GERSHOM SCHOLEM: A Life in Letters, 1914-1982, by Anthony David Skinner, was reviewed by Anthony Grafton in The New Republic in 2003. Robert Schwartz drew my attention to the review in reponse to my recent post on another review by Grafton which involved Scholem.

The Magician
A review by Anthony Grafton

I.
When the Baal Shem Tov had to do something very hard, he went out into the woods, lit a fire, and said a prayer, and the task was done. In the next generation, when his disciple had to do a difficult thing, he also went out into the woods. He could no longer light the fire, but he said the prayer, and that was enough. The next disciple could no longer light the fire or say the prayer, but he could go into the woods, and the thing was done. But in the last generation, the rabbi sat down on his golden throne in his castle and said, "We cannot light the fire, we cannot speak the prayers, we do not know the place; but we can tell the story of how it was done."

S.Y. Agnon told this tale of traditions, colorful and multi-layered as a Russian doll, to Gershom Scholem. The real subject of the story is the slow metamorphosis of rituals and beliefs. The Baal Shem Tov and his followers were Hasidic wonder-workers in two senses. Exemplary figures in the great East European renewal of Judaism, they were also shrewd men who earned their livings by selling amulets that protected against illness and injury. As the generations passed, the rituals that they used for protection in a world of dangers turned into something else: not weapons stored for use in an armory, but treasures displayed under glass in a museum. Words with which magi had torn Promethean fire from the skies turned over time into glowing stories that could be re-told, but not re-enacted. Yet meaning somehow still resided in the commemoration, as well as in the performance, of these rituals of power.

The tale reads like a parable of Scholem's life. ...

There follows a very useful capsule summary of Scholem's life.

On the collection of letters:

How, then, to tell Scholem's story, and tease out its meanings, for readers who do not know the worlds he inhabited — worlds almost as alien to the modern reader as the lost ones that Scholem explored? Anthony David Skinner has adopted a traditional, even old-fashioned solution to the problem of preserving a tradition. He has produced a biography in the form of an anthology of letters, with commentary. A knowledgeable and fluent writer, Skinner divides his subject's life into segments. His introductions to these segments show how well he understands Scholem's personal situations and intellectual enterprises. Skinner writes eloquently of what philology meant for Scholem. His translations are clear and generally accurate, and many of the letters that he has selected deal with matters of the highest interest.

Skinner's selections inform us about Scholem's early life in Berlin and allow us to follow his rebellion against his bourgeois family and his turn to Zionism. They also record, in detail, his encounters with two transforming powers: Walter Benjamin, with whom he carried on one of history's most complex, creative, and torturous friendships; and the Kabbalah, to which he devoted his lifetime of research. We watch Gerhard become Gershom. We marvel at Scholem's unwavering sense of vocation — the sense of mastery that enabled him to reject his parents' authority, and that of bourgeois culture and society, years before he had produced anything solid to show that he was more than an angry young man. Anyone interested in Scholem's contacts with American intellectual life, especially Jewish intellectual life, will learn a good deal here about his correspondence with writers, scholars, publishers, and rabbis.

For the work of a learned editor and a great university press, however, this volume is oddly unsatisfactory. It suffers, first of all, from a surprising number of technical flaws. Source indications are scarce. Skinner tells the reader when he has used an existing translation, but when he offers his own versions he does not tell the reader whether the Hebrew or German original can be found in Itta Shedletzky's edition of Scholem's correspondence, in the standard editions of his correspondence with other individuals, or only in the archives. He claims that he has "added brief footnotes wherever letters allude to obscure people, events, or literary texts" in order to guide readers unfamiliar with the submerged German-Jewish world that Scholem and his correspondents inhabited, but he shows no clear sense of what such readers are likely to know.

[...]

Flaws like these appear in any large-scale edition or translation. More problematic are the criteria that guided Skinner's choice of letters to translate. He draws heavily on Scholem's extraordinary correspondence with his mother. Skinner's book includes not only many of Scholem's letters home, but dozens of Betty's descriptions of the difficulties, and then the horrors, of life in Nazi Berlin. These vivid letters — and Scholem's sometimes distant-sounding replies — are gripping, full of human and historical interest. Yet they shed only a limited amount of light on Scholem himself, and virtually none on the scholarly and technical work that formed the central concern of his life.

[...]

That's just a taste. It's a very long review and well worth reading.

THE JESUS PROJECT is the subject of an article at the Bible and Interpretation website in which he also critiques the earlier Jesus Seminar. He has been involved with both seminars.

Plus ça change… “The Jesus Seminar” and “The Jesus Project”

Jesus’ cultural setting had clearly been misjudged in much of Seminar’s deliberations during the ’eighties, and today its findings are widely recognized as being idiosyncratic.

By Bruce Chilton

Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion
Bard College

January 2009


“The Jesus Project,” convened in 2007 by R. Joseph Hoffman for the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, aims to pursue the task of “The Jesus Seminar,” but in a more critical vein. In a clever turn of phrase, Dr. Hoffman has written that “The Jesus of the [Jesus Seminar] is a talking doll with a questionable repertoire of thirty-one sayings. Pull a string and he blesses the poor.”

Two serious criticisms lie behind this characterization. First, Hoffman charges the Seminar with leading its presuppositions into just the anti-Fundamentalist, liberal Jesus that the majority of its members wanted to find in the first place. Second, he calls attention to the assumption of the Seminar that the sources at our disposal directly provide historical evidence concerning Jesus.

I was a Fellow of “The Jesus Seminar,” and I have been involved with “The Jesus Project” since its formal inception. By understanding where the Seminar lapsed, the Project might indeed offer the prospect of progress. So where did the Seminar fall down, and how is the Project doing in comparison?

[...]

On the Jesus Seminar:

In various presentations at meetings of the Seminar and in its journal, I called attention to signs of Aramaic antecedents in the language of the Gospels and to indications of sources behind the Gospels, both written and oral. On the whole, however, my Judaic approach did not find much resonance within the majority.

Two factors played into that response. The first has to do with the sociology of graduate education in the field of New Testament and early Christianity, which has notoriously skimped on the study of Semitic languages, although Aramaic and Syriac, as well as Hebrew, were clearly major languages of Christianity alongside Coptic, Greek, and Latin until at least the time of the rise of Islam. The second factor was more specific to the Seminar: a pronounced preference for a Greek Jesus over an Aramaic Jesus. That preference was reinforced by fashion within the Seminar and a few other circles, which has since been contradicted directly by archaeological work, to describe Galilee as an urban and Hellenistic environment, where Greek was mostly spoken.

On the Jesus Project:

The challenge for “The Jesus Project” is to learn from the mistakes of “The Jesus Seminar.” I have contributed work to the Project, but I cannot so far report any great signs of progress.

To a large extent, immediate progress should in any case not be anticipated. Critical enterprises always need time to evolve operating principles, and the Project has had to devote time and energy to issues of method in the study of the historical Jesus. Unfortunately, however, the Project has attempted to address questions of critical approach without a thorough grounding in academic study since the eighteenth century. The result is that some of the assertions made by contributors to the Project are not well informed and invoke quests for “objectivity” that seem more at home in nineteenth-century Europe than in twenty-first century America. What is more worrying, actual knowledge of primary sources (and of their languages) does not seem as great among participants in the Project as among Fellows of the Seminar. Discussion of “method” apart from specific evidence was precisely one of the failings of the Seminar and directly fed its liberal, anti-Fundamentalist agenda.

He has lots more to say about both, so read it all. For background on the Jesus Project, go here.

(Heads up, Mark Elliott of the Bible and Interpretation website, whom I originally misidentified. Sorry to both Marks.)

A SIMULATED ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG in Texas:

Diggin’ Education: Curriculum includes search for –artifacts

The Woodlands Villager
By CHARLIE BIER
Updated: 01.10.09
Trey Thames believes students learn in places other than textbooks. Putting that belif into practice, the Biblical Studies and Latin teacher at The Woodlands Christian Academy has built a 50-foot by 50-foot simulated archaeological site on the school’s 40-acres at 5800 Academy Way.

The dig site, some 2,000 cubic yards of dirt and 15-plus tons of limestone and rock, is layered with about 50 artifacts.

As part of an elective archaeology course, TWCA students carefully unearth skeletons and bones, coins, pottery, iron tools and the foundations of four separate dwellings.

The field work helps illustrate the history and culture surrounding an Israeli city between 13th Century B.C. to 1st Century A.D.

[...]

Basically, Thames didn’t want to send students on a scattershot treasure hunt with his dig site.

“One of the things I really tried to do is make it as real as possible. There were moments in Israel when I was really excited about being there... then there were times it was like, ‘Wow, this is really hard work and I hate it,’” he said.

“Some days they were excited; some days it was a chore. It was a process, and I wanted them to get that whole experience.”

[...]

This seems to be a well thought-out and informative project. For other similated archaeology projects in recent years, see here, here, and here.

UPDATE (26 February): More here, including a dig website and a TV interview with Trey Thames.

JUDY GRUEN is frustrated because, rather than chatting with her, her teenage sons are texting friends while doing their geometry homework and discussing Talmudic Aramaic at the dinner table.

This is, admittedly, a problem more common among boys than girls, and it was no hyperbole for the Talmud to state that there were ten measures of speech given, nine of which were given to women! (If you need any proof, watch your daughter's rapid-fire talk on her cell phone.) I have had this problem also. I have watched several sons attached by the ear to an iPod, texting endless messages to friends and doing geometry homework, all at the same time. Apparently, the dictum "Say little and do much" is one they have taken to heart.

But how do we break through that classic "strong but silent" persona? How can a mom who isn't fluent in Dodger talk have a conversation with a teen that will last longer than it takes to even utter the word "con-ver-sa-tion"? One night, as I watched one son laboring over a book of Talmud, I had an idea.

Family dinner conversations were increasingly laced with halachic references and "Talmud-speak." My public high school didn't offer Aramaic as a second language, so I felt as if I almost needed subtitles in my own kitchen. I began cribbing notes when my boys tossed off various Talmudic references, and paid close attention to the disputations at hand. After about a month of furtive note-taking and my own research, I launched Operation Confabulation – one mother's attempt to wrest recalcitrant repartee from her beloved son.

Give 'em a break, Judy, and count your blessings. All parents should have your problems. But you do get points for trying to meet them on their own ground.

ANCIENT SHIPWRECKS from Israel provide new insights into the history of shipbuilding:

Shipwrecks harbor evidence of ancient sophistication
Frame-based shipbuilding emerged surprisingly early and became more advanced within a few hundred years.
By Bruce Bower (Science News)
Web edition : Saturday, January 10th, 2009

PHILADELPHIA — Surprising insights about ancient shipbuilding have floated to the surface from the submerged remnants of two major harbors, one on Israel’s coast and the other bordering Istanbul, Turkey. Researchers described their finds January 9 at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Analyses of salvaged crafts indicate that shipbuilders started making sophisticated frames for their vessels by about 1,500 years ago, 500 years earlier than had been suspected, reported Yaakov Kahanov of the University of Haifa in Israel. By a few hundred years later, craft constructors had steadily improved hull designs for a diverse collection of ships, says Cemal Pulak of Texas A&M University in College Station.

Frames provided greater structural stability for ships than an earlier hull-building technique that had relied on joining planks with adhesives and fasteners to form a shell. Such vessels date to as early as approximately 2,000 years ago.

[...]

GILGAMEL the demon - one who appears as an angel of light, as some of the more dangerous ones do - had his debut tonight in the second episode of the new ITV/STV series Demons. Gilgamel clearly gets his name from the Sumerian King Gilgamesh, known mainly from the Epic of Gilgamesh, but with the ending -"-el" tacked onto the end of his truncated name. This is a time honored-method of creating angel names and sometimes demonic names as well. As for Gilgamesh, there's ancient precedent in the Book of Giants for him be recast in the role of a malevolent supernatural being. I had a couple of relevant Web lectures posted, but they seem to have accidentally been deleted in the recent upgrade of the University website. I'll try to get them restored on Monday.

Demons is silly, but it keeps its tongue sufficiently in cheek to make it kind of fun.

HEADLINE FOR THE DAY:

EVE Online Prepares to Become Apocrypha

The article isn't relevant, but the headline is cool.

THE UNBORN, the new horror movie, has been getting numerous reviews, most of which pan it thoroughly. But it appears to have a couple of themes of minor interest (dybbuk, exorcism in Hebrew), so I note the review in the Chicago Tribune:

MOVIE REVIEW 'The Unborn' ★1/2
'The Unborn' stars Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman
Rating: 11/2 stars (poor-fair)

By Michael Phillips | Tribune critic
January 10, 2009

Filmed in Chicago but universal in its lameness, writer-director David S. Goyer's horror thriller "The Unborn" is the story of a dybbuk (a spirit searching for a human host to possess) who makes trouble for the skinny North Shore college student played by Odette Yustman, who's always out jogging when she should be considering a sandwich. The movie climaxes with a Hebrew exorcism, conducted by Gary Oldman's Rabbi Sendak. If this had been a Lutheran exorcism, the victim would've been pelted with passive-aggression and a hot dish. A Unitarian exorcism? Counseling and mint tea.

[...]

Perhaps the theme most consistently mentioned in the reviews I read (I got through many, but not all of them) was how often Ms. Yustman appears in her undies or less. But the relentless use of clichés and the Holocaust-exploitation came up frequently as well.

Be that as it may, I have more on the dybbuk myth here.

PALMYRA is covered in a detailed travel piece in the Malaysia Star:

Palmyra — past & present
By LEE YU KIT

Palmyra was once ruled by Queen Zenobia, a descendant of Cleopatra. She defied Rome and her country was subjugated. All but forgotten, travellers have brought her back to life.

Excerpt:

My guide, Fayez, is a charismatic Syrian who has taught archaeology at a local university and so is an excellent source of information if prodded with the right questions. Within the tomb, the mummified remains of the dead were stored in drawers recessed into the walls and stacked vertically on top of each other. Each drawer cover bore a bust of the dead person — not as he or she was, but as he or she was thought to have become in a glorious afterlife.

In all, the tower could store over 300 remains.

Another type of burial place, as exemplified by the Tomb of the Three Brothers, is the underground chamber called a hypogeum. A flight of stairs leads to a large underground chamber which sports the same arrangement of sliding drawers stacked vertically for storing mummies. Two-thousand-year-old murals decorate the walls.

Fayez translates the script on the tomb door, in a Palmyrene dialect of Aramaic, the lingua franca of the day. It declares the tomb a commercial venture — a funeral service that accepted bodies for a fee, some two millenniums ago!

The known tombs have all long been looted and emptied, but there are some mummies at the Palmyra museum, with a detailed explanation of the mummification process — not recommended reading immediately after lunch!
An intricately carved ceiling in the Temple of Ba’al.

Palmyra is mentioned as Tadmor in ancient texts dating as far back as the second millennium BC. It is also mentioned in the Bible, and was a part of the Roman empire in the first century BC when its importance as a trading centre grew as trade flourished.

Exotic materials — fabrics, spices, ceramics, glassware and ivory — passed though Palmyra, since it was on a crossroads between the Roman empire and the great civilisations to the east.

The Roman emperor Hadrian visited Palmyra in 129 AD and was enchanted by it. The great structures that remain today were largely built during this period, the halcyon days of Palmyra.

The greatest of these is the Temple of Ba’al (sun). In the sandy wastes of toppled columns, there is little left that hints at the grandeur of the temple. It falls to my guide, who has come equipped with drawings of the temple as it once stood, to conjure up images of what must once have been a monument to the wealth and power of Palmyra.

More on recent excavations at Palmyra is here, here, here, and here. I've commented on a Greek inscription here and on an inscription in Palmyrene Aramaic located in Britain here.

MORTON SMITH and the Secret Gospel of Mark get another look in light of recently published correspondence between Smith and Gershom Scholem, the great twentieth-century scholar of Jewish mysticism. Professor Anthony Grafton has a long article in The Nation ("Gospel Secrets: The Biblical Controversies of Morton Smith"). Excerpt:

To prove that Smith invented nothing, [Guy] Stroumsa has published a fascinating collection of primary sources: Smith's correspondence with a lifelong friend, the twentieth century's greatest Jewish scholar, Gershom Scholem. Smith, an adventurer in life as well as in scholarship, went to Jerusalem in 1940 on a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship awarded him by the Harvard Divinity School. Caught in Palestine by World War II, he spent four years there. At the Hebrew University--the pre-eminent German university in the world in those days, thanks to its faculty of erudite, brilliant refugees--Smith studied classics with Moshe Schwabe and Hans Lewy and Jewish mysticism with Scholem. He helped translate Scholem's first great book on the Kabbala, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, and translated an ancient Jewish mystical text under Scholem's supervision. More remarkably, Smith wrote a doctoral dissertation, in Hebrew, on Tannaitic (early rabbinical) parallels to the Gospels and became the Hebrew University's first Christian PhD. Returning to the United States in 1945, he began a career in the Episcopalian ministry, then moved back into scholarship and became, eventually, a professor of ancient history at Columbia University, where he taught until 1990. From 1945 until Scholem's death in 1982, the two men corresponded regularly. Their letters, which Stroumsa and associates have edited, open a new window on Smith's career, the scholarly world in which Smith flourished and the Secret Mark.

For Stroumsa, the documents make one point clear beyond doubt: Smith could not have forged Clement's letter or Secret Mark. For Smith's letters show him discussing the material with Scholem, over time, in ways that clearly reflect a process of discovery and reflection. From the start, he was sure he had a new work of Clement's on his hands. In August 1959, Smith wrote to Scholem that "the material by Clement of Alexandria which I found at Mar Saba last year is turning out to be of great importance, and as soon as I get all minor nuisances off my hands I must work hard at it." Later that year he went into more detail, noting that the letter "contains some amazing information about the Carpocratians and the Gospel according to Mark." By early 1961 he was working up the materials that eventually went into his two books.

But the more radical conclusions took time to emerge. Not until October 1962 did Smith tell Scholem that "I am really beginning to think Carpocrates and the sort of things he represented (and especially the ascent through the heavens) were far closer to Jesus than has ever been supposed." If Smith really forged Clement's letter, then he also must have spent years deliberately deceiving one of the few scholars he deeply respected. Yet he showed remarkable equanimity when his efforts proved partly unsuccessful. When Smith's scholarly book on Secret Mark appeared, Scholem accepted the letter as Clementine. But though he appreciated Smith's evidence about the magical side of early Christianity as "very good and convincing as far as it pertains to the tradition of the original church," he also found himself "not sure whether the story can be truly taken as historical evidence about Jesus himself." Smith, in his reply, showed only gratitude for his friend's detailed critical response: "Your letter pleased me very much and I thank you most sincerely for writing me at such length about my book.... As to Jesus, I should perhaps have emphasized more strongly that all accounts of his teaching and practice are conjectural, and I claim to my own conjectures only that they fit the reports as well as any and better than most." This is the tone of a colleague in inquiry, not a foiled forger.

Grafton concludes:

... I believe that Smith really found his letter, and that Scholem gave him the framework into which he inserted it. But that's just what I think. Many will disagree. This time, the professor is the Cheshire cat. He smiles and is gone.

That goes against the current consensus - which doesn't, of course, make it wrong. Then again, I ask you, how much understanding of people can someone have who writes the following?

Most philologists, as is well known, have little sense of humor--something every forger needs.

UPDATE: Grafton's view (about Secret Mark, not philologists' sense of humor) may not be the consensus, but he's in good company. Note Helmut Koester's declaration at the SBL meetings in Boston last November (as reported by Mark Goodacre):

"If the Secret Gospel of Mark is a forgery, then I am the biggest fool in the SBL."

As a long-time veteran of SBL, I can assure you this is no small claim.

(Via Hypotyposeis. I will be interested to hear Stephen Carlson's thoughts on this article.)

UPDATE (13 January): More on Scholem from Grafton here.

THE TWELVE DAYS OF MEIER at Ken Schenck's Quadrilateral Thoughts blog.

PHOTOGRAPHS of the Cologne Mani Codex are available online here.

(Via April DeConick at her Forbidden Gospels blog.)

THE FIRE GOSPEL by Michel Faber, is reviewed by Janet Maslin in the NYT. Excerpt:

Mr. Faber, still best known for his long, ravishing “Crimson Petal and the White,” this time manages to be most insightful when describing fatuous superficiality. Yes, Amazon.com review parodies are cheap shots, but he makes them priceless. Theo is horrified to learn that his book is being bought by readers of “The Da Vinci Code.” He marvels at Amazon’s own flat-footed product description. (Malchus’s account is “as honest and vivid as when it was written — in the 1st century AD, at the dawn of the Western world’s greatest faith.”) He encounters spectacular displays of semiliteracy (“once he gets his ear cut off and sees the crucifixtion, thats basicly it.”)

And he is treated by pedants the way Prometheus was treated by carrion-eating birds, even when those birds themselves are a point of contention. “Carrion-eating birds (whose precise species is unclear in the Aramaic, a detail on which Grippin expends a 17-line speculative footnote!) peck out his eyes and portions of his entrails,” one particularly irreverent reader complains. “A curse on these money-grubbing exercises in imaginary scholarship, cack-handed hokum and Mickey Mouse theology!” he complains.

The footnote is a nice touch.

Background here.

MORE ON SHE'AN NIGHTS:

Reviving Ancient Scythopolis

Jan 7, 2009 4:44 PM, By Lisa Murphy (Live Design)

Reviving Ancient Scythopolis The ancient Roman-Byzantine city of Scythopolis in Israel was destroyed in 749 CE by an earthquake, but new life has been given to the area thanks to a multi-sensory multimedia project in the nearby archeological site of Beit She'an.

The $3 million project is a joint initiative of Israel’s Ministry of Tourism through the Israel Government Tourist Corporation, the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority, and the Beit She'an Municipality. The attraction is expected to bring in 400,000 visitors annually and was created by C-nario and Disk-In Pro.

[...]

Following the introductory presentation, visitors walk through the streets of Scythopolis with its marble columns, stone pavements, bathhouses, and mosaics, while watching images of people and objects projected on the shops, pillars, and building remains of the city streets. The images are accompanied by voices and music, reviving the atmosphere and daily life of an old Roman-Byzantine town. In Scythopolis’ ancient theatre, visitors can watch a Roman performance of dancing and music, as well as an audience applauding the performers—all projected on the theatre seats.

[...]

Background here.

ARAMAIC WATCH: More on the manuscript digitization project in Kerala, India:

Kerala to preserve Christian heritage

(Manorama Online)

Thrissur: Kerala has launched a project to preserve and digitise manuscripts and heritage material related to 2,000 years of Christianity in the state. The project, launched in collaboration with Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) and some leading European and American universities, also aims to "promote further studies on the subject in a proper perspective".

A forum called Association for the Preservation of the Saint Thomas Christian Heritage (APSTCH) has been formed to locate, gather and preserve all available documents including the manuscripts in Syrian. "The purpose of the project is to preserve and maintain the St Thomas Christian heritage, monuments, manuscripts and printed books in Syrian and Malayalam to create correct data-base for the study of Christianity in Kerala, their culture and traditions," APSTCH honorary president Mar Aprem said.

[...]

According to Mar Aprem, as many as 120 manuscripts had been digitised. They include 'The Chaldaean Kashkol' (breviary-prayer book) written in 1585 and 'Hudra' (prayer book for 365 days). According to historians, much of the original documents relating to native Christian community have been destroyed by Portuguese in the 15th and 16th century as part of their drive to "Latinise" and bring St Thomas Christians under the Papal control. Also, many other documents had perished due to humid tropical climate and the poor conditions in which they were preserved.

The KCHR is also trying to revive interest in Aramaic, an endangered Semitic dialect believed to have been spoken by Jesus Christ, among the masses, Aprem said. Aramaic, with different dialectical variations was spoken in parts of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. During Jesus's time Jews spoke Hebrew and Aramaic and its Galilean dialect was believed to have been spoken by Jesus. According to Aprem, modern Aramaic is spoken by over 4,00,000 people belonging to various emigrant communities that moved out of Middle East. For St Thomas Christians in Kerala, Syriac was the main church language till mid-20th century.

I noted what seems to be the same project last year here and I've also posted on Aramaic in Kerala here and here. And a few years ago I noted another Indian manuscript digitization project here. In that post I also discussed a Hebrew Old Testament pseudepigraphon (The Words of Gad the Seer) which was discovered in Cochin (Kochi), a city in Kerala. It would be nice if one of these projects turned up more pseudepigrapha manuscripts.

CAN'T MAKE IT UP: The Good Ship Phoenicia is protecting itself from pirates with a sonic ray gun.

(Via Dorothy King the PhDiva, who is keeping close track of current piratical conflicts. Background to the Phoenicia expedition is here.)

HERE'S "A LIST of people who belong to the online community of those who read ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and possibly other NW Semitic languages, with fire in their belly." I am pleased to be on it.

MURPHY'S LAW is celebrating (?) its 60th anniversary:

Murphy's Law rules! It’s the maxim that says if something
can go wrong, it will – and it’s now 60 years old. So just who WAS Mr Murphy?

By Marcus Dunk (Daily Mail)

Last updated at 12:35 AM on 06th January 2009

While this year marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th of the publication of his On The Origin Of Species, another major theory is celebrating an anniversary this year and - if anything - it offers an even more profound insight into the workings of the world than Darwin's theory of evolution.

It was 60 years ago that Murphy's Law was first formerly introduced to the world. Also known as Sod's Law, this is the landmark theory which, put simply, states: If anything can go wrong, it will.

[...]

For Murphy himself, the law and its variations to which he gave his name was the cause of great annoyance. While he preferred to see the law as a principle of good, defensive design - a willingness to be prepared for the worst - he regarded most versions of his Law as 'ridiculous, trivial and erroneous', and said as much before his death in 1990.

Although he may have failed to see the joke, he does have something of a point. While it is easy to label Murphy's Law as the ultimate pessimist's charter, there is an undercurrent of optimism running just beneath the surface of this Law, one that wryly acknowledges that although things will probably go wrong, recognising that fact is the first step in being prepared for when that actually happens.

Faced with a downturn that could rival the Great Depression of the Thirties, Murphy's Law is the perfect creed for our times - a rallying cry of wry pessimism and cold-eyed realism that could be just the ticket to see us through the current downturn.

Unlike the Darwin anniversaries, no formal celebrations have been planned for the 60th birthday of Murphy's Law, but no matter.

In the coming year, if your plans go awry, if disaster strikes, you lose your job, lose your home or find your slice of toast has landed butter-side down on the kitchen floor, know that in your own way you have paid tribute to Murphy and his most universal of laws.

Now you know.

(Via Dorothy King on Facebook.)

VISION OF GABRIEL WATCH: April DeConick notes an article with chemical/geological analysis by Yuval Goren in the Israel Exploration Journal.

Background here.

PHILIP JENKINS'S BOOK, The Lost History of Christianity, is reviewed by Brother Jeffrey Gros, F.S.C. in the Catholic Review Online. Excerpt:

In “The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia – and How It Died,” Philip Jenkins provides an engaging volume, whose clarity of style and accessible narrative belies the carefully researched and detailed documentation that lies behind such a readable story.

He outlines the rise, heritage and expansion of these churches in the early centuries with centers attributed to the apostles. He describes their successful missionary activity as far as China, India and Indonesia, their rich literary and theological production, and their evangelization of whole cultures. He gives an engaging and differentiated view of the coming of Islam, its complex relations with its Jewish and Christian roots, and the variety of approaches it took to its Christian neighbors and subjects. Like Christian relationships with Jews in Europe, periods of toleration alternate with periods of persecution.

A NEW BOOK on the Sibylline Oracles.

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: The Mars Volta's album, The Bedlam in Goliath comes in second in Johnny Firecloud's list of The Top 40 albums of 2008 at Craveonline:

From the very first second of "Aberinkula," the album's opener, Bedlam grabs you by the throat and shoves you down the rabbit hole. Middle-eastern harmonies at the end of the track segue directly into "Metatron," where we're introduced to the true mood of the album. Cedric's frantically swaying, polysyllabic verse delivery, coupled with Pridgen's otherworldly fills and stop-starts going into the chorus are only supplemented by Juan Alderete's stunning basswork and Rodríguez-López’s wah-wah wizardry. You'd think the song is over once the dreamy mid-song breakdown ceases, giving way to silence, but you'd be wrong; without warning, the song crashes back to life with a blindingly frantic pace.

Background here.

APRIL DECONICK has a Report on "The Birth of Christianity: A Jewish Story" Exhibit: The Alexander son of Simon Ossuary. And she promises more reports on the exhibition, including on the Apocalypse/Vision of Gabriel inscription.

Background here.

UPDATE (5 January): Another review of the exhibition is here.

UPDATE: Somehow I missed April's interim report on the Apocalypse/Vision of Gabriel inscription.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences seems to have done pretty well. It ends today.

Museum officials say they don't know how many people have attended the exhibit. A spokeswoman says at least 85 percent to 90 percent of the 2,000 slots available each day have been filled since Dec. 26.

QUR'AN CONFERENCE:

From April 19-21, 2009 the University of Notre Dame will host an international conference on the Quran entitled The Quran in Its Historical Context. Like the 2005 Notre Dame Quran conference (the papers of which are published with Routledge as The Quran in Its Historical Context), the 2009 conference is dedicated to an examination of the Qurans relationship with the historical circumstances in which it emerges and with the larger literary tradition especially Biblical in which it participates. Particular attention will be paid to the relationship of the Quran to Syriac Literature (and, among other things the theories of Christoph Luxenberg). The keynote speakers of the 2009 Notre Dame conference will be Profs. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Robert Hoyland. Fr. Sidney Griffith will also present a paper. All are welcome to attend.

For more information please visit the conference website:
http://quranconference.nd.edu/

(From Gabriel Said Reynolds on the Hugoye list. Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch.")

For the conference volume of the 2005 Notre Dame conference see here. For "Christoph Luxenberg" see here and here.

THE CAIRO GENIZA DIGITIZATION PROJECT is covered in the London Times. Excerpt:

The fragments are known collectively as the Cairo Genizah (or Geniza) from the Hebrew for a document-store. Nearly a third of the materials are scattered around the world in universities and research institutes; the remaining two thirds are in Cambridge.

Now, documents in all locations are being scanned and catalogued and within five years should be available to the world via the web, thanks to an initiative launched in 1999 by the Friedberg Geniza Project, an international foundation. The main player in the project is the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit (widely called the Geniza Unit), set up in the mid-1970s to manage the Cambridge collection.

The importance to Jewish studies research of this online archive is expected to be revolutionary. The Geniza is “the greatest single hoard of primary sources for the study of Judaism and Jewish history ever uncovered,” says the University of Manchester professor Philip Alexander. The Dead Sea Scrolls, he argues, “have gained huge publicity because they are earlier in date and because they throw light on the origins of Christianity.” But the Cairo documents “are much larger in bulk and more varied in content, and they illuminate the ‘mainline’ rather than a sectarian ‘branchline’ of Judaism — Christianity.”

The article gives several examples of the importance of the Geniza texts (light shed on the work of Maimonides, the text of the Jerusalem Talmud, etc.). There are also important early fragments of some of the the Hekhalot documents which clarify their original text and there are lots of magical amulets, recipes, and handbooks that vastly increase our knowledge of early Jewish magic.

Background on the digitization project is here and here.

THE OLDEST RECORDED HANUKKAH MENORAH? This BigNews.biz press release claims that it's is in a museum in Brooklyn:

During a recent excavation in Jerusalem, one of the workers uncovered an unusual artifact that was brought to the attention of the office of Antiquities. Designed from hand pottery and small enough to be held in the palm of an adults hand, this discovery has revealed to be what is known to be the world’s oldest recorded Hanukkah Menorah known to mankind since the establishment of the Hanukkah holiday. Accompanied by a certified letter of authenticity, issued by the Head of Antiquities, this Menorah has found it’s way through a private donor to a museum based in the Orthodox Jewish community of Boro Park located in Brooklyn, New York. Named “The Living Torah Museum” this museum is privately owned and operated with the help of generous donations from saviors from all over such as David H. Brooks

Presumably we are to picture an ancient nine-branched candelabrum. But if such a thing has been discovered recently, I've heard nothing about it. I also checked the Museum website but I can't find anything about a Hanukkah menorah.

MORE TOPS-OF-THE-YEAR LISTS:

First, Tod Bolen lists his Best Blog Posts of 2008 on his own Bible Places blog.

Second, Thaddeus Nelson posts his Top Ten Pseudo-Archaeological Subjects of 2008 at the Archaeoporn blog.

VISION OF GABRIEL WATCH: An article in The Liberty Vindicator notes the inscription's presence in Houston.

Controversial 'Dead Sea Scroll in Stone' featured at Houston Museum of Natural Science

The Jeselsohn Stone, also known as “Gabriel’s Revelation,” has made headlines across the globe and stirred much debate among biblical scholars, archaeologists, and others.

Google the ancient tablet and hundreds of thousands of links appear.

Now, see the world premiere of the three-foot-tall artifact - described by some as a “Dead Sea Scroll in Stone”- on public display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in The Birth of Christianity: A Jewish Story, a new special exhibition opening Dec. 12, 2008 through April 12, 2009.

Dr. David Jeselsohn, a noted collector of Mediterranean antiquities, acquired the stone from a Jordanian antiquities dealer in London about 10 years ago. Covered with ancient Hebrew script, the odd tablet piqued his curiosity. However, it wasn’t until three years ago when Jeselsohn asked Ada Yardeni, an Israeli scholar, to examine writings on other pieces in his collection that the stone would be, in a sense, re-discovered. Yardeni was drawn to the stone and its Hebrew writing, which she said resembled the Dead Sea Scrolls because the text is written in ink, not engraved. Click here to read her findings. While experts agree that the stone itself is a properly dated, authentic archeological artifact, there is spirited disagreement regarding the exact meaning of the text.

[...]

The "click here to read" links are dead.

Background here and here

MY FRIEND ROB headed home this morning. We had a really good visit.


I made vegetarian lasagna for Christmas dinner. Came out pretty well, huh?


"30 Dec is cold!" at Edinburgh Castle. It was!


Princes Street as seen from the Castle.


Two Wild and Crazy Guys atop St. Rules Tower, with the city of St. Andrews in the background.

More holiday photos here and here.

A NEW MAIMONIDES BIOGRAPHY by Joel L. Kraemer is reviewed in Commentary Magazine by David C. Flatto. A good bit of the review is about Maimonides in general rather than about the book, but here's an excerpt:

Kraemer follows the stages of Maimonides’ life and work through the four geographic locations in which he resided, placing his prolific output and multiple interests within the context of his time and place. Skillfully, he weaves excerpts from the writings into the biography. Thus, the story of Maimonides’ lone visit to Jerusalem draws both on a public epistle to the Jews of Yemen and on the Mishneh Torah's “Laws of the Temple,” which include the directive that one must continue to treat the site of the ruined sanctuary with reverence. The portrait of Maimonides’ heroic efforts to ransom Jews taken hostage by Crusaders and pirates similarly cuts to the Mishneh Torah’s “Laws of Gifts to the Poor,” which enumerate no fewer than seven biblical commandments that are violated if a captive is not ransomed (“for not only is the captive included in the general category of the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked, but also his very life is in jeopardy”). And so on.

Kraemer also sheds useful light on aspects of Maimonides’ personal life, exploring his early education and mentors, his close relationship with his brother, the ugly confrontation with a rival in Fustat nicknamed “Zuta the Wicked,” and his devotion to his student Joseph (the epistolary addressee of the Guide), his son Abraham, and his many followers. An early chapter revisits the controversial thesis, dating back to the 18th century, that Maimonides outwardly submitted to a forced conversion to Islam in his youth.

To illuminate Maimonides’ writings, Kraemer draws on a wide array of primary sources, from documents stored in the Cairo Genizah (a rich repository of manuscripts from the medieval period that was re-discovered in the 19th century) to the works of Arabic historians, geographers, poets, and philosophers. He is particularly helpful in identifying the formative influence of leading Arab Aristotelians like Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. For the major treatises, he offers sturdy introductions to genre, layout, and structure, summarizes the principal themes, and discusses intellectual roots.

_____________



There are drawbacks. Crammed with information, Kraemer’s book is at times too dense, at others too thin. One learns more than one needs to know about details like the number of biblical citations in the first book of the Mishneh Torah; by contrast, complex philosophical and rhetorical themes (e.g., the notion of God’s indwelling or the stylistic use of semantic equivalence) are merely summarized. In an instance where he offers a fuller presentation of a fundamental issue—Maimonides’ formulation of thirteen “principles of faith”—Kraemer fails to inquire into the reasons for his selecting or omitting specific dogmas, the absence of any mention of the principles in his more mature works, or the motivation behind this unprecedented theological project.

The analysis of Maimonides’ legal code is especially inadequate. ...

THE TOP 50 ANCIENT HISTORY BLOGS according to Jessica Merritt are listed at the Learn-gasm blog. Some of the choices are odd. I was quite surprised, for example, not to find Mark Goodacre's New Testament Gateway blog.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

RALPHIES 2008: Once again it's time to take up Ed Cook's invitation to post best-of-the-year varia. For my Ralphies of 2005, 2006, and 2007, follow the links. Ed's 2008 Ralphies are here. Mark Goodacre's are here. Doug Chaplin has posted his Ralphies for films here at MetaCatholic.

As before, these are my favorites of the year and probably say little about anything except my own idiosyncratic tastes and what I happened to see or hear.

BEST FICTION BOOK: I don't think I've read any fiction that was actually published in 2008. I'm frequently running a year or more behind on such things. Of the things I did read, by far the best was The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton: The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God. Actually, I re-read it, having read it the first time in 1998-2001 as it came out. It was one of the major contribution to the revival of space opera and its concept, like most really brilliant ones, was simple: an ill-timed accident breaches the gap between Hell and our universe and allows the souls of the damned to cross over and possess the bodies of the living. This is set in a twenty-seventh century context in which nanotechnology and FTL travel are taken for granted (and given adequate scientific rationales), the emerging human galactic empire is presented with an amazing level of plausible detail, the wider tapestry is brought to life with a host of reasonably to highly convincing characters, and the finale is stunning. Highly recommended.

Honorable mention goes to the more recent Black Man (Gollancz, 2007), by Richard Morgan, which had a similar feel to his earlier Takeshi Kovacs novels (noted here), although set in a different world. Morgan has now set his hand to epic fantasy in The Steel Remains, which I am looking forward to reading.

More novels are noted below.

BEST NONFICTION BOOK: Since becoming Head of School I've had very little time to keep up with professional reading, but I do try to do a few short reviews so as not to fall entirely behind. Of the few academic books I read this year, the most impressive was:

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

An invaluable reference work for anyone working on the Enochic literature.

BEST MOVIE: As usual I saw few films in the cinema, all of them children's films I watched with my son. The only one of these that was even bearable was Journey to the Center of the Earth, which merits a mediocre three stars of five. Brendan Fraser did the best he could, and at least the script relied on some plot instead of entirely on CGI. A bonus was that seeing the movie motivated us to get out our copy of the Jules Verne novel that was the loose inspiration for the movie and read it together, which was a lot of fun. I first read it when I was about my son's age and it was a nice complement to H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, which we read earlier in the summer.

As for pre-2008 movies that I saw for the first time this year, my favorite (and my favorite overall for the year) was Sahara (2005), based on the novel by Clive Cussler. Cussler's archaeologist-adventurer hero Dirk Pitt has been around since well before the Indiana Jones movies, and Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn had just the right chemistry as Dirk Pitt and his sidekick Al Giordino. It's a pity that Cussler and the movie's producer, Philip Anschutz, fell out. I would have liked to have seen more Dirk Pitt adaptations with McConaughey and Zahn. Be that as it may, the movie also introduced me to the Dirk Pitt novels, of which I have particularly enjoyed Treasure, in which Pitt recovers the lost Library of Alexandria, which luckily had been packed up and hidden in a very unexpected place by an alert ancient Roman official. Would that it were so!

BEST TELEVISION: There was a lot of good television this year and it's hard to pick out a favorite. Doctor Who was excellent again, and I'm sorry to see David Tennant leave. The Doctor even encountered (apocryphal) Old Testament Pseudepigrapha this year, and what could be better than that? Series two of Primeval was fun and I'm looking forward to series three. Series two of Torchwood was good too. I also managed to watch the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica, which I quite enjoyed, and series six of 24, which was okay but no more. I was disappointed with Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to Life on Mars (noted last year), and I think of it as a real lost opportunity.

This fall's Merlin takes the place in the autumn slot of the disappointing Robin Hood as the BBC's child-friendly British legend program. I liked Merlin. It plays fast and loose with the legend, but, heck, so did Malory. And, again, it got my son interested in Arthuriana, and we're currently reading Howard Pyle's The Story of King Arthur and His Knights.

All in all, I think my favorite television series in 2008 was Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I loved the first two Terminator movies, but found the third very disappointing. It is somewhat redeemed in my eyes now that I see how it fits into the complicated mythos: it presented the failure of the attempt in Terminator 2 to prevent Judgement Day and laid the groundwork for the current series, in which Sarah and John Connor have another go at setting things right. The casting is good and the scripts have been mostly good so far, with some excellent ones. Summer Glau (River Tam in Firefly and Serenity) is particularly well cast as the hot, scary, reprogrammed-to-the-good (most of the time) Terminatrix, Cameron Phillips.



As for my favorite television moment of 2008, it's hard this year to settle on one, but I guess I'll go with moment in the Doctor Who episode "The Doctor's Daughter" when Jenny tells her father to "watch and learn":



I hope we see Georgia Moffett again in the role of Jenny.

BEST MUSIC: I heard almost no new music this year and haven't a clue what's going on. I did, however, dig up a lot of old music on YouTube. One oldish song (1997) did stand out, and I came to think of it as my theme song for 2008: Tubthumping by Chumbawamba.

As those close to me know, 2007 was for me an annus horribilis. 2008 has been a year of nettle-grasping and rebuilding, but all in all it was a significant improvement. May the trend continue in 2009 and may you all have a good year too.

UPDATE (5 January): Chris Brady has his Fifth Annual Ralphies posted over at Targuman.

PALEOJUDAICA is a G-Rated blog:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* dead (3x)
* ass (1x)

How curious. I've been keeping a list of amusing search-engine referrals that might point to a stricter rating, but I'll share that with you another time.

The "ass" reference is here and, despite the proximate mention of dung, it just means donkey. Considering how often I refer to the Dead Sea Scrolls, I have no idea how the 3x for "dead" was computed. But if all of them were counted, the site probably would have figured PaleoJudaica was a zombie movie.

(Found via R-Rated Dorothy King.)

TODD BOLEN has posted his Top 8 of 2008: Archaeological Discoveries Related to the Bible at the Bible Place blog. It's a good list, and he rounds up more of this year's discoveries of interest as well.

DR. GREGORY BEARMAN has an informative article on the Dead Sea Scrolls multispectral imaging project, posted on the SPIE website:

Imaging the Dead Sea Scrolls for conservation purposes

Gregory Bearman

Acquisition of a complete set of new high-resolution color and IR images will allow the scrolls to remain in their environmentally controlled vault.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) recently decided to employ modern digital imaging and imaging spectroscopy to study the Dead Sea Scrolls. High-resolution color and IR images will be provided to text scholars for use in transcription and translation. Stored at the ideal temperature and humidity in an environmentally controlled vault at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the scrolls must occasionally be removed. Traditionally, scholars work with film negatives on a light box, removing the actual fragments only when the negatives are insufficient to their needs. However, exposure to environmental changes may cause the scrolls to degrade. This new project is driven by two main goals, both of which rely heavily on modern imaging technology. The imaging project will create a complete and accessible online database of high-resolution images that will eliminate the need for physical handling of the scrolls. In a concurrent prospective study, imaging spectroscopy will be applied to selected scrolls aimed at detecting changes in the reflection spectra as potential markers of parchment deterioration. This is a large project because there is a lot of original material to image.

[...]

Background here.

Plus, the article briefly mentions the Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription:

We have applied similar imaging to a pottery shard (ostracon) with the oldest-known Hebrew inscription.3 The shard, comprising five lines of text, dates from approximately 3000 years ago. It was excavated in July 2008 and partially imaged during the pilot project. The imaging revealed and clarified the text, prompting the IAA to bring the ostracon to the USA in November 2008 for additional imaging.

Background here.

THE BIBLE is still the best-selling book in America:

Prophet Sharing: The Good Book Is the Best Seller
The Bible, Long a Commercial Hit, Gets Repackaged for Market Niches from the Homespun to the Fashion Forward

By STEPHANIE SIMON

Mobile, Ala. (Wall Street Journal)

Upstairs in the Mobile Museum of Art, there's a Bible on display -- a majestic hand-drawn edition a decade in the making, and not yet finished. Presented as a work of modern art, its oversized pages are filled with ornate calligraphy and rich illustration, shot through with gold and silver leaf.

Downstairs, in the museum foyer, another Bible lies open -- this one so homespun as to be homely. An earnest young couple is carting it cross-country in an RV with a bobble-head Jesus on the dash, asking tens of thousands of ordinary Americans to each hand-write one verse. Blotches of white-out mark corrections.

The two editions on display this drizzly morning are as different as can be, yet they represent an essential truth: God's word is good business.

Throughout history, the Bible has been an object of commerce as well as of reflection. That's especially true in the modern era.

It's an astonishing fact that year after year, the Bible is the best-selling book in America -- even though 90% of households already have at least one copy. The text doesn't vary, except in translation. The tremendous sales volume, an estimated 25 million copies sold each year, is largely driven by innovations in design, color, style and the ultimate niche marketing.

[...]

MORE ON THE DONKEY DUNG as Holy Land souvenir from Green Prophet:

Recycling and Deifying Donkey Dung in Israel

Dec 29th, 2008 by James Murray-White

[...]

Menachem Goldberg, who runs a visitors centre at Kedem, has come up with the extra-ordinary idea of preserving pieces of donkey dung within a plastic cube, that is inscribed with holy writings from the Talmud. Mr Goldberg says that the idea came to him from the Talmudic phrase: (and I quote) “Let the Messiah come…may I be worthy to sit in the shadow of his donkey’s dung”. Make of this what you will!

[...]

And there's more video too.

Background here.

WE'RE BACK FROM EDINBURGH where we spent the afternoon, visiting the Castle and the National Gallery. I'm busy right now but will try to get to some blogging later.

UPDATE: Sorry, ended up watching Donnie Darko again instead. More tomorrow

WE VISITED SOME MUSEUMS in St. Andrews today. I thought I would show you a couple of things we encountered in the St. Andrews Museum in Kinburn Park. Click on the images for a larger version.

First, there's the Kilduncan Stone, a thousand-year-old carved stone containing a scene of sea dragons which may be biblically inspired:

The descriptive plaque is here:The two beasts are clearly visible on the larger image of the stone. There is no reference to two sea beasts in the Masoretic Text of Habakkuk, but an article by Fife Council Archaeologist Douglas A Speirs in History Scotland Magazine suggests that the scene is inspired by a Latin text of the book:

The reverse side of the stone is even more interesting. Its obscure Christian iconography is difficult to interpret but it is likely that the two sea beasts (known as hippocamps), enclosing the low relief encircled cross-of-arcs, symbolises a passage from the old (Vespasian Psalter) text of the prophet in the Book of Habbakuk, Chapter 3: In medio duorum animalium innotesceris: Between two beasts you will recognise Him [Christ]

The passage is Habakkuk 3:2, which the RSV translates:

O LORD, I have heard the report of thee,
and thy work, O LORD, do I fear.
In the midst of the years renew it;
in the midst of the years make it known;
in wrath remember mercy.

The highlighted passage is translated correctly in the Latin Vulgate (opus tuum in medio annorum vivifica illud in medio annorum notum facies), but the Old Latin translation (Vetus Latina) is based on the Greek translation (the Septuagint or LXX). The NETS translation of the line reads:

You will be known in the midst of two living creatures ...

The LXX adds the word involving "knowing" to the first line as well as keeping it in its original spot in the second line, and it reads its grammar differently than the Hebrew of the MT. Then it misunderstands the Hebrew word "years" to be the graphically identical word "two." It also misreads the word translated "renew it" (literally, "make it live") as "living creatures" or "beasts."

And so, perhaps, we get the two dragons carved on this stone.

(This 1953 article by Leo Jung discusses the convoluted transmission of the line from Habakkuk 3:2 as well as its later use in Nativity apocrypha. [Requires JSTOR access to read.])

Second, here is a banner involving Adam and Eve produced by the Order of Ancient Free Gardeners in the town of Cupar, a few miles from St. Andrews:

The plaque is here:I don't see anything as exegetically exciting in this Lost Scroll of Cupar, but it's a nice banner.

THE TOP TEN archaeological discoveries of 2008 according to Archaeology Magazine are listed here. The new Zincirli inscription (now a.k.a. the Kuttamuwa's Soul inscription) is on the list. Background to that is here.

CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, who has been named Briton of the Year by the London Times:

Briton of the Year: Neil MacGregor
'Saint' whose charm and enthusiasm had a curative effect on the British Museum

Rachel Campbell-Johnston, Chief Art Critic

Saint Neil is his nickname. And we are blessed to have him. The British Museum’s director, Neil MacGregor, is far more than just the highly successful administrator of an iconic national establishment. He is a committed idealist who, in a world in which culture is increasingly presented as the acceptable face of politics, has pioneered a broader, more open, more peaceable way forward.

This year we almost lost him. He was being courted to replace Philippe de Montebello as the head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

It was easy to see why the Americans would covet him. Here was a man who had managed – by what often felt like charm and enthusiasm alone – to turn a financial basket case back into a cultural jewel.

When he took up his post in 2002, the British Museum was £5 million in deficit. Morale was at rock bottom. Visitor numbers had plummeted to less than a million. A third of the galleries were closed and the staff that had not yet been sacked were on strike. Six years later, under MacGregor’s auspices, it has six million visitors a year and heads the list of our cultural attractions, trumping even Blackpool’s time-honoured mass-market mecca, the Pleasure Beach.

Who wouldn’t value a man who could convince the masses that carved lumps of old rock are more worth visiting than the Pepsi Max Big One? But MacGregor stayed in Britain. He declined the Met on principle. It was not a public institution, he said. And he wanted to stay at a museum that was free to everyone. MacGregor, it would appear, is profoundly democratic. Refocusing upon the founding ideals of the institution that was established by Act of Parliament in 1753 as a museum for the world, he has radically redefined the role that it can play in public life.

[...]

I'm glad they held on to him. The British Museum has been mentioned frequently in PaleoJudaica during his tenure. See, for example, entries on the Babylon exhibition, the Phoenicia voyage, the Hadrian exhibition, the Vindolanda texts, the Ancient Persia exhibition, the Nebo-Sarsekim tablet, the Cyrus Cylinder, and the Museum's Mesopotamia Collection. In many cases you can follow the links back for more information.

WE'RE OFF to visit Rosslyn Chapel, just south of Edinburgh. (Apologies for the website's corny music.) I'll let you know if we catch sight of the Holy Grail or the treasures of the Templars.

Meanwhile, here's a site devoted to correcting errors about the chapel in The Da Vinci Code.

LATER: Well, we didn't find the Grail or the Templar treasures. On the way we started to suspect that the reason no one had found them was that no one had ever been able to figure out the directions to the place. But we did get there eventually, and the return trip was easier, since all I had to do was follow signs to the Forth Road Bridge to get back to familiar territory.

In any case, the chapel itself is a beautiful piece of architecture which has countless biblical themes and stories encoded in it. As for the Grail, etc., my son found a number of promising hollow-sounding spots in the walls and floors, but I didn't let him get the pry bar from the car to investigate further.

Unfortunately, it is forbidden to take photos inside the chapel, but I do have a few from the outside. Click on any of them for a larger image.


The effect is spoiled a bit by all the scaffolding, but having the whole thing as rubble on the ground would probably spoil it more.


Close-up of a gargoyle or the like above the entrance.


A newer part of the architecture on one side.


The good thing about the scaffolding was that it could be climbed on, so we got a closer look at the outside upper level than we would have otherwise. This is a stained glass window containing St. George. The sun is shining through it from the other side, so you can see part of it in mirror inversion pretty well.


On the exact opposite side of the chapel is St. Michael's window, but the direct sunlight shining on the outside shows very little.



The gift shop was full of nonsensical tomes about Solomon, the Grail, the Templars, etc.


We didn't make it down to Roslin Castle, but you can catch a glimpse of it here in the center of the photo.

There are lots of photos of the inside of the chapel at the Rosslyn Chapel website (here). The chapel was freezing cold and after a while I started to wish I had worn triple socks instead of just double. So it would have taken a lot longer than we had patience for to look closely at all the engravings, but I noticed one right away and it was my favorite of those I noticed. It is a horned Moses holding one of the tablets in one hand and Aaron's rod in the other. (For more on Moses' horns, go here and keep following the links back.)

Also, with reference to the Da Vinci Code website above, Dorothy King e-mails, "Isaac Newton's Tomb in Westminster Abbey also does not have an apple ... LOL"

HANUKKA HEROINES OF YORE are discussed by Rachel Adelman in the Jerusalem Post. Excerpt:

Women are as obligated as men in the commandment to light the Hanukka candles because, according to the Talmud, "they too were involved in the miracle" (B. Shabbat 23a). According to Rashbam, this implies that women were pivotal in bringing about the miracle, and Judith is credited with this central role at Hanukka (cited in Tosafot on B. Pesahim 108b). Rashi, on the other hand, alludes to the story of Hannah, daughter of Mattathias: "'They too were involved in the miracle' refers to a time when the Greeks had decreed that a bride should be given over to the magistrate on her wedding night and a miracle was enacted at the hands of a woman" (Rashi, on B. Shabbat 23a).

Who are these mysterious women, Judith and Hannah? The story of Judith is not found in the Talmud or the classical midrashim, but, like the Book of Maccabees, in the Apocrypha. Many know the story of Judith beheading Holofernes, the Syrian general, but few are familiar with the story of Hannah, the daughter of Mattathias. The events take place during the tyrannical rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-163 BCE).

Read on for the story.

APOCRYPHA WATCH: A Collation and Evaluation of OT Apocrypha Translations has been posted by Mark Hoffman at the Biblical Studies and Technological Tools blog. (Via Ricoblog.)

FIND A DIG is now online at the Biblical Archaeology Review website. It's not too early to start planning your summer 2009 archaeology!

CAN'T MAKE IT UP and don't think I'd want to:

Dung souvenir based on holy phrase

(BBC)

The manager of a tourist centre in the Holy Land has come up with an unusual idea for a souvenir.

Visitors to Menachem Goldberg's tourist compound at Kedem village in Galilee can buy pieces of donkey dung presented in a plastic cube inscribed with religious text.

Mr Goldberg based the idea on a phrase in the Jewish Talmud which says, '"Let the messiah come... may I be worthy to sit in the shadow of his donkey's dung."

Follow the link for a video that really ought to have come from Saturday Night Live.

Some Googling indicates that b. Sanhedrin 98b is the passage in question, but I don't have the text handy today to verify the reference.

UPDATE (26 December): Yep, that's the passage, and Jacob Neuser e-mails the text from his translation:

I.105 A. Said Ulla, "Let him come, but may I not see him."
B. Said Rabba, "Let him come, but may I not see him."
C. R. Joseph said, "May he come, and may I have the merit of sitting in the shade of the dung of his ass."
D. Said Abbayye to Rabbah, "What is the reason [that some do not wish to see the coming of the messiah]? Is it because of the turmoil of the Messiah?
E. "And has it not been taught on Tannaite authority:
F. "His disciples asked R. Eliezer, 'What should someone do to save himself from the turmoil of the Messiah?'
G. "[He replied to them], 'Let him engage in study of the Torah and acts of loving kindness.'
H. "And lo, the master [at hand] practices Torah-study and acts of lovingkindness. [So why not want to see him?]"
I. He said to him, "Perhaps he fears sin will cause [him to suffer], in line with what R. Jacob bar Idi said."
J. For R. Jacob bar Idi contrasted two verses of Scripture, as follows: "It is written, 'And behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go'
(Gen. 28:15), and another verse states, 'Then Jacob was greatly afraid' (Gen. 32:8).
K. "[Why the contrast between God's promise and Jacob's fear?] Jacob feared [and thought to himself,] 'Sin which I have done may cause [punishment for me instead].'"
L. That accords with what has been taught on Tannaite authority:
M. "Till your people pass over, O Lord, till your people pass over, that you have acquired" (Ex. 15:16).
N. "Till your people pass over" refers to the first entry into the land [in Joshua's time].
O. "Till your people pass over, that you have acquired" refers to the second entry into the land [in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. Thus a miracle was promised not only on the first occasion, but also on the second. But it did not happen the second time around. Why not?]
P. On the basis of this statement, sages have said, "The Israelites were worthy of having a miracle performed for them in the time of Ezra also, just as it had been performed for them in the time of Joshua b. Nun, but sin caused the miracle to be withheld."

UPDATE (31 December): More here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all those celebrating.

Yesterday I posted and linked to some relevant historical observations etc.

MY BEST FRIEND is visiting the UK from San Diego. I'm picking him up at the train station in a couple of hours and he will be staying with me for the next week. In high school and at university, Rob and I were Two Wild and Crazy Guys together (in the nerdiest possible sense, you understand). It will be good to hang out together again. But I shall be busy over the next week and blogging may (or may not) be light.

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM is getting its annual airing in the news. Here's a BBC article:

Star of wonder

By Rebecca Ellis

A comet, an eclipse, a supernova, an alignment of planets - was the Star of Bethlehem, said to have led the wise men to the Baby Jesus, a real astronomical event?

Some 2,000 years ago, wise men saw an incredible star shining over the Holy Land. It was their signal to embark on an epic journey to visit the new Messiah. But what exactly was the Star of Bethlehem?
Comet
... perhaps it was a comet

Modern science is unravelling the mystery behind one of the most famous astronomical stories in history. New developments in technology allow astronomers to map the ancient night skies with extraordinary accuracy.

As they study the movements of the planets and stars, experts are challenging the traditional assumption that it was a blazing comet - instead there are several unusual astronomical events that the wise men could have seen in the skies.

[...]

And that's pretty much where things stand. The scientific possibilities mentioned in the article include a planetary conjunction, a stellar-planetary conjunction, a supernova, and an eclipse of Jupiter. Physicist Frank Tipler has recently discussed the possibilities in his article "The Star of Bethlehem: A Type Ia/Ic Supernova in the Andromeda Galaxy?" in Observatory 125 (2005): 168-73. He thinks the supernova possibility is the most likely option and he lays out the conditions for testing the hypothesis.

Until and unless there's a scientific consensus on an astronomical event that fits the conditions at the right time, my working hypothesis is that the writer Matthew drew on or created midrashic traditions based on Balaam's prophecy in Numbers 24:17, which refers to a star coming out of Jacob. The passage was understood to have a messianic connotation in at least some ancient Jewish circles; for example, the title of the messianic leader Bar Kokhba (Aramaic for "Son of the Star") is based on this verse. A literal reading of it could have led to a story like the one we find in Matthew. But I see I've already noted this in a past post. Related posts are here and here. I've noted another cool Star of Bethlehem tradition here. And while I'm at it, I have posts on Matthew's Magi here and here.