TEN DEAD SEA SCROLLS are coming to Discovery Place, in Charlotte, and the museum is gearing up. Here are some interesting details about the preparation:

"We quickly found out that we would have to build the whole exhibition from the ground up, every panel," said Joanie Philips, the museum's director of major projects.

The exhibit hall will be 11,000 square feet. It must be exactly the right climate so that the scrolls don't dry out.

"We had to redo all of our heating and air conditioning systems because we have to maintain a two-point difference in our humidity and temperature," Philips said Wednesday.

Ten authentic scrolls will be showcased in Charlotte. The cases that hold them will have the same lighting system that is used for the Declaration of Independence. Fiber-optic rays will minimize exposure.

"Every 30 seconds, those lights will cycle off for seven seconds to give a rest," Philips said. "You have to be very careful about showing those."

THE VIRTUAL TALMUD BLOG is a new addition to the Beliefnet website.

About Virtual Talmud:
In the spirit of the rabbinic tradition, Beliefnet has asked three rabbis to create a virtual Talmud, blogging on Judaism and the world today. Unlike the talmudic arguments of old, the interactivity of Virtual Talmud makes it possible for any member of our community to talk back to the learned teachers and to each other.

Meet our bloggers:
Rabbi Susan Grossman, a Conservative rabbi, is the rabbi of Beth Shalom Congregation in Columbia, Maryland. Rabbi Eliyahu Stern, an Orthodox rabbi, received rabbinic ordination and an M.A. in Talmud from Yeshiva University. Rabbi Joshua Waxman, a Reconstructionist rabbi, is the spiritual leader of Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation, located in Fort Washington, PA.

THE "TREE OF PARADISE: JEWISH MOSAICS FROM THE ROMAN EMPIRE" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in New York is covered in a Christian Science Monitor article:

Jewish life, portrayed in stone

By Christopher Andreae

This mosaic is from a group of floor mosaics unexpectedly discovered in 1883 in Tunisia. A French army captain, Ernest de Prudhomme, ordered his soldiers to make a garden in his backyard in Naro, the town now called Hammam Lif. Instead they unearthed what proved to be the remains of an ancient Jewish synagogue.

In 1905, some of the mosaics from this building were acquired by the Brooklyn Museum in New York. They are currently on display at the museum until June 4 in the exhibition, "Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics From the Roman Empire." Their meaning is discussed in a new book by Edward Bleiberg, the museum's curator of Egyptian, classical, and ancient Middle Eastern art.

[...]

A WELL-DESERVED DEFEAT:

Shock double defeat for Government

Ministers were examining how they suffered a shock double defeat over plans to combat religious hatred.

Tony Blair was dealt his second and third Commons defeats since coming to power as MPs backed House of Lords objections to the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill.

And in a further embarrassment for the Prime Minister, it emerged he did not vote in the second division - which the Government lost by just one vote.

[...]

Peers had inflicted a series of defeats on the Bill in a bid to safeguard freedom of speech with an amendment restricting the new offence of inciting religious hatred to threatening words and behaviour rather than a wider definition also covering insults and abuse.

They also required the offence to be intentional, and specified that criticism, insult, abuse and ridicule of religion, belief or religious practice would not be an offence.

Ministers urged the Commons to reject the Lords' amendments and back a Government compromise instead. Home Office Minister Paul Goggins insisted that only those intending to "stir up hatred" would be caught under the Government's plans.

[...]

Home Secretary Charles Clarke quickly announced that the Government was bowing to the Commons' will, and that the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill would go for Royal Assent to become law as it stood.

I think the bill as it stands is unnecessary: direct threats and incitements to criminal acts (not thoughts!) are already illegal. It's probably also still subject to abuse by the Government once it becomes law. But it's a vast improvement over the original, on which I have commented in detail here.

UPDATE: On a not unrelated note, buy Danish! (Background here.) I like Carlsberg beer!

UPDATE (2 February): You can see the offending cartoons for yourself here. If such things bother you, don't click on the link. They're not much to my taste, and some are downright tasteless, but I object to them being censored. (Via the Penkill Papers.)

NEW ENOCHIANA -- Gabriele Boccaccini e-mails the follow to the Enoch Seminar:

The year 2005 has been a good year for Enochic Studies:

2005

(a) Four new Enoch books have been published:

Siam Bhayro
The Shemihazah and Asael Narrative in 1 Enoch 6-11: Introduction, Text, Translation and Commentary with Reference to Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Antecedents
Munster: Ugaritic-Verlag, 2005

Gabriele Boccaccini, ed.
Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005

Andrei Orlov
The Enoch-Metatron Tradition
Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2005

Annette Yoshiro Reed
Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005

(b) Two volumes have been reissued:

Margaret Barker
The Lost Prophet: The Book of Enoch and Its Influence on Christianity 1988; repr. Sheffield: Phoenix, 2005

David Suter
Tradition and Composition in the Parables of Enoch
1979; Atlanta: Scholars, 2005

(c) Charles‚ book on Enoch has been translated into Spanish:

R. H. Charles
El libro de Enoc, el Profeta
Madrid: Edaf, 2005

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has published a new issue (9.1; January 2006). Here's the table of contents:

Papers

A Sixteenth-Century Batrashil in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jennifer L. Ball

Ecclesiastics and Ascetics: Finding Spiritual Authority in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Palestine.
Jennifer L. Hevelone-Harper, Gordon College

Possible historical traces in the Doctrina Addai.
Ilaria Ramelli, Catholic University of Milan

Publications and Book Reviews

Recent Books on Syriac Topics.
Sebastian P. Brock, Oxford University

Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West.
Robert A. Kitchen, Knox-Metropolitan United Church

Joanna Weinberg, Azariah de' Rossi's Observations on the Syriac New Testament: A Critique of the Vulgate by a Sixteenth-century Jew.
P.J. Williams, University of Aberdeen

Announcement

Dorushe Graduate Student Conference for Syriac Studies at CUA, February 3-5, 2006.

Advertisements

Journal of Aramaic Studies

Beth Mardutho Amazon Associates

Journal of the Canadian Society of Syriac Studies

Gorgias Press

ANCIENT BURIAL CAVE DISCOVERY:

Boys find Second Temple burial cave near Beit Shemesh
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post

In a scene out of the Hollywood Indiana Jones, three Israeli children stumbled upon an ancient Second Temple cave in the Beit Shemesh area filled with skeletons and ossuaries, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Monday.

The boys, ages 11-13, who discovered the heretofore unknown cave during a scout's cave-hunt, were awarded a certificate of recognition for reporting their finds to the Antiquities Authority.

[...]

It sounds as though the cave may have been undisturbed since antiquity, which would make it an especialy important find. Well done, guys!

THE MASADA DATE SPROUT IS REPORTEDLY STILL THRIVING:

2,000-Year-Old Judean Date Seed Growing Successfully
18:07 Jan 30, '06 / 1 Shevat 5766
By Ezra HaLevi

A 2,000 year old date seed planted last Tu B’Shvat has sprouted and is over a foot tall. Being grown at Kibbutz Ketura in the Negev, it is the oldest seed to ever produce a viable young sapling.

[...]

As this year’s Tu B’Shvat (The 15th of the Jewish month of Shvat, the Jewish new year for trees) approaches, the young tree that sprouted from one of the three seeds now has five leaves (one was removed for scientific testing) and is 14 inches tall. [the cultivator Elain] Solowey has named it Metushelah (Methusaleh), after the 969-year-old grandfather of Noah, the oldest human being recorded in the Torah.

[...]

I say "reportedly" because something seems dodgy with this Arutz Sheva article. The most recent report before it, which I noted in November of 2005, said the sprout was nearly three feet tall (80 centimeters) and had already sprouted nine leaves. The information in yesterday's article thus seems out of date. But if there were any problems with the sprout, I imagine we would have heard of them, so I assume it's still okay.

HOW TO READ THE BIBLE, a new book by Marc Zvi Brettler, is covered in an NPR article that includes a long excerpt from the first chapter:

'How to Read the Bible' Through History

(Heads up, Ian Werrett.)

MORE ON THE LOS LUNAS INSCRIPTION: A reader informs me that this stone has been the subject of controversy for a while. You can read a page from the New Mexico State Land Office here which notes some entertainingly daft speculation. But it seems that Cyrus Gordon accepted this inscription as ancient, but he thought it was Samaritan and from the Byzantine era. (More on the inscription here.) (You may recall that Gordon also accepted a supposedly Phoenician inscription from Brazil as genuine, although it was rejected as a forgery by Phoenician specialist J. Friedrich and renowned epigrapher Frank Moore Cross Jr.)

Also, Professor James Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte has written that he is "tentatively convinced" that the Los Lunas inscription is ancient as well. I don't know of any Northwest Semitic epigraphers who agree, or of any peer-review publications supporting its genuineness. Count me as extremely skeptical, but it's not something I've put any time into, nor do I intend to.

If you're interested, here is the reference to Gordon's article. Our library doesn't carry this journal and I am not inclined to burn an interlibrary loan point for the piece.

Cyrus H. Gordon, "Diffusion of Near East Culture in Antiquity and in Byzantine Times," Orient 30-31 (1995): 69-81

Here is the bibliography on the Parahyba inscription from Brazil (all of it that I'm aware of, anyway). All but the last reference are from the journal Orientalia, vol. 37 (1968).

• Cyrus H. Gordon, "The Authenticity of the Phoenician Text from Parahyba," pp 75-80
  
• Gordon, "The Canaanite Text from Brazil," pp. 425-36
  
• Gordon, "Reply to Professor Cross," pp. 461-63
  
• J. Freidrich, "Die Unechtheit de phönizischen Inscrift aus Parhyba," pp. 421-24
  
• Frank Moore Cross Jr., "The Phoenician Inscription from Brazil. A Nineteenth-Century Forgery," pp. 437-60
  
• Cross, "Phoenicians in Brazil?" Biblical Archaeology Review, Jan/Feb 1979, pp. 36-43

UPDATE: Reader Duane Smith e-mails that Gordon also has a more popular treatment of the Parahyba inscription in Before Columbus, Links Between the Old World and Ancient America, 1971, pp. 120-126, which I have not seen.

IN THE MAIL: Well, actually, delivered by hand. Philip Esler is up from Bristol and today he gave me a copy of:

Philip F. Esler (ed)., Ancient Israel: The Old Testament In It's Social Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005)

This is a volume of essays from this 2004 conference at St. Mary's College.

Another book from the St. Andrews School of Divinity. What can I say?

THE TARGUM LAMENTATIONS DOCTORAL THESIS by Christian Brady is now available online as a PDF document. Chris has info over at Targuman.

CAESAREA LAND DEVELOPERS are being challenged on archaeological grounds. (No pun intended.)

Caesarea residents prefer archeology to expansion
A local NPO objects to selling land in the area, which it says includes important archeological excavations.
Dalia Tal 29 Jan 06 12:08 (Globes, Israel)
A non-profit organization of 750 residents of Caesarea objects to the Caesarea Development Corporation’s plan to market land for building more houses in the town.

The residents claims that the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting archeological excavations on the land that Caesarea Development plans to sell. These excavations have discovered a mosaic, an ancient cemetery, and ancient roads, among other things.

[...]

HERE'S THE IAA RECOMMENDATION to move the Megiddo prison, in a press release on the IAA website:

Scientific Summary of the Authority's excavation at the Megiddo Prison and its recommendation for moving the prison.

The archaeological site at the Megiddo Police hill is identified as the Jewish village Kfar Othnai, mentioned in written sources. The camp of the Roman Legion VI Ferrata and a city named Maximianopolis, mentioned in historical sources, were erected next to it.

The Roman Period site represents a rare cultural grouping of Village-Camp-City in a limited geographical space, which is located near the biblical Tel Megiddo that is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

[...]

The Antiquities Authority recommends moving the prison and places utmost importance on preservation of the archeological assemblage uncovered in the excavations. This preference stems from the magnitude of these finds and their significance for culture and heritage not only of Israel, but for the whole world, and will enable the preservation and display of the site and the mosaic floor, in their original context, integrated with their environs.

(Via this week's Explorator [not yet posted]).

THE SAINT JOHN'S BIBLE, a modern illuminated Bible manuscript commissioned by St. John’s Abbey and St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, is scheduled to be finished in the summer of 2007. Pages are on display at the Joslyn Art Museum. It was also noted on PaleoJudaica (as "St. John's Bible") back in June of 2004.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION at Discovery Place in Charlotte, North Carolina, starts on 17 February. And its weekly lecture series has an impressive lineup of speakers.

ADOLFO ROITMAN, curator of the Shrine of the Book, will be giving a lecture in Springfield, Massachusetts, next week.

Scrolling through history
Saturday, January 28, 2006
By RONNI GORDON [The Republican]
rgordon@repub.com

In 1947, young Bedouin shepherds, searching the cliffs in Israel along the Dead Sea for a stray goat or possibly for treasure, found a cave containing jars filled with manuscripts.

The shepherds removed seven scrolls that led to the discovery of several more scrolls and thousands of fragments from the surrounding area, called the Qumran ruin. Archaeologists and other researchers determined that the scrolls were ancient and authentic.

"The Dead Sea Scrolls are the most outstanding archaeological discovery of the 20th century," according to Adolfo Roitman, an expert who will present a lecture at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Roitman is curator of the Shrine of the Book, which contains the Dead Sea Scroll collection and other ancient manuscripts at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The topic of his lecture is "From Serpent to Satan: The Story of Paradise in Literature and Art."

[...]

STILL MORE LOST BOOKS: Robert A. Kraft's website has endless goodies. I've just run across a couple that deal with ancient lost parabiblical books. First is a page associated with course he taught in 2002-03 on parabiblical literature. It consists of a critical evaluation of material found in:

RESCH, ALFRED. Agrapha. Aussercanonische Schriftfragmente. Gesammelt und untersucht und in zweiter völlig neu bearbeiteter durch alttestamentliche Agrapha vermehrter Auflage hrsg. von Alfred Resch. Mit fünf Registern. (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 30.3-4, Neue Folge 15.3-4) Leipzig, 1906 [first ed 1889]. [Pp. XVI + 426.]

Particularly notable are these quotes from what appear to be lost Old Testament pseudepigrapha:

• L[ogion] 3b [Syr Didasc 26, as scripture says: Jacob will be blessed in his firstborn]
  
• L 4a [Barn 15.1-2, and in another place it says: If my sons keep the sabbath, then will I put my mercy on them]
  
• L 4b [Syr Didasc 21, regarding sabbath: You shall not lift a foot to do any work, and you shall not emit a word from your mouth]
  
• L 5 [Barn 7, in the prophet: And let them eat from the goat ...]
  
• L 7 [Tertullian, exhort cast 7, in Leviticus: Let my priests no longer marry]
  
• L 10 [Didasc 2.23, thus says the Lord: I stretched my hands over him and it is for a myth and a parable]
  
• L 14 [Clement Alex, Strom 6.9.78, the Lord: ask and I will do, be aware and I will give]
  
• L 20 [1 Clement 26.2, somewhere it says: And if you elevate me, I will also confess you]

There's also a discussion of lost apocrypha/pseudepigrapha of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

In addition Bob has a large and impressive page on Lost Apocrypha of the New Testament, conceived along the lines of M. R. James's Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament. (Bob is also expanding and revising the latter; more on both projects here. And note his collection of material on Og the Giant, which I only just noticed.)

A PHOENICIAN INSCRIPTION IN NEW MEXICO? Well, more like Hebrew, and old, but not all that old.

Phoenician Inscription Rock: History or hoax?

By Joseph Maes The New Mexican |
January 26, 2006

RIO PUERCO — Concealed within a small valley at Hidden Mountain is a 15-square-foot piece of basalt. The surface is carved with 216 characters that resemble Phoenician or old Hebrew. Translations have postulated buried treasure, a battle description and a exiled Greek named Zakyneros from 500 B.C.

“I believe someone decided to write down the Ten Commandments , but the question is who and when,” said Richard Melzer, a professor at The University of New Mexico-Valencia branch.

[...]

In 1949, Professor Robert Pheiffer, of the Harvard Semitic Museum, translated the writing on the stone and concluded that the text is Paleo-Hebrew and is based on Exodus 20:2-17.

[...]

Like Melzer, UNM history professor Ferenc Szasz believes this to be the correct translation, he also has a theory on who the mysterious author might be. “I think it’s old, but not pre-Columbian , more likely from the 18th century,” Szasz said Near the large rock are the initials A.M. the same initials are also present at Inscription Rock at El Morro near Grants. The initials are attributed to Andres Muñiz , chief interpreter of the 1776 Dominguez-Escalante Expedition.

[...]

That's Robert Pfeiffer, actually.

Kind of cool.

UPDATE (30 January): More here.

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON JUDAS: On 12 January the Times of London published an article (scroll down) that claimed that there was a "campaign led by Monsignor Walter Brandmuller, head of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Science ... aimed at persuading believers to look kindly" on Judas. But on the 20th I linked to a Zenit article that quoted Monsignor Brandmüller to say:

Reading the Times I discovered that a campaign exists to rehabilitate Judas and that I am the leader," the Vatican official said. "I have not talked with the Times. I can't imagine where this idea came from.

The original Zenit link seems now to be dead, but you can read the article here.

Since the 20th I have been monitoring both Google and the Times website and, although a number of other media outlets including Reuters, have picked up the Vatican's repudiation of the Times story, the Times itself (at least if its dodgy search engine is accurate) has ignored it entirely. What is going on here? If the Times has misrepresented Monsignor Brandmüller's position, it owes him a retraction and an apology. In any case, it owes its readers an explanation.

Is this another example of the professional media's much vaunted system of fact-checkers and editors? I can't say I'm impressed. The original Times article is still online. If they had the standards of a decent blogger, they would have added an update at the end of it as soon as the Zenit piece came out, linking to it and explaining the discrepancy.