An Akkadian-Arabic dictionary

AN AKKADIAN-ARABIC DICTIONARY:

ADACH announces publication of Akkadian-Arabic dictionary

Mar 21, 2010 - 11:00 -

WAM Abu Dhabi, March 21st, 2010 (WAM) -- The National Library at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) has announced publishing an Akkadian-Arabic dictionary, in a bid to fill the gap of information in that department.

The dictionary, whose compiling was part of ADACH's strategy to promote heritage and support cultural initiatives, is prepared by Dr. Ali Yassin Al Jubouri.

In its introduction, the dictionary addresses issues such as the history of writing Akkadian dictionaries, the language's phonology, and the process of using of Latin script following the deciphering of cuneiform writing in the middle of the nineteenth century.

[...]

Good.

Irish bog Psalter restored and going on display in 2011

THE IRISH BOG PSALTER has been restored and is going on display next year:

Psalter to go on display in 2011

MICHAEL PARSONS (Irishtimes.com)

FOUR YEARS after its sensational discovery in a midlands bog, new photographs today reveal the conservation work on the 1,200-year- old “Faddan More Psalter”.

The National Museum of Ireland has announced that the eighth century religious manuscript “of staggering importance” will go on public display for the first time next year.

The book was found in 2006 by a workman operating a mechanical digger on the bog at Faddan More, near Riverstown in north Co Tipperary.

[...]

He praised the “magical and internationally important work” undertaken by senior conservator, John Gillis.

Mr Gillis (49), who is on secondment to the museum from Trinity College Library, was “confounded” when he first saw what had been salvaged from the bog and initially “transfixed with fear” at the scale of the “once-in-a-lifetime” restoration task.

[...]

The Psalter is compared favorably, if perhaps a little enthusiastically, to the Dead Sea Scrolls

Background here and here (bottom of post) and follow the links.

Tal and Levin receive Israel Prize

CONGRATULATIONS to Abraham Tal and Aryeh Levin:

Israel Prize to two linguists, Abraham Tal and Aryeh Levin

By Or Kashti (Haaretz)

Professor Abraham Tal is the Israel Prize laureate in Hebrew linguistics, and Professor Aryeh Levin is the laureate for general linguistics, Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar announced yesterday.

The prize committee awarded the prize to Tal, of Tel Aviv University, for his achievements in the study of Samaritan traditions and the study of the language of the Targums, in lexicography, for his work as an editor of the Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language and his contribution in producing important students.

[...]

The prize committee honored Levin for excellent achievement in the study of the Hebrew language in the Middle Ages and research into Arabic dialects and for promoting literary and spoken Arabic in various state frameworks. ...

I've worked quite a bit with Tal's publications on Samaritan Hebrew and Aramaic.

(Via the Agade list.)

They belong in a museum!

WHOEVER BUYS THESE should donate them to a museum. Or, at the very least, make them freely available to any scholars who want to study them. I don't see anything in the collection that looks unique, but each artifact has its own tale to tell.

Jodi Magness lecturing in Louisville on looting

JODI MAGNESS is lecturing in Louisville, KY, on looting and antiquities trafficking:

Questions & Answers | Archaeologist Jodi Magness

By Diane Heilenman • dheilenman@courier-journal.com • March 19, 2010

There is passion in the dust of ages — and evil. Looting is loathsome, said Jodi Magness, a distinguished and passionate archaeologist who gives a 6 p.m. talk on “Loot and Lies: Trafficking in Antiquities” on Thursday at the Speed Art Museum, 2035 S. Third St., Louisville. She will be accompanied by filmmaker Gary Glassman, whose “The Bible's Buried Secrets” has been seen on “Nova.” The film airs at 6 p.m. Friday at the museum. Both events are free.

[...]

The article also interviews her briefly.

Angela Kim Harkins lecturing in Bridgeport on DSS

ANGELA KIM HARKINS will be lecturing on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Bridgeport, CT:

Tuesday, March 23
“Dead Sea Scrolls” — Angela Kim Harkins, assistant professor of religious studies at Fairfield University, discusses the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 and today’s perspective on them, 6:30 p.m., Black Rock Branch Library, 2705 Fairfield Ave.; free to the public, 203-337-9676.

Gary Anderson interviewed in Christianity Today

PROFESSOR GARY ANDERSON is interviewed in Christianity Today about his new book, Sin: A History.

Earlier review here.

Samuel's Daughter: A Love Story from Third-Century Parthia

A NEW NOVEL by a Hebrew scholar:

Hebraic scholar's historical novel unfolds love story of young woman caught between two cultures

Samuel's Daughter by Ann Brener creates the portrait of a young Jewish girl taken captive in the wars of ancient Iran and her road back to Judaism

WASHINGTON, D.C. (MMD Newswire) March 17, 2010 -- Samuel's Daughter: A Love Story from Third-Century Parthia by Ann Brener uses the story of the capture of Rabbi Samuel's daughter in 259 A.D. to propel a story about one girl's search for identity in the heart of ancient Iran.

[...]

Hurva Synagogue restoration

HURVA SYNAGOGUE RESTORATION: Okay, so far I've ignored this story and the accompanying hoo-haw, since it's tangential to PaleoJudaica's interests. But here's an article in The Forward that summarizes briefly what's been going on:

No Longer in Ruins

Editorial

Published March 17, 2010, issue of March 26, 2010.

There is plenty to criticize when considering the Israeli government’s recent actions and statements on the future of Jerusalem, but that should not diminish its achievement in restoring the ancient Hurva Synagogue in the heart of the Old City’s Jewish Quarter.

[...]

Ruins of an Umayyad palace in N. Israel

RUINS next to the Sea of Galilee, once thought to be of a synagogue, have now been identified as the remains of a seventh-century Umayyad palace.

UPDATE (18 March): More here on how the misidentification came about.

The Phoenicia navigates Cape of Good Hope

THE GOOD SHIP PHOENICIA has successfully circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope:

Phoenicia team navigate Cape of Good Hope

9:00am Tuesday 16th March 2010 (Dorset Echo)

By Laura Kitching

A PRIMITIVE sailing venture being led by a Dorset adventurer has overcome its biggest challenge yet.

A team of 15 international sailors have breathed a sigh of relief as they successfully completed one of the toughest stretches of a 17,000-mile voyage around Africa – navigating the Cape of Good Hope.

This stretch of coastline is a considerable challenge in any modern sailing yacht, but the Phoenicia team managed it in a replica 600 BC Phoenician wooden ship.

Expedition leader Philip Beale, who conceived the project from his base at East Chaldon, near Lulworth, had described it as the ‘critical point in the expedition’.

[...]

Congratulations and well done!

Background here.

TIght security at Minnesota DSS exhibit

TIGHT SECURITY at the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the Minnesota Science Museum:

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- If you go to see the Dead Sea scrolls exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota, you'll notice you actually have to pass through security first. The museum has beefed up security as part of hosting the historical artifacts.

[...]

And keeping the scrolls safe during their stay in Minnesota is a full time job. Some security you'll see, like bag checks, police officers, cameras. But a lot of security you won't see and museum officials can't talk about.

"You have to take every precaution that you can to protect pieces of our history," says Tim Watts who came to the museum to see the scrolls with his family.

While there are no snipers, bomb-sniffing dogs or members of the Israel Antiquities Authority remaining on-site, science museum officials say the scrolls are in good, secure hands for good reason.

[...]

Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance under construction

THE JERUSALEM MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE is now under construction.

Background here and here.

The Dead Sea Squirrels

A WISCONSIN TOURIST: "Can you give me more information on the Milwaukee Public Museum's 'Dead Sea Squirrels' exhibit?"

Background here.

UPDATE: Related items here and here.

Ancient burials at an Ashkelon hospital site

ANCIENT BURIALS at Ashkelon are making the building of a new hospital complicated. Not sure how I missed this story earlier.

Contested gravesite at Ashkelon hospital may have belonged to pagans

By Haaretz Service
Tags: Israel news

The ancient gravesite at the center of ongoing tensions between the Haredi community and the Health Ministry may have belonged to pagans, as opposed to Jews, according to new findings by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The burial site was discovered when Health Minister Yaakov Litzman attempted to add a new wing to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. Once the gravesite was found at the original construction site, the Antiquities Authority confirmed the graves belonged to Jews, and put the project on indefinite hold.

New information gathered by the Antiquities Authority now reveals that the graves belonged to pagan worshippers. The Authority has asked to be given an additional week to conclude the excavations at the contested site.

Finance Ministry officials said a relocation of the new wing would cost at least NIS 160 million, and would be funded either with money designated for reinforcing other hospital departments or by siphoning money from various other government offices.

[...]

Opening ceremony for Maimonides Synagogue canceled

THE OPENING CEREMONY for the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo has been canceled according to the A.P. Zahi Hawass cites the current political situation in Israel and alleged inappropriate behavior ("dancing and drinking") at an earlier ceremony in the synagogue.

Background here.

(Heads up, Carla Sulzbach.)

Pseudepigrapha lecture at the University of Groningen

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: Lecture today at the University of Groningen:

15 maart Godgeleerdheid en Godsdienstwetenschap: Ancient World Seminar. Titel: Why Should We Read the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha? The Case of the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch. Spreker: Matthias Henze. Plaats: Oude Boteringestraat 38, Groningen. Tijd: 14.00 uur.

UPDATE: More information in English on the Seminar is here. An abstract of of Professor Henze's lecture is here.

James McGrath promoted to rediscovered Chair at Butler

CONGRATULATIONS TO JAMES MCGRATH, who has been promoted to a recently rediscovered Chair at Butler University:

A New Testament Scholar Is Named to a Long-Lost Chair at Butler U.

By Andrea Fuller (Chronicle of Higher Education)

When Harry van der Linden, chair of the philosophy and religion department at Butler University, in Indianapolis, was browsing a registry of endowed funds last fall, he made a curious find: a chair in New Testament studies that had not been filled in over half a century. Immediately, James F. McGrath, an associate professor of religion who blogs about biblical studies, came to mind.

Mr. McGrath, 37, was installed last month as the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair of New Testament Language and Literature, making him the first person to hold the position since 1948.

"It was just listed there, a little paragraph, and it basically said that Mr. Goodwin had given money for this chair and the chair had been occupied one time," Mr. van der Linden says. "And then the story just stopped."

[...]

The professor is now doing research on the Mandaeans, an ancient Gnostic group that survives to day. Mr. McGrath says he is interested in the religion's positive portrayal of John the Baptist and negative portrayal of Jesus. He hopes to work with two of the most important sacred Mandaean texts and translate them into English, and although he has applied for a grant to pursue this project, he says funds from his chair could come in handy.

[...]

James also runs the very active blog Exploring Our Matrix.

Lectureship in NT/Second Temple Judaism at KCL

JOB: A Lectureship in New Testament/Second Temple Judaism at Kings College London:

King's College London seeks a Lecturer in New Testament Studies with a specialism in Second Temple Judaism to join a cutting-edge and highly motivated team in Biblical Studies with effect from 1 April 2011.

The successful candidate will research and teach New Testament Studies (especially in the area of Jesus and the Gospels) in its historical context within Second Temple Judaism. He or she will teach undergraduate courses in New Testament, especially in the area of Jesus and the Gospels, and areas of Second Temple Judaism such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. He or she will contribute to MA programmes in Biblical Studies and in Bible and Ministry, and will work in collaboration with colleagues to ensure that the Department attracts high quality students at both MA & PhD level and that the Department's research output is of world-leading quality.

Details here.

Via the British New Testament Society list.

St. Paul DSS exhibition opened on Friday

THE ST. PAUL DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION opened on Friday:

NOW OPEN - The Dead Sea Scrolls: Words That Changed the World Exhibition at the Science Museum of Minnesota

ST. PAUL, Minn., March 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Science Museum of Minnesota has opened the long-awaited landmark exhibition of The Dead Sea Scrolls: Words That Changed the World today -- Friday, March 12, 2010. This exhibition offers visitors an exclusive chance to explore the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century -- one that has great historic and personal meaning to people all over the world. It will run through October 24, 2010

[...]

Background here.

Conference: Between Contact and Contrast: Jews and Christians in the Sasanian Empire

CONFERENCE: Between Contact and Contrast: Jews and Christians in the
Sasanian Empire. 17 - 18 March 2010, SH 1 / 187, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.

This workshop explores the contacts between Persian Christianity and Babylonian Jewry in the Sasanian Era, aiming to promote greater cooperation between these fields, and further interest in the value of comparison between these two ancient communities. In Sasanian Babylonia Jews and Christians shared both geographical space and a biblical lexicon. Both communities could refer to themselves as the “captivity”, seek out the biblical geography of the region, and perceive of their rulers as either “a second Cyrus” or as Nebuchadnezzar. They both also had to reckon with similar issues, be it an uncertain relationship with Zoroastrianism, interreligious and intercultural influences, or their relationship with the “west”:
Palestine for the Jews; the Roman Empire - and particularly Antioch, for the Christians. Each inherited a canonical literary corpus from its western counterpart, but then proceeded towards a sense of independence and creativity, asserting equality, and even superiority. Each religious community indeed responded to the vicissitudes of the period, and in the course of the centuries of Sasanian rule, carved a unique and distinctive path, creating an extensive religious literature. This workshop, viewing the rich potential for comparison, seeks to probe the processes and dynamics of religious contact and exchange in the Sasanian empire.

The conference flier can be downloaded as a pdf file from here.

Via the H-Judaic list.

Book review: The Dead Sea Scrolls. A Full History. Vol. 1

BOOK REVIEW: The Dead Sea Scrolls. A Full History. Vol. 1 by Weston W. FIELDS. 25 x 17,5; 592 pp. Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2009. — Hardback. ISBN 978-90-04-17581-5.

Reviewed by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor here (downloads as a Word document).

A very thorough review of an extraordinary book.

Via the Agade list.

Azusa Pacific DSS fragments go on display in May

THE AZUSA PACIFIC DEAD SEA SCROLL FRAGMENTS go on display in May:

Dead Sea Scroll Fragments and Biblical Artifacts on Exhibit at Azusa Pacific

Share in one of the greatest archeological discoveries of the 20th century as Azusa Pacific University hosts an exhibition featuring five fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a collection of rare biblical artifacts from May 21–July 18. Tickets are currently on sale at www.apu.edu/deadseascrolls/.

Background here.

The Forward on the Israel Heritage Plan

THE FORWARD on the Israel Heritage Plan:

Whose History?
Editorial

Published March 10, 2010, issue of March 19, 2010.

The diagnosis is correct. The prescription is troubling. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wise to be concerned about the weakening Jewish identity of many Israelis, an issue for Jews everywhere but especially poignant in what is supposed to be the national homeland. The powerful collective identity forged during the early years of Israel’s modern existence has given way to a splintered sense of self, particularly among the young.

But his proposed national heritage project, aimed at preserving Jewish artifacts and teaching schoolchildren about Jewish and Zionist history, is a flawed response. Estimated to cost the equivalent of $100 million, the project has been duly criticized for including sites in the disputed cities of Bethlehem and Hebron. There’s a deeper concern, however.

The thrust of the project appears to be in telling only one narrative, the Jewish one, as if no other kinds of people ever lived on the land. A quick trip to any archaeological site will counter that notion.

[...]

Interview with Dr. Irving Finkel

DR. IRVING FINKEL, Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian Inscriptions at the British Museum, is interviewed in Jewish Ideas Daily:

But for the Grace of Babylon
A British Museum scholar offers a Darwinian explanation for Judaism's survival.

Interviewer: Elliot Jager

On the way to work from his home in south London, Dr. Irving Finkel often finds himself sitting on a bus reading the Hebrew Bible while surrounded by black church ladies studying their Bibles. "If they only knew what I was thinking," he muses.

Unlike his fellow passengers, what the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian Inscriptions at the British Museum is thinking is that the Bible is not the literal word of God, but that it was crystallized during the sixth-century B.C.E. Babylonian exile by a displaced people from Judea who had lost their country, whose deity was invisible, abstract, and unforgiving, and whose monotheism had gone wobbly. Their decision to create "scripture," something that had never before been attempted, saved the refugees' civilization and enshrined their religious identity. The result was Judaism.

Finkel outlined his thesis in a late-February talk at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem entitled "New Light on the Babylonian Exile." He is in the midst of writing a book on the subject, and an American literary agent stands ready to help place it.

[...]

Good interview. More on Dr. Finkel here, here, and here.

Richard Bauckham has a new website

RICHARD BAUCKHAM has a new website.

Book review (H-Judaic): Collins & Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God

BOOK REVIEW: Gerbern Oegema. Review of Collins, Adela Yarbro; Collins, John Joseph, King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. March, 2010.

Excerpt:

This is a fine work with a clear thesis: the term "son of God" must be seen in its historical context as the constantly changing expressions of the books of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, both in the way that they develop throughout history and in the ways that they pick up biblical and ancient tradition, and transform and further develop them in new concepts and beliefs. Both authors complement each other and work with a solid knowledge base. They lead us through the texts with their always careful and sound judgment. They finally underline that we have only partial textual evidence of the possible trajectories of a "son of God" concept and that we must always adapt our reconstructions to this.

More on the St. Paul DSS exhibition

MORE ON THE ST. PAUL DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION, which begins on Friday:

Dead Sea Scrolls come to St. Paul
The ancient scrolls will be exhibited at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Published: 03/09/2010 (mndaily.com)
By Kyle Potter

Tweezers and scissors sat within reach of latex glove-clad hands. Rubber suction handles sat attached to a Plexiglass case.

When dealing with ancient artifacts like the Dead Sea Scrolls, a single slip of the hand could destroy 2,000 years of history.

For the first time, some of these revered documents will be open for Minnesotans to view at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul. Drawing on a University of Minnesota professor for help, the exhibit will open this Friday.

[...]

Background here.

More illicit excavation on the Temple Mount?

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: More destructive, illicit excavation? Arutz Sheva reports the following from The Committee for the Prevention of Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount:

According to the Committee, a bulldozer was seen recently on the Temple Mount dumping huge amounts of earth and artifacts extracted from underneath the mount into a large truck for disposal.

In defense of Israel's Heritage Plan (JTA)

IN DEFENSE of Israel's Heritage Plan:

Op-Ed: In defense of Jewish heritage

By Danny Danon · March 8, 2010

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Imagine if someone forbade you from seeing your loved ones or banned you from visiting the graves of your grandparents. Imagine they told you that you have no right to come to your family home and your identity was simply a figment of your imagination.

Israelis deal with claims like these as a nation each and every day -- constant charges that the Jewish people have no right to their ancient homeland.

A new wave of Palestinian rage was unleashed recently following the inclusion of Judaism’s second holiest shrine, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and the tomb of our matriarch Rachel in Bethlehem on the new list of national heritage sites. It is important to note that the list will serve as a budgetary directive to governmental agencies to ensure that these religious and historical sites receive the appropriate funding for their proper upkeep, not as any sort of political statement.

[...]

Background here and follow the links.

Review of Sin: A History

SIN: A HISTORY, by Gary Anderson, is reviewed by Walter Brueggemann in The Christian Century:

Sin: A History

reviewed by Walter Brueggemann

Sin: A History
by Gary A. Anderson
Yale University Press, 272 pp., $30.00
Anderson suggests how the Anselm tradition might be recovered in ways that are socially alert and systemically demanding.

Gary Anderson, professor of Old Testament at the University of Notre Dame, has written an astonishing book that, in ways typical of his work, moves from close textual reading to the widest vistas of interpretation. As usual, he exhibits uncommon erudition, careful method and disciplined imagination that evokes connections his readers surely would not have otherwise noticed. The general idea of the book is that "sin has a history"—that over time understandings of sin reflected in the Bible and in nonbiblical literature changed in dramatic and significant ways.

Anderson identifies three ways of speaking of sin in the Bible—as stain, as burden and as debt. He scarcely mentions stain (only in his introduction), and he handles burden in one brief chapter, so the focus of his compelling study is on sin as debt. He judges that the transfer of interpretive energy from burden to debt can be traced chronologically, with burden evident in the earlier materials and debt becoming dominant in the Second Temple period and exercising immense influence on rabbinic and early Christian interpretation.

He suggests, in too offhand a way, that the change from burden to debt happened because of the move from Hebrew to Aramaic, and that the vocabulary for sin in Aramaic tilted in the direction of economic imagery. Anderson is a most capable scholar of linguistics, but I find his explanation of the change less than persuasive. Whatever may have been the cause of the transfer from one meaning to another, however, his attention to a mass of detailed texts makes clear that meaning does shift in exactly the way he reports.

[...]

Is Khirbet Qeiyafa biblical Neta'im"?

ANOTHER IDENTIFICATION of the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa:

Khirbet Qeiyafa is Identified as Biblical "Neta'im"

Released: 3/4/2010 8:30 AM EST
Source: University of Haifa

Newswise — Has another mystery in the history of Israel been solved? Prof. Gershon Galil of the Department of Bible Studies at the University of Haifa has identified Khirbet Qeiyafa as "Neta'im", which is mentioned in the book of Chronicles. "The inhabitants of Neta'im were potters who worked in the king's service and inhabited an important administrative center near the border with the Philistines," explains Prof. Galil.

Khirbet Qeiyafa is a provincial town in the Elah Valley region. Archaeological excavations carried out at Khirbet Qeiyafa by a team headed by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel and Mr. Saar Ganor have dated the site to the beginning of the 10th century BCE, namely the time of King David's rule. A Hebrew inscription on a pottery shard found at the site, also dating back to the 10th century, has recently been deciphered by Prof. Galil and indicates the presence of scribes and a high level of culture in the town.

[...]

For discussions of other suggested identifications of the site, go here and here. For the inscription, go here and just keep following the links back. For Professor Galili's highly debatable decipherment, see the latter link and follow the first few links back.

The Lemba and their Jewish DNA

THE LEMBA and their Jewish DNA get some attention in Haaretz:

Report: DNA tests support Zimbabwe tribe's claim of Jewish roots

By Haaretz Service

British scientists have succeeded in proving the Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe and South Africa descended from Jewish ancestors, according to a report by the BBC.

According to the report, the scientists conducted DNA tests on a large sample of the Lemba people, which confirmed Semitic origins dating back more than two millennia.

[...]

Inevitably, Professor Tudor Parfitt is quoted.

This is an old story, which I noted back in 2003. For more on the Lemba and their supposed Ark of the Covenant, go here and follow the links back.

Review of The Sisters of Sinai

THE SISTERS OF SINAI, by Janet Soskice, is reviewed by Lawton Posey in the Charleston Gazette. Excerpt:

Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson, the intrepid twins, made their travels to St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai desert to study the books stored there in a place not usually open to women. Securing admission through the good offices of a bishop, they did indeed enter the library, ultimately finding an exceedingly rare volume which seemed to be one thing and was discovered to be another. Hidden beneath more modern writings, and by using special chemicals, Agnes and Margaret were able to see revealed before them a very early set of the four Gospels in Syriac. This astounding find was made by two women who had not only made the journey of discovery, but had the audacity to challenge the scholarly community as to the truth of their claims.

Remember, they had no degrees, had attended no university and were largely self-taught.

And here's something I didn't know:

Ultimately, they did receive honors, and even the very Presbyterian-influenced University of St. Andrews gave them both honorary degrees.

Good for us.

More reviews here and follow the links.

More on the St. Paul DSS exhibition

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION upcoming in the Science Museum of Minnesota is getting a lot of attention. This Star Tribune article has some newish background:

The Israel Antiquities Authority will actually swap out the five-scroll set twice because the artifacts are so sensitive and fragile. They don't want to display them longer than 10 weeks at a time.

Negotiating to secure the scrolls' 13th U.S. visit and 21st trip out of Israel has been a seven-year odyssey for Science Museum staff, featuring a $750,000 conservation fee, a cave-exploring trip along the Dead Sea's northwestern coast and construction of the most sophisticated display cases in the museum's 103-year history. There was even a pivotal 2006 wining-and-dining session of Israel's directors of artifacts and treasures that began at the Mall of America and ended up at a Target store on St. Paul's East Side (more on that later).

There are lots more interesting details about the mechanics of the exhibition, but the article never gets back to the Target store.

Note the scroll photo to the right. It's of a manuscript of Genesis that I edited in DJD 12.

UPDATE: And here's a Twincities.com article that gives a précis of the theories about the origins of the scrolls.

Rioting in Mea Shearim

RIOTING IN MEA SHEARIM (Ynetnews):

The conflict was ignited when a man decided to build on land he acquired in Tzippori, which had been found to contain archaeological findings. The man was ordered by the Antiquities Authority to allow a dig, which uncovered an ancient Jewish burial cave.

The authority notified the police and the Ministry of Religious Affairs of its findings and said it planned to dig further in order to document them.

But large groups of haredim have been arriving to protest at the site for the past few days, fearing the graves may be damaged. Four were arrested, and others were prevented from entering the area. The dig began Sunday morning, with large police forces securing the group of scientists.

The world's oldest man knows Aramaic

PHILOLOGY IS GOOD FOR YOU: The world's oldest man knows Aramaic. Etc.

(IsraelNN.com) He has trouble seeing, but as one who has repeated the prayers for more than a century, he knows them by heart. David Pur, age 115, continues to learn Torah and to pray every day, now in the nursing home to where he moved just three months ago.

[...]

“I have had plenty of time to memorize the Biblical writings,” he said. He prays every morning while standing next to Moshe, who has just turned 100, and who Pur says sometimes seems lost – but is guided by his older friend.

Born in 1895 in what was then Persia and today is Iran, Pur became an adviser to the Shah, who admired his mastery of languages, including Persian, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and French. He later added Tagalog, a language spoke in the Philippines, while learning to care for Filipinos. He and his family made aliyah to Israel in 1948.

[...]

Riots on the Temple Mount

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH - RIOTS:

Dozens hurt in clashes at revered Jerusalem mosque
Ammar Awad
JERUSALEM
Fri Mar 5, 2010 11:34am EST

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police and Palestinians clashed outside Jerusalem's flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque Friday and at least 35 people were injured, Israeli police and Palestinian medical workers said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israeli forces of "provocation" and "crossing red lines" in an effort to derail a resumption of peace negotiations expected shortly under U.S. mediation. In a statement, Abbas appealed to Washington to hold Israel back to prevent a "war of religion" in the Middle East.

Israel's security minister blamed Abbas's Islamist rivals Hamas for fomenting the trouble. It started after weekly prayers at the third holiest site in Islam, in an area that Jews also revere as the site of their biblical Temple.

Muslim worshippers staging a protest after prayers against an Israeli government plan to include holy sites in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in an Israeli national heritage plan flew Hamas flags and threw stones at police who had taken up positions in the compound surrounding the al-Aqsa mosque.

[...]

Background here.

Review of Fifth Symposium on Coptic Studies (Al-Ahram)

THE FIFTH SYMPOSIUM ON COPTIC STUDIES, with the theme "Early Christianity and Monasticism in Aswan and Nubia," is reviewed in Al-Ahram:

Revisiting the southern frontier

Coptic history never ceases to enthral. Jill Kamil attends this year's symposium near Aswan

Early Christianity and Monasticism in Aswan and Nubia" was the fifth symposium on Coptic Studies to take place at a monastic centre. Organised by Coptologist Gawdat Gabra, Fawzi Estafanous of the St Mark Foundation for Coptic History Studies, Hani Takla, president of the St Shenouda Society, and under the auspices of Pope Shenouda III and Anba Hedra, archbishop of Aswan, it was held in the new Monastery of St Hatre (still under construction), within walking distance of the ruins of the famous Monastery of St Hatre in the Western Desert -- known for some unknown reason by early archaeologists and travellers as the Monastery of St Simeon.

Situated due south-west of the southern tip of Elephantine, the monastery is named after an anchorite who was consecrated by Patriarch Theophilus, bishop of Syene (Aswan), at the beginning of the fifth century.

[...]

This in particular is notable:

The temple-church of Qasr Ibrim was the subject of a presentation by Joost Hagen. Ibrim is all that remains of an important frontier post in Roman times that commanded a view of the Nile valley and desert for miles around. Between 30 BC and 395 AD it was the official border between Egypt and Nubia, and its control by the Roman general Petronius is well documented. His task was to contain the Blemmys (Beja) and the Nobodai tributes of the Eastern and Western deserts. Later, when Christianity spread throughout Nubia at the beginning of the sixth century, a Pharaonic temple on the site (built by the 25th-dynasty Nubian ruler Pharaoh Taharqa) was converted into a church, and the great cathedral on the summit was built in the 12th century. Threatened as it was with total inundation by Lake Nasser, excavations started in the 1960s when an important discovery was made. A body clad in episcopal robes was unearthed, and within its folds were long scrolls written in Arabic and Coptic. This was only a beginning. This site has proved vital for historical research. Among the most important discoveries made so far is a horde of ancient documents written in a host of languages -- Old Nubian, Arabic, Coptic, and Greek. They are private and official letters, legal documents and petitions, literary and documentary texts, dating from the end of the eighth to the 15th centuries.

Regular readers will recall that Dr. Hagen discovered Coptic fragments of 2 Enoch, an important pseudepigraphon known formerly only in Church Slavonic, in this manuscript hoard. More on that here and here.

Reconstructed ancient musical instruments

RECONSTRUCTED ANCIENT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS are on display in Kansas City:

Artist makes ancient instruments

Written by Administrator (KC Jewish Chronicle)
Friday, 05 March 2010 12:00

The Kansas City Jewish Museum presents the exhibit “Moshe Frumin — Ancient Instruments” March 14 through May 2 at the Epsten Gallery at Village Shalom.

The show features 21 musical instruments created by Israeli professor Moshe Frumin, who has constructed authentic recreations of ancient biblical instruments based on depictions discovered in archaeological discoveries from Israel.

[...]

DSS arrive in St. Paul

SOME DEAD SEA SCROLLS have arrived in Minnesota for the upcoming exhibition:

Dead Sea Scrolls, live

The 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls and other artifacts have arrived in St. Paul from Israel.

Last update: March 4, 2010 - 8:35 PM (Star Tribune)

Helena Sokolov cradled a 2,000-year-old clay jar in her arms before gently placing it in a display case at the Science Museum of Minnesota on Thursday. "It's like a little baby," said Sokolov, a coordinator with the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The jar is among 200 ancient artifacts found in caves along the Dead Sea that have found their way to the banks of the Mississippi.

The headliners of the exhibit, which opens next week, are five parchment fragments, part of what's known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. ...

Background here.

Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo restored

THE MAIMONIDES SYNAGOGUE in Cairo has been restored:

Egypt completes restoration of Maimonides shul
By RON FRIEDMAN (Jerusalem Post)
05/03/2010 06:00

Dignitaries from Israel and abroad fly in for Sunday’s rededication.

After a year-and-a-half of careful restoration work by the Egyptian authorities, the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo is set to be rededicated on Sunday.

The 19th-century synagogue and adjacent yeshiva, which stand on the site where Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the Rambam, worked and worshiped more than 800 years ago, was restored by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

[...]

That's good, but this news in the article, which I had not heard before, is disturbing:

In late February, a homemade bomb was thrown at the Ben-Ezra Synagogue, sometimes referred to as the El-Geniza Synagogue, in the heart of Cairo.

The land for this synagogue was purchased in 882 CE for 20,000 dinars by Abraham ibn Ezra of Jerusalem.

This was the synagogue whose geniza or store room was found in the 19th century to contain a treasure of abandoned Hebrew secular and sacred manuscripts. The collection, known as the Cairo Geniza, was brought to Cambridge, England, at the instigation of Solomon Schechter.

According to the police report, a man entered a hotel located on the fourth floor of a building across from the synagogue at around 3 a.m. and, as he was checking in, threw his suitcase out the window.

The case contained four containers of gasoline, each attached to a glass bottle of sulfuric acid meant to shatter on impact and ignite the makeshift bomb, said police, who speculated the man may have panicked.

The bag, which also contained clothes, cotton strips, matches and a lighter, fell onto the sidewalk in front of the hotel and briefly caught fire before being extinguished.

There were no injuries and no damage to the historic synagogue.

For more on the Egyptian synagogue restoration project, go here and follow the links.

Editorial on Israel Heritage Plan controversy (Baltimore Sun)

THE CONTROVERSY over the Israel Heritage Plan is the subject of an editorial in the Baltimore Sun:

Heralding Israel's heritage
The nation must defend its historical ties to the land against those who deny them

By Aron U. Raskas

March 5, 2010

Jerusalem - JERUSALEM--The Israeli government adds two culturally rich, millennium-old historic sites to a list of national treasures, and riots break out, followed by international condemnation. Yet, it is precisely this cynical, albeit predictable, response that demonstrates why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to add the Tomb of Rachel and the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs to Israel's National Heritage Sites.

There is no nation with firmer roots in a land than the Jewish people in the greater land of Israel. Yet, that great heritage has been under assault by Arab protagonists and their pusillanimous patrons for the longest time, and this has intensified in recent years.

[...]

Background here.

Jacob Neusner interviewed in the Jerusalem Post

JACOB NEUSNER is interviewed in the Jerusalem Post:

'A utopian document, a utopian law'

04/03/2010 15:49

Jacob Neusner talks of his five-decade love affair with the ancient rabbis, on the future of Jewish life.

In the world of Jewish studies, Prof. Jacob Neusner needs no introduction. The 75-year-old scholar of Talmud and rabbinic literature has written, edited or translated more than 900 books (though he doesn't want you to read them all), making him among the most active and prolific authors alive. "But I have a limited repertoire," he says with a smile, an expertise which extends across a millennium and through dozens of difficult, tightly-written works that are the record of the rabbinic love affair with the Torah. For Neusner, the study of rabbinic literature has been a kind of love affair in itself, and as with all true loves, he remembers clearly when it began. ...

New Penn librarian is a Semitist

A NEW PENN LIBRARIAN is a Semitist:

The Penn Libraries announced the appointment of Waleed el-Shobaki to the position of Middle East Studies Librarian. Mr. el-Shobaki comes to Penn from The John Rylands University Library of the University of Manchester (UK) where he had been employed since May 2004 as the academic liaison librarian for Middle Eastern Studies.

Mr. el-Shobaki holds a master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Manchester and another in library & information management from the Manchester Metropolitan University. He also holds a BA in Oriental languages from the University of Cairo with specialization in Semitic languages and cultures, primarily Hebrew and Judaism.

Since the early 1990s, Mr. el-Shobaki has supplemented his formal degrees with professional training in online cataloging and post-graduate coursework in politics and economics, Spanish language and culture, Islamic Studies, and religious education. He is a native speaker of Arabic, has near-native command of Hebrew, and has working proficiency in Spanish, Persian, French, German, and Turkish. His range of expertise in languages and cultures of the Near East extends from Syriac and the history of the Eastern Church to Persian and the history of Iran.

For more information about Mr. el-Shobaki and other subject specialists at the Penn Libraries, see http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/contact/subjspec/.

Congratulations to Penn and to Mr. el-Shobaki.

More on the "Song of the Sea" Cairo Geniza fragments

MORE ON THE "SONG OF THE SEA" CAIRO GENIZA FRAGMENTS - The exhibition notice from the Israel Museum website:

Piecing Together the Past: - Ancient Fragments of the Song of the Sea

From February 26

The Bible, the cornerstone of the People of the Book, was copied by scribes, interpreted by sages, and studied by generations of Jews from all walks of life. The nation’s respect for the Book of Books was also demonstrated by its desire to keep the manuscripts physically intact. This was not always possible, however,due to the hardships they experienced. Very few Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible have come down to us from the "Silent Period" – between the 2nd century, when the last of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, and the 10th century, when the Aleppo Codex was produced. The discovery of a biblical manuscript, particularly one that served in synagogue services during the "Silent Period," is therefore a rare occasion. Two such fragments of the book of Exodus, originating in the same Torah scroll written during the 7th or 8th century – the Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript and the London Manuscript – found their way, many years later, into different collections. Here they are displayed together for the first time, alongside a fragment of the book of Exodus from the late 1st century BCE, discovered in Qumran, and another fragment of Exodus dating to the 10th or 11th century CE. Featuring excerpts of Exodus 15:1–19, these scrolls are among the earliest testimony to the Song of the Sea. The London Manuscript and the medieval fragment are on loan from Stephan Loewentheil, New York; the Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript is on permanent loan from Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.

There's a photo as well, but it seems to be of the later manuscript in the exhibition.

Background here.

CSM: Will Israel heritage sites spark next Palestinian intifada?

HOPE NOT:

Will Israel heritage sites spark next Palestinian intifada?

The declaration of two biblical tombs in the West Bank as Israel heritage sites last week sparked clashes. Though Monday was quiet, some fear a new Palestinian intifada in response.

By Josh Mitnick Correspondent / March 1, 2010 (CSM)
Tel Aviv

Amid spreading Palestinian protests against Israel's decision to declare shrines in two West Bank cities as Israel heritage sites, the Palestinian cabinet held a solidarity meeting Monday in the city of Hebron near one of the sites while some here worried about a new Palestinian intifada.

Clashes on the Temple Mount plaza in Jerusalem's Old City Sunday capped a week of violence since the declaration of Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem as official Israel heritage locations.

[...]

Background here.

A new inscribed Palmyrene altar

ARAMAIC WATCH: Judith Weingarten discusses a new inscribed Palmyrene altar dedicated to an anonymous god.

Jodi Magness lectures on Qumran archaeology

JODI MAGNESS has been lecturing on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the archaeology of Qumran:

Archaeologist disproves widespread beliefs about the Dead Sea Scrolls

Wyatt Kanyer
Issue date: 2/26/10 Section: News (DailySkiff.com)

Jesus Christ did not live with the ancient people from the settlement near caves in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, even though some scholars have argued the contrary, an archaeologist said Thursday in a presentation sponsored by the Brite Divinity School.

Jodi Magness, an endowed archaeology professor from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, focused on the Essenes, an apocalyptic group that lived in Qumran, near the 11 caves in which more than 900 scrolls were discovered. She said that one-fourth of the scrolls represent all but one of the books of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, all of which have at least one copy.

The rest of the scrolls are the Greek Septuagint, the Aramaic Targums, the Pesharim and the Apocrypha, which are found in early versions of the Catholic Bibles.

[...]

The list of texts is sort of correct, although there were relatively few fragments of the Septuagint, not all of the Apocrypha was found there, and the Aramaic Targums are not the ones known from elsewhere. But quite a lot more was found: sectarian constitutions (the Community Rule and Damascus Document), rewritten scripture and prophecies, already-known pseudepigrapha (e.g., 1 Enoch, Jubilees), poetic and liturgical texts, calendrical texts, etc. Perhaps the reporter wasn't able to take notes fast enough to get all this down.

Otherwise the article looks like a pretty accurate account of what I would have expected Professor Magness to say. She represents the traditional interpretation of the site as an Essene installation, although there are other interpretations as well. For past PaleoJudaica coverage of the archaeology of Qumran, start with this link and keep following the links back.

Phoenicia to tackle Cape of Good Hope

THE GOOD SHIP PHOENICIA is gearing up to round the Cape of Good Hope:

Phoenicia braves the Cape of Good Hope

(Sailworld.com)

A primitive sailing vessel, based on designs of Phoenician cargo ships from circa 600 BC, will soon face its biggest challenge yet as the international crew members onboard attempt to navigate a stretch of the worlds most dangerous coast line; Cape Agulhas on the southern tip of Africa, and its more famous brother, the Cape of Good Hope.

Phoenicia, the Phoenician Ship Expedition, is a project conceived by local expeditioner and entrepreneur Philip Beale from his base near Lulworth Cove in Dorset. Beale is Expedition Leader onboard Phoenicia bringing together sailors and adventurers from across the globe as part of his crew.

Phoenicia (www.phoenicia.org.uk) is attempting to illustrate that 2000 years before the European, Bartholomew Dias, rounded the Cape of Good Hope the Phoenicians had already achieved a circumnavigation of Africa. As such the expedition is attempting to put African history in its true context.

[...]

This a key goal for the expedition and achieving it will be a major milestone. Good luck to them!

Background here and keep following the links back.

In honor of Purim: Masks, Rattles and Purim Customs (IAA)

IN HONOR OF PURIM: Masks, Rattles and Purim Customs (IAA online exhibition by Alegre Savariego).

More on "King Solomon's Wall"

"KING SOLOMON'S WALL" is the subject of an article in National Geographic. It does interview Israel Finkelstein (who, not surprisingly, urges caution), but otherwise it is disappointing. It quotes Eilat Mazar, but it still seems to be relying on an uncritical reading of the IAA press release. Notably there's this:

Figurines typical of tenth-century B.C. Jerusalem—including four-legged animals and large-breasted women likely symbolizing fertility—were also uncovered, as were jar handles bearing impressions reading "to the king" and various Hebrew names, she said.

The "to the king" (LMLK) inscriptions are not typical of the tenth century - none have been found that are that early - and the ones in question seem to be from earlier excavations and to date to the reign of Hezekiah in the late eighth/early seventh century BCE. I'm not sure about the date of the figurines.

Background here.

More on Israel heritage sites controversy

THE ECONOMIST weighs in on the Israel Heritage sites controversy:

Israel's heritage sites
Fanning the flames
A row about holy places threatens to engulf the Holy Land in new violence

Feb 26th 2010 | From The Economist online

The leaders of Israel and Palestine, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, are trying, separately, to contain a week-long wave of riots in West Bank cities that threatens to turn into a new Palestinian uprising. Yet the two men themselves ignited the religious passions that fuel this latest violence. And, while they now seek to control the flames, they are both still feeding them with disingenuous, incendiary statements, instead of putting them out.

[...]

UNESCO is also unhappy.

Background here.

Happy Purim!

HAPPY PURIM to all those celebrating. The festival begins tonight at sundown.

Cairo Geniza Exodus fragment going on display in Israel Museum

THE CAIRO GENIZA EXODUS FRAGMENT (which includes the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15) is going on display (the AP reports) in the Israel Museum. The article refers to two fragments that were joined in 2007, but I can't find any reference to a second fragment in the reports I noted in 2007 (see here and here).

Israel's Heritage Plan is generating some controversy

ISRAEL'S HERITAGE PLAN (background here) is generating some controversy. First, this:

Critics slam heritage plan for omitting non-Jewish sites

By Nir Hasson

The national heritage proposal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented to the cabinet this week is attracting criticism for including only sites that are part of the Jewish and Zionist narrative.

The NIS 400 million heritage project, which is geared toward supporting the preservation of Jewish artifacts and teaching schoolchildren about Jewish and Zionist history, includes 37 archaeological sites - all of which the program ties in to Jewish tradition.

[...]

But the criticisms have become much more specific after this:

Israel adds West Bank shrines to heritage list

(BBC)

Israel's prime minister has announced a controversial plan to add two major religious sites in the West Bank to the country's national heritage list.

Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem would now be included in the $107m restoration plan.

Israeli media said the two sites had been included on the list only after pressure from nationalist ministers.

The Palestinian Authority warned the decision would "wreck" peace efforts.

[...]

Responses include a riot:

Riots over Israeli claim to West Bank heritage sites

Israeli soldiers have clashed with protesters in the West Bank town of Hebron after two disputed shrines were listed as Israeli heritage sites.

Palestinian protesters threw bottles and stones at soldiers who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.

The protesters say the move to list the shrines as heritage sites would restrict Muslims access to them, but this has been denied.

The Hebron shrine is an important site for both Jews and Muslims.

[...]

This blistering editorial in Al Ahram:

Fabricating history

Israel's attempts to establish historical grounds for its existence include stealing, destroying and substituting Islamic heritage, reports Khaled Amayreh in Hebron

Tension in the occupied Palestinian territories rose significantly this week following a decision by the rightwing Israeli government to add two ancient mosques in the West Bank to a list of alleged Jewish heritage sites.

The two mosques are the Bilal Ibn Rabah Mosque, which Israelis call Rachel's Tomb, near Bethlehem, and the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, named after the patriarch Ibrahim (Abraham), widely considered the common forefather of both the ancient Hebrews and northern Arabs.

The Hebron mosque, site of a massacre of Arab worshipers by a Jewish terrorist in 1994, is widely considered the fourth most important Islamic shrine, coming directly after the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, the Prophet's Mosque in Medina (both in Saudi Arabia), and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Israeli officials didn't explain the decision by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to add the two Islamic sites to a list of some 130 so-called Jewish heritage sites. Netanyahu said the sites would be renovated "in order to reconnect Israelis to their history".

[...]

And the AP is also reporting criticism from the US Government.

Geza Vermes profiled in Oxford Times

GEZA VERMES is profiled in a long article in the Oxford Times:

'The world's finest Christ scholar'

6:20am Thursday 25th February 2010

By Reg Little »

In a few weeks’ time The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ will offer Philip Pullman’s radical new account of the life of Jesus, challenging the myths and mysteries of the gospels that have shaped the course of the last 2,000 years.

But before we are presented with the retelling of the life of Jesus by the His Dark Materials author, another Oxford author will have published two new books on Jesus, 35 years after first causing a sensation with Jesus the Jew.

Pullman’s take on Jesus, which will argue that the version in the New Testament was shaped by the apostle Paul, is said to be novel, part history and part fairytale.

For all the massive publicity surrounding the publication of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, it is unlikely to match the long-term impact of Prof Geza Vermes, who, at the age of 85, is still pursuing Jesus the man.

[...]

Phoenicia still circumnavigating South Africa

THE GOOD SHIP PHOENICIA is still circumnavigating South Africa:

Replica of ancient ship sails into PE harbour

2010/02/25 (Weekend Post)

A replica 600BC wooden expedition vessel, the Phoenicia, docked at the Port Elizabeth Harbour yesterday after visiting East London.

[...]

There's video too.

Background here.

Book review (H-JUDAIC): Rajak, Translation and Survival

BOOK REVIEW (H-JUDAIC):

Tessa Rajak. Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible and the
Ancient Jewish Diaspora. Oxford Oxford University Press, 2009. xvi
+ 380 pp. $140.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-955867-4.

Reviewed by Matthew Kraus (University of Cincinnati)
Published on H-Judaic (February, 2010)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

The Greek Bible and Jewish Life among the Greeks and Romans

Generalists and specialists alike interested in the history of Greco-Roman Judaism and Septuagintal studies will benefit immensely from Tessa Rajak's most recent contribution to these fields. Despite the technical nature of the subject, the chapters are quite readable, perhaps because the book originated as the Oxford University Grinfield Lectures on "The Septuagint as a Social and Cultural Artifact" (1995-96). As she notes in her preface, lecturing about the Greek Bible can be a daunting task. Even the great classical historian Arnaldo Momigliano pondered "in what sense a lecturer on the Septuagint might lecture without talking about it" (p. v). Rajak, however, does talk about the Greek Bible, combining recent research on the subject with the perennial quest to define "the nature and limits of Jewish Hellenism or Hellenistic Judaism" (p. v). Rajak's core contributions to this issue revolve around the claim that the Greek Bible represents a middle position between assimilation and rejection of Greek culture. The linguistic features of the Greek Bible simultaneously Hellenize Judaism and Judaize Hellenism. A book review cannot possibly do justice to the numerous insights of this detailed and richly argued work. A brief summary of selected aspects will have to suffice.

[...]

Reminder: DSS coming to St. Paul, Minnesota

REMINDER:

Dead Sea Scrolls coming to St. Paul

by Sunny Thao, Minnesota Public Radio
February 22, 2010

St. Paul, Minn. — The Science Museum of Minnesota will open a new exhibit in March featuring the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of 2,000-year-old documents that contain original texts from the Hebrew Bible.

[...]

Background here.

Unrest at the Jericho synagogue

UNREST AT THE JERICHO SYNAGOGUE:

Police release 33 activists detained for entering Jericho

By Haaretz Service
Tags: Israel news, Jericho

Two still in custody over Sunday night's attempt by rightists to pray at West Bank synagogue.


Police on Monday released 33 rightwing activists who entered Jericho on Sunday night in defiance of a military edict banning Israelis from Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank.

Two others, an adult and a minor, remained in police custody in Ma'ale Adumim after activists broke through checkpoints and marched on the area in the hope of praying at an ancient synagogue and "renewing Jewish settlement in Jericho".

[...]

Presumably this is the ancient synagogue mentioned here, here, here, and here. This is not the first time it has witnessed such conflicts.

UPDATE (11 August): No, it seems that this episode was at the Na'aran synagogue, also in Jericho, not the Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue. See here for clarification.

King Solomon's wall?

KING SOLOMON'S WALL? Well, maybe.

King Solomon's Wall Revealed in Jerusalem

by Maayana Miskin

(IsraelNN.com) Hebrew University archaeologists have revealed an ancient path in Jerusalem believed to date back to the time of King Solomon, along with structures including a gateway and the foundation of a building. Dr. Eilat Mazar, the leader of the archaeological dig, said the findings match finds from the time of the First Temple.

The latest find includes a 70-meter long and six-meter-high stone wall, a small house adjacent to a gateway leading to what was once the royal courtyard, a building that served city officials, and a tower that overlooked the Kidron river.

According to Mazar, the wall is likely to be the wall built by King Solomon. “This is the first time a building has been found that matches descriptions of the building carried out by King Solomon in Jerusalem,” she said.

[...]

It's quite a leap to get from 10th century BCE (which is what I take the quote below actually to mean), and "built by King Solomon." Let's see if the date is verified before we start speculating on builders.

It seems there is epigraphic material as well:

The remnants of a public building discovered along the wall contained shards of pottery that allowed researchers to estimate the date at which the building in use – approximately 10 B.C.E. One of the shards was engraved with Hebrew writing saying “For the chief...” Mazar believes the shard, part of a jug, belonged to the royal baker.

Other jugs bore a seal saying “For the king” in Hebrew. Dozens of seals were discovered using a water sifting technique. The building was ravaged by fire, researchers said, but the jugs that were found at the site were the largest discovered in Jerusalem to date.

A LMLK seal from the tenth century would in itself be very exciting. Indeed, any epigraphic material from that century would be. But let's wait for the inscriptions to be published before we draw conclusions. The photos in the article (which I assume are of the mentioned inscriptions) are not readable, at least by me.

Since they're coming up with written material, something actually mentioning Solomon would be welcome. Just saying.

UPDATE: Here's the full IAA press release at the IMFA website. Also, Todd Bolen has some observations. Notably, he thinks some of the artifacts mentioned are from much earlier excavations. I don't know. (Both via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

UPDATE (23 February): G. M. Grena (of www.LMLK.com) e-mails:

Hi Jim! They're definitely readable by me, & are representative of the well-known specimens dating to Hezekiah's reign.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biblicalist/message/1907

Per the typology I've assigned to the 21 known types, these are S4L, H2D w/CC (concentric-circle incisions), & Z2U. These span the entire reign of Hezekiah, before and after Sennacherib's attack, so it would be no big surprise to learn that they were found in the same locus in Jerusalem if such is the case.

LMLK seals in the reign of Hezekiah sound a lot more plausible to me than in the reign of Solomon. If this is correct, it is not at all clear from the IAA press release that the inscriptions are much later than the 10th-century wall, which is irritating.

UPDATE: John Hobbins has a roundup of blog responses at Ancient Hebrew Poetry.

Gno to the Gnostics

GNO TO THE GNOSTICS: Third Sector columnist Rosamund McCarthy thinks the Charity Commission made a bad call when they refused charitable status to the Leeds Gnostic Centre. Excerpt:

But if religious organisations are going to be registered as charities, can the law please be consistent? The Charity Commission has recently refused to register the Gnostic Centre as a charity. Why? Although the commission accepted that gnostics believe in a supreme being, it found no evidence of an accompanying moral or ethical code.

The decision highlights the absurdity of the law. Because the courts have no means of judging the merits of different faith claims - is there one god or many? - they have concluded that a religion must promote an ethical code capable of benefiting society. A spiritually improving effect on its own is insufficient, they say.

And what about the competing truth claims of different ethical codes? On the Charity Commission register there are religions that are pro and anti-gay, for and against medical treatment, against abortion and in favour of women's right to choose, supportive of just war and pacifist. How can these conflicting moral codes all be for the public benefit and equally worthy of tax breaks?

Background here.

Child sacrifice not common in ancient Carthage after all?

PUNIC WATCH: Child sacrifice wasn't common in ancient Carthage after all? So say these researchers in this press release:

Pitt-led study debunks millennia-old claims of systematic infant sacrifice in ancient Carthage

Researchers examined 348 burial urns to learn that about a fifth of the children were prenatal at death, indicating that young Carthaginian children were cremated and interred in ceremonial urns regardless of cause of death

PITTSBURGH—A study led by University of Pittsburgh researchers could finally lay to rest the millennia-old conjecture that the ancient empire of Carthage regularly sacrificed its youngest citizens. An examination of the remains of Carthaginian children revealed that most infants perished prenatally or very shortly after birth and were unlikely to have lived long enough to be sacrificed, according to a Feb. 17 report in PLoS ONE.

The findings—based on the first published analysis of the skeletal remains found in Carthaginian burial urns—refute claims from as early as the 3rd century BCE of systematic infant sacrifice at Carthage that remain a subject of debate among biblical scholars and archaeologists, said lead researcher Jeffrey H. Schwartz, a professor of anthropology and history and philosophy of science in Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences and president of the World Academy of Art and Science. Schwartz and his colleagues present the more benign interpretation that very young Punic children were cremated and interred in burial urns regardless of how they died.

"Our study emphasizes that historical scientists must consider all evidence when deciphering ancient societal behavior," Schwartz said. "The idea of regular infant sacrifice in Carthage is not based on a study of the cremated remains, but on instances of human sacrifice reported by a few ancient chroniclers, inferred from ambiguous Carthaginian inscriptions, and referenced in the Old Testament. Our results show that some children were sacrificed, but they contradict the conclusion that Carthaginians were a brutal bunch who regularly sacrificed their own children."

[...]

(Via the Agade List.) The PLoS ONE publication is here. I've never hear of PLoS ONE before, but it advertises itself as "an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication" (see here). That's well and good, but I have to say that it makes me nervous that it charges all authors a hefty $1350 subvention to publish an article (although it seems that association with most major academic institutions gets you a discount). Be that as it may, the article's arguments are there to be examined by archaeologists of Carthage.

Somewhat similar claims were being advanced and debunked in 2005. (Sorry, the link there seems to be bad and I can't find the article anymore on Google, so you will have to make do with the excerpts. But see also the second link, which is still good.)

Review of Vermes on the DSS (Economist)

A NEW BOOK ON THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS by Geza Vermes is reviewed in The Economist. Excerpt:

The analysis of such ultra-sensitive material requires calm judgment—and Geza Vermes, a retired Oxford professor, is widely credited with having the coolest head among the scholars who have devoted their careers to studying the scrolls and sharing their insights. Some of his writing is controversial. He has, for example, strong personal opinions on the “historical Jesus”, and like anybody who enters that field he has attracted both admirers and detractors. But in this short personal memoir, he sticks mainly to the known facts about the scrolls, and the arguments they have caused. On this matter, he is careful and fair-minded.

It may help that his personal story stands at the tragic interface between Christianity and Judaism in the 20th century. ...

Then there's this, which I find baffling:

Although Mr Vermes does not spell this out in detail, there is also some intriguing news for Christians: certain “Old Testament” passages which they hold dear—but which are mysteriously absent in the Masoretic version—do feature in the scrolls. They don’t seem to have been late Christian inventions.

I know of no such passages and I wonder if the reviewer has misunderstood something in the book.

UPDATE (20 February): Reader Ed Gallagher e-mails:

As for the Christian passages found in the DSS but absent from the MT, I bet the reviewer has in mind Psa. 22:16 and Isa. 53:10—not “passages” at all, but variant readings that are more congenial to messianic interpretation in their form in the Scrolls than in the MT. I haven’t read Vermes’ book, but these two verses popped into my mind when reading the excerpts of the review on your site.

Maybe so. That would be the readings "pierced" in Psalm 22:16[17] and "light" in Isaiah 53:10, both of which appear in Qumran manuscripts.

Zimbabwean "Ark of the Covenant" resurfaces

TUDOR PARFITT'S SUPPOSED ARK OF THE COVENANT has been found in a storeroom and is now on display:

Zimbabwe displays 'Ark of Covenant replica'

(BBC)

A wooden object claimed to be a replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant has gone on display at a Zimbabwe museum.

The "ngoma lungundu" belongs to the Lemba people - black Africans who claim Jewish ancestry.

They say the vessel was built almost 700 years ago from the remains of the original Ark, which the Bible says was used to store Moses' 10 Commandments.

For decades the ancient vessel was thought to be lost, until it was found in a storeroom in Harare recently.

Tudor Parfitt, who rediscovered the artefact three years ago, told the BBC he believed it was the oldest wooden object ever found in sub-Saharan Africa.

[...]

Background here and here and follow the links.

Ancient aqueduct uncovered in Jerusalem

AN ANCIENT AQUEDUCT has been uncovered in Jerusalem in excavations. The IAA press release:

The 1,800 Year Old High-Level Aqueduct of Jerusalem was Exposed Next to Jaffa Gate in the Old City

A beautiful aqueduct, standing 1.50 meters high and built of large stones, has been situated for almost two millennia right under one of the most familiar and traveled places in Jerusalem – beneath the road that leads from Jaffa Gate toward the David Citadel Museum and the shops on David Street.

The High-Level Aqueduct of Jerusalem, which dates from the second-third century CE, was exposed in excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting, with funding provided by the Jerusalem Development Authority for the purpose of replacing the infrastructure in the region.

[...]

Abassid caliph mentioned in Jerusalem Arabic inscription

AN ARABIC INSCRIPTION that mentions an Abbasid caliph has been found in Jerusalem.

Shroud of Turin going on display

THE SHROUD OF TURIN is going on display in Turin this spring.

For recent discussion of the Shroud, go here and here and follow the links.

UPDATE: The original post had the wrong venue, due to my misreading of a line in the AP article. Sorry about that.

JNUL wants the Russian Hebrew manuscripts it paid for

THE JEWISH NATIONAL AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARY wants the Russian Hebrew manuscripts it paid for nearly a century ago:

Netanyahu personally raised [with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev] the subject of the collection , which is thought to be the world's second-largest anthology of ancient Hebrew literature, after the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Aides to the prime minister also presented the Russians with documents proving ownership of the collection, Haaretz has learned.

The Guenzbergs, a Russian-Jewish noble family, acquired their collection over three generations beginning in the 1840s.

The collection includes 14,000 books, 45 incunabula (books published in the 14th century, at the start of the printing era), more than 2,000 Hebrew manuscripts and 1,000 Arabic manuscripts.

Following the death of Baron David Guenzberg in 1910, Zionist activists, among them Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, sought to retrieve the collection and arrange for its relocation to prestate Israel. In May 1917, the Russians agreed to sell the collection to the Jewish National and University Library for a sum of half a million rubles.

The purchase was made possible by contributions from Russian Zionists.

But after the money had already been paid and the collection was packaged and ready for shipment, World War I erupted, delaying the shipment.

Then the Bolsheviks came and the shipment has yet to happen. Maybe soon.

The Chabad-Lubavitch library in New York is likewise trying to recover a library in Russia:

Written in Hebrew and English, Treasures From the Chabad Library takes a sample of the archive’s 250,000 volumes and antiquities – some dating back to the mid-15th century – to complete 154 entries spread across 564 pages. It contains some of the center’s most-prized relics, complete with descriptions, photos and historical essays.

“This book is a compilation of 35 years of work,” says Rabbi Shalom Dovber Levine, the library’s chief librarian and author of the book. “It is a collection of our rarest and most interesting pieces.”

Released by the Kehot Publication Society, the book comes amidst a public exhibition of many of the library’s artifacts.

The collection, housed alongside Lubavitch World Headquarters in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, has its roots in the personal library of the First Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi. Its few hundred volumes passed down to the Second Rebbe, Rabbi Dovber Schneuri, who moved the collection to the town of Lubavitch, where it remained through three successive generations. At the beginning of World War II, having grown to thousands of books, manuscripts and personal letters, the bulk of the library was moved to Moscow for safekeeping by the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory.

That collection was confiscated by Soviet authorities and is currently held in the Russian State Archives, where it is the subject of American diplomatic and legal efforts to have it restored to Chabad-Lubavitch.

The library includes one of the oldest surviving printed copies of the Talmud.

New issues of Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha

THE JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHA has a new issue out: December 2009, Volume 19, No. 2 . TOC with my parenthetical comments:

Veronika Bachmann
Rooted in Paradise? The Meaning of the ‘Tree of Life’ in 1 Enoch 24—25 Reconsidered
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 19: 83-107.

Liudmila Navtanovich
Second Enoch and The Tale of the Blessed Zerubbabel: Two Different Examples of Old Testament Slavonic Apocrypha
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 19: 109-126.

(This article argues on philological grounds that the short recension of 2 Enoch displays more archaic vocabulary and grammar than the long recension and that therefore the short recension is earlier. Slavists seem to agree widely on the priority of the short recension. This bears very much on the discussion of 2 Enoch in last year's Enoch Seminar in Naples.)

Janelle Peters
Hellenistic Imagery and Iconography in Daniel 12.5-13
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 19: 127-145.

Flemming A.J. Nielsen
Moses’ Throne Vision: A Hebrew Fragment of Ezekiel the Tragedian and the Question of its Origin
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 19: 147-158.

(Don't get too excited by the title. The conclusion is that Jellinek translated an excerpt of the original Greek into Hebrew. Oh well ...)

Requires a paid individual or institutional subscription to access the full articles.

UPDATE: Actually there's another issue I haven't noted yet: September 2009, Volume 19, No. 1. TOC:

Ivor H. Jones
The Finale of the Wisdom of Solomon: Its Context, Translation and Significance
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 19: 3-43.

Ephraim Nissan
On Nebuchadnezzar in Pseudo-Sirach
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 19: 45-76.

Mark E. Hanshaw
Book Review: WHEELER, BRANNON M. Moses in the Quran and Islamic Exegesis. Routledge/ Curzon Studies in the Quran. Routledge/Curzon, 2002. 228 pp. ISBN 0-7007-1603-3
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2009 19: 77-80.

A historical trail in Israel

A HISTORICAL TRAIL in Israel:

Israel forges a new trail through history

By Noah Kosharek (Haaretz)

The government is planning on spending NIS 500 million over five years to restore and preserve heritage sites across the country.

They are hoping the investment will work to strengthen the Israeli and Jewish connection to the historic and Zionist heritage of Israel.
Advertisement

The existence of the plan, whose steering group is headed by Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser, was reported in Haaretz about a month ago.

[...]

The really old

Thirty-seven archaeological sites will be upgraded in the framework of the program.

These include some sites that are already considered well kept, like Caesarea National Park or Masada, where relatively little work, such as the introduction of new sound and light equipment, will be needed.

Other important archaeological sites, like Tel Lachish or the synagogue at Hurvat Amudim near the Golani Junction, will require extensive restoration and preservation work.

At Tel Lachish, which Netanyahu referred to in his speech, the plan is to restore the gate into the city and the city walls, to prepare trails, to build an entrance hall and to add signposts, among other things.

Other sites marked for restoration are Neot Kedumim, Susya, Qumran, Jason's Tomb in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin Garden, the Eshkolot Cave, Umm al-Amad, the Beit Shean antiquities, Tel Megiddo, Tiberias, Tel Arad, Tel Dan, Hurvat Madras, the park around the Old City of Jerusalem and the City of David.

[...]

There are many "less old" sites etc. up for restoration as well.

Apocrypha in Swedish art

APOCRYPHA in Swedish art:

In the Scandinavian nation, a large influence of the old writings can be found in Dalecarlia paintings. These are part of a style that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. It was a form of painting that was practiced solely by self-taught peasant farmers for about 100 years, starting from 1770, in the region of Dalarna. “One of my most interesting findings is that about 75 Dalecarlia paintings are based on apocryphal texts. The motifs are beautiful with nice colors, and often illustrate how the archangel Raphael was appointed guardian. Many paintings also bear the inscription 'God be with you on your journey' in Swedish,” University of Gothenburg expert Elizabeth Philpot, who has spent a lot of time studying the influence of the Apocrypha on Swedish Art, says.

A naked Susanna in a hot tub was reportedly also a favorite theme. Understandably: "'It was a good excuse to paint a naked woman in a biblical context,' Philpot says."

Helen Bond and Gerry Adams in the London Times

HELEN BOND'S CONVERSATION WITH GERRY ADAMS is covered in the London Times. It is not without controversy.

I know why Judas betrayed Jesus, says Gerry Adams in Channel 4 documentary

Ever since Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus with a kiss 2,000 years ago theologians have argued about his motives. But one British academic has now given credit to Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin leader, for a new insight into one of the most controversial passages of the Bible.

The man who spent a lot of his youth “on the run” from the Army in Belfast yet still swears that he has never been a member of the Provisional IRA, believes that Judas was turned informer by the Roman security services of the time in Palestine, just as many of his former comrades in the Republican movement were induced to spy.

Mr Adams’s views will be shown in a Channel 4 documentary The Bible: A History on Sunday. But even before it has aired it is creating a storm of controversy among many victims of IRA violence.

[...]

Background here.

UPDATE: Mark Goodacre takes this article apart as lazy journalism. I didn't think I'd heard of Helen having a blog.

UPDATE: Here's the website for Channel 4's The Bible: A History.

Ink and Blood exhibit in Nashville

THE INK AND BLOOD EXHIBIT is coming to a high school in Nashville. Background here and here. I wouldn't get too excited about the "Dead Sea Scrolls" in it (see first background link).

Byzantine-Era wine press found in Israel

A BYZANTINE-ERA WINE PRESS has been excavated in Israel:

1,400 year-old Byzantine wine press uncovered

15 Feb 2010

The press, unearthed during an excavation by the Israel Antiquities Authority, is one of the largest ever discovered in Israel.

(Communicated by the Israel Antiquities Authority Spokesperson)

One of the largest wine presses ever revealed in an archaeological excavation in the country, which was used to produce wine in the Late Byzantine period (sixth-seventh centuries CE), was recently exposed in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority. The excavation was carried out in a region that will be the farmland of Ganei Tal, a new community slated to be built for the evacuees from Gush Katif.

The impressive wine press is 1,400 years old and measures 6.5 x 16.5 meters. It was discovered southwest of Kibbutz Hafetz-Haim and was partly damaged during the installation of the infrastructure there.

[...]

Book review: Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt

BOOK REVIEW (SCHOLIA):

Roger S. Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi + 110, incl. 16 halftones and 10 tables. ISBN 978-0-691- 14026-1. US$29.95/UK£20.95. Further Details.

Jonathan More
University of Stellenbosch / George Whitefield College, South Africa

Christian manuscripts discovered in the Egyptian desert have supplied students of early Christianity with previously unknown texts. They have also attracted the attention of those concerned with establishing the original text of the canonical New Testament as accurately as possible. But these manuscripts have increasingly been recognised as artefacts in their own right and scholars have turned to them to understand more about the social and economic life of the communities for which they were produced. It is to this field that Roger Bagnall, doyen of things papyrological and Egyptian (and, since 2007, Director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, where he is also Professor of Ancient History), has contributed a series of four provocative studies addressing some disputed issues surrounding early Christian manuscripts. The four chapters of the book are based on lectures delivered by Bagnall at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in May 2006.

[...]

For another recent review of this book, see here.

BMCR review of book on Joseph and Aseneth

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH/BOOK REVIEW (BMCR): a collection of essays on Joseph and Asenenth.

Eckart Reinmuth (ed.), Joseph und Aseneth. Scripta Antiquitatis Posterioris ad Ethicam Religionemque pertinentia 15. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009. Pp. xi, 280. ISBN 9783161501616. €29.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Martina Hirschberger, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (martina.hirschberger@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de)

Es handelt sich bei dem Buch um eine zweisprachige Ausgabe der unter dem Titel Joseph und Aseneth bekannten jüdisch-hellenistischen Schrift, die erzählt, wie die in der Bibel nur dreimal (Gen. 41, 45; 50. 46, 20) kurz erwähnte ägyptische Priestertochter Aseneth zur Gattin Josephs werden konnte. Wie bei den Bänden der Reihe SAPERE üblich, gehen dem Text selbst zwei einführende Essays voran; sieben weitere zu für Verständnis und Interpretation des Textes relevanten Themen folgen. Ziel dieser Reihe ist es, Texte der späteren Antike -- worunter die Herausgeber das 2.-4. Jhdt. n. Chr. verstehen -- einem weiteren Publikum zugänglich zu machen. Obgleich eine Entstehung von Joseph und Aseneth in hellenistischer Zeit -- und damit strenggenommen ausserhalb des zeitlichen Rahmens von SAPERE -- sehr erwägenswert ist, ist es dennoch erfreulich, dass dieser Text nun in dieser Form vorliegt.

[...]