Renovations to Kotel HaKatan

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Kotel HaKatan renovated by Jerusalem Development Authority

By MELANIE LIDMAN (Jerusalem Post)
01/16/2011 02:58

Minor renovations took place over the past week in the area around Kotel HaKatan, or the Small Western Wall, which is located in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Decades-old scaffolding was removed from the plaza, and a new sign was erected. The scaffolding had been built in 1972 to support a house near the wall that was in danger of collapsing. In 1990, an engineer had found that the building had shifted on its own and was no longer touching the scaffolding, making it redundant.

Outside of the Temple Mount, Kotel HaKatan is the second- closest spot to the Holy of Holies after the Kotel Tunnels.

The work is being carried out by the Jerusalem Development Authority.

As Joseph Lauer observes, rather different spins are being put on these renovations:

Arutz Sheva:

Work on "Small Kotel" Begins

For the first time in nearly 40 years, refurbishing work has begun on the Kotel HaKatan, the Small Wailing Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Kotel HaKatan is the little sister of the world famous Western Wall (Kotel). Both are exposed faces of the original western wall of the Temple Mount, built by King Herod over 2,000 years ago. However, while the Western Wall has been a pilgrimage and prayer site for Jews for centuries, is easily accessible, and is hundreds of yards long, the Small Wall has long been little-known, is out of the way, and is barely 10 meters long.

[...]

Haaretz:

Jerusalem opens Muslim Quarter Jewish site to prayer, upsetting status quo
The Waqf - the Muslim religious trust - has specifically warned against opening the 'Little Kotel' to prayer gatherings, threatening a strong response.

UPDATE (19 January): The debate continues, with CAMERA's piece Ha'aretz Gets Little Right on 'Little Kotel'. Excerpt:

So what do we have here? First, an erroneous and misleading headline which reveals a total lack of understanding concerning the subject matter. Second, rather than reporting in an inside page on the improvement of the life of a few Arab families residing in the Muslim Quarter as a result of the removal of unnecessary scaffolding, Ha'aretz irresponsibly tries to ignite the area with a bombastic front-page headline, feeding into anti-Israel claims that "the Zionists want to destroy Al-Aqsa."

It is also impossible to ignore how veteran Ha'aretz reporter Akiva Eldar describes the two NGO's mentioned in his report — Ateret Cohanim and Ir Amin. While he dubs Ateret Cohanim a "right-wing organization," he calls Ir Amin simply "the non-profit organization Ir Amin," as if it were an apolitical non-profit working completely objectively. Ha'aretz is so skewed that editors do not even realize that special treatment is accorded to leftist non-profits even though they have just as much a political agenda as those on the right.

If Ha'aretz journalists are interested in writing about changes in Jerusalem's status quo, they could write about real news, such as the destruction that the Waqf has wrought on the Temple Mount for more than a decade. Since 1990, and especially since 2001, heavy and destructive equipment hauled away thousands of tons of Temple Mount rubble rich in archeological finds from several time periods. All this to build an underground mosque in the area known as Solomon Stables. Beyond the fact that Waqf officials broke the antiquities law and the planning and building law, they destroyed a huge amount of valuable archeological finds in one of the most important places in the world for the three monotheistic religions, out of total disregard for the cultural, historic and religious value of the relics.

These criminal acts, out in the open for all journalists to see, are a clear example of the violation of the status quo. When was the last time Akiva Eldar wrote about the Waqf's destruction of the Temple Mount, and when was the last time it appeared in the leading headline of the newspaper where he works?

To be fair, Haaretz has covered the illicit Waqf excavations on the Temple Mount and the Temple Mount sifting project that is trying to recover as much archaeological data from the excavated rubble as possible. See, for example, here and here. I cannot, however, find any articles on the subject by Akiva Eldar.

Recent posts on the Temple Mount sifting project are here and here, with links to past posts.

Nag Hammadi murder trial update

NAG HAMMADI MURDER TRIAL UPDATE: Verdict expected tomorrow for the case of sectarian violence in Naga Hammadi.

Background here. Related post here.

UPDATE: Man sentenced to death in Egypt over Copt killings (BBC).

Mohamed Ahmed Hussein was found guilty of shooting the group outside a midnight Mass for Coptic Christmas in Naga Hamady, southern Egypt.

The attack was thought to be revenge for the alleged rape of a 12-year-old Muslim girl by a Christian man.

[...]

Two other men are also on trial for the shooting. The court said the verdict against them would be announced next month. All three pleaded not guilty.

The King James Bible at 400

THE KING JAMES BIBLE AT 400: Bernard M. Levinson and Joshua A. Berman have published a fascinating brief article on the historical background of the publication of the King James Bible and its subsequent influence. It is posted at Academia.com.

Levinson, Bernard M., and Joshua A. Berman. "Scripture, Statecraft, and the American Founding: The King James Bible at 400." History Channel Magazine, supplement, November 2010, pp. 1-11.

Lawrence Schiffman accepts vice provost post at YU

CONGRATULATIONS TO LAWRENCE SCHIFFMAN, who has accepted a post as vice provost at Yeshiva University. YUNews:

President Joel Appoints Vice Provost

Lawrence Schiffman Will Lead Effort to Create a Unified Undergraduate Faculty and Improved Student Experience at Yeshiva University

President Richard M. Joel has announced the appointment of Lawrence H. Schiffman as vice provost for undergraduate education at Yeshiva University. Schiffman joins the University from New York University where he served as the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Chair of the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies.

[...]

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

Professor Schiffman is, of course, a world-renowned expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls. His own website is here.

Sarah Palin's use of "blood libel"

SARAH PALIN is widely being taken to task for her use of the phrase "blood libel" to describe accusations from the left that incendiary political rhetoric from the right influenced the man accused of the horrific shootings in Arizona. Video here and transcript here. The relevant paragraph:

Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions. And after the election, we shake hands and get back to work, and often both sides find common ground back in D.C. and elsewhere. If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

My emphasis. The concept of "blood libel" comes from accusations against Jews of the ritual murder of non-Jews, mostly Christians and especially Christian children, and such accusations go back to antiquity. Time Magazine has a summary of some of the historical evidence. One of the earliest examples is cited by Josephus in Against Apion II 92-96 (or II 8 in the old citation system). One of Apion's claims:

Antiochus found in our temple a bed, and a man lying upon it, with a small table before him, full of dainties, from the [fishes of the] sea, and the fowls of the dry land; that this man was amazed at these dainties thus set before him; that he immediately adored the king, upon his coming in, as hoping that he would afford him all possible assistance; that he fell down upon his knees, and stretched out to him his right hand, and begged to be released; and that when the king bid him sit down, and tell him who he was, and why he dwelt there, and what was the meaning of those various sorts of food that were set before him the man made a lamentable complaint, and with sighs, and tears in his eyes, gave him this account of the distress he was in; and said that he was a Greek and that as he went over this province, in order to get his living, he was seized upon by foreigners, on a sudden, and brought to this temple, and shut up therein, and was seen by nobody, but was fattened by these curious provisions thus set before him; and that truly at the first such unexpected advantages seemed to him matter of great joy; that after a while, they brought a suspicion him, and at length astonishment, what their meaning should be; that at last he inquired of the servants that came to him and was by them informed that it was in order to the fulfilling a law of the Jews, which they must not tell him, that he was thus fed; and that they did the same at a set time every year: that they used to catch a Greek foreigner, and fat him thus up every year, and then lead him to a certain wood, and kill him, and sacrifice with their accustomed solemnities, and taste of his entrails, and take an oath upon this sacrificing a Greek, that they would ever be at enmity with the Greeks; and that then they threw the remaining parts of the miserable wretch into a certain pit." Apion adds further, that" the man said there were but a few days to come ere he was to be slain, and implored of Antiochus that, out of the reverence he bore to the Grecian gods, he would disappoint the snares the Jews laid for his blood, and would deliver him from the miseries with which he was encompassed.

Ms. Palin's use of "blood libel" has generated objections, exemplified by the statement of Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League:

It is unfortunate that the tragedy in Tucson continues to stimulate a political blame game. Rather than step back and reflect on the lessons to be learned from this tragedy, both parties have reverted to political partisanship and finger-pointing at a time when the American people are looking for leadership, not more vitriol. In response to this tragedy we need to rise above partisanship, incivility, heated rhetoric, and the business-as-usual approaches that are corroding our political system and tainting the atmosphere in Washington and across the country.

It was inappropriate at the outset to blame Sarah Palin and others for causing this tragedy or for being an accessory to murder. Palin has every right to defend herself against these kinds of attacks, and we agree with her that the best tradition in America is one of finding common ground despite our differences.

Still, we wish that Palin had not invoked the phrase "blood-libel" in reference to the actions of journalists and pundits in placing blame for the shooting in Tucson on others. While the term "blood-libel" has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history.

Well, I imagine she wishes that too now, if for no other reason than that the commentary on her use of the phrase is swiftly overshadowing the larger point she was making.

That said, Alan Dershowitz and others quickly took her side, pointing out that the phrase has long been applied to baseless accusations that any group of people (or more rarely, an individual) has committed serious crimes:

The term “blood libel” has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins were in theologically based false accusations against the Jews and the Jewish People,its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.

Numerous uses of the phrase in this "broad metaphorical" way in the last decade or so by people holding a wide range of political positions are collected by Jim Geraghty at National Review Online.

Where does that leave us? It would have saved trouble and discomfort if Ms. Palin had said something like "false accusations" in that paragraph instead of "blood libel." But at the same time, as Mr. Foxman says, she was well within her rights to defend herself against the inappropriate attacks against her and others, attacks that shamefully sought to score political points off a tragedy. And however discomfiting her use of "blood libel" is, that use is entirely within the norm for political discourse in the twenty-first century.

As for the broader issues around this story, I would like to see political discourse in America become less incendiary, more irenic, and more thoughtful. At the same time, both sides of the aisle use martial imagery and provocative language, and that's just politics. I don't see any reason to get too upset by it. And in this case the accused attacker seems to have been dangerously mentally imbalanced. It is a work of futility to try to censor everything that has a remote chance of setting such a person off, and there is no evidence so far that anyone's political rhetoric had that effect on him.

My heart goes out to the victims of this senseless crime and to their families.

UPDATE (14 January): Haaretz: U.S. Jewish leaders slam Sarah Palin's blood libel accusation. Excerpt:

President of Jewish Funds for Justice Simon Greer said in a statement that "the term 'blood libel' is not a synonym for 'false accusation.' It refers to a specific falsehood perpetuated by Christians about Jews for centuries, a falsehood that motivated a good deal of anti-Jewish violence and discrimination. Unless someone has been accusing Ms. Palin of killing Christian babies and making matzoh from their blood, her use of the term is totally out-of-line."

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in the Wall Street Journal: Sarah Palin Is Right About 'Blood Libel'. Excerpt:

Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.

The abominable element of the blood libel is not that it was used to accuse Jews, but that it was used to accuse innocent Jews—their innocence, rather than their Jewishness, being the operative point. Had the Jews been guilty of any of these heinous acts, the charge would not have been a libel.

Update on Cyrus Cylinder loan extension

UPDATE ON THE CYRUS CYLINDER LOAN EXTENSION: After some confusion, the British Museum has issued the expected announcement:

4 January 2011

Extension of Cyrus Cylinder loan

Following a request from the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicraft and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO), the Trustees of the British Museum have agreed to extend the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to the National Museum of Iran until 15 April 2011. This decision has been taken in recognition of the fact that the exhibition has proved to be very popular to date, and the extension will give an opportunity for people from the provinces including school groups to visit the exhibition during the Norouz (New Year) holidays around 20 March 2011.

The Trustees are delighted that the loan has been such a success and look forward to continuing the Museum’s collaboration with colleagues in Iran in the future.

I've only checked the British Museum website today, but the the previous press announcements (first link above and background link below) imply that it was not posted until well after 4 January.

Background here.

Meditation in the Hekhalot Literature and Kabbalah?

DID THE HEKHALOT LITERATURE AND KABBALAH INVOLVE MEDITATION? I would say yes, more or less. Simon Holloway discusses the question in The Silent Mind: A Jew’s Views on Meditation in Galus Australis. Excerpt:

That the story of the four rabbis [who entered the garden/paradise] should be sandwiched between two laws that forbid teaching and meditating upon mystical realia only reinforces the mystical nature of this orchard, and the story seems to function as a cautionary tale. In fact, Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak (“Rashi”) comments upon this passage as it appears in the Babylonian account, by noting that “entering the orchard” means “ascending to the firmament by means of a [divine] name”. This accords with an extra detail found in the Babylonian version (although found in neither the Palestinian Talmud nor in the Tosefta), in which Rabbi Akiva warns his comrades about what to say when they “reach the stones of pure marble”. It also accords with a genre of extra- and post-Talmudic literature that is known as Heikhalot (“palace chambers”), in which Rabbi Ishmael guides the reader through the various chambers of God’s divine palace, before arriving at the throne room and beholding his majesty.

So much for Rashi’s interpretation; significantly, the “Tosafot” disagree. Nobody knows with certainty which of these scholars were responsible for Tractate Hagigah, but with the majority of the Baalei haTosafot being from France, there may be good reason for suggesting one of the French academies. They stress in their commentary that the four sages didn’t really ascend to the firmament, but that “by means of a divine name” they made it appear to themselves as though they had. And so it is worth asking the important question: were the Tosafot suggesting that Rabbi Akiva and his three colleagues were meditating?

This question is not so strange. Contemporary with the later generations of the Tosafot was a rabbi in south-eastern France known as Yitzhak the Blind (Yitzhak “Sagi Nahor” – “Too Much Light”). The son of Rabbi Avraham ben David (“the Raavad”), Yitzhak the Blind contributed greatly towards early kabbalistic philosophies that pertain to the sephirot: divine emanations that bridge the distance between the transcendent godhead and his finite creation. Unsurprisingly for a man who was completely blind, Yitzhak believed that one could ascend these sephirot and approach his creator through mystical contemplation. This idea was to prove very influential amongst later generations of kabbalists – most notable Nachmanides, whose teacher was Yitzhak’s disciple.

But it wasn’t until the expulsion from Spain that these ideas gained widespread currency. Almost grudgingly, European scholars admitted the sanctity of a 13th century Iberian text called Sefer haZohar, which was attributed to the authorship of a second-century Palestinian rabbi named Shimon ben Yohai. Ben Yohai’s transformation is recorded in Tractate Shabbat of the Babylonian Talmud, and served Jews of the sixteenth century with an origin story for the Zohar. A collection of mystical midrashim on the Torah, the Zohar not only constitutes a development of the sephirot philosophy of Yitzhak the Blind, but a profound testament to the development of experiential, introspective Judaism.

The Hekhalot texts to a large degree consist of instructions for ritual practices that promise to give the user access to and some control over the spiritual realm. This is pretty close to the generally accepted understanding of meditation as a mental or spiritual discipline. There is an influential school of modern scholarly thought that regards the Hekhalot texts as exegetical tractates rather than practical ones, but I think (and have argued extensively in print) that this is correct in what it asserts but wrong in what it denies. The Hekhalot literature, like all meditation traditions, is deeply rooted in exegesis of its native scriptures and mythologies, but it is also much concerned with spiritual ritual practices. For more on this and related issues, see my earlier posts here, here and here.

I am not a specialist on the Kabbalah, which is a much larger corpus than the Hekhalot literature, and I cannot speak to the balance in the Kabbalah between exegesis, mythology, and ritual praxis. It seems to vary a great deal from text to text and from author to author. Praxis seems especially important, for example, in the work of Abraham Abulafia. For past posts on the Zohar, the best-known and probably most influential Kabbalistic document, see here.

Revisionist Purim and the (traditional) Tomb of Esther

REVISIONIST PURIM IN IRAN:

Iran revises story of Esther, labels Purim a day of mourning

Monday, January 10, 2011 | Ryan Jones (Israel Today Magazine)

In a couple of months, Israelis and Jews around the world will celebrate Purim, marking the deliverance of the Jews of the Persian Empire from extinction 2,300 years ago. In Iran, the center of the ancient Persian Empire, the date will be marked with mourning and anger.

For years already, Iran has been teaching schoolchildren that Purim marks the massacre of 75,000 Persians by the Jews under the command of Queen Esther. It is presented today as an ancient Iranian holocaust perpetrated by the Jews.

The Iranian version leaves out the part where Haman, the royal advisor, convinces the Persian king to sign a decree permitting the wholesale slaughter the Jews of the empire. When Esther reveals her Jewish background to the king and reveals that Haman was tricking him, the king issues a second decree, allowing the Jews to defend themselves. By God’s grace, the Jews are largely spared, while their enemies are slaughtered.

This year, Iran may go further than simply revising the biblical account. Iranian authorities have decided to downgrade the status of the “Tomb of Esther and Mordechai the Jews” in the city of Hamadan in central Iran. The tomb had previously enjoyed that status of an official pilgrimage site.

Following the downgrading, the Iranian news agency Fars began pushing the idea that Esther and her uncle Mordechai were responsible for a massacre of Iranians, and that their burial place had merely been tolerated until now.

The Iranian news agency MEHR reported reported that a couple of weeks ago, a group of 250 militant Iranian students gathered at the tomb and threatened to tear it down.

I have mentioned the (traditional) tomb of Esther and Mordechai in Iran here and here. The story of Esther is a legend, and a pretty brutal one, but if the Iranians want to make something out of it, they should take it on its own terms. The Persians don't come out very well in that case. But everyone would be better off if we just take it as a story. And if we must find a moral to it, the lesson that small ethnic groups under threat in a larger nation have the right to protect themselves against persecution seems to fit.

Arutz Sheva has more on the threats to the shrine here. Excerpt:

According to the official Iranian news agency MEHR, a group of about 250 student-members of the Basij militia gathered in front of the tomb in December and threatened to tear it down The Basij members sent to threaten the landmark were students from Abu Ali Sina University. They said they were responding to alleged Israeli plans to damage the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem

"Muslims, be aware that [the Israelis] have started the destruction of Al-Aqsa mosque while their second sacred site in Iran, the Esther and Mordecai tomb, is at peace and no Muslims make a sound," the protesters stated. "We, the student basijis... warn Zionist regime leaders if they assault the Al-Aqsa mosque in any way we will destroy the tomb of these lowly murderers," they said.

If the Iranian government suddenly finds it politically expedient to tolerate, let alone encourage, threats to an historic shrine tied to a Jewish legend, it will only make itself look barbaric.

I was aware of these developments in Iran and I was sure I had noted this story before, but if I did, I can't find the post now. There is a somewhat related post here.

Noah's Ark shocker

NOAH'S ARK SHOCKER. You mean it was a hoax?

Background here.

News on 2nd-4th-century Christian manuscripts

LARRY HURTADO has posted a list of Christian Literary Texts in Manuscripts of Second & Third Centuries (pdf file) in the Essays section of his blog. It is an updated version of the list in his 2006 book. Many Jewish manuscripts are included as well. The list includes Old Testament and Apocrypha manuscripts; New Testament manuscripts; manuscripts of Philo, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, New Testament Apocrypha, Apostolic Fathers; and more.

Via Evangelical Textual Criticism.

And on a related note, from Unreported Heritage News:

A flax merchant from Egypt! Owner of 4th century New Testament papyrus identified

This papyrus contains the first seven verses of Paul's Letter to the Romans. Beneath the scripture a different author has scribbled in random phrases. It has been suggested that this papyrus may have been a writing exercise. New research has identified the owner of this document - a man named Aurelius Leonides.

Evidently this is the only ancient New Testament manuscript for which we have a named owner. And quite a bit of information about Aurelius Leonides survives.

Cyrus Cylinder to stay 3 more months in Iran

CYRUS CYLINDER UPDATE:

Cyrus Cylinder will stay in Iran for another three months
PostDateIcon Saturday, 08 January 2011 11:50 | PDF Print E-mail

By Shimon D. Cohen - CAIS

LONDON, (CAIS) -- Iran's Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation (ICHTO) has announced this morning, the Cyrus the Great Cylinder will remain in Iran for another three moths.

The priceless artefact was loaned by the British Museum to Iran on September 10, 2010 for a period of 4 months to be displayed on a special exhibition at the National Museum of Iran (NMI).

[...]

A statement from the British Museum is expected on Monday.

Background here.

Arbel and Orlov (eds.), With Letters of Light

IN THE MAIL:

Daphna V. Arbel and Andrei A. Orlov (eds.) With Letters of Light: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Jewish Apocalypticism, Magic, and Mysticism (Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011)

This is a Festschrift in honor of Rachel Elior. I have an article in it on "Scriptural Exegesis in the Treatise of the Vessels, a Legendary Account of the Hiding of the Temple Treasure." (More on The Treatise of the Vessels [Massekhet Kelim] here and follow the links. And, no, I haven't yet tracked down the whereabouts of that marble plaque.) I've had a chance to skim through the volume and it looks very good.

Review of Sacred Treasure

SACRED TREASURE, a new popular book on the Cairo Geniza by Mark Glickman, is reviewed in the Seattle Times:

'Sacred Treasure' tells engaging story of early Hebrew documents

Everybody knows about the Dead Sea Scrolls, but Seattle rabbi Mark Glickman tells the story of another treasure trove of early Hebrew documents from Egypt in his new book, "Sacred Treasure: The Cairo Genizah."

By Irene Wanner

Special to The Seattle Times

Seven Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 in a cave above the ancient desert outpost of Qumran, on the Dead Sea's West Bank. By 1956, more than 900 documents dating from 150 BCE to 70 CE had been found in 11 caves. Soon world famous, these copies of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts became a source of international contention. They were kept inaccessible for many years, then moved to the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem after the 1967 Six-Day War, and are now available for study there and digitally.

By contrast, the world's largest trove of 10th- to 13th-century documents from the Cairo genizah (storage room) of Ben Ezra Synagogue number in the hundreds of thousands. Until now, they attracted mainly scholarly attention. But as Seattle-area Rabbi Mark Glickman observes in his fascinating new book, "Sacred Treasure — The Cairo Genizah: The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic" (Jewish Lights Publishing, 255 pp., $24.99), the potential knowledge in so many medieval texts is cultural wealth beyond compare. Anyone who loves reading mysteries and travel with a dash of archaeology and ancient history will find Glickman's tale both entertaining and educational.

[...]

Background here.

Brent Landau interviewed

BRENT LANDAU is interviewed by ksl.com about his book The Revelation of the Magi. Video and transcript here.

More reviews here.

Happy Orthodox Christmas

HAPPY CHRISTMAS to Orthodox Christians, who celebrate it today. And special good wishes to the Coptic Church, which like other Middle Eastern churches, has been subjected to horrific persecution by Islamists. The extremists managed to cancel Christmas in Iraq, so it is good to see that both Christians and Muslims are standing up to them in Egypt.

A modern Jewish mystic speaks

A MODERN JEWISH MYSTIC discusses his experiences in an article in The Foward:

The Problem of Spiritual Experience
Is Mysticism in the Mind of the Beholder?
By Jay Michaelson

The article is difficult to excerpt and is worth reading in full, but here are a few passages:

I’ve been thinking about these questions for quite a while. In college and grad school, I read hundreds of testimonies, tracts and accounts of mystic quests; accounts of visionary ascents, ecstatic unions and divine theophanies. Eventually, I moved beyond theory to try contemplative practice for myself.

What can I report? I can say, in my own limited experience, that if you do what some mystics and contemplatives say, you can experience the results they promise: dissolving of the sense of self; rapture in concentrated joy; feelings of immense bliss; and, for religious souls, a certainty that one is held and loved and engulfed by the Divine. And I think it is worth the effort.

Moreover, there is a sense of “presence” in these experiences that is more than a sensation of having one’s mind altered. Particularly in meditation, the mind feels perfectly clear, not swooning or drunken or seen through a soft cinematic lens. Yet with that clarity, a great love arises without any prodding or effort, and there is often an obvious certainty that the love is not just a personal wiggling of neurons but some openness to how things actually are. That’s the feeling, anyway.

[...]

Well, I was trained to be a skeptic. The process of education is fundamentally about acquiring the cognitive skills of doubt, especially in volatile contexts such as religion, and learning to take apart assumptions more critically and carefully. So I think it’s important, and possible, to be analytically rigorous about spiritual experience. Here are some ways to do it.

First, it is helpful to distinguish what we know from what we don’t. At the very least, since I have experienced what mystics have described, by following their recommendations, that means that if I’m deluded, generations of mystics are as well. It’s not just me, and it’s not new; it’s ancient, widespread and revered. Moreover, the mystics’ testimony is “expert” testimony. Contemplatives are precisely the people who have devoted the most attention to the mind and the spirit. I wonder what my Seder interlocutor, a dentist for 30 years, would’ve said if I had doubted the foundations of modern dentistry. Who are you inclined to believe more — the doubter who has never explored these pathways or millions of experts who spent their lives doing so?

[...]

A second useful analytical tool is to tease apart experience from interpretation. “I felt a great love” could be interpreted as “I felt the love of Hashem” or “I felt the love of Christ” — or just “I felt a great love.” And that depends not on the phenomenology of the experience but the conceptual frame in which it is understood. So as soon as one moves from experience to concepts, one is no longer entitled to the certainty of one’s spiritual perception.

[...]

And, finally, valuing spiritual experience without determining a set interpretive frame diminishes the allure of particularism. If we suppose that spirituality can prove the mythic assertions of the Bible, we are mistaken. Indeed, the universality of mystical experience is why contemplatives tend more to be universalists than do non-contemplatives. Though there may be phenomenological differences in different spiritual experiences, mysticism makes plain that, if religion is like a finger pointing to the moon, you can see the moon with any number of pointers, even those a particular tradition or text wants to suppress.

Again, read it all. For scholars studying ancient mysticism, the experience of the mystics is a black box. The experiences of modern mystics and intermediaries has the potential to give a peek into that black box and are worth listening to. Some related thoughts are here, here, and here.

UPDATE: Last link now corrected!

Obituaries for Shemaryahu Talmon

OBITUARIES FOR SHEMARYAHU TALMON have recently been published in the JTA Eulogizer column and (in Hebrew) in Haaretz.

Qumran Seminar in Paris

QUMRAN SEMINAR IN PARIS, program from Christophe Batsch:

SEMINAIRE QUMRAN DE PARIS
QUESTIONS ACTUELLES SUR LES MANUSCRITS DE LA MER MORTE

Fondateur : Francis SCHMIDT (Directeur d’études, EPHE)
Responsable : Christophe BATSCH (Université de Lille)

Programme 2010-2011

le mardi de 13h à 15h, salle Pierre-Jean Mariette
INHA : 2 rue Vivienne 75002 Paris
(métro : Bourse, Palais-Royal, Pyramides)

Mardi 7 décembre 2010 : Daniel STÖKL (CNRS), Les grottes et les
bibliothèques de Qumrân

Mardi 11 janvier 2011 : Maria GOREA (Paris VIII), Le targoum de Job

Mardi 8 février 2011 : Francis SCHMIDT (EPHE), Trois textes liturgiques : 4QOrdo (4Q334), 4QPrières du soir et du matin (4Q408), 4QPrières pour les fêtes (4Q507-509)

Mardi 8 mars 2011 : Arnaud SERANDOUR (EPHE), La Nouvelle Jérusalem de
Qumrân

Mardi 12 avril 2011 : Ursula SHATTNER (Catho Paris) et Jörg FREY
(Münich), Les 4QMystères

Mardi 10 mai 2011 : Hedwige ROUILLARD-BONRAISN (EPHE), Les pesharim
continus

Mardi 7 juin 2011 : Giuseppe PAPPALARDO (INFN, Italie), Études
archéométriques des manuscrits de la mer Morte au moyen de techniques nucléaires

I'm slightly behind on this one, but most of the papers are still to come.

SBL awards for junior scholars

SBL AWARDS for junior scholars:

January 4, 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS January 10 Deadline


Paul J. Achtemeier Award

The primary goal of the Paul J. Achtemeier Award for New Testament Scholarship is to stimulate the finest and most penetrating work in New Testament studies. In order to compete for the award a paper of publishable quality must be submitted. The paper must not have been previously published or accepted for publication. The awarded paper will be delivered at an SBL national or international meeting with a panel discussion. There is a $1,000.00 monetary award.

The award will be given to a member who has completed the doctorate and been in a teaching and/or research position for at least two (2) years and ordinarily no more than ten (10) years. A person may receive the award only one time. The nominee/applicant will submit a current academic CV and a paper, normally in English, and of no more than 10,000 words in PDF format. Applicants will submit all materials via electronic mail to AchtemeierAward@sbl-site.org.

Applicants should consult the SBL Handbook of Style for guidelines. The subject of the paper is open, but it must advance some dimension of New Testament scholarship. The paper will be evaluated within three categories:

1) persuasive thesis that engages the New Testament,
2) clarity of expression and thought,
3) originality and creativity.

The Achtemeier Award Committee for 2011 consists of Harold W. Attridge, Steven J. Friesen, and Marianne Meye Thompson.

The submission process and calendar is the following:

10 January 2011 Announcement of Intent to submit
1 March 2011 Submit all materials (make sure you receive a confirmation of receipt, if not, contact Sandra Stewart Kruger, sskruger@sbl-site.org immediately)
30 April 2011 Announcement of Awardee

David Noel Freedman Award

The David Noel Freedman Award for Excellence and Creativity in Hebrew Bible Scholarship is open for submissions.

Award
The $1,000 award will be given to an SBL member who submits a paper in Hebrew Bible scholarship. The paper must not have been published or accepted for publication. The awarded paper will be delivered at an SBL annual national or international meeting with a panel discussion.

SBL Members Eligible
The SBL member must have completed the doctorate and held a teaching or research position for a minimum of two (2) years and ordinarily no more than ten (10) years. A person may receive the award only one time.

Submission Requirements
There are two required steps in the process.
First, all intentions to submit a paper for the award must be sent to FreedmanAward@sbl-site.org no later than 10 January 2011. Please indicate in the subject line of all correspondence the last name of the applicant. All of the contact information for the individual should be included in the email. If the tentative title for a paper is available, please indicate it. Include a current copy of your academic CV in PDF format. Name the file with the first and last name of the applicant. Please be certain that the date of the CV is indicated.

Second, by 1 March 2011 the following materials must be attached to an email and submitted to FreedmanAward@sbl-site.org.

1. Update any items on the academic CV that was initially sent.
2. Paper of no more than 10,000 words (double spaced) including footnotes submitted in PDF format and attached to the email. Applicants should refer to the SBL Handbook of Style for guidelines. Do not include bibliographies. Please name the document with the last name of the person applying and the date submitted. Make sure you receive a confirmation of receipt, if not, contact Sandra Stewart Kruger, sskruger@sbl-site.org immediately.
3. A brief statement (no more than 100-250 words) regarding the way the paper advances Hebrew Bible scholarship.

Criteria
The paper will be evaluated on the basis of three criteria:
• a persuasive thesis that engages the Hebrew Bible;
• clarity of expression and thought; and
• originality and creativity.

Award Committee
The 2011 award committee is Susan Ackerman, Dartmouth College; Carol Meyers, Duke University, and William H. C. Propp, University of California San Diego.

Deadlines
10 January 2011 Nominations or intent to submit
1 March 2011 Submission of the materials required for consideration
30 April 2011 Announcement of Award

Museum exhibit: The Story of Iran and the Jews

MUSEUM EXHIBITION:

The story of Iran and the Jews, now on display in Israel

An exhibition devoted to the history, culture and contemporary life of Iranian Jewry opens at Beit Hatfutsot in Tel Aviv.

By Haaretz Service

An exhibition devoted to the history, culture and contemporary life of Iranian Jewry opened last week at Beit Hatfutsot in Tel Aviv, presenting the first in-depth and comprehensive view of Iranian Jewry through ancient artifacts found in the Persian country.

The story of Iran's ancient Jewish community unfolds over more than 2,700 years, back to when the Jews were exiled from Jerusalem through to today, after most members of Iran's Jewish community have relocated throughout the world. According to Professor David Yeroushalmi, a member of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University and the exhibition's historical advisor, over 20,000 Jews still live in Iran today, most of them in Tehran.

Among the items exhibited are archeological artifacts, many on public display for the first time, a wide range of cultural artifacts, including ancient manuscripts, talismans, carpets and both secular and religious music.

[...]

Arutz Sheva also has an article on the exhibition, with more pictures. I'm not sure how Haaretz calculates the Jewish exile to be more than 2700 years ago. (Arutz Sheva goes one better, with "more than three thousand years.") The Babylonian Exile happened in 587/586 BCE, which adds up to just a few years short of 2600 years ago. I'm not sure when a Jewish community was founded in Iran, but it was presumably after that.

The Garshuni script explained

THE GARSHUNI SCRIPT is explained by Dr. Adam McCollum in the HMML Chronicle:

Arabic in Syriac Script: Some Garšūnī Basics

This is the inaugural post in a series that will deal with manuscripts and the languages, literature, and history of Christianity in the Middle East. I serve as lead cataloger of Eastern Christian manuscripts at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML), Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota. HMML is a repository of microfilms and high-quality digital images of several thousands of manuscripts in—as far as Eastern Christianity is concerned—Arabic, Armenian, Syriac, and Ge`ez from collections in churches, monasteries, and libraries in Ethiopia, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere in the Middle East, along with more in European languages from western collections. HMML has entered into agreements with the owners of these manuscripts 1. to preserve them against destruction, theft, etc., and 2. to make them more accessible for scholars to study.

In this first post, I’d like to talk briefly about an interesting phenomenon in Christian Arabic literature: Garšūnī, also known as Karšūnī (and in older publications even Carshun or Carshunic). Whatever it is called and however it is spelled, it refers to the writing of Arabic in Syriac letters. The earliest continuous examples of this kind of writing appear in the fourteenth century, but there are short notes and colophons dated before that time. It is, however, not a practice only of the past: HMML collections have a number of examples of Garšūnī from well into the 20th century.

[...]

Via Abu 'l-Rayhan Al-Biruni on FB.

Much of this will be interesting to nonspecialists, although parts do get technical. Garshuni has been mentioned at PaleoJudaica here and here. The important work of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library has been noted here, with links to previous posts.

Review of Gambetti, The Alexandrian Riots of 38 C.E. and the Persecution of the Jews

BMCR BOOK REVIEW:

Sandra Gambetti, The Alexandrian Riots of 38 C.E. and the Persecution of the Jews: A Historical Reconstruction. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 135. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2009. Pp. viii, 336. ISBN 9789004138469. $169.00.

Reviewed by Torrey Seland, School of Mission & Theology, Norwa (torreys@gmail.com)

Preview

Buy this book from Amazon and support BMCR

The present study, dealing with the political problems of the Jews in the fourth decade CE, is one of the most interesting works published in this field in recent years. The monograph developed from a 2003 doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, supervised by Erich Gruen. After a brief Introduction, the theses of the book are set forth in ten well-argued chapters, followed by a chapter of conclusions, and five appendices, an impressive bibliography, and indexes. The book challenges much of the received view concerning the Alexandrian riots in the thirties CE, and its theses will have to be addressed in future work.

[...]

A retrospective of the voyage of the Phoenicia

A RETROSPECTIVE on the voyage of the Good Ship Phoenicia:

The history maker

8:24am Friday 31st December 2010 (Dorset Echo)

* By Laura Kitching

A DORSET expedition leader is celebrating a successful sailing year after recreating the first circumnavigation of Africa in a wooden boat.

Philip Beale battled the odds to complete his dream quest of re-enacting the 20,000 nautical mile historic voyage, believed to have been undertaken by Phoenicians more than 2,500 years ago, according to Greek historian Herodotus.

It took two years and two months and involved in-depth research into Phoenician history, ship construction, design and building of a 20m wooden replica Phoenician ship in Syria and teamwork by international sailors to safely navigate through the pirate-infested waters off Somalia.

Now Beale, of East Chaldon, near Lulworth, has made history but rather than rest on his laurels, his sights are set on bringing the vessel back to the United Kingdom – and to its home port of Weymouth – in 2012/13.

Beale said: “Thankfully we got home in one piece.

[...]

Indeed. But the sailing career of the Phoenicia is not over yet:

“The ship is in Syria at the moment undergoing some maintenance but it’s our plan to bring it back to the United Kingdom in 2012 or 2013.

“The idea will be to sail up the Channel initially to London and then bring it to all the major ports – as Weymouth is the home port we’ll definitely bring it there.”

Background here and follow the links.

Saving Babylon

SAVING BABYLON:

A Triage to Save the Ruins of Babylon

By STEVEN LEE MYERS (NYT)
Published: January 2, 2011

JIMIJMA, Iraq — The damage done to the ruins of ancient Babylon is visible from a small hilltop near the Tower of Babel, whose biblical importance is hard to envision from what is left of it today.

Across the horizon are guard towers, concertina wire and dirt-filled barriers among the palm trees; encroaching farms and concrete houses from this village and others; and the enormous palace that Saddam Hussein built in the 1980s atop the city where Nebuchadnezzar II ruled.

Something else is visible, too: earthen mounds concealing all that has yet to be discovered in a city that the prophet Jeremiah called “a gold cup in the Lord’s hands, a cup that made the whole earth drunk.”

On the hillside during one of his many visits to the ruins, Jeff Allen, a conservationist working with the World Monuments Fund, said: “All this is unexcavated. There is great potential at this site. You could excavate the street plan of the entire city.”

That is certainly years away given the realities of today’s Iraq. But for the first time since the American invasion in 2003, after years of neglect and violence, archaeologists and preservationists have once again begun working to protect and even restore parts of Babylon and other ancient ruins of Mesopotamia. And there are new sites being excavated for the first time, mostly in secret to avoid attracting the attention of looters, who remain a scourge here.

The World Monuments Fund, working with Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, has drafted a conservation plan to combat any further deterioration of Babylon’s mud-brick ruins and reverse some of the effects of time and Mr. Hussein’s propagandistic and archaeologically specious re-creations.

In November, the State Department announced a new $2 million grant to begin work to preserve the site’s most impressive surviving ruins. They include the foundation of the Ishtar Gate, built in the sixth century B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Nabopolassar, and adorned with brick reliefs of the Babylonian gods Marduk and Adad. (The famous blue-glazed gate that Nebuchadnezzar commissioned was excavated in the early 20th century and rebuilt in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.)

The objective is to prepare the site and other ruins — from Ur in the south to Nimrud in the north — for what officials hope will someday be a flood of scientists, scholars and tourists that could contribute to Iraq’s economic revival almost as much as oil.

[...]

This is very good news, but there are plenty of challenges remaining.

This Tower of Babel business (carried to the point of silliness by Arutz Sheva here) refers to the ruins of a ziqqurat from the time of Nebuchadnezzar II (c. 600 BCE). He may have rebuilt an older ziqqurat, but this is the Tower of Babel only in that it may have inspired the creation of that legend when the Jewish exiles of Nebuchadnezzar's time saw it.

Related, also in the NYT: A Tour of Iraq’s Ancient Sites. Included are a video about the (traditional) tomb of Ezekiel (already noted here) and a photo of Hebrew inscriptions at the (traditional) tomb of the prophet Nahum, as well as photos and videos of other sites of biblical and related interest.

Karbala Christian sites in danger

CHALDO-ASSYRIAN WATCH: The horrific persecution of Iraq's Aramaic-speaking Christians includes desecration of their sacred historical sites and artifacts. This from the Memri blog:

Iraqi Christians in Karbala Report Looted Churches, Desecrated Graves

Reporting from Karbala, Iraq, journalist Fadhel Rashad says that Iraqi Christians are not only subject to killing and deportation, but that their churches, cemeteries, and historical artifacts are being targeted for desecration and looting by organized criminal gangs.

In the province of Karbala, 108 km (67.5 miles) south of Baghdad, officials confirmed that the legacy and history of Christians have become a target for destruction. Karbala, Fadhel wrote, is not just a city for Shi'a Muslims; it was inhabited by people of various sects and religions throughout history, and there is a great deal of archeological evidence to indicate that Christians had built churches and performed religious rites in the city.

In one church, he wrote, Aramaic writing on the walls suggests that the church was in existence in the fifth century CE. There are signs that Saddam's military forces used the place for target shooting.

Source: www.alesbuyia.com December 31, 2010

I have noted previously the Al-Aqiser Church in Karbala, which is perhaps the one mentioned here.

Modern trials of the Samaritans

SAMARITAN NEWS:

The modern trials of the ancient Samaritans

By Helena Merriman
BBC News, Nablus

The Samaritan community has lived in the Middle East for thousands of years - but they are having to find new ways to secure their future, Helena Merriman reports from the West Bank.

A couple of excerpts:

Before, they would take sides, but now they are trying a new approach - neutrality.

They are building good relations with their Palestinian and Jewish neighbours and are unique in the region for having both Israeli and Palestinian identity papers.

This means they can travel between Israel and the West Bank with ease.

Some entrepreneurial Samaritans are now using their unique status to offer a delivery service to businessmen in the West Bank town of Nablus, just a few miles away from Mount Gerizim.

Many Palestinian businessmen there export goods to towns in Israel, but because they have to go through Israeli checkpoints, deliveries can be slow.

An exporter of car parts to Nazareth and Haifa, Ibrahim, pays the Samaritans to take some of his goods to Israel.

"The Samaritan drivers help us because they can take goods to Israel in one day," he tells me at his shop.

"If you want a Samaritan driver, you call them, they take the goods in their cars and return back to Nablus without the checkpoints."

[...]

Mr [Joseph] Cohen tells me that since there are many more men than women, they have to look outside their own community to find potential wives.

Some Samaritans have been using the internet to find brides from other countries, and he introduces me to Alexandra from the Ukraine, who converted to the Samaritan faith and married his cousin.

More recently, an American woman has made history by becoming the first person to convert to the Samaritan faith without marrying in.

Originally from Michigan, Sharon Sullivan now lives with her four children within the Samaritan community.

She says it is sad that more people do not know about this ancient religious sect.

"The good Samaritan story is about a Samaritan who is caring for someone not of their own religion," she says.

"And although the title has been used by so many organisations, the people themselves are unknown."

To address this, Ms Sullivan and Benyamin Tsedaka, a Samaritan historian, have spent the past seven years working on an English translation of the Samaritan Torah - one of the world's most ancient religious texts.

Alexandra was mentioned in PaleoJudaica here (and under the name "Shura" here?). I have also noted Mr. Sedaka's and Ms. Sullivan's Samaritan Torah project here.

UPDATE: That English translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch is now available for preorder from Amazon.com.

More on the Septuagint in the Cairo Geniza

MORE ON THE SEPTUAGINT IN THE CAIRO GENIZA: Manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible with Greek glosses which are in the Cambridge Geniza collection are online here. (HT Gerald Rosenberg.)

Background here.

Jesus kicks ass in the apocryphal Infancy Gospels

JESUS KICKS SOME ASS in the apocryphal Infancy Gospels. If profanity and irreverence offend you, you might want to give this one a miss. But this stuff really is in the Infancy Gospels and the take on it in Cracked is pretty funny.

Assyriologist Gonzalo Rubio on dead languages

ASSYRIOLOGIST GONZALO RUBIO explains why dead languages are important in this excellent interview with LiveScience. Excerpt:

LiveScience: What is it like to study a dead language?

Rubio: In many regards, we are resuscitating a dead civilization through the understanding of its dead languages. When one studies an economic document from ancient Mesopotamia, there are names of individuals entering a contract or making a purchase, normally in front of a number of named witnesses: These are all people who lived three or four thousand years ago, people whose names were forgotten and buried in the sand until modern scholars brought them back to a modicum of life in their articles and books.

When an assyriologist holds a tablet inscribed with cuneiform characters, be it in Sumerian or in Akkadian, there is a chance that she or he may be the first person to read that text again after millennia of oblivion. Even if one is not the epigrapher who first looks at the tablets found at an archaeological site, even as a scholar reading texts at a museum, there is an overwhelming feeling of discovery and recovery, the excitement of bringing a civilization back to life by understanding it, text by text, tablet by tablet.

I have some related observations here.

Selling the Talmud as a business guide in China

TALMUD WATCH (er, reception history?):

Selling the Talmud as a Business Guide
In China, notions of Jewish business acumen lead to a publishing boom—and stereotyping.

P Deliss / Godong-Corbis (Newsweek)

Jewish visitors to China often receive a snap greeting when they reveal their religion: “Very smart, very clever, and very good at business,” the Chinese person says. Last year’s Google Zeitgeist China rankings listed “why are Jews excellent?” in fourth place in the “why” questions category, just behind “why should I enter the party” and above “why should I get married?” (Google didn’t publish a "why" category in Mandarin this year.) And the apparent affection for Jewishness has led to a surprising trend in publishing over the last few years: books purporting to reveal the business secrets of the Talmud that capitalize on the widespread impression among Chinese that attributes of Judaism lead to success in the financial arts.

Titles such as Crack the Talmud: 101 Jewish Business Rules, The Illustrated Jewish Wisdom Book, and Know All of the Money-Making Stories of the Talmud share the shelves with stories of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. There’s even a Talmud hotel in Taiwan inspired by “the Talmud’s concept of success” that features a copy of the book Talmud Business Success Bible in every room. With the increasing interest in business education in China, and a rise in sales of self-help literature, the production of business guides to the Talmud has exploded. The guides are like the Chinese equivalents of books such as Sun Tzu and the Art of Business.

[...]

Non-Chinese experts on Judaism are quick to point out that the Talmud is not a business manual. While the Talmud mentions contract law, zoning, and problems involved with charging interest, it’s not a get-rich-quick guide, says Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, associate professor of Talmud and rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. “I’ve heard a couple of [Chinese] people say that Jews are smart because of the Talmud. But they don’t seem to know what it is. I think they see it as some sort of secret intelligence book,” added Rabbi Nussin Rodin, a Beijing-based emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. “I once got a letter from someone in China saying, I’m very interested in making money so I’d like to know what you teach at your courses about how to make money,” says Diamond. “Of course, there aren’t too many people in the Jewish Theological Seminary pulling in the big bucks.”

[...]

Indeed. The whole thing seems kind of creepy.

UPDATE (27 January): More here, putting this story into a larger and less creepy context.

Hair of the dog from ancient Ugarit

HAIR OF THE DOG from ancient Ugarit. Appropriate for the season.

Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Some end-of-the-year things:

The Biblical Studies Carnival LVIII by Joseph Kelly at כל־האדם. Another very thorough effort.

The December 2010 Biblioblog Top 50.

The completely objective December 2010 Biblioblog Top 50 by NT Wrong.

The Top Stories of 2010 (also here) by Todd Bolen at the Bible Places Blog.

BAR Jan-Feb 2011

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW has a new issue out (Jan-Feb '11). Some articles can be read only with a paid personal or institutional subscription, but several are available in full for free:

The late Ehud Netzer, In Search of Herod’s Tomb

2011 Digs Seeking Volunteers

Andrew McGowan, How December 25 Became Christmas

Who Wrote the Bible? (I haven't watched this episode, but my past experience with Simcha Jacobovici's The Naked Archaeologist has not been encouraging.)

The Septuagint in the Cairo Geniza

THE SEPTUAGINT IN THE CAIRO GENIZA:

Bible discovery reveals links with Jewish scholars

Experts at Cambridge University have made a major discovery about the history of the Bible.

Researchers have been studying ancient biblical manuscripts in the University Library, and have found that a version of the Bible written in Greek was used by Jewish people for centuries longer than originally thought.

The documents, known as the Cairo Genizah manuscripts, were discovered in an old synagogue in Egypt and were brought to Cambridge at the end of the 19th century.

They have now been brought together digitally and posted online, enabling scholars worldwide to analyse them for the first time.

Prof Nicholas de Lange, professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Cambridge University, has been leading a three-year study into the ancient fragments.

He said: “The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek is said to be one of the most lasting achievements of the Jewish civilization – without it, Christianity might not have spread as quickly and as successfully as it did.

“It was thought that the Jews, for some reason, gave up using Greek translations and chose to use the original Hebrew for public reading in synagogue and for private study, until modern times when pressure to use the vernacular led to its introduction in many synagogues.”

Prof de Lange’s research has discovered that some of the manuscripts contain passages from the Bible in Greek, written in Hebrew letters. The fragments date from 1,000 years after the original translation into Greek - showing that use of the Greek text was still alive in Greek-speaking synagogues in the Byzantine Empire, the Greek-speaking eastern part of the Roman Empire.

Prof de Lange said the research offered a rare glimpse of Byzantine Jewish life and culture, and also illustrated the cross-fertilisation between Jewish and Christian biblical scholars in the Middle Ages.

He said: “This is a very exciting discovery for me because it confirms a hunch I had when studying Genizah fragments 30 years ago.” chris.elliott@cambridge-news.co.uk

UPDATE (3 January): More here.

New book: Hendel (ed.), Reading Genesis: Ten Methods

NEW BOOK: Reading Genesis: Ten Methods (CUP), edited by Ronald Hendel. From the back of the book:

Reading Genesis: Ten Methods is a marvelous introduction to recent approaches to the study of biblical texts, accessible yet profound. Distinguished contributors survey methods both old and new, all focused on the book of Genesis. These are classic discussions and offer not only a report on the present state of biblical studies but also fine examples of the biblical scholar's art.
John Barton, University of Oxford

Facebook page here. Previewed at Google Books here.

Tony Burke: Why I Study the Christian Apocrypha

TONY BURKE: Why I Study the Christian Apocrypha.

I have posted a comment in the comments section.

Note also Tony's More Christian Apocrypha website.

The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Calendar-in-a-Year

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: Joseph Kelly has published an Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Calendar-in-a-Year at the כל–האדם blog. If you follow it you will read all of the two Charlesworth Old Testament Pseudepigrapha volumes in 2011. This is ambitious, but now's the time to get it done. You'll be wanting it out of the way when the first More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project volume comes out, I hope not too long after that.

Vendyl Jones has passed away

VENDYL JONES has died today:

Noahide Archaeologist Vendyl Jones Passes Away

by Hillel Fendel (Arutz Sheva)

Vendyl Jones – Noahide archaeologist who discovered an immense stock of incense used in the Second Temple as well as the aromatic anointing oil – has passed away at the age of 80. He was most famous for his search for the Ark of the Covenant.

Diagnosed with cancer of the throat seven months ago, in pain and unable to swallow, Jones was tended by his wife Anita during this period. Money for medical bills was scarce, as most of the money he made during his career went towards furthering his archaeological and religious pursuits in Israel.

[...]

His life goals began to take root when he learned, in 1964, that the Copper Scroll had been found in a cave at Qumran, Israel, and that it listed – in coded form – the hiding places of sacred articles such as the Ark of the Covenant. In April 1967, he moved his family to Israel, continuing his studies in the Department of Judaica at Hebrew University and becoming involved in archaeology. He aided the Israeli army during the Six Day War, when his color-blindness helped him detect camouflaged enemy tanks.

He worked on many digs at Qumran and other Judean Desert sites, though he did not receive government support or funding. His most famous find was that of the Ketoret – 900 pounds of reddish powder with a uniquely strong fragrance that he said was the Ketoret, the 11-ingredient incense used in the Holy Temple. Though critics disputed his findings, they were supported by tests conducted at Weizmann Institute and Bar-Ilan University.

Dr. Jones was often said to be the inspiration behind the "Indiana Jones" films starring Harrison Ford, though he himself has denied it, as have the film-makers. Among his children are converts to Judaism living in Samaria and elsewhere in Israel. His funeral will take place in Grandview, Texas.

You can also read the Wikipedia entry on him here. According to it, another view is that the "incense" was actually dirt.

Mr. Jones was mentioned in PaleoJudaica here, here, and here, all three posts referring to his dotty plans to find the Ark of the Covenant. (Incidentally, the Copper Scroll does not give a location for the Ark of the Covenant, more's the pity.)

It may be that Mr. Jones was involved in some legitimate archaeology along the way, but most of what he did seems to have revolved around finding the Ark and other goofy ideas. Well, if nothing else, he provided some amusement. May he rest in peace.

(HT Gerald Rosenberg.)

Geza Vermes on Herod the Great

GEZA VERMES has a long biographical article on Herod the Great in Standpoint Magazine:

Herod the Terrible or Herod the Great?
GEZA VERMES
January/February 2011

The Christian world has inherited a wholly negative image of king Herod (74/72-4 BCE), during whose reign Jesus was born (Matthew 2:1, Luke, 1:5). Matthew's legendary account, Nativity plays and Christian imagination have turned Herod into the Ivan the Terrible of antiquity. When the three wise kings, or rather oriental magicians (magoi in the Greek Gospel), arrived at the royal palace in Jerusalem and asked about the recently born king of the Jews, Herod pretended to be helpful and directed them to Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of the Messiah, on condition that they promised to let him know the whereabouts of the babe. He, too, wished to greet him, he lied, when in fact he planned to murder the potential rival. So when the magi failed to return, he let loose his soldiers on the infants of Bethlehem.

The extensive secular chronicles provide a more nuanced biography, one that is almost as detailed as those of Roman emperors. Our chief informant is the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-c.100CE), who devoted most of Book I of his Jewish War and Books XIV to XVII of Jewish Antiquities to the life and times of Herod. Josephus uses as his main source the universal history of Nicolaus of Damascus, the well-informed teacher, adviser and ambassador of Herod. The fact that Josephus often criticises the king suggests that beside the court historian's pro-Herod chronicle, he had also at his disposal another account sympathetic to the Hasmoneans, the Jewish priest-kings, who from 152 BCE ruled the Holy Land, first independently and after 63 BCE under the aegis of Rome, until Herod took their throne in 37 BCE.

[...]

It concludes:

In short, both Jewish and Christian traditions treat him as Herod the Terrible. The historian, however, is fully aware, despite Herod's grave shortcomings, of his unparalleled political and cultural accomplishments. In particular, his long friendship with Augustus was highly beneficial to the inhabitants of Judea and the Jewish religion. Moreover, while Herod enjoyed the enviable status of a "client king, friend of the Roman people", none of his descendants, if the short reign of Agrippa I (41-44 CE) is discarded, was sufficiently esteemed by Augustus and his successors to receive the title "king of the Jews". All in all, in view of these unquestionable achievements Herod deserves to be known as the one and only Herod the Great.

Read it all.

Herod the Great has come up fairly often at PaleoJudaica. Some interesting past posts are here, here, and here.

Maurice Casey on the historical Jesus

MAURICE CASEY'S new book on the historical Jesus is given lengthy coverage in Maclean's:

Jesus historians get an earful from Maurice Casey
An academic who is ‘not serving the interests of any faith’ derides self-serving portrayals of Christ

by Brian Bethune on Thursday, December 23, 2010 2:00pm - 10 Comments

Maurice Casey is fed up. The emeritus professor of New Testament language and literature at Britain’s University of Nottingham—a scholar, that is, of the only sources we have for the life and times of Jesus Christ—knows that history is not done in his field like it is in any other. The stakes, and the passions, are simply too high, when those who study the central figure in Western history place him along a spectrum that ranges from God incarnate to mythic creation. What truly disturbs Casey, however, is the way the once vast middle ground in historical Jesus studies is being squeezed, just as it is in many aspects of the increasingly intense faceoff between religion and secularism in modern society.

A resurgence of conservative scholarship on one side, including historians (like Paul Johnson) who accept what Casey considers unbelievable miracles detailed in untrustworthy sources, and revisionism that stretches to outright denial of Jesus’s existence on the other, have led him to pen his own take, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching. It’s less a full-blown biography than a vigorous defence of historical methodology—of the moral necessity of applying the same historical standards to the study of Jesus as we apply to, say, Julius Caesar. Casey’s magnum opus offers, for those who accept his reasoning, an impressive array of facts about Jesus Christ, and a slashing attack on almost everyone to the left or right of him.

[...]

When he’s through eviscerating everyone and everything wrong with his field, Casey turns to the second, and more positive, pillar of his approach. He does respect “the text,” his Scriptural sources, and one mark of that respect is that he applies to them linguistic skills he thinks shamefully lacking in his colleagues. Jesus, his family, his disciples—his entire world—spoke Aramaic, while the New Testament was written in Greek. And therein lies a huge problem. Separating later and less trustworthy material from older, more plausible writing is greatly helped by teasing out the Aramaic originals behind Greek Gospel accounts. For centuries this was almost impossible, because there wasn’t enough Aramaic writing, especially idiomatic writing, available. “Before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found after the war, you just couldn’t do it,” Casey says. “And though most are in Hebrew, the Aramaic scrolls—the Book of Enoch for one—are written in a more popular style, full of stories and idioms.”

Now it’s possible to see how close to the surface Aramaic originals are in the oldest Gospel, Mark, the work of an unknown, educated but not particularly polished, and manifestly bilingual evangelist. In one telling example, Casey points out how the oldest manuscript versions have a puzzling opening to the story of a paralytic (Mark 1:41): “And being angry,” Jesus stretched out his hand and healed the man with a touch. Matthew (8:3) and Luke (5:13) offer the same story, in mostly the same words—that is, they took it from Mark—except they drop the opening because it made no sense. Jesus had no reason to be angry, or if he were, no reason to proceed with the healing. For Casey, though, Mark was simply translating from an Aramaic source and was in the grip of what the scholar calls interference, which affects all bilinguals when they translate. The original Aramaic word used was surely regaz, which can indeed mean “tremble with anger,” as does the Greek word Mark put in its place, orgistheis. But the latter only means angry, and does not carry the wider meaning of regaz, which stretches to include “moved [to sympathy].” In Mark’s mind, Casey argues, because the two words shared one meaning, they shared them all.

I've read some of Casey's work that attempts to retrovert the Aramaic being the Greek Gospels and commented on it in my 2005 JSP article, "(How) Can We Tell if a Greek Apocryphon or Pseudepigraphon Has Been Translated from Hebrew or Aramaic?" If I may quote myself:

All this being the case, I confess myself skeptical of attempts at largescale retroversion such as, for example, Maurice Casey’s reconstruction of long Aramaic passages behind the Gospel of Mark. In his chapter on methodology Casey ignores the important methodological treatments of Beyer, Maloney, and Martin, interacts very little with Fitzmyer’s work, and also ignores the vast literature on the translation technique of the LXX, which lays him open to the charge of trying to reinvent the wheel. It is unclear how his discussions of translation theory and bilingualism theory feed into his method. He is right to look for passages that show signs of being translated literally (although a certain amount of circular reasoning is involved in finding them), but he underestimates the difficulty of retroverting vocabulary and idiom. The two must frequently be treated together, and he does not explain what principles he uses to find Semitisms in the Greek text and then reconstruct the mostly likely Aramaic behind them. He approaches the task as though each problem of retroversion had only one solution, which, as I have shown at length in this study, is by no means true. I do not deny that Mark probably drew on Aramaic sources or that Casey’s attempt to reconstruct them has some heuristic value. He has created some possible solutions to the problem of what lies behind Mark’s Greek, but it is unlikely that his solutions consistently represent something close to Mark’s sources.

Full details of my supporting arguments can be found in this long article, which is online here, but requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to download. You can read a shorter conference-paper version here, although it does not discuss Casey's work.

Back to the Maclean's article:

With numerous examples of the same sort of thing, Casey makes a compelling case that Mark’s Aramaic underlay makes it both old and genuine in its storytelling: “one short step away from eyewitness testimony.” And since Casey, true to his standards of historical methodology, asserts that there has to be good reason for rejecting authentic material, he pays close attention—neither accepting in faith as the divinely inspired word of Scripture nor rejecting as physically impossible—to Mark’s almost eyewitness accounts of miracles (which in his Gospel are far more muted than in John’s, mostly healings and exorcisms) and the Scriptural accounts of visions of the risen Christ after Jesus’s death. “I’ve done quite a lot of reading in the anthropology of medicine and in the history of psychosomatic illnesses,” Casey says. “There are very well-attested accounts after the First World War of doctors curing, by words, cases of hysterical blindness prompted by mustard gas attacks. A charismatic prophet could do it.” Similarly, Casey has investigated the widespread phenomenon of bereavement visions, when grief-stricken survivors have seen their dead loved ones appear to them.

In the end, a lifetime of weighing historical issues leads Casey to accept as fact much that the Gospels proclaim—a remarkable amount, in fact, for a non-Christian. Jesus was born about 4 BCE, and grew up in Nazareth; he was baptized by John the Baptist and called disciples of his own, appointing 12 of them as special apostles; he preached repentance, forgiveness and the coming of the kingdom of God in rural and small-town Galilee; his charismatic authority brought healing to many victims of psychosomatic illnesses, including the paralyzed, the blind and people with skin diseases; about 30 CE he went to Jerusalem, where the disturbance he caused chasing moneylenders out of the Temple led to his arrest and crucifixion by Pontius Pilate. After his death, Jesus was seen, in non-physical form, by some followers, including his brother James, in authentic bereavement experiences, while stories of the empty tomb and of his physical resurrection grew up afterwards to explain the visions inspired by raw grief.

[...]

I haven't read this book, but Casey's conclusions as summarized here sound temperate and sensible to me. For more on his book in the biblioblogosphere, see here.

For my part, a reconstruction of Jesus as a wild-eyed apocalyptic prophet who thought himself to be a divine being seems to me well within the range of possibilities suggested by both the texts and Jesus' first-century Jewish context. I wish historical Jesus scholars would take it more seriously.

Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all those celebrating.

Historical and related notes from Christmases past are collected here. And let's not forget the newly-translated Revelation of the Magi. Go here for Brent Landau's doctoral dissertation, which has the translation and critical text.

More on suppressed Comtroller's report on Temple Mount

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: That suppressed Comptroller's report on the Waqf and the Temple Mount continues to cause controversy:

Censoring of Temple Mount Report Sparks Anger

by Hillel Fendel (Arutz Sheva)

The State Comptroller has prepared a report on the wanton destruction caused by the Waqf on the Temple Mount, and on Israel’s response. The Committee to Prevent Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities is up in arms that the lion’s share of the report will not be publicized.

Attorney Yisrael Caspi of the above Committee responded on Arutz-7’s Hebrew news magazine to remarks by MK Otniel Shneller, who chairs the Knesset subcommittee that determined which parts of the Comptroller’s report may be publicized. Shneller told Arutz 7 on Monday that the Waqf – the Muslim religious body that administers the Temple Mount site, Judaism’s holiest location and Islam’s third-holiest – caused much destruction to Temple Mount artifacts in the course of digging and building a mosque there.

However, he said, “the situation has now changed totally… Many improvements have been made over the past few months, and everything is now done there in full coordination with the police, the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Attorney General’s office, the relevant ministerial committee, and the Jerusalem municipality.”

Caspi says this is not enough: “The report must be publicized in order to disclose the mistakes of the Olmert government that allowed the Waqf to operate on the Temple Mount freely… To censor the report because of ‘security’ considerations is a violation of previous promises made by the committee members.

Shneller had said that other countries are very interested in the Temple Mount, indicating that if Israel releases the full report, it might result in other countries gaining a stronghold there.

[...]

I have no idea what that last quoted paragraph means. I have seen no good reason for the report to remain suppressed. If it causes embarrassment or discomfort or offense to some, that's probably all to the good.

Background here.

Aramaic-speaking Russians

ARAMAIC WATCH: Aramaic-speaking Russians.

The Assyrians -- Russian сitizens who even now ‘speak the language of Christ’

Yesterday at 19:52 | Paul Goble (Kyiv Post)

The Assyrians, one of Russia’s smallest and least known nationalities, not only have kept their religious and national identity in tact despite the vicissitudes of the past century but also to speak the language of Christ, according to the leaders of that community.

The current issue of “Vera-Eskom,” a newspaper directed at the Christians in the Russian North, provides a remarkable glimpse of this ancient people whose ancestors fled from the persecutions of the Ottomans and helped keep Christianity and its principles alive in Russia during the depradations of the Soviet period.

In the early years of the 20th century, more than 100,000 Assyrians fled from the Ottoman Empire and Persia to Russia. Because of Soviet persecutions and intermarriage, that community has shrunk to only 13,000, Mikhail Sizov of “Vera-Eskom” points out. But its members are among the most socially active Christians in the country.

The occasion for this unusual article was a visit to the editorial offices of the journal by Tamara Gurmizova, an ethnic Assyrian pensioner who came to get a copy of the obituary “Vera-Eskom” published earlier this year when Mikhail Sado, probably the most famous Russian Assyrian passed away.

Sado who died on August 30th at the age of 76 played a remarkable role in Assyrian and Russian Christian life. The son of Assyrians who fled from the Ottoman Empire in 1916 only to be repressed by Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s, Sado left Leningrad at the time of the blockade and settled in Krasnodar kray.

[...]

He was arrested by the KGB and taught Aramaic in the prison camps. Wow.

Relaunch of TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism

TC: A JOURNAL OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM is relaunching with a 2010 volume containing four articles. AWOL has more details. Actually, I didn't know TC was on hiatus, and it hasn't missed any years lately, but I'm glad it's on track again.

Iranian goverment wants extension on Cyrus Cylinder loan

THE IRANIAN GOVERMENT wants to keep the Cyrus Cylinder longer than was agreed:

Islamic Republic asked Britain to keep Cyrus the Great Cylinder for a longer period; Iranian cultural figures called it a bad idea

Tuesday, 21 December 2010 13:18

LONDON, (CAIS) -- CAIS was informed that the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has requested an extension of loan of the Cyrus the Great Cylinder. The Cyrus Cylinder was loaned to the National Museum of Iran in early September for a period of four months.

The extension of the loaning this priceless artefact is a matter of great concern, particularly when the Islamic Republic’s National Security and Foreign Policy Council voted in favour of completely cutting ties with the United Kingdom on Saturday.

[...]

I would say that's putting it temperately.

The same article notes that the British Museum has affirmed that the original cylinder and not a replica was loaned out.

I hope they get it back.

Background here with links going back to 2004.

The curse of Ezra?

IS THE CURSE OF EZRA having a corrosive effect on Jewish-Arab relations in modern Israel? Gershom Schocken:

This is not meant to be an advocacy piece on behalf of mixed marriages. Even if these unions were possible, they would presumably remain a marginal phenomenon. But to ensure the formation of an Israeli nation composed of all the ethnic groups in this country, the barriers between them must be knocked down. That includes restrictions on marriages between members of different groups. Had we not granted the rabbinate a monopoly on matrimonial law, and if there were a civil marriage law in Israel, a substantial obstacle would have been eliminated. Ezra the Scribe's prohibition may have been justified for an ethno-religious group. But for a sovereign nation that needs to coexist with another nation from a different background and establish normal relations with neighbors beyond its borders, this prohibition, which symbolizes Jewish alienation, has become a curse. If it persists, it will perpetuate ethnic tensions within the country and guarantee the permanent isolation of Israel in the region. We must liberate ourselves from the curse of Ezra.

Book of Genesis profiled by Jane Williams

THE BOOK OF GENESIS is thoughfully profiled here and here in the Guardian by Jane Williams, tutor and lecturer in theology and wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Aramaic course at Oxford

ARAMAIC WATCH:

Christ's endangered language gets new lease of life in Oxford
An Aramaic course offered by Oxford University is drawing scores of scholars from as far afield as Liverpool and London

* Maev Kennedy
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 December 2010 16.34 GMT

It is the language that Christ spoke, but is regarded as "endangered" with ever fewer scattered groups of native speakers.

But in Oxford, Aramaic has been flourishing again, with a course in the ancient language drawing people from as far afield as Liverpool and London. There are now 56 people learning Aramaic at the university, including three classics professors, solemnly completing their weekly homework tasks and regularly attending the free lunchtime lessons, more than the numbers studying Greek.

Their first lesson might have surprised the writers of the books of David and Ezra in the Bible, and of the Talmud, both originally written in Aramaic: the scholars pored over a translation of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

David Taylor has previously taught the language to groups of two or three people in his study, and was astounded by the turnout for his first public lesson. Though a few fell by the wayside, more than 40 stayed the course until the classes ended in time for Christmas.

[...]

Well done! As it happens, I'm teaching biblical Aramaic next semester. I can't compete with those numbers, but I have six registered for credit and two or three have told me they want to audit. I am content.

Incidentally, there is no "book of David" in the Bible. I think the writer must have mis-heard "book of Daniel." Daniel and Ezra are partly written in Aramaic.

Oh, and this looks exciting:

The lessons were organised by Oxford University's classics faculty and faculty of oriental studies as part of Project Arshama, a collaboration between the universities of Oxford and Liverpool, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project is focused on one of the treasures of the vast Bodleian library, the 13 Arshama letters, written on leather in the Persian empire in the 5th century BC – priceless to scholars because so many documents on parchment or clay have not survived. There will be a seminar and an exhibition on the letters next summer.

Dr. Seuss does Gnosticism

DR. SEUSS DOES GNOSTICISM