MOSES GASTER'S PAPERS are kept at the John Rylands University Library of the University of Manchester. They include hundreds of Hebrew, Arabic, and Samaritan manuscripts; thousands of manuscript fragments; and lots of monographs and offprints, often annotated by Gaster himself. (Heads-up, Jesús de Prado-Plumed on the H-JUDAIC list.)

I wonder what the relation of this collection is to the collection that was auctioned by Sotheby's a year ago.

AN OBITUARY FOR STANISLAV SEGERT has been published by Ed Cook at the SBL Forum site. There are also obituaries there for Robert Funk, by Bob Schwartz, and Timo Veijola, by Raija Sollamo.

WHAT IS A DEMON? Just in case you were wondering.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Ynetnews has clandestine video footage inside forbidden sites on the Temple Mount:

Exclusive: Temple Mount tour

Ynetnews presents rare, exclusive video of holy site, currently closed to Jews, after Israeli able to sneak camcorder into Mount. Prominent archeologist who watched video says Muslim renovation did not damage shrine

I can't get the video to work. It says to use Internet Explorer, which is dreadful for the Mac and which I refuse to use on principle. Firefox and Safari won't play the video. If anyone has suggestions, please drop me a note.

The archaeologist is Ze'ev Herzog. Here's the key section:

Distinguished archeologist Ze’ev Herzog, who has closely dealt with the Temple Mount, watched the video and said it only served to reinforce his stance that Muslim work did not cause any significant damage to the site.

“The Waqf’s renovation activity did not cause archeological damage in my estimation,” he told Ynet. “There’s no chance there were ancient archeological remnants in the area.”

The Waqf has been removing dirt from the site, Herzog says, but notes this dirt was only brought at a later period.

“According to the video, the Waqf in fact reconstructed the site as it was during the crusader period and added a few accessories (such as fans and electricity) to make it a convenient prayer house,” he said.

As so often with media quotes, I'm not entirely sure what some of this means. The "dirt only was brought to the site at a later period" than what? The Second Temple period? The Herodian period? How does he know? How was it brought there? From where was it brought? Doubtless he has answers to these questions, but they didn't make it into this article.

I think everyone was assuming that the material is fill. I had assumed it was fill put into the Temple Platform during the Herodian construction, but maybe Herzog knows something I don't. But in any case, it's fill that is producing a lot of interesting artifacts. At the very least, the dirt should not have been excavated from the Temple Mount without a salvage operation to sift it and catalogue what came out of it before it was mixed with rubble and garbage in the Kidron Valley etc. And I still think it should not have been excavated at all.

(Heads-up, reader Shai Heijmans.)

UPDATE (21 October): archaeologist David Stacey e-mails:

Jim, Surely what Ze'ev was saying was true. The area cleared and turned into a mosque is what is often called Solomon's stables. These were utilised by the templars perhaps even as stables. Whatever they were used for the dirt moved out from them must post-date the Crusader period.

Okay, I think I have this straight now. Professor Herzog was speaking only of the rubble hauled out of Solomon's Stables and he was saying that this area was not damaged. Indeed, that material would not bear on the Second Temple and earlier periods, but surely it still should have been sifted for post-Crusader artifacts.

But the larger issue is the huge pit dug by the Waqf north of the Stables. See this essay by Zachi Zweig on the Har Habayt site. It doesn't sound to me as though the video deals with this area. I believe that it's the rubble from that excavation, which seems to be at least partly Herodian fill, which is providing the interesting ancient artifacts.

UPDATE (23 October): David Stacey replies:

Jim, I think it is important to keep things in perspective. Yes indeed much of the deep pit to the north of Solomon's stables was probably Herodian fill. And yes it would have been better if both it and the spoil removed from the stables themselves had been treated with more archaeological respect. But truckloads of debris were removed by bulldozers from outside the city walls near the Jaffa gate by Israeli archaeologists without the debris being sifted and, moreover, I don't believe that anybody can be absolutely certain that remains from the Umayyad periods onwards were not destroyed in the process. However flimsy these structures may have been they too would have deserved more respect. Let he who is without sin.....

I'm not familiar with that incident, but I take your point. Nevertheless, I still think no one has any business digging big holes in the Temple Mount platform and that it is seriously irresponsible to do so. The way I see it, Herod's work involved dismantaling some or all of the Second Temple, and perhaps its platform too, to build his Temple. This means that, pound for pound, fill from his project is likely to contain considerably more interesting things than fill from elsewhere.

Also, thanks to those who sent suggestions on how to get the video to work. I haven't been able to put much time into it yet, but I'll try to figure it out when I get a chance.

THE EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT'S WEBSITE ON THE HISTORY OF JERUSALEM -- you know, the one that I and others criticized for being full of careless and tendentious errors -- has been taken down.

Imagine that.

UPDATE: Mark Morgan e-mails:

the whole SIS (http://www.sis.gov.eg/) site appears to have been revamped so it has probably changed address. It also appears to be having teething problems!

Well, okay, but I can't find the Jerusalem page anywhere on the site and I can't get the search engine to work. That page seems to be gone. I hope it stays gone.

UPDATE: In case you're curious, the page is archived by the Wayback Machine. I've saved a copy of it now in case it disappears from there too.

ASSYRIAN STUDENTS UNITE at UCLA. That's a good place to do it, since they have Professor Yona Sabar there, who is one of the world's top experts on Neo-Aramaic.

HAPPY VOLUNTEERS AT THE HAZOR EXCAVATION: HappyNews.com has a profile of them. Amidst all the happiness is this bit of information:

The six-week dig is almost over, and though some interesting finds have been uncovered, the whereabouts of the elusive Hazor archive are still unknown. With each passing day, the likelihood of finding the archives this season grows dimmer. No one says anything, but everyone knows that the next strike of the pickaxe could yield the written secrets of the site.

I'll be very happy if they find those long sought-after archives.

THE BOOK is now available for pre-ordering at Amazon. The publication date is actually November 2005 (by the time of the SBL meetings), not January 2006. It is at the printers now.

UPDATE: Ed Cook's book is cheaper, so while you're ordering mine, order his too.

PHILIP DAVIES, on the Bible and Interpretation website, calls for Hershel Shanks to give up the editorship of Biblical Archaeology Review:

Cancel My Subscription

Why have I have changed my mind and no longer write or subscribe? Not largely for any ethical reasons but for commercial reasons of my own. The publicity I have had for my views is a lasting benefit to me (and maybe to scholarship, but that’s not for me to say). The returns have now diminished, partly because there is little more useful publicity to be had, but mostly because the respect Shanks has among the scholarly community has diminished. His stock value has plummeted, and the benefit to scholars of being included in his pages is much less.

By Philip Davies
University Of Sheffield, England
October 2005

Excerpt:

I would hate to see the end of BAR because I believe in popularizing scholarship. But I think it needs to have a new editor if it wants to be of any use to scholarship. Maybe there are other things Hershel can move on to: he has considerable gifts, and with the addition of a little humility, there is still much he might achieve -- elsewhere.

WISH I COULD ATTEND THIS:

This Wednesday, the Oriental Institute Members' Lecture Series continues with a talk by U of C alum Cynthia L. Miller, followed by a reception in the LaSalle Bank Education Center. Join us!
-------

Languages Without Speakers: Reconstructing Ancient Near Eastern Languages from Epigraphic Fragments
Cynthia L. Miller, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Wednesday, October 19
8:00 PM
At the Oriental Institute, 1155 E 58th St
Free

Artifacts of language pose unique challenges for reconstruction and interpretation. Like other material artifacts, epigraphic remains are often fragmentary and enigmatic. Initially, the script must be identified and deciphered so that the text can be read, but beyond these preliminary tasks lies the real interest of Semitic philologists: What can these languages fragments tell us about the language as a whole? What can we learn about how the language functioned in an ancient society? Philologists must find ways to approach these issues without any access to living speakers of the language in question or to the ancient society within which the language was used. This illustrated lecture examines the challenges that Semitic philologists face in reconstructing the languages of the ancient Near East based on fragmentary epigraphic remains, and considers the ways in which linguistic techniques can shed light on these questions.

Speaker Cynthia Miller is Associate Professor, Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Miller specializes in the syntax and pragmatics of Classical Hebrew and the related Northwest Semitic languages. She is particularly interested in moving the field of traditional Semitic philology to an understanding of, and appreciation for, contemporary linguistic approaches to the study of ancient texts. She received her Ph.D. with honors from the University of Chicago in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and the Department of Linguistics (joint degree).



__________________________________________________________________
Please contact Maria Krasinski in the Membership Office with any questions:
(773) 834 9777 or oi-membership@uchicago.edu. This lecture is is free and open to the public. Members are reminded that they may dine at the University of Chicago's Quadrangle Club prior to lectures.

The Oriental Institute is located at 1155 East 58th Street, Chicago IL 60637.
Persons needing assistance should contact (773) 702 9513.

This too:

As most of you know, David Frankfurter (University of New Hampshire) will be the guest speaker Thursday night at the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, on the theme "From Holy Man to Ritual Experts" in late antiquity. David will be arriving on campus in early afternoon (around 1:30 or so), and would be pleased to talk informally with whoever may be interested (probably in the Logan 2nd floor lounge) before the seminar attendees do dinner at Houston Hall around 6.

You can check on any details with the co-chairs of the PSCO, T. J. Wellman and Harry Tolley. Or with me.

I don't have any pre-seminar reading "assignments" to offer, although I suspect that a review of Peter Brown's "holy man" publications and their reviewers would be appropriate as well as David's recent article on "Syncretism and the Holy Man in Late Antique Egypt," Journal of Early Christian Studies (2003). When in doubt, go to google (or similarly).

Note also that at 4:30 that same afternoon, Eric Rebillard (of the Departments of Classics and History, Cornell University) will present a paper sponsored by the Ethnohistory Workshop on the status of saints' relics at the end of the fourth century entitled "Relics and the real presence of the saints: the late Roman evidence" (Room 345 of the University Museum, 4:30-6:30). It may be that David will also want to attend!

For further details on PSCO, see
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/psco/

On David Frankfurter,
http://www.unh.edu/history/fac_frankfurter.htm

RAK
--
Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
227 Logan Hall (Philadelphia PA 19104-6304); tel. 215 898-5827
kraft@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html

(From the ANE list and the PSCO list, respectively.)

METATRON is playing hip-hop and jazz in El Paso.

The T-Lounge has also always been supported of Metatron.

The nine-member hip-hop and jazz fusion band will perform with Mano Sol, Aztec Zodiac and Fall of an Empire at 8 p.m. Oct. 23.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The "Temple Mount Faithful" group has been forbidden by the Israeli High Court of Justice to put a cornerstone intended for a Third Temple beside the Western Wall.

SUKKOT - the seven-day festival of Booths or Tabernacles, begins this evening at sundown. I wish my Jewish readers a happy holiday.

VERY BEST WISHES TO BENJAMIN RICHLER, who has just retired as director of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. Manuscript Boy was at the lecture ceremony and he learned a suprising reason why many Hebrew works were lost in the seventeenth century.

MY ARTICLE "The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha as Background to the New Testament" has been published in the November issue of the Expository Times. It's basically a summary of The Book (although The Book covers much wider territory), which should be out by the time of the SBL meeting in Philadelphia.

This issue also has a number of pieces that deal with Secret Mark, including a review of Stephen Carlson's new book, and it has some other reviews pertaining to ancient Judaism.

You need a paid personal or institutional subscription to access the site. Sorry.

HISTORICAL TRAVELOGUES are in the news this weekend. These are for Ethiopia (with a summary of the story in the national epic the Kebra Negast), Jordan, and the ancient city Petra (also in Jordan). The museum exhibit Petra: Lost City of Stone is coming to Canada later this month.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS ON STAGE. With live music too.

A DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION is coming to Charlotte, North Carolina, in February:

Charlotte's Discovery Place Presents The Dead Sea Scrolls

POSTED: 3:34 pm EDT October 14, 2005 (WSOCtv.com, NC )
UPDATED: 6:57 pm EDT October 14, 2005

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at Charlotte’s Discovery Place will feature two scrolls never seen outside of Israel.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are considered one of the greatest archeological discoveries of the 20th century. They include the earliest written texts of the Bible and are nearly 2,300 years old.

Charlotte’s exhibit will include 10 original scrolls and three replicas. It will be at Discovery Place Feb. 17-May 29, 2006.

The scrolls coming to Charlotte that have never left Israel are transcripts of Numbers and Isaiah. ...

THE INK AND BLOOD EXHIBITION is moving to the Florida International Museum in January.

A NEW ADDITION to the Bible and Interpretation website:

The Mamzer Jesus and His Birth
So why did some people accuse Jesus of being born of fornication (porneia, John 8:41)? Was it for the same reason he was called “son of Mary” in his own town (Mark 6:3) rather than “son of Joseph”? What emerges from both Rabbinic literature (supplemented by Origen) and the New Testament is that Jesus’ mother was clearly known and that the identity of his father was contested.

By Bruce Chilton
Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion
Bard College
October 2005

PARADISE LOST, THE MOVIE? Heaven help us.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: As a number of people have noted, Ha'aretz has an article ("Gems in the dirt") on the Waqf's Temple Mount debris and the controversy between archaeologists Gabriel Barkay (who is leading the project to sift the material) and Meir Ben-Dov on whether the material is worth analyzing. Be-Dov thinks that the inscribed bulla fragment may not be from the Temple Mount debris. I can't let one of his comments pass:

Ben-Dov: "Let's say that there is a bulla and it has three letters on it. Yigal Shiloh [excavator of the City of David] had 70 intact bullas. This bulla says nothing. There is no discovery, so why blow things up like this?"

Well, it has more than three letters (see the article for details) but that's not the point. Genuine ancient Hebrew inscriptions -- even poorly preserved ones -- are very hard to come by and each one adds a bit to the corpus and is of cumulative importance. As I've noted before (see second link above), for an archaeologist Dr. Ben Dov (if he's been quoted correctly) expresses a suprisingly casual attitude toward the recovery of ancient artifacts.

MORE ON JOEL BEININ'S ONLINE COURSE. Daniel H Jacobs, the writer of the Stanford Review article, e-mails in response to my comments:

This is my first time following my article onto the blogosphere so bear with me. Your comment on my article in the Stanford Review was interesting. I believe the Nachmanides' synagogue was established by Nachmanides' pupils shortly after his death, but you described that as a "minor point." Joseph Caro did publish his work during the Ottoman period, but the example was meant to show that a productive Jewish community existed. The more major point is whether Beinin knows that a Jewish community existed continuously between 70-1516. Undoubtedly he does know. In my article I stated that Beinin's lectures IMPLIED there was no such community, meaning that his lectures were deliberately deceitful, intended to omit Jewish history, but cleverly to maintain deniability if actually called for his words. The class, as you know from the course description you downloaded, is intended for novice historians. I did download Beinin's lecture transcripts and have the videos at my house. Here is the pertinent transcript from week one:

"The total number of Jews was about 25,000, and they lived in the four Jewish holy cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. Some of them had lived in Palestine since the 16th Century when Ottoman authorities invited Jews who had been expelled from Spain to settle in Palestine. These were religious Jews, not Zionists. They came to the Holy Land to study Jewish religious texts and to be buried there."

The purpose of Beinin's lectures is to imply, without actually saying so, that most Jews left with Titus and came back due to Arab hospitality. If you were one of the 50 odd students who had little background, that is what you would have believed. It is brilliant, comical and evil all at the same time.

In a second e-mail he adds:

Beinin made a deliberate point of equating Jewish and Palestinian national claims. Therefore he omitted/minimized Jewish life in Palestine from 70 CE until the beginning of Zionism in the 19th century, stated that Jewish and Palestinian nationalism began "about the same time," and postulated that Palestinians might have originated from the Canaanites, and restricted Jewish archaeological finds to the "Wailing Wall." The combination of thoughts seems like a deliberate omission from an historian, who is quite eloquent and knowledgeable in many respects, and presents ideas very similar to the "history" emanating from the Palestinian National Authority, while cleverly protecting his deniability. My conclusion is that the historical talk at the very least deserves filling in. Readers can decide for themselves if they believe his omissions were dishonest.

Again, I do not have access to the course materials, and would not want to judge it on the basis of the limited information I have. If anyone else who took it wants to comment, drop me a note.

CARLA SULZBACH e-mails:

Last March and April you reported on the condition of the Shalom al-Yisrael synagogue in Jericho (thru Arutz 7), the first a worrisome account indicating the place might have been destroyed, the second more hopeful, that a) it had not been totally destroyed and b) that Jews were allowed back for prayers.

My questions are: a) What is the current situation; b) What is the condition of the mosaic floor (is it even there?); c) Would you know of any photographs of the actual remains of the original Byzantine era building? If you do not have any of this info handy (I do realize you are very busy), would you know who best to approach with this?

I've heard no more about it, but with Carla's permission, I am posting her query. Please let me know if you have more recent information.

UPDATE (14 October): Readers Menachem Brody and David Maltsberger point to additional Arutz Sheva articles on the synagogue here and here.

THE HARBOR OF TYRE has recently been the subject of important probe excavations:

History lies in the silt of Tyre
By Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent (Times of London)

[...]

Tyre was an island fortress until Alexander the Great took it in 332 BC and built a causeway linking it to the mainland. The island itself is said to have been created by Hiram, King of Tyre, who sent cedars of Lebanon to King David for his palace and to Solomon for the first Temple in Jerusalem. Hiram linked the two Ambrosian Isles to create his city, with the principal harbour on the north.

The French team have sunk boreholes and extracted cores of sediment that reveal the history of Tyre. While some sediment came from the Litani river to the south, there were also cultural contributions. Mudbrick architecture yielded clay particles that sluiced down the streets, agriculture inland led to erosion and runoff, and people dumped rubbish in the harbour.

[...]

(Via Bible and Interpretation News.)

YOM KIPPUR, the Day of Atonement, begins at sundown today. An easy fast to those observing it. The biblical rules for this holiday are found in Leviticus 23:26-32.

AL JAZEERAH blasts Israeli archaeology in an article by Kevin Chamberlain ("Stealing Palestinian History") which was originally published in thisweekinpalestine.com. A few comments:

When a site is uncovered the Israelis institute a ‘salvage excavation,’ i.e. the rapid removal and recording of artefacts before the site is covered up. In most cases this results in the destruction of the site, although occasionally the site is covered up but not destroyed for future investigation, e.g. in the case of an important mosaic floor. Nevertheless the effect of these ‘salvage excavations’ is that the all-important context of the site is destroyed and the knowledge that it yields is lost forever. Such excavations fall under the authority of the archaeological staff officer, who is an officer of the Civil Administration (i.e. the Israeli military).

Mr. Chamberlain's characteriztion of salvage archaeology is quite misleading and unfair. Salvage archaeology is often necessary, even if it is not the ideal situation, and it is a common practice outside of Israel as well. Indeed, it is the most common type of archaeology practiced in North America. See also here and here. And here's an example in Arkansas. And there's a really cool British television show called the Time Team, which deals with salvage archaeology in Britain, a different site each week. Here, for example, is a summary of their emergency excavation of the Wemyss caves (pronounced "Weems") in Fife, which are threatened by sea erosion. I live not far from this site and have visited it with my family.

In addition to the loss of Palestine’s movable heritage there has also been extensive damage to, and destruction of, immovable cultural heritage. The press release of the World Archaeological Congress issued on 7 January 2004 expressed concern at the destruction of archaeological and heritage sites in the OPTs by Israeli forces, mentioning Nablus, Bethlehem and Hebron.

Regarding the statement of the World Archaeological Congress, there is a detailed reply by Dr. Uzi Dahari, Deputy Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, here.

The Art Newspaper article mentioned in the piece was actually published in 2002, not September of this year. You can read the Forbes reprint of it in this Google cache item. A great deal has been written about the Israeli invasion of the West Bank in the spring of 2002. I'll just refer you to the UN Secretary-General's report and you can draw your own conclusions.

METATRON WATCH: It seems that the angel Metatron is a mover and shaker in the music industry:

Ex-Employee Sues Santana
• Bruce Kuhlman, a former personal assistant to the musician, alleges wrongful termination and age, gender and religious discrimination.

By Donna Horowitz, Special to The [Los Angeles] Times

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. -- A former employee of Carlos Santana is suing the Grammy-winning musician and his wife, alleging that the couple fired him because he wasn't spiritual enough.

[...]

The Santanas have long been spiritual seekers. Carlos Santana, in a 2000 interview with The Times, credited an angel named Metatron for helping inspire his career comeback. At that year's Grammy Awards, he won eight.

[...]

DUBYA THE DOUBLET? Anduril publishes a compelling historical reconstruction.

THE LEVITICUS SCROLL FRAGMENTS recovered by Hanan Eshel are covered briefly in an article in Israel Today. Nothing new, but there's a nice photo.

FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE blasts a book by Nadia Abu El-Haj on Israeli archaeology. I haven't read the book, so I won't comment further.

UPDATE: In June, Solomonia posted a review in Isis by Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Aren M. Maeir.

THE STANFORD REVIEW (an alternative student newspaper at Stanford University) has published an article ("Joel Beinin Doesn’t Deserve Tenure") criticizing the teaching about ancient Judaism by Joel Beinin, a tenured history professor and former president of MESA, in an online course. The author, Daniel H Jacobs, MD, writes:

Beinin teaches an online course sponsored by Stanford, Oxford and Yale entitled “Palestine, Zionism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” Beinin prepared a syllabus and a videotape that was mailed to students that introduced the material for each of the ten weekly classes. The rest of the class consisted of readings, a weekly online chat, and an open bulletin board, that was monitored by a young Ph. D.

The bulletin board allowed students the opportunity to correct countless mischaracterizations by the teacher. A few examples are mentioned below. In the video narrative by Beinin for the first week, Beinin stated that, following the destruction of the Jewish Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70, C.E., Jews had next come to Palestine in the sixteenth century, at the invitation of the Moslem Turks, “to study religious books and to be buried there.”
A poster noted that, in fact, the past two millennia in Palestine that Beinin had implied had little Jewish history were actually chock-full of events. These included Jewish revolts, for over five centuries; the writing and the publication of the Jerusalem Talmud and later, the Shulhan Aruch; and the establishment of a synagogue in Jerusalem by Nachmanides after 1270, a city in which Jews have lived since. Only during the First Crusades, when the Jewish community was burned alive, was there a brief period in which Jerusalem did not have a Jewish community.

Beinin lectured that the “only” remnant of the Herodian Jewish Temple was the “Wailing” Wall (an archaic term) and that the Haram, or the Moslem holy site, was located above. A post reminded the class that, actually, the whole Western and Southern Walls were remnants of the Herodian temple, and that the area above had been the Jewish Temple seven centuries before Mohammed was born. A link was presented to pictures of excavations with Hebrew inscriptions such as the Trumpeter’s stone covering an area about ten times larger than the one Beinin incorrectly described.

There's more, but this is the part that has to do with ancient Judaism. A couple of problems occur to me. The Shulhan Arukh was published by Joseph Caro in Safed in the mid-1500s, so it's not a useful counter example to what Professor Beinin is reported to have said. Also, Nachmanides died in 1270 (in Palestine), so he wasn't founding any synagogues after that. These are small points, but they do show a certain carelessness in the article.

That said, if the statements of Professor Beinin have been represented accurately, they are disturbing. It is certainly bizarre to say that there were no Jews in Palestine between 70 CE and the sixteenth century.

The course description has been taken down, but here is the Google cache archived page. I don't have access to the course materials or the online chat archive and I can't judge whether the presentation here is fair and accurate. If anyone out there took the course, let me know what you think.

UPDATE (14 October): More here.

VOLUNTEERING ON ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGS is the subject of an article in the New York Times. Israel is featured, along with numerous other countries. Good publicity.

ARAMAIC INFLUENCE ON PORTUGUESE? Yep.

Book on Oriental influence on the Portuguese language to be released again
(Brazil-Arab News Agency)

The book 'Oriental Influences on the Portuguese Language', by Miguel Nimer, was reedited by his nephew, Carlos Augusto Calil, and is due to be re-launched next Tuesday, in São Paulo. The book talks about the inheritance from oriental languages like the Arabic, Aramaic, Persian and Turkish in Portuguese. Nimer, who has already passed away, was the son of Lebanese immigrants.

ARAMAIC WATCH (also file under "Watcher Watch"): A high-school track and field coach and novelist in Hollister, California, has the first name "Iran":

Hollister Author Encourages Readers to Seek Spiritual Path

Friday, October 07, 2005

Hollister resident Iran Maurice White wanted to tell a tale with a heartfelt spiritual message. His recently published novel shares his story with the world.

“The Mhystery of Everyone’s Guardian Angel” details the story of a young boy named Quaero who takes a spiritual journey to discover the truth within himself.

[...]

He grew up in San Jose and his family moved to Hollister when he was 16. He finished his last two years of high school as a Haybaler.

His first name Iran (pronounced EYE-wren) means “guardian angel” in the ancient Aramaic language, he said. This meaning has guided him in his own spiritual quest.

[...]

I don't know if there's some sort of Chaldo-Assyrian etc. background in his family, or whether he found this himself, but it does indeed look like an Aramaic word, "our Watcher" (עירן). The Watchers, you will recall, are the angels who descended before the Flood, taught human beings technology, consorted with mortal women, and begat the giants. The story is in the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch 1-36. These are not your usual guardian angels, but to each his own.

ACADEMIC BLOGGING is the subject of a good article ("The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas") by Crooked Timber blogger Henry Farrell in the Chronicle of Higher Education. (Via Instapundit.) It's hard to know what to excerpt, so do read it all. Excerpt:

Most important, the scholarly blogosphere offers academics a place where they can reconnect with the public. The links between academic argument and wider public debates are increasingly tenuous and frayed. It's far harder than it used to be for academics to become public intellectuals (not that it was ever very easy, or very common). This has malign consequences, not only for the quality of debate on both sides of the divide, but also for public perceptions of the academy. It's also a source of considerable frustration to many academics, who either believe that their academic expertise could be valuable to a wider audience, or resent the distorted public perception of what they do. Blogging democratizes the function of public intellectual. It's no longer necessary for an academic to lobby the editors of The Washington Post's op-ed page or The New York Review of Books in order to make his or her voice heard. Instead, he or she can start a blog and (with interesting arguments and a bit of luck and self-promotion) begin to have an impact on the public conversation.

Amen to that. On that note, I've been meaning to say that this term has been especially busy and I'm behind on my non-work-related e-mail. If you've e-mailed lately and I haven't replied, apologies. I do read my e-mail and I try to get around to replying to anything I think needs a response, but it can take me a while.

UPDATE: Also, if you want to make sure I read your message, please put something like "blog" or "PaleoJudaica" in the header. Despite filters, I still get a lot of junk mail and much of it has unpredictable words in the header. If the header doesn't make immediate sense to me, I tend to discard the message unread. I don't doubt that occasionally I have trashed real messages, because a number of times, including once today, I have nearly discarded a message, but then changed my mind and read it and found it to be from a PaleoJudaica reader. So please help me out and make your message headers unambiguous. Thanks!

AN ACADEMIC PUBLICATION? This article in the Kentucky Lake-Times refers readers to the Quarterly Journal of Nestorian Studies, which is online at www.CatholicosPatriarch.org/home/, where we find the following blurb:

Quarterly Journal of Nestorian Studies
Welcome to the English edition of the Quarterly Journal of Nestorian Studies, an academic publication concerning "the Illustrious Religion" throughout the world. Here you will find articles and translations of historical documents on the Ancient Apostolic Orthodox Nestorian Faith, Aramaic and Nasarean (Nasrani), Essene, Dead Sea Scrolls, and much more. The Quarterly Journal of Nestorian Studies is published in Nasramit by the Catholicos Patriarch Research Centre at Mishqana.

I'm afraid that if you have a look at the brief articles on the page, you will see that they are not academic at all. They are anonymous, quote church authorities for their scholarship, and seem to want to assert that at least parts of the Greek New Testament are based on the Syriac Peshitta. The Peshitta is actually a translation of the Greek New Testament into Syriac, an Eastern dialect of Aramaic rather different from the Palestinian Aramaic Jesus spoke, and no attempts to show that it contain earlier Aramaic material from the mouth of Jesus have ever been found persuasive by specialists. In short, don't believe the label. This site is a religious one that promotes a particular denominational agenda. They're welcome to do that, but they should not label it an "academic publication."

MADONNA'S NEXT ALBUM will include a song devoted to pre-eminent Kabbalist Isaac Luria.

AN IMPORTANT NEW RESEARCH INSTITUTE has been founded recently at St. Mary's College and is mentioned by Daniel Driver at Figured Out. This area has been an interest of mine for some time and I hope to be involved with their research.

HAROLD BLOOM is interviewed in the Forward about his new book, Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, in which, it seems, he sets out to offend nearly everybody.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF COSMIC SYNCHRONICITIES: This year Rosh HaShanah and Ramadan (in most Arab countries) start in the same twenty-four-hour period. Again, best wishes to those observing either.

IRAQ'S DRAFT CONSTITUTION is now being printed and distributed in Arabic, Kurdish, and Aramaic:

[U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan] Haq said some 4 million copies would be printed in Arabic - at a rate of 250,000 a day - while the Kurdish north will get 1 million. Another 250,000 will be printed in Turkoman, and 150,000 in Syriac languages, modern variants of the Aramaic spoken in Jesus' time.

The referendum is on 15 October.

THE XIVTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF ETHIOPIAN STUDIES will begin this Monday at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University.

According to Professor [Richard] Pankhurst, the Institute of Ethiopian Studies is actively working to build up its liibrary and museum to present knowledge about Ethiopia's cultural history.

The museum has been largely re-organized for the conference, with a renovated art gallery opening up for visitors at the time of the Conference. In addition there will be new features, such as exhibitions depicting Emperor Menilik's Swiss advisor, Alfred Ilg, history of Ras Mekonnen building and history of Ethiopian patriots.

The library is particularly interested in acquiring photographic copies of the several thousand Ethiopian manuscripts now held in libraries and museums all over Europe and North America. For the development of so many aspects of Ethiopian studies, it is essential that the IES obtain photographic copies by scanning as well as microfilming the important Ethiopian manuscripts not only in Ethiopia but also in foreign countries.

I bet there are lots of manuscripts of Old Testament pseudepigrapha among them.

THE ANCIENT PERSIA EXHIBITION in the British Museum is covered in an article in the Lebanon Daily Star ("Ancient Persia comes alive in British exhibition"). Excerpt:

While the Athenians often defined their own democratic system in opposition to Persian monarchy and autocracy, recent scholarship has acknowledged the highly tolerant and adaptable nature of the Ancient Persians. The Achaemenid king had the title of "king of kings" as well as "king of lands," revealing the flexible nature of his rule: while the different corners of the empire were mostly ruled by satraps (governors) from the central Persian royal family or nobility in order to preserve loyalty, local kings frequently retained their thrones and countries were permitted to function as they wished, as long as the Achaemenid king received his financial dues. In return for the reaping of wealth from around the empire, the Achaemenids promised security and protection, and to back such promises they had formidable military power.

[...]

Interest in the Achaemenid Empire was renewed in 19th century Iran, and was used during the reign of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1971 to reawaken nationalism when the 2,500th anniversary of the foundation of the Persian Empire by King Cyrus the Great was celebrated. Thanks to his appearance in the Old Testament, Cyrus I has been hailed in the Western world as an upholder of religious tolerance and human rights. When he conquered Babylon in 539 B.C., he reinstated religious tolerance and allowed various exiled peoples, including the Jews, to return to their homes.

The Cyrus Cylinder, discovered in 1879, on which is carved Cyrus's statement on entering Babylon, has become, perhaps simplistically, an icon of human rights. There is even a replica at the United Nations in New York. The Cylinder forms the final stage of the exhibition, suggesting that it symbolizes Ancient Persia's principal legacy. However, it is evident from the earlier displays that we can learn more today from the tolerance, flexibility and adaptability that were central to the Achaemenid Empire's administration than from an official royal statement.

I think this gets a little carried away. Although it's true that the Persian Empire looks pretty good in comparision to, say, the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires, it still was an empire, with "hegemony" and "oppression" and all those other bad things we associate with imperialism today. It was not a liberal democracy and Cyrus' liberal policies came more from expediency and enlightened self-interest than from any interest in human rights. Still, his rule does look better on that count than the government of the Mullahs in Iran today.

ROSH HASHANAH, the Jewish New Year, begins tonight at sundown. This will be the year 5766. More here. Best wishes for the new year.

BLOGGER WAS DOWN all morning, but seems to be recovered now.

MORE ON THE TIMBUKTU MANUSCRIPTS, which I have already mentioned here and here. The Independent Online, South Africa, has an article ("Timbuktu - learning at the heart of Africa"). Excerpt:

Today the manuscripts offer proof that Africans' intellectual capacity extended beyond oral history and archaeological findings, which have long been regarded as the African way of recording history.

Experts say the manuscripts could be the most ancient to have survived in sub-Saharan Africa and are important because they offer a glimpse into the views of black Muslim scholars over the centuries.

The manuscripts were commissioned to be copied by governments, for which the artisans were paid a handsome sum of 24g of gold per copy. Some of these copies, which are adorned with gold leaf and vibrant colours, can be seen at the exhibition.

Riason Naidoo, project manager for the South Africa-Mali Project, said: "Copiers were treasured people in Timbuktu. They were paid a high salary and had a high status."

The manuscripts were mainly written in local languages using Arabic script. This makes it difficult for scholars outside of Mali to understand the meanings.

French colonisation has also contributed to much of the local population's inability to understand the scripts today.

Some of the manuscripts were also written in Hebrew, showing that Jewish traders passed through the area in search of gold.

Predictably, antiquities trafficking is a problem.

PROFESSOR STANISLAV SEGERT, who taught Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitics for many years at UCLA, has died at the age of 84. Ed Cook, who was one of his doctoral students, has posted an obituary over at Ralph. I studied with Segert as an undergraduate and Master's student in the late '70s and early '80s and Ed and I overlapped. Everything Ed says about him as a man is spot on. I remember Professor Segert's immense erudition, his great humility, and his quiet sense of humor. All his students were in awe of him and had much affection for him. I remember with great gratitute his kindness to me when I was the most callow of undergraduates. His lectures included asides with amusing stories and wry comments, often about his experiences with communism in Czechoslovakia. Once he mentioned that the goverment required him to take Marxism classes for some years and that he had had few illusions about Marxism before them, and none afterwards.

His scholarly record speaks for itself. He was a master of the traditional scholarly disciplines in our field and was also very open to and interested in newer approaches, including structuralism, deconstruction, and advances in epigraphic photography. Like Ed, I have his books on my bookshelf and refer to them regularly.

Requiescat in pace.

MORE ON THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT EXHIBIT at the Israel Museum:

Artful mending
By NATHAN BURSTEIN (Jerusalem Post)

Israel and the Vatican engaged in an uncharacteristically public war of words this summer, after a papal statement issued in July excluded a bus bombing in Israel from a list of terrorist attacks that occurred in other parts of the Middle East and London.

Any lingering tensions were set aside Tuesday, however, as Vatican officials took part in the official opening of the Israel Museum's newest exhibit, "Rome to Jerusalem: Four Jewish Masterpieces from the Vatican Library."

[...]

I noticed two interesting tidbits unrelated to the article topic.

In his remarks, [the Papal Nuncio] Archbishop Sambi noted that the Vatican is currently working on another project conceived in Israel – a catalogue documenting the hundreds of other items in the Vatican's Judaica collection, an idea suggested by Israeli President Moshe Katsav at a meeting with Pope John Paul II in December 2002.

This sounds like an exciting project.

And there's this:

[the director of the museum, James] Snyder joked that, contrary to long-standing rumors, the Vatican does not have among its holdings the large gold menorah taken from Jerusalem during the Roman destruction of the Second Temple.

I discussed this rumor last year here. I'm not surprised to hear that it's false.

(Via Bible and Interpretation News.)

AN EXHIBIT OF ILLUSTRATED RELIGIOUS TEXTS is showing at Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago. The paintings are by artist Victoria Martin.

The exhibit consists of seven paintings, two of which are large murals. Each piece contains illustrated religious text from various traditions. The work is written in ancient languages, including Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Greek, and the style of the text resembles that of medieval illuminated manuscripts. Martin has worked with scholars from the Oriental Institute and the Spertus Museum in order to ensure accuracy in the text of her paintings.

There's a photograph of several of the Hebrew texts here. The first from the left is Numbers 21:8 and the next one over is Exodus 3:14. I can't make out the other two.

GIVEN THIS, these comments by Israeli archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov about the Waqf's excavations at the Temple Mount seem to me to be unfortunately timed:

"They took earth out of here with tractors, and there was a huge outcry. Never mind that when I work with tractors, they complain that I'm destroying the antiquities of our land, but here no damage was caused. A tool is a tool, the question is how it is operated. Didn't [archaeologist Nahman] Avigad work with tractors? But here it's forbidden. It caused an uproar. Now they are sifting through the earth, and what discoveries have they found? Mameluke findings? There's nothing there. Everything that Saladdin threw around, here and there, and some Israeli ceramics as well. So what? At digs you sometimes throw things out, you have to compromise. How can anyone say that they are destroying Jewish remains here, when they are not destroying Jewish remains? Soon we'll see who is destroying and who isn't," he says.

A sixth-century B.C.E. inscribed Hebrew seal impression sure sounds like Jewish (or at least Judean) remains to me, and not something to be thrown out. This just does not seem to me to be the sort of area in which uncontrolled tractor excavation is appropriate. And, by the way, since when do Mameluke and Crusader-era findings counted as "nothing?"

(Via Bible and Interpretation News.)

SOME HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE VATICAN are on display in the Israel Museum:

Rare manuscripts from Vatican go on display at Israel Museum
By Nadav Shragai (Ha'aretz)

The Vatican library has loaned the Israel Museum four illuminated Jewish manuscripts from the 13th and 15th centuries, which will be on exhibit to the public for the next four months.

The manuscripts include a 15th-century manuscript of Maimonides' Mishne Torah, a 15th-century manuscript of Rabbi Jacob ben Asher's Arba'ah Turim, a 13th-century manuscript of the Bible, and a 13th-century book of Psalms.

[...]

And happy 40th birthday to the Museum!

(Via Bible and Interpretation News.)

SOME SOUTH ARABIAN INSCRIPTIONS are being restored in Yemen:

Ancient Inscriptions Receive Expert Attention
By [Yemen] Observer Staff
Sep 29, 2005 - Vol.VIII Issue 39

SANA’A - The American Embassy is funding a project that will help restore sticks that bear engravings dating back to the time of the Kingdom of Sheba.

The project is being carried out by the American Institute for Yemeni Studies.

“The sticks are wood cylinders, 10-30cm long and 2-5cm in diameter, made from palm stalks or branches of ‘ilb trees. The texts engraved on the sticks are 1-15 lines long, written in a cursive form of musnad called zabur-script.

The inscriptions are letters, accounts, contracts, notes of debts, receipts, lists of personal names and names of tribes, school exercises, etc -- i.e. they contain information about daily life in the South Arabian civilization, of a kind not found in the public inscriptions of kings, temples, etc...” said Christopher Edens, the Director of the American Institute of Yemeni Studies.

[...]

Sheba is mentioned occasionally in the Bible, most notably with reference to the legendary Queen of Sheba.

(Via Archaeologica News.)

A CONFERENCE ON RASHI took place earlier this month at Portland State University:

Rashi conference creates symbiosis between scholars
By Rabbi David Rosenberg, Special to the Jewish Review

The details of Rashi's life have dissolved into legend, but Judaism's greatest commentator remains an incomparable figure who holds the key to all our sacred texts.

The Rashi Conference at Portland State University Sept. 18-19 was a rare event that presented three prominent scholars: Ephraim Kanarfogel, Ph.D., professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University and author of books on medieval Jewry; Martin Lockshin, Ph.D., professor of humanities at York University of Toronto and author of books on the commentaries of Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, a grandson of Rashi; and Cecille Oppenheim Beyl, M.D., an expert in medieval history.

[...]

MORE ON THE NEW HEBREW SEAL IMPRESSION found in the Temple Mount rubble. Reader Menachem Brody points me to this Ha'aretz article in Hebrew (לראשונה: ממצא כתו מבית ראשון התגלה בהר הבית), which has a photo of the object and which reports that the impression comes from the "dynasty of David" (בית דוד), not the time of David and is "more than 2500 years old." The surviving fragment (looks like about half the impression) is less than centimeter in size and has three lines of writing. One name on it ends in "-yahu" (יהו-).

SPEAKING OF FEAST DAYS, today is the Feast Day of St. Jerome, paradigmatic ancient Christian Hebraist and translator of the Latin Vulgate. The other paradigmatic ancient Christian Hebraist was Origen, who produced the Hexapla. But he was a heretic, so he doesn't get a feast day. Apart from these two, scarcely a gentile Christian in antiquity knew Hebrew.

THE JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES has a new issue out (64.4, October, 2005). The articles are in other areas, but some of the reviews are of interest for ancient Judaism, notably a review of The Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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

HERE'S AN ARTICLE ON A KARAITE COMMUNITY IN THE CRIMEA:

Breakaway sect from Judaism
shrinking in numbers in Ukraine
By Vladimir Matveyev (Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
September 28, 2005


EVPATORIA, Ukraine, Sept. 28 (JTA) - Residents of this small Black Sea resort town like to call their city "the Jerusalem of the Crimea."

They have good reason: Evpatoria, population 120,000, is home to about 800 Karaites, members of a sect that broke off from mainstream Judaism in eighth-century Iraq.

Karaites accept the Torah and celebrate most Jewish holidays, but they reject the Talmud and rabbinical Judaism, and have clashed with mainstream Jewish leaders over the centuries.

[...]

Estimates of the worldwide Karaite population range from 24,000 to 50,000. The largest number live in Israel, where they have a separate Beit Din, or rabbinical court, and are not allowed to marry Jews. About 2,000 live in the United States, and smaller but tightly-knit groups persist in Lithuania, Poland, Russia and the Crimea.

[...]

EMANUEL TOV gave a lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls at Trinity Western University a week ago.

TODAY IS THE FEAST DAY OF THE ARCHANGELS (Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael). Here's a capsule history of the archangel Michael in Catholic tradition.

ON TALMUD TRANSLATIONS: The Jewish Exponent has an article ("The Conversion of Texts: Good for the Jews?") on Talmud translations and their importance. And here's a bit of interesting news in it:

Of note, Artscroll just last year completed its project of translating the Talmud into English, and publishing it with exhaustive explications. ...

Artscroll is currently enmeshed in a project similar to the 72-volume Talmud behemoth; the Brooklyn-based publishing house is now tackling the Jerusalem Talmud, a text codified a little more than a century before the Talmud. The first volume is expected next month.

JOFFE REPLIES TO DEUTSCH:

Megiddo, Moussaieff, and Me

Being a graduate student in archaeology and a dealer in antiquities is a contradiction in terms; one is a position of scholarship and stewardship; the other is a position of commodification that traffics in objects and scholarship.

By Alexander H. Joffe
Archaeologist and Historian.
September 2005

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS MEET ART: A Santa Monica Museum exhibition of the works of Beat-Generation artist Wallace Berman includes paintings apparently inspired by the Dead Sea Scrolls:

The catalog astutely traces relationships between Semina and the work of Surrealist poets such as Antonin Artaud and the mystical wing of Judaism represented by the Cabala. Another, more popular source goes unidentified, however, and given Berman's keen interest in the imagery and mechanics of mass media it seems too explicit to ignore. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947 when a Bedouin shepherd boy stumbled on seven rolls of ancient parchment hidden in a cave on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, had grown to some 800 ancient manuscripts, texts and fragments when 10 more caves were explored over the next decade. The aged Hebrew and Aramaic communication galvanized the scholarly and the public imagination, culminating in the 1955 book on the ancient papyri by America's preeminent literary critic, Edmund Wilson.

It's hard to imagine the scrolls weren't at least part of the inspiration for Berman's "parchment paintings" — thin paper brushed with wood stain, inscribed with Hebrew letters in black ink, then torn, abraded and mounted on small square canvases in imitation of ancient fragments — which he began in 1956. [Berman's magazine] Semina, begun immediately prior to the parchments, is like a sequence of modern manuscript fragments communicating mystical utterances in words and pictures, an artifact of 20th century spiritual intercourse.

MORE ON THE MIQVEH AND WALL in Jerusalem mentioned in the previous post:

Israel to open new archaeological site

Associated Press

JERUSALEM - Israel unveiled an underground archaeological site near a disputed Jerusalem holy shrine on Tuesday, nearly a decade after the opening of an exhibit in the same area sparked widespread Palestinian rioting.

The latest discovery included a ritual bath from the period of the second Jewish Temple, destroyed in 70 A.D., and a wall that archaeologists said dates to the first Jewish Temple, destroyed in 586 B.C. The findings strengthen Jewish ties to the shrine also claimed by Muslims.

[...]

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: A late First-Temple-era seal inscribed with Hebrew has been discovered in the rubble from the Temple Mount:

First Temple-era seal discovered
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post

A First-Temple period seal has been discovered amidst piles of rubble from Jerusalem's Temple Mount, an Israeli archaeologist said Tuesday, in what could prove to be an historic find.

The small - less than 1 cm - seal impression, or bulla, discovered Tuesday by Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay amidst piles of rubble from the Temple Mount would mark the first time that an written artifact was found from the Temple Mount dating back to the First Temple period.

[...]

The piece says the seal is 2600 years old, which would put it just before the exile. The article also reports:

Meanwhile, in a separate major archaeological development in Jerusalem, a Jewish ritual bath, or mikva, dating back to the Second Temple period, and a First Temple Wall have been found in an underground chamber adjacent to the Western Wall tunnels, the Antiquities Authority's Jerusalem regional archaeologist Jon Seligman said during a tour.

UPDATE: some of the less snarky comments on the Free Republic site raise good questions about this article. Is the seal impression 2600 years old or "from the time of David?" It can't be both. And how are three lines of Hebrew fitted onto a one-centimenter surface? Is the seal impression damaged and incomplete or are the letters minute (seems unlikely) or is the reported size incorrect?

UPDATE (30 September): More here.

ROBERT DEUTSCH replies to Alexander Joffe on the Bible and Interpretation website.

Joffe and BAR

I never sold to Mr Moussaieff even one of the items he [Joffe] mentions, but instead, I did publish the majority of his epigraphic material!

Robert Deutsch
Archaeologist and Epigrapher

OTHMAR KEEL wins a major Swiss prize for his work:

Religious historian wins science prize
(NZZ Online)

Professor Othmar Keel, a religious historian at Fribourg University, is to receive the 2005 Marcel Benoist prize for his work on the Bible's Old Testament.

[...]

Congratulations to Professor Keel.

MERKAVAH MYSTICISM MEETS ART: The Modern Art Museum of Fort Wort has an exhibition of the paintings etc. of German artist Anselm Kiefer, which includes themes from the pre-Kabbalistic mystical Hekhalot literature.

A weighty world of art

ART REVIEW: Anselm Kiefer's giant works tackle life's big issues

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, September 25, 2005

By JANET KUTNER / The Dallas Morning News

FORT WORTH – It's a visceral experience – scorched landscapes that reek of death and destruction, lead books that carry the weight of the world. Anselm Kiefer, one of the most prodigious talents to emerge from postwar Germany, uses his generation's efforts to surmount the nation's troubled past as a springboard for exploring the age-old quest for transcendence.

[...]

Steeped in literature, history, folklore, theology and mystical beliefs as disparate as alchemy and the Jewish doctrine of Kabbalah, Mr. Kiefer grapples with the big issues: good vs. evil, innocence and guilt, church and state. But he speaks in terms that anyone with feeling can understand.

[...]

One of the largest paintings in the show, The Heavenly Palaces, actually has a massive piece of lead attached to the canvas. It lends an ominous, cloudlike presence to a cavernous hall.

[...]

The Heavenly Palaces takes its name from an ancient Hebrew book known as the Sefer Hechaloth, which describes an ascent through seven heavenly palaces that lead to one in which the wise will be united with God.

[...]

Sefer Hekhalot is the Hekhalot text also known as 3 Enoch, a book that tells of Enoch's tranformation into the archangel Metatron, the "Little YHWH," who takes Rabbi Ishmael on a tour of the secrets of the universe. But it sounds to me as though the inspiration may actually be from the Hekhalot Rabbati, the Greater Book of Heavenly Palaces, which actually does include instructions for and an account of the ascent through the seven celestial palaces to the throne room of God. In any case, this is cool.

CLASSES START TODAY and summer is well and truly over. Wow, that went fast! I read lots of Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Latin, and Arabic; finished a draft translation of my eclectic reconstructed Aramaic and Greek text of Aramaic Levi for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project; made some overall progress in setting up the MOTP Project now that Richard Bauckham and I have our research fellowship grant; wrote most of an article on the Hekhalot literature and ancient Jewish apocalypses; did some work on my upcoming paper on the history and politics of the Temple Mount; made notes on some other projects; got page proofs and indices done for The Book; and managed to get to the beach on most of the (rare) nice days we had in this end of Fife.

This semester I'm teaching biblical Hebrew; supervising a couple of new postgradutes along with the two I already have; continuing to run our postgraduate program (which looks to have a record intake this year); and I'm hoping to get caught up on some of the articles I've promised to write. The MOTP Project will be keeping us busy too, and I hope at least to start thinking about my translation of the Hekhalot texts. And, of course, there's blogging.

Best wishes for a good academic year.

STILL MORE TROUBLES FOR BRUCE FERRINI: He has now filed for bankruptcy. David Nishmura notes the story over at Cronaca.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Physicist Asher Kaufman's theory that the Temple was situated to the north of the Dome of the Rock is covered today in the Jerusalem Post ("Location, location, location"). This section clarifies his agenda:

I contacted Kaufman and he kindly offered to meet me in the quiet order of his home in the Beit Hakerem neighborhood. His soft Edinburgh accent, gentle manner and reasoned arguments are hard to reconcile with the final "proposals" he outlines at the end of his book.

The building of the Third Temple, he says, will be "something wonderful for the Jewish People, and for the world as a whole" – although he does not believe that ritual sacrifice will be reinstated.

Since he locates the Holy of Holies north of the Dome of the Rock, he believes the whole area of the Temple Mount could be divided into a Jewish and Muslim area, Al-Aksa Mosque being within the Moslem area.

The Dome of the Rock would be within the court of the Temple. "In ancient times, strangers other than of the Jewish faith were permitted entry into this court.... This means that there would be free access to the Dome of the Rock. It could be administered by the Muslims without any change."

As I've said before, I can't comment on the archaeological merits of his theory. But I have to say that I find what he says here naïve. I can't imagine that the Palestinian Authority would agree to anything like this arrangement and, for a change, I agree with them. There should be no more excavation on the Temple Mount, apart, perhaps, from scientific archaeological excavation. But even this (which is politically impossible at present anyway) should probably wait until there are less intrusive methods than the one currently available.

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW is the subject of what is evidently a series of critical essays being posted on the Bible and Interpretation website. The most recent is:

The Ages of BAR

The publication of unprovenanced objects from private collections simultaneously accomplished several things. It situated BAR as a source of primary data, presented by scholars without any of the usual controls on the authenticity of materials and quality of analysis, such as peer review, presentation at scholarly conferences (whose sponsoring organizations are usually bound to reject such objects), and dialogues in scholarly journals.


By Alexander H. Joffe
Archaeologist and Historian.
September 2005

An earlier essay was published by Jim West and received a reply from the magazine's editor, Hershel Shanks.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Unearthing earthly Jerusalem (Ha'aretz)
By Meron Rapoport

In Jerusalem's Old City, as in Hiroshima, everything is measured by the distance from the center of the cataclysm. In Hiroshima it is the distance from the site where the atom bomb fell; in the Old City they speak of the distance from the Temple Mount.Sometimes they measure this distance in meters, sometimes even in centimeters. The walls of the Temple Mount are a red line which is not touched, says veteran archaeologist Meir Ben Dov. A conflagration there would be a death certificate for this country. Ben Dov is a controversial figure, but everyone agrees with his view rabbis and archaeologists, policemen and Muslim clerics.

A man who was involved in law enforcement in the Old City says that occasionally he would visit the excavations around the Temple Mount in order to see how close they were getting to the walls of the mount. "That was my greatest fear that someone would try to get close to the Temple Mount," he says. Everyone is afraid, each for his own reason, and tries to keep his distance from these walls. And at the same time people are attracted to them as to a magnet.

This magnet is now being approached by the members of Ateret Cohanim, the best known among the organizations of Jews who have settled in the Old City. Through the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), Ateret Cohanim is at the moment conducting a dig at a depth of 12 meters beneath the building belonging to it, which is 80 meters away from the walls of the Temple Mount. But members of the organization are not satisfied with digging deep down, in one of the most sensitive places in the world. They are also digging along width-wise, to the east, in the direction of the Temple Mount, beneath the houses of Palestinian residents. The excavators have already advanced 20 meters eastward, while "clearing away earth" from subterranean spaces. Only 60 meters separate now them from the walls of the mount, says Jon Seligman, the IAA Jerusalem district director, who is supervising the dig.

[...]

All this in the context of Byzantine political complexities in Israeli society, not to speak of the larger context of Israeli-Palestinian/Muslim relations.

WHY THE JEWS REJECTED JESUS, by David Klinghoffer, is reviewed in the Catholic Explorer. (Via Bible and Interpretation News.)

KABBALISTIC RAP? Yep.

THE HOUSE OF JUDEO-PERSIAN MANUSCRIPTS FOUNDATION in Los Angeles is devoted to collecting copies and originals of manuscripts written in Judeo-Persian (Persian written in the Hebrew alphabet), a literature that goes back at least to the eighth century CE. As always with such things, I wonder if there are any Old Testament pseudepigrapha manuscripts among them.

"ABACUS" -- A Hebrew word? Philologos has the story.

UPDATE: Miriam at Bloghead comments on the Philologos essay:

All very brilliant. But his theory has one weakness: why would a scribe need a box in which he can write, in dust, words and sums that can then be erased? It's hard to imagine.

Perhaps to scribble draft notes and sums before using expensive writing materials to write up the final draft? That's not far from what she goes on to suggest, but scribes would presumably find this useful too.

Whether or not writing in a box of sand would be halakhically acceptable on the sabbath, as Philologos seems to suggest, I leave to those who know more about such things than I do.

A BOOK ON GIORDANO BRUNO AND KABBALAH is reviewed in the Commentator:

Are Hermes and the Kabbalah Irrelevent?

Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah

By Joshua Harrison

Published: Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Karen Silvia De Leon Jones
University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

The figure of the Renaissance magus looms large at Yeshiva College. Indeed, the very slogan of the school channels the spirit of Egyptian pneumatic magic. Beckoning us to "bring wisdom to life," the new motto conjures an image of a magician, his figure ensconced in dark robes, Picatrix in hand, standing over the moribund YU student and imparting him with the ancient Gnostic wisdom of the Hermetica. Just as the ancient Egyptians brought the celestial powers into their idols, we take the lifeless Modern Orthodox youth and fill them with celestial knowledge!

Scorn is heaped on the pedant by Giordano Bruno. The pedant represents the opposite of the magus. With his emphasis on philology or his willingness to analyze primary texts (like Copernicus), the pedants of the world challenged Bruno, whom Yates calls "the lunatic the lover and the poet." Indeed, the Oxford doctors who so opposed Bruno find piercing arrows of invective hurled at them. While they ponder the true epicycles, Bruno hears the song of the Universe.

Of course, the Isaac Casaubon controversy, in which Casaubon used early philological methods to disprove the authenticity of the Hermetica as received Egyptian wisdom, brought this situation to a head. At least Bruno had the authoritative Hermetica on his side. When Casaubon proved that the Hermetica was a Gnostic text, and not a text that antedated Moses (who cribbed, in the old account, liberally from Hermes Trismegistus!), the later Magi, like Robert Fludd, had to persist in their art in the face of vastly superior critical scholarship.

[...]

RASHI COMMEMORATIONS:

French town tributes Jewish sage
By David Dahan Updated: 20/Sep/2005 16:37
(European Jewish Press, Belgium)

The French town of Troyes, where famed Torah scholar Rashi lived, is celebrating the 900th anniversary of his death with numerous activities including conferences and the naming of a square after him.

[...]

AN IMPORTANT RENAISSANCE EDITION OF THE HEBREW BIBLE has been acquired by the library of Berkeley University:

Bancroft Library adds rare Second Biblia Rabbinica, Hebrew Bible

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 20 September 2005

BERKELEY – The University of California, Berkeley, has obtained a rare Hebrew Bible that has served as the foundation for almost all Bibles published since its own printing in the early 1500s.

Paul Hamburg, librarian for UC Berkeley's Judaica collections, said there are likely only a dozen sets left in the world of the four-volume Second Biblia Rabbinica, including half a dozen or so in private ownership.

[...]

When completed in 1525, the Second Hebrew Bible presented for the first time the complete Masorah, the extensive Jewish tradition concerning the correct Hebrew text of the Scriptures accumulated over centuries.

It also contained an introduction by ben Hayim to the Masoretic text. "That introduction remains a classic text in the history of biblical scholarship and the critical study of the Masorah," said [Berkeley Librian Paul] Hamburg.

In addition, the Second Biblia Rabbinica has the Targum Onkelos, a classic Aramaic translation of the Bible, as well as more medieval Hebrew commentaries by rabbis than the first Rabbinic Bible.

[...]

UPDATE: Bad link fixed.

DID GOD HAVE A WIFE?. The Mail and Guardian, South Africa, reviews William Dever's new book on the goddess Asherah in ancient Israel.

QUMRAN SYMPOSIUM: My doctoral student, Ian Werrett, draws my attention to a symposium of the Nordic Network in Qumran Studies which is being held in Jerusalem on 22-29 September. He and St. Andrews British Academy Research Fellow Grant Macaskill are presenting papers there.

CORRECTION: He's still listed on the website, but Grant tells me he had to withdraw from the conference. Apologies -- I should have double-checked with him before posting.

AN ESSAY DEEMED RELIGIOUSLY OFFENSIVE is being removed from an Israeli Defense Force educational booklet:

IDF agrees to ban essay that MK says defames Jewish values
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

When MK Shaul Yahalom (National Religious Party) asked the Israel Defense Forces to stop distributing an article he said "damages and defames Jewish values," the request tested the limits of freedom of thought in the IDF.

The defense minister's bureau set the limits this month, reversing an earlier IDF decision and removing the article from an educational booklet distributed by the army's school for human resources.

In the article "The Stone Age," Assaf Inbari discusses the way in which Judaism relates to the Temple Mount and the Temple. He writes cynically about the various rituals associated with the Temple, and calls the Bible nothing but a collection of myths. Many of the ideas he presents are similar to those raised in biblical criticism or history courses at universities.

The last sentence strikes me as a bit misleading in light of this:

"Titus did Judaism a big favor," Inbari wrote. "He liberated it from the Temple. The Temple is all that stood in [Judaism's] way, caught in its throat - not swallowing and not vomiting."

That sort of editorializing would not, in my opinion, be appropriate as straightforward instruction in a university course on biblical criticism or history. It might make an interesting "respond to this quote" question for a tutorial (discussion section) or on a final exam. But it's difficult to judge the situation without reading the whole essay and knowing more about the context. For example, if the essay had this sort of tone and was presented by itself as an objective treatment of the Temple and Judaism, I can see there would be a problem. But if it was in a collection of essays expressing widely different viewpoints about the subject for the students to discuss, it probably wouldn't bother me.

A BIRD MOSAIC -- also from Byzantine-era Caesarea. (Via Archaeology Magazine news.)

A BYZANTINE-ERA MANSION IN CAESAREA:

Caesarea Byzantine mansion site inaugurated
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

The remains of a lavish Byzantine mansion with pictorial mosaic flooring and a rare table with gold-encrusted glass platelets have been uncovered in the coastal city of Caesarea during an archaeological excavation, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Monday.

[...]

MANDEANS are suffering persecution in Iraq:

Iraq chaos threatens ancient faith
Kate Clark

By Kate Clark
BBC News, Damascus

There are fears for the future of one of the most ancient, as well as the smallest, communities in Iraq - the Mandeans.

Their religion, Mandeanism, comes from the same general background as Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

They share many of the same prophets, but particularly honour John the Baptist.

[...]

Mandeans have traditionally been protected under Islamic law, as believers in one god - like Jews and Christians.

But since the war in Iraq, they have found themselves targeted by Sunni and Shia Islamic extremists, and by criminal gangs who use religion to justify their attacks.

One leaflet which Mandeans said had been distributed to homes in Baghdad gave this warning to both them and Christians (who form another of Iraq's minorities):

"Either you embrace Islam and enjoy safety and coexist amongst us, or leave our land and stop toying with our principles. Otherwise, the sword will be the judge between belief and blasphemy."

[...]

The Mandean language, incidentally, is a dialect of Aramaic, which is not made clear in the article.

DIVINATION CONFERENCE: This just in by e-mail from Angela Voss.

‘SEEING WITH DIFFERENT EYES’

A CONFERENCE ON COSMOLOGY AND DIVINATION

University of Kent, Canterbury
April 28th-30th, 2006

Keynote speakers: Gregory Shaw (Stonehill College, Mass.), Peter Struck (University of Pennsylvania),
Barbara Tedlock (SUNY, Buffalo)

This conference will explore the nature and implications of the visionary knowledge which arises through divinatory practices, the ‘inner sight’ which is evoked through the use of metaphor and symbol in a ritual or therapeutic context, or in everyday life. Questions of knowledge and realisation will be raised in relation to astrology and other forms of divination. Is divinatory insight best understood as a psychological process, an altered state of consciousness, or a spiritual connection with higher beings? Is it necessarily ‘esoteric’, comparable to the initiation rituals of the ancient mystery traditions, or is it available to anyone at any time? What is the role of training and expertise in divination? In the reading of an omen or interpretation of a symbol, how do imagination and technique work together to bring hidden knowledge to the surface? Does a symbolic perception artificially impose meaning on an otherwise meaningless world, or help to create a more coherent cosmos? Does divination allow a glimpse into deeper levels of existence, or simply distort our rational minds with delusion, projection and fantasy? In short, what can we learn from both historical sources and contemporary practice about the nature and ground of ‘truth’ in divination, its value and philosophical implications? What is being revealed, and through what agency?

Papers on any aspect of these questions (30 mins) are invited from both researchers and practitioners in fields including (but not limited to) ancient history, anthropology, astrology, classics, divination, philosophy, psychology, religious studies and theology.


Please send abstracts (200-300 words) to Dr Angela Voss (a.voss@kent.ac.uk) by 31st December 2005

HERSHEL SHANKS is defending the authenticity of the Ivory Pomegranate inscription in the Jerusalem Post.

NOT THE STONE OF JACOB AFTER ALL:

Stone’s biblical past is exposed as myth

Mark Macaskill and Jason Allardyce (Sunday Times of London)

ACCORDING to legend, it was used as a “pillow” by Jacob, the founder of Israel, as he dreamt of angels ascending to heaven on a ladder.

The fabled Stone of Destiny was then taken from Palestine to the north, where it became the ancient symbol of Scottish kingship.

After spending centuries resting at Westminster Abbey, it takes pride of place in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle. Now the Duchess of Hamilton claims to have unearthed evidence that unpicks the myth. She says she has proof that the stone, far from originating in the Middle East, was mined somewhat closer to home — Perthshire, in fact.

Jill Hamilton, the author and historian, took rock samples from the Palestinian village of Beitin, the traditional site of Jacob’s epiphany.

[...]

I'm sure it's still a very nice stone. You can see a photo of it here.

BOOK REVIEW by Jacob Lassner in the Middle East Quarterly:

Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. By Nadia Abu el-Haj. University of Chicago Press, 2001. 352 pp. $52 ($20, paper).

The review was published in 2003, but has just been posted on the Middle East Forum website.

A SYRIAC CONFERENCE is to be held at the Catholic University of America in February, 2006:

Dorushe Conference on Syriac Pedagogy at CUA

The Center for the Study of Early Christianity and the Semitics Department of the Catholic University of America in cooperation with the Dorushe graduate student association invite proposals for the 2006 Dorushe Syriac Studies Conference. This year's conference will be held at the CUA campus in Washington, D.C., February 3-5, 2006. While all are welcome to give papers, the conference is especially designed to aid graduate students interested in integrating the field of Syriac studies with other academic disciplines for a teaching career. Proposals on any Syriac related topic are welcome, but discussion periods will primarily focus on pedagogical aspects (how to incorporate our Syriac research into the classroom for a broader audience.) Papers will be pre-circulated to attendees and summarized at the conference. In addition, a list of resources to aid in the teaching of Syriac and related fields will be compiled and distributed at the conference. For further details see: http://csec.cua.edu/conference/Dorushe2006.cfm.


E-mail proposals in the format outlined below by October 31, 2005 to 56seville@cua.edu.

--Preparation of the Proposal--

Cover Sheet:
On a separate cover sheet include name, address, any academic affiliation, phone and fax numbers, e-mail address, the paper’s title, and indication of any projection or other special facilities needed. Graduate students should indicate their current stage in their program and how they foresee using Syriac in their future academic work.

Proposal:
Maximum word count: 300 words. Please submit your abstract as an e-mail attachment in RTF or MS Word Format. If your abstract includes Syriac or non-Roman characters please use a unicode font (such as the Meltho Fonts from Beth Mardutho). For purposes of anonymous judging, please do NOT include your name or other identification on the abstract. This information should be only on the cover sheet. Please be advised that the submission of an abstract and its acceptance represent a commitment from the contributor to summarize and discuss the paper in person at the conference.

(Via Michael Penn on the Hugoye list. Feel free to forward the message to anyone who might be interested.)