SOME FAMOUS SKELETONS FROM MASADA are being given a new interpretation:

Researchers claim to have solved mystery of Masada remains (The Scotsman)
MATTI FRIEDMAN IN MASADA

AN ISRAELI anthropologist is using modern forensic techniques and an obscure biblical passage to challenge the accepted wisdom about human remains found at Masada, the desert fortress famous as the scene of a mass suicide nearly 2,000 years ago.

A new research paper re-examines the remains of three people found in a bathhouse at the site - two male skeletons and a woman's full head of hair, including two braids.
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They were long thought to have belonged to a family of Zealots - the fanatic Jewish rebels said to have killed themselves rather than fall into Roman slavery in the spring of 73AD, a story that became part of Israel's national mythology.

The bodies found at Masada were recognised as Jewish heroes by Israel in 1969 and given a state burial.

But now it seems Israel might have mistakenly bestowed the honour on three Romans, according to the paper, published yesterday in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology by anthropologist Dr Joe Zias and forensics expert Azriel Gorski.

[...]

Actually the occupiers of Masada were Sicarii, not Zealots.

The core argument is given as follows:

The new paper focuses on the hair, noting the absence of a skeleton to go with it. Forensic analysis showed the hair had been cut off the woman's head with a sharp instrument while she was still alive.

Dr Zias' attempt to explain the discrepancy led him to the Old Testament's Book of Deuteronomy, where a passage says that foreign women captured in battle by Jews must cut off all their hair, apparently in an attempt to make them less attractive to their captors.

He thus concluded that the hair belonged not to a Jewish woman but to a captured foreign woman.

In his scenario, the woman was attached to the Roman garrison stationed at Masada at the time the Zealots took over the fortress and killed the Roman soldiers. Jewish fighters threw two Roman bodies into the bathhouse, and then treated the woman captive according to Jewish law, cutting off her hair, which they threw in along with the bodies.

Typically, the article does not give the biblical reference. The passage in question seems to be Deuterononmy 21:10-14:

10: "When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hands, and you take them captive,
11: and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have desire for her and would take her for yourself as wife,
12: then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails.
13: And she shall put off her captive's garb, and shall remain in your house and bewail her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
14: Then, if you have no delight in her, you shall let her go where she will; but you shall not sell her for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.

If this passage applies to the Masada scenario, it would imply that one of the Sicarii occupiers had taken the captured gentile woman as a wife. It doesn't seem likely to me that an eligible woman would have been found in a remote Roman garrison, but I suppose it isn't entirely impossible. One question is whether she had to be an unmarried virgin. The passage seems to imply this, since she only bewails her mother and father, not her (dead?) husband or her children. Still, the earlier passage in Deuteronomy 20:10-15 which deals with holy war commands the preservation of all women as "booty," which may imply that any captured woman could be taken as a wife or concubine:

10: "When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it.
11: And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you.
12: But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it;
13: and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword,
14: but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you.
15: Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here.

I would not have expected that whole families would be living in the garrison at Masada with women potentially eligible if captured, but I don't know much about the social organization of Roman garrisons in the provinces.

Incidentally, I read the hair and nail cutting in Deuteronomy 21 to be a rite of passage to mark the woman's changed status, not any effort to make her less attractive.

Anyhow, an interesting theory to go with an odd piece of evidence from Masada. I'll try to get a chance to look up the article, which doubtless presents the arguments much more clearly and in greater detail.

UPDATE: It's actually an AP article and the Washington Post has a more complete version. Note in particular the following:

Ehud Netzer, a veteran Hebrew University archaeologist who participated in the 1960s dig and later oversaw restoration work there, questioned the new findings.

Zias is "building a story on assumptions built on assumptions," he said.

"I think that with the existing information, you can't make such theories, and I think that those people should be allowed to rest in peace," Netzer said.

UPDATE (26 June): Joe Zias kindly sent me a copy of the article and it does clarify one of my questions above, about women at provincial Roman garrisons in this period:

As to the inevitable question of a woman garrisoned atop Masada prior to its capture by the Zealots, a cache of documents found preserved in a Roman period fort in northern Britain reveal that higher-level Roman officers and soldiers often brought women with them during military campaigns (Bowman 1994: 51–65). Therefore the shorn woman may have been married or at least related to one of the two males killed and thrown into the Northern Palace bathhouse. Her braided hair however suggests that she was married, since a woman in the Greco-Roman world changed her hairstyle after marriage to symbolize her unavailability to any man but her husband (Cosgrove 2005).

Bowman 1994 is the following:

Bowman, A. K.
1994 Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier: Vindolanda and It’s
People. London: British Museum Press.

The slightly later garrison at Vindolanda did, of course, include whole families.

UPDATE (27 June): Josh Waxman comments at Parshablog.

THE HOLY GRAIL is in the news. Science Daily has the following:

Archeologist says Holy Grail is in Rome

ROME, June 21 (UPI) -- An Italian archeologist says the Holy Grail -- a cup used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper -- is buried beneath a church in Rome.

Alfredo Barbagallo said ancient records show the cup is buried in a chamber beneath the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, one of the seven churches Christian pilgrims used to visit when they came to Rome, The (London) Telegraph said Thursday.

[...]

I'm in a hurry and and can't locate the Telegraph article right now. As for the Grail, I'll believe it when I see it.

For earlier PaleoJudaica coverage of Holy Grail news, see here and here.

THE JERUSALEM FORGERY CONFERENCE, convened by the Biblical Archaeology Society in January of this year, is the subject of a special report on the BAS website. There's also an audio file of the paper by Gabriel Barkay.

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE to all those celebrating.

AN EGYPTIAN JEWISH MUSEUM? An outfit I don't know called "AME Info" has the following interesting brief item:

Egypt resisting Jewish museum

Talks between Egypt and Israel to open a Jewish museum in Cairo are making minimal progress, according to eTN. The Jewish Community Council in Cairo believes there are enough Jewish monuments and artifacts in Egypt to build a museum. But many Egyptian archaeologists dispute the country's Jewish history, and claim that only indigenous Egyptian artifacts have been found in areas that Jewish scholars claim have Hebrew history.

It's heartening that the idea of a Jewish museum seems at least to be under discussion. Certainly there would be ample material. There is the Ben Ezra Synagogue and attached Cairo Geniza; the excavated ruins at Elephantine and the Jewish Aramaic papyri discovered there (some of which are currently in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities); many Jewish and biblical texts among the Oxyrhynchus papyri; legends about the translation of the Septuagint in association with the Library of Alexandria; lots of Jewish traditions associated with Alexandria, notably the works of the philosopher Philo. And so on and so on. (See also the material collected in this TourEgypt! article by one Jimmy Dunn [not the Durham NT scholar of the same name!].)

I hope this concept of an Egyptian Jewish Museum gains some traction, although I don't doubt it will be resisted.

On a related note, in the last few days I've been meaning to point out that Egypt Today had an article celbrating Egypt's rich religious heritage, but unfortunately the article would lead us to believe that these consist only of Islamic and Christian sites. The closest we come to Jewish sites is this, listed under Christian sites:

If hiking’s your cup of tea, head to the Sinai and trek up Mount Sinai to watch the sunrise from the spot where it is believed the prophet Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. St. Catherine’s Monastery below shelters the Burning Bush of Old Testament fame, and an impressive collection of icons and jeweled crosses.

It's also odd that the TourEgypt! website entry for Elephantine Island makes no mention of the Jewish garrison and Jewish papyri excavated there, although the other TourEgypt! piece cited above does mention them.

THIS WEEK I have to attend seven graduation ceremonies (plus a rehearsal), four lunches, and two dinners as Principal of St. Mary's College and Dean of the School of Divinity. Blogging, if any, is likely to be light!

THE MODERN HISTORY OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS, with special reference to the controvery about access to them up to 1991, is surveyed in an article in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Surprisingly, it says nothing about the role of the Huntington Library in the controversy when it released its Scrolls microfilms in 1991.

I think the piece is a little hard on the original Christian team, who did put a lot of effort into placing the Scrolls into their Jewish context, although they also were understandably quite interested in their Christian background and they did neglect (through lack of specialist knowledge) connections with Rabbinic literature. And I don't think that any of the team members argued that the "sectarians were proto-Christians," in the sense of their having some clear genetic connection with Christianity. That the form of Judaism represented by the Scrolls had some interesting overlaps with Christianity is hardly under debate.

The article could also have mentioned that the original team spent ten years piecing together the bits of manuscripts that came from Cave Four. The Scrolls did not land in our hands in anything like complete manuscripts. I like to say that their reconstruction was like taking a thousand jigsaw puzzles, mixing them all together, throwing away most of the boxes, discarding 80-90% of the mixed pieces, then trying to reconstruct the puzzles. However much you want to criticize the original team for their policies on access, the collating of the scattered fragments into what was left of the individual manuscripts was a heroic piece of work that took up a large chunk of their careers and for which they rarely receive explicit credit. This article is a case in point.

(Full disclosure: I was one of the postgraduates in the 1980s who received Scrolls from team members to publish in our doctoral dissertations. For the record, I did not turn down any requests from scholars to see the material I was working on, and as far as I know, none of those other postgrads did either.)

A DEAD SEA SCROLL and some other ancient manuscripts are on display next week at ACTS Bible College in Minnesota:

A manuscript fragment in Hebrew on brown leather, the beginning of a scroll with characters in a Herodian Hebrew book script, dating from the late first century A.D.

There's a photo of the scroll as well (click on it to enlarge).

SOME OF NEWTON'S THEOLOGICAL AND APOCALYPTIC WRITINGS are on display at the Hebrew University's National Library:

Father of modern science calculated: World to end in 2060
By Ofri Ilani (Haaretz)

At the top of the ancient, densely written English manuscript a verse in Hebrew stands out: "Blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom for ever." Other pages contain sketches of the Temple and calculations of the end of the world, based on verses from the Book of Daniel. The author of these mysterious ruminations was not a sorcerer nor a religious fanatic but none other than Isaac Newton, the 17th-century mathematician and physicist considered the most influential scientist of all time.

Newton's original theological and mystical writings will be on display in a special exhibition entitled "Newton's Secrets," opening today at the National Library at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This is the first time the manuscripts, in Israel since 1969, have been presented to the public. A digital version of some of the letters can be seen on the National Library's site: at www.tinyurl.com/28ervr.

One of the most intersting manuscripts is a letter from 1704, in which Newton calculates that the world will end in 2060, based on a phrase from Daniel 12:7 "for a time, times, and a half." Newton interpreted this phrase as meaning 1,260 years would pass from the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire by Charlemagne in 800, until the End of Days.

[...]

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON meets the Mafia.

HEROD THE GREAT'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS are reflected on in Forbes:

Herod's Lost City
Todd Pitock 06.18.07

From the shoreline of Caesarea on Israel's north coast, it's just a few fin kicks and a short descent below the sun-glazed surface of the Mediterranean until you reach the sunken ruins of the harbor that made this one of the great cities of antiquity.

My dive-buddy, Avi Baz, is a buoyant 56-year-old spirit who can go to depths on either of two of his favorite subjects: diving and Caesarea. Like most Israelis, he is fluent in Hebrew, English and politics. We float on our backs a couple of hundred yards toward a buoy that marks one point of entry into Caesarea's newly opened Underwater Archeology Park, a roped trail where recreational divers can view artifacts and excavated ruins along the contours of the sunken marina.

"The visibility will be excellent," Avi says. "I tell you, there is nothing like this in the world. Do you realize," he adds, "that after the fall of the Roman Empire, the technological know-how [that built this port] disappeared for more than 14 centuries?"

[...]

QUMRAN ENTERS VIRTUAL REALITY:

Armchair archeologists can explore Qumran virtually
By Tom Tugend, Contributing Writer (Jewish Journal)

After glancing at the nearby caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were stored, I walked through the entrance to the main building at Qumran, checked out the scriptorium with its ink wells and oil lamps and the pottery-making workshop, and then up to the four-story tower for spotting approaching Roman legions.

Although it was a hot day, I was perfectly comfortable because my virtual walking tour of the desert settlement was conducted at a sophisticated UCLA computer site, courtesy of the Qumran Visualization Project.

"What we've built here is a fully reconstructed, three-dimensional, real-time, interactive model of Khirbet Qumran," explained Robert C. Cargill, a graduate student in the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Joining Cargill was his department chairman, professor William Schniedewind, who initiated the project to graphically enliven his class on ancient Israel and to probe current scholarly disputes on the genesis of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[...]

Cargill and Schniedewind, who developed the computer model over a 15-month period, plan to eventually replace the panoramic photography with satellite imagery, which will allow them to simulate the surrounding topography and terrain. They also hope to create virtual models of the caves where the scrolls were found.

[...]

Joseph I. Lauer notes that the UCLA virtual Qumran site can be found here.

AN ANCIENT JEWISH SETTLEMENT has been found in Israel in a salvage excavation:

Second Temple Jewish settlement found between Jerusalem and TA
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

A Second Temple Jewish settlement has been uncovered between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, including structures that may have been used as hiding places during the Bar Kochba Revolt, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Monday.

[...]

I've been meaning to note this one, but things have been busy around here.

THE ANCIENT BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS CENTER at the Claremont School of Theology has a semi-annual newsletter called The Folio, which I have been receiving for many years. I notice that the ABMC website now has an archive of The Folio starting with its inception in 1981 and complete up to 2005. (These are photographic reproductions in PDF format and some of the files are very large.) The archive preserves a lot of the history of the ABMC and each Folio issue usually has an interesting article on some research subject. For example, the current one (24.1, not yet online) has a piece by Marvin A. Sweeny on "Targum Jonathan on Zechariah 3: An Early Vision of Heaven."

A PAGE FROM A TALMUD MANUSCRIPT in the British Library is available online. Manuscript Boy has the details over at Hagahot.

THE CRADLE OF CHRISTIANITY EXHIBITION is in Atlanta on its final stop. It contains, among other things, a fragment of the Temple Scroll.

FRAGMENT OF THE MONTH: The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University has a new feature on its website:

A fragment that has provoked interest in the Unit in the last month will be displayed together with a brief explanation as to why it deserves attention.

Day in, day out, Unit researchers are working on cataloguing and describing the Taylor-Schechter Collection; hundreds and thousands of manuscripts are examined each month. Just occasionally work stops and colleagues call each other over to take a look at an unusual, unexpected or particularly interesting fragment. In itself the small piece of paper or vellum may not be that significant — when viewed in the wider context of the tens of thousands of pieces in the Collection — and it may ultimately get no more than a brief mention in one of the Genizah Series catalogues, but it has provoked our interest for a moment and so earned a place here.

So far, three fragments have been posted:

April 2007, two new responsa of Moses Maimonides

May 2007, St Augustine in the Genizah

June 2007, Redating a leaf from a medieval Hebrew Book of Tobit (T-S A45.25)

(Via Jack Sasson's Agade list.)

UNESCO'S MEMORY OF THE WORLD PROGRAM is doing great work in manuscript preservation, through both conservation and digitization. The UNESCO website has a page on the project (link above). There's an introductory interview with Abdelaziz Abid, "a programme specialist in the Memory of the World programme." Excerpt:

That means that digital documents are even more fragile than those on traditional materials?

Of course. A piece of parchment can survive for several centuries. Newsprint lasts several decades. It isn’t that the CD-ROM or the USB key can’t last for decades too, but the way in which the information is coded soon becomes obsolete. The problem isn’t the lifespan of the physical materials, but the progress in formats.

In Yemen, manuscripts were discovered in the main Sana’a mosque by chance that had remained walled up for 13 centuries! If you forget a digital document somewhere, at the end of ten years there’s nothing left of it.

If we don’t pay attention to preserving digital documents, we will leave a black hole for future generations. They’ll find Sumerian clay tablets, Chinese, Arabic and European manuscripts and paper…and getting to the 20th and 21st centuries, nothing! We must preserve traces of what we have created.

As regular readers know, I keep a special eye out for manuscript collections and hoards that may preserve early Jewish texts and somewhat later Jewish and Christian biblical apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. A couple of the projects seem relevant.

Timbuktu manuscripts: Africa’s written history unveiled

Excerpt:

Long forsaken treasures

But do the indigenous populations of Mali know that they possess, under their feet or in their attics, hundreds of thousands of vital manuscripts dating from the 13th to the 19th century? Nothing is less certain. Because of a sanctified notion of African oral tradition, an absence of translation due to lack of funds (barely 1% of texts are translated into classical Arabic, French or English) and a certain reserve about rummaging through the memory of Africa, however honorable, government authorities are hesitant to exhume what resembles a political golden age.

Let us judge for ourselves: treatises on good governance, texts on the harmful effects of tobacco, pharmacopeial synopses…works on law (particularly on divorce and the status of divorced women), theology, grammar and mathematics sit in dusty heaps in private libraries or at the Ahmed Baba Documentation and Research Centre in Timbuktu. Written commentaries by the sages of Cordoba, Baghdad or Djenne can still be seen there. On screen-fronted shelves, legal acts regulating the lives of Jews and apostate Christians testify to the intense commercial activity of the era. Parchments concerning selling and freeing slaves, the market prices of salt, spices, gold and feathers are propped against correspondence between sovereigns from both sides of the Sahara, illustrated with illuminations in gold.

All this is frightening. It is intimidating, to the point that even scientists are troubled by so much available knowledge. George Bohas, professor of Arabic at the Ecole normale supérieure in Lyon and an initiator of the Vecmas program (evaluation and critical editing of sub-Saharan Arabic manuscripts) notes, “We estimate the body of existing manuscripts at 180,000, of which 25% have been inventoried, less than 10% catalogued, and 40% are still in wooden or iron containers!” Not counting all the manuscripts stashed in the homes of families, who don’t want to give them up, either out of ignorance or for sordid profiteering reasons.

PaleoJudaica has been following the story of Timbuktu's manuscripts for some time. See here and follow the many links back.

The second project is:

The Matenadaran, from copyist monks to the digital age

In the heart of Erevan, capital of Armenia, the Matenadaran houses seventeen thousand manuscripts and 30,000 documents, some dating back to antiquity. Texts on very varied subjects, written in Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Greek, Latin, Amharic, Japanese and certain Indian languages, are stored together in this museum-library, created at the same time as the Armenian alphabet in 405. Today the Matenadaran is entering the digital age thanks to UNESCO.

Good stuff. Who knows what they're going to find in these collections?

UPDATE: The dratted transition to New Bloggger seems to have screwed up a lot of my internal links in past posts, which is most irritating. Earlier references to the Timbuktu archives can be found here, here, here, and here.

THE SACRED EXHIBITION AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM gets an article in Newsweek. It concentrates on later manuscripts in the exhibit, but here are some interesting things it mentions:

With the Middle East riven by religious and political tensions, it's bittersweet to see such gorgeous proof of its multifaith history. A 13th-century Christian manuscript from near Mosul, Iraq, depicts the three Marys at Jesus' tomb. While many of the details are Byzantine, the tomb's onion dome and the stylized cedar trees draw on Islamic artistic traditions. A similar culture-melt between Islam and Judaism is apparent in a 17th-century manuscript by the Jewish Persian poet Imrani, called "Fathnama," or, "The Book of Conquest." Written with Hebrew characters in Judeo-Persian, the dialect of Iranian Jews and based on the Old Testament books of Joshua, Ruth and Samuel, the manuscript includes a delicate illustration of Joshua's attack on Canaan, with turbaned, bearded priests blowing rams' horns outside the gates of Jericho.

"Sacred's" manuscripts are a reminder that ancient mono- theisms played a critical role in spurring the global spread of culture. On display is a Torah from 17th-century China, made for the Jews of Kaifeng, whose community and synagogue in northern China lasted from the mid-12th to the mid-19th century. Among the British Library's astonishing array of Christian manuscripts are a number of Ethiopic Psalters, with Christian clergymen in bright Ethiopian robes, and the Angel Gabriel appearing in a traditional house with ostriches strutting on its roof.

For more on the exhibition, see here.

ARAMAIC WATCH: The Boston Globe reports on a researcher in Syriac Christianity who just received a Guggenheim Fellowship:

Christian-Muslim history not all hostile

By Rich Barlow | June 9, 2007

From the Crusades to 9/11, history has given many laypeople a tale of unrelenting hostility between Christians and Muslims. Michael Penn, who teaches religion and gender studies at Mount Holyoke College, is assembling a different picture by poking in an obscure nook of history.

He recently was awarded $120,000 in grants, including the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, for research into Syriac Christians who, he says, "arguably have the most direct relationship with Muslims" during Islam's formative years. Populating what is today Iran, Iraq, and eastern Turkey, these Christians lived under Muslim occupation from shortly after the Prophet Mohammed's death in 634. Few moderns know the Syriac language, so troves of documents from the period were largely ignored until Penn began burrowing into archives at the British Library and elsewhere.

[...]

That's an exaggeration, but it's very true that there are treasure troves of Syriac manuscripts crying out to be studied and very few researchers to study them. The focus of this article is Syriac and Muslim-Christian relations, but ancient apocalypses do get a mention.

Cogratulations to Professor Penn.

(I haven't meant to neglect you all, but I've been very busy in the last week with the New Testament and Hebrew Bible searches, among other things, and it really has been a quiet week in the news.)

A CULTURAL CENTER IN THE UAE has arranged to digitize the manuscripts in St. Catherine's Monastery and to archive copies of them:

Centre to help preserve monastery's collection

By Daniel Bardsley , Staff Reporter [Gulf News]


Dubai: A senior church leader in the Middle East has praised a Dubai cultural centre for offering to preserve Christian heritage.

Archbishop Damianos of Sinai, the Abbot of St Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, has thanked the Juma Al Majid Centre for Culture and Heritage for saying it will assist in taking copies of the monastery's well-known collection of manuscripts.

Some of the manuscripts at the Greek Orthodox monastery date back 1,500 years and the Juma Al Majid Centre will provide expertise and equipment so that digital records of the documents can be taken.

[...]

St Catherine's Monastery was built in the sixth century at the foot of Mount Moses. As well as holding an important collection of Arab mosaics, Greek and Russian icons and western oil paintings, the monastery has what has been described as one of the most significant collections of illuminated manuscripts in the world.

There are more than 4,000 volumes in the collection, most of them in Greek, with others in, among other languages, Arabic, Syriac, Slavic, Latin and Georgian.

Archbishop Damianos, who is himself Greek, said in the future it might even be possible to organise an exhibition of some of his monastery's manuscripts in the UAE. "Dubai is not so far from Egypt - it is only three hours," he said.

[...]

I don't know the Juma Al Majid Centre and its website is currently under construction, but this sounds like a positive development.

ISRAEL BOYCOTT UPDATE: Scholars for Peace in the Middle East has posted a petition against the UCU Israel-boycott resolution. The text reads:

We are academics, scholars, researchers and professionals of differing religious and political perspectives. We all agree that singling out Israelis for an academic boycott is wrong. To show our solidarity with our Israeli academics in this matter, we, the undersigned, hereby declare ourselves to be Israeli academics for purposes of any academic boycott. We will regard ourselves as Israeli academics and decline to participate in any activity from which Israeli academics are excluded.

Their goal is to get 5000 signatures. The count at present is 638. I have signed it. If you are an academic anywhere in the world and you wish to as well, the petition is here.

AN ALTERNATE HISTORY of the works of Philo of Alexandria is noted by Torrey Seland. Regular readers will be aware of my interest in alternate or counterfactual history (see, for example, here, here, here, and here).

MORE ON THE CAIRO GENIZA EXODUS FRAGMENT, now on display in the Israel Museum. The Art Daily has an article:

Rare 7th-8th C. Scroll Fragment in First-Time Public Display

JERUSALEM.- The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, announced the unveiling of an extremely rare and never-before-exhibited Hebrew scroll fragment from what is known as the "silent era" – the six-hundred year period from the 3rd through 8th centuries CE from which almost no Hebrew manuscripts have survived. The fragment, dating from the 7th or 8th century, is believed to have been part of the Cairo Genizah, a vast depository of medieval Jewish manuscripts discovered in Cairo's Ben Ezra Synagogue in the late 19th century.

The manuscript is a fragment of a Torah scroll from the book of Exodus (13:19-16:1), which includes the Song of the Sea, widely recognized as one of the most beautiful examples of biblical poetry. The Song celebrates the Israelites' safe crossing of the Red Sea, praises the Almighty for vanquishing their enemies, and anticipates their arrival in the Promised Land.

[...]

The main new information is about the private owner of the manuscript and its recent movements:

Until the late 1970s, the Song of the Sea manuscript was part of the Hebrew manuscript collection of Lebanese-born American physician Fuad Ashkar. Dr. Ashkar was not aware of the historical significance of the Song manuscript until he contacted Professor James Charlesworth at Duke University, now the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. Carbon analysis proved that the manuscript dated from "the silent era" of Hebrew biblical manuscripts and was therefore one of a few of its kind ever to have surfaced worldwide. The fragment was subsequently housed in the Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Special Collections Library at Duke University.

In 2004, Prof. Charlesworth brought the manuscript to the attention of Dr. Adolfo Roitman, and it is now on extended loan to the Museum. Since its arrival in Jerusalem, the manuscript has undergone extensive conservation treatment, undertaken by Michael Maggen, head of the Israel Museum's Paper Conservation Laboratory, in consultation with Duke University.

The article also has a nice close-up of a passage in the manuscript.

RISA LEVITT KOHN, curator of the upcoming Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in San Diego, is interviewed by voiceofsandiego.org:

Overseeing the Scrolls: Questions for Risa Levitt Kohn

Saturday, June 2, 2007 | Decades ago, when a group of Arabian nomads known as the Bedouins entered a cave and found pots and jars of pottery, they broke them to see what treasure they contained. Finding nothing except for some parchment with writing on it in the last jar, they left the cave and carried the parchment with them, eventually turning it over to an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem.

At least, that's the legend surrounding the initial discovery of one of the most important groups of documents and relics in history -- the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in 11 caves between 1947 and 1954. Some of the scrolls will be on display this month through December in an exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park.

Risa Levitt Kohn is the exhibit's curator. Kohn took a two-year sabbatical as director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University to put the show together, her first such stint for a museum. More than 20 of the 100 or so experts who've dedicated their careers to studying the scrolls will lecture on their importance to several disciplines when the show opens at the end of June.

[...]

MARTIN GOODMAN'S LATEST BOOK is reviewed in the Jerusalem Post:

Age of empire
By RALPH AMELAN

Rome & Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations
By Martin Goodman
Allen Lane
639 pages; 25
History, with the apparent wisdom of hindsight, seems inevitable.

Certainly traditional Jewish explanations of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE speak of it as something that had to happen. Most teachings maintain that causeless hatred was the reason for the disaster, citing the murderous factional fighting among Jerusalem's defenders prior to the city's fall. Others brood on the wickedness of "Edom," the code word for Rome, as something that meant a violent collision with Jews sooner or later.

Not, so, claims Martin Goodman, professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University and a specialist in the period. Jerusalem's fall, and the consequent loss of status of Jews in the Roman Empire, was mostly sheer bad luck.

[...]

ISRAEL BOYCOTT UPDATE:

Academics express outrage at Israeli boycott

Debbie Andalo
Thursday May 31, 2007
EducationGuardian.co.uk

Academics and students today hit back at the decision by university lecturers to support calls for a boycott of Israeli institutions.

Yesterday the University and College Union decided by 158 votes to 99 to circulate a motion to all its branches to discuss calls from Palestinian trade unions for a "comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions". The motion is going to branches for "their information and discussion".

But the decision taken at the inaugural UCU national conference in Bournemouth was condemned by the Russell group of research-led universities, the National Union of Students and organisations with an interest in Israel and academic free speech.

[...]

Well done.

SHABBETAI ZVI'S CHILDHOOD HOME in Turkey is in danger of demolition. The Forward has the story:

Shrine of False Messiah in Turkey May Be Razed

Jay Michaelson | Fri. May 18, 2007

Far away from the eyes of the Jewish mainstream, in modern-day Turkey there live hundreds, if not thousands, of crypto-Jews — and today, one of their most sacred shrines is in danger.

This is the hidden, fascinating tale of the doenmeh, descendants of the faithful followers of the 17th-century false messiah Sabbetai Tzvi, who converted to Islam in 1666. Tzvi’s own conversion came under duress: The Ottoman sultan demanded that he don the turban or die after nearly one-third of European Jewry had come to believe he was the messiah and had begun swarming into Turkey, expecting the long-awaited triumph of the Jews.

Tzvi chose to convert, and most of his followers lost hope — but not all of them. Many saw the conversion as a heroic act of tikkun, or repair, and followed their messiah’s lead by outwardly becoming Muslims while secretly maintaining their messianic Jewish faith. They were called doenmeh, meaning “turncoats”— a pejorative term not unlike marrano (“pig.”) Among themselves, they were called ma’aminim, “believers.” Sabbateanism did not die out in 1666, or even 10 years later when Tzvi himself died. There were subsequent messiahs — largely forgotten men like Baruchiah Russo and Jacob Frank — and, as recent scholarship has shown, Sabbateanism greatly influenced the 18th-century emergence of Hasidism. And then there are the doenmeh, who live on until the present day, in secretive communities, at first primarily in Salonika and today almost entirely in present-day Turkey.

A move to tear down the Turkish home where Tzvi is said to have lived, however, may now disturb the balance the community has cultivated for centuries.

[...]

It sounds as though there actually is reasonable evidence that this is Shabbetai's house:

But is the house at 920 Agora Girisi, half-ruined and barely distinguishable from others in the old Jewish neighborhood (now mostly destroyed), really the birthplace of Sabbatai Tzvi, the “mystical messiah”?

Yes, according to Dr. Cengiz Sisman, an expert on Sabbateanism who received his doctorate from Harvard University. Sizman cited a wealth of evidence, including 1925 and 1940 newspaper reports of the house (the architecture of which is clearly described) being used as a “visiting site by believers,” a 1935 book by noted historian Abraham Galante, and a 1961 account by writer John Freely of a group of believers lighting candles and performing a ritual on the third floor of the building.

I've posted earlier on Shabbetai and Sabbateanism here, here, and here.

This sounds like a site of considerable historical interest and I hope it is preserved.

(This story via the article "Why I Study Sabbateanism" by Jay Michaelson in Zeek.)

HEBREW BIBLE/EARLY JEWISH STUDIES JOB AT EXETER - Louise Lawrence e-mails the following:

Lecturer in Hebrew Bible and/or Early Jewish Studies

The Department of Theology in the University of Exeter invites applications from high quality scholars for a new full-time lectureship in Hebrew Bible and/or Early Jewish Studies. Applications from those specialising in the language, literature or culture of the Second Temple period are particularly welcome. The lecturer will be expected to play a full role in the life of the department, including contributing to teaching at BA and MA level, and research supervision. Short-listed candidates will be interviewed on 27 and 28 June 2007. Informal inquiries to Dr Mike Higton (Head of Department) on m.a.higton@exeter.ac.uk or +44 (0)1837 840236 or to Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou (Lecturer in Hebrew Bible) on f.stavrakopoulou@exeter.ac.uk or +44 (0)1392 264290.

Please note that the deadline for applications is 13 June.

Application packs are available from www.exeter.ac.uk/jobs; e-mail m.farrell@exeter.ac.uk; or Answer-phone (01392) 263100, quoting reference number M09-N117.

WHILE WE'RE ON SCI-FI TELEVISION, Ed Cook gives us Lost in Hebrew. And tells us the Hebrew word for "dude." Really.

DOCTOR WHO as an instance of kenotic Christology: Mark Goodacre gives us the exegesis, along with a YouTube clip of the relevant episode.

ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL by the major British academic labor union is in the works, right on schedule.

British Academics’ Union Endorses Israel Boycott

By ALAN COWELL
Published: May 31, 2007 (NYT)

LONDON, May 30 — The main union representing 120,000 British college teachers voted Wednesday to endorse a Palestinian trades’ union call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

The boycott resolution, approved at the inaugural congress of the University and College Union, called on British college lecturers to “consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions.”

In theory, a boycott could sever academic contacts and exchanges of personnel between British and Israeli academic institutions.

The union leaders insisted, though, that rules endorsed in a separate resolution earlier on Wednesday would forestall any immediate moves toward any action of that kind.

[...]

I don't think there's any way that there will be an actual academic boycott of Israel, but the union leaders will have their little annual anti-Israel political statement. In lieu of further comment (for the moment) I'll just quote some of what I said last year, which still applies.

I think the proper response ... [is] to heap international ridicule and scorn on the union for picking leaders who are more interested in making a cheap and cowardly political statement than in doing their actual job of representing the interests of British academics. In fact, those interests have been notably set back by this move. It's a pity, because there is a real need for such representation. But this isn't it.

For the earlier boycott attempts by earlier incarnations of the same union, see here and here.

UPDATE (1 June): More here.

UPDATE (6 June): Petition information here.

UPDATE (24 July): More here.

UPDATE (30 July): More here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Jordan: Stop Temple Mount digging
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
AMMAN, Jordan

A Jordanian official called on Israel Wednesday to stop archaeological excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem, the official Petra news agency reported.

Israel has been carrying out excavations on a ramp leading up to a disputed holy site. The digging has sparked clashes between police and Muslims in Jerusalem and touched off fierce criticism throughout the Muslim world.

[...]

THE PALEOJUDAICA ARCHIVE IS BACK. (See the bottom of the links bar to the right.) I'm still trying to sort out the search engine just above it, which at present does not work. Patience.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Dichter rules area near Temple Mount off-limits to Muslim burial
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

Police have prevented Muslim burial at the foot of the Temple Mount for several months, as Public Security Minister Avi Dichter responded to pleas to reserve the area as a significant archeological site.

The area is one of the most sensitive in Jerusalem's Old City, bordering on the eastern wall of the Temple Mount and running parallel to it.

Dichter became convinced recently that a burial area at the southeast foot of the mount, outside the walls, had stretched into an area defined as a national park and an area of great archaeological significance, an area which had not previously been used for burial.

[...]

The archaeologists persuaded the police that the area "annexed" for the burial ground was tremendously important archaeologically.

[Archaeologist Gabriel] Barkai says it is a rare contact point between Second Temple-era construction and earlier remnants from the First Temple age.

"Muslim burial on the site, which was never a cemetery in the past, could end any possibility of excavating the area in the future, as has been done at the foot of the southern wall and the bottom of part of the Western Wall," Barkai noted in the petition.

The court heard that the area had well-preserved 2000 year old construction from Herod's time and a clear seamline between the northern construction, Hasmonean, and the southern construction, Herod's. British archaeologist Charles Warren, who excavated there 140 years ago, found cornerstones for the five lowest layers of construction built into a layer of terra rosa, which includes remains from the First Temple. The first sealing rings stamped "for the King," found in Israel, dated to late 8th Century B.C.E., were found in the red soil.

[...]

INTERESTING SEALS AND FISH BONES from the early Iron Age II period have been excavated in the fill under a house that was build in a derelict rock-hewn pool near the Gihon Spring. Haaretz has the story:

How did fish reach Jerusalem?
By Ran Shapira

Jerusalem's ancient water system, which excavations over the past decade are gradually uncovering, included a large pool hewn into rock. The pool, next to the Gihon Spring in the City of David, ceased to be used and dried up in the late eighth century B.C.E., after King Hezekiah of Judah built a new water project in the city, the Siloam tunnel. But according to Prof. Roni Reich, of the University of Haifa's Archaeology Department, and Eli Shukrun of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), who are overseeing the excavations at the site, the pool hewn into the rock did not remain desolate for long: Toward the end of the eighth century B.C.E., a Jerusalem resident decided to build himself a house inside it, thus sparing himself a lot of work, since the pool's four hewn walls served as a base for the external walls of his home.

[...]

The high concentration of seals, the graphic motifs on them, which are not typical of Jerusalem of the First Temple era, in addition to the impressive amount of fish bones, are likely to provide evidence of the Phoenician or Israelite presence in Jerusalem during the second half of the ninth century, B.C.E. Reich notes that the dynasty of the house of Omri, the ruler of the Kingdom of Israel in the early ninth century, had family ties to the Phoenicians. These ties reached the Kingdom of Judah when King Jehoram, the son of Jehosaphat, who controlled Judah during the second half of the ninth century, B.C.E., married Athaliah, the daughter of Omri or of his successor, Ahab, who was of Phoenician origin. Athaliah forcibly assumed power and ruled Judah for a number of years until being deposed (II Kings 11).

It is possible that the high concentration of fish bones and seals with graphic images typical of the Phoenicians - one seal depicted a Phoenician ship, another an image of a fish - indicates that before the house was built in the pool, an administrative center of the rulers who were close to the Phoenicians operated nearby. Reich and Shukrun note that apart from Athaliah, also her predecessor, Jehoram and her successor, Ahaziah, were likely to maintain close ties with the capital of the Kingdom of Israel and with Phoenician cities, such as Sidon.

The hypothesis regarding ties between Jerusalem and Phoenicia in the late eight and ninth centuries, B.C.E. is reinforced by other findings, including a pomegranate made of ivory that was found in the earth. The Phoenicians, who were talented sailors, builders and merchants served as cultural intermediaries in the Mediterranean basin, where they sailed. Among other things, they engraved ivory, a craft they learned in Egypt, where they found raw and etched ivory to bring back to Assyria. They also brought artistic motifs from one place to another, such as Egyptian symbols that appeared on the seals. As seafarers, it is likely that the Phoenicians did not want to give up the fish they were so fond of, even when they were far away from the coast, and took the trouble to bring the fish from the coastal cities to Jerusalem.

HEROD'S TOMB (if that's what it is) is used in an L.A. Times essay as a launching point for an essay on archaeology and modern Israeli-Palestinian politics. Palestinian Temple denial also comes up.

King Herod's return
How Israelis and Palestinians put their own spin on archeology to claim an ancestral homeland.
By Walter Reich, WALTER REICH is a professor of international affairs, ethics and human behavior at George Washington University, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former d
May 30, 2007

AFTER 2,000 YEARS of indignity and ignominy, Herod the Great has finally gotten his revenge.

During their revolt against Roman rule over Judea between AD 66 and 72, Jews who remembered King Herod as a Roman puppet smashed his sarcophagus, which had been interred with royal pomp about 70 years before. Christians have identified him as a baby killer who forced Jesus' family to flee Bethlehem. And Herod's habit of having his rivals and relatives killed has hardly burnished his image.

True, he built monumental projects — not only Masada and Caesarea but the grand expansion of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem, the best-known remnant of which is the Western Wall. In the main, though, he's been a forgotten and derided historical figure.

But now Herod is back, at least in spirit. Israeli archeologists announced earlier this month that they've found his tomb, eight miles south of Jerusalem. And that tomb has become yet another impediment on the already impassable road to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

[...]

THE AUTHOR OF RASHI'S DAUGHTERS is interviewed by the Cleveland Jewish News:

Rashi becomes real for novelist Anton

By SORIYA DANIELS, Freelance Writer

Rashi’s Daughters: Book One - Joheved. By Maggie Anton. Banot Press. 368 pp. $15.95.

A mesmerizing tale, part fiction and part fact, by first-time author Maggie Anton takes readers of Rashi’s Daughters: Book One - Joheved back to medieval 11th-century France. The book explores the personal lives, hopes, trials and tribulations of the great Talmudic sage Rashi and his immediate family.

It is also a story of love, marriage, and family - and the timeless struggles life can bring, such as finding an appropriate spouse, dealing with infertility, caring for a parent with dementia, difficulties earning a living and dealing with challenges within marriage, particularly communication problems. As the title implies, Rashi’s Daughters: Book One — Joheved is the first novel in what Anton anticipates will be a trilogy to explore the personal and intellectual lives of Rashi’s three daughters. Book Two, focusing on daughter Miriam, hits bookstones on July 31.

[...]

More on the novel here.

A NEW INTRODUCTION TO THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS is coming out, authored by a Comparative Lit professor at Arizona Western College (Pam Kuhlken) and by senior biblical and Scrolls scholar David Noel Freedman.

THE CAIRO GENIZA gets a nice little profile in the Canadian Jewish News. Excerpt:

As with other major discoveries discussed in this column, it was locals who first brought the material to the attention of the outside world. At first, Europeans noticed something new in the Cairo antiquities market. It was thanks primarily to the efforts of two sisters, Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, residents of Cambridge, that the renowned university there obtained the bulk of the collection.

This was indeed quite fortuitous, since they brought the material to the attention of the man who would be forever associated with the Genizah documents, the redoubtable and legendary Rabbi Solomon Schecter, who at that time was the reader in talmudic and rabbinic literature and keeper of the collection of Hebrew manuscripts at Cambridge.

Fortunately, Rabbi Schecter was probably the one man in the world who would be able to fully appreciate and analyze the material. One of the first documents he came across was the Wisdom of Ben Sira, popularly known as Ecclesiasticus, which he published. His study of the material is still a landmark of scholarship.

But Rabbi Schecter realized that he would have to go to the source, to the genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue itself. What he found there astounded both him and the world. It contained more than 100,000 documents, which have since given us a unique and unparalleled look into a prominent Jewish community of 1,000 years ago.

The article also discusses recent Canadian contributions to Geniza research, including the refurbishment of the Ben Ezra synagogue, a ditigization project on the texts, and a possible upcoming conference.

MEETINGS AND EXAM MARKING all day today. I'll try to post something tomorrow.

MANUSCRIPT COLLATING FOR DUMMIES. Really.

A 7TH-CENTURY CE SCROLL FRAGMENT OF EXODUS, apparently from the Cairo Geniza, is on display at the Israel Museum:

Rare scroll fragment to be unveiled
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

A rare Torah scroll fragment from the Book of Exodus dating back to the 7th century that includes the famous Song of the Sea will be unveiled Tuesday at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the museum announced Monday.

The manuscript, which is a fragment of a Torah scroll from the Book of Exodus (13:19-16:1), comes from the six-hundred year period from the 3rd through 8th centuries known as the "silent era," from which almost no Hebrew manuscripts have survived.
[...]

The Song of the Sea manuscript is one of a kind in terms of its historical and literary significance," said Israel Museum Director James S. Snyder. "It bridges the gap in the period of history between the Dead Sea Scrolls [1st-2nd century CE] and the Aleppo Codex [10th century], both of which are permanently housed in the Shrine of the Book."

[...]

HAPPY SHAVUOT (FESTIVAL OF WEEKS, PENTECOST) to all those celebrating. It begins this evening at sundown.

THERE'S AN OBITUARY OF DAME MARY DOUGLAS in The Times:

Professor Dame Mary Douglas
Challenging and wide-ranging social anthropologist whose ideas and influence reverberated far beyond her discipline

Dame Mary Douglas was one of the outstanding British social anthropologists of the latter half of the 20th century. Her books, Purity and Danger (1966) and Natural Symbols (1970), were seminal for anthropologists and were widely appreciated in other disciplines.

A Sunday Times survey of “Makers of the 20th Century” in 1991 listed Purity and Danger among the 100 most influential nonfiction works since 1945; only four women and four anthropologists made the list.

Starting as an Africanist, she branched out to cover contemporary Western society, addressing such topics as risk analysis and environmentalism, and food and consumption. Old Testament religion was another interest, first in her famous discussion of the “abominations of Leviticus”, in Purity and Danger, and latterly in studies of Numbers and Leviticus.

[...]

The obit is quite interesting and informative.

(Via the Agade list.)

HANNIBAL'S ROUTE through the Alps is under investigation by a Classics Lecturer at Stanford:

"Few historical problems have produced more unprofitable discussion than that of Hannibal's pass over the Alps," said the mid-20th-century historian F. W. Walbank, whom Patrick Hunt, a lecturer in the Classics Department, quotes in acknowledging the difficulty and exhilaration of researching the subject. Hunt, director of the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project, estimates that 20 major studies and articles have focused on it in the past century alone.

He has been investigating the question for the past decade. Now, he hopes he may have found the answer.

"It may be hubristic and definitely ambitious of me to think I might be able to prove that route," he conceded. His most notable predecessor was Napoleon Bonaparte, who reputedly carved his name under Hannibal's on rocks he found in the Alps.

But Hunt has new scientific tools to assist his investigation, and with them have come a profusion of evidence. As the first geoarchaeologist to tackle the question, Hunt has employed methods as diverse as analyzing rock weathering rates, scrutinizing lichen growth, studying pollen records and modeling historical glaciation on computers to help him envision how the land today might be different from that described in ancient texts. Ultimately, the tools will help him comprehend how feasible it was that certain paths were taken by Hannibal and his army traversing the mighty Alps.

[...]

The next leg of his investigation is to look for hard evidence in the form of artifacts. "You have to assume that an army of 25,000 people plus elephants is going to leave a record of its passage," Hunt said. "But to date, not one Carthaginian coin has been found in the Alps proper."

And so he proposes new methods. "I think the topography has sufficiently changed over several millennia so that if the evidence is there, it's not going to be on the surface. I would look not on the direct route, but down the precipices," he said. Also, he said, efforts should be focused where the geology is stable, where rapid erosion would not have buried remains deeply.

Hunt and his team have identified 19 sites to excavate and are awaiting from the European governments the permits that are required before any evidence can be removed from the land. Hoping to be at the cusp of a breakthrough, Hunt and his research have attracted attention and funding from Helen and Peter Bing and the National Geographic Society.

[...]

I hope they get funding and find something.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS go on display in San Diego next month.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Jerusalem's Temple Mount: Historic Preservation with 3D Laser Scanning
Thursday, 01 March 2007

A 1.851Mb PDF of this article, complete with images, is available by clicking HERE

The Temple Mount is a 35-acre historic site in the Old City of Jerusalem which is of central importance to Judaism, Islam and Christianity. It was the site of the first and second Jewish Temples in Jerusalem and is currently the site of two major Muslim shrines, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. The mount is hemmed in by an enclosure wall that was erected to create a level platform on which Herod the Great could rebuild the Jewish Temple in the first century B.C. In February 2004 an earthquake displaced a portion of the mount's eastern wall ( cover photo and Figure 1). To analyze the deformation and determine whether remediation was needed, the Israel Antiquities Authority engaged Mabat 3D Technologies, Ltd., of Tirat-Carmel, Israel to document and measure the displacement using 3D laser scanning.

[...]

The bulge in the southern wall was also scanned.

(Cross file under Technology Watch.)

THE POPE'S NEW BOOK ON JESUS is reviewed by Geza Vermes in The Times:

Jesus of Nazareth
The scholar Ratzinger bravely declares that he and not the Pope is the author of the book and that everyone is free to contradict him
By Pope Benedict XVI, reviewed by Geza Vermes

I LEARNT ABOUT the imminent appearance of Pope Benedict XVI’s book on Jesus at the University of Princeton about four weeks ago. I attended there an international conference on methodology in the quest of the historical Jesus where I was to give the opening address. The title, Jesus of Nazareth, not “Jesus, the Son of God” or something similar, seemed to imply that the Pope was one of us, a seeker after historical truth. Indeed, his preface explicitly states that his study incorporates modern historical criticism, and is intended to portray Jesus as an “historical” figure “in the strict sense of the word”. I must confess, however, that my initial reaction was overoptimistic.

[...]

There follows a summary of historical-Jesus scholarship from the nineteenth century to the present. Then there is a discussion of the book. Here's an excerpt:

Yet I must protest against the reiterated papal claim that the divine Christ of faith – the product of his musings – and the historical Jesus – the Galilean itinerant healer, exorcist and preacher – are one and the same. In the absence of a stringent linguistic, literary and historical analysis of the Gospels, especially of their many contradictory statements, the identification is without foundation. One must declare groundless Benedict’s appeal to “canonical exegesis”, an exercise in biblical theology whereby any text from the Old or the New Testament can serve to explain any other biblical text. Such an approach to biblical studies would force back Catholic Bible experts, already the objects of frequent papal disapproval in Jesus of Nazareth, to a preCopernican stage of history.

As a final comment, may I, after a lifetime of study of Judaism and early Christianity and in the light of hundreds of letters inspired by my books, voice the conviction that the powerful, inspirational and, above all, real figure of the historical Jesus is able to exercise a profound influence on our age, especially on people who are no longer impressed by traditional Christianity. While scholarly exegesis removes some of the mystery enveloping the church’s Christ, it does not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Contrary to Pope Benedict’s forebodings, the world would welcome this authentic Jesus.

Read it all.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBIT IN KANSAS CITY was a great success. Can't say I'm surprised.

Union Station hits jackpot with Dead Sea Scrolls
The display of the artifacts netted nearly $3 million and far exceeded expectations.
By MATT CAMPBELL
The Kansas City Star

The lines were long on Feb. 8, the opening day of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at Union Station, and the interest never waned for the duration of the event, which ended Sunday. A total of 177,782 people saw the scrolls, an average of 1,975 a day.

The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit was the most successful ever at Union Station, selling so many tickets that the station could edge into the black for the first time.

The show closed Sunday after averaging nearly 2,000 visitors a day and netting nearly $3 million, according to preliminary figures released Thursday. The 90-day exhibit far exceeded projections.

[...]

DAME MARY DOUGLAS, I am sorry to report, has died earlier this week. Jack Sasson relays the sad news on the Agade list in an e-mail forwarded from Mark Geller, which I take the liberty of copying here:

Dame Mary Douglas (1921-2007) passed away yesterday evening (16 May), after receiving her knighthood at Buckingham Palace last week. Her contributions to anthropology and biblical studies will be of lasting importance. On the day she passed away, she received proofs of her introduction to a new volume, Imagining Creation, which will appear within the next few months.

Jack also points to this notice about Professor Douglas regarding an honorary degree she received in 2000 at the University of Pennsylvania.

Requiescat in pace.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE SIEGE OF TYRE: There's new geological information on Alexander's siege of Tyre, which siege is alluded to cryptically in the Bible in Ezekiel 26. If you're not familiar with the details of the event, the Livius article "Alexander takes Tyre" is informative. Here's the news from the National Geographic Society:

Alexander the Great Conquered City via Sunken Sandbar
Kate Ravilious
for National Geographic News
May 15, 2007

Changing sea levels and shifting sands helped Alexander the Great conquer the ancient island city of Tyre in one of his most famous military victories, new research shows.

In 332 B.C. the Greek military commander invaded the island just off the coast of modern-day Lebanon, then part of ancient Phoenicia.

New geological findings and computer models show that the growth of agriculture on the island caused sediment runoff, which spurred the formation of a long, thin submerged sandbar between Tyre and the mainland.

Alexander and his men cunningly exploited this sandbar, the findings suggest, to build a 0.6-mile (1-kilometer) raised path, or causeway, out of wood and stone.

[...]

MORE BIG-SCREEN ARAMAIC: Babylonian and Sanskrit too.

Alexandra Maria Lara has 'Youth'
Attracting the eye of Francis Ford Coppola
By KATJA EICHINGER (Variety)

Given her lineage, Alexandra Maria Lara just might have the acting gene stamped in her DNA. Her father, Romanian actor Valentin Platareanu, had been running Bucharest National Theater before emigrating to Berlin, where he founded the Charlottenburg Acting Academy. Lara soon followed in her father's footsteps, attending classes there and eventually landing a part in a German TV series at the age of 16. She has never looked back.

"My first part came along by accident and then everything happened really fast," recalls Lara, now 28. "I've never tried to force anything. So far I've been very fortunate to get some great parts, but maybe it's exactly because I never pushed too hard."

While she's played significant roles in such miniseries as "Napoleon," "Der Wunschbaum" and "Doctor Zhivago," it wasn't until she held her own as the personal secretary Traudl Junge to Bruno Ganz's Hitler in "Downfall" that her career experienced a dramatic upswing and attracted the attention of Francis Ford Coppola.

For the filmmaker's much-anticipated "Youth Without Youth," Coppola's first directing effort in 10 years and based on a WWII-era novella by Romanian writer Mircea Eliade, she had to master speaking ancient tongues such as Aramaic, Sanskrit and Babylonian.

[...]

My emphasis. By "master speaking" I assume they mean "learn to pronounce words in." I doubt very much that she really learned any of these languages. Nevertheless, a movie adaptation of a novel by Eliade with ancient languages sounds pretty interesting.

GOAT DNA AND THE SCROLLS:

How goat skin DNA solved Dead Sea scrolls mystery
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH (Jerusalem Post)

Scientists at the Hebrew University's Koret School for Veterinary Science near Rishon Lezion are helping to piece together some of the 10,000 fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls found decades ago in Qumran by examining the DNA profiles of the goats whose skin was used to make the parchment and reducing the number of possible matches.

Dr. Galia Kahila Bar-Gal said during a journalists' tour at the nearby Hebrew University Veterinary Teaching Hospital, where students learn and treat animals, that she and colleagues were looking at genetic forms from each fragment to know which came from specific animals. Once they know that two pieces came from the skin of the same animal, it is easier to piece them together, she said.

[...]

A NEW TESTAMENT JOB AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS:

School of Divinity

Lectureship/Senior Lectureship/Readership in New Testament

Salary - £33,101 - £47,194 per annum
We are seeking applicants committed to excellence in teaching and research in New Testament. You will contribute to the School's existing strengths in exegetical, literary and historical scholarship. Specialism within the canon of New Testament is open, though a research interest in the interface between biblical studies and Christian theology and/or the history of interpretation is highly desirable. You will teach both NT content and Greek to students from undergraduate to doctoral level. You are a team player who will be fully involved in the School's research, supervisory and administrative roles.

While applications to the Lectureship are welcome from junior scholars, you will be expected to hold a PhD when you take up the position, you will need to demonstrate a capacity and commitment to research and publication as well as teaching, and you should have at least one to four major publications in print. If appointed at the level of Senior Lecturer or Reader, you would be expected to come with a strong international research profile.

This appointment is similar to an assistant or associate professorship in North America. The position will begin on 1 September 2007 or as soon as possible thereafter. Appointment at Grade 7 or Grade 8 may be considered depending on the level of appointment made.

Informal enquiries to Dr Jim Davila (Tel. +44-1334-462834; email: divhos@st-andrews.ac.uk). Further information about the School of Divinity can be found at: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/divinity.


Please quote ref: PS225/07
Closing date: 1 June 2007
Application forms and further particulars are available from Human Resources, University of St Andrews, College Gate, North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AJ, (tel: 01334 462571, by fax 01334 462570 or by e-mail Jobline@st-andrews.ac.uk. The advertisement and further particulars and a downloadable application form can be found at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/recruitment/vacancies.

The University is committed to equality of opportunity.

Please note the early closing date (1 June). If you applied to the earlier NT post and wish to apply now for this one, please send a new application aimed at this job description. The further particulars web page is malfunctioning at present, but you can have the application form and further particulars sent to you by contacting the Joblines e-mail address above.

UPDATE (16 May): Typo corrected (paragraph above should have read "earlier NT post"). Also, the malfunctioning website is now functional again.

AN OLD TESTAMENT/HEBREW BIBLE JOB AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS:

School of Divinity

Lectureship/Senior Lectureship/Readership in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible

Salary - £33,101 - £47,194 per annum/
We are seeking applicants committed to excellence in teaching and research in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. You will contribute to the School's existing strengths in philological and historical scholarship. Specialism within the canon of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible is open, though a research interest in the interface between biblical studies and Christian theology and/or the history of interpretation is highly desirable. You will teach both Old Testament/Hebrew Bible content and Hebrew language to students from undergraduate to doctoral level. You are a team player who will be fully involved in the School's research, supervisory and administrative roles.

While applications to the Lectureship are welcome from junior scholars, you will be expected to hold a PhD when you take up the position, you will need to demonstrate a capacity and commitment to research and publication as well as teaching, and you should have at least one to four major publications in print. If appointed at the level of Senior Lecturer or Reader, you would be expected to come with a strong international research profile.

This appointment is similar to an assistant or associate professorship in North America. The position will begin on 1 September 2007 or as soon as possible thereafter. Appointment at Grade 7 or Grade 8 may be considered depending on the level of appointment made.

Informal enquiries to Dr Jim Davila (Tel. +44-1334-462834; email: divhos@st-andrews.ac.uk). Further information about the School of Divinity can be found at: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/divinity.

Please quote ref: PS226/07
Closing date: 1 June 2007
Application forms and further particulars are available from Human Resources, University of St Andrews, College Gate, North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AJ, (tel: 01334 462571, by fax 01334 462570 or by e-mail Jobline@st-andrews.ac.uk. The advertisement and further particulars and a downloadable application form can be found at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/recruitment/vacancies.

The University is committed to equality of opportunity.

Please note the early closing date (1 June). If you applied to the earlier OT/HB post and wish to apply now for this one, please send a new application aimed at this job description. The further particulars web page is malfunctioning at present, but you can have the application form and further particulars sent to you by contacting the Joblines e-mail address above.

UPDATE (16 May): The malfunctioning website is now functional again.

THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR.

THE IDENTIFICATION OF HEROD'S TOMB is not going unchallenged. Newsweek has an article (BeliefWatch: Entombed) which notes the following from James Charlesworth:

As with all such discoveries, however, there's almost no proof, and already some of Netzer's colleagues are raising questions. Herod, says James H. Charlesworth, of Princeton Theological Seminary, was a ruthless leader—so paranoid that he had his own sons and his wife killed for allegedly betraying him. Why would a king who knew he was hated, a leader fully aware of the perils of grave-robbing and desecration, not hide his tomb away? "He certainly wouldn't put his tomb on the hillside where everybody would see it," says Charlesworth. "I would think he would put the tomb in the base. There are massive tunnels down there."

THE POPE has now published a book on Jesus: Jesus of Nazareth. Newsweek has an article on it (A Portrait of Faith). Excerpt:

One can almost hear Pope Benedict XVI roaring with frustration at this multiplicity of interpretations. Benedict, a theologian by training with an expertise in dogma, has been fierce in his condemnation of the creep of Western secularism, and the promiscuity of recent Jesus scholarship must seem to him another symptom of the same disease, all ill-founded and subjective claims. "We are building a dictatorship of relativism," he declared at the beginning of the 2005 enclave that elected him pope, "that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires." Benedict's answer to secularism is Christ, and this week the American publisher Doubleday releases "Jesus of Nazareth," Benedict's portrait of his Lord. It is an orthodox biography—one that acknowledges the role of analytical scholarship while in fact leaving little room for a critical interpretation of Scripture. This approach is not surprising, given Benedict's job description, but in a world where Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and other proponents of secularism credit belief in Jesus as one of the sources of the world's ills, Benedict offers an unvarnished opposing view: belief in Jesus, he says, is the only thing that will save the world.

Newsweek also has an excerpt of the book itself, here.

THE SACRED EXHIBITION at the British Museum is covered in a Times article from Apri:

The writ and wisdom of the Almighty
The British Library’s collection of books and manuscripts from three of the world’s great religions demonstrate what divides us, but also what should unite us
undefined
Rachel Campbell-Johnston

[...]

British Library curators can draw on rich resources. An unparalleled archive includes treasures that range from papyrus scraps rescued from an Egyptian rubbish dump to the most sumptuously ornamented of manuscripts. These are supported by loans of key texts from other museums, including a Dead Sea scroll fragment (one of several pieces never before shown in this country), and by objects from private collections, from an exquisite silver set used during the Jewish ceremony of Passover through the richly decorated curtain that once hung over the door of the Kaabah (the cube-shaped stone structure in the Grand Mosque in Mecca that forms the focal point of all Muslim worship) to the shalwar kameez that Jemima Khan wore at her wedding.

But at the heart of the show are the manuscripts: those most precious survivors of centuries of pogroms and wars and oppressions, of years of neglect and accident. To- gether they tell a story as vividly intriguing as psalter illuminations, as intricately complex as an Islamic carpet, as minutely detailed as the masoretic notes that weave their patterns around the writings of a Jewish Pentateuch.

The more ostentatiously dramatic of these texts seem more like objects than mes- sages, more like spiritual icons than mere books. Admire the wonderful calligraphy on a leaf of the Lindis-farne Gospels, for instance. This manuscript was far more than a practical text. Transformed by the artistic talent of its maker, it attained a symbolic power. It was not there to be read. It was meant to be glimpsed from a reverent distance by those who queued up to bear witness to this piece of solid proof of Christianity’s strength. Jewish scriptures took on a similar totemic importance. They became a sort of substitute for the Temple of Jerusalem after it was razed by the Romans in AD70. “Where two or three study the Torah together,” explained the rabbis, “the Shekhinah [divine presence] is in their midst”.

[...]

Some of the most fascinating displays are the most visually unappealing. A page of inscrutable scribbling, it turns out, is the Diatessoron — an attempt to combine the four Gospels into one narrative account that was so ruthlessly suppressed that no single complete manuscript sur- vives. And yet curators are keen also to show off their most exotic treasures, the most sumptuously ornamental of their manuscripts. Here are Korans in pure sweeps of burnished gold, Hebraic texts scrolled about with extravagant creatures, Christian stories illuminated with a vig-our that brings them springing to life.

[...]

THE BYU ARABIC TRANSLATION PROJECT is profiled in the Deseret News:

Arabic texts translated — thanks to Bennett
By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News
WASHINGTON — Historical Islamic books and other works previously only available in Arabic have been translated into English through a program at Brigham Young University that receives funding from the Library of Congress.
Andrew C. Skinner, executive director of BYU's Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, gave Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, copies of the several translated volumes in Washington Tuesday as a way to thank him for helping secure the federal funding needed to produce them.

[...]

Since its inception in 1992, the initiative has published 13 English translations from Arabic or Syriac writings by Middle Eastern philosophers, theologians, scientists and physicians through its four projects: The Islamic Translation Series, the dual-language Eastern Christian Texts, the English-only Library of the Christian East, and the Medical Works of Moses Maimonides. Peterson said 10 of the books have been financed by the university and private donations, but he has a goal of translating and publishing 100 works.
Bennett described the translated works as "not ancient" but "very old."

[...]

I noted the project previously here and here. I've worked closely with a couple of the volumes and, from my nonspecialist perspective, they seem excellent.

JOSEPHUS gets a nice little profile in the Texas Monitor online:

Josephus — traitor or scholar?
William McGee
Special to The Monitor
May 9, 2007 - 7:24PM


Students of early Christianity or Second Temple Judaism are sure to encounter the writings of Josephus Flavius, the most important non-biblical historical source for the First Century CE. His writings are dramatic and full of those details that provoke debate among modern historians. At the same time, he is a controversial person whose life and writings are filled with contradictions.

Recently, while discussing these articles with a Jewish friend, we talked about Josephus as a non-biblical source of information. He commented, “To us, Josephus is the Jewish Benedict Arnold.”

To me, his life and work is as worthy of study as are those about whom he wrote.

[...]

HANAN ESHEL is claiming that the Leviticus scroll was improperly handled by the Israel Antiquities Authority, according to Haaretz:

Antiquities Authority manhandled Leviticus scroll, says archaeologist
By Yair Sheleg

Professor Hanan Eshel, the archaeologist who two years ago uncovered scroll fragments of the Book of Leviticus, says the Israel Antiquities Authority, which now has the finds, has cut out large chunks of the scroll on the pretext that its dating needed to be examined.

This was not a necessary procedure, says Eshel, since "experts say it was possible to test the dating without an intrusive examination and in the worst case scenario by cutting a tiny, peripheral portion of the scroll."

[...]

Amir Ganor, director of the unit for the prevention of theft in the Antiquities Authority, said in response that "in order to carry out the examination we could not avoid making certain cuts in the scroll itself. This is acceptable in every examination of this sort. We cut only two small parts, one-half centimeter each, from the end of the scroll. At no stage was there any thought of cutting letters, only to scrape off some ink in order to examine it. The minute it became clear to us that we could not have unequivocal results from such an examination, we did not do it."

However, the photographs published here suggest the scroll cuts are significantly more extensive than what Ganor acknowledges and encompass nearly all the part of the scroll that has no writing on it.

Ganor said examinations of the scroll have undermined Eshel's claim that the finding is authentic.

[...]

Eshel disputes this.

YES, BUT DID THE ANGELS SMITE HIM? Haaretz reports on an interesting inscription currently being displayed at the Israel Museum:

Ancient Greek inscription, dating to 178 B.C.E., goes on display at Israel Museum
By Amiram Barkat

A recently deciphered ancient Greek stele (inscribed stone slab) is currently on display at the Israel Museum. The stele was produced in 178 B.C.E. in Israel at a time when the region was ruled by the Hellenistic Seleucid empire.

The inscription depicts events that preceded the Hasmonean rebellion. It mentions King Seleucus IV, who occupied the throne before Antiochus IV, the target of the Maccabean revolt, and the king's chief minister Heliodorus, who sparked the first open conflict between Greeks and Jews by attempting to seize funds from the Second Temple.

Researchers are unsure where exactly the inscription was discovered, and examinations commissioned by the museum failed to uncover any signs the inscription was inauthentic. The stele was deciphered by two leading ancient inscription researchers: Hannah Cotton-Paltiel of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Professor Michael Woerrle of the German Archaeological Institute in Munich. American-Jewish philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, who acquired the stele a few months ago, gave the stele to the museum on an extended loan.

Failing "to uncover any signs the inscription was inauthentic" is a less robust conclusion than I would like. I hope they are really more confident than that of its authenticity.

The inscription appears on the uppermost part of a stone column engraved with three letters. To date, this is the second stele from this period to be found in the region. The inscription describes King Seleucus IV's appointment of senior Greek clerk Olympiodorus to oversee sanctuaries in Israel and surrounding areas. In the first letter, King Seleucus IV informs his deputy Heliodorus of the appointment and the second and third announces more minor appointments.

[...]

King Seleucus IV was assassinated in 175 B.C.E., three years after the appointment described in the stele. He was replaced by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (the "Shining One" in Greek), who ruled during the Maccabean revolt. The first instance of open tension between both sides took place when Heliodorus entered the Temple and attempted to confiscate money. He was expelled in disgrace. The Maccabean rebellion actually began in 167 B.C.E. in response to grave, religious edicts imposed by Antiochus IV.

[...]

"Expelled in disgrace" doesn't really do justice to the story as it appears in 2 Maccabees 3 (RSV quoted here):

22: While they were calling upon the Almighty Lord that he would keep what had been entrusted safe and secure for those who had entrusted it,
23: Heliodorus went on with what had been decided.
24: But when he arrived at the treasury with his bodyguard, then and there the Sovereign of spirits and of all authority caused so great a manifestation that all who had been so bold as to accompany him were astounded by the power of God, and became faint with terror.
25: For there appeared to them a magnificently caparisoned horse, with a rider of frightening mien, and it rushed furiously at Heliodorus and struck at him with its front hoofs. Its rider was seen to have armor and weapons of gold.
26: Two young men also appeared to him, remarkably strong, gloriously beautiful and splendidly dressed, who stood on each side of him and scourged him continuously, inflicting many blows on him.
27: When he suddenly fell to the ground and deep darkness came over him, his men took him up and put him on a stretcher
28: and carried him away, this man who had just entered the aforesaid treasury with a great retinue and all his bodyguard but was now unable to help himself; and they recognized clearly the sovereign power of God.
29: While he lay prostrate, speechless because of the divine intervention and deprived of any hope of recovery,
30: they praised the Lord who had acted marvelously for his own place. And the temple, which a little while before was full of fear and disturbance, was filled with joy and gladness, now that the Almighty Lord had appeared.
31: Quickly some of Heliodorus' friends asked Onias to call upon the Most High and to grant life to one who was lying quite at his last breath.
32: And the high priest, fearing that the king might get the notion that some foul play had been perpetrated by the Jews with regard to Heliodorus, offered sacrifice for the man's recovery.
33: While the high priest was making the offering of atonement, the same young men appeared again to Heliodorus dressed in the same clothing, and they stood and said, "Be very grateful to Onias the high priest, since for his sake the Lord has granted you your life.
34: And see that you, who have been scourged by heaven, report to all men the majestic power of God." Having said this they vanished.
35: Then Heliodorus offered sacrifice to the Lord and made very great vows to the Savior of his life, and having bidden Onias farewell, he marched off with his forces to the king.
36: And he bore testimony to all men of the deeds of the supreme God, which he had seen with his own eyes.

Unfortunately it seems that the inscription does not mention this event. But, to be fair, it would have no particular reason to, and it's not clear whether it was produced before or after Heliodorus' visit to the Temple.

UPDATE: Nice photo at the Art Daily. (Via Rochelle Altman on Ioudaios-L.)

HEROD'S TOMB: By now, everyone must have heard of the reported discovery of Herod's tomb at Herodium, confirming what Josephus said. But how could PaleoJudaica not cover it too? Here is the Hebrew University press release:

Tomb of King Herod discovered at Herodium by Hebrew University archaeologist

The long search for Herod the Great’s tomb has ended with the exposure of the remains of his grave, sarcophagus and mausoleum on Mount Herodium’s northeastern slope, Prof. Ehud Netzer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology announced today.

Herod was the Roman-appointed king of Judea from 37 to 4 BCE, who was renowned for his many monumental building projects, including the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the palace at Masada, as well as the complex at Herodium, 15 kilometers south of Jerusalem. .

Herodium is the most outstanding among King Herod’s building projects. This is the only site that carries his name and the site where he chose to be buried and to memorialize himself -- all of this with the integration of a huge, unique palace at the fringe of the desert, said Prof. Netzer. Therefore, he said, the exposure of his tomb becomes the climax of this site’s research.

The approach to the burial site - which has been described by the archaeologists involved as one of the most striking finds in Israel in recent years - was via a monumental flight of stairs (6.5 meters wide) leading to the hillside that were especially constructed for the funeral procession.

The excavations on the slope of the mountain, at whose top is the famed structure comprised of a palace, a fortress and a monument, commenced in August 2006. The expedition, on behalf of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was conducted by Prof. Netzer, together with Yaakov Kalman and Roi Porath and with the participation of local Bedouins.

The location and unique nature of the findings, as well as the historical record, leave no doubt that this was Herod’s burial site, said Prof. Netzer.

[...]

The sarcophagus was smashed to bits, apparently by Jewish rebels during the Great Revolt of 66-72 C.E., which I guess shows that Herod wasn't any more popular in the first century than he is today.

This SBL Forum article ("Herod's Tomb Discovered at Herodium") doesn't have any new information, but it does have some good photographs of the site. And here's a slide show of the site from Der Spiegel. There has also been lots of discussion on the Ioudaios-L list. The recent archive of this thread is here.

SAMARITAN NEWS: Reader Sharon Dufour Sullivan e-mails the following:

I am writing to you because I have noticed through the years of following your blog that you have on occasion posted information about the Israelite Samaritans. I wanted to let you know about some exciting news. For the past five years I have been working with Israelite Samaritan Elder, Benyamim Tsedaka in the first English translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch. The project was completed one month ago, gracefully accepted by Logos to soon be published electronically. (I would be happy to send you a sample, if you are interested.) Along with the English translation of the Torah, Logos will be recording the oral chanting done by one of the leading Israelite Samaritan vocalists and choir member, Yefet Tsedaka (hopefully ready in one year from now). Mark Shoulson will also play a part in the Logos package, with the Hebrew parallel of the SP and the MT.

Benny and the choir are traveling to London, arriving Sunday, May 13. Benny will be staying an additional week after the choir performance.

I thought you might find both items of interest: The first ever English translation of the complete Samaritan Torah, and the soon arrival of the Samaritan Choir to perform in London.

Indeed.

Also, Benny Tsedaka e-mails with more information:

Following Sharon letter, yes, we are coming to perform
first time in the British Isle, four times in London.

I will bring with me the last draft of the Israelite
Samaritan Torah Translation, first time in English,
looking for high reputation publisher, as it ought to
be as an explosion in the field of Biblical research
to be in any place where it is studied, all over the
world.

[...]

... The Israelite
Samaritan Choir will perform next week as follows:

May 13, at 7:30 p.m in North Western Reform Synagogue,
Golders Green.

May 15, at 6:00pm in St. Ethelburga's Center for Peace
and Conciliation, Near Liverpool Tube station.

May 16. at 7:00PM at Spiro Ark Center for Jewish
Culture.

May 17, at 7:00pm at Spitz, London

Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to London next week. But if you will be there, you may want to attend one of the performances. I wish I could.

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.