ECO-PSEUDEPIGRAPHA:

Biblical Scholars Challenge Pelosi's 'Scripture' Quote
By Pete Winn
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
April 23, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is fond of quoting a particular passage of Scripture. The quote, however, does not appear in the Bible and is "fictional," according to biblical scholars.

In her April 22 Earth Day news release, Pelosi said, "The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, 'To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.' On this Earth Day, and every day, let us pledge to our children, and our children's children, that they will have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to experience the wonders of nature."

Cybercast News Service repeatedly queried the speaker's office for two days to determine where the alleged Bible quote is found. Thus far, no one has responded.

Distinguished biblical scholars, however, cast doubt on the existence of the passage.

[...]

Doesn't sound familiar to me either.

UPDATE: Iyov is defending Pelosi: Nancy Pelosi got the Bible right.

That's overstating it. She expresses an entirely laudable sentiment and there is some support for it in Jewish midrashic and halachic tradition that draws on biblical ideas, but the quotation is not in the Bible. The closest parallel seems to be Genesis 2:15, but Pelosi's quotation would at best be a somewhat anachronistic midrashic meditation on the verse. Taking care of the land (so human beings can benefit from it!) is generally taken as divine service in agricultural societies, but the modern gaia-oriented disinterested devotion to nature is, well, modern.

UPDATE (1 May): More here.

A SAMARITAN PASSOVER:

West Bank Samaritans mark Passover with blood and fire

MOUNT GERIZIM, West Bank (AFP) — Men chant in ancient Hebrew over the sheep, their white garments and knives lit by the fading dusk as they ready a sacrifice for the God of Israel in the heart of the West Bank.

The voice of the high priest crackles from a megaphone, the chanting reaches a climax and they wrestle dozens of animals to the ground, slitting their throats in a 5,000 year-old Passover ritual that may predate Judaism.

The faithful are Samaritans, a community of 710 people living in Israel and the occupied West Bank who trace their lineage to the ancient Israelites Moses led out of Egypt, an event they remember every year on a grassy hilltop near the Palestinian town of Nablus.

[...]

There are photographs too.

UPDATE: Okay, I should have noted the glaring errors in the above. The Passover ritual is traced in the Bible back to the time of Moses, which is well under 5000 years ago, and in any case the account is legendary. The festival may have originally been a spring new year celebration associated with the barley harvest, but in the form we now have it, it is firmly anchored in the story of the Exodus.

Also, the Samaritans trace themselves to the ten tribes of Israel which were exiled when the Assyrians destroyed the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE.

You can pretty much depend on journalists messing up Samaritan history and the various legendary versions of their origins. But this account of the modern Samaritan Passover ceremony is kind of cool.

INDIANA JONES is set to steal the show at the Cannes Film Festival according to the London Times:

This year for all the combined star wattage of Eastwood, Penn, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Penélope Cruz, Benicio del Toro, Scarlett Johansson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Mike Tyson and Diego Maradona, who are all expected to attend, it is the world premiere of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that is likely to stir up the biggest frenzy among the 30,000 film industry representatives who will descend on the Riviera between May 14 and May 25. Nineteen years after he last flexed his bullwhip in anger, Harrison Ford returns as the adventurous archaeologist with a fear of snakes and a flair for smart one-liners. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the first three films in the series, grossed $1.2 billion at the global box office between 1981 and 1989.

Indiana Jones’s creator and executive producer, George Lucas, and the films’ director Steven Spielberg have between them made 13 of the top 100 grossing movies. Whether they can repeat the trick with the fourth film hinges on their lead actor – who is now 65 – according to Nick James, editor of Sight and Sound magazine. “It’s about whether or not we can buy Harrison Ford still doing this stuff,” he said. “Can you revive a franchise this long after the event? Probably you can, because a lot of people won’t be able to resist.”

Indeed.

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Meanwhile, Cleveland Plain Dealer culture columnist Michael Heaton reflects on baseball and Phoenician philology:

My mind wandered between innings. I began wondering about the origin of [Cleveland] Indians second baseman's Asdrubal Cabrera first name. According to the Web site Behind the Name, it is the Spanish form of Hasdrubal, which means "Ba'al helps" from the Phoenician azru "help" combined with the name of the god Ba'al. So it means something like "god's helper." So now you know.

Sounds about right.

APOCRYPHA WATCH: The Apocrypha is quoted in a Malta travel advert:

Visit Malta and experience the Mediterranean’s first Wellness Rejuvenation Rooms at the Fortina Spa Resort. Be pampered in the Fortina Spa, dine in the Fortina's award winning restaurants and have the chance to explore Valletta and Medina.

The Wellness Rejuvenation Rooms are equipped with the latest sleep, wellbeing and fitness equipment including your personal Power Plate. At the Fortina you can experience all the fun and luxury of an All Inclusive holiday, in a stunning location and treat your body to the healthy indulgence it’s been craving.

“There are no riches above a sound body” said the Apocrypha, Ecclesiastics 30:16S.

Pretty close. The name of the book is actually Ecclessiasticus (or Sirach or Ben Sira). But I give them points for giving the full reference (even though I don't know what the "S" means).

ANOTHER JUDAS APOCRYPHON? Sounds like it.

ARAMAIC IN MALULA (Ma'aloula, Maaloula) is in danger of dying out, according to the New York Times:

In Syrian Villages, the Language of Jesus Lives

By ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: April 22, 2008

MALULA, Syria — Elias Khoury can still remember the days when old people in this cliffside village spoke only Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Back then the village, linked to the capital, Damascus, only by a long and bumpy bus ride over the mountains, was almost entirely Christian, a vestige of an older and more diverse Middle East that existed before the arrival of Islam.

Now Mr. Khoury, 65, gray-haired and bedridden, admits ruefully that he has largely forgotten the language he spoke with his own mother.

“It’s disappearing,” he said in Arabic, sitting with his wife on a bed in the mud-and-straw house where he grew up. “A lot of the Aramaic vocabulary I don’t use any more, and I’ve lost it.”

Malula, along with two smaller neighboring villages where Aramaic is also spoken, is still celebrated in Syria as a unique linguistic island. In the Convent of St. Sergius and Bacchus, on a hill above town, young girls recite the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic to tourists, and booklets about the language are on sale at a gift shop in the town center.

But the island has grown smaller over the years, and some local people say they fear it will not last. Once a large population stretching across Syria, Turkey and Iraq, Aramaic-speaking Christians have slowly melted away, some fleeing westward, some converting to Islam.

[...]

Yona Sabar, a professor of Semitic languages at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that today, Malula and its neighboring villages, Jabadeen and Bakhaa, represent “the last Mohicans” of Western Aramaic, which was the language Jesus presumably spoke in Palestine two millennia ago.

[...]

Past posts on Malula are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

MORE OBITUARIES for David Noel Freedman:

From UCSD

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

David Noel Freedman; UCSD professor a legend among Bible scholars

By Sandi Dolbee
UNION-TRIBUNE RELIGION & ETHICS EDITOR

April 20, 2008

UCSD biblical scholar David Noel Freedman died April 8. He was 85 and still teaching.
In these final years, he had been bowed by age. Last June, he needed a steadying arm to make his way from his office at UCSD to a lunch meeting. But Dr. David Noel Freedman, eminent professor of history and Judaic studies, had an enthusiasm that time could not deter.

Last year, at the age of 85, he came out with a book about the Dead Sea Scrolls, a subject he had studied for more than half a century. It was, he said, the 351st book he had either co-authored or edited in his illustrious career.

He was a legend among Bible scholars. After all, he had managed to graduate from UCLA when he was only 17 and then went on to get a degree in Hebrew Bible from Princeton Theological Seminary and a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University (a colleague reports that he wrote two dissertations, both of which were later published as books).

He was a former president of the Society of Biblical Literature and editor in chief of the massive Anchor Bible Project, which consists of dozens of volumes of commentary and explanation.

So it was little wonder that tributes began spilling forth as news spread of his sudden death April 8 at a son's home in Northern California.

[...]

Indeed.

MORE OBITUARIES for Krister Stendahl:

From the Harvard Divinity School

From the Harvard University Gazette

From the Harvard Crimson

From the Boston Globe

Excerpt from the last:

But as a young man, training to be a priest, I read an essay published in 1963, entitled "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West." In it, Krister Stendahl argued that Christians - at least since Martin Luther, if not since St. Augustine - had misread the testimony of that early apostle. In this misreading, St. Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus was taken as rescue from a troubled preoccupation with sin and guilt, establishing the paradigm of Christian grace, which saves, against Mosaic Law, which condemns. Stendahl showed that St. Paul's conscience, instead of anguished, was "robust." His stance before God was overwhelmingly one of confidence, not terror. God's constant love, not God's threat, was Paul's driving force.

The "Introspective Conscience" article was a milestone, stimulating theological reconsiderations that put Krister Stendahl in rank with Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr. Instead of understanding St. Paul as one who had left his Jewishness behind because it was inadequate to save him from a damning Old Testament God, readers could see that Paul never thought of himself as abandoning his beloved Israel. Jesus, too, was only and forever a Jew. The Old Testament-New Testament polarity, like the Law-grace dichotomy, was false. By emphasizing Paul's commitment to Jewish-Gentile amity over the dominant reading of Paul as Israel's critic, Stendahl restored a Christian mode of respect for Judaism, a foundation stone on which a new Jewish-Christian reconciliation could be built. For the rest of his life, Stendahl was a prophet of that reconciliation.

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: The book of 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) is being invoked in the discussion of race relations in the United States:

U.S. should risk an overdue dialogue on race
Shirley Stancato and John Rakolta Jr. (Detroit News)

Discussing race is tough.

There's no getting around it. Of all the challenges that confront our nation, race relations makes just about everybody uncomfortable. But that's no reason for us to turn away from Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama's recent call for conversations on race in this country. In fact, it is all the more reason we need to accept his invitation and participate in a long-overdue national dialogue on race.

For the past five years, New Detroit has led such conversations. We've learned a lot about the best ways to make those discussions productive.

[...]

The 14th Chapter of 2nd Esdras in the Apocrypha tells us, "I shall light a candle of understanding in thine heart, which shall not be put out." That is why these ongoing, good faith, sometimes heated, and sometimes painful discussions are worth it for all of us. Listening to one another can light a candle of understanding in our hearts, which shall not be put out.

The reference is 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) 14:25. Technically the book of 2 Esdras is in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, not the Old Testament Apocrypha. It is not part of the Catholic or Orthodox biblical canons, even though it is normally printed in the Apocrypha.

ANCIENT JEWISH TOMBS IN MALTA:

Heritage Sundays and Night of the Museums at Mdina and Rabat (Malta Independent)
Heritage Malta is organising another event in the popular Sunday with Heritage Malta series. The next event will be held on Sunday, 27 April and will focus on Mdina and Rabat. Through this activity, the last of the season, Heritage Malta will be giving the public the opportunity to visit the National Museum of Natural History, the Domvs Romana, St Paul’s Catacombs and the Jewish Catacombs in Rabat.

[...]

Visitors will also be able to visit the Jewish Catacombs which are not normally open to visitors. These catacombs, which are found across the road from St Paul’s Catacombs, are a complex of catacombs which contain at least six Jewish Tombs. These ancient Jewish tombs in Rabat testify to the existence of a Hellenised Jewish community on Malta in Roman times. All the tombs in the catacombs have the same plan and tomb-types, and it is often difficult to tell which are Jewish and which Christian. Some carry religious symbols and other engraved decorations, such as crosses, palm fronds, or doves with olive branches - or, in some cases, the Jewish seven-branched candlestick (menorah).

[...]

MASADA and its new museum are featured by the Toronto Star in a piece on tourist attractions for Israel's 60th birthday:

Scaling a fortress

Anyone who watches the History Channel will know the story of Masada, the tragic tale of how 960 Jews chose death by their own hands over slavery after a long siege by Roman conquerors in 73 A.D.

The 450 metre-high mountaintop fortress of King Herod, where the Jewish zealots resisted the Romans, is considered the best-preserved example of a Roman siege camp.

While already a popular tourist stop on the Dead Sea, Masada opened a new museum last year at the base of the fortress that puts the battle and subsequent archeological finds into perspective using life-sized statues and settings that invite the visitor to be part of life in Masada.

The exhibit concludes with a moving statue of Yigael Yadin, the famed archeologist who led the teams of thousands of young volunteers who excavated the site in the 1960s.

He is pictured hunched over his desk drawing his clues from ancient writings of Jewish struggle by Josephus. The three-minute cable car ride, or one-hour hike to the top via the Snake Path, is worth it, if only just for the sweeping views of the Judean desert and the Dead Sea.

THE SARAJEVO HAGGADAH has been reprinted in a new edition, thanks to "a significant interest," sparked I suspect by the new novel by Geraldine Brooks.

A NEW HISTORICAL MOVIE is reportedly in the works, based on a character who makes a brief appearance in the Bible.

Will Smith’s Lesson for Jerusalem
The 
Continental Divide
By Eric Frey (The Forward)

Hollywood star Will Smith is reportedly planning to make a movie on Taharqa, a black warrior king from Nubia who ruled over Egypt during the 7th-century BCE. The film is likely to focus on issues of black pride, but if Smith and his scriptwriters do their homework well, “The Last Pharaoh” should also be of particular interest to Jewish moviegoers. According to some scholars, Taharqa played a key part in the early history of Judaism — and his story carries a crucial lesson for the future of the State of Israel.

The figure of Taharqa, who was born in what is today Sudan, is linked to a pivotal historical event that is described in the Bible: the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701 BCE. Hezekiah, the king of Judah, had little chance of surviving that onslaught by one of the greatest military powers on earth; only two decades before, the Assyrians had conquered the neighboring kingdom of Israel and deported many of its citizens.

But the Assyrians eventually withdrew from the walls of Jerusalem and Hezekiah’s throne was saved. Judah kept its independence for another 115 years, until it was defeated by the Babylonians, who went on to destroy the first temple in 586 BCE.

The rescue of Jerusalem had enormous consequences for religious thought. Recent archaeological discoveries have convinced most historians that monotheism had not yet fully taken root among Israelites at the time of the siege, and the Torah had very likely yet to be written down.

It was only after the withdrawal of the Assyrians that the embattled survivors became deeply convinced that their God was truly unique and almighty. That new belief then had more than a century to evolve and flourish, and it grew strong enough to allow the exiled Jews to retain their faith during the Babylonian exile and later return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.

Why, though, did the Assyrians withdraw from Jerusalem? The Bible talks about God visiting a plague on the invading army. It also mentions a lack of water in the Judean Hills that bedevilled the besiegers, and archaeologists have since credited King Hezekiah for having the foresight to build a tunnel to Gihon Springs that gave the city a secure water supply.

But in a recent book, journalist turned historian Henry Aubin argues convincingly that it was the approach of the Kushite-Nubian army — headed by young Taharqa, whom the Bible refers to as king of Ethiopia — that made the Assyrians lose heart. Militarily, it makes sense: It’s not the best idea to be caught up besieging a city like Jerusalem when a hostile force approaches from the rear.

[...]

The reference to Taharqa (Tirhakah) is found in 2 Kings 19:9:

[9] And when the king heard concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, "Behold, he has set out to fight against you," he sent messengers again to Hezeki'ah, saying,
[10] "Thus shall you speak to Hezeki'ah king of Judah: `Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. RSV

The Bible does not refer to a plague. The story, later in the same chapter, is much more dramatic:

[35] And that night the angel of the LORD went forth, and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.

Imagine what CGI could do with that.

Herodotus recounts the same episode, but says that thousands of mice came into the Assyrian camp during the night and ate their quivers, bowstrings, and shield handles, so that their battle gear fell apart when they tried to use it and they were routed. (Sounds like a scene from a Monty Python movie.) Modern scholars have combined the two accounts to infer (i.e., take a wild flying guess) that rats in the camp brought about an outbreak of the plague.

Well, it's a good story, however you tell it. Should be an interesting movie.

I'll leave it to you to decide whether Frey's political advice is useful.

AN OBITUARY FOR DAVID NOEL FREEDMAN has been published in the Los Angeles Times. And the UPI also has a brief one.

SHIMON BAR KOKHBA is in the news, in a story in the The Tyee inspired by Passover.

The Other Messiah
Dr. Richard Freund: 'Extraordinary story.'
In Israel, unearthing the tale of a Jesus rival named Simon bar Kokhba.
By Michael McKinley
Published: April 18, 2008

[...]

But Dr. Richard Freund, the running-shoed, ball-capped American archeologist and rabbi whom we so fortuitously met in Beit She'an pointed us in the direction of another messiah, a man whom most people have never heard of, but whose deeds and their consequence resonate around the globe.

"Come with me to Yavneh," said Freund. "I'm doing excavations there. It's an extraordinary story."

[...]

His birth name was Simon bar Kozeba, but the great Jewish sage of the day, Rabbi Akiva, christened him "bar Kokhba," meaning "Son of the Star," a Hebrew wordplay on a verse from the Book of Numbers that says "A star (kokhba in Hebrew) has shot off Jacob."

[...]

Did Jesus of Nazareth and Simon bar Kokhba fit the bill, each in their own way? But why did the name of Jesus survive, and inspire a new religion, while Simon bar Kokhba disappeared from history?

The answer to this question lies in a dark forbidding cavern in the blistering desert east of Jerusalem, and it's at the heart of the Jewish-Christian divide. In the 1960s, an Israeli archeologist found a trove of letters -- the largest cache of ancient correspondence ever uncovered in Israel -- that included messages from Bar Kokhba.

Four decades later, convinced that more evidence of Bar Kokhba's reign was overlooked, Richard Freund returned to the desolate area with the latest in modern equipment, including ground-penetrating radar. And he discovered much more about the mighty Simon bar Kokhba.

The big split

The cave mouth is high up a craggy cliff face, and rare birds nest in the cool darkness, protected today by strict laws that mean wildlife officials must keep a lookout to prevent the archeologists from entering whenever a bird is spied bringing food back to the nest.

Despite the obstacles, Freund's team found yet another cache of artifacts and produced a sharpened new view of Bar Kokhba's revolt and place in Jewish history -- including evidence of Judaism's final breach with the religion founded by the first messiah, Jesus.

"I think the split occurred right in the middle of the Bar Kokhba rebellion," Freund told us, "when the Christians said 'This is not our Messiah' and the Jews said 'This is going be the liberation we have been praying for all these years.'"

Bar Kokhba's letters show him warning his followers not to trust the "Galileans" -- a common name for the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. The Galileans, who already were being called Christians, were in the ascendancy. While the Romans were fighting the Jews, the Christians were gaining power and influence and converts in the heart of the Roman Empire.

This was not their war with the Romans, for the Christian messiah was the Prince of Peace, and they would win in the end, with history-changing results. And without the support of the Galileans, Simon bar Kokhba's revolt was doomed.

[...]

These are just excerpts; there's more in the article.

We now know from his letters that his name was actually Shimon bar (son of) Kosiba. His followers came up with the title Bar Kokhba, as the article explains. And much later, in the Talmud, he was known as Bar Koziba, "son of a liar," since it had become clear that he was not the Messiah after all.

Judas the Galilean was killed a few years later than the article indicates: around 6 C.E.

I have commented on Richard Freund's work in one of the Judean Desert Caves here. But I haven't been following his more recent work.

I am skeptical about the supposed connection between the Galileans in Bar Kosiba's letter and the early Christians. There's nothing in the letter to indicate that they were anything more specific than just Galileans.

PASSOVER begins tonight at sundown. Best wishes to all those celebrating.

AN OBITUARY FOR KRISTER STENDAHL has been published in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror.

NEIL ASHER SILBERMAN is not enthusiastic about the UCLA/USC proposed archaeological plan:

Unfortunately, the "Israeli-Palestinian Cultural Heritage Agreement" announced last week in Jerusalem has not quite lived up to the great challenge it set for itself.

The brainchild of two U.S.-based archaeologists, Ran Boytner of UCLA and Lynn Swartz Dodd of the University of Southern California, this initiative brought together three Israeli and three Palestinian archaeologists to formulate a set of recommendations about the equitable division of disputed objects and sites, as part of a comprehensive political final-status agreement. The idealism and dedication of this binational group should not be dismissed lightly. But their final text disappointingly concentrates on the physical control of sites and the repatriation of relics, without seriously confronting the core issues: bridging the enormous differences in attitudes toward archaeology between Israelis and Palestinians, and addressing the utter lack of a sense of shared archaeological heritage.

Regrettably, the agreement's principles cling stubbornly to old-fashioned concepts of territory, sovereignty and exclusive possession of cultural property that dramatically reduce the possibility of ever seeing archaeology as anything more than a zero-sum game. ...

Cutting the baby in two? Will both would-be parents agree with this archaeological variation of the famous Solomonic judgment simply because it seems fair? ...

Background here.

UPDATE: But according to Science Magazine the proposal is getting a more positive response elsewhere:

About 50 Israeli archaeologists, including IAA officials, showed up on 8 April in Jerusalem to hear the U.S. and Israeli part of the team make their case, says Boytner. (No Palestinians attended.) Ilan was prepared for the worst but says "surprisingly, the overwhelming response was positive and congratulatory. Not a single person spoke against the document." The consensus was that "this process should continue," says audience member Hanan Eshel of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. The buzz at the meeting was that the team's anonymous Israeli member is an IAA archaeologist. "We will not comment," says Boytner.

A follow-up meeting is being planned for the Israeli side. Among Palestinians, there is broad support but also those who "do not want to involve Israel whatsoever in a future Palestinian state," says team member Ghattas Sayej, an archaeologist with the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange in Ramallah, the West Bank. The effort to convince Palestinian archaeologists to formally ratify the plan is being led by team member Nazmi el-Jubeh, co-director of RIWAQ, an architectural conservation organization in Ramallah.

UPDATE (19 April): Dead link fixed. Sorry about that.

IN THE MAIL:

Loren T. Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91-108 (Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2007)

My review copy for the SOTS Booklist.

MURDER VIA SYRIAC AT OXFORD:

Murder mystery entices applicants
Daniel Rolle [Cherwell]
Tuesday, 15 April 2008

Dead bodies on the quad used to dispel myths about Oxford.

Oxford University's Admissions Office have used a murder mystery event to try and increase applications from state sector pupils.

During the Easter vacation University authorities invited local schoolchildren to take part in the event, based at Pembroke College. 50 students, aged between 14 and 15, were greeted at the beginning of their three-day visit by a body on the front quad, followed by the revelation of the Morse-like murder mystery scenario.

Students were faced with a number of conundrums including a letter written in Syriac, which they were able to decode after a master class given by Gareth Hughes of the Oriental Institute. Hughes praised the intentions of the programme: “The best way to encourage the brightest to Oxford is to stimulate and challenge. The Access Programme is incredibly important – especially considering Oxford's position and status as a fairly elite institution. The murder mystery event is therefore an excellent way of engaging bright and enquiring minds in a variety of different ways.”

[...]

Whatever works.

(My bold emphasis.)

AN OBITUARY FOR KRISTER STENDAHL has been published in the New York Times.

(Via the Agade list.)

AN OBITUARY FOR DAVID NOEL FREEDMAN by Bill Propp has been published on the Society of Biblical Literature website.

KRISTER STENDAHL, 1921-2008

Dated 15 April 2008

To the HDS community--

It is with immense sadness, but also with immense thankfulness for a singular life wonderfully well-lived, that I write to inform you that Krister Stendahl, our beloved friend, teacher, colleague, and former Dean, died this morning. A funeral service is planned for Friday morning at University Lutheran Church, and a memorial service to be held at Harvard's Memorial Church is being planned for sometime in May. Details on that University event and on other chances to recall, celebrate, and honor Krister will be communicated as soon as we know them, by email as well as on the HDS website. Please keep all of the Stendahl family in your thoughts and prayers.

Sincerely,

William A. Graham,
Dean

(Posted by Bob Kraft on the PSCO list.)

I was a postgraduate at Harvard during Professor Stendahl's last year there before he left to become Bishop of Stockholm, but I didn't really get to know him. Regarding his scholarly career, note this from the Wikipedia article on him:

Stendahl is perhaps most famous for his publication of the article "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West." This article, along with the later publication of the book Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, conveys a new idea in Pauline studies suggesting that scholarship dating all the way back to Augustine may miss the context and thesis of Paul. His main point revolves around the early tension in Christianity between Jewish Christians and Gentile converts.

Through his interest in the Jewish context of the New Testament, Stendahl developed an interest in Jewish Studies and has been active in the Jewish-Christian dialogue.

He also edited the seminal and classic collection The Scrolls and the New Testament (New York: Harper, 1957), which I have on my book shelf and still refer to.

Requiescat in pace.

YERUSHALMI SOURCES AND PARALLELS ONLINE:

Subject: Online database of sources and parallels to the Talmud Yerushalmi

From: "Leib Moscovitz" (moscol@mail.biu.ac.il)
Subject: Notice for H-Judaic
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 10:28 AM

The Talmud Department of Bar-Ilan University and the Livin Chair for Talmudic Research are pleased to announce the online publication of a database of sources and parallels to the Talmud Yerushalmi.

The database contains references to biblical verses cited in the Yerushalmi, as well as sources/parallels from the Mishnah, Tosefta, Halakhic midrashim, the Yerushalmi itself, and the classical aggadic midrashim, as well as selected parallels from the Babylonian Talmud (additional parallels are currently being entered).

The database consists of a collection of PDF files, which can be viewed, searched, downloaded and printed, and is located at the following URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/js/tl/yerushalmi/ (see also http://www.biu.ac.il/js/tl/yerushalmi/about.html for more information).

(From the H-JUDAIC list.)

ARAMAIC WATCH: Steve Caruso (of the Aramaic Blog) has set up "the first release of a (nearly comprehensive) diagram of all known Aramaic dialects" here. It's quite impressive. I confess I've never heard of most of the late and modern dialects in the rightmost columns.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Muslim cleric objects to repairing Western Wall stones
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

The top Muslim cleric in Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, on Tuesday said he would object to Israel carrying out repair work on the Western Wall.

Hussein said that the wall is a part of the attached Al Aksa mosque, warning that any Israeli action there would be seen as aggression.

[...]

Sigh.

Background here.

A CONFERENCE ON THE ARAMAIC QUMRAN TEXTS:

Conference on « The Aramaic Texts from Qumran », Aix-en-Provence, June 30 – July 2, 2008
Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme, Aix-en-Provence, France

generously sponsored by the CNRS, Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille I), French Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
UMR 6125 (Centre Paul Albert Février), UMR 8167 (Orient et Méditerranée)

Contact :
Katell Berthelot, CNRS, Jerusalem : katell.berthelot@crfj.org.il
Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence: stoekl@mmsh.univ-aix.fr



Program

Monday, June 30, 2008

9H30 : Welcome

10H : Opening lecture
• Devorah Dimant (University of Haifa), « Themes and Genres in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran ».

11H15 : Coffee break

11H45 : Comprehensive perspectives
• Emile Puech (CNRS, Jerusalem) : « Le volume XXXVII des Discoveries in the Judaean Desert et les manuscrits araméens du lot Jean Starcky ».
• Arnaud Sérandour (EPHE, Paris) : « Les textes araméens de Qumrân, pour qui, pour quoi ? ».

13H : Lunch

14H15 : Exegesis I
• Katell Berthelot (CNRS, Jerusalem) : « Les références aux textes bibliques dans les textes araméens de Qumrân ».
• Armin Lange (University of Vienna) : « “The False Prophets Who Rose in Israel” (4Q339 1) ».

15H30 : Coffee break

16H : Exegesis II
• Thierry Legrand (University of Strasbourg) : « Exégèses targoumiques et techniques de réécriture dans les manuscrits araméens de Qumrân ».
• Loren Stuckenbruck (University of Durham) : « The Lamech Narrative in the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen) and Birth of Noah (4QEnochc ar): A Tradition-Historical Study ».

17H15 : Coffee break
17H45 : The Birth of Noah
• Esther Eshel (Bar Ilan University) : « The Genesis Apocryphon and Other Related Aramaic Texts from Qumran ».
• Matthias Weigold (University of Vienna) : « Aramaic Wunderkind: The Birth of Noah in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran ».

19H : Cocktail and dinner


Tuesday, July 1, 2008

9H30 : Onomastics
• André Lemaire (EPHE, Paris) : « Nabonide et Gilgamesh : l’araméen en Mésopotamie et à Qumrân ».
• Michael Langlois (Collège de France, Paris) : « Shemihaza & Co : l’onomastique des anges déchus dans les légendes araméennes de Qumrân ».


10H45 : Coffee break


11H10 : Linguistics
• Steven Fassberg (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) : « Salient Features of the Verbal System Reflected in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran ».
• Jan Joosten (University of Strasbourg) : « L’araméen de Qumran entre l’araméen d’empire et les Targums. L’emploi de la préposition « devant » pour exprimer le respect dû au roi et à Dieu ».
• Ursula Schattner-Rieser (Institut Catholique de Paris) : « L’apport de la philologie araméenne et l’interprétation des archaïsmes linguistiques pour la datation des textes araméens de Qumrân ».

13H : Lunch


Afternoon : excursion





Wednesday, July 2, 2008

9H30 : Genres
• Moshe Bernstein (Yeshiva University) : « The Genre(s) of the Genesis Apocryphon ».
• Jörg Frey (University of Munich) : « On the Origins of the Literary Testament: Farewell Discourses in the Qumran Library and their Relevance for Reconstructing the Genre of ‘Testamentary Discourse’ ».

10H45 : Coffee break

11H15 : Sciences and Esoteric Knowledge
• Jonathan Ben-Dov (University of Haifa) : « Scientific Writings in Aramaic and Hebrew at Qumran ».
• Sam Thomas (California Lutheran University) : « Esoteric Knowledge in Qumran Aramaic Literature ».
12H30 : Lunch

14H : Apocalyptics
• Florentino García Martínez (Catholic University of Leuven) : « Aramaica qumranica apocalyptica ? ».
• Lorenzo diTommaso (Concordia University, Montréal) : « The Development of Apocalypticism in Light of the Aramaic Texts from Qumran ».

15H15 : Coffee break

15H45 : Eschatology
• Daniel Stökl ben Ezra (CNRS, Aix-en-Provence) : « Messianic Figures in the Aramaic Qumran Texts ».
• Hugo Antonissen (Catholic University of Leuven) : « The Architectural Presentation Technique in Aramaic New Jerusalem, Compared to Similar Descriptions in Other Texts, particularly in Ezekiel and the Temple Scroll ».

17H : Coffee break

17H30 : Conclusion and general discussion
• John J. Collins (Yale University), « The Aramaic Texts from Qumran: Conclusions and Perspectives »

20H : Dinner (in town)

(Program e-mailed by Eibert Tigchelaar.)

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS -- the court case:

10 Commandments focus of antiquities dispute
By MICHAL LANDO, THE JERUSALEM POST, NEW YORK

A Brooklyn rabbi and an Israeli antiquities dealer are trading barbs over an ancient stone inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

The dispute has now been taken to a Federal Court in Brooklyn, where an Israel-based antiquities dealer, Robert Deutsch, claims he has yet to receive full payment on a number of antiquities, including a 4th century CE stone inscribed with the Ten Commandments. Deutsch claims that Brooklyn-based Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch, of no relation, agreed to pay $110,000 for the stone in 2003.

The stone, an ancient Samaritan synagogue inscription, was found in 1913 at the excavation of an ancient synagogue in Tel Yavne. The inscribed slab sat on top of the Torah ark, as was the custom.

[...]

The dispute seems to be over whether the stone was being sold outright or leased for five years.

"ASCENSION OF THE WATCHERS" -- THE BAND. Brought to you by the Book of Enoch.

Wired: How does your spirituality inform your work without pigeonholing it?
[Burton C. Bell:] I would hope that people who do listen to it, merely enjoy the work as a whole. The Book of Enoch was inspirational to me inasmuch as it drove my creativity to write music and words so very personal. But these works are never mentioned throughout the lyrics. The idea is about a Watcher who is pleading for redemption from God.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

W. Wall stones in danger of crumbling
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

First it was the southern wall of the Temple Mount. Then it was a section of the ancient walls of Masada that were in danger of collapse. Now, it's the turn of the stones of Jerusalem's Western Wall.

Stones at the site are in danger of crumbling, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, the rabbi of the Western Wall, said Monday.

The damaged stones that are beginning to disintegrate are not the ancient ones dating back to the Second Temple Period, but, ironically, the small uniform stones that make up part of the wall built in the 19th century and financed by the British philanthropist and financier Sir Moses Montefiore in an attempt to repair the site at that time.

[...]

Repairs are scheduled for shortly after Passover, but the halakhic issues are complex.

UPDATE (16 April): More here.

JAMES C. VANDERKAM will be speaking on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Thousand Oaks, California.

FORGERY TRIAL UPDATE:

The art of authentic forgery
By Nadav Shragai (Haaretz)

Criminal case 482/04, the State of Israel v. Oded Golan and others, lays out the details of one of the biggest forgery scandals ever in the history of archaeology. According to the indictment, those miseld by Golan, a well-known Tel Aviv antiquities collector, included renowned experts who were ready to confirm the authenticity of the many and controversial findings he supposedly discovered, such as the Jehoash Tablet inscription and an ossuary that supposedly held the bones of James, the brother of Jesus.

And yet, today, three years after the start of the trial, after more than 70 witnesses for the prosecution have taken the stand, and the defense has started to present its arguments, the state prosecutor's office and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which initiated the indictment, face a problem: Marco Samah Shoukri Ghatas, the Egyptian artist who confessed to manufacturing many items for Golan, including the Jehoash inscription, will not be coming to Israel to testify. According to the IAA, it is the Egyptian authorities that are preventing Ghatas from coming to Israel. Golan's attorney, Lior Bringer, on the other hand, counters that it was the Egyptian's choice not to come.
Advertisement

Either way, the prosecution believes it will win the case even without the testimony of Ghatas, a talented stone artist and jeweler from the Khan al-Khalili market in Cairo. The testimony submitted in an interrogation conducted by the Egyptians and in which he confessed to many of the crimes, has already been cited in the Jerusalem District Court, where the case is being heard by Judge Aharon Farkash. Nevertheless, says an IAA official, "we're very interested in bringing him to Israel, so that the man who by his own admission forged the antiquities for Golan, will say so formally in court."

Ghatas himself spoke openly about the artifacts he manufactured with reporter Bob Simon, on the CBS-TV news program "60 Minutes." And authorities here say they have assured him that if he comes to testify, he will not be arrested.

[...]

Regarding the other defendants:

The original indictment was issued against five people. Two of them have in the meantime admitted to some of the crimes attributed to them, were dropped from the indictment and became state's witnesses. In addition to Golan, two other accused people remain: Faiz al-Amla, an antiquities trader from the village of Beit Ula in the southern part of the Hebron Hills, and Robert Deutsch, a well-known antiquities dealer from Tel Aviv. The state signed a plea bargain with al-Amla, and he was convicted and sentenced to a six-month jail term.

And Golan still maintains his innocence:

Lior Bringer, Golan's attorney, says his client denies all the charges attributed to him and stands by the authenticity of the items. "It seems unlikely to me," says Bringer, "that [Ghatas], who was in Israel so many times, encountered trouble coming here to testify. It doesn't seem to me that the Egyptian government prevented him from coming here. What seems more likely is that the man himself prefers, for reasons of his own, not to come to Israel. The antiquities that the Israel Antiquities Authority claims are forgeries - the Jehoash inscription, the ossuary and all the rest, are authentic," says Bringer.

There's lots more in the article, so read it all. For my take on the Joash/Jehoash inscription, see here.

THE SITE OF QUMRAN is in the news:

Israel blasted over ‘truth’ of scroll ad
11/04/2008
By Candice Krieger [Jewish Chronicle, UK]
The Israeli Government Tourist Office was this week forced to change its ThinkIsrael advert following a ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority that it was misleading and breached its code of conduct.

The magazine advert promoting Israel displayed images of well-known landmarks, including Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, with text stating: “You can travel the entire length of Israel in six hours.”

The ASA said that the image, together with the text, implied that Qumran was in Israel. Since Qumran is in the West Bank, it therefore considered the advert was misleading. ...

The image was replaced by one of Masada. I take their point, but at the same time Qumran is an important site for Jewish heritage and many tourists do come to see it for that reason.

DOCTOR WHO meets the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha!

My son and I just finished watching episode 2 of Doctor Who Series 4 (trailer here), which episode takes place in Pompeii on 23 and 24 August 79 CE. I'll avoid spoilers, but at one point the Sibylline priestesses quote Sibylline Oracles Book 13 as predicting the coming of The Blue Box. That line isn't in our copies of Book 13 today, but maybe our text is corrupt.

THE SEPHIROTIC TREE is on display at the Smart Museum in Chicago:

Another attention-grabbing piece is the 19th century “Holy Tree.” This piece is a long strip of parchment with Hebrew text inked onto it. The piece is a sefirot, or a graphic representation of God’s attributes. This piece, like the works from Ancient Mesopotamia, may generally be thought significant more for its religious or historical significance than as a piece of art. But approaching the piece from an aesthetic perspective brings out the fluidity of ink markings and the way the shape of the text guides the viewer’s eyes through the piece without a dizzying effect.

CAITLIN MORAN, television critic for the London Times, wasn't impressed by Tudor Parfitt's Ark of the Covenant theory:

I don't think I'm going to wholly disintegrate your day when I tell you that Parfitt doesn't actually find the Ark. Let's face it - if humanity ever finds what is essentially God's handbag, it's not going to be left to the TV critics to break the news. CNN, I think, might get there first.

What Parfitt does do, however, is trace - using DNA - the lost tribes of Israel, their flight into Africa, and the establishment of Jewish tribes in Zimbabwe that exist until this day. It's all quite reasonable and mildly diverting. Definitely worth, say, half an hour of your life; particularly if you're into African Jews.

However, having worked himself up into a big tizzy about his life-long quest for the Ark - “Five years went by without any leads,” he says, at one point, with almost incalculable weariness - and having been giving a whopping and, frankly, unnecessary 75 minutes to fill, Parfitt keeps on flogging the dead Ark horse to a point of mild dementia.

In the end, he becomes convinced that he's found the real Ark. The real Ark, according to Parfitt and not really anyone else at all, is not a sacred box, 80cm wide and high, lined inside and out with gold, topped with a golden lid, and two golden cherubs with outstretched wings, through which one can hear the voice of God.

It's actually - a drum. Yes, a drum. A knackered old drum from Africa. That's, erm, only 600 years old. That Parfitt eventually finds in a cupboard. In a museum. By looking through a card index.

Yes, I know. It's not quite grabbing-your-hat-from-underneath-the-closing-stone-door-having-just-outrun-the-giant-boulder.

So, mmmmm. Whilst it's great to see bone-botherers going for the big ticket historical items again - why settle for a submerged Neolithic toilet-area, when you could track down the intercom to God? - in this case, it doesn't really work, thrill-wise.

Oh well.

(Background here, and keep following the links back.)

A VATICAN EXHIBIT coming to Cleveland sounds as though it will have some interesting items:

Vatican Splendors Exhibit Coming To Cleveland by Dan Martin
[WYTV, OH]
More than 200 items from the Vatican Museums, Saint Peter's Basilica and the Swiss Guard will soon be on display at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland. A venue large enough to house 2,000 years of history, culture and tradition, some of which has never been seen outside of Rome-- until now.

"They'll see one of the earliest known images of Jesus, we have a sculpture from the great artist Bernini, an Old Testament story of Daniel in the lion's den, it's a clay model, you can actually still see the thumb print of the artist himself.", says Mark Greenberg, President of Evergreen Exhibitions.

[...]

"If you're an art lover, there will be something there for you, if you're a lover of history, you'll see some of the early atlases of North America, Aramaic Bibles, things from cultures from far and wide that the Vatican has visited.", says Greenberg.

[...]

DAVID NOEL FREEDMAN, 1922-2008

On the Agade list, Jack Sasson relays a message from Jim West that David Noel Freedman has passed away. More details here and a Wikipedia article about him here.

I didn't know Noel well, but I heard lots of stories about him when I studied with Frank Cross (they wrote two joint doctoral dissertations together under Albright at Johns Hopkins in the 1940s). I did see him from time to time, most recently at a party at Bill Propp's house in San Diego during the November 2007 SBL conference. Here's a picture I took of Noel and Baruch Halpern that evening. If memory serves, they were discussing letter forms on a new inscription.



David Noel Freedman was one of the major figures in biblical studies of the twentieth century, known for many books and projects, including the editing of the Anchor Bible Commentary Series. He was also a very nice guy. He will be missed.

Requiescat in pace.

UPDATE (11 April): Hershel Shanks has a final Letter to David Noel Freedman.

UPDATE: Here's a recent interview with Professor Freedman on YouTube.

A NEW DEAD SEA SCROLLS INSTITUTE:

WRAP-UP: MBTS enhances origins studies
By Amelia Hendra / Baptist Press
Wednesday, April 9, 2008

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (BP)--An academic chair and institute for the study of Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian origins was approved by Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary trustees during their March 17-18 meeting in Kansas City, Mo.

The G. Richard and Judy Hastings Chair and Institute for the Study of Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins will advance and encourage the academic study of the Hebrew roots, context, language and theology of Christian faith from biblical times to the present.

[...]

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT THEORY OF TUDOR PARFITT is the subject of a Channel 4 documentary next week.

Background here.

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL PLAN?

Plan brokered by UCLA, USC archaeologists would remove roadblock to Mideast peace
Negotiations lead to first agreement on region's archaeological riches

Israelis and Palestinians may not be able to agree right now on their present or future, but, if a pair of Los Angeles archaeologists have their way, they soon will see eye to eye on their past.

Working tirelessly for the past five years, Ran Boytner, a University of California, Los Angeles archaeologist and Lynn Swartz Dodd, an archaeologist at the University of Southern California, have guided a team of prominent Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists to arrive at the first-ever agreement on the disposition of the region's archaeological treasures following the establishment of a future Palestinian state.

"Israelis and Palestinians never previously had sat down to achieve a structured, balanced agreement to govern the region's archaeological heritage," said Dodd, a lecturer in religion and curator of USC's Archaeological Research Collection. "Our group got together with the vision of a future when people wouldn't be at each other's throats and archaeology would need to be protected, irrespective of which side of the border it falls on."

[...]

Sounds pretty ambitious.

The initiative is also covered by The Jewish Journal of Greater L.A. (with video) and, briefly, by the Jerusalem Post.

MARTHA HIMMELFARB is a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.

Martha Himmelfarb, William H. Danforth Professor of Religion, Princeton University: Jewish eschatology and Christian empire.

Congratulations Martha!

(Via the Agade List)

UPDATE (9 April): More from the Daily Princetonian:

Martha Himmelfarb, a religion professor, plans to use her fellowship funds to study the impact of Christianity on Jewish eschatology, the concept of the end of the world.

Though Himmelfarb has done related work before, she said that “there are parts that are entirely unchartered for me, and I’m not sure what will come out of my further research.”

MICHAEL SWARTZ is giving a lecture series at NYU:

"Outside the Text: Sources of Non-Textual Meaning in Rabbinic Civilization"

HEBREW AND HISTORY JOB:

Subject: JOB: Visiting Assistant Professor, Biblical Hebrew and World History, Grand Valley State University

Grand Valley State University
World History/Ancient Hebrew

The Department of History at Grand Valley State University invites applications for a full-time Visiting (non-tenure-track) appointment for the 2008-09 academic year, with possibility for renewal, at the rank of Visiting Assistant Professor (or at the rank of Visiting Instructor if ABD). The teaching load is four courses per semester, including one course in beginning Biblical Hebrew and three sections of a world civilization survey course. Grand Valley State University is an affirmative action and equal opportunity institution. The Department is especially interested in qualified candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community.

Interested candidates are asked to submit a letter of application and curriculum vitae as soon as possible, followed by letters of reference and transcript, to Professor Gretchen Galbraith, Chair, Department of History, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan 49401-9403. Applications will be reviewed until the position is filled. For further information: 616-331-3627 or galbraig@gvsu.edu.

Contact Info:
Professor Gretchen Galbraith, Chair
Department of History
Grand Valley State University
1060A MAK
Allendale, MI 49401

From the H-Judaic list.

THE BIOGRAPHY OF KATHLEEN KENYON by Miriam Davis was mentioned in the article on Davis's recent lecture, about which I posted on Thursday. The publisher has just written me with a link for the book: Dame Kathleen Kenyon: Digging Up the Holy Land.

WORLD LANGUAGE DAY at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is coming on 22 April and it includes a session on the Hebrew of the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls:

World Languages Day to draw 700-plus students from across Wisconsin

April 7, 2008

by Gwen Evans [University of Wisconsin-Madison News]

It's a rite of passage each spring for thousands of state high school students — heading to Madison for basketball, hockey and wrestling tournaments and a taste of the city, the university and a day or two out of school.

But the siren call is not just for sports enthusiasts. The campus beckons each spring to those interested in exploring world languages and cultures at World Languages Day, an annual event sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Language Institute that attracts some 700 students from 25 Wisconsin high schools. This year's event, the 7th World Languages Day, will take place on April 22 in the Memorial Union and the Pyle Center.

Through more than 50 class sessions on language learning, storytelling, skits, cinema, dance and music, students are exposed to many diverse world languages and cultures. Over 30 languages are represented in these sessions, from Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Norwegian and Spanish to Yoruba.

Students may select among sessions with topics such as Finnish youth culture in the 21st century; the language, music and folkloric dance of Jordan; Latin dance; Hebrew in the Bible and the Dead Sea scrolls; using French in the professional world; Chinese fashion; and Hmong language and culture. Many of the sessions are participatory and include performances and foods from the target culture.

[...]

ANOTHER ANCIENT SYRIAC MONASTERY IN TURKEY:

Mor Jacob Monastery: a Syriac oasis in Nusaybin
(Today's Zaman)
Mardin's Tur Abdin region is home to the Mor Jacob Monastery, with an early history that is the stuff of legend: The building serves the oldest Syriac Christian community in Turkey.


The southeastern village of Barıştepe, formerly known as Salah or Saleh, is a little Syriac village in the Tur Abdin region in Nusaybin, a district of the southeastern province of Mardin. Tur Abdin is Syriac for "the mountain of the servants of God" and refers to the numerous ascetics based in the region after the advent of Christianity there.

This plateau, which is on the border with Iraq, is home to the oldest surviving Syriac Orthodox Christian community in Turkey and also to the Monastery of Mor Jacop the Recluse, known as Mor Yakub Manastırı in Turkish and Dayro d'Mor Ya'qub Hbsihiyo in Syriac. Mor is a Syriac word that means "saint" and is also used as an honorary title for living bishops.

Once you enter the village the monastery is visible from the road. There are always children playing around the building, which acts as both a school and playground. The monastery's school teaches classes in the Syriac language and religion, which the children attend after their classes at regular school are finished.

Little is known about the history of the monastery, and its origins remain shrouded in mystery, although it is thought to be named after to its founder Mor Jacob and to have been built in A.D. 419.

[...]

Related post here.

PLANS TO "RESURRECT" ROMAN TIBERIAS:

The Mayor of Tiberias and the Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority Today Revealed for the First Time Plans for the Archaeological Park that Will “Resurrect” the Roman City of 2,000 Years Ago (1/4/08)

In a festive press conference today the mayor of Tiberias and the director-general of the Israel Antiquities Authority announced the beginning of work on the national project for the construction of an archaeological park in Tiberias that will bring the Roman city “back to life”. Berko Park is slated to be magnet that will attract tourism from Israel and abroad to Tiberias and will expose the public at large to Tiberias’ glorious past, through all of its history which has its beginnings in the Early Roman period 2,000 years ago.

[...]

(Via Explorator.)

The project has not been without controversy. The Tiberias excavation has been in the news a lot in the last few years. Run "Tiberias" through the search engine above for more. And note this too.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Jewish group to slaughter lamb in Passover sacrifice rehearsal

(Israel Today)

A Bible-adherent Jewish group on Sunday ritually slaughtered a young lamb in what is called a "rehearsal" for the renewal of the Passover sacrifice once the Jerusalem temple is rebuilt.

[...]

The sacrifice and accompanying religious ceremonies were performed at a prominent yeshiva overlooking Jerusalem's Temple Mount, which is still occupied by several Muslim shrines.

More here.

AN ASSYRIAN ORTHODOX PRIEST has been murdered in Baghdad:

Christian priest gunned down in Baghdad

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Gunmen shot dead an Assyrian Orthodox priest near his house in the centre of the Iraqi capital on Saturday, in an attack condemned by Pope Benedict XVI who expressed his "profound sorrow".

Iraqi security officials said Youssef Adel, a priest with Saint Peter's Church, was gunned down by gunmen travelling in a car around noon (0900 GMT) as he left home.

[...]

The Assyrian church has maintained its independence since the 5th century when it broke away from the rest of the Christian communion. Some of its followers still speak a modern version of Aramaic, the language of Christ.

[...]

Barbaric.

CHARLTON HESTON, 1924-2008

Film Legend Charlton Heston Dead at 84

By BOB THOMAS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing "Ben-Hur" and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the '50s and '60s, has died. He was 84.

[...]

Requiescat in pace.

UPDATE: Here's a statement from his family.

THE TORAH: A WOMEN'S COMMENTARY is featured in the London Times:

Spare-rib scholars unearth scripture bias
Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem

In the days when Moses dictated the law of the land, the five daughters of Zelophephad took issue with the rules of inheritance. The Book of Numbers xxvii recounts how the sisters sought counsel with Moses in front of the congregation of travelling Israelites to demand that the laws be altered to accommodate female succession.

This bit of biblical history is often brushed over, as are other feminist aspects of the Old Testament, because for thousands of years men alone have interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures, according to a feminist revision of the text.

The Torah: A Women's Commentary re-evaluates the Torah's feminine side and offers the first comprehensive analysis of text from a female point of view. “With this commentary we will continue as sisters to empower the women - and men - who come after us for generations to come,” said its chief editor, Tamara Eskenazi, a professor of Bible studies at Hebrew Union College.

The Torah - also known as the Pentateuch or five books of Moses - is the foundational text of Judaism. While scholars have begun to examine women's role in the biblical period, A Women's Commentary is being hailed as a seminal text in religious studies owing to the depth of its analysis and wide spectrum of its contributors - which include several hundred women from the four main branches of Jewish movements - Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist. Those women re-evaluated the text from page one - taking the story of Creation to task for its rendering of Eve as a secondary creation to God's original Adam.

[...]

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL XXVIII has been posted by Chris Weimer at Thoughts on Antiquity.

MARTIN GOODMAN will be giving a lecture at Binghamton University:

Annual Romano Lecture to focus on Rome, Jerusalem

Martin Goodman, professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University, will deliver the annual Mario and Antoinette Romano Lecture at noon Friday, April 11, in the Anderson Center Reception Room.

Goodman has divided his intellectual life between the Roman and Jewish worlds. He has edited both the Journal of Roman Studies and the Journal of Jewish Studies. His most recent book, Rome and Jerusalem: the Clash of Ancient Civilizations, was published in 2007.

In 70 CE, after a war that had flared sporadically for four years, three Roman legions surrounded, laid siege to and eventually devastated the city of Jerusalem, destroying the Temple that had been rebuilt by Herod less than a century before.

Goodman’s lecture, titled “Rome and Jerusalem,” will investigate what brought about this conflict and why, contrary to normal practice and against the reasonable expectations of the Jews, the Roman state would not allow the Jerusalem Temple to be rebuilt, with momentous consequences for the future of the Jews and Judaism.

A reception will follow the lecture, which is sponsored by the Mario and Antoinette Romano Endowment and the Harpur College Dean’s Office. For reservations, call Diane Horvath at 777-4278 or e-mail her at
dmhorv@binghamton.edu.

ARAMAIC WATCH: Aramaic used in an exorcism scam?

Priest allegedly staged fake exorcisms

Published: April 3, 2008 at 4:37 PM

FLORENCE, Italy, April 3 (UPI) -- Prosecutors in Florence, Italy, accuse a Roman Catholic priest in the city of committing fraud by collecting $6 million through staging phony exorcisms.

[...]

Prosecutors said associates of Bazzoffi would "pretend to be possessed by demons" and the priest would use ancient and obscure rites to perform fake exorcisms on them. The events regularly drew crowds in excess of 400 people.

"During mass, the priest spoke in Aramaic, and strange things happened," a witness told police. "I do not know if it was group hysteria or our suggestibility but I remember one old woman screaming in a man's voice while five big guys held her down."


[...]

THE SHRINE OF THE BOOK has an exhibition on the Qumran Isaiah Scroll (IQIsa^a) starting next month (scroll down):

Swords into Plowshares
The Isaiah Scroll and Its Message of Peace

May 13 – August 15, 2008
The Shrine of the Book

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, the Israel Museum presents the longest, best preserved, and most complete Dead Sea Scroll document ever found, in a special installation in the Shrine of the Book. Never before shown in an extended public display, this 2.60 meter-long section of the Isaiah Scroll comprises the first twenty-eight chapters of the Book of Isaiah, including Isaiah’s celebrated message of peace: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares…" (Is. 2:4). In order to illustrate this important message, iron tools from the days of the prophet Isaiah (8th century BCE) will be displayed alongside the Scroll. A Hellenistic seal depicting a dove carrying an olive branch, newly excavated and never before displayed, will also be on view. The exhibition is curated by Adolfo Roitman, Head of the Shrine of the Book and Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Michal Dayagi-Mendels, Chief Curator of Archaeology. An international conference on Dead Sea Scrolls research will be held July 6-8, 2008, and is scheduled to coincide with the exhibition.

FINDADIG 2008 is now online at the BAS website.

IL FANTASTICO. A very appropriate nickname.

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, Happy 325th birthday to Brill publishers!

(Via the Agade list.)

HAPPY TENTH BIRTHDAY to the Hugoye list and to Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies!

A CAPSULE BIOGRAPHY of Dame Kathleen Kenyon was presented in a lecture by Dr. Miriam Davis at Baylor University. Excerpt:

"Why was Kathleen Kenyon worth a biography?" Davis said, to open her speech on Kenyon. "She became an archeologist quite by accident."

Kenyon was the daughter of Sir Frederic Kenyon, the director of the British Museum.

Many people thought that her upbringing made her predisposed to become an archeologist.

Kenyon graduated with a third-class degree from Oxford, which is low. Davis said Kenyon spent more time playing lacrosse and tennis than she did studying.

After graduating, Kenyon joined her first expedition to Great Zimbabwe, an ancient stone ruin in present-day Zimbabwe, with Gertrude Caton-Thompson, another important female archeologist.

It was there that Kenyon "fell in love with field archeology and became interested in methodology," Davis said.

On her second excavation, she worked with Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who developed a new method of digging that emphasized precision in order to gather more data about the artifacts that were discovered.

Kenyon followed his method that she later developed into her own method at her digs in Jerusalem.

She excavated in Jericho for seven field seasons.

"The discoveries she made were breath-taking," Davis said.

Indeed.

UPDATE (8 April): More on the biography (the book) here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Archaeologist Yuval Baruch tells the inside story about how those Iron Age II artifacts were recovered last October from the Waqf's excavation.

Archeologist finds artifacts from time of Solomon’s Temple
By RHONDA SPIVAK, Special to The CJN [Canadian Jewish News]
Thursday, 03 April 2008
WINNIPEG — Yuval Baruch, left, made archeological history in October 2007 when he uncovered pottery artifacts on the site of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. They are considered to be the first physical evidence of human activity during the time of King Solomon’s Temple (the First Jewish Temple).

Baruch, who is Jerusalem’s district archeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority, speaking at the Berney Theatre here, outlined his world-famous discovery as part of a lecture series put on by the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University.

[...]

“The Muslim Waqf [the Muslim religious authority that controls the internal administration of the Temple Mount] does not allow Israeli archeologists to conduct any excavations on the site. But I got access to a small tunnel where electrical cables run under the site when there was an electrical shortage and the Waqf had to get the electricity fixed…

“I was not supposed to be left there alone, as the Waqf always has someone present when Israeli archeologists are on the site. It was in the evening after 8 p.m., and by chance the Arab electrical workers left me and a member of my staff for about 15 minutes while they went to pray. When I was alone in that brief time, I found the pottery shards among dust near the bedrock level,” he says.

The tunnel to which Baruch got access, was a sealed archeological level – “about 400 metres long,” he says – that was exposed during the inspection in the area close to the southeastern corner of the raised platform surrounding the Dome of the Rock.

Baruch’s findings include animal bones; ceramic bowl rims, bases and body shards; the base of a juglet used to pour oil; the handle of a small juglet; and the rim of a storage jar. In addition, a piece of a whitewashed, handmade object was found. It may have been used to decorate a larger object or may have been the leg of an animal figurine. The finds are dated from eight-to six-century BCE.

[...]

Background here and here.

BRUCE CHILTON reassesses The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels, for the New York Sun and he isn't happy with what he finds. Excerpt:

Dealing with each topic in her book, Ms. Pagels does not mention crucial evidence concerning Gnostics and Catholics, and distorts what she does mention. She falsely maintains that Catholics insisted upon a physical view of resurrection (as compared to the Gnostics), when a spiritual view is clearly represented from Paul in the first century until Origen in the third century. She asserts that Gnostics did not concern themselves with authority, when in fact they often branded those who disagreed with them as corrupt materialists who were constitutionally incapable of understanding the world of spirit. Attempting to say that the Gnostics were feminists, she ignores texts from Nag Hammadi, as well as Gnostic sources that had been known for centuries before the library's discovery, that portray "Wisdom" (Sophia), the feminine counterpart of the true, masculine God, as literally hysterical — jealous of divine power, but unable to create life on her own, and therefore vindictive. Martyrdom was a common threat to Gnostics and Catholics, and not at all a fate that the Fathers of the Church wanted Christians generally to seek; Gnostics could be as ferocious as Catholics in claiming unique insight, and the knowledge that transcends this world was every bit as much a Catholic as a Gnostic quest.

Appearing in a book as well written as Ms. Pagels's, her anachronisms have undermined public understanding of early Christianity. Gnosticism proved to be the most powerful philosophical and religious movement of its time because it insisted without compromise that the only truth that matterstranscendsthiscorruptworld. Gnostics often denigrated women as creatures of corruption, condemned any disagreement with their teaching as materialist fantasy, and denied that sexuality had any place in the realm of spirit. Trying to turn this orientation into existentialism, or feminism, or an embrace of the world's physicality, will only work with an extremely selective handling of the evidence, and deploys a laundered view of its subject.

Ms. Pagels is too wise to pretend that the Gnosticism of the historical sources supports the Neo-Gnostic fashions of our time that have thrived in New Age circles. Yet in "The Gnostic Gospels," she does compare the texts to what existentialists, feminists, and environmentalists have to say. Her habit might be seen as part of the historian's function, to use today's language to help explain yesterday's events and movements. But by impact if not by intent, her book has promoted the view that Gnosticism is a liberal version of Christianity, when in fact liberalism and Gnosticism are radically different phenomena.

By softening the hard edges of the texts she herself had a hand in translating, Ms. Pagels has robbed many of her readers of an appreciation of the real force of the Gnostic Gospels. The fact is that Gnosticism, even after Constantine, was not successfully repressed. Many of its books were indeed destroyed or hidden away; it seems plausible that the Nag Hammadi library was sealed in a jar and buried to protect the writings from overzealous orthodox monks during the fourth century. But even as the books went underground, the power of gnosis remained.

THE GRONINGEN QUMRAN INSTITUTE has a new website. And note that it has more on the April Symposium in honor of Florentino García Martínez.

A CONFERENCE AT YESHIVA UNIVERSITY is coming on 11-12 May:

The Temple of Jerusalem: From Moses to the Messiah

(Via the Agade list.)

DEAD SEA DISCOVERIES has a new issue (15.1) online. Table of contents:

A Tribute to James C. VanderKam
pp. 1-4(4)
Author: Ulrich, Eugene

Whose Scripture? Whose Community? Reflections on the Dead Sea Scrolls Then and Now, By Way of Aramaic Levi
pp. 5-23(19)
Author: Kugler, Robert A.

What Has Happened to the Laws? The Treatment of Legal Material in 4QReworked Pentateuch
pp. 24-49(26)
Author: Bernstein, Moshe J.

Geography as an Evaluative Tool in the Genesis Apocryphon
pp. 50-66(17)
Author: Machiela, Daniel A.

The Unfinished Scroll: A Reconsideration of the End of the Temple Scroll
pp. 67-78(12)
Author: Schiffman, Lawrence H.

Decoration, Destruction and Debauchery: Reflections on 1 Enoch 8 in Light of 4QEnb
pp. 79-95(17)
Author: Coblentz Bautch, Kelley

Rereading S: A New Model of Textual Development in Light of the Cave 4 Serekh Copies
pp. 96-120(25)
Author: Schofield, Alison

The Community Hymns Classification: A Proposal for Further Differentiation
pp. 121-154(34)
Author: Kim Harkins, Angela

'Riddled' with Guilt: The Mysteries of Transgression, the Sealed Vision, and the Art of Interpretation in 4Q300 and Related Texts
pp. 155-171(17)
Author: Thomas, Samuel I.

Qumran Self-Identity: "Israel" or "Judah"?
pp. 172-189(18)
Author: Bergsma, John S.

Requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access.

(Heads up, Stephen Goranson.)

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT -- THE LEGEND LIVES ON:

The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt
Chris Mitchell
CBN News Mideast Bureau Chief
April 1, 2008

CBNNews.com - In 1981, Indiana Jones made his big-screen debut re-igniting world-wide interest in history's most hunted relic: the Ark of the Covenant.

That same year, two real-life raiders went on their own search for the Ark. There were no Nazis and no snake pits - like the movie.

Just two renegade Rabbis on a mission. Their search came to an end in Jerusalem.

"God signed, like with a pen, the location where the Ark of the Covenant was located. You can see it today even, on the rock," said Gershon Salomon, Founder of Temple Mount Faithful.

[...]

Except, you see, they didn't actually find the Ark.

Archaeologists exposed parts of the wall that had been buried for 2000 years. Not all of the digging was done legally. In 1981, two of Israel's highest-ranking Rabbis, Shlomo Goren and Yehuda Getz picked up their pick-axes and started chiseling their way under the Temple Mount.

"And he knew that at the end of the gate he will come to the secret room where the ark of covenant is located," said Salomon, who was also one of the paratroopers who liberated the Western Wall in 1967.

Salomon was there 14 years later the night Rabbi Getz opened a secret passage in the Wall and remembers their conversation.

"It was after midnight. And he called me and said to me, Gershon, come immediately, don't wait, your dream is going to be fulfilled. 'What happened?,' I told him. 'The Messiah came?' And he told me, 'He is coming almost.'"

What came next was a subterranean slugftest according to Salomon.

"Arab demonstrations, you know? The Israelis are coming to build their temple underneath the dome of the rock."

At the end of the day, the passage to the Temple Mount was permanently sealed by Israeli Police.

"No doubt, I tell you. No doubt, we needed just two days more to come to the place where the ark of the covenant is located," Salomon explained.

"The work was done without archaeological supervision and when I was the official archaeologist of Jerusalem, I decided to stop the work," said Archaeologist Dan Bahat, who directed the excavation of the Western Wall tunnels.

According to him, the search for the Ark stops with Jeremiah 3:16.

"Prophet Jeremiah says, there will come a day when the ark of the covenant will not be seen, nor will it be visited which means that somehow, he sees the days when it will not be there. In other words, this was a hint from God. Don't look for the Ark of the Covenant!"

[...]

Jeremiah 3:16 reads:

And when you have multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, says the LORD, they shall no more say, "The ark of the covenant of the LORD." It shall not come to mind, or be remembered, or missed; it shall not be made again. (RSV)

I agree with Gabriel Barkay; it was probably melted down for its gold by the Babylonians. Jeremiah says that it won't be remembered and it won't be made again, which implies that it no longer existed when this oracle was written.

A BURIAL CEREMONY for worn-out sacred texts:

At synagogue, old texts are laid to rest
Forks congregation gives worn-out prayer books a proper burial.

By Marion Callahan | Of The Morning Call
March 31, 2008

Sheila Goldberg carefully maneuvered around the mounds of dirt at the rear corner of Bnai Abraham Synagogue's cemetery, approaching an open grave cradling a prayer book she treasured for nearly 70 years.

Using a traditional Jewish prayer shawl, she wrapped the book, its pages yellowed and its edges frayed, and asked: ''Do I just drop it in?'' A man beside her smiled and nodded.

And she let it go.

In a ceremony that dates back thousands of years, members of Bnai Abraham Synagogue in Wilson gathered Sunday at the Forks Township cemetery, to bury worn-out sacred texts, an ancient tradition that Rabbi Mark Shrager said ''bestows respect on the words that spread God's message.''

[...]

Related post here.

ARAMAIC WATCH: Enema instructions in ancient Aramaic?

Historical Use of Enemas

The use of therapeutic coffee enemas began during WWI; however, water enemas have been used for detoxification throughout the ages. In fact, the Vatican holds a third-century Aramaic manuscript in which enema directions are graphically transcribed. In the book The Gerson Therapy by Charlotte Gerson, daughter of famed cancer specialist Max Gerson M.D., and Morton Walker, D.P.M., these ancient instructions for detoxification are recorded:

I tell you truly, the angel of water shall cast out of your body all uncleanness which defiled it without and within. And all unclean and evil-smelling things shall flow out of you... I tell you truly, holy is the angel of water who cleanses all that is unclean and makes all evil-smelling things of a sweet odor...

Think not that it is sufficient that the angel of water embrace you outwards only. I tell you truly, the uncleanness within is greater by much than the uncleanness without. And he who cleanses himself without, but within remains unclean, is like to tombs that outwards are painted fair, but are within full of all manner of horrible uncleanness and abominations...

Seek, therefore, a large trailing gourd, having a stalk the length of a man; take out its inwards and fill it with water from the river which the sun has warmed. Hang it upon the branch of a tree, and kneel upon the ground before the angel of water, and suffer the end of the stalk of the trailing gourd to enter your hinder parts, that the water may flow through all your bowels. Afterwards rest kneeling on the ground...and pray to the angel of water that he will free your body from every uncleanness and disease. Then let the water run out from your body, that it may carry away from within it all the unclean and evil-smelling things... And you shall see with your eyes and smell with your nose all the abominations and uncleanness which defiled the temple of your body... tormenting you with all manner of pains. I tell you truly, baptism with water frees you from all of these. Renew your baptizing with water on every day of your fast, till the day when you see that the water which flows out of you is as pure as the river’s foam... (1)

1. Gerson, C. and Walker, M.: The Gerson Therapy. NY, NY: Kensington Publishing Corp., pp. 156 - 172, 2001

I don't think this is real The second sentence of the middle paragraph looks like it's based on Matthew 23:27, only reapplied to colonic irrigation. And "the temple of your body" has a New Testament ring as well (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19). And overall it just doesn't sound right. Does anyone know what the source is?

UPDATE: Stephen Goranson e-mails:

This text appears to be based on Edmond Bordeaux Szekely's "Essene Gospel of Peace," which he claimed was a translation from ancient Aramaic, Hebrew, and Old Slavonic texts, but which is instead a twentieth-century fabrication. Another book with a similar text, The Holy Movement, Matters of the Colon by Debora Lee Meehan (2000, according to Google Books, which sometimes gets the dates wrong), oddly attributes (p. 50) the translation to "Edmund Waldo Schecklee" and introduces it with "Following is s condensed citation of the Essene gospel of peace." Perhaps in modified (condensed here should read paraphrased or altered) form to avoid copyright disputes? Even though the Szekely text is fiction. I am reminded that Morton Smith in 1958 claimed copyright on "Manuscript Material from the Monastery of Mar Saba, Discovered, Transcribed and Translated by Morton Smith."

Szekely's Essene Gospel of Peace is online here. The passage quoted above is in Book 1.

INDIANA JONES'S TAILOR.

SUMERIAN BLING. And some in Rashi script too. There's video!

DANIEL J. HARRINGTON reviews some scholarly books for America: The National Catholic Weekly. Included are James L. Kugel's How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now and Birger Pearson's Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions and Literature.

IN THE MAIL, late last week:



My new MacBook: 2.4 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 gigabytes of RAM, 160 gigabyte hard drive, with a larger screen and keyboard than my old iBook G4, but weighing less. Beautiful.