Proton beams for DSS analysis

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Proton beams used to analyze the Temple Scroll:

The analyses, which were conducted by INFN physicists in collaboration with researchers from IBAM-CNR, have revealed that one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in particular, the Temple Scroll (which is not part of the biblical narration and instead describes the construction and life of a temple and dictates how laws are to be communicated to the people), may have been made near the Dead Sea, in the area of Qumran, where the scrolls were found. In other words, the scrolls may have been created locally.

Much depends on what "may" adds up to here. This is potentially a very exciting development: if it can be established on the basis of the physical composition of the Dead Sea Scrolls that they (or even some of them) were produced in the vicinity of Qumran, this would have important implications for theories about the origins of the Qumran library. But the very cautious phrasing of the claim makes it fairly uninteresting. We already knew that the Temple Scroll may have been produced locally.

Be that as it may, here are more details about the analysis:

The analyses were conducted on seven small samples of the scrolls (average size of one square centimetre), following a request made by Dr. Ira Rabin of BAM (Bundesanstalt fur Materialforschung) in Berlin. The scrolls belong to the Shrine of the Book of the Israel Museum and the Ronald Reed Collection of the John Rylands University Library.

At the LANDIS laboratory (one of the INFN laboratories in Catania), non-destructive analyses were performed to obtain results on the origin of the scrolls. To produce a scroll, which was the writing material used at the time, a great quantity of water is needed. By analysing water samples taken in the area where the scrolls were found, the presence of certain chemical elements was established, and the ratio of their concentrations was determined. The ratio of chlorine to bromine in the fragments of the Temple Scroll was then analysed using proton beams of 1.3 MeV, produced by the Tandem particle accelerator at the INFN National Laboratories of the South. According to this analysis, the ratio of chlorine to bromine in the scroll is consistent with the ratio in local water sources. In other words, this finding supports the hypothesis that the scroll was created in the area in which it was found. The next step in the research will be to analyse the ink used to write the scrolls.

I keep harping on non-destructive and non-invasive analysis being the future of archaeology and this story offers some support for that point. But again, the wording is exceedingly cautious. What does "is consistent with" mean? Is the ratio inconsistent, say, with the ratio of water samples taken from Jerusalem? It may "support the hypothesis that the scroll was created in the area in which it was found," but does it refute the hypothesis that it was produced in Jerusalem or elsewhere in Judea?

I'm not getting too excited about this one until I see some more robust conclusions.

UPDATE (23 July): Robert Cargill has a useful discussion here.

"Mystery" in the DSS and its Perso-Babylonian background

"MYSTERY" (RAZ) in the Dead Sea Scrolls and its Perso-Babylonian background:

Mystery, Secrecy and Esotericism in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Rigorous philology is still the best place to begin a study of ancient texts, and it can be well complemented by a clear interpretive/theoretical framework that seeks to bring focus to a particular angle of vision. But we should always be clear about the limits of our imaginative effort. Extracting history from ancient texts is difficult enough; trying to apprehend what ancient writers thought is an even dicier business.

The following essay is adapted from The “Mysteries” of Qumran: Mystery, Secrecy, and Esotericism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (SBLEJL 26; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009)

By Sam Thomas (Bible and Interpretation)
California Lutheran University
June 2010

Excerpt:

If raz was such an important word in Qumran texts and if its various associations played such a central conceptual role in the self-communication (or what Carol Newsom has called the “group self-fashioning”) of the Yahad and related groups, how can we explain this in a way that takes seriously the linguistic and social (and political) contexts in which these texts were produced? Moving backward rather than forward in time, it becomes clear that there is at least an indirect—if not direct—connection between the social and discursive worlds of the Yahad and earlier Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian (and perhaps Persian) priestly-scribal groups. A comparative study of these contexts throws new light on the uses of “mystery” language in the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially when buoyed by a more robust heuristic framework of secrecy and esotericism.

Samaritan Temple excavation not open to tourism

THE SAMARITAN TEMPLE EXCAVATION at Mount Gerizim languishes, its tourism potential untapped:

Ancient site near Nablus 'too problematic' to open
Mount Gerizim is sacred to the Samaritans who regard it, rather than Jerusalem's Temple Mount, as the location chosen by God for a holy temple..

By Chaim Levinson Tags: Israel news (Haaretz)

Behind the rusty iron fence surrounding the archaeological work on Mount Gerizim lies one of Israel's most impressive antiquities sites. But the Civil Administration is keeping the compound closed despite its huge tourism potential. It says planning at the site near Nablus in the West Bank is "too problematic."

Over more than two decades, Yitzhak Magen, the administration's chief archaeology officer, dug up a 2,000-year-old city, once home to 10,000 people.
Samaritan community during a pilgrimage on Mount Gerizim near Nablus

It was preserved in its entirety. The site consists of streets lined with houses, a marketplace and town center. Thousands of bones of sacrificial animals and tens of thousands of coins tell its story.

[...]

"They discovered that the destroyed temple began in the Hasmonean era and ended in the Byzantine era. The Byzantines built on its ruins an octagonal church, which has been dug up. The compound wall has remained almost entirely intact, as have parts of the central Samaritan city. The findings show a high living standard, with bathtubs, ceramics, a heating system and mosaics. You can see it was the capital of a kingdom."

[...]

The Samaritan community wants it opened up to tourists.

Ugaritic as a test case for computer language-decipherment

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Progress in computer decipherment of ancient languages, with Ugaritic as a test case.

Computer program deciphers a dead language that mystified linguists

(io9)

The lost language of Ugaritic was last spoken 3,500 years ago. It survives on just a few tablets, and linguists could only translate it with years of hard work and plenty of luck. A computer deciphered it in hours.

[...]

That last sentence, of course, is irresponsible hogwash. What the program did manage to do was (1) to identify almost perfectly (29 of 30) the letter correspondences between Ugaritic and Hebrew and (2) identify about 60% of the Hebrew words cognate to Ugaritic words. This is a remarkable and important achievement and it's a pity that the media coverage it has received so far is so sensationalist.

The limits of the system are (1) it needs to have identified a cognate language (Hebrew in this case) and (2) both languages need to be in an alphbetic script.

Anyone who has worked with Ugaritic will know how far this is from a decipherment. Decipherment of Ugaritic is still at a fairly primitive level and is likely to remain that way unless we recover a lot more texts. (Rumor was in my postgraduate days that a famous Semitist who shall remain nameless liked to say that he thought we were reading the tablets upside-down!) We understand Ugaritic as well as we do primarily because of all the cognates it shares with Hebrew, but a cognate word or root does no more than narrow the range of guesswork for understanding that word or root. Usage and context are also extremely important, and neither are addressed by this computer program. Indeed, the program doesn't do any translating at all. What it does do, remarkably efficiently, is to lay the groundwork for a human being to decipher an ancient language, potentially making the task much easier.

You can download a pdf file of the paper "A Statistical Model for Lost Language Decipherment," by Benjamin Snyder, Regina Barzilay, and Kevin Knight, by clicking on the link. This is the abstract:

In this paper we propose a method for the automatic decipherment of lost languages. Given a non-parallel corpus in a known re-lated language, our model produces both alphabetic mappings and translations of words into their corresponding cognates. We employ a non-parametric Bayesian framework to simultaneously capture both low-level character mappings and high- level morphemic correspondences. This formulation enables us to encode some of the linguistic intuitions that have guided human decipherers. When applied to the ancient Semitic language Ugaritic, the model correctly maps 29 of 30 letters to their Hebrew counterparts, and deduces the correct Hebrew cognate for 60% of the Ugaritic words which have cognates in Hebrew.

JSIJ vol. 8

JUDAIC STUDIES, AN INTERNET JOURNAL has published a new volume:

Dear JSIJ Subscribers,

We are pleased to announce the official publication of vol. 8 of JSIJ (Jewish Studies - an Internet Journal), which includes the following articles (abstracts of these articles appear at the end of this email):

Michael Avioz, On the Origins of the Term Nevi'im Rishonim (Heb.)

Itzhak Hamitovsky. Rabbi Meir and the Samaritans: The Differences Between the Accounts in the Yerushalmi and the Bavli (Heb.)

Menachem Katz, Collections of Halakha or Analytic Clarifications in the Babylonian Talmud? (Heb.)

Moshe Lavee, Welfare and Education vs. Leadership and Redemption: The Stories about Rabbi and Rabbi Hiyya as an Example of the Image of the Tannaitic Past in the Babylonian Talmud (Heb.)

Itzhak Hershkowitz, The Altar as God's House: A Study in Maimonides' Temple Perspectives (Heb.)

Yossi Erel, Ramban’s Approach Toward the Plain Meaning of the Biblical Text vs. his Commitment to Halakha (Heb.)

Chanan Gafni, Hyperbolic Language in the Mishnah (Heb.)

Aron Pinker, On the Meaning of šgl

Ephraim Stulberg, The Last Oral Torah? The Division of the Torah into ‘Aliyot

You can download (view, print, etc.) the articles by going to the
following website and clicking the appropriate links (Word or PDF):

http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/JSIJ/ca.htm.

Best,

Leib Moscovitz
Managing Editor
JSIJ

Abstracts

1.On the Origins of the Term Nevi'im Rishonim
Michael Avioz

The biblical books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are collectively known in Hebrew as Nevi'im Rishonim (Former Prophets). A review of the evidence from earliest times through the Middle Ages leads to the conclusion that the designation was coined by the Soncino family, who printed those books with Rabbi David Kimchi’s commentary in 1488.

2. Rabbi Meir and the Samaritans: The Differences Between the Accounts in the Yerushalmi and the Bavli
Itzhak Hamitovsky

This article seeks to show how the Babylonian sources placed much greater emphasis than their Palestinian parallels on the role Rabbi Meir played in connection with the changing Halakhic status of the Samaritan community. This conclusion is based on an analysis of the tannaitic sources dealing with Rabbi Meir’s relation to the Samaritans and a comparison between the Babylonian sugyot in BK 38b and Hullin 5b-6a and their Palestinian counterparts. It is suggested that according to both the tannaitic sources and the Palestinian Amoraic sources, Rabbi Meir did not make any significant contribution to the halakhic campaign against the Samaritans. Rather, it appears from these sources that Rabbi Shimon b. Eleazar, Rabbi Meir’s student, played a significant role in this campaign, during the late second century CE. The redactors of the Babylonian sources, following literary patterns attested elsewhere in the Babylonian Talmud, attributed Rabbi Shimon b. Eleazar's position to his teacher, Rabbi Meir. If my analysis is correct, the attribution of this position to Rabbi Meir constitutes yet another example of the transformation of Palestinian stories by Babylonian sources in light of the concerns of the Babylonian redactors.

3. Collections of Halakhah or Analytic Clarifications in the Babylonian Talmud?
Menahem Katz

Most of the Babylonian Talmud consists of sugyot, analytical discourses which form complete and closed structures. Another type of structure found in the gemara is the collection of sayings of a particular amora or of the stam. Rashi called sugyot of this type piskei shemu‘ot or piskei halakhot (Sukkah 3b, Pesahim 9b), terms which reflect the nature of these passages – apparently random collections of rulings, edited (according to Rashi) by the school of Rav Ashi.

This article discusses two such collections – Sukkah 3b-4b and Bava Kamma 26a-27a. It argues that these sugyot reflect a remarkable combination of analytical reasoning and complex literary design. In these collections of sayings, the sages of the Talmud discuss real, concrete cases, through which they explore basic concepts of Jewish law. We cannot treat these sugyot as simple collections of shemu‘ot. Rather, we must observe how they analyze in great detail the exact nature of the halakhic concepts they address.

4. Welfare and Education vs. Leadership and Redemption: The Stories about Rabbi and Rabbi Hiyya as an Example of the Image of the Tannaitic Past in the Babylonian Talmud
Moshe Lavee

This article proposes a reconstruction of the Babylonian perspective on the relations of R. Hiyya and Rabbi. We argues that shared motifs, structures and expressions justify reading a group of scattered traditions and stories as if they belong to a single cluster, which may be read coherently. A comparison to parallel traditions in rabbinic compilations from the land of Israel shows the Babylonian character of this reconstructed story. Thus, this story should not be read as reflecting the actual history of the Tannaim, but rather as expressing contrasting values and impressions that were later associated with the figures of Rabbi and Rabbi Hiyya. Rabbi represents tough political leadership, which is expressed, among other things, by restricting the spread of Torah study and by Messianic aspirations. Rabbi Hiyya symbolizes opposition to Rabbi, emphasizing Torah education for the masses, social concern, and investment in the immediate future – the next generation. The reading strategy suggested in this paper seeks to integrate two different approaches to the study of rabbinic literature: the literary approach to reading rabbinic stories, and the study of the contribution of late redactors, transmitters and editors to the formation of the Babylonian Talmud.

5. The Altar as God's House: A Study in Maimonides' Temple Perspectives
Itzhak Hershkowitz

The altar has a unique and complex status in the Bible, since two incompatible characteristics are attributed to it: it is depicted both as a portable sanctified object and as a stationary building. These opposing characteristics are evident in Maimonides' laws of the Temple (Hilkhot Beit Ha-Behirah). However, when Maimonides molds these rulings into a coherent codex of decrees, he prefers the building aspect of the altar, although he bases several rulings about the Temple, especially those concerning building materials and methods, on the conception of the portable altar.

Thus, Maimonides asserts that the altar is the fundamental essence of the Temple. Therefore, even if the Temple is not fully constructed, the presence of the altar alone is sufficient to provide a functional House of God. This view differs from that of the talmudic Sages, who regarded the altar solely as a temporary alternative to the Temple.

These conclusions derive from a textual, contextual, and linguistic study of Maimonides' writings concerning the relationship between the altar, the Temple's outer shell, and the other vessels that were utilized in the divine service.

6. Ramban’s Approach Toward the Plain Meaning of the Biblical Text vs. his Commitment to Halakha
Yossi Erel

In his commentary on the Torah, Ramban displays a deep commitment to the Halakha as it was determined by the Sages in the Talmud and in post-Talmudic traditions. Ramban often demurs when Rashi presents a Rabbinic interpretation that is not in accordance with the Halakha. However, the Ramban’s commitment to Halakha sometimes clashes with his parallel commitment to the plain meaning of the text (peshat), and in these instances the effort to be faithful to both approaches and to reconcile them creates a hermeneutic challenge.

The first two sections of this article present two hermeneutic techniques that help Ramban meet this challenge. The first technique, frequently found in his commentary on the Torah, is the principle of deriving two Halakhot from one verse: the Halakha according to the peshat, and the Halakha according to the Sages. This technique was not accepted by the Ba‘alei Tosafot in France, whose interpretation according to the peshat ignores the Halakha.

The second technique, Ramban’s main approach in analyzing Halakhic passages in the Torah, is one of synthesis between the two contradictory principles.

The third section of this article focuses on excerpts from Ramban’s works on the Talmud, in which he tries to find the source of the Halakha in the plain meaning of Biblical verses even when the Talmud does not cite a Biblical verse.

The fourth section returns to Ramban’s commentary on the Torah. Here Ramban looks for the Biblical verses which were the source of the Halakha even when the Sages cited midrashic sources. Indeed, Ramban constructs an innovative Halakhic framework with regard to the Sabbath and a number of other subjects on the basis of Biblical verses.

The fifth and final section of this article analyzes Ramban’s synthetic approach within the framework of his historical and cultural background and milieu, comparing it to that of the Ba‘alei Tosafot in France on the one hand, and to the Sephardic halakhic tradition in Spain and North Africa on the other. We also point out the directions of the developments that might have been influenced by Ramban’s dispute with the Christians, which may have influenced his attempt to combine two parallel approaches in his commentary on the Torah.

7. Hyperbolic Language in the Mishnah
Chanan Gafni

One of the heated debates in nineteenth-century Jewish scholarship concerned the Talmud’s interpretation of the Mishnah, which to many seemed to deviate from the plain, original sense of the Mishnaic text. In this context, a fascinating discussion was devoted to a number of Mishnayot that, according to the Talmud, employed hyperbolic language (leshon guzma). All of these Mishnayot involved various aspects of Second Temple ritual and, according to the Amoraim, all used the number 300 in a rather arbitrary way. In the nineteenth-century debate surrounding these mishnayot, some interpreted them literally, without ascribing a tendency to hyperbole to the Tannaim. Others, determined to defend the traditional interpretation of the Mishnah at any cost, rejected these attempts. As in many other cases, nineteenth-century scholarship involved not only critical concerns, but ideological considerations as well.

8. On the Meaning of šgl
Aron Pinker

The etymology of šgl is obscure. Šgl is a verb and noun that occurs a number of times in the Hebrew Bible and has diametrically opposing meanings. A strong late tradition exists for understanding the verb šgl as an obscene term for copulation. Our analysis of biblical and Talmudic sources suggests that the obscenity of šgl (verb and noun) stems from its relation to the anus. Specifically, the verb šgl is “to sodomize a woman” and the noun šgl is “a woman that copulates anally, as a bitch.” In some cases in the Hebrew Bible that deal with foreign royalty, a borrowed Akkadian term šgl is used in the sense of “queen, lady.” The Hebrew šgl and the Akkadian term appear to be unrelated.

9. The Last Oral Torah? The Division of the Torah into 'Aliyot
Ephraim Stulberg

The origins of the present-day system by which the weekly Torah reading is divided into seven rigorously delineated aliyot are shrouded in mystery. While recent scholarship has emphasized that standardization of this practice is a relatively recent development, rabbinic literature contains no programmatic statements describing the principles upon which the modern division was founded. This article attempts to define a set of fundamental principles that appear to have guided the formulation of the aliyah divisions currently employed in synagogues throughout the world. It argues that aliyah breaks in both narrative and legal sections were determined to a surprisingly large extent by midrashic considerations, conjoining seemingly unrelated texts in order to convey connections between them that would otherwise go unnoticed. More significantly, perhaps, the aliyah divisions were also manipulated so as to heighten audience interest in the reading, either by creating an atmosphere of suspense or by consistently selecting expressions of blessing with which to conclude aliyot. This final point raises important implications for a reappraisal of audience response to the Torah reading and its importance in the lives of its listeners.

Update on proposed Western Wall museum

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The proposed Western Wall Museum is being considered by Jerusalem's district planning council.

Western Wall museum plans threaten Roman relics, archaeologists warn
Jerusalem planning council to rule on controversial project that opponents claim would destroy valuable ancient structures beneath the Old City.

By Nir Hasson (Haaretz)

Jerusalem's district planning council was on Sunday set to rule on a controversial museum project that archaeologists claim would destroy valuable ancient structures beneath the Old City.

But a group of archaeologists who have petitioned the council says the new building, designed by architect Ada Karmi, would damage an ancient Roman road, flanked by rare and elaborate columns, that runs beneath the planned construction.

They say that if Jewish relics were under threat, the project would never have been allowed.

[...]

As of last October, the IAA was defending the project.

Robert McL Wilson, R.I.P.

ROBERT MCLACHLAN WILSON, requiescat in pace. I am very sorry to inform you that St Andrews Professor Emeritus Robert ("Robin") McL Wilson, renowned scholar of the New Testament, New Testament Apocrypha, and Gnosticism, passed away yesterday as the result of a massive stroke he suffered last week. He was ninety-four years old.

At the time of his 90th birthday celebration in February of 2006 I discussed Professor Wilson's career in detail, so I will not repeat that here. Suffice to say that he was a scholar of the highest international standing who continued his research long after retirement, publishing what turned out to be his last book just in time for it to be celebrated alongside his 90th birthday.

Robin Wilson was a PaleoJudaica reader, and a couple of times he e-mailed me in response to a post. I was fortunate enough to see and chat with him a few times in 2010. During one of our recent conversations he reminded me that just after his birthday celebration he received an e-mail from a friend in New York who knew all about it from reading the PaleoJudaica account of it linked-to above.

The last time I saw him was at the beginning of June end of May, when I visited a service at St Leonard's Parish Church in St Andrews, where Robin was a regular attender. It happened that the Old Testament scripture reading that morning was Proverbs chapter 8:1-4, 22-31, the chapter that tells how Lady Wisdom was present with God at the creation of the world. I commented to Robin that the chapter was a fine foundational text for the Gnostic Sophia mythology and he agreed. I quote it here (RSV) in his honor.

[1] Does not wisdom call,
does not understanding raise her voice?
[2] On the heights beside the way,
in the paths she takes her stand;
[3] beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud:
[4] "To you, O men, I call,
and my cry is to the sons of men.
[22] The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
[23] Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
[24] When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
[25] Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth;
[26] before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
[27] When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
[28] when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
[29] when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
[30] then I was beside him, like a master workman;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
[31] rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the sons of men.

UPDATE (5 June): I found the order of service and have accordingly corrected the date above and the details of the scripture reading.

Computer apps and ancient Judaism (etc.)

COMPUTER APPS AND ANCIENT JUDAISM (ETC.):

Computer apps are bringing religion into the 21st century
By ANNYSA JOHNSON
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

[...]

For the uninitiated, apps are programs that users download free or for a fee to their iPhones, Androids, BlackBerry phones and other hand-held devices.

Apple dominates the industry with more than 225,000 apps at its online App Store, followed by the Google-based Android Marketplace with more than 30,000, though other smaller competitors abound.

“I tell people I’m compensating for my 17th-century looks,” said Rabbi Benzion Twerski of the Orthodox Congregation Beth Jehudah on Milwaukee’s north side, who sports both an iPhone and iPad.

Twerski has apps that let him read the Torah, the Talmud and the Siddur, the book of daily prayers; recite the appropriate blessings for meals; and vet the thousands of ingredients in his work inspecting kosher food factories.

Donald Rappe, an associate professor in the Department of Theology at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee, uses apps to help him translate ancient biblical texts, bone up on his Hebrew and pull down scholarly lectures by colleagues in his field.

And Muslim physician Mushir Hassan has one of the Qur’an and another that tells him when it’s time to pray, wherever he is in the world.

[...]

On my iPod Touch I have the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, the Greek New Testament, the Latin Vulgate, the Arabic Qur'an, the Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon, the Lewis and Short Latin Lexicon, a Qur'anic Arabic vocabulary drill, and English translations of the complete works of Philo and Josephus and the Vulgate. Some of the editions are old, but all are still useful on the run.

Brothel infanticide in Buckinghamshire?

INFANTICIDE by prostitutes in a late-antique brothel in Buckinghamshire?

Nearly a hundred infant burials were excavated there a century ago, but are only now being properly analyzed. The somewhat similar find of about the same number of infant corpses from about the same period in a sewer at Ashkelon, Israel, has been ascribed to prostitute infanticide, although this explanation is not without difficulties. David Meadows discusses the problems with this theory for the Buckinghamshire find.

Vindolanda is a family business

THE VINDOLANDA ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG is a family business:

All roads lead to Vindolanda Roman Fort
The Birley family have toiled for 60 years to unearth Roman artefacts at Vindolanda Roman Fort in Northumbria, says Juliet Rix.

By Juliet Rix (The Telegraph)
Published: 12:34PM BST 25 Jun 2010

In a picturesque Northumbrian valley a mile south of Hadrian's Wall, Andrew Birley stands surrounded by a checkerboard of Roman remains. He is supervising a small crowd of volunteer excavators unearthing a 1,600-year-old flagstone road. They have just dug up a small stone altar with a potentially interesting inscription. Andrew is the third generation of his family to run the excavations here at Vindolanda Roman Fort. It's an unusual family business.

[...]

For more on Vindolanda go here, here, and especially here.

(Via Dorothy Lobel King on Facebook.)

Conference at KCL on Gender and Identity

CONFERENCE AT KCL: This just in from Deborah Rooke (via Viv Rowett) on the SOTS list.

REMINDER

WHOEVER YOU THINK YOU ARE -

ONLY A FEW DAYS LEFT to register for the gender conference at King's College London!!

'WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? GENDER AND THE TRANSMISSION OF IDENTITY IN THE HEBREW BIBLE, DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND RELATED LITERATURE'

9-11 August 2010

SPEAKERS include:
Dr Susanne Scholz, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas
Dr Deborah Rooke, Lecturer in Old Testament Studies, King's College London
Professor Ida Froehlich, Professor of Hebrew Studies and Ancient Near Eastern History, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest

Details and registration form available from http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/trs/events

Closing date for registrations 1 JULY 2010

Note also the 12 July workshop on What Is a Sacred Language? Perspectives from the Diaspora at the same link.

Treasures in the University of Santo Tomas Library

THE LIBRARY of the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines is displaying some historical treasures to celebrate the University's four-hundredth anniversary:

The other National Library

(By FELIPE F. SALVOSA II, Associate Editor, Business World)

Is it possible for the Filipino nation to trace its emergence to one library?

If, as a scientist once said, "A great library contains the diary of the human race," then the library of Asia’s oldest existing university, Santo Tomas, starts the firsthand account of how the Philippines came to being and who the Filipino really is.

It is but natural for the Dominican-run University of Santo Tomas (UST) to bring out the most valuable among its collection of 12,000 or so rare books in time for its 400th founding anniversary next year, but rather than exhibit them as curiosities like the Crown Jewels or even the Shroud of Turin, the "Pontifical" institution has decided to place the library, and itself in the process, in the context of the global forces that shaped history.

The result is Lumina Pandit: An Exhibit of Historical Treasures, the UST library’s multimillion-peso quadricentennial exhibition that speaks of "spreading the light."

[...]

RARE BOOKS AND JESUITS

The oldest in the collection is an incunabulum, the term for books published before 1501 during the infancy of printing. La Guerra Judaica, printed in Seville in 1492, came by way of Amoy, China in 1937. Josephus Flavius, the ancient Jewish historian who lived in the first century A.D., chronicled the failed Jewish rebellion against Rome as a way of dissuading his countrymen from starting a revolt against a mighty empire. The original Aramaic and Greek was translated into Spanish by the scholar Alfonso de Palencia, who dedicated it to Isabel la Catolica, queen of Castille and Leon, on the year Columbus "discovered" America.

The most valuable item in the UST collection is the Polyglot Bible -- the bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and Syriac -- printed by Christopher Plantin in Antwerp between 1569 and 1572. Five of the eight volumes, covering the Old and the New Testaments, are in the university library.

It came to UST by a sheer accident of history. In 1768, the influential and politically savvy Jesuits were banished from all Spanish territories, suppressed by the Pope due to the geopolitical conflicts of the time. Assets of the Society of Jesus were confiscated by the colonial government, and UST had the first crack at the Jesuits' books. The Polyglot Bible and many others carry the mark Del Colegio de la Compania de Jesus de Manila. The remaining Jesuit books went to the seminaries of Manila and Cebu.

[...]

One correction: Josephus probably wrote his Jewish War in Aramaic, but only his Greek translation of it survives from antiquity, so the Greek would have been the basis for the Spanish translation in 1492.

The man who mistook English for Phoenician

THAT CAN HAPPEN: The man who mistook English for Phoenician.

Although I didn't know Dr. Sacks knew Phoenician.

Museum of Tolerance Watch

MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE WATCH:

Arab lawyer files claim against Museum of Tolerance over improper grave removal

Complaint filed on behalf of a new organization, the Association for Muslim Affairs, that represents the heads of various Muslim communities in Israel.

By Nir Hasson (Haaretz)

A complaint has been submitted to State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss against the planned Museum of Tolerance, following a Haaretz investigation into the handling of Muslim graves unearthed at the museum's Jerusalem construction site.

[...]

Background here and follow the links.

Misleading headline of the week

MISLEADING HEADLINE OF THE WEEK, in The Telegraph:

Jesus did not die on cross, says scholar

This refers, not to some Neo-Docetist or daft Schonfieldian interpretation of the crucifixion, but rather to the new doctoral dissertation by Gunnar Samuelsson which argues that the ancient sources actually tell us very little about the mechanics of crucifixion and that the reality (while doubtless as unpleasant as we imagine) may have been quite different from our mental picture and the traditional artistic representations.

El Shaddai and 1 Enoch

THE BOOK OF 1 ENOCH is getting some uncharacteristic attention due to the new computer game El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron:

El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Megatron Breathtaking Debut Trailers
By William Usher: 2010-06-23 14:27:15

The book of Enoch was one of the coolest books of the Bible no one ever got to read in the original KJV. Nevertheless, Ignition Entertainment is taking the missing book of Enoch and turning it into one kick-butt game called El Shaddai.

The book of Enoch is originally what spawned great works like The Divine Comedy, and subsequently, Dante’s Inferno. The new game based on the book follows Enoch’s journey to bring back the soul’s of the original Fallen Angels whose actions ultimately resulted in the great flood.

[...]

Er, it's Metatron, not Megatron. That first sentence is a little garbled too, but I think it means to say (correctly) that the Book of Enoch was not part of the biblical canon found in the King James Version, but it is very cool nonetheless. The book is part of the canon of the Ethiopic Church, but nowhere else.

The second paragraph could use a little clarification as well. Dante's Divine Comedy is not directly inspired by the Book of Enoch, which was lost in the West in his time, apart from a few Byzantine Greek quotations. But Dante was influenced by the apocalyptic traditions ultimately inspired by Enochian and related apocalypses, most directly by the Apocalypse of Paul. The Inferno was the first work in Dante's trilogy, but I take it the author here is referring to the movie Dante's Inferno (which I haven't seen) or to some game I don't know about (maybe this one?).

It seems that El Shaddai involves Enoch trying to help the souls of the imprisoned Watchers, which does at least have some recognizable echoes of the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch.

Other accounts of the game are even more confused about the ancient sources and seem to think that the Book of Enoch is part of the Old Testament. Alas, no.

UPDATE: James McGrath points out on Facebook that Megatron is a Transformer.

The SBL responds to Hendel

THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE responds to Ron Hendel's criticisms:

Discussing Faith and Reason in Biblical Studies

Professor Ronald S. Hendel recently published an opinion piece in Biblical Archaeology Review (see “Farewell to SBL: Faith and Reason in Biblical Studies,” available online here) in which he argues that “[in] recent years [SBL] has changed its position on the relationship between faith and reason in the study of the Bible.” We encourage all SBL members and other interested individuals to read the article in its entirety, then to join a conversation about the SBL and its standards for membership and organizational affiliations (see further below).

The questions that Professor Hendel raises are interesting and important, and we look forward to the discussion that follows. However, we first must clarify a few points of fact with regard to the article in question. In what follows, each “claim” is a summary of one of Professor Hendel’s main points, not a verbatim quotation.

[...]

Follow the link to read the whole thing.

I note that the phrase "critical investigation" is used on the SBL's About page, but not specifically in it's mission statement on that page. This is a small point, but the phrase really should be in the mission statement. (Relevant Facebook page here.)

The correction about the split with the American Academy of Religion looks correct to me. Note the post on the AAR/SBL split here.

I myself don't recall seeing any proselytizing at the SBL sessions. If it is happening, it needs to be stomped on.

The questions for discussion at the end of the post are very constructive and I look forward to the conversation.

James McGrath collects blogospheric responses to Hendel's article here. Robert Cargill responds to the SBL response here.

Thesis from Sweden on rabbinic dreams

A THESIS from Sweden on rabbinic dreams:

Rabbinic dreams during Late Antiquity

News: Jun 03, 2010

Dreams have always held significance for human beings through the ages, and dreaming has been associated with a multitude of different notions. The idea of dreams functioning as a link between humans and the divine has been particularly common. According to a thesis in religious studies from the University of Gothenburg, this notion is also found within Judaism from the period of Late Antiquity.

“The rabbis interpreted dreams using the same methods that they used to interpret the Bible. Texts and dreams were interwoven, for example stories in the religious documents tell of rabbis dreaming that they are reading verses from the Bible. Jewish prayers and dream rituals also recommend recitation of Scriptural verses as a way of dealing with bad dreams; the good text functioning as a kind of weapon against the evil dream,” explains author of the thesis, Erik Alvstad.

The belief that gods and other divine forces convey knowledge and insights to humans through dreams is highlighted in many of the accounts of dreams that readers come across in ancient literary works, such as the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, the works of Homer and the Icelandic sagas. Dream interpretation, prayers and rituals to ward off evil dreams, as well as methods that could be employed in order to encourage good dreams through the power of suggestion, also occurred in ancient cultures.

And in the central text of rabbinic Judaism, the Talmud, we find a wealth of literary material linked to the phenomenon of dreaming. One aspect of particular interest in the Jewish dream culture is that the rabbis, the scholarly elite within the Jewish culture, appear to have made systematic attempts to subordinate dreams to the authority of the Bible, or Torah.

“In the capacity of God’s revelation to the Jewish people, the Torah was regarded as the royal road to knowledge about how to live your life, as well as a source of insights about hidden secrets. But while the Torah was regarded as the most important link between man and God, dreams continued to attract attention: People had dreams and they speculated about where the dreams came from, what they might mean and whether they might be ‘true’,” says Erik Alvstad.

According to Erik Alvstad, the central role of text and textual practices within the culture had major consequences for the way in which dreams were regarded. By examining literary material of various genres in the rabbinic documents, he shows that the late ancient rabbis systematically associated the dream with the text.

“There’s a kind of competition between the Torah, the central revelation given to the Jewish people on one unique occasion, and the dream as an alternative and more peripheral, yet at the same time continuing form of revelation. This is a circumstance that the rabbis express through the maxim: “Dreams are a sixtieth part of prophecy.” The rivalry is also reflected in the polemical stories about conflicts between rabbis and professional dream interpreters about authority and social influence,” says Erik Alvstad.


Title of thesis: Reading the Dream Text: A Nexus between Dreams and Texts in the Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity
Author of thesis: Erik Alvstad, tel.: +46 31 7862091 (work), +46 31 7750802 (home)
E-mail: erik.alvstad@lir.gu.se
Time and venue for public defence of thesis: Saturday 5 June 2010, 10.15 a.m., Lilla hörsalen, Humanisten, Renströmsgatan 6, Gothenburg
Opponent: Professor Philip Alexander, University of Manchester
Copies of the thesis can be ordered from the Department for Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, e-mail: pernilla.josefson@lir.gu.se
Link to thesis: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/22222

BY: Thomas Melin

More on rabbinic dreams here and here.

Samuel Iwry's son

SAMUEL IWRY'S SON is a financial official in Washington:

The Scholar Of Savings

(Dow Jones) Interpreting the Bible and retirement policy typically don't mix.

Unless you are J. Mark Iwry. The son of a Dead Sea Scroll scholar and a descendant of mystical 17th-century rabbi Baal Shem Tov, he also is a uniquely powerful Washington wonk, almost single-handedly guiding the nation's approach to retirement accounts and policy.

Iwry's job, as the Treasury Department's senior benefits official, is to figure out what the government can and can't do to boost retirement savings. He is currently promoting "auto-IRAs," the top retirement item in the Obama administration's budget, which will be introduced to Congress within a few weeks.

Overhauling retirement-plan policies involves interpreting arcane and often ambiguous provisions in the U.S. tax code, then getting employers and lawmakers to go along with proposed changes.

"He's sort of like a biblical scholar," says Norman Stein, professor of law at Drexel University. "He's interested in trying to deal with the technical and policy together, to get the technical to serve the policy."

[...]

Iwry—who lives near Washington with his wife, Daryl Lander, a lawyer in solo practice, and his college-bound son—may have a tolerance for complexity in his DNA.

His father, Samuel Iwry, was a Bible scholar in Poland who joined the resistance during World War II, and made his way to Shanghai, where he negotiated with the British to allow Jewish families to emigrate from Asia to Palestine. He married the woman who nursed him back to health after he was imprisoned by the Japanese, and the couple moved to the U.S., where the senior Iwry became a professor at Johns Hopkins University and worked to decode the Dead Sea Scrolls.

For someone who chooses his words as if he is giving a deposition, the younger Iwry has the unlikely distinction, along with humorist Dave Barry, of being among the most quoted in the recently published "As Certain as Death: Quotations About Taxes," by Jeffery L. Yablon, a tax partner in the Washington office of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.

In one, Iwry compares the tax code to the Bible: "Of only one other book can it be said . . . that great minds have devoted countless hours to the scrutiny and learned exegesis of every passage; that differing interpretations of the text have given rise to some of humanity's most epic struggles; and that, while millions mine it for valuable insights and inspiration, those who claim to live by the book and follow its precepts probably far outnumber those who actually do so."

Silwan archaeological park

THAT ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK slated to be built in Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood is back in the news:

East Jerusalem Building Plan Advances

By ISABEL KERSHNER (New York Times)
Published: June 21, 2010

JERUSALEM — Jerusalem’s city hall advanced rezoning and development plans on Monday for a hotly contested area of East Jerusalem, another example of an awkwardly timed, seemingly bureaucratic Israeli maneuver that could upset fragile peace efforts.

The preliminary approval for the plans — including the demolition of more than 20 Palestinian homes to create an archaeological park, along with a new residential and commercial tourist center — came a day after Israel won unusual praise from Washington for easing the blockade of Hamas-run Gaza, and amid other signs of progress. A mayoral spokesman said the planning decisions were independent of other considerations.

[...]

New US-Israel Crisis Looms over Jerusalem Park

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva)

Another crisis between the Netanyahu and Obama administrations looms over housing in Jerusalem, this time because of Jerusalem’s plan to wreck 22 illegally built Arab homes to make way for an archaeological park. The Jerusalem municipality proposal also calls for making legal 66 other Arab buildings built without permits.

The U.S. State Department said Monday afternoon it is “concerned” over the plan that “we think undermines the trust that is fundamental in making progress to the proximity talks and ultimately in direct negotiations.”

[...]

Background here and follow the links back.

Happy Summer Solstice

HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE to all celebrating. Sunny, clear, and warm here this evening, none of which is to be taken for granted.

SOTS Booklist 2010

IN THE MAIL:

Deborah W. Rook (ed.) with C. A. Strine, Society for Old Testament Study Book List 2010 (London: Sage, 2010)

Crucifixion revisionism?

CRUCIFIXION REVISIONISM?

What do we really know about the crucifixion of Jesus?
June 14, 2010 (Physorg.com)

The many different accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus find little support in historical sources. The reason is that antique sources generally lack descriptions of crucifixions, says Gunnar Samuelsson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who recently finished his doctoral thesis on the topic.

For earlier PaleoJudaica discussions of the physiology of crucifixion, see this post and follow the surviving links. But Samuelsson seems to be taking a much more skeptical line about our whole understanding of crucifixion in antiquity.

UPDATE (22 June): The Gothenburg University website has more information on the thesis here.

Back in St. Andrews

I'M BACK in St. Andrews. Don't know if I'll get to more blogging today.

Back to St. Andrews

I HEAD BACK TO ST. ANDREWS later this morning. Look for me sometime again on Sunday.

Seventh heaven

HEADLINE OF THE WEEK:

The struggles, survival of 7th Heaven

Written by Rick Hellman, Editor (Jewish Chronicle)
Friday, 18 June 2010 12:00

The idea of Seven Heavens is actually an early Jewish mystical concept, propounded by, among others, the sect that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. So it’s fitting that a young Jewish man from Kansas City, Mo., chose 7th Heaven as the name of his record store near the corner of 76th Street and Troost Avenue back in 1974.

[...]

The seven "firmaments" figure prominently in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice among the Dead Sea Scrolls. More on the seventh heaven (broadly speaking) here.

Nabucco at Masada - commentary

NABUCCO AT MASADA - commentary:

Setting opera in Masada resonates with Jewish audience

Published On Fri Jun 18 2010

By William Littler Music Columnist (Toronto Star)

MASADA, ISRAEL—The active campaign to list Masada among the world heritage sites received a huge boost this month with the Israeli Opera’s staging of a two camel-, 10-horse production of Verdi’s Nabucco at its desert base.

[...]

Background here.

Review of Canada's Big Biblical Bargain

REVIEW of Canada's Big Biblical Bargain in Macleans.com (scroll down):

Canada’s Big Biblical Bargain
Jason Kalman and Jaqueline S. du Toit

Most Canadians know something of the Dead Sea scrolls: the first discovery in 1947 by Bedouin nomads after two millennia buried in a cliffside cave, and subsequent finds over the next nine years in 10 other caves; the controversy the texts have sparked over what they reveal about early Judaism and the origins of Christianity; and the endless debate over who owns them now, still making news last year as the scrolls visited the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

What few realize, however, is that a key portion of the scrolls was once set to be permanently housed in Montreal. Half of the 16 scrolls shown at the ROM, in fact, were purchased from their Bedouin finders by a Jerusalem museum with money provided by McGill University. Its $20,000 contribution bought 500 manuscript fragments and, according to Kalman and du Toit, was crucial to keeping the collection intact and available to scholars. In exchange, McGill was promised ownership.

[...]

Background here.

Ron Hendel has left the SBL

RONALD S. HENDEL has left the Society of Biblical Literature:

The battle royal between faith and reason is now in the center ring at the SBL circus. While the cultured despisers of reason may rejoice—including some postmodernists, feminists4 and eco-theologians—I find it dispiriting. I don’t want to belong to a professional society where people want to convert me, and where they hint in their book reviews that I’m going to hell. As a scholar of the humanities—and I might add, as a Jew—I do not feel at home in such a place. What to do? Well, I’ve let my membership in SBL lapse. Maybe that’s a cowardly response, but sometimes, as Shakespeare wrote, “The better part of valor is discretion.” Sometimes it’s reasonable to avoid conflict. And like Pascal and Spinoza, I’m partial to reason in matters of scholarship. But my heart, for reasons of its own, gently grieves.

I didn't know about the change in the wording of the mission statement and I can't say I'm happy with it. I and others have noticed that since the departure of the American Academy of Religion, attendance at the annual-meeting SBL sessions has been disturbingly low, but diluting the mission of the Society is not the solution.

Congratulations to James McGrath et al.

CONGRATULATIONS TO JAMES MCGRATH, with Charles Haberl and April De Conick,, who have been awarded a large NEH grant:

Butler Religion Professor Awarded Federal Funding

InsideINdianaBusiness.com Report

A Butler University associate professor of Religion has landed a $130,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to translate the Mandaean Book of John. James McGrath and his collaborators plan to spend the next two years producing a typed version of the text in the original language and translating the more than 200 pages of handwritten text.

UPDATE: The project now has a blog: The Mandaean Book of John .

Review of Jewish magic exhibition

A REVIEW of the Jewish Magic exhibition at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem:

How lucky charms still bring us a little magic
For all the Bible’s warning against superstition, you can still find Jews wearing amulets today.

By Mordechai Beck, June 17, 2010 (Jewish Chronicle)

Israel's representative at the recent Eurovision Song Contest, Harel Skaat, unashamedly flaunted a kemaye - a Hebrew amulet - on his bared chest during his performance. "I believe in all these superstitions," he confessed.

Skaat is not alone. Superstition and magic among Jews has a history stretching back to biblical times. It is said that the first amulet was the "sign" given by God to Cain to protect him from potential assassins.

A new exhibition, called "Angels and Demons", in Jerusalem's Bible Lands' Museum offers a panoramic view of this Jewish fascination with magic. It brings together written and graphic material from across the centuries and around the globe displaying what the classic book on the subject, Joshua Trachtenberg's Jewish Magic and Superstition, calls "a folk religion". Alongside legitimate Judaism another, subterranean belief system has persisted, attracting rabbis, scholars and laymen alike.
[...]

And here's something interesting that I didn't know about:

Also on display is a young boy's shirt holding various charms in its pockets. It was found by the late Yigal Yadin in the same cave as the letters of Bar Kochba overlooking the Dead Sea. The fact that such a charmed vest would be used by this group of spiritual seekers back in the second century attests to the depth to which these customs had taken hold of the people.

Background here.

Oxyrhynchus biblical papyri

VIGILIAE CHRISTIANAE has an article about the Oxyrhynchus Papyri in its current issue (64.3): Sacred Scriptures as Trash: Biblical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus (requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access).

Rioting over archaeology in Jaffa

RIOTING OVER ARCHAEOLOGY IN JAFFA:

Hundreds of haredim riot in Jaffa
By JPOST.COM STAFF
06/16/2010 13:47

Rioters say archaeological dig desecrates graves, 5 policemen injured.
Talkbacks (13)

Hundreds of haredim were involved in violent riots in Jaffa on Wednesday, in Rehov Louis Pasteur around the site of an archeological dig. Fifteen haredim were arrested.

The haredim maintain that the work desecrates the sanctity of ancient bones at the site. Rabbi Tuvia Weiss, the senior rabbinic leader of the Eda Haredit Badatz (rabbinical court), was on the scene to encourage the protesters and lead a curse against those working at the site.

[...]

It would be interesting to hear more about what has actually been found at the site.

Background here.

Kthobonoyo in the Netherlands

ARAMAIC WATCH:

The Netherlands: ancient faith of the Middle East fathers

Guardian Weekly reader Catherine Ann Lombard writes on a visit to Mor Ephrem, the Syrian Orthodox Monastery at the far eastern border of the Netherlands and meets 45 boys who are learning to read and chant in kthobonoyo, the litur gical language that only about 300 people in the world speak today

[...]

More on Kthobonoyo here.

Hershel Shanks profiled in the NYT

HERSHEL SHANKS is profiled in the New York Times:

Shining a Light on Ancient Israel

By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
Published: June 16, 2010

NEW YORK — He’s not exactly a household name, but anybody who has been paying only intermittent attention to the tricky, contentious and occasionally litigious world of biblical archaeology will know that Hershel Shanks, who at the age of 80 has just published his autobiography, is the leading non-archaeologist in the field.

Mr. Shanks is the founder and editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, a position from which he led the campaign a quarter-century ago to make the famed Dead Sea Scrolls available to pretty much any scholar who wanted to examine them — after forty years during which only members of a small and possessive group of experts were allowed access to them.

In acknowledgment of that, Mr. Shanks has titled his new book, the 21st he has either written or edited, “Freeing the Dead Sea Scrolls: And Other Adventures of an Archaeology Outsider.”

[...]

A novel about Josephus

A NOVEL about Josephus:

THE GOSPEL
The Good News According To Josephus

THE GOSPEL
By: C.G. Weiss
ISBN: 1-4500-2787-3 (eBook )
ISBN13: 978-1-4500-2787-8 (eBook )
ISBN: 1-4500-2785-7 (Trade Paperback 6x9 )
ISBN13: 978-1-4500-2785-4 (Trade Paperback 6x9 )
ISBN: 1-4500-2786-5 (Trade Hardback 6x9 )
ISBN13: 978-1-4500-2786-1 (Trade Hardback 6x9 )

Pages : 275
Book Format :Trade Book 6x9
Subject :
FICTION / Historical

Availability
eBook ($9.99)
Trade Paperback 6x9 ($19.99)
Trade Hardback 6x9 ($29.99)
Please choose book availability

Description

It takes place in the year 95 C.E. (A.D.) at the home of Flavia Sabena — a cousin to Emperor Domitian — on the last night of the Festival of Saturnalia. The hostess has invited eminent Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, as guest of honor, to give readings from his works while they wait up all night in their annual solar vigil celebrating the mid-Winter Solstice. Among the guests are P. Cornelius Tacitus, the leading voice among Roman historians, and Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus the biographer of the Caesars. Opening with the “Star & Scepter” prophecy and a fl ashback to Isaiah, the action shifts to Josephus, who explains that what encouraged the zealot bandits who fomented this war, was an ambiguous oracle of a world ruler coming out of their country that was supported by their scriptural writings. But as it turned out, the oracle foretold the elevation of Vespasian, who was proclaimed Roman Emperor while he was in Judea.

Follow the link for author information and an excerpt from the book. If the excerpt is representative, a lot of the dialogue is taken from the works of Josephus and some of the other Festival guests. Not sure how well that would sustain a whole novel.

Prince Charles quotes a Gnostic gospel

PRINCE CHARLES cites a Gnostic gospel (and the canonical Jesus tradition) in a recent speech on the environmental virtues of the Islamic tradition. I quote the passage in context:

This [unsustainable lifestyle] happens when traditional principles and practices are abandoned – and with them, all sense of reverence for the Earth which is an inseparable element in an integrated and spiritually grounded tradition like Islam – just as it was once firmly embedded in the philosophical heritage of Western thought. The Stoics of Ancient Greece, for instance, held that “right knowledge,” as they called it, is gained by living in agreement with Nature, where there is a correspondence or a sympathy between the truth of things, thought and action. They saw it as our duty to achieve an attunement between human nature and the greater scheme of the Cosmos.

This incidentally is also the teaching of Judaism. The Book of Genesis says that God placed Mankind in the garden “to tend it and take care of it,” to serve and conserve it for the sake of future generations. “Adamah” in Hebrew means “the one hewn from the Earth,” so Adam is a child of the Earth. In my own tradition of Christianity, the immanence of God is made explicit by the incarnation of Christ. But let us also not forget that throughout the Christian New Testament, Christ often refers to Himself as “the Son of Man” which, in Hebrew, is “Ben Adam.” He, too, is a “son of the Earth,” surely making the same explicit connection between human nature and the whole of Nature.

Even the apocryphal Gnostic texts are imbued with the same principle. The fragments of one of the oldest, ascribed to Mary Magdalene, instructs us that “Attachment to matter gives rise to passion against Nature. Thus, trouble arises in the whole body; this is why I tell you; be in harmony.” In all cases the message is clear. Our specific purpose is to “earth” Heaven. So, to separate ourselves within an inner darkness, leads to what the Irish poet, WB Yeats, warned of at the start of the Twentieth Century. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” he wrote, “things fall apart and the centre cannot hold.”

With all due respect to Prince Charles, I have two comments. First, regarding the title "the Son of Man," the word Adamah means "earth" or "ground," not "the one hewn from the Earth." The term/name Adam, "man" or "human being," would indeed probably have brought to mind an echo of Adamah as a folk etymology. But if Jesus used the phrase "the Son of Man" (and I think it's likely he did, although it's less clear he meant himself), he would have been speaking in Aramaic. The Aramaic phrase is bar (a)nasha, (the second word is "man," "human being" from another root, related to the biblical name Enosh). The phrase has no connection with the Hebrew word adamah and would not have brought it to mind.

Second, regarding the Gospel of Mary, I have serious reservations about using a Gnostic scripture to support modern environmentalism. Gnosticism taught esoteric knowledge that was supposed to help the soul escape from the irredeemably corrupt material world into the spiritual, heavenly Fullness or Pleroma. This is not a philosophy that had any sympathy or concern for the natural world.

Fallout from the Ashkelon graves?

FALLOUT from the removal of the Ashkelon graves?

Ottoman-era Archaeological Dig in Jaffa Vandalized (Turkish Weekly)

[...]

While no suspects have been arrested, since the controversial excavation of the ancient graves on the grounds of Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon began a wave of vandalism against IAA archaeological digs swept the country.

Previous attacks on IAA dig sites in Jaffa and elsewhere were found to be the work of haredim.

Recent background on the controversy over the ancient graves at Barliali Hospital ER site is here, here, here and here.

Congratulations to Stevan L. Davies

CONGRATULATIONS TO STEVAN L. DAVIES:

Drs. Davies and Austin receive faculty awards
06-11-10

Misericordia University honored three faculty members for excellence in scholarship, teaching and service to the campus and community during the 84th annual commencement ceremony at the Anderson Sports and Health Center on May 23.

Stevan L. Davies, Ph.D., professor of religious studies, received the Louis and Barbara Alesi Excellence in Scholarship Award for the third time. The annual award recognizes and promotes the academic accomplishments of faculty members in terms of their scholarship and/or artistic achievements. Faculty members are selected by the Misericordia University Faculty Awards Committee. Dr. Davies also received the award in 2000 and 2005.

Dr. Davies of Dallas, Pa., has a bachelor’s degree from Duke University and a doctorate in philosophy from Temple University. He has taught religion at Misericordia University for 31 years. During that time, he has published seven books, including “The Secret Book of John Annotated and Explained,’’ and his most recent release, “The Infancy Gospels of Jesus: Apocryphal Tales from the Childhoods of Mary and Jesus Annotated & Explained.’’

His most recent single-authored book is a continuation of his studies of the New Testament apocrypha. The book is an analysis and commentary on the Gospel of James, the Gospel of the Infancy and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Dr. Davies also was awarded a federal National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study ancient and contemporary religion in Oaxaca, Mexico. The summer institute in Oaxaca led to an exhibition of Oaxacan revolutionary woodcuts at the Pauly Friedman Art Gallery and to two published essays, “The Popul Vuh’s Myth of the Origin of Shamans,’’ and “On the Use of the Term Sacrifice in Maya Studies,’’ by the Community College Humanities Review.

Dr. Davies also appeared on the History Channel about Gnosticism for a program on the Shroud of Turin and has published book reviews and presented at many professional conferences.

[...]

Professor Davies has a website on the Coptic Gospel of Thomas and many related (and one or two unrelated) matters: The Gospel of Thomas Homepage.

Ancient Judaism landmarks at the Israel Museum

ANCIENT JUDAISM LANDMARKS at the Israel Museum (Haaretz):

The Shrine of the Book and the Model of Second Temple Jerusalem
The model of Second Temple-era Jerusalem, recently relocated to a spectacular new home next to the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum - itself recently refurbished - has made these two sites companion pieces illuminating the time of Jesus.

[...]

Ebion, the fictional heretic

EBION is Stephen Tomkins's favorite heretic:

Ebion, the fictional heretic
The Ebionites, said to follow a non-existent Ebion, remained closer to Jesus's Jewishness than other Christians

Stephen Tomkins
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 June 2010 13.15 BST
Article history
The question: Who's your favourite heretic?

My favourite heretic in Christian history is a man called Ebion. He never existed, but had interesting and revealing reasons for not doing so.

The movement he founded, the Ebionites, did exist. It was one of the earliest Christian heresies – necessarily so because it involved staying closer and truer to the Jewish roots of Christianity, in many ways, than the mainstream church did.

The Ebionites were largely Jewish and remained attached to Jerusalem while the mainstream church spread throughout the Roman Empire. St Irenaeus, the exiled bishop of Lyons and leading polemicist against heresies in the second century, wrote about them that they understood the scriptures "in a peculiar way: they practice circumcision, continue to observe the customs commanded by the law, and in their Jewish way of life even venerate Jerusalem as the house of God".

In other words they were so wilfully misguided as to practice the faith of Jesus and the first Christians, even after the church had reworked it to adapt to the non-Jewish world.

[...]

More on Jewish genetics

MORE ON JEWISH GENETICS:

Genetic testing raises an age-old question — are the Jews a people, or a religion?


By MAYRAV SAAR
Last Updated: 5:15 AM, June 13, 2010
Posted: 12:15 AM, June 13, 2010
Comments: 0

We are home, Helen, thank you very much.

Two new genome studies of Jews worldwide prove that the Jewish people — long called the “People of the Book,” the “Chosen People” or, in unkind circles, “those people” — are, indeed, a people after all.

The first study, by researchers at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, found that Jews across the globe share distinct genetic traits that are different from other groups and that trace back to the ancient Middle East.

Researchers say the study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, puts to rest age-old questions about whether Jews are a group of unrelated people who share a religious ideology or a distinct ethnicity with common ancestry.

“The debate is over,” said Dr. Edward R. Burns, one of the lead authors of the study. “The Jewish people are one people with a common genetic thread that evolved in the second or third century BC.”

The study, “Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era,” compared the genetic analyses of 237 Jews, including Sephardic (Middle Eastern) and Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews — as well as an analysis of 418 non-Jews worldwide, and found that the Jews were more closely related to each other than to their fellow countrymen.

Past studies have reached similar conclusions, but they looked at smaller populations and considered only blood groups, mitochondrial DNA (a type of DNA passed down by mothers) or Y chromosomes (passed down by fathers).

For this inquiry, researchers conducted a genome-wide analysis of the major groups of the Jewish Diaspora — Ashkenazi Jews; Italian, Greek and Turkish Sephardic Jews; and Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian Jews.

The study — and a second genetic study published Friday in the journal Nature — scientifically undermines arguments made by those who challenge Jews’ historical relationship to Israel, such as former White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who resigned last week after saying Jews in Israel should “go home” to Germany, Poland and the United States.

[...]

An interesting opinion piece on the historical and social (e.g., with reference to intermarriage) implications of the new studies.

Background here.

In San Diego

I'M IN SAN DIEGO. Got in last night and managed to get some sleep, but have been awake for the last hour or so.

Off to San Diego

I'M OFF TO SAN DIEGO to visit family. Blogging should continue pretty much as normally. I'll be in transit all day, so look for me again late tonight or Sunday.

More Milgrom obituraries

MORE OBITUARIES for Jacob Milgrom:

Jacob Milgrom, 87, bible scholar
By Raphael Ahren (Haaretz)

With the passing of Professor Jacob Milgrom on Saturday in Jerusalem, Israel has lost its second leading Bible scholar in three weeks. Both Milgrom, who immigrated in 1994, and Professor Moshe Greenberg, who died last month at 81, were American-born Conservative rabbis and academics recognized as preeminent authorities in their field. Milgrom was 87.

"He was a master in the understanding of biblical cult and ritual and became the paradigm of research in this field - his works are cited by everyone," said Professor Shalom Paul, a native Philadelphian and former chairman of Hebrew University's Bible department.

[...]

Rabbi, biblical scholar Jacob Milgrom dies at 87
by amanda pazornik, staff writer (Jweekly.com)

Historian Fred Rosenbaum will remember Jacob Milgrom — a rabbi, biblical scholar and professor emeritus of Near Eastern studies at U.C. Berkeley — not poring over biblical tomes, but opening the home he shared with his wife, Jo, and their children to students for Shabbat.

“Just to be invited to Shabbat dinner at the Milgrom home was a wonderful invitation,” said Rosenbaum, who was a graduate student in Jewish history at U.C. Berkeley when he first met Milgrom in the early 1970s. “People really treasured it, including me. I was personally touched by Jack, both by his intellect and his human sensitivity and caring about others.”

Milgrom died June 6 at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem of a brain hemorrhage related to a fall. He was 87.

Best known for his comprehensive commentaries on Torah and his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Conservative rabbi wrote a three-volume series on Leviticus, interpreting Jewish dietary and purification rituals as well as the Bible’s position on homosexuality. He concluded the ban on homosexuality applies only to Jewish men.

“Jacob Milgrom’s painstaking analysis of the priestly laws in the Bible gave these seemingly arcane and antiquated practices ethical urgency and philosophical meaning,” said David Biale, a former professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley who now teaches in the Jewish studies program at U.C. Davis.

[...]

His commentaries on Leviticus and Numbers are masterpieces.

The AP also has a brief note of his passing here.

Slavic manuscript digitization

A PROJECT to digitize Slavic manuscripts:

Building Digital Library For South Slavic Manuscripts

Thursday, 10 June 2010 12:04

Written by Eurasia Review

[...]

From 2000 the Department of Old Bulgarian Literature in the Institute of Literature at BAS created the unique template for Slavic manuscripts encoding – TSM (Template for Slavic Manuscripts) in XML format. The Repertorium Initiative (head: Senior Researcher Anissava Miltenova, web page: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/) is an XML format database containing analytical descriptions of more than 300 Slavonic manuscripts. The corpus is utilized for text search and automatic construction of typology of mediaeval miscellanies. The project participates in the Text Encoding Initiative (member since 2003), cf. http://www.tei-c.org/Applications/.

[...]

The project aims at the following main objectives. Most importantly at activating the cooperation between Southeast Slavic countries and Central Europe in the field of medieval Slavic studies, especially as far as the Balkan written cultural heritage is concerned. Participants from five countries construct a network between institutions, which is directed towards researching the Balkan monastic culture and presenting the Slavonic culture from a comparative perspective. During the project execution we intend to organize a workshop on the implementation of computer applications in medieval studies and especially in the description and analysis of written heritage (principles and methods, terminology, architecture of data, etc.). In the frames of the workshop, a roundtable on monastic culture is to be included. One of the expected considerable effects of the project is the development of international standards for the computer encoding of the Slavic written heritage. Its goal is to create a common platform for electronic publishing. The most important outcome of the project will be the construction of the web page (SLOVO-ASO.cl.bas.bg) containing the results from the existing research for the Balkan written heritage and culture presented in relevant software.

A number of Old Testament pseudepigrapha have been preserved in Church Slavonic. For other manuscript digitization projects, go here and follow the links.

A Samaritan archaeological site

A SAMARITAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE is in the news:

Samaritans seek opening of holy site found in IDF dig

By Chaim Levinson (Haaretz)

At the peak of Mount Gerizim in the West Bank is a fenced-off archeological site, where a dig conducted under the auspices of the Israel Defense Forces Civil Administration recently uncovered a well-preserved 2,000-year-old city, once home to 10,000 people.

[...]

Benny Katzover, who served for many years as head of the Samaria Regional Council, said the excavations began in an effort to find what the Samarians regard as their Holy Temple. Katzover said the ancient historian Joseph Flavius explained that, following disputes with the Jews, the Samaritans moved their spiritual center to Mount Gerizim, near what is now the West Bank city of Nablus, and built their temple on a scope identical to the one in Jerusalem.

"The finds," he said, "reveal a high standard of living, including baths and ceramic tile and heating and mosaics... You can see that it was the capital of a whole kingdom."

Preparations were made to open the site to the public, including a lookout point facing Nablus and the site of the ancient city of Shechem, along with signage explaining the finds. With the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, the plans were shelved, but with the improved security situation the Samaria Regional Council and the Samaritan community have been pressing for the public to be given access to the site.

[...]

The DSS and textual criticism

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS and textual criticism:

Searching for the Better Text
How errors crept into the Bible and what can be done to correct them

by Harvey Minkoff (BAR)

Isaiah’s vision of universal peace is one of the best-known passages in the Hebrew Bible: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6).

But does this beloved image of the Peaceable Kingdom contain a mistranslation?

For years many scholars suspected that it did. Given the parallelism of the phrases, one would expect a verb instead of “the fatling.” With the discovery of the Isaiah Scroll among the Dead Sea Scrolls, those scholars were given persuasive new support. The Isaiah Scroll contains a slight change in the Hebrew letters at this point in the text, yielding “will feed”: “the calf and the young lion will feed together.”

This is just one of numerous variations from the traditional text of the Hebrew Bible contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In some cases the traditional text is clearly superior, but in others the version in the scrolls is better.

[...]

A good introductory article on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible.

Horvat Kur excavation

HORVAT KUR, an ancient village in the Galilee, is being excavated this summer by a group from Leiden University:

Digging for the foundations of the New Testament

Between 20 June and 16 July theologist Jürgen Zangenberg and his students will again be carrying out archaeological research on a hill by the Sea of Galilee. Where was the olive press? How were houses laid out? Where could you enjoy a chat with your neighbour? And where did drinking water come from?

Rural Galilee

Ten volunteers from Leiden - students of Theology and Archaeology - will be going to Isreal with students from other Dutch universities and colleagues from Switzerland, Finland and Rumania (35 in total) with the Professor of the New Testament in search of rural Galilee in the Graeco-Roman period. It is currently the only Dutch excavation site in Israel.

[...]

David Ussishkin on the Temple Mount in the First Temple Period

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Archaeologist David Ussishkin has reprinted an important survey article on "The Temple Mount in Jerusalem during the First Temple Period" at the Bible and Interpretation website, downloadable as a pdf file. Excerpt:

Turning back to the problems of the Temple Mount, the above topographical and archaeological data leave us with four options for reconstructing the Temple Mount during the tenth century B.C.E.

First option: Based on the proposal of Knauf (2000), the Temple Mount formed the cultic and secular center of the city already during the Late Bronze Age and the earlier part of the Iron Age. However, there are no textual or archaeological indications to support this theory.

Second option: Based on the biblical tradition, Solomon built a small, modest temple on the Temple Mount, which formed the basis for later reconstruction and extension of the buildings here. In that case, the large compound and the monumental royal palace were added, and the temple was enlarged or rebuilt, in the eighth century B.C.E., when the Temple Mount was incorporated into the extended city. This is the view of Na'aman, who argued that Solomon built a temple on the Temple Mount, “though on a much smaller scale than the one built in the late monarchical period” (Na'aman 1996:23).

Third option: The royal acropolis was built as a separate entity by Solomon, as described in the biblical text, and it was incorporated in the expanding city during the late eighth century B.C.E.

Fourth option: The royal acropolis was built as described in the biblical text, but in the late eighth century B.C.E., when the modest tenth-century settlement became a large, fortified city and the Temple Mount was incorporated in it.

There is one strong argument in support of the first and second options. One would expect the planners of the city to have built the royal compound at the highest and most strategically located place in the city. The northern part of the Southwest Hill (figure 1:6), at an elevation of ca. 773 meters above sea level, is clearly the optimal place for the location of the acropolis, rather than the Temple Mount at ca. 743 meters (figure 1:4). And indeed, during the Second Temple period, the Hasmonean kings, and later Herod, shifted their royal palaces to the Southwest Hill. This is a clear indication that the Temple Mount had already been a significant cultic place before the extension of the city in the eighth century B.C.E., so that the royal acropolis was built at this spot.

His reconstruction of the Temple Mount in the time of Hezekiah is much more detailed, based to a large degree on inference from the biblical texts and deduction from similar sites of the same period elsewhere.

Read it all.

Some years ago at PaleoJudaica I surveyed the evidence for the existence of the First and Second/Herodian Temples.

Pulsa de nura rite appears again

THE PULSA DE NURA ritual of cursing is being invoked again:

MK Tibi 'Received Threat'

by Gil Ronen (Arutz Sheva)

Anti-Israel Knesset member Ahmed Tibi allegedly received a threatening letter Tuesday morning, from a group calling itself “Pulsa Dinura.” “Pulsa Dinura” is the name of a ritual ceremony with supposed kabbalistic roots, which has been used on occasion in Israel to call for the downfall of prominent public figures.

"Because of your poisonous positions against Israel and Zionism,” the letter said, “the organization's management has issued a Pulsa Dinura against you.”

"You have 180 days left to live. Your death will be sudden and cruel, accompanied by much pain... It is time that you prepare your will.”

[...]

Background here. The MK should not be too worried. The success rate of the pulsa de nura curse is not particularly impressive. One was put on Teddy Kollek, former mayor of Jerusalem, and he lived 25+ more years, dying at the age of ninety-five.

Oxyrhynchus Papyri volumes online

OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI VOLUMES ONLINE: Mark Goodacre has the links. (Via Chuck Jones at AWOL.)

Gnostics lose another lawsuit

SOME GNOSTICS have lost another lawsuit, this one in Utah. The court refuses to allow the group Summum to post their Seven Aphorisms in a city park where the Ten Commandments are displayed. The group says that on Mount Sinai Moses destroyed the stone tablets containing the Aphorisms because the Israelites were not yet mature enough for them. That does sound pretty Gnostic. But the world has moved on and now the Aphorisms (Principles) are online.

Hannibal profile

HANNIBAL, Carthaginian Military Leader, is profiled in Finding Dulcinea.

Nabucco at Masada

NABUCCO AT MASADA:

Israel breaks ground with opera on Dead Sea shores

Ori Lewis
MASADA
Mon Jun 7, 2010 12:21pm EDT

MASADA Israel (Reuters) - Music lovers have found cause to celebrate in a groundbreaking spectacular opera event at one of Israel's most important landmarks.

The staging last week of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco on a patch of desert on the shores of the Dead Sea with the historic mountain of Masada as a backdrop has taken Israel Opera to new realms, its director [Hanna Munitz] said.

[...]

The story of the Sicarii's defiance has turned the bare sandstone mountain into a revered site for Israelis and Jews who see it as a symbol of defiance in adversity.

That perception tied in well with the choice of Nabucco, the tale based on biblical king Nebuchadnezzar's capture and sacking of Jerusalem and his exiling of the Jews to Babylon.

"Nabucco is probably the most Jewish of all Verdi's operas and this area is so symbolic for Jewish history. So we thought that a combination of both will bring an added value to what we are doing," Munitz said.

[...]

Background here.

Greenberg obituary

AN OBITUARY for Moshe Greenberg has been published in Jewish Ideas Daily:

The Importance of Moshe Greenberg On May 15, a giant of Jewish Bible scholarship passed away in Jerusalem at the age of eighty-one. American-born and -educated, Moshe Greenberg combined classical erudition in ancient Near Eastern languages and rabbinic and medieval exegesis with the critical perspectives of modern scholarship, analytical deftness, and literary style. He brought all these to bear on the ancient texts to elicit both knowledge and moral and spiritual guidance.

[...]

More Greenberg obituaries etc. are here, here, here, and here.

What is the Septuagint?

WHAT IS THE SEPTUAGINT? asks John Shore at Crosswalk.com, and his briefly summary of its history is more or less correct. I'll take issue with just one paragraph:

The resultant volume -- which ultimately took at least one hundred years to finish, and included the entire Old Testament -- is known as the Septuagint (from the Latin word for seventy, for the seventy or so scholars who are said to have launched the work; the book is also known as "LXX," the Roman numeral for seventy).

It is an anachronism to refer to the Septuagint as a "volume." At the time of its translation, and for centuries to come, the individual books were written out separately (first in scrolls and later in codices), and so all the scriptures together would take up at least a number of shelves in a library. (The earliest surviving complete Bibles in a single bound volume come from the fourth century C.E. and tended to contain more books than are in anyone's biblical canon today.*)

The fact that the books were originally not bound together is important because it made the concept of "canon" more fluid: whether a book belongs in a library is a somewhat different question than whether in belongs bound with other books in a single volume. I suspect that the process of translation took more than a century and, in any case, many of the books were subjected to repeated translation revisions, so there wasn't a single, authoritative Greek translation circulating for each book. This variety is reflected in the New Testament quotations of the Septuagint.

*Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus contained texts now included among the Apostolic Fathers. Codex Vaticanus is damaged but may also have included material from the Apostolic Fathers. The inclusion of these books in the volume doesn't necessarily mean they were canonical; they may have just been considered useful or edifying.

More on Glenn Beck and the DSS

GLENN BECK'S garbled comments about the Dead Sea Scrolls are taken apart by Mark Shea in the National Catholic Register. Shea misses the confusion with the Nag Hammadi library but finely parses the errors about the Council of Nicaea.

Jacob Milgrom z"l

JACOB MILGROM Z"L. I am sorry to report the news that Jacob Milgrom died on Saturday. There's more on Professor Milgrom in David Noel Freedman's preface to this book. May his memory be for a blessing.

(News and links from the Agade list.)