Saturday, July 02, 2005
THE AFTERLIFE OF THE TEMPLE: Here's an interview with Simon Goldhill, author of The Temple of Jerusalem (Wonders of the World; Harvard University Press, 2005):
There are also some cool pictures of artistic representations of the Temple throughout the ages.
I hope the last paragraph of the interview is wrong.
Construction Site
A history of the Second Temple unearths an archaeology of fantasy and longing.
INTERVIEW BY Franklin Toker
Built by Herod 20 years before the Common Era, the Second Temple�a magnificent recreation of an earlier structure built by King Solomon and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.E.�stood in Jerusalem for less than a century. Despite its short life, the legacy of Herod's effort has lasted millennia, bolstered by the discovery of archaeological relics and by continuing discussions of its grandeur that date back to Josephus's histories, written in the first century C.E.. In The Temple of Jerusalem, Simon Goldhill, a fellow of King's College, Cambridge University, and author of Foucault's Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality, examines the Temple's endurance as an object of religious and political fascination. He discusses this architectural marvel and his book, part of Harvard University Press's Wonders of the World series, with Franklin Toker.
[...]
There are also some cool pictures of artistic representations of the Temple throughout the ages.
I hope the last paragraph of the interview is wrong.
Friday, July 01, 2005
"HOW MANY CONSONANTS DID HEBREW HAVE? This is a trick question." -- Seth Sanders at Serving the Word.
HISTORY CARNIVAL XI is up at the Siris blog. Both PaleoJudaica and Ralph the Sacred River are featured.
THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ENOCH SEMINAR have been published by Eerdmans:
Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection
Gabriele Boccaccini (editor)
$40.00 Paperback
In stock (Usually ships within 3 business days)
472 pages; dimensions (in inches): 6.25 x 9.25; 2005
ISBN: 0-8028-2878-7
The rediscovery of Enochic Judaism as an ancient movement of dissent within Second Temple Judaism, a movement centered on neither temple nor torah, is a major achievement of contemporary research. After being marginalized, ancient Enoch texts have reemerged as a significant component of the Dead Sea Scrolls library unearthed at Qumran.
Enoch and Qumran Origins is the first comprehensive treatment of the complex and forgotten relations between the Qumran community and the Jewish group behind the pseudepigraphal literature of Enoch. The contributors demonstrate that the roots of the Qumran community are to be found in the tradition of the Enoch group rather than that of the Jerusalem priesthood.
Framed by Gabriele Boccaccini�s introduction and James Charlesworth�s conclusion, this book examines the hypotheses of five particularly eminent scholars, resulting in an engaging and substantive discussion among forty-seven specialists from nine countries. The exceptional array of essays from leading international scholars in Second Temple Judaism and Christian origins makes Enoch and Qumran Origins a sine qua non for serious students of this period.
Contributors:
William Adler
Matthias Albani
Jeff S. Anderson
Albert I. Baumgarten
Andreas Bedenbender
Stefan Beyerle
Gabriele Boccaccini
James H. Charlesworth
John J. Collins
Michael A. Daise
James R. Davila
Torleif Elgvin
Mark A. Elliott
Hanan Eshel
Peter W. Flint
Ida Fr�hlich
Florentino Garc�a Mart�nez
Claudio Gianotto
Lester L. Grabbe
Ithamar Gruenwald
Charlotte Hempel
Matthias Henze
Martha Himmelfarb
Michael A. Knibb
Klaus Koch
Helge S. Kvanvig
Armin Lange
Erik W. Larson
Timothy H. Lim
Corrado Martone
George W. E. Nickelsburg
Pierluigi Piovanelli
�mile Puech
Annette Yoshiko Reed
John C. Reeves
Henry W. Morisada Rietz
Paolo Sacchi
Lawrence H. Schiffman
Loren T. Stuckenbruck
David W. Suter
Shemaryahu Talmon
Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar
Patrick Tiller
Liliana Rosso Ubigli
James C. VanderKam
Jacques van Ruiten
Benjamin G. Wright III
MESSIANIC WOES FOR THE LUBAVITCHERS:
For more on this movement see here and here.
This passage from the article is interesting from a history of religions perspective:
Messianic resurrection appearances in the twenty-first century.
Lubavitch�s Open Wound At 770
Destroyed plaque honoring rebbe points to new round in battle over messianism and control of movement.
Debra Nussbaum Cohen - Staff Writer (Jewish World)
If ever an architectural feature of a building�s exterior stood as a symbol for the life within, then the defaced plaque honoring the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson at Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heigh ts is it.
Like the jagged fault line that eventually brings down the mansion in the famous Edgar Allan Poe story �Fall of the House of Usher,� the cornerstone � which has been vandalized many times over the past few months and was violently ripped out this week � has come to represent a movement bitterly split by those who believe Rabbi Schneerson is the messiah and those who do not.
The plaque was put up seven years ago by the anti-messianists and bears the inscription �of blessed memory� after the rebbe�s name, referring to him in past tense.
Apparently that was too much to bear for some messianists who began defacing it as soon as it was set in place.
[...]
For more on this movement see here and here.
This passage from the article is interesting from a history of religions perspective:
�I describe the rebbe as alive,� Rabbi Sokolovsky said in an interview. �The body of moshiach does not die, even if it appears to be so. A tzaddik [righteous person] can materialize himself in the world if he needs to. �Concealment does not mean that the rebbe has an invisible body,� he said. �It has to do with people�s readiness to see it. It�s people�s perception.�
Rabbi Sokolovsky said he has met people who have seen the rebbe in person since he died.
Messianic resurrection appearances in the twenty-first century.
NEPHILIM IN THE NEWS: Here's a review of The Fallen Ones a made-for-TV movies that was shown on the Sci-Fi Channel in May. Excerpt:
The reviewer, Stephanie Star Smith, seems to think this one is a better-than-usual horror movie, "a notch or six above the formulaic." Plus, there are good explosions.
Given that it doesn't pretend to be real, it gets more points in my book than this.
The Fallen Ones
Horror films, just like any film genre, seem to go through periods of topic convergence. Recently we've seen a resurgence of the zombie film, as well as animals-eating-people movies; a couple of years ago there was a slew of demonic possession and substantiation flicks; before that there was a slasher renaissance; and right around the millennium there were a number of supernaturally-caused apocalypse movies.
Another popular subject of late has been fallen angels, either with or without an accompanying war amongst the heavenly host. Some of these have focused, wholly or in part, on nephilim, which are the offspring of angels and human women and were, according to some of the apocrypha, giants. The Fallen Ones, another from the Sci-Fi Originals stable, follows the giant theory of nephilim, and also throws in an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it gambit for good measure.
The reviewer, Stephanie Star Smith, seems to think this one is a better-than-usual horror movie, "a notch or six above the formulaic." Plus, there are good explosions.
Given that it doesn't pretend to be real, it gets more points in my book than this.
SOME GOOD NEWS on the Israeli/Palestinian archaeology front. The US Department of State has posted the following article:
More please!
Palestinian, Israeli Scholarly Teams Preserve Shared Heritage Sites
Local communities encouraged to participate in site protection
By David C. Walsh
Washington File Special Correspondent
Washington -- Since 2001, two teams of scholars and scientists, one based in Israel, the other in the Palestinian territories, have worked on a cooperative project to preserve historical sites that are important to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions.
The project, called the People to People Exchange Program, was funded by a $400,000 Department of State grant as an outgrowth of the U.S.-brokered Wye River Accords, signed by Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland in 1998.
The Israeli team, from the Zinman Institute of Archaelogy at the University of Haifa, focuses on the historic and religious structures in Akko, northern Israel, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities. The Israeli team is led by Ann E. Killebrew of Haifa University. She is assisted by Mina Evron, head of the Zinman Institute and Wye Project co-coordinator. Participants on the Israeli team include Israeli Jews, Israeli Muslims, Israeli Christians, Germans and other Europeans, and Americans.
The Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE) team focuses on heritage initiatives in two important biblical sites in the West Bank: Beitin (old Bethel) and el Jib (old Gibeon). Team leader Adel Yahyeh, an archaeologist and PACE�s director, said, �Both were in a fragile state, threatened by roiling political currents and largely neglected.�
Rehabilitation was achieved �in close cooperation with the people of the two villages,� he said. The Palestinian cadre also was a diverse group, with Germans, Italian-Americans, and various university grad students and interns.
[...]
More please!
THE DISCOVERY OF THE CHESTER BEATTY PAPYRI: On the Textual Criticism list, Wieland Willker has posted a contemporary account of the discovery of these New Testament and Septuagint manuscripts in Egypt in the 1930s.
ELECTRONIC GREEK PHILO: Daniel Foster and Rick Brannan have e-mailed to alert me that Logos Software is offering the Greek text of Philo in a searchable electronic text. There's a special deal for pre-publication orders. Details here. The announcement begins:
Imagine being able to ask questions of a first-century Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, a contemporary of Jesus and Paul who worked to understand Mosaic thought in light of Greek ideals. What kinds of questions would you ask to better understand the theology, interpretive strategies, and historical context of the biblical writers, who often wrestled with the same task?
The writings of Philo Judaeus, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, between approximately 20 B.C. and A.D. 40, provide a fascinating glimpse into the world of Jesus and the Apostles. In fact, Philo�s works are a goldmine of information on Jewish exegetical methods, the worldview of the apostles, and theological matters of great importance for Christianity.
We are pleased to bring you the first electronic edition of the complete works of Philo in Greek, morphologically tagged. This resource is built upon the database compiled by the Norwegian "Philo Concordance Project," which published the first complete, printed concordance of Philo in 2000. The Logos Bible Software resource includes the complete works of Philo, in Greek, drawn from the same four text editions used to compile the concordance (Cohn & Wendland, Colson, Petit, and Paramelle). The lemmatization and morphology are also supplied by the Philo Concordance Project scholars.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
MORE ON THE RUSSIAN "INVESTIGATION" of Jewish literature as incitement to religious hatred. This week's Forward has a different version of the story:
My emphasis. I think there must be a mix-up here. The earlier articles said that the text in question was the Kitzar Shulhan Arukh, which is a nineteenth-century compendium of material from the Shulhan Arukh. The point remains the same, but someone is confused about which document was being accused.
After World Pressure, Russia Abandons Investigation Denounced as 'Blood Libel'
By E.B. solomont
July 1, 2005
Following an international outcry, state prosecutors in Moscow have abandoned an investigation into claims that a centuries-old code of Jewish law contains racist and anti-Russian material.
Prosecutors had been investigating the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations of Russia because of its role in publishing and distributing Russian translations of the Shulchan Aruch, the 16th-century code written by Rabbi Joseph Caro. The organization's leader, Rabbi Zinovy Kogan, was questioned last week as part of an investigation reportedly launched at the behest of Russian nationalists, who said the code incited ethnic hatred and racism.
"It's not only a story about the Shulchan Aruch," Kogan told the Forward. "This conflict about the book is an attack on Judaism in Russia... an attack on the right of Jews to be Jews in Russia."
[...]
My emphasis. I think there must be a mix-up here. The earlier articles said that the text in question was the Kitzar Shulhan Arukh, which is a nineteenth-century compendium of material from the Shulhan Arukh. The point remains the same, but someone is confused about which document was being accused.
ANOTHER SARNA OBITUARY, this one by his son, Jonathan, in the Forward:
Biblical Scholar Nahum Sarna, 'Understanding Genesis' Author
By Jonathan D. Sarna
July 1, 2005
When I picture my father, my abba, renowned biblical scholar and translator Nahum Sarna, I inevitably picture him studying. His favorite room, by far, was his book-lined study: There he sat, morning, noon and long past nightfall, reading, writing and teaching.
[...]
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
BLOG WATCH: Ed Cook critiques one of Maurice Casey's Aramaic retroversions over at Ralph, and at Mystical Politics Rebecca Lesses alerts us to some modern-day Jewish amulets written by a soferet -- a female Jewish scribe. Cool.
PHILIP DAVIES: "DO WE NEED BIBLICAL SCHOLARS?" An interesting essay on the Bible and Intepretation website.
Personally, I think Philip is treating the problem too much as though it applies only to biblical studies. Educating university administrators and the public is something all academics have to do, and frequently this involves clearing up common misunderstandings, whatever the field. My friends who are physicists, biologists, classicists, economists, etc. have to do this too. Granted, biblical studies has its own set of problems, but so do other fields. And in general nonspecialists (usually including me!) have only the vaguest idea of what these specialists do and why it matters, and often what nonspecialists think that they (we) know about an academic field is full of misconceptions. This is the price we pay for the necessity of narrow specializations. Indeed, specialists within a field often have little understanding of what some other specialists in the same general field are doing. I think it's to the credit of the public (and university administrators) that they understand the value of supporting what we do, even if they don't understand exactly what it is. And, of course, that makes it all the more crucial that we explain the main points to them in nontechnical language that makes sense to them.
In blogs, for instance.
UPDATE: Helenann Hartley corrects a quotation in the essay.
Personally, I think Philip is treating the problem too much as though it applies only to biblical studies. Educating university administrators and the public is something all academics have to do, and frequently this involves clearing up common misunderstandings, whatever the field. My friends who are physicists, biologists, classicists, economists, etc. have to do this too. Granted, biblical studies has its own set of problems, but so do other fields. And in general nonspecialists (usually including me!) have only the vaguest idea of what these specialists do and why it matters, and often what nonspecialists think that they (we) know about an academic field is full of misconceptions. This is the price we pay for the necessity of narrow specializations. Indeed, specialists within a field often have little understanding of what some other specialists in the same general field are doing. I think it's to the credit of the public (and university administrators) that they understand the value of supporting what we do, even if they don't understand exactly what it is. And, of course, that makes it all the more crucial that we explain the main points to them in nontechnical language that makes sense to them.
In blogs, for instance.
UPDATE: Helenann Hartley corrects a quotation in the essay.
CORRECTIONS TO NYT SARNA OBITUARY: A post on the H-JUDAIC list by Ellen Frankel, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the Jewish Publication Society, includes the following:
On June 25, The New York Times ran an obituary for Nahum Sarna that contained several errors. Both Jonathan Sarna and I alerted the writer, Wolfgang Saxon, that Dr. Sarna served as Chair of the JPS Committee for the Translation of Kethuvim, the Writings, not the Torah; and that the JPS book, JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, was written by Jonathan, not Nahum Sarna. The Times has promised to run a correction.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
THE KITZUR SHULHAN ARUKH -- INCITEMENT TO RELIGIOUS HATRED? Here's an example of what laws against incitement to religious hatred lead to:
The Kitzur Shulhan Arukh is a nineteenth-century compendium from the centrally important sixteenth-century law code the Shulhan Arukh. I've not read it, but evidently it has highly stringent tendencies and is not everyone's cup of tea. But attempting to ban it is blatant anti-Semitism. This is the sort of mess we could end up in here in Britain if the law against inciting religious hatred is passed.
UPDATE: Ha'aretz sums the story up: "A dark reminder of the Dark Ages."
UPDATE (29 June): Apparently the investigation has been dropped. This time. But the fact that there had to be an investigation at all -- the fact that a ridiculous and openly anti-Semitic charge like this was taken that seriously -- shows why this sort of law should never be on the books.
Russia examines Jewish religious texts
MARIA DANILOVA
Associated Press
MOSCOW - Prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether a Russian translation of an ancient Jewish religious text incites national and religious hatred, a move condemned by many Jewish organizations as anti-Semitic.
Moscow district prosecutors summoned Rabbi Zinovy Kogan for questioning last week as part of a probe into whether the Russian translation of Kitsur Shulhan Arukh, a code of ancient Jewish religious laws, provokes religious hatred, Kogan told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday.
The investigation was meant to review a ruling last month by Moscow prosecutors that the text did not inspire hatred and a criminal case was not warranted, said Kogan, chairman of the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations who published the translated text.
[...]
The Kitzur Shulhan Arukh is a nineteenth-century compendium from the centrally important sixteenth-century law code the Shulhan Arukh. I've not read it, but evidently it has highly stringent tendencies and is not everyone's cup of tea. But attempting to ban it is blatant anti-Semitism. This is the sort of mess we could end up in here in Britain if the law against inciting religious hatred is passed.
UPDATE: Ha'aretz sums the story up: "A dark reminder of the Dark Ages."
UPDATE (29 June): Apparently the investigation has been dropped. This time. But the fact that there had to be an investigation at all -- the fact that a ridiculous and openly anti-Semitic charge like this was taken that seriously -- shows why this sort of law should never be on the books.
Russian prosecutors drop investigation into ancient Jewish text
By Henry Meyer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
3:38 p.m. June 28, 2005
MOSCOW � Prosecutors dropped an inquiry Tuesday into whether a Russian translation of an ancient Jewish text incites national and religious hatred � a decision that drew praise from Russia's chief rabbi and Israel's vice premier.
Rabbi Berel Lazar said he had contacted prosecutors to explain that the text was not aimed at non-Jews and to complain that officials seeking the probe had "anti-Semitic sentiments."
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"I'm happy that this case has been dropped," Lazar told The Associated Press, adding that he'd been personally informed of the decision by the Moscow prosecutor's office.
The prosecutor's office declined comment. That office was responsible for the investigation into whether the Russian translation of Kitsur Shulhan Arukh, a code of ancient Jewish religious laws, provokes religious hatred.
[...]
Monday, June 27, 2005
SBL BLOGGING: Jeffery Hodges and Tim Bulkeley are in Singapore, blogging the International Society of Biblical Literature conference. Tim has discovered my principle that "a paper handout doesn't crash and have to be rebooted just as you're supposed to be starting your presentation." Remember, PowerPoint is evil!
I hope they get to see those Dead Sea Scrolls at the Vatican exhibit (see immediately preceding post).
UPDATE (28 June): Mark Cheesman is there too and is posting on Deinde (as noted by Michael Pahl).
I hope they get to see those Dead Sea Scrolls at the Vatican exhibit (see immediately preceding post).
UPDATE (28 June): Mark Cheesman is there too and is posting on Deinde (as noted by Michael Pahl).
DEAD SEA SCROLLS IN SINGAPORE UPDATE: Reader Coleman Yee e-mails:
Interesting. Now the question is, how is the Vatican connected with the fragments?
I just came back from the museum exhibition and am able to confirm that they do have the 2 tiny DSS fragments. The info in the g-Megillot list is more or less accurate, except that the first fragment is not actually from Daniel, but the Hebrew word found in the fragment (described in g-Megillot) can only be found in Daniel 11:36. According to the exhibition catalog, "it is possible to imagine that the fragment belongs to a non-biblical book..."
Interesting. Now the question is, how is the Vatican connected with the fragments?
ARMENIAN LANGUAGE RESOURCES: Rick Brannan has the low-down over at Ricoblog. Ancient Armenian was an important translation language not only for the New Testament, but also for Philo of Alexandria (some of whose works survive only in Armenian) and for some Old Testament pseudepigrapha.
Bet you didn't know that there was an Armeniapedia.
Bet you didn't know that there was an Armeniapedia.
ON INCITING RELIGIOUS HATRED: The bill to make illegal the incitement of religious hatred in Britain passed its second reading in the House of Commons last Tuesday. It now "goes to committee" for further review and then to the House of Lords. You can read the British Government's case for it here.
This is what the bill is about, according to the Goverment website FAQ:
Here are a couple of passages from this FAQ that should be underlined:
And this:
There are some points about this proposed law which I would like to make. I'm not the first to make any of them, but they are worth belaboring.
First, there is no need for it. There are already laws that protect people from religious persecution (i.e., violence against one's person or property, or threats of or incitement of others to violence). People do not need to be protected from having someone hate their religion or express that hatred in words that fall short of threat of or incitement to violence. Sticks and stones, etc.
Second, even if this law results in only a few prosecutions (and I'll believe that when I see it), it will have a chilling effect on free speech. People will censor themselves when talking about religion, which is not good. It will push actual religious hatred underground without diminishing it, and at the same time will stifle legitimate debate about religious issues. In both cases, problems that might benefit from open discussion will fester rather than having a chance to come to any resolution.
Third, ultimately the legislation assumes, indeed requires, the goodwill of the government. The term "religion" is explicitly not defined, and probably couldn't be defined for a purpose like this. That means there's never any way to be quite sure what the law is about. The Attorney General is given tremendous latitude, and therefore tremendous power, to interpret this law, since no one actually knows what it means. It may be that this power will be used wisely and justly. But it may not be, even in the short term. Once the government has the power, it can do whatever it wants with it, whatever promises it may have made. It is not unheard-of for politicians to break their promises. And in the long run, there is serious danger that mission creep and growing distance from its original context will lead to this law being misused to criminalize legitimate free speech.
There is a larger problem here that should be mentioned: the danger of "positive rights." The point of the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution is to lay out a broad range of areas in which the government does not have the right to interfere in the life of the individual. These are "negative rights" and they are the foundation of any free society. Positive rights, that is rights to particular things which the government has to enforce, are necessary in some cases (see above for examples), but are carry serious risks of abuse and need to be strictly circumscribed. The "rights" to, say, education or "access to placement services" or -- the issue in question here -- freedom from hatred being directed toward your religion by other citizens (again, short of violence or threat of/incitement to violence) increase the power of government to interfere with individuals and the last in particular increases it in an open-ended, unpredictable and uncontrollable way. The preoccupation with positive rights is a central failing of EU legislation and is one of the problems with the (now hopefully defunct) European Constitution and one of the reasons it was the size of a telephone directory.
Obviously, this legislation against inciting religious hatred could have profound implications for academics who specialize in religion and for bloggers who write about it. If the law passes, it can scarcely be doubted that there will be people who test it by trying to bring charges against others even on specious or frivolous grounds, and it is scant comfort that the Sword of Damocles will be restrained only by the thread of the Attorney General's goodwill and good sense.
This is no way to govern. We can only hope that the mounting backlash against this bill will stop it before it is made into law.
UPDATE: Greetings Daily Dish readers. While you're here, please have a look at the "Memorable PaleoJudaica Posts" link and my recent article "Assimilated to the Blogosphere: Blogging Ancient Judaism."
UPDATE (28 June): Here's a concrete example of what such laws lead to.
UPDATE (3 July): Welcome also to readers of Britblog #20.
This is what the bill is about, according to the Goverment website FAQ:
* The Government is extending protection to prevent hatred being stirred up against people targeted because of their religious beliefs, or lack of religious beliefs, as well as people targeted because of their race.
* This is being done through the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Bill, by expanding the existing criminal offences of incitement to racial hatred contained in the Public Order Act 1986.
* The provisions make it an offence for a person to knowingly use threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behaviour with the intention or likelihood that they will stir up hatred against a group of people based on their religious beliefs.
* It is about protecting people who might be the object of someone else�s hatred because of their religion; not about protecting religion itself.
Here are a couple of passages from this FAQ that should be underlined:
In keeping with similar legislation, the proposals do not define the meaning of religion. �Religious hatred� is defined as �hatred against a group of people defined by their religious beliefs or lack of religious belief�. Explanatory notes have been published which provide a non-exhaustive list of widely practised religions and clearly explain that the protection also covers people identified with a particular branch of a religion. They also stress that the protection of the offence covers Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics. When the circumstances are unclear, the courts will decide whether a particular group of people is protected, in the wider context of the criminal behaviour being considered. If the courts ruled that a new religious movement qualified as a religion for the purposes of the new offence, that would not prevent criticism of the practices of that movement.
And this:
The proposed and existing offences both carry a high threshold in order to protect freedom of speech. Words, behaviour or material used must be threatening, abusive or insulting and must either be intended to or likely to stir up hatred. The hatred must be aimed at people who are members of that group, not ideologies. Hatred is a strong term; which goes beyond ridicule, prejudice, dislike, contempt, anger or offence. A further safeguard in the legislation is that a person who does not intend to stir up hatred is not guilty of an offence if they did not know that their words, behaviour, written material, recording or programmes were threatening, abusive or insulting. Furthermore the offences do not apply to anything that takes place in one�s own home. All prosecutions require the consent of the Attorney General, which will prevent the offences being misused through private prosecutions. We believe the wording of the offences, the public interest test applied by the CPS, and the veto of the Attorney General are sufficient to safeguard freedom of speech.
There are some points about this proposed law which I would like to make. I'm not the first to make any of them, but they are worth belaboring.
First, there is no need for it. There are already laws that protect people from religious persecution (i.e., violence against one's person or property, or threats of or incitement of others to violence). People do not need to be protected from having someone hate their religion or express that hatred in words that fall short of threat of or incitement to violence. Sticks and stones, etc.
Second, even if this law results in only a few prosecutions (and I'll believe that when I see it), it will have a chilling effect on free speech. People will censor themselves when talking about religion, which is not good. It will push actual religious hatred underground without diminishing it, and at the same time will stifle legitimate debate about religious issues. In both cases, problems that might benefit from open discussion will fester rather than having a chance to come to any resolution.
Third, ultimately the legislation assumes, indeed requires, the goodwill of the government. The term "religion" is explicitly not defined, and probably couldn't be defined for a purpose like this. That means there's never any way to be quite sure what the law is about. The Attorney General is given tremendous latitude, and therefore tremendous power, to interpret this law, since no one actually knows what it means. It may be that this power will be used wisely and justly. But it may not be, even in the short term. Once the government has the power, it can do whatever it wants with it, whatever promises it may have made. It is not unheard-of for politicians to break their promises. And in the long run, there is serious danger that mission creep and growing distance from its original context will lead to this law being misused to criminalize legitimate free speech.
There is a larger problem here that should be mentioned: the danger of "positive rights." The point of the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution is to lay out a broad range of areas in which the government does not have the right to interfere in the life of the individual. These are "negative rights" and they are the foundation of any free society. Positive rights, that is rights to particular things which the government has to enforce, are necessary in some cases (see above for examples), but are carry serious risks of abuse and need to be strictly circumscribed. The "rights" to, say, education or "access to placement services" or -- the issue in question here -- freedom from hatred being directed toward your religion by other citizens (again, short of violence or threat of/incitement to violence) increase the power of government to interfere with individuals and the last in particular increases it in an open-ended, unpredictable and uncontrollable way. The preoccupation with positive rights is a central failing of EU legislation and is one of the problems with the (now hopefully defunct) European Constitution and one of the reasons it was the size of a telephone directory.
Obviously, this legislation against inciting religious hatred could have profound implications for academics who specialize in religion and for bloggers who write about it. If the law passes, it can scarcely be doubted that there will be people who test it by trying to bring charges against others even on specious or frivolous grounds, and it is scant comfort that the Sword of Damocles will be restrained only by the thread of the Attorney General's goodwill and good sense.
This is no way to govern. We can only hope that the mounting backlash against this bill will stop it before it is made into law.
UPDATE: Greetings Daily Dish readers. While you're here, please have a look at the "Memorable PaleoJudaica Posts" link and my recent article "Assimilated to the Blogosphere: Blogging Ancient Judaism."
UPDATE (28 June): Here's a concrete example of what such laws lead to.
UPDATE (3 July): Welcome also to readers of Britblog #20.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
THE SUDOKU CRAZE leads the Jerusalem Post ("Crazy about numbers") into an excursus on numbers in Judaism, especially gematria.
Examples follow.
The craze (Sudoku, not gematria) has hit Britain too. My wife and son are working on Sudoku puzzles here even as I write.
The Jewish people are no newcomers to numbers, or even to doing mental gymnastics with them. We find numbers in ancient Jewish sources: Starting off in the Bible with the days of the creation, there are the dimensions of Noah's Ark, the numbers of its inhabitants, and so forth (or fifth). Indeed, a whole book of the Pentateuch is entitled "Numbers" in English, because of the census of the Jewish people in the desert. Numbers featuring in the Bible's text range from one to 100 million (Daniel 7:10).
The traditional Pessah Haggada is positively overflowing with numbers, and the climax of the Seder is the numerical riddle song, "Who Knows One?" Numbers mentioned in the Haggada text range from 1?2 to 10 9 (one billion, or one with nine zeros after it).
Numbers often feature in discussions in the Talmud, and of course there is the discipline of gematria, which uses the numerical values of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet (aleph = 1, kaf = 20, koof = 100) as a means of interpretation and commonly accords significance to concepts or phenomena which share the same numerical value. There are several weird and wonderful methods used in calculating gematrias, such as "small numbers," "filling," "great numbers" squares and factorials.
Examples follow.
The craze (Sudoku, not gematria) has hit Britain too. My wife and son are working on Sudoku puzzles here even as I write.
THOUGHTS ON ANTIQUITY is a newish blog by Chris Weimer, a student at the University of Memphis, Tennessee. The blurb for the blog is as follows:
See also his website called Neonostalgia.
This weblog focuses on Ancient Cultures of the world, from the Ancient Mesopotamian world to Egyptian pyramids, from Greek mysteries to Roman commissatio, from China to the Aztec, all things in antiquity.
See also his website called Neonostalgia.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
MORE ON MESSIANIC JEWS: David Klinghoffer published an essay on them a while ago in the Forward. It's been reprinted in various places, most recently (as noted by Michael Pahl) in Jewcy, evidently as a counterpoint to the essay by Rabbi Marc Howard Wilson on Jews for Jesus, discussed here. More evidence for the complexity of real-life religious identities.
Are we fair to messianic Jews?
Some criticize messianic Jews for blurring the distinction between Judaism and Christianity. But are they any different from those who blur traditional Jewish values and those of secular liberalism?
HEROD'S TEMPLE REBUILT ON ARTHUR'S SEAT?
Yeah, and imagine how much that project would go over its budget.
Herod the one about an MSPs' temple on top of Arthur's Seat?
IAN SWANSON
SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR (The Scotsman)
THE controversial �431 million Holyrood parliament could one day be replaced by a replica of Herod's Temple positioned on the top of Salisbury Crags, according to a new book.
Edinburgh-born architect and author Alan Balfour came up with the vision as he tried to imagine what the Scottish Parliament would be like in 500 years' time.
But Mr Balfour, now a professor of architecture in New York, is quick to make clear he is not advocating such a plan. But in a new book on Enric Miralles' Holyrood building, Creating a Scottish Parliament, he visualises how the parliament will develop over the next 50, 100 and 500 years.
By 2505, he says, the current parliament will be too small. And he goes on: "Imagine it sitting in the shadow of its successor - a new building, formed to the disgust of those who would wish to separate religion from politics, in the most theatrical reconstruction of Herod's Temple, spread across the crest of Salisbury Crags.
[...]
Yeah, and imagine how much that project would go over its budget.
THE PETRA EXHIBIT at Calvin College is profiled by the Northwest Indiana Times:
It looks pretty accurate, apart from the first line: I don't think Petra has existed for several millennia.
One Tank Trip: Grand Rapids, Mich
Travel back to a Middle East metropolis in Grand Rapids, Mich.
BY JANE AMMESON
Times Correspondent
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Saturday, June 25, 2005 1:04 AM CDT
Travel back several millenniums to "Petra: Lost City of Stone," an exhibit at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., about 2-1/2 hours northeast of Munster.
Petra, once a major Middle East metropolis carved out of red sandstone cliffs (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed here), stood at the crossroads of the silk and spice trade routes. Considered a major exhibit with 200 artifacts including a life-size bronze cast of a Roman goddess never displayed before, this is Petra's last stop in the U.S.
Petra is where the Nabataeans built temples, tombs, houses, altars and aqueducts and became one of the major metropolitan outposts of its time, home to some 20,000 people. During its prime, in the century or so before the birth of Christ, the city was considered the wealthiest and the Nabataean empire included parts of Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
[...]
It looks pretty accurate, apart from the first line: I don't think Petra has existed for several millennia.
A BIBLICAL GARDEN IN PENNSYLVANIA:
Biblical garden features plants used centuries ago
By Candy Williams
FOR THE [PITTSBURG] TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, June 25, 2005
The sweet smells of summer are a little sweeter this season at the Rodef Shalom Biblical Botanical Garden in Oakland.
From intense jasmine to the delicate scent of a rose, from the pungent leaves of oregano to the welcome aroma of the cinnamon tree's bark, spices and fragrances from biblical times to the present are the focus of an exhibit created by Irene Jacob, of Point Breeze, founding director and caretaker of the garden for 19 years.
Through plantings, programs and tours, her display welcomes visitors to a virtual journey through thousands of years of taste and smell. The exhibit opened June 1 and runs through Sept. 15.
Jacob has taken special care to identify plants, the country of origin and Bible verses in which they are mentioned on markers staked in the ground next to different species. ...
Friday, June 24, 2005
NAHUM SARNA has passed away. Jim West has some information. May Professor Sarna's memory be for a blessing.
UPDATE: Jim e-mails to note that Tyler Williams has some biographical and bibliographical information, as well as a photo, posted on his Codex blog.
UPDATE (25 June): The New York Times has posted an obituary:
UPDATE (29 June): for corrections to this obituary, see here.
UPDATE: Jim e-mails to note that Tyler Williams has some biographical and bibliographical information, as well as a photo, posted on his Codex blog.
UPDATE (25 June): The New York Times has posted an obituary:
Nahum Sarna, 82, a Translator of the Torah, Is Dead
By WOLFGANG SAXON
Published: June 25, 2005
Nahum Sarna, a biblical scholar who did notable translations of Scripture for modern readers, notably his work on the Jewish Publication Society's "Torah (New Translation)," died on Thursday at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 82, and a former resident of Newton, Mass.
[...]
UPDATE (29 June): for corrections to this obituary, see here.
SOME CRITICISMS OF THE INK AND BLOOD EXHIBITION, which opens today in Lexington, Kentucky:
In case you're not familiar with the somewhat acrimonious origin of the exhibit, this article summarizes it:
The first criticism is that the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments are not much to look at:
I believe this has been called the "burnt cornflake" look.
The second criticism is that the prominently featured "Marzeah Papyrus" may be a fake:
Over at Ralph, Ed Cook has also questioned the authenticity of the Marzeah Papyrus and has noted Rollston's reservations about it.
Bits and pieces of early Bible writings
SOME QUESTION EVANGELICAL UNDERTONES
By Sarah Vos
[LEXINGTON] HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER
Ink & Blood, an exhibit on the history of the Bible that opens here today, has been heavily promoted on radio and television by a former Miss America and touted by area churches.
In ads, Heather French Henry calls it the "most comprehensive museum exhibition ever on the Bible."
But some scholars say the exhibit has more of an evangelical Christian spin than a historical one, that its advertising of the pieces of Dead Sea Scrolls is misleading and that one of the exhibits, the Marzeah Papyrus, may be a modern forgery.
In case you're not familiar with the somewhat acrimonious origin of the exhibit, this article summarizes it:
Ink & Blood: Dead Sea Scrolls to the English Bible was organized by Dr. William Noah, a Nashville-area pulmonologist, and traces the evolution of the Bible from early writings to the Dead Sea Scrolls to translations into Latin, German, French, and, most importantly from the exhibit's point of view, English.
Noah, 44, pulled the exhibit together from private collections, including his own. He doesn't have any formal training in biblical studies, but he has studied on his own and traveled around the world to see important Bibles and other artifacts. He wrote the panels that explain the objects and had scholars in the field review them, he said.
Ink & Blood isn't Noah's first Bible-related exhibition. In Dallas and Akron, Ohio, Noah and Bruce Ferrini, an Ohio art collector, and Lee Biondi, a California antiquities expert, put together an exhibit under a company called HisStory LLC. That exhibit included Dead Sea Scroll fragments from Ferrini's private collection.
The partnership broke up, and HisStory filed for bankruptcy in February 2004. In a related lawsuit, Noah accused Ferrini of taking close to $400,000 of the Dallas exhibition's profits and not giving Noah some $28,000 from gift-shop sales of videotapes and books created by Noah.
Since the breakup of HisStory, Biondi has put together a competing traveling exhibition called The Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America. That exhibit was in Paducah earlier this year.
The first criticism is that the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments are not much to look at:
The pieces in the Lexington exhibit are small. They measure in centimeters, and the letters are no longer visible because time has blackened the animal skins they were written on. Some contain only a few letters from the scroll they were once a part of.
Weston Fields, executive director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, which helps coordinate Israeli Antiquity Authority-approved exhibitions of the scrolls, calls exhibits like Ink & Blood misleading.
"It's not really being honest with the public to advertise these tiny little things as a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit," Fields said, despite the fact that they are genuine.
I believe this has been called the "burnt cornflake" look.
The second criticism is that the prominently featured "Marzeah Papyrus" may be a fake:
But Christopher Rollston, a paleographer at the Emmanuel School of Religion in Tennessee, said there are hundreds of written documents from the period. The papyrus is significant because it talks about a Marzeah, an ancient ritual gathering that is mentioned twice in the Old Testament and in the literature of other cultures. Scholars don't know exactly what it is.
But, it's the writing, along with the papyrus's mysterious origins, that makes Rollston wonder if it isn't a fake. To him, it looks like a mixture of Aramaic, Hebrew, Moabite and Anamite.
"I think that the forger didn't really do his homework on scripts," Rollston said. "Because we never have this mixture of scripts in any other inscriptions."
In addition, the papyrus wasn't found in an archeological dig, which means scholars don't know where it came from or how it was discovered. It first appeared on the antiquities market sometime during the last 25 years. In that same period, several modern forgeries purported to be religious antiquities have appeared on the market.
Over at Ralph, Ed Cook has also questioned the authenticity of the Marzeah Papyrus and has noted Rollston's reservations about it.
PROSTITUTION IN ANTIQUITY: Ha'aretz ("Origins of the sex industry") summarizes the latest issue of the journal Zmanim, which issue is devoted to this subject. Excerpt:
Incidentally, the articles on "Prostitution" and "Prostitution (Cultic)" in the Anchor Bible Dictionary come to the same conclusion.
Mayer Gruber of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) reaches more solid conclusions in "Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Biblical World." He starts by exploring the many meanings of the Hebrew word "zona" in the Bible. Usually it means a woman who sells sex for money. But in some cases, the verb "zana" (whored) is synonymous with "na'af" (commited adultery) and refers to a married woman who sleeps with a man who is not her husband. The prophets used zona as a metaphor for a society that has abandoned the pursuit of decency and social justice. They compared the Israelites, who turned their back on God and embraced other gods, to a woman who has violated her marriage vows.
"The Torah, the prophets and rabbinic literature were critical of the profession," writes Gruber, but nowhere in these texts is there any allusion that prostitutes or those who availed themselves of their services were punished or deserving of punishment. Most surprising of all is Gruber's conclusion that there were no cult prostitutes in biblical times. "There is no evidence, either in the Bible or Ugaritic and Akkadian texts, of sex being part of any religious ritual," he stresses. "This is a myth which spread from book to book, very much like a computer virus."
Incidentally, the articles on "Prostitution" and "Prostitution (Cultic)" in the Anchor Bible Dictionary come to the same conclusion.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 124.2 (2005) has just been posted. Back issues are available for free, but you must log in as an SBL member to view the current issue. Here is the table of contents:
Exodus 31:12�17: The Sabbath according to H, or the Sabbath according to P and H?
SAUL M. OLYAN
The Ambidextrous Angel (Daniel 12:7 and Deuteronomy 32:40): Inner-biblical Exegesis and Textual Criticism in Counterpoint
EUGENE P. MCGARRY
On the Dating of Hebrew Sound Changes H > H and G > and Greek Translations (2 Esdras and Judith)
RICHARD C. STEINER
Defending the �Western Non-Interpolations�: The Case for an Anti-Separationist Tendenz in the Longer Alexandrian Readings
MICHAEL WADE MARTIN
The Character of the Lame Man in Acts 3�4
MIKEAL C. PARSONS
1 Corinthians 11:3�16: Spirit Possession and Authority in a Non-Pauline Interpolation
CHRISTOPHER MOUNT
The Last Battle of Hadadezer
STUART A. IRVINE
Book Reviews
Index
SILWAN HOUSING-DEMOLITION UPDATE:
(Via Bible and Interpretation News.)
J'lem offers compromise on Silwan demolitions
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)
The Jerusalem Municipality has proposed that Arab residents of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan present the city with an alternative housing plan to scores of illegal constructed homes in the area which had been slated for demolition, the city and residents
said Tuesday.
[...]
(Via Bible and Interpretation News.)
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
SERVING THE WORD is now a group blog with a somewhat wider agenda: not exclusively "posts on ancient Israel" and "narrow old topics (the shape of letters in 8th-6th century B.C.E. inscriptions)," but also "we (collectively, not royally) will begin to post irregularly on other topics, always keeping focused on the politics and mystery of language." I look forward to reading about those good old narrow topics and the broader new ones.
JEWS FOR JESUS: Michael Pahl points to an interesting article by a Rabbi Marc Howard Wilson on Jews for Jesus in Jewcy Magazine (formerly Jewsweek):
My interest here is sociological. The controversy over Jews for Jesus reflects in some ways the controversies between Jews, Jewish-Christians, and gentile Christians in the early centuries CE. I've been thinking about these conflicts for some time because of the implications they have for understanding the Old Testament pseudepigrapha. They show that there was not necessarily a hard and fast distinction between Jews and Christians in antiquity, but rather a continuum between Torah-observant Jews and non-observant gentile Christians, with both Jewish-Christians and gentile Judaizing Christians fitting somewhere on the continuum in-between. (Something of the same continuum exists today, as the Jews for Jesus movement demonstrates.) If we have an OT pseudepigraphon that contains both (Torah-observant) Jewish ideas and also Christian ideas, how can we tell (or can we tell) if it was written by an observant Jew and edited by a gentile Christian or written by a Jewish-Christian or a Judiazing gentile Christian? Often, we can't. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is the paradigmatic example of such a text. We know that the author(s) used Jewish sources (Aramaic Levi, Hebrew Naphtali) but we don't know what else they used or what they were making up themselves.
I discuss some of these issues in my online piece "Jewish Pseudepigrapha and Christian Apocrypha: (How) Can We Tell Them Apart?", in which I support Jonathan Z. Smith's "polythetic" approach as the most useful etic methodology for unraveling the problems. This 2002 conference paper is a short and now out-of-date summary of chapter 1 of my forthcoming book, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? You can read much more on the subject in the book when it comes out, I hope in the fall (shameless self-promotion alert). I don't discuss the Jews for Jesus movement in the paper or the chapter, but I would evaluate it polythetically as a borderline case, one which has some features of the category Judaism and accepts itself as belonging to the category, but which is rejected from the category by (I believe) all other groups who class themselves in the category. It's a nice example of how complicated religious movements and their interrelationships can get in the real world.
UPDATE (23 June): A reader writes to point out that Jews for Jesus is only one segment of the "Messianic Jews" movement, which movement comes in a wide variety of levels of observance and not all of whom proselytize Jews. Fair enough. I was using Jews for Jesus as a specifice example of an interesting point on the continuum, one of many such points between strictly Torah-observant Judaism and non-observant gentile Christianity. And a one-dimensional continuum is itself is a fairly simplistic way of conceptualizing the situation.
UPDATE (25 June): More here.
A deceptive name -- a deceptive assertion
Were they to make themselves known not as "Jews for Jesus," but as "Jews Who Have Chosen to Practice Gentile Christianity," the results might be equally lamentable, but the honesty would be refreshing.
My interest here is sociological. The controversy over Jews for Jesus reflects in some ways the controversies between Jews, Jewish-Christians, and gentile Christians in the early centuries CE. I've been thinking about these conflicts for some time because of the implications they have for understanding the Old Testament pseudepigrapha. They show that there was not necessarily a hard and fast distinction between Jews and Christians in antiquity, but rather a continuum between Torah-observant Jews and non-observant gentile Christians, with both Jewish-Christians and gentile Judaizing Christians fitting somewhere on the continuum in-between. (Something of the same continuum exists today, as the Jews for Jesus movement demonstrates.) If we have an OT pseudepigraphon that contains both (Torah-observant) Jewish ideas and also Christian ideas, how can we tell (or can we tell) if it was written by an observant Jew and edited by a gentile Christian or written by a Jewish-Christian or a Judiazing gentile Christian? Often, we can't. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is the paradigmatic example of such a text. We know that the author(s) used Jewish sources (Aramaic Levi, Hebrew Naphtali) but we don't know what else they used or what they were making up themselves.
I discuss some of these issues in my online piece "Jewish Pseudepigrapha and Christian Apocrypha: (How) Can We Tell Them Apart?", in which I support Jonathan Z. Smith's "polythetic" approach as the most useful etic methodology for unraveling the problems. This 2002 conference paper is a short and now out-of-date summary of chapter 1 of my forthcoming book, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? You can read much more on the subject in the book when it comes out, I hope in the fall (shameless self-promotion alert). I don't discuss the Jews for Jesus movement in the paper or the chapter, but I would evaluate it polythetically as a borderline case, one which has some features of the category Judaism and accepts itself as belonging to the category, but which is rejected from the category by (I believe) all other groups who class themselves in the category. It's a nice example of how complicated religious movements and their interrelationships can get in the real world.
UPDATE (23 June): A reader writes to point out that Jews for Jesus is only one segment of the "Messianic Jews" movement, which movement comes in a wide variety of levels of observance and not all of whom proselytize Jews. Fair enough. I was using Jews for Jesus as a specifice example of an interesting point on the continuum, one of many such points between strictly Torah-observant Judaism and non-observant gentile Christianity. And a one-dimensional continuum is itself is a fairly simplistic way of conceptualizing the situation.
UPDATE (25 June): More here.
"PETRA AND THE BIBLE." Philip Hammond publishes this essay on the Bible and Interpretation website. The biblical connections with Petra are mostly post-biblical. The reference to the ten thousand Edomites cast down from "the rock" is in 2 Chronicles 25:12.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
SITE LOOTING IN IRAQ: The good news is that site protection forces in Iraq are finally having an effect on the site looting. The bad news is that many of the already looted artifacts have not been showing up on the antiquities market and it's possible they may be held in storage for many years in the hope that ardor for recovering them will cool down. Meanwhile:
This, incidentally, is the first reference to looted Aramaic incantation bowls I can remember seeing.
Here's a photo of some recovered antiquities.
(Via Frances Deblauwe and Archaeology Magazine News.)
UPDATE: Michael van Rijn links to an article on the Iraq Museum website on Internet sales of Iraqi artifacts. It has photos of Aramaic incantation bowls for sale on EBay and elsewhere. At least one has been brought to the attention of the FBI for return to Iraq.
On the ground, archaeologist Abdal Amir Hamdani, in charge of antiquities for Dhi Qar province, home to some of Iraq's most famous archaeological sites, says his focus has shifted from looters to smugglers.
"I'm not an archaeologist. I'm a policeman," he says.
Hamdani uses what he calls a "hunting dog" -- a former looter turned paid informant -- who follows up on rumours and goes out with a digital camera and global positioning system (GPS) equipment to locate and mark smugglers' houses.
Italian carabinieri forces disguised as Bedouin then go with Hamdani to carry out often fruitful raids.
"This is the war within the war, the forgotten war," he says of his dangerous job.
Last October, eight Iraqi customs officers were found dead and their recently seized cargo of antiquities disappeared on the road to Baghdad.
Al-Fajir, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Hamdani's base in Nassiriyah, is rife with smugglers and dealers, he says, and 60 suspect homes in the small town of 10,000 have already been identified.
Hamdani shows photos of seized artifacts: Parthian glasswork, Sumerian statues and erotic images on temple tablets, hundreds of coins, gold jewellery and bowls inscribed in ancient Aramaic, some clumsily glued together, damaged forever.
This, incidentally, is the first reference to looted Aramaic incantation bowls I can remember seeing.
Here's a photo of some recovered antiquities.
(Via Frances Deblauwe and Archaeology Magazine News.)
UPDATE: Michael van Rijn links to an article on the Iraq Museum website on Internet sales of Iraqi artifacts. It has photos of Aramaic incantation bowls for sale on EBay and elsewhere. At least one has been brought to the attention of the FBI for return to Iraq.
Monday, June 20, 2005
UPDATE ON LATEST GOSPEL OF JUDAS ENTRY: The photo was of a codex of the Four Gospels, not the Gospel of Judas.
ANOTHER UPDATE (21 June): Matthew Hamilton e-mails:
I have noted Michael van Rijn's website on this subject earlier. And I'm about about to add an update to today's "Iraqi site looting" post with more from him (scroll up).
Also, go to Sunday's post on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Singapore for an update.
ANOTHER UPDATE (21 June): Matthew Hamilton e-mails:
1. check the Michel van Rijn website for photographs of the Gospel of Judas.
2. regarding the possibility of the Gospel of Judas being divided into parts or at least having stray leaves, the Gospel of Judas was apparently found with other MSS, including a codex of Exodus from the mid 4th century, with parts of the Exodus codex found in at least 4 collections.
I have noted Michael van Rijn's website on this subject earlier. And I'm about about to add an update to today's "Iraqi site looting" post with more from him (scroll up).
Also, go to Sunday's post on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Singapore for an update.
SOMETHING MISSING HERE?
True, and worth belaboring. But what about the Jews? For example, the Septuagint as the earliest translation of the Bible, Philo of Alexandria as an important Middle Platonist, the vibrant Jewish community in ancient Alexandria in general, etc. There's no mention of any of these in the article. I hope the project itself is more balanced. Does anyone know more?
Egypt's other pasts
By Sylvia Smith for CNN
Sunday, June 19, 2005 Posted: 1550 GMT (2350 HKT)
CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) -- Although Egypt stands at the crossroads of continents and civilizations, images of pyramids, The Sphinx and mummies dominate, eclipsing its other historic cultural and religious strands.
Now attempts are being made to redress the balance and to put the Pharaonic period in context through an ambitious renovation project in Cairo and a series of cultural events in the United States.
Tourism has flourished under the watchful eyes of the Pharaohs with the majority of foreign visitors being attracted by the prospect of viewing ancient tombs and temples.
But this rather blinkered view of Egypt's past has been criticized because it overlooks the county's debt to the heritage of the Greeks, Romans, Copts and Islam.
[...]
True, and worth belaboring. But what about the Jews? For example, the Septuagint as the earliest translation of the Bible, Philo of Alexandria as an important Middle Platonist, the vibrant Jewish community in ancient Alexandria in general, etc. There's no mention of any of these in the article. I hope the project itself is more balanced. Does anyone know more?
PROFESSOR MORDECHAI COGAN of the Hebrew University debates scriptural precedents with the anti-disengagement people.
It's interesting to note that the story in 1 Kings of Solomon's transfer of the cities to Tyre didn't go down well later on. The Chronicler changed it to "Huram" (Hiram) giving cities to Solomon (2 Chron 8:2: "Solomon rebuilt the cities which Huram had given to him, and settled the people of Israel in them").
From a historian's perspective, it's not at all clear how early any of the passages cited by Professor Cogan are. Nevertheless, if some want to argue against disengagement on the basis of the Bible, it's fair game for him to show that the biblical picture is more complicated.
King Solomon gave land away (Ha'aretz)
By Mordechai Cogan
In discussing the legality of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank, opponents of the move are enlisting verses from the Tanach - according to which God promised the Land of Canaan to the Israelites - and pointing to the fact that those same areas that are about to be evacuated are included in this promise. In addition, the rabbis of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip warn that din torah (a rabbinical legal decision) prohibits the handing over of parts of Eretz Israel to non-Jews.
[...]
King Solomon transferred "20 cities in the land of the Galilee" to Hiram King of Tyre (1 Kings 9:11-13), apparently in order to erase the debt he owed Hiram for his assistance in building the Temple. These were 20 cities with their land and their inhabitants - the entire Acre Valley up to Rosh Hanikra, which became the property of the Phoenicians. This was recorded in the Tanach without any criticism on the part of the writer of the chronicles of Solomon, and the explanation for that is clear: There is no prohibition whatsoever in the Torah against handing over territories to someone who is not a member of the Israelite nation. The ownership of territories in Eretz Israel by the Jewish nation has always reflected the political and military circumstances of the period.
And if we are discussing the boundaries of the Promised Land, we should take note of the southern boundary of that same detailed map in the Book of Numbers. The line stretches from "the outmost coast of the Dead Sea eastward. And your border shall turn from the Negev to Ma'aleh Aqrabbim and pass on to Zin, and its limits shall be from the south to Kadesh Barnea, and shall go on to Hazar-Addar, and pass on to Azmon. And the border shall turn about from Azmon to the wadi of Egypt, and its limits shall be at the sea." That means that most of the Negev south of Be'er Sheva is not included in the estate of our forefathers. Moses explained that this piece of land, which is called the Land of Edom, belongs to the children of Esau, and by God's order, "meddle not with them, for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as a foot's breadth; because I have given Mount Se'ir to Esau for a possession" (Deuteronomy 2:5).
[...]
It's interesting to note that the story in 1 Kings of Solomon's transfer of the cities to Tyre didn't go down well later on. The Chronicler changed it to "Huram" (Hiram) giving cities to Solomon (2 Chron 8:2: "Solomon rebuilt the cities which Huram had given to him, and settled the people of Israel in them").
From a historian's perspective, it's not at all clear how early any of the passages cited by Professor Cogan are. Nevertheless, if some want to argue against disengagement on the basis of the Bible, it's fair game for him to show that the biblical picture is more complicated.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
SOME DEAD SEA SCROLLS are coming to Singapore:
I didn't know that the Vatican owned any Dead Sea Scrolls. The article doesn't say which ones they are, and the link given for the exhibition website leads to an incomplete page. The exhibition runs from Saturday to October.
UPDATE (20 June): Stephen Goranson e-mails:
UPDATE (21 June): Reader Matthew Hamilton e-mails:
Interesting.
UPDATE (22 June): More on the g-Megillot list.
UPDATE (27 June): More from someone who visited the exhibit here.
UPDATE: (1 August): More here.
Treasures from Vatican Museum on show in Singapore
By Joanne Leow, Channel NewsAsia
SINGAPORE : The Asian Civilisations Museum is bringing in the largest ever Asian exhibition of art and artifacts from the Vatican.
This will be the most expensive project the local museum has ever mounted, with insurance costing a six figure sum.
From paintings by masters like Raphael and rare relics from the beginnings of Christianity, 140 objects from the Vatican and local churches will be on show at the one-off, specially curated for Singapore exhibition.
[...]
One of the extraordinary highlights of this exhibition is two fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
They are over 2,000 years old, right from the origins of Christianity.
[...]
I didn't know that the Vatican owned any Dead Sea Scrolls. The article doesn't say which ones they are, and the link given for the exhibition website leads to an incomplete page. The exhibition runs from Saturday to October.
UPDATE (20 June): Stephen Goranson e-mails:
According to a reference by Stephen Pfann in the DSS microfiche book to DSS: A Personal Account 1977 p.47 (by Trever, not Allegro as given there?--my copy is at home), the Vatican paid for some fragments in October 1951. Perhaps these are the same, now delivered? (Or perhaps the Vatican borrowed fragments from the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum?) I don't yet know which fragments.
UPDATE (21 June): Reader Matthew Hamilton e-mails:
Regarding the DSS on display in Singapore:
1. I checked through my records and can't find any mention of DSS actually held in the Vatican collections.
2. The purchase by the Vatican in the 1950s was cancelled by the Jordanian government when they cancelled all the foreign institution purchases in 1956.
3. I emailed Paolo Vian of Dipartimento Manoscritti, Biblioteca Vaticana, who replied
"Le posso confermare che in Biblioteca Vaticana non vi sono frammenti di rotoli del Mar Morto. In passato si � svolta presso la Vaticana una mostra sull'argomento ma con l'uso di riproduzioni e, comunque, di oggetti non appartenenti alla Biblioteca."
If my understanding of the Italian is correct, this is confirmation that there are no DSS in the Vatican collections, and Paolo Vian doesn't say anything about the Singapore exhibition.
4. I was able to get into the website of the Asian Civilization Museum, the website of the Empress Palace, and 3 other websites referring to the exhibit, but no mention is made of the DSS - but as these websites only present in the most glowing terms the art aspects of what is being displayed, I'm not surprisd by the lack of mention of fragments of the DSS (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence)
There are a range of possibilities - Vian is wrong (very unlikely), the web article by Joanne Leow is wrong (very likely, most web articles on the DSS are wrong), the DSS are only copies, the DSS are from another collection, and probably other possibilities.
Sorry if this doesn't clarify the situation.
Interesting.
UPDATE (22 June): More on the g-Megillot list.
UPDATE (27 June): More from someone who visited the exhibit here.
UPDATE: (1 August): More here.
CHALDO-ASSYRIAN WATCH:
The full text of the letter is included in the article. You will recall that both Churches use a dialect of Aramaic as their liturgical language.
Assyrian Coalition Sends Letter to Assyrian Patriarchs
Posted 06-18-2005 15:24:02 GMT 6-18-2005 20:24:2)
(AINA) -- A coalition of Assyrian (also known as Chaldean and Syriac) political and cultural organizations has sent a letter to two Assyrian Patriarchs, urging them to continue and expand the dialog between their churches. The Patriarch of the Chaldean Church of Babylon (a Roman Catholic uniate), Mar Emanuel III Dally and the Patriarch of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Dinkha IV, are both in the United States visiting their communities.
The letter urges the Patriarchs to continue the dialog begun in 1997 between Mar Dinkha IV and the former Chaldean Patriarch, Mar Bedawid, stressing the critical situation of the Assyrian community in Iraq, and the forthcoming Iraqi constitutional convention. The letter asks the Patriarch to work to ensure that Assyrians will be fundamentally recognized in Iraq's new constitution.
[...]
The full text of the letter is included in the article. You will recall that both Churches use a dialect of Aramaic as their liturgical language.
THE CODEX SINAITICUS CONSERVATION PROJECT is covered in a long Reuters India article. The discussion of Sinaiticus looks pretty accurate, although it's debatable whether it was one of Constantine's fifty manuscripts.
Here are some other interesting details about the use of the same technology on other manuscripts at St. Catherine's:
The technical name for a manuscript with two layers of writing on it is"palimpsest."
I wasn't aware that the project involved so many manuscripts.
FEATURE - Monks use hi-tech camera to read ancient manuscripts
Sun Jun 19, 2005 12:54 AM ET
By Tom Perry
MOUNT SINAI, Egypt (Reuters) - The world's oldest monastery plans to use hi-tech cameras to shed new light on ancient Christian texts preserved for centuries within its fortress walls in the Sinai Desert.
Saint Catherine's Monastery hopes the technology will allow a fuller understanding of some of the world's earliest Christian texts, including pages from the Codex Sinaiticus -- the oldest surviving bible in the world.
The technique, known as hyperspectral imaging, will use a camera to photograph the parchments at different wavelengths of light, highlighting faded texts obscured by time and later overwritings.
[...]
Here are some other interesting details about the use of the same technology on other manuscripts at St. Catherine's:
Hyperspectral imaging will be used to read another of the monastery's most significant manuscripts -- the Codex Syriacus.
The technology should allow scholars to read the faint remnants of a washed-out 5th-century text which lie underneath visible 8th-century writing. The underlying text in Syriac is a copy of a 2nd-century translation of the New Testament gospels.
The technical name for a manuscript with two layers of writing on it is"palimpsest."
In the late 19th century, scholars applied chemicals to the manuscript which briefly made the underlying text visible but made the parchment more brittle. "It's almost certain that the whole text has not been extracted yet," Pickwoad said.
Photographing the rippled parchment may involve using up to "four cameras taking images from different angles and then knitting the image together, electronically pulling it flat because we may not be able to pull it flat physically," he said.
The technology could also be applied to read the faint traces of a script in a language only ever seen before carved in a few stone inscriptions. It lies in the pages of a Georgian manuscript dating to the 8th or 9th century.
[...]
The monastery aims to have 100 manuscripts photographed and accessible through a Web site by mid-2006. "Even though it's only 100 out of 3,000, it will be an important scholarly resource," he [monastery librarian Father Justin] said.
Book historians are currently cataloguing the condition of the manuscripts and the physical features of their bindings, 50 percent of which are original.
"The evidence of where a manuscript has been and where it has come from to get here is often in the binding," [book historian Nicholas] Pickwoad said.
Conservators are even keeping the dust they brush from the manuscripts for traces of pollen or seeds which may yield evidence on how texts in languages including Persian, Amharic and Hebrew made it to the middle of the Sinai Desert.
I wasn't aware that the project involved so many manuscripts.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
STEVEN FINE'S NEW BOOK, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World, is noted by Rebecca Lesses over at Mystical Politics. She also tells us a little about her current research on the Aramaic incantation bowls.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE CANAANITES: In Rogue Classicism, David Meadows notes an Arutz Sheva article about this story in the Babylonian Talmud.
GIANTS, ALIENS, AND JOSEPHUS: A press release announces a new novel about the Nephilim and UFOs, published by Zondervan.
Here's the Josephus part:
The Nephilim (plural; the singular, if it were attested, would be something like "Naphal"), which the Greek Septuagint takes to be "giants," are found in Genesis 6:1-4. The story is told at much greater length (probably, in my opinion, telling a version of the full story that Genesis grudgingly summarizes) in 1 Enoch, particularly the Book of the Watchers. There was also a Book of Giants in antiquity which is partially preserved in Aramaic at Qumran and in later Manichean versions.
As for Josephus, here's what he says about the giants in Antiquities 5.125 (5.2.3)
I can't find any mention of the bones being on "display in Jerusalem." And let's face it, Josephus' comment doesn't prove very much. Maybe people just pointed out big funny rocks or dinosaur fossils or some such in his time and said they were giants' bones.
But the premise of the story doesn't sound too bad. I love ancient legends, I'm a voracious reader of science fiction, and I like some epic fantasy. I can handle Nephilim and UFOs in a novel, if the concept is done well. (Whether it's done well here is a very open question, but I haven't read it.)
But this is another matter:
He is mixing giants mythology with alien abductions and trying to tell us that it's all real. (His website has more silliness along these lines.) Here we enter into Dan Brown territory and indeed, go well beyond it into Erich von Daniken territory and maybe even beyond that. Why is it that otherwise competent fiction writers do a little "research" on the Bible and then conclude that all of us who spend our lives working on such things got it all wrong and, luckily, they have found the truth and are now putting it their novel? But give Brown credit; at least he doesn't drag in UFOs. And even von Daniken doesn't drag in the "spiritual dimensions" on top of the UFOs.
Sigh.
Zondervan Releases �The Revealing,� the Final Book in the �Nephilim Trilogy� by Christian UFO Cult Expert Dr. L.A. Marzulli
Zondervan has released �The Revealing,� the stirring conclusion to the science fiction series of books entitled �Nephilim Trilogy� by Dr. L.A. Marzulli, a Christian UFO cult expert. Although the books are fiction, they include history, biblical prophecy, and the author�s own shocking research on Nephilim, giant biblical creatures that are the offspring of fallen angels and human women. Dr. Marzulli�s personal theory is at the trilogy�s core�that fallen angels are reemerging on the world scene disguised as aliens, are abducting human women for a sinister breeding program, and initiating a great demonic deception that will culminate with the Antichrist and the Apocalypse.
Here's the Josephus part:
Opening with the chilling discovery of a giant skeleton under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Marzulli�s trilogy is based on the premise that ancient giant beings called �Nephilim,� who are the unholy offspring sired by fallen angels and born of abducted human women, are reemerging to unleash terror into the modern world scene. The historic origins of this giant hybrid race of Nephilim can be traced to Chapter 6 in Genesis in the Bible before the Flood, and to the �Book of Enoch,� a book discovered with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Jewish historian Josephus confirms the existence of the creatures, and that the bones of a Nephilim were on display in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.
The Nephilim (plural; the singular, if it were attested, would be something like "Naphal"), which the Greek Septuagint takes to be "giants," are found in Genesis 6:1-4. The story is told at much greater length (probably, in my opinion, telling a version of the full story that Genesis grudgingly summarizes) in 1 Enoch, particularly the Book of the Watchers. There was also a Book of Giants in antiquity which is partially preserved in Aramaic at Qumran and in later Manichean versions.
As for Josephus, here's what he says about the giants in Antiquities 5.125 (5.2.3)
For which reason they removed their camp to Hebron; and when they had taken it, they slew all the inhabitants. There were till then left the race of giants, who had bodies so large, and countenances so entirely different from other men, that they were surprising to the sight, and terrible to the hearing. The bones of these men are still shown to this very day, unlike to any credible relations of other men.
I can't find any mention of the bones being on "display in Jerusalem." And let's face it, Josephus' comment doesn't prove very much. Maybe people just pointed out big funny rocks or dinosaur fossils or some such in his time and said they were giants' bones.
But the premise of the story doesn't sound too bad. I love ancient legends, I'm a voracious reader of science fiction, and I like some epic fantasy. I can handle Nephilim and UFOs in a novel, if the concept is done well. (Whether it's done well here is a very open question, but I haven't read it.)
But this is another matter:
Marzulli is an evangelical Christian who has done in-depth research on UFO cults and the giant Nephilim. In writing the Nephilim Trilogy, he drew heavily on his own research as well as his past personal involvement in the occult and New Age. Although the trilogy is a work of fiction, Marzulli�s research has convinced him that his books� basic premise about the identity of aliens and their purpose on earth is true.
�I believe serious spiritual deception is going on,� says Marzulli. �I wrote the Nephilim Trilogy to help people understand the spiritual dimensions of the whole alien and UFO phenomenon, which I believe are part of the prophesies about the end of the world in the Book of Daniel, the Book of Revelation, and elsewhere in the Bible.
He is mixing giants mythology with alien abductions and trying to tell us that it's all real. (His website has more silliness along these lines.) Here we enter into Dan Brown territory and indeed, go well beyond it into Erich von Daniken territory and maybe even beyond that. Why is it that otherwise competent fiction writers do a little "research" on the Bible and then conclude that all of us who spend our lives working on such things got it all wrong and, luckily, they have found the truth and are now putting it their novel? But give Brown credit; at least he doesn't drag in UFOs. And even von Daniken doesn't drag in the "spiritual dimensions" on top of the UFOs.
Sigh.
Friday, June 17, 2005
MYSTERIOUS RUSSIAN ARTIFACTS:
I know the artifacts aren't ancient, but they were excavated and are inscribed with Hebrew, ancient Greek, and Latin esoterica; so, close enough. The article has a picture of one of the rings, but the face is angled away from the camera so that any inscription on it is unreadable.
UPDATE: Wieland Willker e-mails a link to an article in Spiegel which has photos of two of the artifacts. They can be enlarged by clicking on them. The second has the Latin word Deus and the angelic name "Rabiel" on it, along with other words in Roman letters and a lot of alchemical-looking symbols that I can't identify.
UPDATE: Joe Cathey e-mails:
Hmmm ... better not try any of those rings on.
Jewellery find puzzles Russians (BBC)
Archaeologists in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad have uncovered 16th century jewellery which they say is unlike any found in the area before.
They were found in a 10cm round box during an excavation at the site of a medieval castle in the city.
It contained 11 items made of gold, silver, tin and hematite, covered with hieroglyphs and inscriptions in Hebrew, ancient Greek and Latin.
[...]
Archaeologists think the rings and amulets might have belonged to a counsellor of Albrecht, Duke of Prussia, who had an interest both in astrology and black magic.
[...]
I know the artifacts aren't ancient, but they were excavated and are inscribed with Hebrew, ancient Greek, and Latin esoterica; so, close enough. The article has a picture of one of the rings, but the face is angled away from the camera so that any inscription on it is unreadable.
UPDATE: Wieland Willker e-mails a link to an article in Spiegel which has photos of two of the artifacts. They can be enlarged by clicking on them. The second has the Latin word Deus and the angelic name "Rabiel" on it, along with other words in Roman letters and a lot of alchemical-looking symbols that I can't identify.
UPDATE: Joe Cathey e-mails:
While reading this post I couldn�t but help notice that the rings might be possibly left over from the Third Age. It could be a vicious trick by none other then Melkor himself to trick us into falling for his trap. We are not told actually how the nine ringwraiths fell from their perches of power. As you can tell I just again finished �Fellowship of the Ring + Hobbit + Similarion.�
Hmmm ... better not try any of those rings on.
ARAMAIC TANGO?
The Passion, to a Latin beat
Friday, June 17, 2005
DAVID STABLER (The Oregonian)
"Revolutionary." "A breakthrough work." "A work of genius."
When "La Pasion Segun San Marcos" ("The Passion According to St. Mark") exploded onto the stage five years ago with its exuberant mix of tango, drumming, dance, orchestral and choral music in Latin, Spanish and Aramaic, audiences and critics raved.
[...]
Thursday, June 16, 2005
LET ME ADD MY CONGRATULATIONS to Catherine Smith, Mark Goodacre's doctoral student, who has just passed her viva.
So Catherine, what's happening with the Open Text Project? The link is dead.
UPDATE (17 June): Catherine Smith e-mails:
Good news. Thanks Cat.
So Catherine, what's happening with the Open Text Project? The link is dead.
UPDATE (17 June): Catherine Smith e-mails:
OpenText.org is alive and doing really well.The site is back up now - it had experienced a bit of a server problem before. Work has been progressing really well. The basic clause level annotation was recently completed for the whole of the New Testament. There are some examples up on the site and we are currently working on getting all of the texts available for viewing and basic searches which will hopefully be available very soon.
Good news. Thanks Cat.
ALAN SEGAL'S BOOK, Life After Death : A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion is reviewed by Scot McKnight in Christianity Today.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
THE ROMAN SIEGE OF JERUSALEM during the first Jewish revolt against Rome (66-70 CE) is the subject of an article by J.E. Lendon reprinted on the HistoryNet website:
I don't have time to read it all, but it looks interesting. Here's more on the piece and the author:
(Via Bible and Interpretation.)
Roman Siege of Jerusalem
The prosecution of one of the greatest sieges in ancient history offers a chance to assess the nature of Rome's military discipline and its importance to the success of the imperial army.
I don't have time to read it all, but it looks interesting. Here's more on the piece and the author:
This article was written by J.E. Lendon and originally published in the Summer 2005 edition of MHQ [i.e., MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History -- JRD]. J.E. Lendon is an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. This article is excerpted from his book Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity, to be published in May 2005 by Yale University Press. Copyright �2005 by Yale University. Reprinted by permission.
(Via Bible and Interpretation.)
THE JOURNAL OF NORTHWEST SEMITIC LANGUAGES has published tables of contents for two volumes since I last checked. Here are the articles listed therein:
Issue 29.1 (2003)
Issue 29.2 (2003)
Issue 30.1 (2004)
Issue 29.1 (2003)
John van Seters, The Redactor in Biblical Studies: a Nineteenth Century Anachronism
1-19
Jim Pohlig, Cognition and Biblical Documents: Towards Overcoming Theoretical and Methodological Obstacles to Recovering Cultural Worldviews
21-35
Francisco Javier del Barco del Barco, Syntactic Structures of Parallelism: a Case Study in Biblical Prophecy
37-53
Michal Ephratt, Hebrew Morphology by Itself 55-65
Hans Rechenmacher, al and /ya in Nominal Clauses 67-85
Reinoud Oosting, Appearing in Zion: the Role of Zion in Psalm 84: From a Linguistic Point of View
87-106
Jan H Kroeze, The Semantic Functions of Embedded Constructions in Biblical Hebrew
107-120
Vincent DeCaen, Moveable Nun and Intrusive Nun: The Nature and Distribution of Verbal Nunation in Joel and Job
121-132
Issue 29.2 (2003)
Articles
Claudia V Camp, Over Her Dead Body: The Estranged Woman and the Price of the Promised Land
1-13
Jacobus A Naud�, The Consonantal Root in Semitic Languages
15-32
Dominic Rudman, A Note on Zechariah 1:5 33-39
Yehoshua Gitay, Rhetoric and Its Limitiations: Job the Dissident X
41-63
Nachman Levine, Vertical Poetics: Interlinear Phonological Parallelism in Psalms
65-82
Steve A Wiggins, Pidray, Tallay and Arsay in the Baal Cycle 83-101
Hermann-Josef Stipp, Bemerkungen zum griechischen Michabuch aus Anlass des deutschen LXX�bersetzungsprojekts
103-132
Paul A Kruger, Ahab�s �Slowly� Walking About: Another Look at 1 Kings 21:27Bb
133-142
Issue 30.1 (2004)
Homage to Siegfried Mittmann iIssue 30.2 (2004)
Selected Academic Publications of Siegfried Mittmann iii
Articles
Johann Cook, Exegesis in the Septuagint 1-19
Sakkie Cornelius, A Preliminary Typology for the Female Plaque Figurines and Their Value for the Religion of Ancient Palestine and Jordan
21-39
Dirk J Human, Yahweh, the Israelite High God, Bends Down to Uplift the Downtrodden: Perspectives on the Incomparability of Yahweh in Psalm 113
41-64
Louis C Jonker, Another Look at the Psalm Headings: Observations on the Musical Terminology
65-85
Jacobus A Naud�, A Perspective on the Chronological Framework of Biblical Hebrew
87-102
Philip J Nel, Psalm 19: the Unbearable Lightness of Perfection
103-117
Christo H J van der Merwe, Towards a Principled Working Model for Biblical Hebrew Lexicology
119-137
Harry F van Rooy, A New Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible
139-150
Daan N Pienaar, Some Observations on Conquest Reports in the Book of Joshua
151-164
Articles
John van Seters, The Formula leshakken shemo sham and the Centralisation of Worship in Deuteronomy and DH
1-18
Florentino Garc�a Mart�nez, Sammael in Pseudo-Jonathan and the Origin of Evil
19-41
Hans Rechenmacher, Kognitive Linguistik und althebr�ische Lexikographie
43-59
Jessie Rogers, Wisdom in Sirach 61-79
L�nart J de Regt, Signs of Redactional Development in Some Old Testament Texts and the Translator
81-97
Jan H Kroeze, Towards a Multidimensional Linguistic Database of Biblical Hebrew
99-120
JEWISH-TEMPLE DENIAL appears to be featured in a new association of Jordanian Islamic scholars. Monsters and Critics reports the following (my emphasis):
Clearly "scholar" here means "cleric" rather than "historian."
At the conclusion of the symposium on championing the Holy Koran and defending Al-Aqsa, Dr Ibrahim Zayd al-Kilani announced the formation of an association for Muslim scholars in Jordan. The establishment of this association came in response to the demands by numerous religious scholars. They proposed the establishment of such an association to unite religious scholars in Jordan, to confront the Western onslaught targeting the morals and values of the Jordanian people, and to raise the awareness of the Jordanian people and safeguard their religious values.
The symposium championing the Holy Koran and defending Al-Aqsa was held last Saturday at the headquarters of the Islamic Action Front [IAF] party in Tila al-Ali. It was attended by a large number of religious scholars and lasted for about five hours during which the participants debated two working papers. The first working paper was on championing the Holy Koran and the second was entitled "The Falsehood of the Temple [Mount], one of the most serious perils threatening Al-Aqsa".
Clearly "scholar" here means "cleric" rather than "historian."
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
BOOK NOTE: I recently read Richard A. Freund, Secrets of the Cave of Letters: Rediscovering a Dead Sea Mystery (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2004). This is an exciting book that describes the recent re-excavation of the so-called Cave of the Letters in the Nahal Hever. Freund's archaeological team used some new technologies to locate and get at material that was unreachable when Aharoni and Yadin excavated the cave in the 1950s and 1960s, respectively. Some of the newly located artifacts remain inaccessible until still-better technologies allow us to recover them. The book also makes the case that the cave was used not just by refugees during the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the early 130s CE, but also by others after the first Jewish Revolt in 66-70 CE. Most controversial of all, Freund argues that the Cave of the Letters is mentioned in treasure #25 of the Copper Scroll, that that treasure was unknowingly excavated by Yadin, and that it included implements that came from the Jerusalem Temple.
The main weakness of the book is its very popular style, which does not allow it to make a detailed case for any of the above which would be satisfying to an archaeologist or textual scholar. For that we must wait for forthcoming scholarly volumes. On the basis of the Nova program last year, Ed Cook raised some doubts about the proposed identification of the Cave of the Letters with the Cave of the Column in Copper Scroll treasure #25. One of his objections, that the weight of the Copper Scroll treasure is too great, is debatable. The scroll refers to 42 kk (??). This has widely been taken as an abbreviation for kkr (???), "talent" (about 75 pounds) which would indeed be far too much. But if Judah K. Lefkovits is right in taking kk as standing for keseph karsh/karshin (??? ???/?????), "silver karsh" (a Persian measurement equaling 10 shekels or about 71 grams), the amount listed is at least within the same order of magnitude as the weight of the bronze implements in the Cave of the Letters. (See Lefkovits, The Copper Scroll: 3Q15: A Reevaluation [STDJ 25 Leiden: Brill, 2000], 481-82 and Freund, 175-77.) I don't know whether this new interpretation of ?? will stand up, but it certainly makes the hitherto implausibly enormous amounts of precious metal in the Copper Scroll sound more believable.
Ed's second objection was to the identifying of the small limestone vessel found in the Cave of the Letters with the qalal(???)-vessel mentioned in the Copper Scroll. In the book Freund states confidently that this vessel "is usually a ritual limestone vessel well known in Jerusalem during the time of the Temple, but apparently in use by pious Jews elsewhere as well" (p. 171). I can find no evidence for it ever being a limestone vessel. I've checked most of his rabbinic references and this is not stated in any of the ones I checked. Rashi, who is very late, says there was such a copper vessel (see Lefkovits, p. 207), but I wonder if this isn't just a guess based on its graphic similarity to the Hebrew word that means "burnished" (also ???). Otherwise, there is no indication that we are dealing with anything but a ceramic vessel. Indeed, the Mishnah, our earliest evidence apart from the Copper Scroll, makes it clear that it was not a stone vessel. Ed mentions Parah 3.3, but Parah 10.3-4 and Eduyyot 7.5, the only other Mishnaic passages that mention the vessel, are quite important as well. These passages discuss the circumstances under which a qalal-vessel can become ritually impure. Stone vessels are not susceptible to ritual impurity, so the qalal-vessels of the Mishnah must have been ceramic. True, the word could have referred to a limestone vessel in the first century -- we just don't know -- but I can't find any positive evidence for such a meaning ever at any period, and if it's there, it should be front and center in Freund's presentation, popular though it may be.
In short, as I said, the book is exciting. But where I can test its claims, they are overstated. I remain to be convinced and will be watching with interest for publication of the scholarly defenses of Freund's theories.
UPDATE: Obviously, I still don't get this Unicode font thing. Sorry for all the question marks above. The Hebrew worked fine when I was typing up the post, but it's been lost in the posting for reasons unknown to me.
UPDATE (15 June): Ed Cook e-mails to ask if karsh is attested after the Persian period. The answer is possibly, but possibly not. It's used in the fifth-century BCE Aramaic Elephantine papyri. A Phoenician inscription from Lapethos, Cyprus uses the abbreviation kr for a measure of weight. This may well be for karsh. And Murabba'at document 9:3 (early second century CE?) uses the abbreviation k, which could be for keseph ("silver") or karsh. (Lefkovits, pp. 479-80.)
UPDATE (4 July): Hebrew fonts fixed.
The main weakness of the book is its very popular style, which does not allow it to make a detailed case for any of the above which would be satisfying to an archaeologist or textual scholar. For that we must wait for forthcoming scholarly volumes. On the basis of the Nova program last year, Ed Cook raised some doubts about the proposed identification of the Cave of the Letters with the Cave of the Column in Copper Scroll treasure #25. One of his objections, that the weight of the Copper Scroll treasure is too great, is debatable. The scroll refers to 42 kk (??). This has widely been taken as an abbreviation for kkr (???), "talent" (about 75 pounds) which would indeed be far too much. But if Judah K. Lefkovits is right in taking kk as standing for keseph karsh/karshin (??? ???/?????), "silver karsh" (a Persian measurement equaling 10 shekels or about 71 grams), the amount listed is at least within the same order of magnitude as the weight of the bronze implements in the Cave of the Letters. (See Lefkovits, The Copper Scroll: 3Q15: A Reevaluation [STDJ 25 Leiden: Brill, 2000], 481-82 and Freund, 175-77.) I don't know whether this new interpretation of ?? will stand up, but it certainly makes the hitherto implausibly enormous amounts of precious metal in the Copper Scroll sound more believable.
Ed's second objection was to the identifying of the small limestone vessel found in the Cave of the Letters with the qalal(???)-vessel mentioned in the Copper Scroll. In the book Freund states confidently that this vessel "is usually a ritual limestone vessel well known in Jerusalem during the time of the Temple, but apparently in use by pious Jews elsewhere as well" (p. 171). I can find no evidence for it ever being a limestone vessel. I've checked most of his rabbinic references and this is not stated in any of the ones I checked. Rashi, who is very late, says there was such a copper vessel (see Lefkovits, p. 207), but I wonder if this isn't just a guess based on its graphic similarity to the Hebrew word that means "burnished" (also ???). Otherwise, there is no indication that we are dealing with anything but a ceramic vessel. Indeed, the Mishnah, our earliest evidence apart from the Copper Scroll, makes it clear that it was not a stone vessel. Ed mentions Parah 3.3, but Parah 10.3-4 and Eduyyot 7.5, the only other Mishnaic passages that mention the vessel, are quite important as well. These passages discuss the circumstances under which a qalal-vessel can become ritually impure. Stone vessels are not susceptible to ritual impurity, so the qalal-vessels of the Mishnah must have been ceramic. True, the word could have referred to a limestone vessel in the first century -- we just don't know -- but I can't find any positive evidence for such a meaning ever at any period, and if it's there, it should be front and center in Freund's presentation, popular though it may be.
In short, as I said, the book is exciting. But where I can test its claims, they are overstated. I remain to be convinced and will be watching with interest for publication of the scholarly defenses of Freund's theories.
UPDATE: Obviously, I still don't get this Unicode font thing. Sorry for all the question marks above. The Hebrew worked fine when I was typing up the post, but it's been lost in the posting for reasons unknown to me.
UPDATE (15 June): Ed Cook e-mails to ask if karsh is attested after the Persian period. The answer is possibly, but possibly not. It's used in the fifth-century BCE Aramaic Elephantine papyri. A Phoenician inscription from Lapethos, Cyprus uses the abbreviation kr for a measure of weight. This may well be for karsh. And Murabba'at document 9:3 (early second century CE?) uses the abbreviation k, which could be for keseph ("silver") or karsh. (Lefkovits, pp. 479-80.)
UPDATE (4 July): Hebrew fonts fixed.
Monday, June 13, 2005
"THEN, GO AND UNCOVER HIS FEET AND LIE DOWN" (Ruth 3:4). If you've ever wondered what that was all about, then read this. (Hint: "feet" is a euphemism.)
UPCOMING DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITS in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Lexington, Kentucky, are noted, respectively, in the Charlotte Observer and the Lexington Herald-Leader.
THE GERMINATING-DATE-FROM-MASADA STORY has been picked up by the Associated Press and other news sources. My favorite headline is from a Sydney Morning Herald reprint of the New York Time story: "Nurturing a date with destiny."
Sunday, June 12, 2005
THE FESTIVAL OF SHAVUOT begins tonight at sundown. (Best wishes to all those celebrating.) But if the Sadducees had had their way, it would have started last night. (Apparently this is in the Talmud, but as usual no reference is given.)
UPDATE: Manuscript Boy e-mails the following:
Carla Sulzbach sends the same reference. That's the Babylonian Talmud.
UPDATE: Manuscript Boy e-mails the following:
Menahot 65a, which is a quote from the scholion of Meggilat Ta'anit. See Vered Noam's new edition of the Megillah, p. 59 (Nissan 8 until the end of the Moed).
Carla Sulzbach sends the same reference. That's the Babylonian Talmud.
THE COPTIC GOSPEL OF JUDAS is the subject of a press release by the Coptic Museum in Cairo. It includes an update on the manuscript's whereabouts, current study of it, and plans for its publication in 2006. There's also a tiny photograph of the codex and several pages of the transcribed Coptic with Charles Hedrick's translation.
UPDATE: Stephen Goranson comments on the press release on the Textual Criticism list. He is unsure whether the codex photo is of the Gospel of Judas. Anybody know?
UPDATE (20 June): Goranson emails to confirm that the book is not the Gospel of Judas. It is "The Book of the Four Gospels. It contains a golden portrait of John the Evangelist. It is taken from Abu Sefeen Church (623 H/ 1220 AD)" and is pictured here.
UPDATE: Stephen Goranson comments on the press release on the Textual Criticism list. He is unsure whether the codex photo is of the Gospel of Judas. Anybody know?
UPDATE (20 June): Goranson emails to confirm that the book is not the Gospel of Judas. It is "The Book of the Four Gospels. It contains a golden portrait of John the Evangelist. It is taken from Abu Sefeen Church (623 H/ 1220 AD)" and is pictured here.
AN ANCIENT DATE SEED FROM MASADA has been coaxed into growing:
After a 2,000-Year Rest, a Seed Sprouts in Jerusalem
By STEVEN ERLANGER (New York Times)
Published: June 12, 2005
JERUSALEM, June 11 - Israeli doctors and scientists have succeeded in germinating a date seed nearly 2,000 years old.
[...]
The plant is now 11.8 inches tall and has produced seven leaves, one of which was removed for DNA testing. Radiocarbon dating in Switzerland on a snip of the seed showed it to be 1,990 years old, plus or minus 50 years. So the date seed dates from 35 B.C. to A.D. 65, just before the famed Roman siege.
Three date seeds were taken from Level 34 of the Masada dig. They were found in a storeroom, and are presumably from dates eaten by the defenders, Dr. [Sarah] Sallon says.
[...]
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