THE INK AND BLOOD EXHIBITION may be coming to the Hardin Center in Gadsden, Alabama - if they can raise the money in time:

Center needs funds to land Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit

By Cyndi Nelson
[Gadsden] Times Assistant Managing Editor

Published: Monday, November 3, 2008 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, November 2, 2008 at 9:34 p.m.

With the Big Read, a tribute to air conditioning, a Faberge and Vivian Alexander exhibit and the annual Festival of Trees already scheduled for 2009, the Hardin Center's cup runneth over.

Now, the center's board is faced with a unique opportunity, a challenging funding issue and a short deadline. The opportunity is to bring portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Gadsden. The funding issue is a $50,000 price tag. And the deadline is $30,000 of that in hand in just more than two weeks.

According to its Web site, "`Ink & Blood: Dead Sea Scrolls to Gutenburg' is the largest collection ever assembled chronicling Western civilization as seen through one of its most prominent and carefully preserved objets d'art - the Hebrew, Latin and English Bible. The collection includes authentic Dead Sea Scrolls, 5,000-year-old clay tablets, Hebrew Torahs, ancient Greek texts, Medieval Latin manuscripts, pages from Gutenberg's Bible and rare English printed Bibles. In addition to the more than 100 authentic artifacts, the exhibition includes a working replica of Gutenberg's printing press featuring live demonstrations of incunabular printing."

[...]

If they want the exhibition because of the promised Dead Sea Scrolls, they should have a look at them before they commit themselves: the scroll fragments reportedly look like burnt cornflakes. Plus the Marzeah papyrus may be a forgery (see same link).

AN ONLINE ARAMAIC CURRICULUM is being developed by Steve Caruso at the Aramaic Designs website.

A GIRL IN EVERY PORT? It seems that those Phoenician sailors got around:

Phoenicians Left Deep Genetic Mark, Study Shows

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD (NYT)
Published: October 30, 2008

The Phoenicians, enigmatic people from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, stamped their mark on maritime history, and now research has revealed that they also left a lasting genetic imprint.

Scientists reported Thursday that as many as 1 in 17 men living today on the coasts of North Africa and southern Europe may have a Phoenician direct male-line ancestor.

[...]

I've noted this story before here, but this much-reported recycling focuses more on how widespread the "Phoenician gene" is. Another report (see bottom of post linked in this paragraph) claimed that Jews share the gene, but this NYT article seems to say otherwise:

From the research emerged a distinctive Phoenician genetic signature, in contrast to genetic traces spread by other migrations, like those of late Stone-Age farmers, Greek colonists and the Jewish Diaspora. The scientists thus concluded that, for example, one boy in each school class from Cyprus to Tunis may be a descendant of Phoenician traders.

THE FIRE GOSPEL, by Michel Faber, is reviewed in the Scotsman. Excerpt:

Although there is much to admire in The Fire Gospel, as a whole it doesn't quite ignite. Faber makes some of the Malchus material appropriately shocking (such as Jesus's last words actually being "please finish me"). The level of hysteria around the book seems a little overdone – theologians have wrestled with the lack of any mention of the resurrection in Josephus, or the meaning of the Alexamenos Graffito, or the Dead Sea Scrolls for decades, and come up with surprisingly inventive explanations without a pandemic of atheism shaking the world.

If Faber had chosen to make Theo a fraudulent memoirist, an evangelical atheist à la Dawkins, or even the author of a popular series of conservative stories about wizards, then the hype would be comprehensible. Likewise, if he'd really gone into the mental acrobatics of Christian apologists, the weirdness of Gospel narratives or the challenges of literalism, this jeu d'esprit might have been equal to his merits as a writer.

As it is, the elements of satire and provocation, superficiality and profundity pull in oddly differing directions. One minute the text is similar to Mel Gibson's The Passion, all gruesome precision of torture; then it's more akin to Life Of Brian, with Jesus loosing control of his bladder over the new disciple's face. As for Theo, who has sought popular recognition over peer-reviewed respect – by the end, his vanity is so overweening that even a comeuppance can't redeem him.

Background here.

HEZBOLLAH is not happy with recent developments concerning the Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance:

BEIRUT (AFP) — Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group slammed Israel for allowing the construction of a Museum of Tolerance on the site of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, in a statement received by AFP on Sunday.

[...]

Background here.

THE EPHIPHANY PROJECT - a fusion of music and ancient philology:

The Sounds of Scripture
by Sharon Nichols, October 28, 2008 (Chronogram Magazine)

The Epiphany Project is back, both physically and musically. John Hodian and Bet Williams moved from their Woodstock home a few years ago to live in New York City, before hopping on over to Europe to expand their work even more. What better for these masters of world music than to spend a few years tooling around Poland, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Armenia? It was in the latter country where their newest masterpiece was born, the haunting, breathtaking Hin Dagh (Epiphany Records, 2008). On November 19, Williams and Hodian, who haven’t played in the US in five years, will have a homecoming of sorts at the Colony Café in Woodstock.

Hodian is Armenian-American and had been working with struggling Armenian composers while living there. Yet he didn’t set out to consciously record an Armenian album. “We were traveling with a filmmaker friend who was doing documentaries on dying cultures in the area,” he says. “There are still tiny pockets of Zoroastrians and Avestans who have ancient practices and pre-Christian belief systems. Coming in contact with some of their customs, languages, and rituals was really inspiring.”

The album title itself means “old words,” and many of the songs are in dead languages, orchestrated with indigenous instruments from Armenia and the surrounding areas. Vocalist Williams, who has always been fascinated with language, started experimenting with new sounds on the group’s 2000 self-titled debut CD, using ancient Aramaic on one track. But this time Williams delves into Avestan, Armenian, Aramaic, Hindustani, ancient Welsh, Sanskrit, Swahili, and Coptic Greek. ...

Not sure what "Coptic Greek" is. Coptic and Greek?

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL XXXV has been published by Duane Smith over at Abnormal Interests.

GUNDISHAPUR - the oldest university in the world?

I doubt it, but so says Press TV, Tehran. Ancient Iranian history is not my specialty, but I can see the article isn't entirely accurate on other grounds: Shapour I reigned in the 200s CE, not BC(E). But the story of the University is kind of cool, especially the curriculum in Greek, Syriac, and Pahlavi:

Gundishapur, world's oldest university
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:13:08 GMT
By Tamara Ebrahimpour, Press TV, Tehran

The ancient Iranian city of Gundishapur, located in the country's southern province of Khuzestan, was founded in 271 BCE by the Sassanid king, Shapour I.

The ninth king of the Sassanid Empire, Shapour II, chose the city as his capital and built the world's oldest known medical center, which also included a university and a library with an estimated 400,000 books.

Gundishapur hospital became the most important medical center during the 6th and 7th centuries and attracted many distinguished scientists from Greece, Egypt, India, and Rome.

[...]

I would think that Plato's Academy and perhaps the Library of Alexandria would be earlier contenders for the world's first university.

THE FIRE GOSPEL by Michel Faber is reviewed by Ian Sansom in the Guardian. Excerpt:

This startling, short book by the mercurial Michel Faber is basically The Da Vinci Code with gags - and bile. What he did for the Victorian novel in The Crimson Petal and the White (2003) - rethinking and recasting it - Faber now does for the bestselling books du jour.

Theo Griepenkerl, a pathetic, overweight academic from the Toronto Institute of Classical Studies, is visiting a looted museum in Iraq. A bomb goes off and Theo discovers, hidden inside a bas-relief sculpture, nine papyrus scrolls written in Aramaic. Theo just happens to be one of the world's leading scholars of Aramaic. It seems like a miracle: "The coincidence of finding an Aramaic memoir - to have it literally falling at his feet - at a highly dramatic moment in his life, was too astounding to ignore."

Background here.

UNHOLY BUSINESS by Nina Burleigh, is reviewed by Jonathan Lopez in Citizen.com Excerpt:

For all its good points, "Unholy Business" is not a deep book. You won't learn much about archaeology or ancient cultures by reading it. And Burleigh's lack of any specialized background in her subject is at times problematic. Notably, she seems unable to describe or analyze the formal qualities of the artifacts at the center of the story. Indeed, it is very difficult to visualize them without referring to the section of photographs in the middle of the book.

Likewise, her writing style is nothing if not exuberant: The pages turn and the narrative zips along, but there are many passages where the prose goes for baroque in a way that is difficult to admire. A sunset is "a primal kaleidoscope in the heavens." The antiquities trade is "a death match between reason and superstition, monitored by laughing commerce."

Still, "Unholy Business" spins a good yarn. It offers a window onto a world about which few of us know very much, and although it isn't likely to become the definitive book on the James ossuary or the larger subject of forged antiquities, it's an entertaining and worthwhile read.

Background here.

"PIZZAZZ" IN THE TALMUD? Alas, Philologos thinks not:

As for the Talmud, I would imagine that the passage Mr. Fletcher has in mind is a well-known story occurring in slightly different versions in the tractates of Shabbat and Ketubot. In both, a gentile scolds a rabbi for acting impetuously and says to him: “You Jews are a hasty people! You once put your mouth before your ears and you are still as impulsive today.” The Aramaic for “hasty people” is ama peziza, and the gentile is referring to the response of the Children of Israel to the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, about which, in Exodus, 24:7, we read: “And he [Moses] took the book of the covenant to read to the people, and they said, ‘All that the Lord hath said we will do and listen to’.” A people that promises first to do and then to listen to what it is that it is supposed to do is indeed impetuous.

It seems safe to say that, even had Diana Vreeland been a Talmud scholar on the side, peziza would not have led her to pizzazz. Being hasty or impulsive is not quite the same as having (to quote one dictionary’s definition of pizzazz) “an attractive and exciting vitality….combined with style and glamour.” Many things can be said of the Israelites at Sinai, but not that they were stylish or glamorous.

Philologos suggests that pizzazz may be one of the "non-onomatopoeic words that are formed on the analogy of onomatopoeic ones."

THE MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE in Jerusalem has gotten the go-ahead from the Israeli Supreme Court:

Israeli court clears way for Jerusalem museum

By STEVE WEIZMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 29, 2008; 3:37 PM

JERUSALEM -- Plans for a Jerusalem museum dedicated to tolerance and coexistence got the final go-ahead Wednesday from Israel's Supreme Court, which rejected an appeal by Muslims who complained the site covers part of an ancient Muslim cemetery.

The judges ruled they would not block construction since no objections had been lodged in 1960 when the city put a parking lot over a small section of the graveyard.

The Museum of Tolerance is intended to bring the city's warring tribes together. But the planning alone sparked a fight with political, religious and historical dimensions between Muslims and Jews.

[...]

Background here.

ENDLESS ATTENTION to the Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription in the press. I'm busy right now, but I'll note the Daily Mail piece that contains the inflated headline of the week:

'Proof' David slew Goliath found as Israeli archaeologists unearth 'oldest ever Hebrew text'

By Matthew Kalman
Last updated at 7:40 AM on 31st October 2008

Astounding new evidence has been unearthed in Israel that could confirm the biblical story of King David.

Until now, almost nothing has been found that would prove the biblical account of a shepherd boy from the 10th century BC who slew the giant Goliath and went on to become the King of Israel who founded Jerusalem.

But today Hebrew University archaeology professor Yosef Garfinkel announced the discovery of a tiny, but potentially invaluable, piece of pottery at the site of the ruins of an ancient fortified city south-west of Jerusalem dated to the time of King David.

[...]

Or earlier. The article is not particularly helpful, but it does contain a photo of the inscription, unfortunately with someone's hand obscuring most of it. Yitzhak Sapir has collected links to more photos here, none of which are of much use for reading the text.

THE FORGERY TRIAL prosecution seems to be in trouble:

Ossuary hoax case may collapse

Matthew Kalman, [San Francisco] Chronicle Foreign Service

Thursday, October 30, 2008

(10-30) 04:00 PDT Jerusalem - --

The high-profile trial of two Israeli antiquities experts accused of faking a burial box containing the remains of Jesus' brother and other priceless artifacts faced a humiliating collapse Wednesday after a Jerusalem judge advised the prosecution to consider dropping the proceedings after more than three years in court.

"After all the evidence we have heard, including the testimony of the prime defendant, is the picture still the same as the one you had when he was charged?" District Court Judge Aharon Farkash pointedly asked public prosecutor, Adi Damti. "Not every case ends in the way you think it will when it starts. Maybe we can save ourselves the rest."

[...]

Shuka Dorfman, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, had described the charges against Golan as "the tip of the iceberg. These forgeries have worldwide repercussions," he said after the indictments were filed. "They were an attempt to change the history of the Jewish and Christian people."

But under cross-examination by defense attorneys, many experts recanted some of their findings. Judge Farkash's comments, which were excluded from trial transcripts but said in open court, came after more than 80 witnesses and 10,000 pages of testimony including evidence and cross-examination of Golan and leading archaeologists and scientists from around the world.

No definitive proof

"Have you really proved beyond a reasonable doubt that these artifacts are fakes as charged in the indictment? The experts disagreed among themselves. Where is the definitive proof needed to show that the accused faked the ossuary?" Judge Farkash asked prosecutor Damti. "You need to ask yourselves those questions very seriously, and if necessary consult with your superiors in the public prosecutor's office."

[...]

Read it all. Whatever happens will have repercussions in the field for years to come.

Recent background here and here.

MORE ON THE KHIRBET QEIYAFA INSCRIPTION:

Find of Ancient City Could Alter Notions of Biblical David

By ETHAN BRONNER (NYT)
Published: October 29, 2008

KHIRBET QEIYAFA, Israel — Overlooking the verdant Valley of Elah, where the Bible says David toppled Goliath, archaeologists are unearthing a 3,000-year-old fortified city that could reshape views of the period when David ruled over the Israelites. Five lines on pottery uncovered here appear to be the oldest Hebrew text ever found and are likely to have a major impact on knowledge about the history of literacy and alphabet development.

[...]

What he has found so far has impressed many. Two burned olive pits found at the site have been tested for carbon-14 at Oxford University and were found to date from between 1050 and 970 B.C., exactly when most chronologies place David as king. Two more pits are still to be tested.

A specialist in ancient Semitic languages at Hebrew University, Haggai Misgav, says the writing, on pottery using charcoal and animal fat for ink, is in so-called proto-Canaanite script and appears to be a letter or document in Hebrew, suggesting that literacy may have been more widespread than is generally assumed. That could play a role in the larger dispute over the Bible, since if more writing turns up it suggests a means by which events could have been recorded and passed down several centuries before the Bible was likely to have been written.

[...]

Still, how this new site relates to King David and the Israelites is far from clear. Mr. Garfinkel suggests that the Hebrew writing and location — a fortified settlement a two-day walk from Jerusalem — add weight to the idea that his capital was sufficiently important to require such a forward position, especially because it was between the huge Philistine city of Gath and Jerusalem.
Skip to next paragraph
The New York Times

The city at Khirbet Qeiyafa is some 3,000 years old.

“The fortification required 200,000 tons of stone and probably 10 years to build,” he said as he walked around the site one recent morning. “There were 500 people inside. This was the main road to Jerusalem, the key strategic site to protect the kingdom of Jerusalem. If they built a fortification here, it was a real kingdom, pointing to urban cities and a centralized authority in Judah in the 10th century B.C.”

[...]

Inevitably, the discoveries have immediately been clouded by the debate over Bible verification. Whatever relevance the discoveries may have to that, both the site and the inscription are quite important for shedding light on a period that is still very imperfectly understood.

An article from GMANews has a little discussion of the inscription:

The shard is now kept in a university safe while philologists translate it, a task expected to take months. But several words have already been tentatively identified, including ones meaning "judge," ''slave" and "king."

The Israelites were not the only ones using proto-Canaanite characters, and other scholars suggest it is difficult — perhaps impossible — to conclude the text is Hebrew and not a related tongue spoken in the area at the time. Garfinkel bases his identification on a three-letter verb from the inscription meaning "to do," a word he said existed only in Hebrew.

"That leads us to believe that this is Hebrew, and that this is the oldest Hebrew inscription that has been found," he said.

Other prominent Biblical archaeologists warned against jumping to conclusions.

Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said the inscription was "very important," as it is the longest proto-Canaanite text ever found. But he suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far.

"It's proto-Canaanite," he said. "The differentiation between the scripts, and between the languages themselves in that period, remains unclear."

This is the first time I've seen any information on the contents. Watch this space.

Background here.

MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE "PERUGIA GENIZA" are now available in an online exhibition:

The Fragments of Hebrew Manuscripts discovered in the binding of books
in the Biblioteca del Dottorato of the University of Perugia


With the recent discovery of Hebrew parchments removed from mediaeval codices and reused to cover printed books, Perugia is added to the list of centres where the phenomenon described as the "Italian Genizah" is documented, by analogy with a true Genizah, or store room where Jews since time immemorial placed sacred texts in order to avoid desecration. Today thanks to the discoveries made by Dr Gianfranco Cialini, we may now speak of the "Perugia Genizah".
It is already more than twenty-five years since the late Giuseppe Baruch Sermoneta in 1981 launched the Hebrew Fragments in Italy Project or the Italian "Genizah" Project. By a happy intuition he anticipated the systematic survey of re-used Hebrew manuscripts which was later coordinated with other projects concerned with non-Hebrew manuscripts discovered in Italy. The survey of the disiecta membra of Hebrew codices is not yet complete, but has so far brought to light around 10,000 fragments of Hebrew manuscript books, for the most part whole pages or double pages as well as smaller fragments.
Discovering these remains means giving new life, so to speak, to manuscripts that had been "dead" for four or five centuries. It involves entering into the history of the Hebrew manuscript book, following its journeys, and examining the methods and forms of its conservation, as well as its ritual destruction by the Jews in what may be described at its "death" and "burial" in a Genizah, or its destruction in the fires lit by the Church in the sad history of 2000 years of persecution - or in this case in its recycling.

[...]

Via the SOTS list.

A similar project, involving Hebrew manuscript fragments recovered from book bindings in the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria in Modena, Italy, is noted here. It is not clear to me whether the projects are connected.

APOCRYPHA WATCH -- a Judith-fest in Kansas City:

Virginia Blanton teaches an Anglo-Saxon version of the story, in which Judith is a Christian, to her English students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Blanton notes that Judith appears in paintings variously from a “robust maid horrified by what she must do” to “a shameless slut.”

Linda E. Mitchell, professor of history and women’s and gender studies at UMKC, notes that Judith was “an iconic figure of independence and dissent” in the Renaissance, so the paintings were “political statements as much as aesthetic ones.”

The Friends of Chamber Music brings a dramatic staging of a Croatian version of the story with musical idioms from medieval Dalmatia on Nov. 8 at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, 415 W. 13th St.

Amity Bryson, chairwoman of the music department and director of women’s studies at Avila University, says the composer, Katarina Livljaniæ, draws materials from the earlier musical period “dominated by male composers,” but the feminine experience “adds a unique perspective” to this 21st-century composition.

These three scholars have lots to say about Judith’s morality and gender roles. They will speak at 6:30 p.m. in Founders’ Hall before the 8 p.m. performance in the sanctuary. For more information visit www.chambermusic.org.

And more on this Croation version here.

A LATE ANTIQUE STUDIES POSITION IN BUDAPEST:

Assistant Professor of Late Antique Studies

Central European University (CEU) invites applications for a full-time faculty position in Late Antique Stud-ies in the Department of Medieval Studies beginning September 2009 or as soon as possible thereafter, at the rank of Assistant Professor. Candidates who can demonstrate a focus in research and/or teaching on the east-ern Mediterranean in late antiquity will be preferred. Appointment will be made for an initial period of four years, and is renewable.

About CEU
CEU is an English-speaking, research-intensive postgraduate university located in Budapest, Hungary, char-tered in the U.S. and accredited both in the U.S. and in Hungary. Its primary mission is to contribute to the development of open societies in the post-Communist and the developing countries by promoting academic excellence, critical thought and cutting-edge research. The university enrolls each year around 1,000 students from over eighty countries. The academic staff consists of around a hundred faculty from over thirty coun-tries.

About the Department of Medieval Studies
The Department of Medieval Studies, founded in 1992, is part of CEU’s School of Historical and Interdisci-plinary Studies. It cooperates closely with CEU’s Department of History and currently offers one-year and two-year MA programs, the latter jointly with the Department of History, and an independent PhD program in Interdisciplinary Medieval, Byzantine and Late Antique Studies. The annual intake of students amounts to some twenty to twenty-five students in the MA programs and between six to eight in the doctoral program, usually representing the whole thematic range of interdisciplinary Medieval Studies as cultivated by the De-partment. The Department has a permanent faculty of eighteen including postholders in the related fields of Late Antique Studies (Latin), Eastern Christian Studies, Late Antique and Medieval Philosophy and Theol-ogy, Islamic Studies, and Byzantine Studies. It puts great emphasis on team-teaching, joint seminars and close thesis-supervision.

Job description
The successful candidate will carry out high-quality research in the field of Late Antique Studies, including the development of grant proposals and the implementation of projects. Research time is in principle 35 % of the full-time position.

S/he is expected

to provide broad and specialized classes for both the MA and PhD programs on late antique history and culture. These classes should include a survey class on late antique history, with a focus on the eastern half of the Roman Empire, from c.285 to c.700;
to help develop and administer, and to contribute to the teaching of the envisaged specialisation in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies (LABS);
to participate in the activities of CEU’s Center for Hellenic Traditions (CHT), founded in 2004, of which the future postholder will be a Fellow. The CHT promotes Hellenic, Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at CEU, in the region and beyond.
Additional responsibilities will include the provision of supervision to MA and PhD students with a research interest in late antiquity and participation in the MA and PhD Seminars regularly convened at the Department. A full-time teaching load at CEU currently consists of twelve credits per academic year, one credit being twelve times fifty minutes of teaching.

Requirements
Applicants must have the PhD by the beginning of the appointment in September 2009 and show promise of a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher. The successful candidate will have an active research agenda in late antique history and culture and the ability to teach as specified above.

Knowledge of both Greek and Latin is essential. Knowledge of additional source languages, such as Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian or Georgian, will be an advantage, as will be the ability to contribute to CEU’s existing specialisation in Religious Studies (RSP) and substantial international connections in the field of Late Antique Studies. Fluency in English is a requirement.

Send letter of application including an outline of future research, curriculum vitae, a writing sample of ap-proximately 50 pages, and names and addresses of three referees to to the Rector and President of Central European University, c/o Ms Judit Pallos, Late Antique Studies Search Committee, Human Resources Office, Central European University, Nador u. 9, H–1051 Budapest, fax +36 (1) 235-6135, e-mail: advert@ceu.hu. If the writing sample is a section of a larger book manuscript or dissertation, please include an abstract and table of contents or a statement of how the writing sample fits in with the larger project. Po-tential applicants who wish to enquire informally about the position are encouraged to contact the Head of the Department of Medieval Studies, Professor Gyorgy Gereby (gerebygy@ceu.hu). For full consideration applications must be received by December 1, 2008.

CEU is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive community.

From Istvan Perczel on the Hugoye list.

KING SOLOMON'S MINES? Well maybe. But not diamond mines, alas. And not in Africa.

Jordan copper mines from biblical times could be King Solomon’s

Mark Henderson, Science Editor (The London Times)

An ancient copper works in Jordan may have been the location of the fabled King Solomon’s mines, new archaeological investigations suggest.

The dig at Khirbat al-Nahas, once a thriving copper production centre in the Faynan district, about 30 miles (50km) south of the Dead Sea, has found evidence that it dates back to the 10th century BC, making it at least two centuries older than was thought. The new date means that the mine was almost certainly active during the time of the biblical Jewish kings David and Solomon.

[...]

Any connection with Solomon or even the Kingdom of Israel, is entirely inferential and not based on any evidence from the excavation apart from the date:

Date seeds and sticks of tamarisk and other woods used for charcoal for smelting have produced dates in the 9th and 10th centuries BC, which are consistent with the likely dates of the reigns of David and Solomon, his son. Details of the research are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

What remains less certain for now is whether the Khirbat al-Nahas mine was actually controlled by the kingdom of Israel at this time. It lies in a region associated with the biblical kingdom of Edom, which was an enemy of ancient Israel.

Even if the mine was not controlled by the Jewish kings, the fresh date is important to biblical scholarship. It indicates firmly that the kingdom of Edom was sufficiently organised to have been a rival to Israel, a point that has been disputed by some historians.

Dr Levy said: “Now, with data from the first large-scale stratified and systematic excavation of a site in the southern Levant to focus specifically on the role of metallurgy in Edom, we have evidence that complex societies were indeed active in the 10th and 9th centuries BC and that brings us back to the debate about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible narratives related to this period.”

UPDATE: This is generating a lot of press. For some commentary and a little reining in of the excitement see the article "Return of the Kings?" in Science News. Excerpt:

Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University disagrees. “I see no connection between Nahas and the biblical material on Solomon,” he says.

Scholars have long argued about whether Edom was organized as a kingdom early enough to have threatened the Israelites. During the 1930s, archaeologist Nelson Glueck surveyed southern Jordan and said that he had discovered King Solomon’s mines in the northern part of biblical Edom. His claim, and the Bible’s assertion that the kingdom of David and Solomon existed 3,000 years ago, came under attack in the 1980s. British excavations of Edom’s highlands in the 1970s and 1980s suggested that Iron Age copper production did not begin there until around 2,700 years ago, fueling skepticism.

Finkelstein and others now hold that much of the Old Testament was passed on orally until put in writing between the eighth and fifth centuries B.C., with earlier events being either invented or distorted for political purposes by the document’s writers.

Since 2001, many researchers have acknowledged that nomadic groups inhabited the Khirbat en-Nahas area and probably made copper around 3,000 years ago, remarks archaeologist Piotr Bienkowski of the University of Manchester, England. “I still see no evidence for settlement or buildings there prior to the very end of the 10th century B.C. or beginning of the ninth century B.C.,” he says.

Both Bienkowski and Finkelstein assert that the site was reused seasonally many times, leaving behind a complex mix of industrial debris and other material that is difficult to separate into distinct layers that form a timeline.

It sounds like an important and interesting discovery and it seems a pity that the tired issue of Bible verification is overshadowing it.

PSCO MEETING AT SBL! Annette Reed e-mails on the PSCO list:

Dear friends and colleagues,

For those of you planning to attend the (all too quickly impending) SBL Annual Meeting in Boston this year -- a quick note to let you know that we are indeed holding a special session of PSCO!

The session is scheduled for 7:00 pm on Friday, November 21st in the Fairfax room of the Hilton Back Bay Hotel. All are welcome to attend!

See below on our theme for this year. More details coming soon on the speakers and topic for the SBL session (and the schedule for the rest of year too)! In addition, if anyone is interested in meeting for a quick dinner beforehand, please email me and let me know, so we can begin arranging this as well! [Annette can be reached at reedanne-at-sas-dot-upenn-dot-edu -- JRD]

Best wishes -- and more soon!

Annette

==================

"Food, Self, and Community:
Tradition and Transformation in Jewish and Christian Eating"

Co-Chairs: Moriah Hazani and Virginia Wayland (University of Pennsylvania)

Food is often a significant focus for the maintenance of group identities, cohesion of communities, and expression of cultural ideals and assumptions. Choices such as what one does (and does not) eat and with whom one shares meals can thus tell us much about individual and groups - as do choices to abstain from eating practices common in a society at large. Practices such as feasting, fasting, and food-related charity are frequently central to the expression of piety, community, and identity. Ritual meals, moreover, can serve as a nexus for the memorialization of the cherished past and the preservation of traditions about it. In addition, eating practices can function as a powerful tool for social differentiation, establishing and enacting the boundaries between various groups within an otherwise shared culture.

This year's PSCO will explore our evidence for early Jewish and Christian eating practices in their shifting Hellenistic and Roman cultural contexts. In keeping with the focus on "Change" in this year's Penn Humanities Forum, our discussions will center on the dynamic interplay between tradition and transformation. We will ask, on the one hand, how the encounter with "pagan" religions and philosophies may have shaped early Jewish and Christian interpretations of biblical dietary laws, attitudes towards animal sacrifice and meat-eating, and practices related to feasting and fasting. On the other hand, we will consider how the eating practices of Jews and Christians alike were transformed in the wake of the destruction of the Second Temple and the cessation of Jewish (and later "pagan") animal sacrifice. As such, we hope that our discussions throughout the 2008-2009 academic year will also resonate in interesting ways with the Department of Classical Studies' interdisciplinary conference on "Meat: Killing, Consuming and Commodifying Animals" in May 2009.

MORE DEAD SEA SCROLLS IMAGING in Boston:

Dr. Gregory Bearman, retired Principal Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and current president of Snapshot Spectra in Pasadena, CA, travelled to the Israel Museum in August with one of CRi's Nuance(TM) multispectral imaging systems to take near-infrared pictures of the scrolls. The spectral data will be the key to a new conservation program to monitor the scrolls for changes. While some changes can be detected visually, the spectral data will quantify them and provide early warning before they are visible to the human eye.

CRi has developed sophisticated biomedical imaging systems that use wavelength-based information to reveal unseen details in specimens. These systems are used to assist with research in disease diagnosis and therapy development. Now, the system has been used to uncover original writing hidden on the discolored parchment and papyrus of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

"Today, with the recent development of advanced biomedical imaging technology, we have access to much more sophisticated imaging algorithms and easier-to-use digital instruments such as CRi's Nuance system," points out Bearman. "CRi's core technology and integrated imaging solutions are among the best in the business."

Indeed, now that there are digital images of the Dead Sea Scrolls available in conventional color and as multispectral image data, Bearman's goal is to make the entire collection available to everyone via the Internet over the next one-to-two years.

Via the Agade list etc.

I'm extremely busy this week and blogging will not be a high priority.

AN OBITUARY FOR AVRAHAM BIRAN in the Los Angeles Times:

Avraham Biran, Israeli archaeologist who found House of David inscription, dies at 98
Times Staff Reports
October 26, 2008

Avraham Brian, an Israeli archaeologist whose three-decade dig at the ancient city of Dan in northern Israel yielded historical treasures including a fragment of a stone monument that provided the first known reference outside the Bible to the royal House of David, died Sept. 16 in Jerusalem, the Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem announced. He was 98.

[...]

Background here.

METATRON WATCH, and other interesting esoterica and magica:

The Frog, the Demons, and the Jewish Star

Menachem Wecker (The Jewish Press)
Posted Oct 01 2008

The Frog, the Demons, and the Jewish Star
Mark Podwal: Jewish Magic
Forum Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue
http://www.forumgallery.com


Perhaps upholding Leviticus 19:31, which insists, "Do not turn to those who worship Ob or to wizards; do not desire to become defiled by them," King Saul launched a campaign to eradicate magicians from the Holy Land which was so devastating that the Bible mentions it on three separate occasions. Yet Saul decided to violate his own ban when all he heard was dead air in response to his request of God for advice on the proper military strategy to defeat the Philistine army.

Saul masked his identity and visited a "wife of the idol of Ob" to ask her to facilitate communication with the late prophet Samuel. Amazed, the conjurer asked, "Do you not know what Saul has done, that he has cut off the worshipers of Ob and the wizards from the land," and perhaps suspicious of her client's identity added, "Why are you tricking my soul, to have me killed?" (1 Samuel 28: 3-14).



Although commentators and scholars debate Saul's actions and their apparent disregard for the Second Commandment, Kabbalistic masters and Jewish artists have long embraced magic and amulets. Hamsa hands are still believed to disarm the evil eye, and some carry miniature copies of the book of the Angel Raziel to protect against fires. Mark Podwal's exhibit, "Jewish Magic" at Forum Gallery in Manhattan, continues in that tradition, drawing specifically from the artist's many visits to Prague, where he is such an important fixture that he holds his own personal seat at the Altneuschul, the Old New Synagogue.

[...]

Several other supernatural forms appear in Podwal's works in the Forum show, including Lilith, queen of the demons; Metatron, a non-biblical angel who was said to be the chief angel and divine scribe; and "The Devil Proper" (2006), represented as a brick-red bat's wing, with three demons grabbing on for the ride. Just as many Jewish medieval manuscripts show the hand of God exacting punishment on the Egyptians (but never more of God), Podwal shows just the devil's wing, which leaves the full extent of Satan's horror and menace up to the viewer's imagination. This is, of course, far more frightening - to not even know the extent of the evil present.

[...]

There are pictures and discussions of several of Podwal's works. And there's much more on the artist and the exhibition at the Forum Gallery website.

ARAMAIC WATCH - Aramaic figures importantly in a new novel about the discovery of a lost eyewitness life of Jesus:

The Fire Gospel by Michel Faber
The [London] Times review by Tom Gatti

The Fire Gospel is a titanic work - not in size (it's a slim 213 pages), but in source. Its protagonist, Prometheus, is a Titan; a member of the race of deities who, in Greek myth, were usurped by Zeus and his Olympian gods. Prometheus is famous for stealing fire for mankind, and suffering for it: Zeus had him bound to a rock and arranged for an eagle to tear out his liver. Overnight the liver would regenerate, and the next day the eagle would return. Prometheus underwent this hellish beak-hole surgery every day for 3,000 years.

[...]

In The Fire Gospel, Prometheus takes the unlikely form of a Canadian academic called Theo Griepenkerl. Theo is inspecting a ravaged museum in Iraq, hoping to borrow some treasures for his university, when a bomb goes off. It kills the curator and destroys a statue, releasing nine scrolls of Aramaic text that had been hidden inside. Theo rushes back to Toronto, the papyri burning a hole in his briefcase “like a stash of pornography he'd been forced to delay getting to grips with”. They turn out to be the memoir of Malchus, a 1st-century Christian convert and witness to the Crucifixion. Theo, an atheist, is unmoved by the prose but dizzy with dollar signs at the potential of his translation.

Malchus is named in the Gospel of John as the servant who assisted the High Priest Caiaphas in the arrest of Jesus, and had his ear cut off by Peter - but in Malchus's own account Jesus does not work a miracle to heal the ear; it remains hanging from his head “like a woman's adornment” for the rest of his life. More significantly, in Malchus's description of the Crucifixion, Christ's life ends not with a noble “It is finished” but with an evacuation of bowels and a desperate “Please finish me”. As for the tomb and the Resurrection - Malchus paints an altogether grittier picture of Jesus's “afterlife”.

[...]

And from the review in the Financial Times:

Although a trifle tasteless, and written in a style that occasionally slips towards cliché, The Fire Gospel is an entertaining story, with a vein of playful symbolism running throughout. The religious resonance of the name Theo is significant, for Theo Griepenkerl's discovery allows him to play God. Less obviously, the choice of his surname is no accident; Faber is recalling Christian Griepenkerl, a German artist noted for his paintings of Prometheus. Moreover, Theo's favourite music is by the saxophonist John Coltrane, whose fixation with measuring his Christian faith against other spiritual codes led him to renounce the dogma of organised religion. Theo's favourite Coltrane recording is Stellar Regions , which, as jazz aficionados will know, was discovered by his widow some years after Coltrane's death and published in a form he had not approved. Again, the esoteric detail is carefully calculated.

ANCIENT BABYLON is the subject of a new British Museum exhibition, reviewed here by the London Times:

Babylon, the exhibition that opens in the British Museum next month, explores the myths and relates them to historical reality. What is astonishing is the richness of both legacies: the archaeological treasures excavated from the ruins barely a century ago reveal a magnificent capital, while the myths have engendered an equally powerful legacy in art, thought, paintings, film and music. Cuneiform clay tablets, coloured tiles and brick friezes, papyruses, cylinder seals, sculptures and zodiac inscriptions testify to Babylon’s former glory while paintings, engravings, medieval manuscripts and maps show the preoccupation of later ages with this vanished city.

Many of these pictures and engravings are familiar. Who does not now see Nebuchadnezzar as William Blake saw him – a haunted and terrified man crawling on all fours, his face a mask of horror and revulsion? The poet showed the king’s madness, described in the fourth chapter of Daniel. In fact, the scriptures have conflated two historical events: there is no evidence that Nebuchadnezzar became insane; it was his successor Nabonidus who was afflicted with disease (probably scurvy) and vilified after he fled the city when it was captured by the Persians.

LARRY SCHIFFMAN was is lecturing in New York on the Dead Sea Scrolls (NYT):

JEWISH MUSEUM, 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, Thursday at 6:30 p.m., “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of Judaism and Christianity,” a lecture by Lawrence H. Schiffman, a professor at New York University, in conjunction with the exhibition “The Dead Sea Scrolls: Mysteries of the Ancient World.” (212) 423-3337, jewishmuseum.org; $15; $12 for students; $10 for members.

UPDATE: I had read this as Thursday-yesterday, but reader Carl Mosser assures me it is Thursday next week (the 30th).

JOSEPH DAN, his current project - an important and ambitious history of Jewish mysticism, his biography, his relationship with Gershom Scholem, and his views on the current state of Israeli academia, are the subjects of a long article in Haaretz. Madonna and Britney even make an appearance.

Mystic circles
By Yair Sheleg
Tags: Israel News, Kabbala

Prof. Joseph Dan, 73, the renowned scholar of Jewish mysticism, rises between 5 and 6 each morning. He reads the newspaper, listens to the 7 o'clock news on the radio and then gets down to work. "I am a morning person," he says. "Those are my best hours. Usually I have prepared my materials the afternoon or evening before, so the books and studies are already on my desk, and I write for a few hours in the morning." Lest anyone think he is sacrificing his life to study, he is quick to say, "I am not a monk. By 5 or 6 P.M. my mind is no longer focused, so I go out, meet friends or watch television. I do not have an ascetic streak and I don't want to give the impression that I'm devoting my life to this enterprise. On the contrary, this enterprise gives me life."

He has lived this way for the past seven years. The result, just published, is the first three volumes of a monumental project, "Toledot Torat Hasod Ha'ivrit" ("History of Jewish Mysticism and Esotericism," Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem). It amounts to an attempt by one individual to write the entire history of Jewish mysticism: not some executive summary, but rather a full-blown academic survey abridgment for executives but with academic detail. The first three volumes deal with antiquity, from the beginning of the Second Temple period to the end of the Talmudic period, on the cusp of the Medieval era. Dan does not yet know how many volumes will be needed, and is unwilling to restrict himself. "I have the whole picture in my head, up to the end of the 20th century," he says. "But at my age, I am only prepared to commit to what is close to completion."

Dan says he approached Zvi Yekutiel, the executive director of the Shazar Center, with a proposal for the first three volumes "only when they were very close to completion, and as of now I still haven't signed a contract for them. It's the same with the rest: I'm not about to enter into a commitment I'm not sure I can meet. The fourth volume, the first of the books on the Medieval period, is already at the publishers. I am in the process of completing the fifth, which I hope will be done by January. That's why I allowed a note in the first volume indicating that the project is intended to include the Middle Ages as well, but I'm not prepared to make a commitment regarding the later periods. At my age everything is in God's hands."

Dan says that at his current rate he can complete one volume a year, "probably even one and a half.

[...]

In other words, even Maimonides, the most important figure in the history of Jewish thought, was ultimately unable to inculcate the major message of his philosophy: the rationalism that rejects not only mysticism but also denies the very assumption that a human being can describe the Godhead in any meaningful way. Engagement with the secrets of the Godhead is a central and inseparable element of Judaism, from the prophet Ezekiel, who describes God's appearance, down to the kabbala of our time. Ezekiel is also connected to another of Dan's key decisions: to begin his journey into Jewish mysticism not from the Bible but from the Second Temple.

"The Bible is filled with prophecies," he explains. "All through the Bible we have prophets who are in direct contact with God. In this situation there is no place and no need for mysticism. You do not have to 'learn' about the Godhead when you are in direct touch with it. Accordingly, Jewish esotericism begins only at the point where prophecy ends."

With the end of the prophetic age an extraordinarily rich mystical literature comes into being. The general public is unfamiliar with this body of literature, collectively termed the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. They include the works of the "Yordei Merkava," whose authors purport to "report" in great detail about the upper worlds where God and all his angels reside.

"Indeed, Ezekiel's descriptions could also fit the description of 'Yordei Merkava,' but they are not 'esoteric theology,'" Dan explains. "Ezekiel 'reports' his prophetic vision to the entire nation. He does not safeguard it for a handful of select pupils." Another distinction relates to the fact that in the popular view Jewish mysticism is wholly identified with the term "kabbala."

"The kabbala is a central branch of mysticism, which began to develop from the 13th century; indeed, since then it has been the major branch. What we researchers view as new ideas of the kabbalists, from their point of view are ones that have been passed down, received - hence the name 'kabbala' [receiving] - through the generations. The chief characteristic of this outlook is the implication of the term 'sephirot,' which in the early esoteric theology related to the physical reality of the world, to the Godhead itself [in the sense of different levels within it."

[...]

There's much more. Read it all.

FATHER J. BRIAN PECKHAM has passed away.

Father J. Brian Peckham
OBITUARY FATHER J. BRIAN PECKHAM, S.J. At the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, on Sunday, October 19th, 2008, surrounded by family and friends. He was 74 years old, in his 58th year of religious life, and 41st year of priesthood. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, on January 28th, 1934, son of Sydney Brittain Peckham and Elizabeth Caroline. Brian entered the Roman Catholic religious order the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1951, and was ordained a priest in 1967. He became a professor of Biblical Studies, and then of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at Regis College in the Toronto School of Theology and at the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He was a respected scholar and a beloved teacher and friend. He is survived by four sisters, a brother, and numerous nephews and nieces. Friends may call at the Rosar-Morrison Funeral Home & Chapel, 467 Sherbourne St. (South of Wellesley) on Wednesday, October 22nd, from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Mass of the Resurrection will be celebrated at Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church (Sherbourne at Earl) on Thursday, October 23rd, at 10:30 a.m. Burial to follow at 3 p.m. at the Jesuit Cemetery in Guelph. In memory of Father Peckham, donations may be made to the Jesuit Development Office, 43 Queen's Park Crescent East, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C3.

I never met Father Peckham but I've used his monograph on late Phoenician scripts a good bit. There's a tribute guest book for him here.

Requiescat in pace.

Via the Agade list.

PETER SCHÄFER is lecturing in Ann Arbor today on the Missing Baby Messiah. Wish I could go.

VISION OF GABRIEL WATCH: When I noted the Vision.org article on the Jerusalem Dead Sea Scrolls conference a couple of days ago, I should also have mentioned this article by the same author: "The Dead Sea Stone, or 'Gabriel’s Revelation.'"

FORGOT TO NOTE that Shemeni Atzeret and Simchat Torah were on the 20th-21st in Israel and the 20th-22nd elsewhere. Sorry about that.

PUNIC WATCH: A BBC Hannibal documentary is playing in New Zealand:

A battle against all the odds
Staff Reporter [The Times] Published:Oct 20, 2008

THERE are few individuals who change the course of history — Hannibal is one of them.

Born in 247BC, Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar Barca, was a skilled military leader who brought Rome to the brink of destruction.

This documentary series, entitled Hannibal — The Man, The Myth, The Mystery reconstructs the life of the commander of the Carthaginians during the seven stages of the century-long conflict between Carthage and Rome.

[...]

There's a trailer here. Apparently it came out in 2006 and I seem to have missed it.

PHILO REDIVIVUS. Welcome back.

ANOTHER REVIEW of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the New York Jewish Museum, this one in the New York Jewish Weekly. It rambles, but onto interesting topics. For example, this discussion of de Vaux's field notes:

... An ongoing controversy over unpublished archaeological documents still holds up a more definitive answer to this arcane academic debate. If it seems like a rerun of the original controversy surrounding the publication of the scrolls 20 years ago, that’s precisely the point critics are trying to make.
“I’m sorry to say it’s true,” said Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeological Review. “If you dig and don’t publish, it’s destruction.”
Shanks led the campaign to get the Dead Sea Scrolls published in their entirety over two decades ago. Until then, the scrolls were kept in the hands of a close-knit group of scholars affiliated with de Vaux, a French Dominican priest and archaeologist at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. But de Vaux’s field notes from his excavations at the Qumran site, near where the scrolls were found, in the 1950s, remain unpublished. In an odd twist, it’s these papers that scholars — who mostly defend newer variants of de Vaux’s increasingly challenged Essene-sect hypothesis — argue might vindicate their ideas.
“What you have is the same exact thing as [the controversy that surrounded the publication of] the Dead Sea Scrolls,” said Jodi Magness, a prominent Dead Sea Scroll archaeologist who defends de Vaux’s original Essene theory. “But it’s worse because it’s longer.” The first Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, but only a quarter of them were published shortly thereafter. It wasn’t until Shanks led his battle in the 1980s that the remaining texts that were finally published in full by the early-1990s.
But other critics say that those whose theory is increasingly under challenge are feeding it to the press. They also point to more practical impediments: de Vaux’s field notes were never properly organized nor written according to today’s publishing standards; a lack of money; and political pressure from the Israeli, Jordanian, French and American governments who have said in the past that any publication regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls — found at Qumran, in the West Bank — should wait until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is settled. “All we can do is wait patiently,” said Pnina Shor, head of the conservation department at the Israel Antiquities Authority. The body now safeguards the Dead Sea Scrolls and lends them to international exhibits.
The Ecole Biblique, which de Vaux headed until his death in 1971, has in fact published the first two volumes of four that comprise de Vaux’s field notes. Jean-Baptiste Humbert, the successor to de Vaux, said in an interview from Jerusalem that the third volume will be published within the next three months and the fourth and final one “within a year after that.”
Still, he said his most ardent pursuers — who largely defend one of several variants of de Vaux’s theory — will not find much evidence in them to support their theories. He increasingly sides with the newer ideas about who might have used the texts. “Everyone inside the Ecole Biblique, we separate from the Father de Vaux interpretation,” he said. “The Dead Sea Scrolls could not have been the library of the people at Qumran.”

A REPORT on the July 2008 conference in Jerusalem on the Dead Sea Scrolls has been published by Peter Nathan in Vision.org. Belated, but quite detailed.

The Legacy of the Scrolls

Fall 2008 Issue

Sixty years after their discovery, the Dead Sea Scrolls still spark controversy and debate. What, if anything, have they established so far, and how will they be remembered?

Proclaimed as the greatest discovery of the century, the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) quickly became the preserve of a limited academic circle. That meant that any hope they would increase our collective understanding of the Bible became rather remote. In July 2008, leading DSS scholars gathered at an international conference to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the scrolls’ discovery. The event, titled The Dead Sea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture, took place at the Israel Museum’s Shrine of the Book, designed and built specifically to house seven of the celebrated scrolls, and now home to all of them that are in Israel’s possession. The declared focus of the conference was “to reflect on the progress made in the last ten years and to articulate our hopes for the future of Qumran studies.”

With respect to the scrolls, the program notes raised the question, “How can we dispel myths and inaccuracies?” Answering that question may have been an impossible goal, however, as myths and inaccuracies will always abound with a trove of documents as old as these. But the conference did reveal something of even greater importance: the diversity of opinions that surround the body of related evidence from the pre-Christian settlement at Khirbet Qumran, near the caves where the scrolls were discovered. The ongoing debate strikes at the foundation of some dearly held views regarding the scrolls’ significance.

[...]

MORE ON THE REPAIRS NEEDED for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre:

Unholy row threatens Holy Sepulchre

By Wyre Davies
BBC News, Jerusalem

An unholy row is threatening one of the most sacred places in Christianity - the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The centuries-old site, where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified, is visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and tourists every year.

A recent survey says that part of the complex, a rooftop monastery, is in urgent need of repair, but work is being held up by a long-running dispute between two Christian sects who claim ownership of the site.

[...]

There's not much new in the article, but it lays out the situation pretty clearly.

Background here.

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: A Good Abstract (Gurtner on 2 Baruch).

IN THE MAIL:

Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (CUP, 2008)

My review copy for the SOTS Booklist.

ANOTHER REVIEW of Unholy Business by Nina Burleigh in the WSJ. Excerpt:

As Nina Burleigh shows in "Unholy Business," her lively account of the case, the story behind the James Ossuary remains unclear. Oded Golan, the owner of the box itself, maintains his innocence, despite the discovery -- by two Israeli detectives on an unauthorized smoking break when they were staking out Mr. Golan's apartment -- of a cache that included Tupperware containers of dirt from archaeological sites, diamond cutting tools, dentist drills and artifacts stashed in an unused laundry room. The scientific panel that the Israeli Antiquities Authority convened to examine the ossuary concluded that it appeared to be genuine but that someone had carved the inscription onto it and then covered the letters with a paste made from water and chalk concocted to mimic the natural varnish that covers objects over time.

Ms. Burleigh, who focuses her narrative primarily on the role of Mr. Golan, seems to believe that he is guilty as charged, but she suspects that his lawyers have been able to raise enough doubts in trial testimony that he may be able to avoid conviction. There is still no verdict in a court case that has dragged on for years.

Background here.

BOOK REVIEW from BMCR:

Richard E. DeMaris, The New Testament in its Ritual World. London/New York: Routledge, 2008. Pp. x, 143. ISBN 9780415438261. $34.95 (pb).

Reviewed by V. Henry T. Nguyen, Loyola Marymount University (henry.nguyen@lmu.edu)
Word count: 1371 words

This book tackles a neglected area in the study of the New Testament -- ritual -- by making it the focal point of the work. DeMaris states: "This study starts from the premise that ritual was central to, and definitive for, early Christian life (as it is for all social orders), and it explores the New Testament through ritual lens" (p. 11). In order to gain new insights into the ritual dimensions of the earliest Christian communities, he grounds the study in ritual theory, Greco-Roman ritual life, social history, and the literary and archeological evidence of the ancient Mediterranean world. In doing so, he reconsiders longstanding scholarly consensuses and interpretations of New Testament texts referring to rites practiced in the church (especially baptism) and surrounding cultural environments.

[...]

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: Ethiopic pseudepigrapha get a positive mention from the independent Catholic news agency Zenit in a report on interventions at the current ninth general congregation of the world Synod of Bishops:

-- H.E. Most. Rev. Berhaneyesus Demerew SOURAPHIEL, C.M., Metropolitan Archbishop of Addis Abeba, President of the Episcopal Conference, President of the Council of the Ethiopian Church (ETHIOPIA)

1) The Word of God was the source of Ethiopic Literature. The Bible was translated into Ethiopic between the 4th and the 6th century AD.

2) Some books are preserved in their entirety only in Classical Ethiopic and parts of the Ethiopian Biblical Canon are precious for biblical scholarship;
The Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees are important works for understanding the context of Second Temple Judaism, Qumran and the origins of Christianity. They are also significant for the study of apocalyptic literature.

THE INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL COMMENTARY SERIES – or at least the older volumes, which are still very useful – is now available online.

ARAMAIC WATCH: a reminder - Symposium on Jacob of Sarug and His Times: Studies in Sixth Century Syriac Christianity later this month.

BOOTHS, TABERNACLES, Tents and Huts: Naming the Sukkah. Philologos explains at The Forward:

A taberna in ancient Rome was a cottage, shop, inn or pub. (From the last of these meanings comes our English “tavern.”) Its diminutive form of tabernaculum (of which tabernaculorum is the genitive plural) meant a hut or, more often, a tent. Used more specifically, it referred to a tent erected in the Campus Martius or “Field of Mars,” the military drill grounds of ancient Rome, in which a priestly augur secluded himself prior to the convening of the comitia, the popular assembly of the Roman Republic. And because tabernaculum thus had a sacral connotation, it was also used by the Latin Bible to translate the Hebrew term ohel mo’ed, or “tent of convocation,” which served the Israelites as a portable religious shrine during their years of wandering in the desert.

How, then, did “tabernacle” also come to mean a monumental structure like that of the Mormons, which would occupy almost an entire football field? The answer is that in the late 18th and 19th centuries, “tabernacle” was adopted by various English dissenting sects, particularly the Congregationalists, to denote their churches, which were indeed small, simple buildings. And since the Mormons were America’s version of England’s dissenters, the one Christian church in the United States ever to have been persecuted by the political and religious establishment, it was natural for them to call the huge prayer hall they constructed in Salt Lake City in 1864 a “tabernacle,” too. This subsequently influenced the use of the word in American English, in which a tabernacle can now be big and ornate.

As for habetabitis (you shall live in) umbraculis, the Latin word umbraculum is also a diminutive, formed from umbra, shade or a shady place. (Think of an umbrella, which was originally designed to protect its holder against sun rather than rain.) In classical Latin an umbraculum is a parasol, but in the fourth-century C.E. Latin of Jerome’s Bible it means a tent or temporary shelter. Tyndale’s choice of “booth” and of the Hebrew sukkah was an excellent one, because a booth in his day was just that: a shelter against the sun roofed with green tree branches, a meaning that the word kept well into the 19th century.

SIMON SCHAMA is reportedly planning to write a history of the Jews:

Schama plans history of the Jews

16.10.08 Catherine Neilan (theBookseller.com)

Popular television historian Simon Schama is planning to write a history of Judaism and Israel as his next project after The American Future: A History.

Although the book has yet to be written, it is understood that the BBC is already interested, and a six to eight-part series is under discussion.

[...]

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The priestly blessing at the Western Wall:

Thousands attend priestly blessing
By JPOST.COM STAFF AND AP

Thousands of Jews participated in the priestly blessing, or Birkat Cohanim, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Thursday.

Birkat Ha'Cohanim at the Western Wall in Jerusalem

The Cohanim, believed to be descendants of priests who served God in the first and second Jewish Temple before they were destroyed, perform a blessing ceremony of the Jewish people once a year during the festival of Sukkot.

[...]

There's video.

As the article notes, this blessing is also the earliest biblical text to be attested in an ancient inscription (the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets).

SOLOMON, SOCRATES AND ARISTOTLE. Sounds like a scene from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, or maybe Doctor Who, but it's actually a picture from Pompeii, which is treated by Theodore Feder in BAR. Abstract:

When the city of Pompeii was covered by volcanic ash on an August night in 79 A.D., it was a tragedy of tremendous scale for its inhabitants. For modern scholars, however, the devastating destruction that occurred literally overnight in the Roman town and its neighboring cities preserved a treasure trove of information about first-century Roman life. Scholar Theodore Feder examines a fresco, excavated from a villa called the "House of the Physician," that depicts the Judgment of Solomon. The subject is a popular one in Christian art: Two women, both claiming to be the mother of the same child, bring their case to King Solomon. The king orders that the infant be cut in half, and the true mother is revealed when she relinquishes her claim on the child in order to save its life. Feder posits that the presence of two archetypal figures in the fresco represent the famous Greek philosophers Socrates and Aristotle. The presence of the two ancient philosophers, he argues, reveals the great respect that Greek philosophy could have accorded to Hebrew wisdom in the ancient world.

Also, there's this poignant epigraphic tidbit from the article, which is news to me:

... A two-word inscription, Sodoma Gomora, also survives from a house front in Pompeii and may have been written by a Jew or, less likely, by an early Christian, either before the eruption of Vesuvius or by a digger soon afterwards. It is perhaps more affecting to imagine its having been hastily written in the midst of the eruption by someone who analogized the town’s impending fate with that of the two doomed Biblical cities.

UPDATE (14 November 2011): Dorothy Lobel King is skeptical about the characters in that fresco.

JACOB NEUSNER'S The Theology of the Oral Torah contines to be reviewed by Kevin Edgecomb at Biblicalia. The latest instalments cover chapters four and five and chapter six.

NEW PUBLICATIONS from the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures. Ehud Ben Zvi e-mails:

Dear all,

I am glad to announce that the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures (http://www.jhsonline.org) has recently published the following article:

Journal of Hebrew Scriptures - Volume 8: Article 20 (2008)

F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Psalm 133: A (Close) Reading

Abstract

A close reading of Psalm 133, with special attention paid both to the words out of which the poem is literally made and to what happens in between and beyond those words, as well as what emerges because of them.

Those who wish to access this article directly may go to http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/Articles/article_97.pdf

In addition, the following reviews have been recently published:

Metso, Sariana, The Serek Texts (Companion to the Qumran Scrolls, 9; Library of Second Temple Texts, 62; London/New York: T & T Clark, 2007). Reviewed by Jean Duhaime)

Boda, Mark J., Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney A. Werline, eds. Seeking the Favor of God. Volume 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism (SBL Early Judaism and its Literature, 21; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006). (Reviewed by Andrea K. Di Giovanni)

Kugel, James L., Prayers that Cite Scripture (Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies; Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 2006). (Reviewed by Andrea K. Di Giovanni)

Ben Zvi, Ehud, History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles (Bible World; London: Equinox, 2006). (Reviewed by Steven L. McKenzie)

Jacob, Benno, The First Book of the Bible: Genesis, Augmented Edition (Abridged, Edited and Translated by Ernest I. Jacob and Walter Jacob; Jersey City: KTAV Publishing House, 2007). (Reviewed by John Van Seters)

del Barco, Francisco Javier del Barco, Catálogo de manuscritos hebreos de la Comunidad de Madrid (3 vols., Literatura hispano-hebrea 5, 7 and 8; Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigationes Científicas, Instituto de Filología, 2003-06). (Reviewed by Colette Sirat)

To access the reviews directly please go to http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/reviews/reviews_vol.html

I haven't keep track of this online journal very well, but I probably should.

THE LOST MUSIC OF THE TEMPLE in concert:

Jerusalem concert to feature fantasies of the Temple's lost music
By Tamar Rotem (Haaretz)
Tags: Levites, Israel news

At the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, every day had a song of its own, played before morning prayers, says singer and instrumentalist Ilan Green, formerly a member of the group "Nekamat Hatraktor." Green will lead a performance of the Levites' lost musical traditions on Thursday night at Beit Avihai in Jerusalem.

[...]

Green says he does not consider himself religious, but he is very interested in the Jewish scriptures. He says that he discovered early on that this was barely charted territory.

In combing the Bible, Mishna and other texts, he discovered that aside from the familiar violin, trumpet and lyre, at least 30 musical instruments are mentioned whose sound and appearance are lost to history. Building on the few scraps of information he could find, and adding a heavy dose of guesswork, he reconstructed 16 of them from wood and metal.

Green says the mystery surrounding the instruments gave him a certain artistic license.

[...]

I dare say.

This is not an area I know much about, but I note this recent book on the general topic: Joachim Braun, Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine: Archaeological, Written, and Comparative Sources (Eerdmans, 2002).

HARSH WORDS for the James Ossuary inscription in a book review in Time Magazine:

Exposing the Jesus' Brother Fraud
By Tim McGirk / Jerusalem Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008

[...]

The extraordinary story of how Israeli detectives built a case against Golan and his alleged cohorts is the subject of Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land by Nina Burleigh, a former TIME staffer who now writes for People. In fast, noir-ish prose — imagine Sam Spade in the Holy Land — Burleigh tracks her story through the twilight world of Arab grave robbers and smugglers to the glimmering salon of a billionaire collector in Mayfair whose mission, writes Burleigh, is "proving the Bible true." Past accounts of the James Ossuary are fiercely partisan, written by debunkers or true believers. But Burleigh keeps her balance, and her humor, as she sifts — far more diligently than many archeologists — through the evidence. She also has unprecedented access to all the major players in the James Ossuary debate: dogged police detectives, sharp-witted antiquarians, Bible-besotted collectors and suspected forgers of near-genius.

[...]

Believers and scientists alike were shocked by the accusations that not only was the James Ossuary a fake but so were two other rare objects of Biblical significance — an inscribed pomegranate and the gold-flecked Jehoash Tablet which both supposedly came from Solomon's Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6th century B.C. Those two relics are linked to Golan's workshop, say police. As Burleigh describes it, the debate over the authenticity of these sacred items pitted scientists against believers. She writes: "The faithful — those who believe in a higher, supernatural power that leaves a material record of itself for man to literally hold and behold — must also confront and grapple with the painful presence of doubt."

Meanwhile, Golan's trial, with its parade of more than 75 scientists and Biblical scholars, is likely to drag on for another year. But Golan maintained, in an interview with TIME, that he is innocent of all charges and that since the trial began experts have come forth, he says, to prove that both the inscriptions on the James ossuary and the Jehoash table are genuine. Even after the judge finally decides whether Golan was an innocent collector or a master forger, it's likely that the debate between skeptics and believers over the James ossuary — and its supposed proof of Christ's historical existence — will rage on long afterwards.

It was kind of a shock to hear that the Ivory Pomegranate inscription was a fake, but it was pretty obvious early on the the Joash/Jehoash inscription was.

A CHAIR/READERSHIP IN ANCIENT JUDAISM OR NT at the University of Durham:

The Department of Theology and Religion seeks to appoint a Professor or Reader in Ancient Judaism or New Testament, from September 2009. Candidates should be able to teach undergraduates and supervise research projects in both fields, though the preponderance of their own research may fall more in one field than the other. The postholder will be expected to teach, to supervise doctoral research, and to publish research at the highest international level.

The academic field here labelled ‘Ancient Judaism’ is taken to cover the post-exilic period up to and including rabbinic Judaism of the Talmudic era. The postholder will be joining a number of colleagues whose research covers aspects of this field, including Prof. Robert Hayward, Dr. Stuart Weeks, Prof. John Barclay and Prof. Francis Watson. The latter two also teach and research in New Testament, along with Dr. Stephen Barton and Dr. William Telford.

Via the BNTS list.

THE REPAIRS NEEDED on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are noted in the London Times:

Warring monks threaten destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Sheera Frankel in Jerusalem

A long-running row over the rights to a rooftop section of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre could bring the entire structure tumbling down, destroying Christendom’s holiest site.

While renovations are needed across the church, the small Deir al-Sultan monastery on its roof has reached an “emergency state”, according to engineers who completed an evaluation this month.

The Times has learnt that in 2004 the two chapels and twenty-six tiny rooms that comprise the monastery were pronounced in dire need of reinforcement. They have since deteriorated to the point where engineers now fear that they will crash through the roof and into the church, venerated by millions of Christians as the site of the Crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

[...]

The church has been vigilantly managed by six competing and often fractious Christian denominations — Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic, Syrian Orthodox and Ethiopian — since an agreement reached under Ottoman law in 1757.

Rival denominations often battle for access or space and the congregation at the annual Easter service sometimes resembles the terraces of a boisterous football match. The keys to the main entrance of the church have been held by a Muslim family since the 12th century because the Christians do not trust one another.

The dispute over the Deir al-Sultan monastery is a more recent phenomenon dating back to Easter 1970. When the Coptic monks, who had controlled the area, went to pray in the main church and left the rooftop unattended, Ethiopian monks seized the opportunity to change the locks at the entrances before the Copts returned.

[...]

Sigh.

Background here.

JACOB NEUSNER'S BOOK, The Theology of the Oral Torah, is being reviewed in instalments by Kevin P. Edgecomb at the Biblicalia blog. The first two posts are here and here.

ENDOWED LECTURESHIP AT BARD - Jacob Neusner e-mails:

This is the announcement of the first lecture in a newly endowed lecture
ship at Bard.

The Jacob Neusner Lecture in Comparative Studies of Religion
presents
Jonathan Z. Smith
University of Chicago
will give a talk
"Why Compare Religion"
Tuesday, October 28th
7:00 p.m. in RKC 103

A RABBINICS POST:

Relgious Studies: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Religious Studies invites applications for a tenure-track appointment in Rabbinic Judaism, effective July 1, 2009, at the rank of assistant professor. The successful candidate will be named the E.J. and Sara Evans Fellow of Jewish History and Culture. Preference will be given to candidates who already have a PhD in hand. Candidates must be prepared to teach large introductory undergraduate courses in the field of Rabbinics, broadly defined, along with upper level courses and graduate seminars requiring close reading of rabbinic texts and exploration of relevant thematic topics. Thorough knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic will be assumed, along with a familiarity with all the major issues of literary, textual, and socio-historical analysis. Scholars with secondary (teaching and research) competence in a range of related fields and subfields are invited to apply. Successful candidates will also be expected to direct doctoral students in the department, to collaborate with faculty in the Department of Religion at Duke University, and to contribute to the interdisciplinary work of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies. Both teaching and research of the candidates need to be related to the problems and issues in the study of religion broadly conceived. Interested candidates should provide a letter of application, a current curriculum vitae, and three letters of reference. All materials except letters of reference should be submitted online at http://hr.unc.edu/jobseekers/search.htm. Please click on "open positions" under EPA Faculty Positions heading. Under the department drop-down menu, select Religious Studies and click on the appropriate position. Click the "apply now" button and create a new applicant profile. Please have hard copies of letters of reference sent to Chair of Rabbinic Judaism Search Committee, Department of Religious Studies, CB# 3225, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3225. Completed applications (including letters of reference) must be received by December 1, 2008, but screening of applicants will begin as soon as applications are filed. Preliminary interviews will be held at the annual meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies. The University of North Carolina is an equal opportunity employer. Women and minorities are strongly encouraged to apply.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, via the Agade list.

ALSO IN THE SBL FORUM: William L. Lyons, "Rahab through the Ages: A Study of Christian Interpretation of Rahab."

HERESY HUNTING in the New Millennium." Tony Burke defends the Christian Apocrypha in this month's SBL Forum. Excerpt:

A cottage industry of books has emerged in the past few years responding to apparent "attacks" on the Christian faith by such perceived enemies as the Jesus Seminar, Bart Ehrman, Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, and the discoverers of the so-called Jesus Tomb.[1] Targeted also in these books are the texts of the Christian Apocrypha (CA). The books are transparently apologetic with the aim of disparaging the CA and the Gnostics who (they say) wrote them so that their readers will cease being troubled by thei texts' claims. The problem with such books, at least from the perspective of those who value the CA, is that they often misrepresent the texts, their authors, and the scholars who study them. Proper research and sober argument take a back seat to the apologists' goal of buttressing the faith.

In many ways these books read much like the works of apologetic writers from antiquity, such as Irenaeus and Hippolytus. They too were concerned about the impact of non-canonical texts and heretical ideas on their readers and sought to reinforce the faith by denigrating and ridiculing their enemies. Then and now accuracy was sacrificed to the needs of apologetics. Yet, perhaps there is something that scholars of the CA can learn from the modern apologists, something not only about ourselves but also about those who were attacked by the heresy hunters of the past.

UPDATE (18 October): A critique and reply here. And more critique here at the Religious Researcher blog.

SIDNIE WHITE CRAWFORD is lecturing on the Dead Sea Scrolls:

TALK TOPIC: WOMEN IN DEAD SEA SCROLLS

University of Nebraska professor Sidnie White Crawford will talk about "Women in the Dead Sea Scrolls and at Qumran" at 4 and 7 p.m. Thursday as part of the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences' eight-part lecture series accompanying The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. The lecture will be held in the museum's WRAL Digital Theater.

According to Crawford, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in particular the Damascus Document, contain evidence of women participating in the Essene movement in late Second Temple Judaism. Crawford, professor of Hebrew Bible and head of the department of classics and religious studies, is a member of the international publication team for the Dead Sea Scrolls, responsible for editing 14 manuscripts from the Qumran collection.

Individual tickets for the lectures are $25 for the general public and $20 for Friends of the Museum. Last tickets to the exhibition are sold at 5 p.m. on lecture nights. For more information, visit www.naturalsciences.org/scrolls/. The museum exhibition runs through Dec. 28.

METATRON WATCH: The Archangel Metatron meets performance art:

Ten is considered the number of divine perfection and is reflected in the 10 Days of Awe between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. On each of those days, Briller performed and videotaped an action related to one of these 10 sefirot in several locations in each of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

[...]

Channeling the kabbalistic angel-character Metatron, considered God's closest messenger, each of Briller's daily actions were directly connected to one of the sefirot. Though the project is fluid and the order could change along the way, his plan is to work top-down from the highest rung to the lowest.

Some of his actions include walking around and playing a Tibetan bowl, the golden sound-healing musical instrument, which he relates to keter (crown), or God's absoluteness; popping popcorn on a kerosene cooker as part of gevura (judgment/strength/determination); taking 10 eggs in each city and juggling with them in various spots until they all break, which relates to tiferet (balance); for netzah, which is both contemplation and persistence, Briller dances in some spots, or stands blindfolded in others; for hod (sincerity), he echoes the original action and affixes ceramic ears around each city; and for malchut (lower crown), which relates to both healing and realizing the divine plan, he returns to Kikar Rabin (which was previously called Kikar Malchei Israel) with a water purifier normally used for camping. There he will purify the water in the large fountain-pool that stands in front of Tel Aviv City Hall, the only action that might not be undertaken in Jerusalem.

"These are heavy subjects," says Briller, "and I don't want to feel that this is the only way to negotiate them. Though I'm not laughing at any of it, I want there to be a sense of humor."

That sounds like it would be necessary.

SUKKOT (the Festival of Booths or Tabernacles) begins tonight at sundown. Best wishes to all celebrating.

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS: What Would the Talmud Do? asks David Van Biema in Time Magazine.

Would the current financial crisis have been avoided if traders followed Jewish traditions embodied in the Bible and the Talmud? Two scholars from the Conservative and Orthodox branches of the Judaism are suggesting just that. They also conclude that the tradition prescribes significant regulation to begin to redress the debacle.

[...]

THE ORTHODOX STUDY BIBLE is profiled in the Vicksburg Post

... But most Bibles published today include an Old Testament based on a translation made many years after the Crucifixion, not the version Jesus and the apostles used, said the Rev. Dr. John Morris, historian and pastor of Vicksburg’s St. George Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church.

“The early Christian church used the Greek version of the Scriptures,” Morris said in an interview in his study at St. George. “This Greek version was called the Septuagint, for the Greek word for ‘70,’ the number of scholars Ptolemy hired about 200 or 300 B.C. to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek.”

As members of St. George complete preparations for their annual Lebanese dinner, Morris reflected on his role in this year’s publication of the first-ever complete Orthodox Study Bible, which includes a Septuagint-based Old Testament with Deuterocanonical or Apocryphyal books, a New King James translation of the New Testament, and many study notes, articles, maps and reference material. Published in February after years in development, the study Bible is both a spiritual and historical reference work, Morris said, designed for the layman to read and use.

Like the NETS, this includes a translation of the Septuagint. But it seems more of a devotional project than the strictly scholarly NETS.

Background to both translations here.