When was a synagogue a synagogue?

WHEN WAS A SYNAGOGUE A SYNAGOGUE? From Bible and Intepretation:

‘Synagogues’ in the New Testament Period

It is no accident that in the last ten years a number of new potential synagogue buildings have been proposed, as the wider role of the ‘synagogue’ and the lack of identifying features in this period have been recognised. The problem then becomes, by what criteria do we identify these as synagogue buildings?

See, Reconstructing the First-Century Synagogue (T & T Clark International, 2008)

By Stephen Catto
Lecturer in Biblical and Theological Studies,
Morelands College, UK
January 2009


The study of the ancient synagogue has recently been the focus of a great deal of scholarly literature.1 While a previous generation of scholars had a very clear idea of what was meant by a reference to a first-century synagogue–it was an architecturally defined public building which was used for religious purposes, especially on the Sabbath–many of these assumptions have now been questioned. Two periods have especially interested scholars: the origin of the synagogue, and the first-century period, which is of particular interest to those working in New Testament studies. It is into this second category that my work, Reconstructing the First-century Synagogue,2 fits, and it is this period that this essay will address.

[...]

Where Heaven and Earth Meet (San Francisco Sentinel review)

BOOK REVIEW/TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Where Heaven and Earth Meet (ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar and Oleg Grabar) is reviewed by Miriam Feinberg Vamosh in the San Francisco Sentinel. It's a long review with detailed comments on the individual articles in the book. Excerpt:

Despite the multiple, interfaith/intercultural authorship, one does not feel that on an individual level most of the writers are struggling with the meaning of the mount. Rather, they seem quite comfortable in their various niches. But while the book cannot be considered “ecumenical” in terms of the individual writers’ conclusions, meaning-seeking readers would not want this book without its juxtapositions of often conflicting views. Such juxtaposition may be precisely what we need to allow us to compare and contrast what the various scholars have to say, ultimately coming away from the accumulation of perspectives educated and enriched.

More reviews here.

UPDATE: It seems this review was first published in Haaretz (via the Agade list).

Sands, Invention of the Jewish People (Guardian review)

THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE by Shlomo Sands is reviewed by Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg in the Guardian. He is not impressed. Excerpt:

Uncomfortable books, if they are good, can be important. National narratives do need deconstruction; they often blind us to different perceptions of the world and deafen us to the just claims of others. This is certainly true of the Middle East, and I am one of many Jews who would agree with Sand that a decisive factor in the future of Israel will be its capacity to be far more attentive to the narratives and rights of its Palestinian and other non-Jewish citizens.

But the book is a great disappointment. Its sweeping attempt to take apart the entire history of the Jewish people from its origins to present day Israel and prove it to be a wilful fabrication is marred by tendentious premises, the misreading of key events and the ignoring of central texts and institutions.

More reviews here.

Nag Hammadi murder update

NAG HAMMADI MURDER UPDATE:

Gunmen surrender after Egyptian Coptic attack
From Amir Ahmed, CNN
January 8, 2010 8:34 a.m. EST

(CNN) -- The gunmen responsible for a drive-by shooting that killed six Christians and a Muslim guard after a Mass this week have turned themselves in, government news outlets reported Friday.

The three gunmen gave themselves up after a 24-hour chase that ended in farm fields in southern Egypt, the MENA news agency reported.

[...]

The AP also reports riots on Thursday in response to the murders.

Background here.

THE CLAIMED DECIPHERMENT of the Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription is being picked up by the mainstream media. The Jerusalem Post buys the whole story and presents it pretty much as fact. The AFP is commendably more cautious, reporting the content of the press release without taking a position on its correctness. But neither seems to have bothered to ask any other Hebrew epigraphers what they thought.

Background here.

ROM DSS exhibition a success

A SUCCESS:

The Dead Sea Scrolls Spoke Volumes During their Toronto Engagement

(Art Daily)

TORONTO.- Dead Sea Scrolls: Words That Changed the World is the most successful exhibition displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in the nine years since Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids. Over 300,000 visited the exhibition during its Toronto engagement.

[...]

I'm not surprised; this sort of success is the norm for Dead Sea Scrolls exhibitions.

The article has a nice picture of 11Q5, the Psalms scroll.

A decipherment of the Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription

THE KHIRBET QEIYAFA INSCRIPTION has reportedly been deciphered. Press release:

Most ancient Hebrew biblical inscription deciphered

'It indicates that the kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE, and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research.'

Prof. Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa who deciphered the inscription: "It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research."

A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible was written. Prof. Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David's reign), and has shown that this is a Hebrew inscription. The discovery makes this the earliest known Hebrew writing. The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the biblical scriptures were composed hundreds of years before the dates presented today in research and that the Kingdom of Israel already existed at that time.

The inscription itself, which was written in ink on a 15 cm X 16.5 cm trapezoid pottery shard, was discovered a year and a half ago at excavations that were carried out by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel at Khirbet Qeiyafa near the Elah valley. The inscription was dated back to the 10th century BCE, which was the period of King David's reign, but the question of the language used in this inscription remained unanswered, making it impossible to prove whether it was in fact Hebrew or another local language.

Prof. Galil's deciphering of the ancient writing testifies to its being Hebrew, based on the use of verbs particular to the Hebrew language, and content specific to Hebrew culture and not adopted by any other cultures in the region. "This text is a social statement, relating to slaves, widows and orphans. It uses verbs that were characteristic of Hebrew, such as asah ("did") and avad ("worked"), which were rarely used in other regional languages. Particular words that appear in the text, such as almanah ("widow") are specific to Hebrew and are written differently in other local languages. The content itself was also unfamiliar to all the cultures in the region besides the Hebrew society: The present inscription provides social elements similar to those found in the biblical prophecies and very different from prophecies written by other cultures postulating glorification of the gods and taking care of their physical needs," Prof. Galil explains.

He adds that once this deciphering is received, the inscription will become the earliest Hebrew inscription to be found, testifying to Hebrew writing abilities as early as the 10th century BCE. This stands opposed to the dating of the composition of the Bible in current research, which would not have recognized the possibility that the Bible or parts of it could have been written during this ancient period.

Prof. Galil also notes that the inscription was discovered in a provincial town in Judea. He explains that if there were scribes in the periphery, it can be assumed that those inhabiting the central region and Jerusalem were even more proficient writers. "It can now be maintained that it was highly reasonable that during the 10th century BCE, during the reign of King David, there were scribes in Israel who were able to write literary texts and complex historiographies such as the books of Judges and Samuel." He adds that the complexity of the text discovered in Khirbet Qeiyafa, along with the impressive fortifications revealed at the site, refute the claims denying the existence of the Kingdom of Israel at that time.

The contents of the text express social sensitivity to the fragile position of weaker members of society. The inscription testifies to the presence of strangers within the Israeli society as far back as this ancient period, and calls to provide support for these strangers. It appeals to care for the widows and orphans and that the king – who at that time had the responsibility of curbing social inequality - be involved. This inscription is similar in its content to biblical scriptures (Isaiah 1:17, Psalms 72:3, Exodus 23:3, and others), but it is clear that it is not copied from any biblical text.

###

English translaton of the deciphered text:

1' you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2' Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3' [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4' the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5' Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.

Via James McGrath, who cites reactions from other bibliobloggers. The press release has a drawing of the text as well. For earlier PaleoJudaica coverage, of which there is much, go here and keep following the links back.

Although this is a very interesting development, I think people are getting carried away. Someone has finally published a preliminary translation of this very difficult text and (more importantly) a drawing that gives the translator's interpretation of the readings and reconstruction of the (many) damaged letters. This in an over-hyped press release (the text, even if the decipherment is exactly correct, doesn't prove an early date for any specific [unnamed!] biblical texts). Oddly, the press release does not even give a transcription of the Hebrew. Still, this announcement is very welcome and the proposed decipherment is, as I said, quite interesting, especially the specifically Hebrew (not generically "Canaanite") words and the mention of a king in tenth-century BCE Israel.

But before we get all excited, let's see Professor Galil's interpretation published in a peer-review journal. Then let's wait a few years to give other epigraphers time to digest it and give their interpretations. Then, let's see what we have.

UPDATE: On Facebook, Stephen C. Carlson reminds me that John Hobbins posted a quite different transcription and translation of the inscription in October at John's Ancient Hebrew Poetry blog. It is much less biblically interesting: it includes some of the same specifically Hebrew words, but we don't get a king in Israel from it. I am reminded of one of the epigraphic rules of thumb I learned from my teacher, Frank Moore Cross: the more banal reading is to be preferred.

Michael Goulder has passed away

MICHAEL GOULDER, retired biblical scholar of the University of Birmingham, has passed away. The sad news comes from Mark Goodacre, who reports that Professor Goulder died yesterday. His Wikipedia entry is here. My strongest memory of Michael was at the 1999 British New Testament Conference. It was my first time there and he noticed me as a new person and bought me a beer. He was a good guy. Requiescat in pace.

Murder in Nag Hammadi

MURDER IN NAG HAMMADI:

Egypt Copts killed in Christmas church attack

(BBC)

At least six Coptic Christians and a security official have been killed in a drive-by shooting outside a church in southern Egypt, officials say.

The shooting came as worshippers left the church in Naj Hammadi after a midnight mass on Coptic Christmas Eve.

A car pulled up and gunfire was sprayed into the crowd.

Officials say they suspect the attack is in revenge for the rape of a 12-year-old Muslim girl by a Christian man in the town in November.

There were five days of riots in the town, with Christian properties torched and damaged, following the rape.

[...]

Naj Hammadi is 40 miles (64km) from Luxor, southern Egypt's biggest city.

[...]

Naj Hammadi is also known as Nag Hammadi, the place where the ancient Coptic Gnostic library was discovered in the 1940s, mentioned frequently in PaleoJudaica, most recently a few days ago here. The library was buried in a jar, likely hidden because of persecution (this time from other Christians). This is the first I have heard of these recent events. I grieve for all the victims involved.

Philogos on new Hebrew names for Uranus and Neptune

PHILOLOGOS discusses the new Hebrew names for the planets Uranus and Neptune in The Forward:

Oron (the stress is on the second syllable) was coined by one of the contest’s Internet participants, from the Hebrew word or, meaning “light,” plus the diminutive suffix –on, thus giving us “little light.” Besides sounding like “Uranus,” it must have seemed fitting to those who voted for it, because the seventh planet is indeed a faint presence in the sky. Shaḥak, the runner-up, is a literary Hebrew word for “sky” that goes back to the Bible and would have been closer to Uranus in meaning, though without any phonetic similarity.

Rahav, the new Hebrew name for Neptune, also appears in the Bible, where it is the name of a mythological sea monster. In the Book of Job, for instance, we are told, “By His [God’s] power He stilled the sea; by His understanding He smote Rahav.” The Talmudic tractate of Bava Batra even refers to Rahav as “the lord of the sea” (sar shel yam), which makes this legendary creature a rough Hebrew parallel to the Roman sea god Neptune. Tarshish, which came in second, is the name of a distant but unidentified Mediterranean city or land mentioned many times in the Bible, sometimes in the metaphorical sense of “far over the sea.”

Philologos also notes that the other five planets that were known in antiquity already have Hebrew names and that Pluto is no longer technically a planet (too small). I think they should name Pluto Sheol anyway.

Background here.

PaleoJudaica is one of Technorati's Top 100 Religion blogs

PALEOJUDAICA is one of Technorati's Top 100 Religion blogs, just squeaking in with a three-way tie for place #97. I don't see many biblioblogs in the top 100, but Jesus Creed comes in at #3 and Exploring our Matrix at #23. Well done, Scott and James! I may be missing others; I don't keep careful track of such things anymore.

UPDATE: James McGrath comments.

Byblos recovery

BYBLOS, the ancient Canaanite port, has made a nice recovery in the last few years. The NYT reports:

If Beirut is the Paris of the Middle East, as the cliché goes, then Byblos, some 22 miles up the coastline, is its Cannes: an ancient port framed by pre-Roman ruins, white sandy beaches and cedar-topped mountains. The city is famous for its fish restaurants, which serve up fresh red snapper and sea bass to an international clientele. Party yachts cruise into its spectacular harbor at sundown, the way Brando and Sinatra did during Byblos’s prewar heyday, docking next to old dinghies and wooden fishing boats with names like “Taxi Joe.” Arab starlets and their hangers-on shimmy all day at nearby beach resorts like Eddé Sands, studded with palm trees, shimmering pools and Lebanese glitterati.

The city’s revived night life is adding a new dimension to the already powerful lure of its 7,000-year-old history and ruins. For years, Byblos’s main draws were its Crusader citadel, Phoenician ramparts and Bronze Age ruins of L-shaped temples scattered along a seaside bluff like oversized Lego blocks. Byblos lays claim to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world, dating its origins to 5000 B.C., as well as the birthplace of the modern alphabet (“byblos” is the Greek word for papyrus).

It was a major commercial port for ancient Egyptian seafarers buying cedar. Though many of its best-preserved sarcophagi and hieroglyphic vases are now in Beirut’s National Museum, visitors can wander through the endless maze of ruins and marvel at one of the world’s earliest examples of sophisticated urban planning.

“I come to just walk around and soak up the atmosphere,” said Mouna Bassili Sehnaoui, a painter from Beirut with a shock of silvery hair. “The stones almost seem to want to talk about what happened here many millennia ago.”

Background here.

Find A Dig

FIND A DIG: Biblical Archaeological Review has published its annual listing of archaeological excavations that are accepting volunteers for this year's season. More information here.

Jordan and the DSS - not over yet?

JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS - not over yet?

Jordan awaiting official response from Canadian government over Dead Sea Scrolls

By Khetam Malkawi (Jordan Times)

AMMAN - Jordan has not received an official response from Canada regarding a request to seize the Dead Sea Scrolls that were displayed at a museum in Toronto until Sunday, a senior official said.

Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Maha Khatib was responding to news published in some news websites that the Canadian government has announced it will not act upon Amman’s request to seize the two-millennia-old scrolls. The Kingdom will not respond until receiving an official response, the official said.

According to Khatib, the government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has requested Canada to take custody of the scrolls, citing the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, to which both Jordan and Canada are signatories.

[...]

Background here. Previous reports made it sound as though the Canadian Government had already replied negatively.

I can see why they would not be anxious to get involved in this. I'm not qualified to comment on the international-law issues, but I think it's safe to say that if Canada were agree to seize the Scrolls, Canadian museums would suddenly find it exceedingly difficult to persuade any other country to lend them anything.

Helen Bond meets Gerry Adams and talks about Jesus. Really.

NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLAR HELEN BOND has been hanging out with Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams and talking about Jesus. Really.

Jesus through the Eyes of an Irish Republican

By Helen Bond
Senior Lecturer in New Testament Language,
Literature and Theology
University of Edinburgh
January 2010 (Bible and Interpretation)

Recent historical Jesus study prides itself on the diversity of participants: Jews, Christians, and secularists from a range of (first world) nationalities and backgrounds. But how diverse are we really? Despite apparent variety, we all share the same basic training in biblical languages and historical criticism, the same basic commitment to scholarly enquiry, and, broadly speaking, a similar social status in our respective settings. It was with some curiosity, then, that I travelled to Israel last month to make a TV program on Jesus for UK’s Channel 4 with Gerry Adams, leader of the Irish Sinn Féin party.

[...]

Ezekiel's tomb in Iraq to be de-Judaized?

EZEKIEL'S (TRADITIONAL) TOMB in Iraq is going to be turned into a mosque and stripped of Jewish features according to "sources in Baghdad" in contact with Arutz Sheva:

Reports: Iraq De-Judaizing Ezekiel's Tomb

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) Early reports that Iraq plans to retain the Jewish nature of the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel are apparently false. Sources in Baghdad say that the government plans to turn it into a mosque and erase all Jewish markings.

Iraq announced earlier this year that it would revamp the ancient burial site, which is located in Al-Kifl, a small town south of Baghdad. The U.S.-backed government announcement implied that its Jewish nature would continue to be emphasized.

Since then, however, reports have surfaced that the government is actually planning to build a mosque there, including removing the ancient Hebew inscriptions that adorn the site. Some reports say that all or some of the lines of Hebrew script have already been erased.

[...]

Such a "renovation" would be a travesty. I certainly hope these reports turn out to be incorrect.

More on Ezekiel's tomb here (and follow the links). CAMERA's concerns may have been justified. Watch this space.

Talmud fragments from book bindings

TALMUD FRAGMENTS from book bindings:

Exhibit Showcases Jewish Scholasticism Before the Printing Press

By Dovid Zaklikowski (Chabad.org)
Jan 3, 2010 1:00 PM

A new exhibit at a Jewish archive in New York City is shedding light on the dissemination of religious material in the days before the printing press.

Comprised of old manuscripts, fading marriage certificates and handwritten editions of the Talmud – once consigned to be nothing more than filler for the bindings of printed books – the display at the central Chabad-Lubavitch library in Brooklyn represents the collective discovery of staff members cataloguing the library’s vast holdings.

According to Rabbi Sholom Ber Levine, chief librarian and archivist at the Library of Agudas Chassidei Chabad, the parchment documents also reveal a practice used by early printers, who compressed old manuscripts together to make covers for newer versions of the Talmud.

“When we were cataloging the library,” says Levine, “I felt that several of the covers were very flimsy, and that the bindings were comprised of many layers.”

The rabbi’s hunch proved correct when he took the material to a lab to extract the individual pages. The resulting treasure included several pages of the Talmud dating from before the first Jewish book was printed in the last third of the 15th century.

Levine says the find has enormous value to scholars, who examine minute variations between different versions of a text.

Also known as Ohel Yosef Yitzchak-Lubavitch, the library is named after the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory. Located in the Crown Heights section of the city, it houses close to 250,000 published volumes, many of them rare, and tens of thousands of antique documents and manuscripts.

Among its collections is a prayer book used by the founder of Chasidism, the 17th-century rabbi known as the Baal Shem Tov, whose tears stained some of the book’s pages.

[...]

The Coptic Gnostic library from Nag Hammadi also used discarded manuscripts (in this case documentary texts) as book-binding filler and the dates on some of those fragments helped establish the dates of the codices. And a fragment of the Codex Sinaiticus was very recently discovered in the binding of an 18th century book.

Update on Jordan and the DSS

UPDATE ON JORDAN AND THE SCROLLS:

Scroll exhibit closes amid controversy

Jordan claims Israel seized scrolls from Jerusalem museum. Ottawa says Canada will not intervene

MICHAEL VALPY

From Monday's Globe and Mail Published on Monday, Jan. 04, 2010 12:00AM EST Last updated on Monday, Jan. 04, 2010 2:25AM EST

The six-month exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls closed yesterday in Toronto, with scholars baffled by the Jordanian government's last-minute request to Canada to stop the ancient manuscripts from going back to Israel.

The request, delivered to the Canadian chargé d'affaires in the Jordanian capital of Amman, underscores the tortuous history of the region, where custody of the 2,000-year-old fragments of Jewish spiritual writings has become entangled in the politics and warfare of perhaps the world's most fought over piece of geography.

[...]

The Canadian government has replied by saying Jordan, Israel and the Palestine Authority should sort out who owns the scrolls and Ottawa will not intervene - a response which, legally, the Canadian government likely had no choice but to make, said Prof. Lawrence Schiffman, chair of New York University's department of Hebrew and Judaic studies and a Dead Sea Scrolls specialist.

Ottawa, he said, was likely party to an indemnification agreement signed before the scrolls left Israel to come to Canada. The agreement - a conventional document protecting cultural property - would guarantee that Israel would get the scrolls back.

What has puzzled scrolls experts is not just Jordan's timing but Jordan's intervention. Why did it wait until just before the exhibit closed? And why did it make the request when 20 years ago it declared that its previous interests in the area, such as the museum in east Jerusalem that once housed some of the scrolls that came to Canada, were now in the hands of the Palestinian Authority.

[...]

The article goes on to say that there is doubt that the Hague Convention applies to the particular complicated political circumstances surrounding the discovery of the Scrolls.

Background here.

The Flood Ark was round?

A NEWLY TRANSLATED FRAGMENT of the Atrahasis Epic apparently says that the great boat made by the Flood hero was round:

Relic reveals Noah's ark was circular

• Newly translated tablet gives building instructions
• Amateur historian's find was almost overlooked

* Maev Kennedy
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 January 2010 22.35 GMT

That they processed aboard the enormous floating wildlife collection two-by-two is well known. Less familiar, however, is the possibility that the animals Noah shepherded on to his ark then went round and round inside.

According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft.

The now battered tablet, aged about 3,700 years, was found somewhere in the Middle East by Leonard Simmons, a largely self-educated Londoner who indulged his passion for history while serving in the RAF from 1945 to 1948.

The relic was passed to his son Douglas, who took it to one of the few people in the world who could read it as easily as the back of a cornflakes box; he gave it to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, who translated its 60 lines of neat cuneiform script.

[...]

In his translation, the god who has decided to spare one just man speaks to Atram-Hasis, a Sumerian king who lived before the flood and who is the Noah figure in earlier versions of the ark story. "Wall, wall! Reed wall, reed wall! Atram-Hasis, pay heed to my advice, that you may live forever! Destroy your house, build a boat; despise possessions And save life! Draw out the boat that you will built with a circular design; Let its length and breadth be the same."

[...]

Noah's Ark in Genesis 6 was an oblong box. If memory serves (I don't have the text handy at home), the Gilgamesh epic described it as a cube. Read the whole article; it's entertaining. And this is worth quoting:

In the Victorian era some became obsessed with the ark story. George Smith – the lowly British museum assistant who, in 1872, deciphered the Flood Tablet which is inscribed with the Assyrian version of the Noah's ark tale – could apparently not contain his excitement at his discovery.

According to the museum's archives: "He jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement and to the astonishment of those present began to undress himself."

Slow news day.

(Via the Agade list.)

A Literary Bible (NYT book review)

BOOK REVIEW:

In the Beginning

By FRANK KERMODE (NYT)
Published: December 31, 2009

“A Literary Bible,” by ­David Rosenberg, is a large book though not, of course, a complete translation of the Hebrew Bible. Genesis is fairly full, though one looks in vain for the passage “In the beginning . . . ,” from which Genesis takes its title in both Hebrew and Greek. The Prophets, from Samuel to Jonah, get about 160 pages, and an anthology drawn from the Writings — notably the Psalms and Job — occupies the remaining half of the book. Each selection has a preface providing scholarly information and justification for the assumptions and procedures of the present translator. An epilogue, “How the Bible Came About,” makes these points in a more expansive way.

[...]

In the work of Bloom and Rosenberg, the character of J was now exultantly developed: she was a sublime writer, an “uncanny” writer, among the greatest of all writers. She was a “strong” poet — not a religious writer, any more than Shakespeare was. Indeed, she was a comic writer whose powerful and eccentric character, more Kafka than Moses, has been obscured by clerical interpreters in the 3,000 years since she wrote. Part of Rosenberg’s task was to produce a style of translation that might fairly represent the rocky magnificence of J’s language.

It was a difficult program, and one may say, with some reservations, that on his own terms Rosenberg makes it work. ...

Jordan enters the DSS fray

JORDAN ENTERS THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS FRAY:

Jordan asks Canada to seize Dead Sea scrolls

2,000-year-old Hebrew artifacts, which Jordan claims were illegally taken by Israel in 1967, are on display in Toronto

Patrick Martin

From Friday's Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2009 9:38PM EST Last updated on Friday, Jan. 01, 2010 1:18AM EST

Jordan has asked Canada to seize the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls, on display until Sunday at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, invoking international law in a bid to keep the artifacts out of the hands of Israel until their disputed ownership is settled.

Even if Canada ignores the request, it will make other countries think twice before accepting the controversial exhibit.

Summoning the Canadian chargé d'affaires in Amman two weeks ago, Jordan cited the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, to which both Jordan and Canada are signatories, in asking Canada to take custody of the scrolls.

[...]

While confirming that Canada has received a message from Jordan, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said yesterday that “differences regarding ownership of the Dead Sea scrolls should be addressed by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. It would not be appropriate for Canada to intervene as a third party.”

[...]

This is a new twist, one that may complicate matters, since now it is an actual state that existed at the time of the discovery disputing ownership of the Scrolls. Read it all.

For background to the exhibition and the ownership controversy raised initially by Palestinians, see here and follow the links back.

(Note: I have been asked by readers to start using post titles to make this blog easier to read in news feeds etc. I obey.)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

RALPHIES 2009 - another best-of-the-year varia post, inspired by Ed Cook, who posts his sixth annual Ralphies here. For past PaleoJudaica Ralphies for 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, follow the links.

These are my favorite items of the year. Your results may differ.

BEST FICTION BOOK: No contest here. Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Published in 2008 but I read most of it in 2009 (my son gave it to me for Christmas 2008). A parallel universe in which, after a technological holocaust and other disasters, nerds are kept in secular low-tech monasteries to prevent knowledge from advancing too fast. Naturally that means that they just discover more dangerous knowledge in even weirder ways. Then something happens to cause the world to really really need their knowledge ... A demanding book that assumes a working knowledge of physics and the history of Western philosophy (all of which is replicated with a completely parallel history and terminology) but well worth the effort. I can't remember ever enjoying an SF novel more. It entered the NYT hardback bestseller list as number one in September of 2008.

I should also note that one of my favorite authors, Stephen R. Donaldson (writer of, inter alia, the Thomas Covenant series - see my 2005 and 2007 Ralphies above) received an honorary doctorate from the University of St. Andrews in 2009. My laureation address, given at the ceremony, is transcribed here.

BEST NONFICTION BOOK: I started some very good nonfiction tomes in 2009, but didn't finish them. Maybe I'll be able to report on one or two of them next year.

BEST SCHOLARLY BOOK: Once again, I didn't get to read nearly as many technical books as I should have or wanted to. I did read some good ones though. I'll settle on the best as Bill Rebiger and Peter Schäfer, Sefer ha-Razim I und II. Das Buch der Geheimnisse I und II: Band 1: Edition (TSAJ 125; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). I'm reviewing this for the SOTS Booklist, so I'll keep my comments brief. Sefer ha-Razim (Sepher HaRazim) is the most important Jewish magic handbook from antiquity and it is foundational to the later Jewish magical tradition. Rebiger and Schäfer have produced a stunningly executed new edition full of new data. (Observant readers will recall that I only got a copy a little over a week ago, so this glowing note may seem premature. But Schäfer and Rebiger kindly gave me page proofs of much of the manuscript for my work on a translation of the text for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project when I was on research leave in 2008. So I have worked closely with the book for some months and my comments are carefully considered.)

Honorable mention goes to Hartmut Stegemann (late and lamented), Eileen Schuller, and Carol Newsom, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, vol. XL Qumran Cave 1.III: 1QHodayot^a with incorporation of 1QHodayot^b and 4QHodayot^a-f (Oxford: Clarendon, 2009), the final volume in the DJD seires.

(By the way, I step down as Head of the School of Divinity, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, and Principal of St. Mary's College in February of 2010, after a little over three years total (not counting the semester of research leave) in post. It was an interesting experience and I learned a lot, and I think I led the School in good directions, but I'll be glad to be able to go back to spending more time on my research and teaching.)

BEST MOVIE: I spent even less time in the cinema in 2009 than in previous years and nothing that I saw particularly impressed me. I'll pass this year.

BEST TELEVISION SERIES: My vote would have to go to FlashForward. The novel by Robert J. Sawyer had a good concept, but the series actually sharpens it by making the gap between the present and the visions of the future only six months (rather than 21 years) and introducing other complexities not found in the book. Good acting and scripts too (not to be taken for granted these days). After 10 episodes, so far so good. I look forward to the rest of the season in 2010.

I was very sorry that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled last year. (The movie Terminator Four had some good concepts but sacrificed their development with way too much CGI.) Likewise, I'm sorry for the recent canceling of Dollhouse, which has really picked up as it speeds toward its imminent conclusion. But Ashes to Ashes, which had a weak first season in 2008 picked up in 2009 and I quite enjoyed it. My favorite television moment of 2009 was the concluding topsy-turvy and maddeningly multivalent seconds of the 2009 season of Ashes to Ashes. Bolly seems to have her work cut out for her in season three.

BEST MUSIC: I listened to almost no new music in 2009. But in lieu of that, I'll leave you with a recent parody of the in-itself over-the-top 1980s video for Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart. The parody had a very strong viral presence this year. I don't know if it's the funniest video on YouTube, but it's certainly the funniest one I've seen.



Best wishes for a most excellent 2010!

A DISPUTE OVER THE BODY OF SANTA CLAUS is roiling, reminding me for some perverse reason of the dispute between the archangel Michael and the devil over the body of Moses (Jude 9 and the lost Testament of Moses). You can decide who gets to be Michael and who gets to be old Nick. Not to be confused, of course, with St. Nick.

Related item here.

THE TOP DISCOVERIES OF 2009, "related to the biblical world," according to Todd Bolen have been posted at his Bible Places blog. He also has a good list of his additional 2009 posts on major discoveries and stories of 2009. And he notes the National Geographic list of Top Ten Archaeology Finds: Most Viewed of 2009. Only one of these is even tangentially related to the Bible or ancient Judaism: GOLD HOARD PICTURES: Largest Anglo-Saxon Treasure Found, the Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon gold hoard, which included a gold strip inscribed with a quotation from the Latin Vulgate, as I noted here. Photo here.

ONE MORE TIME: another Alexa-based ranking of biblioblogs, this one for December, 2009 by Joseph Kelly at Kol ha-Adam.

(Via James McGrath.)

A MEDITATION ON THE LEGEND OF AHER (Elisha ben Abuyah) is cited by Rabbi Yair Hoffman in the Five Towns Jewish Times in an essay on responses to morally fallen Torah scholars in Jewish tradition:

In conclusion, there is a fascinating Kochvei Ohr which discusses the sin of Acher – Elisha Ben Abuyah - the teacher of Rabbi Meir and the sage who fell. While talking to his teacher who went off the path of Torah, Acher the teacher told Rabbi Meir that he had reached the Shabbos boundary. Rabbi Meir asked him how he knew. The teacher said that he was counting the footsteps of his horse. Rabbi Meir asked Acher to come back and return to Judaism. Acher responded that he could not because he was privy to a Bas Kol that said, “Return you wayward sons all except Acher – who knew my Glory and rebelled against Me..”
Rabbi Meir tried to convince him to come back anyway. Rav Yitzchok Blaser – the author of the Kochvei Ohr and student of Rabbi Yisroel Salanter asks two questions: The first is that how could it be that Hashem did not want the penance of Acher? The second question he asked was how it could be that Rabbi Meir is going against a Bas Kol – a direct request from Hashem Himself?
The Kochvei Ohr answers that generally speaking Teshuva is always somewhat tainted. We know that Hashem will accept our Teshuva ultimately if we offer it and He will forgive us. Even though it is tainted in this manner, nonetheless, Hashem does not care and accepts it anyway.
This is true for most people. However, Acher was so depraved and had fallen so far that he needed a completely perfect Teshuvah. He required a Teshuvah untainted by the knowledge that it would be accepted.
Hashem wanted Acher to perform this type of Teshuva and that is why Acher heard that Bas Kol. Rabbi Meir was aware of this, while his own teacher was not. He tried convincing him to do real Teshuvah anyway – even though it would not have been accepted.
We see from the words of Rav Blaser how very much Hashem wants everyone to do Teshuvah. May all of us be zocheh to a complete Teshuva in all that he do wrong. Amain.

I had never heard this story before. I have discussed the Aher legend in another context in an earlier post here.

WELL GOOD.

Uranus and Neptune get Hebrew names at last
By Yair Ettinger (Haaretz)

Call it Star Wars. In the end, Oron defeated Shahak and Rahab prevailed over Tarshish as the Hebrew Language Academy on Wednesday unveiled the new names of two planets referred to until now by non-Hebrew names. Henceforth, Uranus will be known as "Oron" and Neptune as "Rahab."

Astronomy and language experts selected the four proposed names, but the general public was allowed to make the final decision.

[...]

Both Hebrew names were inspired by their Greek and Latin equivalents. Rahab, like Neptune, comes from the nautical world: It is the name of a sea monster in the Bible and Talmud. A source at the Academy said Oron was chosen partly because of its phonetic similarity to the word Uranus and partly because "Oron means small light - hinting at the pale light the planet emits when seen from Earth because of its great distance from the sun."

[...]

Background here.

THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE by Shlomo Sand is reviewed by Ricki Hollander for CAMERA. Not surprisingly, she doesn't like it. Excerpts:

When it comes to undermining the legitimacy of the Jewish state, there is no thesis too absurd to be published. In fact, one can assume that any book attacking the idea of Jewish nationalism will gain a following (and even garner awards), regardless of how preposterous the underlying thesis.

Such is the case with "The Invention of the Jewish People," a book by Shlomo Sand who teaches French history at Tel Aviv University. The thesis: There is no such thing as a Jewish people; today's Jews have no connection to biblical Israelites or to Jews who inhabited Israel during the time of the Second Temple; rather, they are descended from disparate groups of people who converted to Judaism and had no ties to the land of Israel. Conversely, there was no exile of Jews from the land of Israel; most Jews remained in the land, converted to Islam and were the progenitors of present-day Palestinians.

Sand acknowledges his mission is to prove invalid the foundation of Zionism – the idea of a Jewish state built on a Jewish ancestral homeland — and to promote instead the idea of a single non-Jewish state of Arabs and Jews. His qualifications for this project lie – not in Jewish history scholarship (his field is French nationalism and cinema), but – in his communist, anti-nationalist and anti-Zionist background and politics (which he proudly mentions in the book's preface). His thesis whereby Arabs – and not Jews– are the rightful inheritors of the land provides the support for his political argument.

[...]

Sand is unable to adequately explain away this longstanding belief in a common heritage, or the writings, prayers, practices,, customs and rituals which form the essence of a Jewish national consciousness. He feebly attempts to dismiss them as inconsequential, religious practices and the bible as a "marginal" book of fairy tales. But by pretending that a true national consciousness arose only as a result of recent historians who "invented" the concept of a Jewish people, Sand essentially ignores everything that Jews believed in before that. It is just such a longstanding, shared consciousness (even among those who are not religiously observant) that forms the core of nationhood. The very fact that for thousands of years, Jews shared the same bonds to the land of Israel and regarded themselves — and others regarded them — as a people, itself invalidates Sand's contentions to the contrary. Unable to dismiss this salient fact, Sand involves himself with irrelevant, meaningless arguments, however false.

[...]

More reviews here.

WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY? At the Bible and Interpretation website, Professor Gerd Lüdemann has a brief essay on "What Jesus Never Said," i.e., the sayings of Jesus recorded in the canonical and noncanonical gospels which are judged to be inauthentic by modern scholars. Excerpt:

It has long been a truism of Biblical criticism that the New Testament abounds in examples of words attributed to Jesus both incorrectly and subsequent to the actual or purported events to which those utterances are related. In reconstructing what Jesus actually did say, researchers have largely ignored the invented sayings in order to concentrate on the authentic passages. Exhaustive work has been done in the latter domain – examining how the sayings are connected and attempting to determine their specific context – in order to assemble as complete a picture as possible.

In this essay I propose to inspect the other side of the coin by considering a selection of the inauthentic words of Jesus – both clearly invented sayings and those that reveal noteworthy alterations to what must have been their original form. In the latter cases, of course, it will be necessary to include both versions. My collection of inauthentic logia will, I trust, enable the reader to see the fictional sayings as a collective phenomenon worthy of serious consideration. At the same time, they will yield an important image of the early Christian mentality and thus a better concept of how the early church came into being.

Oddly, the essay does not cite or quote a single saying of Jesus, authentic or inauthentic, although it does manage to quote the Apostle Paul twice. Apparently this is a teaser for the author's 2001 and 2008 books. But an example or two would have been nice.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE HELIODORUS STELE are being asked by Mark Elliott and Paul V.M. Flesher at the Bible and Interpretation website. Excerpt:

In short, we would argue that there are many questions which need to be answered about the Heliodorus Stele, above and beyond the inscription written upon it: when was it found; how was it found; if it were looted from Beit Guvrin, did the dig directors know when and how it was taken; did the IAA and the Parks Authority know that such looting was going on and, if so, what steps did they take to prevent further looting; how did Gil Chaya really come into possession of the stele; how did the Steinhardts find out about it and buy it; how much did they pay for it and was Chaya allowed to keep the money; why wasn't the sale stopped; why was the sale allowed in the first place; what role did the Israel Museum play in this; and why isn't the IAA (and the dig directors) questioning all this if the object has been shown through analysis to come from the same place on a licensed dig as three other similar objects?

Background here.

WILLIS BARNSTONE, author of The Restored New Testament is interviewed about his long and interesting career by Bowdoin Magazine (he is a Bowdoin College alumnus). Excerpt:

On Translating:

In your introductions to your Biblical translations, you mention translators from ages past whose lives were endangered by their work. As you've labored on the New Testament, have there been any passages where you wondered if your own choice of words might be considered threatening to prevailing beliefs?

Of course, throughout. That, and the literary love I have for demotic Greek, is one of the main reasons for doing that 10-year project. This is a huge subject, so I should probably stop here. But in my Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice (Yale, 1993), I do talk a lot about such things. Yes, restoring the biblical Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew names of place and person, may be threatening. Actually, my response from people, from right to left, from atheist to believer, is that what I've offered is not a threat but good information. We're in a fine ecumenical period, and people want to know more. Hence the luck now with The Gnostic Bible. Silence now.

I suppose that more technically accurate transliterations of the names and more literal translations of key phrases could be helpful to novice readers and for getting the attention of non-specialist readers who are used to current translations. It seems a little grating to me, but that may be because things seem obvious to me which are not obvious to the target audience.

Reviews of The Restored New Testament are noted here. And I noted a review of The Gnostic Bible some years ago here.

THE ZOHAR is briefly profiled by Eli Dahan in the Learning Biblical Hebrew blog. Substantially accurate, although there is some room for thinking that the composition of the Zohar involved collaboration by R. Moses de Léon and others, sometimes using older sources. Background here.

EGYPTIAN BLOGGER Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman (Karim Amer) continues to languish in an Egyptian prison for criticizing Islamic extremists and the Egyptian Government. He has just lost his final appeal.

Egypt court upholds 4-year sentence for blogger

Tue Dec 22, 2009 3:36pm EST

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court confirmed the four-year jail sentence imposed on an Egyptian student blogger for posting writings critical of Islam and the government, the state news agency MENA said.

[...]

Background here and keep following the links back.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION coming to Milwaukee receives coverage in the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle:

Controversy and intrigue surround Dead Sea Scrolls

By Leon Cohen

Controversy has swirled around the Dead Sea Scrolls since the first ones were discovered in 1947. Some of these controversies have been scholarly, but others have been theological and even involve anti-Semitism and the Arab-Israel conflict.

The Milwaukee Public Museum will be mounting the largest temporary exhibit it has ever produced around some of these scrolls and associated artifacts for a limited engagement beginning Jan. 22.

According to Carter Lupton, head of the museum’s history and anthropology sections, this exhibit, titled “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible,” is probably the first time these materials have been brought to the city and the state.

But to obtain and display them, he and the museum have had to thread their way through some of those controversies.

[...]

The article covers the issues with a high level of accuracy for the most part, but I do have one significant criticism:

This campaign intensified in 1990, when [John] Strugnell revealed himself to be an anti-Semite in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in 1990. (“Judaism is originally racist…. The correct answer of Jews to Christianity is to become Christian.)

Frankly, I think it is irresponsible journalism to include this paragraph without ever noting that Strugnell suffered from bipolar disorder (aggravated at the time by alcoholism) and that he made these comments during a manic episode. More on that here.

THE RESTORED NEW TESTAMENT by Willis Barnstone has been reviewed a couple of time recently. I have not yet seen this new translation.

First, "Writer seeks to restore Bible's Jewish roots" by Don Lattin in the San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt:

We're here to talk about this extraordinary opus, a lifetime of work that seeks to radically restore the historical Jewish context of these all-too-familiar stories about the lives and times of an itinerant rabbi named Yeshua, a.k.a. Jesus Christ.

Back to Jewish names

That's the first thing you notice about this Bible. The names have been changed, and not to protect the innocent. Other Bibles make it too easy to forget the fact that Jesus and his first 12 followers were Jews. This Bible starts by restoring the Jewish names of the purported authors of the familiar gospel stories. Matthew becomes Mattityahu. Mark morphs into Markos, Luke is Loukas. John appears as Yohanan. John the Baptist is renamed Yohanan the Dipper.

Barnstone adds three other versions of the story, the recently discovered Gnostic gospels of Toma (Thomas), Yehuda (Judas) and Miryam of Magdala (Mary Magdalene), and argues in his commentary that they are at least as important and potentially accurate depictions as the canonical accounts that made it past the theological censors and into that ancient anthology we call the Bible.

The next thing you notice about the Barnstone Bible is the poetry, which is this translator's real passion.

Sitting in his kitchen, which like every other room in this house is filled with books, Barnstone lights up when he starts talking about how these texts began as spoken stories. They were later sung and chanted in verse. Most modern Bibles have lost that sense.

"It's poetry locked in prose," he says between bites of his bagel.

Then "The New Testament as Dan Brown conspiracy theory" by Fr Richard Ounsworth OP in the Catholic Herald. Excerpt:

Well, it would be ridiculous to deny that anti-Semitism has been a powerful force in the history of Christianity, and perhaps some readers of the New Testament are unaware of the Jewishness of Jesus and his disciples and of St Paul and the other apostolic writers. If so, then perhaps a fresh translation that gives us the Aramaic names these men probably had is no bad thing. I must confess I find it rather contrived and irritating after a while, but perhaps I am fortunate in being more familiar with the thoroughly Jewish milieu of the New Testament, able to see in the word "Jesus" the Greek "Iesous" that translates the Hebrew "Yehoshua" and the Aramaic "Yeshua".

But it is quite unfair of Barnstone to imply that he is uncovering a 2,000-year-old plot to pretend that Christianity did not emerge from Judaism and that Christ and the Apostles were not Jews.

For every modern Scripture scholar who appears in the footnotes of this book denouncing the Church for inventing the figure of Judas there are a dozen or more others whose serious and sober scholarship engages seriously with the historical and theological questions of the origins of Christianity and is entirely ignored.

Barnstone himself is a serious scholar of literature, especially of poetry. Indeed, he discerns in many of the words of Jesus a poetic resonance which he shows by printing them as poetry within his translation; he does the same thing with many of the Epistles, and with the Apocalypse. Some of this versification is more convincing, some less.

I cannot decide whether I think these translations are powerful and resonant, offering a fresh and exciting reading of texts that are always in danger of becoming stale, or irritatingly idiosyncratic and eccentric. Perhaps they are both.

I suggest that readers make up their own minds. Just beware of accepting uncritically the impression that scholars all acknowledge a picture of Jesus and the origins of Christianity that the Church has been hiding from you for generations.

Regarding the latter review, the title is a little over the top, although the reviewer probably was not the one who came up with it. But he did say this:

So after the four canonical gospels Barnstone gives us his new and very good translations of the "Gospels" of Thomas, Mary (Magdalene) and Judas, and I can see no reason why these should not be read and studied. It is, though, perhaps a little sneaky to call a book that does this the Restored New Testament, with the implication that somehow these were hitherto either lost or hidden.

There is a little of the Dan Brown conspiracy theory about this. I suppose if one does not believe in inspiration, or the authority of the Church to determine the canon of scripture, then one can simply devise one's own canon according to one's historical theories or aesthetic preferences.

Or, whatever one's beliefs, a historian can approach these documents as a historian without worrying about the anachronistic conception of "canon." And, if I may say it, it is a little disingenuous (or perhaps just ill-informed) to imply that these documents were not "either lost or hidden." All three were lost for many centuries and the Gospel of Thomas survived complete only by virtue of someone having hidden a copy with a collection of other non-canonical scriptures (etc.; the Nag Hammadi Library) in a buried jar, possibly to prevent them from being destroyed during a time of persecution. The Gospel of Mary is known from one Coptic manuscript that was rediscovered (in a tomb?) at the end of the nineteenth century but only published in the 1950s. Small fragments of both Gospels in Greek were also recovered among the Oxyrhynchus papyri. The Gospel of Judas may also have been found among grave goods in a tomb.

UPDATE (30 December): Dead link fixed now. Sorry about that. And more here.

THE SISTERS OF SINAI by Janet Soskice is reviewed in the Christian Century by Jean K. Dudek. Excerpts:

Imagine this: after a nine-day camel ride from Suez in 1892, identical twin sisters from Scotland arrive at the Greek Orthodox Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai. They find a decrepit manuscript of the Gospels, unread for at least a millennium, written in an obscure language that one of the twins had started learning only a few months previously. The manuscript astounds biblical scholars and fascinates the Bible-reading public.

It's a preposterous story. And it's true. Janet Soskice, professor of philosophical theology at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Jesus College, has written a lively and lucid biography of these intrepid sisters, Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dun lop Gibson (1843-1926 and 1843-1920, respectively). Don't let the title be a turnoff. The phrase "lady adventurers" might be grating, and some of us may feel we're going to scream if we see one more book purporting to reveal hitherto unknown secrets from "hidden Gospels," but not to worry. The subjects' gender is a significant part of the story, and what they found was a manuscript of the four canonical Gospels.

[...]

Much of the book is devoted to the sisters' first trip to Mount Sinai to look for ancient biblical manuscripts, particularly those written in Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic spoken by Jesus. Their big find, in a closet in a desert monastery, was the earliest known Syriac version of the four Gospels—in the form of difficult-to-read underwriting in a palimpsest manuscript, the pages having been scraped and the text written over. The twins struggled to get the appropriate experts at Cambridge to look at their photographs, then traveled back to Sinai with scholars who could help transcribe the text. They wrangled with the various experts about getting the text published and about who deserved credit for what.

A few years after finding the Syriac Gospels, Lewis and Gibson bought some manuscript pages in Hebrew that turned out to be part of the book of Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben Sira). This was exciting because until then Ecclesiasticus had been known only in translation, and some doubted that there had ever been an original in Hebrew.

[...]

For earlier reviews go here and follow the links back.

PRIVY ANGELS:

World of the Sages: Guardian angels
By LEVI COOPER (Jerusalem Post)

The Talmud prescribes a statement to be made before one enters the rest room to relieve himself: "Be ennobled, O noble ones, holy ones, servants of the supreme one; render honor to the God of Israel, disengage yourselves from me until after I enter, do what I will and return to you" (B. Brachot 60b) - a request that the angels that accompany us leave while we momentarily attend to our bodily functions.

One talmudic sage - Abbaye - objected to this formula: One should not tell the angels to leave, lest they indeed leave and do not return. The danger of the angels deserting the person when he enters the rest room was reason enough for Abbaye to suggest an alternative text: "Guard me, guard me; aid me, aid me; assist me, assist me; wait for me, wait for me - while I enter and exit, for such is the way of people."

What is the charge of these angels? In this passage their function is unclear, yet elsewhere their task is apparent (B. Ta'anit 11a): Our sages tell us that whoever suffers along with the community when the community is faced with tribulations will merit to witness the consolation of the community. The Talmud notes that a person may wonder: Who will testify that I did not share in the community's anguish? According to one approach, the two angels who escort a person may serve at witnesses.

[...]

THE ERETZ ISRAEL MUSEUM in Tel Aviv is profiled by Carl Hoffman in the Jerusalem Post. Excerpt:

HOW DID this eclectic mix of attractions come into being? According to spokeswoman Miri Tzdaka, 37, the Eretz Israel Museum began in 1953 as an on-site exhibition of the archeological excavations of Tel Qasile, a Philistine port city that flourished along the Yarkon River from the 12th to the 10th centuries BCE. Among the first archeological sites unearthed within the new State of Israel, excavation at Tel Qasile was started in 1948 by Prof. Benjamin Mazar. Subsequent excavations on three Philistine temples, built one on top of the other, were conducted in 1971-1972. The Eretz Israel Museum grew around the Tel Qasile excavations, which continue to be a focal point and major attraction of the museum.

The main pavilions are clustered not far from the entrance to the complex at Rehov Haim Levanon 2. First, however, the visitor passes a vintage 1917 fire engine, rescued from a junk heap and lovingly restored at the instigation of Ilan Cohen, current director of the museum.

The ceramics and glass pavilions are extensive, offering comprehensive displays of objects from this area's successive historical periods. The Ceramics Pavilion tells the story of Neolithic people's discovery that fired clay becomes watertight; the introduction of pottery; and the evolution of pottery designs and functions. Thepavilion also contains a reconstruction of a biblical-period home. The popular Glass Pavilion features rare and beautiful objects from 3,000 years of glass-making, from its introduction to Israel in the 15th century BCE through the Medieval era.

The Kadman Numismatic Pavilion features an extensive collection of coins from all of the country's historical periods, right up until today, as well as bank notes, certificates and other marginalia, like weights.

TREASURE HUNTERS in the Holy Land:

Tales of hidden gold reveal mysterious niche in Ottoman-era bridge

By Eli Ashkenazi (Haaretz)

The Ottoman-era railway bridge stood over Tavor Stream for more than a century, but recently it was nearly brought down by rumors about a trove of gold hidden in its foundations.

[...]

Three years ago, however, tunnels were found at the bridge's foundation. under the bridge. "We didn't have the slightest idea why someone would be digging there," the deputy director of the Society for the Preservation of Buildings and Historic Sites, Omri Shalmon, who visited the site, related.

His organization, together with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and Israel Railways, began regular patrols of the area and apprehended the diggers. The perpetrators, men from the nearby village of Shibli, told police officers they were digging for Ottoman gold hidden in the bridge by its builders. They even produced tattered maps they claimed clearly indicated the location of the treasure trove.

[...]

To the preservation society's surprise, during the work a mysterious niche was uncovered in the northwest corner of the bridge, made of concrete slabs. Shalmon believes it was probably built into the bridge several years after its completion. "It's not from the Turkish period, they didn't have slabs like that," he said.

The purpose of the niche remains unclear, but it may well be the source of the tales told in Shibli about hidden gold. Some believe it was made by the British, for weapons storage or with the aim of holding explosives in the event the bridge needed to be destroyed.

[...]

Another chapter in the long and creative history of treasure maps for this part of the world, some apparently real and some not so much. See, for example, here, here, here, here, and here.

APOCRYPHA WATCH: Some weird, but I suppose seasonally-relevant, medieval Ben Sira apocrypha (which I guess counts as meta-apocrypha?) is noted by Michael Handelzalts in his Pen Ultimate column in Haaretz. This in the context of a discussion of the origins of the term "New Testament" in a phrase first used by the prophet Jeremiah.

The birth of Jesus commemorated on Christmas Day is a result of virginal conception by Mary. In the context of Jeremiah and the New Testament, it is particularly relevant to note here that there was a virginal conception in his own family as well (more of which anon).

One of the apocryphal books of the Bible - the third collection of writings (the so-called Apocrypha) - is the book of Ecclesiasticus (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes, or Kohelet, in the Old Testament). It is a book, as stated in its prologue, of "[the wisdom of] Jesus, as he himself witnesseth, [who] was a man of great diligence and wisdom among the Hebrews, who did not only gather the grave and short sentences of wise men, that had been before him, but himself also uttered some of his own, full of much understanding and wisdom. When as therefore the first Jesus died, leaving this book almost perfected, Sirach his son receiving it after him left it to his own son Jesus, who, having gotten it into his hands, compiled it all orderly into one volume."

Ecclesiasticus is not part of the Jewish canon, of course, but a book attributed to Ben Sira is mentioned by the Hebrew sages. It includes two collections, one in Aramaic and the other in Hebrew, of proverbs and pearls of wisdom, arranged in alphabetical order, written or compiled probably in the 11th century. In the preface to the second collection is the story of Ben Sira himself. Born with the ability to speak (and thus to argue with his teachers from a very early age, like Jesus did with the doctors), Ben Sira was the son of Jeremiah's daughter - and the fruit of virginal conception. Since she was virtuous and could not have sinned, the assumption was that she fell pregnant while immersing herself in a ritual bath, by the seed of a male who bathed in it beforehand.

Ben Sira claims - verbally to his mother, but elsewhere in writing - that he is the son of Jeremiah himself. Of course, we only have his word on this, but he says the prophet was forced by wicked men from the tribe of Ephraim, to whom Jeremiah had preached against spilling their seed in the bath, to perform that act himself under the threat of being sodomized. The prophet's seed thus impregnated his own daughter. (Incidentally, the book of Ben Sira is used by rabbis as a basis for halakhic rulings on the use of artificial insemination.)

To make a short story long, it is possible to see in Ben Sira's book a later, Jewish parody of the story of the virginal conception of Jesus, which is the cause for worldwide celebration today. And this is a fitting coda to our discussion of the new covenant - a term first used in the Old Testament.

The chronology of the story doesn't work: Jeremiah lived in the seventh-sixth centuries BCE and Ben Sira in the third-second. But apocrypha frequently do not trouble themselves much about such matters.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all those celebrating. Past historical notes on Christmas are here and here. For the New Testament birth narratives in Matthew 1 and Luke 1-2 and the prologue to the Gospel of John (John 1:1-18) follow the links. And don't forget the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Infancy Gospel of James.

And then there's "Santa and His Asherah" by William H. Propp (BAR). Bill Propp wrote this when he was a postgraduate at Harvard and I remember he read it out at a departmental Christmas party in the mid-80s when he was back in town. I just found out that he had actually published it. Requires a paid subscription to read it all, but if you have one, do have a look and a laugh.

UPDATE: Zohar Laor has holiday photos of the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, which has been in the news lately because of the first-century house excavated next door.

SHROUD OF TURIN UPDATE: I've updated this post with further information regarding the weave of the Shroud (in the context of the discussion of the very different weave of the Jerusalem Shroud).

ANOTHER EMPTY TOMB TALE (via James McGrath).

There is a similar story about Shabbetai Zvi (Sabbetai Sevi), the seventeen-century mystical messiah of sin, although it is arguably at least indirectly dependent on the accounts of the empty tomb in the Gospels. And related is the very modern apotheosis of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, which reportedly includes resurrection appearances (follow the links back).

INNOVATIVE KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER in Israel:

Israeli history lecturers go 'on the rails'

By Heather Sharp
BBC News, Modiin, Israel

"I'm not nervous, but I hope I won't feel nauseous," joked Professor Isaiah Gafni, as he prepared to deliver his slightly unusual lecture.

But once the commuters were settled, he gripped an upholstered seat back with one hand, two weighty tomes in the other, and launched with gusto into his exposition of the documentary evidence of the Maccabean Jewish revolt in the 2nd Century BCE.

Few of the passengers on the 0905 train from Modiin to Tel Aviv were expecting this.

But most seemed willing to hear out the bespectacled historian, as he re-examined the story, taught in Israeli kindergartens and schools, of the Jewish rebellion which is commemorated in the festival of Hannukah.

'Crazy idea'

Lecturers "on the rails" is an initiative launched recently by Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to bring academia to the general public.

[...]

This is a fun idea and I can see it working in Israel, where interest in history is so pervasive, but perhaps not in many other places.

ANOTHER HISTORICAL-TERRITORIAL DISPUTE IN JERUSALEM:

Vatican, Israel joust over Jerusalem site
The Mt. Zion site where Jesus is believed to have gathered his disciples for the Last Supper was lost to the Roman Catholic Church more than 450 years ago. No accord was reached in the latest talks.
Mixed-heritage Jerusalem site

By Edmund Sanders (Los Angeles Times)

December 23, 2009

Reporting from Jerusalem - The government of Israel seems to be embracing the Christmas spirit. This week it is organizing carols and tree giveaways in Jerusalem, bus service to Bethlehem and even a fireworks show in Nazareth with an apparent eye on burnishing the nation's reputation for religious diversity.

But Israel won't be giving the Christmas gift near the top of the Vatican's wish list this year: possession of a Mt. Zion holy site where Jesus is believed to have gathered his disciples for the Last Supper.

The Roman Catholic Church has been fighting for more than 450 years to win back control of the Crusader-era sanctuary, also known as the Holy Cenacle, which was seized from Franciscan monks around 1551 during the Ottoman Empire.

Vatican officials had hoped to made a deal with Israel this year, but the latest round of negotiations ended this month without an agreement, leading some to say that the impasse is souring diplomatic relations between the two sides.

[...]

MASADA'S ANCIENT SYNAGOGUE is back in use for a special project:

Behind a Glass Wall: Work on Masada's Torah Scroll

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) A ritual scribe has begun spending his days behind a glass wall in the famous Masada synagogue – writing a Torah scroll to be installed there.

The young scribe, Shai Abramovitch, moved from the northern city of Tzfat, together with his wife and three young children, to the Negev city of Arad, in order to be able to carry out and complete the project. He will make the 45-minute Arad-Massada trek each morning after immersing in a mikveh (ritual bath) – a customary prelude to ritual scribes' work – and will return after seven and a half hours of painstaking writing.

His glass-enclosed“office” is in the very spot used as a synagogue by hundreds of Jews who found refuge from the Romans on Masada some 2,000 years ago. Hard at work throughout the day, the scribe can be seen through the glass by the many tourists who visit the famous site.

[...]

The office will include a webcam.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE ISRAEL MUSEUM, which has just received a $12 million grant from the Mandel Foundation in Cleveland.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Women are protesting patriarchal policies at the Western Wall.

Challenging Traditions at the Heart of Judaism

By ISABEL KERSHNER (New York Times)
Published: December 21, 2009

JERUSALEM — A struggle for the character of the Western Wall, this city’s iconic Jewish holy site and central place of worship, is under way, and it is being fought with prayer shawls and Torah scrolls.

On Friday, sheets of rain obscured the Old City’s ancient domes. But by 7 a.m. about 150 Jewish women had gathered at the Western Wall to pray and to challenge the constraints imposed on them by traditional Jewish Orthodoxy and a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court.

Under their coats many of the women, supporters of a group of religious activists called Women of the Wall, wore a tallit, or fringed prayer shawl, a ritual garment traditionally worn only by men. Some wore their prayer shawls openly, an illegal act in this particular setting that can incur a fine or several months in jail.

[...]

LEONARD RUTGERS has a new book out on the early history of anti-Semitism:

From Roman to Third Reich: anti-Semitism has long history

Published: 21 December 2009 14:03 | Changed: 21 December 2009 15:30

The Holocaust has its roots in Roman times, according to Dutch professor Leonard Rutgers, who published a book recently on how the Jewish identity was shaped in Christian minds.

By Dirk Vlasbom (NRC International)

In 388 AD a Christian mob led by a local bishop destroyed the synagogue of Callinicum, a Greco-Roman city in northern Syria. The attack angered emperor Theodosius I, who had declared Christianity the religion of the Roman state just eight years earlier. As the Jewish community enjoyed a protected status under Roman laws, he ordered the synagogue be rebuilt be rebuilt at bishop’s expense. This triggered Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, to write the emperor a letter defending the obliteration of the Jewish temple. What could possibly be wrong with destroying a “house of betrayal and godlessness” where Christ’s name was sullied on a daily basis, Ambrose asked.

Since the second century, Christian leaders had been publishing texts denouncing “the synagogue”, a metaphor for all the followers of Judaism in the Roman empire. While American historians have dismissed these attacks as 'ideological constructions,' Leonard Rutgers, a professor of Late Antiquity at the University of Utrecht specialised in religion, recently published a book disputing this rosy perspective. His book, Making Myths – Jews in early Christian identity formation, describes how the verbal violence directed at the Jewish population by the church leaders became physical in the fourth century.

[...]

JAMES TABOR has Some Thoughts on "Silent Night" at the Bible and Interpretation website. In it he discusses the possible birthdates (year and day) and paternity of Jesus, although he notes quite correctly that the any fine-tuned discussion of the date is based on evidence "which most historians would place wholly in the realm of the theological." I suspect the December 25th date really caught on because it helped keep Europeans from killing themselves from SAD in mid-winter.

THE NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS OF BABY JESUS? A first-century Jewish house excavated in Nazareth - next to the Church of the Annuciation:

Residential building from the time of Jesus exposed in Nazareth
21 Dec 2009
The remains were discovered in an archaeological excavation of the Israel Antiquities Authority near the Church of the Annunciation.

(Communicated by the Israel Antiquities Authority)

An archaeological excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority recently conducted has revealed new information about ancient Nazareth from the time of Jesus. Remains of a dwelling that date to the Early Roman period were discovered for the first time in an excavation, which was carried out prior to the construction of the "International Marian Center of Nazareth" by the the Association Mary of Nazareth, next to the Church of the Annunciation.

[...]

According to Yardenna Alexandre, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, "The discovery is of the utmost importance since it reveals for the very first time a house from the Jewish village of Nazareth and thereby sheds light on the way of life at the time of Jesus. The building that we found is small and modest and it is most likely typical of the dwellings in Nazareth in that period. From the few written sources that there are, we know that in the first century CE Nazareth was a small Jewish village, located inside a valley. Until now a number of tombs from the time of Jesus were found in Nazareth; however, no settlement remains have been discovered that are attributed to this period."

In the excavation a large broad wall that dates to the Mamluk period (the fifteenth century CE) was exposed that was constructed on top of and "utilized" the walls of an ancinet building. This earlier building consisted of two rooms and a courtyard in which there was a rock-hewn cistern into which the rainwater was conveyed. The artifacts recovered from inside the building were few and mostly included fragments of pottery vessels from the Early Roman period (the first and second centuries CE). In addition, several fragments of chalk vessels were found, which were only used by Jews in this period because such vessels were not susceptible to becoming ritually unclean.

[...]

How's that for timing? Although the IAA must have been sitting on this for a while.

IN THE MAIL:

Daniel M. Gurtner, Second Baruch: A Critical Edition of the Syriac Text (Jewish and Christian Texts in Contexts and Related Studies 5; New York: T&T Clark, 2009)

Bill Rebiger and Peter Schäfer, Sefer ha-Razim I und II - Das Buch der Geheimnisse I und II: Band 1: Edition (TSAJ 125; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009)

Review copies for the SOTS Booklist.

THE WINTER SOLSTICE is today. Best wishes to all those celebrating. Although maybe not at Stonehenge. And happy Yalda Festival too of course.

THE KANDO FAMILY BUSINESS is still operating:

Bethlehem souvenir shop still open

BY ELLEN CREAGER
[DETROIT] FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Dear Travel Diva: Is the Kando Store souvenir shop still open in Bethlehem in the West Bank? -- Middle East Wondering

Dear Wondering: Yes. "The store still open, and we are a family that will never ever think leaving our homes and our land that we've grown in, especially this city, the most holy city in this world," wrote owner Shibly Kando via e-mail. "We are like the fish; if it comes out from its water, it will die."

The Kandos are Christians, a minority in Bethlehem. The big store features antiques, jewelry and gifts made in the West Bank. Shibly Kando's grandfather, an antiques dealer, helped discover the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.

"Tourism has picked up lately," Shibly Kando wrote. "We can say that it's a little better than before, but still if we compare with how it was before 2001, it's still not 10% of that yet."

Kando, of course, was the antiquities dealer who dealt with the first Dead Sea Scrolls. The article is a bit confusing: Kando's shop was in East Jerusalem (and I know it was still there at least into the late 1980s) although he also operated out of Bethlehem, where he had a cobbler's shop. Perhaps there is another family shop in Bethlehem? For more on Kando see here, here, here, and here.

WHO WROTE THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS? asks a nice article by Andrew Lawler in the Smithsonian. The piece covers pretty much all the responsible theories about the Scrolls and the site of Qumran and is worth reading in full. Excerpt:

Tour guides shepherding the tourists through the modest desert ruins speak of the scrolls’ origin, a narrative that has been repeated almost since they were discovered more than 60 years ago. Qumran, the guides say, was home to a community of Jewish ascetics called the Essenes, who devoted their lives to writing and preserving sacred texts. They were hard at work by the time Jesus began preaching; ultimately they stored the scrolls in 11 caves before Romans destroyed their settlement in A.D. 68.

But hearing the dramatic recitation, Peleg, 40, rolls his eyes. “There is no connection to the Essenes at this site,” he tells me as a hawk circles above in the warming air. He says the scrolls had nothing to do with the settlement. Evidence for a religious community here, he says, is unconvincing. He believes, rather, that Jews fleeing the Roman rampage hurriedly stuffed the documents into the Qumran caves for safekeeping. After digging at the site for ten years, he also believes that Qumran was originally a fort designed to protect a growing Jewish population from threats to the east. Later, it was converted into a pottery factory to serve nearby towns like Jericho, he says.

Other scholars describe Qumran variously as a manor house, a perfume manufacturing center and even a tannery. Despite decades of excavations and careful analysis, there is no consensus about who lived there—and, consequently, no consensus about who actually wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“It’s an enigmatic and confusing site,” acknowledges Risa Levitt Kohn, who in 2007 curated an exhibit about the Dead Sea Scrolls in San Diego. She says the sheer breadth and age of the writings—during a period that intersects with the life of Jesus and the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem—make Qumran “a powder keg” among normally placid scholars. Qumran has prompted bitter feuds and even a recent criminal investigation.

Nobody doubts the scrolls’ authenticity, but the question of authorship has implications for understanding the history of both Judaism and Christianity. In 164 B.C., a group of Jewish dissidents, the Maccabees, overthrew the Seleucid Empire that then ruled Judea. The Maccabees established an independent kingdom and, in so doing, tossed out the priestly class that had controlled the temple in Jerusalem since the time of King Solomon. The turmoil led to the emergence of several rival sects, each one vying for dominance. If the Qumran texts were written by one such sect, the scrolls “help us to understand the forces that operated after the Maccabean Revolt and how various Jewish groups reacted to those forces,” says New York University professor of Jewish and Hebraic studies Lawrence Schiffman in his book Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls. “While some sects were accommodating themselves to the new order in various ways, the Dead Sea group decided it had to leave Jerusalem altogether in order to continue its unique way of life.”

For more on the work of Peleg, Golb, and Stacey, see here and here and follow the links. For the Raphael Golb case, go here and follow the links.

A LATE-ANTIQUE SYNAGOGUE in an Arab village southwest of Hebron has been defaced with swastikas.

Swastikas on Walls of Ancient Synagogue in PA City near Hevron

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

(IsraelNN.com) A group of Jews, in a rare visit to the ruins of an ancient synagogue in an Arab village southwest of Hevron, was shocked to discover swastikas scrawled on the walls by Arabs. Israel National News learned that the discovery was made last Friday morning, the same day that Muslims in Samaria accused Jews of setting fire to the second floor of a mosque in a village in Samaria.

[...]

Whoever did it (and I assume no one actually saw it being done), this is very disturbing. For another recent case of vandalism of an antiquities site, see here.