Mark D. Roberts on early Christology

MARK D. ROBERTS has been putting up some thoughtful posts on early Christology at his Beliefnet blog. I list them below with some comments:

Echoes of Wisdom and the Divinity of Jesus: Part 1

Echoes of Wisdom and the Divinity of Jesus (Part 2)

Echoes of Wisdom and the Divinity of Jesus: Part 3

I was disappointed not to hear more about Philo of Alexandria's Logos theology (cf., e.g., here) or the Enochian wisdom tradition (notably in the Similitudes, 1 Enoch 42). Maybe a fourth essay is warranted.

Jesus as the Son of God

This piece takes the evidence in directions that I don't think are entirely warranted, notably here:

If Jesus had openly proclaimed himself as Son of God, his contemporaries would not have thought of this as a claim to divinity. They might have understood only that Jesus was touting his own righteousness. More likely, they would have heard a claim to be the promised Messiah, the human being who would lead Israel to throw the Romans out of God's land once and for all.

There is plenty of evidence that the phrase "son of God" could mean an angel or a divine being (cf. Job 1, Deuteronomy 32:8). And the assertion earlier in the essay that the Israelite kings were not divinized is debatable. Note that Solomon was enthroned on the throne of YHWH as king according to 1 Chronicles 29:23 and that the king is arguably addressed as God or a god in royal rites in Isaiah 9:5 (Evv 9:6) and Psalm 45:7 (evv. 45:6).

Jesus and the Perplexing Son of Man

The Son of Man in the Judaism of Jesus

The treatment of the Son of Man is good, apart from the discussion of "the one like a son of man" in Daniel 7:13:

While still dreaming, Daniel approached one of the divine attendants, asking for the interpretation of the dream. He learned that the four beasts represent four kingdoms that shall dominate the earth. But when the Ancient One finally executes judgment upon the all four beasts, the saints will be exonerated. In fact,

The kingship and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them (Dan 7:27).

Therefore, the "one like a son of man" represents the faithful people of God who endure oppression and ultimately share in God's rule over the earth.

The problem here is that the vision in chapter 7 comes in three parts: the allegorical vision of the four beasts in vv. 1-8 a second vision of the heavenly throne room consisting of God and his angels (who are evidently watching the first vision) in vv. 9-16; and the angel's interpretation of the allegorical vision in vv. 17-27. The difficulty with Dr. Roberts's interpretation is that the one like a son of man comes in the second part of the vision. He is a figure in the heavenly throne room, which is "real," that is, not part of the allegory. The kingdom of God will be given to the Jewish people ("the people of the holy ones of the Most High" in v. 27), but the one like a son of man is not an allegorical representation of them. He is a heavenly figure in his own right, perhaps the angel Michael or Gabriel (who appear elsewhere in Daniel) or - my best guess - the glorified patriarch Enoch.

Daniel 7 is arguably based on Enoch's ascent vision in the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 14), along with Ezekiel chapter 1. In Enoch's vision he ascends on the clouds and is brought before the throne of God, and it seems likely to me that Daniel had him in mind here. Confirming this, the Similitudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 37-71) explicitly says in chapter 71 that Enoch is the Danielic Son of Man.

(I am currently teaching a course on the book of Daniel and these matters are near and dear to my heart. For more details on the reading of Daniel 7 given in the paragraph before the preceding one, see the magisterial Hermeneia commentary on Daniel by John Collins.)

With the caveats above, Dr. Roberts's summary of the state of the question regarding early Christology is good and worth a read. Incidentally, with him, I don't have any problem with the idea that Jesus spoke of the Son of Man with Daniel's exalted "one like a son of man" in mind, perhaps even referring to himself. But many historical Jesus scholars, perhaps most, think that this is a post-Jesus stratum of the tradition.

Cario Geniza book excerted on Google Books

SACRED TREASURE: The Cairo Geniza, by Rabbi Mark Glickman (noted here), is excerpted extensively on Google Books. (HT Dorothy Lobel King.)

More on the completion of the Steinsaltz Talmud

MORE ON THE COMPLETION OF THE STEINSALTZ TALMUD:

Steinsaltz completes Talmud translation, but not without controversy

By Sue Fishkoff · October 31, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- On Nov. 7, noted Talmud scholar and teacher Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz will formally conclude his Hebrew translation of the Babylonian Talmud, a monumental task that has occupied him for the past 45 years.

While he marks the day in a hadran, or completion ritual, in Jerusalem, hundreds of Jewish communities around the world will celebrate a Global Day of Jewish Learning, coming together in synagogues, Jewish community centers and schools to study Jewish text and build community.

But as scholars and Jewish leaders herald his remarkable accomplishment, Steinsaltz himself has become a figure of controversy, criticized in some Orthodox circles for what many consider his unorthodox behavior.

Five years ago he found himself outside the Orthodox consensus for accepting the post of nasi, or president, of a modern-day Sanhedrin, a re-creation of the ancient Jewish legal body that set ritual observance for the Jewish people. Steinsaltz’s decision a year later to hold Rosh Hashanah services in which the shofar was sounded on Shabbat Rosh Hashanah -- a practice banned centuries ago by the Jewish sages -- caused further controversy.

For some it was his life’s work -- the translation of the Talmud -- that was problematic.

[...]

Steinsaltz’s Hebrew Talmud is not the only modern translation.

Soon after he launched his project, a team of Orthodox scholars began work on their own English translation. Published by ArtScroll, the Schottenstein Babylonian Talmud is used now by students around the world, and is available in English, Hebrew and French.

ArtScroll also published English and Hebrew versions of the Jerusalem Talmud -- a version of the Talmud written in Palestine about two centuries before the Babylonian version but not regarded by subsequent scholars as the authoritative word on Jewish law.

"There is some indication that this was done in response” to Steinsaltz, Blau said of the ArtScroll translations.

"It was done by committee, and was authorized by certain parts of the Orthodox community,” Blau said. “Some elements in the Orthodox community wanted a translation that met their requirements.”

In the late 1980s, Steinsaltz began publishing his own English editions of the Talmud, working from his Hebrew translation. He completed 22 volumes -- about half the tractates. The books are out of print, but he hopes to embark on another attempt to translate the entire Talmud into English and several other languages.

Steinsaltz’s English Talmud is not as widely praised as his Hebrew translation; the ArtScroll English version is more widely used.

[...]

Background here. More on the Artscroll Talmud here and here.

UPDATE (3 November): Jacob Neusner e-mails:

The JTA story that you printed on the Steinsaltz Talmud says there are two English language translations of the BAVLI, Steinsaltz and Artscroll. There are four, Soncino and mine,

In mine I translated 32 tractates and the other five were done by others (fully credited to them ad loc). Soncino was done in the 1930s and finished in 1948, I think. All she had to do was check out the LC catalogue.

The reference for the Neusner translation is: The Talmud of Babylonia. An American Translation. Chico, then Atlanta: 1984-1995: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies.

I think the author of the article was focusing on very recent Talmud translations just now being finished, but she indeed should have mentioned the earlier, already completed English translations.

Iraqi Jewish archive update

IRAQI JEWISH ARCHIVE UPDATE:

Iraqi Jewish documents remain in limbo

Damaged during the U.S. invasion and shipped from Baghdad to Washington for preservation, a collection of antique Torahs and other material faces an uncertain future. Back to Iraq? Or to Israel?

By Alice Fordham, Los Angeles Times

October 31, 2010

[...]

Saad Eskander, the director of Iraq's National Library and Archive, says the collection belongs in Iraq. He said he was negotiating with the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, but if those talks failed, he would probably work with international organizations to take the case to U.S. courts.

"Jews are Iraq's oldest community. They are a significant part of the history of establishing Iraq," said Eskander, who helped rebuild the National Library after it was reduced to rubble by fighting and looting.

Jewish groups in America and Israel, however, have raised concerns about the safety of the collection if it were returned to Iraq.

"We fear the documents might be lost forever to Iraqi Jews," said Eric Fusfield of the B'nai B'rith international Jewish organization, which wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this year calling for an immediate bar on the return of the documents.

"The Iraqi government should be commended for trying to preserve the Jewish legacy … but these are Jewish communal properties first and foremost."

State Department officials in Baghdad declined to comment beyond saying that negotiations were ongoing and that they hoped for resolution soon.

[...]

Shmuel Moreh, a professor of Arabic literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, left Iraq in 1951, along with hundreds of thousands of Jews who were victimized in the wake of the creation of Israel. He believes that all Jewish documents from Iraq are vital, and would like to see them in Israel.

"We need the documents to learn about history," he said. "We couldn't take any documents from Iraq when we left."

Although he felt that the Iraqi government had every right to claim the documents as their own and said he would be happy to work with good copies of the documents, he expressed doubt that Iraq had the skills to read the rare Judeo-Arabic scripts or the facilities to conserve the archive.

The collection, now kept in cold storage, would be subject to Iraq's flickering electricity supplies and to the still-considerable risk of bombs, thieves and institutional disarray.

A trip to the Babylonian section of a museum in Berlin, filled with archaeological treasures taken in the 19th century from what is now Iraq, had made Moreh believe the documents would be safer elsewhere.

He was accompanied by a group of Iraqi academics who admired the magnificent winged bull sculptures of the early Assyrian civilization displayed in the museum. Had they remained in Iraq, they would probably have been pocked with bullets or stolen, he said.

Moreh said: "Even these educated people said, 'What luck that the Germans took all this and kept it in such a way. They saved my civilization.'"

As always, I think the decision should be made on the basis of what is best for the ancient artifacts, not on any nationalist considerations.

Background here, where I make the same point at greater length, and here.

Phoenicia completes her journey

THE GOOD SHIP PHOENICIA completed her journey almost a week ago:

Phoenicia Ship Arrives in Arwad Island Port
(DP-News-Sana)

Tartous, Coastal Region- After a 26-month journey, Phoenicia Ship on Saturday arrived in the Port of Arwad Island, finishing its 17,000- mile trip around Africa.

The ship sailed through the Red Sea, the Cape of Good Hope and Gibraltar Strait in an attempt to revive the Phoenician heritage dating back to2600 years ago, carrying the message of peace and cultural communication that Syria has always been keen to spread throughout time.

The ship's captain, Philip Bill talked about the two-year voyage and the difficulties it went through such as the storms and high waves in South Africa, noting that the ship was once chased by a small boat in Somalia until a bigger ship helped them reach a safer place.

[...]

Congratulations to the crew and all involved!

Background here.

A popular book on the Cairo Geniza

A POPULAR BOOK ON THE CAIRO GENIZA:

Rabbi tells story of Hebrew texts found in Cairo

Kathleen Lavey • klavey@lsj.com • October 29, 2010 (LSJ)

Rabbi Mark Glickman first heard about the Cairo Genizah in 1985, while he was in rabbinical school.

The story of a trove of ancient documents found in a 1,000-year-old Egyptian synagogue doesn't get the same amount of ink as tales of the gold and jewels from the nearby tombs of Egyptian rulers.

But Glickman thinks maybe the crumbling documents should, because of the details they offer about life in the Middle East in the Middle Ages, when Arabic-speaking Jews were part of the fabric of the Islam-dominated society around them.

"The picture is of a Jewish culture that lives in peace and harmony and happiness, for the most part," Glickman said. "It not only paints a beautiful picture of the past, it paints a very hopeful picture of the future."

Glickman, who leads two small congregations near Seattle, is visiting Michigan and will discuss his new book, "Sacred Treasure: The Cairo Genizah" in two appearances: 7 p.m. Sunday at Congregation Kehillat Israel in Lansing, and at 7 p.m. Monday at Michigan State University.

[...]

To research the book - a snappy, fast-moving history written for the non-academic crowd - Glickman and his teenage son, Jacob, traveled to Cairo, where they got a glimpse inside the now-empty genizah, and Cambridge, where they looked over many documents.

A non-specialist treatment sounds like a good idea to me.

UPDATE (1 November): More here.

More coverage of Ehud Netzer's death

THE DEATH OF PROFESSOR EHUD NETZER in a tragic accident has been covered in many media articles in the last day including in the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Arutz Sheva, and the AFP. I understand that the initial announcements yesterday were premature: he was on life support at the time, but with no hope of recovery. The life support was discontinued late yesterday.

Zenobia on Zenobia

ZENOBIA ON ZENOBIA.

Eyewitness account of the Christmas story?

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE CHRISTMAS STORY?

'Revelation of the Magi' an Ancient Manuscript Lost for Centuries in the Vatican Library Reveals Eyewitness Account of the Christmas Story

Theologian Brent Landau presents the ancient account of Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar, the three “wise men” who journeyed to Bethlehem to greet the birth of Jesus. The Revelation of the Magi offers the first-ever English translation of an ancient Syriac manuscript written in the second to third century after the birth of Christ and safeguarded for generations in the Vatican Library.

This book sounds like an important scholarly contribution, but if I were the author I would be kind of irritated with the headline of this press release (which I'm sure was composed without his knowledge or approval). The document claims to be an eyewitness account, like many apocryphal gospels, but of course it actually is a legend written centuries after the time of Jesus' birth, as the opening paragraph does make clear. As such, it is very good now to have an English translation of it.

UPDATE: Brent Landau e-mails:

The book is very attractively packaged with lots of pretty pictures, but scholars will also want to consult my dissertation, available here.

Zuckerman photographs SBTS's DSS fragments

THOSE DEAD SEA SCROLL FRAGMENTS acquired recently by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary have been photographed by epigraphic photographer Bruce Zuckerman. Good.

Seminary's Dead Sea fragments go hi-tech

Posted on Oct 27, 2010 | by Benjamin Hawkins (Baptist Press)

FORT WORTH, Texas (BP)--In a convergence of ancient Scripture with the latest in photographic technology, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary worked with the West Semitic Research Project this fall to prepare for the study and publication of its Dead Sea Scrolls collection and other artifacts.

A workshop hosted by the seminary's Tandy Institute for Archaeology featured a team from the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California that specializes in producing high-definition images of ancient texts and artifacts. The scholars made images of Southwestern's collection of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments as well as some artifacts from the seminary's Carlson Cuneiform Collection.

"The West Semitic Research Project is one of the best for the digital imaging of ancient manuscripts, particularly Dead Sea Scrolls fragments," said Steven Ortiz, associate professor of archaeology and biblical backgrounds at Southwestern and director of the Charles D. Tandy Archaeology Museum.

[...]

Background here and follow the links.

Is "pizzazz" Aramaic?

IS "PIZZAZZ" ARAMAIC? Anatoly Liberman at the OUP blog is very skeptical:

Pizzazz “flair, pep, etc.” I’ll first quote part of the letter: “According to my Chambers Dictionary, Diana Vreeland made piz[z]azz popular in the thirties, but there is a similar word with a similar meaning in the Talmud. It’s entirely possible that the word traveled to America via Yiddish. [… ] I fear the NED’s long-established tendency to be Hebrew-blind might spill over into Aramaic.” NED (New English Dictionary) is the same as OED. Not being a specialist in either Hebrew or Yiddish, I can offer only very vague and inconclusive advice. Our correspondent may have found the Hebrew etymology of pizzazz in Isaac Mozeson’s dictionary The Word. If this is so, he has enough reason to distrust it, because this dictionary is a collection of moderately amusing, but mainly irritating fantasies (the author who has no knowledge of historical linguistics traces a sizable section of the vocabulary of English to Hebrew). Second, whatever the practice of OED (I am not sure it pays no heed to Hebrew or Aramaic), in English etymology it is sometimes better to be Hebrew-blind than Hebrew/Yiddish-wide-eyed. Dozens of English words, especially those related to swindling and crime and those sounding funny, have been declared Hebrew or Yiddish, with no research supporting such statements. To show that pizzazz has come to English from Hebrew via Yiddish, proof us needed that this word was sufficiently common among the New York Jews and popularized by them in slang. I am not aware of such evidence. Those lexicographers who dared offer conjectures about pizzazz suggested an unlikely blend, an imitation of a roar, and so forth. Finally, pizzazz, with its multiple z’s, has such a strong sound symbolic shape that it could easily be coined in different places at different times and refer to exuberance and zest (incidentally, zest, of French descent, also has a z and is also of unknown origin; it first designated part of a walnut and was put into drinks for flavor; similar use has been recorded in connection with pizzazz). I once dealt with the obscure etymology of razzmatazz (evidently, razz-ma-tazz), swizzle, and tizzy “nervous excitement.” They taught me great caution in dealing with z-words.

As I noted a couple of years ago, Philologos agrees.

Dead Sea Scrolls drew 262,171 to Science Museum

STATISTICS: Dead Sea Scrolls drew 262,171 to Science Museum.

Background to the Minnesota exhibition here.

Ehud Netzer has died

EHUD NETZER has died from a tragic accident at the Herodium excavation. The Jerusalem Post reports the accident here. Overnight the news has reached me from multiple sources that he died from his injuries yesterday. This was forwarded by Mladen Popovic:

Van: Roger Wilson
Datum: 28 oktober 2010 7:09:48 GMT+02:00
Aan: CLASSICISTS@liverpool.ac.uk
Onderwerp: Professor Ehud Netzer
Antwoord aan: Roger Wilson

Colleagues will be saddened to learn that Professor Ehud Netzer, the distinguished Israeli archaeologist, has died at the age of 76 after a tragic accident. On October 25th he fell 15 metres while excavating the ancient theatre on the hillside at Herodion, injuring his head and neck, and died two days later in hospital in Jerusalem. His discovery at Herodion of the Tomb of Herod in 2007 made headlines around the world, but he will be remembered for many superlative excavations at sites associated with Herod, culminating in his magisterial The Architecture of Herod, the Great Builder (2006), as well as for the excavations at Sepphoris, which he directed from 1985 to 1993. A modest and unassuming man, who wore his learning lightly, he will be greatly missed by his family and friends and by colleagues around the world. Anyone who wishes to express their sympathy should write to Kathryn Gleeson (kathryngleason@hotmail.com), who will pass on your words to Ehud’s family and his colleagues at the Hebrew University.

Professor R J A Wilson, MA, DPhil, FSA
Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire
Director, Centre for the Study of Ancient Sicily
Head, Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies
University of British Columbia
1866 Main Mall
Vancouver V6T 1Z1
Canada

I noted his announcement in 2007 of the discovery of Herod's tomb here. His most recent appearance at PaleoJudaica was in the middle of last month, here.

May his memory be for a blessing.

More fragments of the Gospel of Judas

MORE FRAGMENTS OF THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS. April DeConick reports.

New book: Elior, A Garden Eastward in Eden

NEW BOOK:

גן בעדן מקדם: מסורות גן עדן בישראל ובעמים
Gan Beden Mikedem, Masorot Gan Eden beIsrael uBeamim
A Garden Eastward in Eden: Traditions of Paradise: Changing Jewish Perspectives and Comparative Dimensions of Culture, edited by Rachel Elior,
Scholion-Interdisciplinary Research Center in Jewish Studies, The Hebrew University, Magnes Press: Jerusalem 2010
ISBN 978-965-493-461-9
ebook ISBN 978-965-493-462-6

Review: Herrero de Jáuregui, Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity

BMCR REVIEW:

Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity. Sozomena. Studies in the Recovery of Ancient Texts 7. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010. Pp. xiii, 442. ISBN 9783110206333. $136.00.

Reviewed by Benjamin Garstad, MacEwan University (garstadb@macewan.ca)

Preview

Readers seeking a speculative and sensational exposé of intimate and hitherto secret links between phantasmal circles of Orphic adepts and the first Christians will not find one in this book. Instead Herrero de Jáuregui has offered the scholarly world a sober and substantial contribution which is sure to stand the test of time in the form of a philological examination of the testimonies of Orphic texts and practice found in early Christian apologetic literature. This material (the most important examples of which are offered in translation as appendices to the volume) is not only among our best evidence for the phenomenon of Orphism in antiquity, it also represents a telling case-study of the early Christian engagement with the religious and philosophical discourse of the Greek culture which surrounded it, as the early Christians might have said, of which it was a part as contemporary scholars, like Herrero de Jáuregui might say. All those interested in the religious life, both pagan and Christian, of the Imperial centuries should be grateful that this translation has made Herrero de Jáuregui’s 2007 book Tradición órfica y cristianismo antiguo accessible to a wider audience.

[...]

Michael Coogan on Bible"family values"

MICHAEL COOGAN: Bible has some shocking 'family values'.

Reminiscing about the Harvard Old Church Slavonic course

JOHN FREEDMAN REMINISCES in the Moscow Times about the Harvard Old Church Slavonic course:

Lunt did not brook lazy thought, to say nothing of lazy actions. He would not abide it in his students or in his scholarly opponents. The professor’s often cranky, cantankerous articles, reviews and letters to editors were legendary. And this is important — in fact, it is the whole point: The legend grew not because of Lunt’s acerbic pen, but because of the unparalleled clarity and superiority of his arguments.

Lunt may have shot down more puffed-up academic careers than any other scholar of his time. And it was all because he believed in the truth and in doing things thoroughly and right. People established reputations by concocting elaborate theories for aberrations in syntax or word formation in old texts, or at least until Lunt realized that their whole argument was based on that simplest and most malicious bane of human existence — the error. The scribal error.

The wrong letter in the wrong place; a strange shift in the narrative flow of a sentence. What some interpreted as Old Church Slavonic morphing into Old Russian or showing the influence of some other linguistic construction was nothing more than the result of a scribal error.

I love conjuring Lunt in my mind as he describes the situation to us.

“The candle was burning low. The poor monk had been without sleep for 24 hours. It was cold outside. No. It was freezing. The cell in which the monk worked was like a block of ice. A wolf howled outside his door. He took his mind off what he was doing for just one second, but when he turned his bleary eyes back to the page he had lost his connection to what he was doing. He wrote down the wrong letter. Scribal error. This is not an example of linguistic development.”

Sure enough, Lunt showed us similar situations in the same text, recorded by the same scribe, and all were correct. Only this one was wrong. Scribal error. Bleary eyes.

Horace Lunt and I were never close. I wasn’t of much interest to him, for my field of study was literature, not linguistics. He knew perfectly well that those of us studying literature just needed to get some requirements out of the way in order to go about doing what we were in graduate school to do. I don’t think he begrudged us that. It was merely another of those things about which nothing could be done — like scribal errors. If the latter could not be suffered, the former could.

I’ll go further in the interest of full disclosure and honesty. I did not much like Old Church Slavonic, which we all called OCS. Oh, there were things that fascinated me and stuck with me, like the fact that the name of Old King Wenceslaus from the Christmas carol can be demonstrated to be the same name as the Slavic Vyacheslav. But that’s the pop version of OCS. It’s pretty much all I retained in the way of the discipline’s science.

Which brings me to the point of this freeform remembrance: Horace Lunt had more influence on me than any other scholar I studied with. His rigor came through loud and clear during that first class I had with him in September 1983. I can still hear it in my head to this day.

Every time I fail to catch a typo, every time I fail to properly check a fact, every time I say “good enough,” only to learn later that I was less than exact, I remember Horace Lunt. Scribal error. For all that I never learned or retained from his truly extraordinary course in Old Church Slavonic, I was profoundly affected by his attitude, his approach, his honesty before himself, his colleagues and his work.

Professor Lunt reminds me of Professor William Moran, from whom I took introductory Akkadian at the same place at exactly the same time. Moran's dictum You have to make the grammar work is branded into my synapses.

More on Old Church Slavonic here and here.

Review of Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community

BOOK REVIEW from the H-JUDAIC list:

John Joseph Collins. Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian
Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Grand Rapids William B. Eerdmans
Pub. Co., 2010. xii + 266 pp. Illustrations. $25.00 (paper), ISBN
978-0-8028-2887-3.

Reviewed by Alex Jassen (University of Minnesota)
Published on H-Judaic (October, 2010)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Revisiting the Origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls

[...]

Into this fray enters John J. Collins's new book _Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls_. The bulk of its pages carefully assess the merits and drawbacks of many of the prevailing theories on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran. At the same time as Collins deftly critiques sixty years of scholarship, he offers his own vision for the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their relationship to the site of Qumran. Collins is well positioned to undertake both tasks, having long been active in the study of the scrolls. His sobering approach to the material allows the evidence to speak for itself--rather than the phenomenon Collins observes far too often, of scholars speaking for the text (and, of course, saying far too much). In this sense, a good deal of this volume consists of a careful deconstruction of other approaches, many of which are rendered speculative at best by the textual or archaeological evidence. His analysis of the textual evidence is restrained, perhaps too restrained for many. But, in the end, this judicious approach often leaves the reader in agreement with Collins versus the alternatives.

[...]

A soferet writes a Torah scroll

A SOFERET is writing a Torah scroll:

Local Woman Bucks Jewish Law, Handwrites Religious Text

by Bay City News

October 25, 2010 11:53 AM

In a dimly lit alcove on the second floor of San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum, a young woman has spent the last year performing a task for which the process has barely changed since about 500 A.D.

Five and a half centuries after the printing press was invented and decades after word processors came to dominate offices, 35-year-old Julie Seltzer is nearing completion of one of the few handwritten ritual Torah scrolls ever to be commissioned from a woman.

Seltzer's work is the centerpiece of "As It is Written," a museum exhibit that gives patrons an intimate experience with the 62 sheets, 248 columns, 10,416 lines, and 304,805 letters of the ritual, or Sifrei, Torah.

The museum estimates that more than 86,000 visitors have watched Seltzer deliberately form the letters of the Sifrei Torah with hand-made turkey quills and kosher ink. She writes on parchment made of cow hide and sharpens the quills every five lines or so.

Jews call themselves the People of the Book, and that book is the Torah. It's comprised of the five the books of Moses, which are also the first five books of the Old Testament in the Bible.

Printed copies of the Torah are used for study, but only a Torah scroll written by a trained scribe, or sofer, is permitted for holidays and other ritual use.

Seltzer is a female scribe, or soferet, and while Jewish law traditionally permits women to write wedding contracts and do decorative work on scriptures, the Talmud, an important 6th Century Jewish text, specifically says Torahs written by women are not kosher.

Museum Director Connie Wolf decided she wanted to hire a woman anyway.

[...]

Does the Talmud actually say that? Does someone have the reference?

For more on female scribes, including Jen Taylor Friedman, who trained Ms. Seltzer (and who also created Tefillin Barbie), go here and follow the links.

Director of El Shaddai on the Book of Enoch

TAKEYASU SAWAKI, the Director of El Shaddai: The Ascension of the Metatron, has more to say about his use of 1 Enoch:

"As a Japanese creator, I want to make something that only Japanese people can make. I don't want to follow the European people's way," he told Gamasutra in a new feature interview. While his studio is based in Japan, parent Ignition Entertainment is headquartered in the UK.

The game is based books from the Christian Apocrypha, books considered by Protestant Christians to not be part of the Biblical canon. El Shaddai is essentially a Japanese imagining of parts of the Western religion. The main character in the game is Enoch, a very pure former human that is now working for God.

"I read, of course, the Book of Enoch, and I also read a lot of other people's books dealing with those two characters. I think all of those books were boring," said Sawaki, who also worked at Capcom on Devil May Cry and Okami. "I think my image of Enoch is closer to the original Enoch. Because I read a lot of information, and based on that, I drew this Enoch."

1 Enoch is part of the Old Testament pseudepigrapha, although, given its transmission and use in Christian circles, it could be regarded as a Christian apocryphon as well. It is canonical only to the Ethiopic Church, so it outside the biblical canon not only for Protestants, but also Jews, Catholics and the (Christian) Orthodox.

Background here.

A visit to the Madaba Map

THE MADABA MAP was visited by Kalpala Sunder, who writes about it in The Hindu:

Time machine

KALPANA SUNDER

Bucolic scenes where herds of goats have the unofficial right of way, Bedouins swathed in flowing robes… Jordan echoes with stories from the Bible and reminders of the hoary past. This country is mentioned in both the Old and the New Testament as the tribal kingdoms of Edom, Moab and Ammon.

From Amman, we drive down the 5,000-year-old King's highway (one of the oldest roads in the world), which rambles through stunning landscapes. Our first stop is at Madaba the Mosaic Town. Hundreds of mosaic maps are scattered throughout this town where Christians and Muslims live in harmony. Madaba is an archaeologist's delight. The St. George's Greek Orthodox Church is a 19th Century construction, which has on its floors, a fragment of a wonderfully vivid mosaic map dating back to the 6th Century. This is the first cartographic representation of the Holy Land. This map, unearthed in 1896, was once a clear map of all the major Biblical sites from Palestine to Egypt, with over 150 captions in Greek. This map was probably intended to help pilgrims to the Holy Land. Today, this map has helped archaeologists and historians assign modern-day sites to places mentioned in the Bible.

Attention to detail

What makes the map come alive are the details — the fish that swim in the Jordan River turn back when they get to the Dead Sea; the lion that hunts a gazelle in the desert; the palm trees at Jericho...

[...]

More on the Madaba Map here.

Charlesworth interviewed about Google DSS project

JAMES CHARLESWORTH is interviewed by the BBC about the new Google Dead Sea Scrolls archiving project.

Background here.

Samaritans mark holiday of Tabernacles

SAMARITANS mark holiday of Tabernacles - a photo gallery.

HT Carla Sulzbach again.

New World Hebrew Forgeries and Arutz Sheva

THOSE NEW WORLD HEBREW FORGERIES have taken in Arutz Sheva, which embarrasses itself thoroughly with Audio: Did King Solomon Discover America Way Before Columbus? and King Solomon vs. Christopher Columbus. They fall for the Los Lunas inscription, the Bat Creek stone, and more. Why doesn't it occur to journalists to talk to some actual experts before publishing this tripe?

HT Carla Sulzbach.

Background here.

Completion of the Steinsaltz Talmud translation

THE STEINSALTZ TALMUD TRANSLATION into Modern Hebrew is about to be completed:

Steinsaltz’s Talmud translation to be centerpiece of Global Day of Jewish Learning
North Jerseyans to take part in Global Day of Learning

Abigail Klein Leichman • Local (New Jersey Jewish Standard)
Published: 22 October 2010


Four North Jersey venues will join Jewish communities around the world in offering free programming on Nov. 7, the Global Day of Jewish Learning. This first-ever worldwide, trans/non-denominational program is planned to coincide with the culmination of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s 45-year project to translate the voluminous Talmud from ancient Aramaic folios into modern punctuated Hebrew. The event also falls on the UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey’s annual Mitzvah Day.

At about 2 p.m., Steinsaltz is scheduled to pen the final words of his monumental work in a live telecast from Jerusalem. A champion for open access to Jewish learning, he is widely credited with making talmudic study available to the masses, as his translation is being prepared for publication in French, Russian, English, and Spanish.

[...]

This is a celebration of the completion of the Hebrew translation, but a fair number of tractates have also been translated into English.

SBTS acquires more DSS fragments

THREE MORE Dead Sea Scroll fragments have been acquired by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary:

Fort Worth seminary obtains more pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Posted Friday, Oct. 22, 2010 (Star-Telegram)

FORT WORTH -- Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has acquired three more fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the seminary announced this week.

The fragments were obtained from a private collector in Europe through a gift from a friend of the seminary, according to a news release. Early analysis shows that the new fragments include two portions of Deuteronomy and one of the Psalms.

[...]

SBTS obtained three additional fragments early this year.

Sad News: Professor John Kevin Coyle

SAD NEWS: This in an e-mail from Pierluigi Piovanelli:

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I am extremely saddened to announce that Professor John Kevin Coyle, of St. Paul University, has suddenly passed away in the night of Wednesday, October 20.

Those who have known Kevin will remember him not only as a great scholar – he had just published in 2009 the volume Manichaeism and Its Legacy, a collection of his articles on Manichaeism in Brill’s prestigious series Nag Hammadi and Manichean Studies – but also and especially as a warm and generous person, a true gentleman. This is a terrible loss for all of us.

I am sure that his soul is presently climbing the column of glory and is not too far from her final destination in the paradise of light, where she will enjoy the company of Augustine and Mani.

May peace be upon him!

Requiescat in pace.

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

BOOK REVIEW in BAR:

The Dead Sea Scrolls, A Full History, Vol. 1

by Weston W. Fields

Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2009, 592 pp.
$99 (hardcover)

Reviewed by Charlotte Hempel

This lavishly illustrated volume contains a virtual mini-archive of the momentous events relating to the discovery, acquisition and early publication history of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Fields interviewed all the living major, as well as some minor, players or their family members in different parts of the world. Among them are Arab nomads, local Arab antiquities dealers, scholars, wealthy collectors and librarians. Fields studied the archives of universities and institutions in various countries and reproduces much of what he has discovered word for word.

[...]

Job in Jewish apocryphal lit and history of Judaism in antiquity

JOB:

Faculté de théologie et de sciences des religions

The Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies (FTSR) at the University of Lausanne invites applications for the following position:

Full professor or tenure-track position at the level of full professor in Jewish Apocryphal Literature and History of Judaism in Antiquity

Follow the link for details. The deadline is 31 December.

Project on multi-faith ancient biblical exegesis

A PROJECT to study multi-faith ancient biblical exegesis:

Scripture Through Jewish, Christian and Muslim Eyes

by Chana Ya'ar (Arutz Sheva)

A joint research project headed by Rabbi Mordechai Cohen of Yeshiva University and Professor Meir Bar-Asher at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University has launched a comparative study of early Biblical scholarship in the world’s three major monotheistic faiths.

The study, which began September 1 at the Jerusalem Institute for Advanced Studies, examines early Jewish, Christian and Muslim strategies of Scriptural reading and their contemporary implications

[...]

“In Judaism, we need only think of the riches offered by the Cairo Genizah [an accumulation of Jewish manuscript fragments that were found in the store room of the Ben Ezra Synagogue Cairo in the 19th century - ed.], from which extensive exegetical texts have now been published. Similar finds exist in Christian and Muslim interpretation. The time has come to study all of these interpretive traditions comparatively,” [Cohen] explained.

[...]

As part of its work, the team will study the basic Hebrew, Latin and Arabic (and in some cases Greek and Aramaic / Syriac) terminology and idioms of pre-modern interpretation.

[...]

Nag Hammadi murder trial update

NAG HAMMADI MURDER TRIAL UPDATE: Prosecutors call for death sentence for Naga Hammadi murder suspects. But the conclusion of the trial has now been rescheduled to 18 December.

Background here.

Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS is coming out in the UK in a week, and a couple of weeks later in the USA. Follow the link for details. The Amazon link is here. Professor Timothy Lim, co-editor of the volume, also has sent the table of contents. I have contributed an article on the Scrolls and mysticism.

Introduction: Current Issues in Dead Sea Scrolls Research
Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins

PART I ARCHAEOLOGY OF KHIRBET QUMRAN AND THE JUDAEAN WILDERNESS
1. Khirbet Qumran and its Environs
Eric M. Meyers

2. The Qumran Cemetery Reassessed
Rachel Hachlili

PART II THE SCROLLS AND
JEWISH HISTORY
3. Constructing Ancient Judaism from the Scrolls
Martin Goodman

4. The Origins and History of the Teacher’s Movement
Michael O. Wise

5. Women in Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Tal Ilan

PART III THE SCROLLS AND SECTARIANISM
6. Sectarian Communities in the Dead Sea Scrolls
John J. Collins

7. The Classical Sources on the Essenes and the Scrolls
Communities
Joan E. Taylor

8. Sociological Approaches to Qumran Sectarianism
Jutta Jokiranta

9. Qumran Calendars and Sectarianism
Sacha Stern

10. The Book of Enoch and the Qumran Scrolls
James C. VanderKam

PART IV THE BIBLICAL TEXTS, INTERPRETATION, AND LANGUAGES OF THE SCROLLS
11. Assessing the Text-Critical Theories of the Hebrew Bible after Qumran
Ronald S. Hendel

12. Authoritative Scriptures and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Timothy H. Lim

13. Rewritten Scripture
Molly M. Zahn

14. The Continuity of Biblical Interpretation in the Qumran Scrolls and Rabbinic Literature
Bilhah Nitzan

15. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek in the Qumran Scrolls
Jan Joosten

PART V RELIGIOUS THEMES IN THE SCROLLS
16. Purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Jonathan Klawans

17. Apocalypticism and Messianism
Michael A. Knibb

18. Exploring the Mystical Background of the Dead Sea Scrolls
James R. Davila

19. Wisdom Literature and Thought in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Armin Lange

20. Iranian Connections in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Albert De Jong

21. Was the Dead Sea Sect a Penitential Movement?
David Lambert

PART VI THE SCROLLS AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY
22. Critical Issues in the Investigation of the Scrolls and the New Testament
Jo¨rg Frey

23. Monotheism, Principal Angels, and the Background of Christology
L. W. Hurtado

24. Shared Exegetical Traditions between the Scrolls and the New Testament
George J. Brooke

PART VII THE SCROLLS AND LATER JUDAISM
25. Halakhah between the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Literature
Aharon Shemesh

26. The Contribution of the Qumran Scrolls to the Study of Ancient Jewish Liturgy
Daniel K. Falk

27. Reviewing the Links between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Cairo Genizah
Stefan C. Reif

PART VIII NEW APPROACHES TO THE SCROLLS
28. Rhetorical Criticism and the Reading of the Qumran Scrolls
Carol A. Newsom

29. Roland Barthes and the Teacher of Righteousness: The Death of the Author of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Maxine L. Grossman

30. The Scrolls and the Legal Definition of Authorship
Hector L. Macqueen

More on Google's planned Dead Sea Scrolls archive

GOOGLE'S PLAN with the IAA to put the Dead Sea Scrolls online (noted here) has received endless media coverage, most of it repetitive. But here's an interesting little photo essay from National Geographic.

UPDATE: Reader Luke Richards calls my attention to a glaring error that I should have noticed myself:

Discovered in caves near the Dead Sea in the 1940s and 1950s, the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek scrolls date to between 150 B.C. and A.D. 70. They include copies of nearly every book in the Old Testament as well as others that are not part of the traditional canon, such as the Gospel of Judas (time line of early Christianity).

That'll teach me to skim a source before linking, even if it's the normally reputable National Geographic Society. The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic Christian text in Coptic which was apparently found in Egypt. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls. It seems that someone at the National Geographic Society has been reading too much Dan Brown.

More on the planted graves at Mamilla cemetery

MORE ON THOSE PLANTED GRAVES at the Mamilla cemetery in Jerusalem:

Arutz Sheva Report Leads Court to Check Out False Arab Graves

by Elad Benari
Follow Israel news on Twitter and Facebook.

The Jerusalem Magistrates Court held a discussion on Wednesday regarding the ancient Muslim cemetery in the city’s center. The Muslim Waqf had asked the court to force the Jerusalem Municipality to stop the actions it has taken to remove the false graves that had been planted in the area, in an attempt to add property to the cemetery..

[...]

Background here amd here.

Daniel Matt on the Zohar

DANIEL MATT is lecturing in NYC on the Zohar:

Daniel Matt: Revealing the Secrets of the Zohar

Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Mark Pearlman (The Jewish Week)
JInsider

Kabbalah – the ancient study of Jewish mysticism – continues to be one of the spiritual movements du jour in Hollywood and around the world. If you are interested in exploring why Kabbalah is relevant today, you should attend one of the lectures by world-renowned author and lecturer Dan Matt when he makes a rare visit to NYC on Halloween Weekend (10/29 - 10/31). To experience Matt’s thoughtful wisdom, below are highlights from an interview with him about various teachable moments from the Kabbalah.

[...]

I have been following Professor Matt's progress on his Zohar translation for many years. Background here, here, here, and here and follow the links.

The Tomb of Ezekiel in the NYT

THE TOMB OF EZEKIEL (traditional) gets some coverage in the New York Times. Article here. Excerpt:

The historic core includes not only Ezekiel’s tomb and the synagogue around it, but also a precariously leaning 14th-century minaret of a mosque long since destroyed, and a vaulted T-shaped bazaar built in the 1800s under Ottoman rule, when Jews and Muslims lived in relative tolerance, if not exactly harmony.

All are at the center of Kifl’s redevelopment plan, still under consideration and very much contested. A copy of the plan, hanging on the wall of the mayor’s office, depicts modern hotels, restaurants, shops, parks, parking lots and even a boat launch on the Euphrates shore: Kifl in 2030.

“We hope everyone who visits Iraq comes to Kifl,” said the mayor, Khalid Obeid Hamza.

His ambitions are as grand as the Malaysian city he improbably cited, when asked, as the inspiration for the plans.

“Kuala Lumpur,” he said. “It’s a very nice place.”

The plan, like the restoration work, has been greeted with deep suspicion by Kifl’s residents, including the tailors, shop owners and restaurateurs who work in the covered bazaar. Last month Kifl’s residents staged a protest, fearing the redevelopment would force them out.

“If it’s good for my work, but hurts others, I won’t accept it,” said a baker, Malik Ali, expressing fears that hotels and restaurants for tourists would ruin the town’s historic, albeit worn, charm.

He then echoed a familiar Iraqi lament: “I wish the restoration work would start with electricity and water and sewage.”

In fact, the restoration of the tomb and its environs had barely started before it came under attack. News reports early this year that the project aimed to turn Ezekiel’s tomb into a mosque, removing architectural details like carvings in Hebrew, provoked a fury in Israel and beyond.

The reports were false — the carvings remain in place, as do the wooden balustrades that separated the men’s and women’s sections and a carved cabinet that once held the Torah — but the fears were not without some foundation.

Modern plaster, including some with painted Hebrew words and designs, was removed, ostensibly to expose the original stone walls, which have their own designs.

Photographs here and video here. Some of the Hebrew inscriptions appear in both.

I have been following the fate of the Tomb of Ezekiel for some time. Start here and follow the links back. I am very pleased that the site has been getting some renovation funding and some attention from the international media.

John Dominic Crossan interviewed

JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN is interviewed by the Religion News Service about his new book on the Lord's Prayer:

10 minutes with … John Dominic Crossan

By Ron Csillag

(RNS) John Dominic Crossan is arguably the world’s foremost scholar of the historical Jesus. Twenty-five years ago, Crossan co-founded the Jesus Seminar with Robert Funk, a group of mostly liberal scholars who decide on the historicity of the deeds and sayings of Jesus.

A former Roman Catholic priest and professor emeritus of religious studies at DePaul University, Crossan newest book—his 26th—looks at the Lord’s Prayer, or the Our Father. In “The Greatest Prayer,” Crossan argues that Christianity’s best-known invocation is misunderstood and undervalued in today’s society.

[...]

Back in St. Andrews

BACK IN ST. ANDREWS. More tomorrow.

Heading back to Scotland

HEADING BACK TO SCOTLAND later this morning. Look for me again late on Wednesday at the earliest.

Junk History Watch: Algerian Paper Claims Torah Scroll Includes Name of Mohammed

JUNK HISTORY WATCH: Algerian Paper Claims Torah Scroll Includes Name of Mohammed. The word in question is actually a Hebrew adjective in the Song of Songs. It would be great if a second-century CE scroll of the Song of Songs were discovered in Jerusalem, but I certainly haven't heard this from anywhere else.

Dead Sea scrolls to go on Google archive

FROM CAVES TO COMPUTERS: Dead Sea scrolls to go on Google archive.

Review: Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011

BOOK REVIEW:

Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011 by Gordon Campbell – review

A history of the King James Version celebrates the Bible's stunning scholarship – and drunken misprints

* Daisy Hay
* The Observer, Sunday 17 October 2010
* Article history

Part way through this history of the King James Bible, Gordon Campbell turns his attention from the 17th century to our own age. "It would be difficult now," he writes, "to bring together a group of more than 50 scholars with the range of languages and knowledge of other disciplines that characterised the KJV translators. We may live in a world with more knowledge, but it is populated by people with less knowledge."

Campbell's book demonstrates that this conclusion is depressingly accurate. The King James Version was, first and foremost, an unbelievable feat of scholarship: its translators were fluent in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Ethiopic, as well as being expert theologians and Bible historians. It was also an organisational feat, which brought together Britain's leading scholars in tiers of companies and committees, and which entailed a concerted effort by cohorts of printers, typesetters and bookbinders.

[...]

This seems to be turning into one of those media memes that journalists mouth without bothering to check the facts. That's the depressing part. I don't know if Campbell is being quoted in context, but if he is, he should know better. Briefly, yes it would be a challenge to organize such a project, but not an overwhelming one, and no it would not be hard to find the requisite number of specialists. The More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project has an international team of scholars about the same size as the one that produced the King James Bible and the MOTP contributors cover a much wider range of languages and specialties. Mercifully, we don't have "tiers of companies and committees." My comments here also apply.

Phoenicia reaches Lebanon

THE GOOD SHIP PHOENICIA has reached Lebanon:

PHOENICIA MAKES LANDFALL IN LEBANON

(Gibraltar Chronicle)

After 20,000 miles and two years at sea, Phoenicia has arrived at the ancient Phoenician port of Sidon in Lebanon

Nearing completion of a voyage to circumnavigate Africa the replica 600 BC ship has been warmly received in Lebanon by the coordinators of www.phoenicia.org.uk - a website dedicated to furthering knowledge about Phoenician history and culture. In Lebanon the ship will stay for a few days in port Sidon before sailing north to the capital, Beirut, where a ceremony is planned to mark the 2,600 year anniversary of the Phoenicians original circumnavigation. Mr George Faddoul from www.phoenicia.org.uk is coordinating the ship’s visit to Lebanon and the events in Beirut taking place between 15th-20th October.

[...]

Background here. After the ceremony the ship sails to Syria.

The Mesha Stele and President Ahmadinejad

THE MESHA STELE is invoked by Arutz Sheva in response to President Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon:

Ahmadinejad spoke before thousands of supporters in the afternoon at Bint Jbeil, the scene of a battle between the IDF and Iranian puppet militia Hizbullah in the Second Lebanon War. As predicted by expert Mordechai Kedar on Arutz Sheva, Ahmadinejad told the audience: “You fought at the front line against the aggressors and Zionist occupiers,” adding: “You proved that no country will succeed in breaking the Lebanese resistance.”

He predicted that “the Zionists will go back to the place they came from.”

Bint Jbeil, he said, “is “the capital of freedom, the capital of resistance.” The town, he said, “holds its head high and will hold out until the last moment” whereas “the Zionists will not last long.”

[...]

The nation of Israel has a long history of facing enemies who swear to annihilate it, as Ahmadinejad does. The Passover Hagaddah recounts that “in every generation, they arise to destroy us, and the Holy One, Blessed Be He saves us from them.”

In the Mesha stele, a tablet discovered in what is now Jordan, the king of ancient Moab declares that he fought against a Jewish king, but was victorious, adding: “And Israel suffered everlasting destruction.” The tablet dates from the 9th century BCE. There are no traceable Moabites in the world today..

The article might also have noted a similar premature claim in the thirteenth-century BCE Merneptah Stele, which says, "Israel is laid waste, its seed is not."

New Book: Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory

NEW BOOK:

Cherub Press is proud to announce the publication of
the 26th volume in the book series, “Sources and Studies in the Literature of Jewish Mysticism”

Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory
Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism

by Daniel Abrams
foreword by David Greetham

* * *

Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism, by Daniel Abrams, foreword by David Greetham, SSLJM 26; 2010, 761 pp., hardcover, ISBN 1-933379-18-9, in English, $49. Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory uncovers the unstated assumptions and expectations of scribes and scholars who fashioned editions from manuscripts of Jewish mystical literature. This study offers a theory of kabbalistic textuality in which the material book – the printed page no less than handwritten manuscripts – serves as the site for textual dialogue between Jewish mystics of different periods and locations. The refashioning of the text through the process of reading and commenting that takes place on the page – in the margins and between the lines – blurs the boundaries between the traditionally defined roles of author, reader, commentator and editor. This study shows that kabbalists and academic editors reinvented the text in their own image, as part of a fluid textual process that was nothing short of transformative.

Via the Agade list.

Roitman lecturing tonight on DSS

ADOLFO ROITMAN is lecturing tonight on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Springfield, Missouri:

Adolfo Roitman, curator of the Shrine of the Book and guardian of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Israel, will present a public lecture, "The Dead Sea Scrolls -- Myth and Reality," this evening.

A video produced by the Israel Museum that portrays life among the Essenes, often called the Dead Sea Scrolls community, will introduce the presentation, which will be followed by a question-and-answer period.

Dr. Roitman is on a North American tour.

Pictures: King Herod's VIP Box Excavated

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Pictures: King Herod's VIP Box Excavated.

Off to San Diego

I'M OFF TO SAN DIEGO to visit family. I'll be busy, but I'll try to keep up some blogging. Look for me late this evening San Diego time or, more likely, on Wednesday.

UPDATE: Unplanned overnight stay in Amsterdam due to a technical glitch in Edinburgh which made us miss our connection. Could be late Wednesday evening or Thursday before I can get back to blogging.

Things look pretty quiet right now, but here's something via the Agade list.

From Cook, Edward M. (COOKE@cua.edu):
==================================

The Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, announces a public recital, "An Evening of Neo-Aramaic Literature: Readings in Neo-Aramaic Poetry and Proverbs," with department member Dr. Shawqi Talia, Reader in Arabic and Neo-Aramaic. The event is open to the public.

The recital will be held Thursday, Oct. 28th beginning at 4:30 pm in the May Gallery of the Mullen Library on campus. Please direct enquiries to cua-semitics@cua.edu for more details.

Exciting New Books

EXCITING NEW BOOKS are noted at the Talmud Blog. And notice also this post at Hagahot on a new book on Automatic Writing in the Zoharic literature. The latter makes me think of Ezra's reception of the 94 lost scriptures in 4 Ezra 14:37-48.

UPDATE: More new books from the SBL:

THREE NEW TITLES FROM THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE

The Bible in Theory: Critical and Postcritical Essays
Stephen D. Moore

The sixteen essays assembled in this volume, four of them co-authored, chart the successive phases of a professional life lived in the interstices of Bible and “theory.” Engaging such texts as the Song of Songs, 4 Maccabees, Mark, Luke-Acts, John, and Romans, and such themes as the quest for the historical Jesus, the essays simultaneously traverse postmodernism, deconstruction, New Historicism, autobiographical criticism, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, masculinity studies, queer theory, and “posttheory.” Individual essay introductions and periodic annotated bibliographies make the volume an advanced introduction to biblical literary criticism.

Paper $51.95 • 480 pages • ISBN 9781589835061• Resources for Biblical Study • Hardback edition www.brill.nl

Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from Iron Age
Christopher A. Rollston

Ancient Northwest Semitic inscriptions from Israel, Phoenicia, Syria, Moab, Ammon, Edom, and Philistia enlighten and sharpen our vision of the Old Testament world in various ways. Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel focuses on this epigraphic evidence in order to broaden our understanding of the techniques and roles of writing, education, and literacy during this biblical period. To that end, the volume systematically covers scribal education; scribal implements; writing media such as stones, potsherds, and plaster; and the religious, administrative, and personal uses of writing. Its “handbook” format makes it easily accessible, including for use as a textbook in courses addressing the cultural context of ancient Israel.

Paper $21.95 • 192 pages • ISBN 9781589831070 • Archaeology and Biblical Studies • Hardback edition www.brill.nl

Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri
James R. Royse

In textual criticism, the “scribal habits” in a manuscript (tendencies to make various sorts of changes) must be known in order to evaluate its testimony. Colwell analyzed the scribal habits in P45, P66, and P75, by examining their singular readings. This book expands on Colwell’s work by studying P45, P46, P47, P66, P72, and P75, the six most extensive early New Testament manuscripts. All the singular readings in these papyri are studied along with all the corrections. The results, which incorporate many revised readings of these papyri, make possible the more precise use of these papyri in textual criticism. Among the important discoveries is that the general tendency of these early scribes was to omit rather than to add.

Paper $89.95 • 1088 pages • ISBN 9781589835221 • Brill Reprints • Hardback edition www.brill.nl

Review of Alter, The Wisdom Books

ROBERT ALTER'S THE WISDOM BOOKS is reviewed in Jewish Ideas Daily:

Englishing the Hebrew Bible

By David Curzon

All translators of the Hebrew Bible into English work in the shadow of the genius of the King James Version (KJV), done in the 17th century and still in wide use today despite its thee's and thou's. The diction of the KJV has been modernized in the Revised Standard Version (1962) and the New Revised Standard Version (1989). Jewish translations, following the sequence and other features of the Hebrew Bible, and guided by rabbinic understandings, have been brought out by the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) and others.

In the 1980s, the American literary critic and scholar Robert Alter began publishing original studies of the Hebrew Bible that yielded, among other books, The Art of Biblical Narrative and The Art of Biblical Poetry. In 1987 he co-edited, with the late Frank Kermode, The Literary Guide to the Bible, a volume of essays by diverse authors on the books of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Since then he has been publishing his own translations into contemporary English of, to borrow his titles, The Five Books of Moses, The David Story, and The Book of Psalms. The newest addition to this ongoing project, just published, is The Wisdom Books, consisting of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. All of these translations, informed by both scholarly understanding and literary sensitivity, are accompanied by detailed commentaries free of jargon. Anyone interested in the Hebrew Bible should become familiar with Alter's undertaking.

[...]

Earlier review noted here.

JSNT Booklist 2010

IN THE MAIL:

JSNT Booklist 2010

This came a while ago and I've been meaning to mention it. It can also be accessed online, but you need a personal or institutional subscription.

Queen Helena of Adiabene

QUEEN HELENA OF ADIABENE, whose sarcophagus has just returned from France to go on loan in Jerusalem, is profiled by Judith Weingarten in her Zenobia: Empress of the East blog.

Another Torah Scroll from Iraq?

ANOTHER TORAH SCROLL FROM IRAQ?

Iraq loses sleep after Torah finds its way into Israel

Officials say ancient scroll was never a part of museum

* By Jumana Al Tamimi, Associate Editor
* Published: 00:00 October 8, 2010
* Gulf News

Dubai: An ancient handwritten Torah scroll has mysteriously been sent to Israel from Iraq. The Israeli media reported how the scroll arrived in the country, but do not seem to know where it came from.

The Iraqi authorities say it was never part of their state museum and that there is no record of it in the archive for artefacts.

At the same time, however, they've approached the foreign ministry and the Interpol office in Baghdad requesting that the ancient scroll be retrieved, on the basis that because it was sent from Iraq, it is the property of Iraq — irrespective of whether it was owned by the government or by the private sector.

News of the ancient scroll surfaced a few weeks ago when Israeli TV Channel 7 announced its arrival in the country, claiming "an amount" of money had been paid for it.

"The Iraqi cultural ministry, then, wrote to the foreign ministry and Interpol to initiate a follow-up and verification, and to confirm that at a later stage the scroll would be returned to Iraq," said Abdul Zahra Al Talqani, a spokesman for the Iraqi Tourism ministry.

"Because it's illegal to have any Iraqi scroll or artefacts in any other country except Iraq — according to international conventions and treaties — including Unesco's 1970 treaty which prohibits trading of historic artefacts (anywhere in the world)," Al Talqani told Gulf News.

[...]

A few years ago there was another story about a Torah Scroll taken from Iraq, but to the United States, not Israel (noted here; Dorothy Lobel King has recent commentary here). This seems to be a different scroll. I would take the "ancient" with a grain of salt. Technically, something is ancient if it is older than Charlemagne, the rise of Islam, or the fall of Rome (take your pick, I usually use the middle one). But colloquially people use it to mean "way old," often dating anywhere from the first MTV video to several centuries ago. I suspect this Torah comes from the earlier end of the latter range, but I would like to have some clearer information on its age.

The Iraqi Jewish archive is also mentioned. I have posted endlessly on it, most recently here.

UPDATE: Bad link now fixed!

Review of Tobias and the Angel

APOCRYPHA WATCH Tobias and the Angel is reviewed at NPR:

Classical Lost And Found: Jonathan Dove's Heavenly 'Angel'

Categories: Classical Lost And Found

11:27 am

October 6, 2010

by Bob McQuiston

Short, single-act operas on religious themes — church operas, as they are often called — are something of a British specialty. Continuing in the tradition of works like Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde, English composer Jonathan Dove gives us Tobias and the Angel. It's based on a story from the Book of Tobit contained in the Apocrypha.

With mystical as well as Jewish folk elements in the scenario, Dove proves he’s one of today's most inventive opera composers. It's apparent in the scoring alone, which calls for eight soloists, a male quartet, three substantial choruses, and an iridescent chamber ensemble with accordion and organ.

[...]

There's also an audio file of one of the tracks.

The Three Faiths Exhibition at the NY Public Library

THE THREE FAITHS EXHIBITION at the New York Public Library includes some interesting ancient texts:

The rare Library works on view include a Veiled Prophet manuscript from Istanbul (1594); the Scroll of Esther from Amsterdam (1686); the Harkness Gospels in Latin, from Landévennec, Britanny (circa year 900); and Two Gold Amulets and Case from Irbid, Jordan (5th-6th century). The Veiled Prophet manuscript on display is the third of six volumes that contain a Turkish translation of the Prophet’s biography; it was completed in Cairo in 1386 and presented to a local ruler. The 100 inches of the treasured 17th-century Scroll of Esther, a megillah, is displayed, described, and explained. The small amulets on display, written in Aramaic on gold foil, were discovered in Jewish tombs and likely worn as jewelry by the deceased. The Harkness Gospels is the earliest Western manuscript in The New York Public Library. The volume in the exhibition is of considerable textual and artistic importance; it comes from an abbey located in the far reaches of Brittany, near present-day Brest, which was abandoned in the midst of Viking raids in the year 919.

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.