THE LAST WORDS OF JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA? I'm afraid not.

The never-ending search (BBC)
By Brendan O'Neill

Fascination with the Holy Grail has lasted for centuries, and now the Bletchley Park code-breakers have joined the hunt. But what is it that's made the grail the definition of something humans are always searching for but never actually finding?

Could an obscure inscription on a 250-year-old monument in a Staffordshire garden point the way to the Holy Grail - the jewelled chalice reportedly used by Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper?

Short answer: no. Nevertheless:

That is one theory entertained by Richard Kemp, the general manager of Lord Lichfield's Shugborough estate in Staffs.

Kemp has called in world-renowned code-breakers to try to decipher a cryptic message carved into the Shepherd's Monument on the Lichfield estate.

The monument, built around 1748, features an image of one of Nicholas Poussin's paintings, and beneath it the letters "D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M."

It has long been rumoured that these letters - which have baffled some of the greatest minds over the past 250 years, including Charles Darwin's and Josiah Wedgwood's - provide clues to the whereabouts of Christ's elusive cup.

[...]

The story is kind of fun, and the article brings in the risible but bestselling Da Vinci Code as well. You can find a clearer picture of the inscription here (The Age, subscription-only I'm afraid).

I agree with Richard Holloway in the BBC article:

"It's all good fun but absolute nonsense", says Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh. "The quest for the Holy Grail belongs with the quest for the ark Noah left on Mount Ararat or the fabled Ark of the Covenant Indiana Jones is always chasing. There ain't any objective truth in any of it - but of course it's a dream for publishers, who know the world is full of gullible people looking for miracles and they keep on promising that this time the miracle's going to come true.

"Only it isn't - but the money keeps rolling in."

Okay, so its a slow news day.

INSCRIPTIONS FROM THE LAND OF ISRAEL is a new online project just getting underway. The description opens:

The Inscriptions from the Land of Israel project seeks to collect and make accessible over the Web all of the previously published inscriptions (and their English translations) from the Land of Israel from the Persian period through the Islamic conquest (ca. 500 BCE - 640 CE). There are about 15,000 of these inscriptions, written primarily in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, by Jews, Christians, and pagans. They range from imperial declarations on monumental architecture to notices of donations in synagogues to humble names scratched on ossuaries, and include everything in between.

MARK GOODACRE has a round-up of SBL bloggers with links to lots of us. He also mentions the plane that was struck by lightning. I assume this was the plane I was on, during the approach to Memphis (I think - all those flights tend to blur together in the memory). I certainly hope it didn't happen twice. I'm not sure the lightning actually hit us, but if not, it was too damn close for comfort. It was a loud, bright blast that made the plane shake and caused a good bit of alarm for a minute or two. But all's well that ends well.

If you haven't looked back over my SBL postings, you may want to. I've added updates and photographs to some of them, starting with Monday's post on the Enoch manuscript. (But no pictures of the manuscript. Sorry.)

THE NEUSNER PHENOMENON is explored by David Klinghoffer in what appears to be a review of Neusner's latest introduction to the Mishnah in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles (even though very little space is give to reviewing the book). Excerpt:

Perhaps the only other Judaic scholar with a semifamiliar name outside academia, NYU�s Lawrence Schiffman, explains that this partly stems from the fact that Neusner seriously shook up the field early on, defining the major questions that other professors would have to deal with for the rest of their careers.

�I had to invent what the field would look like,� Neusner says.

Schiffman doesn�t deny the credit-taking. In American university religion departments before Neusner, Schiffman says, �The missing element was Talmud, the real core of Judaism. You went right from the Bible to the Middle Ages.�

Neusner upset Israeli academics, among others, by arguing that the teachings given in the name of individual rabbis in the Talmud couldn�t, as a rule, be attributed to those individual rabbis. Schiffman, best known for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, also speculates that �there are some who disdain him because he�s not a philologist,� an expert on the technical aspects of the definition and history of words.

Maybe so, although hating Neusner because he�s not a philologist calls to mind Lenny Bruce�s explanation of why the Jews killed Jesus: �We killed him because he didn�t want to become a doctor.�

Ever-subtle Klinghoffer.

UPDATE: Carl Kinbar e-mails:

I was wonderfully seduced into the study of early Judaism by Neusner and his infectious love for that literature. Now I am writing my dissertation on redactional characteristics of the Tosefta.

Though I recognize Neusner's flaws as a scholar (including his weakness in philology), his contributions have been immense. Klinghoffer's article not only fails to review the book, it also fails to convey Neusner's achievements.

Making God's Word Work: A Guide to the Mishnah is a reprise of Neusner's work in The Philosophical Mishnah. The "official" description on the Continuum website is a serviceable booknote.

THE TEMPLE MOUNT IS NOW STABLE, according to the IAA:

Temple Mt. wall now said stable (Jerusalem Post)
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

The eastern wall of the Temple Mount is no longer in danger of collapse, following repair work carried out by Jordanian engineers inside the compound, Israel's Antiquities Authority said Tuesday. But not all Israeli experts are convinced.
[...]

"What you can see looking at the wall leaves me with serious questions about the stability of the wall," said Hebrew University archeologist and Temple Mount expert Dr. Eilat Mazar, noting that repair work at the southern and eastern walls is far from finished.

[...]

ON MONDAY AFTERNOON I chaired the session of the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Group (S22-59) which held a panel review of Rachel Elior's book The Three Templess: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism. Her thesis is that the roots of early Jewish (Merkavah) mysticism are in secessionist priestly groups in the second temple period who had a sectarian view (compared to the mainstream temple cult after the Maccabean revolt) of holy time (calendar), holy place (temple), temple, and holy service (the temple cult). The reason why the Dead Sea Scrolls and the major pseudepigrapha are "external," noncanonical works is this secessionist viewpoint, although the Dead Sea Scrolls also preserve presecessionist priestly literature (e.g., the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice).

I think I've got that right. It is a very densely argued book and I have to say I understand it considerably better now that I've heard Elior explain it and reply to comments on it. The panelists were Rachel Elior, Jonathan Klawans, Ra'anan (Abusch) Boustan, April DeConick, and Alan Segal (with Elior getting both the first and the last word). The discussion was very wide ranging and it's hard to know where to start a summary. One theme that was discussed a lot was the calendar. The Qumran sectarians and others preserve material on the 364-day solar calendar, but it's hard to know how it was actually used. It's a very tidy system, since it divides the year into exactly 52 weeks with each festival happening on the same day of the week every year. The only problem is that it's a day and a quarter off the actual solar cycle, which means that it would depart rapidly from it and the seasonal festivals would soon become disconnected from their seasons. One possibility is that the users introduced some sort of intercalation: adding a day at certain points to correct the departure. The only problem is that, unless a week's worth of days was added at a time, the neat system would be disrupted and the festivals would no longer happen on the same day each year. Another possibility is that the departure was explained theologically as the result of human sin (cf., perhaps, 1 Enoch 80). Another unresolved question is which calendar the ancient temple used. There seemed to be quite a bit of sympathy for the idea that the second temple originally used the solar calendar. Elior said that there's evidence that Antiochus changed the calendrical system, presumably to the lunar calendar now used in Judaism, but I'm not sure what that evidence is.

The book was perhaps not as clear as it might have been about which texts Elior considered secessionist and which were presecessionist, and a good bit of the discussion, especially with Klawans, went into clearing this up. She thinks, for example - as I mentioned above, that the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice is a presecessionist priestly work rather than a Qumran sectarian work, and I think it's likely she's right. Boustan also argued that we are better off looking to the postrabbinic culture of Byzantine Palestine (and I would add, Amoraic Babylonia) for the origins of the Hekhalot literature. I agree with Elior that lots of ideas in the Hekhalot texts go back to the second temple period (and I've argued this in print elsewhere), but I think Boustan's point is valid too. The actual life situation of the material is in late antiquity or later.

April DeConick had a very interesting presentation in which she said that the fate of mystical traditions in ancient Judaism had a parallel in early Christianity. It started out with a belief in ongoing prophetic revelation but, as with rabbinic Judaism, it could not survive based on this tradition. Valentinus, in fact, knew a great deal about Jewish mystical and even priestly traditions and applied them to the elect. Also, Jesus is given many of the titles and functions of Enoch. So early Christianity provides a fascinating parallel to Elior's thesis. DeConick also raised the question of how the figure of Melchizedek fitted into the secesionist literature.

There were many issues that were raised but which we didn't get to (Alan Segal produced a long list of such questions, e.g., where the Sadducean tradition and the other Jewish temples at Leontopolis, Elephantine, etc., fitted in), but these are some of the things that we did discuss.

UPDATE: Blogger has been very uncooperative today, making it difficult to post. This usually happens when there's an embarrassing typo or misspelling in a post, as there was in this one. I've also taken the opportunity to add a few more thoughts on the session. But between Blogger and the fact that I'm busy with other things, I don't know how much more patience I'll have to chronicle the rest of the SBL sessions. I also attended the Early Jewish Christian Relations Section/New Testament Textual Criticism Section/Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds Group (S22-110) on Monday and the Pseudepigrapha Section (S23-14) on Tuesday, and they were both good sessions, but at least for now I'll just refer you to the online SBL abstracts for more information on them. But do note Robert Kraft's paper from S22-110, "From Jewish Scribes to Christian Scriptoria?: Issues of Continuity and Discontinuity in their Greek Literary Worlds," the full text of which is available on his web page.

THE FROM THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS TO THE BIBLE IN AMERICA EXHIBITION is coming to the vicinity of Charlotte, North Carolina, in January.

A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS in Eilat. Tasty though.

YESTERDAY'S NOVA PROGRAM, "ANCIENT REFUGE IN THE HOLY LAND," is now available in transcript on the Nova website.

FORGERY CRISIS SESSION (S21-134): This session took place on Sunday evening (just after the Enoch fragment presentation, so I made due with an energy bar for dinner). Hershel Shanks chaired. The planning was pretty poor: the session was scheduled for 7:00-8:30 pm, yet four 30-minute papers were scheduled into the slot in the program book. Then Shanks also brought David Noel Freedman to give an unscheduled presentation. Shanks asked everyone, evidently with little warning, to keep their comments down to 20 minutes, which was not entirely successful.

The first speaker was Professor Eric Meyers of Duke University. His main agenda was to present the text of a resolution recently passed by ASOR, the gist of which was that ASOR would support the publication of unprovenanced Iraqi artifacts (may have been limited to cuneiform tablets; I can't remember for sure) given the following conditions: (1) the State Board of Antiquities of Iraq consents; (2) any such artifacts taken outside Iraq will be repatriated by foreign institutions when requested by the Iraqis; and (3) any future ASOR publication of this material must mention that the material is unprovenanced. Although this case is very specific, Meyers held up the basic principles as applicable to unprovenanced and chance finds in general.

The second speaker was Professor Jim Harrell of the University of Toledo, known for being one of the few geologists to challenge the conclusions of the IAA panel regarding the James Ossuary and the Joash Inscription. He presented some recommendations for the technical analysis of such finds. Again, the gist of these was: (1) organize a panel of unpaid experts who are open-minded about the authenticity of the artifact and give them all the evidence; (2) the analytical work should be planned and conducted jointly by these experts, all of whom should be present during the testing; (3) the panel should engage in reciprocal dialogue until they reach a consensus; and (4) the panel should issue a final report that fairly represents the views of all panel members and that, ideally, should be published. He also proposed that "analytical protocols" be set up to industrial testing standards, although he has not persuaded any professional body to do this yet.

The third speaker was Dr. Uzi Dahari, the Deputy Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the chair of the committee that found the James Ossuary and the Joash Inscription to be forgeries. His presentation consisted mostly of a detailed account of the analysis of the patinas of the two inscriptions and the reasons for concluding it was fake in both cases. In addition, he referred to the reports that the police raid of Oded Golan's house (where the two inscriptions were found) led to the discovery of a laboratory where many forgeries were in the process of being made. (You can find the basic information about the patina testing and Oded's laboratory in the transcript of this BBC Horizon program.) He then took Biblical Archaeology Review to task very strongly for publishing these inscriptions for a journalistic scoop. He added that the IAA committee had very much wanted to find the inscriptions to be genuine, but "science is science," and that we should wait for the conclusion of the trial to get the full story.

The fourth speaker was Professor Bezalel Porten of the Hebrew University. He gave a very technical presentation on the onomastic, dating, linguistic, etc. features of a collection of 284 Aramaic Idumean ostraca. The presentation was interesting in itself, but the title was "Why the Unprovenanced Idumean Ostraca Should Be Published," and it wasn't clear to me when the question was answered. Perhaps it was when he said that some of the information was to be found nowhere else but in these documents. That's a fair point, but given the seminar topic, it would have been better to fill it out more and spend less time on the philological details. As it was, the paper would have been better suited to an epigraphy seminar.

Meanwhile, Noel Freedman had finally arrived and was sitting in the front row waiting for his turn. At about 8:45, Shanks got up and asked Porten to finish up. Porten answered that no one else had been asked to stop early (some of them did stop at least a little early of their own accord) and he wasn't going to either. He then continued with his paper. There was increasing murmuring and watch looking at in the audience, and more and more people got up and left. Professor Porten was still reading his paper when I left five or ten minutes later, since I had three receptions to go to, so I didn't get to hear Freedman at all.

This was a very interesting session but the organization of it was very poor: too much was crammed unscheduled or impossibly scheduled into an already tight conference program and both the presenters and the audience were ill served by the scheduling problems.

MEL GIBSON'S THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST is to be released as a video game this summer. (Via Andrew Sullivan). I was going to say that I could hardly wait to see what the game companies do with the Second Coming, but then I kept reading and saw that the first in the Left Behind Games series is coming out this summer too.

UPDATE: Duh. It's a satire site, as Evy Nelson kindly pointed out to me. My mistake. Trouble is, it's weird enough to be true.

SAN ANTONIO is my father's home town, where he was born and raised.


The Tower of the Americas was built in the Hemisfair Park. during the 1968 World's Fair. I had breakfast in it when I was a kid in 1969, while we were visiting my grandparents. This shot was taken last week from the window of my hotel room.


Remember the Alamo. Friday was a nice sunny day, so I was able to walk around a bit and to do the Alamo tour.

Some of the other photos need some touching up, so I'll leave them for later. I'll try to post something more substantive presently. Meanwhile, Mark Goodacre has been blogging the conference like a fiend. Start with this post and then just keep moving forward.

UPDATE: On Friday evening the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins met.


Here are some of the usual suspects.

For the last eight years, Jeffrey Gibson has been organizing a face to face meeting at the SBL conference of such members of biblical e-mail lists as wish to be present. We meet on Saturday at the Gramcord booth in the book display area. Here is the lot who showed up this year:


You can see me on the far left, back row, Mark Goodacre on the far right, back row, and Stephen Carlson in the front row, second from the right. Jeffrey is front row, just left of center. I don't know what the blur in front of him is. The Spirit of Bible-E-lists maybe?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all my American readers. And I hope all the AAR/SBL attenders had uneventful trips home. Or at least no more eventful than mine. I'm a little blurry this morning but I'm here in my office.

I'M HOME. My flight from Memphis to Amsterdam was delayed for a few hours because they had to fix a faulty transponder before we took off. I'm all in favor of a working transponder on any passenger jet I'm riding, so I didn't mind, but the delay did make me miss my connection to Edinburgh and I got home late this evening and am too tired to blog. No television blogging was available at the hotel and I don't have a laptop, so on-site conference blogging was limited to short snatches on the SBL communal computers. (Baylor also provided some free computing, which I used for e-mail.) But I have lots of photos and notes, so look for more from me about the conference soon.

NEWS ON THE NEW 1 ENOCH FRAGMENT: Yesterday evening after the Qumran session, Esther and Hanan Eshel gave an impromptu presentation on the new 1 Enoch fragment, whose story broke on PaleoJudaica some time ago. They are calling it XQpapEnoch, since they are confident it comes from a Qumran cave, but they don't know which one, and (unusually for a Qumran scroll and uniquely for a Qumran Enoch manuscript) it's written on papyrus rather than leather. It contains the damaged Aramaic text of 1 Enoch 8:4-9:3, a passage that tells how the archangels looked down from heaven on the corruption of the earth before the Flood, and it allows us to correct one of Milik's reconstructions since the word in question survives on this papyrus. The correct reading or something very close to it was conjectured by Loren Stuckenbruck (of Durham University) some time ago, before this fragment was discovered. (Well done, Loren.)

The fragment belongs to the Kando family. (Kando was an antiquities dealer who brokered the original Dead Sea Scrolls acquistions.) The Enoch papyrus is one of 12 unpublished fragments owned by them. The Eshels have seen infra-red photos of 6 of these. Five are biblical fragments from three already known manuscripts: 4QIsac, 4QGenf, and 8QGen. The other six look like "black corn flakes" and are now on tour in the USA in the From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Forbidden Book exhibition. The Eshels haven't seen the fragment in person yet but the are confident enough of its authenticity to publish it now. They passed around a photo of the text during the lecture and Moshe Bernstein promptly challenged one of their readings. Scholarship in action.

There are also rumors that another fragment of the same manuscript exists.

Many thanks to Esti and Hanan for sharing this information with us. And thanks again to the Society of Biblical Literature for providing the free Internet access that's allowing me to post this. I'm in a hurry so as not to monopolize the facilities, so apologies for any typos. More has been happening, of course, but this is the most interesting conference news so far.

UPDATE (25 November): Here's a photo of Esther Eshel making the presentation:

I'M HERE and blogging from an SBL computer in the book display room. Can't stay long. I got in late Thursday evening and for some reason have adjusted to Texas time with no particular jet lag. I spent Friday morning at the Alamo and then took my sister (who lives in San Antonio) to lunch, then she took me shopping. The PSCO session was Friday evening. So far today I haven't yet attended any papers, but I have had some very useful meetings and conversations. The schedulers have managed to place most of the sessions I want to go to on Sunday morning (with most of the rest directly opposite the session I'm chairing on Monday), so my being-two-places-at-once skills are to be stretched to their limits.

I have some photos to share with you, but no means to upload them here. Patience.

That's enough for now. I need to check my e-mail.

I'M OFF TO SAN ANTONIO first thing tomorrow morning to attend the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. On Friday evening I'm scheduled to give a short paper, "Astrology and the Descenders to the Chariot," in the PSCO session. PaleoJudaica readers can read it now by following the link. Then on Monday I'm to chair the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism session (S22-59) that reviews Rachel Elior's new book The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism. (Unfortunately, the Online Program Book does not allow permalinks to individual sessions. I hope next year they will consider remedying that.)

Any blogging during the conference will depend on ready availability of Internet facilities, plus my whim. At the moment I feel inclined just to take a break, but we'll see. In any case I'll try to take some interesting notes and photographs. I expect to be back on Wednesday the 24th, so look for me then, if not before. Have a good week.

NO INCITEMENT FOUND IN DIN RODEF COMMENT:

No Charges to Be Filed Against Rabbi Neventzal (Arutz Sheva)

GIVE THE DEVIL HIS DUE �

The Greatest Story Ever Retold (Emediawire)


Everything God has told you is a lie...this is the Devil's story. The Devil's Apocrypha, a novel that gives a revisionist twist to the Bible and has spawned many international cults, has been acquired by Brazilian new age publisher Madras Editoria. The book will be translated from English into Portuguese and distributed worldwide.

[...]

The Devil's Apocrypha is a retelling of the Bible from Satan's point of view and has gained international attention for its controversial subject matter and revisionist themes. Written in a biblical style, the tale has many people asking whether it is fact...or fiction. Regardless of individual opinions, it has captured the attention of readers across the globe.

�I think The Devil�s Apocrypha has struck a chord because there's never been anything like it,� says author John A. De Vito.

[...]

� but let's not get carried away. This gimmick is hardly new. Back in the fourth century C.E. or earlier, the Gnostics made the serpent the hero of the story of Adam and Eve's Fall. See, for example, the Hypostasis of the Archons from the Nag Hammadi Library.

THE CHRISTIAN ORIGINS BLOG IS BACK, although it hasn't been updated recently.

THE NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE SEPTUAGINT series has a website with lots of information on the project. They will be posting prepublication drafts of the volumes as they are completed. Currently you can download the Genesis volume by Robert J. V. Hiebert as a PDF file. A commentary series on the Septuagint is in the works too, as is a new edition of the Hexapla. All these projects are sponsored by the IOSCS.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS IN ISRAEL 2005: The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a list that will be added to as new information comes in.

MORE ON THE UPCOMING NOVA PROGRAM ON THE CAVE OF THE LETTERS in "Wartburg profs' work featured on NOVA" (Waterloo Ceadar-Falls Courier). The two professors in question were involved in the 2000-2001 excavation of the cave. The title of the program, incidentally, is "Ancient Refuge in the Holy Land." I hope it gets shown in Britain some day. I could almost catch it in the USA, but my flight home on the 23rd leaves too early.

UPDATE: Reader Allen Black points me to the PBS web page for the Nova program. Looks like there will be a transcript of it posted in due course. In the meantime the page has lots of interesting ancillary material.

REGARDING RASTAFARIAN SCRIPTURES, Seth Sanders e-mails:

Compare these words of Reggae singer Max Romeo:

"Take back Maccabee Version that God gave the black man
Give back King James Version, it belongs to white man"

from "Maccabee Version", his statement of rasta theology vis a vis the Biblical text. Note that "version" here probably plays on another meaning of "version" within dub reggae, where songs are produced in multiple editorial "versions," with different elements stripped out, altered or added in. Interesting that this religious self-consciousness about textual versions occurs in a lyrical genre that is extremely self-conscious about musical versions!

For the political and religious significance of this, see Barry Chevannes, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology (Syracuse, 1994).

For the song, see Max Romeo's "Holy Zion".

INTERESTING ARTICLE in the Jerusalem Post on "Priestly Paternity Tests," which reviews a book on DNA testing to establish priestly descent and a Jewish DNA profile in general. I don't know anything about the technicalities of DNA testing and I have no idea how well founded the studies are. The claim is:

Dr. Harry Ostrer, chairman of the Human Genetics Program at New York University, sums it up: "Recent work from genetics labs has validated the biblical record of a Semitic people who chose a Jewish way of life several thousand years ago. These observations are the biological equivalent to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls."

JOSEPHUS SEMINAR: Steve Mason has kindly sent the Ioudaios-L list a brief profile of the Josephus Seminar, coming up at the annual Society of Biblical Literature conference in San Antonio. The conference starts officially on Saturday, although there are related meetings before that. More from me on the SBL meetings presently.

THE "DEAD SEA SCROLLS OF BUDDHISM" have been in the news a fair bit lately. Here's an article on them:

Wanted: Dead Sea Scrolls Of Buddhism
(Independent Online, South Africa)

November 13 2004 at 03:29PM

The Afghan government is to request the return of the Dead Sea Scrolls Of Buddhism from the British Library, amid concerns the priceless manuscripts were looted during civil war in the early 1990s.

Afghanistan's Minister of Culture will formally ask for the 2 000-year-old scrolls to be sent from London to the newly restored Kabul Museum in the next few weeks as part of a campaign to bring home stolen treasures from foreign collections.

The British Library, whose conservation experts saved the scrolls from crumbling, has admitted it has no idea how they came to London from one of Afghanistan's most famous historical sites at Hadda near the Khyber Pass.

The British Library said it had bought the scrolls in 1994 from a British dealer out of concern that they were deteriorating rapidly and needed emergency restoration work to ensure that they were not lost.

[...]

THERE'S CONFLICT AT YALE UNIVERSITY over modernizing the offerings in its wonderful (for the study of antiquity and the Middle Ages) Department of Near Eastern Languages. The Yale Herald reports:

Issues of funding and interdepartmental cooperation have long been sticking points for the NELC department. "Our requests for expansion in the area of modern Near East were systematically and routinely turned down," [Professor Benjamin] Foster said, referring to the department's expansionary efforts during the '70s. According to him, "Requests from other departments to expand in the modern Near East were honored," allowing the history and religious studies departments to add full professorships. "It was cool to do modern Middle East studies, but the only place you couldn't do it was in the Near East department," he said.

Yet departments like history and religious studies, given their broad scope, have limited openings for fully-tenured faculty who specialize in a particular region or area, meaning that most of the professors at Yale who focus on Middle East topics are employed as adjunct or visiting professors. The transient nature of these positions has inevitably hindered the creation of a coherent program at Yale. Furthermore, it can be difficult for NELC majors to get into popular courses outside of the NELC department. David Nitkin, ES '06, said that it is "nearly impossible" to get into popular history seminars as a NELC major, even if the seminar is directly related to NELC studies. NELC majors have also had trouble finding senior essay advisors.

Foster thinks the problem is ultimately tied to funding, the lack of which plagues the deparment, despite growing popularity among undergraduates. "In the struggle for resources, we are still considered a small department with small enrollments," he said. "If you want to know where all the money is being spent, take a walk up Science Hill." Given that recent expansions in the NELC department have focused on the language program, which is what the YCIAS grant specifies, it seems any changes in the department are directly tied to financial constraints. "I see less likelihood in our expanding in history and civilization than expanding in languages and literatures, which is really what we do," Foster said.

They have the difficult job of trying to be relevant to a broad range of students, especially given renewed interest in current events in the Middle East, without succumbing to trendiness and without compromising the integrity of their excellent offerings for the earlier period. I wish them well.

SPEAKING OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, here's a review of two new books about him, a novel and a history:

Authors offer new look at Alexander the Great

By David Walton
FOR THE [PITTSBURG] TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, November 14, 2004

"The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great," by Steven Pressfield; Doubleday, $24.95, 301 pages, and "Alexander the Great: A New Life," by Paul Cartledge; Overlook Press, $28.95, 347 pages.

Novelist Steven Pressfield says he "looted shamelessly" writers ancient and recent for "The Virtues of War," his fictional re-creation of the military career of Alexander the Great.

Surprisingly, new information continues to turn up about Alexander, who fought and died three centuries before the birth of Christ, Caesar and the Roman Empire. Satellite photography and computer technology have made possible detailed reconstructions of battlefields, weaponry and battle tactics, confirming and correcting ancient legend and historiography. These past 20 years have been an exciting time for classical archaeology -- a subject almost nobody is interested in anymore.

Pressfield's device is to let Alexander tell his own story. "I have always been a soldier," he begins . . .

In the string of excellent new histories over the last decade, the most readable and engrossing is Paul Cartledge's "Alexander the Great: A New Life," just published. Cartledge, the world's leading historian on Sparta and ancient Greece, adapted his book from his Cambridge University lectures over the past 20 years. His approach is immediate, discursive, insightful, and highly engaging, aimed at the audience for the BBC-PBS series on the Spartans and Greek civilization that Cartledge has written and advised.

Cartledge looks at Alexander's "extraordinary achievement" not only for what he accomplished in his own time, but for its "subsequent impact" -- which continues to this day, when Alexander is still prayed in aid by fishermen in Greece, cursed as a thief in Iran, and worshipped as a saint in the Coptic Church of Egypt.

[...]

MORE ON DHUL QARNAYN (and Moses' horns make a cameo appearance):

WORD FOR WORD: Zulqarnain � Alexander or Cyrus? �Khaled Ahmed (Pakistan Daily Times)

Alexander is a curious word. The �ander� part in it means �man� and comes from �aner� through a grammatical change. We know that �nar� in Persian and Sanskrit means �man�. Name Andrew means �manly�. Alexander means �he who saves men�. Alex is a negative of �leg� meaning �to join�. Root �lg� appears in �lex� (law) and �religion�

We all believe that there was once a good king called Zulqarnain whom Allah made powerful on earth. The Quran says (18:83-94) he travelled to where he sun set in a muddy well, after which he went east where the sun rises. He then went north where he built a wall to protect the world against Yajuj-Majuj or Gog and Magog.

Zulqarnian is another transliteration of Arabic dhul qarnayn. They are the same phrase, which means "one (masc. sing.) who possesses two horns".

Zulqarnain means man with two horns. Although old tradition says Moses had two horns, Muslims have largely identified him with Alexander the Great. In Rome, the statue of Moses has two horns.

[...]

Archaeological discovery showed that Cyrus was the great king who rescued the Jews from their exile in Babylon. The king with two horns is mentioned by prophet Daniel. He wore the two horns to indicate his control of two countries: Pars and Medea.

But Alexander was the "he-goat from the west" in this vision. I take it that Khaled Ahmed is proposing that the Qur'an means Cyrus here, which I suppose is possible. I don't know whether there is any precedent for this idea in the early Muslim commentators. The "ram with two horns" is interpreted in Daniel 8:20 as follows: "As for the ram which you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia," so the original meaning is clearly the Persian Empire rather than a specific king.

A bit later we read:

The �qrn� root is curious. It appears in Greek as �kr� and in Latin as �krn�, which makes me think that it is one and the same thing. The origin of the word must be Syriac from where many words have radiated to the Semitic and Indo-European group of languages.

Greek �kr� became �sr� since Latin had no �k� sound. So we have rhinoceros meaning horn on the nose. The mythical horse unicorn has one horn because corn here means horn. (Note the transformation of Latin corn into horn in English.)

This is a little confused. The Greek word for horn is keras and rhinoceros is a Greek derivative meaning "horned-nose." What Ahmed means to say, I think, is that the Greek word was adopted into Latin (whose "c" was pronounced as "k" in antiquity), but the Latin "c" is generally pronounces as "s" in English. Hence the pronunciation "rhinoseros" rather than "rhinokeros." [Note: I have corrected the Greek word for "horn," for which I gave the wrong form originally.]

BOOK OF ENOCH MEDIA WATCH: The Book of 1 Enoch has been mentioned in the media a couple of times in the last few days. First of a letter in defense of Rastafarianism was published on Thursday in City Vision South Africa. The author comments at one point on Rasta scriptures:

Rasta uses the bible, apocrypha, book of Enoch, the hiden books of Eden, the other gospels and most, importantly, the Holy Piby (the black man's bible) - the Royal scroll of black supremacy; the promised Key; the utterances and testimony of the Binghi ancients; the epistles of Ras Marcus; The Kebra Negast; the Fetha Negast; The Egyptian and the Ethiopian book of the Living; and the Testament of the Living I, by Ras Tesfa.

You will recall that 1 Enoch (which is really a library of 5+ second temple Jewish texts) survives complete only in an Ethiopic translation, although Aramaic fragments were recovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls and translations of some of the book survive in Greek. I don't know some of the other texts, but I have mentioned the Kebra Negast here recently.

Second, a Q & A column in today's Allentown Morning Call addresses the question "Do Jews believe in hell? Where is it found in the bible?" and comments:

Hell, like paradise, was created by God. In the Apocryphal Book of Enoch and in the post-biblical work called the Talmud, more speculations were added to this rather minimal reference in the Hebrew Bible.

Some of these ideas are also found in the writings of the Persians and Greeks. In those legends, the entrance to hell in the valley near Jerusalem is considered one of three on earth; another is under the sea, a third is in the desert. The valley entrance is between two palm trees, down a hole that's always filled with smoke. The mouth of the entrance to hell is narrow and keeps the smoke from rising and revealing the exact location of the place.

Hell is huge and divided into seven different areas. In hell, a fiery river flows over the heads of sinners, and this fire is 60 times hotter than any earthly fire. There is a smell of sulfur in Gehenna. An angel-prince in charge of Gehenna � the devil, Satan. The basic belief is that sinners go directly to hell after death, while the righteous go directly to paradise olam habah, ''the world to come'').

At birth, a place is reserved for each person in both heaven and hell, and at death, after a final judgment is made by God of our life's deeds, either the space in heaven or the one in hell is given up.

Most souls after death are not sent to heaven or hell immediately, but rather remain in a place of judgment and purification (purgatory for Christians) for up to one year as they learn why they were afraid and why they were cruel. Christians have much more elaborate beliefs about the nature of purgatory.

No specific references for either 1 Enoch or the Talmud are given for these details, but the author seems to have in mind Enoch's tour of the universe in the the Book of the Watchers (the first component book of 1 Enoch) 17-36, esp. chaps. 18 and 27, and also various parts of the Epistle Enoch (= 1 Enoch 91-105). Most of the details seem to come from somewhere other than 1 Enoch. Some come from the Talmud, but I think other sources may be involved as well. There's a fair amount of speculation about hell in Jewish literature, but it never turned into a coherent doctrine, as it did in Christianity.

"CHRISTOPH LUXENBERG" IS NERVOUS:

Low profile for German Koran challenger
Thu 11 November, 2004 12:49 (Reuters)

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

PARIS (Reuters) - When a Muslim radical murdered the Dutch director Theo van Gogh for a film criticising Islam, Christoph Luxenberg saw his name ripple through Internet forums 1,000 times and immediately knew why.

"The safety of experts on Islam is topical again," he said -- in a surprisingly detached tone for the author of a critique of the Koran who fears it could one day spark similar anger.

Van Gogh, murdered last week for a film slamming Muslim treatment of women, set out to be provocative. But such is the apprehension among critics of Islam that even an obscure German professor of ancient Semitic languages keeps a very low profile.

"Christoph Luxenberg" is a pseudonym. The professor hides his work from his own students -- even those who recommend it to him, not knowing he is its author. He gives interviews by phone and offers little hint of who he really is or where he lives.

This has served Luxenberg well over the past four years, when his book "The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran" was only available in dense academic German. But he doesn't know what to expect when an English translation appears next year.

"I fear a strong reaction in the Islamic world," he told Reuters late on Wednesday by telephone. "My Muslim friends tell me that many people will jump on this book."

[...]

His thesis doesn't sound very plausible to me, but I do intend to read the book once it's out in English. But even if he's wrong, it's sick that he has to be in fear of his life over it.

THE BETHSAIDA PROJECT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA AT OMAHA:

Bethsaida Project has new addition to showcase (UNO Gateway)

by J. Parker Adair
November 12, 2004

UNO's Bethsaida Excavations Project now has several stones on display from the Temple Mount of Jerusalem's King Herod the Great.

The three stones are part of a new exhibit in the Arts and Science Hall, room 343.

"This is kind of an outreach to draw attention to our archeological project at UNO," said Steve Reynolds.

Reynolds is the archivist for the Bethsaida Project, which has been going on at UNO since 1987. While this exhibit is not from the Bethsaida site, nor UNO excavations, it has great historical significance and does draw attention to what UNO is doing, while also sharing displays from other universities.

[...]

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Beit Morasha of Jerusalem - Robert M. Beren College
The Institute for the Study of Rabbinic Thought

Invites the public to attend its Seventh Annual Conference:

Controversy in Rabbinic Literature:
Its Boundaries, Logic, and Hermeneutic Status

Sunday-Tuesday, December 12-14, 2004
Beit Morasha of Jerusalem
Kiryat Moriah Campus, Talpiot, Jerusalem

Hebrew version (HTML): http://www.geocities.com/okutner/progheb.html

For further details please contact: hazal@bmj.org.il



Sunday, December 12
9:30-11:30 Albert Baumgarten (Bar Ilan University), Chair
Alon Goshen-Gottstein (Beit Morasha), Controversy In Rabbinic Literature: Polysemy and Complex Valuation
Eszter Fuzessy (University of Chicago), Differentiating Inter-religious from Intra-religious Polemics in Rabbinic Literature - Methodological Considerations
Rella Kushelevsky (Bar-Ilan University) The Role of Controversy in Forming the Identity of the Sage

12:00-14:00 Hanna Safrai (Shalom Hartman Institute), Chair
Yohanan Silman (Bar-Ilan University), "Both Are the Living Words of God"
Harry Fox (University of Toronto), Controversy for the Sake of Heaven or to Annul?
William Kolbrener (Bar-Ilan University), "Chiseled From All Sides": Hermeneutics and Controversy in the Rabbinic Tradition (English)


Monday, December 13
9:30-11:30 Leib Moscowitz (Beit Morasha and Bar Ilan University), Chair
Menahem Kahana (Hebrew University), The Structuring of Controversy in the Mishna and Its Goals
Meir Lichtenstein (Yeshivat Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Dati, Ein Tzurim), Amoraic Invention of Tannatic Controversies
Noam Zohar (Bar-Ilan University), The "Innovative Controversy": Revolution and Respect for Tradition Among Tannaim

12:00-14:00 Galit Hasan-Rokem, (Hebrew University), Chair
Dina Stein (University of California, Berkeley), Domestic Controversies: Everyday Hermeneutics
Nili Ben-Ari (Emek Ha-Yarden College) Rabbinic Controversy in Aggada in the Beit Midrash
Rina Lapidus (Bar-Ilan University), Halakhic and Aggadic Controversies on How To Obey Commandments


Tuesday, December 14
9:30-11:30 Shlomo Zalman Havlin (Bar-Ilan University), Chair
Yehuda Brandes (Beit Morasha), Ideological Background of Amoraic Rules for "Pesak"
Michael Chernick (Hebrew Union College, New York), Controversy in Divine and Celestial Torah
Tamas Turan (Hebrew University), The Imagined Midrashic Controversy in the Talmuds: Its Forms, Assumptions and Development

12:00-14:00 Joshua Levinson (Hebrew University), Chair
Marc Hirshman (Hebrew University), Controversy in Bereishit Rabba and Vayikra Rabba: A Reappraisal
Nachman Levine (Michigan Jewish Institute), Controversy as Metaphor in the Aggadic/Halakhic Story
Daniel Nikritin (Bar-Ilan University), "Torah Without and We're Within?": To Disagree and Belong

14:30-16:00 Alon Goshen-Gottstein (Beit Morasha), Chair
Hemi Avneri (Beit Morasha), Urbanism as a Factor in Halakhic Homogeneity and Heterogeneity
Yitzhak Roness (Beit Morasha), Human Relations During Controversy Chayuta Deutsch (Beit Morasha), Matrona and the Rabbis: Study, Polemic or Controversy?

ARAFAT IS DEAD. According to Reuters the agreement to hold the funeral in Cairo and to bury him in Ramallah seems to be holding:

His body was to be flown to Cairo for a ceremony on Friday and then to the West Bank city of Ramallah for burial at his battered headquarters, Palestinian officials said.

[...]

Israel said on Wednesday it would permit Arafat's burial in Ramallah and allow Arab leaders, even from states with which it remains officially at war, to attend.

[...]

Also, reader Raphael Malyankar e-mails:

There is a judaica-related issue, which you surely know about but missed, in this sentence in the Haaretz report:

At the weekend, Justice Minister Yosef Lapid touched off a furor by declaring that the Temple Mount was a site "where Jewish kings are buried, and not Arab terrorists."

Jewish kings are *not* buried on the Temple Mount and would not be buried there for reasons of religious law. Other news reports quote Lapid as saying "Jerusalem is the city where Jewish kings are buried...".

I didn't notice that sentence but Malyankar is quite right. Doubtless the "Jerusalem" version of the quote is the right one.

UPDATE: Funeral details in this CNN article. The idea of a Jerusalem burial has clearly not been dropped:

Crews in Ramallah are also preparing to construct a moveable monument in which to bury the Palestinian leader -- one that could be transported to Jerusalem one day, Palestinian sources said.

WHAT HAPPENED to the Christian Origins blog?

OF COURSE I live in a castle, Mark. Doesn't everybody in Scotland? Well, at least all academics.



Nothing elaborate, as you can see. Just a nice, down to earth, regular, unpretentious castle. Nothing special. But then again, I'm not a bishop.

What's the big deal?

CONTINUED CONTROVERSY OVER ARAFAT'S BURIAL:

MK Tibi: In the end, Arafat will be buried in Al Aqsa
By Haaretz Service

Yasser Arafat will ultimately be buried in the Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, even if the step is years away, Israeli Arab MK and former Arafat advisor Ahmed Tibi said in remarks broadcast Wednesday.

[...]

At the weekend, Justice Minister Yosef Lapid touched off a furor by declaring that the Temple Mount was a site "where Jewish kings are buried, and not Arab terrorists." Arafat has also angered Jews in past statements dismissing Jewish historical claims to the compound, the site of the ancient temples.

"In the end," Tibi told Israel Radio, "if he is not buried today or tomorrow in East Jerusalem, a day will come when there is a sovereign Palestinian government, a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, and Yasser Arafat will be buried in the mosque of Al Aqsa.

"This is definite. This will be," Tibi said.

[...]

UPDATE: An agreement may be falling into place for a funeral in Egypt and burial in Arafat's Ramallah compound:

Ramallah burial planned for Arafat
Average Palestinians appear unmoved by imminent demise

Matthew Kalman, [San Francisco] Chronicle Foreign Service

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Ramallah, West Bank -- In the West Bank, preparations began Tuesday for Yasser Arafat's funeral, even though Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath told a Paris press conference that the Palestinian leader was "very much alive" and discussion of his death was "indecent."

The Abu Ghosh printing house in Ramallah received an urgent order early Tuesday from the Palestine Liberation Organization's public affairs office to print 10,000 large posters. Above the simple script "Yasser Arafat: The president, the leader," a photo of the ailing Palestinian Authority head stared defiantly out over Ramallah for the last time.

Palestinian officials burst into tears when they announced that Arafat would be buried in Ramallah, in the half-destroyed headquarters compound where he defied the onslaught of the Israeli army and spent the last three years of his life under virtual military siege. The officials hope the burial will follow an impressive state funeral in Cairo.

Israeli security officials said Tuesday the government would not object to the Ramallah burial, the Associated Press reported. Israel's Cabinet was to take up the matter today.

[...]

I hope very much that this works. We don't need another fight over the Temple Mount.

UPDATE (11 November): More here, including a correction to the Lapid quote above.

NO GOLDEN GLOBE BEST DRAMA AWARD for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ:

"Passion," meanwhile, cannot compete for best drama because the organization's rules limit that prize for movies in English � while the dialogue of "Passion" is mostly in Aramaic.

"Yes, we know Aramaic is not a spoken language and, yes, we know the film doesn't have a country of origin," said HFPA president Lorenzo Soria.

"But our bylaws state that when a film is in a language that is preponderantly non-English, it's a foreign-language film."

"Passion" can compete in all other categories, including best foreign film and a possible best actor nod for Jim Caviezel as Jesus Christ.

ACCORDING TO A RABBI'S WORLD, "Paleojudaica is a funky look into the harrowing world of archeology and academia and Jews who dig."

Maybe I should put that in my masthead.

MANICHEAN RUINS DISCOVERED:

Ruins of Manichean center discovered in West Azerbaijan (via Archaeologica News)

Tehran Times Culture Desk
TEHRAN (MNA) �- The ruins of what is believed to be the center of Mani (216-276 C.E.), the founder of Manicheanism, was discovered during the seventh stage of excavations at the ancient site of Qalaychi Hill in West Azerbaijan Province which began last month.

Experts used to believe that Hasanlu Mound was the major early Manichean center, but the recent excavation seems to prove otherwise.

An inscription found at Qalaychi Hill last year showed that Qalaychi Hill, not Hasanlu Mound, was probably Mani�s early center.

[...]

BLOGGERS BEWARE! So far today, Blogger has eaten two of my posts and I had to reconstruct them. Copy your posts before you press the Publish Post button!

ASHKELON BURIAL CAVE ENDANGERED:

Construction pit and rain threaten to destroy 1,700-year-old burial cave (Ha'aretz)
By Yuval Azulay

A 1,700-year-old burial cave near the beach in Ashkelon is at risk of imminent collapse. Its decorations form quite a collection: Greek goddesses; a naked boy pruning grape vines and picking grapes, which are gathered in a basket; birds pecking at a vine; a boy playing the flute; palm fronds and the implements of war, such as a lance and a shield.

The cave, which served Roman nobles in the third century C.E., was discovered in 1936 near the Ashkelon coastline by an Arab farmer tending his vineyard. Experts describe the site as a particularly valuable archaeological asset and source of information about religion, faith and burial practices during that era. This asset now faces the risk of imminent collapse, ironically, because of earthworks intended to ensure the cave's future by placing it at the center of a new tourism project.

[...]

A NOVA PROGRAM is to feature the theories of Richard Freund regarding the Cave of the Letters. Excerpt from the Jerusalem Post article:

In the hour-long NOVA documentary, airing on PBS stations on November 23, Richard Freund, director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford in Conneticut, challenges some of the groundbreaking ideas of famed soldier and archeologist Yigael Yadin.

Freund's most controversial conclusion is that ritual bronze vessels, found by Yadin in the so-called Cave of Letters, were used in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and may be its only surviving items. Yadin, who had discovered them in 1960, believed that the vessels, decorated with a sea goddess and other Roman mythological figures, had been stolen from the Romans.

THE ACRE SITE � NOT A JEWISH GRAVEYARD:

Acre dig finds proof that site wasn't Jewish graveyard (Ha'aretz)
By David Ratner

A day after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intervened in a crisis over the archaeological dig near the train junction in Acre, another monument was discovered at the scene proving the area was a Roman graveyard without the presence of any Jewish graves whatsoever.

[...]

Last Friday an unusual marble monument find was uncovered, and yesterday - a day after Sharon's intervention at the request of ultra-Orthodox who were convinced that the bones being uncovered belonged to Jews - the monument was cleaned and discovered to be the tomb of Legionnaire Olfius Martinos, of the Seventh Claudian Legion.

A source in the Antiquities Authority said yesterday that what was amusing about the monument is that ultra-Orthodox Jews and their political allies are fighting against archaeological investigations of legionnaires who oppressed the Bar Kochba rebellion and killed tens of thousands of Jews.

[...]

THE PSCO SESSION AT THE SBL MEETING:

Bob Kraft e-mails:

Yes, it's a bit confusing. We have a PSCO meeting coming up this Thursday, 11 November, here at UPenn -- Jodi Magness on zodiac floors -- then the very next week, at the SBL/AAR conferences in San Antonio, the following program on Friday night (please cross-post as appropriate):

PHILADELPHIA SEMINAR ON CHRISTIAN ORIGINS
in its 42nd year
an Interdisciplinary Humanities Seminar
under the auspices of the
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Department of Religious Studies
201 Logan Hall
with support from
the Penn Humanities Forum

TOPIC FOR 2004-2005: The Impact of Astrological (and Related) Traditions on Early
Jewish and Christian Perspective

While astrology today is relegated to dubious status in the back pages of newspapers, in the ancient world there was no question as to the impact of the stars on human beings. The power gained through knowledge of astrology was at times troubling and terrifying, but rarely, if ever, discounted. Astrological ideas are reflected in all manner of Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian traditions, from the vivid Jewish synagogue floor mosaics to the Star of Bethlehem and the attendant arrival of the Magi to Paul's use of technical terminology drawn from astrology and beyond. Given the widespread impact of astrology, then, it is surprising that these traditions have received relatively little scholarly attention. It is our hope to use this year of PSCO to generate an ongoing conversation involving scholars of early Christianity, scholars of early Judaism, and other students of late antiquity in an examination of the role of astrological traditions in the Greco-Roman world, and especially in early Judaism and Christianity.

Co-Chairs:
Todd C. Krulak (University of Pennsylvania) tckrulak@hotmail.com
Sarah L. Schwarz (Haverford College/University of Pennsylvania)
sschwarz@haverford.edu
Secretary:
Harry Tolley (Univ of Pennsylvania) tolleyhw@ccat.sas.upenn.edu

Webmaster:
Jay C. Treat (University of Pennsylvania)jtreat@ccat.sas.upenn.edu

THE THIRD MEETING OF THE 2004-05 YEAR WILL BE HELD on Friday 19 November, in San Antonio just before the AAR/SBL annual meetings. We are scheduled for Conference Room 8 in the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter, from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm (presumably we can stay later if we wish). There will be two brief presentations to help spur discussion:

James Davila (St.Andrews University),
"Astrology and the Descenders to the Chariot."

Participants might want to look at chapter 3 of my Descenders to the Chariot: The People Behind the Hekhalot Literature (JSJSup 70; Leiden: Brill, 2001). There is a precis of that chapter in the section "Becoming a Shaman" of my article "The Hekhalot Literature and Shamanism," SBLSP 33 (1994), 767-89, also available online at:

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/hekhalot_shamanism_art.html

Annette Yoshiko Reed (McMaster University),
"Astrology in the Rhetoric of Jewish and Christian Chosenness"

Some examples (Josephus and a couple of later sources such as Justin Martyr and Talmud) of Jewish and Christian sources that use astrology as a foil for describing through comparison/contrast what they see as true "religion" -- all the more interesting a rhetorical twist, since astrology was widely practiced among Jews and Christians no less than "pagans."

If someone would like to organize a pre-seminar group meal, or would like to be included in such, please let me know.

Bob Kraft, coordinator

--
Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
227 Logan Hall (Philadelphia PA 19104-6304); tel. 215 898-5827
kraft@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html

EGYPTOLOGY NEWS is a blog on, well, Egyptology news, by someone named Andie. I just noticed it in this week's Explorator.

MORE ON ARAFAT'S BURIAL PROSPECTS:

Israel takes over Arafat burial plan (London Times)
From David Sharrock in Jerusalem

ISRAEL announced yesterday that it had completed preparations for Yassir Arafat�s funeral to be held in the Gaza Strip, not, as he had hoped, in Jerusalem.

The decision appears to rule out the 75-year-old Palestinian leader�s own wish to be buried in Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem � known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

[...]

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians� chief negotiator, said the Israeli announcement was inappropriate. �I think it�s not for the Israelis to decide and I would urge them to show some sensitivity,� he said.

But an unnamed Palestinian official quoted by Reuters from the West Bank said: �He has liver failure. His condition is not improving.� He added: �One option being considered is moving him to Cairo.�

[...]

UPDATE: This story just keeps getting stranger. First, according to CNSNews, "'They're Trying to Bury My Husband Alive' Suha Arafat Says," in response to the plan of Palestinian leaders to come to France to visit his bedside. Aside from everything that arises from that title, this article is full of interesting gossip about the legal situation for keeping Arafat on life support (if that's what's happening) and about what his illness might be. Note also the following historical tidbit:

Before Suha's outburst, analysts here had speculated that Arafat would be allowed to die on Tuesday, which is Lailat al-Kader, the 27th day and most holy night in the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

It is known as the Night of Power, when Muslims believe that Allah revealed the Koran to Mohammed. Arafat's death on that day would take on added significance.

Then, in response to Suha Arafat, one Palestinian official is reported (by Xinhuanet) to be promising that "the ailing President will reject his wife's claims that the visit by Palestinian leaders was to 'bury him alive.'" All I can say to that is, I'll believe it when I see it.

UPDATE: Hmmm... Maybe that last quote was a hasty mistranslation of the Arabic. The Washington Post gives what seems to be the same quote as follows (my bold-font emphasis):

Her accusations infuriated officials already frustrated that Arafat's wife has refused to divulge details of their seriously ailing leader's condition.

"They are angry with Suha and don't want to go," Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior Arafat aide told reporters at a press conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "What came from Suha doesn't represent our people. If the president were to hear that, he would reject it completely."

This makes more sense.

ARAMAIC IN TENNESSEE:

Academy of Nasramit Language & Culture established in Tennessee
(Kentucky Lake Times)
Benton County, TN - The Nasrani Church of the East (world headquarters in Tennessee) announced Sunday evening their plans to open an educational institute known as the Academy of Nasramit Language & Culture for the education of the church's members in the church's liturgical language and to promote awareness of the diverse cultural aspects of the denomination.

Nasramit (referred to as "Nasarani" and "Nazarani" in some regions) is spoken by the majority of Nasrani Church of the East members (St. Thomas Christians) in India, Goa, Portugal, Spain and Southeast Asia with some individuals within North America.

Nasramit is a dialect of Aramaic resembling ancient Biblical Hebrew. In the United States of America and some other countries the language is written with the characters of the English alphabet.

[...]

I'm afraid I've never heard of Nasramit before this. You can find more about the Nasrani Church of the East in America by following the link.

THE VANDALIZED ACRE EXCAVATION has been temporarily suspended:

Sharon defends move to suspend Acre dig (Jerusalem Post)
By TOVAH LAZAROFF

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon defended his decision Sunday to call a temporary halt to an underpass project in Acre after hearing that a 100,000-person protest was planned for Sunday because haredim believe the project is disturbing an ancient Jewish burial site.

[...]

COLLOQUIUM ANNOUNCEMENT:

A Covenant to the People, A Light to the Nations:
Universalism, Exceptionalism, and the Problem of Chosenness in Jewish
Thought http://jewishthought.mcmaster.ca

Sponsored by Canada Research Chair in Modern Jewish Thought, Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University

Convened by Dana Hollander (http://univmail.mcmaster.ca/~danahol)
and Annette Yoshiko Reed (http://www.annettereed.com)


COLLOQUIUM - May 18-20, 2005

The Colloquium will consider the ongoing reflection about the concept of Israel as a "light to the nations" (Isa 42:6; 49:6) in ancient, medieval, and modern Jewish thought, together with its relevance for Christianity and contemporary philosophy and theory. This and other biblical attempts to reconcile the election of Israel with the universality of Israel's God will serve as a starting point for exploring the range of ways in which Jews past and present have negotiated the nature and boundaries of their collective identities (ethnic, religious, cultural, political) in relation to other nations and peoples. Inquiries into the historical development of concepts such as chosenness, Jewish exceptionalism, and Jewishness, and the history of their reinterpretation in different socio-cultural contexts, will be combined with philosophical and theoretical explorations of their continued contemporary relevance.

Speakers include Idit Dobbs-Weinstein (Vanderbilt), Willi Goetschel (U of Toronto), Dana Hollander (McMaster), Andrew Jacobs (UC Riverside), Joel Kaminsky (Smith College), David Novak (U of Toronto), Gesine Palmer (FESt, Heidelberg), Randi Rashkover (York College of Pennsylvania), Annette Yoshiko Reed (McMaster), Kenneth Reinhard (UCLA), Peter Sch�fer (Princeton/Berlin), Yossef Schwartz (Tel Aviv University), and Susan Shapiro (U of Massachusetts, Amherst)

In the coming months, further information (e.g., paper titles, abstracts, schedule) will be posted at http://jewishthought.mcmaster.ca

PRE-COLLOQUIUM SEMINAR, May 17, 2005

This special daylong Seminar, geared toward graduate students in Jewish Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and related fields, will involve intensive discussion of key texts on the theme of chosenness, including classical works such as the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic literature and works by modern and contemporary authors. Sessions will be led by Dana Hollander, Joel Kaminsky, David Novak, and Annette Yoshiko Reed.

Seminar participants will be selected through application and will be granted stipends to cover the costs of travel, meals, and accommodations during both the Seminar and the Colloquium. Interested students should submit a CV and a letter detailing their relevant academic background and research interests to Dr. Hollander (danahol@mcmaster.ca) by DECEMBER 15, 2004. The Seminar is geared towards graduate students but open to post-docs and other interested scholars.


FURTHER INFORMATION

These events are the first in a series to be sponsored by the recently established Canada Research Chair in Modern Jewish Thought at McMaster University. McMaster's Department of Religious Studies has been distinguished by a long tradition of studying Judaism and Christianity in concert, as equally significant yet intertwined religions, and in conjunction with philosophy and political thought. Building on this scholarly profile, the conference aims to promote a vision of the study of Jewish thought traditions as engaged in an ongoing conversation with philosophy and theory, political thought, and the study of Christianity, both classical and contemporary.

For more information about the Seminar and Colloquium, please contact Alisha Pomazon (pomazoaj@mcmaster.ca) or see our website:
http://jewishthought.mcmaster.ca/

CONFERENCE ALERT:

The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power

An International Conference
November 7-10, 2004
At the University of Michigan
and the Toledo Museum of Art

Given its topic, this conference has a surprising number of papers on ancient Judaism.

(Heads-up, Justin Winger.)

THE TERRORIST WHO MURDERED DUTCH FILM DIRECTOR THEO VAN GOGH left a five-page letter fixed to Van Gogh's corpse with one of the murder weapons. The letter includes Talmud libels, the like of which we have encountered before. The translation below is from the Dutch blog Zacht Ei. The relevant passage, addressed to (former Muslim) Dutch M.P. Ayaan Hirshi Ali, reads:

I would like to ask you the following questions:

How do you feel about the fact that Van Aartsen (leader of the VVD) subscribes to an ideology where non-Jews are considered as non-humans?

Baba Mezie 114a-114b: Only Jews are people ("Only you are called people"). Also see Kerlthoth 6b under subtitle ("Oil of anointing") and Barakath 56a, where gentile (non-Jews) females are called animals ("female-donkeys")

Yebamoth 92a: All Gentile children are animals.

How do you feel about the fact that a mayor is leading Amsterdam, whom subscribes to an ideology where Jews can lie to non-Jews?

Baba Kamma 113a: Jews may lie ("listen") to mislead a Gentile.

How do you feel about the fact that you are part of a government that supports the state with an ideology that proposes genocide?

Sofarim 15, line 10 (Minor Tarcctates): These are the words by rabbi Simom ben Yohai: Tod shebe goyyim herog ("Even the best of the Gentiles should be killed").

Since you are a fighter for equal rights, you will probably (after learning this knowledge) ask with your Jewish masters in chambers to reject the teachings of the Talmud. You will also probably make work of asking the Jewish community in Holland to reject it.

I'm familiar with most of these accusations and proof-texts; you can find the same claims on various anti-Semitic websites. I noted similar and partly overlapping material last year in an Al Jazeerah article. Obviously the murderer had been steeped in such sources. These Talmudic etc. passages are taken out of context � often grossly so � or otherwise twisted to get these bizarre results. For example, sometimes the passage is rejecting the quoted view and other times the quoted phrases are scriptural allusions in detailed halakhic discussions that have very different points than implied here. You can find full analysis of all these passages at David Maddison's website and "Gil Student"'s Real Truth about the Talmud page.

If you're ever tempted to think that ancient history isn't "relevant," think again. These lies about ancient Judaism are being put to the very modern, practical use of inciting Islamist terrorists to murder people in Western Europe.

THE ETHIOPIC ALPHABET MAY GO WIRELESS:

Progress in an Ancient Tongue

By Andrew Heavens (Wired News)

02:00 AM Nov. 05, 2004 PT

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- For centuries, its letters have covered the pages of goatskin manuscripts, illuminated Bibles and the chronicles of ancient kings.

Now one of the world's oldest living alphabets could be about to make its debut on a mobile phone, if a group of Ethiopian academics gets its way.

Professors and research students here in the Ethiopian capital have just released a piece of groundbreaking research that they hope will open the door to SMS messaging in Ethiopic characters.

[...]

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE IN ISRAEL HAS BEEN VANDALIZED:

Controversial archeological excavation site vandalized
By Jackie Khoury and David Ratner, Haaretz Correspondents and Haaretz Service

An archeological excavation site on the Acre-Safed road was vandalized by unknown assailants on the night between Thursday and Friday.
The director of the excavation site, Yotam Tefer, said the vandals destroyed archeological findings and damaged digging equipment and bulldozers.

The excavations were initiated six months ago in order to salvage an ancient Roman cemetery unearthed in Acre's city center during works on a new two level underpass on the Acre-Safed road.

The diggings raised the fury of orthodox Jews who claimed that the cemetery contained Jewish graves, despite archeologists' contrary findings, and should thus remain untouched.

[...]

(Heads-up, Jim West.)

THERE IS A CONFERENCE ON JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM in Grand Rapids on Wednesday. Arthur Green and Bernard McGinn are the speakers.

SHEIKH ZAYED BIN SULTAN AL-NAHYAN, President of the United Arab Emirates, died this week at the age of 86. He has been mentioned before on this blog in connection with his founding of the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up, which he later shut down because of its promoting of anti-Semitism, and for his unsuccessful attempt to fund a chair of Islamic studies at Harvard University. Here is an obituary in the Telegraph. But to me the most interesting recent comments on him come from an article published on 19 October, shortly before his death, "Mayo builds on $25 million gift from sheikh" (Minneapolis Star Tribune), about his financial aid to the Mayo Clinic:

Controversial center

Sheikh Zayed also has contributed money to other institutions, sometimes generating controversy.

In 1999, the sheikh helped fund the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think tank in Abu Dhabi that soon drew criticism from around the world for anti-Semitic language on its Web site and speakers who promoted anti-Jewish and anti-American views.

The following year, the sheikh gave $2.5 million to Harvard Divinity School to create a professorship in Islamic studies in his name -- a gift that triggered further criticism from a Divinity School student and others. Harvard put the professorship on hold, and the sheikh later withdrew the gift with Harvard's blessing.

Amid all the controversy, however, Sheikh Zayed's government shut down the think tank, saying in August 2003 that it "starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance." The center's Web site also was closed.

That action by Sheikh Zayed earned him praise from one of the center's early critics: the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and promoting religious tolerance.

"Give the guy credit for what he did," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, "and the implications of what he did are not small. ... He is the only Arab head of state who has explicitly dealt with and condemned this sort of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism."

True enough, and worth saying. But the point would have more force if the U.A.E. government hadn't tried in September to deny that the Zayed Centre was ever involved in anti-Semitic activity.

It's interesting to note that not one of the more than 600 online articles covering the Sheikh's death mentions the Zayed Centre.

(All this bears on ancient Judaism inasmuch as the Zayed Centre promoted the views of Jewish-Temple deniers.)

AS YASSER ARAFAT LIES IN A COMA, seemingly close to death and perhaps already on life support, the Palestinian leadership is so far declining to make funeral arrangments. This AP article summarizes the state of play regarding where he might be buried and how the Temple Mount fits into the picture.

Arafat Could Be Buried in Gaza or Ramallah

By ARTHUR MAX
Associated Press Writer

November 5, 2004, 2:45 AM EST

JERUSALEM -- Though Yasser Arafat lies gravely ill in a Paris hospital, Palestinians have refused to begin planning for his funeral or coordinate with Israel on the movement of attending foreign dignitaries, officials say.

Arafat's burial place also is uncertain, after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ruled out Jerusalem. Arafat had expressed a wish to be buried there at a hotly disputed holy site in the Old City.

Muslims call the hilltop Haram as-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, Islam's third-holiest shrine, where the Al Aqsa Mosque compound is built over the ruins of the biblical Jewish temples.

Jews call the site the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site. Disputes over control and sovereignty there have scuttled several rounds of peace talks.

Arafat could be buried in the Gaza Strip, where his family has a plot. An alternative would be the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Arafat made his headquarters and which became his prison after Israel besieged his compound more than two years ago.

Palestinians refuse to discuss arrangements as long as Arafat is alive.

[...]

PROFESSOR HUGH WILLIAMSON recently gave a lecture at Johns Hopkins University:

Oxford prof. examines Bible
By Rebekah Lin
November 05, 2004

The Near Eastern Studies Department's 18th annual Iwry Lecture hosted Oxford professor and Biblical history expert Hugh Williamson on Monday, who spoke on the development of the Hebrew Bible.

[...]

The article, which is in the Johns Hopkins News-Letter, summarizes the lecture and is an interesting read. Excerpt:

According to Williamson, an emic study of history takes its meaning from the participant's point of view, and seeks meaning from what is being studied. An etic approach takes its meaning from the causes of an observer, and seeks causes and explanations for what happened.

Williamson expressed fear that if emic and etic approaches are not both recognized and understood, they would become "two sides of that coin in danger of being undervalued."

Currently, studies of Judaism from the time are considered to be too emic, since the Bible is the only source. However, "now the pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction."

NORMAN GOLB AND THE NEW QUMRAN EXCAVATIONS:

Excavations reinforce Golb�s contention of where Dead Sea scrolls originated
(University of Chicago Chronicle)
By William Harms
News Office

Discoveries in Israel now reinforce the view of Norman Golb that the Dead Sea Scrolls were not written exclusively or even largely by the Essene sect of antiquity, famous for its abstemious celibacy. Golb, the Ludwig Rosenberger Professor of Jewish History and Civilization in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and the College, contends that the scrolls were the product of many hands and represent a broad range of perspectives rather than just the thinking of a tight-knit religious group.

[...]

Read it all. I think Golb's theory that the Scrolls are not a sectarian ("Essene") collection and that they come from literary archives in Jerusalem is wrong, but I also think he's been asking the right questions and raising some important and useful points. For more on his ideas see The Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Hebrew MSS Project web page at the University of Chicago.

ANNOUNCING A NEW POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP AT ST. ANDREWS:

THE BLACK-BEST SCHOLARSHIPS
IN NEW TESTAMENT / CHRISTIAN ORIGINS
The School of Divinity
University of St Andrews, Scotland

The School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews intends to offer up to two doctoral scholarships in New Testament / Christian origins. Outstanding students with stimulating thesis proposals are encouraged to apply.

The scholarships are offered in memory of Matthew Black and Ernest Best, who are cherished for their longstanding service to the University of St Andrews.
Each scholarship will provide full funding for tuition for the duration of the three-year doctoral program. The Matthew Black scholarship will provide an additional �2000 per annum to cover further expenses.

The School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews is a thriving theological community, with over 80 students working at masters and doctoral levels in the fields of biblical studies, systematic theology, ethics and practical theology, theology and the arts, and Jewish studies. Residential doctoral students are provided with their own research desks in a fully furnished postgraduate building (the Roundel). The library offers substantial holdings in NT and Christian origins, and further resources are made readily available to students. Research seminars are offered in four fields of study.

The successful Scholarship applicants will work under the supervision of one of following scholars who make up the NT / Christian origins team at St Andrews:

Professor Richard Bauckham, with interests in NT Christology, Gospel of John, early Jewish context of the NT, Gospel origins / audience, and NT theology.

Professor Philip Esler, with interests in social-scientific approaches to the NT, Paul, early Christian identity, the Bible and art, and NT theology.

Professor Ron Piper, with interests in the Gospels, Q, the historical Jesus, wisdom traditions in the NT, and social-scientific approaches to the New Testament.

Dr Bruce Longenecker, with interests in Paul, ancient rhetoric and the NT, social concern in early Christianity, the imperial order and the NT, and Luke-Acts.

Dr Jim Davila, with interests in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Jewish context of Christian origins, and Christian transmission of Jewish literature.

Applications for the Black-Best Scholarships must be received by 4 January 2005, and the scholarships are expected to commence as of September 2005. Applications for entry to the New Testament PhD programme that are received from within the European Community will automatically be considered for the Black-Best scholarships. Applications for entry to the New Testament PhD programme that are received from outside of the European Community will not be considered for the Black-Best scholarships unless they are accompanied by an application for Overseas Research Students (ORS) funding. For application forms and information regarding ORS funding forms, please contact Margot Clement at mc41@st-andrews.ac.uk. For further details about the School, see the website at: http://www.st-and.ac.uk/divinity.

Please pass this announcement on to anyone you know who might be interested.

THERE'S A PAGE DEVOTED TO THE JAMES OSSUARY AND THE JOASH INSCRIPTION at the Biblical Archaeology Society website, as noted by Mark Goodacre. This Update � Finds or Fakes? page has lots of papers, editorials, notes, etc. from BAR and elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure that the Joash inscription is a fake, for reasons I've already given, and I have yet to be convinced that the full inscription of the James ossuary is genuine. Granted, I haven't invested a lot of time in either, since neither has been relevant to my research over the last couple of years. As I think I've said before, anyone who wants to defend the authenticity of either needs to do it in the realm of the peer-review journals and the professional monographs. If defenses appear in specialist journals or monographs, I would be grateful if readers would draw my attention to them. Meanwhile, I'm inclined to ignore the issue � unless, of course, a whim to do otherwise seizes me.

IF DANIEL COULD DO IT . . .

Man Survives Jump Into Lion's Den
46-Year-Old Reportedly Trying To Convert Lions To Christianity



A man was attacked and injured after jumping into a lion's den at the Taipei Zoo and trying to convert the lions to Christianity.

The 46-year-old man leaped into the den of African lions and shouted "Jesus will save you," according to the report. He also said, "Come bite me" before one of the male lions attacked and bit the man.

[...]

Another one for the You Couldn't Make This Up File.

STOLEN ARTIFACTS SEIZED IN ISRAEL: It's hard to tell exactly what the loot consisted of, but evidently antiquities were included.

Police seize Ben-Gurion letters, other stolen artifacts
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent

Police on Tuesday confiscated dozens of historical documents and artifacts that had apparently been stolen, including correspondence by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and its first president, Chaim Weizmann.

[...]

Among the artifacts found were ancient coins, Torah scrolls and menorahs.

[...]

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION WEBSITE is once again on hiatus, this time until January. I hope very much that they do come back.

NEW TROUBLES FOR BRUCE FERRINI:

Indiana couple sues local artifacts dealer

EVANSVILLE, IND. - Two Evansville residents are suing Akron antiquities dealer Bruce Ferrini because they say he's taken three of their valuable artifacts and has neither returned them nor given them the proceeds from their sale.

[...]

Ferrini, who is the only private holder of pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ran into trouble in Akron this spring over a fight with business partners over the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit he brought to town.

This, you may recall, was the From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America exhibition, which is increasingly becoming an embarrassment.