Mandaean news

MANDAEAN (MANDEAN) WATCH: The Boston Globe reports on the Mandaean diaspora in Massachusetts. Excerpt:

Massachusetts is home to the country’s largest and fastest-growing number of Mandaeans, members of a non-Arab, pre-Christian race whose 60,000 people have been scattered worldwide since Iraq erupted in sectarian violence in 2006.

Mandaeans are a monotheistic people who revere John the Baptist; regard running water, such as rivers, as sacred; do not intermarry; do not accept conversions; and speak an ancient Aramaic language.

They also are pacifists who, in Iraq, have suffered murder, rape, and kidnappings by Islamic extremists, and by criminals who target the Mandaeans’s traditional success as jewelers, said Wisam Breegi, a Mandaean refugee who lives in Woburn.

A total of 380 Mandaeans have emigrated directly to Massachusetts since 2008, according to State Department figures. Mandaean leaders estimate that at least 50 more refugees have migrated to Massachusetts from other states. “This is a place where they can not only start, but flourish,’’ said Breegi, whose jewelry store in Boston’s Downtown Crossing serves as a resettlement assistance center.

In the last two years, Breegi has helped and advised most of the Mandaeans who have flocked to Massachusetts. The work, Breegi says, is a matter of cultural survival. “If we keep being scattered, if we don’t bring people in, it probably will be an actual death sentence to our culture, our faith, and our people,’’ said Breegi, 50, who arrived in Massachusetts in 1992.

[...]

Breegi said he wants to “build a society with all the bells and whistles.’’ His efforts began two years ago by approaching charitable groups, politicians, and government officials with slide shows, PowerPoint presentations, and pleas to investigate the plight of Mandaean refugees.

His drumbeat struck a chord with Lutheran Social Services, which encouraged Mandaeans to relocate to Worcester, a relatively affordable city where many of them live near downtown. In Worcester, resettlement officials said, Mandaeans have been steered to housing, jobs, schooling, and myriad other necessities of American life.

And while we're on the topic, James McGrath is seeking advice on translating a technical term in the Mandaean Book of John.

Sixth-century mosaics at Tel Shikmona

SIXTH-CENTURY MOSAICS have been excavated at Tel Shikmona by a University of Haifa team:

Revealing 6th-century mosaics

Published by Editor at 2:56 pm under Home Page, Press Releases

Researchers at the Institute of Archaeology from the University of Haifa excavating at Tel Shikmona have exposed magnificent mosaics dating back to the Byzantine Period (sixth century C.E.), which were part of an ecclesiastic structure. The excavations are taking place as part of a project funded by the Hecht Foundation, to expand the Hecht Park in Haifa, Israel, annex it to Tel Shikmona, and transform Shikmona into a public archaeological park.

[...]

The press release has photos, including of a mosaic bearing a Greek inscription. I can make out the words "... the devout ... the light in ... of [the] law."

A plan to redesign the Western Wall plaza

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Plans approved for redesign of Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem

06 October 2010 (World Jewish Congress)

A municipal committee has approved a plan to fundamentally change the layout of the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem's Old City. An underground plaza and tunnel would replace the existing main entrance at the Dung Gate. The ancient Roman highway that begins at the entrance near the Old City’s Silwan neighborhood, which leads to current archaeological excavations, will be renovated and reopened, enabling visitors to view the results of the ongoing digs. A visitors' center and extra bathrooms, classrooms and an auditorium, as well as exhibition space for archeological artifacts found in the area are also envisaged.

[...]

The Palestinian Authority is not very happy with the plan.

Rennes-le-Chateau

THANK YOU DAN BROWN:

Treasure Hunters Flock to Sleepy French Town
But Rennes-le-Chateau locals think they're 'pitiable'

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Oct 5, 2010 12:37 PM CDT

(Newser) – No treasure has ever been found in Rennes-le-Chateau. But Remy Martinez is convinced it’s there. He believes, he tells the LA Times, that Visigoths hid vast wealth under the tiny French town, in an underground labyrinth that also contains an ancient Jewish temple and the body of Jesus Christ (hidden there by the Knights Templar, naturally). And he’s not alone. Treasure hunters routinely flock to the village, whose 100 residents receive some 150,000 visitors a year—it even has a sign out front reading “Digging is forbidden.”

[...]

The locals may think the treasure-hunting tourists are pitiable, but I bet they're making plenty of money off them. And that's the closest thing to "vast wealth" that's going to come of this.

Hess, Some Views on Literacy

SOME VIEWS ON LITERACY by Richard S. Hess at Bible and Interpretation.

Israel forgery trial update

ISRAEL FORGERY TRIAL UPDATE from AOL:

The indictment leveled 44 charges of forgery, fraud and deception against Golan and 13 lesser counts against a co-defendant, antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch. The trial of Golan, Deutsch and three other defendants opened at the Jerusalem District Court in September 2005.

On Sunday, the defense ended its summing up with just two men left in the dock, bringing to an end five years of court proceedings that spanned 116 sessions, 133 witnesses, 200 exhibits and nearly 12,000 pages of witness testimony. The prosecution summation alone ran to 653 pages.

Yet despite the flood of strong scientific testimony, the feeling in the tiny courtroom, where fewer than a dozen people (including only one reporter) have followed the proceedings, was that the prosecution had failed to prove that the items were forgeries or that Golan and Deutsch had faked them.

Judge Aharon Farkash, the wheelchair-bound polymath who has overseen the marathon trial, wondered aloud on several occasions how he could be expected to deliver a legal ruling on what was essentially a scientific question that the experts themselves could not resolve.

In October 2008, just three years into the proceedings, Farkash pointedly asked whether the trial should continue after the prosecution and Golan had presented their evidence.

Read it all. It may take several months for the judge to reach a verdict.

Background here and follow the links.

The Golem Rock Album

THE GOLEM ROCK ALBUM, by Black Francis, is coming out next month. Really.

More golem posts here.

A new Coptic grammar

A NEW COPTIC GRAMMAR by Johanna Brankaer is noted by April DeConick.

Review: Debié (ed.), L'historiographie syriaque

BMCR REVIEW:

Muriel Debié (ed.), L'historiographie syriaque. Études syriaques. Paris: Geuthner, 2009. Pp. 219. ISBN 9782705338213. €35.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Daniel King, Cardiff University (kingdh@cf.ac.uk)

[Table of Contents is listed at the end of the review.]

The Société des Études syriaques (Paris) are producing, year-on-year, a wonderful set of volumes on key themes in Syriac studies, each including articles on the latest state of research based on ‘tables rondes’ held in Paris each year. This latest instalment, on Syriac historiography, succeeds in bringing together some of the foremost scholars in the field, often writing on the very texts they themselves have edited or translated. Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.

The extent to which literature written in Syriac partook of the Hellenic cultural baggage of late antiquity is still only faintly understood, and even less appreciated, by historians of the Eastern Mediterranean. It is the principal achievement of this excellent and useful volume not only to have provided students and specialists alike with an overview of the subject at the current state of research, but also to have highlighted the lines of transmission that carried Greek historiography into Syriac (and thence Arabic). The point is both to indicate how well integrated was the latter within the cultures of the late antique Empire, and moreover to describe the transformation these forms underwent in their ‘Oriental’ afterlives.

[...]

"The Golem" - the musical

THE GOLEM - THE MUSICAL:

Owen/Cox’s 'The Golem' blends traditional themes, contemporary music and dance

By ROBERT TRUSSELL
The Kansas City Star

The Owen/Cox Dance Group’s interpretation of ancient Jewish folklore is a thoroughly charming mix of elegant dancing, an exciting original score and a dash of bold theatricality.

“The Golem,” produced by the dance company in collaboration with the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy and Paul Mesner Puppets, evokes a distant past but feels utterly contemporary.

[...]

The rabbi is danced by the charismatic Christopher Barksdale, who probably moves with stunning grace even as he stumbles to the coffeemaker in the morning. He performers opposite Andrew Taft as Thaddeus, the trouble-making villain of the piece, who performs the most difficult choreography in the show and uses an actor’s instincts to create a distinct and memorable character.

The show is at its whimsical best when the rabbi teaches the 12-foot-tall golem (a marvelous piece of puppetry from the Mesner studio) how to dance. The puppet is manipulated by two dancers — Jered Solace and Christopher Dunn, according to the program — and is uncannily human in his responses despite immobile facial features. The blinking eyes help.

[...]

For lots more golem stuff, go here and keep following the links back.

Queen Helena's sarcophagus back in Jerusalem

QUEEN HELENA'S SARCOPHAGUS is on loan at the Israel Museum:

A royal return
Two-thousand years after Helena of Adiabene converted to Judaism and visited Jerusalem, and nearly 150 years after her burial box was spirited away to France, the queen's sarcophagus is on display

By Ran Shapira (Haaretz)

Nearly 2,000 years passed between the time the coffin of Queen Helena of Adiabene first came to Jerusalem and its recent return there. In an impressive ceremony on September 21, the coffin was put on display in the reopened archaeology wing of the Israel Museum, after having been flown in from France.
Queen Helena's sarchophagus, Michal Patael

In keeping with the customs of the time, the body of the first-century C.E. queen, who was a convert to Judaism, was interred in a stone coffin, a sarcophagus, weighing around 1,200 kilograms. The coffin looks massive, says the French ambassador to Israel, Christophe Bigot, who attended the ceremony, but any careless movement could damage it.

Queen Helena's sarcophagus wound up in France after it was discovered almost by accident in Jerusalem in 1863, when Louis Felicien de Saulcy was excavating the site called the Tombs of the Kings, in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, not far from the U.S. consulate. ...

UPDATE (8 October): More here.

Michael Coogan interviewed on God and Sex

MICHAEL COOGAN is interviewed by the Boston Globe about his new book:

Coogan’s new book, “God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says,” is his attempt to bridge these gaps. In it he argues that today’s readers are often unaware of how the Bible was written — it was not, as he writes in the introduction, “delivered by humanity as a complete book, written by God and shrink-wrapped in a shipment from Amazon or available for download on a Kindle.”

In fact, he writes, the current scholarly consensus is that it was written by many authors, mostly men, over the course of 1,000 years or so — a span of time and geography that inevitably leads to questions, inconsistencies, and cultural misunderstanding. Those who take its meaning literally, isolating single passages to guide modern behavior, he argues, do so at their peril.

In “God and Sex,” Coogan attempts to distill what the Bible says about an array of topics related to human sexuality often in the news — abortion, homosexuality, divorce, and the role of women in the church — and to help contemporary readers sort through its meanings.

Coogan spoke to Ideas from his home in Concord.

Alter's new translation of the wisdom books of the HB

ROBERT ALTER has published a new translation of the wisdom books in the Hebrew Bible. Nathaniel Stein in The New Yorker looks at its literary quality in comparison to the King James Version:

But the various inaccuracies and other inadequacies of the King James Version, though they justify a new translation, are beside the point when it comes to that version’s aesthetic power. The K.J.V. is so ingrained—its poetry has so completely seeped into the collective consciousness of the English-speaking world—that a new rendering, however valuable, is a vaguely disconcerting experience. In the four centuries since its completion, the K.J.V. has become our lives’ background poetry, its phrases and rhythms echoing through the canon, having been endlessly plundered by writers in search of a turn of phrase, or of a certain resonance unattainable elsewhere.

Which suggests a fun exercise for quickly determining just how different Alter’s new version is. In a world that possessed only this new translation, how would some familiar works be different? How would those famous titles, epigraphs, and other allusions come out?

Golb found guilty

THAT WAS FAST! The Golb identity-theft case went to the jury yesterday and they promptly came back with a verdict of guilty on 30 of the 31 counts.

Son of Dead Sea Scrolls Expert Is Convicted

By JOHN ELIGON (NYT)
Published: September 30, 2010

The son of a prominent professor at the University of Chicago was convicted on Thursday of impersonating a New York University professor and other scholars who disagreed with his father’s theories on the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Jurors took half a day to find the son, Raphael Haim Golb, a 50-year-old real estate lawyer, guilty on 30 of 31 counts, including identity theft, criminal impersonation and aggravated harassment.

Before the trial, prosecutors had offered Mr. Golb a plea deal under which he would not have served time in jail. Now, at sentencing on Nov. 18, he could receive up to four years in prison.

[...]

He should have taken the plea bargain. Then again, it looked to me as though he was more interested in getting a platform for his views on the Dead Sea Scrolls than in winning the case.

A tragic story all around.

Background here.

(Bumped to top of page.)

Audio files of ancient Akkadian literature

READINGS FROM ANCIENT AKKADIAN LITERATURE in the original Akkadian have been made available by Cambridge University as online audio files. The readings include excerpts from the Gilgamesh Epic, the Atrahasis Flood Epic, the so-called Babylonian Job story, and the Babylonian Creation Epic. The Daily Mail has a story on the project:

Heard for the first time in 2,000 years: Scientists post readings of ancient Babylonian poems online

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:37 AM on 29th September 2010

Scholars have rediscovered how to speak the language of the King Of Babylon,

Scholars have rediscovered how to speak the language of the King Of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar

The ancient language of Babylonian can be heard for the first time in almost 2,000 years after Cambridge University scholars posted readings and poems online.

Babylonian, one of the chief languages of Ancient Mesopotamia, dates back as far as the second millennium BC but died out around 2,000 years ago.

However, Cambridge historians have resurrected the ancient tongue by discovering how the language was pronounced and spoken.

Researchers have now recorded readings of ancient tablets, poems and laws, and posted them online.

The project is the brainchild of Dr Martin Worthington, of the University of Cambridge, who described uncovering the pronunciation as 'detective work'.

These tablets have not been read aloud for over 2,000 years and working out how Babylonian was pronounced required detailed forensic investigation.

[...]

The project website is here.

We probably know better how ancient Akkadian was pronounced than we do how ancient Hebrew or Aramaic was pronounced. There is much more epigraphic evidence for Akkadian and it is vocalized, albeit in a perversely complicated writing system.

UPDATE: Akkadian next? Google adds Latin to machine translation service.

UPDATE (2 October): The AP has a story on the project here.

1 Enoch article in latest JBL

THE JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE has a new issue out (129.3, downloadable here with subscription).

A number of the articles look interesting, but I noticed this one in particular: Randall D. Chestnut, "Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2069 and the Compositional History of 1 Enoch" (pp. 485-505). It makes some advances on Milik's treatment, based on new access to the actual manuscript fragments.

The full TOC of the current issue is here.

Conference on Iran and Israel at YU

A CONFERENCE at Yeshiva University on 31 October: Iran and Israel: From Cyrus the Great to The Islamic Republic.

Review: Daly (ed.), Apocalyptic Thought in Early Christianity.

BMCR REVIEW:

Robert J. Daly (ed.), Apocalyptic Thought in Early Christianity. Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009. Pp. 303. ISBN 9780801036279. $32.99 (pb).

Reviewed by Oleh Kindiy, Ukrainian Catholic University (okindiy@ucu.edu.ua)

[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

Since its inauguration in 2003, the Pappas Patristic Institute has embarked on a weighty project of annual patristics conferences and publications exploring specific topics in the field of patristic studies. The present volume is the second book in the series of the Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History, edited by Robert J. Daly. It is comprised of fourteen individual papers each dedicated to early Christian authors, theological themes, and iconographies of early Christian perceptions of the Apocalypse.

[...]

The volume is full of interesting essays. These two in particular caught my eye:

Alexander Golitzin discusses how apocalyptic metaphors influenced the development of the articulation of mystical experience in the early period of the monastic practice. He analyzes texts of Aphrahat and Macarius as interacting with the contemporaneous Jewish mystical tradition of merkavah. Both authors are eager to embark on a spiritual ascending journey to God. However, this ascent was indeed not only a way up, but also a step ad intra, which was a direct imitation of the apocalyptic solution of the Second Temple Judaism amplified by the eschatological enthusiasm stirred by the Christ-event.

Lorenzo DiTommaso surveys the chief issues in the study of the Daniel apocalyptica, which only recently received serious attention from modern scholars. DiTommaso redefines an “apocalypse” as a genre and adds to it apocalyptic oracles and testaments. Written in the post-Nicene and Byzantine period, these texts assure audiences that history is under God’s control. Some compositions do depend on the Greek Apocalypse of Daniel, but most of them, against the standard view, absorbed contemporaneous phobias and beliefs of a later period independently, reflecting political tensions and fears of Islamic invasion.

Professor DiTommaso is editing some Daniel material for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project.

iPad May Revolutionize Archaeology

IPAD MAY REVOLUTIONIZE ARCHAEOLOGY.

Golb trial covered in NYU Local

THE RAPHAEL GOLB IDENTITY-THEFT TRIAL is taken up by the NYU Local: "‘Academic Crusader’ Charged For Impersonating NYU Professor."

Background here.

Stuxnet meets ancient Judaism?

STUXNET meets ancient Judaism?

In a Computer Worm, a Possible Biblical Clue

By JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID E. SANGER (NYT
Published: September 29, 2010



Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.

That use of the word “Myrtus” — which can be read as an allusion to Esther — to name a file inside the code is one of several murky clues that have emerged as computer experts try to trace the origin and purpose of the rogue Stuxnet program, which seeks out a specific kind of command module for industrial equipment.

Not surprisingly, the Israelis are not saying whether Stuxnet has any connection to the secretive cyberwar unit it has built inside Israel’s intelligence service. Nor is the Obama administration, which while talking about cyberdefenses has also rapidly ramped up a broad covert program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Iran’s nuclear program. In interviews in several countries, experts in both cyberwar and nuclear enrichment technology say the Stuxnet mystery may never be solved.

There are many competing explanations for myrtus, which could simply signify myrtle, a plant important to many cultures in the region. But some security experts see the reference as a signature allusion to Esther, a clear warning in a mounting technological and psychological battle as Israel and its allies try to breach Tehran’s most heavily guarded project. Others doubt the Israelis were involved and say the word could have been inserted as deliberate misinformation, to implicate Israel.

[...]

Then there is the allusion to myrtus — which may be telling, or may be a red herring.

Several of the teams of computer security researchers who have been dissecting the software found a text string that suggests that the attackers named their project Myrtus. The guava fruit is part of the Myrtus family, and one of the code modules is identified as Guava.

It was Mr. Langner who first noted that Myrtus is an allusion to the Hebrew word for Esther. The Book of Esther tells the story of a Persian plot against the Jews, who attacked their enemies pre-emptively.

“If you read the Bible you can make a guess,” said Mr. Langner, in a telephone interview from Germany on Wednesday.

Carol Newsom, an Old Testament scholar at Emory University, confirmed the linguistic connection between the plant family and the Old Testament figure, noting that Queen Esther’s original name in Hebrew was Hadassah, which is similar to the Hebrew word for myrtle. Perhaps, she said, “someone was making a learned cross-linguistic wordplay.”

[...]

Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah

SHEMINI ATZERET begins this evening at sundown. In Israel, this is also the holiday of Simchat Torah (Simhat Torah). Outside of Israel, that holiday begins tomorrow night at sundown.

Shemini Atzeret is a biblical holiday mentioned in Numbers 29:35-38. Simchat Torah is not a biblical holiday, but it marks the beginning and ending of the annual cycle of Torah readings.

More Golb testimony in DSS identity-theft trial

MORE ON GOLB'S TESTIMONY in the Dead Sea Scroll identity-theft trial:

Dead Sea Scrolls cyber-bully admits lying to authorities

By DAVID K. LI (New York Sun)

Last Updated: 9:54 PM, September 28, 2010

Posted: 2:39 PM, September 28, 2010

A prosecutor today hammered the "deranged" Dead Sea Scrolls cyber-bully for lying to investigators about the defendant’s scheme to discredit his dad’s academic adversaries.

During tedious and testy cross-examination, Manhattan lawyer Raphael Golb was forced to admit he lied throughout his 2009 video-taped interview with authorities, who were grilling him about fake e-mail addresses created to wage cyber war against rival scholars.

"In my deranged state of mind, yes!" a frustrated Golb blurted out, admitting to his series of deceptive answers.

[...]

The defense claims Golb initially lied because he was so stunned he was arrested for exercising his freedom of expression.

"Yes, I lied over and over again during the interview, the interrogation," an exasperated Golb admitted.

[...]

It doesn't seem to me that he has helped himself much with his own testimony, but we'll see what the jury thinks. The AP has more analysis in "Att'y: Son in NY Dead Sea Scroll case not criminal."

Background here.

BMCR Reviews on Sicarii and Hannibal

TWO MORE BMCR REVIEWS:

Mark Andrew Brighton, The Sicarii in Josephus's Judean War: Rhetorical Analysis and Historical Observations. Early Judaism and Its Literature 27. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009. Pp. xiv, 184. ISBN 9781589834064. $26.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Dmitry Bratkin, St Petersburg State University (bratkin@yandex.ru)

[The reviewer apologizes for the tardiness of this review.]

This book is a revision of the author's University of California (Irvine) dissertation and shares every benefit and drawback of this genre. One has to be cautious when writing (or reviewing) a new piece of scholarly work in this field as it is vast and dominated by a number of competing disciplines and approaches, each of which provide a particular bias. Moreover, the scholarship on Josephus is an industry in itself so that any evaluation of one's predecessors is selective by necessity. This makes any historiographical survey a difficult and uncomfortable list of details and authors. However, M. A. Brighton is fully aware of those hidden traps and steers his ship safely and convincingly through the troubled sea of Josephus and his world.

[...]

And (cross-file under Punic Watch):

Robert Garland, Hannibal. Ancients in Action. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2010. Pp. 168. ISBN 9781853997259. $24.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Fred K. Drogula, Providence College (fdrogula@providence.edu)

Robert Garland has produced a concise, useful, and highly readable book that provides an excellent introduction to a difficult subject. The stated mission of the ‘Ancients in Action’ series is to introduce “major figures of the ancient world to the modern general reader, including the essentials of each subject’s life, works, and significance for later western civilisation” (back cover), although Garland further attempts “as much as possible to examine and evaluate Hannibal’s success and failure from his own perspective, in the belief that it is the business of a historian not only to present facts but also to imagine possibilities” (11). This is a daunting task, since (as Garland readily acknowledges [17, 30]) we have very little information about Hannibal’s character and personality, and what we do have mainly comes from later, pro-Roman sources. Nevertheless, Garland assembles the surviving information into a thoughtful and engaging narrative of Hannibal’s career that raises questions and provides insights into the life of Rome’s most famous enemy.

[...]

Via the Agade list.

Director of El Shaddai interviewed

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: The Director of El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron comments on the use of the "Book of Enoch" (i.e., the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch 1-36) in an interview with Joystiq. Excerpts:

So what is the world in the game supposed to be? Is it a weird interpretation of our world or is it a fantasy realm?

It is completely a fantasy world, completely original. It came out from the developers. It's not really an interpretation of the real world.

Does it have a name?

There is no name. We don't have a specific name for the game world.

It's set in sort of a fantasy landscape, but the story is based on Biblical themes. What inspired the use of these Biblical elements?

That's because the project started when the UK headquarters asked me to make something based on the Book of Enoch, which is Old Testament apocrypha. That's how it started.

What about the Book of Enoch led into an action game?

It's not that I thought that a game based on the Book of Enoch would be good for an action game, per se, but it's because I have a lot of experience with action games. Also, when the UK headquarters based on the Book of Enoch, there was another guy from the UK headquarters who said he wanted to make something beyond God of War. We decided to combine them and make it into one game.

When the guy at the UK office who requested the Book of Enoch game -- when you showed him this, what did he think?

He was very pleased.

[...]

About the religious elements. Do you think Japanese players and Western players will feel different about the religious aspects?

I guess that probably people will feel differently in Japan. I think so.

In what way?

As for Japanese people, the Old Testament, we're not familiar with these kinds of things at all. They don't feel familiar. It's a complete fantasy for Japanese people.

[...]

I dare say Japanese and Western players will react differently, although the Enochic material is very foreign to Westerners too.

This was interesting, but I wish he had said more about the details of the use made of the Book of the Watchers.

Background here and here.

Lod Mosaic on display at the Met

THE LOD MOSAIC is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Met Unveils Ancient Israeli Mosaic

By PIA CATTON (Wall Street Journal)

In 1996, workers in Lod, Israel, were preparing to expand a road when they found something that turned out to be an artistic and archeological treasure: a Roman mosaic from about 300 A.D. Preserved just three feet below the modern surface, it was in nearly excellent condition.

On view beginning Tuesday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through April 3), the mosaic—50 feet long by 27 feet wide—looks slightly larger than some Manhattan apartments. It is believed to have been used as an interior ground cover for an entrance hall at the home of a wealthy Roman, living in what would have been the eastern portion of the Roman Empire.

[...]

Background here.

Raphael Golb testifies

RAPHAEL GOLB is testifying in his own identity-theft trial:

A Trial on Identity Theft, With Scholarly Discourse

By JOHN ELIGON (NYT)
Published: September 27, 2010

Loyal son. Academic crusader. Dead Sea Scrolls expert.

Raphael Haim Golb is accused of impersonating professors who disagreed with his father’s theory on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Raphael Haim Golb, a 50-year-old real estate lawyer, seemed at times to take on the role of everything but criminal defendant as he testified in his own defense on Monday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Mr. Golb faces charges that he stole the identity of and impersonated a New York University professor and others who disagreed with his father’s theories about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls in an effort to discredit them.

Mr. Golb spent much of his nearly three hours on the witness stand defending the theory of his father, Norman Golb, a professor at the University of Chicago, that the scrolls were kept in various libraries in Jerusalem until they were hidden during the Roman war of A.D. 67 to 73 in the caves where they were found more than a half-century ago. Others, including Lawrence H. Schiffman, the N.Y.U. professor whom Mr. Golb is accused of impersonating, contend that the scrolls, among the earliest surviving biblical documents, were written by a Jewish sect known as the Essenes who lived near the caves.

This academic debate provided an underlying — though not extremely relevant — theme to the case, as Mr. Golb drifted into lengthy dissertations that implored the jurors, if nothing else, to agree with his father’s theory.

[...]

The New York Sun also has coverage here, the AP here, and the Chronicle of Higher Education here.

Background here and here.

April DeConick reports on Mellon Seminar

APRIL DECONICK reports on a Mellon Seminar she held a few weeks ago. The posts, at her Forbidden Gospels blog, in order are: Mellon Seminar, Mellon Seminar Reflection 1: What are T/traditions?, Mellon Seminar Reflection 2: Is there a connection between myth and ritual? , Mellon Seminar Reflection 3: Is the author dead?, and Mellon Seminar Reflection 4: Was Jung a Mystic?

Review: Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis

BMCR REVIEW:

Daniel Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Pp. xiv, 388. ISBN 9780226069166. $45.00.

Reviewed by Oona Eisenstadt, Pomona College (oona.eisenstadt@pomona.edu)

Preview

The broadest purpose of this book is to argue that Plato’s dialogues and the Babylonian Talmud are examples of Menippean satire, or spoudogeloion, a genre in which high and low elements are mixed in such a way that the practices of intellectuals “are both mocked and asserted at one and the same time” (26). Almost every society, Boyarin tells us, produces such satire, but Plato and the Talmud are particularly comparable because they share a Hellenistic viewpoint (133) and because they apply the satire similarly. The meat of the book constitutes a description of the similarity through close readings of several passages from Baba Metzia and other tractates (chs. 4, 5, and 6), as well as the Protagoras (ch. 2), the Gorgias (ch. 3), and the Symposium, particularly the speeches of Pausanias, Socrates, and Alcibiades (chs. 7 and 8). Boyarin’s interpretations of Talmud are novel and compelling, as is the evidence adduced of a general rabbinic familiarity with Greek and Roman stories. The interpretations of Plato probably offer the scholarship at large no net gain, but reframe the work of others in way that is consistent and engaging. The book is driven by delight in all things clever and witty, and, while often cavalier, is pleasant and unrancorous.

[...]

More on the Cyrus Cylinder in Iran

MORE ON THE CYRUS CYLINDER IN IRAN:

Persian Jews welcome the return of the Cyrus Cylinder home

Friday, 24 September 2010 09:47 | PDF Print E-mail

By Brokhim Davoudian from Tehran for CAIS

LONDON, (CAIS) -- The Cyrus Cylinder loaned by the British Museum to Iran and currently on show at the National Museum in Tehran has attracted attention nationally and internationally and has excited all Iranians including the small community of the Iranian Jews.

The Cyrus Cylinder signifies humanity and kindness and it is considered by many scholars to be the world’s first declaration of human rights issued by the ancient Iranian emperor, Cyrus the Great in 6th century BCE.

Amongst Iranians the most excited for the return of the Cyrus Cylinder being home after forty years, is the small Jewish community. The Iranian Jewish population better known as ‘Persian Jews’, constitute the largest among the Islamic countries.

A Tehran Rabbi excitingly stating: “it is wonderful and I’m much exited to see that the Cylinder is home – in fact I am doubley exited, as an Iranian as well as a Jew.”

He continued: “the Cylinder is a Persian artefact, but its contents concerns the history of Jewish people as much as Iranians, which echoes the past and is the voice of our ancestors – it tells us about the history of my ancestors, the Hebrews who were liberated by the ‘anointed of God’ from Babylonian captivity and their return to the holy land. It is the history of my forefathers who stayed behind and who had chosen Iran as their home.”

[...]

The Cyrus Cylinder did not "return home" and it is not "a Persian artifact." It was excavated in the ruins of Babylon, so, if anything, it is an Iraqi artifact. But, as I've said before, I prefer to think of it as part of the cultural heritage of humanity.

Background here and follow the links. For the Spiegel article, the Payvand response to it, and my thoughts on Cyrus and human rights, see here and here.

UPDATE: I don't mean to dismiss the understandable fact that Iranians, and especially Iranian Jews, are interested in the Cyrus Cylinder because of its content. Whether that was sufficient reason for the British Museum to loan it to Iran under current circumstances is another matter. I'm not convinced.

Lecture: Dobroruka on Zoroastrian-Hellenistic Apocalypses

LECTURE at SOAS on 14 October:

Hesiodic reminiscences in Zoroastrian-Hellenistic apocalypses

Professor Vicente Dobroruka (Centre for Jewish-Hellenistic Studies, University of Brasilia)

Follow the link for details.

Kimberly Stratton interviewed about Satan

PROFESSOR KIMBERLY STRATTON is interviewed about Satan:

Getting reacquainted with Satan

By Jennifer Green, The Ottawa Citizen September 25, 2010 1:02

Kimberly Stratton teaches a new Carleton University course on the history of Satan, looking at early Biblical references all the way up to Hollywood movies, with an emphasis that man’s ideas of God and goodness, evil and misfortune, are shaped by history.
Photograph by: Bruno Schlumberger, The Ottawa Citizen

The devil is not who we think he is. In fact, for much of ancient history, he wasn’t even a “he,” says Kimberly Stratton, who is teaching a new Carleton University course on the history of Satan.

The earliest Biblical references use “satan” as a verb, meaning to block or prevent something.

In the Book of Numbers, an angel blocks or “satans” Balaam from cursing the Israelites. “In the original Hebrew, the verb is to ‘satan’ him,” says Stratton. “The angel himself was a normal angel of God.”

In the Book of Job, “satan” is a job title, something like a Crown prosecutor who seeks sinners and brings them to justice.

“He is still an angel in God’s court. There is no indication that he is an opponent of God. He just seems to be an angel doing his job. If anything, he has a higher-ranking position in heaven.”

Even in the New Testament’s Gospel of Matthew, the Devil tests Jesus in the desert, but then he disappears, and ministering angels come in. “So it’s not clear there that he isn’t still part of God’s entourage. … acting somehow as the Crown attorney.”

Stratton outlines in her course how man’s ideas of God and goodness, evil and misfortune, are shaped by history.

[...]

Sounds like a good course.

Did wind part the "Red Sea?"

DID WIND PART THE "RED SEA?"

Computers show how wind could have parted Red Sea

(BBC)

New computer simulations have shown how the parting of the Red Sea, as described in the Bible, could have been a phenomenon caused by strong winds.

The account in the Book of Exodus describes how the waters of the sea parted, allowing the Israelites to flee their Egyptian pursuers.

Simulations by US scientists show how the movement of wind could have opened up a land bridge at one location.

This would have enabled people to walk across exposed mud flats to safety.

The results are published in the open-access journal Plos One.

[...]

Unfortunately, this story is sweeping through the gullible mainstream media like, well, a strong east wind.

The problem with this kind of wild guesswork is that it insists on taking stories as literal history when they give every appearance of being legends. Their historical basis, if any, is irrecoverable using such historical tools as we have, and we need not assume any historical basis for them at all. Such notions ("theories" would be a rather generous term) give a naturalistic explanation for something presented in the text as a miracle, but advance no actual historical evidence that such a natural event happened. The argument is simply that if one insists that the story have a factual, non-miraculous basis, one can reinterpret the story to be about an event that happened in this way, even though it is not the event described in the text.

The prose narrative about this particular biblical episode was written centuries after the supposed event. Even the poetic passage in Exodus 15:1-18, which has been argued by Cross et al. to be linguistically and typologically early, is likely generations to centuries after the event. The poem is also heavily influenced by the Canaanite myth of the warrior storm god defeating the chaotic sea dragon, so any event behind it has been thoroughly processed through a mythic template.

The most sensible historical-critical approach to the story of the crossing of the Sea of Reeds is that it is a origins legend based in a creation myth. One need not assume any historical basis for it and any such basis has probably been reworked beyond recognition.

We are being asked to assume, nevertheless, that some historical core lies behind the story and it has been recovered by these scientists, who based it on the widely-held theory that the Israelites took a northern route close to the Mediterranean coast during the flight from Egypt. Is it possible that these scientists are right? Sure, although it would have been an awfully lucky coincidence that this strong, precisely placed wind came along just in time to save the fleeing Israelites and left just in time to thwart the Egyptian pursuers. But the question for the historian is never, "Is this possible?" (pretty much always the answer would be yes), but rather is "What is the evidence and how persuasive is it?" Not very in this case.

One can also believe the story as presented: as a miracle brought about by divine intervention. That's a matter of faith, but I have no quarrel with it as long as it is so labeled.

It is telling, but sadly predictable, that no biblical scholars were even consulted for this BBC story. The Plos One article is here, and it too ignores the scholarly literature on the Exodus traditions apart from a couple of apologetic works. We have encountered the journal Plos One before and I have raised a concern about it here. It makes much of its rigorous peer review process, but it labels itself as a science/medicine journal and I doubt very much that any biblical scholars were involved in the peer review of this piece.

The Phoenicia reaches Malta

THE GOOD SHIP PHOENICIA has reached Malta:

History recreated as 'Phoenicia' sails in

(Times of Malta)

The Phoenicia, a replica 600 BC Phoenician merchant ship, sailed gracefully into Marsamxett harbour today on one of the final legs of an expedition covering 17,000 miles around Africa.

The 20m long vessel, built using traditional methods, arrived from Carthage.

[...]

She depart in the direction of Syria on Monday.

Background here.

13th annual Bible & Archaeology Fest

THE THIRTEENTH ANNUAL BIBLE AND ARCHAEOLOGY FEST:

Announcing the 13th annual Bible and Archaeology Fest in Atlanta

The Biblical Archaeology Society announces the 13th annual Bible and Archaeology Fest in Atlanta Georgia where 20 scholars will present the latest research on topics such as early Christianity, Gnostic scholarship, the Hebrew Bible, and more.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – Sep 22, 2010 – Announcing the 13th annual Bible and Archaeology Fest, to be held November 19–21, 2010, in Atlanta, Georgia. Twenty leading scholars will convene from around the world to share their research with the public in a dynamic seminar series designed specifically for the interested lay person. Concurrent sessions over the three-day period will address the latest developments in the fields of early Christianity, Gnostic scholarship, the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Israel and Biblical archaeology. For thirteen years, the Biblical Archaeology Society is proud to be the only organization to bring current Biblical research to the general public straight from the scholars who are at the forefront of their fields.

[...]

One might want to note in passing that the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, with four or five thousand delegates attending, is also happening at the same time and same place.

Sukkot

SUKKOT (the Festival of Booths or Tabernacles) begins this evening at sundown. Best wishes to all those celebrating.

Job in Ancient Judaism at Indiana Univ, Bloomington

JOB IN ANCIENT JUDAISM at Indiana University, Bloomington:

From J. Albert Harrill jharrill@indiana.edu:
================================

INDIANA UNIVERSITY, Bloomington.
Assistant Professor in Ancient Judaism

The Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Program in Jewish Studies invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor in Ancient Judaism. Ph.D. or equivalent required. Applicants should demonstrate engagement with the critical study of post-biblical, Second Temple Judaism and/or the classical texts of early rabbinic history and culture. The successful applicant must maintain ongoing research, a record of creative and effective teaching, and an active professional profile. Teaching obligations will extend from introductory and upper-level undergraduate courses to graduate training at the master's and doctoral levels.

Applications received prior to November 1, 2010 will be assured full consideration. Applicants can anticipate the possibility of a preliminary interview at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (November 18-21 in Atlanta) or the annual meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies (December 19-21 in Boston).

Applicants must mail a cover letter, C.V., a writing sample, and a dossier with at least three letters of recommendation to:

Ancient Judaism Search Committee
The Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Program in Jewish Studies
1011 E. Third Street, Goodbody Hall 326
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405-2601

Women and minority candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. Indiana University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.

Via the Agade list. Oddly, I can find no notice of the job on the Indiana University, Bloomington, website.

Golb identity-theft trial update

GOLB IDENTITY-THEFT TRIAL UPDATE: The AP has an article on the latest: "NY man in Dead Sea Scrolls trial: It's revenge."

Samaritan synagogue excavated in Bet She'an

AN ANCIENT SAMARITAN SYNAGOGUE has been excavated in Bet She'an (Bet Shean, Beit Shean):

Archaeologists in Israel Find a 1,500 Year Old Samaritan Synagogue

JERUSALEM.- The remains of a synagogue and farmstead that operated in the Late Byzantine period, which were unknown until now, were exposed in an archaeological excavation conducted on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and underwritten by the Ministry of Construction and Housing, prior to enlarging a residential quarter south of Bet Sheʽan, c. one half kilometer west of the Jordan Valley highway (Route 90).

[...]

The building that was exposed consisted of a rectangular hall (5 x 8 meters), the front of which faces southwest, toward Mount Gerizim, which is sacred to Samaritans. Five rectangular recesses were built in the walls of the prayer hall in which wooden benches were probably installed. The floor of the hall was a colorful mosaic, decorated with a geometric pattern. In the center of the mosaic is a Greek inscription, of which a section of its last line was revealed:
T[]OUTON NEWN
meaning “This is the temple”.

[...]

Apocalyptic traditions and Middle Eastern politics

APOCALYPTIC FOUNDATIONAL TRADITIONS in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are explored by James Carroll (Boston Globe) in relation to current politics in the Middle East: Turning history into hope: Teetering on the apocalypse. Excerpt:

This series of columns began by pointing to Western anti-Semitism and European colonialism as unindicted co-conspirators in this conflict, and we end by naming two more — the taboo realities of a transcendent weapon and a self-hypnotizing End Time theology. Neither is explicitly on the negotiators’ agenda, but each alone is enough to wreak havoc in the Middle East; together, on the world.

First theology. The humane mainstream of monotheistic religion, and therefore the civilizations that spring from it, has included an inhuman countercurrent that swirls around the idea that God wills violence. Indeed, God uses hyper-violent destruction as a mode of redemption. We call this apocalypse. In apocalyptic texts (I & II Maccabees, Daniel, Enoch are Hebrew examples; Revelation is the supreme Christian example), history is envisioned as climaxing in cosmic warfare between God and Satan. That the battle is imagined as centered in Jerusalem defines its tie to the present conflict: Jerusalem an eternal cockpit of violence.

But apocalyptic struggle, far from local, is for nothing less than cosmic order. In such a battle, no price is too high to pay, which means a destroyed earth is acceptable and individual martyrdom is glorious. The virtue of suffering embraced for the higher cause of good against evil becomes an absolute.

This vision did not come out of thin air. It was a way of coping with the savageries of actual wars, centered in Jerusalem. The bloody apogee was reached in the wars waged by Rome against the Jewish people at the beginning of the Common Era. The Jewish historian Josephus says that more than a million Jews were killed in the first Roman war, around the year 70. The Roman historian Tacitus says that more than 600,000 Jewish men, women, and children defended Jerusalem against the Roman siege. It felt like the end of the world. Jewish resistance embraced martyrdom, as typified by the saga of Masada, where the last Jewish fighters killed themselves rather than surrender.

Thus, exactly as the Passion narratives about the death of Jesus were being written down, tens of thousands of Rome-resisting Jews were crucified. The Book of Revelation, composed in the thick of the violence, portrays the Roman war in ferocious — if mainly symbolic — terms (Rome is Babylon, The emperor Nero is the beast). Yet the apocalyptic violence of God is most clearly dramatized in the Gospel notion that the God-willed death of Jesus is the transcendent destruction that saves the cosmos. Golgotha is the highpoint of martyrdom.

The Book of Revelation, also known, tellingly, as Apocalypse, locates End Time mayhem, yes, in Jerusalem. More than other texts, it planted the idea in the Western mind that the human race is ultimately doomed to a mass suicide-murder from which it can be rescued only after the fact and magically. Such holy destruction defines the rushing current of apocalyptic millennialism.

There seems to be a bit of slippage here between apocalypses, apocalyptic, eschatology, and decisive wars. Daniel, the books collected in 1 Enoch, and the Book of Revelation are apocalypses (revelations of heavenly secrets by divine being to a human being). Apocalypses are usually interested in eschatology: the theology of ultimate issues, especially the cosmic final judgment and the fate of individuals after death. (The Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch is more interested in personal than cosmic eschatology, as are the Gnostic apocalypses.) 1-2 Maccabees deal with the persecution of Judaism by Antiochus Epiphanes and the successful Jewish guerilla war against him (the "Maccabean Revolt, a decisive war). They are historical works, not apocalypses. Presumably Mr. Carroll includes them because the Maccabean Revolt is the setting of the Book of Daniel and the Animal Apocalypse (the latter again in 1 Enoch). Both authors expected this revolt to be successful (it was) and to lead directly into the final judgment (it didn't). "Apocalyptic" is hard to define beyond generally the stuff you find in apocalypses, mainly revealed heavenly secrets, usually involving some form of cosmic or personal eschatology.

As the article goes on to say, there are eschatological and apocalyptic traditions in Islam as well. There's plenty to go around. And I'm sure you can work out for yourself what the "transcendent weapon" is.

Mr Carroll's larger point is that a lot of the ideas in these apocalypses which involve cosmic eschatology are lurking in the background and sometimes the foreground of the current politics of the Middle East, and that should make us more than a little uneasy. He concludes:

The apocalyptic mind is alive and well — armed and dangerous. If the Israelis and Palestinians succeed in defusing their local conflict, they will also have nudged the entire human family back from an impulse that, though long regarded as holy, is profoundly wicked. The earth was not created to end in a cataclysm of violence, and neither were Israel or Palestine. Peace, therefore. Shalom. Salam.

Amen to that.

Apollo signet ring excavated at Tel Dor

A SIGNET RING bearing the image of Apollo has been excavated at Tel Dor:

Archeological digs in North unearth rare signet ring

By BEN HARTMAN (Jerusalem Post)
09/20/2010 05:19

The rare find at the major port bears an intricate impression of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, light, and music.

An ancient bronze signet ring excavated recently in Tel Dor, near Zichron Ya’acov, indicates that well-heeled elites were living in the area during the Hellenistic era, archaeologists from the University of Haifa reported on Sunday.

The rare find at the major port bears an intricate impression of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, light, and music. According to Dr. Ayelet Gilboa, head of the university’s Department of Archeology, “A piece of highquality art such as this, doubtlessly created by a top-of-the-line artist, indicates that local elites developing a taste for fine art and the ability to afford it were also living in provincial towns, and not only in the capital cities of the Hellenistic kingdoms.”

The true nature of the find was only revealed after it was taken to be examined by Dr. Jessica Nitschke, professor of classical archeology at Georgetown University in Washington and Dr. Rebecca Martin, assistant professor of art at Southeast Missouri State University. Upon further examination, both scholars confirmed that the image on the ring is that of Apollo.

The signet ring dates to the 4th or 3rd century BCE.Rings of its type were used as seal or as an offering to the god whose image adorns them.

[...]

The article also mentions the Alexander the Great gemstone, on which more here. If an important mosaic floor has been excavated at Tel Dor recently, I'm afraid I must have missed it.

UPDATE (21 Spetember): Joseph I. Lauer notes that the full press release from the University of Haifa is here.

Nag Hammadi murders update

NAG HAMMADI MURDERS UPDATE:

Nagaa Hammadi case adjourned to Oct. 17

By Safaa Abdoun/Daily News Egypt September 19, 2010, 4:05 pm

CAIRO: The Emergency State Security Criminal Court in Qena adjourned on Saturday the trial of the Nagaa Hammadi drive-by shooting suspects to October 17.

The trial was postponed so that Bishop Kirollos, who heads the church in the area, and Colonel Abdel Hameed Al-Alaki, chief of Nagaa Hammadi police station, can give their testimonies, reported Al-Masry Al-Youm.

The shooting, which took place after Christmas midnight mass on Jan. 7, left six Copts and a Muslim guard dead.

[...]

The repeated delays are not encouraging Coptic Christians to believe that justice will be done.

Background here.

Another DSS court case?

ANOTHER DEAD SEA SCROLLS COURT CASE?

Grateful Dead Sea Scrolls dispute reaches New York court

The Bad Plus: "My Friend Metatron"

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: In the new The Bad Plus album, Don't Stop, "My Friend Metatron":

Translations of Jewish classics into Arabic

TRANSLATIONS OF JEWISH CLASSICS into Arabic so far seems to have a limited audience:

Lost in Translation
A Ramallah man struggles to find a reading public for Maimonides

By Daniella Cheslow | Sep 14, 2010 7:00 AM | (Tablet Magazine)

When Mohammad Husein studied at Hebrew College in Boston, he was delighted to put to use his years learning Hebrew in Ramallah. As a Master’s student (class of 2007), he often went to Saturday morning services and helped his neighbors find their way in Hebrew prayer books. But once he returned to the West Bank, Husein, 54, found far less use for his professional interest in Judaism. A year after translating into Arabic an abridged version of the code of Jewish law known as the Mishneh Torah, written by the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides, Husein said he can only find work as a truck driver. His story reflects the difficult position of Arab Muslim scholars who wish to learn about Jews.

[...]

The article discusses in detail the difficulties of finding a market for this kind of work. Note also this aside:

Husein’s difficulty doesn’t surprise Mohamed Hawary, a professor of Jewish thought and comparative religions in Cairo’s Ain Shams University. Hawary wrote in an e-mail that an Arabic translation of the six books of the Mishnah were published between 2006 and 2009 but that no one has tackled Maimonides yet.

I didn't know there was an Arabic translation of the Mishnah. That's kind of cool.

But there is hope:

One option may lie with Intellectual Encounters, a virtual academic community of scholars who study the medieval world of Islam. On the steering committee are Hebrew University rector Sarah Stroumsa, Yale Islamic studies professor Frank Griffel, and Sari Nusseibeh, who is president of Al-Quds University but working on this project privately as an Islamic philosophy scholar. Funding is from the Rothschild Family’s Yad Hanadiv Foundation in Jerusalem.

Academic director Raquel Ukeles said the program will include a course on medieval Islam to be taught at Yale, Al-Quds, Bar Ilan University in Israel, and Tübingen University in Germany. Further, the program’s website will publish translations of important works, and scholars who speak Hebrew and Arabic would be useful. Ukeles, who has traveled to Egypt, Morocco, and Qatar, said, “Everywhere I go people ask me, ‘Can you recommend books about Jewish philosophy?’ ”

“Now that I know about Husein, and if he’s doing good work, I think I can work with him to raise money,” she said.

I wish Mr. Husein every success with his work.

As the article notes, much of the work of Maimonides was written in Judeo-Arabic - Arabic written in the Hebrew alphabet. A lot of Hebrew literature was also translated into Judeo-Arabic in the Middle Ages for Arabic-speaking Jews. I need to gear myself up to work with this brand of Arabic soon, because some of the earliest and best manuscript evidence for the Hebrew document Sefer ha-Razim (Sepher HaRazim) , which I am translating for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project, is found in a Judeo-Arabic translation from the Cairo Geniza.

Séamus Ó Coigligh, R.I.P.

SEÁMUS Ó COIGHLIGH, R.I.P.:

Language, literature expert and former curator of Cork Public Museum

(The Irish Times)

Séamus Ó Coigligh: SÉAMUS Ó Coigligh, polymath, expert in European languages and literature and former curator of Cork Public Museum, has died at the age of 94. During the Cold War, he wrote a column in The Irish Times , An Eye on Russia and An Eye on Eastern Europe, from 1959 until 1972. He was a frequent book reviewer on Russian affairs in The Irish Times , and also contributed articles to various European and Irish language journals.

His specialty was mostly in Irish and in European languages, but this caught my eye:

Ó Coigligh lived among his thousands of books in all rooms of his house, books which he referred to as his “friends”. He was able to read all current European languages, as well as a number of extinct languages such as Manx. As well as understanding Aramaic and Hebrew, he had a good grasp of Urdu and Arabic. He usually introduced himself to a new language by first studying the Bible in that language.

[...]

I do that too. I also do it to keep up languages that I already know. For example I read the Arabic New Testament some years ago when I wanted a break from Qur'anic Arabic.

Requiescat in pace.

Koine Greek still spoken?

KOINE GREEK STILL SPOKEN? Sort of.

(Via James McGrath on FB.)

More on Bible Lands Museum Jewish magic exhibit

MORE ON THE BIBLE LANDS MUSEUM EXHIBITION ON JEWISH MAGIC:

A walk through the subconscious

The exhibition 'Angels and Demons' at the Bible Lands Museum focuses on the rich history of sorcery in Judaism.

By Benny Ziffer (Haaretz)

There has been a sort of exorcism going on in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem over the past few months. An exhibit called "Angels and Demons" - curated by gifted Assyriologist Filip Vukosavovic, whose life story would make a great novel - tells the story of this young Montenegrin's love for Israel and his decision to join his fate to that of Jerusalem, by researching incantations and amulets related to Jewish tradition.

The exhibit displays the entire history of Jewish magic, from the early Middle Ages onward, in the form of objects, some of which you wouldn't suspect of being useful for sorcery if it weren't for the explanations provided. These items embody humanity's fears, past and present, in the face of danger. A seemingly shapeless lump of clay turns out to be a little sculpture of a person with its hands and feet tied, signifying the desire of its owner to symbolically bind evil so it won't harm him. And there are angels for all seasons, whose names are no less strange than the powers attributed to them. Their role? To defend people in difficult times, whether from the evil eye, bad health or other problems.

[...]

Nice article, but I think he means "unconscious." (The text of the article also uses "subconscious," so it's not an editor's error.) Also, "sorcery" is usually reserved for offensive magic that aims to harm another person. Most of the magic discussed here does not seem to come under that category.

Golb trial and Eisenman-Qimron case

THE GOLB IDENTITY THEFT TRIAL is tied to the Eisenman-Qimron Dead Sea Scrolls copyright trial by Neil Wilkof at the IPCat blog (which deals with copyright, IT, etc. issues). Excerpt:

One of the most media-drenched iconic copyright cases of the last 20 years must certainly be the dispute over the copyrightability of the Scrolls. Well, not exactly the Scrolls themselves, since they entered the public domain nearly 2,000 years ago. But in the case of Eisenman v. Qimron, the Israel Supreme Court was called upon the decide on whether the reconstruction of one of the ancient texts by an Israeli academic--Professor Elisha Qimron-- was a protected copyright work.

What Qimron did was study the text itself, which itself was a physical recreation of a large number of parchment fragements that had been discovered in a desert cave in the late 1940's. Imagine having your grandchild tear up into fragments your favorite copy of Beowulf in the original Norse language and then try to put the fragments back together again--you get the idea. Since the physical reconstruction itself revealed gaps in the text, Professor Qimron was asked to complete the text, which he did.

The reconstructed text was then set to be the centerpeice of a book that Professor Qimron intended to publish. But before he could do so, however, the reconstruction was published in a journal--Biblical Archealogical Review. Qimron alleged infringement, while the defendants challenged the copyrightability of Qimron's reconstruction, arguing inter alia that what he did was reconstruct a pre-existing work (albeit of ancient provenance) that may well have significant academic value, but which did not constitute a "work" in the copyright sense. Qimron prevailed at tht trial court level and the Supreme Court affirmed.

Behind the particulars of the case (and the archaeo-political intrigue behind it) the debate continues to rage over who composed the Scrolls. Two of the most prominent scholars in this field are Lawrence Schiffman of New York University and Norman Golb of the University of Chicago (who was a witness in the copyright case discussed above). The debate centers on whether the authors of the scrolls were members of the Essenes, an ascetic sect that lived in the Judean desert, or other groups located in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Now the issue of the authorship of the scrolls has led to its own lawsuit.

I believe Qimron's text of 4QMMT was published without permission in A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, not BAR. In any case, the post has links at the bottom to various resources on the earlier trial. You can read an unofficial English translation of the Hebrew-text Israeli Supreme Court judgment here.

Also, the current case is now getting attention from British media with this Telegraph article.

Background here.

Yom Kippur

YOM KIPPUR (THE DAY OF ATONEMENT) begins this evening at sundown. An easy fast to those observing it. The biblical precepts for Yom Kippur appear in Leviticus 23:26-32.

International Conference on Judaea and Rome in Coins

THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON JUDAEA AND ROME IN COINS, 65 BCE TO 135 CE, was held earlier this week in London. Nikos Kokkinos has posted abstracts of several papers on the Ioudaios-L list.

I noted the conference last year here, but mistakenly implied that it would be in 2009.

Cyrus Cylinder political fallout

CYRUS CYLINDER POLITICAL FALLOUT: The UAE National has a balanced and sensible article on the latest Iranian response to the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder by the British Museum. Excerpt:

The cylinder is now back in Iran, on loan from London for four months. This has presented the Iranian clerical regime with a dilemma. Celebrations of Iran’s pre-Islamic past have been out of fashion for 30 years as too reminiscent of the shah.

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has seized the opportunity to bask in the cylinder’s glow and turn it into a symbol of the Islamic Republic’s power and prestige. For years Mr Ahmadinejad has been seen as a religious zealot, impatiently awaiting the return of the messiah of Shiite Islam. Now he is emerging as an Iranian nationalist.

In a ceremony on Sunday to unveil the cylinder at the Iranian National Museum, Mr Ahmadinejad sought to link modern Iran with the old Persian empire. He decorated a man dressed as one of King Cyrus’s soldiers with a keffiyeh, which is part of the uniform of the pro-government militia, the Basij. Having described Cyrus as “King of the World”, he praised the cylinder as embodying respect for the basic rights of mankind, freedom of thought and choice, and the revolutionary ideal of fighting oppression. Folk dancers representing the various ethnic groups of Iran performed to the sound of traditional instruments.

Stepping up the rhetoric, the hard-line newspaper Keyhan said that the cylinder “belonged to Iran” and suggested it should not be returned to the “thieves” of the British Museum.

There are several problems with this Iranian nationalist discourse. First, the cylinder was discovered in Babylon, 85 kilometres south of Baghdad, so if it were to be returned, it would be to Iraq, not Iran. Second, scholars are somewhat sceptical as to the thesis of Cyrus the Great as the pioneer of human rights. The proclamation appears to be part of a tradition going back thousands of years in Mesopotamia – modern Iraq – whereby new kings would make such declarations on ascending to the throne. “The Cylinder may indeed be a document of human rights and it is clearly linked with the history of Iran, but it is in no real sense an Iranian document: it is part of a much larger history of the ancient Near East, of Mesopotamian kingship, and of the Jewish diaspora,” Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, has argued. In short, the cylinder’s origins lie as much in Mesopotamian tradition as in Persian.

Academic disputes aside, what matters is the context in which Mr Ahmadinejad was speaking. It is not uncommon for a politician in a tight spot to wrap himself in the nation’s flag, and the Iranian president is certainly beset by problems. ...

I don't think the British Museum has covered itself with glory by giving Iran's batty head of state this excuse for a political platform, although he does seem to be seizing the opportunity to make a fool of himself with it. Cyrus was an ancient empire builder, not a human rights champion, but in some ways he looks pretty good next to the current Iranian Government.

That article calling for Iran to keep the Cylinder sounds ominous.

Background here.

New pagan finds at Hippos-Sussita

NEW PAGAN FINDS AT HIPPOS-SUSSITA:

Greek Gods In The Land Of Jesus

By News Staff | September 16th 2010 12:05 AM | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
(Science 2.0)

Tolerance has meant different things in different eras. For some religions in the past, there was a 'convert or die' mentality, which tended to drive out competitors but, at least when it comes to works of art, old religions have always survived.

A fresco of Tyche, the Greek goddess of fortune from the Byzantine period had been discovered at the Sussita site, on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee, and a maenad, one of the companions of the wine god Dionysus, was found also. The city of Sussita is located within the Sussita National Park under the management of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

[...]

During their excavations the researchers found a residence that appeared to belong to person of rank in the city and it contained an inner courtyard with a small fountain at its center. Near the fountain they found the fresco of Tyche, and they believe she had been deified as the city's goddess of fortune.

According to the researchers, the wall painting may be dated to the end of the Roman period or the beginning of the Byzantine period, the 3rd-4th centuries A.D.

[...]

Tyche was not the only mythological figure to be discovered in this compound. Found on a bone plate was an etched relief of a maenad, one of a group of female followers of Dionysus, the god of wine. ...

The article has photographs of both finds.

For a related discovery at Hippos-Sussita last year, go here. And for more posts on the site, go here.

Schiffman testifies in Golb trial

LAWRENCE SCHIFFMAN is testifying in the Raphael Golb identity-theft trial:

Scholar says he never ripped off Dead Sea Scrolls 'bully'

By DAVID K. LI (New York Post)

Last Updated: 4:32 PM, September 16, 2010

Posted: 4:31 PM, September 16, 2010

A leading Hebrew scholar today angrily lashed out at accusations he ripped off a rival’s work and deserved to be targeted by a relentless cyber bully.

Lawrence Schiffman -- chairman of NYU's department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies -- minced no words in defending his academic reputation against defenders of Manhattan lawyer Raphael Golb.

Golb -- the son of another noted Hebrew scholar, Norman Golb -- is on trial for creating fake Internet personas to wage cyber war against his dad’s academic rivals, who clash on theories about the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Defense lawyers claim Schiffman, who prosecutors said was Golb’s top victim, is an academic fraud and needed to be called out by any means necessary.

"I’ve never plagiarized Norman Golb!" an agitated Schiffman screamed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The defense spent most of its cross-examination of Schiffman, trying to hammer him for a seemingly minute error he made in citing Norman Golb‘s research.

The NYU scholar once wrote Golb believed the Dead Sea Scrolls came from a single library of work in Jerusalem -- when in fact the defendant’s dad theorizes the writings came from several literary institutions.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman continually chastised the defense for this line of questioning and repeatedly called it "irrelevant."

"I made one error, if you call it plagiarism … forget it, no chance!" Schiffman yelled.

[...]

I doubt very much that Larry was "screaming." He does have a booming voice that carries. Incidentally, I recall making the same error about Golb's position in a post for one of my online Dead Sea Scrolls courses in 2001. One of the list members politely corrected me and no one accused me of plagiarism.

Background here.

Celebrating the King James Bible

CELEBRATING THE KING JAMES BIBLE (1611-2011) at the OUP blog:

Why all the fuss about an old translation of an ancient book? There are two reasons: first, it is the founding text of the British Empire (including breakaway colonies such as the United States), and was carried to every corner of the English-speaking world by migrants and missionaries; second, it matters now, both as a religious text and as the finest embodiment of English prose. Its history in the intervening centuries has been complex. The text has evolved over the centuries, and there are thousands of small changes in spelling, punctuation and grammar. The commissioning of a revised translation was suggested by a puritan to King James, but the KJV was subsequently repudiated by some puritans, because of its inclusion of the Apocrypha and its use of ecclesiastical terms (e.g. ‘baptize’ instead of ‘wash’, ‘church’ instead of ‘congregation’, ‘bishop’ instead of ‘elder’). In the twenty-first century its most loyal advocates are those at opposite ends of the Protestant continuum: Anglo-Catholic ritualists who revere it alongside the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and evangelicals who think that God answered the prayers of the translators by helping them to produce the most authoritative of all translations.

Is it a good translation? The answer is yes and no. On the affirmative side, it is certainly the most scrupulous of all translations, in part because the scholarly fire-power of the original translators could not be matched in our less educated age. Where could one now find fifty translators with competence in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Samaritan, Ethiopic and Arabic (the languages of the English polyglot Bible of the period) and a command of patristic, rabbinical and Reformation commentaries? Another reason for its scholarly probity is the scrupulous process through which the KJV was produced. The time lavished on the translation by the learned translators was secured by relieving them of other duties; no modern publisher would buy out fifty scholars for several years in order that they might devote their full attention to a translation of the Bible.

That's a bit unfair. I doubt that all of the fifty translators controlled all of those languages and commentary traditions, and there are many biblical scholars today who control many of them. I myself am competent in all of them except Ethiopic and the Reformation commentaries, although I'm not equally strong in every area. I bet we could assemble a group of scholars to match the competencies of the original team without too much trouble. And, as the blog post goes on to admit, we have many more ancient manuscripts at our disposal than they did. Whether a publisher would want to pay for a new project on the same scale may well be another matter, though.

All that said, the King James translation of the Bible was a stunning work of scholarly erudition and literary sophistication and beauty for its time and on many counts it has stood the test of time until today. Its fourth centenary deserves to be thoroughly celebrated.

UPDATE (17 October): More here.

Livius.org hacked

LIVIUS.ORG was reported hacked yesterday. I noticed it was down, and then Judith Weingarten linked to Roger Pearse's notice of the attack on FB. Everything seems to be back up today and I can find nothing about the attack on the Livius website itself.

Regarding Roger's post, I really don't think this episode justifies banning all Muslims, or even all of Turkey, from the Internet, and if we were to take that rather unfocused collective approach the Chinese and the Russians would be well ahead in the queue. A more productive course would be to track down and punish the actual perpetrators, whoever they are. I trust that this is the approach that the authorities are taking.

UPDATE: Jona Lendering has an account of what happened here. I have to say I'm a little jealous. But maybe Blogger just has better hacking countermeasures.

Did the ancient Israelites drink beer?

RESEARCHING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:

Did the Ancient Israelites Drink Beer?

By Michael M. Homan (BAR)

Ancient Israelites, with the possible exception of a few teetotaling Nazirites and their moms, proudly drank beer—and lots of it. Men, women and even children of all social classes drank it. Its consumption in ancient Israel was encouraged, sanctioned and intimately linked with their religion. Even Yahweh, according to the Hebrew Bible, consumed at least half a hin of beer (approximately 2 liters, or a six-pack) per day through the cultic ritual of libation, and he drank even more on the Sabbath (Numbers 28:7–10). People who were sad were advised to drink beer to temporarily erase their troubles (Proverbs 31:6). Yet the Biblical authors also called for moderation. Several passages condemn those who consumed too much beer (Isaiah 5:11, 28:7; Proverbs 20:1, 31:4). The absence of beer defines a melancholy situation, according to Isaiah 24:9.

[...]

So what's with the translation "strong drink," which goes back at least to Tyndale? Why make beer into something stronger?

A "hastily documented" 1st century CE tomb in Jerusalem

A "HASTILY DOCUMENTED" FIRST-CENTURY CE TOMB in Jerusalem is reported by Hadashot Archeologiot. Excerpts:

The hurried process and poor lighting conditions in the cave precluded a proper examination and description of the cave’s contents. Artifacts were not removed from the cave and once its documentation was done, it was sealed and covered with soil. ...

The cave was carefully hewn with a serrated mallet that left diagonal stone dressing marks on its sides, which are mostly upright and slightly curved toward the top. ...

Seven complete ossuaries, at least eight lids and numerous ossuary fragments were discovered in the cave; no other artifacts were found. The ossuaries were concentrated on the western and eastern stone benches (Fig. 3). All the ossuaries were made of soft limestone, except for a single ossuary of hard limestone. Two of the ossuaries were closed with a lid; one of the lids was attached to the ossuary with a bronze nail. Due to the haste, only two complete ossuaries and several decorated fragments were documented (Figs. 4, 5). A two-line Hebrew inscription (length of inscription 0.37 m; Figs. 6, 7) was incised on the hard-limestone ossuary. The letters were clearly engraved, separated from each other and painted blue. The inscription reads: “Alexa bar Shalom barat Alexa/Cursed is the one who casts me from my place”. Careless engravings or traces of faded paint were noted on other ossuaries; these may also be inscriptions that require further research for decipherment. Some of the ossuary fragments were consolidated together with bone fragments in the corners of the chamber and it seems that these ossuaries had been shattered by grave robbers who damaged the cave; the robbers had apparently penetrated into the cave via the entrance, which was later blocked.

[...]

Via Todd Bolen at the Bible Places blog, who is not impressed with the haste of the documentation.

"Royal" theater box excavated at Herodium

A "ROYAL" THEATER BOX has been excavated at Herodium:

King Herod's royal theater box uncovered at Herodium

By RONEN SHNIDMAN
09/15/2010 00:05

Theater box reveals Jewish monarch's luxurious lifestyle, displays rare example of elaborate style of Roman wall painting found outside Italy.

A royal box built at the upper level of King Herod's private theater at Herodium has been fully unveiled in recent excavations at the archaeological site, providing a further indication of the luxurious lifestyle favored by the well-known Jewish monarch, the Hebrew University announced in a statement released Tuesday.

The excavations at Herodium National Park at the eastern edge of Gush Etzion region, were conducted by Prof. Ehud Netzer under the auspices of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology.

[...]

The royal box (measuring eight by seven meters and about six meters high) is the central space among a group of rooms attached to the upper part of the theater's structure. This impressive room likely hosted the king, his close friends and family members during performances in the theater and was fully open facing the stage.

[...]

More on the excavations of Herodium (Herod's apparent tomb) here. Todd Bolen has a page on the site of Herodium at his Bible Places website.

Adolfo Roitman speaking at TWU

ADOLFO ROITMAN is speaking at Trinity Western University:

Dead Sea Scrolls guardian speaking in Langley

Published: September 14, 2010 1:00 PM
Updated: September 14, 2010 1:48 PM

The guardian of the Dead Sea Scrolls is delivering a public lecture later this month.

Dr. Adolfo Roitman will deliver his lecture, ‘From Serpent to Satan: The Story of Paradise in Scripture, Literature and Art’, at Trinity Western University’s Northwest Auditorium.

The lecture takes place on Tuesday, Sept. 28 at 7:30 p.m.

Roitman is curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the director of the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, one of the world’s leading archaelogical museums.

[...]

Golb identity-theft trial begins

THE GOLB IDENTITY-THEFT TRIAL began in New York yesterday:

Dead Sea Scrolls 'cyber bully' claims he had right to fight dirty

By DAVID K. LI (New York Post)

Last Updated: 5:35 PM, September 14, 2010

Posted: 5:34 PM, September 14, 2010

Defenders of an alleged cyber bully went on the attack today, accusing a noted Hebrew historian of plagiarism and claiming their client had every right to fight dirty in this no-holds-barred academic brawl.

Raphael Golb, 49, went on trial for allegedly engineering a wacky 2008 identity theft and "sock-puppeting" campaign against his dad’s intellectual rivals over ancient origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

During opening statements to jurors, defense lawyers didn’t back away from acts Golb is accused of committing by prosecutors -- and even glorified his actions.

"Raphael Golb is a whistle blower," defense lawyer David Breitbart told jurors in opening statements.

[...]

The story is also covered by the AP and noted by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Background here.

Syriac symposium at Duke, June 2011

CONFERENCE:

Sixth North American Syriac Symposium
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
June 26-29, 2011

The Sixth North American Syriac Symposium will be organized at Duke University on June 26-29, 2011. Held every four years since 1991, the North American Syriac Symposium brings together university professors, graduate students, and scholars from the United States and Canada (more than half of the participants) as well as from Europe, the Middle East, and India, in particular from the State of Kerala. The Symposium offers a unique opportunity for exchange and discussion on a wide variety of topics related to the language, literature, and cultural history of Syriac Christianity, from the first centuries ce to the present day.

While adopting the general template of previous symposia, the Duke Symposium will at the same time be organized in such a way that it aptly reflects current trends in Syriac studies. Additionally, it will allow Duke scholars and students to communicate to a wider audience some highlights of their research, teaching, and resources.

To serve as a general framework and organizational principle, the following theme has been chosen:


Syriac Encounters

Encounters and interactions between individuals, generations, communities,traditions, ideas, languages, and religions.

This general theme allows us to highlight various kinds of diachronic and synchronic interaction and dialogue, formation of communal identity, construction of tradition, language contact, and religious conversation both within Syriac Christianity and between Syriac Christianity and other traditions, in particular Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, and various forms of Western Christianity. The overall theme is not meant, however, to exclude topics that are not directly related to it.

[...]

For more information, follow the link.

Via Stephen C. Carlson on FB.

More on the Petra cave art

MORE ON THE PETRA CAVE ART – new images from National Geographic: Before & After: Wine-Cult Cave Art Restored in Petra?

Via Archaeology News. Background here.

The futility of book-burning

SEEMS TIMELY:

The futility of book-burning

(The Republican-American)

When Florida pastor Terry Jones talked about burning copies of the Quran on Saturday to mark the Sept. 11 attacks, an aspect of the worldwide overreaction seemed based on the mistaken belief that fricasseeing copies of another faith's holy writings was something novel. It isn't. There's a venerable tradition of torching someone else's holy books.

There are also copious examples of how futile an exercise that is.

The most combusted book in history is probably the Talmud, a compilation of Jewish commentaries on and interpretations of the first five books of the Bible. Anti-Semites burned copies of the Talmud from the early Middle Ages through the massive Nazi bonfires of the 1930s, yet there are likely more copies of the Talmud extant today than at any point since the earliest rabbis began compiling it nearly 2,000 years ago.

And then there's the even more instructive case of the best-read author in English history, a man who every bit as much as William Shakespeare could be considered the grandfather of the language. Most people don't know his name, but nearly everyone who reads English knows his words.

I refer to William Tyndale, whose story exemplifies the futility of burning books. Tyndale was executed in 1536 for what at the time was considered the most heinous of crimes: daring to translate the Bible into English. The official charges, pushed by King Henry VIII, were heresy and treason.

[...]

All of which leads to an incident from Tyndale's career that illustrates the pointlessness of book-burning. At one point, the Bishop of London offered to buy up an entire printing of Tyndale's Bibles so he could burn them. Tyndale gleefully sold them to the bishop, who dutifully consigned the books to the fire. Tyndale, meanwhile, used the profits to publish an even larger run of his Bibles than the bishop had bought and burned.

Were I a publisher of Qurans, I would emulate Tyndale and offer to print copies on spectacularly pyrotechnic stock. For when the flames had died down, there would be exactly as many copies of the Quran in the possession of those who revere and cherish the book as there had been before the fire, and I'd have turned a tidy profit.

[...]

I think Mr. Goodman fails to grasp the investment that Muslims have in the sanctity of individual copies of the Qur'an. But the point remains: burning scriptures is a pathetic exercise in futility. If you strike them down, they shall only become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.