"THINK LIKE A FORGER":

Probing Question: How can you spot a forgery?
Thursday, February 1, 2007

By Lisa Duchene
Research Penn State

History is checkered with stories of fakes -- and people duped into believing they were the real thing.

Even an artist as great as Michelangelo was not above being accused of forgery. As the story goes, in 1496 the sculptor created a sleeping cupid figure, treated it to appear ancient, then sold it as such to a cardinal who -- upon learning of the fraud -- demanded a refund. The mystery over the still-lost cupid is credited with drawing attention for the first time to Michelangelo's sculpting work.

So how do you spot a forgery?

Think like a forger, says Baruch Halpern, a Penn State professor of ancient history, classics and religious studies whose class "The Art and Science of Forgery" teaches students to do just that.

"If you don't think like a forger, you're going to get scammed yourself," said Halpern.

[...]

Sounds like an interesting and timely class.

REFRESHING THE SAMARITAN GENE POOL:

Samaritans look further afield to find their future

* The last of an ancient sect have turned to eastern Europe to safeguard their survival, reports Martin Chulov from Jerusalem
* February 03, 2007 (The Australian)

YAIR Cohen is one of the last of the Holy Land's smallest sect, and does not want to let the bloodline die with him.
Facing extinction on the one hand, or grave genetic risks on the other, he did what perhaps no other Samaritan has done in 3000 years - turned a long way from home to find a bride.

Four years ago, Cohen, now 45, returned to Mount Gerizim near the West Bank city of Nablus with a blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned 18-year-old Ukrainian woman. Like any budding groom, he was nervous as he took her to meet his parents.

But Cohen had an extra dose of the jitters. His father's blessing would mean much more than his happiness. It would also be an endorsement of a new and critical way out of the Samaritans' chromosomal decay.

[...]

The union did receive the sought-for blessing, but so far has not resulted in any children. I wish them well.

TU B'SHEVAT, the "New Year for Trees," began this evening at sundown. It's an ancient, but postbiblical festival. More here and here.

THE JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE has posted a new issue (125.4, winter 2006) on the SBL website. Unfortunately, you have to be an SBL member to access this issue, although back issues are available at JSTOR.

The articles in JBL 125.4 include:
Bishlam's Archival Search Report in Nehemiah's Archive: Multiple Introductions and Reverse Chronological Order as Clues to the Origin of the Aramaic Letters in Ezra 4-6 Richard C. Steiner; Proverbs 8:22—31: Three Perspectives on Its Composition Alan Lenzi ; Analogical Reasoning in Romans 7:2—4: A Woman and the Believers in Rome Peter Spitaler; Taming the Shrew, Shrike, and Shrimp: The Form and Function of Zoological Classification in Psalm 8 Richard Whitekettle; What Becomes of the Angels' "Wives"? A Text-Critical Study of 1 Enoch 19:2 Kelley Coblentz Bautch; Did Paul Loathe Manual Labor? Revisiting the Work of Ronald F. Hock on the Apostle's Tentmaking and Social Class Todd D. Still; Book Reviews and the Annual Index: Volume 125 (2006)

CULTURAL ICON WATCH:

Robyn Art's "Vestigial Portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls"

Robyn Art's "Vestigial Portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls"
[ Featured Underground Poet ] - 01.31.07 - by: Marie Lecrivain (Get Underground)

Robyn Art's Vestigial Portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a not-quite-convincing collection of poems loosely constructed, and then presented as one long book-length poem. I say "not quite," because the poems do not quite fit together, but this is the trick of the post-post-modern poet: to hammer the square pegs into the round holes and declare that "it fits," splinters and all.

[...]

Catchy title, but the poems appear to have nothing to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

EGYPTIAN BLOGGER Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman now has the support of Amnesty International:

Amnesty International today called for the immediate and unconditional release of Karim Amer, the first Egyptian blogger to be tried for writing blogs criticizing Egypt's al-Azhar religious authorities, President Husni Mubarak and Islam.

Their support is very good news. I'm glad this case is finally getting some real attention in the West.

BOOK REVIEW in Commentary Magazine:

Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel by Jon D. Levenson
Reviewed by David Berger

February 2007

“Who Revives the Dead”
Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life
by Jon D. Levenson
Yale. 274 pp. $40.00

[...]

Jon D. Levenson, a professor of Jewish studies at Harvard, is a distinguished biblical scholar and theologian whose interest in this theme was foreshadowed in his The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (1993). Here he has given us a beautifully written, multi-faceted work that begins with 19th and 20th-century Jewish theologians and liturgists, moves back in time to touch on Maimonides in the 12th century, back still farther to the Talmud and midrash, and finally turns to the biblical material that stands at the core of the book.

Levenson’s purpose is to refute two widely held positions, or what might be called contemporary orthodoxies. The first of these is a counter-orthodoxy current among many Jews—to wit, that Judaism rejects belief in physical resurrection, either because Judaism is a this-worldly religion or because it accords pride of place to the idea of a disembodied immortality of the soul. As Levenson notes, those who apply either of these characterizations to classical Judaism are very numerous, but uninformed.

A more serious variant of this same contention is that Judaism should reject belief in resurrection, in favor of a putatively more sophisticated alternative. ...

"... JUDAS IS AS EVIL AS EVER" in the Gospel of Judas. So April DeConick on her new Forbidden Gospels Blog. There seems to be an emerging counterconsensus on this issue, originated by Louis Painchaud and now with April and Einar Thomassen on board.

April also has a meditation on postmodernism inspired by Thomas the Tank Engine. Really. I quite agree with her conclusion (which actually sounds pretty postmodern): "the historian cannot privilege one set of texts over another, or one position over another." That said, I also would say a word in the defense of postmodernism, or at least poststructuralism. I have found deconstruction and intertextuality to be very helpful for getting my head around the fact that the meaning of ancient texts (and, particulary, ancient scriptures) has been a moving target throughout history and changed, often radically, as times and cultural contexts changed. This does not mean that we can apply whatever meaning we want to ancient texts. Rather, it means that we need to read each text in a repeatedly new context and new light as we study its meaning during the course of its transmission.

UPDATE: April DeConick e-mails:

Jim, I noticed on your post today that you included Einar and me, but also there is John Turner of Nebraska. He is a very important scholar of NH and Coptic, especially Sethian Gnosticism. Einar and Louis had contact in the summer and their opinions may have influenced each other. But John and I worked through the text independent of Louis and Einar. I didn't have a clue what Louis' position was. In fact, when I went to the Sorbonne, I was very nervous about my paper because I thought that I would be a lone voice critiquing the NG translation and interpretation. I think that our independence is important because it is not a bunch of scholars jumping on the counterposition bandwagon started by one person. What has emerged is a counterposition that has developed independently by Coptic scholars across the world.

This is what I had meant to get across, but April has expressed it more clearly.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The Israeli excavations are now being used as an excuse for a terrorist bombing.

FEATURE-Israel excavation work near shrine fans Muslim ire
Mon 29 Jan 2007 12:42 PM ET

By Jonathan Saul

JERUSALEM, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Israeli excavations near Jerusalem's most sensitive shrine have sparked fury among Muslims who fear such works endanger its foundations, but officials involved say they will not damage the holy site.

[...]

On Monday, Palestinian militants who claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the Israeli resort of Eilat, which killed three people, said it was a response to Israeli attempts to "defile" al-Aqsa mosque.

[...]

Al Aqsa Brigades spokesman Abu Qusai accused Israel of carrying out building work underneath the mosque as well as continued archaeological digging in the area, which could undermine the foundations of the mosque.

"The attack was in response to the continued Israeli aggression and the attempts to defile the al-Aqsa mosque," Abu Qusai said. The militants added the Eilat attack was just the beginning of operations "in defence of al-Aqsa".

Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said in response: "Palestinian terror organisations never lack a reason to attack innocent civilians wherever they can. This is why we are always on guard against their activities."

Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Western Wall and Jewish holy sites in Israel, said there were no plans to excavate under al-Haram al-Sharif, known to Jews as Temple Mount.

[...]

There's also more on the controversy over the bridge to the Mugrabi Gate.

A GOOD QUESTION, submitted to Question, Science Times, of the New York Times:

Speaking in Tongues

By C. CLAIBORNE RAY
Published: January 30, 2007

Q. How do researchers know the pronunciation of the languages of long-gone peoples?

A. Scholars do not so much know the pronunciation of ancient languages as extrapolate and guess. They have had more success with some languages than with others, said Emily Teeter, spokeswoman for the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, a major center for the study of the ancient Near East. For example, she said, Semitic languages like Babylonian and Akkadian are closely related to ancient Hebrew, providing solid clues about how the other ancient Semitic languages were vocalized.

[...]

Arabic is also very important for comparative Semitics. The answer continues with ancient Egyptian, drawing on the Rosetta Stone and Coptic.

THE OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA COURSE that Grant Macaskill and I are teaching next semester holds its first session on Friday, 9 February. I have fully revised and updated the St. Andrews Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Website and all systems are now go. The course will include a blog, which has been set up, but does not have any posts yet, and which will open on the day of the first class meeting. PaleoJudaica will continue as normally, so I hope you will follow both blogs.

If you want to keep up with the course, you might want to make sure you have access to these books:

James H. Charlesworth (ed.),
The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments vol. 2, Expansions of the "Old Testament" and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983, 1985)

Reading assignments will come from them. They should be available in any decent sized public library. You can also order them through Amazon.

I recommend that you also read the following articles, all of which are available online, although unfortunately mine requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access:

James R. Davila, "The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha as Background to the New Testament," Expository Times 117.2 (2005): 53-57.

Robert A. Kraft, "The Pseudepigrapha in Christianity," in Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha (ed. John C. Reeves; SBLEJL 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 55-86. This article is also available on Professor Kraft's website and can be accessed by clicking here.

Robert A. Kraft, "The Pseudepigrapha and Christianity Revisited: Setting the Stage and Framing Some Central Questions," JSJ 32 (2001) 371-395.

If you can't access my Expository Times article, the following conference paper from some years ago covers much of the same ground:

"Jewish Pseudepigrapha and Christian Apocrypha: (How) Can We Tell Them Apart?" (BNTC, September 2002)

Watch this space.

ASSIMILATED TO THE BLOGOSPHERE: April DeConick has just started a blog on the New Testament Apocrypha and Christian origins. It's called The Forbidden Gospels Blog.

I'd like to start this blog with what may be a shocking observation, but one which I know to be true: the major obstacle to any historical study of early Christianity is the New Testament canon.

NAZIS. I HATE THESE GUYS:

Neo-Nazi group plans book burning

MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Jewish, Christian and Muslim groups in Minnesota have joined to oppose a neo-Nazi group's burning of "anti-white" books.

The books targeted by the National Socialist Movement, which is based in Minneapolis, include the Talmud, the compilation of laws and religious practices and discussions by Jewish rabbis on them.

[...]

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS are coming to Kansas City any day now. The preparations sound very thorough and a little cloak-and-dagger.

Union Station making ready for Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition
By: Barbara Bayer, Staff Writer [Kansas City Jewish Chronicle] January 26, 2007

The Dead Sea Scrolls are on their way to Kansas City, Mo.

It's just that nobody knows exactly when.

"It will arrive sometime between the end of January and the beginning of February. They don't tell us for security reasons," said Andi Udris, president and CEO of Union Station. "They will tell us about a half hour before it gets here."

Union Station Kansas City will host the international Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit beginning Feb. 8. The exhibit, on display through May 13, was developed in conjunction with the Israel Antiquities Authority. It will feature pieces of 10 scrolls. Six of the scrolls are original and have not been on public display in the United States. The other four are replicas. The exhibit will also feature a replica of the famous Copper Scroll. It also includes more than 100 artifacts - clay jars, sandals, even a hair comb - found in the community of Qumran, near where the scrolls were found.

[...]

I've fixed the typo for them in the headline.

PHOENICIAN AND PUNIC ARTIFACTS have been donated to a museum in Malta by a collector's nephew. The Times of Malta reports:

Ancient artefacts donated to Heritage Malta

In a highly commendable gesture of altruism, Joseph Sammut yesterday donated a collection of about 300 Punic and Phoenician artefacts to Heritage Malta. The items had belonged to Chev. Sammut's uncle Ganni. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli.

About 300 Punic and Phoenician artefacts collected by a Qormi blacksmith in the early 20th century were yesterday donated to Heritage Malta.

The collection - dating back to pre-Christian times - was donated by Joseph Sammut, nephew of Ganni Sammut who until his death in 1958 collected objects unearthed by building contractors with whom he had business deals. Ganni Sammut also bought a number of artefacts from auctions and sometimes purchased items to prevent foreigners from acquiring them so that the artefacts would remain here.

[...]

There's a photo of a few of the artifacts, which seem mostly to have been plundered from tombs. There's no mention of written materials.

BOOK REVIEW: Diarmaid MacCulloch reviews Martin Goodman's latest on ancient Jews and Romans for the Guardian. MacCulloch opens with a bit of alternate history and maybe belabors the modern applications a bit. But the book sounds interesting.

Original spin

Diarmaid MacCulloch lauds Martin Goodman's compelling account of two crucial centuries in Jewish history, Rome and Jerusalem

Saturday January 27, 2007
The Guardian

Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilisations
by Martin Goodman
656pp, Allen Lane, £25

History which never happened both comforts and tantalises by hinting how we might have avoided present miseries. What if Rome had never grown to be more than a small, undistinguished Italian city-state? It is unlikely that any other Mediterranean empire would have obliterated the Temple of Jerusalem, as did the Roman emperor's son Titus in 70CE - at least, it is very unlikely that the temple would not have been rebuilt or redeployed for a new sort of faith. Total destruction was not the way in the ancient Near East: witness the seventh-century struggle over the ancient holy place of Mecca, which Muhammad transformed into the focus of a newly conceived religion. Without the Romans, temple worship would have continued in Jerusalem, with thousands on thousands converging on it yearly, ecstatic to end their pilgrimage in a centuries-old sacred city, as still happens on the hajj to Mecca.

[...]

Martin Goodman's massive new treatment of two crucial centuries of Jewish history should be read by anyone seeking seriously to understand modern Middle Eastern tangles. His subtitle might suggest that he is a believer in Samuel P Huntington's theory of an inevitable "clash of civilisations", that malign banality underlying American neo-conservative meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. In fact, the message of the book is entirely the reverse: the ghastly sequence of events after 66CE was in no way inevitable. The previous century had been one of the most glorious and happy in the holy city's history: the temple, magnificently rebuilt by the somewhat unconvincingly Jewish king, Herod the Great, attracted more pilgrims than ever before. Jewish client kings might be cosmopolitan figures closely linked to powerful Romans: one of them, the ebulliently bisexual Agrippa II, was first a dissolute intimate friend of the Emperor Caligula, and afterwards the man most responsible for frogmarching Caligula's uncle Claudius to the imperial throne. A mark of how little the Romans expected real trouble from the Jews before 66 was the low calibre of the governors sent to this politically insignificant area, and the small numbers of troops thought necessary to govern it.

[...]

UPDATE: The Scotsman also has a review:

Sacrifice at the altar of empire
COLIN DONALD

Rome & Jerusalem - The Clash of Ancient Civilisations
BY MARTIN GOODMAN
Allen Lane, 656pp, £25

ARE CENTURIES OF ANTI- Semitism really just based on ancient political spin? According to Martin Goodman's provocative and closely argued thesis, the answer is yes. If you want to trace the roots of the Holocaust, he argues, you have to dig deep in Roman domestic politics. And while you're digging, you'll find something perhaps just as shocking: that Christians promoted Jew-hating almost from the earliest days of the religion.
Click to learn more...

Goodman, a professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford and a distinguished historian of Rome, has written a magnificent, luxuriantly detailed book of revelations and connections, the implications of which will take time to absorb. Much of what it says about the origins of the Jewish diaspora has a bearing on the modern Middle East, where ancient events remain fresh in the mind.

His book's facility of narrative, wry appreciation of human nature and its clarity and authority in arbitrating on widespread mutual resentments, make it an important addition to studies of the roots of anti-Semitism.

Goodman wears his intimate knowledge of the first few centuries of the Christian era lightly, even jauntily. His confidence comes from the historian's understanding that the politics of the Roman Empire are the politics of all empires, formal and informal. It's a matter of seeing the patterns, and knowing how the tribes related and interacted, philosophically and politically.

[...]

MAIMONIDES AS A MEDIC; a review by Stephen Mark Dobbs in the Jewish News Weekly:

“Maimonides,” by Sherwin B. Nuland, a professor of surgery at Yale, studies Maimonides from this medical perspective.

Maimonides was the most prominent physician to write about medicine from a Jewish perspective and sense of compassion. The Talmud considers the physician as a messenger and a partner of God. In the Mishneh Torah Maimonides writes: “A man should aim to maintain physical health and vigor, in order that his soul may be upright, in a condition to know God.”

As a 12th-century Jew living in a Muslim world, Maimonides read the ancient texts in Arabic, which provided a bridge between the Hellenistic era and that of the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment. Maimonides was among the early vanguard seeking to remove the veils of superstition of the Dark Ages that cast shadows over all learning, including medicine. He and other Jewish physicians were sought after by royal courts throughout the Muslim world and Christian Europe.

NO SNAKES ON A WALL AFTER ALL? On the Agade list, Jack Sasson points to a post by Egyptologist Thomas Schneider on what appears to be an Egyptology discussion list. (I'm not familiar with it.) He is skeptical of Steiner's proto-Northwest Semitic interpretation.

PETER SCHÄFER has published a book on Jesus in the Talmud.

COPTIC TEXTS: A Boharic New Testament is now available online. And the same site already had a Sahidic New Testament.

THERE'S A NEW SLAVONIC PSEUDEPIGRAPHA PROJECT, run by Andrei Orlov at Marquette University. Apparently he sent out an e-mail circular about it which Stephen Carlson, Tyler Williams, and others received, but I didn't. That makes me worry that my junk mail filter has started eating good messages again.

A BODMER PAPYRUS has ended up at the Vatican.

AN ANCIENT SHIPWRECK, found off the coast of Haifa some years ago, is in the news:

Ancient Boat Shows Israeli Maritime Life

By MATTI FRIEDMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, January 24, 2007; 1:04 PM

JERUSALEM -- A boat that plied the coast of the Holy Land 1,300 years ago carrying fish, carobs and olives is helping researchers better understand a little-known period in the region's history.

The boat, discovered in a coastal lagoon near the northern city of Haifa, dates from the early 8th century, not long after the rise of Islam and the Arab conquest of the Middle East. The find suggests that a long tradition of sea trade was not disrupted by the arrival of new rulers from the Arabian desert.

[...]

ARAMAIC WATCH: Aramaic for school children in Los Angeles:

School preserves ancient culture
BY SUSAN ABRAM, [LA Daily News] Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 01/22/2007 10:45:31 PM PST

TARZANA - Their alphabet, once carved in stone or found on ancient parchment, comes alive in red and blue marker on a white board in a San Fernando Valley classroom.

They might not know it yet, but the dozen or so teens who write out the letters are making history by learning their history.

It's the only way their culture will survive.

"It's really nice to teach them, though it's challenging," said a patient Amir Dinkha, a teacher at the Assyrian American Christian school, the first and only private campus of its kind in the United States.

[...]

On the other side of the world, news reports have detailed increased violence against the Assyrians and other Christian minorities who have called the Ninevah plains of northern Iraq their home since ancient times.

"It's a miracle we're even alive actually, considering all the persecution that we've gone through," Bet-Rasho said.

[...]

On a recent weekday, the students in teacher Dinkha's class read aloud the Aramaic version of a Bible story. There are good-natured giggles along the way as their American-trained tongues try to grasp words similar to those spoken by Jesus Christ.

While the lessons can be tough, some students say they feel as if the school is their home. It is among each other where they have found their identity.

"It used to make me feel kind of down because I would tell people at school I was Assyrian, and they would say, `What's that? Syrian?"' said Justin Atneyel, 14. "I used to bring a book with me to school to show them."

[...]

By the end of the school year, the students might be ready to write to those who remain in their ancestral lands, Bet-Rasho said. He does not want the Assyrian American youth to forget where they came from.

"This school is dedicated to every hero who died of persecution in the homeland," Bet-Rasho said. "They died for their name, their language and their faith."

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Pilgrims' road to Temple unearthed in City of David dig
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

At the end of the 19th century, the archaeologists Bliss and Dickey discovered a short piece of road dating back to the Herodian period in Jerusalem's City of David. The road ascended from south to north in the direction of the Temple Mount. Many years later, in 1963, the archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon found another piece of the road, a little closer to the Temple Mount. When, a little over a year ago, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) archaeologists found yet another section of it, they believed they had solved a puzzle, and that they could now sketch the course of the main road by which many pilgrims of Second Temple times made their way up to the Temple after immersing themselves in the Siloam Spring. It turned out they were wrong. That road was apparently secondary.

The road that IAA archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron have now found, which is much grander, wider and more central, is parallel to the one Bliss and Dickey discovered. Reich believes that at a certain point further to the north, these two roads converged.

[...]

The story from last March about the smaller road is here.

THE EARLIEST SURVIVING NORTHWEST SEMITIC TEXT?

Hebrew U. presents Semitic snake spells (JTA)
The earliest continuous Semitic text ever deciphered was displayed publicly for the first time Monday at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Richard Steiner, professor of Semitic languages and literature at Yeshiva University, interpreted Semitic passages in Egyptian texts discovered more than a century ago inscribed on the subterranean walls of the pyramid of King Unas at Saqqara in Egypt sometime between the 25th and 30th centuries BCE.

Earlier than PaleoJudaica's usual time frame, but too cool not to mention.

The passages, which were meant to protect royal mummies against poisonous snakes, were written in hieroglyphic characters, but Steiner discovered that they were composed in the Semitic language spoken by the Canaanites in the third millennium BCE, an archaic form of the languages later known as Phoenician and Hebrew.

The Canaanite priests of the ancient city of Byblos, in present-day Lebanon, provided these texts to the kings of Egypt.

It's not strictly speaking "Canaanite," since the "Canaanite shift" (original long a changes to long o) didn't happen until the late second millennium BCE. Still, the early third-millennium natives of Byblos would have spoken a dialect that was perhaps very early (proto-?)Northwest Semitic and ancestral to Phoenician and a sort of great-great aunt to Hebrew.

Although the Egyptians viewed their culture as far superior to that of their neighbors, the find shows that their morbid fear of snakes made them open to borrowing Semitic magic.

Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?

UPDATE: The story is also covered in the Jerusalem Post (here via the Agade list). Most of the information is the same, but note the following:

"This finding should be of great interest to cultural historians, linguists and Biblical scholars" Steiner said.

"This is a sensational discovery," said Hebrew University Professor Moshe Bar-Asher who is the president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language.

"It is the earliest attestation of a Semitic language, in general, and Proto-Canaanite, in particular."

The texts also shed light on several rare words in the Bible, Steiner said.

Also, Manuscript Boy e-mails with the information that a lecture by Steiner in Hebrew also deals with this text. You can download it from the Hebrew University website as a PDF file here.

Today's Ancient Judaism Seminar in St. Andrews went very well. I'll try to post something on it tomorrow.

I hope Blogger doesn't eat this update again. I thought we were past that!

UPDATE (24 January): Another tidbit from a widely disseminated A.P. article:

The Semitic language of these texts that have now been deciphered was a very archaic form of the languages later known as Phoenician and Hebrew, Steiner said.

The text includes words that have the same meaning as in Hebrew, like "yad" for hand, "ari" for lion, and "beit" for house, he said.

UPDATE: Reader Aaron Koller e-mails:

Following your links, I read Steiner's paper; it seems he thinks the dialect he's found does show the Canaanite shift. The "traditional" dating is based on its non-existence in Ugaritic, but if Ugaritic is outside the Canaanite family anyway, this may simply push the date of the shift back by a thousand years, and clarify to some extent the position of Ugaritic in NWS.

I seem to recall some limited evidence for the Canaanite shift in the Mari Letters in the early second millennium BCE, but to have it nealy a millennium earlier than that would be very interesting.

UPDATE: Nice wordplay at Metafiller: Snakes off a Pharaoh. Good supplementary links too. I thought about this inscription and its location on a wall and was tempted to say "Snakes on a Plane," but I restrained myself. Until now.

UPDATE (26 January): An Egyptologist is skeptical.

UPDATE (27 January): Duane Smith comments on the Canaanite shift over at Abnormal Interests.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Islamic Movement alleges Israeli dig under J'lem's Temple Mount
By Nadav Shragai, Yoav Stern and Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondents

The Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement, headed by Ra'am-Ta'al chairman MK Ibrahim Sarsour, on Sunday accused Israel of carrying out excavations underneath Jerusalem's Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

Sarsour also claimed the Israel Antiquities Authority paid a Palestinian vendor $60,000 for his store along the Temple Mount. The Israel Antiquities Authority denied the accusation.

Earlier on Sunday, the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement presented pictures taken two weeks ago that allegedly documented excavations near the Temple Mount.

[...]

An inquiry by Haaretz revealed that the excavations referred to by Sarsour were carried out some 100 meters from the Temple Mount and were stopped due to lack of funds. The excavations, carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority at the behest of a Jewish group on property owned by businessman Aaron Mosovitch, was first revealed by Haaretz about a year ago.

In the article, archaeologists said the excavations were not only vertical, but horizontal, and advanced to within 60 meters of the Temple Mount. However, archaeologists claimed the purpose of the dig was to clear out an old garbage-filled tunnel to determine whether it posed a safety hazard.

[...]

There's more coverage of the claims by Al-Jazeerah, Arutz Sheva, and Ynet News. Similar claims were made in January of 2006 and I covered them here.

UPDATE: More, via Joseph I. Lauer:

Hadash calls for urgent Knesset debate on Jerusalem excavation
By Meron Rapoport

The Hadash-Ta'al Knesset faction has requested an urgent debate in the Knesset Interior Committee following the report published in today's Hebrew edition of Haaretz magazine on excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is carrying out in Jerusalem's Old City.

The IAA, which is carrying out the excavation for the Ateret Kohanim association, has dug 12 meters into the foundations of a Jewish-owned building in the Muslim Quarter, 80 meters from the Temple Mount, and has progressed about 20 meters to the east under other buildings, toward the Temple Mount.

[...]

[Director of the Jerusalem district of the IAA, Jon] Seligman said excavation to the east "has ended for the time being." He also said he had not heard about a possibility that the dig would link up to the Western Wall Tunnel. However, sources involved in the excavation said they had heard from its directors that this was the case. Attorney Eitan Geva, who represents the owner of the building, said the intention is to build a museum at the site where finds discovered during the excavation would be displayed. Eitan said the excavation to the east involved clearing out a channel that had been discovered, to ascertain whether it endangered the building's foundation, and that after the earth was removed, it was sealed. There was no intention to use it or continue digging eastward, Eitan added.

[...]

But it appears that people were not informed of digging going under their houses, although there is a legal requirement that they be notified.

WHAT IS A JEWISH MYTH? asks Rabbi Geoffrey W. Dennis in the New-Age-but-thoughtful Llewellyn Journal. The essay is more about what myth is in general, but it does touch on Judaism as well.

FREE DIGITAL BOOKS ON SYRIAC MATTERS! "Lagus1974" sends the following note to the Hugoye list:

You can download for free the following books (in various digital formats) at this site - http://www.archive.org/details/texts -

Mitchell, C.W. (ed.), S. Ephraim's Prose Refutations of Mani, Marcion, and Bardaisan. Vol. 1: The Discourses Addressed to Hypatius (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912).

Hill, J.H., A Dissertation on the Gospel Commentary of S. Ephraem the Syrian with a Scriptural Index to his Works (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1896).

Cureton, W. (ed.), History of the Martyrs in Palestine, by Eusebius, Bishop in Caesarea, Discovered in a Very Ancient Syriac Manuscript (London / Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate / Paris: C. Borrani, 1861).

Payne Smith, J. (ed.), Extracts from the Ecclesiastical History of John, Bishop of Ephesus (Semitic Study Series 13; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1909).

Payne Smith, R. (tr.), The Third Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John Bishop of Ephesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1860).

Payne Smith, R. (tr.), A Commentary upon the Gospel according to S. Luke by S. Cyril. 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1859).

Budge, E.A.W. (tr.), The Paradise or Garden of the Holy Fathers, Being Histories of the Anchorites, Recluses, Monks, Coenobites, and Ascetic Fathers of the Deserts of Egypt between A.D. CCL and A.D. CCCC circiter. 2 vols. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1907).

Connolly, R.H. and Codrington, H.W. (eds.), Two Commentaries on the Jacobite Liturgy by George Bishop of the Arab Tribes and Moses Bar Kepha: together with the Syriac Anaphora of St. James and a Document Entitled The Book of Life (London / Oxford: Williams and Norgate, 1913).

Lewis, A.S. (tr.), Select Narratives of Holy Women from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest as Written above the Old Syriac Gospels by John the Stylite, of Beth-Mari-Qanun in A.D. 778 (Studia Sinaitica 10; London: C.J. Clay and Sons, 1900).

Wensinck, A.J. (ed.), Legends of Eastern Saints Chiefly from Syriac Sources. 2 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1911, 1913).

Gibson, M.D. (ed.), The Commentaries of Isho`dad of Merv, Bishop of Hadatha (c. 850 A.D.), in Syriac and English. 3 vols. (Horae Semiticae 5-7; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911).

Gibson, M.D. (ed.), Apocrypha Arabica: Kitab al-Magall, or The Book of the Rolls; The Story of Aphikia; Cyprian and Justa, in Arabic; Cyprian and Justa, in Greek (Studia Sinaitica 8; London: C.J. Clay and Sons, 1901).

Saeki, P.Y., The Nestorian Monument in China (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1916).

Phillips, G., Syriac Grammar (3rd revised ed.; Cambridge: Deighton, Bell & Co / London: Bell & Daldy, 1866).

Malan, S.C. (tr.), The Book of Adam and Eve, also called the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (London: Williams and Norgate, 1882).

Good stuff. The Story of Aphikia is an Old Testament pseudepigraphon about the legendary wife of Ben Sira. We considered including it in the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project, but we finally decided that it was too late. I see that The Life of Adam and Eve is included at the end of the list as well. We're including new Coptic material for it in the MOTP. I've also mentioned the Nestorian Monument in China recently on PaleoJudaica.

UPDATE (22 January): Another one from gareth030:

That's a very useful list of texts from "lagus1974".

There are titles in other languages too, for any who may find them useful. For example on this site I also found:S. Ephraem Syri Opera, with text in Syriac, Greek and Latin, commentary in Italian. (Ed.)Silvius Ioseph Mercati, Sumptibus Pontificii Instituti Biblici, Rome 1915.

http://www.archive.org/details/ephraemopera00ephruoft

ELAINE PAGELS is interviewed in the LA Times. She discusses her own background and the historical and theological significance of the Gnostic gospels. Excerpt:

What stirred your interest in obscure religious sects in the first place?

My father was a biologist who had no use for religion. He thought it was naive. But at 13 and 14, I began to find religious notions powerful and compelling. Whether it was the great cathedrals of Europe or Hopi dancers, I sensed in them a potent spiritual dimension of life that I just had to explore.

Later, when I went off to study the early history of Christianity at Harvard, I was surprised to discover that my professors had file cabinets filled with early Christian texts that didn't make it into the Bible. We were told they were bizarre, heretical, nonsensical, full of philosophical fantasies and religious junk. That's also what the fathers of the orthodox Christian church said. They called them "illegitimate secret writings."

After a close read, they changed my understanding of what early Christianity was all about.

*

The word "Gnostic" derives from "gnosis," the Greek word for knowledge. But what is Gnosticism?

We really don't know. The term "Gnostic" has been used in so many ways over the years it's hard to say. The label has been used by people who attacked certain early beliefs as the wrong kind of Christianity and by New Agey types.

Referring to the authors of these texts as Gnostic only accepts that negative judgment. But the people who wrote them didn't think of themselves as belonging to a school called Gnosticism. They were spiritual leaders who thought they had gone beyond simple faith to a deeper understanding.

Essentially, they were trying to make a distinction between anthropomorphic notions of God and the divine reality.

I agree that "Gnosticism" isn't a very useful category in scholarly terms. Most of the time it can be replaced with something like "adherence to the demiurgic myth" (the myth that the creator of our world is an imperfect derivative god, not the True God).

I think her answer to this question is correct as far as it goes, but it's also incomplete:

Where do they rank in comparison with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

I think of them now as the other texts that were not included in the canon. Much of what was in the canon was to be used in public church. But, as in Judaism, there were certain secret teachings — or advanced teachings — that were not to be taught publicly or even written down.

They were only to be shared with certain disciples when they were ready. In other words, the New Testament Gospels were the texts students of Christianity began with. Some moved on to the secret teachings.

She really should have added that the four canonical gospels can be dated to the second half of the first century or the very beginning of the second century at the latest. All our evidence indicates that the Gnostic gospels come from later in the second century or later still. With the possible exception of the Gospel of Thomas (which I would not count as "Gnostic"), the noncanonical gospels give us no new information about the historical Jesus or the first generation of the Jesus movement.

But anyhow, read it all.

MORE LESLAU OBITUARIES: Back in November I noted the death of renowned Ethiopic scholar Wolf Leslau at the age of 100, and I linked to an obituary from the LA Times. Now Jack Sasson has noted two more obituaries on the Agade list. Gary Rendburg sent them along with this opening note:

t only recently came to my attention that Wolf Leslau, professor emeritus of Semitic linguistics at UCLA and the world's foremost authority on Ethiopian languages, died two months ago, on November 18, 2006, at the age of 100 (plus four days).

I had the privilege of knowing Professor Leslau well over the years, notwithstanding the geographical distance between the two coasts of the U.S. I last visited him in his home (within a retirement community in Fullerton, California) in December 2003, and can attest to Grover Hudson’s description of Leslau at work (see below).

There he was, at age 97, working diligently on his Macintosh computer, entering the data from card files on yet another Gurage dialect, which he had kept at hand for about forty years.

In addition to the detailed information provided by Hudson, note that Leslau also served a term as president of the American Oriental Society.

The longer obit was published on The Linguist list in November:

Message 1: Obituary: Wolf Leslau, 1906-2006
Date: 23-Nov-2006
From: Grover Hudson
Subject: Obituary: Wolf Leslau, 1906-2006


Wolf Leslau, surely the greatest Semiticist linguist of the post-war generation, whose work established Ethiopian linguistics as an essential part of Semitic studies, died on Nov. 18, at age 100 + four days. He is survived by two daughters, Elaine and Sylvia, and grandchildren.

Author of a body of work the size and breadth of which it is difficult to imagine anyone again matching, and the content of which it is difficult to imagine anyone again having the competence to match, his life was filled with love and energy for scholarly work. His publications date from 1933 including eleven articles before the appearance of the book Lexique soqotri in 1938, and continue uninterrupted almost to this year (The Verb in Mäsqan, 2004). Until recent months he was diligently working on another book, on the Ethiopian Semitic language Gogot. Characteristically, at 80 years old he discovered and mastered use of the Macintosh computer, recognizing its usefulness in composing work using phonetic and European-language fonts as well as Ethiopic and other Semitic writing systems.

[...]

The other one is a brief note on the website of The North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics:

Wolf Leslau, 1906-2006

Wolf Leslau, one of the greatest Semiticist linguists of the post-war generation, passed away on Nov. 18, at age 100 + four days. Leslau was a frequent participant in NACAL's annual meetings, and had the unique distinction of serving as NACAL reminiscer not once but twice, first at NACAL 12 (1984) and then again, two decades later, at NACAL 32 (2004). Grover Hudson's obituary for Leslau can be found here. [i.e., at the same link as above - JRD]

THE SITE OF PETRA in Jordan is a finalist in the "New Seven Wonders of The World" competition.

(Via Archaeologica News.)

ART BUCHWALD - R.I.P. Normally I wouldn't have mentioned Buchwald's death, sorry though I am to hear of it. But the brief A.P. death notice has this intriguing paragraph:

Buchwald fired volley after volley of unrelated humor -- such as recounting a landing in the Dead Sea by helicopter and being asked to return some scrolls.

A Google search brought up nothing relevant. Does anyone have information on this story?

UPDATE: Reader Roberto Labanti has sent a copy of a Buchwald column that was published in the Washington Post, Times Herald on 23 March 1961 and which is the source of the paragraph. Buchwald reports on his helicopter ride to Yadin's camp near the Dead Sea, where a basket containing what we now know was Babatha's archive had just been discovered in a cave. Yadin then asked them to take the scrolls back with them on the helicopter. Buchwald reported that they were happy to comply, "not only because we were taking a small part in a great archeological discovery, but because it would also give us something to read on the plane."

EGYPTIAN BLOGGER Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman is going on trial for his blogging:

Accused Egyptian Blogger Stands Trial


Friday January 19, 2007 2:16 AM

By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD

Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - An Egyptian blogger went on trial Thursday on charges of insulting Islam and causing sectarian strife with his Internet writings. Egypt's first prosecution of a blogger came as Washington has backed away from pressuring its Mideast ally to improve its human rights record and bring democratic reform.

Abdel Kareem Nabil often denounced Islamic authorities and criticized Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on his Arabic-language blog. He has been in detention since November and faces up to nine years in prison if convicted.

Egypt has arrested a string of pro-democracy bloggers over the past year, sparking condemnation from human rights groups.

[...]

Nabil is the first blogger Egypt has put on trial for his writings. Other bloggers have been released without charges. But unlike the other detained bloggers, who concentrated on politics, Nabil wrote often on religion - and Seif al-Islam said the government was likely prosecuting him as part of its ``competition with the Muslim Brotherhood to show its Islamic credentials.''

In his blog - where he uses the name Kareem Amer - Nabil was a fierce critic of conservative Muslims and in particularly of al-Azhar, one of the most prestigious religious institutions in the Sunni Muslim world.

Nabil was a law student at al-Azhar University, but denounced it as ``the university of terrorism,'' accusing it of promoting radical ideas and suppressing free thought. Al-Azhar ``stuffs its students' brains and turns them into human beasts ... teaching them that there is no place for differences in this life,'' he wrote.

He was thrown out of the university in March, and in his last blog entry before his arrest blamed al-Azhar for pushing the government to investigate him.

In other postings, Nabil described Mubarak's regime as a ``symbol of dictatorship.''

[...]

This is very bad news. The only positive thing about the story is that the A.P. is finally taking notice of it. For updates on the situation see the Free Kareem! blog.

AN AMATEUR PHILOLOGIST IN BERKELEY:

Black Oak Books strives to stay open, but the times, they are a-changing

Heidi Benson, [San Francisco] Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, January 15, 2007

Don Pretari doesn't want to shut the doors of Black Oak Books. And not just because running the store has been his life's work.

When not attending to the details of the 23-year-old business, he spends every spare minute studying languages, including Quranic Arabic, classical Chinese, biblical Hebrew, Ethiopic and more.

"All the languages I study are dead," he says. "Who would hire me?"

But with profit margins down, a five-year lease coming due and a partner who wants to retire, Pretari, 49, may have to seek a vocation less perfectly suited to a Berkeley-educated polymath.

Last week, he sent up a trial balloon, inviting someone, anyone, to buy one or both Black Oaks stores -- the Berkeley location on Shattuck Avenue or the San Francisco store on Irving Street. (A short-lived third store in North Beach closed last year.)

"We'd like Black Oak to keep going," he says, adjusting his round glasses and settling into a chair in the back office, a warren of books. "We're exploring every possibility, even if that means someone else has to come in and own it."

Whether Pretari and his partners sell the store or find a way to keep it going themselves -- perhaps through renegotiation of the nearly $1 million Berkeley lease -- they don't want to see it change.

"It's a niche store, slanted toward the scholarly," says Pretari, noting that the landlord wants them to stay. "I wouldn't want to sell the store to someone who wouldn't carry books from university presses because they don't sell well enough."

Today, Pretari runs the finances, does new book buying and manages the store with Bob Brown, 68, whose specialty is rare and used books. (There are two other co-owners, but they are less involved in day-to-day operations.)

Pretari had more time for study just 10 years ago, when the staff was one-third larger. That's when he became interested in reading sacred texts in the original languages. Even now, he studies two hours a day -- down from six. He reads the Quran, with a dictionary, every morning, and he never takes a walk without his Latin note cards. His next project: to study math for pleasure. "I want to go back to arithmetic and follow it up as high as I can," he says. If he can do that and keep the bookstore going, great. "But I can't if I'm working 50-hour weeks."

[...]

I hope he finds a suitable buyer and is able to continue with his studies.

FINDING JESUS' FORESKIN? Usually I ignore things like this, but I couldn't resist this one. This strange article from AND, South Africa, is so garbled it's hard to say if it's based on anything real:

Christian gravesite found in Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery.

Reprint permission by: Judaistic Review

Issue 14:22 Yeshuhana Journal

25th of Tevet, 5767

By Mitch Ugana

Important Archaeological Find: Christian Gravesite at Mount of Olives

Christian gravesite found in Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery. Christian researchers were invited to Mount Olive Cemetery, just outside the walls of Jerusalem. This sacred site made infamous by the biblical story of Jesus last spot on earth, before leaving on a cloud for heaven.

Summoned by archaeological scholars from Egypt, Rome, Greece and Tunisia, the Christian Scholars are excavating a site which may hold clues to some of the burials of those left behind after Jesus departure. Although the bible doesn’t specifically state the disciple’s place of interment, Mount of Olives is a reasonable place to expect them to be buried. The mainly Jewish graveyard is where the Jews wait until the Messiah comes to take them home.

The finding of a Christian Cross type headstone is what all the fuss is about. This is so unusual, and had gone unnoticed for so many years; until a visitor noticed a stone hidden by an olive tree at the site. When they carefully moved the olive tree, they found a white cross with the Greek inscription, To The God Jesus Christos. This same inscription was found in a ruin adjacent to Megiddo prison in Israel, where a mosaic floor also had written in ancient Greek, “To the God, Jesus Christo.” Some say it may be the burial grounds of the rabbi Jesus himself, but the Christian scholars were quick to point out, that it couldn’t be, as Jesus left on a cloud, as witnessed by Peter, and possibly other disciples, and this was collaborated by two strangers who were present at the time of Jesus passage from earth. YX is the Ancient Greek Inscription for Jesus Christ.

The Christian scholars are interested in the find, but both agree that the finding of the possible prepuce of Jesus is a much greater find. Jesus, being Jewish, and of devout parents would have had his ritual circumcision on the 8th day after his birth. The prepuce would have been expected to be kept by his Mother Mary, as only she knew for sure he was the son of God. They surmise she may have buried Jesus prepuce in a ritual box, and in a location where Mary felt it would be safe. This only remnant of Jesus left on earth, is a subject of great interest to scholars. What will the DNA reveal and what does this mean for Christian’s worldwide?

The article obviously belongs in the crank file, but I wonder if it is vaguely inspired by the Akeldema ossuaries excavated by Shimon Gibson, which included the "shroud of the leper" and perhaps the James Ossuary (in it's original form, whatever that was). The findings at the Megiddo prison are much later and are not of relevance for the time of Jesus, so any similar discovery at the Mount of Olives (if there actually has been one, which I don't know) is likely to be irrelevant as well. Any reference to burial grounds of Jesus is the wildest of speculation, although the garbled allusion to Acts 1:6-11 is really neither here nor there.

For the record, I know of no evidence that foreskins of circumcised Jewish infants were saved in antiquity. So don't get your hopes up about recovering Jesus' DNA.

UPDATE (18 January): It seems the holy prepuce has a long and illustrious history (if that's the right term). Reader Robert S. Schwartz e-mails to point to the "Holy Prepuce" Wikipedia article, which I will repost here (but you have to go to the article itself to follow all the links). Apparently the traditions go back to apocryphal infancy gospel material. And the relics were put to some very creative uses (note, for example, the applications reported of St. Bridget and Leo Allatius).

Holy Prepuce
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Holy Prepuce, or Holy Foreskin (Latin præputium or prepucium) is one of several relics attributed to Jesus. At various points in history, a number of churches in Europe have claimed to possess it, sometimes at the same time. Various miraculous powers have been ascribed to it.

Contents


* 1 Theological origin
* 2 Claimants
* 3 Modern practices
* 4 Historical allusions and references to the Holy Prepuce
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links

Theological origin

As a Jew, Jesus would have been expected to be circumcised on his 8th day after birth.

According to the apocryphal Infancy Gospels, after Jesus' circumcision in a cave, Mary's midwife placed the foreskin in an alabaster jar filled with spikenard, a preservative, which she gave to her son, admonishing him "Guard well this jar of aromatic nard and do not sell it, even when they offer you 300 denarii". [1]

According to legend, the prepuce was eventually given to St. John the Baptist by Mary Magdalene. [2]

Since the circumcision removed his foreskin, this raises the question of what happened to it once Jesus had ascended forty days after his death. Some ancient Christians believed that Jesus ascended bodily, hence implying that Jesus' foreskin would be one of the few physical remainders of Jesus left behind on Earth, unless it had been restored to him during his resurrection, and by the fourth century this became the traditional stance.

There was also some theological dispute as to whether Jesus can really be said to have ascended wholly into Heaven if this part of his body was actually missing. This was resolved by noting that his foreskin was no more an obstacle to this than the hair and fingernails that he had cut throughout his life or the blood he shed. The Jewish custom of burying the foreskin in the earth would, however, seem to argue against its preservation, and hence its ability to be a relic.

Some argue that when God achieves something by miracle, it is arbitrary to propose limits to what that miracle can restore. In Mark 12:18-25, Jesus responded to the Sadducees' question about marriage after the resurrection, saying that "For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven." (KJV) This suggests that the resurrected dead may have certain anatomical differences that may make the question irrelevant. But then again, he may have restored the foreskin in heaven without taking the discarded one away from earth.

The act of circumcision was a ritual of profound religious significance to Jews, and marked their membership in the covenant community. The New Testament contains extensive discussions about whether circumcision was needed for Gentile converts, and concludes that it was not; the position settled upon is that Jesus' crucifixion established a new covenant for Christians for which the rite was not necessary.

The modern, peri'ah style of circumcision did not become the standard mode until around the time of the revolt led by Simon bar Kokhba in AD 132–135, whereas the style of circumcision practised by Jews in Judea prior to bar Kokhba removed only the 'tip' of the foreskin, not all of it. Thus modern, and probably medieval, ideas of what Jesus'foreskin would be like were, and are, wide of the mark.[citation needed]

Claimants

"Depending on what you read, there were eight, twelve, fourteen, or even 18 different holy foreskins in various European towns during the Middle Ages". [3] The relic was originally said to have been given to Pope Leo III on December 25, 800 by Charlemagne on the occasion of his coronation; he in turn is said to have claimed that it had been brought to him by an angel while he prayed at the Holy Sepulcher (although another version of the story says it was a wedding gift from the Byzantine Empress Irene). The Pope placed it into the Sancta Sanctorum in the Lateran basilica in Rome with other relics. [4]

In addition to the Holy Foreskin claimed by Rome, other claimants in history have included the Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay, Santiago de Compostela, the city of Antwerp, Coulombs in the diocese of Chartres, France as well as Chartres itself, and churches in Besançon, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux, Conques, Langres, Anvers, Fécamp, Puy-en-Velay, Calcata, Santiago de Compostela, and two in Auvergne. [3]

According to legends of the village of Calcata, in 1527 a soldier in the German army sacking Rome looted the Sancta Sanctorum; when he was eventually captured in the village he hid the jeweled reliquary containing the Holy Prepuce in his cell, where it was discovered in 1557 and officially venerated by the Church since that time, offering a ten year indulgence to pilgrims. Calcata thus became a popular site for pilgrimmage.[4]

The abbey of Charroux claimed the Holy Foreskin was presented to the monks by Charlemagne. In the early 12th century, it was taken in procession to Rome where it was presented before Pope Innocent III, who was asked to rule on its authenticity. The Pope declined the opportunity. At some point, however, the relic went missing, and remained lost until 1856 when a workman repairing the abbey claimed to have found a reliquary hidden inside a wall, containing the missing foreskin. The rediscovery, however, led to a theological clash with the established Holy Prepuce of Calcata, which had been officially venerated by the Church for hundreds of years; in 1900, the Church solved the dilemma by ruling that anyone thenceforward writing or speaking of the Holy Prepuce would be excommunicated. In 1954, after much debate, the punishment was changed to the harsher degree of excommunication, vitandi (shunned); and the Second Vatican Council later removed the Day of the Holy Circumcision from the church calendar .[5]

Modern practices

Most of the objects reputed to be the Holy Prepuce were lost or destroyed during the Reformation and the French Revolution. [5]

Calcata is worthy of special mention, as the reliquary containing the Holy Foreskin was paraded through the streets of this Italian village as recently as 1983 on the Feast of the Circumcision, which was formerly marked by the Roman Catholic Church around the world on January 1 each year. The practice ended, however, when thieves stole the jewel-encrusted case, contents and all. [5] Following this theft, it is unclear whether any of the purported Holy Prepuces still exist. In a 1997 television documentary for Channel 4, British journalist Miles Kington travelled to Italy in search of the Holy Foreskin, but was unable to find any remaining example.
According to 17th century theologian Leo Allatius (Leone Allacci), the foreskin may have divinely ascended to become the rings of Saturn.
According to 17th century theologian Leo Allatius (Leone Allacci), the foreskin may have divinely ascended to become the rings of Saturn.

Historical allusions and references to the Holy Prepuce

Apart from its physical importance as a relic, the Holy Foreskin is sometimes claimed to have appeared in a famous vision of Saint Catherine of Siena. In the vision, Jesus mystically marries her, and his amputated foreskin is given to her as a wedding ring. [6] However, this has not been traced any earlier than a seventeenth-century anti-Catholic parody, and as such is of dubious credibility.

Because the sweet scent that the relic was supposed to give off was reputed to enhance fertility and ease childbirth, when Catherine of Valois was pregnant in 1421, her husband, King Henry V of England, sent to Coulombs for the Holy Prepuce. According to this legend, it did its job so well that Henry was reluctant to return it after the birth of the child (the future King Henry VI of England).[6]

Saint Bridget was said to have received the Holy Prepuce from an angel, and would experience "orgasm-like sensations" when she would place bits of it on her tongue.[6]

During the late 17th century, Catholic scholar and theologian Leo Allatius in De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba ("Discussion concerning the Prepuce of our Lord Jesus Christ") speculated that the Holy Foreskin may have ascended into Heaven at the same time as Jesus himself and might have become the rings of Saturn, then only recently observed by telescope.

Voltaire, in A Treatise of Toleration (1763), ironically referred to veneration of the Holy Foreskin as being one of a number of superstitions that were "much more reasonable... than to detest and persecute your brother". [7]

Umberto Eco, in his book Baudolino, has the young Baudolino invent a story about seeing the holy foreskin and navel in Rome to the company of Friedrich Barbarosa.

See also

* Circumcision
* Holy Umbilical Cord
* Shroud of Turin
* True Cross

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ Boussel, Patrice; Des Reliques et de Leur Bon Usage, 1971.
3. ^ a b [2]
4. ^ a b [3]
5. ^ a b c "Fore Shame", David Farley, Slate.com, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006
6. ^ a b c [4]
7. ^ [5]

* Müller, Alphons Victor: Die hochheilige Vorhaut Christi im Kult und in der Theologie der Papstkirche. Berlin 1907.
* Shell, Marc: "The Holy Foreskin; or, Money, Relics, and Judeo-Christianity." Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies. Ed. Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997.

External links

* Relics article from the Catholic Encyclopedia
* The Relics of Romanism article at the European Institute of Protestant Studies (anti-Catholic site)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce"

Categories: Articles with unsourced statements | Circumcision | Relics attributed to Jesus | Famous body parts

(# This page was last modified 02:49, 29 December 2006.
# All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License)

A STATEMENT ON TEDDY KOLLEK from the Israel Museum:

A STATEMENT ON THE DEATH OF TEDDY KOLLEK
JANUARY 2, ‏2007

The entire family of the Israel Museum mourns today the passing of Teddy Kollek.

Teddy's vision shaped the modern landscape of Jerusalem, embracing as its cultural centerpiece the plan for a museum of art, archeology, and the material culture of the Jewish world that would parallel the national museums of other countries worldwide.

From its founding in 1965, Teddy guided the flowering of what would become one of the largest encyclopedic museums in the world, comprising over 500,000 objects spanning the timeline of material culture from pre-historic archeology through contemporary art. He also envisioned the Museum as a vital educational setting where Jerusalem's and Israel's many communities could together learn to appreciate the rich cultural heritage of an intercommunal world.

With charisma and determination, Teddy also forged an international network of friends - the Museum’s International Council - whose contributions of gifts of works of art and financial support have enabled the Museum to achieve world-class standing in a history of just over forty years - a result which is surely without parallel in the museum world.

"Teddy was visionary in his conception for a museum that would be the jewel in the cultural landscape of modern Jerusalem, in the cultural crown of the modern State of Israel. The comprehensive reach, and sheer physical beauty, of the Museum and its campus are a true testament to his success," states James Snyder, Director of the Museum.

"The Israel Museum today stands as a proud symbol of Israel’s cultural heritage, from the archeology of the ancient Land of Israel to the creativity of Israel’s artists today, seen within the context of world cultural heritage. Teddy realized this dream through his persuasiveness with a community of supporters from around the world - an achievement almost as remarkable as the Museum itself," states Isaac Molho, Chairman of the Board of the Museum.

Teddy himself, together with his wife Tamar, was also a donor to the Museum, with gifts of archeological objects and historical maps from their private collection.

Teddy served as Chairman of the Museum from 1965 through 1996, and then as President until his designation as Founder in 2000. On the occasion of the Museum's 25th Anniversary in 1990, he was named Avi Ha Muzeon (Father of the Museum), and he and Tamar were named the 100th Honorary Fellows of the Museum in 2000. Teddy enjoyed an intense relationship of commitment, caring, and affection with many members of the Museum's staff, its Board, and its International Council, and he will be greatly missed by all of them.

JACK BAUER AS JESUS? PaleoJudaica has already been there.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: More on opposition by archaeologists to the bridge to the Mugrabi Gate. The Jerusalem Post reports the following:

The plan to construct the new bridge straight through the archeological garden has provoked fierce opposition by archeologists, who say that the bridge will inevitably damage antiquities.

"What is being done is a crime against one of the world's top archeological places, and the Antiquities Authority is lending its hand to this crime, the destruction of archeology," said Dr. Eilat Mazar, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Shalem Center.

Mazar noted that there is no need for the bridge - whose planned length has nearly tripled - to run through the garden. Originally, the route for the bridge ran between the Western Wall and the site.

"The archeological garden is of primary importance to the future and history of Jerusalem and under no circumstance should be touched," said Professor Amos Kloner, former Jerusalem district archeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Kloner lambasted the IAA for succumbing to "foreign interests" in approving the plan and forgoing its mandate to preserve the archeological site.

Kloner added that a petition against the planned bridge had been signed by 30 leading Israeli archeologists, already forcing some changes in the proposal.

THE HOLYLAND THEME PARK in Orlando is reviewed in SouthFlorida.com. It sounds pretty goofy, but this is interesting:

Two features are still ahead for next year. One is the Qumran Cave, a copy of the caverns where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947. That's planned for a July opening. The other is the "Scriptorium," a museum of biblical manuscripts planned for an opening early next year. An extended loan from the Robert Van Kampen familyof Michigan, the collection is so large that only 20 percent of it will be on display at any given time.

IN THE MAIL: Hendrickson Publishers have noticed PaleoJudaica and have kindly offered to send me books on ancient Judaism from time to time. There are no conditions attached, but whenever I think one might be of interest to PaleoJudaica readers, I'll mention it. Here's one:

T. Anthony Perry, The Honeymoon Is over: Jonah's Argument With God (2006)

Looks like an interesting popular treatment of theological issues in Jonah from a Jewish perspective.

THE BYBLOS OIL SPILL has now been cleaned up:

U.S. Helps Lebanon Complete Oil-Spill Cleanup

USAID experts train, partner with locals to clean historic sites, harbors

By Carrie Loewenthal
USINFO Special Correspondent

Washington -- A team of American and Lebanese workers has completed the cleanup of over 100 kilometers of coastline in Lebanon, stretching from Byblos to Enfeh, contaminated by an oil spill, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) says.

[...]

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Temple Aqueduct and Ritual Bath Excavated Opposite Temple Mount
01:00 Jan 15, '07 / 25 Tevet 5767
by Ezra HaLevi (Arutz Sheva)

Excavations being conducted opposite the Western Wall Plaza have uncovered an aqueduct that brought water to the Holy Temple, as well as a ritual bath from that period.


The never-before-excavated area is situated behind the Western Wall police station, adjacent to the plaza where millions of worshipers and tourists come each year to visit the Western Wall and Temple Mount.

The new archaeological find uncovers a missing link in the ancient water system, known as the "Lower Aqueduct" which channeled water from Solomon’s Pools near Bethlehem (located miles south of Jerusalem) directly to the national focal point of Jewish worship - the Temple Mount.

[...]

UPDATE: The Jerusalem Post also has a story on the excavation that includes additional information:

Invading Romans' greatest obstacle uncovered in J'lem
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

An immense bedrock cliff uncovered opposite Jerusalem's Temple Mount may help explain why it took the Romans so long to capture what is now known as the Jewish Quarter almost two millenia ago, an Israeli archeologist said Sunday.

The cliff, uncovered during a year-long excavation at the western edge of the Western Wall Plaza, was one of several important finds that include the remains of a colonnaded street called the Eastern Cardo, dating from the Roman-Byzantine period; a section of the Lower Aqueduct that conveyed water from Solomon's Pools to the Temple Mount; and a damaged rock-hewn and plastered Jewish mikve (ritual bath) that dates back to the Second Temple period, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced at a press conference.

[...]

And there's also a report by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs that looks as though it's the source of the Arutz Sheva article.

IN THE MAIL -- or at least in my mailbox. My colleague Richard Bauckham has very kindly given me a signed copy of his latest:

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Eerdmans, 2006)

I've seen some of it in page proofs already. I dare say it will be judged to be one of the most important books on the New Testament to be published in the last year.

ANTIQUITIES ARE BEING RAINED ON in a museum in Jerusalem:

Ancient treasures graced by rainwater
By Nadav Shragai (Haaretz

Visitors to a unique museum in Jerusalem's Old City displaying rare mosaics, frescoes, ritual baths and structures dating to the time of the Second Temple, find themselves stepping over buckets of water, as they make their way from one archaeological treasure to the next.

The buckets have been placed throughout the Herodian Mansions-Wohl Archaeological Museum in the Jewish Quarter in an attempt to minimize rainwater and sewage from dripping onto the ancient displays.

[...]

The Jewish Quarter Development Company, which owns and operates the museum, says the water dripping onto the antiquities is due to poor sealing between paving stones of the streets above the site. The Jerusalem Municipality, which is responsible for infrastructure in public areas, says there is no proof of that contention, and that sewaged pipes are the source of the leak.

[...]

Whatever the reason is, the leak is damaging the museum and its contents. This is not good.

THE GODS OF ROME are important for the second season of the series Rome. Beliefnet has an article on pagan religion in the series:

The Pagans of 'Rome'
The HBO series, entering its second season, explores the Romans' oft-ignored devotion to their many different gods.
By Ted Phillips

If the past is a foreign country, then ancient religion may be its most exotic locale. The HBO series "Rome," which returns for its second season on Sunday, is hardly "Fodor's Guide to Paganism," but by venturing off some well-worn cinematic paths, the show has given the worship of the gods a generous treatment in a genre dominated by stories of gladiators and the advent of Christ.

The creators of the serial drama, which focuses on the power struggles during the last days of the Roman Republic in the first century B.C.E., wanted to portray Roman religion not as a doomed prologue to Christianity but as a vibrant and meaningful part of everyday life.

[...]

Ancient Judaism also makes an appearance:

Headed the opposite direction is the amoral Jewish horse trader and henchman Timon, who slowly embraces the ethical tenants of Judaism when his zealous brother pays him a visit from Judea. His brother's influence comes to a head while Timon tortures a rival of his patron and discovers there is a limit to how much brutality he is willing to put another human being through.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH (2): A volunteer reports on a visit to the salvage excavation of the Temple Mount rubble dumped by the Waqf:

Sifting through history

BY: ARI Z. ZIVOTOFSKY Special to the CJN (Cleveland Jewish News)

(Israel) - About a dozen volunteers, including my three children, were dumping buckets of dirt over wire mesh, washing the dirt down with a hose, and hoping to find 2,500-year-old coins.

They were among the hundreds of volunteers and tens of professionals who have assisted in a most unusual archaeological project, currently taking place in Tzurim Valley just below the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University.

[...]

Having visited Barkai's [i.e., archaeologist Gabriel Barkay] work area and realizing the unique opportunity involved, I took my family for a morning of “junior archaeologist.” We walked down a steep hill from the Hebrew University parking lot and were seated with several other volunteers on benches to hear a short introduction to the work and methodology, as well as to see photos of some of the previous finds. Before any of us had shown up, a mechanical sifter had been used to separate the earth into heaps consisting of material of differing sizes.

The finest pile was going to be sifted by hand by us. We were each given a bucket of dirt to pour onto the wire mesh “sifters,” where the dirt was thoroughly rinsed and the tedious process of searching for centimeter-sized objects began. After all of the material was examined, an experienced assistant checked the work, and what was left was dumped into a second pile for discarding. All found objects were sorted into six categories and left for the professionals to examine and study.

We found nothing more significant than a few mosaic tiles, but a good time was had by all. And knowing that we had sifted dirt from the Temple Mount, where our two destroyed temples had stood and that now gave forth a coin from almost 1,900 years ago that bore the Hebrew phrase L'Herut Tzion - “For the Freedom of Zion,” gave us a special feeling.

There is still much dirt to be sorted, and the project is open for volunteers, both individuals and organizations, who can participate by contacting the Ir David organization (ElAd), which is now funding and coordinating the project (www.cityofdavid. org.il/).

For some recent background, see here and here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH (1): More controversy over the bridge to the Mugrabi Gate:

Archaeologists knock Western Wall bridge plan
By Nadav Shragai (Haaretz)

Senior archaeologists have come out in harsh criticism against the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) for authorizing plans for a bridge to connect the Dung Gate in Jerusalem's Old City to the Mugrabi Gate, located next to the Western Wall and leading to the Temple Mount.

Work on the bridge is to begin Sunday, after it received a green light from the city's planning division.

The archaeologists say that the bridge's pylons will damage one of the most significant archaeological parks in Israel and the world, located outside the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount.

They also say the plan was not held up to professional and public scrutiny, that the conservation committee of the IAA was not called together to discuss it, and that other alternatives were not given proper consideration. They are thus calling for a halt to work until the plan can be reevaluated.

The IAA rejects the criticism outright and says "the construction of the bridge was conditioned on archaeological excavations that would expose the ancient remains completely, preserve them and present them to the public as part of the Archaeological Park." The rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovich, who has promoted the plan, says that from his point of view, the Mugrabi Gate could be closed, but since the police insist on its continued use, and the plan was approved and alternatives carefully examined, the bridge is the lesser evil.

[...]

For some background to this story, see here.

A GENDER-NEUTRAL PENTATEUCH? Insofar as that is possible:

Scholars Wrestle With Language of Torah Without Throwing It Away
January 11, 2007 - Rachel Silverman (Jewish Exponent)

As a biblical scholar, Ellen Frankel sees the Torah as a sacred, absolute text.

But when it comes to issues of gender, Frankel -- the author of a women's commentary on the Torah, among other books -- feels that the work of God could stand for a little revision.

As the editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society explained it, "I had to figure out how to wrestle with the Torah and still not throw it away."

Out of this need The Contemporary Torah: A Gender Sensitive Adaptation of the JPS Translation was born.

In refashioning the text, a team of scholars -- including Frankel; David E.S. Stein, a Reconstructionist rabbi and editor; Adele Berlin, a Hebrew Bible expert at the University of Maryland; and Carol Meyers, a religion professor at Duke University -- tried to meld contemporary interests about gender with an ancient text -- and world -- that is predominantly male-centric.

[...]

This is an interesting project whose principles seem to have been worked out quite sensibly:

In some cases, these questions led the scholars to retain gendered language.

For example, a verse in the '62 translation mentions that the wife of a male slave should leave with him when he becomes free.

But what if the roles were switched: Would a man go off with a newly freed female slave?

Ensuing research proved that this would not have occurred. Such an act would have been a transgression of ancient mores that made women more or less property of men. Therefore, the new editors felt the original sentence should not be refashioned. And so it reads: "If [a male slave] came single, he shall leave single; if he had a wife, his wife shall leave with him."

In other cases, gendered terms were extracted and more generic ones applied.

For instance, the editors explain in the prefatory material to the the new volume that it was not uncommon for ancient Hebrews to refer to both male and female herders as "herdsmen." Ancient audiences, too, would have interpreted the term figuratively.

But in today's gender conscious society, the editors felt that most readers would assume "herdsmen" meant solely men. So, to better enable modern audiences to grasp the meaning of the line -- found in Genesis 13 -- they decided to go with "herders."

Regarding the Tetragrammaton:

The editors agreed that the tetragrammaton -- the unpronounceable four-letter name for God -- presented their biggest hurdle.

Though Judaism as a theology does not ascribe a gender to God, the 1962 Torah translation consistent- ly refers to God as "the lord." This has left many Jews with a sense that God is in fact male, a sentiment the authors said they did not want to propagate.

To handle the issue, Stein asked 18 biblical scholars to weigh in on how to represent God in a gender-sensitive light.

After much wrangling -- Frankel admitted that most respondents couldn't even produce an answer -- the editors decided to keep the Hebrew lettering that corresponds to the English consonants YHWH.

In addition to satisfying the gender-neutral requirement, this solution was meant to separate God's name from the rest of the text, explained Frankel.

That is probably the best solution, in that YHWH was the proper name of the Israelite God and it's not entirely clear what it meant. The mistranslation "Lord" comes from the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation). But that also doesn't change the fact that YHWH was considered male in ancient Israel. Indeed, the Israelites clearly thought of YHWH as a really big guy who sat on his throne up in heaven and ruled the universe. In at least some Israelite circles he seems even to have had a goddess wife.

But, of course, this patriarchal view of God is offensive and theologically unacceptable to many if not most people today, and it just won't do. Nevertheless, the text should still be translated to say what it actually says, like it or not. This translation seems to have side-stepped the problem, at least for the most part. Although I do wonder how they handle the the gender of pronouns referring to YHWH.

IN THE MAIL:

Jane Dammen McAuliffe (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an (CUP, 2006)

Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (CUP, 2003)

Stefan C. Reif, (ed.), The Cambridge Genizah Collections: Their Contents and Significance (CUP, 2002)

Abraham Wasserstein and David J. Wasserstein, The Legend of the Septuagint: From Classical Antiquity to Today (CUP, 2006)

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL - BEST OF 2006 has been posted on the Codex blog by Tyler Williams. It's an excellent retrospective of the year in the Biblioblogosphere.

UPDATE: Note also the recent Patristics Roundup by Phil S. at hyperekperissou.

THE SBL FORUM for January has been posted. Highlights include Lawrence J. Mykytiuk, "Wikipedia: Unreliable Source, Useful Heuristic Tool," and Mark Goodacre, "'The Nativity Story': A Review."

A SEMINAR ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS will be held here at St. Mary's College on Tuesday, 23 January. Nicholas de Lange and Margaret Williams are the speakers. Alex Panayotov has asked me to post this flier:Click on the image for a larger version. If you're in the vicinity, hope to see you there.