ANDERS BELL is dissing the Harvard doctoral gown at the instigation of Ryan's Lair and Brad DeLong. But commenter Bill Poser is spot-on: the problem is not the color per se, it's the material. Besides being uncomfortable, the polyester doesn't dye well and I suspect that's why the noble Harvard crimson comes out icky pink. The older, actually crimson, gowns are cool. When I graduated, I couldn't bring myself to buy a pink polyester one for I-forget-how-many hundreds of dollars. The only academic gown I own is a black one, which we found here in a local charity shop.

Note to Harvard: I love you, but please get rid of the polyester. Even if a gown made of good-quality material costs more, more of us would buy one.

UPDATE (28 May): Anders writes:

NOTE: Jim over at Paleojudaica has accused me of "dissing" the Harvard gown - I prefer to think that I was merely drawing attention to it.

Well, drawing attention to something under the rubric "blatant absurdity" isn't all that neutral. But don't worry, I wasn't offended: I don't like it either.

See the same link ("scholarly threads continued" - good one!) for more on academic regalia.

THE PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA BLOG has had a spiffy makeover. Go and have a look.

A NEW CHALDEAN COMMUNITY CENTER IN MICHIGAN:

Chaldean center boasts of rich culture and history

$23 million site opens in Dec. in West Bloomfield

By Jennifer Chambers / The Detroit News

WEST BLOOMFIELD � Adhid Yousif Miri studies the entrance of the new Chaldean Community Cultural Center and sees his ancient homeland of Iraq.

[...]

The focus of the community center will be its art gallery, museum and cultural center and a banquet hall that seats 750.

Association officials are collecting pieces of Chaldean art by working with scholars and historians from around the world and members of the Chaldean community who may have pieces packed away in their homes. Part of the center�s mission is to acquire, exhibit and serve as a permanent home for the artwork.

Museum organizers hope to reproduce part of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and craft a time line of the entire 5,000-year history of the Chaldean people.

Rosemary Antone, chairwoman of the center, is actively negotiating with the Berlin Museum, the Louvre in Paris, the Detroit Institute of Arts and Cranbrook to acquire artifacts or copies of artifacts for the center.

[...]

The lower level of the building will contain a gymnasium, where youngsters and adults can play basketball or soccer and swim in an outdoor pool, and classrooms where people can learn to read, write and speak Aramaic, the oldest continuously spoken language in the world.

�With what�s going on in Iraq, it is a language that may become extinct,� Manna said. �We are trying to do everything to preserve it. We have a lot of people who are here now who still speak it.�

[...]

ANCIENT GADARA TODAY:

Taking a stroll through history at Jordan's Umm Qays ruins
Ancient site was one of the 10 cities of the Roman 'Decapolis'

By Peter Speetjens
Special to The Daily Star [Lebanon]
Thursday, May 27, 2004

UMM QAYS, Jordan: "For passers by I say, as you are now, I was, and as I am now you will be. Life is mortal, so enjoy it."

Thus reads a text carved in a black block of basalt on display in the museum of Umm Qays. The text is attributed to Herod the Great, history's notorious killer of firstborns and an indulgent lover of parties and banquets, who is generally known for his cruelty rather than words of wisdom.

Located in Jordan's mountainous northwest, Umm Qays is the modern day name of ancient Gadara, one of the 10 cities of the Roman "Decapolis" situated on the Hauran Plateau between Syria and Jordan. Only a day-trip away from Amman, Gadara boasts a rich Roman and Christian history, as well as a profound natural beauty, including a spectacular view of the Golan Heights and Sea of Galilee.

[...]

But, as old Gods are replaced by new ones, in the 3rd century AD Gadara became a major Christian pilgrim destination, as according to Matthew and the New Testament, it was where Jesus had cast out the devil of two madmen into a herd of pigs. The two men were saved. The animals however, did not have a clue what got into them and plunged into the river.

As in nearby Bethany, Jordan, where Jesus is said to have been baptized by John, and in Mount Nebo, where Moses was buried, a complex of three churches and a number of religious buildings was erected in Gadara to deal with the streams of Christians who wanted to follow in Jesus' footsteps and be purified.

[...]

THE TETRADRACHM OF AETNA � on display in the Israel Museum:

One-of-a-kind coin makes its debut in Jerusalem (Ha'aretz)
By Amiram Barkat
Valued at $3 million, the Tetradrachm of Aetna makes first public appearance at the Israel Museum

It goes by the name of the Tetradrachm of Aetna; numismatists consider it to be the most valuable ancient coin in the world; and from today, it is on display to the general public for the first time in its history - at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. For the purpose of the exhibition, an insurance company has placed a value of $3 million on the coin.

[...]

The principal reason for the Tetradrachm's value is its rarity; it is the only one of a series to be found till now. In addition, the coin is very well preserved, and the quality of its minting and the level of the artwork it depicts is most impressive. A layman can easily identify the smallest details, including the folds of Zeus' robe or the panther skin that covers his throne.

[...]

The Tetradrachm of Aetna, however, is not for sale, and the reason for this lies in the coin's Jewish chapter from the past. In the 19th century, the coin found its way into the hands of one of Catania's wealthiest residents, who then sold it to the Castellani brothers, prominent antique dealers from Rome. In 1882, the Castellani brothers sold the coin to a Jewish antique collector, Lucian de Hirsch, for a record sum of 8,000 Belgian francs - some $50,000 in today's terms.

[...]

Lucian de Hirsch died of pneumonia at the age of 30, shortly after purchasing the Tetradrachm of Aetna; and his mother decided to bequeath his coin collection to the state, in return for the naming of a collection room at the Royal Library of Belgium after her son.

Since then, the Tetradrachm of Aetna has been featured in various catalogs and research papers, but has never before gone on public display.

[...]

AFRICA AND THE BIBLE is a new book by Edwin Yamauchi. Christianity Today interviews him in a somewhat inaccurately titled article: "Sudan's Biblical History". Excerpt:

What was the relationship between King Solomon and Africa?

The contacts with Solomon and Africa as far as the biblical texts are concerned are somewhat tenuous. The only possible site in Africa that Solomon may have traded with is Ophir. But the location of Ophir, which is a definite source of gold, can be placed either in East Africa or Western Arabia. Most of the connections with Solomon were made in the post-biblical period, particularly with the legendary development of the Queen of Sheba story and with the idea of Solomon's mines in Zimbabwe.

The legend of the Queen of Sheba goes far beyond the biblical visit to Solomon, and it even extends to Rastafarianism.

Sheba is the same as Saba, which is the area in southwestern Arabia, Yemen today. That's the source of myrrh and frankincense, and the queen brought the incense on camels on a perilous journey north.

The later tradition developed with the country of Ethiopia. Originally the name Ethiopia in Greek meant "sunburned face," that is anyone who is dark-skinned, particularly those south of Egypt but also even in India. The name of the modern country did not acquire the name Ethiopia until the 20th century. It had been called Abyssinia. But this misleads people, including the Ethiopians themselves to connect references to Ethiopia in the Septuagint and in the New Testament to their country.

In the middle ages, to support a particular dynasty that seemed to have decended from Solomon, the Kebra Negast, the national epic, was created. Ostensibly, it's the first to be a translation into Ge'ez the ancient Ethiopic language.

David Hubbard, the late president of Fuller Seminary, who did a wonderful dissertation on this, which was never published, does not think that the story is correct. But that story said the Queen of Sheba came from Ethiopia, modern Ethiopia, and she then had a son Menelik. Menelik then stole the Ark of the Covenant, which the Ethiopian Christians claim is still in their cathedral in the Church of Mary Zion in Aksum.

THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES is having its annual conference this year in Oxford on 12-14 July. The subject is Midrash. Wish I could go.

HAPPY SHAVUOT (Festival of Weeks, Pentecost), which begins at sundown today. The biblical rules for Shavuot are given in Exodus 23:14, 16; Leviticus 23:15-21; and Deuteronomy 16:9-12. In the New Testament it figures in the "tongues of fire" giving-of-the-Holy-Spirit episode in Acts 2:1-41 and is also mentioned in passing in Acts 20:16 and 1 Corinthians 16:8. It is mentioned in the Apocrypha in Tobit 2:1 and 2 Maccabees 12:31-32.

UPDATE (26 May): Arne Halbakken e-mails:

In your weblog for Shavuot, you mention "... 'tongues of fire'...." in Acts 2:3.

You might want to note the word hWSEI is used here.

BDAG calls this a "...marker denoting comparison, as, like (something) like, lit. 'as if'...."

"Tongues of fire" is not a good translation. RSV is better, "tongues as of fire".

Yes, I know. I was just in a rush and feeling lazy. They aren't presented as actual tongues of fire but something that, evidently, looked like tongues of fire. Of course, given the context, that would be pretty clear anyhow.

MORE ON THE MASADA SYNAGOGUE: According to the Australian, the ancient synagogue on Masada is being renovated.

The foreign-donated [Torah] scroll was placed in a room of the partially renovated synagogue on the edge of the site which the Romans attacked from a sloping ramp in 73 AD

The Romans captured the fortress only after its 900 defenders committed mass suicide and Masada is now a major site of pilgrimage for Jews around the world.

The religious emergency volunteer organisation Zaka, which organised the event, explained an active synagogue on the site was needed for the thousands of Jewish visitors who until now needed to bring a scroll to pray.

This article makes it sound as though the ruin of the synagogue is being rebuilt for modern use, but it doesn't say by whom or how. This worries me: the ruin is itself an archaeological and historical treasure. Any new buildings on the site should not interfere with the architechture already there. I'd like to know more about this.

UPDATE (30 May): More here.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Dahm, Ulrike
Opferkult und Priestertum in Alt-Israel: Ein kultur- und
religionswissenschaftlicher Beitrag
Reviewed by Christophe Nihan

Das, A. Andrew and Frank J. Matera, eds.
The Forgotten God: Perspectives in Biblical Theology: Essays in Honor of
Paul J. Achtemeier on the Occasion of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday
Reviewed by Sean P. Kealy

Fabry, Heinz-Josef, G. Johannes Botterweck, and Helmer Ringgren, eds.
Translated by Douglas W. Stott
Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament: Volume 12: pasah-qum
Reviewed by Marvin A. Sweeney

Greenspahn, Frederick E.
An Introduction to Aramaic: Second Edition
Reviewed by Max Rogland

Gunn, David M. and Paula M. McNutt, eds.
Imagining Biblical Worlds: Studies in Spatial, Social and Historical
Constructs in Honor of James W. Flanagan
Reviewed by Tom Craig

Kim, Hyun Chul Paul
Ambiguity, Tension, and Multiplicity in Deutero-Isaiah
Reviewed by Mitchel Modine

Lipschits, Oded and Joseph Blenkinsopp, eds.
Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period
Reviewed by John Kessler

Newsom, Carol A.
The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations
Reviewed by Michael S. Moore

Whealey, Alice
Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late
Antiquity to Modern Times
Reviewed by Dennis C. Stoutenburg

Guggenheimer, Heinrich W.,ed.
The Jerusalem Talmud: First Order: Zeraim. Tractates Terumot and Ma'serot
Reviewed by David Instone-Brewer

King, Karen L.
What is Gnosticism?
Reviewed by Marvin Meyer

WHEW! I've just spent the last week reading about 700 lines of late-antique biblical epic poetry in Latin. Most of the 4th-6th-century Latin epic poetry on Old Testament subjects has never been translated into English and I have found some wonderful things for The Book, which I will make public in my paper "Did Christians Write Old Testament Pseudepigrapha that Appear to be Jewish?", scheduled to be presented in at the International SBL meeting in Groningen in July. As usual, I intend to post the oral version of the paper on PaleoJudaica before I leave for the conference.

I've also just finished Neal Stephenson's new novel, The Confusion, which I heartily recommend. It's the second volume of his Baroque Cycle trilogy, set during the lifetime of Isaac Newton and dealing with Newton, his real and imagined friends, enemies, and other contemporaries, along with pretty much everything else imaginable during the time-frame and on this particular planet.

No, it doesn't have very much to do with ancient Judaism, although alchemy and cabalism do play a fairly prominent part in The Confusion (and Newton really was interested in both). Plus, I'm pretty such one of the characters (and if you read either volume, especially if you've already read Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon, it will become obvious whom I mean) is either the patriarch Enoch returned from heaven on a long-term mission, or else the Wandering Jew.

UPDATE (25 May): Not surprisingly, I am not the first one to make the Enoch connection. Warning: this link contains spoilers and speculation. Lots of both. But if you've read the books, the site (Quicksilver Metaweb) is extremely interesting.

A TORAH SCROLL ON MASADA:

Torah Donated to Synagogue on Top of Masada (Arutz Sheva)
11:30 May 24, '04 / 4 Sivan 5764

(IsraelNN.com) At the crack of dawn yesterday, a new Torah scroll was brought to the ancient synagogue located at the top of Masada, the mountain-top fortress used by Jewish freedom fighters and their families fleeing the besieging Roman armies.

[...]

I'm confused here: when I visited Masada in the mid-80s, the ancient synagogue was just a ruin. Has it been rebuilt?

By the way, can anyone tell me why Arutz Sheva consistently gives my Internet Explorer 5.2 a screen freeze?

LOS ANGELES TIMES HEADLINE:

They're Called to Smote Typos From the Good Book

The word they're looking for is "smite." "Smote" is the past tense form. Samson sought to smite the Philistines. Samson smote the Philistines.

Perhaps the L .A. Times should hire some of the Peachtree proofreaders.

RABBINICS CONFERENCE IN JERUSALEM:

Call for Papers:
Dispute in Rabbinic Literature: Its Limits, Logic, and Hermeneutic Status

The Institute for the Study of Rabbinic Thought at Robert M. Beren College, Beit Morasha of Jerusalem, invites scholars to submit proposals for papers for the Institute's Seventh Annual Conference, to take place during Hannukah, 5765 (2004), in Jerusalem.

This conference follows last year's conference discussion on the topic of "Religious Polemics as a Shaping Factor in Rabbinic Thought," which examined the importance of polemics in the perception of rabbinic thought in research, and the hermeneutic function of polemics in the academic construction of rabbinic thought. One of the issues raised in discussions was the relationship between internal and external polemics. This touches on the question of the boundaries between polemic and controversy (machloket), between legitimate disagreement and illegitimate religious differences. We wish to pursue various aspects of this issue, not handled in last year's conference, in the forthcoming conference, by focusing on the phenomenon of dispute in rabbinic literature. Controversy is phenomenologically close to polemics, but is an internal phenomenon of tradition. Controversy is a hallmark of rabbinic literature, and understanding the logic of this literature entails constant involvement with machloket. We therefore wish to raise a wide range of questions regarding the phenomenon of dispute, and dedicate the coming conference to them.

One aspect we wish to specially emphasize is the attempt to understand rabbinic logic through analyzing machlokot. The works of Marmorstein and Heschel make significant use of controversy as an interpretive tool for the understanding of rabbinic thought. We suggest the following foci for discussion:

* Definition of controversy, including its social, public, institutional and
intellectual (study) dimensions
* Evaluating controversy and dispute as intellectual and social phenomena
* Definition of the limits of dispute and distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate disagreement
* Justification of controversy as a phenomenon in the development of Oral Torah
* Using controversy as a tool for understanding rabbinic thought
* Literary and rhetorical representations of dispute
* Controversy in Halakha and Aggada
* The relationship between rabbinic dispute and related phenomena in adjunct literatures

Please send an abstract of up to two pages to Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottstein, at hazal@bmj.org.il, by June 30, 2004. Only proposals approaching the study of the thought of the sages of the Mishna, Talmud and Midrash in a systematic manner will be considered. The study of extra-talmudic literature will be considered only inasmuch as it sheds light on issues pertaining to the thought patterns of the rabbinic authors.

Emailed by Opher Kutner.

MORE GOODIES IN PITTSBURG:

Local museum boasts rare finds

Sunday, May 23, 2004
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Buried in the basement of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park is a small archaeological treasure: The James L. Kelso Bible Lands Museum.

It is more staid than the upcoming touring exhibit on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but appeals to the same interests with rare finds of its own. In addition to pottery, jewelry and other items unearthed in the Holy Land, it features newly digitized films of early 20th-century digs. And it's free.

"This institution has not only taught archaeology, but it has been doing archaeology since the 1920s," said Ronald Tappy, professor of Bible and archaeology and director of the museum. Pittsburgh Theological Seminary stands alongside Harvard and the University of Chicago as schools that changed archaeology from the hobby of treasure seekers to a meticulous science.

[...]

Some delicate pieces have survived, including a wooden comb from Qumran, the site in Israel near the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947. There's an exhibit on the excavations, including a large model of the complex where most scholars believe the scrolls were created.

Although alternate theories have been proposed, the consensus is that Qumran was home to a religious community that copied the scrolls and hid them in anticipation of a Roman attack, Tappy said.

"This was a monastic desert community of Essenes who broke with mainstream Judaism," he said. "There is a scriptorium there where they have even found inkwells that were used."

If I may nitpick a little, whether it was a monastic community or a sectarian retreat center or something else is still debated. I'm a little uncomfortable with the term "monastic" here, since it brings to mind much later Christian communities and can color our reading of what was at Qumran in ways that might lead to confusion. And it's been argued by archaeologists in recent years that the room in question could not have been a scriptorium.

The museum also has lots of important data for the history of archaeology:

One of the museum's rarest finds came from its own storeroom. Many years ago the widow of James Kelso, the staff archaeologist for whom the museum is named, brought a collection of 16mm movies to the seminary. A former curator determined that the films were too fragile to project, so they were put into storage.

Then Bowden was reading Kelso's diary from 1930, and he mentioned that he must stop writing to take "moving pictures." Bowden immediately remembered the films and vowed to find out what was on them. Pittsburgh Filmmakers made a digital master at no charge.

Now visitors can watch Kelso and early archaeological luminaries on digs going back to the 1920s. Kelso was fascinated with the life of local Arabs and filmed workers drawing water from wells and farmers loading huge stacks of wheat onto a camel.

The earliest films are from Tell Beit Mirsim in the hill country southwest of Jerusalem, where seminary archaeologist M.G. Kyle was the chief administrator of an excavation conducted by the legendary William F. Albright. Still photos of that dig, begun in 1926, are displayed among those of other representative sites that seminary archaeologists have worked.

Photos from the 1950s show New Testament Jericho, which is not the Jericho where the Bible describes the walls falling. It was the home of Herodian kings, and Kelso directed the excavation of the Roman-style palace of Herod the Great.

In the 1960s, work began at Bab edh-Dhra', a town and cemetery near the Dead Sea in Jordan, last occupied in 2300 B.C. Kyle first surveyed it in 1924 as the possible site of Sodom.

And Professor Tappy (who, incidentally, was a graduate student at Harvard in the '80s at the same time I was studying there) has his own excavation in Israel:

Tappy, who joined the faculty in 1997, has been excavating at Zeitah, a mound of ruins in a valley between the biblical sites of Lachish and Gath. He maintains a Web site on the dig at www.zeitah.net.

He chose Zeitah because he wanted to explore a tiny village from antiquity. But in the sort of surprise that characterizes archaeology, Tappy found that it had been a large town that was occupied from at least 2000 B.C. until the Israeli war of independence in 1948.

He thinks it might be the biblical city of Libnah, mentioned in the Book of Joshua, or Ziklag, where David governed before he was king. Tappy's was one of the last excavations to remain in Israel as political tensions heightened in 2001. A few days after he returned home, the terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001. But he is optimistic about the future. He will return to Zeitah June 5 with a team of 20 professionals and 35 volunteers.

It's good that the Scrolls exhibition is generating some well-deserved publicity for the museum.

THE FROM THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS TO THE BIBLE IN AMERICA EXHIBITION is now in Pittsburg:

Dead Sea Scrolls 'fragments' on exhibit

Don't ask me why "fragments" is in scare quotes.

Tour includes other ancient biblical texts drawn from private collections

Sunday, May 23, 2004
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


A remarkable array of ancient and antique biblical texts, including four fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, will be on exhibit at the Monroeville ExpoMart from Friday through June 20.

[...]

And it's generating more controversy:

Ronald Tappy, professor of Bible and archaeology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, was disturbed that a Web site belonging to one of the show's chief sponsors sells panels cut from 400-year-old Torah scrolls.

Joel Lampe, the co-curator who operates the rare Bible dealership at www.greatsite.com, said the scrolls were badly damaged in a fire more than a century ago and are beyond restoration.

"We are the largest restorers of biblical materials in the world," he said of his family's business at the The Bible Museum in Goodyear, Ariz. They create whole Bibles from damaged rare texts and sell only pages and panels left over from the restoration process, he said.

Tappy, who has a similar Torah scroll at his Bible Lands Museum, compared it to smashing an ancient jug missing its handles and selling the shards. "There is something unseemly about selling it, even if it is just a fragment," he said.

But those academic debates will probably mean little to most people who tour the exhibit. The highlight will be what Biondi says are the only four biblical fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls in the United States.

The scrolls, which most scholars believe were copied by a Jewish sect between about 100 B.C. and 68 A.D., were discovered in caves by Bedouin shepherds in 1947. There are scholarly debates about why they were stored in the cave and about the beliefs of those who stored them. But to the show's curators they are primarily a testimony to reliability of the Hebrew text as it was transmitted over the ages.
[...]

There's an update on the lawsuit in Akron, Ohio, too:

The show has had a somewhat troubled history of its own.

It toured several southern and midwestern cities as "From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Forbidden Book." Then a collector who was a partner in the exhibit, William Noah, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., sued two other collector-partners, Biondi and Bruce Ferrini, of Bath, Ohio, over financing. The suit forced the exhibit into involuntary bankruptcy, and a trustee was appointed to sort through the competing claims.

Biondi said he was no longer involved in the suit and that Noah and Ferrini were not involved in the reconstituted exhibit. The trustee, lawyer Kathryn Belfance, of Akron, Ohio, was unaware of the Monroeville exhibit until a reporter called. She said she could not be sure whether it violated any court injunction.

"I don't know what assets they are using," she said. Unpaid bills remain from a March exhibit in Akron, which drew 2,000 visitors daily and had a gift shop that made "tons of money," she said.

[...]

There are also photos of a scroll fragment under regular light, when the writing is unreadable, and under infrared light, which makes the letters clearly visible.

A NEW INTERNATIONAL GROUP FOR STUDENTS OF SYRIAC:

Announcement: Graduate Students in Syriac Studies
�
We are pleased to announce the beginning of a new international group of students of Syriac Studies: Dorushe. This is intended to be a means for students at different universities in different parts of the world to have a way of coming into contact with other students of Syriac Studies. Graduate studies can be a trying time, especially when one may be one of only a few at a given institution working in the field. It is our hope that this group could establish a network for students to help and support each other. In the future, perhaps we could also work on projects together, or even plan student trips to visit places of interest or import to our studies. There will be an initial planning meeting at the North American Patristics Society meeting, on Saturday May 29, 2004 at 3:30 in Crown 434. Professors are invited to share this message with their students. We will begin a list serve to get into contact with each other. People with questions or suggestions can contact Jeanne-Nicole Saint-Laurent at Jeanne-Nicole_Saint-Laurent@brown.edu . We are excited for the possibilities that this could bring and hope you will share our enthusiasm!

From the Hugoye list.

OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC online resources are noted here and here by Christopher Culver over at the Classical philology blog Nephelokokkygia. One, called "Help Me Learn Old Church Slavonic," is devoted to "the modern form of Church Slavonic that is currently used in the Russian Orthodox Church." The other, "Old Church Slavonic Online," is a set of inductive, text-based lessons on the old form of the language.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Arutz Sheva has more on the danger that the east wall may collapse. It quotes archaeologist Eilat Mazar as follows:

Dr. Mazar noted that construction on the Temple Mount is governed by the Antiquities Law, and that the person responsible for its enforcement is Prime Minister Sharon: "He shunts aside these matters, however, and therefore the responsible authorities can't take the necessary actions. This is the most important site in Israel, and yet we don't see the authorities there. We have to wake up and realize that if we don't take care of it, the vandalism and illegal construction will continue."

BOOK NOTE: A brief review by Betty E. Stein in the Fort Wayne News Sentinel:

"The Linguist and the Emperor," by Daniel Meyerson, tells us about Jean-Francois Champollion, a French boy who becomes obsessed with -- and adept at -- ancient languages. His brother provides him with the opportunity to get an education; he learns Greek and Latin and also Arabic, Chaldean, Hebrew, Persian and even Coptic, an old Egyptian language. This is the time of Napoleon. When the general and his army invade Egypt, the French soldiers find a rock with text written in Greek and hieroglyphics.

No one as yet had been able to decipher hieroglyphics. It is Champollion, the student and conqueror of ancient languages, who solves the mystery of that pink and gray chunk of rock. It was the Rosetta Stone, and it was he who was able, finally, to translate it into modern language. The writing style takes some getting used to. But watching this genius perform his great work is a rewarding experience.

THE SAMARITANS, who have just celebrated Passover, are the subject of an article, "Samaritans cling to unique heritage," in the Dallas Morning News. Excerpt:

Despite the Samaritans' marking of Passover, the Sabbath and other rituals and observances similar to Judaism, Samaritans are not Jews but a distinct people. They are best known from the New Testament parable Jesus told of the Good Samaritan who came to the aid of a mugged and wounded traveler.

In contrast to Jews, who follow both the Written Law of the Torah and the Oral Law, the Samaritans adhere only to the Five Books of Moses.

Like Orthodox Jews, the Samaritans strictly observe the laws of circumcision, family purity and kosher diet. They write in ancient Hebrew script, the language of their Torah, and pray in the ancient Hebrew dialect spoken by Jews through the first millennium A.D.

"Jews and Samaritans are both sons of the Israelites," said Israel Tzedaka, one of the Samaritans' elders, during the Samaritan Passover feast, which occurred a month after the Jewish holiday.

Mr. Tzedaka lives in the Israeli town of Holon, as do roughly half the world's Samaritans. During holidays and family occasions, the Israel-based Samaritans travel to Kiryat Luza, where the community's other half resides on Mount Gerizim, in Palestinian territory just southwest of Nablus.

"We trace our roots to the 12 tribes of the Kingdom of Israel," Mr. Tzedaka said, seated in the living room of his friend and kinsman Yaffet Ben Asher Cohen, who lives on the mountain.

FURTHER TO MY ALTERNATE HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF BRIAN POST: Reader Alex Bensky e-mails:

There is a�reference that some Americans may miss in the discussion of the alternate title of "Monty Python's Life of Brian." The movie, "Patton," was sometimes subtitled "Salute to a Rebel" in the U.S., the times being what they were. In Britain the movie was offered as "Patton: Lust for Glory," which I assume is where the Pythons got the original title idea.

It's still a wonderful movie. Blessed are the cheesemakers.

How interesting. I didn't know that.

NEW EVIDENCE FOR THE HISTORY OF WEAVING:

Ancient Moabite fort provides insight into history of weaving (Lebanon Daily Star)
Recent archaeological evidence from Jordan reveals the antiquity of a craft and an industry in the Middle East

[...]

Khirbat al-Mudaybi is a mid-size Iron Age fort constructed around 700 BC on the eastern Karak Plateau of Central Jordan, between the king's and desert highways. During antiquity, Mudaybi was located on the edge of the eastern frontier of Moab, an Iron Age state located east of the Dead Sea.

[...]

Three seasons of excavations carried out by the Karak Resources Project in the last three years have revealed that sturdy basalt and limestone walls, towers and gates enclosed the settlement. Most notable is the four-chambered monumental eastern gate where volute capitals rest on top of each pier wall, supporting stone lintels, wood beams, and a roof of mud and reeds. The gate faces the Fajj al-Usaykir, an important commercial route connecting the Arabian Desert with the interior of the Karak Plateau. Given the fort's strategic position, it is likely Mudaybi protected ancient Moab's eastern frontier and provided security for passing caravans.

Given their assumptions about the military function of Mudaybi, the excavation team was surprised to discover a weaving installation in the fort's domestic quarter. Here, at least 68 small, perforated clay loom weights were concentrated in the northwest corner of one of the rooms. Each weight was hand-molded from local clay into a round or cylindrical shape, ranging from 32 millimeters to 61 millimeters in height, 48mm to 86mm in width, and weighed from 70 to 437 grams. Multiple threads could be strung through a perforation in each weight, and multiple weights may have been needed for each group of warp - or vertical - threads to provide the necessary tension for weaving. This tension allowed the weaver to integrate weft - the horizontal thread - and warp.

. . . A senior researcher from the Institute of Archaeology, Andrews University, observed, "the discovery of so many loom weights makes me wonder if perhaps carpets or tents were being produced in this location by a family or specialized craftsman."

[...]

NOT AN EPIDEMIC: According to "No sects, please," in the Jerusalem Post, the "Jerusalem syndrome" has been overrated. Excerpt:

People afflicted by the so-called Jerusalem Syndrome suddenly imagine themselves to be biblical figures or feel compelled to start preaching on the streets of the city. The condition was first identified in 1982 by former Jerusalem district psychiatrist and director of the Kfar Shaul hospital, Dr. Yair Barel.

Sufferers usually believe they are Jesus, Moses, or the Virgin Mary, but several King Davids and at least one Mary Magdalene have also been recorded. While some sufferers arrive in Jerusalem with psychiatric conditions that are heightened (or triggered) by the city's spiritual atmosphere, others have no history of mental problems, but are overcome by the urge to preach in public dressed in white robes - often bed sheets from their hotel.

The condition is usually temporary, affecting religious pilgrims - mostly Christian, but occasionally Jews - who begin to exhibit strange behavior while touring holy sites, sometimes proclaiming that they are ancient religious figures sent on a mission.

"The media exaggerated the syndrome. The issue was blown out of all proportions. A minimal number of tourists have been affected - it passes within a few days. It's nothing," says Amnon Ramon, a researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

"The perception was that thousands come down with this syndrome every year, [but] the embassy has encountered only three cases in 20 years, I have heard of about a dozen cases in two decades - it's that rare," says Parsons. "The Jews who get it are always Samson or David - strong characters. Christians are often Moses or Elijah, the witnesses. As soon as they're back in their home setting, the symptoms disappear."

"There's no shortage of crazies who could do great damage," warns Ramon. "These include Christian, Muslim, and Jewish zealots.

In the 1980s, the "Jewish Underground," led by Yehuda Etzion, planned to sabotage the mosques atop the Temple Mount. Some view the Temple Mount Faithful led by Gershon Salomon as a potential threat to an already explosive situation.

While the influence of spiritual Islamic sects such as the Sufis has been overpowered by fanatical, often violent, Muslim groups and their affiliated terror cells, many of the Christian-affiliated cults appear to have drifted away from the city.

David Koresh also figures in the article.

MORE ON THE PEACHTREE BIBLE PROOFREADERS:

PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. -- Thank the Lord -- and the proofreaders at Peachtree Editorial and Proofreading -- that the Bible refers to "our ancestors" instead of "sour ancestors," and calls for an end to "factions" -- not "fractions." The proofreading service caught those typos and others before the latest edition of the Holy Book went to press.

At Peachtree, attention to detail is more than a job description. It's a calling.

"Bible readers are less forgiving of errors because they expect perfection in the Bible text," said June Gunden, who founded the business along with her husband, Doug.

Peachtree Editorial and Proofreading Service is believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation -- and one of only a few in the world -- to specialize in proofreading Bibles.

[...]

BETHSAIDA IN THE NEWS: Here's a long article, " Looking for miracles," in Ha'aretz about the excavation in Bethsaida, which excavation has uncovered a lot of interesting information and which hasn't received the publicity it deserves. The article is too long to excerpt properly, but here are a few bits:

Bethsaida is situated on a tel (a large mound formed by the accumulated remains of ancient communities) 1.5 kilometers away from the northern shore of Lake Kinneret, in an area that is today part of the Jordan River Park. The city that [archaeologist Rami] Arav and his expeditions have worked to uncover since 1987 lays on a basalt outcrop that descends from the Golan Heights. The tel is also known by its Arabic name, Et-Tell ("the mound"). It is 400 meters long, 200 meters wide and 25 meters high. Deep down in the earth, at least two different cities lie on top of each other, after having existed at different periods in history.

One of the periods represented at the tel is the Hellenistic-Roman era (Second Temple) - from the fourth century B.C.E. to the fourth century C.E. At the outset of this period, the experts say, Bethsaida was a large, bustling fishing village. Toward the end, it was abandoned by its inhabitants. Says Arav: "The waters of the lake reached the shores of Bethsaida until the third century C.E.," but subsequently receded about 1.5 kilometers southward due to geological changes in the region. The fishing village had found itself without water.

The tremendous excitement of the Christian pilgrims who visited the site stems from the fact that, according to the historical sources, at least three of Jesus' apostles were born here: Peter, Andrew and Philip. Jesus himself probably visited Bethsaida in the second decade of the first century C.E. According to the New Testament, it was here that he performed several of his most famous miracles - healing the blind man and feeding the multitudes (the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes) - and it was from Bethsaida that he was seen walking on water

[...]

Despite Bethsaida's popularity as a place of pilgrimage for Christians, the site is unknown to Israelis. Rami Arav, a graduate of Tel Aviv University, completed his doctorate in the ancient Middle East at New York University. He returned to Israel in 1986 and began to work as a researcher at an institute involved in studying the Golan Heights and to teach at the University of Haifa. As he scouted around for something interesting to research in the north, his eye caught the name Bethsaida.

[...]

Bethsaida is not just about Jesus. The researchers discovered that the city from the time of Jesus and Peter was built on the ruins of an older Bethsaida. In addition to the findings from Hellenistic-Roman times, the site has turned up remnants from an earlier period that is no less historically and archaeologically important: the First Temple period, from the 10th century B.C.E. to 732 B.C.E., when Bethsaida was laid waste by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III. For part of this period, Bethsaida was a large and important city, which was crowned capital of the biblical Kingdom of Geshur.

The findings from this period is of vast importance in biblical contexts. Thus it turns out that Bethsaida is also of interest to Israeli visitors, who are not necessarily interested in Christianity: The Geshurites were not Israelites, but the palace that was uncovered at the site apparently belonged to the king of Geshur, Talmai, son of Ammihud (or Ammihur). So it is quite possible that it was to this palace that King David came when he asked Talmai for the hand of his daughter, Ma'achah, who became his wife and gave birth to his son Absalom and his daughter Tamar.

Arav asserts that this is "the best-preserved palace of its kind that has ever been discovered in Israel. It is an archetype that is identical to King Solomon's palace in Jerusalem (which has never been found). The palace at Bethsaida is a highly valuable find."

What led Arav to these far-reaching conclusions? He cites four main causes: the comparatively vast dimensions of the city, the way it was built, the paved road leading to it, and the evidence of the religious services and administration that the residents received, which are embodied in the findings. The historical importance of the findings far transcends the fact that they were simply uncovered at this particular site.

But his conclusions have not gone undebated.

Worth reading in full

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Eastern Temple wall in danger of immediate collapse (Jerusalem Post)
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

The eastern wall of Jerusalem's Temple Mount is in danger of immediate collapse, which could cause a 'domino effect' and bring down other sections of ancient compound, the head of the Israel Antiquities Authority Shuka Dorfman said Tuesday.

The rare public warning, made at a meeting of the Knesset's Interior Committee, came one month after a team of senior Egyptian and Jordanian engineers began to carry out tests to determine the stability of the eastern wall.

[...]

"Our ongoing demand for the renewal of full archaeological supervision of the site is needed now more than ever after it has been proven yet again that the direct result of the lack of such inspection on the Temple Mount is further antiquities damage as well as physical danger," said Hebrew University archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, a leading mount expert and a senior member of the non-partisan Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount.

At the Knesset meeting Tuesday, committee head Yuri Shtern (National Union) called on the prime minister to have an authorized Israeli team carry out the needed repair work at the mount's eastern wall, as opposed to the foreign team at work on the southern wall.

This sounds like a good idea to me.

UPDATE: Ha'aretz also has an article on this. Excerpt:

Dorfman said no building materials are being brought to the mount now. Shlomo Ra'anan, who heads the police force on the spot, said as soon as police see any attempt to build there, the work is stopped and the authorities are informed.

Representatives of the committee for prevention of destruction of antiquities told the MKs that "wide-scale building is continuing [at the site] without appropriate archaeological supervision."

SPEAKING OF THE FORWARD, Philologos has a recent essay, "A Long Linguistic Chase", on the history of the words "emery" and "emerald." It opens:

Sometimes a seemingly trivial etymological question can lead to a long linguistic chase. Such a query was recently sent to me by Raymond Henkin, who asked:

"In Uriel Weinreich's Yiddish dictionary, the Yiddish word shmergl is translated as 'emery.' A search shows the origins of 'emery' to be either Greek or Latin. How say you?"

What I say, Mr. Henkin, is that before we are done we are going to have to touch not only on Latin, and more importantly, ancient Greek, but on Sanskrit, Akkadian, biblical and post-biblical Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Persian and French. If you're ready, here we go.

THE Forward has a new blog, Fiddish, run by Stephen I. Weiss of Protocols fame.

UPDATE: While I'm noting Protocols spin-offs, I should mention Avraham Bronstein's Back Row of the 'Beis blog.

Evidently there are now complaints about quality control at Protocols, but I haven't been reading it enough lately to be able to comment intelligently.

Also, I've noticed that quite a few blogs in recent weeks have added PaleoJudaica to their blogrolls. Thanks much, I do appreciate every link.

THE TEMPLE OF THE HEBREW GODDESS? That's a new one to me. The Berkeley Daily Planet reports on a pagan festival:

Pagans on Parade Cavort in Downtown Berkeley
By RICHARD BRENNEMAN (05-18-04)

Bay Area tree-worshippers, Goddess-worshippers, gay and straight wiccans, Shinto devotees and their kindred�many of them clad in lavish costumes�gathered in Berkeley Saturday for the always colorful Pagan Pride Parade and Celebration.

[...]

Though paganism was nowhere defined in event literature, a visitor to the affair could have walked away from the festivities with the notion many adherents were polytheist peddlers.

The grassy area of Civic Center Park was encircled by a ring of booths offering crystals, dolls, drinking horns, clothing, jewelry, idols, drawings, prints, ointments, oils, incense, and palm and card readings.

[...]

The other dispensers of free things�recruiters for the Covenant of the Goddess and the Temple of the Hebrew Goddess and promoters of gay marriage, immigration rights for same-sex partners, and legalized prostitution (itself a fine old pagan tradition)�were restricted to the elevated plaza around the defunct fountain, an area that attracted few visitors.

The paganisms on offer were distinctly New Age version of ancient traditions. No animals (or humans) were offered up as sacrifices, and the closest thing to ritual scarification on view were tattoos.

There were no temple prostitutes and no orgies, though several costumed males wore the horns of satyrs and the ever-randy Pan, and the only bared female breasts appeared on modern-day replicas of ancient Minoan statues.

And the only equivalent of the All-Seeing Eye was the tripod-mounted video camera run by a red-coated gentleman from atop the tower of old city hall building.

UPDATE: Reader Greg Gershman e-mails:

I did a little Googling on "Temple of the Hebrew Goddess" and came up with the site for the parade you mentioned, which links to a detailed list of the participating organizations:
http://ppp.magiclamp.net/mn/2004Participants.asp

A bit of the way down the Temple of the Hebrew Goddess is described, including a link to http://www.jamieisman.com/ who appears to be the leader of the group.

This brought to mind a question I had while reading The DaVinci Code (which I recall you have been critical of in the past). The main character made the claim that Solomon's Temple did in fact hold pagan
type rituals, including the temple prostitutes and such. My gut reaction is that this was not true, but I was wondering if you had any information on the subject.

Thanks for the pagan parade info, Greg. As for Solomon's Temple, yes it certainly did hold polytheistic rituals, including prostitution, at some points in its history. King Ahaz had an altar put in the Temple, which he based on a model from Damascus, although it's not clear whether he worshiped Yahweh or other gods on it (2 Kings 16:10-16). King Manasseh set up idolatrous cults in the Temple (2 Kings 21:4-9). And King Josiah cleared idols and houses of male cult-prostitution out of it at the beginning of his reign (2 Kings 23:4-7). The Deuteronomistic History treats the polytheistic stuff as an aberration, but we have very little evidence for what went on in Solomon's Temple and it's hard to tell what was original policy and what was departure from it, either in the direction of worshiping other gods or of insisting on the worship only of Yahweh. After all, Solomon himself is remembered as having a pretty liberal view of the whole matter (1 Kings 11:1-8).

THE ALTERNATE HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF BRIAN � the title and the movie you didn't see:

Some of us still consider it a loss, nevertheless, that the Pythons did not stick with their original title. Eric Idle came up with that one, as the others agree. Since they agree so rarely these days, they naturally cannot remember where the flash of divine inspiration happened � Idle says New York, Palin reckons Canada, Cleese says Soho, the others remember an incident in Amsterdam � but the gospel according to Python is clear on one point: after Holy Grail, they were asked what they might be doing next. �Oh,� said Idle, �our next movie is Jesus Christ � Lust For Glory.�

But lo, it never came to pass, more�s the pity. In fact, it did not take the troupe long to conclude that Jesus was the wrong target entirely. They couldn�t really fault his teachings and failed to see what was funny about them. The less relaxed followers of Jesus, on the other hand, were another matter entirely.

In the recent Python Autobiography, Jones explained it this way: �The Life Of Brian isn�t blasphemous, it�s heretical. It�s not blasphemous because it takes the Bible story as gospel; you have to believe in the Bible, you have to know and understand the Bible story to understand it for the film, really. It�s heretical because it�s making fun of the way the church interprets it. Heresy is basically taking against the church�s interpretation, not against the basic belief.�

John Cleese, equally, has pointed out that Jesus barely features in the film and is seen only while delivering, perfectly seriously, the Sermon on the Mount. �What I think [the film] does very usefully is point out that whatever the founder says, within three minutes everyone�s rewriting it in accordance with their own emotional needs and that�s an extremely good point.� Not to mention a blessing for the cheese makers.

So keen were the Pythons to avoid playing into the hands of conservative believers, they even discarded an alternative plot that has entered the apocrypha of cinema as one of the great unmade comedies. In this version, Brian was to be the 13th disciple, the one who always turned up late. As Cleese put it: �Of course, the funny thing is that if you turn up five minutes late for a miracle you might as well turn up two and a half thousand years late. So he�d missed the Last Supper because his wife had invited friends around and he was going to come on afterwards for a drink. I thought it was really funny, but that got dropped quite early on.�

UPDATE (21 May): More here.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE:

Fabry, Heinz-Josef, G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, eds.
Translated by Douglas W. Stott
Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament: Volume 12: pasah-qum
Reviewed by Christopher Nihan

Gilbert, Maurice
Les cinq livres des Sages: Les Proverbes de Salomon, Le livre de Job, Qoh�let ou l'�ccl�siaste, Le livre de ben Sira, La Sagesse de Salomon
Reviewed by Dennis Stoutenburg

Mazzinghi, Luca
No Cerato E No Esplorato: Studi Sul Qohelet
Reviewed by James E. West

Skarsaune, Oskar
In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity
Reviewed by Daniel E. Goodman

THERE'S MORE ON THE REOPENING of the Shrine of the Book on the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website (scroll down to the third story):

Israel Museum to reopen the Shrine of the Book following major restoration

On June 7, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem will reopen the Shrine of the Book, the architectural monument which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, considered to be among the most important archaeological treasures uncovered in the last century and perhaps the most important patrimonial treasures of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. The Shrine has undergone a complete architectural restoration and installation redesign, to provide for the optimal preservation and display of the Scrolls and other treasures.

Built in 1965, the Shrine of the Book was commissioned for the display and preservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating from the third century B.C.E. to the first century C.E. Its holdings include eight of the most complete Scrolls discovered, as well as one of the most famous handwritten Bibles � the Aleppo Codex from the 10th Century C.E. Designed by Austrian-born American architect Frederick Kiesler and American architect Armand Bartos, the Shrine is considered a master work of modern architecture and is considered an international landmark.

[...]

The permanent display featuring original Scroll documents has been reorganized also to highlight the Aleppo Codex, the oldest and most complete extant Hebrew Biblical codex until the discovery of the Scrolls, thus expanding the Shrine�s presentation of the full history of the Hebrew Bible � and underscoring the Shrine�s expanded role as a center for the study of canonical Hebrew texts. A complementary display on the theme of �A Day at Qumran� � devoted to the daily life of the sect who lived in Qumran during the time that the Scrolls were written � will include newly excavated material from Qumran, displayed for the first time.

[...]

THERE'S A PRELIMINARY REPORT on the archaeological excavation at Yavneh Yam during the 1992-99 seasons, over at the Bible and Interpretation website. Yavneh Yam was the harbor for the city of Yavneh or Jamnia, a famous center of the Tannaim, mentioned often in rabbinic tradition. An important ostracon (oddly, there seems to be no image of it on the Web) was also discovered at Yavneh Yam many years ago.

GORGIAS PRESS has an interesting profile of reprints of Victorian-era and early twentieth-century works on Syriac, Jewish studies, ancient Near East, etc., along with some recent titles on the same. They will also reprint a facsimile of any book you want, as long as it's in the public domain and you're willing to pay the rather steep fee. At conferences I've seen lots of interesting titles on their table, especially reprints of hard-to-find older items.

SOME DEAD SEA SCROLL FRAGMENTS are on display this weekend in Arizona:

4.Fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls are on display today and Saturday at Southwestern College, 2625 E. Cactus Road, as part of "The Forbidden Book Bible Symposium" presented by the Bible Museum.

Teachers and experts from across the country take part in the 14-hour event. The symposium is free, but reservations are required. Hours are 2 to 9 p.m. today and 9 a.m. to 4 pm. Saturday. Register at (623) 536-8614 or www.thebiblemuseum.com.

UPDATE: For some reason the "Bible Museum" link works - at least for me - on Explorer but not Netscape. I've had a look at it now and the museum appears mainly to be an advertisement for an antiquities dealer. Please do not take my mentioning the exhibit as an endorsement of the business.

A CAPSULE HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON: Richard N. Ostling presents one in an A.P. article entitled "'Da Vinci' sparks interest in choice of the canon." Looks accurate and to the point. Well done, Mr. Ostling.

PAST VOLUMES of the Zeitschrift f�r Papyrologie und Epigrafik (1991-2000) are available for free online. Many of the articles have to do with biblical and ancient Jewish matters. Wieland Willker has a list of these on the new Textual Criticism list.

A PASTISCHE OF BIBLICAL MYSTERY PLAYS wil be performed at the University of Chicago this weekend. Seth Sanders reports in the University of Chicago Chronicle:

Giant puppets will parade across the quadrangles to herald the return of a fifth-century medieval ceremony, which will be presented in the performance of The Greater Mysteries: A Pastiche.

The cosmic story of Genesis, from creation to flood, will be told through music, dance and ancient ritual during two performances at 8 p.m. on Friday, May 14, and again at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 15, in the neo-gothic Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, 5850 S. Woodlawn Ave.

[...]

�God�s relationship to humanity, from the fall of Lucifer and Adam to the reaffirmation of His covenant after the Flood, is the tale that the Mysteries will tell,� said Lorraine Brochu, Assistant to the Dean for External Affairs at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. �The performance will be both wild and appropriate for ages 6 and up, from the arcane cleansing rituals in Hebrew, Latin, Greek and Arabic to the delightful dance of the giant puppets.�

This pastiche, or compilation, of various mystery plays is the creation of James Redfield, the Edward Olson Distinguished Service Professor in Classical Languages & Literatures and the College, who also directs.

[...]

I'm not quite clear on how a fifth-century ceremony can be medieval, but it sounds interesting and I wish I could go. I hope that Seth will do a follow-up article with some photographs.

UPDATE: Seth Sanders e-mails regarding "fifth-century medieval":

I didn't exactly write that, it's a press release from Rockefeller chapel. In fact the U of C news office has several hundred releases that have me as contact or author that I had nothing to do with but get my name on them as the point man for humanities and arts.

JUST GOT THE GOOD NEWS that my paper, "Ritual in the Old Testament Apocrypha," has been accepted for the Anthropology and the Old Testament Research Seminar in Glasgow this August. I'll paste in the abstract below. As usual, I plan to put the oral version online just before the conference.

ABSTRACT: RITUAL IN THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA

Recent decades have seen the emergence of "ritual studies" as a field in its own right, one pursued with increasing methodological sophistication and applied not only in the social sciences but also in the humanities. This paper is one segment of a larger project to explore the place of ritual in ancient Jewish literature that was transmitted by Christians but dropped by Jews. The larger corpus includes the works of Philo and Josephus; the Jewish Pseudepigrapha (covered in a symposium paper last year); and the Old Testament Apocrypha. The purpose of this paper is to apply methods and insights from ritual studies to further our understanding of the last group, the Old Testament Apocrypha.

The Old Testament Apocrypha consist of a collection of Hellenistic works, including books on scriptural or Jewish themes (1 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ben Sira, Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah, 1-2 Maccabees) and a number of supplements to books of the Hebrew Bible (Additions to Esther, the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Hebrew Youths, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Manasseh). They are generally agreed to be Jewish works, most of them supposedly composed in a Semitic language (Hebrew or Aramaic). Much of Ben Sira survives in Hebrew and some of Tobit in Aramaic, but the Apocrypha are preserved in their entirety only in other languages such as Greek, Syriac, and Latin. In at least two cases (Wisdom of Solomon and 2 Maccabees), and probably in others (e.g., Baruch), they were composed in Greek. Although the Apocrypha were rejected as scripture by Jerome and some other early church fathers, they were eventually transmitted as part of the Latin Vulgate, as well as part of the Greek Bible, and most of them became canonical in both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. They thus form an ancient collection of allegedly Jewish works which Christians knew Jews to have rejected, but which nevertheless held scriptural authority for many early Christians and which eventually became authoritative in much of Christendom until the Protestant Reformation, when the Reformers removed them from their biblical canon.

Catherine Bell, in her book Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), proposes a sixfold typology of ritual, including rites of passage, calendrical rites, rites of exchange and communion, rites of affliction, rites of feasting and fasting, and political rites. In this paper I intend to catalogue and analyze in a very preliminary way the rituals mentioned or described in the Old Testament Apocrypha, using Bell's typology as a basis (although nuancing it as necessary by other typologies and mappings such as those of Ronald Grimes). Although I will analyze all the works in the Apocrypha, I will concentrate especially on those of substantial length, which can be shown on the basis of positive evidence to have originated in Jewish circles. The preliminary cataloguing will give us clearer information about the rituals and types of rituals important in the Judaism of the centuries immediately before and after the turn of the era, and this is the primary objective of the paper. Another objective is to search for trends in the ritual repertoire of the Jewish Apocrypha which may give us insight into why Christians chose these texts and not others to preserve.

THE TEMPLE MOUNT � "LET IT FALL"? Arutz Sheva has an opinion piece by Joseph Yudin, in which he argues that the Palestinians have themselves to thank if the the Temple Mount collapses and the mosques on it are destroyed. Excerpt:

During the autumn months of 2000, Palestinians began carrying out illegal construction of an underground mosque in the "Solomon Stables" part of the Temple Mount. This construction has not halted during the last four years and a "bulge" in the southern (retaining) wall appeared in the fall of 2002. The unauthorized construction destroyed Jewish antiquities thousands of years old, but both the Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon governments were afraid of the repercussions if police halted the work on the new "mosque", which is housed amongst the arches constructed by King Herod more than two thousand years ago to support the southern part of the Temple Mount. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you harm these arches, the floor and walls may come crumbling down. However, if you deny that there ever was a Second Temple, I guess it is easy to deny that these very arches supported it.

The Israel Antiquities Authority wanted to carry out repair work and oversee the excavations of the Temple Mount area, which it is entitled to do under Israeli law. The Waqf, however, refused to allow this and the Israeli governments did not force the issue. A "compromise" was reached whereby Jordanian archaeologists would oversee repairs on the south wall. The work, however, seems shoddy and many Israeli experts say the repairs are just a band aid for the effect, rather than a fix of the cause. An earthquake in February 2004 again struck the foundations of the Temple Mount, causing damage this time to the eastern (retaining) wall. Again, a key structural weakness pointed out by the Israel Antiquities Authority is the "Solomon Stables" part of the Temple Mount. The Waqf, of course, denies that any structural cracks exist in the eastern wall.

So, what are we to do? It seems to me that if the Israeli government is too afraid to enforce the rule of law on the Temple Mount, and allows the wholesale destruction of Jewish history by the Moslem authorities, then it should at the same time have no regard for any damage that befalls the Temple Mount caused by illegal construction by those very same people. If they damage the Temple Mount building a mosque, then let them fix it themselves. If the eastern and southern walls come crumbling down, let them come down. Herod was a beast of a being and we should not hold his creations as anything holy, anyway. If Mount Moriah is exposed once again to sunlight for the first time in 2,000 years due to Arab negligence, then so be it.

I'm no fan of the WAQF and I agree that they should lead, follow, or get out of the way. And I agree that all the illegal construction needs to be stopped. Nevertheless, I cannot be indifferent to the fate of the Temple Mount. We don't judge the value of historical relics by the morality of who made them, but by what they can tell us about the past. What's left of the archaeology of Herod's platform could still tell future archaeologists a great deal about the Second Temple period, and much of this will be lost if there is a major collapse. And the destruction of the ancient mosques on the Temple Mount would be a terrible tragedy, not only because of the rioting and mayhem that would ensue, but because they too are precious historical artifacts that deserve to be preserved. It's hard for me to get a clear picture of what the actual situation is without being there, but it's obvious that the Temple Mount has already suffered a major cultural and historical outrage with the building of the Solomon's Stables mosque, and a collapse would be a far greater catastrophe. I hope it can be averted and I encourage anyone who has any say in what happens to exert every effort to protect the site.

ANOTHER OBITUARY of Samuel Iwry appears in today's Washington Post. It has some interesting information on his research at the time the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered:

In 1947, the couple immigrated to the United States through San Francisco and moved to Baltimore, where Mr. Iwry resumed his studies. Albright assigned him to work on the Damascus document, a medieval Hebrew text that required someone who had a familiarity and ease with classical Hebrew.

When the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, beginning in 1948, the language in the Damascus document turned out to be so crucial to verifying the scrolls' authenticity that scholars consider its study to be the beginning of scroll scholarship.

"He was literally working on one of the most important Dead Sea Scrolls before they were discovered," said Kyle McCarter, a professor and former chairman of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins. "It was Albright's knowledge and recognition that something was going on and [Iwry's] skills and education" that enabled the pair to authenticate the scrolls' antiquity and significance.

As more scrolls were discovered into the early 1950s, scholars kept a special phone line between Jerusalem and Baltimore, through London. As Israeli scholars reported what was on the scrolls, Mr. Iwry was on the phone with Albright, giving him "a kind of intimate involvement with the scrolls that people don't know about," McCarter said. Mr. Iwry wrote the first doctoral dissertation on the scrolls and was regarded throughout his life as the expert on them. He completed his doctorate degree in 1951 at Johns Hopkins.

NEW TEXTUAL CRITICISM LIST:

Wieland Willker e-mails:

Since the TC-list is now dead, I have set up a (hopefully only) temporal
replacement at Yahoo groups. It can be accessed at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/textualcriticism/messages

This is the description of the list:

This group is for the discussion of the variants in the text of the Bible in the original languages and the early versions. Posts must be on-topic. Contributors should be familiar with the contents of the web pages given in the Links section.

IF GOOGLE ETC. DIRECTED YOU HERE (and it seems there are lots of you), I'm afraid PaleoJudaica is not the "arabic� site� showing� american� b*heading." The appearance of those words (and various similar combinations) on last week's page is an unfortunate coincidence, arising mainly from a reference to an episode in the book of Judith.

But while you're here, let me just mention that Al Qaeda sucks.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HEBREW AND UGARITIC GRAMMAR ONLINE:

The Oriental Institute Research Archives is pleased to announce the availability on-line of:

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF UGARITIC GRAMMAR AND BIBLICAL HEBREW GRAMMAR IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY By Mark S. Smith
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/DEPT/RA/bibs/BH-Ugaritic.html

This 136 page bibliography is a work in progress and is available in three formats, .pdf, .doc, .rtf

From the introduction:

"...In order to make this bibliography more "user friendly," I have presented it in the order of topics found in a grammar. The order here is largely traditional (with the customary division of phonology, morphology and syntax), although since the 1960s linguists have paid a great deal of attention to the interface between these levels of grammar. In section 15, the organization for syntax gives precedence of text linguistics before the syntax of clauses and their subunits, reflecting the current view that the sentence does not constitute the largest unit of grammatical analysis. One might go further and present syntax as theoretically prior to, and the context for, situating morphology, and, by extension, phonology as well; however, the traditional order of grammars is retained here for the sense of familiarity that it affords readers. I have included bibliography for the alphabet (under section 2), although properly speaking the alphabet is not a grammatical topic but a matter of the graphic representation of languages. However, the alphabet's historical importance for the study of West Semitic languages dictates its inclusion here. I have included some entries for Hebrew phonology or morphology with little or no mention of Ugaritic, in part to be more inclusive in these areas and in part to promote such work in the study of Ugaritic. Also included are entries for the syntax of particles (under 9.2) and for the verb (under 10.2.1) as well as some select individual verbal roots (under 14.11 and following). The bibliography in section 16 includes both basic and illustrative entries in the areas of lexicography, loanwards and semantics as well as personal names, but listings for dictionaries and lexica for Biblical Hebrew have not been included... Standard abbreviations have been used (see the list in the final section of this introduction); these are found also in Ugarit-Forschungen and Journal of Biblical Literature)."

Heads-up, Arne Halbakken and Chuck Jones.

THE SBL FORUM has posted a number of interesting short articles this month, as Mark Goodacre (here and here and here) and Torrey Seland have already noted. I haven't had the chance to read them all (I'm having the chance to do precious little reading outside things directly relevant to The Book right now), but here are some that look interesting:

Writing a Dissertation in Biblical Studies
by Jane S. Webster
"Learning how to write about the Bible in a dissertation was a challenge. In spite of the fact that I had to balance the needs of my family, the demands of being a teaching assistant, and the hunt for meaningful employment, I had to get the job done."

Writing in the Greco-Roman World
by Ronald F. Hock
"The skills and techniques that are necessary to be able to write any number of genres are taught in every educational system, and education in the Greco-Roman world was no different, though perhaps it did so with a rigor and thoroughness that would surprise those who are familiar only with current methods of teaching writing."

Hypertext and Publication in Biblical Studies
by Tim Bulkeley
My experiments with the hypertext forms of communication in biblical studies have centered on the genre of commentary. This genre, with its goal of explaining or interpreting a prior text, has features that are inherently hypertextual.

A Brewing Thought, a Spot of Tea: Scholarly Writing as Adventure
by Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan
"By getting to know yourself better, from the inside out, you will become a better writer."

Journal of Biblical Literature Today
by Susan E. Haddox
Nearly half of the articles published in recent years utilize newer methodologies, including narrative, ideological, and sociological approaches

NOTE (13 May): Sorry, somehow this post got demoted to draft status and disappeared for a while. Can't say I'm impressed with Blogger's new setup so far. It seems prone to this sort of mixup.

SAMUEL IWRY has passed away at age ninety-three:

(JTA) - Hebrew scholar dies at 93

Hebrew scholar Samuel Iwry, an authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, died Saturday in Baltimore at age 93. Iwry wrote the first doctoral dissertation on the scrolls, which shed light on Judaism and the origins of Christianity. He also was one of the world's leading Hebrew scholars. Born in Poland, Iwry was a direct descendant of the Ba'al Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidism.

May his memory be for a blessing.

There's an obituary in the Miami Herald. Excerpt:

. . . he began work on doctoral studies at the Johns Hopkins University with William Foxwell Albright, the noted Orientalist and archaeologist.

''With his mentor, Professor Albright, he was the first scholar to identify and authenticate the Dead Sea Scrolls, their antiquity and significance, and wrote the first doctoral dissertation on the scrolls,'' the son said.

Dr. Iwry -- who spoke five Semitic languages, five European languages as well as Latin and Greek -- joined the Hopkins faculty in 1951 and was professor of Near Eastern studies. He retired in 1991.

His autobiography, To Wear the Dust of War: From Warsaw to Shanghai to the Promised Land, will be published in August.

UPDATE: More here.

JEWISH-TEMPLE DENIAL in the Arab world is laid bare in a new study by Dr. Yitzhak Reiter. This Ha'aretz article summarizes his findings:

A campaign of denial to disinherit the Jews

By Nadav Shragai

[...]

Indeed, a new study by Dr. Yitzhak Reiter, conducted for the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies states: "In the last generation, the Islamic and Arab history of Jerusalem has gradually been rewritten. At the heart of this new version is the Arabs' historic right to Jerusalem and Palestine. The main argument is that the Arabs ruled Jerusalem thousands of years before the children of Israel. In addition to building the Arab-Muslim case, the Muslim thinkers are formulating a denial and negation of the Jewish-Zionist narrative. Included in that effort is the de-Judaizing of the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and Jerusalem as a whole.

[...]

Contrary to the standard history whereby the Al-Aqsa mosque was built in the seventh century, in recent years an ancient tradition from the beginning of Islam has been gaining ground. According to it, the Al-Aqsa mosque was built 40 years after the construction of the mosque in Mecca by Adam (i.e., close to the seven days of creation). Other traditions that appear in the Waqf administration offices in Jerusalem attribute the building of the mosque to Abraham and Solomon, as Islamic figures, with no connection to Judaism. The former Jordanian minister of Waqf affairs, Abed al-Salaam al-Abadi, Sheikh Raed Salah and Islamic Internet sites refer to Abraham as the builder of the Al-Aqsa mosque 4,000 years ago.

[...]

Members of the Saudi royal family, Palestinian archaeologists (such as Dr. Dimitri Baramki), Sheikh Kardawi, Syrian clerics and others all identify the Jebusites as an ancient Arab tribe that wandered from the Arabian peninsula, together with the Canaanites, around 3,000 years B.C.E. and therefore predated the children of Israel in the land.

[...]

The "fabricated" Temple

The new history most jarring to Jewish hearers is that the First and Second Temple are lies fabricated by the Jews. In public discourse among Arabs, participants regularly add the word "al-maz'um" - that is, the presumptive or fabricated - when referring to the Jewish Temple. Mufti Sabri says that there are no remnants proving the Jews' claim that there was a temple on the site.

The current Jordanian minister of Waqf affairs, Ahmed Khalil, said last year that Israel is trying to intervene in Al-Aqsa affairs and conduct excavations beneath the mosque in order to build the fabricated temple there. Arafat Hajazi, a member of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement, asks in an article published in 2002 on the movement's Web site why the Jews did not build their Temple during the longer than 500-year period between the time it was destroyed a second time by Titus and Abed el-Malik built Al-Aqsa mosque; he also notes that hundreds of archaeological delegations have conducted excavations in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa and not one of them has found remnants of the Temple.

In another article, which recently appeared on the Internet site of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, Egyptian archaeologist Abed al-Rahim Rihan Barakat, the manager of the archaeological site at Dahab in Sinai, writes, "The myth of the fabricated Temple is the greatest crime of historical forgery."

[...]

It's hard to think of a comparable campaign completely to misrepresent well-documented ancient history for political purposes

NEW BOOK REVIEWS from the Review of Biblical Literature:

Jacobs, Steven Leonard
The Biblical Masorah and the Temple Scroll: An Orthographic Inquiry
Reviewed by Stephen Reed

Washburn, David L.
A Catalog of Biblical Passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Reviewed by Ian Young

Davis, Frederick B.
The Jew and Deicide: The Origin of an Archetype
Reviewed by D. Andrew Kille

McQueen, Hector L, Calum M. Carmichael, and Timothy H. Lim, eds.
On Scrolls, Artefacts and Intellectual Property
Reviewed by Bruce Zuckerman

THE ANCIENT UNIVERSITY OF ALEXANDRIA has been excavated:

Archeologists Find Fabled Center of Learning in Egypt (L.A. Times via Cronaca)
� The University of Alexandria drew some of the ancient world's most famous scholars.

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer

A Polish-Egyptian team has unearthed the site of the fabled University of Alexandria, home of Archimedes, Euclid and a host of other scholars from the era when Alexandria dominated the Mediterranean.

The team has found 13 lecture halls, or auditoria, that could have accommodated as many as 5,000 students, said archeologist Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The classrooms are on the eastern edge of a large public square in the Late Antique section of modern Alexandria and are adjacent to a previously discovered theater that is now believed to be part of the university complex, Hawass said.

All 13 auditoria have similar dimensions and internal arrangements, he added. They feature rows of stepped benches running along the walls on three sides of the rooms, sometimes joining at one end to form a "U."

The most conspicuous feature of the rooms, he added, is an elevated seat placed in the middle of the "U," most likely designed for the lecturer.

"It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area," Hawass said, calling it "perhaps the oldest university in the world."

The discovery is "incredibly impressive," said UCLA archeologist Willeke Wendrich. "We knew it existed and was an extremely famous center for learning, but we knew it only from textual accounts�. We never knew the site."

[...]

The Septuagint translators, Philo of Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen may have sat in these lecture rooms.

UPDATE (11 May): Reader Ellen Birnbaum, a Philo specialist, e-mails:

Thanks for posting the item about the "University of Alexandria." How odd that the excavators would call it this--I've never heard of such a University. They must mean either the gymnasium or the Museum. I'll be interested in how they identify this newly discovered site with one that's mentioned explicitly in the ancient sources!

UPDATE (23 January, 2005): More here.

A CAPSULE HISTORY of Second Temple Judaism: Rabbi Dennis Sasso provides a good summary in Exploring the Judaism of Jesus' time (Indystar.com). Naturally, I want to quibble about this or that, but I'll restrain myself this time. Excerpt:

What do we learn from these early centuries? We learn about the persistence of diversity. There were multiple expressions of Judaism during the Second Temple Period, as there was diversity within early Christianity. Both, like all vibrant, living traditions, continued to be diverse through history. As we seek dialogue with others within our own faith tradition, so must we seek understanding across faith traditions.

We can affirm one another while remaining faithful to our own heritage, recognizing that even as Christians walk in the footsteps of Jesus, Jews walk in the pathways of Torah. Only integrity and respect can pave the way to a time when the teachings that flowered 2,000 years ago will bring healing, harmony and hope to a world that yet yearns for redemption.

BLOGGER has upgraded its system. The site looks spiffy, but it also makes my Internet Explorer 5.1 crash at random and it refuses to recognize button input from my Netscape 7.02. Presumably this is nature's way of telling me I need upgrades. I'll try to do this today, but I'm extremely busy with other things, so apologies if my browser problems lead to light blogging for a while.

THE IRAQ MUSEUM in Baghdad now has an official website (via John Simmons on the IraqCrisis list).

Excellent! Now how about a blog to go with it?

UPDATE (10 May): It seems this announcement was premature and that the site was only being tested internally. This from John Russell on the IraqCrisis list. Well, what I saw yesterday looked good. I'll let you know when I hear that the site is officially opened.

THE LATEST on the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in Ohio, which now seems to be called the Dead Sea Scrolls to America exhibit:

Dead Sea Scrolls come to Bucyrus

By Dan Clutter
[Bucyrus] Telegraph-Forum staff



T-F photo by Beth Thompson

6-year-old Nathan Wayne of Caledonia reacts to his mother's comment that the papyrus is over 1,800 years old. The Dead Sea Scrolls to America exhibit is on display at Victory in Truth Ministries, 485 Ohio 4 South, 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday and noon-8 p.m. Sunday.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the earliest recordings of Bible passages in existence, and fragments from the Scroll are in Bucyrus through the weekend.

The 2,200-year-old fragments that predate the birth of Jesus are passages from the Bible books of Genesis and Isaiah. They are on display with other Biblical finds at Victory In Truth Ministries, 485 Ohio 4 South.

The artifacts belong to Dr. Craig Lampe of Arizona, who has spent 30 years collecting Biblical treasurers from all over the globe.

"I have a Bible museum," Lampe said. "And mine is the only one strictly devoted to the Bible. This is a complete history of the Bible.

"We have about $7 million worth of Bibles. And about $4 million are here in Bucyrus now."

Lampe took the Telegraph-Forum on a guided tour of his impressive collection.

[...]

A list of manuscripts in the exhibition follows.

THE ORATIO LA GUIDITTA, by Alessandro Scarlatti, is playing in Houston:

'La Giuditta' to bow here
By CHARLES WARD
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Nothing like a beheading to stoke creative fires. The exploits of the ancient Jewish character Judith so fascinated Italian Baroque composer Alessandro Scarlatti that he turned them into an oratorio twice.

The tale is simple: A widow gets fed up with the Assyrian army besieging her city. She dolls herself up, sneaks into the opponent's camp, seduces the commander -- and chops his head off.

The story comes from the Book of Judith, part of the Apocrypha of the Roman Catholic Bible. Though its author probably invented many details, he left librettists plenty of ammunition.

According to The Oxford Companion to the Bible, the heroine is "a shameless flatterer," "a bold-faced liar" and "a ruthless assassin."

Ars Lyrica Houston performs the second Scarlatti version to close out the debut season of its St. Cecilia Concert Series at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. It's the second Scarlatti oratorio Ars Lyrica has presented.

[...]