INDIAN MANUSCRIPTS: Earlier this month I thought about blogging on an article about a project to conserve ancient (and more recent) manuscripts in India, on the grounds that there might be an Old Testament pseudepigraphon or two tucked among them. But then I thought that was reaching too far.

Scholars catalog ancient manuscripts to preserve 4,000-year history of India

Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post

Sunday, June 26, 2005

[...]

And so it goes, as India's 30,000 manuscript hunters fan out nationwide, seeking the nation's heritage in old temples, madrassas, mosques, monasteries, libraries and homes.

Launched two years ago, the National Mission for Manuscripts is a five- year project to catalog for the first time India's ancient documentary wealth and ensure that basic conservation practices are followed to halt their rapid decay. Officials say that India is the largest repository of manuscripts in the world, with an estimated 5 million texts in hundreds of languages.

Linguistic scholars and history students involved in this adventurous hunt for ancient volumes use not only expertise but also social skills, coaxing and cultural sensitivity to gain access to manuscripts.

[...]

The manuscript project's officials say the nationwide survey will open a window to India's ancient knowledge systems: religion, astronomy, astrology, art, architecture, science, literature, philosophy and mathematics.

"We are creating a manuscript map of India. The survey will present new facets to our intellectual heritage," says Sudha Gopalakrishnan, chief of the National Mission for Manuscripts. The project will not take the volumes from their owners but merely document what is available and help in conservation.

"The key abstracts of all the ancient knowledge found in our manuscripts will be available digitally for the world to see," Gopalakrishnan says

[...]

The oldest manuscripts that India possesses are a set of sixth century Buddhist texts that were found buried in the hills of Kashmir about 60 years ago. In the last two years, the surveyors have found rare ancient Sanskrit and Arabic treatises on such subjects as diabetes, astrophysics, interpretation of dreams, surgical instruments, concepts of time and the art of war. A 400-year- old handwritten Koran was found in a locket measuring 3 inches.

[...]

It seems I was wrong. Recently, while going through our list of texts for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project, I noticed that one of the documents, the Words of Gad the Seer, being prepared by Dr. Meir Bar-Ilan, survives in a single eighteenth-century Hebrew manuscript from Cochin, India. Let's hope that the National Mission for Manuscripts finds more like it.

APOCRYPHA WATCH: Some good advice from Kansas Senator Sam Brownback to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts:

The men did not discuss their shared Catholic faith, but Brownback did urge Roberts to read the Book of Wisdom, a book in the Old Testament Apocrypha.

"There's a chapter about how we are judged at the end," Brownback said. "Those who are judges and leaders are held to a higher standard -- that what we do be the right thing to do and that we apply justice. I did recommend that he read that at some point in time."

CONGRATULATIONS to Philip Alexander, Professor of Post-Biblical Jewish Literature at the University of Manchester, who has been elected to be a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). A well-deserved honor!

MY "LOST BOOKS" POST has been extensively updated over the weekend.

UPDATE (26 July): And it's still being updated. Keep checking.

APOCALYPTO, Mel Gibson's next movie, is to be filmed in an "obscure Mayan dialect" according to Variety. Now can someone tell me what filmworthy event happened among the Mayans 3,000 years ago?

UPDATE: I'm not subscribed to Variety, but this Google excerpt from the article reads "Set 500 years ago, pic will be filmed in an obscure Mayan dialect, presumably with the same kind of subtitles Gibson reluctantly added to "The Passion of the [Christ]". Five hundred years ago would make more sense.

UPDATE: Bryan Cox e-mails:

It's just a guess on my part, but Gibson's Mayan movie may have something to do with the fact that the Mayan calendar ends on December 21st, 2012. This seems to have inspired many "end-of-the-world" stories. If you google "Maya 2012" (or some derivation of that), you'll find lots of information.

The first place I ever bumped into this fact about the Mayan calendar was in "Breaking the Mayan Code" by Michael D. Coe, a very interesting account of the decipherment of Mayan script.

UPDATE (26 July): Yep, it's 500 years. Here's a Reuters article.

MORE ON THE JEHOASH INSCRIPTION from the Bible and Intepretation website;

The Jehoash Inscription: An Evaluative Summary


The strength of the forgery position is the cumulative weight of all the objections that have been raised rather than any single objection taken alone.

By Stuart A. Irvine and Charles David Isbell
Jewish Studies
Louisiana State University
July 2005

They seem to want to keep the possibility of its genuiness open, mainly on the grounds that we don't know the Hebrew of the period very well. You can see some of my thoughts on the inscription here. I haven't had time to read the essay carefully yet. I may have more to say later.

MORE ON THE PROPOSED SILWAN HOUSING DEMOLITIONS:

Trouble brews over homes at ancient Jerusalem site
Fri Jul 22, 2005 2:13 AM BST

By Cynthia Johnston

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A new row is rumbling in Jerusalem over the fate of dozens of Arab houses on land that may have been the gardens of biblical King David's capital and next to where Christians believe Jesus performed miracles.

On one side are Palestinian residents of Bustan, a hamlet of about 80 homes.

On the other are Israeli authorities who say some houses may face demolition because they were built illegally on land set aside for a park. Israeli archaeologists also want the ground cleared.

[...]

Many residents of Bustan say they have received demolition orders and are challenging them in court. Several have exhausted court challenges and their homes could now face demolition, community leaders say.

[...]

Meanwhile, Israeli archaeologists are keen for the land to be cleared. It lies atop what they believe were royal gardens at the foot of Kind David's capital. Nearby is the Siloam pool, where the New Testament says Jesus gave a blind man sight.

"We hope that somebody will help us in this fight to protect the area," said Yuval Baruch, Jerusalem District Archaeologist for the Israel Antiquities Authority.

"We just asked the municipality to do their job, not to allow people to build without permission... And if somebody does that, they have to take action to remove his house, not just in this area, but all over Israel."

Sami Ersheid, a lawyer representing many of the residents, dismissed the calls for preservation.

"Wherever any prophet touched his foot on the earth, do we have to preserve it until the end of this world?" he said.

[...]

Sounds like a messy situation.

ERIC AND CAROL MEYERS, along with the Sepphoris excavation, are profiled in a Durham Herald-Sun article:

Duke husband-and-wife archaeologists renowned for decades of field studies


By PAUL BONNER : The Herald-Sun
pbonner@heraldsun.com
Jul 23, 2005 : 11:40 pm ET

DURHAM -- The excavators were turning up tesserae, small bits of colored tile, that told Eric and Carol Meyers a mosaic probably lay beneath.

The Duke archaeologists and a team were digging in a banquet hall of a Roman-style villa at Sepphoris, four miles from Nazareth and not far from the Sea of Galilee in Israel. It was July 2, 1987, a Friday afternoon.

[...]

And from the same source, an article on the disagreement between Eric Meyers and Hershel Shanks over the James Ossuary.

one box bedevils friendship


By PAUL BONNER : The Herald-Sun
pbonner@heraldsun.com
Jul 23, 2005 : 11:41 pm ET

DURHAM -- Few single archaeological artifacts have stirred as much controversy as the so-called James ossuary.

It has placed Duke archaeologist Eric Meyers and an erstwhile friend, Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archeology Review, at odds -- with Meyers among those doubting the authenticity of a key phrase of its inscription.

[...]

HOMICIDE BOMBERS -- BLAME THE JEWS? And Christians. There's an article by a psychologist named Rona Fields in a Canadian publication called the Tyee which tries to explain the mentality and historical origins of homicide bombing.

The Deadly Martyr Complex
Suicide bombers seek love and acceptance

The subtitle may be tongue in cheek, but it's still tacky and insulting to the many who have been murdered and maimed by these monsters, including the recent victims in Iraq, London, Israel, and Egypt. But authors don't write headlines, so this is probably from an editor who was trying to be cute.

I won't comment on the psychological part of the article, but here's what she has to say about historical origins:

Their choice isn’t a new one. Terrorism became the primary tool of anarchists and nihilists in the late nineteenth century. But martyrdom homicides go back historically to at least the time of the ancient Zealots of Judea.

Two millennia of martyrdom

The idea of martyrdom never had a name in Hebrew or Aramaic. Instead it derives from the Greek, mytros or witness. The early Christians, who were tortured to death for their witnessing for Christ, became the martyrs memorialized on icons. These iconic images proved a powerful attraction both for group memory and for exciting new adherents or followers.

Islam adopted the martyrdom image despite he fact that they eschewed graven images of human beings. But the grandson of Mohammed who stated that it is better to die in dignity than to live in humiliation became the iconic figure for Shia Islam. Those who die on the path to Allah become martyrs in Islam. Similarly, Pope Urban II recruiting for the Crusades promised that all who died in the reclamation of the Holy Land from the infidels would be forgiven all venal sins and ascend immediately to Heaven (paradise).There is historical precedent on all sides.

There's quite a bit of goalpost moving here. The "Zealots" (I think she means the Sicarii) did not engage in homicide "martyrdoms." The Latin word sicarius means "dagger assassin." They would get close to a target in a crowd, stab the target with a small dagger hidden on their person, then melt back into the crowd and get away. This is assassination, it is not a homicide "martyrdom": the objective was for the assassin to get away.

One could argue that the Sicarii who died at Masada were "martyrs" and that they committed suicide, but they were not suicide martyrs in the sense the phrase is used today in militant Islamist circles. According to Josephus' account (Antiquities 8.8-9, the specifics of which we, however, have considerable reason to doubt), they voluntarily committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans. This was a horrific decision based, rightly or wrongly, on their unwillingness to submit to slavery or worse by the Romans. Perhaps Dr. Fields considers them "martyrdom homicides" because they killed their wives and children too. Again, without trying to justify that decision, it was an intragroup attempt to choose the least of very great evils for the group and, according to Josephus, the wives were fully involved in the decision. But this, if anything like it really did happen, is quite different from today's "suicide bombers": the Sicarii did not use suicide as a way of killing innocent civilian noncombatants on the enemy side as a terror tactic. This is one of the reasons I prefer the term "homicide bomber" to "suicide bomber" (although neither is entirely satisfactory). The point is that the suicide is used to kill innocent people on the other side.

In short: the first-century "Zealots," i.e., Sicarii, did not engage in "martyrdom homicides" in the modern sense.

Two small points: you would think that someone who had just written a book on martyrdom would be able to write out the Greek word for "martyr" (martys or martus -- μαρτυς [sorry, originally had genitive form here]) properly. And you would think that she would have found out that the Hebrew term for "martyrdom" is qiddush ha-Shem (קדוש השם), "sanctification of the Name (of God)."

Then there's the matter of Christian martyrdom, which has been a value in Christianity pretty much from its inception. But nonviolence and purely passive resitance have been part of this ideology from the beginning. The martyr does not commit suicide; he or she declines to resist when someone, usually the authorities, executes the martyr because of the martyr's religious beliefs. No suicide and no killing other people.

Then there is the issue of martyrdom in war: the doctrine that soldiers who die in battle for a particular cause will go immediately to heaven or paradise. This has certainly been an Islamic idea going back to the Hadith (the early non-Qur'anic traditions about the life of Muhammad). I wasn't aware that the Crusaders used it as well, but it doesn't surprise me that they did. But even this -- and, again, I am not justifying it -- is quite a distance from homicide "martyrdom." Telling a soldier that if he dies in battle he will go to heaven will make him a fiercer fighter, but it's not the same as telling him to kill himself in such a way that he murders as many innocent civilians as possible (thousands in the case of 9/11). There is no moral equivalence.

When did homicide "martyrdoms" start?

Nationalist ideas blended with religious, and the connection of maryrdom with terrorism merged fully during the Civil War in Lebanon in the 1980’s. Suicide bombings of the American Embassy in Beirut and the Marine Corps barracks on the perimeter of that city and the relentless suicide bombings of the Israeli forces and their Lebanese allies, the SLA in southern Lebanon were claimed by their perpetrators as the most successful weapon of mass destruction and least costly to produce.

In the 1980s in militant fundamentalist Islamist circles. This is what Dr. Fields pretty much admits here, it's what I read elsewhere, and it agrees with my own memories.

I hope the pyschology part of this article is better researched and reasoned than the historical part.

UPDATE: The Sunday Times repeats the same meme. Response here.

THE JEWISH CATACOMB STORY is taken up by the Los Angeles Times in a short article. (Requires free registration.)

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Gabriel Barkay and his team appear not to have run out of money yet. They're still sifting rubble from the Waqf's illicit excavations of the Temple Mount. Christianity Today has the latest:

70 Truckloads of Treasures
Temple Mount dig uncovers new finds.
by Gordon Govier | posted 07/21/2005 09:00 a.m.

Overlooking Jerusalem at Tzurim Valley National Park, archaeologists and volunteers work on one of Jerusalem's most unusual excavations. They are sifting tons of dirt removed in 1999 by Islamic work crews who were remodeling an underground area of the Temple Mount—known as Solomon's Stables—to create the Marwani Mosque (CT, March 6, 2000, p. 27).

[...]

The biggest surprise has been large amounts of remains from the early Christian or Byzantine period.

Barkay said part of Jerusalem's history will have to be rewritten. Most historians thought the Temple Mount was largely deserted then.

Although they are only about halfway through the 70 truckloads of dirt, Barkay planned to stop the process at the end of June in order to analyze the finds. He said he doesn't know when they'll start up again. Funding remains a critical issue.

Indeed. Michael Pahl ask whether this might not be "a not-so-implicit appeal to wealthy American evangelicals to fund the project?" I hope some of them take it as such.

THE SEVEN-DAY WEEK: according to Jack Sasson, we have the ancient Israelites to thank for it.

APOCALYPTO -- the next Mel Gibson movie:

Gibson Faces Apocalypto Now
Mel directs another historical epic (Empire Online)
22 July 2005

Last year, he made one of the world's biggest ever indie films. Now, Mel Gibson is returning to ancient history to write and direct Apocalypto, which readers may be relieved / disappointed to know is "not religious in theme" and which is, we're promised, more of an action movie.

The story is set in "an ancient civilisation" some 3,000-odd years ago. While the title might suggest that this is the mother of all disaster movies, it is in fact a Greek word meaning "an unveiling" or a "new beginning", rather than, say, the end of all creation (cause, you know, we're still here). ...

Obviously related to the word "apocalyptic," which does mean "revelation" or "unveiling." "Apocalypto" looks faux-Italian to me.

What's not clear is whether this is the same ancient action movie that Gibson was planning last year. That was based on the Jewish story of the Maccabees, a group that rose up in rebellion against a corrupt King, and reconsecrated the defiled Temple in Jerusalem. However, the fact that their story, while not Biblical, is the basis for the Jewish feast of Hanukah, and that this film is not religious in theme, means that he may have written a different story in the intervening months.

If Gibson did say the movie is set 3000 years ago, it can't be about the Maccabean revolt. It took place in 167-165 BCE, less than 2200 years ago. This wouldn't have been all that hard to look up.

What happened to Boudicca?

The only promising event from 3000 years ago I can think of is the conquest of Jerusalem by David, but that's just a wild guess. It may be from an entirely different part of the world. We'll see. If he really does this one, I hope it's filmed in another ancient language.

UPDATE: Carla Sulzbach e-mails:

now, here's an idea: a movie about the destruction of Ugarit - that's only slightly over 3000 years ago. There are many questions to be apocalypted: who where the Ugaritans, how was the city destroyed, and.... most vexing: how correctly to vocalize that tantalizing language. Subtitles could be in cuneiform, Hebrew and Roman and perhaps in Aramaic for Mel's earlier audience. This could be followed up by Ugaritic action figures - cool gods too!

Just an idea on another very hot day.

Apocalypted?

UPDATE (25 July): The mystery is revealed here.

MORE TERRORISM IN LONDON: There have been four "attempts" at explosions in London, at least one of which may have been an actual explosion. The events are centered in Warren Street, Oval Street, and Shephards Bush. There seems be a bus involved too at Hackney Road. So far no casualties have been reported. Some Tube lines have been shut down. I'm listening to the BBC right now. The Command Post is also updating regularly. Speculation that this is a botched attack in which only the detonators went off in three cases and the scenes may provide the authorities with important forensic evidence.

UPDATE (22 July): So the Al-Qaeda weenies missed. Nyah, nyah, nyah! Losers. I don't doubt that they'll try again, but I hope this is a sign that our efforts against them worldwide are wearing them down.

This weekend let's all hoist a tankard for London and spit on the floor for Al-Qaeda.

MORE FROM UNESCO:

Twenty-nine new documentary collections inscribed on the Memory of the World Register

21-06-2005 11:10 am Twenty-nine documentary collections in 24 countries have been inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. These additions bring to 120 the total number of inscriptions on the Register to date. They include, for the first time, collections from Albania, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Cuba, Italy, Lebanon, Namibia, Portugal, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom and United States of America. The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, approved the inscriptions, which were recommended by the 14-member International Advisory Committee of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme.

[...]

Some interesting documents and collections include:

Albania - Codex Beratinus 1 and 2, of the 6th and 9th centuries respectively. Beratinus 1 is one of the three or four oldest surviving Gospel codices and contains non-standard pre-canonical passages. Beratinus 2 contains Gospel writings from the standard-text period. Its uniqueness stems mainly from its format: gold letters on purple parchment. The codices are kept at the National Archives of Albania in Tirana.

Italy - The Malatesta Novello Library. The library contains works on philosophy, theology and biblical nature as well as classical and scientific books from different provenances. It is a rare example of a complete, beautifully preserved collection from the mid-15th century, just before the advent of printing in Europe. The collection is a unique example of a humanistic library of the Renaissance, a time when the dominance of Christian writing and teaching was giving way to more secular considerations. The collection is kept in its original building in the town of Cesena.

Lebanon - Evolution of the Phoenician Alphabet. The inscribed alphabet on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram of Byblos, 13th century B.C., is the earliest known example of alphabetical as opposed to hieroglyphic or cuneiform writing. It is the base from which most subsequent alphabets have been developed. The sarcophagus is kept by the National Museum in Beirut.

Lebanon - Commemorative stela of Nahr el-Kalb, Mount Lebanon. The Commemorative Stele of Nahr el-Kalb on Mount Lebanon are a series of stones pillars depicting Lebanese history from the 14th century B.C. to the present through the inscriptions left by successive armies, Pharaonic, Assyro-Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Arab, French and British. Situated on a strategic north-south road, the stela, carved with inscriptions in different languages, evoke the history of Lebanon and testify to its relations with the rest of the Middle East and the West.

Back when I was following such things closely, it was generally agreed that the Ahiram inscription was from the 10th century BCE, not the 13th.

DISENGAGEMENT IN GAZA could create a messy situation regarding antiquities and archaeology:

Palestinians: Israel to steal artifacts
By ORLY HALPERN (Jerusalem Post)

Palestinian archaeologists say they fear that when Israel withdraws from Gaza it will also take priceless archeological artifacts. Israeli officials have acknowledged this is a possibility.

[...]

According to international law, it is illegal for an occupying power to remove ancient artifacts, movable and immovable, from the land.

But Israel accuses the Palestinians of being unable to safeguard ancient sites in the West Bank's Areas A and B, under Palestinian control, where looting by Palestinians is common and most of the looted items are sold to Israelis.

[...]

Everyone seems to agree that current Israeli antiquities laws are part of the problem.

There is also this claim from the Palestine News Agency:

Israeli Bulldozers Destroy Remains of Byzantium Church in Gaza

GAZA, July 20, 2005, (WAFA)- Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MTA) revealed Wednesday that Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) destroyed a very important archeological site south of Gaza.
.
. Director General of MTA, Dr. Moin Sadeq, told WAFA that Israeli troops razed yesterday (Tuesday) a site of huge remains of Byzantium Church, close to the shore of Deir Albalah City, south of Gaza.

[...]

I'm taking this report with a good pinch of salt unless it is confirmed by major mainstream media.

A JEWISH CATACOMB IN ROME is in the news:

Jewish catacomb came first, study finds
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Jewish catacomb in Rome predates its Christian counterparts by at least 100 years, indicating that burial in the city's sprawling underground cemeteries may not have begun as a Christian practice, according to a study published Wednesday.

Scholars have long believed early Christians were the first to bury their dead in Roman catacombs. But Dutch experts from Utrecht University who dated organic material from a Jewish catacomb in the city say it appears early Christians inherited the practice from Jews.

[...]

The research has just been published in Nature:

Death in Rome

Radiocarbon dating of wood from one the Jewish Villa Torlonia catacombs (underground cemeteries) to the northeast of Rome shows that it pre-dates its Christian counterparts by 100 years or more. This suggests that burial in Roman catacombs may not have been a strictly Christian practice, as is commonly believed, and that its origin may lie in Jewish traditions.

Brief Communications:
Radiocarbon dating: Jewish inspiration of Christian catacombs

A Jewish cemetery in ancient Rome harbours a secret that bears on the history of early Christianity.

Leonard V. Rutgers, Klaas van der Borg, Arie F. M. de Jong and Imogen Poole

The site requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access the article.

THE JOURNAL OF SEMITIC STUDIES has a new issue out (50.1, Spring 2005). Here is the table of contents:

M.E.J. Richardson
The First Fifty Years: Background and History
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 1-22

Victor Sasson
The Tell Dan Aramaic Inscription: The Problems of a New Minimized Reading
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 23-34

Aaron Schade
A Text Linguistic Approach to the Syntax and Style of the Phoenician Inscription of Azatiwada
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 35-58

Hans Rechenmacher and Christo H.J. van der Merwe
The Contibution of Wolfgang Richter to Current Developments in the Study of Biblical Hebrew
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 59-82

Bernard S. Jackson
Revolution in Biblical Law: Some Reflections on the Role of Theory in Methodology
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 83-116

Philip Davies
Crypto-Minimalism
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 117-136

Erik S. Ohlander
Fear of God (taqwa) in the Qur'an: Some Notes on Semantic Shift and Thematic Context
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 137-152

Alan S. Kaye
Semantic Transparency and Number Marking in Arabic and Other Languages
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 153-196

Plus lots of interesting book reviews.

The abstracts are free, but the site requires a paid personal or institutional subscription to access the PDF files of the articles and reviews.

WISH LIST OF LOST BOOKS: Michael Pahl writes:

I've often thought what a boon it would be to New Testament scholarship if we could have a copy of Papias' "Expositions of the Logia of the Lord." Given Papias' desire for living tradition over against written record, it could provide tremendously valuable insights into the nature of the oral Jesus tradition at the beginning of the second century and perhaps shed more light on that oral tradition back into the first century. I was just reminded of this today, and this led me to think about this more broadly: Out of all the lost documents related to early Christianity--those mentioned by early Christians but no longer extant, those for which we have fragments or quotations but not whole manuscripts--which would I most wish to be discovered?

After giving his list he adds:

Anyone else have a similar wishlist? If we hurry, we may get it off in time for Christmas... :-)

This is a subject near and dear to my heart, since the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project on which my colleague Richard Bauckham and I are working, aims to include a list of all Old Testament pseudepigrapha mentioned in surviving literature from antiquity to the present, whether or not the works survive themselves. So here is my preliminary list of now lost or highly fragmentary ancient pseudepigrapha of which I would like to have complete manuscripts in their original languages.

The Stichometry of Nicephorus mentions:

• The Testament of Moses
  
• The Assumption of Moses
  
• Eldad and Modad
  
• Of the Prophet Elias
  
• Of the Prophet Sophonais
  
• Of Zacharias the father of John
  
• Pseudepigrapha of Baruch, Ambacum (Habakkuk), Ezekiel, and Daniel

The List of the Sixty Books mentions some of these and also (some overlap?):

• Adam
  
• Lamech
  
• Vision of Esaias
  
• Apocalypse of Sophonias
  
• Apocalypse of Zacharias

The Gelasian Decree mentions in addition (again, possibly some overlap with above?):

• The book, concerning the daughters of Adam, of Leptogenesis
  
• The book which is called the Penitence of Adam
  
• The book concerning the giant named Ogias who is stated by the heretics to have fought with a dragon after the Flood
  
• The book which is called the Penitence of Jannes and Mambres
  
• The Writing which is called the Interdiction (or Contradiction) of Solomon

We have bits of some of these, but none (or at least very few) of them complete. Add to them the Aramaic Book of Giants (see also here) and the Nazarene Apocryphon of Jeremiah in Hebrew, mentioned by Jerome.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head (with the help of M. R. James's The Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament). If I've missed some lost Old Testament pseudepigrapha known only by title or small fragment, drop me a note and let me know.

Incidentally, some very good news about our More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project is going to be announced soon. Watch this space.

Also, blogging may be light for a while. The page proofs for my book, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? have arrived, thanks to a remarkably quick production on Brill's part. I was just getting started on them this afternoon when I got a call from the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha asking if they could e-mail me the proofs for my 27,000-word article, "(How) Can We Tell If a Greek Apocryphon or Pseudepigraphon Has Been Translated from Hebrew or Aramaic?" and would I be able to manage a turnaround by Monday. (The narrow window is due to a technical glitch that is no one's fault and it can't be helped.) This is good news, since it means that the article should be out next month and the book in the fall. But it also does mean that I'm going to be pretty busy reading proofs and supervising the book indexing for some time. Bear with me.

UPDATE: Michael Turton and Stephen Carlson post their wish lists. And Jim West posts his.

UPDATE (21 July): Ken Ristau posts his wish list.

UPDATE (22 July): Manuscript Boy posts his medieval wish list. But one of his wished-for books is in the future.

UPDATE (24 July): Justin Dombrowski posts his wish list of five. I also especially covet his first two.

UPDATE (25 July): Christopher Heard weighs in at Higgaion. I've thought of some more, which I'll try to post presently.

LATER: Lost treatises of the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria: three books missing from Questions and Answers on Exodus, one book from Drunkenness, and three books from Dreams. We also lack That Every Fool is a Slave (the companion piece to Good Person), two books On Covenants, a treatise On Rewards, the lives of Isaac and Jacob, perhaps a companion piece to Contempl. Life, and the promised sequel to Eternity (assuming it was written). There are also references to a treatise On Piety, although it has also been suggested that this is another name for Virtues. (The treatise names are from the SBL Handbook.) A number of Philo's treatises also survive only in Armenian translation, and I would like the Greek originals of those too, please.

I should perhaps also note the "external books" forbidden by R. Akiva in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 10.1), although these are to be read at your own risk! Then there's also the passage in Mishnah Pesahim 4.9 (some manuscripts) which refers to a "book of healings" suppressed by King Hezekiah. Not that there was such a book in Hezekiah's time, but it's possible that a pseudepigraphon with that description was circulating in the Tannaitic period.

UPDATE: Ellen Birnbaum, Philo scholar, e-mails to say she approves of my list of lost Philonica. She adds:

Years ago, Hanan Eshel mentioned to me as a great desideratum the history of the Jewish war against Rome by Justus of Tiberias. (Though this is [probably] non-biblical, I thought I'd mention it anyway.)

In Against Apion, Josephus cites several sources that would illuminate our knowledge about attitudes of non-Jews towards Jews, and there are also the fragmentary Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs (CPJ 2: nos. 154-59). Though your criteria for inclusion may be Bible-related works, some of these (esp. counter-accounts of the Exodus) may fall into that category in a perverse sort of way!

UPDATE (26 July): Reader Eric Rowe e-mails:

FWIW, at the top of my wish list would be Origen's Hexapla, partly for the (albeit possibly few) new readings, but mainly for its sheer importance.

Indeed. Also, on the H-Judaic list, Michael Stone is looking for the Book of Noah in rabbinic and later literature:

First, any references in Rabbinic or later texts to a book, testament or other document attributed to Noah. I am, of course, familiar with Sefer Noah in Jellineck, Bet HaMidrash.

If he finds any references, I hope he will share them with the list.

Also, Joe Cathey points to excerpts from a classical article on the Book of Giants by W. B. Henning which is now online. It discusses the story of Ogias the giant.

UPDATE: Brandon Wason has some suggestions over at Novum Testamentum.

UPDATE (5 August): Speaking of ancient lost books, many of these books might as well be lost for all people know about them, but thanks to new funding for the MOTP project, you should be able to read them soon.

UPDATE (30 December 2006): I've added to my lost books wish list here and here. See also here and here.

I HOPE THIS STORY gets as much attention as Silwan and Babylon have:

Developers and purists erase Mecca's history

By Laith Abou-Ragheb

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Some of Islam's historic sites in Mecca, possibly including a home of the Prophet Mohammad, are under threat from Saudi real estate developers and Wahhabi Muslims who view them as promoting idolatry.

Sami Angawi, an expert on the region's Islamic architecture, said 1,400-year-old buildings from the early Islamic period risk being demolished to make way for high rise towers for Muslims flocking to perform the annual pilgrimage to Islam's holiest city.

"We are witnessing now the last few moments of the history of Mecca," Angawi told Reuters. "Its layers of history are being bulldozed for a parking lot," he added.

[...]

I have nothing against commercial development and better housing in Mecca, but they should not come at the expense of the city's historic architecture.