ANTIQUTIES LOOTERS FOILED (THIS TIME):

Stolen rare artifact recovered in mail
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

A rare archaeological artifact dating back nearly two thousand years which was stolen from an archaeological site in Israel has been intercepted in the mail en route to the US, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday.

The 5-7 cm lead weight,[mishkolet oferet] dating back to the second century Bar Kochba Revolt, was hidden inside a book sent by airmail.

The unusual package was sent by a former Israeli antiquities dealer to a prominent American antiquities dealer in New York, the head of the Antiquities Authority's anti-theft division Amir Ganor said.

[...]

This success is good news, but the overall picture continues to worsen:

About 300 archeology thefts are detected each year in Israel, with the illicit antiquities trade on the black market in the country estimated to be running in the millions of dollars a year.

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.

TRIAL DELAYED: The antiquities forgery trial in Israel has been delayed until September:

Antiquities fraud trial opens, then adjourns for four months
By The Associated Press

Five suspects in a forgery ring that allegedly produced a treasure trove of fake Bible-era artifacts went on trial yesterday in Jerusalem, but the judge agreed to adjourn until September.

Defense attorneys said they need more time to prepare, noting that investigators provided some of their material only in recent days. The next hearing is set for Sept. 4.

[...]

SOME BOZO? Why do e-mail messages from the Society of Biblical Literature to its membership now consistently contain the name "Some Bozo" in the sender field? I have e-mailed them about this and received no reply. I think someone needs to update a default setting.

UPDATE (18 May): The SBL technical people have been in touch. Whatever the problem is, it seems to arise in the Eudora Macintosh system I'm using and shows up only in the mailbox. One version of it is discussed here and a fix for it is given here. But this involves messages sent with no return address, which is not the case with the SBL messages I've been getting. Anyhow, thanks to Lauren Hightower and Bob Buller for their prompt replies.

THOMAS THOMPSON previews his new book on the Bible and Intepretation website:

Creating Biblical Figures

I reconsider the theme of life�s victory over death through the perspective of the related themes of �new wine� and �blood of the covenant,�... is intimately connected to the fertility myth of the dying and rising god, from Tammuz and Ba�al to Dionysus.


By Thomas L. Thompson
Professor of Old Testament,
University of Copenhagen
May 2005

Job, in his utopian, king-like role in Job 29, provides me with a useful paradigm for the biblical figure of the messiah (Th.L. Thompson and H.Tronier, Frelsens Biografisering, Museum Tusculanum: Copenhagne, 2004, 115-134) and an internal coherence to my new book, The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David (Basic Books: New York, 2005), which provides the theme of a seminar this coming semester. ...

An online seminar, I hope? I've been interested in royal ideology in the Jesus traditions for a long time, so I look forward to reading this one. But if he really is arguing that Jesus never existed (as the Amazon reviews seem to indicate), he's got his work cut out for him. Note the review by biblioblogger Michael Turton in particular for a detailed commentary.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: I'm not sure what to make of this one.

Israelis Foil Plot by Jewish Extremists


Tuesday May 17, 2005 3:31 AM

AP Photo JRL152

By MARK LAVIE

Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM (AP) - Three Jewish extremists planned to fire a missile into Islam's third-holiest shrine in hopes of unleashing mayhem across the Middle East and halting Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank this summer, police said Monday.

Officials admitted that hard evidence in the case was weak, but other opponents of the pullout showed Monday that even small numbers of demonstrators can tie up police throughout Israel, blocking main highways with burning tires and their own bodies. At least 300 people were detained, police said.

[...]

The plot apparently did not progress past the stage of discussion. No missile was purchased, no concrete plans were made and authorities did not have enough evidence against the three to go beyond ordering house arrest for a short time last month before releasing them.

Israel's Justice Ministry said the suspects would not be indicted because there was no evidence they carried out any part of the plot, and they had second thoughts about it even before they were detained.

Naftali Wirtzburger, attorney for the three, said his clients never served in the army and have no idea how to fire a missile. He accused security forces of entrapment.

[...]

There just isn't enough information here to tell what was really going on, but it sounds as if it could have been serious.

UPDATE: More details here and here. The plot sounds half baked, but dangerous and not to be ignored.

CALL FOR PAPERS ON SYRIAC: George Kiraz e-mails on the Hugoye list:

Periodically, Hugoye sends a call for submissions.

Hugoye is an peer-reviewed scholarly journal dedicated to Syriac studies, and is published twice a year in electronic form and in print. Papers on all aspects of Syriac studies are welcomed. For information, please see: http://www.bethmardutho.org/hugoye

George Kiraz, General Editor

Actually, it appears that the correct address is http://bethmardutho.cua.edu/hugoye/. The one above redirects you to this one.

JEWISH MOSAICS FROM THE ROMAN PERIOD will be on display at the Brooklyn Museum in their Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire exhibition, according to ArtDaily.com.

BROOKLYN, N.Y.- Twenty-one extraordinary Roman-period mosaics from the first archaeological ruins of an ancient synagogue to be discovered in modern times will be on view September 9 through November 20, 2005, at the Brooklyn Museum. This exhibition will examine the role of these mosaics, acquired by the Museum in 1905, in the development of synagogue decoration in the late Roman Empire. Approximately thirty-eight related artifacts, such as contemporaneous textiles, marble statues, gold jewelry, and bronze ritual objects, will be included.

Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire will investigate the origins of synagogues, the development of Jewish art in the Roman period, female patronage in the ancient synagogue, the differences between early Christian and Jewish symbolism in art, and the relationship between ancient and modern synagogues.

[...]

LEVANT ARCHAEOLOGY PROJECT: Calvin College News reports:

Calvin Prof Part of Norwegian Grant
May 13, 2005

Calvin College history professor Bert de Vries will be joining an international team of 16 archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, historians and sociologists, including Bethany Walker of Grand Valley State, in a wide-ranging study of global moments in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria - an area known as "the Levant."

The work will be funded over four years by a $2.6 million (16 million Norwegian kroner) grant from the Norwegian Research Council. The team was one of 17 successful applications out of 263 in an annual competition for 250 million Norwegian kroners of NRC funding for basic research in all fields.

[...]

THE MUSEUM OF BIBLICAL ART in Manhattan is reopening with displays on William Miller (the founder of the "Millerite" movement), evangelical art from the American South, and this:

The museum, formerly the Gallery of the American Bible Society -- the society was the main donor for the expansion -- also has a smaller exhibit showing centuries-old Bibles in Latin, Chinese, Syriac, Spanish and German, and a Torah scroll, at least 400 years old, from a synagogue in Kaifeng, China.

AUT ISRAEL-BOYCOTT UPDATE: Carla Sulzbach e-mails to point to the following response from Haifa University. Excerpt:

The University of Haifa is saddened and not a little outraged by the utterly unjust and unjustifiable decision of the AUT and by its attempt to erect barriers and obstruct the flow of ideas within the international academic community.

In lieu of evidence to support the singling out of Israeli academia, the authors of this campaign have chosen to adopt a three-year old urban legend.

We are astounded by the fact that the AUT never requested our response prior to adopting their resolution, and did not allow our position to be presented by members of the AUT who are familiar with the facts.

The case against Israeli academia, in general, and the University of Haifa in particular, is devoid of empirical evidence and violates the principle of due process. Driven by a prior and prejudicial assumption of guilt, the AUT has refused to confuse itself with facts.

[...]

Whatever the merits of the case, the conduct of the AUT before the vote was reprehensible.

A GOOD CONSPIRACY? Regular readers will recall the bemusement of bibliobloggers about the overhyped articles in the Independent about the imaging of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri and the alternate reading of Revelation's number of the beast. There is now a new Independent article on the Herculaneum papyri and Rogue Classicist David Meadows deduces a conspiracy among papyrologists to get the public behind the idea of renewed excavation in Heculaneum.

So what appears to be happening is that we've got some lover of Classics using the media to create some hype about the Villa of the Papyri! This is great because when this call to excavate first came out, it was met with a resounding round of indifference. It was brought up again in March, and again seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Now, because of that 'number of the beast' thing, there's been great attention drawn to the technology available to read this stuff and this Independent piece is clearly designed to get folks 'licking their lips in anticipation' of what might be found there. Consider how many mummies are now being CT scanned since they gave Tut the treatment (every week in Explorator there's one). Bravo! Well done! Let's see where it goes from here ....

If so, I'm not sure the conspiracy has been all that successful, since the article is quite ambivalent about the idea of further excavations any time soon. Personally, I hope that the money can be found for both conservation and excavation. Both are extremely important.

Incidentally, my usual quibble: The Independent article says of the Villa of the Papyri:

Thanks to the fluke of its preservation within the inferno of the eruption, this is by far the oldest extant library in the world.

This is not true at all. Sumerian libraries have been recovered which were older at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius than the Herculaneum library is today.

Anyhow, I hope the plot of these mild-mannered papyrologist masterminds succeeds in increasing public interesting in ancient Heculaneum and its library.

THE INK AND BLOOD EXHIBITION is going to Lexington, Kentucky, in June.

THE BOOK has been sent to the publisher. It went off this afternoon by airmail to Leiden (Brill) in its final, edited, proofread, approved, to-be-published form. In the past Brill has provided a very good turnaround time at this stage -- one of a number of reasons why I keep publishing with them. So, with luck, you may be able to find it in print at the SBL meetings in Philadelphia in November. The title is now The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? and it will be in the Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series.

The Next Book is an English translation of the Hekhalot Literature. Much of the work is already done, but it needs a lot of going over, pulling together, writing up, introduction writing, etc. I have several articles to finish in the coming months, so it will be a while before I get to work seriously again on any book writing.

I GUESS THIS IS NOW PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE: My colleague Philip Esler, Professor of Biblical Criticism, will become the new chief executive for the Arts and Humanities Research Council (the former AHRB, which funded my research leave in 2003-04) in September. Mark Goodacre has the relevant links. Congratulations Philip!

While I'm at it, congratulations also to Mark on welcoming his two-millionth visitor to his New Testament Gateway website.

AUT ISRAEL-BOYCOTT UPDATE: The American Association of University Professors (the equivalent of the AUT in the USA) has condemned the AUT boycott.

These resolutions have been met with strong condemnation and calls for repeal within the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The American Association of University Professors joins in condemning these resolutions and in calling for their repeal. Since its founding in 1915, the AAUP has been committed to preserving and advancing the free exchange of ideas among academics irrespective of governmental policies and however unpalatable those policies may be viewed. We reject proposals that curtail the freedom of teachers and researchers to engage in work with academic colleagues, and we reaffirm the paramount importance of the freest possible international movement of scholars and ideas. The AAUP urges the AUT to support the right of all in the academic community to communicate freely with other academics on matters of professional interest.

Good for them.

(Via the Elfin Ethicist and Engage.)

ALLEGRO RELOADED: From the Bible and Interpretation website:

JOHN ALLEGRO AND
THE CHRISTIAN MYTH

John Allegro observed the way the Jesus story echoed events and ideas in Gnostic literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Old Testament, and he identified the doctrine of divine light as the unifying theme. This is expressed in myth and imagery and is a key to understanding a range of mythologies - including Christianity.

By Judith Anne Brown
May 2005

I haven't read Allegro's books, so I won't say too much here, although I will say a few things. If this essay is a fair summary of his theories, I am not persuaded. Judith Anne Brown is Allegro's daughter, which I really think ought to have been mentioned with her essay.

First, regarding the Teacher of Righteousness: he is mentioned in the Damascus Document and some of the Pesharim, nowhere else. Some speculate that he may have written some or all of the Hodayot, but this is speculation. One cannot assume that the Hodayot reflect his teachings. Likewise, the Community Rule never mentions the Teacher of Righteousness. On what grounds, then, is it quoted as part of his message?

Second, much is made of the light-darkness dualism in Qumran sectarianism, the New Testament, and Christian Gnosticism. If this is an attempt to argue for a genetic link between Qumran sectarianism and Christian Gnosticism (and I don't see how else to read it) I'm skeptical. Light=good, dark=bad is a fundamental human archetype based on our sensory apparatus. When it's light we can see and it's safer. When it's dark, we can't, and the monsters come out. The Qumran sectarian light-darkness predestination, in which people are born with their destined proportion of light/darkness which determines their eternal fate, is quite difference from the Gnostic aspiration to fan the soul's spark of light to redeem it from the dark material realm and restore it to the Pleroma of light. The New Testament light-darkness imagery is just that, imagery, and does not reflect a coherent doctrine.

I think it is very unlikely that there is direct influence from the Qumran sectarians on either the New Testament or Gnostic Christianity. They are all drawing on apocalyptic Jewish themes and they all make use to some degree of the light-darkness archetype, but the parallels don't go very far. First-century Christianity extracted the messiah/eschatological divine mediator theme from Judaism and makes it central in a way that it wasn't for the Qumran sectarians. The Gnostics developed this redeemer idea out of first-century Christianity and introduce a lot of Platonic myth into the system.

Third, regarding the proposed influence of the story of the Teacher of Righteousness on the story of Jesus, I'm skeptical again. The reference seems to be to CD B xx 14-15 (not ii 14), which is a typically vague eschatological prophecy and which mentions a "unique teacher" (or perhaps, with a plausible emendation, "the teacher of the Yahad") but not the Teacher of Righteousness specifically. The Qumran manuscripts of the Damascus Document were all written before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., so this passage could not refer to this event, and we certainly have no evidence that the early Christians knew it or knew anything about the Teacher of Righteousness. Where are the specific references to hanging or trees with reference to the Teacher of Righteousness? I can't find any. Some years ago in my Divine Mediator Figures course we looked at parallels between Jesus and the Teacher of Righteousness as mediator figures. You can find some notes here and here (scroll down). There are some mildly interesting phenomenological parallels, but it would be hard to make a case for any influence.

Perhaps the arguments are stronger in Brown's new book on her father, but I'm not optimistic. A book on Allegro as an important figure in the history of Qumran scholarship is welcome and should be very interesting, and it seems reasonable for his daughter to write it. But his theories did not convince his contemporaries and now, many years later when we know so much more about the Qumran library, I doubt very much that any attempt to bring them back into the mainstream of Qumran scholarship will have much success.

ARAMAIC WATCH (cross reference with "journalistic objectivity watch"): The A.P. article "Gov't Seeking to Preserve Dying Languages" report that

WASHINGTON (AP) - Thousands of languages are threatened with extinction, and the U.S. government is trying to help save some of them, from the one used by Cherokee Indians to a language spoken by a small group of people in Tibet but never written down.

The project awards $4.4 million to 26 institutions and 13 individual scholars to investigate the status of more than 70 languages among the 6,000 to 7,000 in the world.

This is a good thing, of course. And, as pointed out by reader Ian M. Slater, Aramaic is one of the threatened languages:

For more than a decade, the endowment has helped pay for the writing of a dictionary of ancient Aramaic. Many Christians believe that Jesus spoke that language, which is related to Hebrew. Modern versions of the language are spoken in a few Middle East villages and used in the services of some Christian denominations.

I assume that this dictionary is the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon project, although I can't find anything on their website to confirm it. (Perhaps Ed Cook can tell me if I'm right.) But the second sentence, which I have put in bold font, requires a comment. This is an example of a journalist showing his critical caution and objectivity: he takes a thunderously obvious fact that no one disputes and presents it as though it might be a dubious religious belief: many Christians believe that Jesus spoke Aramaic. (Cf. Jews believe that a Jewish temple once stood on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.) Meanwhile, journalists present things that really are religious beliefs as objective scholarship: "Many biblical scholars believe that the Jezreel Valley will be the site of the penultimate battle between the forces of God and Satan, with the final conflict and return of the Messiah taking place in Jerusalem." I have nothing against religious beliefs or scholarship, but let't try not to confuse them.

Sigh.

UPDATE (19 May): Several days ago Ed Cook e-mailed the following:

Yes, the NEH has supported the CAL project (along with other donors). (BTW, I haven't had any official connection with CAL for several years, so my knowledge of the recent details is sketchy.) But it sounds like CAL is what the article is talking about.

A DIGITAL PHILO? Bring it on!

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK -- IN IRELAND. Here's an interesting archaeology-related story:

Ireland Divided Over Hill of Tara Plan


Wednesday May 11, 2005 8:01 PM

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK

Associated Press Writer

HILL OF TARA, Ireland (AP) - This grassy, windswept hill outside Dublin was long the spiritual and political center of Ireland, an earthen fort where Celtic chieftains jockeyed for power and legend says St. Patrick confronted paganism.

Today, the Hill of Tara is at the center of another showdown - over whether Ireland, a rapidly expanding country where construction often uncovers the past, can reconcile its rich heritage with the demands of modern life.

Capping two years of arguments, the government on Wednesday authorized archaeologists to begin excavating 38 sites along the proposed route of a new highway past the hill. Environment Minister Dick Roche and some state archaeologists say the road project will uncover historical material that otherwise would remain buried.

But an alliance of environmentalists, archaeologists and other academics warn that the road will scar Ireland's most significant landscape.

What does this have to do with the Lost Ark? Read on:

Infamously, a crowd of British zealots tore up the site in 1901-02 in a vain quest for the Ark of the Covenant, causing untold damage that is hidden today by the grass.

More on those British Zealots in this International Herald Tribune piece ("Will Ireland slice up its most mythical site?"), which also has lots of information on the current controversy:

Emigrants from Ireland, like the O'Hara family in "Gone With the Wind," could conjure up the old country by naming their estate after its most sacred place. Indeed, so sacred became its reputation at the end of the 19th century, and so much mystery surrounded what was buried beneath, that a sect called the British Israelites began to dig there in search for the Ark of the Covenant. They were greeted with indignation by Irish nationalists like Yeats, who believed that the Hill of Tara, where the remains of 30 or so prehistoric monuments are somewhat visible to this day, must have its mystery unraveled by the slow and painstaking work of archaeologists.

Quite right.

IS THE SECRET GOSPEL OF MARK A FORGERY? Stephen Carlson thinks so and argues this in a forthcoming SBL paper and book. More here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Jim West's Biblical Theology blog.

THE QUMRANICA BLOG has reached its conclusion and is now on indefinite hiatus. I have just put up the final posts (here and here). In the first you can read a student song about me.

MTV AND THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST: MTV.com has the best popular article I've seen so far on the variant reading 616 for Revelation's number of the beast in an Oxyrhynchus manuscript ("666 Not So Evil? '616' Revelation Might Bedevil Metalheads"). Teri vanHorn reports correctly that (1) the reading is not new (2) the variants are based on gematria of slightly different spellings of "Nero" (actually "Nero Caesar") in Hebrew letters; and (3) the variant 616 isn't necessarily the original reading. And she gets the title "Revelation" right too. There's also a fun fact I didn't know: the word for the fear of 666 is "hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia." And, not surprisingly, there's also a lot of information on the use of 666 in popular culture, especially heavy-metal music.

MIT TIME TRAVELER CONVENTION UPDATE: This has been posted on the convention's website:

Update:The convention was a success! Unfortunately, we had no confirmed time travelers visit us.
We did, however, have a great series of lectures, awesome bands, and even a DeLorean. We regret having had to turn away visitors, but there were capacity restrictions governing Morss Hall.

Check this space for photos, commentary, and more.

Well, this result could mean any number of things.

1. Time travel really is impossible.

2. Time travel is possible but no time machines have been invented yet and when they are, they won't be able to travel further into the past than when they were built.

3. Time travel is possible, but the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is correct, and time travelers who went to the convention started new branches of the multiverse. It happens that our branch descends from the original universe, so we don't get any time travelers this time.

4. Time travel is possible, even easy, and there's only one universe. According to "Niven's Law," the only stable configuration in such a universe is a history in which time travel is never invented. So time travelers keep changing things at will until by chance they do something that prevents time travel from being invented every time it might have been. The practical result from our viewpoint would be that every time a researcher was on the verge of building a time machine, that researcher would slip on a banana peel and suffer a fatal injury, or a mega-asteroid would destroy all life on that planet, or the like. Professor Mallett, be careful!

5. The convention's organizers are fibbing. Time travelers actually came in droves and threw a big party with the attendees in a gigantic, lavishly furnished ballroom hidden in a spatio-temporal vacuole and discreetly connected to the convention site through a broom closet or bathroom stall. After all, what would be the point of stirring up the indigenous primitives and maybe causing riots and such that could disturb future timelines or spoil the party? Better just to keep things quiet. The attendees, of course, duplicated themselves for the duration and stayed in Morss Hall so as to give the appearance that the convention was going on without any time travelers. (Why do you think that no television cameras were allowed? Buwahahahahahahaha!)

6. Someone in the future is going to throw a better party for time travelers.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers! If you'd like to know more about this blog, you might be interested in reading this brief article I published recently on blogging on ancient history (and how the media screws up that topic too).

UPDATE: Here is a link to an audiotape of The Moment. Here are some photos of the convention. Here is a report of a time traveler who was turned away. And Rick Lippincott proposes a seventh reason. But if people in the future can manage the time travel part, I doubt that aiming for the right part of space would be a big challenge for them.

UPDATE: My eight-year-old son proposes another reason (#8?): a working time machine won't be built until so far in the future that, despite our best efforts, this time traveler convention has been completely forgotten.

Also reader Michael C. Grant e-mails:

Let's expand on your reason #5.

Perhaps it is possible for a stable single-universe to exist even if time travel has indeed been invented. Let's say that someone in, say, the year 2150 achieves the first successful time travel device. This person would immediately be met by visitors from the future who have developed a full understanding of the dangers of time travel to the space-time fabric, and how to avoid them. Together they would take steps to insure that no fatal damage to the space-time fabric ever occurs, by building safeguards into the new invention as well as imposing a system of rules for using it.

So for example, perhaps time travellers would never endeavor to reveal their identities as members of the future in eras where time travel itself had not yet been stabilized. Thus they would travel back to, say, prehistoric days to watch dinosaurs, but they wouldn't appear on Ben Franklin's doorstep---or to a time-travel convention in 2005.

Actually that's an interesting expansion on both reasons #4 and #5.

And thanks also to many other bloggers for their links to this post.

UPDATE: Another reason! This one from reader Ben Skott:

You're missing a reason. Maybe our era has a reputation of being particularly boring and materialistic, or violent, or any number of distastful things, so no time travellers ever bother coming.

Wouldn't surprise me.

UPDATE (10 May): Reports on the convention in Wired News and the Harvard Crimson.

AUT ISRAEL-BOYCOTT UPDATE: Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has a "Credo" column in yesterday's Times of London: "Why academic freedom is a religious matter". I want to excerpt the whole thing (so do read it all), but I'll limit myself to this small section:

The late Sir Stuart Hampshire used to say that justice means hearing all sides of a conflict. In that sense the university was a place of justice. It wasn�t always so. Until the 1820s neither Jews nor Catholics could get degrees. Academic life was bound by doctrinal orthodoxy. If you held the wrong opinions you were excluded.

There is nothing inevitable about intellectual openness. Historically it has been the exception, not the rule. Today in many parts of the world holding the wrong opinions can get you barred, imprisoned, tortured or killed. That is why academic freedom matters. It took a long time to achieve. It can be lost overnight.

Indeed.

Keep the pressure on.

LECTURE ON KETEF HINNOM:

Villanova professor to discuss archaeological work in Israel

FROM [TOLEDO] BLADE STAFF

Judith Hadley, a professor of biblical archaeology at Villanova University, will give a free public lecture about her recent excavations in Israel tomorrow in the Temple-Congregation Shomer Emunim in Sylvania.

Ms. Hadley says her work at the burial cave of Ketef Hinnom, which dates from the 8th to 6th century B.C., has yielded the earliest archaeological record of worship of the Jewish deity and use of the priestly benediction from the Scripture in Numbers 6:4-26. She will also discuss her work at Megiddo ...

If you're in Toledo, it sounds well worth hearing.

THE MIT TIME TRAVELER CONVENTION starts tonight at 8:00 pm EST. The Associated Press has finally taken it up and the story is being widely covered. It will be most interesting to hear what happens. I wish I could go. Maybe someday I will!

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The archaeological salvage operation on the Temple Mount rubble dumped into the Kidron Valley by the WAQF is covered by Cybercast News Service:

Temple Mount Antiquities Destroyed In 'Cultural Intifadah'

There is not a great deal that is new in the piece, but this comment by the director of the project, archaeologist Gabriel Barkay, is worth noting:

Barkay said it was a tragedy that the Western world was not more concerned about the destruction of the antiquities on the Temple Mount.

The world community was outraged when the Taliban blew up two 165-foot nearly 2,000-year-old statues of Buddha in Afghanistan in 2001. But the destruction of "the heartland of [Jewish and Christian] faith did not create an effect as it should have done," said Barkay.

"Very clearly parallel to the armed [Palestinian] intifadah is also the cultural intifadah, more serious than the armed intifadah, Palestinians claiming Jews never had a right to this country, Jews were never here," Barkay added.

I wouldn't say "more serious than," but it's very serious nonetheless.

There's a nice summary of the finds to date:

By the door stands that largest piece -- a three-foot-high section of a marble pillar with purple veins running through it. The marble would have been imported from Asia Minor, Barkay said. They know it came from the Temple Mount because there are others like it there, Barkay said.

They have found pottery shards - 15 percent of which date back to the First Jewish Temple period - the days of Biblical King Solomon. But workers will never be able to put together a complete vessel because of the way things were mixed up, he said.

There are pieces of early Christian oil lamps, figurines, pottery fragments with Hebrew inscriptions. Hundreds of coins have been discovered dating from the Second Jewish Temple period all the way up to the time of Napoleon.

They found a silver charm of St. Christopher, which would have been used by Europeans during the 16th and 17th centuries to ward off evil.

Arrowheads of various shapes attest to the battles fought by generations of conquerors over the Mount.

There are beads from an Islamic era, jewelry, ivory objects -- including a fine-toothed comb -- which Barkay said he is sure will prove to contain lice eggs when it is thoroughly examined.

And there's one quite important bit of new information tucked quietly into the end of the article:

Barkay said the workers won't be able to finish sifting all of the material they have but will get a good sampling. The project, which is funded by private donors, is scheduled to continue until summer, he said. All of the artifacts as well as the remaining material from the Temple Mount belong to the Antiquities Authority by law.

The last information we had, from the middle of April, indicated that the project was about to stop for lack of funding. It appears that an angel has come through and funded it until the summer. Let's hope someone continues to provide the money to see the entire project through.

While we're on this subject, BiblePlaces.com has new (?) heavily illustrated articles posted on the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, as noted yesterday by Bible and Interpretation News.

UPDATE (9 May): Greetings, readers from The Corner. You can read some more about this blog and about the historical politics of the Temple Mount and related matters in my brief article "Assimilated to the Blogosphere: Blogging Ancient Judaism."

AUT ISRAEL-BOYCOTT UPDATE:

Second time round for boycott debate

As the Association of University Teachers prepares to reopen its debate on a boycott of Israeli universities, Polly Curtis looks at the politics behind the move

Thursday May 5, 2005

Hindsight is a precious thing, and something that members of the Association of University Teachers have been granted. Last night the union announced that an emergency conference would be held on May 26 to reopen the debate about the boycott of two Israeli universities.

The union voted to boycott Bar Ilans and Haifa universities at its annual conference in Eastbourne two weeks ago, putting it in the eye of an international storm.

This time round, though, when the issue is debated every member of the AUT's council will know exactly how strong international opinion is against the boycott. Despite a solid support base in favour of the boycott, the union has been under sustained attacked for the decision.

[...]

It's a pity it took sustained international outrage to make them have a real debate about the boycott, but better late than never.

THE MIT TIME TRAVELER CONVENTION, scheduled for tomorrow night, has now received coverage by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.

I'M SO BUSY TODAY that I'm not even sure what to panic about first. And the weekend is not looking much better. But have a look at this San Franciso Chronicle article about Egyptian Karaite Jews in San Francisco:

Jewish sect from Egypt keeps it all in the family
Karaites' exodus began after the Suez Crisis in the '50s

Loolwa Khazzoom, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, May 6, 2005

When asked to name a traditional Passover dish, most Bay Area Jews wouldn't come up with "barbecued lamb." But for the local Karaite Jews from Egypt -- an ancient community that follows biblical Jewish law and rejects the rabbinic interpretation of Judaism -- an outdoor barbecue kicks off the seder celebration, with the meat symbolizing the paschal sacrifice.

Sara and Elie Moussa of San Carlos were sure to barbecue enough lamb to serve the 32 guests gathered in their home for the festivities. In addition to the four generations of family seated at the U-shaped table in the living room, there were several out-of-town Karaite guests who had no families with whom to celebrate the holiday.

The largest community of Karaites in the United States -- 200 families in all -- resides in the Bay Area, with 50 families in the South Bay. The Karaites began moving here from Egypt in the '50s when Egypt and the newly created state of Israel went to war, a conflict referred to in the West as the Suez Crisis.

[...]

PULSA DE NURA AND MEGILLAT HASHOAH: This miscellany in Ha'aretz discusses two newsworthy innovations in Judaism, both of which draw on ancient themes. First, there is the Pulsa de Nura cursing ceremony that, as has been noted here before seems to have been created in the early twentieth century.

The two researchers reached the conclusion that the pulsa denura invoked today is merely a new and particularly frightening version of an excommunication edict, a ceremony that also incorporates extinguishing candles, blowing shofars in synagogue and reciting a curse. Excommunication does not really frighten secular Jews. In the final analysis, what do they care if the Haredim ostracize them? After Israel's establishment, the term pulsa denura replaced excommunication.

The researchers did not identify who gave excommunication its new name. But so as not to hold the reader in suspense, we will note that use of the curse in the early days of the state was usually attributed to religious struggles in Jerusalem that involved the leader of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement, Amram Blau.

"Pulsa denura is not a kabbalistic ceremony," they concluded. "Kabbalists do not take part in it, it is not done at midnight but rather at midday - not after a fast of three days, not to the light of black candles, the text is not read seven times, and the persons do not necessarily stand facing the east."

The second (last item in the article) is a new Conservative liturgy for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah, which starts today at sundown [but is observed a day early this year because of proximity to Shabbat -- I think I have this straight now!]).

One group that has adopted Holocaust Day and is proposing a unique liturgical text is the Conservative movement, which this year published Megillat Hashoah (the Shoah Scroll), composed by literature professor Avigdor Shinan. The scroll completes the Conservative initiative to formulate an order of unique prayers for Holocaust Day. The introduction to the Shoah Scroll states, in the spirit of the Passover Haggada, that, "The new commandment of Jewish life is that each of us must see himself as if he has witnessed the Shoah with his own flesh."

NEW DISCOVERIES AT MERON indicate that the site was occupied long before the Second Temple period:

Meron - an old story may be getting older
By Ran Shapira (Ha'aretz)

The synagogue and the splendid buildings uncovered in the many excavations carried out during the last century at Meron in the upper Galilee, near the eponymous moshav at the foot of Mt. Meron, have left scholars with little doubt: This was the site of an important Jewish settlement during the Roman period, from the late first century BCE until the fourth century CE.

[...]

A series of discoveries at Meron over the past decade have changed the picture. Last year, for example, Stepansky excavated a small area north of the center of the ancient site of Meron. Under the layer containing stones and remains of a wall from the Roman period, three Bronze Age layers were uncovered: remains of a round installation and pottery shards from the Middle Bronze Age IIA (about 4,000 years ago), a floor of ash and remains of pottery vessels imported from Syria during the Intermediate Bronze Age (between the Middle and Early Bronze Ages, 4,000-4,200 years ago) and an earlier layer containing flint implements and pottery, also from the Intermediate Bronze Age.

In the course of two inspection digs conducted within the grounds of the Bar Yochai Yeshiva in Meron, Stepansky unearthed pottery from the Chalcolithic period (about 5,700 years ago), the Iron Age (about 3,200 years ago) and even the Persian and Hellenistic periods.

[...]

Meron has lots of other interesting associations, such as the cave of R. Shimon bar Yohai (where much later legend says he composed the Zohar) and a synagogue gate whose fall is supposed to presage the coming of the Messiah. And it may (or may not) be the Merom of Joshua 11:5, 7.

VERY BUSY TODAY, plus not much seems to be happening in the news, at least with regard to ancient Judaism. So to keep you amused, here are some noteworthy search engine referrals I've been saving up, which have sent people to PaleoJudaica in the first several months of 2005:

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ARABIC DOWNLOADABLE VERSION OF 7TH BOOK OF MOSES
How to make a model scale of Basalt Stele?
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Intertextuality in Monty Python's Life of Brian
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TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Here's an odd story involving Jewish-Temple denial. The article has appeared only in two Chinese media outlets, the People's Daily and Xinhua. (The latter is listed in Google but seems to have gone dead.)

Turkish PM says Aqsa Masque belongs to Moslems only

Visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed Monday that al Aqsa Masque in East Jerusalem only belongs to the Moslems and not to anybody else.

Erdogan, who arrived in Israel on Sunday, made the statements after he visited al Aqsa Mosque and prayed there with his wife and the delegation that accompanied him.

Al Aqsa Mosque is considered for all the world's Moslems as their first shrine and their third mosque. It is located at al Haram al Sharif area, a place that Jews are calling "the Temple Mount."

Moslems, mainly Palestinians are afraid that some Jewish extremists, who believe that the Jewish temple is built under the al Aqsa Mosque, would carry out an action to demolish the mosque.

"Al Masjed (mosque) al Aqsa is belonging to the Moslems only, and [no] one has the right to interfere into its affairs or try to administrate it," said Erdogan.

Sheikh Ekrema Sabri, Mufti of Jerusalem and the holy land, and Sheikh Mohamed Hussein, director of the mosque, received Erdogan and accompanied him in the tour of the mosque.

[...]

I have put the most interesting bits in italics. Two things to note. First, the Jewish-Temple denial: it's not just only Jews, but some Jewish extremists who think there was a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount.

Second, there is the italicized quotation in rather poor English attributed to Prime Minister Erdogan. (In fact, the whole article is in rather poor English and the quote has an obvious mistake in it which I have corrected.) The story of the Turkish PM's visit, including his visit to the Temple Mount, has been widely reported in an A.P. article and elsewhere (e.g., Ha'aretz, Kavkaz Center, the Turkish Weekly, and Zaman). This particular quote, however, is not found in any other report, with one exception: an article by the Palestine Media Center. It's not the same article as the People's Daily, but some of the material overlaps, including this quotation, which is given correctly (i.e., including the "no" that is missing in the other article).

Did the Turkish Prime Minister really make this statement? I'm skeptical. It doesn't seem very likely to me that the A.P. and the other sources would not have thought it newsworthy if he had. Let's see who else, if anyone, picks up the report.

UPDATE (4 May): Reader Menachem Brody e-mails:

There is a problem here that keeps repeating, and you should be aware of it.

This should be publicized, since it is used to intentionally destabilize things here.

Briefly and simply:

The Temple Mount described in the Mishna and Talmud is 500 Amot (cubits?) square.

The present day compound is much larger, including a large section added to the Southern edge by Herod, divided by a clearly visible seam seen in the Eastern wall (photo on request). On this addition is built the Al-Aksa Mosque.

Almost all responsible historians and archaeologists place the site of the Temple over the Even Shtia, under the Dome of the Rock, in the center of the compound (far from Al-Aksa).

In other words:

The Islamic demand is for control of Al-Aksa, built on a site adjacent to the location of the Temple. The Jewish demand is for the rebuilding of the Temple on it's location in the center of the Mount. THERE IS NO INHERENT CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THESE TWO DEMANDS.

If something here is unclear, I will be glad to explain further.

Thanks for that point. But even if we read the article that way, the intention still seems to be Jewish-Temple denial, since it refers to the Mount as "a place that Jews are calling 'the Temple Mount'" (that is, others would not call it such). This seems to be a comment about the nature of the site, not just the name, although, granted, the English is not very clear.

As for the rebuilding of the Temple, I doubt very much that Muslims would see no problem with the project, even if it could be fitted around the Dome of the Rock. I would oppose it too: I want no more digging on the Mount apart from scientific archaeological excavation.

I still would like to know whether the Turkish PM really said the quote attributed to him. It hasn't been mentioned anywhere else.

IRAQI JEWISH MANUSCRIPTS RECYCLED: Strangely, the Cincinnait Post has recycled an old A.P. article on the Iraqi Jewish archives currently in deep freeze in the National Archives in Washington D.C. The article, "Rare Jewish artifacts remain in soggy limbo," was obviously written before the transfer of sovereignty on 30 June of 2004. The elections are also mentioned as an event still in the future. No effort seems to have been made to update anything in it.

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

There are questions about who now owns the documents, where they should be housed and whether money will be available to restore them. It's likely those questions won't be answered until after June 30, or months later, after Iraqis hold elections.

How astoundingly careless.

The most recent information I've been able to find on the Iraqi Jewish archives is here. Follow the links backwards to get the whole story.

7 MAY 2005: TIME TRAVELER CONVENTION AT MIT! Spread the word!

The Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
42:21:36.025�N, 71:05:16.332�W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

What is it?

Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT in one week, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Why do you need my help?

We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in MAJOR outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them.

Great idea, I'd love to help! What should I do?

Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention.

[...]

(Via Instapundit.)

In what is surely a related development, on Saturday Professor Ronald Mallett was the featured speaker for this year's National Gallery For Young Inventors in Akron Ohio:

Young inventors honored in Akron

Cancer-weakening spice, method to grow bone among teens' inventions

By Paula Schleis

[Akron] Beacon Journal staff writer

[...]

This year marked the 10th anniversary for the National Gallery for America's Young Inventors, one of the affairs that make Akron the ``City of Invention.''

[...]

The program began with a lively physics lesson by Ronald Mallett, a theoretical physicist at the University of Connecticut, who believes he's on the verge of building the world's first time machine.

With a slide show, laser pointer and a handful of props, Mallett turned the hall into his classroom. He talked about the Albert Einstein equations that suggest time travel is possible, and how the untimely death of Mallett's own father inspired him to prove Einstein was right.

Then, step by step, Mallett walked his captivated audience through his plan for creating a wormhole in a laboratory setting so he can send a neutron into a time warp.

[...]

A coincidence? Do you really think so?

Memo to superbeings of the distant future: If you've located an ancient time machine bequeathed to us by friendly aliens and will be bringing ancient celebrities to the party (Ezra, Plato, Julius Caesar, Jesus, Paul, etc.) and you need an interpreter -- well, look me up.

UPDATE (3 May): Joe Cathey comments. The wormhole method sounds promising, but let's not neglect the Tipler cylinder either. And Professor Mallett seems to be following an entirely different approach. I'm not picky; whatever works is fine with me.

Incidentally, National Public Radio is now covering the Time Traveler Convention.

UPDATE (4 May): Helenann Hartley comments. Also the Time Traveler Convention has now been covered by Yahoo!news. Sure makes me wish I still lived in Cambridge.

UPDATE (7 May): More here.

UPDATE (9 May): More here.

MORE ON THE OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI: The Independent has revived the old story of the variant reading 616 for the Number of the Beast in a Revelation manuscript from Oxyrhynchus, presenting it as a new discovery. The variant has been know for a long time, although the Oxyryhnchus papyrus was only published in 2000. The treatment in the Independent is lame: it neglects to explain why there are two readings (gematria variant-spellings of "Nero Caesar" -- not Caligula -- in Hebrew letters) and tries to be cute by interviewing a satanist high priest about the variant. But at least the got the title "Revelation" right.

(Via Rogue Classicism.)

I wish the Oxford people would publish a press release that corrects all the inaccurate information being spread around by the news media. "Further information" is now being promised "shortly" on their website.

UPDATE: Mark Goodacre comments.

ANGELS IN THE NEWS. While we're on New Age subjects, according to the London Times it seems that Metatron and his archangel colleagues are "co-ordinating" a "World Angel Day" in Kensington:

What is it about angels? [Diana] Cooper, 64, says that she first encountered her supernatural saviours in 1982 when she hit a black period of divorce and depression. She called out for help, waited, and found herself in the company of a �being of light� who showed her how her new future would map out. �I started off as a healer and worked with spirit guides, which operate on a lower frequency than angels. Then, years later, the angels asked me to help to introduce them to the people of the world.�

Guided by higher spirits (naturally), Cooper wrote her first book, A Little Light on Angels (Findhorn Press, �6.95), detailing people�s angelic encounters, which was published in 1996. �The response started building quite quickly,� she says. �When I first put a chat room on my website, 100 people visited. Now it is thousands a day. Her work continues to diversify: she is co-hosting a World Angel Day in October at Kensington�s Great Hall (price �69 a ticket; 020-7361 2220), though she is only an earthly organiser. It is co-ordinated by the archangels Metatron, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel, and the symphonies of all angels, she says.

For the story of Metatron (the former patriarch Enoch, now promoted to the status of the "Little YHWH"), go here.

THE GODDESS RETURNS: The Jerusalem Post has a long article on the revival of goddess worship in modern Israel.

The feminine divine
By MEREDITH PRICE

The scent of sage fills the air as a light breeze blows through the leaves of nearby palm trees. Somewhere in the distance, a tractor is plowing a field. The chirp of an occasional bird breaks the calm hush for a moment. A bag of instruments is passed around, and a shrine with Neolithic goddess figurines, babushkas, photographs of goddess statues, and a ceramic plate painted with a spiral design is quietly constructed.

Thirteen Israeli men and women are seated in a circle around the artifacts. The earth below is the archeological site of a civilization over 8,000 years old. A few hundred meters away, one of the oldest known wells, now-covered, marks the spot where the people of the Yarmukian society once came to fill buckets of fresh water for pottery, drinking and bathing.

We are in Kibbutz Sha'ar Hagolan, south of Lake Kinneret, but the modern blessing ceremony some Israeli women have invented might have origins much older than was previously imagined.

They have chosen this place to conduct their ritual because of the goddess figurines recently found in this area. Iris Yotvat, one of the leaders of the goddess spirituality movement in Israel and a former movie star, leads the group in songs and prayers. As a chalice filled with water passes from hand to hand, each person places a few drops on their skin and thanks Mother Earth for her blessings. Some of the women remind everyone that we were not here first, and we will not be here last. A thin bundle of smoking sage, tightly bound with white string, is passed around for meditation and cleansing.

[...]

TALMUD QUOTATION? In a ceremony honoring Paul Wolfowitz as he left the Pentagon to become president of the World Bank, Donald Rumsfeld is reported by the A.P. to have said the following:

"The threatened, the oppressed and the persecuted around the world must know in their hearts that they had a friend in Paul Wolfowitz," Rumsfeld said. "You are one of those rare people who, as the Talmud puts it, would rather light candles than curse the darkness."

Is this really in the Talmud? According to this Phrase Finder webside, it's an old Chinese proverb. The entry notes a use by Adlai Stevenson in 1962, with reference to Eleanor Roosevelt. The first time I recall seeing it was in a Peanuts cartoon featuring Linus walking around outside at night with a candle and Lucy standing there shouting "You stupid darkness!"

GRAVE CONFLICT IN JERUSALEM UPDATE:

Construction halted on Highway 6
By JPOST.COM STAFF

Construction work on Road 6 in the north will be stopped for the duration of next week after the Orthodox community protested the route of a section they claim will damage an ancient gravesite.

[...]

As noted earlier, archaeologists deny that the construction is any threat to the ancient graves.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE A PARODY, but it isn't:

Professor acts out drama in ancient, religious studies

By Christine Cole | Special to the [Orlando] Sentinel
Posted April 29, 2005

MOUNT DORA -- For Kenneth Hanson, history is as full of adventure as any Indiana Jones movie.

That is the way he teaches the subject at the University of Central Florida, where he is assistant professor of Judaic studies.

To turn scholarship into accessible drama, he recently created a theatrical work, Jerusalem Jones: Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which he plays a swashbuckling character reminiscent of the part made famous by Harrison Ford.

He and a four-piece band will perform the originally scored production at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Gematria 888 Center.

Hanson also plays a cast of colorful characters, including the Bedouin shepherd boy who in 1947 went into a cave in the cliffs near the Dead Sea and found the first of what would become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[...]

Here is Kenneth Jones's faculty entry on the University of Central Florida website and here is one of his web pages, which mentions this show. And it seems there actually is a Gematria 888 Center.

The world is full of surprises.

AUT ISRAEL-BOYCOTT UPDATE: The New York Academy of Sciences has condemned the boycott and called for it to be canceled:

New York Academy of Sciences Issues Statement on Boycott of Israeli Universities by British Group

NEW YORK, April 28 (AScribe Newswire) -- The Committee on Human Rights of Scientists of the New York Academy of Sciences has released the text of a letter to the Association of University Teachers (AUT) of the United Kingdom calling upon the organization to "rescind and withdraw its call for a boycott of Israeli universities, passed by AUT delegates on April 20, 2005."

The letter, from Joseph Birman, the chair of the Academy's committee, notes that the call for boycott "contradicts the most basic tenets of academic life which have been repeatedly reaffirmed by international bodies, including those to which the United Kingdom adheres." The letter is addressed to Angela Roger, president of AUT, and Sally Hunt, the association's general secretary.

The full text of the Academy letter follows.

- - - -

April 26, 2005

Dear President Roger:

The Committee on Human Rights of Scientists of the New York Academy of Sciences urgently calls upon the Association of University Teachers (AUT) of the United Kingdom to rescind and withdraw its call for a boycott of Israeli universities, passed by the delegates on 20 April 2005. This call for boycott contradicts the most basic tenets of academic life which have been repeatedly reaffirmed by international bodies including those to which the United Kingdom adheres.

[...]

Too true, and how embarrassing that this even needs to be said.

Also, Israel's Diaspora Affairs Minister Natan Sharansky has written to the British Government asking them to dissociate themselves from the boycott. I certain hope they do.

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.