AMY-JILL LEVINE'S NEW BOOK is reviewed in the Vanderbilt News Service:

A prescription for Jewish-Christian relations; "The Misunderstood Jew" is Amy Jill Levine's new book 12-18-2006

Amy-Jill Levine recalls twice being approached by “nice, silver-haired Protestant women” who had never met a Jewish person. They wanted to know where she had had her horns removed.

“They were both surprised and relieved to know that Jews don’t have horns,” Levine said.

As a Jewish expert on Jesus and the New Testament, the Vanderbilt professor has also experienced a neo-Nazi interrupting her lecture to protest the decidedly non-radical concept that Jesus was Jewish. Another time a student from Kenya was standoffish; it turned out that in the student’s native language the word “Jew” meant “someone who deceives or betrays.”

In her new book The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Levine painstakingly illustrates the wasted effort that has gone into obscuring, distorting, explaining away or ignoring the simple fact that Jesus was a practicing Jew.

[...]

UPDATE ON THE BOG PSALTER AND ITS CONSERVATION:

How a manuscript found in an Irish peat bog was saved

Restorers are hoping to separate the pages of the ninth-century psalter and recover some of the ancient text

By Martin Bailey | Posted 18 December 2006 (The Art Newspaper)

LONDON. An astonishing discovery in an Irish bog is posing an unusual conservation challenge. A chance find by a peat cutter last summer in County Tipperary, southern Ireland, turned out to be a psalter, which has been dated to around 800 AD. The discovery has been described as the Irish equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

National Museum of Ireland conservator Rolly Read and his team are now stabilising the compacted vellum mass. The difficult issue is how to separate the pages, preserving as much as possible of the ancient text.

[...]

The first stage of the work, which has almost been completed, is a full investigation of the book in its excavated condition. This has involved an analysis of the binding and book structure, photography, magnetic resonance imaging, multi spectral imaging, analysis of vellum deterioration and an investigation of pollen samples.

Work is about to start on the second stage, which will involve the delicate separation of the pages and the process of drying out the vellum. Sadly, the vellum losses mean that only a fairly small part of the text of the Psalms remains, but it should be enough to enable scholars to see how the book has been written, decorated and bound.

[...]

The article has lots more interesting details, such as the conclusion that the codex originally contained the whole book of Psalms.

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BUSH at the White House Hanukkah reception are here.

PETER WILLIAMS, New Testament textual critic, Syriacologist, and blogger at Evangelical Textual Criticism, is leaving his post as Senior Lecturer in NT at Aberdeen University to become the new Director/Warden of Tyndale House in Cambridge. This according to Justin Taylor at the Between Two Worlds blog (via Michael Pahl at the stuff of earth) and confirmed by a Tyndale House announcement posted by Ardel Caneday on the Biblia Theologica blog. Best wishes and congratulations to Pete, but we'll be very sorry to see him leave Scotland.

WELCOME TO C. BRIAN ROSE, the new president of the Archaeological Institute of America, and kudos to Jane Waldbaum for her years of service in the office.

Also in the latest issue (January-February 2007) of Archaeology Magazine, there's a list of the top ten discoveries of 2006. The Irish bog Psalms manuscript comes in at number 4.

KING DAVID IN THE DOCK:

King David on trial at university event
By Chris Emery
[Baltimore] sun reporter
Originally published December 18, 2006

King David, the second monarch of the Israelites and a hero of the Bible, was defiant during his trial in a Northwest Baltimore courtroom. Wearing a golden crown and facing charges of adultery, murder and coveting another man's wife, he maintained his innocence on all counts.

"I was at my palace when he was killed," said David - being portrayed by Daniel Kirsch, a biblical scholar - when asked by the prosecuting attorney if he murdered the husband of a woman with whom he had had an affair. "I did not lay a glove on him, and if I had, it would not fit."

[...]

I'm not sure what the glove is all about, but this reaction is most uncharacteristic of the biblical David, who confessed immediately when confronted by the prophet Nathan (2 Samuel 12 [RSV]):

7: Nathan said to David, "You are the man. Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, `I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul;
8: and I gave you your master's house, and your master's wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if this were too little, I would add to you as much more.
9: Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have smitten Uri'ah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.
10: Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uri'ah the Hittite to be your wife.'
11: Thus says the LORD, `Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun.
12: For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.'"
13: David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD."

UPDATE: Reader Joshua Waxman e-mails:

the glove reference is an OJ Simpson reference.
"If the glove don't fit, you must acquit"

UPDATE (22 December): Reader Gary Greenberg e-mails:

Also, David was the third king of the Israelites, not the second. Eshbaal, son of Saul, was the second king of the Israelite

True. The reference is 2 Samuel 2:10 ("Ish-bosheth," "Man of Shame," is probably an unfriendly bowdlerization of "Esh-baal," "Man of Baal").

Also, Seth Sanders e-mails:

As for David, the full narrative context of the II Sam 12 story suggests he would be as shrewd as Kirsch implies--after all, it is only after Nathan drew him into a brilliant poetic and legal trap, and then made an elaborate pronouncement, in the voice of the Lord himself, that David had betrayed the divine trust and would be punished, that David admitted guilt. Indeed, it is only after the Lord proclaims that David has been caught, is guilty, and will incur terrible consequences that David even confesses--note well, not explicitly to the crime itself, but only to having "sinned against the Lord" (David's centire confession is only two words in Hebrew). Even here, one could consider it more an attempt to gain forgiveness (which is immediately, though only partly, granted) than a sincere apology. David's strange act of fasting only before his son's death, could be read as a totally pragmatic attempt to escape the consequences of his actions, followed as it is by no show of remorse once his pragmatic gambit fails, upon the boy's death.

Perhaps the real anachronism here is the idea that a formal human institution like a court, rather than a prophet deploying the full arsenal of Israelite poetics and divine justice, could hold the king responsible for his actions. Anyway, fascinating stuff!

THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS occupies the numbers 1 and 4 spots in National Geographic News's list of top ten stories for 2006. The thesis of the number one story is now contested. And, unfortunely, a Noah's Ark story is also in the list.

(Heads up, reader G.M. Grena.)

UPDATE (22 December): Link to story now corrected.

QUMRANET is a startup firm backing a new Linux kernel:

New virtualization system beats Xen to Linux kernel

By Matthew Broersma, TechWorld, 12/14/06 (LinuxWorld)

A relatively obscure virtualization system has leapfrogged better-known rivals to make its way into an upcoming Linux kernel.

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) has been accepted by kernel gurus such as Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton for inclusion in Version 2.6.20 of the Linux kernel, developers said earlier this week. The system consists of a loadable kernel module and a user component, and is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Its development is backed by Qumranet, an Israel-based start-up with finance from Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners, which is still in stealth mode. Qumranet is named after Qumran, an ancient settlement near the Dead Sea best known as being the closest to the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

[...]

THE INK AND BLOOD EXHIBITION is coming to Idaho. I've noted this before, but here's another brief article:

Dead Sea Scrolls Remnants To Show at Museum of Idaho
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) - Surviving fragments of The Dead Sea Scrolls will appear alongside some of the oldest bibles and religious texts preserved by history at the Museum of Idaho.

Museum officials will announce details of the exhibit on Tuesday.

The exhibit will come to Idaho Falls in February.

It's titled Ink and Blood -- Dead Sea Scrolls to the King James Bible.

[...]

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Jerusalem Engineer: Temple Mount Ramp May Collapse
13:30 Dec 15, '06 / 24 Kislev 5767

(IsraelNN.com) A Jerusalem city engineer warned this week that the ramp leading to the main tourist entrance of the Temple Mount is in danger of total collapse.

[...]

UPDATE ON THE MONASTERY OF THE SYRIANS (Deir Al-Surian) in Egypt: I noted a piece on this monastery and its important library last May. Now Jill Kamil has more in Al-Ahram:

Troves of scholarship
For 1,500 years, Deir Al-Surian has had a working library. Active steps are now being taken to conserve this rich heritage, says Jill Kamil

The Coptic monastery known as Deir Al-Surian, or the Monastery of the Syrians, contains more than 3,000 books as well as a vast number of texts in Syriac, Aramaic (the language of Christ), Coptic, Arabic and Ethiopic. They date upwards from the fifth century and today, as a result of the revival in Coptic monasticism in recent years, a new generation of educated monks are anxious to safeguard this heritage. Both Syrian and Coptic monks are engaged in their conservation, as well as restoration of the monastery itself.

Collaborating with them on what is known as the Deir Al-Surian Library Project is the Levantine Foundation. The aim is twofold: to salvage old manuscripts which, after surviving a century and a half in a living community, are in danger of being lost, and to conserve the remaining literary inheritance of more than 1,000 Syriac manuscripts for future generations.

The project is moving ahead and members of the conservation team, with the help of volunteers and on a shoe-string budget, are surveying, restoring, cataloguing and storing the Syriac texts in a suitable environment. A digital photographic record of each manuscript will eventually be made to facilitate access for scholars, and appropriate storage for the manuscripts and facilities for visiting scholars is also planned.

[...]

There follows an interesting summary history of the monastery.

Two thoughts. I hope that the digital record of the manuscripts will make its way online in due course. And, as always, I hope that study of these manuscripts will uncover new copies of known and unknow Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Our project is probably too far advanced to take account of such finds, but future More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha projects will be able to include them.

THE IN THE BEGINNING: BIBLES BEFORE THE YEAR 1000 EXIBITION is reviewed by Rebecca Cursey in National Review Online.

A NORWEGIAN PH.D. THESIS ON JOSEPHUS is noted by Torrey Seland on the Philo of Alexandria blog.

ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES -- not such a bad guy either?

This must be historical revisionism week. First Herod the Great, and now Antiochus:

Antiochus' decrees - a figment of Hasmonean propaganda
By Ofri Ilani (Haaretz)

Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-163 BC), ruler of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, was known as an eccentric king. He spent his childhood as a hostage in Rome and ascended to the throne only due to the surprising death of his father and murder of his brother.

When he inherited the kingdom it was already in decline. However, this does not explain the moves that made him infamous to this day - the brutal edicts he issued against the Jews in 167 B.C., forbidding them to practice their religion.

"The reason for Antiochus' oppression of the Jewish faith, attack on the Temple and prohibition of the Torah precepts is not explained by the existing historic sources," says Dr. Steven Weitzman, a lecturer of Judaism in the University of Indiana and the author of Surviving Sacrilege: Cultural Persistence in Jewish Antiquity.

Weitzman analyzes the description of the edicts in the Hanukkah tale, and concludes that the story was concocted by the Hasmonean kings as propaganda intended to legitimize their precarious rule. The Hasmoneans used literary tales dating back to ancient Eastern kingdoms as the basis for their story of Antiochus, he says.

[...]

In a recent essay in the Journal of Biblical Literature Weitzman says these explanations are based an unfounded speculations. He suggests checking what purpose the story about Antiochus' edicts was meant to achieve, and how it served the interests of those who wrote it - the supporters of the Hasmonean kings.

"The Maccabees have been considered heroes for so long, that it is hard to imagine that in their time, their rule was extremely controversial. They and their descendants, the Hasmonean dynasty, presented themselves as high priests, but did not belong to a family that held that position for a long time. Neither did they belong to the House of David dynasty, which was supposed to produce kings. Therefore many Jews did not recognize the Hasmoneans as legitimate rulers."

"The story of Antiochus' edicts is part of the effort to justify the Maccabee's rule. This is why they described themselves as protectors of the Jewish tradition, a tactic which many rulers and conquerors in the ancient East used to justify usurping power," he says.

[...]

You can download the JBL article from this page. It's in JBL 123.2, Summer 2004. This is a large file that contains a PDF version of the whole issue.

I haven't read the article and don't have time to right now, so I won't comment, except to say that I'm skeptical. Here's one response noted in the Haaretz article:

Weitzman's position is far from acceptable to many researchers of the Second Temple era. Professor Joshua Efron, a senior historian of the Hasmonean period, believes the Maccabean revolt and ensuing rule were accepted by the majority of the nation.

"The Maccabees were undoubtedly widely supported," says Efron. "Otherwise they would not have been able to conduct guerilla wars as they did. A minority cannot rebel and wage such war without popular support."

Efron has no difficulty explaining Antiochus' edicts. "Indeed, this was not customary Hellenistic kings' behavior, but some believe the initiative to issue the edicts did not come from Antiochus but from the Hellenist Jews, who wished to amend the Jewish religion," he says.

It's interesting to note that the sixth century chronographer John Malalas has an account of the Maccabean revolt in his Chronicle (8.22-23) which is arguably based on Seleucid sources and gives a somewhat more positive picture of Antiochus. But it would not support Weitzman's theory that the persecution was just Hasmonean propaganda.

We plan to include Malalas' account in the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project (as "8 Maccabees"), although we don't yet have an editor for it.

(Heads-up, Joseph I. Lauer.)

HAPPY HANUKKAH to all those celebrating. It begins this evening at sundown.

ST. PAUL'S SARCOPHAGUS (if that is indeed what it is) is discussed at the Bible Places blog.

HEROD THE GREAT -- not such a bad guy after all?

Historians, Fans Defend the 'Real' King Herod
By Nicole Neroulias
Religion News Service


He ruled over the ancient Jews for 37 years, and when it comes to bad publicity, King Herod has reigned supreme ever since.

Annually vilified in Christmas pageants as the tyrant responsible for the slaughter of Bethlehem's baby boys and for chasing Mary, Joseph and Jesus into Egypt, Herod the Great should receive more balanced treatment, some historians and academics argue.

Like most biblical villains -- Judas, Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, take your pick -- Herod has simply gotten a bad rap, some say.

For example, historians say Herod probably never ordered the Massacre of the Innocents that Christians commemorate in late December.

[...]

True, but, as the article notes later on, the deed would have been entirely in character.

The article is quite right that Herod accomplished some remarkable things during his reign, including the rebuilding of the Second Temple. But such information as we have about him (and to be fair, most of it comes from Josephus who is not always to be trusted) indicates that he was also murderously ruthless and was probably not in the best of mental health, especially later in his life.

PIERLUIGI PIOVANELLI is guest-blogging at Apocryphicity, with a post entitled "Gospel of Judas opens old wounds." He comments on recent publications and has redactional notes on the differences between the English and French versions of some of them and the scholarly conflicts those differences reflect.

JEWISH STUDIES, AN INTERNET JOURNAL has just published another article (vol. 5):

Ronit Shoshany, "Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai in the Cave and Elijah in the Wilderness: A Comparison between Talmudic and Biblical Narratives"

Abstract

Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai is described in talmudic and midrashic sources, for the most part, as a righteous scholar and wonder-worker. The Babylonian version of the cave narrative (Shabbat 33b–34a), however, offers a more critical portrayal. This paper presents an analysis of the talmudic cave narrative and compares it with the Elijah biblical narrative in I Kings 19. There the prophet behaves like a zealot, abandoning his community and entering the wilderness due to his disappointment with human nature. Despite finding some individuals who are faithful to God, Elijah remains critical of his entire people. The central argument of this paper is that the Babylonian redactor fashioned the cave narrative as an analogy to the biblical narrative, with changes appropriate to the different time period and plot.

You can download it in PDF or Word format here.

UPDATE ON PAUL'S TOMB:

Vatican may open St Paul's tomb

By Philip Pullella (The Scotsman)

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican said on Monday it was studying the possibility of opening a thick marble sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the 1st century apostle St Paul to study its contents.

The prospect was raised at a news conference at which Vatican officials unveiled the results of an archaeological dig which has made part of the sarcophagus in Rome's Basilica of St Paul's Outside the Walls visible to pilgrims.

"We tried to X-ray it to see what was inside but the stone was too thick," said Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, archpriest of the basilica on Rome's outskirts.

[...]

Wouldn't it be nice if it turns out that copies of his letters to the churches were buried with him in an airtight container?

(Via Archaeologica News.)

THE JAILED EGYPTIAN BLOGGER'S PLIGHT is covered by TCS Daily:

Jailed for a Blogpost
By Dalia Ziada & Jese Sage : BIO| 11 Dec 2006

In a cramped jail cell in Alexandria, Egypt, sits a soft-spoken 22-year-old student. Kareem Amer was remanded to over a month in prison for allegedly "defaming the President of Egypt" and "highlighting inappropriate aspects that harm the reputation of Egypt." Where did Amer commit these supposed felonies? On his weblog.

If the Alexandria prosecutors' standards of censorship were applied in the US, thousands of Americans would be behind bars. The Egyptian authorities' decision to jail an obscure student for his blogposts reveals a larger struggle for free speech playing out between dissident bloggers and state prosecutors across the Middle East.

[...]

"THE GOSPEL TRUTH: Why some old books are stirring up a new debate about the meaning of Jesus" is a long, thoughtful article in U.S. News & World Report on ancient Gnosticism and its modern defenders and opponents. Worth reading in full. I excerpt the conclusion:

Theological comfort zone. But can there really be any reconciliation of those who believe that salvation comes from the outside, through the redemptive act of a divine savior, with those who believe that it comes through self-knowledge? Such a difference, Johnson, Wright, and other traditionalists argue, cannot be explained away by scholars like Pagels as merely politically motivated differences. The distinctions reflect profound theological and anthropological convictions about human nature and its relation to the divine.

The core Christian teaching is wrong, Wright insists, if the Gnostics are right. "In other words," he says, "you are not the spark of light; you are part of the problem. And if you look deep within your heart, and you are true to what's deep within your heart, then you will actually mislead yourself and others that you drag down with you."

The Gnostic perspective is unlikely to wither even under such forceful attacks. Its defenders, past and present, inevitably intellectuals like those second-century, Greek-speaking eggheads, are always ready with a quick "Yes, but." "This is an exciting time to be a scholar," says Marvin Meyer. "There are now so many new approaches and possibilities and ways of putting things together that they allow people to find out where their theological comfort zone is." The Gnostic claim that the truth lies within fuels an argument so deep and old-and indeed so fundamental to who we think we are-that it is hardly surprising that it finds expression in our contemporary culture wars. And unlikely that it will cease doing so in the culture wars to come.

For a related post, see here.

DONNY GEORGE has been hired as a visiting professor in the United States:

Stony Brook Hires Baghdad Museum Director

Donny George, who directed the National Museum in Baghdad and became a vocal advocate for protecting Iraqi antiquities before leaving his post recently and fleeing to Syria, has been hired as a visiting professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, the university announced. Mr. George became the international face of the plight of ancient artifacts in Iraq, many of which have been stolen or destroyed since the war began in 2003, but left his job in August after telling colleagues that he felt threatened. Mr. George, a Christian, was a midlevel official in the Baath Party under Saddam Hussein’s government and could have been the target of a revenge campaign by conservative Shiites, American officials said at the time. Beginning next semester, Mr. George will teach two courses, “The Archaeology of Mesopotamia” and “The Cultural Heritage of Iraq.” He will also conduct archaeological research. His appointment was sponsored by Stony Brook and the Scholar Rescue Fund, a program run by the Institute of International Education to provide refuge to persecuted scholars. RANDY KENNEDY

(From the New York Times via the Agade list.)

A CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS to Biblical Studies Carnival XIII has gone out at Tyler Williams's Codex blog. This edition will include a Best of 2006 section.

"THE LOST GOSPELS," a documentary on the apocryphal gospels, was shown on BBC 4 last week. I didn't see it, but the comments I've heard on it have not been positive. And the Apocryphicity blog links to a very negative review.

UPDATE ON THE ARRESTED EGYPTIAN BLOGGER: His story has been covered by CNS News and MEMRI. And don't forget the Free Kareem! blog. No real news; he's still under arrest. I wish the case were getting more attention from the big media organizations.

THE FROM ABRAHAM TO JESUS EXHIBITION has come to Nashville.

PETER KIRBY has a podcast on "The Week in Early Writings" in which he reads aloud selected blog posts (including one from PaleoJudaica). He's soliciting feedback on the project, so drop him a note if you have any.

FOR MANY MORE PHOTOS of the "Church of the Ark," go here.

THE BIBLES BEFORE THE YEAR 1000 EXHIBITION is reviewed again, this time in the Washington Times.

UPDATE: The International Herald Tribune has a much longer and more detailed review. Excerpt:

A fragmentary scroll found in a cave at Khirbet Qumran ("The Qumran Ruins" in Arabic) on the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea preserves a few lines from Isaiah copied before 73 B.C. Many similar fragments surfaced at Qumran, making the 1947 find by Arab shepherds a landmark in the history of Hebrew manuscripts.

The other huge discovery made half a century earlier was that of manuscripts in the Genizah (store room) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue dating from 882 A.D. at Fustat, the early Islamic city near Cairo. There they lay, because in Jewish law, flawed manuscripts must be set aside. These included fragments of vellum scrolls with lines from the Genesis copied in the 5th or 6th century or perhaps later.

A series of fascinating revelations came with the pages of a manuscript of which the vellum pages had been washed out to be used again. The earlier text, still legible, retains a literal translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek made by Aquila around 125 A.D. A fragment in a 6th-century hand, on loan from Cambridge University Library, illustrates the continued prevalence of Greek as a cultural language in some Jewish circles at a time when Syriac (the modern version of Aramaic), had long been the spoken language across the Semitic Near East.

Written over Aquila's half-washed translations, the later text reproduces Hebrew poetry by Yannai, a Near Eastern writer who composed one poem for every weekly portion of the Torah read in the synagogue. Few of his poems were known prior to the opening up of the Genizah. Hundreds have now been recorded.

As usual, there seems to be a glitch or two:

The earliest complete Christian Bibles, all in Greek, date from the 4th and 5th centuries. A fourth-century volume, possibly copied in Caeserea, Palestine, is on loan from the monastery of Saint Catherine in Mount Sinai.

Actually only part of this manuscript (the Codex Sinaiticus) is in the exhibition.

And I'm not sure about the following:

Not least among its treasures, the earliest near-complete dated manuscript of the Bible copied in 929 A.D. is believed to have also come from the Genizah. A page decorated with a scrolling pattern and an arcade with alternate triangular and round arches symbolizing the Temple Ark bears striking analogies to Koranic illumination in Syria.

This makes it sound as though there's a "near complete" copy of the Hebrew Bible dated to 929 on exhibit. I've not heard of such a manuscript coming from the Cairo Geniza and I doubt very much that this is correct; the Cairo Geniza produced fragments of codices and scrolls, not complete or even near-complete manuscripts. Can someone give us the story on this manuscript?

Also, I just noticed the following symposium, which is being co-chaired by one of my History-Department St. Andrews colleagues:

The Old Testament in Byzantium

Symposiarchs: Professors Paul Magdalino (University of St. Andrews and Koç University, Istanbul) and Robert Nelson (Yale University).
Venue: The Meyer Auditorium, the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Dates: December 1–3, 2006

This symposium, designed to complement an exhibition of early Bible manuscripts at the Sackler Gallery of Art, examines the use of the Greek Old Testament as text, social practice and cultural experience in the Byzantine Empire. Not only are reminiscences of the Old Testament ubiquitous in Byzantine literature and art, but Byzantines revered and identified with Old Testament role models. The phenomenon has never received systematic investigation, despite the fact that this was the part of its tradition that Byzantium shared most widely with other cultures – not only its Christian neighbors, but Judaism and Islam.

The program and abstracts are also available via the link.

THE APOSTLE PAUL'S TOMB?

Vatican archaeologists find tomb believed to be that of Apostle Paul
Updated 12/6/2006 5:04 PM ET

ROME (AP) — Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul that had been buried beneath Rome's second largest basilica.

The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least A.D. 390, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and was completed last month, the project's head said this week.

"Our objective was to bring the remains of the tomb back to light for devotional reasons, so that it could be venerated and be visible," said Giorgio Filippi, the Vatican archaeologist who headed the project at St. Paul Outside the Walls basilica.

The interior of the sarcophagus has not yet been explored, but Filippi didn't rule out the possibility of doing so in the future.

[...]

There's nothing about the size of the sarcophagus being unusual, so it appears he wasn't a midget after all.

(Via Archaeologica News.)

MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE UPDATE: From the Jewish Journal of greater L.A.:

Fate of Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance Rests With Israeli High Court

Israel's highest judicial and executive authorities both have weighed in on the protracted dispute surrounding construction of a $200 million Center of Human Dignity-Museum of Tolerance in the heart of Jerusalem. The ambitious Simon Wiesenthal Center project, designed by famed Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry, has been stalled since February, when the Israeli Supreme Court issued an injunction halting any construction work. The court acted on a petition by two Palestinian groups, which asserted that the planned museum would sit atop an ancient and sacred Muslim cemetery.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center's founding dean, and his lawyers in Jerusalem have argued that the site has been used as a parking lot and underground garage for decades and that Islamic courts had ruled that the onetime cemetery had thus lost its sacred character.

Hier said that he had offered a number of compromises to resolve the dispute, but that the Muslim plaintiffs were stalling and "trying to run out the clock."

Attorney Durham Saif, representing the Palestinian side, said that in its most recent hearing in October, the court told the Wiesenthal Center to submit a redesign of the museum, so that construction would not damage the cemetery.

The next court hearing is scheduled Jan. 3, but in the meantime, Hier said, the delay has added more than $1 million to the cost of the project and has slowed down fundraising in the United States.

[...]

BENYAMIM TSEDAKA is speaking on (and for) the Samaritans in Savannah this Sunday:

Samaritan shares story of ancient culture
Coastal Empire | Local News (Savannah Morning News)
Dana Clark Felty | Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 12:30 am

Savannah may boast thousands of Biblical "Good Samaritans."

But an ethnic Samaritan, a descendant of the ancient community of Samaria, will be speaking at a downtown synagogue Sunday.

Benyamim "Benny" Tsedaka, an elder of the Israeli Samaritans, will make a presentation on the history of the culture, from the height of their population - about 1.5 million between the 4th and 5th centuries - to the present day.

Samaritans number about 700 today, with most living in just two communities: Kiryat Luza in the West Bank, and in the city of Holon in Israel.

The public is invited to attend the presentation Sunday at Temple Mickve Israel. Reservations are required by noon today to attend a luncheon at 12:15 p.m. Sunday but are not required to hear the speaker at 1:15 p.m.

[...]

I have more on Mr. Tsedaka here, here, and here.

METATRON, ALIEN ABDUCTOR? This article in UFO Digest critiques a couple of surveys done on alien abductions. This paragraph in it surfaced in one of my Google News searches:

The control word, TRONDANT, originally thought to be an arbitrary, made-up word, was in fact a real word. The word “Trondant” is a title for the angel Metatron, or Sefer Ha-Heshek. (By the way, the Metatron stories and their connection to possible ancient, alien abductions and contacts, is an interesting topic in itself. But that’s another story.) ...

I dare say.

THE BOOK OF 2 ENOCH is cited in a horoscope at Artvoice:

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In the ancient Hebrew text known as the Second Book of Enoch, the author describes his trip through the ten heavens and a meeting with God. He’s surprised to find that hell is here, located in the northern regions of the third heaven. Why is this relevant to you? Because I believe it might help you understand an apparent anomaly that will soon appear. While you’ll be having expansive adventures in circumstances that resemble paradise, there’ll also be a diabolical area nestled right in the midst of the beauty. It won’t be a big deal or terrible annoyance as long as you recognize it early and plot a course around it.

Arieses, you are warned!

(2 Enoch, of course, is preserved in Old Church Slavonic, not Hebrew.)

PATRISTICS CARNIVAL #1 has been posted at hyperekperisou by Phil S. It links to lots of posts of tangential relevance to ancient Judaism.

ARCHAEOLOGIST DAVID USSISHKIN replies to El-Haj at the Solomonia blog. See especially point #5, which clarifies the use of the bulldozer.

EXCAVATORS OF THE LOST CHURCH:

'Church of the Ark' found on West Bank

By Harry de Quetteville in Shiloh (The Daily Telegraph)
Last Updated: 1:40am GMT 04/12/2006

Archaeologists claimed yesterday to have uncovered one of the world's first churches, built on a site believed to have once housed the Ark of the Covenant.

The site, emerging from the soil in a few acres in the hills of the Israeli occupied West Bank, is richly decorated with brightly coloured mosaics and inscriptions referring to Jesus Christ.

According to the team, led by Yitzhak Magen and Yevgeny Aharonovitch, the church dates to the late 4th century, making it one of Christianity's first formal places of worship.

"I can't say for sure at the moment that it's the very first church," said Mr Aharonovitch, 38, as he oversaw a team carrying out the final excavations before winter yesterday. "But it's certainly one of the first." He said the site contained an extremely unusual inscription which referred to itself, Shiloh, by name.

[...]

And this almost has the ring of an Indiana Jones movie:

The team at Shiloh is considering whether to dig under the beautiful mosaics that they have uncovered, in order to find traces of the Ark. "We have to decide whether to fix the mosaics here or take them to a museum," said Mr Aharonovitch.

Jewish residents in the modern settlement of Shiloh, which sits on a hill amidst Palestinian villages, want the team to keep digging.

David Rubin, a former mayor of Shiloh, said: "We believe that if they continue to dig they'll reach back to the time of the Tabernacle," referring to the portable place of worship where the Israelites housed the Ark.

I suspect the issue is whether to move the mosaics to see if there's an earlier (pre-exilic?) shrine there. The location of sacred spots tends to be very conservative and not apt to move even if the local religion changes, so it's not an unreasonable to look for an earlier sanctuary at the same spot. Whether "traces of the Ark" are likely to be found is quite another matter and the formulation is a little sensationalistic. I'll believe it when I see it.

UPDATE (6 December): Reader Menachem Brody e-mails:

There is no question- walls and entrance to a monumental building from the time of the Second Temple are clearly visible to the West and to the North of the excavated mosaic.

Buildings from the time of the Judges are found on the Tel itself, as well as a very likely location for the site of the Tabernacle.

No need to look for the Ark- as well documented, was lost to the Philistines at the battle of Even HaEzer, and was returned to Jerusalem by David...

UPDATE (9 December): For more photos of the excavation, see here.

STUDIA PHILONICA ANNUAL 2006 is out, and Torrey Seland has the table of contents over at the Philo of Alexandria blog.

JUDAS MAY NOT HAVE BEEN A GOOD GUY in the Gospel of Judas after all:

Judas no hero, scholars say
Last Updated: Monday, December 4, 2006 | 9:43 AM ET
CBC News

Some scholars are refuting an interpretation of a 1,700-year-old document claiming to prove that Judas was a hero and not a villain.

Craig Evans, a professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia, was part of the team that unveiled the Gospel of Judas last spring.

"The big headline was in April that the text was discovered," Evans said.

"The second big headline is right now: oops, maybe we misinterpreted it and we need to rethink it."

[...]

This, of course, is old news to regular readers of PaleoJudaica, where I reported in early October that Professor Louis Painchaud was challenging the positive interpretation of Judas in the Gospel of Judas in a paper he presented at the Ottawa Workshop on Christian Apocrypha. Craig Evans was at the workshop too, and it looks as though he found Painchaud's challenge persuasive. The article reports, however, that Elaine Pagels remains unconvinced.

BRIEF REVIEWS of Geza Vermes's book, The Nativity: History and Legend, have appeared in the Guardian and the Independent.

LARA CROFT - Antiquities looter. Well, yeah.

(Also via Explorator 9.31-32.)

PETER KIRBY could use some help with his Open Scrolls Project. I've noted the project before, but he has recently mentioned it again on his Christian Origins blog and e-mailed me about it, so I'm pointing it out again. If you have the time, the expertise, and the inclination, give him a hand.

"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.