More doubts about the GJW

MARK GOODACRE: More doubts surface on the Jesus Wife Fragment. The doubts are raised by Owen Jarus at LiveScience: 'Gospel of Jesus's Wife': Doubts Raised About Ancient Text. The problem is that, according to an estate representative, the now dead West German man who supposedly provided the papyrus was not an antiquities collector and did not own papyri. Not conclusive, but interesting and worth following up further.

Mark also links to a recent video interview with Karen King here.

Background on the GJW is here and links.

On the DSS

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING: What are the Dead Sea Scrolls? These ancient parchments discovered by chance in desert caves by the Dead Sea tell mysteries about the mysterious Jewish sect that wrote them, and debunk a myth about Goliath's height while about it. (Elon Gilad, Haaretz).

This is a pretty good summary of the majority opinion about the Scrolls, with which I more or less agree. But I would like to nuance the confident identification of the Qumran sectarians with the Essenes, and I would be very caution about the uncritical harmonization of the sectarian texts with the accounts of the Essenes by Philo, Pliny, and Josephus.

Also, there are a few papyrus scrolls from Qumran in addition to all the parchment, and the extra passage about Nahash was already known through Josephus' retelling of the story before the Qumran Samuel manuscript was discovered.

For some related posts, see here, here, here, here, here, and here and follow the many links. Also relevant posts at the old Qumranica blog are here and here.

St Andrews Symposium

LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER: The St Andrews Symposium for Biblical and Early Christian Studies: Ancient Readers and their Scriptures, 2-3 June 2014 (University of St Andrews). The registration deadline is 1 May 2014. For registration information, follow the link or e-mail Garrick Allen (ga22@st-andrews.ac.uk).

Mouse in Hebrew

HAARETZ: Word of the Day / Akhbar from the bible to the digital age. The word for mouse goes back millennia, completely unchanged, but its antecedents may be an artifact of some ancient's sense of humor. (Elon Gilad).

At any rate, much like mice in the pantry, this word for the humble rodent has lasted through the ages, from Biblical times to the time of the Mishnah, through Talmudic times in Aramaic and then to rabbinic writings in Hebrew of the Middle Ages. Nor has it changed with the revival of Hebrew as a living language in the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

That said, akhbar underwent an important semantic twist in the late 20th century, when in 1963, Bill English built a prototype of a device designed by Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute. The little palm-sized box with a cord protruding from its front resembled a mouse and thus it was so named.

Sof pasuk

IT'S NOT OVER: Word of the Day / Sof pasuk: Ending things, biblical style. A poetic phrase to help express one's strongly-held feelings. (Shoshana Kordova, Haaretz).

“This isn’t sof pasuk,” they said, using a phrase that roughly means “This isn’t the last word” or “It’s not over yet.”

Sof means “end” and pasuk (pah-SOOK) is a verse in the Bible (with pasuk muzikali meaning “musical phrase”), such that the term literally means “end of the verse.”

More to the point, perhaps, it is the name of the Torah cantillation symbol that signals, not surprisingly, the end of the verse, the same way that “period” in American English and “full stop” in British English are the names of the punctuation mark that signals the end of a sentence.

Maaloula, Easter, Assad, and Aramaic

MAALOULA WATCH: Assad makes Easter visit to recaptured Christian town.
State television reports Syrian president goes to Maalula, taken by government forces in December (AFP). See also here.

Well that was a good gesture, but more is needed: Why the language of Jesus is at risk (Kinda Jayouse, Globe and Mail).

But in the Syrian civil war, Maaloula is also strategically significant. The village is located near the main road that links Damascus to Homs, which is considered an essential supply route. That is why the government was eager to retake Maaloula from rebels – to cut off their supply routes and give the government more control of central Syria.

The exodus of Christians over the past year has worried experts, who fear that Aramaic speakers will integrate into their new communities and eventually the language will disappear. And although the village has been recaptured, many believe that the residents will not return because their homes have been destroyed, they are not wealthy enough to rebuild and the insecurity of the civil war continues.

“The village is badly damaged and security is very limited,” says one Maaloula resident who did not want to be named for safety reasons. “I do not think we will be able to go there to settle in a long time.”

“We are so happy [Maaloula] is free now, but the village is littered with land mines, many parts of it are destroyed and some homes have been torched,” says a former resident named Ward, who fled in late 2013 and has taken refuge in Damascus. “Most villagers are poor and I doubt they would have the means to rebuild their homes. And those who have the means are afraid that the general security situation is not stable yet or safe,” she added.

Meanwhile in the USA: Assyrians Who Fled Syria Prepare to Celebrate Easter in Chicago (Angie Leventis Lourgos, Chicago Tribune).

The situation in Maaloula is critical and its status as one of last remaining places where Aramaic is spoken as a daily language hangs in doubt. This is a chance for the Assad Government to demonstrate its goodwill and commitment to human rights and religious tolerance. Let's see Maaloula rebuilt, re-established for the original inhabitants, and made secure.

The world is watching.

Background on Maaloula (Ma'aloula, Malula) is here and links.

Easter 2014

HAPPY EASTER to all those celebrating!

The links have rotted in my old Easter post, so here they are again. The resurrection narratives in the four Gospels are found in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20-21. Paul refers to Jesus' resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. As a bonus, go have a look at the Passion and resurrection fragment of the Gospel of Peter, which may, at least in part, be independent of the canonical Gospels.

Schiffman on Iraq and the Jewish People

ANOTHER BLOG SERIES BY LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: Iraq and the Jewish People (11 posts).

De Troyer et al., In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes

NEW BOOK FROM PEETERS:

In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes
Studies in the Biblical Text in Honour of Anneli Aejmelaeus

Series:
Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology, 72

Editors: De Troyer K., Law T. M. , Liljeström M.

Year: 2014
ISBN: 978-90-429-3041-4
Price: Forthcoming

Summary:
The book contains a preface by the Three (editors) and has five sections—all befitting the recipient of this Festschrift with her interest in Septuagint and Textual Criticism. The first part of the book, entitled The Septuagint. Origins and Translations contains articles on what a translator is and does (such as the contribution from Benjamin G. Wright and Joachim Schaper) or how LXXGenesis functions as the first translation of Scripture (Emanuel Tov) and contains numerous articles on idioms and accuracy (John A.L. Lee), on lexical variation (Arie van der Kooij) and on renderings of nouns (Bénédicte Lemmelijn), verbs (Anssi Voitila), tenses (Raimund Wirth), semi-prepositions (Raija Sollamo), particles (Michael N. van der Meer) or lexical expressions and themes such as the “end of times” (Staffan Olofsson) or ‘labouring women (Takamitsu Muraoka), etc. In the second part, entitled The Septuagint and the Versions. Textual Criticism and Text History, the books that are focused on are Samuel and Kings (with contributions by Jan Joosten, Philippe Hugo, Zipora Talshir, Siegfried Kreuzer, Andrés Piquer Otero, Pablo Torijano Morales, Juha Pakkala, Christian Seppanen) and Joshua (with contributions by Seppo Sipilä and Julio Trebolle Barrera). Then, there are also studies on textual issues and text history of Isaiah (Anna Kharanauli), Ezechiel (Johan Lust), Job (Claude Cox), Ecclesiastes (Peter J. Gentry) and Minor Prophets (Hans Ausloos). The third part of this volume is entitled The Septuagint in New Testament and Christian Use and contains two contributions on textual links between LXX and the New Testament (contributions by Tuukka Kauhanen and Georg A. Walser) and patristic texts (contributions by Reinhart Ceulemans and Katrin Hauspie,). A fourth part of the volume is devoted to The Septuagint in Jewish Tradition (with contributions on how the Tabernacle Account was received in Hellenistic Judaism by Alison Salvesen and ‘Seeking “the Septuagint” in a Scroll Dependent World by Robert A. Kraft). The final part of the volume is dedicated to The Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It opens with an attempt by Martti Nissinen to answer the question: ‘Since when do Prophets Write?’ Then, there is the contribution by George J. Brooke who offers a variant on the issue of variant editions, albeit from the perspective of the scrolls. Eugene Ulrich explores the fine balance between intentional variants and isolated insertions in 4QSama and the MT. Sarianna Metso offers an article on the Leviticus traditions at Qumran and Jutta Jokiranta offers a reflection on ‘the stranger’ in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea. The contribution by Hanne von Weissenberg forms a nice inclusion with the opening contribution by Benjamin G. Wright as it too focuses on Authority.

Congratulations to Professor Aejmelaeus. And on Facebook, T. Michael Law adds, "Notice this volume's number in its series." He says that the volume should be out by the end of this week.

GJW: Depuydt replies to King

MARK GOODACRE: Jesus' Wife Fragment Latest: Leo Depuydt responds to Karen King . Mark posts the response as a pdf file. I'm not a Coptologist, so I won't try to address the substantive issue. But I do have two observations. First, King's response addresses many of Depuydt's objections, whereas his reply only addresses one of her points. What about the others? Second, the tone of the two responses is very different. King writes objectively and respectfully. She accuses Depuydt of making a grammatical error. If she is wrong, she made a mistake, but she isn't rude about it. Depuydt's reply is very sarcastic and it tries too hard to sound hip and edgy, complete with emoticons. Now regular readers know that I am by no means above a little sarcasm if I think it's justified, but it isn't justified here. King is trying to advance the discussion. If she accused Depuydt incorrectly of making a mistake, this could be pointed out politely and respectfully.

I am still quite skeptical that the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is an ancient artifact, but King has made a real effort to keep the tone high and the skeptics should do the same.

Background here and links.

Maaloula in ruins

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Syria fighting leaves Maaloula, a historic Christian town, in ruins. Syrian forces have driven most rebels from Maaloula, home to ancient churches and monasteries now smashed and defaced after months of battles (Patrick J. McDonnell and Nabih Bulos). Excerpt:

Maaloula never had the strategic value of other nearby areas, such as the city of Yabroud to the north, which was recaptured by the military in March. But it possesses vivid symbolic importance. The Christian enclave has long been a signature site for Syria's diverse assemblage of faiths and ethnicities.

Assad's government has presented itself as a staunch defender of religious tolerance and minorities in the face of Islamic militants who make up some of the strongest rebel forces. Recapturing Maaloula helps reinforce that message.

The town is acclaimed as one of the few places where a version of Aramaic, said to be the language of Jesus, is still spoken and taught. Its ancient churches and monasteries are iconic.

Most of the 2,000 or so residents fled long ago. A group of 13 nuns abducted by Islamic rebels who overran the town last year has since been freed in a prisoner exchange.

One of the first tasks facing officials will be to determine the damage inflicted on Maaloula's historic churches and other Christian sites. Statues of Jesus and Mary that once looked down from twin ridges have been destroyed — whether by the rebels or government shelling is not clear.

St. Thecla monastery, from where the nuns were kidnapped last year, remains in a perilous zone. It was impossible on Tuesday to assess the damage. But crosses had been removed from the tops of St. Thecla and other churches, apparently by Islamic rebels. It seemed likely that the crosses and hillside statues will be easier to replace than other, more profound losses yet to be cataloged.

Up the hill from St. Thecla, the ancient Church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus lay in ruins. The sturdy brick structure still stands, but shells have crashed through the dome, and much of the interior has been reduced to wreckage.

The record of the Syrian Government with regard to Maaloula has been at best mixed (e.g., here and here). But now is their chance to demonstrate their support of religious tolerance. Let them rebuild the city and restore it to its ancient inhabitants. And re-open that Aramaic Institute.

Much more on Maaloula (Ma'aloula, Malula) here and links.

Lod mosaic at Waddesdon Manor

THE LOD MOSAIC IS COMING TO THE U.K.: Predators and Prey: A Roman Mosaic from Lod, Israel (PastHorizons). The article has lots of cool detail photos.

From there the Lod Mosaic will go on display in St. Petersburg, then back to Israel to be housed in its new permanent museum home, the Shelby White and Leon Levy Lod Mosaic Archaeological Center.

More on the Lod Mosaic and other, related ancient mosaics here with many links.

Maaloula retaken

LEBANON DAILY STAR: Syrian regime troops sweep through Maaloula.

MAALOULA, Syria: Syrian troops triumphantly swept through some of the last remaining opposition strongholds north of Damascus, including the ancient Christian village of Maaloula, sending rebel fighters fleeing to nearby hills amid an ever-tightening noose.

The near total collapse of rebels along a key supply route that has long funneled weapons to opposition-held districts around Damascus helps strengthen President Bashar Assad’s hand in and around the capital.

The dramatic capture of Maaloula, Sarkha and Jibbeh was the fastest series of army successes against rebels in the Qalamoun region since the government launched an offensive in November in the strategic area, a wedge of mountainous territory between the capital and the Lebanese border.

[...]

This is certainly news, but it remains to see whether it is good news or bad news for Maaloula (Ma'aloula, Malula). Background here with many links. Cross file under "Aramaic Watch."

GJW and online discussion

LIV INGEBORG LIED: GJW and the status of online academic discussion: will you cite this?

This post will neither discuss aspects of the textual contents of GJW nor the possible status of the fragment or its text as a forgery - I am not a Coptologist. Rather, this post concerns the function, use and status of online academic discussions: the discussions that take place in blogs, in their commentary fields, and sometimes even on Facebook, and which sometimes may turn out to make a difference to wider academic debates.

Background on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is here and links.

Noah and white people

EXPLANATION: "Noah" Screenwriter Ari Handel Addresses the Reason For An All White Cast: To Represent "Stand-ins for All People" (Diane Cho, Complex).

I raised this issue in passing in my review of the movie, but I didn't really think through the implications until later. The problem, of course, is that by making everyone white before the Flood, the film opens the door to the old racist meme that dark skin color is the curse of Ham. Now to be absolutely clear, the movie does not include the curse of Ham (although Ham does go into self-imposed exile) and I am not for a moment suggesting that the writers intended any such implication. Still, I do not find their explanation satisfactory. Myths do matter, and the problem could easily have been solved with a little diversification of the cast.

Much more on Noah here and links.

Blood moon tetrad, the Talmud, Passover, and Thallus

COSMIC SYNCHRONICITY WATCH: Watch the lunar eclipse ‘blood moon’ tonight, and witness the beginning of the end of the world (maybe) (Sebastian Anthony, Extreme Tech).

If you’re into skygazing, you really should stay up late tonight (April 14, April 15) and watch the first of a series of four “blood” moons — a sequence of lunar eclipses called a tetrad that will occur over the next two years, and which some religious types believe signifies the beginning of the apocalypse. Mars is also incredibly close to Earth at the moment, making it one of the brightest objects in the sky. This alignment between the Sun, Earth, Mars, and the Moon has only occurred a handful of times in the last two thousand years, each time coinciding with a “hugely significant” religious event. For non-religious types, though, it’s just a great opportunity to see an amazing astronomical event that probably won’t happen again in your lifetime.

[...]

And don't forget that Jupiter is very visible up there too, whatever that means. Besides this lunar and planetary alignment, a number of cosmic synchronicities suggest themselves. Various people (notably here) are pointing out that the Talmud (Sukkah 29a) says that a lunar eclipse is a bad omen for Israel and a blood moon is a sign of war. The relevant passage reads:

Our Rabbis taught, When the sun is in eclipse it is a bad omen for idolaters; when the moon is in eclipse, it is a bad omen for Israel,23 since Israel reckons by the moon25 and idolaters by the sun.26 If it27 is in eclipse in the east, it is a bad omen for those who dwell in the east; if in the west, it is a bad omen for those who dwell in the west; if in the midst of heaven it is bad omen for the whole world. If its face is red as blood, [it is a sign that] the sword is coming to the world; (Soncino Talmud)

Let's hope those omens don't work out this time.

Another synchronicity is the eclipse of the moon during Passover. Granted, the synchronicity is mostly in my own head, in that the connection made me think of the famous citation of an ancient historian called Thallus by the fourth-century writer Sextus Julius Africanus as quoted by the ninth-century chronographer George Syncellus. Syncellus quotes Africanus, with reference to the darkness over the land at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus as reported in the Gospels, as follows: "Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse of the Sun in the third book of his Histories." Africanus adds that he thinks this is wrong and explains that a solar eclipse is impossible during Passover because the moon is full and on the opposite side of the earth from the sun.

But, of course, eclipses of the moon are okay, and here we just had one last night to remind us of that!

Quite a bit has been made of this reference to Thallus as potentially being the earliest external reference to the crucifixion of Jesus and the attendant darkness, but the relevant work of Africanus is lost apart from quotations and the work of Thallus is also lost, again apart from quotations, so whatever Thallus said (which is not quoted verbatim) is nested in two levels of missing context. It is quite unclear whether he said anything about Jesus or the crucifixion in his comment about an eclipse. In addition, we don't even know exactly when he lived, and the argument that he is a Samaritan Thallus who lived a generation after Jesus and was mentioned by Josephus is dodgy. First, Thallus was not an uncommon name and, second, Josephus doesn't actually mention a Samaritan Thallus. This is a debatable modern emendation of Josephus' text. So, alas, the notion of Thallus as a non-Jewish historian writing in the 50s C.E. who mentions Jesus and his crucifixion pretty much evaporates when one looks closely at the evidence.

Vidas, Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud

NEW BOOK FROM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud
Moulie Vidas

Hardcover | May 2014 | $35.00 / £24.95 | ISBN: 9780691154862
256 pp. | 6 x 9 | 5 tables. |

eBook | ISBN: 9781400850471 |

Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud offers a new perspective on perhaps the most important religious text of the Jewish tradition. It is widely recognized that the creators of the Talmud innovatively interpreted and changed the older traditions on which they drew. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that the ancient rabbis were committed to maintaining continuity with the past. Moulie Vidas argues on the contrary that structural features of the Talmud were designed to produce a discontinuity with tradition, and that this discontinuity was part and parcel of the rabbis' self-conception. Both this self-conception and these structural features were part of a debate within and beyond the Jewish community about the transmission of tradition.

Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud, produced in the rabbinic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia, Vidas analyzes key passages to show how the Talmud's creators contrasted their own voice with that of their predecessors. He also examines Zoroastrian, Christian, and mystical Jewish sources to reconstruct the debates and wide-ranging conversations that shaped the Talmud's literary and intellectual character.

Moulie Vidas is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion and the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University.

Follow the link for TOC, excerpt, ordering info, and endorsements.

St. Catherine's Monastery threatened?

BARBARIC: Retired army general wants Egypt's St. Catherine's Monastery demolished. Ahmed Ragai Attiya says that the historic UNESCO site in South Sinai poses a threat to Egypt's national security, after the monks turned it into 'a place for foreigners' (Sherry El-Gergawi, ahramonline).

It is one thing for a crank columnist to call for a lawsuit over the legend of the ten plagues. It is quite another for an (up to now) respected member of the military actually to bring a lawsuit to try to destroy some of Egypt's history. If the story is true (and one hopes it is inaccurate or exaggerated), it is dismaying that the suit is being taken as seriously as it is. It should be laughed out of court.

More problems for St. Catherine's Monastery, as well as much background on it, noted here and links.

Moss on the GJW

CANDIDA MOSS: The ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife’ is Still as Big as Mystery as Ever. Scholars had concluded that a papyrus referring to Jesus’s wife was a clever forgery—until new evidence re-opened the case. Is there any way to figure out the truth? (The Daily Beast). Professor Moss sums up the issues well. Excerpts:

The biggest problems were the grammatical errors in the text and the similarities between GJW and another early Christian Coptic text, the Gospel of Thomas. Francis Watson argued that all of the fragmentary sentences preserved on the papyrus are also found in the Gospel of Thomas. He tentatively suggested that the text is a pastiche compiled by a modern forger with an elementary grasp of Coptic.

Even more damning was the argument that one of the typographical errors in the fragment appears to have been copied from an erroneous online edition of the Gospel of Thomas. The sixth line of the GJW nonsensically seems to read, “Evil man habitually does not he does habitually bring [sic].” Interestingly, precisely the same error appears in a 2002 online edition of the Gospel of Thomas. The chances of two independent texts making the same grammatical error are remarkably small. (You just can’t trust the internet for anything these days.)

[...]

In the absence of clear evidence, the debate is still where it was over a year ago. On the one hand, tests designed to prove that the text is a forgery failed to establish its inauthenticity. On the other hand, the grammatical errors and similarities to the Gospel of Thomas are still a problem. A modern forger with the right materials could still have made this text.

And let none of this be forgotten in the excitement over the test results. It really comes down to two possibilities. The first is that we happened to find a very old unprovenanced text that says exactly what the Zeitgeist of the second decade of the twenty-first century would like to hear about Jesus. This text happened to be written in what looks like a fourth century Coptic script, even though the papyrus it is written on tests (at least on the second try*) some centuries younger than that. Moreover, the text is more or less based on the Gospel of Thomas, which luckily we already had, and the ancient scribe even made the same copying error as an entirely independent modern editor of an internet edition of the Gospel of Thomas. So it's possible that the fragment is a genuine ancient(-ish) artifact, but we sure won the big-time lottery on this one!

The second possibility is that a forger did a good job of obtaining ancient blank papyrus and obtaining (or mixing up a reasonable facsimile of) ancient ink and used them to create the artifact. Unfortunately for the forger and fortunately for us, the Coptic script used by the forger was some centuries too early for the papyrus, the forged text is rather too close to its Gospel of Thomas template, and there was a pesky typo in the Gospel of Thomas edition which the hapless forger copied.

Those seem to be the options. I blog, you decide.

Background here and links.

*The first try at a C-14 test gave a date range that was even earlier — before the birth of Jesus.

UPDATE: Christian Askeland at ETC highlights an attempt in 1990 to forge a Gospel of Thomas manuscript. Leo Depuydt also debunked it on grounds very similar to the objections to the authenticity of the GJW: Demotic Gospel of Thomas.

Superhuman angelic priests

DANIEL R. STREET: Priests and Israel as Superhuman (καὶ τὰ λοιπά).

Passover

HAPPY PASSOVER to all those celebrating! The holiday begins this evening at sundown.

Biblical passages that describe the precepts for Passover include Exodus 12 and Exodus 23:15 and Leviticus 23:5-8 and Numbers 9:1-14 and Deuteronomy 16:1-8 and Ezekiel 45:21-25.

Another recent post on Passover is here.

Schiffman on Purity as Separation

ANOTHER BLOG SERIES BY LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: Purity as Separation (4 posts).

Passover and Jesus

TIS THE SEASON: The ASOR Blog has a star lineup of posts on Passover and Jesus.

Eric M. Meyers, Did Jesus Celebrate Passover in Sepphoris?

Adela Yarbro Collins, The Passover and Jesus

Helen K. Bond, Passover as Jesus Knew it

Tasty scroll fragment

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To: Make A Dead Sea Scroll.

GJW latest

THE NEWS ON THE GOSPEL OF JESUS' WIFE is predictably making a splash in the media and the blogosphere. The media coverage is for the most part repeating the line of the Harvard press releases and getting that pretty accurately. I see no need to link to any of the many news articles beyond what I covered yesterday. As for the blogosphere, much the same applies, but I do want to note blog posts by Mark Goodacre here and especially here. The latter publishes a new essay by Professor Watson of Durham University: Jesus’ Wife Attempts a Comeback: Initial Response (pdf file) which gives a preliminary evaluation of the new evidence. Excerpt:

A press release that accurately represented the analyses published in the
Harvard Theological Review might have been entitled: “Testing of Jesus’ Wife Fragment Yields Inconclusive Results”. That would not have attracted much attention, but it would at least be truthful.

I am very busy with my own work in the coming weeks and it will be some time before I can get around to reading the HTR articles, but meanwhile I'll try to keep track of any interesting developments.

Background here and links.

UPDATE: I've been meaning to link to this post by Larry Hurtado, which came out before the GJW test results but is nonetheless relevant: Carbon-14 and Palaeographical Dating of Papyri. Note this in particular:

To summarize results of the tests [on Green Collection manuscripts] reported on in [the conference in] Oklahoma City, the results from the three labs were basically/broadly in agreement, which gives some assurance about the reliability of the process. But also, these results were broadly in agreement with the prior/independent palaeographical dating of these items. And this (as I see it) is the really larger import. It means (contrary to the reported comment by a distinguished papyrologist, who is not himself a palaeographer, that palaeographical dating is “bullshit”), that palaeographical dating (using today’s standards and practices) by competent palaeographers can be treated as broadly reliable.

Contrast this with the test results on the GJW: the two C-14 tests came up with results that differed by many centuries, not overlapping at all, and both results were incompatible with the dating that had already been proposed by paleographers. When lined up against the Green Collection tests, this sounds inconclusive indeed.

UPDATE: New blog posts: Christian Askeland (ETC): Jesus's Wife Resurrected from Dead; Larry Hurtado: “Jesus’ Wife Fragment”: Further Observations.

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.