SORRY ABOUT THE DEAD LINKS-PAGE. I've sent three messages so far to the provider, none of which have received a reply. Grrr. I don't have time to do anything more about it now, but follow the link above for a link to the new, unasked-for and unwanted, URL.

MARK GOODACRE has more on good things about the new Blogger.

THERE'S A REVIEW by Richard S. Hess of Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament over at the Denver Journal. Mark Goodacre also has noted some new NT items and has more also on citing electronic resources.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Waqf expanding cemetery outside Temple Mount walls (Ha'aretz)
By Nadav Shragai and Arnon Regular

The Islamic Trust has been expanding the Muslim cemetery at the foot of the eastern wall of the Temple Mount south of Mercy Gate, and in recent months has stepped up the pace of preparing burial sites in the cemetery, including working at night.

The land is owned by the Waqf, but the area has been zoned as "green" not to be developed. Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski recently signed an administrative demolition order against the section of cemetery that has been expanded, but sources at City Hall said "the police refused to implement the order and prevented its execution."

Observers on the scene say the activities continue day and night, and that burials are taking place in the expanded cemetery area.

[...]

Doesn't sound like a good sign to me.

NEW BOOK ON QOHELET:

The Bible's most improbable book, Ecclesiastes, gets a new Jewish analysis

By: RICHARD OSTLING - Associated Press

What is the Book of Ecclesiastes doing in the Bible? This astonishing little masterwork from ancient Israel struggles with concepts found elsewhere in the Scriptures.

Ecclesiastes is greatly perplexed that evil people often prosper while good ones suffer, and says that life sometimes seems to lack meaning or makes no sense. It asks, how do things fit together?

The issues are sifted, if not exactly answered, in "Ecclesiastes," the latest of the Jewish Publication Society's commentaries on biblical books. The series is excellent in quality, but pricey (this 87-page book costs $34.95).

"Ecclesiastes" provides the Hebrew text, the JPS English translation, and an introduction and verse-by-verse comments from Michael V. Fox, professor of Hebrew at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison.

[...]

As in Fox's "A Time To Tear Down and a Time To Build Up" (Eerdmans, 1999), this commentary disputes scholars from the past century who've seen Koheleth as a modern-style skeptic, pessimist or fatalist who embraces pleasure and scorns the rest of Scripture.

By that theory, the traditional beliefs in Ecclesiastes were tacked on by later rabbis to offset the bleak original, for example the book's summation: "Revere God and observe his commandments! For this applies to all mankind."

But in Fox's view, Koheleth is no nihilist. The speaker says that many things are worthwhile in life: moderate work and pleasure, love and friendship, gaining and using our limited human wisdom, seeking to be righteous, and "fearing God and hoping for divine justice."

This complex biblical book says that such things are often fleeting, limited and uncertain, but they "are enough to make life worth living," Fox says.

[...]

THE PATRIARCH OF THE SYRIAC ORTHODOX CHURCH is interviewed in this article:

Keeper of The Word shares a few
Pope Zakka speaks on preserving the ancient language of Aramaic in a new, modern world

This is the fourth in a series of interviews with spritual leaders in the Middle East by cultural historian Yvonne Seng.
By Yvonne Seng
Special to The [Lebanon] Daily Star
Wednesday, June 02, 2004

CULTURAL HISTORY

DAMASCUS: With the recent release of the film, "The Passion of The Christ," Aramaic has likely been heard by more people in the past months than in it's entire history. Once the vernacular, it is now reduced to subtitles, spoken daily by a few. The man in front of me has a less brutal way of keeping the language alive.

Patriarch Zakka sits in a gold encrusted chair in a fading cathedral in the Old Quarter of Damascus, but the power of this holy man is not contained in a chair. Or in his extensive title: His Holiness Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I Iwas. The power of Pope Zakka rests in words.

Pope Zakka is the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East and the Supreme Head of the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church, the planet's second oldest church, founded by the Apostles.

As intriguing as the longevity of the institution, is its charge to keep alive Aramaic, the language in which Christ spoke. That is, the words in which The Word spoke.

Words have consequence, but few take words as seriously as Pope Zakka.

We all know one phrase in Aramaic: Abracadabra. Childish magical gibberish to the rest of us, loosely translated from Aramaic it has a vastly more serious meaning: "Create what I speak, or, May my words be brought to life." These are not men who dangle their participles.

[...]

I've never heard this about "Abracadabra" and I doubt that it's correct. According to the American Heritage Dictionary it's a "cabalistic" word that probably goes back through late Latin and late Greek to the "Gnostic" magical name "Abrasax." The latter is not only Gnostic, but was found all over the place in ancient magic. Here's another attempt at an explanation.

Whether the Syriac Church was founded by the apostles depends on what to make of much later church traditions. We just don't know very much about what the apostles were up to in the first century, although certainly founding churches was high on their agenda.

More:

"The most important thing is that Aramaic was spoken by Our Lord Jesus Christ," the Patriarch says. "That's why we love it. It has been the liturgical language of our church from the beginning of Christianity and, of course, it was the ancient language of Syria before Islam. That's also why we love it. And we feel it is our duty and responsibility to keep it alive because we can't imagine that, one day, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ will be forgotten. It's something we can't imagine."

Monks and holy scholars have kept the flame alive for almost 2,000 years, but can they survive the tornado of Western culture?

[...]

The internet, with its disrespect for man-made borders, is his ally.

"Technology has always been with the human being," he states. " Those who believe the world was created by God, they will always be loving God through Our Lord Jesus Christ."

With the help of technology - and the savvy leadership of the Patriarch - Aramaic is undergoing revival among members of the Syriac Orthodox Church connected across the globe and scholars attracted to its cerebral mission.

"We have many scholars here and there," the Patriarch says with enthusiasm. "And they learn the language and they teach it and, of course, we are proud of those people, too. And grateful, too. Yes."

Although he admits he doesn't fully understand the new technology, Pope Zakka visited Los Angeles to bless it.

The Syriac-Orthodox Church of Antioch, formed in the time of the Apostles, has its own website, with libraries, chatrooms, youth groups and CDs of liturgical music for sale through Amazon.com.

Pope Zakka has his own page where you can access copies of his encyclicals and writings. The Syriac-Aramaic language project has a worldwide center that the peripatetic Apostle Peter, first Bishop of the church, would definitely approve of.

For the Patriarch also, globalization and technology are positive developments.

[...]

UPDATE (25 August 2007): In retrospect I think my skepticism about the proposed etymology of Abracadabra was misplaced. The translation is a little loose, but the general idea is plausible. More here.

THE "ST. JOHN'S BIBLE" carries on the medieval tradition of handwritten, illuminated biblical manuscripts:

Handwritten St. John's Bible uses both old techniques, modern images

By JEFF BAENEN Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press - Monday, May 31, 2004
COLLEGEVILLE, Minn.

As Donald Jackson and his scribes worked on a handwritten and "illuminated" Bible, they used an image unavailable to the monks of the Middle Ages: a view of Earth taken from outer space.

It's one of the many modern touches in The St. John's Bible, from using computers to lay out pages to using "virtual voice prints" of chanting monks, Buddhists and American Indians in several artworks.

[...]

Jackson and his team of artists in Monmouth, Wales, use quills cut from goose or swan feathers. Ancient inks are prepared using the yolks of eggs from free-range chickens near Jackson's scriptorium as a binder. The words are written on large sheets of prepared vellum, or calfskin, which are then illuminated or brought to light with gold, silver or platinum to form dazzling artwork.

"People just open a page and tears come into their eyes," Jackson says.

The eight-year, $4 million project funded by private donations has reached the halfway point. Jackson and his artists have completed three volumes and have four to go. About 70 percent of the text has been written, and 40 percent to 45 percent of the illustrations are done.

When the Bible is finished, expected in 2007, the massive work will total about 1,150 pages. When open, the facing pages measure about 3 feet wide by 2 feet tall. Each volume will be bound separately and have a cover of white oak from Wales.

[...]

St. John's Abbey, one of the largest Benedictine monasteries in the world with about 200 monks, and St. John's University, founded by the abbey in 1857, commissioned Jackson in 1998 to create The St. John's Bible to celebrate the new millennium and the 150th anniversary of the monks' arrival, Ternes says.



[...]

The seven volumes are being done out of order, but eventually will be arranged in the order of a Roman Catholic Bible. The finished version will include the Apocrypha, the books that Protestants don't view as divinely inspired Scripture.



[...]

The text of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, a modern English translation, is the version being used. . . .

If this site won't let you in, try this one.

Note also the St. John's Bible web page and other links at the bottom of the article in the first link above.

NEW-BLOGGER GRUMBLES: There's nothing more annoying than "upgrades" that are less flexible and useful than the previous version. These seem to be increasingly common � MacIntosh is certainly egregiously guilty of them. I'm sorry to say that Google/Blogger is now guilty as well. Consider the following disimprovements (if that isn't a word, it should be) in the new Blogger:

1. In an in-progress message you can no longer check your links under the "preview" option. Moving away to another link without saving the draft erases your message.

2. Saved drafts no longer reset their date and time when you change them and save them again. If you publish the draft, it is posted with the date and time you created it, even if that was many days ago.

3. Previews of messages now do not register paragraph divisions. All the paragraphs appear together in an undifferentiated lump.

In addition, the new Blogger forced me to upgrade both my browsers for no good reason, marking it as part of the Evil Upgrade Conspiracy that foists ever more unnecessary software and machine upgrades on users.

I don't see any marked improvements over the quality of the old Blogger which would outweigh these glitches (although, to be fair, I haven't wasted spent a lot of time looking through every feature of the new Blogger, so readers may want to point out any glorious improvements I've missed). The new layout is reasonably esthetically pleasing, but the old one was fine. There's no good reason for these glitches, which make the day-to-day use of Blogger less easy. Google can do better than this.

UPDATE: Rub�n G�mez e-mails:

I agree with you. However, notice that under point 1, you CAN check your
links if you press the Shift key while clicking. As for point 3, I do see
paragraphs (if I hit Return twice) when I use the preview option.

BTW, You may be interested in reading my last blog entry, where I elaborate
a little bit more on some of your concerns about "useless upgrades".

Thanks Rub�n. It appears that I was wrong about #1: if you move away from the post, the changes are not erased. But the the warning message to the effect that "you have unsaved changes" is misleading.

Regarding #3, I can't get the paragraphs to appear at all on my Mac IE 5.2.3, which the highest upgrade they make for the Mac. Hitting return doesn't help. However, I see that my Netscape 7.1 does show the paragraphs. But that's not good enough: I have my own reasons for preferring to blog with IE, and it did leave up the paragraphs under the old Blogger. Rub�n tells me that he is using different browsers from either of these, so that must be the difference.

Do have a look at his post on upgrades. The world would indeed be a better place if the Fuller Brush were the model for computing software.

UPDATE: Mark Goodacre comments:

On one of Jim's points, the date and time one, you can make an adjustment manually by clicking "More Post Options . . ." at the bottom of any given entry and then adjusting the time. I find this useful because I often write half a post, get disturbed and can't get back to it for some time, sometimes after I've published others in the mean time (e.g. now I have one pending on the Open Scholarship issue). In fact I tend to think of there being broadly two types of blog entry, the one notebook style entry which goes up quickly in five minutes or so and the other the mini-essay post, which takes a little longer and has more of one's own prose in it.

Yes, I know you can adjust the date and time manually. My point was that with the old Blogger you didn't have to do that: when you reopened the post and started making changes, the time would reset itself to the beginning of the new session. The current system is a disimprovement.

A couple of things I like about the new blogger: the archiving is greatly improved by separating off posts into single pages with single URLs, which means that when one searches for a given post you can go straight to it rather than getting to the page on which it appears.

I'm confused by this: for me the individual posts always came with their own URLs in the old Blogger. I had to configure the Atomz search engine to reflect this, but that only involved an extra line or two of code.

I've also noticed that other users of Blogger are now using its Comments function. I still have comments from Haloscan which date back to the time before Blogger provided their Comments system. Ideally I'd like to move to that too, but it will mean losing all the Haloscan comments.

That's a fair point. If people like to have a comments facility, it's more convenient to have it as part of the Blogger package. Me, I don't want to have to bother with policing them. Back when I ran e-mail lists for online courses, I had the problems with both overenthusiastic amateurs and people with agendas dominating the list discussion, and these became sufficiently trying that I gave up on running e-mail lists. Although I welcome comments on my blogging (e-mailed to me at the above address), and often I post them, especially if someone has a substantive disagreement with me, I want to maintain control of what goes up here.

For that reason, and this is as good a time as any to mention this, when I next do a course with an online component � to wit, in spring semester 2005, when I teach my honours course on the Dead Sea Scrolls again � I'm planning on opening up a new Dead Sea Scrolls blog, for the duration of the course only. More on this in due time. You can access my previous Dead Sea Scrolls course by following the link, and there are similar course materials on Divine Mediator Figures in the Biblical World and the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.

MO'ED � ANNUAL FOR JEWISH STUDIES, Volume 14 (2004), has just been published by the Center for Jewish Culture at Beit Berl College.

Mo'ed is a refereed annual devoted to all branches and periods of Jewish Studies, and welcomes original contributions in these fields in both Hebrew and English. Mo'ed publishes English abstracts of all the Hebrew articles, including review essays, and vice versa. Guidelines for Contributors appear at the beginning of each volume of Mo'ed. Referees are chosen from among scholars, both Israeli and foreign, specializing in the fields to which the articles pertain.

More information, including a table of contents, can be found in this H-Judaic list message.

THE CONNECTION TO MY LINKS PAGE IS DOWN, because Flyservers has once again changed the URL without telling anyone. I'll try to sort out why this keeps happening. Meanwhile, you can, for now, follow these links to find the Links Page and the About PaleoJudaica.com Page.

TORREY SELAND is baffled by the "University of Alexandria" too.

ANOTHER PETRA TRAVELOGUE, this one in the Montreal Gazette. Excerpt:

Jordan's most impressive offering, however, is the ancient city of Petra, an archaeological marvel on par with the seven wonders of the world. A lost city for almost 700 years, Petra was rediscovered by a Swiss explorer in 1812, but it was not officially excavated by archeologists until 1924. Known as the "red rose city," this secret and sacred place was hewn out of pinkish-red mountains more than 2,000 years ago.

Just as a sculptor creates art from a slab of stone, the ancient Nabatean people moulded huge architecture out of colossal mountains. From sheer stone, they carved temples, tombs, stadiums, monasteries, homes, irrigation systems, cliff staircases and roads. Construction took three centuries and borrowed designs from Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman styles.

An eternal tribute to a lost civilization, Petra is the legacy of the industrious and ingenious Nabatean people. At the height of its power, the city housed 30,000 citizens and controlled most of the ancient Arabian trade routes. Eventually, Petra's increasing influence and prosperity began to concern the Roman Empire.

In 106 AD, the Romans overtook the city, shifted the trade routes and brought about Petra's economic downfall. In the centuries that followed, two major earthquakes wiped out the Nabataen culture and further diminished Petra's worth until it became a ghost town, concealed from the rest of the world.

In modern times, this ancient attraction has been made internationally famous as the exotic setting of the Hollywood blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indeed, exploring Petra goes a long way to fulfilling my childhood fantasies of being Indiana Jones and experiencing his adventures.

MASADA SYNAGOGUE UPDATE: Reader Todd Bolen in Israel points me to the following photograph of the synagogue, which shows how the interior looked a little over a week ago when he was last there (click on the image for the source).



This is how it looked when I was there, about twenty years ago. The Australian article referred to the synagogue as "partially renovated," which it is, but it also quoted Zaka as saying that "an active synagogue on the site was needed," which led me to think that the ruin was being rebuilt into a complete building for modern use. I would have serious reservations about that being done. But if people are just using the ruin for worship (restored, naturally, to the best condition possible considering what's left of it), that's different. I have no objection to that, as long as it's not used so intensively as to wear out what remains. Again, I'd like to know exactly what is going on.

IMAGES GALORE! In his latest TyndaleTech Email, David Instone-Brewer provides many links from all over the Web to Images for Powerpoint Lectures and Sermons on biblical and related subjects. I don't do Powerpoint or sermons myself, but I suspect I'll find other uses for some of these images.

KABBALAH "EXPERT" INTERVIEW: Rabbi Yehuda Berg, associate director for communications of The Kabbalah Centres, interacts with readers of USA Today. A few thoughts on this.

1. Rabbi Berg's ideas are pretty much unobjectionable in themselves � they mostly consist of moral platitudes that most people would agree with � and I imagine following his principles does some people a lot of good. Still, his New Age Kabbalah has almost nothing to do with traditional Kabbalah.

2. This doesn't bother me quite as much as you might expect. Massive revision of an ancient tradition is nothing new. Moses de Leon radically reinterpreted rabbinic Judaism when he wrote the Zohar � although he did keep it Jewish and halakhic � and he came up with something of lasting interest and value. The Apostle Paul may be a better historical analogy: he went further and dispensed with both Jewish ethnic identity and halakhah in his � soon very successful � new religion. I rather doubt that New Age Kabbalah will have the staying power of either Paul or Moses de Leon, but we'll see. Rabbi Berg is also clearly trying to make money from his Kabbalah, but, then, so was Moses de Leon.

3. Rabbi Berg makes some preposterous historical claims: Kabbalah was written by Abraham 4000 years ago; Plato, Jesus, and Muhammad were Kabbalists. Again, one can point out that Moses de Leon did the same: he had Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai and other Tannaitic rabbis teaching Medieval Platonistic ideas in Medieval Aramaic. But the world has moved on since then and I would like to think that we expect religious teachers these days to be responsible in the history they teach. Maybe that's being naive. But for me, if someone gets it wrong in areas I know about, I'm not going to trust them to tell me about things I don't know about, let alone about cosmic truth.

4. The thing that really does bother me about the new Kabbalah � something that is a major departure from the tradition � is its superficiality. Moses de Leon was tremendously learned and he produced a mystical canon that has exercised some of the most brilliant Jewish (and other) minds for many centuries. The superficial New Age platitudes of the new Kabbalah, harmless and perhaps even helpful in themselves, stand in tremendous contrast to the learned complexity of traditional Kabbalah. Although the idea of Kabbalah for the masses is appealing in principle, it really should have something to do with the teachings you actually find in traditional Kabbalah.

5. I think it is very misleading for USA Today to present this piece as an interview with a "Kabbalah expert." Rabbi Berg is doing his own thing, which is fine, but people who don't know better, and most people don't, are going to take his comments to be representing traditional Kabbalah, and they most certainly do not. Why couldn't USA Today have gotten, say, Daniel Matt, who is a high-profile scholar who really is an expert on Kabbalah? Sigh.

If you want to learn about traditional Kabbalah, here are some bibliographical resources:

Joseph Dan, Ronald C. Kiener, Moshe Idel, The Early Kabbalah (New York: Paulist, 1986). Excerpts from pre-Zoharic Kabbalistic texts, along with a useful, user-friendly introduction.

Daniel Chanan Matt, Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist, 1983). Excerpts and introduction, both by Matt himself.

Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (3rd ed.; New York: Schocken, 1954). Now out of date, but still very useful and reasonably user-friendly.

There are also, of course, the first two volumes of Matt's Zohar translation and commentary, but these are more oriented toward specialists.

For pre-Kabbalistic Jewish mysticism (Merkavah Mysticism or Hekhalot Literature) see:

Peter Sch�fer, The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Jewish Mysticism (Albany, N. Y.: SUNY, 1992). Excellent introduction, accessible to nonspecialists, but not available on Amazon, so I take it to be out of print.

Also (shameless self-promotion alert):

James R. Davila, Descenders to the Chariot: The People Behind the Hekhalot Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2001). A scholarly monograph presenting a particular interpretation of the Hekhalot literature, but should also be helpful as an introduction and overview for serious nonspecialists. Very expensive (sorry).

MASADA, THE MUSICAL, has delayed its run in Chicago (and thence to Broadway) until 2005:

Masada Delays Chicago Tryout; Aims for Spring 2005 Broadway Bow (Playbill News)

By Andrew Gans
26 May 2004

Masada, the musical based on the legend of Masada, has delayed its out-of-town tryout at Chicago's Ford Center for the Performing Arts.

A spokesperson for the musical confirmed to Playbill On-Line that the new musical, originally scheduled to begin performances at the Chicago theatre Sept. 19, will now play a limited engagement there Feb. 20-March 27, 2005. A casting notice had indicated that the musical would arrive on The Great White Way in December 2004; Masada is now aiming for a spring 2005 Broadway bow.

[...]

MORE ON THE JEWISH MANUSCRIPTS FROM IRAQ, now frozen and awaiting restoration:

Jewish Artifacts Remain in Limbo in Iraq (Yahoo! News via Archaeology Magazine News)

Thu May 27, 1:55 PM ET

By CARL HARTMAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A damaged Torah, a centuries-old Bible and other rare documents important to Iraq (news - web sites)'s few remaining Jews were rescued from a flooded cellar in Baghdad, only to remain in limbo here.

[...]

The materials are in moderate to poor condition � they remained wet for several weeks after being salvaged, which allowed mold to grow, and some records became detached from their bindings and were lost, according to the Iraqi Jewish Archive Preservation Report. The study was prepared for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which is overseeing Iraq until a June 30 transfer of some sovereignty to the Iraqis.

[...]

When it was found over a year ago, the collection first had to be taken from three feet of mucky water � a U.S. bomb had wrecked the plumbing of the police building.

A salvage crew heaped the documents in piles, loaded them into sacks and took them to a nearby courtyard, where they were partly dried. Later they were packed into 27 metal trunks and stored in a refrigerated truck to halt the mold.

They were then shipped to Texas, where they were freeze-dried to stop the remaining moisture from causing further damage. They are now at a National Archives laboratory.

Among the items are a Bible printed in Venice in 1568, rare books on Jewish law, pamphlets and parchment scrolls, including sections of a damaged Torah.

Doris Hamburg, in charge of conservation at the National Archives, said a 1,400-year-old Talmud, thought to have been in police hands, is still missing.

[...]

I'm skeptical about this seventh century Talmud, which would come from very close to the time of its final editing, and thus would be extremely important. It would also be hard to miss: the Babylonian Talmud consists of many large volumes; it's not something you could carry around in your backpack. I hope this early copy really is out there somewhere, but I'll believe it when I see it.

UPDATE: I should have linked to this earlier post too, which links to the detailed "Iraqi Jewish Archive Preservation Report."

MORE ON THE PITTSBURG EXHIBITION of the Dead Sea Scrolls etc.:

Fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls on view at ExpoMart

By Mary Frances Stotler
[PITTSBURG] TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, May 28, 2004

Documents written 5,000 years ago sit a mere arms-length away. Peruse a copy of temple-era biblical scrolls or skim through a page of the Guttenburg Bible.

"The Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America," opening today and running through June 20 at the Pittsburgh ExpoMart, provides Pittsburgh residents the opportunity to experience rare Bibles and other religious documents in an intimate way.

"The Dead Sea Scroll portion is just one chapter in a very long history," says Lee Biondi, a dealer in rare books and manuscripts, and co-curator of the exhibit.

Pittsburgh marks the fifth stop on the Dead Sea Scrolls nationwide tour, with Cornerstone Television sponsoring the Pittsburgh visit. Indianapolis is the next major city on the circuit, but the length and schedule of the entire tour is yet to be determined. All of the traveling artifacts are from private collectors -- the majority are from the personal collection of co-curator Dr. Craig Lampe, Ph.D.

Also, here's something interesting I hadn't noticed before:

Another rare fragment showcased at the exhibit is a letter from Paul to the Colossians. This third-century document is the earliest surviving account of Paul's writing -- his work from the first century has since been destroyed. The Coptic tongue this version of Colossians is written in makes it unique. Coptic, the Egyptian language his book was penned in, indicates the vast expansion of the early Christian Church.

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.