Pompeii and the pyroclastic surge

THE PEOPLE AT POMPEII died from a pyroclastic surge, and the media has finally noticed:

Scientists question accepted wisdom on what killed Pompeiians when Mt. Vesuvius erupted

By Angelica Marin (MinnPost.com)

POMPEII, Italy — A child lies on the ground with his tiny arms elevated in motion. Beside him, a woman with another child on her lap clenches her fists, as if guarding herself from an inevitable horror. Inside a dimly lit room, surrounded by chipping coral frescoes, lie 2,000-year-old skeletal remnants, vividly human forms encased in chalky plaster.

The Mt. Vesuvius volcano took their lives in 79 A.D., unleashing its fury and burying the ancient port city of Pompeii under layers of lava and ashes. The sight was so horrific, that Pompeians thought the gods had grown angry — and that the end of the world was near.

Since the uncovering of Pompeii in 1599, archeologists believed that these ancient Romans died by being suffocated by the ashes and gases spewing for two days from the mouth of Vesuvius. Their theory rested on the account of a contemporary witness, Pliny the Younger, who saw the eruption from across the Gulf of Naples, claiming that his uncle in Pompeii had taken his last breath under a cloud of ash.

“Our scientific research has proven differently, that death came because of the temperature, not suffocation,” said Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, a rogue vulcanologist from the Naples Observatory. “Everything that has been written in the guides, and the texts, and that has been re-told to tourists is false,” he said.

After years of analyzing nearly 100 skeletal casts, testing bone tissue and creating numerous simulations of the Vesuvius eruption, Mastrolorenzo concluded that the people of Pompeii were instantly killed by a pyroclastic cloud, a gusty surge carrying the volcano’s lethal temperatures.

[...]

It's not clear to me what is new about this study, since the effects of the fatal pyroclastic surge at Pompeii has been known for a long time. I noted it at PaleoJudaica five years ago, citing a 2003 Archaeology Magazine article.

Unrest at another ancient Jericho synagogue

UNREST at another ancient Jericho synagogue:

30 arrested in march to Jericho-area synagogue
Right-wing activists seeking to establish an outpost near an ancient synagogue in Na'aran, near Jericho, clash with security forces.

By Anshel Pfeffer and Chaim Levinson (Haaretz)

Israeli security forces yesterday arrested 30 right-wing activists seeking to establish an outpost near an ancient synagogue in Na'aran, near Jericho. During the arrest, the activists clashed with police officers and soldiers who had been sent to the area.

The activists had arrived at the culmination of a protest march aimed at "bolstering the [Jewish] foothold on the old cities of Nablus and Jericho." The three-day march was organized by a youth group led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger.

At the end of the march, the activists arrived at the synagogue where some 60 soldiers and policemen were waiting. Some of the settlers were beaten while taken into custody. During the clash, a driver hired by the army to take activists away from the area hurled stones at the protesters and hit one woman.

The activists then boarded the vehicle, tore out seats and upholstery and broke two windows. They were taken to a police station in Ma'aleh Adumim.

This was not the first clash between security forces and activists trying to storm the Na'aran synagogue.

In February, the Israel Defense Forces arrested 35 right-wing activists who barricaded themselves inside the synagogue. The activists, who were well organized, easily got by the police and army roadblocks and entered Jericho.

[...]

The Na'aran synagogue is not the Shalom al Yisrael synagogue, which is also in Jericho and which has also seen considerable political unrest. Apparently this story in February was actually about the Na'aran synagogue, but the links there are to stories about the Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue. There, I think we have that straight now.

New retrograde Hebrew and Aramaic lexicon

A NEW RETROGRADE HEBREW AND ARAMAIC LEXICON is noted at Balashnut and it doesn't get a terribly positive review:

I received an e-mail this morning from Amazon, suggesting that I might be interested in the Retrograde Hebrew and Aramaic Dictionary by Ruth Sander and Kerstin Mayerhofer (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010). Here is a look from Google Books.

[...]

I agree that this seems more appropriate as an electronic database, especially given the price. Also, there is already an old retrograde lexicon for ancient Hebrew, although it is long out of print:

Kuhn, Karl Georg, Rückläufiges hebräisches Wörterbuch, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1958

New book on Slavonic Pseudepigrapha

A NEW BOOK ON SLAVONIC PSEUDEPIGRAPHA:

Andrei Orlov, Divine Manifestations in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, Orientalia Judaica Christiana 2 (Piscataway: Gorgias, 2009).

Via April De Conick, who also notes that Orlov has posted the introduction here.

BOOK REVIEW (BMCR):

Reidar Aasgaard, The Childhood of Jesus: Decoding the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009. Pp. xii, 285. ISBN 9781606081266. $33.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Enrico Norelli, Université de Genève (Enrico.Norelli@unige.ch)

Même s'il suscite un certain nombre de réserves, le livre de Reidar Aasgaard est important en tant que tentative systématique de prendre au sérieux un ancien apocryphe chrétien comme témoin d'un milieu où on élaborait et on transmettait des récits sur Jésus. Il s'agit de l'œuvre couramment désignée comme Evangile de l'enfance de Thomas, bien que ce nom d'auteur n'apparaisse que dans une partie de la tradition manuscrite grecque, de plus clairement secondaire et tardive. L'entreprise est d'autant plus méritoire que l'apocryphe en question a souvent été liquidé par les savants comme une suite d'épisodes hétérogènes sans structure ni logique narrative d'ensemble, ayant un niveau littéraire modeste et un contenu théologique insignifiant. Cette évaluation a par ailleurs alterné avec une autre qui a voulu reconnaître dans ce texte des allusions cachées au mythe gnostique de l'âme emprisonnée dans ce monde puis libérée par le Christ, ainsi qu'une christologie docète.

[...]

Report on Temple Mount excavations "buried"?

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Government 'tried to bury' report on Temple Mount excavations
Knesset to discuss 'suppressed' report on potentially explosive Temple Mount excavations.
By Nir Hasson (Haaretz)

It is over two months since State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss completed his report on excavations at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem – yet the Knesset will only discuss his findings this week, giving rise to charges that the government tried to suppress the controversial document.

The report has not yet been published but Knesset sources who have seen it say it contents are so sensitive that they could spark riots once revealed.

[...]

Lindenstrauss's report is expected to point the finger at government bodies, as well as the Waqf, in failing to monitor work on the site. The national Antiquities Authority, the police the Prime Minister's Office, the Attorney General and the Jerusalem municipality are all expected to come under fire.

The Comptroller will conclude the Antiquities Authority and the municipality were effectively evicted from the Temple Mount after the 1996 disturbances, leaving supervision of development work in the hands of the police, which was unequipped for the task.

Police have so far failed to open to a single file on destruction of antiquities.

"The likelihood is that the Waqf has carried out hundreds of illegal excavations, construction projects and demolitions," said Shmuel Berkovitch, an expert on Jerusalem's holy places.

For many posts on the Temple Mount sifting project, go here and follow the links.

More on the rephotographing of the DSS in Minnesota

MORE ON THE REPHOTOGRAPHING OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS in Minnesota:

Megavision's website describes the technology used:

High- resolution photography and multi-spectral imaging [capture] high resolution images over 12 or more spectral bands from the near UV to the near IR. The spectral bands are created not by using band pass filters to filter reflected light, but by using narrow-band LED illumination which subjects the treasure to only the light energy that is required to expose a highly sensitive monochrome sensor.

The photographic images displayed on a wide computer screen are brown-gold, with black Hebrew script, just the way they look on the black background beneath the camera. All of the images produced with different parts of the light spectrum have been digitally combined, explains Ken Boydston, president of MegaVision, who is demonstrating the photography along with Greg Bearman of SnapShot Spectra. On the screen, many times larger than life, we can see faint lines, and the script marching along beneath them. Boydston zooms in on the edge of one fragment, where we see a tiny, illegible blotch.

The next image is black-and-white, the infra-red version of the same scroll fragments. The computer zooms in on the same blotch at the edge of the fragment of scroll. Under the infrared imaging, the blotch resolves into a shin, a Hebrew letter. From the discovery of the scrolls in 1947 until now, this shin has been hidden, invisible to the eyes of scholars.

Background here.

Tony Scott to direct Hannibal the Conquerer?

TONY SCOTT (Ridley's brother) as director of Vin Diesel's Hannibal the Conquerer? Maybe. And it seems the project could be expanding into a trilogy.

Vin Diesel himself let slip that he was talking to Scott about his "Hannibal" pic.

Over on Diesel's facebook, the big guy writes "We talked about Hannibal and the Punic Wars and how by nature the story demanded three movies. The first movie centering around Hamilcar, Father of Hannibal and the Defender of Africa, in the First Punic War. He said he would get our friend Denzel to play Hamilcar. Haha, very super cool... Denzel is a friend, whom I admire and who has given industry advice that I use to this day. Him to playing Hamilcar and for Tony to Direct... exciting to say the least."

Now this "Hannibal the Conqueror" pic has been in development for the best part of a decade so don't go lining up for you tickets just yet.

Indeed.

Background here.

UPDATE (10 August): I should have flagged the fact that Denzel Washington's name is being dropped as a candidate to play Hamilcar, which is all to the good.

Raphael Golb case going to trial

THE RAPHAEL GOLB CASE is going to trial according to the New York Post:

Accused Dead Sea Scrolls identity thief rejects plea deal, plans trial

By LAURA ITALIANO
Last Updated: 2:11 PM, August 6, 2010
Posted: 2:05 PM, August 6, 2010

Plea negotiations broke down this morning for accused Dead Sea Scrolls cyber-bully Raphael Golb -- who now says he's taking his wacky identity theft and impersonation case to trial.

Golb, 49, is charged with trying to boost his historian father's scholarship on the 2,000 year old scrolls by going online in the name of rival scholars -- notably Dr. Lawrence Schiffman of New York University -- to discredit their work.

Plea negotiations before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman fell apart today when prosecutors insisted that any deal include probation -- a deal breaker for Golb, said his lawyer, Ronald Kuby.

[...]

Then there's this odd exchange:

Has he [Mr. Golb] forsaken the scrolls?

"I continue to be interested in the topic," he said, mysteriously, to which Kuby snapped -- "Just keep your hand away from the curser!"

I assume this should be "cursor."

Read on for more about the defense and about Larry Schiffman's response to it ("You can call it a game all you want," he added, "but that doesn't mean anything. Russian Roulette is a game too.").

Background here and follow the links.

X-ray technology and the Jerusalem cuneiform fragment

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: An article in YubaNet.com on the technology that determined that the Jerusalem cuneiform fragment originated in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

Now, by adapting an off-the-shelf portable x-ray lab tool that analyzes the composition of chemicals, Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations can reveal hidden information about a tablet's composition without damaging the precious ancient find itself. These x-rays reveal the soil and clay composition of a tablet or artefact, to help determine its precise origin.

But Prof. Goren's process, based on x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry, can go much further. Over the years, he has collected extensive data through physical "destructive" sampling of artefacts. By comparing this data to readouts produced by the XRF device, he's built a table of results so that he can now scan a tablet - touching the surface of it gently with the machine - and immediately assess its clay type and the geographical origin of its minerals.

The tool, he says, can also be applied to coins, ancient plasters, and glass, and can be used on site or in a lab. He plans to make this information widely available to other archaeological researchers.

[...]

In his recent study published in the Israel Exploration Journal, Prof. Goren and his colleagues investigated a Late Bronze Age letter written in the Akkadian language and found among the Ophel excavations in Jerusalem.

Its style suggests that it is a rough and contemporary tablet of the Amarna letters - letters written from officials throughout the Middle East to the Pharaohs in Egypt around 3,500 years ago, pre-biblical times. Using his device, Prof. Goren was able to determine that the letter is made from raw material typical to the Terra Rossa soils of the Central Hill Country around Jerusalem. This determination helped to confirm both the origin of the letter and possibly its sender.

"We believe this is a local product written by Jerusalem scribes, made of locally available soil. Found close to an acropolis, it is also likely that the letter fragment does in fact come from a king of Jerusalem," the researchers reported, adding that it may well be an archival copy of a letter from King Abdi-Heba, a Jesubite king in Jerusalem, to the Pharaoh in nearby Egypt.

Well, maybe, but it could be a lot of other things too, such as a local administrative tablet. There's not very much of it. It's exciting to be able to harvest so much new data with technology, but it's also important not to over-interpret the evidence.

Background here and notice this regarding speculation about the contents of the tablet.

More on the New Jersey DSS

THE DEAD SEA SCROLL FRAGMENTS IN NEW JERSEY get lots of coverage in the New Jersey Jewish Standard:

From Qumran to Teaneck
Fragments of history from the Dead Sea Scrolls

Josh Lipowsky • Cover Story
Published: 04 August 2010

Throngs of Jews walk past St. Mark’s Syrian Orthodox Cathedral in Teaneck every Shabbat on their way to shul, unaware that the church is the caretaker of an ancient and precious piece of Jewish history.

When Archbishop Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel arrived in New Jersey in 1949, he brought with him four scrolls and fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the earliest known texts of books of the Bible. Although the scrolls were later sold to an Israeli archeologist, Samuel kept the fragments and they are to this day under the care of the Eastern Diocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church, headquartered in Teaneck.

“His eminence was really firm he wanted [the fragments] to stay with the church because it’s been a privilege for our church to have those fragments and to make them again available,” said the church’s Very Rev. John Meno, who served as Samuel’s secretary from 1971 until the archbishop’s death in 1995.

[...]

From Qumran to Teaneck
The Dead Sea Scrolls: Scenes from a tragicomedy

Rebecca Kaplan Boroson • Cover Story
Published: 04 August 2010

The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery and fate — and how fragments ended up in Teaneck — “is enormously interesting,” said Hershel Shanks, the founder of the Biblical Archaeology Society and the editor of Biblical Archaeology Review.

[...]

From Qumran to Teaneck
Yeshiva University students and professor take up the Dead Sea Scrolls challenge

Lois Goldrich • Cover Story
Published: 04 August 2010

“The problem with doing ancient history is that you don’t have very many sources,” said Steven Fine, professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University and part of the group convened by Bruce Zuckerman to study the Dead Sea Scroll fragments at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Teaneck. “You have to squeeze out as much as you can from everything that does exist.”

Fine, who also heads YU’s Center for Israel Studies, is clearly excited by the project and the doors that Zuckerman’s work have opened for students in the field.

[...]

From Qumran to Teaneck
Dead Sea Scrolls and advanced technology

Lois Goldrich • Cover Story
Published: 04 August 2010

Digitizing the Dead Sea Scroll fragments in Teaneck led to an important discovery, said Bruce Zuckerman, professor of religion in the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences at the University of Southern California and founder/director of the West Semitic Research Project.

While the shooting itself took only several days, later analysis, conducted back at USC, revealed a possible new tool for refining the dating of the scrolls.

“We were very pleased; it was a complete surprise,” he said.

[...]

Initially, he explained, the four-member group was planning for the first time to use reflectance transformation imaging technology (RTI) on Dead Sea Scrolls — an imaging tool first shown to him 12 years ago by Hewlett Packard scientist Tom Malzbender, who demonstrated the concept by manipulating images of a bowl of rice. The aim was to get a detailed picture of the texture of the skin of the scroll, in order to gauge its condition primarily for purposes of conservation. In addition, he thought he might learn more about the hair follicle patterns on the skin. “I thought we might be able to pick something up,” he said. Pointing out that every skin is unique, “like a fingerprint,” Zuckerman said he hoped the technique might tell his team what kind of animal was used for the scrolls and would allow them to match fragments based on common patterns of follicles.

Shooting a series of 32 images at different light angles — later combining them into a master image allowing him to move the light around — Zuckerman found that he could see the skin patterns very clearly.

But even more, after enhancing the reflectivity of the surface, “we realized we could see the thicknesses of the ink strokes on top of the skin. In fact, we could even see the thicknesses of individual ink strokes and see which were made first, second, third.”

This has significant implications for paleography, he said. Traditionally, scholars have looked at the overall shape of the letters when studying ancient scripts. Now, with RTI, they can see much more — offering tantalizing new possibilities for the study of
the Dead Sea Scrolls.

One expert in the field has suggested that more than 50 of the scrolls were written by the same scribe, he said. “She looked at them and evaluated them by eye, but if we could get RTI images of these texts, we would have better empirical evidence to guide and test this kind of expert opinion.”

[...]

There's more on the Teaneck fragments and on Bruce Zuckerman's work here.

Tobias and Raphael in an 18th century Siddur

APOCRYPHA WATCH: The story of Tobias and Raphael, from the Book of Tobit, appears in the Siddur of an eighteenth-century Mohel:

The siddur, currently in the Braginsky Collection (reviewed in the Jewish Press, February 26, 2010), is called "Sefer Sod Adonai im Sharvit ha Zahav (Book of the Lord's Mystery with the [commentary] Golden Scepter." It was copied and illuminated by Aryeh ben Judah Leib of Trebitsch in 1716 and features a title page showing three men and two women in a synagogue setting. After that is the prayer Adon Olam illuminated with two rampant lions unfolding a cartouche with the Hebrew word Adon inscribed. Next are the first morning blessings: "Blessed are you Hashem regarding washing the hands. Blessed are You Hashem who heals all flesh and is wondrous in His acts." The blessing on washing the hands is surrounded by an illumination that depicts an angel on the left and a young man carrying a big fish on his shoulder on the right. Rather surprisingly the subject is from the Book of Tobias, part of the Catholic cannon and known as a book of the Apocrypha (from the Greek meaning "hidden things").

What's this subject doing in a pious Jew's siddur?

Read on, and enjoy the illumination as well.

(Niggles: It's the Book of Tobit, not the Book of Tobias. Tobias is the son of Tobit and one of the characters in the book. And there is still some debate on whether the original language of the book is Aramaic or Hebrew.)

Inside the Israel Antiquities Authority

INSIDE THE ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY with Eti Bonn-Muller in Archaeology Magazine.

The finder of the Jerusalem cuneiform fragment

THE FINDER OF THE JERUSALEM CUNEIFORM FRAGMENT is introduced by her mother in the Jewish Tribune:

The young woman who literally found the fragment with her own two hands is our daughter, Ephrat, who was born in Toronto in 1982, while we were on educational shlichut there. She had the privilege of working with Mazar on this, as on a previous occasion, as head of the sifting crew. Ephrat’s responsibilities included keeping track of what was found and where, and training new sifters.

On the morning of March 11, when the discovery was made, Ephrat’s regular work was slow, so she decided “to grab a bucket and sift.” In the first bucketful she noticed something that was “different than anything I had ever seen before. It had some kind of writing carved into it.” Mazar was summoned from Hebrew University and, the moment she saw the little piece of clay, declared it a significant find.

On July 12, four months later, the find was made public, after it had been examined and assessed by all the relevant experts.

[...]

Ephrat is not a student of archeology. Her BA studies were in the behavioural sciences at Ariel College. But she has hiked with my husband all over Israel and grew up in our home in Efrat, halfway between Bethlehem and Hebron, among the hills that Abraham walked.

“I was always interested in archeology,” she said, “and I just wanted the chance to dig.”

Background here and here.

Cyrus Cylinder fragments from China?

CYRUS CYLINDER FRAGMENTS FROM CHINA?

Extracts of Cyrus Cylinder found in China
British Museum curator has identified cuneiform text inscribed on horse bones

By Martin Bailey | From issue 215, July-August 2010 (The Art Newspaper)
Published online 2 Aug 10 (News)

LONDON. Two fossilised horse bones with cuneiform inscriptions have been found in China, carved with extracts from the Cyrus Cylinder. They were initially dismissed as fakes because of the improbability of ancient Persian texts turning up in Beijing. But following new research, British Museum (BM) specialist Irving Finkel is now convinced of their authenticity.

This discovery looks set to transform our knowledge about what is arguably the most important surviving cuneiform text, written in the world’s earliest script. Dating from 539BC, the Cyrus Cylinder was ceremonially buried in the walls of Babylon. Its text celebrates the achievements of Cyrus the Great, ruler of the Persian empire. The clay cylinder was excavated by BM archaeologists in 1879 and sent to London, where it is one of the museum’s most important antiquities.

The texts found in China inexplicably have fewer than one in every 20 of the Cyrus text’s cuneiform signs transcribed, although they are in the correct order. ...

I'm not at all sure what that last sentence means, but that's what it says, and it's repeated later in the article. This is not my area, but if Irving Finkel thinks it's real, it's worth taking note of. For more on the Cyrus Cylinder and on Irving Finkel, go here. And there's still more on Dr. Finkel here. And follow the links in both posts for still more.

(Via Francis Deblauwe on Facebook.)

Ancient Canaanite bracelet

LILIT MARCUS: I Would Totally Wear This Recently Discovered 3,000 Year Old Bracelet.

More ancient bling posts here and follow the links.

UPDATE: Oh oh! More here.

No bones of John the Baptist

ROBERT CARGILL: no, no you didn’t find the remains of john the baptist. Indeed not.

A New Glimpse of Day One

IN THE MAIL:

S. D. Giere, A New Glimpse of Day One: Intertextuality, History of Interpretation, and Genesis 1.1-5 (BZNW 172; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009)

A revised PhD thesis finished under my supervision in 2006. Glad to see it in print.

Mandaic Lexicon Project Receives Grant

ARAMAIC WATCH: Mandaic Lexicon Project Receives Grant.

Maaloula in the news

MAALOULA (MA'ALOULA, MALULA) IN THE NEWS:

Speaking the language of Jesus
Teaching Aramaic was discontinued recently in Maloula, but new efforts are being exerted to revive the program

by Alastair Beach (Forward Magazine Syria)

Photo by John Wreford

In a dimly-lit grotto carved out of a cliff face in the foothills of Syria’s Anti-Lebanon Mountain range, scores of pilgrims pay their respects at one of the holiest Christian shrines in the world.

Surrounded by framed religious icons and beneath a low-slung rock ceiling festooned with flickering lanterns, a steady procession of awe-struck worshippers stoop down, made the sign of the cross and then reached through a tiny gap in the stone to try and touch the tomb of St Thecla, one of Christianity’s earliest martyrs.

Her burial place lies in Maloula, a small village which clings like a crab claw to a spine of sand-coloured rock about 55km north-west of the Syrian capital. It is famous for being one of the last places in the world where the inhabitants still speak Aramaic, the language used during the time of Jesus Christ.

[...]

I don't think I knew that Thecla was associated with the area. More on the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla here.

“It’s quite extraordinary,” said Annyck Wustyn, a 63-year-old visitor from France. “In our country, where we are mostly Catholic, Aramaic is like a myth. Now I know it is a reality.”

The only way to try and learn the ancient dialect in Maloula itself is at the Aramaic institute that was established in 2007, when the Syrian government decided to launch a series of language courses in a bid to preserve the country’s unique heritage.

The programme has been frozen since last year when an article in Syria-news.com suggested that the alphabet being used to teach written Aramaic bore an uncanny resemblance to the Hebrew characters found in modern-day Israel. But plans are afoot to try and breathe new life into the project this summer.

[...]

Background to that here and here. The Syrian government looks appallingly lame here and they deserve to be ridiculed mercilessly for this silly decision until they make it right.

Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."

Dead Sea is finalist in New 7Wonders of World contest

THE DEAD SEA is in the running for status as one of the Seven Wonders of Nature:

Tourism Ministry Seeks ‘Floating Voters’ for Dead Sea Contest

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva)

The Dead Sea is great for floaters, but no floating voters are allowed, say tourism officials, who want your vote to make the “lowest point on Earth” officially one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World.”

As part of its global marketing effort to promote the Dead Sea as a unique tourist destination and as a finalist in the New7Wonders of Nature online campaign, the ministry has launched a dedicated multi-lingual Dead Sea website. It also has posted a social media campaign to include Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

[...]

I know the first paragraph says Seven Wonders of the World, but that was a contest for human-made monuments and that contest is already over. The Dead Sea is a finalist in the New 7Wonders of Nature contest, the voting for which is set for 2011. The actual Dead Sea site linked to above refers to the correct contest.

Obituary for John WIlliam Wevers

AN OBITUARY for John William Wevers at the Globe and Mail. (Via the Agade list.)

Background here.

First blind PhD graduate in biblical languages?

CONGRATULATIONS to Ray McAllister:

Blind Andrews student gets biblical languages doctorate

By DEBRA HAIGHT - H-P [Herald Palladium] Correspondent
Published: Sunday, August 1, 2010 1:04 PM EDT

I stand

At the end of one miracle

And the beginning

of a thousand more.

I rest

Having finished one impossible journey

And about to start

What will seem as countless others.

– Ray McAllister, “The End and the Beginning”

BERRIEN SPRINGS — Ray McAllister graduates today from Andrews University, having overcome obstacles and achieving what very likely no one else in his position has.

Totally blind since age 12 due to a degenerative disease called Peter’s Anomaly, he hasn’t let his disability keep him from achieving his dream of getting a doctorate in biblical languages.

It’s a feat that he believes makes him unique in the state and maybe the nation and the world. He also thinks it’s fitting that he’s graduating in the week that saw the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

From what he’s been able to ascertain from conversations with the National Federation for the Blind and the Society of Biblical Literature, no other totally blind person anywhere has ever gotten a doctorate in biblical languages.

[...]

His biggest help throughout the last decade has been Sally, whom he married in 2001. She has done everything from reading quizzes and exams to him to dictating vocabulary words.

The technological assistance has also been tremendous, McAllister said. The Michigan Commission for the Blind provided him with the computers, scanners, software programs and the BrailleNote readers he needed to study.

He sees the hand of God not only in the help he got from his wife and the state, but also the assistance he’s gotten from other educational institutions and religious organizations.

For example, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Computer Analysis of Texts provided him with text files of the entire Hebrew Bible and other religious tracts for a nominal charge. He now has the whole Bible in transliterated codes.

“I had to build my way through this,” McAllister said. “The Commission for the Blind didn’t have all the equipment I needed. I had to make my own path. That’s why I wanted to get my story out, so people could know how to get the different resources.”

McAllister also can’t praise Andrews enough for its help. While he was studying and preparing for his doctorate, it gave him the opportunity to teach seminary classes on biblical subjects.

[...]

And kudos to Penn's Center for Computer Analysis of Texts for its technological support.

Beer and Bible

A WINNING COMBINATION:

Beer and Bible promote Israel’s cultural future

By JONAH MANDEL (Jerusalem Post)
08/02/2010 01:02

Group aims to inspire potential teachers.

There is nothing quite like a chilly pint of bitter in a welcoming and air-conditioned bar after a ridiculously hot day.

But the fine brew served on Sunday evening in Herzliya’s Theodor bar was primarily an alluring setting for the real delicacy put forth before nearly 40 secular men and women, the “living water” of the Bible.

As the axiom goes, there is no such thing as a free beer, happy hours notwithstanding. In this case, it was the initiative of the non-profit group Israeli Education, which for the third time against such a backdrop set out to expose the attendees to what the group does in instilling the Bible in public schools. It does this with the underlying aspiration to draw some of the young academics sipping drinks to become Bible teachers themselves, in a Kibbutz Seminar program currently in the works.

[...]

For a similar, but apparently unrelated initiative (which lacks beer), see here.

Mandaeans in Iran: a photo essay

MANDAEANS (MANDEANS) IN IRAN, a photo-essay in Payvand:

Photos: As Old as Water Itself - the Mandaeans of Iran, followers of John the Baptist
Text Source: Parvaneh Vahidmanesh Mianeh Photo: Hasan Sarbakhshian

Ancient baptism ritual still performed in southwestern province. These pictures offer a rare glimpse into the lives and religious practices of the Mandaean community in Iran.

As followers of John the Baptist, members of this small faith group, numbering between 5,000 and 10,000 in Iran, immerse themselves in moving water every Sunday. Because the rituals of birth, baptism, marriage and death centre on water, the Mandaeans have from time immemorial lived close to rivers - the Karoun in Khuzestan province of southwest Iran, and the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq.

[...]

Iranian Mandaeans, alas, seem to be no better off than their Iraqi co-religionists:

In Iran, which always had a smaller Mandaean population, numbers have also fallen due to emigration. Current numbers are estimated to be between 5,000 and 10,000. After the US State Department granted Iranian Mandaeans protective refugee status in 2002, more than 1,000 moved to America.

Because the Mandaeans do not seek to convert others, they are not perceived as a threat by the Shia clerical establishment. Yet unlike other faith communities - Armenian and Assyrian Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews - the Mandaeans are not recognised as a discrete group in the Islamic Republic's constitution, and are not accorded representation in parliament as others are.

As a result, says Farid, a Mandaean from the town of Ahvaz in Khuzestan province who emigrated to France last year, "Our children are forced to attend Koranic classes and Islamic studies because Mandaeans are not mentioned in the Iranian Constitution.... Iranian Jews, for example, can opt out of religious classes for Muslims in school."

Farid also noted that the lack of formal recognition means that whereas other minorities may legally name children according to their religious preference, Mandaeans are required to adopt approved Muslim or Iranian names.

Shortly after the 1979 revolution, senior Mandaean clerics went to see Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani - an ally of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini regarded as tolerant of other faiths - to ask him what freedoms they could expect under the new regime.

They were shocked at Taleghani's response - that the Mandaeans would be "given an opportunity to convert to Islam."

Amnesty International has highlighted violations of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities not recognised by the Iranian state, including the Mandaeans, for example when applicants are vetted for employment and higher education.

As well as discrimination, the Mandaeans also miss out by being ignored.

Their location in Khuzestan means they rarely encounter government officials from distant Tehran.

Farid says the Iranian media simply ignore the Mandaeans.

Background here.

Herod loses two building projects

HEROD THE GREAT evidently had two fewer building projects than we'd thought:

Revelations of an ever-changing past

Thanks to findings at a recent dig near Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, King Herod has lost his claim to being the original contractor of certain ancient structures in the area.

By Nir Hasson (Haaretz)

A manhole cover is inconspicuously embedded in the road leading into Jaffa Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. Every day, hundreds of drivers and pedestrians pass by this spot; one of the city's busiest sites. But only a few realize that this is not really a manhole, leading into the bowels of the municipal sewerage system, but rather a "gateway" to a different kind of underground world - in fact, to one of the most dramatic archaeological sites in this part of the city.
Jerusalem excavation

The manhole cover was installed in the road to allow access to an ancient aqueduct located four meters below street level. The subterranean aqueduct and fortification wall discovered nearby were at first thought to be simply more evidence of the vast construction projects undertaken by King Herod the Great (74-4 B.C.E. ) during the Second Temple period. However, their excavation has revealed not only the precise dimensions of the structures, and who built them - but, more significantly, the fact that hundreds of archaeologists and researchers have been mistaken for the past 150 years about this site.

[...]

This long article is very difficult to excerpt or summarize, so read it all. But this paragraph near the end flags the main issues:

For researchers, the key finding involved the location and dating of the construction of the wall and aqueduct. The fact that the two structures intersect proves irrefutably that they were built concurrently - by the 10th Roman Legion [around the second century C.E.]. In one stroke, Herod lost his claim to be the builder of these Jaffa Gate projects.

The headline reminds me of Marty McFly's "Yeah, well, history is gonna change."

Masada profiled in Stars and Stripes

MASADA AND ITS STORY are profiled in Stars and Stripes:

Israel's Masada: Where Jewish rebels took a stand against the Romans

By Mark Abramson
Special to Stars and Stripes
Published: July 29, 2010

Its imposing cliffs, ancient fortifications and desolate location helped make Masada a safe palatial refuge for King Herod the Great years before it was taken over by Jewish rebels and then seized by Roman soldiers in 73 A.D.

But the fortress in Israel’s eastern Judean Desert became more. It is a lasting monument to the Jewish people’s last stand against Roman conquerors and a major Holy Land tourist attraction.

The old palace/fort is perched high atop a mesa that offers beautiful desert vistas from any direction, including, on a clear day, a sweeping view of the Dead Sea to the east.
The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization calls the nearly 2,000-year-old archaeological site made up of Herod’s citadel, the Roman camps below and the ramp built by the Romans to seize Masada, the “most complete Roman siege works surviving to the present day.” Masada was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001.

Historians believe that the fortress was built as a defense by Herod, the king of Judea, who according to UNESCO reigned from 37 B.C. to 4 B.C. He was a pro-Roman ruler, and one theory claims the fort was built as a refuge in case of a local revolt or attack from abroad.

A revolt did come — about 70 years after Herod’s death — when a group of Jewish extremists was forced out of Jerusalem, seized Masada and used it as a base to fight the Romans. The Romans eventually laid siege to the fortress, establishing several bases with high walls around the mesa to make sure no Jews could escape from the fortress above. Then they built a ramp from their bases to Masada’s walls to attack the rebels. In the spring of 73, after approximately a half year of siege, the Romans entered the fort.

Instead of armed resistance, they found burning storerooms and more than 900 dead bodies — the rebels had committed mass suicide rather than face defeat, slavery or execution.

[...]

This summary follows Josephus' narrative without nuance or question. His whole version of events has been questioned by both historians and archaeologists in recent years, and the use made of his account in present-day Israel is not without problems either. I have discussed some of the issues here and here. Two articles on the problems with Josephus' story are:

Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Masada: Literary Tradition, Archaeological Remains, and the Credibility of Josephus," Journal of Jewish Studies 33 (1982): 385-405

Kenneth Atkinson, "Noble Deaths at Gamla and Masada? A Critical Assessment of Josephus' Accounts of Jewish Resistance in Light of Archaeological Discoveries," in Making History: Josephus and Historical Method (ed. Zukeila Rodgers; JSJSup 110; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 349-71

Tyler Williams on John William Wevers

TYLER WILLIAMS on John William Wevers: "He was one of the few scholars I know who had the mastery of the languages and texts necessary to do true textual criticism."

Background here.

Infra-red photography of the DSS

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Infra-red photography is being used once again on the Dead Sea Scrolls:

High-tech test of Dead Sea Scrolls under way at Science Museum of Minnesota

By Sharon Schmickle | Published Wed, Jul 28 2010 9:46 am (MinnPost.com)

Since 1947, when a shepherd searching caves near the Dead Sea discovered fragments of ancient texts, scholars have sought ways to study the remarkable discovery — now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls — without damaging the 2,000-year-old documents. That quest continued in St. Paul on Tuesday when delegates from the Israel Antiquities Authority tested a new digital infrared camera system at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

A rare exhibit of the scrolls opened at the museum in March. On Tuesday, one set of scrolls was packed up for return to Jerusalem. A third and final set was delivered and unpacked this week for viewing that can begin next Tuesday, Aug. 3. The exhibit is open through Oct. 24.

[...]

In 1991, the Authority set up a climate-controlled storeroom and laboratory for the scrolls and began the painstaking process of restoring the fragments and detailing their contents. Eventually, the fragments were sewn between two layers of polyester net stretched in acid-free mounts. Those, in turn, were enclosed in a frame made of polycarbonate plates.

So housed, the scrolls were ready to share with the world, including the thousands of people who have lined up at the Science Museum of Minnesota to view them.

The scrolls were photographed in the 1950s. And the texts of most of the scrolls also have been published, although controversy persists over the exact meanings of difficult-to-decipher documents. Images of the scrolls also have been made available online.

Despite the precautions, the deterioration continues.

Now the hope is that this new state-of-the-art imaging system will help strike a balance between preserving the documents and also making high resolution color and infrared images of them available for research.

“With this imaging, there could be a lot more for the scholarly world to see,” Shor said.

Meanwhile, the full array of images could form a basis for detecting even subtle damage. Images from the visible part of the spectrum could, for example, reveal changes in color. And those from narrow bands in the infrared could show other changes in more detail than could be seen with the naked eye.

[...]

More proof that non-intrusive/non-destructive analysis is the way of the future.

Some background on the Minnesota exhibition is here.

Cargill on DSS documentary

ROBERT CARGILL adds his own commentary to that National Geographic documentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls. His comments are very sensible and I agree with most of what he says, although I see no need to postulate that anyone outside the sectarian movement hid scrolls in the caves. Sectarians could have non-sectarian literature in their libraries, either because they liked it or perhaps even because they felt it merited refutation. The origins and purpose of the Copper Scroll are very murky, but I would not rule out the possibility that even it was a sectarian composition.

NYU Job: Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

JOB AT NYU:

Position Announcement: Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic)

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, seeks to make an appointment (tenured or tenure-track, rank open) of a wide-ranging scholar in the languages, literatures, and cultures of the Near East in the Roman, Late Antique, and early Islamic periods. The principal areas of interest should be in the Semitic languages (Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic, in particular) rather than in Greek, but specialization is less important than broad interests and connections with neighboring regions and cultures. We seek individuals of scholarly distinction whose work will benefit from freedom from departmental structures and who will be stimulated by working closely with colleagues in other disciplines, approaches, periods, or geographical areas and who are committed to helping develop the intellectual life of such a community. Applicants with a history of interdisciplinary exchange are particularly welcome. The Institute’s graduate program emphasizes individual supervision and research seminars. The faculty is involved in choosing a group of visiting researchers each year.

Applications (letter, curriculum vitae, and list of referees) should be made through the NYU online system at www.nyuopsearch.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=50564. Review of candidates will begin on November 1, 2010. For questions, please email Ms. Kathryn Lawson at kathryn.lawson@nyu.edu. New York University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

(Via George Kiraz at the Hugoye list.)

Apocryphicity blog rediscovered

APOCRYPHICITY, the blog on Christian apocrypha by Tony Burke, appeared to go dead after January of 2009, but in fact it just changed addresses. Mark Goodacre has recently noted the new address. Tony has been blogging fairly frequently in recent months, especially on the New Testament Apocrypha course he has been teaching, so do have a look. And don't miss The Flying Head of John the Baptist.

Obituary for Robin Wilson

AN OBITUARY FOR ROBIN WILSON has been published in the Scotsman and elsewhere:

Obituary: Rev Prof Robin McLachlan Wilson, Kirk minister and New Testament expert

Published Date: 05 July 2010

By JOHNSTON McKAY

Rev Professor Robin McLachlan Wilson, minister and university lecturer.

Born: 13 February, 1916.

Died: 27 June, 2010, aged 94.

ROBIN Wilson once described his career as "spanning the space between the fountain pen and online publications". Although he was a New Testament scholar, his main contribution was to the study of an alternative movement to Christianity which flourished in the second century AD. This was Gnosticism, which made a distinction between an evil god who ruled this world and a far higher God who was revealed in Jesus Christ. Gnosticism also believed the hidden wisdom or knowledge of this religion had been revealed to a select group only. While some scholars regarded Gnosticism as having existed long before New Testament times, Wilson argued from the outset of his academic career it was in essence a different phenomenon from the second century rival to Christianity.

[...]

I agree with him on that, incidentally. Regular readers of PaleoJudaica will not find much new in this obituary (cf. here and follow the links), but I note it for completeness. If you have any trouble accessing it without registering with the Scotsman, you can also read it, for example, here.

More Waqf digging on Temple Mount?

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Waqf Bulldozers on Temple Mount May Be Destroying Jewish History

by Eli Stutz (Arutz Sheva)

Jewish residents report that Waqf works at the Dome of the Rock have restarted 'under cover', likely destroying Jewish archaeological artifacts.

[...]

Not good.

Background here.

Article on Cargill's DSS documentary

MORE ON CARGILL'S DOCUMENTARY:

Dead Sea Scrolls Mystery Solved?

Published July 27, 2010 (National Geographic)

The recent decoding of a cryptic cup, the excavation of ancient Jerusalem tunnels, and other archaeological detective work may help solve one of the great biblical mysteries: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The new clues hint that the scrolls, which include some of the oldest known biblical documents, may have been the textual treasures of several groups, hidden away during wartime—and may even be "the great treasure from the Jerusalem Temple," which held the Ark of the Covenant, according to the Bible.

The title is overly ambitious but I don't hold Robert responsible for that. The description of the documentary sums up a lot of interesting recent discussion about the Scrolls. As I've mentioned before, my own working hypothesis is that the Dead Sea Scrolls come from multiple libraries held by various congregations in Judea which belonged broadly to the same sectarian movement (probably more or less to be identified with the "Essenes"). The libraries were brought to Qumran for safekeeping in the lead-up to the first Jewish war with Rome in the late 60s CE. Not surprisingly, the collection contains both sectarian texts and other texts that the sectarians found interesting and congenial for one reason or another (e.g., biblical books, Enochic books, etc.). The evidence reviewed here seems to fit well with that scenario. I hope the documentary goes online so I can see it too.

By the way, since when has the Jerusalem cryptic cup been deciphered? This was the last I've heard about it, in November of 2009. If there's more recent information, I would be grateful if someone would point me to it.

Background to the documentary is here.

For more on the archaeology of the site of Qumran and the origins of the Qumran library, see here, here, and here.

UPDATE (29 July): More here.

Boyarin on Metatron in JSJ

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: This article by Daniel Boyarin in the current issue (41.3) of the Journal for the Study of Judaism looks both interesting and important.

Beyond Judaisms: Metatron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism

Abstract:

My specific project in this paper is to combine several related and notorious questions in the history of Judaism into one: What is the nexus among the semi-divine (or high angel) figure known in the Talmud as Metatron, the figure of the exalted Enoch in the Enoch books (1-3 Enoch!), "The One Like a Son of Man" of Daniel, Jesus, the Son of Man, and the rabbinically named heresy of "Two Powers/Sovereignties in Heaven?" I believe that in order to move towards some kind of an answer to this question, we need to develop a somewhat different approach to the study of ancient Judaism, as I hope to show here. I claim that late-ancient rabbinic literature when read in the context of all contemporary and earlier texts of Judaism—those defined as rabbinic as well as those defined as non-, para-, or even anti-rabbinic—affords us a fair amount of evidence for and information about a belief in (and perhaps cult of) a second divine person within, or very close to, so-called "orthodox" rabbinic circles long after the advent of Christianity. Part of the evidence for this very cult will come from efforts at its suppression on the part of rabbinic texts. I believe, moreover, that a reasonable chain of inference links this late cult figure back through the late-antique Book of 3 Enoch to the Enoch of the first-century Parables of Enoch—also known in the scholarly literature as the Similitudes of Enoch—and thus to the Son of Man of that text and further back to the One Like a Son of Man of Daniel 7.

Keywords: ANCIENT JUDAISM; JUDAISMS; METATRON; SON OF MAN; TALMUD; 3 ENOCH

(Requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access the full article. H-T James McGrath on Facebook.)

Todd Bolen vs. Josephus on place of Herod Agrippa's death

TODD BOLEN challenges Josephus regarding the place of Herod Agrippa's death (Bible and Interpretation):

Not in the Theater: Challenging Josephus’s Location for the Place of Herod Agrippa’s Death

The death of Herod Agrippa I occurred in Caesarea according to both Josephus and the book of Acts. Josephus writes that the king was in the theater when the crowd hailed him as a god and he was struck down. Details in Josephus’s account, however, indicate that the episode occurred in the city amphitheater next door to the temple where the emperor was worshipped.

By Todd Bolen
Bibleplaces.com
July 2010

Josephus is an important source for first-century Palestinian Jewish history, but he is far from infallible.

Todd Bolen's blog is Bible Places.

More on the Hazor cuneiform fragments

MORE on the Hazor cuneiform fragments:

Hebrew U. archeologists find Patriarchs-era tablet

By JUDY SIEGEL (Jerusalem Post)
07/27/2010 05:54

Written code on tablet dates from the Middle Bronze Age in 17th, 18th centuries.

A document written on two cuneiform tablets around the time of the patriarch Abraham, containing a law code in a style and language similar to parts of the famous Code of Hammurabi, has been discovered for the first time in an Israeli archeological dig.

The code, dating from the Middle Bronze Age in the 18th and 17th centuries BCE, was found at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s excavations this summer at Hazor National Park in the North. However, it has not yet been determined whether the document was written at Hazor – where a school for scribes was located in ancient times, or brought from elsewhere, said Prof. Wayne Horowitz of the HU Institute of Archeology.

[...]

The researchers said that the laws also reflected to a certain extent a number of biblical laws such as “an eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth.” Jewish sages have regarded this verse from Leviticus, Exodus and Deuteronomy as an order not to actually remove the eye or tooth of someone who causes another person to lose one, but to require financial compensation equal to its value. So far, among the words that have been deciphered are “master,” “slave” and a word referring to bodily parts, apparently the word for “tooth.”

[...]

The fragments, said Ben- Tor, now form the largest corpus of documents of cuneiform texts found in Israel. Previous documents dealt with such subjects as the dispatch of people or goods, a legal dispute involving a local woman, and a text of multiplication tables. Also found over the years were an ancient bilingual dictionary, legal and economic documents and texts for predicting the future. This demonstrates that Hazor was a center of scholarship and administration and a circle of highlevel scribes during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, said Ben-Tor.

The archeological team, which is continuing to dig under the sponsorship of HU and the Israel Exploration Society, will soon begin uncovering a monumental building dating to the Bronze Age, where the team members expect to recover additional tablets.

I hope so.

Background here.

UPDATE: Christopher Rollston has further reflections here.

John W. Wevers, R.I.P.

JOHN W. WEVERS, requiescat in pace. I am sorry to relay the following from Jack Sasson's Agade List:

From Paul E. Dion came this sad news:
===============================================

Sadly, on July 23, Professor Emeritus John William Wevers, of the University of Toronto, passed away at the age of 91. Prof. Wevers was struck by a cerebral hemorrhage in the Toronto nursing home where he had lived since July 2008. A memorial service will be held in Toronto on Sept. 11.

During his long tenure at the University of Toronto, Prof. Wevers had brought the Department of Near Eastern Studies (now merged into the Dept. of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations) to unprecedented complement and quality; he himself became an undisputed master of Septuagint Studies during the last decades of the 20th century, having produced the critical edition of the whole Greek Pentateuch for the Göttingen Septuaginta Unternehmen, and added further text-critical studies, translations, and commentaries to each of the five main volumes of this edition. Prof. Wevers's knowledge and contribution extended to several other languages; he had, in particular, made significant contributions to Classical Hebrew scholarship, as well as vigorously promoting its study at the University of Toronto.

Sizable autobiographical sketches are expected to come out, and will be announced on the web site of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies when available.

[A Festschrift in his honor was published in 1984: DE SEPTUAGINTA. Studies in Honour of John William Wevers on his sixty-fifth birthday (ed. Albert Pietersma and Claude Cox; Benben Publications: Mississauga).

A brief notice on him with photo is at the website of the Calvin Theological Seminary from which he received a Distinguished Alumni
Award for 2010 http://www.calvinseminary.edu/events/commencement/2010/distinguishedAlumni.php.]

The IOSCS website is here.

Professor Wevers made massive contributions to our understanding of the text of the Septuagint. His editions of the LXX books of the Pentateuch in the Göttingen series will be standard reference works for many years to come.

Taming time travel

TIME TRAVEL WATCH: Physicists at MIT are ...

Taming time travel
New work solves paradoxes by making the impossible impossible

By Laura Sanders (Science News)
Web edition : Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Novelists and screenwriters know that time travel can be accomplished in all sorts of ways: a supercharged DeLorean, Hermione’s small watch and, most recently, a spacetime-bending hot tub have allowed fictional heroes to jump between past and future.

But physicists know that time travel is more than just a compelling plot device — it’s a serious prediction of Einstein’s general relativity equations. In a new study posted online July 15, researchers led by Seth Lloyd at MIT analyze how some of the quirks and peculiarities of real-life time travel might play out. This particular kind of time travel evades some of its most paradoxical predictions, Lloyd says.

Any theory of time travel has to confront the devastating “grandfather paradox,” in which a traveler jumps back in time and kills his grandfather, which prevents his own existence, which then prevents the murder in the first place, and so on.

[...]

In contrast, Lloyd prefers a model of time travel that explicitly forbids these inconsistencies. This version, posted at arXiv.org, is called a post-selected model. By going back and outlawing any events that would later prove paradoxical in the future, this theory gets rid of the uncomfortable idea that a time traveler could prevent his own existence. “In our version of time travel, paradoxical situations are censored,” Lloyd says.

But this dictum against paradoxical events causes possible but unlikely events to happen more frequently. “If you make a slight change in the initial conditions, the paradoxical situation won’t happen. That looks like a good thing, but what it means is that if you’re very near the paradoxical condition, then slight differences will be extremely amplified,” says Charles Bennett of IBM’s Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

For instance, a bullet-maker would be inordinately more likely to produce a defective bullet if that very bullet was going to be used later to kill a time traveler’s grandfather, or the gun would misfire, or “some little quantum fluctuation has to whisk the bullet away at the last moment,” Lloyd says. In this version of time travel, the grandfather, he says, is “a tough guy to kill.”

[...]

This sounds to me like another version of Niven's Law, which is kind of old news. Still, it's interesting to have physicists discussing it, not just science fiction writers.

(Via Ray Kurzweil's Daily Newsletter.)

More on time travel here (and follow the links) and here.

Museum of Torah animals in Brooklyn

MUSEUM OF TORAH ANIMALS:

The Torah’s Animals Inhabit a Borough Park Museum

Sun, Jul 25, 2010

By Sharyn Jackson (The Brooklyn Link)

Holding up the stuffed leg of a giraffe, Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch commanded the unwavering attention of nine sixth-grade boys on a June afternoon. The class from Yeshiva K’Tana in Waterbury, Conn., had come to Deutsch’s museum, Torah Animal World, to see the difference between kosher and non-kosher animals, an issue of Jewish dietary law discussed at length in two passages of the Torah they were studying in school. Deutsch showed the group the clean split down the center of the animal’s hoof, one sure sign that a giraffe is indeed kosher. He later pointed out on a two-humped camel upstairs that its hoof is not fully split, its meat therefore forbidden to enter Jewish mouths.

“It’s amazing to actually see the animals that we learn about,” said Rabbi Elisha Freedman, the students’ teacher and chaperone. While buying keychains of scorpions encased in plastic, Freedman’s students echoed his sentiment as only 11-year-olds can: “Really cool!”

In two years, Torah Animal World, a taxidermy museum claiming to display every animal mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, has become the final resting place for approximately 350 specimens gathered from taxidermists, zoos and private collectors around the world. The museum, in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, will be complete once Deutsch builds an annex for the sacrificial animals listed in the Torah—oxen, sheep and goats, mostly. But the rooms of this row house-turned-museum are already brimful with $3.5 million worth of wildlife that once traipsed about the ancient Middle East, assembled by one man determined to make Torah-learning a hands-on experience.

[...]

There's even a room devoted to "creeping things." Deutsch has more such projects:

Besides Torah Animal World, Deutsch also runs the Living Torah Museum, a collection of biblical artifacts two doors down, and an animal exhibit in the Catskills featuring the creatures mentioned in the Talmud, the collection of writings on Jewish law. On the horizon is a plan to open a botany museum, with freeze-dried examples of every plant in the Torah. Deutsch also hopes to one day build a full-size model of the Tabernacle, the ancient shrine believed to be the dwelling place of God. His plans are part of a pursuit, he said, to make Jewish scripture both visible and tangible to those as curious as he was. “The things I struggled through,” said Deutsch, “I want to make that available to everybody.”

Finally, some Talmudic exegesis based on an exhibit:

Deutsch then pointed to a massive white snake. Once at a zoo, the zookeeper put a 13-foot boa constrictor around the rabbi’s legs, pulling the snake off only when it reached his chest. The journey took the boa constrictor 11 minutes. “Now, why would I do something like that?” Deutsch asked the group. “Because the Talmud tells us that if you’re standing and praying, even if a snake is around your legs, don’t stop. You have time to finish. It takes him a while till he gets up there.”

David Stacey on proton-beam analysis of Temple Scroll

ARCHAEOLOGIST DAVID STACEY e-mails regarding that proton-beam analysis that suggests that the Temple Scroll was produced near the Dead Sea, based on the chemical composition of the scroll and the local water:

The problem with this research is that it does not address the issue of how much bromine or any other salts would be absorbed by any porous material after it had been in a cave near the Dead Sea for 2000 years. The human bones from the Qumran cemetery had a high bromine content (Rasmussen et al in Kh Q II, Humbert and Gunneweg (eds)) and Crowfoot when dealing with the linen wrappers over 50 years ago never questioned that they had absorbed Dead Sea salts. Even some of our sherds in Jericho had a flaking of snow-like crystals which were, presumably (as far as I know they were never analysed) salts of some sort. How about testing, for example, the wooden coffins from Ein Gedi for bromine content?

Good point.

Background here and here.

Philologos over-hypes Ugaritic computer "decipherment"

PHILOLOGOS gets uncharacteristically over-excited about that new language-decipherment computer program that was recently field tested on Ugaritic:

From Hebrew to Ugaritic and Back Again

On Language
By Philologos
Published July 14, 2010, issue of July 23, 2010. (The Forward)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced on June 30 that three linguists, working under its auspices, have developed a successful computer system for deciphering the ancient language of Ugaritic. At the coming annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, the three will present a paper on a new computer system that, “in a matter of hours,” learned to read from scratch a long-dead language that is close to biblical Hebrew. In fact, the MIT press release stated, since the system calls for a second, known language to which the language to be deciphered is related, Hebrew was chosen for this purpose.

[...]

No, it didn't "learn to read" Ugaritic "from scratch." It just accurately isolated some correspondences with Hebrew. Nor did "the computer ... come to the same conclusions at which previous scholars had needed generations to arrive." Worst of all is this:

This is a quite remarkable achievement. Imagine that German had ceased to be spoken centuries ago, and been forgotten until written texts of it were discovered in an alphabet that at first no one could read — and imagine that, based solely on German’s known kinship with English, a computer determined within hours not only how to read these texts, but also what they meant.

The program did not read the texts or even determine anything about what Ugaritic meant. It proposed a lot of cognates with Hebrew and did so pretty accurately, but it gave no translations or even assignments of meanings to individual words. At most the cognates would be suggestive to human beings of possible meanings for the Ugaritic words, determined by sensible meaning in context.

Philologos is usually more careful than this.

Background here.

New discoveries at Petra

PETRA is finally in the news for something besides another travelogue:

Ancient City of Petra Tombs Reveal 61 Burials and Islamic Gold Medallion
Submitted by owenjarus on Fri, 07/23/2010 - 08:17 (Heritage Key)

Inside this tomb archaeologists found a gold medallion, with an Islamic inscription, that may have been used to ward off evil. Outside they found the remains of a stone platform that can be seen in this photo. Photo courtesy Professor David Johnson.
Archaeologists have made two major tomb discoveries at the ancient city of Petra in southern Jordan.

They discovered a rock-cut tomb that contained the skeletal remains of 61 individuals, along with a wealth of wooden artefacts, animal bones and ceramics.

The second discovery was made at a place called tomb 676. While excavating it archaeologists found a gold medallion with an Islamic inscription on it. The find dates to long after the tomb was abandoned.

“This object was placed in the tomb in a later period - perhaps as a way of warding off evil coming from the tomb,” said Professor David Johnson, of Brigham Young University in Utah, who led the team that made both tomb finds. He has been working in Petra for nearly three decades.

Each of the tombs date back about 2,000 years, to a time when the city was prosperous. At that time Petra was ruled by a people called the Nabataeans – an Arabic people who made the city the centre of their kingdom. Petra’s location made it a natural place to do business with people coming from Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East.

[...]

The Nabataeans spoke Arabic but used Aramaic as their written language for official purposes.

There are some good tomb photos in the article, but none of the medallion.

(Via Dorothy King on Facebook.)

Replica of Solomon's Temple to be build in Saõ Paolo

CAN'T MAKE IT UP:

Rebuilding Solomon’s Temple, in São Paulo

By ROBERT MACKEY (The Lede, NYT)

This week, as Jews around the world observed the fasting day of Tisha B’av, commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Jewish Temples in ancient Jerusalem, a Brazilian megachurch received planning permission to build a 10,000-seat replica of Solomon’s Temple in the city of São Paulo.

As Tom Phillips of The Guardian noted, a Brazilian newspaper, Estado de São Paulo, reported that the church will cost an estimated $200 million and should be completed in four years.

[...]

We're talking about a larger than full-scale model here. Judging from the simulated view of the Holy of Holies, historical authenticity will be upstaged by other considerations (see the video).

Cross-file under "Temple Mount Watch," only not.

Dennis Pardee appointed to a named chair

CONGRATULATIONS TO DENNIS PARDEE, who has been promoted to a named chair at the University of Chicago. Press release:

Dennis Pardee has been appointed the Henry Crown Professor in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations.

Currently Professor in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, Pardee studies northwest Semitic languages and is a leading scholar of Ugarit, the language spoken by the residents of the ancient Syrian city. He is the author of two–volume scholarly translation of Ugaritic rituals, many of which had been difficult for scholars to access before the publication of Pardee’s translation.

In 2008, Pardee translated the inscription on an ancient stone slab uncovered by an Oriental Institute team in southeast Turkey. The slab provided the first written evidence in the belief that the soul was separate from the body.

Pardee teaches intermediate and advanced Biblical Hebrew, and is a 2010 recipient of the University’s Graduate Teaching Award. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995. In 2007 he delivered the British Academy’s prestigious Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology.

He received his Ph.D. from UChicago in 1974 and has been teaching at UChicago since 1972.

Via the The Oriental Institute: Fragments for a History of an Institution blog via Christopher Rollston on Facebook. I have noted Professor Pardee's work on the new Zincirli inscription (a.k.a. the Kuttamuwa's Soul inscription) here and here.

UPDATE: Blog name corrected in last paragraph. Sorry about that.

Robert Cargill hosts a National Geographic DSS documentary

ROBERT CARGILL hosts a National Geographic documentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls, to air on 27 July:

Scholar highlights new research on Dead Sea Scrolls in TV special
scrolls.use

After 12 years of researching the Dead Sea Scrolls, UCLA archaeologist Robert Cargill couldn’t believe his luck last January when he finally got to penetrate archaeology’s Holy of Holies — the underground vault beneath the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. There he read from the Isaiah Scroll, the oldest-known copy of any book of the Bible.

"Nobody I know has ever been down there," recalled Cargill, the instructional technology coordinator for UCLA’s Center for Digital Humanities and an adjunct assistant professor of Near Eastern Languages and Culture. “As a scholar, it’s as close as you can get to a religious experience.”

The moving moment is captured in an hour-long exploration of new research on the Dead Sea Scrolls that will air next week on the National Geographic Channel. Religious texts dated between 150 BC and 70 AD and written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek on parchment or papyrus, the scrolls include the oldest-known surviving copies of the Bible as well as religious commentary from the flowering of Jewish culture that followed the return from the exile in Babylon.

As the on-air investigator for “Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Cargill talked to nine archaeologists and other scholars who are conducting research that is challenging old assumptions about the authorship of the texts.

[...]

Robert Cargill's blog is here. I see also that he has an interesting post on the recent research that argues that the Temple Scroll may have been produced in the vicinity of Qumran based on the chemical composition of the water that went into the scroll. Excerpt:

At roughly 32% salinity, the water in the Dead Sea is nearly 9 times as saline as the oceanic average. Likewise, the Dead Sea has the highest concentration of bromide ions (Br−) of all bodies of waters on Earth. Because of these distinctive properties, the chlorine and bromine levels of the Temple Scroll’s parchment can be used as a way of determining the origin of the parchment. Because the bromine levels matched those distinctively elevated levels of the Dead Sea, the researchers could confidently conclude that the parchment of the Temple Scroll was manufactured at or near the Dead Sea.

The Italian team says it will next use the same XPIXE and particle accelerator technique to test the Temple Scroll’s ink. This is an important test because it is possible that the parchment was cured at or near the Dead Sea, and then sold or transported elsewhere for use by scribes residing in some other region. Qumran has offered evidence of animal husbandry, and appears to have had distillation vats (Locus 121) that may have been used to cure animal hides for the production of parchment. While the existence of inkwells in Locus 30, evidence of animal husbandry (needed for animal skins), and the presence of distillation vats all support the suggestion that scrolls (or at least parchment) were produced at Qumran, it does not necessarily follow that the resulting parchment was inscribed at Qumran. Granted this is somewhat of a minimalist position, but one cannot argue for certain that the Temple Scroll’s parchment was cured at Qumran, only that it was cured using water from the Dead Sea. Likewise, the presence of parchment production facilities (if that’s what they were indeed used for) at Qumran does not necessarily mean that the parchment was inscribed at Qumran, just as the presence of paper at a paper mill does not mean that the paper was used only at the mill. Just as most universities do not produce their own paper, but import it from elsewhere, so too could the parchment used for what became the Temple Scroll have come from the Dead Sea region, but inscribed elsewhere.

Synagoge unearthed at Horvat Kur

THE HORVAT KUR EXCAVATION has found a late-antique synagogue:

Ancient synagogue discovered at Horvat Kur

A group of researchers and students from the University of Helsinki Faculty of Theology participated in a project that unearthed an ancient synagogue in Israel.
Horvat Kur

The excavations of an international research group at Israel’s Horvat Kur in June and July culminated in the discovery of a subterranean wall. It turned out to be the western wall of a synagogue dating back to the 5th century CE. On the western side of the wall there is a cobblestone pavement, possibly the courtyard of the building. In addition, fragments of pilasters, among other things, were discovered in a nearby excavation.

Excavations were also carried out on a hill close by, where remnants of two courtyards and a room full of discarded pottery were discovered. This summer’s projects were the first systematic excavations in the village of Horvat Kur. The aim is to extend the excavation both around the synagogue and domestic quarters.

[...]

Background here.

Book review: Tawil and Schneider, Crown of Aleppo

BOOK REVIEW on the Aleppo Codex:

The Other Bible, the Crown of Aleppo

By Jonathan Kirsch (The Jewish Journal)

When it comes to the treasures of biblical antiquity, the Dead Sea Scrolls seem to get all the attention. But there is another Bible that deserves our attention — the so-called Crown of Aleppo.

To be sure, the Dead Sea Scrolls represent the oldest copies of the biblical text, but the earliest and most authoritative copy of the Hebrew Bible in the form of a bound book rather than a scroll is the Aleppo Codex, an object lovingly known in Jewish tradition as “the Crown.” How it was created, preserved and rediscovered is one of the great adventure stories of biblical scholarship.

The story is told in “Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex” by Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider (Jewish Publication Society: $45.00), a deft, elegant and utterly fascinating introduction to the object itself and its place in Jewish history.

[...]

Another review, plus more on the Aleppo Codex, are noted here.

Still more on Dura Europos

STILL MORE ON DURA EUROPOS:

Considering Dura: Part III

Richard McBee
Posted Jul 21 2010 (The Jewish Press)

The significance of the 3rd century Dura Europos synagogue murals paradoxically lies less in their historical importance as the earliest example of Jewish narrative art than in their role as a paradigm of what is possible for contemporary Jewish artists. After all, we have absolutely no other examples of Jewish narrative art on this scale and one might argue Dura is simply an aberration, a curiosity from Late Antiquity, never repeated. But of course that is its power, revealing the untapped possibilities of Jewish narrative based on Torah, Midrash and individual creativity, spanning a gap of 1700 years and, with imagination, finding parallels and inspiration between their world and ours.

Admittedly the images we have are frequently hard to see and, when clear, primitive and foreign. Nonetheless, this unknown artist or artists, and the community that commissioned them, utilized Torah narratives as a means to comment on the complexity and hopes of their community, a small ethnic minority in a polytheistic Roman border town. The notion of consummate outsiders struggling to forge culture and identity surely resonates with the modern Diaspora Jewish artist.

[...]

There follow many photographic images of the murals with extensive commentary.

For Parts I and II go here and also note this. And earlier stories on Dura are noted here, here, and here.

New book of Jewish SF and Fantasy

RUMORS of the dearth of Jewish fantasy literature are challenged by this new book.

(H-T Grant Macaskill.)

NYT report on the Israel Museum renewal

THE ISRAEL MUSEUM RENEWAL is covered by the New York Times:

Cleaning Up Intersection of Ancient and Modern

By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: July 20, 2010

JERUSALEM — The director of the Israel Museum was leading a visitor to see a provocative contemporary sculpture of a naked African youth when, stepping over protective cloths and around an exhibit of late Canaanite sarcophagi, he nearly ran into four workmen carrying the million-year-old horns of a wild bull.

The horns are the oldest items in the museum’s collection, and something about the juxtaposition of contemporary social consciousness, ancient ceremony and prehistoric beast summed up the museum’s refocused mission as it completes a three-year, $100 million renewal. As described by the director, James S. Snyder, the museum offers a series of unexpected aesthetic links across cultures and their histories, like the way 2,000-year-old carved ritual cups that are on view in the museum near the Dead Sea Scrolls are somehow evocative of Brancusi.

[...]

And today, here in the capital of the Jewish state, there is a tendency to see the world purely through Jewish history and culture. That is precisely what Mr. Snyder, an American Jew who spent 22 years at the Museum of Modern Art, has sought to avoid. Rather, he has emphasized the commonalities of cultures and tried to place Jewish history and practices in a broader and clearer context.

One example is a new display that focuses on the Byzantine era. On one side is a restored synagogue; next to it are a church and the prayer niche of a mosque. Roughly contemporary structures, they are placed in a way that highlights both their distinctiveness and their commonality.

[...]

There is a slide show here. The scene just described is at slide number 5.

Background here.

Fewer Sabaean Mandaeans in Iraq

FEWER SABEAN MADAEANS (Sabaean Mandaeans) are in Iraq this year to celebrate their new year.

Background here.

New book on the lost Book of Noah

NEW BOOK published by the SBL:

Noah and His Book(s)
Michael E. Stone, Aryeh Amihay, Vered Hillel

ISBN 1589834887
Status Available
Price: $45.95
Binding Paperback
Publication Date June, 2010

In a collection of original essays, this book offers new insights on the question of the lost “book of Noah,” as well as studies of Noah’s figure in postbiblical literature. It focuses on ancient Jewish literature, including the Septuagint, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, and rabbinic literature, but Christian sources, especially Christian iconography, gnostic literature, and Syriac material, as well as later sources such as the Qur’an and Jewish medieval traditions, are also consulted. The contributors are Michael E. Stone, Vered Hillel, Aryeh Amihay, Michael Tuval, Daniel Machiela, Claire Pfann, Esther Eshel, Jeremy Penner, Rebecca Scharbach, Benjamin G. Wright III, Nadav Sharon and Moshe Tishel, Albert Geljon, Sergey Minov, Erica Martin, and Ruth Clements.

Michael E. Stone is Professor Emeritus, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and the author of numerous books on Second Temple literature and on Armenian studies. Aryeh Amihay is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. Vered Hillel is a professor at the Israel College of the Bible in Jerusalem.

Hardback edition available from Brill Academic Publishers (www.brill.nl)

Follow the link to order it.

Cross-file under "Lost books."

Jewish War symposium at Groningen

SYMPOSIUM AT GRONINGEN:

The Jewish War against Rome (66-70/74): Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Qumran Institute Symposium

Date

21-22 October 2010

The symposium at the Qumran Institute of the University of Groningen (21-22 October 2010) brings together different disciplines and fields of research (literary, archaeological and numismatic sources) in understanding the broader historical context of the first Jewish revolt against Rome.

The focus of the symposium is on historiographical and methodological reflections: what are our sources, what is their nature and what sort of questions do they allow us to answer and what not? The scope is broad and integrates different sources and perspectives (local and site specific, regional, international), taking into account individuals, such as Flavius Josephus, and specific groups, such as the Sicarii or the people behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. The goal is to further our understanding of the impact of the Roman administration on Jewish Palestine and to understand better processes of ‘Romanization’ in Palestine, the various Jewish responses to it and how this shaped identities of groups involved in the conflict. For this interdisciplinary symposium we invited specialists from the different fields of research.
Organisation

The conference is organised by Prof.dr. P.W. van der Horst, Prof.dr. E. Noort and dr. M. Popović, and is sponsored by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Groningen Research School for the Study of the Humanities.

Follow the link for full details and registration information.

A notice of the first Qumran Institute Symposium is here.

More on computer "decipherment" of Ugaritic

CUNEIFORM DAY! National Geographic has an article on that recent computer "decipherment" of Ugaritic:

"Lost" Languages to Be Resurrected by Computers?

New program can translate ancient Biblical script.

Tim Hornyak

for National Geographic News

Published July 19, 2010

A new computer program has quickly deciphered a written language last used in Biblical times—possibly opening the door to "resurrecting" ancient texts that are no longer understood, scientists announced last week.

Created by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the program automatically translates written Ugaritic, which consists of dots and wedge-shaped stylus marks on clay tablets. The script was last used around 1200 B.C. in western Syria.

[...]

As I have already noted, the program did not decipher Ugaritic, although it does sound like a useful tool to aid human decipherment of lost languages.

The rest of the article describes what the program actually does. But the most interesting bit was this part at the end:

The next step should be to see whether the program can help crack the handful of ancient scripts that remain largely incomprehensible.

Etruscan, for example, is a script that was used in northern and central Italy around 700 B.C. but was displaced by Latin by about A.D. 100. Few written examples of Etruscan survive, and the language has no known relations, so it continues to baffle archaeologists.

(Related: "Languages Racing to Extinction in Five Global 'Hotspots.'")

"In the case [of Ugaritic], you're dealing with a small and simple writing system, and there are closely related languages," noted Richard Sproat, an Oregon Health and Science University computational linguist who was not involved in the new work.

"It's not always going to be the case that there are closely related languages that one can use" for Rosetta Stone-like comparisons.

But study leader Barzilay thinks the decoding program can overcome this hurdle by scanning multiple languages at once and taking contextual information into account—improvements that could uncover unexpected similarities or links to known languages.

If this program leads to the decipherment of, say, Etruscan or Linear A, I will indeed be impressed.