BRUCE FERRINI, most recently associated with Gospel of Judas fragments, is profiled by the Akron Beacon Journal. The piece is an archive story reprinted from last December, but I don't recall noticing it then.

Worn pages tell a tale
Millionaire art dealer Bruce Ferrini had it all: fame, fortune and respect. But tragedy struck the Bath resident, and his storybook life began to unravel
By Bob Dyer
Beacon Journal staff writer

Published: Sunday, December 11, 2005

Talk about a fall from grace.

November 2002: Kent State University announces largest gift in school's 92-year history -- $6.8 million, from Bath resident Bruce Ferrini.

April 2004: Ferrini arrested by U.S. marshals, charged with contempt of court.

September 2005: Ferrini files for bankruptcy protection.

[...]

Even a Hollywood producer wouldn't dare to pack this many cliched elements into one drama. We've got the hilltop mansion . . . precious relics . . . mysterious thefts . . . dramatic detective work . . . mistaken identity . . . a child prodigy . . . a fatal drug overdose . . . Scotland Yard . . . the Vatican . . . Sotheby's . . . Christie's . . . Interpol . . . the Dead Sea Scrolls . . . George Washington . . . and Leonardo da Vinci.

[...]

Michael van Rijn figures in the story too.

More on Bruce Ferrini here, here, and here.

ASSIMILATED TO THE BLOGOSPHERE -- University of Edinburgh postgraduate student Michael J. Leary has a new blog:

Ekthesis
Because the New Testament is Becoming Cool Again.

He's been posting a lot of good stuff on the Gospel of Judas and related matters. Have a look.

UPDATE: Here are a few other recent blog posts on the Gospel of Judas. Craig Evans is interviewed by Danny Zacharias over at Deinde and he makes clear that, despite what the New York Times says, he does not think the Gospel of Judas has any historical basis in the first century. Chris Weimer posts on what may have happened to some of the texts found with the Gospel of Judas at Thoughts on Antiquity. (And Michael Leary, above, has lots more on this.) And Ed Cook over at Ralph takes on the New York Times with " Is the Gospel of Judas "Troubling"?" and takes issue with Christopher Hitchens in " Gnosticism and the Jews."

BLOGGING HAS BEEN LIGHT LATELY. Sorry about that. Since I got back I've been playing catch-up at work and there have been holiday distractions as well. It may be another week or two before things settle down. I still haven't had time to figure out what's wrong with the "blogger at paleojudaica dot com" address above. But meanwhile, if you need to reach me, write to my university address: "jrd4 at st-andrews dot ac dot uk".

SOME OF THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS REMAINS UNPUBLISHED and is in a bank vault in Akron, Ohio, according to the Akron Beacon Journal:

A sizable chunk of that manuscript -- 10 to 20 percent, by one estimate -- is right here.

How did it get here?

The short version is this: The manuscript was discovered in a cave in Egypt in the 1970s and wound its way through antiquities dealers in Europe and the United States before being purchased in 2000 by Bath Township resident Bruce Ferrini.

Ferrini is an internationally known art dealer who filed for bankruptcy last September. He bought the ancient book, known as a codex, for $2.5 million. But because of his failing finances, the deal fell through.

Ferrini was at least $4.6 million in debt last year, according to court filings, and creditors began to battle for his holdings. Akron attorney R. Scott Haley was appointed to catalog and assess Ferrini's possessions.

In 2001, when the sale fell apart, Ferrini supposedly returned the whole codex to its previous owner. But according to Haley and National Geographic, which photographed the Akron pieces in February, a significant portion of the gospel remained in Ferrini's possession.

Ferrini referred a phone call to Akron lawyer Morris Laatsch, who said Ferrini returned everything he was given by the previous owner, and questions whether the National Geographic experts are correct.

``There's more than one series of writings,'' Laatsch said. ``The Gnostics apparently wrote lots of things. Possibly this could be from this same document. But if the experts do say it is, I guess perhaps you can rely on them or not rely on them.''

Manuscript's location

The delicate fragments are inside a special vault at FirstMerit. Only the bank has the combination to an outer vault, and only Haley has the combination to an inner vault.

Rumors about this have been circulating, but this is the most detailed account I've seen so far.

JESUS LAUGHED. Guy G. Stroumsa has an article ("And the traitors will become heroes") in Haaretz on Gnosticism and the Gospel of Judas. It has some interesting ideas, notably about Jesus laughing in Gnostic tradition.

Jesus laughs

A striking characteristic of the new text is the fact that it depicts Jesus as laughing a lot. This is a laughter of superiority and scorn for the blindness of others - including his disciples, who do not understand the essence of things, nor the significance of their acts. This laughter is typical of the figure of the Gnostic Jesus, and is familiar to us from other Gnostic texts, especially those found toward the end of World War II at Nag Hammadi, south of Fayum. The Nag Hammadi "library" is comprised of approximately 50 Gnostic texts in 13 codices in the Coptic language (into which books had been translated from the original Greek). The texts had not been known beforehand.

The discovery at Nag Hammadi, which is similar in importance to the discovery of the scrolls at Qumran, allowed us to understand rather precisely the processes of the emergence of the Gnosis and the details of its extensive mythology. The new text, along with three other texts that were found in the same codex, is a significant addition to the Nag Hammadi discovery.

Jesus laughs at the sight of the stupidity of the "rulers" (Archons) - the angels of evil. These act under the command of the god Saklas (the Fool - related to the Hebrew word ksil), who is the God of Israel, the creator of our material and evil world. Saklas and his cohorts intend to crucify Jesus, but they succeed only in killing the material body, an empty shell that the spiritual redeemer succeeded in exiting before the calamity. Therefore Jesus laughs.

Parallel to Isaac

Some time ago I suggested the hypothesis that Jesus' laughter in the Gnostic texts hints at constructing the figure of Jesus as a parallel to the biblical Isaac (whose name comes from the Hebrew root for laughter), who is also saved at the last minute from an attempt to sacrifice him. The new text supports this hypothesis, both because of the centrality of laughter and because it includes a probing discussion of sacrifice in general, and human sacrifice in particular. The possibility of seeing Jesus as an avatar of Isaac hints that the first Gnostics were Jews, and that at the basis of their interpretation stood the difficulty of acknowledging that the messiah died (and in such a humiliating way). The new discovery helps us draw a more precise picture of the complex religious situation that existed at the inception of Christianity.

Indeed, Jesus never explicitly laughs in the canonical gospels, although he does "rejoice" (Luke 10:21) and he is laughed at once (Mark 5:40). But in the Gospel of Judas he laughs quite a bit, and also elsewhere in Gnostic texts, notably in the Gospel Apocalypse of Peter (NHC VII.3 81), where he laughs from the cross. I'm not sure what to make of all this, although I suppose it must mean something.

That said, I can't say I see anything in Isaac parallels that leads convincingly to a pre-Christian Jewish Gnosticism. I myself think that Gnosticism developed within Christianity.

UPDATE: My thanks to Richard Bauckham for the correction above (Apocalypse of Peter not Gospel. The Gospel of Peter is a different, non-Gnostic work.) Also, there are two Apocalypses of Peter, one (the one to which I was referring) survives in a Coptic manuscript from the Nag Hammadi Library and another survives in Greek (in part) and Ethiopic (complete).

GNOSTICS, ANCIENT AND MODERN:

"People have had a sense for a long time that something is missing in Christianity but it has been very hard for them to put their finger on what that is," says [Richard] Smoley, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated religious scholar who lives in Massachusetts. "Some of the insights of the Gnostics are getting close to it."

So who were the Gnostics, and what did they believe?

Even that, says Smoley, is a tricky question. He defines them as a very diverse group of early Christians who flourished between the first and fourth centuries A.D. in mystical schools and largely vanished due to persecution by mainstream Christians. While the Gnostics also believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ, they parted ways with mainline Christians when it came to the spiritual status of everyday folks, focusing more on achieving inner-enlightenment (with meditation and secret rituals) than on connecting with an external God through the established church hierarchy.

"Gnosis in Greek means inner-knowing," explains David Tresemer, founder of Boulder's All-Season's Chalice, a local church which incorporates many Gnostic texts and teachings into its spiritual practice. "It means that the human being has the capacity for direct experience of spiritual reality without the intermediary. That is the whole key of Gnosticism."

[...]

Today, at Tresemer's 16-year-old nature-based, transdenominational church in the foothills west of Boulder, the congregation comes together for full moons, solstices and other celestial celebrations. They meditate, walk the labyrinth, dance, or sit in silence in pursuit of that often elusive "gnosis" or enlightenment long written about by Gnostic scholars.

It also offers workshops called "The Path of the Ceremonial Arts," for men and women.

Tresemer says he has seen the church grow in recent years, as people have longed for a more intimate experience with the divine.

"THE DOG ATE MY JESUS PAPERS" -- Nick Ochwar comes up with the best title so far for a review of Michael Baigent's new book.

MORE COPTIC GNOSTICA? This BYU panel discussion on The Gospel of Judas is not of great interest in itself, since it mostly covers well-trodden ground. But these comments by Professor S. Kent Brown merit highlighting:

When asked if the world should expect similar discoveries in the future, Brown said "yes." He said this gospel may be part of a larger cache that includes other documents.
"I actually had my hands on some of those, once," he added.
The texts he saw were being offered for sale and have yet to surface, he said. He believes the reason the documents haven't surfaced may be because they were obtained illegally. He's glad BYU didn't buy them, he said.
"That might have brought stain on the university," he said. "Right now the university enjoys wonderful relationships with authorities in Egypt."

And here we have the problem with looted antiquities. On the one hand we don't want to encourage the looters and the whole illegal-antiquities-trafficking infrastructure. On the other, we don't want to lose ancient manuscripts like the ones Brown seems to have seen, and sometimes these are found by accident and quite innocently. Whatever the solution in this case, it goes without saying that the Egyptian Government should be involved with it.

HAPPY EASTER to all those celebrating.

ONLY 14% OF AMERICANS know that the Samaritans are still around. This according to a CBS poll.

MICHAEL BAIGENT'S NEW BOOK is reviewed by New Testament Professor Richard Ascough in the Ottawa Citizen:

A matter of faith: While the Gospel of Judas was meticulously verified, we'll just have to trust Michael Baigent about The Jesus Papers

Richard S. Ascough, Citizen Special
Published: Friday, April 14, 2006

As the Christian church worldwide prepares to celebrate its most sacred of liturgical dates, the figure of Jesus looms wide in the popular, secular press.

From cover stories in major news magazines to lengthy newspaper articles to television spots, Jesus has grabbed the attention of faithful, agnostic and atheist alike. At the centre of this year's fascination with the person and work of Jesus is a book called The Jesus Papers written by Michael Baigent, who has made headlines for his failed attempt to sue Random House, the publisher of The Da Vinci Code by author Dan Brown.

Held up against recent events, Mr. Baigent's evidence for The Jesus Papers sounds suspiciously more like the claims first made for the James ossuary than those made for the Gospel of Judas.

[...]

I think that's generous. We actually had the ossuary to study, unlike Baigent's Aramaic manuscripts.

The most sensationalistic detail of the book, however, is the existence of the "Jesus papers" themselves. Mr. Baigent claims to have seen two Aramaic documents from the first century, written by Jesus to the Jewish court, the Sanhedrin, denying his divinity outright and stating that he merely claimed to be filled with the spirit of God.

Since Mr. Baigent cannot read Aramaic the owner of the documents summarized their contents for him. Alas, Mr. Baigent tells us, the owner of these documents must remain anonymous.

In sum, we are asked to trust Mr. Baigent's faith in an unnamed businessman who told him that his documents contained one of the most explosive claims in history. The veracity of Mr. Baigent's arguments boils down to how much faith we will put in Mr. Baigent.

All this is true, but in addition there are unlikely elements in Baigent's story which make me suspicious of it. I'm not going to take it seriously unless he produces these Aramaic documents and makes them available for scholars to study. If they do exist at all, it is astronomically unlikely that are really autograph documents by Jesus.

Trust, but verify.

MORE DETAILS ON THE DISCOVERY OF THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS from the New York Times. The article also discusses the problem of dealing in looted antiquities.

How the Gospel of Judas Emerged

By BARRY MEIER and JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: April 13, 2006

When the National Geographic Society announced to great fanfare last week that it had gained access to a 1,700-year-old document known as the Gospel of Judas, it described how a deteriorating manuscript, unearthed in Egypt three decades ago, had made its way through the shady alleys of the antiquities market to a safe-deposit box on Long Island and eventually to a Swiss art dealer who "rescued" it from obscurity.

But there is even more to the story.

[...]

Details of how the manuscript was found are clouded. According to National Geographic, it was found by farmers in an Egyptian cave in the 1970's, sold to a dealer and passed through various hands in Europe and the United States. Legal issues in its transit are equally vague.

No one questions the authenticity of the Judas gospel, which depicts Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus but as his favored disciple.

But the emerging details are raising concerns among some archaeologists and other scholars at a time of growing scrutiny of the dealers who sell antiquities and of the museums and collectors who buy them. The information also calls into question the completeness of National Geographic's depiction of some individuals like Ms. Tchacos Nussberger and its disclosure of all the financial relationships involved.

[...]

But scholars who have campaigned against the trade in artifacts of questionable provenance said they were troubled by the whole episode.

"We are dealing with a looted object," said Jane C. Waldbaum, president of the Archaeological Institute of America, a professional society. "The artifact was poorly handled for years because the people holding it were more concerned with making money than protecting it."

[...]

Read it all for the details. I don't know what the solution is to the problem of antiquities looting, but I do know that whatever it is, it has to involve keeping artifacts like the Gospel of Judas and the Dead Sea Scrolls from being lost. On the one hand, we don't want to encourage looters to destroy sites and tear artifacts from their contexts, and a great deal of that is happening all over the world. On the other hand, it would be tragically counterproductive if antiquities laws caused people like that farmer to decide that it's too much hassle to deal with that manuscript they found and to just use it for kindling.

UPDATE: David Meadows has lots more over at Rogue Classicism. The story of the history of the manuscript from the 1980s on just keeps getting weirder.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS weighs in on the side of The Gospel of Judas. Hitchens's rants are always entertaining (such as when he fisks the Ten Commandments).

This Slate article also follows the good practice of correcting an error and noting the correction on the page of the article itself (even though the correction also has a spelling error in it).

UPDATE: Christianity Today is less positive. And the Pope reaffirms the traditional account in his Holy Thursday homily.

Lots of interesting discussions for this Good Friday.

THE SEPARATION WALL is cutting off a pilgrimage route between Bethany and the Old City of Jerusalem:

30ft high Jerusalem wall bars pilgrims' way
By Tim Butcher (The Telegraph)
(Filed: 14/04/2006)

Pilgrims wishing to follow in the footsteps of Jesus to Jerusalem from the place where he raised Lazarus from the dead will soon need their own miracle, as the ancient route is about to be severed by the Jerusalem wall.

The cutting of the two-mile path from Bethany over the Mount of Olives and down past the Garden of Gethsemane into the Old City will end a tradition begun more than 1,600 years ago by the earliest Christian pilgrims.

[...]

HERSHEL SHANKS editorializes in The Jewish Week against the arrest of Hanan Eshel:

Arrests Won't Stop Looting Of Antiquities
Hershel Shanks

It�s not as bad as Afghanistan prosecuting a man and threatening him with the death penalty for converting to Christianity, but it smacks of the same unreality: Israel is threatening to prosecute a distinguished archaeologist for purchasing some Dead Sea Scroll fragments from Bedouins who apparently found them in a Judean desert cave near Ein Gedi. The charge: buying looted antiquities. The archaeologist says he was rescuing them.

[...]

THE PASSOVER PAPYRUS -- This Aramaic papyrus is, I believe, the earliest extrabiblical text that mentions the Jewish Passover. It was recovered from the Jewish garrison on the island of Yeb (Elephantine) in Egypt and dates to 419 BCE.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF MISLEADING HEADLINES - Fox 12, Boise Idaho, comes up with a winner:

Translated Ancient Documents Refute the Bible

The "ancient documents" are, of course, the Gospel of Judas and the article proceeds to say exactly the opposite of the headline. I'm not sure whether this is just an ignorant use of the word "refute" to mean "disagree with" (not "disprove"), as is common these days, or a deliberate sensationalizing distortion to attract readers. Either way, boo to Fox 12.

RABBI PROFESSOR MICHAEL COOK writes in The Forward about the Gospel of Judas, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and why Jews should be more familiar with the New Testament:

Time To Teach Jews Gospel Dynamics
By Michael Cook
April 14, 2006

The story of Judas Iscariot has been, if nothing else, damaging to Jesus' image. Since their time Judas's presence among Jesus' inner circle has been disconcerting, as it suggests not only Jesus' lack of insight into Judas' character but also his inability to reform Judas once he became a follower. Indeed, around 200 C.E. the pagan Celsus ridiculed the presumably all-knowing Lord of Christianity for selecting among his close followers one who became a traitor.

One purpose of the recently discovered Gospel of Judas — which intimates that Judas, contrary to commonly held belief, was Jesus' best friend — was to repair Jesus' reputation. It tries to rescue his image by showing that he made no mistake in selecting Judas after all.

Most Jews likely view this revelation as no more than a matter for Christian scholars, or at best as a news item of passing interest. That is a shame, because the questions raised by the Gospel of Judas are in many ways analogous to questions our community has avoided for centuries, much to our own detriment.

[...]

MORTON SMITH would probably approve.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBIT IN CHARLOTTE IS DOING WELL:

"Normally when you see an exhibit opening, you see a big push in the beginning and then there's somewhat of a lull and then another big push at the end," said Joanie Philips, the museum's director of major projects. "We haven't really seen that. We�ve seen a huge push at the beginning, and our numbers just keep building."

The exhibit has seen an estimated 106,000 visitors since it opened Feb. 17. Many of them are coming from outside the Carolinas.

HAPPY PASSOVER (begins tonight at sundown) to my Jewish readers.

BOB KRAFT is teaching a course on "Parabiblical Literature" in Early Judaism and Early Christianity at the University of Pennsylvania this semester.

AN ARMY OF EDITORS. I hope.

This story is reminiscent of the decision of the U.S. Government to release the Arabic documents from Saddam's Iraq online so that anyone who knows Arabic can sort through them and perhaps find interesting things. Now Cambridge University and the AHRC are doing the same thing with many thousands of unpublished fragments in Hebrew, Arabic, etc., from the Cairo Geniza.

Piecing together the Medieval Middle East

General Science : April 10, 2006

An important collection of ancient Jewish and Arabic documents, equal in significance to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and discovered as fragments in an old storeroom, has received a major grant for its upkeep. The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection, housed at Cambridge University Library, has been awarded a £475,000 grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. This will pay for the description, cataloguing and digitization of a substantial part of the total 140,000 fragments, vital in making this unique collection accessible to scholars and lay people worldwide.

[...]

When I heard about the release of the Iraqi documents I wondered whether anyone was planning to do something similar with the Cairo Geniza texts and I was even planning to write a blog post suggesting the idea. This is being done on a small scale alread on the Giluy Milta B'alma blog, but what is needed is the release of all or most of the documents that no one is currently working on. Now it's being done, and I look forward to seeing the texts, many of which are of extraordinary importance for the study of late antique Judaism. I hope the online publication leads to many new doctoral dissertations, articles, and monographs.

While we're at it, does anyone know whether anything similar is planned for the Oxyrhynchus Papyri? I know lots of the material is already online, but my impression is that these are published rather than unpublished texts. Is that correct? Are there plans to put more online?

UPDATE: As I look more closely at the article, it doesn't say explicitly that the digitized material is going online, although that seems to be implied at the end of the quoted paragraph. Does anyone know for sure?

UPDATE: Roberto Labanti points me to the original press release on the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit website, which answers my question and has more details:

At the end of three years, it should be possible to search the online database of the new material on our web-site, to read the catalogue-entry and to view complete and detailed images of the fragments described in the course of the project.

This is an ambitious aim - requiring the researchers to describe an estimated 16,000 fragments and the Library's Imaging Department to produce an estimated 32,000 digital images - but one confidently within the Unit's reach, given the professionalism and experience of its staff and the introduction of new technology to the Imaging Department.

By the way, a number of you have written to say that the "blogger at paleojudaica" e-mail address is not working. As soon as I get a chance, I'll try to track down the problem. Meanwhile, you can reach me at my University address: "jrd4 at st-andrews dot ac dot uk".

I THINK THIS IS A GOOD IDEA:

Rabbi: Jews Should Know New Testament

By RACHEL ZOLL
The Associated Press
Saturday, April 8, 2006; 1:01 PM

-- Of all the texts considered required reading in a thorough Jewish education, one major work with Jewish roots is usually missing from everyone's list: the New Testament.

Most Jews shun Christian Scripture. As a result, they can't answer Christians who ask why Jews don't accept Jesus as the Messiah.

Reform Rabbi Michael J. Cook says this "self-imposed ignorance" is dangerous.

At a time when many Christians are embracing the Jewish origins of their faith, holding Passover seders before Easter, Cook says he has taken on the "Herculean task" of convincing Jews they must learn how the Gospels molded Christian attitudes toward Judaism.

[...]

I think he's right, although this point is legitimate too:

Burt Visostsky, a longtime professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the flagship institution for Conservative Judaism, said many rabbinical students enroll at the seminary without strong backgrounds in their own religion _ let alone Christianity and other faiths.

"In an ideal world, of course we'd train our students to know something about Christianity and also Islam," said Visostsky, who teaches Midrash and interreligious studies. "But where is it on the triage list? I'm afraid not very high."

Despite that, I hope that Professor Cook has some success in getting Jewish seminaries interested in the New Testament. By the same token, Christian seminarians would do well to learn something about rabbinic texts during their training, and this would alleviate many serious misunderstandings of Judaism that arise when people think they can understand it just by reading the New Testament.

My recent work has focused on how scholars should and shouldn't use the Old Testament pseudepigrapha as Jewish sources. (See my book, above right, and a popular article. In the book I also discuss the same issue for Josephus, Philo, and the Old Testament Apocrypha.) One of these days I mean to write another article on how scholars of early Christianity should approach Jewish sources, including the rabbinic literature, but time has not permitted it so far. Meanwhile, a few thoughts here and here.

JUDAS SPIKE: My site stats were running at triple the normal levels on Friday and have been at about double since then. Blog links and search engine queries about the Gospel of Judas seem to be the cause. Thanks for the links and welcome to all those new readers. Please have a look around and come visit again.

This isn't the first time I've noticed that a little heresy does wonders for public interest.

UPDATE: By the way, PaleoJudaica was reporting on the Gospel of Judas way back in July of 2004, long before the mainstream media had heard of it.

IN THE MAIL -- my review copy of:

Annette Yoshiko Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature (CUP, 2005)

THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS -- THE MOVIE?

The lab assistant looked at the needle of the energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer and whistled. “My God, it’s authentic. This manuscript is 1,600 years old. ...

A sudden chill seemed to grip the room. Carbon dating, bank vaults, Switzerland, Gnostic symbolism — it all seemed familiar. And dangerous. “We should be careful. The new Pope may like this. But Opus Dei won’t. Does this link Judas with Mary Magdalene? You know, this is gonna be bigger than the Apocrypha, bigger than the Dead Sea Scrolls, bigger than . . . Da Vinci! My God! Think — film rights. Where’s Tom Hanks?”

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS DOCUMENTARY was live-blogged by Mark Goodacre. Mark also has a good roundup of Gospel of Judas blog posts and media articles.

ANOTHER GOSPEL OF JUDAS, this one published in The Spoof. Excerpts:

And Judas spoke and said

Lord when will you show us the Kingdom?

And Jesus spoke and said.

If I showed you, you would not believe, and if you believed I would not show you.

And Judas and Peter wondered in their hearts what manner of syntax this might be.

[...]

Jesus said,

It is late in the day. When the dawn kills the moon the kingdom will come as a thief in the night to destroy the fig tree.

Judas said:

Now that really makes no sense at all.

And Peter, saddened, said.

It does to me. I love figs. I will miss the trees.

Jesus said:

I am now going to my father's house where you can not come. Not today, anyway. They will come seeking me like a dog among thieves and I really don't want to be around for that. The spirit is willing but few are chosen.

Judas said,

The boys and I will sort your sayings out later. They need a lot of work.

[...]

Funny in places, if you're not too easily offended.

ISRAEL MUSEUM RENOVATION:

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Announces $50-Million Capital Project to Enhance Visitor Experience and Transform Collection and Exhibition Spaces
מיקום: Jerusalem
תאריך פירסום: 09/04/2006


Project Creates New Entry, Route of Passage, and Expanded Galleries

Collective Funding Initiative Sets Precedent in Israel as Goal is Reached

Jerusalem, March 31, 2006 – The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, announced today a $50-million capital program to transform and unify the facilities on its landmark campus. This initiative is a joint project of American designer James Carpenter, a 2004 MacArthur Fellow, of the firm James Carpenter Design Associates, and the Israeli firm Efrat-Kowalsky Architects, specialists in Israel’s unique modernist architectural history.
This multi-year program envisions new entry facilities, an enclosed route of passage from the front of the campus to a relocated main entrance hall with access to all of the Museum’s curatorial collection wings, reorganized and expanded collection galleries, and new centralized temporary exhibition space. All together the program consists of 80,000 square feet of new construction and 140,000 square feet of renewed gallery space within the Museum’s 500,000-square-foot complex, and includes 30,000 square feet of new and newly allocated temporary exhibition and collection galleries.

[...]

The project is conceived to enhance the visitor’s experience of the Museum’s outstanding collections in the fine arts, archaeology, Judaica, and Jewish ethnography, and of its pioneering public programs. ...

I'M HOME. More later.

DAN BROWN has been acquitted -- of plagiarism, not bogosity. Still, this was the right decision.

Judge Clears 'Da Vinci Code' Author

By SARAH LYALL (New York Times)
Published: April 7, 2006

LONDON, April 7 — A High Court judge ruled today that Dan Brown did not steal the idea for his stratospherically successful thriller, "The Da Vinci Code," from an earlier book, and he cleared Mr. Brown's publisher, Random House, of accusations of copyright infringement.

In issuing his judgment, Justice Peter Smith said that Mr. Brown did indeed rely on the earlier work, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" in writing a section of "The Da Vinci Code." But he said that two of "Holy Blood's" authors, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, had failed to define the central theme of their book and thus failed to prove their accusation that Mr. Brown had lifted it from them.

In fact, the judge said, the earlier book "does not have a central theme as contended by the claimants: it was an artificial creation for the purposes of the litigation working back from 'The Da Vinci Code.'

[...]

LOTS MORE ON THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS: I'm getting on a plane this evening and don't have much time to blog. But here are some of the many current articles on the Coptic Gospel of Judas, with a little commentary. The media coverage seems to me generally to have been thoughtful and accurate. The National Geographic Society is to be commended for its handling of the publicity.

In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal (New York Times)

Note the following therefrom:

The 66-page codex also contains a text titled James, a letter by Peter and pages provisionally called Book of Allogenes, or Book of Strangers.

Allogenes was known from Porphyry's Life of Plotinus 16 as one of the works of the Gnostics whom Plotinus opposed. A copy also survives in the Nag Hammadi Library. I believe Allogenes means 'stranger" or "alien," singular rather than plural.

Also, I notice that the NYT has put a prominent correction at the bottom of this article which corrects a mistake in a related earlier article, which is good practice.

Document Is Genuine, but Is Its Story True? (NYT)

I'm surprised to hear that Craig Evans thinks that there could be an historical basis to the idea in The Gospel of Judas that Jesus gave Judas private instruction. That strikes me as exceedingly unlikely.

Finally, the Philadelphia Inquirer has some grassroots reactions from Christians. No one seems much impressed from a theological perspective, which I would say is the correct reaction (although, of course the new text is very exciting from the perspective of the history of Gnosticism and second-century apocryphal gospels).

Skepticism over a long-lost text.

Enjoy the documentary if you get to see it tomorrow. I probably won't have anything more to say today. I'll try to let you know when I get home on Sunday, but otherwise I expect to be back in my office on Monday, with a class to teach at 11:00 am. Look for somewhat jet-lagged blogging to resume then.

UPDATE: Geza Vermes on Judas in The Times:

Iscariot and the dark path to the Field of Blood

JUDAS AS SNAPE?

Harry Potter and the Gospel of Judas

JAMES TABOR'S NEW BOOK, The Jesus Dynasty, is profiled by ABC News. According to the article, he says that Jesus and John the Baptist were the dual messiahs as per the expectations of the Qumran sect. He also accepts the second-century and later tradition that Jesus' father's name was Pantera. I always thought that ben Pantera was a corruption of the Greek "son of the parthenos (virgin)."

THE COPTIC GOSPEL OF JUDAS was published today (it's still today in California) by the National Geographic Society. You can download a translation of excerpts in PDF format here. And here's the website on The Lost Gospel, which has some images. There's good media coverage in:

"In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal" (New York Times)

"Judas: this is what really happened" (The Observer)

The title of the second is lame; the Gospel of Judas doesn't tell "what really happened." But otherwise the article is pretty good.

WALKING ON THIN ICE:

Jesus may have walked on ice, not water: study

By Jim Loney
Reuters
Tuesday, April 4, 2006; 6:22 PM

MIAMI (Reuters) - The New Testament says that Jesus walked on water, but a Florida university professor believes there could be a less miraculous explanation -- he walked on a floating piece of ice.

Professor Doron Nof also theorized in the early 1990s that Moses's parting of the Red Sea had solid science behind it.

Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, said on Tuesday that his study found an unusual combination of water and atmospheric conditions in what is now northern Israel could have led to ice formation on the Sea of Galilee.

[...]

I think this sort of approach is naïve. Miracle stories gather around charismatic intermediaries as a matter of course, even in their own lifetimes. There is no need to look for naturalistic explanations of the stories. I have commented at greater length on this issue here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Kotel Stability to be Checked Thursday
18:46 Apr 04, '06 / 6 Nisan 5766 (Arutz Sheva)

(IsraelNN.com) On Thursday this week, a crane will be placed in the plaza in front of the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem's Old City. It will be used in an architectural examination of the stability of the Wall's composite stones. ...

ART IMITATES TALMUD at the Center for Jewish History in New York:

Permanent Exhibit: Luminous Manuscript


Wednesday Apr 5 2006 Sunday Dec 31 2006 - 11 pm to - 3 pm

A permanent artwork commissioned by the Diane H. and Joseph S. Steinberg Charitable Trust. Pittsburgh artist Diane Samuels has created a 22-foot square mosaic tablet, laid out in a design reminiscent of a page of the Talmud. ....

AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PILLOW was preserved with Dead Sea wax:

Unusual Ancient Egyptian Pillow Analyzed
By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

April 5, 2006 — Most ancient Egyptian pillows were rather uncomfortable-looking headrests carved out of wood, ivory and stone, but scientists have just analyzed a 4,000-year-old Egyptian pillow made out of woven plant fibers that were encased in a wax coating.

The rare artifact, which dates to 2055-1985 B.C., suggests Cleopatra and other well-known ancient Egyptians may have snoozed on relatively fluffy pillows that perhaps biodegraded over time, leaving the hard headrests for modern archaeologists to find.

"If sleeping on fiber pillows and bedding occurred, it has not survived well or at all in the archaeological record of the ancient Near East," said Andy Gize, Judith Seath and Rosalie David, whose research will be published in next month's Journal of Archaeological Science.

Since the wax on the pillow appears to have come from a Dead Sea petroleum residue, the artifact also could indicate that a community of "foreigners" brought knowledge of petroleum processing and pillow making into the Sedment el-Gebel region of the western Nile Valley.

[...]

The wax was not scented. However, the coating may have been an attempt to preserve the pillow for the deceased, who was likely an adult female. ...

MORE ON THE NEW CAVE with Iron Age remains which has been found in connection with the "John the Baptist Cave" at the Suba Cave site. A press release by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte includes the following:

In the most recent excavations in March, 2006, a University of North Carolina at Charlotte student team, supervised by Gibson and Tabor, uncovered an outside corridor leading to what appears to be another cave. The corridor was filled with deposits that date to the Iron Age (within 100 years of the site's original construction) and leads directly into the steep hillside.

"Just last summer we found new pools outside up above the cave and a corridor, which our most recent dig shows is leading into what we now think is another chamber," said Tabor. "We're almost afraid to continue because it now looks like this is some huge complex, but now that we are into it, we can't stop."

"We're following the corridor on back and taken it up to a wall of fill – it is leading to something – maybe another cave. The corridor narrows as it approaches the cliff face and up above you can see bedrock, maybe a roof, but in front you can just see fill. It could just be a little enclave, but it just keeps going… it's going somewhere."

Read it all for more details.

(Via the Agade list.)

THE COPTIC GOSPEL OF JUDAS DOCUMENTARY premiers on 9 April on the National Geographic Channel. I'll be in transit that day, and don't subscribe to that channel anyway, but if anyone in St. Andrews does, I'd be grateful if I could borrow the video.

ARAMAIC WATCH: Well, sort of. Aramaic has now securely replaced Greek in popular culture as the language symbolic of utter obscurity. Here's an example, with reference to the script of the new Simpsons movie:

“We’ve taken script security to the point of lunacy, though it helped that we wrote it in Aramaic,” jokes Mike Scully ...

It's all Aramaic to me.

ARAMAIC WATCH - Syriac-speaking Christians in Turkey:

FEATURE - Ancient Christian sect prays for Turkey to join EU

Mon Apr 3, 2006 7:03 AM IST8

By Gareth Jones

MARDIN, Turkey (Reuters) - Like most Turkish men, Gabriel Oktay Cilli likes to drink tea with his mates and go to soccer matches.

However, one detail marks him out sharply in this overwhelmingly Muslim country: every Sunday he goes to church.

On the wall of his jewellery shop, next to the more familiar portrait of modern Turkey's founder Kemal Ataturk whose image decorates stores, restaurants and offices throughout the country, hangs a picture of Jesus Christ and his disciples.

Cilli belongs to one of Turkey's most ancient communities, the Syriac Christians, who still speak a form of Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. In Turkey they number barely 20,000, down from 250,000 when Ataturk founded the republic in 1923.

The 20th century was hard on the Syriacs, bringing religious persecution and economic hardship, but Cilli is confident about his future in a democratic Turkey that aims to join the European Union. He has no plans to follow relatives into exile.

[...]

THE "JOHN THE BAPTIST CAVE" is back in the news in a brief UPI piece, perhaps because of this tidbit:

The most recent excavations point to the possible existence of a second, still unexcavated cave at the site, suggesting that the location may have been a major complex of uncertain function during the Iron Age.

I don't remember hearing this before.

ANOTHER ARTICLE on the Cleveland exhibit and the Temple Scroll:

Early Christianity exhibit features pieces from Dead Sea scroll
M.R. KROPKO
Associated Press

BEACHWOOD, Ohio - Small, oddly shaped fragments of an ancient Hebraic scroll appear almost like the flames atop candles as they lay enclosed in a glass protective case with lighting that makes the handwritten text stand out.

The pieces are from the Temple Scroll, one of eight Dead Sea scrolls stored at the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. It's a commentary about ritual and rules at the second Temple, a place where many Jews from about 2,000 years ago would have visited and worshipped. It was a place key to the experiences of Jesus.

The newly restored scroll segments are on display for the first time. They have been added to the Israel Museum's early Christianity exhibit, which has only been on display previously in Jerusalem to mark the new millennium in 2000. The traveling exhibit, which is making its first stop in suburban Cleveland and will travel to Atlanta, seeks to document the historical linkage of early Christianity to the Jewish culture of Israel.

The "Cradle of Christianity: Treasures from the Holy Land" opened Saturday and continues until Oct. 22. It's the first major visiting exhibit for the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, which opened about six months ago.

[...]

THE CRADLE OF CHRISTIANITY EXHIBITION in Cleveland opens today. Here are two reviews:

Treasures gleaned from a shared past (The Plain Dealer)

Key Dead Sea Scroll Makes U.S. Debut (NPR)

CONGRATULATIONS to the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:

Hebrew and Semitic Studies to celebrate golden anniversary

March 24, 2006

by Barbara Wolff

The genesis of this anniversary began with another one:

Rabbi Joseph L. Baron suggested in 1954 that the 300th anniversary of the arrival of Jews in the American colonies might best be recognized with a special chair in Hebrew language and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Baron backed his commitment to that idea and $75,000 in private donations funded a faculty position occupied initially by the late Menachem Mansoor.

In 1954 Mansoor was a young scholar interested in the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls. His first course, Modern Hebrew Literature, enrolled 37 students. Hebrew and Semitic studies became an official department in 1956.

[...]

If you're in Madison this coming week, note the lecture series associated with the anniversary celebrations.

A NEW BOOK ON KABBALAH by Joseph Dan is reviewed in Commentary Magazine by Benjamin Balint. Excerpt:

Amid all the trendiness, one almost hesitates to ask the essential question: what is kabbalah? Joseph Dan of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who has reflected on the subject for some 50 years, offers a fascinating reply in his new book.

Kabbalah, which literally means “that which has been received,” refers broadly to a “hidden” doctrine that (along with the “Written” and “Oral” Torah) is said to have been given by God to Moses at Sinai and to have been privately transmitted ever since, often only in hints and allusions, from master to disciple. Throughout the medieval period and well into the early modern age, traditionalists took these teachings very seriously, although they were also regarded as an inherently dangerous subject matter that could lead all but a select few into heresy or madness. In later, post-Enlightenment times, many scholars and religious progressives came to consider these teachings a form of superstitious nonsense. Only in the last hundred years or so has kabbalah become a subject of academic study.

Dan’s book thus represents the fruit of a century’s worth of research and systematic analysis, much of it centered at the Hebrew University. Exquisitely attuned to the varied schools, streams, and shades of his subject, Dan begins on a note of caution: although the term “kabbalah” has never been so widely used as it is today, even in the past it did not have a single meaning. Having warned us that “there is no ‘kabbalah’ in the singular,” he proceeds to give us a nuanced chronological survey of kabbalah in the plural.

Read it all. Sounds like a very useful book.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Road to Temple Mount uncovered

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

The main road that ran from Jerusalem's City of David to the Temple Mount during the time of the Second Temple has been uncovered by Israeli archeologists, those involved in the dig said Thursday. The road connected the Shiloah pool in the City of David to the Temple Mount compound.

The 2,000-year-old road was discovered adjacent to the Shiloah pool during ongoing excavations at the site, said Israeli Antiquities Authority archeologist Eli Shukrun. He is directing the dig together with University of Haifa archeologist Prof. Ronny Reich.

[...]

MORE ON THE NEGEV SPICE ROUTE that is now spared from being mined:

No mine for Genesis Land

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF

In what is seen as a major victory for environmentalists, the Southern Regional Planning Council decided on March 20 to reject a proposal to mine the western Hazeva region of the Negev desert.

[...]

On July 17 last year, UNESCO board members agreed to preserve the ancient Spice Route and the adjacent area within the western Hazeva region as a World Heritage Site. At that time, a phosphate mining proposal for the same site had been tentatively approved. This region, known as Genesis Land, is part of the Spice Route and noted for its unique canyons, springs and vast untouched stretches of land.

[...]

CATS IN THE APOCRYPHA:

A tale of cats, Vestal Virgins and more cats
GREGORY ELDER (Redlands Daily Facts)

Sadly, the Bible does not have a lot of cats in it, and depending on which translation you read, perhaps none at all.

There are of course the big cats like lions, as in the lion of Judah, or the leopard, who cannot change his spots, the text tells us. But the simple housecat does not get much of a showing, although they were known to the Greeks and Romans, and the Egyptians worshipped them.

There is one exception to this odd biblical omission, which is in the Deutero-Canonical books, or the Apocrypha, which is accepted as scriptural by some churches and not by others. "Thy idols shall fall and cats shall walk upon them," the Hebrew sage declares, denouncing the pagan gods and goddesses of the ancient world.

[...]

The author doesn't bother to give the reference, but he seems to be thinking of Epistle of Jeremiah 22, which does have cats sitting on idols, although not fallen ones. Here is the verse in context:

17: For just as one's dish is useless when it is broken, so are the gods of the heathen, when they have been set up in the temples. Their eyes are full of the dust raised by the feet of those who enter.
18: And just as the gates are shut on every side upon a man who has offended a king, as though he were sentenced to death, so the priests make their temples secure with doors and locks and bars, in order that they may not be plundered by robbers.
19: They light lamps, even more than they light for themselves, though their gods can see none of them.
20: They are just like a beam of the temple, but men say their hearts have melted, when worms from the earth devour them and their robes. They do not notice
21: when their faces have been blackened by the smoke of the temple.
22: Bats, swallows, and birds light on their bodies and heads; and so do cats.
23: From this you will know that they are not gods; so do not fear them.

JUGS AND "EMERGENCY IGLOOS" FROM KFAR KANA:

Excavators at Kafr Kana find 2,000-year-old jugs linked to the Great Revolt
By Ran Shapira (Haaretz)

Eleven earthenware jugs lay patiently on their sides for close to 2,000 years, until excavators recently discovered them in a subterranean cave near Kafr Kana in the lower Galilee. This amazing find has been linked to the Great Revolt in the second half of the first century CE, and it is assumed the jugs stored food in the caves, which were used as a hideout.

The jugs were found during a salvage excavation at the Karem el-Ras antiquities site on the western outskirts of Kafr Kana, beneath a house from the Roman period (from the first century CE) with a packed earth and stone floor.
Advertisement

When the excavators, led by Yardenna Alexandre of the Israel Antiquities Authority, uncovered the floor, they noticed three unusual stones. Situated near one another, the stones were flat and circular, each about 50 centimeters in diameter. After the dirt surrounding them was removed, the excavators discovered the purpose of these stones: to cover the entrances to three subterranean chambers, built of stone and shaped like igloos.

[...]

(Via the Agade list.)

SPECIAL DEAL for postgraduates attending the Edinburgh Justin Martyr conference:

This is a special announcement and update on the International
Conference on Justin Martyr and His Worlds to be held in New College
(School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh) 20-22 July 2006. See the
conference web page for further information, registration form, and a
draft schedule of presentations:
http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/justinmartyr_conf.html

We now are pleased to announce a half-fee reduction for PhD students,
meaning a confernce registration fee of £45, for those who register by
15 April (£65 thereafter). Please pass this notice on to research
students in your department. For others, the conference fee is £90
(registration by 15 April; £110 thereafter).

L. W. Hurtado, Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology
Director of Postgraduate Studies
School of Divinity, New College
University of Edinburgh
Mound Place
Edinburgh, UK. EH1 2LX
Office Phone: (0)131 650 8920. FAX: (0)131 650 7952

(From the British New Testament Society e-mail list.)

A NEW ENDOWNED CHAIR IN ARCHAEOLOGY OF ANCIENT ISRAEL AT UCSD:

Kershaw Family Endows UC San Diego's First Faculty Chair In Archaeology
Posted by: jpiercey on Thursday, March 30, 2006
Topic Education (PNN online)


Norma Kershaw, retired educator and a prominent Southern California philanthropist, lecturer and volunteer in the fields of archaeology and cultural studies, first met UC San Diego professor of Anthropology and Judaic Studies Thomas Levy, Ph.D., some 20 years ago while she was excavating at a site in Israel. Their shared interest in the history and archaeology of the Levantine region has kept the two in touch since they met.


But it still was a surprise to Levy earlier this year when Kershaw and her husband, Reuben, made a significant donation to UCSD through the Kershaw Family Trust to establish the Norma Kershaw Endowed Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands. This is the university’s first endowed faculty chair in the Department of Anthropology and the fifth endowed chair in Judaic Studies within the UCSD Division of Social Sciences. This philanthropic gift contributes to UCSD’s $1 billion fundraising initiative, The Campaign for UCSD: Imagine What’s Next.


The campus has named Levy as founding chairholder. His most recent book (with T. Higham, Oxford University) is The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating – Archaeology, Text and Science (London: Equinox). Based on his publications and fieldwork in both Israel and Jordan, Levy is recognized as one of the leading experts on the archaeology of the Middle East.

[...]

THE VIDEVAD PROJECT:

The Vīdēvdād Project is a long term project of a small Iranistic team in the section of Indoeuropean Linguistics of the Department of Classical Philology and Indoeuropean Studies at the University of Salamanca. It is supported with the financial aid of the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and of the Junta de Castilla y León. Formerly this project has been carried out in the Institut für Iranistik of the Freie Universität Berlin with the collaboration of Maria Macuch and with funds of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

[...]

This is from the index page:

Vīdēvdād is the only complete Nask of the Sassanian Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrian religion, that has been transmitted to us in its complete Sassanian version. According to the Dēnkard the books of the Avesta were divided in three categories: gathic, ritual and legal. The legal text are divided since the Avestan in the law of Zaraθuštra (dāta- zaraθuštrahe) and the law of Vīdēvdād (dāta- vīdaēuua-). The latter handled mainly on prescriptions against nasu- "corpse" and the demoness concerning witth it (druj- nasu-).

Therefore, the Nask Vīdēvdād consisted in originally only of prescriptions in order to remove impurity from the pure elements of the creation of Ahura Mazdā. However, through many centuries of transmission, another texts about different matters have been incorporated to it, such as the mythical creation of the sixteen lands and their countercreations (V 1), Yima’s mythical kingship and his protection of the whole creation (V 2), the goddess of the earth (V 3), contracts and punishment for breaking them (V 4), proper dog’s care (V 13), sin for killing an otter and its atonement (V 14) , Θrita and the origin of the medicine (V 20) and the origin of the diseases (V 22). On the other side only V 5-12, V 16-17, partly V 18-19 and V 20 deal with different themes related to impurity and its purification and the removing of the evil forces. Thus the Sassanian text of Vīdēvdād which has arrived to our time sums 22 chapters (phl. fragard), but not all of them seem to have belonged in origin to the Vīdēvdād Nask.

This is an example of a fairly common phenomenon in the study of antiquity: medieval and later manuscripts that contain medieval texts mixed with late antique and genuinely ancient material. Pseudepigrapha manuscripts often have the same sort of mix. These Iranian texts preserve material that is of considerable interest for the study of ancient Jewish apocalypses and apocalypticism

(Via the Agade list.)

THE ARTSCROLL YERUSHALMI, volume 1, is reviewed by the Jewish press. It discusses the series rather than the volume, and is quite positive. Excerpt:

While some Jewish studies educators feared the ArtScroll series would provide an easy way out for students looking to avoid the challenges represented by the Talmud, most have been convinced that the elucidation of these texts has allowed many more people to become involved with Talmud study than in generations past. To date, available in English, Hebrew and French, the impact of the ArtScroll is only beginning to be felt, and the Jerusalem Talmud will serve as an additional measure of its role.

Revolutions like these in Jewish scholarship are rare and can often only be best appreciated with considerable hindsight. Yet in the relatively short amount of time that ArtScroll Talmuds have been appearing in study halls and Jewish homes around the world, it is clear the Mesorah publishing house has offered a valuable contribution to the spread of Jewish study.

ON CRUCIFIXION POSTURES:

Image of Jesus' crucifixion may be wrong, says study

PARIS, March 30, 2006 (AFP) - The image of the crucifixion, one of the most powerful emblems of Christianity, may be quite erroneous, according to a study which says there is no evidence to prove Jesus was crucified in this manner.

Around the world, in churches, on the walls of Christian homes, on crucifixes worn as pendants, in innumerable books, paintings and movies, Jesus Christ is seen nailed to the cross by his hands and feet, with his head upwards and arms outstretched.

But a paper published by Britain's prestigious Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) says this image has never been substantiated in fact.

Christ could have been crucified in any one of many ways, all of which would have affected the causes of his death, it says.

"The evidence available demonstrates that people were crucified in different postures and affixed to crosses using a variety of means," said one of the authors, Piers Mitchell of Imperial College London.

[...]

This isn't exactly a grand revelation. It's well known in scholarly circles that we really don't know much about the postures used in ancient crucifixions, and the movie The Last Temptation of Christ uses a nontraditional but possible posture, so this ought to be well known in popular culture as well. That said, this is the first I've heard of convicts being nailed to a cross by their genitals and I wonder what evidence there actually is for that. Not that I doubt the creative imagination of the ancient Romans.

CONTROVERSY OVER THE NYU GIFT:

$200 Million Gift Triggers Backlash at NYU By Michael Balter ScienceNOW Daily News 28 March 2006 When New York University (NYU) officials announced last week the creation of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, it was widely seen as a major coup. The new Ph.D.-granting research institute, devoted to the art, archaeology, history, literature, and geography of ancient societies, was made possible by a private gift of $200 million in cash and real estate, one of the largest donations the university has ever landed. Yet some NYU faculty, along with outside archaeologists, are aghast that the school accepted the money. One leading NYU archaeologist has already resigned from the university's existing ancient studies center to protest the decision. [...]

I'm less tolerant of antiquities collecting than I used to be, and after the forgery scandal in Israel I hope Shelby White will think twice about continuing to collect. She has promised to "deal with" anything in the collection that she "should not have bought," which is good, although I'm sure that one could debate what exactly that last quoted phrase should mean. But in any case the Leon Levy Foundation has done an immense amound of good for archaeology and the study of antiquity and I think it would be counterproductive for NYU to turn down the gift. (Heads up, reader Carla Sulzbach.)

DAN BROWN AND MICHAEL BAIGENT have new books out:

'Da Vinci Code' Rival Releases New Book

By RICHARD N. OSTLING
The Associated Press
Monday, March 27, 2006; 5:19 PM

-- "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown and his courtroom nemesis, Michael Baigent, now have a new rivalry _ on the best-seller lists.

Brown's novel goes on sale in paperback Tuesday with an advance printing of 5 million copies, the same day that HarperSanFrancisco is issuing "The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History" by Baigent, with an initial hardcover print run of a much more modest 150,000.

[...]

Sigh.

UPDATE: MSNBC has an excerpt of Baigent's book.

He turned over all those photographs without keeping copies for himself.

Right.

He neglected to get a receipt.

Right.

And he doesn't give the names of any of the British Museum "experts."

Right.

EILAT MAZAR is interviewed in Moment Magazine about the big administrative building (palace?) she's excavating in Jerusalem. Nothing new, but a good summary of the evidence, the issues, and the controversy:

Eilat Mazar: Uncovering King David's Palace

Eilat Mazar is not at her dig just south of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, where she has been exhuming the massive stone walls of what she believes to be the 10th-century remains of King David’s palace. Instead the 49-year-old widowed mother of four is at her office at the Shalem Center, a conservative social policy think tank in Jerusalem’s German Colony. Her short blonde hair bobs up and down as talks about the palace, possibly the most stunning archaeological discovery in Israel in decades. “It’s a huge structure built on the most important place that controls everything around it,” she says with excitement. “It must have been an important structure. We need to reveal more of it.”

[...]

I think we can all agree on that much.

IN THE MAIL: Here are the Amazon.com orders that were waiting for me when I arrived:

Al-Ghazali, The Niche of Lights (ed. D. Buchanan) (oddly, no longer registers on Amazon)

Al-Ghazali The Incoherence of the Philosophers (ed. M. E. Marmura)

Glenn Reynolds, An Army of Davids

Robert A. Heinlein, Red Planet

The first three are for me and the fourth is to read with my son.

I'M HERE! In San Diego, that is. More tomorrow.

BOOK REVIEW:

Ex-Christian scholar explores New Testament views of Jews

By Richard N. Ostling
The Associated Press
Posted March 24 2006

Julie Galambush brings a rare background to the often delicate topic of Jewish-Christian relations and her special interest in the first-century split between the two faiths.

She was an American Baptist Churches minister and teacher at the Lutherans' St. Olaf College in Minnesota. Now a convert to Reform Judaism who belongs to a temple in Falls Church, Va., she teaches Bible at the College of William and Mary.

Galambush, naturally, doesn't believe in Jesus' divinity. But her main emphasis is that Christians misunderstand what their scriptural writers originally meant to say about Jews.

She develops that case in The Reluctant Parting: How the New Testament's Jewish Writers Created a Christian Book (HarperSanFrancisco). ...

Looks interesting.

OIL IN THEM THERE HILLS UPDATE:

Zion Oil & Gas: We may have a discovery

By LEAH KRAUSS
UPI Correspondent

BINYAMINA, Israel, March 23 (UPI) -- Zion Oil & Gas, a company on a "Biblical Treasure Hunt" for oil in Israel, may have proven wrong everyone who scoffed at the idea of black gold in the Holy Land.

"We have what appears to be a discovery of both oil and gas in a number of different zones," Zion said on its updated Web site.

There are a number of indicators that point to a discovery, Zion said. These include: "Increased penetration rates while drilling ... with natural gas shows on the gas chromatograph, which measures natural gas components; microscopic oil and gas stains on sample rock cuttings during drilling; asphaltic rock cuttings that burn when lit with a match; gas bubbles and oil stains on the mud pit while drilling; pockets of gas that ignited and flared for several minutes at different times when the well was being swabbed; and a skim of oil in sample jars taken from fluids being swabbed," according to the company Web site.

The company has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering, and its application for listing on the American Stock Exchange is being reviewed.

[...]

I have commented earlier on the project and its basis in biblical mis-exegesis here. I would be very happy if they find oil anyway, but I'll believe it when I see the gusher. Meanwhile, I'm not buying any stock in the company.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO PALEOJUDAICA! My first post was three years ago today. The first anniversary post is here and the second here. The counter reads 233,436 hits, 125,982 of them in the last year, nearly an exponential increase over the previous year. PaleoJudaica has 315 links from 115 sites (down quite a bit from last year, for reasons unclear to me, but during the summer at one point there were links from over 190 sites). I no longer try to keep count of biblioblogs, but there are more and more of them all the time.

I haven't had time to put together a detailed review of the year as in previous years. But here are some of my favorite posts from the last twelve months:

• AUT Israel Boycott
  
• Reflections on the MIT Time Traveler Convention (This post received the most hits in the last year.)
  
• The Egyptian State Information Service's Web Page on "Jerusalem in History"
  
• On Inciting Religions Hatred
  
• Wish List of Lost Books 1
• On the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project
  
• The British Open
  
• Evidence for the Second and Herodian Temples
  
• Evidence for the First ("Solomonic") Temple (Needs some revision: Herodotus is a poorer historical source than I'd indicated and the Dtr comes out better than he.)
  
• More Lost Books
  
• The Eruption of Vesuvius
  
• Egyptian Blogger Released
  
• SBL Tel Zayit (Zeitah) Inscription Report (1 of 4)
  
• SBL Blogging Session Roundup
  
• Mount Athos Cats
  
• Bleg for a Phoenician Giant
  
• On Paul Mirecki and Intelligent Design
  
• 2005 Ralphies for PaleoJudaica
  
• Celebration of Robin Wilson's 90th Birthday
  
• Da Vinci Code Review
  

I leave for a fortnight's holiday in San Diego first thing tomorrow morning. I'll try to slip in a little more blogging before then, but I'm very busy. I don't expect to post anything on Saturday, but look for me again on Sunday, blogging from sunny California. Thanks for your interest in PaleoJudaica and please keep coming by!

JESUS MOVIE FATWA?

Controversy Over Christ Movie in Egypt

By Sobhy Mujahid, IOL [Islam Online] Correspondent

CAIRO, March 22, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – An intended attempt to produce a movie on the life of Jesus Christ (peace and blessings be upon him) has stirred a hot debate between Al-Azhar scholars who vehemently oppose the depiction of any Prophet and Christian activists who considered the rejection an interference in their private affairs.

"Al-Azhar (the Cairo-based oldest seat of learning in Sunni Islam) rejects the depiction of Christ in a film because he is not only the prophet of the Christians but also Muslims believe in him and all other prophets," Abdel Mooti Bayumi, a professor in Al-Azhar University, told IOL.

Islamic Researches Academy (IRA) of Al-Azhar had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against any "depiction of Allah's prophets" including Jesus, secretary-general of the IRA Sheikh Ibrahim Attah Al-Fayoumi told IOL Tuesday, March 21.

Other IRA members, however, seem to be denying that there has been an official response (i.e., a fatwa?):

But IRA members denied that the academy officially rejected the movie of Jesus Christ, saying that it had not been forwarded for scrutiny.

"The academy does not scrutinize any drama or literary work until asked to do so by a specific party," said Al-Fayoumi.

Al-Azhar gives recommendations for such works and not binding decrees, he said, adding that it is the justice system that makes verdicts.

"Banning drama, art or literature works is the responsibility of censorship. It is not Al-Azhar business," he said.

But the response of the scriptwriter, the producer, and unnamed "Christian activists" seems entirely sensible to me:

Christian activists, however, hit back, saying making a movie on the life of Jesus Christ is not prohibited by the Christian dogma.

"Producing a movie on the life and pains of the Christ is not the first of its kind but would be the 30th on the international level," Coptic political activist Jamal Asaad told London-based ASharq Al-Awsat daily Monday, March 20.

The move is significant since it is the first Egyptian-Arab movie on Jesus Christ, he added.

The movie scriptwriter has a similar stance.

"Christian dogma does not prohibit the depiction of Christ, so what gives Al-Azhar the right to intervene?" charged Fayez Ghali, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Some churches in Egypt stage plays and screen movies on the life of Jesus Christ, activists said.

The film's producer, Mohammed Ashub, said it was not the business of Al-Azhar, which has not issued an official protest, to interfere in the making of the movie.

"Al-Azhar does not have the right to intervene in something which concerns the Christians, otherwise it would have to tear down the icons of Christ and the Virgin Mary from churches," he told AFP.

I hope this one doesn't turn ugly, but I also hope that the makers of the film don't back down.

THE COPTIC GOSPEL OF JUDAS is to be covered in a National Geographic Channel "Global Television Event" on 9 April according to a press release. It promises that the document itself "will be first presented during a press conference at the National Geographic Society in early April."

"WHAT'S NEXT? SUMERIAN?" And why not?

MORE ON THE NEW NYU CENTER FOR ANCIENT STUDIES from the NYU Washington Square News:

NYU receives $200 mil. for new center

by Liz Skalka
News Editor

March 22, 2006
NYU has received a donation of nearly $200 million — among the largest ever given to NYU — to create an interdisciplinary center for ancient studies, NYU officials announced yesterday.

[...]

John Bernstein, the president of the Leon Levy Foundation, told WSN that the foundation is pleased to be working with the university to create a center that will approach ancient studies in a new, multidisciplinary fashion.

“We want to work with one of the great research institutes,” he said.

[...]

The new ancient studies program is geared toward crossing boundaries and is expected to bring together different departments at the university that focus on topics in ancient studies, said Mark S. Smith, the Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient and Near Eastern Studies in the Hebrew and Judaic Studies Department.

“It has potential to create fantastic synergy between existing faculty in ancient studies and the center itself,” he said.

Smith said the gift “may be unprecedented” in the field of ancient studies.

“This is great news for New York University,” he said. “We don’t usually get gifts like this, and to get one in ancient studies is really unique.”

[...]

The article has lots of additional details.

THE CRADLE OF CHRISTIANITY EXHIBITION will be moving to Florida in December:

Biblical exhibit encore to Tut
BY ALEXANDRA ALTER
aalter@MiamiHerald.com

The Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale, which has attracted more than 500,000 visitors to its current exhibit Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, will follow that up with a major exhibition of biblical artifacts that trace the common origins of Judaism and Christianity, museum officials announced Tuesday.

[...]

The collection of artifacts, which date from the time of Jesus to the Seventh Century, includes one of the Dead Sea Scrolls; a burial ossuary of Caiaphas the High Priest, who according to the New Testament delivered Jesus to the Romans for trial and crucifixion; and a commemorative plaque inscribed with the name Pontius Pilate.

[...]

The Temple Scroll is the Dead Sea Scroll in the exhibit.

MUSSOLINI'S VILLA is now open to the public, according to the A.P. As noted before here, there are archaeological relics associated with its underground bunkers:

The bunker was dug 23 feet deep, burying a 10-foot-thick concrete box with bare cylindrical corridors and multiple escape routes.

While restoring the chamber, archeologists discovered it was built over a second-century Christian tomb, in which they found three bodies. The area was a common burial ground in Roman times, housing mainly the sprawling underground corridors of one of six Jewish catacombs in the city.

[...]

Future plans for Villa Torlonia's grounds include opening the ancient Jewish catacombs and building a museum dedicated to Holocaust victims right across from Mussolini's residence.

This is the first I can recall hearing about a second-century Christian tomb at the site.

ANCIENT NEGEV TRADE ROUTE SAVED:

Environmentalists save ancient Perfume Route from destruction

By Zafrir Rinat, Haaretz Correspondent

Environmental groups on Monday persuaded the southern committee of planning to turn down a plan that would open a phosphate quarry in an area where the ancient Nebatean Perfume route passed through.

The committee decided against the Rotem Apart company's Sde Hetzba West plan, ruling that it was in the public's interest to favor preservation over development.

[...]

AN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD has just been funded at New York University:

N.Y.U. and Columbia to Receive $200 Million Gifts for Research

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD and JONATHAN D. GLATER
Published: March 21, 2006 (New York Times)

New York University and Columbia have each received donations of about $200 million, among the largest to academic institutions in recent years. The gifts, from different donors, come as both universities try to compete with rivals that have far larger endowments.

The gift to N.Y.U., among the largest it has ever received, will create a multidisciplinary center for the study of the ancient world. Consisting of cash and real estate valued at up to $200 million, the gift is from the Leon Levy Foundation. Mr. Levy, who died in 2003, was a Wall Street investor and benefactor of art and archaeology. The university president, John Sexton, and the Levy foundation's trustee, Shelby White, Mr. Levy's widow, are expected to announce the gift today.

[...]

N.Y.U. officials emphasized in interviews that a goal of the new center, to be called the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, was to approach the research and teaching of antiquity on a broad geographic and thematic scale. The focus will be on cultural evolution through time and across societies and regions, incorporating the history, archaeology, literature and art of antiquity.

The areas to be studied will include not only Europe and the Mediterranean basin, but also Central and East Asia — from Gibraltar to Taiwan, as Glen W. Bowersock, a historian familiar with the plans, put it.

[...]

The institute will be in a six-story townhouse at 15 East 84th Street, which was previously owned by the Ogden Reid family and then the American Jewish Congress. The Levy Foundation bought the property two years ago and is having it renovated.

Christopher Ratté, a classical archaeologist at N.Y.U., said the institute was expected to hire five or six full-time professors, maybe an equal number of visiting fellows, and several post-doctoral researchers.

[...]

Congratulations to NYU! This is excellent news. Shelby White and the late Leon Levy have made a very valuable contribution to the study of antiquity -- notably in Larry Stager's Ashkelon dig -- for many years. Oh, and congratulations to Columbia too on their new Science Center.

AND NOW IT GOES TO THE JUDGE:

Judge Asks Sharp Questions at Close of 'Da Vinci Code' Case

By SARAH LYALL
Published: March 21, 2006 (New York Times)

LONDON, March 20 — The lawyer for the two men who say Dan Brown stole from their book for his novel "The Da Vinci Code" faced sharp and relentless questioning from the judge in the case during closing arguments in the High Court here on Monday.

The judge, Peter Jones, will not issue a decision for several weeks, and it is impossible to know how he will rule. But his tough questions appeared to reflect skepticism, even exasperation, toward some of the arguments put forward by the lawyer for the plaintiffs, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of the three authors of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail." (The book's other author, Henry Lincoln, is not taking part in the lawsuit.) They claim that Mr. Brown lifted the central "architecture" for his megaselling "Da Vinci Code" from their nonfiction book, published in 1982.

[...]

Justice Jones seems to be showing good sense in this case and I shall be very surprised if he rules against Random House.

THE SBL PSEUDEPIGRAPHA SECTION'S PROGRAM for the November 2006 meeting in Washington D.C. has not yet been published, but Pierluigi Piovanelli has kindly sent me an abstract of the paper he will be presenting in the session on my book. Here it is:

In Praise of "The Default Position," or Reassessing the Christian Reception of the Jewish Pseudepigraphic Heritage

It is well known that many ancient Jewish Pseudepigrapha have been preserved in their integrality only through secondary versions and Christian late antique and medieval manuscript traditions. Building on such evidence, a large majority of specialists of Second Temple literature is still eager to identify newly discovered parabiblical narratives bearing no explicit Christian signatures with new Jewish Pseudepigrapha. However, during the last two decades some authoritative voices - Marinus de Jonge, Robert A. Kraft, and Enrico Norelli, to mention just few of them - have begun to argue that early Christian authors could have written at least some of those texts. In the same vein, James R. Davila's new monograph on The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha (2005) provides us with a useful survey not only of Christian "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha That Appear to Be Jewish" (Ch. 2) but also of "Pseudepigrapha of Debatable Origin" (Ch. 4) that were previously deemed to be Jewish but that probably are of Christian origins. The plausibility of such a paradigmatic shift is independently confirmed by the major changes that another great specialist of Second Temple Judaism, George W. E. Nickelsburg, has just introduced into the revised and expanded edition of his 1981 masterful introduction to Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (2005). In this new edition, some Pseudepigrapha are now relegated into a newly created limbo of "Texts of Disputed Provenance" (Ch. 9), while others are purely and simply omitted. Following the same line of thought, I will discuss some examples of Jewish Pseudepigrapha copied and translated by Christian scribes (the so-called Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon), Christian rewritings of Jewish Pseudepigrapha (the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah), and Christian original compositions (the Melchizedek Story). This new approach will help us to emphasize the natural continuity existing between ancient Jewish and early Christian pseudepigraphic trajectories.

Pierluigi Piovanelli
University of Ottawa

Pierluigi is translating the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon and the Story of Melchizedek for our More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project. The session looks promising.

HOW TO WRITE A BEST SELLER: Dan Brown has some advice. I'll have to keep it in mind for my next book.

COPTIC GOSPEL OF JUDAS WATCH: Mark Goodacre notes a radio interview on the Gospel of Judas by Aberdonian New Testament scholar Simon Gathercole. Mark writes:

Simon explained that the Gospel was written long after the living memory of the apostles, and that it featured anachronisms equivalent to our writing a document about Queen Victoria in which she comments on The Lord of the Rings and on her CD collection.

HAPPY SPRING EQUINOX and Persian New Year (Norouz).

HOLY GRAIL "CLUE"? The Times has the only follow-up I can find to last week's promised revelation about the inscription on the Shepherd's Monument:

Holy Grail 'clue' at stately home

A CODE etched on a marble monument in the grounds of a Staffordshire stately home is a secret message that the Holy Grail is buried near by, a Canadian codebreaker claimed yesterday.

One or both of the stones thought to make up the Holy Grail are “very likely” to be buried in the Shugborough estate, near Stafford, according to Louis Buff Parry.

[...]

The inscription reads "D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M." I think it looks like a password to somebody's computer account.