SOME ODD PSEUDO-HISTORY appears in an essay by Genevieve Cora Fraser entitled "Kerry Sponsors Collective Punishment of Palestinians on Behalf of Israel." It appears in a number of places but seems to have originated with AMIN. I have nothing to say about the main thesis of the piece, but this bit caught my eye during my usual Google searches:

To set the record straight, Jesus was a Palestinian but not a Jew. He was of Arabic origin, though religiously a Hebrew, and spoke Aramaic. This also means that the Jews could not possibly have been responsible for the drama that led to the crucifixion, despite some nasty Christian accusations and scape-goating. The word Jew was coined in the 10th century to describe the European converts.

Where does one start with something like this?

1. Our central source for information about Jesus is the New Testament. All four Gospels present Jesus as a Jew. Matthew 1 and Luke 3 give genealogies. He is explicitly called a Jew (by the Samaritan woman) in John 4:9. The Roman soldiers sarcastically call him "King of the Jews" in Mark 15:18 and Pilate puts a placard with the same title on the cross in 15:26. And in general, Jesus' entire environment is Jewish through and through.

2. It is difficult to figure out what Fraser means by "Palestinian." Her usage is an anachronism for Jesus' time. There were Jews (Yehudiyyim or Ioudaioi) who had been native to the area for many centuries. In Jesus' time there likely were some indigenous non-Jews like the Syrophoenician woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon mentioned in Mark 7:24-30. (Matthew calls her a "Canaanite" in 15:22.) But Jesus clearly considered her an outsider and helped her only reluctantly.

Modern Palestinians likely have some genetic connection with people like her (with lots of Arab and Crusader genes mixed in), but culturally they have virtually nothing in common with them. They speak a very different language and follow monotheistic religions (Islam and Christianity) rather than West-Semitic polytheism. I don't know of positive evidence for "Canaanites" actually in Judea in the first century (drop me a note if you do), but it's likely enough there were some. Galilee was on the border of late-"Canaanite" (Phoenician) cities and I don't doubt that a fair number lived in Galilee as well, although current evidence points to it being predominantly Jewish.

Modern Palestinians certainly have a long connection with the land, and any national identity is necessarily a cultural construct, but to call anyone in the first century a "Palestinian" in the modern sense is a big leap of logic. It is a much greater leap than calling Ioudaioi and Yehudiyyim (Yehudayyin) in the first century "Jews," since besides the long geographic presence and the genetic connection, there is a cultural and linguistic continuity and even a continuity in the use of the name (see next point). In any case, Jesus was not a "Palestinian" except in the sense that he lived in a region that was called "Palestine" (deriving and generalizing from "Philistia") quite a lot since about the second century CE.

3. The word "Jew comes" from the Hebrew word יהודי (member of the tribe of Judah) which is found in the Hebrew Bible and, once or twice, in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The earliest extrabiblical appearance of which I am aware is the Aramaic form יהודיא in the fifth century BCE Elephantine papyri (more here). The Greek Ioudaios, very common in literature of Jesus' time, including the New Testament, comes from the Hebrew. By the first century it clearly had an ethnic-religious sense over and beyond any geographical sense. The Latin Iudaeus is the source of our word "Jew."

4. I agree with Ms. Fraser that, whatever the circumstances of Jesus' death (and in my opinion we don't have much reliable information about those circumstances), Christian scapegoating of Jews over it is both wicked and idiotic. But how Jesus supposedly actually being an Arab would bear on the whole issue isn't very clear to me.

As always with these things, when I find tendentious errors in an article or book which could have been corrected with the most basic research, it doesn't make me trust the author about other things I don't know about.

UPDATE: I've added a third paragraph to #2 to clarify what I was trying to say there.

JEWISH SHAMANS? They should read my book. (Not the one up in the right corner, one of the others.)

DEATH MIASMA is posing a threat to the newly expanded Knesset:

Burial caves raise controversy

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post

First, Jews of the priestly class were instructed to veer left after a cave housing centuries-old ancient graves was uncovered underneath the city's main north-south road.

Next, work on Jerusalem's Museum of Tolerance was abruptly stopped after an ancient Muslim cemetery was found on the site, and Islamic leaders petitioned the High Court of Justice against the construction.

Now, the discovery of Second Temple period graves during a three-year expansion project at the Knesset has set off a ruckus among religious cohenimMKs concerned with violating ancient Jewish law.

[...]

THE DA VINCI CODE JUDGE gets in on the act:

Judge joins Da Vinci fun with a code of his own

By Ian Evans and Steve Bird (The Times

Can you break the code? Read the judgment in full and send your ideas to our weblog

IT HAS provided global intrigue and controversy but the enigma that is The Da Vinci Code is not over yet.

In another twist to the publishing phenomenon, it was disclosed yesterday that the judge in the recent plagiarism court case included a coded message in his written judgment.

[...]

You just can't make this stuff up. Read the rest and see if you can solve the code.

A NEW ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL OF SEMITIC STUDIES (51.1, Spring 2006) is out. Here's the table of contents:

Holger Gzella
Die Entstehung Des Artikels Im Semitischen: Eine ‘Phönizische’ Perspektive
J Semitic Studies 2006 51: 1-18; doi:10.1093/jss/fgi080

Ilsung Andrew Yun
A Case of Linguistic Transition: The Nerab Inscriptions
J Semitic Studies 2006 51: 19-43; doi:10.1093/jss/fgi081

Rivka Shemesh
Direct Discourse Markers in Mishnaic Hebrew
J Semitic Studies 2006 51: 45-58; doi:10.1093/jss/fgi082

Matthew P. Anstey
The Grammatical-Lexical Cline in Tiberian Hebrew
J Semitic Studies 2006 51: 59-84; doi:10.1093/jss/fgi083

Adam H. Becker
The Discourse on Priesthood (Bl Add 18295, ff. 137b–140b): An Anti-Jewish text on the abrogation of the Israelite Priesthood
J Semitic Studies 2006 51: 85-115; doi:10.1093/jss/fgi084

Mark S. Wagner
Arabic Influence on Sabazian Poetry in Yemen
J Semitic Studies 2006 51: 117-136; doi:10.1093/jss/fgi085

Leigh N. Chipman and Efraim Lev
Syrups from the Apothecary's Shop: a Genizah Fragment Containing one of the Earliest Manuscripts of Minhaj Al-Dukkan
J Semitic Studies 2006 51: 137-168; doi:10.1093/jss/fgi086

Plus lots of interesting book reviews.

Requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access. But you can read the abstracts for free.

MARY MAGDALENE AS A FALLEN ANGEL AND VAMPIRE. Not surprisingly, the Gospel of Judas is involved. (Or a Gospel of Judas, anyway.) One for Joss Whedon?

THE GREAT POINTING CRISIS: Peter Williams alerts us to one of the great challenges of our generation. But there is hope.

"SO YOU WANT TO BE AN ARCHAEOLOGIST?" Brian Fagan has some advice in the current issue (May-June 2006) of Archaeology Magazine. And AIA President Jane Waldbaum comments in "A Hidden Discipline." Also, there's an excerpt from the outrageously funny Zombie Survival Guide on the history of zombie outbreaks: "Archaeology of the Undead."

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH -- The BBC has an article that surveys the archaeology of the Temple Mount and its attendant political complications:

Jerusalem's volatile archaeology

By Malcolm Billings
Presenter, Trench Warfare: The Politics of Archaeology

One of the most visited archaeological sites in Jerusalem is also charged with emotion that has erupted in riot and bloodshed.

MIQRA is a new discussion group on the Hebrew Bible sponsored by the Society of Biblical Literature. Here is the description:

Miqra is an online site for scholarly dialogue about literary, linguistic, archaeological, social, political, historical, and ideological issues in studying the Hebrew Bible. It is not for discussion of contemporary religious interpretations of texts or (above all!) confessional/doctrinal matters. The assumption is that contributors will have the necessary expertise in Hebrew and cognate languages; knowledge of ANE history, literature, and culture; familiarity with the ever-expanding reading strategies ("methods") used in biblical studies; and an interest in collegial discussion – all of which should be hallmarks of our discipline. This is a moderated list, which means that your comments will be screened to make certain posts conform to the above standards. My interest is not in limiting debate but promoting scholarly discussion free of ad hominem attacks and other types of heavy-handed rhetoric.

REFUTING THE DA VINCI CODE is shooting fish in a barrel, but these fish do keep on coming back. Inspired by the imminent release of the film, the Associated Press has a new rebuttal article that quotes lots of big names and makes the usual points.

As film arrives, ‘Da Vinci Code’ debate renews
Churches, scholars at issue with many of the novel’s central themes

BLOGGER IS JAMMED. This is the third message I've tried to post today. The first two are listed as published on my Edit Posts page, but when I tried to publish them, they publish cycle went into an infinite loop until it timed out and neither ever showed up on the blog. I can't find anything about planned outages, so I don't know what the problem is -- perhaps another system failure. I'm assuming the posts will appear eventually. Sorry -- on behalf of Blogger -- for the delay.

UPDATE (9:18 pm): Okay, Blogger is back. I had to republish all the posts, but here they are now.

HAROLD BLOOM'S BOOK Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine is reviewed by James Wood in The New Republic (requires free registration to access):

"WHAT HAROLD BLOOM CAN TEACH GOD"

The review is entertaining, if purple ("This being Bloom, everything must be worn three or four times at a stretch, like a waif's underwear ..."), and concludes that Bloom is a closet theologian and a Gnostic:

But of course theology has not altogether disappeared. There is a covert, unconfessed theology behind Bloom's theology of aesthetics. For there is indeed a sense in which he simply does not believe in Christ as he believes in Yahweh. He would murmur that he does not believe in Christ "as a literary creation"; that his disbelief has not been suspended by the Gospels as Genesis and Exodus suspends it. But I suspect that this is not just a literary belief. How is it different, really, from the beliefs of thousands of quite un-Bloomian Jews? Like them, Bloom rightly prefers Yahweh to Christ. For him, Yahweh is God and Jesus is only a man pretending to be God: standard fare. What else can it mean to say that the New Testament is not as successful as the Torah because the Torah "is God" whereas the New Testament merely argues that "a man has replaced Scripture"? Isn't this just a way of saying that Jesus is not the Messiah?

Bloom will not admit to this kind of actually theological belief, because he is wedded to the sole theology of art, to pondering the Bible only as what he calls "high literature." A theological belief would need theological argument, but Bloom prefers a belief beyond argument, a belief about which one cannot ever say that so-and-so is "mistaken" to hold it: "If Smith was mistaken, then so were they, but I hardly know just what it could mean to say that the Kabbalists or Joseph Smith were mistaken." Instead, Bloom prefers the pictures and branching hypotheses of Gnosticism, a system he never seems to think of as theological, doubtless because it seems to him so boldly fictive or poetic.

Yet the most powerful part of Jesus and Yahweh, the moment when the book really comes alive, is when, ironically enough, Bloom is being theological. Near the end, he gives a brief summary of his cherished Gnostic and Kabbalistic beliefs, and then launches a series of anguished laments. Generally, Bloom's Gnosticism has been inert, theologically speaking--he seems to have so little interest in its fundamental raison d'être, which is to explain the large questions of theodicy; but at the end of his book Bloom gives voice to a kind of plangent Gnostic complaint, whereby he asks Yahweh, in effect, why he has abandoned us--and more particularly, why he has abandoned the Jews. Where did God go? Bloom wonders if Yahweh is off in space, nursing his lovelessness. Or perhaps, following Jack Miles, God has deserted us because he has withdrawn into the contradictions of his own character?

Sounds kind of depressing. But I haven't read the book.

BOOK REVIEW:

Material witness
By Joshua Schwartz (Haaretz)

"Tarbut Khomrit Be'eretz Yisrael Beyemai Hatalmud" ("Material Culture in Eretz-Israel in the Talmudic Period") by Daniel Sperber, Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi and Bar-Ilan University, Volume II, 185 pages

"We (yeshiva students) want to know what Abaye and Rava said, while they (academic researchers) want to know what they wore," goes a wry comment attributed to the yeshiva world. No one denies that the essence of Talmud study is the discussion of the text itself and not the historical, social or literary background of the issue or its linguistic and philological features. However, it is impossible to properly understand halahka (Jewish law) and aggadah (homiletics) without familiarity with the lifestyle of the Mishnah and Talmud periods, which requires broad cultural knowledge and a solid grounding in ancient languages, archeology and history.

Talmudic literature is full of references to everyday life that are important for understanding the text even on the simplest level. For those reading or studying this material many generations later, the physical reality of those days is not always comprehensible, and this creates an obstacle to "real learning." Daniel Sperber's book, which presents the reader with various features of life in Talmudic times and illuminates aspects of the material culture in those days, demonstrates how essential critical scientific research is for understanding the Talmudic issues.

[...]

(Via the Agade list.)

MY E-MAIL ADDRESS above in the masthead (blogger at paleojudaica dot com) is now working again. I seem to have done something to glitch it when I was following the impenetrable geekese instructions for renewing the domain name. But it's up and running again now. Sorry for any inconvenience.

SPEAKING OF ST. GEORGE, here's a conference announcement from the Hugoye list:

Subject: ARAM Forthcoming Conference

Dear Colleague,
I am writing again to update you on the progress of the ARAM Twenty Second International Conference on "Iconography and Mythology of Prophet Elijah, St. George and al-Khodor in the Syrian Orient", to be held at Oxford University, 4-6 July 2006.
The conference will start on Tuesday 4 July at 9am, finishing on Thursday 6 July at 5pm. Each speaker's paper is limited to 30 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes for discussion.
I would like to thank those who have already answered our first announcement of the ARAM conference, and they will receive soon the list of the speakers with the programme of the conference.
I would like also to inform you that we can still accept another five speakers, but we need their names before mid-May 2006.
If you know of academic colleagues who might like to contribute to the conference, please forward this message to them or send us their names and email addresses.
All papers given at the conference will be considered for publication in a
future edition of the ARAM periodical, subject to editorial review.
I am also writing to remind you of our ARAM new website
(www.aramsociety.org), which aims to update our colleagues and friends on ARAM academic activities. ARAM has also its own new email address:
aram@aramsociety.org
However, you can still use our current email address at Oxford University:
aram@orinst.ox.ac.uk
Both email addresses can reach our ARAM Society.

Thank you very much for your interest in our ARAM Society.
Yours sincerely,

Shafiq Abouzayd (Dr.)
ARAM Society
The Oriental Institute
Oxford University
Pusey Lane
Oxford OX1 2LE, UK.
Tel: ++44-1865-514041 Fax: ++44-1865-516824

THE SECRETS OF JUDAS, by James M. Robinson is reviewed in "The redemption of Judas" (Waterloo Record) by William Klassen. He starts with an third-century ivory carving that he thinks may have been made by the same group that produced the Gospel of Judas. He also defends the National Geographic Society and their consultants on the project, of whom he is one. Excerpt:

For all its strengths, Robinson's book also has some serious flaws. He offers an extremely biased account of the events and negotiations which led to the publishing of the Judas manuscript and its public release by the National Geographic Society. He makes serious accusations against the museum in Geneva which owns the codex and National Geographic.

Some of the accusations are patently based on rumour and are, to my mind, totally false. For example, he indicates that the people whom National Geographic brought in as consultants and swore to six months of secrecy, were paid handsomely. As he puts it, they "have been bought off (no doubt with considerably more than 30 pieces of silver) and sworn to silence on a stack of Bibles -- or on a stack of papyrus leaves." As one of those consultants, I can assure Robinson that not a penny was paid to me, let alone any pieces of silver.

Robinson criticizes the National Geographic for resorting to sensationalism, but on several occasions offers his own bits of sensationalism. The discovery of the Gospel of Judas is a sensational event. Moreover, the way in which the 1,700-year-old manuscript survived a group of camel drivers drawing lots for it, to say nothing of the conniving of antiquity dealers and 15 years of disintegration in a safety deposit box, is nothing short of a miracle.

HAPPY EASTER to those celebrating in the Orthodox tradition.

UPDATE: The Department of Cosmic Synchronicities reports that today is also St. George's Day and both the birth and the death date of William Shakespeare.

MORE MODERN GNOSTICS: The Los Angeles Times has a collection of responses to the Gospel of Judas, starting with a Bishop of the Gnostic Society:

Gnostics Find Affirmation in Gospel of Judas

The document portrays the disciple as a faithful servant of Jesus, not a villain -- a firm belief of the small Christian branch. But it doesn't shake up mainstream doctrine.

By Arin Gencer, Times Staff Writer
April 22, 2006

When National Geographic unveiled the Gospel of Judas this month, the narrator in the accompanying television documentary solemnly announced: "It tells a different story. One that could challenge our deepest beliefs."

The Gospel portrayed a Judas who simply carried out his master's orders — and did not betray him.

But for Gnostics, a small branch of Christianity, that so-called revelation was just a confirmation of a long-held belief that there was more to Judas and the crucifixion story than the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John suggest.

"Gnostics were inclined in this direction for a long, long time," said Bishop Stephan Hoeller, of the Gnostic Society, who also leads a congregation in Los Angeles. The society was founded in 1923, he said, and the church, Ecclesia Gnostica, was started in 1956.

"The notion that Judas was this terrible villain … that has never really been accepted in Gnosticism," Hoeller said.

[...]

AN AIA RESPONSE TO STAGER'S "STATEMENT OF CONCERN" was posted on the Agade list. I reproduce it here with Jane Waldbaum's permission:

A "Statement of Concern" regarding the publication of unprovenanced antiquities has been circulating recently by letter, email and on various scholarly listservs. The "Statement" affirms opposition to looting, recognizes the damage done by the destruction of context, and makes a case for the publication of unprovenanced antiquities, particularly texts, in order to salvage the information they may contain.

The "Statement," however, also makes several erroneous assertions regarding the policies of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) on the publication of undocumented antiquities, and alleges that these "rules" were adopted "without a vote of (its)membership." In fact, since 1970 the Council of the AIA has voted to adopt a series of resolutions and policies that are quite different from what is asserted in the "Statement." The Council is the largest and most representative governing body of the AIA. It is comprised of representatives chosen by all of the AIA's 102 Local Societies and of representatives of the members-at-large, and is empowered to vote on policy issues and pass resolutions on behalf of the membership. The following list of the AIA's ethical and publication policies adopted since 1970 is provided in the interest of setting the record straight and of clarifying the AIA's positions on the publication and presentation of undocumented antiquities as well as its ethical standards. Complete texts may be found on the AIA's web site.

1. Resolution in support of the Draft UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. Adopted by a vote of the AIA Council, December 30, 1970.
www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10192

2. Resolution on the acquisition of antiquities by museums. Adopted by vote of the Council of the AIA, December 30, 1973.
www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10192

3. Resolution on the presentation of undocumented antiquities at the AIA's Annual Meeting. Adopted by vote of the Council, December 30, 1973 and revised 2004. The full text of the amended resolution is provided here:

The Annual Meeting may not serve for the announcement or initial scholarly presentation of any object in a public or private collection acquired after December 30, 1973, unless its existence can be documented prior to that date, or it was legally exported form the country of origin. An exception may be made by the Program for the Annual Meeting Committee if the presentation emphasizes the loss of archaeological context.
www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10288

4. In 1978 the editors of the American Journal of Archaeology (AJA) adapted the 1973 Annual Meeting Presentation Policy to apply to articles published in the AJA. See Editorial Statement, AJA vol. 82, 1978, p. 1. The policy has been clarified in a succession of editorial statements published in the AJA vol. 86, 1982, pp. 1-2; vol. 94, 1990, pp. 525-527, and most recently vol. 109, 2005, pp. 135-136 (see also www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10040). The current text of the AJA publications policy as amended in 2004 reads: As a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America, AJA will not serve for the announcement or initial scholarly presentation of any object in a private or public collection acquired after December 30, 1973, unless its existence is documented before that date, or it was legally exported from the country of origin. An exception may be made if, in the view of the Editor, the aim of publication is to emphasize the loss of archaeological context. Reviews of exhibitions, catalogues, or publications that do not follow these guidelines should state that the exhibition or publication in question includes material without known archaeological findspot.

At no time was an attempt made to "blame the object" or to prevent the scholarly discussion of archaeological objects or materials already in the scholarly record. In the words of Naomi Norman, current Editor-in-Chief of the AJA, "The clear intent of the policy was not to enhance the market value or importance of these objects by giving them the imprimatur of the AIA by publishing them for the first time in the AJA..." In clarification of the modified policy she stated, "The intent here is to keep the checkered past of an object out in the open and part of the continuing scholarly discussion of that piece (emphasis added). All too often, once a piece gets 'proper scholarly presentation' and the debate begins, scholars forget that the object is without archaeological context and may have come to the market illegally...The point is to remind us all of how much information and value is lost when an object is illegally removed from its archaeological context," (AJA 109, 2005, p. 136).

5. On December 29,1990 the AIA Council voted to adopt a Code of Ethics. The Code was amended at the Council meeting of December 29, 1997 and now reads:

The Archaeological Institute of America is dedicated to the greater understanding of archaeology, to the protection and preservation of the world's archaeological resources and the information they contain, and to the encouragement and support of archaeological research and publication. In accordance with these principles, members of the AIA should:

1. Seek to ensure that the exploration of archaeological sites be conducted according to the highest standards under the direct supervision of qualified personnel, and that the results of such research be made public;

2. Refuse to participate in the trade in undocumented antiquities and refrain from activities that enhance the commercial value of such objects. Undocumented antiquities are those which are not documented as belonging to a public or private collection before December 30, 1970, when the AIA Council endorsed the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property, or which have not been excavated and exported from the country of origin in accordance with the laws of that country;

3. Inform appropriate authorities of threats to, or plunder of archaeological sites, and illegal import or export of archaeological material.
www.archaeological.org/pdfs/AIA_Code_of_EthicsA5S.pdf

6. A Code of Professional Standards applying to AIA's professional members was adopted by vote of the Council on December 29, 1994 and amended on December 29, 1997. Among other things, this Code states: "Professional archaeologists should adhere to the Guidelines of the AIA general Code of Ethics concerning illegal antiquities in their research and publication." The full text of this Code may be found at
www.archaeological.org/pdfs/AIA_Code_of_Professional_StandardsA5S.pdf

It should be noted that neither the general Code of Ethics nor the Code of Professional Standards constitute "rules" that the membership "must" follow. They are rather guidelines for ethical behavior and statements of responsibility to the archaeological record that the membership of the AIA, through its Council, has affirmed many times since 1970. While these guidelines firmly discourage any involvement of its members in the antiquities trade, the AIA does not censor the objects of members' research and scholarship.


Jane C. WaldbaumPresident, Archaeological Institute of America

STATEMENT ON UNPROVENANCED ANTIQUITIES: Jack Sasson forwards the following on the Agade list. If you want to sign up, write to Larry Stager, not me.

From Larry Stager (stager@fas.harvard.edu). Any response should go
to *him*.
================================

Below is a Statement of Concern for which I am collecting signatures expressing the importance of publishing unprovenanced archaeological materials and inscriptions. Please read the Statement and, if you agree with it, let me know if we can list you as a signatory.

When emailing me, kindly give me your
Name:
Title:
Affiliation:
Area of interest.

If you know of colleagues who would be willing to be a signatory, please have them write or email me to this effect.

We have no specific plans at this time concerning how we will publicize this Statement. Surely we will provide a copy to ASOR and AIA. The Statement and signatories will also be published in BAR. And undoubtedly it will get some press and internet coverage.

With best regards,

Lawrence E. Stager
Harvard University

*******************************

STATEMENT OF CONCERN

We are archaeologists and scholars who deal with archaeological materials from the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean basin. We wish to express our concern at a movement that has received much publicity lately that condemns the use of unprovenanced antiquities from consideration in the reconstruction of ancient history. On the contrary, a history of this region cannot be written without the evidence from unprovenanced antiquities.

1. We are strongly opposed to looting. We encourage governments to take all necessary steps to stem, if not eliminate, looting at the source by increased surveillance at archaeological sites, involvement of local communities to increase pride in their heritage, vigorous prosecution of offenders and by the use of modern scientific advances such as motion-sensing and satellite-based technologies.

2. We also recognize that artifacts ripped from their context by looters often lose much of their meaning. On the other hand, this is not always true, and even when it is, looted objects, especially inscriptions, often have much of scholarly importance to impart.

3. It is true that many unprovenanced antiquities have been looted. Other unprovenanced antiquities, however, are the result of chance finds either by people on their own property or by others on public land. Still other unprovenanced antiquities on the market come from old family collections.

4. The list of important unprovenanced and looted antiquities of value is long: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Codices, the recently reported Gospel of Judas, the Wadi Daliyeh papyri, to name only a few. Hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets, the basis of our understanding of Mesopotamian history, are unprovenanced. Almost all ancient coins and stone seals that reveal so much about ancient society come from the antiquities market. It has been rightly said that the history of the ancient Near East as we know it could not have been written without the use of unprovenanced, often looted artifacts and inscriptions.

5. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) and the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) have adopted rules (without a vote of their memberships) prohibiting the initial publication in their journals of unprovenanced artifacts. Similarly, papers at their meetings are not permitted to be read if they are based on unprovenanced antiquities. We strongly oppose these restrictions. Scholars cannot close their eyes to important information.

6. The opposition to the publication of unprovenanced antiquities is supposedly based on the view that their publication encourages looting. Yet it is almost universally recognized that this prohibition on publication has had little or no effect on looting.

7. We do not encourage private collection of antiquities. But important artifacts and inscriptions must be rescued and made available to scholars even though unprovenanced. When such objects have been looted, the antiquities market is often the means by which they are rescued, either by a private party or a museum. To vilify such activity results only in the loss of important scholarly information.

8. We would encourage private collectors of important artifacts and inscriptions to make them available to scholars for study and publication. Too often collectors who do make their objects available to scholars are subject to public obloquy. As a result, collectors are disinclined to allow scholars to study their collections, and the public is the poorer.

9. Our interest is scholarship. If we had to decide between ignoring vital information and encouraging looting, we would have a difficult choice. But, fortunately, that is not the choice we are faced with. Studying and publishing important looted artifacts has no demonstrable effect on the extent of looting.

10. The real objection to the antiquities market and unprovenanced material is that it somehow sullies our hands by participation in an illegal enterprise. But we believe a more refined judgment is called for. Yes, it would be nice if we always had professionally excavated materials to study and publish. But that is not the situation. Our choice is either to study unprovenanced material or ignore it. Given that choice, we prefer to study unprovenanced material. The sweeping exclusion of unprovenanced material from scholarly consideration results only in a loss to scholars, to scholarship and ultimately to the public.

11. The questions we deal with here are quite apart from the issues currently engaging the media and the public regarding patrimony laws and repatriation. These issues are complex and separate from the issues we are concerned with here. On the repatriation issues, we express no view.

I think there's a lot of good sense in this, but I haven't decided yet if I'm going to sign it. Some thoughts:

(1) I'm not sure what evidence there is on whether scholarly involvement with looted artifacts encourages further looting. Intuitively, I would guess it does, but I don't know and I don't know how this could be proved or disproved. How would such evidence be gathered? Are there objective data either way? The question is one of degree too, and we really need a costs-benefits weighing of whether it's a little extra looting as the price of saving data from lots of critically important artifacts or much additional looting to save data from only a few artifacts of dubious genuineness (see next point). Or something in between.

(2) The Statement does not mention the problem of antiquities forgeries, which clearly has been encouraged by scholarly involvement of unprovenanced artifacts. Certainly both popular and scholarly interest in biblical-related artifacts encouraged the forgery scandal in Israel. Indeed, some of those forgeries seem to have involved altering actual ancient artifacts (the James Ossuary, the Ivory Pomegranate, etc.).

(3) I think there's a qualitative difference between Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of Judas on the one hand, which would be horrendously difficult to forge and which are of enormous inherent value even if their archaeological contexts are lost and, on the other hand, ostraca, bullae, many lapidary inscriptions, inscribed and uninscribed seals, and various other artifacts, which are much easier to forge and some of whose value depends considerably more on having an archaeological context. It would be ridiculous not to study the Gospel of Judas (once properly authenticated), and if the AIA and ASOR really forbid papers and publications on it, I think that's a mistake. But nevertheless, the field of Hebrew-and-related epigraphy has been badly damaged by all the fakes poured into it from the 1980s on, and this is in no small part due to the antiquities trade and scholarly involvement with it.

Perhaps the third point can be addressed on a sliding scale, on which the use of a looted artifact is contingent on the degree to which its authentication is robustly reliable. But the danger of encouraging both looting and forgeries remains a problem to which I have no ready solution. I do agree that we should not ignore highly important and fully-authenticated, very-hard-to-forge artifacts even if they are looted. I will continue to study the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of Judas but I will also continue to be suspicious of unprovenanced (often looted) ostraca, bullae, and the like that appeared from the 1980s on unless I have extremely good reason to think they are genuine.

What do you think? Comments enabled. (Click on the time-of-posting link below.) Be nice and to the point. Please give your right name. Irrelevant and rude comments will be deleted.

UPDATE: For technical reasons involving my search engine, I've had to shut down the comments function, which has only been used on this page. Here are the comments that were left:

Comments:
Jim, you are correct in seeing a difference between things like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of Judas and ostraca, bullae, etc. But I'm far from clear where the demarcation line is. And in the history of scholarship, some fairly lengthy documents have turned out to be forgeries.

I'm also afraid that the current policies actually give cover to the forgers. Their work no longer needs to face the scrutiny of the scholarly community.

You are also correct about being "suspicious of unprovenanced (often looted) ostraca, bullae, and the like that appeared from the 1980s on" unless one has "extremely good reason to think they are genuine." To me this is a matter of where the burden of proof lies and that tends to follow the evidence even in cases were the artifact was well provenanced. There have been cases of salted artifacts.
# posted by Duane : 3:45 PM

I for one believe thay any materials that may have valuable information for scholars should be analyzed. Unprovenanced items are most definitely a problem and I agree that forgeries have been an issue. However, I would think that upon close scrunity by various experts, forgeries can be identified. I wish I new exactly certain papyri, scrolls, and inscription came to light, but the bottom line is that we have them and should try and figure out if we can learn anything from them. So much of our knowledge of Near Eastern antiquity has come via chance discoveries (and shady black market dealings: unfortunately, that's life! As my Ancient Judaism prof. often iterates, "we must play the ball as it lies."

Michael Helfield (M.A.)
# posted by Anonymous : 4:51 PM

Hello Jim,

First, thanks for sharing this with us. I will shortly post my own thoughts about the matter in fuller depth at my blog, but for now, here's some thing I have in mind.

I too agree with most of the statement, especially on the points concerning government crackdown. Actually, I don't think "vigorous prosecution" would adequately describge the loathe for these spineless leeches. Looters, and their equally vile counterparts forgers, need at the minimum financial ruin.

In Africa, if poachers are carrying weapons, they are shot by the military protecting the wildlife. That should put things into perspective a bit.

HOWEVER, I do recognize that unprovenanced artifacts can still have serious worth. What needs to be done is to devalue the artifacts so that no money can be made from it, if possible, and to perform rigorous tests to verify authenticity.I would support a statement that nothing can be published until it has undergone the tests necessary for validation. Otherwise, we *are* encouraging these people to continue to loot, plunder, and forge to get make money off of stolen goods.

And with that, we really need to bear in mind that they are indeed stolen.

Chris
# posted by Chris Weimer : 11:14 PM

MORE ON THE ISRAEL MUSEUM EXPANSION:

Israel Museum Expansion Moving Forward

April 20, 2006 (Architectual Record News)

Officials from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, an icon of Israeli architecture, and the country’s premier showcase of art, archaeology and Judaica, recently announced plans for a $50 million expansion. The project, which is being led by New York-based designer James Carpenter, will include four main elements: a covered entrance path, a new main entrance hall, reorganized and expanded galleries, and a new space for temporary exhibitions.

[...]

THE HAMAS WIN IN THE ELECTIONS is creating complications for Palestinian archaeologists:

Palestinian Archaeology Braces for a Storm
John Bohannon (Science Magazine)

RAMALLAH--Six years ago, Hamdan Taha, director of the Palestinian Authority's Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, was struggling to make ends meet with a skeleton crew and a $500,000 budget (Science, 7 January 2000, p. 33). Then last December, his department got a windfall: The Palestinian Authority offered a $6 million budget boost. Much of the new money was to be for preservation, but some was tagged for the excavation of a freshly uncovered Bronze Age site called Tell Etell, a few kilometers outside Ramallah--the first archaeological project that would be fully Palestinian from start to finish.

But fortunes change fast here. After Hamas was elected to the Palestinian government in January, Israel ceased transferring customs payments. Last week, the European Union announced that it is suspending direct aid to the Palestinian territories. And the United States is asking international agencies to withhold contributions until Hamas recognizes Israel and renounces violence, although few agencies so far have joined the squeeze.

"This will bring terrible impacts on Palestinian archaeology," says Moain Sadeq, antiquities chief in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority may be forced to lay off guards at sites, which could exacerbate a serious looting problem. Some also fear that a Hamas-led government may refocus archaeological efforts on the region's Islamic roots, at the expense of earlier periods. ...

But the minister of tourism and antiquities for the PA says that the latter will not happen.

MORE RESPONSES TO THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS:

Jewish responses:

"Discovery of New Gospel Rekindles Interfaith Jitters," by Hillel Halkin (Jerusalem Post columnist):

Of course, since the text of the "Gospel According to Judas" has not yet been released by the National Geographic Society, we may yet be in for unpleasant surprises. This gospel, so the advance publicity has informed us, is, like a number of other noncanonical early Christian accounts of Jesus' life and death, a Gnostic document - and in its attitude toward Jews, Christian Gnosticism was on the whole even more hostile than mainstream Christianity. The fact that the "Gospel According to Judas" vindicates Judas does not necessarily mean that it will prove to be a vindication of the Jews or Judaism.

But never mind that.

An early, second-century C.E. exoneration of Judas Iscariot is sufficient unto itself. And although it obviously has great historical significance for scholars, such an exoneration will speak especially to those Jews (of whom I confess to be one) who have always felt both close to the figure of Jesus and unforgiving toward a Christian world that persecuted us viciously in his name. With such a Judas, one can identify.

"Judas, Reconsidered,", by Lawrence H. Schiffman, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies, New York University (The Jewish Week):

Despite its alleged kosher certification of Judas Iscariot, the Gospel of Judas is part of a literature that represents a sort of alternative anti-Judaism to that which developed in the era of the Church Fathers. Much has been made of the fact that this text describes Judas as having been particularly close to Jesus, who revealed to him esoteric teachings. However, the content of this revelation is a series of Gnostic teachings that are totally at odds with Christianity as we know it.

[...]

The Gospel of Judas discovery may lead some to read the New Testament in a way that further reduces its anti-Judaism � by interpreting Judas� role as part of what Christians see as the divine plan. If so, this text will have turned out to be �good for the Jews.� Texts such as the Gospel of Judas can help to remind us of alternative explanations and guide us towards greater understanding, but they cannot be taken as the basis for any kind of historical understanding of the first century.

Christian responses:

Catholic Santa Fe Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan as quoted in "N.M. Catholic archbishop: Judas text heretical, ‘not a real gospel'" (Catholic News Service):

Writing in the May issue of the monthly archdiocesan newspaper, People of God, Archbishop Sheehan said the National Geographic Society, which sponsored an English translation of the ancient text and put the manuscript on exhibit in early April "did a disservice to Christian people and has exploited this old manuscript for its own purposes."

[...]

"In the early church there were many writings such as the Gospel of Judas which were rejected as unworthy to be included in the Bible," Archbishop Sheehan wrote. "We believe that the early church fathers had the guidance of the Holy Spirit in determining which writings were truly authentic and inspired by God and which writings were not. Obviously the Gospel of Judas did not 'make the cut.'"

Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in a sermon, as reported in "Archbishop of Canterbury says Gospel isn't a cover-up for the powerful" (Ecclesia):

In his Easter Sunday sermon, delivered at Canterbury Cathedral, the spiritual head of the world’s 77 million Anglicans – himself a noted scholar – acknowledged that the discovery of the Coptic text of a ‘Gospel of Judas’ and the excitement generated by the publication of The Da Vinci Code might appeal to people's desire for exciting secrets.

[...]

“We have become so suspicious of the power of words … the first assumption we make is that we're faced with spin of some kind, with an agenda being forced on us. So that the modern response to the proclamation ‘Christ is Risen!’ is likely to be, ‘Ah, but you would say that, wouldn't you? Now what's the real agenda?’”

Said the Archbishop: “Anything that looks like the official version is automatically suspect. Someone is trying to stop you finding out what ‘really’ happened, because what really happened could upset or challenge the power of officialdom.”

The New Testament account doesn't fit this model he says: “It was written by people who, by writing what they did made themselves less powerful, not more. They were walking out into an unmapped territory, away from the safe places of political and religious influence … it was written by people who were still trying to find a language that would catch up with a reality bigger than they had expected.”

THE AKRON FRAGMENTS OF THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS, if that's what they are, were conserved and photographed in January and made a public appearance yesterday:

Akron's piece of Judas puzzle unveiled to world
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Evelyn Theiss
Plain Dealer Reporter

They are tiny brown pieces of papyrus with torn edges -- smaller than a playing card, almost woodlike in their appearance -- with lettering most people wouldn't recognize.

Some of these pieces were revealed to Northeast Ohioans today via television and Web images. The fragments were photographed in an Akron law office Wednesday morning.

The fragments are believed to be part of the newly discovered Gospel of Judas, unveiled last week by the National Geographic Society. The gospel purports to record conversations between Jesus and Judas Iscariot in the last week of their lives and indicates that Judas only betrayed Jesus at his request.

R. Scott Haley made the papyrus available. The Akron attorney has been appointed receiver over art dealer Bruce Ferrini's extensive inventory of religious artifacts and antiquities.

Haley is keeping them in a secure place until the question of who owns them is resolved: whether it is Ferrini or a Swiss art dealer and the Switzerland-based Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art.

[...]

There are more details from the Akron Beacon Journal in "Ancient documents, book once owned by da Vinci removed from Akron vault" and from the Canton Repository in "Lawyer tries to sell papyrus bits he says have ties to Judas". The National Geographic Society says that the fragments will have to be authenticated before the Society can take a position on what they are. I hope they aren't sold off to pay Mr. Ferrini's debts!

BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS FROM THE SITE OF BABYLON. The New York Times reports in "Babylon Awaits an Iraq Without Fighting." There's been lots of bad news for a long time and up to the present:

Mr. Hussein started in 1985 with a project that was part restoration, part new construction and all ego. He imported thousands of Sudanese laborers (Iraqi men were tied up with the Iran-Iraq war) to build an ancient-looking palace right on top of Nebuchadnezzar's original one. Yellow brick walls 40 feet high and stamped with Mr. Hussein's name replaced the stumpy mounds of biblical-age mud.

To be fair, Mr. Hussein did shore up Processional Way, a wide boulevard of ancient stones, and the Lion of Babylon, a black rock sculpture around 2,500 years old.

After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, he commissioned a modern palace, again over some ruins, done in the pyramidal style of a Sumerian ziggurat. He called it Saddam Hill. In 2003, he was about to begin construction on a cable car line stretching over Babylon when a certain invasion got in the way.

American marines stormed up the Euphrates River valley on their way to Baghdad and turned Saddam Hill into a base. Their graffiti is still scrawled on the walls, including, "Hi Vanessa. I love you. From Saddam's palace" and "Cruz chillen' in Saddam's spot."

But more serious than that, archaeologists said, was the use of heavy equipment, like helicopters and armored vehicles, which may have pulverized fragile ruins just below the surface.

Mr. George, who was Mr. Hussein's field director for Babylon in 1986, said he remembered once scraping a few inches beneath the topsoil and unearthing a "wonderful little plate."

"So just imagine what we have lost," he said.

Looters did not help, either. After the invasion, a locust-like swarm of thieves descended on Iraq and picked clean countless historical sites. (Iraq has more than 10,000 of them.)

Babylon was not as badly hit as others, but many of its prized artifacts disappeared from museums. By the summer of 2003, cuneiform tablets, among the oldest examples of writing, were being sold on e-Bay.

Ancient artifacts and even bones have also ended up in sandbags filled by soldiers who were defending the site, according to an investigation by the British Museum in 2004.

Elizabeth Stone, an archaeologist at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, who is helping to restore Babylon, said troops "took big scoops out of major ruins."

According to a recent BBC report, an American Marine colonel said he was willing to apologize for the damage caused by American troops, but added that the ruins would have been worse off if no troops were there to protect them. Americans are now staying out of the site and allowing Iraqis to guard it.

He's probably right, but it's hard to imagine how the securing of the site could have been handled in a more ham-fisted, damaging way.

But there's good news too and I hope it represents a turning point:

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is pumping millions of dollars into protecting and restoring Babylon and a handful of other ancient ruins in Iraq. Unesco has even printed up a snazzy brochure, with Babylon listed as the premier destination, to hand out to wealthy donors.

ROSEMARY RADFORD RUETHER has a Beliefnet essay on the feminine divine in Christianity and early Judaism:

God's Wisdom
What we're talking about when we talk about the feminine divine in Christianity

By Rosemary Radford Ruether

It has become a kind of dogma among many feminists interested in spirituality that Judaism and Christianity suppressed all female imagery of the divine. It is also assumed that it was women who created female symbols of the divine and that these symbols served to empower women. So, this line of thinking goes, female symbols for the divine were suppressed as a part of a patriarchal disempowerment of women. However, my own research, published in my book, "Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History" shows that all these relations are considerably more ambiguous.

Men, more so than women, probably shaped much of the classical images of the female divine in the ancient Mediterranean world and elsewhere. Such images served male and upper class interests, at least in their official expressions The feminine divine was seen as protecting men in power, probably because they were believed to be protecting men, like a great mother whose power is seen as nurturing rather than judgemental.


But in truth, female symbols of the divine were never entirely suppressed in Judaism or Christianity. Although they were marginalized, they continued to reappear in renewed forms--and are still with us today.

The root of female images of the divine in Christianity lie in what's known as the Wisdom tradition, which is found in the latter half of the Hebrew Bible ...

THE CRADLE OF CHRISTIANITY EXHIBITION at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Cleveland is reviewed by Tom Freudenheim in The Forward:

Sowing the Seeds of Christianity
EXHIBIT
By Tom Freudenheim
April 21, 2006

You don't need to be a born-again Christian to understand the critical role played by the Holy Land in the development of Christianity. That's probably what the folks at Cleveland's new Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, which opened last October, are counting on by showing Cradle of Christianity, a major exhibition from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem that opened early this month. Recent reports about the discovery of the Gospel of Judas and its potential meanings should make this show even timelier.

[...]

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.