THE CALIPH OMAR ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT: Can anyone point me to verification of this very interesting claim? It's in an editorial by
Jonathan Lincoln in the Middle East Times ("Next year, Jerusalem?").

That Al Aqsa sits where it does today is also perfectly reconcilable with Jewish belief and tradition. According to documents found in the Cairo Geniza, an archive of ancient Jewish manuscripts, the Caliph Omar asked the Jewish community to ensure that the shrine he erected on the Temple Mount, later to become the Al Aqsa Mosque, be built over the Temple's foundation.

In return, the Caliph allowed Jews to return, establish houses of worship and rebuild their community -- rights not accorded to them by their former Christian rulers. This history makes it particularly disheartening to hear some Palestinian religious and political leaders deny Jewish connections to the city.

Which Cairo Geniza document are they and where are they published?

UPDATE: David Stacey e-mails:

Check Moshe Gill's 'A History of Palestine 634-1099' sections 84-85 (pp70-71 in the English edition).

Thanks. I'll do so when I get a chance.

RASHI UPDATE: the proceedings of a Jerusalem conference on Rashi (in Hebrew) can be found online here.

(Heads up, Manuscript Boy.)

HUGOYE: A JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has published a new issue (8.2, July 2005) online. Table of contents:

Papers

Revisiting the Daughters of the Covenant: Women’s Choirs and Sacred Song in Ancient Syriac Christianity.
Susan A. Harvey, Brown University

Septuaginta and Peshitta. Jacob of Edessa quoting the Old Testament in Ms BL Add 17134.
Andreas Juckel, University of Münster

Nisibis as the background to the Life of Ephrem the Syrian.
Paul Russell, St. Joseph of Arimathea Anglican Theological College

Publications and Book Reviews

Emma Loosley. The Architecture and Literature of the Bema in Fourth- to Sixth- Century Syrian Churches.
Marica Cassis, University of Toronto

Peter J. Williams, Early Syriac Translation Technique and the Textual Criticism of the Greek Gospels.
Jan Joosten, Marc Bloch University, Strasbourg

F. Briquel Chatonnet, M. Debié and A. Desreumaux, eds., Les inscriptions syriaques..
Andrew Palmer

Pauline Allen and C. T. R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch.
Lucas Van Rompay, Duke University

Robert A. Kitchen and Martien F. G. Parmentier. The Book of Steps: The Syriac Liber Graduum.
Anne Seville, The Catholic University of America

Mar Aprem Mooken. The Assyrian Church of the East in the Twentieth Century.
Alexander Toepel

Announcements

Dorushe Conference on Syriac Pedagogy at CUA.

Advertisements

Beth Mardutho Amazon Associates

Journal of the Canadian Society of Syriac Studies

Gorgias Press

THANKS to all those who e-mailed or blogged their good wishes. The weather could have been better, but it was nice to get out of town and drive down the coast. The best birthday presents were some Doctor Who tapes from the Jon Pertwee era and my son's drawing of Rocket Ship Galileo. The latter is the title of a 1947 book by Robert Heinlein, which we're currently reading at bedtime. Teenage boys and their scientist uncle soup up a rocket with a nuclear drive and take the world's first trip to the moon, where they fight Nazis! What could be better?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! I'm spending the day out, and blogging will not be a high priority.

THE GILGAMESH MOVIE now has a web page on the Internet Movie Database. The cast includes Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole, which is an interesting reunion. Max Ryan plays Gilgamesh. The producers did not take up my suggestion to cast Monica Bellucci as Ishtar, but Leonor Valera played Cleopatra in the miniseries and she looks like she'll do all right. Curiously, the Harlot is not listed in the cast. They could hardly leave her out, could they? Maybe they've given her a name.

It's hard to imagine that Hollywood won't botch this completely, and the early signs are not particularly promising, but I suppose I should try to keep an open mind.

(Heads up, Chuck Jones on the ANE List.)

A UNICODE HEBREW-TRANSLITERATION FONT FOR THE MAC has been created and posted online by Danny Zacharias. I haven't had a chance to download and install it yet, but it looks very useful. Thanks Danny!

THERE'S A CLOSEUP PHOTO OF THE JEHUCAL BULLA posted by the Taipei Times. A nice one in which the readings are quite clear. (Noted by Joseph I. Lauer on the ANE List where there's been some discussion as well.) These things tend not to last long, so if you are interested, I would advise you to download a copy for your own use. Ed Cook has some good philological commentary, as usual.

PROFESSOR MARK CHANCEY calls for real biblical scholarship to be taught in U.S. public schools. See his letter posted on the Bible and Interpretation website:

Help protect the Bible and our public schools!

His report on The Bible in History and Literature curriculum is very disturbing.

A CONFERENCE ON PTOLEMY II PHILADELPHUS was held at Auckland University last month. Report here. You may recall that the Greek translation of the Pentateuch is traditionally assigned to the reign of this Ptolemy (e.g., in the Letter of Aristeas). Can anyone explain to me what this paragraph means?

Greeks in fact created the chronology of the Hebrew scriptures as they were translated into Greek by 70 or so scholars brought from Jerusalem for the job, asserted French-born, Swiss resident Philippe Guillauime of the Near East School of Theology at Beirut (who put himself up at a city backpackers' hostel for the privilege of attending the event). His novel account of the Septuagint translation raised eyebrows, but his insight into Semitic mentality earned judicious respect.

(Via Archaeologica News.)

THE ".IQ" DOMAIN HAS BEEN REACTIVATED FOR IRAQ. Details here.

LATIN IS ALIVE AND WELL, and Aramaic isn't doing too badly either:

Latin lovers flock to Missouri for national convention

ALAN SCHER ZAGIER

Associated Press

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Latin, the dead tongue? Hardly.

Just ask members of the National Junior Classical League, which for more than 50 years has preached a love of the classical language among American teens and their teachers. The league now has 50,000 members nationwide, nearly 2,000 of whom gathered this week on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus for an intense spell of academic competitions, pep rallies, mythology-themed costume pageants and Olympic-inspired athletic contests.

[...]

Alvin Duggan, a 68-year-old retired Lutheran pastor from Eden, Minn., took the frenetic scene in stride. As the first NJCL president in 1953-54, he presided over a group that numbered just over 100 students.

"Latin is alive and well," he said. "Classics are anything but dead."

Duggan went on to study Hebrew and Aramaic in the seminary, a scholarly asset he regularly relied upon when crafting weekly sermons.

"Understanding these ancient languages gives you a concept of where we've come from - and where we could go if we understood where we came from," he said.

[...]

A MESSIANIC BILLBOARD:

Billboard latest sign of Messianic fervor among some

BY CAROL EISENBERG
STAFF WRITER

August 7, 2005

A new billboard on the West Side Highway and 44th Street proclaims "Moshiach," or Messiah, "Is Here" under a picture of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Crown Heights -- the charismatic Jewish leader known as the Rebbe who died 11 years ago.

The billboard, put up Tuesday and paid for by a group called Jewish Women United for the Redemption, is the latest sign of the messianic fervor continuing to grip parts of the Lubavitch community that Schneerson once led.

[...]

THE LUXOR COPTIC PAPYRI get a brief mention at the end of an EgyptToday article on King Tut's cause of death:

Tut is not the only archaeological find to have been in the news of late. A team from the Polish Center for Mediterranean Archaeology recently announced the discovery of a Coptic trove buried in the ruins of a sixth-century monastery.

The team unveiled two papyri books of Coptic writings, a set of parchments (text on sheep’s skin) placed between two wooden labels, Coptic ostraca, pottery fragments and textiles. The manuscripts were hidden beneath a Middle Kingdom tomb in Luxor.

The SCA [Supreme Council of Antiquities] believes Christians fearing Roman persecution may have hidden the texts. According to Hawass, scientists will restore the manuscripts in an effort to learn more about early Christianity.

Nothing much new in this, but it's good to hear that someone is working on them.

TODAY (29 Tammuz) is the 900th anniversary of Rashi's death, but I can't find any mention of it in today's news. Curious.

UPDATE (6 August): Christopher Heard notes this article in Arutz Sheva:

900th Anniversary of Bible Commentator Rashi´s Death
14:54 Aug 05, '05 / 29 Tammuz 5765
By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz

Friday marks the 900th anniversary of the death of one of the Jewish people's greatest Bible and Talmud commentators, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, known as Rashi.

[...]

A VICTIM OF THE MT. SCOPUS TERRORIST ATTACK is continuing his ancient philological studies. Kol hakavod!

THE JERUSALEM SYNDROME was the subject of a paper at the 14th World Congress of Jewish Studies:

'I want to be 1st woman to interview the messiah'
By SAM SER (Jerusalem Post)

"What really opened my eyes to Jerusalem Syndrome," said Dr. Maria Leppakari, "was the Rastafarians. I was looking through a travel guide on Jamaica when I saw a little mention of the fact that the Rastafarians believe in a god called Jah. Bob Marley is kind of their St. Paul... You know, 'I'm gonna be iron like a lion in Zion,' that kind of thing," she explained to The Jerusalem Post, trailing off to the lyrics of the reggae legend.

[...]

The coming of the year 2000 has been the only disappointment for Leppakari, she said, with the relative quiet of messianic and apocalyptic groups creating a severe anticlimax for research.

"And I was so excited to be waiting there on the Mount of Olives," Leppakari recalled. "I was hoping to be the first woman to interview the messiah!"

Well, maybe she can cover the finding of the Ark of the Covenant.

MORE ON THE CITY OF DAVID EXCAVATION in the New York Times:

Digging Deep for Proof of an Ancient Jewish Capital

By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: August 5, 2005

JERUSALEM, Aug. 4 - An Israeli archaeologist says she has uncovered in East Jerusalem what may be the fabled palace of the biblical King David. Her work has been sponsored by a conservative Israeli research institute and financed by an American Jewish investment banker who would like to prove that Jerusalem was indeed the capital of the Jewish kingdom described in the Bible.

Other scholars are skeptical that the foundation walls discovered by the archaeologist, Eilat Mazar, are David's palace. But they acknowledge that what she has uncovered is rare and important: a major public building from around the 10th century B.C., with pottery shards that date to the time of David and Solomon and a government seal of an official mentioned in the book of Jeremiah.

The discovery is likely to be a new salvo in a major dispute in biblical archaeology: whether the kingdom of David was of some historical magnitude, or whether the kings were more like small tribal chieftains, reigning over another dusty hilltop.

The find will also be used in the broad political battle over Jerusalem - whether the Jews have their origins here and thus have some special hold on the place, or whether, as many Palestinians have said, including the late Yasir Arafat, the idea of a Jewish origin in Jerusalem is a myth used to justify conquest and occupation.

The exciting news is that a tenth-century BCE public building has been located in Jerusalem and that (later) epigraphic material has been found, apparently in the same place. All else at this point is speculation and it would be a shame if the squabbling over the speculation were to overshadown the find itself.

As for the last sentence, we have plenty of evidence that Jerusalem was inhabited by Hebrew-speaking Judeans during the Iron Age II, especially the last century or so of it (e.g., references to biblical kings in the Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions, the Hezekiah's tunnel inscription, the Siloam tomb inscription, the Ophel ostracon, etc.). There is legitimate debate about the nature of David's and Solomon's supposed empires and how reliable the biblical sources are for the Iron Age II, but that is another issue and should not be conflated with the frequently bizarre claims of the Palestinians. I don't know exactly what "origins" means here and I don't want to get into the endlessly debatable topic of the political implications of what we do know about Iron Age-II Jerusalem.

Hani Nur el-Din, a Palestinian professor of archaeology at Al Quds University, said he and his colleagues considered biblical archaeology an effort by Israelis "to fit historical evidence into a biblical context." He added: "The link between the historical evidence and the biblical narration, written much later, is largely missing. There's a kind of fiction about the 10th century. They try to link whatever they find to the biblical narration. They have a button, and they want to make a suit out of it."

This is a pretty fair criticism. At the moment they've found a button, which is quite important in itself. It remains to be seen how much of a suit can be inferred from it and what the size and cut of the suit was. It will take years of study and publication in peer-review journals and monographs before we have a clear idea what the find means.

Now I look forward to Professor Nur el-Din's condemnation of the Palestinian Authority's false claims that there never were Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount. If he has gone on record about this, please send me the reference so I can link to it.

Even Israeli archaeologists are not so sure that Ms. Mazar has found the palace - the house that Hiram, king of Tyre, built for the victorious king, at least as Samuel 2:5 describes it. It may also be the Fortress of Zion that David conquered from the Jebusites, who ruled Jerusalem before him, or some other structure about which the Bible is silent.

A couple of corrections: Eilat Mazar's title is "Dr." And the reference should be to 2 Samuel 5:11.

Later in the article we read:

In his book, "The Bible Unearthed," Mr. [i.e. Professor Israel] Finkelstein writes with Neil Silberman, "Not only was any sign of monumental architecture missing, but so were even simple pottery shards."

Ms. Mazar believes she has found a riposte: a large public building, with at least some pottery of the time, and a bulla, or governmental seal, of an official - Jehucal (or Jucal), son of Shelemiah, son of Shevi - who is mentioned at least twice in the Book of Jeremiah.

Three questions. First, is the name on the bulla Jehucal (according to Maariv) or Yehudi (according to the New York Sun)? I assume it's the former, but given the Sun report it would have been helpful to have clarification. Second, where does the name "Shevi" come from? The book of Jeremiah doesn't give Jehucal's grandfather's name and according to the Maariv article the grandfather's name on the bulla was "Nubi." Is Shevi a correction of the earlier report? (Just how well-preserved is this bulla?) Third, what is a late-seventh-century bulla doing in a tenth-century building? Was the bulla excavated in the building or was it just found in its vicinity? What is the stratigraphy of the building? Was it still in use in the seventh century?

The building can be reasonably dated by the pottery found above and below it. Ms. Mazar found on the bedrock a large floor of crushed limestone, indicating a large public space. The floor and fill above it contain pottery from Iron Age I of the 12th to 11th centuries B.C., just before David conquered Jerusalem.

Above that, Ms. Mazar found the foundations for this monumental building, with large boulders for walls that are about 2 yards thick and extend at least 30 yards. In one corner was pottery of Iron Age II, the 10th to 9th centuries, roughly the time of the united kingdom.

Unfortunately, Mr. Mazar said, she found no floor. It is clear the building was constructed after the pottery underneath it, but less clear exactly how much later.

[...]

The lack of a floor complicates things, as does the evidence for 10th-9th century occupation being limited to a corner. Again, we should wait for the formal publication of the excavation before we draw any larger conclusions.

UPDATE: Ed Cook e-mails:

As far as the Nubi-Shebi confusion is concerned, note that in printed Hebrew nun-vav and shin are easily confused. There could be a "scribal error" at some point in the process.

Yes, that could be it. I just checked: both words (as Nobay and Shobay) are attested as names in the Bible in Neh 10:20 and Ezra 2:42/Neh 7:45. The word "Nubi" does not appear in biblical Hebrew.

I suspect the error in citing 2 Samuel above has a similar origin, i.e., that 2 Samuel 5 ended up as Samuel 2:5.

Another update has been removed at the request of the sender.

ARK RAIDERS IN THE NEWS: JewishPress.com notes that there are currently two would-be Indiana Joneses on the loose:

The Race For The Lost Ark
Posted 8/3/2005
By Dvora Waysman

Thousands of people saw the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and most of them knew that Indiana Jones was based on a real person, famous archaeologist Dr. Vendyl Jones. Less well-known is another charismatic contender, who believes he will be the first to uncover the hiding place of this fabulous prize. He was recently in Jerusalem, and his name is Lt. Barry S. Roffman of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Roffman is basing his search on the Bible Code ... a code encrypted in the Bible some 3,000 years ago, now unlocked by computer. [...]

"Thousands"? More like hundreds of millions. My son and I just watched it last week, he for the first time, I for the umpteenth. But most of them didn't (and don't) know anything about Vendyl Jones. Indeed, Vendyl Jones himself disclaims any connection with the movie character. As for this:

In the case of Vendyl Jones, he plans to uncover the lost Ark of the Covenant by Tisha b`Av.

Jones says on his website that he didn't say this, he just said it would be neat if he did find it before then.

Readers may be interested to learn that I'm working on a relevant Hebrew text that is likely to be translated for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project. It's called Massekhet Kelim, the Treatise on the Vessels, and it purports to tell the story of the hiding of the vast Temple treasures -- including the Ark of the Covenant -- at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. The hiding places, we are told, were inscribed on a bronze plaque, and it looks to me as though at least some of them are given in this text. The Massekhet Kelim is not to be confused with the Copper Scroll, but the parallels are obvious and have not gone entirely unnoticed in the scholarly literature. Milik translated this text into French, but it has never been translated into English and it deserves more attention.

So if I come into sudden wealth in the next few years, you'll know why.

Joking aside, I'm not going to go into all the problems with these efforts or I'd be at it all day. (Don't even get me started about the Bible Code.) I'll just say that I'll take this Ark hunt seriously when one of these guys actually produces the Ark of the Covenant. Don't hold you breath.

UPDATE: For those interested, the Massekhet Kelim was published by Adolph Jellinek in the nineteenth century in Bet ha-Midrasch, vol. 2, #xiii, pp. xxvi-xxvii, 88-91. Milik published another copy found inscribed on a marble plaque in Beirut, in Revue Biblique 66 (1959), 550-75, esp. pp. 567-75.

I'M CURRENTLY READING THE RULE OF FOUR. You may recall that this is a thriller built around a mysterious, real, 500-year-old book known as the Hypneratomachia Poliphili, which is written in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, etc. Given events here in the last month, it seemed timely. So far it's a pretty good read. The authors have a good sense of paleobibliophiles and the narrator comes across convincingly as someone who knows them but isn't quite one of them. I like this description of the tome on page 51, probably because Plotinus is one of my favorite ancient authors:

The gist is simple: Poliphilo has a strange dream in which he searches for the woman he loves. But the way it's told is so complicated that even most Renaissance scholars -- the same people who read Plotinus while waiting for the bus -- consider the Hypnerotomachia painfully, tediously difficult.

And, in case you're wondering, the sex with buildings is on page 87. Reportedly, it was good for one of the buildings too.

My only complaint is that the British edition by Arrow books has pages that are too narrow, so it's almost impossible to hold the book flat on a desk or a reading stand.

I must see if the St. Andrews library has a copy of the Hypneratomachia Poliphili among its rare books.

UPDATE: We do have a copy, but I don't have time to look it up right now. Maybe later. Meanwhile, Manuscript Boy e-mails to point to a digitized copy online at the Jewish National and University Library. You have to install special software to access it, and the software works for me with Safari but not Firefox, but the images are cool if you can get at them.

THE CODEX SINAITICUS PROJECT is covered in an article by the BBC:

Oldest known Bible to go online

The Codex is written in ancient Greek
A manuscript containing the oldest known Biblical New Testament in the world is set to enter the digital age and become accessible online.

There's also a nice image of a column that they say is from the book of Esther.

STEPHEN GORANSON has posted a Dead Sea Scrolls-related paper online:

Jannaeus, His Brother Absalom, and Judah the Essene

Click on the link to download it as a PDF file. It's a 34 page, 334 kb pdf
file and he says it's "on the history and identities of the 'Wicked Priest' and the 'Teacher of Righteousness' in the view of Essenes at Qumran and elsewhere." I don't have time to read it now, but there you have it.

THE HEBREW ROYAL SEAL STORY has now been carried in a brief article in Arutz Sheva. It gives the name of the seal-bearer as "Jehudi, son of Shelemiah," whom it puts in the reign of King Zedekiah. Looks like they just summarized the Sun article, which is very odd. I would have expected them to use the Hebrew Maariv article.

(Via Archaeologica News.)

ZAPPING INSCRIPTIONS WITH RAYS -- the latest in data-recovery technology. Cornell University has a press release:

X-ray technology to shed new light on ancient stone inscriptions
August 02, 2005 (PhysOrg.com)

In an unusual collaboration among scientists and humanists, a Cornell University team has demonstrated a novel method for recovering faded text on ancient stone by zapping and mapping 2,000-year-old inscriptions using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) imaging.

[...]

The chosen inscriptions -- one in Classical Greek and two in Latin -- each presented different levels of wear. XRF imaging detected minute amounts of iron, zinc and lead in the inscribed regions, among other elements. Iron chisels were commonly used to inscribe the stones, and the letters were usually painted with pigments containing metal oxides and sulfides. These may account for the iron and lead, but the source of the zinc is a mystery. In the most worn stone, the trace elements measured by XRF clearly revealed the contours of the original letters, even where they were no longer visible to the eye. For modestly worn stones, XRF imaging will help to decipher texts and may provide new information on how the inscriptions were made.

"This means restoring thousands of stones, including, possibly, part of the law code of Draco," said Clinton. Draco was a seventh-century Athenian politician who codified the law of Athens. "It applies to practically any kind of public document you can think of, including many laws, decrees, religious dedications and financial documents."

[...]

The research is being published in this month's Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik.

A QUIET NEWS DAY SO FAR. I'm taking the day off work and may get out of town for a bit. But there's lots of good biblioblogging going on. If you haven't been reading Tyler William's Codex blog, you should go have a look. He's been keeping track of a lot of interesting developments regarding the new Leviticus scroll fragment, including a new photograph. Also, Joe Cathey has a post that gives the TOC of an interesting new book, In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel, which he is reviewing for RBL. And Rick Brannan has announced the advent of the new Logos Bible Software Blog.

HISTORY CARNIVAL #13 is up over at Willisms.com. Good entries include Rebecca Goetz on "Tribble’s Drivel, or, Why Universities Should WANT to Hire Bloggers" (a response to the infamous, anonymous Chronicle of Higher Education article on blogging); the Little Professor on "Lumping and splitting"; and Philobiblion on "Found poetry" (found in a very unexpected place). PaleoJudaica also makes an appearance.

ANOTHER MOTP ARTICLE: Totally Jewish.com has just published a brief piece entitled "Ancient Texts To Be Translated." It's reasonably accurate and it includes a photo of a leaf from Codex Ambrosianus. We actually have a few Israelis on the team and Richard Bauckham and I are jointly heading the project. (UPDATE: Just to be clear, Richard was listed as the principal applicant for the Leverhulme grant.)

THE ZEALOTS-AS-SUICIDE-ATTACKERS MEME appears now in the Sunday Times. In an article entitled "Biggest suicide wave in a bloody 2,000-year history," Yuba Bessaoud asserts:

The history of suicide assaults dates back to Judaea in the 1st century when Jewish Zealots, an extreme resistance sect, would sacrifice themselves by mounting individual attacks on Roman soldiers with knives. Although documentation is scarce, the Zealots were hundreds strong and committed “numerous daily murders”. Their actions culminated in the Jewish war of AD66 which ultimately brought about the exodus of the Jews from the region.

Neither the "Zealots" (a Jewish group or party that violently opposed the Roman occupation) nor the "Sicarii," which is the group I think Bessaoud actually has in mind here (his unattributed quote from Josephus pertains to them; see below), engaged in suicide attacks. The Sicarii did use small daggers (sicae) to assassinate their foes in crowds, but they used the confusion of the crowds to make their escape. Josephus is our source for the Sicarii:

When the country was purged of these, there sprang up another sort of robbers in Jerusalem, which were called Sicarii, who slew men in the day time, and in the midst of the city; this they did chiefly at the festivals, when they mingled themselves among the multitude, and concealed daggers under their garments, with which they stabbed those that were their enemies; and when any fell down dead, the murderers became a part of those that had indignation against them; by which means they appeared persons of such reputation, that they could by no means be discovered. The first man who was slain by them was Jonathan the high priest, after whose death many were slain every day, while the fear men were in of being so served was more afflicting than the calamity itself; and while every body expected death every hour, as men do in war, so men were obliged to look before them, and to take notice of their enemies at a great distance; nor, if their friends were coming to them, durst they trust them any longer; but, in the midst of their suspicions and guarding of themselves, they were slain. Such was the celerity of the plotters against them, and so cunning was their contrivance.
(Jewish War 2.13.3/2.254-57)

My emphasis. From what Josephus says here and elsewhere, they don't sound like very savory characters, but they clearly had a well-developed sense of self-preservation. They were not suicide attackers. More here.

This looks like a new (at least to me) blame-the-Jews meme starting to make the rounds now that homicide bombing has come to the West. It is very disturbing to see the Times perpetuating it.

MORE ON THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS IN SINGAPORE: Matthew Hamilton e-mails:

I recently received a reply from the curator of the Singapore exhibit, Dr Umberto Utro, who replied in part:

Le confermo che i due frammenti esposti alla Mostra di Singapore sono pertinenti alle collezioni del Reparto per le Antichità Orientali dei Musei Vaticani, e sono abitualmente esposti nella Sala del Vicino Oriente del Museo Gregoriano
Egizio (invv. 57241-57242).

I frammenti provengono dalla collezione del Pontificio Istituto Biblico.

This reply means that a previous email I received from another person at the Vatican is incorrect (perhaps that person thought of scrolls as substantial scrolls, rather than as fragments, so to that extent that person was not incorrect).

The Hebrew fragment is the one previously in a private collection in Rome, published by Lacerenza in Revue de Qumran 2000, p.441-446, with additional article by Puech in the same issue of Revue de Qumran, and a brief mention by Tov in The Texts from the Judaean Desert, Indices ... (Oxford: Clarendon: 2002), p.165 and 214. There Tov notes that the fragment might be from 4Q22, 4QpaleoEx (m).

Regarding the Aramaic fragment, apart from it being not decipherable, I have no other information regarding it.

AN INSCRIBED ROYAL SEAL EXCAVATED IN JERUSALEM? So says the New York Sun. The Sun is a subscription-only service, so only the beginning of the article is available to me:

Royal Seal Supports Biblical Depiction of Jerusalem

BY BENNY AVNI - Staff Reporter of the Sun
August 1, 2005

A royal seal dating to biblical times has been unearthed in the City of David by Israeli archaeologists, and the artifact's inscription supports Old Testament depictions of ancient Jerusalem.

According to an Israeli daily newspaper, Maariv, the seal bears the name of one of the top officials in the court of the last Judean ruler prior to the destruction of the First Temple, King Zedekiah, and was created in about 580 before the common era. It was found at a dig currently carried out in semi-secrecy by Israeli archaeologists in an area known as City of David in Jerusalem.

A Google search for "Temple Mount" also produces this excerpt from the article: "... A succession of Judean kings ruled the area until 586 BCE, when the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple, which stood on what Jews now call the Temple Mount. ..."

The entry appeared on Google just a few minutes ago, so hopefully more news outlets will pick it up. If this report accurate, it's quite an important discovery. We'll see. Incidentally, "about 580" is an odd date to assign the seal, since that would be after the destruction of the city.

If anyone has more information, please drop me a note.

UPDATE: Stephen Goranson e-mails more of the article:

Researchers under the supervision of an Israeli archaeologist, Eilat Mazar, believe that the current dig is conducted at the site where the palace of the Judean kings once stood. As described in the Bible, the First Temple was the center of Judean political and religious life, and is at the center of Jewish claims to historical links to Jerusalem, as articulated by generations of Jews who pray for "next year in Jerusalem."

[....]
The name of the court official as it appears on the newly discovered seal - Jehudi, son of Shelemiah - is cited in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah.

Several years ago, another circa-580 B.C.E. royal seal was found in the same region. It bore the name of Gemaryahu, son of Shaphan, who is also mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah, and was a top official in the court of King Zedekiah's predecessor, King Yehoyachim. The existence of two seals from the same era lends historical credibility to the biblical descriptions, and according to Maariv, has encouraged the archaeologists to keep digging.

[....]

An excavation in the royal palace sounds very exciting indeed.

Jehudi appears in Jeremiah 36:14-23 in the episode in which King Jehoiakim burned the scroll of Jeremiah's oracles. Jehudi was the official whom the king ordered to read from the scroll as it was burned, piece by piece. However, there appear to be some errors in the article in addition to the "580" business. The book of Jeremiah gives his geneaology as "Jehudi son of Nethaniah, son of Shelemiah, son of Cushi," so Shelemiah was his grandfather, not his father as the article seems to indicate. And he was an official under King Jehoiakim, not King Zedekiah. The episode took place in the fourth year of the former's reign, c. 605 BCE. All this could have been learned by asking for the specific passage in Jeremiah and looking it up in a decent study Bible. So much for the mainstream media's much-vaunted multiple layers of fact checking.

The Gemaryahu seal was recovered in a controlled excavation as well and it's genuineness is not in doubt. Gemaryahu (Gemariah) appears in the same episode as Jehudi (Jer 36:10ff.).

Yes, please do keep digging.

UPDATE: Here's the Maariv article (via Yitzhak Sapir on the ANE list), which I don't had time to read. But it gives the text of the "seal" (bulla?) as יהוכל בן שלמיהו בן נובי, "Jehucal son of Shelemiah son of Nubi. This person is mentioned in Jeremiah 37:3 and 38:1 (Jucal in the latter) and indeed was an official during the reign of Zedekiah. The article in the Sun seems to have gotten the name mixed up. Very curious.

UPDATE: Yitzhak Sapir has posted a translation of much of the Maariv article on the ANE list. He also has some comments on possible reasons for the confusion about the name on the seal/bulla.

MY RECENT EXPERIENCE WITH THE MEDIA has been entirely positive. There was lots of interest and the coverage was accurate. Ed Cook's experience has not been as good.

Incidentally, the Herald article did not come out over the weekend, probably due to being bumped by all the coverage of the IRA deal and the capture of the 21/7 suspects. Too bad; there were some nice photos. But I'm glad of the good news that bumped it.

MORE ESOTERIC UNIVERSITY COURSES are also being called for at the 14th World Congress of Jewish Studies:

Jewish studies to woo with mysticism and practical magic
By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent

Increasing the number of courses offered in Jewish mysticism, practical magic and the significance of Jewish existence are among the proposals to make Jewish studies more attractive to Israelis that will be debated at the 14th World Congress of Jewish Studies, which opens Sunday in Jerusalem.

Some 1,200 speakers, one-third from abroad, will take part in the congress, organized every four years by the World Union of Jewish Studies, in fields ranging from Talmud to Jewish art and poetry, and contemporary Judaism.

Of interest to the congress is how to teach about Jewish mysticism and practical magic, which includes exorcism and spells, in an academic framework. Professor Itamar Greenwald of the Philosophy Department of Tel Aviv University says, "The intention is not that the students will deal with exorcism, but it is certainly important for students to understand what is behind processes like this. We know that in a trance things can happen that don't happen in normal waking states and these things cannot be discounted as lies or hallucinations."

[...]

No one will be surprised to hear that I think this is a good idea. These days people like esoteric stuff (as the response to the More OT Pseudepigrapha project last week demonstrated), and offering courses on such things can sometimes lead students to a broader appreciation of the field and a better-informed interest in more mainstream elements of it. I bet that the introduction of courses on Jewish mysticism and magic will lead to better enrollments in Talmud courses.

By the way, it's Professor Gruenwald, not Greenwald. He is a major figure in Hekhalot literature/Merkavah Mysticism studies.

THE 900th ANNIVERSARY of Rashi's death is this Friday, 5 August. The Jewish community of Louisville, Kentucky, will be commemorating him this year. I'm sure will see more about Rashi commemorations in the coming week.

Events honor key Jewish scholar

Special to The [Louisville] Courier-Journal

The Louisville Jewish community is commemorating the life of one of Judaism's most influential thinkers with a yearlong slate of special events that organizers are calling "The Community-wide Rashi Project."

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, or Rashi for short, was an 11th-century Jewish scholar from Troyes, France, whose writings revolutionized the contextual reading of the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, and the Talmud, the repository of Jewish law and lore. Rashi died on Aug. 5, 1105, so Friday will mark the 900th yahrtzeit, or anniversary of his death.

[...]

THE DA VINCI CODE is to be the subject of a university course at Trinity College, Dublin:

Da Vinci Code put on Trinity syllabus
Siobhan Maguire (London Times)
IT HAS sold more than 18m copies worldwide and been translated into 44 languages. Now The Da Vinci Code, the controversial bestseller by the American author Dan Brown, is to be the subject of an evening course at Trinity College Dublin.

The Decoding Da Vinci module will, among other things, analyse the contentious claim made in the book that Jesus married Mary Magdalene. Dismissed as mumbo jumbo by historians, the book represents an unusual choice of subject matter for the country’s leading academic institution.

Nigel Biggar, a professor of theology and head of TCD’s school of religions and theology, said The Da Vinci Code was chosen precisely because it confused fact with fiction.

[...]

Sean Freyne, director of the programme for Mediterranean and Near-Eastern Studies at TCD, who helped organise the Da Vinci course, said: “Every airport I have been to, I have seen people reading this book and there is no doubt that it raises a lot of questions about the historical Jesus. What intrigued me was how fascinated people were by this piece of fiction and the whole mystery and arcane ways of early Christianity.

“This is our first attempt at something like this and we want people to walk away from this course with a better appreciation of the use and spread of Christianity, without the fiction.”

However, supporters of the Catholic church, which furiously denounced the book, are not convinced that it merits a course.

[...]

An interesting experiment. It sounds to me like a good opportunity to get across to students just how absurd the book is and to introduce them to some real (and really fascinating) history.

THE MORE OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA PROJECT, developed by my colleague Professor Richard Bauckham and myself, has brought the University of St. Andrews a major research grant from the Leverhulme Trust. The University's press release is here:

Light Shed on Ancient Jewish and Christian Texts

This post was originally published on 28 July at 9:55 am. But I'll keep it at the top of the page for a while and will keep adding updates below. There are also plenty of new posts under this one, so do scroll down and check.

[UPDATE (6:00 pm): Welcome to visitors who find their way here through one of the articles coming out about the project. You may be interested also in this post about a book I've just completed on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (the page proofs are sitting on my desk right now) and in the St. Andrews Old Testament Pseudepigrapha website, which contains lots of material from a course I have been teaching on the subject. And if you look at the bottom of the links panel to the right, there is a link to some relevant papers and book reviews available online. Also, you may want to look at this post on lost books, some of which will figure in the comprehensive list of Old Testament pseudepigrapha which we're compiling for the project.]

This is the good news I promised you a few days ago. The grant has allowed us to hire a full-time research fellow to administer the project. The research fellow is Dr. Alexander Panayotov, who has appeared on PaleoJudaica from time to time (for example, here and here). The photo in the latter link seems to have rotted, but here's one of him and me at his graduation in June of 2004.

He is to join us here in January, when the project will really begin to move full-speed ahead. But we've already been spending a fair amount of time on it and we continue to add texts to our list (see the first link above, which has just been updated) and to invite new contributors.

UPDATE: The Herald has called to arrange a photo shoot of me with some manuscripts later today.

UPDATE (5:40 pm): Just had the photo shoot with the Herald, using the wonderful photolithographic facsimile volume of Codex Ambrosianus as our manuscript prop. The article should be out tomorrow. I was interviewed by the Jewish News earlier today and the press office has had inquiries from the Daily Mail and the Times of London. And there's already an article in the Scotsman and a brief notice in icScotland.

Watch this space.

UPDATE (29 July). There was a brief blurb last night in the Edinburgh Evening News and there's a piece this morning in the Telegraph. The Herald article will probably be out over the weekend.

By the way, I should also take this opportunity to welcome another pseudepigrapha researcher coming to St. Andrews. Grant Macaskill has been awarded a three-year British Academy Fellowship. Grant is in the final stages of the Ph.D. here and when he starts the Fellowship he will be producing a critical edition of 2 Enoch, an extremely important pseudepigraphon preserved only in Old Church Slavonic. St. Andrews is rapidly becoming a major international center for Old Testament Pseudepigrapha studies.

UPDATE: The Times has an article too: "Translators turning to magic texts for a spell." Everybody seems to like my little quote about divine-human miscegenation, pagan prophetesses, and incantations. The story is also in the Courier, the local Fife newspaper, but it doesn't seem to have made it to its online edition.

(12:28 pm): Just got off the phone with Radio Scotland. They're interviewing me at 4:50 this afternoon (GMT).

UPDATE (evening): You can hear the Radio Scotland Newsdrive interview by following the link and clicking on "LISTEN AGAIN." They seem to keep only the most recent show archived, so this one should be available until Monday afternoon GMT. The access facility is very primitive, but my segment, which is only a few minutes long, starts somewhere between 50 and 55 minutes into the program. The jump-forward (in 15- or 5-minute intervals only) works on some systems but not all. Good luck.

UPDATE (1 August): Another article. Info here.

UPDATE (11 August): An article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

JIM WEST ON THE TEMPLE AND TEMPLE MOUNT: Further to the update on my post on the forthcoming Temple Mount blogburst, Jim West has posted a comment to his first post and then a later post as well. First, in response to my comment on his first post (JRD is in italics, JW in Roman type):

The Palestinians and the Arab world in general have for some years been taking the line that no Jewish temples ever existed on the Temple Mount.

Such notions are not to be taken seriously if one is talking about the Temple of Herod, for instance. But there is no archaeological evidence at all for any earlier temple on the site.

If "not to be taken seriously" means "bogus," I agree. But these bogus notions are coming from PA leaders and Muslim clerics employed by the PA. They seem to be mainstream positions among Palestinians and widely in the Arab world. They need to be replied to even though they are bogus. There's a "big lie" for you.

As for their being "no archaeological evidence at all for any earlier temple [than Herod's] on the site," as phrased, that's more or less correct. (I could dispute that point, but let it lie for now.) Herod's expansion of the Temple Platform seems to have obliterated the earlier architecture. Of course, the only way to find out if some of that earlier architecture survives is to excavate the site. Obviously that is politically impossible. I have expressed the hope that future technologies may someday allow us to do nonintrusive scans of the site.

But in any case, what is the implication you are drawing from this (current) lack of archaeological evidence? Are you seriously suggesting that there wasn't a Jewish Temple on the site before Herod built it? That would mean there must have been a massive conspiracy by Josephus, the (pre-Herodian!) Dead Sea Scrolls, etc., to convince someone or other that there was a pre-Herodian Temple on the (previously empty?) site. I can't parse this at all, so I'll just have to ask you what you do mean.

And the Waqf, under the oversight of the Palestinian Authority, has done horrible damage to the archaeological record through illicit construction on the Temple Mount.

Isn't that exactly what Ben-dov calls "the big lie"? See my latest posting on the issue here. And if you would kindly care to comment on any of its contents I would love to hear.

The main things I would say is that the article was written in 2001 and is now out of date and that in any case it oddly downplays the damage that the Waqf has done. Taking the second point first, I would say that digging out 10,000 tons of material in uncontrolled excavations from a site as important as the Temple Mount is horrendously irresponsible. We don't know what architecture might survive down there and even if most of it is fill from Herod's work, that fill could contain some tremendously important stuff and we don't know what layering might survive in it. Layering can survive sometimes in fill, depending on the circumstances of its deposit. Only painstaking archaeological excavation would be able to tell us all this. By the way, what authority do "police reports" have for an archaeological question? And since when is archaeological importance limited to "spectacular" finds? I thought "bits of buildings, ceramics, coins" were the mainstay of archaeology.

Regarding the first point, archaeologist Gabriel Barkay has been analyzing the rubble from the Waqf's excavation and I don't think the things he has found in it are trivial. They include, for example, Hebrew epigraphic material and artifacts from both the first and second temple periods. Until all the material is published (assuming he finds the funds to excavate it all), we won't know exactly what is there. And we will never know what was destroyed in the Waqf's bulldozing.

Jim also says:

Even today, the fear that archaeology may not prove what so many want proven lies beneath the apprehension. What if there were no Solomonic Temple? What if the arrival in the land of migrants from Babylon is as far back as Israel can trace its existence as a "nation-state"? Would that fact somehow mean that present day Israel had no right to exist? That seems to me an odd conclusion.

I'm not sure that ascribing unworthy motives to the people one disagrees with is a constructive approach here. And the merits of their position still remain to be weighed, whatever their motives. I'm sure there must be people with the motive Jim describes, but there are plenty of others who are simply horrified at the wanton destruction in a site of such historical importance. I'm one of the latter and I'm just as appalled by the loss of Islamic and Crusader-era data as I am about data on the earlier periods. I agree that the right of present-day Israel to exist is not predicated on the historical specifics of Judean and Israelite kingdoms in the Iron Age II.

I've read some of the "minimalist" research (sorry, I hate that term too, but I don't know of a better one) but certainly not all of it. I have not encountered anything by a minimalist scholar that forthrightly denied that there was any Judean temple on the Temple Mount at any time in Iron Age II and I think this would be pretty difficult to maintain. Whether there was a grand edifice in the time of Solomon as described in the Bible is quite another matter, as I said in my last post on this subject. If someone can point me to serious scholarly discussions that do deny there was a pre-exilic temple in Jerusalem, I would be grateful if you would point me to them. Ditto, if a "minimalist" scholar holds this position and would like to e-mail me and tell me why.

I've spent way too much of my Saturday morning on this and need to get on to other things. But I am working on a long post on the archaeological and historical evidence pertaining to Judean/Jewish temples on the Temple Mount for the Temple Mount blogburst and plan to post it just before. I will have more to say then.

UPDATE: Jim replies:

I don't believe I have ascribed any sort of motives, unworthy or otherwise, to anyone I disagree with. In fact, I've simply asked a question.

The statement I was referring to was the sentence "Even today, the fear that archaeology may not prove what so many want proven lies beneath the apprehension." The immediately preceding context was "But many religious and secular Zionists find cause for worry. "If anything is sacred to secular Zionists, it's archaeology," explains Gorenberg. "It provides an essential link between today's Israelis and the ancient Jews." That's really what its all about." The italics are the article and the Roman type is Jim's comment. I don't think that this sums up the reasons for concern over the damage to the Temple Mount by the Waqf. There are good archaeological and historical reasons to be mightily disturbed by the damage. Zionist ideology is not "really what it's all about," although I don't deny that that is the issue for some people.

Jim continues:

If there were no evidence (and note, that is the issue so far as I am concerned) for a Solomonic (First) temple what impact could that possibly have on the State of Israel's present claim to the land? What Jim and others seem to be suggesting is that until no proof of a Temple can be found, it must be presumed to have existed. And if the Waqf weren't wantonly destroying materials, said evidence would be found. That argument seems tenuous. It is as much as saying "there's evidence but we don't have it so that proves it's there to be found".

My point of view is that, archaeologically speaking, we cannot claim there was a First Temple until we have evidence that there was.

Okay, but any Jewish Temple at all is the issue for the Palestinians, which was one of my points. As to an Iron Age-II Temple, much here depends on what one does with the evidence of the Deuteronomistic History and other relevant texts from the Hebrew Bible, doesn't it? There's also some interesting (genuine, excavated) epigraphic evidence, although it's not conclusive. But all that is a discussion for another post, which I intend to get around to. As I said, I've not seen the position Jim is taking here in a specialist peer-reviewed publication, and I'm not inclined to put a lot of my time into debating positions that haven't passed that hurdle.

Meanwhile, the Waqf should still not be wantonly destroying materials.

UPDATE (31 July): Jim quotes my last two sentences above and concludes:

Hence, if a position isn't found in a "specialist peer reviewed publication" it has no merit and isn't worthy of the time it may involve to discuss it until it "passes that hurdle".

This, of course, is not what I said and, given the amount of time I've spent this weekend discussing his position, is rather ungracious. Jim either thinks there was no Iron Age II Temple or else wishes to act as devil's advocate for that idea. Fine. But so far he's given me no indication that he is anything but a congregation of one. I have asked for publications on this idea and so far have received no answer. The only argument Jim has produced in favor of the idea is the lack of archaeological evidence, which I have addressed above. Somehow this is transformed into "no evidence" and "no proof." I have pointed out the matter of the Deuteronomistic History. It's certainly a mainstream position (I'm not saying a consensus) that Dtr was published either in the time of Josiah or not long afterward, and this seems to me to be the most persuasive view. Not everyone would agree, and that's fine. It's worth discussing. But Dtr is not "no evidence" and "no proof."

I'm willing to spend some time discussing speculative ideas, but there's a limit to how much, which is what I said above. I did not say that such an idea "has no merit and isn't worthy of the time it may involve to discuss it." It depends on the idea and the context of the discussion, doesn't it? Jim is putting words in my mouth that I did not say. He did this to Judith Weiss as well and it is not an appealing rhetorical tactic.

Yes, of course peer-review publication is a very useful filter, because it makes sure that an idea has positive arguments in its favor that some other scholars have at least found worth moving forward for debate. If someone wants seriously to advance a position, that's the place to do it. Coincidentally, Yuval Goren has just made the same point on the ANE list.

As for the rubble already dug out by the Waqf, I never said I expected it to prove the existence of the First Temple. I think no such thing. I do think that precious historical evidence has been destroyed by the actions of the Waqf, and that's what I said.

Again, I plan to come back to the Temple Mount and its archaeology and history in a couple of weeks.

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WITH GREEK MORPHOLOGY is another promising project from Logos Bible Software. The project's web page opens:

The Pseudepigrapha are among the most important non-canonical texts for biblical study, second only to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Students of the Bible engage the literature of the Pseudepigrapha (Greek portions as well as those in Hebrew and Aramaic) because this material provides sharp insight into how the Jewish community of Jesus’ day approached and interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures.

...an invaluable resource for the study of both early rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. —Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible

Old Testament Greek Pseudepigrapha with Morphology will include morphologically tagged and lemmatized Greek texts for all the Greek Pseudepigrapha included or referenced in Charlesworth’s The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols., Doubleday) and M. Denis’s Concordance grecque des pseudépigraphes d’Ancien Testament. Concordance, corpus des texts, indices (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1987). We have also been supplied with Greek texts from Craig Evans and the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha project.

In total, the Logos edition will include 81 books, letters, and fragments, making it the most complete electronic assemblage of Greek pseudepigraphal texts available. A number of texts left out of other electronic editions on the market (e.g., Apocalypse of Daniel and the Psalms of Solomon) will be included in the Logos edition! The complete list of included texts is at the bottom of this page.

The Logos edition will also include brand new introductions, written by Dr. Michael Heiser, PhD. (see samples below). These introductions provide a summary of the significant features of each text and explain how each plays a role in biblical studies.

There's lots more on the page, so have a look. This is a prepublication announcement, which I think means that they will come out with it if enought people sign up to buy it. So if you're keen to have it, sign up now.

This sounds exciting, but I'm afraid I have to allow myself one criticism. The sample introduction to The Life of Adam and Eve tells us that it "can inform us as to Jewish conceptions of the appearance and significance of the throne chariot of Ezekiel 1, 10." Most, if not all of the scholars currently working on this text agree is it probably a Christian rather than a Jewish composition. I hope very much that these introductions reflect cutting-edge research on the pseudepigrapha rather than the naîve approach that has been characteristic of much of their use until recently. But aside from this one point, it looks like a great project.

THE LEGEND OF THE TEN MARTYRS is the subject of what seems to be a very short Hebrew book reviewed in Ha'aretz:

Memories of martyrdom
By Rabbi Israel Meir Lau

"Aseret harugei malkhut bemidrash uvepiyut" (no English title) by Alter Welner, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook Institute, 44 pages

[...]

Alter Welner's book "Aseret harugei malkhut bemidrash uvepiyut" deals with the story of the Ten Martyrs and with the way it is expressed in midrash and liturgical poems. The martyrs were Tannaim, who were led by Rabbi Akiva and had fought Roman rule in the Holy Land. Welner understands two things that all of us have understood all these years: First, the "Aileh ezkera" prayer and the Ten Martyrs are directly linked to martyrology, total self-sacrifice and martyrdom in all periods and in all generations. Second, this elegy, which is recited on the two fast days of Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av (on the Ninth of Av, August 14 this year) and which is about individuals who were "cedars of Lebanon and mighty figures in Torah," is about martyrdom irrespective of the time period, and it thus includes the martyrs of the previous generation. The book has three introductions and each of them presents a theme common to both the tale of the Ten Martyrs and the martyrs of every generation.

[...]

UPDATE ON JEWISH SCHOLARS IN IRAQ: With reference to this post, this post, and this post, I note that Donny George, director of Iraq's National Museum, posted an important statement in December on the IraqCrisis list. Somehow I missed blogging on it, but Chuck Jones has just posted it again. Here it is:

IRAQ MUSEUM

POLICY FOR ACCESS TO THE COLLECTION FOR STUDY

STATEMENT

The policy for access to study objects of the Iraqi Museums shall be as follows:

Access to the collection for purposes of study or cataloging shall be granted to all scholars, regardless of race, religion, gender or ethnicity. Access will be granted, depending on the condition of the objects and by previous approval and appointment with the museums. Research will be conducted within the museum's facilities. Access will not be granted to scholars and institutions that are known to work with stolen Iraqi antiquities or give expertise to the illicit market in antiquities, whether that work involves Mesopotamian Antiquities, the Cultural Heritage of Iraq, or antiquities illicitly acquired from other countries.

Dr. Donny George
Director General
Iraqi Museums
December 2004

My emphasis. This statement says exactly what needed to be said. Well done. I trust that the policy will be implemented exactly as it is written. If you are a Jewish scholar applying for research access to objects in an Iraqi museum, please alert me to your application and keep me posted on how it goes.

THE ROMAN JEWISH CATACOMBS are in the news again. The Cleveland Jewish News reports:

Restoring burial sites in Rome

(JTA) -- Work will begin in September to restore ancient Jewish catacombs in Rome so that tourists can visit.

[...]

Recent scientific research, published this month in the magazine Nature, indicated that the Villa Torlonia catacombs date from the first century C.E.

[...]

The publication and publicity seems to be getting them some needed attention.

BEN WITHERINGTON acknowledges that St. Andrews is God's country. But of course.

JEWISH STUDIES, AN INTERNET JOURNAL (JSIJ) has posted a new article by Meira Polliack:

Wherein Lies the Pesher? Re-Questioning the Connection Between Medieval Karaite and Qumranic Modes of Biblical Interpretation

Abstract

The article questions the long-held thesis concerning the existence of a viable connection between the Qumranic pesher and the early Karaite model and method of interpreting biblical prophecy (and some other biblical texts), as argued primarily by N. Wieder, and later adopted in other studies.

Although much clarification will be required in future research, the theoretical direction upon which this article draws, is that Karaism is first and foremost an expression of a crisis internal to Rabbinic Judaism. It primarily reflects a dialectic with the intellectual traditions of Rabbinic Judaism, as well as deep unease, to the point of implosion and friction with its social-political outlook. The more Karaism and its driving ethos are examined in the context of Rabbinic Judaism rather than in that of "sectarian" Judaism, the supposed impact of the Second Temple sects on Karaism becomes less probable. As research progresses, a re-evaluation will inevitably be sought of the relative place and degree of importance attributed to each of these basic contexts in the formation of early Karaite literature.

The hypothesis proposed is that the parallels which have been identified between the exegetical texts of both groups are analogous in nature, reflecting a similar orientation in the history of Jewish Bible interpretation, yet cannot be confused with actual influence of Qumranic sources upon early Karaite literature. The analysis offered concerns three major aspects of the comparative sources: the conceptual framework of interpretation (I), its methodology (II) and terminology (III). It will be shown that in all these aspects there is no substantive continuity between the interpretive systems idiosyncratic to the Qumranites and the Karaites. Hence, the process, style and content of biblical interpretation cannot be used in support of wider claims presupposing some form of historical linkage between these two dissenting movements of antiquity and medieval times.

As introductory background, two additional dimensions of the claim to connection are generally outlined, which do not concern its exegetical manifestation, but focus on halakhic and historical forms of evidence which have been harnessed to this claim. A short general introduction is also appended which highlights recent breakthroughs in Karaite Studies (of relevance to the comparative discussion). Also appended are short sections on hermeneutic theory and conclusions, which draw attention to the wider implications of this debate for the study of the history of Jewish Bible exegesis.

It can be downloaded here as a PDF file.

THE TIBERIAS EXCAVATION has issued a press release, as has been noted already by several other bloggers. Excerpt:

Beneath the apse hall, remains of an impressive, first-century, marble floor were found. There is no natural marble in Israel, and therefore, this floor must have been part of a grand structure belonging to an individual of extraordinary wealth. The excavators believe it was one of the palaces belonging to Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, who founded Tiberias in 20 C.E. A marble floor of this type from the Second Temple period has been found previously in Israel only at the Herodian palaces of Masada, Jericho, and Herodion.

The finds in the remains of the complex's ancient shops this season were extremely rich: complete oil lamps, bronze coins, including more of the "Jesus coins" ( a coin from the 11th century bearing the image of Jesus, discovered in earlier excavations there ), glass and stone vessels, jewelry and frescoes. On the western façade of the basilica complex, a row of shops was discovered along with a 50-meter section of street paved with basalt stones, which the archaeological team named "Galilee Street."

UPDATE (29 July): Live Science has a note on the Jesus coin with nice close-up picture.

WELCOME BACK to the ANE List! The new listowners write:

Dear Listmembers,

After a several weeks hiatus the Oriental Institute is pleased to announce the re-launch of the ANE list. With the departure of Chuck Jones to Athens, the list is now organized and maintained by John C. Sanders (OI Computer Lab) and Magnus Widell (OI Research Archives). Basically, list operations remain as the were while Chuck was running the list. It's a testament to Chuck's capacity that it has been relatively easy for us to take over the list operations.

Ok, lets start ANE scholarly discourse again!

DAVID MEADOWS is back from holiday and is blogging like a fiend over at Rogue Classicism. Go and have a look.

TEMPLE MOUNT BLOGBURST ANNOUNCEMENT: This just in from Judith Weiss:

First of all, please note the new Kesher Talk URL if you haven't already.
http://www.keshertalk.com/

The following text with links is here:
http://www.keshertalk.com/archives/2005/07/announcing_anot.html

Sunday was the fast day of the 17th of Tammuz, beginning the Three Weeks of somber reflection that lead to Tisha B'Av, the Jewish holy day commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples (in each case also the destruction of the Jewish nation at that time).

During these three weeks, I am asking for contributions to a blogburst to appear just before Tisha B'Av.

The theme of this blogburst is the destruction of Temple Mount archeological relics under the authorization of the Muslim authority in charge of the Mount, in the context of ongoing propaganda attempts to erase Jewish history.

A "blogburst" is a simultaneous and cross-linked posting of many blogs on the same theme, usually to commemorate a particular event or to publicize a situation. The organizer makes a master blog entry with links to all the other blogposts on the topic.

Kesher Talk has spearheaded several blogbursts in the past, most notably commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Munich Olympics Massacre. That effort earned links from James Taranto's "Best of the Web" and Instapundit, among others.

Tisha B'Av begins the evening of Saturday August 13th and continues till the evening of Sunday August 14th. Because Shabbat is just the day before, please post your contribution and email me the permalink before 3 PM, Friday August 12th.

If you don't have a blog but would like to write on this topic, email me your essay and I will post it on Kesher Talk in its own permalink, and link to it from the main blogburst entry.

You don't have to be Jewish, or know anything about Tisha B'Av, to contribute to this blogburst. You can post solely about any of these topics, or in combination:
- the ongoing Temple Mount destruction and efforts to mitigate it
- the history of Jewish Jerusalem and Jewish residence in Israel (preferably that which can be corroborated by artifacts and documents)
- the disinformation campaign to falsify Middle Eastern history to erase the Jewish presence
- controversies about future Jewish and Muslim activity at the Temple Mount
- personal experiences at the Temple Mount
- Tisha B'Av: its rituals and many meanings

I have many URLs on these topics and will be happy to email them to you upon request, to assist you in writing your contribution. Of course, your own resources are welcome and desired.

Feel free to publicize this effort on your blog - the more contributors the better; that's how a blogburst works.

Judith Weiss
Kesher Talk

I'll see what I can come up with.

UPDATE: Jim West takes exception to this project on the following grounds:

From the sound of it, only contributions which support the belief in a grand, Solomonic Temple will be included as the blogger defines herself as a person with a hawkish liberal Jewish perspective.

His emphasis. On the grounds that Jim doesn't like Judith's politics, he puts words in her mouth which she did not say. What she did say was that she wants discussions of "the history of Jewish Jerusalem and Jewish residence in Israel (preferably that which can be corroborated by artifacts and documents)," which sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I don't know what she thinks about the various minimalist positions about such things -- I don't buy all of them myself -- but her having a "hawkish liberal Jewish perspective" doesn't disqualify her from being interested in the actual evidence.

He continues

The troubling bit, at least for me, is the line which suggests that there is [an] ongoing propaganda attempt to erase Jewish history. If this means, as I think it must, that any questioning of the historical truth claims of the Deuteronomic History is seen as an attempt to erase Jewish history, then I must strenuously disagree with the premise.

No she doesn't mean that, Jim, as you really ought to know if you've been paying attention to what has been going on in the Middle East in recent years. She's talking about claims coming from Palestinians and the Arab world in general that there were no Jewish temples at all ever on the Temple Mount (see, for example, here, here, here, and here) and that the Wailing Wall is "a Muslim wall" rather than a Herodian structure. These are just a few examples of a very widespread phenomenon that I have blogged on frequently.

Yes, there is solid archaeological evidence that raises significant doubts about the stories of Solomon's and David's empires. That does not mean that there was no temple on the Temple Mount in the Iron Age II. Yes, there is room for debate over the date of its founding and how big it was. It seems quite unlikely that it was the grand structure described in 1 Kings 6 and 7 in the time of Solomon. But archaeologist Israel Finkelstein certain accepts a reasonably grand temple on the site by the time of Josiah's royal state, and it may be that Josiah's "repairs" to the temple involved expanding a more modest original structure. (That's my speculation, not Finkelstein's.) But whatever you do with the first temple, how can you possibly take seriously the claim that the second temple, even in its expanded Herodian form, didn't exist? That certainly sounds like a "disinformation campaign to falsify Middle Eastern history to erase the Jewish presence" to me. And the destruction of the archaeology of the Temple Mount by the Waqf under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority (see, e.g., here, here, and here), on which Jim does not comment on at all in his post, involves erasure that goes far beyond mere disinformation. Now there's something to be troubled about.

THE PULSA DE-NURA CURSE CEREMONY is in the news. The AP article "Israeli soldiers practice removing settlers from homes three weeks before Gaza pullout" ends with this:

On Tuesday, well-known Jewish extremist Michael Ben Chorin said he and about 20 others carried out an ancient curse ceremony called "pulsa denura," calling death down upon Sharon, author of the pullout plan. The mystical ceremony was conducted in a cemetery in Israel's north, he said.

"We called on angels of destruction to kill Sharon as soon as possible," he told Israel Radio.

Such a ceremony preceded the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a fanatical opponent of concessions to the Palestinians. The assassin was influenced by hard-line rabbis and extreme religious pronouncements.

The mainstream settlers council, Israel's chief rabbi and pro-peace groups condemned Ben Chorin and the ceremony.

And well they should. It's been speculated that carrying out this ceremony may count as incitement to murder. See first link above.

UPDATE: Something Jewish has more details in "Sharon's kabbalistic curse." It seems that the cursers have chosen their words carefully to try to avoid charges of incitement. But there's also this quote from WorldNetDaily:

Dayan told WND he is not inciting anyone to assassinate Sharon.

"We are talking to angels and spirits, not people," he said. "If someone takes the law into his own hand and kills Sharon, it's not my problem."

I wouldn't be so sure about that. The Jerusalem Post has the following:

Charges could be filed for pulsa denura
By YAAKOV KATZ

Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz weighed Tuesday night whether or not to issue criminal charges against far-right disengagement protesters enacted a pulsa denura (Aramaic for "lashes of fire") death curse against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in an effort to thwart the disengagement plan.

[...]

(Bad link to last article now fixed.)

UPDATE (28 July): Some additional details in an article today in News.com.au:

Several years before Rabin's death, the pulsa denura curse was invoked against archaeologist Yigal Shiloh, who was accused by ultra-orthodox activists of desecrating ancient Jewish graves while excavating in Jerusalem. When Shiloh died not long afterwards, the activists claimed credit. But the curse has also been directed over the years at other prominent people without ill effect.

Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek was the target of such a ceremony more than 25 years ago but he is still alive at 94.

INDIAN MANUSCRIPTS: Earlier this month I thought about blogging on an article about a project to conserve ancient (and more recent) manuscripts in India, on the grounds that there might be an Old Testament pseudepigraphon or two tucked among them. But then I thought that was reaching too far.

Scholars catalog ancient manuscripts to preserve 4,000-year history of India

Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post

Sunday, June 26, 2005

[...]

And so it goes, as India's 30,000 manuscript hunters fan out nationwide, seeking the nation's heritage in old temples, madrassas, mosques, monasteries, libraries and homes.

Launched two years ago, the National Mission for Manuscripts is a five- year project to catalog for the first time India's ancient documentary wealth and ensure that basic conservation practices are followed to halt their rapid decay. Officials say that India is the largest repository of manuscripts in the world, with an estimated 5 million texts in hundreds of languages.

Linguistic scholars and history students involved in this adventurous hunt for ancient volumes use not only expertise but also social skills, coaxing and cultural sensitivity to gain access to manuscripts.

[...]

The manuscript project's officials say the nationwide survey will open a window to India's ancient knowledge systems: religion, astronomy, astrology, art, architecture, science, literature, philosophy and mathematics.

"We are creating a manuscript map of India. The survey will present new facets to our intellectual heritage," says Sudha Gopalakrishnan, chief of the National Mission for Manuscripts. The project will not take the volumes from their owners but merely document what is available and help in conservation.

"The key abstracts of all the ancient knowledge found in our manuscripts will be available digitally for the world to see," Gopalakrishnan says

[...]

The oldest manuscripts that India possesses are a set of sixth century Buddhist texts that were found buried in the hills of Kashmir about 60 years ago. In the last two years, the surveyors have found rare ancient Sanskrit and Arabic treatises on such subjects as diabetes, astrophysics, interpretation of dreams, surgical instruments, concepts of time and the art of war. A 400-year- old handwritten Koran was found in a locket measuring 3 inches.

[...]

It seems I was wrong. Recently, while going through our list of texts for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project, I noticed that one of the documents, the Words of Gad the Seer, being prepared by Dr. Meir Bar-Ilan, survives in a single eighteenth-century Hebrew manuscript from Cochin, India. Let's hope that the National Mission for Manuscripts finds more like it.

APOCRYPHA WATCH: Some good advice from Kansas Senator Sam Brownback to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts:

The men did not discuss their shared Catholic faith, but Brownback did urge Roberts to read the Book of Wisdom, a book in the Old Testament Apocrypha.

"There's a chapter about how we are judged at the end," Brownback said. "Those who are judges and leaders are held to a higher standard -- that what we do be the right thing to do and that we apply justice. I did recommend that he read that at some point in time."

CONGRATULATIONS to Philip Alexander, Professor of Post-Biblical Jewish Literature at the University of Manchester, who has been elected to be a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). A well-deserved honor!

MY "LOST BOOKS" POST has been extensively updated over the weekend.

UPDATE (26 July): And it's still being updated. Keep checking.

APOCALYPTO, Mel Gibson's next movie, is to be filmed in an "obscure Mayan dialect" according to Variety. Now can someone tell me what filmworthy event happened among the Mayans 3,000 years ago?

UPDATE: I'm not subscribed to Variety, but this Google excerpt from the article reads "Set 500 years ago, pic will be filmed in an obscure Mayan dialect, presumably with the same kind of subtitles Gibson reluctantly added to "The Passion of the [Christ]". Five hundred years ago would make more sense.

UPDATE: Bryan Cox e-mails:

It's just a guess on my part, but Gibson's Mayan movie may have something to do with the fact that the Mayan calendar ends on December 21st, 2012. This seems to have inspired many "end-of-the-world" stories. If you google "Maya 2012" (or some derivation of that), you'll find lots of information.

The first place I ever bumped into this fact about the Mayan calendar was in "Breaking the Mayan Code" by Michael D. Coe, a very interesting account of the decipherment of Mayan script.

UPDATE (26 July): Yep, it's 500 years. Here's a Reuters article.

MORE ON THE JEHOASH INSCRIPTION from the Bible and Intepretation website;

The Jehoash Inscription: An Evaluative Summary


The strength of the forgery position is the cumulative weight of all the objections that have been raised rather than any single objection taken alone.

By Stuart A. Irvine and Charles David Isbell
Jewish Studies
Louisiana State University
July 2005

They seem to want to keep the possibility of its genuiness open, mainly on the grounds that we don't know the Hebrew of the period very well. You can see some of my thoughts on the inscription here. I haven't had time to read the essay carefully yet. I may have more to say later.

MORE ON THE PROPOSED SILWAN HOUSING DEMOLITIONS:

Trouble brews over homes at ancient Jerusalem site
Fri Jul 22, 2005 2:13 AM BST

By Cynthia Johnston

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A new row is rumbling in Jerusalem over the fate of dozens of Arab houses on land that may have been the gardens of biblical King David's capital and next to where Christians believe Jesus performed miracles.

On one side are Palestinian residents of Bustan, a hamlet of about 80 homes.

On the other are Israeli authorities who say some houses may face demolition because they were built illegally on land set aside for a park. Israeli archaeologists also want the ground cleared.

[...]

Many residents of Bustan say they have received demolition orders and are challenging them in court. Several have exhausted court challenges and their homes could now face demolition, community leaders say.

[...]

Meanwhile, Israeli archaeologists are keen for the land to be cleared. It lies atop what they believe were royal gardens at the foot of Kind David's capital. Nearby is the Siloam pool, where the New Testament says Jesus gave a blind man sight.

"We hope that somebody will help us in this fight to protect the area," said Yuval Baruch, Jerusalem District Archaeologist for the Israel Antiquities Authority.

"We just asked the municipality to do their job, not to allow people to build without permission... And if somebody does that, they have to take action to remove his house, not just in this area, but all over Israel."

Sami Ersheid, a lawyer representing many of the residents, dismissed the calls for preservation.

"Wherever any prophet touched his foot on the earth, do we have to preserve it until the end of this world?" he said.

[...]

Sounds like a messy situation.

ERIC AND CAROL MEYERS, along with the Sepphoris excavation, are profiled in a Durham Herald-Sun article:

Duke husband-and-wife archaeologists renowned for decades of field studies


By PAUL BONNER : The Herald-Sun
pbonner@heraldsun.com
Jul 23, 2005 : 11:40 pm ET

DURHAM -- The excavators were turning up tesserae, small bits of colored tile, that told Eric and Carol Meyers a mosaic probably lay beneath.

The Duke archaeologists and a team were digging in a banquet hall of a Roman-style villa at Sepphoris, four miles from Nazareth and not far from the Sea of Galilee in Israel. It was July 2, 1987, a Friday afternoon.

[...]

And from the same source, an article on the disagreement between Eric Meyers and Hershel Shanks over the James Ossuary.

one box bedevils friendship


By PAUL BONNER : The Herald-Sun
pbonner@heraldsun.com
Jul 23, 2005 : 11:41 pm ET

DURHAM -- Few single archaeological artifacts have stirred as much controversy as the so-called James ossuary.

It has placed Duke archaeologist Eric Meyers and an erstwhile friend, Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archeology Review, at odds -- with Meyers among those doubting the authenticity of a key phrase of its inscription.

[...]