MKs visit Temple Mount-debris sifting project

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Some MKs have visited the Temple Mount-debris sifting project and have made some pointed political comments:

In honor of Jerusalem Day, MKs get to dig into past

By ABE SELIG (Jerusalem Post)
12/05/2010 09:58

Land of Israel Lobby members spend a day sifting through more than 2,000 years of history at the Temple Mount.
Talkbacks (1)

Ahead of Jerusalem Day, members of the Knesset’s Land of Israel Lobby spent Tuesday sifting through more than 2,000 years of history inside a large tent at the Temple Mount Antiquities Salvage Operation.

The ongoing archeological project is located in the capital’s Tzurim Valley National Park, where workers have spent the last five years carefully combing through thousands of tons of debris removed from the Temple Mount nearly 10 years ago.

[...]

On Tuesday afternoon, Knesset members got a firsthand look at the site’s operations and were even given a chance to do some sifting of their own, as they paid a visit to the tent where Barkay, Zweig and a slew of volunteers were conducting their work.

“This could have part of a vessel one of my ancestors carried olive oil in to make sacrifices in the Beit Hamikdash [the Temple],” said MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union), as he held up a shard of pottery he discovered in a pile of the discarded debris.

Other MKs echoed Ben-Ari’s observations, expressing the importance of the site’s offerings for “all Israelis, and all of the Jewish people.”

“This is a clear sign that Jerusalem is ours – that its beginnings belong to the Jewish people, and the basis of its holiness is rooted in Judaism,” said Kadima MK Otniel Schneller, who was also in attendance.

[...]

For background on the Temple Mount sifting project go here and follow the links.

A ghost aqueduct-bridge from the Second Temple era

A GHOST AQUEDUCT-BRIDGE from the Second Temple era (plus a real medieval one):

Regards from the Past: Ancient Water Bridge Found in Jerusalem

by Hillel Fendel (Arutz Sheva)

Part of the ancient aqueduct that brought water to the Temple Mount has been exposed near the Sultan’s Pool across from Mt. Zion. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) says it found a “spectacular arched bridge” that marked part of Jerusalem’s ancient water system while conducting archaeological rescue excavations prior to work on the city’s modern water system.

Two of the bridge’s original nine arches have now been excavated to their full height of about three meters.

In actuality, the newly-discovered bridge was built in 1320 C.E. by the sultan Nasser al-Din Muhammed Ibn Qalawun, as evidenced by its dedicatory inscription. However, it was apparently constructed to replace an earlier bridge dating to the time of the Second Temple period that was part of the original aqueduct.

[...]

DSS fragments to go on display at Azusa Pacific

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS recently acquired by Azusa Pacific University will be on display at the University in May and June:

Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments, Biblical Artifacts on View in Azusa

By Tom Tugend (JewishJournal.com)

Five fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a collection of rare biblical artifacts will be on display May 21 through July 18 at Azusa Pacific University (APU) in Azusa.

The exhibition, “Treasures of the Bible: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Beyond,” is part of APU’s mission “to play a part in history by carefully preserving, while also sharing, these remarkable treasures with the public,” Jon Wallace, president of the Christian evangelical institution, said.

Among the biblical artifacts are a 5,000-year-old cuneiform tablet, a Gutenberg bible leaf, a 17th century Sefer Torah scroll and original King James Bibles dating from 1611 to 1640.

The five Dead Sea Scrolls fragments were purchased by APU last summer and will be available for public viewing for the first time, APU spokeswoman Allison Oster said.

“The fragments from Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Daniel confirm the accuracy of the Scriptures and are therefore as significant to Christians as to Jews,” APU Executive Vice President David Bixby said in a phone interview

[...]

The scroll fragments are currently on display in a church in Granite Bay.

Invisibility in the Greco-Roman world

GET YOUR INVISIBILITY SPELLS HERE:

In Pursuit of Invisibility: Ritual Texts from Late Roman Egypt
by Richard Phillips
215p, 8 pls with 10 b/w images (American Society of Papyrologists 2009)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9700591-9-2
ISBN-10: 0-9700591-9-1
Hardback. Price US $49.95

A close examination of invisibility in the context of the Greco-Roman world, from the role invisibility enjoys as a literary motif to the ritual spells whose logos and praxis in magic papyri promise the individual that he will move about unseen by others. Capping the six chapters investigating invisibility in fiction and in handbooks of magic, Phillips examines the relevant papyri, evaluating the Greek texts and translating them into English, as well as offering thorough commentary for each text (e.g. P.Oxy. LVIII 3931, and six examples drawn from the Papyri Graecae Magicae). Includes bibliographical references and pertinent indices of the Greek.

I suspect these were like the "vanishing cream" sold in magic shops when I was a kid. The box would promise that if you rubbed some of the cream into your hand, it would vanish! And it did! The cream, that is.

But in any case, if you try any of these, let me know how they work out. But do test them before you use one to try to sneak in somewhere without paying.

I don't recall much made of invisibility in ancient Judaism, but there are invisible angels in 2 Kings 6:15-17 and Daniel 9:5-7, and Jesus may go invisible in Luke 4:29-30 and Peter in Acts 12:6-11. I can't think of any more examples off the top of my head.

File under too amusing not to mention.

Via the Agade list, etc.

UPDATE (12 May): Richard Bauckham e-mails to note an angel who acts invisibly in Pseudo-Philo (L.A.B.) 27.10:

10. And it came to pass when Cenez heard their words, he was clothed with the spirit of might and changed into another man, and went down into the camp of the Amorites and began to smite them. And the Lord sent before his face the angel Ingethel (or Gethel), who is set over the hidden things, and worketh unseen, (and another) angel of might helping with him: and Ingethel smote the Amorites with blindness, so that every man that saw his neighbour counted them his adversaries, and they slew one another. And the angel Zeruel, who is set over strength, bare up the arms of Cenez lest they should perceive him; and Cenez smote of the Amorites forty and five thousand men, and they themselves smote one another, and fell forty and five thousand men.

Milwaukee DSS exhibit review

ANOTHER REVIEW of the Milwaukee Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit:

Ancient words at Milwaukee Public Museum's 'Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible' exhibit
Jay Rath on Monday 05/10/2010 11:39 am (The Daily Page)

Religion aside, it is a miracle that the fabulous Dead Sea Scrolls are on exhibit in Milwaukee.

It's also a miracle that you probably haven't heard the priceless antiquities are in the state. Madison needs to pay better attention. To paraphrase the vice president, this is a big freaking deal.

[...]

Indeed. And I like this:

Above all is the human connection: unknown hands wrote in 10-point text and then hid these messages in a desert cave for us to find, 2,000 years later. Why?

You come away frankly feeling accused, for example by the exhibited Mystery Scroll, which reads, "They don't know the future mystery, or understand ancient matters..."

Background here.

Israeli PM Urged to Place Temple Mount on Heritage List

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

PM Urged to Place Temple Mount on Heritage List

by Hillel Fendel (Arutz Sheva)

As Jerusalem Day approaches, redoubled efforts are underway to increase Jewish awareness of the Temple Mount and to have the site included on the National Heritage Sites list.

Highlights of the campaign include a visit by 43 rabbis to Judaism’s holiest site on Monday and a petition to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to include the location on his recently-formulated list of National Heritage sites.

[...]

That would be interesting. And, I suspect, even more controversial than adding sites from the West Bank.

Background on the Heritage Sites list here.

Ketef Hinnom site lies neglected at Menachem Begin Heritage Center.

KETEF HINNOM, the site of the discovery of the silver amulets inscribed with the priestly benediction, lies in neglect at the Menahem Begin Heritage Center according to Jewish Ideas Daily:

Interestingly, the Heritage Center also hosts an actual biblical site: Ketef Hinnom, or the "Shoulder of Hinnom." This is a chain of Jewish burial chambers that were carved out of the rock in the 7th century B.C.E. In 1979, a dig conducted by the archaeologist Gabriel Barkay yielded one of the most significant finds in Israel's history: tiny rolled-up silver scrolls on whose inner surface is inscribed the Priestly Blessing—"The Lord bless you and keep you . . ." (Numbers 6:24-26)—in ancient Hebrew. These are the oldest surviving texts of the Bible—older than the Dead Sea Scrolls by roughly a half-millennium. Barkay speculates that the scrolls were originally worn "as amulets to give their wearers protection against evil."

Ketef Hinnom is thus one of the most important sites in the history of biblical archeology. Yet it suffers from serious neglect. The burial chambers lie hidden behind the Heritage Center's courtyard; you won't even find a sign pointing you in the right direction. More troublingly, the site is completely exposed to the elements, and in winter months some of the chambers are filled with standing rainwater. Trash is strewn between the graves; unattended foliage grows over the stone.

The problem, according to the center staff, is limited resources. But you don't need a large sum of money to put up a proper sign, or any money at all to remove trash. A starker explanation may be seen in the Heritage Center's souvenir shop, where you will find plenty of books about Menahem Begin as well as the usual tourist items but nothing connected to the archaeological site—not even a replica of the Priestly Blessing.

For the Ketef Hinnom silver amulet, see here and here and follow the links back.

Ashkelon graves to be moved

THE ASHKELON GRAVES are to be moved after all:

Graves adjacent to Barzilai hospital soon to be removed

Construction of emergency room in Ashkelon medical center may commence as early as next week following decision by committee created by PM Netanyahu

Ynet reporters
Published: 05.09.10, 20:54 / Israel News

The ancient tombs near the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon which were at the heart of a national controversy will be removed in the near future, possibly next week, a specially designated committee created by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided on Sunday.

During the committee meeting, headed by Prime Minister's Office Director General Eyal Gabay, it was decided in accordance with Netanyahu's instruction that the construction of the new emergency room at the original site should commence as soon as possible.

[...]

Another proposal was raised by haredi officials during the meeting, suggesting to build the ER above and below the graves, in such a way as would not require their removal. The proposal was rejected by the Health Ministry officials.

[...]

I'm not sure what "above and below the graves" means. A few days ago there was a proposal to build the ER underground, but that doesn't explain the "above" part. This story has as many plot twists as a season of 24.

Conference: Die Samaritaner und die Bibel

CONFERENCE: Die Samaritaner und die Bibel, at the University of Zürich, 30 June - 2 July.

Via the Agade list.

Josephus the Zionist?

I'M CALLING ANACHRONISM:

Josephus the Zionist

The publication of a new translation of 'The War of the Jews' affords an opportunity to look at the motivations underlying the betrayal on the battlefield and the historical writing of a complex Jewish figure.

By Shlomo Avineri (Haaretz)
Tags: Israel news

"Toldot Milhemet Hayehudim Baroma'im" ("The War of the Jews Against the Romans"), by Yosef Ben-Matityahu (Josephus Flavius), Hebrew translation by Lisa Ullmann, Carmel, 751 pages, NIS 159

Like every self-respecting Israeli youth movement, my Hanoar Ha'oved branch in Herzliya also held a mock trial for Josephus Flavius, aka Yosef Ben-Matityahu, under the heading "traitor or hero?" The unique thing about our particular trial was that it had two defendants: not only Josephus - the commander of Jewish forces in the Galilee in the first century C.E., who after the fall of Yodfat went over to the Roman side - but also Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai, who fled a besieged Jerusalem to the camp of the besieging 10th Legion, and asked that "Yavneh and its sages" be spared; his wish was granted. Having both figures as defendants made our trial more complicated and interesting, especially since it was held in late 1948, during the charged days of Israel's War of Independence.

Both defendants were acquitted. If I recall correctly, the argument made in their favor was that the harm caused by their respective choices to cross the lines was not as great as the good they did the Jewish people - whether in the form of Josephus' historical enterprise, or in the capacity for survival symbolized by Yavneh and its sages, which made it possible to create an alternative normative framework for Jewish identity after the destruction of the Temple (we in Herzliya at the time were, of course, a bit less scholarly in our phrasing).

[...]

Further to my comment above, the headline, typically, does not accurately reflect Professor Avineri's view, which is rather more nuanced and which acknowledges my concern:

When interpreting Josephus, one is always in danger of lapsing into anachronism, and yet without a doubt, to him this was the war of the Jews as a nation against the Roman Empire. One cannot, of course, understand this in terms of the modern nationalism of the 19th century, but although Josephus explains that the uprising started out as a trivial land dispute between Jews and Greco-Syrians in Caesarea, as the rebellion spread, it increasingly came to resemble a war of liberation.

The religious element is not the decisive one for Josephus; unlike Antiochus, after all, the Romans did not infringe on Jewish religious ritual and even respected it. It is important to understand how Josephus describes the nature of the war: As modern as the idea of nationalism may be (and this includes Zionism as an expression of Jewish nationalism), modern national movements - as scholar Anthony D. Smith claims - have ancient ethnic-historical roots. If I weren't wary of going too far, I would even say Josephus is the first modern Zionist.

Read the whole very long article (and better yet, read Josephus) and see what you think.

Via David Meadows on Facebook.

"The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind"

ARAMAIC WATCH: A clarinetist in Cleveland will be performing a work in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Yiddish based on the Kabbalah of Isaac the Blind.

Clarinetist performs epic Jewish work

By ARLENE FINE
Senior Staff Reporter (Cleveland Jewish News)
Published: Friday, May 7, 2010 1:08 AM EDT

Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinetist Franklin Cohen will be playing klezmer melodies at Severance Hall, but don’t expect to hear a stirring rendition of “Romania.”

Instead, Cohen, 63, accompanied by The Cleveland Orchestra, will perform klezmer riffs in the second movement of Osvaldo Golijov’s “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind,” on May 13-15. This selection is part of the Symphonie Fantastique concert at Severance Hall.

The Argentinean-born, religiously observant Golijov composed “The Dreams and Prayers” in 1994 for string quartet and clarinet. He was inspired by the medieval French rabbi, known as Isaac the Blind, a mystic who believed that all things happen as the result of combinations of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Golijov’s work uses music instead of the kabbalah to portray the cosmic mysteries of the Jewish experience. “The movements of this work are written in three different languages spoken by the Jewish people throughout our 6,000-year history,” the 49-year-old Golijov writes. “The prelude and the first movement are in the most ancient Aramaic; the second movement is in Yiddish, the rich and fragile language of a long exile; and the third movement and postlude are in sacred Hebrew.”

[...]

Not to be too pedantic, but the "most ancient" Aramaic here would presumably be medieval or Talmudic Aramaic, rather than the actual most ancient version, which would be Iron Age epigraphic.

More on Isaac the Blind here.

Restoration of the site of Babylon

THE SITE OF BABYLON has received generous U.S. funding for its restoration, but the project is hampered by local administrative wrangling over tourism vs. study of the site. This A.P. article has some photos too.

Milwaukee DSS exhibit watch

THE MILWAUKEE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION gets a good review in the Chicago Tribune:

Dead Sea exhibit worth trip to Milwaukee

You have until June 6 to see "Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible: Ancient Artifacts, Timeless Treasures" at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

You have until June 6 to see "Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible: Ancient Artifacts, Timeless Treasures" at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

It seems that some of these 2,000-year-old documents are always on tour somewhere in the world. But Milwaukee is your only shot at this particular collection, which includes everyday objects from the same period as the scrolls. Items curated for this show won't travel to any other institution.

The best among them:

There follows a detailed listing of the goodies in the exhibition, which include the ossuary of Alexander, son of Simon of Cyrene, and scrolls of Deuteronomy and Daniel.

Background here and follow the links.

The Ashkelon graves controversy continues.

THE ASHKELON GRAVES CONTROVERSY just keeps going and going ...

New plan suggests building Ashkelon hospital ER underground
MK Eitan Gafni proposes plan to avoid uprooting Jewish graves thought to be under current ER, which PM decided won't be relocated.

By Yair Ettinger (Haaretz)
Tags: Israel news Ashkelon Benjamin Netanyahu

The director general of the Prime Minister's Office, Eyal Gabai, announced Thursday that he was considering a plan to build a new emergency room at Ashkelon's Barzilai Medical Center underground, instead of rebuilding it in its current location.

Two months ago a graveyard was discovered under the site on which the ER is built. Once the grave site was found at the original construction site, the Antiquities Authority confirmed the graves belonged to Jews, and put the planned project on indefinite hold.

[...]

I have certainly seen nothing from the IAA saying that they now think the graves are Jewish rather than pagan. (The last I heard anything about this is noted here.) I want to see some verification before I accept the claim in this article.

The outcry over the planned relocation prompted Netanyahu to retract his original decision to relocate, and the emergency room was set to be rebuilt at its current location.

However, MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) has recently promoted a new idea to rebuild the controversial ER underneath the alleged ancient Jewish graves.

According to a rabbi with the Zaka emergency service organization, Gafni's suggestion is "serious." Several Rabbis reviewed Gafni's plan and presented Gabai of the Prime Minister's Office with architectural blueprints for the underground ER, prepared for them by an architect. They said that the plan was beneficial as it would circumvent the uprooting of Jewish graves.

Zaka's rabbi, along with rabbi Arie Dvir, said that the plan to build the emergency room underground would be cheaper than building an above ground emergency room and reinforcing it against rocket attacks – as the original plan dictates.

The Prime Minister's Office said in response that they have reviewed the plan and will announce a decision within the coming days.

[...]

So it seems that negotiation about how to deal with the graves continue.

Photos of Samaritans celebrating Passover

HERE ARE PHOTOS of Samaritans celebrating Passover on Mount Gerizim.

Egyptian censorship of a novel on ancient Christianity

EGYPTIAN CENSORSHIP focuses this time on a novel about ancient Christianity:

Egypt Christians want action on "insulting" novel
Yasmine Saleh
CAIRO
Wed May 5, 2010 12:59pm EDT

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian Christians have called for government action against the author of a widely read novel they say insults Christianity, in an unusual case that puts freedom of expression in Muslim-majority Egypt under fresh scrutiny.

Government investigators are looking into the complaint filed by a group of Egyptian and some foreign Copts against Youssef Ziedan, a Muslim who wrote the 2008 award-winning novel Azazeel (Beelzebub).

Egyptian law prohibits insults against Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and Ziedan could be sent to jail for up to five years if prosecuted and found guilty.

"They accuse me of insulting Christianity ... It's a serious crime and this is a big shock to people, especially since the novel has been so successful," Ziedan said.

Azazeel, which won the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, backed by the Booker Prize Foundation, tells the story of a 5th-century Egyptian monk who witnesses debates over doctrine between early Christians.

[...]

What next, an arrest warrant for Rachel Weisz?

I have every sympathy for the plight of Coptic Christians and the persecution they suffer in Egypt, but they are really damaging their own cause here. They should not be calling for government persecution of someone else, just because he writes a novel that offends them. To do so is to accept the twisted moral world of their own persecutors. The idea that no one should ever say anything that offends anyone else is one of the most pernicious notions circulating today. It plays into the hands of totalitarian governments of any stripe and it increasingly cripples free speech in democracies as well.

For more on the novel Azazeel/Beelzebub, see here.

Hebrew Manuscripts of Complutense University, Madrid

THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS of Complutense University, Madrid, have their own website: Los manuscritos hebreos de la Biblioteca Histórica en la web. The site is in Spanish, but the pdf document Los manuscritos hebreos de la Biblioteca Histórica "Marqués de Valdecilla" UCM: Guía de recursos. has a brief English summary as follows:

2. Hebrew manuscripts in Complutense University Library

The collection Hebrew Manuscripts of the Madrid Complutensian University Library is formed by 21 codex of Spanish origin, principally from Toledo and contains mainly biblical codices. All the manuscripts were brought together in Alcalá at the beginning of the 16th century by Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros for the compilation of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible. BH MSS 617 is from Jesuits College of Madrid (Colegio Imperial). Villa-Amil nº 3 was destroyed or missig in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

The majority of the collection is formed by biblical codex (BH MSS 1, BH MSS 2, BH MSS 4, BH MSS 5, BH MSS 6, BH MSS 7, BH MSS 11, BH MSS 12, BH MSS 13 y BH MSS 617). There are, however, three commentaries by Abraham Ibn Hezra (BH MSS 8) and David Quimhi (BH MSS 9 y BH MSS 10)

There is an etymological dictionary with proper names of both the old and new testaments by Alfonso de Zamora (BH MSS 14). By David Quimhi there are five codex: two hebrew dictionaries, Sefer ha-Sorasim, (BH MSS 17 y BH MSS 21) and three hebrew grammars Sefer ha-Miclol, (BH MSS 18, BH MSS 19 y BH MSS 20).

Finally, there are two liturgical manuscripts: Mahzor o sefardic prayer book (Selihot and other liturgical poetry) (BH MSS 15) and a play by Hayyim bar R. Semuel Meir de Tudela, Seror hayyim (BH MSS 16)

(I was alerted to the site by an e-mail from Marta Torres Santo Domingo, Directora de la Biblioteca Histórica.)

More on the Jewish Magic exhibition

MORE ON THE JEWISH MAGIC EXHIBITION at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem:

The Times of Malta has a brief notice of the exhibition, but it includes a nice photo of what looks like a page from a magical handbook.

Meanwhile, Times Live avails itself of an eye-catching, if somewhat meretricious, headline:

Sex and the Jewish mystic

May 4, 2010 3:29 PM | By Sapa-dpa

In the beginning there was sex - and it was complicated.

The first conversation of the first man and the first woman on this earth was apparently to argue about ... sexual positions - if you believe medieval Jewish texts, that is.

According to Jewish legend, the argument between Adam and the woman named Lilith - over who would be on top - became so heated that Lilith flew off in a huff, turned into a demon who harms newborns, and forced God to create a substitute for her, namely Eve.

Lilith's chained image appears on many amulets used throughout the ages to protect infants and their mothers.

Examples will be among the items on display in an exhibition on Jewish magic opening in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

[...]

Stephen Hawking on time travel

STEPHEN HAWKING ON TIME TRAVEL:

Let's imagine I'm throwing a party, a welcome reception for future time travellers. But there's a twist. I'm not letting anyone know about it until after the party has happened. I've drawn up an invitation giving the exact coordinates in time and space. I am hoping copies of it, in one form or another, will be around for many thousands of years. Maybe one day someone living in the future will find the information on the invitation and use a wormhole time machine to come back to my party, proving that time travel will, one day, be possible.

In the meantime, my time traveller guests should be arriving any moment now. Five, four, three, two, one. But as I say this, no one has arrived. What a shame. I was hoping at least a future Miss Universe was going to step through the door. So why didn't the experiment work? One of the reasons might be because of a well-known problem with time travel to the past, the problem of what we call paradoxes.

It's already been done! And, indeed, apparently no time travelers showed up. Follow the link for reflections on why.

SBL paper on blogging (etc.)

I'VE BEEN INVITED to present a paper at the 2010 Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Atlanta in November in the Blogger and Online Publication Section. Here's the abstract of my paper:

What Just Happened: The rise of "biblioblogging" in the first decade of the twenty-first century

This paper recalls the rise of "biblioblogging" early in this decade, surveys its expansion and development since that time, and explores the ways in which it has affected the field of academic biblical studies. Biblioblogging has made possible rapid dissemination of information on new discoveries and other matters of interest – as well as dissemination of accessible specialist commentary on such matters – to a vastly enlarged audience, an effect increasingly amplified by the new "new media" such as podcasts, Facebook, and Twitter. It has helped to put a personal face on biblical scholarship by allowing scholars to speak with an informal public voice different from the voice of academic publication; it has encouraged biblical scholars to interact publicly with popular culture, including not only dubious television documentaries, but also the cinema and television series such as Lost; it has helped scholars to mobilize in support of their colleagues in an era of job cuts and financially threatened departments; and it has contributed at least a little to the accelerating erosion of the authority of the mainstream media. Blogging is likely to be with us for a long time to come and to be increasingly incorporated into our field as a fruitful contribution to biblical scholarship.

I will also be presenting in a review session on Peter Schäfer's new book, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, this for the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Group.

UPDATE (5 May): James McGrath and Michael Barber have also posted the abstracts for their papers in the Blogger and Online Publication Section.

Jerusalem exhibition on Jewish Magic

AN EXHIBITION ON JEWISH MAGIC:

Exhibition at the Bible Lands Museum Looks at Jewish Magic through the Ages

(Art Daily)

JERUSALEM.- Magic permeates our daily (Jewish) lives to such a degree that life without magic is close to impossible. An interesting fact is that most individuals are unaware that many items in their daily life and many daily actions and beliefs are magical in nature. Examples of this are endless: knocking on wood, tfu tfu tfu, Evil Eye (בלי עין הרע), not naming a child before birth, the amuletic power of the mezuzah, red ribbon bracelet, khamsas, jinxes… These and many more practices have ancient sources. Some have lost their meaning even though they are still used, for example, the magical formula ABRACADABRA, has its roots in the 3rd century CE, and is continuously used even today.

In this exhibition visitors examine the origins and development of magic in Judaism from the First Temple period to the present day by focusing on beliefs, customs and, particularly, the practical use of magic objects in daily Jewish life.

[...]

The exhibition opens to the public tomorrow. Its web page is here.

The Pope on the Shroud of Turin

POPE BENEDICT'S RECENT COMMENTS on the Shroud of Turin seem to go a long way toward accepting it as genuine and are being snapped up by the press. The Christian Science Monitor, which is usually more temperate, has the following exaggerated headline:

Pope Benedict says Shroud of Turin authentic burial robe of Jesus

Dismissing skeptics on Sunday when he visited the Shroud of Turin, Pope Benedict XVI said the burial cloth was none other than the same robe that once 'wrapped the remains' of Jesus Christ.

The article then goes on to tell what he actually said, which doesn't go quite that far:

By Nick Squires, Correspondent / May 3, 2010
Rome

In the centuries-old debate over the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday diverged from his predecessor and weighed in favor of those who believe that the burial robe once cloaked Jesus Christ.

Pope Benedict described the shroud, which allegedly bears blood stains and the facial imprint of a long-haired, bearded man, as an icon that once “wrapped the remains of a crucified man in full correspondence with what the Gospels tell us of Jesus.”

While Pope Benedict joins the ranks of those who believe the sepia-colored shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, skeptics dismiss it as an ingenious medieval forgery that radiocarbon testing has dated about 800 years old.

The Vatican, which owns the linen cloth, has in the past tiptoed around the issue, describing it as a potent symbol of Jesus Christ’s suffering but never asserting outright its authenticity. Pope John Paul II visited the Shroud when it last went on public display in 1998, but he said the Catholic Church had "no specific competence” to pronounce on its authenticity and urged further scientific analysis.

Benedict was much less equivocal on Sunday when he prayed in front of the cloth at St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Turin, Italy, saying afterwards in a “meditation” that it was "an icon written in blood; the blood of a man who was whipped, crowned with thorns, crucified, and injured on his right side."

[...]

Although Pope Benedict doesn't come out and say that it was the shroud of Jesus, he does seem to say (if he is being quoted correctly and in context - and the quote does appear in many other articles, e.g., here) that it actually does bear the imprint of a crucified man - by implication rejecting the prevailing theory that it is a medieval forgery. I remain very skeptical of its being an ancient artifact and I suspect that the Pope's comment may prove to be a nuisance to him and the Church. It wouldn't surprise me to see a backtracking "clarification" coming from the Vatican soon.

Background on the Turin exhibition here. For background on authenticity issues, click on the "recent discussion" links at that post and keep following the links back.

Debunking junk archaeology (e.g., Noah's Ark)

DEBUNKING JUNK ARCHAEOLOGY, including the latest Noah's Ark nonsense:

Scholarly Squad Debunks Biblical 'Discoveries'

Chanan Tigay
AOL News

(May 2) -- When Robert Cargill got word this week that a group of Chinese evangelicals had uncovered Noah's Ark atop a Turkish mountain, the archaeologist's reaction was a familiar one.

"I thought, here we go again -- another fake 'ark-eologist,' " says Cargill, an adjunct assistant professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures at UCLA.

His skepticism may prove well founded: A former member of the joint team from Noah's Ark Ministries International and Media Evangelism Ltd. that announced the find has circulated an e-mail suggesting that the discovery might have been staged. And if that's the case, it would be just the latest in a series of hoaxes surrounding the much-searched-for vessel.

Indeed, it was word of two previous ark expeditions that helped prompt the American Schools of Oriental Research, the leading professional organization of American Middle Eastern archaeologists, to take action.

Fed up with the exposure these types of stories were getting in the media, the group last year launched a committee tasked with taking aim at archaeological frauds.

"We really just decided that it was time to take back our field," says Eric Cline, a George Washington University archaeologist. He and Cargill co-chair the committee, whose membership also includes the Archaeological Institute of America and the Society of Biblical Literature.

[...]

Worth reading in full. Robert Cargill has been closely following the Noah's Ark story on his blog. See especially the posts here, here, here, and here.

Mom can see the DSS for free on Mother's Day

MOM can see the Dead Sea Scrolls for free this Sunday in St. Paul.

Moms see sea scrolls for free Sunday
Pioneer Press
Updated: 05/02/2010 09:36:17 PM CDT

You can treat Mom to brunch anytime. Why not take her to see some 2,000-year-old sacred texts for Mother's Day? The Science Museum of Minnesota is among a handful of museums offering free admission on Sunday for any mom, accompanied by a paying visitor.

The free admission includes a ticket to the Dead Sea Scrolls, a display of ancient biblical and Hebrew texts on loan from Israel, along with artifacts such as fabrics, inks, pottery and weapons that tell the story of early Jewish culture and life in the Judean desert.

[...]

Just what she wanted.

The Mishnah Quiz

THE MISHNAH QUIZ is this week:

And Now – the Mishna Quiz

by Gil Ronen (Arutz Sheva)

The seventh annual Mishna Quiz is set to begin this week. Hundreds of students from Israel's junior high schools will take part in the quiz, which tests knowledge of the Mishna – the compendium of Oral Law that originated at Mount Sinai but was written down about 2,000 years ago by Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi to prevent its details from being forgotten. It includes legal pronouncements, moral observations and debates about interpretations of the law between the Jewish sages of his period, known as the Tannaim.

[...]

Islamic origins: "a surprisingly big tent"?

ISLAMIC ORIGINS: "A SURPRISINGLY BIG TENT"?

Islam's beginnings
Mohammed's early movement was a surprisingly big tent, says historian Fred M. Donner

By Thanassis Cambanis (The Boston Globe)
May 2, 2010

The first followers of Christ didn’t consider themselves ’’Christians’’; they were Jews who believed that a fellow Jew named Jesus Christ was the long-awaited messiah. It took centuries for Christianity to evolve and solidify as a distinct faith with its own doctrine and institutions.

In ’’Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam,’’ University of Chicago historian Fred M. Donner wants to provide a similar back story for Islam — a religion which, in the popular imagination, sprang wholly formed from the seventh-century sands of Arabia. Mohammed preached at the juncture of the Roman and Sassanian empires, winning support from Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and various deist polytheists. According to Donner, Mohammed built a movement of devout spiritualists from many faiths who shared a few core beliefs: God was one, the end of the world was near, and the truly religious had to live exemplary lives rather than merely pay lip service to God’s laws. It was only a century after Mohammed founded his ’’community of believers” and launched the great Islamic conquest that his followers started to define their beliefs as a distinct religious faith.

Devout Muslims — who model their lives directly on the mores of the Prophet and his companions — will be surprised to read that Mohammed welcomed Christians and Jews into his monotheistic movement. In fact, Donner suggests, the entire narrative of Islamic conquest misinterprets the ecumenical nature of the early believers. Mohammed, it appears, didn’t require his followers to renounce their religion; early Islam, in this read, was more a revival of existing faiths than a conversion.

[...]

Professor Donner is also interviewed in the article. It will be interesting to watch both the academic and the popular responses to his reconstruction.

Lecture and latest news on Persepolis archive lawsuits

THE PERSEPOLIS CUNEIFORM ARCHIVE CONTROVERSY was the subject of a recent lecture at the University of Pennsylvania:

Iran Gambles with its Cultural Heritage in U.S. Lawsuits

Apr 29, 2010 E.E. Mazier (Suite101.com)
By remaining passive in U.S. lawsuits that may force the sale of the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Iran may lose a major historical artifact.

By failing to take seriously lawsuits against it in the United States, Iran risks losing a major component of its cultural heritage. That was the underlying message of an April 27, 2010 lecture by Matthew W. Stolper at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia. The lecture was titled ""Persian Antiquities in Crisis: the Persepolis Tablets at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago." Stolper is professor of Assyriology at the Institute.

[...]

The tablets are now the prize in a tug of war between survivors and families of victims of two horrific bombing incidents on one side and museums, universities, and scholars on the other side.
Iran Ignored Underlying Lawsuits by Blast Victims

In one lawsuit in federal court, the plaintiffs sued Iran for funding Hamas, the accused mastermind of a 1997 triple-suicide bombing in a Jerusalem shopping area. In a separate federal action, another set of plaintiffs sued Iran for aiding Hezbollah in the 1987 bombing of U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut. The actions were filed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act as amended by the U.S. Congress in 1996 to allow Americans to sue foreign countries that commit or support terrorist acts and that are officially listed as state sponsors of terrorism. Since 1984, the United States has designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism.

[...]

Iran failed to respond to either lawsuit. Consequently, the plaintiffs in the Jerusalem bombing case won a $412 million default judgment against the country in 2003, while the plaintiffs in the Beirut bombing case were granted a $2.65 billion default judgment in 2007.

[...]

In response to audience questions after his lecture, Stolper noted that the entry of the default judgments means that the central issue is whether artifacts of great cultural and historical significance not only to Iran but also the rest of the world can be sold off, most likely in pieces, to the highest bidders.

While sympathetic to the plight of the plaintiffs, several of whom were severely injured in the blasts and have recovered very little compensation, Stolper and other scholars decry the legal attempt to raid the collections of museums and institutions and the precedent this would set if successful. One concern is that countries would no longer want to participate in cultural exchanges out of fear of losing priceless artifacts in similar court actions. As to the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Stolper and others contend that the tablets are most valuable if kept intact because this is the only way to get a big-picture view of daily life in the ancient Persian empire.

[...]

Stolper also told the audience that Iran has attorneys in the post-judgment actions, but he described a surprising lack of knowledge about the cases by Iranian officials in the United States. In fact, he is concerned that Iran may walk away from the proceedings.

"If the Iranians do not stay in the case, it becomes a second default judgment after their day in court, which [from a judicial viewpoint] is almost insurmountable,." Stolper said.

[...]

That doesn't sound good. I have every sympathy for the terrorism victims and no love for the current Iranian regime, but I think Professor Stolper is right. For much more on this, see here and keep following the links.

Hebraica and Semitica in the Library of Congress

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS has an illustrated guide to its Hebraic Collections online. Other Semitic languages besides Hebrew are represented as well. It includes photos of Bible, Talmud, and Zohar manuscripts (etc.) here and a cuneiform tablet and an Aramaic incantation bowl here. There is also a collection of images of selected cuneiform texts here. And the contents of the Hebraica collection are surveyed here:

HEBRAICA
Beginning with Jacob H. Schiff's 1912 gift of nearly 10,000 books and pamphlets, the Library has developed and expanded its Hebraic holdings to include all materials of research value in Hebrew and related languages. Today, more than 150,000 items are available. Included are works in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Arabic, Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic, and Amharic. The collection includes an extensive range of monographs; a broad selection of Hebrew periodicals both current and retrospective, popular as well as scholarly; and a variety of Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers reflecting all shades of opinion. A comprehensive collection of Holocaust memorial volumes documents Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Second World War, and a large collection of rabbinic bio-bibliographical works in Hebrew is available. Holdings are especially strong in the areas of Bible and rabbinics, liturgy, Hebrew language and literature, responsa, and Jewish history. Access to online sources of Judaica is also available.

Among the 2,000 rarities in the collections are cuneiform tablets, manuscripts, incunabula, kettubot, micrographies, miniature books, and amulets. The more than 200 manuscripts include a Hebrew translation of the Koran, a selection of decorated Jewish marriage contracts, an early Ethiopian psalter in Ge'ez, various commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, and the Washington Haggadah, a 15th-century Hebrew illuminated manuscript. Also included are examples from among the first books printed in Portugal, Turkey, and on the African continent. With 24 Hebrew incunables--books printed before the year 1501--and an additional 15 in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, the Library of Congress ranks as one of the world's most important public collections of Hebrew incunabula. Also unique are more than 1,000 original Yiddish plays, in manuscript or typescript form, written between the end of the 19th and the middle of the 20th centuries, intended for the American Yiddish theater.

Via this Payvand article on the online LOC Iranian material.

Lecture series at Minnesota DSS exhibit

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION at the Museum of Science of Minnesota, has a lecture series lined up:

Kicking off in the coming week is a series of lectures by scholars who have studied the scrolls. First up is "The Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Jerusalem Origin" by Norman Golb, a professor of Jewish history at the University of Chicago. He'll speak at 7 p.m. Thursday.

He will be followed by Michael Wise from Northwestern College in Roseville on May 20; Risa Levitt Kohn from San Diego State University on June 10; Alex Jassen from the University of Minnesota on July 15; and Jodi Magness from the University of North Carolina on Aug. 12.

This is an unusually diverse collection of speakers and I'm sure the series will be very interesting.

Celebration of Yahrtzeit of R. Shimon bar Yohai at Lag B'Omer

THE YAHRTZEIT OF RABBI SHIMON BAR YOHAI coincides this year with the festival of Lag B'Omer and this weekend it will once again be enthusiastically celebrated at his gravesite in Meron:

On Lag B’Omer, Kabbalah’s ‘Patron Saint’ Inspires Pilgrimage, Donations

By Nathan Jeffay (The Forward)
Published April 28, 2010.

Tel Aviv — As millions of people worldwide — celebrities like Madonna among them — turn to Kabbalah in hopes of solving their problems, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are going one step further by appealing directly to the man some consider to be the author of mystical Judaism’s most important text.

In early May, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, whom some believe wrote the Zohar, is purportedly holding court from beyond the grave. Some 500,000 Israelis will flock to a Galilee hilltop, Mount Meron, to sing, dance, feast and pray at the resting place of the second-century sage. Many more pay a third party to appeal to Bar Yochai on their behalf — a move some say is a gimmick that depersonalizes prayer.

The mass gathering will take place during the minor festival of Lag B’Omer — this year it takes place May 1 and 2 — which coincides with the anniversary of Bar Yochai’s death; Kabbalah adherents believe that Bar Yochai’s powers are strongest around his yartzheit. Each year, more people go, often with high expectations for what the visit will reap. “Rav Shimon promises that everyone who comes will be healthy in body and soul and that all that they want comes,” said Bnei Brak resident Esther Shnitzer, a Haredi woman in her late 50s who works for a credit card company, and who fundraises to provide free refreshments to any pilgrims who want them.

[...]

The Zohar was actually written in late thirteenth-century Spain by Moses de León, perhaps in collaboration with others, and published pseudepigraphically in the name of R. Shimon bar Yohai. It may contain older material, but I doubt that any of it goes back to actual teachings of R. Shimon. Be that as it may, it has been a profoundly influential mystical tradition.

Background on R. Shimon bar Yohai is here. And there's more on Daniel Matt's superb, in-progress translation of the Zohar here.

Aramaic in New York

ARAMAIC WATCH - The NYT reports that New York's 800 languages include Neo-Aramaic and Mandaic:

In addition to dozens of Native American languages, vulnerable foreign languages that researchers say are spoken in New York include Aramaic, Chaldic and Mandaic from the Semitic family ...

A few fading foreign languages have also found niches in New York and the country. In northern New Jersey, Neo-Aramaic, rooted in the language of Jesus and the Talmud, is still spoken by Syrian immigrants and is taught at Syriac Orthodox churches in Paramus and Teaneck.

The Rev. Eli Shabo speaks Neo-Aramaic at home, and his children do, too, but only “because I’m their teacher,” he said.

Will their children carry on the language? “If they marry another person of Syriac background, they may,” Father Shabo said. “If they marry an American, I’d say no.”

And on Long Island, researchers have found several people fluent in Mandaic, a Persian variation of Aramaic spoken by a few hundred people around the world. One of them, Dakhil Shooshtary, 76, a retired jeweler who settled on Long Island from Iran 45 years ago, is compiling a Mandaic dictionary.

I think "Chaldic" should be "Chaldaic," or better, "Chaldean," the dialect of Aramaic used by the Chaldean Catholic Church.

Samaritan Passover sacrifices

SAMARITAN PASSOVER SACRIFICES:

Samaritans Perform Passover Sacrifices

by Malkah Fleisher

On Wednesday, a small and ancient community in the Samaria region performed a Passover offering just as it has done for over two thousand years.

Israel's small Samaritan community gathered, as it does annually, to offer sacrifices on Mount Gerizim, overlooking Shechem. Heads of Samaritan households slaughtered 35 sheep that were offered in a way very similar to that prescribed in the Torah, for sacrifices at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

[...]

Coverage last year is here.

Review of Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed

A BOOK REVIEW of Richard Miles's Carthage Must Be Destroyed has been published by Daniel Metcalfe in the Guardian. Excerpt:

When most people think of Carthage, they picture Hannibal and his elephants or Dido, the suicidal queen, cursing her perfidious lover, Aeneas. But as every schoolboy used to know, Carthage is inextricable from the Punic wars – its very own 100-year conflict with Rome (264-146 BC). Almost all our stories of this once-great north African empire, says Richard Miles, come to us through a biased Roman filter. Carthage never had a chance to tell its own tale – its library was lost to its Numidian neighbours. But drawing on archaeological and written sources, Miles helps to fill in the blanks with this thoughtful and meticulous book. Carthage was rather more sophisticated than history gave it credit for, and its people were certainly no more war-mongering than their regional neighbours.

For more reviews, go here.

Reflections on the propagation of news of Wright's move

INTERESTING YESTERDAY to watch the news about N. T. Wright's appointment to a New Testament Chair at St. Andrews propagate across the planet in a matter of hours via blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. I saw students in the St. Mary's Quad getting the news from one of their phones and saw congratulations and comments online coming from all over the United States and Britain. Technorati, which used to be useful (before its latest "upgrade") has only just started to index a couple of blog posts. Google Blogs does a lot better, currently listing a little over fifty blog posts. The legacy media did get in on the news yesterday a little: there were notices in the London Times religion blog and BBC Radio One. Google News is better than Technorati, but it wasn't showing these articles yesterday at least in the late afternoon when I last checked. Ruth Gledhill has also published a Times article in the Times. A Guardian blog has taken notice in the last hour. The US media have yet to take any notice. [Update: Forgot to mention one Dutch article this morning. As for local media, the Durham Times had an article out early on too.]

As far as I can tell, PaleoJudaica was the first to pick up the news after the initial annoucement, although my colleague, Steve Holmes put up a blog post within minutes of mine. We did, of course, have advance warning.

An interesting case study for the information age ...

Copper Scroll mentioned in the Guardian

THE COPPER SCROLL gets a mention in the Guardian in a reader submission in the Notes and Queries column:

Have treasure maps ever existed?

While not exactly a map, the copper scroll, which was discovered among the dead sea scrolls, does contain details of the location of 63 deposits of buried treasure. Unfortunately, the directions provided are very localised and use names that have passed out of common usage, which means they are of no practical help to a modern treasure hunter.

However, four maps that could reveal the location of buried treasure were discovered in the 1920s, hidden in furniture, which, it was claimed, had belonged to the Scottish pirate captain, William Kidd. The British Museum initially thought them to be genuine, but more recently their authenticity has been called into question.

As with the copper scroll, the details given are too vague to be of much use, although an island shown on one of the maps is thought by some to resemble Oak Island in Nova Scotia, where a treasure hunt has been ongoing since the late 18th century, with little to show for it.

Geoff Clifton, Solihull, West Mids

It's 64 locations actually. But yes, so far there hasn't been much luck in locating the treasures, although Richard Freund has argued that he has found one. As you see from the link, this is debatable. More on the Copper Scroll and related matters here and here (and follow the links).

N. T. Wright appointed to Chair in St. Andrews

N. T. WRIGHT (Bishop Tom Wright) has been appointed to a New Testament Chair at the Divinity School of the University of St. Andrews:

N. T. Wright appointed to Chair at St Andrews


Tuesday 27 April 2010

The School of Divinity is delighted to announce that Dr N. T. (Tom) Wright, currently Bishop of Durham, has been appointed to a Chair in New Testament and Early Christianity at St Andrews. He will take up his duties on 1 September 2010. The Head of School, Professor Ivor Davidson, says: 'Tom Wright ranks among the most distinguished New Testament scholars in the world, and his profile as a churchman, writer and communicator is simply outstanding. I am delighted that he will be joining us at St Andrews, where he will further enhance the long-established reputation of the School of Divinity as a major international centre of biblical and theological scholarship.'

Tom Wright, a native of Northumberland, was educated at Sedbergh School and Exeter College, Oxford, where he took a 'double first' in Classics ('Greats') and Theology and gained his D. Phil. He trained at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and was ordained as a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College.

Dr Wright worked successively at Cambridge, McGill (Montreal) and Oxford Universities before holding various church appointments, culminating in seven years as Bishop of Durham. He received the Oxford DD in 2000.

N. T. Wright is best known for his writing, both scholarly and popular. He is currently working on the fourth volume (on Paul) of his major academic series Christian Origins and the Question of God, on the final two books in his popular New Testament for Everyone, and on the series of contemporary explorations of faith that includes, most recently, Virtue Reborn. He has broadcast frequently on radio and television, and has lectured at universities and colleges around the world, holding visiting Professorships at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Harvard Divinity School, and the Gregorian University in Rome. He has received honorary doctorates from several universities, including St Andrews. He is eagerly looking forward to resuming his work of teaching and writing in the School of Divinity at St Andrews.

Dr Wright is married to Maggie. They have four adult children and three grandchildren, and are looking forward to enjoying the fine scenery of Fife. More details about Dr Wright's work are available at www.ntwrightpage.com.

Press releases are here (quoted above) and here (longer).

Let me add my voice to those of colleagues and students in welcoming Dr. Wright to St. Andrews. Tom is no stranger here: most recently he received an honorary doctorate from the University in June of last year. I am truly delighted that he will be joining us in September.

Bene Menashe migrating to Israel

THE BENE MENASHE are coming to Israel:

After three millennia in exile, Bnei Menashe lost tribe heads home

James Hider in Jerusalem (London Times)

When Tzvi Khaute landed at Tel Aviv for the first time, he wanted to kiss the earth. Alas, the modern airport was all tarmac and stone, so he kissed the first soil he came across, in a flowerpot. Thousands of diaspora Jews from around the world make aliyah — the migration to Israel — every year, but for Tzvi and his fellow Tibeto-Burmese immigrants from the far northeast of India, the journey was particular freighted with symbolism. They believe they are descendants of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel, sent into exile by the Assyrians almost 800 years before the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem.

About 1,700 members of the Bnei Menashe tribe — the Sons of Manasseh, one of the original 12 biblical tribes of Israel — have migrated to Israel, completing what they believe is an extraordinary, 2,700-year exile that took them from the Middle East seven centuries before the Christian era, through Afghanistan, China, Burma and India, before they heard that a new state of Israel had been created 62 years ago.

[...]

I've mentioned the Bene Menashe earlier here, here, and here. As I've noted before, there's no evidence for the claim that they go back to the Assyrian exile in the 700s BCE, although their genetic profile does seem to indicate some connection with the Middle East. This 2005 BBC article sums up the evidence.

Late apocalypses online

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic: A Postrabbinic Jewish Apocalypse Reader, by John C. Reeves, is available online at Google Books. Much, but not all of the text is included.

This from Sigrid Peterson on the PSCO list, in response to an announcement of lecture by Professor Martha Himmelfarb last week (22 April) at the University of Pennsylvania, to which I wish I could have gone. This is the abstract:

“Revelation after the Rabbis: Sefer Zerubbabel and Sefer Eliyyahu”

Abstract: /Sefer Zerubbabel /and /Sefer Eliyyahu/, often described as medieval Hebrew apocalypses, were composed in the first part of the seventh century. They thus faced the challenge of offering their revelations to a world that was not only post-biblical but also post-talmudic. I will discuss the implications of this situation for the content of their revelations and the quite different ways they present them, suggesting that /Sefer Eliyyahu /shows a much greater affinity for rabbinic values and rabbinic literary style than /Sefer Zerubbabel /and considering the implications of /Sefer Zerubbabel/’s distance from rabbinic culture.

Bibliography - Please read the texts if possible. Probably the most convenient place to get the translations of the two works is John Reeves, /Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic: A Postrabbinic Jewish Apocalypse Reader /(2005). I translated /Sefer Zerubbabel /in /Rabbinic Fantasies/, ed. David Stern and Mark Jay Mirsky (1990). The originals of both works await real editions. The most convenient source for the Hebrew of both works is probably Yehudah Even-Shmuel, /Midreshei Ge'ulah/, but be warned that these are "improved" version. Reeves refers you to other editions of the two works.

UNESCO drops Syria a hint.

ARAMAIC WATCH: The Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, has brought up Aramaic and Maaloula (Ma'aloula, Malula) in the hearing of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria:

She pointed out that her talks with President al-Assad underlined the role of education in bolstering social cohesion based on the roots of national identity and historical prospects and aspirations for future. "Syria is such a unique place for laying down bridges that connect history, modern life and the future," she said. Ms. Bokova spoke about her visit to Ma'lula which, she added, is given great attention by President al-Assad "not only for its importance in preserving Aramaic language, but also in order to keep it as a living example of the different cultures and religions which have lived together in tolerance over decades." ...

In other words, Mr. President, how about reopening the Aramaic Language Institute in Maaloula?

I can relate.

"THEY EXPECT ME TO ANSWER with the ancient Aramaic or Phoenician name of a fallen angel." Yeah, this happens to me a lot too.

Types of texts in the DSS

TYPES OF TEXTS in the Dead Sea Scrolls are summarized in the Youngstown Vindicator (Ohio). The list is essentially correct, although it should be noted that Pesharim are also sectarian texts and none of the Pseudepigrapha discovered at Qumran are known in the Armenian canon.

Hamas and Gaza antiquities

HAMAS is taking some interest in antiquities in Gaza according to the Christian Science Monitor:

When laborers stumbled on an ancient hoard of 1,300 silver coins and the walls of a 3,300-year-old city in the southern town of Rafah in January, it was a fresh reminder that the tiny territory maintains a rich past.

[...]

"Gaza is very small geographically, but in terms of archaeology, it is very large," says the Hamas minister of tourism and antiquities, Mohammed al-Agha. "Gaza was at the crossroads of Africa, Asia, and Europe, and there is a great accumulation of human civilization here. But we don't have our own specialists so we can't manage the sites professionally."

[...]

Construction contractors like Jawhdat Khodary, who opened a private museum in a beachfront space in 2008, would pay laborers and local fishermen for any artifacts they found, preserving at least 3,000 pieces.

[...]

But Hamas says it is making both the regulation and preservation of historical sites a priority. The tourism and antiquities ministry inaugurated in January an artifacts museum in Gaza City – in an Ottoman-era governor's residence – and took control of the Rafah coin find.

Mr. Agha says the ministry also plans to cooperate with Gaza's Islamic University to expand courses on archaeology. Hamas hired a new guard for the remains of the 3rd-century monastery that Mr. Mubaid says is Gaza's most important site.

But Mr. Khodary charges Hamas with censoring some of his finds. He claims Hamas asked him to put away tiny menorahs – and a small statue of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, whose gown was deemed too revealing.

The censorship (noted earlier here) is kind of pathetic, but the new museum and the efforts on the Rafah coin hoard are encouraging.

For that coin hoard see here. Mr. Khodary's museum has also been mentioned here and here.

More on the Azusa Pacific DSS and exhibition

AZUSA PACIFIC UNIVERSITY tells the story of how they acquired those five Dead Sea Scroll fragments. And the Treasures of the Bible: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Beyond exhibition website is here.

Background here.

UPDATE (12 May): Bad link now fixed!

Progress on the Cairo Geniza Digitization Project

THE CAIRO GENIZA DIGITIZATION PROJECT has processed about 65,000 images, about 20% of the 310,000 total estimated.

Background on the project is here.

St. George's Day is today

ST. GEORGE'S DAY is today.

Lemba "Ark of the Covenant" on display in Harare

THE LEMBA "ARK OF THE COVENANT" is on display in Harare:

African 'Jewish' tribe displays its lost ark

By Moira Schneider, April 22, 2010 (Jewish Chronicle Online)

Members of an African tribe are displaying a sacred object they believe to be the Ark of the Covenant in a Harare museum.

The item is a ngoma, a sacred drum made of wood. According to oral tradition, a ngoma was carried from Israel by the Lemba, a South African tribe who believe they are descendants of Jews from the Middle East. After it burst into flame and was destroyed, another ngoma - the one currently on display - was constructed from the ruins.

DNA research has traced the Lemba's origins to the Middle East. More remarkably, a genetic marker largely found only in Cohanim, descendants of the ancient Jewish priesthood, is present in the same proportions among the Lemba's own priests, known as the Buba.

[...]

There's a good photo of the object, which has no particular resemblance to the biblical Ark. Background here and here (scroll down) and just keep following the links back.

Tobias and the Angel by Adam Elsheimer

APOCRYPHA WATCH: Tobias and the Angel (1607), painted by Adam Elsheimer, is profiled by Michael Glover in the Independent. Excerpt:

Only 34 paintings are known to exist by him, but a number of them are amongst the most exciting and innovative works of their time. Tobias and the Angel, which was probably painted three or four years before his death, is one of those tiny, innovative works which show us why he is so important. The subject itself is not uncommon – Verrocchio, Lippo Lippi and Raphael made paintings of the same title. But Elsheimer's way of dealing with the subject was quite different. If you look at the three treatments of the subject by the other masters, you will find them all to be brilliant, and almost gaudily worldly, displays of painterly excellence, bathed in the light of day – self-preeningly so, you might even add. Elsheimer turns the subject into a much more mysterious and almost hole-in-the-corner affair. What is more, the scene is mysteriously under-lit, and variously lit – another trait common to many of Elsheimer's best works.

The story is taken not from the Bible, but from the Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha, that collection of narratives which got excluded from the Bible by the Church Fathers. Tobias is the son of Tobit. A fish attacks him while he is washing beside the River Tigris. He kills it, removes its guts, and later uses them to exorcise a demon, and to cure his father of blindness. An angel guides him across the water to safety. One important matter which Elsheimer more than suggests is that Tobias, who is represented as a small, vulnerable boy stumbling his way across the waters in the half-light, does not necessarily know that his protector and guardian is an angel because Tobias is not looking at him.

The article has an enlargeable photo of the painting.

Kurt Raveh interviewed about the Jesus Boat in CT

KURT RAVEH, excavator of the "Jesus Boat" (a first-century wooden boat discovered in the Sea of Galilee in 1986 - with no actual direct connection with Jesus), is interviewed by David Neff in Christianity Today. Excerpt:

How was the Jesus Boat discovered?

It was a real surprise. After four years of drought, in 1986 the Sea of Galilee had retreated. Two brothers, Jewish fishermen, were walking on the exposed seabed and found coins, pieces of wood, and iron nails. They called us to check into it.

We started cleaning some of the boat, and suddenly we saw the mortise and tenon joints. We found a Roman oil lamp and a Roman cooking pot. It was a boat from Roman times! This is what we had been waiting for.

At that moment, there appeared a beautiful double rainbow. It was like a blessing. We danced there like Indians from happiness.

Then the problems started. The wood was completely waterlogged so it was like wet cardboard. Our boss at the Department of Antiquities didn't have equipment. Our group was just two archaeologists, two fishermen, and two others. We had only three buckets and two shovels. An expedition like this normally brings with it a million dollars, a year of preparation, laboratories, and a 40-person professional crew.

The same issue of CT also has a review of the book The Jesus Boat: Living Proof of a Modern-Day Miracle in Galilee by Christian Stillman.

I noted the Jesus Boat story a few years ago here.

Obituary for Hanan Eshel (Jewish Ideas Daily)

AN OBITUARY FOR HANAN ESHEL in Jewish Ideas Daily:

What the Archaeologist Knew

The ghosts of Qumran have conjured up two distinct communities of modern scholars: the archaeologists who dig in the caves and discover the libraries, and the textual scholars who read and interpret the Dead Sea Scrolls in cavernous libraries of their own. Not many have been able to move with assurance among both. One of them was Hanan Eshel, who died earlier this month at age fifty-two.

[...]

Earlier tributes here.

A Bible Museum in Amsterdam

THERE'S A BIBLE MUSEUM in Amsterdam, built in the 1660s, with models of the Temple Mount and the Tabernacle.

Qumran scholar comes to Brite Divinity School

BRITE DIVINITY SCHOOL at Texas Christian University has a new director of its Jewish Studies program who is a specialist in the Dead Sea Scrolls:

Jewish studies gets new director

Kayla Mezzell
Issue date: 4/22/10 Section: News (Daily Skiff)

Brite Divinity School officials found a new director of the Jewish Studies Program last week.

Nancy Ramsay, Brite Divinity School dean, said Ariel Feldman, a current Newton Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Manchester in England, accepted the position early last week and would join the staff as the Rosalyn and Manny Rosenthal Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and director of the Jewish Studies Program in fall 2011. Both posts are currently vacant.

Ramsay said Feldman could not relocate to the U.S. to begin teaching until he has completed the prestigious Newton fellowship. The classes traditionally taught by the director will not be taught again until Feldman arrives in 2011.

According to the Newton International fellowships website, the Newton fellowship is a post-doctoral research fellowship for international scholars. The program is administered by The British Academy, The Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society.

When he comes to campus, Feldman, a graduate of the University of Haifa in Israel, will be required to teach three graduate-level courses and one undergraduate-level course in the religion department, Ramsay said.

Ramsay said Feldman will teach the same undergraduate class as his predecessor, David Nelson, who resigned from the post in May 2009 to pursue other interests.

Because of the specialized nature of the program Feldman will be entering, Ramsay said, the position has been vacant with special lectures augmenting attention to the area in the meantime.

Feldman has specialized in the Qumran Scrolls, better known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ramsay said. According to the Library of Congress website, the Dead Sea Scrolls were the oldest Hebrew scripture manuscript still in existence when they were discovered in 1947.

[...]

Congratulations to Dr. Feldman and to Brite Divinity School.

Ten minutes with ... James Charlesworth

TEN MINUTES WITH ... JAMES CHARLESWORTH, who tells us that in antiquity the serpert was a symbol of good sex. This and other things from his new book, The Good & Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol Became Christianized.

Philip Pullman interviewed in the Guardian

PHILIP PULLMAN is interviewed in the Guardian about his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, and other things. Excerpt on Gnosticism:

But in truth he had for some while been thinking about Jesus. "Reading around the subject," he says. "I love late antiquity because it's a time of immense competition among religions. The old gods, the Greek and Roman gods, were gradually being replaced by rather fearsome or demanding new gods, such as the one that the Christians were bringing from the region we call Palestine. At the same time, Greek thought had combined with religious feelings from a little further east and produced something then known as gnosticism . . . "

It is at moments like this, that one sees the remnants of Pullman the teacher. "It's the idea that this world is a false creation of an evil demiurge," he continues, voice calm and dry, "and not the real place created by the real God, and that all of us have inside us a sort of spark of divinity that was stolen from the real God and that explains what our task is — we have to escape and get back to the real source." He smiles faintly. "Now that's a hell of a good story because it accounts for so many things: it accounts for why there's evil and suffering and sickness and so on; it accounts for why those who think deeply don't feel at home in the world; and it gives us something to do. It's one of the best stories of all time. But it's not true." He adds a polite qualification: "I don't think."

When did he decide it wasn't true? "Well I went through a very gnostic phase in my 20s," he recalls. "I read a lot of stuff about it and tried to feel the sort of angst appropriate to someone who's a prisoner of a material world. But I don't do angst very well. As the man who wanted to be a philosopher said to Dr Johnson, 'Cheerfulness keeps breaking through.' Heh-HA!" He has a linty sort of laugh, not hearty or loud, but something quickly brushed off.

"And so I came to realise that this world was actually rather a good place, which is full of things that make you laugh and things that make you happy and things that make you feel good physically, and so I gradually abandoned the idea of the evil demiurges who had created this ghastly world, and realised actually that this is our home, it's where we belong, and there ain't no elsewhere." He pauses. "So that's where I am now, spiritually speaking. Which I never do, because I don't like that word." What word would he use? "Um . . ." he ponders. "Philosophically speaking. Intellectually speaking. Emotionally speaking."

(Yeah, I can relate. I have a go at angst sometimes, but I tend to lose momentum pretty soon and start being happy again. But these days, for those so minded, the Simulation Argument can provide a form of Gnosticism in which the angst is optional.)

On his new book:

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ was recently reviewed in the Guardian by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, a great supporter of Pullman. "I think he was generous," Pullman says. "Much more generous than might have been expected, but he is a good and kindly man. And predictably, but correctly, in effect he said, 'This wasn't as good as the Bible.'" Several critics have made a similar observation. "I know," he says, a little tetchy. "But I wasn't trying to write an alternative Gospel. What I was trying to do was tell the story of Jesus in a different kind of way. And make a fable out of it." He hopes in fact that his book will lead people back to the Bible itself. "Because then they will see how many contradictions and inconsistencies there are between the gospels," he explains, "instead of this single monolithic story."

There's much more and it's worth a read.

Earlier Pullman coverage here.

Emanuel Tov lectures at St Andrews

PROFESSOR EMANUEL TOV, Editor-in-Chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls, lectured in St. Andrews last Thursday. My doctoral student, David Larsen, has posted his notes on the lecture. Many thanks to Professor Tov for coming to us and for Professor Kristin De Troyer for arranging his visit.

The Phoenicia has arrived at St Helena

THE GOOD SHIP PHOENICIA has completed another leg of her journey. (Note that this article is a week old.)

Dorset adventurer's ship Phoenicia arrives at St Helena

1:00pm Tuesday 13th April 2010 (Dorset Echo)

AFTER 17 days and nights at sea, a replica 600BC Phoenician ship has completed its latest passage on an expedition around Africa.

Phoenicia arrived at St Helena after a 1,693-mile voyage from Cape Town, South Africa on Wednesday morning.

Led by Dorset adventurer Philip Beale, the team of 11 international sailors are one step closer to their objective – recreating the first circumnavigation of Africa.
[...]

Having already made a successful navigation of the Cape of Good Hope the crew are delighted to have arrived at St Helena where they will spend a few days on dry land restocking with fresh provisions and taking a short break from life at sea.

They will also invite a local school, who have been tracking their progress online, to visit the ship and learn about the project.

The next leg of the expedition is expected to be a challenge as they sail towards the Ascension Islands and the Azores.

[...]

Background here.

UPDATE: Judith Weingarten e-mails to remind me of the expedition website here and notes that the Phoenicia has arrived at the Ascension Islands.

Welcome to Dead Sea Scrolls 3204

WELCOME TO DEAD SEA SCROLLS 3204

By Ken Ronnan | Published Mon, Apr 19 2010 10:42 am (MinnPost.com)

Professor Alex Jassen's students have a unique opportunity this year to combine classroom learning with a field visit to the same 2000-year-old document they are studying. Jassen has been teaching Dead Sea Scrolls 3204 at the University of Minnesota for several semesters, and this year served as an academic adviser to the Science Museum of Minnesota in its current exhibit of the actual scrolls. The course studies, in-depth, the impact these scrolls have had on the study of religion, mainly Judaism and Christianity.

There's video too.

I am currently teaching my Dead Sea Scrolls class DI4712/13. (Yes, I know, the website is getting out of date.)

More on the Granite Bay, Ca, DSS exhibition

MORE ON THE GRANITE BAY, CA, DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBIT:

Glimpse of holy scrolls at Sacramento area church
Parts of Dead Sea discovery on loan in Granite Bay
By Sue Nowicki (Modesto Bee)
snowicki@modbee.com

GRANITE BAY -- Want to see a piece of 2,000-year-old history as well as centuries of historic Jewish and Christian writings?

Check out "From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America" at Bayside Church in this Sacramento-area community. Eleven fragments of the famous scrolls -- about the size of a thumbnail -- are on display for the first time in Northern California. The show runs daily through May 15.

On loan from Azusa Pacific University, only three of the exhibit's fragments have been deciphered. They are from Deuteronomy and Daniel and include this verse:
Danny Poplin Jr. is scheduled to be sentenced today

Deuteronomy 8:3 "So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord."

[...]

The article also has a photo of the fragment of Deuteronomy 27:4b-6, on which, more here and follow the links. Background to the exhibition is here.

Metatron in the theater

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: Metatron in the theatre:

Tiny Kushner 5 one-act plays at Tricycle from 1 Sep

(LondonTheatre.co.uk)

The Guthrie Theater/Berkeley Repertory Theatre production of Tiny Kushner, a collection of five one-act plays by Tony Kushner, at Tricycle, in Kilburn, north London, from 1 to 25 Sep 2010.

It is directed by Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Artistic Director Tony Taccone. Designed by Annie Smart, lighting by Alexander V. Nichols, sound by Victor Zupanc

Number four is:

DR. ARNOLD A. HUTSCHNECKER IN PARADISE: Metatron, a Recording Angel with a million eyes, is holding a supervisory session with Dr. Hutschneker in an upscale office in heaven. The two discuss how Hutschneker’s pains and his denial of mortality could quite possibly be related to his sessions with his own patient, Richard Milhous Nixon, with whom he frequently meets in the afterlife.

Review of Vermes books

ANOTHER VERMES REVIEW, this one of two of his books in the London Times:

Searching for the Real Jesus: Jesus, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Religious Themes by Geza Vermes/The Story of the Scrolls: The Miraculous Discovery and True Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Geza Vermes

The Sunday Times review by Christopher Hart

Geza Vermes, arguably the greatest “Jesus” scholar of the 20th century, was born into an assimilated Hungarian Jewish family in 1924. At the age of seven he was baptised into the Roman Catholic Church. He lost both his parents in the Holocaust, joined the order of Notre Dame de Sion, and for six years was a Catholic priest. But in middle age, “without a spiritual storm”, he left the Church and found himself “back at my Jewish roots”, though not a practising Jew.

The author’s biography is relevant, in this case, since it has been Vermes’s bifocal vision, Christian and Jewish, which has given us such a startlingly vivid image of the historical Jesus. Searching for the Real Jesus is a welcome collection of 29 essays, lectures and newspaper articles, in which he offers portraits of Jesus the Jew from a number of angles, although all are derived from a method of extraordinary simplicity: reading the New Testament closely and without prejudice. As well as bringing Jesus powerfully to life, this also throws up some rather overlooked details, such as that Simon Peter (the first Pope, traditionally) was married.

[...]

The focus is on the Jesus book; the DSS book only gets part of a paragraph at the end.

Earlier Vermes review here.

Aramaic concert shut down by Syrian Government

ARAMAIC WATCH: An Aramaic concert has been shut down by the Syrian Government. The openness they once showed toward Aramaic-speaking culture in Syria seems to be deteriorating.

Review: Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint

BOOK REVIEW (BMCR):

Takamitsu Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint. Louvain/Paris/Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2009. Pp. xl, 757. ISBN 9789042922488. $138.00.

Reviewed by Frank Shaw, Wright State University (Dayton, OH) (feshaw72@email.com)

At some time or other nearly every classicist has consulted, or will need to consult, the Septuagint (LXX), the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek done in the Hellenistic period (along with some additional deuterocanonical or apocryphal books). Until fairly recently for vocabulary one had to employ the often dated and curt entries in LSJ, as modern specialists had yet to produce a LXX lexicon. That situation has changed over the last two decades. In 1992 Johan Lust, Erik Eynikel, and Katrin Hauspie published the first of two volumes of their A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft); the second tome appeared in 1996. The entire work was then revised as a single volume in 2003 (henceforth LEH).1 Naturally any subsequent similar work will be partly assessed in comparison with LEH. It is not as though Muraoka's recently completed dictionary is his first endeavor in Septuagintal lexicography. This volume is the culmination of a continued effort that spans over 20 years (vii). The first installment of that research appeared in 1993 when he published a LXX lexicon of the Twelve (= Minor) Prophets, and again in 2002 with a dictionary of the Twelve Prophets and the Pentateuch (both Peeters). Thus our volume is the completed work, although reviews and use of it will surely necessitate further revision. The book contains an 11-page introduction, a 5-page abbreviations list, and a 16-page bibliography. The lexicon proper is 751 pages; at the book's end is a 5-page list of words found in the standard concordance of the LXX by Hatch and Redpath (henceforth HR)2 but missing in Muraoka's dictionary entries. Important here are most Greek transliterations of Hebrew words since classicists reading the LXX will be curious about such lexemes and likely surprised at not finding an entry for them in the lexicon proper. The lexicon does not generally cover proper names (occasional exceptions: 224, 341).

[...]

Looks like a very useful new resource.

Review of Vermes, The Story of the Scrolls

THE STORY OF THE SCROLLS, by Geza Vermes, is reviewed in the Calcutta Telegraph. Excerpt:

Geza Vermes is one of the world’s acknowledged experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls. But he was only 23 when they were first discovered. He gives a cogent and objective account of how his life has come to be inextricably linked with the scrolls. He remarks at the end, lightheartedly, that he was once introduced as the man who has written the Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Most people who are aware of Vermes’s work will agree that such a description of him is entirely justified even though it does not encompass all aspects of his phenomenal scholarship and erudition.

This book is addressed to the intelligent layman who is interested in the scrolls and in the history that emerges from them. Vermes does two things in this book. First, he tells the story of their discovery, decipherment, collation, editing and annotation. This was not a smooth operation and it took inordinately long. There were too many groups of scholars involved. As a result, there were bickerings, vested interests, clash of egos, blunders and so on — all leading to the stalling of the project. This part will be of interest to those who are interested in the academic background of the project.

The other dimension of the book concerns the significance of the scrolls: how and to what extent have they extended and altered the understanding of the period. He precedes this by providing a sketch of the state of knowledge of biblical studies before the discovery of the scrolls.

Another review is noted here.

Prague Golem goes into hiding

THE PRAGUE GOLEM - the latest:

Battle over ownership rights sends Prague Golem into hiding

15-04-2010 13:18 | Daniela Lazarová (Radio Prague)

Among the souvenirs that tourists bring back from a visit to Prague are little clay figures of the Golem – a giant linked to one of Prague’s best known legends. What few of them know is that there is a fierce battle underway for ownership rights, which has sent a much larger version of the clay monster into hiding.

The much larger version is a large statue that cannot now be displayed or copied because of the ownership dispute. For a photo, click on the link above. For Golem background, go here and follow the links back.