BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL XXXVIII has been posted by Judy Redman at Judy's Research Blog. Lots of good stuff, as usual.

PRESIDENT OBAMA misattributed a Talmud quote in a recent speech - noted by Julia Duin in the Washington Times Belief Blog:

Before we go on to that, must mention that the Chief Executive's speechwriters need to be a bit more on the ball in terms of quoting Scripture. At one point, the new president said, in his National Prayer Breakfast speech this morning, "The Torah commands, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." "

That is not in the Torah, aka the Old Testament. It's from the Talmud, specifically a quote from Rabbi Hillel in the book Talmud Shabbos. (The Talmud, a 20-volume biblical commentary, was compiled by Jewish sages in second-century AD Babylon.)

The reference is b. Shabbat 31a. The positive formulation, "Love your neighbor as yourself" does appear in the Torah in Leviticus 19:18.

Ms. Duin makes her own error in her comments. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled (based on lots of earlier material) in (roughly) the sixth century, not the second.

UPDATE (7 September): Reader Aryeh Amihay e-mails in defense of the President:

In relation to your post on President Obama’s misattributed Talmud quote I wanted to add that the story of Hillel as it appears in tractate Shabbat, has Hillel stating that “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbour. that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it.” In other words, according to Hillel himself this is what the Torah commands, rendering the president’s statement true (he did not say he was quoting from the Torah, only that this was what the Torah commands).

MOD'IN RENAISSANCE:

Modi’in: City Of The Past And Future

By Harold Gellis (Five Towns Jewish Times Online, NY)
Published on Thursday, February 05, 2009 - COMMENTS (0)

Over 2,000 years ago, an unprecedented miracle took place in an ancient Jewish town in the center of Judea. In the obscure town of Modi’in, the high priest Matthias, Judah Maccabee, and a handful of followers rose up in battle against the mighty Greek empire. The Chanukah festival commemorates their ultimate victory.

After two millennia, another remarkable miracle has again taken place in Modi’in. The town of the Hasmoneans has come to life again. In the land where the Maccabees lived and fought, there is now Israel’s newest city. In the 21st century, Modi’in, the city of the past, is now the city of the future.

[...]

[Alex] Weinreb [deputy mayor of Modi’in], an amateur archaeologist and fierce environmentalist, is dedicated to preserving Modi’in’s past as well as ensuring its ecological future. Standing on a hill among the ruins and artifacts of the Hasmonean era, he envisions the site as a future cultural and educational center. “In the planned center, students will be able to do their dissertation on Modi’in,” muses Weinreb. “One will be able to have his bar mitzvah in the same beit k’nesset where Judah Maccabee had his bar mitzvah.”

What is needed, however, for the planned center is funding. And funding is also needed for other infrastructure in Modi’in, as well; in a city where there are more births annually than in any other city in the country except B’nei Brak, there is no hospital!

[...]

On Givat HaTeturah, a hilltop in Modi’in full of Hasmonean relics, Efraim Weiss of Pearl Skolnik describes the interconnected past and present of Modi’in: “On this hill, the Maccabees lit fires on their way to Jerusalem. On Chanukah, all the schools come up here for different activities. But they have to dress warmly because it gets quite cold here.”

A major construction project for Givat HaTeturah that would have destroyed the hilltop’s archeological treasures was thwarted by Alex Weinreb, who vigilantly works to preserve Modi’in’s ancient heritage. Givat HaTeturah is now a municipal nature site.

In the municipal building framed by the menorah, Alex Weinreb can cite an additional list of impressive accomplishments. Weinreb, the avid archaeologist, has established environmental, cultural, and historical educational programs and institutions about Modi’in and its heritage, including marking the festival of Chanukah with annual cultural events. An equally avid environmentalist, Weinreb also stood up to the phone companies and made them remove their cellular towers from the city in order to reduce cellular radiation.

But to understand the future direction of Modi’in best, one has only to look at Alex Weinreb’s slogan—“Alex Weinreb doesn’t stop at the green!”

Well, the preservation of archaeological sites and the educational programs do sound worthwhile.

UPDATE: Reader Shai Secunda e-mails:

Just to let you know, many archaeologists now consider a site in the southern end of the city (in the Buchman neighborhood) to be the site on ancient Modiin, and not Titura hill. This site contains the remains of a possible synagogue, but is fenced off and not yet open to the public.

A CUNEIFORM TABLET at the Bible Lands Museum:

Historical treasure at Bible Lands Museum

Rare 4,000 year-old cuneiform tablet that sheds light on beliefs and practices of religious Babylonian customs during Tu B'Shvat now on display at Bible Lands Museum

Ynetnews
Published: 02.04.09, 11:45 / Israel Travel

As part of Tu B'Shvat celebrations the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem reveals a rare 4,000 year old cuneiform tablet that sheds light on the beliefs and practices of the religious Babylonian customs during Tu B'Shvat.

[...]

The connection with Tu B'Shvat, which comes up in a few days, is pretty tenuous, but the tablet is quite interesting in itself.

The rare tablet takes the visitors to the ancient month Shabatu, 4,000 years ago. It is the only known example of a text recording the daily routine followed in the temples of the capital city of Larsa, which neighbored Ur in ancient Mesopotamia. In over six hundred and thirty lines, the tablet registers the rites performed in the temples during the month of Shabatu. This month is identical to the Hebrew month of Shevat and they are both the eleventh month of the year.

Given the troubles over Iraqi antiquities in recent years, it would have been helpful if the article had said more about its provenance and the route that brought it to Jerusalem. I suspect it's from a Larsa archaeological excavation, but I don't know. Anybody out there have information?

LOOTERS have been caught with what seems to be an ancient Syriac Bible. The report is muddled:

Nine arrested over 2,000 year-old Syrian bible
By Simon Bahceli (Cyprus Mail)

A TWO THOUSAND year-old Syrian Orthodox bible, believed to have been smuggled into the island from southeastern Turkey, has become the subject of major police operation in the north that has so far led to the arrest of nine suspects.

The bible, estimated to be worth around €2 million, was seized during a raid at the Famagusta bus terminal last Friday where smugglers were seeking to sell it to buyers in the north. It is thought Turkish Cypriot police had been tipped off about the impending sale.

Although the north’s ‘antiquities department’ refused yesterday to comment on the bible, because it was “the subject of an ongoing inquiry”, a statement from police said it was bound in deerskin, written in gold letters in the Syriac language, and believed to be around 2000 years old. The bible may have come from the heartland of the Syrian Orthodox community in southeastern Turkey, where a small community remains, despite often being caught in the crossfire between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish military.

“It is very likely to come from the Tur-Abdin area of Turkey, where there is still a Syriac speaking community,” Dr Chalotte Roueche, professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King College, London told Reuters yesterday.

In 1994, the British historian William Dalrymple wrote that the community “could die out within one generation”. However, conditions are reported to have improved in recent years with the Turkish government making efforts to protect religious minorities in the country.

Roueche added, however, that it was impossible to say for sure whether the bible was either from that area, or whether it was as old as the Turkish Cypriot police thought.

“The problem about this description is that a Syriac gospel-book could be from the 4th century, but it could date from several centuries after that, well into the middle ages. Indeed, I think that gospel books may still have been being written in Syriac then. Obviously the smugglers will have wanted to date it as ancient as possible,” Dr Roueche added.

[...]

Dr. Roueche has it right. I think the chances of this being a two thousand year old complete biblical codex in Aramaic are minimal. The Syriac language is the Aramaic dialect of Edessa and is first recorded, I believe, in the second century C.E. The codex (bound book) rather than the scroll, is also characteristic of the period well after the second century C.E. Still, if this is an ancient or even Medieval Syriac Bible codex or codex of the Gospels or some such, it is still of great interest and it's very fortunate that the authorities recovered it.

The oldest surviving complete Syriac Bible (Old and New Testament plus some Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha) is Codex Ambrosianus B.21, Milan, from the sixth or seventh century C.E. I have commented on it here. Unfortunately, the photographs seem to have been purged in our recent website upgrade. I'll try to get them back up soon.

UPDATE (7 February): More here.

MORE ON THE IRANIAN CUNEIFORM TABLETS that the U.S. court is trying to confiscate and sell off to recompense victims of terrorism:

World Iranologists ask Obama to bar seizure of Achaemenid tablets
Tehran Times Culture Desk

TEHRAN -- About 700 Iranologists and Iranian cultural heritage lovers have recently signed a petition asking President Barack Obama to prevent confiscation of Iran’s 300 Achaemenid clay tablets loaned to the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute.

The petition has been organized by the European Iranologist Society (Societas Iranologica Europaea, SIE) in its website www.societasiranologicaeu.org.

[...]

Background here and follow the links back. I have commented on the case here, here and here. If so minded, you can sign the petition here. I have signed it. I'm not sure what the President's powers are in this case, but the statement is still worth making.

WHEN ISRAEL AND THE ARABS WERE ALLIES. It has happened! Excerpt from the paper abstract by Peter Feinman, posted at HNN:

Thus there once was a time when Arabs and Israel were allies and Israel was part of the Semitic world around it as brother, cousin, and husband to its many peoples, when the image of Isaac and Ishmael standing together as one matched the historical record of 853 BCE. One prays that we won't have to wait another 2861 years for these peoples to be allies and part of the same family once again.

The event in question was the Battle of Qarqar, between the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III and a coalition of West Semitic groups (including King Ahab of Israel), Arabs, and others.

THE SLAVONIC PSEUDEPIGRAPHA PROJECT has an announcement, sent to me by Andrei Orlov:

The Slavonic Pseudepigrapha Project would like to announce the launch of two new resource pages devoted to 2 (Slavonic) Enoch (http://www.marquette.edu/maqom/2enoch.html)and the Apocalypse of Abraham (http://www.marquette.edu/maqom/apocalypseabraham.html).

The resource pages include original manuscripts, translations, extensive bibliographies, and research articles pertaining to these important apocalyptic works which survived in Slavonic language.

The Slavonic Pseudepigrapha Project (http://www.marquette.edu/maqom/pseudepigrapha.html) is an electronic resource developed by scholars from the Theology Department at Marquette University (Milwaukee, USA).

Readers might also be interested in my colleague Grant Macaskill's online lecture, "The Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: An Introduction."

ANOTHER DEFENSE of the Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance by Rabbi Marvin Hier, "the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance":

Op-Ed: Museum a beacon of hope in the center of Jerusalem

By Marvin Hier · February 2, 2009 (JTA)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) -- On Oct. 29, 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court rendered a unanimous decision permitting the Simon Wiesenthal Center to resume construction on its Museum of Tolerance project on the site of the municipal parking lot in the heart of western Jerusalem. The court denied the contention of the project’s chief opponent, Sheik Raed Salah, a notorious anti-Semite and Hamas supporter, that the parking lot was a Muslim cemetery and allowed construction to resume even on the small portion where bones were found.

For half a century, hundreds of Jews, Christians and Muslims parked their cars every day on the site, with no protest whatsoever from any Muslim groups, religious leaders, nongovernmental organizations or professors.

As the court noted, “for almost 50 years the compound has not been a part of the cemetery, both in the normative sense and in the practical sense, and it was used for various public purposes." It also said, "During all those years no one raised any claim, on even one occasion, that the planning procedures violated the sanctity of the site, or that they were contrary to law as a result of the historical and religious uniqueness of the site." And, "For decades this area was not regarded as a cemetery by the general public or by the Muslim community."

"No one," the court said, "denied this position."

In 1964, the highest Muslim authority, the Muslim Religious Council, even ruled that the adjacent Independence Park (Mamilla Cemetery) was a "mundras," an abandoned site where building is permissible. Today, mundras is a widely relied-upon categorization and sanctioned throughout the Arab world -- in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian territories.

[...]

Background here and follow the links back.

CONGRATULATIONS to Prof. Casey Elledge, who is one of seven faculty members who just received tenure at Gustavus Adolphus College:

Casey Elledge holds a B.A. in English from Centenary College, and both a M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Seminary. Elledge is Chair of the Gustavus Lecture Series as well as a member of the Achievement Recognition Committee and the Academic Petitions Committee. Since arriving at Gustavus in 2002, Elledge has been a part of five major academic publications and four general audience publications. His publications include Life after Death in Early Judaism: The Evidence of Josephus and The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: An Introductino to Qumran and Its Literature.

DEAD SEA SCROLLS FRAGMENTS FOR SALE (by Michael R. Thompson, Booksellers, at their display at the San Francisco Antiquarian Book Fair later this month):

29. [DEAD SEA SCROLLS]. Original fragment from Daniel, Chapter 5, Verse 13-16. Found at Qumran, on the Dead Sea, in Cave 4, some time between 1952 and 1956. The fragment itself dates between 50 BC - AD 68 (the Roman destruction of Qumran). 32 mm. x 30 mm., written in Hebrew on brown animal hide. Preserved between glass, and enclosed in cloth chemise, in full black morocco clamshell slipcase. $275,000
Includes the verse translated in English as: "Art thou that Daniel, which art of the children of the captiuity of Iudah..."

30. [DEAD SEA SCROLLS]. Original fragment from Exodus, Chapter 18, Verse 6-8. Found at Qumran, on the Dead Sea, in Cave 4, some time between 1952 and 1956. The fragment itself dates between 150 BC - AD 68 (the Roman destruction of Qumran). 11 x 34 mm. written in Hebrew on brown animal hide. Preserved between glass, and enclosed in cloth chemise, in full black morocco clamshell slipcase. $145,000
Includes the verse translated in English as: "Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharoah and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, all the hardship that had befallen them on the journey, and how the Lord had delivered them.”

I don't know if these are genuine or not, but if they are, it is unfortunate to find them like this in the public marketplace, although I suppose it's better than their being lost entirely. If you should happen to be in the position to buy these, I hope you will consider donating them (or at least be willing to sell them) to a museum, preferably one in Israel. If you must keep them, please, please be willing to make them available for specialists to study. It will do no harm to the value of the fragments and it will insure that the contribution they can make to history is not lost.

(Noted on Joseph I. Lauer's e-mail list.)

UPDATE (15 February): More here.

A BIBLICAL MUSEUM is planned in Virginia:

LU professor has plans for biblical museum

By Christa Desrets

Published: January 31, 2009 (Lynchburg News and Advance)

Randall Price has big plans for what is now a small space in DeMoss Hall at Liberty University.

Price, an archaeologist and Liberty professor, is executive director of LU’s Center for Judaic Studies, which opened in fall 2008.

Price plans to implement academic coursework and degree programs in Jewish studies. He also is working with school officials to establish a Biblical Museum at the university that would house antiquities from the biblical period.

Preliminary plans for a 10,000-square-foot museum already have been drawn, and Price hopes that within a couple of years it will be built.

His own collection of antiquities, as well as those that he could get on loan from dig sites, would be housed at the museum to provide the school and Lynchburg a window to the past.

“We felt there was a need to have a program in Jewish Studies because we want our Christian students to understand the issues,” said Price, who over the past 30 years has traveled to Israel more than 90 times.

With that goal in mind, in December, Price led 12 students, four from Liberty, in the school’s first archaeology program. They traveled to Qumran in eastern Israel, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered about 60 years ago in nearby caves.

[...]

GIANTS IN THE EARTH? Well, this one was put there by a hoaxer:

The Giant of Cardiff

Category: History of Science
Posted on: January 28, 2009 6:13 PM, by Brian Switek (Laelaps blog)

Given the speed at which information travels these days it is not surprising how quickly we forget hoaxes and humbugs. Every year people get their 15 minutes of fame by claiming to have seen ghosts, aliens, or fanciful creatures, but these far-out tales quickly fade away. This past summer, for instance, Matt Whitton, Rick Dyer, and "professional Bigfoot hunter" Tom Biscardi claimed to have in their possession the corpse of a Sasquatch.

Media outlets, particularly FOX News, picked up the story and ran with it but it was quickly determined that it was all a hoax. The story held the public's attention for about a week and quickly faded away, but there have been more famous hoaxes that, while they are unfamiliar now, were widely known for decades after they were perpetrated.

In October of 1869, on a farm not far from Cardiff, New York, Gideon Emmons and Henry Nicols dug into the loose soil to begin making a well. They did not get far before they struck something large, but they had no clue what it was until the soil fell back to reveal a gigantic human foot. The owner of the farm, William Newell, was brought out to oversee the dig and soon the team uncovered a super-sized human form. News quickly spread of this 10-foot-tall curiosity.

[...]

And there's this interesting tidbit:

The fact that the giant had been outed as a hoax did not stop some from trying to divine ancient secrets from it, however. Alexander McWhorter, a Yale graduate student, was sure he found Phoenician letters inscribed upon the idol. ...

Alas, no.

More on the Cardiff Giant here. Additional entertaining giant hoaxes are noted here. And posts on another giant (Og) are collected here.

PHOENICIA EXPEDITION UPDATE:

Phoenicia Expedition - Six months waiting for wind

(Sail-World.com UK)

'Just like the Phoenicians, we will have to secure the ship and wait for the prevailing winds which will turn in August 2009.'

These are the words of Philip Beale, leader of the Phoenicia Expedition which is recreating the first circumnavigation of Africa, believed to have taken place some 2500 years ago.

However, Beale and his multi national crew are still on course to beat the original Phoenicians - Greek Historian Herodotus recorded that the original voyage took nearly three years to complete with mariners planting crops enroute and waiting for the harvests.

The organisers of the Phoenicia Expedition have announced they will put a six month break in the voyage in order to meet the crucial 'weather windows' for rounding The Cape of Good Hope as well as getting out of the Gulf of Aden.

In a 70 ft replica of a 600 BC wooden ship which was built in Syria, the crew have sailed to Yemen which is where the boat will stay for the next few months.

[...]

Background here and keep following the links back. Expedition website here.

PROVERBS 31, UPDATED.

CODEX PSEUDEPIGRAPHICUS VETERIS TESTAMENTI, edited by Johann Albert Fabricius in the early 1700s, is now available online for downloading in various formats.

Alex Panayotov has placed it here, downloadable in two installments in PDF format.

You can also find it at www.archive.com in DjVu, HTML, and PDF formats. And maybe one or two others, although the Full Text version doesn't seem to have come out properly - and it hung up my Firefox browser.

Volume One

Volume Two

This is the earliest scholarly collection of Old Testament pseudepigrapha. I have more on it and its editor here. Enjoy!

MORE ON "KING SOLOMON'S MINES" is promised soon:

Digs may help decide if 'King Solomon's mines' was a misnomer
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH [Jerusalem Post]

A University of California archeologist has found evidence that sheds new light on the venerable question of whether King David and his son King Solomon controlled the copper industry in the Kingdom of Edom, which is present-day southern Jordan.

The term "King Solomon's Mines" was made famous by a 19th century novel of the same name - although, until now, no such mines have been proven to exist during the time period mentioned in the Bible.

Prof. Thomas Levy of UC San Diego, who reported the findings of an international team of archeologists he headed in an issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US) late last year, is expected to reveal more on February 18 at a meeting of his university's Social Sciences Supper Club.

[...]

Stay tuned!

Background here.

DAMAGE to the Antiquities Museum of Gaza in the latest conflict:

First evidence of damage to Gaza’s cultural sites emerges

Lauren Gelfond Feldinger | 28.1.09 | [The Art Newspaper] Issue 199

JERUSALEM. After a 3,500-year history of invasions, the latest war on the beleaguered coastal strip of Gaza has once again put historic sites at risk.

With the fragile ceasefire still in force, The Art Newspaper has learned that Gaza’s only museum has been damaged and other heritage sites and buildings may also be at risk.

The Antiquities Museum of Gaza, privately founded and run by Gazan contractor and collector Jawdat Khoudary, was badly damaged during Israel’s 22 days of air and land strikes. The glass doors and windows have been shattered and the roof and walls have been damaged. Roman and Byzantine pottery, Islamic bronze objects and many amphorae have been destroyed, initially during shooting 20m to 200m away, and later because of nearby shelling, with one direct hit to the museum’s conference hall, Mr Khoudary said. Amphorae, clay and ceramic vessels with two looped handles, were created in Gaza and the region during the fourth to seventh centuries for storing wine, olive oil and food and trading perishable commodities.

“I am very concerned: the entire Gaza Strip is an archaeological site,” said Palestinian archaeologist Professor Moain Sadeq, who founded the Palestinian Antiquities Department of Gaza in 1994, and is currently a visiting lecturer at the University of Toronto while in contact daily with Gaza.

[...]

This museum was profiled recently by the New York Times.

ARAMAIC WATCH - only not:

Tattoos popular art form for students
January 29, 2009

BY OLIVIA MARTIN / Staff Writer [the Auburn Plainsman
Sketches of different tattoos hang on a wall inside Shenanigans Tattoo Parlor located on Gay Street.Sketches of different tattoos hang on a wall inside Shenanigans Tattoo Parlor located on Gay Street.

Tattoo art has gained significant attention during the past 10 years, and while it isn’t hanging in The Met, it is an art form.

Nils Larson, a tattoo artist at Shenanigans Tattoo Parlor, describes the intricacies of tattooing.

“People who say that it isn’t an art form usually don’t know about art,” Larson said. “Drawing a good picture is hard. Then, you must transfer it onto a surface with bony protrusions.”

With tattoo art gaining popularity and prestige across America, many Auburn students are braving the needle for a variety of reasons.

[...]

Brett Livesay, a senior in psychology, chose a piece with meaning.

“I have tetelestai written across my wrist,” Livesay said. “It is Aramaic for ‘it is finished’ or ‘paid in full,’ and it is the last thing Jesus said before he died. It is in block lettering to look like a stamp, as if Jesus stamped me to redeem my sins.”

[...]

Fine, but tetelestai is Greek (John 19:30), not Aramaic.

THE EISENBRAUNS ANE LOVE POETRY CONTEST is running again in 2009. Last year's contest was noted here and I posted a link to the winners here, but said link has now rotted. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Good luck!

UPDATE: James Spinti e-mails to say that the contest website (with a link to last year's results) is here.

THE LIBRARIES OF THE NEOPLATONISTS, edited by Cristina D'Ancona Costa, is reviewed by Christophe F. Erismann in BMCR (noted on Jack Sasson's Agade list). Excerpt:

One of the strengths of the book is that it highlights the importance of the so-called Philosophical collection, a set of Byzantine manuscripts containing philosophical texts, mostly related to the Neoplatonic tradition. It is an essential intermediary in the process of transmission of philosophical texts from Antiquity, so essential that, according to Richard Goulet, without it "we would only have kept from ancient philosophy a very small corpus of texts, maybe Aristotle's Organon, as is the case in several eastern traditions" (p. 54, translation is mine). This set of 17 Greek manuscripts which present similar codicological and palaeographical characteristics, comes from a copying centre which is considered to have been situated in Constantinople around 850. It comprises nothing less than: Plato's dialogues, the De anima, the De fato and Quaestiones of Alexander of Aphrodisias, the Didaskalikos of Alkinoos, the Dissertations of Maximus of Tyre, the treatises of Plotinus, the commentaries on the Republic and the Timaeus of Proclus, the commentary on the Parmenides and the treatise De primis principiis of Damascius, the commentaries on the Physics and the Categories by Simplicius, the commentaries on the Gorgias, the Phaedrus, and the Alcibiades by Olympiodorus, the treatise Contra Proclum de aeternitate mundi by John Philoponus, the commentary on the De interpretatione by Ammonius, the De caelo, the De generatione et corruptione, the History of animals, the Metaphysics, the Meteorology and the Physics of Aristotle, as well as Patristic texts and geographical and astrological writings. The "Platonic" nucleus of the Philosophical collection is probably made up of copies of remnants of the library of the philosophical school of Alexandria which had been brought from Alexandria to Constantinople at a date impossible to state precisely, but probably falling between the beginning of the seventh century and the beginning of the ninth century, as has been suggested by L. G. Westerink.

Henri Dominique Saffrey proposes, in an insightful essay, a study of one of the manuscripts of the Philosophical collection, the Parisinus graecus 1807 which contains among other things tetralogies VIII (Clitophon, Republic, Timaeus, Critias) and IX (Minos, Laws, Epinomis, Letters) of Plato, with the Definitions and the Spuria. It is the manuscript A for Plato, made around 850, the model of which went from Alexandria to Byzantium, and which travelled from Byzantium to Armenia, and then to the library of Francesco Petrarca.

Guglielmo Cavallo, Philippe Hoffman and Didier Marcotte provide remarks which complete this study of the Philosophical collection. The textual tradition of Syrianus' commentary on the Metaphysics and the influence of Neoplatonists on Byzantine thought are also studied. The second part of the book contains studies on the dissemination of Neoplatonic texts in the Syriac-speaking and Arabic-speaking areas. Henri Hugonnard-Roche provides a useful synthesis article on Syriac philosophical literature in the sixth and seventh centuries. As to the Arabic tradition, the influence of Neoplatonism during the Abbasid period, in particular on al-Kindi (P. Adamson, G. Endress), the presence of Proclus, and the proximity between sixth-century Alexandrian commentators and the Baghdad Aristotelian Ibn al-Tayyib are considered.

It wasn't the Syriac that caught my eye, but rather something that isn't mentioned in the review, although I imagine the book must note it somewhere. Some biblical (sort of) apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, specifically apocalypses, were included in Neoplatonist libraries as well. The evidence is found in Porphyry's Life of Plotinus:

16. Many Christians of this period--amongst them sectaries who had abandoned the old philosophy, men of the schools of Adelphius and Aquilinus--had possessed themselves of works by Alexander of Libya, by Philocomus, by Demostratus, and by Lydus, and exhibited also Revelations [i.e., apocalypses - JRD] bearing the names of Zoroaster, Zostrianus, Nicotheus, Allogenes, Mesus, and others of that order. Thus they fooled many, themselves fooled first; Plato, according to them, had failed to penetrate into the depth of Intellectual Being.

Plotinus fequently attacked their position at the Conferences and finally wrote the treatise which I have headed Against the Gnostics: he left to us of the circle the task of examining what he himself passed over. Amelius proceeded as far as a fortieth treatise in refutation of the book of Zostrianus: I myself have shown on many counts that the Zoroastrian volume is spurious and modern, concocted by the sectaries in order to pretend that the doctrines they had embraced were those of the ancient sage.

Both Zostrianos and Allogenes were recovered in the Nag Hammadi Coptic Gnostic library. As far as I know, the others are still lost. I haven't noted the lost Apocalypses of Zoroaster, Nicotheus, and Mesus in my earlier discussions of lost books (here, here, and here), perhaps because they aren't obviously to be counted as Old Testament pseudepigrapha. But it seems likely that at least Zoroaster was, as an ancient Gentile prophet co-opted into the Judeo-Christian tradition as we find the Sibyl in the Sibylline Oracles and Zoroaster himself in Zostrianos

UPDATE: Note also that Messos (Mesus?) is the recipient of the revelation in Allogenes and that the Zostrianos closes with the line "Teaching of Zoroaster" (as pointed out by the editors [Wire and Wintermute] of Allogenes in the Robinson translation of the Nag Hammadi Library). So it may be that Porphyry got all four names from just these two works. Wire and Wintermute also report that Allogenes can be a designation for the biblical patriarch Seth, who was important for the Sethian Gnostic movement.

THE GOLD COINS recently found in that Jerusalem excavation are covered in a Science Daily article:

Hoard Of Hundreds Of Antique Gold Coins Uncovered In Walls Around Jerusalem National Park

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2009) — One thousand three hundred year old Chanukah money in Jerusalem: a hoard of more than 250 gold coins was exposed December 11 in the excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting in the Giv ‘ati car park in the City of David, in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park. The excavations at the site are being carried out on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority and are underwritten by the ‘Ir David Foundation.

[...]

I can't see anything new in the article, but it's a pretty good summary of past coverage. Background here. Finds from the same excavation are noted here (immediately preceding post below).

AN ANCIENT WEIGHT in the shape of a Roman boxer's head has been excavated in Jerusalem. Here's the IAA press release:

An 1,800 Year Old Marble Figurine in the Image of a Bearded Man, probably that of a Roman Boxer, was Discovered (26/1/2009)

In the archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting at the Givati car park in the City of David, in the Walls around Jerusalem National Park:

An 1,800 Year Old Marble Figurine in the Image of a Bearded Man, probably that of a Roman Boxer, was Discovered

The figurine was used as a suspended weight together with a balance scale. This is probably the only find of its kind from excavations in the country.

A figurine (bust) made of marble depicting a miniature image of a bearded man’s head was discovered in the excavations that the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting in the area of the Givati car park in the City of David, in the Walls around Jerusalem National Park.

[...]

An ancient earring and a Byzantine-era gold coin hoard were discovered recently at the same site.

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

HERE'S A NEWS VIDEO on YouTube covering the discovery of the Kirbet Qeiyafa inscription and making rather more politically of it than I would. There are numerous shots of the ostracon, although the letters are usually not visible. I kept wanting to tell Professor Garfinkel to put it down before he dropped it!

Heads up, Maggid. Background here (and follow the links back) and here.

THE KUTTAMUWA STELE from Zincirli is noted in a nice summary blog post on K. Kris Hirst's Archaeology Blog. There is some debate about whether eighth-century Sam'alian is Aramaic or something less readily classifiable. Peter Bekins has a summary of the issues at Balshanut.

For more background on the Kuttamuwa inscription, go here and keep following the links back.

ANOTHER 250th anniversary this month:

British museum director talking collections
An extract from Neil MacGregor's anniversary lecture where he reflects on the great works made by humans throughout history

Neil MacGregor (London Times)

It was 250 years ago this month that the British Museum first opened its doors to the public. When you visit the museum today, you visit somewhere that is like no other collection, no other building on earth. It is the only place where you can, in every sense, walk through the world, and through time, and look at the whole range of what humans have made and speculate as to what they have thought.

[...]

More on Neil MacGregor and the British Museum here.

THE TIMUBKTU ARCHIVES now have a library devoted to their conservation:

S. Africa helps Mali modernise ancient libraries
Sat Jan 24, 2009 2:44pm EST

By Rainer Schwenzfeier

TIMBUKTU, Mali, Jan 24 (Reuters) - South Africa and Mali opened a high-tech library in the Malian desert town of Timbuktu on Saturday, boosting efforts to preserve thousands of ancient manuscripts documenting Africa's academic past.

The launch is part of a South African plan to help Mali to protect up to 150,000 manuscripts, some of which date from the 13th century and document subjects ranging from science and the arts to social and business trends of the day.

South Africa has also been training Malian conservators to protect the texts, which some say will force the West to accept Africa has an intellectual history as old as its own. Others draw comparisons with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[...]

Background here and keep following the links back. For why I think this is interesting see here and here.

I'M OFF to the St. Mary's College Burns Night Supper, this year celebrating the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns's birth. (I know we're a night early, but that's just how the scheduling worked out.)

APRIL DECONICK asks, What can I contribute to The Jesus Project? With people like April and James Crossley involved in the Jesus Project, I'm optimistic that it will produce some significant contributions.

ARAMAIC WATCH: The Mor Gabriel Syriac Orthodox Monastery in Turkey has become the center of a land controversy:

Christian monastery in Turkey fights to keep land
Wed Jan 21, 2009 8:02pm EST

21 Jan 2009

By Ibon Villelabeitia

MIDYAT, Turkey (Reuters) - In a remote village near the Turkish-Syrian border, a land dispute with neighboring villages is threatening the future of one of the world's oldest functioning Christian monasteries.

Critics say the dispute, which has become a rallying cry for Christian church groups across Europe, is a new chapter in the long history of religious persecution of the small Christian community by the Turkish state.

Tucked amid rugged hills where minarets rise in the distance, a small group of monks chants in Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ, inside the fifth-century Mor Gabriel monastery. It is a relic of an era when hundreds of thousands of Syriac Christians lived and worshipped in Turkey.

"This is our land. We have been here for more than 1,600 years," said Kuryakos Ergun, head of the Mor Gabriel Foundation, surveying the barren land and villages from the monastery's rooftop. "We have our maps and our records to prove it. This is not about land. It's about the monastery."

The dispute, on which a court is due to rule on February 11, is testing freedom of religion and human rights for non-Muslim minorities in this overwhelmingly Muslim country that aspires to join the European Union.

The row began when Turkish government land officials redrew the boundaries around Mor Gabriel and the surrounding villages in 2008 to update a national land registry.

The monks say the new boundaries turn over to the villages large plots of land the monastery has owned for centuries, and designate monastery land as public forest. Christian groups believe officials want to ultimately stamp out the Syriac Orthodox monastery.

[...]

AINA reports on a response in Europe:

"Save the monastery of Mor Gabriel, save Christendom in Turkey" -- that is the slogan of a huge demonstration planned for Sunday, Jan. 15, in Berlin. Its aim is to help safeguard the existence of Mor Gabriel -- also known as the Monastery of St. Gabriel -- which is the spiritual center of Syrian-Orthodox Christians in Turkey. Founded in 397, it is the oldest surviving Syriac Orthodox monastery in the world. It is located on the Tur Abdin plateau in Southeastern Turkey, the motherland of the Syriac people. Its main purpose is to keep Syriac Orthodox Christianity alive in the land of its birth by providing schooling and the ordination of native-born monks. Throughout its long history, it has also provided physical protection to Turkey's Christian minority. The so-called "Action Mor Gabriel" was founded by S.E. Mor Julius Dr. Hanna Aydin, the Archbishop of the Syrian-Orthodox church of Antiochia in Germany in November 2008. It unites six organizations, namely the Archdiocese of Syrian-Orthodox Churches in Germany, the umbrella organization of Tur Abdin, the European Syriac Union, the Federation of Armenians in Germany, the Federation Survoye and the Central Council of Assyrian Associations in Germany. The managing director of the "Action Mor Gabriel" is Raid Gharib, a German citizen of Turkish descent. He is a political scientist working at the university of Tübingen on a Ph.D. entitled "Nation and identity of the Syriac Christians: The quest for a feasible societal model."

A CATALOGUE of the 800 Hebrew manuscripts in the Vatican:

Vatican catalogs its Hebrew manuscripts

January 21, 2009

ROME (JTA) -- With the help of Israeli scholars, the Vatican has published a catalog of the Hebrew manuscripts kept in its library.

Publication of the work, a Vatican communique said, "represents a significant example of co-operation between the cultural institutions of the Holy See and of Israel."

[...]

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

BOOK NOTE from Wesleyan University's page on recent alumni/ae doings:

Sharp ’85 Finds Irony in Hebrew Scriptures
In her fascinating new study, Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible (Indiana University Press), Carolyn J. Sharp ’85, associate professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Yale Divinity School, suggests that many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures may be ironically intended. By interweaving literary theory and exegesis, she examines the power of the unspoken in a wide variety of texts from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. Her book considers such themes as foreign rulers and the fear of God, the prostitute as icon of the ironic gaze, indeterminacy and dramatic irony in prophetic performance, and irony in ancient Israel’s wisdom traditions.

Sharp pays special attention to how irony can challenge the dominant ways in which the Bible is read today, especially when it touches on questions of conflict, gender, and the other.

Sharp’s research continues to explore the composition, redaction, and rhetoric of Hebrew Scripture texts. She is also the author of Prophecy and Ideology in Jeremiah: Struggles for Authority in the Deutero-Jeremianic Prose; and Old Testament Prophets for Today.

ARAMAIC WATCH: Another novel featuring a fictional Aramaic inscription:

The plot spins on a silver bracelet found in the sands of Myrtle Beach by Jesus with a metal detector. Jesus' real name is Gary, but the mysteriously inscribed bracelet briefly annoints him to followers Mark and Luke.

The bracelet passes through several hands in "Jesus Swept's" 276 pages: from Jesus to fiftysomething Liz Forsythe, the director of planned giving at Duke University, to redneck twins Hook and Sinker, the former nicknamed for the five-inch-long shark hook she ripped through her brother's bicep when he "tried his hand on her."

The inscription is translated by Liz's tiny, lesbian professor friend Gloria Grace in the Village of Weaver Woods. It turns out to be Aramaic and at least 1,000 years old. It's not giving anything away to say the inscription reads "Good works do. Kind and loving be. Joy in pleasure seek. ... These are the threads of life full filled."

How do you say that in Aramaic? In any case, I think Bill and Ted said it better with "Be excellent to each other" and "Party on, dudes!"

ANOTHER JESUS PROJECT ESSAY has been posted on the Bible and Interpretation website:

Jesus Projects and a Different Kind of Minimalism (Perhaps)

Historical Jesus scholarship still pushes the “great man” view of history with Jesus the individual massively influential. One of the ways in which the Jesus Project could provide a distinctive contribution to scholarship is to challenge and test this general scholarly assumption by analyzing broader socio-historical trends underlying the emergence of the historical Jesus and Christian origins.

By James Crossley
Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies
Department of Biblical Studies
University of Sheffield, UK
January 2009

Crossley comes up with some ideas that might well move elements of the field of Christian Origins forward. Excerpt:

As Hoffmann pointed out, “the possibility that Christianity arose from causes that have little to do with a historical founder is one among many other questions the Project should take seriously. Inevitably, scholars and critics (if not always the same people) will ask, And just how do you go about doing that?, and neither the answer ‘Differently’ or ‘Better’ will suffice.” While my attitude towards historical Jesus studies is increasingly deconstructive, I hope I can add some constructive comments here and suggest ways in which the Project might go about “doing that,” namely ways to challenge or test the dominant assumption that Jesus was singularly so influential. There is enough work on social history and social anthropology and enough empirical data collected and analyzed to exploit these issues. Areas ripe for exploitation might include: social networks, ethnic interaction, and the origins of gentile inclusion; class-conflicts and the emergence of a new religion; universal monotheism, developments in communication, and the origins of the deification of Jesus; and so on. In each case, the influence of Jesus the individual could be tested. We might even get answers to big, big questions. Perhaps the historical Jesus was influential in changes which brought about Christian distinctiveness and identity, perhaps he was not, or perhaps his individual influence was somewhere in between. Perhaps broader socio-economic developments better explain change than the individual; in this case, we could add a further question: why was the figure of Jesus the object of affection? Perhaps Jesus’ teaching was a crucial factor in interacting with longer- and medium-term trends in historical development. Big though these questions undoubtedly are, they are not questions widely discussed in historical Jesus scholarship.

Go for 'em.

Background here.

JUDAICA AND HEBRAICA UP FOR AUCTION:

First, Antiques and the Arts Online reports on Sotheby's sales from the Delmonico Judaica Collection, including the following:

The sale's top price was achieved by an extremely rare and exquisite Fifteenth Century illuminated Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, on vellum completed by Levi ben Aaron Halfan in Florence, 1489, which sold for $362,500. A series of 40 lots from the Babylonian Talmud printed in Venice by Daniel Bomberg, 11 of which derived from the only known copy printed on blue paper, more than doubled the high estimate to achieve $2.25 million. After spirited bidding, all 11 lots of Bomberg's Talmud printed on blue paper were purchased by a private collector, and will remain assembled as a collection.

Pair of George I parcel gilt silver Torah finials, William Spackman, London 1719–20, brought $338,500.
Pair of George I parcel gilt silver Torah finials, William Spackman, London 1719–20, brought $338,500.
Chief among these was four tractates printed on blue paper, which brought $230,500 against a presale estimate of $40/60,000. Two tractates on blue paper brought $206,500, and a single tractate on blue paper soared to $194,500.

Collectors also enthusiastically competed for the largest selection of Hebrew incunabula, or early printings, to come for sale in years, yielding strong prices for the first complete edition of the entire Mishnah, with the commentary of Maimonides, completed in Naples, 1492, which achieved $254,500. Nahmanides' Perush ha-Torah (Commentary on the Pentateuch), Rome, 1469–73, which totaled $338,500; and the Teshuvot She'elot (Answers and Questions) by Solomon ben Abraham ibn Adret, Rome, 1469–73, which brought $302,500.

Second, LiveAuctioneers is advertising a 1611 Hebrew/Latin biblical fascicle:

1611, Book, "Daniel, Hezra, & Nechemiah", printed in Hebrew and Latin, Fine.
Original 1611 printing of the books of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, 7.25" x 4.5", hardcover, 134 pages. This rare, early 17th Century work was printed in Antwerp, Belgium by Officina Plantiniana Raphelengii. This volume has a Hebrew text with interlinear Latin translation, by the celebrated Dominican scholar, Santes Pagninus (i.e. Pagnini, 1470-1536). Bound in old sheep skin or leather (most of which has worn off), generally the book is clean internally. The cover is well worn, the hinges cracked, and there is an institutional stamp on the title page. The pages are numbered from 415 to 548, and the volume opens and reads in traditional Hebrew format (from right to left, and back to front). The Dominican friar's Latin version of the Hebrew Bible, the first since St. Jerome's, contributed greatly to virtually every 16th Century scriptural translator.

[...]

All I can say is that I hope that the collectors who bought or buy these items don't go dark with them. They should remain available for scholars of the Renaissance and the early modern period to study.

ARAMAIC WATCH: The manuscript digitization project in Kerala, India, gets some slightly garbled coverage in ExpressBuzz. Excerpt:

[Dr Mar] Aprem, who is the author of the book ‘Teach yourself Aramaic’, said that after the release of Mel Gibson’s film ‘The Passion of Christ’ in 2004 with most of its dialogue in Aramaic, people in different part of the world are showing interest in knowing and learning the language.

The Metropolitan said that a body called Association for the Preservation of St Thomas Christian Heritage with close association of the Oriental Institute of the University of Tobingen, Germany
, the Syriac Institute USA, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, USA, Central European University, Hungary and the Kerala Centre for Historical Research has been constituted for the purpose.

He is the honorary president of the association.

He said that initial efforts of the association would be to preserve through digitalisation of printed books, manuscripts both in paper and palm leaves, and other locally available documents in Syrian [That should be "Syriac" - JRD].

He said that he himself has a collection of about 250 manuscripts and printed books in Syrian language.

Background here.

TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism has a new issue out (Volume 13 [2008]). Pete Williams has an article on the Syriac Peshitta of Romans and there are lots of book reviews of interest as well.

THE FIRE GOSPEL, Michel Faber's novel about newly recovered Aramaic scrolls about the life of Jesus, gets a couple more reviews. Excerpts below.

By Nancy Connors in the Plain Dealer:

In his way, Faber remains true to the Prometheus myth, but he also has a lot of fun: Theo's surname is the same as that of a German artist who painted a four-part mural of Prometheus, and his re-creation of Amazon reader comments about Theo's book is dead-on.
Yet there's a tenderness about humankind and our inarticulate, profound need to believe that shines through Faber's tale.

Or as Malchus himself writes: "The hand that holds the pen is attached to the body that aches and growls. And that is our misfortune, brothers and sisters: we speak of things that cannot be spoken. We seek to store understandings in our gross flesh that gross flesh cannot contain, like a madman who would snatch a moonbeam and put it in his purse."

By Stephen Finucan in the Toronto Star:

Faber's strength is his irreverence. No one is left unskewered, from academics and religious bumpkins to book publishers – not even the poor, soon-to-be-blown-to-smithereens curator of the Mosul museum is spared. The Fire Gospel is a very funny book.

Where it suffers is in the strictures placed upon it by the Myth series itself. Faber hasn't enough room here to flex his writerly muscles. In the end, the reader is left with is a collection of amusing set pieces more than a cohesive novel.

Background here.

SMUGGLING TORAHS FROM IRAQ?

Iraq worried that ancient Torah manuscripts were smuggled to Israel
By THE MEDIA LINE NEWS AGENCY (Jerusalem Post)

The Iraqi Interior Ministry accused security companies working with the American military forces of attempting to smuggle out unique archeological artifacts, stating its concern that Babylonian-era Torah manuscripts were smuggled to Israel, the London-based daily Al-Hayyat reported.

Iraq is searching for over 9,400 artifacts that were lost or stolen since the start of the American-led invasion in May 2003.

Among these items are Babylonian-era Torah manuscripts taken by American forces. The US promised it would return the manuscripts in two years after their renovation, but there was "information pointing to the possibility that they had been smuggled to Israel," Gen. (ret.) Widah Nas'rat of the Interior Ministry's Criminal Investigations Department told Al-Hayyat.

[...]

I don't know what "Babylonian-era" means in this context. The manuscripts are very unlikely to be older than fairly late in the Middle Ages. There were stories in 2007 and 2008 about a several-hundred-year-old Torah Scroll being removed from Iraq under questionable circumstances (see here) and perhaps this is related.

Incidentally, this week is full of exam marking, meetings, and interviews, so blogging is likely to be relegated to evenings - if my strength holds out. I will try to pace such posts as I find time to write by pre-posting some of them.

UPDATE (20 January): It occurs to me that the 400-year-old Torah Scroll mentioned above was smuggled to Baltimore, so it probably is not related.

There's also an article on the possible Torah manuscripts taken to Israel in Arutz Sheva, but it has no new information.

THE JESUS PROJECT is the subject of another essay at the Bible and Interpretation website:

Rocks, Hard Places, and Jesus Fatigue: Jesus Seminar and Jesus Project

The following comments are not a direct response to Bruce Chilton’s very helpful article on the Jesus Project but in many ways anticipate and respond to some of his observations. I offer it as further commentary on the pros and cons of undertaking yet another “quest,” at a time when New Testament scholarship, in the eyes of some, is a mission without a guiding purpose.

By R. Joseph Hoffmann
R. Joseph Hoffmann (PhD, Oxford) is Chair of CSER, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion and co-Chair (with Robert M. Price and Gerd Luedemann) of The Jesus Project. He is Scholar in Residence (2009) at Goddard College and teaches History at Geneseo College (SUNY).
January 2009

Crouching somewhere between esthetic sound byte and historical detail is Michelangelo’s famous statement about sculpture. “The job of the sculptor,” Vasari attributes to il Divino, ”is to set free the forms that are within the stone.” It’s a lovely thought—poetic, in fact. If you accept the theory of Renaissance Platonism, as Michelangelo embodies it, you also have to believe that “Moses” and “David” were encased in stone, yearning to be released—as the soul yearns to be set free from the flesh in the theology of salvation. You will however be left wondering why such a theory required human models with strong arms and firm thighs, and why the finished product bears no more resemblance to real or imagined historical figures than a drawing that any one of us could produce. We may lack Michelangelo’s skill and his deft way with a rasp and chisel, but we can easily imagine more probable second millennia BC heroes—in form, stature, skin-tone, and body type—than the Italian beauties he released from their marble prisons. In fact, the more we know about the second millennia BC, the more likely we are to be right. And alas, Michelangelo didn’t know very much about history at all. And what’s more, it made no difference to his art, his success, or to his reputation. That is why idealism and imagination are sometimes at odds with history, or put bluntly, why history acts as a control on our ability to imagine or idealize anything, often profoundly wrong things.

If we apply the same logic to the New Testament, we stumble over what I have (once or twice) called the Platonic Fallacy in Jesus research. Like it or not, the New Testament is still the primary artifact of the literature that permits us to understand the origins of Christianity. It’s the stone, if not the only stone. If we possessed only gnostic and apocryphal sources as documentary curiosities and no movement that preserved them, we would be hard-pressed to say anything other than that at some time in the first and second century a short-lived and highly incoherent religious movement fluoresced and faded (many did) in the night sky of Hellenistic antiquity. The Jesus we would know from these sources would be an odd co-mixture of insufferable infant a la the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a hell-robber, like the liberator of the Gospel of Nicodemus, a mysterious cipher, like the unnamed hero of the Hymn of the Pearl, or an impenetrable guru, like the Jesus of the gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Despite the now-yellowed axiom we all learned as first year divinity students of a certain generation and later in graduate school (the one where we are taught that “no picture of early Christianity is complete without availing ourselves of all the sources”), I will climb out on a limb to say that these sources are not so much integral to a coherent picture of early Christianity as they are pebbles in orbit around the gravitational center we call the canon. They are interesting—fascinating even—in showing us how uniformity of opinion and belief can wriggle out of a chaos of alterative visions (maybe the closest analogues are in constitutional history), but they are not the stone that the most familiar form of Christianity was made from. That recognition is as important as it is increasingly irrelevant to modern New Testament discussion.

[...]

My initial thoughts were (1) those metaphors need to rounded up and shot to put them out of their misery and (2) why "second millennia BC?" There was only one of them. But beyond the niggling, I think the point is that what we can learn from the earliest stage of Christian origins comes from the canonical Four Gospels and I don't have too much trouble with that, but I am keeping an open mind about the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas and some of the early fragments.

The conclusions and as much of a positive agenda as appears in the essay come in the last two paragraphs:

When we considered developing the Jesus Project, it was not out of any malignant attempt to “prove” that Jesus did not exist. (The press releases have done an immeasurable disservice by harping on this as the agenda). As a Christian origins scholar by training, I am not even sure how one would go about such a task, or be taken seriously if it were undertaken. Yet the possibility that Christianity arose from causes that have little to do with a historical founder is one among many other questions the Project should take seriously. Inevitably, scholars and critics (if not always the same people) will ask, And just how do you go about doing that?, and neither the answer “Differently” or “Better” will suffice. The demon crouching at the door, however, is not criticism of its intent nor skepticism about its outcome, but the sense that biblical scholarship in the twentieth century will not be greeted with the same excitement as it was in Albright’s day. Outside America, where the landscape is also changing, fewer people have any interest in the outcomes of biblical research, whether it involves Jericho or Jesus. The secularization of world culture, which will eventually reach even into the Muslim heartlands, encourages us to value what matters here and now. As one of our members, Arthur Droge (Toronto) mentioned at the recent meeting of the Project in Amherst, NY, most of us were trained in a generation ”that believed certain questions were inherently interesting.” But fewer and fewer people do. Jesus-fatigue—the sort of despair that can only be compared to a police investigation gone cold—is the result of a certain resignation to the unimportance of historical conclusions.

Reaching for the stars and reaching back into history have in common the fact that their objects are distant and sometimes unimaginably hard to see. What I personally hope the Project will achieve is to eschew breaking rocks, and instead learning to train our lens in the right direction. Part of that process is to respond to Droge’s challenge: Why is this important? And I have the sense that in trying to answer that question, we will be answering bigger questions as well.

Hmmm ... I think there is still a great deal of popular interest in historical Jesus research, as exemplified recently by the mostly misguided interest in what the new Coptic Gospel of Judas could tell about the historical Jesus. Alas, the answer is "nothing," but I think the message did eventually get across that it tells lots of interesting things about second-century Jesus movements. There may well be Historical Jesus Fatigue among New Testament scholars, although Richard Bauckham's recent book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses has certainly generated a lot of interest. But I do think there is a considerable amount of Jesus Seminar Fatigue. It would be nice if this new Jesus Project would help alleviate this by coming up with something new and interesting, but that remains to be seen. I'm skeptical, but I wish them the best.

Background here.

UPDATE: April DeConick has more on the Jesus Project here and on the Gospel of Judas here. The revised version of her book will be very welcome.

THE UNICORN LEGEND owes its existence in part to a creative translation in the Septuagint:

The Natural History of Unicorns by Chris Lavers

The Sunday Times review by Rosemary Hill

In this beguiling book, Chris Lavers pursues the unicorn across two and a half millenniums, from the bas-reliefs of ancient Persia to the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom by way of medieval tapestry. As a scientist, his main purpose is to find out what zoological truths lie behind the myth. But he is also a careful explorer of folklore, sifting fact from fiction.

The first known description of a unicorn comes in 398BC from the Greek doctor Ctesias of Cnidus, who in a book called Indica wrote about “certain wild asses which are as large as horses” and “have a horn on the forehead which is about a foot and a half in length”. This first unicorn was a colourful beast, white with a dark red head, blue eyes and a crimson, white and black horn. Lavers concedes that Ctesias was “a library type of fellow” who had never actually seen what he was describing, but that doesn't mean he was a fantasist. He was right, for example, about elephants, which must have seemed equally implausible to him, and about talking birds (which we now know as parrots).

[...]

More details were added to Ctesias's original picture over time, but for more than six centuries the legend of the beast whose single horn, if you could catch one, had curative properties remained in essence unchanged. The very different creature of later western myth - symbolic, semi-sacred - was born when the unicorn “popped up”, as Lavers puts it, most unexpectedly, in the Greek Old Testament. This beast of savage power, whose name in the Greek is translated from the curious Hebrew word “reem”, rampages through the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy, Job and several Psalms. “The unicorns shall come down with them,” Isaiah warns the enemies of God, “and their land shall be soaked with blood.”

Opinion divided sharply among early scholars as to what this Hebrew word “reem” might have meant. St Jerome in the 4th century was among those who thought it might perfectly well be a rhinoceros, and so it appeared in the Vulgate. To the more metaphysically inclined, though, something less lumbering and more spiritual seemed appropriate. Tertullian of Carthage saw the unicorn as a precursor of Christ that “pierces every race with faith”.

[...]

More on unicorns in the Bible here. And this and this are perhaps relevant as well.

MORE ON THE FACIAL RECONSTRUCTION of ancient Palestinian Jews:

Tel Aviv University researcher reconstructs ancient Israelite faces
By ISRAEL21c staff
January 18, 2009

Prof. Eugene Kobyliansky keeps two busts in his office. One represents the face of an average male Jew in ancient Israel from 332 to 37 B.C.E; the other is a composite face for Jewish women from the ancient Roman era (37 B.C.E. to 324 C.E.).

"It's like looking into a time machine, going back 2,000 years, to visit these people," says Kobyliansky.

Kobyliansky, of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, is the first researcher in the world to provide facial reconstructions of what Jews looked like in the land of Israel, before their exile into the Diaspora.

Using bone measurements collected from skulls at Jewish burial sites at Ein Gedi near the Dead Sea and the Jordan River, Kobyliansky created plastic molds on which to base the facial reconstructions. The technique was made possible through a unique forensics lab in Moscow, at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which uses the most up-to-date software in anthropological facial reconstruction to recreate facial features from craniums with about 70 percent accuracy.

[...]

An earlier article noted that a female skull had some African features and drew perhaps unwarrantedly broad conclusions from it. This article is more cautious and gives what may be a more plausible explanation:

... The female skull also exhibits all the Mediterranean features but, in addition, there are probably some African traits, as manifested by the shape of the nose and face.

"This woman certainly had some African intermixture," Kobyliansky explains. "We know from history and the stories of King Solomon that there were Ethiopian Jews in Israel. In this particular female, we see some African traits. But maybe she was absolutely white in color. It's impossible to say."

THE IDEOLOGY OF MASADA in Israel gets some attention from the BBC, evidently inspired by the current Gaza conflict:

Masada legend galvanises Israel

By Paul Moss
BBC News, Masada

"You cannot surrender, you cannot give up. You should fight to the last second," the young Israeli boy said after scratching his head and thinking for just a few seconds.

He was talking about what he had learned from his tour of Masada, the ancient site where a band of Jewish rebels once held out against the might of the Roman Empire.

The tour prompted a similar conclusion from one of his female classmates: "It's really important to stand up for yourself."

They want us to vanish from the world. But it will never happen. Masada will never fall again!
Teacher at Masada

"Especially now that we're at war. We need to do whatever it takes," she told me.

It is something of a rite of passage for Israeli schoolchildren - a trip to Masada - as obligatory a part of their upbringing as exams and sports days.

And Masada is a remarkable story, albeit one that is mired in legend.

[...]

I have posted on the historicity and ideology of the Masada story here and here.

UPDATE (19 January): Jodi Magness has a post on the siege of Masada at the ASOR Blog (a blog that's new to me). (Noted on Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

PROFESSOR DAN SCHOWALTER is speaking on Herodian archaeology at Arizona State:

Scholar explores fusing archeological remains, historic texts
January 29, 2009
7 p.m.

Scholar Dan Schowalter will investigative the three temples built by Herod the Great that Jewish historian Josephus writes about in his texts at a lecture at 7 p.m., Jan. 29 in Life Sciences A Building, room 1919, Arizona State University Tempe campus. Schowalter will examine the difficulty of integrating material remains at these archeological sites with textual evidence from Josephus’ texts and the New Testament.

The lecture is sponsored in partnership by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Department of Religious Studies, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, School of International Letters and Cultures, and the Central Arizona Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Schowalter will discuss the political significance of holy places in both the ancient and modern world. The remains of the temples at the cities of Caesarea Maritima and Samaria Sebaste in Israel have been discovered for years. But the discovery of a three-phase temple site at Omrit, in northern Israel, has created a debate about the location of the third temple.

[...]

These would be pagan temples built to please the Roman authorities etc., not to be confused with his "third" (i.e., heavily reconstructed second) Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

THE REVIEW OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE now comes in blog format.

(Via Mark Goodacre.)

THE LAYOFFS at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology have been mentioned in various archaeology-related sources online, but I haven't yet noted them here. Jack Sasson on the Agade list has linked to a petition cum blog about them. You can read background on the controversy at that site in the right-hand sidebar. The situation sounds pretty grim and I hope a way can be found to preserve these positions.

THE EXPEDITION ARTIST of the Good Ship Phoenicia, Daniella Eubanks, is interviewed in the LA Weekly. Excerpt:

When the Phoenicia crosses the Suez Canal, Eubank and the rest of the crew will row the boat through — you can’t use a sail. Killer, but not so bad, considering that the ancient Phoenicians carried their vessels overland across the Suez, which hadn’t yet been carved through. From there, the ship will hug the east coast, round the Cape, then continue up the west coast through the Strait of Gibraltar. It will cross the Mediterranean to return home to Syria.

The crew is divided into two teams, which sleep in shifts. Pirates, being not so civilized, tend to strike at night. Eubank’s duties will include cooking and keeping watch for big tankers or strange floating objects with which the ship could collide. “We are such a tiny boat on the sea,” she says. “You know when you do something long enough that it feels like you haven’t done anything else? It was like, ‘I’m on this boat. This is my life. This is what I do.’”

Meals are her favorite times, when everybody gets together to talk and tell stories — the three guys from the tiny Mediterranean island who spoke no English, who had one TV set on the entire island. The several 20-something college students. The Swede, the Iranian photographer, the carpenter, the smattering of Brits and Aussies. What do you eat on a re-created ancient ship? On the Borobudur it was rice, fish and Navy beef, donated by the Indonesian government. Eubank made a Bolognese pasta, which the Indonesians refused to eat. “Yes, the rice did get weevils. We picked them out.” At port, they ordered pizza.

Mostly, Eubank drew and painted onboard. She painted the reflection of the purple striped sail in water, which seemed to resolve into eyes and faces and mouths agape. She painted the harbor lights glimmering on the black water at night, then the golden-yellow morning sun warming the ship’s large, arching bow, which curves up into an edged point like a scimitar. She painted the vessel’s belly. “The ship has a voluptuous curve right in the middle,” she says of the painting. “Difficult to capture.”

She also commented on the ship's anti-pirate strategy:

The pirate plan, as Danielle Eubank, expedition artist aboard the good ship Phoenicia, sees it, is to run like hell in case of attack and try to escape with her life. The pirates are real, mainly Somalian, but there are no guns aboard the Phoenicia — largely to reduce misunderstandings with potential attackers and to ensure that innocent people aren’t accidentally shot ...

Accurate as far as it goes, but I hear there's more.

BUSY TODAY. May find time to do some blogging this evening.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. had nice things to say about biblical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, according to an odd press release by one Don Boys. The article excoriates King, basically for not being a conservative Christian, using unpublished papers he wrote in Seminary.

He clearly asserted that the book of Jeremiah was not infallible. He also espoused the heretical view that the non-canonical books were as good as or better than the Old Testament books! “To my mind, many of the works of this period were infinitely more valuable than those that received canonicity. The materials to justify such statements are found mainly in the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha. These works, although presented pseudonymously, are of lasting significance to the Biblical student.”

I don't think it's a matter of which is more valuable in principle, which would be a very subjective judgment and would depend on the criteria applied. I would say that the stories in the Hebrew Bible are generally of a higher literary quality than their retellings in later Rewritten Scripture. There are also some very good stories in the Apocrypha/Deuteroncanonica. But literary considerations aside, all of these books are of considerable historical value, although not necessarily because the stories they tell have any useful historical data about the events they narrate. Very often they don't. But the books themselves, when one reads them carefully and asks them the right questions, provide an enormous amount of historical information about the writers who produced them and, by extension, about the circumstances and social worlds of those writers.

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: DNA profiling is being applied to medieval manuscripts:

How Old Is That Book? DNA May Hold the Answer
Hide and Seek: genetic material from animal-skin pages may trace medieval manuscript origins

By Katherine Harmon (Scientific American)

Long before musty old paper volumes and Google Book Search, most tomes in medieval Europe were written on animal skins—a practice which might now hold the key to tracing their origins.

Timothy Stinson, an associate English professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, has started using DNA testing to track the history and age of medieval manuscripts. His goal: to create a DNA database from the books with known publication dates and places (such as calendars and histories) in an effort to use the genetic information gleaned from them as a baseline to date those manuscripts whose backgrounds are unknown.

"There are these tantalizing hints that this would work for parchment," he says of the DNA testing, "but no one was really using it." He says that in addition to tracing the roots of written documents, genetic clues may help piece together manuscripts that were separated over time.

[...]

DNA testing has previously been used to study Greek manuscripts as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Nikos Poulakakis, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Crete in Greece who conducted some of that research, says he's eagerly awaiting the results of the U.S. study. He notes that in addition to revealing important information about old manuscripts and library collections, the genetic material may also shed light on ancient trade routes and even domestic animal herds of the time.

[...]

I've posted on DNA analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The application to medieval manuscripts is also welcome and could be useful, for example, for studying Old Testament Pseudepigrapha manuscripts, most of which are medieval.

DR. NATHAN MACDONALD, my Hebrew Bible colleague, has received some more media attention on his work on food in ancient Israel:

Biblical diet 'not very healthy'

Ancient Israel was far from "the land of milk and honey," and instead people suffered from the lack of a balanced diet, according to a theologian. (BBC)

Dr Nathan MacDonald, an Old Testament lecturer at St Andrews University, used biblical texts and archaeological evidence to study the ancient diet.

He has concluded that there were frequent famines and people's meals often lacked vitamins and minerals.

However, he believes the Bible contains important messages about sharing food.

Dr MacDonald feels his study disputes the notion held by many that the bible provides not just religious instruction and moral guidance, but the recipe for healthy living.

In North America, books based on the diet of the bible such as What Would Jesus Eat? and The Maker's Diet are bestsellers.

Dr MacDonald explained: "Though many people have thought otherwise, the evidence is that the diet in biblical times was not very healthy.

[...]

Nathan, who is a Biblical scholar, was bemused to find that he had been promoted to paleo-osteologist as well:

By examining human remains from the Israelite period, Dr MacDonald found evidence of iron-deficiency anaemia, consistent with a diet high in flat bread and low in meat and vegetables.

Otherwise the article is pretty accurate.

(Via Dorothy King on Facebook. More on Dr. MacDonald's work here and here.)

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA'S REPUTED CAPITAL is profiled in the Yemen Times:

Where a woman once ruled

Salma Ismail

German archaeologists have been conducting excavation and restoration works in Yemen for 30 years now and have helped to preserve some of Yemen’s most valuable ancient sites. YT Photo by Salma Ismail.
Once the capital of the kingdom of Queen Sheba, also known by her Arabic name Balqis, Mareb is now largely in a state of disrepair. Blocks of stone with Sabean writing bear testament to the rich history of the city. Writing in spray-paint also stands witness to the negligence of authorities to adequately protect this historical site which has been buried in the desert for over a millennium.

Officials are calling for adequate security personnel to protect the sites while no excavation is being carried out. Most security personnel are Bedouins and do not understand the importance or the historical value of the sites.

Mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an, but only recently excavated, new information grows daily about Sheba and this temple city of the Sabaean kingdom, home of the legendary Queen, who was very influential, wealthy and famous during her rein, some 3000 years ago. The Bar’an temple Mahram Bilqis, or Temple of the Moon God, was a sacred site for pilgrims through Arabia from 1200 BC to 550 AD.

[...]

Mareb, which was named in 1000 B.C, is located 172 km east of Sana’a, is considered to be one of Yemen’s richest archeological sites.

Landmarks of the city include the prime temple located in the southern part of the city; the temple exemplifies the Maeenian architecture, having 16 vertical and horizontal columns, formulating a grid-shape. Researchers believe that this temple was built for the worship of Athtar, the sun god. There is also another temple in the heart of the city of which four columns can still be seen.

The German Archaelogical Institute (DAI) together with the Yemeni General Organization of Antiquities and Museums (GOAM) have been conducting an excavation and restoration of the ancient Sabaean town of Sirwah in the Yemeni province of Ma’rib since 2001. In March 2008 their work led to the discovery of an ancient, well-preserved Sabaean temple dating back to 7th century BC. according to Dr. Iris Gerlach, Director of the DAI in Sana’a. The discovery was made during excavation works in the ancient Sabaean town of Sirwah, at the central province of Marib.

The large town was surrounded by a fortification wall, and included many monumental buildings, of which the most prominent is the al-Maqah Temple, a sanctuary that dates back to the 7th century BC, and is currently undergoing restoration.

During the restoration work at the al-Maqah Temple, the DAI team discovered ‘another unique and well preserved Sabaean temple as part of the ancient town.’

The sacred building has a monumental entrance decorated with pillars and different rooms inside.

[...]

There are lots of sites supposedly connected with the Queen of Sheba and I am not qualified to comment on the merits of any of them, although I have the impression that people who work in the area think Yemen is the most plausible location. For more on Mareb/Marib/Mar'ib, go here. For possible connections with Sana/Sana'a (some distance from Mareb, as noted above), go here and here. For Ethiopian legend about the Queen, go here, especially the links at the end of the post. For a supposed, and apparently highly debatable, archaeological connection with Ethiopia, go here, here, and here, (Nelson link). And here is a suggested connection with Nigeria - again, highly debatable. I have noted a Queen of Sheba museum exhibition here, here, and here. Finally, here is a note about beauty products associated with her (in legend).

THE TOP 100 THEOLOGY BLOGS according to Jessica Merritt has been posted on the Christian Colleges: Online Bible Colleges & Universities website. I'm pleased to see PaleoJudaica among the history blogs. Also, unlike her earlier Top 50 Ancient History Blogs list, this one includes Mark Goodacre's New Testament Gateway blog - among the academic blogs.