New book on Hannibal

PUNIC WATCH – New book on Hannibal:

Office Hours: Robert Garland
Professor Tackles Hannibal and his Legacy in New Book

By Nate Lynch (Colgate Maroon-News)

Published: Thursday, December 2, 2010

Updated: Thursday, December 2, 2010 13:12

Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster Professor of the Classics Robert Garland recently published Hannibal, part of the "Ancients in Action" series, in April of this year. The book tries to explain the somewhat enigmatic historical character of Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who famously led a massive expedition of infantry, cavalry and elephants over the Alps in an attack on Rome during the Second Punic War. The book was published by the Bristol Classical Press and is available at the Colgate University Bookstore.

The goal of the "Ancients in Action" series is to provide short incisive books introducing 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 civilization.

Garland began work on Hannibal about three years ago with this goal in mind, but also to examine the events surrounding Hannibal from the general's own perspective and convey his personal admiration for his achievements and perseverance.

[...]

New book: Aramaica Qumranica

NEW BOOK:

Aramaica Qumranica
Proceedings of the Conference on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran in Aix-en-Provence 30 June - 2July 2008
Edited by Katell Berthelot and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (STDJ 94; Leiden: Brill, 2010)

The Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls represent roughly 13% of the Qumran library and correspond to a wide range of genres and topics. This book consists of the proceedings of a conference on the Aramaic scrolls from Qumran which took place in Aix-en-Provence in 2008. It includes both the papers themselves and a transcription of the discussions. The 22 papers tackle linguistic, exegetical and historical questions, focusing in particular on: the relation of the Aramaic texts to what we know as the Hebrew Bible; their literary genres; the question of their sectarian or non-sectarian provenance; the character of the corpus, and specifically its relevance to the development of apocalypticism and messianism in the Jewish tradition.

More reviews of Landau, Revelation of the Magi

MORE REVIEWS of Brent Landau, The Revelation of the Magi: by Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed and by Therese J. Borchard at Catholic San Francisco. McKnight is skeptical of the comparatively early date that Landau assigns to the work.

Given the season, I expect that this book will get a lot more attention in the coming weeks.

For earlier reviews, go here.

UPDATE (11 December): Landau responds to McKnight.

Israeli rabbis tell Jews not to sell homes to Arabs

UNHELPFUL:

Israeli rabbis tell Jews not to sell homes to Arabs

Tue Dec 7, 2010 9:37am EST

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Dozens of Israeli rabbis, some of them civil servants, issued an appeal on Tuesday telling locals not to sell or rent property to non-Jews, drawing condemnation from lawmakers and human rights activists.

The open letter underscored Jewish-Arab tensions that have deepened along with Israel's deadlocked Palestinian conflict, as well as more recent demographic fears triggered by an influx of illegal African migrants.

"The Land of Israel is intended for the people of Israel," Yosef Shainin, chief rabbi of the southern port city of Ashdod and one of the 41 signatories, told Israel's Army Radio when asked about the letter.

Obtained by Reuters ahead of its planned publication in synagogues and religious journals, the letter quotes warnings by ancient sages that living with non-Jews can lead to "sacrilege." Other concerns for property values are also raised.

[...]

I can't find the full text of this letter anywhere online. Presumably it will become available when it is actually published. (If the writers don't have sense enough now to cancel publication.) In a CNN article another line from the letter is quoted as: "In answer to many questions, we reply that it is prohibited by the Torah to sell a house or field in Israel to a gentile."

Since no specific passages from ancient texts are cited, it is difficult to comment in any specific way about their use. In general, it is true that some biblical passages and passages in the early rabbinic texts warn Israelites/Jews not to associate with their pagan polytheist neighbors because of the danger of adopting their idolatrous ways. Polytheistic and idolatrous rites permeated pagan societies, since there was no distinction between religion and other elements of society in those times. Nevertheless, polytheists who adopted Israelite ways, including monotheistic devotion to the Israelite God, were welcome. Conversion wasn't particularly encouraged at any period (and is a massively complicated topic that I won't go into here), but it was accepted if outsiders wanted to join up (see, e.g., the Book of Ruth).

The point here is that such biblical and rabbinic passages were aimed at very specific social circumstances a long time ago. It is disingenuous and unhelpful to try to apply them today to, apparently, Muslims – that is, fellow monotheists – in a pluralistic society where societal structures allow and indeed assume that people will practice different religious faiths peaceably in the same society.

The writers of this letter have the right to express their views, but I wish they would keep the ancient texts out it.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Pitkowsky points me to the full Hebrew text of the letter here. He also comments at the Menachem Mendel blog.

Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day 2010

PRETEND TO BE A TIME TRAVELER DAY is today. Try to stay out of trouble.

Book review: Colleen Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy

BOOK REVIEW, in the Journal of Theological Studies:

Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostles’s Life and Thought. By Colleen Shantz.

Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostles’s Life and Thought. By Colleen Shantz. Pp. viii + 267. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. isbn 978 0 521 86610 1. £45/$80.

1. Quinton Deeley

+ Author Affiliations

1.
Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London

1. Christopher Rowland

+ Author Affiliations

1.
University of Oxford christopher.rowland@queens.ox.ac.uk

The first thing that needs to be said about this remarkable book is that it is an exciting and brave book. The second of those epithets might be a prelude to a polite rejection of its findings because they are tendentious, or stray beyond the bounds of what is currently acceptable in the discipline. That is not the case. There is no doubt that this is an unusual thesis, but its peculiarity is the reason for its bravery. It is explicitly interdisciplinary, and, what is more, retraces a course which has been eschewed by much modern historical scholarship—the application of neuroscience to the religious experience of the leading New Testament writer, Paul of Tarsus. There is a double jeopardy here: interdisciplinarity, of course, but also the exploration of the experience which is referred to in (and behind) the text as a significant factor in the writer’s experience and one that has major ramifications for understanding his thought. The interdisciplinary nature of this book has prompted the need for a comprehensive review in which the different facets of this book can be adequately assessed. We have been engaged in an ongoing conversation on the nature of visionary experience over the last three years, together with Professor Stephen Pattison of the University of Birmingham and this joint review has arisen out of that collaboration.

Colleen Shantz’s study explores a neglected field, and suspicion of mysticism and religious experience, rooted in theological fear of the dynamic unpredictability of the mystical and the experiential in Christianity, has coloured the way these issues have been treated within biblical studies. The book, which started life as a doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Leif Vaage, represents something of a milestone in the spasmodic, but necessary, exploration of the nature of early Christian experience and in ...

Full text available only with personal or institution subscription.

It's exciting to see this sort of work being done, which takes mystical experience seriously as an input to foundational religious traditions.

Happy 6th blogiversary to Ralph the Sacred River

HAPPY 6TH BLOGIVERSARY TO RALPH THE SACRED RIVER.

New book: Halakha in Light of Epigraphy

NEW BOOK: Halakha in Light of Epigraphy.

Robert Eisenman in Malaysia – plus defense of original DSS team

PROFESSOR ROBERT EISENMAN has been lecturing in Malaysia and is profiled in the Malaysia Star. I learned something: I didn't know that he had been an anti-Beat beatnik. Be that as it may, I'm going to stick with "controversial" to describe his views. And I do have to comment on this, which hits a sore spot:

“We said (the [Dead Sea] scrolls) should be open to anybody,” said Prof Eisenman. “It should be free for anyone – religious, non-religious, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, whoever – to look at the scrolls for themselves. And the Israelis didn’t want that. They wanted their scholars to see the documents and write the principal work so that their version would be the official interpretation.”

I make no assumption that Professor Eisenman is being quoted correctly, but I'll respond to the charge as stated. The above quote is flirting with conspiracy theorizing and the last two sentences are simply wrong. The original team were Christians (Protestants and Catholics), plus one agnostic (Allegro), which hardly seems like the ideal makeup for Israeli mouthpieces. Indeed the Jordanian government had the ultimate remit for assembling the team and they made it a condition that no Jewish scholar be included.

Regarding the later expansion of the team when the Israelis were in charge, I was one of the doctoral students to whom original team members reassigned Scrolls material to publish in the 1980s. I knew the other students and we had a wide range of political, religious, and theological views (and no one ever showed the slightest interest in asking us about any of these views). The expansion of the team to 40 or more included Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

The original team of eight was simply too small for the size of the job, which was an understandable mistake given that no one had ever tried to coordinate a manuscript publication project of that size and complexity before. That said, a team that had been much larger would have strained the space and resources available in the Rockefeller Museum, where the team spent ten years sorting the tens of thousands of fragments into manuscripts. It is also understandable, and very human, that they were reluctant to give up the material after they had spent so many years of their lives on this basic task of reconstruction, for which they still get little credit. Nevertheless, this project was far better coordinated, executed, and completed than the publication of, say, the Oxyrhynchus papyri or the Cairo Geniza archive, neither of which are anywhere near being fully published after more than a century.

Our resources for this sort of project are almost inconceivably better than those available to the original team of Scrolls researchers and they should be judged in the context of the time in which they were working. I'm sure they could have done better, had they been granted our perspective and hindsight with a flashforward, but could we have done better than they did if we didn't know what we know now?

I have offered these and other points in defense of the original team here, here, here, and here.

Regarding the rest of the quote above, of course the material should be available to anyone to study. Happily, it now is. I'm not aware of any Muslim or Buddhist specialists in the Scrolls, but we would all be glad to hear their insights if they turn up.

USA Today on The Revelation of the Magi

THE REVELATION OF THE MAGI in its new translation by Brent Landau is profiled by USA Today:

Were the Three Wise Men from China?

By Michelle Healy, USA TODAY

The story of the Three Wise Men is one of the most familiar and beloved parts of the Christmas story. But for all of their popularity, the mysterious travelers from the East — known as the Magi — appear in only one short passage in the New Testament, following a star to the site of Jesus' birth and bringing gifts of gold, francincense and myrrh. Many religious scholars aren't even sure they really existed.

Now, a first-ever English translation and detailed analysis of a little-known eighth-century text uncovers a far more substantial version of the wise men story.

[...]

Landau's book, Revelation of the Magi: The Lost Tale of the Wise Men's Journey to Bethlehem (HarperOne) describes the Magi as an ancient mystical sect descended from Seth, the pious and virtuous third son of Adam and Eve. From Seth they inherited a prophecy of "a star of indescribable brightness" someday appearing and "heralding the birth of God in human form." This same star had initially hovered over the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.

[...]

It's a pretty good article, but I would be happier with it if it had said more explicitly that The Revelation of the Magi is a manuscript of a second- or third-century CE text that gives a legendary account of Matthew's (probably already legendary) magi. It tells us nothing about any actual magi in the first century, although potentially it could tell us quite a lot about an interesting Christian author (and community?) in the second or third century.

Background here. More on Matthew's magi and the historical magi here.

Incidentally, the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project is publishing a quotation fragment from a text called The Apocryphon of Seth which deals with some related Seth legends.

'Study' denying Jews' right to Kotel resurfaces

IT'S BACK:

'Study' denying Jews' right to Kotel resurfaces

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH (Jerusalem Post)
12/04/2010 17:57

Document which sparked strong condemnations from Israel and the US returns on official website of the PA’s news agency Wafa.
Talkbacks (26)

Only days after it was removed from the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Information website, a “study” denying Jews’ rights to the Western Wall has resurfaced, this time on the official website of the PA’s news agency, Wafa.

By publishing the document on Wafa’s website, the official mouthpiece of the PLO and the PA, the authority has sent a message that its has officially endorsed its findings.

[...]

It's back and it's still bogus. I hope the Obama Administration and others renew their protests. Background here.

Symposium on Syria's Ugaritic Alphabet

IN PARIS: Symposium on Syria's Ugaritic Alphabet. This to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the decipherment of Ugaritic.

Congratulations to Seth Sanders

CONGRATULATION to Seth Sanders, recipient of the Frank Moore Cross Award.

Trinity News press release:

The Frank Moore Cross Award is Bestowed on Trinity’s Seth Sanders

Honor is for Most Substantial Book on Near Eastern Epigraphy, Tradition

HARTFORD, Conn. – Back in the late 1980s, Seth L. Sanders studied at Harvard College under one of the most eminent Biblical scholars of the 20th century, Frank Moore Cross Jr. Thus, it’s only fitting that Sanders, assistant professor of religion at Trinity, was recently awarded the 2010 Frank Moore Cross Award for Sanders’s 2009 volume, The Invention of Hebrew, which argues that Hebrew was the first successful vernacular literature.

In comparing Biblical documents with ancient texts in Hebrew, Ugaritic and Babylonian, Sanders’s book demonstrates the ways in which Hebrew was a “powerfully self-conscious political language [and] how Hebrew assumed and promoted a source of power previously unknown in written literature: the people as the protagonist of religion and politics.”

The award, named in honor of Cross, now professor emeritus at the Harvard Divinity School, is presented annually by the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), based at Boston University.

Founded in 1900, ASOR’s mission is to initiate, encourage and support research and public understanding of the peoples and cultures of the Near East from the earliest times. The organization has more than 1,300 individual and 95 institutional members. The Frank Moore Cross Award is given to the author of “the most substantial volume related to ancient Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean epigraphy, text and/or tradition.”

In issuing its citation for the award, ASOR praised Sanders’s book for being “the first to approach the Bible in light of recent findings in the history of writing.” Noting that researchers and historians have engaged in “bitter, old debates over whether the Bible is history or ideology,” debates that rightfully should give way to productive new ones over the relationship between the Bible’s written form and its political power, ASOR credits The Invention of Hebrew with documenting “distinct ways in which Hebrew was a powerfully self-conscious political language.”

The Invention of Hebrew, published by the University of Illinois Press, was also a finalist in the scholarship category of the 2009 National Jewish Book Awards. Sanders, a member of Trinity’s faculty since 2007, received his B.A. from Harvard and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He is also the editor of the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions. On sabbatical this year, Sanders is working on a second book, Divine Personae and Journeys to Heaven: Ancient Near Eastern Elements of Early Jewish Mysticism and Apocalypticism.

In reviewing The Invention of Hebrew, Alex Golub, professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii, said, ”Seth Sanders combines anthropology and biblical studies to describe how Hebrew came to be used so widely, and to explain the unique status of the Bible as a written document.”

Golub described the book as “extremely clearly written,” and one that “even has a certain flair to it.” Continuing, he said, “In my opinion, this book is great. It combines so many fields that have been kept separate, compares ancient Israel with so many other cultures and societies. Reading Sanders’s book, you feel as if your eyes have been opened and the fog has lifted on a lot of ancient history.”

On entering Harvard, Sanders thought he was going to be an artist. But he found that religion and mythology fascinated him. In particular, he became interested in connecting social theory with ancient myth and inscriptions. Eventually, that led to his research and subsequent book.

“I thought there might be something about the form in which the Bible is written that might explain the power of its content,” he said.

“Some people want to see events in the Bible as entirely true and accurate,” he added. “Other people see it as all propaganda or nostalgia. There’s enough solid evidence to decide either way. My book doesn’t end the debate but it may provide more solid ground historically.”

Although The Invention of Hebrew is primarily intended for academic use, Sanders said that he wrote the book in a way that lay people could understand and appreciate, as well as those interested in Jewish studies, anthropology and political thought.

ASOR’s U.S.-based coordination center, its publications program and its three affiliated overseas centers in the Middle East have been in the forefront of America research efforts for more than a century. Among ASOR’s distinguished alumni are many of the world’s major Near Eastern and Biblical scholars.

According to ASOR’s web site, its main purpose is to “enable properly qualified persons to pursue Biblical, linguistic, archaeological, historical, and other kindred studies…under more favorable conditions than can be secured at a distance from the Holy Land.”

ASOR disseminates news of the latest research findings in its publications and through lectures at its annual meeting, which brings together scholars from around the world. The Frank Moore Cross Award is one of seven honors that ASOR bestows each year.

Seth also has a blog called Serving the Word.

Praise of the Steinsaltz Talmud

THE STEINSALTZ TALMUD is praised by Mordechai Beck at the Guardian blog.

Background here.

More on Magdala synagogue

MORE ON THE FIRST-CENTURY CE SYNAGOGUE found in Magdala last year: Patricia Corrigan reports at JWeekly.com. Excerpt:

The discovery of the Magdala synagogue occurred after the center, a Christian guesthouse in Jerusalem operated by the Legionaries of Christ, decided to build a hotel and visitor center near the Sea of Galilee. They chose to build in Magdala, said to be the home of Mary Magdalene, about 100 miles north of Jerusalem.

Before the complex could be built, however, the government required that there be an archaeological investigation on the site. The dig, directed by Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Arfan Najar of the Israel Antiquities Authority, began in July 2009. One month later, workers uncovered the first remains of the synagogue.

Archaeologists have since unearthed pottery, coins and frescoes that have retained their vivid colors through the centuries. Magdala was one of several Galilean towns where Christians often shared the synagogues with Jews. The synagogue may have been destroyed during a Jewish revolt against Roman rule between 66 A.D. and 70 A.D.

In October 2009, [excavator] Avshalom-Gorni told CNN: “We are dealing with an exciting and unique find. This is the first time that a menorah decoration has been discovered from the days when the Second Temple was still standing.”

Since the discovery, the Israel Antiquities Authority has given the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center permission to build the hotel and visitor center, with a projected opening date of July 2012. New construction plans add an ecumenical chapel on the spot where the ancient synagogue was found.

In addition to the synagogue’s historical significance to Jews, [Father Eamon] Kelly, [vice chargé of the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center] sees it as a possible moment of interfaith harmony, telling an Irish newspaper that “there is a high probability that the people from this synagogue were followers of Jesus and may have witnessed his miracles firsthand.”

That last comment is wild speculation, but it's nice to have the background to the discovery anyway.

A stone engraved with a seven-branched menorah was also found in the building.

Background here.

Full-Scale Replica Of Noah's Ark Planned for outside Cincinnati

CAN'T MAKE IT UP: Full-Scale Replica Of Noah's Ark Planned for outside Cincinnati.

Hmmm ... do they know something we don't?

Somewhat related Noah's Ark stories are noted here, here, here, and here, but none as ambitious as this one.

PA removes controversial Kotel report from website

MYSTERY:

PA removes controversial Kotel report from website

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH, JORDANA HORN AND HILARY KREI
12/01/2010 21:37 (Jerusalem Post)

Move comes after Israel, US condemn 'study' claiming Kotel is not holy to Jews; PA ministry claims post taken down by hackers.

A Palestinian Authority “study” that rejects Jews’ claim to the Western Wall disappeared on Wednesday from the official website of the Palestinian Ministry of Information.

The ministry said in a statement in Arabic that its website had been “penetrated by unknown persons.”

However, a senior PA official in Ramallah revealed that the controversial report was cut at the request of the United States.

The ministry said that despite the alleged attack by hackers, it was “determined to show the truth and relay all what’s happening in Palestine to the world.”

Despite the claim about a hacker attack, the ministry’s website did not seem to be affected at all and was continuing to publish new material all day.

The paper about the Western Wall, which was first reported by The Jerusalem Post on November 22, had appeared on the site until Tuesday night.

It was removed the first time almost immediately after the US criticized the Palestinians for issuing it.

The Prime Minister’s Office responded to the PA’s decision to take down its “study” denying any Jewish connection to the Western Wall off the website, by saying it was notenough for the PA to pretend this never happened, but was important that the leadership denounce it publicly.

[...]

Background here.

Livius: Let’s Abandon Achaemenid Studies

JONAS LENDERING AT LIVIUS:

Let’s Abandon Achaemenid Studies

Three books on the Achaemenid Empire, all aiming at the general audience. One of them is just bad, the second one is unnecessary, the third explains what everybody already knows. This is the wrong way to introduce people to one of the most fertile branches of ancient history.

Kaveh Farrokh,Shadows in the Desert (2007)
Tom Holland, Persian Fire (2005)
Bruce Lincoln, Religion, Empire, and Torture (2007)

The reviews also contain a wealth of internal links to pages relevant to ancient Iran at the Livius site.

UPDATE: I just noticed that these reviews are two-and-a-half years old. But I only noticed them today and they are of undiminished interest.

Hebrew MSS exhibition at the Israel Museum

A HEBREW MANUSCRIPT EXHIBITION at the Israel Museum:

Braginsky Collection of Rare Illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts Premieres at Israel Museum

(artdaily.org)

JERUSALEM.- The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, will present one of the most important private collections of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts and printed books in the exhibition A Journey through Jewish Worlds: Highlights from the Braginsky Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books, on view from December 1, 2010, through April 30, 2011. The exhibition marks the first opportunity for Israeli audiences to experience examples from the notable library of Swiss collector René Braginsky, which includes objects ranging from a 6th-7th century Shema Yisrael (Hear O Israel) amulet to a rare early 20th century Samaritan Ketubbah (marriage contract) from Schechem. The collection comes to Israel following an international tour, which included Amsterdam and New York. Its presentation at the Israel Museum will be complemented by related objects from the Museum’s own Jewish Art and Life holdings, providing insight into a vibrant and artistic Jewish culture around the world.

[...]

Among the highlights on view are:

• A Shema Yisrael traveler's amulet, dating from the 6th – 7th century CE, inscribed with an early and unusual combination of biblical verses. It is presented alongside two singularly important items from the Israel Museum collection: a passage from the book of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls, which dates to the first century BCE and is among the oldest known Biblical texts; and a page from the Aleppo Codex, the earliest known Biblical Hebrew manuscript, from the Middle Ages. The amulet offers important rare testimony to the existence of Hebrew Biblical text during the “silent” period between the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the oldest surviving Medieval manuscripts.

[...]

Obama Administration condemns PA Jewish-Temple denial

GOOD FOR THEM: The Obama Administration has condemned the latest bout of PA Jewish-Temple denial.

US condemns PA denial of Jewish ties to Western Wall

By JTA
11/30/2010 23:47 (Jerusalem Post)

PJ Crowley says paper "factually incorrect, insensitive and highly provocative"; tells PA leadership to combat de-legitimation of Israel.
Talkbacks (9)

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration condemned on Tuesday a Palestinian Authority-backed paper that denies any Jewish connection to the Western Wall.

“Regarding a claim by a senior Palestinian Authority official that the Western Wall is an Islamic Waqf, we strongly condemn these comments and fully reject them as factually incorrect, insensitive and highly provocative," State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said Tuesday. "We have repeatedly raised with the Palestinian Authority leadership the need to consistently combat all forms of de-legitimization of Israel, including denying historic Jewish connections to the land."

Multiple Jewish groups and members of Congress have slammed the Palestinian Authority for the paper, which appeared on its website last week signed by a senior Ministry of Information official.

[...]

Background here and keep following the many links back in many posts for extensive discussion of the problem of PA and Palestinian (etc.) denial of basic historical facts related to the Jewish historical association with Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, etc.

UPDATE (2 December): The report has now been removed from the PA website.

Happy Hanukkah!

HAPPY HANUKKAH to all those celebrating! The festival begins this evening at sundown.

Biblical Studies Carnival 57

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL 57 has been published by Deane Galbraith at the Religion Bulletin blog. This carnival sets a new standard. Mark Goodacre asks Possibly the best Biblical Studies Carnival Ever? and the answer is surely yes. It includes detailed coverage of the recent SBL meeting in Atlanta, with special attention to the Biblioblogging session, and very, very full coverage of all the usual categories and more. There's even a humor and gossip section that notes, for example, Helen Ingram's recent ascension to rock-stardom. And there's a new, quality-based ranking of the top 30 biblioblogs, in which PaleoJudaica does very well.

The Greek word for "blog"

SO NOW I KNOW the Greek word for "blog." Cool.

UPDATE (1 December): James McGrath is really getting into this.

Recent developments in Raphael Golb case

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS in the Raphael Golb Dead-Sea-Scrolls identity-theft and sock-puppetry case receive attention at Robert Cargill's blog: trying to dig oneself out of a hole: raphael golb posts his appeal online.

Dura Europos murals inspire new art

THE DURA EUROPOS MURALS are inspiring new art:

ANCIENT MURALS INSPIRE LOCAL ARTISTS

(Teaneck Patch, About Town, Jennifer Pinto)

Deborah Ugoretz, Miriam Stern and Debbie Schore of Teaneck will have their artwork featured in the Dura Europos Project at the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art from Dec. 5 to March 27.

The women's artwork reflect murals found in the 3rd century synagogue of Dura Europas in Syria. These ancient murals, which were created by artists within a diverse religious environment, are displayed in the National Museum in Damascus, Syria.

The Jewish Art Salon of New York City is organizing the exhibit, with the opening planned from 4 to 6 p.m. Dec. 5.

Follow the Jewish Art Salon link for a flier on the project. There's more on Dura Europos and its murals here and follow the links, and note especially here. Teaneck (New Jersey) also has an interesting association with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Jerusalem Post on Palestinian revisionist history

THE JERUSALEM POST ON PALESTINIAN REVISIONIST HISTORY:

Palestinian revisionism is the only obstacle to peace

By DANNY AYALON
11/27/2010 22:11

The attempt to "refute" the Jewish claim to the Western Wall is merely the latest in a series of efforts to deny the Jewish people’s connection with its homeland.
Talkbacks (40)

The recent Palestinian Authority report stating that the Western Wall has no religious or historical significance to the Jewish people is sadly yet another attempt at political historical revisionism. Under normal circumstances, we could dismiss this as a pathetic and infantile attempt to erase the history and peoplehood of another people. Unfortunately, as the recent UNESCO report on Jewish sites in Judea and Samaria exposed, the Palestinian rejectionist narrative is foisted on the international agenda and is supported by an automatic majority in multilateral forums.

The recent “study” prepared by Al- Mutawakel Taha, a senior official in the PA’s Ministry of Information, attempting to “refute” the Jewish claim to the Western Wall is merely the latest in a series of efforts, stretching back more than 100 years, to deny the Jewish people’s connection with its homeland.

{...]

One correction, or at least nuancing:

The myth that Jesus was a Palestinian is told to anyone who arrives on a pilgrimage to Bethlehem or other Christian holy sites under the Palestinian Authority.

However, the facts once again don’t add up. The Jewish province of Judea was destroyed by Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 C.E. when the Romans quashed the Bar Khochba-led Jewish revolt. To sever the Jewish connection with the Land of Israel, the Roman emperor changed its name to Syria Palaestina, eventually becoming known in English as Palestine.

According to Christian scholars, Jesus was crucified somewhere between 26 and 36, a full hundred years before the term Palestine had even been coined.

Correct in what it asserts but not entirely in what it denies. The province of Judea first got this name officially from the Roman empire, but it was used informally of the general region long before that. The word originally comes from the "Philistines," Indo-European invaders who settled on the coast in the late second millennium BCE. Herodotus used the term of the region between Phoenicia (Lebanon) and Egypt in the fifth century BCE (Hist. 3.91).

I don't think there's much mileage in getting into an argument with the PA over this type of terminology. The point is that, yes, Jesus was a "Palestinian" inasmuch as two thousand years ago he lived in a place one of whose names is now "Palestine," but the earliest texts we have identify him as genetically and culturally "Judean" or Jewish. (For these purposes the distinction between "Galilean" and "Judean" does not seem to have been particularly important.) I have discussed the issue at greater length here. For Galileans vs. Judeans, see my discussion in my book, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, pp. 56-59.

On a related note, Vel Nirtist at the American Thinker blog raises an interesting question regarding Muhammad's Night Journey (Al-Miraj) to Jerusalem, from which the name Al-Buraq Wall comes:

Now, if there was nothing sacred for Muhammad to see there, why exactly did he travel to Jerusalem? Why couldn't he ascend to heaven, and talk to the prophets and to God straight out of Mecca? And if there was anything sacred for him in Jerusalem, what was it?

The Palestinian Authority does not enlighten us. Perhaps it simply cannot, for now it caught itself in a dilemma: deny Jerusalem a Jewish connection -- and you make Muhammad's "night journey" look stupid, and render Jerusalem's status of Islam's "third holiest site" meaningless. But acknowledge Jerusalem's meaning to Muhammad, and you automatically affirm Jewish claims to the City of David.

The PA's comments render the first (earthly) leg of Muhammad's Night Journey not "stupid" so much as pointless. Why go to Jerusalem if there's nothing special there?

Background to this discussion is here. On UNESCO and "Rachel's Tomb," see here.

Life of Jews at the Time of Jesus

ESSAYS by Cynthia Astle about Life of Jews at the Time of Jesus have been posted at About.com: Ancient / Classical History (noted by N. S. Gill). The essays are basic, but look accurate enough as far as they go.

PhDiva reviews Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People

SHLOMO SAND, THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE is reviewed by Dorothy Lobel King at her PhDiva blog.

For earlier reviews go here and follow the links back.

Random SBL 2010 reflections and links

RANDOM SBL 2010 REFLECTIONS AND LINKS:

Bob Cargill has posted Introductory Remarks for the Inaugural Blogger and Online Publication Session at the 2010 Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting and his paper for the same session, Instruction, Research, and the Future of Online Educational Technologies.

Chris Brady has posted his paper from this session on his Targuman blog and the paper has an important proposal: A Modest Proposal: Assessing Digital Biblical Studies. [UPDATE (26 Nov): Chris Heard responds to Chris's paper at Higgaion.]

Michael Barber also published his paper from this sesssion, Weblogs and the Academy, on The Sacred Page blog.

James McGrath collects these and other posts on the session at Exploring Our Matrix. [UPDATE: James has now posted the full text of his own paper at the same session, The Blogging Revolution: New Technologies and their Impact on How we do Scholarship. I like the Google cartoon.]

Someone – I won't say who – was in the back of the room at this session and later told me that people actually were getting out their iPads and following my paper online as I read it.

In the E-Publish or Perish section (S21-314) there were lots of very good panelist presentations. Particularly exciting to me was Ian Scott's announcement that the new Grammateus user interface (for user-friendly production of original-text critical editions) is now available in association the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha. It has my head whirring about other possible uses.

Some very good papers and discussion also at the Pseudepigrapha Group's session on "The Inspired Production of Texts and Traditions" (S22-331a, formerly S22-138). Unfortunately, I had to leave early in order to make it to the Epigraphy session honoring Bruce Zuckerman, but I will mull over the handouts I collected from the session. I have some related thoughts in my 2006 SBL paper Scripture as Prophetically Revealed Writings (PDF, 169 KB) toward the end.

Ed Cook reports Scenes and Observations from SBL Atlanta 2010.

Mark Goodacre has SBL posts here, here, here, and here (additional to those noted here) at his NT Blog. [UPDATE (26 Nov): One more post from Mark here.]

Rebecca Lesses, at her Mystical Politics blog, worries: SBL – an increasingly confessional Christian scholarly society? She has other SBL observations here. [UPDATE (26 Nov): John Hobbins responds at Ancient Hebrew Poetry.]

Loren Rosson has SBL observations here and here at his Busybody blog. [UPDATE: Loren has a third post here.]

Peter Head posts reflections at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog. I agree that the lack of wireless internet access in the hotel meeting rooms was a pity (and rather primitive). Moreover, the Hyatt Regency not only charges a daily fee for internet access, the fee is applied individually to each device used, which is a rip-off. [UPDATE: James McGrath posts on the wi-fi issue here and he is quite right.] Overall I was not impressed with the Atlanta facilities, although the staff were unfailingly polite and helpful.

Rumors of Atlanta being overrun by zombies turned out to be exaggerated.

I'm sure there are many other interesting SBL blog posts that I haven't seen. If I run across good ones later, I'll add them to this post.

UPDATE: Oh, yes, the only book I bought was Stephen R. Donaldson, Against All Things Ending, the third book in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I'd held off buying it until now because my copies of the earlier volumes are all the American edition and I wanted a consistent set. I had to walk a mile to get to a bookstore that had it (as I said, Atlanta facilities are not impressive) but it was worth it.

UPDATE (27 November): It seems that the blogging session was being recorded. No one told me that. I wonder if my extemporaneous comments about alcohol and zombies will be preserved for posterity. (Via James McGrath.) [UPDATE (29 November): More podcasts here, here, here, and here. Bibliobloggers' lunch photos here.]

Also, David Larsen reports on mysticism sessions at his Heavenly Ascents blog.

Raphael Golb case chronicled in the Jewish Journal

THE RAPHAEL GOLB identity-theft and sock-puppetry case is chronicled in detail in the Jewish Journal:

Slander, Lies and the Dead Sea Scrolls

By Tom Tugend

The Dead Sea Scrolls, recorded by ancient Jewish scribes some 2,260 years ago, are at the center of a criminal case featuring such 21st century concepts as cyberbullying and Internet sleuthing.

Involved is a high-level cast of characters, including eminent Jewish and Christian scholars in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, and a professor’s son sentenced to six months in prison for his part in the strange affair.

Bitter scholarly disputes are not uncommon, but they are usually kept within the confines of academia or the pages of professional journals. However, the scrolls confrontation, which involved identity theft and defamation of character, came close to ruining the career of a UCLA researcher and blackening the reputation of a prominent New York University (NYU) professor.

[...]

Background here and follow the many links back. Mr. Golb is now out on $25,000 bail and is evidently going to appeal the verdict.

Nephilim in NYT's 100 Notable Books, 2010

THE NEPHILIM make it into the New York Times's list of 100 Notable Books for 2010:

Fallen Angels

By SUSANN COKAL
Published: March 3, 2010

There was a time in the 1990s when angels were impossible to escape. Guardians, muses, articles of trade, they covered T-shirts and bathroom accessories, bloomed on restaurant walls and peered from the edges of book jackets. Lately they may seem to have drifted away, but they’ve merely wandered into the literature of self-help and healing. It is now possible to buy “How to Hear Your Angels,” “Working With Angels,” “In the Arms of Angels” and “Angels 101,” as well as angel dictionaries, encyclopedias and art books.

Danielle Trussoni’s first novel, “Angelology,” should not be confused with any of these. Her rousing story turns on bad and fallen angels, particularly the offspring of matings between humans and heavenly beings. The hybrids known as Nephilim first appear in Genesis 6: “The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose,” and when “they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” This might not sound so bad, but in Trussoni’s handling, the Nephilim are “beautiful, iridescent monsters” who belong in cages. With shimmering golden skins and vast white wings sprouting from their backs, they frighten a 9-year-old girl named Evangeline. And how much more terrifying to hear one of the creatures declare, “Angel and devil. . . . One is but a shade of the other.”

[...]

Happy American Thanksgiving!

HAPPY AMERICAN THANKSGIVING! It seems to be my destiny to spend Thanksgivings at work in a jet-lagged stupor, but I hope the rest of you are having a good time.

Back in St. Andrews

I'M BACK IN ST. ANDREWS. More later, probably tomorrow.

Roman bathhouse excavated in Jerusalem

A ROMAN BATHHOUSE has been excavated in Jerusalem. Here's the IAA press release at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website:

Ancient Roman bathing pool uncovered in Jerusalem

22 Nov 2010
A 1,800 year old bathing pool, probably part of a bathhouse used by the Roman soldiers who destroyed the Temple, was exposed in excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting prior to the construction of a new miqve in Jerusalem.

A Roman bathing pool - part of a bathhouse from the second-third centuries CE - was uncovered in archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting at the initiative of the Jerusalem Municipality and the Moriah Company for the Development of Jerusalem, prior to the construction of a men's ritual bath (miqve) in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.

According to Dr. Ofer Sion, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, "We were surprised to discover an ancient bathhouse structure right below the spot where a miqve is to be built. During the excavation we uncovered a number of plastered bathtubs in the side of the pool. Incorporated in the side of the pool is a pipe used to fill it with water and on the floor of the pool is a white industrial mosaic pavement. The bathhouse tiles, which are stamped with the symbols of the Tenth Legion "Fretensis" - LEG X FR, were found in situ and it seems that they were used to cover a rock-hewn water channel located at the bottom of the pool.

"The hundreds of terra cotta roof tiles that were found on the floors of the pool indicate it was a covered structure. The mark of the soldiers of the Tenth Legion, in the form of the stamped impressions on the roof tiles and the in situ mud bricks, bears witness to the fact that they were the builders of the structure. It seems that the bathhouse was used by these soldiers who were garrisoned there after suppressing the Bar Kokhba uprising in 135 CE, when the pagan city Aelia Capitolina was established. We know that the Tenth Legion's camp was situated within the limits of what is today the Old City, probably in the region of the Armenian Quarter. This assumption is reinforced by the discovery of the bathhouse in the nearby Jewish Quarter which shows that the multitude of soldiers was spread out and that they were also active outside the camp, in other parts of the Old City."

Dog's paw print impressed on a roof tile (Photo: Shlomi Amami, courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority)

Dr. Sion adds, "Another interesting discovery that caused excitement during the excavation is the paw print of a dog that probably belonged to one of the soldiers. The paw print was impressed on the symbol of the legion on one of the roof tiles and it could have happened accidentally or have been intended as a joke."

According to Dr. Yuval Baruch, the Jerusalem District archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority, "What we have here is a discovery that is important for the study of Jerusalem. Despite the very extensive archaeological excavations that were carried out in the Jewish Quarter, so far not even one building has been discovered there that belonged to the Roman legion. The absence of such a find led to the conclusion that Aelia Capitolina, the Roman city which was established after the destruction of Jerusalem, was small and limited in area.

The new find, together with other discoveries of recent years, shows that the city was considerably larger than what we previously estimated. Information about Aelia Capitolina is extremely valuable and can contribute greatly to research on Jerusalem because it was that city that determined the character and general appearance of ancient Jerusalem and as we know it today. The shape of the city has determined the outline of its walls and the location of the gates to this very day."

The Israel Antiquities Authority reports that the remains of the ancient Roman bathhouse which were uncovered will be integrated in the new miqve slated to be built in the Jewish Quarter.

Follow the link for a couple of photos, including one of the paw print.

More Jewish-temple denial from the PA

MORE JEWISH-TEMPLE DENIAL from the PA:

Jews have no right to Western Wall, PA 'study' says
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH (Jerusalem Post)
11/22/2010 18:07

‘Muslim tolerance allowed the Jews to stand in front of it and weep,’ says Information Ministry official.
Talkbacks (35)

The Western Wall belongs to Muslims and is an integral part of Al-Aksa Mosque and Haram al-Sharif (the Islamic term for the Temple Mount complex, meaning the Noble Sanctuary), according to an official paper published on Monday by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information in Ramallah.

The paper, which has been presented as a “study,” was prepared by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the ministry, to “refute” Jews’ claims to the Western Wall.

In the past, PA leaders and officials have also denied Jewish rights to the Wall, insisting that the Temple Mount never stood in the area.

The new document claims that the Western Wall, or Al- Buraq Wall, as it is known to Muslims, constitutes Waqf property owned by an Algerian- Moroccan Muslim family.

It claims there isn’t one stone in the wall that belongs to the era of King Solomon.

[...]

The document is correct that there are no Solomonic stones in the structure, which is Herodian. But a Herodian Jewish temple refutes the PA's other claims in itself, and there is ample indirect evidence for a Judean temple on the site in the Iron Age II. See here and here for the historical evidence for the Jewish/Judean temples on the Temple Mount. On the title "Al-Buraq Wall" see here and follow the links.

Via Joseph I. Lauer.

The Messiah of Tel Aviv?

THE MESSIAH OF TEL AVIV? These things happen.

I can't decide which quote I like better:

"This is the kind of thing you have to be ready for if you are messiah."

or

"If this guy is the Messiah, we're screwed."

More on Jerusalem Syndrome here.

Obama as Job?

OBAMA AS JOB? We'll see. (This is actually a NYT review of Robert Alter's THE WISDOM BOOKS: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes , with a somewhat idiosyncratic take.)

Earlier reviews noted here.

Stalin, Hitler and ... Tobit?

APOCRYPHA WATCH: Stalin, Hitler and ... Tobit? Yep.

The renowned German historian Werner Maser says that the luggage included one historically significant object: a personal gift from Stalin to Hitler.
It was a painting by an unknown Russian artist taken from the collections of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad.
The subject of the painting was linked with the legend of the Book of Tobit from the Apocrypha.
As the legend was known both in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, Stalin, a former student at an Orthodox seminary, imagined that it might have been familiar to Hitler, who once was a choirboy and who was interested in art. After all, the subject matter had been a source of inspiration for certain well-known artists in previous centuries.

The painting depicted a devout Jewish family that had previously lived in exile in Assyria.
Tobit, the father of the family, had gone blind in exile and lost part of the use of his hands.
Coming to his aid was the family’s son Tobiah, who had been told by the angel Raphael to use the gall of a fish on the eyes, which would restore his father’s sight and the full use of his hands.

Stalin’s cryptic message was that the victories achieved by Germany in the previous months, especially in the west, were based not only on Hitler’s political skills, but also on the support provided by the non-aggression pact.
The idea was that thanks to the pact, Hitler had regained his sight and Germany had re-established the mobility that it had lost.
For that reason, Hitler, like Tobit the father, would do well to rely on the help of the son Tobiah, or Stalin.

The reason for Stalin’s extraordinary idea for a gift was, in the final sense, that Hitler had drawn attention in early 1940 to aspects of the Soviet military conquests.
He passed on his statements through his Ambassador in Moscow, Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg, drawing attention to the conquests which had been implemented under the terms of the German-Soviet pact, but which Hitler felt did not quite correspond to the spirit of the agreement.
It is not known what Hitler felt about the highly symbolic gift that he got from Stalin.
Inspired by his conquests of the previous summer, and especially by his victory in France, one might imagine that Hitler might have found it difficult to identify with Tobit in his state of blind helplessness.

Steinsaltz Talmud covered in NYT

THE STEINSALTZ TALMUD is covered in the New York Times:

Life’s Work Is a Talmud Accessible to All Jews

By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: November 18, 2010

JERUSALEM — In the 1960s, when a young Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz embarked on the mammoth task of translating the ancient Jewish texts of the Talmud into modern Hebrew and, even more daringly, providing his own commentary alongside those of the classical sages, the state of Israel was still in its teens, there were no home computers, and man had not yet landed on the moon.

The monumental work took 45 years. But this month in his hometown, Jerusalem, Rabbi Steinsaltz, now 73, marked the end of the endeavor, as the last of the 45 volumes of his edition of the Babylonian Talmud, originally completed 1,500 years ago, rolled off the press.

[...]

Background here and here.

Online Critical Pseudepigrapha at AWOL

THE ONLINE CRITICAL PSEUDEPIGRAPHA is profiled at AWOL, with a full list of the many texts now available.

In Atlanta

IN ATLANTA NOW. I see that Mark Goodacre is already here and has posted twice. As for me, I think I'll turn in soon.

What Just Happened

WHAT JUST HAPPENED – Here's the full text of my second SBL paper, which is being presented orally (and thus without all the links) on Monday afternoon.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED
The rise of "biblioblogging" in the first decade
of the twenty-first century
© James R. Davila, University of St. Andrews
2010 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta
S22-209 SBL Blogger and Online Publication Section
In the tradition of my two papers on biblioblogging published in 2005, I have poached the title of this paper from elsewhere, this time from a 2002 book by James Gleick subtitled "A Chronicle from the Information Frontier." Gleick's book chronicled the rise of e-mail and the Internet in everyday life over the previous decade and it remains an entertaining and informative period piece. The aim of this paper is somewhat similar, if more constrained: it concerns the rise and development of "biblioblogging" or blogging devoted to the area of academic biblical studies. Many aspects of this topic were treated in my two earlier papers and I have made some effort here to avoid overlapping with them. (I should note in passing that the written version of this paper is posted on my blog with numerous links, so I encourage listeners at the SBL session to check there as well to get the full effect.) I will begin with some brief background notes on the rise of computer and Internet applications to biblical studies, then say a few words about the rise of biblioblogging, and then draw on the predictions I made in 2005 as a launching point for discussing further developments over the last five years. I do not hope to be as entertaining or as informative as Gleick, but I offer the following as someone who has been involved in developments since the early 1990s and who has been part of the biblioblogging revolution more or less from its inception. Let me proceed then, at the risk of trying my audience, with a riff on yet another book title, this one by Neal Stephenson:

In the beginning ... was Bob Kraft. The likelihood is that this audience has heard of Professor Kraft, seen his University of Pennsylvania website, and is aware that he has been a major influence driving the adoption of computer technology in academic biblical studies for some decades. With Emanuel Tov, Bob conceived of the Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint Studies Project in the late 1970s, a project that received NEH funding and which is still ongoing today, having produced numerous important computerized textual resources that have generated many publications. As early as 1982 Bob was one of the teachers of a course at Penn on "Computers and Textual Research" and he began editing a bulletin called "OFFLINE: Computer Assisted Research for Religious Studies" in April of 1984, publishing it in various print venues and in early electronic discussion groups.

Bob was also instrumental in moving the field into the next stage of computer literacy, as the founder of a small e-mail group (spun off from the Humanist listserve list), which group focused its discussion on ancient Judea. Inspired by the success of this group, Steve Mason founded the listserve discussion list Ioudaios in April of 1990 at York University. (It later moved to Lehigh University as Ioudaios-l.) The great canon debate took place on Ioudaios in the early months of its existence. The ANE list followed in 1993, founded by Chuck Jones and John Sanders at the University of Chicago. Notable also is the Orion list on the Dead Sea Scrolls, published by the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which ran from 1995 to 2001. For a time such lists proliferated; I ran three myself from 1997 to 2002. Ioudaios-l and the ANE list are still operating today. The 1990s were a heady era in which we learned to take for granted that we could trade notes to colleagues around the world anywhere, anytime, at the speed of light. And so the stage was set for the blog.

I first heard about "weblogs" or "blogs" from an essay by Andrew Sullivan in the London Times in about mid-2002. I began reading his blog, then some other political blogs. At some point it dawned on me that a blog could be a useful tool for calling the media to account on the seemingly endless errors they spew out when covering the academic field of biblical studies and related matters. So, as the saying goes, I stopped shouting at my television (and newspaper) and started the PaleoJudaica blog in March of 2003.

The blog is one of those ideas whose utility seems obvious – once someone else has thought of it. Granting the existence of the World-Wide Web and hyperlinks, it makes perfect sense to set up a web page that:

• can be easily updated while saving the old versions as separate "posts," as though they were diary entries;
  
• focuses on the thoughts of a single person (or a small number of people) rather than acting as a bulletin board for a large group;
  
• does not need to be subscribed to and can be checked on by readers or not, as they please;
  
• potentially gives more control over content than an e-mail list. Originally blogs did not come with a comments feature and it still remains optional, although most blogs now use it. (Mine does not.) The comments can be moderated or not, like posts on an e-mail list, but unlike a list, blog comments are always at least nominally posted in response to a specific post by the owner, and those who post too many off-topic comments tend to acquire "troll" status and be banished.
  
• Blogs are also by their nature already on the Web and are therefore search-engine indexed without the need of expensive listserve software.

The advent of the "biblioblog," a blog with a substantial amount of content on academic biblical studies, came either with PaleoJudaica or with New Testament scholar AKMA Adam's more diary-style blog, AKMA's Random Thoughts, in January of 2002. In the year following the founding of PaleoJudaica, I am aware of the creation of seven more such blogs: Mark Goodacre's NT Gateway blog (building on his much older New Testament Gateway website), Stephen Carlson's Hypotyposeis, Torrey Seland's Philo of Alexandria blog, Rubén Gómez's Bible Software Review, Tim Bulkeley's SansBlogue, Jim West's Biblical Studies blog (whose archive has been deleted), and James McGrath's Exploring Our Matrix (which I only recently learned was that old). It's interesting to note that all of these original bloggers continue to blog today, although some of them have rebooted their blog with a new name, sometimes rather more than once.

By March of 2005, two years after the founding of PaleoJudaica, I was aware of sixteen more biblioblogs, which I noted at the time amounted to geometric growth. By this time blogging about the academic study of the Bible had acquired enough self-consciousness to generate the great naming debate of late 2004 and early 2005, with the result that "biblioblogging" became the generally accepted term for what we do, despite the fact that librarians had decided to use the same term. And around the same time as PaleoJudaica's second anniversary the first Biblical Studies Carnival (for biblioblogs) was published by Joel Ng at his no-longer-archived Ebla Logs.

Also in 2005 I published two papers on the phenomenon of biblioblogging, the first in April at the SBL Forum and the second as a paper for an SBL session on biblioblogging in November. In them, and in a related blog post from the same time I made a number of predictions about what to expect from biblioblogging in the coming years. It seems a useful exercise to revisit these now, both to see how I did and as a roundabout way of reviewing aspects of the last five years. (As an aside, let me mention that shortly after my two essays were published, Blogger re-jigged the URLs to all previous blog posts, so many of my internal links in the essays no longer work. Apologies for Blogger's unhelpfulness.)

One prediction was (in late November of 2005) that over the next couple of years the geometric increase in the number of biblioblogs would continue. At the time I was aware of thirty more biblioblogs, making the total close to fifty. Geometric growth would then produce about 100 at the beginning of 2007 and 200 at the beginning of 2008. Statistics have been hard to come by, but I have located one supposedly comprehensive list of biblioblogs in September of 2009 which named 362 blogs "which deal primarily with matters concerning scholarly or academic biblical studies" and another 262 "which have a different primary focus (e.g. theology, ancient Near Eastern archaeology, devotional and homiletic approaches to the Bible) or are commercial rather than personal blogs – yet which contain some biblical studies material." PaleoJudaica is listed in the first category, although I don't really think of it as dealing primarily with the Bible. This gives us a total of 585 blogs that have at least some academic Bible-related content. If we take a reasonably big-tent approach to the subject, it looks as though geometric growth did continue through at least into 2008 and perhaps even into 2009. It may well be that growth has leveled off. There are, after all, only so many biblical scholars to go around! Or the actual number may now be beyond normal human ability (or even nerd ability) to keep track of and we may not know it until our search spiders become more intelligent. In any case, my fairly cautious prediction of two more years of geometric growth seems to have been correct.

Second, I predicted "that blogging and other forms of online publishing will grow more and more user friendly and more and more people will develop a personal media voice," and, more specifically, that "blogging is in fact an early and primitive manifestation of what will become the ubiquitous media presence of the individual ... everyone who wants to will have a media soapbox as easy to access as CNN and the BBC are in our time."

What can I say? We are there. At the time, Facebook was a small cloud on the horizon, used mostly by university students. I signed up on it in the spring of 2005 to keep track of pictures being posted of me by my students, but its mass adoption (more than 500 million users at present) is a more recent phenomenon. LiveJournal has been around since 1999, but remains much less popular, with only 31 million subscribers. Twitter appeared in 2006 and currently has more than 100 million users. Flickr was launched in early 2004 and at present hosts more than 5 billion images. YouTube opened in early 2005 and currently two billion videos a day are being viewed on it and twenty-four thirty-five hours of content are being posted every minute. And smartphones are making the uploading of all kinds of content ever easier.

If I may hazard more predictions, I expect that these somewhat fragmented and still relatively primitive private media productions will become increasingly powerful, increasingly user-friendly, and increasingly integrated into a personal media expression that is as seamless as the user wishes it to be and that puts into the hands of a private individual the media resources that in the 1980s would have been available only to a major production studio. There is no time here for a proper discussion of the implications this will have for society and individual liberty, but I think they will be largely positive. In a word, the increasingly Orwellian surveillance powers of the State will be to a significant degree neutralized by the ability of billions of individuals to turn those powers back on the State and to shine the glaring light of universal publicity on an ever-increasing portion of its actions. This is already happening.

I predict also that, despite all the new media resources, blogging has found its own niche in the new media – it provides focused discussion that is readable at leisure and ring-fenced for particular purposes – and it will be here to stay at least for quite some time to come.

Lastly, in 2005 I predicted that, "any professional news story will be subject to immediate criticism by experts and eyewitnesses; these worthwhile responses will be indexed next to the story itself by intelligent software; and everyone will know to check for them. The emergent order we can see developing around us even now will let the cream rise to the top and hold the media (and bloggers!) accountable for their every word as soon as it is uttered. ... I think we can look forward to a leaner, sharper, more cautious, and better informed press corps as time passes."

Well, we've made a little progress; less, I confess, than I had hoped. The New York Times does index possibly relevant (though often not) blog posts next to their articles, and Google indexes blog commentary on media publications, but not always sensibly and helpfully. But my experience remains that the legacy media by and large is determined to ignore the implications of the new mass individual media and the increased scrutiny and accountability it generates. Journalists who are not experts in anything continue to pontificate and editorialize with a sanctimony that is increasingly intolerable to their audience, with the result that that audience is steadily shrinking. I stand by my 2005 prediction, but I will update it to say that I expect to see a radical shakeup of the mainstream media in not too many years. Empires will topple and major organizations will go under or undergo a massive restructuring. When the dust settles, the professional mass media will be a smaller, leaner, more focused enterprise that is integrated with and sensitive to the private mass media that will hold it to account. Whatever form the new professional media takes will have to compete directly with coverage by private individuals and amateur groups which meets the current highest professional production standards. Or so I hope.

Let me next say a little about what biblioblogging has done and continues to do for the field. First, it has made possible the rapid dissemination of information on new discoveries and other matters of interest – as well as dissemination of accessible specialist commentary on such matters – to a vastly enlarged audience. I have given examples in the past, but some interesting recent ones include the discovery in 2008 of an Iron Age II seal in Hebrew in Jerusalem which was initially read with the name "Temech." But within a fortnight criticisms of the reading in the biblioblogosphere led the excavator to revise it to "Shelomit." In 2009, the discovery of Coptic fragments of 2 Enoch (formerly knowing only in Old Church Slavonic) was rapidly disseminated by biblioblogs. And in 2010 when a dubious decipherment of an important Hebrew inscription was published by the media, it quickly became apparent that a quite different and more cautious decipherment had been published months before by John Hobbins at his Biblical Hebrew Poetry blog.

Second, blogging helps to put a personal face on biblical scholarship by allowing scholars to speak with an informal public voice different from the voice of academic publication. Even the most academic of academic blogs is a much more personal expression of the author's thoughts than any academic peer-review publication. And, for better or for worse, the blog will probably be read by more people than those scholarly publications. Not infrequently, we also get a welcome glimpse of the lives of prominent biblical scholars through blogs. I note, for example, my own blog posts on the ninetieth birthday party of New Testament and Gnosticism specialist Robert McLachlan Wilson and on the retirement party of New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham, and, less rather festively, April DeConick's account of her and her family's encounter with Hurricane Ike.

Third, blogging encourages biblical scholars to interact publicly with popular culture. Sometimes this borders on farce, if not tragedy, as in the recent widely-publicized court case in which the son of a prominent Dead Sea Scrolls scholar was convicted of attempting to discredit a scholar who opposed his father's theories by impersonating him online and having him confess to false misdeeds. The son's associated massive campaign of sock-puppeted online comments was exposed by a blogger and the case was widely watched and commented on in the blogosphere.

On a more constructive note, we can mention James McGrath's frequent posts on science fiction and its relation to theology and biblical studies on his blog Exploring Our Matrix or Robert Cargill's recent blog reflections of the National Geographic TV documentary that he hosted. Happily, in this case we had a reputable documentary hosted by an actual biblical scholar, but in many cases we are not so fortunate and specialist critiques by bibliobloggers becomes all the more important. As for James's science fiction commentaries, I myself am carefully avoiding all his posts on Lost, because I'm not yet finished watching the series. But the titles look fascinating.

Fourth, blogging has also generated some interesting discussions and controversies within the field and its professional organizations. An amusing example with a serious point behind it is the recent attempt of leaders in the Society of Biblical Literature hierarchy to censor the title of a paper being presented by a member at this year's conference. The paper writer posted the correspondence on his blog, which led to some pointed commentary within the biblioblogosphere, followed by the decision of the Society to withdraw the request to alter the paper's title. And April DeConick's post from last year on the deleterious effects of the proliferation of SBL sessions will, I suspect, remain all too relevant this year.

Fifth, a new development, and a sign of the times, is that blogging has helped scholars to mobilize in support of their colleagues in an era of job cuts and financially threatened departments. A recent story on this theme, one with a happy ending, involved the attempt to shut down the Biblical Studies Program at the University of Sheffield. (And, worth noting as an aside, this and related events inspired Helen Ingram to post an eloquent and much commented-on defense of the academic study of theology on her blog The Geek Muse.)

Sixth and finally, I think it is fair to say that biblioblogging has contributed at least a little to the accelerating erosion of the authority of the mainstream media. My earlier two papers collected many examples and you can find many more in posts on many biblioblogs since 2005.

To conclude, blogging has found a solid niche in academic biblical studies in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It has enriched the field in numerous ways and its expansion over the decade has been geometric, at least until recently. Moreover, the contributions of blogging have been amplified rather than diluted by the advent in recent years of additional new media such as Facebook, Twitter, and podcasts. All three are routinely used in synergy with blogs and I believe, although I cannot prove statistically, that dissemination of blog posts through these other media routinely increases blog traffic rather than reducing it. We are nowhere near a zero-sum game within the new media. And all indicators are that biblioblogging will be with biblical studies for a long time to come.

UPDATE (25 November): I have revised the language of the paper slightly in a few places to clarify a mathematical point raised in the session discussion.

Off to SBL in Atlanta, plus review of Schäfer, Origins

I'M OFF TO ATLANTA for the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, which runs from Saturday to Tuesday. I'm presenting two papers there. The first is on Saturday morning:

Review of Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism
(Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2009)

SBL S20-114 Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Section

Click on the link to download the paper as a pdf file.

The book under review is partially available at Google Books (here). Ordering information can be found there as well. It's expensive for individuals, but if your local research library doesn't have it yet, make them buy it.

You can find an early summary of what eventually became my book Descenders to the Chariot (mentioned in the review) here:

The Hekhalot Literature and Shamanism

Early drafts of two of my articles mentioned in the review can be found by following the links:

Ritual in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha

The Hekhalot Literature and the Ancient Jewish Apocalypses (pdf file)

In the review I also refer to the work of Professor Maxine Grossman. The text of an online lecture she gave to my Dead Sea Scrolls class is available here and it treats some of the relevant issues. Do read her book, though.

I have received the sad news that, due to unavoidable circumstances, Professor Schäfer will be unable to attend the session.

I'm giving the second paper, "What Just Happened: The rise of 'biblioblogging' in the first decade of the twenty-first century," on Monday. The next post, which I have preposted for publication in 15 minutes, will have the full text of that paper, with links.

Have a good week. I shall be very busy, but I hope to be able to continue some blogging during the conference.

Raphael Golb to be sentenced today

RAPHAEL GOLB is to be sentenced today in the Dead Sea Scrolls identity-theft case in which he was convicted on thirty of thirty-one counts last month. He says he's going to appeal.

Robert Cargill has commentary in a UCLA News Week interview.

UPDATE: Mr. Golb has been sentenced to six months in prison and five years probation.

More protesting over Jaffa graves

MORE PROTESTING over the excavation of Jaffa graves for a hotel:

Jewish group threatens to picket Core Club, Gramercy Park Hotel over hotel construction in Israel

Gatecrasher (NY Daily News)

Wednesday, November 17th 2010, 4:00 AM

A group called Save the Graves wants to bury real estate developer Aby Rosen in protests.

After staging demonstrations outside the Lever House headquarters of Rosen's RFR Holding and, last week, outside his upper East Side home, the Central Rabbinical Congress of the USA and Canada has announced it will turn up the heat on the Quaker-maned magnate by picketing two of his investments: VIP hangouts the Core Club and the Gramercy Park Hotel.

As we reported this summer, the CRC's beef with Rosen and RFR involves the company's project to build an ultraluxe $600 million hotel in Jaffa, Israel. Construction crews there have unearthed an ancient grave site, and the protesters allege RFR has ignored their pleas to deal with the remains in a proper manner.

[...]

A spokeswoman for Rosen responded with a cryptic release that does not name Save the Graves or the CRC, but rather states, "Israel's High Court of Justice has rejected the claims of "an anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist religious extremist group to obtain a temporary injunction" against RFR.

The release also contends the remains were "definitively determined" to be of "pagan origin" and concludes: "The project continues to move forward without delay."

Background here.

New technology gives on-site assessments in archaeology

TECHNOLOGY WATCH:

New technology gives on-site assessments in archaeology

DURHAM, N.C. – The ability to tell the difference between crystals that formed naturally and those formed by human activity can be important to archaeologists in the field. This can be a crucial bit of information in determining the ancient activities that took place at a site, yet archaeologists often wait for months for the results of laboratory tests.

Now, however, an international team of physicists, archaeologists and materials scientists has developed a process that can tell in a matter of minutes the origin of samples thousands of years old. The new device is easily portable and works by "lifting off" the spectral fingerprint of a material with infrared light.

The first material tested was the mineral calcite, commonly found in rocks such as limestone, which forms over millions years in sediments. These rocks can also contain the mineralized shells of sea creatures. Archaeological sites may also feature calcite that was a part of ash, plaster, or other building materials.

In the latest issue of the journal Advanced Materials, on-line today, Stefano Curtarolo, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials sciences and physics at Duke University, and Kristin Poduska, associate professor of physics at Memorial University in Newfoundland, and their colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, describe the new approach, which has already been successfully tested in archeological sites in Israel.

[...]

Last summer, a team of archaeologists and scientists from the Weizmann Institute successfully tested the new approach at an ancient site in central Israel at Tel Safit, close to where David is thought to have slain Goliath.

"Whenever they found something white, they would call us over to do tests," Poduska said. "We were able to confirm whether the sample was rock or plaster, which helps us decide how to proceed at the excavation site."

[...]

Egyptian blogger Karim Amer released from prison

EGYPTIAN BLOGGER Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman (Karim Amer) has been released from prison after serving a four-year sentence:

Dissident Egyptian blogger freed after 4 years

The blogger, known as Kareem Amer, had been jailed on charges of insulting Islam and defaming President Hosni Mubarak. He had written harshly about religious fanaticism and Egypt's authoritarian government.

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times

November 18, 2010

Reporting from Cairo —

An Egyptian blogger whose case epitomized the struggle for freedom of expression in cyberspace has been freed after serving four years in prison on charges of insulting Islam and defaming President Hosni Mubarak.

Human rights organizations announced Wednesday that Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, the blogger known as Kareem Amer, had been released from prison. His ordeal highlighted the Egyptian government's concern over dissident voices arising on websites and online social networks that are trickier to control than traditional opposition media outlets.
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"We are deeply relieved and happy to know that Kareem's nightmare is over and he is free at last," the international advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said in a statement. "Nothing will be able to erase his four years of suffering as a result of a totally unjustified conviction, but at least he will no longer be the scapegoat of Egyptian government anger at criticism expressed by bloggers.

[...]

Background to this barbaric story is here.

Sefer ha-Razim, translation and commentary

IN THE MAIL:

Bill Rebiger and Peter Schäfer, Sefer ha-Razim I und II - Das Buch der Geheimnisse I und II: Band 2: Einleitung, Übersetzung und Kommentar (TSAJ 132; Tübinger: Mohr Siebeck, 2009)

I have noted volume one, the edition of the manuscripts, here and here.

Advice on giving conference papers

THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE starts this weekend in Atlanta. Convenienty, Inside Higher Ed has a piece on The Art of the Conference Paper (noted by James McGrath on FB). Looks useful, especially for those presenting a paper for the first time or (for conferences further in the future) hoping to get a first conference paper accepted. That also gives me an excuse to dust off my 2004 post on How to Read a Scholarly Paper, which some may find useful. It also links to a post by Mark Goodacre on the same subject, which links to lots of other related posts. Plus, my post includes a picture of Buffy.