UPDATE ON CLAIRE SMITH'S STATEMENT on behalf of the World Archaeological Congress (which you can find at greater length here): Dr. Uzi Dahari, Deputy Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, has replied on the ANE list (heads-up, Carla Sulzbach). The RTF format garbled the reply in the list's archive, but with his kind permission I reproduce it here ungarbled.

January 13, 2004

Dr. Clair Smith
President, World Archaeological Congress
Department of Archaeology
Flinders University
Adelaide, South Australia

Dear Dr. Smith,

Subject: The WAC Accusation of Israeli Destruction of
Archaeological Sites

I have read your e-mail media release dated 7 January 2004 addressed to the world archaeological community at the conclusion of the Fifth Archaeological Conference held in June, 2003, at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in which Israel stands accused of destroying archaeological sites. I refer, as well; to the accusations at the Congress by Dr. Najat el-Hafi that appear to have influenced the Congress� decision concerning Israel�s �destruction� of Palestinian antiquities, an unacceptable one-sided judgment not worthy of the WAC.

As to the matter itself: The concept of separate Israeli (Jewish) and Palestinian (Muslim) archaeological cultural heritage is an unknown concept to me as an Israeli archaeologist. The cultural heritage of the Land of the Bible is common to all past and present groups, religions, nations, and tribes in the area, or to those that look upon this land as being holy to three monotheistic religions. From the aspect of cultural heritage, Tel Shechem (Nablus) and Tel el-Jib (both within Palestinian Authority), and Tel Megiddo or Tel Beersheba (both within the bounds of the State of Israel) are of equal importance to me as an Israeli, and I believe to Dr. Najat as well. By the same token, the Ottoman palace of Mohammed Bek Abdul-Hadi in Nablus is as important a cultural heritage site to both Israelis and Palestinians. Cultural heritage should not be confused with territorial conflicts.

Concerning Israeli observance of the 1954 Hague Convention, I would like to remind you and the entire archaeological community, that the only country in the world which returned antiquities to a neighboring country, as required by the Convention, is Israel. In 1994 Israel returned to Egypt all of the antiquities from Israeli salvage excavations in the Sinai Peninsula, up to the last pottery shard! It was my honor to head that project. The antiquities were returned in excellent condition and meticulous order accompanied by scientific reports and the required drawings. This was not only because we are signatories to the Hague convention, but also due to the fact that we respect the cultural heritage of the Sinai and recognize that the proper place for those antiquities is in Sinai.

In your media release you claimed that, between the years 1967 to 1973, the Israel Antiquities Authority excavated in Nablus and other West Bank sites. This is patently untrue! The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is charged with the enforcement of the Israeli Law of Antiquities, which is applicable in only areas where Israeli law is in force. The IAA only determines archaeological policy, and issues excavation licenses within the borders of Israel. Israel has not applied its own laws to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The existing laws in those areas are the Jordanian law (in the West Bank) and the Egyptian law (in the Gaza Strip). Therefore, until the transfer of responsibility in Nablus to the Palestinian Authority, the person responsible for enforcing Jordanian law was the Archaeological Staff Officer appointed by the Civil Administration. That body�an arm of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)�is legally responsible for the civilian matters in those territories. The Archaeological Staff Officer is not subordinate to nor a part of the IAA. Over the years, the Archaeological Staff Office did indeed conduct many salvage excavations in Nablus and its surroundings due to its flourishing growth. These excavations are of significant scientific value, having uncovered, inter alia, the Hellenistic city on Mount Gerizim (overlooking Nablus on the south), and the rich heritage of Nablus of the Roman period (Neapolis), as well as the Byzantine and early Islamic periods. The full scientific publication (now in preparation) of these excavations will shed new light on the cultural heritage of Nablus�for Israelis and Palestinians alike and for all those in the world who value science.

On some Arguments Raised in Najat�s Lecture:

Israeli archaeology is not conducted on behalf of any ideology, nor does it explicitly serve the heritage of the Jewish people on its land. It is pure science for the purpose of studying the past through its archaeological finds. No one can claim that prehistoric excavations by Israelis are meant to serve the Jewish heritage. No one can claim that the Staff Archaeological Officer excavations in Nablus that uncovered the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic city aimed to search for Jewish roots in that city. No Israeli scholar that studied the Samaritan burials and synagogues in the Nablus area claims that these belong to the Jewish nation and religion. It is patently clear to us that these are Samaritan items. No one can claim that the hundreds of Byzantine churches and monasteries uncovered in Israel and in the PA areas in the past fifty years serve the claims of the Jewish people to the land. Science is science is science, and heritage is heritage is heritage; they belong to all.

Israeli archaeology is not a means to �underline Jewish historical continuity� in Israel, as Dr. Najat contended. I would be surprised to see one scientific paper published by an Israeli with such a claim. I will be happy to refer Dr. Najat to the latest publications by Professor Israel Finkelstein, a respected archaeologist of the Biblical period in Israel, who advocates a significant reduction of the size of the Judean Kingdom. At the same time, I will be happy to refer him to the major archaeological project directed by the late Professor Benjamin Mazar south of the Haram el-Sherif in Jerusalem, where grand palaces built by Umayyad (Muslim) rulers were uncovered. There is no indication of these palaces before their excavation. They did not appear in any written historical source, until the Israeli excavations discovered them.

I will be happy to refer Dr. Najat to the accepted archaeological terminology in Israel when it was decided to label the periods Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid periods with the term �Early Islamic Period� and not with the term used in the rest of the world, �Early Arab Period�, because Israeli scholars are well aware that an Arab element existed in the Levant, west of the Jordan since Hellenistic times.

If Dr. Najat had read recent publications by Israeli archaeologists (published also in English) instead of reciting groundless slogans, he would find hundreds of published excavations with strata from Islamic periods, with excavations proving that the pinnacle of church and monastery construction in Israel took place during the Umayyad period under Islamic rule. The IAA is working to change the Law of Antiquities so that the legal definition of �antiquities� will include objects and sites dating from earlier than 1840, and not as in the law today (in effect since the British Mandate), which fixes the date at 1700. The change in this law will give us better tools for preserving sites and finds from the Ottoman period, in which it is universally accepted that the majority of the populations were Palestinians.

Is this what Dr. Najat refers to as archaeology serving Israel�s ideology?

The purpose of archaeology is to uncover history. Differing interpretation of archaeological sites should not be based upon the researcher�s origins, whether they are Israeli, Palestinian, Australian or others. It may be that the nascent Palestinian archaeology is still somewhat na�ve (and this is natural). Israeli archaeology is more mature.

I agree fully with every word in the concluding paragraph of Dr. Najat�s abstract, with the addition of the underlined words: �The violent events of the last two years in the Palestinian Territories and in the State of Israel, have not only caused irreversible damages to many archaeological and historical sites of intrinsic value, but also shattered hopes for a better definition of the present and the future of the cultural heritage of the Holy Land.�

In Summary:

The World Archaeological Congress will do well to concentrate on archaeology as a science, and on preserving archaeological and cultural heritage sites. It will also be appreciated were the WAC to sound the alarm for endangered archaeological sites due to armed conflict. But, taking a political position, or providing a stage for only one political position in a conflict, thereby transforming the science of archaeology into a platform for political polemics, is unacceptable. It is clear to every sensible person that �truth� is subjective�each side has its own version. A common cultural heritage of the sons of Abraham�Jews and Arabs�each with divided opinions on the fate of this country, can serve as a lever for fostering peace. A condition for this is that neither side �take possession� of archaeology for its own objectives.

Sincerely,
Dr. Uzi Dahari

Deputy Director
Israel Antiquities Authority

"WAREHOUSING" ISRAEL'S ANTIQUITIES:

Israel Warehouse Holds Mankind's History (The Guardian)

Monday January 19, 2004 10:46 AM

By STEVE WEIZMAN

Associated Press Writer

[...]

The warehouse is the new home of Israel's National Antiquities Collections, housing close to 1 million artifacts unearthed in excavations in Israel since its founding in 1948.

The Beit Shemesh warehouse was unveiled Sunday. Previously, excavated items were stored in a cramped old building in Jerusalem, said a curator, Galit Litani.

[...]

The Beit Shemesh facility only holds artifacts excavated since 1948. Items dug up under pre-state British or Ottoman rule or in the West Bank or Gaza Strip before Israel captured those territories from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 Mideast War are kept in various museums and international archaeological institutes in Jerusalem and abroad.

The building is an archive, not a museum, and the boxes of history lining the aisles will not be on view to the general public, Litani said, but scholars and museum staff will be able to borrow items for research or display.

In addition to the nearly 1 million objects held at Beit Shemesh, a similar number are currently out on loan. Litani said the goal was to have as much of the collection as possible on public display.

[...]

DEAD SEA DISCOVERIES has a new issue (10.3) online. The table of contents:

The Date of the Psalms Scroll from the Cave of Letters (5/6HEVPS) Reconsidered
319
Walter C. Bouzard Jr

4Q Pesher Hoseab: Reconstruction of Fragments 4, 5, 18, and 24
338
Gregory L. Doudna

Mastema's Attempt on Moses' Life in the "Pseudo-Jubilees" Text from Masada
359
Esther Eshel

A Qumranic Parallel to 1Thess 4:4? Reading and Interpretation of 4Q416 2 II 21
365
Menahem Kister

The Book of Jubilees and its Calendar - A Reexamination
371
Liora Ravid

The Punishment of the Wicked Priest and the Death of Judas
395
Rick Van De Water

Book Reviews
420

Requires paid personal or institutional subscription to access.

ROCHELLE ALTMAN, co-coordinator of the Ioudaios-L discussion list, argues that artifacts found near Newark, Ohio, in 1860 are neither proof of Israelites in Pre-Columbian America or modern forgeries: they're medieval relics from Europe, stolen from a murdered European settler in America. Most of the essay deals with paleographic matters I'm not an expert on, and I've only read it over once pretty quickly. I will say that I'm very skeptical about the the Tetrateuch being transcribed as early as the 10th century B.C.E. and about the efforts to use these relics to illuminate the biblical period. But you can read the piece on the Bible and Interpretation News website and decide for yourself:

�First, �recognize that it's a penny�: Report on the "Newark" Ritual Artifacts

She sums up her arguments here:

�� The Newark Ritual artifacts date to the Late Medieval period, as is made clear from stylistic features on the bas-relief sculpture on one of the artifacts and the Late Medieval Hebrew base-script used for the consolidated grid font that appears in the inscriptions on two of the artifacts. The artifacts are authentic, if not what they were thought to be in the 19th century, and, unfortunately, even today.60

��� Claims of modern forgery based on the "peculiar" script, or "spelling" errors (of which there is precisely one after 1500 years or more of copying the text),61 or the pose of the figure on the bas-relief are equally erroneous and have no basis in actuality. The fact that black limestone with crinoid stems can be found in Ohio also has been claimed as evidence that the artifacts are forgeries. Black limestone containing crinoid stems, however, is available throughout the world. The material may be found, for example, in Belgium, England, France, Hungary and Spain. It may also be found in Idaho and the Dakotas as well as in Mercer and Muskingum Counties Ohio.62 The artifacts pass all visual forensic analysis tests. They also pass the materials examination as far as the availability of the material at the probable site(s) of manufacture. That black limestone can also be found in Ohio is irrelevant.

��� Archaeology as a soundly based field only came into being in the 1880's. That in the 1860's claims that the artifacts were forgeries, although the evidence at the site and expert opinion was against this, can be excused. Claims today that these artifacts are forgeries and not "old" enough for where they were found are unacceptable; such claims ignore both basic archaeological standards and the evidence. We can never know whether the artifacts were deposited during the "pirate treasure hunt" phase or sometime shortly after 1832 when the workmen removed 144,000 cartloads of stones from all the stacks at the site. There is, though, little doubt: this set of ritual artifacts was deposited at the two sites during the early part of the nineteenth century. As Dr. Fischel pointed out in 1861, these artifacts are medieval and European and had been stolen from a European settler.

��� The "Newark" Ritual artifacts are neither forgeries nor relics of �Ancient America.� They are, however, very important concrete evidence of Ancient and Medieval Israelite practices. The ancient graphs included in the consolidated script on these phylacteries are also our first small pieces of concrete evidence that a factual basis underlies Exodus 32:15. The shape of the tablet held by Moses as well as the condensed "decalogue" inscribed on the hand phylactery is concrete evidence of the types of authoritative and theological disputes that divided the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. In addition, these artifacts also give us some hints as to the continuation of Jewish traditions among the peoples displaced after the Northern Kingdom was destroyed. This particular penny is far too important to leave in the obscurity of a wrangle between two extremist sides, both of whom ignore the evidence.

��� If an American penny finds its way onto the Acropolis in Athens or the Colosseum in Rome, we dismiss the question of how it got there as too obvious to be worth asking. This set of late-medieval ritual artifacts found their way to these sites in the United States because they were brought there, as so many family heirlooms were, by a settler from Europe searching for a new home in the new world.

UPDATE (23 January): I have reposted the quotation, since it has been re-edited.

AN EARTHQUAKE in the Old City of Jerusalem could be devastating.

The Bible tells of earthquakes splitting open the hills of this holy city with apocalyptic fury, adding to the mayhem of battles and punctuating Jesus' crucifixion.

Now, a geological survey says the heart of biblical narrative - Jerusalem's walled Old City - would be among the worst hit parts of the city in the event of another earthquake because it rests on layers of debris, not solid rock.

A natural disaster in the Old City could also bring devastating political aftershocks because it is the fiery heart of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

The three-year study, conducted by the Geological Survey of Israel and released this week, found that the Old City is more at risk than modern neighborhoods because of its ancient construction and the underground layers of shifting debris left behind by ransacking armies, said Amos Bein, the center's director.

"The layer below is not made of solid rock, but rather a kind of rubble," Bein said. Those weak foundations could magnify an earthquake's seismic wave, he said.

[...]

Most at risk, the report says, is the Old City and the 11-acre (4.4-hectare) elevated plaza housing two major mosques, including the gold-capped Dome of the Rock.

[...]

"IT IS AS IT WAS." That's the quote from the Pope on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and it appears he really said it. He also said it was incredibile. Frank Rich has tracked down the source. Not that he approves.

That a movie star would fan these culture wars for dollars is perhaps no surprise, but it demeans the pope to be drafted into that scheme. It also seems preposterous � so much so that I wondered whether the reports of the gravely ill John Paul's thumbs up for "The Passion" were true. A week after the stories first appeared, the highly respected Catholic News Service also raised that question, quoting "a senior Vatican official close to the pope" as saying that after seeing the movie, the pope "made no comment. The Holy Father does not comment, does not give judgments on art."

I sought clarification from the Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls. His secretary, Rosangela Mancusi, responded by e-mail that "this office does not usually comment on the private activities of the Holy Father" and would neither confirm nor deny the pope's feelings about "The Passion." But she suggested that I contact "the two persons who brought the film to the Holy Father and gathered his comments" � Steve McEveety, Mr. Gibson's producer, and Jan Michelini, the movie's assistant director.

Mr. McEveety declined to speak with me from Hollywood, but last week I tracked down Mr. Michelini, an Italian who lives in Rome, by phone in Bombay, where he is working on another film. As he tells it, Mr. McEveety visited Rome in early December, eager "to show the movie to the pope." Mr. Michelini, it turned out, had an in with the Vatican. "Everyone thinks it's a complex story, the pope, the Vatican and all," Mr. Michelini says. "It's a very easy story. I called the pope's secretary. He said he had read about the movie, read about the controversy. He said, `I'm curious, and I'm sure the pope is curious too.' "

A video of "The Passion" was handed over to that secretary � Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, whom Vatican watchers now describe as second in power only to the pope � on Friday, Dec. 5. "McEveety calls me like crazy, 20 times that weekend, saying, `I want to know what the pope thinks,' " Mr. Michelini continues. On Monday, the archbishop convened a meeting with Mr. McEveety and Mr. Michelini in the pope's apartment. There, Mr. Michelini says, the archbishop quoted the pope not only as saying "it is as it was" but also as calling the movie "incredibile." Mr. Michelini was repeating the archbishop's Italian and said that "incredibile" translates as "amazing," though Cassell's dictionary defines the word as "incredible, inconceivable, unbelievable." But why quarrel over semantics? Followed by an exclamation point, it will look fabulous in an ad, perhaps next to a quote from Michael Medved, the conservative pundit and film critic who has been vying with Ms. Noonan to be the movie's No. 1 publicist.

ARAMAIC (?) PUZZLE:

Someone has e-mailed me requesting help with a puzzle from the annual MIT Mystery Hunt, which is taking place right now. "The Lame Puzzle" is about an inscription that evidently is supposed to be in Aramaic. The puzzle reads:

"Here may be found the last words..." He reads the inscription on
the wall. "Oh forget it," says Randall. "More pointless garbage singing the praises of our ex-employer. It sticks in my throat, it does."

The inscription can be found here. I've already made some suggestions to my correspondent, but I won't repeat them here. If you have any ideas about what to make of the inscription and the clue, please e-mail me with them and I will pass them on. The objective of the competition is, by solving numerous puzzles, to find a coin hidden somewhere on the MIT campus. The only prize is the right to organize the hunt next year. Once this year's hunt is over, I'll post the solution.

THERES A NEW BOOK ON CAIAPHAS coming out soon, by British New Testament scholar Dr. Helen K. Bond, who has already published a book on Pontius Pilate. (Heads up, Mark Goodacre.) Helen's specialty is New Testament but, as you can see, her work is also much involved with ancient Judaism. She's currently working on "Josephus and the women of the Herodian Dynasty, particularly Herod�s sister Salome" (see her web page).

TEMPLE ARTIFACTS IN THE VATICAN?

That's what the following story, which is all over the news sites, suggests:

Pope Meets With Israel's Chief Rabbis (The Guardian)

Friday January 16, 2004 7:46 PM

By VICTOR L. SIMPSON

Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pursuing his goal of reconciliation among religions, Pope John Paul II received Israel's chief rabbis Friday and assured them of his commitment to Catholic-Jewish cooperation.

[...]

For their part, rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar said they asked the pope to keep speaking out against anti-Semitism, to intercede in favor of Israeli prisoners taken by the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon, and to dedicate a day on the Catholic calendar to study and reflect on the Jewish faith.

[...]

Before leaving Israel, the rabbis said they would ask to search Vatican storerooms for artifacts, such as the huge golden menorah that stood in the temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. But Metzger said Friday they didn't mention the menorah.

``We left it to his discretion to find an object that would be important to us,'' Metzger said. ``We don't know if it (the menorah) exists, but if it does and they decide to give it to us, there will be no greater joy for us.''

They were shown manuscripts written by the 12th-century Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides and asked that they be lent to Israel.

When the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70 A.D., they took huge amounts of booty home. Legend has it that religious articles from the Temple, including the menorah, were among them.

[...]

The notion that the Vatican has artifacts from the Jerusalem Temple strikes me as pretty unlikely, though perhaps not entirely impossible. One would have to assume that the Roman government managed to hold on to them through all its upheavals in the early centuries C.E. and then somehow they got transferred to the Church after Constantine. Given that the idea of the Vatican hiding all sorts of ancient relics is a major theme of fiction and rumor, I'd have to see some pretty striking evidence (say, the actual menorah) to believe this one.

AND HERE IS THE WEBSITE OF THE OPEN TEXT PROJECT:

The OpenText.org project is a web-based initiative to provide annotated Greek texts and tools for their analysis. The project aims both to serve, and to collaborate with, the scholarly community. Texts are annotated with various levels of linguistic information, such as text-critical, grammatical, semantic and discourse features. Beginning with the New Testament, the project aims to construct a representative corpus of Hellenistic Greek to facilitate linguistic and literary research of these important documents. These annotated texts will be made freely available to the scholarly community on the understanding that they will in return contribute any additions or alterations made to them. Further, it is anticipated that scholars will be involved in the text annotation process and in the use and development of analytical tools.

There's not much more there: the project still seems to be in its infancy. But if you're interested in getting involved, I'm sure they would be happy to hear from you. I heard about it some time ago from Professor Stanley Porter at McMaster Divinity College, who is one of the organizers.

As you may have guessed, I'm writing a chapter section today on computer resources for analyzing Hellenistic Greek texts.

HERE'S THE WEB PAGE OF THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR SEPTUAGINT AND COGNATE STUDIES. It includes information on their projects (including the New English Translation of the Septuagint � "NETS"); a call for papers for the July 2004 meeting in Leiden; the table of contents for every issue of the Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studes, going back to 1968; information on becoming a member of the IOSCS; and (under "Useful Resources on the Internet") links to the online CATSS databases with the parallel aligned text of the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, the complete morphologically-tagged text of the Septuagint, and an under-construction corpus of Septuagint variant readings. And more. Highly recommended!

MORE ON THE MEGASITE CONCEPT: Mark Goodacre continues the discussion.

UPDATE (17 January): And Torrey Seland offers final(?) comments.

"QUMRAN-SCIENCE BY TOPIC." This is a web page by Dr. Jan Gunneweg of the Hebrew University which deals with aspects of archaeology and materials science in relation to Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Much of it is still under construction but what's there looks interesting. I'm especially looking forward to the Qumran Gossip page. (Via Bible and Interpretation News.)

ARAMAIC POP MUSIC: The Boston Globe reports on Australian singer Lisa Gerrard's newest album. Excerpt:

Gerrard's voice is otherworldly, and she often sings in unfamiliar languages -- some indigenous, some antiquated, some invented. In the mid-1990s, the writer/director Michael Mann asked her to write music for the film "Heat," and against all odds the uncompromising Gerrard has become a sought-after soundtrack composer, working on "The Insider," "Ali," and "Whale Rider,"among others, and receiving an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for her score to "Gladiator."

Gerrard's new album, written and performed with the Irish classical composer Patrick Cassidy, comes out Tuesday. "Immortal Memory" grew out of "the desire to bring things from the ancient world into the contemporary world," Gerrard says on the phone from a London hotel."We've got a 6,000-year-old poem on the album, and it still resonates with the same compassion and beauty."

Gerrard spent long hours learning the phonetics of Gaelic -- in which she sings the first words, according to legend, uttered by a mortal in Ireland -- and Aramaic, so that she might perform the Lord's Prayer in the language Jesus spoke. It wasn't until they had finished recording that she and Cassidy realized that the album was a cohesive, thematic whole.

SOME GOOD NEWS ON THE IRAQI ANTIQUTIES FRONT (via Francis Deblauwe's 2003 Iraq War & Archaeology website):

Archeological site protection discussed in Al-Hilla (Coalition Provisional Authority Press Release January 6, 2004)

Al Hilla, Iraq. On Monday, January 6, archaeologists, representatives from the Ministry of Culture, and Coalition Partners gathered in Al Hilla for an Archaeology Summit. They discussed the Archaeological Sites Protection Project (ASP Project), which holds responsibility for helping to safeguard more than 7,000 identified archaeological sites in Iraq.

[...]

The ASP Project intends to organize all the archaeological sites, so that each site is guarded by multiple guards who have radio communications with a nearby police department. The ASP Project will first be implemented in Dhi Qar Province. Once the Dhi Qar province is functioning properly, the plan will be implemented throughout all of Iraq. Italian Cabinnari will assist in training the guards, since they have successfully protected archaeological sites in Italy.

Currently, there are 3,232 sites being watched by 1,272 guards throughout Iraq. The ASP Project changes the status of these guards to members of the Facilities Protection Service (FPS) status. This will allow them to carry weapons and detain suspected looters for up to 12 hours. Additionally, their task will change from defenders of the sites to a strong security force that works closely with the Iraqi Police, alerting the police when looters are discovered at the archaeological sites.

Dr. Mariam U�Mran, from the Babil Archaeological Office, thanked the Coalition for their efforts in providing more than 350 guards to protect 432 archaeological sites in Babil Province. �Babil Province is better off than most provinces. But my desire is that all of Iraq will benefit from this project.�

[...]

Obviously they need many more well trained and well equipped guards and they need them now. I hope that's what results from the ASP Project.

"I AM WHO I AM" ('EHYEH 'ASHER 'EHYEH): Professor Gary Rendsburg (who, incidentally, is cited in my 1994 piece that I just posted) has a new explanation of Exodus 3:13-14, based on an ancient Egyptian myth, in the Forward. Excerpt:

Note how the reader learns only that Ra revealed his name to Isis, but that the reader never learns the name itself. It is simply too dangerous for the author to disclose the name publicly, lest malevolent forces gain control over Ra.

In light of this Egyptian text, we now can understand what the biblical text is all about. The God of Israel also has a secret name but, unlike his Egyptian counterpart, there is no danger in disclosing that name upon a simple request for the information. Given the Egyptian cultural setting of our story, the author imputes to God a mysterious name and presents Moses as seeking to learn the name. But in contrast to the long give-and-take between Isis and Ra, only a portion of which I have quoted and summarized above, the exchange between Moses and God is simple and direct. Moses asks, and God responds.

Moreover, and here is the most crucial point, it is not only Moses who learns the secret name of God, but every reader of the Torah does so as well. Space does not permit me to discuss further the exact nature of the phrase Ehyeh-asher-Ehyeh; all that is important for the present purpose is to understand that this name of God occurs only here in the Bible, and therefore stands as his special name, whether we consider it arcane, mysterious or esoteric.

MEL GIBSON'S THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST will open next month in America on 2,000 screens, which apparently is a lot for an indy film.

NEW (OLD) SBL PRESENTATION ADDED TO LINKS:

I've just had occasion to dig up and re-read a presentation I made at the SBL conference in 1994 in a panel discussion on ancient Hebrew dialectology. I wrote it nine years ago and I want to fiddle with a few details, but basically it has stood up well. Apart from correcting a few typos, I've left it unchanged. I even poached a paragraph for the chapter I'm currently writing. I've added the piece to the bottommost category of the links section, the one with my own work online. And here's a link as well:

Dialectology in Biblical Hebrew: A North Israelite Dialect? Synchronic and Diachronic Considerations

UPDATE ON THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ENOCH SEMINAR:

Gabriele Boccaccini e-mails:

Our intention was to post this material on the web, but the quality of the papers we have received is so high that we decided that they are worth publishing. I am glad to inform you that we have reached an agreement to publish the volume with Eerdmans. It will be a perfect companion to the volume published by Zamorani with the material from the First Enoch Seminar.

Title:

G. Boccaccini (with J.H. Ellens and J. Waddell), ed., Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection

Table of Contents

Introduction

ch.1 - "Daniel and Dream Visions"
Articles by Armin Lange, Matthias Henze, Matthias Albani, Helge Kvanvig, Stefan Beyerle, Patrick Tiller, James Davila, and Charlotte Hempel.
With a Response by John J. Collins.

ch. 2 - "Enoch and Jubilees"
Articles by Lawrence Shiffman, Helge Kvanvig, Hanan Eshel, Martha Himmelfarb, Jacques Van Ruiten, Jeff Anderson, Michael Daise, Annette Reed, Eibert Tigchelaar, Eric Larson, Liliana Rosso-Ubigli, and Henry Rietz.
With a Response by James VanderKam.

ch. 3 - "The Apocalypse of Weeks"
Articles by Klaus Koch, Michael Knibb, Ithamar Gruenwald, Timothy Lim, Andrea Bedenbender, Eibert Tigchelaar, and Matthias Henze.
With a Response by George W.E. Nickelsburg.

ch. 4 - "The Groningen Hypothesis Revisited"
Articles by Charlotte Hempel, Lester Grabbe, Albert Bamgartner, Benjamin Wright, Emile Puech, Torleif Elgvin, Shemaryahu Talmon, Timothy Lim, and Mark Elliot.
With a Response by Florentino Garcia Martinez

ch. 5 - "The Enochic-Essene Hypothesis Revisited"
Articles by David Suter, John Reeves, Corrado Martone, Philip Davies, James Davila, Paolo Sacchi, Torleif Elgvin, Jeff Anderson, Pierluigi Piovanelli, and Claudio Gianotto.
With a Response by Gabriele Boccaccini

Summary and Conclusion

This, of course, is very good news for the Seminar participants, since a print publication is worth more in the academic world than publication online. Still, I'm sure I'm not alone in looking forward to the day when such things can be published online - at much less expense and with a shorter time lag - and be considered as significant a publication as one with a major print publisher. It's too bad that these proceedings won't be online after all, but at least Eerdmans books are quite reasonably priced.

Thanks, Gabriele, for arranging this.

HERE'S A GEE-WIZ! TRAVELOGUE OF PETRA from SunSpot.net, Maryland (evidently originating in the Chicago Tribune - here via Archaeologica News).

TORREY SELAND WROTE:

Etana turns out to be an excellent site for students of Philo and his social world too. But it makes me think about how long it is useful to keep up all these other collections of links like my own site, NTGateway, and others. I know from my own work that it eats my time, and I can't imagine how Mark Goodacre gets time to keep up his great site as a one-man work...
Have we reached the point where we should seriously consider coordinating more of this work, get some sponsors, and establish a team to work on a really megasite for Biblical studies? Viewpoints are welcome....

Mark Goodacre gave his response here.

Torrey replied:

I am glad to hear he will not stop developing his site,- but even without being a prophet, I can foresee that it will be a more and more demanding task as a one-man work.
Hence I also do think it is time to start thinking about the future. I totally agree with Mark, that SBL would be the major organisation to involve in this. Maybe the CARG sessions at the SBL Annual Meeting would be a setting to start some serious discussions on how to develop ways to get further. The relevant material on the Internet is growing so rapidly, that it is hard to imagine what even the next year will bring.

This is certainly a worthwhile conversation to have and to keep having. My thoughts:

By sponsors do you mean someone to give us web space? Probably one or more academic institution could supply that. Or if we want to have separate space, one can get quite a bit very cheaply. I'm not sure what else we would need sponsors for.

I myself have reservations about the team and megasite idea. Personally, I prefer a Darwinian "emergent order" approach in which each of us eventually says, "I'm going to do this particular thing, because I like it and other people like what I do, and drop the other things I've been doing, because I'm tired of them and someone else is doing them better anyway." Over time (and it's very early days yet), the result is likely to be something like that megasite, only distributed in a more efficient and robust way and done by people who've already shown that they really want to do it and they can do it well. Sure, there will be some duplication and redundancy, but some of those is good, and so is some competition. Some of the duplication is useful: there's a lot of readership overlap between, say, Mark Goodacre's sites and mine, but there are also a good many people interested in one area more than the other and it is convenient for them to look at Mark's links rather than mine, or vice versa. In other words, there's a fair amount of niche marketing but with a healthy overlap and I see no need to give any of it up.

True, it would potentially be useful to have a megasite of links to all our manifold sites and blogs etc. But various people, Torrey included, maintain such things. I'm not sure what the benefit would be to adding another.

Torrey, if you're feeling Internet fatigue, perhaps you should consider cutting back to just the stuff you care about the most. We would hate to see any of your sites go, but you have to decide what is worth your time and effort. And as I've said before, if anyone else wants to start up a website or blog, well, by all means go for it! If it's good and fills a niche, others will link to it and it will become part of the picture. My experience is that having more people with an Internet presence helps us all. For example, when Mark Goodacre started his blog, my hits per day went up, not down.

As for Mark's idea of involving the SBL, I would need to hear more about exactly how. It would be fine for us all to get together over beers at the meetings and discuss what we're doing and what we want to do. I suppose we could consider starting a group on Internet matters and biblical studies, although it would have to be clearly differentiated from CARG, which might not be easy. Or, as Torrey suggests, we could see about arranging a CARG session (or sessions) on the subject. But what I wouldn't want to see is a committee trying to disseminate a centrally planned vision of how biblical studies on the Internet should look. There aren't any hierarchical controls over the Internet, which means that people can and will do whatever they want, and I don't think centralization can or should change that.

That's what I think at the moment: it's rather early to contemplate an SBL-sponsored team effort and I'm not at all sure that it will ever be the way to go. As Torrey said, we don't know what will happen even in the next year (and I suspect all our guesses will be wrong), so it would be very difficult and perhaps futile and even counterproductive to try to plan an overall strategy now. But I don't mean to be a wet blanket and I'm perfectly willing to be persuaded otherwise and to get involved if I think it's in my interest.

As for my intentions, PaleoJudaica is still fun and as long as it remains fun I'll keep it going. And I'm hoping to hold another online course in the next year or two, this time blog-based rather than using e-mail.

UPDATE (15 January): Torrey responds here. I can't think of anything more to say right now except that I'll be happy to meet with those interested either at the International SBL meeting in July in Groningen or at the SBL meeting in San Antonio in November, and either beer or wine is fine with me.

ADOLFO ROITMAN, Dead Sea Scrolls curator at the Shrine of the Book (Israel Museum) will be lecturing on ancient Judaism in Billings, Montana.

MORE ON THE ANCHOR FROM THE DEAD SEA in the Scotsman (via Archaeologica News):

Could Dead Sea Anchor Be from Herod's Royal Yacht?

An Israeli archaeologist has discovered what he says is a unique Roman-era wooden anchor on the shores of the Dead Sea, preserved by the water�s high salt and mineral content.

Archaeologist Gideon Hadas said he would like to believe � but has no proof � that the anchor came from a royal yacht of biblical King Herod who ruled Judea at the time of Jesus� birth and had a palace on nearby Mount Masada.

[...]

Hadas said that while there is no record of Herod having a boat, it is recorded that in his old age he would travel from Masada to hot springs on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea for treatments.

�It is unlikely the ailing king travelled all the way around through the harsh desert by donkey,� Hadas said. �He would probably have gone by boat.�

[...]

MORE ON LILITH from Rebecca Lesses. You can still get Lilith amulets in Jerusalem.

MORE ON THE JEWISH MANUSCRIPTS discovered in Iraq last May: The Iraqi Jewish Archive Preservation Report is now available on the website of the Middle East Librarians Association Committee on Iraqi Libraries (on the Oriental Institute's Lost Treasures from Iraq website - heads up, Chuck Jones on the IraqCrisis list).

The report opens:

Background

Rare, historic and modern books, documents and parchment scrolls pertaining to the Iraqi Jewish community were found in the flooded basement of the Iraqi Intelligence (Mukhabahrat) headquarters in Baghdad in early May 2003. Upon removal from the basement, the wet materials (known as the Iraqi Jewish Archive) were packed into sacks and transported to a nearby location where they were partially dried. Dr. Harold Rhode, expert in Middle Eastern and Islamic Affairs, Department of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense, provided a general review and initial sorting of the contents during the retrieval process, after which the materials were placed in 27 metal trunks. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) arranged for the materials to be frozen, which served to stabilize the condition and eliminate further mold growth.

At the request of the Coalition Provisional Authority, conservators from the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) traveled to Baghdad June 20-23 to assess the condition of the materials and develop recommendations for their preservation. The following report outlines the preservation action plan and funding requirements for preserving this important collection.

Description of the Iraqi Jewish Archive

The Iraqi Jewish Archive contains 16th-20th century Jewish rare books, correspondence and document files, pamphlets, modern books, audio tape and parchment scrolls. Languages represented in the Archive include Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Arabic and English (a few items).

The following descriptive information, provided by Hebraic and Arabic area study specialists at the Library of Congress, was gleaned from the photographs taken of the frozen materials in the open trunks. Once the materials are dried and have had the mold remediated it will be possible to provide a clearer and more detailed assessment of the contents.

? Hebraic materials. The Hebraica includes an eclectic mix of materials, ranging from holiday and daily prayer books, Bibles and commentaries, sections from a damaged Torah scroll, books on Jewish law, as well as children's Hebrew language and Bible primers. The printed books were published in a variety of places, including Baghdad, Warsaw, Livorno, and Venice, and most are from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rare works include:

? the 'Ketubim' volume of the monumental Third Rabbinic Bible that was published in Venice by Giovanni di Gara in 1568; and

? what appears to be Abraham Brudo's 'Birkat Avraham,' which was published in Venice in 1696.

[...]

There's more on the contents and much more on the steps being taken to conserve the manuscripts. There are also some color photographs.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Fontaine, Carole R.
Smooth Words: Women, Proverbs and Performance in Biblical Wisdom
Reviewed by Christine Roy Yoder

Murphy, Catherine M.
Wealth in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Qumran Community
Reviewed by Eileen Schuller

Otzen, Benedikt
Tobit and Judith
Reviewed by Dan W. Clanton, Jr.

Soggin, J. Alberto
Storia d'Israele: Introduzione alla storia d�Israele e Giuda dalle origini
alla rivolta di Bar Kochb�
Reviewed by James E. West

Trebolle, Julio and Susana Pottecher, eds.
Libros de los salmos: Himnos y lamentaciones
Reviewed by Pablo Torijano Morales

NEW BOOK ALERT:

Kenneth Atkinson, I Cried to the Lord: A Study of the Psalms of Solomon's Historical Background and Social Setting (Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, 84; Leiden, Brill, 2004).

The author e-mails:

Although it is not explicit in the book description, readers of the blog may be especially interested in my use of the PssSol and the Qumran texts to reconstruct the worship practices of the Sadducees at the time of Pompey's conquest as well as Jewish beliefs regarding the messiah in the first century B.C.E.

I've found his earlier work on the Psalms of Solomon very useful and I look forward to reading this as well.

"ARCHAEOLOGY, ARAMAIC, AND MEL GIBSON" appears to be an actual class taught at Loyola Marymount University by Father William Fulco, the Semitist who served as consultant to Gibson's upcoming movie The Passion of the Christ and who translated the dialogue into Aramaic. It's not unusual these days to have courses based on movies (we've had one at St. Mary's on the Bible in film) or, I suppose, even a single movie. But how many courses are based on a movie that hasn't even come out yet? Is that postmodern or what?

The writer of the letter to the Modesto Bee certainly seemed to feel she got something out of the course. It would be cool if Aramaic was actually required, but I suspect it wasn't. I wonder what the enrollments were like. And I hope the class got a special preview of the movie.

BIBLE TIMES TECH is a new exhibition in the SciTech Hands-On Museum in Aurora, Illinois. The Chicago Tribune (requires registration) has a brief article on it. Excerpt:

Based on the research of the late Ken Mull, who was a professor of religion and archeology at Aurora University, the exhibit compares tools and machines used in the Middle East during biblical times with their modern counterparts.

An electric bulb glows beside the two dozen clay oil lamps it would take to equal its light. A reconstructed well from which visitors can haul water is dwarfed next to 50-gallon bottles representing the amount of water the average Fox Valley resident uses each day. A lyre, doumbek and hanging cymbals show children what it was like to make music without a stereo system.

THE DENVER JOURNAL has begun a new online volume (no. 7). Items of interest so far include reviews ofThe Da Vinci Code and of Dunn, James D. G., ed., The Cambridge Companion to St Paul both by Craig L. Blomberg. There also are continously (I think) updated versions of an Annotated Old Testament Bibliography by M. Daniel Carroll R. and Richard S. Hess and a New Testament Exegesis Bibliography by C. L. Blomberg, and William W. Klein.

REBECCA LESSES blogs on Lilith in Jerusalem.

WOODEN ANCHOR FROM ROMAN TIMES FOUND IN THE DEAD SEA (Haaretz via Archaeologica News). The brief article says it may have belonged to Herod's royal yacht, but it doesn't say why they think so. There's also a picture.

UPDATE (12 January): As has been noted by various people, Arutz Sheva has a little more information in its article "Roman Anchor Found In Dead Sea".

ISRAEL ACCUSED OF DESTROYING ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES (Ha'aretz):

Historic sites destroyed in territories

Israel is systematically destroying historic sites in the territories, Claire Smith, president of the World Archaeological Congress (WAC), said in a statement at the weekend. She accused Israel of destroying world heritage sites in Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron, many located on the separation fence route. Israel has admitted demolishing at least one site, an ancient Byzantine monastery in Abu Dis, partly destroyed by IDF bulldozers before Antiquities Authority inspectors arrived. Smith urged world governments to insist Israel observe the Hague treaty protecting cultural assets in armed conflicts. (Amiram Barkat)

I blogged on the original story of the damage to the Byzantine monastery here.

NOW THIS IS INTERESTING: You may recall the story last spring about "the Talmud they didn't find" in Iraq, which I blogged on here and here and here. The Art Newspaper has a report on "Saddam�s secret hoard of Jewish manuscripts" which follows up that story. They didn't find a Talmud but they did find a hoard of manuscripts belonging to and pertaining to the Iraqi Jewish community. Excerpts (but read it all):

In May 2003, military personnel looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and following a lead for a missing valuable Jewish Talmud, searched the headquarters of the Mukhabahrat, the Iraqi secret police, in Baghdad. Instead of bombs, they found a collection of Judaica, including rare 16th-century books printed in Venice. The cache was pulled from the water-filled basement of the Iraqi secret police building and transferred to Washington, DC where it is now being conserved by specialists at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

[...]

In the weeks after the discovery in May, personnel from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) retrieved printed and manuscript materials in Hebrew, Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, and English from the water, under working conditions made precarious by the presence of an unexploded bomb outside the building. Following removal, the objects were packed into sacks, partially dried, placed in metal trunks and frozen.

[...]

The collection includes Hebrew-language materials such as the �Ketubin� volume of the monumental Third Rabbinic Bible, published in Venice by Giovanni di Gara in 1568; and what appears to be Abraham Brudo�s �Birkat Avraham,� published in Venice in 1696. Hebrew prayer books, Bibles, commentaries and books published in Baghdad, Warsaw, Livorno and Venice in the late 19th to early 20th century are also part of the cache. Arabic materials include hand-written and printed items relating to the Iraqi Jewish community, including a 1966 request for names for a board of directors of the Jewish community and 1930s documents.

The article also has two photos of material from the hoard.

UPDATE: Somehow two earlier drafts of this post were posted with it. I've deleted them. Sorry for the confusion.

FROM THE JUNK HISTORY FILE:

If I may quote something I wrote in November:

One of the concepts we ancient historians take for granted, yet have immense difficulty getting across to laypeople, is that there is a large range of "theories" that we or our subspecialties agree to be quite impossible and not worth talking about (because they are obviously grossly flawed methodologically or the evidence put forth for them is obviously wrong or for various other reasons). There are lots of other theories that are somewhere between barely possible and quite likely, and it is this latter category of the possible that we spend so much time arguing about, while we tend to ignore the impossible theories except when, say, a crank manages to get them some media attention, in which case we say that they're impossible and the crank complains about ossified mainstream scholarship which can't appreciate his or her grand breakthrough.

The context was some comments on the "James Ossuary" inscription, which some real scholars still do think may be genuine. But here's an excellent example of a "quite impossible" theory that illustrates my point:

The History and Future of Israelite America -- Author Sets Out to Prove Israelites were Real Native Americans (PrimeZone Media Network press release)

GOODING, Idaho, Jan. 9, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- History teaches students that Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas and Native Americans passed to North America via an ice bridge from Asia. This is all wrong, writes Walter Baucum, who believes the real natives of America are Israelites. In his new book, The History and Future of Israelite America (now available through 1stBooks), he shows readers that America was visited and settled by "lost tribes" of Israel well before American Indians.

"(I) boldly accuse America's historians and archeologists of mysteriously failing or deliberately refusing to teach these truths for centuries and point out how even our own government has bought into the farce that Asians are the 'native' Americans," Baucum says.

The History and Future of Israelite America rejects the idea that Columbus was the first European to reach America and embraces the idea of America's Israelite ancestors, from Abraham all the way to Noah's son, Shem, and Sumerians. Baucum shows "proof upon proof" that the continent was not "found by a few lost and shipwrecked seamen sailing the crosswinds and ocean currents of the world." Instead, it was a deliberate outpost for all the great empires that included trade, settlement and exploitation by countries from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Scandinavia for at least 3,000 years, he explains.

[...]

There's more here. Excerpt:

"Sumerians [were] a worldwide empire, with their influence found in many nations on the earth--the ancient Hebrew-Israelites were descended from Shem, from whom came the Sumerians--founders of early civilization--these Israelites carried on the Sumerian?s cultural and empire-building traditions, down through, and by right of, the Covenant Promise to Abraham, establishing empires and spreading the same culture to all corners of the globe."

"Many of the Phoenicians, Greeks, Libyans, Celtiberians, European Celts, and Scandinavian Norsemen who settled at various times in America were Israelites. That America is not only our land today, but also that we have a prior, more ancient claim to it by our Sumerian forebears, has become overwhelmingly evident by modern research."

"Our people came to this land as rulers, exploiters, and colonizers before Columbus. And they continued to come after Columbus as so-called New World colonists. America is our land by right of the Covenant Promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob [Israel]. This is our past, as mapped out by both Biblical and secular history. It is our destiny as one of the two "Birthright" nations to preserve this ?original? knowledge."

"The aim of all learning should be to arrive at the truth, but once a paradigm has been established and bought into, such as "Columbus discovered America," the students can do little or nothing but agree with what their professors tell them. Thus the error is perpetuated with each successive generation."

"America is Israelite land, as proved by history, archaeology, serology, Amerindian tribal tradition, epigraphy, and, most of all, by inheritance and settlement. That the English-speaking people are Israelites seems evident in light of much research. We are the modern heirs of this land."

This is a weird amalgam of bits of history, theology, politics, and imagination, with an especially heavy dose of the last. The author has no training in the history, archaeology, languages, linguistics, and epigraphy of the numerous cultures he writes about, yet he thinks he can overturn centuries of work by serious scholars in many fields. It's hard to know where to begin: The Sumerians did not have a worldwide empire, Sumerian is unrelated to Hebrew, and both are unrelated to the European languages. None of these are related to the Native American languages. The use of the Bible is uncritical (Shem = Sumerians). As for children being taught that Columbus discovered America, if I recall correctly, I was taught that the first verified Europeans to reach North America were the Vikings, who arrived in the year 1000 and called it Vinland and that Amerigo Vespucci may have gotten there before Columbus too and that, in any case, at least he had some idea of what he'd found. Surely school children today are being taught the same thing. Archaeologists and epigraphers in various fields would have massive objections to this book too. But enough: you get the picture.

MORE ON THE SAMARITANS from the Dallas Baptist Standard. Excerpt:

In early November, Samaritan Benyamim Tsedaka, chancellor to the Samaritans' high priest Shalom Ben Amran, made his annual diplomatic visit to the United States, meeting with government officials, lobbyists and charitable organizations and sharing updates about the Samaritans.

His goal was to garner support for a Samaritan-run international peace center he would like to build on the sacred Mount Gerizim, near Nablus, where many of the remaining 672 Samaritans live.

The Samaritans, who live mainly in Israel and Palestine, have special, close relationships with their neighboring communities. Tsedaka said these friendships are unique in the fiercely divided Middle East.

The Samaritans' friendly relationships with two of the warring nations in the world and their modern-day policy of non-violence after millennia of conflict make them ideal candidates to build a peace center in the Middle East, he said.

ANNOUNCING THE ETANA-ABZU-NEWS E-MAIL LIST:

Announcing a new list

ETANA-Abzu-news

We are pleased to announce the availability of a new mailing list that will serve to inform the public of developments at ETANA: Electronic Tools and Ancient Near Eastern Archives, and of additions to Abzu, ETANA's guide to the ancient Near East on-line. Instructions for adding your address to the list can be found at:

https://listhost.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ETANA-Abzu-news

The ETANA project seeks to serve as a model of how a discipline-specific content site in ancient Near Eastern Studies can be constructed to become the dominant site for that discipline. ETANA will take a leadership role in developing standards specific to this discipline, test altruistic funding models, utilize OpenArchive metadata standards and create discipline-specific harvest engines to work with these metadata. ETANA will create a structure whereby scholarship can be accessible from data capture to finished scholarship on a single site. It will host data capture and access, core texts and born-digital publications in an environment of rights management, appropriate levels of peer review, and archival permanence. ETANA encompasses the primary portal in ancient Near Eastern Studies: Abzu, and the multiple rich image databases being created in the discipline.

Scholarship is enhanced by technological innovations that facilitate communication and expedite the efficient sharing of research and ideas. No less than other disciplines, the study of the ancient Near East promises to be enriched significantly by the development of a singular, far-reaching resource for research that will be widely accessible to professionals and amateurs alike. To that end, ETANA brings together a consortium of universities and academic societies in order to develop and maintain a comprehensive, unified Internet site for the study of the ancient Near East.

ETANA is a cooperative project of:

American Oriental Society | American Schools of Oriental Research | Case Western Reserve University | Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State | Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago | Society of Biblical Literature | Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University | Vanderbilt University | Virginia Polytechnic and State University

Support for ETANA has been provided by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (8/00 to 2/02, 6/01 to 8/02) and the National Science Foundation (Continuing grant IIS-0325579).

Please forward this announcement wherever it may be useful.

-Chuck Jones- for the ETANA team

(Via the Ioudaios-L list.)

"FOUND OBJECTS: What archaeologists can gain from markets, or lose by ignoring them" is an article by Jeremy Lott in Reason online. Lott begins by going over what happened last year to the Baghdad Museum during the war and what has happened to antiquities in Iraq since. His account looks to me to be substantially accurate, although I'm not sure of every detail. (You can see my understanding the situation from this post and this one in June, both of which I still stand by.) More important, he outlines the current situation regarding Iraqi (and other) antiquities and archaeological sites and proposes some solutions:

Yet looted material from museums was only a small part of the overall trade. One of the few forms of ready cash during the years of the debilitating, decade-long sanctions regime against Iraq came from artifact sales. In defiance of the Ba�athist government, which occasionally executed looters, and of U.N. Security Council resolutions, an extensive black market in Iraqi antiquities was in place before the recent scandal. The Iraqi antiquities that ended up for sale on eBay were likely from this earlier period. By 1997, enough antiquities had been seized at the Iraq-Jordan border to have their own exhibit at the National.

Nor are Iraq�s looting problems unique. In the last dozen or so years, museums in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Kuwait have been sacked. Site looting is the order of the day anywhere poor people find themselves sitting on land that is less valuable than what is underneath the soil. In an interview, Hershel Shanks described a conversation with an Italian museum curator to illustrate the point: "I said to him, in certain places in Italy they�ve been looting tombs for three generations. He said, �No. Four.�" For Shanks, the exchange embodies a certain bitter truth: To archaeologists, site looting is more damaging than sacking museums. At least in the case of the latter, the items have been excavated using methods that allow scholars to compare notes. The information can survive the loss or the destruction of the object, but haphazard, undocumented looting deprives future generations of important tools for reconstructing the past.

The modern archaeological establishment has responded to the threat of markets by lobbying governments to disrupt the flow of antiquities across borders, and to crack down on collectors and dealers. They may have occasional legislative successes -- Switzerland recently tightened its notoriously loose antiquities laws, for example -- but the most likely result will be a slight reduction in trade volume, and even that much is uncertain. Historically, governments have not proven to be very good at preservation.

Reducing the flow of illicit goods would do precious little to fix some of the other problems that plague professional archaeology, including a chronic lack of funding for digs, and of the time and money needed to service large collections of artifacts. One of the reasons the details from the National Museum are still so sketchy is that thousands of items were still awaiting documentation. As with many museums, the National had (and continues to have) thousands of items deteriorating in storage in the hope that someone might someday pull them out and catalog them before sticking them back on the shelf. At any given time, Iraq�s premier cultural institution could showcase perhaps 8,000 items from its 170,000-piece collection. Practically, this means that most items will never see the light of archivists� flashbulbs.

Shanks argues that from the point of view of archaeology, collectors can be either "good" or "bad," and that a lot of the collectors� actions depend on what archaeologists choose to do as a profession. That means that both law and the field of archaeology should carve out a place where collectors and potential looters can funnel their energies. There are many possible ways to structure such an arrangement. Shanks, for example, has suggested giving responsibility for major sites to private companies that would ensure the sites� security in exchange for an opportunity to trade in duplicate finds.

Potential looters should be hired and supervised by archaeologists (a perfectly common arrangement in archaeology�s past), who could pay for the digs by getting collectors to sponsor them or by selling many of the items afterwards, after they�ve been studied and cataloged. Emmerich argues, and Shanks concurs, that many duplicate pots and artifacts currently sitting in museum storage should be sold to private collectors, who would be more likely to properly maintain and display them, and who might keep their own property safe in a time of looting.

A less antagonistic arrangement would be ideal for archaeologists, for collectors, and for the nations that are so rich with physical evidence of ancient cultures. Archaeology is more interested in the information that the artifacts provide than in the artifacts themselves. By controlling the excavations and thoroughly documenting finds, archaeologists could get all the necessary information. Collectors could get access to artifacts that interest them, especially duplicate objects that are otherwise sent into eternal storage, without risking forgeries, lawsuits, or public denunciation. Countries of origin could require that a minimum percentage of the antiquities found (including all unique objects) be donated to their museums, which would both enrich their collections and boost their reputations. The possibility of continuous employment -- along with the occasional payout for important finds and no risk of being shot or hanged -- might persuade the locals to go along with an ordered excavation instead of looting.

These proposals are neither new nor untested. Shanks likes to point out that the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and dug out by people we�d now consider looters. Archaeologists responded by buying the scrolls from antiquities dealers, then hiring the Bedouins to help them further excavate the fragments of this ancient library. Many museums in the U.S. and other countries have Iraqi antiquities today because they agreed to finance digs with the understanding that they could keep half the artifacts.

Much of what happens in the next few years will depend on the actions of the archaeological establishment. Right now, an anti-collector, anti-market bias remains pervasive. That may be a majority position, or it could be that, as pro-market archaeology types would have it, a loud minority only makes it sound that way. In either event, the utility of this attitude is far from clear. If used properly, markets could help preserve artifacts, reduce looting, and expand the number of digs. It�s a virtuous circle waiting to happen.

So his solution is to privatize excavations, exchanging the right to profit from the sale of duplicates for privately arranged security of the site. He also wants to hire potential looters to help with excavating. The latter is certainly a good idea, when there happens to be a well funded excavation handy, which is almost universally not the case in Iraq or in many other parts of the world where archaeological looting is rampant. (See now the article "London and Paris markets flooded with looted Iranian antiquities" from the Art Newspaper via Archaeologica News.) The privatization idea is more problematic, and I myself go back and forth about it. The positive side is that it would provide short-term security and funding to a grossly underfunded and unprotected field. The negative side is that these would be bought at the price of losing the future information that could come from the "duplicates" through improved technology and the asking of questions that haven't occured to us yet. (I put "duplicates" in scare quotes because in reality there is no such thing: each piece is unique in some way and as we learn more, we will be better able to extract that precious unique information.) On the one hand, I'm generally wary of sacrificing a long-term future gain for a short-term present one. But on the other, I'm also wary of being high minded to the point of rejecting a lesser evil on principle when the result is to let a far greater evil happen by inaction. We have desperate problems in the present that are doing dreadful damage to future excavations and future study, arguably far more damage than the potential loss of information from selling "duplicates."

I have discussed this problem in earlier posts here and here.

No easy answers on this one.

THE ARTSCROLL BIBLE is trashed in a rambling article by Michael Fox in Ha'aretz. In "Musings / Roll up this scroll" he tells us that the Hebrew Bible is a better literary work than the King James translation, although the latter is still a "literary masterpiece." No such kind word for the Artscroll translation:

In stamping out heresy, the Artscroll in its translations is not above tampering with the text. Contrast with the standard translations its treatment of the Song of Songs, a powerfully erotic set of poems with no apparent religious content. The book was admitted into the canon of the Bible as an allegory and perhaps, one would like to think, for its literary quality.

At any rate Rabbi Akiva called it the holiest of all books and the liturgy of the Hasidim calls for it to be read every Sabbath eve. By means of marginal notes the King James translators present the book as an extended metaphor of the love of Christ for the Church. The line "a bundle of myrrh is my beloved unto me, he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts" is annotated "The Church and Christ congratulate each other," but the translation itself is literal; the translators, though clerics, seldom resort to euphemism in their translations.

Avian abominations

Artscroll, however, is not content to leave to its commentary an allegorical interpretation. Religious correctness has compelled it to ignore the literal meaning of the book entirely. See where Artscroll has placed that bundle of myrrh: "But my Beloved responded with a bundle of myrrh ... the fragrant atonement of erecting a Tabernacle where His Presence would dwell amid the Holy Ark's staves."

Sometimes the demands of orthodoxy make the Artscroll translators give up in despair. Chapter XI of Leviticus contains a list of 20 birds that may not be eaten. The King James Version speaks of eagles, ospreys, vultures, owls, hawks, cuckoos, cormorants and kites. Subsequent versions have altered some of these translations in the light of later scholarship. But Artscroll's house ornithologist must have been on leave when the avian abominations were listed as: "the nesher, the peres, the ozniah; the daah and the ayah according to its kind; every orev according to its kind; the bas hayaanah, the tachmos, the shachaf, and the netz according to its kind; the kos, the shalach, and the yanshuf; the tinshemes, the kaas, and the racham; the chasidah, according to its kind, the duchifas, the anafah according to its kind and the atalef."

Well, thank you for "and" and "the."

I haven't seen the translation myself, but the examples he gives, not all of which are quoted above, don't sound very encouraging.

UPDATE: Reader Dan Rabinowitz e-mails:

I was supremely disappointed at the "trashing" that the artscroll bible got. First of all it has been out for a couple of years now, and to subject it to that minor of a review is rather pathetic. It is not as if the reviewer did not have time?! Further, the Shir HaSHirim critique, Artscroll many years ago, I don't know exactly when published a in a single volume the Shir HaShirim, this current translation just reuses that one, so no big news there.

True, the review could have been more thorough. As I said, I haven't seen the translation.

PHILOLOGOS ON THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT:

Professor Berel Lang writes from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.:

"Perhaps you would give a couple of paragraphs to the misconception (and the mistranslation) of the Sixth Commandment [in Exodus 20:13], 'You shall not murder,' as 'You shall not kill.' The original Hebrew, lo tirtsah., is very clear, since the verb ratsah. means 'murder,' not 'kill.' If the commandment proscribed killing as such, it would position Judaism against capital punishment and make it pacifist even in wartime. These may be defensible or admirable views, but they're certainly not biblical."

[...]

Traditionally, Christian translations of Exodus 20:13 have favored � as does the King James Version in English � "Thou shalt not kill." Martin Luther's German Bible has Du sollst nicht t�ten rather than du sollst nicht m�rdern, the French Louis II Bible has tu ne tueras point and not tu meurtrieras or assassineras point, and so on. This has led Jewish commentators, going back to medieval rabbis like Samuel Ben Meir and Joseph Bekhor-Shor, to accuse Christian translators of distorting the Sixth Commandment so as to make it conform to the Christian principle � honored by Christianity, alas, almost entirely in the breach � of turning the other cheek. Whereas, such polemicists have maintained, pointing to the Christian translation of lo tirtsah., Christianity preaches the impossible goal of loving one's enemies, Judaism realistically teaches, in the words of the rabbinic maxim, that "he who comes to kill you, kill him first."

[...]

In the final analysis, I would agree with Segal's conclusion that "the translation 'Thou shalt not kill' was not the result of simple ignorance on the side of Jerome or the King James' English translators. Rather, it reflects their legitimate determination to [translate] accurately the broader range of meanings of the Hebrew root." This is not to say that "Thou shalt not kill" is the better or more accurate translation. It is simply to say that, first of all, not all languages make an absolutely clear distinction between killing and murdering, and secondly, that, as is often true of translation, one's interpretation depends on prior attitudes. To an opponent of capital punishment, killing a murderer is murder too; to a proponent of abortion, killing a fetus is not. It is not the meaning of the Sixth Commandment that will in most cases determine how we think about such things. It is how we think about them that will determine what we make of the Sixth Commandment.

Concepts in one language often cannot be mapped directly onto the vocabulary of another language and this is a good example. There is no word in ancient Hebrew which corresponds exactly to the English word "murder." As Philologos notes, in Numbers 35, ras.ah. (or ratsach - the root is resh-tsade-het) is used of someone who kills someone accidentally (e.g. v. 11), our "manslaughter," and of the execution of a murderer by the victim's next-of-kin both outside and within a judicial setting (vv. 27, 30). As near as I can tell, ras.ah. means "to kill in cold blood" or "to kill without immediately preceding provocation." Much of the time it applies to murder but it also applies to manslaughter, where it's an accident but still without immediate provocation, and execution or revenge killing, where the provocation is not an immediate threat to the avenger but the earlier unlawful killing of the avenger's relative. In Israelite law, execution and revenge killing were legal and proper. So the best translation in context of the sixth commandment is indeed "you shall not murder," but the exact nuances of the Hebrew word are more complicated and can't be expressed in a single word.

THE TESTAMENT OF ABRAHAM as a bedtime story? Now that's a thought. I'll have to try it.

If you don't have a modern translation handy, here's one online. It appears to be old � I suspect it's from the Ante-Nicene Fathers series but the site doesn't say � and I make no promises about its accuracy. But it should do for bedtime story material.

QUESTIONS FOR PAUL (via Hypotyposeis): On the Corpus Paulinum list Jeffrey Gibson has asked the list:

Imagine if you will (please forgive me, Rod Serling) that

(a) we had the mid 60's CE Paul before us for an hour or two and that

(b) we were able to make ourselves understood by him, and that

(c) he had agreed to answer anything about himself, his career, his
beliefs, and his writings about which we might be inclined to inquire,.

what questions would you put to him?

Let's limit this to your top five.

In another message he clarifies:

OK, once again, I see I have not made the scenario clear enough. What I intended to be part of the "let's imagine" is the premise that we **go back to** Paul's time, and to that point in his time just before Paul met his end. The scenario is not that Paul is brought into ours, let alone that he's been schooled in all that's happened since his time.

I'm not on the Corpus Paulinum list (and I'm not a Paul specialist), but for your amusement, here are the questions I would ask Paul:

1. Have you ever asked Jesus' brother James or his disciples Peter and John to tell you about Jesus and, if so, what did they say?

2. Here are a bunch of letters people claim you wrote. (I brought them with me in my time machine.) Please look them over and tell me which ones you did write and whether the text I have of them presents accurately what you actually said.

3. There's going to be a guy they call "Luke" who will write some stuff about you. Do you know him? Here's his book, which I've also brought in my time machine. What do you think of the parts about you?

4. Do you believe that everybody is "saved" in the end or not?

5. What do you mean by the "wrath of God" in your letter to the Romans? Is this some kind of eternal damnation or is it something else (see previous question)?

Jeffrey doesn't say if we're allowed to bring things in our time machine, but he doesn't say we can't either, so I'm not sure whether I can get away with questions 2 and 3 as written. If he didn't mean we could, they would have to be revised. And they also might take more than an hour or two to discuss!

This exercise reminds me of a midterm question I used to ask my undergraduates back when I taught Introduction to the New Testament at another institution:

Imagine a meeting between a leader of the Q people, the Apostle Paul, and an Essene leader from Qumran in the year C.E. 58. Write your essay from the perspective of the Q person and explain how and where you (the Q person) agree and disagree with the other two leaders on observance of Torah law, proper religious lifestyle, relations with the gentiles (including proselytizing), the correct celebration of the communal meal, and the end of the world.

UPDATE (9 January): Q-heretic Mark Goodacre comments regarding my midterm question:

Nice idea; I'd be interested to hear a conversation between John Kloppenborg, Paul and a Qumran person!

Good one Mark!

If Mark can teach the undergraduates in his Intro to the NT course about the Q theory and why it's wrong, and get them to take it all in, well, my hat's off to him. Me, I'm a Q-agnostic, although I'm happy enough to assume the two-source theory as the current most widely accepted reconstruction when I need to think about such things.

UPDATE (11 March 2014): Just noticed a misstatement ("Paul" for "Peter") and a typo in this one. Now corrected.

WHICH TESTAMENT AGAIN? Reader "Hershel" refers me to this New York Times column by William Safire on Howard Dean's comments on the Book of Job:

As he heads into what H. L. Mencken called the "Bible Belt," the candidate moved to plug an apparent hole in his r�sum� about an interest in religion. After hearing Dean's observation beginning "If you know much about the Bible � which I do," a reporter asked about his favorite New Testament book. Dean named Job, adding, "But I don't like the way it ends . . . in some of the books of the New Testament, the ending of the Book of Job is different . . . there's one book where there's a more optimistic ending, which we believe was tacked on later."

The candidate returned an hour later to confess error: Job was in the Old Testament, not the New. Beyond that slip, his recollection of "one book where there's a more optimistic ending" is muddled; the Book of Job in the Old Testament has an upbeat ending, with God doubling Job's former wealth and giving him new children for having sustained his piety through all his trials.

"Many people believe that the original version of Job is the version where . . . Job ends up completely destitute and ruined," said Dean in his correction. That's accurate, though there's no other Job book in Scripture with an optimistic ending other than the familiar one. I think he means that some scholars believe that the Old Testament Book of Job that we know was amended by later rabbis fearful of portraying God as unjust.

Many people believe," concluded Dean, presumably among them, "that the original ending was about the power of God, and the power of God was almighty and all knowing, and it wasn't necessary that everybody was going to be redeemed."

Let's not be too hard on Dean; we all make mistakes and people like him have to live with their mistakes being trumpeted across the world at the speed of light. And I do give him credit for fessing up promptly and offering an - admittedly incomplete - correction. Safire's further corrections are essentially right, although the final form of the Job was set centuries before there were any rabbis.

Bruce Zuckerman has a very interesting book on the historical development and redaction of the Book of Job: Job the Silent: A Study in Historical Counterpoint. He argues that the poetic dialogues (with the downbeat ending) are a satire of the story in the prose prologue and epilogue (which have the upbeat ending). So he thinks the downbeat version is a theological correction by someone who didn't like the original all-better-now happy ending.

NOW YOU CAN WATCH THE NEWS IN ARAMAIC - at least in Michigan.

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) � Talk about your electronic global village.

TV Orient, a television channel in Southfield that locally produces programming aimed at Arab-American viewers, has been added to Comcast Digital on Channel 667.

Once available three hours a day and only by satellite dish, the 18-year-old channel has expanded its programming to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It is now available to an estimated half-million viewers of Middle Eastern descent in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw and Genesee counties.

[...]

Programming is broadcast in English, Arabic and the ancient language Aramaic. Aramaic still is spoken by Chaldeans who are Iraqi Roman Catholics.

[...]

"EYES ON MESOPOTAMIAN GLORY." The New York Times reports that the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago has opened a new display hall of Mesopotamian artifacts and the University of Pennsylvania has assembled a traveling exhibit about Mesopotamia.

Note that the URL the article gives for the Oriental Institute Iraq Database has an errant space in it, which makes it unusable. The correct URL is http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/Iraqdatabasehome.htm. Note to the New York Times: it's always a good idea to double-check your links to make sure they work!

BRITNEY'S MARRIAGE: BLAME KABBALAH?

REBECCA LESSES is in Israel and has visited the Temple Mount.

THE JOURNAL OF SEMITIC STUDIES also has a new issue out (48.2). There are three articles of interest:

VOWEL QUANTITY AND STRESS IN JEWISH LITERARY ARAMAIC

S.P. Harrison

University of Western Australia

Semiticists recognize that pre-modern Northwest Semitic languages had vowel quantity distinctions, but disagree regarding whether quantity was lexical or was predictable from factors like stress or syllable structure. These discussions fail to recognise that quantity cannot be a function of syllable structure and stress if those parameters are themselves quantity-sensitive. In this paper the author proposes a metrical account of main stress in Jewish Literary Aramaic (JLA) under which stress and vowel reduction are governed by an end-right quantity-sensitive (moraic) trochaic foot. It follows that vowel quantity must be lexically specified in JLA for at least some vowels positions, and also that some JLA final vowels generally regarded as long were in fact short. This last conclusion heralds later developments in other Aramaic dialects. Finally, the author argues for some cases of final CV metathesis in JLA.


THE RELATIVITY OF GEOGRAPHIC TERMS A RE-INVESTIGATION OF THE PROBLEM OF UPPER AND LOWER ARAM

David Talshir

Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel

In different languages, or dialects of the same language spoken in different regions, words originally meaning 'above/upper' as opposed to 'below/lower' serve as terms for different cardinal directions, depending on the topographical character of the region (highland versus lowland). Thus, in the Akkadian of Nuzi el[emacr]nu (literally 'above') indicates 'East', while in the Aramaic of the Mandaeans mulia 'upper' means 'North'. Considering the topography of Egypt and Syria and the broad context in which the terms occur, two conclusions follow: (1) In Egyptian Aramaic 'lyh (literally 'upper') indicates 'South', and th&05B4;tyh (literally 'lower') indicates 'North'. (2) 'ly 'rm = ��&05F4;���� �?��ɜ��� = Southern Syria (Lebanon Mountains), and th&05B4;t 'rm = ɻ��&05F3;ɗ [Sorry, I don't have the right fonts installed to make the Greek and Hebrew work properly.]


DETERMINATION AND THE USE OF THE DEFINITE ARTICLE IN THE SAMARITAN AND IN THE MASORETIC TEXT OF THE TORAH

Stefan Schorch

Bielefeld-Bethel

The work on this study has been made possible by a valuable grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Bonn, Germany. It forms part of a more comprehensive project carried out by the present author, which is devoted to the significance of the Samaritan reading tradition for the textual criticism of the Torah.

The use of the Hebrew article underwent changes throughout the history of Biblical Hebrew. Some of these changes are documented by the differences between the consonantal framework and the Masoretic vocalization. A comparative view of these materials and the respective variants in the Samaritan Pentateuch including its reading tradition provides further insights. With regard to the use of the article, the consonantal framework of the Masoretic text preserves the oldest stratum, while the Masoretic vocalization represents the youngest. The Samaritan tradition, on the other hand, is uniform in both its parts - consonantal framework and reading tradition - and holds a middle position between the two Masoretic strata from a historical point of view. However, both parts of the Masoretic tradition share at least one common feature, which set it as a whole apart from the Samaritan tradition: the generic use of the article.

There are also many book reviews relevant to ancient Judaism, but I haven't time to put in links to them right now. Go have a look yourself. (Note to the editors of JSS: It would be a lot easier to skim the review titles if they were all on the same page, instead of each hidden behind its own link. This would also save bother in composing the web page.)

Requires paid individual or institutional subscription to access the articles and reviews.

REVUE BIBLIQUE has a new issue out (111.1). It contains five articles, all having to do with the Hebrew Bible or ancient Judaism. Note in particular the following:

RB 2004 T.111-1 (pp. 28-30)

Aron PINKER
11519 Monticello Ave.
Silver Spring
MARYLAND
United States
aron_pinker@hotmail.com

The Targum on Hab 2:2


RB 2003 [sic - should be 2004] T.111-1 (pp. 31-60)

Gershon HEPNER
1561 Reeves Street
LOS ANGELES, CA 90035
United States
gwhepner@yahoo.com
The Begettings Of Terah and the Structure of Genesis and the Tetrateuch: A Zadokite Polemic

An analysis of the formula we'eleh t�led�t, "these are the begettings", which appears 11 times in Genesis suggests that the pivotal patriarch in Genesis is Terah, the ancestor not only of Abraham but of all the four matriarchs, since the sixth time the formula appears is in association with his begettings. The formula appears a twelfth time in Num. 3:1 where it denotes the begettings of Aaron and Moses. The fact that the first and last time the formula appears in Genesis links the begettings of the heavens and earth to those of Jacob highlights the importance of the Israelites. However, the fact that there is a twelfth citation of the formula in Num 3:1 implies that the redactor of the Tetrateuch considered that the Aaaronites who follow the Mosaic law facilitate the union of the heavens and earth implied by the first citation of the formula at the beginning of Genesis. Analysis of the use of the formula suggests that the Tetrateuch reflects the ascendancy of the Zadokites after the Babylonian exile and their adoption of Deuteronomic law excluding Canaanites.


RB 2004 T.111-1 (pp. 79-89)

Jerome MURPHY-O'CONNOR, O.P.
�cole Biblique
P.O.B. 19053
J�RUSALEM jmoc@ebaf.edu

Where was the Antonia Fortress?

The hypothesis that the present Haram esh-Sharif/Temple Mount was once the Antonia fortress cannot be sustained. It does not conform to what we know of the Antonia from Josephus, and it does not account for the archaeological remains in the western section of the north wall.

The website only contains the abstracts.

LOS ANGELES TIMES READERS respond to David Klinghoffer's recent article on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

BACK TO WORK! The holidays are over and I'm back in my office. I managed to get some rest; spend some time with my family; build a space ship out of cardboard boxes with my son; blog; nearly finish Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver; and read and make extensive notes on about forty articles, most pertaining to a particular section in Chapter One. The last would feel like more of an accomplishment if I hadn't located, cited in the ones I read, some forty or so other articles I need to track down and read too. But that goes on the back burner for now. Just before the break I'd completed a detailed outline of Chapter Two, so now it's time to finish it. Full speed ahead!

PIGS, ISRAEL, AND JUDAISM: in a long article titled The Secret Life of Pigs" (Jerusalem Post) Lauren Gelfond tells us all about it. Here are a couple of excerpts which discuss pigs and ancient Judaism:

Anti-Semitism comes in many pig forms. One of the most famous and early anti-Jewish pig legends, says Friedman, is found in the Talmud.

"When the Romans seized Jerusalem, it says, the Jews sacrificed an animal every day. As part of an ancient war agreement, the Romans would give the Jews a pure animal every day to be part of this sacrifice. Then one day suddenly the Romans offered a pig. Eretz Israel was shocked, it understood the act was an effort to humiliate. The Talmud is full of [such] pig legends."

All periods of Jewish persecution, from the Roman Era to the Crusades and World War II, he says, are full of stories where pig names or actual pigs were used to humiliate Jews.

"It is fascinating how the pig [as opposed to another non-kosher animal] became a symbol for being anti-Jewish," says Friedman.

As the only mammal to have cloven hoofs without chewing its cud, a midrash argues that this puts the pig in a special category beyond treif, where the pig serves as a metaphor for deception and manipulation, as it sticks its foot out and masquerades as "part kosher" when there is no such concept in Judaism.

[...]

It's a confusing subject, causing many Jews to avoid all things piggy. But when it comes down to Jewish law, not all things pig are actually forbidden, says Rabbi Ya'akov Weiner, dean of the Jerusalem Center for Research, Medicine, and Halacha.

[...]

Indeed, says Weiner, there is nothing strange about using pigs in Jewish medicine.

"The Talmud was even aware of the similarity of pig physiology to humans. In Tractate Ta'anit 21b regarding if there was a plague in the animal world, the fear was that there would be a plague in pigs - not because they might transfer the plague to humans, but because of the similarity of the organs, that whatever attacked the pigs might also attack the humans."

Though there is a biblical prohibition against touching a pig's carcass, Weiner says that it refers only to priests and the Temple: "You [priests] couldn't enter [the Temple] without a mikveh [ritual bath]."

As for modern Jews, he says, it's even okay halachicly to touch a pig's carcass.

Evidently pigs are also used in traditional Jewish magic. The article opens:

Avi Ben-David is a butcher with a secret. Owner of the Ivo Delicatessen in downtown Jerusalem, he knows which former prime minister favors pork, but he won't tell. He also keeps mum the who's who list of VIPs who likewise indulge.

[...]

On a recent breezy afternoon, customers wander in and out of Ivo's Deli, joking around with Ben-David. Since its opening in 1988, the store is thriving, serving all kinds of unexpected clientele, he says. In addition to the regulars: Knesset members, judges, doctors, athletes, journalists, diplomats, and regular folk, he claims some eyebrow-raising requests.

"Sorry, this store is not kosher," he recalls with a wave of his arm, imitating his warning to the haredi man with a black hat and sidecurls, who strolled in with his modestly-clad wife.

But the couple shyly remained, he says - in search of pig bones.

"Their rabbi had told them to make an amulet with pig bones, and if the wife wore it, it would help her have children."

Rabbis do make all kinds of halachic [Jewish legal] exceptions, permitting the use of pig parts in surgery, in some medicines, and on rare occasions in mystic treatments, such as amulets. But more often, religious neighbors pop in to curse Ben-David and his non-kosher wares.

"Still, it's a good thing that pig bones could be found," says Ben-David, twisting his face in disbelief about the wife's atypical prescription. "I wish I knew whatever happened to her, if it worked."