I'M BACK, at least for the present. Sorry for the long hiatus, but I did need the break to take care of other things. I hope to continue blogging regularly now, but there may be other unscheduled breaks.

Sorry also about the missing archive. It's still in the system, but for some reason the new Blogger system doesn't show it on the blog page. I'll try to figure out how to get it back, time permitting.

Finally, let me just mention that St. Andrews did not fill the two positions for New Testament and Old Testament/Hebrew Bible chairs (i.e., full professorships). So we are about to relaunch the search for both at a more junior level, with a range from Lectureship to Senior Lectureship to Reader. British readers will understand these titles. North Americans and some others may not, but they should think of this as in the range of assistant professor to associate professor. The adverts are cycling through our system, but I will post them as soon as I can.

It's good to be back.

NO BLOGGING FOR A WHILE. I'll be back when I can.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The Turkish delegation's report on the Mughrabi Gate excavation should be out in a few days, according to Today's Zaman.

Al-Aqsa report to be presented to PM Erdoğan within days
A report that is being drawn up by a group of technical experts, following an April visit to Jerusalem where they surveyed archeological work near the revered al-Aqsa Mosque, is expected to be finished and introduced to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a few days, Foreign Ministry spokesman Levent Bilman said Wednesday.

The Israeli archeological dig near the Muslim holy site sparked widespread protests amid fears that the work could damage the site. The Turkish delegation’s visit to Jerusalem, inspection of the site and eventual preparation of a report are all the result of an agreement reached in early February between Erdoğan and his Israeli counterpart Ehud Olmert, during the latter’s visit to the Turkish capital.

[...]

ARCHAEOLOGIST JODI MAGNESS is profiled by UNC Chapel Hill's Daily Tar Heel:

Students enraptured by Magness' teaching style
By: Deborah Neffa, Staff Writer

While some people have a hard time memorizing a five-minute speech, professor Jodi Magness can talk passionately about religious studies for more than an hour - without using so much as a note card.

About 200 students, some of whom resorted to sitting on the floor of Murphey 116, listened intently Tuesday as Magness narrated a tale about the Roman siege of Masada, a site of ancient palaces in Israel.

And although many typically consider history lectures dry and trite, Magness' unique teaching style of using vivid anecdotes kept students on the edge of their seats.

[...]

TALPIOT TOMB WATCH: The Jerusalem Post notes changes on the Discovery Channel's website.

Jesus tomb film scholars backtrack
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

Several prominent scholars who were interviewed in a bitterly contested documentary that suggests that Jesus and his family members were buried in a nondescript ancient Jerusalem burial cave have now revised their conclusions, including the statistician who claimed that the odds were 600:1 in favor of the tomb being the family burial cave of Jesus of Nazareth, a new study on the fallout from the popular documentary shows.

[...]

Pfann's paper reported that a statement on the Discovery Channel's Web site, which previously read "a statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters...concludes that the probability factor is 600 to 1 in favor of this being the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family," in keeping with Feuerverger's statement, has been altered and now reads, "a statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters... concludes that the probability factor is in the order of 600 to 1 that an equally 'surprising' cluster of names would arise purely by chance under given assumptions."

Another sentence on the same Web site stating that Feuerverger had concluded it was highly probable that the tomb, located in the southeastern residential Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot, was the Jesus family tomb - the central point of the film - has also been changed. It now reads: "It is unlikely that an equally surprising cluster of names would have arisen by chance under purely random sampling."

[...]

Readers of Mark Goodacre's New Testament Gateway blog will have known about this since the middle of March. Once again the mainstream media comes trailing in behind the Blogosphere.

SAMSON AS SUICIDE BOMBER?

Samson, the Jewish suicide bomber
By israelinsider staff April 10, 2007

This April the Canadian Victoria Philharmonic Choir is performing Handel's Samson, but with a different spin, thanks to Artistic Director Simon Capet. The Irishman managed to transform the biblical story of the Samson into the story of a Jewish suicide bomber in pre-state Palestine.

According to the biblical story, Samson has superhuman strength, but fails to follow God's instructions. After being captured and blinded by his enemy, the Philistines, he prays and repents to God and is able to bring down a Philistine temple, thus killing everyone inside, including himself.

Musically, Capet left Handel's work unchanged. However, in the climactic scene in Capet's version, there is no trace of the Philistine temple. Instead, Samson's mother unbuttons her coat, removes the explosives belt she had concealed, and attaches it to Samson's beaten body. She then helps him put on a shirt and he is led offstage. Moments later there is the blast of an explosion and a burst of light offstage.

[...]

The Samson story is morally repugnant in any number of ways, but it's a big stretch to transform him into a suicide bomber. Besides the fact that, as the article notes, there have not been any Jewish suicide bombers. This sounds to me like one of those artsy modernizing adaptations that regularly ruin Shakespeare and the like.

MORE JEWISH-TEMPLE DENIAL, this time from the Chief Palestinian Justice, according to the Palestine News Network:

Dozens of settlers enter grounds of Al Aqsa Mosque
(Jerusalem) Palestine News Network
Sunday, 08 April 2007

After the Chief Palestinian Justice warned of an impending attempt by Jewish fundamentalists to storm Al Aqsa Mosque on Sunday, dozens did.

Sheikh Taysir Al Tamimi said that the support that the Israeli government gives not only to political, but religious extremists, is an illustration of its own fundamentalism. The military did not try to stop the settlers, but instead provided them protection.

“This provocation, for which the military provides full support and protection, directly wrongs the religious feelings of Muslims."

He continued, "It is sinful to desecrate the sanctity of the Mosque and is a flagrant abuse of the role of worship.”

The Sheikh pointed out the political folly of claims that an ancient Jewish temple exists in the area. He said, “The claims of the alleged temple are pure fabrications which fact, archaeologists and history prove wrong. The work of the extremists is contrary to heavenly and divine laws, and also to international law.”

[...]

My emphasis. I'm not sure what the "storming" of the site by religious extremists is about, but whatever happened seems not to have attracted any attention by the major media outlets.

RICHARD FREUND is lecturing on the Cave of the Letters at Washington University in St. Louis:

Dead Sea cave archaeology is focus of Richard Freund lecture, April 20

By Gerry Everding

April 9, 2007 -- Richard Freund, director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford, will discuss "Temple Treasures in the Dead Sea Caves: New Insights from Archaeology" at 11 a.m. April 20 in Room 301, Lab Sciences Building, Danforth Campus.

[...]

TOO BUSY TO BLOG right now and the news seems to be quiet anyhow. But you might want to have a look at posts on blogging and tenure by Mark Goodacre and April DeConick. Also, happy second blogiversary to Tyler Williams's Codex blog. And Pete Williams is blogging on Sogdian and Middle Persian Psalters.

ST. VERONICA has been deleted from the Via Dolorosa by the Vatican because she comes from apocryphal traditions. Tony Chartand-Burke takes exception.

I have no theological stake in this issue, but, for what it's worth, the New Testament quotes from lost and not-so-lost apocrypha and pseudepigrapha from time to time (see, e.g., 2 Timothy 3:8 and Jude 9 and 14-15). So in purely historical terms the biblical corpus cannot be sharply separated from noncanonical texts.

ANNIE JAUBERT'S THEORY that Jesus celebrated the Last Supper according to the Qumran solar calendar seems to have been mentioned recently by the Pope. The theory, first published half a century ago in French, is being "hailed as radical" by the press.

ANOTHER 60TH-ANNIVERSARY ROUNDUP on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Looks like an accurate and well done summary of the mainstream scholarly views on the Scrolls.

Dead Sea Scrolls fuel imagination

Found 60 years ago, they remain iconic

By Craig Nelson
Cox News Service
April 8, 2007

KIBBUTZ KALIA, Israel -- Whenever fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls are put on exhibition anywhere in the world, throngs of religious believers crowd in front of display cases.

The fragments are faded, some even black, with age and the effects of the amino acids in the animal skins on which they were written. Most are illegible.

Still, the ancient scrolls, discovered 60 years ago this year, have an enduring grip on the imagination and offer important insights of life in ancient Israel at the dawn of Christianity.

[...]

HAPPY EASTER to all those celebrating. More on Easter here.

ANNE WIDDECOMBE on Jeffrey Archer on Judas. Whew!

Excerpt:

Not even the severest critics of Jeffrey Archer can deny his style. Recognising the need for scholastic input to give some verisimilitude to his fiction, he doesn't bother with the local priest, but goes to the Vatican and one of the greatest living scriptural scholars, Professor Francis Moloney, whom he persuades to get heavily involved. If nothing else, it will ensure that The Gospel According to Judas will not endure the indignity, inflicted on The Da Vinci Code, of being greeted with a published rebuttal, whatever heresy it may contain (eg that Jesus was the actual son of Joseph).

Archer wrote this book knowing that everyone would draw parallels with his own life, although I defy anyone to imagine him going off to the obscurity of some latter-day Essenes. Can a reputation be rescued? Can the reviled man be reinvented as a hero? Can the man shunned become the man venerated?

Interesting. But please don't waste your time on Who Moved The Stone?

TWO NEW GUGGENHEIM FELLOWS at Brown University are worthy of note here:

* Susan Harvey, a professor of religious studies, who specializes in late antique and Byzantine Christianity, focusing on Syriac studies. She is widely published in the fields of asceticism, hagiography, women and gender, hymnography, homiletics, and piety in late antique Christianity. Harvey will work on her current book project, “Teaching Women: Biblical Women and Women’s Choirs in Syriac Tradition.”

* Michael L. Satlow, an associate professor of Judaic studies and religious studies, whose specialty is early Judiasm. A member of the board of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and a co-editor of the Brown Judaic studies series, he earned his Ph.D. in ancient Judaism from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Satlow will investigate how the Jews of late antiquity understood their relationship with God, in a project titled “Jewish Piety in Late Antiquity.”

Congratulations to Professors Harvey and Satlow, and to the other Fellows listed as well.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS were discovered sixty years ago this month. More or less. Maybe.

60 years and still scrolls a mystery

Apr 07, 2007 04:30 AM
Stuart Laidlaw
Faith and Ethics Reporter (Toronto Star)

Sixty years ago this month, a poor Bedouin shepherd named Muhammed edh-Dhib cut down a series of parchments hanging in his tent and handed them to his older cousins, who had contacts in the shadowy world of antiquities in nearby Bethlehem.

Convinced they had nothing of real value on their hands, but needing money, Juma and Khalil walked into the shop of Khalil Eskander Shahin, better known by the nickname Kando, and sold the scrolls for £5, or about $10. Kando later resold them for five times that, a tidy profit.

Today, they are priceless and better known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Popular legend surrounding the scrolls says, several months earlier, 16-year-old edh-Dhib was looking for lost sheep and became convinced they were in a cave on the edge of the Dead Sea. Throwing a rock in the cave to scare the sheep out, he heard the sound of breaking pottery.

[...]

Looks like a pretty good article on the story of the discovery of the Scrolls.

A DIRECTOR has been chosen for NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World:

NYU Antiquities Center Director Is Named
Institutions

By GARY SHAPIRO (New York Sun)
April 5, 2007

New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World has named a classics professor and former Graduate School dean at Columbia University, Roger Bagnall, as its first director.

[...]

For more on the Institute, see here and follow the links back.

TODAY IS GOOD FRIDAY. More info here.

THE BRITISH LIBRARY has announced a forthcoming important exhibition of sacred texts:

Jewish Christian And Muslim Sacred Texts Exhibition At BL

The British Library is proud to announce that HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco, are the royal patrons of its forthcoming exhibition, Sacred: Discover what we share, which presents some of the world’s earliest-surviving, most important and beautiful religious texts from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths.

[...]

Sacred sees priceless examples of the Torah, New Testament and Qur’an mounted alongside each other – not individually in separate zones. The texts will be treated thematically, exploring points in common, looking at the ways in which they have been produced, interpreted and used. By integrating material in this way, the exhibition will demonstrate how these faiths have interacted and influenced one another, and will enable visitors to learn about all three alongside each other.

The exhibition explores inter faith attitudes in the UK both today and in the past and takes a look at community and schools projects from around Britain.

The exhibition is part of the Library’s long-term plans to feature other major world faiths which are represented within its collections.

Among the treasures to be displayed are:

* Codex London: One of the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, which are central to Jewish worship. The traditional Jewish view is that these five books were written by the Prophet Moses at divine dictation. This rare early copy was made in the Middle East, perhaps Palestine, in the 10th century.

* Codex Sinaiticus: It is the oldest complete manuscript of the New Testament and the earliest and best witness for some books of the Old Testament as well. This copy of the New Testament in Greek is absolutely key in the history of Christian textual scholarship. It was produced around 350 AD, possibly in Palestine, but its name derives from the still active Monastery of Saint Catherine near the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt where it was preserved for many centuries.

* Ma'il Qur'an: One of the earliest Qur’ans in the world to have survived, this dates from the beginning of the 8th century AD. That equates to the 1st century in the Muslim Hijri calendar, which means that this manuscript was penned within 100 years of a key event in the founding of Islam i.e. the hejira or flight of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD to escape his enemies. It was produced on the Arabian peninsula, probably in or near the holy cities of Islam.

* Syriac Pentateuch: The earliest known dated Biblical manuscript. This copy of the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy in Syriac is the earliest known dated Biblical manuscript. It was written by Deacon John at Amida (modern Diyarbakir in south eastern Turkey) in 463. Syriac was the language of the Syrian Church which extended across modern Turkey, Syria and Iraq. This version of the Bible (known as the Peshitta or 'simple' version) became important as the origin of most of the translations made into other languages of the Eastern churches, including Armenian.

[...]

And more! This sounds like a superb project. The article has the usual sort of glitches, such as giving the impression that the whole of Codex Sinaiticus will be displayed (only part of it is in Britain and I doubt they are gather all the surviving leaves from the other sites). It also refers to the Book of "Revelations," which should be "Revelation."

HEROD THE GREAT is to be the subject of a lecture at Bryn Mawr:

Archaeologist Brings Historical Perspective
To the Reign of a Biblical Villain

Each year, the C. Denismore Curtis Lecture is presented by a speaker chosen by the graduate students of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. This year, the students have extended the honor to University of Cincinnati archaeologist Barbara Burrell, who will provide an historical perspective on Herod the Great, a biblical figure long reviled in the West. She will deliver the lecture, titled "Conquering Nature: Herod the Great's Caesarea," on Friday, April 13, at 5 p.m., in Carpenter B21. The lecture is free and open to the public; those who wish to meet Burrell are invited to tea in the Quita Woodward Room at 4 p.m.

ONE OF MY BOOKS with Brill is on sale this month at half price. Marinke de Rooij e-mails the following information. Get 'em while they're hot!

I would like to inform you that your title, Descenders to the Chariot - The People Behind the Hekhalot Literature, published in 2001 by Brill, will be available as the monthly special offer of our Biblical Studies & Religious Studies E-Bulletin in April. In case you are not yet familiar with the Brill E-Bulletins I kindly refer you to the attached March edition of this free monthly newsletter, announcing per subject area new and forthcoming titles, new journal ToCs, book reviews, news about our program and a special offer. And as said, this month your title was selected and will be available at 50% discount from 15 April till 15 May 2007: Special offer price EUR 69 / US$ 93. This offer is open to all E-Bulletin subscribers and any interested parties (no additional discounts apply), so please feel free to spread the word. I of course hope you would then also endorse a subscription to this E-Bulletin, as this is a guarantee of receiving the latest information from Brill plus the opportunity to be the first to profit from any special offers and free trials we have for you.

In addition, I would like to update you on one of the links on your webpage for the Journals Online. As of 2007, the journal Aramaic Studies is available from Brill. Access to the online content from Brill can be found at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/arst
With the transition to Brill, we have seized the opportunity to significantly lower the subscription rates to Aramaic Studies. Individual subscription rates for 2007 are now at EUR 54 / US$ 69. For more information please see www.brill.nl/arst.

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL XVI has been posted by Brandon Wason at the Novum Testamentum blog. Also, Brandon interviews James Tabor as Blogger of the Month at Biblioblogs.com.

APOCRYPHA WATCH: Juditha Triumphans, by Vivaldi, is playing in Boston.

Baroque delivers a rare Vivaldi in vivid color

By Jeremy Eichler, Globe Staff | April 2, 2007

Boston Baroque's current season leans rather heavily on greatest hits of the repertoire such as "Don Giovanni," "Messiah," and Beethoven's Fifth. But music director Martin Pearlman also has a nose for sniffing out music that flies a bit below the radar screen -- not exactly obscure but performed rarely enough to perk up the ears. Last year in the rediscovery department was Cherubini's noble yet neglected C minor Requiem (just out on CD); this season it is Vivaldi's only surviving oratorio, "Juditha Triumphans," which the group performed vibrantly on Saturday night in Jordan Hall.

It is a lovely and somewhat peculiar work, written in 1716 for the girls of the orphanage where Vivaldi worked, and labeled "A Sacred Military Oratorio." It adapts a story from the apocrypha featuring Juditha, a Jewish widow who, in order to save her embattled city, seduces and later beheads Holofernes , a general of Nebuchadnezzar's army. The libretto by Giacomo Cassetti gets pretty gory -- in one recitative, Judith urges her servant Abra to put the general's severed head in a bag as they make their escape -- and Vivaldi's vocal writing sometimes seems more concerned with florid display than with deeply probing the complexities of his characters' plights. But the music is consistently imaginative -- and occasionally breathtaking -- in its use of orchestral color.

[...]

ELAINE PAGELS is interviewed about the Gospel of Judas etc. in the San Francisco Chronicle. Once again, there is no mention of the contrary scholarly reading that Judas is as evil as ever in the Gospel of Judas. But it's still a very interesting interview and well worth the read.

AN ANTIQUITIES EXHIBITION IN DALLAS includes some Dead Sea Scrolls:

Dallas museum exhibits artifacts from Jesus time
April 3, 2007

By ASHLIE YOUNG
Reporter (Baylor Lariat)

The smell of hot lentils and garlic wafts through the air amid scrolls of Biblical text and bone boxes of men who have been dead for centuries.

Wild treasures lay along every wall, scenes of ancient days coming to life.

Clay squishes and forms into pots as sand seeps through fingers digging for artifacts.

For the first time in history, people will have the chance to step back in time and experience life the way it was centuries ago, the way it was when Jesus walked the earth.

Dallas Fair Park is holding "Ancient Treasures of the Holy Land," the largest cultural exhibit of Holy Land antiquities in U.S. history nearly 30,000 square feet.

Artifacts date back from the time of Abraham until after the death of Jesus, laid out in chronological order.

"This exhibit is the culmination of many years of dreaming, planning and conceptualizing," general manager Dennis Malone said.

"Many people want to go to Israel but can't. So we are bringing it to them "Ancient Treasures of the Holy Land" paints the story of Israel and Jewish heritage."

More than 350 priceless artifacts, many never seen outside their native countries, have been brought together to allow viewers to see the real story.

Displayed items include the ossuary, or bone boxes, believed to have contained the bones of both Simon of Cyrenia, who carried the cross of Jesus, and his son Alexander; large portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls from Leviticus and Deuteronomy; wall decorations from the Ivory Palace of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel; inscriptions more than 4,000 years old from Abraham's home in the city of Ur; ancient coins and weaponry, including a sword dating back to 2200 B.C.; and many other artifacts from Masada, Qumran, the City of David and Egypt.

[...]

HAPPY PASSOVER to those celebrating. The Festival of Passover began yesterday evening at sundown. (I meant to note it then, but Blogger was down.) More info here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The plan of the new Sanhedrin to sacrifice sheep on the Temple Mount has been nixed by the Israeli High Court of Justice.

Court prevents groups from sacrificing live animals at Temple Mount
By Nadav Shargai and Amiram Barkat , Haaretz Correspondent

In their efforts to sacrifice a live animal at the Temple Mount, the New Sanhedrin Council adopted an almost underground modus operandi. Rabbis Adin Steinsaltz, Israel Ariel, Yishai Baved and their associates secretly located a butcher, found a Cohen hailing from a lineage 1,000 years old and worked out a plan to quickly erect an alter on the Temple Mount.

They tried to revive the customs of the ancient Sanhedrin tribunal, which was the highest judicial body for the Jewish people in Israel some 1,600 years ago. They sought to slaughter a sacrificial animal across from the Western Wall.

The activists, who belong to various religious circles such as the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement, also petitioned the High Court of Justice for the right to perform the ritual.

Their plans were thwarted on Sunday when the court rejected their request, ruling that "the rights of the petitioners to practice their faith are outweighed by other considerations such as public order and safety."

[...]

MORE ON THE NEW (?) JESUS APOCRYPHON located by Tony Chartrand-Burke. Over at Apocryphicity he writes:

Several weeks ago I posted the beginning and ending of a fragment of a text I referred to as the “Funeral of Jesus” which I recently came across in a manuscript catalogue entry. I have since obtained the manuscript and have begun the process of deciphering the text. This is no easy task. While the manuscript is well-preserved, the proliferation of abbreviations makes reading the text quite difficult. I offer this preliminary report on the text with the hope of generating some discussion on its contents. Though I believe the text has never been published, I am curious whether anyone in the field has encountered it before.

For a description and summary of the text, go have a look.

ASSIMILATED TO THE BLOGOSPHERE: Steve Caruso has a new Aramaic Blog, which has been discussing, inter alia, the epigraphic material from the Talpiot tomb. Plus, he'll sell you an Aramaic tattoo. Don't embarrass yourself with an error-ridden one by a second-rater!

No, this isn't an April Fool's joke.

(Via the New Testament Gateway blog.)

JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN review a new Gospel of Judas book by Elaine Pagels and Karen King in the Washington Post:

Embracing Judas
A recently translated gospel argues that betraying Jesus was the right thing to do.

Reviewed by John Dominic Crossan
Sunday, April 1, 2007; Page BW11

READING JUDAS

The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

By Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King

Viking. 198 pp. $24.95

The Christian Gospels are surprisingly ridden with conflict. Each one -- whether officially part of the New Testament or not -- contains a sometimes acrimonious debate about faith or practice, theology or authority, this leader or that one.

In the recently published Gospel of Judas, for example, that archetypal traitor becomes the only true believer, the one who "lifted up his eyes . . . saw the luminous cloud and . . . entered into it." The gospel was discovered sometime in the 1970s along with some other texts in a papyrus book in Egypt. The original 2nd-century Greek text had been translated into Coptic -- the Egyptian language using the Greek alphabet -- in the 4th century. This version was stored inadequately, protected irresponsibly and bartered greedily for maximum profit. Finally, last year, the badly damaged gospel received expert preservation, scholarly restoration and public presentation by the National Geographic Society.

In their slim but excellent Reading Judas, Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King rightly focus on the text's ancient and provocative theology rather than on the codex's modern and tortured history, with King also providing a new and very well annotated translation of this early Christian document.

[...]

Once again, there is no acknowledgment that the Judas-as-a-good-guy interpretation of the text is strongly contested by some specialists.

POEMS RELATED TO ARCHAEOLOGY, including Lord Byron's Destruction of Sennacherib, are being collected by K. Kris Hirst at About: Archaeology.

JAMES KUGEL notes that in the Bible God is not omniscient or omnipresent:

Envisioning a God with a body

The all-knowing, invisible God, we think of today isn't present in early chapters of the Bible, Jewish scholar James Kugel (right) says. Instead, those texts describe a walking, talking deity who travels from place to place

MIRKO PETRICEVIC (Waterloo Record)

(Mar 31, 2007)

Contrary to popular opinion, God in the earliest books of the Bible didn't know all things.

Nor did He exist everywhere, all at once, James Kugel says.

Instead, the God of Israel was a walking, talking deity who needed to seek clarification from time to time, the world-renowned Jewish scholar observed during a recent public lecture at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo.

[...]

God also experiments and sometimes gets it wrong and has to initiate damage control (e.g., Genesis 6), and he sometimes has to be talked out of rash decisions (e.g., Exodus 32).

ANNE RICE'S JESUS NOVEL is being made into a movie in Israel according to this press release:

Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt' to Shoot in Israel This October

LOS ANGELES, March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT, the motion picture based on Anne Rice's best-selling novel about Christ's early years, will begin shooting in Israel this October. Good News Holdings' decision to make the film in Israel has the full support of the Israeli government and casting has begun in Israel to find the boy who will play Jesus at the age of 7. A theatrical release is planned for Fall 2008.

[...]

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

First Temple wall found in City of David
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

A wall from the First Temple was recently uncovered in Jerusalem's City of David, strengthening the claim that it is the site of the palace of King David.

The new find, made by Dr. Eilat Mazar, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center's Institute for the Archeology of the Jewish People, comes less than two years after she said she had discovered the palace's location at the site just outside the walls of the Old City.

The monumental 10th century BCE building found by Mazar in 2005 following a six month dig has ignited debate among archaeologists about whether it is indeed the palace built for the victorious David by King Hiram of Tyre as recounted in Samuel II:5.

A 20-meter-long section of the 7-meter-thick wall has now been uncovered. It indicates that the City of David once served as a major government center, Mazar said.

Mazar estimates less than a quarter of the entire wall has been uncovered so far, and says that it is the largest site from King David's time ever to have been discovered.

The dig is sponsored by the capital's Shalem Center, with academic backing from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

There has to be an error here, perhaps just a word inadvertently omitted. Mazar must have said that she found a wall from the First Temple period, not a wall from the First Temple itself. Any surviving wall of the Temple would be buried under the Temple Mount platform and could not be excavated. It sounds as though this wall is actually from the monumental building she found earlier.

I'm extremely busy today and am unlikely to get in much blogging. But I did want to comment on this.

(Via Joseph I. Lauer.)

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

First synagogue facing Temple Mount to be built
By ELAZAR LEVIN / BUSINESS POST (Jerusalem Post)

The only synagogue in the world overlooking the Temple Mount will be built in the High Commissioner's Residence neighborhood in the southern part of Jerusalem. The project, titled 'Nof Zion' (view of Zion) is run by the Digal company, owned by Yehuda Levi and Meir Shamir.

The NIS six million investment was made entirely by donations of contractors and others. The synagogue will be built as a part of a neighborhood containing a hotel with 150 rooms and 475 apartments overlooking the Mount.

The synagogue, which will have a dome over it, will be two kilometers from the Temple Mount, but no building will obstruct the prayers from the holy location, and they will feel as if they are standing right next to it. The synagogue will be constructed by the "Bnei Zion Association" led by Yehuda Levi and his wife Betty.

[...]

PETE WILLIAMS, in his new role as Warden of Tyndale House, is profiled in Christian Today (not to be confused with Christianity Today). Pete, who is departing from Aberdeen University, is a prominent figure on the British New Testament scholarly scene and is a frequent contributor to the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog.

MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH have lost their appeal in the Da Vinci Code copyright case and they now face three million pounds in legal fees.

Novelist Dan Brown wins 'The Da Vinci Code' copyright infringement case in London

By Danica Kirka
ASSOCIATED PRESS

9:44 a.m. March 28, 2007

LONDON – Britain's Court of Appeal rejected a lawsuit Wednesday from two authors who claimed novelist Dan Brown stole their ideas for his blockbuster novel “The Da Vinci Code.”

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh had sued Brown's publisher, Random House Inc., claiming he had copied from their 1982 nonfiction book, “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.”

[...]

Such is the fate of over-reachers.

AN APOCRYPHAL COOKBOOK FROM THE TIME OF MOSES!!!

Ancient Israelites Snacked on 'Pizzoh,' Historians Reveal
By Bob Michael March 26, 2007

RAS SASAFEH, Egypt. -- The discovery of an apocryphal cookbook, likely written in the time of Moses, promises to change Passover traditions worldwide.

"The Israelites had a pretty limited menu, and frankly they were bored," said Biblical scholar Ruth Meqabyan. "We have strong evidence that they began to sculpt exotic cuisine in dough in order to alleviate the crunchy boredom of matzoh."

Adornments included the addition of olives, figs, lentils, medallions of whole-roasted lamb, and grated manna.

The decorated flatbread, called 'pizzoh,' resembled Neopolitan-style thin-crust pizza. Deep-dish variants required over eighteen pounds of flour per serving.

[...]

Another cutting-edge discovery from the Weekly World News.

(Heads-up, Tony Chartrand-Burke.)

MARK GOODACRE has another Talpiot tomb update over at the New Testament Gateway blog. Thanks also to Mark for the blogiversary good wishes.

Also, Mark notes an updated Coptic grammar for those responding to April DeConicks call, as Mark puts it, "for compulsory Coptic for all." My Coptic is rusty these days but, like Mark, I like Lambdin's grammar, which I got back in the 1980s. I'm sorry to hear that it is now hard to find. And a commenter to Mark's post writes plaintively, "By DeConick's reasoning, Latin, Syriac, Greek, and Coptic all need to be compulsory." Well yeah.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Turkish team to present report on excavation this week
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

ANKARA – Turkish Daily News

A group of Turkish experts that went to Israel last week to visit a controversial excavation site will present a report to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday or Friday.

[...]

THE JUDAS NOVEL by Archer and Moloney is already being parodied (in the Guardian). Excerpt:

Chapter 3

1. The treacherous Scribe tried to get Judas to betray Jesus, but he refused.

2. Judas understood the writings of Ezekiel far better than Jesus and the other disciples, but they didn't want to listen. So they never understood the true meaning of the Son of Man.

3. Judas also tried to tell the disciples what Jesus had meant by, "Get thee behind me, Satan." But they did not want to learn the subtleties of ancient Aramaic so Judas said unto them: "Verily, it is your loss."

Verily, verily.

FACILE GRAND HISTORICAL COMPARISON ALERT: Usually these involve America being the Roman Empire. This one in the American Chronicle is at least novel: The EU gets to be the Manichaeans.

50 Years of European Manichaeism

Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
March 25, 2007

What European politicians and statesmen, intellectuals and philosophers tried to exorcise with the most ardent fervor is precisely what they have immutably been so far: Manichaean!

[...]

Around the middle of the 6th century, Manichæism seemed to have died out in Western Europe, but in reality it survived through a number of secret societies down to the times of the Paulicians and Bogomili. When the latter were driven out by the Byzantine emperors, they met with groups in the North of Italy and the South of France whereby the quintessence of Manichaean teachings had survived, and they merged with them, giving successively birth to the formidable Cathars, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and the Free Masons.

The Manichaean Nature of today’s Europe

Two diametrically opposed groups of power for various reasons supported the rise of a European Union, trying - each one - to pull the institutions under formation close to their own ideals. We attest these two groups in frontal battle of ideas and concepts, not followers and armies thus far.

The Catholic pledge for Christian Europe clashes with the Free Masonic concept of a secular Europe; associations fight against or in favor of abortion, and issues like Euthanasia have risen to points of discord. Homosexual marriages and homo-parental legislation have become issues of fundamental political determination. Soon or later, Europe – united or not – will have to choose between two diametrically opposed groups that have shaped its History, leading Europeans to battlefields and death.

In parallel with this ideological confrontation between the Catholic church and the descendants of European Manichaeism, another issue should draw more attention; even if eliminated at the ideological level, Manichaean dualism reigns in the sphere of political language and behaviour.

Suffice it that we refer to the highly symbolic Berlin Declaration that is expected to be signed in terms of a 50 years European panegyric, and we are met with an abundance of duplicitous statements that are made to hide realities and to unveil imaginative considerations.

[...]

The essay includes a long summary of the history of the Manichaean movement. Use at your own risk; I'm not familiar enough with the details of this history to be confident of catching errors. I'm not sure I follow the overall argument (the core of which I have tried to excerpt here), but have a look if such things amuse you.

THE NEW JUDAS NOVEL by Archer and Moloney is excerpted by MSNBC:

Novelist pens fourth gospel
New book looks at the story of Jesus through the eyes of Judas

Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET March 26, 2007

"The Gospel According to Judas," published simulataneously in eight languages this month, is a fictionalized account of the life of Jesus purportedly written by Judas’ son, Benjamin. Authored by novelist Jeffrey Archer and biblical scholar Francis J. Moloney, the book follows the style of the gospels to offer what some reviewers say is a more sympathetic portrayal of Judas. Archer and Maloney were invited to talk about their book on TODAY. Here is an excerpt:

Chapters one and two of the book follow.

Note to MSNBC: There are already four gospels.

UPDATE: Speaking of Judas, this is tantalizing. Stay tuned!

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA IRANICA IS UP TO VOLUME "G":

U.S.-funded encyclopedia revels in Iran's greatness

Jim Krane, Canadian Press
Published: Monday, March 26, 2007

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - The Christian concepts of heaven and hell originated in Iran. The Jewish holy Talmud is littered with Iranian words and ideas. And some Iranians cherish the Israeli city of Haifa as a sacred place.

These are among the fascinating nuggets in the Encyclopedia Iranica, a sprawling project that since 1973 has sought to distill 5,000 years of Iranian history, geography and life and has produced 45 blue-bound volumes proclaiming Iran's greatness.

"Today more than at any other time we need to keep our Iranian culture alive," Iranica's director Ehsan Yarshater told an audience of 350 Iranians at a fundraiser in Dubai last month. The glitzy dinner, concert and auction raised US$100,000 for a project that will take an estimated $20 million - and another decade or so - to finish.

The Iranian government bitterly opposes the encyclopedia, and the U.S. government backs it. More than half of the encyclopedia's budget comes from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, which has funded it as a project of major cultural significance since 1979 - the same year Iranian students occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

"Once completed it will be a magnificent gift to our children and the generations to come," said Yarshater, an Iran scholar at Columbia University in New York.

The encyclopedia is Yarshater's life work. Now a frail 86-year-old with Parkinson's disease, he started the encyclopedia 32 years ago, just after leaving Iran. The project threatens to outlast him. Another Columbia Iranologist, Ahmad Ashraf, will take over leadership of the project if Yarshater dies before completing it.

Only 13 volumes of the English-language encyclopedia have yet been published, up to the letter G. It's been so slow that managers have abandoned the one-letter-at-a-time approach and are soliciting all remaining articles at once.

[...]

Concepts such as the survival of a person's soul after death, the Day of Judgment, heaven and hell, and holy angels all derive from Iran's surviving Zoroastrian faith, a 3,000-year-old religion that predates Islam and Christianity, the encyclopedia says. Iran's hard-liners also frown on the Zoroastrian beliefs.

I think that the claims in the article about Iranian influence on Judaism are a bit inflated. Resurrection, Judgement Day, heaven and hell, and angels are all concepts logically flowing out of the religion of ancient Israel, although it is clear that parallel ideas in Iranian religion had some influence on the development of these concepts in Judaism.

I AM DELIGHTED TO ANNOUNCE that the New Testament Lectureship recently advertised by the University of St. Andrews has now been offered to Dr. Grant Macaskill and he has accepted the offer. Grant is currently a British Academy Fellow at St. Mary's College and we welcome him anew as he prepares to take up the role of Lecturer in September.

TALPIOT TOMB WATCH: Just a couple of blog posts to note. James Tabor summarizes his case for a connection between the Talpiot tomb and Jesus' family in "The Talpiot Jesus Tomb: An Overview." And Tony Chartrand-Burke has a post on "The Jesus Tomb and Christian Apocrypha."

And, as ever, Mark Goodacre continues to post on the subject at the New Testament Gateway Blog.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The self-appointed new Sanhedrin reportedly wants to sacrifice sheep on the Temple Mount for Passover:

Sanhedrin plans for sacrifice of sheep

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE

In a donated apartment concealed among the narrow streets of the Jerusalem suburb of Nahlaot, 13 Orthodox Jewish men meet every Tuesday to debate matters of Jewish law. They are the management team of a larger developing Sanhedrin, or religious court, in Israel.

They plan to sacrifice sheep on the Temple Mount on the day before or one month after Passover, which will start at sundown April 2. Either date is permissible under Jewish law. "If the government will not resist," said Rabbi Dov Stein, 68, a member of the group, "we will do it."

As Easter eclipses the last days of Passover this year, Christians will focus again on the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus. The Sanhedrin, meanwhile, will literally attempt to resurrect the Passover sacrifice of old.

For these Jews, the sacrificial Passover offering is not their redemption per se, yet it is vital to the process.

The Passover sacrifice is the latest of more than 40 legal decisions issued by the modern Sanhedrin. Seventy-one Orthodox men revived the court more than two years ago in the city of Tiberius, the geographical spot that they believe marked the final days of the Sanhedrin a few hundred years after the time of Jesus.

[...]

I don't think that much of anyone is going to receive this plan with enthusiasm.

JOE WEAKS reviews the Kansas City Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition over at his Macintosh Biblioblog. The review is far better than anything you'll see in the mainstream media.

HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY TO PALEOJUDAICA, which started four years ago today. I don't have time this morning to put up a list of favorite posts from the last year, but during the Christmas break I did add some notable 2006 entries to the Memorable PaleoJudaica Posts link in the sidebar.

I've been extremely busy both personally and professionally in 2007 and this is likely to continue indefinitely. One result is that I have not done well in answering blog-related e-mail. But please be assured that I always read your e-mails and that I try to post anything interesting you send me (although time constraints do not always allow me to do the latter). Please do keep sending me things and please keep reading PaleoJudaica.

JUDAS IN THE NEWS: Judas has been resurfacing in the news recently, because of the new novel by Jeffrey Archer and Francis Moloney. The Independent has an article on him in FAQ format:

The Big Question: Should Judas be rehabilitated?
By Paul Vallely
Published: 22 March 2007

Why, what did he do?

In Christian tradition, Judas was the follower of Jesus who betrayed him to the Jewish authorities. The four gospels leave his motives uncertain, but his name has passed into common usage as a synonym for personal betrayal. "Judas" was what some folkie shouted at Bob Dylan when he set aside his acoustic guitar and went electric.

Isn't he the classic baddie?

Every story needs a villain, and Judas offers an archetype with his traitor's kiss. The trouble is that the modern fashion is not for heroes but for anti-heroes. And Judas makes a handy one of those too, hence the new book by a very odd couple, the perjurer-novelist Jeffrey Archer and one of the world's top biblical scholars, Professor Francis Moloney. A very unholy alliance. They have just written The Gospel According To Judas, which portrays Judas as traduced by the gospel writers since he was really trying to save Jesus from "an unnecessary death".

[...]

But wasn't the real Gospel of Judas found recently?

A 62-page codex, carbon dated to about AD300, but believed to be copied from an earlier document, was unveiled last year. It was in same Sahidic dialect of Coptic used in the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1945 (which included the Gospel of Thomas), which the Church does not accept as divinely revealed but which prompted a major re-evaluation of early Christian history. It may be the Gospel of Judas that we know existed because it was condemned as heretical around AD180 by the second-century bishop Irenaeus.

What did it say?

It said that Judas, far from being Jesus's enemy, was his chief Apostle, who was acting at Jesus's request when he "betrayed" him to the authorities. Without Judas's help, Jesus would not have been crucified and God's plan to save mankind from its sins could not have been fulfilled. Someone had to do it, to fulfil Old Testament prophecies, the early Christians believed. Judas was the chosen one.

[...]

The writer seems unaware that an increasing number of specialists believe that Judas is as evil as ever in the Gospel of Judas.

UPDATE: Also, as Ellen Birnbaum pointed out in an e-mail, the article confuses the Nag Hammadi Library with the Dead Sea Scrolls (quoted above).

A DOCUMENTARY on a Samaritan bride from the Ukraine:

Israel/Palestine - New Samaritans - 52 min 29 sec [22 March 2007]

For over 3,600 years, the ancient community of Samaritans have only intermarried. Today they number only a few hundred and inbreeding has caused serious problems. On the brink of extinction, their leaders take the unprecedented step of allowing two lucky men to marry foreigners. We follow them as they set off to faraway lands in search of brides. How will their new wives adapt to life in the Samaritan community?

Surrounded by old men chanting prayers and children dressed in traditional robes, Shura looks completely out of place. She smoothes down her scarlet dress and looks around the room at her new family. A few months ago, Shura was signed up by a matchmaking agency in Ukraine. Now, she has just married into the Samaritan’s First Family.

[...]

ARAMAIC WATCH: Martin Schøyen wants his Aramaic incantation bowl collection back from University College London:

Tycoon orders university to return his ‘magic’ artefacts
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent (Times of London)

A buyer of antiquities is suing University College London for the return of a multi-million-pound collection of ancient artefacts he lent it a decade ago.

Martin Schøyen, a Norwegian tycoon who has homes in London and Oslo, accuses the university of giving him “spurious reasons” for failing to return 654 Aramaic incantation bowls that date from the 1st century. He loaned the bowls, which are inscribed with magical texts, for academic research purposes in 1996. But two years ago the strength of criticism from scholars about the bowls’ provenance led the university to open an investigation. Lord Renfrew of Kaims-thorn, director of the McDon-ald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, joined an independent ethics committee headed by the lawyer David Freeman.

The committee’s report was delivered last summer, and although UCL has yet to publish it, the case will make other public institutions wary of handling unprovenanced antiquities.

While Mr Schøyen’s claim that the bowls were exported legally from the Middle East is being challenged, the collection remains in store at UCL.

[...]

They aren't from the first century. Such bowls were manufactured in the fifth to seven centuries CE.

For background to this story, see here and follow the links back.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Turkish team inspects controversial Jerusalem dig

Reuters
Wednesday, March 21, 2007; 9:30 AM

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A team of Turkish experts inspected an Israeli excavation in Jerusalem on Wednesday that Muslims fear could damage one of Islam's holiest sites.

Israel's archaeological dig is taking place 50 meters (165 feet) from the religious compound known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount. The work has sparked protests and concern in Muslim nations, including in Turkey.

About six Turkish officials toured the area briefly with Turkey's consul general in Jerusalem, Ercan Ozer.

[...]

"About" six? They couldn't just count them?

AN ARABIC ACADEMY IN ISRAEL:

Knesset okays opening academy to promote Arabic language
By Reuters

Israel passed legislation on Wednesday to set up the first Arabic-language academy marking the first time such an institution will exist in a non-Arab country.

[...]

The institute, to be set up by Israel's Education Ministry, will work in parallel with an existing Hebrew-language academy and will promote research into ancient linguistic ties between Hebrew and Arabic, said Melchior. It will also study Arabic terminology, grammar, diction, and written Arabic. The academy will research the modern language and its adaptation to the technological era.

[...]

A LECTURE ON THE LEGAL SYSTEM IN ANCIENT ISRAEL by Bruce Wells at St. Joseph's University:

Professor studies judicial systems of Hebrew Bible
Pat DePippo '09

The Hebrew Bible has been a source of knowledge and a written set of spiritual guidance for the Jewish population for millennia, but can it be a document that is historically true and may even offer some insight on legality of the laws in ancient Israel?

Bruce Wells, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Theology, presented such an outlook during the latest installment of the College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Colloquium in the Presidents' Lounge last Thursday. Wells' lecture, entitled "What Do the Gods Know? Courtroom Evidence in Ancient Israel and Mesopotamia", argued the validity and accuracy of the Hebrew Bible as a legal text. He also discussed what sort of significance and impact it had on the functioning of ancient societies.

[...]

THE GRAVE OF THE PROPHET HABAKKUK -- NOT.

STEVEN FINE "Decries 'DaVinci Codification' of Culture" on the BAS website:

The public, and the scholarly world, is faced on an almost monthly basis with “discoveries” by either non-academics or lone academics that fly in the face of the kinds of careful scholarly research for which the academy prides itself. The “DaVinci Codification” of the public imagination is—to a very disturbing degree—affecting our cultural agenda.

While each outburst of new discoveries is truly a “teaching moment” for scholars and clergy and even an opportunity for reflection, my overall sense is that academic scholarship—and with it, our culture—is being damaged by this developing—and for some highly lucrative—discourse.

I think that depends on how willing scholars are to seize those teachable moments and divert them into something constructive.

(Heads-up, Evy Nelson.)

NOT SURE WHAT TO MAKE OF an Haaretz article (Searching for God's words," by Yair Sheleg) about the late Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, who had some idiosyncratic ideas about biblical criticism and "devoted his life to one impressive undertaking: determining the precise wording of the Bible." This seems to mean that he tried to reconstruct the Vorlage of the Masorah (the medieval vocalization and cantillation-marking of the surviving text of the Hebrew Bible).

For centuries, the Bible did not have any vowels or cantillation marks (Mesorah). These were added in the seventh to ninth centuries, mainly by scholars in Tiberias. For a long time, the Mesorah was transmitted orally from father to son, teacher to student. In the 10th century, a Mesorah expert named Aaron Ben-Asher, who is credited with writing the Aleppo Codex, recorded the marks.

Ostensibly, Breuer could have had a very useful tool in his search for a reliable version of the Mesorah, because large portions of the Aleppo Codex, from which Maimonides also gleaned the divisions that appear in his Mishneh Torah, arrived in Israel in 1958. The manuscript, preserved for many generations by the community in Aleppo, Syria, was damaged during the December 1947 pogroms there, following the UN resolution to establish Israel. Approximately two-thirds of its pages survived and were smuggled into Israel.

For Breuer, the problem was that the manuscript had been handed to the Hebrew University's Mifal Hamikra project, which did not agree to allow other researchers to share the asset. Due to lack of choice, Breuer embarked on a meticulous independent study: He took the five other most important Bible manuscripts (although newer than the Aleppo Codex) and began comparing them word for word, generally choosing what was written in the majority. Academia rejected this approach, his son says, "because the assumption was that the Mesorah did not have one agreed upon version, but that each of the important manuscripts reflected a different version." Breuer's work was perceived by academics as an "eclectic" combination. Breuer, however, thought there was one ancient version that could be revealed through the more recent copies.

And then he managed to get hold of facsimiles of the Aleppo Codex. The circumstances are unclear even to his son and his student, Ofer. The son knows only that "the day Dad came home with a copy of the Aleppo Codex, he was acting like an accomplice to a crime." There are several versions of his "accomplishment": some say the photocopies were given to him surreptitiously by someone with access to the Aleppo Codex; another, less likely, version says he simply approached the librarian of the Ben Zvi Institute, where the Aleppo Codex was being kept, and asked if they had another manuscript he had not seen, and the librarian innocently handed him photocopies of the Aleppo Codex. Meir Hovev, Breuer's friend, told Haaretz this week that Breuer said he received the copies from Shlomo Zalman Shragai, a Jewish Agency official who received the Aleppo Codex from the smuggler who brought it into Israel, and had kept some copies of its pages.

In any case, when Breuer reviewed the copies of the Aleppo Codex, he found his method was correct: Except for in two places, all the vowels and cantillation marks in the Aleppo Codex corresponded exactly with what he had reached through his independent, meticulous work. This information was not just a personal success but a research revolution: He proved there was one agreed upon version of the Mesorah, and that the Aleppo Codex reflected it. Otherwise, there would not have been a correlation between the majority of the other manuscripts and the Aleppo Codex, because the Aleppo Codex would have represented another Mesorah. Furthermore, this meant Breuer's work applied to the missing portions of the Aleppo Codex (most of the Pentateuch). Breuer then issued for Da'at Mikrah, and later independently, a version of the Bible that was quickly accepted as the most reliable and accurate.

The writer of this article seems to think that the Masoretic Text can be identified with the "precise wording of the Bible," so I don't have any great confidence in the article's perspective. I'm not a specialist in Masoretic studies, but if anyone is (an academic specialist, that is) and wants to comment, please drop me a note. (For the moment, use my jrd4 at st-andrews dot ac dot uk address. The blogger@ address above is down, but I hope to have it working again shortly.)

RISA LEVITT KOHN, Professor of Religious Studies at San Diego State University, has just given a lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls in advance of the exhibition coming to San Diego later this year.

IN MEETINGS ALL DAY TODAY -- and then some. Too tired to blog now, but check out the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha blog, where I have posted something.

ADMIN AND ARNI - Over at Ralph, Ed Cook has evidence that Luke's genealogy was originally written in Hebrew script.

SAMARITAN POP:

Samaritan rebel returns to roots in new pop album

By Matti Friedman
ASSOCIATED PRESS

11:22 a.m. March 18, 2007

TEL AVIV, Israel – A mainstream pop album is an unlikely place to encounter an ancient tongue known to a total of 705 people in the Holy Land.

But tucked between the smooth chords and Hebrew vocals on Israeli singer Sofi Tsedaka's debut CD, listeners can hear the lilting language of the Samaritans.

Tsedaka, well known here as the striking red-headed star of soap operas and children's TV shows, calls her new album a gesture of reconciliation with the Samaritans, the tiny religious sect she was born into and which she abandoned in anger a decade ago.

[...]

TALPIOT TOMB WATCH: I can't hope to keep up with this subject and I refer you to Mark Goodacre's New Testament Gateway blog for regular updates. But here are two things I don't think Mark has mentioned yet. Richard Bauckham has published another essay, "Ossuaries and Prosopography," on Chris Tilling's Chrisendom blog. James Tabor continues to argue on his Jesus Dynasty blog the likelihood that the Talpiot tomb was the tomb of Jesus and his family. Recently he has posted a response ("Leah Di Segni on the Pfann “Correction” of Rahmani") to Stephen Pfann's proposed new reading. I am not a Greek epigrapher and I take no position myself on Pfann's proposal.

CALL SHERLOCK HOLMES! The mystery of the discarded Torah scroll:

It was the end of June when a Maplewood resident walking his dog stumbled upon an object not ordinarily found in the green rolling hills of Essex County’s South Mountain Reservation [in New Jersey].

[...]

In the end, the found scroll proved to be what is known as a “souvenir Torah.” Rabbis Geoffrey Spector and Adam Rosenbaum of Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston, where Chris Rakib works, told her that it is the kind of scroll that that is given to children who have their b’nei mitzva ceremonies on top of the Masada archaeological site in Israel.

The Hebrew letters are on paper, not parchment; therefore, it is not considered “kosher” for use in the synagogue (and not worth the tens of thousands of dollars that a full-size kosher Torah scroll can command).

Still, the Rakibs would like to reunite the scroll with Jennifer Langer, who, if she became bat mitzva in 5751, would be 27 or 28 years old. They would also like to know how the scroll ended up near the trash in a nature preserve? Even though it is not kosher, the scroll must have “sentimental value,” said Pierre Rakib.

THE STATE DEPARTMENT has condemned the jailing of Egyptian Blogger Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman:

US Condemns Court Decision on Egypt Blogger
By: Reuters | Mar 17,2007

The United States on Thursday condemned an Egyptian appeals court ruling that upheld a jail sentence for a blogger convicted of insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak.

"His conviction is a setback for human rights in Egypt," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

[...]

Good. High time.

WHY IS HEBREW WRITTEN RIGHT TO LEFT?

When right to left is really right Dead Sea Scrolls’ Hebrew is the opposite of how we read, and theories abound as to why
Dead Sea Scrolls’ Hebrew is the opposite of how we read, and theories abound as to why.
By BILL TAMMEUS
Special to The Star

As Union Station’s exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls moves toward the halfway mark of its three-month run, many visitors are asking this question:

Why must Hebrew, the language in which many of the scrolls are written, be read right to left?

No one knows for sure, but there are interesting theories. As early as 3000 B.C.E./B.C., most Egyptian hieroglyphs were written to be read from the right.

Stephen J. Andrews, who teaches Old Testament, Hebrew and archaeology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, says one scholar proposed that the right-to-left direction was due to most people being right-handed. So a scribe would begin on the side where the hand that did the writing was resting.

A similar theory is that the language in ancient times was chiseled into stone. A right-handed person would hold the chisel in the left hand and the hammer in the right. If he tried to go left to right, his left hand would constantly be blocking his view of what he was doing. That would happen much less when chiseling right to left.

But this theory has problems, Andrews says, because early cuneiform and inscriptions are written left to right.

[...]

Maybe it's because God is right-handed?

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The MEMRI Blog reports that "The Turkish daily Hurriyet reports that a Turkish technical team will be leaving for Israel on March 20 to inspect the repair work being carried out near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem."

UNICORNS IN MONTANA? Alas, apparently not.

Prosecutor: Unicorn defense was a mixup

March 14, 2007 (Boston.com)

On Tuesday, a Billings prosecutor had told a district judge that Phillip C. Holliday Jr., 42, claimed a unicorn was driving when his truck crashed into a light pole earlier this month.

But on Wednesday, the chief prosecutor said it was all a misunderstanding. Apparently, Holliday told police an unnamed woman was driving when his truck hit the pole -- not a unicorn.

[...]

An understandable mixup. After all, there are unicorns in the Bible, and I suppose Montana might be a good place to look for them, although somehow Wyoming seems more likely.

THE MANDAEANS now have some allies in the U.S. Congress, which is good news:

U.S. House members seek help for a religious minority in Iraq
By CHRIS NEWMARKER
Associated Press Writer

March 14, 2007, 4:44 PM EDT
TRENTON, N.J. -- The plight of Mandaeans _ an endangered religious minority in Iraq _ has drawn the attention of five members of Congress who want the Bush administration to do more to help them.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, the four Republicans and one Democrat call for appropriate resettlement programs for Mandaean refugees that have fled to Jordan, Syria, Yemen and Indonesia, where community members say there is still persecution.

The five U.S. House members _ Joseph R. Pitts, R-Pa., Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, Trent Franks, R-Ariz., Michael E. Capuano, D-Mass., and Marilyn N. Musgrave, R-Colo. _ also want a refugee resettlement program in the U.S. to be expanded to include Mandaeans.

The letter, dated Tuesday, was initially released Wednesday by the New Jersey-based Mandaean Society of America.

Mandaeanism, which treats John the Baptist as a great teacher, has survived for two millennia, but the war in its major homeland of Iraq now threatens its existence.

Many have fled amid targeted killings, rapes, forced conversions, and property confiscation by Islamic extremists, according to the Mandaean Society of America.

[...]

COL. GADHAFI is trying to promote antiquities tourism as part of his program to open the Libyan economy:

The government would privatize banks and other state firms. Tens of thousands of government workers would be encouraged to leave their jobs with promises of three years' salary and training to open businesses. The hope is to build up sectors like construction and tourism -- using Libya's extensive Phoenician, Roman and Islamic antiquities as a draw.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The UNESCO report on the Mughrabi Gate excavation is out and the contents are as expected:

A report for the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, released in Paris on Wednesday, said Israel should have sought the advice of international organizations before it started the archaeological work.

The panel also said work done on the site was already sufficient to examine the structure of the ramp, and Israel "should be asked to stop immediately the archaeological excavations."

In February, however, UNESCO concluded that the excavations posed no threat to the stability of the site, and the new report also credits Israel with adhering to "professional standards."

STEPHEN J. PFANN says that "Mary Magdalene Is Now Missing" from the Talpiot Tomb. Maybe better "still missing," but the point is he has an interesting new reading of the inscription on the relevant ossuary.

SUMMARY POINTS OF DISCUSSION:

• The original transcription of the inscription was incorrect.
  
  
• The inscription does not read “Mariamene the Master”nor does the name Mariamene or Mariamne appear on the ossuary at all.
  
  
• The inscription reflects the writing of two distinct scribes who wrote in different forms of the Greek script.
  
  
• The correct reading of the inscription is “Mariame and Mara,” based on parallels from contemporary inscriptions and documents.
  
  
• The ossuary thus contained the bones of at least two different women, interred at two separate times, one named Mariame and the other Mara.
  
  
• No support exists for ascribing the ossuary to Mary Magdalene.

Mark Goodacre has comments here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: UNESCO should be releasing its report on the Mughrabi Gate excavation today. Here's a preview:

UNESCO to call for halt to Jerusalem dig-reports
14 Mar 2007 08:39:57 GMT
Source: Reuters

JERUSALEM, March 14 (Reuters) - United Nations experts will call on Israel to halt excavations near Jerusalem's most sacred Islamic site and proceed only under international supervision, people briefed on a UNESCO report said on Wednesday.

Israel's archaeological excavations 50 metres (165 feet) from a religious compound known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount sparked Muslim protests.

The Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which surveyed the site, is expected to issue its report on the dig later in the day.

The report will say the work being carried out at the site complies with international standards, according to officials briefed on the findings.

But the report will call on Israel to suspend the project and draw up a new work plan in consultation with Jordanian authorities and the Waqf, a body that oversees Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

[...]

BRIAN ROSE, President of the AIA, has just been named the James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania. Pritchard is most widely known for editing the incredibly useful (although now dated) Ancient Near Eastern Texts (ANET) anthology. Congratulations to Professor Rose and also to the other two Classicists who have also received Chairs.

MORE BAD NEWS regarding the imprisoned Egyptian blogger:

Court Upholds Prison for Egypt Blogger


Monday March 12, 2007 2:46 PM

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - An Egyptian appeals court on Monday upheld the four-year prison sentence given to an Egyptian blogger who criticized conservative Muslims and was convicted of insulting Islam and Egypt's president, court officials said.

Abdel Kareem Nabil's sentence last month had been widely condemned by local and international rights groups as a bid to curb free expression.

Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, had been sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and inciting sectarian strife, and another year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak.

[...]

RESTORING THE MASADA FRESCOES:

Restoring the glory of Herod the Great
By Eli Ashkenazi (Haaretz)

"This is the pinnacle of my career in restoration." This was how Italian expert renovator Maurizio Tagliapietra defined his work on the preservation project of the palace of Herod the Great in Massada, near the Dead Sea, before returning to Italy. The complex project, headed by the Israel Nature and National Parks Protections Authority (INNPPA), was completed last week after three years of preparations and two weeks of work.

[...]

Before the current project began, the paintings were removed from the walls, put on fiberglass slabs and returned after being sealed in glass to protect them.

"This preservation technique turned out to be disastrous. The damage sustained during the past 40 years has been greater than that of the previous two millennia. The frescoes were crumbling," Margalit recounts.

To save the frescoes of the Northern Palace, the INNPPA launched the restoration project three years ago with funding from the ministries of finance, environment, tourism, industry, trade and education. The Israeli UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization) committee also participated in the project, along with the Dead Sea Water Authority. The Antiquities Authority then issued an international tender that resulted in Tagliapietra's involvement.

After much deliberation, the archaeologists decided not to return the ruined frescoes to the site after they had been restored. "This wasn't an easy decision," says Margalit. "In renovation projects we always prefer to keep the articles at the original site, but the damage was just too extensive."

The frescoes were put into a special renovation laboratory built at the bottom of the Massada complex. Most are to remain in the new museum built at the site, which will soon be opened to the public. However, some of the frescoes were returned to the palace's southern wall, which is less exposed to damaging sunlight.

"We decided to replace the frescoes removed from the palace with replicas in order to return the color into the palace," says Orit Borbnik, conservation manager at the INNPPA. "These are exact copies prepared with the same techniques that were used on the original pieces during the times of Herod the Great," she adds.

[...]

ANOTHER INSULT LOST:

Philistines, but Less and Less Philistine

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD (NYT)
Published: March 13, 2007

Archaeologists have applied more polish to the long-tarnished reputation of the Philistines.

Recent excavations have raised the estimation of Philistines.

In recent years, excavations in Israel established that the Philistines had fine pottery, handsome architecture and cosmopolitan tastes. If anything, they were more refined than the shepherds and farmers in the nearby hills, the Israelites, who slandered them in biblical chapter and verse and rendered their name a synonym for boorish, uncultured people.

Archaeologists have now found that not only were Philistines cultured, they were also literate when they arrived, presumably from the region of the Aegean Sea, and settled the coast of ancient Palestine around 1200 B. C.

At the ruins of a Philistine seaport at Ashkelon in Israel, excavators examined 19 ceramic pieces and determined that their painted inscriptions represent a form of writing. Some of the pots and storage jars were inscribed elsewhere, probably in Cyprus and Crete, and taken to Ashkelon by early settlers. Of special importance, one of the jars was made from local clay, meaning Philistine scribes were presumably at work in their new home.

The discovery is reported in the current issue of The Israel Exploration Journal by two Harvard professors, Frank Moore Cross Jr. and Lawrence E. Stager. ...

Biblical scholars and archaeologists have known for a long time that the Philistines weren't so philistine, but I'm glad the NYT has found out too. The article has some cool photos of the inscriptions.

By the way, I worked on the Ashkelon dig for a couple of seasons in the late 1980s.

VOLUNTEERS IN CAVES:

Tourists help excavate ancient sites in Holy Land

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

By Marshall Thompson, The Associated Press

JERUSALEM -- Deep in a 2,000-year-old tunnel system outside Jerusalem, a young woman unearthed a rare oil lamp used in ancient rituals during an archaeological dig.

For Abby Krewson, the discovery is especially gratifying: Krewson is a 10th-grader from Philadelphia participating in a "dig for a day" archaeological experience with her family and a Bible college group.

"I didn't expect to find something like that, so it's very exciting," Krewson said.

Tourists like Krewson pay $25 to spend the day working in ancient tunnels in Israel's Bet Guvrin National Park, about 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem.

Participants do the dirty work, digging and sifting through the ruins, while their fees underwrite the more difficult parts of archaeological work: washing pottery shards, logging finds, and publishing papers in academic journals.

Ian Stern, director of Archaeological Seminars, which is licensed by the Israeli government to do the dig, said it's a "Tom Sawyer-ish, paint-the-fence-white kind of a situation."

[...]

The caves were made in the Hellenistic period, about 2,200 years ago, and are found near Maresha, the ancient capital of the biblical Edom and possible birthplace of King Herod the Great, Stern said. The dig is one of the richest in the world, Stern said.

[...]

SECOND TEMPLE VILLAGE WATCH:

2nd-Temple Jewish Town Uncovered in Jerusalem

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) In the course of preparing tracks for the new light-rail system in Jerusalem, remains of an ancient Jewish community just north of the Holy Temple have been uncovered.

Rescue digs, required by law before any major construction work in Jerusalem and environs, have found a major set of remains of a Jewish town from post-Second Temple times. A long strip of land, 400 dunams (100 acres) in size, has been uncovered in which can be seen roads, alleys, houses, public buildings, a mikveh (ritual bath), and more.

The community was located east of the old Roman highway leading from Jerusalem to Shechem (Nablus) - roughly along the same route as today's Shechem Way, or Highway 60.

[...]

This is an old story, which I have noted here, here, here, and here.

ZAHI HAWASS is reportedly calling for a boycott of archaeologists who work with Israel on "the excavations currently going on in East Jerusalem" (apparently the Mughrabi Gate excavation). I'm surprised, and I don't think this is at all justified.

(Via Explorator 9.46.)

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH:

Metatron . . . has cuboctahedral symmetry . . . the layers of sintered metal powder are aligned with the junctions along one fourfold axis, creating a pattern of concentric circles.

NEWS on the upcoming Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in San Diego, which begins on 1 July.

The San Diego Natural History Museum is at work preparing for an exhibit of the priceless ancient writings, which will cover two floors and 12,000 square feet of space. It will run for six months.

[...]

In a scroll room, 27 scrolls will be displayed through the course of the exhibition — 15 at any one time. The switch will be made during the fall. The scrolls will include biblical books of Leviticus, Isaiah and Job. There will be the Damascus Document and the War Scroll, which highlight the life and thoughts of the Qumran community. Also included will be the Copper Scroll from Jordan, the only scroll inscribed on copper. Another will be what has been deemed the best preserved manuscript of Deuteronomy. It contains the text of the Ten Commandments.

J IS FOR JEZEBEL.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

UNESCO Mughrabi report due in days
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

A week after a group of UNESCO officials toured the contested Israeli archaeological dig under way outside Jerusalem's Temple Mount, the organization has still not published its findings, officials said Thursday.

The routine salvage excavation, which began last month in the archeological garden adjacent to the Western Wall ahead of the planned construction of a new bridge to the Temple Mount, has triggered protests in the Arab world.

The four-member UNESCO team which visited the site last week came to Jerusalem at Israel's invitation as part of its efforts to display "full transparency" over the dig, Antiquities Authority spokeswoman Osnat Guez said.

The group made no statement after the visit.

[...]

The mission report, currently under preparation, will be presented to the director-general of UNESCO in the upcoming days. Thereafter, it will be made available to the Organization's Governing Bodies as well as the World Heritage Committee," UNESCO spokeswoman Sue Williams said Thursday.

[...]

THE DISCOVERY OF THE KETEF HINNOM SILVER AMULETS was described by the excavator, Gabriel Barkay, in a a lecture at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Excerpt from the article in the Baptist Press News:

Then Barkay described for his audience how, in 1979, a group of 12-year-olds from an archaeology club in Tel Aviv had come to the dig. Barkay thought the children were “pesky.” One in particular, a boy named Nathan, was always “tugging on my shirt and asking silly questions,” Barkay said.

Barkay assigned Nathan to a far-off, unimportant task: clearing out an ancient repository cave to prepare it for being photographed. Nathan took to the task with a hammer and “expressed his frustration by hammering the floor of the repository.” Barkay recalled being quite perturbed when young Nathan, who had not been on task very long, tugged on this shirt to tell the archaeologist that the hammer had broken through the floor of the cave and there was something below.

Upon inspection, Barkay realized that what he had thought was the floor of the chamber was, in fact, the ceiling of another ancient chamber underneath. Nathan had opened up a chamber where Barkay would make his most renowned discovery.

Thank goodness for pesky boys.

MASADA is reportedly still in urgent need of repairs:

Masada Needs $18M Repair Or Will Soon Be ‘Gone Forever'

By GWEN ACKERMAN
Bloomberg News
March 9, 2007

JERUSALEM — Masada, one of Israel's biggest tourist attractions and a symbol of the country's struggle for survival, is in danger of collapse after heavy rainfall four years ago damaged some of its supporting walls.

The 4,600 feet of wall damaged by the water must be fixed before irreversible harm is done, the head of the preservation department at the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority, Zeev Margalit, said by telephone.

"What collapses today will be gone forever," he warned. "Masada could fall tomorrow, or it could fall a year from now, or even 10 years from now. We have the tools to slow down the deterioration process and stop it now."

[...]

TALMUD, THE MUSICAL:

HOUSTON – Imagine making Robert's Rules of Order into a musical comedy and you understand what Rabbi Judith Z. Abrams did in giving the Talmud a Broadway-style makeover.

"My whole mission in life is to make people fall in love with the Talmud," said Abrams, who operates Maqom, a Web site dedicated to adult Talmud study.

Abrams hopes A Talmud Tale will show audiences that studying the ancient works is not just for Orthodox Jews.

[...]

THE MASADA DATE SPROUT is still thriving:

Researchers hoping for a date with history

By Joel Greenberg

Chicago Tribune

(MCT)

JERUSALEM - In quarantine under protective netting, a palm sapling coaxed from a seed nearly 2,000 years old is growing in southern Israel.

Researchers nurturing the plant, nicknamed Methuselah after the biblical figure said to have lived 969 years, are worried about the seedling's exposure to modern pests.

"Things have changed in 2,000 years, and we have this plant that is frozen in time, like Rip Van Winkle," said Elaine Solowey, a horticulturist from the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura in the southern Negev region.

"We have date trees across the road with modern diseases," Solowey said. "There's only one tree like this, and I feel very responsible for it."

The fledgling date palm was grown from a seed found by archeologists at the desert fortress of Masada, where Jewish rebels took their own lives in A.D. 73 rather than submit to Roman forces that captured the stronghold after a long siege. Carbon dating has shown the seed to be from around the 1st Century.

If the plant is female and continues to grow normally, researchers say, it could produce fruit in three to four years, replicating the ancient date of Judea, a valued export also known for its medicinal properties.

[...]

THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL has forthcoming programs on the Dead Sea Scrolls and on Cain and Abel. For the Dead Sea Scrolls show there is an impressive lineup of scholars, but they also include conspiracy-theorist Michael Baigent, whose nonsense inspired the Da Vinci Code. That alone indicates to me that the producers haven't a clue what they are doing, and I can only hope that the qualified scholars will be able to salvage the show.

Apart from Jon Levenson (who is excellent), I don't know much about the people lined up for the Cain and Abel program. It looks as though they are combining an attempt to get at the original-audience meaning of the story with a look at its history of interpretation. This could work quite well. But it's not a good sign that the program is looking for "where the biblical Eden actually existed."

I won't be able to see either show anytime soon, but I'll be watching the reactions to it with interest.