A COPTIC CONFERENCE IN EGYPT took place recently:

The spirit of monasticism in Upper Egypt (Al-Ahram)
The recent Coptic convention at Naqada drew scholars from all over the world. The symposium, organised by the Saint Mark Foundation for Coptic Studies, took place in the church of the Archangel Michael from 6 to 11 February. Its aim was to draw attention to the rich heritage of one of the lesser-known monastic sites in Upper Egypt; to present an overview of the current state of research, conservation and restoration in the Naqada and Qus (Coptos) region; to increase general knowledge of the area; and to activate concern for conserving and preserving its Christian heritage. Bishop Beiman gave the opening address in the grand new hall of the monastery. Attending were Magdi Ayoub, the governor of Qena, who said a word about the specialised gathering being a part of a wider culture and identity which spanned the ages, along with VIPs, participants, guests, the press, and a large number of residents of Naqada and Qena anxious to witness such an important event taking place at a site which is not on the regular tourist map and, until relatively recently, not easily accessible by road. Jill Kamil was there

Nag Hammadi, the site of the discovery of the well known Coptic Gnostic library, was the subject of a paper.

It would be nice to go to this sort of thing once in a while, but given the attitude of the Egyptian Government toward bloggers, I don't plan to. I would not feel safe.

BEN WITHERINGTON'S BLOG gets some coverage in Time Magazine's Future Revolutions series:

10. Re-Judaizing Jesus
By DAVID VAN BIEMA

Recently a popular blogger — let's call him Rabbi Ben — zinged the scholarship of a man we shall call Rabbi Rob. R. Ben claimed R. Rob did not "understand the difference between Judaism prior to the two Jewish wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. and later Mishnaic and Talmudic Judaism." He helpfully provided a syllabus.

Actually, neither man is a rabbi. (Sorry.) Ben Witherington is a Methodist New Testament scholar, and Rob Bell a rising Michigan megapastor. Yet each regards sources like the Mishnah and Rabbi Akiva as vital to understanding history's best-known Jew: Jesus.

This is seismic. For centuries, the discipline of Christian "Hebraics" consisted primarily of Christians cherry-picking Jewish texts to support the traditionally assumed contradiction between the Jews — whose alleged dry legalism contributed to their fumbling their ancient tribal covenant with God — and Jesus, who personally embodied God's new covenant of love. But today seminaries across the Christian spectrum teach, as Vanderbilt University New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine says, that "if you get the [Jewish] context wrong, you will certainly get Jesus wrong."

[...]

This is hardly a future revolution, as the essay itself makes clear. Nevertheless, it's good to see the mainstream media paying some attention to these issues and getting their information from someone who knows what he's doing. Ben comments on the piece here.

ELAINE PAGELS will be lecturing on the Book of Revelation in Santa Barbara tomorrow.

BRUCE FERRINI'S ANTIQUTIES COLLECTION is going up for sale:

Artifacts up for auction to pay debt

Ancient religious relics seized from collector from Akron in 2005

By David Giffels
Beacon Journal staff writer

Published on Saturday, Mar 15, 2008

What was once a bright constellation in the universe of art and antiquities is disintegrating in an online auction, mouse-click by mouse-click, in a major step toward satisfying millions of dollars of an Akron collector's debt.

The continuing fall of Bruce Ferrini from international prominence is being documented in real time, as eBay-style bids creep upward on 153 items, many of them ancient religious artifacts.

A 2,800-year-old strip of linen mummy wrap, inscribed with text from the Book of the Dead.

Current bid (as of Friday afternoon): $1.

A Babylonian pottery vessel, ap
proximately 3,800 years old, valued at $3,000 to $5,000.

Current bid: $150.

Ferrini owes some $5 million to a long international list of creditors. Mainly because of the eclectic nature of the collection and the controversy attached to its architect, this auction has been more than two years in the making.

Fortunately the really valuable items are not (yet) on the auction block:

Some not included

The auction does not include the three most valuable and controversial segments of Ferrini's disputed collection. An ongoing legal battle has yet to sort out the true owner of these items, worth millions:

• A batch of biblical artifacts that include fragments from the Book of Exodus and the Letter of Paul to the Colossians. It also includes part of the controversial Gnostic manuscript known as the Gospel of Judas.

• A large marble Assyrian relief believed to have belonged to Alexander the Great.

• Fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose display at the John S. Knight Center in 2004 devolved into a contentious public squabble, with court injunctions and lawsuits over missing money, unpaid bills and claims of fraud.

Charlie Bowers is a Cleveland attorney who represents Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos of Switzerland, who claims to be sole owner of the papyrus pages of the Gospel of Judas. He hopes the auction represents a step forward in resolving Ferrini's complex legacy.

''We certainly hope that the receiver gains as much from the auction as possible,'' Bowers said. ''But what does still remain to be determined is the ownership of the other items that we still claim.''

Bowers declined to put a value on the Gospel of Judas fragments, and said doing so would be irrelevant, as his client has promised to donate the artifact to Egypt, where it can be properly archived, displayed and studied.

I certainly hope that the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, pitiful though they are, end up in a museum in Israel.

Besides the above link, note the following PaleoJudaica posts involving Bruce Ferrini (in chronological order) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The last four of these deal with the fragments from the same codex as the Gospel of Judas (the Tchacos Codex). On those, note this post as well.

THE NEW IRANIAN JESUS MOVIE is covered in a CNN video.

The idea that Jesus wasn't really crucified is found in the Qur'an and also in earlier Christian Gnostic texts such as The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, in which Simon of Cyrene, not Judas, is crucified in Jesus' place.

By the way, another Jesus movie, The Life of Brian, has a scene that plays off this tradition. Start at about 7:10.




I look forward to seeing The Messiah. It sounds quite interesting.

(Heads-up, Nathan MacDonald.)

THE KIDNAPPED CHALDEAN ARCHBISHOP has been murdered:

Meanwhile, a Christian archbishop kidnapped in northern Iraq last month was found dead on Thursday, according to a Nineveh province official.

Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paul Faraj Rahho's body was found near the town of Mosul, where he and three companions were ambushed by gunmen on February 29.

The archbishop's driver and two security guards were killed in the ambush. Investigators believe the archbishop may have been shot at that time, the Nineveh deputy governor said.

Nineveh Deputy Gov. Khasro Goran, in Mosul, told CNN that the kidnappers had been in touch with the church and the relatives and wanted to be paid a ransom for the archbishop's release. The contacts ended a few days ago.

He said the apparent kidnappers had contacted relatives on Thursday and told them the body was in the eastern part of town. Relatives and authorities went to the location and found the body, which had gunshot wounds.

However, the Catholic news agency in Italy, SIR, quoted Msgr. Shlemon Warduni in Baghdad as saying the abductors told church authorities that "Msgr. Rahho was very ill."

"We do not know yet whether he died because of his unstable health or if he has been killed. The abductors only told us he had died," Warduni said.

Christians are a tiny fraction of Iraq's population, but insurgents have targeted their religious sites and leaders in recent years.

Background here. This is another reminder of the barbarity of the Islamist insurgents in Iraq.

הוה שלם

AN ANCIENT JEWISH AMULET IN AUSTRIA?

Shema amulet unearthed in Austria

Published: 03/13/2008 (JTA Breaking News)

University of Vienna archeologists unearthed an amulet in a third century grave bearing the Shema prayer.

The find in eastern Austria represents the earliest sign of Jewish inhabitants in present-day Austria, the university said in a news release.

The silver amulet contains a gold scroll on which the words of the Shema are inscribed in Greek.

The grave of the child is one of about 300 graves in an ancient Roman cemetery discovered in 1986 near the town of Halbturn. The Jewish amulet was identified in 2006 and will go on public display next month in the Burgenland State Museum in Eisenstadt.

I'm surprised to hear of a Jewish inscription in Austria this early, but Western European Jewish epigraphy is not my specialty. Still, I would not rule out the possibility that this is a Christian amulet or even pagan amulet using the Shema with a magical force. I would be more confident of Jewish origin if the inscription were in Hebrew rather than Greek. It may be, though, that the archaeological context provides more information.

UPDATE: The Science Blog has a long post with more information. Excerpts:

Archaeologists from the Institute of Prehistory and Early History of the University of Vienna have found an amulet inscribed with a Jewish prayer in a Roman child's grave dating back to the 3rd century CE at a burial ground in the Austrian town of Halbturn. The 2.2-centimeter-long gold scroll represents the earliest sign of Jewish inhabitants in present-day Austria.

This amulet shows that people of Jewish faith lived in what is today Austria since the Roman Empire. Up to now, the earliest evidence of a Jewish presence within the borders of Austria has been letters from the 9th century CE. In the areas of the Roman province of Pannonia that are now part of Hungary, Croatia and Serbia, gravestones and small finds attest to Jewish inhabitants even in antiquity. Jews have been settling in all parts of the ancient world at the latest since the 3rd century BCE. Particularly following the second Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire, the victorious Romans sold large numbers of Jews as slaves to all corners of the empire. This, coupled with voluntary migration, is how Jews also might have come to present-day Austria.

[...]

THE INSCRIPTION ON THE AMULET IS A JEWISH PRAYER
Suma Istrahl adwne elwh adwn a
Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

GREEK SCRIPT, HEBREW LANGUAGE
Greek is common with amulet inscriptions, although Latin and Hebrew and amulet inscriptions are known. In this case, the scribe's hand is definitely familiar with Greek. However, the inscription is Greek in appearance only, for the text itself is nothing other than a Greek transcription of the common Jewish prayer from the Old Testament (Deuteronomy, 6:4): "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one."

[...]

So it's Hebrew transliterated (badly) into Greek letters. But that does not allay my suspicion. The pagan Greek magical papyri sometimes use transliterated Hebrew as part of the spell. See, for example, "BAROUCH ADONAI ELOAI ABRAAM" ("Blessed be the Lord, the God of Abraham") in PGM V.480-85. And would a Jew write Israel as "Istrael? I doubt it. In fact, Istrael is found in PGM XXXVI around line 310 as a magic word in a love spell. One could argue that this spell in PGM XXXVI is Jewish too, but one soon gets tied up in knots trying to figure out what Jewish magicians might or might not write in their spells. I'm keeping an open mind about the origin of the Austrian amulet until I hear more convincing information one way or another.

NETS IS AVAILABLE. Cool.

UPDATE: Gee, there's another one!

MORE INSCRIBED MATERIALS from the Jerusalem excavations. This from an IAA press release:

This is actually the first time in the history of the archaeological research of Jerusalem that building remains from the First Temple period were exposed so close to the Temple Mount – on the eastern slopes of the Upper City. The walls of the buildings are preserved to a height of more than 2 meters.

Another impressive artifact that was found in the salvage excavations is a personal Hebrew seal made of a semi-precious stone that was apparently inlaid in a ring. The scarab-like seal is elliptical and measures c. 1.1 cm x 1.4 cm. The surface of the seal is divided into three strips separated by a double line: in the upper strip is a chain decoration in which there are four pomegranates and in the two bottom strips is the name of the owner of the seal, engraved in ancient Hebrew script. It reads: לנתניהו בן יאש ([belonging] to Netanyahu ben Yaush).

The two names are known in the treasury of biblical names: the name נתניהו (Netanyahu) is mentioned a number of times in the Bible (in the Book of Jeremiah and in Chronicles) and the name יאש (Yaush) appears in the Lachish letters. The name Yaush, like the name יאשיהו (Yoshiyahu) is, in the opinion of Professor Shmuel Ahituv, derived from the root או"ש which means “he gave a present” (based on Arabic and Ugaritic). It is customary to assume that the owners of personal seals were people that held senior governmental positions.

It should nevertheless be emphasized that this combination of names - נתניהו בן יאוש (Netanyahu ben Yaush) – was unknown until now.

In addition to the personal seal, a vast amount of pottery vessels was discovered, among them three jar handles that bear LMLK stamped impressions. An inscription written in ancient Hebrew script is preserved on one these impressions and it reads: למלך חברון ([belonging] to the king of Hebron).

(Via Yitzak Sapir on the Canaanite list.)

MORE ON THE IRAQI JEWISH ARCHIVE, about which we have heard little in the last two and a half years. This article gives some addition details about the early moves to preserve the texts and says a little about their current status.

Curator ferried damaged relics from Baghdad


Peggy Lim, Staff Writer [Charlotte News & Observer]
RALEIGH - During her 10-month deployment to Baghdad in 2003, Army Reserve Maj. Cori Wegener helped repair the recently looted Iraq National Museum, clean artifacts fetched from cesspools and rescue Jewish-Iraqi archives soaked from flooded basements.

It was the challenge of preventing wet books from growing mold in 120- degree weather that has pushed her to provide more military training on protecting cultural artifacts. She addressed the topic Sunday before about 265 people at the N.C. Museum of Art.

John Coffey, curator of the museum's Judaica gallery, said he had originally planned on asking Wegener to speak about the Judaic collection she curates at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. But after talking with her, Coffey thought her Baghdad experiences would make a more interesting topic for the North Carolina museum's ninth annual Kanof lecture.

Wegener said Iraq has not been like previous wars. In World War II, a team of about 300 Americans and Europeans, trained as art historians, architects and archaeologists, mapped monuments to protect them from bombing and repatriated pieces Hitler's army had pillaged.

Wegener, who retired from the reserves in 2005, said she stayed with the military for 21 years because she provided skills the Army normally would not have. When she watched the looting of the Iraq National Museum on CNN in April 2003, Wegener was confident she was the only arts curator in the U.S. Army.

"Why aren't they calling me?" she remembers thinking. Soon, they were.

Among Wegener's early assignments in Baghdad was assisting Ambassador Paul Bremer's team with saving Hebrew and Arabic texts, dating from the 16th century to 1950s, found in the flooded basement of an Iraqi secret police building that the United States had bombed.

Until the 1940s, Iraq had a large Jewish community, as much as 20 percent of the population around Baghdad, Wegener said. After a series of pogroms, most Jews fled. But the secret police held onto its collection of Israeli-Palestinian documents.

Before Wegener was called in, members of Bremer's team spread the wet items out to dry. But the documents started to grow mold. Wegener knew that to stop the destruction, they needed to be frozen immediately.

She got a freezer truck from Jordan to store the documents. But the truck barely stayed below freezing, and the documents needed to be below 20 degrees, she said. Finally, Wegener got permission to fly the documents to the United States.

"I felt torn, because that's one of the principles of international law," she said. "Don't remove cultural property."

But she knew if she didn't act, the documents would be lost.

On the way to America, she encountered a delay on the tarmac in Spain. She called the Pentagon to request a new flight crew. Then, she ran into a local officer.

"What you got in that box, ma'am, human hearts?" the Navy lieutenant asked.

"It's none of your business ... , lieutenant," answered a famished and exhausted Wegener, pulling her senior rank.

But then Wegener noticed the yarmulke the lieutenant was wearing and changed her tone.

"What I have is what's left of the cultural heritage of the Jewish people of Iraq," she said.

In a heartbeat, the lieutenant asked how he could help.

"I need a Spanish electrician to hook up a Kuwaiti generator," she replied. "And a hamburger."

[...]

The Jewish-Iraqi artifacts are at the National Archives in College Park, Md. The mold stopped growing after being freeze-dried for 30 days. But money for mold removal has been hard to come by, she said, as questions remain of who will ultimately own the artifacts.

[...]

Background here, here, and here.

(Via Chuck Jones on the IraqCrisis list.)

IN PRAISE OF MYRRH:

Myrrh: Nature's Ancient Anti-Inflammatory Agent

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 March 2008, 03:00 CDT [Red Orbit]

It's been used in the Middle East for thousands of years to treat infected wounds and bronchial complaints. In Mesopotamia and the Greek and Roman worlds, this powerful herb was considered a panacea for many human ailments-from lesions of the mouth to hemorrhoids. The Chinese even put it to work in treating psychiatric afflictions. MYRRH boasts a long history in Indian medicine for the treatment of mouth ulcers, gingivitis, throat infections, inflammation of the mouth, and respiratory catarrh. It's topically applied to ulcers and may be used as a mouthwash or gargle. In East Africa, it serves as an anti-inflammatory and antirheumatic agent.

High Trade Value

In ancient times, the Egyptians imported great quantities of myrrh from Palestine. Because of its unique aromatic fragrance, it was highly valued as a trade commodity. The Ishmaelite travelers who purchased Joseph from his meanspirited brothers were journeying to Egypt with camels loaded with spices, balm, and myrrh (Genesis 37:25). It was believed that the Queen of Sheba brought great quantities of the herb and other spices from Yemen as gifts for King Solomon. The long-heralded "balm of Gilead" is a member of the myrrh family, known far and wide as a healing agent for wounds.

When the sons of Jacob returned to him with the request from Joseph to bring Benjamin to Egypt the old patriarch sent products from the land of Palestine in an attempt to appease the prime minister. The shipment included myrrh, along with almonds, pistachio nuts, honey, and spices (Genesis 43:11).

Precious Perfume

Myrrh was commonly used as perfume in the Middle East. In ancient Persia, when King Ahasuerus set about choosing a new queen to replace Vashti, the eligible girls had to complete 12 months of beauty treatments, including a six-month cosmetic regimen with the oil of myrrh (Esther 2:12). That oil is still used today during massage treatments.

The herb was one of the ingredients of the anointing oil used in the Jewish tabernacle and served as incense in religious rituals centered on ancient gods. It was proved effective as a fiimigant for homes and temples of the Old Testament.

But it is Christ's life with which myrrh is most famously connected. The magi who visited Mary and Joseph at the birth of Jesus brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (Matthew 2:11). That gift hinted at the future awaiting the tiny baby in the manger. Myrrh was commonly used as an embalming agent by Egyptians and others in the ancient world. After Jesus was crucified, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took His body and prepared it for burial using 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes (John 19:39).

[...]

I'm currently working on a translation (for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project) of the Talmudic-era compendium of magic spells called Sefer ha-Razim (The Book of the Mysteries). I've noticed that both myrrh and frankincense are frequently used as ingredients for the materia magica.

MADONNA reportedly quoted from the Talmud during her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a couple of days ago:

"It is a great honor to receive this award, and I'm grateful and appreciate for the acknowledgement that this implies," said Madonna, who thanked many of the Sire executives (Seymour Stein, Michael Rosenblatt, Liz Rosenberg) who helped get her career off the ground, and also quoted the Talmud during her acceptance speech.

This is mentioned in a number of stories on the event, but none of them say what the quote actually was.

UPDATE: Søren Holst points me to Bangkok Jungle, which has the quote:

In her acceptance speech, Madonna reads a saying from the Talmud: “There’s a saying in the Talmud that for every blade of glass there’s an angel that watches over it and whispers grow, grow. And I could still hear those angels whispering. And even the naysayers, the ones that said I was talentless, that I was chubby, that I couldn’t sing, that I was a one hit wonder, they helped me too.”

Søren adds "I seem to remember Bill Clinton using that in a speech, too." Can anyone identify the quote? Is it really in the Talmud?

UPDATE: Manuscript Boy (from Hagahot) e-mails:

Not the Talmud but Genesis Rabba (10). Not whispers but beatings. Other than that, it's pretty close.
א"ר סימון אין לך כל עשב ועשב ברקיע שאין לו מזל ברקיע שמכה אותו ואומר לו גדל

Neusner's translation: "Said R. Simon, 'There is not a single herb whch is not subject to the influence of a planet in heaven, which smites it and says to it, "Grow!"' ..." (Gen. Rab. 10.6)

UPDATE: James Darlack has found a similar passage in the Zohar.

KIDNAPPED CHALDEAN ARCHBISHOP UPDATE: Muslim Leaders Launch Appeal for Iraqi Archbishop's Release

I hope they get somewhere.

Background here.

EPIGRAPHY AND TECHNOLOGY SYMPOSIUM:

From: "Steven Fine"
Subject: "Puzzling Out the Past: New Technologies Reveal Ancient Jewish Inscriptions" : Mini-Symposium at YU
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 6:22 PM

The Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies & The YU Rabbi Arthur Schneier Center for International Relations invite you to a mini-symposium:

"Puzzling Out the Past:
New Technologies Reveal Ancient Jewish Inscriptions"

Speakers: Professor Bruce Zuckerman (University of Southern California),

Pinchas Roth and Eytan Zadoff
(YU Schneier Center Graduate Fellows)

March 13, 2008, 2:45-3:45, Belfer Hall 12th Floor

Bruce Zuckerman has revolutionized the study of ancient writings through the application of the newest technologies to their interpretation and study. Professor Zuckerman has provided new and important readings for such texts as the Elephantine Papyri, Ketef Hinom amulet and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

As a part of their graduate studies in Jewish History at the Revel Graduate School, Eytan Zadoff and Pinchas Roth have applied Prof. Zuckerman's methods to the interpretation of a 5th-6th century Jewish Aramaic amulet that had never before been read, revealing a text of great significance for the history of Jewish magic.

Epigraphy, technology, and ancient magic! I really wish I could make it to this one. (There's more on Bruce Zuckerman here.)

(From the H-Judaic list.)

RICHARD ELLIOTT FRIEDMAN will be giving a lecture at UNC Greensboro about what life was like in the prelapsarian Garden of Eden:

‘Life Before the Fall’ Focus of Levinson Lecture April 13

By Michelle Hines, University Relations

Contact: (336) 334-5371

Posted 3-10-08

GREENSBORO, NC – Ever wonder about life before Eve gave in to her craving for forbidden fruit?

Biblical scholar Dr. Richard Friedman will discuss “Before the Apple: What Was Life Like Before the Events in Eden?” Sunday, April 13, at UNCG.

Friedman, who is professor emeritus of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California at San Diego, will speak at 7:30 p.m. in the Elliott University Center Auditorium. His presentation will mark the 8th in UNCG’s annual Henry Samuel Levinson Lecture Series.

[...]

I wish I could attend.

THE MOSES-ON-DRUGS THEORY of Professor Benny Shannon gets coverage in the Jerusalem Post:

HU research: Revelation at Sinai was 'mind-blowing'
By DAVID BRINN

"What a long, strange trip it's been" may be known as a catchphrase conjured up by The Grateful Dead to describe their mind-expanding experience with psychedelic drugs in the 1960s. But a Hebrew University professor of psychology claims that it may also be an appropriate title for the journey experienced by Moses and the Israelites when they wandered in the desert for 40 years.
[After such a long dispersion...]

After such a long dispersion around the world, why are the Jews so radically divided? Kevin Galder, Jacksonvilled, Florida.

Writing in the British scholarly journal Time and Mind, Prof. Benny Shanon claims that Moses and the children of Israel were likely under the influence of natural psychedelics found in the Sinai Desert when cataclysmic events like the receiving of the Ten Commandments took place.

He writes that two naturally existing plants in Sinai have the same psychoactive components as one of the most powerful psychedelic substances in existence, the Amazonian brew Ayahuasca.

[...]

I've already commented here. And Deane at the Merkavah Vision blog has an extended critique.

UPDATE: Thaddeus Nelson has a review and critique at the Archeoporn blog. (Via Alun at the Archaeoastronomy blog.)

MARK GOODACRE is interviewed in Inspire Magazine about his work on the BBC'S The Passion. Excerpt:

Mark was asked by producer Nigel Stafford-Clark to draw up a historical background on the story in advance of the production. As Frank Deasy's script took shape and filming began he remained on hand to deliver expert advice when needed.

Mark argues that the drama couldn't be taken literally from the Gospels.

"If you try to stick too strictly to the Gospels you sacrifice drama. So I tried not to be a scholarly nerd. Otherwise you end up with a wooden, literalistic interpretation, not drama," he says.

Instead he directed the production to a wide range of sources, including Josephus, the Jewish historian who lived in the first century AD.

The aspects that Mark was most keen to see presented in a new light were the portrayals of Pilate, Mary Magdalene and, in particular, the High Priest Caiaphas.

REFLECTIONS ON TEACHING GNOSTICISM IV: The Gospel of Thomas has been posted on Apocryphicity by Tony Chartrand-Burke.

SO FAR SO GOOD. The new Indiana Jones trailer is a hit, in no small part thanks to the Intenet:

Trailer for upcoming 'Indiana Jones' film a smash hit with audiences in theaters and online

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Times sure have changed in the 19 years since Harrison Ford last donned the signature fedora of thrill-seeking archaeologist Indiana Jones. The viral spread of the trailer for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is proof of that.

The trailer for the May 22 release has drawn highly enthusiastic responses in theaters. But it may have had its biggest impact online, on a younger audience that may not think of Ford, 65, as equal to today's spry action heroes.

After premiering Feb. 14 on "Good Morning America," Lucasfilm and Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures sent the trailer to the Web, plus movie theaters and TV stations around the world. Paramount estimates the trailer was seen more than 200 million times worldwide in the first week alone.

Harry Knowles, who runs the movie fan site AintItCool.com (his official title is Head Geek), says he first saw a bootleg version of the trailer online, then the official version online, and then saw it twice in theaters.

There were cheers in the theater when the familiar theme song kicked in, Knowles said, and comments on his Web site have been positive. "People generally really, really loved the trailer," he said.

I've linked to the trailer here.

NUBIAN ANTIQUITIES are at risk in the Sudan, as are modern Nubians:

Nubia at Risk as the Next Sudanese Tragedy

Contact: Loralei Coyle, 202-682-4131, 202-905-6852 cell, lcoyle@TheIRD.org; Radio Interviews: Jeff Walton, jwalton@TheIRD.org; both with The Institute on Religion and Democracy

WASHINGTON, March 6 /Christian Newswire/ -- An ancient civilization that has survived the tumult of history could fall prey to rising floodwaters if the National Islamic Front regime if the Sudan has its way. Construction has been completed on the Chinese-built Merowe dam, scheduled to begin submersion of the region later this year. The newly dammed river will displace hundreds of thousands of Nubians and drown ancient sites, home to unexcavated historical treasures and monuments from the time of the Pharaohs and the ancient Christian and Jewish communities of Kush.

The Nubians have long been oppressed by the Khartoum government, which has banned them from teaching their children in their native language as part of an aggressive Arabization project and now seeks to use the dam as a tool to disperse the ancient community.

[...]

MORE ON TUDOR PARFITT'S ARK OF THE COVENANT, including a picture:

The man who says he has the lost Ark
07/03/2008 (Jewish Chronicle)
By Simon Rocker
In the Bible, it could be seen only by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies. Anyone who lay an unauthorised finger upon it would instantly drop dead. It was the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, where it vapourised its Nazi captors.

Now a British academic believes he has unravelled the mystery behind one of antiquity’s most sought-after objects — the lost Ark of King Solomon’s Temple.

Tudor Parfitt, professor of Hebrew at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, has located an object he believes could be the successor to the original Ark.

[...]

And so on. (Background here.) But I haven't seen this before:

But Professor Parfitt believes that the biblical Ark was not quite what it appears. It was a drum-like object which doubled as a primitive cannon, releasing a kind of early, perhaps saltpetre-based explosive. “The Ark did blast things,” he said. “It was a kind of weapon, it is obvious from the text.”

There is no basis for this in the biblical texts about the Ark. I remain unconvinced.

ANNE RICE has published a new Jesus book. Chapter one is available online.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Settlers dig tunnels around Jerusalem

James Hider in Jerusalem (London Times)

Jewish settler groups are digging an extensive tunnel network under Muslim areas of Jerusalem's Old City while building a ring of settlements around it to bolster their claim to the disputed city in any future peace deal, anti-settlement campaigners have told The Times.

One group, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, said that settler tunnels could one day extend under the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, and claimed that extremists could use the access route to attack the structure in an attempt to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. Settler groups flatly deny such allegations.

[...]

Arutz Sheva has more:

New Tunnel Expands Jewish Quarter of Old City

by Ezra HaLevi

(IsraelNN.com) Israel is opening a 25-meter long tunnel that will connect the Western Wall Tunnels with an ancient restored synagogue in the so-called Muslim Quarter, uniting the Old City.

Channel 2 television was brought on an exclusive tour of the new network of tunnels, which was broadcast during Wednesday’s 8 o’clock news. (click here to view the report - in Hebrew)

The tunnel will lead from the Western Wall plaza to the Ohel Yitzchak synagogue, which is being reconstructed and rehabilitated by the Moskowitz Foundation, headed by Land of Israel philanthropist Irving Moskowitz.

[...]

Also, I'm not sure if the following is related to yesterday's story:

Police detain three Arabs over illicit work on Temple Mount
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

Jerusalem police on Wednesday detained two Arab Israeli members of the Islamic Movement for carrying out unauthorized construction work on the Temple Mount, police said.

The two men were taken in for questioning after trying to carry out "surfacing work" in an unauthorized area of the holy site for the second straight day, Jerusalem Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

A third Arab Israeli suspect was detained for trying to create a disturbance at the site.

[...]

HIGH ON MOUNT SINAI?

Researcher: Moses was tripping at Mount Sinai
By Ofri Ilani (Haaretz)

"And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking." Thus the book of Exodus describes the impressive moment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

The "perceiving of the voices" has been interpreted endlessly since these words were first written. When Professor Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reads the verse, he recalls a powerful hallucinatory experience he had when he visited the Amazon and drank a potion made from a plant called ayahuasca.

"One of the things that happens when you drink the potion is a visual experience created via sounds," he says.

Shanon presents a provocative theory in an article published this week in the philosophy journal Time and Mind. The religious ceremonies of the Israelites included the use of psychotropic materials that can found in the Negev and Sinai, he says. "I have no direct proof of this interpretation," and such proof cannot be expected, he says. However, "it seems logical that something was altered in people's consciousness. There are other stories in the Bible that mention the use of plants: for example, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden."

[...]

I have argued elsewhere (see here, here, and here) that Jewish intermediaries in the second temple and rabbinic periods generated visions and spirit encounters for themselves using shamanistic ritual techniques. It's not unlikely that they were doing this at at earlier time as well. That said, I have never found any evidence that they used psychotropic drugs and it is pure speculation to say that they did.

UPDATE (6 March): This from an Israeli chatroom, via the Guardian:

One poster writes: "Maybe it is true - then religion really is the opiate of the people."

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Police stop Islamic work on Temple Mt.
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

Police on Tuesday stopped Wakf Muslim trust officials from performing unauthorized construction work on the Temple Mount.

Officers blocked workers from continuing unauthorized "surfacing word," said Jerusalem police chief Cmdr. Aharon Franco. "It is our duty to ensure that the status quo is maintained on the Temple Mount."

He said Wakf officials had planned to carry out the work as a result of the tensions in east Jerusalem over the recent violence in the Gaza Strip and that the unusual police intervention sparked opposition on the holy site.

[...]

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL XXVII has been published by Kevin A. Wilson at Blue Cord.

EVA ETZIONI-HALEVY is interviewed in the Albany Herald about her novels on biblical women:

Reviving biblical heroines
Israeli author brings biblical women to the forefront with her fictional novels.
ASHLEY HINDSMAN ashley.hindsman@.at.albanyherald.com

TEL AVIV, Israel — When mystery, romance and suspense book lovers are looking for a page-turner, they usually look for the names they know.

James Patterson. Terry McMillan. Nora Roberts.

But for three-time author Eva Etzioni-Halevy, all of the elements that make for a good read are in the best-selling book of all time — the Bible.

“I was searching for my roots in the Bible and when I read the Bible I found it very fascinating,” Etzioni-Halevy said in a phone interview from her Israel home.

Etzioni-Halevy, a Jewish retired professor emeritus of political sociology at Var-Ilan University in Israel and child Holocaust survivor, said when she decided to trace her heritage in the Bible, she didn’t expect to it to be as entertaining as it was enlightening.

“The people described in the Bible are so similar to us,” she said. “They lived thousands of years ago, yet they’re so similar to us in their desires and hopes. They are not described as angels. They all had strengths and weaknesses, many of which stem from their personality.

“The Bible is a divine book and also a very human book,” she said. “If everyone in the Bible were described as innocent, I would have put it down.”

She said she was especially intrigued by the women of the Bible for their various acts of bravery and leadership, though they are not as spotlighted in the Bible as their male counterparts.

With this in mind, Etzioni-Halevy said she took her rekindled religion and decided to give the heroines of the Bible her own version of the spotlight that she felt they deserved.

“Five years ago I decided to switch over to writing biblical novels,” she said. “This is a completely new chapter of my life which I never dreamed of doing before.”

Her first novel, “The Song of Hannah,” was released in 2005. Then came “The Garden of Ruth” in 2006 and her latest installment, “The Triumph of Deborah,” released late last month.

[...]

IN THE MAIL, from the author:

Ian C. Werrett, Ritual Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 72; Leiden: Brill, 2007)

This is a revised version of the doctoral thesis Ian wrote under my supervision.

NEWS IS SCARCE about developments around the kidnapping of the Chaldean archbishop in Iraq, but here's what I can come up with.

From an APF article on Saturday:

The Syriac Christian archbishop of Mosul, Baptiste Georges Casmoussa, himself a kidnap victim two years ago, said he had begun negotiating with the kidnappers for his Chaldean counterpart's release.

"We received a telephone call from the kidnappers and have begun negotiations for the release of Monsignor Farraj Rahhu," the Rome-based missionary news agency MISNA reported Casmoussa as saying.

Casmoussa was himself kidnapped in January 2005 and held for a day before being released.

And from an AP article on the recent demise of an al-Qaeda-Iraq leader:

It remains unclear if al-Qaida was responsible for Friday's kidnapping of Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho and the killing of three people who were with him.

[U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Gregory] Smith said that Iraqi and U.S. forces were searching for those who abducted the cleric as he left Mass in the northern city of Mosul. The European Union also appealed for his release and condemned the kidnapping in an announcement.

Background here.

STOLPER'S LAW - important philological principles for the decipherment of Akkadian:

Professor Stolper also has a healthy mythology surrounding him at the Oriental Institute. He is widely credited with the invention of "Stolper's Law," which stipulates that, when translating Akkadian, an unknown adjective is likely to mean "pure," and an unknown verb probably means "destroy."

(From the Matthew Stolper Wikipedia entry, via the Agade list.)

CHALDO-ASSYRIAN WATCH: Bad news from Iraq.

Iraqi Chaldean archbishop seized (BBC)

Gunmen have kidnapped the archbishop of the Chaldean Catholic Church in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and killed three of his aides, his church says.

Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was seized as he left a church in the eastern al-Nour district, it added.

Pope Benedict XVI deplored the kidnapping as a "despicable" crime.

Most of Iraq's estimated 700,000 Christians are Chaldeans - Catholics who are autonomous from Rome but recognise the Pope's authority.

[...

Originally made up of members of the Nestorian Church, the traditional liturgical language of the Chaldean church is Syriac - a descendent of Aramaic, which is thought to have been spoken by Jesus and his disciples.

[...]

Barbaric. We pray for his safe return.

The BBC has more on the Chaldeans in Who are the Chaldean Christians?

A DEAD SEA SCROLLS SYMPOSIUM in Palmyra, NY:

Dead Sea Scrolls myths unfurled
scrolls

GateHouse News Service (Wellsville Daily Reporter)
Fri Feb 29, 2008, 12:50 PM EST

Dead Sea Scrolls scholars, wanting to separate Hollywood movie fiction from fact, are holding a symposium at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Palmyra Stake Center.

“One of the things that most Dead Sea scholars realize is that we have an obligation to get out what the Dead Sea Scrolls really are,” said Dr. Lawrence Schiffman, chairman of New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. “There is so much misinformation out there. When there is an opportunity to educate a lot of people, you have to do that.”

[...]

The original documents are housed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. Facsimiles of the scrolls, painstakingly reproduced to look like genuine leather, are currently on display at the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center at 603 Route 21 in Manchester until the end of March.

Joining Schiffman is his long-time friend and colleague Dr. Donald Parry, professor of Hebrew Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls at Brigham Young University. Parry is also a member of the International Team of Translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Both men have spent more than 20 years dedicated to the preservation, translation and research of the scrolls.

The two will be conducting tours of a traveling exhibit of scroll facsimiles at the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center, as well as giving evening lectures on various aspects of the scrolls in the evenings at the Palmyra Stake Center at 2801 Temple Road.

[...]

LUKE THE EVANGELIST'S BODY?

MARK GOODACRE is mixed up with the BBC Jesus movie. Good for him (and them!) and why am I not surprised? He's been blogging on it. for some time and went to the premiere yesterday.

CIVILIZED, OR WHAT? Here I am at a School retreat in a Georgian mansion in the woods in Edzell -- and it has Wifi! We live in an age of wonders.

I'M AWAY THIS WEEKEND and am not likely to have Internet access on Saturday. Look for me again late on Sunday.

THE STORY OF THE LATEST INSCRIBED SEAL FROM JERUSALEM is taken up by the Jerusalem Post and Arutz Sheva.

THE LOST ARK OF THE COVENANT, by Tudor Parfitt, is excerpted by MSNBC. Here's an excerpt of the excerpt:

This was the gist of the document he held in his hand: Muhammad swears in the letter that it was the Jews of Medina and the other oasis towns of Arabia who had always come to his aid in his many battles against the heathen tribes of the desert. The Jews were even ready to desecrate their holy Sabbath to help him. They never left his side. They never betrayed him. During a single bloody campaign, the Jews killed over 20,000 heathen enemies of the Prophet: 7,000 knights, 7,000 regular horsemen, and 7,000 foot soldiers.

“This is what the Prophet actually promised the Jews,” declared Reuven reverently, raising one finger for emphasis. “Not centuries of contempt and persecution!” “Just listen.” He put on a pair of reading glasses, scrutinized the document, and read aloud. “‘O men of the Children of the lost ark of the covenant Israel, by Allah I shall reward you for this … I shall grant you my protection, my covenant, my oath and my witness for as long as I live and as long as my community shall live after me, until they see my face upon the Day of Resurrection.’ “Did you hear that?” he asked, his voice suddenly shrill, thrusting the document in my face and revealing an immaculately laundered cuff. “If the Muslim world knew about this, they would change their attitude to Israel overnight! There’d be no more Arab–Israel wars! No more terrorist attacks!”

Unfortunately, there was more to the letter than met the eye. It was probably quite old, I could see that.

The body of the text was in Arabic and there was a short introduction in Hebrew.

I knew something about Hebrew palaeography—the study of the form of ancient writing—and I could see this was a medieval Hebrew Yemenite script.

This much was genuine. Then I recalled that once in the Yemen I had seen an almost identical document in the home of an antiquarian in Sana’a, the capital of the Yemen. It was called Dhimmat al-Nabi (The Protection of the Prophet) and was an ancient Jewish fabrication, an old forgery, which the Yemenite Jews had created to counter the animosity of their Muslim neighbors. There was no Jewish community in the Muslim world quite as wretched and persecuted as the Jews of the Yemen. They needed all the help they could get. However, this document would not persuade many Muslim scholars to turn their received opinions upside down. It would not change the world. “It’s a shame,” I said, “but it is a forgery. A very old forgery.” A yellow hamseen wind was blowing in from the desert. It was stiflingly hot. Reuven’s face fell when I gave him my assessment of his document, and he grew silent. He just sat there grimacing, rubbing the side of his head where he had been grazed by an Egyptian bullet in the last of his wars.

Background here.

NEW BOOK:

Paul Magdalino, Maria Mavroudi, The Occult Sciences in Byzantium (la pomme d'or, 2008)

This volume represents the first attempt to examine occult sciences as a distinct category of Byzantine intellectual culture. It is concerned with both the reality and the image of the occult sciences in Byzantium, and seeks, above all, to represent them in their social and cultural context as a historical phenomenon.
The eleven essays demonstrate that Byzantium was not marginal to the scientific culture of the Middle Ages, and that the occult sciences were not marginal to the learned culture of the medieval Byzantine world.

Contents:

Paul Magdalino, Maria Mavroudi, Introduction.

Maria Mavroudi, Occult Sciences and Society in Byzantium: Considerations for Future Research.

Katerina Ierodiakonou, The Byzantine Concept of Sympatheia and its Appropriation in Michael Psellos.

Paul Magdalino, Occult Sciences and Imperial Power in Byzantine History and Historiography.

Maria Papathanassiou, Stephanos of Alexandria: a Famous Byzantine Scolar, Alchemist and Astrologer.

Michèle Mertens, Graeco-Egyptian Alchemy in Byzantium.

David Pingree, The Byzantine Translations of Masha’alla’s Works in Interrogational Astrology.

William Adler, Did the Biblical Patriarch Practice Astrology? Michael Glykas and Manuel Komnenos I on Seth and Abraham.

Anne Tihon, Astrological Promenade in Byzantium in the Early Palaiologan Period;

Joshua Holo, Hebrew Astrology in Byzantine Southern Italy.

Charles Burnett, Late Antique and Medieval Latin Translations of Greek Texts on Astrology and Magic.

George Saliba, Revisiting the Astronomical Contacts between the World of Islam and Renaissance Europe: the Byzantine Connection.

A LECTURE ON WOMEN IN THE SYRIAC LITURGY:

Women’s Choirs in Late Antiquity Offered More Than Just Hymns, Scholar Says

Contact: Gina Vergel
(212) 636-7175
gvergel@fordham.edu

Though the voices of biblical women were rarely heard, they were prominent and significant, and used as a vehicle of teaching by the Church in late antique Syriac homilies and hymns, according to a scholar at the Orthodoxy in America lecture at Fordham University on Feb. 26.

"The hymns assigned to the women’s choirs in the middle of the fourth century were explicitly liturgical," Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Ph.D., a professor of religious studies at Brown University. "The church spoke through these women’s choirs."

In a lecture titled, "Women’s Voices Bearing Witness: Biblical Memories in Ancient Orthodox Liturgy," Ashbrook Harvey said Syriac writers, such as Ephrem Syrus, gave women, such as the Virgin Mary and Sarah, a rhetorical voice in the lyrics of Madrashes, stanzaic poems of different meters that dealt with doctrinal matters.

"These voices were often lacking in biblical narratives," Ashbrook Harvey said. "Ephrem’s Mary embraces her social sufferings as a form of power. She was a figure who embodied challenge … and whose voice is a teaching voice."

[...]

ANOTHER INSCRIBED SEAL from the City of David excavation:

Seals dating to the 8th Century BCE found at City of David excavations
27 Feb 2008 (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Finds recovered from the excavations in the City of David reveal an interesting development in the ancient world: whereas during the 9th century BCE letters and goods were dispatched on behalf of their senders without names, by the 8th century BCE the clerks and merchants had already begun to add their names to the seals.

In an excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority and the Elad Association in the City of David, in the National Park around the Old City Walls of Jerusalem, artifacts were found that include, among other things, a complete seal that bears the Hebrew name “Rephaihu (ben) Shalem” and fragments of bullae. The excavation directors are Professor Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

[...]

A CONFERENCE in honor of John Collins is to be held at Amherst College in April:

The Other in Second Temple Judaism: A Conference in Honor of John J. Collins, hosted by Amherst College on April 4th and 5th, 2008. Longtime colleagues and students of Professor Collins will explore a topic that embraces many of the issues and areas within biblical and hellenistic Jewish writings that Professor Collins has illuminated during his long and distinguished career.

(Via the Agade List.)

BRUCE CHILTON'S LATEST BOOK is reviewed in the Los Angeles Times:

'Abraham's Curse' by Bruce Chilton

Violence, a familiar strain in Judaism, Christianity and Islam
By Michael Harris, Special to The Times
February 26, 2008
Is there something uniquely bloodthirsty in the teachings of the Koran that has inspired a generational wave of Muslim suicide bombers and their supporters? These days a lot of people would like to know. Or is a justification for violent martyrdom to be found in any religion that relies on faith rather than reason -- and has claims to be the only true faith? A spate of atheist writers have recently made that argument. Or does the flaw lie not in our creeds but in our genes? Are human beings simply a violent species, compelled to slaughter our children over and over again?

Bruce Chilton, professor of religion at Bard College and rector of an Episcopal church in Barrytown, N.Y., describes in "Abraham's Curse" how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the murder of a young woman near his church by a deranged disciple of the Afro-Caribbean god Ogun made him ponder these questions with new urgency.

[...]

He focuses on the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac, a key episode for Jews, Christians and Muslims. Abraham obeys God's command to sacrifice his son on Mount Moriah, but at the last moment an angel stops him, saying Abraham has proved his faith and pointing out a more suitable sacrifice: a ram caught in a thicket. The true and original meaning of the story, Chilton insists, is that human sacrifice is not God's wish, but he shows how all three religions, in times of persecution, have twisted this meaning 180 degrees to glorify martyrdom.

[...]

THE BBC is trying its hand at a Jesus movie.

BOOK REVIEW:

April D. DeConick, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says (New York: Continuum, 2007). pp. xxi + 202. ISBN-10 HB: 0-8264-9964-3; ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-9964-6. $19.95.

In the spring of 2006 there was a great deal of media attention devoted to the publication by a team of specialists assembled by the National Geographic Society of a transcription and translation of the Coptic Gospel of Judas, a second-century apocryphal Gospel known to Irenaeus but lost until the present. More exciting still, the translation indicated that the Judas of the Gospel of Judas was not only good rather than evil, he was in fact the only disciple who understood the message of Jesus and it was at the behest of Jesus that Judas betrayed him in order to defeat the powers of darkness.

PaleoJudaica noted the existence of the Gospel of Judas and its impending publication in Jully of 2004, long before it came to the attention of the mainstream media. Then in early October of 2006, PaleoJudaica again broke the story that there was specialist doubt that the Gospel of Judas actually presented a good Judas rather than an evil one. So I am glad to have this opportunity to review one of the recent books on this controversy and I am grateful to Continuum for providing a copy for review on PaleoJudaica.

The Preface to the book under review explains how DeConick began to doubt the interpretation of the Gospel of Judas published by the National Geographic team and how, as it became clear to her that other specialists in Gnosticism and Coptic shared her doubts, she reluctantly found herself led to write this book.

Part One: An Unfamiliar Story
Chapter one, "The Silenced Voice," begins by laying out a few of DeConick's doubts about the National Geographic interpretation of the Gospel of Judas. Then it presents brief, user-friendly summaries of most of the various movements in the early church through the second century, including the Apostolic Church (the "proto-orthodox" movement ancestral, but not yet identical to what would later become "mainstream" Christianity); the Marcionite Church (which rejected the Old Testament and elements of the New as spurious); the Ebionite Church (a Jewish-Christian movement); the Church of New Prophecy (the Montanist movement, a charismatic reform movement that predicted that the second coming of Christ would happen the year 172 CE); and the Gnostics (the Valentinian, Basilidean, and Sethian movements that disagreed much among themselves but agreed that salvation came through esoteric "gnosis" or knowledge).

Chapter two, "A Gnostic Catechism," gives a user-friendly summary of the oldest Gnostic movement, the Sethians: their Platonic cosmology; the transformation of the biblical Angel of YHWH into the Platonic Demiurge or secondary creator god Yaldabaoth; the myth of the creation of this creator god by Sophia (the personified Wisdom of the True God) and the creator god's fall and creation of the material universe; and the theology of the redemption of the human divine spark through the defeat of Yaldabaoth by means of the death of Jesus, which released his divine and redemptive spirit and opened a route for the souls of the Gnostics to ascend out of the material realm.

Part Two: Translation Matters
Chapter three, "A Mistaken Gospel," presents a compendium of what DeConick regards as incorrect translations in the National Geographic translation of the Gospel of Judas, this embedded in a highly autobiographical account of her reactions as she discovered them.

Chapter four discusses the discovery of the manuscript (the tomb where the manuscript was found, the other contents of the Tchacos Codex, and the three other books found with the Tchacos Codex in a limestone box) and then presents a complete English translation of what remains of the 58 pages of the Coptic Gospel of Judas.

Part Three: Good Old Judas?
Chapter five, "Judas the Confessor," argues that the Gospel of Judas plays upon a reasonable, literal reading of the canonical Gospel of Mark, which reading presents the disciples of Jesus as faithless, hard-hearted, and repeatedly unable to get the point, and holds that it is the demons who understand the truth about Jesus. (In DeConick's view, Mark presents a polemic by the Jesus movement associated with the Apostle Paul against the Jesus movement associated with Jerusalem.) So Judas is a demon, not a Gnostic.

Chapter six, "Judas the Demon" presents DeConick's understanding of Judas in the Gospel of Judas. In order to grieve him, Jesus reveals to Judas that it is his destiny to rule over the thirteenth aeon (realm of the demonic ruler-angels or Archons), replacing or merging with Yaldabaoth; and over the twelve apostles, who double as the twelve aeons; and over the apostolic church. Nevertheless, all of these shall curse Judas. Since Gnostic baptism can save a person from that person's fate or destiny, it appears that Judas is understood never to have undergone Gnostic baptism.

Chapter seven, "Judas the Sacrificer," continues the exposition of the theology of the Gospel of Judas. In the Sethian drama and in the Gospel of Judas, Judas is a demonic figure who sacrifices Jesus, but thereby accidentally releases his spirit, which then defeats the Archons. This story is a critique of the weak point in the canonical Passion narratives, that the sacrifice of Jesus came about through Judas, who was explicitly demon possessed. The conclusion drawn by the Sethians is that Judas sacrificed Jesus to Yaldabaoth, which could hardly support the doctrine that the death of Jesus atoned for the sins of humanity. This new spin was of concern to proto-orthodox Christians and led the Church Father Origen to conclude that it was God who used Satan to possess Judas and bring about Jesus' death, but that Satan was outwitted by his resurrection, a position that preserved the theological viability of Jesus' atoning death. Despite their great theological differences, Origen and the Sethians would have agreed that the death of Jesus brought about victory over the dark powers.

Chapter eight, "An Ancient Gnostic Parody," briefly summarizes the narrative of the Gospel of Judas and then argues that this Gospel had a surprisingly modern message about questioning authority and thinking for oneself. It is profound that Origen and the Sethians both concluded that Jesus' spirit overcame death and by that victory defeated the Devil.

The Epilogue traces the evolution of Judas in Jesus movies and shows how from the 1960s to the 1980s the formerly evil figure of Judas became much more sympathetic. DeConick suggested that a similar impulse may have influenced the National Geographic team while they deciphered the Gospel of Judas. But ultimately the Judas of the Gospel of Judas is much more like the Judas of Dante than the Judas of The Last Temptation of Christ or the Judas of the National Geographic translation.

The book concludes with Appendices on: Further Reading; A Synopsis of Sethian Gnostic Literature; Testimony from the Church Fathers on the Gospel of Judas; and a Q&A with April DeConick on her interpretation of the Gospel of Judas.

This is a very useful introductory work on the Coptic Gospel of Judas. It vigorously advances the author's own views, but always puts them in the context of the scholarly debate so that the views of her opponents are clear as well. Some may find the highly autobiographical style a little irritating, but it must be kept in mind that this is a popular book, not a specialist monograph. The book offers clear explanations of the reasons for rejecting the view that the Gospel of Judas presented a Judas who was good, including detailed and commendably jargon-free discussions of the problematical passages and the philological issues, and these discussions require no knowledge of Coptic.

The debate about the meaning of the Gospel of Judas has naturally continued after the book was published (see the response of Marvin Meyer, member the National Geographic editorial team, here and DeConick's replies, beginning with this post, followed directly by seven more). Sethian Gnosticism and Coptic philology are not my areas of specialty, so I must decline to pronounce in favor of either DeConick or her opponents. But I can say that this book is an excellent entry into the Gospel of Judas for the nonspecialist, be it a scholar in a cognate discipline or an interested layperson.

MORE REFLECTIONS ON TEACHING GNOSTICISM from Tony Chartrand-Burke:

Reflections on Teaching Gnosticism II: The Gospel of Judas

Reflections on Gnosticism III: Valentinianism

Background here.

SYRIAC WATCH: A Symposium on Jacob of Sarug and His Times: Studies in Sixth Century Syriac Christianity is to be held at St. Mark's Cathedral in Teaneck, NJ on October 24-26, 2008. Follow the link for details and registration information.

THE ZIMBABWE "ARK OF THE COVENANT" gets coverage in the Daily Mail in an article that really plays up the Raiders of the Lost Ark angle:

The real Indiana Jones: Intrepid British don Tudor Parfitt's mission to find the Lord Ark
By ZOE BRENNAN - More by this author » Last updated at 19:14pm on 22nd February 2008

As he entered the sacred cave, a deafening roar filled the air. It was the dead of night in deepest Zimbabwe. The lone explorer reached for his gun, the beam of his torch wavering as he battled his nerves.

This was Dumghe mountain, the spiritual home of the mighty Lemba people. In this cave lay the secrets of their ancestors. A real-life Indiana Jones was determined to reach into its closely-guarded depths.

The renowned Welsh academic Tudor Parfitt had been told of a previous hapless researcher who had wandered too far down forbidden paths leading to this den of treasures. He had been brutally circumcised by the tribe. Village elders spoke of two-headed snakes which resided in the cave.

Tonight was Parfitt's opportunity to put ancient questions to rest once and for all.

He had left the Lemba drinking chibuku - home-brewed maize beer the consistency of porridge - at their chief's hut, their naked women ululating and dancing to encourage the gods to bring rain.

Later, they would collapse into an alcohol-induced slumber, leaving the cave momentarily unguarded. The treasures they hid were reputedly no ordinary tribal spoils of gold and riches. Legend had it that deep within the mountain lay the Ark of the Lost Covenant - the subject of the Steven Spielberg film Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

While conducting his research, Parfitt had found that the Lemba's stories told of a 'ngoma' - a wooden drum used to store sacred objects, which they claimed to have carried on poles from their homeland in Israel, where it had resided in "the great temple in Jerusalem". It had guided them on their long trek from Israel to Africa and was too sacred to be touched by their bare hands.

[...]

Background and comments here.

THE ENOCH SEMINAR has a new website. Cool.

EGYPTIAN BLOGGER Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman (Karim Amer) is (surprise, surprise) not being treated well in that Egyptian prison:

One year in prison for Egyptian blogger

2008-02-22 13:21:34

Amnesty International Press release
22 February 2008

One year ago, Egyptian blogger Karim Amer was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for the "crime" of publishing on the internet material critical of Islam and President Mubarak.

The then 23-year-old former al-Azhar University student was sentenced on 22 February 2007 and the Court of Appeal confirmed the sentence on 12 March of the same year. Amnesty International described the sentence as yet another slap in the face of freedom of expression in Egypt.

Amnesty International considers Karim Amer to be a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned on account of the peaceful expression of his views. The organisation condemned the four-year sentence he received and calls for his immediate and unconditional release.

Karim Amer, who is serving his prison sentence in Borg Al-Arab Prison, Alexandria, wrote in his letters to one of his legal counsels that he was beaten on 24 October 2007.

Karim Amer said he was punched and kicked by a prisoner and a prison guard under the supervision of a prison investigations officer. One of his teeth was broken and he was badly bruised. He was then taken to a disciplinary cell, hand-cuffed and his legs tied up and beaten again by the same two individuals on the orders of the prison investigations officer.

Karim Amer wrote that he was examined by the prison’s doctor, but there was no mention of his broken tooth in the medical report. He also said that he was not allowed to file a complaint about what happened.

After he was beaten, he was put in solitary confinement in a disciplinary cell until 2 November 2007. During this period, he was given only one meal and one bottle of water a day and not allowed to send letters. He was finally moved back to the prison section where he was initially detained on 7 November 2007 and held in an individual cell.

Amnesty International has also called for an investigation of Karim Amer’s ill-treatment in prison and for appropriate measures to be taken to ensure his safety and security.

Amnesty International has urged the Egyptian authorities to review or abolish all legislation that, in violation of international standards, stipulates prison sentences for the mere exercise of the rights of freedom of expression, thought, conscience and religion.

Karim Amer was first detained by the Egyptian authorities for twelve days in October 2005 because of his writings on his blog (karam903.blogspot.com) about Islam and the sectarian riots that took place in the same month in Alexandria's Moharram Bek district. These riots followed reports that the video of a play believed to be anti-Islamic was being screened in a Coptic church in the district.

In March 2006, disciplinary measures were taken against him by al-Azhar University and he was dismissed. The university's disciplinary board found him guilty of blaspheming Islam.

He was rearrested in Alexandria on 7 November 2006 following a complaint made against him by al-Azhar University. He remained in detention since then until his sentencing, following a series of extensions.

I'll say it again: barbaric.

BIBLICAL ULPAN:

The language of Moses
By DAVID SMITH [Jerusalem Post]

At first glance the ulpan at Kibbutz Tzova, about 20 minutes west of Jerusalem, may seem no different than any other. But within a couple of minutes of listening to the exchange between students and teachers, it becomes clear that there is something fishy about the Hebrew spoken here.

Welcome to the Biblical Ulpan, a framework that allows students to study biblical Hebrew in its original context. In place of the conventional grammar-driven approach to Hebrew study that often includes memorizing elusive rules and arcane verb charts, biblical Hebrew is the medium through which the language is taught here to Christian and Jewish students.

"Studying a text needs the 'code' [the language] and the culture, history and geography in order to be most fully understood," explains Randall Buth, who founded the ulpan 10 years ago.

[...]

Buth says some of the students try to speak biblical Hebrew in the street or in restaurants, evoking a smile or puzzled look from Israelis, though they are usually understood.

This would be something like coming up to someone in New York or London and speaking to them in Shakespearean English.

Often, he reports, Israelis affirm the effort. "At archeological sites it frequently happens that Israelis will walk by, hearing us read a biblical passage, explaining the passage and the geography in simple biblical Hebrew. Sometimes they are curious enough to stop and ask the teacher what they have just heard. They have never heard anything like it and are impressed to see foreigners take the time and discipline to delve into the ancient texts like this."

[...]

This is the first time I've heard of this program, but it sounds like a good concept. One quibble about the headline (for which, obviously, Randy is not responsible): the language being taught is hardly that of Moses, which would be more like Ugaritic. Biblical Hebrew is the upper-class Jerusalem dialect of the Hebrew of the late First-Temple and early postexilic periods, but overlaid with an early medieval pronuciation in the vowel-pointing of the Masoretes.

THE GOLEM TO BE SHOWN AT BROOKLYN COLLEGE:

Brooklyn College To Feature Classic Silent Film ‘Golem’
by Brooklyn Eagle (edit@brooklyneagle.net), published online 02-22-2008


BROOKLYN COLLEGE — Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College concludes its 2007-08 Arts in the Afternoon series with a screening of “The Golem” on Sunday, March 9 at 2 p.m. The film will be accompanied by a world premiere score, commissioned by Brooklyn Center as part of its newly launched New Work/New York initiative, which supports multidisciplinary artists in the creation of works that receive their New York and/or world premiere at Brooklyn Center.

Recognized by many as the source of the Frankenstein story, Paul Wegener’s 1920 landmark silent film “The Golem” draws from ancient Hebrew legend to tell the story of Jewish inhabitants in an Eastern European ghetto. Faced with persecution, the community’s rabbi forms a giant golem out of clay to serve as protectorate. Tom Nazziola’s original score for the film breathes new life into this classic piece of German cinematic expressionism. The afternoon will also feature a post-performance discussion with Nazziola.

[...]

For more on the film, see here.

UPDATE (24 February): Iyov notes another upcoming showing of the film, and also notes that it can be bought on Amazon.

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) in Zimbabwe?

A Lead on the Ark of the Covenant
Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008 By DAVID VAN BIEMA [Time Magazine]

When last we saw the lost Ark of the Covenant in action, it had been dug up by Indiana Jones in Egypt and ark-napped by Nazis, whom the Ark proceeded to incinerate amidst a tempest of terrifying apparitions. But according to Tudor Parfitt, a real life scholar-adventurer, Raiders of the Lost Ark had it wrong, and the Ark is actually nowhere near Egypt. In fact, Parfitt claims he has traced it (or a replacement container for the original Ark), to a dusty bottom shelf in a museum in Harare, Zimbabwe.

[...]

Parfitt, 63, is a professor at the University of London's prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies. His new book, The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500 Year Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark (HarperOne) along with a History Channel special scheduled for March 2 would appear to risk a fine academic reputation on what might be called a shaggy Ark story. But the professor has been right before, and his Ark fixation stems from his greatest coup. In the 1980s Parfitt lived with a Southern African clan called the Lemba, who claimed to be a lost tribe of Israel. Colleagues laughed at him for backing the claim; in 1999, a genetic marker specific to descendents of Judaism's Temple priests (cohens) was found to appear as frequently among the Lemba's priestly cast as in Jews named Cohen. The Lemba — and Parfitt — made global news.

Parfitt started wondering about another aspect of the Lemba's now-credible oral history: a drumlike object called the ngoma lungundu. The ngoma, according to the Lemba, was near-divine, used to store ritual objects, and borne on poles inserted into rings. It was too holy to touch the ground or to be touched by non-priests, and it emitted a "Fire of God" that killed enemies and, occasionally, Lemba. A Lemba elder told Parfitt, "[It] came from the temple in Jerusalem. We carried it down here through Africa."

[...]

Parfitt's final hunt for the ngoma, which dropped from sight in the 1940s, landed him in sometimes-hostile territory ("Bullets shattered the rear screen," of his car, he writes). Ark leads had guided him to Egypt, Ethiopia and even New Guinea, until one day last fall his clues led him to a storeroom of the Harare Museum of Human Science in Zimbabwe. There, amidst nesting mice, was an old drum with an uncharacteristic burnt-black bottom hole ("As if it had been used like a cannon," Parfitt notes), the remains of carrying rings on its corners; and a raised relief of crossed reeds that Parfitt thinks reflects an Old Testament detail. "I felt a shiver go down my spine," he writes.

Parfitt thinks that whatever the supernatural character of Ark, it was, like the ngoma, a combination of reliquary, drum and primitive weapon, fueled with a somewhat unpredictable proto-gunpowder. That would explain the unintentional conflagrations. The drum element is the biggest stretch, since scripture never straightforwardly describes the Ark that way. He bases his supposition on the Ark's frequent association with trumpets, and on aspects of a Bible passage where King David dances in its presence. Parfitt admits that such a multipurpose object would be "very bizarre" in either culture, but insists, "that's an argument for a connection between them."

[...]

I think the only connection that is at all likely is that this drum (carbon dated to 1350 CE) was made in the Middle Ages as an object of ritual power vaguely inspired by traditions (the Bible? oral traditions based on the Bible?) about the Ark of the Covenant. There is no evidence at all that the Ark of the Covenant was a drum and its description in the Bible would not allow for it being one.

Still, I suppose I should read his book, since the lost Temple treasures figure a good bit in my research right now. And I may have more news for you on that soon.

UPDATE: I noted the original story about the Lemba and their Cohen DNA here back in September of 2003.

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW has put the full text of it's current issue (March/April 2008) online. TOC:

Fit for a Queen: Jezebel's Royal Seal
Does the seal belong to the notorious wicked Phoenician queen Jezebel?
By Marjo C.A. Korpel

Emmaus: Where Christ Appeared
Excavators at Emmaus-Nicopolis believe they’ve got the right one
By Hershel Shanks

First Publication: A Newly Discovered House Shrine
A Temple Built for Two
Intriguing evidence suggests Yahweh shared a throne with Asherah
By William G. Dever

Dissecting the Qumran-Essene Hypothesis
Magnifying glass on the Scroll scholars
By Edna Ullmann-Margalit

Departments
First Person
In Defense of Eilat Mazar

Queries & Comments
It Ain’t Easy
Trip of a Lifetime
Schoolyard Bully

Biblical Views
Should Palm Sunday Be Celebrated in the Fall?
By Bruce Chilton

Archaeological Views
Save Endangered Landscapes
By Shimon Gibson

Another View
Why Isn’t King Solomon Just a “Dirty Old Man”?
By James Kugel

Another View
Don’t Be So Quick to be Disappointed, David Ussishkin
By Norma Franklin

Past Perfect
An English Newsgirl in Palestine

ReViews
Neolithic by Susan Foster McCarter
The Neolithic Revolution in the Near East by Alan H. Simmons
Mary Magdalene Understood by Jane Schaberg with Melanie Johnson-Debaufre

WorldWide
Turkey

Strata
Scroll Editor Strugnell Dies
Troubled former editor-in-chief dies at 77

$57 Million for BAR WorldWide

The Bible in the News
Apocrypha Now

By Leonard J. Greenspoon

Exclusive New Photos of Ancient Jerusalem’s Eastern Gate

Call for ASOR Papers
$10,000 prizes offered

Scholars Face Off Over Antiquities
Are unprovenanced artifacts worth studying?

In Their Own Words
Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek
By Mendel Kaplan

What Is It?

Milestones
Dick Steffy (1924–2007)
Larry Toombs (1919–2007)

How Many?

In History

Special Collections
Picturing Jerusalem; Medieval and Renaissance Treasures; and Excavating Egypt

Cartoon Caption Contest

CAN'T MAKE IT UP:

What Bible calls 'Holy ground' can be yours
The ultimate gift! Temple Mount soil beautifully encased
Posted: February 20, 2008
5:06 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee." – Psalms 122:6

JERUSALEM – Have you ever wanted to own a piece of the Holy Land?

Is someone close to you in love with Jerusalem?

Do you enjoy giving unique gifts to those you love?

At the very moment the Israeli government is reportedly considering giving up holy sites and sections of Jerusalem to create a Palestinian state, now you have a chance to hold on to your own piece of the Temple Mount.

For a limited time, genuine Temple Mount soil is being made available exclusively to WND readers as part of a campaign of solidarity with the Mount, which is under threat by Islamists and by Israeli government laws banning Christians and Jews from worshiping at the site or visiting during most hours of the day.

This past summer WND was able to salvage a very small amount of soil from the Temple Mount slated to be disposed by the Waqf, the holy site's Islamic custodians. The soil, which originates near what many consider the holiest place of the Mount itself, was searched for ancient relics since the Waqf numerous times has attempted to dispose of Temple artifacts.

[...]

I'm sure there must be an interesting story behind this "salvage" project.

THE WOMEN'S TORAH COMMENTARY is covered in the Jerusalem Post:

Why a women's Torah commentary?
By ANDREA L. WEISS

The recent debut of The Torah: A Women's Commentary, brings together the scholarship and insights of women from all segments of the Jewish community and from around the world.

For the past two years, in advance of the commentary's publication, I have previewed drafts in congregations across the country. Inevitably, when I conclude my teaching, a male member of the audience raises his hand and asks one of the following questions: "Why should men be interested in a women's Torah commentary?" "Why would you create a commentary that only speaks to half of the community?" "In this day and age, shouldn't we create a work that brings together women and men instead of segregating them?"

[...]

Recently, the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion featured a panel of scholars gathered to celebrate the publication of the women's commentary and to reflect on its significance. One of the panelists was the renowned Jewish feminist theologian Judith Plaskow, the author of the influential 1990 book Standing Again at Sinai, a contributor to the commentary and a member of its editorial board.

Plaskow characterized the publication of the commentary as a "watershed event," perhaps as important as the ordination of the first woman rabbi. When she used the word "watershed," she referred to the figurative meaning of the word: an event or period marking a turning point in a course of actions or state of affairs.

How is the publication of this commentary a turning point? One answer to that question became clear when the panel ended and I spoke to one of our authors, a Bible professor who wrote one of the Central Commentaries in Leviticus.

The professor said she did not fully appreciate the significance of this project until she taught the commentary she wrote to the sisterhood group at her local synagogue. She explained that for the first time, many of the women saw themselves as part of the implicit audience of the Torah. They were no longer bystanders listening in on a conversation aimed at someone else. Instead, they sensed that the Torah was speaking to and about them. They were able to see how the text was relevant to them as contemporary women and how their lives as women were relevant to the interpretation of the biblical text.

On a literal level, a watershed is an area of land that channels all the streams and rainfall to a common outlet. This is, in fact, an ideal metaphor for A Women's Commentary. This volume gathers five forms of exegesis into a single location. It collects the wisdom of several hundred Jewish women - scholars, clergy, poets and other writers - into one place. It assembles the writings of Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Orthodox and secular Jews into a common source.

[...]

A DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION IN SAN FRANCISCO:

Dead Sea Scrolls on display at S.F. museum
Contra Costa Times
Article Launched: 02/19/2008 03:22:06 PM PST

A precisely legible, 42-inch-wide Dead Sea Scroll in Hebrew from the Book of Psalms should be enough to dominate a modest-size gallery at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. But add 6,000-year-old burial containers, ritual objects from the Iron Age, a Byzantine mosaic and Islamic gold jewelry and you truly have a museum exhibit that can be called "5,000 years of treasures."

This collection is merely the first in a series produced in conjunction with the Israel Antiquities Authority, which was involved . The big draw, of course, is the brown parchment fragment of Psalm 119, one of the longest and best preserved of the biblical scrolls discovered in the last half-century in caves along the western side of the Dead Sea. It is from the most famous site, Qumran. Whatever a museum visitor's religious beliefs, it is hypnotic to inspect the precise handwriting that dates from the first century A.D., accompanied by an English translation mounted above.

As curator Renee Dreyfus points out, the lines from Psalm 119 are not in the same order that has become standard in versions of the Old Testament. Another distinction: "The name of God, because it was so sacred, is written in Paleo-Hebrew, an older form of the writing."

The Psalm scroll is carefully displayed under a thick transparent panel, lighted intermittently to protect it from fading. Even so, it will be replaced in May by other scrolls, one from the Book of Genesis and another from the apocryphal Book of Enoch, "which was not included in the Bible, for whatever reason," Dreyfus says.

[...]

THE TYNDALE TECH BLOG has a good post on online resources for Qur'an, Arabic and Islamic theology.