HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO PALEOJUDAICA! Today is this blog's second anniversary. This was its very first post and this is my first anniversary post a year ago.

The post with the most hits in the last year was an announcement of plans for the publication of the rumor-shrouded Coptic Gospel of Judas, kindly relayed by Pierluigi Piovanelli. Thanks to a link from Instapundit a week later, the post received several thousand hits in one day.

I think my favorite post in the last year is one from December on "Philo or the Pseudepigrapha?", in which I ranked our ancient Jewish sources for their importance as NT background and summarized some of the issues treated in the book I was finishing on the methodology of studying the Old Testament pseudepigrapha. For more favorite posts of the last two years, follow the Memorable PaleoJudaica Posts link. One major innovation this year has been the opening of my temporary blog Qumranica for my course on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I recently submitted an article to the SBL Forum for a thematic issue on biblioblogging, tentatively scheduled for publication in April. Much of the material for that article covers major PaleoJudaica posts in the last year, so I won't anticipate myself by giving the sort of detailed review I did last year. When the piece comes out, I'll put in a link in an update to this post.

It's been a good but exhausting year and blogging has helped keep it fun. And as long as the blogging stays fun, I imagine I'll keep doing it. A couple of times I have caught myself sitting down wearily to write a post out of a sense of duty rather than because I felt like it. I trashed those posts as soon as I realized what I was doing. PaleoJudaica doesn't aim to cover everything, but I do try to keep track of many of the things that look interesting to me and to comment when I have something to say and time to say it. I hope some of it has been fun and interesting for readers too.

It's worth remarking on how blogging, including biblical studies blogging (or "biblioblogging," if you must) continues to expand. This time last year there were not many blogs in this area: PaleoJudaica; Mark Goodacre's New Testament Gateway blog; AKMA's Random Thoughts; Stephen Carlson's Hypotyposeis; Torrey Seland's Philo of Alexandria blog; Ruben Gomez's Bible Software Review blog; and Tim Bulkeley SansBlogue. The Bible and Interpretation News website functioned much like a blog. David Meadows's Rogue Classicism, David Nishimura's Cronaca, Christine's Mirabilis, and Rebecca Lesses's Mystical Politics also sometimes had (and have) related material.

But in the last year quite a few other biblioblogs have started up. I can't keep track of them all, but some of the ones I try to keep an eye on include Ed Cook's Ralph the Sacred River; Jim West's Biblical Theology blog; Eric Sowell's The Coding Humanist; Seth Sanders's Serving the Word; Michael Homan's blog; Helenann Hartley's blog; Peter Kirby's Christian Origins blog; Michael Pahl's The Stuff of Earth; Joe Weak's Macintosh Biblioblog; Zeth's Biblioblog blog; Rick Brannan's ricoblog; Zhubert's blog; Dr Cathey's blog. Michael Turton's The Sword; Joel Ng's Ebla Logs; Justin Dombrowski's Midrash Le-Justin; and Daniel Driver's Figured Out. Gee, that was hard to stop once I'd started (and apologies to those I've missed). My point is made: this looks like geometric growth to me. Blogging is becoming ever more popular and people are starting blogs by the million. Many won't last but some will, and a few of those will be very good. For reasons explained in the promised SBL article, I do not think that blogging is a passing fad, and I look forward to ever more sophisticated forms of democratized media as time goes on.

According to Technorati, PaleoJudaica currently has 164 links from 126 other blogs. The counter stands at 110,852 individual hits, 68,243 of them in the last year. In the last two years, 1,074,454 words, apart from this entry, have posted on PaleoJudaica, 741,763 of them in the last year. (I hasten to add that most of them were quotations from other people!) There have been over 1700 individual hits and over 2300 page views in the last week. So in the last year links from other blogs have increased by a factor of almost 2.5 and individual hits have increased by a factor of over 1.5. Weekly individual hits are up too, although this may be partly a blip due to a link from a popular Portuguese blog about a week ago. None of these statistics are at all reliable, but they do at least indicate positive trends.

Once again, please keep visiting PaleoJudaica, keep telling your friends about it, keep sending me items, and keep letting me know when you think I've gotten something wrong. And maybe think about starting a blog yourself.

ANOTHER TYNDALE TECH E-MAIL has been published by David Instone-Brewer, this one on Theology Periodicals Online. As usual, it looks astoundingly useful.

Meanwhile, Mark Goodacre points to his own Journals page, which has additional info, and he also calls for David's assimilation to the Blogosphere. Tim Bulkeley is cautiously supportive of the idea. Now far be it from me to discourage anyone from starting a blog, but I think that the infrastructure for Tyndale Tech is pretty good as it is. I like to be able to click on one link to get a themed collection of websites and I think that a blog that just posted random websites as David found them would be less useful. Of course, maybe there's a middle way that would combine the benefits of blogging with the benefits of the current system to make something better. But David's system isn't broken, so I hope he'll be cautious about fixing it.

ISRAEL FORGERY SCANDAL WATCH: Macleans has the most comprehensive article that I've seen up to now ("Cashbox"). The author, Jonathon Gatehouse, interviewed many of the major participants in the story including Oden Golan, Shlomo Moussaieff, Joe Zias, Yuval Goren, Hershel Shanks, and the CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum, and the article has lots of interesting information I'd not heard before. Here are just a few excerpts, but read it all.

When the case goes to trial, perhaps as early as this spring, the prosecution may call as many as 124 witnesses, and enter hundreds of exhibits -- seized antiquities, tools, blueprints, documents, surveillance tapes -- that it claims will prove the existence of a concerted effort to change history. Last week, Golan was being held by police, charged with obstruction for attempting to interfere with his own case; authorities were seeking a court order to keep him jailed until the end of his trial. On the original charges, he and his co-accused have said they will plead innocent, and that they are victims of bad science and a witch hunt by overzealous bureaucrats who want to end the legal but highly controversial trade in the Holy Land's archaeological heritage. The debate that has raged in scholarly circles about the authenticity of the James ossuary will spill into the public spotlight. If Golan and the others were to be found guilty, it would expose some of the biggest names in archaeology as being naive, perhaps greedy, or possibly worse. Reputations will suffer. And the Royal Ontario Museum's looks to be at the head of the line.

[...]

Shanks hasn't been shy about firing back at the ossuary's more vocal critics. The package he sends me helpfully includes a scathing review of a book by Rochelle Altman, a specialist in writing systems who has frequently asserted that the inscription is full of errors and was written by two different hands. In the May/June 2004 edition of the Review, he launched a sharp attack on Meyers and Zias under the headline "Lying Scholars." He dismissed Zias's claim that he had seen the unaltered ossuary in a Jerusalem shop, quoting the dealer as saying he "had never heard" of the former curator. Next to the story, Shanks published an old photo of the man standing in the door of his shop chatting with an unidentified man. Unfortunately for Shanks, the other figure was Zias (whom Shanks has known for decades).

[...]

Publicly available documents of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service show that the Biblical Archaeology Society generated just under US$5 million in revenue in 2003. Shanks, whose job is described as a weekly "20-hour" position, received $162,000 in salary, while the organization paid a further $66,000 in rent to a company he owns. The charity, which lists grants to "worthwhile projects in the field of archaeology and the Bible" as one of its principal activities, handed out just $7,109 to such projects in 2003. In 2002, when Shanks made $150,000 in salary and $67,000 in rent, it gave away $8,500. One of the biggest beneficiaries was Lemaire, who received a $1,000 "travel scholarship for James ossuary work."

[...]

What he's [that is, Golan] most excited about, however, is a fax that has just arrived from a religious studies professor in France. The scholar writes that two decades ago, his brother-in-law, a former French diplomat in Israel, told him about an ossuary inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," that was in the possession of a Tel Aviv collector. Golan's eyes are shining. He breaks away at one point to take a call from Shanks and fill him in on the latest development.

It's not until I'm well down the highway back to Jerusalem that the tumblers click into place. If Golan never recognized the significance of the inscription until just a few years ago, how would anyone else come to know that he owned such a box? And wouldn't a scholar be interested in following up such a story? Later on, I look up the professor on the Internet. He teaches at the Sorbonne, and once wrote a book with Andr� Lemaire.

(Via Joe Zias on the ANE list.)

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The plan by the Revava group to swarm the Temple Mount on April 10th has been vetoed by the Israeli police:

Police to bar masses from Temple Mt.
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post


Acting to defuse renewed tension at Israel's most sensitive site, Jerusalem police announced Tuesday that they would bar a massive Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount by a group of ultra-nationalists opposed to the planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

[...]

A SABEAN MANDEAN PSYCHOPOMPIC RITUAL is described in an AFP article in the Peninsula (Qatar):

Sabean-Mandeans trying to preserve their traditions
Web posted at: 3/23/2005 3:9:4
Source ::: AFP

BAGHDAD: �I cannot speak because I am dead,� scribbles Salem Daoud on a piece of paper as he stands on the banks of the Tigris.

The 55-year-old priest looks like the biblical Moses with his thick white beard, rosy cheeks and white tunics. His headgear resembles that of a Jewish Rabbi.

He is impersonating one of 100 members of his tiny Sabean-Mandean community who died in violent incidents in Iraq over the past few months, during the US-led invasion two years ago or in the wars of ousted leader Saddam Hussein.

According to the ancient religion, which combines Babylonian, pre-Islamic, Persian and Christian beliefs, those who die of unnatural causes must have their last baptism and be honoured with a feast, otherwise their spirits would remain stuck on earth and never make it up to the �world of light.�

Tuesday is the climax of the �five white days,� one of the holiest periods in the Mandean-Sabean calendar.

[...]

Other rites are described as well.

THE MINIMALIST-MAXIMALIST DEBATE CONTINUES: Here's an encouragingly irenic essay by V. Philip Long on the Bible and Interpretation website. It is in response to an earlier essay by Niels Peter Lemche published in the same place.

Conservative Scholarship-
Critical Scholarship: Can We Talk?

At the end of the day, I believe that just as there are no "bad questions," provided that they are sincerely and respectfully posed, there are no "bogus conversations," provided they are sincerely and respectfully joined. Lemche is quite correct to decry situations in which scholars of other viewpoints are simply labeled and dismissed. This should not be done to today�s minimalist scholars, nor indeed to today�s more conservative scholars.

One small criticism: why isn't there a link to Lemche's essay in the first paragraph of this one? I wish online essayists would think like bloggers more often and link to everything in sight -- especially online pieces of immediate relevance.

YOU'VE HEARD OF THE LORD'S PRAYER IN ARAMAIC, but how about the Lord's Prayer in Elvish? Translated by Tolkien himself:

�taremme i �a han �a
na aire esselya
aranielya na tuluva
na care ind�melya
cemende tambe Erumande :
�men anta sira ilaur�a massamma
ar �men apsene �caremmar
s�v� emme apsenet tien i �carer emmen.
�lame tulya �saht�enna
mal �me etelehta ulcullo
: n�sie :

(Via Mirabilis.)

PHYSIOGNOMY -- AND HOW! It is often quite illuminating to find out what students are getting from my classes.

MEL GIBSON'S THE PASSION RECUT is a flop so far in the USA. This review suggests some reasons why. (Satire alert!)

CHRISTIAN PILGRIMS had their annual procession from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem yesterday to celebrate Palm Sunday. This AP article has an aside I'd never heard about before:

A discovery of Jewish graves in 1954 has caused biblical scholars to reconsider the route Jesus would have followed into Jerusalem as a "ruler of peace." Jewish tradition holds that Jesus would not have brought his followers through a Jewish cemetery. However, since 330, the ritual procession has passed within 100 feet of a Jewish burial site archaeologists and scholars believe existed before the time of Jesus, said archaeologist Joe Zias.

This doesn't seem to be written very clearly and I'm not sure what's at stake. True, Jesus probably would not have gone through a Jewish cemetery, but I don't see the problem with him going past one 100 feet away. Cemeteries had to be at least 50 cubits away from inhabited areas (m. Baba Bathra 2.9), which is less than 75 feet. Can someone explain to me what the issue is here?

A CARNIVAL OF BIBLICAL STUDIES is in preparation over at the Ebla Logs blog. If you are an academic Bible blogger (biblioblogger if you insist), send Joel Ng what you regard to be your finest post ever, or the one you want most to be read. The deadline for submission is 3 April.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Ha'aretz editorializes against the plan to bring in Diaspora Jews to help swarm the Temple Mount in protest of Sharon's disengagement plan. It also says that the event is scheduled for July, which seems to fit in with MichNews.com's comment that the April event is just a "dress rehersal. Excerpt from the Ha'aretz piece:

Moreover, as the Jews of the world object to Israeli interference in their struggles inside their states, even during outbreaks of anti-Semitic incidents, Israel will not tolerate having a foreign Jewish force flood its streets to take part in demonstrations against the disengagement plan. The displays of Jewish solidarity with Israel have so far focused on consensual situations - defense wars, economic plight, political siege. Now the extreme right wing is enlisting Jewish backup forces to help one camp, the minority, which is at odds with the majority.

Summoning Jews who are foreign citizens to Israel for a limited period of time, to participate actively in events involving the violation of state laws and confrontation with the Israeli security forces, is testimony to the distorted concept of the radical right-wing leaders. They ignore the fact that they are a minority and wish to impose their will on the majority by force - whether with the demand to count "all the generations of the Israeli nation" in the vote on the future of the territories, or by urging Diaspora Jews to come and take an active part in the resistance to the disengagement plan.

TODAY is Palm Sunday, the vernal equinox, and the Persian New Year. Best wishes to everyone celebrating any of these.

GEZA VERMES'S THE PASSION is reviewed by the London Times ("Religion: The Passion by Geza Vermes"). It concludes:

The central tension that Vermes highlights is that between history and faith. How can a historical document also be the basis of a religion? The Gospels try to square the circle by both recording events and shaping them to determine readers� response. While absolute objectivity may be impossible, this biased approach has left them increasingly scorned in our secular age. Which, Vermes states, is a loss.

To get into this beguiling book, you will need first to overlook a rather clumsy play by the publisher for the same audience who saw Mel Gibson�s The Passion of the Christ. The subtitle of the book and its glossy jacket ape the feel of �book of the film� editions. But once you are inside the pages, you realise it is the polar opposite of Gibson�s muddled literalism and gore. This is subtle, teasing and erudite stuff. It may be ultimately inconclusive, as of course it has to be, but it will give Easter a whole new dimension for all but the most closed of minds.

Vermes always has an interesting perspective, built both upon critical sifting of the material in the Gospels and on placing the sifted material in its ancient historical, philological, and geographic context.

If you're in Britain, you can get the book at a discount through the Times. See the bottom of the article.

NON SEQUITUR OF THE WEEK: Performance artist Sandra Bernhard in her current show, Everything Bad and Beautiful: "'Let me tell you,' she said, of Madonna pushing Kabbalah on Britney, 'that girl is a brilliant Aramaic scholar. When she read a portion of the "Canterbury Tales," I wept.'

THE QUMRAMICA BLOG now has last week's material fully posted. There are essay abstracts and seminar summaries for seminars on the Qumran calendrical texts and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The proposed mass protest of Jews on the Temple Mount on 10 April is getting rather different coverage in different places. In MichNew.com:

GOD-FEARING JEWS STAGE TEMPLE MOUNT TAKEOVER
By J. Grant Swank, Jr.
MichNews.com
Mar 18, 2005

"'We must conquer the Temple Mount to abort the withdrawal plan. If 50,000 people go to the Temple Mount, our Father in heaven will see and the (Israeli) institutions will not be able to remain indifferent,' said one of the takeover planners."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans to oust Jews from their Gaza Strip homes starting July 20. Then Strip is the Palestinian Authority's. Jewish police guards will yank "fellow" Jews from their dwellings. To go where? To motels and hotels. And what about their furniture? In warehouses somewhere. Sound bizarre? Yes. And it's also illogical and unjust.

Therefore, devout Jews are rehearsing today how to take over the Temple Mount in order to draw attention to their righteous indignation against the Sharon agenda. The devout Jews' scheme of course also sets up conflict potential with Muslims throughout Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. A Jewish civil war could result. A war between Jew and Arab could erupt.

[...]

Then there are these new details:

American Jews likewise are boarding planes to join in on the mob scene in Israel. Professionals such as doctors, teachers, lawyers are planning on moving into vacated dwellings in the Strip as well as lining the avenues and beaches in order to prevent Jewish police guards from ousting Jews from their houses.

"According to the report, extremist Jews will hold a 'dress rehearsal' on the Temple Mount, or the Jerusalem mosques complex, the third holiest site for Muslims, in three weeks time.

"Dozens of police reinforcements were deployed near the compound last month, fearing possible attacks by Jewish extremists, who might try to sabotage the Prime Minister's Gaza plan."

Then in TurkishPress.com (from APF and Turkish Press) we read:

Threats against Al-Aqsa mosque are "ticking bombs": Imam
Published: 3/18/2005

JERUSALEM - The imam of Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque on Friday warned that threats by Jewish extremists against the sacred complex were "ticking bombs" and said the Israeli government must take responsibility for containing the threat.

[...]

On Wednesday, Israel private television screened a video showing far right-Jewish extremists, including rabbis, discussing ways of occupying the site in a bid to sabotage Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza.

"We must conquer the Temple Mount to abort the withdrawal plan. If 50,000 people go to the Temple Mount, our Father in heaven will see and the (Israeli) institutions will not be able to remain indifferent," said one participant.

In response, Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei warned of the dire consequences which would result from any such move and called on Israel to act decisively..

"We warn that the region will explode if there is any attack against Al-Aqsa," he told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

[...]

The one thing I think both sides have right is that this plan could lead to an eruption of violence. I hope we're not watching a disaster in the making. I call on everyone involved to keep this peaceful.

THE IRAQI ASSYRIANS and their political situation get favorable coverage in a Reuters article:

Iraq's Assyrians Seek Voice in New Government
Fri Mar 18, 2005 05:08 PM ET

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Supporters of Iraq's minority Assyrians urged the United Nations and the European Union on Friday to pressure Baghdad to give Assyrians more humanitarian aid and a voice in the new Iraqi government.

"Iraq was liberated to have freedom for everybody, not just the Shi'ites, Kurds and Sunnis," Andy Darmoo, who heads the "Save the Assyrians" campaign told a news conference at U.N. headquarters.

Iraq's Assyrians are Christians and speak Aramaic, the language of Christ. There are an estimated 1 million to 1.5 million Assyrians living in Iraq, most of them in the north.

They are the target of a "quiet campaign of ethnic cleansing," according to Darmoo, who left Iraq in 1965 and now lives in Kent, England.

[...]

The Washington Post also carries the article. Keep that spotlight right there!

WHY THE JEWS REJECTED JESUS: The Turning Point in Western History is the title of a new book by David Klinghoffer. It was reviewed yesterday for the A.P.:

Author looks at 'Why Jews Rejected Jesus'
FAITH

By RICHARD N. OSTLING
Associated Press Writer

During the Lenten season of 2004 there was considerable fury over Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" and its depiction of Jewish leaders conspiring to hand Jesus over to the Romans for crucifixion.

A year later, just in time for Good Friday of 2005, a book by Jewish writer David Klinghoffer says of course that's what the Jewish authorities did: "Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History" (Doubleday).

He bases that not only on the New Testament -- whose history he distrusts to a fair extent -- but on the Talmud, Judaism's authoritative compilation of Bible commentary and rabbinic law, and later Jewish sages such as Maimonides.

[...]

Klinghoffer already published some of his ideas on Jesus in the Talmud in January and I have commented on them here. It seems he also delves a bit into counterfactual history, for which Jesus and the rise of Christianity have been popular subjects.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Still more on the plans of the Revava group to swarm the Temple Mount on 10 April. The BBC now has a story on it and it includes a response from the Palestinian Authority:

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei has appealed to Israel to stop any action against the compound.

"We warn that the region will explode if there is any attack against al-Aqsa," Mr Qurei told reporters.

THE PROFESSION OF "SCRIBE" is profiled in the Jerusalem Post:

Written by hand
By BEREL WEIN

One of the most honored professions in Jewish life is being a scribe or sofer.
[...]

The scribe writes the Torah, the parchments inserted into the boxes of teffilin and the parchment inserted within the mezuzot affixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes and premises. Thus, a scribe is usually called a sofer stam - the word stam being the acronym for sefer torah, teffilin and mezuzot.

Scribes are also employed to write gittin - bills of divorce, which must be written individually, by hand, for each particular case. A scribe writes with a quill made from the feather of a fowl and uses ink specially prepared for the task. His work is exacting, time-consuming and painstaking. No mistakes are allowed and in today's technologically advanced world, there are special computer driven programs that check the work of the sofer for accuracy and correctness.

[...]

Lots of interesting information here and worth reading in full.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: More on the plans of the Revava group to swarm the Temple Mount on 10 April. Ha'aretz has an article today with this news:

10,000 rightists plan to visit Temple Mt.
Right-wing extremists have announced a campaign under which they are seeking to bring some 10,000 people to the Temple Mount on the eve of the Hebrew month of Nissan. The police have no intention of allowing the plans to be put into practice.

Police usually allow Jews to visit the Temple Mount in groups of a few dozen individuals, with Jewish prayer sessions banned at the site, in keeping with a government decision from 1967. The High Court of Justice has rejected numerous petitions against this decision.

[...]

Also, the Jerusalem Post has a short article on the planned protest which refers to "tens of thousands" of people rather than 10,000. But it appears that the Arutz Sheva headline " Channel 2 Claims 100,000 Jews Plan Temple Mount Protest" is a mistake, since the article refers to only 10,000. It looks to me as though 10,000 is the number that is actually being used.

LEONARD GREENSPOON has an essay on the problem of translating the sacrificial terms in Leviticus in the Forward this week ("PORTION: Translations And Transliterations - Leviticus 1:1-5:26"). He advocates a radical solution:

In my opinion, all readers, and especially Jewish readers � for whom these chapters should retain a lively relevance as they did for talmudic rabbis (most of whom, like us, lived after the fall of the Jerusalem Temple, and the end of its sacrificial system) � are best served by transliterating these terms rather than translating them: Thus, we would have in chapter one, "olah"; in chapter two, "a minchah offering/gift", and in chapter three, "an offering of shelamim" (Fox anticipates this with his "slaughter-offering of shalom"). To my mind, this is the best way to alert readers to the fact that, at this point, they need to take some extra time to consider both the nature and purpose of these rituals.

In the best of all worlds, this approach would lead all readers to go look up these offerings and learn something about them. But in our world I fear it would just make Leviticus a more intimidating book than it already is to lay people. But it would be an interesting experiment.

THE SBL FORUM for March is devoted to forgeries. Here's a list of the articles. I don't have time to read them right now, but they look very interesting. I may comment on some of them later.

The Antiquities Market, Sensationalized Textual Data, and Modern Forgeries: Introduction to the Problem and Synopsis of the 2004 Israeli Indictment
by Christopher A. Rollston
and Andrew G. Vaughn

The Forgery Indictments and BAR: Learning From Hindsight
by Edward M. Cook

The Crisis of Modern Epigraphic Forgeries and the Antiquities Market: A Palaeographer Reflects on the Problem and Proposes Protocols for the Field [1]
by Christopher A. Rollston

The Probability of Forgeries: Reflections on a Statistical Analysis
by Andrew G. Vaughn
and Carolyn Pillers Dobler

The Jerusalem Syndrome in Biblical Archaeology [1]
by Yuval Goren

The Saga of the Yonan Codex
by Bruce M. Metzger

Epilogue: Methodological Musings From The Field
by Andrew G. Vaughn
and Christopher A. Rollston

Access to my blog accounts has been somewhere between spotty and nonexistent for some time. I hope the situation improves soon, but meanwhile I'll try to fill in the backlog as time and dodgy Blogger software allow.

SEPTUAGINT ESSAY: Jennifer Dines of Cambridge University has a short essay on the Septuagint posted at the Bible and Interpretation website:

The Septuagint: Greek Scriptures for
Greek-speaking Jews and Christians:
Some Current Research

There are fascinating implications here for how the Bible was used and interpreted in the third to first centuries BCE, but the work is difficult and delicate and scholars often come to different conclusions. This is not surprising since they have been researching these questions piecemeal for at least the last hundred years, often starting from differing premises.

The essay goes through some current issues in Septuagint research and links to the websites of a couple of relevant projects.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: WorldNetDaily has an article on the plan of the Revava group to bring thousands of Jews to the Temple Mount on 10 April.

10,000 Jews to ascend
Temple Mount
Group seeks to reclaim
Israeli control of holy site
Posted: March 16, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Aaron Klein
� 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

JERUSALEM -- A grassroots Jewish organization plans to bring 10,000 Jews next month to the heavily restricted Temple Mount to spark Israeli dialogue about reclaiming the holy site from its Muslim custodians.

"The Temple Mount is the single holiest place in the world for Jews. It's about time the Israeli government restores it to the Jewish people, where it belongs," David Ha'ivri, chairman of Revava, the group orchestrating the gathering, told WND.

The visit, scheduled for April 10, would be the largest Jewish presence at the Temple Mount since the ancient Temple period, said Haivri.

[...]

This is a messy situation. I have no sympathy with the whole "third temple" agenda, for reasons I've explained before (see first link above). But again, this group has a right to assemble peaceably and they say that is their intention. It's not clear whether the event will happen at all, since the police say they have not made any decisions yet. If it does, I just hope it all stays peaceable.

THE JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES has a new issue out (64.1, January 2005). It includes a couple of book reviews of interest:

Zipora Talshir, I Esdras: A Text Critical Commentary (Ralph W. Klein)
59
PDF OF BOOK REVIEW (41 kB)


Bernard A. Taylor, X Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies: Oslo, 1998 (Ralph W. Klein)
60
PDF OF BOOK REVIEW (35 kB)

Click on the links to download the PDF files. I think a paid personal or institutional subscription may be required for access, but I'm not sure.

THE PASSION BY GEZA VERMES is reviewed by Karen Armstrong in the London Times:

The Passion by Geza Vermes
reviewed by KAREN ARMSTRONG
Not the Gospel truth
THE PASSION
By Geza Vermes
Penguin, �6.99; 130pp
ISBN 0 141 02132 2
Buy the book

The patient, scholarly work of Geza Vermes has performed an invaluable service by placing the career of Jesus in its original Jewish setting. Now he has turned his attention to the Gospel accounts of Jesus�s Crucifixion. Christians believe that Jesus, God incarnate, died on the Cross to save them from the sin of Adam in an act of supreme love. Yet the story has inspired shameful atrocities, because the Gospels place the blame squarely on the Jewish people. After the reading of the Passion on Good Friday, crowds of worshippers regularly stormed into the Jewish districts, looting and killing, to take revenge.

[...]

Naturally, Mel Gibson's movie also figures in the discussion.

(Via Bible and Interpretation News.)

THE ARTICLE ON CODEX SINAITICUS from the Dallas Morning News has been reprinted by Christianity Today [correction: Christian Today - see update] with errors intact. I would have expected them to have a clue and add some corrections.

UPDATE: Oops! Peter Head e-mails:

It is "Christian Today" - a UK based Christian news agency (it is too easily confusable I think, perhaps deliberately so). Not to excuse poor journalism.

I did email the author with the following list:


Dear Eunice,

It is a pity for Christian Today to publish such an un-informed article on Codex Sinaiticus:

E.G.:
Sinaiticus was originally produced on high-grade papyrus
WRONG: parchment/vellum = animal skins

written between the 1st and 4th centuries A.D.,
WRONG: written in the fourth century

The Codex was produced as the Greek version of the principal Jewish and Christian scriptures to match Greek heritage.
UNKNOWABLE CONCLUSION


The Codex has a very special significance in Theology because the texts were written so soon after the life of Jesus, therefore it is the largest and longest-surviving Biblical manuscript in existence, including both the Old and New Testaments.
WRONG: many earlier fragments, individual books and smaller collections of Biblical books in Greek survive. Sinaiticus is 300 years after the life of Jesus. It is neither the largest Biblical manuscript in existence nor the longest-surviving (Codex Vaticanus is more complete in the OT and on most accounts older).

In addition, it contains two Christian texts written by the Shepherd of Hermas and Apostle Barnabas at around 65 A.D.
WRONG: Both Hermes and Barnabas (Not actually by the apostle) are mid-second century compositions. CHECK ANY REFERENCE BOOK!

However, since then, the texts were divided when visitors bribed and deceived monks into letting certain sections be removed for further examination in Russia, Britain and Germany, according to the Dallas Morning News.
WRONG: DMN gives only the Orthodox side of a complex issue (we might expect such from Dallas I suppose).

By comparing the texts in the world's oldest Bible with the prevalent interpreted Bible in modern language, the team of top experts and scholars involving in the project will be able to trace back and research how and more importantly, why changes were made to the original version of the Bible.
NONSENSE: this doesn't make any sense as a research method. Nor is it widely accepted that Sinaiticus is 'the world's oldest Bible'

Thanks, Peter, for the correction and my apologies to Christianity Today.

Also, on the Textual Criticism list Peter notes the following more accurate but still overstated press release from the British Library.

A NEW HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY CENTER IN ISRAEL is under discussion in the Knesset:

MKs back memorial day for `father of voluntary transfer'
By Dalia Shehori (Ha'aretz)

Under a bill endorsed by 50 MKs, the state would set up a Rehavam Ze'evi Heritage Institute to receive the same resources as those allocated to the Yitzhak Rabin Heritage Institute. The bill would also dedicate a annual day of mourning for the memory of the man who put the concept of "transfer" on the public agenda.

[...]

Former tourism minister Ze'evi, who founded the Moledet Party, was killed by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Jerusalem in 2001.

The bill was introduced by National Union MK Aryeh Eldad to perpetuate the work and heritage of Rehavam Ze'evi through the establishment "of a Rehavam Ze'evi center for the study of the history, geography and archaeology of the Land of Israel," with an emphasis on "the vision, work and heritage of Rehavam Ze'vi."

There are fractious politics behind all this, which I know little about and don't want to get mixed up in. But another Ha'aretz article today, "A requiem for Gandhi," has a detailed analysis of the political context.

The concluding paragraph of the article pulled me up short:

Yahad MK Yossi Sarid, on the other hand, said there was no reason to establish "a monument to a racist theory."

I didn't know that there was an Israeli political party called "Yahad." This word means "together" but it was also used by the Qumran sectarians in the idiosyncratic sense of "community" as a title for their own group. The Yahad party seems unaware of the earlier usage. It is a leftist social democratic party that would not exactly look on the Qumran sectarians as their ideological forebearers. Here is the Wikipedia article on "Yachad" and here is the party's own basic covenant.

A NEW TYNDALE TECH E-MAIL was distributed by David Instone-Brewer a while ago and is now up on his website. This one is on Rabbinics and Jewish Research. Many of the resources for ancient Judaism have been noted at one time or another already on PaleoJudaica and lots are in my links page, but it's useful to have them all collected on this page as well. When I get around to it, I'll add the remaining relevant links to my page.

THERE'S MORE ON HERCULANEUM and the proposed excavation to try to recover more carbonized scrolls in the Art Newspaper ("British scholars call for the excavation of the Villa of the Pa[p]yri"). In this week's Explorator (link not yet available) David Meadows points to this two-part article. One writer is Martin Bailey, otherwise unidentified, and the other is Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, who "is director of the British School at Rome and also of the Herculaneum Conservation Project." The excavation project seems more tentative here than I had thought. Bailey writes:

Outside funding for Herculaneum has already come from David Packard, whose family helped set up the Hewlett-Packard computer company. At present Mr Packard wants money to be devoted to preserving what has been found, rather than spent on new excavations. His US-based Packard Humanities Institute is backing the Herculaneum Conservation Project, which has already spent $2 million. Mr Packard says that �when the Italians decide it is time to resume excavation at the Villa of the Papyri, our foundation expects to be in a position to offer appropriate financial support��but �for the present, conservation is the responsible priority.�

Wallace-Hadrill confirms this in his contribution, taking very much the line that further excavation is desirable and should be thought about but is not in any way urgent:

It is right that it look at every aspect of the problem in a far-sighted way before leaping to conclusions. In terms of urgency, the unexcavated part of the villa stands in no danger.

Equally, in terms of urgency, the already excavated portions of the same site stand in great danger. The only responsible way forward is that embraced by the Superintendency, the Packard Humanities Institute, and the international world of archaeology: of saving and recording what we have while there is still time, and planning ahead to ensure that any future excavations will not add to an existing crisis.

The emphasis in this article is different from the London Times piece of 13 February titled "Millionaire to fund dig for lost Roman library" (noted here on PaleoJudaica). This article seemed to say that there was no conflict between excavation and conservation and that Mr. Packer was ready to fund both. As I look over it again that does seem to be the message. But the Art Newspaper has Packard and the director of Packard's conservation project putting much more emphasis on conservation and seems to indicate that there are no actual plans for excavation in the foreseeable future. I'm not sure why the tones of the articles are so different. Was the Times just being selective and overly enthusiastic in its presentation? Does anyone have more information?

THE HADRIAN MOVIE - yet another pastsploitation flick. David Meadows has some info over at Rogue Classicism. I wonder how significantly the Bar Kokhba revolt will figure in it.

THE CODEX SINAITICUS digitalization project has come to the attention of the media and, as usual, they are garbling the story. Ed Cook has details over at Ralph.

AMIR DRORI, former director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, has died.

Commander of Golani Brigade during Yom Kippur War dies
By Haaretz Service

Israel Defense Forces reserve Major General Amir Drori, who was the commander of the Golani Brigade during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, died on Saturday during a trip in the Negev Desert.

[...]

Since his release from the IDF, Drori has served as the director of the Antiquities and Archaeological Authority.

May his memory be for a blessing.

AMEN.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: More Jewish-Temple denial, this time from the Palestine Chronicle. The Temple Mount Faithful are also making things interesting.

Jewish Settlers Plan to Storm Al-Aqsa Mosque
Friday, March 11 2005 @ 08:51 AM EST

"Extremist Jewish groups, which rally for the construction of the 'Temple Mount', are expected to join the storming, according to Israeli press sources.."

By Samer Khuwayera

NABLUS, West Bank - Extremist Jewish settlers are planning to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest place, by next April, according to Al-Aqsa Institution for Reconstruction of Islamic Sanctities.

Leaders of Jewish settlers have declared some 10,000 settlers are planning to storm the holy mosque in a bid to perform Jewish �religious rituals� in the holy place, they claim to be the site of �Temple Mount�.

Leaflets are being distributed by Jewish settlers to urge Jews to join the storming of the Islamic holy site on April 10.

Extremist Jewish groups, which rally for the construction of the "Temple Mount", are expected to join the storming, according to Israeli press sources.

The campaign patron, David Hebrew from the Tfwah settlement in the West Bank city of Nablus, claimed that his campaign aimed at fostering what he termed �spiritual relations� with �Temple Mount� by performing the Jewish religious rituals within the holy mosque.

�Through this campaign, we are trying to bring some 10,000 Jews into the mosque,� he told Israel�s Channel 7.

The extremist Jewish settler pressed for opening up all entrances of Al-Aqsa Mosque before the Jewish people, claiming that Al-Aqsa belongs to Jewish people, not to Muslims.

I can't find complete verification of this story. Neither "David Hebrew" (which doesn't sound like a real name to me) nor "tfwah" (or "tfwa") show up anywhere on Google except this in this article. I can locate no mention of a David Hebrew on the Temple Mount Faithful website (see below). Can anyone in Israel confirm that there is such a settlement in Nablus or that someone named David Hebrew was interviewed on Israel's Channel 7 about these matters?

What I can verify is that the Temple Mount Faithful is planning (or at least hoping), not to "storm" the Temple Mount, but to assemble there on 10 April to perform a Passover sacrifice on an altar they say is already there.

Now let me be quite clear. I am strongly opposed to the objectives of the Temple Mount Faithful. (Links via Indy.media.ie.) I have no interest in their theological agenda but I object on archaeological and historical grounds. I don't want anybody interfering with or damaging the historical treasures that are already on the Temple Mount, including the mosques and the ancient archaeological strata of the site. Even if they decided that the site of the temple wasn't where the mosques are so that the mosques don't need to be moved, the thought of the damage that would be done to the archaeology of the site by building a third temple there makes me ill.

All that said, I do respect the right of these people to free speech and peaceable assembly, no matter how much I oppose their agenda. There is sometimes a fine line between these rights and incitement and I leave it to the Israeli government to decide where that line is. I'm glad I don't have to make that decision.

Israel claims Al-Aqsa Mosque was built on the so-called Temple Mount, an allegation refuted by scores of world historians.

This is a variation on a stock Temple-denial sentence we have seen repeatedly before. My comments previously apply as well here.

The article concludes:

Archeologists have also warned that ongoing Israeli excavations weakened the foundations of the mosque, cautioning it would not stand a powerful earthquake.

A part of the road leading to one of the mosque�s main gates collapsed in February, 2004, due to the destructive Israeli digging work.

Israeli soldiers also attempted in June, 2004, to storm the mosque�s prayer hall (Al-Musallah Al-Marwani) and ended by force restoration works that were underway there.

The first paragraph is a bit rich, given the massive destruction wreaked upon the Temple Mount by the WAQF. For a rather different take on the collapse mentioned in the second paragraph, go here. Note also that illicit digging by the WAQF is considered "restoration."

For my take on how the Temple Mount should be treated, see here.

UPDATE: "Manuscript Boy" e-mails:

I would have to check the posters all over Jerusalem to make sure, but
I think the name is David Ivri. Tafwah is surely Kfar Tapuach. And they plan to bring thousands up to the Temple Mount before Passover. It seems to be a different group from the Temple Mount Faithful.

I should have thought to Google "David Ivri." The name does exist, but the only references I can find are to a former air force commander, evidently not the man in question. In any case, the basic elements of the story look to be correct.

UPDATE: Manuscript Boy e-mailed again with the website of the group. The English version is http://www.revava.org/index.php. There's a Hebrew version as well, of course. David Ha'ivri is one of the named leaders of the group.

SEXY APOCRYPHA? Well, I'm glad someone thinks so, even though the movie Constantine doesn't seem to rise to that level. Columnist Giles Coren reviews the movie for the London Times. You may want to skip the first half, which consists of self-indulgent Coren blather. But the second half, when he actually gets to the film, is kind of funny.

So imagine my delight when I heard he [Keanu Reeves] was to take the title role in Constantine. After Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great and Brad Pitt as Achilles, what could be more natural than Keanu as the man who converted Rome? Only Keanu could give credence to the story of the Emperor who saw a vision of the Cross before the Battle at the Milvian Bridge, built a new capital on the Bosphorus and laid the foundations of Christendom. In hoc signo vinces, duuuude.

When I got to the cinema, though, the posters were not promising. It was Keanu, back in his Matrix-period black coat, toting a silver machinegun in the shape of a cross. Under him, the legend: �The wager between Heaven and Hell is on Earth.� Um, like, I totally know that, dude. Are we talking Job, here? Or the temptation of Christ, maybe? Or the sort of sexy apocrypha that Milton worked up into Paradise Lost? The Bible is full of bets. They�re always the Devil�s idea, admittedly, but God just can�t seem to say no if the odds look half tasty. He�s a regular Sky Masterson, is the Lord.

[...]

As ever in Hollywood movies, leather-bound books are used to show that it�s all very old and mysterious. Nothing freaks out the Yanks more than a book. The genre here is legal-thriller meets classy historical adventure, as succinctly indicated when, mystified by the arrival of the wrong kind of zombie (a �soldier-demon�, I believe it is) Keanu yells to Rachel Weisz, in that gurgling wheeze of his: �Check the scrolls, see if there�s any precedents!�
[...]

Be warned, however, that the end of the review seems to have a major spoiler in it.

A BYZANTINE-ERA SYNAGOGUE IN JERICHO HAS BEEN DESTROYED BY VANDALS according to Arutz Sheva:

Arabs Destroy Ancient Jericho Synagogue
17:04 Mar 10, '05 / 29 Adar 5765

(IsraelNN.com) The ancient synagogue in Jericho, known as the �Shalom Al Yisrael� (Peace on Israel) synagogue has been destroyed by Arab vandals, says the former head of the yeshiva that studied there until the start of the Oslo War.

[...]

ON THE QUMRANICA BLOG I have posted the abstract of this week's essay on 4QMMT, a summary of the seminar discussion, and some links on the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. The latter is one of our topics next week. Do have a look.

Also: Blogger has been suffering numerous server errors recently, which has led to annoyances such as stuttered posts and posting lost during publishing. It also makes it very hard sometimes to correct typos. Apologies in advance for any problems.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

No relinquishing Western Wall, poll finds
By Nadav Shragai (Ha'aretz)

Ninety-one percent of the Jewish public would be unwilling to give up Israeli control of the Western Wall, 46 percent would agree to joint Israeli-Palestinian control, or sole Palestinian control, with regard to the Temple Mount, according to a poll to be aired tonight on a program on the Knesset television channel.

[...]

SOME HEBREW MATTERS:

Ed Cook relays Dave@GracePages's request for a recommendation for a grammar of biblical Hebrew. I can't be of much help, because I've never found one I really liked. I've used Lamdin and Seow long ago. Both are excellent grammars, but they overwhelm a beginner with too much information. Currently I use Martin's revision of Davidson's Introductory Hebrew Grammar. It's fine for the first semester. The level is right for first-year students, the explanations are generally good, and the exercises are helpful. The problem is that it crams all the derived stems, regular and irregular, into three chapters in the last fifth of the book, which again can overwhelm the students unless those chapters are stretched out quite a bit with supplemental material. I see that a number of people are recommending Kittel, Hoffer, and Wright. It seems to be out of print in the U.K., but maybe I should have a look at it anyhow.

Joe Cathey calls for a new chrestomathy of Hebrew and even suggests my name as a possible author. Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I have far too many other projects in progress right now. Also, I have to say I'm skeptical whether there's a market for a chrestomathy of biblical Hebrew. With BHS readily available, it's just too easy for a lecturer to assign passages straight from it, creating a personalized chrestomathy on the fly so to speak. There is also a good chapter by chapter listing of less frequently used biblical Hebrew vocabularly in Armstrong, Busby, and Carr's A Reader's Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament , so rapid reading of any part of the Bible is easy to assign too. It's true that sometimes annotations of difficult passages would be helpful, but such issues are often covered in class and I'm not sure that that annotations alone would create a sufficient market. Not that I'd be sorry to be proved wrong.

If instead you were to think of a chrestomathy involving (vocalized?) Qumran, Bar Kokba, and rabbinic Hebrew alongside biblical Hebrew, you might be able to demonstrate a greater need, but I think the market would be smaller too.

JACOBY'S FRAGMENTE DER GRIECHISCHEN HISTORIKER is being republished online in a new edition by Brill. David Meadows has the story. Excerpt from the announcement from Ian Worthington, the editor-in-chief of the project:

BNJ [Brill's New Jacoby] will appear online at the rate of 80-100 authors per year (approximately half of this number appearing every six months) beginning in January 2006. Each author will be subject to peer review and revision before publication. The advantage of online publication is that authors will be published as soon as all revision stages are complete, rather than having to wait years before appearing with others (in a numerical sequence) in a hard copy volume. When all 856 authors are online, in approximately ten years' time, hard copy volumes will be produced.

FGrH includes a number of Hellenistic Jewish authors and other related authors such as Berossus.

UPDATE: Sorry for the multiplication of this post. Blogger has been acting up a lot lately and after posting two or three copies of this in the afternoon, it refused to let me make any changes until now (11:00 pm).

MORE ANTIQUITIES-LOOTING ARRESTS IN ISRAEL:

Construction workers held for antiquities theft
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

Eight Palestinian construction workers illegally
employed at a building site in Modi'in were under
arrest for carrying out antiquities theft at a nearby archaeological site, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday.

The eight suspects were caught "red-handed" just after midnight Tuesday morning after a chase through a second temple period underground compound at the site, the head of the Antiquities Authority's anti-theft division Amir Ganor said.

[...]

Although this seems like good news, the conclusion of the article is discouraging:

Despite the overall drop in violence in Israel, the number of antiquities theft has risen more than 50 percent in the last year alone.

In 2004 there were 314 reported cases of antiquities theft, compared to less than 200 in 2003.

The phenomenon of antiquities theft has taken on gold rush dimensions, with an antiquities site now plundered every day on average.

ALAN SEGAL'S BOOK ON THE AFTERLIFE is reviewed in the National Catholic Reporter. Excerpt:

Alan F. Segal, professor of religion and Jewish studies at Barnard College, Columbia University, claims that even though the afterlife is beyond the purview of science, belief in life after death is older than the existence of Homo sapiens if ancient Neanderthal burial studies can be trusted.

This book is an extensive social history that traces the development and comparative cultural impact of a religious idea.

The author has studied the development of religious belief over 5,000 years of human history. He has mined rich insights about the afterlife from research into many ancient Near Eastern mythologies, rites and rituals. More recently, he has investigated the subject in Islam and compared life-after-death beliefs in the three great Abrahamic faith traditions.

MORE ON THE HERPES AND CIRCUMCISION STORY: The Commentator, Yeshiva University's student newspaper, covers it in the article "'Metzitzah Be Peh': The Dangers of a Custom Intended to Heal" by Ryan Nadel. It has with lots of new details about the controversy over the practice of metzitzah be peh, including an interview with Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler who contributed to the Pediatrics article that called for changes in the practice. The piece concludes:

Even though Rabbi Tendler's position of performing oral suction using a sterile instrument instead of direct oral contact has firm halachic support, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv has publicly stated that, unlike AIDS, herpes does not pose a real threat to the baby and therefore the custom of direct oral suction is permitted. Rabbi Tendler pointed out that although Rabbi Elyashiv permits using an instrument to perform oral suction when there is a concern that the mohel might contract AIDS from the baby, which has never occurred, Rabbi Elyashiv does not allow an instrument to be used to protect the baby from herpes, a substantive and documented concern.

THE CODEX SINAITICUS is being digitally photographed. This is an unusually complicated project, because the leaves of the manuscript reside in four different countries. The Harvard Gazette reports on the work of a Widener Library photographer who is part of the team working on the project:

From vellum to pixels
David Remington offers expertise in project to digitize Codex Sinaiticus
By Paula Carter
Harvard College Library Communications

The Codex Sinaiticus is the earliest manuscript of the complete New Testament and the earliest and best witness, according to Bible scholars, for several books of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). Dating from the middle of the fourth century, the manuscript was originally written by hand on vellum (calfskin or sheepskin). Now, having endured into the 21st century, it will soon be replicated in pixels. Four institutions currently hold leaves from the Codex - the British Library, Leipzig University Library in Germany, National Library of Russia, and St. Catherine's Monastery in Egypt - and they have come together to create a digital reunification of the Codex Sinaiticus that will be published and placed on CD-ROM.

David Remington, collections reformatting photographer in the Digital Imaging and Photography Group in Widener Library, is serving on the Codex Sinaiticus Technical Standards Working Party, composed of representatives from each institution and digital imaging specialists. The international team's goal is to create a scholarly edition of the Codex and as exact a replication as possible.

[...]

This article via the Bible and Interpretation website. It's over a year old, but I haven't seen it before. The story has also received lots of attention on the Textual Criticism list in the last several days, starting when Jim West pointed to a German article about the project. Dave Washburn also noted the Harvard Gazette article and a brief notice on the SBL website. I wonder if Dirk Jongkind is involved.

One quibble regarding the Harvard Gazette article: Sinaiticus is "the earliest and best witness ... for several books of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament)" in the Greek version, the Septuagint. The Dead Sea Scrolls are much earlier and cover almost all of the Hebrew Bible, albeit only in fragments.

ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE has just published its March-April issue. As usual, there are lots of goodies. Note the following in particular:

"Forgery Fallout" (full text of brief interview with Eric Meyers)

Sandra Scham, "The Lost Goddess of Israel" (abstract)

"CARTHAGINIAN?" This brief ContactMusic.com, UK article gives a slightly longer version of the Vin Diesel quote about his forthcoming Hannibal movie:

DIESEL FOLLOWS GIBSON'S FOREIGN AND ANCIENT EXAMPLE

VIN DIESEL is following MEL GIBSON's example and employing ancient and little-known languages for his upcoming HANNIBAL THE CONQUEROR epic.

Gibson caused a sensation with his THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST movie last year (04) when he used ancient Aramaic in his biblical drama, and now Diesel will use JESUS' tongue as well as Iberian and Carthaginian to tell the story of the Carthaginian general.

He explains, "I'm going to make it a non-English multi-lingual film that represents the many languages that Hannibal employed in his army.

"So it will be Aramaic for Rome, Iberian for Spain, there will be some Carthaginian or some Maltese and it will represent all these different languages.

[...]

By Carthaginian I take him to mean Punic (the north African dialect of Phoenician). Reconstructing ancient Punic will be a much more challenging exercise than reconstructing first-century Jewish Aramaic. I will be following this story closely.

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.