MAGI, WISE MEN, WISE WOMEN?

Three Wise Men might have been women, church rules (The Independent)
By Andrew Clennell

10 February 2004

The three Wise Men might not have been men at all and there might not have been three of them, the Church of England has ruled.

In a new short prayer book, the Church of England has decided to refer to them as "magi", because it says the Bible is "silent" on whether they were men or women.

Last night a spokesman for the Church confirmed the decision of the General Synod in preparing the prayer book, Common Worship. He said the Synod knew there were the three gifts for Jesus of gold, frankincense and myrrh but original scripture did not say whether these were from three or fewer visitors, or from men or women.

[...]

This basically makes sense. The relevant passage is Matthew 2:1-16:

1: Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying,
2: "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him."
3: When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him;
4: and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.
5: They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is written by the prophet:
6: `And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people Israel.'"
7: Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star appeared;
8: and he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him bring me word, that I too may come and worship him."
9: When they had heard the king they went their way; and lo, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was.
10: When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy;
11: and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
12: And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
13: Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him."
14: And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt,
15: and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt have I called my son."
16: Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. (RSV)

In Greek the word translated "wise men" is magoi, a transliterated Persian word with a masculine plural Greek ending, which ending is used either to refer to a group that is entirely male or that has at least one member who is male. The pronouns referring to them are also in the masculine plural. The verbs are in the plural, but they don't have special markers for gender.

In other words, Matthew thought that at least one of the magi was a man, but there's no reason why he couldn't have thought that some of them were women. (I make no assumption that the story is historical, but we can still ask what Matthew might have had in mind.) The reports about what the Synod said seem to miss this point: at least one must have been a man according to the Greek grammar of the passage.

My understanding is that the magi were a Median tribe that became a priestly class for both the Medes and the Persians and that Hellenistic authors like Matthew generally had a vague sense that they were the Persian priests (even though, evidently, there were other kinds of Persian priests as well). So two relevant questions would be, could women be magian priests and would Matthew have thought that women could be magian priests? Are there any Iranologists out there who can enlighten us?

Incidentally, this morning the London Times cluelessly blares on its front page: "There were three, but were they wise � or even men?" As the Independent article above notes, Matthew doesn't say how many magi there were; he just says there were three gifts, and tradition has inferred three magi. Helpful hint to journalists: if you want to write about a biblical passage, it is often useful to find a Bible and read the passage.

UPDATE (12 February): More here.

HOWLER ALERT: This Knight Ridder article on biblical and Nag Hammadi scholar Elaine Pagels contains the following paragraph:

Pagels was a graduate student in the classics and Greek language, history and literature at Stanford in the mid-1960s and early '70s. Now 59, she looks back at being in the right place and time to be afforded a rare opportunity: To study the newly available Nag Hammadi texts. Along with the Dead Sea Scrolls, they are the only existing writings about Jesus's life other than those in the New Testament.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are from around the time of Jesus but they are not "writings about Jesus's life" and they do not mention him. The article should also say that Pagels did her doctoral work on the Nag Hammadi texts at Harvard.

THE HIGH PRIEST OF THE SAMARITANS has passed away. My condolences to the Samaritan community.

STEPHEN C. CARLSON comments on Hershel Shanks's reply to Eric Meyers. He says, inter alia:

Given the huge differences between what Meyer related and what Shanks presented, it is not entirely clear to me that Meyer and Shanks are talking about the same incident. Although both agreed on the details of the International Christian Embassy and possibly the $2M price tag, the year is different and the visitor is different. Meyer did not identify the person who was contacted, so it may not even be the case that Meyer's source was describing a meeting with Hedding at all, which means that Shanks's source, Hedding, may not have been in a position to verify or refute the claim.

I think this is pretty unlikely. For it to be true we would have to assume that either Hedding or an employee forgot and kept no record of the meeting with a Golan representative about which Meyers's source knew, but Hedding remembered and did keep a record of a different but very similar meeting about which Meyers's source didn't know. Got all that? Anything is possible, but this reconstruction is too complicated to be a good working hypothesis.

But we agree that we need more information � as in, all of it � to evaluate what happened. I've commented further here.

UPDATE (10 February): Stephen Carlson replies.

NEW BIBLICAL BLOG ALERT: Mark Goodacre notes Rub�n G�mez's Bible Software Review weblog and also his Bible Software Review website. Looks very useful.

HERE'S A JEWSWEEK PROFILE OF DR. DANIEL MATT, who is currently translating the Zohar into English. Excerpt:

A native of upstate Troy who grew up in Metuchen, N.J., he was first drawn to Judaism's "mystical dimension" by his late father, Hershel, a Conservative rabbi. Matt studied Jewish mysticism at Brandies University, and later, privately with a Kabbalist in Jerusalem. He also was a teaching assistant to Gershom Scholem, the 20th century's most prominent academic expert on Kabbalah.

Pritzker's 1995 offer to underwrite a translation of the Zohar seemed daunting. "The project could take 12 to 15 years," he told her when they met in Chicago. "To which she responded, 'You're not scaring me.'"

To prepare for his next few decades' work, he went to Spain to look at original Zohar manuscripts, and to Safed to walk in the Kabbalists' footsteps.

Now he lives in the Zohar seven-plus hours a day. "It's a constant challenge," he says in a telephone interview. "The Zohar is intentionally cryptic. The Zohar created its own language. There is no Zohar dictionary."

So it's slow, line-by-line work. "I've probably done a month or two of Vayishlach," the Torah portion where Jacob and the angel appear.

A BIT MORE ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT: The Jerusalem Post has a brief article recapping the latest on what appears to be unauthorized construction work and improper care for ancient architecture on the Temple Mount:

Mounting garbage
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

Ancient boulders strewn among heaps of garbage on the Temple Mount along with two tractors and piles of new slabs of stone are seen in a video taken secretly at the Jerusalem holy site.

The video, which was obtained on Monday by The Jerusalem Post, was filmed in parts of the Temple Mount which remain off-limits to Jewish and Christian visitors.


[...]

So how about putting the video online? Or at least some stills from it!

PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST JOE ZIAS, who has been mentioned here frequently, has published a piece on the Bible and Interpretation website which very strongly criticizes two articles in a recent issue of Dead Sea Discoveries:

"Qumran Archaeology: More Grave Errors"

He takes up the archaeology of the cemetery, the analysis of the excavated skeletons and the mysterious zinc coffin (he takes it to be modern), and various reports in the press, and he's not happy with what he finds. Excerpt from his conclusion:

The excavators have presented here a deliberately biased and distorted picture, raising questions about funding, institutional support, media, and the scientific value of the whole excavating process. Perhaps the time has come for those in the profession to show their peers C-14 dates, scientific data, pottery analysis, and other relevant scientific data in order to remove any suspicion of manipulating the data for personal gain. By doing so, there would be less misconduct and those unwilling to produce such data would in and of themselves cause suspicion.

John the Baptist complete with a skull, James the Brother of Jesus, The Teacher of Righteousness, Bedouin women, Bedouin men -- all of which was bandied about and appeared in the media depending on which co-director was addressing the press begs the question: is this archaeology? Entertaining, headline-grabbing, perhaps so, but scientifically questionable, deliberately misleading, irresponsible, and lacking any creditability.[29] Reading the report and the numerous articles in the media raises serious questions of scientific impropriety and misconduct by many, though not all, of those involved in funding and the excavation process itself.

Those Essenes who lived, struggled, and died in Qumran some 2,000 years earlier as well as the world of Qumran studies certainly deserve something better than what has been presented in their excavation report.

THE DSD articles are from issue 9.2 (2002) and are available online but require a personal or institutional paid subscription. (I'm at home and my access authorization is tied to my office computer, so I can't see them myself at the moment.) Here are the links:

"NEW DATA ON THE CEMETERY EAST OF KHIRBET QUMRAN"
Hanan Eshel; Magen Broshi; Richard Freund; Brian Schultz

"SCHOLARS, SOLDIERS, CRAFTSMEN, ELITES?: ANALYSIS OF FRENCH COLLECTION OF HUMAN REMAINS FROM QUMRAN"
Susan Guise Sheridan

Well, no one can accuse the Bible and Interpretation website of avoiding controversy! Needless to say, these charges are very serious, and the whole thing makes me rather sad, because I know most of the people on both sides and consider them my friends. I'm not an archaeologist and I am not qualified to take sides on this one. But I'm sure Mark Elliott and his fellow editors will give the DSD article authors space to respond and that we have not heard the last of this.

PAUL FLESHER e-mails regarding my latest post on the "James Ossuary":

I was pleased to see that you saw Hershel Shanks' editorial item about the Christian Embassy. Unfortunately, while you saw the speck, you missed the log. Yes there is a difference with regard to the date (as well as the name of an individual). However, apart from those two details, Shanks corroborates the entire story!

Meyers simply put the story forward as a comment about an attempted sale of the ossuary. It was Shanks, not Meyers, who made the observation that if it was 2001 rather than 2002, then Golan's claim about not knowing the significance of the inscription would be false. (Of course, if the ossuary was sold in the 1990s, this is irrelevant.) Meyers and Shanks may differ on the details, but not on the SUBSTANCE of the story.

So Shanks' details, if true, disprove the question he himself raises, but they have no impact on the point Meyers makes.

Thanks, Paul, for your comments. Some thoughts in response:

1. I take the point that part of the anonymous archaeologist's account, specifically, Meyers's "postscript" about the ossuary being offered for sale to the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, has been verified. I probably should have underlined this in my posting.

2. However, it appears that the account has also been shown to have a couple of errors: the date was wrong and the intermediary was not Golan's lawyers. The first error is significant for the question of Golan's veracity, although this issue wasn't raised by Meyers and does not seem to have occurred to him.

3. The substance of the postscript has been corroborated. But we have no new information either way, that I can see, about the main account, about the end of the inscription being missing in the mid-1990s.

4. I've mentioned before that there's a question that still bothers me: how does this testimony that the inscription was carved in two stages, at least one in the 1990s, cohere with the geologists' conclusions that the entire inscription was coated with the so-called "James Bond," a modern patina made of water and chalk and evidently daubed onto the whole inscription? I quote from the Archaeology Magazine article, "Gold Dust and James Bond":

The geologists Goren and Ayalon, in fact, identified three distinct coatings on the surface of the ossuary:

* A thin brown veneer of clay and other minerals cemented to the rock surface, presumably rock varnish created by living bacteria or alga over prolonged periods of time.

* A crusty natural coating of patina (this was the "cauliflower") that formed over the rock surface due to the absorption or loss of various elements and minerals.

* The "James Bond": a unique composite material that received this nickname from Goren since it was bonded onto the incised letters of the James Ossuary inscription, but wasn't found at any other place on the ossuary surface--or on any of the authentic ossuaries that the commission members had used as comparative examples.

�� The varnish covered large areas of the ossuary surface and the patina had burst through the varnish in many places. Both varnish and patina coated a rosette inscribed on the other side of the ossuary. But Goren and Ayalon's meticulous microscopic analysis showed that the letters of the entire Aramaic inscription "James, Son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus" were cut through the varnish, indicating that they were carved long--perhaps centuries after--the varnish-covered rosette.

�� Strangest of all was the "James Bond," the chalky material that coated the letters. It contained numerous microfossils called coccoliths, naturally occurring as foreign particles in chalk, but not dissolved by water. Hence it was clear that this was not a true patina formed by the surface crystallization of calcite, but rather powdered chalk--microfossils and all--that was dissolved in water and daubed over the entire inscription. Thus, the forger's technique was apparent: the James Ossuary was an authentic artifact on which a decorative rosette originally marked the "front" side. At some time long after the natural processes of varnish and patination in a damp cave environment had been completed, someone carved a series of letters through the natural varnish on the ossuary's "back" side. Then he or she covered the freshly cut letters with an imitation "patina" made from water and ground chalk.

Are we supposed now to conclude that the inscription was forged in two stages? Is that plausible? Or is the cutting through the original varnish and the application of the James Bond the result of modern cleaning of both the original, genuine, and later, faked, sections of the inscription? In that case, wouldn't the conclusion be that Golan is right and that the James Bond was accidentally put on when his mother cleaned the inscription? Am I missing something? Someone help me out here.

4. Back to the story of the altered inscription. Another important point: the errors in the postscript inevitably raise the question of how many errors there might be in the account about the ossuary and its inscription in the 1990s. Maybe none, maybe trivial ones, maybe significant ones. We have no way of knowing at present.

5. And that returns me to the same point I've been making: until the entire story is made public, in detail, with all names and places included, we can't evaluate it. Let me emphasize that I believe the parties involved in this debate are speaking in good faith and telling us what they know as best they know it, to the degree that circumstances permit them at present to tell it. But in some ways this is still a game of "telephone" and we've already seen (again, if Shanks's understanding checks out) that errors have entered the transmission in one way or another. This reinforces my contention that the account needs to be fully aired in public so that lots of people can check it out from different angles. Testimony in court would be an excellent venue, and that seems to be in the works. The story is important and it deserves that kind of open presentation and attention. Until we have it, I'm just going to watch with interest and keep an open mind.

"Trust, but verify."

ARAMAIC STUDIES 2.1 (January 2004) is now out and the table of contents and abstracts are available online. Don't pay attention to the main page, which tells you at the moment that this is volume 1. It isn't. The sidebar to the left lists the articles in 2.1 and links to the abstracts. This is the list of articles:

11QPs a and the Hebrew Vorlage of the Peshitta Psalter
Ignacio Carbajosa

Is Subtlety in Translation the Reason for the Targumic Use of Various Verbs of Fleeing?
Carol A. Dray

The Aramaic Dialect of the James Ossuary Inscription
Paul V.M. Flesher

Response to Paul Flesher, 'The Aramaic Dialect of the James Ossuary Inscription'
Margaretha Folmer

The Relationship of Aquila and Theodotion to the Old Greek of Ecclesiastes in the Marginal Notes of the Syro-Hexapla
Peter J. Gentry

The New English Annotated Translation of the Syriac Bible (NEATSB): Retrospect and Prospect
K.D. Jenner, A. Salvesen, R.B. ter Haar Romeny, W.T. van Peursen

The So-called Cuthean Words in the Samaritan Aramaic Vocabulary
Abraham Tal

Book Reviews

Bibliography of the Aramaic Bible

THE PLOT THICKENS:

Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, replied to Eric Meyers regarding the "James Ossuary" (via Bible and Interpretation News).

"Internet Rumor Proves Groundless"

Read it all, but note two especially interesting points. First, Shanks promises to unveil the identity of the anonymous archaeologist who claims to have seen the "James Ossuary" in the 1990s without the last part of the inscription ("brother of Jesus"):

Meyers has posted an article on the internet entitled, �Well-known Israeli Archaeologist Casts More Doubt on Authenticity of James Ossuary.� The Israeli archaeologist is not Meyers, who is American, but a source unnamed in the article who claims he �spotted [the ossuary] in a dealer�s shop [in the mid-1990�s] lacking the �brother of Jesus� element in the inscription,� as the subhead on Meyers� article reads. In his article, Meyers tells us that �the archaeologist [his unnamed source] is certain that the ossuary is one and the same as the one whose authenticity is being debated in the press today.� At that time, the source told Meyers, the ossuary lacked the words �brother of Jesus.� A fuller account of this supposed sighting will appear in the March/April 2004 issue of BAR, and I will say no more about it here.

Here I wish to address a second item in Meyers article. Meyers reports that �Sometime in 2001 my [unnamed] source [you will learn his name in the March/April 2004 BAR] alleges that [Oded] Golan through his lawyers offered for sale to The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, the so-called James Ossuary, now in its revised and expanded form, for a sum of $2 million.� That is, since it was seen in the mid-1990s without �the brother of Jesus,� by 2001 it had acquired that addition.

Here's exactly what Meyers said:

�� As an interesting postscript to this story, the dealer�s shop has recently closed and the one-time owner of the ossuary has since moved to Europe. My anonymous source has also provided one other interesting datum that is pertinent to this discussion. Sometime in 2001 my source alleges that Golan through his lawyers offered for sale to The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, the so-called James Ossuary, now in its revised and expanded form, for a sum of $2 million. This information has also been turned over to the Israeli police but, as of this writing, without any tangible result.

This second item is important because, if true, it would show that Golan knew the significance of the inscription even before epigrapher Andr� Lemaire read it for him in 2002. But Shanks replies that it isn't so:

In receipt of such damning evidence, one would think that Meyers would do a little checking before placing this kind of charge on the internet. He could have at least called the International Christian Embassy to verify an unnamed source. Admittedly, Meyers is not an experienced journalist (although he did serve as editor of ASOR�s semi-popular magazine, Biblical Archaeologist), but even a scholar would be expected to check out such a serious charge.

Since Meyers did not think to do this, I placed the call myself. Malcolm Hedding, the executive director of the International Christian Embassy, checked his records and found that he had been visited at 11:00 in the morning on November 28, 2002 [not 2001] by a man named Uri Ovnat, whose business card identified him, not as a lawyer, but as director of the International Marketing Development Enterprises, Ltd. in Ramat haSharon, Israel. The remainder of Hedding�s file consisted only of Lemaire�s article in BAR.

In other words, the visit occurred not in 2001, before Lemaire had seen the ossuary, but after Lemaire�s BAR article appeared in late October 2002.

Ovnat confirms the visit but he and Hedding disagree on whether a price was mentioned.

If what Shanks reports checks out, it would seem to knock a hole in one part of the story of the anonymous archaeologist. It will be interesting to see how Meyers and his source respond. As I've said before in my two previous postings on this (here and here), the whole story needs to come out in full, with all names named, before we can evaluate it properly.

TU B'SHEVAT begins tonight at sundown. This is the "new year for trees," i.e., the date on which one reckons a tree to be a year older for the purpose of determining when it has reached its fifth year and its fruit may be eaten, as per Leviticus 19:23-25:

23: "When you come into the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as forbidden; three years it shall be forbidden to you, it must not be eaten.
24: And in the fourth year all their fruit shall be holy, an offering of praise to the LORD.
25: But in the fifth year you may eat of their fruit, that they may yield more richly for you: I am the LORD your God. (RSV)

In honor of the day, the Jerusalem Post has the following articles:

"A Tu Bishvat compendium"

"Tempted by the 'etrog'"

PROFESSOR TIKVA FRYMER-KENSKY (University of Chicago Divinity School) has received the Jewish Book Council's Barbara Dobkin Award in Women�s Studies for her book Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories.

"A TALE OF TWO TABLETS": Professor Yair Hoffman of Tel Aviv University and Seminar Hakibuzim College, reviews:

"Milhemet Haluhot: Hahagana Alhamikra Bame'a Hatesha Esrei Upulmoos Bavel Vehatenakh" ("The War of the Tablets: The Defense of the Bible in the 19th Century and the Babel-Bible Controversy") by Yaacov Shavit and Mordechai Eran, Am Oved, 305 pages, NIS 84

(In Ha'aretz, heads up, Jim West.)

This is a remarkable review of what sounds like a remarkable book that deals with the politics of biblical scholarship, Jewish identity, and anti-Semitism from the 19th century to the present. The review is very long, but worth the read. The book sounds fascinating but it also clearly has some flaws, which the reviewer comments on in the final section. The review is hard to excerpt, but here are a few extracts and comments:

This book by Yaacov Shavit and Mordechai Eran transports us to the late 19th and early 20th centuries and presents us with yet another of the many biblical debates - an internal Jewish, internal Christian and, in some respects, a Jewish-Christian debate. At the center stands, Friedrich Delitzsch (1850-1922), one of the most renowned Assyriologists of his time. In the appendix to their book, the authors state that the scholarly research "on works dealing with the reaction of Germany's Jews to modern anti-Semitism and on works about the intellectual history of Germany's Jews" treats this debate as "nothing more than a footnote." The very creation of "The War of the Tablets: The Defense of the Bible in the 19th Century and the Babel-Bible Controversy" challenges the justification behind this assumed marginality and redeems the Delitzsch debate from the oblivion of history's abyss.

[...]

Delitzsch delivered two lectures in Berlin, on January 13, 1902 and April 17, 1903, before large audiences of distinguished individuals. The lectures were given under the auspices of the German Oriental Society and under the patronage of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who granted the events the status of something approaching "an official declaration from the Kaiser and the State." The lectures, under the rubric "Bible and Babel," "aroused a storm of controversy ... appeared in several editions and were published in tens of thousands of copies. They were also translated into many languages. Delitzsch estimated that by 1904 he had received responses in 1,350 short articles" and hundreds of other publications in Germany and elsewhere.

[...]

However, underlying his scholarly observations was the undisguised current of anti-Jewish and anti-biblical polemics. He argued that the source of both the biblical perspective and biblical law was Babylon - not Mount Sinai, which was what Moses wrongly claimed, and not the original creative spirit of the Jewish people. Therefore, the source of the cultural influence on Christianity was not Judaism, but "Babel" (for example, the Code of Hammurabi), the code name for the ancient Mesopotamian cultures. As the authors write: "The only element of `racist' ideas in the first lecture was the allusion to the Assyrians' Aryan origin."

[...]

This motif, evident in his book entitled "The Great Deception," which appeared in 1920, developed into the argument that there is a similarity between the Samaritans (who were not Semites) and the Germans. Delitzsch's lectures sparked a wave of protests and the book in question here surveys, in a matter- of-fact way and from a sociological viewpoint, which groups mounted the attack against Delitzsch, who wanted to replace the tablets of the Ten Commandments with the clay tablets of Mesopotamian culture.

A note here: the Samaritans were not Jews, but they were certainly "Semites." They were descended from ancient Israel and spoke Hebrew (and still are and still do).

The authors see the "War of the Tablets" as a central theme from the chronological standpoint, in terms of both the cultural background and the reactions that this war aroused. (It is curious that the book makes no mention of another Friedrich - Nietzsche - who made a crucial contribution to the "neo-paganic" thinking in Germany in his day, to which Shavit and Eran frequently refer.) The focus on this "war" makes eminent sense: The intellectual background to it - the highly respected standing that biblical criticism was starting to acquire and the bitter opposition to its conclusions, primarily from Jewish groups (not necessarily Orthodox) - provided the soil in which the Delitzsch polemical debate sprouted and, without knowledge of that background, it is difficult to understand the debate. The reactions to the debate and its later reverberations prove the authors' argument concerning its importance in the cultural history of both Germany and the Jewish world.

[...]

A second fascinating aspect of the Delitzsch debate is the following question: To what extent do arguments denying the antiquity of the Jewish people, as opposed to the Bible's cultural and religious "primacy" (not necessarily superiority), conceal anti-Semitic sentiments? Granted, these motives can be seen in the words of Appius, who clearly expresses anti-Jewish views; however, even here, we must exercise caution. Today, no biblical scholar - whether "Jewish," "Israeli" or even "Zionist" - would hesitate to point out that foreign cultures influenced the ancient Israelites and their culture, or would feel that stating such a view undermines the primacy of Israelite culture. Nevertheless, we would be burying our heads in the sand if we were to deny that some scholars use biblical criticism to serve a political agenda that may reflect elements of an anti-Israeli and/or anti-Zionist attitude, which, as we know, is sometimes a camouflage for anti-Semitism.

I am referring here to people like Thomas L. Thompson, Niels Peter Lemche, Michael Prior (note, for example, the title of a book written by Keith W. Whitelam that appeared in 1996: "The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History"). In an obvious attempt to deny the primordial nature of the Bible, they date its composition as late as the Hellenistic period and hint that important archaeological finds supporting the historiography's antiquity (for example, the Mesha stele and the Tel Dan inscription) are forgeries. Similarly, they present hollow arguments not backed by any empirical evidence.

I haven't read Whitelam's book. I'm aware that some people have argues that the Tel Dan inscription is a forgery, but has any scholar seriously argued this about the Mesha Stele? That strikes me as a view that would be extremely hard to defend.

Anyhow, there's lots more. Do read it all.

WHILE I'M AT IT, the annual meeting of the International Organization for Targumic Studies (IOTS) is on 29-30 July; that for the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS) is on 30-31 July; and that for the International Organization for Masoretic Studies (IOMS) is on 2 August. All three are also in Leiden. (I can't find a web page for the IOMS, but see the IOSOT link in the previous entry for the date and venue of the meeting.)

(I've updated this post to include the IOSCS.)

THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (IOSOT) will be holding its annual conference in Leiden on 1-6 August. (Via the Jewish Studies Newsletter.)

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has a new issue out (7.1). Goodies include the following:

The Reception of the Book of Daniel in Aphrahat's Fifth Demonstration, "On Wars".
Craig E. Morrison, Pontifical Biblical Institute

Recent Books on Syriac Topics.
Sebastian P. Brock, Oxford University

Review of Gillian Greenberg, Translation Technique in the Peshitta to Jeremiah. Monographs of the Peshitta Institute 13.
Craig E. Morrison, Pontifical Biblical Institute

Appeal: The Syriac Digital Library Project

There are also obituaries, more articles, conference reports, announcements, and advertisements for Syriac matters, so if you're interested in Syriac, have a look.

NEW TECHNOLOGY WATCH: "Muons May Unlock Secrets of Teotihuacan" (Physics Today, via Archaeology Magazine News). This isn't about ancient Judaism, but the technology, detecting surplus muons to find otherwise undetectable open spaces in large structures, could have archaeological applications anywhere. Excerpts:

Does the Pyramid of the Sun harbor any tombs? What might such tombs reveal about the society that two millennia ago built one of Mesoamerica's largest pyramids? In an experiment � la Luis Alvarez, who in the late 1960s concluded that there are no tombs in Egypt's Chephren pyramid, a collaboration of physicists and archaeologists hopes to glean answers to these questions by monitoring the passage of muons through the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, 50 kilometers northeast of Mexico City.

[...]

This spring, a detector in the tunnel will begin a year of muon counting. Created when cosmic protons hit the atmosphere, muons rain down uniformly and are absorbed when they interact with matter. In hunting for a tomb, the researchers are looking for a surplus of the charged particles. "If you find more muons than you expect, the difference is an indication that in that particular direction you have less matter," says Menchaca. "That is the secret of the technique." (See Physics Today, May 2003, page 19.) [The link requires a subscription to access.]

[...]

But teasing answers out of the data may be tricky. "What you can tell is where there is less density than you expect," says Menchaca. Such a spot might indeed be a tomb or other empty chamber. But it could be that the soil in the pyramid has settled over time to create caves. Or stone walls might surround a cave, canceling out any muon effect. Or a tomb's contents may have been stolen. "Another possibility," Menchaca says, "is a stone-filled tomb, which seems likely based on the recent findings in the Pyramid of the Moon. That would show up as a region with fewer muons than expected, rather than more. If we do find a compact localized region with more--or less--muons, we will perceive it as the end of work for my group. Once we understand the topology, we will pass things on to the archaeologists."

"If the Pyramid of the Sun has a void, a chamber, we will detect it with the muon experiment," says Manzanilla. "Then we will excavate."

I hope they find something.

"IN THE BEGINNING": In the Forward, Biblical historian Baruch Halperin reviews an archeologist's attempt to find the origins of ancient Israel:

Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?
By William G. Dever
Eerdmans, 280 pages, $25.

Excerpts:

All of this has since changed, and there is now an eagerness in some scholarly circles to be liberated from dependence on the Hebrew Bible, to assign primacy to the archeological record and other sorts of external evidence. Such approaches are not entirely new, but they have come to the fore during the last several decades, as open rebellion has broken out against the "biblio-centric" mentality that had long prevailed. There is, however, a major problem in attempting to use archeological evidence alone to reconstruct Israelite history, and it is the paucity of inscriptional material uncovered through archeological activity in biblical lands. Only written remains would allow us to identify with certainty the ethno-cultural identity of the builders, owners and manufacturers of the many artifacts and edifices that have been uncovered in various regions of the Holy Land, and such sources unfortunately are scarce. Even if we assume that changes in architectural and artistic style point to the introduction of a new population in Canaan, we cannot identify precisely that new population as Israelite. Furthermore, archaeologists are no longer sure that there was major population change in Canaan at the time the Israelites were supposed to have arrived there.

[...]

In the present study, Dever, who has excavated at numerous major biblical sites, attempts to come to terms with this recent upsurge of interest in Israelite origins and identity, seeking middle ground in the process. He begins with a chapter titled "The Crisis in Understanding the Origins of Early Israel," and proceeds to take up pivotal issues in the reconstruction of early Israelite history. These include the historicity of the exodus and conquest narratives, covering both Transjordan and Canaan west of the Jordan. He analyzes the very limited epigraphy unearthed in archeological excavations, and summarizes the evidence provided by surveys and excavations, including assemblages of pottery. All the while, Dever provides reliable information on the various social models and research methods being used at the present time, and offers a reasoned critique of them. His style is perhaps too colloquial at times, and he pays a disproportionate amount of attention to theories that even he regards as highly unlikely, diverting attention from his own methodology and argumentation. He partially makes up for this in an appended section entitled "Some Basic Sources," where he provides what amounts to a classified bibliography of recent works that is extremely helpful in directing the reader to the relevant literature.

It is not until chapters 11 and 12 that Dever begins to clearly formulate his own conclusions. He is fairly confident in identifying at least one large group of inhabitants of Canaan during the early Iron Age (circa 1200-1000 BCE) as "proto-Israelites," the direct antecedents of the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible. He bases his findings on what he calls "convergences" between text and artifact ? namely, areas in which the biblical and archaeological evidence point in the same direction and seem to corroborate one another. In this spirit, his concluding chapter is titled "Salvaging the Biblical Tradition," and indeed, he successfully "salvages" a good deal of it. In essence, Dever accepts the historicity of the ancient Israelites as a people, and the reality of their religious, social and political experience in Canaan. His discussion of the House of Joseph traditions is particularly enlightening for tracing the emergence of the early Israelites, as is his treatment of the victory stele of Pharaoh Merneptah, a remarkable text from the late 13th century BCE attesting to the early presence of a group called "Israel" in central Canaan.

On the other hand, Dever finds no evidence on the ground (or beneath it) to indicate that the Israelites arrived from elsewhere to invade Canaan, or that they migrated to the land. Hence, he considers the exodus saga to be more mythic than real, a metaphor of liberation.

Halperin also raises the theory that "The Israelites may have been one of those groups who migrated southward from Syria following the fall of the Neo-Hittite Empire and the kingdom of Amurru, much like the contemporaneous Amorites of whom the Bible speaks." This is one I haven't heard before, although I haven't made much effort to keep up with such things for some years.

UPDATE: Then there's Kenneth Kitchen, who makes Dever look like a minimalist.

ALEXANDER PANAYOTOV, my doctoral student, is publishing a volume that collects the ancient Jewish inscriptions from the Balkans (his dissertation) in a new series with Mohr-Siebeck. Here is information on the series and his volume:

David Noy /Alexander Panayotov /Hanswulf Bloedhorn
Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis
Volume I: Eastern Europe

2004. Ca. 400 Seiten (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism).
ISBN 3-16-148189-5
Leinen ca. 90 Euro; erscheint im M�rz

The Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis collect all known Jewish inscriptions from the Graeco-Roman period (up to c. 700 CE), in all languages (Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Palmyrene, Middle Persian, Parthian) in Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, Syria, and Cyprus. It provides the texts of the inscriptions with English translations together with full bibliographies, discussions and indexes. The previous collection, Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum, published 1936�50, has been superseded by the discovery of more inscriptions, and over half the inscriptions included in this new collection were not in CIJ. They include epitaphs, inscriptions from synagogues, records of the manumission of slaves, amulets and graffiti. Inscriptions mentioning Samaritans are also included. Volume I covers the regions Pannonia, Dalmatia, Moesia, Thrace, Macedonia, Achaea (Thessaly, Attica, Mainland Greece, and Aegean Islands), Crete, and the North Coast of the Black Sea. It includes appendices on inscriptions considered medieval and inscriptions not considered Jewish as well as a bibliography, a concordance with CIJ,
indexes and maps.

Additional volumes include:

Walter Ameling
Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis
Volume II: Asia Minor

2004. XVIII, 650 Seiten (Texts and
Studies in Ancient Judaism 99).
ISBN 3-16-148196-8
Leinen 119 Euro; erscheint im Februar

Walter Ameling collects all known Jewish inscriptions from the Graeco-Roman period (up to c. 700 CE) in Asia Minor. The book provides the mainly Greek texts of the inscriptions with German translations together with full bibliographies, discussions
and indexes.

David Noy / Hanswulf Bloedhorn
Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis
Volume III: Syria and Cyprus

2004. Ca. 300 Seiten (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism).
ISBN 3-16-148188-7
Leinen ca. 80 Euro; erscheint im M�rz

Volume III of the Inscriptiones collects all known Jewish inscriptions from the Graeco-Roman period (up to c. 700 CE), in all languages (Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Palmyrene, Middle Persian, Parthian) in Syria and Cyprus. It provides the texts of the inscriptions with English translations together with full bibliographies, discussions and indexes. It covers the regions Phoenicia, Southern Syria, Northern Syria and Osrhoene, Dura-Europos, and Cyprus. It includes appendices on Jewish inscriptions in Palmyrene, Jewish inscriptions not related to Syria and inscriptions not considered Jewish, as well as a bibliography, a concordance with CIJ and Roth-Gerson (2001), indexes and a map.

Ordering information can be found at the Mohr-Siebeck website.

MORE ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT: This AP article from Newsday.com (via Archaeologica News) has some additional details, notably a denial from the WAQF:

The charges were denied Tuesday by the Islamic Trust, or Waqf, which administers the holy site. "This is about politics and nothing else because of the sensitivity of Jerusalem," said Waqf director Adnan Al-Husseini.

Israel's Antiquities Authority declined comment on the archaeologist's claims.

[...]

The Islamic Trust director denied the contention. "(Our) work was simply to consolidate the prayer area, to strengthen it," said Husseini. "There are no stones there from the Temple Mount."

A spokeswoman for the official Israel Antiquities Authority declined comment until she viewed the pictures.

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ANCIENT MOAB is featured in "Bright past for ancient Moab, brighter future for Jordan" in the Daily Star Lebanon. It discusses the history of Moab and the history of its modern study. Excerpt:

Scholars want to clarify issues like the nature of Moab's social structure, economy, and religious practices. Understanding these will help answer a larger question: Should we characterize Moab as a "state," akin to what is found in Mesopotamia and elsewhere? Some scholars have hesitated to apply this label, arguing that Moab remained a "tribal kingdom" consisting of groups who, other than cooperating to defend their territory, did not organize themselves into a unified political group. Counter to this argument are scholars who insist King Mesha was a driving force in establishing a politically and economically organized "state" that persisted for several centuries. They cite the large cities and the specialized economy that are often hallmarks of increasing political and social complexity. This discussion is one of many that Bruce Routledge of the University of Liverpool reviews in his upcoming book, Making Moab in the Iron Age, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Discussions like these suggest a bright future for Moabite studies. Currently, the Jordanian government and scholars are working together to develop Moab's archaeological resources for domestic and foreign tourism and education. One such project is currently under way at ancient Lehun, directed by Professor Denyse Homes-Fredericq, a site spanning the Early Bronze Age (around 3000 BC) to the recent Ottoman Period. The project has been a cooperative effort between the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and the Belgium Committee of Excavations in Jordan with the sponsorship of the EU. Undertaking projects such as these, it is hoped, will invigorate the local economy, as the development of archaeological resources elsewhere in Jordan already has proven successful. Working closely with the Jordanian government as well as local communities, scholars are hoping they can help make Jordan's future as bright as the light they are shedding on Moab's past.

If you want to read the Mesha stele, there's an old English translation of it here.

I MENTIONED THE NEH SUMMER SEMINAR ON ARAMAIC last October. Here is an NEH web page with additional information about the Summer Seminars (via the Jewish Studies Newsletter).

TEMPLE MOUNT NEWS: Archaeologist Eilat Mazar is claiming that the WAQF is carrying out illicit excavations on the Temple Mount which are damaging precious remains of the second temple period. Her evidence is a video and some photographs taken by an Israeli journalist which show engraved stones from this period. This from Ha'aretz:

Archeologist charges waqf endangering Temple remains

By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service

An Israeli archaeologist has charged that Muslim authorities are excavating a hotly disputed holy site in Jerusalem in a way that endangers the remains of the biblical Jewish Temples.

An Israeli photographer took the photos, released on Tuesday, showing stone blocks with a unique design linked to the Second Temple, destroyed in A.D. 70. Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar charged that their presence in the middle of a Muslim construction project shows that the Wakf, or Islamic Trust, is ignoring the Jewish history of the site.

[...]

In recent years Muslim clerics and Palestinian leaders have rejected the Jewish belief - backed by archaeological findings - that the ancient Jewish Temples stood on the same spot.

[...]

The pictures were taken two weeks ago by Yossi Milshtin, an Israeli journalist who sneaked into the site, masquerading as a Palestinian. Jews are banned from visiting the Muslim shrines.

Milshtin said he had been alerted by Mazar about the presence of the stone blocks and took a camera and video recorder with him to record their images.

Mazar said the images showed large stones endowed with architectural elements unique to the Second Temple period. "(They show) beautiful grape vines," she said. "There is no doubt that these are motifs from the Second Temple period. It is the different elements of the decoration that show this, combined with the style of the artistic work.

[...]

The story is also covered by the Jerusalem Post. According to that article, the Israel Antiquities Authority says it knows nothing of any work going on at the Temple Mount, but archeological inspectors have not been there for three years.

ARCHAEOLOGIST DAN BAHAT and others have presented a series of seminars in New Mexico on the archaeology of Israel.

Over 200 Converge on Albuquerque and Santa Fe for Seminar Focused on New Archaeological Findings in Israel (Yahoo News press release)
Friday January 30, 9:01 pm ET
Israel Finds Warm Reception at New Mexico Seminar: Mayor of Santa Fe Declares January 30, 2004 New Mexico-Israel Friendship Day

ALBUQUERQUE and SANTA FE, N.M., Jan. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- A series of seminars, sponsored by the Israel Government Tourist Office (IGTO), designed to shed light on new findings and archeological discoveries, were presented to clergy members, the New Mexico Legislature, four Santa Fe City Council representatives and County Manager Gerald Gonzales, today. Citing the historical importance of the State of Israel to the roots of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Mayor Delgado went on to proclaim January 30, 2004 Santa Fe, New Mexico-Israel Friendship Day.

The aim of the seminars was to awaken interest among Americans, to show their solidarity with the State of Israel by traveling to the country. Attendees were encouraged to share their experience with their congregation as a show of their support to the only democratic state in the Middle East.

A key presenter of the series on Israel and the lead archeologist on many significant "digs," Dr. Dan Bahat, emphasized the excitement of recent archeological finds and their implications to religious believers. Bahat offered the more than 200 participants a multimedia presentation on findings unearthed in Jerusalem's Western Wall Tunnel of the Temple Mount, specifically, the wealth of artifacts and information directly tied to writings in the Bible. The series is the first time the famed archaeologist has presented this information in North America.

[...]

NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

deClaisse-Walford, Nancy L.
Biblical Hebrew: An Introductory Textbook
Reviewed by David Jackson

Dotan, Aron ed.
Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia: Prepared according to the Vocalization, Accents, and Masora of Aaron ben Moses ben Asher in the Leningrad Codex
Reviewed by Marjo Korpel

Seow, C. L.
Daniel
Reviewed by Stephen L. Cook

THE POWER OF DEAD SEA MUD: Loolwa Khazzoom reports in the Jerusalem Post on how treatment with Dead Sea mud helped her bad back ("Cleopatra's beauty secret"). She includes a brief historical survey toward the end:

Thousands of years before modern science proved the beneficial aspects of the Dead Sea waters, the city of Jericho was established nearby, and numerous inhabitants made their living from producing and selling Dead Sea products - including highly sought-after perfumes and beauty treatments. King David as well as King Solomon built bathing palaces on the shores of the Dead Sea, and when the Queen of Sheba visited the area sometime around 1000 BCE, King Solomon presented her with a coveted gift of Dead Sea salts.

Dead Sea products were deemed so valuable that numerous wars were fought for possession of the region. Queen Cleopatra, reputedly the most beautiful woman in the world in her day, was an ardent user of Dead Sea beauty formulations. Upon her request, Mark Antony conquered the entire area surrounding the Dead Sea for her. The last battle between the Romans and the people of Israel took place just off the western side of the Dead Sea, on Masada. Following the Roman conquest, historian Josephus Flavius noted that Roman travelers took back home as much Dead Sea salts as they could.

The Dead Sea health and cosmetics industry went into decline shortly after Roman rule, and did not make a comeback until the 20th century. In 1959, dermatologists from Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital set up a pilot project to test the effects of Dead Sea water on patients suffering form arthritis and psoriasis, with great success. Within decades, hotels, resorts, and spas began sprouting up throughout the area; many still stand today, along with new additions. The area also has numerous dermatology clinics, including the International Psoriasis Treatment Center.

At the turn of the century, prior to modern interest in the Dead Sea, my grandfather made several pilgrimages from Baghdad to Jerusalem. Whenever he returned home, he brought back bottles of Dead Sea water. When I go to the Dead Sea to help my ailing back, I continue a long tradition.

It would have been helpful to have a few references here. I don't recall the biblical accounts of David and Solomon saying that they built bathing palaces on the shore of the Dead Sea. And the Bible definitely doesn't say that Solomon gave the Queen of Sheba any Dead Sea salts. (See 1 Kings 10 and 2 Chronicles 9, both of which just say that he gave her whatever she asked.) Maybe this is part of the cycle of legends about the queen, but that's not quite the same thing. The Josephus reference would be nice to have too. I would like to know where she got her information. Is that so much to ask for in a newspaper article?

UPDATE (2 February): David Meadows discusses Cleopatra's beauty secrets and tells us he finds it possible to imagine her in a milk bath. Well, works for me.

While I'm on such matters, let me return to the Queen of Sheba. The Alphabet of Ben Sira (discussed recently by Rebecca Lesses and Josh Yuter) 21b = Yassif A/B 217-18 describes a depilatory Solomon made, for the Queen's legendary hairy legs, out of ground lime and arsenic. I swear I'm not making up that it was called "'miracle-with-lime' hair-remover" (NS BSYD TGLXT). (This is from Christopher Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion [Brill, 2002], which has an appendix on the Queen of Sheba legend.) The scary thing is that it appears to have been a real recipe.

MORE ON THE ALLEGED TAMPERING WITH THE "JAMES OSSUARY" INSCRIPTION: Paul Flesher tells the Casper Star Tribune ("Scholar calls Jesus box a fake") about the still-anonymous Israeli archaeologist who says he saw the ossuary in the 1990s, when it was in the hands of an antiquities dealer, and it lacked the last part of the inscription, "brother of Jesus." The conclusion: the end of the inscription is fake. (Note to Paul: does that mean the first part of the inscription is genuine? Isn't the modern patina on the whole inscription?)

This is a very interesting account, which a number of people have heard from the archaeologist in question, and they vouch for his reliability. My understanding is that in due course his testimony will come out in court and it will be at that point that we all can put it into full context and decide exactly what to make of it. Watch this space.

ADOLFO ROITMAN'S LECTURE in Billings, Montana, (mentioned earlier here) is summarized in "Dead Sea scrolls curator draws crowd at RMC" (Billings Gazette).

ON LINK EXCHANGES: Recently a few people have e-mailed to ask me to "exchange links" with them, i.e., put a link to their blog in my links section in exchange for their putting one to mine in their links section. Sorry, and I do appreciate the interest, but I don't do that. If you find PaleoJudaica worth reading and it would be appropriate for your blog roll, by all means please add it. I do keep track, via Technorati, of who is linking to me and I'm glad to have every link. And if you have a site or a blog that you think might interest me, again, please let me know about it and I may add it to my blog roll. For me to do this, the blog or site would have to have something to do with ancient Judaism or at least ancient history in general. But I prefer to add links on the basis of relevance rather than in exchange for getting a link somewhere else.

Also, a suggestion: if you want to get people to notice your blog and to come back, include something more than your name or a cryptic title as introduction. It's very helpful to have a paragraph or a page somewhere easy to find telling readers three things: who you are, what the blog is about, and why you are the right person to be blogging on that subject. "John Smith's Blog," with no explanation, and apparently on whatever John Smith happens to be thinking about, is not likely to be interesting to anyone but John Smith and perhaps his family and friends. And even if the blog has a specific topic, your readers are likely to ask who you are and why they should be reading you on the subject when there's so much competition out there.

DAVID FOX SANDMEL, Rabbi and Professor, has seen the latest draft of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and reports to the Ioudaios-L discussion list. Excerpt:

From my perspective (note the disclaimers above), the movie is much less concerned with historical or scriptural accuracy than it is with portraying the passion in as painful, brutal, and emotionally affecting way possible. This is Gibsons' stated goal. All other considerations (historical accuracy, scriptural faithfulness, potential anti-Judaism, criticism of Vatican II, etc. etc.), take second place.

"TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE." Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University surveys some recent dubious and forged antiquities in "The Jerusalem Syndrome in Archaeology: Jehoash to James" (Bible and Interpretation website) and he suggests that biblical archaeologists and epigraphers have been suffering from a mild form of "Jerusalem Syndrome": "a temporary state of sudden and intense religious delusions brought on while visiting or living in Jerusalem." Excerpt:

�� It is only due to the limits of space that I do not go on and on with similar narratives. A hundred and thirty years after the exposure of the na�ve and crude biblical forgeries of Moses Wilhelm Shapira, it seems that biblical archaeology did not learn the lesson and has completely forgotten its implications. Recently, I had the dubious pleasure of examining a seemingly endless line of fake biblical texts of various kinds. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of such forgeries referring especially to the time of the First Temple. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the disciplines of biblical history and archaeology have been contaminated to such an extent that no unprovenanced written source seems to be reliable anymore. To put it even more bluntly, the sciences of Hebrew epigraphy and philology are nothing but a fool�s paradise. The question arises: are we playing here with science or with science fiction? Is it possible that, as in the popular movie �The Matrix,� we all live in a virtual world that was programmed for us by aliens and operated by a well-organized system of na�ve scientists, media tycoons, and other messengers, who manipulate us so we can live calmly in the virtual reality that they created for us?

��� Is it possible that over a century after Sir William Mathew Flinders-Petrie established the scientific methodology of biblical archaeology, the discipline is still controlled by dilatants and charlatans? As we all still hope that most of the scientists involved in this saga were motivated only by true scientific purposes, we must ask how could some of them be so na�ve, ignore any sense of objectivity and be trapped in the crude pitfalls set by the forgers? Considering the nature of the fakes in question, the answer to this question may lie in the domain of psychology. The forgeries discussed here are not merely fakes of ancient artifacts. They are relics, intended to manipulate the emotions of scientists and the public alike by using the attribution to biblical events.[35] These forgeries were intended to infect collectors, museums, scientists, and scholars with the Jerusalem Syndrome in order to boost their market price and attract public attention.

��� We biblical archaeologists must now decide whether we are ready to remain in a fool�s paradise or fight back in order to bring back science into our discipline. For my grandfather, who was a very orthodox Jew, the question whether there was a temple in Jerusalem or not was completely irrelevant to the depth and sincerity of his faith. He never needed a dubious ostracon, written in dodgy biblical Hebrew and coated by a layer of modern lime and wax, to make his belief stronger. I am confident that the discovery of the James Ossuary has not served to bring more people into the belief in the historicity of the Gospels. Perhaps the opposite is true. But for those of us who care about the future and integrity of biblical archaeology and history, the Jerusalem Syndrome in archaeology is a question of life and death -- either we fight against it, or we lose any trace of scientific dignity.

He also responds to the criticisms by James A. Harrell of the IAA report on the "James Ossuary" and "Jehoash Inscription."

HERE'S MORE FROM DAVID KLINGHOFFER on Daniel Matt's Zohar and on the Kabbalah Centre. Klinghoffer thinks, or at least hopes, that the first may provide something of an antidote in popular culture to the second. He is quite critical of the Kabbalah Centre but he also makes an effort to put it in a fair historical context. The article, "Into the Mystic," (Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles) is worth a read and it's difficult to excerpt. Here's just one passage:

Matt also has mixed feelings about the Kabbalah Centre. While deploring accounts of people being fleeced, urged to buy $415 Zohar sets in order to ward off dangers, he puts the center in the historical context of Jewish mysticism.

"You have to admit that there are phenomena like this in earlier stages. It's not unheard of."

He points out the long-established popularity of amulets, said to give the same protections that the Kabbalah Centre claims for its strings and Zohars.

It?s not the price of the Zohar set that's troubling. A standard Aramaic/Hebrew edition costs around $345. Matt?s Zohar, when its projected 12 volumes are completed, will run about $540. Rather, what rankles is that most of the people buying it from the Kabbalah Centre can't make head or tails of it, or put it to any real use at all.

Professor Pinchas Giller at the University of Judaism serves on Matt's academic advisory committee. He too puts the Kabbalah Centre in context, pointing out that it's not as if the enterprise was invented by Berg out of thin air.

"It began about 70 years ago in Jerusalem. Their 'mission to the gentiles' goes back as early as the writings of the founder, Yehudah Ashlag. So they have a long history and have generally been true to themselves." Berg claims he received his mission in 1969 from Rabbi Yehuda Brandwein, Ashlag's successor as head of the original Kabbalah Learning Centre in Israel � a claim Brandwein's family denies.

"Unfortunately," Giller allows, "their present business model has been adapted from Scientology," which is also known for its hard sell.

TECHNORATI had been so far behind lately as to be effectively defunct: last I had checked it was running twelve and thirteen days behind. But now there's a new beta version up and it seems to be updating in realtime. (For those of you unfamiliar with it, Technorati is a site that allows you to enter a URL and see which blogs have linked to it and when. Bloggers use it a lot to keep track of who is linking to and dialoguing with them.)

ROGUE CLASSICIST DAVID MEADOWS comments on the megasites discussion. I like his idea of a group conference blog. Any volunteers for, say, the SBL meetings or the British New Testament Conference?

He has other good ideas and some useful history concerning the now defunct Argos search engine.

MORE NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ARAMAIC, this time in Cyprus:

Aramaic, language of Jesus, lives on in Cyprus

A Maronite village, isolated by the island's division, struggles to carry on the tongue.
By Michael Theodoulou | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

KORMAKITI, CYPRUS � If the people of this remote village were to travel back to Jesus' time and hear him preach, they wouldn't need an interpreter to understand the Sermon on the Mount or the parable of the prodigal son.

That's because they speak the same language as the Son of God. Literally.

Spoken in the Middle East during Jesus' time, Aramaic is still used in everyday life by most of the 130 elderly Maronite Catholics in Kormakiti, which overlooks the Mediterranean Sea.

This could be good news for Mel Gibson. If the megastar has trouble finding an audience for "Passion," his upcoming movie about the final hours of Jesus' life on Earth with dialogue mostly in Aramaic, due to be released next month, the folks here should have no trouble with the original biblical tongue.

Still, Kormakiti's unique diluted version of Aramaic, called Cypriot Maronite Arabic, is in danger of extinction. Once the thriving center of the island's Maronite community, Kormakiti now has the eerie atmosphere of a ghost town.

[...]

Actually, I doubt that the modern brand of Aramaic they speak would be mutually comprehensible with the first-century Galilean dialect.

"HOW KABBALAH IS LIKE BRAIN SURGERY." David Klinghoffer reviews Daniel C. Matt's new translation of the Zohar for Beliefnet. (For another review, go here.) Excerpt:

Reading along, you get the strong impression that either this stuff is meaningless rubbish, or it was not meant for popular consumption but rather conveys ideas too profound to be understood by amateurs, in language that is appropriately obscure given the unfathomable depth of the subject matter. The latter is the view that Jews who know something about Judaism have historically taken.

It's like brain surgery. Someone who tells you he wants to start cracking open skulls to fix the brains inside but who hasn't yet cracked open a book of anatomy is, obviously, either a lunatic or a fool. So when these obscure secrets are seemingly readily available to all who are willing to shell out the 26 bucks for a red string without investing themselves in the basics of Judaism, namely learning and practicing Torah and its commandments, it's obvious this version of Kabbalah lacks authenticity.

To be sure, there are those in the academic world who would dismiss the Zohar itself as a hoax. It purports to be a record of the conversations of Rabbi Shimon and his disciples, yet the book "emerged mysteriously" (in Daniel Matt's diplomatic phrase) more than a thousand years after they lived, in Spain at the close of the 13th century. The venerated 20th�century scholar Gershom Scholem ruled that the work was entirely the product of the imagination and the pen of Rabbi Moses de Leon, who composed it sometime in the decade of the 1280s.

In his fascinating, lucid introduction to the Matt translation, Professor Arthur Green writes that just because the Zohar is "a work of sacred fantasy," that's no reason "to impugn the truth of its insights or the religious profundity of its teachings." But if the Zohar is a hoax, common sense would suggest that that is a very good reason to impugn its truth and profundity. If Shimon ben Yohai did not conceive these teachings on the basis of earlier traditions, if they were just made up by a guy with a lot of imagination, then they are mere opinions, without any special authority.

What seems undeniable is that the Zohar is a mystery. The rest of Moses de Leon's writings are pale, dry, lifeless, where the Zohar is as brilliantly colorful as it is impenetrably obscure. Some later kabbalists offered the view that de Leon was a reincarnation of Shimon ben Yohai. That would explain why, when the spirit of the ancient sage moved him, he could write in Shimon's name without it being a "fantasy" at all.

It is certainly true that kabbalah is a rigorous, demanding discipline that offers its joys only upon the expenditure of significant effort.

THE KABBALAH CENTRE is taken to task by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in "Keeping Kabbalah Jewish" (Beliefnet) for promoting "superstition as religion" and for presenting a Kabbalah that is not really Jewish. He makes some good points, although I think comparing Madonna to a Mafia boss is intemperate and, frankly, cruel. Excerpt:

The test of Jewish authenticity is a lifelong commitment to tikkun olam, fixing our communities, healing the sick, and offering hope to the dispirited.

But the Kabbalah Centre seems to have placed itself squarely in line with the new-age fad of personal growth and spiritual fulfillment, placing terminology like 'cosmic energy' and 'celestial transcendence' over communal commitment and social service. The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a branch of Hasidism, is also a mystical movement. But it has built soup kitchens and orphanages, trade schools, and elementary schools, all over the world. Christian missionaries have built hospitals and hospices in the most remote corners of the earth. The New Age movement has had much success in heightening the spiritual awareness of its adherents, but it does not contribute as much to the communal good.

I have some thoughts on the historical claims on the Kabbalah Centre's website, which I will try to pull together and post one of these days.

"BORROW" OR "ASK OF"? Leonard Greenspoon, in "The Politics of Biblical Translation" (the Forward) meditates on the political effects of an old mistranslation in this week's Torah portion. (The Hebrew verb in question is sha'al, which means to ask or request.) Excerpts:

As the Israelites prepared to leave Egypt, the Hebrew text of Exodus 3:22 records one of the divine commands in words that the King James Version understood in this way: "But every woman shall borrow of her neighbor... jewels of silver, and jewels of gold." Through their actions, the Israelites "spoil" the Egyptians. The same or similar wording occurs twice in this week's Portion, at Exodus 11:2 and 12:35-6. Almost all English translations of the mid- and late 20th century have changed the wording in these passages, from "borrow" to "ask of" (or something similar). Among newer Jewish versions, in which "borrow" is sometimes retained, the alternate rendering is occasionally noted, but not discussed.

How different it was for earlier Jewish translators, especially those in England! The traditional King James rendering was perceived not only as erroneous, but as pernicious, dangerous, anti-Jewish.

[...]

What was at stake, in the view of these translators, was the sanctity of the text and the safety, perhaps even the survival, of their fellow Jews in a society where they still labored under many social and legal impediments. In the hands of their enemies, a shifty Jacob of the Bible could easily foreshadow a shiftless Jacob from London's East End, and Israelites who pretended to borrow from the Egyptians with no intention of repaying could become blood-sucking moneylenders.

We therefore may conclude that a fairly obscure biblical reference loomed larger than we might have expected for British Jews a hundred or more years ago. Beyond its value as a historical and cultural footnote, is this truly relevant to us today? Alas, it is. As reported by the media worldwide in 2003 � see the December 2003 edition of Bible Review, for example � an Egyptian jurist, relying on just these passages, was preparing a lawsuit against "all the Jews of the world," who, in his opinion, were responsible for absconding with the equivalent of more than 1,000 trillion tons of gold during the Exodus. This jurist apparently is willing to amortize this debt over a millennium, so long as cumulative interest is calculated and paid.

For those seeking to discredit the Book, or the People of the Book, there is no concept of a statute of limitations. Mistranslations continue to haunt us.

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA AS TOURIST ATTRACTION:

FEATURE-Yemen hopes Queen of Sheba legend will boost tourism

By Miral Fahmy

MARIB, Yemen, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Whether she was an ancient matriarch renowned for her wisdom or one of the world's most enduring myths, the Queen of Sheba lives on in her reputed homeland Yemen.

The woman who supposedly inspired the admiration and lust of King Solomon remains one of the most important characters in Yemeni history despite the lack of proof that she even existed.

Now Yemen wants to use the legend of Bilqis, as the Queen of Sheba is known here, to draw tourists to the ruins of the Sabean kingdom that once ruled supreme over the Arabian Peninsula and parts of Africa as far back as 6,000 years ago.

"There can be no tourism without antiquities so we're preparing the sites and we hope that within a year or two, we can welcome visitors," said Sadeq Othman, head of the antiquities department in eastern Marib province.

"We believe that the Queen of Sheba ruled from here and we want the whole world to come and see it."

The Queen of Sheba is mentioned in the Muslim, Christian and Jewish holy books as the woman who stood up to Solomon but who renounced paganism after meeting him.

[...]

Keep reading, there's more. And I've blogged some additional information about the Queen of Sheba here.

STEPHEN CARLSON enters the megasite discussion.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Sch�ssler, Karlheinz, ed.
Das sahidische Alte und Neue Testament: Vollst�ndiges Verzeichnis mit Standorten, 3/1: sa 500-520

Reviewed by Elizabeth Penland

Sharpe, John, and Kimberly Van Kampen, eds.
The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition
Reviewed by Ignacio Carbajosa

Haynes, Stephen R.
Noah's Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery
Reviewed by Dexter E. Callender

Reiterer, Friedrich V.
Z�hlsynopse zum Buch Ben Sira
Reviewed by Eric Noffke

Reiner, Andy M.
Miracle and Magic: A Study in the Acts of the Apostles and the Life of Apollonius of Tyana
Reviewed by Kimberley Stratton

(There's a typo in this entry: the author's name is Reimer.)

Noegel, Scott B. and Brannon Wheeler
Historical Dictionary of Prophets in Islam and Judaism
Reviewed by Aaron Hughes

SOME DEAD SEA SCROLLS are coming to Houston, Texas, and Mobile, Alabama in 2004-05:

Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit coming (Mobile Register)

01/25/04
By THOMAS B. HARRISON and KRISTEN CAMPBELL
Staff Reporters

In a city where the past and present share living quarters, history will become a religious experience in 2005.
From Our Advertiser


Visitors to the Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center in Mobile will have an opportunity to examine their Judeo-Christian heritage when an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls opens Jan. 20, 2005.

The exhibit will remain on view through April 24 and is expected to eclipse attendance for the museum, according to executive director W. Michael Sullivan.

It will be the most ambitious project that the Exploreum has undertaken since the museum reopened in its $21 million building in 1998.

"Once we heard it was available, how could we not have gone after it?" Sullivan said.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, written more than 2,000 years ago, include some of the oldest surviving texts of the books of the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament, and of Hebrew community laws.

The rare manuscripts, penned by unknown scribes working in the religious community of Qumran in the Judean desert, were discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd who found them stored in jars in a cave near Bethlehem. Thousands of scroll fragments, representing every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, were transcribed onto scrolls of parchment and papyrus. Their discovery is considered one of the greatest archeological finds of the 20th century.

The Exploreum will feature fragments of 12 scrolls, including pieces from the books of Genesis-Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Others relate to sectarian documents such as community laws reflecting the lives and convictions of the Hebrew sect believed to have written the manuscripts.

Visitors also will see jars, coins, clothing and other artifacts that tell the story of the people who lived near the caves. A final section of the exhibit explains the efforts of international scholars to conserve and translate the scrolls.

[...]

Before it travels to Mobile, the exhibit will show at the Houston Museum of Natural History from October 2004 until Jan. 2, 2005.

The Houston and Mobile exhibits will be identical except for the specific fragments on view, Sullivan said. Because of the fragility of the pieces, the IAA limits the display of each fragment to three months in any 12-month period.

[...]

PAUL FLESHER ON THE "JAMES OSSUARY":

THE STORY THUS FAR... (Bible and Interpretation website)

A Review Essay of The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story & Meaning of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus and His Family, Hershel Shanks & Ben Witherington III, HarperSanFrancisco, New York, 2003

This is a long, thorough, and careful discussion of the current state of the question and you should read it all. Excerpts:

On Shank's section on the "James Ossuary":

Did the ossuary once contain the remains of James the brother of Jesus Christ? It seems not. The first three necessary points that needed to be demonstrated in order for the ossuary to be that of James the brother of Jesus failed to provide any solid support. The fourth point, that of the antiquity of the ossuary?s inscription, demonstrates conclusively that the inscription constitutes a modern forgery. If Shanks, Lemaire and others still wish to demonstrate their claim, these are serious obstacles to overcome.

On Witherington's section on James the brother of Jesus:

Witherington is clearly an excellent writer. He adheres consistently to the level of discussion he has decided upon. He writes interestingly and confidently, bringing his audience along through enticing prose and engaging rhetoric. His discussion by and large sticks to the scholarly mainstream. He is familiar with the scholarly work on James and readily acknowledges his dependence on it through footnotes and appreciations.

One must be careful to realize, however, that Witherington speaks with more certitude than other scholars. As part of the way he addresses his audience, Witherington often leaves out scholarly debates about various points and just states a position. This is most evident in dating. Witherington, for instance, assigns the Letter of James to the year 52 CE, without any discussion of why that date and not some other.

Witherington's main innovation is to incorporate the ossuary as evidence into the analysis of James' life. Taking as a given that the ossuary contained the remains of James the brother of Jesus--without even an argument for that assumption--Witherington brings it into the discussion of several issues, including burial practices, James' relationship to his family vs. the Christian movement, and so on. Unfortunately, given the inability of the ossuary to bear the weight of the claims placed upon it shown above, this one contribution has been rendered essentially worthless.

Flesher's conclusion:

In the end, this experience reminds one of the Cold-Fusion debacle of 1989, when two researchers, Professors S. Pons and M. Fleischmann, claimed that they had been able to produce nuclear fusion in a test-tube. Their announcement was greeted with great fanfare, and the international press spread the story across their front pages. But when other scientists tried to duplicate the experiment, they could not. The scientific requirement that experiments be reproducible failed. This gave the press another field day, during which they trumpeted that Cold Fusion was a lie.

The first part of the Cold Fusion story parallels that of the ossuary, but the second part does not. Apart from studies of the patina, the ossuary is not subject to the test of reproducible results. Paleography, linguistics, and even the statistics cannot be verified in the way that scientific tests can be. Instead those of us in these fields must hold ourselves to an even higher standard. We must do our work right the first time, and not rush to publication without due consideration.

Why? Because something like the James ossuary matters to people in a way that Cold Fusion cannot. The claim about the ossuary touches on people's faith, it can change their beliefs, it is evidence that demands a verdict from the Christian church. The sensationalism surrounding the James ossuary may have served its promoters well, but it has done a disservice to the believing community. The fanfare that greeted its announcement has not been repeated for the events that seem to have discredited the find, namely, the IAA report and Golan's arrest. As Bruce Chilton observes in the Fall 2003 issue of the newsletter of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College, "The arrest of the owner was reported at the time by the Associated Press, but the popular media in this country � the same media that beat the drum for the authenticity of the piece � mostly let the story pass. . . . In this, journalists understand neither religion nor their own function. A story that is not followed up is just gossip, not news, and unsubstantiated rumor is the stuff of superstition, not faith." The ossuary?s announcement was news because it impacted the faith of members of the world's largest religion, Christianity. The media's failure to continue its coverage will impact it none the less. Scholars will be answering for the false leads of the "James" ossuary for generations to come, since because of scholarly incaution it will probably become part of the discourse for sincere but ill-informed believers.

Perhaps, finally, the question of the authenticity of the ossuary and its inscription will be addressed by the forum to which it should have come first, that of scholarly knowledge and analysis. Only there can the competing judgments of the ossuary?s proponents and its critiques receive a proper evaluation. And that, finally, seems likely.

Let's hope so.

The analogy with Cold Fusion is a good one, especially for illustrating how the press jumps on flashy stories it doesn't really understand and makes much of them and how the real process of evaluating scientific and historical claims is a slow and not very glamorous one. To be fair, my impression is that the press has made an effort to keep up with the story and has reported the major developments fairly widely. Of course my perspective may be skewed because I make a point of digging such things up, often from places outside the mainstream media. If you're curious, try searching the PaleoJudaica archive for "James Ossuary" and see what you think.

Incidentally, had Cold Fusion been real, I suspect it would have mattered to people a good deal more than the inscription on the "James Ossuary." By now we might all be riding around in Doc Brown's flying cars, powered by Mr. Fusion. If only it had been so!

HERE'S A DIRECTORY of doctoral dissertations in progress in the U.K. and Ireland having to do with "Classics and related subjects." Some of them pertain to ancient Judaism. The site is hosted by the Classics Department of the University of Reading and came to my attention by way of Hypotyposeis. If are working on a dissertation in this area in the U.K., use the form to add your topic to the list.

HERE'S A NICE LIST of some of the bogosities in The Da Vinci Code, complied in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

"8 surprising fictions in the Da Vinci Code"

DR. JAMES A HARRELL, the Professor of Geology at the University of Toledo who has criticized the IAA report on the "James Ossuary," is interviewed in the Toledo Blade. Excerpts:

Dr. Harrell, in an interview this week, said that after examining the available scientific data, he is certain that the IAA's evaluation was flawed.

"Basically what I'm saying is that the scientific evidence is inconclusive. But that is substantial because the IAA, in their report, claim the inscription is a forgery - no ifs, ands, or buts about it."

Dr. Harrell, who has taught at UT for 25 years, said none of the data used in the IAA's report can justify the agency's outright rejection of the box's authenticity.

"It may be that they're ultimately right in their conclusion, but if so it would be for the wrong reasons," Dr. Harrell said. "I haven't made my mind up yet as to whether I think it's authentic or not, but the balance is in favor of authenticity."

[...]

He said it is obvious that somebody cleaned the ossuary, possibly with a metallic pad, since it was purchased more than 30 years ago by its current owner, Ogded Golan, an Israeli antiquities dealer who reportedly tried to sell the ossuary for $2 million.

"Whenever inscribed objects are found, perhaps in illicit excavations, they're cleaned up and made presentable," Dr. Harrell said. "An archaeologist would never do that, but an antiquities dealer would."

[...]

On scientific standards alone, the IAA report was amateurish, Dr. Harrell said.

"It was a rush job, it was not well written, there were no reasons given for conclusions, no mention of dissenting views," he said. "It was just badly done."

Perhaps, he said, the Israeli government was trying to make an example of Mr. Golan to discourage people from selling archaeological treasures - even though Mr. Golan's purchase was legal at the time.

Dr. Harrell said he thinks Israeli authorities were unprepared for a serious scientific study of the ossuary.

"What I think happened is that they threw this committee together very quickly. It's like a road accident: The first people on the scene are not always the best to help. That's exactly what happened. I think there will be another, better-qualified committee to study it and issue a new report."

As for his argument about the cleaning of the inscription, I think it has been adequately answered by Stephen Carlson: "what reasonable collector permits his mother to ruin his collection?"

The article also has a nice close-up of the name "James" ("Jacob") in the inscription.