MARK GOODACRE has some good presessional posts on the upcoming SBL CARG session on biblioblogging here and here, in which he suggests ideas for what we can talk about in the session and gives some background links on academic blogging and biblioblogging. I'm adding references to both posts in my paper, which is nearly done.

UPDATE: More from Mark here and here. And Michael Pahl responds here.

SLOW NEWS DAY. The Tel Zayit abecedary is covered by the BBC in a brief but accurate article. Personally, I can't see how this inscription bears on the minimalist/maximalist debate. If it is Hebrew script, we already knew that Hebrew was being written in the tenth century BCE from the Gezer Calendar (apparently a scribal exercise). It's interesting that people in Judah could write too and that they even made crude stone inscriptions, but it's not anything surprising.

On a more amusing note, Pravda also has an article on the inscription and, not having access to an actual photo of it, has posted one they made up or got from somewhere else. The photo on the right shows a stone with the Hebrew alphabet carved thereon in six lines in the modern square script, complete with final (sofit) letters. A little misleading, wouldn't you say?



Pravda means "Truth."

UPDATE (14 November): Seth Sanders e-mails:

It's tough to fit the new inscription into the old (and to my mind unhelpful) debates. Crucially, there is no clear evidence that Gezer is in Hebrew, rather than Phoenician or (more likely, I think) an unmarked Canaanite scribal dialect that may not have been what anyone spoke (an argument advanced nicely in Bill Schniedewind's recent book). The case for Gezer's lack of paleographic and dialectal distinctiveness is already laid out in detail in Joseph Naveh's Early History of the Alphabet.

Chris Rollston, who's done the most recent, detailed and comprehensive studies of Iron Age paleography that I'm aware of, isn't convinced it's Hebrew either:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05313/603007.stm

In fact, our teacher and the stone's epigrapher, Kyle McCarter, describes it as "of a Phoenician type" here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4422628.stm

For what it's worth, my contribution to the topic, The Invention of Hebrew and the Formation of Ancient Israel (out next year from U of Illinois) will argue that Hebrew, as a formal written standard, was most probably created in the 8th or 9th century. This isn't to debunk the authenticity of earlier Israelite history--just to suggest that if they wrote it down it was either in Phoenician or a Canaanite variety
not yet defined as "Hebrew."

Stay tuned for the SBL session, folks!

RENOWNED QUMRAN SCHOLAR GEZA VERMES has an essay in the Times of London on Jewish-Christian relations:

Moving on from reproach to rapprochement
By Geza Vermes
Israel’s state visit to the Vatican is a challenge to faith leaders
NEXT Thursday the son of the caretaker of a Jewish school in Tehran will pay a state visit to the son of a Bavarian policeman. In plain language, Moshe Katsav, President of Israel, will be received amid pomp and ceremony in the Vatican by Pope Benedict XVI.

This event leads him to reflect on the history of relations between Jews and Christians, which has not always been constructive, to say the least. He has some advice for both:

Jews will have to stop being afraid of Jesus and treating Him as taboo. When we look at Him through the prism of history, rather than theology, and in the light of all the freshly gained knowledge of the world in which He lived, He reveals Himself as Jesus the Jew, who in the judgment of Martin Buber, one of the greatest modern Jewish thinkers, deserves an “important place in the religious history of Israel”.

The task Christians have to confront is, if anything, even more challenging. They must face up to the fact that the image of Jesus and the formulation of His message have come down to the Church not in their original language — they were delivered to simple Aramaic-speaking Galilean Jews — but in a culturally alien language (Greek) and in a form adapted to the needs of Hellenised non-Jews of Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and Rome. The saying, Traduttore traditore (a translator is a traitor), applies not just to texts but to the transmission of religious ideas as well.

Christians will need to discover the Jewish meaning of the authentic message preached and practised by Jesus and a way to apply it to their own circumstances today. Take His command to behave like children of God. Jesus does not advocate childishness, a lack of self-confidence and a constant demand for help and mediation — from priests, saints, the Virgin Mary or even from Himself — but recommends His own Jewish notion of a son of God, which entails boundless trust in the heavenly Father who can be reached directly by all his children. Such an outlook may turn out to be more exciting than the humdrum doctrine which churchgoers quite often hear from the pulpit.

During the past three decades, scholars on both the Jewish and the Christian sides have made great advances in clearing the path for a new understanding of Jesus and His gospel. Will Christian leaders and teachers of today and tomorrow be lion-hearted enough to come to grips with the challenge that beckons?

Let's hope so.

THE "GOLIATH" MEME continues to be spread in the media; that is, that the inscribed postsherd from Tel es-Safi has the name "Goliath" written on it, whereas in fact, at least according to this Jerusalem Post article, there are two names similar but not identical to Goliath: 'WLT and WLT (אולת and ולת). The Independent reprints the AP article that makes the claim about the name Goliath, as do many other newspapers.

In addition, epigrapher Lawrence Mykytiuk is interviewed (apparently in a Purdue University press release) about the potsherd with the correct understanding that the names are similar but not identical to Goliath.

Claims are being made that these names, whether Goliath or something similar, have some bearing on the historicity of the David and Goliath story in 1 Samuel 17. I'm not so sure. It's been a long time since I read about this, but I believe Goliath was a family name used by Jews in the first century BCE, which implies it could have been known and used any time between them and whenever the name originated. I can't find an online discussion that isn't behind a subscription wall, but the main reference seems to be:

Rachel Hachlili, "The 'Goliath' Family in Jericho," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 235 (1979): 31-66.

RICK BRANNAN has posted his SBL paper for the upcoming CARG Blogging session. It's really good, so be sure and read it whether or not you can come to the session. I'm working on my paper for the same session and I intend to post it here before I leave for Philadelphia.

REDATING THE SECOND TEMPLE? Diana Edelman summarizes her new book on the Bible and Interpretation website:

Redating the Building of the 'Second' Temple
It is hard see what benefit would have accrued from rebuilding the temple under either Cyrus or Darius while Jerusalem remained unoccupied and in ruins. How would either king have benefited from a pilgrimage site in a destroyed city in an underdeveloped, distant province?

A summary of the main arguments made in D. Edelman, The Origins of the 'Second' Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Yehud (London: Equinox, 2005).

By Diana Edelman
University of Sheffield
November 2005

If I'm reading her right, she thinks the Second Temple was actually built in the reign of Artaxerxes I (c. 464-423 BCE), sometime after the 21st year of his reign. It's very difficult to evaluate this sort of argument on the basis only of a summary of a book, but a few thoughts occur to me.

• First, the only hard datum about the date of building of the Second Temple I can find is the reference in an Elephantine papyrus dated 407 BCE to the high priest and the priests in Jerusalem, which certainly seems to imply a Temple there and then. See here for discussion. This does not conflict with Edelman's interpretation.
  
• Second, she also should take into account the evidence of the Enochic Animal Apocalypse (see link just cited). In fact, 1 Enoch 89:72 could be used to support her argument. One reading says that two "sheep" (Zerubbabel and Joshua?) started rebuilding Jerusalem (the "House"), after which the Temple (the "Tower") was rebuilt (v. 73). But another reading of v. 72 says three sheep, which would include either Sheshbazzar or Nehemiah. If the latter is intended, the text could be read to say that the Temple was rebuilt in his time. This would be especially interesting, because the Animal Apocalypse rejects the validity of the Second Temple and thus is witness to a different propaganda tradition and possibily a different line of historical memory about the Second Temple. But it's a very difficult passage and any interpretation of it is speculative.
  
• Third and sed contra, I don't find it incoherent that the exiles might have put more work sooner into rebuilding the Temple than into rebuilding the city. Religious people have their own priorities that don't necessarily make sense from a modern secular perspective. Look at all the time, money, and effort Europeans put into building cathedrals in the Middle Ages. So I don't see a problem in principle with the biblical accounts.

In brief, Edelman's theory seems to involve a lot of speculation and extrapolation, but I wouldn't rule the possibility out. I'll be interested in reading her book.

Bibliography

Patrick A. Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse of I Enoch (SBLEJL 4; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1993), 336-40

George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36, 81-108 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2003), 387-95

UPDATE (12 November): Regarding my point #3, reader Robert Schwartz e-mails:

Of course they would have. The Temple was the attraction that would jumps start the city's economy by requiring the people to make their tri-annual pilgrimages.

YOU CAN SEE A PHOTO of part of the Tel Zayit abecedary in this New York Times article. The article also notes some letters that are out of the traditional order. (Via this post at the Language Log, which has a number of useful links and which was found via Yitzhak Sapir on the ANE list.)

These discoveries seem to be pouring in fast and furious and I'm too busy writing my SBL paper etc. to keep up with them properly. But I'm trying at least to note interesting developments.

UPDATE: I see it's the same NYT article I cited before. But the photo wasn't there originally!

GOLIATH WAS HERE. Well, maybe not that Goliath, but a Goliath nonetheless.

Finding Said to Boost Proof of Goliath

JERUSALEM, Nov. 11, 2005
(AP) Archaeologists digging at the purported biblical home of Goliath have unearthed a shard of pottery bearing an inscription of the Philistine's name, a find they claimed lends historical credence to the Bible's tale of David's battle with the giant.

While the discovery is not definitive evidence of Goliath's existence, it does support the Bible's depiction of life at the time the battle was supposed to have occurred, said Dr. Aren Maeir, a professor at Bar-Ilan University and director of the excavation.

"What this means is that at the time there were people there named Goliath," he said. "It shows us that David and Goliath's story reflects the cultural reality of the time." In the story, David slew Goliath with a slingshot.

[...]

A sling, not a slingshot. Sigh.

UPDATE: It seems that maybe it's just someone who had a name a bit like Goliath. That's rather less interesting, although a tenth-century BCE inscribed ostracon is in itself very important news, whatever it has on it. Christopher Heard has lots of links and commentary over at Higgaion.

UPDATE (12 November): More here.

MANDAEANS IN IRAN: The Gnostic, Aramaic-speaking (in their liturgy) Iraqi Mandaeans have been getting some attention in the news since the war, and rightly so, but let's not forget the plight of the Mandaeans in Iran. From the U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report 2005 on Iran:

There was no substantive change in the status of respect for religious freedom during the reporting period. Members of the country's religious minorities--including Sunni and Sufi Muslims, Baha'is, Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians--reported imprisonment, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination based on their religious beliefs. Government actions created a threatening atmosphere for some religious minorities, especially Baha'is, Jews, and evangelical Christians.

[...]

Baha'is, Jews, Christians, Mandaeans, and Zoroastrians constitute less than 1 percent of the population combined. ... The Mandaeans, a community whose religion draws on pre-Christian gnostic beliefs, number approximately 5,000 to 10,000 persons, with members residing primarily in Khuzestan in the southwest.

[...]

According to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees' (UNHCR) background paper on the country, the Mandaeans are regarded as Christians and are included among the country's three recognized religious minorities. However, Mandaeans regard themselves not as Christians but as adherents of a religion that predates Christianity in both belief and practice. Mandaeans enjoyed official support as a distinct religion prior to the Revolution, but their legal status as a religion since then has been the subject of debate in the Majlis and has not been clarified. The small community faces discrimination similar to that faced by the country's other religious minorities. There were reports that members of the Mandaean community experienced societal discrimination and pressure to convert to Islam, and they often are denied access to higher education. Mandaean refugees have reported specific religious freedom violations and concerns, such as being forced to observe Islamic fasting rituals and to pray in Islamic fashion, both in direct violation of Mandaean teaching.

As noted, Jews, Baha'is, Christians, Zoroastrians, and even Sufi Muslims don't have it easy in Iran either.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: More Waqf construction?

Archaeologists decry Wakf 'renovation'

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

In a renewed dispute, a group of Israeli archaeologists has condemned the Wakf's planned renovation work of an ancient tower adjacent to the Temple Mount, warning that such a move is part of a long-running plan by the Islamic Trust to expand a recently-created mosque at the Jerusalem holy site.

The non-partisan 'Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount,' which has been leading the public campaign against Wakf construction at the site has sent a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Director of the Antiquities Authority Shuka Dorfman lambasting the proposed renovation work on the historic structure.

[...]

I shall be watching this one closely.

THE HOWLER OF THE WEEK goes to this headline at 6abc.com regarding the (roughly?) 10th century BCE abcedary discovered in Israel:

PA Archaeologist Discusses 12,000 Year–Old Alphabet

BNEI MENASHE CONVERSIONS STOPPED:

Israel halts Indian conversions (BBC)

Israel has stopped converting people in north-east India who say they are from a biblical "lost tribe" following complaints from the Indian government.

Delhi did "not view positively" conversions to another religion, Israel's foreign ministry said.

The 6,000-strong Bnei Menashe community in India's north-east say they are descendents of one of the 10 tribes exiled in the 8th Century BC.

Israel says it will now convert members when they emigrate.

[...]

Ha'aretz has more here.

IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME. In theory, anyway.

A theme park for the Holy Land?

American Evangelicals and Israeli officials plan to unveil this month a $60 million park where Jesus walked.

By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

JERUSALEM – Officials in Israel say that out of about 2 million people who will realize their dream of visiting the Holy Land this year, more than half will be Christian. And among those, more than half will be Evangelical.

With that in mind, the Israeli ministry of tourism has gone public with a plan to build - in partnership primarily with American Evangelical churches - a sprawling Holy Land Christian Center on the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee, home to some of the most notable chapters in Jesus' ministry. The center, to be built on approximately 125 acres that the Israeli government is offering free of cost, would be a Christian theme park and visitors' center, one that would be particularly attractive to Evangelicals and other Christians who want to spend more time in the places where Jesus walked.

Highlights may include a Holy Bible Garden, full of plants and trees mentioned in the New Testament, and equipped with quiet sites for reflection and prayer. A Sea of Galilee Amphitheater will overlook the mouth of the Jordan River and hold 1,500-2,000 worshippers. And the park will have a Christian Experience Auditorium and a Multimedia Center. The center would also feature an online broadcast center, which would give religious leaders an opportunity to address their followers back home, live, near the tranquil blue waters of the Sea of Galilee (which today is considered a lake).

[...]

This seems kind of goofy to me, but I guess they think there's a market for it. I hope they're right that it won't degenerate into a Disneyland.

AN ANCIENT ABECEDARY has been discovered carved in a stone at Tel Zayit in Israel.

A Is for Ancient, Describing an Alphabet Found Near Jerusalem

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD (New York Times)
Published: November 9, 2005

In the 10th century B.C., in the hill country south of Jerusalem, a scribe carved his A B C's on a limestone boulder - actually, his aleph-beth-gimel's, for the string of letters appears to be an early rendering of the emergent Hebrew alphabet.

Archaeologists digging in July at the site, Tel Zayit, found the inscribed stone in the wall of an ancient building. After an analysis of the layers of ruins, the discoverers concluded that this was the earliest known specimen of the Hebrew alphabet and an important benchmark in the history of writing, they said this week.

[...]

The date is not certain, but evidently both ceramic typology (from the stratum at the site) and epigraphic considerations point in that direction. The inscription is already being brought into the minimalist/maximalist debate, perhaps prematurely.

A few other comments:

The two lines of incised letters, apparently the 22 symbols of the Hebrew alphabet, were on one face of the 40-pound stone. A bowl-shaped hollow was carved in the other side, suggesting that the stone had been a drinking vessel for cult rituals, Dr. Tappy said. The stone, he added, may have been embedded in the wall because of a belief in the alphabet's power to ward off evil.

I'm having trouble picturing this. Was the stone originally part of the wall or reused later as a wall stone? Is the inscription on the same side as the bowl (so you could review your ABCs while you took a drink at the water fountain between classes?) or on the other side (the outside of the wall?)? What is the evidence that the use was cultic rather than, say, in a classroom for a scribal school?

Another baffling peculiarity is that in four cases the letters are reversed in sequence; an F, for example, comes before an E.

F before E? What does that mean? The Pe before the Ayin maybe? Or the Vav before the He?

The ANE list has had rumors of this inscription in recent days. I look forward to Ron Tappy's paper on it in the ASOR/AAR/SBL meetings in Philadelphia later this month.

UPDATE (12 November): More here.

HERE'S AN INDEX OF MISHNAIC REFERENCES in M. H. Segal's A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew. It was compiled by J. Boas. Click on the relevant link on the page to download the PDF file.

(Via Martin Baasten on the ANE List.)

UPDATE (9 November): Truncated link fixed.

HERE'S A JESUS MOVIE that places him in India during the years of his life which are not covered in the four gospels, and maybe after the crucifixion too:

Kolkata filmmaker traces Christ's 'India trail' (NewKerala.com)

By Sujoy Dhar, Kolkata: Where was Jesus Christ between the age of 12 and 30 years? He supposedly visited India during this period, according to a theory, and a filmmaker here has tried to follow Christ's yet unexplored trail in his new movie.

Though the Bible does not give credence to such theories, engineer-turned filmmaker Subhrajit Mitra's "The Unknown Stories of the Messiah" focuses on the unexplored life of Christ and his unaccounted years in the Bible.

Did Christ visit India after his crucifixion? Is a tomb in the Kashmir Valley that of Christ? These are some of the controversial questions Mitra raises in his film.

[...]

"Neither the Bible nor the mainstream gospels give credence to such theories but the scrolls found in caves near the Dead Sea or at Nag Hammadi (in Egypt), believed to be the first drafts of the Bible, corroborate the alternative theory about Christ," Mitra told IANS.

[...]

This alternative theory was strengthened after some scrolls (dating back to between 200 BC and 100 AD) were discovered in 1947 in a group of caves near Khirbat Qumran in Jordan at the northwestern end of the Dead Sea.

Two years before that, in 1945, some scrolls dating back to 350 AD were found tucked into a large jar at Nag Hammadi village in upper Egypt.

[...]

Maybe it will be an entertaining movie, but this historical rationale is bogus. The Dead Sea Scrolls never mention Jesus and I'm pretty sure they never mention India either. The Nag Hammadi library has a number of noncanonical gospels and apocalypses, but they do not mention India and certainly do not place Jesus there.

I'm not an expert in this area, but as far as I know, the earliest text to connect a first-generation Christian figure with India is the third-century Syriac Acts of Thomas, which has Thomas (not Jesus) evangelizing India. As far as I know, claims about Jesus himself going to India are modern. Here's a site that claims to collect the information, but I can't speak for its accuracy or completeness.

THE EGYPTIAN BLOGGER arrested by the Egyptian authorities is covered again by the AFP (here and here). The mainstream media is not leaping on the story.

UPDATE: More here. Don't forget to sign this petition. It will take you just a minute and you need not have your name posted in public.

THE ANCIENT CHRISTIAN SITE AT MEGIDDO is the subject of a National Geographic photo essay.

A DISTANCE-LEARNING COURSE ON THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS at the University of Copenhagen:

The Faculty of Theology of the University of Copenhagen is pleased to announce an MA-level Distance Learning Course: "Introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls".

For general information and links to application form, point your browser to www.teol.ku.dk/csbb/default-eng.htm and click "Dead Sea Scrolls Course" in the top bar.

For further information, please contact assistant professor, Ph.D. Søren Holst at mailto:sh@teol.ku.dk



Associate Professor, Ph.D. Carsten Selch Jensen
Coordinator of the Distance Learning Programme
at the University of Copenhagen's Faculty of Theology

(From Søren Holst on the g-Megillot list.)

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE JOURNAL OF SEMITIC STUDIES, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary on 16 November.

THE THIRD-CENTURY "CHURCH" AT MEGIDDO is the subject of a somewhat more temperate article ("Site May Be 3rd-Century Place of Christian Worship") in the Washington Post. Excerpts:

Judging by the age of broken pottery discovered on the floor, the distinctive mosaic style, inscriptions citing Jesus and the apparent pre-Byzantine design of the building, state archaeologists said the structure was most likely a public place of Christian worship that dates to the mid-3rd or early 4th century. If true, the find would join the early 3rd-century Christian gathering place at Dura Europus in Syria as one of the oldest of its kind.

[...]

Some archaeologists not involved in the project said the conclusions, while tantalizing, might be premature given that only 10 percent of the site has been excavated. Workers have yet to turn up a dated inscription or other evidence that firmly establishes the year the structure was built.

Zeev Weiss, an archaeology professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who runs the largest excavation project here in the Galilee region, said: "There is no question that what they have found is connected to Christianity. The only questions concern the design of the structure, the use of the structure and the date.

"To my mind, they don't really know what they have," said Weiss, who nonetheless called the discovery "very interesting." "That's probably why they are hesitating to call it a church."

THE LUBAVITCHER REBBE is the subject of a conference at New York University:

"Reaching for the Infinite:" Scholars At NYU On the Lubavitcher Rebbe
NEW YORK CITY — Sunday, November 06, 2005 (Lubavitch News Service)

“Menachem Mendel Schneerson is larger than life,” said Elliot Wolfson, a professor at NYU and scholar of Chasidism. “To speak of him is fraught with danger.”

And yet that’s precisely what a cadre of academics and scholars of Chasidic thought are attempting to do this week as they tackle a variety of themes related to the Rebbe and his legacy. Coming to NYU’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, from as far as Australia, Israel and the U.K., the academics are presenting at a conference billed “Reaching for the Infinite, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Life, Teachings and Impact.”

[...]

The article doesn't mention that some Lubavitchers believe he was the messiah.

UPDATE: Steven Weiss is attending the conference and has put up a number of posts on it already.

A DICTIONARY OF MANICHAEAN TEXTS is in the works:

Dictionary of Manichaean Texts being compiled in Britain

TEHRAN, Nov. 5 (MNA [MehrNews.com]) -- The most comprehensive Dictionary of Manichaean Texts is being compiled at the British Academy.

The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board.

The three volume dictionary is being compiled by Professor Sims-Williams, Dr. Gunner Mikkelsen and a number of other scholars. The first volume entitled “Texts from the Roman Empire” was published in early 1999, and the remaining volumes are now in course of preparation, covering the texts from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia and China.

[...]

Most cool.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN CHURCH found at Megiddo:

Prison dig reveals church that may be the oldest in the world
By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent, and AP

A mosaic and the remains of a building uncovered recently in excavations on the Megiddo prison grounds may belong to the earliest church in the world, according to a preliminary examination by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

One of the most dramatic finds suggests that, instead of an altar, a simple table stood in the center of the church, at which a sacred meal was held to commemorate the Last Supper.

Photographs of three Greek inscriptions in the mosaic were sent to Hebrew University expert Professor Leah Di Segni, who told Haaretz on Sunday that the use of the term "table" in one of them instead of the word "altar" might lead to a breakthrough in the study of ancient Christianity. It is commonly believed that church rituals based on the Last Supper took place around an altar.

[...]

There's also a photo of one of the inscriptions.

THE EGYPTIAN BLOGGER who was arrested on 26 October has generated scarcely any interest in the mainstream media so far. But here are a few posts from another Egyptian blogger with more info and links. At the moment Technorati is listing 53 blog posts about him, but there are probably more, since it often takes a day or so for Technorati to cycle through.

Glenn Reynolds also points to a petition from the Committee to Protect Bloggers which asks for Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman's release. I've signed it. I hope you will too.

In addition, on Friday I sent the following note to the Egyptian Embassy in London (info@egyptianconsulate.co.uk):

Dear Sir,

I write regarding the reports that Egyptian blogger Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman was arrested in Egypt on 26 October for publishing blog posts that criticized Salafi Islam and the Egyptian Government, and that his whereabouts are currently unknown.

If the reports are accurate, this is a serious human rights violation and is particularly disturbing from my personal perspective given the announcement today in Al-Ahram Weekly of an upcoming international conference on Coptic studies to be held later this year in Sohag.

I am a lecturer at a British university and one of my research specialties involves ancient biblical pseudepigrapha written in numerous languages, including Coptic. Thus, this is the sort of conference I might well wish to attend. However, given that I have criticized the Salafis and the Egyptian Goverment on my own weblog, I would fear for my personal safety in Egypt after hearing the report of Mr. Seliman's arrest.

Is this really the sort of publicity you want for your country? I urge you to release Mr. Seliman immediately, drop all charges against him, and henceforth respect his human rights to criticize both his own government and religious traditions with which he disagrees.

Sincerely yours,

James R. Davila

Please feel free to write a note of protest to the Egyptian Embassy in your country. In the USA the e-mail address of the Egyptian Embassy is embassy@egyptembdc.org. If you live in a country other than Britain or the USA, you can find the relevant e-mail address easily through Google.

Please do be polite (abusive letters are counterproductive) but also firm. The main points are that Mr. Seliman's right to free speech (whatever one thinks of his views), including the right to criticize his government and religious views with which he disagrees, should be respected and he should be released without charge immediately. My understanding is that there is not a right to free speech in Egypt, so this should be presented as a universal human right. You may want to point out also the very negative international publicity that is arising from reports of this incident. Feel free to poach any of the language in my e-mail if it applies to you.

I encourage you to do this. Such messages do make a difference and could be very important in this case. Thanks.

Okay, now back to ancient Judaism and related matters.

UPDATE: There's good news and bad news (see here too). Only the good news is pretty bad too. Do send that e-mail.

A NEW BLOG ON HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS: Giluy Milta B'alma, a new blog by Dr. Ezra Chwat, has the purpose of providing informal preliminary publications of interesting Hebrew manuscript finds, especially from the Cairo Geniza. Here's the blurb:

Working from the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in the National Library in Jerusalem, we present here new and interesting findings in Hebrew Manuscripts, particularly the Cairo Genizah. This is a good place to announce preliminary findings, and get feedback from fellow scholars. We welcome posts in Hebrew or English. They will be archived in hardcopy for bibliographic reference.

(Via Hagahot.)

THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF NOSTRA AETATE was observed in a conference in Jerusalem last week:

Catholics Want Message of Respect for Jews to Continue
By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
November 04, 2005

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Catholic and Jewish scholars and theologians gathered in Jerusalem this week to mark the 40th anniversary of an important Catholic Church document acquitting the Jewish people of killing of Jesus Christ.

But scholars said they are concerned that the message of respect for the Jewish people could be forgotten by coming generations.

Blamed for the death of Jesus and considered rejected by God, the Jewish people suffered persecution, pogroms, torture and death at the hands of the Catholic Church, among others, for 1,900 years.

But a change in official Catholic doctrine came with the declaration of Nostra Aetate , a document accepted by the Second Vatican Council on October 28, 1965. It opened a door of friendship and diplomacy between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people.

[...]

ANOTHER INFORMAL SEGERT OBITUARY, this one by his student Tom Finley, posted by Ed Cook on Ralph.

THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA is the subject of an article ("Library, most magnificient") in the Hindu, for reasons unclear to me. It collects a lot of traditional material quite uncritically. For some evaluation of some of that material, see this post and its final link.

COPTOLOGY CONFERENCE COMING IN EGYPT:

Scene set for Coptic studies
The Third International Seminar on Coptic Studies will be held in Sohag early next year.
Jill Kamil looks at the preparations [Al-Ahram Weekly]

"People have come to know that the series of Coptic studies seminars that take place in monasteries are serious affairs," well-known Coptologist Gawdat Gabra says. "Already we have had a most satisfactory response to our announcement that the next seminar will take place in Sohag early next year, and it promises to be even more successful than the other two."

[...]

UPDATE: It sounds like an interesting conference, but if this story is accurate, maybe I shouldn't attend:

Egypt arrests blogger
04/11/2005 09:28 - (SA)

Cairo - Egyptian police have detained a blogger for his anti-Islamic and anti-government writings and confiscated his books and copies of his articles, his family and other bloggers said on Thursday.

Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman, a 21-year-old law student at Al-Azhar University, was arrested on October 26. His whereabouts are not known.

[...]

Another blogger, Malik Moustafa, closely followed Seliman's detention and accused followers of the fundamentalist Islamic Salafi movement in Alexandria of being behind the arrest. Moustafa said the arrest followed articles in which Seliman accused the Salafis of inciting the latest sectarian tensions in his neighbourhood of Mouharm Bay.

Blatant remarks

Seliman was detained three days after posting an article to his blog commenting on the violent riots that erupted when thousands of security forces clashed with streams of angry Muslim worshippers in front of a Coptic Christian church over a play put on by Christians deemed offensive to Islam.

[...]

In addition to his anti-Islamic writings, Seliman posted several articles blatantly attacking Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak regime and describing it as a "symbol of dictatorship".

[...]

Criticising the Salafis and the Egyptian Government. What could he have been thinking?

According to this article, the poor guy's mother even had to condemn him to stay out of trouble.

For more on those riots, see this AP article . For more on the detention of Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman see here (includes links to his blogs if you read Arabic) and here.

THE TREE OF LIFE synagogue mosaics exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum is reviewed by the Forward in "The Roman Era, Revised". (Requires free registration). Excerpt:

"If you were wealthy, you could afford marble and the poor had plaster floors," [archaeologist and cultural property lawyer Lucille] Roussin said, meaning it [the synagogue floor at Hamman-Lif] was likely that this community was someplace in between. The inscriptions on the floor were written in Latin, the least common language for Jews of the period, trailing Greek and Aramaic. This suggests a high level of comfort with the prevailing culture. The designs also speak loudly. Some scholars believe that elaborate figurative images may indicate that the communities' interpretation of Jewish law was less strict — much like Reform Judaism today — than in places where only the geometric mosaics condoned by the rabbis are found. It is also possible that the Jews of Hammam-Lif simply had less knowledge of Jewish law coming together in Israel and in Babylonia.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF JUNK PHILOLOGY: The Axis of Logic has a long rant against Israel et al. by Ghali Hassan. My interest here is mainly in the first few paragraphs. The bold-font emphasis below is mine.

Critical Analysis
Anti-Semitism and Arabs
By Ghali Hassan
Nov 2, 2005, 21:31

Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world.
- Umberto Eco, NY Review of Books, June, 1995.

To Israel’s friends and supporters of its colonial policy in Palestine, ‘anti-Semitism’ means; any criticism of Israel’s brutal policy against the Palestinians and any criticism of Zionism and its racism that continues to inflict great harm on Arabs and Muslims. The real victims of today’s Western anti-Semitism are Arabs and Muslims, not Jews.

The term ‘anti-Semitism’ has nothing to do with religion. It originated in 18th century Europe where philologists used the term ‘Semite’ to distinguish languages from each other by grouping them into ‘families’ originating from the so-called ‘mother’ tongue to which they are related. Despite the lack of a common ancestral language, Arabic, Aramaic, Amharic, Assyrian, Hebrew, etc. where [sic] grouped as ‘Semitic’ languages. For both Arabic and Hebrew, the classification was incorrect. In other words, neither Arabic nor Hebrew is Semitic.

This is quite wrong. All these languages, including Hebrew and Arabic, do have an ancestral language that is called "Proto-Semitic" for the sake of convenience. ("Semitic" comes from the legendary biblical ancestor "Shem" in the book of Genesis.) Proto-Semitic broke up into various Semitic languages and proto-languages before writing was available, so no texts survive in it, but its existence is clear from linguistic reverse-engineering of the surviving Semitic languages. This is elementary knowledge to anyone trained in Semitic philology.

With the rise of European racism against minorities in the 19th century, European Jews where [sic] targeted. Differences between Jews and other European citizens have to be manufactured. Since European Christians (the Protestant Reformists) adopted the Hebrew bible, religion was not an option for those differences. The Jews were identified as ‘Semites’ based on the incorrect assumption that their ancestors spoke Hebrew, which wasn’t the case. Ancient Hebrew tribes were Aramaic speakers.

This is bizarre. It is perfectly clear from the Hebrew Bible and numerous Iron Age Hebrew inscriptions that Hebrew was the language spoken by the ancient Judeans and Israelites. If I may quote myself:

While I am discussing inscriptions, it is worth noting that the epigraphic evidence makes it clear that speakers of Hebrew engaged in a monumental building project in Jerusalem around 700 (the Siloam Tunnel inscription). Other excavated Hebrew inscriptions in Jerusalem around this time include the Silwan tomb inscription, the Ophel ostracon, and an ostracon from Arad that mentions "the king of Judah." Substantial corpora of Judean Hebrew correspondence by worshipers of YHWH were found on ostraca from the end of the Iron Age (late 600s to 586/87) at Lachish and Arad. The Lachish letters mention "the king" (##3, 5), "the prophet" (#3), and possibly (the reading is damaged) "Jerusalem" (#5). The Arad ostraca also refer to "the king" (#24). These are all excavated inscriptions whose genuineness is not in doubt.

The Arameans in what is now Syria spoke Aramaic (the CAL website seems to be jammed at the moment, but here's the Google cache version of their "Aramaic" article.) After the Babylonian Exile, the Persian Empire used Aramaic as its diplomatic language, which resulted in its being used all over the ancient Near East in the Persian period and widely for centuries thereafter. Again, anyone who knows anything about the history of the Semitic languages knows this.

The article also makes the daft revisionist claim that "Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all part of Arab culture."

If this is an example of "critical analysis" by the Axis of Logic, I'm not impressed.

ANNE RICE WATCH: There's lots more in the media about Anne Rice and her Jesus book and I don't have time to note all of it. But this paragraph struck me. It's in a New York Times article from 26 October:

On the Internet she has challenged bloggers who dismiss her, on religious grounds and otherwise, as unqualified to take on the subject. "I tell them it's sincerely written and it's the Jesus of the Gospels," she said.

Hmmm ... Anne Rice reads blogs. I'll let you know if I get any e-mail from her.

MORE ON ANNE RICE and her Jesus book from Beliefnet:

Anne Rice: 'Stations on a Journey'
The best-selling author gives up writing about vampires to write about the 'ultimate supernatural hero'--Jesus Christ.
By Marcia Z. Nelson
Anne Rice has nailed her vampire novels into a coffin.

"I will never write those kind of books again -- never," Rice said, referring to three decades of work that include bestsellers like "Interview with the Vampire" and other books in the Vampire Chronicles series.

That's a bummer, because it means we'll probably never see the resolution of that wild cliffhanger at the end of Taltos. But this seems to confirm my fear at the time I read it that she had written herself into a corner she couldn't get out of.

Her books about witches and dark angels, she said, "were reflections of a world that didn't include redemption."

Actually, I recall quite a bit of redemption in Memnoch the Devil, even if God didn't seem overly enthusiastic about the idea.

Then, near the end of the piece:

In the end, Rice seems to consider her new book a gift, both to Christians and to non-Christian fans of her previous work. "This is a book I offer to all Christians," she writes, "to the fundamentalists, to the Roman Catholics, to the most liberal Christians in the hope that my embrace of more conservative doctrines will have some coherence for them in the here and now of the book...

"I offer this book to those who know nothing of Jesus Christ in the hope that you will see him in these pages in some form. I offer this novel with love to my readers who've followed me through one strange turn after another in the hope that Jesus will be as real to you as any other character I've ever launched into the world we share."

The ellipsis is in the article. It will be very interesting to see how all of these readers react to this new book.

The article also describes her faith journey from and back to the Catholic Church and looks a bit at her view of New Testament scholarship.

THAT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM, as Indiana Jones would say. I hope some philanthropist will see it that way, or at least will see to it that this lot of geniza fragments being sold by Christie's remains fully accessible to scholars for research.

DIGITALIZED SPECIAL COLLECTIONS are the subject of an interesting Library Journal article:

Rarities Online
By Andrew Richard Albanese — November 1, 2005
With digitization, special collections are entering a golden age of usability

Columbia University librarian James G. Neal beams as he walks past item after item on display in the school’s Butler Library, treasures drawn from the massive Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum. The collection is a veritable feast for theater scholars, including everything from rare first editions, sketches, and manuscript drafts to playbills, set designs, ornate masks, and some remarkable 19th-century handcrafted marionettes.

It is in unique collections like these that Neal sees a bright future for libraries. In fact, at the April 2005 Association of College and Research Libraries annual conference in Minneapolis, Neal told an audience of librarians that in the digital age, librarians are poised to enter a new “golden age” of special collections, spurred by digitization and greater online access to primary resources.

“Research libraries traditionally have been evaluated by how many volumes they hold, but the smallest library can eventually access as many volumes as the largest,” Neal explains, alluding to the advent of digital databases for contemporary resources. “In the future, I believe great research libraries will be evaluated more and more on their special collections.”

Here's a (from my perspective) particularly interesting example:

[Alice] Schreyer [special collections librarian at the University of Chicago] points to the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection Project at the University of Chicago. With a $250,000 award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services matched by $227,762 from the university, the project has created a remarkable digital collection of 65 Greek, Syriac, Ethiopian, Armenian, Arabic, and Latin manuscripts dating from the seventh to the 19th century, complete with software to scroll over and examine every part of the manuscripts in detail. The program, Schreyer says, began with a faculty member using the collection with a class but quickly evolved. “We really felt the research potential of the collection was of global interest to scholars, and we wanted to be able to share that worldwide,” Schreyer says. “It’s a collection that has not been heavily researched because it is all in Chicago.” It is now freely accessible, and such efforts epitomize the transformation of learning.

In a curious old-media-mindset lapse, the article neglects to give URLs or links to the projects it cites, but you can access the Goodspeed New Testament Manuscript Collection by following this link.

SO YESTERDAY I spent the day driving to the Edinburgh airport, picking my family up from a holiday, bringing them home, and getting them settled in. Plus teaching a Hebrew class. So what happens while I'm away? The Israeli government arrests Hanan Eshel.

Police arrest archaeologist suspected of ancient relic trade
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent

An archaeologist was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of locating and purchasing an ancient document from antiquities thieves.

Professor Hanan Eshel, of Bar-Ilan University, is suspected of purchasing pieces of a Leviticus scroll from the Bar Kokhba period (132-135 CE) from three West Bank Bedouin for $3,000. The three Bedouin allegedly showed the document first to a doctoral student of Eshel, Roi Porat. Porat, who was also questioned yesterday, allegedly called in Eshel, who subsequently made the purchase. Eshel and Porat were released with limitations after questioning.

[...]

Apparently the charges are failing to inform the IAA of the purchase within 15 days and also "illegal excavation." A longer Hebrew version of the article is here, but be forewarned: the page gave my Firefox browser the Evil Rotating Beach Ball screen freeze.

For more on the Leviticus scroll fragments in question, see here.

There are further details in this Jerusalem Post article:

Police probe leading archeologist
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

In a bizarre case, the former head of the archeology department at Bar-Ilan University is under investigation for illicitly trading in antiquities valued at $1 million, police said Tuesday.

Regarding the charges, it says:

After purchasing the scroll, he [Eshel] said he had it photographed at a police lab, a claim police deny.

"I bought the scroll to give it to the State of Israel and, instead of thanking me, they are accusing me of trying to steal it, which is nonsense," he said.

Eshel maintained he reported the find to the Antiquities Authority a few months after it was shown to him, but that the authority did nothing about it.

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby, however, said that Eshel hid both the discovery of the Bar Kochba-era scroll in a Judean Desert cave and his purchase of it.

The Antiquities Authority, subsequently lodged a complaint with the police, which opened an investigation, Ben-Ruby said.

During questioning, Eshel reportedly told the police he did not report the find to the Antiquities Authority because he was afraid that "they would steal the credit," Ben-Ruby said.

Prof. Aren Maeir, current head of Bar-Ilan's Land of Israel studies and archeology department, accused the Antiquities Authority and police of blowing the case "completely out of proportion."

There's been some discussion on the ANE List. Joseph I. Lauer has bee especially good at digging up references.

It's really too soon to know what all this means or how it will play out. I have the highest regard for Hanan Eshel as a scholar and a friend and I can't imagine him deliberately breaking any antiquities laws. I believe there has been controversy on whether he should have dealt with the looters at all, though. That is a difficult question.

Stay tuned.

AMEN ON ALL COUNTS.

KABBALAH CENTRE WOES in Tel Aviv:

Kabbalah leader arrested over '£30,000 charge for fraudulent cancer cure'

· Madonna's Israeli host questioned in Tel Aviv
· Woman told £4 branded water would help chances

Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv
Tuesday November 1, 2005
The Guardian

The head of a religious centre which hosted Madonna's visit to Israel was last night under arrest on suspicion of promising to cure a woman's cancer in return for more than £30,000.

[...]

ARAMAIC WATCH: Aramaic chat rooms as PSYOP?

Make love, not jihad: PSYOP, OSINT efforts should tackle repression of romance

By Steve Hammons
October 31, 2005 (American Chronicle)

In the struggle against terrorism, religious extremism and in dealing with challenges in Iraq, there are many strategies and tactics available. These include so-called "hard power" options such as bullets and bombs as well as "soft power" such as persuasion, education and psychological operations (PSYOP).

Dr. Walid Phares, a professor of Middle East studies and senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, wrote an article titled "�Valentine's Day Enrages Jihadists." Phares noted that, "the terrorists are not intimidated by death, but they are terrorized by love."

[...]

This situation is ripe for PSYOP and open source intelligence (OSINT) endeavors to "liberate the oppressed," as the U.S. Army Special Forces motto goes.

[...]

"Love warfare has become the boldest threat that can roll back jihad. On the internet, Arab, Persian, Kurdish, Aramaic, and other love and music chat rooms attract ten times the al-Ansar-crowded rooms. There, you read and hear discussions of love; they seek, not decadence, but the early stages of a romantic revolution," according to Phares.

[...]

My emphasis.

FRICTION OVER THE ANCIENT SYNAGOGUE IN JERICHO:

Police Arrest Jews Trying to Visit Synagogue in Jericho
09:48 Oct 31, '05 / 28 Tishrei 5766 (Arutz Sheva)

(IsraelNN.com) Police this morning arrested a number of Jews who were attempting by foot to visit the ancient Jewish synagogue in Jericho.

[...]

I assume this is the same synagogue that was discussed here.

By the way, I shall be very busy today and tomorrow. Blogging may be light.

TREE OF PARADISE REMINDER: ArtDaily.com is recycling an article from last May on the Tree of Paradise exhibition of ancient synagogue mosaics, now showing at the Brooklyn Museum. If you're in the vicinity, it sounds very much worth seeing.

DA VINCI CODE AUTHOR DAN BROWN is being sued for stealing some of the ideas in his book [correction: it's his publisher who's being sued]:

Date set for Da Vinci court case (BBC)

A date has been arranged for High Court action by two authors against the publishers of The Da Vinci Code, which they say infringes upon their ideas.

A trial will begin on 27 February to hear the claim that writer Dan Brown stole Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh's idea that Jesus had a child.

They are suing Random House, claiming the bestseller lifts from their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

[...]

And they aren't even good ideas!

By the way, I finally got around to reading The Da Vinci Code this month. I'm writing up some comments and I'll try to get around to posting them pretty soon.

AFROCENTRISM OUT OF CONTROL:

Garamma: Stone writings of African Adam

Posted to the Web: Sunday, October 30, 2005 (Vanguard, Nigeria)

NIGERIA'S dogged cultural researcher, and erstwhile senior special assistant to the President on Arts and Culture, Catherine Acholonu-Olumba recently teamed up with India’s computer engineer and IT specialist, Ajay Prebhaka, winner of several awards as an upcoming computer "whiz kid" to undertake the most painstaking and ambitious cultural research project ever carried out on the shores of Africa.

[...]

The outcome of the journey was the discovery that Africa was home to a celestial, high technology civilization based in the present day location of the Sahara Desert - a civilization that was decimated by the deluge and by the war of the gods of antiquity, the hallmarks of which included the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Egypt.

Also, the stone writings of Ikom were deciphered by Acholonu, and Prabhakar and were found to contain an entire scripture in our solar system. This was the very first scripture of humanity! The researchers discovered that the writings were a combination of ancient Egyptian, Sumerian and Davidian letters. Evidence abounds in the work of the two researchers to prove that the Ikom stone writings were the original source-book of the ancient Sumerian epic of creation, Euuma Ellsh, dated 6000 B.C. (the original source of Genesis) and of The book of the Secrets of Enoch; that the delta location of the monoliths was the limed global seaport of Tilmun, from where great ships sailed the global seas of antiquity supplying gold, palm produce, spices, dates and copper; that Mount Cameroon (known as ‘The Chariots of the God" ) was the Mecca and Rome of antiquity, a veritable chariot of the gods to which the Pharaohs of Egypt betook themselves to dwell with the gods in underground dwellings connected secretly with the lands stretching through the Niger Delta and through the Niger/Benue ‘Sacred Confluence of Osiris’ to the Chad Basin (with its core in the Ejegham nation);

[...]


Ikom stone writings gave away their sacred language - The Garamma Language - the Lost Mother Tongue of mankind, the origin of the Hebrew Qabbala and the ‘Tera-gramm’ name of Yaweh. Off-shoots of the Garamma writing include Nsibidi of Ekpe cult of Southern Nigeria and the Ogham sacred writings of the Celtic dwarfs (Druids) of ancient British Isles.

[...]

There's more along these lines, but you get the idea. Obviously, none of this has been published in serious venues and the wildly inflated claims about pretty much everything ("celestial, high technology," Egyptian, Sumerian, Dravidian (?), Babylonian myth [the Enuma Elish], Eridu, the book of Genesis, Enoch literature, the crossing of the Sea of Reeds, Druids, Kabbalah, etc.), which claims were supposedly established "over more than four years" of research, speak for themselves. I don't know if there really are any "Ikom inscriptions," but if there are and someone can tell me something responsible about them, I'd be interested in hearing it.

With all the actual fascinating history in Africa (such as the vast repositories of manuscripts in Timbuktu), it's a pity that people are being fooled with this nonsense.

UPDATE (31 October): Richard Bartholomew has more.

THE HYPNERATOMACHIA POLYPHILI, along with other "rare tomes," is becoming availble on CD-Rom/DVD according to the Berkeley Daily Planet:

These discs make it possible to examine and magnify in minute detail not just text and illustrations, but even the paper, watermarks and binding. Although for now we still see through a glass, it is no longer darkly. It is as if someone, our computer genie, were willing to take an infinite amount of time to display every detail of a treasured object, its hand-tooled leather bindings, translucent watercolors, the very texture of the paper. There is none of that greying out of the page that you find in many facsimiles. The presence of each book is almost palpable.

The Octavo Editions series covers classics in art, architecture, botany, zoology, religion, science and literature and, although the actual book is viewable in its pristine form, plenty of explanatory background material is provided as well. While the prospect of owning Gutenberg’s Bible, Redouté’s Roses or Tory’s Champ Fleury rang my bells, the following titles made this old English major positively salivate:

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), the chef d’oeuvre of Aldus Manutius, the greatest printer of the Italian Renaissance, has fascinated poets, psychologists and iconographers for half a millennium. Anyone interested in dreams, erotica, alchemy, architecture, hieroglyphs, emblems, allegory or symbolism has probably stumbled upon this title and its hermetic illustrations and wondered about its author, its euphuistic language and its meaning.

It reads like a collaboration between Baron Corvo and Carl Jung. The real author is unknown even though the name Francesco Colonna is encrypted into the text. Joscelyn Godwin, whose 1999 translation is the only complete English version, pays lip service to Colonna in that volume, although two years earlier in Prague he told me that he was convinced by recent scholarship that Leone Battista Alberti, the humanist author and architect, wrote this strife of love in a dream. Whoever wrote it, the book is one of the most beautiful ever printed and all of that loveliness comes through in this disc.

"ALL THE BOOKS IN THE WORLD." The Letter of Aristeas and the Library of Alexandria figure in an essay in Ha'aretz by Michael Handelzatts.

HAPPY 1600TH BIRTHDAY TO THE ARMENIAN ALPHABET!

Ancient Armenia gave faith an alphabet

By Rich Barlow | October 29, 2005 (Boston Globe)

Few birthdays are cause for a global scholars' conference at Harvard, but they're raising a metaphorical glass in Cambridge to toast the Armenian alphabet. It's not just that at 1,600 years old the alphabet makes Methuselah look like a youngster. These three dozen letters gave a written language of faith to a pivotal country in Christian history.

Years before the Roman emperor Constantine's famous conversion, Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its state religion, in the year 301. At the time, Armenian was a spoken tongue only, meaning worshipers relied on translators during services to interpret a Bible that was written in other languages.

''Bare oral translations," an Armenian theologian later wrote, ''were insufficient to satisfy the aspirations of the heart."

A fifth-century priest, Mesrob Mashtotz, sated those aspirations, devising a 36-letter script (two more letters were added later) so the Old and New Testaments could be rendered in Armenian. For Armenians worldwide, including the Armenian Apostolic Church, religion and language would become intertwined as the life supports keeping the nation's culture and heritage alive outside the homeland, says James R. Russell, Mesrob Mashtotz professor of Armenian studies at Harvard.

[...]

The article also notes that an excerpt from Proverbs was the first biblical text to be trascribed into the alphabet. But this seems to be garbled:

The effects spilled over beyond Armenia's border; for example, Russell says that many works of Philo of Alexandria, the great Jewish theologian of the Greco-Roman era, have come down to us only because they survived in Armenian and subsequently were translated into Greek.

Yes, some of Philo's works survive only in Armenian, but the were translated from Greek into Armenian, not the other way around. I'm sure that's what Professor Russell said and the interviewer misunderstood.

A number of Old Testament pseudepigrapha and New Testament apocrypha also have important manuscript traditions in Armenian.

GOOD ADVICE ON TEACHING HEBREW from Charles David Isbell at the SBL Forum site:

The Hebrew Teacher: Guru, Drill Instructor, or Role Model?

Clicking on this link will downloan the PDF file onto your system.

(Via the Bible and Interpretation website.)

PSEUDO-HEGESIPPUS, De excidio Hierosolymitano, an important fourth-century Christian Latin history of the first-century destruction of Jerusalem which made extensive use of Josephus' Jewish War, has now been put online in English translation by Roger Pearse on his Early Church Fathers - Additional Texts website. It is important as a roundabout but early source for the text of Josephus' work, and also exegetically as a fairly early Christian reworking of a major Jewish source. (Heads-up, Hypotyposeis.)

MORE ON SHEIKH KAMAL HATIB (KHATIB). Whether or not WorldNetDaily quoted him correctly, his organization does seem to indulge in Jewish-Temple denial. This from an Haaretz article ("Focus / `False' dreams, and temples, on the Mount" dated 23 June 2005 (according to Google cache):

Last week, before he was arrested, Sheikh Ra'ad Salah, head of the Islamic Movement's Northern Branch, slammed Jerusalem Police Chief Mickey Levy for his comment that the police were considering allowing Jews to go to the site. Salah said that Levy's remarks "reveal the tragic circumstances of the existence of the Al-Aqsa Mosque under the occupying Israeli rule."

Following this week's wave of arrests of top Islamic Movement members, the organization published a declaration saying that the campaign against it was part of the "rosy, narcissistic, false dream" of the Israeli government "to build their false temple on the blessed land of Al-Aqsa."

Ra'ad's deputy, Sheikh Kamal Khatib, told Haaretz this week that the steps against his movement also serve the interests of the Palestinian Authority - and especially the new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) - which is concerned about the control the organization is beginning to wield over the Mount.

The Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement holds an annual Al-Aqsa Festival, which it first started in the 1990s and which draws thousands and thousands of participants. The movement fundraises intensively for renovations via its Al-Aqsa Association and publishes propaganda in the form of books and articles on the "false temple" Israel plans to build once it has rid the Temple Mount of all mosques.

Brousing through the books sold at the movement's store in Kafr Qana, for example, one suddenly comes across "scientific" proof showing that the First and Second Temples never stood on the site, as the Jews believe. ...

Note also the intensely anti-historical attitude he takes in these comments in an exchange with the Catholic Archbishop of the Galilee, Butrus Al-Mu'alem, reported by MEMRI (Special Dispatch Series - No. 41, "Muslim-Christian Tensions in the Israeli-Arab Community").

Archbishop Al-Mu'alem stated: "I want to be clear that we are the Christians of this land and not uninvited intruders. We were Arabs before the appearance of Islam, we are still Arabs, and we will continue to be Arabs. We were the first to congratulate [the Muslims] who came in the days of the Caliph Omar. I send you back to history."

Sheik Khatib responded: "Revered Archbishop, is it a day of struggle or a day of reconciliation…? If anyone else had said those things we may have forgiven him, but coming from you - there can be no forgiveness. What do you mean when you say you were here before the appearance of Islam? It means that Islam is a foreign phenomenon here. …You should know that for us Islam is not only the religion of the Prophet Muhammad, but also the religion of Moses, Jesus, and Abraham [who according to the The Koran are considered prophets of Islam]...

THE HOLIDAYS SHEMENI ATZERET AND SIMCHAT TORAH are today, outside Israel. Shemeni Atzeret began on the evening of the 24th and lasted one day in Israel (with Simchat Torah on the same day), but continues a second day outside of Israel (today, with Simchat Torah today as well). I think I have this straight this time. If not, I'm sure someone in Israel will correct me.

Shemini Atzeret is a biblical holiday mentioned in Numbers 29:35-38. Simchat Torah is not a biblical holiday, but it marks the beginning and ending of the annual cycle of Torah readings.

ROBERT H. JOHNSTON -- R.I.P.

Robert H. Johnston, Examiner of Dead Sea Scrolls, Dies at 77

By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: October 26, 2005 (New York Times)

Robert H. Johnston, an archaeologist who helped develop a way to read ancient texts blackened or faded by time, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, died last Wednesday at his home in Brighton, N.Y. He was 77.

He spent more than a month in the hospital recently after several minor falls followed by infections and minor strokes, said his wife, Louise, but she could not point to a single cause of death.

Mr. Johnston, who for two decades was a professor and administrator at the Rochester Institute of Technology, worked in digital imaging to tease out ancient text, often minute fragments of individual characters, that had not been seen for as long as 2,000 years. This involved manipulating technology first used for medical diagnosis and enhancing pictures taken from military satellites.

Along with the Dead Sea Scrolls, texts from the time of Christ, Mr. Johnston decoded parts of a 10th-century parchment copy of a famous treatise by the Greek mathematician Archimedes that had been used as the fabric for a 13th-century prayer book, among other projects.

[...]

THERE WERE GIANTS IN THE EARTH IN THOSE DAYS -- NOT.

Hobbits maybe, but no giants.

WAS JESUS BORN IN BETHLEHEM OF JUDEA? Then archaeologist Aviram Oshri, writing in the current issue of Archaeology Magazine, wants to know where the Herodian remains of the town are. He hints that Jesus may have been born at another site with the same name in Galilee. Too bad this is just an abstract.

A NEW USE FOR ANTIOXIDANTS is reported by Wired News. Actually, I thought the ink of Dead Sea Scrolls was carbon based, but the article says that recipes for iron gall inks go back to the Scrolls.

CHORAL MUSIC inspired by the Dead Sea Scrolls is being commissioned in North Carolina.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: World Net Daily reports more from Sheikh Hatib on Temple Mount archaeology and history:

Israeli dig to spark Temple Mount violence?
Al Aqsa leader warns of deadly riots, busing supporters to mosque
Posted: October 24, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Aaron Klein
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

JERUSALEM – A senior Al Aqsa leader whose group has been accused of associations with Hamas told WorldNetDaily yesterday recent Israeli digs near the Temple Mount and a plan to construct an underground visitors center near the Western Wall are really Jewish designs to destroy the mosque, potentially sparking deadly riots.

The group, which has previously been involved with Temple Mount violence, has been sending buses the past few weeks to Israeli Arab neighborhoods asking Muslims to "swarm" the Al Aqsa Mosque to protect it from "Jewish attacks," WND has learned.

[...]

The archaeological dig in question was noted here on PaleoJudaica. And here's a Ha'aretz article on the visitor's center.

Then there's this historical note:

Hatib told WND the recent Israeli archeological findings are "nonsense. Finding pieces of one centimeter is nothing near our historical right that counts thousands of years before Israel and before Moses. I suggest to the Israeli and Jewish fanatics and to the Christian groups in America who support them to think about how to support peace and not war."

UPDATE (25 October): A reader who does not wish to be named takes me to task a bit for quoting WND, since they are not actually journalists, they have an obvious agenda of their own, and their reporting is not necessarily reliable. Fair enough. The information is only as good as its source. What Sheikh Hatib is reported to have said has the historical problems I have indicated. It does cohere with what the Zayed Centre said about the al-Aqsa Mosque, but that doesn't mean the Sheikh's comments have been reported accurately by WND, and I have no cross verification. I blog, you decide. If anyone is aware of him saying he has been misquoted or misrepresented, please let me know.

UPDATE (27 October): More here.

STILL MORE ON ANNE RICE'S JESUS BOOK: Time Magazine has an article and Newsweek has an article and also an audio excerpt from chapter one.

FURTHER TO THE EARLIER LOST BOOKS DISCUSSION, David Meadows points to an article in the Australian on Missing Masterpieces," including lost books by Homer, Confucius, Aeschylus, and some much more recent authors. Interesting, but this should not have been repeated without qualification:

But on December 22, AD640, a reader with a very different agenda was in control of Alexandria. Where literary works were concerned, he was strict: "Those which disagree with the Word of God are blasphemous, those which agree, superfluous." Amrou Ibn el-Ass, on orders from his caliph, decreed that the library be burned. The scrolls opened a final time, unfurled by the flames, and the complete works of Aeschylus became lost forever.

The story about Muslim fanatics burning the contents of the Library of Alexandria should be taken with a good firkin of salt. The sources for the story are very late and unreliable and its historicity is quite doubtful. Julius Caesar may be the one responsible for (accidentally) burning down the library, although this is debated. Details are here. Note especially the last three links in the post.

MY TEMPLE MOUNT VIDEO POST has been updated over the last couple of days. If you haven't checked it for a while, have another look.

UPDATE (24 October): bad link fixed.

THE JESUS SEMINAR is alive and well and is coming to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in November to observe its twentieth anniversary.

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM is planned for Gaza. The BBC has the story in "Gaza's ancient history uncovered". Excerpt:

Around the world, Gaza is seen only as a deeply troubled place - a bloody arena in the Palestinians' confrontation with Israel.

But efforts are being made now to present a fuller picture.

The Palestinian Authority has approved a plan to build a national archaeological museum in Gaza.

Land has been set aside, and the United Nations is helping to develop the project.

"People around the world have looked at Gaza through the TV as a place of violence and anarchy," says the head of the United Nations Development Programme in Gaza, Khalid Abdul Shafi.

"Yes there was violence. But there is another face of Gaza - there is culture and archaeology and history."

I wish the project good success.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH (cross-file under "Jewish-Temple denial watch"): World Net Daily has an interview with "Sheik Kamal Hatib, vice-chairman of the Islamic Movement, the Muslim group in Israel most identified with Temple Mount militancy," in which he is reported to have spouted much lunacy. Excerpts:

WND: But what about the previous Jewish Temples? Do you believe they existed? Do Jews have any historic claims to the Temple Mount whatsoever?

HATIB: We the Muslims believe that Al Aqsa was built since the time of Adam – God bless him. It was built 40 years after the construction of the Al Haram Mosque in Mecca which was built thousands of years ago. Al Aqsa was built by the angels as it is mentioned in a verse of the Quran. The mosque is mentioned in the Quran, which speaks about the raising of the prophet.

We believe that the Jewish Temples existed, but we deny they were built near Al Aqsa. When the First Temple was built by Solomon – God bless him – Al Aqsa was already built. We don't believe that a prophet like Solomon would have built the Temple at a place where a mosque existed.

WND: What you are saying contradicts reality. There is no serious scholar or archeologist in the world who argues Al Aqsa was built before the Jewish Temples. And if the Temples didn't exist on the Mount, what then do you say is the Western Wall? What do you make of all the archeological findings?

HATIB: About the Kotel (the Western Wall), we deny any relation between the Temple and the Al Aqsa Mosque. We believe that the Western Wall is part of the mosque and not the Wall of Lamentation, as the Jews say. ... The Western wall is an inseparable part of the mosque.

And all the historical and archeological facts deny any relation between the Temples and the location of Al Aqsa. We must know that Jerusalem was occupied and that people left many things, coins and other things everywhere. This does not mean in any way that there is a link between the people who left these things and the place where these things were left.

The Dome of the Rock, one of the most sacred sanctuaries in Muslim tradition, was build by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik approximately on the site of the Temple in the late seventh century C.E., where it still stands to this day. The al-Aqsa Mosque (named after the "furthermost sanctuary" mentioned in Sura 17.1) is located further south on the Temple Mount. It was first build by the Umayyad Caliphs in the early eighth century (although the Caliph Umar cleared the spot and set up a rough structure there c. 638 C.E.), but it has repeatedly been destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt. The current mosque is, I believe, about a thousand years old. This is all well documented in Muslim and other sources.

The Western Wall (to Jews, the "Wailing Wall") is part of the Temple Platform built by Herod the Great for his rebuilt and expanded Temple complex. This is well documented both in contemporary historical records and by archaeological and epigraphic evidence. See my post on the Herodian and Second Temples here. In the last week I presented a paper on Arab denial of the Jewish Temples at one of our seminars. I can see I really need to work it into an article and get it published.

Then there's this:

HATIB: The fact that Jerusalem is mentioned in the Torah does not in any way mean that the city was populated or built by the Jews. Everyone knows that when the prophet Abraham came from Arik in 1850 before Christ he was given by the Arab King Melchizedek the land where he and his wife lived in Hebron, and it was 600 years before Moses' message, which also proves that Abraham was not a Jew.

So Melchizedek and Abraham were Arabs. Funny that they have Northwest Semitic names. More here.

UPDATE (24 October): More here.

MORE ON ANNE RICE'S JESUS BOOK from the Dallas Morning News (free registration required):

Queen of darkness sees the light in new book on Jesus

12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, October 22, 2005

By BENEDICTA CIPOLLA Religion News Service

The queen of darkness has seen the light.

In her latest book, Christ the Lord, novelist Anne Rice turns away from the doomed souls of her best-selling tales about vampires and witches in favor of a first-person account of the 7-year-old Jesus.

It sounds like she's done her homework, although she's taking a number of artistic liberties too:

Ms. Rice chooses 11 B.C. as the date of Jesus' birth. While she said she found one scholarly precedent for doing so, she uses the earlier date mainly to allow the 7-year-old Jesus to arrive from Egypt in time to witness the well-documented violence that erupted in Judea and Galilee after Herod's death in 4 B.C.

That seminal event in childhood is certain to influence Jesus in Ms. Rice's planned subsequent volumes.

[...]

The Gospels are almost silent on Jesus' childhood, giving Ms. Rice a wide berth to take certain liberties with her story. In the book, Jesus is taught in Alexandria by the Hellenistic philosopher Philo, which in turns allows for her Jesus to be fluent in Greek, something many historians doubt was the case.

Ms. Rice also borrows two incidents – the slaying of a playmate and the turning of clay sparrows into live ones – from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a second-century work that shows Jesus learning to use his divine powers for good. It was never accepted as part of the Christian Scriptures.

She also gets in some criticisms of NT scholarship. The charge of faddishness is not entirely unfair, but I don't know of any serious scholar who has argued that Jesus was married (there's no evidence either way) and I doubt she'll convince many scholars to redate the Gospels before 70 C.E. John Dominic Crossan is interviewed in the article as well.

I'm disappointed that there seem to be no vampires in this book, but it sounds worth a read anyhow.

Read the whole article.

UPDATE (23 October): You can read it here with no registration required.

UPDATE (24 October): More here.

SYRIAC APOCRYPHA BOOK -- This looks cool:

Dear Hugoye members
The second volume of the collection Etudes syriaques, edited by the Societe d'etudes syriaques and published by Geuthner, just came out.

Les apocryphes syriaques, ed. Muriel Debie, Christelle Jullien, Florence
Jullien, Alain Desreumaux, Etudes syriaques 2, Paris, 2005.
ISBN 2-7053-3771-7

Table of Contents
B. Outtier – Préface : Les apocryphes syriaques. Histoire passée et future
A. Desreumaux – Des richesses peu connues : les apocryphes syriaques
D. Taylor – Quand les apocryphes syriaques relisent l’Ancien Testament
M.-J. Pierre – Les Odes de Salomon : genre littéraire et pseudépigraphie
A. Desreumaux – Les apocryphes syriaques sur Jésus et sa famille
A. Desreumaux – Les apocryphes apostoliques
F. Jullien – Figures fondatrices dans les apocryphes syriaques
V. Calzolari – La transmission et la réception des apocryphes syriaques dans la tradition arménienne
G. Troupeau – Notes sur quelques apocryphes conservés dans des manuscrits arabes de Paris
M. Debie – Les apocalypses apocryphes syriaques : des pseudépigraphes de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament
H. Kaufhold – La littérature pseudo-canonique syriaque
J.-N. PÉrès – L’intérêt des apocryphes syriaques dans la pensée et la théologie syriaques
A. Desreumaux – Esquisse d’une liste d'œuvres apocryphes syriaques

This volume is sent to all members of the Societe d'etudes syriaques for 2005.
It can be bought from Librairie orientaliste Geuthner, 12 rue Vavin, 75006 Paris, France.

For North America, this volume and the first (Les inscriptions syriaques) can be bought from
Librairie GGCitée
1567, rue King Ouest
Sherbrooke (Québec) J1J2C6
Téléc. 819 566 4305
www.biblairie.qc.ca
gerald.caza@biblairie.qc.ca

See the SES web site: www.etudes-syriaques.org

(From Briquel Chatonnet on the Hugoye list.)