THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER CITES APOCRYPHAL SCRIPTURES:

Who're you calling naive?
Apr 28th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The Archbishop of Canterbury takes on Adam Smith

Get article background

THIS week Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, called for a challenge to the Church of England's teaching on the sufficiency of the scriptures for salvation in the light of new evidence from non-canonical texts. His audience of economists and business leaders responded enthusiastically.

No, of course he didn't. But he ought to, if he is to follow the example of the nation's top spiritual leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury. ...

Yeah, it had me going for a minute too. Oh well. Read it all for the full context.

"ANCIENT HEBREW POETRY" is a new blog by John F. Hobbins.

MY ARTICLE "ASSIMILATED TO THE BLOGOSPHERE: Blogging Ancient Judaism" has been published again on the SBL Forum site, this time with links intact. My thanks again to Sharon Johnson and her colleagues for solving the technical problems that were preventing the links from working the first time around. And a warm welcome to visitors from the SBL site!

OVER AT QUMRANICA I have posted this week's essay abstracts and seminar summaries for seminars on scriptural exegesis in the Damascus Document and on the Essene hypothesis.

FRANCIS DEBLAUWE'S 2003-IRAQ WAR & ARCHAEOLOGY SITE has a new home in Austria. The new URL is:

http://iwa.univie.ac.at

Be sure to update your bookmark.

AUT ISRAEL-BOYCOTT UPDATE: A few new items. Encouragingly, there is an attempt within the AUT to get the boycott decision overturned before it does them any more damage. The Guardian reports:

Academics opposed to Israeli boycott try to overturn ban

Matthew Taylor and Polly Curtis
Thursday April 28, 2005
The Guardian

Academics opposed to the controversial boycott of two Israeli universities are trying to overturn the decision before it has time to make an impact.

Members of the Association of University Teachers narrowly voted last week to sever links with Israeli academia which it claimed was complicit in the abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

The decision led to an angry backlash from both Israeli and non-Israeli groups in the UK and around the world.

Union members who opposed the decision are calling for a special AUT council in the next month to overturn the decision. The campaign is being run by Jon Pike, a philosopher at the Open University, who needs 25 signatures to invoke union rules and secure a fresh debate.

[...]

I bet they'll get a lot more than 25 signatures.

[UPDATE: It's 25 signatures of council members they need. Nevertheless, I doubt there will be any trouble getting them.]

Alan Dershowitz, law professor at Harvard University, has a scathing editorial in the National Post (Canada):

From Britain, with bigotry

Alan M. Dershowitz
National Post

The British Association of University Teachers has now created a blacklist against Jewish Israeli academics -- really a blue and white list -- reminiscent of the worst abuses of McCarthyism. And just as McCarthyism was a barrier to peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union - by contributing to a dangerous atmosphere in which each side vilified and threatened the other - so too does the British lecturers' boycott endanger the progress now being made toward peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. ...

Open University professor Marc Eisenstat e-mails to alert us to his blog post "Boycott Facts," which collects much of the relevant information in one place. [UPDATE: He now has another post comparing the line the AUT took toward South Africa in 1965 to the boycott of Israeli institutions today.]

I should note also that biblioblogger Helenann Hartley has commented briefly on the boycott here.

UPDATE: And Torrey Seland comments on his Philo of Alexandria blog.

HEBREW BIBLE JOB: The University of Exeter is advertising a permanent lectureship in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible in the Department of Theology. Follow the link for further particulars.

OXYRHYNCHUS WATCH: National Geographic has an article (via Bible and Interpretation News) on the use of the imaging techniques reported by the Independent:

Papyrus Reveals New Clues to Ancient World
James Owen
for National Geographic News
April 25, 2005

Classical Greek and Roman literature is being read for the first time in 2,000 years thanks to new technology. The previously illegible texts are among a hoard of papyrus manuscripts. Scholars say the rediscovered writings will provide a fascinating new window into the ancient world.

[...]

They appear to have interviewed Dirk Obbink:

Obbink says the research should add to the body of known work of standard classical authors such as Homer and Sophocles, as well as that of lesser known writers "who didn't survive either through accident of time or because they weren't as popular."

Sophocles wrote 120 plays, but only seven survived, among them Oedipus Rex and Antigone. "We have samples of all the rest in these papyrus fragments," Obbink said. "We're filling in the gaps incrementally. You're never going to get each and every word of 120 plays, but you will get a slice of what was available during the centuries when these rubbish mounds built up."

The fragments may also shed new light on texts that have survived only by being repeatedly copied over thousands of years. "These older [papyrus] texts can be more accurate, or preserve completely new readings," Obbink said.

The claims are not as striking as in the Independent article, but they still indicate that some interesting things have been turning up. And it looks as though my hopes regarding the Old Testament pseudepigrapha are not entirely without basis:

Similarly, Biblical scholars can expect valuable new material to emerge as some gospels that weren't included in the New Testament didn't survive. "The texts that are in the Bible were selected out of a much larger body of work that once circulated," Obbink said. "We have samples of that material here."

However, even National Geographic can't publish an article on biblical studies without including an embarrassing error:

The latest volume includes details of fragments showing third- and fourth-century versions of the Book of Revelations. Intriguingly, the number assigned to "the Beast" of Revelations isn't the usual 666, but 616.

The Book of "Revelations." Sigh. Makes you wonder how many other mistakes we don't know about are in the article, doesn't it?

UPDATE: David Meadows notes an article in the New York Sun ("A 'Second Renaissance'? Well, Maybe a Little One") by Gary Shapiro which puts the whole story in perspective and seems to clear up much of the confusion. It has some overlap with the National Geographic article and even includes the Book of "Revelations" mistake. I'm not sure if this means one is using the other or both are relying on e-mails or a press release from Dr. Obbink. But I doubt he would have made the error.

UPDATE: Over at Ralph, Ed Cook discusses the number 616 in the Oxyrhynchus manuscript of Revelation mentioned above.

UPDATE: Mark Goodacre has more.

MORE ON THE GRAVE CONFLICT IN JERUSALEM:

Haredim scuffle with J'lem police in grave protest
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

Several hundred haredi demonstrators blocked a central Jerusalem thoroughfare Tuesday evening in the city's Mea Shearim neighborhood and then clashed with police in protest over what they believe is the desecration of ancient graves during the construction of a national highway, police said.

[...]

And in answer to my earlier question:

Israeli archaeologists say that the graves in question near 'Road Six' are not being disturbed during the work on the highway.

SETH SANDERS is back and he's Serving the Word. He's getting started on some conference blogging and promises more this week. Welcome back, Seth.

AUT ISRAEL-BOYCOTT UPDATE: The Guardian has two pieces of interest today: "Legal warnings over Israeli boycott" and "Union losing members over Israeli boycott." These are pretty obvious consequences of the decision to boycott and the AUT should have seen them coming.

An outfit called "Open Democracy" has an interesting article by someone named Stephen Howe, which aims to give the historical context of the accusations that led to the two boycotts that passed.

Boycotting Israel: the uses of history
Stephen Howe
25 - 4 - 2005
Britain�s Association of University Teachers has voted to boycott Israel. Stephen Howe scrupulously maps the background to a bitter controversy over historical truth and academic freedom.
------------------------------------------



On 22 April 2005, the annual council meeting of Britain�s Association of University Teachers (AUT) voted - against the advice of the AUT executive - for an academic boycott of Israel. Specifically, British academics are urged to boycott two Israeli universities, Bar-Ilan and Haifa. Even before the vote, the proposal aroused bitter contention, not only within the United Kingdom or Israel but worldwide. With last week�s decision that will only spread and intensify. The AUT move is the start, not the end, of a ferocious battle going far beyond academia.

[...]

Regarding Bar Ilan University he says:

From the mid-1990s, small numbers of �Judea & Samaria� students took degree courses validated by Bar-Ilan: thus involving the university, as pro-boycott campaigners argue, in direct collaboration with Israel�s occupation of the land where the college operates. The Bar-Ilan authorities have responded that their agreement with the Ariel college is being phased out and is set to end in 2005 anyway. This appears to be true: certainly I cannot find such courses listed on either the Bar-Ilan or the �Judea & Samaria� websites, nor any reference to them more recent than 2002.

If anyone working at Bar Ilan University would like to comment, I would be interested in hearing what you have to say.

Howe discusses the complexities of the situation of Dr. Ilan Pappe at Haifa University at length. He concludes:

There is much that remains unclear in this saga, and some starkly contrasting versions of events. I have read many hundreds of articles, interviews and documents relating to the controversy; I have talked in detail to many of those most closely involved at Haifa; I have even written a little about it myself. Even now, I don�t feel I know for sure what happened � either at Tantura in 1948 or at Haifa University in 2000-2005. How can the members of the Association of University Teachers after just a few minutes� hasty and apparently one-sided debate, seem so confident that they do know?

MAQDALA MANUSCRIPTS TO STAY IN EDINBURGH. The Art Newspaper reports that the University of Edinburgh has declined to return five Ethiopic manuscripts to Ethiopia:

Meanwhile, the University of Edinburgh has rejected a request for the return of five manuscripts which were seized at the battle of Maqdala. The claim was made by Afromet, based at the University of Addis Ababa. However, the Court of the University of Edinburgh decided that Afromet did not represent the original owner, Emperor Tewodros (Theodorus). Edinburgh agreed to continue the dialogue and provide Addis Ababa with microfilm and digital images of the manuscripts. Afromet has condemned the Edinburgh refusal, quoting an Ethiopian embassy in London spokesman as expressing the hope that the manuscripts will return.

(Via Cronaca.) I noted this story here in October of last year. At that time the Art Newspaper mentioned eleven Ethiopic manuscripts held by Edinburgh University, four of them definitely from Maqdala. No word so far on the other seven.

"A REAL 'PAGE TURNER'": Archaeology Magazine interviews Stephen Mitchell about his new rendition of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

EGYPTIAN JUDAISM is the subject of an article ("Judaism in Egypt - The End of the Exodus from Egypt") in Egypt Election Daily News. Evidently it is reprinted from Ha'aretz, but I seem to have missed it when it came out. It describes some of the ancient synagogues in Egypt, including the Maimonides Synagogue, the Karaite Synagogue, and the Ben Ezra Synagogue (which housed the famous Cairo Geniza), all three in Cairo. Of the last it says:

The Ezra synagogue in Fostat, the quarter from which Cairo began to develop in the seventh century CE, is the only synagogue in Cairo that has been fortunate. Originally, the synagogue was a Coptic church, which was sold to the Jews in 882 CE. The synagogue was rebuilt a number of times, the last time in 1890. During that construction work, the Cairo Geniza was discovered in the attic, containing hundreds of thousands of documents written by the Jews of Cairo over a period of almost 1,000 years.

The Ezra synagogue also suffered from neglect for many years, but in 1980, in the wake of the peace agreement, it was chosen as a project that would serve as a symbol of historical coexistence among Jews, Christians and Muslims. The Egyptian foreign minister at the time, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and the president of the World Jewish Congress, Edgar Bronfman, agreed to preserve the synagogue. The preservation work, which was done under the supervision of Bronfman's sister, Canadian architect Phyllis Lambert, was concluded in the early 1990s, and today the synagogue enjoys a large number of visitors, most of them non-Jewish tourists.

In recent years, the Egyptians have even evacuated the residents from the entire area, in an attempt to turn it into a tourist compound in which the visitors can view the oldest synagogues, churches and mosques in Cairo. Dr. Meital says that with all due respect to the preservation work, he is disturbed by the fact that the place will never again be a synagogue, but will remain as "a kind of interreligious monument."

Most of the others are in disrepair, some direly so, after the exodus of nearly all Egyptian Jews in the twentieth century. Many Jewish books have also been lost in this process.

MORE ON THE AUT'S ISRAEL BOYCOTT: The London Times notes, "Lecturers condemned for vote to boycott Israeli universities". Indeed. At least it sounds as though the vote was close. Not that that's an excuse.

Having made this idiotic decision, they now have some problems with how they're going to implement it:

There was confusion last night over how the boycott would operate and whether it would breach equal opportunities regulations.

Gosh, you think so? Maybe they should look into that.

Hugh Mason, of the AUT executive, said he feared that the vote would cause the AUT difficulties in dealing with academics in the Middle East, but "in practice it won�t have much of an impact. People will make their own decisions."

As I said before, I think the main effect will be seriously to undermine the AUT's moral authority and credibility everywhere.

By the way, I did a Technorati search with the key words "AUT Israel boycott." It came up with 76 results, all of them condemning the boycotts. If the Blogosphere is any indicator, the AUT's decision has not been well received.

Then there's the press. As a blogger (I forget which one) pointed out, judging by the scare quotes in this article, the BBC isn't particularly sympathetic either. The Telegraph notes:

The AUT was accused of fuelling anti-Semitism after delegates at its annual conference voted on Friday to boycott all academic links with Bar Ilan and Haifa universities. The revelation that Prof Mina Telcher, a leading mathematician, was denied the opportunity to put the Israelis' side of the story before the vote will heighten criticism of the AUT, which was already under fire for cutting short the debate on the controversial motion because of time constraints.

And an editorial by David Aaronovich in the Observer (the Sunday Guardian) is highly critical.

But some AUT members will be happy to see that the Electronic Intifada is pleased.

UPDATE (25 April): Today's London Times editorializes:

The decision by the Association of University Teachers (AUT) to boycott two universities in Israel is a mockery of academic freedom, a biased and blinkered move that is as ill-timed as it is perverse. The vote at the AUT annual conference to forbid its 40,000 members to visit Haifa and Bar Ilan universities in protest at the alleged ill-treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories not only comes at the very moment when official Israeli-Palestinian relations are improving, but it also targets the very institutions in Israel that have been havens of political and racial tolerance and beacons of academic freedom.

The piece nicely sums up the arguments that many others, myself included, have been making against the boycott.

ALTMAN AND CROWDER MENDACITY UPDATE: In June of last year I evaluated a Kansas City Star article about Neil Altman's ridiculous idea that the Dead Sea Scrolls are medieval. I established at the time that Altman misrepresented the views of Qumran scholar James VanderKam. In the first post I quoted the following from the article:

�If it is true that these scrolls display writing techniques that are from a later period, then they become historically interesting.�
Erik Heen of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia

I commented:

Also, I hope very much that Erik Heen was misquoted or quoted out of context in the header above. But just to clarify, here's a news flash: these scrolls are already historically interesting.

My guess was spot on. Erik Heen ran across this post and e-mailed me yesterday. I quote his letter with his permission:

I notice on your blog that there has been some discussion on the very unfortunate article, "Casting doubt upon the Dead Sea Scrolls" (Kansas City Star):Appearance of Western letters and numbers raises eyebrows" By Neil Altman and David Crowder. I am quoted in this article as saying: "If it is true that these scrolls display writing techniques that are from a later period, then they become historically interesting." Let me set the record straight. Altman approached me (via fax) with some photographs and material he had gathered from different sources about the scrolls. I begged off from comment because, I told him, I was not an expert in this area and my comments or opinion would mean nothing. I also told him I thought the late dating of the Scrolls was unfounded. He kept after me through repeated calls. Finally I gave him something similar to what was quoted (the original article was for an in-house Lutheran publication). What is missing, of course, is the exactness of careful wording and my expressed intent behind the statement. First of all, I put it into a conditional statement ("If...then."). More exactly, my comment is placed in a "contrary to fact" conditional statement. That is, "the truth" of the claims of a later dating of the script is assumed for the sake of an argument. The intent of my comment (expressed to Altman at the time), was to indicate the opposite of how the comment was used in his article. My intent was to suggest that if (a) peer-reviewed recognized experts in the field were to agree that some of the handwriting in the scrolls seems to stem from periods that have been traditionally dated as originating at a later time, then (b) the received tradition of the dating of the various "hands" might have to be revised. That is, it may be that the dating of the script types might not be as "set" as he (Altman) assumed. If so, this new data (re the dating of script types not the dating of the scrolls) becomes "historically" interesting. Again, I told Altman that the issue lies outside of my field of knowledge. Altman, of course, disregarded all of this and quoted me as an another "expert" who cast doubt on the pre 70 CE dating of the Scrolls. For the record, I do not. Altman simply quoted me out of context for his own purposes.

In other words, what Heen said was, if it were true that scholars found the scripts of the scrolls to be much later than originally thought (and they don't), that fact (which actually isn't true) would be of interest to historians. Hardly the impression give by Altman's quotation in the Kansas City Star article.

AN EXODUS TO THE PROMISED LAND seems to be coming for the Bnei Menashe:

End of 2,700-year exodus for India's lost tribe of Jews
Sun Apr 24, 2005 01:47 AM ET

By Simon Denyer

AIZAWL, India (Reuters) - In unison they dip their middle fingers into their plastic cups of grape juice, calling out in Hebrew the names of the 10 plagues they believe their God sent to curse the ancient Egyptians.

Plastic Israeli flags and photographs of Jerusalem adorn the chipboard walls. Saturday's feast could have been a celebration of Passover anywhere in the Jewish world, but this is no ordinary celebration and these are no ordinary Jews.

In India's remote hill states of Mizoram and Manipur, thousands of people who believe they belong to one of the Biblical 10 "lost tribes" of Israel are celebrating what they hope is their last Passover before ending a 2,700-year exodus.

Three weeks ago, reports came from Israel that Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar had accepted the B'nei Menashe as one of the fabled lost tribes, and would send a team of rabbis to formally convert them and bring them back to Israel.

[...]

I have commented on the story already here.

THE ARMENIAN MASSACRE IN TURKEY is in the news this week because this is its 90th anniversary. This AFP article discusses the attempt to recover ancient Armenian books, many of which were destroyed at that time:

Ancient Armenian books tell a story not written in their pages
22/04/2005 AFP
YEREVAN, April 22 (AFP) - 4h34 - Over a meter (yard) wide when opened and weighing 32 kilograms (15 pounds), the Homilies of Mush is the largest ancient Armenian book to be rescued from eastern Anatolia during anti-Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey almost a century ago.

Archivists say the story of how the manuscript and many others like it were saved could be more telling of the plight of the Armenian people then what the intricate Armenian lettering describes within the pages.

[...]

Some 9,000 rare manuscripts are estimated to have been destroyed as Armenians were driven from their homeland in World War I, but about 30 books currently on display in Armenia�s Archive of Ancient Manuscripts are believed to have been rescued by fleeing peasants.

[...]

A slow trickle of antique texts continues to fill the archive�s shelves to this day as more Armenian works pillaged in Anatolia are discovered by collectors around the world and donated to the repository.

Earlier this week a Diaspora Armenian from Paris was able to convince the sister of a collector who recently passed away to donate a page from a lost tenth century bible to the archive.

"Hopefully when she sees that it is good hands she will be willing to donate more works from the collection," said Claude Mutafrian, a 62-year-old historian on medieval Armenia who carried the sheepskin sheet to Yerevan from Paris.

Ancient Armenian manuscripts are another important source for both Old Testament pseudepigrapha and New Testament apocrypha as well as for the works of Philo of Alexandria, including some Philonic works that are otherwise lost. The loss-to-recovery ratio of thess manuscripts is discouraging, but this tenth-century Bible page is intriguing, both because of its content and its date. Too bad the article doesn't say what else is in the collection (or even what the contents of the Homilies of Mush are).

MARVIN MEYER'S LECTURE ON NAG HAMMADI is summarized in the Billings Gazette:

Talk highlights unused gospels

By MARY PICKETT
Of The Gazette Staff

Numerous gospels were written about the teachings of Jesus, but only four made it into the New Testament.

Because those four all climaxed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, it's not surprising that Christianity has become the religion of the cross, said Marvin Meyer, a professor and chair of the department of religion studies at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.

On Friday, Meyer gave the last in the Distinguished Lecture Series of the academic year at Montana State University-Billings.

During the presentation that nearly filled a 375-seat lecture hall, Meyer talked about how the discovery of the Gnostic gospels 60 years ago reveals that early Christianity was as diverse as it is today.

[...]

It also reports that Meyer has a new book on Nag Hammadi coming out in the fall.

FROM THE DEPARMENT OF HOLIDAY SYNCHRONICITIES: Passover begins tonight at sundown. Today is also St. George's Day. (St. George is the patron saint of England.) If you're celebrating one or both, enjoy.

MOTIONS PASSED: The Guardian reports that the AUT has passed two of the three motions to boycott three Israeli universities. The motions to boycott Haifa University and Bar Ilan University passed, while the motion to boycott the Hebrew University was dropped or delayed (not clear which) when the very weak evidence against it was challenged. The following is interesting and my hat is off to Alastair Hunter:

At the end of the vote, delegates angrily demanded to be able to voice their opposition to the new policy and to the cutting short of the debate, due to lack of time, so that no opposition other than from the executive was heard.

Alastair Hunter, a delegate from Glasgow, speaking from the back of the Winter Gardens conference hall, where the debate took place, called the motions "divisive". He said: "I am disgusted we were not given a chance to debate fully."

The BBC also covers the story. Some interesting information in their report:

The lecturers' decision has been criticised by representatives of the executives of Britain's universities, Universities UK.

A spokesperson said: "UUK condemns the resolution from AUT which is inimical to academic freedom, including the freedom of academics to collaborate with other academics."

[...]

But the Academic Friends of Israel in the UK said the boycott was "based on false information, imposes discriminatory boycott and vetting of political opinions, and is a backward step in the current climate of positive moves being made in the region".

"It is also the beginning of a dangerous process against the tenets of academic freedom and may rebound on the AUT itself," it said.

It also condemned the way that it had been made difficult for pro-Israel voices to be heard.

The group's chair, Ronnie Fraser, said: "Israelis and Palestinians will continue to co-operate even without the AUT, as they, who live the reality of the Middle East, know no other alternative is available for them.

"If the sponsors of this boycotting campaign succeeded in something, it is only to undermine further progress, collaboration and peace in the Middle East and to marginalise the standing of the AUT and its members in the academic community."

The last sentence is certainly true. I suspect that the main result of this shameful decision is that the international and national credibility of the AUT will now be seriously damaged and any influence it may have had to do some good will be compromised. I certainly want nothing to do with it as long as it comes up with policies like this.

OVER AT QUMRANICA this week's essay abstracts and seminar summaries (three of each) have now been fully posted. Have a look if you haven't already.

THE SCH�YEN COLLECTION is in the news, in an emerging controversy involving Aramaic incantation bowls:

Museum inquiry into 'smuggling' of ancient bowls

By Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent (London Times)

ONE of the world�s leading buyers of antiquities is at the heart of an inquiry to establish whether part of his multimillion-pound collection was illegally exported from the Middle East.

University College London has set up a committee of inquiry into the provenance of 650 Aramaic incantation bowls inscribed with magical texts, The Times has learnt.

The bowls were loaned to the university museum � the Petrie � by Martin Schoyen, a Norwegian tycoon who has built up one of the world�s finest collections of antiquities in private hands.

[...]

I was aware that these were in London but I didn't know they were part of the Sch�yen collection. Almost certainly these are unprovenanced Iraqi antiquities. I first heard of hundreds of incantation bowls in London in around 2000. I assume these are the same, in which case they must have been exported before the Iraq war.

UPDATE: Ed Cook comments over at Ralph.

NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLAR PREDICTS POPE'S NAME IN 1994. Really.

THE GUARDIAN'S 2005 UNIVERSITY GUIDE, which ranks the British universities by institution and by subject, has just been published this week. I am very pleased to see that the University of St. Andrew ranks number 10 in the whole country and, even better, among "Theology" departments (which includes all Divinity and religious studies subjects), our Divinity School ranks number 5. That's a substantial move forward from last year for both the University and the School.

A LECTURESHIP IN OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY is being advertised by Ridley Hall, Cambridge.

OXYRHYNCHUS UPDATE: David Meadows collects all the latest news over at Rogue Classicism. Curiouser and curiouser ...

UPDATE: Important news on the Textual Criticism list. Wieland Willker forwards a message by Oxford papyrologist Dr. Dirk Obbink on the PAPY list regarding the Independent. Follow the link to read the whole thing.

Like other collections we do not normally announce our findings in advance of publication. In this case a team from ISPART (formerly CPART) at Brigham Young University in Utah spent last week creating MSI images (that is, at all ranges of the light band) of papyri in Oxford as part of a project begun in 2002. We scanned portions of the unrolled Herculaneum papyrus in the Bodleian Library and experimented on problematic carbonised and non-carbonised samples in the Oxyrhynchus collection in the Sackler Library ...

Details of the results follow.

The London press got wind of this (the unrolled Herculaneum papyrus of Epicurus' Peri physeos in the British Library is being done this week) and reported enthusiastically, if selectively. No mention, for example, was made of the success on the Bodleian Herculaneum papyrus (P.Herc. 118), now thereby revealed to be a Peri Epikourou or at any rate a pre-Philodemean history of the school. The article certainly should not have said (if it did) that all the papyri had been discovered yesterday, only that we made significant (and sufficiently exciting) advances in reading and confirmation of identifications with some, the same with some other pieces, while still others were identified for the first time, some standard classical authors, as usual, while others remain complete mysteries. ...

This does seem to confirm that the project has made "significant advances" recently, including identifying new fragments of classical authors. It clarifies that both the Oxyrhynchus and the Herculaneum texts were involved. We are not told how "the London press got wind of this" and it seems that Dr. Obbink himself has not seen the Independent article, which seems odd. He will be presenting the results in Berkeley this month and Oxford next month. I hope that means that something will go up on the Oxford Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project website soon as well.

SBL FORUM ARTICLE UPDATE: It develops that the XSL now being used to publish Forum articles cannot handle hidden links. I've been discussing this with Sharon Johnson and she agrees that this is a problem that will keep coming up and that needs to be fixed. Their technical people are working on it, but apparently this problem is connected to some others and is fairly complex, so it may take several weeks to solve. I am content to wait until the article can be published in the form I intended, so it won't be back up for a while. I am very grateful to Sharon and her colleagues for tackling the difficulty head-on. I'll let you know when the piece does come out.

THE ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY TEACHERS (the UK's trade union for University lecturers, equivalent to the AAUP in the United States) is considering a boycott of three Israeli universities. Individual scholars from these institutions who sign an acceptable political statement would be exempted. (This is the post promised in the previous post below.)

Lecturers may boycott Israeli academics

State's policy in occupied territories fuels union debate

Polly Curtis and Will Woodward
Tuesday April 5, 2005
The Guardian

Israeli academics who refuse to condemn their government's actions in the occupied territories risk a boycott by the UK's leading lecturers' union.

The Association of University Teachers' annual council, which begins on April 20 in Eastbourne, will also debate whether to boycott three of Israel's eight universities - Haifa University, Bar Ilan University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem - over their alleged complicity with the government's policies on the Palestinian territories.

The union voted against an academic boycott policy two years ago, but campaigners believe the motions are more likely to be passed this year.

Palestinian academics have also issued a call for an international boycott of Israel.

[...]

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

The AUT website has more information on the relevant motions to the AUT council. I'll just excerpt it here, but please do read it all. First of all, let's be clear about the long-term agenda:

56 Open and Birmingham Council notes:

1. That nearly sixty of the most prominent academic, cultural and professional associations and trade unions in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza, including the Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities' Professors and Employees and the umbrella organization of Palestinian Non Governmental Associations (NGOs) in the occupied West Bank (PNGO), and thus highly representative of the views of major sectors in Palestinian civil society, have now called for an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions.
2. That AUT is affiliated to Friends of Bir Zeit University and Trade Union Friends of Palestine.
3. That the full text of the Palestinian Call can be found on the following websites: http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/news/article178 http://www.bricup.org.uk
4. That the wording of this call is as follows:
'In the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression, we, Palestinian academics and intellectuals, call upon our colleagues in the international community to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel's occupation, colonization and system of apartheid, by applying the following:
1. Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions;
2. Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;
3. Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions;
4. Exclude from the above actions against Israeli institutions any conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies;
5. Work toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations;
6. Support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.'


Council resolves to circulate the full text of the Palestinian call to all LAs for information and discussion.

To be moved by Open and seconded by Birmingham
EA

To put it simply, the long-term goal here is an outright boycott of Israel it its entirety. The specific boycotts called for below are the thin end of that wedge. The Executive has agreed to circulate this call for a general boycott "for information and discussion" during the meeting. (That's what "EA" means.)

There follow three motions for the boycotts of the three specific Israeli universities. I will quote one of them below but, again, do follow the link and read the whole document.

As I said in my previous post, I am not a member of the AUT, in no small part because of their habit of championing this sort of trendy political cause. But as a British academic who specializes in Judaism, I think I need make some comments.

1. I wish that the AUT would concentrate on its real job of working to supporting British academics and improving our working conditions. There's work enough there to keep them busy.

2. I have no trouble with AUT members or anyone else criticizing the actions of the Israeli government or of particular Israeli institutions or particular Israelis. I'm not happy myself, for example, with the Israeli government's neglect of the safety of the archaeological relics on the Temple Mount, as I've said before. But the full agenda of the people who wrote this is a complete boycott of Israel, which is not reasonable. This fits in pretty well with the AUT's policy statement on Israel and Palestine, which is entirely one-sided against Israel.

3. I am not well acquainted with the particular cases above involving the three Israeli universities. At least two of them (the Hebrew U and Haifa) deny that the charges are true. Such cases get very complicated and often come down to "Did too! Did not!" and can take years to decide in court. Moreover, there are some warning signs in the AUT document that make me nervous. The first specific motion reads as follows:

57 Birmingham Council notes:

1. That on Sunday, November 21 2004 at 7:15AM, bulldozers and armed security guards hired by Hebrew University Properties, Ltd. Arrived at the home of the Al-Helou family in Jerusalem to announce that their land would be confiscated for the expansion of the university.
2. That the Al-Helou family is among seven Palestinian families whose houses are trapped among the university dormitory buildings.
3. That the families have lived in this area, called Ard Al-Samar, since 1948 when they were forced out of the Jerusalem village of Lifta with the establishment of the state of Israel.
4. That after the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem began in 1967, these families' land has been confiscated repeatedly by the university to build student dorms, so that the families are now confined in small pockets of land surrounded by the fences.


Council resolves:

1. To call on all AUT members to boycott the Hebrew University of Jerusalem until it calls a halt to all attempts to confiscate land from Palestinian families, and reaches an acceptable settlement with the families' lawyers regarding restoration or compensation in the case of land already confiscated.
2. That the boycott should take the form described in the Palestinian call for academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

ERef

The source of this report appears to be an article from the Electronic Intifada dated 22 November 2004. It reads in part:

On Sunday, November 21 at 7:15AM, bulldozers and armed security guards hired by Hebrew University Properties, Ltd. arrived at the home of Al-Helou family in Jerusalem to announce that their land will be confiscated for the expansion of the university dormitories. ... The Al-Helou family is among seven families whose houses are trapped among the university dormitory buildings. They have lived in this area, called Ard Al-Samar, since 1948 when they were forced out of the Jerusalem village of Lifta with the establishment of the Jewish state. ... After the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem began in 1967, their land has been confiscated time and again by the university to build student dorms. The dormitory buildings have been closing in on the families, who are now confined in small pockets of land surrounded by the fences.

As you can see, the information in the AUT resolution is lifted without attribution and pretty much verbatim from the Electronic Intifada piece. The Electronic Intifada is not the first place I would go to for objective news. It may well be that the story is entirely true, but I think it's a matter for serious concern that it has not been picked up by any of the major mainstream media. As far as I can tell, this is the one and only source for the story. My own rule is to be very wary of any report that comes only from a single source with a clear ideological agenda. I certainly would not make a big deal about such a story until I saw it was taken up by, Reuters, the A.P., or the like. The AUT is calling for an academic boycott of a major, world-class university on the basis of what certainly appears to be a single ideologically-oriented Internet source which they copy almost word for word without naming the source. If they have made any efforts to verify the account, they say nothing about it in the motion. That doesn't strike me as impressive research or presentation and I strongly encourage anyone who attends the meeting to point this out and call for further verification.

This post is getting too long, so I'll refrain from commenting on the other two motions. My point is made.

4. Even if all the charges are completely true, the call for a boycott is very extreme. It's one thing to criticize particular problems or abuses, it's quite another to cut off communication and any relationship entirely, and nothing here justifies it. Moreover, the call for a boycott occurs in a curious vacuum. The AUT is putting itself forward as a champion of human rights, yet a search of their site for "Saudi Arabia" and "Syria," both renowned for their gross human rights abuses, including of academics and students (notably censorship and denying the rights of women), comes up empty. (Try it!) Where is the call to boycott Saudi Arabia and Syria, whose abuses are flagrant, widespread, and systemic? Where is the condemnation of the Saudi education system or the now defunct pseudo-academic Zayed Centre for Co-ordination and Follow-up in the UAE?

And is everything really quite satisfactory with the Palestinian Authority? What about the destruction of the Temple Mount antiquities by the WAQF? Or the hate filled Palestinian Authority sermons that encourage children to become suicide "martyrs"? Or the eleventh-grade Palestinian Authority textbook that calls for the execution of anyone who abandons Islam? It's illuminating to note that the author of that textbook is offended by Christian missionaries not so much because they teach faith in Jesus, but because they promote Western culture, history, and literature; lead people to take an interest in ideas such as capitalism, atheism and communism; and promote the freedom of thought to criticize Islam and its teachings, including polygamy. Is this really the education the AUT wants Palestinian students to enter university with?

I could go on and on in this vein but, again, the point is made. Should Israel and Israeli institutions be criticized if they do something wrong? Of course. But is it right to single Israel out and boycott its institutions and even the whole country, especially in light of the ghastly human rights abuses in Israel's neighbors in the Middle East? I think not. The causes promoted by the AUT are very selective, very oddly prioritized, and advocate disproportionate and inappropriate responses.

As for me, the two conferences I organized at St. Mary's College in 1998 and 2001 included invited Israelis. I maintain close relations with Israeli colleagues and am happy to be involved with Israeli academic institutions. This is not going to change, and if the AUT has a problem with that, it's their problem.

I hope very much that these proposals are defeated by the AUT when they are voted on this Friday. It is embarrassing enough for British academics that the motions are being considered at all.

Some other recent articles on the ongoing annual AUT council in Eastbourne and the proposed Israel boycotts include these: "Academics vote on Israel boycott" (BBC); in the London Times: "Jews criticise lecturer boycott" and "Dons' boycott raises Jewish student fear"; and in the Guardian: "Why we ask for a boycott"; "To Boldly Go"; "Blunt Boycott"; "The Sins of the Few"; "Israeli debate threatens to eclipse university pay talks". And a response from Israel: "Who's turning up the heat on Palestinian academics?" (Jerusalem Post).

UPDATE (22 April): More here. For shame.

UPDATE (24 April): More here.

UPDATE (26 April): More here.

UPDATE (28 April): More here. Resistance is mounting.

UPDATE (29 April): More here.

UPDATE: (7 May): More here. A new debate has been scheduled for 26 May.

UPDATE (8 May): More here.

UPDATE (13 May): More here.

UPDATE (15 May): More here. (Response of Haifa University.)

UPDATE (18 May): More here.

UPDATE (23 May): More here.

UPDATE (24 May): More here.

UPDATE (26 May): The boycott has been repealed. This is good news, but do follow the link and read the rest of my comments.

THIS SORT OF THING is one of the main reasons I'm not a member of the Association of University Teachers (the British union for University lecturers, comparable to the AAUP in the United States). I've been working on a post on this embarrassing proposal by the AUT, but haven't had time to finish it. Rebecca Lesses lays out the basic issues.

OXYRHYNCHUS UPDATE: On the Ars Technica forum an anonymous papyrology student at the University of Chicago is expressing serious skepticism about Sunday's Independent article on the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. The writer sums up:

So as of right now, the rest of the papyrological community is waiting to hear Dirk Obbink at Oxford either back up for disavow the claims made in the article. At the very best, the Independent's reporters are covering some kind of new imaging breakthrough in an extremely hyperbolic fashion. And at the worst, they're trying to make a major story out of 20-year-old news.

My correspondence also seems to indicate that papyrologists who ought to have known already about these new texts if they were real haven't heard anything about them.

David Meadows notes some more media coverage here

Developing ...

UPDATE: Paul Nikkel e-mails:

I do believe Hannibal at Ars is Jon Stokes. Just so you can give him proper credit.

As I wrote initially at deinde when this came up, even if there was some breakthrough in the "spectral analysis" the real problem of piecing together the fragments still remains. This is the same point brought up by Meadows and Stokes. The fact that the Independent article doesn't mention anything about the fragment problem seems to indicate there's nothing substantial to report here. A statement from the Oxford team would certainly clear the issue quickly.

I certainly agree with that. Oxford papyrologists, speak!

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: For some reason this Arutz Sheva article from 14 April did not show up on Google. I only found it yesterday at the Bible and Interpretation News website.

Exclusive: Dumped Temple Mount Rubble Yields Jewish Artifacts
23:09 Apr 14, '05 / 5 Nisan 5765

A historic excavation has been taking place in an eastern Jerusalem valley for the past six months: the first-ever archaeological examination of the Temple Mount.

I note this passage in particular:

�The very act of spending time and making the effort to examine debris just because it originates from the Temple Mount transmits a very powerful message to the general public and to the world as a whole about the importance of the place,� Dr. Barkai said, likening the painstaking examination of the Temple Mount rubble to the respect given to a dead corpse by burying it.

He said the project is of particular importance due to the Islamic Waqf efforts to perpetrate something that he says is worse than Holocaust denial. "There is a phenomenon of Temple denial," Barkai said. "I just heard [Arab] MK Dahamshe this week in the Knesset denying that there were ever temples on the Temple Mount. It is a part of the cultural Intifada. I think it is just as serious as Holocaust denial. This intifada started in Joseph�s tomb and is trying to deny Jewish rights to the country."

The sifting and examinations have already yielded important artifacts from various periods, starting from the First Temple period until today. ...

I think it's an overstatement to say this is worse than or as serious as Holocaust denial, but it's still vile.

As for the artifacts discovered, the list is too long to copy here, but you should read it all. Some wonderful things have been found, which are important despite the fact that they have been torn from their precious stratigraphic context. It is very important that this salvage project get funding so that it can be completed.

MY ARTICLE, "Assimilated to the Blogosphere: Blogging Ancient Judaism," has just been published in this month's SBL Forum. However, the scores of links I put in it have been stripped!!! This will not do. I'm running to the next class right now, but I've e-mailed the editor and will tell you when I know more.

UPDATE: The article had about 63 links to my blogs, other blogs, and other websites. I assure you it makes much more sense with those links included.

UPDATE: Thanks Mark!

UPDATE (10:55 pm): For now the article has been taken down. I am in discussion with the SBL people about how to proceed in light of technical limitations of which I was only made aware today. It's late here and today has been long enough. More tomorrow.

UPDATE: (morning, 20 April): Still discussing. This may take a while. More in due course.

UPDATE: More here.

SCOTLAND IS CASHING IN on the success of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code:

Star role for Scots chapel in Da Vinci Code film

WILLIAM LYONS
ARTS CORRESPONDENT
wlyons@scotlandonsunday.com

HOLLYWOOD is coming to Midlothian. An 11th hour deal has been struck that will bring filming of the blockbuster movie based on the bestselling book The Da Vinci Code to Rosslyn Chapel.

The genteel village of Roslin is now preparing for an invasion of A-list celebrities when Tom Hanks, who plays the book�s hero Professor Robert Langdon, and Am�lie star Audrey Tautou fly in for an eight-day shoot in August.

[...]

Since The Da Vinci Code was published in 2003, visitor numbers at the 15th-century chapel have risen by 56%, but it is hoped a substantial sum can be raised from the shoot itself. Last year almost 70,000 people visited the building in Midlothian, making it one of the country�s most popular tourist attractions.

[...]

As well as the chapel, The Da Vinci Code could be worth millions for Scottish tourism. Harry Potter fans have flocked to the west Highlands to see locations, and 18% of visitors from the United States cited films as a factor in their decision to come to Scotland in a survey in 1996, the year after Braveheart was released.

[...]

Ah well, at least it's good for the Scottish economy. On the positive side, The Da Vinci Code is good for tourism and is likely to get people interested in biblical-related history and even perhaps get some bright young people interested in the field as a vocation. (Since my interest in what I do now was sparked by Erich Von Daniken's dreadful books, I shouldn't discount this factor.) But the negative side of The Da Vinci Code is, of course, that it's bogus.

MARATHON MAN II: With the extra seminar rescheduled for today, my five-hour teaching marathon begins later this morning. To start the day off right, the fire alarm went off just as I got in my office and we all spent the first 25 minutes of the morning standing out in the St. Mary's Quadrangle waiting for the fire brigade. At least there was no fire.

Blogging is likely to be light today, but I am posting some essay abstracts at Qumranica.

THE WIKIPEDIA "ARAMAIC LANGUAGE" ARTICLE is today's featured article on the Wikipedia main page. That's all to the good, but the current version of the article includes this unfortunate sentence:

Biblical Aramaic was originally written in Achaemenid Aramaic, but heavily influenced by later forms of Aramaic and Hebrew due to the work of the Masoretes in the first century CE.

The Masoretes worked in roughly the second half of the first millennium C.E. (The Aleppo Codex of the Hebrew Bible was produced by them.)

It's also a bit of a stretch to call Biblical Aramaic "Achaemenid Aramaic." Granted, Official Aramaic was settled into its mainstream form then, but the material in Daniel, while in the Official Aramaic dialect (apart from its late orthography) was written in the second century B.C.E. (granted, in some cases perhaps based on earlier stories). I think "Achaemenid Aramaic" should read "Official Aramaic" here.

UPDATE: The broken link to the article has now been fixed.

UPDATE (19 April): Ed Cook comments over at Ralph. He says the whole article needs to be rewritten, not just revised.

CHUCK JONES, the Librarian at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, has announced that he is leaving the OI to become the Head of the Blegen Library at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Chuck is well know as moderator of a number of e-mail discussion lists and as founder and maintainer of the ABZU database. I have cited the ANE list and the IraqCrisis list frequently here on PaleoJudaica. We should all say thanks to him for his hard work over many years on Internet projects from which we have all benefitted. Good luck and best wishes, Chuck!

Let's hope someone takes up his mantle at the Oriental Institute and keeps these projects going.

A GRAVE CONTROVERSY:

Highway engineer receives threat note warning road damages graves
By Roni Singer, Haaretz Correspondent

The chief engineer of the Trans-Israel Highway received a threatening letter on Sunday, apparently part of a stand-off over extending the road into an area some ultra-Orthodox Jews say contains ancient graves.

[...]

Ultra-Orthodox Jews have criticized plans to extend the partially-completed toll road, arguing that it passes over a site where Jews were buried during the Second Temple Period (536 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.). ...

And what do archaeologists say?

"PRINTING THE TALMUD: From Bomberg To Scottenstein" is a new exhibition at the Yeshiva University Museum. The Art Daily has the story:

The exhibition Printing The Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein provides the visitor with a once in a lifetime opportunity to view outstanding examples of early Talmud manuscripts, such as an exceptionally rare Spanish 13th century copy of Avodah Zarah (a tractate that was frequently destroyed by Church censors), and rare examples of early printed volumes, including one of the very few extant complete sets of the famed 16th century Bomberg Talmud, the publication that established the layout of the Talmud page for future generations. Also on display is a rare copy of the Holocaust Survivors' Talmud, published in 1948 in Heidelberg Germany with the help of the U.S. Army.

Exhibited alongside these rare manuscripts is a floor mosaic from the ancient synagogue at Rehov in Israel�s Bet Shean Valley. Dating back to the 6th century this unique mosaic is the oldest preserved copy of a Rabbinic text, and the only example to survive from the time the Talmud was compiled and redacted.

UPDATE: The exhibit and some lectures associated with it are also covered by the Commentator.

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: According to the Independent, new imagining techniques are allowing the recovery of a vast amount of new information from the Oxyrhynchus papyri.

Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world

Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome

By David Keys and Nicholas Pyke

17 April 2005

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

The web page of the Oxford Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project is here (and note this page especially), but there's nothing about the breakthrough there yet.

The Independent article describes the techniques as follows:

Since it was unearthed more than a century ago, the hoard of documents known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has fascinated classical scholars. There are 400,000 fragments, many containing text from the great writers of antiquity. But only a small proportion have been read so far. Many were illegible.

Now scientists are using multi-spectral imaging techniques developed from satellite technology to read the papyri at Oxford University's Sackler Library. The fragments, preserved between sheets of glass, respond to the infra-red spectrum - ink invisible to the naked eye can be seen and photographed.

The fragments form part of a giant "jigsaw puzzle" to be reassembled. Missing "pieces" can be supplied from quotations by later authors, and grammatical analysis.

Much like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And this passage really caught my eye:

When it has all been read - mainly in Greek, but sometimes in Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic, Nubian and early Persian - the new material will probably add up to around five million words. Texts deciphered over the past few days will be published next month by the London-based Egypt Exploration Society, which financed the discovery and owns the collection.

We are already aware that the Oxyrhynchus papyri contain some of our earliest fragments of important Old Testament pseudepigrapha (2 Baruch is an example), and it's on our agenda to go through the published material to look for hitherto unidentified pseudepigrapha fragments for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project. With luck, perhaps these new developments will add to our corpus.

UPDATE: David Meadows, over at Rogue Classicism says that most of the information in this article is a couple of years old and he speculates that this is opening hype for an as yet unannounced documentary. Maybe so, but some of the most interesting information about the new texts is presented as less than a week old. Is this poor editing of an older article or is the information actually new? Anyhow, it's new to me and has never been noted on PaleoJudaica before, so I'm glad they ran the piece.

UPDATE (18 April): Wieland Willker is skeptical.

UPDATE: More from David Meadows. BBC Radio 4 had a documentary on Oxyrhynchus.

UPDATE (20 April): More here.

UPDATE (1 May): More here, here, and here.

ANOTHER ANCIENT MOSAIC has been uncovered in Israel:

Impressive' villa mosaic unearthed near Caesarea (Ha'aretz)
By Amiram Barkat

A 500-square-meter mosaic depicting an intricate design of flamingos, peacocks, ducks and other animals that adorned the floor of a fifth-century C.E. villa, was unearthed recently on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean near Caesarea.

[...]

Cool photo.

PALEOJUDAICA is ranked #4 by Blogshares in the Ancient History Industry and its shares are currently worth $1,992.96. If only it were real money.

David Meadows's Rogue Classicism is #1, which is fair, but how authoritative can such a ranking be when it doesn't include Mark Goodacre's New Testament Gateway blog?

UPDATE: It seems Mark's blog is listed under "Bible Study," far too low in the ranking. Mark and Jim West comment further. Mark also notes that none of us make it into "Blog Heaven." Well, fie on Beliefnet. But as I've said before, if I can just make it into Limbo, I'll consider myself fortunate.

"THE PASSION OF ARAMAIC." Well, yeah. The Jerusalem Post has a long, interesting article on the Aramaic language. It opens:

Trying to unravel the mysteries of Aramaic is like embarking on an odyssey across the deserts, mountains and valleys of the Middle East and onwards to Europe and North America.

It is an intellectual adventure that leads to an array of secular scholars, devout clergy and laymen - Jewish and Christian - who are experts in the history of these Semitic languages, which in some places still survive.

They tell of Israeli rock groups that sing modern Aramaic songs, of popular radio and TV programs in Aramaic or Syriac broadcast in Canada, the US and Scandinavia and of remote villages in Syria and Iraq, where Aramaic, rather than Arabic, is the local vernacular.

Regular readers of PaleoJudaica are, of course, already well acquainted with most of this, but even they will find some new facts about Aramaic in this article. It tells of Aramaic-speaking Kurds, Christians in Nazareth who use Aramaic, Syrian villages whose traditional language is Aramaic, the origins and history of the language, Aramaic weddings by Jews in the Caucusus, how Aramaic saved a good bit of ancient Western literature for posterity, and Aramaic popular music.

Then there's this:

Outside of prestigious universities like Cambridge and Tel Aviv University, there are few, if any, schools where Aramaic or Syriac is taught as a language to read, write and speak.

All too true. I am happy to say, however, that at least biblical Aramaic is offered at the University of St. Andrews and I am scheduled to teach it here next year. I keep hoping to offer Syriac some day, but it hasn't happened yet.

On a related note, it is now possible to hear football (soccer) commentary in Aramaic. Really.

UPDATE: The following paragraph from the Jerusalem Post article is attributed to "a Christian scholar based in Jerusalem" who wished to remain anonymous:

The pervasiveness of Aramaic was such that it virtually replaced Hebrew as the preferred language of the Holy Land's Jews, a declining number of whom were familiar with the biblical tongue. This was also true of their coreligionists in Babylon and the surrounding regions of Mesopotamia - so much so, this scholar noted, that the Book of Daniel, which emerged from that milieu, "is more than 80 percent Aramaic."

This requires some correction and nuancing. First, most of chapter 2 and all of chapters 3-7 of Daniel are in Aramaic. That leaves chapters 1, a bit of 2, and 8-12 in Hebrew. I haven't done a verse count, but it's more like a 50-50 split. Second, the book of Daniel was written in the second century B.C.E. (granted, likely incorporating some older legends) and shows important Palestinian Jewish concerns (such as a preoccupation with the Maccabean revolt). In other words the indicators are that it's a Palestinian Jewish book, not a Mesopotamian one. As for the decline of Hebrew, certainly the epigraphic evidence (especially the Bar Kokhba correspondence) indicates that Hebrew was still very much in use as a living language into the second century C.E.

You would think that the Jerusalem Post could have found a biblical scholar somewhere in Jerusalem who was willing to be quoted by name with accurate information on the book of Daniel.

PROFESSOR MARVIN MEYER will be speaking next week in Billings, Montana, (which is a happening place for biblical scholarship) on the Coptic Gnostic library from Nag Hammadi.

CODEX SINAITICUS WATCH: The Art Newspaper has a long and detailed article on the current conservation and digitalization project as well as the controversy over ownership:

Sinai monks in historic agreement with British Library
Ownership dispute has been set aside for joint study and digitisation of the world�s oldest bible

One quibble:

The Codex Sinaiticus was one of the original 50 Bibles copied in Greek at the order of Emperor Constantine, or a direct copy of the period. It dates from the mid-fourth century and it is likely to have arrived at St Catherine�s in Sinai when the monastery�s church was erected in the mid-sixth century.

This is correct, strictly speaking, but could be phrased a little more clearly. It is possible that Sinaiticus is one of the Bibles commissioned by Constantine (I don't know exactly what "original" means here"), but that's only an educated guess. We don't know for sure where the manuscript came from and an Egyptian provenance has also been proposed, which apparently is what the first sentence means by "or a direct copy of the period." Again, I don't know what "direct" means here. What would an "indirect" copy be?

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The Jerusalem Post has an article on the salvage operation, headed by archaeologist Gabriel Barkay, which is stifting the rubble from the depredations of the WAQF on the Temple Mount.

Temple Mount relics saved from garbage
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

On the grounds of a Jerusalem national park with a view of the Temple Mount, a small group of Israeli archaeologists and volunteers sifting through piles of rubble discarded by Islamic Wakf officials from the Temple Mount into a city garbage dump have recently uncovered a series of history-rich artifacts dating back to the First and Second Temple periods.

The five-month old privately-funded project underway at the site, which is being directed by Bar Ilan University archeology professor Dr. Gabriel Barkay, is being called virtually unprecedented since archaeological excavation has never been permitted on the Temple Mount itself.

Some important finds from the second temple period and earlier are noted:

The first coin recovered from the rubble was from the period of the First Revolt against the Romans that preceded the destruction of the Second Temple, he added.

The coin bore the phrase "For the Freedom of Zion," and was particularly meaningful as the Temple Mount was one of the epicenters of the fight against the Romans.

Other finds include a spout of a Hasmonean lamp, an assortment of arrowheads, an ivory comb, a ceramic flask, various first temple figurines, and numerous pottery oil lamps.

And this is a matter for concern:

The historical project underway is now in danger of going unfinished due to a lack of financial support, with the project director saying that the project will abruptly end in one week unless organizers receive urgent financial backing needed to complete the work.

If you know any millionaires looking for a tax break, now's the time to speak up.

It is a great pity that this has to be done by volunteers with private funds. The Israeli government needs to start making serious efforts to protect the archaeology of the site and to recover what can be recovered from the rubble of what has already been bulldozed and dumped.

TORI AMOS MEETS THE GNOSTICS. And likes them.

The remarkable thing is not that Tori Amos got Gnostic on the gospels, but that it took until now. The daughter of a Methodist minister father and Eastern Cherokee bibliophile mother, with a dose of Scottish and Southern blood mixed in for good measure, Amos has just released her ninth album The Beekeeper, a cycle of songs framed by a concept constructed from suppressed Magdalene texts applied to the ancient art of shamanic beekeeping. Britney it ain't.

Nag Hammadi makes another inroad into popular culture.

THE BYZANTINE-ERA SYNAGOGUE IN JERICHO has recently been visited by Jews, according to Arutz Sheva:

Jews Return to Ancient Jericho Synagogue
22:28 Apr 13, '05 / 4 Nisan 5765

For the first time in four and a half years, a group of Jews was allowed to visit and pray in the ancient Shalom al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho Tuesday.

I JUST SENT IN my contract to write some articles for the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, including "Enoch, Third Book of" and "Merkavah Mysticism." The field of Hekhalot studies has come a long way since the original (1962) IDB or the (1976) supplementary volume, neither of which included either topic.

A TUG OF WAR seems to be starting over the Codex Sinaiticus.

Britain may have to give up oldest known Bible

By Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent (London Times)

THE British Library is facing the possible loss of one of its most important manuscripts, the world�s oldest Bible, to a Middle Eastern monastery.

The fear is raised weeks after the institution was told by a government advisory panel that a 12th-century manuscript in its collection was looted from a cathedral near Naples during the Second World War and must be returned.

The backing last month by the Spoliation Advisory Panel of a 27-year campaign by the city of Benevento to be reunited with a jewel of Italy�s heritage will have given renewed hope to St Catherine�s, a desert monastery on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, of being reunited with a manuscript that it is believed to have owned from the 6th century, if not earlier.

[...]

(Via Michael Pahl and others.)

All I can say is that I hope all parties involved have the welfare of the manuscript foremost on their agendas. It is very fragile and moving it should be done only with the utmost care and only for excellent reasons. It also needs to be kept in a place where it can be conserved properly. It would be a tragedy if political factors led to the neglect of these concerns.

UNICORNS IN THE BIBLE: Charles Hedrick has the story.

The Christians who wrote the New Testament did not use the Hebrew Old Testament, but rather its Greek translation, as sacred Scripture. In the Greek Old Testament eight passages describe an animal having only one horn (monokeros) as a translation for the Hebrew word re'em.

In the late fourth century, the Old Testament was translated into Latin (the Vulgate) using both the Greek and Hebrew. In some of the passages above the Vulgate translates the Hebrew re'em as "rhinoceros" and others as "unicorn." All Christians used the Vulgate until the 16th century, at which time Martin Luther translated the Bible into German � the first time the Bible was ever translated into a modern European language. Luther used only the Hebrew, for the Old Testament. Nevertheless, he still translated re'em as unicorn.

Hmmm ... Unicorns and Hobbits. I wonder if there are Elves too?

JACOB NEUSNER is profiled in the New York Times:

Scholar of Judaism, Professional Provocateur
By DINITIA SMITH

Published: April 13, 2005

Jacob Neusner, a mild-seeming, grandfatherly man relaxing in his easy chair, might have published more books than anyone alive. "As of this morning, 905," he said recently. It was 4 p.m. The count was still good.

Hold it! Mr. Neusner, 72, a professor of theology at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., has just called to say there are 924. This year alone there have been 22 books, most in his field, ancient Judaism. And no, he doesn't count revisions or translations.

Mr. Neusner studies rabbinical writings of the first 600 years A.D., when rabbinic Judaism evolved. He has translated both the Palestinian Talmud (35 volumes) and the Babylonian, twice (second translation, 46 volumes). In fact, he has translated most of the ancient rabbinic literature. The Chronicle of Higher Education has called him probably the most prolific scholar in the nation.

[...]

STILL THERE. According to this Jerusalem Post article, the name "Allah," which was inscribed (or something) on a stone in a wall of the Temple Mount, is still there after two weeks. None of the questions bloggers, including myself, have asked about this are answered in this article (and if Eilat Mazar replied to my e-mail, it never reached me). The piece does add one bit of new, if depressingly true to form, bit of information -- the response of the director of the WAQF to the vandalism:

After the vandalism was uncovered, Wakf director Adnan Husseini said that he saw nothing wrong with the 'Allah inscription' on the Temple Mount wall. "What's the problem with that? It's the name of God," he said.

CONGRATULATIONS to my former teacher, Professor John Huehnergard, who has been awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. I am delighted to hear that his long-awaited historical grammar of Hebrew has such support. Well done, John.

MARATHON MAN DELAYED: It developed that one of the seminars had to be canceled, so my five-hour teaching marathon is tentatively rescheduled for next Tuesday. That left the 3:00-4:00 pm hour open today, but instead of blogging (or doing some work), I retired with some of the Dead Sea Scrolls students to the pub across the street to continue the seminar. Sort of. My last lecture of the day is in World Religions in a few minutes.

JEWISH-TEMPLE DENIAL WATCH: Okay, I'm busy, but I can't resist noting this one. CAMERA has pointed out two incidents of pandering to the Jewish-temple deniers in major media outlets in recent days. In both quotes below, I have added the bold emphasis.

Reuters, 7 April, article by Jonathan Saul:

Non-Muslims Banned from Flashpoint Jerusalem Shrine

[...]

The ancient mosque compound is Islam's third holiest site. It is Judaism's most sacred site, the place where Jews say a biblical Jewish temple was razed by the Romans in 70 A.D.

[...]

The New York Times, 10 April, article by Steven Erlanger:

Israeli Troops Kill 3 Teenagers in Buffer Zone at Gaza Border

[...]

In Jerusalem, thousands of police officers fanned out in and around the Old City to prevent the threatened march on Al Aksa mosque. Jews believe that the site, also known as the Temple Mount, housed the second temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70.

[...]

For relevant commentary, see my post some time ago regarding Time Magazine, and this post as well.

Most irritating.

MARATHON MAN: Today I have five hours of teaching: two lectures and three hours of seminars (including the rescheduled Temple Scroll seminar). I believe this is a one-day record for me, one that I hope never to exceed or even equal again. Blogging is likely to be limited. But do keep an eye on Qumranica, where I plan to be posting new material throughout the week.

JAROSLAV PELIKAN is interviewed by NPR about his new book Whose Bible Is It? You can access the audio file here.

OVERDRIVE: Due to a confluence of team-teaching commitments, combined with (welcome!) unexpectedly high enrollments in two courses, my teaching load for the next several weeks is going to be very high and I expect to be extremely busy. Blogging is refreshing for me, so I hope to be able to keep it up more or less as usual, but it will be a low priority and may slow down. Bear with me.

ASSIMILATED TO THE BLOGOSPHERE: Last week Tyler F. Williams, of Taylor University College in Edmonton, Alberta, e-mailed to alert me to his new blog, Codex. His first entry reads:

Welcome to my blogspot! I hope that my blog will be worthy of your attention. I hope to post my musings on Biblical Studies, Biblical Hebrew, Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, Popular Culture, and pretty much anything else that interests me! I will also let you know about site updates and special academic events in the Edmonton area, among other things.

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Tyler!

The blog is one element of a website that contains lots of resources on biblical studies and related subjects.

UPDATE: Michael Turton notes further assimilation: a new blog called KAIMOI by University of Birmingham doctoral student Ken Olson, who is working on the Testimonium Flavianum (the mention of Jesus by Josephus). If this parody post (I hope it's a parody!) on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is any indication, we should be seeing some good blogging from him.

ARAMAIC WATCH: Even at the Pope's funeral?

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals led the funeral ceremony with great tenderness and craft. It was conducted mainly in Latin and Italian but also included several passages in languages used throughout the Catholic world such as Spanish, Swahili, Polish, Filipino, French and English. Arguably, the most spellbinding part was the prayer sung in Greek and, I think, Aramaic by members of the Eastern Churches in an emotional swirl of bejewelled robes, incense and eastern mystery.

It probably was Aramaic, most likely Syriac.

Also, David Nishimura's comments over at Cronaca on the coverage of the funeral by the New York Times are worth reading.

UPDATE: The Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church were represented at the funeral, as was the Iraqi Syriac Catholic Church.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The planned Revava protest seems to have fizzled:

Low Turnout at Right-Wing Jewish March
Sun Apr 10, 2005 02:16 AM ET

By Corinne Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian militants threatened to abandon a de facto cease-fire with Israel if right-wing Jews went ahead with a planned march to a flashpoint holy site in Jerusalem on Sunday.

"If the Zionists defile al-Aqsa mosque, they will be planting the seeds of the third uprising," said Nizar Rayyan of the Islamic militant group Hamas.

But with Israeli police out in force at the site revered by Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) and by Jews as the Temple Mount, only a handful of would-be marchers turned up for the 7:30 a.m. (0430 GMT) rendezvous.

Three of them were arrested, Army Radio said.

[...]

UPDATE: The BBC has posted a brief guide to Jerusalem's Holy Sites.

UPDATE: David Ha'ivri and others have been arrested. And anti-disengagement protesters disrupted a Tel Aviv freeway this morning.

UPDATE (9:40 pm GMT): Yep, it fizzled. I have to say I'm relieved.

Small Turnout for Extremist Jewish Rally at Holy Site (the Scotsman)

A rally by Gaza withdrawal opponents at a contested Jerusalem holy site today ended in a fizzle, with only a few dozen protesters showing up, but it mobilised thousands of police in full riot gear.

Police arrested 31 extremist Jews who planned to demonstrate in the Old City of Jerusalem, along with a West Bank Hamas leader who spoke at the holy site, but the mass demonstration of 10,000 pledged by organisers did not materialise.

[...]