Criticism of the Lod Mosaic exhibition

THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN: Professors critique Penn Museum's ‘Lod Mosaic’ exhibit: The professors submitted a statement to the museum director with their concerns.

Limited information is known about the history of the Lod Mosaic, but a number of Penn faculty have voiced concern that the piece is presented without any archaeological context. “We don’t want to celebrate a master work in isolation,” said Professor of Roman architecture Lothar Haselberger, who initiated the conversation on how the mosaic is presented.

“Nothing is conveyed to the public that [the mosaic] is more than a carpet,” Haselberger said, referencing the fact that mosaics like the “Lod Mosaic” were popular in this time period as floor decorations in many buildings.

“This is an exhibit that really focuses on the meticulous conservation by the Israel Antiquities Authority of a dazzling Roman mosaic that was found during highway construction,” said Brian Rose, Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section at the Penn Museum.

Via Joseph I. Lauer. Background on the exhibition and the mosaic is here with many links.

More on Herod the Great

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Herod the Great: Friend of the Romans and Parthians?Jason M. Schlude explores how King Herod manipulated his position between two regional powers.

Background on Herod and the current exhibition about him at the Israel Museum is here, leading to many links.

Shanks, Christianity & Rabbinic Judaism

OUT IN A SECOND EDITION, FROM BAS:

Christianity & Rabbinic Judaism 2nd Edition

Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism
A Parallel History of their Origins and Early Development

Edited by Hershel Shanks

ITEM: 7H192 Hardcover

ISBN 978-1-935335-52-8

A unique look at two of the world’s great religions

This newly revised parallel history of Judaism and Christianity presents the first six centuries in the development of both religions in one understandable volume. This unprecedented book takes readers from the middle of the first century—when a distinction between Judaism and Christianity first became apparent—to theArab conquest. This book begins where its companion volume, Ancient Israel, ends.

The first edition appeared more than two decadesago and has since become a standard text book and reference work for undergraduate, graduate and Bible study courses across the country. The book’s editor and contributing authors have now written a completely updated and revised edition that incorporates the most important finds andi nsights from the past two decades of archaeological, historical and biblical research.

More than 65 images enhance the text, many illustrating the most dramatic and importantf inds discovered in the Holy Land and elsewhere in recent decades. It also includes, for the first time, informative maps detailing the many sites and regions where the shared histories of these two world religions unfolded

Follow the link for TOC and ordering information.

Macaskill, The Slavonic Texts of 2 Enoch

NOW PUBLISHED BY BRILL:

The Slavonic Texts of 2 Enoch
In The Slavonic Texts of 2 Enoch, Grant Macaskill publishes the manuscript evidence for this important pseudepigraphon in a format that, for the first time, allows synoptic comparison of the variants encountered. With the long and short recensions represented on facing pages, and variants listed against two exemplars (J and A), readers will be able to weigh the textual and linguistic evidence in a way that has previously been hindered by the available publications of 2 Enoch. The book also includes an introductory discussion of the manuscripts and the problems associated with text-critical work on them, and a translation of the neglected manuscript B, with notes on the significance of its readings for the reconstruction of an ur-text.

Some background here. Cross-file under "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch."

Shroud of Turin latest

THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT: Shroud 2.0: A High-Tech Look at One of Christianity’s Most Important Artifacts.

Background on the Shroud of Turin is here and links.

Ancient synagogue damaged but not destroyed

JOBAR SYNAGOGUE:

Ancient Syrian synagogue hit by looting, shelling

BEIRUT | Mon Apr 1, 2013 6:10pm BST

(Reuters) - Theft and shelling have damaged a 2,000 year-old synagogue in Damascus, one of the oldest in the world, Syrian government and opposition activist sources said on Monday.

Syria's historic monuments have increasingly become a casualty of the civil war has killed more than 70,000 people. Parts of Aleppo's medieval stone-vaulted souk have been reduced to rubble, and many ancient markets, mosques and churches across the country are threatened with destruction.

The damage has so far been light at the Jobar Synagogue, built in honour of the biblical prophet Elijah, according to Mamoun Abdulkarim, the head of Syria's antiquities department.

"Local community officials say the place's sanctity has been violated and there were thefts but I cannot verify the nature of the thefts without investigation," Abdulkarim told Reuters by telephone.

"Four months earlier they (Jewish authorities) tried to go in and were prevented from entering due to the presence of fighters."

He said that authorities believed looters have mostly stolen gold chandeliers and icons dating back 70 to 100 years.

But Abdulkarim said he doubted that thousands of priceless manuscripts had been stolen from the synagogue as most of them, including Torahs in filigreed silver cases, had already been moved to the synagogue inside Damascus's Old City, a UNESCO world heritage site.

[...]

A similar report comes from the AP: Historic synagogue in Damascus damaged, looted. It sounds as though JTA got ahead of itself when it reported yesterday that the synagogue was destroyed. So the current status is that the news is bad, but not nearly as bad as was initially reported. I hope the current report is the one that is accurate.

The Walking Dead

EASTER THOUGHTS FROM JARED CALAWAY: Creepiest Part of Jesus' Death and Resurrection in the Gospels.

Matthew 27:52-53 is an odd passage that leaves many loose ends and open questions. Why does it say "many bodies" as though the souls might be elsewhere, leaving ... zombies? What were the reactions of the hapless folk in the Holy City when confronted by these reanimated bodies? Joy at seeing lost loved ones again? Terror? Confusion? Baseball bats? What happened to these bodies? Did they have souls and settle in and rejoin society for an extra lifetime? Did they go back to their graves after a while and climb back in? Were they all slain again by the living? Or did they shuffle off into the wilderness to prey on passers by?

The implications of the passage arising from an intertextual reading with the zombie apocalypse have been noted before, and I have commented on them here.

Bar Kokhba

I BLOG, YOU DECIDE: Bar Kochba and Pesach: Zionist Hero or Rabbinical Rogue? (Times of Israel).

Ancient synagogue destroyed

REPORT: Historic Damascus synagogue looted and destroyed: Assad forces and rebels trade blame for destruction of 2,000-year-old Jobar shul, Syria’s holiest Jewish site (JTA).

The synagogue is said to be built on the site where the prophet Elijah concealed himself from persecution and anointed his successor, Elisha, as a prophet. It had been damaged earlier this month by mortars reportedly fired by Syrian government forces.

The rebels said the Syrian government looted the synagogue before burning it to the ground, Israel Radio reported Sunday.

The government said the rebels burned the synagogue and that so-called Zionist agents stole its historic religious items in an operation that had been planned for several weeks, the Arabic Al-Manar Television reported, citing the Arabic Syria Truth website.

The news came as Jews around the world marked the final days of Passover, the festival of freedom.

One of the oldest synagogues in the world, the shul was partially destroyed by Syrian government shelling four weeks ago, according to a video posted to YouTube.

Assuming the report is accurate, this is yet another tragedy in the disaster that is currently Syria.

UPDATE (2 April): It looks as though the report was not accurate: current accounts from Reuters and the AP say the synagogue has been damaged but not destroyed.

Shroud of Turin

'TIS THE SEASON: New experiments on Shroud [of Turin] show it’s not medieval (Vatican Insider).

It's dismaying to see how readily this has been taken up by the media and blogs. Here's a helpful rule of thumb: stories timed for Easter about how the Shroud of Turin turns out to be ancient after all are likely to have some problems with them. Steve Caruso has a blog post that sums up the problems with this one: "New experiments on [the Shroud of Turin] show it’s not medieval" -- What?? (the Aramaic Blog).

Briefly, if your multiple scientific test results give you a (95% certain!) 1500-year range, maybe rather than averaging them you should start thinking about whether your samples are contaminated or incorrectly provenanced. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Archbishop of Turin (who as the official custodian of the Shroud would have every reason to welcome the conclusion) doubts that the samples are actually from the Shroud and dismisses the results.

Background on the Shroud of Turin and the endless less-than-securely-founded theories about it is here and just keep following those links back.

Easter

HAPPY EASTER to all those celebrating!

New Testament resurrection narratives are noted here, although for some reason I neglected to mention 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. I see that in the same post I also linked to the resurrection narrative in the Gospel of Peter. All the links in that post have rotted, but you can find a live link to the Gospel of Peter here.

Ultimate monster battle

BETTER THAN GODZILLA VS. KING KONG: Leviathan vs. Behemoth ( Jared Calaway).

Syriac tattoo

ARAMAIC WATCH: Here's a nice Syriac tattoo for Steve Caruso. But I bet this one doesn't have errors in it.

Other tattoos in ancient languages, some quite unfortunate, are noted here and links.

Joseph Aviram

MEMORIES:

Israel's archeological triumphs through the eyes of a man who was always there
Joseph Aviram, 97, brought Ben-Gurion one of the Dead Sea Scrolls and took Yigael Yadin up to Masada in the 1960s.

By Nir Hasson | Mar.29, 2013 | 9:59 AM (Haaretz)

In the world of Israeli archaeology, Joseph Aviram is the man who was there. He was there when Alexander Zaid [a founder of Hashomer, a Jewish defense organization] arrived on horseback to show a group of students the Beit She'arim excavations in the 1930s. He organized the first professional Jewish digs in the 1940s. He brought David Ben-Gurion one of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was found in the Judean Desert in the 1950s, and he took Yigael Yadin up to Masada in the 1960s.

Aviram, who is 97, probably holds the record for successive employment at the same place of work. For 70 years he has been with the Israel Exploration Society (previously known as the Society for the Reclamation of Antiquities ). Next month, the IES will celebrate its centenary, an achievement matched only by a handful of institutions in Israel.

[...]

Karaite and Samaritan Passover

OTHER PASSOVER TRADITIONS: Samaritans, Karaites take Passover back to its ancient roots (judy lash balint at Jweekly.com).

More on Karaite Passover here and links, and more on Samaritan Passover here and links.

Good Friday

TODAY IS GOOD FRIDAY. Best wishes to all observing it. References to the Passion of Jesus in the New Testament are gathered here (but the links have rotted). And for something different, here is the account of the Passion and Resurrection in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter.

No Israel Prize

THERE MUST BE AN INTERESTING STORY BEHIND THIS: No Israel Prize for Archeology This Year (Arutz Sheva).

The prize will not be given because the prize committee attempted to award it to two candidates, in violation of ministry rules which state that each prize may be given to only one winner.

Review of Klawans, Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism

BOOK REVIEW ON H-JUDAIC:

Jonathan Klawans. Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 400 pp. $74.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-992861-3.

Reviewed by Kenneth Atkinson (University of Northern Iowa)
Published on H-Judaic (March, 2013)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Rethinking Flavius Josephus as a Witness to Early Jewish Theologies

Jonathan Klawans’s monograph is a welcome addition to the increasing body of literature devoted to the works of the first-century CE Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus. Well known for his work in the history of Jewish law and ritual, Klawans in this book attempts to put Josephus closer to the center of all studies of ancient Judaism. His book focuses on Josephus’s descriptions of the three major Jewish religious movements (the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes) to understand the theologies of ancient Judaism. He proposes that ancient Jewish religious disputes revolved primarily around matters of ritual law, including disagreements over the calendar, and purity practices. Through his examination of Josephus, Klawans challenges the widespread belief that Judaism was shattered by the cumulative events of 70 CE and 135 CE (First and Second Jewish Revolts). For Klawans, Josephus demonstrates that much of the vitality associated with rabbinic Judaism existed in the first century CE, and that there is no evidence that the three major Jewish movements disappeared after the 70 CE Roman destruction of the Jerusalem temple.

[...]

Rollston on the Cyrus Cylinder

CHRISTOPHER ROLLSTON: Nebuchadnezzar’s Destruction of Jerusalem, The Cyrus Cylinder, and the Building of the Second Temple.

Background here with many links.

Vermes on crucifixion

GEZA VERMES: Was Crucifixion a Jewish Penalty? (Standpoint Magazine).

The doctoral dissertation by Gunnar Samuelsson discussed in the article is noted here and links.

Tangentially related (via crucifixion—'tis the season) from Bible History Daily: The Staurogram: The earliest images of Jesus on the cross. I noted a lecture by Larry Hurtado on the subject (as well as his book) in 2007, here.

Job at University of Edinburgh

A CHANCELLOR'S FELLOWSHIP at the University of Edinburgh is available with the School of Divinity and is open to a specialty in biblical studies.

(HT Timothy Lim on Facebook.)

UPDATE (29 March): Further particulars here.

Egyptian blogger latest

EGYPTIAN BLOGGER ALAA is once again being pursued by the Egyptian authorities, this time apparently for comments left on his blog: Egyptian blogger accused of violence released (AP). The new bosses don't seem to like him much better than the old bosses. I give the AP credit for keeping a close eye on the situation.

Did I mention that the world is watching?

Background here, here, here, here, here, and here, with many links, going back to the Mubarak regime in 2005.

The Talmud Diet?

JONATHAN K. CRANE, IN The Talmud and Other Diet Books (NYT), proposes a Talmudic solution to the obesity epidemic:

Among these old arguments is the novel idea of eating less than what fills one’s belly. The Talmud teaches that people should eat enough to fill a third of their stomachs, drink enough to fill another third, and leave a third empty. (A hadith in the Islamic tradition also teaches this.) Rashi, a medieval French rabbi, interpreted the Talmud to mean that the final empty third is necessary so that the body can metabolize emotions. If one ate until one’s belly was completely full, there’d be no room left to manage one’s emotions and one would burst asunder.

However absurd this may seem to us today, it made physiological sense in the premodern world as the emotions were considered physical things that, like food and drink, were metabolized by the body. A body stuffed with food and drink is full only of biology; it leaves no room for biography, for what makes us human.

Typically, no reference is given. I trust that some alert PaleoJudaica reader can provide one.

Physiology of emotions aside, the approach, whether Talmudic or not, of pushing away from the table before you're stuffed is generally pretty effective.

That said, there may well be an element of making the best of a bad job in the Talmud's advice. Scarcity of resources, including food, was the norm in the brutal world of antiquity.

DSS Decalogue

THE QUMRAN TEXT OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN DEUTERONOMY is going on display at the end of the week in the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the Cincinnati Museum Center: EXCLUSIVE: Ancient document to go on display: Dead Sea Scroll features the Ten Commandments (cincinnati.com).

The tightly guarded Ten Commandments scroll – one of the most important of the approximately 900 ancient Dead Sea Scrolls still in existence – will be on display from Friday through April 14 at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

That will add considerable star power to the last 17 days of the blockbuster exhibit “Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times,” which also has 10 other scroll fragments from Israel on display.

[...]

Background here and links.

Herod exhibition review

THE HEROD THE GREAT EXHIBITION is reviewed by Amotz Asa-El in the WSJ: Shards of a Reputation. Excerpt:

One Herod biographer, Hebrew University's Abraham Schalit, wrote in 1960 that the king's successors "were weaklings," and that the spiritual elite, the Pharisees, "were too introverted to appreciate all that was useful about the great king's legacy." And the university's current authority on this era, Daniel Schwartz, says Herod's "balancing act" between Rome and Judea reflected his belief that Rome was "here to stay," and that it fostered peace, tolerance and prosperity. That is why Herod built both Jerusalem and Caesarea, "in effect giving the country two capitals and positing a separation of religion from state," Mr. Schwartz said.

Yes, none of this justifies Herod's violence. But, then again, confronting Rome brought even more violence.

For its part, the Israel Museum avoids judging Herod. "Our role is merely to look at history through artifacts," says Director James Snyder. Thanks to this well-crafted exhibition, judging Herod's place in history becomes even more challenging than it already was.

More on Herod and the exhibition here and links.

Textual uniformity and diversity in the NT, Qur'an, etc.

LARRY HURTADO: Textual Criticism, the New Testament, and the Qur’an.

As to results, Small repeatedly notes that the Qur’an manuscripts exhibit a remarkable stability in the text across many centuries, from the earliest to the latest. In general terms, not much more than orthographic variants (vowel differences in the consonantal script) and other minor variants are found. There are occasional copyist mistakes, but no major differences involving whole clauses or sentences. This accords with traditional, popular Muslim beliefs/claims about the stability of the text of the Qur’an.

But Small also notes that the other evidence (especially palimpsests and reports from early centuries) suggest strongly that there was, in the earliest period, a considerably greater diversity in the text of the Qur’an than is reflected in the extant manuscripts studied. Moreover, as is widely accepted, in the late 7th century, disturbed by the diversity in the text of the Qur’an, the Caliph Uthman organized a standardization of the consontantal text (early Arabic, like ancient Hebrew, was a consonantal aphabet with no written vowels), suppressing variant versions.

The development of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible is similar: the surviving manuscripts show a remarkable textual uniformity, but earlier, pre-Masoretic evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint shows that an earlier textual diversity had to be suppressed to achieve the uniformity of the MT. This appears to be a fairly common pattern as texts achieve a greater or lesser level of canonicity or authority. In my work on the Hekhalot Literature it has become clear that the later manuscripts of the complete major texts (albeit themselves often highly corrupt) come from a tradition edited into uniformity by the Haside Ashkenaz in the thirteenth century. The earlier fragments of these texts from the Cairo Geniza show considerably more textual diversity.

As Hurtado notes, the New Testament also reached a high level of textual uniformity in time, but no one seems to have had any interest in suppressing the earlier manuscripts that preserved a greater diversity.

Yannai and Passover

THE TALMUD BLOG: Some Notes on Yannai and Pesach: Between Exegesis and Received Traditions (Yitz Landes).

Talmud app upgrade

ARTSCROLL APP: The Talmud Gets (Another) Facelift (The Jewish Press).

Background here and here.

Totally infinitive absolute

ED COOK: Totally Modally.

Metatron coming to Supernatural

ARCHANGEL METATRON WATCH: ‘Supernatural’ Season 8 Spoilers: What Famous Angel Is on Its Way?

SpoilerTV reports that ‘Supernatural’s’ producers have begun casting the role of one of the most famed angels of all, that of the “Metatron,” to appear in the final three episodes of the season, and potentially recur into the ninth. The character is described as an older angel, the scribe of God and one present before the time of Adam and Eve. To Dean’s would-be delight no doubt, Metatron is seen as a cross between Obi-Wan Kenobi and ‘The Usual Suspect’ character Verbal Kint/Keyser Söze.

Temple Mount on Passover

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Temple Activists Detained, Lamb Seized: Several Temple Movement activists tried to make the Pesach sacrifice on the Temple Mount. (Arutz Sheva).

Groningen scholarship

THE UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, has just announced a new scholarship: Qumran Institute presents the Florentino García Martínez Research Master Scholarship.

(HT Mladen Popovic.)

Passover

PASSOVER begins this evening at sundown. Best wishes to all those observing it.

The links have rotted, but some biblical references are listed here.

Tenth anniversary

HAPPY TENTH BLOGIVERSARY TO PALEOJUDAICA!

I began this blog on Monday, 24 March, 2003. The first two posts are here and here.

Most years (last year I was busy and couldn't be bothered), I have put up a retrospective anniversary post. You can find links to all of them in the eighth anniversary post.

For the history and significance of "Biblioblogging" over the last decade, see my 2005 SBL Forum article Assimilated to the Blogosphere: Blogging Ancient Judaism (Blogger reformatting has killed most of the links. Thanks, Blogger!); my 2005 SBL paper, Enter the Bibliobloggers; and my 2010 SBL paper, What Just Happened.

Here are a few of my favorite posts over the last couple of years.

2012-13 (year 10)

• The Economist on the fake metal codices (and follow the links!)
  
• Lecture on Hekhalot translation
  
• SBL 2012 (with a link to my 2012 SBL paper, "The Ninety-four Books of Ezra and the Angelic Revelations of John Dee")
  
• Frank Moore Cross, 1921-2012
  
• Is Christopher Rollston being "disciplined" for a HuffPo essay?
  
• A Coptic gospel that mentions Jesus' wife?
  
• Search engine referrals
  
• Off to the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense
  
• The Samaritans in Der Spiegel

2011-12 (year 9)

• A Syriac apocryphal gospel manuscript in Turkey?
  
• Afghan manuscripts update (follow the many links back for this interesting story)
  
• Off to California (with a link to my 2011 SBL paper, "Ritual Praxis in Ancient Jewish and Christian Mysticism")
  
• The Legend of the Ten Martyrs
  
• Enoch Seminar: Response to Najman
  
• At the Biblioteca Ambrosiana
  
• Quotations from Lost Books in the Hebrew Bible
  
• News on the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project (Yeah, I know the book isn't published yet. Soon, I hope.)
  
• Popular culture, Metatron, Talmud, science fiction, Gnosticism ...
  
• Davila on "The Golb Affair"
  
• Ezekiel plates—and a legend of the Temple treasures

It's been fun so far, and I have no plans to stop. Thanks to the many loyal readers who keep coming back year after year, and welcome, always, to new readers.

Obama at Petra

PRESIDENTIAL TOUR: Barack Obama tours ancient 'lost' city of Petra (The Telegraph).


No sign of the Holy Grail.

The New New Testament

GOOFY HEADLINE OF THE WEEK: Dead Sea Scrolls part of pastor's 'New New Testament' (Deseret News).

Er, no. The Dead Sea Scrolls don't contain any New Testament texts, even noncanonical ones. What the article is trying to say is that this book includes translations of Coptic Gnostic Christian scriptures from the Nag Hammadi Library (in Egypt) among the canonical New Testament books. These are definitely not Jewish Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures etc. from the Dead Sea region. The Amazon page for the book has more information on the book and the project. It seems a little gimmicky to me, but I'm always happy to see the noncanonical scriptures get more attention.

Edmonds, Rastafari

IN THE MAIL: A complimentary copy from OUP:

Ennis B. Edmonds, Rastafari: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2012)

Not sure how I ended up on the list to get this book, but it looks interesting. Past posts on the subject are here, here, and here.

Shape-shifting Jesus again

MICHAEL HEISER weighs in at PaleoBabble on the shape-shifting Jesus apocryphon:

Shape-Shifting Jesus: On the Sins of Marketers and Media.

I think Michael is a little too hard on this article. Notably, he asserts incorrectly that in the apocryphal text Jesus is not a shape shifter, but he cites an irrelevant passage in the section on Jesus' dinner with Pilate, while ignoring the quoted passage about shape-shifting Jesus:

"Then the Jews said to Judas: How shall we arrest him (Jesus), for he does not have a single shape but his appearance changes. Sometimes he is ruddy, sometimes he is white, sometimes he is red, sometimes he is wheat coloured, sometimes he is pallid like ascetics, sometimes he is a youth, sometimes an old man ..."

Background here.

Moss, The Myth of Persecution

JAMES MCGRATH reviews Candida Moss's new book (which I have not yet seen), The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom.

Obama in Israel

SOME HIGHLIGHTS SO FAR of President Obama's visit to Israel:

Obama visits Israel Museum, Dead Sea Scrolls (Jerusalem Post)

Obama Tells Inspiring Talmudic Carob Tree Story (Arutz Sheva)

Obama affirms Israel's ancient biblical roots (AP)

And perhaps not unconnected with the above:

Obama faces Palestinian anger (iolnews)

Worthless Mysteries

ASSIMILATED TO THE BLOGOSPHERE (haven't had one of these for a while): Worthless Mysteries (Jack Collins).

Exploring the Bible and other ancient literature from a secular—not to mention irreverent—point of view, with an emphasis on Enochic and apocalyptic traditions.

Also, rants about the academic job market.

The title of the blog, taken from the First Book of Enoch, refers to the teachings given to humanity by fallen angels, and reflects the joy I take in studying things that are utterly irrelevant.

(Via Deane Galbraith at Remants of Giants.

Herod exhibition again

POLITICS: King Herod, Long Reviled, Finds New Love Among Jewish Settlers:
Interest in Historical Villian Boosts Claim to West Bank (The Forward). Regarding the proposed alternative handling of the exhibition at the end of the essay, I will start thinking about trusting the Palestinian Authority with artifacts important for Jewish history when they start acknowledging that there was a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in antiquity.

I have a post that deals with Herod's ethnic background here.

Background on the Herod the Great exhibition is here and links.

On to Eruvin

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET MAGAZINE: Navigating the Talmud’s Alleys: The range of problems and the variety of answers in the study of Oral Law lead to new pathways of reasoning.

When I first heard about eruvs as a teenager, I regarded them a little indignantly. If the point of Shabbat is to rest from labor, to rejoice in prohibitions, why invent legal fictions to allow you to get around those prohibitions? Isn’t the eruv contrary to the very spirit of Shabbat? Now, after being immersed in the Talmud for half a year, I’ve begun to understand the more flexible imagination that the rabbis brought to these problems. For them, it was not a question of enjoying a holiday from reality, but of finding a way to obey very specific divine laws while still carrying out the necessary business of life. Precisely because they take the letter of the law seriously, they want to know the exact boundaries of that law—what it allows and disallows, and how to tell the difference.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links, as well as here and here.

Geniza songs of David

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Genizah Psalms

A Study of MS 798 of the Antonin Collection. Cambridge Genizah Studies Series
David Stec

The Genizah Psalms (MS 798 of the Antonin Collection) is a Hebrew document of messianic character, apparently presenting itself as the work of David. It is taken by some to date to the time of the second temple, and to be approximately contemporary with some of the literature of Qumran, while others regard it as a medieval composition. From the point of view of a classical hebraist, David M. Stec explores how this text relates to classical Hebrew literature as a whole and considers how viable it is to regard it as a genuine constituent of that body of literature. He presents an edition of the Hebrew text and English translation, together with an introduction, commentary and analysis of language.

These apocryphal songs of David are also translated (by G. W. Lorein and E. van Staalduine-Sulman) in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Canonical Scriptures volume one (the first volume of texts produced by the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project). Did I mention you can pre-order the latter volume at Amazon at a discount? For you, special deal!

As for the Geniza songs of David, I am inclined to see them as works of late antiquity, around the time of the early piyyutim, but I'm not dogmatic about it.

Cross-file under "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch."

ASOR fundraiser update

FOR YOU, SPECIAL DEAL: Support Archaeology Students.

Haven’t given to ASOR’s March Fellowship Madness yet? We are giving away a copy of The Photographs of the American Palestine Exploration Society (AASOR v. 66) by Rachel Hallote, Felicity Cobbing, and Jeffrey Spurr to one of the donors to our fellowship fundraising drive!

[...]

Details at the link. Background here.

Aramaic Facebook

ARAMAIC WATCH: Update Your Facebook Status — In Ancient Aramaic! (Haaretz via The Forward).

Hello, Forward editors, Aramaic is not a Canaanite Tongue (let alone a "Canaanite Toungue"). It is a Northwest Semitic language, but it lacks the "Canaanite shift," the systematic change of original long a to long o. You should know these things.

Obama and the Dead Sea Scrolls

POLITICS:

A visit to view the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum is being interpreted as a presidential acknowledgement of the ancient Jewish connection to the land, and the laying of a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, is also considered symbolically significant. (The Guardian)

UPDATE: From Eugene Kontorovich at the Volokh Conspiracy: More on the Politics of the Scrolls.

The Golb case—it's not over

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE IDENTITY-THEFT CASE involving Raphael Golb and the Dead Sea Scrolls:

First, last week New York's highest court agreed to hear Golb's appeal. Second, also last week, two bloggers received e-mails from Lawrence Schiffman's lawyer demanding that they remove blog posts that have dealt with the case. The relevant discussion is in the following posts.

By prominent legal blogger Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy:
Prof. Lawrence Schiffman’s Lawyer Demands Removal of Post Containing the Text of a Court Opinion
New York’s Highest Court Agrees to Hear the Golb (Dead Sea Scrolls) E-Mail Impersonation Case

By another legal blogger, Scott H. Greenfield, at the Simple Justice blog:
Schiffman, Meet Streisand (Update!!! x4)

Blogger Ken White at Popehat has also involved himself and added some commentary and information:
Barbra? Barbra Streisand? Never Heard of Her. Now, Back To My Threat.

I have blogged extensively on the case (start here and just keep following the links back) but I have not been involved in this particular blog-related situation, except to e-mail Professor Schiffman to ask if he wanted to comment on it for PaleoJudaica. In view of the current status of the case, he was advised not to do so.

UPDATE (19 March): Dead link now fixed. Sorry about that. Also, related, another Blogospheric reaction, this one from techdirt: The Internet Is For Baseless Legal Threats: Popehat, Greenfield And Volokh Triple-Streisand Edition!

Aramaic Peter Rabbit

ARAMAIC WATCH (UPDATE): The Tale of Peter Rabbit - In Galilean Aramaic (Steve Caruso).

Background here. Related item here.

Female angels?

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why didn’t the female angels have sex with man? Deane Galbraith says that "the answer is simple: there are no female angels. In early Jewish literature, all angels are male." This is probably correct in terms of the specific question, but it is technically incorrect. There were female angels: the four Hayyot ("living creatures" or "beasts") of Ezekiel chapter 1 are grammatically female. But their gender identity, of course, looks kind of complicated, plus it seems unlikely that mortal men would find them attractive in that way.

Josephus on Jesus

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Did Josephus Call Jesus the Messiah? (Ed Cook).

That Assyrian Dalek

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: If Sennacherib had at least one Dalek and he couldn't take Jerusalem, does that mean that God sent the Doctor to help king Hezekiah? (James McGrath—of course).

Satlow (ed.), The Gift in Antiquity

NEW BOOK:

The Gift in Antiquity

Michael Satlow

ISBN: 978-1-4443-5024-1
Hardcover
272 pages
March 2013, Wiley-Blackwell

Follow the link for the TOC.

(Via the Talmud Blog on Facebook.)

The Bible and soap

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Does the Bible Have No Recipe for Soap?

Two thoughts come to mind. First, I don't know much about the history of soap, but I kind of doubt that it was in widespread use in ancient Israel or in the ancient world in general. Even in the nineteenth century, Mark Twain had trouble finding it in Europe. (Things are better there now.)

Second, there are lots of things the Bible doesn't include but which must have been well known in ancient Israelite society. For example, the book of Leviticus tells us about sacrificial rites, but includes nothing about the prayers, songs, and music that must have accompanied them and which are alluded to elsewhere (e.g., 1 Chronicles 25).

UPDATE (15 March): I have received a number of responses to this one. For the early history of soap, see here (with the usual caveats about Wikipedia). Also, Gerald Rosenberg points to Jeremiah 2:22, which may refer to a couple of early types of detergent. I suppose the reference to a "fuller" in Mark 9:3 could be relevant as well, since the job involved cleaning wool. But I can't find any evidence for hygienic hand soap as early as the biblical period.

Shape-shifting Jesus

T-INFINITY? Shape-Shifting Jesus Described in Ancient Egyptian Text (Owen Jarus, LiveScience).

A newly deciphered Egyptian text, dating back almost 1,200 years, tells part of the crucifixion story of Jesus with apocryphal plot twists, some of which have never been seen before.

Written in the Coptic language, the ancient text tells of Pontius Pilate, the judge who authorized Jesus' crucifixion, having dinner with Jesus before his crucifixion and offering to sacrifice his own son in the place of Jesus. It also explains why Judas used a kiss, specifically, to betray Jesus — because Jesus had the ability to change shape, according to the text — and it puts the day of the arrest of Jesus on Tuesday evening rather than Thursday evening, something that contravenes the Easter timeline.

The discovery of the text doesn't mean these events happened, but rather that some people living at the time appear to have believed in them, said Roelof van den Broek, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who published the translation in the book "Pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem on the Life and the Passion of Christ"(Brill, 2013).

[...]

An interesting little text, presented with a refreshing lack of hype. Shape-shifting Jesus is even more fun than flying Jesus. For more shape-shifting miracles, see the Legend of the Ten Martyrs in the Hekhalot Rabbati.

(HT Steve Caruso.)

Monday's child is ...

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET MAGAZINE: Written in the Stars (Or Not): To overcome fated lives, the Talmud’s rabbis argued, perform virtuous acts according to Torah.

Most often, when Jews use the phrase mazel tov, they simply mean “congratulations”—it’s the kind of thing you say when you hear about someone getting married or having a baby. Literally, however, mazel tov means “good fortune,” as in “may you have good fortune.” Still more literally, I learned in this week’s Daf Yomi reading, mazal means a constellation, and wishing someone a good mazal means hoping that the stars will be in their favor. In other words, mazel tov is a relic of astrology, the belief that the orientation of the stars can affect human destiny. As such, it seems to pose a significant challenge to the basic Jewish idea that God and God alone rules the universe. Should Jews believe in mazal?

This issue came up as part of a long digression in the final chapter of Tractate Shabbat. ...

According to the system of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, I am either "completely for the best or completely for the worst." I blog, you decide.

Hamas, Obama, and the Temple Mount

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Hamas: ‘Declaration Of War’ If Obama Visits Temple Mount.

Sigh.

Cyrus Cylinder latest

TWO MORE ARTICLES ON THE CYRUS CYLINDER are pretty good.

Cyrus Cylinder: How a Persian monarch inspired Jefferson (BBC)

The Cyrus Cylinder: Its Significance for Today (Payvand Iran News).

Both are factually accurate overall. The second plays up Cyrus's virtues more than I would. It should also have made clear that the letter attributed to Cyrus by Josephus (in Antiquities Book 11—see chapter two of this online translation for the passage in context) is a much later expansion of the letter referred to briefly in Ezra 6 // 1 Esdras 6.

Background here and links.

The brutal world of antiquity

NASTY, BRUTISH, AND SHORT: Even governors in Pharaonic Egypt died in their 20s.

afrol News, 9 March - Researchers have analysed more than 200 mummies from ancient Egypt, finding that even high dignitaries were poorly nourished and had infectious diseases. The typical governor in Pharaonic Egypt died before he was 30 years old.

Anthropologists and archaeologists from the Spanish universities of Granada and Jaén have analysed more than 200 mummies and skeletons from the Necropolis Qubbet el-Hawa in the Egyptian region of Aswan. They were surprised to see how early in life these men in leading positions had died and what they had died of.

"The ancient Egyptians did not live in such good conditions and were not surrounded by such opulence as was thought up to now," the Spanish researchers write. Rather, they "suffered from hunger and malnutrition, a whole range of infectious diseases and an extremely high infant mortality rate," the analyses had shown.

[...]

And, to add insult to injury, they also had heart disease: Mummies With Heart Disease Show That Clogged Arteries Aren't Just Modern Ailment.

People have long debated whether clogged arteries and heart disease resulted from the fat and sugar-laden modern diet or an inevitable vagary of aging. There's no doubt that westernized diets have worsened diabetes, obesity and chronic disease, but whether a more primitive diet could completely eliminate those scourges was debatable.

[...]

I suspect the ancient lifestyle created plenty of opportunities for arterial inflammation through chronic infections and the like, so I wouldn't be too complacent about our modern diet. (But I am not a doctor and that is not medical advice.)

If you are sometimes tempted to feel nostalgic about life in antiquity, these article will help cure that. Relate thoughts here and here.

Locusts update

BIBLICAL PLAGUES AREN'T WHAT THEY USED TO BE: Locusts Invade Israel but More of a Tourist Site than a Plague.

Background here and here.

St. Matthew's skull in Scotland?

DO THEY NOW? Rosslyn Chapel was built to protect the skull of St Matthew, researchers claim.

Needless to say (I trust), if there is anything to this idea at all, it is vanishingly unlikelty that the skull in question had anything to do with the actual apostle Matthew. But Rosslyn Chapel is really cool and I encourage you to visit it if you happen to be in Scotland. Preferably in warmer weather than on my trip several years ago, noted here.

Obama's Israel itinerary

PRIORITIES: Obama's Israel Checklist: Dead Sea Scrolls, Birthplace Of Jesus, Missile Defense System.

Interview with Jon D. Levenson

MARGINALIA: Jon D. Levenson Talks to Charles Halton about Abrahamic Religions.

Which Abrahamic tradition? Jon Levenson’s Inheriting Abraham

Abrahamic religions. We’ve all heard the phrase and many of us use it. It implies a touchpoint between three of the world’s “great” religions — a common ancestor that supposedly binds together 3.5 billion Jews, Christians, and Muslims the world over. Except that, as Jon D. Levenson explains in Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, these traditions view the patriarch in very different ways.

Good stuff.

Collins on DSS controversies

JOHN J. COLLINS: The eternal disputes of the Dead Sea Scrolls
In the beginning, there was a fierce fight over ownership. More than five decades later, controversies endure. (LA Times).

As noted in the article, Professor Collins has a new book out: The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography, on which see here and here.

For more on the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the early negotiations about them, see here. For more on John Allegro, see here and here. For more on the Raphael Golb case, see here and links and also here and links.

Cyrus Cylinder hype

CNN: Ancient blueprint for Mideast peace tours U.S. Five-city tour began Saturday in Washington.

A headline often does not reflect the article accurately, but unfortunately this one does.

WASHINGTON (CNN) —An ancient Persian symbol of freedom, tolerance and coexistence has joined documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Emancipation Proclamation in Washington.

[...]

"The Cyrus Cylinder sets up a model to run a multifaith, multifaceted, diverse society, leaving a model of the Middle East as a unit and what it could ideally be," said Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, in a recent TED Talk.

[...]

Both headline and article are over the top. The "blueprint for Mideast peace" or "model to run a multifaith, multifaceted, diverse society" consists of the following:

1. Become a Middle Eastern dictator.

2. Conquer the countries around you and set up an empire.

3. Refrain from inflicting atrocities on those you subjugate if they surrender promptly and then pay whatever tribute you demand.

4. Then do a few nice things for them.

5. Make much of point 4 in your propaganda.

This actually was being an enlightened ruler in antiquity, but I don't think of it as a political model for today's world.

Background here with many links. Additional commentary on the Cyrus Cylinder and human rights etc. can be found by following the links at this post.

Update on Secret Scriptures Revealed

TONY BURKE: Secret Scriptures Revealed: Thoughts on Writing for Non-Specialists, Part 4.

Background here and links.

Hurtado on Mark

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why did the Gospel of Mark Survive? (Larry Hurtado).

Klawans promoted

CONGRATULATIONS TO JONATHAN KLAWANS: Full Professorships Awarded to 17 Faculty (BU Today).

Jonathan Klawans, CAS professor of religion
A leading scholar on ancient Judaism, Klawans has taught courses on subjects ranging from the Hebrew Bible to the Dead Sea Scrolls to ancient Jewish history. His most recent book is Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism.

Schiffman on sabbath law

LAWRENCE SCHIFFMAN: Qumran Sabbath Law.

Leviticus: video game, Talmud, and tattoos

CAN'T MAKE IT UP: Leviticus, the Video Game.

Titled Leviticus!, the game, as its title suggests, is both irreverent and deeply faithful to the source text—all that business about doves and cows and purity is right there in the book. But whereas Leviticus is too thick with rules to make for a very compelling read, it’s perfect when played.

This insight came to the game’s creator, Sarah Lefton, in shul. It was Yom Kippur, and she was davening but feeling not only hungry but burned out. Leafing through the machzor, she stumbled across a reading from Leviticus 16, detailing the high priest’s obligations on Judaism’s holiest day. Lefton—the executive director of G-dcast, a nonprofit that produces animated shorts of biblical texts designed as educational tools—read on, fascinated. It didn’t take long for the epiphany to hit her.

“The whole book is a series of rules,” she said. “It’s all about how the priest should do this but shouldn’t do that, and if he did something a certain way, something will happen, and if he didn’t, it won’t. It’s just a bunch of rules with rewards and punishment, and that’s what games are.”

Obviously.

The book of Leviticus (in the context of a rather weird Talmudic discussion) also comes up in an article about how Drew Barrymore is having her tattoos removed in order to convert to Judaism for her new husband: The Tattoo: Stil Taboo?

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 103b) records a bizarre dispute about a tattoo that King Jehoiakim of Judah had on his male organ. Interpreting the “abominations … found upon him” (II Chron. 36:8) as a tattoo, one rabbi averred that it consisted of the name of a pagan deity, while another rabbi disagreed, stating that in fact it was the name of God that had been inked there.

Another Talmudic passage (Makkot 21a) indicates that the dispute about Jeoiakim’s tattoo may hinge upon the interpretation of Leviticus 19:38 (“You shall not … make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the Lord”). According to the first rabbi (echoed many centuries later by Maimonides), the Jewish aversion to tattoos is part of its age-old polemic against idolatry, contravening God’s declaration that “I am the Lord,” especially when paying explicit homage to a foreign god. In the view of the second sage, however, the biblical ban on tattoos is non-rational, rooted in divine fiat. As such, the most egregious type of tattoo, the most audacious rebellion against Jewish tradition, is specifically one that contains God’s name.

And while we're on the subject of tattoos, note this recent post on an unfortunate Aramaic one, as well as this post, which collects references to tattoos in ancient languages, many of which did not turn out well.

2.8 petabytes

I REMEMBER WHEN A GIGABYTE WAS A LOT: Good Lord! Vatican Needs 2.8PB Of Hard Disk Space To Digitize 40 Million Pages Of Ancient Manuscripts.

More on this and other manuscript digitization projects here and links.

Aramaic-tattoo pirates beware

STEVE CARUSO: Aramaic Tattoo Troubles: An Email I Wrote. It will be interesting to hear whether he got his ten bucks.

UPDATE (8 March): Much more on tattoos here.

Cyrus cylinder latest

THE CYRUS CYLINDER AGAIN: A King's Manifesto (WSJ). With some thoughts on Thomas Jefferson. Looks like a pretty balanced treatment.

Background here and links.

Locusts latest

GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS. The good news: Israel Escapes Locust Plague — For Now. The bad news: Rabbi warns locust-eaters: insects may not be kosher.

New Chaldean patriarch enthroned

CHALDO-ASSYRIAN WATCH: Iraqi Chaldeans enthrone new patriarch (AFP). The former patriarch also retired at age 85. With the Egyptian Copts also recently enthroning a new Pope, this is adding up to quite a turnover in these circles.

Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."

Forthcoming: Hekhalot Literature in Context

REBECCA LESSES: Hekhalot Literature in Context" to be published by Mohr Siebeck.

The papers from the "Hekhalot Literature in Context" conference, which was held at Princeton a couple of years ago, are going to be published this spring by Mohr Siebeck. I have a paper in this volume, "Women and Gender in the Hekhalot Literature."

Hekhalot Literature in Context: Between Byzantium and Babylonia

Edited by Ra'anan Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb and Peter Schäfer

Follow the links for details.

Ancient compliance with rabbinic rulings

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN by Adam Kirsh in Tablet Magazine: Leave the Jewish People Alone: Rabbis left enforcement of their Talmudic decrees to communal standards and voluntary commitment.

However, Rava bar Rav Chanan points out in a rare moment of empirical candor, “We see that people do these things, and we do not say anything to stop them.” Why is it that the rabbis, who have so many decrees to enforce, allow these particular ones to be ignored? Here the rabbis are following a surprising principle: “Leave the Jewish people alone, and do not rebuke them. It is better that they be unwitting in their halakhic violations and that they not be intentional sinners, for if they are told about these prohibitions they may not listen anyway.”

This struck me as a pretty amazing statement. The Talmud, which is nothing but tens of thousands of rules for the Jewish people to follow, now tells us to “leave the Jewish people alone”! ...

BNTC 2013

THE 33RD ANNUAL MEETING OF THE BRITISH NEW TESTAMENT SOCIETY is in St. Andrews on 29-31 August 2013. Registration for the 2013 British New Testament Conference is now open and you can book online here.

The conference coincides with the celebrations of the 600th anniversary of the founding of the University of St. Andrews and indeed commences on the day after the 600th anniversary of Pope Benedict XIII's issuing of the Papal Bull confirming the privileges of the University (28 August 1413).

ASOR fundraiser

THE ASOR BLOG: March Fellowship Madness 2013.

It's that time of year again! March Fellowship Madness is a month-long drive to raise as many fellowship dollars as possible, so we can get more students in the field! Last year, 80 donors joined in the madness and gave over $9,000. That meant that ASOR was able to award nine additional travel scholarships! That's nine additional scholars who were able to conduct field research and expand our knowledge of the ancient Near East. How many more students can we send to the field this year?

Follow the link for details. And here's a testimonial from fellowship recipient Caroline Carter: The Platt Fellowship Changed My Life. Many years ago, when I was a doctoral student, I got an ASOR travel fellowship to do archaeology for a summer in Israel and it was a very good experience.

The New Yorker on the Cairo Geniza

THE CAIRO GENIZA is profiled in some detail by Emily Greenhouse in The New Yorker: Treasures in the Wall.

Oxford and Cambridge are longtime rivals, but in February, the two universities launched their first-ever joint fundraising campaign in order to save the Lewis-Gibson Genizah Collection—named for the intrepid twins who led Schechter to it and, not incidentally, endowed Westminster College, which owns the collection but can longer afford to keep it—from division and dispersal. (The New York-born, Oxford-educated financier Leonard Polonsky has already promised £500,000 of the £1.2 million needed.) This uncommon partnership is a testament to the value of the collection, which is the largest assembled from Ben Ezra. (The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, which Schechter would go on to lead as President, holds the second largest.) Ben Outhwaite, the head of genizah research at Cambridge, explained to me how crucial the Cairo Genizah collection is for scholars. “It is not hyperbole,” he wrote, “to talk about it as having rewritten what we knew of the Jews, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages.”

Background here.

Cyrus Cylinder latest

THE CYRUS CYLINDER goes on exhibit in the U.S.A. on Saturday: Cyrus Cylinder Makes First Appearance in D.C.

Background here and links.

Locust plague

TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY: Israel on alert as locusts cross in from Egypt. Shortly before Passover, naturally.

UPDATE: Of course the locusts are already in Egypt ...

Boston-DSS student opportunities

STUDENT VOLUNTEERS ARE WANTED for the upcoming Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in Boston:

Museum of Science staff to outline scrolls openings
Brandeis students eligible for interpreter and internship positions

By Charles A. RadinMarch 4, 2013

Opportunities for students to work on the upcoming "Dead Sea Scrolls: Life in Ancient Times" exhibition at the Museum of Science in Boston will be outlined in an information session with representatives of the museum on Wednesday, March 6.

The meeting will be held in Alumni Lounge, Usdan Student Center, from noon to 1:30 p.m., and is open only to Brandeis affiliates.

The university is partnering with the museum on the exhibition, which will run from May 19 to Oct. 14. Brandeis students -- including undergraduates, graduate students and participants in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Brandeis (BOLLI) -- are eligible for volunteer interpreter and internship positions. At this week’s meeting, museum representatives will discuss these positions, applications and selections processes, and the time commitment and training required.

[...]

The Economist on the fake metal codices

FAKE METAL CODICES WATCH: A new blog in The Economist called "Erasmus," run by someone who goes by the initials "B.C.," has put up an oddly naïve post to belabor the obvious: Test those mysterious codices: Mistrust, but verify. It links to some of my posts and I seem to be among the "militant" and "vociferous sceptics" alluded to.

Tom Verenna has done a good job of replying to the article in the comments, but I will add a few things.

And given their supreme confidence, the militant sceptics should surely have no problem with further scientific analysis. From their point of view, it must be a pre-ordained certainty that peer-reviewed laboratory tests in Jordan, or anywhere else, will simply confirm their rightness and give them fresh opportunities to wag their fingers at anybody who took the codices seriously.

What a childish little rant. No wonder this B.C. doesn't want to put his or her name to this blog. There have been rumors for the last two years that tests on the codices were imminent or that the publication of such tests was imminent. For the same period I have been calling for such tests to be published, if they exist. The bottom line is that such evidence as we have points strongly to the codices being fakes. If someone wants us to reconsider this conclusion, they should present us with new evidence that calls for consideration. It is being open to new evidence, or the possibility thereof, that constitutes having an open mind. Being forever unwilling to make a judgment call—in the vague hope that someday someone will come up with something that actually supports the claims—is being gullible, not open minded.

That makes it slightly puzzling that a couple of the most vociferous sceptics declared that they would have refused, if asked, to sign the letter to the Jordanian authorities asking for more information. From their perspective, perhaps, backing such a request would have implied taking the codices too seriously.

If B.C. is really puzzled by my comments, cited by Jim West and published originally here, perhaps he or she needs to brush up on basic reading comprehension skills. What I said was:

Regarding the letter that was submitted to and published by the London Times, I was not at the SOTS meeting and was not asked to sign the letter, but I would not have done so if asked, at least in the form in which it was published. ... If I am wrong, it would be helpful to hear what they [the Jordanian authorities] do think and what they are currently doing about the codices, and to that extent I can support the central point of the letter. ... The second issue is the final sentence of the first paragraph of the letter: "There are many indications that these finds are not modern forgeries, but [that] possibility cannot as yet be definitively excluded."* I know of no such "many indications that these finds are not modern forgeries."

Let me try to make it even simpler: I said I would not have signed the letter in the form in which it was published because it incorrectly stated that there were many indications that the codices are not modern forgeries, but I supported the central point of the letter—that the Jordanian authorities should speak up if they knew something.

I will just add that all of my many posts on this subject have been in my own name. I stand behind what I write rather than hiding behind anonymity. I'm looking at you, B.C.

Background most recently here and just keep following those links back over the last two years.

Phoenicians in America?

PHILIP BEALE, the captain of the Good Ship Phoenicia, is profiled in the Daily Mail:

Man's mission to prove Phoenicians discovered the Americas a thousand years before Columbus

Former City fund manager Philip Beale built replica Phoenician vessel
Believes 50-tonne wooden boat could have crossed the Atlantic
Will set sail from Tunisia to try and prove the theory himself

By Steve Robson

PUBLISHED: 08:45, 1 March 2013 | UPDATED: 18:39, 1 March 2013

Christopher Columbus and his discovery of the Americas in 1492 is one of the great stories of modern history.

But five centuries after his momentous achievement, a British explorer wants to prove that Columbus was actually beaten to it by another seafaring nation 1,000 years earlier.

Philip Beale believes the ancient Phoenicians - a Semitic civilization that prospered between 1500BC and 300BC on the Mediterranean coast - sailed to the Americas first.

[...]

All he needs now is £100,000!

Attempts thus far to prove that the Phoenicians made it to the Americas have not been found persuasive by specialists. (If you follow the links at this recent post, you will find discussions of much of the supposed evidence.) It's not impossible, of course, and Beale's dangerous project to prove that a Phoenician vessel could have done it would be interesting in principle as long as he manages to succeed and not get himself killed. But positive evidence is currently lacking and still would be if he succeeds.

On the discovery of America, see the comments at the bottom of this post.

I have blogged a great deal on the voyage of the Phoenicia (see here and links) and whether he is right or wrong, I wish Captain Beale well.

(HT Dorothy Lobel King.)

Tents and Persian fire priests in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET MAGAZINE: Ancient Laws for Modern Times. When is a tent just a tent and not like a bed or a hat? To update Jewish laws, the rabbis reasoned by analogy.

... But the rabbis of the Talmud are not law-makers. They are interpreters of already existing laws, both the written laws of the Torah and the Oral Law handed down over generations. Their job was to close the gaps between ancient laws and modern problems, a task that requires a particular kind of intellectual creativity. This is a creativity that is not, or can’t admit itself to be, originality. The rabbis always insist that the answers to problems are already present in the sources—biblical verses or Tannaitic rulings—and only need to be uncovered. What looks to a modern reader like Talmudic contortions of logic often has to do with the rabbis’ insistence on connecting a new case to an old precedent.

Oh, and rabbinic sages are still here, but there are still some Persian fire priests around too, so I guess we have to call that one a draw.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Los Lunas inscription again

THE LOS LUNAS INSCRIPTION—a modern forgery of the Decalogue on a stone in New Mexico—has come to the attention of Batya Ungar-Sargon in Tablet Magazine: The Mystery Stone: Does a rock in New Mexico show the Ten Commandments in ancient Hebrew? Harvard professor says yes.

Even the headline is disingenuous and the article isn't much better. Yes, a rock in New Mexico shows the poorly forged Ten Commandments in ancient Hebrew. The Harvard Professor—Robert Pfeiffer—died in 1958 and it is not clear from the coverage here that he said "yes" in the sense of thinking that it was possible that it was an ancient inscription.

This article gathers together some entertaining anecdotes and occasionally some interesting information, but ultimately it tries to find a "debate" where there is none. No epigrapher of ancient Hebrew is willing today to defend the authenticity of the inscription. (James Tabor tried once in a popular article, but this article reports that he has changed his mind.) The evaluation by Comanche Ranch manager Martin Abeita seems to me to have some merit:

It’s a pain in my ass is what it is,” he says. “And it’s a fake. It’s a money-maker for the state.

As usual, if a trained specialist wants to publish an article in a peer-review journal which argues that the stone is really an ancient inscription that shows the presence of pre-Columbian Jews in New Mexico, I would be willing to listen to the argument. But in the meantime, it's a fake.

Earlier posts involving the Los Lunas inscription (including a link to Tabor's article mentioned above) are here, here, here, and here.

"Genetic" dating of the Iliad

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Not of direct relevance to PaleoJudaica, but possibly of interest.

Geneticists Estimate Publication Date Of The 'Iliad'

Rights information:
Public Domain | http://bit.ly/128YJKO

Genomes and language provide clues on the origin of Homer's classic.
Originally published:
Feb 26 2013 - 4:30pm
By:
Joel N. Shurkin, ISNS [Inside Science News Service] Contributor

(ISNS) -- Scientists who decode the genetic history of humans by tracking how genes mutate have applied the same technique to one of the Western world's most ancient and celebrated texts to uncover the date it was first written.

The text is Homer's "Iliad," and Homer -- if there was such a person -- probably wrote it in 762 B.C., give or take 50 years, the researchers found. The "Iliad" tells the story of the Trojan War -- if there was such a war -- with Greeks battling Trojans.

The researchers accept the received orthodoxy that a war happened and someone named Homer wrote about it, said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Reading in England. His collaborators include Eric Altschuler, a geneticist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in Newark, and Andreea S. Calude, a linguist also at Reading and the Sante Fe Institute in New Mexico. They worked from the standard text of the epic poem.

The date they came up with fits the time most scholars think the "Iliad" was compiled, so the paper, published in the journal Bioessays, won't have classicists in a snit. The study mostly affirms what they have been saying, that it was written around the eighth century B.C.

[...]

The story is also covered by ScienceDaily: Homeric Epics Were Written in 762 BCE, Give or Take, New Study Suggests.

Although this project told us nothing new, the method did give the same date as had been reached independently by other means. That may mean that it can be applied usefully in cases where we don't know the date of a text. But there are many questions that are not answered in these popular articles and the assumptions behind the method would need to be tested very carefully by linguists. But still, it may turn out to be a useful development, one potentially applicable to biblical texts etc.

Boston DSS exhibit

MORE ON THE UPCOMING DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION IN BOSTON: Museum of Science, Together with the Israel Antiquities Authority, Presents Dead Sea Scrolls: Life in Ancient Times
—New England Premiere: May 19, 2013 – October 14, 2013—
Brings to Life the Greatest Archeological Discovery of the 20th Century Taking Visitors Back 2,000 Years

Background here and links.

Putin on the Schneerson Library

THE PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA has weighed in on the Schneerson Library dispute:

Russia stands firm in Schneerson Library dispute

Tags: Schneersohn library, Russia, Opinion & Analysis, Politics, World

Lyubov Kuryanova

Feb 26, 2013 20:47 Moscow Time

Russia has solid legal reasons to keep the Schneerson Library on its territory, the country’s Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky said. The U.S.-based Hasidic movement has rejected President Putin’s initiative to place the collection of books and religious documents in the European Tolerance Center in Moscow.

[...]

In January, the US District of Columbia Court ruled that Russia should pay $50,000 per day in fine unless it returns the collection. In response, President Putin suggested placing the archive in the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre in Moscow. He also expressed his regret over the dispute reaching the point of confrontation, adding that the library does not belong to a particular Jewish community.

“If we agree that this national asset goes to anyone, we will open Pandora`s Box. If we start meeting their demands, we will see such kind of lawsuits streaming in”, Mr. Putin said.

[...]

Background here and links.

New novel series on the Nephilim

THE NEPHILIM IN HARLEQUIN ROMANCE MODE: Age of Eve: Return of the Nephilim Is a New Romance Novel from BroadLit with a Paranormal Twist.

Fallen angels, voodoo magic, and intense passion combine in the first paranormal romance novel from Quantum Leap co-creator D. M. Pratt. BroadLit, a company introducing a new slant on romance, is publishing the first novel in award-winning D. M. Pratt’s new romantic thriller series Age of Eve: Return of the Nephilim. The series introduces readers to a passion of mythological proportions that will captivate the reader’s body, mind and soul.

The scary thing is that it will probably sell well.

Review of Law and Salvesen (ed), Greek Scripture and the Rabbis

MARGINALIA: Nicholas de Lange on Greek Scripture and the Rabbis, Edited by T.M. Law and A. Salvesen. Did the Jews abandon the Greek Bible to the early Christians? Excerpt:

Greek Scripture and the Rabbis is a valuable contribution to Greek bible studies. Its eleven chapters represent the cutting edge of scholarship in this area. Even if few of them engage directly with rabbinic studies, taken together they draw attention to important questions, both methodological and substantial, in the study of the Jewish reception and use of Greek bible translations.

Jubilees meets the synagogue

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: The Book of Jubilees features in Jewish adult education in Boulder: Midrash Before the Rabbis: Stories of Parents and Children.

Rabbis have retold the stories of the Torah in radical ways as Midrash. But, as explained by Dr. Naomi Susan Schwartz Jacobs, an internationally recognized teacher and scholar of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism, that process began hundreds of years earlier.

The Book of Jubilees, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, retells a large section of the Torah with numerous and dramatic changes. In this session we will examine how Jubilees retells stories of parents and children. ...

E-book: Patmore, Adam, Satan, and the King of Tyre

BRILL HAS PUT A RECENT MONOGRAPH ONLINE—for a price:

Adam, Satan, and the King of Tyre
The Interpretation of Ezekiel 28:11-19 in Late Antiquity

Author: Hector M. Patmore
Subjects: Jewish Studies
Publication Year : 2012
DOI: 10.1163/9789004208803
E - ISBN : 9789004208803
Imprint: Brill
Collections: Biblical Studies, Ancient Near East and Early Christianity E-Books Online, Collection 2012

You can buy access to the whole thing for a set price, or buy single chapters for a proportionately higher price.

Jewish descendants (etc.) in Timbuktu

MORE ON JEWISH MANUSCRIPTS AND DESCENDANTS OF JEWS IN TIMBUKTU: After Islamist Threat Repelled, Spotlight Hits ‘Jews’ of Fabled Timbuktu:Ancient Saharan City Is Home to 1,000 Jewish Descendants (Nathan Guttman, The Forward).

Timbuktu, the remote and ancient Sahara Desert city that was until recently controlled by Al Qaeda-affiliated groups, is not often thought of as an outpost of Jewish life. Yet this West African town of some 55,000, in northern Mali, is still home to an estimated 1,000 descendants of Jews who converted to Islam centuries ago.

In three villages near the city, local residents still refer to these descendants as “the Jews,” but visitors and activists report that Malians of Jewish ancestry did not suffer any form of discrimination, even with the infiltration of violent Islamist extremists to the region. It also appears that the ancient documents that serve as proof of Jewish life in Timbuktu survived the recent attacks on the city’s historic library.

Interest in this Jewish history peaked two decades ago, when a local scholar, armed with ancient trade documents containing Hebrew script, launched a research project that documented the Jewish roots of some local residents. This ignited a search for identity among some of these individuals, and brought a degree of international attention to their existence. But mutual disappointment followed amid disputes over financial aid from Jews overseas. Activists on both sides have since given up on reconnecting residents of Timbuktu to their Jewish roots.

[...]

The documents establishing the Jewish connection to Timbuktu are believed to be safe. The fire set to the library by rebels destroyed many Muslim manuscripts, but most were spirited to safety beforehand and hidden by local families devoted to their preservation over many generations. The documents relating to Jewish activity in the region are believed to be safe in the hands of Haidara or in possession of these villagers.

[...]

Related: How Timbuktu’s heritage was saved in rice sacks and canoes (Alice Fordham , The National)

"We are very proud of what we did," said Khalif Al Hadji, an archivist. "We did it for three reasons. The first, is that if we lose these manuscripts, we won't find them again. Two, we work in the library. Three, we are all Malians and we know exactly how valuable these manuscripts are to us."

Mr Cisse added proudly that the rich archive of thousands of books belie the myth that Africa relies on oral tradition as opposed to written history and scholarship. "It's enormous," he said. "The culture, the history."

Even as the men spoke, in a courtyard of the new building, ashy fragments of burnt manuscripts eddied in the breeze. Just before a French-led intervention had pushed the militants out of town, some of the rebels pulled around 1,000 manuscripts off the shelves and built a bonfire. The charred scripts are still discernible, but the treasures are lost.

French soldiers have now left Timbuktu, and there are fears that the militant Islamists could creep back, and a similar fate could await any of the manuscripts returned to the institute. Under the circumstances, the manuscripts are unlikely to go home for some time, said Shamil Jeppie, head of the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town.

[...]

Background here and links. Still hoping for some word on ancient literary texts such as Old Testament pseudepigrapha somewhere among those Timbuktu manuscripts.

New BBC series on Judaism

SIMON SCHAMA writes in the Financial Times about his upcoming BBC series, "The Story of the Jews": Wandering star. The first section describes a visit to Elephantine Island and has a good discussion of the Judean community that lived there in the fifth century BCE. The Dura Europos synagogue also comes up in the article, as do the Jews of Chochin in India.

Cyrus Cylinder and modern politics

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF WISHFUL-THINKING HEADLINES, brought to you by Ian Black in the Guardian: Can a text from ancient Persia break down mistrust between enemies?

Fortunately, the essay itself pretty much (and correctly) answers the question "no." See also the linked essay by Jacob Wright: The Cyrus Cylinder And A Dream For The Middle East. I have some similar comments here. More background here and many links.

Purim

HAPPY PURIM to all those celebrating! The festival began last night at sundown and concludes today at sundown.

Sheffield Phoenix Press on Facebook

FOR YOU, SPECIAL DEAL: "Visit Sheffield Phoenix now on Facebook for great discounts."

The Cyrus Cylinder and the "N" word

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, it turns out it's possible to write a New York Times column on the Cyrus Cylinder without mentioning nuclear war: Find the Missing Word.

Background of the Cyrus Cylinder and its upcoming trip to the United States is here with many links.