THE ENOCH GRADUATE SEMINAR for 2008 now has its schedule posted on the Enoch Seminar website.

Also, Gabriele Boccaccini e-mails:

While we are preparing for the event, I am very pleased to announce you that the Third Enoch Graduate Seminar will be held in two years (July 2010) at the Catholic University of Budapest, Hungary, and will be chaired by Ida Froehlich, Armin Lange, Geza Xeravits and myself--a recognition for the leadership in Central Euroepe. Unlike the Enoch Seminar (which is a thematic conference), papers from ALL fields and subfields of Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins (Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, Philo and Josephus, etc.) are accepted at the Enoch Graduate Seminar. The deadline for submitting paper proposals will be in the Fall 2009 (we will pick up the best 24 ones). It is very important that we start "advertising" the event as soon as possible and have all most talented graduate students from all around the world attend the event.

The 2012 Fourth Enoch Graduate Seminar will be at the University of Notre Dame, chaired by James VanderKam, Hindy Najman, and myself.

PROMOTION: I am very happy to report that I have just been promoted to (Full) Professor. I did mention my blogging in the promotion application under innovative teaching, but I doubt it was the deciding factor.

LOOKING FOR A GRADUATION PRESENT?

Israeli artist inspired by Dead Sea Scroll vessels

BY: JENNIFER DADDARIO Staff Reporter [Cleveland Jewish News]

It was a normal visit to The Israel Museum in Jerusalem to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it changed artist Avital Sheffer’s life.

After Sheffer, 53, took a closer look at the vessels that held the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Sabra altered her career. Within a week, she was enrolled in a ceramics class, and soon after, she began making her own ceramic vessels.

[...]

The artist, who now lives in Australia, creates large, non-functional ceramic vessels inspired by ancient and Middle Eastern glassware and metalware. All are adorned with Hebrew text. “They are contemporary expressions of my interpretation of ancient classical forms,” Sheffer explains in a phone interview from Israel. The vessels are about 3 feet tall and range from $3,200 to $3,900.

[...]

Sheffer spends a great deal of time doing research and seeking out ancient manuscripts to re-create on her vessels. To find the ancient documents n anything from love letters to passages from the Bible or prayer books n Sheffer visits museums and libraries all over the world. “Because the Hebrew language is considered sacred, all manuscripts were preserved, even simple letters and documents,” she explains.

[...]

THE TIMBUKTU MANUSCRIPT DIGITIZATION PROJECT continues apace:

Project Digitizes Works From the Golden Age of Timbuktu

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD (New York Times)
Published: May 20, 2008

From Timbuktu to here, to reverse the expression, the written words of the legendary African oasis are being delivered by electronic caravan. A lode of books and manuscripts, some only recently rescued from decay, is being digitized for the Internet and distributed to scholars worldwide.

These are works of law and history, science and medicine, poetry and theology, relics of Timbuktu’s golden age as a crossroads in Mali for trade in gold, salt and slaves along the southern edge of the Sahara. If the name is now a synonym for mysterious remoteness, the literature attests to Timbuktu’s earlier role as a vibrant intellectual center.

In recent years, thousands of these leather-bound books and fragile manuscripts have been recovered from family archives, private libraries and storerooms. The South African government is financing construction of a library in Timbuktu to house more than 30,000 of the books. Other gifts support renovations of family libraries and projects for preserving, translating and interpreting the documents.

Now, the first five of the rare manuscripts from private libraries have been digitized and made available online (www.aluka.org) to scholars and students. At least 300 are expected to be available online by the end of the year.

[...]

Then there's this interesting aside:

Many documents in the graceful Arabic calligraphy are a visual delight. Although the writing is mostly in Arabic, quite a few manuscripts are in vernaculars adapted to the Arabic script, which is sure to pose a challenge for scholars.

Hmmm... Garshuni maybe? (Syriac written in Arabic script.) And who knows what else. Hebrew and Greek manuscripts are also known. Background here and keep following the links back.

(Via the Agade list.)

UPDATE (22 May): Bulbul e-mails:

The "quite a few manuscripts ... in vernaculars adapted to the Arabic script" NY Times articles mentions are almost certainly written in what is usually referred to as 'ajami'. This terms is used as a
designation of the practice to write African languages like Hausa, Yoruba, Wolof and many others and often as a generic term for various modifications of the Arabic script necessary to adequately record the various languages of East Africa. The website
[http://warc-ifap.wikispaces.com/Ajami] is a good overview of the subject. Confusingly enough, in some instances, the term 'ajami' is used as if it referred to a particular language (e.g. "Liste des manuscripts en langues arabe et ajami") which is bound to cause some confusio, just like it so often happens with karshuni/garshuni.

He then very tactfully points out that my definition of Garshuni above is wrong: it is actually Arabic written Syriac script. Oops! That was a silly mistake. Thanks for the correction. Bulbul has a post on Garshuni/Karshuni here.

PICTS AND COPTS in contact in late anquity? So says Magnus Linklater in the London Times:

Around the 6th century, the Picts converted to Christianity and some of their carvings show links with the Middle Eastern Coptic church. This image (left), of two hands receiving a loaf of bread from a raven, depicts StAnthony and StPaul the Hermit in the desert. It is found on a monastery wall in Egypt and a Pictish stone at St Vigeans, Dundee.

Unfortunately the online article has no image.

VIENNA JOB UPDATE: Armin Lange e-mails a link to a web page containing the advert I posted last week:

The Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies of the University of Vienna announces the position of a Full Professor of Jewish History, Religion and Literature in Rabbinic Times (70-1000 CE) (full-time permanent position under private law).

MORE ON THE ARCHAEOLOGY AND POLITICS of the City of David/Silwan from the AP:

The organization funding the digs, the Elad Foundation, is associated with the religious settlement movement and is committed to preventing Israel from ever ceding the area in a peace deal. It says it has a yearly budget of close to $10 million, nearly all of it from donations, and is buying up Palestinian homes in Silwan to accommodate Jewish families. Around 50 have moved in so far, living in houses flying Israeli flags and guarded by armed security men paid for by the Israeli government.

At the same time, the City of David digs have expanded through the neighborhood, carried out by respected Israeli government archaeologists with funding from Elad.
The site at the City of David is seen next to the Arab neighborhood of Silwan near Jerusalem’s Old City.

The site at the City of David is seen next to the Arab neighborhood of Silwan near Jerusalem’s Old City.

Fakhri Abu Diab, a neighborhood activist, said the Elad Foundation has made it clear that he and his neighbors are in the way.

“They want the land without the people,” he said.

None of the finds that the archaeologists highlight for the public are from the eras of Christian or Muslim rule. “They are looking only for Jewish ruins,” said Abu Diab. “It’s as if we’re not here.”

Elad denies having any intention of driving out Silwan’s Palestinians. “There will always be Jews and Arabs living together here,” said Doron Spielman, Elad’s international director of development. Dozens of Silwan Arabs are employed by Elad, he said, and the foundation’s activities include neighborhood beautification projects that improve life for Palestinian residents.

Still, he said, “We do not deny we have a Zionist dream — to reveal the ancient city beneath the ground and create a thriving Jewish neighborhood above the ground.”

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH (indirectly) - another quarry:

Another Second Temple quarry uncovered
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

For the second time in the past year, archeologists have uncovered a Second Temple Period quarry whose stones were used to build the Western Wall, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Monday.

The latest archeological discovery was made in the city's Sanhedria neighborhood, located about two kilometers from the Old City of Jerusalem.

The quarry was uncovered during a routine "salvage excavation" carried out by the state-run archeological body over the last several months ahead of the construction of a private house in the religious neighborhood.

The quarry is believed to be one of those used to build the Jerusalem holy site because the size of the stones match those at the Western Wall.

[...]

Background here and here.

COMPUTER GEEK KEN FISHER, co-founder of Ars Technica, is a also a philology geek:

Ken Fisher, one of the co-founders of Ars Technica, may be just a pen-protector expression of the Condé Nast way. After we discussed our common interest in fourth-century Coptic texts — O.K., he talked, I listened — he said that he had been approached by a number of parties interested in buying the site. After talking to people at Wired.com and Reddit, he and his partners decided that the Condé Nast way left them the best chance of developing what had been a hobby on steroids into a business.

When I first read this quote in a NYT piece on Condé Nast's investments in tech publications, I figured that Fisher just meant that he had read one of the translations of the Nag Hammadi Library or the like. But when I found his brief bio at the Ars Technica site, I realized my error:

I'm currently a Ph.D. student in Religion at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. I'm now working on my dissertation, and hope to be finished in a few years. I have worked in IT for most of my "career years," performing senior administrative functions at two different universalities, as well as running my own consulting business on the side. I tend now to focus all of my energy on my studies, but I still consult from time to time to pay the bills.

He's the real thing. Cool.

UPDATE: Brent Landau, Harvard doctoral candidate in NT and early Christianity, e-mails to say that Ken Fisher "is definitely the real deal" and that he is doing his dissertation on ritual practice in the Gospel of Philip.

MORE ON THE PSALMS SCROLL that was on display for the President's Conference in Jerusalem: The IAA has a press release.

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

THAT STORY ABOUT THE QUEEN OF SHEBA'S PALACE - supposedly excavated in Axum, Ethiopia - now has coverage by the London Times and Fox News. It recycles the earlier story, and repeats some errors (Menelik, Queen of Sheba's - ahem - "liason" with Solomon), but introduces a healthy note of skepticism.

The discovery, announced by the University of Hamburg last week, has stirred skeptical rumblings from the archaeological community.

[...]

Many archaeologists believe that their profession should not be in the business of myth-chasing. Even if the Ark were found, it would be impossible to establish scientifically whether it was the original receptacle for the Ten Commandments.

Iris Gerlach of the German Archaeological Institute in Sanaa, Yemen, believes the religious centre of Sheba is in present-day Yemen.

Although she does not go head-to-head with her colleague Professor Ziegert, the message is clear: A relic such as the Ark would have been stored in an important religious city rather than in Aksum.

[...]

There may an interesting story in this, but we're not there yet.

(Via Explorator 11.4)

HARRISON FORD has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Archaeological Institute of America. Now if they can just get Angelina Jolie signed up ... (Maybe they shouldn't have dissed Lara Croft!)

(Via the Agade list.)

Also, don't miss the link in that announcement to the article on crystal skulls by Jane MacLaren Walsh in the current issue of Archaeology Magazine. Alas, they are fakes - a multi-generational industry that began in the Victorian era.

Impressed by their technical excellence and gleaming polish, generations of museum curators and private collectors have been taken in by these objects. But they are too good to be true. If we consider that pre-Columbian lapidaries used stone, bone, wooden, and possibly copper tools with abrasive sand to carve stone, crystal skulls are much too perfectly carved and highly polished to be believed.

THE BOOK OF 2 SAMUEL has been made into a musical, with the Archangel Metatron as one of the characters:

Reconsidering a King as a Lord of the Dance
The Spirit That Moves Theater J's 'David' Comes From the Sole

By Celia Wren
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 18, 2008; Page M04

You might think of it as the original "Dancing With the Stars." The biblical book of 2 Samuel recounts how David, king of Israel, leaped and capered in worshipful jubilation as the ark of the covenant -- symbolizing God's presence -- progressed toward Jerusalem.

That scriptural episode has long fascinated Yehuda Hyman, a Los Angeles playwright and former professional dancer. With the gamboling-monarch anecdote at the back of his mind, Hyman found himself musing more broadly on the David story. The upshot is "David in Shadow and Light," a musical receiving its world premiere at Theater J. Boasting a libretto by Hyman and a Middle Eastern-flavored score by Daniel Hoffman (a klezmer violin virtuoso), the show runs through June 22 under Nick Olcott's direction.

"David" is a chronicle of the biblical hero, from his slingshot triumph to his exploits as army commander to the highs and lows of his reign over Israel. With a quarter-million-dollar budget, a four-person band and staging that runs to puppetry and other high-concept touches, the musical is the boldest, costliest and most time-intensive production ever for Theater J, according to Artistic Director Ari Roth.

The cast includes Matt Pearson (MetroStage's "tick, tick . . . BOOM!") as the young David, and Bobby Smith doubling as Saul and the older David. Will Gartshore portrays Saul's son Jonathan. Enlivening the musical's postmodern-frame tale (based on a legend from a midrash, a storytelling exegesis of biblical texts), Donna Migliaccio depicts the Archangel Metatron, who is screening a movie biography of David for Adam (Norman Aronovic), of Garden of Eden fame.

[...]

Note: it was a sling, not a slingshot. Also, in case you're wondering, Metatron does not actually appear in 2 Samuel. I'm not sure which midrash served as the inspiration. Anyone know?

Cross file under "Metatron watch."

UPDATE (17 June): More here.

VISION OF GABRIEL UPDATE: A technical glitch has been fixed and Israel Knohl's article "'By Three Days, Live': Messiahs, Resurrection, and Ascent to Heaven in Hazon Gabriel" is back up on the Shalom Hartman Institutute website. They send apologies for the glitch.

Background here and here.

UPDATE: N. T. Wrong brings in an Ugaritic connection (via Abnormal Interests).

ALON GOSHEN-GOTTSTEIN gave a lecture in Ohio on sacred space in Judaism and Christianity. Rabbi Goshen-Gottstein also publishes on Merkavah Mysticism and Hekhalot literature.

"IT'S HOT, IT'S DIRTY." A Berkeley professor reflects on archaeology after Indiana Jones:

"I don't know how he stands a big heavy jacket and hat in those climates," said UC Berkeley classics professor and unabashed Indy fan Kim Shelton. "But it looks good in movies."

Shelton spent 12 years as a full-time archaeologist at Mycenae, one of the great Greek city-states and home to legendary king Agamemnon, hero of Homer's "Odyssey." These days, Shelton directs the university's dig in Nemea, a site with links to the Hercules legend and the original Olympic games.

But Shelton has fond recollections of watching "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" with fellow archaeology students back in grad school. This time, she'll share the adventure with her own students, most of whom spent the semester exploring the myths and realities of archaeology and such topics as antiquities law, Trojan gold and "Whip or Trowel? Tools of the Trade."

It's not so much that the Indiana Jones movies are wrong, Shelton said, as that they depict "an old-fashioned way of doing things, a romantic version with traps and danger. You find things easily and sell them, which we don't do. And Indiana Jones never seems to publish. He gets his tenure from his good looks."

But Indiana Jones' greatest success has been in wooing students to archaeology and classics classrooms, Shelton said. The razzle-dazzle of Nazi fortune hunters and gleaming treasure lure them in. Science and history win their hearts.

Nonsense about archaeology and history can be used to reel in potential serious students. As I've remarked before, reading Erich von Däniken as a kid got me interested in this field.

Read the rest of this article to hear about Professor Shelton's coolest find ever. And about the "sudden avalanche of voracious, enormous red fox fleas," whatever those are. Ugh!

JOB IN JUDAISM IN RABBINIC TIMES at the University of Vienna:

The Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies of the University of Vienna announces the position of a Full Professor of Jewish History, Religion and Literature in Rabbinic Times (70-1000 CE) (full-time permanent position under private law).

As stated in its development plan (http://www.univie.ac.at/rektorenteam/ug2002/entwicklungsplan.html) the University of Vienna aims at strengthening its position as a major research oriented university. Key elements of this strategy include the provision of an attractive range of research-based study programmes, support for furthering the work of junior academic colleagues, and high-calibre professorial appointments.

The Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies of the University of Vienna announces the position of a Full Professor of Jewish History, Religion and Literature in Rabbinic Times (70-1000 CE) (full-time permanent position under private law).

The University of Vienna intends to increase the number of women on its faculty, particularly in high-level positions, and therefore specifically invites applications by women. Among equally qualified applicants women will receive preferential consideration.

The successful candidate will have a research record in one of the fields of Rabbinic epoch and will be able to teach Jewish history, religion and literature in Rabbinic times (70-1000 CE) at all levels (BA, MA, PhD).

Successful candidates will have the following qualifications: - PhD and post-doctoral experience at a university or other research institution. (Austrian or equivalent international academic degree in the relevant field)
- Outstanding research and publication record, with an excellent reputation as an active member in the international academic community (Habilitation (venia docendi) or equivalent international qualification in the relevant field is desirable)
- Experience in designing, procuring and directing major research projects, and willingness and ability to assume the responsibility of team leadership
- Experience in university teaching, and willingness and ability to teach at all curricular levels, to supervise theses, and to further the work of junior academic colleagues
The University of Vienna expects the successful candidate to acquire, within three years, proficiency in German sufficient for teaching in Bachelor programmes and participation in committees.

The University of Vienna offers:
- with its unusually broad spectrum of subjects, and the city of Vienna, with its libraries, archives, museums and other institutions, provide ideal surroundings for research and teaching in the humanities.
- Attractive terms and conditions of employment with a negotiable and performance-related salary, associated with a retirement fund
- A "start-up packageı for the initiation of research projects
- An attractive and dynamic research location in a city with a high quality of life and in a country with excellent research funding provision
- Support for relocation to Vienna, where appropriate Candidates should send an application containing at least the following documents:
- Academic curriculum vitae
- Brief description of current research interests and research plans for the immediate future
- List of publications together with a) specification of five key publications judged by the applicant to be particularly relevant to the advertised professorship together with an explanation of their relevance
b) PDF versions of these five publications provided either as email attachments or through URLs of downloadable copies
- List of talks given, including detailed information about invited plenaries at international conferences
- List of projects supported by third-party funds
- Short survey of previous academic teaching and list of supervised PhD theses.

Applications in English or German should be sent to:
The Dean of the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies of the
University of Vienna
Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring 1
A-1010 Vienna

and submitted by e-mail to Guntram.Schneider@univie.ac.at, no later than June 15th, 2008 with reference 14/24-2007/08.

(From the Agade list.)

MORE ON THE ISAIAH SCROLL EXHIBITION: Art Daily has an article with a nice photograph.

Israel Museum Presents Great Isaiah Scroll For the First Time in Over Forty Years

TEL AVIV.- On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, the Israel Museum presents two major sections of the Great Isaiah Scroll – the most complete biblical Dead Sea Scroll document ever found and one of the world’s greatest archaelogical treasures – in a special installation in the Shrine of the Book. For the first time in over forty years, the public will have the rare opportunity to view the two longest sections of the Scroll, featuring Isaiah’s celebrated message of peace: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares…" (Isaiah 2:4). In order to illustrate this important message, artifacts from the days of the prophet Isaiah (8th century BCE), including a bent scimitar and agricultural tools, will be displayed together with the Scroll as part of this special exhibit. Swords into Plowshares: The Isaiah Scroll and Its Message of Peace will be on view in the Shrine of the Book at the Museum from May 19 through August 30, 2008.

“This special installation, held in celebration of Israel’s 60th anniversary, provides visitors with a rare opportunity to view one of the oldest, most complete, and best preserved of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” said James S. Snyder, Anne and Jerome Fisher Director of the Israel Museum. “The Isaiah Scroll, housed at the Israel Museum in the Shrine of the Book, with its timeless message of peace, is one of the most important ancient biblical documents ever discovered.”

Swords into Plowshares presents the longest sections of the complete Isaiah Scroll: a 2.60 meter-long section comprising chapters 1-28, and a 2.38 meter-long section comprising chapters 44-66. Contextualizing the scroll, the Museum will also display ancient archaeological tools, including a bent scimitar and a newly excavated and never before displayed early Roman seal, depicting a dove-like bird carrying an olive branch. The exhibit is curated by Michal Dayagi-Mendels, Chief Curator of Archaeology, and Adolfo Roitman, Head of the Shrine of the Book and Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[...]

There will also be a conference in July to go with the exhibition and the sixtieth anniversary of the discovery of the Scrolls.

"HOW MANY HOLY BOOKS HAVE YOU READ?"

Don't get me started.

PRESIDENT BUSH visited Masada yesterday. And Mrs. Bush visited the Western Wall tunnels.

UPDATE: Here's a Masada Factbox from Reuters. Looks accurate, except it should note that Josephus's account is viewed with skepticism by some modern scholars.

VISION OF GABRIEL UPDATE: Earlier I noted Israel Knohl's English article "'By Three Days, Live': Messiahs, Resurrection, and Ascent to Heaven in Hazon Gabriel" in the Journal of Religion, accessible only by subscription. Now Professor Knohl has posted it for free at the website of the Shalom Hartman Institute.

UPDATE: The link has gone dead. I've e-mailed Professor Knohl and will keep you posted.

UPDATE (18 May): Problem fixed.

THE FIFTEENTH WORLD CONGRESS OF JEWISH STUDIES has issued a call for papers.

(Via the Agade list.)

MORE ON THE ISAIAH SCROLL EXHIBITION:

Israel Museum puts Dead Sea scroll on rare display

By MATTI FRIEDMAN – 13 hours ago

JERUSALEM (AP) — One of the most important Dead Sea scrolls is going on display in Jerusalem this week — more than four decades after it was last seen by the public. The 24-foot scroll with the text of the Bible's Book of Isaiah had been in a dark, temperature-controlled room at the Israel Museum since 1967. It went on display two years earlier, but curators replaced it with a facsimile after noticing new cracks in the calfskin parchment.

The museum decided to put the scroll back on show for three months as part of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations.

[...]

Yesterday's article said only two months. The Jerusalem Post had some photos to go with today's article. (Click on first link above.)

A far smaller fragment of another Dead Sea scroll will be on display at the Jerusalem convention center where Bush will be speaking along with other dignitaries.

The segment, also rarely shown, contains the text of Psalm 133, which reads: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."

INDIANA JONES GALLERY: Lots of Crystal Skull photos here.

Plus, there are interesting interviews with Karen Allen here and here. Excerpt from the second:

iF: What's the biggest change that Marion has made in the new Indy?

ALLEN: Well, it's difficult to talk about that, given that we're not supposed to reveal anything about the story. And a lot of the changes in Marion’s life are connected to the plot of the film that's been kept so incredibly, incredibly secret! But I think I can say that Marion and Indy's lives over the past twenty years have diverged, and they haven't seen each other for a long time. She's been living in the world on her own terms, and has developed into an interesting, completely independent woman who can stand on her own two feet. And that’s definitely a change from the first RAIDERS. Even though she's a feisty character in that movie, I felt that Marion was a bit buffeted around by circumstance in it. She's thrown here, thrown there, dropped into a well of souls and tossed into a basket. But I feel that this time, Marion’s really taking charge of where, and whom she's going with. And it’s that level of grounding, and maturity in her character that I liked when I read the script.

DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITIONS:

The Isaiah Scroll from Qumran Cave 1 (1QISa^a) is on display at the Israel Museum:

2,100-year-old Isaiah Scroll on rare public display for two months
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Yigal Yadin, Isaiah Scroll

For the past 40 years, the 2,100-year-old Isaiah Scroll has been kept in a dark room with temperature and humidity controls, far from the public eye. A few days ago, in honor of Israel's 60th anniversary, the Israel Museum put the parchment scroll on display in the Shrine of the Book - for two months only.

[...]

And the Jewish Museum in New York is to have six unidentified Dead Sea Scrolls on display for the same reason:

Jewish Museum Celebrates Israel’s Birthday
(Huliq.com)

The Jewish Museum is marking the 60th anniversary of Israel’s founding with a variety of programs featuring Israeli art and artists. Among the highlights are a panel discussion on Israeli and Jewish film on Tuesday, June 3; an exhibition of six Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum from September 21, 2008 through January 4, 2009; and several exhibitions including the work of contemporary Israeli artists.


[...]

An upcoming exhibition will feature artifacts that shed light on ancient worship and religious debates. The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the world’s most famous archaeological discoveries, and three of the six scrolls to be displayed––from September 21, 2008 through January 4, 2009––have never before been shown in New York. Part of one of the earliest copies of the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Jeremiah (c. 200), is included. Exhibition visitors will be able to explore what the scrolls tell us about ancient Judaism and early Christianity.

[...]

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Resumption of the work on the Mughrabi (Mugrabi) Gate bridge has reportedly been approved (again?).

Background here.

THE NEWARK STONES are in the news:

'Holy Stones' prompt investigation

By L.B. WHYDE • Newark Advocate • May 12, 2008

NEWARK - Trying to preserve the Union during a tumultuous time in history, several prominent local men conspired and manufactured artifacts to support an emerging anti-slavery theory.

Known as Newark's Holy Stones, the artifacts later were proven to be fake. But two local men have done extensive research to discover the reasons behind the conspiracy.

Brad Lepper, an Ohio Historical Society archaeologist, first learned of the pair of hand-carved stones found in the Newark area in 1860 while he was a graduate student working at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, where the original stones are housed.

When he became the curator at the Newark Earthworks in 1988, Lepper had to learn about the fake artifacts because of the number of questions about them. But when Jeff Gill, a history enthusiast and supply preacher, moved into the area in 1989, the duo continued the research to discover the men and reasons behind the conspiracy.

"Looking into the background of what was going on at that time period, it shows us how Licking County played a role in the movement for freedom of rights," Gill said. "They (the conspirators) did it for the right reasons, but I deplore their methods."

[...]

The first stone unearthed had several flaws, including being found too close to the surface and the fact the writing was modern Hebrew for that time. Five months later, another stone, called the Decalogue Stone, was discovered much deeper, in the area of Jacksontown.

Again Wyrick found the stone, which seemed to answer all the flaws of the first stone. The stones were claimed to be conclusive proof that all men descended from Adam and Eve. After both stones later were found to be fake, and his premature death, the blame was put on Wyrick by former Newark Mayor Israel Dille.

[...]

A few years ago Rochelle Altman published an essay at the Bible and Interpretation website in which she argued that the stones were genuine Jewish artifacts from the late Middle Ages.

A "BIOGRAPHY" OF A GEMARA MANUSCRIPT from Manuscript Boy. The first of many, I hope.

ED COOK is publishing a new book:

A Glossary of Targum Onkelos

Congratulations Ed!

DUELING NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICS.

HARRISON FORD is profiled by the Independent in advance - of course - of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Excerpt:

The marketing men are taking a rather different line on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which is a star attraction at the Cannes film festival starting next week and which opens in the UK later this month. They are talking about something "fresh but familiar", which is what fans will be hoping for from the old team of storymaker George Lucas, director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford back in the hat as the born-again archaeologist action hero. The money men are predicting the blockbuster of the summer.

Harrison Ford has form on that. The previous Indiana films have been one of the biggest box-office successes in the history of the movies. They won Ford the No 1 slot in Empire magazine's Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time list – and took his gross worldwide earnings to almost $6bn, making him one of the most financially successful actors of his generation. Who cares that his long career has featured only one Oscar nomination when he has appeared in five of the top 10 highest-grossing movies ever.

Still, Indiana 4 has been a long time coming. Spielberg and co have been on the lookout for a good enough script for more than 15 years, rejecting three so-so ones in the process. "None of us was fully satisfied with what was produced," says Ford.

There is an irony in that. For long planning is the antithesis of the happenstance that has characterised Harrison Ford's long career. Many of the nodal points over the past four decades were happy accidents or serendipitous defaults. His big break, playing Han Solo in the first Star Wars film, came while he was a carpenter standing in to read for an absent actor. Indiana's leather coat (very odd wear for a hot-climate archaeologist) was originally intended for another actor, Tom Selleck, who at the last minute couldn't get out of his contract for the TV show Magnum PI.

And there are already noises being made about a fifth Indiana Jones movie. I'll let you know what I think of that once I've seen the fourth.

Meanwhile some high school students in Florida are learning about real archaeology in a simulated excavation:

The project, a joint effort by Matanzas and Flagler Palm Coast high schools' Community Problem Solvers teams, is designed to teach students about world cultures through archaeology, said Flagler Palm Coast teacher Diane Tomko.

"When you learn about archaeology, it's hard to do it in the classroom," said Tomko, who worked with Matanzas teacher Mat Saunders to coordinate the project. "They get more of a hands-on experience this way."

To prepare for their roles as archaeologists, students first researched 15 different countries including Japan, India and Pakistan, said Bunnell fifth-grade gifted teacher Karen Driscoll. They had to familiarize themselves with the art forms, dress and currency of the country.

Students practiced their excavation techniques using toothpicks to carefully wedge out the chocolate chips in cookies, Driscoll said. Saunders -- who will lead Flagler Palm Coast and Matanzas students on a dig in Belize this summer -- said it's important students understand that there's more to archaeology than just digging up antiques.

"We're teaching them scientific method, history, world cultures, geometry," he said. "Everything is tied into this."

The 27-by-50-foot dig box may be the largest of its kind in North America and is similar to a real archaeological site, Saunders said. Before the students could dig, Saunders and Tomko charted the locations of each country in the box and buried dozens of artifacts -- ranging from a full samurai suit to a golf club.

Good stuff.

DRUZE DNA is producing some interesting genetic data:

Genetics Confirm Oral Traditions Of Druze In Israel

ScienceDaily (May 8, 2008) — DNA analysis of residents of Druze villages in Israel suggests these ancient religious communities offer a genetic snapshot of the Near East as it was several thousands of years ago.

The Druze harbor a remarkable diversity of mitochondrial DNA types or lineages that appear to have separated from each other many thousands of years ago, according to a new study by multinational team, led by researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Rappaport School of Medicine.

But instead of dispersing throughout the world after their separation, the full range of lineages can still be found within the small, tightly knit Druze population.

Technion researcher Karl Skorecki noted that the findings are consistent with Druze oral tradition suggesting the adherents came from diverse ancestral lineages "stretching back tens of thousands of years." The Druze represent a "genetic sanctuary" or "living relic" that provides a glimpse of the genetic diversity of the Near East in antiquity, the researchers write in the May 7th issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

[...]

THE BIBLE, BRITISH VERSION. Including the Apocrypha.

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA'S PALACE?

Archaeologists find Queen of Sheba's palace at Axum, Ethiopia
07.05.08 23:38 (TREND Information, Azerbaijan)

Archaeologists believe they have found the Queen of Sheba's palace at Axum, Ethiopia and an altar which held the most precious treasure of ancient Judaism, the Ark of the Covenant, the University of Hamburg said Wednesday, the dpa reported.

Scientists from the German city made the startling find during their spring excavation of the site over the past three months.

The Ethiopian queen was the bride of King Solomon of Israel in the 10th century before the Christian era. The royal match is among the memorable events in the Bible.

Ethiopian tradition claims the Ark, which allegedly contained Moses' stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written, was smuggled to Ethiopia by their son Menelek and is still in that country.

[...]

Whatever is going on here sounds garbled to me. I take it that a German team of archaeologists has found a tenth-century BCE palace in Axum and speculates that it might have belonged to the Queen of Sheba. This sounds at least possible. But the Bible does not say that Solomon married the Queen of Sheba. That, the stuff about the Ark, and the name Menelek all come from the medieval compilation of Ethiopian legends in the Kebra Negast. (See the links at the bottom of this post for background.) The original story of the Queen of Sheba is found in the Bible in 1 Kings 10:1-13.

This may be an important find, but we'll have to see. Watch this space.

UPDATE (10 May): Todd Bolen has some useful observations at the BiblePlaces blog.

A PBS SPECIAL ON JUDAISM is reviewed by the NYT:

Telescoping 4,000 Years of Talmud and Tradition

By GINIA BELLAFANTE
Published: May 7, 2008

It is easy to see why someone might approach “The Jewish People: A Story of Survival” with a certain reservation. The documentary, to be shown on Wednesday on WLIW and on other PBS stations in June, condenses four millenniums of atrocity into 60 minutes, allotting the pogroms the amount of time it takes to dust a coffee table.

On the surface “The Jewish People” is like a YouTube video reducing multiple seasons of a complex television show — let’s say “Battlestar Galactica” — into 50 seconds: enslavement, evil pharaohs, the marauding Babylonians, the overpowering Romans, the rise of anti-Semitism, the ravages of the Crusades, shtetls, the birth of Yiddish, the Holocaust, Stalinism, the glories of Theodor Herzl, Zionism. And yet what we get is an impressive and surprisingly rigorous feat of synthesis that roots itself in the lesser-known aspects of Jewish life during the ancient world.

[...]

If Ms. Leibowitz really does take her Talmud on the plane, it must be the Reader's Digest condensed version.

BLOG POST TITLE FOR THE DAY:

Piles or Penises?

SOME EXCITING GENIZA NEWS, also via the Aramaic Blog.

UPDATE (8 May): Bad link fixed. Sorry.

ARAMAIC WATCH: An Aramaic Music Festival in Lebanon.

SCHØYEN COLLECTION FOR SALE.

I've mentioned the Schøyen Collection here, but the links have all died. But see also here and here.

UPDATE: Duane Smith comments at Abnormal Interests.

ARAMAIC WATCH: This is a novel use of Aramaic, although I'm not sure what it has to do with the sacks.

Wool sacks return to cathedral
By Tanya O'Rourke (Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Woolsacks are hanging from the Bradford [England] Cathedral bell tower once again - more than 350 years after they were strung up around the outside to protect it from cannon fire.

During the English Civil War, the sacks were used in the 1642 Bradford Siege to prevent damage being caused by Royalist cannonballs.

And this month - as part of an exhibition by Bradford-based artist network CART - hessian sacks are adorning the inside of the tower with fragments of Aramaic script, the ancient language of the time of Christ, also featuring.

The piece, called Blessed, hangs 30 feet from the bell tower into the cathedral.

[...]

CONGRATULATIONS TO THOMAS LEVY, who has been named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences:

Founded in 1780, the Academy annually elects individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large. The 2008 class of scholars, scientists, artists, civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders elected as fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences includes 190 new Fellows and 22 new Foreign Honorary Members from 20 states and 15 countries.

[...]

Thomas Levy is professor of anthropology at UC San Diego where he holds the Norma Kershaw Endowed Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and the Neighboring Lands. Levy has had a distinguished career as a field archaeologist working in Israel and Jordan, focusing primarily on the evolution of complex societies and on the role of technology in the evolution of ancient cultures. Since joining the faculty in 1992, he has served as the chair of the Department of Anthropology, director of the Judaic Studies Program and associate director for Archaeology at UCSD’s Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology, part of Calit2. Levy’s interests include anthropological archaeology, Biblical and Near Eastern archaeology, ethno-archaeology in India and the application of digital methods in archaeology. In 2007, he served as the guest curator for the San Diego Museum of Man’s exhibition ‘Journey to the Copper Age’ carried out in association with the National Geographic Society.

HEADLINE FOR THE DAY:

Anyone who can master Ancient Greek like Boris can master anything ... including London

THE CHRONOGRAPHIAE of Julius Africanus, which survives only in fragments, has been published in a new edition that is reviewed in Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

Martin Wallraff (ed.), Iulius Africanus: Chronographiae. The Extant Fragments. In collaboration with Umberto Roberto and Karl Pinggéra, William Adler. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte, NF 15. Translated by W. Adler. Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007. Pp. lxxxix, 352. ISBN 978-3-11-019493-7. €91.59.

Reviewed by Hagith Sivan, University of Kansas (dinah01@ku.edu)
Word count: 1514 words

First, congratulations are in order to the venerable Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller for producing, for the first time in its history, an edition with an English translation and even an introduction in English. "Let these be multiplied," as the rabbis used to say, a blessing that, one hopes, is sufficiently suitable for an edition of an author who hailed from Palestine.

Julius Africanus well deserves the effort that the impressive international team assembled by Martin Wallraff has obviously invested in this project. Of Africanus' not insignificant output, consisting of the Cesti (originally in 14 volumes), two letters (one addressed to Origen, the other to an Aristides) and the Chronographiae (originally in 5), we now have the most complete collection of 100 fragments from the last work and, equally useful, of 99 testimonia.

Through the Chronographiae Africanus conceived the extraordinarily ambitious plan of fitting widely disparate strands of different histories into a biblical frame of time, beginning with Adam and culminating with the Resurrection. The resultant chronological system served as a basis for universal histories of which the Eusebian-Hieronymian version proved both influential and lasting. Perhaps the success of the latter ultimately guaranteed the dispersal and fragmentary survival of the model conceived by Africanus.

[...]

UPDATE (5 May): Blog post title for the day:

He Was the Very Model of a Pantheon Librarian

L'AELAC (L'Association pour l'étude de la littérature apocryphe chrétienne) has its annual meeting in June in Dole, France.

A DEAD SEA SCROLL REPLICA will be on display next week at the Kaleidofest Festival in honor of Israel's sixtieth anniversary:

KaleidoFest also will celebrate Israel's scientific, medical and technological achievements, including work with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Part of the exhibit will feature a replica of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Biblical documents in the world. The St. Louis Jewish community owns one of only four facsimiles of the scrolls outside of Israel, according to Rabbi Brad Horwitz, director of the JCC's Helene Mirowitz Department of Jewish Community Life.

THE OXFORD CENTRE FOR HEBREW AND JEWISH STUDIES gets a new president in the fall:

American to lead Oxford Centre
02/05/2008 (Jewish Chronicle, UK)
By Simon Rocker
An academic who has written books on Kabbalah and Jewish belief is to be the first American head of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

David Ariel, 58, the acting president of Baltimore Hebrew University, will succeed Peter Oppenheimer in October. He retires after eight years as president of the centre.

[...]

And this is especially exciting:

A key objective will be to increase funding for Oxford’s fellowships, as well as endowing new posts in areas such as Sephardic studies, Kabbalah and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Congratulations to David Ariel and to the Oxford Centre.

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL XXIX has been published at the Dr Jim West blog.

VISION OF GABRIEL UPDATE: Israel Knohl has published an English article on this inscription in the Journal of Religion:

“By Three Days, Live”: Messiahs, Resurrection, and Ascent to Heaven in Hazon Gabriel

Requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access.

Background here and keep following the links back.

UPDATE (15 May): More here (with a no-charge link to the article).

THE TALMUD AND ENVIRONMENTALISM?

NPR quotes Anglican minister Martin Palmer as saying the following:

Palmer says priests and rabbis and imams know how to explain complicated, abstract ideas by using parable and metaphor. On this day, he tells a creation story from the ancient Jewish text, the Talmud.

"The Talmud says that the angels went to God and said, 'You just created this wonderful world and now you've created these human beings who will only go and mess it up. Are you start staring mad?' And God says, 'I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing.' And then the earth spoke, and the earth was afraid. And the earth said, 'These creatures, they will only rebel against me and harm me.' And God answers, 'I promise you that they will never be allowed to destroy you.'"

Palmer sees it as his job to help God keep that promise.

Talmud experts, is this in the Talmud?

Also, reader George Spragens suggests the following regarding the Nancy Pelosi quote:

"Biblical scholars" can't find the text House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is paraphrasing because they are looking for a stewardship-of-the-earth passage, not the social-justice passage Ms. Pelosi is referencing out of context: "Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him." -- Proverbs 14:31 (NRSV)

Her quotation could be a reworking of this passage with Genesis 2:15 in mind, in good midrashic form. But it still doesn't appear in the Bible.

UPDATE: Iyov suggests that Palmer's quote is "a highly twisted version" of b. Sanhedrin 38b, which Iyov quotes in his post. Reader Aaron Koller e-mailed to suggest this passage and others:

I'm not writing as an expert, but...
The text known to me is in bSan 38b and Genesis Rabbah 8:5, where the angels object to the creation of man, citing Ps 8:5, "what is man that you are mindful of him..." That's not a concern for the environment, but just a belittling of the value of humanity. (There are other version in GenRab, as well.) Something similar is actually in the Qur'an (2:30), as well as in Pirqe de-R. Eliezer 12.
http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Of course, maybe if we didn't think so highly of ourselves we wouldn't trash the environment -- but I don't know of any explicit guarantees like the one "quoted" by Palmer.

More's the pity. It would be nice to have one.

UPDATE (2 May): Simon Montagu agrees regarding b. Sanhedrin 38b and adds:

However, the classic Rabbinic source for environmentalism is Ecclesiastes Rabbah on 7:13:

בשעה שברא הקב”ה את אדם הראשון נטלו והחזירו על כל אילני גן עדן ואמר לו ראה מעשי כמה נאים ומשובחין הן וכל מה שבראתי בשבילך בראתי, תן דעתך שלא תקלקל ותחריב את עולמי, שאם קלקלת אין מי שיתקן אחריך

When the Holy One, Blessed be He, made the first human, he led him past every tree in the Garden of Eden, saying, “Look at what I have made! See how beautiful and excellent they are! Everything that I created I created for you; take care not to damage or destroy my world, because if you damage it there is nobody else who can repair it after you.”

A PSALMS SCROLL (apparently 11Q5, the Qumran Cave 11 Psalms Scroll) will be on display for President Bush during his visit for the 60th anniversary festivities:

Israel to display rarely seen scroll

10 hours ago

JERUSALEM (AP) — A rarely displayed segment of the Dead Sea Scrolls will be part of an exhibition for President Bush and other dignitaries attending Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations next month, a museum official said Wednesday.

The ancient manuscripts date back over 2,000 years and contain almost the full text of the Jewish Bible.

The segment on display will be from Psalm 133. It reads: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."

And as an aside, on the Megillot list Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra points out that this AP article appears in Haaretz with a bizarre error:

The ancient manuscripts date back over 2,000 years and contain almost the full text of the Jewish Bible, as well as early Christian texts.

Sounds like someone has been reading too much Dan Brown.

Joe Zias comments:

One of the things that I like so much about the AP here in Jrsm is that senior journalists usually let us check out the article for mistakes like this before it goes out. Here it's obvious someone forgot to ask scholars before it went out and now that it's in the public record, the damage is done. I have a feeling that the misinformation may have come from some gov't PR folks as no scholar dealing with the topic would have permitted such a thing.

But the AP article as currently posted does not have the error. Either it was corrected quickly or Haaretz introduced it.

UPDATE: Ken Penner notes that the Haaretz article also has a concluding paragraph not found in the AP version:

Study of the scrolls has been going on for decades, and some scientists
complain that fragments of the scrolls have been given to too few experts, drawing out the process of analyzing them

This might have applied before 1991, but since then the Dead Sea Scrolls have been fully available in photographs (and more recently in full editions) to anyone who wanted to study them. Could this have been cribbed from some old source? The mystery deepens.

RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND THEOLOGY: The Guardian has the lowdown on undergraduate study in the U.K.

UPDATE: The Guardian's 2009 league table ranks the University of St. Andrews at number 2 in the U.K. for Religious Studies and Theology, after Oxford but before Cambridge.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS, THE ALBUM, is forthcoming soon. And the blog is here.

ANOTHER POLYGLOT BIBLE is in the news:

Harry Ransom Center Acquires
Rare Plantin Polyglot Bible

AUSTIN, Texas—The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin has acquired a rare Plantin Polyglot Bible, containing parallel texts in Hebrew, Greek, Syriac and Aramaic with translations and commentary in Latin.

The acquisition of this eight-volume folio was made possible by a major gift from Margaret Hight and an important contribution from Lucy Ross. Additional support came from the Ransom Center's Carl H. Pforzheimer Endowment.

[...]

Printed in Antwerp between 1568 and 1572, Christopher Plantin's Polyglot Bible is recognized for its contributions to philological and Biblical scholarship and the printing arts.

[...]

CONGRATULATIONS TO PROFESSOR PETER GENTRY, who has just received a research grant for work on the Septuagint:

Gentry receives research grant for third time
April 28, 2008
By David Roach

For the third time, Peter Gentry, professor of Old Testament interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has received a Lilly Theological Research Grant.

The grant, administered by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) and funded by the Lilly Foundation, is awarded after a team of scholars evaluates applicants’ research proposals. ATS is the main accrediting agency for theological schools in North America.

Gentry plans to use the $12,000 award to fund research in Germany during a sabbatical from January through June 2009. The research will allow Gentry to finish a critical edition of the Greek text of Ecclesiastes for the Goettingen Septuagint Series.

[...]

THE POLYGLOT BIBLE meets Google digitization:

Digitizing ancient books a laborious process
Globally, hundreds of librarians turning pages for Google

Natasha Robinson, Associated Press

Monday, April 28, 2008

In a dimly lit back room on the second level of the University of Michigan library's book-shelving department, Courtney Mitchel helped a giant desktop machine digest a rare, centuries-old Bible.

Mitchel is among hundreds of librarians from Minnesota to England making digital versions of the most fragile of the books to be included in Google Inc.'s Book Search, a portal that eventually will lead users to all the estimated 50 million to 100 million books in the world.

The manual scanning - up to 600 pages a day - is much slower than Google's regular process.

"It's monotonous," said Mitchel, 24. "But it's still something that I'm learning about - how to interact with really old materials and working with digital imaging, which is relevant to art history."

The unusually tight binding on the early 16th century polyglot Bible made it hard to expose the portions toward the book's middle as Mitchel spread each pair of pages for the scanner. Librarians believe it is the oldest Bible in the world with Arabic type.

[...]

Nice project. One quibble (about the article, not the project): I'm not aware of any sixteenth century Polyglot Bibles that included Arabic. The Paris and London Polyglots, both of the seventeenth century, did though. See the Catholic Encyclopedia article on "Polyglot Bibles":

The "Complutensian Bible" published the first printed edition of the Greek Old Testament, the one which was commonly used and reproduced, before the appearance of the edition of Sixtus V, in 1587. It is followed, on the whole, in the Septuagint columns of the four great Polyglots edited by Montanus (Antwerp, 1569-72); Bertram (Heidelberg, 1586-1616); Wolder (Hamburg, 1596); and Le Jay (Paris, 1645). ...

The "Paris Polyglot" in ten volumes, more magnificent than its Antwerp predecessor, was edited with less accuracy, and it lacks a critical apparatus. Its notable additions to the texts of the "Antwerp Bible", which it reproduces without much change, are the Samaritan Pentateuch and its Samaritan version edited with Latin translation by the Oratorian, Jean Morin, the Syriac Old Testament and New Testament Antilegomena, and the Arabic version of the Old Testament.

The "London Polyglot" in six volumes, edited by Brian Walton (1654-7), improved considerably on the texts of its predecessors. Besides them, it has the Ethiopic Psalter, Canticle of Canticles, and New Testament, the Arabic New Testament, and the Gospels in Persian. All the texts not Latin are accompanied by Latin translations, and all, sometimes nine in number, are arranged side by side or one over another on the two pages open before the reader ...

UPDATE: Gilles Firmin e-mails:

Je ne sais pas dans quelle mesure un "librarian" peut distinguer entre le syriaque (présent dans la Polyglotte d'Anvers) et l'arabe... En tout état de cause, l'arabe figurait bien dans la première "polyglotte" imprimée : non pas une Bible complète, toutefois, mais dans le Psautier de Giustiniani (1516).

So there was a Polyglot Psalter of the right period which included Arabic. Perhaps this is the "polyglot Bible" to which the article is referring. Thanks for the correction.

"JESUS AND THE ROMANS": Shmuley Boteach presents a revisionist reading of Jesus in the Jerusalem Post. Excerpt:

If Jesus had lived in Nazi Germany and, during the years of 1940 to 1945, focused his preaching exclusively on matters of faith while ignoring completely the gas chambers and blitzkrieg that was all around him, would we have considered him a righteous leader?

In fact, is this not precisely the argument brought against Pope Pius XII, the man said to be his human representative on earth, nearly two millennia later, when he was utterly silent during the Nazi Holocaust? In his passivity he severely compromised his own moral integrity.

The gospels relate that Jesus famously proclaimed, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

In my view, this is an incredible statement. Would Jesus really endorse the greed of the Roman emperor by endorsing his right to exact cruel and unjust tribute as he enslaved peoples throughout the world? Would Jesus really have made himself party to the Roman occupation by directly endorsing the Romans' right to invade and occupy Judea and mercilessly slaughter the patriotic Jews who battled the occupation?

Surely a man as great as Jesus would be on the side of the victims rather than of their oppressors, and would never have advocated blindly accepting Roman rule.

IT IS for this reason that we have to rethink Jesus' mission and what he was trying to accomplish. I have written many articles arguing that it is time for the world Jewish community to reclaim the Jewish Jesus by understanding his original mission and his great love for his people before his story was later edited by Pauline writers and before he was made into an enemy of the Jews and a friend of the Romans.

n my next column on this subject I intend to summarize Maccoby's conclusions that will, based on the sources, make the real Jesus known not as an enemy of Judaism but as a Jewish patriot who sought to win Jewish independence from Rome, and who was thus cut off mercilessly by Pontius Pilate for his act of rebellion.

It's an interesting idea and I look forward to reading the next column or columns. (I haven't read any of the articles he mentions.) But the implied moral equivalence between the Nazis and the ancient Romans is very overdone. The Romans ran an empire in a brutally efficient way, but they didn't engage in systematic genocide for genocide's sake. And whether death by crucifixion was worse than many of the deaths people died in the Nazi death camps is at the very least open to debate.

That said, it's entirely possible that Jesus had criticisms of the Romans that were censored by his earliest followers for the sake of their own safety. But I'd like to see some positive evidence.

HAPPY EASTER to Orthodox Christians.

Orthodox Christians prepare to celebrate Pascha

By Marcy Ortega
The Reporter-Herald
Most Christians in Loveland celebrated Easter almost five weeks ago, but St. Spyridon Orthodox Christian Church tonight will mark the beginning of the most sacred and holy day of the year.

“The Orthodox Church is so literal that it waits for the celebration of Passover to observe Pascha,” said the Rev. Evan Armatas, the priest at St. Spyridon.

The Orthodox Church follows the ancient Julian calendar when calculating the date for Easter (or “Pascha”). It always is observed after the Hebrew Passover, to maintain the biblical sequence of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, according to Armatas.

[...]

WAS CERVANTES A CONVERSO?

Was Miguel de Cervantes a 'Converso' ?
by: Linda Jimenez Glassman Updated: 25/Apr/2008 16:53

MADRID (EJP)---Historian Abraham Haim believes that Miguel de Cervantes’ classic "Don Quixote de la Mancha" is the product of "the silence experienced by a Jewish soul."

A specialist in Sephardic history and culture, Haim made the comment during a lecture "Traces of Judaism in Don Quixote" organized by Casa Sefarad-Israel in Madrid at the Cervantes Institute.

This institute is a worldwide cultural organization created by the Spanish government in 1991 to promote the study and the teaching of Spanish language and culture.

Citing several examples, Haim stated that "Don Quixote" contains numerous references to the Kabbalah and Jewish traditions, and that the only possible explanation for this would be that the author belonged to a family of "Conversos", the Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity or face expulsion from Spain in 1492.

Many of these families continued observing some Jewish practices secretly, which might explain Cervantes’ knowledge of them a century later, when Don Quixote was written.

Haim’s claim that Cervantes’ birth records were probably forged adds credence to this theory.

[...]

Apparently this is not a new theory, but it's the first I've heard of it.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: More on the repairs needed on the Western Wall:

Jerusalem's Wailing Wall at risk of collapse

By Carolynne Wheeler in Jerusalem (The Telegraph)
Last Updated: 12:26am BST 27/04/2008

For thousands of years it has withstood fires, floods and earthquakes. But now a portion of one of Judaism's holiest sites, Jerusalem's Western Wall, is crumbling.

The rabbi charged with watching over the structure, which the faith believes to be the last remnants of a retaining wall from the ancient Second Temple, has warned that a section repaired more than a century ago is again at risk of falling.

A young Jew prays at Jerusalem's Western Wall
Mourning prayer: a young Jew at Jerusalem's Western Wall which is losing its mortar to the rain

Because the weakened stonework is high on the 60ft wall, the danger from any falling fragment to the crowds who pray at its foot each day is particularly acute.

[...]

Background here.

CONGRATULATIONS TO FLORENTINO GARCÍA MARTÍNEZ!

Royal Decoration for Prof. F. García Martínez

Date: April 25, 2008

Prof. F. García Martínez, professor of Religion and Literature of Early Judaism and Director of the Qumran Institute, has been made a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion. García Martínez will receive his decoration during an international congress in honour of his retirement to be held in Groningen on 28 and 29 April 2008. The presentation, by Frank de Vries, Deputy Mayor of the municipality of Groningen, will take place on 29 April 2008 at 5 p.m. in the Aula of the Academy Building.

[...]

More on the symposium here and here.

A WEBSITE ON ANCIENT JERUSALEM has won a UN award:

City of David website wins global UN award
By Sharon Kanon (Israel21c)
April 24, 2008

Israel may have missed out at the Oscars in Hollywood, but an Israel website, www.cityofdavid.org.il, won first prize at the UN-sponsored World Summit Awards (WSA) in Venice recently.

Selected as "the best in e-content and creativity in the category of e-culture," "this outstanding website brings remote visitors face to face with the protagonists and locations of the living Bible," the WSA stated in its laudatory citation.

"Its fabulous visuals and rich description of the site - in English, Spanish, Hebrew, French and Russian - bring to life the only place on earth where the only guidebook needed is the Bible itself."

More than 167 countries competed in the contest, held every two years. The WSA was started in 2003, within the framework of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Ilan Dray, the young Israeli-French designer of the "cityofdavid" site, and his team at Inkod-Hypera, along with Udi Ragones, director of PR for Ir David, were invited to Venice to receive the prestigious award.

The "cityofdavid" website has also won the British FWA (Favorite Web Award).

[...]

OLD HEBREW BOOKS ONLINE:

Site Puts Ancient Hebrew Texts Online

HebrewBooks.org added two ancient book collections to its searchable archive of 15,000 Hebrew books and works of Judaica online.

By K.C. Jones
InformationWeek
April 24, 2008 02:16 PM

More than 1,000 ancient Hebrew texts have been added to a free Web site, Hebrewbooks.org.

The non-profit Society for the Preservation of Hebrew Books announced that it added two ancient book collections to the Friedberg-Ryzman collection of more than 15,000 Hebrew books and works of Judaica online. Technology companies Ligature and dtSearch helped to make the texts fully searchable in Hebrew.

One collection, loaned by the Chabad-Lubavitch Library in Brooklyn, N.Y., contains more than 1,000 Passover Haggadahs (tales of Jewish liberation from slavery). They come from all over the globe and some are from the Middle Ages.

[...]

The second collection includes 400 original works related to the scholar and physician Maimonides, also known as Rambam. They date back to the 12th century BCE and can be searched in the original text for the first time.

[...]

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.