WHAT WOULD JESUS DRIVE? Having seen this post by St. Andrews postgraduate Daniel Driver (who is also in my Dead Sea Scrolls course this semester), I made a suggestion to him about what the Jesus of the book of Revelation would drive. I see Daniel has posted on it here.

AN INDEX to scriptural citations in Charlesworth's two Old Testament Pseudepigrapha volumes is now downloadable in PDF format, produced by Kevin P. Edgecomb and available on his website. He writes:

One useful thing about this index is that it includes "both sides" of a citation. That is, if as in 1En 1.1 a citation is noted for PsSol 4.9, at PsSol 4.9 you will find a corresponding citation for 1En 1.1. This may or may not have been the case in the original OTP marginal notations. Imade certain to make it so in this index.

More introductory details can be found on the last page of the file (p. 178!). Looks extremely useful.

(Via Jim West's Biblical Theology blog.)

THE EBLA FORUM is an online forum on the Hebrew Bible and archaeology. The owner, Joel Ng, points to the following discussion threads as of possible interest to PaleoJudaica readers:

http://www.eblaforum.org/main/viewtopic.php?t=1099 ("From Manetho to Minimalism")
http://www.eblaforum.org/main/viewtopic.php?t=1118 ("Purity and Exile")
http://www.eblaforum.org/main/viewtopic.php?t=1170 ("Halpern's Hysteria")
http://www.eblaforum.org/main/viewtopic.php?t=1172 ("Was Goliath a Hoplite?")

There's also an associated blog, the Ebla Logs. This posting on it floats the interesting possiblity of a biblical studies blog carnival. That sounds good to me and I'll be happy to contribute posts and to host it now and again (the latter not any time soon though) - as long as someone else gets it started and does the overall organizational work. What do other bibliobloggers think?

THE MOVIE CONSTANTINE is getting mixed reviews, but a lot of people seem to like it. Here's a pretty positive take (3 stars out of 4) from the Boston Herald:

Constantine

( R )

Damned good fun: Reeves scares up thrills in `Constantine'
Review by James Verniere
Friday, February 18, 2005

Move over, Hellboy.

In ``Constantine,'' Keanu Reeves, fresh from battling the evil machines of ``The Matrix,'' takes on demons from hell who have the power to enter our realm. It's a supernatural thriller for our terrorist-bedeviled times, if not a training film for the Department of Homeland Security.

Based on the Vertigo/DC Comics' ``Hellblazer'' series, the film, which is set in present-day Los Angeles, might be described as mysticism for headbangers. It's also a kind of B-movie follow-up to ``The Passion of the Christ'' insofar as some of it is in Latin, it's about redemption and is steeped in Roman Catholic beliefs, apocrypha, icons and rituals, beginning with that favorite Catholic horror movie staple, the exorcism.

[...]

It also has a female version of the angel Gabriel, played by Tilda Swinton.

It's interesting to note that there's even sympathetic interest in the movie in Baptist circles. Also, blogger Tim Bulkeley and his teenage son saw it and Tim thinks "it could provide the stimulus for lots of good theological discussion, and even an old-fashioned revivalist appeal to conversion." And there's already a spinoff video game.

Because of Rachel Weisz my professional interest in media and religion, I suppose I'll have to get around to seeing it.

UPDATE: Chuck Jones e-mails:

For another take on Constantine have a look at David Denby's review
in The New Yorker and in particular the final few sentences:


"..."Constantine" turns Catholic doctrine, ritual, and iconography
into schlock. God's warrior wins, but is that enough to justify the
tawdry, promiscuous borrowing? Will the trashy exploitation of
Catholicism in movies ever end? Imagine a Jewish version of the
spectacle-"Angel," starring Vin Diesel, in which God's messenger
stays Abraham's hand in mid-sacrifice and then earns His approval by
lowering himself into cursed pharaonic tombs with tied-together
prayer shawls. In a Hindu version-"Vishnu," with Nicolas Cage-Shiva
unleashes his snakes on the outskirts of Poughkeepsie and starts a
war between truck drivers and apple pickers. Somehow, I think these
projects might be shelved. Yet terrible movies like "The Exorcist"
and "The Passion of the Christ" and "Constantine" get made and become
enormously popular. I will leave the issue of blasphemy to experts.
But maybe some of the audience should wonder if they aren't
performing the Devil's work by sitting so quietly through movies that
turn wonders into garbage."

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/index.ssf?050307crci_cinema

THE BIBLIOBLOG BLOG IS BACK! An improved model too.

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA is cited by Arutz Sheva in a call for passive resistance to Sharon's disengagement plan. David Meadows has the story over at Rogue Classicism.

A MANIFESTO FOR DEALING WITH THE FORGERY CRISIS has been published on the Bible and Interpretation website by Christopher Rollston and Heather Dana Davis Parker.

Responses to the Epigraphic Forgery Crisis:
Casting Down the Gauntlet to the Field
and to Museums

During recent years, the public has often been inundated with sensational stories of �new epigraphic discoveries�: the �Ya�akov Ossuary� (�James Ossuary�), the �Jehoash Inscription,� �the Moussaieff Ostraca,� and the �Ivory Pomegranate� are some of the most notable. Dominant voices have touted such epigraphs as being of great significance �for the field� and �for the faith.� Voices of caution and moderation (that note the absence of an archaeological pedigree and the potential of forgery) have been quelled with substantial success.

There's lots of interesting stuff here. Two points are especially important: "For this reason, the default position with regard to non-provenanced epigraphs should now be methodological doubt, regardless of the 'sensationalism' surrounding the epigraph." Then, "Moreover, museums and collections should begin to be even more intentional about addressing the problem by exhibiting forgeries and including discussions of the problems associated with non-provenanced artifacts." The Israel Museum is currently doing this with the Ivory Pomegranate and it's a good policy in general. Both of these seem to me to be eminently sensible policies.

And don't miss the notes, which have lots of interesting tidbits. For example, Rollston has another piece on the forgery crisis coming out in the March issue of the SBL Forum - any time now, I assume.

THE QUMRANICA BLOG has been updated with the abstract of the first seminar paper (on the Hodayot) and a summary of the seminar discussion. Now that we're in the seminar phase of the course there will be abstracts and seminar summaries (usually two of each) posted each week of class.

MORE ON THE HERPES AND CIRCUMCISION STORY in the Forward. It seems that the practice suspected of causing the infection still has its defenders.

Following Baby's Death, Orthodox Group Urges Followers to Drop Disputed Ritual
By Eric J. Greenberg
March 4, 2005

In response to the death of a New York baby boy from herpes, the top union of Modern Orthodox rabbis is urging Jews to abandon the ancient ritual practice of suctioning the blood by mouth directly from the baby's penis during circumcision.

The Rabbinical Council of America, representing more than 1,000 rabbis, issued a policy statement this week arguing that instead of direct oral suction the tradition known as metzitzah be-peh could be fulfilled with the use of a tube. The statement came following the death of a New York baby from herpes, which officials suspect might have been transmitted from the mouth of a Hasidic mohel during the circumcision process.

[...]

RCA's statement is expected to upset Hasidic sects and other ultra-Orthodox communities. Leaders of these Orthodox camps have been vigorously defending the practice of direct oral suction since it came under attack last month ...

Government or religious attempts to ban the direct oral practice were denounced in a pointed February 18 editorial, by Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz, editor and publisher of Yated Neeman, an ultra-Orthodox newspaper.

[...]

PROTEST IN ARAMAIC:

Update on the Assyrian Voter Lockout Protest At the UN

(AINA) -- The Assyrians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs) on the East Coast of the United States gathered to protest the voter lockout of Assyrians in the Iraq elections. The demonstration was held at the United Nations on February 19.

Nearly 100 mostly young people chanted, sang and prayed in Syriac for two hours behind a police barricade. They carried large banner signs in Assyrian (neo-Aramaic), English and in Chinese, all of which addressed the problem of the six towns east of Mosul which did not receive ballots despite two days (Jan 30 and 31) of waiting to vote. These are the same towns in which the candidates on Assyrian list (204) had campaigned for three days, and hundreds of thousands of votes for ChaldoAssyrian representation would have been cast had the people not been prevented from voting. As it was, because the voting did not take place, only enough votes were counted to seat one independent ChaldoAssyrian representative. Four other ChaldoAssyrians came in under the auspices of the leading Kurdish list and one, from Baghdad, gained a seat under the Allawi list.

[...]

The sign behind the woman wearing glasses is in Syriac, but I can't see enough of it to read it.

I hope these people get the attention they deserve.

WILLIAM DEVER gave a lecture in New Orleans in February which challenged the minimalists.

Scholar: Archaeology rebuffs effort to erase biblical Israel (Baptist Press News)
Mar 2, 2005
By Michael McCormack

NEW ORLEANS (BP)--Revisionist scholars in Europe are ignoring a wealth of archaeological evidence in seeking to discount and, ultimately, erase belief in the biblical Israel, noted archaeologist William Dever said at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

[...]

Though this postmodern movement seeks to sap the Bible of its historical significance and accuracy, Dever maintains that the archaeological evidence supports the biblical accounts of Israel and its kings. His presentation focused on structures he and other archaeologists have uncovered throughout the Holy Land that point to Solomon and the Solomonic Temple. He began with 1 Kings 9:15-16.

[...]

He includes lots of interesting details on the archaeology of Gezer, Hazor, and Megiddo. And it seems that Steven Ortiz, of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (and one of Dever's students) is hoping to reopen the Gezer excavation and to carbon date some material from it. The debate goes on ...

UPDATE: This piece is receiving lots of attention on the ANE list. (Start here.) Note in particular the comment of Niels Peter Lemche:

But think of a sentence in the summary of his New Orleans lecture like this: In fact, Dever said, they have recently argued that Hebrew is not a semitic language -- a garbled summary of an argument that biblical Hebrew may be a kind of artificial language, a kind of 'Mandarin' created for the purpose of writing biblical texts (like Qur'an Arabic is a bit different from other written Arabic, and even Homeric Greek different from other written Greek). However, the argument that it is not a semitic language and that the revisionists are claiming that is of course nonsense, and only show that Dever is a least not a properly educated biblical scholar, but exactly a biblical archaeologist. The sentence must be considered an obvious misprission.

My experience is that when the media portray a scholar as saying something strangely garbled, it's almost always the reporter who got it wrong, not the scholar. I would give Dever the benefit of the doubt here. Would he or someone who actually heard the lecture like to comment?

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: The "atomic paring-knife" laser. Cool.

'Atomic Paring Knife' Will Help Probe Ancient Civilizations

Newswise � Mississippi State researchers are acquiring a high-tech laser instrument described as an �atomic paring knife� that will be used, among other things, to probe the mysteries of ancient civilizations.

Hailed as the first such unit of its type in the Southeastern United States, the university�s Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometer will provide organizations across Mississippi�academic, non-profit and industrial�with unique capabilities for quantitative surface analysis and depth profiling.

[...]

�The new laser ablation (precise removal) system provides a rapid, non-destructive way of tracing pottery to its source,� Peacock, an environmental archaeologist, said.

Plodinec said the system uses a laser to gently scratch the sample surface, ejecting a small amount of material into plasma, where the atoms are separated by mass.

�The instrument provides a complete, rapid and accurate compositional analysis of almost any materials�stone, glass, ceramics, metals�with no sample preparation and minimal damage to the original sample,� said DIAL assistant research professor Adriana Giordana, who is coordinating the technological effort for the lab.

[...]

MSU will be using the instrument on local Native American artifacts, but the potential applications for other archaeological research are obvious.

(Via Archaeologica News.)

THE DAF YOMI CYCLE ENDS TODAY:

Everyone's on the same page (Ha'aretz)
By Yair Sheleg
They study 2,711 `daily pages' for seven and a half years, and start over again from the beginning the very next day. Today's the end of the 11th Daf Yomi cycle

For 10 years now Rabbi Pinhas (Paul) Lederman has been participating in the daf hayomi ("daily page") lesson in Jerusalem - a lesson in which a page of the Babylonian Talmud is studied every day in sequence, one two-sided page a day, 2,711 pages altogether. The lesson lasts for about an hour in the late morning, with some 20 people taking part, all of them pensioners.

[...]

More than 1,000 groups around the globe similar to Lederman's will study the last page of the Talmud today, for the 11th time since this project was started in 1923. The number of pages in the Talmud means that each cycle takes about seven and a half years. Ceremonies will be held internationally to mark this event tonight and tomorrow, with three of the biggest locations being at the Yad Eliyahu sports arena in Tel Aviv, at Madison Square Garden in New York, and for the first time since the Holocaust, in the city of Lublin in Poland, the city where the daily page project began. ...

Congratulations to all those who are finishing the cycle today, and best wishes for the next seven and a half years of study.

ART AND ANCIENT JUDAISM:

David Aronson: A Retrospective in Boston (Artdaily)

March 1, 2005

BOSTON, MA.- David Aronson: A Retrospective will showcase the life's work of David Aronson, an artist and teacher who has remained an influential force in the development of the arts in Boston for over fifty years. A leader in the nationally recognized Boston Expressionist group of the 1940s-1950s, Aronson has spent a lifetime producing monumental narrative works and has won international acclaim for his visual interpretation of themes from the Hebrew Talmud and Cabala.

Often using the ancient encaustic technique of painting with molten wax, Aronson's luminous paintings explore subjects derived from Old Testament, New Testament, and mystical religious and humanist themes. He brings these figures to life, animating them with a combination of fervor and wit. In the 1960s, when he was already a mature artist in his late thirties, Aronson began sculpting figures in bronze. This exhibition features the artist's early encaustics, bronze sculptures, as well as pastels, oil pastels, and oil paintings on canvas.

[...]

Unfortunately, the article doesn't include any images of his work.

A NEW JUDAIC STUDIES INSTITUTE is being founded at the University of Michigan:

U. of Mich. receives $20 million for Judaic studies institute (Detroit Free Press)

February 23, 2005, 9:36 AM

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) -- The University of Michigan on Wednesday announced a $20 million gift to establish a Judaic studies institute.

[...]

The institute -- to be called the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies -- will reside within Michigan's existing Frankel Center for Judaic Studies.

The new institute will bring 14 of the world's leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to Ann Arbor for an academic year to collaborate in advancing scholarly research on the history, culture, literature, and religion of the Jews from antiquity to the present.

[...]

This is welcome and exciting news.

(Via Paul Nikkel at Deinde.)

NUMBER 11 OF HAVEL HAVELIM, "the weekly roundup of the best of the Jewish blogosphere," is now posted by Judith Weiss over at Kesher Talk. Havel Havelim is a Jewish "carnival of the vanities" (the Hebrew phrase means "vanity of vanities," from Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes 1:2). A post from PaleoJudaica is included this week.

IT'S A SMALL WORLD:

CIA blind to its shortcomings before 9/11, former spy says
14 years an agent, she now offers an insider's view in book

Matthew B. Stannard, [San Francisco] Chronicle Staff Writer

Melissa Boyle Mahle's first brush with the clandestine world of espionage was Fr�d�rique, a mysterious Frenchwoman who unexpectedly joined Mahle as a volunteer at an Israeli archaeological site in 1985 -- and then vanished, with an Israeli security team hot on her trail.

Fr�d�rique, Mahle eventually learned, was actually Christine Cabon, a French secret agent hiding in Israel after infiltrating Greenpeace New Zealand, where she collected information other agents used to bomb the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior.

The encounter planted a seed in Mahle's psyche that eventually drew the UC Berkeley graduate into a career with the Central Intelligence Agency, specializing in the Middle East and counterterrorism. Fourteen years later, after witnessing the agency's response to Sept. 11 and leaving the agency on less than the best of terms, Mahle decided to put down her thoughts in writing.

[...]

I dug at the same site in 1985 and stayed in the room next door to the mysterious Fr�d�rique.

MORE: I've gotten out my 1985 diary and read the entries for the time I spent at Tel Dor that summer. It does mention the incident and adds that I never spoke to this woman, who was at the site for three weeks, and when I heard the Israeli Secret Service was looking for her it took me a while just to place who she was.

I probably met Melissa Boyle Mahle but I don't remember her. No Melissa is mentioned in my diary, and her picture doesn't look familiar. It was a big dig with lots of staff and volunteers and we probably just hung out with different people.

That event was not the only interesting political rumor at the site that year, but perhaps I shouldn't go into such things here. If you see me at a conference and want to buy me a beer, maybe I'll tell you more.

MORE ON THE DAN DAVID PRIZE:

Six named winners of Dan David Prize
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PARIS, France

Tel Aviv University archeologist Prof. Israel Finkelstein was among the winners of the Dan David Prize for having made "outstanding" impact on their respective fields, the organization announced Friday.

The awards, in the categories of "past, present, and future time dimensions," go to nominees whose achievements have outstanding scientific, technological, cultural or social impact on the world, the organization said in a statement.

Each prize is worth $1 million. Israel Finkelstein shared the "past" prize with a British archaeologist.

[...]

The work of Finkelstein, a leading scholar in the archeology of the Levant, has "revolutionized the interpretation of Israel's history in the Bronze and Iron Ages," the organizations said.

The three scientists who shared the $1m. prize in the "future" category were specialists in materials science, including Robert Langer, professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[...]

THE JAMES OSSUARY is the subject of a recent article in the Washington Post. I noted this on the 21st, but have only had time this morning to read it carefully, after a reprint came up on Google and reminded me of it.

Find or Forgery, Burial Box Is Open to Debate

By Guy Gugliotta and Samuel Sockol
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A13

The first group of experts heralded it as one of archaeology's greatest discoveries, a burial box inscribed with the earliest reference to Jesus ever found. But after a closer look, another group of specialists debunked the find as an elaborate hoax.

Now Israeli authorities have indicted the box's owner as a serial forger. But far from putting the case of the "James Ossuary" to rest, the indictment has further polarized opposing sides in an increasingly vitriolic dispute.

Magazine editor Hershel Shanks, the most outspoken advocate of the box's possible authenticity, last week published an article in his Biblical Archaeology Review detailing mistakes in what he called a "badly bungled" investigation by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The response was immediate. Antiquities Authority Deputy Director Uzi Dahari dismissed Shanks as "totally crazy" and his claims as "pathetic." Dahari denounced ossuary owner Oded Golan as a "scoundrel" and a career criminal who lives off the proceeds of doctored artifacts.

[...]

It goes on to rehearse the story, which by now is well known to PaleoJudaica readers. It sounds as though the latest comments of Hershel Shanks in the current Biblical Archaeology Review precipitated the piece. The article is mostly accurate as far as I can see. However, even if it were genuine, calling the ossuary "one of archaeology's greatest discoveries" seems to me a bit of a stretch. It would offer some confirmation that Jesus lived in the first century and had a brother named James (assuming the same Jesus and James are involved), but we do already know that. That would be exciting, but it wouldn't tell us anything new about biblical antiquity, let alone anything on the scale of, say, the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Ugaritic texts, each of which really is one of the greatests archaeological discoveries. I'm sure I've made this point before, but it bears repeating.

There's one other point to nitpick:

The District Court of Jerusalem indictment last December named Golan and four co-defendants in forgeries of items ranging from more than two dozen bullae -- clay relics used to seal documents from the time of King Solomon -- to the ossuary and the "Jehoash Inscription," an ancient tablet purported to be the 2,800-year-old instructions for maintaining the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

No inscribed bullae from as early as the time of Solomon have ever been found, more's the pity.

THE HISTORY CARNIVAL #3 is up. It's hosted by a different blog each time it runs. If you're not reading it, you may want to have a look. Ed Cook summarizes some of the posts. I too liked Paul Musgrave's "Linguae Non Francae." Add to that Tim Burke�s "Misrecognitions and Mythologies." It focuses on a recent Rastafarian "mass visitation" to Ethiopia, but deals generally with the difference between popular (mis)conceptions about a country and culture by outsiders vs. actual conditions in that country and culture. The rife modern popular misconceptions about the biblical world and about antiquity in general is directly comparable. He concludes:

More modestly, sometimes such images or constructed pasts simply contribute to a communicative disconnect, to a failure of potential. You can�t help but wonder if maybe the Rastafarians would learn something important if they looked for the real Selassie--perhaps in fact they would renew their faith in the Selassie they imagine by recognizing just how imaginary he is, by unshackling him from a real man who walked the Earth. Maybe you can�t find Ethiopia until you know you�re looking for something that has yet to exist, something that you have to make from nothing, something you have yet to gain rather than something you have already had and lost. Perhaps this is also not so modest a point, but instead the real source of dangerous consequences. Perhaps we should worry less about garden-variety stereotypes sprinkled through popular culture like gaudy ornaments of some barely-recalled past, and worry more about the fervid dreamers, who see a whole and coherent picture in their imagination and set out to compel the world to align itself with their vision.

THE EVANGELICAL TIMES, UK, is recycling a short article (retitled "Moses and Archaeology") on the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets which claims that the amulets prove that the five books of Moses, or at least the Priestly source, were in existence in the First Temple period. I've already pointed out the lapses in logic in an earlier post.

ISRAELI ARCHAEOLOGIST ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN is sharing a �522,000 "Dan David prize" with British archaeologist Graeme Barker. The prize has "past, present, and future time dimensions" and, of course, their share is for the "past" component.

Congratulations to both archaeologists, as well as to director Peter Brook, who won the "present" component. No word on the "future time dimension" winner.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: More on the danger of an attack on the Temple Mount and its political implications:

'Temple Mount attack could foil pullout' (Jerusalem Post)
By YAAKOV KATZ

An attack on the Temple Mount has the potential to thwart the implementation of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza Strip disengagement plan, Deputy Internal Security Minister Yaacov Edri warned Thursday.

Police, Edri said, have recently stepped up their presence on the Temple Mount out of fear that Jewish and Muslim extremists might perpetrate an attack, which, he warned, would create for Israel an unprecedented international crisis.

[...]

UPDATE (27 February): Rebecca Lesses comments.

CULTURAL ICON WATCH: The Coptic "Gnostic" (?) text from Nag Hammadi with the title "Thunder, Perfect Mind" has been used as a short film/long commercial advertisment for the new Prada perfume at the Berlin Film Festival. Ed Cook has the story. (Ridley Scott, you may recall, directed the Alien movies.) As an aside, it seems that schoolboys in Ed's town are considerable more erudite than those in St. Andrews.

This is the New York Times article: "Scent of a Movie." Excerpt:

The Prada film, which strives to be simultaneously more and less commercial, casts the model Daria Werbowy as a beautifully accessorized bundle of contradictions. As she makes her way through the streets of Berlin, she sees herself coming and going at every turn in the faces of other women, some older, some quite a bit younger, some more wholesome and some actually Werbowy herself. In a particularly delicious moment, shot in the back of a taxi, an unseen driver ogles her in the rearview mirror, watching as she removes her winter coat only to put it back on inside out.

On a related note, I've always been struck by the similarity between "Thunder, Perfect Mind" (Ed points to this link) and Meredith Brooks's pop song "Bitch." Different messages, but perhaps tapping the same archetype.

UPDATE (25 February): Ed Cook explains "that the 'schoolboy' is one of the most brilliant beings in the world." And he has the links to prove it.

UPDATE (26 February): Mark Goodacre invokes "schoolboyish error." It's always very interesting to see which posts and which parts of those posts generate comments from other bloggers.

UPDATE (27 February): Tim Bulkeley at Sansblogue offers additional nuance to the schoolboy meme.

UPDATE (28 February): More from Mark Lieberman at the Language Log.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The security around the Temple Mount has been increased in response to danger of either Jewish or Arab attacks. The Jerusalem Post article doesn't say if the police have gotten their extra NIS 61 million of funding (see previous post).

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Police want NIS 61 million to counter Temple Mount threats
By Zvi Zrahiya, Haaretz Correspondent

The police is demanding an additional NIS 61 million to counter increasingly grave threats of an attack on the Temple Mount.

[...]

UPDATE (24 February): According to this A.P. article, that comes out to US $14 million, which also is what I get for today's rate from an online currency converter. That comes out to about �7,345,000 at the current rate.

THE PULSA DE-NURA CURSING RITE is in the news again:

Woman held for sending pulsa denura to Shaul Mofaz (Ha'aretz)
By Roni Singer

A Bat Yam woman known to have harassed media figures and politicians was also behind a letter that suggested a religious edict of execution against Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, police have discovered.

The letter implied that religious authorities had issued a pulsa denura, a ruling allowing Jews to assassinate Mofaz over his support of the disengagement plan.

[...]

UPDATE: Reader Joshua Waxman e-mails:

the haaretz article excerpt you recently posted contains a glaring inaccuracy. the pulsa denura is NOT "a ruling allowing Jews to assassinate..." The ceremony, for those who believe in it, is a curse and a call for *God* to cause the untimely death of the person.

It is not a ruling allowing people to assasinate an individual. Perhaps the author confused this with din rodef, which is something else entirely. In other articles, they write that the pulsa denura was assosiated with the assassination of Rabin, so perhaps this is where the author gets the misconception.

True, although after the assassination of Rabin, some evidently took his murder to have resulted from the rite. Legally, enacting it against someone may count as incitement to murder. So the implications of the ritual are open to a range of interpretation. (Follow the first link above for more information.)

UPDATE: Bad link fixed.

A "SHARP RISE in thefts of antiquities in 2004" in Israel according to Ha'aretz:

According to [director of the robbery prevention unit, Amir] Ganor, the phenomenon of antiquities theft has taken on gold rush dimensions, with an antiquities site plundered every day on average.

The Antiquities Authority claims that a lenient punitive policy by the courts presents incentive for antiquities thieves. The Knesset recently increased the maximum punishment for damaging an antiquities site from three to five years, but Ganor says that the punishments meted out in the courts today rarely exceed a year in prison.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: As noted previously, the newly established "monarchist" Sanhedrin has recently been showing an interest in the Temple Mount. In tongue-in-cheek response to my post, Dr. Andrew Jackson comments: "Hal Lindsey must be thrilled."

Well, he is. Now I'm not impressed by Hal Lindsey's biblical exegesis or his track record at predicting the future. But give him this: at least his third-temple scenario doesn't involve tearing down the mosques on the Temple Mount. Could be worse.

As I've said before, the Temple Mount is a terribly important archaeological site that is a crucial part of humanity's cultural heritage. I don't have a theological agenda for it, but I sure do have a historical and archaeological one. The damage the WAQF has already done to it is bad enough. There should be no more construction there of any kind. The only alteration to the site, if any at all, should be scientifically controlled archaeological excavation. Otherwise, leave the place as it is until we have the technology to do sophisticated non-intrusive and/or nondestructive scans to get at what's there.

BOOK REVIEW in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review:

Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. x, 370. ISBN 0-19-926289-6. $99.00.

Reviewed by Tom Robinson, Religious Studies, The University of Lethbridge (robinson@uleth.ca)
Word count: 2066 words

Judith Lieu is one of the leading scholars in the field of Jewish and Christian identity in the Greco-Roman period, and this book is her latest contribution to the discussion. Those familiar with her work have come to expect a cautious, thorough and balanced analysis of the ancient literature and a firm grasp of the varied modern discussions of identity. That quality of scholarship marks the present work too. Although the primary focus is on Christian identity in the first two centuries, as suggested by the title, considerable attention is given to Jewish, as well as Greek and Roman perceptions of identity. The book will, without a doubt, become a key one in the discussion of early Christian identity, but its rich exploration into Jewish identity makes it a serious contribution to that field as well.

[...]

A thoughtful review about what sounds like an important book.

(Via Rogue Classicism.)

HANNIBAL, THE MOVIE, is coming, according to Eurweb.com:

THE DEAL WITH DIESEL�S �HANNIBAL�: Budget problems plague actor�s labor of love.

The director, Vin Diesel, is very proud of himself for cutting the budget down to $50 million.

Diesel, in theaters on March 4 with the family comedy �The Pacifier,� has also made the recent decision to direct as well as star in Hannibal as the young man from the ruling clans of the city of Carthage in North Africa who makes an oath of vengeance against Rome when they kill his father. Making the revenge his life�s goal, Hannibal becomes a general by the time he's in his mid-20s, and with an army of 100,000 who have his back, he sets out to bring Rome down, first by conquering Spain, and then by launching a surprise (and famous) attack on Italy by way of the Alps, with an array of forces that included war-trained elephants.

When I read the rest, I started to think that the whole article must be a satire. But a little Googling confirmed that director Vin Diesel is planning to make a Hannibal movie. And Eurweb.com does not appear to be a satire site. Could Diesel be serious in what follows?

�To make things even more exciting, I�m going to make it a non-English, multi-lingual film that represents the many languages that Hannibal employed in his army,� enthuses Diesel. And the point being, Hannibal united people of no common culture, language, or religion and proved that united, they can defy tyranny. Very interesting point of where we are in our world.�

Diesel said Gibson had given him advice on the use of multiple languages, which helped to illustrate �The Passion of the Christ.�

�He�s always been a role model of mine in this industry,� said the action star. It�ll be Aramaic for Rome, Iberian for Spain, it�ll be some, you know, Maltese version. And it will represent all these different languages. So that�s what�s happening with �Hannibal.��

If he thinks the language of Rome was Aramaic, he could do with some better advice. Still, the prospect of a movie with dialogue in Punic is pretty interesting. Some Northwest Semitist out there could make a bundle as a consultant.

FORGERY SCANDAL UPDATE: The Washington Post has an article ("Find or Forgery, Burial Box Is Open to Debate") this morning that recaps the story, instigated evidently by Hershel Shanks's latest comments in BAR. The trial begins on 17 May.

Heads-up Stephen Goranson on the ANE list.

THE TEL DAN INSCRIPTION has been discussed a good bit lately on the ANE list and in the biblioblogosphere. I've been following the discussion but haven't had anything to add, since I've never done any serious work on this text. But if you're interested, Stephen Carlson has a summary post. Add to it Ed Cook's latest as well.

ON PUBLISHING UNPROVENANCED FINDS: Eric M. Meyers has an important essay on the Bible and Interpretation website.

Should Scholars Authenticate and Publish
Unprovenanced Finds?

Paper Presented in San Antonio, 2004

Today we know for certain that in addition to promoting illicit trade in antiquities the publishing of unauthenticated and unprovenanced material also has promoted an entire industry, namely the forgery business.

By Eric M. Meyers
Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor
Director of the Graduate Program in Religion
Duke University
February 2005

He concludes:

I believe what I have suggested, following ASOR�s original policy, adopted in 1992, is a step in the right direction. Let us put pressure where it belongs: on the departments and authorities that are in charge of protecting their national heritage. Let us at the same time push toward repatriation of the cuneiform record along the lines I have suggested. We all have to fight looting in every way possible, and we must prevent unethical dealers and collectors from taking advantage through legal loopholes to promote their own collections and the value of individual artifacts, thereby significantly enhancing their net worth. We should not take any steps, however, that will allow important and properly authenticated artifacts and inscribed materials from seeing the light of scholarly publication, albeit with the provisos I have noted. Surely any policy that impedes true enlightenment of the past through careful publication is one in need of some adjustments, either legal or ethical.

This seems to be the full text of the presentation I summarized in my report on the SBL forgery crisis session in November. It also seems to have been revised since the original presentation, but I'm not sure how much.

(Via Biblical Theology.)

SBL RESOLUTION UPDATE: Jim West comments:

The Society of Biblical Literature survey results are published now and other bibliobloggers have offered their perspective. I think the results were skewed because a) anyone who got the link could participate- and unfortunately the link was made widely available to non members of the society. And b) intentional "padding" of the survey was performed by many who simply cleared their "cache" and took the survey as many times as they liked. In future, such surveys / resolutions should be sent, by regular mail, to current active members of the Society only and a signature should be required in order for the survey to count.

He copied this to Matthew Collins, who wrote back:

Hi Jim,

Actually the survey recorded via individual identifiers in the link who responded and who didn't. It only allowed one response per identifier - so even if the survey was forwarded or the cache was cleared, it would work only once for each member. The results were in fact not skewed, but accurately reflect the membership.

-Matthew

I'm afraid this doesn't solve the problem. The language here is not very specific, so it's a bit difficult to interpret. The issue was never clearing the cache, but rather that deleting the cookies allowed one to vote multiple times. If a cookie is the device for recording via individual identifiers in the link, then the concern I raised is not addressed at all. If Matthew means that they checked their server logs and weeded out multiple votes from the same IP address (which I suggested in my unanswered e-mail to him), that goes part way toward addressing the problem, but doesn't solve it. In the first place, it would not correct cases where the same person voted from two or more computers (home and office, for example). It would also incorrectly delete a vote from two SBL members (e.g., spouses in the same household) using the same computer. Second, dialup services sometimes assign a different IP address to the same user with each session, so someone could have voted, logged off, then redialed and voted again later.

In addition, Matthew's reply doesn't address the problem of votes from non-SBL members. The Host Names of IP addresses are rarely so specific that they pin down the actual name of a user, so nonmember votes remain generally undetectable even with the information from the server logs. Nor would it be possible to attach a single hostname to a specific member in most cases.

In a word, the survey mechanism was insecure and the results should not be considered accurate. In the future such online surveys should be password protected according to the individual member's SBL password.

All this not to speak of the whole question of whether the Society of Biblical Literature should be getting into this sort of political debate at all.

UPDATE: Ken Penner e-mails:

Re: your blog on the SBL survey.
I think Collins was referring to the digits after the ?A= in the link sent to each member as the mechanism by which each member could vote only once. The link I was given was as follows:
[I've deleted the link here. - JRD]
Is the link you were given the same or different?

Yes my link was different. It looks as though Ken is right. Sorry Matthew, I withdraw my objections regarding security.

INSCRIPTIONES JUDAICAE ORIENTIS, vol. 3, Syria and Cyprus is reviewed by Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra in Bryn Mawr Classical Review. This is a very useful critical review that recognizes and praises the remarkable achievement of the volume while pointing to weaknesses and making constructive suggestions for improvements in future editions and perhaps computerized and online supplements. The problem of identifying Jewish inscriptions is a difficult one, and I tend to take a more skeptical line than most. As the reviewer observes, the selection process itself is bound to distort the evidence in some way, whether by excluding undetectable Jewish inscriptions or including apparently Jewish ones that actually aren't. Each item in such collections needs to be weighed carefully on a case by case basis. But it is extremely useful to have all this information collected in this volume and the series as a whole.

(Via the Philo of Alexandria blog.)

NEW COPTIC TEXTS have been discovered on Luxor's west bank. Al Ahram has the story:

Coptic trove
Luxor's west bank was the site of a significant find, reports Nevine El-Aref

In Al-Gurna where several excavation missions are probing for more Ancient Egyptian treasures under the sand, a team from the Polish Centre for Mediterranean Archaeology has stumbled on a major Coptic trove buried under the remains of a sixth-century monastery located in front of a Middle Kingdom tomb.

Excavators unearthed two papyri books with Coptic text along with a set of parchments placed between two wooden labels as well as Coptic ostraca, pottery fragments and textiles.

[...]

Sounds like a very important discovery. Zahi Hawass is quoted as saying that it's comparable to the Nag Hammadi Library. There's little indication of the content of the new texts, but the article does conclude with this:

Early examinations and studies carried out in situ revealed that the newly discovered books could include more information about how early Christians performed their rituals.

It's important to note that the texts were excavated by professional archaeologists, which means their genuineness is not in doubt and the precious information about their physical context and stratigraphy is being preserved and studied.

(Via the Biblical Theology blog.)

THE ECOLE BIBLIQUE (The School of Biblical and Archaeological Studies) in East Jerusalem is profiled in the Jerusalem Post ("The brothers' work"). Excerpt:

A few years later, the Dominican Order decided to open a biblical institute in which the Scriptures could be studied in the land of their birth. Called L'Ecole Biblique (The School of Biblical and Archeological Studies), the now prestigious facility was the very first research institute of its kind in the Middle East. All of the teachers at the Jerusalem institute are Dominican monks in residence; all of the priory's monks are teachers who specialize in biblical history, archeology and ancient languages like Syriac, Phoenician and Aramaic at the highest levels. Although they must teach their lessons in French, there are monks at the priory from Mexico, Portugal, Poland and Ireland.

WHEN I entered the light and airy priory for the very first time, I was struck by the sense of tranquility imparted by its design. I was also fascinated by several of the artifacts along the walls. A metallic copy of the Copper Scroll, the only Dead Sea Scroll found in situ at Qumran, hangs just inside the entrance. The original was unearthed by Dominicans from the Ecole Biblique in 1952, during one of the school's many digs. As a matter of course, it was presented to the reigning Jordanian government, which permitted the order to make a perfect facsimile by pressing soft copper against the original.

But it was the library that was most impressive. Located in the basement, enclosed within stone walls over a century old, it reminded me of my college days at the splendid, subterranean University of Chicago library. I could happily have spent weeks here, leafing through the library's 140,000 volumes. A few date back to 15th-century Spain and subjects range from New Testament material to archeology and hieroglyphics. Old-timers say that Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew, browsed this very library. He probably even perused an early edition of one of the books I saw on display: A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

I stayed in the Ecole Biblique for about a month in 1988 and again for a couple of weeks in 1990, both times when I was editing Dead Sea Scrolls. The library there is indeed a wonder. It has everything and there a marvelous index of the holdings that allows you to look up articles by biblical verse covered.

One nitpick of the article regarding the Copper Scroll. I think what the author was trying to say was that the Copper Scroll is the only complete scroll to be discovered in situ at Qumran by archaeologists. But they did excavate many other scroll fragments there.

CORRECTION: Sorry, my memory was deceiving me. In 1990 I stayed at the Albright Institute, not the Ecole Biblique. They are both in East Jerusalem. I'm pretty sure I did consult the Ecole's library during that trip though.

CONGRATULATIONS to Peter Flint!

KUDOS TO HARVARD for providing a good liberal arts course on the Hebrew Bible and Greek Culture. Responding to a critical article in the Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Senior David Weinfeld writes in the Crimson:

Douthat writes of the wonder he had as a freshman poring over the course catalogue. What he fails to realize is that there are tons of great courses out there�even in the core�but students are simply not taking them. This fall, I took Literature and Arts A-53: �Athens and Jerusalem� as an elective. Eight other undergraduates took the class with me. We rigorously compared the Hebrew Bible to Ancient Greek literature in one of the more enjoyable academic experiences of my Harvard career.

It's too bad that more students didn't take it.

SETH SANDERS'S "MARGINS OF WRITING" CONFERENCE starts at the end of next week. The University of Chicago Chronicle has an article on it.

Scholars to examine language, power it gains in evolution from spoken to written
By William Harms
News Office

The Oriental Institute is organizing a conference, �Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures: Unofficial Writing in the Ancient Near East and Beyond,� to be held in Breasted Hall Friday, Feb. 25, and Saturday, Feb. 26.

[...]

I wonder if anyone will be blogging it.

THE ISRAEL MUSEUM is gearing up to celebrate its 40th birthday:

Israel Museum marks 40th (Jerusalem Post)
By MEIR RONNEN

The Israel Museum has proudly announced a year-long series of special exhibitions and programs to mark its 40th anniversary.

The eight-part exhibition series, entitled "Beauty and Sanctity," is drawn largely from the museum's holdings and includes some notable recent acquisitions, as well as a few special loans of visiting masterworks from major institutions abroad. The works on loan will reflect the range of disciplines represented in the museum's collections, which span art, archaeology, and Judaica and Jewish ethnography. In some of the shows, these disparate sections will be brought together.

[...]

The exhibitions described are heavily weighted toward the modern rather than the ancient.

THE FIRST-CENTURY JERUSALEM SHROUD figures in a story on TB and leprosy. The occupant of the shroud, you may recall, had both. I saw the headline some time ago, but only just realized that the Jerusalem shroud body figured in it.

TB 'may have killed off leprosy' (BBC)

Human remains dating from the 1st Century AD suggest tuberculosis (TB) may have killed off leprosy in Europe.

Scientists at University College London have been examining a shrouded body recently discovered in a sealed chamber in Israel.

The bones reveal the man was infected with both TB and leprosy.

[...]

The argument goes that those who caught both died of TB, and thus the formerly common disease leprosy became much rarer.

Incidentally, this recent Guardian review covers a book on leprosy, describing the medical condition and putting the disease into a historical context.

And perhaps it's worth mentioning that the fictional character Thomas Covenant has in the last generation given millions of readers of numerous languages a sympathethic understanding of Hansen's syndrome and the plight of its victims. (And yes, The Runes of the Earth is as good as the first six books in the series, if you like that sort of epic fantasy - which I do. Go Linden, go!)

AT LEAST ONE CHALDO-ASSYRIAN has been elected to Iraq's new National Assembly:

Iraqi exile voters put Chaldo-Assyrian Christian in Iraqi assembly

By Susannah A. Nesmith

Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq -Yonadam Kanna owes his seat in the new Iraqi National Assembly to people from places such as Detroit and San Jose, Calif., who voted for his slate in the Jan. 30 elections.

Without the 18,538 votes he received from expatriates, Kanna's slate would have been about 12,000 votes short of the number required to secure a seat in the assembly. Though more than 260,000 expatriates voted, Kanna's National Two Rivers slate is one of only three that received more than half their votes from abroad, and it's the only one that owes its seat on the assembly to expatriate votes.

[...]

He's hoping to barter his lone vote for the protection of his community by working with the new opposition led by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to block a constitution based on Islamic law. The slate that took the most seats, about 140, was blessed by a conservative Shiite Muslim cleric and has ties to the fundamentalist regime in Iran, but many here think it won't have a big enough majority in the 275-seat assembly to form a religious-based government.

Kanna's constituents in San Jose are proud that they helped put him in a position where he may be able to help prevent that. But they too are concerned that many Chaldo-Assyrians were prevented from voting, either because polling stations abroad were too far from their homes - a common complaint that crosses ethnic and religious lines - or because of irregularities in Ninevah province, where the Chaldo-Assyrian community is strongest.

[...]

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN on its two new appointments in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.

NICHOLAS DE LANGE is giving what sounds like a very interesting lecture at Princeton University on "The Greek Bible in the Byzantine Synagogue." He will argue, based mostly on new evidence from the Cairo Geniza, that Jews continued to use Greek translations of the Bible through late antiquity and into the Middle Ages. Lampros F. Kallenos gives further details on the TC List.

JEWISH STUDIES, AN INTERNET JOURNAL (JSIJ) has a new issue (vol. 3) out. Abstracts of the articles were e-mailed by the managing editor, Leib Moscovitz:

�Even if One Found a More Beautiful Woman�: An Analysis of Grounds for Divorce in Rabbinic Literature

by Ishay Rosen-Zvi

* *

This paper analyzes the development of rabbinic views about grounds for divorce. The common rabbinic view, which grants the husband the sole right�indeed, an almost unlimited right�to divorce his wife, differs both from the strict prohibition on divorce found in the New Testament and Qumran literature and the view of Roman law, which permits both husbands and wives to divorce one another. Through comparison of the principal tannaitic sources with parallel material in the New Testament and Qumran literature, we distinguish between first and second century views about divorce, and claim that the principal rabbinic source on this issue (Mishnah Gittin 9:9), which ostensibly describes a first century debate, actually reflects later tannaitic discourse. We suggest that this Mishnah, which takes the right of divorce for granted, reinterprets the original, first-century debate of the Houses of Hillel and Shammai as dealing with grounds for divorce. This reconstruction is based, inter alia, on the recent publication of a new tannaitic midrash by Menahem Kahana.

On the Need to Correct Krauss's Lehnw�rter: /Pnqrysyn/

by Daniel Sperber

S. Krauss' /Lehnw�rter/ (vol. 2) was published in Berlin in 1899. It constitutes a masterpiece of pioneering lexicography, listing words in rabbinic literature derived from Greek and Latin. However, it is full of errors and needs radical revision. This short article demonstrates how the entry �? ������ should be corrected and rewritten as several different entries with varied meanings and emended readings.

Mishnah Study and Study Groups in Modern Times

by Aaron Ahrend

This article discusses study of the Mishnah in modern times, beginning with the period after the Spanish Expulsion. We analyze the reasons that Mishnah was studied in modern times as an independent work, without connection to the Talmud. We then discuss the phenomenon of Mishnah study groups (/hevrot Mishnah/) and the regulations (/taqqanot/) adopted by these groups, examining some of the notebooks of these groups which have been preserved in archives. Finally, we publish several new collections of these /taqqanot/.

A Good Story Deserves Retelling � The Unfolding of the Akiva Legend

by Shamma Friedman

Original composition and creative transmission are native to the talmudic corpus. One of the pervasive literary devices of this corpus is transfer of motifs from one context to another, or even duplication and reapplication of a story from one hero to another.

The body of this paper is devoted to the famous accounts of Rabbi Akiva�s scholarly beginnings as recorded in the Bavli, Ketubbot 62b and Nedarim 50a.

The closest approximation to the original literary kernel of the Akiva legend is in ARNB, in short, unconnected pericopae. Akiva is unlearned and poor, but determined to conquer the study of Torah, and eventually he raises 12,000 pairs of disciples. Ultimately he is rewarded with great riches, and he bestows magnificent gifts upon his wife. He justifies this extravagance with the recollection of the suffering she underwent during his studies. In ARNA her role moves from passive suffering to active contribution; she supports the children. In the Yerushalmi her contribution is made directly to Akiva and romanticized: she cuts off her braids and devotes the money to his study of Torah.

Only in the Bavli are these themes woven into a continuous narrative, as they are further developed and romanticized. Most creatively, their son Yehoshua�s betrothal bargain (Tosefta Ketubbot) of having his wife support his study is assigned to his parents. Akiva�s boorishness now has him cast as a shepherd. The disinheritance theme is borrowed from R. Eliezer�s appearance before Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, and is connected to one of the personalities who was sitting in the audience, Kalba Savua. The 12,000 disciples are combined with the 13 years of study. During this period he was described as living separately from his wife with her permission, in contrast to the literary description of the wrongdoings of Hanania ben Hakhinai, who remained in R. Akiva�s academy for 13 years without communicating with his wife.

The full exemplum was then taken over by an author working within the framework of Nedarim, who added the other fabulous tradition about R. Akiva and the Jerusalem-of-Gold. The brilliant prefiguration of the golden diadem in the straw scene allows the storyteller to shift Ketubbot�s betrothal pact a la Yehoshua to a more tender and stirring scene. Delaying the exhortation to study to a time after the betrothal and anticipating the Jerusalem-of-Gold bring both themes together as the couple exchange their mutual vows of love.

"Up to the Ears" in Horses Necks (B.M. 108a): On Sasanian Agricultural Policy and Private "Eminent Domain"

by Yaakov Elman

In B.M. 108a the first-generation amora, Samuel, to whom the rule that "the law of the secular state is valid" is attributed, rules that though one who takes possession of a riverbank is considered impudent, the court cannot remove him. To this is added a later comment: "Now that the Persians write that '[the adjacent riverbed] is acquired by you to the [depth] of water to the [height] of a horse�s neck, we do remove him.'" This decision raises a number of questions, among which are: Why should anyone be interested in acquiring riverbed property? Why should the court care?

Now that an early-seventh-century compilation of Sasanian laws is available - the Book of a Thousand Decisions - a relevant Persian law is available (see MHD 85:8-11). The Babylonian Aramaic term �water to the [depth] of a horse�s neck� is equivalent to the Middle Persian /gosh balay/, �the height of a horse�s ear.� The Sasanian law relates to the digging of a cana, and the rights of eminent domain that the diggers receive in return for this public service. The context of this decision becomes clear when we realize that the Sasanians introduced rice-cultivation into Iraq, and that a riverbed property in a meandering stream, such as the Euphrates, with a very gentle slope, might permit as much as a 30-meter strip to be cultivated. We may learn much about Sasanian agricultural and commercial policy from this decision and related ones.

UPDATE ON THE BOOK: This weekend I got the good news that Brill has accepted The Book, subject to some revisions. They want me to make some cuts, do some minor revising, and take some comments into account. I am pleased with the outcome and think it will be a better book for the changes. I'm pretty confident too that some of the cut material can be published elsewhere.

SBL RESOLUTION UPDATE: Ed Cook draws attention to Matthew Collins's SBL Forum report on the resolution. I agree with everything Ed says and have nothing to add.

I'VE PICKED ON THE UAE GOVERNMENT quite a bit, so it's only fair that I praise them for something good they're doing:

Ancient scrolls being digitised in UAE

Monday, 14 February , 2005, 18:18 (Sify News)

Dubai: More than 100,000 ancient Indian manuscripts and 15 million historic documents in Urdu, Persian and Arabic and 5 million English manuscripts are being digitised by the Juma Al Majid Centre for Culture and Heritage in Dubai.

[...]

Well done. This is an important cultural heritage preservation project in general and, as always, there's no telling what odd bits of biblical pseudepigrapha might be in some of those manuscripts.

(Via Archaeologica News.)

HUMOR IN THE BIBLE is the subject of a conference in Turin:

Italy event probes Bible's lighter side

By ARIEL DAVID
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

ROME -- Humor in the Bible? Scholars say the Old and New Testament are riddled with humorous references and aim to set the record straight at a three-day congress beginning Monday, "Laughter and Comedy in Ancient Christianity."

[...]

THE HERCULANEUM RE-EXCAVATION PROJECT now has some funding, according to the Sunday Times:

Millionaire to fund dig for lost Roman library

Nick Fielding

A PHILANTHROPIST has stepped forward to fund excavations at the ancient city of Herculaneum in Italy, where scholars believe a Roman library lies buried beneath 90ft of lava from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.

David W Packard, whose family helped to found the Hewlett-Packard computer company, is concerned that the site may be poorly conserved or that excavation of the library may not continue unless he underwrites the work.

[...]

Packard, a former classics scholar who lives in California, runs the Packard Humanities Institute, which supports archeological work in Bosnia, Albania and other countries. Though the institute has an endowment of �375m, Packard is not making an open-ended pledge to support work at the site. But he added: �If the proper circumstances develop, we can afford to do it. It is not a problem of having to go out and raise the money. There are no catches.�

He said there should be no conflict between those who want to excavate the villa immediately and those who argue in favour of conserving the whole site, generally acknowledged to be in a poor state of repair. �It would be irresponsible treasure hunting to dig the choice parts of the site and then leave afterwards,� he said.

[...]

This is very good news.

ALTER'S PENTATEUCH AGAIN: On a more serious note, Martin Sieff has a review in the Washington Times of Robert Alter's new translation of the Pentateuch. Excerpt:

Mr. Alter's work, however, is in a class by itself. Over the past 25 years, this professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley has established himself as the grandmaster of style, translation and literary criticism par excellence in the English-speaking world in such definitive studies as "The Art of Biblical Poetry" and "The Art of Biblical Narrative." His vast new work is the worthy fruition of a lifetime's outstanding labors.

What Mr. Alter has always understood is that the formative texts of the Old Testament are as rich in word-play and complex literary coding and style as any of William Shakespeare's greatest plays and that the ultimate challenge of any translator ought to be to convey all that subtle and precise richness and elegance of style into English - or any other language.

The Nephilim and the assumption of Enoch are also mentioned.

CULTURAL ICON WATCH: We have a few items this morning. (All bold-font emphasis below is mine.) First, in the Newark Star Ledger a sports columnist named Jerry Izenberg takes someone named Jason Giambi to task for an insufficiently clear apology, apparently involving steriods.

More precisely, where were they on Thursday when Jason Giambi spoke to the media in code or in tongues or, possibly, even in early Aramaic. They would have been a long, long shot to make some sense out of the proceedings but probably the only ones who could have broken the Yankee-Giambi code.

The Yankees stage-managed a press conference that for all intents and purposes will go down alongside such unsolved mysteries as why the Druids built Stonehenge or the meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls or the exact location of Atlantis or the name of Casey Stengel's diction teacher.

Here we have Aramaic as a code for incomprehensible language (cf. "it's all Greek to me") and the Dead Sea Scrolls , as often, symbolizing abstruse, esoteric lore. Glossolalia and Atlantis are thrown in for good measure.

Then the Scrolls appear again in the same role in The Spoof, in a piece on Prince Charles's wedding plans which seems intended to offend, if not quite everybody, pretty near. The relevant passage reads:

According to transcripts of recently released translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Charles's startling bombshell co-incides with revelations accredited to the mysterious Three Secrets of Fatima - universally acknowledged to be the source of all accurate predictions concerning the Apocalypse, Armageddon and the meteoric rise to public office of George Walker Bush.

Finally, the Glasgow Herald has a piece by Brian Morton which seems mostly to be about the occupational risks to the arteries of French restaurant critics. It opens:

The French may be passionate about food, but they are morbidly obsessed with food writing. The real driving force behind nouvelle cuisine, cuisine minceur and Bernard Loiseau�s bold cuisine des essences wasn�t public taste, but the health and well-being of a motley horde of restaurant critics; not just the showbizzy newspaper writers, but the anonymous reviewers for Guide Kleber, Gault-Millau and above all the Michelin Red Guide, which is to other food guides what the New Testament is to the Apocrypha.

The Michelin Guide is thus the true canonical authority, while the other food guides are of lesser if not dubious authority.

All in all, an impressive Sunday morning for popular cultural memes involving ancient Judaism.

THE RECENTLY ESTABLISHED "MONARCHIST" SANHEDRIN met in Jerusalem this month to discuss the exact location of the Temple on the Temple Mount. Their agenda is to rebuild the Temple on that spot and reestablish the Davidic monarchy.

UPDATE ON THE JERUSALEM SHROUD: James Tabor, one of the excavators, has some authoritative comments on the ANE list. I'm not sure he says anything new, but he summarizes the current state of knowledge and also discusses the plans for publication.

WELCOME BACK to the Bible and Interpretation news site!

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: Over at the Philo of Alexandria blog Torrey Seland notes that a new commentary on Pseudo-Phocylides is about to be published in De Gruyter's Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature series.

THIS TRAGIC STORY has been getting some media attention:

After infant's death from herpes, scrutiny turns to circumcision rite
By JTA

The death of one infant boy from herpes and the infection of two others has focused attention on an ancient practice that is still used in some fervently Orthodox communities as they circumcise babies.

New York City health officials are investigating whether the mohel who operated on the three boys had infected them. The city's legal department has been granted a temporary restraining order against Rabbi Yitzhak Fischer until the investigation is complete.

Fischer practices a custom called metzitzah b'peh � loosely translated as oral suction � that is considered an integral part of the brit milah in parts of the Jewish world, though it is met with shock and distaste in others. It's not known if Fischer carries the herpes virus, but the restraining order forbids him from practicing metzitzah b'peh, and demands that he wear surgical gloves when he performs a circumcision.

[...]

The article goes on to discuss the Talmudic rules for the practice and the response by present-day physicians in the medical journal Pediatrics. Curiously, this Jerusalem Post article, like all the others I've seen, doesn't give the specific reference in the Talmud. One of the authors of the Pediatrics article, biologist Rabbi Moses Tendler of Yeshiva University, sums up as follows:

"Metzitzah is strictly medieval medicine, and it should have given way to modern medicine. "We have a tradition that says that when it comes to medicine, you don't look into the Talmud. You seek the most competent physician to tell you what to do."

UPDATE: Reader Dan Rabinowitz e-mails:

The Talmud passage appears in the Tractate Shabbat first on page 133A in the Mishna and then on page 133,B here is the full quote of the Talmudic passage in English

"Sucking out the blood." R. Papa said: "The circumciser who does not suck out the wound places the child in danger, and should be discharged from office." Is this not self-evident? It certainly must be dangerous not to do this, or the Sabbath would not be violated in order to perform that duty! We might assume, that the blood having already come to the surface it would run out of itself, and hence by sucking it out the Sabbath is not violated; hence we are given to understand that this is not so: the blood is moved only by the suction, and the Sabbath is violated; but failure to do this would involve danger for the child and hence it is permitted, and is regarded the same as applying a plaster or caraway seeds (mentioned further on in the Mishna), the omission of which would also involve danger to the child.

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has just published a new issue (8.1, January 2005) online. Note in particular the following:

Article

Jacob of Edessa's version of Exodus 1 and 28.
Alison Salvesan, Oxford University

Project Reports

Digitization of Syriac Books and Other Holdings at The Catholic University of America.
Monica J. Blanchard, The Catholic University of America

Vatican Syriac Manuscripts: Volume 1.
Kristian S. Heal, Brigham Young University

Conference Report

The Bible of Edessa, Towards a New English Translation of the Syriac Bible, Leiden, August 2, 2004.
Wido T. van Peursen, Leiden University

And there are other articles, book reviews, project reports, announcements, etc.

THE SCHOTTENSTEIN ARTSCROLL TALMUD is the subject of an article in the New York Times: "An English Talmud for Daily Readers and Debaters." Incidentally, it explains the name:

The publishing process has been costly - $250,000 a volume - and that explains a basic mystery of the undertaking: Why is it called "Schottenstein"? Rabbi Scherman said that ArtScroll realized that sales would never cover the costs, and enlisted donors. Jerome M. Schottenstein, an Orthodox Jew who had studied the Gemara at Yeshiva University High School for Boys in Manhattan in the 1940's and went on to found a department store empire based in Columbus, Ohio, financed a large share of the project; since his death, in 1992, his family has sustained the gift.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkay (mentioned here before as the excavator of the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets) has given a lecture in New Orleans on his salvage excavation of the WAQF's Kidron Valley dump.

Temple Mount destruction stirred archaeologist to action (Baptist Press News)
Feb 8, 2005

NEW ORLEANS (BP)--Gabriel Barkay's excitement over new discoveries at the Temple Mount -- the Jerusalem site that carries great significance to the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths -- is tempered by the destructive events that led to them.

Barkay, professor of archaeology at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, visited to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary for a Jan. 27 lecture sponsored by the seminary's Center for Archaeological Research.

"In November 1999, the Islamic authorities carried out a huge excavation of [the part of the Temple Mount known as Solomon's Stable]," Barkay said. "They built a modern entrance to the building instead of the existing entrance, and they dug a huge pit with the help of bulldozers and 300 [dump trucks] that removed the dirt from the earthen fills of this spot."

[...]

"Who knows how many inscriptions we lost in this way?" Barkay said. "Who knows how many decorated stones were defaced in this manner? The earth was saturated with ancient materials, and it was dumped in the Kidron Valley to the east of the Temple Mount."

[...]

Just two months ago, Barkay put his archaeological know-how into action; he got a license to excavate the dumping grounds in the Kidron Valley.

"We began a project of collecting the dirt from the dumping areas. We moved the piles of dirt to a well-protected area," he recounted. "We covered them with plastic sheets. Each pile was marked with the exact place of origin and exact depth we could estimate from which it came."

His team used sifting machines to separate stones from more delicate items. Then they began searching through the material by hand.

"This effort already yielded some scores of coins," he said. "We have coins from the 12th century, the 19th century, up to the first century B.C. We have some second-century B.C. Antonian coins. We have some Herodian coins."

Among the other things, the team found a Christian charm bearing the image of John the Baptist with an infant Jesus and the Jordan River in the background. They found an alabaster dish from the Persian Period and an ivory comb from the Second Temple period. Though much had already been lost, the substance of what they are finding is encouraging amid the delicate and unfortunate situation.

[...]

This destruction of antiquities on the Temple Mount is a major archaeological scandal that should be getting more attention. The site is an important part of humanity's cultural heritage and the damage done to it is an affront to all archaeologists and historians.

UPDATE (11 February): David Nishimura at Cronaca comments: "I'm not happy about the damage done by the military occupation of Babylon, but the attention it has received is wholly disproportionate to what has been happening for far longer in Jerusalem."

QUMRANICA, my new weblog, is now officially up and running. I've just made my first post to it and I'll posting a lecture summary on it late this afternoon (GMT).

PaleoJudaica is an open-ended blog on which I post information on anything I find that has to do, more or less, with ancient Judaism, along with my own musings. Qumranica, however, is built around an undergraduate course on the Dead Sea Scrolls which I am currently teaching here at the University of St. Andrews. Qumranica is to function, first, as a kind of bulletin board for the course, noting when lecture summaries and abstracts of student papers are posted to the course website and providing space for my summaries of our seminars and perhaps sometimes also for student reflections and comments e-mailed by outside readers. Second, I will note on the blog any interesting media items pertaining to the Dead Sea Scrolls which I find online. And, third, I will sometimes use Qumranica to note interesting websites having to do with the Scrolls.

Qumranica will run until sometime in May. I haven't decided yet on the exact closing date. Meanwhile PaleoJudaica will continue as usual, although anything Qumran-related will generally go to Qumranica.

Do go and have a look.

UPDATE: Bad link fixed. Thanks to David Meadows for pointing it out to me.

THE BIBLIOBLOG BLOG seems to have vanished. You okay Zeth?

THE FROM THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS TO THE BIBLE IN AMERICA EXHIBIT, currently showing at High Point in North Carolina, has a sleazy connection that has been mentioned here before, but this article by by Barbara Thiede ("For shame! Slick marketers find gold mine in selling God") in the Charlotte Observer (free registration required) is a good opportunity to highlight it. The meat of the story is this:

A group of private dealers in rare Bibles has opened an exhibit in High Point. The exhibit includes antique biblical texts, sections from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. A mock biblical market featuring books, videos and jewelry for sale sits alongside.

What's wrong with a private exhibition of ancient manuscripts and early printed Bibles? Is there anything inappropriate about making good money from entry fees to see such an exhibit? Is it immoral to profit from the sale of related items in the accompanying gift shop?

The problem is simple: The promoters are selling God.

One of the participants, the Arizona rare-book business of Craig Lampe and John Jeffcoat called GreatSite.com, has lent various artifacts to the show. Go to their Web site, and you can find out what sort of items they market.

One is a 400-year-old Torah.

Its marketers are selling it bit by bit. They cut it into panels, exactly according to their customers' specifications, like cloth in a fabric store.

The Torah, the Web site explains, was damaged in a fire. But you can buy a surviving column. You can buy two.

Sure enough, this is the page at the GreatSite.com website.

Ancient Hebrew Torah Scroll Panels:
From the World�s Oldest Scriptorium

A panel of leather from an incomplete ancient Hebrew Torah Scroll of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). These hand-written, one-of-a-kind pieces are approximately 300 to 400 years old. They were produced in the world�s oldest continually operating scriptorium, a 2,400-year old scriptorium in South Yemen, about 1,000 miles south of Israel. These are pieces of the same type of �Bible� that Jesus read, and quite possibly from the same scriptorium! They are available as approximately 22 inch tall segments of any length you desire from 9 inches to 9 feet or more! Each comes with a beautiful Certificate of Authenticity.

In a word, for $100 you can have a column sliced out of a damaged three- or four-hundred-year-old Torah scroll and turned over to you to hang on your wall. While you're at it, it seems you can buy individual leaves removed from the first printing of the King James Bible or from "the earliest available printing" of the Tyndale Bible.

In some past entries I have tried to cut antiquities dealers some slack, although I have to say my attitude has been hardening in light of the ongoing forgery scandal in Israel. I'm still open to discussion about whether it is acceptable, say, to sell potsherds that otherwise would be discarded or buried in museum basements. But this is another matter. I'll leave aside the question of whether the exhibition promoters should be selling God. My concern is that they are mutilating precious, historic manuscripts and scattering them to the wind for the sake of a few bucks. It certainly seems beyond the pale to me, and I hope that if you or someone you know are considering spending your money on this exhibit, you will keep this in mind.

GLASS'S AHKEHATON is showing at the Boston Conservatory:

Original staging, fine performance enliven Glass's tale of Egypt

By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff | February 7, 2005

The new director of opera at the Boston Conservatory is baritone Sanford Sylvan, who is leading the school, and its operatic training, in a new direction. Last weekend he made his debut as a stage director with Philip Glass's "Akhnaten." The conservatory had the cast for it, and as a performer who premiered works by Glass and John Adams, Sylvan feels that it's important for young singers to get an early start on learning how to deal with the special theatrical, musical, and vocal demands of this new kind of music-theater.

"Akhnaten," now 21 years old, is the third work in Glass's trilogy of "portrait" operas. Akhnaten was the most fascinating of Egyptian pharaohs, the man who introduced monotheism to Egypt. Glass presents his story in a series of isolated but defining moments (the funeral of his father, his own coronation, etc.). The texts are ancient and sung in the original languages (Egyptian, Akkadian, biblical Hebrew), while a Scribe delivers spoken translations in the language of the audience to bridge the scenes.

[...]

THE MACCABEES IN THE NEWS:

Held in Israel every four years, the Maccabiah Games is named for Jewish warrior Judah Maccabe [sic] who fought against the ancient Greeks. The first Maccabiah Games were held in 1932 with approximately 390 athletes from 14 countries participating in the competition. At the 1935 games, a German delegation of 134 Jews flouted Nazi Germany's order not to attend the games and the delegation refused to fly the German flag during the opening ceremonies. In 1950, 800 athletes representing 19 countries attended the first games to be held after the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel.

The 17th Maccabiah Games take place in Israel this July.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBIT IN MOBILE is covered yet again, this time in an article in the Times Picayune (New Orleans): "Dead Sea Scrolls come to Mobile museum". It's a good piece; well researched and with some interesting reflections for a popular audience on the importance of the Scrolls for our understanding of the development of the biblical canon and the biblical text. Excerpt:

Although the Exploreum's marketers have accurately pitched the exhibit to their Bible Belt audience as "The oldest surviving texts of the Bible," the scrolls actually reflect the Bible's complicated, organic development, [James] Bowley [of Millsaps College] said. It is a story far removed from the image of a collection of books that appeared long ago and never varied from their original forms.

Indeed, the Hebrew Bible -- the Christian Old Testament -- did not exist when the scrolls were produced. Not until about the second century would a consensus emerge on which books would be discarded and which should be included in an authoritative collection of this sacred literature, Bowley said.

One scroll, the Book of Jubilees, seems to have been terribly important to the Essenes, he said. By contrast, there's only a tiny scrap of the Book of Chronicles, reflecting their own theological emphasis. Yet today Jubilees is out of the Bible and Chronicles is in.

"Different Jewish communities had different collections of scrolls," he said. "The Essenes would have had many that other communities would have, plus some others."

Biblical evolution

Moreover, the scrolls deeply underscore a point scholars had already known: There was no standard version of biblical texts in play. Instead, individual biblical compositions and other Jewish writings developed through time and went through various stages and editions before arriving at the form we have today, Bowley said.

"People writing different versions of Jeremiah are Jews of the same period, with the same concept of God. While the versions might have some differences in terms of order or arrangement, does that change our basic concept of God? No. It doesn't change the theology."

UPDATE: And here's a nice backgrounder about the genesis of the exhibition in the Gulf Coast Exploreum, also in the Times Picayune. When their state funding was cut,

Marketing Director Eleanor Kulin had a thought. "I sat at my computer one day, and I literally Googled 'Dead Sea Scrolls.' "

She got a hit, in more ways than one.

What Kulin found was that the famous scrolls were in the United States and had just closed at the Public Museum of Grand Rapids, Mich., where administrators had been floored by the success of the exhibition.

Officials at the Exploreum talked it over, then resolved to make a serious run at grabbing the scrolls for Mobile.

It seemed like a natural. Even then, Kulin said, she could see the headlines that now grace the advertising aimed at Alabama's heavily evangelical populace: "Featuring the oldest surviving texts of the Bible."