"THE TREASURES OF TIMBUKTU" are covered in an article in The Smithsonian. For past PaleoJudaica coverage of the Timbuktu manuscripts, see here and just keep following the links back.

(Via Explorator 9.31-32.)

MY REVIEW of Andrei A. Orlov's The Enoch-Metatron Tradition has been published by the Review of Biblical Literature.

NATIVITY STORY REVIEWS have been collected by Mark Goodacre at the New Testament Gateway blog. And he starts his own review of the film here.

THE SAN DIEGO DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION is receiving substantial private funding from philanthropists Joan and Irwin Jacobs.

GEZA VERMES fisks the traditional Christmas story in the London Times:

The real Christmas story
Geza Vermes
A close reading of Matthew shows the emotional truth of the Nativity
There are three variations on the theme of Christmas. In addition to the potpourri of the traditional Nativity story, the careful reader of the New Testament can discover two further accounts in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

[...]

Four features in this story are without basis in the Gospels. The date of Christmas on December 25 does not appear until AD334 when in a Roman church calendar the Nativity of the Lord replaces the pagan feast of the Unvanquished Sun. Before the 4th century, the birth of Jesus was celebrated on January 6 (Epiphany), or April 21 or May 20.

The idea that Joseph was an old widower with a grown-up family comes from the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James, written in the 2nd century in an attempt to make less puzzling the by then current doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary and the gospel references to brothers and sisters of Jesus. The presence of an ox and an ass in the stable is also alien to the New Testament.

As for the kings or wise men, they were neither. Matthew calls them magi, magicians or stargazers, without mentioning their number. The figure of three is no doubt deduced from the reference to the gifts left by them: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

[...]

He also takes a critical look at the Gospel Nativity stories. Professor Vermes has e-mailed to say that he is not responsible for the article's title. He will also be on the BBC program on the Dead Sea Scrolls, noted yesterday, and he has a new book out: The Nativity: History and Legend (Penguin). Reviews are coming out, but don't seem to have reached Google yet.

UPDATE (5 December): Some reviews are noted here.

UPDATE (23 December): Another review is noted here.

ARAMAIC WATCH -- Aramaic in Wyoming:

Pastor attempts to teach Lord's Prayer in Aramaic
Saturday, December 02, 2006
By Charles Honey

[Grand Rapids] Press Religion Editor

WYOMING -- While walking or running in the early morning, the Rev. Larry Bradford chants the ancient words.

"Abwoon d'bwashmaya, nethqadash shmakh": "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name."

Bradford said chanting the Lord's Prayer in the language Jesus spoke brings him closer to God, the mysterious words resonating like "a body prayer."

"The breathing in and breathing out, the movement, for me makes the Lord's Prayer come alive," said Bradford, interim rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. "Whether while still in meditation or out walking in nature, it's as close to God as I can get."

Beginning Sunday, the first in Advent, Bradford hopes to bring his congregation closer by teaching them the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic.

[...]

A NEW EDITION OF THE MIKRAOT GEDOLOT is receiving anonymous private funding to continue:

Anonymous contribution keeps Bar-Ilan U. Bible project afloat
By Ofri Ilani, Haaretz Correspondent

The first attempt in 500 years to update the Bible was in danger of being eliminated by continued budget cuts at Bar-Ilan University, but was saved at the last minute by an anonymous contribution.

On the shelf in Professor Menachem Cohen's office at Bar-Ilan University sit nine volumes of an edition of the Bible with numerous commentaries known as Mikra'ot Gedolot.

[...]

It appears they are using the Aleppo Codex to correct copyist errors the biblical text, but I assume they must also be collating manuscripts of Rashi's commentaries, etc.

ANOTHER MARY MAGDALENE NOVEL:

'Expected One' first in a series of novels on Mary Magdalene
BY FRANCIS MOUL / For the Lincoln Journal Star

(“The Expected One, Book One of the Magdalene Line” by Kathleen McGowan, Simon & Schuster, $25.95, 449 pages.) Twenty years. Four continents. A first draft of 12,000 pages. That’s the effort that went into the latest best-selling novel about the life of Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene and the family they supposedly created.

This is not about “The Da Vinci Code,” that famous novel and movie that involved a conspiracy by the Catholic Church to eliminate the last descendants of Christ. Kathleen McGowan’s book goes far beyond that and opens up a totally different schism from the very days of Christ’s preaching, a conflict that lasts for 2,000 years.

[...]

Sounds pretty wild.

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL XII is up at the Dr Jim West blog.

HAPPY SECOND BLOGIVERSARY (slightly belated) to Ralph the Sacred River.

EL-HAJ'S BOOK, FACTS ON THE GROUND, is excerpted at the Solomonia blog here and here.

Regarding the first quote, my experience at Tel Dor was that all periods were studied carefully by Israeli archaeologists. If a bulldozer was in fact used at Lachish -- and the author does not claim she saw this and does not report the names of those who told her -- it doesn't sound like a good idea to me. But I would have to know the specific reasons before I could comment, and I could comment only as a nonspecialist (i.e., not an archaeologist).

As for the second quote, I have not studied the report on Avigad's burnt houses. But from the description it seems very likely that the fires had something to do with the Roman-Jewish conflict around 70 CE. I don't know whether they were caused by the Roman destruction of the city or by conflicts between Jewish factions within the beseiged city. I doubt that the cause was someone smoking in bed. There is plenty of literary evidence for the Roman destruction of Jerusalem (and the literary material is what I know), so whatever happened to these particular sites, that destruction is not in doubt.

I do hope to get around to reading El-Haj's book one of these days, but lately I haven't had adequate time to do much more important reading, and that's not likely to change soon, so don't hold your breath. One can only tell so much from excerpts, and I'm not going to pronounce on the book without actually reading it through. Give the tenure review committee my good wishes and sympathy. They have a hot potato.

UPDATE (6 December): The excavator of Lachish responds.

RAGEH OMAR will be hosting a program on the Dead Sea Scrolls on BBC 4 this Tuesday:

Dead Sea Scrolls
Tuesday 5 December
9.00-10.30pm BBC FOUR (Schedule addition 13 Novermber)

In the winter of 1947, Bedouin looking for a lost goat on the shores of the Dead Sea discovered a cave whose contents rocked the academic world. The Dead Sea Scrolls were the Biblical find of the age. Dating from the time of Jesus, it was hoped that they would shed light on the birth of Christianity and the Jewish world of the first century.

But the scrolls were soon embroiled in controversy, with allegations of conspiracy and cover-up – and the rumours persist today, thanks to The Da Vinci Code.

Most people have heard of the Scrolls, but what do they actually contain? Do they deserve their controversial reputation and can they change people's understanding of Jesus?

In Secrets Of The Scrolls, Rageh Omaar tells the remarkable story of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He uncovers the truth behind the myth and discovers that their story is far from over. As Rageh says: "I guessed that the Dead Sea Scrolls would be a puzzle, but the more I met those who understood the contents of these documents, the more I realised that there are, in fact, many, many intriguing puzzles within the wider puzzle."

THE LIBRARIAN:

Bob Newhart plays against type
By Rick Bird
[Cincinnati] Post staff reporter

Imagine a befuddled, hesitant Bob Newhart-type character guarding humanities' great secrets and artifacts like the Dead Sea Scrolls, Noah's Ark, Poseidon's Trident, King Arthur's Excalibur.

"I would be terrified at the thought of that," Newhart says with a laugh.

The legendary comedian/actor reprises his role as Judson, head of a mysterious monolithic library in "The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines" (8 p.m. Sunday, TNT) in the sequel to the Indiana Jones spoof TV movie that first aired two years ago. Noah Wyle ("ER") produced the movies, also starring as a nerdy and reluctant action-adventure hero with 22 academic degrees.

Actually Newhart's librarian is a different character than he usually plays, a sort of smug all-knowing taskmaster who sends Wyle's hero on missions to prevent the bad guys from acquiring legendary artifacts that will give them more evil powers.

[...]

I've not heard of this series before, but it sounds funny, and Bob Newhart is always good. I hope it makes it across the pond. There's another review of the show here.

UPDATE: This review is considerably less positive. And the New York Times grudgingly acknowledges that the first movie was "inexplicably successful."

THE DIET OF THE INHABITANTS OF MASADA (throughout its history) is being studied by an Israeli archaeologist:

What peach did they dare to eat at Masada?
By Ran Shapira (Haaretz)

The Roman army commander and naturalist Pliny described, in his book "The Natural History," a rare and unique variety of peach that ripens at an early date, in the summer, and not in the fall, as did all the other peach varieties around in his day. No one knows what this rare variety was called in antiquity, but Prof. Mordechai Kislev, an expert on botanical archaeology, claims that peaches matching Pliny's description appear in a wall drawing in the city of Herculaneum, near Pompeii, and that they also grew in the Land of Israel and were part of the diet of Masada's residents.

[...]

Masada's residents did not suffice with just peaches, of course. In excavations at the site conducted by the late Prof. Yigael Yadin, abundant remains of fruits and grains were found. At the beginning of his academic career, in the early 1970s, Kislev received from Yadin all the remains of plants unearthed until then at Masada, and a few years ago, other botanical remains were added to the collection, having been uncovered in excavations there by Prof. Ehud Netzer and Dr. Guy Shtiebel. Today the collection includes thousands of items, representing all the periods when the mountain was inhabited: from the construction of Herod's palace on the peak of Masada in 37 BCE to the era of Roman rule after the conquest of the mountain in 73 CE.

Almost 30 years elapsed from the time Kislev received the findings from Yadin until he found the time and assistance to research the material. In the last three years, he has returned to the collection, with help from Suheil Zeidan, of the Jewish National Fund, and his colleagues Dr. Orit Simchoni and Yonit Tabak, a master's student. The team found that Masada residents enjoyed the full variety of foods produced by the Land of Israel: wheat, barley, apricots, plums, pomegranates, peaches, almonds, figs, grapes and olives.

[...]

THE "BLOGGER@" E-MAIL ADDRESS in the Masthead is now working again. Sorry for the inconvenience while it was down.

CHUCK JONES has a newish blog on the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project that I've been meaning to mention for some time. Among other things, it keeps track of news about the controversy over the tablets.

Today is St. Andrews Day and I am heavily involved in our fall graduation ceremonies and festivities from this morning on, so blogging will be a low priority.

AN EXCERPT from Nadia Abu El-Haj's Facts on the Ground has been posted on the blog of the University of Chicago Press. The excerpt deals with the views of the Israeli archaeologists Yigael Yadin and Yohanan Aharoni about archaeology and the biblical Conquest traditions, with special reference to the excavation of Hazor. Broadly speaking, the account of the views and disagreements of Yadin and Aharoni look right to me, but this isn't my area of specialty. If any archaeologists have comments, please send them to me. (Send them to jrd4 at st-andrews dot ac dot uk -- I haven't forgotten that I need to get the paleojudaica address fixed, but I'm unbelievably busy this week and I'm doing well to manage any blogging at all.)

(Heads up, Chuck Jones.)

UPDATE (2 December): More here.

HOW'S YOUR AVESTAN? On the Agade list, Jack Sasson noted the following:

At http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/ P. Oktor Skjaervo has posted introductory surveys (in PDFs) of:

Languages:
* Introduction to Young Avestan
* Introduction to Old Avestan
* Introduction to Old Persian
* Introduction to Sogdian

Religions:
* Introduction to Zoroastrianism
* Introduction to Manicheism

With this disclaimer:
"The material on this site is intended for teaching and learning. As such it is constantly corrected, updated and, hopefully, improved. It is therefore recommended that you check back regularly for updates. Obviously, it reflects the author's current opinions on many issues, but not on all. Therefore, if you want to cite anything here for the purpose of scholarly discussion, please check with the author first. Many points of interpretation and translation have been discussed in various articles, as well, for which see the Bibliography http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/POS_CV_Biblio.pdf."

Professor Skjaervø, by the way, is translating the Manichaean Iranian fragments of the Book of Giants for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project.

SCROLL DOWN to the update to yesterday's post on the Barnard College tenure controversy if you want to hear me grumble some more about the media.

NOTES ON A BYZANTINE ARCH in Jerusalem:

Byzantine arch found at site of renovated Jerusalem synagogue
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

A high arch which had been part of the skyline of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City in Jerusalem since the Six Day War has recently disappeared. It belonged to the Hurva Synagogue, Israel's grandest, most important synagogue until the War of Independence.

The arch, a remnant of the synagogue bombed by the Jordanians in 1948, was removed due to the renovation and reconstruction of the synagogue now in progress.

Excavations at the site, directed by archaeologists Hillel Geva and Oren Gutfeld, have exposed findings from various periods of the synagogue's history. The most significant is an entire arch standing along remnants of a stone-paved street from the Byzantine period, which split from the Cardo (one of Jerusalem's main streets during the Roman and Byzantine period) and ascended east to the center of the Jewish Quarter. The arch - 3.7 meters wide, 1.3 meters thick and five meters high - is built of one row of large hewn stones. Geva believes it formed the entrance gate to the Byzantine street.

[...]

The excavations, which began in 2003, also unearthed structures and pottery from the First Temple period, remnants of rooms from the Herodian period (Second Temple), burnt wooden logs (evidence of fire that took place after the destruction of the Second Temple), and three plastered ritual baths carved in rock from the Second Temple period.

[...]

AN SBL PHOTO SET has been posted by Joe Weaks at the Macintosh Biblioblog. Yours truly appears in the e-listers photo.

THE JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES has a new issue out (65.4, October 2006). One article may be of interest:

The Servant's Tale: How Rebekah Found a Spouse
Jack M. Sasson

Perhaps also:

The Terms "Assyria" and "Syria" Again
Robert Rollinger

There are also lots of interesting reviews.

(Requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access.)

THE PRESIDENT OF BARNARD COLLEGE, Judith Shapiro, has published an open letter to Alumnae about Nadia Abu El-Haj's book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society and the tenure controversy surrounding her and it. Excerpt:

Once a teacher-scholar is appointed to the Barnard faculty, she becomes subject to the rights and responsibilities specified in our Code of Academic Freedom and Tenure. In the case of a tenure review, we solicit outside letters from distinguished scholars in the candidate's field. The reviewers are not chosen by the candidate and she does not know who they are.

In this case, and with specific reference to Facts on the Ground, these reviewers will certainly include archaeologists with appropriate expertise and broad comparative perspectives. While it is a legitimate cultural anthropological enterprise to show how archaeological research can be used for political and ideological purposes — something that is common not merely to Israelis and Palestinians, but is a pervasive pattern in many parts of the world — it is, needless to say, of the essence that the archaeological enterprise itself be addressed responsibly and knowledgeably. That is something to be determined by those in a professional position to do so. The Faculty Committee on Appointments, Tenure, and Promotion, along with the Provost, gives long and careful consideration to such outside evaluations, among other kinds of information, when they make a recommendation to me about whether a faculty member should be tenured. The decision then is mine.

This sounds right to me.

(Via the Inside Higher Ed article "Input or Intrusion." Incidentally, contra one commenter, I didn't quite say the book was "daft." I said that if the newpaper article's account of the contents was accurate, it did seem so. I have not read the book. I hope to get around to reading it, but it's not high on my list of priorities right now.)

UPDATE (28 November): In the New York Sun Daniel Pipes also uses the same one-word quote of me without any qualification. I have no interest whatever in defending the book, but I haven't read it and am dependent to no small degree on newspaper reports that I generally don't trust much (and at the time I wrote last week's post that was all I had seen). I do wish people would take the trouble to represent what I actually say, nuance and qualification included. And, by the way, I'm not an archaeologist; I'm a philologist and a historian of religion. But I am an expert on ancient Jewish history.

This episode doesn't increase my faith in what I read in the press. The ironic thing is that I'm quite sympathetic to the concern of Pipes and others about the book, based on what I've heard about it. But I still want what I say to be represented accurately and I'm not going to pronounce on it definitively without actually reading it -- if and when I get time.

I've been fiddling with the exact wording of this update for a few hours, but I think it says now what I want to say.

UPDATE (2 December): More here and here.

UPDATE (28 September 2007): Okay, I've finally had time to read the book and I've posted a review here.

SOME SBL 2006 BLOG POSTS are collected over at Observatório Bíblico.

ALSO AT MYSTICAL POLITICS, Rebecca has posted an abstract of her SBL paper on "Magical Knowledge in 1 Enoch" (which, unfortunately, I was unable to attend) and she wonders if Joseph Smith knew the Enochic books or other pseudepigrapha.

MIRCEA ELIADE'S FASCISM is the subject of a post by Rebecca Lesses over at Mystical Politics. Ironically, the unsolved murder in 1991 of Eliade's star student, Ioan P. Culianu, also a Romanian, has been attributed by some to Iron Guard remnants. (See also here.) Culianu did important work on Gnosticism, among other things.

MORE MAGIC from Manuscript Boy at Hagahot.

SYRIAC IN SEVENTH CENTURY CHINA: In this WCC press release:

A press conference and a visit to a church-supported village for prisoners' children were among the highlights at the end of a 15-22 November visit to China by World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia.

[...]

we read this:

On 22 November, the WCC delegation visited the province of Shaanxi, whose long history of Christian presence dates back to 635 AD and the Tang Dynasty when Nestorianism was introduced to the area.

In Shaanxi, the delegation visited a 7th-century Nestorian tablet. Inscribed in both Chinese and Syriac, it is the oldest record of early Christian presence in the area.

There's an 1895 article on this text available from JSTOR. And here is a translation of what seems to be the same tablet. I'm not familiar with it, but this and other sources from Google indicate that it dates to 781 CE, which would make it eighth century.

UPDATE: Reader Kate Lingley (Asst. Prof., Chinese Art History, University of Hawaii at Manoa) e-mails:

As a Jewish Sinologist I was interested to see your recent blog entry on the Popular Stele of Daiqin Nestorianism, the memorial stele that commemorates the founding of the first (and by no means the last) Nestorian Christian church in China in the 630s.

I don't know if you know of the various documents in Judeo-Persian and Hebrew found at Silk Road sites in the Taklamakan desert. Here's an image of one that's in the Stein collection in London. It comes from Dandan-Uiliq aka Dandan Oilik, a Khotanese site, and while I don't know the date, Dandan-Uiliq was permanently abandoned (probably due to reduced water supply and invading Muslims) at the end of the eighth century, so it's not likely to be later than that. If I recall correctly it is supposed to be a business letter concerning the sale of inferior sheep.

The more famous document comes from the Dunhuang library. I always heard it was a page from a book of Tehillim in Hebrew, but some sources seem to imply it is a page of Selichot instead. I don't know where this page is located now, but the fact that it's not listed on the IDP page suggests that it may be part of the Pelliot collection in the Bibliotheque National de France (probably the "Pelliot divers" category, which catalog hasn't been digitized yet), since they appear to be doing their own digitization of these documents with the help of the Mellon foundation. Here's a description of the digitization project. Your French may be better than mine (it could hardly be worse) in which case you may be able to track down the document.

I'm afraid I don't have time to chase this up, but if anyone else has or finds more information on the Dunhuang Library document, please let me know.

It appears that the blogger at paleojudaica dot com address is down again. I will try to get this fixed as soon as possible, but meanwhile you can reach me at my University address, jrd4 at st-andrews dot ac dot uk.

UPDATE (26 November): Rabbi Moshe Rudner e-mails:

Just fyi, I happen to have a copy of the Hebrew page that Kate refers to and it appears pretty clearly to be Slichot (the penitence oriented prayers recited around the High Holidays). The Judeo-Persian document written in Hebrew characters is older than this page by about a century but it is, after all, a rather prosaic business document. This page of Slichot though keeps us guessing as to the character of its scribe. It appears to have been written with a now-defunct vowalization method involving dots and dashes (nekudot) above rather than below the letters and the page may have been written by someone functionally illiterate in the Hebrew language, though obviously not in the Hebrew script (a thing not uncommon among modern non-Israeli Jews as well). This can be seen for example in seeming spelling errors such as the conflating of the words "Mi El" ("who is like God") from two separate words spelled Mem Yud and then Aleph Lamed into one single word spelled Mem Yud Yud Lamed. This would seem to indicate the page as one having been written from memory or from hearing another's recitation of the prayer.

Of course (as always) other explanations are possible, such as an unwillingness to put a name of God into writing or similar explanations, but it does appear to have been a mis-write. All the same, his religious loyalty in packing his carry-on prayers into the Middle Kingdom is impressive.

A TRAGIC TRADITION OF LOOTING in the West Bank:

Ancient treasures lure modern thieves
With Israeli, Palestinian authorities busy with other matters, Bedouins rob tombs much as forefathers did

Matthew Kalman, [San Francisco] Chronicle Foreign Service

Friday, November 24, 2006

(11-24) 04:00 PST Herodion, West Bank -- At least two nights a week, Abu Moussa, the Bedouin leader of Herodion, takes his sleeping bag, tools and a small group of men and heads into the mountains to practice the trade he learned from his father and grandfather before him -- robbing the treasures of ancient tombs.

It's a tradition that goes back centuries, and these days it is considered illegal by both Israeli and Palestinian police. But as the Palestinian economy crumbles in the face of Israeli security restrictions and crippling international sanctions against the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority, ancient treasures buried in the biblical landscape have become a major source of income for many West Bank residents.

"The mountains and valleys in this area are full of caves. All the boys and men in the village search the caves to look for antiquities, and they bring whatever they find to me, because I am the mukhtar, the leader of the village, and I know about all these things," said Abu Moussa, 50, displaying a table covered with treasures, including a 3,000-year-old Canaanite earthenware jug, several oil lamps, decorated bowls, and fistfuls of ancient coins, weights and arrowheads.

[...]

A TORAH READING in ancient Ethiopic (Ge'ez) to celebrate the Ethiopian Jewish holiday of Sigd:

35,000 Ethiopian Israelis celebrate the giving of Torah
By Ayanawo Farada Sambetu (Haaretz)

Some 35,000 people celebrated the Ethiopian Jewish holiday of Sigd in Jerusalem yesterday, marking the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

Absorption Minister Zeev Boim said he believed "the holiday of Sigd can belong to the whole people of Israel, like Mimouna," referring to the Moroccan holiday at the end of Pesach.

[...]

During the ceremony, the community's religious leaders read chapters from the Torah, particularly those concerned with the giving of the Ten Commandments and portions from the prophets and Psalms. The readings were in the ancient Ethiopian language of Gez and translated into Amharic.

[...]

UPDATE (25 November): The Jerusalem Post has more on Sigd, including a couple of photos of the recent celebration.

OH, YES, AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING to American readers and all other celebrating it, wherever you are. It's a normal work day here, and a jet-lagged one for me because of the SBL meetings, so I didn't think to mention it earlier. But I'm off to my Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends in a few minutes.

IN THE MAIL -- my review copy of:

Shaul Shaked (ed.), Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity (IJS Studies in Judaica 4; Leiden: Brill, 2005)

FAKE ANCIENT ARAMAIC and other forged antiquities are being used to fund terrorism according to the Independent:

Fake Iraqi artefacts sold in UK to fund terror
By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
Published: 23 November 2006

Forged ancient works of art from Iraq are being sold in Britain to fund terrorism in the Middle East, Scotland Yard says. Police believe genuine artefacts plundered from Iraq and Afghanistan are also being traded by groups linked to al-Qaida.

The forged artefacts are being sold on internet auction sites and market stalls for up to £3,000 each.

[...]

The growing problem of fake artworks - worth an estimated £100m to £200m every year in the UK - was highlighted by the police yesterday at a private exhibition at the Albert and Victorian Museum in London.

The display contained examples of faked Middle Eastern artefacts that included a Mesopotamian cone, a Greek pendant, a clay nail with aramaic script and a Sumerian message tablet said to date from 2100BC. But police are also finding huge quantities of genuine artefacts.

[...]

APOCRYPHA WATCH: The stories of both Judith and Susannah are currently being retold onstage.

WOLF LESLAU, professor emeritus of Hebrew and Semitic linguistics at UCLA, has died at the age of 100.

Wolf Leslau, 100; UCLA professor sought out and recorded Ethiopian languages
By Jocelyn Y. Stewart, [Los Angeles] Times Staff Writer
November 23, 2006

Wolf Leslau, professor emeritus at UCLA and a leading expert on Ethiopian languages and culture, died of natural causes Nov. 18 at a nursing home in Fullerton, said his daughter, Eliane Silverman. He was 100.

Leslau learned to use a computer at 80, and the last of the nearly 50 books that he wrote was published when he was 98. He spoke 17 languages.

[...]

There's a little more information on Professor Leslau here. He had already retired by the time I came to UCLA in 1978, although I think he was still around and even teaching classes. But I don't recall ever meeting him in person.

May his memory be for a blessing.

UPDATE (20 January 2007): More here.

CONFERENCE REFLECTIONS: As promised, here are some thoughts about the sessions in which I participated at the SBL conference.

I got lots of feedback on my paper "'Scripture as Prophetically Revealed Writings." Often I didn't know the names of the questioners and my notes are not always clear on who asked what, so I won't attach names to specific questions, but here are the questions:

• Alongside the question of any altered state of consciously in the production of pseudepigraphic books, would it not also be rather convenient for the authors to have, for example, Jubilees or the Temple Scroll to advance their agenda? (I entirely agree with this and said that altered states of consciousness often converge with convenience.)
  
• What did the ancient authors mean by a "prophecy"? How would they have defined it? (My first shot at answering this was that a prophecy was a writing by a prophet, but see the next question.)
  
• Did everything a prophet wrote count as prophecy? If not, what made it a prophecy? (No, and this is a good point. A love letter or a note to the milkman would not be a prophecy just because a prophet wrote them. This raises the question of what genres count as prophecy and I need to defer this one to think about it more.)
  
• What did the ancient exegetes think about the prophetic books mentioned in the Bible but which are now lost. (I don't know. It would be very interesting to trawl through the ancient Jewish and Christian literature to see if the exegetes ever commented on such lost books and, if so, what they said.)
  
• It was pointed out that the evidence I had collected came from a wide geographic area over a long period of some centuries and this made it problematic to generalize about. (I agree, but this was just an initial attempt to collect all [or at least much] of the relevant evidence.)
  

My paper "The Hekhalot Literature and the Jewish Apocalypses" elicited the following feedback.

• It would be worthwhile to see how well the model applies to groups that existed after the time of the ancient apocalypses but before the Merkavah mystics, particularly the Manicheans. (Indeed. I don't control the Manichean literature, but perhaps I should at least have a look at the Greek Life of Mani with this in mind.)
  
• Was there an apocalyptic movement of which all the writers of the surviving ancient apocalypses considered themselves to be a part? (Perhaps there was from our [etic] perspective, but from their [emic)] perspective they often would have disagreed violently on important issues. For example, the author of the Animal Apocalypse advocates armed resistance during the persecution of Antiochus whereas the contemporary author of Daniel promotes pacifist martyrdom. It is hard to imagine that they considered themselves part of the same movement.)
  
• What can we say about the social context of the writers of the ancient apocalypses along the lines of my reconstruction of the social context of the Merkavah mystics in my book Descenders to the Chariot? (I can't remember what I said here except that we have a lot less information on the former than the latter.)
  
• Can the model be applied as far back as to the book of Ezekiel, which is the font of much apocalyptic and mystical thought in Judaism? (I don't think that this specific model would work very well with the book of Ezekiel, but Ezekiel is certainly a character who makes use of altered states of consciousness and had visions of the divine realm. My suspicion is that Ezekiel presents us with a much more realistic view of what a priest in the Jerusalem Temple was like and that Leviticus is a bowdlerized account by a movement that rejected the visionary elements of the Jerusalem cult.)
  

The session of the Pseudepigrapha Section devoted to my book generated a lot of good discussion and debate. Here are some reflections I and others shared at the time.

• One of my main objectives in writing the book was to get people talking about the methodology for identifying the provenance of pseudepigraphic books, and I am delighted that the book is getting so much attention. Ultimately it doesn't really matter if I am right or wrong about the provenance of a particular book or even about any given point of methodology. What matters is that we are now discussing these issues on a more sophisticated level.
  
• The most general criticism from the panel was that I did not go far enough and that I should have approached the problems from an even more abstract and higher-order level (e.g., dispensing with or being even more sceptical of labels like "Jewish" or "Christian"). I don't doubt that there is some truth to this and I am not surprised to hear it from this panel, which consisted mostly of OT pseudepigrapha specialists. But another important audience I am trying to reach is New Testament scholars, and the book was written for them too. I suspect some of them think (assuming they bother to read it, which I hope they do) that I've gone entirely too far as it is. Let's see how far we get with level of abstraction and label-rejection before we call for more.
  
• The quest for the viewpoint of the original authors and audiences of these works is worth pursuing for two reasons, even though such questions are out of fashion. First, our job as historians of religion is to reconstruct the reception history of these documents from their inception to the present, so the original audience is one audience (of many) that we should consider. Second, we are already handed the agenda of finding the viewpoint of the original audience and author by New Testament scholars who want to know which texts they can use as first-century "Jewish background." We specialists need to guide them on this question, because it is not going to go away.
  
• The methods I have advanced in the book need to be applied by specialists who control the language and culture of particular areas (Armenian, Coptic/Egyptian, Ethiopic. Syriac/Eastern Church, Slavonic, etc.). They may well be able to refine and correct my conclusions about specific texts.
  
• One suggestion in the discussion was that junior scholars who wish to work with Second Temple literature and Pseudepigrapha should develop a subspecialty in at least one of the more obscure church languages and cultures that transmit OT pseudepigrapha. I also underlined the importance of team work in approaching such texts. Often a single pseudepigraphon is transmitted in more than one such language and we may need several specialists collaborating in order to understand the transmission and origin of the work. I hope that on the coat tails of the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project I will be able to edit a collection of essay that gives an introduction and bibliography for each of these languages and cultures. I am discussing this with a publisher right now.

The ten-year retrospective panel of the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Section looked both at what we accomplished and where we are going. In the business meeting at the end we decided that for the next ten years (at least!) we would approach the problem of Jewish and Christian mysticism chronologically, beginning with the earliest texts and moving forward each year. In 2007 we plan to hold one session on mysticism in the ancient Near East, another on mysticism in the Hebrew Bible, and a third session consisting of reviews of books published recently by members of the group.

A few other random notes:

On Monday I also attended S20-30, Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, the theme of which was "the experience of possession." I was especially interested to hear Guy Williams's paper, "Spiritual Possession in Judaism and Paul's Relationship with Christ," in which he argued that Paul was possessed by the spirit of Jesus, a position that is close to mine -- in my "'Scripture' as Prophetically Revealed Writings" paper -- that Paul was channeling Jesus.

I also stopped for a while at S20-82, the review of DJD 17 (the Samuel manuscripts from Cave 4), on which I have already commented here. I was very sorry that Frank Moore Cross, the chief editor of the volume and my doctoral supervisor was unable to attend. I had been hoping to see him.

I also attended the business meeting of the Enoch Seminar on Monday evening and I can report that there will be another Enoch Seminar at Camaldoli in Italy in July of 2007 (and, yes, I plan to go). The topic will be Enochic Judaism and the book of Jubilees. There is also a tentative plan for a panel discussion at next year's SBL in San Diego which will be devoted to the proceedings volume of the 2005 Camaldoli Enoch Seminar on the Similitudes.

I'M HOME. More later.

BOOK PLUG: I've mentioned this before, but I received my contributor's copy yesterday at the EJCM panel session, so I'll note it again:

Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism

/April D. DeConick, editor/

A substantial introduction to the study of early Jewish and Christian mysticism, this volume examines major aspects of the mystical tradition within early Judaism and Christianity. This tradition was centered on the belief that a person directly, immediately, and before death can experience the divine, either as a rapture experience or one solicited by a particular praxis. The essays define and analyze the nature and practices of mysticism as it emerges within early Judaism and Christianity, recognizing this emergence within a variety of communal environments. Larger questions about the relationship between hermeneutics and experience, as well as the relationship between mysticism and apocalypticism are also discussed, and a substantial bibliography of the field is provided. The book is the result of ten years of work of the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism unit of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Paper, $49.95 - ISBN: 1-58983-257-4 - 480 pages - Hardback edition available from Brill

Symposium Series 11

Highly recommended.

I checked out the conference book display area on Saturday and didn't find anything I needed urgently, so this may be the only professional book I bring home this time. Perhaps just as well, since I've already filled much of my spare luggage space with science fiction paperbacks and the 2007 Dilbert calendar.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The Southern Wall is the subject of a Ynetnews Travel column. Uma Thurman is mentioned but she is not of central importance to the site.

THE SESSION ON MY BOOK produced a good and vigorous discussion of the current state of the question on the Pseudepigrapha and I was quite happy with it. Again, I'll post some notes on it and on the tenth-anniversary EJCM section when I get a chance, perhaps not until after the conference.

I depart for Scotland tomorrow afternoon. I may or may not be able to blog tomorrow. If not, look for me again on Wednesday.

UPDATE (22 November): More here.

MY TWO PAPERS went well yesterday. When I get a chance, I'll post some notes on the feedback I got. The Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Group went out to dinner last night and afterwards I stopped at the Harvard reception for a while. But I did manage to get to bed pretty early because I figured (correctly) that I would wake up early anyway -- hence the obscenely early hour of these posts.

The gym in the Grand Hyatt doesn't open until 8:00 am on Sundays, which seems pathetic to me. Most hotels have twenty-four hour access (and most of them don't charge extra for use either, unlike the Hyatt). But the session on my book is this morning and I need to get my notes on the presentations into some kind of order, so I do have something to keep me occupied. The EJCM panel discussion is this afternoon as well.

UPDATE (22 November): More here.

A NEW BOOK ON MARY MAGDALENE by Betty Conrad Adam is reviewed in the Houston Chronicle (free registration required). It is devotional rather than scholarly:

What makes Adam's book different from others is its conversational tone, roundup of past research and legends, and a focus on adapting Mary Magdalene's spirituality for today's world.

"It helps us envision our spirituality in new ways," she said. "It's a message that I believe inspires a new way of thinking about ourselves and others. I talk about it in terms of the contemporary community here."

Adam and others refer to the Gospel of Mary, as the "gospel of peace" and look to Magdalene's teachings as a way to bridge barriers in today's world.

Mary Magdalene's teachings are pretty thin on the ground, but perhaps she is referring to the Greek and Coptic Gospel of Mary, which is mentioned in the article as well. Like the Gospel of Judas, this gospel is much later than the canonical ones and tells us interesting things about the second century church, but nothing new about the time of Jesus.

ONE NIGHT WITH THE KING is given a "tepid" review by the Catholic News Service. Excerpt:

The biblical drama has impressive production value and cameos by Oscar-pedigreed actors such as Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole, but it's handicapped by an inferior screenplay by Stephan Blinn -- which makes some changes to the story -- and awkward, if earnest, direction by Michael Sajbel.

Still, the power of the tale's enduring theme of faithful witness in the face of persecution isn't completely diminished by the filmmaker's uninspired telling.

THERE'S A TENURE CONTROVERY regarding a Barnard College anthropologist who has written a controversial book on the historical relationship of Jews to Palestine:

Barnard Alumnae Opposing Tenure for Anthropologist

By GABRIELLE BIRKNER
Staff Reporter of the [New York] Sun

A group of Barnard College alumnae is attempting to stop their alma mater from giving tenure to an assistant professor who minimizes Jews' historical connection to Israel.

In her 2001 book, "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society," published by the University of Chicago, the professor of anthropology, Nadia Abu El-Haj says Israeli archaeology manipulates evidence to justify a modern Jewish state in the region.

Relying heavily on the input of anonymous archaeologists, tour guides, and tour participants, the book portrays Israeli archaeologists as ideologues who, driven by a desire to "efface Zionism's colonial dimension," have fabricated Jews' territorial claims to Israel.

I haven't seen the book, but the Sun summarizes some points from it as follows:

In "Facts on the Ground," Ms. Abu el-Haj suggests Jerusalem was destroyed not by the Romans, but by the Jews themselves due to rising class tensions among them. Yet, the 1st-century historian and scribe Josephus described in great detail the Roman siege of Jerusalem. Additionally, carvings in the Arch of Titus in Rome depict the Roman General Titus showing off menorahs and other objects looted from the Second Temple.

In another passage, Ms. Abu El-Haj relates how a tourist questions a Jerusalem tour guide's explanation that the Judean King Hezekiah saved the city from an Assyrian conquest in 701 B.C.E. The tourist refutes the statement, claiming that Hezekiah's actions actually led to the destruction of the nearby Israelite kingdom. "Although the tourist's objection would appear to undermine the guide's interpretation … this is a ludicrous claim, since the Israelite kingdom had been conquered twenty-one years earlier!" an archaeology professor at Israeli's Bar-Ilan University, Aren Maeir, wrote two years ago in a University of Chicago journal, Isis.

If this is an accurate representation of what the book says (always a big if in a newpaper article), it does seem daft.

There's an online review by Alexander Joffe in a recent issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, but it's behind a subscription wall and I can't get at it at the moment. And I see that I already noted the controversy over the book a little over a year ago.

UPDATE (27 November): More here.

UPDATE (28 November): If you were referred here to see my "daft" quote, please read what I actually said above, which is a little more cautious than was reported, and then read my comments, including in the update, in this post.

UPDATE (28 September 2007): I have now reviewed Abu El-Haj's book here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH -- More on the salvage excavation of the rubble from the Temple Mount that was removed by the Waqf:

At Mideast holy site, what is treasure?

By MATTI FRIEDMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

JERUSALEM -- Off an East Jerusalem side street, between an olive orchard and an abandoned hotel, sit a few piles of stones and dirt that are yielding important insights into Jerusalem's history.

They come from one of the world's most disputed holy places - the square in the heart of Jerusalem that is known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

The story behind the rubble includes an underground crypt, a maverick college student, a white-bearded archaeologist, thousands of relics spanning millennia and a feud between Israelis and Palestinians which is heavily shaped by ancient history.

Among finds that have emerged are a coin struck during the Jewish revolt against the Romans, arrowheads shot by Babylonian archers and by Roman siege machinery, Christian charms, a 3,300-year-old fragment of Egyptian alabaster, Bronze Age flint instruments, and - the prize discovery - the imprint of a seal possibly linked to a priestly Jewish family mentioned in the Old Testament's Book of Jeremiah.

And the finds keep coming. On a drizzly November morning, Gabriel Barkay, the veteran biblical archaeologist who runs the dig, sat in a tent near the mounds examining some newly discovered coins stamped by various Holy Land powers: the Hasmonean dynasty of Jewish kings more than 2,000 years ago, a Roman procurator around the time of Pontius Pilate, the early Christians of the Byzantine Empire, two Islamic dynasties and the British in the 20th century.

Oddly, there is no mention of the recent finding of an inscription in the rubble that mentions Flavius Silva.

Near the end of the article there is this less than construction comment from the Waqf:

For its part, the Waqf says it wasn't destroying any evidence of Jewish presence - because there isn't any.

"I have seen no evidence of a temple," said the Waqf's director, Adnan Husseini. He had heard "stories," he acknowledged, "but these are an attempt to change the situation here today, and any change would be very dangerous."

I ARRIVED IN WASHINGTON late on Thursday evening. Even though the conference technically begins only today, there was lots to do on Friday. In the morning and early afternoon I went to a seminar on "How to Study the Dead Sea Scrolls: An International Working Group on Methods and Scrolls Scholarship," chaired by Maxine Grossman of the University of Maryland. She's editing a book on this topic and a number of contributors attended. I'm doing a chapter on "counterfactual history" and you can get a general idea of what it's about from this conference paper from a couple of years ago.

In the evening I went to a session of the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins in which David Brakke of Indiana University gave the following very interesting paper:

In his recent book, _Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity_ (Harvard University Press 2006), Brakke considers the creation of Egyptian monastic identity alongside the development of demonology. Using recent theoretical discussions of race and gender to explore the Othering of these demonic forces, Brakke's insights fit well into our theme for this year.

The title for his presentation is "Shifting Strategies: Monks, Demons, and Historians."

There are two recommended reading items:

1. "The Lady Appears: Materializations of 'Woman' in Early Monastic Literature." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003): 387-402. Reprinted in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Asceticism, Gender, and Historiography, 25-39. Ed. Dale B. Martin and Patricia Cox Miller. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005.

2. "Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self." Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (2001): 501-35. A briefer and less theoretically explicit version is chapter 7 of Brakke's Demons and the Making of the Monk (Harvard University Press, 2006).

I'M OFF TO WASHINGTON D.C. for the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. I leave first thing tomorrow morning. I am presenting two papers, which I have now posted online. You can read them by clicking on the links below.

'Scripture' as Prophetically Revealed Writings
S18-71
Rethinking the Concept and Categories of 'Bible' in Antiquity
11/18/2006
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: 203B - CC

The Hekhalot Literature and the Ancient Jewish Apocalypses
S18-112
Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism
11/18/2006
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: 142 - CC

The second is a summary of an article that has just been published in full here. This is a volume that represents many years' work of the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism SBL Group and it is highly recommended.

In addition, there is a session on my book:

S19-28
Pseudepigrapha
11/19/2006
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: 150A - CC

Theme: The Pitfalls of Categorization: A Panel Discussion of James R. Davila, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? (Brill, 2005)

Andrei Orlov, Marquette University, Presiding

Pierluigi Piovanelli, University of Ottawa
In Praise of 'The Default Position,' or Reassessing the Christian Reception of the Jewish Pseudepigraphic Heritage (25 min)

Chad Day, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
"The Way Forward" or Two Steps Back? Assessing Davila's "The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha" (25 min)

Magnar Kartveit, School of Mission & Theology, Misjonshogskolen i Stavanger, Norway
The Jewish source in the Ascension of Isaiah (25 min)

John C. Reeves, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
‘A Demonstrably Jewish Text’? Reconsidering the Similitudes of Enoch (25 min)

Panelist responses
Discussion (20 min)
Audience responses
Discussion (30 min)

I don't have a formal slot in this one, but I will be there, I've seen at least early drafts of most of the papers, and I will have some comments. These will be fairly extemporaneous, so I'm not posting anything here.

I'm also listed as a panelist in the following, although given my level of involvement elsewhere, I'll try to keep pretty quiet in this one:

S19-111
Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism
11/19/2006
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: 149A - CC

Theme: Tenth Anniversary Celebration & Panel Discussion
In this session, we will celebrate the tenth anniversary of our group as well as the release of a volume of collected papers entitled Paradise Now. The panel will consider the questions: what contributions have we made over the past decade and where do we go from here? The panelists have been invited, but all are welcome to join us and contribute.

April Deconick, Illinois Wesleyan University, Presiding
Rebecca Lesses, Ithaca College, Panelist
Kevin Sullivan, Marquette University, Panelist
Charles Gieschen, Concordia Theological Seminary, Panelist
Ra'anan Boustan, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Panelist
Celia Deutsch, Barnard College, Panelist
Kelley Coblentz Bautch, St. Edward's University, Panelist
Seth Sanders, Cornell University, Panelist
Frances Flannery-Dailey, Hendrix College, Panelist
Andrei Orlov, Marquette University, Panelist
James Davila, University of St. Andrews-Scotland, Panelist
Andrea Lieber Merwin, Dickinson College, Panelist

I'll be taking my laptop and I expect to continue blogging through the conference -- as usual, as time permits. As I said, I leave early tomorrow morning. It may be two or three days before I'm back in touch.

UPDATE (22 November): My other SBL posts for this year are here, here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE (17 November 2010): Dead links now fixed!

THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE responds to complaints about the plaque in the Megiddo Gallery. This is from an article ("Oriental Institute Museum denies accusations of pro-Muslim bias") in the Chicago Maroon, a student publication:

Fred Donner, professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the Oriental Institute, said the attention surrounding the Muir article “made a mountain out of a molehill.”

“This is all a political issue for some people,” Donner said, referring to Muir’s allegations. In response to questions of historical accuracy surrounding Prophet Muhammad’s ascent to heaven, Donner pointed to the historical relevance of the story of the Jewish prophet Moses crossing the Red Sea.

In defense of the museum’s scholarship, both Donner and Emberling also noted that some parts of the disputed captions could have been made clearer to prevent such misunderstandings.

“The label should have said, ‘According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet ascended to heaven,’” Donner said.

Reflecting those sentiments, Emberling added the captions could have been improved when the exhibit was first installed a year ago.

“We may have made an error in our editorial process,” he said. “But certainly to claim that there is any propagandistic intent is very far from truth.”

The scholars maintained that Muir’s accusations are incorrect and have not affected operations at the museum.

“I think this is an overreaction by that one person,” Donner said. “But people are entitled to their overreactions.”

Read it all. I have not accused the Oriental Institute of any bias (and do not), but I think the errors in the plaque should be corrected.

THE EARLY JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM GROUP of the SBL has its tenth anniversary this year and it is profiled in this month's SBL Forum. I've been a member of the group from the beginning.

Also in the SBL Forum, Larry Hurtado has a piece on "Manuscripts and Munificence: The Centenary of the Freer Biblical Codices."

AN ANCIENT LATRINE has reportedly been discovered near Qumran, and the implications are very interesting.

Stringent religious purification proved lethal
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH (Jerusalem Post)

Strict hygienic practices of the ancient Jewish sect at Qumran near the Dead Sea, which kept Jews healthy in other times and places, are believed to be responsible for their short life expectancy in that very dry area, according to new scientific findings on their burial of feces far from their camp and use of ritual immersion.

The findings by an international research team including Americans, French and Israelis give direct evidence of the presence of the Essenes at Qumran, as described in the Dead Sea scrolls, confirm the existence of a communal latrine located at a remote distance from the camp and provide a window into the dynamic relationships between the sect's rigorous religious practices and the community's health.

[...]

University of North Carolina at Charlotte biblical scholar Prof. James Tabor suggested the investigation at a site outside the ruins of Qumran, noting instructions in two of the Dead Sea Scrolls (the "War Scroll" and the "Temple Scroll") specifically requiring latrines to be located at a significant distance "northwest of the city" and also to be "not visible from the city."

Tabor had also noted that the first century Jewish historian Josephus described very similar exotic toilet practices among the Essenes.

Analysis of the site by Israeli paleopathologist Joe Zias and soil analysis by Stephainie Harter-Lailheugue, a French parasitologist from the Centre National de la Recerche Scientifique, confirmed the area as an ancient latrine site through the presence of desiccated eggs from three distinct human-specific intestinal parasite species.

[...]

Zias and Tabor also note that the settlement's unusual latrine practices may be clues in solving some of Qumran's other archeological puzzles - in particular, questions raised by the 1,100 graves found at the site, which are almost exclusively male.

"The graveyard at Qumran is the unhealthiest group that I have ever studied in over 30 years and this is readily apparent," said Zias, who has done previous work on the Qumran burials. "For example, 2,000 years ago in Jericho 14 kilometers to the north, the chances of an adult male dying after 40 were 49 percent. But when you go to Qumran, the figure for people surviving to 40 falls to 6% - the chances of making it to 40 differ by a factor of eight!

[...]

Read it all.

The War Scroll and the Temple Scroll don't actually refer to the site of Qumran, but it appears (assuming the research is found convincing once published) that the sectarians applied the same principles in these scrolls to their own site and the placement of its latrine. I look forward to reading the article, which is due out in the next issue of Revue de Qumran.

UPDATE (15 November): James Tabor himself blogs the story with photos at the Jesus Dynasty blog. (Heads-up, Ian Werrett.)

THE SMITHSONIAN EXHIBITION of biblical manuscripts is reviewed in the Baltimore Sun:

The word of God: captured, transcribed and embellished
Smithsonian exhibit of ancient Bibles reveals fascinating works of astounding beauty
By Joe Burris
Sun Reporter
Originally published November 12, 2006

Ninth-century Vikings almost certainly did not care that the elaborately ornamented book of New Testament works that they looted came out of a tradition including the commandment "Thou shalt not steal."

Yet the Codex Aureus (Latin for Golden Book) that the men stole from a church in Kent, England, was worthy of coveting - made of purple-stained vellum pages and written in gold and silver ink. Its detailed drawings and lettering are a fusion of Roman, Byzantine, Celtic and German art.

The book was so valuable that a local earl paid a ransom in pure gold for its return.

The Codex Aureus is among the artifacts in the Smithsonian Institution exhibit In the Beginning: Bibles Before The Year 1000, which illustrates the Western world's efforts to transcribe, glorify and preserve the word of God.

[...]

By the way, I had thought that the exhibit contains only part of Codex Sinaiticus, not the whole codex (or what survives of it), which is located in four different places. Can someone tell me if that is correct and, if so, which part is included in the exhibit? Is it the 347 leaves from the British Library?

UPDATE (14 November): Tommy Wasserman (Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University, Sweden) e-mails:

You are correct, it is in four different locations (in St Petersburg, Lepizig, St Catherine's monastery and British Library). Right now David Parker in Birmingham is directing a major project to digitize the compete codex. You will find details (and sample images) here http://www.itsee.bham.ac.uk/projects/sinaiticus/index.htm

The leaves from Codex Sinaiticus on display at the exhibit in Washington is from St Catherine's monastery at Sinai, where the codex was originally discovered by Tischendorf. In 1975 when they were rebuilding the monastery, a hidden room was discovered where many new manuscript fragments were discoved, including new leaves from the Codex Sinaiticus.

A BOOK REVIEW in the Washington Post:

Judgment Day
Why Revelation remains the most incendiary chapter of the New Testament.

Reviewed by Jay Tolson
Sunday, November 12, 2006; Page BW06

A HISTORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD

How the Most Controversial Book of the Bible

Changed the Course of Western Civilization

By Jonathan Kirsch

HarperSan Francisco. 340 pp. $25.95

The question of whether religions have historically done more harm or good is one of those debates that persist well beyond their proper sophomore-year expiration date. But there is a less futile variation on the argument: What is it in specific faith traditions that can lead to dangerous interpretations?

In the five years since 9/11, much time has been devoted to identifying the elements of Islam that lend themselves to a hateful jihadist ideology. Less has been devoted to what is incendiary in the other two Abrahamic traditions: Judaism and Christianity. Jonathan Kirsch, the author of several acclaimed books on religious themes, goes some way toward remedying that deficit in this thoughtful history and analysis of the most controversial book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation.

[...]

The article also discusses some speculations on the origins of the thought world that produced the genre "apocalypse."

THE TIMBUKTU MANUSCRIPTS are in the news again:

Fighting to preserve ancient Timbuktu texts
Researchers say they reveal a written history in Africa as old as the Renaissance

By NICK TATTERSALL
Reuters News Service

TIMBUKTU, MALI — Researchers in Timbuktu are fighting to preserve tens of thousands of ancient texts which they say prove Africa had a written history at least as old as the European Renaissance.

Private and public libraries in the fabled Saharan town in Mali have already collected 150,000 brittle manuscripts, some from the 13th century, and local historians believe many more lie buried under the sand.

The texts were stashed under mud homes and in desert caves by proud Malian families whose successive generations feared they would be stolen by Moroccan invaders, European explorers and French colonialists.

[...]

Some academics say the texts will force the West to accept Africa has an intellectual history as old as its own. Others liken them to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The talk is that more than a million manuscripts may survive there. As noted before, some are in Hebrew and Greek, as well as Arabic. Note this as well, and for both posts follow the links back from there.

UPDATE: Scientific American has a longer version of this article.

THE FROM ABRAHAM TO JESUS EXHIBITION is coming to Columbus:

Holy meets history
Touring exhibit in Columbus blends biblical stories with artifacts, technology
By Colette M. Jenkins
Beacon Journal religion writer

A touring exhibit that promises to transport people back to the Holy Land as it was thousands of years ago opens Monday in Columbus.

``From Abraham to Jesus'' is a nearly 40,000-square-foot exhibit that blends biblical stories with historic artifacts and modern technology to take visitors on a walk through the birth of Judaism and Christianity.

It features some of the Dead Sea Scrolls; the ossuary, or bone box, that archaeologists believe held the remains of a son of Simon the Cyrene, who carried the cross for Jesus; a musical score produced by national recording artist Don Moen and a 5,000-square-foot bazaar.

[...]

BISHOP TOM WRIGHT is dissing neo-Gnosticism:

Bishop assails Gnostic fad that ‘Code’ boosted
By RICHARD N. OSTLING
For AP Weekly Features

Gnosticism, the religious rival that lost out to orthodox Christi-anity in ancient times, has be-come fashionable again thanks to Dan Brown’s huge-selling novel “The Da Vinci Code” and the efforts of professors like Princeton’s Elaine Pagels.

Harvard University picked Pagels to deliver its prestige-laden William Noble Lectures in theology for 2001. But this year’s Noble lecturer, scholarly Church of England Bishop N.T. Wright, assailed Gnostic chic.

He said the central issue is: “Do we or don’t we believe in a good God who made the world?”

For Wright, that’s no esoteric scholarly issue. He told the Ivy Leaguers that Gnosticism — ancient or modern — fosters spiritual elitism and political escapism, and undercuts truth and social betterment.

“Da Vinci” was popular because it “tapped into a deep desire in our culture for secret knowledge,” Wright said, and similarly, Gnostics conveyed Jesus’ supposed secret teachings to a spiritual elite.

Like “Da Vinci,” Gnosticism claimed that “Christianity as we have known it was based on a gigantic mistake” and “the church has hushed up the real Jesus,” he added.

That false history, the bishop asserted, appeals to growing numbers of Westerners who think truth cannot be known, who distrust authority, who seek private spiritual experience and who love conspiracy theories.

Analysts will doubtless debate Wright’s remarks about 21st-century Gnostic-style thinking. But his depiction of ancient Gnosticism is well-documented by the “Gospel of Judas,” a Gnostic text released last spring by National Geographic amid intense promotion.

[...]

I don't know a lot about modern neo-Gnosticism. Does the demiurgic myth (that the biblical creator god is actually an evil derivative and secondary god) actually play a large part in the doctrine of such groups? Can anyone point me to relevant websites, etc.?

UPDATE: Justin Dombrowski e-mails to point to this site,which contains, among many other things, a neo-Gnostic essay on "The Mystery of Iniquity." Excerpt:

Contemporary Gnostics for the most part agree with the fundamental insights of their ancient counterparts. Do modern Gnostics believe in the Demiurge? Do they believe in Messengers of Light? Do they regard such ideas as metaphysical truths or as mythologems hinting at more subtle and mysterious realities? The answer is that some Gnostics may believe these things more in a literal sense, while others may believe them symbolically; still others may hold a mixture of both views.

What matters is not the precise form of these teachings but their substance. And this is clear enough. It speaks of the reality and power of evil, of its fundamental presence in all of manifest existence. It declares that while we may not be able to rid the world or ourselves of evil, we may and indeed will rise above it through gnosis. And when the task of this extrication is accomplished, then we shall indeed no longer fear the noonday devil or the terror that walks by night.

The site also has a neo-Gnostic theological reflection on the 2004 tsunami. It does indeed draw on the demiurgic myth toward the end, but it doesn't sound to me as though it "erodes the basis for work to improve society." Excerpt:

Thus we are left with the eternal Gnostic realization: Only the liberating insight of Gnosis will ultimately lift us out of a reality where horrors of this kind prevail. In a Gnostic sense earthly life itself is a disaster. Like so many of the unfortunate men, women, and children who were living (or vacationing) in areas that were like Paradise and were then so cruelly deprived of their lives in the twinkling of an eye, so have we come forth once from the Fullness (Pleroma) and have been swept away by a dreadful torrent that carried us far away from the glories and beauty of our true home. Horrible as this realization strikes us, we must balance it with the afore noted recognition: There is a liberating insight, which we call Gnosis, that can reverse the process and take us back to our true dwelling place. In a very true sense, this is really all that matters. And until then, let us treat each other with compassion, let us extend such help and love as we may be able to offer. For while it is beyond our power to change this dark and violent reality, it is within our ability to shed some light on the path upon which we move toward our goal beyond this world.

Anyway, have a look and see what you think. And let me know if you find any other interesting sites.

THE OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM has been named as one of the Seven New Wonders of the World by USA Today:

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem
Posted 11/10/2006 6:00 AM ET

By Jerry Shriver, USA TODAY
Mankind's capacity for wonder is profoundly expressed in Jerusalem's Old City, which has served as a spiritual nexus for the world's three major monotheistic faiths — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — for millennia.

Our six experts chose the ancient city as one of the seven New Wonders of the World for its central place in religious history and struggles for tolerance.

[...]

The Potala Palace and Jokhang Temple: Lhasa, Tibet has also been put on the list.

MORE TEMPLE TREASURE LEGENDS -- sort of. I found this today in a bookstore in Edinburgh:

Paul Sussman, The Last Secret of the Temple (Bantam, 2005)

It's blurbed by the Independent as "The intelligent reader's answer to The Da Vinci Code."

We'll see. I normally avoid such Bible-related historical thrillers, since the historical elements are often irritatingly poorly done. But I'm keeping my eyes open right now for both scholarly and popular material that deals with the lost Temple treasures, as part of my research on the Temple treasure legends in the Massekhet Kelim, The Treatise of the Vessels, for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project. I may not get around to reading this one very soon, but I'll let you know what I think.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I also got this, which is now out in paperback:

Anne Rice, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (Arrow, 2005)

For lots more on this book, look at this post and the one immediately below it and follow the links back from there.

I SHALL BE IN EDINBURGH most of tomorrow, giving a paper at the biblical studies seminar at New College. The paper is "The Hekhalot Literature and the Ancient Jewish Apocalypses," of which I will also be presenting a shorter version at the SBL meeting in Washington D.C. in the middle of this month. Stay tuned for the short version, which I will post before I leave for D.C.

I'm busy tomorrow evening too, so blogging may be light to naught tomorrow.

UPDATE ON THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE PLAQUE: Jonathan Hirsch, the President of Chicago Friends of Israel at the University of Chicago, has gone to look at the plaque and sends the following transcription and photo:

Land of the Bible

600 BC to the Present

Three Major Religions Grew in the Southern Levant

Long after the Canaanites and the Israelites, the southern Levant (today primarily modern Israel) has continued to play an important role in the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

These artifacts from the Levant dating to the last 2,500 years reflect these religious traditions: an early jewish "bone box" or ossuary, a mosaic fragment from a church floor, and a fragment from a Dead Sea Scroll.

The golden days of Israel and Judah ended at the hands of the Babylonians with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 586 BC and subsequent mass exile of the Israelites. Although many returned to the southern Levant under the rule of the Persians (539-332 BC), they would not soon regain their autonomy. The city of Megiddo faded from prominence after 332 BC.

But the Israelite religion continued to develop. At the turn of the first millennium AD, several religious sects broke away in response to Roman rule and the local political climate. One of these lines led ultimately to the tradition of modern Jewish religion. Jesus was born into the context, and was hailed by his followers as the Messiah, son of God. Six centuries later, the Prophet Mohammed would visit Jerusalem where he would experience his Night Flight and Ascension to heaven. Today Jerusalem is the third holiest place in Islam, next to Mecca and Medinah.

(Click on the image for a larger version.)

I would say my earlier points stand. The independent Hasmonean kingdom is not mentioned and probably should have been, since one could easily take the plaque to be saying that there was no independent Jewish state in the area again until the modern period. It doesn't say this explicitly, but it lends itself to misreading along those lines.

Also, it's worth underlining that the claim that Muhammad visited Jerusalem is quite misleading, since this "visit" took place only in a vision (and this only according to a post-Qur'anic interpretation of a very enigmatic Qur'anic verse). A reader who did not know this would assume that Muhammad paid a this-worldly visit to Jerusalem by traveling there. This is not without relevance to modern political controversies about Jerusalem and the unfortunate phrasing could cause confusion.

I hope the Oriental Institute rethinks this plaque.

UPDATE (15 November): More here.

EGYPTIAN BLOGGER Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman has been arrested for his blogging -- again! -- by the Egyptian authorities. For the story of his arrest and release in 2005, go here and follow the links. For the current situation, see the Free Kareem! blog. I've also received the following e-mail from HAMSA (Hands Across the Mideast Support Alliance):

The freedom to say what you believe is a universal human right. But, as two prominent Middle Eastern bloggers discovered in the last week, freedom of expression is not always guaranteed. One blogger had his site blocked for text he posted. The other is currently in jail – and needs you help.

Mahmood Al-Yousif is know as the godfather of the blogging scene in Bahrain. A Bahraini entrepreneur, he runs a popular blog called Mahmood’s Den and serves as a judge for HAMSA’s Dream Deferred Essay Contest.

Last week, Bahrain’s Ministry of Information issued an order blocking Mahmood’s Den. They objected to his blogging about a recent scandal in Bahraini politics, and so suddenly readers in Bahrain could no longer access Mahmood’s blog. Along with a group of local activists, HAMSA launched a campaign to unblock Mahmood’s blog. Over 200 people sent emails to Bahraini officials.

A few days later – after negotiations with Mahmood – the site was unblocked.

One of the Middle Eastern bloggers who supported the campaign was Abdelkareem Soliman. Kareem, as he is also known, received international attention last year when he was kicked out of Al Azhar University in Egypt for criticizing the school on his blog.

Yesterday, Kareem was called into the prosecutors office in Alexandria, Egypt, where he lives. A lawyer from the Arabic Human Rights Network went with him. The Egyptian officials began interrogating Kareem about his blog, as well as his religious beliefs (“Do you fast on Ramadan? Do you pray? What do you think of what is happening in Darfur?”).

Kareem stood firm. He would not retract anything he wrote on his blog. So the prosecutors threw Kareem in jail, where he remains as you read this. He faces several charges including "defaming the President of Egypt" and "highlighting inappropriate aspects that harm the reputation of Egypt." His case is currently on the front page of The Daily Star, one of Egypt’s largest independent English papers.

Kareem is a soft-spoken young man. He entered the HAMSA essay contest and joined a recent human rights seminar we recently organized in Cairo. We will not abandon him. And we hope you will take a moment to speak out on his behalf.

To stay updated on the campaign, read the Free Kareem blog started by his friends. And please take one minute to sign an email/petition to Egyptian and America authorities urging Kareem’s immediate release. In less than 24 hours, over 130 people have signed.

Please add your voice. Thank you for your attention and support.

In Freedom,

Jesse Sage
HAMSA Project Director

Readers, if you get something out of PaleoJudaica and feel it makes some small contribution to your life, I would be very grateful if, in return, you would take just a minute or so to go to this site and sign the petition to release Kareem. The message will be sent to a number of Egyptian and American officials. If you don't want your name listed online, you can tick a box that keeps it off the public list. In the past, petitions like this have made a significant difference, so please do add your name and please also draw the situation and the petition to the attention of your friends.

A PLAQUE at the Oriental Institute is being challenged by Diane Muir at the History News Network as presenting revisionist history of Judaism and Palestine.

If her transcription is accurate and complete, the text of the plaque does seem to have some problems. It glosses over the independent Hasmonean state. It also asserts, oddly, that Muhammad visited Jerusalem, where he had a vision. According to Islamic tradition a passage in the Qur'an (Sura 17.1) does refer to a visionary journey of Muhammad to Jerusalem and then to heaven (the Miraj), but there is no historical claim that he ever visited Jerusalem apart from in the vision. The phrasing of the plaque is rather misleading.

Can anyone at the Oriental Institute confirm the text of the plaque?

UPDATE: More here.

ANOTHER PULSA DE-NURA CURSE is threatened:

Rabbis to curse parade organizers
By MATTHEW WAGNER (Jerusalem Post)

A Jewish invocation will be used by ultra Orthodox rabbis in Jerusalem to curse the organizers of the Gay Pride March and the police who protect them, said a spokesman for the Edah Haredit Monday.

In a ceremony known as "Pulsa D'nura" (blows of fire), rabbis of the anti-Zionist Edah Haredit rabbinic court will convene sometime before the march, which is scheduled for Friday, to conduct the kabbalistic ceremony which is believed to unleash unearthly powers against specified sinners.

[...]

It isn't a kabbalistic ceremony; it's only about a century old. For some background, see here and here. (The Philologos link seems to have rotted. Sorry.) And there are lots more PaleoJudaica posts on this ceremony. Just run the search term "pulsa" through the search engine on the right to find them.

It's interesting from a sociological perspective, but I think it's in poor taste.

AN ANCIENT GRAVEYARD in an unexpected place:

Archeologists Discover Ancient Graveyard Where Second Temple Model Once Stood
13:54 Nov 07, '06 / 16 Cheshvan 5767

(IsraelNN.com) Archaeologists working at the site of the Holyland Park building project in Jerusalem have discovered a graveyard that is over 4,000 years old.

The graveyard formerly had a model of the Second Holy Temple on top of it. The model was recently relocated to the Israel Museum.

[...]

A SURPRISE PARTY at Yeshiva University for Louis Feldman's 80th birthday. Well done!

A REPORT on the preview reception and dinner for the In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000 exhibition appears in the Washington Times.

An eclectic group of social and cultural connoisseurs gathered to celebrate what is, in a sense, a double whammy since the exhibit coincides with the 100th anniversary of the Freer Gallery of Art. "An exceptional gift of magnificent collections, a fine building and a generous endowment that was presented to the nation in 1906 by Charles Lang Freer," in the words of Julian Raby, director of both the Freer and Sackler. "When the gallery opened to the public in 1923, it was the first fine arts museum in the Smithsonian."

Freer "was no biblical scholar," Mr. Raby noted by way of explaining how a museum devoted to mainly Asian art has undertaken an exhibit devoted to biblical scholarship. "But so important was scholarship and research to him that he supported a group of scholars to produce some of the most important 20th century studies on biblical texts of the early period." Few if any biblical manuscripts in the Freer have been on view since 1978, he added. Some never have been seen in public before.

I think Bede (mentioned in the first part of the article) would be pleased to have his work displayed in such good manuscript company.

BUT HERE'S A MUCH BETTER PIECE on the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's an interview with local Rabbi David Weiner about the Seattle exhibition. He's involved in an interfaith forum on the Scrolls coming up next week.

These days "Second Temple period" is preferred over "Intertestamental period," as being less confessional. But otherwise, the article is pretty good.

NEIL ALTMAN'S NONSENSE has just been reprinted by the Toronto Star. (For those not familiar, he claims that the Dead Sea Scrolls are medieval and contain Chinese characters.) The article was originally published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last June. I commented on it then here and I posted more comments later in June here. My conclusion in the latter post applies more than ever: "Altman and his friends are making fools of a good many journalists and newspaper editors, who don't have sense enough to vet their claims independently with real specialists."

Note also this essay by Jay C. Treat.

(Heads up, Joseph I. Lauer.)