A NEW GREEK PSALMS MANUSCRIPT:

Professor: 'Once-in-a-lifetime find' (Press Herald, Maine)

[�]

[Professor David] Trobisch [of Bangor Theological Seminary] and colleague Matthias Klinghardt, professor of New Testament at the University of Dresden, went to a Dresden library to examine the famed Codex Boernerianus. Written during the ninth century, it is one of four existing copies of that particular edition of the Christian New Testament.

He says he found the first eight Psalms, with a few words missing because of small holes in the paper or other slight damage, in a folder of discarded sheets. The manuscript ends abruptly at the end of the eighth Psalm.

Trobisch said he immediately recognized the papers as pages from a Christian Bible because of the lines drawn over words used to designate holy names in Greek texts.

By carefully examining the letters and artwork, Trobisch, with the help of other scholars, was able to determine that it was copied in the 14th century, almost certainly in Greece and perhaps on the island of Crete.

[�]

THE EXCAVATION AT PTORA, NEAR KIRYAT GAT, has uncovered an 8000-year-old village and "the remains of a first century C.E. farmhouse, apparently abandoned by its Jewish occupants during the bloody revolt against Roman occupation in the year 70 C.E. . . . The building had an open court yard used as a kitchen, and two baths" (Ha'aretz, via Archaeology Magazine News).

THE ZAYED CENTRE FOR COORDINATION AND FOLLOW-UP, home of junk archaeology and other nonsense, may be closing. (Via Mystical Politics - scroll down.)

Arab League: Zayed Center closure would be 'great loss' (Jerusalem Post)
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DUBAI, United Arab Emirate

The Arab League was awaiting official word from the United Arab Emirates of plans to close a league-affiliated think thank that Western critics accuse of promoting anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.

On Sunday an official in the Gulf state told The Associated Press that the Emirates was closing down and cutting off funding of the Emirates-based Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up � named in honor of the Emirates' president. The Emirates has funded and hosted the center, which is officially sponsored by the Arab League, since it opened in 1999.

[�]

Their website is down.

There's more in the Boston Globe, including a discussion of a call for the Harvard Divinity School to return a $2.5 millon donation from Sheikh Zayed. The student who initiated the call, Rachel Fish, has a website on the issue here. As a Harvard alumnus (Ph.D., NELC, '88), I strongly encourage them to return the money. An elementary school in California finds itself in a similar position (USA Today). The Arabic News has articles here and here. The Gulf News reports that "Arab journalists and intellectuals flooded the Zayed International Centre for Coordination and Follow-up (ZICCF) with letters yesterday to express solidarity against a mounting Israeli campaign against the institution." Israeli campaign? Huh?

ACCORDING TO MY BRAVENET COUNTER, when I checked it this morning, I'd had 30 first-time visitors and -30 returning visitors today for a grand total of zero. One returning visitor has shown up meanwhile, bringing the returning total to -29 and the grand total to 1. Can anyone explain this to me?

LILITH IS A SCARY LADY. Read about her at Alan Humm's Lilith Page.

THE DOWDIFIED QUOTE OF MEL GIBSON is used in an article printed today in the following Australian newspapers: the Daily Telegraph (where the article originated), the Mercury, News.com.au, and the Melbourne Herald Sun. Even though the transcript of the O'Reilly interview is easily available on the web (see first link), it obviously wasn't consulted by the writer of the article. Nor has it occurred to anyone at any of these papers to double check the ellipsis points in the quote to see what's missing and if it might affect the sense. So much for journalistic fact-checking.

"THE JESUS SEMINAR AND THE PUBLIC: ANOTHER TAKE," by Darrell L. Bock (Bible and Interpretation News). Excerpts:

Robert Miller�s piece on the Jesus Seminar is a revealing glimpse of how someone from inside the Seminar sees the Seminar�s work. Two goals of the Seminar are primary for him: (1) to find out what critical historiography can say about the historical Jesus, and (2) to communicate responsibly the results of our scholarly work to the public. He says that the Seminar�s commitment to "full public disclosure" set, in effect, a new standard for candor among scholars addressing these issues in a public forum. My essay will assess whether such candor actually helps us get to the historical Jesus and whether the effort of the Seminar can be regarded as a meaningful contribution to the debate about what Jesus did and said. I will say this much for the Seminar. They were very "up front" about their goals and desires. But such aims in themselves do not mean that a significant contribution to scholarly discussion has taken place, no matter how honest or sincere the effort has been in aiming at its target.

[�]


Miller�s list of "negative findings" include some categories where one would be hard pressed to find historical evidence even if such events happened today. For example, "There is no historical evidence that Jesus had no human father." How could one give concrete evidence for this? Others obscure the debate that does go on in New Testament studies. So, for example, another claim Miller notes, "There is no historical evidence that Jesus� corpse came back to life." Actually this is a complicated claim. How does one find traceable, ancient evidence that a corpse has come back to life? One could appeal to evidence of an empty tomb or to the fact others saw him after his death, or that their views about their understanding of themselves or their mission or their doctrine changed. All of these effects are what the gospels claim. They are historical evidence, but it is evidence that needs interpreting. What is debated is what such claims indicate. Most scholars in fact do hold that the disciples believed that Jesus was raised from the dead�and that their behavior changed radically as a result. The key question is what caused them to form that belief, including a belief in a doctrine that had no real precedent in Judaism or pagan religion, an immediate, bodily resurrection outside of the time of the judgment at the end. For a long monograph defending the rich, historical ground for the resurrection and making this point about precedent, see N. T. Wright�s recent The Resurrection of the Son of God. His work represents where many critical New Testament scholars are on such questions.

However, here is more that Miller did not tell you about the Seminar�s substantive conclusions. The Seminar did argue that Jesus did not make a claim to be the anointed one and did not form a group of disciples (I have in mind the Twelve here), although such claims and acts with such implications Jesus are multiply attested in the gospels. (Multiple attestation is one of the critical criteria for authenticity). Something drove the disciples to place Jesus in such a category and make them willing to risk their lives to proclaim it. The Seminar argued that Judas� betrayal and Peter�s denials were fiction, despite the embarrassment such stories would carry with them. They also argued that Jesus was an itinerant sage, but it is not so clear what Jesus taught about the kingdom of God beyond it was already present but unrecognized in a way that challenged apocalyptic and nationalistic expectations. Such hesitation on Jesus� basic teaching about the kingdom is despite the fact that most Jesus scholars regard this expression as his most comprehensive theme.

In sum, the Seminar has a rather minimal Jesus that many critics do not see as a genuine reflection of the historical Jesus. This is why the Seminar did not catch on with many scholars in historical Jesus studies. This is something the public also needs to know about the Seminar.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:


Getty-Sullivan, Mary Ann
Women in the New Testament

Harstine, Stan
Moses as a Character in the Fourth Gospel: A Study of Ancient Reading
Techniques

Borodowski, Alfredo Fabio
Isaac Abravanel, on Miracles, Creation, Prophecy, and Evil: The Tension Between Medieval Jewish Philosophy and Biblical Commentary

Davila, James R.
Liturgical Works

Feldman, Louis H., Translator
Judean Antiquities Books 1-4

Hengel, Martin, Peter Sch�fer, Hans-J�rgen Becker and Frowald Gil
H�ttenmeister
Andreas Lehnardt, translator
�bersetzung des Talmud Yerushalmi. Reihe 2: Seder Mo'ed (Festzeit), Band 8: Besa (Ei)

Mason, Steve, ed.
Life of Josephus: Translation and Commmentary

I'VE BEEN BUSY WITH FAMILY THINGS TODAY, but if you want something interesting to look at, go to Annette Yoshiko Reed's website. In the past few months I've already profiled some of the things she links to in her Judaism page, but there's lots more there and in her other pages on biblical studies, early Christianity, Classics, computers, etc.

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN is a new movie premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September. The relevant section of the Globe and Mail article reads:

Toronto � The three-hour film, The Gospel of John, will have its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was announced Thursday.

Directed by Philip Saville, the epic, which takes a contemporary approach to the biblical story, is among the films to be shown at the festival's Special Presentation feature.

Christopher Plummer narrates and Henry Ian Cusick plays Jesus. The film features 75 principal actors from the Canadian and British stage, as well as more than 2,000 extras.

It opens in North America on 26 September. Today is the first I've heard of it.

DEAD SEA DISCOVERIES has a new issue out online. Here's the table of contents:

Volume 10 Number 2 2003

Articles

The Mystery of Creation in 4QInstruction 163
Matthew J. Goff

Rhetorical Devices in 4QMMT 187
Jesper H�genhaven

The Cult of Artemis and the Essenes in Syro-Palestine 205
John Kampen

The Endtime Return of Elijah and Moses at Qumran 221
John C. Poirier

Abominated Temple and a Holy Community: The Formation of the Notions of Purity and Impurity in Qumran 243
Eyal Regev

Book Reviews 279

Requires personal or institutional subscription to access.

THAT MEL GIBSON QUOTATION AGAIN: Terry Lawson, Free Press Movie Writer, discusses The Passion in the Detroit Free Press and uses the dowdified quotation in even briefer form:

He [Gibson] also says that "The Passion" is not anti-Semitic in its depiction of why Jesus was crucified, but that "anybody who transgresses has to look at their own part or look at their own culpability."

As before, quoting the whole sentence would have nuanced Gibson's statement considerably. Describing it in the context of both of O'Reilly's two immediately preceding questions would have nuanced it further. I have e-mailed Mr. Lawson to alert him to my post of 5 August on the subject. He's on vacation too, until 25 August, but we'll see what comes of it.

Again, I am not defending The Passion, which is likely enough to score as high on the bogosity index as any Hollywood movie. But I'll wait to formulate an opinion until I see the whole movie. Meanwhile, I do think the discussion should represent accurately what all parties are saying.

MORE ON LEVITICUS AND THE GAY BISHOP. A perspective from Liberal Judaism, "which for at least a decade has been ordaining openly gay and lesbian rabbis," by Rabbi Jonathan Kendall (TCPalm). Excerpt:

For thousands of years, from the priests in the Temple to the rabbis of the Talmud and onward into the last century, Jewish clergy had always been male. The role of women was secondary, even tertiary when it came to ritual, ceremony and officiation.

In 1972, the Reform Movement ordained the first woman rabbi. Today, more than half the students at the four campuses of our seminary are women.

And if this was so for women, what about gays and lesbians?

For us, the selective reading of Scripture is a dangerous exercise. Yes, the Torah tells us that homosexuality is an abomination. It also tells us that if the priest has a defect in his vision, he cannot serve in the sacrificial cult. Does this mean that every rabbi who wears glasses is disqualified from service? The Torah teaches that if one has a son who is uncontrollable, gluttonous and a drunkard, he is to be stoned to death. How would that play in Stuart or Port St. Lucie?

There is text and there is context; there is the letter of the law and there is its spirit.

We opt to read the text through two lenses. The first is clearly attached to our past. We are, as Elie Wiesel says, "Not just a people, but a people with a history." The other is bound to our sense of fairness, decency, love and compassion. It would be the height of arrogance to suggest that others follow our lead, but our path is clear and unshakable. It proclaims who we are and the ideals we embrace.

HERE'S A GUY WHO MAKES ANCIENT JEWISH LAMPS. Replicas, that is. Cool.

IF ANY OF YOU THOUGHT THAT THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS IS IRRELEVANT to the twenty-first century, think again. At the moment it figures in about 127 Google News links, including here and here (the gay bishop debate); here (the same debate illustrated by the laws of kashrut, although the author gets his facts wrong: the no milk and meat rule comes from rabbinic exegesis of Exodus 23:19, 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21, it's not in Leviticus or the Bible); here (tattoos); here (Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusions); and here (house mold).

Just so you know.

THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY has a new article on archaeology in Jordan in 2002. Here's the abstract:

Archaeology in Jordan, 2002 Season

Stephen H. Savage, Kurt Zamora, and Donald R. Keller

The 10th season of excavations at the Petra Great Temple took place between 15 June and 3 August 2002. The Great Temple precinct is located in the center of Petra on the south side, fronting the Petra basin and the Colonnaded Street, a few meters east of the Temenos Gate of Qasr al-Bint. Most of the temple precinct has been excavated; however, certain areas, such as the propylaeum, and specific projects lying to the east and south of the temple, remain to be researched.

General Projects and Surveys
New Satellite Imagery and Digital Terrain Models of Jordan
Wadi Ziqlab Survey
Moab Archaeological Resource Survey
Wadi al-Koum Survey

Excavations
Al-Basat�n
Tell Johfiyeh
Tell Ya'amun
Jerash City Walls Project (JCWP)
Tell Zera'a
Tell el-Fukhar
Tell al-'Umayri
Tell Madaba
Petra
The Great Temple
The Small Temple
Petra: North Ridge Project
Petra: The Obodas Chapel
Jabal Har�n
Humayma
The Roman Aqaba Project

The whole article is available as a PDF file on the same page, but the file takes up 9.9 megabytes, so I'm going to hold off downloading it myself until I can use the broadband connection in my office. I guess it must have lots of pretty pictures.

MEL GIBSON HAS "SOFTENED" THE PASSION STORY. I think this article (in JewsWeek) is saying that he's made changes in the movie in light of criticism, but it's not entirely clear.

Director Mel Gibson, under heavy fire from Jewish groups for his $25 million movie on the death of Jesus, has "softened the story" and made changes to make The Passion more palatable to critics, according to a spokesman. Scheduled for release next year during Lent, The Passion has some Jewish groups nervous it will resurrect old beliefs that Jews were responsible for the death of the Christian savior.

Paul Lauer, marketing director for Gibson's Icon Productions company, said Gibson has edited the film to show more "sympathetic" Jewish characters who were not calling for Jesus to be crucified. "We believe we have softened the story compared to the way the Gospel has told it," Lauer said in an interview. He pointed to Matthew 27:25, in which the Jewish mob calls for Jesus' blood "to be on us and on our children."

"That's in the Gospel," he said. "It's not in our film."

In addition, Lauer said the character of Simon of Cyrene, who was forced to carry the cross for Jesus, will be clearly labeled a Jew in the film. A shouting mob will include voices opposing the execution, Lauer said.

Faced with vocal Jewish opposition, Gibson is mounting a pre-emptive public relations offensive to counter his critics -- all for a film that is still being edited. After regional screenings, Gibson has lingered with his audiences to listen to their advice. In an effort to soothe concerns, Gibson is also hoping to launch "The Jewish Initiative" to recruit Jewish and Christian leaders to discuss the film's effects on Christian-Jewish relations.

"We've gone out of our way to accommodate this process because we felt it was necessary and important, and to show that we care and that we're not callously sitting back saying, 'Screw you, we're going to make the film we want to make,'" Lauer said.

Jewish groups, however, remain unconvinced. . . .

TO HELL WITH WORK! And to hell with blogging too. This is the last week of the school vacation and I'm taking my son and his friend to the beach for the sand castle competition. Meanwhile, if you'd like to read some things about the Nabateans, go to Professor Avraham Negev's website here.

More later, maybe.

HERE'S A REPORT IN THE DARTMOUTH ONLINE on a lecture entitled "The Tale of Androgynous and the Unity of Jewish Culture" given at Dartmouth by Moscow State University professor Arkady Kovelman. The lecture was about changing literary genres in first- and second-century Judaism, the exegesis of the Genesis creation story by Philo of Alexandria, and the unity of Jewish culture. Also, he mentioned pornography, which, of course, made it into the headline.

CNN HAS A ROUNDUP of current opinions of Mel Gibson's The Passion.

THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE has released its online program for the November annual meeting in Atlanta, as has been noted on a number of e-mail lists in the last day. The following are sessions devoted in particular to aspects of ancient Judaism:

S24-4 Aramaic Studies Section
S24-102 Aramaic Studies Section

S23-3 Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World Section

S24-53 Biblical Lands and Peoples in Archaeology and Text Section

S24-8 Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah Section

S25-7 Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Group
S24-10 Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Group

S24-108 Early Jewish Christian Relations Section
S24-56 Early Jewish Christian Relations Section
S25-8 Early Jewish Christian Relations Section

S25-9 Hellenistic Judaism Section
S23-9 Hellenistic Judaism Section

S24-112 History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism Section
S23-109 History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism Section
S25-10 History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism Section

S23-13 Josephus Seminar
S24-116 Josephus Seminar

S24-117 Late Antiquity in Interdisciplinary Perspective Section
S23-113 Midrash Consultation Consultation

S25-14 Literature and History of the Persian Period Group

S23-18 Paleographical Studies in the Ancient Near East Section

S23-117 Philo of Alexandria Group
S24-19 Philo of Alexandria Group

S24-63 Pseudepigrapha Section
S24-20 Pseudepigrapha Section

S24-64 Q Section

S23-67 Qumran Section
S22-112 Qumran Section

S24-59 International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies Affiliate

S24-66 Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism Section

S24-67 Social-scientific Studies of the Second Temple Period Section
S22-70 Social-scientific Studies of the Second Temple Period Section

S23-72 Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early Judaism and Early Christianity Group

I tried to include the JavaScript pop-up links directly to each session, but I couldn't get them to work. My JavaScript skills are, well, nonexistent, so if a Java-literate reader can tell me how to fit them into the Blogger interface I can redo this post with links. Also, there are plenty of other relevant individual papers scattered through the other sessions, so skim the whole program. And perhaps I should mention that, at least for me, the search engine was not recognizing some obvious keywords it should have known, such as "Judaism."

MORE BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

The World of the Aramaeans I: Biblical Studies in Honour of Paul-Eug�ne Dion
Daviau, P. M. Mich�le, John W. Wevers and Michael Weigle, editors
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001

The World of the Aramaeans II: Studies in History and Archaeology in Honour of Paul-Eug�ne Dion

The World of the Aramaeans III: Studies in Language and Literature in Honour of Paul-Eug�ne Dion

All three reviewed by Joel S Burnett.

MICHAEL FISHBANE'S NEW BOOK, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford University Press) is reviewed by Seth Sanders (who was at the St. Andrews Anthropology and Biblical Studies conference in July) in the University of Chicago Chronicle.

Is it blasphemous to say that myth is at the heart of the Hebrew Bible? What is more, what if rather than suppressing biblical myth, Jewish tradition actually deepened and even added to it?

[�]

Fishbane joins a recent wave of scholars of Judaism who are rethinking the meaning of biblical myth as well as scholars of comparative religion, such as Chicago�s Bruce Lincoln, the Caroline E. Haskell Professor in the Divinity School, who are reevaluating myth�s cultural force. Fishbane writes that his goal is �to retrieve, study and even reconstruct the phenomenon of monotheistic myth over the course of two millennia,� from the Hebrew Bible to the great works of Kabbalah.

Fishbane argues that from the start, one is at a disadvantage in understanding myth, since we inherit traditions, ranging from the Greek Sophists to medieval Jewish philosophers to the European Enlightenment, which rationalize it away. He discussed one of his working principles: �If something would be considered myth in an ancient Babylonian or Canaanite source, there is no reason to assume the same material would not have the same force in an Israelite or Jewish setting. These are variants of mythic elements that have gone through a monotheistic filter. This does not mean that imagery has been softened, just that it occurs in an ancient Israelite context. These images would not have been mere �metaphors� for the Babylonians, and neither would they have been mere metaphors for the Israelites.�

[�]

�The same principles affect my study of interpretation and storytelling in early Jewish Midrash. People assume monotheism implies the impossibility of myth. But what�s interesting is that certain Rabbinic myths, like God�s dragon-slaying or his abandonment of and lamentation for the temple, actually show a greater vibrancy than similar topics found in the Bible, matching that of the ancient Near East. There was an old and ongoing mythic tradition in Israel, much of which did not surface in the Bible. But much of it does surface in Midrash and later in Jewish religious culture.�

But the Rabbis� creativity does not stop there. Fishbane explained, �The other innovation within rabbinic material is the way interpretation both expands old myths and creates new ones.�

Certain images now appear that the Israelites might never have imagined. �Among the themes that only emerge in rabbinic interpretation are that of God actually enduring suffering and going into exile along with the Jewish people. The third section of the book focuses on this increasing boldness and creativity. One of the striking things about the first great Kabbalistic work, the Zohar, is the very ancient myth of God�s building the world on the slain dragon�s body. Here, a theme already known in Babylonian literature, but only hinted at in the Bible, is elaborated in the much larger and more complex world of Kabbalah.� In these instances, Jewish tradition has actually expanded its mythmaking power so that in the Zohar there is �virtually no word or image in the Hebrew Bible that is not a potential myth.�

Why have people been so reluctant to examine this rich legacy? Fishbane argues that this reluctance is defensive. In his analysis of earlier scholars who pose an imaginary but convenient break between polytheistic myth and monotheistic purity, he challenges a whole roster of the 20th century�s great Jewish thinkers, including Gershom Scholem, the most famous student of Jewish mysticism. Scholem and others have maintained that Kabbalah was a mysterious outburst of a mythology that had been cut off and repressed in mainstream Judaism. But, Fishbane argued, if its myths were truly alien or obscure, Kabbalah could not have won the massive and widespread acceptance that it did.

[�]

Bravo. Read it all.

THE JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE has a new issue (122.2) online. Some articles of interest include:

"Who Was the Chronicler�s Audience? A Hint from His Genealogies"
YIGAL LEVIN

"Purity Beyond the Temple in the Second Temple Era"
JOHN C. POIRIER

Accessible by paid subscription only

I HAVE E-MAILED FRANK RICH about the "dowdified" quote of Mel Gibson in his New York Times essay. I'll let you know what comes of it.

UPDATE: He's on vacation through Labor Day, so it may be awhile.

WAS ODED GOLAN PART OF AN INTERNATIONAL CONSPIRACY? The Baptist Standard (via Jim West on Ioudaios-L) reports that Israeli authorities suspect he was. Excerpt:

Based on evidence seized in the late-night raid, investigators now suspect Golan may have been systematically counterfeiting antiquities and selling them for a number of years. They also believe other professionals, including possibly specialists from abroad, collaborated with him in the alleged scam of the James ossuary.

A panel of Israeli experts has determined the James ossuary inscription, along with a second inscription, supposedly written by King Joash of Judah in the ninth century B.C., both were fakes.

But the circle of inquiry now appears to be widening beyond Golan, said Amir Ganor, an Israeli Antiquities Authority officer.

"We now believe that he had partners who collaborated with him, people from the world of science, academia and also professionals," Ganor said. "We think we know who they are, but we are not willing to publish it at this point."

While most of the inquiry was focused in Israel, personalities from other countries also had been questioned regarding the alleged scam, Ganor said. But so far, the Israeli police have not officially turned to any police agency abroad in connection with a possible international conspiracy.

The Israeli police, in their raid on Golan's apartment, discovered a rooftop storage room containing various items that appeared to be in the process of being doctored, some with so-called "ancient" inscriptions, he said.

Although police had searched Golan's apartment six months ago, the rooftop storage room was a new discovery.

"We found in this room other inscriptions and antiquities that appeared to be in various stages of being counterfeited," Ganor said. "We also found a lot of equipment for the process.

"We are investigating suspicions that beyond the two artifacts that have received so much publicity, there was a process of counterfeiting antiquities that was going on for years," he said. "There are witnesses and evidence that support the suspicion that this is part of something systematic that happened over many years."

Is it so? I have no idea.

HERE'S A REVIEW OF A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF SIR HENRY RAWLINSON, diplomat, scholar, and decipherer of Old Persian and Babylonian cuneiform. The book is by Lesley Adkins and is called Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon.

THIS ISN'T THE BODY OF ST. ANDREW and it's not even the remains of St. Regulus, but it's archaeology and it's in St. Andrews, about a block from my office:

Dig discovers dozens of St Andrews skeletons (Glasgow Herald)
ELEANOR COWIE

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered dozens of skeletons buried beneath the centre of St Andrews, casting fresh light on medieval attitudes to death.

Yesterday, they said the graveyard showed medieval Scots were less squeamish about living on top of the dead.

The remains were found during refurbishment of the public library next to Holy Trinity Church, in the town centre.

The centuries-old bones are believed to belong to people who attended the church, which was established in 1410.

Douglas Speirs, head of archaeology at Fife Council said it was a significant find.

"It shows us more about the evolution of one of Scotland's most well preserved medieval towns," he said.

Archaeologists have exhumed about 40 skeletons in the past fortnight and expect to find more by the end of their month-long excavation.

Tom Rees, of Rathmell Archaeology, who is leading the dig, said: "Research into this will have to be done, but what is known is that it wouldn't have made St Andrews a very attractive place to live."

NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Roop, Eugene F.
Ruth, Jonah, Esther

Moeser, Marion C.
The Anecdote in Mark, the Classical World and the Rabbis

Fitzmyer, Joseph A.
Tobit

Reif, Stefan C.
The Cambridge Genizah Collections: Their Contents and Significance

Stone, Michael E.
Adam's Contract With Satan: The Legend of the Cheirograph of Adam

THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE'S Rabbi Eugene Korn has seen The Passion and didn't like it.

"The film unambiguously portrays Jewish authorities and the Jewish mob as the ones responsible for the decision to crucify Jesus," Abraham Foxman, the league's national director, said in a statement.

"We are deeply concerned that the film, if released in its present form, will fuel the hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism that many responsible churches have worked hard to repudiate," Foxman added.

[�]

Korn said "The Passion" contains "many dangerous teachings" that Christians and Jews had worked to counter, and he added that the group hopes Gibson and his film production company will "consider modifying" the movie.

Here is a link to the ADL's press release on the movie, dated yesterday.

In the new issue of Vigiliae Christianae (57.3) there is the following article of interest:

"WHERE DID ANOTHER RICH MAN COME FROM? THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN PROFILE OF THE STORY ABOUT A RICH MAN IN THE "GOSPEL OF THE HEBREWS" (ORIGEN, COMM. IN MATTH. 15.14)"
Petri Luomanen

Requires paid individual or institutional subscription to access.

TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism has posted a new article:

David Marcus, "A Proto-Masoretic Gloss in the Prayer for the King (Psalm 61:7-8)?"

NO, I HAVEN'T READ THE IAA REPORT YET. For the last several days I've been "having a life" and even "having a summer" (involving, e.g., the Anstruther Fish Bar the beach at Elie, the swimming pool, the beach at Kingsbarns, the local Lammas fair, etc.). If I'm not careful, I may develop a tase for both.

UCHRONIA: THE ALTERNATE HISTORY LIST is a website (via David Nishimura at Cronaca) that lists thousands of printed works of "alternate history" (the history of what might have happened but didn't in our world), both fictional and scholarly. It happens that the book I am currently writing on Christian transmission of the Jewish Pseudepigrapha uses "alternate history" as a tool to help understand how the Pseudepigrapha were passed down. This site will be extremely useful to me. Thanks David!

THE FULL SET OF 2003 ABSTRACTS FOR REVUE BIBLIQUE is now available online in French and English. This volume includes Emile Puech's article on the Zachariah Inscription at Absalom's Tomb. The abstracts for the first issue of 2004 are also available, but so far in French only. A number of articles in 2003-04 bear on ancient Judaism.

THE JULY ISSUE OF NOVUM TESTAMENTUM IS OUT (available online by paid institutional or individual subscription only). Nothing of explicitly paleojudaic interest, but it has articles on Pauline nomos, ancient testimonia, and other things. The reviews are worth a look too.

KAREN ARMSTRONG CRITICIZES MARINE GEOLOGIST ROBERT BALLARD for using Noah's Flood to promote his underwater archaeological expedition to the Black Sea. I've left this one alone so far, but I have to say she makes some good points. Read it all.

Believers in the lost Ark (via Archaeologica News)

Treating myth as fact misunderstands the meaning of religion

Karen Armstrong
Saturday August 9, 2003
The Guardian

The explorer who discovered the Titanic beneath the Atlantic in 1985 is setting out on another underwater expedition to document Noah's flood. The Black Sea was originally a freshwater lake that in ancient times became inundated by the salty Mediterranean. Robert Ballard believes that this was a cataclysmic event that occurred about 7,500 years ago, and was possibly the deluge described in the Bible.

Ballard's critics are sceptical: they argue that the infiltration of the Black Sea was a gradual process that occurred much earlier and over a long period of time. They accuse Ballard of using Noah to sex up his material for maximum publicity.

Christian fundamentalists will expect great things of Ballard's expedition. American creationists, who believe that the book of Genesis gives a scientifically accurate account of the origins of life, have long discussed Noah's flood. Some have even led archaeological expeditions to Mount Ararat in Turkey, in the hope of unearthing the Ark, and proving the literal truth of scripture once and for all.

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Needless to say, Ballard does not subscribe to these ideas. Yet by mentioning Noah in the context of a serious scientific expedition, he is unwittingly helping to perpetuate a widespread but erroneous understanding of the nature of religious truth. The search for Noah's flood is as irrelevant as an attempt to find the "real" Middlemarch or Cranford. Like George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell, the authors of Genesis are not writing history, but are engaged in an imaginative investigation of the human predicament.

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But the biblical writers would have been astonished to hear about a scientific expedition to find the "real" flood. In the premodern perspective, mythos and logos each had its own sphere of competence. If you confused them, you had bad science - like that of the creationists. You also had bad religion. Until we recover a sense of the mythical, our scriptures will remain opaque, and our faith - as well as our unbelief - will be misplaced.

When my son was four years old, he asked his mother if the babies at the time of the Flood were naughty.

HERE'S A REPORT on the four-minute clip of The Passion which was shown at the Christian "Harvest Crusade" in Anaheim on Friday night. It says that the offensive passage in Matthew 27:25 is left out. The writer of the article also thinks that Aramaic is a "dead language," which would be news to the Chaldean and Assyrian Christians. The Mandeans also use Aramaic in their religious rites, although I'm not sure that any of them speak it as a main language any more.

HERE IS AN M.A. THESIS by Graham Lester, entitled "Paul and the Mission to the Gentiles: A Study in the History of Scholarship," and completed in History in 1998 at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. The abstract reads:

This study begins with a brief overview of the religious and historical context from which the Jesus movement arose. The primary sources for the emergence of the gentile mission are evaluated, followed by a description of the spread of the movement prior to Paul's ministry. The historiography on Paul from the early nineteenth century to the present is then considered in chronological order, with emphasis on the beginning of Paul's mission and his relationship with Jesus' brother James and the other elders of the Jerusalem congregation. The views of the various scholars surveyed are summarized and assessed. Although the nature of the sources is such that certainty is seldom if ever an option when the early history of Christianity is under consideration, some conclusions are presented. They are: 1) that the growth of the Jesus movement gained momentum from cultural tensions that had arisen from the diaspora and the growth of the Roman empire; 2) that the members of the new sect quickly developed a "high" Christology influenced by preexisting eschatological motifs; 3) that the relationship between Paul and the elders of the Jerusalem congregation was not as antagonistic as some scholars have supposed; 4) that Paul's attitude toward the religion of his fathers is best characterized as sectarian triumphalism and not as anti-Judaism; and 5) that the later use of Paul's polemics to condemn Judaism in particular and nonacceptance of the gospel in general arose from the failure of the apostle's presumed special knowledge, particularly his beliefs that the Jews were soon to be converted and that the end was at hand.

The full text, minus the footnotes, is available online at http://people.delphiforums.com/tglit/graham/Paul.html

Mr. Lester is no longer in academics, but he has a blog called Uncategorical which combines limericks with political commentary. Really.

"IS 'THE DA VINCI CODE' as accurate as it claims?" Short answer: No.

THIS ARTICLE IS MOSTLY ABOUT THE "JAMES OSSUARY," but it discusses the general issue of people using archaeology to prove their religious views. It touches on Indiana Jones, the Empress Helena, "biblical archaeology," Zionists and Palestinians, relics in other traditions, etc.

MORE ON THE BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS EXHIBIT in Fort Worth, which includes Dead Sea Scrolls and early New Testament papyrus fragments. However, unless I missed something very recent, the earliest fragment of the Gospel of John is the John Rylands fragment in the University Library, Manchester. It is is not in a private collection.

MEL GIBSON will screen a four-minute clip of The Passion (Jesus being flogged and crucified) at a Christian festival this weekend.

NO JEWS OR NON-MUSLIMS were allowed on the Temple Mount on Tisha B'Av.

"CALIGULA 'THOUGHT HE WAS A GOD,'" maybe. Suetonius thought he did and now so does an archaeologist. If it's true, it's another illustration that such ideas were in the air in the first century.

THE IAA FINAL REPORT on the "James Ossuary" and the "Joash Inscription" has been published online by the Bible and Interpretation website (via Jim West on Ioudaios-L). I'm taking the day off from work to have some fun and I probably won't have time to read it. I'll try to have a look over the weekend.

THERE IS AN EARLY JEWISH WRITINGS WEBSITE owned by Peter Kirby which includes information on and, when available, online translations of books of the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonica, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, and the Babylonian Talmud. He also has started the Open Scrolls Project, which aims to produce a new translation of the Scrolls online. (Note to Peter Kirby: you would be better off using the DJD volumes, with their photographs, for the base text. The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition is an extremely useful resource, but it's not meant to be the basis for an independent translation: the Hebrew/Aramaic texts don't indicate doubtful and damaged letters.) Also, it was pointed out on the g-Megillot list that this project may duplicate the work of Accordance Software. But Kirby's version is designed for all platforms, not just the Mac, and he is not planning to charge for it.

CONAN GOT IT RIGHT. Last night I stayed up late to watch Conan the Barbarian. At one point in this movie, the possible future Governor of California is crucified on a tree. The nails go through his wrists, not his palms. I'm sure that proves something but I don't know what.

Conan the Barbarian movie poster


UPDATE: If first-time visitors are wondering why I think Conan's crucifixion is relevant to ancient Judaism, see this earlier post on the trailer to Mel Gibson's The Passion (and follow the bottommost link on that post for a link to the trailer itself).

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Carla Sulzbach e-mails the following:

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University is organizing an International Conference from September 15th to 19th 2003 with the title "The Changing Face of Judaism, Christianity and Other Greco-Roman Religions in Antiquity". The info below is from the "call for papers" which, of course is closed now. The conference schedule may be found at http://ww2.mcgill.ca/religion/lects.htm.

Description of the Conference

The conference on "The Changing Face of Judaism, Christianity and Other Greco-Roman Religions" has three main objectives: first, it seeks to advance research materially by coordinating and comparing recent perspectives on the often separated sub-fields of pre-Rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, Gnosticism and other Greco-Roman religions. Second, the conference is intended to foster emerging research partnerships between McGill's Faculty of Religious Studies and two key Religious Studies centres in Germany as well as among research universities in Montreal. Finally, we hope the conference will engage and stimulate research interests in Canada which have been moving toward a broader and more interdisciplinary approach to the religious world of Mediterranean antiquity (e.g., in the Religious Rivalries Seminar of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies)

In recent decades, Greco-Roman Judaism has become a major field of interest linking Biblical Studies, Religious Studies and Jewish Studies. The whole corpus of writings found in Qumran and elsewhere in the Judean Desert has finally been published, while new critical studies and translations have made other non-canonical writings of ancient Judaism (the so called Pseudepigrapha) newly accessible to wider scholarly study. The corpus of Gnostic literature found in Nag Hammadi has similarily challenged our understanding of the relations among Judaism, early Christianity, Gnosticism and their wider religious environment.

These texts and the new methods applied to their study have forced scholars to re-think well-established and widely accepted historical and religious constructions in the areas of Biblical Studies (Hebrew Bible and New Testament), Religious Studies (the interaction between Ancient Judaism, Early Christianity and the Greco-Roman religions) and Jewish Studies (the continuity and discontinuity between Ancient Israel, Post-Exilic Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism).

At the same time scholars interested in the religious diversity and complexity of the Roman Empire have also absorbed the influence of new methods (e.g., ritual studies) for studying practices, sources, periods and regions often neglected in Classics.

This not only has resulted in a growing number of publications with an interdisciplinary character, but also in new approaches to Jewish-Christian and interreligious dialogues and concepts of religious pluralism. Thus, not only the face of the various religious traditions of the Greco-Roman period, but even the ways in which the members of present-day religions are looking at themselves are changing.

The planned conference, which is scheduled to take place from September 15th to 19th 2003 and will be hosted by the Faculty of Religious Studies, will therefore seek to cover and link the following fields: 1) Hellenistic Judaism and Greco-Roman Culture 2) Sectarian and Non-Sectarian Writings from Qumran, 3) The Canons of the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint and New Testament, 4) Interactions between Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, and 5) Jewish and Christian Traditions in the context of Greco-Roman religions.

International scholars will be invited to present papers on the basis of their merits in the sub-fields of Ancient Judaism/Early Christianity/Greco-Roman Religions. A call for short papers will be sent to all members of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (as far as they do not belong to the invited speakers) as well as to all colleagues and graduate students from Montreal universities. Papers will be selected not only for general merit, but also especially for their light on the interrelations among the sub-fields named above. A representative selection of papers will be published in a congress volume.

An important motive for the Montreal meeting is the realization of hopes for closer research relationships in the study of ancient religions among McGill, Erfurt and T�bingen, a nexus into which we would also like to invite local colleagues from the Universit� de Montr�al and Concordia University.

LINDA CHAVEZ saw the rough cut of The Passion and liked it (CNSNews via Bible and Interpretation News). But was it really quite necessary to put St. Veronica in the movie? And the bit about Caiaphas urging Pilate to crucify Jesus is not in the Gospels and doesn't sound good.

ARCHAEOLOGY MEETS SUPERCONDUCTIVITY:

Archaeology turns to superconductivity (PhysicsWeb)
6 August 2003

Researchers from Israel have developed a new way to date archaeological objects that is based on superconductivity. The new technique relies on measuring the magnetic signal from lead - which was widely used in antiquity - in samples that have been cooled to cryogenic temperatures. The method could be used to date pipes, coins, bottles and other objects (S Reich et al. 2003 New J. Phys 5 99)

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The tests were done on samples from Tel Dor, Israel, which had previously been dated by other means to dates ranging from the Persian Period to the time of the Crusaders.

TODAY IS THE NINTH OF AV, the traditional anniversary of the destruction of both temples, the fall of Betar during the Bar Kokhba revolt, and other disastrous days in Jewish history. It's the culmination of three weeks of annual mourning of these events.

Here are some randomly gathered links of relevance. The Orthodox Union website has more information on the holiday. Here's an article on it in Greenwich Time. This is a Biblical Archaeology Review article by Hanan Eshel on the archaeology of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Meredith Scheck has some very modern meditations on the nine days of mourning in her new blog ReJew. And, via Protocols (which also has been commenting off-and-on on the Ninth of Av and the preceding days of mourning - keep scrolling up to today), here's a live webcast for Tisha B'Av, again from the Orthodox Union, and an audio address from the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The former also includes a link to a PDF file of Talmudic material on the fall of the Second Temple.

A healthy fast to my Jewish readers.

MICHAEL MEDVED has seen the rough cut of The Passion and was answering questions about it online. Lots of them. There's a transcript in the Washington Post.

The opening:

washingtonpost.com: Michael Medved, welcome to washingtonpost.com. You have seen this unfinished movie. First off, how is it as a film? Is it well-done, believable? Second, the controversy. Can you explain what that is all about?

Michael Medved: Yes, I have seen the movie. As a work of film it's remarkable, though flawed. Most Biblical movies are laughable -- reminiscent of "The Life of Brian" -- but "The Passion" is intense, persuasive, believable. The use of Aramaic and Latin (with subtitles) helps avoid goofy dialogue (remember, "Oh Moses, Moses, you adorable fool Moses!" in "The Ten Commandments."
The controversy, meanwhile, centers on charges from people who have never seen any version of the film that it is anti-Semitic. Those charges are unfair and inappropriate, in my opinion.

Then there's this:

New York, N.Y.: Has there been any word from scholars on how well the Aramaic language is presented? If this film appeals to every one on Earth who speaks the language, it will still need a few more viewers to break even. It is interesting, though, that the film attempts to capture the original language. Did you find this brought anything to the movie that the audience could appreciate, or is it just something of interest to note?

Michael Medved: I study in Aramaic several times a week, of course, because that is the language of the Talmud and of many prayers in the traditional Jewish liturgy. The pronunciation of Aramaic in the film is wildly uneven. Some of the actors seem to speak the language with authority, others seem to struggle with it and to garble the words. A few dozen movie goers may notice this but I'll plead guilty to being one of them.

UPDATE (7 August): The last quote is making some Christians feel guilty about their poor Hebrew and Aramaic skills. Good. Anything that motivates people to work harder at their Hebrew and Aramaic is all right in my book.

HERE ARE SOME OCCULT ENOCHIANA SITES ON THE WEB:

The Internet Sacred Texts Archive has two collections of Enochic material: Enochian Magic Archives and The Calls of Enoch by Benjamin Rowe. There is also The Enochian Web Ring which has many links to such things. Enoch lives!

WARNING: this is modern occult material, not ancient Enochic traditions. I've spot-checked some of it but by no means all. Some people will think it's interesting but others may be disturbed by it. If you are one of the latter, don't go there.

"GROUP WANTS TO LAY TEMPLE CORNERSTONE" (Ha'aretz, via Bible and Interpretation News).

The Temple Mount Faithful, led by Gershon Salomon, has asked the police to allow the group to hold a symbolic cornerstone-laying ceremony for the rebuilding of the Temple this Thursday, Tisha B'Av, the day of mourning for the destruction of the First and Second Temples.

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The police have turned them down.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Fountain, A. Kay
Literary and Empirical Readings of the Books of Esther


Wesselius, Jam-Wim
The Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus' Histories as Blueprint for
the First Books of the Bible

(That's what the RBL web page and the review say, but the author's name is actually "Jan-Wim.")

Jones, F. Stanley
Which Mary?: The Marys of Early Christian Tradition

The last one is especially timely.

MORE ON MEL AND THE PASSION: I had noticed this New York Times article, "Mel Gibson's Martyrdom Complex," a couple of days ago but never got around to posting it. I was reminded today when I looked at Mystical Politics. Frank Rich does not like Mr. Gibson or his movie and some of his quotes, if they are accurate and in context, do sound pretty unsavory. I still think that the nature of Hollywood movies is to be inaccurate and irresponsible and am keeping my expectations and view of their importance correspondingly low.

UPDATE: This article and others quote the following exchange:

Asked by Bill O'Reilly in January if his movie might upset "any Jewish people," Mr. Gibson responded: "It may. It's not meant to. I think it's meant to just tell the truth. . . . Anybody who transgresses has to look at their own part or look at their own culpability."

As it stands, this quote makes Gibson sound as if he could be saying that the Jewish people were culpable for the death of Jesus and they need to face up to it. If so, this is scuzzy. But note those suspicious ellipses. What's been deleted from the quote and how might it change the sense? Does anyone know where the quotation came from and how it read in full? What did Mel actually say?

Also, Cal Thomas saw the rough cut of the film and liked it a lot. And - an interesting aside - it seems that it contains a "unique portrayal of the resurrection."

UPDATE: I found the full transcript [sorry, not full, but without the ellipses] of O'Reilly's interview of Gibson here The full exchange was as follows (material omitted in the ellipses above is italicized):

O'REILLY: Is it going to upset any Jewish people?

GIBSON: It may. It's not meant to.

I think it's meant to just tell the truth. I want to be as truthful as possible. But, when you look at the reasons behind why Christ came, why he was crucified, he died for all mankind and he suffered for all mankind, so that, really, anybody who transgresses has to look at their own part or look at their own culpability.

As I suspected, Gibson was saying that according to Christian theology Jesus suffered and died for everyone and so therefore everyone is responsible in some sense for his death and needs to look at their own failings as a result. Even if you find this theological notion distasteful, it's right there in the center of Christianity and it was fair game for Mel to use it. By deleting the italicized material, those who have used the quotation have left the reader with the impression that Gibson was talking in particular about Jews and thus making an anti-Semitic remark. He wasn't doing either. This is another case of "Dowdification." I don't know who doctored the quote in the first place, but it took me about five minutes of research to find the full version. The abbreviated version appeared in the New York Times (above), the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald and the International Herald Tribune. Who knows where it's going to spread from there? Are these major newspapers really all so sloppy that no one in any of them bothered to check the original quotation? I think Frank Rich and quite a few other people owe Mel Gibson an apology.

Which is not to say that my view of Hollywood movies, including this one, has changed any. Unfortunately, the press frequently does no better.

UPDATE: Note also that O'Reilly's question is a follow-up to this immediately preceding exchange, which further nuances what Mel said above: he was talking about people in general, not just Jews. Read the whole transcript!

O'REILLY: Is it going to upset some people to see the person they believe is God brutalized in this manner?

GIBSON: Well, I think anybody that is in the know about Jesus as God and they believe in that realize that he was brutalized and that I'm exploring it this way, I think, to show the extent of the sacrifice willingly taken. I think it's going to be hard to take, but I don't necessarily know that people are going to be upset by it.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers. For more information about this blog, have a look at the "About PaleoJudaica.com" link to the right. If you are interested in ancient history, please do visit again.

UPDATE (6 August): Protocols notes that Bill O'Reilly trashes Rich's essay without even noticing the dowdified quote from his own interview! Also, I should point out that O'Reilly misspells Barbara Theiring's name. Her theories are very idiosyncratic and are not accepted by any other Dead Sea Scrolls scholar I know (and there aren't many I don't know), but if you want to find out about them you'll have to enter the correct spelling of her name in his search link. These media guys are careless.

UPDATE (6 August): In his blog Along the Tracks, Paul A. Miller pointed out Rich's misuse of the Gibson quotation a day before I did.

REMINDER TO ANYONE WHO HAS RECENTLY COMPLETED A HIGHER DEGREE IN SOMETHING TO DO WITH ANCIENT JUDAISM: I am willing to post abstracts of recently completed (fully completed, accepted, and passed, not just submitted) doctoral or master's-level dissertations. If you've finished one, please send me (by e-mail to the address above) an abstract and, if you have it, a link to any additional information on the Web. If you have ordering information (e.g., a UMI order number), give me that as well. If I think it's relevant to this blog's focus, I'll post it here. Feel free to pass this information on to anyone you know who might be interested.

DESPITE JORDAN'S RICH BIBLICAL HISTORY, its foreign tourism has dropped enormously in recent years.

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ENOCH SEMINAR (VENICE) WILL BE PUBLISHED UNABRIDGED ON THE WEB. This according to an e-mail from Seminar organizer Professor Gabriele Boccaccini. Excellent!

WAS JESUS MARRIED TO MARY MAGDALENE? The bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, has been getting some press lately for having this as part of the plot line. It does play off a real mystery in the Jesus tradition: Jewish men normally got married. It was considered a duty by the rabbis and celibacy (apart from temporary periods of celibacy by priests when they served in the Temple) was quite unusual. Philo, Josephus, and Pliny tell us that at least one faction of the Essenes were celibate men. (If the Dead Sea Scrolls were collected by Essenes, as I think they probably were, it is interesting to note that none of the texts ever refer explicitly to celibacy. It is possible to take the Community Rule as the constitution of a celibate group living at Qumran, although I don't find this interpretation persuasive myself. And one passage in the Damascus Document (CD VII.4b-7) could be read as referring to a celibate group, but it need not. The archaeology of the site of Qumran seems to be fairly consistent with the possibility of a quasi-monastic group living there, but it isn't by any means necessary to interpret it that way.) And Philo also tells about a celibate Jewish community (male and female) in Egypt called the Therapeutae.

So Jesus' marital status is a mystery. We would expect, a priori, that he would have been married, but the tradition tells us nothing about his wife, if he had one, and I can think of no good reason the Gospel writers would have wanted to hide the fact if he was married. But it would have been unusual, although not unprecedented for a Jewish man of that period to be celibate. Like the Essenes, he may have renounced marriage for the sake of his ministry. Most people assume that this is the case.

Judging by its sales records, The Da Vinci Code is probably a good read, although I doubt I'll get around to it myself. I have too many science fiction novels heaped up at home crying for attention. But I wish the author weren't so confident that it is actually true that Jesus was married to Mary. You can read the arguments for this in the linked review. I'm not impressed by them. If Jesus was married, I suppose Mary Magdelene is a possible candidate for his wife. But nothing in the traditions we have says anything about his being married, even though his family is mentioned a number of times. Like so much about Jesus, we just don't know.

I'm not an expert on the area of women in the Gospels, and these are just my extemporaneous musings. (Come to think of it, most of what I say here is extemporaneous musing. I blog, you decide.) If you want to read the latest serious scholarship on Mary Magdelene and other women in the Gospels, see Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels by my colleague Professor Richard Bauckham.

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.