APOCRYPHA WATCH: The story of Tobit figures in a London Times review by Waldemar Januszczak of a National Gallery exhibition of Renaissance German stained glass. He certainly has his own take on the story.

At its outset, however, I was much taken by a beautiful little panel from the Lower Rhine, produced anonymously in about 1520 and showing Tobias and Sarah tucked up in bed on their wedding night. Both of them appear to be sleeping soundly. And so, at the foot of their bed, is their dog, curled up neatly in a single circle of glass.

The story of Tobias and Sarah is one of my favourite examples of madly inventive biblical moralising. If you don’t know it, then your own past has been too godless and you are probably keener than you should be on sex with married women. According to the Apocrypha, Sarah was a dangerous woman. No fewer than seven of her husbands died on their wedding night, murdered cruelly by wicked spirits as they tried, unsuccessfully, to consummate the marriage. Undeterred by this nuptial carnage, Sarah’s cousin, Tobias, fell in love with her, and was about to become her eighth victim when the Archangel Raphael came down to him and advised him to catch a giant fish in the River Tigris, and to remove its heart, gall and liver. On the appointed wedding night, the angel advised Tobias to grill the fish’s liver in the nuptial chamber, so its smell would scare off the evil demons. All this Tobias did, and the marriage was successfully consummated. And the two of them lived happily ever after.

But none of the scary sexual fearfulness that underpins this weird tale of Sarah and Tobias, or any of its mad mood of fish-frying primitive magic, has been allowed to disturb the air of quiet German domesticity that the anonymous glass master of the Rhine has brought to his sweet telling of the story. There’s no hint of wedding-night anxiety. No touch of conjugal excitement. All of the story’s biblical terror has been smothered in an eiderdown of comfortable married bliss. Look how properly Sarah and Tobias are dressed for their wedding night, in their neat village bonnets. Look how well ordered the fateful bedchamber is. Sarah might be a dangerous demon in bed, but when it comes to cleaning and sweeping, she’s a perfect German Hausfrau.

The show’s point is that the stained-glass artists of Germany were mimicking the moods and approaches of the painters of the time, and therefore avoiding the ecstatic, light-filled sensuality you find in medieval stained glass. It’s true; they were. Accompanying this lurch into an unexpected realism – who would ever have imagined that a stained-glass window might one day go in search of house-proud village moods! – were various technical and stylistic developments that are, indeed, mightily impressive.

Look, for instance, at the rolled-up curtain hanging to the right of Sarah’s bed. It’s a fabulous piece of illusionism that really captures the folds and squashings of the cloth. And what about the decorated blue bedspread? All its folds are amazingly convincing, but I particularly enjoyed the two lumpy creases that mark the spot where Tobias and Sarah have chastely folded their hands over their genitals. At least, I think that’s what the folds mark.

What’s happening here is that German stained glass is trying, rather desperately, not to be stained glass at all. It’s trying to copy the illusionism and detail you find in, say, a Dürer painting. The show has a decent stab at describing the techniques involved in achieving this difficult descriptive-ness. Some of the best effects were achieved not by adding, but by taking away. The design of Sarah and Tobias’s fabulously illusion-istic bedcloth involved covering the blue glass in a dark film, then selectively scratching sections of it away. And how typical of the Germans to be extra-good at this.

Overall, he wasn't much impressed by the exhibit.

THE SAN DIEGO DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION receives yet another review, this one in the Salt Lake Tribune:

The Dead Sea Scrolls in San Diego
Words apart
Exhibit provides a fascinating glimpse of these ancient, mysterious manuscripts
By Kurt Kragthorpe
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 12/15/2007 03:14:36 PM MST

SAN DIEGO - The impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls, written more than 2,000 years ago, painstakingly pieced together and displayed under glass at the San Diego Natural History Museum, is being recorded on index cards, preserved in plastic sheets in a looseleaf binder on a table positioned just outside the exhibit.
Visitors have expressed their impressions, with one describing the tour as "one of the greatest experiences of my life." That was from a 93-year-old woman.
And then there was the guest who wrote, "Now I can die, after seeing the scrolls for myself." Judging by his handwriting and his spelling of "othentick," Joshua Lopez is probably about 10.
More than 300,000 visitors over the past six months have witnessed the most extensive collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls ever displayed in the U.S.
Discovered in caves in Israel some 60 years ago, the scrolls contain manuscripts from the Hebrew Bible. The 12 scrolls being displayed through the exhibit's Jan. 6 closing depict the Ten Commandments from Deuteronomy, as well as parts of Psalms, Genesis, Leviticus and other Old Testament books.
Another guest commented that the exhibit was "breathtaking and humbling, to be so close to the origins of how our faith has been recorded."

[...]

ROBERT ALTER'S PSALMS TRANSLATION is reviewed in the Washington Times. Excerpt:

Ever since the King James Bible came off the press at the close of the Elizabethan era, biblical scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have attempted to correct and update it. The most recent laborer in this vineyard is Robert Alter, who teaches Hebrew at Stanford. In his "The Book of Psalms," he focuses on eponymous Bible book and seeks to present the passages "in a kind of English verse that is readable yet sounds something like Hebrew." I'm not competent to judge the accuracy of his translation, but I am bold enough to say that his revised version fails to come trippingly off the tongue.

CARTAGENA, Hannibal's home town, is gearing up for the tourist season. So far so good.

More on Cartagena here.

A SCHOLAR OF PHOENICIAN STUDIES has been appointed an honorary member of Malta's National Order of Merit:

CLAUDIA SAGONA M.O.M.

(in absentia)

A Senior Research Fellow in Archaeology at the Centre for Classics and Archaeology, Melbourne University who since 1990 has devoted much of her scholarly efforts to a better and more detailed understanding of Malta’s ancient past especially the Phoenician and Punic periods. Her service to Malta is achieved through her international standing as a scholar and her promotion of Maltese heritage. Her publications include four substantial books on Malta and a large number of articles, reviews and reports. Her detailed studies on Malta are considered benchmarks in the discipline and are often cited in scholarly works. In 2005 she organised a Round Table at the 6th International Congress of Phoenician-Punic Studies in Lisbon and in 2006 she organised another conference in collaboration with Heritage Malta and the University of Malta on Phoenician-Punic Ceramics.

Since 1996 she has been senior investigator in charge of pottery finds at the excavations at Tas-Silg, conducted by the Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Malta. Dr Sagona has a commitment to promote Maltese heritage to the public at large. She has done this through interviews for a film documentary and public lectures at the University of Melbourne and Sidney, the Maltese Historical Association (Melbourne), and the Archaeological Society (Malta). She encourages students in Australia to pursue the study of Malta, whereas in Malta, during her annual visit, she has willingly trained students in her specialist area and encouraged them with their research.

Congratulations to Dr. Sagona.

MODERN ALEXANDRIA is profiled in a Travel piece in the NYT. Some of its ancient history comes up as well.

A City of Legend Embarks on a New Journey

By KAREEM FAHIM
Published: December 16, 2007

ON a cloudless morning in mid-September, it was not quiet around the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern disc-shaped library in Cleopatra’s ancient hometown in Egypt. Outside, students flirted and joked on the edge of a reflecting pool. Behind them, cars whizzed by on the Corniche, the spruced-up sea road that hugs the Mediterranean.

Inside, a tour guide, a fast-talking young woman wearing a bright hijab, led a group of tourists into the library’s immense reading room, stopping on a wooden terrace that looked down onto more terraces. The sun threw spots of blue and green light onto the floors through colorful glass as she pointed out the library’s art galleries, theaters, rare manuscript collections and planetarium, as well as its more than half a million books.

But the thing that caught everyone’s attention was the Espresso Book Machine in the main reading room. The giant photocopier-like machine can print, on demand, virtually any book, complete with color covers and glue bindings in minutes.

It is a fitting symbol for Alexandria, a faded metropolis that is rising again from the sea, one replicated landmark at a time.

[...]

In recent years, however, efforts by preservationists and the government to restore the city’s luster have started to bear fruit. The first sign of Alexandria’s renewal was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the glimmering vision in steel and glass that opened on the Corniche in 2002.

Built near the site of the original Library of Alexandria — perhaps the ancient world’s greatest, with an unrivaled collection that included original manuscripts of Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles — the Bibliotheca seeks to resurrect that lost monument with shelf space for eight million books and a massive granite wall inscribed with what officials say are characters from all the world’s written languages.

[...]

And there are plans, though still not financed, to restore the city’s Eastern Harbor with an underwater archaeology museum, a waterfront promenade and hotels, including one inspired by the third-century B.C. Pharos lighthouse, whose ruins lie underwater.

[...]

THE SAN DIEGO DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION has been extended for a week to 6 January. Not surprisingly, attendance has been very high:

The San Diego Natural History Museum extended the exhibition, which opened in June, to meet demand. Delle Willett, the museum's director of marketing, said 315,552 people had seen it as of Dec. 13 and 10,400 others have bought advance tickets.

"Our normal attendance for the entire year is usually under 300,000," she said. "So we've really outdone ourselves. This is huge."

THE 'DE-POSHING' OF LATIN. Bring it on!

ANOTHER OBITUARY FOR JOHN STRUGNELL, this one in the LA Times:

John Strugnell, 1930 - 2007
Dead Sea Scrolls project editor lost post after anti-Semitic remarks

By Mary Rourke, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 14, 2007
John Strugnell, a prominent biblical scholar who was the editor in chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls project for six years but was dismissed from his position for anti-Semitic remarks he made during an interview with an Israeli newspaper, has died. He was 77.

[...]

He was replaced by Emanuel Tov, an Israeli scholar who had been a part of the team. With Tov's encouragement, Strugnell continued working on the scrolls.

In his close to 40 years on the project he translated and deciphered several liturgical and biblical texts, including, in the 1990s, a work of previously unknown Jewish wisdom literature that he completed with Father Daniel J. Harrington.

"John Strugnell was one of the first and most brilliant decipherers of the Dead Sea Scrolls," said Harrington, a former student of Strugnell who is on the faculty of Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass. "He had a genius for reading them and piecing them together."

Strugnell also trained several generations of scholars in the painstaking work of deciphering the scrolls and was generous with his time and expertise both toward students and colleagues, Harrington said.

[...]

UPDATE: There is also a brief and unhelpful mention of Strugnell's death in the Seattle Times (scroll down to "Passages"). I think it is unconscionable for them to highlight his dismissal for anti-Semitic remarks without mentioning his illness at all.

UPDATE: A short but excellent Strugnell obituary by Sidnie White Crawford has been posted at the Biblical Archaeology Society website.

BLOGGING ARCHAEOLOGY: Bill Caraher gives us an overview at the Ancient World Bloggers Group blog.

A NEW COPTIC TV CHANNEL in Egypt.

UPDATE: More info here.

UPDATE: Hmmm ... I guess it doesn't actually say that it's a Coptic language channel does it? Oh well. But it does mention that

Egypt has a Coptic TV channel already, called Aghapi TV, which started brodcasting in 2005. But Aghapi specializes in broadcasting lithurgical services.

Presumably the liturgical services are in the Coptic language.

A DEAD SEA SCROLLS CONFERENCE is coming, to be held at the Center for Ancient Studies at NYU. Details are sketchy, but this has been posted on the Agade list:

From Diana Pittet dlp5@nyu.edu:
==================================

* Save the Date:

March 6 & March 7, 2008
Center for Ancient Studies Conference
"Dead Sea Scrolls at Sixty: Scholarly Contributions by NYU Faculty & Alumni"
New York University

We'll soon post information on our Web site (http://ancientstudies.fas.nyu.edu/page/home) and send e-mails and posters by February 2008. We hope that you can make it to our annual

This reads as though something was lost at the end of the message, but that's how it arrived.

MEGILLAT ANTIOCHUS, The Scroll of Antiochus, is noted as relevant to the season in an Arutz Sheva article:

The Unknown Megillah of Chanukah
by Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple

The theme of the book is the Hasmonean victories.

Chanukah and Purim are often compared. But the differences are substantial. In particular, without Megillat Esther there would be no Purim, whilst Chanukah without its megillah is not only possible, but taken for granted.

Yet, there is actually a megillah for the festival. Known variously as Megillat Antiochus ("The Scroll of Antiochus"), Megillat Beit Chashmona'i(m) ("The Scroll of the House of the Hasmoneans") and Megillah Y'vanit ("The Greek Scroll"), it is a post-Biblical compilation in 76 verses, originally in Aramaic, in deliberate imitation of the style of the Scroll of Esther. Presumably, the authors hoped their work would achieve the status of Megillat Esther on Purim, but the dream was never realised, for reasons we shall explain.

The theme of the book is the Hasmonean victories, ending with the destruction of the Second Temple. It is more legend than objective history. ...

We first intended to include this text in the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project, but we couldn't find anyone willing to defend a pre-seventh-century date. Still, it's an interesting document that deserves more attention. A number of Geniza fragments were published in the 1970s and, as far as I know, there is no complete critical edition. There might be a good doctoral dissertation there.

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

A NONCANONICAL PAPYRUS ONLINE: A fragmentary papyrus of the Greek text of the Gospel of Thomas has been posted online by the Houghton Library of Harvard University.

MS Gr SM4367

P.Oxy.4.655

Gospel of Thomas, [ca. 200-ca. 250]

Bibliography

Digital Images

The main page of the Houghton Library papyri site is here. Fragment of the New Testament, the Homeric epics, other known and unknown literary texts, and documentary texts are included as well.

(Via Peter Head at Evangelical Textual Criticism. An earlier version of this post implied incorrectly that Peter hadn't mentioned this fragment. Apologies for the error.)

MORE ON THE ALEPPO CODEX and the new effort to recover all surviving bits of it:

From Maimonides to Brooklyn:
The mystery of the Aleppo Codex

By Dina Kraft Published: 12/09/2007

TEL AVIV (JTA) -- It's been a long journey for the brittle pieces of parchment inked more than 1,000 years ago along the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

The manuscript considered the most authoritative text of the Bible, the Aleppo Codex, was studied by Maimonides, ransomed by Crusaders and dismembered during rioting in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

A tiny patch of the codex even spent several decades in the wallet of a businessman from Brooklyn, N.Y. -- Sam Sabbagh revered it as an amulet with sacred powers.

Several weeks ago that fragment was brought to Israel, prompting a new drive for the return of the text's other long missing pieces.

"Our feeling is that if there is one piece of it, there must be others," said Michael Glatzer, academic secretary of the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, which has worked to track and study the codex.

Last week, the institute launched a new campaign to bring other missing pieces of the famous codex home to the Holy Land.

[...]

Covers much the same ground as this article, but I think it has a few new details.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Support Sought for Temple Mount Synagogue

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) Haifa's long-time Chief Rabbi She'ar-Yashuv Cohen, who has taken part in many interfaith conferences and gatherings with Moslem religious leaders, says he's trying to gather support for a synagogue on the Temple Mount.

Rabbi Cohen, son of the late renowned Torah scholar known as the Nazir, Rabbi David Cohen, chairs the Chief Rabbinate Council for the Establishment of a Synagogue on the Temple Mount. Speaking on a special Temple Mount radio program on Voice of Israel's Moreshet (Tradition)-channel this week, he said he is working in the United States to amass support for the project.

Other rabbis have also called for the construction of a Jewish prayer site on the Temple Mount. Former Chief Sephardic Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu is among them, though he has not campaigned for this cause. Other members on the Chief Rabbinate committee are Be'er Sheva's Chief Rabbi Yehuda Deri and Tzfat's Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu.

[...]

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. No construction, please, on the Temple Mount unless it is done with controlled, scientific archaeological excavation. And I would prefer not even then. Let's wait a few decades until we have far more sophisticated technologies that might be able to scan and analyze what's there nonintrusively.

A COLLOQUIUM ON ANCIENT HEBREW:

The 9th Mainz International Colloquium on Ancient Hebrew (9. MICAH) will take place at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (Germany), from Friday, 14 to Sunday 16 November, 2008.

You are invited to give a lecture, either a short paper (20 min plus 5 discussion) or a full lecture (45 min plus 10 discussion), as you please.

Topics cover the grammar and linguistics of Ancient and Classical Hebrew (Epigraphic and Biblical Hebrew, Qumran and related Hebrew, and Ben Sira), as well as studies of adjacent languages and epigraphy, for instance Ugaritic, Phoenician-Punic, Old and Imperial Aramaic, Moabite and Edomite. Also welcome are topics on general epigraphy, paleography, and general linguistics in connection with these languages.

Submitted paper topics will be arranged into special sessions, within the following areas:

Biblical Hebrew
Postbiblical Hebrew
Ugaritic
Canaanite
Phoenician-Punic
Aramaic
Transjordan
Lexicography & Semantics
Epigraphy & Palaeography
General topics of Northwest Semitic paleography.

Conference languages are German, English, and French. As we wish to avoid parallel sessions, sessions will be deemed closed when the optimal number of proposed papers for each are accepted. For this reason, if you are considering participation, the earlier you send your proposal the better.

Postgraduates, or PhD. doctorate students are explicitly invited to present their projects where they might benefit from collegial discussions. Any one applying In this category, please indicate clearly your institution and supervisor.

For participation, we request a fee of 35 Euro, which is due on site. For those who present a paper, participation is free. Active students can request the suspension of fees and it might be granted depending on the availability of funds.

Please send paper proposals to the undersigned (lehmann@uni-mainz.de) and indicate the topic (preliminary or working title) and the preferred length of presentation.

While no formal pre-registration form is needed, for planning purposes, it is nevertheless important that we receive soon an email declaration of intent, at the above address.

We are not organizing travel or housing arrangements, but will gladly inform you on available lodging near the University. For all questions and concern please contact:

Dr. Reinhard G. Lehmann
Academic Director / Ancient Hebrew and NWS Languages
Research Unit on Ancient Hebrew and Epigraphy
Faculty of Protestant Theology
Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz
Tel. +49-6131-39-23284 (office)
Phone and fax +49-6132-799873
Email: lehmann@uni-mainz.de

In co-operation with:
Anna Zernecke (University of Mainz)
Johannes F. Diehl (University of Frankfurt)

We look forward to hosting you in Mainz next year.

(From the Canaanite list.)

ANOTHER JOHN STRUGNELL OBITUARY, this one in the Harvard Crimson, the Harvard student newspaper. It's better and more balanced than any of the ones so far from the mainstream media. Excerpt:

“I think that while the things he said and did can’t be condoned, they can be forgiven because of his illness,” said Sidnie W. Crawford, who also worked with him on the Scrolls project. According to Crawford, Strugnell was instrumental in bringing both female and Jewish scholars to the team.

CONTINUING A LEGACY

Strugnell’s students remember him as a inspirational teacher and scholar.

“He was a marvelous teacher—really was incredibly erudite,” Crawford said. “He just knew so much about so many things. No matter what you were working on, he always had something very helpful to say.”

Crawford, who is currently a professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said that Strugnell’s scholarly influence lives on.

“His students are going to be his legacy,” Crawford said. “All the students that he trained won’t forget him.”

According to Anne-Christine Strugnell, her father was so immersed in his work that it was sometimes difficult for him to find time for his family of five children.

“But it’s interesting to see that he was a father figure for a lot of his students­—that was where his interests lay,” she said. “He was totally engrossed and enthralled by his work.”

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

PRETEND TO BE A TIME TRAVELER DAY was yesterday and I missed it! Just as well, maybe ...

REBECCA LESSES remembers John Strugnell.

ANOTHER PETRA TRAVELOGUE. There sure are a lot of these.

Following Indy's Footsteps
Visit to ancient city of Petra proves to be truly awe-inspiring

Larry Perry
Sunday, December 9, 2007

Walking down a mile-long, 25-foot-wide slot canyon known as the Siq in southern Jordan, Daniel Martin, son of Lee Martin of Knoxville, turned the corner and stopped suddenly to gaze in disbelief at the scene before him. With eyes as big as saucers, he looked at his dad and said, “Wow Dad!”

As we turned the corner from a narrow part of the canyon walls, there appeared a scene right out of Indiana Jones’ “The Last Crusade” movie. There before us stood the ancient city of Petra. The first structure seen is the Treasury Building, which bears a facade that is carved into the sandstone cliff wall and is about 150 feet high. It dates back to a civilization from the sixth century B.C., the Nabataean period.

[...]

Lee, Daniel, my wife, Eloise, and I were on a photo shoot that took us to most of the Holy Land and parts of Jordan. The shoot included the World Heritage Site of Petra, which, incidentally, was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World by the New Open World Corp.

While not mentioned by name in the Bible, Petra, which means “rock,” is often identified as “Sela,” which also means “rock,” in the Bible and other ancient writings. The Petra area was the home of the Edomites of the Old Testament. They were cave dwellers. Rekem is another ancient name for Petra and appears in the Dead Sea scrolls. This region in southern Jordan is on the main east/west trade route between much of Arabia and the Mediterranean and Red seas. The city of Petra is about 60 miles north of the Red Sea and easily accessible by the King’s Highway.

[...]

I'm pretty sure that the treasury building was built a lot later than in the sixth century B.C.E.

THIS IS FUNNY: With the Christmas season comes the dreaded Christmas letter. Here's an amusing parody:

Others equally haunted by the ghosts of Christmas letters past have launched dozens of Web sites this year where people can post the most egregious examples of self-absorption. An Internet favorite facetiously speaks to the trend: "Junior has re-translated the Rosetta Stone, correcting several errors previously made by linguists which has changed the meaning and importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and shed new light and understanding on the Bible. ... He earned 72 Merit Badges in the Boy Scouts of America in one month and can field strip a F-116 fighter jet blindfolded and restore it to flight status using only a Swiss Army Knife."

ANOTHER OBITUARY FOR JOHN STRUGNELL, this one in the New York Times.

John Strugnell Dies at 77; Scholar Undone by His Slur

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: December 9, 2007

John Strugnell, a respected biblical scholar at Harvard whose tenure as the chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls ended in controversy over anti-Semitic remarks he made in an interview, died on Nov. 30 in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77 and lived in nearby Arlington.

He died while hospitalized for an infection associated with treatment of cancer, said his daughter Anne-Christine Strugnell.

At 23, while still a student of languages at the University of Oxford, Mr. Strugnell joined the original team of scholars piecing together and translating the scrolls, one of the great ancient finds of the 20th century. About 900 documents in Hebrew and Aramaic, bearing on a critical period in the history of Judaism and the origins of Christianity, were uncovered from 1947 to 1956 in caves near the Dead Sea, in the West Bank.

[...]

Scholars consider the Dead Sea Scrolls a reflection of the thinking of Jews during the turbulent period of the beginnings of Rabbinic Judaism and the emergence of Christianity. In his research, Mr. Strugnell personally translated several notable texts of Jewish religious literature, including one important document that he completed with a former student, the Rev. Daniel J. Harrington of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, in the years after his downfall.

Krister Stendahl, a former dean of the divinity school, described Mr. Strugnell as “a linguistic prodigy” in classical and Semitic languages and “a scholar’s scholar, one you would go to when you knew your own knowledge was not enough to solve a problem.”

Dr. Stendahl said that Mr. Strugnell had been plagued with depression for much of his life and that particularly given that struggle, it “was amazing how much research he managed to accomplish and the large number of students he prepared to be biblical scholars.”

[...]

AN UNOFFICIAL BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVALETTE has been published by Doug Chaplin at the Metacatholic blog.

Mark Goodacre comments that this "just goes to show that non-canonical texts can be as interesting as canonical ones." Well yeah.

ANOTHER REVIEW of Nadia Abu El-Haj's book, Facts on the Ground, has been published in The Current, an alternative student publication at Columbia University. It's of interest because it's by an anthropologist. He doesn't like it.

Searching for "Facts" on the Ground
David Rosen
Professor of Anthropology, Fairleigh Dickinson University

The very title of the Nadia Abu El-Haj's Facts on the Ground invites controversy. The phrase "facts on the ground" originally referred to a cardinal principle of the post-1967 Israeli settler movement, which held that by building and occupying settlements in the newly-controlled West Bank it would be able to create an undeniable dominion over Palestinian lands that would be impossible to dislodge. As used in El-Haj's book, the phrase refers to the entire archeological enterprise in this region of the world, which beginning in the 19th century, she charges, invented a mythological story of Israelite and Jewish historical presence in the land of Israel, and imbued that story with the false aura of factuality that has also proven impossible to dislodge. In her view, archeology is a "colonial science" whose main goal has been to intellectually erase the history of Palestinians from the land.

[...]

It is within this framework that Facts on the Ground is situated. Post-colonial discourse has intellectually colonized much of the anthropology of the Middle East. As a form of bricolage unburdened by rules of evidence or proof, it pulls together snippets of anything and everything to weave its dismal tale of unfettered nationalism and colonialism. The task is made easier by the book's definition of archeology, which intentionally conflates professional and scientific practices with popular and political uses of archeological material. Imagine the results if this definition were applied to cultural anthropology in the United States. Every use of anthropology, from the crackpot to the sublime, could be attributed back to the profession. And so it goes: a potsherd here and a potsherd there, a bizarre comment by a tour guide, a film in a museum exhibition all become grist for the mill.

[...]

Background on the tenure controversy at Barnard and its aftermath here. And just keep following the links back.

CAN'T MAKE IT UP -- A COMIC BOOK ON RASHI:

Jewish comic book hero
By NETANYA HOFFMAN (Jerusalem Post)

Rashi Hakadosh: A Light after the Dark Ages
By Rabbi Berel Wein
Mahrwood Press
64 pages; $14.95
If your teenager is a Jewish history buff (or if you would like him to be), Rashi Hakadosh: A Light after the Dark Ages may be just for him. Produced by scholar, historian, educator and Jerusalem Post columnist Rabbi Berel Wein and written by J. Cogan and Aryeh Mahr, this comic book about the life of 11th-century talmudic scholar Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki comes as a companion to other comic books on the lives of Maimonides and Shmuel Hanagid. Rashi's analysis is the most widely read Torah commentary, and he spent his life making the Torah and Talmud accessible to the layman.

[...]

I accidentally posted these last two posts on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog for a few minutes. Apologies.

MARVIN MEYER, one of the National Geographic's translators of the Gospel of Judas, responds to the criticisms of April Deconick in her recent NYT Op-Ed piece. Marlon Brando is invoked. I would have found his response more helpful if he had listed what he saw as the positive things about Judas in the document. A National Geographic representative responds as well.

Background here.

IF ONLY IT WERE SO: Jack Sasson on the Agade list points to this curious fictional account of the archaeological discovery of a medieval library of heterodox chants and scriptures in Morocco.

SCRIPTURE

Gnostic Chants of North Africa

by Prof. Ephraim Weinherz,
Coordinator of the Harvard Commission on the Wadi al-'Irfan Texts

During the first weeks after the discovery of the ruins at Wadi al-'Irfan in southern Morocco in January, 2000, it became clear that the texts found there were of far-reaching significance. To say the least, the mere juxtaposition of scriptures in Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek was most surprising especially for a dervish monastic library in such a remote region.

[...]

The author is making a subversive point in a lateral and perhaps overly subtle way (see the disclaimer at the end), but the scenario is quite well thought out and surprising plausible. It may well be that equally startling libraries actually are buried in out of the way places, and let's hope that they're found in our time.

But meanwhile, it occurred to me while reading the essay that our corpus in the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project bears some striking resemblances to this fictional library in terms of contents, languages, and dates of texts and manuscripts. The same languages appear and more. The texts are scripture based, come in both prose and poetry, and sometimes have heterodox elements. At least one (the Balaam Text from Deir 'Alla) goes back to the actual period of the Hebrew Bible. The manuscripts are of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic origin (and pagan) with a generally similar range of dates. A pyramid even figures in one (the Surid Legend).

We may not have any newly recovered archives of lost apocryphal scriptures handy at the moment, but there's an amazing amount of work to be done on such documents that survive piecemeal in manuscripts scattered all around the world.

I've been coming down with a cold all day, so I hope these rumination still make sense to me when I'm feeling less muzzy!

AN OBITUARY FOR JOHN STRUGNELL has been published in the Boston Globe:

John Strugnell, 77; Dead Sea Scrolls expert who was dismissed after comments

Globe Staff / December 5, 2007

John Strugnell was perched at a scholarly pinnacle in 1990 when he sat for an interview with a reporter from an Israeli newspaper and made the anti-Semitic remarks that effectively ended his career.

As chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls project, he had been leading a team of translators in piecing together fragments of the ancient documents that shed light on early Judaism and Christianity. A language prodigy, Mr. Strugnell had joined the effort when he was 23 and in college. Nearly four decades later, he was heading the project and teaching at Harvard Divinity School.

"He was a linguistic genius," said Krister Stendahl, a former dean of the divinity school and a retired Lutheran bishop of Stockholm. "We brought him in to get the best man we could imagine for philological and textural criticism precision in our New Testament department."

Few colleagues, however, knew that while Mr. Strugnell labored in two high-profile jobs, he also was being treated for manic depression and struggling with alcoholism. Upon publication, his anti-Semitic comments led to his firing and public denunciations, though a few friends spoke in his defense, attributing his remarks to "mental imbalance" and a "drinking problem."

[...]

Actually, many of his friends and students, myself included, signed a statement in his defense which was published in Biblical Archaeology Review in 1991. John suffered from a bipolar mood disorder and alcoholism. And the fact is that people in the throes of a manic episode say things that they don't mean and would not say when in their right mind. He was still to some degree in this state in 1994, when he tried, with limited success, to nuance his views in a BAR interview with Hershel Shanks. John's problems were a part of his life, but they should be put in the context of other parts that are much more important, and indeed his acccomplishments in spite of these problems are remarkable. He made a huge contribution to the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls in terms of his own work, his administrative work, and supervising the research of his students. Those who knew him well will remember him for his vast erudition and his steadfast support of his students. The Boston Globe piece does try to be fair, but they could have tried harder.

(UPI has also published a summary of the Boston Globe obituary. It focuses almost entirely on his unfortunate comments in 1990. Alas, it's a good example of the journalistic taste for dirt and sensationalism. I'm not going to link to it.)

QUEEN HELENE'S MANSION?

Israeli archaeologists find 2,000-year-old mansion linked to historic queen

Remains of mansion archaeologists believe likely belonged to Queen Helene of Adiabene unearthed during dig in east Jerusalem parking lot; building by far the largest and most elaborate structure discovered in the City of David area

Associated Press
Published: 12.06.07, 10:56 / Israel News

Israeli archaeologists digging in an east Jerusalem parking lot have uncovered a 2,000-year-old mansion they believe likely belonged to Queen Helene of Adiabene, a minor but exceptional character in the city's history.

The remains of the building were unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, underneath layers of later settlement that were themselves hidden until recently under the asphalt of a small parking lot. The dig site is in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan, built on a slope that houses the most ancient remnants of settlement in Jerusalem and is known to scholars as the City of David.

The building, which includes storerooms, living quarters and ritual baths, is by far the largest and most elaborate structure discovered by archaeologists in the City of David area, which was home 2,000 years ago almost exclusively to the city's poor. The contemporary Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, who penned detailed descriptions of Jerusalem, mentions only one wealthy family that lived there - the family of Queen Helene.

According to Josephus and Jewish texts, Helene was from a royal clan that ruled Adiabene, a region now in northern Iraq. Along with her family, she converted to Judaism and came to Jerusalem in the first half of the first century A.D.

[...]

UPDATE: Joseph I. Lauer notes that Arutz Sheva has more info, a map, and photos here.

RESTORING THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS:

Italy to restore dead sea scrolls

By Web Editor. Filed under General, Arton December 5th, 2007 (Italy Magazine)

Italy to restore dead sea scrollsItaly is to help restore the Dead Sea Scrolls, Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli announced on a visit to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem Tuesday.

Rutelli said Italy was ”honoured” to lend its know-how to preserving Jerusalem’s batch of the famous Biblical scrolls, which have been slowly deteriorating since their discovery 60 years ago.

”The decision to entrust such a fundamental document to Italy bears witness to our acknowledged global expertise in conservation and restoration,” Rutelli said.

Italy’s Central Institute for Restoration and its Institute for Book Pathology will be involved in the two-year project, the minister said.

[...]

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

THERE IS NOW AN ANCIENT WORLD BLOGGERS GROUP BLOG. I am a member.

AN OBITUARY FOR JOHN STRUGNELL has been posted by his daughter, Anne-Christine Strugnell, at Jim West's blog.

MORE GOODIES are emerging from the new Herculaneum excavation:

Rare ancient wooden throne found in Herculaneum

Tue Dec 4, 10:13 AM ET

ROME (Reuters) - An ancient Roman wood and ivory throne has been unearthed at a dig in Herculaneum, Italian archaeologists said on Tuesday, hailing it as the most significant piece of wooden furniture ever discovered there.

The throne was found during an excavation in the Villa of the Papyri, the private house formerly belonging to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, built on the slope of Mount Vesuvius.

The name of the villa derives from the impressive library containing thousands of scrolls of papyrus discovered buried under meters (yards) of volcanic ash after the Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79.

[...]

I didn't know that the new excavation at the Villa of the Papyri had already commenced, but I'm glad to hear it has. If they're finding wooden furniture, there's reason to be optimistic that more scrolls are preserved there as well.

(Via the Agade list.)

UPDATE: David Meadows comments on the "throne" and has a photo.

THE JERUSALEM POST seems to be taking something of a Scrooge line on Hanukkah this year:

Hard times now, hard time then
By ELI KAVON

In the Zionist imagination, the holiday of Hanukka is a celebration of triumph, glory, and a golden age of Jewish power and sovereignty under the leadership of the Maccabees and their descendants.

While Ahad Ha'am and Max Nordau were early Zionist thinkers and activists who disagreed on almost every aspect of the emerging movement, the one element they agreed upon was the importance of Hanukka to modern Jews. Both men admired the Maccabees and placed them in the center of their ideologies. Looking back in history, however, the idea that the Hasmonean kingdom of Judah and his descendants were all-powerful and truly independent is, in part, a myth.

Yes, Judah Maccabee led a successful rebellion against the mighty Seleucid empire, he retook the temple in Jerusalem and reestablished it as a cultic center, and he founded a sovereign Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Yet, the history of the Maccabees after the triumph of Hanukka in 164 BCE is, for the most part, dismal and depressing.

[...]

Well, history is like that.

THE HISTORY BEHIND HANUKKAH is discussed by Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg in an article in the Jerusalem Post. The focus is a debunking of the oil miracle, but it goes well beyond that.

What miracle of the oil?
By STEPHEN GABRIEL ROSENBERG

As children we all knew about the miracle of the oil that was the basis of the festival of Hanukka. When the Maccabees conquered the Temple, they found only one cruse of oil with the unbroken seal of the high priest. It was enough to fuel the holy menora for one day but by miracle it lasted eight days, and thus the Festival of Lights, the festival of Hanukka, is celebrated for eight days.
This is the story in the Talmud, based on earlier versions in Megillat Ta'anit (which records all the days when we are not to fast) and repeated in the Scroll of Antiochus, which was read in medieval times.

It has been pointed out by scholars, Orthodox and otherwise, that this account is full of difficulties. There is no other record that the oil for the menora was ever sealed by the high priest, nor that he even had such a seal. The oil was said to burn for eight days, but it would have been impossible to produce fresh pure olive oil in that time. As the temple had been polluted by the Seleucids, the menora would not have been usable and, although the claim is made that the Hasmoneans made a temporary one out of their weapons, Maccabees mentions nothing about the oil or the miracle.

Above all, who was the high priest whose seal was so important to the Hasmoneans? The story assumes that the high priest was a person of impeccable respectability, who would have upheld the laws of purity in a meticulous manner. He was the spiritual head of the Jewish people and most reliable in keeping the holy laws. That is the assumption made by the writers of the Talmud and the two other sources mentioned.

TO EXAMINE the matter further we have to consult the two Books of Maccabees. They both tell the same story but in a different way and with different details. The First Book is more down-to-earth in its account, while the Second Book takes a more religious tone seeing the hand of God behind the events.

[...]

A DEBATE ON THE DATE of the recently discovered Galilean synagogue:

Rethinking Byzantine-era Judaism
By Ran Shapira

A row of artisans and laborers - one with a saw in his hand, another with a chisel, and others with various sized hammers - are depicted on the mosaic floor recently uncovered in a Roman- or Byzantine-era synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam, on Mount Nitai in the Lower Galilee. The workers appear next to a very large building, which they seem to be constructing.

Because the image appears on the synagogue floor, the researchers have assumed it depicts the construction of an important Biblical structure. Is it the Temple, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, or some other well-known work?
Advertisement

Dr. Uzi Leibner of the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology and Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center in Jewish Studies, who is leading the excavation, has no clear answer at this stage. What is clear is that the mosaic, constructed from very small stones - whose sides measure about four millimeters each - is unique. No such scenes have been found in other ancient synagogues or structures in Israel from that period. But which period exactly are we referring to - the Roman or the Byzantine? The dig at the synagogue is being carried out to answer that question.

To judge by the findings, the synagogue, which sits within the Arbel National Park, is a "Galilean synagogue" - a high-quality Romanesque structure with an elaborate facade facing toward Jerusalem and attractive stone carvings. Synagogues of this type were thought to date from the late Roman period, between the second and fourth centuries. However, in the last few years, researchers have discovered that synagogues of this type were built in the Byzantine era, too - between the fifth and sixth centuries.

The debate was sparked by the synagogue at Capernaum, a fine example of a Galilean synagogue that clearly was built in the fifth century. The findings from that synagogue and others led some researchers to consider the hypothesis that the Galilean synagogues were built mainly in the fifth and sixth centuries.

[...]

HANUKKAH begins tonight at sundown. Best wishes to those celebrating it.

A NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS FOR PALEOJUDAICA is now given above on the masthead. The old address has been dead for some time, but I've only just gotten around to setting up the new one.

SOME REAL DEAD SEA SCROLLS, in addition to the already-noted replicas, are coming to South Korea:

Oldest Bible to Be Exhibited in Seoul

By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter (Korea Times)

An extraordinary exhibition is expected to unite all Christians ― Protestants and Roman Catholics alike ― this holy month.

The oldest Old Testament manuscripts found in the Dead Sea showing the history of ancient Israel at a time of transition in Judaism and the origin of Christianity are coming to Seoul to be exhibited for the first time in the nation.

Five genuine pieces and three copied pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls will be on display, along with 800 pieces of other relics at Yongsan National Memorial Museum in Seoul from Dec. 5 to June 4, 2008.

The exhibition titled ``The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Birth of Christianity'' is expected to draw much attention from not only Christians and but also Korean historians and non-Christians as it is one of the oldest anthropological and historical resources.

[...]

A CALL FOR ALEPPO CODEX FRAGMENTS:

Ben-Zvi institute calls for return of centuries-old Aleppo Codex fragments
By Anshel Pfeffer (Haaretz)

Scholars at Yad Ben-Zvi research institute in Jerusalem have called on Jews around the world who originally come from Aleppo, Syria and may possess fragments of the ancient Aleppo Codex to turn them over to Israel.

The call came yesterday at an event marking the 60th anniversary of riots against the Jews in Aleppo during which most of the codex, the authoritative copy of the Hebrew Bible written in the 10th century, was lost.

The head of Yad Ben-Zvi's Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, Prof. Yom Tov Asis, who witnessed the riots from the window of his Aleppo home when he was five years old, said yesterday: "We know for a fact that pages are being kept in various places in the world and we hope we can touch the hearts of those who are holding them."

The institute confirmed yesterday that talks are under way with former residents of Aleppo who are believed to be holding fragments of the texts, but declined to comment further so as not to jeopardize the negotiations. "This is the No. 1 asset of the Jewish people," Dr. Zvi Zameret, head of Yad Ben-Zvi said, "and I believe the Jewish people would do a great deal to have it back."

[...]

If any readers should happen to have one of these fragments or to know where one is, please get in touch with the Ben Zvi Institute.

Background here.

A CANAANITE-LANGUAGE DISCUSSION LIST is being launched by Yitzhak Sapir:

Dear all,

I would like to invite you all to a new discussion list that I created -- Canaanite! This discussion list will concentrate on the Canaanite family of languages, which for the purposes of the list includes Phoenician, Punic Neo-Punic, Ugaritic, all varieties of ancient Hebrew (even Mishnaic and Late Samaritan Hebrew), but not Modern Hebrew, and other attested 1st and 2nd millennium Canaanite dialects, including Amarna Canaanite, Ammonite, etc. I suppose that a major topic of discussion -- if the list takes off -- would be Biblical Hebrew, as would academically oriented discussions of Biblical passages. However, I really hope that similar discussions of Ugaritic or Phoenician would also take place. Thus, the recent discussions on ANE-2, where Phoenician ZYB vs Hebrew ZW or where Ugaritic vs Hebrew RP? were discussed would really have benefited from more expert input from scholars in those fields. This list would also form an important needed discussion list of one major subfamily of Northwest Semitic -- the other being covered by the Aramaic list.

So like I said, I invite everyone to join! You can do so with this link:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/canaanite/join

Also, if any scholars in relevant fields would like to take part in moderation of the list, and feel they have the time and resources to do so, please feel free to contact me privately in that regard.

Best,
Yitzhak Sapir
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/canaanite

(From the Aramaic list.)

APOCRYPHA WATCH: Vivaldi's Judith opera will be playing in Australia.

Heads will roll

Vivaldi's take on the gory biblical story of Judith and Holofernes is about to be revived by a small but ambitious opera company, writes Matthew Westwood | December 01, 2007 (The Australian)

REHEARSING an opera under a flight path may not be ideal, but aiming high in difficult circumstances is the aptly named Pinchgut Opera's way.

The company is in the second week of rehearsals for its production of Antonio Vivaldi's oratorio Juditha Triumphans. On the rehearsal floor, Sally-Anne Russell as Judith is beguiling her enemy Holofernes (David Walker) with sweet and tender music. Then another passenger jet flies overhead, shaking butnot completely shattering the tense and erotic mood.

The visiting Italian conductor Attilio Cremonesi rolls his eyes. "Sometimes it's a little bit too much," he says.

Pinchgut, a part-time Sydney company, has made a virtue of creative belt-tightening. The rehearsal space in the city's inner west is a disused clothing factory that has been made available by one of the chorus members: there are, incongruously, racks of men's ties in gold, blue and maroon on the floor. The atmosphere is one of intense concentration, however, as words and music are knitted into a dramatic whole.

Juditha Triumphans is the story from biblical times of the beautiful widow Judith, who charms the Assyrian enemy Holofernes so that she can decapitate him. The source of the legend is the Book of Judith, one of the apocrypha or deuterocanonical books that are part of the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles but omitted from Protestant versions.

The figure of the chaste and avenging woman inspired musicians and artists. The spectacular end to Holofernes was a scene that painters of the baroque period -- from Caravaggio to Artemisia Gentileschi, the best-known woman artist of the time -- would depict with grisly verisimilitude. Judith was the subject of more than 20 oratorios between 1621 and 1716, when Vivaldi's version was first performed in Venice.

[...]

RICHARD LEIGH, who unsuccessfully sued Dan Brown's publisher for copyright violation (not plagiarism), has died at the age of 64.

Richard Leigh

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 30/11/2007 (The Telegraph)

Richard Leigh, who has died aged 64, was a co-author of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, one of the most controversial books of the 1980s; in 2006, with Michael Baigent, he lost his plagiarism case against the American Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, the spectacularly successful thriller which they claimed was based on their book.

Written by Leigh, Baigent and Henry Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail claimed to have uncovered a massive conspiracy to conceal a bloodline descended from Jesus of Nazareth that has influenced the course of European history.

The protracted court case boosted sales of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which had stalled at 3,500 copies a year in Britain, to 7,000 copies a week, a 100-fold rise. (Similarly, The Da Vinci Code returned to the bestseller lists with sales of 20,000 copies a week.) But against their royalties windfall, Leigh and Baigent - Lincoln took no part in the case - were left with a legal bill for their failed action of about £2 million.

[...]

I can't say that he made a contribution to human knowledge, but he did help keep life interesting. Peace be upon him.

APRIL DECONICK has an op-ed in the New York Times on the Gospel of Judas:

Gospel Truth

By APRIL D. DECONICK
Published: December 1, 2007

Houston

AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.

It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.

[...]

Read it all.

UPDATE (7 December): More here.

PROFESSOR JOHN STRUGNELL (1930-2007)

Just got word from Eileen Schuller of the sad news that John Strugnell, one of the members of the original Dead Sea Scrolls editorial team, died on 30 November in Boston. I worked with John a good bit in the 1980s as a Harvard postgraduate working on the Scrolls. He was a giant in the field.

Requiescat in pace.

TYLER WILLIAMS needs some emergency help with this month's Biblical Studies Carnival.

MORE ON THAT WALL that has been associated with the time of Nehemiah. An AP article quotes the views of two other Israeli archaologists:

Ephraim Stern, professor emeritus of archaeology at Hebrew University and chairman of the state of Israel archaeological council, offered support for Mazar's claim.

"The material she showed me is from the Persian period," the period of Nehemiah, he said. "I can sign on the date of the material she found."

However, another scholar disputed the significance of the discovery.

Israel Finkelstein, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, called the discovery "an interesting find," but said the pottery and other artifacts do not indicate that the wall was built in the time of Nehemiah. Because the debris was not connected to a floor or other structural part of the wall, the wall could have been built later, Finkelstein said.

"The wall could have been built, theoretically, in the Ottoman period," he said. "It's not later than the pottery — that's all we know."

THE FALLOUT from the Abu El-Haj tenure decision continues:

Facts in the air
By Bari Weiss (Haaretz)
Tags: land of israel, Archeology

Earlier this month, a young anthropology professor named Nadia Abu El-Haj received tenure at Barnard College, a division of Columbia University in New York. Unlike most academic promotions, which largely go unnoticed, her successful tenure bid was met with raucous jeers and cheers. Here was a victory for a "purveyor of hate," according to Paula Stern, the Barnard alumna who organized a campaign to deny El-Haj tenure. For her supporters, this marked a clear victory against the "New McCarthyism" - the alleged campaign now being waged against scholars who criticize Israel, particularly those of Arab descent.

It's all too easy to toss the news of El-Haj's tenure into the stew that is the ongoing battle over the state of Middle Eastern studies at universities today. But this is not just another round between the Zionists and the anti-Zionists. This is about the nature of truth, and the possibility of, well, facts themselves.

[...]

Let's be clear: Is it in the interest of today's Zionists to find evidence of an ancient Israelite kingdom in the Land of Israel? Of course. But recognizing such interest does not preclude the possibility of the application of fair, professional standards, and the ability of archaeologists, regardless of their ethnic group, to uphold them in good faith.

El-Haj's work does not remind readers of the need to be skeptical of the influence nationalism can have on the interpretation of archaeological facts. Instead, she has written a book condemning the notion of facts themselves. It is for this reason that those who care about the future of the veracity of facts - and not just the future of Israel - should take serious notice of her promotion.

This is a defensible reading of the book, although, largely due to Abu El-Haj's convoluted writing, as well as what I have called her argument by insinuation, I think she could also claim that this wasn't what she meant.

HANUKKAH is coming soon, and so the Jerusalem Post has a tourism-related piece on real and not-so-real archaeological connections etc. with the Maccabees:

On the Maccabee trail
By ESTI KELLER

The spectacle of two ancient armies advancing toward each other in battle is no doubt striking. And these compelling images of warriors atop elephants and steering extravagant chariots into battle are evoked at Canada Park, once the site of a Hellenistic town traditionally considered to be the New Testament settlement of Emmaus. Remnants of the town are displayed alongside plaques detailing the modest Maccabee rebel militia's most successful victory against its vast Greco-Syrian rival in 166 BCE, which was won at Emmaus.

[...]

AN ESSAY IN EL AHRAM entitled "Colonising a metaphor," by one Eric Walberg, begins with a reasonably coherent discussion of the dangers of using archaeology to prove the stories in the Bible as facts, although it draws entirely on a minimalist viewpoint which, although it is reputable, is hardly the only specialist position on the history of ancient Israel. The essay then rapidly descends into a bizarre anti-Israel conspiracy-theory rant:

The Zionists reconvened the ancient Jewish supreme court, the Sanhedrin (which condemned Jesus), in 2005 for the first time since 425 AD, and have been plotting virtually since the creation of Israel to blow up the Al-Aqsa Mosque and rebuild a replica of Solomon's temple there. Just recently, Israeli archaeologists "found" remains of a temple under the mosque, yet another astounding victory for this bogus science. Reconstruction plans are in place for the mythical and no doubt magnificent temple of Solomon, a temple that never existed except in the imaginations of dreamy-eyed Jewish scribes in third c BC Alexandria. Truly a breathtaking prospect, however mad. But nonetheless the logical culmination of the Zionist project, eagerly fuelled by the official Israeli archaeological establishment.

Then there's the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which sets out just such a programme in albeit an overtly grotesque form and is solemnly disowned by Zionists as a forgery, though a forgery of what is never made clear.

What is behind the Bible is not simply a record of historical facts or of even doctrines, but ultimately, the presence of God. There is much self-reference of symbols within the Bible for which the only "proof" that, say, the gospel story is true is that it fulfils the prophecies of the OT, and the only "proof" that the prophecies of the OT are true is that they are fulfilled by the gospel. This has absolutely nothing to do with digging up shards to establish some self-referential "event" in one of the Bible's many tales. There is no temple out there (or under there, where "there" happens to be the very real Al-Aqsa Mosque). The real temple exists in one's heart, though it is very unlikely that one can find it in the scheming Zionist's inflamed and secular heart. And by murdering and tormenting peaceful natives in order to scrounge some bits of a previous building and call it God's temple is unspeakable in its evil. The Naturei Karta heart has the temple in it, but for such a Jew, physical Israel itself is an abomination, and should be dismantled forthwith, or to borrow a particularly colourful metaphor of recent vintage, wiped off the map.

That's right, he equates professional archaeologists with the (self-appointed) "new Sanhedrin" and the extremists calling for the building of a third temple. He thinks there was no Solomonic Temple. He hints that maybe the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has something to it after all. And he thinks that for the true (anti-Zionist) Jew, with the President of Iran, Israel should be wiped off the map.

A Google search for Eric Walberg is illuminating. If we stick just to things written under his own name and posted on his own website, it's clear that he's a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Al Ahram has published better.

For the evidence for the existence of the first Temple, go here.

ARAMAIC WATCH: WIKISYR -- a Wikipedia on matters Syriac ("l'encyclopédie électronique de l'Orient Syriaque").

(Via Andrew Hannouche on the Hugoye list.)

MORE ON "NEHEMIAH'S" WALL IN JERUSALEM:

Nehemiah's wall uncovered
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

The remnants of a wall from the time of the prophet Nehemiah have been uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's ancient City of David, strengthening recent claims that King David's palace has been found at the site, an Israeli archeologist said Wednesday.

Not sure I follow the logic of that.

The section of the 2,500-year-old Nehemiah wall, located just outside the Dung Gate and the Old City walls facing the Mount of Olives, was dated by pottery found during a recent dig at the site, said Hebrew University archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar.

[...]

(Via Joseph I Lauer's list.)

Tomorrow is St. Andrew's Day and our autumn graduation ceremonies, and I'm swamped today clearing space for tomorrow. Blogging will be a low priority.

UPDATE (1 December): More here.

VARIOUS ENOCHIC APOCRYPHA seem to be alluded to in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier:

JESS NEVINS' "BLACK DOSSIER" ANNOTATIONS
by Andy Khouri, Staff Writer [Comic Book Resources]
Posted: November 15, 2007 — More From This Author

The long awaited "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier" is on sale now from Wildstorm, and that means Jess Nevins has been busy. Known in far corners of the Internet for his exhaustive annotations on some of American comics' greatest works, Nevins is a master who has been acknowledged by "League" creators Kevin O'Neil and Alan Moore, who've provided him with their own commentaries and remarks about his hugely impressive work.

Nevins has already completed his annotations for "Black Dossier," and CBR News is proud to re-publish his startlingly prodigious work here for our readers. To discuss Nevins' annotations and "Black Dossier" with fellow readers, don't forget to stop by CBR's Wildstorm forum.

[...]

The Book of Enoch is not, I believe, a reference to the various books which are falsely-attributed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, but rather to the book in which Dr. John Dee and his assistant Edward Kelley took dictation of the angelical language from a set of angels.
Philp & Emily Graves write, "I think the reference to the Book of Enoch is possibly a double-allusion. Certainly the apocryphal Enoch talks of various Angelic beings (and is the reference for the Nephilim and Lilim, which are the offspring referenced on p26). Likely, therefore that Suttle (Dee) and Face (Kelley) communicate with the creatures from Apocryphal Enoch, and would then use such contact to write a LoEG version of Dee's Enoch."
Greg Strohecker writes,

I think Moore is referencing the actual book "1 Enoch" from the pseudepigrapha, as well as the writings of John Dee and Edward Kelly. In 1 Enoch, there is a section where it describes how some of the "Watchers", who were fallen angels, took human wives and had children with them. Their descendents were a race of giants called the Nephillim (not unlike the Titans of Greek Mythology). Here's the link and quote from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_enoch#The_Book_of_the_Watchers . "The first section of the book depicts the interaction of the fallen angels with mankind; Sêmîazâz compels the other 199 fallen angels to take human wives to have children." In the magical Enochian tradition “aethyrs” are various planes or worlds which surround and mingle with our own.

[...]

The mythos is nothing if not eclectic, with (to give a random smattering) references to Greek, Greco-Assyrian, and Egyptian mythology, Arthurian legends, and the Cthulu and Conan stories.

"PICTURING JERUSALEM" in the 1800s:

Nineteenth Century Photographs Of Israel At Yeshiva Museum
Nov 27th, 2007 (Antiques and the Arts Online, CT)

Yeshiva University Museum will present the first exhibition of Nineteenth Century photographs of Israel by James Graham and Mendel Diness. On view December 4–April 6, "Picturing Jerusalem" includes 70 rare vintage prints of the Holy Land by Diness and his teacher Graham along with a selection of original artifacts used by the photographers.

Organized by the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and featuring some of the earliest known images of Jerusalem, the exhibition is the result of discovery at a garage sale in St Paul, Minn., in 1989, when an American photographer came across some dusty boxes of glass plate negatives, silver prints, notebooks and other photographic material. This will be the first known exhibition of James Graham's work since an 1862 exhibition in London. Yeshiva University Museum provides the exhibition's premiere venue on an international exhibition tour. The tour's final stop will be the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

[...]

Two images of the Temple Mount from the 1850s appear in the article.

REPORTER OF THE LOST ARK? A journalist from The Smithsonian traveled to Ethiopia to try to get a glimpse of it.

Keepers of the Lost Ark?

Christians in Ethiopia have long claimed to have the ark of the covenant. Our reporter investigated

* By Paul Raffaele
* Photographs by Paul Raffaele
* Smithsonian magazine, December 2007

"They shall make an ark of acacia wood," God commanded Moses in the Book of Exodus, after delivering the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. And so the Israelites built an ark, or chest, gilding it inside and out. And into this chest Moses placed stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, as given to him on Mount Sinai.

Thus Jews came to revere the ark as an earthly manifestation of God. The Old Testament describes its enormous powers—blazing with fire and light, halting rivers, blasting away armies and bringing down the fabled walls of Jericho. (Steven Spielberg's 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark provides a special-effects approximation.) According to the First Book of Kings, King Solomon built the First Temple in Jerusalem to house the ark. It was venerated there during Solomon's reign (c. 970-930 B.C.) and beyond.

Then it vanished. Much of Jewish tradition holds that it disappeared before or while the Babylonians sacked the temple in Jerusalem in 586 b.c.

But through the centuries, Ethiopian Christians have claimed that the ark rests in a chapel in the small town of Aksum, in their country's northern highlands. It arrived nearly 3,000 years ago, they say, and has been guarded by a succession of virgin monks who, once anointed, are forbidden to set foot outside the chapel grounds until they die.

One of the first things that caught my eye in Addis Ababa, the country's capital, was an enormous concrete pillar topped by a giant red star—the sort of monument to communism still visible in Pyongyang. The North Koreans built this one as a gift for the Derg, the Marxist regime that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991 (the country is now governed by an elected parliament and prime minister). In a campaign that Derg officials named the Red Terror, they slaughtered their political enemies—estimates range from several thousand to more than a million people. The most prominent of their victims was Emperor Haile Selassie, whose death, under circumstances that remain contested, was announced in 1975.

He was the last emperor of Ethiopia—and, he claimed, the 225th monarch, descended from Menelik, the ruler believed responsible for Ethiopia's possession of the ark of the covenant in the tenth century b.c.

The story is told in the Kebra Negast (Glory of the Kings), Ethiopia's chronicle of its royal line: the Queen of Sheba, one of its first rulers, traveled to Jerusalem to partake of King Solomon's wisdom; on her way home, she bore Solomon's son, Menelik. Later Menelik went to visit his father, and on his return journey was accompanied by the firstborn sons of some Israelite nobles—who, unbeknown to Menelik, stole the ark and carried it with them to Ethiopia. When Menelik learned of the theft, he reasoned that since the ark's frightful powers hadn't destroyed his retinue, it must be God's will that it remain with him.

Many historians—including Richard Pankhurst, a British-born scholar who has lived in Ethiopia for almost 50 years—date the Kebra Negast manuscript to the 14th century a.d. It was written, they say, to validate the claim by Menelik's descendants that their right to rule was God-given, based on an unbroken succession from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. But the Ethiopian faithful say the chronicles were copied from a fourth-century Coptic manuscript that was, in turn, based on a far earlier account. This lineage remained so important to them that it was written into Selassie's two imperial constitutions, in 1931 and 1955.

[...]

Whatever the merits of the claims about the Ark of the Covenant (and as you might guess, I am skeptical), this is cool:

By chance, in the lobby of my hotel I met Alem Abbay, an Aksum native who was on vacation from Frostburg State University in Maryland, where he teaches African history. Abbay took me to a stone tablet about eight feet high and covered in inscriptions in three languages—Greek; Geez, the ancient language of Ethiopia; and Sabaean, from across the Red Sea in southern Yemen, the true birthplace, some scholars believe, of the Queen of Sheba.

"King Ezana erected this stone tablet early in the fourth century, while still a pagan ruler," Abbay told me. His finger traced the strange-looking alphabets carved into the rock 16 centuries ago. "Here, the king praises the god of war after a victory over a rebel people." But sometime in the following decade Ezana was converted to Christianity.

Abbay led me to another stone tablet covered with inscriptions in the same three languages. "By now King Ezana is thanking 'the Lord of Heaven' for success in a military expedition into nearby Sudan," he said. "We know he meant Jesus because archaeological digs have turned up coins during Ezana's reign that feature the Cross of Christ around this time." Before that, they bore the pagan symbols of the sun and moon.

Raffaele didn't get to see the Ark, but he did meet its guardian.

The next day I tried again, led by a friendly priest to the gate of the ark chapel, which is about the size of a typical suburban house and surrounded by a high iron fence. "Wait here," he said, and he climbed the steps leading to the chapel entrance, where he called out softly to the guardian.

A few minutes later he scurried back, smiling. A few feet from where I stood, through the iron bars, a monk who looked to be in his late 50s peered around the chapel wall.

"It's the guardian," the priest whispered.

He wore an olive-colored robe, dark pillbox turban and sandals. He glanced warily at me with deep-set eyes. Through the bars he held out a wooden cross painted yellow, touching my forehead with it in a blessing and pausing as I kissed the top and bottom in the traditional way.

I asked his name.

"I'm the guardian of the ark," he said, with the priest translating. "I have no other name."

I told him I had come from the other side of the world to speak with him about the ark. "I can't tell you anything about it," he said. "No king or patriarch or bishop or ruler can ever see it, only me. This has been our tradition since Menelik brought the ark here more than 3,000 years ago."

We peered at each other for a few moments. I asked a few more questions, but to each he remained as silent as an apparition. Then he was gone.

It's a long article and well worth the read. It's of interest not for any historical information about the actual Ark, but for the fascinating parabiblical legends of the Ethiopians.

Earlier posts on the Kebra Negast are here, here, here, here, and here.

RICHARD BAUCKHAM'S BOOK, JESUS AND THE EYEWITNESSES, continues to generate lots of discussion post-SBL.

(The time stamp on this post is correct. Jet lag has caught up with me the second night home.)

NEW BIBLICAL STUDIES JOURNAL:

THE ORTHODOX CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF BIBLICAL STUDIES (OCABS) is pleased to announce the launching of its new, on-line academic journal, The Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies (JOCABS).

The mission of JOCABS is to promote scholarship in biblical studies, homiletics, and religious education among Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians around the world.

Although submissions in English are preferred thus ensuring greater accessibility, academic papers in other languages (especially Arabic, Armenian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish) will be considered by our multi-lingual editorial board and its international associates.

Articles may be submitted in the following areas:

• Old Testament and Cognate Studies. Including (but not limited to) critical studies in Hebrew Bible; Septuagint; Pseudepigrapha; Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture; Syro-Palestinian Archaeology.
  
• New Testament and Cognate Studies. Including (but not limited to) critical studies in New Testament; Early Christian Literature; Apocryphal Literature and Traditions; Classical Studies; Archaeology of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
  
• The Bible in Homiletics and Christian Education. Including theoretical and methodological studies dedicated to the practical applications of biblical scholarship to both preaching and pedagogy.
  
• Book Reviews. Submissions of critical reviews of books related to the field of biblical studies will be accepted and invited.

JOCABS is committed to promoting scholarship among scholars and graduate students and encourages them to submit papers to its peer-reviewed process. The first issue will appear in the Summer of 2008, and semiannually thereafter.

For additional information, please contact Dr. Nicolae Roddy, at nroddy@creighton.edu or Fr. Vahan Hovhanessian, at vartabed@stnersess.edu.

To submit an article online, please visit http://www.ocabs.org/journal.

CAN'T MAKE IT UP -- Movies on Jesus in India:

Hollywood takes action hero Jesus to India

Film based on Aquarian Gospel to cover years left out of New Testament

Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Monday November 19, 2007
The Guardian

Hollywood is to fill in the Bible's "missing years" with a story about Jesus as a wandering mystic who travelled across India, living in Buddhist monasteries and speaking out against the iniquities of the country's caste system.

Film producers have delved deep into revisionist scholarship to piece together what they say was Jesus's life between the ages of 13 and 30, a period untouched by the recognised gospels.

[...]

The Aquarian Gospel is a modern forgery, which doesn't exactly count as "revisionist scholarship" or, indeed, any kind of scholarship.

Jesus Christ gets an evil twin in fantasy film
Mon Nov 26, 2007 1:14pm IST

By Tony Tharakan

PANAJI, India (Reuters) - There's no mention of him in the Bible but the plot of a fantasy film set in India gives Jesus Christ a twin brother -- and an evil one at that.

German filmmaker Robert Sigl's "The 13th Disciple" is still in the planning stage but producer Mario Stefan is in Goa trying to attract an Indian co-producer for the project.

"It's a fantasy-adventure film and takes place completely in present-day India," Stefan said on the sidelines of the 38th International Film Festival of India, which opened over the weekend.

The story traces the journey of two German archaeologists looking for evidence that Jesus visited India.

The researchers, who are twins themselves, find that Jesus had an evil twin brother who is reincarnated in the present as the scheming head of a religious sect.

[...]

The third-century Acts of Thomas places the Apostle Thomas in India, but that's quite a late tradition and in any case is rather a different matter from putting Jesus there.

Also the wandering Greek philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, who lived at the same time as Jesus and is sometimes compared with him, reportedly (according to his third-century biographer Philostratus) traveled to India and hung out there with the gymnosophists for a while. But I'm not aware of any remotely ancient apocryphal traditions that put Jesus in India.

HERE'S MY REPORT ON THE SAN DIEGO DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION, which I visited on Friday. (Click on the images below for larger versions.)


This is a view of the Natural History Museum from the outside.


The big tree (visible on the right in the previous picture) has been a prominent fixture of the Museum Plaza for a very long time. I remember climbing on it when I was five years old, after a weekly summer museum class for children. But the decades of climbers like me started to take a toll on the health of the tree, so now it is fenced in so it can get a little peace.


This is the security line, through which visitors have to pass before entering the museum.


Security was tight. I had to check in my Swiss army knife.


There were further lines in the Museum. I had already bought my ticket online, so strictly speaking I didn't need to go through any of them, although it did take some time to find the place on the second floor where I could pick the ticket up. Note, by the way, the Allosaurus skeleton visible in the background through that open door.


My book was indeed for sale in the gift shop.

No photos were allowed in the displays, but here are some impressions. The upper floor had a lot of photographs on the walls of various things pertaining to Qumran, the Dead Sea, and the Scrolls, but I was familiar with most of this and breezed through it quickly. The actual Scrolls were on the lower level. The first few displays were crowded, but the crowds thinned, evidently because for most people when you've seen a couple of Dead Sea Scrolls, you've seen them all. The lighting was low and not always well angled for reading, but I did give each Scroll a careful look and managed at least to pick out a word or two in each. I was especially interested in two of them. The first was a manuscript of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, on which I've done a lot of work -- including in the commentary for sale in the gift shop. I worked from photographs and this was the first time I've been in the same room with one of the manuscripts, so I spent some time puzzling out the opening lines of the work. The second was Bar Kokhba papyrus 46. It's a land contract and in itself is not very interesting, but the opening line dates it to "year three of Shimon bar Kosiba, Prince of Israel" (שמעון בר כסבא נשיא ישראל). Again, this is the first time I've been in the physical presence of a scroll contemporary with Bar Kokhba which actually contained his name. It's a little like reading a document from Camelot with King Arthur's name on it. I also was happy to locate the name of Šemihaza, one of the Watchers (fallen angels that consorted with human women and fathered giants), in the Aramaic manuscript of the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch).

The introductory displays mostly seemed quite good to me. They concentrated on the Essene theory, but also repeatedly referred to Golb's theory (without mentioning him by name) that the Scrolls came from Jerusalem. They rightly made much of the ten years of effort invested by the original team in piecing together the thousands of fragments into scrolls, a huge accomplishment frequently glossed over by those who criticize them for taking so long to publish. There was mention of the criticisms of De Vaux's application of monastery-related terminology to describe the Qumran buildings. And there were salutary explicit corrections of errors in The Da Vinci Code, such as the fact that there are no books from the Christian New Testament among the Scrolls.

Naturally I found statements with which I disagreed or that I wanted to nuance, but I'll pass over those. But the timeline just before the Scrolls display did have a disturbing number of errors and infelicities. It said that Qumran was settled c. 250 BCE (actually generally thought to be c. 150 BCE, although the archaeological evidence would point to closer to 100 BCE). It dated the LXX translation c. 300-200 BCE, but I've never heard anyone argue that the Pentateuch was translated much before 250. Plato is correctly dated to about 385 BCE but he is placed under the third century BCE in the timeline. We are told that Jesus "teaches of the supreme power of love," which is not a very accurate sound bite of the scholarly view of the historical Jesus. It would have been more helpful to say that he taught about the Kingdom of God in parables. And, although I'm not a specialist in ancient China, I'm pretty sure that specialists regard the Tao Te Ching not as a fifth century BCE composition by someone named Lao Tzu, but a later pseudonymous work.

I wish they would correct these problems, but otherwise the exhibition was very good.


After the museum visit I had to run an errand Downtown and, this being Southern California and all, I was bemused but not surprised to happen upon this museum on Market Street. Unfortunately, it seems no longer to be in business, so I couldn't get in.

I'M BACK IN ST. ANDREWS. The trip was uneventful, apart from when my watch shorted out going through the security scanner at the San Diego Airport. All the security personnel I talked to swore that the scanners don't do such things, but it seems like a remarkable coincidence.