GUIDE TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGS: The Biblical Archaeological Society web page has one for the 2004 season which includes both digs in Israel and digs at ancient sites elsewhere.

TOLKIEN AGAIN, but this time not entirely irrelevant to PaleoJudaica. It seems that Aramaic isn't the only language benefitting from movie publicity:

Elvish is hobbitforming (Business Standard, India)

Nilanjana S Roy
Published : March 9, 2004

Lle quena i�lambe tel� Eldalie? The answer to that question �Do you speak Elvish? � is �yes� more often than you might realise.

Lord of the Rings fans trade phrases in Sindarin and Quenya in their online film discussions; linguists, particularly those with a puckish sense of humour, have confessed to occasionally speaking the language Tolkien invented; RPG (role-playing games) addicts often keep a downloadable phrase book handy.

But the Elven languages just took the mainstream world by surprise when a school in the UK announced that it planned to put Sindarin and Quenya on the syllabus.

It sounds like a load of Nevbosh, just another instance of hobbitmania run amok. (Nevbosh, an early language that Tolkien helped invent, stands for �New Nonsense�.)

But the educators who suggested incorporating Elvish into the syllabus suggested that a language, invented or not, that their students might actually be interested in learning, scored far higher in teaching terms than a worthier but dead language.

Every second kid in the playground wants to orate like Aragorn, give commands like Theoden and swear like an Orc; no one wants to go through the veni, vidi, vici routine any more, Gladiator notwithstanding. (It�s always possible that Mel Gibson�s Passion will spark off an Aramaic revival, but then again, we�re unlikely to see it happening in the classrooms at present. LOTR just has more reach.)

[...]

Unfortunately the article doesn't say which school in the U.K. is doing this.

UPDATE: Here's the information. The classes are being offered after hours. (Via Mirabilis.)

MORE ON THE "JEHOASH INSCRIPTION." Today's Ha'aretz reports:

Scholars want 'fake' Jehoash inscription reexamined
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

The scholarly furor over the so-called Jehoash inscription has broken out again, nine months after an Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) committee pronounced it a forgery. Now four leading scientists demand that a new committee evaluate the inscription.

[...]

But four leading scientists have asked Education Minister Limor Livnat for a new committee to be appointed to evaluate the inscription. The group includes Prof. Haim Cohen of the department of Hebrew Linguistics, Bible, and the Ancient Near East of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Prof. Yoel Kronfeld, of the faculty of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences of Tel Aviv University; Dr. Gabriel Barkay of the department of Land of Israel Studies at Bar-Ilan University; and Dr. Yoel Elitzur of the departments of Language and Land of Israel Studies at Herzog College in Alon Shvut.

[...]

The four scholars calling for the establishment of a new committee to consider the authenticity of the inscription claim that the IAA committee was one-dimensional, and that expert opinions and interpretations from Israel and elsewhere were not brought to bear on the evidence. "Scholars who expressed the clear opinion that the inscription was a forgery were invited to the committee, " Prof. Cohen noted, "while those who believed otherwise, such as the two scientists from the Geological Institute, were disqualified." The four scholars also said that "professional errors were made in dealing with the issue, which led to hasty conclusions. "

[...]

"There is nothing philological in the inscription that attests to its being a forgery," Prof. Cohen, a philologist, noted. "I can categorically refute all the evidence that my colleagues have brought up in concluding that it is a forgery," Cohen stated. "I can explain everything written there from a linguistic point of view as suited to the biblical period, to the period of Jehoash, the ninth century BCE. And I am not the only philologist who thinks so."

[...]

You can find my opinion on some of the philological issues here.

MORE ON THE ARAMAIC AND LATIN in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. (If you're wondering why I keep repeating that phrase, it's to make it easier to find all the references in the search engine.) Three professors from Andrews University Seminary in Michigan comment on this and related matters in "'The Passion of the Christ' brings dead languages back to life" (St. Joseph Herald Palladium, MI). Excerpt:

Roy Gane is an assistant professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Languages and associate editor of the Andrews University Seminary Studies magazine. Robert Johnston is professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, while Jon Paulien is professor of New Testament Interpretation and New Testament department chairman at the Andrews University Seminary.
Their hope is that the movie will spark interest in learning more about languages that most people are likely to be hearing for the first time.

"The Aramaic in the movie was extremely well done," Johnston said as the three professors sat down for an interview on the Berrien Springs campus last week. "For the actors to be able to learn their lines in an ancient language was an amazing thing. They tried to reproduce the accents of the first century as much as they were able. The Italianate Latin was not as accurate."

All three questioned why Latin was used at all, because the language of administration at the time was usually Greek. It was Greek that would likely have been the language used when the Jewish leaders spoke with Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator who condemned Jesus to be crucified.

Gane noted that the use of Latin in a scene between Jesus and Pilate was probably not accurate. "The use of Latin in that scene was a little strange," he said. "Pilate says 'What is truth?' using the word 'veritas'. It was a nice bridge to the next scene where Pilate is speaking with his wife about truth or veritas, but it's not likely that Jesus knew Latin."

"As far as the Aramaic, it sounded very authentic," Gane said. "We really don't know today how it was pronounced, but for me it was fabulous and wonderful to be able to follow the language."

Gane has first-hand experience in trying to communicate in Aramaic, which is still spoken by an estimated half million people, mainly in the Middle East and in Arab conclaves in cities such as Detroit. He spent time in northern Iraq in 1989 on an archaeological dig near Mosul and tried to speak in Aramaic to the local people because it's their native language.

"I went to a Seventh-day Adventist church there and the people were speaking Aramaic," he said. "I tried to join the discussion speaking old Aramaic and they didn't understand it."

They also think there was too much flogging. But overall, they liked the movie.

UPCOMING CONFERENCE AT YALE UNIVERSITY:

Rethinking Nomos and Narrative
Marking Twenty Years Since Robert Cover's Nomos and Narrative
Sunday, April 25, 2004

(Via Steven D. Fraade on Ioudaios-L.)

PURITY PAPERS ONLINE. The full texts of papers from the �Purity from the Bible to the Mishna� session in the Association for Jewish Studies Annual Meeting in Boston, December 2003 are available on Professor Gary Rendsburg's website for downloading. (Via Ioudaios-L, where you can find more details.)

MORE ON THE ARAMAIC of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ: Geza Vermes e-mails:

In my article in the Guardian I too have referred to an odd mixture of Aramaic and Hebrew in the Passion. The several times repeated "Mashiacha" is surely a phonetical nonsense; it should be "Mshicha". Shame on William Fulco. Jonas Greenfield must be rotating in his grave. Also Jesus should have addressed God, in Gethsemane of all places, as "Abba", not "Adonai". Finally, has anyone detected any sign of Galilean Aramaic? After all, Peter, or should I say "Kefa", was betrayed by his speech in the courtyard of the high priest.

TOLKIEN DIGRESSION: Today is the sixty-fifth anniversary of J. R. R. Tolkien's presentation at the University of St. Andrews of his famous Andrew Lang lecture "On Fairy Stories." Professor Trevor Hart and his Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts at St. Mary's College has arranged a day seminar at the University, Tolkien: "On Fairy Stories" Here and Back Again, commemorating the event. I've just come from a reading by BBC Radio 4 presenter Nigel Ford of a reconstruction of the original lecture. To echo Professor Hart's comments afterward, it was a rare privilege to hear the essay read out as a lecture � the format for which it was originally composed. The oral version of such a skilled reader brings out many nuances that are easily glossed over in a silent reading. Shortly I will going to hear the new Andrew Lang lecture by Professor David Lyle Jeffrey: "The Future of Literary Studies: Was Tolkien Right?"

Many thanks to Professor Hart, his team of helpers and associates, the lecturers, and the University of St. Andrews for making this event happen. Tolkien fans, wish you could all be here.

ARAMAIST EDWARD COOK e-mails:

I went to see The Passion over the weekend. The merits and problems of the film have been covered by others, but I don't remember anyone offering specific assessments of the Aramaic. I have to say that I found the Aramaic very strange. Often Hebrew vocabulary was used; e.g., in the Last Supper scene Jesus speaks of the "new covenant" as "berit hadathah" (instead of "keyama hadatha"); in a flashback, Jesus the carpenter refers to a "tall table" as "shulhan illay". Huh? I would expect "patur ram." On the cross, when Jesus says "ana sameh" (I thirst), again the vocab is Hebrew. And frequently, people say "adoni" for "my lord." I don't want to be pedantic -- maybe William Fulco was aiming at some kind of Hebrew-Aramaic patois in his reconstruction -- but I found it all very distracting.

UPDATE: Seth Sanders e-mails:

Dr. Cook is right that there's a good bit of Hebrew vocabulary in the movie, which I imagine Father Fulco (who studied with Jonas Greenfield, to my mind the greatest Aramaist of the previous generation) is presenting as loan words. For example, Robert Alter complained http://slate.msn.com/id/2095946/entry/2096184/ that mashiakha "messiah", with Biblical Hebrew phonology and the Aramaic determined ending, is a "conflation," but it is plausible as a religious import (cf. terms such as Elyon, with Hebrew morphology, in Daniel). For the everyday lexicon, I imagine he is presenting a language variety basically Aramaic in grammar but which overlaps with Hebrew in vocabulary. It is worth remembering that the neat division between official languages is more a product of schools and political units than it is a product of daily human interaction.

I have bigger questions about the *theology* of this language choice, which I'm preparing for the University of Chicago Divinity School's electronic Sightings op-ed format and which I'll deliver at the SBL or AJS.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE (9 March): More here.

REPAIRS TO THE DOME OF THE ROCK on the Temple Mount are being funded by the U.A.E. I think this Ha'aretz article is saying that the same group built the mosque in Solomon's Stables. The article also reports:

According to Palestinian sources, the Waqf, the Moslem religious trust, has completed repairs on the bulge in the Southern Wall. The work was carried out over the last nine months by Jordanian experts.

DR. NASHAT GABRAIL, an Iraqi Assyrian Christian and a native speaker of Aramaic, comments on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and on the future of the Assyrians and of Aramaic (New Philadelphia Times Reporter, OH):

�It�s very exciting to see a moving picture for the first time in Aramaic,� he said. �I was impressed by the actors. They really learned it.�

Gabrail, an oncologist who has a practice in Dover and is a resident of Stark County, is of Assyrian Christian descent, original natives of Mesopotamia, the current Iraq. His native language is Aramaic.

[...]

Gabrail said the dialect of Aramaic was so ancient in �The Passion of the Christ� that even he had to use the subtitles occasionally, but he said the language was completely accurate.

�I went in with an open mind to criticize, but I didn�t see anything. Mel Gibson should be complimented for what he did. He took Scripture and translated it in an honest way into a movie.�

While 4,000,000 people in the world still speak Aramaic, only 200,000 can read it and write it. Gabrail is one of those 200,000.

He said the language diminished because of the dying Assyrian identity, which was denied under the Iraqi government and rulers of Iraq like Saddam Hussein. As time passed, the Aramaic language became spoken less and less. Assyrians were not allowed to speak it in public and were not taught it in schools. They learned it through family and church.


[...]

Now that Hussein is gone, Gabrail hopes they can teach Aramaic in schools again.

The Aramaic language has been kept alive because of the Assyrians� religious faith. The church insisted that the language of prayer and mass remain Aramaic. However, Gabrail thinks it should not have to rely on the church.

�We want our identity intact based on rights, so individuals can say who they are,� he said.

Gabrail said the United States is concerned about preserving the identity of the Assyrians because the majority of Iraqis are trying to insert the word Islam in the new Iraqi constitution, something Assyrians do not like because they are Christians. Paul Bremmer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, is a supporter of the Assyrians and is trying to prevent this.

ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE has a new issue out (March/April 2004), which includes an article on That Movie and how, although archaeology really gives us no information about the events of the Passion, tourists keep going to look over the traditional spots anyhow. Core sound bite:

Archaeologists and historians are rapidly coming to the conclusion that, for most people, the past is a sort of theme park--and they want the themes to be familiar ones. "Everybody already thinks they know the story of Jesus," says [Paula] Fredricksen. "A truly ancient Jesus is just too different for audiences to deal with."

There is also a review of the "Petra: Lost City of Stone" exhibit in New York and an interview with museum curator Kenneth D.S. Lapatin about archaeological forgeries. Excerpt from the latter:

Forgery is closely linked to looting and it operates by many of the same mechanisms: the true origins of the object are necessarily erased, and fakes, like looted artifacts, often come on the art market with a false provenance. In my view, the only effective way to stop forgery, like looting, is not to try to cut off production, but rather to starve it, that is to say, to change the behavior, the desire, of consumers. But unlike the damage done by looters, that done by forgers is not irrevocable. A lost archaeological context can never be recovered, but a false antiquity can be removed from the corpus of genuine material. The damage can be undone.

REBECCA LESSES reviews Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Read both entries for March 6th. She opens:

I thought the Passion was a powerful film -- but in a very disturbed and violent way.

UPDATE (9 March): Goodacre fisks Lesses.

"PURIM STORY WOULD MAKE A SUPERB MOVIE," says Rabbi James Rudin in the Toronto Star.

I wonder if Mel Gibson is listening.

"RAIDERS OF THE LOST SYNAGOGUE." Arieh O'Sullivan of the Jerusalem Post looks at the problem of archaeological site looting in Israel and how it led to the excavation of the rich site Caphethra from the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt.

Ironically, it's because of these grave robbers that the Antiquities Authority, together with the Jewish National Fund, is opening a newly excavated ancient village this weekend in the Judean hills south of Beit Shemesh.

The organizers have planned a carnival at the site, called Hurvat Itri, this Saturday and Sunday (March 6 and 7) to coincide with Purim and the annual "Rural Food Festival" of the Yoav and Judean foothill communities.

[...]

"But this is the hottest area in the country for plundering ancient sites," says Amir Ganor, 35, the country's chief archeological cop.

As head of the Antiquities Authority's Unit for Prevention of Theft, Ganor says his dozen armed agents face a daunting task, since there are an estimated 50,000 archeological sites ripe for plunder in the Holy Land.

"One of them is right here," Ganor says, leading the way to Hurvat Itri, today a magnificently restored village from the Second Temple period. A hilltop like many others, it seemed to be a major draw for the grave robbers. Night after night in the late 1990s they dug up its ancient stones in search of treasure. In 1999, at least three gangs from the West Bank just two kilometers away were caught and jailed, but the looting continued. Driving them was a desire to find rare coins from the Bar Kochba revolt. Known as a sela in Hebrew or bawabeh in Arabic, each silver coin could fetch anywhere between $40,000 and $350,000.

In 2000, the Antiquities Authority began excavating the site, which yielded a wealth of undisturbed finds as well as what archeologists call the "missing link" to Jewish life here 1,870 years ago.

[...]

In the heart of the 50,000-dunam Adullam Cavern Park, near Moshav Tzafririm, the site contains beautiful ruins, including numerous ritual baths, decorated burial caves, and an amazing network of subterranean tunnels.

Ganor and archeologist Dr. Boaz Zissu led excavations for two years with the aid of unemployed locals - and even reformed grave robbers. One, named Sayid el-Amneh, proved to be invaluable in helping discover a total of eight underground tunnel networks. Three of these had not been touched since the Bar Kochba rebels hid there.

"It was the first time I was able to see a sealed tunnel network," Ganor says. "Items were lying on the ground where the rebels had left them. We simply had to come and gather them up. It was all very exciting."

There are about 6,000 known coins from the Bar Kochba period, nearly all discovered by grave robbers. In 1986, the Antiquities Authority did not have even one discovered in situ. Zissu and Ganor were able to find 1,000 from various periods on this site, including three extremely rare silver sela coins.

As valuable a find as it was, the place did not even have a name. It was referred to as Khirbet Hoch, after a family from Tzurif. But the mystery was solved when an ostracon was unearthed with the name Atra. From this, archeologists deduced that it was Kfar Atra, or the Caphethra mentioned in Josephus Flavius's historical account.

Apparently, one day in the summer of 69 CE, Cerealius, one of Emperor Vespasian's officers, led a small force of cavalry and foot troops and ravaged the village of Caphethra. The event was such a minor affair in the midst of the great revolt that Josephus recalled Caphethra as a place "which calls itself a town," adding that Cerealius vanquished it "in his stride and set it on fire."

After destroying the Second Temple in Jerusalem and carting off some of the survivors to slavery, the Romans were content. They did not cleanse the villages of the Judean Hills - a strategic mistake that would come back to haunt them 70 years later, when Bar Kochba organized his revolt from there.

Survivors rebuilt the village on a smaller scale and farmed grapes and figs. The hillside is speckled with numerous vats where the grapes were pressed. But the community added something new: a synagogue. At least this is what archeologists believe to be the purpose of a large hall facing Jerusalem.

[...]

Read it all.

MARK GOODACRE REVIEWS Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. He liked it.

THE FESTIVAL OF PURIM, as I noted yesterday, begins this evening at sundown.

I HAVE UPDATED yesterday's "Thoughts on Freedman's Article" post in order to respond to a third point he made.

THE MACCABEES � THE NEXT MEL GIBSON MOVIE?

It seems that PaleoJudaica may not have seen the last of Mel.

The first rumor flitting through the evangelical world is that the filmmaker intends to plow the profits from The Passion into a movie about the central characters of the holiday of Hanukkah, fighters called the Maccabees. Their story is told in sacred writings of the biblical period, although the two books of the same name are not officially a part of either testament.

Nearly 200 years before Jesus' birth, religious Jews in the land of Israel rose in violent rebellion against pagan occupiers and their Jewish allies.

[...]

The Maccabean uprising was sparked when a government official compelled a Jew to offer a pagan sacrifice. This sacrilegious act enraged a pious man named Mattathias, who killed the collaborator and the official with his sword, and then shouted to the crowd: "Whoever is for the Lord, follow me!"

Mattathias led his five sons and their followers into the hills, from which they launched a protracted guerrilla war, led by his son Judah, a brilliant military tactician. Bloody battles and torture ensued, as the outnumbered believers wore down their enemies, some of whom rode into the fray on armored elephants.

Maybe he can recycle the sets from The Return of the King.

In the end, after Mattathias died and several of his sons were killed in battle, the orthodox Jewish believers triumphed and the temple in Jerusalem was cleansed and restored to holiness. According to tradition, a remnant of sanctified oil in the temple lamp miraculously burned for eight days, until more could be found.

And here's another suggestion:

Last week, the American-born Israeli educator Yossi Katz suggested that Gibson's next film should be a dramatization of the Bar Kochba Revolt of A.D. 132-135. This rebellion took place a century after Jesus' death, and 60 years after a failed uprising against the Roman occupation that led to half a million Jewish deaths and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

Well, the gore potential in either should meet Mel's standards. What's next: 4 Maccabees, The Movie?

ISRAELI ARCHAEOLOGIST DR. DAN BAHAT will be lecturing in Western Canada on "In Search of the Ark of The Covenant & Jerusalem at the Time of Jesus." And I'm not making that title up.