GJW test results finally in

HARVARD MAGAZINE: The Jesus's Wife Fragment: The Scientific Evidence. Bottom line: the papyrus and "ink" test as ancient and the results are being published in HTR:

Now the scientific dating of the papyrus and the ink (which is not ink at all, but rather lampblack, a pigment often used in ancient Egypt for writing on papyrus) indicate that both are consistent with an ancient origin.

Because the fragment is so small, carbon-dating it proved troublesome. Researchers at the University of Arizona called into question their own results—which dated the papyrus to several hundred years before the birth of Christ—because they were unable to complete the cleaning process on the small sample of papyrus with which they were working, and felt that might have led to spurious results. A second carbon-dating analysis undertaken by Clay professor of scientific archaeology Noreen Tuross at Harvard and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute dated the papyrus, and a separate one (also believed to be of ancient origin) with text from the Gospel of John to approximately A.D. 700 to 800.

The article then mentions the literary context:

Because the text concerning Jesus’s wife is written in Sahidic, a language of ancient Egypt, it may be a transcription of an earlier Coptic text that was based on a Greek copy, as many early Christian gospels are. Given similarities in wording and subject to the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Philip, the text of the GJW may originate in a time as early as the second half of the second century C.E.

This may be, at least in part, an allusion to the literary-critical arguments by that the text is a forgery based on ancient material published in modern times or even on an online edition of one of the texts. There were also objections to authenticity on paleographic and papyrological grounds.

The article goes on to indicate that the HTR issue contains some dissent, formulated before the test results came in, but not irrelevant to them:

The April 2014 issue of the Harvard Theological Review (HTR) includes King’s article (originally slated to be published in January 2013) discussing the fragment and its importance to understanding early Christian debates about whether wives and mothers could be disciples of Jesus. The issue also contains a counterpoint by professor 
of Egyptology and ancient Western Asian studies Leo Depuydt of Brown University, who writes that he is certain that the text is a modern forgery. Depuydt’s analysis, which predates the scientific findings, points out that a forger could have written with lampblack on ancient papyrus. Infrared microspectroscopic analysis of the ink and papyrus, however, found nothing to suggest that they had been “fabricated or modified at different times.” In a rebuttal, King finds Depuydt’s textual analysis unpersuasive.

One point that does not come up in the Harvard Magazine article is that the date originally proposed for the fragment on paleographic grounds was the fourth century, yet the C14 date for the papyrus is 700-800, some centuries later. Even granting that both kinds of dating are approximate, this is a very large discrepancy. And it took two tries to get a result that was anywhere near the paleographic date or indeed any possible date that involves the text being genuinely ancient. If the C14 dating is correct, either Coptic paleography is a very inexact science (which may well be) or it is not unthinkable that a forger wrote in a fourth-century script on a blank piece of papyrus that was very old, but not quite old enough.

The April 2014 issue of HTR is not yet available online, but I look forward to reading the articles when they come out (and when I have time). But my opinion on this is not particularly important. It will be the evaluations of the Coptologists, paleographers, specialists in radiocarbon dating, and historians of late antique Christianity which matter. I will be looking for clear information on who did the tests (which seems to be given) and replies to the literary, paleographic, and papyrological objections. I would also like to know more about the dating of the lamp black, which is reportedly "ancient" also, but what does that mean? What is the range of possible dates and how does the range compare to the dating of the papyrus?

This round goes to those who think that the Gospel of Jesus' Wife fragment is a genuinely ancient literary artifact. I'm still skeptical, but maybe we did win the lottery on this one. But the really good and important news is that the material is being published in a peer-review journal. Now the discussion can start in earnest.

Background here with many links.

Also, it really doesn't need to be repeated, but I'll repeat it anyway, that if this fragment is genuine, it still tells us nothing about whether Jesus was married or not. At best it preserves speculation from a century or more (perhaps much more) after Jesus' time. That, of course, would be of considerable interest to historians of early Christianity, but not for the study of the Historical Jesus.

UPDATE: More in the NYT: Papyrus Referring to Jesus’s Wife Is More Likely Ancient Than Fake, Scientists Say (LAURIE GOODSTEIN). Regarding the ink:

The “Jesus’s Wife” papyrus was analyzed at Columbia University using micro-Raman spectroscopy to determine the chemical composition of the ink. James T. Yardley, a professor of electrical engineering, said in an interview that the carbon black ink on this fragment was “perfectly consistent with another 35 or 40 manuscripts that we’ve looked at,” that date from 400 B.C. to A.D. 700 or 800.

At M.I.T.’s Center for Materials Science and Engineering, Timothy M. Swager, a chemistry professor, and two students used infrared spectroscopy to determine whether the ink showed any variations or inconsistencies.

“The main thing was to see, did somebody doctor this up?” Dr. Swager said in an interview. “And there is absolutely no evidence for that. It would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible.”

[...]

A forger could easily create carbon black ink by mixing candle soot and oil, he [Dr. Depuydt] said: “An undergraduate student with one semester of Coptic can make a reed pen and start drawing lines.

But the scientists say that modern carbon black ink looks very different under their instruments. ...”

How about ancient ink recovered from an ancient inkwell and rehydrated with distilled water? One can find inkwells dating to somewhere in the vicinity of the relevant period on eBay, although I don't know if such are ever found with desiccated ink inside.

CORRECTION: The April 2014 issue of HTR is available online here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jodi Magness reports that one of the inkwells discovered at Qumran still "contained the remains of dried ink" (The Archaeology of Qumran and The Dead Sea Scrolls [Eerdmans, 2002], p. 60). So it does happen. (HT private communication from Dan McClellan.)

STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: See the blog posts by Christopher Rollston, Larry Hurtado, and Robert Cargill. And further, James McGrath has much linkage.

Volokh on the Golb case

EUGENE VOLOKH: Crime to e-mail your roommate’s girlfriend saying ‘he really is a useless person’? Volokh, who is a Constitutional lawyer Law Professor, seems to think it not unlikely that some or all of the charges in the Raphael Golb identity-theft-case appeal will be upheld, but he also thinks that the prosecutor is reading the criminal harassment statute dangerously broadly.

Background on the Golb case is here and links.

Frogs or crocodiles?

HAARETZ: Word of the Day / Tzefarde'a: A weird word for an unimpressive plague. Could it be that the rabbis have had it wrong all these centuries, and the plague was actually of crocodiles? Short answer: probably not. As the article notes, the evidence for the meaning "frog" goes back to the Septuagint, whereas the suggestion of the meaning "crocodile" is medieval.

The [five-letter-root] Hebraic word is also pretty unique among the Semitic languages, whose words for "frog" are similar – but only slightly so. Arabic has ḍifda, Aramaic has orda’a, Ge'ez has karn’na’at, while old Egyptians called the pop-eyed amphibian the krar.

As this is the case, how can we be sure that the plague of frogs was really a plague of frogs, especially since the word only appears in the Bible in relation to the same plague and in no other context?

The answer is that we can’t be entirely sure. In fact, in the 12th century Rabbi Abraham Ben Meir Ibn Ezra suggested tzefarde'a actually means "crocodile." That would surely have been much worse than a plague of frogs.

Free OUP stuff for a week!

FOR YOU, SPECIAL DEAL: National Library Week — All OUP Online products are free April 13-19th.

CLARIFICATION: "Access is available in the United States and Canada only."

JSIJ: Cohen, "'Shmuel said: Hilkheta'"

JEWISH STUDIES, AN INTERNET JOURNAL, has published a new article pertinent to ancient Judaism: Barak S. Cohen, "Shmuel Said: Hilkheta": The Halakhic Rulings of Shmuel in the Two Talmudim (pfd file). The article is in Hebrew. English abstract:

The well-known amora Shmuel was one of the central rabbinic figures in the first generation of Babylonian amoraim. He is known as a sage familiar with Persian culture who brought about the transformation of tannaitic law in Babylonia. This article examines his halakhic methodology by analyzing one of the most significant collections of halakhic rulings found in the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: the more than 130 sources in which Shmuel issues a ruling based on a tannaitic source. These sources employ the literary formula “Shmuel said: Hilkheta.” This analysis reveals important findings about the application of tannaitic law in Babylonia and about Shmuel’s unique Babylonian approach which emerges from these rulings. By analyzing the methodological characteristics that underlie Shmuel's halakhic rulings we can offer a systematic and comprehensive explanation of his rulings, as well as of his disputes with other sages, especially in light of the apodictic phrasing of these rulings. This study contributes to clarification of the important question of the reliability of amoraic statements in the Babylonian Talmud, demonstrating that the study of specific amoraim and their rulings can offer a significant contribution to scholarly exegesis of the Babylonian Talmud.

The Syriac Gazetteer

SYRIAC WATCH: The Syriac Gazetteer is a new online publication of Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal.

The Syriac Gazetteer is a geographical reference work of Syriaca.org for places relevant to Syriac studies. “Places relevant to Syriac Studies” include places named in Syriac texts (such as Ḥarqel — ܚܪܩܠ), places interesting to historians who work on Syriac texts (such as Dura-Europos), and places where scholarship on Syriac is being produced (such as Japan). There are no temporal or spatial boundaries for the geographic database, which collects places relevant to any period of history useful for Syriac studies, from places mentioned in the Peshitta version of Genesis to places founded recently, and from ancient Edessa to Mongol-era outposts in China and diaspora communities in the United States of America. At least in theory, any type or size of place could be represented in the geographic database, from large empires to single churches or a particular named city gate. Maps are provided for places whose location is known, but the database includes places which are not located or even locatable: each place is a conceptual thing with a mental existence related to, but not reducible to, its physical manifestation. Mythological and other ahistorical places are also included in the database.

Via David Allen Michelson on the Hugoye List.

Apollo of Gaza: more no news as news

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What happened to Gaza's Apollo statue? A precious statue vanished after its discovery in Gaza last summer and many suspect it is now a hostage to politics (Lena Odgaard, AlJazeera). Excerpt:

Bassem Naim, advisor for foreign affairs to Ismail Hanyieh, the prime minister of Gaza's Hamas-led government, told Al Jazeera that the statue is in the custody of the Ministry of Tourism. "They are taking care of the statue and finding out how Gaza can make the maximum benefit of the statue - not only at a financial level, but also culturally," he explained. "When we find a statue like Apollo, I'm sure it will divert the attention of millions around the world toward the small suffering city, and I hope it can help Gaza attract the attention of the international community towards the suffering of Gaza."

But time is precious when it comes to restoration, said Fadel Alotol. He leads the archaeological excavation of the Tel Umm el-Amr site in Gaza, and is one of the few archaeology and restoration experts in the Palestinian territory. To his frustration, he has not been able to see the statue except for the few leaked pictures of it, and said he was the one who identified the statue as depicting Apollo.

Experts, including Alotol, have questioned Jawdat's story, arguing that the colour and apparent excellent condition of the statue contradict the story that it was found in the sea. They speculate it was discovered inland, under the ground, and that the real story has been stifled either to avoid arguments of ownership or to avoid revealing that it was found while digging tunnels to nearby Egypt.

Alotol fears that the government is using the statue as political leverage to engage with European countries. The European Union brands Hamas as a terrorist organisation and will not meet with members of the party at an official level.

We've heard all this before, and the only actual news in the story is that there is still no sign of or word on the Apollo of Gaza.

Background (including concerns about the authenticity of the statue) here and links.

Chickens, eggs, and torch relays

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Which Came First: The Chicken, the Egg, or the Divine Law That Governs Their Use? The apparent abstraction of Talmudic rulings, immune to the vagaries of history, are also a key to Jewish survival. Excerpt:

The tractate has come to be called Beitzah because that is its very first word, and just as advertised, the pages we read this week were entirely devoted to eggs. “An egg that is laid on a holiday,” chapter 1 begins: What is its legal status? As always when the Talmud seems to be focusing on a trivial issue, the rabbis are not interested in eggs per se, but in the concepts that this particular question brings to light. In this case, we are dealing with our old friend muktzeh, a legal category that was dealt with extensively in tractates Shabbat and Eruvin.

Plus torch-relay sabotage.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

The new Patriarch and Teaneck

THE NEW SYRIAN ORTHODOX PATRIARCH is from Teaneck, New Jersey: Teaneck archbishop is named patriarch of Syriac Orthodox Church (Chris Harris, NorthJersey.com).

Hundreds of enthusiastic well-wishers gathered outside St. Mark’s Cathedral on Saturday afternoon to congratulate and welcome back Cyril Aphrem Karim, the new worldwide patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Karim, 48, who had been serving as archbishop of the church’s Eastern United States Diocese since moving to Teaneck in 1996, was elected March 31 to head one of the world’s oldest Christian sects.

Karim — whose official title will be Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East — returned Saturday from Damascus, where he was installed this week as the 123rd successor to St. Peter the Apostle.

He will reside in Syria.

[...]

Teaneck is a scholarly place. It is home to an important Syrian Orthodox community that has ties to the early history of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as to Neo-Aramaic and scholarly Syriac studies. Gorgias Press, the well-known academic press specializing in Syriac studies is located in nearby Piscataway. Other associations of Teaneck with ancient Judaism are noted here and here.

Background on the new Patriarch is here.

Ari Handel interview

NOAH CO-WRITER ARI HANDEL is interviewed by David R. Henson at the Edges of Faith Blog: The Faithfulness of the Noah Film: Writer Ari Handel on God Learning From Humankind, Vitriolic Christians, & Midrash. Excerpt:

Even the parts that were not directly in the Noah story you can find resonances and themes throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. I loved the way you wove in not just the Noah story but themes that you find throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.

AH: Wherever possible it was our aim not to contradict Genesis explicitly and our secondary aim that wherever possible draw off of midrash, exegesis and extrabiblical texts to try and pull, because we had to create a world — but also we were taking advantage of the centuries of thinking that has gone into the story by others and bring that stuff in because it makes everything richer.

Much more on Noah here and links.

Random thoughts on the Noah movie

I SAW NOAH THIS WEEKEND. The film more or less met my expectations, which were not high, but it certainly did not exceed them. The CGI was good, of course. Thank you Titanic, Lord of the Rings, and Transformers.

Below are a few random thoughts, most of which I have not seen elsewhere, although I don't doubt that some of them have already appeared in other reviews that I haven't seen. There are some spoilers, so don't keep reading if that matters to you.

• It was a forgettable, shamelessly emotionally manipulative movie which said more about our society (indeed this decade of our society) than anything about the Bible.

• In its favor, it grasped and expressed the full psychotic horror of the Flood story which is only implicit in the biblical narrative.

• Earlier I expressed reservations about the movie functioning as midrash. But in favor of that view, it did make ample use of the midrashic technique of transferring biblical motifs from one story to fill out another one. Notably we have the theme of the barren matriach Ila (cf. Sarah, Rebekah, etc.) made fertile by divine dispensation; the blessing by the aged patriarch Methuselah (cf. Isaac and his sons etc.); and of course, the-binding of-Isaac theme applied to Noah and his granddaughters.

• The oddest departure from the biblical narrative was the matter of the wives of the sons of Noah. Genesis has God telling Noah to bring the sons' wives aboard (6:18) and reports that he did so (7:13). The movie makes up the story of Ila, which is fair enough in that none of the wives is named in Genesis. But then no other wives come aboard and we are left to believe that Ham and Japheth will eventually marry their nieces. Presumably all this was to inject some romance and drama into the story, but I still thought it was weird.

• Incidentally, the name "Naameh" for Noah's wife comes from the name of Tubal-Cain's sister ("Naamah") in Genesis 4:22, who was identified with Noah's wife in Rabbinic midrash.

• The story of the sons of God and the daughters of men (Genesis 6:1-4) was picked up in two different ways in the movie. The Enochic myth of the descent of the Watchers was brought in (where the sons of God are angels), but otherwise the narrative stuck to the Rabbinic and Patristic tradition that the sons of God were the godly line of Seth and the daughters of men were the corrupt line of Cain. The whole episode of the mating of the Watchers with mortal women and the resulting birth of the Nephilim or giants was left out entirely, perhaps to preserve that 12A rating.

• The idea of the Promethean descent of the Watchers to share their knowledge with humanity comes from Jubilees 4:15. The fallen Watchers are eternally damned, not forgiven, in all ancient versions of their story.

• What did Noah and his family eat if they lived in a blasted volcanic landscape with no crops and no eating of animals? Lichen?

• What did that snakeskin heirloom do besides glow?

• Why didn't anybody ever ask what an "Ark" was?

• Why were there only white people before the Flood?

• Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?

• Why didn't someone kill Noah in his sleep during those nine months in the Ark?

• How many extinct species did Tubal-Cain eat during those same nine months? Is that what happened to the unicorns and the saber-toothed cats?

• Speaking of animals and the Ark, what about the dinosaurs?

• The message of the movie seems to be that a feeling of love (or not) should decide the most consequential of moral issues. It's creepy that a lot of people seem to think that's okay.

• I really, really hope that they don't make a sequel.

• Ham comes back in sixteen years and marries Miley Cyrus ...

More reviews of and commentary on Noah are here and links.

Juditha Triumphans

APOCRYPHA WATCH: Vivaldi's Juditha Triumphans was performed last week by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in Northern California to pretty positive reviews:

Juditha Triumphans a Triumph (Ashley Webb, Stark Insider): "It’s hard to imagine a time when the Philharmonia Baroque ever sounded better."

Philharmonia Baroque review: Uneven but strong 'Juditha' (Joshua Kosman, SFGate): "But it's not until the second half that Vivaldi pulls out all the stops."

Schiffman on Second Temple Literature and Rabbinic Judaism

ANOTHER BLOG SERIES BY LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: Second Temple Literature and Rabbinic Judaism (7 posts).

John of Patmos

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Visions of John of Patmos (The Anxious Bench).

Enochic Studies

4 ENOCH: Enochic Studies. A nice summary of the history of research by Gabriele Boccaccini. Related: I have posted a paper on the Enochian revelations of John Dee and Edward Kelley here.

Incidentally, 4 Enoch is an online encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism, not another pseudepigraphic Enochic book.

Cross-file under "News you can use."

Review of Kirshenbaum, Furniture of the Home in the Mishnah

THE TALMUD BLOG: Between Furniture in the Mishnah and the Mishnah on Furniture: On Kirshenbaum, ‘Furniture of the Home in the Mishnah’- Guest Post by Yair Furstenberg.

That James Ossuary inscription again

THE BIBLE PLACES BLOG: New Article on Authenticity of the James Ossuary. The issue, of course, is not the ossuary itself, which everyone agrees is ancient. Rather, the question is whether the inscription, or all of the inscription, is genuinely from the first century.

Background here and just keep following the links back.

Was Noah an albino?

THE BBC: The people who think Noah had albinism (Damon Rose). The article makes clear that nothing in the Bible indicates that Noah was an albino. Nor does the Noah movie. But one of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been read that way by some:

Though Crowe's Noah has a dirty grey beard, the Old Testament figure who was ordered by God to build an ark, is often depicted with a long white beard.

This in itself is no evidence of albinism but some people have seized on text from the Dead Sea Scrolls which elaborates further. Discovered between 1946 - possibly 1947 - and 1956 in a cave east of Jerusalem, they are thought to contain the earliest known manuscripts of some parts of the Hebrew Bible.

In the scrolls, there is a description of Noah as a child "the flesh of which was white as snow, and red as a rose; the hair of whose head was white like wool, and long; and whose eyes were beautiful. When he opened them, he illuminated all the house, like the sun".

It doesn't exactly sound conclusive.

No it doesn't. The quoted text is from 1 Enoch 106:2, the Aramaic original of which survives in 4QEnoch^c (4Q204). It certainly doesn't read like a description of albinism; Noah's flesh is "red as a rose" as well as white. Rather, as the article goes on to suggest, it hints that he looks like he could be part divine or angelic (cf. Daniel 7:10; 10:6; Revelation 1:12-16), thus making his father Lamech fret that Noah might be one of the offspring of the Watchers. (George Nickelsburg discusses the background of the passage in his commentary on 1 Enoch.)

So, sorry, no albino Noah. Also, regarding the quote above, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in eleven caves, not just one.

The Qumran Genesis Apocryphon also tells this story, but unfortunately the section parallel to this one is very fragmentary. More on that passage here.

And background on the Noah movie is here and links.

The Raphael Golb identity-theft case and parody

AN UNLIKELY COMBINATION: Parody, Jerry Falwell and Dead Sea Scrolls Debate (Christopher Dunn, New York Law Journal). Lynn Cheney figures in the discussion too. The article concludes:

Among other things, Golb has argued that his email impersonation of the NYU professor was parody protected by the First Amendment. As Hustler Magazine makes clear, acts of parody are entitled to broad constitutional protections. The more difficult issue presented by the Golb situation, however, is whether his impersonation can be considered parody. That turns in large part on whether a reasonable person would have realized the emails were not actually from the professor, as the jury in Hustler Magazine concluded that a reasonable reader would not have thought the Falwell interview to have been genuine.

Yes, that sums up the issue pretty well.

Background here and links.

Historical imagination in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Jugglers, Acrobats, a Magnificent Temple—and Notably No Political Strife. In the Talmud, nostalgic, biblical, divine explanations override accurate secular history and chronology. Excerpt:

By the time the Talmud was compiled, the Alexandrian synagogue, like the Temple, was long gone, also having been destroyed by the Romans. But the rabbis’ account of what happened to it reveals the curious historical amnesia that we see again and again in the Talmud. The Talmud is, of course, deeply concerned with the past: There is no limit to the rabbis’ curiosity about the smallest details of the Temple and its rituals. But the Temple as the rabbis imagine it is essentially static, a world out of time in which the same actions eternally recur. About the wider historical context—the world of empires and states, wars and politics, which is always changing—the Talmud is surprisingly incurious, considering how deeply Jewish fate had been affected by it. The rabbis had the biblical stories and some fragmented folk traditions; beyond that, they felt no need for accurate history. The contrast with a historian like Josephus, who portrays the ancient Jewish world as a hotbed of political intrigue, is striking.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Noah as postmodern midrash?

MAYBE: "Noah": A Post-Modern Midrash (Fr. Robert Barron, The Catholic World Report Blog). I suppose it depends on how you want to define midrash.

“Noah” is best interpreted, I think, as a modern cinematic midrash on the Biblical tale. The midrashim—extremely popular in ancient Israel—were imaginative elaborations of the often spare Scriptural narratives. They typically explored the psychological motivations of the major players in the stories and added creative plot lines, new characters, etc. In the midrashic manner, Aronofsky’s film presents any number of extra-Biblical elements, including a conversation between Noah and his grandfather Methuselah, an army of angry men eager to force their way onto the ark, a kind of incense that lulls the animals to sleep on the ship, and most famously (or infamously), a race of fallen angels who have become incarnate as stone monsters. These latter characters are not really as fantastic or arbitrary as they might seem at first blush. Genesis tells us that the Noah story unfolds during the time of the Nephilim, a term that literally means “the fallen” and that is usually rendered as “giants.” Moreover, in the extra-Biblical book of Enoch, the Nephilim are called “the watchers,” a usage reflected in the great hymn “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones.” In Aronofsky’s “Noah,” the stone giants are referred to by the same name.

The film certainly is an imaginative retelling, but I haven't heard much evidence that the elaborations are based on hints elsewhere in scripture, as with ancient Jewish midrash.

Once again, someone who should know better garbles the Watchers myth. In the Book of 1 Enoch the Watchers are angels who fathered the giants on mortal women. The Nephilim are the giants, not the Watchers. And the hymn is based on the "the Watchers and "the holy ones" mentioned in Daniel 4:14 (cf vv. 10, 20; English vv. 17, 13, 23). According to the Enochic mythology (1 Enoch 14:23, 39:12-13), some of the Watchers remained in heaven unsleepingly guarding the throne of God, and this is likely assumed in Daniel, but the reference is to the passage in Daniel, not 1 Enoch.

Earlier posts on the Noah film are here and links.

Lawsuit over the ten plagues?

OF COURSE HE DOES: Egyptian Columnist Apparently Wants to Sue Israel Over…the 10 Plagues (The Blaze). Despite the date of the article, this is not an April Fool's joke. MEMRI has a translation of some of Mr. Al-Gamal's article dated 20 March. The basic concept isn't new. Back in 2003 I noted a proposal made, apparently in earnest, by the dean of the faculty of law at Egypt's Zagazig University to sue Israel over gold looted during the Exodus.

Cross-file under "Can't make it up."

Rolf Rendtorff, 1925-2014

SAD NEWS: According to Wikipedia and Jacob L. Wright on Facebook, Prof. Rolf Rendtorff passed away yesterday. I do not yet have any further information. His important work on Pentateuchal studies is well known. There is more about him in a post by Deane Galbraith at the Dunedin School blog celebrating his birthday in 2010. Requiescat in pace.

As I was about to press "publish," Dan McClellan posted the following on Facebook: Heidelberg: Rolf Rendtorff ist tot.

Is Noah Gnostic?

FILMCHAT: No, Noah is not Gnostic. (Say that ten times fast!) (Peter T. Chattaway). Chattaway's post is in response to a blog post by Dr. Brian Mattson, Sympathy For The Devil, which argues that the film is Gnostic.

I link to the discussion mainly because it includes some valuable background material on Aronofsky's interest in Kabbalah. (Incidentally, his first movie, Pi, is one of my favorites.)

As to whether Kabbalah is "Gnostic" or not, it really depends both on what you mean by Gnostic and which texts in the vast sea of Kabbalah you are talking about. If you take Gnosticism to mean a system of thought that assumes that the spiritual elite possess crucial secret knowledge that gives them salvation or supreme spiritual authority, then Kabbalah is pretty much Gnostic. If you take Gnosticism to mean a radically dualistic worldview in which the universe is a war zone between good spiritual forces of light and evil spiritual forces of darkness, then at least some Kabbalistic thought is Gnostic. But if by Gnosticism you mean acceptance of the demiurgic myth (that an evil or at least imperfect secondary creator, the demiurge, created our material world, and that this material world is fundamentally evil and must be escaped by the spiritual elite), then Kabbalah only plays with the idea.

One example of a rather Gnostic (in all three senses) Kabbalistic text is the Treatise on the Left Emanation, written by R. Isaac ben Jacob HaCohen in Castile in the 13th century. It has typically Gnostic-sounding emanations of spiritual beings, some good and some evil (with the main focus on the evil ones), and it includes a primordial threefold emanation of successive creations, each more evil than the last and each having to be destroyed. All that sounds pretty Gnostic, although there is no clear demiurge behind the preliminary evil creations, and they are distinguished from our world. But from what I know about Kabbalah, which is not all that much, this text has an untypically Gnostic inclination.

More on the Noah movie here and links.

UPDATE (3 April): The two bloggers noted at the beginning of this post have continued the discussion. See Chattaway's post for updates. And Loren Rosson weighs in against Mattson's claim about Gnosticism in Noah here. Be aware that there are lots of spoilers.

They chose ... poorly.

ROBERT CARGILL: No, no, you DIDN’T find the Holy Grail.

Byzantine-era monastery and inscribed mosaic floor excavated in Israel

IAA PRESS RELEASE:

An Impressive Byzantine Period Monastery with a Spectacular Mosaic Floor was Exposed

An Impressive Byzantine Period Monastery with a Spectacular Mosaic Floor was Exposed at the Entrance to Hura in the Northern Negev
It was discovered during excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority prior to the construction of an interchange by the Netivei Israel Company
An impressive monastery dating to the Byzantine period was discovered at the entrance to Hura in the northern Negev during the course of an IAA salvage excavation for the purpose of building an interchange on Highway 31, at the initiative of the Netivei Israel Company. The structure, measuring 20 × 35 meters, is divided into halls built along an east–west axis, the most outstanding of which are the prayer hall and dining room due to the breathtaking mosaic carpets revealed in them.
The prayer hall is paved with a mosaic on which a pattern of leaves is vibrantly portrayed in blue, red, yellow and green colors. The dining room floor is a colorful mosaic pavement depicting floral motifs, geometric decorations, amphorae, baskets and even a pair of birds.
According to Daniel Varga, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “It seems that this monastery, located near the Byzantine settlement of Horbat Hur, is one monastery in a series of monasteries situated alongside a road that linked Transjordan with the Be’er Sheva‘ Valley”.
The mosaic carpets also include four Greek dedicatory inscriptions denoting the names of the monastery’s abbots: Eliyahu, Nonus, Solomon and Ilrion, and the dates when the pavements were constructed in the different halls. These inscriptions also aided archaeologists in dating the monastery to the second half of the sixth century CE. One of the inscriptions is bi-lingual. In addition to the Greek there is also a section of the inscription that is written in the Syriac language.
The entrance to the monastery was located in the west. The monastery’s western wing, which is divided into four service rooms, is paved with a white mosaic, much of which was destroyed following the collapse of the building at the end of the Byzantine period.
Various pottery assemblages were discovered during the excavation of the monastery. These include large storage vessels such as different kinds of amphorae and jars, cooking pots, kraters and bowls. In addition, numerous and sundry glass vessels ascribed to the Byzantine period were discovered, as well as coins. These finds indicate there was a rich material culture in the monastery.
The Israel Antiquities Authority, together with the Netivei Israel Company, Hura municipality and Wadi ‘Attir Association, plan on relocating the monastery, including its mosaics, to the Wadi ‘Attir agricultural/tourism project adjacent to Hura.

Photo of mosaic with Greek inscription (photo title: חדר האוכל ["dining room"]) by Assaf Peretz, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority. For five more photos, follow the link above. For other ancient mosaics in Israel and nearby, see here and here and links.

New Syrian Orthodox Patriarch

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SYRIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH: US Orthodox bishop becomes Patriarch of Syrian church (Ecumenical News).

The Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch and All the East has elected a U.S. bishop prominent in American and international ecumenical organizations to be its new Patriarch.

Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, newly elected patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch and All the East, was congratulated Tuesday by Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches on Tuesday.

[...]

Background here. Cross-file under "Syriac Watch."

Hebrew, pepper, and Columbus

HAARETZ: Word of the Day / Pilpel: How Christopher Columbus' mistake confounded early Israeli cooks. Ask your spouse to pick up 'pepper' and you'd better be specific, thanks to competing explorers giving the same name to very different plants.

The Hebrew word for pepper is pilpel.

The story of a geographical mix-up that wound up confusing two categorically different plants starts in India, the source of black pepper, where it was called pippeli. The spice was brought to the Middle East by Persian merchants in the mid-first century BCE, where Jews encountered it for the first time in its Aramaic form - pilpel. That is the name of the pepper in the Mishnah and the Talmud and that is its name to this very day.

[...]

Meanwhile, their neighbors, the Spanish, were seduced by an unknown Italian named Christopher Columbus into trying to reach India from the other direction – head west, circle the globe and reach the pepper-rich coast from the east.

Remember, they didn't know about the American continent and Columbus sailed right to it. Not that he understood where he was. He didn’t find Indians or pepper, but believing that he had, he called the natives ‘Indians’ and their hot spice - the chili - pepper, though that fruit and the black seeds we know as pepper are totally unrelated.

[...]

And the situation becomes even more complicated in Hebrew. Columbus's mistakes have been disquietingly influential.

Resources on Judaism in ancient Babylonia

SETH SANDERS: The Republic of Letters in the Babylonian and Second Temple Periods.

Decades ago, scholars like Michael Stone pointed out ways that the intellectual milieu of the Aramaic Enoch literature was Mesopotamian. The question, as scholars like Mladen Popovic emphasize, has always been exactly who shared what with whom, how.

In recent years scholars have been getting more specific about who was writing what, when in the Babylonian and Second Temple periods.

[...]

More on the Jacobovici – Zias lawsuit

THE TIMES OF ISRAEL: Filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici sues academic for libel. The ‘Naked Archaeologist’ to face off against former IAA curator Joe Zias in a Lod courtroom in early April. As noted in the article, Jacobovici often blogs for the Times of Israel. As I've said before, it is up to the court to rule on the charges, but I have commented on the background of the case here and links.

Looted ossuaries recovered

BUSTED: Police confiscate ancient coffins from tomb raiders in Jerusalem (Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post).

2,000 year old coffins containing Jewish bones, artifacts plundered from burial cave near Jerusalem.

Over 2,000 years following their entombments in a Jerusalem cave, 11 ossuaries dating back to the Second Temple period containing the skeletal remains of members of a Jewish family were stolen by Palestinian looters for sale to Jewish buyers on the black market.

As a result, the two Arab men who stole the chests remain in jail, while the two Jews who colluded with them to buy and then sell them are under house arrest, the Antiquities Authority said Monday.

[...]

“We have 11 here, but we know of more than 1,000 found in Jerusalem,” Klein said. “In fact, 10 years ago we found the area where the coffins were carved by artists.”

Several of the ossuaries had their lids taken off, exposing the delicate bone fragments of each person. However, only two of the chests had the person’s name inscribed in Hebrew on its side.

“This one says Yoezer, which we know was a common Jewish name during the Second Temple period,” Klein said as he pointed to the still visible inscription, which was also carved in Greek. “The name Ralfin is on the other one, but we only have their first names.”

[...]

New ossuaries from Jerusalem are always an exciting find, assuming they are genuine. And the circumstances here certainly point in that direction. But its a pity their provenance and archaeological context are now lost. Well done to the police who spotted them.

Special issue of The Journal of Ancient Judaism

CALL FOR PAPERS:

The Journal of Ancient Judaism invites submissions for a special issue devoted to Jews in the ancient Mediterranean, outside the land of Israel and its environs, from the early fourth to the early seventh centuries. We particularly invite articles that identify and interrogate evidence for Jews and Jewish communities in localized geographic areas, asking a range of evidentiary, historical, and historiographic questions. We welcome work about their social networks, including communications and relations between such communities, as well as investigations of their location within the larger late antique and early medieval Mediterranean. We especially encourage contributions that combine engagement with historiographic and theoretical concerns with the surviving evidence, including material evidence.

We invite submission both of completed manuscripts and of detailed proposals (500-750 words). All articles will be peer-reviewed according to the Journal’s usual practices. Completed manuscripts may be no longer than 7500 words, including footnotes. The Journal will consider including images as space permits.

Please email all proposals, as both Word docs and PDFs, to Maxine Grossman (mgrossma@umd.edu) and to Ross Kraemer (Ross_Kraemer@brown.edu) no later than August 1. Completed manuscripts are due by June 1, 2015. Authors with questions about the suitability of particular topics are welcome to email Ross Kraemer, guest editor of the issue.

Style and formatting should follow the guidelines found on the JAJ website (http://www.v-r.de/en/magazine-2-2/journal_of_ancient_judaism-500060/#section_ausfuhrliche_informationen), and on the back of any issue of JAJ. Hebrew text must be in the SBL Hebrew font, while Greek text may be in any unicode font.

The issue is currently planned to appear in 2016.

From Maxine Grossman.

The river of fire

PHILOLOGOS: Was Daniel's ‘River of Fire’ Really the Milky Way?
In a Galaksiya Far, Far Away. (The Forward). The "river of fire" comes originally from Daniel 7:10:

Was Daniel actually referring to the Milky Way? When one considers that his millions of God’s “attendants” must have been angels and that in his age — which is to say, in the second-century BCE — the stars were commonly thought to be angelic beings, he quite possibly was. What other part of the sky is so packed with stars? The rabbis of the talmudic period clearly thought that the River of Fire, far from belonging only to Daniel’s vision, was an objective feature of the heavens. In the talmudic tractate of Hagigah, for example, there is a belief attributed to the renowned Babylonian sage Rav: “Every single day, ministering angels are created from the River of Fire and sing [before God], and cease to exist.” Elsewhere in the same passage, the somewhat different view is ascribed to Rav that the stars of this river are drops of sweat fallen from the attending angels as they rush about, serving their Maker.

Of course, although there may be a distant echo here of the sky-spattering drops of Hera’s milk, this still doesn’t prove that Rav was identifying the River of Fire with the Milky Way. Confirmation of such an identification comes from another passage in the Talmud, this one in the tractate of Berachot, where Rav’s contemporary and fellow Babylonian Shmuel is quoted as saying, “If the tail of Scorpio weren’t in the River of Fire, no one stung by a scorpion would ever live.” Shmuel was a star watcher — “I know the paths of heaven as well as I know those of [his hometown of] Neharda’a,” he boasts in the same place in Berachot. And while it isn’t quite clear what he had in mind (does the sweat of angels magically mitigate the effects of a scorpion’s sting on earth?), the tail of the constellation of Scorpio is indeed just inside the Milky Way.

Cross-file under "Asking the important questions."

More Noah reviews

THERE ARE ENDLESS REVIEWS OF NOAH and there's no point in trying very hard to keep up with them, but as the whim hits me I will note some from time to time. Here are two recent ones.

By J. Hoberman in Tablet Magazine: Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Noah’ Is a Hot, Wet, Cinematic Mess. It rains and rains in the most eccentric Old Testament adaptation, and most Jewish biblical blockbuster, ever made. Lots of spoilers in this one. I haven't seen the film yet, but what I've read about it sounds more this-decade forgettably trendy than particularly Jewish. But I'll keep an open mind until I do see it.

By Ezra Glinter in The Forward: Darren Aronofsky's 'Noah' Departs From the Bible, But Doesn't Go Far Enough. Blockbuster Flood Story Tries To Be Too Much, and Too Little. Excerpt:

In a few chapters, the Bible describes a strange primordial world in which people live to be hundreds of years old, extraterrestrial beings invade Earth, and a wrathful God speaks to the devout while obliterating the rest of humankind.

There’s enough here not just for a lifetime of self-published books explaining the true origins of humanity — were the Nephilim, in fact, “ancient aliens”? — but also for a great Hollywood movie. What’s better fits the blockbuster aesthetic than ancient landscapes mixed with sci-fi speculation, sword-and-sandals action with Lovecraftian horror? Despite the disappointments of similar projects — the “Stargate” flicks, say, or Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” — it’s a movie I’d like to see.

Unfortunately, Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah,” starring Russell Crowe in the title role, is not that movie.

Latest on Palmyra

SCOOP.CO.NZ: Palmyrenes: Risking their lives to preserve Heritage. An account by Franklin Lamb, a Western observer who reports that he visited the Syrian site. The site has been under serious threat during the civil war. Excerpts:

Some of the most destructive and anguishing damages this observer was briefed on at Palmyra are to the Temple consecrated in CE 32 to the Semetic [sic] god, Bel. He was worshipped at Palmyra with the lunar god Agilibol and the sun god Yarhibol and this triad formed the center of religious life in Palmyra and the widespread Palmyrrene culture.

Details follow.

I cannot vouch for any of this information, but I hope the following is accurate:

The Director of Palmyra’s very impressive Museum, Dr. Khalil al Hariri, showed this observer more than one hundred priceless artifacts that had been stolen by rebels and recovered over the past two years from hiding places. This was mainly accomplished with the help of the local Syrian Nationalist population who refer to themselves as Palmyrenes. Sometimes risking sniper fire or revenge attacks, local citizens continue to collect and report to authorities the stolen treasures. These and many other antiquities are now secured due to their efforts. As a result partly of citizens vigilance and the far-sightedness of the Syrian government, and the lessons learned from Iraq and the Baghdad Museum, all of Syria’s 32 Museums, as well as 80% of all antiquities housed inside the local Palmyra Museum were buried secretly early in the conflict and as of today, none of the storage vaults have been discovered or damaged, with locals keeping secret what they know. Heavy metal doors have also been installed at the entrances of Syria’s Museums with security augmented by government forces and volunteer local ‘neighborhood watch’ committees comprised of ordinary citizens.

There's lots more on Palmyra here and links.

Another legal win for the Persepolis archive

PERSEPOLIS ARCHIVE UPDATE: News: Judge: Persian artifacts can't be used to pay survivors of attack.

Background concerning the archive and the seemingly endless legal case over whether it can be seized and sold to compensate terrorism victims is here and follow the many links back.

Schiffman on the Torah in the Second Temple period

ANOTHER BLOG SERIES BY LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: Second Temple Period Rationales for the Torah’s Commandments (5 posts).

Good Zohar passages

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Good Passages in The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volumes 1-8 (Daniel Matt on Facebook; HT Raziel Abulafia).

More on Daniel Matt and his edition and translation of the Zohar here with many links.

UPDATE: Dead link now fixed. Sorry about that!

The spirit of halakhah

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Why Read Daf Yomi? To Rediscover an Older Way of Imagining the Jewish Spirit. To the Talmudic rabbis, religion was not opposed to the law but deeply connected to its study, even if dialogue wins over decree. Excerpt:

Equally challenging is the way halakhah refuses to signify anything beyond itself, to become metaphorical. When the rabbis debate whether it is allowed to wave the lulav on Shabbat, they want to know whether it is allowed to wave the lulav on Shabbat, period. That is because, to them, every Jewish action has enormous significance, since it is a way of understanding and carrying out God’s will. Once you begin to doubt that immediate relationship between God and the law, the Talmud can easily seem arid and overly intellectual—just as it did to Christianity and the Enlightenment. One reason I am committed to reading Daf Yomi is that I want to try to rediscover that older Jewish way of thinking about the spirit as something not opposed to the law but deeply connected to it.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Noah is released

THE NOAH MOVIE comes out today and there are endless reviews up online. I don't have time to look at more than a representative sampling, all of which were more or less positive, of which the following are worth noting.

In the New York Times by A. O. Scott: Rain, Heavy at Times. Russell Crowe Confronts Life’s Nasty Weather in ‘Noah’. Excerpt:

But even though the scale of this film — the size of its budget and the breadth of its themes — is larger than anything this director has attempted before, “Noah” is less an epic than a horror movie. There are some big, noisy battle scenes and some whiz-bang computer-generated images, but the dominant moods are claustrophobia and incipient panic. The most potent special effects are Mr. Crowe’s eyes and the swelling, discordant strains of Clint Mansell’s score. Once the waters have covered the earth and the ark is afloat, a clammy fear sets in, for both the audience and the members of Noah’s family: We’re stuck on a boat full of snakes, rats and insects, and Dad’s gone crazy.

In the Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan: Review: Energetic 'Noah' goes overboard — to riveting effect. Darren Aronofsky, a director known for excess, finds the perfect story for his brand of grand filmmaking with the biblical tale of 'Noah.' Excerpt:

This is what moviegoers thought they'd be getting, but there is more going on here, a whole lot more. Aronofsky's "Noah" includes not-so-covert messages about despoiling the planet, a bemused Anthony Hopkins as oldest-man-ever Methuselah, an unlooked-for villain played by Ray Winstone, plus romantic Sturm und Drang about finding appropriate wives for Noah's three sons. And don't forget the Watchers, a bunch of giants who look and act like Stone Age Transformers but are apparently fallen angels marooned on Earth (don't ask.) This is one busy movie.

In The Wire by Esther Zuckerman: Why Emma Watson Is the Secret Key to 'Noah'. This one has a lot of spoilers about Watson's character, "Ila," and her adventures. Excerpt:

While, yes, Aronofsky does stage an impressive battle pitting the people who are destined not to make it onto the arc against giant Watchers, fallen angels made out of stone, once everyone is one the ark the movie turns into a story about a family dealing in an apocalyptic scenario.

In The New Republic by Brook Wilensky-Lanford: The Big New 'Noah' Movie Is Closer to the Bible Than its Christian Critics Will Admit. Excerpt:

The Watchers, as this movie calls these stone giants, have a direct biblical inspiration, the Nephilim. These larger-than-life creatures, part human, part divine, are described in Genesis 6:4. The exact lineage of the Nephilim is hotly debated in creationist circles. Were they descendants of Adam’s other son, Seth, or were they fallen angels, or some combination thereof? Aronofsky’s interpretationis that they were the beings, made of light, that God created to protect humanity from sin; and when they failed, God punished them by turning them into stone giants. Incidentally, creationist Ken Ham says that this interpretation has “some biblical support.” It is a testament to the creative possibilities of the Bible that two people whose larger visions disagree so sharply could sometimes coincide on the small stuff.

And how could I omit the review in the tradition of patristic allegory by Peter K. Rosenthal in The Onion?


The Onion Reviews 'Noah'

I am especially interested in the presentation of the Watchers and giants. There's a pretty good discussion of the issues by Steven D. Greydanus in The ‘Noah’ Movie Controversies: Questions and Answers (National Catholic Register). From the reviews it sounds as though Aronofsky gives a rather confusing account of the two. Or perhaps some of the reviewers are confused, which is likely enough in itself. Or both. In any case, according to the myth in the Book of the Watchers, the Book of Giants, and off and on in the rest of the Enochic literature (and clearly alluded to in Genesis 6:1-4), the Watchers were fallen angels who came to earth, revealed various technologies to human beings, and seduced mortal women. The children who were a result of these unions were cannibalistic giants sometimes called the Nephilim. Evidently the Watchers appear in the movie as fallen angels who are exiled to earth as six-armed stone giants. It has been suggested that the six arms come from the six wings of the seraphim in Isaiah 6. There seems to be nothing specific about the giants/Nephilim. They are either implicitly identified with the Watchers (against all the earlier traditions) or ignored.

This doesn't sound like a cinematic masterpiece, but I suppose I shall have to get around to seeing it and posting my own review.

Background here and links.

Finkel, Aronofsky, and the Ark

A MISLEADING HEADLINE: How Darren Aronofsky and 'Noah' Got The Ark Wrong.
And So Did Just About Everyone Else (Benjamin Ivry, The Forward).

Darren Aronofsky’s $130 million Hollywood epic “Noah” starring Russell Crowe has displeased Christian fundamentalists with its non-literal approach to the Old Testament story. Jewish moviegoers might also find it irksome that Aronofsky and his team of designers probably got the shape of the ark wrong. Irving Finkel’s “The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood” was published too late for the filmmakers to revise their design.

[...]

The Ark Tablet describes the god Enki declaring: “Pay heed to my advice, that you may live forever! Destroy your house, build a boat; despise possessions/ And save life! Draw out the boat that you will build with a circular design.” Instructions are given to build the ark so that it is 220 feet wide and 20 feet high, in the shape of a coracle, a round boat familiar in Iraq, where the Ark Tablet originates. Since the main goal of the ark was keeping afloat and not going anywhere, much of the usual ship-like design would have been superfluous.

[...]

No, Aronofsky is (freely) retelling the biblical version of the story, not the cuneiform one, so there is no reason for him to use the cuneiform account of the ark's shape and size. Actually this article is mostly a reviewish thingy on Dr. Finkel's new book on the cuneiform version, with lots of interesting background on Finkel himself. The author should not be blamed for the headline, but he does make the same misleading assertion in the article itself.

Background on the new cuneiform Flood text and on Irving Finkel is here and links. More on the Noah movie is here and links.

Report on Golb's appeal hearing

THE APPEAL HEARING ON RAPHAEL GOLB'S IDENTITY-THEFT CONVICTIONS is summarized by John Leland in the NYT: Court Hears Appeal by Son of Scholar on Dead Sea Scrolls. Excerpt:

What would make it illegal? [Golb's lawyer] Mr. Kuby was asked.

Economic benefit, he said. Merely getting “psychic joy” and “savage pleasure” did not count. “Intent to annoy, intent to be obnoxious — that, in and of itself, cannot be criminalized.”

Mr. Rivellese [representing the state] countered that Mr. Golb’s behavior was clearly malicious and criminal, intended to mislead recipients and damage Dr. Schiffman’s career.

Judge Eugene F. Pigott Jr. pushed the point with Mr. Kuby, asking whether it would be all right for someone to pretend to be Alex Rodriguez and confess to using banned steroids, which Mr. Rodriguez has denied.

“I don’t actually see a criminal problem with that,” Mr. Kuby said.

Background here and just keep following the links back.

Review of The Story of the Jews

ALYSSA ROSENBERG: How Simon Schama wants us to think about Jewish history, and a Jewish future (WaPo). Excerpt:

If only disrupting the established narratives about Jewish identity and politics was as simple as presenting the evidence and getting a community that understands argumentativeness to be a core part of its identity to agree. Schama’s project in the five episodes of “The Story of the Jews” and two accompanying books is about history, of course. But as Schama and I discussed in two conversations, the first in January and the second earlier this week, Schama hopes to mine that history not just for under-discussed facts, but to advocate for a different framework for public discussions of Jewish identity and politics. In focusing on entries in that history that emphasize the integration of Jews in communities of other believers, and on cultural and artistic cross-pollination, Schama pushes not just for new answers to political questions, but urges us to consider whether cultural conversations might get us closer to the core of Jewish identity than political contests.

Earlier reviews etc. here and links.

Pink in Hebrew

JUST GIVE ME A REASON: Word of the Day / Varod: Pink, or, a rose by any other ancient Persian name. How the island of Rhodes and the Hebrew for rose came from the same word. (Elon Gilad, Haaretz). Excerpt:

At the end of the 19th century, Eliezer Ben Yehuda was busy coming up with a variety of words Hebrew was missing, not only for print in his publications but also for his day-to-day use, as he and his family had vowed only to use Hebrew at home. One of the words the family needed, probably for the dresses of his wife Hemda or one of their daughters, was a word for pink.

Ben-Yehuda simply decided to adopt the French practice of calling the flower (the rose) and the color (pink) by the same name. As we said, the Hebrews had adopted the ancient Persian word for rose in the form vered. Ben-Yehuda took that root, v-r-d, and created varod. And thus Hebrew got a word for pink.

Houtman et al., A Jewish Targum in a Christian World

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

A Jewish Targum in a Christian World

Alberdina Houtman, Protestant Theological University, Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman, VU University and Hans-Martin Kirn, Protestant Theological University

What is the use of a Targum in a cultural setting where Aramaic is not a common language anymore? And why would Christians be interested in a typically Jewish text in an otherwise anti-Jewish milieu? These and related questions have served as guides for Alberdina Houtman, Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman and Hans-Martin Kirn in bringing together the articles for the present book, which consists of three parts: 1. Uses and Functions of Targum in Europe; 2. Editing Targums and their Latin Translations; 3. Targums and Christianity. A number of the articles deal with the codicological and paratextual aspects of the relevant manuscripts and editions as witnesses of their cultural historical situations. The intended readership includes specialists in Targum, Jewish and medieval studies, (church) historians, codicologists and (Christian) theologians.

Review of Neis, The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture

THE TALMUD BLOG: Outside Aphrodite’s Bathhouse: On Rachel Neis’ ‘The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture’- Guest Post by Zachary Braiterman.

Golb appeal

THE RAPHAEL GOLB IDENTITY-THEFT CASE: New York court to hear Dead Sea Scrolls first amendment case. Case centres around man who argues that mocking scholars in academic debate about Scrolls is protected by first amendment (AP).

Background here and here and many links. In 2011, after the original convictions, I wrote an article on the case for Religion in the News which is noted here.

Sad News: The Syriac Orthodox Patriarch has died

AINA: Assyrian Orthodox Patriarch Dies in Germany. Cross-file under "Syriac Watch." More here (scroll down to message).

Apollo of Gaza: no news is news

HAARETZ: Whereabouts and future of Gaza Apollo still unclear. The Louvre denies reports that it will be restoring and exhibiting the statue, which was found off the Gaza coast last summer. Okay, not quite no news, but not much. The article also indicates that Hamas hopes to use the statue and its restoration to gain some political acceptance in the West.

Background (including concerns about the authenticity of the statue) here and links.

Eleventh anniversary

HAPPY ELEVENTH BLOGIVERSARY TO PALEOJUDAICA! It's been a busy year for me and a good one, with two big books that were long-term projects finally published. Below I have listed some of my favorite PaleoJudaica posts from the last twelve months. Also, it's worth noting that this year PaleoJudaica passed the 10,000-post mark and the current count as of this post is 10,348. Past anniversary posts are here and links.

Update on Davila's forthcoming books
Conference reports
7th Enoch Seminar
Enoch Seminar, Camaldoli, La Verna, and Rome
BNTC wrap-up
Search engine referrals
Anxious Ezra varia
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Vol. 1
EerdWord post on MOTP
SBL 2013
SBL 2013 highlights
Brannan's tweets on MOTP1 collected
Treatise of the Vessels interview
Treatise of the Vessels update
Treatise of the Vessels latest
MOTP1 reviews online
Raphael Patai Prize winner

Thanks for reading PaleoJudaica! Please keep coming back and keep bringing your friends.

More from Doudna on Qumran and the DSS

GREG DOUDNA: The Sect of the Qumran Texts and its Leading Role in the Temple in Jerusalem During Much of the First Century BCE: Toward a New Framework for Understanding (Bible and Interpretation).

The revival of Israel like a dead plant coming back to life of CD 1.5-8 is usually understood in terms of some sectarian phenomenon, which may not be entirely inaccurate, but another possibility, not necessarily in contradiction, is that the dead plant returning to life could allude to the conquests and expansions of Alexander Jannaeus viewed favorably by the authors of the Qumran texts—a reversal of the conquest of Nebuchadnezzar, Israel at last come ‘back to life’ as a serious and formidable entity on the map as it once had been in a golden age long ago.

See Also: D. Stacey and G. Doudna, Qumran Revisited: A Reassessment of the Archaeology of the Site and its Texts (Archaeopress, 2013)

More on Greg Doudna's controversial but interesting theories about Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls is noted here and links.

Schiffman on the DSS and the Jewish book

ANOTHER BLOG SERIES BY LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of the Jewish Book (5 posts).

The complicated process whereby the biblical books took shape and were copied and transmitted in biblical times can only be partly reconstructed based on biblical evidence, with the help of ancient Near Eastern parallels. Clearly, the biblical era constitutes the first stage in the history of the Jewish book, or more correctly, The Jewish book, par excellence. However, for the period immediately following, the Second Temple period, the level of documentation for creating, editing/redacting, and copying and disseminating Jewish books is now enormous due to the discovery, publication and analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls.[1] While this information relates directly to the period in which the Scrolls were copied, from the last part of the third century BCE through the early first century CE, it does allow us a model with which to supplement our understanding of the biblical period, and much of it is directly relevant to the rabbinic period in which most of the same scribal conventions were in use.

New JSTOR journals online

AWOL: New Ancient World Content in JSTOR. Including The Hebrew College Annual.

Boccacinni and Zurawski (eds.), Interpreting 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch

NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY: Interpreting 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. International Studies (Editor(s): Gabriele Boccaccini, Jason M. Zurawski).

In this volume Gabriele Boccaccini and Jason M. Zurawski collect together essays from leading international scholars on the books of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. The literature of the Second Temple Period has become increasingly studied in recent years as scholars have begun to recognize the importance of these texts for a developed understanding of Rabbinic and Christian origins.

Through close readings of the texts themselves, examining the books in comparison with other Jewish apocalyptic literature and early Christian materials, and reading the texts in light of their social and historical settings, the fifteen papers collected herein significantly advance the current scholarly conversation on these defining Jewish apocalypses written at the end of the first century CE, and they shed light on the everlasting legacy of apocalyptic ideas in both Christianity and Judaism.

Follow the link for TOC and ordering information. These essays are short papers from the 2011 Enoch Seminar. Another volume of essays from that Seminar is noted here.

LXX podcasts

TIMOTHY MICHAEL LAW is doing a series of podcasts on the Septuagint. Access and subscription information is at the following: The Septuagint Sessions #2 – Shoddy Greek? On the Language of the Septuagint I.

Interesting articles

PETER M. HEAD: Some interesting articles. Text-critical and related articles pertaining to the New Testament, 1 Enoch, and an Hebreo-Greek Pentateuch.

The Story of the Jews comes to America

TELEVISION: Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews is showing on PBS in the USA beginning next week. Adam Kirsch has a review in Tablet: Simon Schama Moderates a Moderate History of Moderate Jews ‘The Story of the Jews’ is the most important TV documentary about Jewish history since Abba Eban’s famous ‘Heritage’ series. Excerpt:

The difficulties begin with what might seem like the simplest question of all: Where does the story of the Jews start? The answer is much more elusive than it might appear. Do you begin with Abraham, the father of the chosen people and the first recipient of God’s covenant? Or with Moses, the lawgiver, who first instituted the religion and practices of Judaism? Or with Saul and David, who gave the Jews political existence in the form of the Kingdom of Israel? Any one of these potential starting points implies a whole interpretation of what Jews and Judaism really are. The question is complicated by the fact that none of these people can be confidently said to have existed at all: They are mythic figures, not historical actors. Yet how can you begin to tell the story of the Jews without them?

Schama's answer is to begin with the Judean exiles at Elephantine Island in Egypt in the fifth century BCE and their Deuteronomically unauthorized temple. Of course.

Not least important, for Schama’s purposes, is the fact that the Jews of Elephantine did something that the Bible absolutely and repeatedly forbids: They built their own Temple, far from Jerusalem, where they offered up sacrifices to God. Thus we have, in this historically rather unimportant Jewish outpost, a potent combination of symbols and significances. Judaism, Elephantine tells us, has always been just as much at home in Diaspora as in Zion; it has been an affair of ordinary people, as well as of sages and martyrs; it has resisted religious authority and invented many modes of worshipping God. It has even, for long stretches anyway, enjoyed harmonious and mutually enriching relations with its gentile neighbors. The Elephantine papyri are, for Schama, a life-giving anti-Bible, not “the epic of the treaty-covenant with Israel” but “the quotidian record of the lives of the expat Judeans and Israelites with whom we can keep company as naturally … as if we were living in their neighborhood.”

The series is also coming out in book form and I noted a review of volume 1 here. Links there deal with the BBC documentary and the Elephantine papyri.

The latest on the Noah movie

CINEMA: Noah Comes To The Big Screen With Help From A Dallas Rabbi (Jonathan Mark, The Jewish Week). Some enlightening background to the movie:

Around two years ago, Rabbi [Geoffrey] Dennis, 54, who leads a Reform synagogue in the Dallas suburbs and teaches Jewish studies at the University of North Texas, received a call from Ari Handel, the executive producer of such films as “Pi,” “Black Swan” and “The Wrestler.” Handel was, along with director Darren Aronofsky, co-writing and producing “Noah,” the film coming to theaters next week. As a Manhattan Beach seventh grader, young Aronofsky wrote a poem about Noah, “The rain continued through the night and the cries of screaming men filled the air.”

Now, Paramount was giving him $130 million to tell the story, with Russell Crowe and Emma Watson (and Aronofsky was giving his seventh-grade teacher a walk-on in the movie). Aronofsky has admitted that “Noah” was being written by “two not very religious Jewish guys,” so Handel was calling Rabbi Dennis, author of the “Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism” (Llewellyn Publications), and a 2007 National Book Award finalist, to give a Jewish sense of the story.

I've not yet seen the movie yet, of course, but early indications are that the Noah mythology used in it is nothing if not eclectic. That make sense if Rabbi Dennis was their consultant. I noted a review of his Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism a few years ago and on that basis put it in the "use with caution" category. There's not much point in carping about the historical accuracy of a movie about Noah's Flood, but it interesting to get a sense of where the traditions used in this version of the story came from. Rabbi Dennis adds:

If you want to see Aronofsky’s original vision, says Rabbi Dennis, “You need to see his French comic book of Noah [available on Amazon]. It’s a storyboard for a movie.” There is a reference, said the rabbi, to six-winged angels in Isaiah. The film refers to the Tzohar, the gemstone given by an angel to Adam, and used by Noah for illumination in the ark. Watchers (thought to be the Fallen Angels), is found in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, written by Noah’s great-grandfather.

Rabbi Dennis adds, “In the Dead Sea Scrolls, there’s a version of a book called the Book of Giants. In each one of these books there is more elaborate narrative about who the Fallen Angels were, what they did, and how they corrupted the earth. It’s so dualistic that it became problematic for the rabbis. Judaism developed a theology of angels in which angels have no free will. If angels have no free will, angels can’t rebel.”

In related news, Egyptian Islamists are proactively calling for the movie to be banned: Egyptian Islamists say no to ‘Noah’. But the call for a ban is getting some pushback from the (coolly named) Creativity Front: "Noah" triggers a storm in Egypt: The Creativity Front rains down their Al Azhar-opposing opinion.

There has also been proactive Christian criticism of the film, which is noted in the first article linked to above.

Additional PaleoJudaica posts on Noah, the movie, are here and links.

UPDATE: More on Christian objections to the movie (HT Akma Adam on Facebook): Russell Crowe film ‘Noah’ edited to appease Christians upset by ‘historical inaccuracies’ (Scott Kaufman, The Raw Story).

According to The Wrap, Paramount Pictures has edited Darren Aronofsky’s Noah — which stars Russell Crowe in the titular role — in order to avoid offending Christian viewers.

Aronofsky allegedly told an associate that he was “not happy” when he learned that Paramount had appended a disclaimer to both the film and promotional materials for it.

At the request of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), Paramount added a disclaimer which reads, in part, that “[t]he film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values, and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis.”

NRB board member Phil Cooke told The Wrap that the disclaimer was necessary because the film is “historically inaccurate.” It is, Cooke said, “more of an inspired movie than an exact retelling.”

[...]

Historically inaccurate. You don't say?

UPDATE: St. Andrews PhD student Raymond Morehouse puts this latter controversy into context. Somewhat related anecdote at the end of this post.

Heavenly Lights exhibition

ART: Lights of heaven: Jerusalem artist Yoram Raanan exhibits at the Heichal Shlomo Museum of Jewish Art.

Aramaic bedtime story

LITERATURE: The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been translated into Aramaic.

Exhibition on ancient commemmoration of the dead

AT THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE MUSEUM: Exhibit at UChicago to Show How Ancient Cultures Commemorated the Dead. "In Remembrance of Me" at Oriental Institute opens April 8. Excerpt from the press release:

The exhibit, “In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East,” opens to the public April 8. The show is built around two themes: the regular offering of food and drink to nourish the dead in the afterlife, and the use of two- or three-dimensional effigies of the dead, often made of stone, to preserve their memory and provide a means of interaction between the living and the dead.

The Oriental Institute’s Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli, Turkey in 2008, during which an inscribed funerary monument was discovered, inspired the exhibit. The monument, which dates to about 735 B.C, is carved with an image of a man named Katumuwa seated before a table heaped with offerings and with a lengthy inscription in Aramaic—a language widely used in the ancient Middle East. The text proved to be the longest-known memorial inscription of its type.

Until the discovery of the stela, scholars did not know about the practice of enacting annual sacrifices for the soul of the deceased. The discovery also revealed that the people of Zincirli, located in the ancient Syro-Hittite region of southeastern Turkey, believed Katumuwa’s spirit resided in the monument.

“The text gave us a whole new understanding of the ancient belief system in eastern Turkey and northern Syria. Although Katumuwa knew that the realm of the dead could be a cruel and lonely place, the rituals he describes that his family would enact on his behalf would give him a happy afterlife,” said exhibit curator Virginia R. Herrmann, PhD’11. Herrmann, now a visiting professor at Dartmouth College, was part of the team that discovered the stela and co-curated “In Remembrance of Me.”

Before the discovery of the stela, it was not understood that, in eastern Turkey and northern Syria, such banquet scenes depicted on other monuments were special pleas to the viewer to make annual offerings of animal sacrifices and grapes or wine. Those offerings were directed not only to the deceased, but also to local gods. The biblical commandment to “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long” (Exodus 20:12), is rooted in the tradition expressed by the Katumuwa text.

The text also revealed that the rituals took place not just at the grave or in the home, but in a private mortuary chapel next door to a temple—exactly the setting where the Katumuwa stela was discovered. The stela itself is in the Gaziantep Museum in eastern Turkey, but a precise facsimile of its front has been produced for the exhibit.
The exhibit also features a video produced by video artist Travis Saul, MFA’12, in collaboration with Herrmann and her colleague and exhibit co-curator, Oriental Institute Associate Professor David Schloen. It provides background on the site of Zincirli, the discovery of the stela, a recreation of the rituals enacted to commemorate the soul of Katumuwa, and a recitation of the text in Aramaic and English.

Earlier PaleoJudaica posts on the Katumuwa (Kuttumuwa) inscription are here, here, and here and links. Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."

New archaeology library and archive in Jerusalem

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Antiquities Authority to build in Jerusalem largest archeology library in Mideast. Library, to be called The Mandel National Library for the Archeology of Israel, is to house nearly 150,000 volumes. (Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post).

The Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday that it would construct the Middle East’s largest archeological library in Jerusalem.

The library, to be called The Mandel National Library for the Archeology of Israel, is to house nearly 150,000 volumes, including 500 rare books and over 1,000 periodicals, the authority said.

The adjacent Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel National Archeological Archives is to contain the authority’s archive as well as maps, permits, plans and publications of excavations from the British Mandate period through today, serving researchers and the public.

[...]

The AP (here in The Guardian) also has the story: Israel to build national centre for ancient artefacts. Centre will showcase Israel's rich collection of 2m artefacts including world's largest collection of Dead Sea scrolls.

Restoration of the Temple in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Talmud Is a Training Manual for Jews Preparing for the Next Holy Era. For a hundred generations Jews lived in anticipation of redemption, a historical tension that continues to define Judaism. Excerpt:

This way of thinking only makes sense if you believe, as Yochanan did, that “soon the Temple will be rebuilt”—and not just soon, but suddenly, without preparation. In other words, the Third Temple is not going to be a massive, long-term construction project, like the First Temple that Solomon built, and the Second Temple that Ezra and Nehemiah built. It is going to spring up or descend from heaven all at once, intact—and in that moment, Jews will suddenly have to go back to obeying a whole host of laws that currently seem obsolete. For this reason, Jews have to remain in training, ready to resume Temple life when the need arises; and the Talmud, one might say, is their training manual.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature

EXCITING NEW PROJECT: Announcing METI’s new Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature (Morgan Davis).

On behalf of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, I am pleased to announce the addition of an important new series to our Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI). The series, to be called the Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature (LJAL), will publish works written by Jewish authors living within the Islamic world of the Middle Ages. At the invitation of James T. Robinson, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and David Sklare, of the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, an international team of scholars have come together to edit, translate, and publish these texts in the same dual-language format as other METI publications like the Islamic Translation Series and Eastern Christian Texts. The bilingual format makes primary texts and expert translations simultaneously available to experts, students, and general readers alike. Texts will be selected from across the entire range of genres represented in Judeo-Arabic literature, including philosophy, theology, Biblical interpretation, history, and many other genres.

Follow the link for more information. I have a number of the Arabic/English volumes from the Islamic Translations Series on my bookshelves and have even read some of them to help maintain my Arabic. They are excellent, and I very much look forward to this new series.

Schiffman on the Rabbis and early Christianity

ANOTHER BLOG SERIES BY LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: The Halakhic Response of the Rabbis to the Rise of Christianity (5 posts).

The Jewish-Christian schism in Late Antiquity has been studied from numerous points of view. This paper will approach these events by investigating the manner in which halakhic issues (questions of Jewish law) motivated the approach of the early Rabbis to the rise of the new faith, and the manner in which Rabbinic legal enactments expressed that approach as well. The eventual conclusion of the Rabbis and the Jewish community that Christianity was a separate religion and that Christians were not Jews, was intimately bound up with the Jewish laws and traditions governing personal status in the Jewish community, both for Jews by birth and proselytes. These laws, as known today, were already in full effect by the rise of Christianity. ...

Veale video

SARAH VEALE IS TOTALLY PROMOTING THE STUDY OF ANCIENT LANGUAGES. Well done, Sarah.

Enochic radio?

THERE'S A RADIO SHOW IN LAS VEGAS CALLED "THE TEACHINGS OF ENOCH." Who knew?

Interview with Helene Wecker (The Golem and the Jinni)

MARGINALIA: The Golem and the Jinni: A Conversation with Helene Wecker. Phillip Sherman talks with Helene Wecker about incorporating Jewish and Muslim traditions into her debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni.

It was like I was telling these old stories I’d heard a million times, and they sort of lay there on the page. I was complaining about it to a friend in the workshop, who knew what I liked to read, and asked me why I wasn’t doing something fantastical instead of this straight-up realist fiction. And instantly, it was like this side door opened that I hadn’t seen before but had always been there. I thought, what if, instead of the Jewish girl and Arab-American boy who’d been the two characters who threaded through the stories, I swapped in a female golem and a male jinni?

For reviews of The Golem and the Jinni, as well as much more on golems, go here and just keep following the links back.