Durham Conference: The Construction of Time in Antiquity

FROM LUTZ DOERING:

On 3–4 March 2013, a two-day international conference, The Construction of Time in Antiquity, will be held in Durham, England. The conference is sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Durham University and is convened by Lutz Doering and Jonathan Ben-Dov. The conference is free and open to all; however, seating is limited, so please write to lutz.doering@durham.ac.uk to register your name.

The Construction of Time in Antiquity
Durham University, University College, Senate Suite, 3–4 March 2013
Sunday, 3 March 2013

13.00–13.30 Start of the Conference with Buffet Lunch

13.30–13.45 Welcome

13.45–14.30 John Steele (Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island): Real and Constructed Time in Babylonian Astral Medicine

14.30–15.15 Lorenzo Verderame (Università Sapienza di Roma): Mapping the Mythical Time in Rituals: The Mesopotamian Case

Break

15.45–16.30 Alexandra von Lieven (Freie Universität Berlin): Divine Figurations of Time in Ancient Egypt

16.30–17.15 Ivana Petrovic (Durham University): Greek Festivals as Medium of Communication between Gods and Men

Break

17.45–18.30 Robert Hannah (University of Otago, currently IAS Fellow): The Antikythera Mechanism

18.30–19.15 Jörg Rüpke (Universität Erfurt): Constructing Future Time: Divination by Calendars

19.45 Conference Dinner (for speakers)



Monday, 4 March 2013

9.00–9.45 Sacha Stern (University College London): Calendars, Politics, and Power Relations in the Roman Empire

9.45–10.30 Ted Kaizer (Durham University): Re-constructing Religious Time at Dura-Europos: Another Look at the Feriale Duranum

Break

11.00–11.45 Jonathan Ben-Dov (Haifa University, currently IAS Fellow): Time and National Identity: The Sabbath in Jewish Hellenistic Writings

11.45–12.30 Lutz Doering (Durham University): The Beginning of the Day in Ancient Jewish Sources

Break, Buffet Lunch

14.30–15.15 Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris): Seasoning the Bible - Biblifying Time Through Fixed Liturgical Reading Systems (Lectionaries)

15.15–16.00 Robert Hayward (Durham University): The Ember Days in Early Christianity

Break

16.30–17.15 Clemens Leonhard (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster): Why Did They Celebrate? Appointed Times and Festivals in Early Christianity

17.15–17.45 Final Discussion

Review of Marienberg, La Baraïta de-Niddah

THE TALMUD BLOG: On the Margins: A Review of E. Marienberg’s ‘La Baraïta de-Niddah’.

More on the Herod Exhibition

A VIDEO ON THE HEROD THE GREAT EXHIBITION has been posted by Arutz Sheva: Video Sneak Peak: The Israel Museum "Herod the Great" Exhibition. It interviews Dr. Silvia Rozenberg, Co-Curator of the exhibition.

Background here with many links.

Computer advances (?) in biblical studies

A COUPLE OF RECENT STORIES on supposed new discoveries in biblical studies arising from computer analysis are worth noting, but perhaps more for their amusement value than any serious advances in the field.

First, the "Search Visualizer" meets the King James version of Genesis: New Analysis of Genesis Reveals 'Death Sandwich' Literary Theme (ScienceDaily). Not to be confused with the Birthright-Eating-Red-Pottage Theme.

Second: New findings on debated authorship (NewsMaker).

University of Adelaide researchers have provided new evidence on the long-debated authorship of two famous texts – the US Federalist Papers and the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament.

[...]

The researchers turned their attention to the Letter to the Hebrews, traditionally attributed to Saint Paul, but debated since the third century AD with scholars suggesting Barnabas, Luke and Clement of Rome as alternatives.

Testing was done, using the original Koine Greek texts, with these four possible authors, plus the three other gospel authors, Matthew, Mark and John and another possible author, Ignatius of Antioch.

“What we found is that the Letter to the Hebrews is indeed closest to Paul than to any of these other authors,” Professor Abbott says. “But the sting in the tail is that this positive result had only a weak likelihood weighting. There are two possibilities: Luke was the second closest match so there may have been some collaboration between the two, for example if Paul wrote the letter in Aramaic (the Hebrew language) and then Luke translated it into Greek. Or it may simply mean we have yet to find the true author!

If I had to bet, I would bet the latter.

I love this bit:

If the Vatican were to agree to supply us with more extra-canonical texts that we haven't tried, we would be happy to do more exhaustive tests.”

Hey Vatican, can I have some more extra-canonical texts too? I'm starting to run out.

A second Iron-Age inscription at Khirbet Qeiyafa

LUKE CHANDLER: Information on the second Qeiyafa inscription coming later this year.

Again, via Joseph I. Lauer.

Background on the first Qeiyafa inscription is here and links. Some other interesting recent finds at the same site are noted here and links.

Byzantine-Era Industrial ruins found in Jaffa

IAA PRESS RELEASE:


Photograph: courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

An Ancient Industrial Installation was Revealed beneath the Asphalt in Yafo (February 2013)

The Israel Antiquities Authority exposed remains of an installation for extracting liquid which dates to the Byzantine period

Archaeological excavations of the Israel Antiquities Authority provide a glimpse at hundreds of years of magnificent history that lies beneath the busy streets. The excavations are being conducted prior to modernizing the infrastructure, on behalf of the Tel Aviv municipality, by the Mashlama Le-Yafo, within the framework of the Magen Avraham Compound project. Recently impressive remains of an industrial installation from the Byzantine period which was used to extract liquid were exposed on Hai Gaon Street.

Installations such as these are usually identified as wine presses for producing wine from grapes, and it is also possible they were used to produce wine or alcoholic beverage from other types of fruit that grew in the region. Yafo’s rich and diverse agricultural tradition has a history thousands of years old beginning with references to the city and its fertile fields in ancient Egyptian documents up until Yafo’s orchards in the Ottoman period.

According to Dr. Yoav Arbel, director of the excavations on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “This is the first important building from the Byzantine period to be uncovered in this part of the city. The fact that the installation is located relatively far from Tel Yafo adds a significant dimension to our knowledge about the impressive agricultural distribution in the region in this period. The installation, which probably dates to the second half of the Byzantine period (sixth century – early seventh century CE), is divided into surfaces paved with a white industrial mosaic. Due to the mosaic’s impermeability such surfaces are commonly found in the press installations of the period which were used to extract liquid. Each unit was connected to a plastered collecting vat. The pressing was performed on the mosaic surfaces whereupon the liquid drained into the vats. It is possible that the section that was discovered represents a relatively small part of the overall installation, and other elements of it are likely to be revealed in archaeological excavations along adjacent streets which are expected to take place later this year”.

Upon completion of the excavation the installation was covered over, and new infrastructures were laid in place above it without damaging it, thereby enabling the continued work on the infrastructure without compromising the preservation of the antiquities for future generations.

The Magen Avraham Compound project constitutes another tier in the development of the tourist, commercial and residential region in Yafo and encompasses seven streets: Noʽam, Magen Avraham, Hai Gaon, Yossi Ben Yossi, Ardon, Ba’alei Ha-Tosafot and Resh Galuta.
The municipality is modernizing the underground infrastructure, roads and sidewalks within the framework of the project. The overhead electrical and telephone wires are being lowered as well and street furniture and landscaping are being added.

The infrastructure development was preceded by the Israel Antiquities Authority excavations because the region is an official, declared antiquities site. As was the case with antiquities that were previously uncovered, this project also reflects the cooperation and balance between the historical archaeological finds and their preservation on the one hand and the necessary development of the city on the other.

Via Joseph I. Lauer.

Sabbath and circumcision

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN by Adam Kirsch in Tablet Magazine: Birth Right: You wouldn’t expect that the tractate on Shabbat would be the place to discuss circumcision. You’d be wrong.

When my son was born on a Friday and I contacted a mohel to schedule the bris for the following Saturday, I was surprised to be asked whether the baby had been delivered by Caesarean section. If boys are delivered traditionally, I learned, they must be circumcised on their eighth day of life; but if they are delivered by C-section, the ritual can be postponed if the eighth day falls on Shabbat. I didn’t ask the mohel for the halakhic reasoning behind this distinction—as a new parent I had enough things to think about—but I finally learned it from reading the Talmud this week.

In Shabbat 135a, Rabbi Asi explains that the distinction has to do with the ritual purity status of the mother. Vaginal delivery renders the mother impure, tamei, for seven days, and it is only at the expiration of this term that circumcision takes place, as we learn from Leviticus: “If a woman bears seed and gives birth to a male, she shall be impure seven days, and on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.” The rabbis drew the corollary that, if a woman is not impure because she delivered by C-section, her son does not need to be circumcised on the eighth day. And since it is preferable not to perform a circumcision on Shabbat unless absolutely necessary, the circumcision or milah can be postponed until the ninth day in such cases. Of course, in Talmudic times Caesarean section would have been a very rare and dangerous operation, performed without anesthetic using unsterilized tools. The rabbis could hardly have imagined that in our day almost a third of births would happen this way.

[...]

Caesarean section in antiquity was usually done either in cases when the mother was already dead or when both mother and baby could be expected to die without intervention. This particular intervention would have a chance to save the baby, but the survival of the mother, although it (remarkably) was not unheard of, would have been unusual. For some data on pre-modern Caesarean section see Samuel Lurie's article The changing motives of cesarean section: from the ancient world to the twenty-first century.

As I have remarked before, it is difficult to imagine the brutality of the world in which the ancients lived.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Chasing biblical manuscripts

SHOCKER: New Testament Scholar: Chasing Biblical Manuscripts Is Nothing Like 'Indiana Jones'.

Herod exhibition and BAS

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY (BAS) has put up a couple of posts this week on the Herod the Great exhibition at the Israel Museum:

Herod the Great—The King’s Final Journey
Take a closer look at the exhibit with a web-exclusive slideshow (Suzanne F. Singer)

The Israel Museum’s exhibit Herod the Great—The King’s Final Journey guides visitors through the Herodian world and the end of the illustrious king’s life, as brought to light by the late archaeologist Ehud Netzer. Read the article “Herod the Great—The King’s Final Journey” by Suzanne F. Singer as it appears in the March/April 2013 issue of BAR , and take a look at additional web-exclusive highlights from the exhibit in the Bible History Daily slideshow.

Ehud Netzer Publications Available to Public
Rediscover Herod's tomb through archaeologist Ehud Netzer's scholarship (Noah Wiener)

In a commemoration of the scholarship of Ehud Netzer, Biblical Archaeology Society has made a special collection of his groundbreaking scholarship from the BAS Library available for free.

Background on the exhibition is here and links.

Stolen artifacts recovered

ARUTZ SHEVA:

Ancient Stolen Artifacts Discovered in Beit Jann

The Carmiel police and the Antiquities Authority Theft Prevention Division discovered hundreds of stolen artifacts during a search of a private home in the Arab village of Beit Jann.

Arrowheads, lamp fillers, counterweights and nails were uncovered, as well as glassware and 300 coins from the Roman-Hellenist period.

[...]

Review of Green, The Aroma of Righteousness

H-JUDAIC BOOK REVIEW

Deborah A. Green. The Aroma of Righteousness: Scent and Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011. xiv + 286 pp. $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-271-03767-7.

Reviewed by Jonathan Brumberg Kraus (Wheaton College)
Published on H-Judaic (February, 2013)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Tracking the Trail of Scent in Rabbinic Literature

Deborah A. Green’s analysis of the language and sensory experience of smell in early rabbinic Judaism is--I’ll risk the cliché--a breath of fresh air in the often stodgy discipline of rabbinic textual studies. Reading Green’s book reminded me of Wayne Meeks’s critique of “the air of unreality pervading much of the recent scholarly literature” about ancient Christian texts back in the early 1980s.[1] Green’s expansion of what began as a textual study of literary references to olfaction to “the relevant history, archaeology, and cultural data” they presupposed resonated with me (p. 3). At last, a fellow reader who remembers that texts under critical consideration were composed by living, breathing, feeling human beings! And with their olfactory-enhanced concern with the emotionally charged subjects of love and death, the same texts affect us too as living, breathing, feeling human beings, even if not quite in the same way. Just as Meeks and others turned to sociology and social history to flesh out “the air of unreality” pervading descriptions of ancient Christianity, so Green and a cohort of scholars have recently turned to the sensory dimensions of ancient Jewish and Christian texts and practices, to re-embody human experiences and emotions latent in them.[2] This scholarship notably shares a multidisciplinary interest in current biological and cognitive neuroscience research on the physiology of the senses and emotions, as well as philosophical and social historical studies on how western European intellectual tradition generally, and the study of Jewish religious texts in particular, have maligned the “lower senses” of smell, taste, and touch (pp. 3-4).

[...]

Heller on the making of the early Hebrew book

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book

Marvin J. Heller
Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book contains essays on aspects of the early Hebrew book most often treated in a cursory manner if addressed at all. The largest section of the volume is concerned with the makers and places of Hebrew books, mainly addressing book-makers poorly remembered or controversial and print-shops that issued a small number of books in a brief period of time. The section on varia addresses aspects of the book trade such as small books, incomplete books published as a prospectus, competing simultaneous editions, and errors and variations in books. Two smaller sections deal with book arts such as incunabula frames and pressmarks; variations between medieval and current Sephardic Haggadot.

New book by Leonard Greenspoon

PRESS RELEASE:

Biblical Archaeology Society Announces the Digital Publication of Leonard Greenspoon’s New Volume

NewswireToday - /newswire/ - Washington, DC, United States, 02/14/2013 - Biblical Archaeology Society announces the digital publication of Leonard Greenspoon’s new volume, along with new eReader editions of four popular print publications - BiblicalArchaeology.org.

For more than a dozen years, Leonard J. Greenspoon’s “The Bible in the News” column has been one of the most popular and enjoyed sections of the widely read magazines Bible Review and Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR).

For his column, Greenspoon, who is the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization at Creighton University, scours the world’s newspapers and popular media looking for interesting, entertaining and often surprising references to the Bible and its timeless collection of sayings, characters and fables. Greenspoon’s perceptive eye and insightful commentary are matched by a charming, tongue-in-cheek humor that always brings a sly smile to the reader’s face.

Developed exclusively for eReaders, the brand-new book The Bible in the News: How the Popular Press Relates, Conflates and Updates Sacred Writ brings together all of Greenspoon’s “The Bible in the News” articles and columns into a single collection, beginning with his August 2000 feature article “Extra! Extra! Philistines in the Newsroom!” until his recent column in the November/December 2012 issue of BAR. This entertaining array of columns, whose topics range from Adam and Eve in pop culture to North American highways and byways numbered 666 (the number of the beast according to Revelation 13:18), has been conveniently arranged into chapters focusing on Biblical episodes and passages from both the Old and New Testaments. The book’s final chapter explores general biblical themes and topics that often appear in media reports, from exceptional Bible translations to champagne bottles named for lesser known biblical characters like Rehoboam and Melchizedek.

These and many other fascinating stories about the Bible’s vibrant and continued presence in today’s media culture are found in this eBook, The Bible in the News. Leonard J. Greenspoon is author of BAR’s popular “The Bible in the News” column, and holds the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization at Creighton University in Omaha. He is editor-in-chief of the Studies in Jewish Civilization series, which is publishing its 24th volume this fall. He also co-authored, with the late Harvey Minkoff, BAS’s free guide to modern Bible translations, The Holy Bible: A Buyer’s Guide. BAS also released new digital editions of four popular print volumes: Aspects of Monotheism, The Rise of Ancient Israel, Feminist Approaches to the Bible and The Search for Jesus.

New CAL features

THE ARAMAIC BLOG: New Features at the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL).

A bunch of new search options are now available at the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon over at Hebrew Union College.

Lod Mosaic in Philly

THE LOD MOSAIC is on its last stop in the United States, before heading to Paris and then back to Israel:

Mosaic floor discovered in Israel on view at Penn Museum in Philadelphia

Kristie Rearick/South Jersey Times By Kristie Rearick/South Jersey Times
on February 15, 2013 at 12:38 PM, updated February 15, 2013 at 7:18 PM

Bringing a mosaic floor — one believed to have come from the home of a wealthy Roman living in the Eastern Roman Empire at about 300 CE — into the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, was not an easy task.

[...]

Background on the mosaic and its earlier travels is here and links.

Tomb of ancient sage vandalized

VANDALISM: Temple-Era Sage's Tomb Defaced Near Tzfat (Arutz Sheva).

Unidentified vandals caused damage to the tomb of Second Temple era sage Yonatan Ben Uziel Saturday. The tomb is located near Amuka, in the vicinity of Tzfat, in the Upper Galilee.

Including, whatever this means, Druze-themed graffiti.

Anime Metatron

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: 8 Interesting Uses of World Religious Figures.

2. Metatron (Demonbane) In a world of Cthulu mythos, one Jewish archangel rises up as a magical girl-nun trying to stop an evil organization from summoning The Ancient Ones. Specifically, she'd rather not be used as control vessel for them, instead mounting her Hunting Horror motorcycle in a suit of white angelic armor. In Jewish apocrypha, Metatron is the angel incarnation of Enoch and the ancestor of Noah.

More in Jewish mysticism than Jewish apocrypha.

Ruth Calderon's Talmud lesson

THE TALMUD BLOG: A Talmud Lecture in the Knesset.

... when was the last time a Talmud shiur went viral like this?

NYT on Golb identity-theft case

THE RAPHAEL GOLB IDENTITY-THEFT CASE is covered in a thorough and well-informed article in the New York Times:

Online Battle Over Sacred Scrolls, Real-World Consequences

By JOHN LELAND
Published: February 16, 2013

There is a saying about academia that the disputes are so vicious because the stakes are so low. In the case of Raphael Haim Golb, a son of a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, the last few years have provided ample support for the first half of the saying. But the second half is less accurate.

In his cluttered fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Greenwich Village, Mr. Golb, 53, is waiting to begin serving a six-month sentence for waging an Internet campaign against his father’s academic rivals, including sending e-mails under a rival professor’s name. The younger Mr. Golb, who has a Ph.D. from Harvard and a law degree from New York University, is six feet tall, 120 pounds; digressive, tightly wound, bookish; a gadfly, an irritant, an obsessive. If you saw him on the street, you might worry about his safety.

Between 2006 and 2009, he created more than 80 online aliases to advance his father’s views about the Dead Sea Scrolls against what he saw as a concerted effort to exclude them. Along the way, according to a jury and a panel of appellate court judges, he crossed from engaging in academic debate to committing a crime.

[...]

The current status of the case:

“I’m not saying anybody here acted well,” Mr. [Ronald] Kuby [a lawyer of Mr. Golb's] said. “I just don’t think anybody acted criminally.”

After a three-week trial, the jury ruled otherwise, finding Mr. Golb guilty on 30 of 31 counts, including two felonies. On Jan. 29 he lost again on appeal on all but one count. He is currently out on bail pending a decision by the State Supreme Court on whether or not to hear his appeal. Last week, he was granted permission to go to Chicago, where his father was in the hospital after a minor stroke.

The remark by Mr. Kuby about Robert Cargill's "hurt puppy persona" is generating some commentary—and photoshopping—on Facebook.

Much background on this long, sad story is here with many links.

On 1 Enoch 90:15

EDWARD COOK: A Suggestion About I Enoch 90:15. Sounds plausible to me.

Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."

UPDATE: Related: Scholarly Papers on 1 Enoch Available For Free (Michael Heiser at PaleoBabble). For you, special deal.

Another reason to learn Latin

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 7 ways to be ready next time news breaks in Latin
If only you'd studied Latin, maybe you could have broken the story of Pope Benedict's resignation.

Forthcoming book on source of sin in Second Temple Literature

ASOR BLOG:

The Source of Sin and its Nature as Portrayed in Second Temple Literature

Posted on February 7, 2013 by jennfitz

By: Miryam T. Brand, New York University, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow

My fellowship at the Albright this year has enabled me to further develop the topic of my dissertation with the aim of producing a book for academic readers: Evil Within and Without: The Source of Sin and its Nature as Portrayed in Second Temple Literature, to be published in the Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplement series. The aim of my study has been to examine how sin, specifically, the source of sin, is presented in Second Temple literature, including Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Philo and the Dead Sea Scrolls. These texts are examined according to their genre: prayer texts, narratives, wisdom literature, and covenantal texts (introductions to legal rules).

[...]

More Daf Yomi columns

RECENT DAF YOMI COLUMNS by Adam Kirsh at Tablet Magazine:

Can’t Touch This
Talmudic rabbis debate the reach of permissions and prohibitions, and Jews are rewarded for virtuous behavior

Writing last week about the Talmud’s rule that you cannot extinguish a fire on Shabbat, I noted that presumably an exception must be made for saving human life. I didn’t have to wait long to see how the rabbis approached this question, since it turned out to be one of the major themes of this week’s Daf Yomi reading. When it comes to sick people, women in childbirth, and even suffering animals, the rabbis make clear in Shabbat 128b, the usually strict rules of Shabbat observance can be relaxed or even violated.

Queen for a Day
The rabbis who reasoned about the day of rest also celebrated it. Plus: The Talmud on iPad and in translation.

That praise of Shabbat, typically, comes in the course of a technical discussion about a new area of Shabbat law. What kinds of things can be saved from a fire on Shabbat? This is the main subject of Chapter 16, which proceeds on the assumption—never explicitly stated—that it is forbidden to extinguish a fire on Shabbat, since that is one of the 39 melachot. Presumably the law makes an exception for saving human life, always a chief Talmudic value, but the issue doesn’t come up directly. Instead, the chapter begins with a mishnah about something almost as crucial: Is it permitted to put out a fire in order to save “sacred writings”?

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Review of Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition

BOOK REVIEW:

A World Without Jews
An exhilarating new intellectual history argues that anti-Judaism is at the heart of Western culture

By Adam Kirsch|February 13, 2013 7:00 AM|21comments (Tablet)

The title of David Nirenberg’s new book, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, uses a term pointedly different from the one we are used to. The hatred and oppression of Jews has been known since the late 19th century as anti-Semitism—a label, it is worth remembering, originally worn with pride by German Jew-haters. What is the difference, then, between anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism? The answer, as it unfolds in Nirenberg’s scholarly tour de force, could be summarized this way: Anti-Semitism needs actual Jews to persecute; anti-Judaism can flourish perfectly well without them, since its target is not a group of people but an idea.

Nirenberg’s thesis is that this idea of Judaism, which bears only a passing resemblance to Judaism as practiced and lived by Jews, has been at the very center of Western civilization since the beginning. From Ptolemaic Egypt to early Christianity, from the Catholic Middle Ages to the Protestant Reformation, from the Enlightenment to fascism, whenever the West has wanted to define everything it is not—when it wants to put a name to its deepest fears and aversions—Judaism has been the name that came most easily to hand. “Anti-Judaism,” Nirenberg summarizes, “should not be understood as some archaic or irrational closet in the vast edifices of Western thought. It was rather one of the basic tools with which that edifice was constructed.”

[...]

UPDATE: And here is an essay on the subject by Nirenberg in The Chronicle of Higher Education: Anti-Judaism as a Critical Theory.

Collins on NPR

JOHN COLLINS IS INTERVIEWED ON NPR: 'Dead Sea Scrolls' Live On In Debate And Discovery.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the ancient manuscripts dating back to the time of Jesus that were found between 1947 and 1956 in caves by the Dead Sea. Since they were first discovered, they have been a source of fascination and debate over what they can teach — and have taught — about Judeo-Christian history. In his new book, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography, Yale professor John J. Collins tells the story of the scrolls, their discovery and the controversies surrounding the scholarship of them.

February 14th

HAPPY STS. CYRIL AND METHODIUS DAY!

Background here and links. Cross-file under "Old Church Slavonic."

More discoveries at Qumran

NOT, ALAS, MORE SCROLLS: Dead Sea Cave Yields New Finds (Popular Archaeology).

Led by Dr. Haim Cohen of Israel's Haifa University, a small team ascended a steep escarpment of rocky terrain to the cave each morning at 5.45 a.m. beginning on November 28 for several weeks of painstaking excavation. The routine climb took 2 hours to reach the excavation site, a cave where Cohen had previously conducted excavations in 2003 and 2006. Cave 27, also called the "Mikveh Cave" or Cave of the Pool at Nahal David, is best known for the Second Temple period (530 BCE to 70 CE) mikveh, or ritual cleansing pool, dated to the time of the first centuries B.C. and A.D. It was discovered and excavated just outside the cave entrance. The cave is located in a cliff approximately 400 meters above the Dead Sea and is accessible from a plateau above the cave. Among the many other finds excavated in past seasons were Early Roman period potsherds, flint tools, remains of straw matting, textiles, date pits, ropes, olive pits, animal bones, two coins of Agrippa I, a glass bottle, an iron trilobate arrowhead from the Early Roman period, a pottery seal with a geometric decoration considered to be from the Chalcolithic period, and an ashen hearth. The most intriguing questions, however, have surrounded the presence of the mikveh at the entrance to the cave, a relatively unusual location for such a feature.

Now, Cohen and his team have uncovered new artifacts and items that will add to their database of finds, a body of information or evidence that will help them answer some important questions about what the cave was used for, who may have inhabited or used the cave, and what significance the cave holds. Their most recent efforts have uncovered a large amount of pottery dated to the Second Temple period, and some dated to the Chalcolithic and Iron Age. Other finds included a few fragments of Roman period blown glass, identified as the base and rim pieces of perfume bottles; and an abundance of organic material such as twigs, branches of palm trees, animal bones, fragments of reed and straw, dates (one remarkably well preserved), rope, (including one knotted around a ceramic handle), fabric and leather, including a remarkably well preserved part of a sandal.

Via the Agade list and others.

Samaritan brides again

MORE ON THE UKRAINIAN-SAMARITAN BRIDES:

How Ukrainian women saved the Samaritans of Mount Gerizim
The Samaritans of Mount Gerizim were a rapidly dwindling religious community facing extinction. Then a handful of young Ukrainian brides made the journey to the West Bank, bringing with them fresh hope

Harriet Sherwood
The Guardian, Monday 11 February 2013

For decades, it seemed as though one of the world's smallest religious communities was doomed. Dwindling and insular, the Samaritans of Mount Gerizim were struggling to survive as inbreeding produced generation after generation of children with serious disabilities on an isolated hilltop in the biblical landscape of the West Bank.

But the threat of extinction is now receding after the deployment of the twin weapons of advanced medical science and internet marriage agencies to import brides from Ukraine. In fact, the community of four extended families totalling 320 people is now looking forward to rapid growth.

"We're hoping our numbers will reach 10,000 in 10 years," jokes high priest Aharon Ben-Av Chisda, with more optimism than realistic prediction. "Before, we were worried about the future of our community. Now we have hope."

Much of this hope stems from five young Ukrainian women who have injected fresh blood to Mount Gerizim after swapping a life of bleak prospects, dismal housing and badly paid employment for space, security and strict observance of the religious dictates of the ancient Samaritan community.

[...]

Earlier coverage indicated that eleven Ukrainian women had recently joined the community.

Herod exhibition opens

THE HEROD THE GREAT EXHIBITION AT THE ISRAEL MUSEUM is now open and is raising predictable political issues: "Herod the Great" show in Israel angers Palestinians (Reuters).

Palestinians said the artefacts were removed without their consent from Herodium, the builder-king's excavated palace on an arid hilltop a short drive from Jerusalem.

The Palestinian minister of tourism and antiquities, Rula Ma'ayah, told Reuters all Israeli archaeological activities in the West Bank were illegal.

Also, the Daily Mail has a review with some nice photos: Inside Herod's house: Fascinating exhibition of 2,000-year-old treasures belonging Biblical king who tried to kill baby Jesus... including his bathtub.

Background here and here and links.

Cyrus Cylinder coming soon to USA

THE CYRUS CYLINDER is going on display at the Smithsonian next month: Cyrus Cylinder Brings 2,600 Years of World History to Smithsonian in U.S. Debut (/PRNewswire). This press release covers the usual ground, including the rather inflated view of Cyrus as a human rights pioneer, but it also has some interesting information about the artifact's historical context and its reception history after its discovery in the nineteenth century:

The message of the Cylinder and the larger legacy of Cyrus' leadership have been appropriated and reinterpreted over millennia, beginning with its creators. The Babylonian scribe who engraved the Cylinder attributed Cyrus' victory to the Babylonian god Marduk, a stroke of what could be considered royal and religious propaganda. In the fourth century B.C.E., the Greek historian Xenophon wrote Cyropaedia, a text that romanticizes the philosophies and education of Cyrus as the ideal ruler, which greatly influenced both Alexander the Great and, much later, Thomas Jefferson in his creation of the Declaration of Independence.

When the Cylinder was rediscovered in 1879, it immediately entered the fray of public debate as invaluable proof of the historical veracity of events described in biblical scripture. In the early 20th century, supporters of the creation of the state of Israel compared the actions of British King George V to those of Cyrus, allowing Jews to return to Jerusalem. When the Cylinder was loaned to Iran in 2010, it was viewed by more than 1 million people, one of the most visited exhibitions in the country's history.

Background here, with many links.

Those were the days

THE CRIMSON:

In the seventeenth century, Harvard students were required to take three years each of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Syriac as well as demonstrate fluency in Latin as part of their graduation requirements, according to The Crimson.

Paul and the Wisdom of Solomon

OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: James McGrath muses on whether the Apostle Paul was disputing with the Wisdom of Solomon in Romans 1:29-31: Who Are You, O Man? (Maybe the Author of Wisdom of Solomon?)

My favorite contribution to this discussion is by R. A. Knox, who once commented that he had toyed with the idea of arguing that the Wisdom of Solomon was actually written by Paul before his conversion.

Computer-reconstructed proto-languages

UC BERKELEY PRESS RELEASE

Scientists create automated ‘time machine’ to reconstruct ancient languages

By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations | February 11, 2013
BERKELEY —

Ancient languages hold a treasure trove of information about the culture, politics and commerce of millennia past. Yet, reconstructing them to reveal clues into human history can require decades of painstaking work. Now, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have created an automated “time machine,” of sorts, that will greatly accelerate and improve the process of reconstructing hundreds of ancestral languages.

In a compelling example of how “big data” and machine learning are beginning to make a significant impact on all facets of knowledge, researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of British Columbia have created a computer program that can rapidly reconstruct “proto-languages” – the linguistic ancestors from which all modern languages have evolved. These earliest-known languages include Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Afroasiatic and, in this case, Proto-Austronesian, which gave rise to languages spoken in Southeast Asia, parts of continental Asia, Australasia and the Pacific.

And, of course, Proto-Semitic.

”What excites me about this system is that it takes so many of the great ideas that linguists have had about historical reconstruction, and it automates them at a new scale: more data, more words, more languages, but less time,” said Dan Klein, an associate professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and co-author of the paper published online today (Feb. 11) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research team’s computational model uses probabilistic reasoning – which explores logic and statistics to predict an outcome – to reconstruct more than 600 Proto-Austronesian languages from an existing database of more than 140,000 words, replicating with 85 percent accuracy what linguists had done manually. While manual reconstruction is a meticulous process that can take years, this system can perform a large-scale reconstruction in a matter of days or even hours, researchers said.

Not only will this program speed up the ability of linguists to rebuild the world’s proto-languages on a large scale, boosting our understanding of ancient civilizations based on their vocabularies, but it can also provide clues to how languages might change years from now.

“Our statistical model can be used to answer scientific questions about languages over time, not only to make inferences about the past, but also to extrapolate how language might change in the future,” said Tom Griffiths, associate professor of psychology, director of UC Berkeley’s Computational Cognitive Science Lab and another co-author of the paper.

[...]

Despite the try-too-hard time-machine metaphor (no flux capacitor is involved), this sounds like a useful development. It is not a panacea for the reconstruction of proto-languages, nor does it pretend to be, but anything that speeds up the slow and painstaking process of gathering, organizing, and categorizing the raw data is worthwhile and commendable. The claims here (apart from the time travel stuff) are relatively measured in comparison with the reports a few years ago about a computer program that could decipher Ugaritic.

The idea that this program could predict language changes should be handled cautiously. It may well be able to indicate a range of possible developments (conditional predictions), but any attempt to make precise extrapolations (unconditional predictions) about how a language will change in the future will quickly run up against far too many sensitive variables to compute (the butterfly effect), involving numerous intangibles about human society. Karl Popper had already described this problem in the days before Chaos Theory, and he also pointed out that the process of scientific advancement of knowledge is itself unpredictable and therefore injects unpredictable variables into any attempts to predict the future.

Muslim conference on Hebrew language and culture

INTERESTING:

Muslims Host First Ever Hebrew Conference Held in South Asia

By: Jewish Press News Briefs
Published: February 11th, 2013

The first-ever Hebrew language and culture conference in South Asia was hosted at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and organized by none other than Muslims scholars in a show of Muslim-Jewish amity in India.

[...]

The topics listed are wide ranging and seem to encompass the full range of Jewish history:

The conference focused on literature and psychology; language and religion; names in ancient and modern Hebrew; Halakhah, Jewish identity and modernization; law and language; Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic and the mutual influences; the language of the Bible, as well as sessions held on the Indian Jews, and India in Hebrew Literature and Hebrew in India.

Herod exhibition latest

THE HEROD THE GREAT EXHIBITION opens tomorrow at the Israel Museum. Here are a couple of recent articles on it.

Monumental enough for Herod the Great? The Israel Museum’s exhibit on the life and legacy of the controversial king opens this week. (Jerusalem Post)

'Herod the Great': Israeli museum examines infamous leader (USA Today)

Ancient public board games

GAMES PEOPLE PLAYED:

Unearthed board games shed light on ancient holy land trivial pursuits
A Jerusalem 'artifactologist,' who directs a national storage facility that holds more than a million archaeological items, says games offer insight into human life throughout the ages.

By Nir Hasson | Feb.10, 2013 | 10:53 AM (Haaretz)

A few years ago, a striking street from the Roman period was discovered in the back part of the Western Wall Square. This eastern cardo area features a wide lane, sidewalks, and entryways for stores. Archaeologists, led by Shlomit Wexler-Bedolah from the Israel Antiquities Authority, discovered an inscription in one of the sidewalk areas − the engraving stretches across two quadrants, each divided into squares, and has a large X in its center.

In another area, an engraving features a rectangle divided into 42 squares. An intensive search uncovered another six inscriptions of various types; and searches in other parts of Jerusalem’s Old City uncovered another 21 engravings − in the Damascus Gate square, around the Dung Gate, at the Jewish quarter’s cardo, and elsewhere. Each is actually a public game-board, dating from the Roman period, similar to public chessboards that can sometimes be found in public parks in Europe. Jerusalem in Roman times − Aelia Capitolina − is not unusual in this respect. Archaeologist Dr. Michael Saban, who investigates ancient games artifacts, alludes to hundreds of game boards of different types, from all historical periods. The oldest such board dates to the 7th century B.C.E., 9,000 years ago.

[...]

A wonderful howler in that last sentence: for "century" read "millennium."

The national storage facility is in a secure, undisclosed location.

LXX Day

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL SEPTUAGINT DAY!

Whew! Almost missed it. Thanks to Rick Brannan on Facebook for the reminder.

Cairo Geniza funding crisis

OH OH:

Slideshow: Oxbridge coalition in bid to save collection

Written by Jennie Baker (Cambridge News)

A £1.2 million fundraising bid has been launched by Cambridge and Oxford universities to keep 1,000 years of Jewish history in the public domain.

The Lewis-Gibson Genizah Collection of more than 1,700 fragments of ancient Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts has been housed at Westminster College, a Cambridge theological college, since 1896.

But the manuscripts – dating from the 9th to the 19th century – are in danger of being sold into private collections unless the universities can gather the funds to buy them.

[...]

This is news to me. They have already raised half a million pounds, which is great, but there's lots more to go. If you, dear reader, are, or if one of your friends is, a rich philanthrophist, here's your chance!

DSS dynamic duo

OBSCURE HEADLINE OF THE WEEK: Dead Sea Scrolls anchor interfaith series. Unpacked, it tells us that Larry Schiffman and James VanderKam will be doing a joint lecture series on the Dead Sea Scrolls in New Jersey later this month.

Herod exhibition

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: King Herod’s monument, tomb or temple? Bonna Devora Haberman has some rambling reflections on the new Herod exhibition in the Israel Museum.

Background here and links.

Sarajevo Haggadah latest

THE SARAJEVO HAGGADAH is back in the news: Bosnia Refuses to Loan Sarajevo Hagaddah to NY's Met: National Museum in Sarajevo, where the Hagaddah is kept, closed its doors indefinitely due to a lack of funding. (Arutz Sheva).

Background here, here, here, here, and links.

Cuneiform top 100

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The One Hundred Most Important Cuneiform Objects.

The list includes the Hammurapi law code, the Gilgamesh Epic, the Gilgamesh Flood story, and the Cyrus Cylinder. Unaccountably, the Sumerian Flood story (or "Eridu Genesis") is missing.

(Via Francis Deblauwe on Facebook.)

The Early High Christology Club

LARRY HURTADO reminisces about The Early High Christology Club (EHCC).

I guess I'm pretty close to a charter member; I wasn't on the committee, but I attended all the Divine Mediator Figure SBL sessions (the first was in 1991) and I presented some papers in the group. Alas, I wasn't at the famous dinner. My 1998 undergraduate course Divine Mediator Figures in the Biblical World was very much inspired by the work of the group, and it led into the International Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus at St. Andrews, which I organized with Carey Newman. Larry Hurtado and many others from the group attended and gave papers, which were published in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism.

I still have my mug. I'm drinking my morning coffee from it right now.

Cataloguing grants at HMML

ADAM MCCOLLUM: Cataloging grants. "The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) announces grants available for cataloging work in its eastern Christian collections in Arabic/Garšūnī, Armenian, Old Church Slavonic, and Syriac. ..."

Follow the link for details.

Zippori

A TRAVEL PIECE ON ZIPPORI/SEPPHORIS in Haaretz: Tourist tip #157 / Zippori National Park: The ancient ruins of this once great city lives up to its post-Biblical billing, "the ornament of all Galilee".

With ancient hype billing it as “the ornament of all Galilee” (the Jewish historian Josephus), and “perched on a mountain like a bird” – i.e., a bird’s eye view (the Talmud) and “a land flowing with milk and honey for 16 miles around,” (ditto) even in ruin, the city of Zippori has a lot to live up to. And it does.

It includes a late-antique synagogue and some cool mosaics.

Earlier posts on Zippori are here, here, here, and links

DSS in Cincinnati

CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER: Dead Sea Scrolls swapped out.

By the time you read this, the Cincinnati Museum Center should have completed the mid-exhibit changeover of the 10 ancient Dead Sea Scroll artifacts on display as the centerpiece of its current exhibit.

[...]

The [new] set includes Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah Commentary, Book of War, Aramaic Levi, Pseudo-Ezekiel, Apocryphal Lamentations, Papyrus Bar, Community Rule and Leviticus/Numbers.

Background here and here and links.

Timbuktu manuscripts update

THE LATEST ON THE TIMBUKTU MANUSCRIPTS:

From Time Magazine: Timbuktu’s Ancient Libraries: Saved by Locals, Endangered by a Government.

In fact, Timbuktu’s residents and preservationists had told TIME early last year that they had rescued tens of thousands of manuscripts before the militants seized northern Mali. They agreed to talk on the condition that TIME kept their secret until the jihadists had been defeated. The operation was conducted by Timbuktu’s old families, which have looked after the city’s 300,000 or so ancient documents for centuries. The residents left behind just a few hundred manuscripts in Timbuktu’s only publicly run collection, the Ahmed Baba Institute, in order to conceal the fact that they’d hidden the bulk of them elsewhere; it was those that were destroyed last month. “The vast majority of belligerents are illiterate, and we don’t want them to know how valuable these are,” Stephanie Diakité, an American in Bamako who runs workshops on the manuscripts, told me before the French and African forces freed Timbuktu. “We want them to think that they are just silly books.”

Now that impression is gone forever. Even those jihadists who are illiterate are likely aware of the manuscripts’ high value, given the headline news generated by their potential destruction. Timbuktu’s libraries comprise one the most detailed written accounts of Africa, from when the city was a gold- and salt-trading hub in the 15th and 16th centuries with a thriving community of scholars and several universities. When TIME visited Timbuktu in 2009 to describe the manuscripts, residents explained that each family appointed one of their children to look after the documents for the next generation — a system that has lasted through countless migrations, invasions and skirmishes over the years.

But with the manuscript pages brittle — they can crumble at the lightest touch — preserving them has become urgent. ...

From the AP: On vegetable carts, in millet sacks, people of Timbuktu conspire to save priceless manuscripts.

It appears from the latter article that most of the 2000 unaccounted-for manuscripts were locked safely in a basement room in the Ahmed Baba Institute and were not harmed, which is good news. Also, it is not clear to me whether the Institute building was burned or not. This article indicates that it was at least set on fire, but apparently it did not burn down.

Background here and links.

Top 10 archaeological finds

THE CONFIRMATION THAT RICHARD III'S SKELETON was buried in a car park has generated a new top-10 list: Top 10 archaeological finds of all time after discovery of skeleton of Richard III (metro.co.uk).

There's plenty of room for debate about a top-10 list this broad, but the choices in this list do not strike me as unreasonable.

Golem: the video game

CAN'T MAKE IT UP: Moonbot Studios of Shreveport announces plans for its next step: a video game, titled 'Golem' (The Times-Picayune).

Although most audiences probably know Moontbot from its Oscar-winning film or from Joyce's award-winning children's books, "Golem" is entirely in in keeping with the studio's expressed goal of telling stories through whatever medium works best.

"At Moonbot, we've been trying to find different ways to tell stories because that's what we love to do," Joyce said. "And games seem to be a place that had a lot of potential for narrative, and not just for fun or blowing stuff up. And we saw that, as storytelling evolves -- and it is, the way we get stories, the way we see stories -- that gaming is maybe one of the most exciting places to tell a story."

This particular story -- with its ancient origins -- was so appealing because, among other reasons, it holds great potential for both great action and great emotion, Joyce said. "(It is based on) the ancient folktale of the Golem, the invincible man of clay made in Prague to save Prague from the invading hordes," he said. "There's all kinds of different versions of what the Golem did. And they treat this story as truth. ... It has an ancient pedigree in storytelling. It sort of the first monster movie. "

Background here with many links.

Forthcoming: Macaskill, The Slavonic Texts of 2 Enoch

SPEAKING OF SLAVONIC, this very important critical edition of the Slavonic text of 2 Enoch by my colleague Dr. Grant Macaskill is forthcoming with Brill in June: The Slavonic Texts of 2 Enoch.

UPDATE: Meant to add some links. More on 2 Enoch here, here, and links.

Slavonic alphabet anniversary

CYRIL AND METHODIUS DAY UPDATE: The Cyril and Methodius Readings have begun at the Russian Scientific and Cultural Center in Rome as part of the celebration of the 1150th anniversary of the creation of the first Slavonic alphabet by Saints Cyril and Methodius (Voice of Russia, TASS)

Background here and links.

Timbuktu manuscripts update

INFORMATION ON THE FATE OF THE TIMBUKTU MANUSCRIPTS continued to develop over the weekend, but I was knocked down by a bad head cold and wasn't following the media. Lydia Polgreen at the New York Times has the latest: As Extremists Invaded, Timbuktu Hid Artifacts of a Golden Age.

The residents of Timbuktu suffered grievously under Islamic militant rule. Almost all of life’s pleasures, even the seemingly innocent ones like listening to music and dancing, were forbidden. With the arrival of French and Malian troops here on Jan. 28, life is slowly returning to normal.

But the city’s rich historical patrimony suffered terrible losses. Timbuktu is known as the City of 333 Saints, a reference to the Sufi preachers and scholars who are venerated by Muslims here. The Islamic rebels destroyed several earthen tombs of those saints, claiming such shrines were forbidden.

During their hasty departure from the city last weekend, the fighters struck another parting blow, setting fire to dozens of ancient manuscripts at the Ahmed Baba Institute, the city’s biggest and most important library.

[...]

It turned out the worries were not unwarranted. In the chaotic final days of the Islamist occupation, all that changed. A group of militants stormed the library as they were fleeing and set fire to whatever they could find.

Fortunately, they got their hands on only a tiny portion of the library’s collection.

“They managed to find less than 5 percent,” he said. “Thank God they were not able to find anything else.”

None of the city’s libraries are in a hurry to return their collections from their hiding places, even though Timbuktu is back under government control.

[...]

Can't say I blame them. As for that less-fortunate less than 5 percent, Matt Blake and Sam Webb at the Daily Mail have some heartbreaking photos: Mali's history goes up in flames: Pictures show priceless texts torched by Islamist fighters fleeing French forces at Timbuktu.

These pictures show the scorched remains of priceless historical documents torched by Islamist fighters before they fled French troops as they closed in on Timbuktu.

The extremists set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts as they fled French and Malian forces.

Without firing a shot, 1,000 French soldiers backed by 200 Malian troops descended on the ancient desert trading post, as they tried to cut off the escape of al Qaeda-linked fighters.

But before they could be rounded up, the rebels scattered into the desert, torching homes, mosques and libraries, including parts of the city's £16-million Ahmed Baba Institute, home to some 20,000 ancient documents on culture, science and geography, as they left.

[...]

Background here and links.

Animating the Talmud

THE TALMUD in cartoon format:

Animating the Talmud
Studio G-dcast videos bring together animators and storytellers to put a modern spin on ancient Jewish texts

By Samuel Thrope|January 28, 2013 7:00 AM| (Tablet)

Rabbi Eliezer, in his purple robe and flowing gray beard, curls his fists in concentration as he miraculously reverses the direction of a river’s flowing, cerulean water. A paper-cut Moses looks on in surprise as Rabbi Akiva teaches his many students, all colored in yellows and pastels. Rabban Gamliel, sporting a bow tie and monocle, shakes his jowls and wields his gavel as he publicly shames a thin and meek Rabbi Yehoshua.

The Talmud has never looked so good.

Last August, a group of young Jewish artists gathered at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum to write, record, and animate the short films from which these scenes are taken. Over the course of one intensive week, the participating animators and storytellers, many of whom were encountering the Talmud for the first time, brought to life six of the Babylonian Talmud’s best-known tales. Organized by G-dcast, the Jewish nonprofit production company best known for its animations of the Bible, this new initiative, called Studio G-dcast, is out to change the way American Jews approach the Talmud.

[...]

Hugoye 16.1

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has published a new issue: Volume 16.1 (Winter 2013). Follow the link for the TOC and for links to the articles, reviews, etc., all online for free.

Cyrus Cylinder coming to D.C.

THE CYRUS CYLINDER is on the road again: 2600 Years of World History in One Iconic Object: Cyrus Cylinder Makes U.S. Debut on March 9 at Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery.

Background here with many links.

More on the Golb case

THE RESULTS OF THE RAPHAEL GOLB APPEAL in the Dead Sea Scrolls identity theft case has received some media attention:

NY appeals court reaches mixed ruling in Dead Sea Scrolls harassment case of historian’s son (AP). "Mixed" as in 29 of the original 30 convictions were upheld.

Also, Hershel Shanks in Bible History Daily: Dead Sea Scrolls Scholar’s Son Off to Jail. Golb is not off to jail immediately, though, and he seems to be planning another appeal.

Background here and links.

1 Enoch—the opera

AN OPERA BASED ON THE BOOK OF 1 ENOCH is being performed in New York: Taconic Opera: World Premiere of New Oratorio - Enoch (Angela Usobiaga, RivertownsPatch).

Dan Montez’s Enoch is based on the life of the Old Testament prophet, Enoch, the father of Methuselah, who mysteriously disappeared from the Book of Genesis without explanation. Over 100 chapters of the Book of Enoch, lost for almost 2000 years, were discovered recently and translated from Hebrew, Aramaic and Ethiopian (Geez).

Sort of. Quotations of a Greek translation were known to Byzantine authors, but the complete Ethiopic text was recovered in in the West in the eighteen century. Fragments in Aramaic were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s. No Hebrew fragments of 1 Enoch survive.

Christian and Jewish scholars were surprised to find quotes from the Book of Enoch as many as 128 times in the Old Testament, more than any other book, and consider it to be scripture.

Uh, no. Completely wrong. But there is one quotation from 1 Enoch in the New Testament in Jude 14-15. I suspect that the Parable of the Sheep and Goats in Matthew 25:31-46 also shows some familiarity with the book.

The story is the antithesis of the Sodom story inasmuch as a city becomes so righteous that is taken up into heaven.

No, no ascending cities in 1 Enoch.

Enoch is called as the first scribe of heaven and first author of scripture. With a little help from Montez, the newly-discovered Enoch will now have his very own oratorio. The work will feature the Taconic Opera chorus, professional lead singers and full orchestra. Performances will be conducted under the baton of Dan Montez himself who is delighted to debut the second of his oratorical compositions in Westchester County. Enoch will be sung in English and its musical influences include Fauré, Ravel and Poulenc. Those who come to the world premiere of the piece will have the opportunity to take part in the making of music history.

Should be interesting.

Cross-file under "Pseudepigrapha Watch."

Avdat restored

SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT THE NABATAEAN (NABATEAN) SITE OF AVDAT:

Ancient Site Restored after Modern Vandalism
Nabatean King Obodas, revered as a deity, built the southern Negev city of Avdat 2000 years ago. Vandals tried to destroy it three years ago. Now it has been restored.

By: Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu (The Jewish Press)
Published: January 30th, 2013

Six different Israeli ministries invested nearly $2 million to repair damage, much of it irreversible, after unknown vandals in October 2009 assaulted the site, designated by UNESCO (United Nations Science and Culture Organization) as a world’s cultural heritage.

[...]

[District official Raviv] Shapiro is pleased that the site now has been re-opened for visitors after massive rehabilitation efforts have actually made the site “look a lot better than it was before the vandalism.”

However, the archaeological value of many fragile artifacts has been lost forever, adds Nature Authority official Orit Bortnik.

[...]

The Nabatean city of Avdat, named after King Obodas who was known in Arabic as Abdah, is located in Avdat National Park, which includes hiking trails, springs, groves and wildlife. The city is on the “Spice Route” along which merchants traveled with perfumes and spices from East Africa and Arabia.

[...]

Background on the vandalism inflicted on Avdat in 2009 is here and links.

Latest on Timbuktu Manuscripts

MOST OF THE TIMBUKTU MANUSCRIPTS that were reported burned earlier this week seem to safe after all. The news accounts remain confused and uncertain, but it seems that some 2000 manuscripts remain unaccounted for, which is not good.

Bulk of Timbuktu manuscripts safe, unharmed: experts

By Pascal Fletcher | Reuters – 20 hrs ago

DAKAR (Reuters) - The vast majority of Timbuktu's ancient manuscripts in state and private collections appear to be unharmed after the Malian Saharan city's 10-month occupation by Islamist rebel fighters, who burnt some of the scripts, experts said on Wednesday.

The news, based on information from persons directly involved with the conservation of the historic texts, came as a relief to the world's cultural community which had been dismayed by varying media reports of widespread destruction of the priceless manuscripts.

After French and Malian troops on Sunday retook Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site and ancient seat of Islamic learning, from Islamist insurgent occupiers, the city's mayor reported the fleeing rebels had set fire to a major manuscript library.

But experts said that while up to 2,000 manuscripts may have been lost at the South African-funded Ahmed Baba Institute ransacked by the rebels, the bulk of the around 300,000 texts existing in Timbuktu and its surrounding region were believed to be safe.

"I can say that the vast majority of the collections appear from our reports not to have been destroyed, damaged or harmed in any way," Cape Town University's Professor Shamil Jeppie, an expert on the Saharan city's manuscripts, told Reuters.

A Malian source also directly involved with the conservation of the Timbuktu manuscripts told Reuters 95 percent of the total documents were "safe and sound".

[...]

Additional confirmation comes from the Tombouctou Manuscript Project blog: Timbuktu Update:

Since the start of this week there are reports about the destruction of library buildings and book collections in Timbuktu. It sounds as if the written heritage of the town went up in flames. According to our information this is not the case at all. The custodians of the libraries worked quietly throughout the rebel occupation of Timbuktu to ensure the safety of their materials. A limited number of items have been damaged or stolen, the infrastructure neglected and furnishings in the Ahmad Baba Institute library looted but from all our local sources – all intimately connected with the public and private collections in the town - there was no malicious destruction of any library or collection.

[...]

I think of 2000 manuscripts as rather more than "a limited number," but for now let's take that as a sign that perhaps the situation is still better than it currently looks.

The Telegraph adds that:

UNESCO, the UN's cultural organisation, is to send a mission as soon as possible to assess the damage done to the ancient cultural sites.

Hopefully we will learn more when they report.

Background here and links.

Golb convictions upheld

RAPHAEL GOLB'S convictions in the Dead Sea Scrolls identity theft case have been almost entirely upheld on appeal. Robert Cargill has the story: NY Court of Appeals Upholds Raphael Golb’s Conviction on 29 of 30 Counts.

Background here with many links.

McGrath on Mandaean

ARAMAIC WATCH: James McGrath collects some links on Mandaean (Mandean) texts and language: The Mandaean Good Shepherd.

On being a Talmudic sage

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN by Adam Kirsch: Rabbinic Mind Games: Lionizing those who perform feats of memory and logic, who reason strictly from premise to conclusion.

Here, then, is part of what it takes to be a great Torah scholar: the ability to perform feats of memory and logic, to reason strictly from premise to conclusion. Two things strike me about this sacralization of the intellect. The first is that, for the rabbis, this kind of thinking is not just impressive; it is itself the supreme expression of piety, since Torah study is the highest Jewish obligation. We please God most not by feeling or even praying, but by thinking. The second is how very unusual this value system is, historically speaking. Working in the midst of empires—Rome and Persia—which were built on hierarchies of birth, wealth, and force, the rabbis evolved their own aristocracy of mind. Many things have changed since the Talmud was written, but I think it’s still possible to see the ethical and intellectual legacy of this value system in Jewish life today.

But intellect is only part of what is required from the Torah sage. In addition to being a great thinker, he is also the leader of his community and its public face, which means that his bearing must be dignified and impressive. ...

Kirsch's earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Timbuktu manuscripts safe?

NOTE THE IMPORTANT UPDATE to today's earlier post, One of the burned Timbuktu manuscripts was in Hebrew. There are conflicting reports that the libraries were not burned or that at least some manuscripts were saved.

UPDATE (30 January): This from Lila Azam Zanganeh, Has the Great Library of Timbuktu Been Lost?, in The New Yorker:

Jean-Michel Djian, a French writer who specializes in West African culture, and is author of a recent book, “The Manuscripts of Timbuktu,” confirmed by phone last night that parts of the various collections were safe. “The great majority of the manuscripts, about fifty thousand, are actually housed in the thirty-two family libraries of the ‘City of 333 Saints,’ ” he said. “Those are to this day protected.” Djian also revealed that Abdel Kader Haidara, the owner of his family’s “Mamma Haidara” library, had transported, two months ago, more than fifteen thousand of its manuscripts to the capital city in order to protect them. Djian said that the same was true of the several thousand manuscripts of the Kati Foundation in Timbuktu. “The rest,” he added with a crack in his voice, “is unknown.”

One of the burned Timbuktu manuscripts was in Hebrew

AS I FEARED: Ancient Timbuktu Manuscripts, 1 in Hebrew, Torched by Islamists (Arutz Sheva).

At least one of the manuscripts, buried beneath the sand or in cave for centuries in wooden trunks and boxes, was written in Hebrew. Another was written in Turkish, according to Seydo Traore, a researcher at the institute where the manuscripts were kept.

Most were written in Arabic, and some were written in African languages. They covered women’s rights, medicine, music, poetry, geography, history, religion and even astronomy, dating as far back as the year 1204. Researchers had managed to digitize only a small percentage of the manuscripts.

This is a manifold desecration and a great loss for human history.

Background here.

UPDATE: This just in. There are now conflicting reports that either the insurgents took some or most of the manuscripts with them or at least some of the manuscripts were removed for safe keeping by locals some time ago, well before any library buildings were burned, if any were. Time Magazine: Mali: Timbuktu Locals Saved Some of City’s Ancient Manuscripts from Islamists.

In interviews with TIME on Monday, preservationists said that in a large-scale rescue operation early last year, shortly before the militants seized control of Timbuktu, thousands of manuscripts were hauled out of the Ahmed Baba Institute to a safe house elsewhere. Realizing that the documents might be prime targets for pillaging or vindictive attacks from Islamic extremists, staff left behind just a small portion of them, perhaps out of haste, but also to conceal the fact that the center had been deliberately emptied. “The documents which had been there are safe, they were not burned,” said Mahmoud Zouber, Mali’s presidential aide on Islamic affairs, a title he retains despite the overthrow of the former President, his boss, in a military coup a year ago; preserving Timbuktu’s manuscripts was a key project of his office. By phone from Bamako on Monday night, Zouber told TIME, “They were put in a very safe place. I can guarantee you. The manuscripts are in total security.”

In a second interview from Bamako, a preservationist who did not want to be named confirmed that the center’s collection had been hidden out of reach from the militants. Neither of those interviewed wanted the location of the manuscripts named in print, for fear that remnants of the al-Qaeda occupiers might return to destroy them.

That was confirmed too by Shamil Jeppie, director of the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town, who told TIME on Monday night that “there were a few items in the Ahmed Baba library, but the rest were kept away.” The center, financed by the South African government as a favored project by then President Thabo Mbeki, who championed reviving Africa’s historical culture, housed state-of-the-art equipment to preserve and photograph hundreds of thousands of pages, some of which had gold illumination, astrological charts and sophisticated mathematical formulas. Jeppie said he had been enraged by the television footage on Monday of the building trashed, and blamed in part Mali’s government, which he said had done little to ensure the center’s security. “It is really sad and disturbing,” he said.

But the mayor of Timbuktu says that not all of the manuscripts were saved.

The Globe and Mail: Priceless manuscripts missing in Timbuktu .

When hundreds of French soldiers rolled into the remote desert city in northern Mali on Monday, cheered by thousands of residents who were ecstatic that the Islamist rebels had fled, one of the biggest fears was the fate of Timbuktu’s ornately crafted manuscripts, as precious to world history as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The city’s mayor, exiled far away in Mali’s capital, alleged that the Islamist extremists had torched the manuscript libraries, burning them to the ground. This was quickly disproved by a Sky TV crew embedded with the French soldiers, who found the main library intact, alleviating the worst fears of many scholars.

Inside the library, television reports showed a few small piles of ash, along with dozens of empty boxes. Up to 10,000 manuscripts were gone. The immediate assumption was that the Islamist militia groups had stolen or destroyed them – although subsequent reports suggested that many of them had been hidden and saved.

[...]

In fact, the most alarming reports were unfounded. The main library, a new headquarters built in 2009 with South African funds, was still intact when the French arrived. Televised images showed dozens of empty cardboard boxes scattered around a courtyard. But each box holds just one manuscript, so the number of burned manuscripts may be relatively small.

The new library contained about 10,000 manuscripts last year when the rebels captured the city, Mr. Diagayete said. But the basement vaults were empty when the French troops arrived on Monday.

The fate of a second library, an older building where a further 29,000 manuscripts were held, was still unknown.

(Both stories via a Facebook friend of Brent Landau.)

It would be wonderful if the story of the burned library turned out to be a false alarm. But I remain very concerned for the manuscripts and antiquities of Timbuktu in the current atmosphere in Mali.

UPDATE (30 January): More here.

Jacobovici vs. Zias

COURT CASE: A Feud Between Biblical Archaeologists Goes to Court (Time Magazine). Simcha Jacobovici is not a "biblical archaeologist" (a phrase that implies formal specialist training), and Nina Burleigh should know better than to call him one. He is a filmmaker who is involved in archaeology and biblical studies as an amateur, and some of his ideas are pretty goofy (see, for example, here, here, here, and here). It is for the judge to rule on the court case, but the journalists should still at least exert minimal effort to get the basic facts right.

Tomb-robbing arrests

SUSPECTS IN CUSTODY:

Arabs Caught Red Handed Robbing Ancient Grave
Three suspects were caught inside 1st century cave near Kibbutz Metzer.

By Gil Ronen (Arutz Sheva)
First Publish: 1/29/2013, 10:36 AM

A protracted surveillance operation led to the capture of three suspects who were caught red handed robbing an ancient grave near Kibbutz Metzer.

Inspectors for the Unit for Prevention of Theft in the Antiquities Authority caught the suspects inside a burial cave dating from the 1st century CE.

The suspects are Arabs from the town of Baka el Gharbiya and the village of Zamer. They were in possession of numerous digging tools.

[...]

Jewish amulet exhibition

Moriah Galleries Presents Exhibit of Ancient Jewish Amulets

Thursday, 24 January 2013 06:23 By JV Staff (The Jewish Voice)

In its 54th year of specializing in the world’s finest antique Judaica, Moriah Galleries is now presenting a most exquisite exhibition of Jewish amulets that is on view through February at its Manhattan gallery, at 230 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1311.

The extensive collection that has been developed over the last 20 years is comprised of amulets made of various materials including silver, paper and parchment. The vast array of amulets were culled from the length and breadth of the Jewish world; most specifically from Syria, North Africa and Persia and include a number of rare European examples with some never before seen.

[...]

On exhibit at the Moriah gallery are some of the most important and spectacular examples of Jewish amulets and talismans comprising the ancient and old (from cca. 400 to 1900 C.E.) Many of these exude a unique charm and flavor with special meanings and “Hashivut” (importance).

[...]

More on such amulets here and on some modern jewelery inspired by such here. Another exhibition on Jewish magic was noted here.

Meanwhile, Dan Levene's 1998 BAR article on skulls inscribed with incantations gets some attention in The Examiner: Occult news: Babylonian mystery religions, the Talmud and magick skulls. More on the BAR article here and here

Manuscripts destroyed in Timbuktu

I KNEW SOMETHING LIKE THIS WAS COMING:

Mali rebels fleeing Timbuktu burn library full of ancient manuscripts
Town's mayor says Islamist insurgents torched two buildings containing priceless books as French-led troops approached

Luke Harding in Sévaré
guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 January 2013 11.40 GMT
Jump to comments (91)

Islamist insurgents retreating from the ancient Saharan city of Timbuktu have set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the 13th century, in what the town's mayor described as a "devastating blow" to world heritage.

Hallé Ousmani Cissé told the Guardian that al-Qaida-allied fighters on Saturday torched two buildings where the manuscripts were being kept. They also burned down the town hall and governor's office, and shot dead a man who was celebrating the arrival of the French military.

French troops and the Malian army reached the gates of Timbuktu on Saturday and secured the town's airport. But they appear to have got there too late to save the leather-bound manuscripts, which were a unique record of sub-Saharan Africa's medieval history.

[...]

Background on the Timbuktu manuscripts is here with many links. Note also the last two links here, at which I reflected on what might have been found in manuscripts such as these. Now we will never know.

UPDATE (29 January): Maybe not. See the important update to this post.

Sabar on preserving Aramaic

ARAMAIC WATCH: Ariel Sabar has an article in Smithsonian on a project to preserve nearly-extinct Neo-Aramaic dialects:

How to Save a Dying Language
Geoffrey Khan is racing to document Aramaic, the language of Jesus, before its native speakers vanish

By Ariel Sabar
Smithsonian magazine, February 2013, Subscribe

It was a sunny morning in May, and I was in a car with a linguist and a tax preparer trolling the suburbs of Chicago for native speakers of Aramaic, the 3,000-year-old language of Jesus.

The linguist, Geoffrey Khan of the University of Cambridge, was nominally in town to give a speech at Northwestern University, in Evanston. But he had another agenda: Chicago’s northern suburbs are home to tens of thousands of Assyrians, Aramaic-speaking Christians driven from their Middle Eastern homelands by persecution and war. The Windy City is a heady place for one of the world’s foremost scholars of modern Aramaic, a man bent on documenting all of its dialects before the language—once the tongue of empires—follows its last speakers to the grave.

[...]

Ariel Sabar is known for his book My Father's Paradise, about his father, the Aramaic scholar and speaker, Yona Sabar. Background here and links.

Latest on Mussolini's catacombs

MORE DELAYS in the restoration of the Jewish catacombs under Mussolini's villa. In fact, the latest coverage mentions the catacombs but then discusses only the building of the associated Holocaust Museum. I hope the catacombs are still on the agenda.

Bureaucracy stalls construction of Italy’s first Holocaust museum

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · January 22, 2013

ROME (JTA) -- If all goes according to plan, a starkly modern, $30 million Holocaust museum will soon rise on the site of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s Rome residence.

The site, also the location of ancient Jewish catacombs and now a city park, will be home to a museum first proposed in 2005 but held up repeatedly by financial and bureaucratic problems.

“I hope construction begins this summer,” Leone Paserman, the president of the Museum of the Shoah Foundation, told JTA. “Of course in Italy, it is always hard to say.”

[...]

The new museum will be built on the grounds of Villa Torlonia, an elegant 19th century mansion that Mussolini used as his residence from 1925 to 1943. Jewish catacombs dating back to ancient times were discovered by chance beneath the surface of its extensive gardens in 1919.

“It is surely one of the ironies of history that for nearly two decades Mussolini resided on top of a catacomb complex constructed by those whose descendants -- being the main victims of his racial policies -- were the ones he forcefully tried to eliminate from the very fabric of Italian society,” Leonard Rutgers, a Dutch expert on the catacombs, told JTA.

[...]

Contra this article, the project has been in the works since at least 2004. Background here and links.

DSS move to Boston

A PROMINENT DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION is coming to Boston:

Museum of Science collaborates with Brandeis on Dead Sea Scrolls

By Connor Novy (The Brandeis Hoot)
January 24, 2013
Section: Front Page, News

The Museum of Science has announced an exhibit centered around the Dead Sea Scrolls. Brandeis has been collaborating with the museum since August and will be providing opportunities for students to become involved with the exhibit once it opens.

“It’s really quite incredible that we are the one university the museum is working with for the project,” Professor Marc Brettler (NEJS), chair of the museum committee said. While the Museum of Science has relationships with many of the universities in the Boston area, Brandeis is the only school with which they are communicating on the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit. The Israeli Artifact Association, as the institution lending the scrolls, has also been in negotiations. While many of the plans are still tentative, Brandeis’ participation has already greatly influenced the exhibit. “A number of us at Brandeis have worked with the museum, advising them concerning various aspects of the exhibit,” Brettler said.

“The museum had some role in choosing which Dead Sea Scrolls would actually be available for the public to see. I and some others advised the museum concerning that,” Brettler said.

The exhibit will feature 20 scrolls and fragments of scrolls total, as well as many artifacts from ancient Israel. “One of the areas we pushed, especially since they’re a museum of science, and I know which scrolls have more scientific material in them, I pushed them in that direction, so the exhibit would fit with museum’s goal,” he said.

“There are astronomical texts, or texts that deal with astronomy among the scrolls,” one of which will be featured in the exhibit. “So that’s science in antiquity,” said Brettler. The exhibit will also highlight the science of the scrolls itself—the technology of archaeological preservation has made huge advances since the scrolls were initially discovered in 1947.

[...]

There is additional information at Brandeis Now: Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit to create opportunities: Brandeis and Museum of Science collaborating on programming. The latter reports that this is the exhibition that has already appeared at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and Discovery Times Square in New York City.

Peter conference reminder

LIKE THE TITLE SAYS: Peter Conference in Edinburgh: A Reminder (Larry Hurtado). New College Edinburgh, 4-6 July 2013.

Schiffman on Jewish genetics and history

LAWRENCE SCHIFFMAN has been blogging a series on Jewish genetics:

I. History and Genetics: Can the History of the Jews Actually be Observed in their Genomes
II. History and Genetics: Commonality of origin
III. History and Genetics: Mesopotamia to Canaan
IV. History and Genetics: Eastern Diaspora
V. History and Genetics: Western Diaspora

Review of Cohn, The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis

BOOK REVIEW by Yitz Landes at the Talmud Blog: Naftali Cohn’s “The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis.”