ABADDON makes an appearance on Torchwood in the season finale, which aired in Britain on Sunday and Wednesday. Pete Phillips comments in detail at the postmodernbible blog. And it looks as though Captain Jack got his wish at the end of the episode, doesn't it?

TEDDY KOLLEK, former longtime mayor of Jerusalem, has died at the age of 95. He had a long and illustrious political career that started long before he became mayor in 1965. He was involved in the purchase of the Dead Sea Scrolls and was a major force behind the building of the Israel Museum. He was called the greatest builder of Jerusalem since Herod the Great. The Jerusalem Post has a long biographical article here.

Watch for imbeciles to claim that he was finally done in by their pulsa de-nura curse, which they put on him more than twenty-five years ago.

May his memory be for a blessing.

ANOTHER QUMRAN LATRINE ARTICLE:

Ancient latrine fuels debate at Qumran
Posted 1/2/2007 11:54 PM ET

By Matti Friedman, Associated Press
QUMRAN, West Bank — Researchers say their discovery of a 2,000-year-old toilet at one of the world's most important archaeological sites sheds new light on whether the ancient Essene community was home to the authors of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In a new study, three researchers say they have discovered the outdoor latrine used by the ancient residents of Qumran, on the barren banks of the Dead Sea. They say the find proves the people living here two millennia ago were Essenes, an ascetic Jewish sect that left Jerusalem to seek proximity to God in the desert.

[...]

The article looks good and accurate and is worth a read. This bit in particular caught my eye:

Still, there is no way to date the fecal parasites, which could have been left by Bedouin who are known to have inhabited the area. To counter this, the paper quotes a Bedouin scholar as saying the nomadic tribespeople do not bury their feces.

Another problem is that archaeologists have already identified a toilet at Qumran — inside the settlement. But Zias believes it was for emergencies: In some cases, divine commandments notwithstanding, nine minutes outside the camp was too far to go.

Also, reactions from Norman Golb and Stephen Pfann are quoted. Not surprisingly, Golb is very skeptical of the Essenes connection. In any case, the question of the date of the latrine needs to be addressed.

THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY sent out the old year with a bout of Jewish-Temple denial, according to Israel Insider:

From the Arab Press
Sunday, December 31, 2006
‘Western Wall Is not Jewish’
A Palestinian Authority Television program featured Hassan Khader, founder of the Al-Quds [Jerusalem] Encyclopedia, denied any Jewish historical connection to the Western Wall and Temple Mount.

The true name of the Western Wall of the Temple, according to the PA academic, is the Al Buraq Wall, named after Mohammed’s winged horse which ostensibly flew him to Jerusalem.

“We did not invent this place,” Khader said. “This is the place where Al-Buraq landed and the Prophet tied him [to the wall]”

I have noted this claim already up here and here (and compare here). The story of Buraq is found in the Hadith, the post-Qur'anic traditions about the life of Muhammad. Based on Surah 17.1, it reports that Muhammad was miraculously transported to Jerusalem, where he encountered Buraq and rode the beast (who was half horse and half mule) through the seven heavens. Whatever one believes about the Buraq story, it has no bearing whatever on the historical origins of the Western Wall, which is part of the platform of the Herodian Temple (on which see here).

If there was any doubt about whether there would be freedom of worship if the Palestinians achieve their aim of establishing Jerusalem as their capital, Khader made it clear: There would be no Jewish or Christian worship in the city or at any of its sites.

Khader not only praised Arab efforts to prevent Jewish access to the Western Wall in the 20th century, he condoned terrorist attacks against the Jews if they continued to claim the Wall as their holy site.

The bottom line, he said, is that “the Jewish connection to this site is fabricated.”

Obscene politics to go with bogus history.

SADDAM'S OBITUARY in the Times of London mentions his obsession with Nebuchadnezzar and some of its effects:

Saddam Hussein
April 28, 1937 - December 30, 2006
Iraqi dictator whose brutal and reckless rule brought untold miseries on his people and encompassed their utter ruin

Saddam Hussein was a tyrant whose actions brought down unimaginable catastrophe on Iraq and its peoples. From an early age, he had enjoyed inflicting suffering on those around him and, when he came to positions of political power, those whom he could not force or corrupt into submitting to his will, he maimed, murdered or made to flee.

He started two international wars — one against Iran, the second as a result of aggression against Kuwait — which cost an estimated one million lives. He instituted genocidal campaigns against the Kurds in the north of Iraq and the Marsh Arabs in the south. Ruling through the Sunni minority of which he was a member, he ignored the claims of the country’s majority Shia population.

The third war in the region, which brought him and his regime down, was not directly begun by him, but by apparent American — and British — fears of a perceived threat his weapons posed to international security. This time Saddam misjudged the event — and certainly the American mood. Having been let off the hook after his defeat over his Kuwait adventure, he clearly felt that the international community did not have the stomach for a fight. He may have been right in that. But a new American president, George W. Bush, determined to find a scapegoat for the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, was in no mood to abide by the niceties of international law. In the determination of President Bush and his advisers, Saddam at length met his match, though the internecine aftermath of the campaign that overthrew him gave his conquerors little enough satisfaction.

[...]

A fervent admirer of Hitler on account of the latter’s boldness and hatred of Jews, he told his official biographer in 1980 that he wanted Iraqis to think of Nebuchadnezzar every day. “We could march into Palestine and bring all those Jews here in Babylon with their hands tied behind their backs once more”, he said.

[...]

Motivated by the prospect of humiliating “the ancient Persian enemy” and increasing his chances of becoming the overall leader of the Arab world, Saddam declared the agreement he had signed with the Shah in 1975 invalid, saying that he had signed it when Iraq was militarily weak. On September 22, 1980, Iraqi tanks rolled into Iran and attempted to cut the southern oilfields of Khuzistan from the rest of the country. It proved to be a costly mistake. ...

My emphasis. One of the first PaleoJudaica posts was on Saddam and Nebuchadnezzar. Alas, all the links in it have rotted, but the overall content stands. See also here for the same quote as in today's obituary, and here and here for Saddam's own brick inscriptions in Babylon and Hatra.

UPDATE: The American Thinker and Arutz Sheva are drawing an additional parallel between the legendary Nebuchadnezzar of Daniel 4:30 (English version 4:33) and Saddam in his spider hole. And perhaps its worth being reminded by Robert Windrem on the MSNBC Blog of the other person who served as a major inspiration for Saddam:

Publicly, he liked to be compared to the great Mesopotamian leaders who had created the earliest cultures: Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar. But privately, he kept a portrait of the equally paranoid Stalin, the low-born Georgian thug he so resembled. If he had studied Soviet history closely though, he would have seen that arrogant miscalculation had almost undone Stalin. And in fact, it was such miscalculation that did undo Saddam: the Iran-Iraq War that killed almost a million Iranians and Iraqis, the invasion of Kuwait that led to the Gulf War and his belief that the US would never invade Iraq.

AMY-JILL LEVINE'S BOOK, The Misunderstood Jew, is reviewed by Julie Galambush in the New York Times:

Interfaith Approach to Forgiving Trespass

By JULIE GLAMBUSH
Published: January 1, 2007

As a child Amy-Jill Levine insisted on attending catechism class at a Catholic church. She faithfully administered Holy Communion to her Barbie doll. This, despite being, then as now, an observant Jew. A professor of New Testament studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, Ms. Levine has spent a lifetime exploring the profound connections and equally profound divisions between Christianity and Judaism — and, perhaps more important, between Christians and Jews.

The premise of “The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus” is simple: Jews and Christians need to understand one another. The implicit corollary: Despite years of trying, and to their mutual harm, they do not.

In a book intended for Jews and Christians alike (but mostly addressed to Christians) Ms. Levine offers both critique and corrective on topics as seemingly disparate as the Jewish content of the Lord’s Prayer and Christian responses to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But that is Ms. Levine’s point: to show how frequently and disastrously inaccurate beliefs about Jesus and early Judaism produce distorted relationships in the present.

[...]

Jewish-Christian dialogue, having come into its own in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has seemed less compelling in recent decades. Ms. Levine’s chilling tales of casual anti-Judaism among scholars who should know better rekindles the urgency of the task. She covers a vast canvas and of necessity does so in broad strokes, some more effective than others. But it is a book whose strengths far outweigh its flaws, and whose flaws count only because its subject matters so deeply.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! For your New Year's present, I've updated the PaleoJudaica links page, which you can access by clicking on the link or by going to the links bar on the right. I've added memorable PaleoJudaica posts through 2006; updated the blogger roll; and added all of my online publications to the present. I've also purged all the dead links I could find and corrected some but not all of the bad links that need correction. Have a good 2007!

"THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH: Clinical Practice Guidelines for Post-Deployment Health Evaluation and Management" -- brought to you by the VA/DoD. As David Meadows says in this week's Explorator, this application of the Epic is "somewhat strange."

RALPHIES 2006. Ed Cook (here, here, and here) and Mark Goodacre have posted their annual best-of the-year Ralphie awards, so I suppose I may as well post mine as well.

MUSIC: Sorry, I didn't listen to any new music this year.

MOVIES: Didn't go to the cinema either, except to take my son to two or three children's blockbusters, all of which were forgettable. Of the pre-2006 movies I saw outside the cinema and for the first time this year, my favorite was the eerie Donnie Darko (a mentally disturbed teenager is led to save the universe by a spirit guide who takes the shape of a giant rabbit). I liked the quasi-shamanic wounded-healer theme that drives it. I saw the Director's Cut, which, from what I can tell, makes more sense than the original version. See also the helpful Wikipedia FAQ, which, however, contains many spoilers.

BOOKS: I managed to read a number of technical monographs, mostly to review them. All of them were good and some were excellent, but none really stands out as best of the year. But I'll just mention one of the excellent ones that is likely to be of some general interest to regular PaleoJudaica readers:

Philip Alexander, The Mystical Texts: Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and Related Manuscripts (Library of Second Temple Studies, 61, Companion to the Qumran Scrolls, 7; London and New York: T & T Clark International, 2006), pp. x + 171. £65. ISBN 0-567-04082-8.

Surveys the Dead Sea Scrolls that have mystical content and places them in the larger context of the mystical tradition in Judaism.

I read a fair number of novels this year, mostly science fiction. Again, many were good and some were excellent, but the best was unquestionably:

Charles Stross, Accelerando (London: Orbit, 2005 [but paperback 2006])

Traces a future history of the Singularity, starting from the second decade of this century. Bizarre enough to be plausible.

TELEVISION: British television had a number of very good new series this year. My favorite was Life on Mars. (A man in 2006 is trapped in his own comatose body after a car accident and subjected to the persistent and fully realistic hallucination that he has been transported to 1973 - or has he actually somehow been astrally projected there? - while his doctors at first think he's brain dead and then begin to resort to risky experimental measures to try to reawaken him before his weakening body gives out. To conclude in season two in 2007.) The 2006 season of Doctor Who, with David Tennant as the new Doctor, and Torchwood (a Doctor Who spinoff featuring Captain Jack Harkness as an alien hunter in Cardiff) come in neck and neck for a close second place. Spooks (the adventures of MI5 agents) deserves honorable mention as well. My favorite new children's series was ITV's Prehistoric Park (nature presenter Nigel Marven travels back in time to rescue extinct species from oblivion). My favorite television moment of 2006 was Nigel coaxing two baby T-Rexes through the Time Portal with a ham sandwich while, in the background, the fireball from the dinosaur-destroying meteorite blasts toward them at two hundred times the speed of sound.

UPDATE: More Ralphies from Chris Brady and Tyler Williams.

COLLOQUIUM ON REVELATION IN ANTIQUITY -- Moulie Vidas e-mails the following:

Revelation, Literature and Community in Antiquity, Colloquium at Princeton University

On 14-16 January, 2007, Princeton University will host a three-day colloquium which sets to explore the connection between revelation and literary and social configurations, focusing on texts written between the hellenistic period and the rise of Islam. Seventeen papers will be presented by faculty members and graduate students from Princeton University as well as guest speakers from other institutions. For full details, see our website: http://www.princeton.edu/~religion/revelation. Please e-mail mvidas@princeton.edu if you wish to attend.

The program includes quite a lot on ancient Judaism, and also deals with Manicheism, Platonism, Hermeticism, early Christianity, the Qur'an, etc. I wish I could go.

A BRIEF REVIEW of books on The Gospel of Judas:

New books respond to Gospel of Judas

By Jean Peerenboom
jpeerenb@greenbaypressgazette.com

The Gospel of Judas made a big splash when it was revealed to the world in April, and naturally, it spawned several books analyzing, discrediting or praising it.

Noted theologian N.T. Wright, bishop of Durham in the Church of England put together a short treatise that essentially dismisses the new gospel as shedding any true light on early Christianity or presenting a challenge to the Christian church. He offers an orthodox Christian response in "Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity?" (Baker Books, $18.99).

[...]

A second look at the gospel of Judas comes from religious studies professor Bart D. Ehrman in "The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed" (Oxford University Press, $22). Written for a more general audience, it talks about what the gospel teaches and how it relates to the other gospel texts — those in the New Testament and those not included in the Bible.

[...]

STAND UP FOR HEROD! A site called "Anarkismo.net" has published an essay by Uri Cohen which offers us some more Herod revisionism. Cohen seems to want to rehabilitate Herod the Great and even to draw an analogy between him and the current president of the Palestinian Authority.

Stand up, stand up for Herod!
by Uri Cohen - 21st Century Socialism Thursday, Dec 28 2006, 3:41pm
uri.cohen@portman-aptus.com phone: UK 07968-859-322
mashriq / arabia / iraq / history / non anarchist press

Ancient Palestine

It is a seasonal story of ancient Palestine: the Arab Jewish king, the suicidal religious militants, the re-invention of God and the abolition of Jerusalem. The historical truth is both stranger and more familiar than the tales in the Gospel. It is a sound historical analysis of Palestine 37-4 BC.

Stand up, stand up for Herod!
A seasonal story of ancient Palestine: the Arab Jewish moderate king, the suicidal religious militants, the re-invention of God and the abolition of Jerusalem. The historical truth is both stranger and more familiar than the tales in the Gospel.

King Herod the Great, who ruled Palestine from 37 to 4 BC, is vilified by both Jewish and Christian traditions. Like more recent Palestinian leaders, King Herod enjoyed relative autonomy under the menacing shadow of the world’s most powerful empire and its brutal army of occupation. Like the current Palestinian president, King Herod was politically undermined by popular religious militants. The ancient Jewish fundamentalists denounced Herod as a Roman imperialist puppet and a corrupt heathen ruler.

But why stand up for Herod? Partly, for the sake of historical truth. For example, Herod’s massacre of the innocents as described in the Gospel of Mathew – which is the main thing that people today ‘know’ about the much-maligned monarch - certainly never happened. The event is not mentioned in any other contemporaneous account and cannot be reconciled with the date on which we are told that Jesus was born.

[...]

Yes, the story in Matthew doesn't have any verification and is generally taken to be a legend. But it's not correct that the supposed date of the event is irreconcilable with the date of Jesus' birth, since we don't actually know exactly when Jesus was born. It's true that it's widely recognized that if Herod was still around when Jesus was born, Jesus must have been born before Herod's death, which is generally taken to have been 4 BCE. But if the massacre of Bethlehem story is legendary, any connection of Jesus' birth with the reign of Herod becomes tenuous. Luke does place the conception of John the Baptist in Herod's day (1:5], but his chronology of Jesus' birth has its own problems.

Monotheism, the cult of the single invisible god, was imposed on the Jerusalem city-state by the Zoroastrian Persian Empire, at around 500 BC. The Persian invaders installed a priestly aristocracy who set out to merge a number of pagan deities into a single male god: called Jehovah. To achieve this spiritual task, the Jerusalem priesthood reformed the old Palestinian gods and goddesses.

In Palestine, the pagan pantheon of deities was dominated by the male god Jehovah and his female consort, the goddess Ashera, and another prominent male god El or Elion and his female consort Eilat. The Jerusalem monotheists divorced the female goddesses from their husbands, banishing the female side of godliness and violently repressing all female cults. Then the monotheists set about merging the remaining male gods into a single male, invisible, macho and homicidal God. This single God was called either Jehovah or Elohim (the Hebrew plural for Gods).

[...]

In 37 BC Palestine, Herod inherited a kingdom that was beset by social and religious strife. While maintaining the authority of the priestly aristocracy, Herod tried to rule in name of all Palestinians.

He was later vilified by Jews and Christians for tolerating pagan communities and promoting religious freedom. Herod was an Arab leader with a strong Jewish faith, who ruled in a secular way - he could perhaps teach current Arab and Jewish politicians a trick or two. But above all he had to please imperial Rome and its insatiable appetite for material tribute, new highways, forts, conscript armies and mineral riches.

[...]

Was Herod an Arab? One can make that case. He was three-quarters Nabatean (his mother was Nabatean and his father Idumean but with a Nabatean mother), but culturally he was Idumean. The Nabateans were an Arabian ethnic group that spoke an Arabic dialect originally, but adopted Aramaic language and culture, at least in educated circles. The Idumeans, however, were not Arabians; they were descendants of the Edomites, an ethnic group that spoke a Northwest Semitic dialect (i.e, closely related to Hebrew, Aramaic, and Phoenician) in the Iron Age II and had a polytheistic religion that included the worship of a god called Qaus. The surviving Idumean inscriptions in the Persian and Hellenistic periods are in Aramaic. (See here and here.) The Idumeans were forcibly converted to Judaism in the Hasmonean period and from that point on they seem to have considered themselves Jews.

So Herod was genetically three-quarters Arabian and presumably was exposed to some Nabatean language and culture from his mother, but he himself was vigorously committed to Judaism. There is no cultural or religious continuity between the polytheistic Nabateans of Herod's time and modern Palestianian Arabs, but some of the latter surely transmit some Nabatean genetic material, and modern Palestinians speak a variant dialect (coming from Islamic Arabia) of the language that the Nabateans originally spoke. Add all that up as you will. (For more on such questions, see here.)

As to Herod's personality and rule, whether or not Matthew's story of the slaughter of the innocents is true, it's typical enough of the sort of thing he might have done. (More on that here). By the standards of his own time he may not have been as bad as he looks to us, but he was nothing to be proud of. As despots go, he accomplished more than some, but I think a little standing up for Herod goes a long way.

Also, I'm a bit baffled by this "Jehovah" business. The name Jehovah is an erroneous form created accidentally by Christian Hebraists who didn't know that the vowels added to the name YHWH in the Masoretic text were meant to indicate that the name should be read as "Adonay," "My Lord." The name Jehovah never existed in antiquity, and it's odd to see it used repeatedly in an article that is so concerned with giving the true story of Second Temple era history. Incidentally, the origin of the word Elohim is messy, but is probably something like the following. It is actually a singular abstract noun formation rather than a plural and means "divinity" (cf. Hebrew Ne(uRiM [נערים], meaning the quality "youth"). Because its ending coincidentally resembles the masculine plural noun ending, it secondarily became the plural of the word El, "god" as well, which makes for some ironic confusion.

Otherwise, the essay presents an anti-Zionist, revisionist reading of the history of the Second Temple period. This is kind of interesting but it contains a good bit of wild speculation (e.g., the claim that monotheism was imposed by the Persian Empire or the confidently reconstructed polytheistic cults of Yahweh/Asherah and El/Elyon/Eilat).

Cohen appears to be inviting modern Palestinian Arabs to claim Herod as one of their own. I suppose they can have him if they want him. His Judaism credentials are debatable too and I don't imagine many Jews would mind sharing him. But the historical links to modern Palestinians are tenuous and the historical analogy to the present strikes me as weak. Be that as it may, if Palestinians want to adopt Herod, they will need to accept the existence of the Second Jewish Temple, whose renovation and rebuilding was his greatest achievement.

UPDATE (31 December): Reader E.K. e-mails:

On the subject of Herod's Arab background (and evaluation in early Judaism), it is worthy to note a stream of exegesis that saw in Herod the fulfillment of either Daniel 9:24-27, Genesis 49:10, or both (attested in Eusebius, Epiphanius, Slavonic Josephus, with echoes in Justin Martyr and Julius Africanus), which William Adler regarded as having an earlier Jewish provenance ("The Apocalyptic Survey of History Adapted by Christians: Daniel's Prophecy of 70 Weeks," by William Adler, published in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity, 1996). In this reading, Herod would be the prophesied Gentile who would take the scepter of Judah away and/or come "to destroy the city and sanctuary". The Herodian interpretation of these scriptures would have then survived in Christian exegesis for some time.

EPHRAIM ISAAC cites the Ethiopic book of Enoch in an interview on the Ethiopic calendar:

Ethiopia: Scholar Says Ethiopian Calendar Neither Gregorian Nor Julian

The Ethiopian Herald (Addis Ababa)

December 29, 2006
Posted to the web December 29, 2006

ENA
Addis Ababa

A renowned Ethiopian born U.S scholar, Prof. Ephraim Isaac said that the Ethiopian calendar is unique in that it belongs neither to the Julian, nor to the Gregorian calendars.

He also said that close to 2,000 African-Americans living in the U.S have been organizing themselves to come to Ethiopia for the celebration of the New Ethiopian Millennium.
Oracle Content & Collaboration

Prof. Ephraim who is Director of the Institute of Semitic Studies in the United States, said that most scholars, including himself, believe Ethiopia has retained the old Egyptian system of calendar.

[...]

In addition to Mestehafe-Hissab, the professor said, there is a very famous book called, Mestehafe-henok, (The Book of Enoch) which is found only in Ethiopia with chapters that deals with some calculation of the years.

[...]

He's referring to the Astronomical Book, which was originally a separate and longer work, but now is found in chapters 72-82 of 1 Enoch. Extensive fragments of the original Aramaic Astronomical Book were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

INTERACTIVE MACCABEES FOR CHILDREN:

‘MACCABEES’ (Sunday through Thursday) Courtesy of a time machine (bet you didn’t know Brooklyn had one), children 5 and older can journey back to ancient Judea and experience the Hanukkah story as an interactive tour. (Through Jan. 7.) Sunday at noon, 1, 2:30 and 4 p.m.; Mondays through Thursdays at 12:30, 1:30, 3 and 4:30 p.m., at the Jewish Children’s Museum, 792 Eastern Parkway, at Kingston Avenue, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, (718) 467-0660, jcm.museum; $10; $15 includes museum admission. (NYT)

MUSSOLINI'S VILLA -- the one with the ancient Jewish catacombs underneath -- is back in the news. The Times of London has an article on its reopening to the public, but I don't see anything new in it.

Mussolini's Roman villa restored to glory
Paul Bompard, Rome
# Il Duce paid rent of one lira a month
# Interior ruined by Allies then vandals

The magnificent historic villa that was the home of Benito Mussolini when he was the all-powerful Duce of Italy has been reopened to the public after nearly 30 years of restoration.

The nine buildings and gardens of the Villa Torlonia, which were largely built in the 19th century by the Torlonia princes of the Vatican aristocracy, will now house an art museum dedicated to the Roman school of 20th-century painting.

The complex will also house a high-tech playground and a museum of the Holocaust, dedicated to the 2,000 Jews who were deported from Rome during the German occupation of 1943-44.

[...]

n 1919 it was discovered that the villa stood over an underground Jewish cemetery from the Ancient Roman period, and its main chamber, richly decorated, can now be visited.

After languishing for decades, the buildings and the gardens, set in peaceful tree-lined avenues with ornamental pools and fountains, are once more fully open to visitors.

VIN DIESEL'S HANNIBAL MOVIE is still in the works:

Diesel follows trend for dead languages with film in Punic
By Jonathan Brown (The Independent)
Published: 27 December 2006

For film students with a passion for archaic languages awaiting the release of Mel Gibson's bloodcurdling Mayan adventure Apocalypto next week, 2007 could prove to be something of a vintage year.

Following in the footsteps of the controversial star comes another movie tough guy with the desire to be treated as a serious artist.

Vin Diesel is hoping to replicate the success of Gibson's Aramaic-language film The Passion of the Christ and to a lesser extent the Yucatec Maya-scripted Apocalypto by starting production of his own adaptation of the life of Hannibal Barca in the original Punic.

The Hollywood rumour mill has been abuzz with talk of the forthcoming historical epic for months. But many have dismissed as little more than a bad joke suggestions of Diesel recreating the life of the man considered by many to be the greatest military strategist of all time.

However, the shaven-headed star with the gym-buffed physique insists that he is deadly serious. Having recruited the same academic who translated Passion for Gibson, he spent much of this year scouting Spain for suitable locations. Diesel has said that he will direct and star in Hannibal the Conqueror, which is expected to go on general release in 2008.

[...]

For more on Diesel's Hannibal project, see here and follow the links. And on a related note, this month's Archaeology Magazine has an article on Hannibal (abstract here).

GNOSTICISM SCHOLAR MARVIN MEYER has given a lecture on The Gospel of Judas at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

A FEW MORE ITEMS from Joseph I. Lauer's list in recent days:

First, from CNN: " Shortcuts: How to make it as an archaeologist"

An unflinching look at the profession. Excerpt:

Even Howard Carter, whose discovery, in 1922, of the tomb of Tutankhamun made him one of the few archaeologists ever to attain the status of international celebrity, endured decades of unrecognized penury before eventually hitting the big time (at one point he was so poor he was reduced to producing sketches for tourists to fund his work). If you are not utterly obsessed with the subject, to the exclusion of all else, then archaeology is probably not for you.

Second, Lauer writes the following:

The Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies has scheduled a very interesting program for its 12th Annual Meeting to be held at Bar-Ilan University on Thursday, December 28, 2006. The subject is "New Studies on Jerusalem"
Following is the English version of the day-long program.
I have also received the program in Hebrew and have it in Word document form. I would be happy to forward it to any interested person. [His e-mail address is josephlauer at hotmail dot com if you want to contact him.]

**************************************

The Ingeborg Rennert Center, The Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, The Faculty of Jewish Studies, Bar-Ilan University
in cooperation with:
The Center for the Study of the Land of Israel,
the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Jerusalem District

Invite you to
The 12th Annual Meeting of
the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies
"NEW STUDIES ON JERUSALEM"

8:45 gathering
9:00 opening remarks:
Prof. M. Orpali, Dean of the Faculty of Jewish Studies, Bar-Ilan University
Prof. J. Schwartz, Director of the Ingeborg Rennert Cetner for Jerusalem Studies

Session 1 – 9:15- 10:45
Chair: Joshua Schwartz

Avraham Faust
Jerusalem's Countryside during the Middle Bronze Age
Eilat Mazar
The Fortifications of Jerusalem in the Second Millennium BCE in Light of the New Excavations in the City of David
Gabriel Barkay
An Ancient Hebrew Weight from the Temple Mount
Boaz Zissu
A "Vanished Settlement" from the Iron Age: Excavations near the “Cave of the Ramban”, Upper Qidron Valley, Jerusalem

Session 2 - 11:15- 12:45
Chair: Moshe Fischer

Joseph Patrich
The Location of the Second Temple - A New Proposal
Orit Peleg
Architectural Decoration from Judea during the Second Temple Period in Light of the Finds from Jerusalem
Eyal Regev
The Ritual Baths Near the Temple Mount: What Were They Used For?
Yehoshua Peleg
The Meaning of the Word "Xystos" in the Writings of Josephus
Discussion

Lunch Break

Session 3 - 14:00 15:50
Chair: David Adan-Bayewitz

Ronny Reich and Guy Bar-Oz
The Jerusalem City Dump in the Late Second Temple Period: A Quantitative Study
Ehud Weiss, Ram Bouchnik, Guy Bar-Oz and Ronny Reich
A Dump Near the Temple? Two Difficulties Regarding the City Dump Adjacent to the Second Temple
Ram Bouchnik, Guy Bar-Oz and Ronny Reich
Faunal Remains from the Late Second Temple Period: A View from the Village of Burnat and Jerusalem City Dump Assemblages
Emmanuel Friedheim
Jerusalem in the Light of Greek and Roman Authors
Leah Di Segni
Epigraphic Finds Reveal New Chapters in the History of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Sixth Century.
Discussion

Break

Session 4: 16:20- 17:40
Chair Shimon Dar

Yuval Shahar
Was There a Civilian Settlement in Jerusalem between the Two Jewish Revolts?
Amos Kloner
New Dating for the Eastern Cardo of Aelia Capitolina
Ben-Zion Rosenfeld
The Attitude of the Sages toward Jerusalem after the Bar-Kochba Revolt
Oded Shay
The Museums and the Zoological Collections in Jerusalem in Late Ottoman Palestine
Discussion

The conference proceedings (app. 180 pp. including 2 articles in English and 17 in Hebrew, with English abstracts) will be on sale during the conference

For additional information, please contact the Ingeborg Rennert Center (jrslm1@mail.biu.ac.il) or Avi Faust (fausta@mail.biu.ac.il)

And finally, this IAA press release:

The Beit Ha-Kerem Neighborhood in Jerusalem: An Attractive Place in Antiquity Also (December 10, 2006)

In excavations being conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Beit Ha-Kerem neighborhood of Jerusalem, an archaeological site that was hitherto unknown is currently being uncovered. The site is situated in the heart of the built-up neighborhood and the remains there indicate that throughout a number of periods in antiquity the place was considered a desirable location to live in. In the excavations remains were exposed that date to the First Temple, Second Temple, Byzantine and Mamluk periods.
The Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out a salvage excavation following the discovery of archaeological remains in a lot slated for construction on Ha-Satat Street in the Beit Ha-Kerem neighborhood of Jerusalem. So far remains from four periods were discovered: the end of the First Temple period (8th -7th centuries BCE), end of the Second Temple period (1st century BCE-1st century CE), Byzantine period (4th-7th centuries CE) and Mamluk period (14th-15th centuries CE).

In one of the excavation areas a cave was revealed that housed an olive oil extraction plant comprised of two phases. The first phase of the installation dates to the Byzantine period. The remains from this period include an especially large stone that was used as a press-bed for a screw-operated olive press from which the oil flowed into an adjacent collecting vat. In the second phase, in the Mamluk period, the floor of the cave was paved with flagstones that also covered the Byzantine press-bed and the collecting vat. Another press installation that was probably operated with weights was made in place of them. The press-bed and collecting vat of this later installation were preserved. A large stone memmel, used for crushing the olives prior to pressing them, was found in the cave.

In the second area a trial excavation was conducted in order to ascertain what antiquities exist there. Another large cave was discovered by chance in which there was a large concentration of masonry stones and numerous fragments of pottery vessels, glass vessels and tesserae from the Byzantine period.

In the excavations that were carried out along the edge of the lot numerous pottery sherds from the end of the First Temple period were discovered on the bedrock surface thus attesting to the presence of a settlement there or in the surrounding area during this period. Two hewn shafts were also exposed from which fragments of pottery vessels were recovered that date to the time of the Hasmonean dynasty (1st century BCE).

Ya’akov Billig, director of the excavations on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said, “If in the future additional excavations are conducted in the open areas that remain nearby we may learn more about the nature of the settlement that was here during the different periods”.

NORMAN GOLB takes the Seattle Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit to task for its bias in favor of the Essene hypothesis. For more on Golb and his theory see here.

(Via the Agade list and Joseph I. Lauer.)

SEAN KINGSLEY, the author of God's Gold: The Quest for the Lost Temple Treasure of Jerusalem (see earlier comments here and here) is interviewed by ABC National Radio.

(Via Explorator.)