A SLAVONIC SCRIPTORIUM is being excavated in Bulgaria:

Bulgarian Archaeologists Discover Unique Medieval Byzantine Seal
Archaeology | August 21, 2009, Friday (Novinite.com, Sophia News Agency)

Bulgarian archaeologist, Prof. Kazimir Popkonstantinov, has discovered a unique medieval seal at the site of the Knyazhevski (i.e. "Princely") Monastery near the Eastern city of Varna.

The seal is dated back to the 10th century and belonged to the Byzantine dignitary Antonius, who was an imperial protospatario in Constantinople. Antonius had correspondence with a representative of the Knyazhevski Monastery, who is believed to have been the Bulgarian Knyaz (i.e. king) Boris I (r. 852-889 AD) himself.

The team of archaeologist Popkonstantinov from the University of Veliko Tarnovo has also discovered fragments of Byzantine ceramics and a book lock near the seal, which is seen as a proof that the Knyazhevski Monastery was a scriptorium of the Bulgarian royal family in the 9th and 10th century when the Slavic literature was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire.

During their excavations in the summer of 2009 so far, the archaeologists have discovered very well preserved monastery vaults from the 9th century. They have stated that those vaults were the only ones preserved in Bulgaria from the medieval monasteries, and that the scriptorium of what once was the Knyazhevski Monastery was the only one in the lands of the Byzantine Empire that was preserved so well.

The Knyazhevski Monastery, located in the Karaach Teke area, is believed to have been the largest literary and cultural center in Northeast Bulgaria in the 9th-12th century. The archaeologists have discovered there over 40 book locks, pieces of parchment, lead seals. They believe that some of the disciples of St. Cyril and St. Methodius most likely worked there.

[...]

Some very interesting Old Testament pseudepigrapha survive only or mainly in Church Slavonic, including 2 Enoch, the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Ladder of Jacob, and the Narrative of Lamech (all presumably translated from Byzantine Greek). Bulgarian scribal culture in this period and later was an important factor in their transmission. See Grant Macaskill's online essay, "The Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: An Introduction." Note also the Marquette website on the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha Project, which is down for some reason at the moment, at least from here. For more on important recent developments regarding 2 Enoch, see here and here. And regarding the latter, note that I have since been informed by an expert that Slavists regard the short recension of 2 Enoch as the superior text, so the text of the work is in less doubt than I indicated at the link. The Coptic fragments of 2 Enoch, the Slavonic Narrative of Lamech, and a Hebrew fragment of the Ladder of Jacob are to be translated for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project, as are some Adam Octipartite traditions found in 2 Enoch and Latin and Old Irish sources. Oh, and I have collected some Slavonic pseudepigraphers here.

ARAMAIC WATCH: That Latin and Aramaic production of Ben Hur comes to the O2 in London on 17 September:

Ben Hur Live coming to London's O2 Arena
Ben Hur is coming to the London stage, with real chariots and music and narration by Stewart Copeland of the Police

Bryan Appleyard (London Times)

[...]

Anyway, [Franz] Abraham went into business as a producer of big, live shows. He started with classical music (Placido Domingo, Philip Glass) and moved on to rock (the Stones, David Bowie). He created the genre of touring open-air opera with a production of Carmina Burana. He also did a “dinner show” called Ganymée on Water, on a giant catamaran. He seems to have over-reached himself with a production of Carmen in France, with Italian, German and Russian singers: “It was embarrassing. I said I’d never do that again.” The singers’ French accents were awful. This is why he’s doing Ben Hur in Latin and Aramaic. They are, he says, “universal languages”, and the only change as the show moves from one country to another will be the language of the narrator.

[...]

Background here.

STEVE MASON has a very interesting Bible and Interpretation essay on method in ancient history and philology:

Methods and Categories: Judaism and Gospel

In my view, then, we all benefit from a constant return to basics. If we force ourselves to return to the basics over and over again, not to recite the catechism of received opinion but actually to rethink what we are doing and why, to kick the tires again and check the worthiness of our assumptions and categories, our work will never become old. When it comes to rethinking the human past, there will always be much to do.
Adapted from Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins (Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009)

Excerpt:

Paradoxically, then, it appears the Christians invented a system called Judaism, just as they invented paganism. Judaean culture on its own terms—the laws, customs, and traditions emanating from the mother-city of Jerusalem—had been something else altogether. It had been a vibrant and living civilization, which Judaean authors such as Philo and Josephus compared to other great civilizations of the time: Egyptian, Athenian, Spartan, and Roman.

The discussion of euangelion, "gospel," is also fascinating and his concluding reflections on methodology are a must-read.

UPDATE (24 August): Daniel O. McClellan comments here.

THE LAST EMBER, by Daniel Levin, is reviewed by Ross King in the Los Angeles Times. Excerpt:

An endearing aspect of "The Da Vinci Code" phenomenon has been the creation of a new kind of action man. The boffin-as-hero, exemplified by Robert Langdon, marks a change from the traditional male adventurers of page and screen: the gun-toting muscleman, the caped superhero, the suave secret agent lethally accessorized with an exploding fountain pen. Guns and gadgets now have to make room for middle-aged professors more familiar with biblical symbolism than how to deal with ominously ticking briefcases or what to wear for cocktails in South American embassies. These eggheads may not be destined for glory as articulated dolls or interactive video games, but their ability to foil evil cults by drawing on a knowledge of dead languages and ancient statuary has undeniably captured readers' imaginations.

Dead languages and ancient statuary rule.

LOOKING ASKANCE at Egyptian synagogue restoration:

Babylon & Beyond
Observations from Iraq, Iran,
Israel, the Arab world and beyond

EGYPT: What's behind Jewish synagogue restoration?
August 21, 2009 | 11:58 am (Los Angeles Times)

Is historical preservation or modern day cultural politics behind the restoration of the Maimonides synagogue in Cairo's ancient Jewish quarter?

Although most Egyptians are against efforts linking their country to Jewish or Israeli heritage, the move has been interpreted as an attempt by Culture Minister Farouk Hosni to win international recognition ahead of his controversial bid to become head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Hosni's bid to become the next UNESCO director-general was set back in 2008 when he said that he'd personally burn Hebrew books if he found any in Egyptian libraries. Since then, it is been reported that the ministry has been trying to make amends for Hosni's comments. It recently has begun allowing the translation of books written by Jewish and Israeli authors, a move that dismayed many Egyptians.

[...]

Perhaps it is political, but I like to say that if it weren't for politics there are a lot of things that wouldn't get done.

According to this AFP article the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, home of the Cairo Geniza, has also been restored.

THOMAS L. THOMPSON gives a "minimalist" capsule history of ancient Israel and early Judaism ("Biblical Archaeology and the Politics of Nation Building"), with modern political reflections, at the Bible and Interpretation website. Excerpt:

A similar use of caricature and anonymity in referring to the same group of “minimalist” scholars, with methods reflecting apologetic purpose, a discourse that is closed to any who do not share the same political biases and a rhetoric of distrust for critical questions is also to be noticed among secular scholars who make an essentially nationalistic (rather than theological) plea for a return to biblically oriented archaeology.ii I am, therefore, led now to ask similar questions: Is Biblical Archaeology, as practiced in Israel and Palestine today, dominated by politically directed apologetics or is it a legitimate scholarly discipline? I can hardly answer this question fully here. However, the stringent apologetics of this discipline, the lack of openness, the distrust of critical questions and the dogmatic historical assumptions are so marked and commonplace that one must at least attempt to open the discussion.

MODEST APHRODITE:

Dig unearths ancient cult figurines of Aphrodite
By Ofri Ilani (Haaretz)

Remains of an ancient cult to the goddess of love have come to light in the southern Golan Heights site of Susita

At the site, on a 350 meter-high-plateau overlooking the eastern shore of Lake Kinneret, archaeologists found a cache of three figurines of Aphrodite (whom the Romans called Venus), dating back about 1,500 years. The figurines, made of clay, are about 30 centimeters tall. They depict the nude goddess standing, with her right hand covering her private parts - a type of statue scholars call "modest Venus."

[...]

UPDATE: Was there still an Aphrodite cult as recently as 1500 years ago? That date sounds off to me.

UPDATE (16 September): It looks as though there was, if clandestinely. Details here.

MORE JEWISH-TEMPLE DENIAL, this time from a lecturer at Al-Quds Open University (with video):

PA University Lecturer: No Jewish Connection to Western Wall

by Israel National News

(IsraelNN.com) A Palestinian Authority university lecturer was the latest PA academic to rewrite history and deny Jewish history in Jerusalem, which was the Jewish capital for a full 1,600 years before Muhammad authored the Muslim Koran. The lecturer denied the Jewish people's connection to the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported that Shamekh Alawneh, who teaches modern history in the televised lectures of Al-Quds Open University, said Jews invented the connection to the Wall for political purposes, to convince European Jews and Zionists to come to “Palestine.”

The Jewish claim to the Western Wall “has no historical roots," he said on a television program called “Jerusalem – History and Culture.” The Jews’ claim, he said, is “political terminology to win the hearts and the support of the Zionists in Europe, so they would emigrate and come to Palestine. Nothing more!”

[...]

For the Herodian Temple Platform, of which the Wailing/Western Wall is a part, see here. For similar claims and an explanation of the "Al-Buraq Wall," see here.

MORE ON THE WAC CONFERENCE CONTROVERSY in Nature:

Uproar over Palestinian archaeology congress

Dearth of Israeli researchers attending provokes accusations of bias.

Haim Watzman
Hisham's palaceHisham's palace is one of many important archaeological sites in the West Bank.Wikimedia Commons

A row has broken out between scholars over an international conference held last week on the relationship between the archaeology, heritage and politics of the West Bank and its surrounding regions.

Senior Israeli archaeologists have accused conference organizers of including only speakers who presented Palestinian points of view. But Claire Smith, president of the World Archaeological Congress (WAC), the organization that sponsored the conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, says Israelis were not deliberately excluded.

[...]

Seems to be a good summary of the current state of the dispute.

Background here.

HOW BAR WAS BORN.

THE WORLD ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS has published a Statement on the WAC Inter-Congress in Ramallah on its website, which opens:

The World Archaeological Congress Inter-Congress on Structural Violence was held in Ramallah, Palestine from 8th to 13th August, 2009. There have been reports that WAC banned Israeli archaeologists from attending this Inter-Congress. These reports are untrue. A public discussion forum has been established as a way of exploring the issues surrounding these reports.

[...]

Background here.

(Via the Agade list.)

AN OBITUARY FOR GRAHAM STANTON has been published in the London Times:

Graham Stanton: New Testament scholar

Graham Stanton provided personal and intellectual leadership in British New Testament studies in the generation following the retirement of his Cambridge mentor, C. F. D. Moule (obituary, October 5, 2007).

[...]

Via Mark Goodacre's NT Blog.

A THIRD CENTURY C.E. MANSION being excavated in Jerusalem is featured in an IAA press release (link here is to the IMFA website):

Third century CE mansion exposed in the City of David excavations
17 Aug 2009

An Israel Antiquities Authority excavation in the City of David has revealed a large third century CE building – apparently a large mansion - in excavations in the City of David, in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park.

(Communicated by the Israel Antiquities Authority Spokesperson)

A spacious edifice from the Roman period (third century CE) – apparently a mansion that belonged to a wealthy individual – was recently exposed in the excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out in the 'Givati Car Park' at the City of David, in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park. The excavations are being conducted at the site on behalf of the IAA and in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority, and are underwritten by the ‘Ir David Foundation.

According to Dr. Doron Ben-Ami, the excavation director on behalf of the IAA, together with Yana Tchekhanovets, “Although we do not have the complete dimensions of the structure, we can cautiously estimate that the building covered an area of approximately 1,000 square meters. In the center of it was a large open courtyard surrounded by columns. Galleries were spread out between the rows of columns and the rooms that flanked the courtyard. The wings of the building rose to a height of two stories and were covered with tile roofs”.

A large quantity of fresco fragments was discovered in the collapsed ruins from which the excavators deduced that some of the walls of the rooms were treated with plaster and decorated with colorful paintings. The painted designs that adorned the plastered walls consisted mostly of geometric and floral motifs. Its architectural richness, plan and particularly the artifacts that were discovered among its ruins bear witness to the unequivocal Roman character of the building. The most outstanding of these finds are a marble figurine in the image of a boxer and a gold earring inlaid with precious stones.

[...]

The (temporary) IAA link to the release is here (via Joseph I. Lauer). Earlier PaleoJudaica coverage of the marble figurine and the earring are here. Note (see latter link) that a gold coin hoard was found last year at the same site, but apparently not the same building.

IN THE MAIL:

Christopher Rowland and Christopher R.A. Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God: Early Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament (CRINT III 12; Leiden: Brill, 2009)

I am one of the reviewers of this volume in the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Group at the November meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in New Orleans.

COPTIC WATCH: An essay in Égypt monde arabe by Samuel Rubenson on "The Transition from Coptic to Arabic." Excerpt:

4 It is thus significant, that although Egyptian in the form represented by the various Coptic dialects had been the spoken language of the population at large for many centuries, as a literary language it was a fairly recent innovation.It was only in the fourth century that translations of Greek texts became widely diffused and only in the fifth century that literary texts began to be written in Coptic 2. The emergence of Coptic as a language of literature was, moreover, to a large extent linked to the emergence of a new religions and social culture manifested in the Manichaean, Gnostic and Christian movements and crystallized in the rise of monasticism. Although originating in the Greek-speaking society, they soon began to use Coptic. The success of these new movements and their associated shift to Coptic greatly contributed to the decline of Greek. Coptic literature was thus originally and primarily a vehicle for new ideas born in late Hellenistic times, and to a great extent either based on Greek (or in a few cases, Syriac) texts, or more or less modeled upon these. Not only were content and form borrowed, but as muchas 25% of the vocabulary was Greek. Not only technical terms but also particles and common verbs were borrowed 3. As a literary language therefore, Copticis as much part of the Greek Hellenistic legacy as of the ancient Egyptian.

5 After the Arab conquest of Egypt, Coptic continued to be used by the Christian population and remained the sole language of the Church for at least three centuries. During the first century of Arab rule,it seems as if the use of Arabic was mainly limited to the immigrants, and the internal affaire of the military ruling elite. It was only with the large-scale immigration of Arabs, the defeat of Coptic peasant résistance to the new rulers and the repressive taxation of the Copts with the subsequent conversion oflarge parts of the population to Islam in the later eighth and in the ninth century, that Arabic became the main spoken language. By the early ninth century, the use of Arabic among Christians had become widespread but was still regarded as contrary to their fidelity to the Christian heritage 4. But during the tenth and eleventh centuries, this changed rapidly. Within a few generations Coptic died out as a spoken language, and by the end of the twelfth century, Arabic had become the main written languageof the Church. As is evident from the linguistic works of the great Coptic scholars of the thirteenth century, Copticwas already a classical language known only by those who studied it from preserved texts 5.

6 Compared with the transition from Syriac and Greek to Arabic among the Christians of Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine, the developments in Egypt are strange. While the Christians in these other areas started to translate their heritage into Arabic within a century after the Arab conquest and soon even to write theological treatises in Arabic, the Copts seem to have resisted any use of Arabic for almost two hundred years 6. But when the Copts gave in to Arabic, they did so much more thoroughly than any other Christians in the Middle East. Whereas Syriac, and to some extent Greek, at least as the spiritual language of the monasteries and the language of the liturgy, has continued to be widely used even till the present, Coptic died out almost completety. While there is a great literature in Syriac from the Middle Ages and while Syriac continues to be spoken today, there areno important Coptic authors after the tenth century and evidence that Coptic was no longer understood by the majority of Christians, by the end of the eleventh century. The two problems that arise from this comparison are : why there was initially a much greater reluctance, on the part of the Copts, to accept Arabic; and why Coptic was then so rapidly forsaken.

(Via Explorator.)

THE ROM DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBIT is criticized from the perspective of the Palestinian protesters in the Bullet (Socialist Project). It opens:

Even before the highly anticipated six-month, $3-million collaboration between the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) showcasing the Dead Sea Scrolls was officially launched in late June, the exhibit was already the subject of growing controversy. “Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World,” as the exhibit is entitled, first attracted international attention in April when Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and executives at the ROM were each sent letters of protest from senior officials of the Palestinian Authority (PA) – signed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khouloud Diabes, respectively – declaring that the scrolls were in fact illegally seized by Israel following its occupation and subsequent annexation of the West Bank in 1967.[1] The PA not only called for the repatriation of the scrolls but further argued that they merely represent one example of possibly millions of other artifacts that have been systematically looted by Israel from occupied Palestinian territory over several decades, a message that has since been echoed by a chorus of supportive community groups who continue to organize weekly pickets outside of the ROM in protest.
Demonstration at the ROM

The majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls were excavated in eleven caves near the site of Qumran, one kilometer along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, by the Palestine Archaeological Museum (also referred to as the Rockefeller Museum) in a joint expedition with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan and the Ecole Biblique Française between 1947-1956. Originally found quite by chance by an Arab Bedouin named Mohammed Ahmed el-Hamed in 1947, the scrolls are by now widely regarded as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century. Consisting of approximately 900 documents in various states of completeness, the scrolls are said to represent the oldest known version of the Old Testament Bible (approximately 150BC-70CE) and are considered sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike; they are written largely in Hebrew, but many can be found in Aramaic and Greek script as well.

The scrolls were displayed at the Palestine Archaeological Museum in east Jerusalem until 1967, whereupon after the Six-Day War they were seized and relocated to the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in western Jerusalem. Several additional excavations have since occurred in the West Bank and east Jerusalem whose artifacts continue to be illegally appropriated by Israel, under the auspices of the IAA, from what is internationally recognized as occupied Palestinian territory. Israel unilaterally declared Jerusalem its “...complete and united capital” following the Jerusalem Law of 1980; however, the decision was immediately deemed null and void under UN Security Resolution 479 and later reinforced by successive UN Resolutions, 242 and 338, that together call on Israel to withdraw completely from all territories occupied in 1967.

[...]

As I've mentioned before, most of the Scrolls (which are highly fragmentary) remained in the Rockefeller Museum (PAM) in a carefully controlled environment (and were not on display) at least until about 1990. I know a lot of sources online say otherwise, but I was there. I know these Scrolls have undergone a lot of conservation since and it's possible they may have been moved, although I haven't heard about it. But the Israel Museum website only mentions having the well-preserved Cave One Scrolls and Temple Scroll at the Shrine of the Book.

For background to the dispute and to the exhibition, go here and follow the links.

PHOENICIAN/PUNIC WATCH:

Metro station in Algeria's capital: link to the past

By Pierre-Yves Julien (AFP) – 3 days ago

ALGIERS — Workmen digging the foundations of a new metro station in Algeria's capital stumbled on an archaeological goldmine that gives new meaning to "time travel" -- opening a window on 2,300 years of history.

Relics from the French colonial era lie on top of those from the Ottoman period, in turn covering those from the Middle Ages and early Roman Empire.

Then comes what archaeologists hope will be ruins from the Punic period -- when Phoenician traders established north African outposts in the first millennium BC.

[...]

Beneath that came the remains of a Paleo-Christian church dating from the 4th or 5th century AD, said Francois Souq, director for the Mediterranean region at the National Institute for Preventive Research (INRAP) in the southern French city of Nimes.

The bases of columns are still visible, surrounding a nave around 20 metres (65 feet) wide, with the floor covered in mosaics.

The archaeologists hope that by digging a bit deeper they will uncover remains dating from the Punic era, when the Phoenicians built trading posts along a 1,200-kilometre (745-mile) stretch of the Algerian coastline.

One of the ports was Icosium, the ancient city on which Algiers now stands.

Archaeologists believe Icosium would have been founded in the 3rd century BC although they admit their knowledge is limited.

Among the few clues so far was a pot of money discovered during the building of a road near the Casbah.

It contained coins with the Punic inscription for Icosium and the effigy of a man who could have been Melqart, a Phoenician god.

[...]

(Via the Agade list)

MORE ON PROFESSOR DONALD W. PARRY and his work on the Biblia Hebraica Quinta:

Utahn's work with Dead Sea Scrolls adds insights for Bible translation

By Scott Taylor

Deseret News
Published: Friday, Aug. 14, 2009 7:52 p.m. MDT

PROVO — With its scriptural texts coming from the Holy Land's Old Testament era and its publication pedigree traced back to Germany at the turn of the 1900s, Biblia Hebraica Quinta will be a global product with worldwide benefits — and a Utah connection.

That Utah tie comes through Donald W. Parry, a Brigham Young University professor of Hebrew Bible. Parry is one of two dozen editors selected from across the world — and one of only a couple from the United States — for the current Biblia Hebraica Quinta project.

It's the fifth edition of Biblia Hebraica — the version of the Hebrew Bible published under the auspices of the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft (German Bible Society), which oversees 141 global Bible societies. Biblia Hebraica Quinta in turn will be used for future translations of the Old Testament into almost as many languages.

[...]

Background here.

THE LAST EMBER is a new, Second-Temple-Judaism-themed thriller that has just come out. There are a number of reviews etc. online. Here's one:

Book review: ‘The Last Ember’ aglow with plot energy

By Alex Jurek
alex.jurek@indenvertimes.com

9781405039062The Last Ember
by Daniel Levin
Riverhead Hardcover
432 Pages

Archeology as arena of struggle for the past and the future is brought alive as it hasn’t been in a long time in this smart thriller that takes on Biblical holy objects, secret plots of the prisoners of ancient Rome, and those who would today contemplate acts of archaeological terrorism, fashioning these elements into an engrossing and highly readable read filled with mystery, suspense and thrills.

Fans of Dan Brown’s last religious-themed mega-thriller will find plenty of goodies in the pages of this book, brimming with not just action and ancient mysteries but complex modern day politics surrounding archeology of the Temple Mount.

[...]

TIME TO PARTY! Biblical-themed, ancient-style costumed toga parties, grand openings & weddings serving vegan dips.

A SECOND TEMPLE/HELLENISTIC JUDAISM JOB is being advertised for Northwestern University.

(Via the Agade list.)

BOOK REVIEW: Elie Wiesel, Rashi, by Eric Lidji in the Jewish Chronicle. Excerpt:

“Rashi,” a new book by Elie Wiesel, sketches a portrait of the master that is neither definitive nor exhaustive, but that introduces him and his work to those who don’t know him, and offers some context to those steeped in his work, but not in his world.

The slim volume — less than 100 pages — is part of Nextbook’s Jewish Encounters series, which tasks contemporary Jewish authors with writing about iconic Jewish figures or overarching Jewish themes. Wiesel and Rashi fit: both are prolific French Jews of traditional background who embrace the entire Jewish community through their words.

Because few biographical details exist about Rashi, Wiesel instead relies on Rashi’s enormous body of work — which covers the entirety of the Tanakh and almost all of the Talmud — to show a leader seeking to reassure his community and future communities of Jews that the promises heralded in the Torah still held true, despite trying times.

TATTOO WATCH: Victoria Beckham reportedly has a new Hebrew tattoo, which says "together forever, eternally." The photo shows most of it: ביחד לעולמי עד. The first two letters aren't visible, although the second is certain from context. The next two are very blurred. There are also vowel points, but I've left them out. The translation seems accurate. Ms. Beckham already has another Hebrew tattoo; a quotation from the Song of Songs.

Heads-up, reader Yoel Heltai. For another accurate ancient-language tattoo, see here.

CONFERENCE CONTROVERSY:

Israel protests exclusion from int'l archeological conference in Ramallah
By GIL HOFFMAN AND JOSIAH DANIEL RYAN (Jerusalem Post)

The Israel Antiquities Authority condemned the World Archeological Congress on Wednesday for holding an international conference in Ramallah dedicated to "overcoming structural violence" and the negative impact of politics on archeology.

In a fiercely worded letter to the congress's president, IAA deputy director Dr. Uzi Dahari accused the organization of excluding Israelis, not informing the IAA of the event in advance, and allowing an academic forum to be used for political propaganda against Israel.

[...]

WAC president Claire Smith responded that Israeli archeologists had not been intentionally excluded from the conference and that it had been widely advertised. She said there had been a misperception that Israeli archeologists would not be permitted to go to Ramallah to attend the event, and that a videoconference to allow Israeli participation had been attempted, but had not succeeded.

[...]

UPDATE (14 August): The IAA letter and press release have been published at the Independent Media Review Analysis website. Information on the Ramallah Congress can be found on the WAC Congresses website.

UPDATE (19 August): More here from the WAC.

TECHNOLOGY WATCH:

Algorithms help unravel the secrets of ancient documents

By HANNAH FISHER (Jerusalem Post)

Computer science and humanities departments have joined forces at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba to decipher historical Hebrew documents, a large number of which have been overwritten with Arabic stories.

The texts include fragments of Jewish prayer books from the Land of Israel.

The unique algorithm being used to determine the wording was developed by BGU computer scientists. The documents are searched electronically, letter by letter, for similarities in handwriting which help determine the date and author of the texts.

The documents being deciphered at BGU are degraded texts from sources such as the Cairo Geniza, the Al-Aksa manuscript library in Jerusalem, and the Al-Azar manuscript library in Cairo.

All together, the base consists of "100,000 medieval Hebrew codices and their fragments [that] represent the book production output of only the last six centuries of the Middle Ages," BGU computer science professor Klara Kedem said this week.

[...]

The article is not entirely clear, but it sounds as though the algorithm is being used as an epigraphic tool to establish readings; some form of computer enhancement to remove the top layer of writing on a palimpsest and highlight the lower layer.

For other manuscript imaging and conservation projects see here.

AN ANCIENT JEWISH "TEMPLE" (SYNAGOGUE?) has been found in southern Turkey:

Jewish temple found in ancient port city at Lycian site

(Today's Zaman)

Ongoing excavations at the ancient port city of Andriake in Lycia -- located in Antalya's Demre district -- have uncovered a centuries-old Jewish temple.

Site chief Dr. Nevzat Çevik, an archaeology professor at Akdeniz University, told the Anatolia news agency that his team believes the temple is from around the third century. Located on a choice spot facing the sea, the temple was likely built following a law instituted in 212 that allowed Jews the right to become Roman citizens, Çevik said.

The find is important as it is the first archaeological trace of Jewish culture found in Lycia. ...

PHILIP DAVIES has an essay at the Bible and Interpretation website in which he calls for a Dictionary of Biblical Studies:

Watch Your Language!

By Emeritus Professor Philip Davies
University of Sheffield, England
August 2009

About twenty years ago, I gave a conference paper called “Do Old Testament Studies Need a Dictionary?”1 In those days, “Old Testament” was unselfconsciously used—but so were biblical categories of description. I was railing against “Academic Bibspeak,” in which key terms were not translated into meaningful modern equivalents but remained fossilized within biblical scholarship. My argument was that to be “critical” we had to analyze one kind of vocabulary by using another, and not in its own—and thus be able to offer a “judgment” by translating the vocabulary.

Rereading this old piece recently—for the first time since its publication, I think—I expected symptoms of youthful brashness and was not disappointed. Did I also recognize how far the discipline had progressed since? Just a bit.

[...]

I do take his points, but personally I think Ark of the Covenant has a much better ring to it than Treaty Box. But maybe that's just me.

I'M VERY BEHIND on noting TOCs of online journals (i.e., most of them, these days). I'll try to get started catching up. Here are some recent TOCs for the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha. A paid personal or institutional subscription is required to download the whole articles, although the abstracts are free.

September 2007, Volume 17, No. 1

J. Allen
Ezekiel the Tragedian on the Despoliation of Egypt
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2007 17: 3-19.

J.R. Dodson
Locked-Out Lovers: Wisdom of Solomon 1.16 in Light of the Paraclausithyron Motif
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2007 17: 21-35.

Brent A. Strawn
Why Does the Lion Disappear in Revelation 5? Leonine Imagery in Early Jewish and Christian Literatures
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2007 17: 37-74.

Sarah L. Schwarz
Book Review: KLUTZ, TODD E. Rewriting the Testament of Solomon: Tradition, Conflict and Identity in a Late Antique Pseudepigraphon. London: T&T Clark, 2005. Cloth. Pp. 176. USD 130.00. ISBN 0567043924. Paper. Pp. 192. USD 55.00. ISBN 0567081877
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2007 17: 75-78.

January 2008, Volume 17, No. 2

Micah D. Kiel
Tobit and Moses Redux
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 83-98.

Bradley C. Gregory
The Death and Legacy of Leah in Jubilees
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 99-120.

Kristine J. Ruffatto
Raguel as Interpreter of Moses' Throne Vision: The Transcendent Identity of Raguel in the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 121-139.

Dries De Crom
The Letter of Aristeas and the Authority of the Septuagint
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 141-160.

May 2008, Volume 17, No. 3

Arye Edrei and Doron Mendels
A Split Jewish Diaspora: Its Dramatic Consequences II
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 163-187.

David Shepherd
What's in a Name? Targum and Taxonomy in Cave 4 at Qumran
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 189-206.

Marcus P. Adams
The Alexandrinus Text of 4 Maccabees
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 207-231.

Carla Sulzbach
Book Review: FRANCES FLANNERY-DAILEY. Dreamers, Scribes, and Priests: Jewish Dreams in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras. SJSJ 90. Boston/Leiden: Brill, 2004. 327 pp. ISBN 9004123679
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 233-236.

June 2008, Volume 17, No. 4

David Rothstein
Text and Context: Domestic Harmony and the Depiction of Hagar in Jubilees
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 243-264.

Fiona Grierson
The Testament of Moses
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 265-280.

[Grierson's article started its life as a seminar paper in my and Grant Macaskill's Old Testament Pseudepigrapha course.]

Erkki Koskenniemi
Moses—A Well-Educated Man: A Look at the Educational Idea in Early Judaism
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 281-296.

James F. McGrath
History and Fiction in the Acts of Thomas: The State of the Question
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 297-311.

Jan Dochhorn
Book Review: J. TROMP, The Life of Adam and Eve in Greek: A Critical Edition. Pseudepigrapha Veteris Testamenti Graece, 6. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2005. Cloth, viii + 208 pp. Euros 77.00, $104.00 USD. ISBN: 9004143173
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 17: 313-319.

September 2008, Volume 18, No. 1

John Byron
Cain's Rejected Offering: Interpretive Approaches to a Theological Problem
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 18: 3-22.

Daniel M. Gurtner
The `Twenty-Fifth Year of Jeconiah' and the Date of 2 Baruch
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 18: 23-32.

Andrei A. Orlov
`The Gods of My Father Terah': Abraham the Iconoclast and the Polemics with the Divine Body Traditions in the Apocalypse of Abraham
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 18: 33-53.

Steven Richard Scott
The Binitarian Nature of the Book of Similitudes
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 18: 55-78.

December 2008, Volume 18, No. 2

Lorenzo Ditommaso
Pseudepigrapha Notes II: 3. The Contribution of the Manuscript Catalogues of M.R. James
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2008 18: 83-160.

March 2009, Volume 18, No. 3

William `CHIP' Gruen, III
Seeking a Context for the Testament of Job
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 163-179.

David C. Mitchell
A Dying and Rising Josephite Messiah in 4Q372
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 181-205.

Helen R. Jacobus
The Curse of Cainan (Jub. 8.1-5): Genealogies in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 and a Mathematical Pattern
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 207-232.

Daniel C. Olson
'Enoch and the Son of Man' Revisited: Further Reflections on the Text and Translation of 1 Enoch 70.1-2
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 233-240.

June 2009, Volume 18, No. 4

Benedikt Eckhardt
Reclaiming Tradition: The Book of Judith and Hasmonean Politics
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 243-263.

Ronald Charles
A Postcolonial Reading of Joseph and Aseneth
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 265-283.

Michael Avioz
The Incineration of Saul's and His Sons' Corpses according to Josephus
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 285-292.

Michael E. Stone
Two Unpublished Eschatological Texts
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 293-302.

Robert Phenix
Book Review: DEBIÉ, MURIEL, ALAIN DESREUMAUX, CHRISTELLE JULLIEN, and FLORENCE JULLIEN, eds. Les apocryphes syriaques. Études syriaques 2. Paris: S. N. Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner S. A., 2005. ISBN 2-7053-3771-7. 231 + 2 pp. Paperback. 40 Euros
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 303-310. [PDF] [Request Permission]

Noah Hacham
Book Review: JOHNSON, SARA RAUP. Historical Fictions and Hellenistic Jewish Identity: Third Maccabees in Its Cultural Context. Hellenistic Culture and Society, 43; Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 2004. Pp. xix + 253. ISBN 0-520-233070-7
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 310-315. [PDF] [Request Permission]

Matthew J. Goff
Book Review: COLLINS, JOHN J., GREGORY E. STERLING and RUTH A. CLEMENTS (eds.). Sapiential Perspectives: Wisdom Literature in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. STDJ 51. Brill, 2004. ISBN: 9004136703
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 18: 315-319.

AN OBITUARY FOR GRAHAM STANTON has been published in the Telegraph.

(Via Mark Goodacre.)

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: The angelic Enoch as cosmic eschatological scribe? According to TradingMarkets.com:

Metatron to acquire 100% of Just Data

Compare Jubilees 4:19-20:

And what was and what will be he saw in a vision of his sleep, as it will happen to the children of men throughout their generations until the day of judgment; he saw and understood everything, and wrote his testimony, and placed the testimony on earth for all the children of men and for their generations.

(I love this new company. They give me lots of material.)

THE RAMAT RACHEL EXCAVATION is getting some attention from Arutz Sheva:

Remains from Period of King Hezekiah Discovered

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) The most recent dramatic archaeological find in Israel is that of a luxurious administrative center from the period of King Hezekiah, over 2,700 years ago. The center was discovered in Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, just south of Jerusalem

Over 100 students and volunteers from Israel and abroad are taking part in the dig, which is a joint project of Tel Aviv University’s Archaeological Institute and Heidelberg University in Germany.

[...]

Apparently the dig has started a 2009 season, although so far there's no activity on its blog. Background here.

ARTIFACTS GALORE! One Million Archaeological Artifacts on Display in Israel.

BLOGGERS AT SBL are listed at the Hebrew and Greek Reader blog.

BREAKING NEWS: Barack Obama is not the Antichrist.

CONGRATULATIONS TO BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW, which is publishing its 200th issue this month.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE EMPEROR VESPASIAN may have been discovered in Italy:

'Roman emperor's villa' unearthed

(BBC)

Archaeologists at a villa in Italy believed to be the birthplace of the Emperor Vespasian, 5 August 2009

Archaeologists in Italy say they have unearthed the remains of a sumptuous villa thought to be the birthplace of the Emperor Vespasian.

The ruins were found in the Roman city of Falacrine, about 80 miles (130km) north-east of Rome.

The villa's location and luxury suggest it was probably Vespasian's birthplace, an archaeologist said.

Vespasian lived from AD9-79. He was emperor from AD69-79, restoring peace after a period of civil war.

[...]

He was also proclaimed to be the messiah by Josephus.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

IN THE MAIL:

Gesa Schenke (mit Beitragen von Gesine Schenke Robinson), Der Koptische Kölner Papyruskodex 3221: Teil I: Das Testament des Iob (Abhandlungen der Nordrhein-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künst, Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensia 33; Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2009)

The long-awaited edition of the Coptic fragments of the Testament of Job. An English translation of the fragments will be included in the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project.

THE BYU-CUA SYRIAC REFERENCE LIBRARY has been updated with some 35 additional PDF resources. Note also the article and lectures on Syriac and the smaller collection of Coptic resources.

Via Kristian Heal on the Hugoye list. Mentioned earlier at PaleoJudaica here.

ROBERT CARGILL responds at the Bible and Interpretation website to Palestinian protests of the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition:

On the Curious Protests of the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition in Toronto

By Robert R. Cargill
Center for the Digital Humanities,
Qumran Visualization Project

UCLA

August 2009

Excerpt:

The pro-Palestinian protesters outside the ROM claim that the Dead Sea Scrolls were “illegally moved” from the Rockefeller Museum to the Israel Museum. The PNA claims the scrolls are looted “Palestinian” artifacts. However, this claim intentionally overlooks the fact that prior to 1967, the Kingdom of Jordan controlled east Jerusalem and the West Bank, not the PNA, which wasn’t officially formed until the Oslo Accords of 1994. Thus, there could be no realistic “Palestinian” claim to the Dead Sea Scrolls, since they were discovered prior to the existence of any recognized Palestinian governmental body. If anyone other than Israel can make a claim on the scrolls, it is Jordan, not the PNA. The PNA’s claim that the scrolls belong to them is a creative attempt to politicize archaeology and interject an anachronous revision of history into the present day dispute between Israel and Palestine.

Further evidence that the Toronto ROM protests are not about archaeology, but rather politically motivated attempts to unfairly chastise Israel is the fact that there have been no such protests against the Jordanian government. The Copper Scroll is presently on display in the Jordan Archaeological Museum in Amman. Yet, we do not see pro-Palestinian protests against the Jordanian government across the street from the Jordan Archaeological Museum demanding the return of the “looted” Copper Scroll to the PNA. The PNA vociferously demands the return of scrolls in Jewish hands, but not of those in Arab hands. This double standard betrays the underlying reality that the Toronto protests are nothing more than a hypocritical attempt to use archaeology to advance the PNA’s agenda against Israel.

One small point: the bulk of the Dead Sea Scrolls remained at the Rockefeller Museum at least until the early 1990s, when I worked there on the ones I was editing.

Background to the protests is here.

For more background to the exhibition, see here, here, and here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: More on that new scale model of the Jerusalem Temple, with video:

World’s Largest Temple Model Inaugurated next to Temple Mount

by Yehudah Lev Kay

(IsraelNN.com) The world’s largest model of the Holy Temple was inaugurated Wednesday only a few hundred meters away from the Temple Mount, the site where the Temple existed up until 70 CE.

The model, built at a scale of 1:60, was built by Michael Osanis for the Aish HaTorah Yeshiva in Jerusalem’s old city, and is displayed on the roof of its new museum, which at seven stories above the Western Wall plaza has a breathtaking view of the Temple Mount.

[...]

Do keep in mind that our information about the architecture and appearance of Herod's Temple is limited and that a project like this would involve a considerable amount of inference and guesswork.

Background here.

UPDATES on the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition:

A scroll of the Ten Commandments is going on display for a short time in October:

ROM shalt not display it for longer than a week
Fall showing set for copy of 10 Commandments

Aug 06, 2009 04:30 AM

Adrian Morrow
Staff reporter (The Star)

It is older than the Declaration of Independence and the Magna Carta. It was written by hand before the printing press was invented. It is even thought to pre-date Jesus Christ by a few years.

For a single week, Torontonians will get a glimpse of one of the oldest copies of one of the most ancient sets of laws in existence.

The Royal Ontario Museum has scored the rights to add one of the earliest existing copies of the Ten Commandments to its Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition, the museum announced yesterday.

[...]

Dr. Hindy Najman is interviewed about the exhibition in the Jewish Tribune:

Similarities between ancient and modern Jewish communities evident at Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit U of [Sic]
Written by Atara Beck
Wednesday, 05 August 2009

TORONTO – The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) “shows that Judaism was as varied in its prayer, its interpretations and its politics then as it is now,” stated Professor Hindy Najman, director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at University of Toronto (U of T) and a scholar of ancient Judaism.

[...]

THE IAA is registering private antiquities collections:

Israel Antiquities Authority to register antiquities collections held by the general public in Israel
4 Aug 2009

Estimate: In Israel there are at least 100,000 people who can be considered ‘collectors of antiquities’.

(Communicated by the Israel Antiquities Authority Spokesperson)

The Israel Antiquities Authority is embarking on a first of its kind campaign to register the antiquities collections that are held by the general public in Israel. An individual that is listed in the state’s databank as the owner of an antiquities collection will be recognized by the state as a “collector of antiquities”.

Israel is one of the world’s richest countries in archaeological artifacts. As such, over the years private individuals have discovered thousands of archaeological finds during the course of development work, agricultural work, etc.

In 2002 the legal status of a collector of antiquities in Israel was regulated, which is defined as “one who collects antiquities otherwise than for the purpose of trading therein”. The law defines an antiquities collection as: “an assemblage of fifteen antiquities or more.” It is estimated that there are at least 100,000 people in Israel who can be considered by definition “collectors of antiquities”, but only several hundred of them are recognized by the state.

In February 2009 regulations took effect that will enable enforcing the law which was passed in 2002. The IAA is now calling on the public to comply in accordance with the law and report any antiquities they possess. An individual doing so will be granted the status of collector according to law and will be issued a certificate. The antiquities will be registered as the property of the collector and anyone who wishes to sell the collection they own can receive permission from the IAA to do so. Thus on the one hand, the collector can sell the antiquities he possesses, and on the other, the state will know to whom the object was transferred.

[...]

Overall, this sounds like a very positive development to me. I would, however, like to have a clearer idea how the new regulations have been formulated to avoid encouraging people to buy looted artifacts and then register them. Or is that battle now a lost cause?

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

LOST BOOKS MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE are noted by Daniel Hopkinson, the "Knoxville Evangelical Examiner" for The Examiner:

The other books mentioned within the Bible pages:
August 3, 5:07 AM

The very King James Bible (among other translations as well) that so many insist is complete and having no need of other books to be included in it, mentions several other books over the course of the 66 books contained in the official canon that at one time were evidently prominent in that particular author’s thought that mentioned it, a few of which may actually refer to books already included in the canon.

[...]

Mr. Hopkinson has been writing a lot lately about apocrypha and pseudepigrapha -- apparently unaware of even the most basic and foundational secondary literature (e.g., the Charlesworth edition of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha), so I haven't been noting his articles. But this one interests me particularly, since I've done a lot of research on these lost books and am publishing a translation of their surviving fragments for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project ("Quotations from Lost Books in the Hebrew Bible").

His list is fairly complete, but leaves out some things, such as the other two quotations in Numbers 21:16-18, 21-25; another possible quote from the Book of Jashar in the LXX of 1 Kings 8:53 (cf. 1 Kings 8:12-13 MT); a book by Samuel on the conduct of kingship in 1 Samuel 10:25; the Book of the Acts of Solomon in 1 Kings 11:41; the Book of the Chronicles of King David in 1 Chronicles 27:23-24; King David's plan from YHWH for the Temple in 1 Chronicles 28:19; and the Laments (over King Josiah) attributed to the prophet Jeremiah in 2 Chronicles 35:25. It is likely on various contextual grounds that the apparent prophetic books quoted in 1-2 Chronicles are actually references to passages in the Chronicles of the lost Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah, which in turn is likely a digest of the lost Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah cited in 1-2 Kings. It is interesting also that Ezra 6:18 attributes material to "Moses" which is not found in our Pentateuch.

There are also other references to lost OT pseudepigrapha in the New Testament: the Testament of Moses in Jude 9, and perhaps the Apocalypse or Apocryphon of Elijah in 1 Corinthians 2:9 and the book of Eldad and Modad in James 4:5. Richard Bauckham will be providing contributions dealing with all three of these in MOTP. The quote in Ephesians 5:14 may also be of a lost apocryphon. (There are other NT quotes of OT pseudepigrapha that are not lost, or not entirely so: 2 Timothy 3:8 refers to Jannes and Jambres and Jude 14-15 quotes from the Book of Watchers [1 Enoch 1:9]).

For more on all of this, see the relevant MOTP chapters, which should be going to press soon.

I am not a specialist in the Pauline letters or the NT Apocrypha, but those who are agree unanimously that the Epistle to the Laodecians is a forgery from well after Paul's time. As Mr. Hopkinson says, you can make up your mind for yourself.

For more on lost books, see here and follow the links.

THE ROM DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION is reviewed in the Democrat and Chronicle:

Rare look at Dead Sea Scrolls in Toronto
Toronto museum offers rare look at the biblical writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Mary C. Kenessey • Contributing writer • August 2, 2009

The Dead Sea Scrolls bring us the earliest recorded writings of the Bible, as well as of the prophets and patriarchs revered by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So this major exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, which runs through Jan. 3, affords us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view, firsthand, words that changed the world.

[...]

Located in the spectacular Lee-Chin Crystal extension, this important exhibit first takes the visitor on an absorbing and informative journey through the exotic sites and history of the Holy Land. It's a journey enriched by displays of jewelry, exquisite glassware, pottery, ossuaries, genuine silver shekels — and a breathtaking video re-creation of the magnificent Temple Mount.

Inside the actual scroll exhibition area, the ROM has taken extraordinary security and temperature-monitoring measures to ensure the protection and well-being of these delicate treasures, as evidenced by the controlled and dimmed lighting. Each scroll segment is ensconced in its own deeply recessed and specially illuminated case, backed by tall display stands clearly outlining the translated text. However, the truly amazing aspect of this exhibit is the tiny size and fragility of these remnants of writing, causing one to marvel how they ever managed to survive for so many centuries.

[...]

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Unique Temple Model to Overlook Kotel

by Maayana Miskin

(IsraelNN.com) On Wednesday this week, the Aish HaTorah center in Jerusalem's Old City plans to unveil a one-of-a-kind model of the Temple. The model will be located in the Aish headquarters, overlooking the Kotel (Western Wall) and the Temple Mount.

The model will be unveiled at 11 a.m. It will be the focal piece in a museum dedicated to Judaism and the Jewish idea, "Aish" directors said. The museum will be open to all.

The model is unique in two ways, its designers say. For one thing, it is the largest of its kind. In addition, it will be the first to provide a view inside the Outer Sanctuary. An elevator system will move parts of the model, allowing visitors to view depictions of the Holy of Holies, the menorah and the Ark of the Covenant.

[...]

Other scale models of the Jerusalem Temple are noted here.

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL 44 ("the Funhouse Edition") has been published this month by Jim West.

JOSEPHUS AND HIS MASADA NARRATIVE are the subject of an essay at the Bible and Interpretation website:

"The Irony of Masada"

These last Judean rebels were either very brave to take their own lives or cowards in doing so. They acted irrationally or as those who carefully deliberated the best course of action. Their action was either a horrendous crime or a noble plan. Such effective use of irony allows Josephus to loudly proclaim at Masada that the Roman “victory” was after all not really their victory but God’s punishment upon the Judean stasis and that these Judeans have a nobility that even surpasses that of the Romans.

Essay based on The Sicarii in Josephus's Judean War (Society of Biblical Literature, 2008).

By Mark Andrew Brighton
School of Theology,
Concordia University at Irvine
August 2009

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Augustine of Hippo was a native speaker of Punic, as the late Henry Chadwick reminds us in an about-to-be-published-posthumously biography:

Both Augustine’s parents are likely to have been of Berber stock, but Romanized and Latin-speaking. Numidian peasants of the fourth century spoke not Latin but Punic, inherited from the Phoenician settlers who came from Tyre and Sidon a millennium before to set up their trading station and maritime power at Carthage. In Hannibal they had once offered a frightening threat to Rome’s ambitions to conquer the Mediterranean. As Romans settled in their North African provinces, many took Berber- or Punic-speaking wives. In the second century ad Apuleius, of Madauros near Thagaste, author of the Golden Ass, had a Punic-speaking wife. In Augustine’s time the Punic-speakers retained a consciousness of their old Phoenician forefathers, and could manifest a lack of enthusiasm for the Roman administration of their country now established for over five centuries. Latin culture was a veneer; those who had it tended to despise those who had not. Augustine acquired a conversational knowledge of the patois, and never speaks of Punic language or culture with the least touch of scorn as the pagan Maximus of Madauros did. But his parents and nurses spoke to him in Latin, and education at the Thagaste school was principally in Latin language and literature, a subject which ancient men called ‘grammar’, taught by the grammaticus.

PHOENICIAN WATCH: The site of Baalbek, with its annual festival currently in progress, is reviewed in the WSJ:

What the Romans Wrought in Lebanon

Shadowed by Hezbollah, a visitor finds Baalbek’s temples to Jupiter and Bacchus an intoxicating sight

By MELIK KAYLAN

These days, if you visit the Roman ruins of Baalbeck in Lebanon you will likely be followed by Hezbollah before, during and after the visit. On the Bekaa Valley main road that runs into the town of Baalbeck, your car is likely to be tailed by nippy little BMWs with blackened windows. Aggressively antennaed opaque vans sit parked along the road every few miles—they are Hezbollah surveillance vehicles. Stretched overhead, banners depicting Hezbollah leaders multiply. Entering Baalbeck itself, you will pass by a garishly tiled blue-and-turquoise mosque built recently with Iranian help.

Nevertheless, a first glimpse of Baalbeck’s six 72-feet-high Corinthian columns will instantly raise your spirits and turn unease into adventure. Like the Parthenon or the Pyramids, the Baalbeck complex is one of the glorious monuments of history. No matter which angle you look from, the two lofty temples—to Jupiter and to Bacchus—seem to ride the sky and will intoxicate your faculties. You will know how it feels to be a besotted idolater.

[...]

THE MT. ZION CUP INSCRIPTION has come to the notice of the Los Angeles Times:

2,000-year-old ritual cup found in Old City of Jerusalem

The 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script on the artifact is 'unprecedented,' an archaeologist says. Researchers are not yet able to decipher it.

By Thomas H. Maugh II
August 1, 2009

U.S. archaeologists have found an extremely rare 2,000-year-old limestone cup inscribed with 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Such ritual cups are common, especially in areas that were inhabited by priests, but usually they are unmarked or bear only a single line of text, such as a name, said archaeologist Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who led the dig along with James Tabor of the same school.

"To have 10 lines of text is unprecedented," he said in announcing the find Wednesday.

Although the script itself is not eroded or otherwise degraded, he said, researchers are not yet able to decipher it because the text is in an informal cursive script and is apparently deliberately cryptic. They know it contains the Hebrew word for God, YHWH or Yahweh, indicating it was probably important to the priests who used it in rituals. Gibson expected it to take two to six months to understand its meaning.

[...]

There's not much new in the article, apart from the guess about how long the decipherment might take (which sounds reasonable, but it's only a guess), but it looks accurate overall.

ON STAGE – Josephus and the Dead Sea Scrolls:

Kadmos establishes bridges among cultures via theater

(Today's Zaman)

The world knows about mythological Phoenician Prince Kadmos from the ancient texts of Greek mythology in which he is sent to rescue his sister, Europa, from Zeus, who kidnapped her from the shores of Phoenicia.
Now, the spirit of Kadmos, the founder of the Greek alphabet and the ancient Greek city of Thebes, is being revived in a multinational project that brings four Mediterranean countries together around the same ambition: theater.

A pan-Mediterranean production of renowned Israeli director Amos Gitai's “The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness,” the first-ever project by the newly established international theater network Kadmos, will be staged tonight and tomorrow night at the historic Rumeli Fortress on the Bosporus coast. The play's cast brings French, Greek, Spanish, Israeli, Palestinian and Turkish theatrical actors together on the same stage and most notably features veteran French stage and screen actress Jeanne Moreau as its narrator.

Kadmos was formed by France's Avignon Festival, the Grec Festival of Barcelona, Athens' Epidaurus Festival and the İstanbul International Theater Festival with the aim of strengthening cultural ties across the Mediterranean.

[...]

Prominent Turkish stage actor Cüneyt Türel plays the Roman Emperor Titus in Amos Gitai's “The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness,” in which Jeanne Moreau plays the narrator, Josephus Flavius, and Jerome Koenig plays the role of Emperor Vespasianus.

In the play, Flavius narrates the horrors of war, which has become a destiny for all peoples in the Middle East. Besides the story of how Jerusalem was conquered by the Romans, based on accounts by Flavius in the A.D. first century and the Dead Sea scrolls, the play also features quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke and Oscar Wilde. The play recalls a multilingual oratorio as it combines a number of languages, including French, Turkish, Arabic and Hebrew.

“The play is a work of historian Josephus Flavius about the war which the Roman Empire started in order to stamp out the uprisings of the Jews,” notes Dikmen Gürün. “The play, which focuses on concepts such as a nation's homeland, war, oppression and domination, in fact stands against all wars throughout the world. While questioning the violence experienced [in the Middle East] throughout history, Amos Gitai's political stance can clearly be observed in this play.”

[...]

ARAMAIC WATCH? Arutz Sheva has an article on the new stone-jar inscription excavated on Mt. Zion and raises doubt on whether the inscription is in Aramaic or Hebrew:

Stone Vessel with 'Priestly Inscription' Uncovered In Jerusalem

by Hana Levi Julian and Gil Ronen

(IsraelNN.com) A rare 2,000-year-old ritual vessel made of limestone and inscribed with 10 lines of text has been discovered in an excavation near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is an unprecedented find, according to Dr. Shimon Gibson, the archaeologist who heads the University of North Carolina team conducting the dig.

Inscription found on Mt. Zion. Israel news photo: UNC

"Such stone vessels were used in connection with maintaining ritual purity related to Temple worship, and they are found in abundance in areas where the priests lived," Gibson reported. "We have found a dozen or more on our site over the past three years. However, to have ten lines of text is unprecedented. One normally might find a single name inscribed, or a line or two, but this is the first text of this length ever found on such a vessel," he said.

Although the letters are clearly visible it will take some time before their meaning can be discerned due to the style of the writing. Gibson estimated in his preliminary report that it could take up to six months to translate the inscription. "It is written in a very informal cursive hand and is quite difficult to read," he explained.

Initially, Gibson thought the inscription was written solely in Aramaic. However, a group of experts consulting on the matter was not convinced; they say there is a possibility that the text contains the sacred name of G-d and is deliberately cryptic.

"Stephen Pfann, of the University of the Holy Land, is leaving open the possibility that it is Hebrew. He has also suggested that the text might have had meaning within a closed circle of priests, similar to texts at Qumran," said Dr. James D. Tabor, co-director of the dig.

[...]

If they are not yet sure what language it is in, that's a good sign that it's a difficult text and decipherment is still at an early stage.

There's also this bit of context:

Also uncovered were at least half a dozen Murex snail shells with holes drilled through them. "Prior to our excavation one or two such shells had been found in all of Jerusalem," Gibson said. "That so many would be found at our site further supports our supposition that we are in a priestly residential area."

Also, Joseph I. Lauer has noted a larger version of that photo of the two lines of the inscription, this at the Mt. Zion excavation website.

Background here.

THE NEW YORK TIMES has been dissing the Pharisees and Philologos calls them out on it in The Forward:

The New York Times: Ignorant and Antisemitic?

On Language

By Philologos
Published July 29, 2009, issue of August 07, 2009.

‘Pharisees on the Potomac” is the headline from a July 18 attack by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on what she considers to be the moral hypocrisy — “the ancient political art of Tartuffery,” as she calls it — of Republican Party leaders on Capitol Hill.

Let’s stay away from politics. Let’s even stay away from Maureen Dowd, being it’s likely that her column’s headline was written by the editors of the Times’ op-ed page rather than by the columnist herself. Headlines of newspaper and magazine articles are generally an editorial prerogative.

Let’s stick to the word “Pharisee” in its common English sense of a hypocrite who preaches morality to others without practicing it himself. Is this a usage Jews should be up in arms about? Should we be bombarding The New York Times, and others who resort to it, with our protests?

There certainly would seem to be good reasons for doing so. After all, the Pharisees were not just another ancient sect of Jews, like the Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots, who lived toward the end of the Second Temple period; they were the founders of rabbinic tradition and the direct spiritual and intellectual ancestors of the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud who came after them — that is, of normative halachic Judaism as we know it. To perpetuate the English language’s equation of them with self-righteous hypocrites is to perpetuate the belief that Judaism is a self-righteous and hypocritical religion.

Philogos concludes that such usages should be challenged and I agree. One nitpick, though:

The original source of this belief is, of course, Jesus’ remarks about the Pharisees in the New Testament — remarks that owe no small part of their venom to the fact that Jesus was a maverick Pharisee himself who shared many of the Pharisees’ assumptions and values. We rebel most strongly against our own predecessors, and when Jesus is quoted as saying things like, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of extortion and wickedness… you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God,” he is venting his anger and disappointment on those to whom he is religiously closest. A loyal Jew in his fashion, it never would have occurred to him that such statements would form the basis of rabid anti-Jewish sentiments in a new religion he had no intention of founding.

[...]

We know very little about the Pharisees: they are mentioned in the New Testament and by Josephus, both of which have their own not-entirely-reliable agendas. And we can squeeze some more information from the earliest stratum of the oral traditions of the Mishnah, but that still doesn't add up to a complete or clear picture. So it is not at all clear that Jesus was "a maverick Pharisee" or any kind of Pharisee. But the point Philologos is making is valid in a more general sense: Jesus (and also his first-generation followers who transmitted and likely augmented these sayings) was a first-century Jew who shared a great many assumptions with his opponents, who was engaged in an internal dialogue with them, and who would have been horrified at the use later made of these sayings about the Pharisees.

MORE on Martin Abegg's recent lecture at the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition:

Dead Sea Scrolls almost identical to Pentateuch, Haftorahs

Written by Rick Kardonne (Jewish Tribune)
Tuesday, 28 July 2009

TORONTO – For the most part, the Torah and Jewish prophetic portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which can be seen at the Royal Ontario Museum, are identical to the traditional Pentateuch and Haftorahs. But their authorship remains a topic of scholarly debate.
So said Dr. Martin Abegg, Ben Zion Wacholder Professor of Dead Sea Scrolls Studies at the religious studies department at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC, and co-director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute.

Professor Abegg delivered an enthusiastic speech at the Royal Ontario Museum Signy and Cleophee Eaton theatre last Thursday as part of the Anne Tannenbaum Dead Sea Scrolls lecture series, which coincides with the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit.

[...]

More background to the exhibition here.

PETRA AND THE NABATEANS are discussed in a BAR article:

Solving the Enigma of Petra and the Nabataeans

by Joey Corbett

For every tourist who visits the ancient city of Petra in modern day Jordan, there is one breathtaking moment that captures all of the grandeur and mystery of this city carved in stone. After passing the final bend of the tortuous narrow canyon that leads into the site (the Siq), one is confronted by the awe-inspiring spectacle of a towering rock-cut façade, its sun-struck sandstone gleaming through the darkness of the canyon.

[...]

It's a nice and nicely illustrated article, although I think it's a little odd that it never mentions that the language of the Nabateans (at least their official written language) was Aramaic.

TISHA B'AV (the Ninth of Av) started last night at sundown. An easy fast to all observing it.

ARAMAIC WATCH: The inscribed stone cup found recently at the Mt. Zion excavation turns out to be written in Aramaic:

J'lem: Rare 2nd Temple inscription found
By JPOST.COM STAFF

A unique ten-line Aramaic inscription on the side of a stone cup commonly used for ritual purity during Second Temple times was recently uncovered during archaeological excavations on Jerusalem's Mount Zion, it was announced Wednesday.

Inscriptions of this kind are extremely rare and only a handful have been found in scientific excavations made within the city.

[...]

The new Aramaic inscription from the first century CE is currently being deciphered by a team of epigraphic experts in an effort to determine the meaning of the text, which is clear but cryptic. The dig also produced a sequence of building remains dating back to the First and Second Temple periods through to Byzantine and Early Islamic periods.

[...]

No word yet on what the inscription says, but the article includes a photo of two lines of it, so I'm sure Aramaists, including blogging Aramaists, will be having a go at it. (I don't have time right now.)

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

Background here.

THE SHROUD OF TURIN has Aramaic and Hebrew on it?

Traces of Aramaic on Shroud of Turin

Published: July 29, 2009 (CathNews)

As Pope Benedict confirmed his intention to visit the Shroud of Turin next year, French scientist Thierry Castex has revealed that he has found traces of Aramaic on the Shroud.

Pope Benedict confirmed his intention to visit the Shroud of Turin when it goes on public display in Turin's cathedral April 10-May 23, 2010, Catholic News Service reports.

[...]

A recent study by French scientist Thierry Castex has revealed that on the shroud are traces of words in Aramaic spelled with Hebrew letters.

A Vatican researcher, Barbara Frale, told Vatican Radio on July 26 that her own studies suggest the letters on the shroud were written more than 1,800 years ago.

She said that in 1978 a Latin professor in Milan noticed Aramaic writing on the shroud and in 1989 scholars discovered Hebrew characters that probably were portions of the phrase "The king of the Jews."

Count me as interested, but very skeptical. I've not heard anything about this before and I've been following Shroud of Turin news for quite a while. I don't know Thierry Castex, what kind of "scientist" he is, or who this Latin professor in Milan is, or who the unnamed other scholars are. I don't know where this recent study has been published, if it has been. Barbara Frale is a specialist in the Templars and has just published a book on them.

Castex's recent discovery of the word "found" with another word next to it, which still has to be deciphered, "together may mean 'because found' or 'we found'," she said.

What is interesting, she said, is that it recalls a passage in the Gospel of St Luke, "We found this man misleading our people," which was what several Jewish leaders told Pontius Pilate when they asked him to condemn Jesus.

I wouldn't base too much on one word that is still of uncertain meaning.

She said it would not be unusual for something to be written on a burial cloth in order to indicate the identity of the deceased.

I don't know what the basis for this statement is. We have very few Judean burial shrouds from the first century. The only one I know of is the Jerusalem Shroud (see here and here) and it is not inscribed. There is at least one other that is several thousand years older (and of course is not inscribed either). Are there other surviving Roman-era shrouds?

As I said, I am quite skeptical of this report, but I would be happy to read the evidence (with good photographs please) in a scientific (peer-reviewed) publication.

BOOK REVIEW:

Reconstructing a fragmented past
By DAVID SCHONBERG (Jerusalem Post)

Adama Shehora (Black Earth)
By Natalie Messika
(in Hebrew)
Dofen
338 pp.,
NIS 78 (recommended price)

This gripping historical novel, set in the first century CE in Judea, Galilee, Rome and Pompeii, focuses upon two events: the siege and fall of Yodfat (67 CE) in Galilee during the Great Revolt and the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy several years later (79 CE) that engulfed the surrounding area, unexpectedly ending in a dramatic moment the lives of many, including the inhabitants of Pompeii.

[...]

The author is an Israeli archaeologist.

JUDAS ISCARIOT in recent scholarship and popular perception (especially as fueled by the Coptic Gospel of Judas) is the subject of a long article in the New Yorker:

Betrayal
Should we hate Judas Iscariot?
by Joan Acocella August 3, 2009

[...]

For two thousand years, Judas has therefore been Christianity’s primary image of human evil. Now, however, there is an effort to rehabilitate him, the result, partly, of an archeological find. In 1978 or thereabouts, some peasants digging for treasure in a burial cave in Middle Egypt came upon an old codex—that is, not a scroll but what we would call a book, with pages—written in Coptic, the last form of ancient Egyptian. The book has been dated to the third or fourth century, but scholars believe that the four texts it contains are translations of writings, in Greek, from around the second century. When the codex was found, it was reportedly in good condition, but it then underwent a twenty-three-year journey through the notoriously venal antiquities market, where it suffered fantastic abuses, including a prolonged stay in a prospective buyer’s home freezer. (This caused the ink to run when the manuscript thawed.) The book was cracked in half, horizontally; pages were shuffled, torn out. By the time the codex reached the hands of restorers, in 2001, much of it was just a pile of crumbs. The repair job took five years, after which some of the book was still a pile of crumbs. Many passages couldn’t be read.

[...]

Acocella concludes:

All this, I believe, is a reaction to the rise of fundamentalism—the idea, Christian and otherwise, that every word of a religion’s founding document should be taken literally. This is a childish notion, and so is the belief that we can combat it by correcting our holy books. Those books, to begin with, are so old that we barely understand what their authors meant. Furthermore, because of their multiple authorship, they are always internally inconsistent. Finally, even the fundamentalists don’t really take them literally. People interpret, and cheat. The answer is not to fix the Bible but to fix ourselves.

Now there's a thought.

Some background to the Gospel of Judas is here.

WHEN CHIASMUS IS OUTLAWED, only outlaws will use chiasmus.

BOOK REVIEW IN BMCR:

Jörg Rüpke, Fasti sacerdotum: A Prosopography of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian Religious Officials in the City of Rome, 300 BC to AD 499. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. viii, 1107. ISBN 9780199291137. $399.00.

Reviewed by Linda Zollschan (zollschan@yahoo.com)
Word count: 2575 words

[Table of Contents below]

Scholars of ancient Rome will be delighted that Rüpke's monumental work, Fasti sacerdotum, has been translated into English and thus become accessible to a wider readership. The work of translation was done by David Richardson who has faithfully rendered the original German into English.1 For those unfamiliar with the German edition, its aim was to construct annual lists for the city of Rome of attested priests, cult officials and followers from 300 BCE to 499 CE, lists that included not just pagan priests but also the officials from Jewish and Christian groups. The work falls into two main parts: a compilation of annual lists of priests and religious functionaries and a set of alphabetically arranged individual biographies. Understandably, the whole work was 14 years in the making and required a team of assistants.

[...]

THE VISION OF GABRIEL INSCRIPTION is the subject of a popular article by John J. Collins in the Yale Forum. He thinks that, despite its lack of provenance, "for now, the text's authenticity must be given the benefit of the doubt." He also is very skeptical of Israel Knohl's theory about a reference to a dying and rising messiah in the text.

Background here and follow the many links back.

ANOTHER REVIEW of the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition, this one in Dawn.com:

Fragments of history

Maheen A. Rashdi
Sunday, 26 Jul, 2009 | 09:47 AM PST |

The Dead Sea lies between Israel and the West Bank on one side and Jordan to the east, with Jordan River as its main tributary. Known as the deepest and saltiest of lakes, at 1,385 feet below sea level, it is also said to have been the refuge of King David; the place where Herod went for health reasons and from where the chemicals to mummify the Egyptian royals were brought.

Most importantly though, it is the surrounding area of the caves at Qumran from where the most ancient archaeological objects were discovered, namely, The Dead Sea Scrolls. Qumran is a dry plateau bordering the Dead Sea in the West Bank.

[...]

The ROM exhibition is an exhilarating and awe-inspiring experience. The build up to the actual display of the Scrolls is most skillfully executed and it leaves one saturated with every piece of information on the worth, discovery, origin and geographical detail of the Scrolls’ resting area. The artefacts include numerous shards and complete pottery vessels, glass and stone vessels, coins that signified the various stages of the site, jewelry, ostraka and organic materials. Objects found were from the Iron Age and from the Second Temple period.

The first set currently on display—from June 27, 2009 until October 2009—includes biblical scrolls, non-biblical texts and Apocryphal (i.e. non-verified) Psalms. Intriguing were the fragments from the Book of War (non-biblical text, 1st century AD, Hebrew), which scholars believed contained the text of a blessing describing how God will enable the universe to produce fertility and prevent disease and destruction. It is supposedly a description of the apocalyptic war between good and evil.

The other most astounding scroll display for me was the biblical text from Genesis (150 BC to 68 AD, Hebrew). The details state that approximately 20 manuscripts of the Book of Genesis were uncovered in the caves and this scroll contains some of the oldest fragments of Genesis discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Twelve fragments had to be pieced together to reconstruct this portion of the Scroll.

The displayed fragments contain parts of the story of the death of Jacob’s wife Rachel and of Joseph’s encounter with the wife of Potiphar. To my own amazement reading the text translation in archaic English was almost identical to reading a verse (Surah 12; verse 23-25) from the Quran which narrates the same tale. That was my moment of becoming a believer in the authenticity of the scrolls.

[...]

The article is pretty accurate, although it takes the "theory" that the Dead Sea Scrolls are of Christian origin too seriously. It's also interesting that a Muslim reviewer appreciates the exhibition's efforts to tie the Scrolls to the three Abrahamic religions:

Without doubt though, there is one indelible truth that emerges from the discovery of the Scrolls: that there are more similarities in the origins of the three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—than disparities

Contrast Robert Fisk's sour evaluation here.

Further background to the exhibition is here and here.