died beside Jesus, and the plaque, naming Jesus �King of the Jews,� that hung on his cross.

For her efforts, Helena was named a saint by the Roman Catholic and Eastern churches; in art, the cross became her symbol. In more recent times, she has been hailed as the first biblical archaeologist. But did Helena actually find the true cross? And if not, how did this legend, kept alive in Renaissance paintings and today�s popular press, arise?

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As you probably already guessed, she didn't find the true cross. Indeed, it appears she didn't even find a fake one. An interesting story.

The August issue also has an article by Bernhard Lang on the names of God, and some other goodies too.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Silberman, Neil Asher and Ernest S. Frerichs
Archaeology and Society in the 21st Century: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Case Studies

Talmon, Shemaryahu, Jonathan Ben-Dov and Uwe Glessmer
Qumran Cave 4 XVI: Calendrical Texts

Funk, Wolf-Peter, Paul-Hubert Poirier and John D. Turner
Marsanes (NH X)

Turner, John D.
Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition

DISCUSSION BETWEEN FRANK MOORE CROSS, ANDRE LEMAIRE AND HERSHEL SHANKS (via Bible and Interpretation News)

Cross has thought for some time that the "James Ossuary" is a forgery. Shanks and Lemaire want to see the full IAA report before they are convinced.

JOE ZIAS E-MAILS regarding the Zechariah (Absalom's Tomb) Inscription:

One last item, vis a vis the inscriptions atop Absalom. While the inscriptions are 4th century they are based on earlier writings which suggest that Zach. James and Simon may be buried there in the valley. We have just finished some more casting and preliminary results show that there are more inscriptions there. We will present these at the SBL meetings in Atlanta. What is of interest is that no one has challenged the finding, prob. because no dealers nor is Shanks involved, also Puech is one of those rare scholars who seldom 'gets it wrong. Secondly, as the insc. is 1.5 meters long one has to ask about literacy among the 'people of the book' it was def. meant to be seen from a distance.

I'd like to hear more about these earlier writings.

UPDATE (16 July): Joe Zias e-mails in reply:

Basically I'm presently contemplating that that the (1st century AD?) "pillar" mentioned by Hegesippus in the 2nd (quoted by Eusebius)�may be identical to the "Absalom" monument.

"...and they buried him [in the valley?] on the spot [where he was killed] and the [nearby but not same spot?] pillar [="Absalom"?] erected to his memory still [according to Hegesippus and/or Eusebius?] remains..."

The quotation is from Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History 2.23.

IN RESPONSE TO MY MOST RECENT POSTING ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT, a reader e-mailed:

I'm writing to you about the following from your blog:
"two ancient temples once stood.
''And that, please God, is where the temple shall rise again,'' he said.

Although I strongly support the right of people of all religious faiths
(or none) to visit the Temple Mount, I don't find that last quotation
very encouraging."


Whenever I read anything like this it reminds me of my first visit to the western wall. There, as a religious Jew, I faced the extraordinary reality of the dome of the rock - one of the most beautiful and revered buildings in the world. One can't help noticing that it is, shall we say, in the way of rebuilding the Jewish Temple.

Traditionally religious Jews must believe that the third temple will be built in that location, unless we receive a clear divine command to build it elsewhere, but most of us believe the rebuilding will happen, at that very site, only when the Messiah comes. When the Messiah comes anything can happen, so - who knows - perhaps the dome of the rock and the Jewish temple will superimpose.

There are definitely Jews (not a large number) who want to rebuild that temple as soon as possible, and to them the Dome of the rock is an immediate annoyance. Please do not assume that the person you quoted belongs to that minority. He may just, like me, long for a time in the future when religious hatred will be completely resolved and there will be no impediment to rebuilding.

The reason why I found that comment "not very encouraging" is that it can hardly be taken by Muslims as anything but "fighting words." I don't know exactly what the speaker meant; maybe he was hoping that God would put a third temple on the Temple Mount in quantum superposition with the Dome of the Rock or put them both in parallel timelines linked to the temple platform or whatever, but what would naturally occur to most readers would be that he wanted the Dome of the Rock torn down and replaced with the third temple. Who knows how selectively he was quoted by the reporter who, being a reporter, would naturally display his words prominently and not necessarily in context. But saying anything like this to the media on a newly reopened tour of the Temple Mount was, to say the least, imprudent and unhelpful.

To underline my point I refer you to a recent article in Al Jazeerah (via Protocols), which quoted "The Islamic Action Front (IAF), Jordan�s largest political party" as follows:

�Bush spoke during the Aqaba meeting on June 4 about sharing the holy land between Israelis and the Palestinians. What Bush meant found expression in the Zionist decision allowing Jews to enter the Islamic shrine, because historians do not recognize the existence of any holy place for the Jews in Jerusalem,� the statement said.

My italics. The Islamic Action Front is promoting a fantasy that denies a basic historical fact - the ancient Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, a fact verified by a vast amount of historical evidence - to support their political agenda. The article continues:

The IAF cautioned that allowing Jews to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque had the aim of �demolishing the Islamic shrine and rebuilding the alleged biblical temple in its place�.

My italics. Unfortunately, statements like the one from that Jewish tourist give support to this accusation and indirectly give credibility to the people who deny that there was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount. When Jews and Christians call for a third temple on the Temple Mount, it can only be seen by Muslims as a provocation. It too is a fantasy, about the future rather than the past. Fantasizing about how we wish the past had been is futile: we can't change what really happened. Fantasizing about the future can be pretty futile too: what we imagine may not happen (and fantasies about what God is going to do have an especially poor track record). In the meantime there is the present to be lived in. I wish we could leave aside both fantasies and try to get along with each other right now.

AFTERTHOUGHT: No, I'm not saying that all eschatological scenarios are false. How the heck could I know that? I'm saying that such scenarios have had a lousy track record so far and if you hold to one you should hold it with humility and put some real thought into how your expression of it affects events and people in the here-and-now.

HERE'S A COLLECTION OF JEWISH SCRIPTURES AND RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS from the Internet Sacred Text Archive. It includes links to the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew and in English, translations of the Talmud, Pirke Avot, Sepher Yetzirah, Kabbalah extracts, Midrash, and Maimonides. It also has Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews (already noted here) and some modern Jewish texts. The translations are generally very old and should not be used for serious work, but they could be useful for initial soundings and, of course, the price is right.

THERE IS A NEW E-MAIL DISCUSSION LIST ON ARAMAIC. (Via Jim West on Ioudaios-L.)

THE TRAILER FOR MEL GIBSON'S THE PASSION IS OUT.

If you are squeamish don't watch it. Also, note to Mel: the nails go in the wrists, not the palms. Even Stigmata got that right.

NOW THIS TECHNOLOGY MAY HAVE PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS IN OUR FIELD SOMEDAY:

Maybe time travel could be possible (USA Today)

Q: I believe Einstein's General Relativity Theory mathematically proved that time travel into the past is impossible. Do the recent experiments showing that light can be slowed, then returned to its normal speed, have any theoretical implications for time travel?

A: Yes, according to Ronald Mallett, theoretical physicist and professor at the University of Connecticut, recent experiments slowing light's speed may make time-travel feasible. Mallet thinks he can harness slow-light energy and turn the future into the past.

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Mallett thinks time travel is not merely theoretically possible but doable , given the speed-of-light breakthrough. He and a group of scientists at University of Connecticut are designing the first experiment to test Mallett's ideas. They plan to build a time-travel device.

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This is an old article (06/20/2001) but Professor Mallett was recently featured on the Discovery Channel and he also gave a public lecture on his work last week. Unfortunately, the device they're building only transfers atomic particles through time, but I suppose that's a start. A greater drawback is that travel to the past can't go any farther back than when the time machine itself was built, so we'd have to borrow a machine from a friendly ancient alien civilization if we wanted to go back to paleojudaic times. Other articles on Professor Mallett's work can be found in the Village Voice and Ananova.

THE EARLY JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM WEB PAGE of the Society of Biblical Literature lists the papers that have been presented in the group since its inception in 1996. The texts of many of the papers are included. I'm currently a member of its steering committee.

ARCHAEOLOGY IS RUBBISH. A new book by the people who make the television series "Time Team" in Britain.

MORE ON THE ARAMAIC MUSIC OF SAEVE:

Music taps roots of religion (Cincinnati Enquirer)

The San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble are playing in the Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains in downtown Cincinnati today. For a sample of their music go here.

HERE'S A ROUNDUP OF THE CURRENT SITUATION WITH THE "JAMES OSSUARY":

Defender of 1st-century Jesus inscription fight back following Israeli fraud charge (Dodge City Daily Globe)

Nothing new, but it covers what's been said and done so far.

THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS, the great classic by Louis Ginzberg, can be found at the Internet Sacred Texts Archive. Ginzberg's notes do not seem to be included but you can read all the stories. (I've already cited the traditions about Ezekiel's and Baruch's tombs from this source.)

The Internet Sacred Texts Archive looks like a useful site and I'll try to profile some more of the material on it when I get a chance.