City-of-David-excavation visitors' center approved and work begun

THAT TOURIST CENTER near the Old City of Jerusalem is going forward apace:

Israel approves new East Jerusalem visitors' compound, razes Palestinian community center

Jerusalem planning and committee approves construction of new visitors’ center at City of David National Park in Silwan.

By Nir Hasson (Haaretz)

The Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee approved on Monday the construction of a new visitors’ center at the City of David National Park in Silwan.

As part of this decision, Israel Nature and Parks Authority representatives this morning razed a complex built by Silwan residents that included a playground, community center and cafe.

The new visitors’ center is to be built above the Givati parking lot and will be called the Mercaz Kedem (Kedem Center). The building will be built on stilts and beneath it there will be an area where visitors can view recently discovered archeological findings. The Elad organization promoted the plan and it obtained the support of Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, who appeared before the district committee earlier today to voice his support.

The Israel Antiquities Authority’s Jerusalem District director, Dr. Yuval Baruch, also expressed support for the plan, despite the presence of archeological findings under the building. “This is one of the most important projects in Jerusalem in recent generations. It would be impossible to find a serious archeologist with a bad word to say about the conduct of the excavations,” said Baruch. “The building as it stands is approved by the Israel Antiquities Authority and was presented to the authority in dozens of meetings.

[...]

Background here. I am surprised at the rapidity of these developments. The Arutz Sheva article cited in the Background link said at the end of December that "[t]he planned center and parking lot over the excavations is years away from construction."

Interview of authors of Jewish Annotated New Testament

MARC BRETTLER AND AMY-JILL LEVINE, the authors of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, are interviewed by Jay Michaelson in The Forward: Jewish Roots of the New Testament: New Book Says Much of the Scripture is Jewish Literature. First question:

The JANT strikes me as a tour de force, and it fills much-needed gaps in our knowledge. But why is it important for Jews to read the New Testament?

First, much, if not all, of the New Testament is Jewish literature, and all of it is relevant for understanding Jewish history. The New Testament sheds important light on early Jewish life and literature, from the practice of Halacha relations with Rome to women’s social roles to the meaning of apocalyptic texts. Another rationale for Jews reading the N.T. is respect: If we Jews want Christians to respect Judaism, we owe the church the same respect, and that respect includes knowing what is in the Christian canon.

More on the book here and links.

Back to Oxyrhynchus

EXCAVATIONS AT OXYRHYNCHUS are resuming:

Spain: Catalan archaeological mission returns to Egypt

06 February, 18:36

(ANSAmed) - MADRID, FEBRUARY 6 - One year after the uprising in Egypt, the mission of archaeologists and Egyptologists of the University of Barcelona, working in collaboration with the Catalan Egyptology Society, returns to Cairo to resume its excavation work in Oxirrinco. The news is reported by mission director and Egyptology professor Josep Padro, quoted by La Vanguardia.

The goal of the Spanish mission, entering its 20th year, is to ''continue excavating the remains of a large Greek-Roman temple which, because of its position and texts found on papyrus scrolls, could be the Serapeum, dedicated to the god Serapis'', Pardo explains.


[...]

Contra the next paragraph in the article, the most famous find at Oxyrhynchus is the massive cache of papyri, of which only about one percent have been deciphered and published in the last century or so (background here and here, and here with many links). I hope the Spanish expedition stays safe. I also hope they find more papyri.

(Via the Agade list.)

UPDATE: I see that the article covered in the first background link says that 1% of the fragments have been edited and published, whereas the one at the third link says 15%. Also, Larry Hurtado quoted the first figure in a 2007 address at the BNTC. In any case, a lot of work remains to be done.

The Queen of Sheba's mines?

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA is back in archaeological news:

Archaeologists strike gold in quest to find Queen of Sheba's wealth

A British excavation has struck archaeological gold with a discovery that may solve the mystery of where the Queen of Sheba derived her fabled treasures

Dalya Alberge
The Observer, Sunday 12 February 2012
Article history

A British excavation has struck archaeological gold with a discovery that may solve the mystery of where the Queen of Sheba of biblical legend derived her fabled treasures.

Almost 3,000 years ago, the ruler of Sheba, which spanned modern-day Ethiopia and Yemen, arrived in Jerusalem with vast quantities of gold to give to King Solomon. Now an enormous ancient goldmine, together with the ruins of a temple and the site of a battlefield, have been discovered in her former territory.

Louise Schofield, an archaeologist and former British Museum curator, who headed the excavation on the high Gheralta plateau in northern Ethiopia, said: "One of the things I've always loved about archaeology is the way it can tie up with legends and myths. The fact that we might have the Queen of Sheba's mines is extraordinary."

An initial clue lay in a 20ft stone stele (or slab) carved with a sun and crescent moon, the "calling card of the land of Sheba", Schofield said. "I crawled beneath the stone – wary of a 9ft cobra I was warned lives here – and came face to face with an inscription in Sabaean, the language that the Queen of Sheba would have spoken."

On a mound nearby she found parts of columns and finely carved stone channels from a buried temple that appears to be dedicated to the moon god, the main deity of Sheba, an 8th century BC civilisation that lasted 1,000 years. It revealed a victory in a battle nearby, where Schofield excavated ancient bones.

Although local people still pan for gold in the river, they were unaware of the ancient mine. Its shaft is buried some 4ft down, in a hill above which vultures swoop. An ancient human skull is embedded in the entrance shaft, which bears Sabaean chiselling.

[...]

Other archaeologists have been searching for evidence of the Queen of Sheba in Yemen. For much more on archaeology and legend relevant to the Queen of Sheba, go here and follow the many links. See also this more recent link, this notice of a novel involving the Queen, and, finally, the forthcoming translation of the legendary "The Questions of the Queen of Sheba" in the first volume of texts edited for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project (scroll down to the table of contents).

Back to the Observer article:

Sean Kingsley, archaeologist and author of God's Gold, said: "Where Sheba dug her golden riches is one of the great stories of the Old Testament. Timna in the Negev desert is falsely known as 'King Solomon's Mines', but anything shinier has eluded us.

"The idea that the ruins of Sheba's empire will once more bring life to the villages around Maikado is truly poetic and appropriate. Making the past relevant to the present is exactly what archaeologists should be doing. "

For more on Sean Kingsley and his book, which claims to have deduced where the treasures of Herod's Temple were hidden after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, go here and follow the links.

(Observer story via Joseph I. Lauer.)

Footnote director interviewed

JOSEPH CEDAR is interviewed by Daphne Merkin in The Tablet: Writing Footnote: Director Joseph Cedar on Orthodox Judaism, The Social Network, and the nightmare scenario behind his latest Academy Award-nominated film. Excerpt:

Did you have any model for the kind of film you were trying to make?

It’s a film that can’t be compared to anything. While we were preparing the shoot, we decided that the way the father character sees the world—in extreme detail, the way a philologist looks at a text—was the way we were going to look at the story. Extremely subjectively and not considering the larger context. My previous films had left me with a lot of ideas that I didn’t know how to fit into the story; that’s the way narrative films are. Because of the style of this film, its flexibility, anything that was important to the story found its way onto the screen.

Background on the film and its reception here and links.

Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage

THE GORGIAS ENCYCLOPEDIC DICTIONARY OF THE SYRIAC HERITAGE is now in print:

Brock, Sebastian, Aaron Butts, George Kiraz, and Lucas Van Rompay. Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage

Title: Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage
Availability: In Print
Publisher: Gorgias Press
Edited by Sebastian Brock
Edited by Aaron Butts
Edited by George Kiraz
Edited by Lucas Van Rompay
ISBN: 978-1-59333-714-8
Availability: In Print
Publication Date: 9/2011
Language: English
Format: Hardback, Black_ColorInsert, 8.25 x 10.75 in
Pages: 612


The Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (GEDSH) is the first major encyclopedia-type reference work devoted exclusively to Syriac Christianity, both as a field of scholarly inquiry and as the inheritance of Syriac Christians today. In more than 600 entries it covers the Syriac heritage from its beginnings in the first centuries of the Common Era up to the present day. Special attention is given to authors, literary works, scholars, and locations that are associated with the Classical Syriac tradition. Within this tradition, the diversity of Syriac Christianity is highlighted as well as Syriac Christianity’s broader literary and historical contexts, with major entries devoted to Greek and Arabic authors and more general themes, such as Syriac Christianity’s contacts with Judaism and Islam, and with Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, and Georgian Christianities. In addition to the literary tradition, inscriptions and objects of art are given due consideration. The entries are accompanied by 131 illustrations, twenty of which are in color. The volume closes with maps, lists of patriarchs of the main Syriac Churches of the Middle East, and elaborate indices.

GEDSH is a collaborative project that involves seventy-six scholars from across the globe. Three of the four editors are associated with major universities in Europe and the United States: Oxford University, Yale University, and Duke University. The fourth editor is the founding director of Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. GEDSH was carried out under the auspices of Beth Mardutho.

Pricing for scholars and students: $98.00
Pricing for institutions: $160

Noted here in December when it was still in press.

More on the early Mark manuscript

DR. DANIEL B. WALLACE has posted more information on the (reportedly) first-century manuscript of the Gospel of Mark at the Dallas Theological Seminary website: Dr. Wallace: Earliest Manuscript of the New Testament Discovered?. The relevant section of the post is:

On 1 February 2012, I debated Bart Ehrman at UNC Chapel Hill on whether we have the wording of the original New Testament today. This was our third such debate, and it was before a crowd of more than 1000 people. I mentioned that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered—six of them probably from the second century and one of them probably from the first. These fragments will be published in about a year.

These fragments now increase our holdings as follows: we have as many as eighteen New Testament manuscripts from the second century and one from the first. Altogether, more than 43% of all New Testament verses are found in these manuscripts. But the most interesting thing is the first-century fragment.

It was dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers. He said he was ‘certain’ that it was from the first century. If this is true, it would be the oldest fragment of the New Testament known to exist. Up until now, no one has discovered any first-century manuscripts of the New Testament. The oldest manuscript of the New Testament has been P52, a small fragment from John’s Gospel, dated to the first half of the second century. It was discovered in 1934.

Not only this, but the first-century fragment is from Mark’s Gospel. Before the discovery of this fragment, the oldest manuscript that had Mark in it was P45, from the early third century (c. AD 200–250). This new fragment would predate that by 100 to 150 years.

Very interesting, although as others have already pointed out, paleographic analysis generally can't pinpoint a date more precisely than about a fifty-year range at best. That means that if we start with the generally accepted date of composition for Mark of 70 CE, we would be hard-pressed to distinguish a late first century script from one from the early second century, especially if the sample is small. Which, of course, would be impressive enough.

But I maintain an open mind about the precision of the dating until the manuscript is published and numerous Greek paleographers have been able to evaluate it. Meanwhile, I am still baffled as to why "one of the world’s leading paleographers" would be happy to have his "certain" paleographic judgment made public, but would be unwilling to attach his name to it. Come on, who is he? I double dare him to come forward.

(Via John Byron's The Biblical World blog.)

Background here and links.

UPDATE (13 February): Peter Williams has a post on this new information at ETC: First century Mark fragment and extensive papyrus And a number of textual critics weigh in with comments.

Visiting PT post in Second Temple & Rabbinic Judaism

JOB at Brown University:

From: "Jacobson, David"
List Editor: "Mendelsohn, Adam D"
Editor's Subject: JOB: part-time visiting position in the area of Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple and Rabbinic periods, Brown University
Author's Subject: Employment notice--please post
Date Written: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 16:25:57 -0500
Date Posted: Fri, 09 Feb 2012 22:04:34 -0500

The Program in Judaic Studies and the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University in Providence, RI seek to fill a part-time visiting position during the academic year 2012-2013 in the area of Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple and Rabbinic periods. The successful applicant will teach one course each semester and will serve both undergraduate and graduate students. S/he will also be invited to participate fully in the intellectual communities of both units. Questions for further information and CVs of applicants should be sent to < Tracy_Miller@Brown.edu >.

(From the H-Judaic list.)

Rabbi Boteach's book and the Historical Jesus

BOOK REVIEW in The Forward:

It's 'Kosher' To Accept Real Jesus?
Boteach Book Seeks To Strip Away Distortions of Christ

By Adam Gregerman
Published February 09, 2012, issue of February 17, 2012.

Kosher Jesus
By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Gefen Publishing House, 263 pages, $26

Despite Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s best efforts in “Kosher Jesus,” some Jewish teachers and their messages are not worth reclaiming. Whether because of their fanciful interpretations of the Bible or their odd religious agendas, they are best ignored. I have in mind not Jesus but Hyam Maccoby, the late, idiosyncratic religion scholar. Boteach says that his writings were, “more than any other works of scholarship,” his most trustworthy guide to early Christianity and essential to his efforts to construct a portrait of Jesus the Jew.

Maccoby, in works from the 1980s and ’90s, claimed that Paul — a conniving gentile pretending to be a Jew — distorted Jesus’ starkly political message. Boteach seems not to know that this strange, conspiratorial reading has been almost universally rejected by scholars since it appeared. Indeed, Boteach, relying on Maccoby’s speculations, goes further. He presents this questionable historical reconstruction to buttress a religious argument that modern Jews and Christians should embrace Jesus as a model of devotion to both God and the people of Israel.

A “kosher” Jesus, Boteach argues, is the “authentic” Jesus: a Torah-observant Jew and an active opponent of Rome. Sadly, he notes, New Testament authors falsely presented him as an antagonist of his own people and of the Torah. Also falsely, they saw him as divine. Once these distortions are removed, Jews need not shun him, and he even can serve as a bridge between Jews and Christians.

Boteach’s work depends on retrieving the historical Jesus from the character portrayed in Christian tradition. One commonplace is that such reconstructions usually end up resembling the people doing the reconstruction. Liberal Christians find a liberal Jesus; conservative Christians find a conservative Jesus. While Jews historically ignored or lampooned Jesus, modern Jewish scholars sympathetic to him (such as Abraham Geiger and Martin Buber) also fit this model, praising or criticizing qualities with which they agreed or disagreed. Boteach sees a Jesus in his own image, but his reconstruction is nevertheless distinctive.

[...]

I've not seen the book, but if the review is accurate, it has a lot of problems.

The last paragraph quoted above highlights a central weakness of Historical Jesus studies, as I have noted before. And, of course, the sources themselves seem to present rather different pictures of Jesus, which does not help matters. Back in 1988 John Dominic Crossan wrote a very perceptive article* that took up this problem and asked "What did Jesus say and do that led, if not necessarily at least immediately, to such diverse understandings?" Some such attempt to jump out of the system and produce a meta-reconstruction of the Historical Jesus with this as guiding principle has always seemed to me to be a promising way forward, but I haven't kept up with Historical Jesus studies enough to know if anyone has run with it. What I have seen over the last couple of decades shows no sign of such an approach.

*"Divine Immediacy and Human Immediacy: Towards a New First Principle in Historical Jesus Research," The Historical Jesus and the Rejected Gospels, Semeia 44: 121-140, quotation from p. 125.

UPDATE: Bad link now fixed. Sorry about that.

More commentary on early Mark manuscript

MORE BLOG COMMENTARY on that supposed first-century manuscript of Mark:

Larry Hurtado: Newly-Identified Early New Testament Fragments? Larry notes that the fragment seems to be part of the Green Collection (and therefore connected to that supposed second-century manuscript of Romans).

John Byron: Earliest Copy of Mark Found? John is cautiously optimistic.

Follow the links in both posts for more Biblioblogospheric reactions. PaleoJudaica background is here.

Adin Steinsaltz receives Israel Presidential Prize

CONGRATULATIONS TO RABBI ADIN STEINSALTZ:

Israel: Rav Steinsaltz Tapped for Presidential Prize

(Thursday, February 9th, 2012) (The Yeshiva World)

HaRav Adin Even Yisrael Steinsaltz has been selected as the first recipient of the Presidential Prize the selection committee announced today, Thursday, 16 Shevat 5772. The committee is made up of President Shimon Peres, former president Yitzchak Navon and former president of the High Court of Justice Meir Shamgar.

Rav Steinsaltz was a recipient of the Israel Prize in 1988 for his outstanding contribution to the field of education. The rav was hailed by Time Magazine as a “once-in-a-millennium scholar”.

[...]

Arutz Sheva also notes the story and lists the five other recipients of this year's Prize: State of Israel Honors Kissinger, Steinsaltz, Mehta.

Background on the Steinsaltz Talmud translation (into Modern Hebrew) is here with many links.

SBL Call for Papers?

APPARENTLY the Society of Biblical Literature opened its call for papers yesterday for the 2012 annual meeting in Chicago. I have been expecting to receive e-mail notification when it happened, but nothing has arrived. But in any case, you can find information on the SBL website here.

A computer algorithm for Greek paleography

AN ARMY OF (STUDENT) PALEOGRAPHERS is teaching a computer algorithm how to transcribe the Oxyrhynchus papyri:

Excavators find treasure in Egyptian trash heap
University experts are trying to match Greek letters to symbols found on ancient fragments of papyri.

By Jill Jensen (mndaily.com)
2012 / 02 / 09

University of Minnesota students can be a part of discovering history by helping researchers decipher Greek characters on 2,000-year-old fragments of ancient papyri discovered in Egypt.

Their participation could also help develop an algorithm to faster assess data in different disciplines — the sole responsibility of the University in the project.

The team is collaborating with the University of Oxford in the Ancient Lives project to translate papyri preserved in Egypt since about the third century B.C.

The damaged fragments are available online for the public to identify and match Greek letters in order to translate works. About 120,000 people participate internationally.

“You don’t need to know Greek,” said Marco Perale, papyrology and Greek language expert.

Only 30 percent of ancient Egyptian works have surfaced, Perale said. Other literature is alluded to in books or poems but wasn’t copied down by scribes and monks.

Lost works, like a book of poetry by Greek poet Sappho, have been deciphered since the excavation of the papyri from a trash heap in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt.

The project has the potential to unveil those treasures as well as develop an algorithm to speed up computers when deciphering data in any discipline.

[...]

Background on the Ancient Lives Project is here.

Cross-file under "Technology Watch" and "The Singularity is Near."

More on new DSS in NYC exhibit

MORE ON THE NEW SCROLLS at the Discovery Times Square exhibition:

Dead Sea Scrolls get new life

Written By John R. Quain

Published February 08, 2012 (FoxNews.com)

The most extensive public display of 2,000-year-old Biblical documents just got a refresh.

At the Discovery Times Square exhibit “The Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times," a new set of 10 documents have been installed to replace the previous set on display. The new collection includes a section from the book of Isaiah and two scrolls never before seen by the public, “Greek Minor Prophets” and “Job Targum.”

[...]

Among the newly installed scrolls is a section from the book of Isaiah, which will resonate with many Christians. Also included in the copy of Psalms are passages that will be instantly recognized by Jewish visitors as these words from thousands of years ago are still part of services today.

[...]

Background here and links.

Talmud Blog Book Club latest

THE TALMUD BLOG: Definite Article – The Book Club II. Responses to Zvi Septimus’ article “Trigger Words and Simultexts: The Experience of Reading the Bavli."

Background here.

New book: Henze (ed.), A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism

NEW BOOK:

A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, ed. Matthias Henze (Eerdmans 2012)

A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism presents eighteen commissioned articles on biblical exegesis in early Judaism, covering the period after the Hebrew Bible was written and before the beginning of rabbinic Judaism. The essays, all written by experts in the field, are arranged in seven categories: Hebrew Bible, Rewritten Bible, Qumran Literature, Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, Wisdom Literature, Hellenistic Judaism, and Biblical Interpretation in Antiquity. Together these essays provide a systematic and comprehensive introduction to the diverse modes of scriptural interpretation practiced by a variegated and dynamic spectrum of Jewish groups in the Hellenistic and early Roman eras.

(HT James Tucker on FB.)

SBL call for papers: Christian Apocrypha

TONY BURKE: Christian Apocrypha at 2012 SBL. Once again, the Society of Biblical Literature has put off the opening of their 2012 call for papers until tomorrow. Meanwhile, in many places in the blogosphere and on discussion lists, SBL groups are making the announcements independently.

Hurtado on The Annotated Jewish New Testament

LARRY HURTADO has posted a reviewlet of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, eds. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford University Press, 2011). He reports that he will have more to say in a panel discussion later this year.

I noted the book a couple of months ago here.

Review of Koosed, Gleaning Ruth

BOOK REVIEW:

Jennifer L. Koosed. Gleaning Ruth: A Biblical Heroine and Her Afterlives. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011. xiv + 173 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-57003-983-6.

Reviewed by Talia Sutskover (Tel Aviv University)
Published on H-Judaic (February, 2012)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

The Book of Ruth: New Insights

Gleaning Ruth, by Jennifer L. Koosed, examines the characters of the book of Ruth and their relationships, and offers a pleasurable reading and learning experience. In part, it is pleasurable to read because in some of the chapters the author draws on her personal experience where it is relevant to her subject. For instance, in the second chapter, titled “Agricultural Interlude No. 1,” the author gives the reader a glimpse into her childhood summers in the branches of a cherry tree in Ohio. This writing technique does indeed have an effect on the reader, because through contemporary personal experience, we are gently taken into the ancient world of gleaning, the making of bread, and altogether, of surviving. The reader acquires a better understanding of the world of Ruth, and is better prepared for the fresh perspective presented in the book.

Koosed’s Gleaning Ruth is a also pleasurable learning experience, because aside from the author’s new findings, the discussion of each of the topics contains a thorough scholarship survey. Careful attention is given not only to the author’s own conclusions but to those of other interpreters, as well. I find that Koosed often offers a new and even brave perspective on various topics. For instance, when commenting on Agnès Varda's documentary The Gleaners and I (2001), she writes, “Even though Varda does not mention Ruth in her documentary, the biblical heroine might easily be considered a shadow presence, following behind and beside the contemporary gleaners Varda documents” (p. 6). Linking a modern documentary with the book of Ruth, even though there is no explicit reference in the documentary, and constructing an interpretation based on this link is, in my view, a courageous and creative act of interpretation.

[...]

Follow the first link for the full review. Sounds lightweight but still interesting.

Templeton Foundation grant and conference

THE TEMPLETON FOUNDATION is offering support for projects on the philosophical theology of early Jewish texts. Announcement on the H-JUDAIC list:

From: "Mendelsohn, Adam D"
List Editor: "Mendelsohn, Adam D"
Editor's Subject: CFP: "Philosophical Investigation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Talmud, and Midrash," Jerusalem, July 2012
Author's Subject: CFP: "Philosophical Investigation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Talmud, and Midrash," Jerusalem, July 2012
Date Written: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 11:01:00 -0500
Date Posted: Wed, 07 Feb 2012 11:01:00 -0500

In Fall 2010, the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, with the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation, launched an initiative aimed at developing a Jewish “philosophical theology” that will seek to advance the study of the ideas of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Talmud and Midrash in the academic setting. This initiative is part of a broader “Analytic Theology” project of the Templeton Foundation, which will also support Christian centers for philosophical theology at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Innsbruck, Austria. The Jewish component of the project envisions the development of a uniquely Jewish discipline that will use philosophical tools and methods for examining classical Jewish sources. The project is open to Jewish and non-Jewish scholars interested in the philosophical elucidation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Talmud and Midrash.

In the context of this project, the department of Philosophy, Political Theory and Religion (PPR) at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem invites submissions for an interdisciplinary conference on “Philosophical Investigation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Talmud and Midrash,” to be held in Jerusalem on July 22-26, 2012.

[...]

For more information, follow the link above.

Workshop on Ancient Religion, Modern Technology

WORKSHOP at Brown University on 13-14 February: Ancient Religion, Modern Technology.

This workshop will explore the intersection of ancient religion and the digital humanities. Can digital tools not only allow us to do our work faster and more thoroughly but also enable entirely new kinds of research? How might different digital data (e.g., textual, geographic, and material culture) be used together most productively? One session is devoted to “nuts and bolts” issues of funding, starting, and maintaining a digital project.

There will be a "pre-workshop" session on Monday, February 13, 10 AM - 12 PM. This session will introduce some general tools and concepts of use to digital humanists.

The workshop is free and open to the public. All sessions will take place in the Petteruti Lounge, located in the Stephen Robert '62 Campus Center at Brown University.

Follow the link for the tentative program, etc.

(HT James McGrath, who flags a paper on Digital Analysis of Mandaic Manuscripts.)

New DSS in NYC

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION at Discovery Times Square is being refreshed: NYC's Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit has 10 new scrolls (AP). Lots of interesting variety in the new collection.

Background here and links.

Tu B'Shevat

TU B'SHEVAT, the New Year for Trees, begins tonight at sundown.

BNTC 2012 call for papers

THE BRITISH NEW TESTAMENT SOCIETY has issued a call for papers for its 2012 meeting on 6-8 September at Kings College London. As ever, Darrell Hannah and I are chairing the NT & Second Temple Judaism Seminar.

UPDATE: I haven't forgotten my promise last week to link to the Society of Biblical Literature call for papers, but they keep putting it off. It's currently scheduled for tomorrow. We'll see.

More on the Torah scroll fraudster

DOROTHY LOBEL KING has been on this story too, and she too saw problems when it was coming out some years ago: Rabbi admits Torah tales were a fraud.

Background here.

A first-century copy of the Gospel of Mark?

DANIEL B. WALLACE, of Dallas Theological Seminary, has announced (in a debate with Bart Ehrman, reported on Professor Wallace's blog, Parchment & Pen) that numerous very early manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark New Testament, including one (of the Gospel of Mark) from the first century, are soon to be published: Ehrman vs Wallace: Round Three. The relevant passage of the post:

He [Professor Ehrman] answered the second question by saying that we really don’t have any early manuscripts. But this again is a huge overstatement. We have as many as eighteen second-century manuscripts (six of which were recently discovered and not yet catalogued) and a first-century manuscript of Mark’s Gospel! Altogether, more than 43% of the 8000 or so verses in the NT are found in these papyri. Bart had explicitly said that our earliest copy of Mark was from c. 200 CE, but this is now incorrect. It’s from the firstcentury. I mentioned these new manuscript finds and told the audience that a book will be published by E. J. Brill in about a year that gives all the data. (In the Q & A, Bart questioned the validity of the first-century Mark fragment. I noted that a world-class paleographer, a man who had no religious affiliation and thus was not biased toward an early date, was my source. Bart said that even so, we don’t have thousands of manuscripts from the first century! That kind of skepticism is incomprehensible to me.)

Well, I look forward to the book, but in the meantime I am cordially skeptical of the claim about the supposed first-century date of one manuscript—and I'm sure Professor Wallace will understand that kind of skepticism. As pointed out by a commenter at Exploring Our Matrix (noted below), claims have been made in the past that first-century fragments of New Testament texts, including Mark, were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, but specialists have not found the case convincing.

At this point all we have is an extraordinary assertion, presented with no evidence and on the authority of a "world-class specialist" who, very oddly, is not named. (Wouldn't he want his name to be associated with any announcement of such an important find?) As always with such things, I remain skeptical until I see compelling evidence, but I would be delighted to be convinced.

Note the recent similar report that a first mid-second-century copy of Romans has been found in a private collection. As far as I can find out, no further substantiation has been offered for this one.

If you know any more about either of these manuscripts and are willing to share (either confidentially or for blog publication), please do drop me a note.

(HT James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix.)

UPDATE: Reader Roberto Labanti has e-mailed to correct a couple of errors (peripheral to my argument) which I have now corrected. Sorry about that.

UPDATE (7 February): I sense that my skepticism is shared by some textual critics.

UPDATE: I see that Mark Goodacre is skeptical as well. Plus, he brings Doctor Who into the discussion.

Phoenician bling

Another in PaleoJudaica's series on ancient bling:

A golden exhibit for Spain

February 4, 2012 • Lead, Sevilla • 4 Comments (The Olive Press)

IT has been kept locked away for years, with the public only having seen it five times since it was first discovered.

But now an ancient hoard of gold jewellery has gone on permanent display at the Archaeological Museum in Sevilla.

The so-called Carambolo Treasure is made up of 21 elaborately worked 24-carat gold pieces that together weigh almost three kilos.

[...]

Nice bracelet.

More bling here and links. Also, just possibly, here (with more links here).

Another review of the NYC DSS exhibit

A SUPERCILIOUS REVIEW by Jenna Weissman Joselit in The Forward, which emphasizes the elements of tourist tackiness in the exhibition: Thou Shalt Suspend Disbelief: Dead Sea Scrolls Come to Times Square Tourist Land. Excerpt:

Columnist, historian, curator and occasional ethnographer, I came to West 44th wearing a number of hats, all of which put me at some remove from the proceedings at hand. But what about everyone else? Why were they there, and what did they take with them as they emerged from the gloom into the bright light of Broadway? I suspect that what drew most visitors to the display and sustained their spirits as they waited patiently on line was the opportunity to be in the presence of texts that had, arguably, been in the presence of Jesus or his followers.

Much like a reliquary, “Dead Sea Scrolls” dissolved the temporal boundaries between past and present, enabling those in attendance to connect the early history of Christianity and its context with their own contemporary display of faith. For them, visiting the exhibition was an exercise in affirmation.

The queue to see the Ten Commandments scroll does sound like it was unpleasant.

More reviews here and links.

Torah scroll fraudster

THIS IS SAD. And strange. And annoying.

'Jewish Indiana Jones' faces jail for $1m fraud after lying about daring trips to save ancient Torah scrolls

• Claimed he was 'beaten up, thrown in jail, and [went] $175,000 into debt' to rescue relics
  
• Said he found priceless scroll at Auschwitz using metal detector

By Rebecca Seales (Daily Mail)

Last updated at 2:14 PM on 3rd February 2012


A Jewish charity founder who claimed he travelled the world as a 'Jewish Indiana Jones' to rescue holy scrolls has admitted he was a $1 million fraudster.

Menachem Youlus told the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, New York he lied about making risky trips to obtain vintage Torah scrolls in Europe and Israel for six years.

The texts are sacred to the Jewish faith, and followers believe they contain the rules that God intended mankind to live by.

Among the fantastical tales Youlus invented were detailed accounts of recovering Torah lost or hidden during the Holocaust, including at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

Youlus, 50, who owns the Jewish Bookstore in Wheaton, Maryland, allegedly boasted that he had been 'beaten up, thrown in jail, and gone $175,000 into debt, to bring these holy scrolls out of less-than-friendly places, back to safety and a new life.'

The court heard he had fabricated various exploits between 2004 and 2010 in order to obtain funds from his Save a Torah charity and some of its contributors.

'I know what I did was wrong, and I deeply regret my conduct,' Youlus said yesterday.
[...]

One of Mr. Youlus's supposed exploits, this one in Iraq, was noted in PaleoJudaica here and here. At the time I commented on what seemed like a difficulty in the story. I never received any clarification about that matter and in light of recent events, it may have been a significant point. Apparently he did have a Torah scroll, but one may wonder whether it really came from Iraq. The specific episode is not mentioned in the Daily Mail article.

UPDATE (7 February): More here.

Golden Jubilee for Vermes, Dead Sea Scrolls in English

CONGRATULATIONS TO GEZA VERMES:

Emeritus Fellow Geza Vermes celebrates Dead Sea Scrolls golden jubilee

2 February 2012

Wolfson College was honoured to welcome Emeritus Fellow Geza Vermes and Penguin Books on 23rd January for the 50th Anniversary of the publication of his The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, which has sold an estimated half-a-million copies worldwide.

[...]

The article also reports that the latest version of this translation is set to go online with the Google/Shrine of the Book online publication of the Scrolls (on which see, e.g., here).

Biblioblog Carnival for February

THE BIBLIOBLOG CARNIVAL FEBRUARY 2012 has been posted by Amanda MacInnis at the Cheese-Wearing Theology blog.

CSSS Symposium XII November 10, 2012, plus Syriac SBL

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT:

The Canadian Society for Syriac Studies (CSSS) will hold its annual Symposium XII entitled Studies on Syriac Manuscripts: Texts, Illuminations, and Collections, on Saturday November 10, 2012, 9 am to 5 pm. The CSSS welcomes a limited number of speakers to present papers related to this theme. There will be no registration fee; however, participants are expected to cater for their own travel and accommodation. Those interested are requested to email us the topic title, an abstract, and a short biography.

Best wishes.



Board of Directors

---

Canadian Society for Syriac Studiers

Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations

University of Toronto

4 Bancroft Avenue

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1C1

Tel. 416-978-3184

FAX 416-978-3305

Posted on the Hugoye list.

And on a related note, Cornelia Horn flags another Syriac event: Call for Papers SBL Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred. The call for papers for the November 2012 SBL meetings opens tomorrow. If you're in the SBL, I assume you will automatically get a message about it, but I'll post a link here anyway.

New book: Greengus, "Laws in the Bible and in Early Rabbinic Collections"

NEW BOOK from Wipf and Stock:

Laws in the Bible and in Early Rabbinic Collections
The Legal Legacy of the Ancient Near East
By Samuel Greengus

-
Book Description

The remarkable discovery of ancient Near Eastern law collections or "codes," beginning with the Laws of Hammurabi and followed by many other collections in decades following, opened a new window upon biblical law. This volume seeks to examine within a single study all of the biblical laws that are similar in content with ancient Near Eastern laws from Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, and Hatti. The book also examines a small but important group of early rabbinic laws from postbiblical times that exhibit significant similarities with laws found in the ancient Near Eastern collections or "codes." This later group of laws, although absent from the Bible, are nevertheless of comparable antiquity. The presentation focuses on the actual law statements preserved in these ancient law "codes." The discussion then adds narratives, records, and reports of legal actions from ancient sources outside the laws-all of which relate to the formal law statements. The discourse is non-polemical in tone and does not seek to revisit all theories and interpretations. The format allows readers, including those who are new to the subject of biblical law, to engage the primary sources on their own.

(Via the Agade list.)

Bad news for Classicists

CONSTANTINA KATSARI: Redundancies at the Foundation of the Hellenic World.

Possibly cross-file under "Higher Education Bubble," although this sounds more like a side effect of the Greek economic disaster in general.

Etrogs in an ancient garden at Ramat Rachel

POLLEN from a Persian-Period garden has yielded up some surprises:

Jerusalem dig uncovers earliest evidence of local cultivation of etrogs

Pollen reveals ancient palace grew the citrus in its garden.

By Zafrir Rinat (Haaretz)

Tags: Jerusalem Israel archeology Tel Aviv University

The earliest evidence of local cultivation of three of the Sukkot holiday's traditional "four species" has been found at the most ancient royal royal garden ever discovered in Israel.

The garden, at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel in Jerusalem, gave up its secrets through remnants of pollen found in the plaster of its walls.

[...]

Then, Lipschits said, he and his colleagues had a "wild thought": If plasterers had worked on the garden walls in springtime, when flowers were blooming, breezes would have carried the pollen to the walls, where it would have become embedded in the plaster.

Enlisting the aid of Tel Aviv University archaeobotanist Dr. Daphne Langot, they carefully peeled away layers of the plaster, revealing pollen from a number of plant species.

Most of the plants were wild, but in one layer of plaster, apparently from the Persian period (the era of the Jewish return from the Babylonian exile in 538 B.C.E. ) they found pollen from ornamental species and fruit trees, some of which came from distant lands.

The find that most excited the scholars was pollen from etrogs, or citrons, a fruit that originated in India. This is the earliest botanical evidence of citrons in the country.

[...]

Coptic incantation texts online

ALIN SUCIU has found yet another venerable Coptic resource online: A. Kropp, Ausgewählte koptische Zaubertexte.

The Coptic magical texts draw on a great many Jewish traditions. You can find lots of them in English translation in Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith (eds.) Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power.

Google and the Dead Sea Scrolls

LINA BROYDO visits the Dead Sea Scrolls online with Google and on site in Israel: Google Offers Stroll Through Dead Sea Scrolls (The Epoch Times). The Discovery Times Square exhibition is also mentioned in passing, but not reviewed.

Speaking of replicas of archaeology sites ...

CAN'T MAKE IT UP:

Blooming Prairie couple design, build cave for Vatican.

Posted: Jan 31, 2012, 10:10 am
By John Weiss
The Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN

BLOOMING PRAIRIE — Once the 800-square-foot cave replica was shipped to the Vatican, Chris and Linda Beech were able to take a deep breath and get back to their usual jobs of writing computer games.

But there was no peace during the month the Blooming Prairie couple worked up to 16 hours a day in a local garage to fashion a replica of a cave where the famed Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

[...]

Okay, maybe I could have made this one up, but it's still pretty odd.

Ancient language composition

ADAM MCCOLLUM has a post on Translating into and composing in ancient languages at the hmmlorientalia blog.

Coptic apocrypha

ALIN SUCIU: P. Lacau, Fragments d’apocryphes coptes. Downloadable as a pdf file. They include apocryphal gospels (?), the Acts of Pilate, and an Apocalypse of Bartholomew.

Herod's Tomb again

TODD BOLEN is skeptical of the Haaretz report on the proposed reconstruction of Herod's Tomb: Reconstruction of Herod’s Tomb Criticized. Excerpt:

Whether or not a monument that helps the public to visualize the tomb (and thus increases visits to the site) is a good thing or not can be debated. Haaretz misleads, however, in suggesting that there is a widespread movement among archaeologists against a plastic model. A more accurate headline would be: “Two archaeologists condemn Israeli plan to rebuild ancient tomb.”

Background here.

New Book: Dimant (ed.), "The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective"

NEW BOOK from Brill:

The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective: A History of Research

Edited by Devorah Dimant

The volume consists of 27 surveys of research into the Dead Sea Scrolls in the past 60 years, written by 26 authors. An innovation of the volume is that it covers Qumran scholarship in separate countries: the USA, Canada, Israel, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Italy and the Eastern bloc. Each essay also carries a detailed bibliography for the respective country. Biographies of all the major scholars active in the field are briefly given as well. This book thereby exhaustively surveys past and present Qumran research, outlining its particular development in various circumstances and national contexts. For the first time, perspectives and information not recorded in any other publication are highlighted.

Afghan manuscripts update

THE AFGHAN JEWISH MANUSCRIPTS are mentioned briefly in a Reuters article on another Afghan antiquity: Germany returns two millennia old Afghan sculpture. The relevant passage:

Ancient Jewish scrolls, which [Omara Khan] Massoudi [the director of Afghanistan's National Museum] confirmed were recently smuggled out, are currently being kept by private dealers in London.

This is the first confirmation I have seen from an Afghan official that the manuscripts come from Afghanistan. Assuming, of course, that he was understood and cited correctly.

Background here.

Cuts in Hebrew at Temple U

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE:

Hebrew major cut deserves a fair compromise

January 30, 2012 by Donald Hopkins
Filed under Commentary, Opinion, (The Temple News)

PMHopkins argues that while the decision to cut Hebrew as a major is logical, the non-tenured track position is still necessary.

This year, many of the interdisciplinary programs have fallen to the wayside, in the wake of budget cuts and student apathy toward certain academic subjects. Recently, Temple administration announced its intentions to eliminate the Hebrew major effective Fall 2012 and consolidate it within the Jewish studies major. Furthermore, the administration plans to eliminate the only non-tenured track position for Hebrew – occupied by Dr. Ayala Guy. Temple has justified this consolidation as part of a larger trend to save money as well as a response to lack of student interest.

Two questions have to be addressed, when considering whether this elimination and consolidation of the Hebrew major is a good idea for the university and its’ student body. First, is there a benefit to Hebrew existing outside the Jewish studies program as a separate major? Second, is the plan to eliminate the only stable teaching position for the Hebrew language, conducive to the study of language?

[...]

The authorities at Temple do seem to be trying to think this through and not just make random cuts to meet a budget. As long as these cuts have been preceded by, say, the cutting of two administrative posts, I would say they are reasonable.

Ostromir Gospels added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program

CHURCH SLAVONIC WATCH:

Old Russian book part of Memory of the World

Tags: Russia, World, UNESCO World Heritage , Commentary, Culture, Gospel
Olga Bugrova

Jan 30, 2012 17:11 Moscow Time

The Ostromir Gospels, the second oldest dated East Slavic book, has been included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme, an international initiative launched to preserve the documentary heritage of humanity. The Voice of Russia’s Olga Bugrova reports.

The Ostromir Gospels was written in Church Slavonic in 1057 for St.Sofia’s Cathedral in Veliky Novgorod. The book was created by deacon Gregory for his patron, Posadnik Ostromir, possibly as a gift for the monastery. Though classified as the first Russian book, in fact, it isn’t. The Novgorod Psalm Book discovered in 2000 was written several decades earlier. It consists of four wooden plates covered in wax with the text scribbled over it with a sharpened stick. Researchers have yet to establish the exact date of the Novgorod Psalm Book.

The Ostromir Gospels has survived in good condition, which makes the manuscript still more valuable. All 294 sheets covered with large Church Slavonic characters used for solemn occasions have been preserved in full. The book is richly studded with miniatures and gems. At present, the monument is kept at the Russian National Library in St.Petersburg. Alexei Alekseev, who heads the Library’s manuscript department, comments:

"The original is stored in a special case. Each sheet is stored separately with special paper inserted between the sheets. We take it out when it needs airing. In the near future, we plan to post a digital copy of the manuscript on our website so that it could be accessible to all people interested in Russian history."

[...]

Book review: Hidary, "Dispute for the Sake of Heaven"

BOOK REVIEW:

Richard Hidary. Dispute for the Sake of Heaven: Legal Pluralism in the Talmud. Providence Brown Judaic Studies, 2010. xii + 441 pp.
$65.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-930675-77-3.

Reviewed by David Levine (Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, Jerusalem)
Published on H-Judaic (January, 2012)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Excerpt:

This is a knowledgeable and broad-minded study, and Hidary brings a variety of skills to his research. Philological technique is coupled with literary sensitivity throughout the book, and textual analyses and their resultant conclusions are placed within theoretical
considerations of legal pluralism. Historical contextualization plays a prominent role in the conclusion when explanations are considered for the differing approaches of the Talmudim. In the spirit of Hillel's _u'dela mosif yesuf_ (Avot 1:13: "One who does not add, will meet his end"), I will offer a few thoughts and responses to some of
the points made.

A list of biblical verses cited in the Talmud

MICHAEL SATLOW and his team have compiled a list of all the biblical verses cited in the Babylonian Talmud. Like the new index of the Talmud, this a resource that will undoubtedly be very useful. For details see his recent post at the Talmud Blog: One pesuk, two pesuk, three pesukim more…- Guest Post by Michael Satlow.

Review of Roberge, "The Paraphrase of Shem"

RBL REVIEW:

The Paraphrase of Shem (NH VII,1): Introduction, Translation and Commentary
Roberge, Michel

Leiden: Brill, 2010 pp. xii + 192. $122.00

Series Information
Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, 72

Description: This book presents the first comprehensive interpretation of the Paraphrase of Shem, Codex VII,1 in the Coptic Nag Hammadi Library. The lenghty introduction discusses the literary genre of the treatise, its plan and system, its situation among the Gnostic systems, its provenance and date. The translation sets out the text in paragraphs, with headings and subheadings. A short commentary follows the translation. The analysis of the system shows that the author is working from a model of the universe, whose principles have been drawn from Stoicism and Middle Platonism. While dipping into the springs of the major Sethian and Valentinian systems, the author follows his own way and offers an original system, anticipating in many respects Manichaeism.

Subjects: Nag Hammadi and Gnostic, Literature

Review by James F. McGrath

A Herod's Tomb theme park?

CONTROVERSY OVER HEROD'S TOMB:

Top archeologists condemn Israeli plan to rebuild ancient tomb

The plan, promoted by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Gush Etzion Regional Council, includes rebuilding the tomb of Herod the Great in West Bank.

By Nir Hasson (Haaretz) Tags: West Bank Jerusalem Israel archeology

An unusual plan to rebuild the tomb of Herod the Great at the Herodium site, southeast of Jerusalem, has spurred opposition on the part of top archeologists.

The plan, which is being promoted by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Gush Etzion Regional Council, includes building a lavish mausoleum in its original size out of light plastic material, and turning it into a visitor’s center. The plan is the first of its kind in the realm of Israeli archeological digs, as most sites consist of either miniaturized or renovated historical sites that use the original materials found at the site.

[...]

Well it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Best quote in the article: "'It’s crazy - Archeology is not Disneyland,' said one top archeologist who asked to remain anonymous."

Background on Herod's tomb (if that's what it is) is here and links.

UPDATE (1 February): Todd Bolin comments skeptically on the report.

Tur Abdin

(NEO-)ARAMAIC WATCH:

Exploring the Tur Abdin a forgotten treasure of southeastern Turkey

29 January 2012 / PAT YALE , MARDİN (Sunday's Zaman)

Imagine a landscape of narrow country roads hemmed in by dry stone walls. Imagine village after honey-colored village, each with its church tower punctuating the skyline.

Imagine golden-stoned houses blending softly into the scenery. The cotswolds in the UK? No, believe it or not this is a description of the Tur Abdin, the strangely named area immediately around Midyat in Turkey that was, until recently, off-limits to visitors because of the troubles in the Southeast.

Tur Abdin sounds as if it should be the name of a tour company bringing visitors to the area, but actually it just means “Mountain of the Servants,” a name that extends way back to the pre-Roman era. The name is actually a bit of an oddity since although the land is undoubtedly high in relationship to its surroundings most visitors will think it hilly rather than mountainous. Mostly you will find yourself roaming around a lofty plateau that was once the local heart of Syriac (Suryani) Orthodoxy, a form of Christianity believed to have evolved from that taught by St. Peter in Antioch (Antakya) in the first century.

In the fourth century monasticism was introduced to the area, and at one time there were so many monasteries here that some writers called it “the Mount Athos of the East.” Today, however, a mere 5,000 Syriac Orthodox Christians are thought to live in Turkey compared with, say, 80,000 in Sweden. Most of them speak Turoyo, a variation of the Aramaic believed to have been spoken by Jesus.

[...]

That is, a very late and developed dialact of an Anatolian branch of Aramaic, not directly related to the first-century Galilean dialect that Jesus spoke.

Fellowships and grants

SOME FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES for various relevant areas of research are gathered below. Click on the links for further details for each.

3 POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWS
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY, BERLIN (GERMANY)

FUNDED BY THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL

Within the European Research Council Advanced Grant 2011 "FOUNDMED. Foundations in medieval societies. Cross-cultural comparisons" there are three open positions for postdoctoral research fellows to be filled at the Department of History of Humboldt-University, Berlin (TV-L HU 13, 100 %, approx. EUR 2.000 net./month) to run from June 1, 2012 initially for five years.

reference number DR/007/12
Job description: research services within the framework of the ERC Advanced Grant 2011 “FOUNDMED. Foundations in medieval societies. Cross-cultural comparisons” for the field of Jewish Studies / Medieval Jewish History; collaboration in an intercultural comparative study of foundations in the premodern era; tasks to upgrade one’s academic qualifications

Requirements: (preferably above-average) graduate and doctoral degree in the field of Jewish Studies / Medieval Jewish History; willingness to work in Berlin; good command of Hebrew and English, at least passive command of German; willingness to collaborate with scholars from four other academic disciplines in preparing an “Encyclopedia of Premodern Foundations” based on intercultural comparative research; knowledge of the history of foundations is an advantage but not a requirement

The other two ERC fellowships mentioned above are in Byzantine studies and Islamic/Middle Eastern studies.

BINAH NEMOY MEMORIAL PUBLICATION FUND

The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Yale University invites applications for support of publication of texts and studies in Judeo-Arabic Literature of the Karaite Sect.

GORGIAS BOOK GRANT

In its efforts to promote education, Gorgias Press offers annually the Gorgias Book Grant. This program offers outstanding graduate students grants in the form of Gorgias Press publications. Grants consist of books in the value of $500.00 per grant. Each year, two grants are distributed.

2011-2012 Grant Field: Any field within the scope of Gorgias Publications
Application Deadline: February 29, 2012
Grant Date: April 2012

NPR interviews Talmud indexer

DANIEL RETTER is interviewed by NPR about his new index of the Babylonian Talmud: A Lawyer, Not A Sage, Creates Talmud Index. Excerpt from the transcript:

RETTER: Well, it was a seven-year labor of love. The methodology involved was the idea of being able to find entries or topics. And once we had the entries or the topics, we would build on them and have subentries and subtopics. And once we had all of those, then we would develop the sources or find the sources. So about seven - almost seven years ago, I decided that this was what was needed.

And my wife, Margie - who's a lawyer in her own right - said to me, Danny, one minute. You know, we're very traditional. The Talmud study's very traditional. The rabbis are very traditional. And I'm not so sure that you want to do something as revolutionary as this without getting the haskamah, or the approbations or the endorsements of the various rabbis throughout Israel, throughout America, throughout the world. And if you work for - on this for many, many years and you finish it and then it's not accepted for whatever reason, then you've really worked for nothing.

So taking her good advice, I worked for about two years, and we developed a template where we covered all of the various track dates, the 63 track dates. And then I basically went around the world, went to Israel, rather than went to America. And unlike the normal author who writes a book and then seeks endorsements, here was a situation where I just sketched out the basic idea, the basic plan with many, many examples, and then I went to the various rabbis, both rabbis - the Sephardic rabbis, the Ashkenazic rabbis, the Chassidish Rebbes, the Lithuanian scholars. And they not only were very much encouraging, but they said, Mr. Retter, or Daniel, do it quickly, because this is needed.

"Track dates" is, of course, an amusing error for "tractates."

Background on the Talmud index is here.

Ancient Wine

ANOTHER CRUCIAL CONTRIBUTION of ancient Israel to modern civilization: Ancient Wine.

Fun fact (unverified): "The Talmud describes 60 types of wines."

"Footnote" nominated for an Oscar

FOOTNOTE has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Background on the film is here and links.

More murder at Nag Hammadi

NAG HAMMADI is back in the news; not, alas, for any new discoveries of Gnostic manuscripts: Two Copts Killed in Egypt For Refusing to Pay Extortion Money (AINA).

It seems that this is getting to be a dangerous place.

Background here.

New issue of Hugoye

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has just published a new issue (15.1). TOC:

Volume 15 (Winter 2012)

Introduction
George A. Kiraz

Papers

Ktabe Mpassqe, Dismembered and Reconstituted Syriac and Christian Palestinian Aramaic Manuscripts: Some Examples, Ancient and Modern
Sebastian P. Brock, University of Oxford

A Tentative Checklist of Dated Syriac Manuscripts up to 1300
Sebastian P. Brock, University of Oxford

Syriac in Library Catalogues
J.F. Coakley, University of Cambridge

Corpora, eLibraries, and Databases: Locating Syriac Studies in the 21st Century
Kristian Heal, Brigham Young University

A Guide to Manuscripts of the Peshitta New Testament
Andreas Juckel, University of Münster

Bibliograpy

Recent Books on Syriac Topics
Sebastian P. Brock, University of Oxford

Book Reviews

Martin Heimgartner, Timotheos I, Ostsyrischer Patriarch: Disputation mit dem Kalifen al-Mahdi
Vittorio Berti, Theologisches Seminar, Universität Zürich

Patrik Hagman, The Asceticim of Isaac of Ninevah
Robert A. Kitchen, Knox-Metropolitan United Church

Françoise Petit, Lucas Van Rompay, Jos J.S. Weitenberg, eds., Eusèbe d'Émèse, Commentaire de la Genèse. Texte arménien de l'édition de Veise (1980), Fragments grecs et syriaques, avec traductions
Edward G. Mathews, Jr., Independent Scholar

Bernhard Maier, Semitic Studies in Victorian Britain. A Portrait of William Wright and his World through his Letters
Adam C. McCollum, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library

Barsawm, Ignatius Afrem I, Omid & Mardin Manuscripts
Andrew Palmer, University of Münster

Reports

Beth Mardutho Summer 2011 Internship Report

Manuscripts from Eastern Christian Traditions at SBL (2011)

International Syriac Language Project (2011)

16th International Conference on Patristic Studies

Sixth North American Syriac Symposium

And don't forget that this journal has a call for papers out, noted here.

Virtual Bible museum

THE BIBLE AND ARCHAEOLOGY - ONLINE MUSEUM is noted by Todd Bolen at the Bible Places blog. Lots of nice photos, and the captions seem pretty reasonable.

Afghan manuscripts update

THE AFGHAN JEWISH MANUSCRIPTS are treated in a JTA article by Ben Harris: Mystery swirls around Judaic manuscripts discovered in Afghanistan. It has some new information, or at least new rumors:

But that doesn't mean there aren't lots of colorful stories floating around. One story, which several of those involved had heard, involves a Russian-Jewish billionaire who supposedly had expressed interest in purchasing the manuscripts but had pulled out after his attorneys advised that he may run into legal difficulties. No one would divulge his name.

It “adds an element of mystique,” [antiquities dealer Lenny] Wolfe said. “I personally never spoke to any Russian oligarch. What I’ve heard is hearsay. I don’t trust hearsay.”

Menashe Goldelman, a London-based expert in Middle Eastern antiquities who has authored a 23-page report on the documents, told JTA that they emerged on the London market several months ago. Goldelman said he had been enlisted by a dealer to sell the documents on his behalf. At present, Goldelman said he was trying to broker an agreement with the various dealers to bring the collection together. Goldelman estimates their total value at about $5 million.

“They are not things that are stolen from an institution or found in a legal excavation,” Goldelman said. “At some point, everything that comes from the ground goes to the black market. The black market, this is the institution that helps to save this material. If something has, let’s say, commercial value, it gets saved. If you don’t have a commercial value for the manuscript, they go and put it in the fireplace.”

Goldelman's involvement may not reassure skittish buyers about their provenance. In 2010, two professors reportedly accused him of trafficking in stolen antiquities and protested his scheduled appearance at a conference in Israel. Goldelman's lawyer denied the accusations and threatened to sue for libel.

None of the experts who have spoken publicly on the matter of the Afghan documents appeared to be too troubled by unanswered questions about their origins, seeming to accept such things as the cost of doing business in ancient artifacts.

“What is important for us is that these fragments and documents don’t get buried again in some safe of a collector,” said Haggai Ben-Shammai, a professor of Arabic at Hebrew University and the academic director of Israel's National Library. Ben-Shammai said the library was searching for a donor who would acquire the manuscripts on its behalf.

“We don’t have the means to acquire them on our own,” Ben-Shammai said. “We need some assistance in this.”

I note that the number of texts is back down to 150. The number "200 or more" was suggested at one point. The current article raises the possibility of a Karaite connection for the manuscripts. And this is the first I've heard that "a few are probably older" than a thousand years. I wonder what that means.

This case illustrates the difficult choices scholars have to make in dealing with unprovenanced antiquities. On the one hand, we don't want to encourage looting. But on the other, it would be culpable negligence to ignore discoveries like this because they were not excavated in situ. I don't have a good solution.

Meanwhile, if you know of any philanthropists with a few million to spare, you might want to show them this article.

Background here and links.

New book: Hovhanessian (ed.), "The Canon of the Bible and the Apocrypha in the Churches of the East"

NEW BOOK on the Christian Orthodox biblical tradition from Peter Lang:

Hovhanessian, Vahan S. (ed.)

The Canon of the Bible and the Apocrypha in the Churches of the East

Series: Bible in the Christian Orthodox Tradition - Volume 2

Year of Publication: 2012

New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2012. VIII, 113 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4331-1035-1 hb.

Book synopsis

The Canon of the Bible and the Apocrypha in the Churches of the East features essays reflecting the latest scholarly research in the field of the canon of the Bible and related apocryphal books, with special attention given to the early Christian literature of Eastern churches. These essays study and examine issues and concepts related to the biblical canon as well as non-canonical books that circulated in the early centuries of Christianity among Christian and non-Christian communities, claiming to be authored by biblical characters, such as the prophets and kings of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New Testament.

Contents

Contents: Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou: The Canon of Scripture in the Orthodox Church - Daniel Alberto Ayuch: The Prayer of Manasses: Orthodox Tradition and Modern Studies in Dialogue - Slavomír Céplö (bulbul): Testament of Solomon and Other Pseudepigraphical Material in Ahkam Sulayman (Judgment of Solomon) - Anushavan Tanielian: The Book of Wisdom of Solomon in the Armenian Church Literature and Liturgy - Nicolae Roddy: Visul Maicii Domnului («The Dream of the Mother of the Lord»): New Testament Romanian Amulet Text - Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou: Banned from the Lectionary: Excluding the Apocalypse of John from the Orthodox New Testament Canon - Vahan S. Hovhanessian: New Testament Apocrypha and the Armenian Version of the Bible.

Noted by Vahan S. Hovhanessian at the Hugoye List.

Incidentally, Dr. Hovhanessian is a contributor to volume one of the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project, now in press.

Some Coptic biblical fragments in Dublin

ALIN SUCIU: A Preliminary Report Concerning the Coptic Biblical Fragments in the Possession of the Trinity College in Dublin.

Errata list for Sokoloff's "A Syriac Lexicon"

THE NEW EDITION OF BROCKELMAN'S LEXICON SYRIACUM, edited by Michael Sokoloff and published by Gorgias press, has now produced a pdf document with corrections to first printing and orthographic variants. I noted the first printing of the Sokoloff edition in 2009 here. The current advert for the book is here.

This is an excellent way of circulating errata lists for complex works such as lexicons.

(HT Abu 'l-Rayhan Al-Biruni on FB.)

More on the Afghan manuscripts

THE JEWISH MANUSCRIPTS FROM AFGHANISTAN are covered in a Reuters article that has some new details: Scholars intrigued by Afghan scrolls. Excerpt:

The cache is being kept by private antique dealers in London, who have been producing a trickle of new documents over the past two years, which is when Shaked believes they were found and pirated out of Afghanistan.

It is likely they belonged to Jewish merchants on the Silk Road running across Central Asia, said T. Michael Law, a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University's Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

Cultural authorities in Kabul had mixed reactions to the find, which scholars say is without a doubt from Afghanistan, arguing that the Judeo-Persian language used on the scrolls is similar to other Afghan Jewish manuscripts.

National Archives director Sakhi Muneer denied the find was Afghan, arguing that he would have seen it, while an adviser in the Culture Ministry said it "cannot be confirmed but it is entirely possible."

"A lot of old documents and sculptures are not brought to us but are sold elsewhere for 10 times the price" the ministry pays, said adviser Jalal Norani, explaining that excavators and ordinary people who stumble across finds sell them to middlemen who then auction them off in Iran, Pakistan and Europe.

As Mr. Norani notes, the looting is unfortunate. We can only hope that the site of origin can be located and excavated properly some day. But even if we are that lucky, much important context for the manuscripts will have been lost.

Still, and especially given the volatile politics of the region, we are lucky to have them at all.

HT Sue Homer on FB. Background here.

Hekhal

HEKHAL: The Irish Society for the Study of the Ancient Near East

HEKHAL was created by a group of four(*) Trinity College Dublin graduates who wish to promote research in the fields of ancient near eastern history and historiography, biblical studies, and archaeology with the long-term aim of increasing both academic and public understanding of the biblical and ancient near eastern world and its texts.

HEKHAL will strive to meet these aims through the organisation of events including conferences, seminars, lectures, workshops, web resources and the publication of annual conference proceedings. Although we are “The Irish Society for the Study of the Ancient Near East”, we are by no means restricting our membership or participation in the society to those residing in Ireland. If you’re out there and interested, you’re more than welcome to join us and participate in all events.

All upcoming events shall be announced on this website. The first thing we will be doing is hosting a series of afternoon seminars and lectures. If you are interested in attending or participating in any of these, please see the “Events” page of this website and know that we will be delighted to do all that we can to facilitate your participation.

(*Hekhal has acquired a fifth founder since parthenogenesis.)

Click through to the website for more.

New book: Townsend & Vidas, "Revelation, Literature, and Community in Late Antiquity"

NEW BOOK from Mohr Siebeck:

Revelation, Literature, and Community in Late Antiquity

Ed. by Philippa Townsend and Moulie Vidas

This volume stems from a conference held at Princeton University, which brought together leading scholars in the study of ancient religions. Claims to divine revelation are not simply a common trope in ancient religious texts: they often determine the structure of these texts and of the communities that produce them. The authors of the studies collected here examine the literary and social functions of revelation in late antiquity from early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism to early Islam, contributing both to our understanding of the phenomenon of revelation as well as to the study of the great transformations, interactions, and tensions typical of this important period. With contributions by: Pavlos Avlamis, Patricia Crone, Martha Himmelfarb, Eduard Iricinschi, Michael Pregill, Annette Reed, Daniel Schwartz, Gregory Shaw, Philippa Townsend, Christine Trevett, John Turner, Azzan Yadin, Yuhan Vevaina, Moulie Vidas

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

Latest on Talmud Blog Book Club

THE TALMUD BLOG BOOK CLUB has finished its discussion of its first book and has posted a response by the author. See the post Clearing out the Living Room. Next it will be discussing an article: Zvi Septimus’ “Trigger Words and Simultexts: The Experience of Reading the Bavli," now available as a pdf file in the post Updates Regarding the TBBC. The next book on their agenda is Talya Fishman, Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures, noted on PaleoJudaica recently here.

Wayne Stiles visits the Western Wall Tunnel

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Wayne Stiles reports on the Western Wall Tunnel:

Sights and Insights: Jerusalem down under

By WAYNE STILES
01/23/2012 11:09 (Jerusalem Post)

The Western Wall Tunnel allows visitors to explore the full length of the Kotel, seeing first-century Jerusalem.


Wayne Stiles is an author who has never recovered from his travels in Israel and loves to write about them from his desk in Texas.

Question: What major site in Jerusalem can a visitor see without wasting daylight but that still requires men to wear a hat? (Okay, so you could wear a yarmulke instead of a hat. And really, most men remove the hat after ten minutes anyway.)

Answer: The Western Wall tunnel.

When you say the words “Kotel” or “Western Wall,” most folks think of the Western Wall plaza, the place where bar- and bat-mitzvahs regularly occur and where soldiers are inducted. It’s the spot where Jews come to pray—as well as many tourists—and the place of national prayer gatherings.

But like the tip of an iceberg, the Western Wall plaza represents only a small part of the whole picture. Most of the Kotel lies buried beneath the rubble of time and hasn’t seen the light of day for centuries. Because the site represents part of the Western Wall, the tour requires all men to cover their heads respectfully.


[...]

I have collected some earlier posts on Jerusalem tunnels and caves at the end of this post.

UPDATE (24 January): Todd Bolen comments and shares some of his own photos.

Egyptian blogger update

EGYPTIAN BLOGGER Maikel Nabil Sanad has been "pardoned":

Egypt pardons jailed blogger as generals brace for anniversary protests

Maikel Nabil Sanad among almost 2,000 prisoners convicted by military tribunals over the past year who are set to be released

Jack Shenker in Cairo
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 January 2012 11.57 GMT

An Egyptian blogger jailed by the military junta for insulting the army has been officially pardoned, as the country's ruling generals attempt to bolster public support before protests planned for the Wednesday's anniversary of the uprising.

Maikel Nabil Sanad, a 26-year-old Coptic Christian who became a cause celebre for activists opposed to the post-Mubarak military government, was among almost 2,000 prisoners convicted by military tribunals over the past year who are set to be released after an announcement by Egypt's de facto leader, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.

Sanad was imprisoned in March over a blogpost titled "The army and the people were never one hand", inverting a popular Egyptian chant in support of the military.

He refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the army court that convicted him and staged a high-profile hunger strike behind bars that saw him come close to death several times. He resisted efforts by the authorities to certify him insane and have him transferred to a secure psychiatric unit, and was designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

[...]

High time. He should not have been arrested in the first place. But maybe the new Egyptian Government is finally catching on that the world is watching.

Background here.

Dragons in the news

HERE BE DRAGONS is an entertaining survey of dragon mythology by Rouwen Lin in the Malaysia Star. Excerpts of interest:

The Sumerian and Babylonian dragon myths, symbolising the creation of order out of chaos, were the earliest to surface, with written records going back several thousand years BC.

“Their myth was of a dragon – symbolising chaos – being defeated by a god, who thereafter proceeded to create the world, largely out of parts of the dismembered dragon. The dragon in question was vast, ferocious, had a scaly body, horns and claws. These are also generally the features of later dragons,” says tropical marine biologist Peter Hogarth, who is retired, but was until recently a senior lecturer in Biology at the University of York, Britain.

[...]

In Beowulf, the earliest Germanic epic, and The Saga Of The Volsungs, a later Norse prose mythical saga based on early materials, the dragons show influence from the classical Roman and Greek dragon myths (which were in turn influenced by ancient Semitic, near-eastern and biblical dragon concepts). Also, the dragon-like creatures of Egyptian myths and in the most ancient sources in the Western European tradition do not have wings – “so one can say that Western dragons acquired their wings from the Asian myths,” he adds.

[Robert] Miller [II, S.F.O., associate professor of Old Testament at The Catholic University of America] points out that the biblical dragons are clearly derived from the ancient Near Eastern dragon myths of ancient Israel’s neighbours.

“There are many, many connections in the words used and images involved that show Israel knew the dragon myths of ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq) and the Canaanites (their neighbours in the Levant). Israel used these myths in different ways in the Bible; they either co-opted the dragon slaying myth of some other god or they demoted the dragon to an ordinary (if rather large) animal.”

[...]

“The Old Testament doesn’t have a devil with a pitchfork to symbolise evil; it has a dragon. The Bible says God ‘slew the dragon’ to articulate God’s total power over evil personified,” says Miller.

Evan adds: “The saint doing combat with the dragon symbolises the cosmic or spiritual battle of the divine forces of God against the demonic, diabolical, or satanic forces of evil. In the end, the biblical tradition says, the dragon Satan will be destroyed and all evil will be destroyed with it.”

Dragons figure prominently in some earlier PaleoJudaica posts here, here (the link to the Times article has rotted, sorry), here, here, here, and here.

Back story to "Rashi's Daughters"

THIS ARTICLE on Maggie Anton has some interesting background on the author and the genesis of the books:

Author of 'Rashi's Daughters' to speak, sign books in Savannah on Jan. 23

Posted: January 22, 2012 - 12:03am

By Linda Sickler (Savannah Morning Herald)

Author Maggie Anton’s gift is taking little-known women from history and fleshing them out into strong, vibrant characters.

The author of the “Rashi’s Daughters” trilogy will be in Savannah on Monday.

“I lecture about the research and history behind my novels and sign books and sell them, too,” Anton says.

Though geared toward Jewish women, her novels — “Joheved,” “Miriam” and “Rachel” — are growing in popularity among men and readers of all faiths.

[...]

Here's part of the story, but there's more:

“The teacher [of her Talmud class] pointed out that Rashi had no sons, only daughters, who were reputedly learned,” Anton said. “I became intrigued and decided to do research for the fun of it.”

She found the names of Rashi’s daughters and evidence they were highly educated. “I discovered that France and northern Europe were part of the 12th century renaissance and that it was an incredibly enlightened time throughout Europe and the Arab world. Women had much higher status and a higher place in society and were more active than I ever expected.”

The research intensified, and “it was as if something possessed me,” Anton said. “I don’t even remember deciding I was going to write about these three women.”

Starting in 1997, she finished her first draft in 2000. “My goal was to write a book I wanted to read.”

“By that point, people knew I was doing this, and quite a few wanted to read it,” Anton said.

But by 2004, her agent still hadn’t sold the first novel, so Anton and her husband decided to start a small press and publish it themselves.

Background here and links. And I have more posts on Rashi here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Not counting incidental mentions.