Jerusalem panel approves alternate plan for Mughrabi BridgeBackground here.
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent
Jerusalem's Planning and Construction Committee approved Thursday an alternative plan to the controversial Mughrabi Bridge project.
[...]
As the final volume of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary goes to press, Martha Roth, its editor for the past 11 years, heads to the Humanities dean’s office.Cool.
The room looks foreign now to Martha Roth. Empty, orderly. A week ago the sprawling, odd-angled space on the Oriental Institute’s third floor was still home to the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary project. Piles of papers smothered desks, and windowsills acquiesced to coffee mugs, Post-it notes, jumbled stacks of books. But with the effort to document every word of ancient Akkadian nearing completion after 86 years, Roth, the dictionary’s current editor-in-charge, is consolidating. She’s culled countless duplicate index cards and consigned dozens of filing cabinets and yellowing binders to a janitor’s closet across the hall.
[...]
Lynn R. LiDonnici and Andrea Lieber, Heavenly Tablets: Interpretation, Identity and Tradition in Ancient Judaism (JSJSup 119; Leiden: Brill, 2007)This is the Festschrift for Betsy Halpern-Amaru. I have a piece in it called "Is the Prayer of Manasseh a Jewish Work?"
Libya Frees Foreign Medical WorkersMy emphasis. I can't find any more details at present.
By John Bohannon
ScienceNOW Daily News
24 July 2007
Five foreign medical workers boarded a French government jet last night in Tripoli, Libya, and landed in Sofia, Bulgaria, early this morning, greeted by a cheering crowd of thousands. Their arrival is a surprise happy ending to an 8-year political saga that has involved allegations of bioterrorism, torture, millions of dollars in ransom money, and an international coalition of scientists working tirelessly to find the real reason behind the infection with HIV of more than 400 Libyan children.
[...]
The medics' release is the outcome of furious last-minute dealing between Libyan and European politicians, although the precise terms of the deal remain unclear. Libyan officials said today that their demands were met. Principal among them were payments of $1 million in "blood money" to each of the families of the infected children. European officials have denied that they paid any money to the families. According to Seif al Islam, a son of the country's longtime dictator, Libya paid the families after European countries had agreed to forgive Libya's debts to them.
Bulgarian media reported that other Libyan demands included full reinstatement of diplomatic and economic ties with Europe, lifelong treatment for the infected children, the renovation of the children's hospital in Benghazi where the outbreak occurred, aid to upgrade Libya's railway and highway infrastructure, and expert help restoring Libya's many crumbling archaeological sites. No European official could be reached to confirm whether these demands were part of the deal.
[...]
New plan for Temple Mount bridge aims to silence criticsUPDATE (27 July): More here.
By Jonathan Lis (Haaretz)
Jerusalem's Planning and Construction Committee will begin discussing an alternative to the controversial Mughrabi Bridge project tomorrow.
The original plan for the bridge, which leads from the Old City's Dung Gate and the Western Wall to the Temple Mount's Mughrabi Gate, raised hackles in the Arab world when it was presented in February, due to allegations that it would damage the Temple Mount. Some archaeologists and architects also expressed concern that the bridge would damage antiquities or block the view of the Temple Mount.
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The bridge will consist of a wooden walkway bordered by metal, with two-meter-high iron railings, as required by the police. The number of pylons supporting it will be reduced from seven to four. The height of the pylons will not exceed half a meter, and they will be placed on platforms in spaces excavated by the Israel Antiquities Authority during its salvage dig, allowing the antiquities to be restored and protected. The planners mapped the archaeological finds along the bridge's path and found spaces in which the pylons could be placed without damaging the antiquities.
[...]
Minister Majadele cedes role in Mughrabi Gate project to cabinet
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent
The cabinet Sunday set up a ministerial committee to oversee the Temple Mount's Mughrabi Gate project, thereby effectively depriving Culture Minister Ghaleb Majadele, who previously had ministerial responsibility for the work, of this job.
The decision follows Majadele's tour of the area a few days ago during which he reportedly ordered archaeological excavations at the site to stop.
However, both Majadele and the Israel Antiquities Authority, which is carrying out the dig, deny that he gave such an order. The authority said that the work, which is a necessary step to replacing a collapsed ramp leading to the Mughrabi Gate from the Western Wall plaza, was halted due to planning problems and not the minister's orders.
[...]
Tisha Be'Av: The Third Temple that wasn't
By ALEXANDER ZVIELLI
On this day, as we mourn the destruction of both the First and Second Temples, it seems fitting to recall a little-known story of how a Roman emperor stood ready to rebuild the third temple. He acted not out of love for the Jewish people, but because he was a pagan who - despite its ascendency - despised Christianity.
[...]
Israel prosecutes that old black magicI think the headline is inaccurate. Tasseography (what a great word!) is divination, but it doesn't sound like black magic, which would have some malevolent element or intent.
By Dion Nissenbaum
McClatchy Newspapers
JAFFA, Israel — For nearly a quarter-century, Sana Kuma has been staring into the bottoms of coffee cups to divine the future for top Israeli models, actresses and businessmen.
It is in the chocolate swirls of coffee grounds that the fortuneteller says she can see what lies ahead.
Her fawning customers consider her a soothsayer.
To the Israeli government, Kuma is a witch and a fraud.
This year, Kuma became one of the few people ever to be charged in Israel with practicing magic, a crime punishable by up to five years in jail.
Kuma was the target of a modern-day witch hunt.
"Life is enemies and friends," Kuma said recently after a coffee-ground reading for a former Miss Israel. "I have to accept the good and the bad."
Kuma's transgression is something known to its practitioners as tasseography. Put more simply, it is the ancient art of overturning a coffee cup and looking for answers in the patterns left behind by the grounds.
And that, under Israeli law, can be grounds to charge someone with illegally practicing magic.
[...]
In 2004, the Israeli police officer [Avraham Beihou] was looking for help on the eve of his marriage.I'm curious about how the bride turned out.
According to the government charges, Kuma looked into the coffee grounds and saw a cursed bride.
To remove the curse, Beihou agreed to pay Kuma about $1,000 for the help of a special "Jordanian sheik" brought in to deal with the problem.
When that was done, Beihou turned to Kuma for advice about his ailing father. Kuma told the police officer and his sister that their father was likely to die in two months if they didn't act quickly.
So Beihou paid another $2,200 for a series of amulets.
But Beihou's father didn't get better. So, earlier this year, he turned to the government, which filed fraud and magic charges against Kuma.
[...]
In the end, the Israeli government decided that proving that Kuma was faking it was too difficult. Almog cut a deal. The state agreed to drop the charges, and Kuma agreed to give Beihou a full refund.Stay tuned.
That might have been the end of it. But Beihou said that he's not satisfied.
"I mean to sue her in civil court," he said. "She's cheated a lot of people."
Biblical recipe produces virus-fighting oilThis sounds too good to be true - indeed, it sounds like tabloid fare - but it appears to be real. Professor Ovadia's website is here. And here's a press release announcing the deal with Frutarom:
(Israel Today)
A professor from Tel Aviv University has used a passage of the Bible to produce a modern version of an ancient priestly oil that is capable of protecting against a wide range of viruses.
Professor Michael Ovadia of the university's Department of Zoology told Israel21c that concoction is based on a recipe from a passage of the Bible describing the preparation of a special oil Israel's temple priests were to anoint themselves with prior to conducting animal sacrifices.
“I had a hunch that this oil, which was prepared with cinnamon and other spices, played a role in preventing the spread of infectious agents to people,” said Ovadia.
He prepared the oil according to the biblical recipe, and sure enough, found that it was extremely effective in preventing the transfer of viruses such as the Avian flu, herpes and even HIV.
Last week, Ovadia sold his discovery to Frutarom, a multinational nutraceutical company that plans to use the oil in a variety of applications, including preventing the spread of infections in airports and hospitals.
Tel Aviv University licenses cinnamon extract as HIV, flu cureNo reference, however, is made to the biblical oil of anointing. The recipe for this oil can be found in Exodus 30:23-33. But beware of verse 33!
News release from Frutarom
Frutarom Industries Ltd. and Ramot at Tel Aviv University Ltd. signed an exclusive agreement to commercialize unique knowhow (patent pending) developed by Professor Michael Ovadia of Tel Aviv University, to produce an innovative extract from cinnamon with anti viral properties.
The comprehensive research performed in Professor Ovadia’s laboratory demonstrated the extract’s ability to rapidly neutralize a broad range of viruses that cause infectious diseases in both humans and animal, such as human and avian influenza, herpes (HSV-1) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1). Another unique activity of this innovative extract is its ability to boost the immune system against viruses, demonstrated by the ability to serve as a vaccination agent in chicken embryos infected with Newcastle disease virus (NDV). Trials performed together with a veterinary company showed that chicken embryos can be vaccinated against the NDV virus while they are still in the egg and in so doing, significantly improve the efficiency of the vaccine’s administration, increase success rates and reduce mortality.
[...]
Well, I'm used to that sort of thing. As dead languages go, 800 years isn't so long ago.
Your Score: Older Futhark
You scored
Language of the Norse, Older Futhark! Thirty symbols, all told. And no hardier, more warrior-like tongue has ever graced the longships of the Viki or left the Celts and Saxons in such quivering fear. There's only one drawback, that being you died 800 years ago.
Jewish relief over Latin MassThis seems like a sensible solution. I hope it works.
Leaders say Catholic prayer for conversion must go
(ANSA) - Rome, July 19 - Italian Jewish leaders voiced satisfaction on Thursday after the Vatican Secretary of State said that a Catholic prayer for the conversion of Jews could be eliminated from the recently re-introduced Latin Mass.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, second only to the pope in the Vatican hierarchy, referred to recent polemics over the prayer on Wednesday, saying it could be removed and that this would "solve all the problems".
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A Boost for the Book of JeremiahThis isolated instance of verification of a detail in the book of Jeremiah is very interesting, but we should be careful not to start drawing too grand of conclusions from it.
Saturday, Jul. 21, 2007 By DAVID VAN BIEMA
By confirming the historical accuracy of a tiny detail, a two-inch clay tablet long in the possession of the British Museum has given ammunition to those who believe that the Bible — specifically, in this case, the book of the prophet Jeremiah — is history. That, at least, is what the believers are claiming.
[...]
ATV drivers 'conquer,' destroy archaeological mounds
By Yoav Kaveh (Haaretz)
Archaeological mounds attract all-terrain vehicle (ATV) drivers. Not because of the antiquities or the view from the top. These people - and let it be clear at the outset, it is a small, noisy and damage-doing minority - want to conquer the mound, snap a picture for a souvenir and drive away for the next off-road challenge. Their tires leave ugly ruts in the ground into which surface runoff is channeled, detouring the natural course and disturbing the ecological balance.
The ATV drivers' two favorite archaeological mounds are in central Israel not far from Beit Shemesh: Tel Azeka and Tel Foded. These mounds were settled from the time of the Judean monarchy to the Byzantine period and contain water systems, hideout caves and other antiquities. They are located within the confines of the Jewish National Fund's British Park.
[...]
Vatican Library closure irks scholarsBummer.
By David Willey
BBC News, Rome
One of the world's oldest public libraries, the Vatican Library, has closed for rebuilding.
It is not expected to reopen before September 2010.
The reading rooms were unusually full last week.
Bespectacled university professors, graduate students from famous universities around the world, monks wearing brown and black habits, and Biblical researchers from more than 50 countries were sitting elbow-to-elbow at desks piled with documents and crowded with laptops and ancient manuscripts.
They were working desperately against time to complete their work before the closing down for the next three years of this powerhouse of academic research.
[...]
Vatican Library in Rome Closes: Saint Louis University Becomes Hub for World's Leading Scholars
ST. LOUIS -- On Saturday, July 14, the Vatican Library in Rome is closing for a three-year renovation. The closure will make Saint Louis University's renowned Vatican Film Library even more important for the world's leading scholars and researchers.
The Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library, located in the University's Pius XII Memorial Library, holds microfilm copies of approximately 37,000 of the Vatican Library's 70,000 manuscript codices. Because of this extensive collection, officials from Rome are encouraging scholars to come to St. Louis during the renovation period.
Holding major portions of the Vatican's Greek, Latin and Western European vernacular collections as well as materials in Arabic, Ethiopic and Hebrew, the Vatican Film Library at Saint Louis University is one of the largest and most comprehensive libraries in the world for medieval and Renaissance manuscript studies. The Vatican Film Library also has microfilm of some of history's most important treasures, including early complete texts of the Bible and early works of Virgil.
[...]
Arutz Sheva has an eight-minute English audio interview with Dr. Eilat Mazar concerning the Temple Mount. It was apparently conducted yesterday (7/16).Also, Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review, has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal (unfortunately the full text is available only to paid subscribers):
Arutz Sheva's home page's URL is http://www.israelnationalnews.com/
Those interested in hearing the interview should go to the site, scroll down to the section entitled "Radio Highlights" and click on Dr. Eilat Mazar: Fighting for the Temple Mount
For an alternative that may also work, paste the following onto the address line of your Web searcher (such as Internet Explorer): mms://msmedia.a7.org/arutz7/shows//English-show/highlights/EilatMazar.mp3
Biblical DestructionThe Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israeli Government are coming in for a lot of criticism on this one - rightly, as far as I can tell.
By HERSHEL SHANKS
July 18, 2007; Page A14
Within the last few days, a trench two-feet deep -- starting from the northern end of the platform where Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock sits -- has begun working its way toward the southern end of the Temple Mount. The work is being done without any regard for the archaeological information or treasures that may lie below. Destruction is particularly great in places where bedrock is no deeper than the trench. Some of the digging is being done with mechanical equipment, instead of by hand as a professional archaeological excavation would be conducted.
I don't know who are worse: the Muslim religious authorities digging up Jerusalem's Temple Mount, or the Israeli authorities who are allowing it to happen.
[...]
BBC won't remove anti-Semitic postingFor more on Talmud libel and its unfortunate history, see here. For a refutation of the particular item in this message (which doesn't even refer to the right Talmudic tractate being misconstrued), see "Claim (27)" here.
By JONNY PAUL (Jerusalem Post)
The BBC is refusing to remove a provocative and anti-Semitic message posted on one of its message boards despite a barrage of complaints.
The message was posted on the BBC Radio Web site message board following a discussion about a television program on anti-Semitism that screened on the UK's Channel Four network last week.
The offensive message, left by someone using the alias "Iron Naz," reads: "Zionism is a racist ideology where jews [sic] are given supremacy over all other races and faiths. This is found in the Talmud. There is a law called Baba Mezia which allows jews to lie as long as its to non-jews. Many pro jewish supporters will cringe at this being exposed because they know it exists, yet they keep quiet about it, hey frip, jla and co [the aliases of other people taking part in the discussion]. The Law of Baba Mezia!! Tsk tsk tsk! It's in the Talmud."
[...]
16 יולי 2007A reader who does not wish to be named notes the following:
סימוכין: 2007-0225-1662
Turkish officials to Mayor Lupolianski: "The tablet with Siloam Inscription will be returned to Jerusalem"
Following a meeting between mayor Lupolianski and Turkish ambassador to Israel, Mr. Namik Tan, it was agreed to look into the option of lending the tablet with Siloam inscription to the city of Jerusalem.
The 2,700-year-old tablet, which is now presented in the Archeology Museum in Istanbul, holds a great historical and cultural significance to the Jewish people. It contains testimonies from the days of the first temple and describes the construction of the tunnel by king Hezekiah. The tunnel was dug in order to maintain water supply to besieged Jerusalem. The tablet was discovered in 1880 by the British and taken by the Ottoman rulers when they left the region in 1917, after world War 1.
These days there have been indications that Turkey sees Lupolianski's request in a positive light. Therefore, the tablet might be returned to Jerusalem as a gesture of goodwill and as a sign of friendship between the 2 peoples.
The municipality sees it as a great archeological and cultural achievement.
Throughout the years, attempts have been made in order to bring the tablet back to its natural environment -Jerusalem .However, back then these attempts did not succeed.
The mayor, on his part has, agreed to promote a plan to build a monument to commemorate the Turkish soldiers who died on Israeli land/here during World War one.
For more information please contact Meital Jaslovitz, Foreign Media Assistant 02-6297744
Gidi Schmerling,
Municipality's spokesman
Note: the story gets one thing wrong. The tunnel and inscription were discovered by Edward Robinson, of Robinson's arch, a Connecticut born, Hamilton College grad and professor at Union theological Seminary in New York, in 1838 (not 1880)The same reader notes that the discussion seems to be about a loan of the inscription rather than its return.
Turkey may return Hezekiah tablet found in JerusalemBackground here.
(Israel Today)
A visiting Turkish delegation told Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski on Sunday that their government is seriously considering returning an ancient tablet from the time of King Hezekiah that was found in the Israeli capital prior to Britains defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
[...]
Antiquities Department to renovate synagogue holding Nahum’s tombUPDATE (19 July): More here, including photos.
By Ammar Imad
Azzaman, July 15, 2007
The Antiquities Department has included an ancient synagogue where Biblical prophet Nahum is purportedly buried in its 2008 renovation plans.
“The Antiquities Department has added the tomb of Prophet Nahum, peace be on him, to its 2008 preservation plan,” said department’s chief, Abbas al-Hussaini.
The synagogue and the tomb are situated in the northern Christian Iraqi town of al-Qoush, 40 kilometers north of Mosul.
Al-Qoush, a major Christian center in northern Iraq, had a large Jewish community before the Jewish exodus to Palestine in 1948.
The renovation of the synagogue and the tomb, archaeologists say, is an urgent matter. Some scientists say the synagogue might be irreparably damaged.
The department has put off the renovation of the tomb mainly because it lacked the right expertise and resources to have it refurbished and reconstructed.
[...]
Temple Mount travestyRead it all. Background here.
A bulldozer was seen last week ripping up earth on the Temple Mount, at the Dome of the Rock platform. It slashed a long gash, purportedly to lay new electric cables. With crude, damaging handling, it exposed a largely gray deposit, which according to archeologists is a sure-fire indication of "archeologically significant" matter.
Incomprehensibly, despite TV air-time and print space, these revelations by the Archeologists Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount (CPDATM) failed to cause much stir. The public has perhaps grown numb due to official abdication of control on the Mount. But the expedient turning of official blind eyes amounts to abetting the Wakf's ongoing construction at Judaism's most sacred site.
[...]
Archeologists slam Temple Mount dig
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
A group of Israeli archeologists has condemned the Antiquities Authority for authorizing Islamic trust officials to carry out a dig on Jerusalem's Temple Mount as part of work to repair electrical lines.
[...]
The Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, which is composed of archeologists and intellectuals from across the political spectrum, has lambasted Israel's chief archeological body for permitting the work.
"The Antiquities Authority would never have allowed such damage to antiquities at any other archeological site in Israel," said group spokeswoman Dr. Eilat Mazar, a leading Temple Mount expert.
"The Antiquities Authority has the ability and full backing of the police to enforce real archeological supervision, but does not do so," she said, adding that the dig was being carried out "without real, professional and careful archeological supervision involving meticulous documentation."
[...]
CONTROVERSY ALIVE AND WELL: A Chicago professor is at the center of a dispute about who really wrote the Dead Sea ScrollsFor more on Golb see here. It seems that his idea that Qumran was a fortress could be catching on.
By Pauline Dubkin Yearwood (07/13/2007) (Chicago Jewish News)
When Professor Norman Golb leads a weekend trip to an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the San Diego Natural History Museum this fall, it won't be the ordinary excursion in which visitors admire the exhibit and learn some extra tidbits about its content from the visiting scholar.
Instead Golb, the Ludwig Rosenberger Professor of Jewish History and Civilization at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, will try to convince travelers that much of the information in the exhibit is wrong.
Golb, who describes himself broadly as a scholar of the Jewish people, has been a controversial figure in the world of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship since 1995, when his book, "Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? -- The Search for the Secret of Qumran" (Scribner) was published.
In it, he goes against a scholarly consensus that has been at the forefront of scroll scholarship since the awe-inspiring documents' accidental discovery in 1947. That conventional wisdom holds that the scrolls were written by the Essenes, an ancient Jewish communal society of ascetic pacifists.
Golb contends instead that the scrolls were the work of individuals from many segments of the ancient Jewish world and that they were hidden near the Dead Sea, among other locations, by Jews fleeing the Roman army around 70 C.E.
[...]
Jerusalem Seeks Return of Ancient TabletThere's more on the Siloam Tunnel Inscription here [bad link now fixed]. The project is mentioned in 2 Kings as well.
By MATTI FRIEDMAN
The Associated Press
Friday, July 13, 2007; 7:54 AM
JERUSALEM -- Jerusalem's mayor has asked the Turkish government to return a 2,700-year-old tablet uncovered in an ancient subterranean passage in the city, sugggesting that it could be a "gesture of goodwill" between allies.
Known as the Siloam inscription, the tablet was found in a tunnel hewed to channel water from a spring outside Jerusalem's walls into the city around 700 B.C. _ a project mentioned in the Old Testament's Book of Chronicles. It was discovered in 1880 and taken by the Holy Land's Ottoman rulers to Istanbul, where it is now in the collection of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.
[...]
IAA set to okay museum on site of Muslim cemeteryPresumably "enormous" is a mistranslation of "prominent" or some such in the original Hebrew. For more, see here and follow the links back. See also here.
By Meron Rapoport
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) told the High Court of Justice that it was prepared to allow construction of the Museum of Tolerance on the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem's Mamila area, although an enormous archaeologist had determined that the excavation was far from complete.
In the opinion, to be submitted to the court today, Dr. Raphael Greenberg of Tel Aviv University states that the IAA archaeologist excavating the area wrote in his concluding report that there were at least 800 graves still left in the area and that he unequivocably recommended prohibiting construction there.
[...]
Photos: Unsupervised Islamic Digging on Temple MountThe article includes lots of photos. The story is also covered in Haaretz here
by Ezra HaLevi
(IsraelNN.com) The Islamic Wakf is digging large ditches on the Temple Mount without archaeological supervision to protect antiquities at Judaism’s holiest site.
Photos of the construction were publicized earlier this week. Investigation revealed that the dig had been approved by the police, though not coordinated with any archeological authorities. The ditch is being dug in the direction of the Dome of the Rock, the site of the Holy Temple, according to most opinions.
[...]
This concept we find only in rabbinic literature [i.e., not in the Bible], where it plays an important role, especially in the early form of Jewish mystical thought known as “Hechalot” or “Palace” mysticism. In the Hechalot tradition, it is the task of the mystical initiate to ascend by meditative techniques through the seven heavens one after another, overcoming angelic challenges in each, and then to pass safely through the seven “palaces” of the seventh heaven in order to reach the base of God’s throne. Similar beliefs, each with a complex angelology, existed among various Gnostic sects in the Roman Empire and had some currency in early Christianity, too, at least to judge by Paul’s remark in Corinthians II that “I knew a man in Christ… [who was] caught up to the third heaven.” From Judaism and/or Christianity the idea also spread to Islam, so that we read in Sura 71 of the Quran, “See you not how Allah has created the seven heavens one above another, and made the moon a light in their midst and made the sun a lamp?”
To be in “seventh heaven” is thus to reach the pinnacle of bliss. The expression has been around in English for a long time, although whether it got there from indigenous Christian sources, Jewish ones or Muslim ones, I don’t know. It almost certainly doesn’t come from in zibnten himl, since it’s older than the late 19th-century Yiddish-speaking immigration to the United States. Yet neither does in zibnten himl, which derives from internal Jewish traditions, come from it. Both go back to ancient beliefs that are thousands of years old.
Museum’s tablet lends new weight to Biblical truthUPDATE (20 July): More here.
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent
The British Museum yesterday hailed a discovery within a modest clay tablet in its collection as a breakthrough for biblical archaeology – dramatic proof of the accuracy of the Old Testament.
The cuneiform inscription in a tablet dating from 595BC has been deciphered for the first time – revealing a reference to an official at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that proves the historical existence of a figure mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.
This is rare evidence in a nonbiblical source of a real person, other than kings, featured in the Bible.
The tablet names a Babylonian officer called Nebo-Sarsekim, who according to Jeremiah xxxix was present in 587BC when Nebuchadnezzar “marched against Jerusalem with his whole army and laid siege to it”.
[...]
Exhibit illuminates Dead Sea Scrolls
By Robert L. Pincus
UNION-TRIBUNE ART CRITIC
July 8, 2007
It's dumbfounding to think, standing in front of this or that example of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that these humble pieces of ancient paper, so small in size and covered with diminutive lines of text, were the archaeological find of the 20th century.
And it's startling to realize that without their initial discovery by Bedouin shepherd Muhammed edh-Dhib, they might still be lingering in their long-standing home, in caves near the site of the ancient settlement of Qumran.
[...]
A new museum confronts an old mystery at Masada
By Danny Rubinstein (Haaretz)
The exhibit at the end of the tour of the new museum at Masada consists of 11 tiny sherds bearing intriguing names.
Hundreds of inscriptions on sherds were found at Masada, including some on earthenware jugs. Some are only a single letters, others contain names and numbers from the days of the rebellion and the Roman siege. The archaeologists, in particular Yigael Yadin, were reasonably good at decipher the inscriptions on the various sherds, but the inscription on these 11 sherds was unusual.
They were all found in the same place, next to the network of internal gates that controlled the passage to the foodstores, and were not scattered over a wide area like the other sherds. They were all written in the same handwriting, and each sherd contained only one name.
Most important, the names were not regular names but rather nicknames, such as Ben Hanahatam (or Ben Hanahtum), Tzayda (or Hatzayad, "the hunter"), Ha'amaki (someone from a village in the Acre area). Among them was one well-known name - Ben-Yair, the name of the leader of the Masada rebellion, Elazar Ben-Yair.
[...]
Masada complex
A new museum at Masada presents a selection of the archaeological discoveries that were found at the site, including a pay stub of a Roman soldier and 2,000 year old date and olive pits. However, today’s Masada belongs to the people of Israel, some of whom take home souvenirs, and some of whom choose to get married there
Pack your trunks and march to Hannibal'sThe food sounds okay too.
Scott Joseph | [Orlando] Sentinel Restaurant Critic
June 29, 2007
Winter Park has a stylish new lounge for cool drinks and light nibbles. But if you're on Park Avenue, you're going to have to cross the railroad tracks to get to it.
Hannibal's on the Square is, it shouldn't be a surprise to learn, on Hannibal Square. What might be a surprise to learn is that Hannibal Square is more of a street than a square. I had always assumed it was the name of the park that sits catty-corner to Dexter's, but that's called Shady Park. It has been my observation that if you're opening a business, you don't want the word shady in your name.
And as long as we're digressing here, let's go a little further afield. Did you know that Hannibal Square is named for that famed Carthaginian military commander known for crossing the Pyrenees and Alps on elephants to start the Second Punic War? The Second Punic War was also known by the Romans as the War Against Hannibal, which shows you what kind of grudge the Romans could hold. This all happened around 218 B.C., so my memory is a little fuzzy. As far as I know, Hannibal never visited the Winter Park location that is named for him. Neither did his elephants.
[...]
Les manuscripts araméens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Samarie vers 450-332 av. J.-C.
Jan Dušek
Books
Forthcoming
Expected: August 2007
ISBN-13 (i)The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) has been changed from 10 to 13 digits on 1 January 2007: 978 90 04 16178 8
Cover: Hardback
Number of pages: xvi, 682 pp. (French)
List price: € 190.00 / US$ 257.00
Readership
All those interesed in the Old Testament, the history of Palestine and the ancient Near East, Hebrew and Aramaic philology and epigraphy, theology, papyrology, and history of law.
About the author(s)
Jan Dušek, Ph.D. (2005) in History and Archaeology of Ancient Worlds, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris/France, works as a researcher in the Centre for Biblical Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Charles University in Prague.
This book deals with the manuscripts from the Wadi Daliyeh (Samaria Papyri) written in Aramaic in the 4th century BCE in the city of Samaria, in the last decades of the Persian Period. The book contains a complete edition of the Wadi Daliyeh manuscripts, their new historical interpretation and an analysis of their legal aspects. The historical interpretation shed new light on the history of Samaria and its institutions in the Persian period, as well as on the history of the Persian province of Judaea. The book is particulary useful for historians of Palestine in the Second Temple Period, for biblical scholars as well as for scholars dealing with Near Eastern legal texts.
To beef up security before the scrolls' arrival, the museum was awarded roughly $80,000 by the Department of Homeland Security's Urban Area Security Initiative for nonprofit institutions considered to be at "high risk" for a terrorist attack. Of the seven San Diego nonprofits awarded a grant in 2006, six were Jewish organizations, the seventh being the museum, which spent the money on security cameras and door locks.But the story about the mouse is amusing.
Dave Dalton, head of security for the museum, said that although it's been busy ("busier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs," as he put it), there've been no threats.
"I keep my ear to the drums pretty closely," Dalton said. "I check with organizations on a regular basis to see if there's been any intelligence that would suggest there's any known threats or risk, and [there are] none that I'm aware of."
Cox Communications to Launch Middle Eastern Broadcasting Network of AmericaMy emphasis.
Network Joins Cox's Free International Programming Tier
By PR Newswire
HERNDON, Va., July 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Cox Communications Northern Virginia has announced the launch of the Middle Eastern Broadcasting Network of America (MBN TV), which will be offered to Cox Digital Cable customers throughout Fairfax County and the Fredericksburg region starting August 1, 2007. The new channel joins Cox's free International Tier of programming, which currently features 14 channels.
"We're pleased to offer yet another international programming choice to our diverse customer base," said Janet Barnard, vice president and region manager for Cox Northern Virginia. "MBN TV features a variety of compelling content, and is the perfect complement to our existing international lineup."
MBN TV is a 24-hour Middle Eastern network broadcasting from the United States, with coverage reaching the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The network has developed a unique programming structure in Arabic, Aramaic and English languages with widespread appeal. MBN TV airs a variety of content including: movies, soap operas, documentaries, music concerts, music videos, talk shows, sporting events, educational series, international and local news, and children's shows.
[...]
Bomb at Yemen temple kills 9Barbaric. The speculation is that Al Qaeda is responsible.
Reuters, The Associated Press
Published: July 2, 2007
SANA, Yemen: A suicide bomber killed nine people including six Spanish tourists Monday when he drove his car into the site of an ancient temple, police officials said.
In addition to the Spanish tourists, three Yemenis, including the suicide bomber, died, said the police officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Witnesses said a car drove through a gate and then exploded at the Queen of Sheba temple in northeastern Yemen, which was built about 3,000 years ago.
[...]
Israel scraps Mughrabi bridge plan
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)
In a dramatic about-face, controversial plans to construct a major new bridge to the Mughrabi Gate adjacent to Jerusalem's Western Wall directly through an archeological garden abutting the Temple Mount have been nixed amid concern about possible damage to artifacts, officials said Monday.
The decision to abort the massive bridge, the construction of which had been deeply contested by leading Israeli archeologists, effectively means that a salvage excavation under way in the area, which has drawn the wrath of Islamic officials and led to low-level Arab violence in the region earlier this year, will be coming to a close shortly, the officials said.
The planned major bridge was meant to replace a temporary bridge that was constructed on the section of the Western Wall allocated for women's prayer. The temporary bridge was built more than a year ago, after the original stone ramp leading up to the Mughrabi Gate was removed, having been deemed unsafe by city engineers.
[...]
A UNESCO report on the dig concluded that the excavation is not damaging the holy site but called on Israel to stop the dig nonetheless to allow for international observation of the work.
[...]
Restore and protect the Mount of Olives
(Jerusalem Post)
Without any fanfare, the Knesset last week passed in preliminary reading one of its most overdue bills ever - for the establishment of a single national authority charged with the preservation, restoration and protection of the Mount of Olives cemetery - the Jewish people's most ancient burial ground and final resting place to a veritable pantheon of religious, spiritual, cultural and national paragons, including the Biblical prophets Zechariah, Haggai and Malachi.
[...]
The Authority to be set up according to the new Knesset legislation is to manage the cemetery as "a national shrine for the Jewish people, resurrect it from ruin and protect it from desecration and defacement." We can only hope that real action does indeed finally follows all the words and lamentations.
[...]
Smuggled antiquities court session delayedI don't recall hearing of this case before, although Jack Sasson's Agade list noted this general article on antiquities smuggling in Yemen last April. Does anyone out there have more information?
The trial of Samir Hamad Jad Allah, a Jordanian man accused of trafficking and smuggling Yemeni antiquities, was postponed yesterday by the Secretariat Appeals Court. It was rescheduled for July 3 of this year. “The accused did not respond to the new report made by the Antiquities Department in Sana’a University,” said Judge Hamood al-Herbi. That report, made by experts at Sana’a University, examined a kilogram of old Yemeni gold and a number of stone and bronze pieces seized with the accused.
The report showed that these parts were extracted from a Yemeni cemetery or temple during an archaeological excavation, and that these pieces were tampered with. These pieces may date back to between prehistoric times and the Islamic century. This is indicated by the Mosnad line, which is a Yemeni pen marking used on a large number of those pieces. In addition to the monetary significance of the archaeological pieces, the committee said in the examination report that the archaeological group seized in the case is of an important and great history. The tampering with these objects has caused the loss of much important information from the location of the original graves, said the report.
The added decorations are related to the Jewish religion, such as the Temple of Solomon and the Hebrew lines. “Such action leads to distortion of the Yemeni heritages and flinging graphics elements which has nothing to do with the Yemeni civilization,” said Hisham al-Thawr, the antiquities specialist. Experts also had to examine the antiquities seized with the accused, at his request. Jad Allah refused to accept a previous report prepared by the General Authority for Antiquities, because he didn’t feel it was created by experts in the field. He demanded that the court form of a neutral committee specialized in the examination of the antiquities pieces.
[...]
My point, on the other hand, is different, though I have given you the data for it in the two preceding paragraphs. In antiquity – and all through the Middle Ages, when different pantheons from further North flourished – there never was such a thing as paganism. The essence of traditional polytheism is its multiplicity. To think of paganism as an “-ism,” as “church” with its own sets of creeds and standardized rituals and “chaplains,” is to betray a venerable ancient religious culture by remaking it in the image and likeness of the Church. Since my ancient pagans cannot speak for themselves, I must speak for them: Whatever the pagan equivalent of goyishe would be, that’s what they would call this initiative.I quite agree with her answer to the question.
Sabbatai Zevi(Via Jack Sasson's Agade list.)
Testimonies to a Fallen Messiah
David J. Halperin
Sabbatai Zevi stirred up the Jewish world in the mid-seventeenth century by claiming to be the messiah, then stunned it by suddenly converting to Islam. The story is presented here for the first time through contemporary documents, written by Sabbatai’s followers and by one of his detractors, in translations that brilliantly capture the vividness of this landmark episode in early modern Jewish history.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
David J. Halperin is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He trained in Semitic languages at Cornell University, in Near Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and in rabbinics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1977. From 1976 through 2000 he taught the history of Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was repeatedly recognized for excellence in undergraduate teaching. He is the author of The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (1980), The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision (1988), Seeking Ezekiel: Text and Psychology (1993), and Abraham Miguel Cardozo: Selected Writings (2001).
Judas: It's Still About MoneyAs I noted, the scope of the piece is considerably wider than one would expect from the title.
Cashing in on the craze for Gnostic gospels
The re-release this year of several books in paperback reflects continuing popular interest in obscure nonbiblical works regarding the life of Jesus and the early church.
Last year it was the newly translated so-called Gospel of Judas, the latest pseudo-Christian text to grab attention. It’s release was conveniently timed to generate sales during the Easter season. A companion book, The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot, told the story of the purchase and translation of the ancient Gnostic work. Both titles were published by the National Geographic Society and launched together with a prime-time documentary.
It was a great multimedia success, with top-echelon book sales. But while National Geographic’s Terry Garcia has pointed out that the society spent a significant sum on the manuscript’s restoration and that the project was “not a commercial enterprise,” the sentiment would carry more weight if claims made about the text were not so hyperbolic. For example, it is highly questionable that this is “the most significant archaeological discovery in 60 years,” as National Geographic News subjectively reported, or that “this lost gospel . . . bears witness to something completely different from what was said [about Judas] in the Bible.”
[...]
Sports Illustrated featured former Bengals quarterback David Klingler in a recent "Where are they now?" feature.
Don't try guessing: Klingler is at the Dallas Theological Seminary, studying to become an Old Testament scholar. He says he is already proficient in Greek, Latin, French, German, Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac, so we're guessing that the time he spent studying coach Dave Shula's playbook must have been good for something.
King on a shrink's couch
By Magen Broshi
"King Herod: A Persecuted Persecutor: A Case Study in Psychohistory and Psychobiography" by Aryeh Kasher, in collaboration with Eliezer Witztum (translated from the Hebrew by Karen Gold), Walter de Gruyter, 514 pages, $193
Now that the world has heard about the discovery of Herod's tomb at Herodium, it also has an extraordinary book about him to read. Authors Prof. Aryeh Kasher, a historian from Tel Aviv University, and Prof. Eliezer Witztum, a psychiatrist from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, have produced a carefully researched and up-to-date historical and psychological analysis of Herod - a man of many exploits but also a raving lunatic. A meaningful analysis of the psyche of a historical character is not always possible, but thanks to the Roman Jewish historian Josephus (one of whose sources was Nicholas of Damascus, who tutored Herod's sons and served as his adviser), we have an abundance of details that seem to be reliable.
[...]
Herod was not only the greatest builder in the history of Eretz Israel, but one of the greatest builders in human history. He holds at least three architectural world records: largest palace (Lower Herodium), largest plaza (Temple Mount) and largest royal portico (Temple Mount). His palaces in Jericho and Caesarea, and his fortresses on Masada, Herodium and Machaerus, were only a fraction of his architectural endeavors. The port he built in Caesarea was one of the most sophisticated in the ancient world. His masterpiece, of course, was the Temple, possibly followed by the splendid edifice he built over the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
[...]
From adolescence Herod showed signs of paranoia, exhibited in pathological suspiciousness. He trusted no one (apart from his quarrelsome sister) and had delusions that people were plotting against him. He suffered from extreme mood swings that became progressively worse over the years. His paranoia increased, too: Not only did he execute his bodyguards, servants and courtiers, but also his three sons (the last one five days before his own death), his brother-in-law, his mother-in-law and his adored wife. Some of his victims were cruelly tortured before their deaths, testifying to sadistic tendencies. No wonder the people, and presumably many of his close associates, feared and hated him.
Fifty years ago, Schalit published "Hordus hamelekh - ha'ish" (translated into German as "Koenig Herodes"). Readers have the right to ask if there is any justification for a new book. The answer is a resounding yes: Kasher and Witztum break new ground with psychohistorical and psychobiographical analyses that explain many of Herod's actions. Moreover, over the past 50 years our knowledge has been enriched by close examination of the writings of Josephus and many archaeological findings. During this time, large-scale digs were carried out all over the country, from Masada and the Banias to Jericho and Caesarea, which have added greatly to our understanding.
The book is also commendable in that it does not judge Herod, as so many earlier historians have. ...
Israel Museum Breaks Ground for Comprehensive Campus Project
JERUSALEM.- The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, has launched a comprehensive $80-million project to transform and unify the facilities on its landmark campus, with the goal of increasing accessibility to the Museum’s collections and enhancing the overall visitor experience. Design of the project, the most comprehensive undertaking since the Museum’s opening in 1965, is a joint initiative of the New York-based firm James Carpenter Design Associates and the Israeli firm Efrat-Kowalsky Architects. The Museum anticipates celebrating the completion of the campus project in time for its 45th anniversary in mid-2010.
“The founding of the Israel Museum was one of the most important events following the founding of the State of Israel,” remarked Israel’s President-Elect Shimon Peres at the Museum’s International Council, which convened earlier this month. “Its renewal is central to the future of Israel. If politics are part of everyday life, the Israel Museum is part of life’s inspiration.”
The project was motivated first and foremost to enhance visitor services and facilities on the Museum’s campus, which has grown ten-fold in the past four decades, and to improve the presentation of the Museum’s encyclopedic collections, which have developed impressively since its founding in 1965. The multi-year program will create new entrance facilities, an enclosed route of passage from the front of the campus to a relocated main entrance hall with access to the Museum’s curatorial collection wings, reorganized and expanded collection galleries, and newly centralized temporary exhibition space. Overall, 80,000 square feet of new construction will be added and 200,000 square feet of gallery space will be renovated within the Museum’s existing 500,000-square-foot architectural envelope. The Museum is also concurrently working with the international design firm of Pentagram Partners, London, to renew the Bronfman Archaeology Wing, planned to provide a narrative timeline of the archaeological history of the ancient Land of Israel.
[...]
About 1,800 visitors attend museum's exhibit of ancient fragments on first dayVisits have at about a little over half capacity so far. And here's a common reaction when someone first actually sees the Scrolls:
By Sandi Dolbee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
June 30, 2007
BALBOA PARK – Christine DeCoup's mind wandered as she looked at the leather fragments written by a biblical scribe more than 2,000 years ago.
Her younger sister, Katie, nodded her head. “That it would be all so famous,” she said.
“And a display in a museum,” added their mother, Linda.
After three years of planning, San Diego's first exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls opened yesterday to visitors from San Diego to Georgia, who pronounced it somewhere between “fascinating” and “fantastic.”
[...]
The DeCoup family – Christine, 21; Katie, 18; and Linda, 47, who came down from Orange County – admitted to being a little disappointed that the “scrolls” were not actually big, intact rolls of writings. Instead, what they saw often resembled a jigsaw puzzle with several pieces missing.Indeed.
“It was still cool,” Katie said.
Gabriele Boccaccini (ed.), Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables (Eerdmans, 2007)
Dead Sea Scrolls: Long-awaited exhibit offers sights, sounds, smells and samplesAnd here's some information I don't think I've highlighed yet:
By: KIRBY FAIRFAX For the North County Times
By far the most convenient way to see Israel this year is to visit the San Diego Natural History Museum in our very own Balboa Park, where a once-in-a-lifetime experience awaits. For, in addition to an unprecedented exhibition of the actual Dead Sea Scrolls, the museum's staff has created a powerful, multisensory tour of the land where these historical treasures were discovered, thereby helping viewers to put them into context.
[...]
Also on display are 11 pages from several 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bibles on loan from the Russian government as well as 17th and 18th century Ethiopic copies of the Bible and three pages from a six-year contemporary project, the Saint John's Bible, which seeks to replicate the medieval tradition of illuminating manuscripts, among many other such treasures.
Although Pagels and King attend with care to the ironies of a text that both attacks Christian martyrdom and sets Judas up as the first Christian martyr, they are less effective in dealing with the most disturbing feature of this gospel: Jesus’ sarcastic laughter. In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus laughs no fewer than four times. He laughs not with his disciples but at them — for worshiping incorrectly and for misunderstanding his teachings. “Teacher, why are you laughing at us?” Judas asks. Good question. Pagels and King devote scant attention to it, responding simply that this laughter is intended to spur Jesus’ disciples on to “higher spiritual vision.” To me, however, it just sounds mean-spirited, turning Jesus into the sort of person you wouldn’t like, much less worship.
The Gospel of Judas will have its champions, not least Pagels and King, who laud its hero for inspiring a text that makes early Christianity look like contemporary American religion — more pluralistic, more wild and more contested than most imagine. But this gospel is not long for the world, or at least the American corner of it. Most Americans will rightly prefer Luke’s Jesus, whose heart breaks over the oppression of women and the poor, to a smart-aleck Jesus who guffaws at the stupidity of his listeners. America is supposed to be a happy place. Americans want their Jesus to channel Paula Abdul rather than Simon Cowell, Dorothy rather than the Wicked Witch of the West.
Israel Museum starts $80 million renewal projectIt's a "renewal" but not a "renovation." I'm not sure why. But it looks as though the price tag has gone up by $30 million since March of 2006. In any case, it sounds impressive.
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)
The Israel Museum is launching an $80 million campus renewal project aimed at enhancing visitors' experience, the museum announced Sunday.
The project, which is being primarily funded by private donors, is the most comprehensive initiative undertaken by the museum since it opened its doors in 1965, and was inspired by the desire to enhance visitors' services on a campus that has grown tenfold over the past four decades.
The nearly three-year project will create new entrance facilities, an enclosed route of passage from the front of the campus to a relocated main entrance hall with access to all of the museum's curatorial collection wings, reorganized and expanded collection galleries and newly centralized temporary exhibition space.
[...]
Reading Judas" is beautifully presented as well as generally well written, and it sets discussion of Judas along a productive direction. But its failure to bring "Judas" into dialogue with its counterparts in the Christian Bible and patristic writings makes the treatment less engaged with the passionate diversity of the period than it should have been.
Dear Colleagues, Good morning, and please excuse this mass email. I am hosting this month's Carnival at my blog at www.biblische.blogspot.com Could you please post a reminder to folks to send in their favorite posts from this month to me? Would each of you also be willing to email me either your own nomination or what you consider to be the best post from your own blog for the month of June? Thanks so much for your help! I hope the summer is going great for each of you. My email address is SCook@vts.edu Peace,
---Stephen Cook
In short, it seems he searched several digital editions of the Talmud for possible references to Jesus, and with the understandably meager results of such investigation (after all, Jews are strongly discouraged from naming or discussing a person convicted of a capital crime), constructed his central thesis - that the Talmud's few and enigmatic references to him represent "a highly ambitious and devastating counter-narrative," "a well-designed attack" by Babylonian rabbis who intended to mock the Gospels' accounts of Jesus's birth, life, death and resurrection, while defending his condemnation as a sorcerer who led Israel astray.For more on Jesus in the Talmud see here and follow the links.
The book's nine short chapters cover what the author maintains is the Talmud's description of Jesus's birth and family, his failures as a student and disciple, his work as a Torah teacher, healings done in his name, his execution, his disciples, and his punishment in hell, where he is described as sitting in boiling excrement.
Whether the few scattered words and phrases involved (most referring not to "Jesus" or "Jesus of Nazareth" at all, but rather to one "ben Stada" or "ben Panthera") indeed represent the deliberate and "devastating counter-narrative" posited by Sch fer, I leave to the reader's judgment; however, it seems to me that Sch fer may actually have caught and dissected one or two academic flies, while ignoring at least two elephants in the lab - and all because of his stated fear of "relapsing into the bad habits of positivism."
A lively debate over the Dead Sea ScrollsFor more on Norman Golb, see here. Robert Eisenman's work is more controversial than Golb's and I don't know of any specialists in the Dead Sea Scrolls who find convincing his attempts to connect the Scrolls with early Christianity. I can't find a useful recent discussion of his theories (here's a Time article from 1992), but this is his most recent book.
As the ancient documents are readied for a San Diego exhibition, scholars clash over just who wrote them and what they represent.
By Mike Boehm, Times Staff Writer
June 26, 2007
SAN DIEGO — The first commandment for showing the Dead Sea Scrolls is: "Let there not be too much light."
It has been handed down by the Israel Antiquities Authority, custodian of most of the 2,000-year-old parchments and papyri. The scrolls, many of them pieced together like puzzles from fragments and tatters, contain the oldest known biblical writings — among them a text of the Ten Commandments that will be part of the six-month Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition that opens Friday at the San Diego Natural History Museum. It's billed as the largest and most comprehensive ever.
Museum-goers accustomed to prolonged gazing will have to adjust their expectations when they reach the show's darkened climactic room. There, each of the 15 scroll fragments lies in its own case, with separate climate controls and a fiber-optic lighting system that's set to turn off five seconds out of every 20 to avoid overexposure.
The scrolls' appeal shows no signs of fading. Since the Israeli government began making them regularly available for exhibition a few years ago, they've been a hot attraction in international museums — not bad for an assortment of documents so visually mundane that in 2003 a Montreal museum director said that "they look like little pieces of burned paper."
A little controversy never hurts at the box office, either. Most scholars consider the scrolls to be the articles of faith of a small Jewish sect that lived an ascetic life near the Dead Sea, avoiding what it saw as the corrupt religious establishment while waiting for the Messiah. But dissidents have kept up a literary crossfire disputing the majority's thinking — and some complain that the public has gotten a slanted view of the scrolls.
[...]
Brevard S. Childs, an iconic figure in biblical scholarship, dies at 83As noted in the obituary, St. Andrews Divinity postgraduate Daniel Driver has a Brevard S. Childs website with lots of additional information. Daniel also has a blog, Occasional Publications, whose most recent post is a tribute to Childs.
Brevard S. Childs, one of the most influential Old Testament scholars of the 20 th century, died Saturday afternoon in New Haven at the age of 83 from complications from injuries sustained in a fall in his home.
[...]
Demonic Possession And Miraculous HealingThe lecture in question is:
Science Daily — Latest research into health in medieval Europe — taking in everything from demonic possession to miracles of healing — is to be revealed at The University of Nottingham.
Experts from all over the world are gathering at the University to exchange their latest findings on concepts of 'Health and the Healthy Body' in early medieval times, 400-1200AD.
[...]
'”This should not be shown to a gentile”: Medico-magical entries in medieval Franco-German Hebrew manuscripts and their social significance', Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, Ben-Gurion University, Israel. Includes a discussion of texts detailing short potions, charms and medical remedies in the pages of Hebrew manuscripts.
Researchers claim to have solved mystery of Masada remains (The Scotsman)Actually the occupiers of Masada were Sicarii, not Zealots.
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.
Advert for Barclaycard
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.
[...]
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.Typically, the article does not give the biblical reference. The passage in question seems to be Deuterononmy 21:10-14:
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.
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,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:
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.
10: "When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it.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.
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.
Ehud Netzer, a veteran Hebrew University archaeologist who participated in the 1960s dig and later oversaw restoration work there, questioned the new findings.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:
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.
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.The slightly later garrison at Vindolanda did, of course, include whole families.
1994 Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier: Vindolanda and It’s
People. London: British Museum Press.
