PHILISTINE CUISINE has been illuminated by recent excavations:

Crock-pot cookery

Unlike most of the peoples living in the region in the biblical era, the Philistines were not Semites, but rather one of the Sea Peoples who immigrated from the Aegean Sea region of today's Greece and western Turkey. They brought with them technologies new to the area, including a wide range of pottery vessels and a sophisticated political organization.

They prepared meals in a characteristic sealed pottery vessel suited to long cooking times at low heat, while most inhabitants of Canaan at the time used open pots and faster cooking methods. The bones found at the Philistine cities showed that their diet was also different from those of their neighbors. While the Canaanites and Israelites ate mainly beef and lamb, the Philistines ate mainly pork, with an occasional meal of dog meat. The Philistines' wine culture was also very well-developed.

Dog stew, eh? My cat would approve.

ELAINE PAGELS is lecturing on the Gospel of Judas at Emory University. She still seems to be taking the line that Judas was a good guy in this Gospel.

THE NEW BISHOP OF CYPRUS AND THE GULF has a degree in Oriental Studies and seems to have focused on Northwest Semitic languages. This according to the Cyprus Mail:

New Bishop brings hope to Middle East posting

THE NEW Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, Rt Revd Michael Lewis, aims to play a part in encouraging Greek and Turkish Cypriots to resolve their differences when he takes up his post in November.

Bishop Lewis, of Middleton in the diocese of Manchester, replaces the Most Revd Clive Handford, who was also presiding bishop of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East. He retired in April this year.

The new Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, in an interview with the Church Times to be published later this week, said he did not pretend to be an expert on the politics of the divided island where he will be based. But he would “relish living in it and learning from it”, and developing a relationship with the Greek Orthodox Church.

[...]

Bishop Lewis’ interest in the Middle East dates back to his time at Oxford University where his degree in oriental studies involved learning Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac. More recently he has led numerous pilgrimages and study tours to Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Israel and Turkey.

[...]

I don't know if the language training will help in his new post, but it's kind of cool.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Remnants of the Second Temple Being Destroyed by Islamic Wakf

by Hana Levi Julian and Alex Traiman

(IsraelNN.com) A large trench being dug on the Temple Mount is destroying a never before uncovered section of the outer wall of the Second Temple. The construction is being supervised by the Wakf—the Muslim Authority acting as custodians to the Temple Mount.

Archeologists have been calling for construction to halt on the trench, which is approximately 1,300 feet long and five feet deep. The Wakf claims the trench is being dug to replace 40-year-old electrical cables for nearby mosques.
Muslims dig a trench across the temple mount destroying ancient artifacts
Photo: The Temple Movement

New photos of construction debris from the Temple Mount show carved stones casually dumped in a pile that appear to be a section of the outer wall of the Second Temple, according to archaeologist Eilat Mazar.

[...]

UPDATE: forgot to note that background is here.

UPDATE (6 September): More here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Where do all the prayer notes go?

Ari Rabinovitch, Reuters
Published: Sunday, September 02, 2007

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - People from around the world place their prayers in Jerusalem's Western Wall or mail them to "God, Jerusalem." It's Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz who clears them up.

Millions of people a year visit the Western Wall -- one of Judaism's holiest sites -- and leave a written prayer on pieces of paper wedged into the cracks of the ancient stones.

The tradition has been adopted by members of many faiths around the world. It is very common for Christian pilgrims traveling through the Old City of Jerusalem to stop by the Western Wall and leave a note, the rabbi says.

As Rabbi of the Western Wall, it is up to Rabinowitz to make sure there's room for future paper wishes. Twice a year his team collects hundreds of thousands of notes and buries them on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives.

[...]

Now you know.

A COPTIC BOOK WORKSHOP is being held in Portland, Maine:

Bonnie Bishop will guide participants through the making of a Coptic book, in which the spine and binding threads are exposed. These essential aspects of this ancient book form present in African, Roman, and early Christian cultures from 4th century AD. Bonnie invites workshop participants to explore various methods of journaling as a way to engage in and further self-discovery and inquiry, using the Coptic book as a place to record dreams, events, drawings, and poetry, or personal writings.

Materials
The instructor will provide all paper, thread, needles, awls and bone folders. However, participants should bring their own scissors and can bring any of the above tools if they have them and prefer using their own. They should also bring favorite drawing supplies, paper and pictures for collage, glue sticks, stamps, inks, etc., and any other materials desired to embellish the covers or work the interior pages.

I suppose the journaling won't be in Coptic, more's the pity. Still, sounds like fun.

ROBERT ALTER is intereviewed by the Boston Globe about his translation work on the Hebrew Bible:

Q&A with Robert Alter

By Harvey Blume | September 2, 2007

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF the Hebrew Bible - most notably the King James version - have been key not only for the believers who look to them for instruction and inspiration, but to the evolving literary and cultural sensibility of the West. It's no wonder, then, that the radical approach to translating biblical texts that Robert Alter has taken - first in ``The Five Books of Moses" (2004) and now in ``The Book of Psalms" - has been greeted with responses ranging from delight to irritation.

Alter aims to reproduce the rhythmic energy of the Hebrew texts in an English that adheres as closely as possible to the meaning and style of the original. Alter's Genesis, for example, begins: ``When God began to create . . ." The word ``began" is key: Creation, for God, is a work in progress. It's a powerful reading that can easily jolt someone wedded to older versions.

As Alter explained when I called him in Berkeley, where he has taught literature since 1967, he was drawn to biblical translation almost despite himself, propelled by a sense that recent translations were badly flawed. Often, translations lacked sensitivity to English literary values, modeling themselves on the lingo of ``high-school textbooks, bureaucratic directives, and ordinary conversation." And almost always, according to Alter, translators simply failed to recognize that the Hebrew Bible, whatever its religious content, was a collection of masterpieces composed by authors who took ``writerly pleasure" in their work.

[...]

THE HAZOR ARCHIVE STILL HASN'T BEEN FOUND, despite excavation of the site since 1990.

A city of stature in days of old
By Ran Shapira (Haaretz)

About two weeks before the end of the last excavation season at Tel Hatzor, in July, a clay tablet with hieroglyphic was found. The tablet teaches how to forecast the future with an animal liver, a practice common in the ancient East.

The priests would examine the liver of an animal that had been sacrificed to the gods and use it to predict the future. The tablet found at Hatzor has not yet been deciphered, but its hieroglyphics are reminiscent of the style of early documents from the ancient kingdom of Mari on the Euphrates, in what is today Syria. Mari was an important political center during the Middle Bronze Age, in the years 2000-1500 B.C.E., and Hatzor was the only city in the Land of Israel that had connections with it at that time.

[...]

Clearly the writer means "cuneiform" not "hieroglyphic(s)."

In the coming seasons, Ben-Tur and Zuckerman are planning to dig under the houses close to the northern slope of the tel, in search of concrete evidence to prove the assumptions about the earlier layers from the Iron Age and the Bronze Age. They are hoping to find the Canaanite administrative palace and the archive of Hatzor, both of which the archaeologists have been seeking since they returned to the site.

[...]

We've been waiting a long time for that archive. Bring it on!

UPDATE (4 September): Duane Smith comments at Abnormal Interests.

IN THE MAIL:

Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (University of Chicago Press, 2001)

I finally decided that I need to have an informed opinion about this book, so I ordered a used copy from Amazon. I'll post a review when I get a chance.

AN ONLINE TRANSLATOR FOR AKKADIAN AND SUMERIAN CUNEIFORM AND EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS:

UAT Instructor Creates Cuneiform and Hieroglyphic Translator

TEMPE, AZ--(Marketwire - August 23, 2007) - University of Advancing Technology (UAT) instructor and senior web developer Joe McCormack has completed work on a web-based application that translates English words into cuneiform script from the Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian and the hieroglyphic script of Egyptian. The tool may be seen at his website, virtualsecrets.com.

The translator works by converting cuneiform and hieroglyphs, both used in the earliest forms of writing, into English words. For example, typing "I am a father" into the Ancient Egyptian translator yields hieroglyphs that roughly translate to "I am" and "father." The translator has been featured on several museum websites around the world and websites specializing in resources for the ancient world.

[...]

Great! Now all we need is the time machine.

(Via Explorator 10.19.)

KAREN TINTORI, one of the authors of The Book of Names, is interviewed in January Magazine. She and co-author Jill Gregory are working on another "hidden history thriller."

THE GOLEM is the subject of two recent books:

The Sorcerer's Apprentice?
Another look at the mythic servant who repeatedly saved the Jewish people
August 30, 2007 - Robert Leiter, Literary Editor [Jewish Exponent]

The golem -- the massive, hulking servant figure who manages to repeatedly save the Jewish people from doom and destruction in any number of tales written in the 19th and early-20th centuries -- has popped up in book form once again in The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague, the work of Yudl Rosenberg as edited and translated by the distinguished novelist Curt Leviant. Just about a year ago, W.W. Norton publishers released a compilation of golem tales, titled simply The Golem, that brought together various works in several genres, written by a quartet of writers, Rosenberg among them, all translated by Joachim Neugroschel. The other authors represented were S. Bastomski, Dovid Frishman and H. Leivick, who penned the classic play about the massive creature fashioned from a piece of clay by a wonder-working rabbi.

There is a great deal of overlap between these recent books. Both translators fill in the history behind the term "golem" and identify the nature of the character that bears the name, and the general outline is similar. They part ways, however, in their assessments of Rosenberg.

[...]

Earlier posts on the Golem are here and here.

UNION STATION, despite its wildly successful Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition, has lost its accreditation due to financial problems:

Union Station loses professional accreditation because of financial instability
By MATT CAMPBELL
The Kansas City Star

Union Station this week lost its professional accreditation because of financial instability.

Officials said the loss, while disappointing, would not affect daily operations, although it could have an impact on future projects.

In a letter dated Thursday, the American Association of Museums praised the station for its progress in many areas but noted that it had eaten up most of its endowment over the last six years and failed to establish a solid foundation for the future.

“There is no track record of financial stability,” the association said.

The accreditation lapse comes as Union Station is poised to end the year in the black for the first time since it was restored in 1999.

“We hoped that by showing them (the accreditation commission ) that we had cut our budget down and turned the corner with this year’s projected profit that that would have been enough,” Union Station Chief Executive Officer Andi Udris said Friday. “They are smart enough to recognize that the only reason we turned the corner was that we had the Dead Sea Scrolls. They said you cannot expect to survive on these blockbusters.”

Udris said ongoing financial stability would require a combination of public and private support.

[...]

MULTI-SPECTRAL IMAGINING, THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS, AND THE ARCHIMEDES PALIMPSEST: the Rochester Institute of Technology has a brag sheet on their scientitsts' accomplishments, and good for them.

New life for Dead Sea Scrolls, Archimedes

RIT’s reputation for using modern imaging technologies to illuminate historical documents began with the late Robert Johnston, former dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts and, later, a visiting scholar in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. His use of imaging to recover information from artifacts led to RIT’s involvement in the 1990s with the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish texts that hold clues to the early development of Christianity. Johnston became involved in the project after traveling to Israel and was among the first to suggest the use of digital imaging technology in deciphering the scrolls.

In 1996, Johnston, Roger L. Easton Jr., professor of imaging science at RIT, and Keith Knox, currently an imaging senior scientist and Boeing Technical Fellow at Boeing LTS, digitally recovered several characters from the Temple Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The RIT team originally used digital images created from color transparencies of the Temple Scroll and, later, at Princeton Theological Seminary, imaged actual fragments of other scrolls borrowed from the Syrian Orthodox Cathedral in Teaneck, N.J. The scientists used Johnston’s first-generation Kodak DCS-100 digital camera with filters over the lens to capture multispectral data – information visible on different wavelengths – that they processed using digital imaging software. Their efforts successfully enhanced the contrast between text and parchment for scholarly study.

[...]

UPDATE: Hindu philosophical writings in Sanskrit too.

VOLDEMORT AT QUMRAN? Maybe not.

UPDATE: Then there's Harry Potter and the menstruating woman with the basilisk's gaze.

Related post here. And don't miss Harry Potter and the biblical canons (S17-25).

I AM VERY HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE that Dr. Kelly Iverson has joined the staff of the Divinity School of the University of St. Andrews as a Lecturer in New Testament (post advertised here). Welcome Kelly!

OPPONENTS OF TENURE FOR NADIA ABU EL-HAJ at Barnard now have a website. (Via the JTA.)

Background here.

UPDATE (10 September): More here and here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH - Forbes has more info on the damage caused by the latest Waqf excavation:

On Thursday, Israeli archaeologist Zachi Zweig said a tractor used to dig the trench damaged the foundation of a 7-yard-wide wall "that might have been a remnant of the Second Temple."

Zweig said his group, the Public Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, drew that conclusion because of the location of the damaged foundation.

"We saw the damage for ourselves and documented it," he said.

The Second Temple was built by Cyrus the Great of Persia in 515 B.C. and destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.

The tractor dug a trench that was 4 feet deep, Zweig said.

"The bedrock at this location is very shallow, so there is a high probability that ancient remnants were damaged," he added.

The top Muslim cleric in Jerusalem, Mufti Mohammed Hussein, rejected the Israeli group's charges.

"We don't harm the antiquities, we are the ones who are taking care of the antiquities, unlike others who destroy them," the mufti said.

Zweig said the Israel Antiquities Authority supervisor who was assigned to oversee the cable replacement was a novice archaeologist. "The oversight was a joke," he said.

The authority had no comment.

Earlier coverage here.

UPDATE: Additional coverage in the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz. The latter also has new info on the sifting project on the Waqf's earlier illicit excavations:

In a related development yesterday, new artifacts discovered in sifting through earth removed from the Temple Mount were presented at the eighth annual City of David archaeological conference.

The project, now in its third year, entails scrutinizing truckloads of earth removed by the Waqf in 1999.

Among the ancient finds were numerous stone tiles intended for flooring, some of which have been identified as designed for use in the Roman-era mosaic work known as opus sectile, in which colorful tiles were cut into shapes and fitted into geometric patterns.

"The discovery of stone tiles used in opus sectile flooring in [earth from] the Temple Mount is one of the most important discoveries of the dirt-sifting work," Barkai said, "and it might aid in reconstructing the appearance and character of the Temple's outer courtyard."

Also, denials from "Israeli officials" according to the APF:

Doubts over 'second temple remains' in Jerusalem

Israeli officials cast doubt Friday over claims that remains of the second Jewish temple might have been found during work to lay pipes at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.

"If that was the case, the antiquities authority, which has an observer on site, as well as police, also monitoring the work, would have stepped in," said archaeologist Dan Bahat, a former excavations official in Jerusalem.

And the Al Aqsa Foundation (not sure what that is) responds:

A statement issued by the institution read that the Israeli parties have dubbed the maintenance works as barbarian, confirming that any construction works inside the Islamic shrine are the responsibility of the Waqf committee.

The Al-Aqsa foundation rejected the Israeli incitement against the Islamic Waqf ‘endowment’ committee, declaring willingness to defy all Israeli interventions in the mosque’s affairs.

UPDATE: Predictably, it seems that this episode is generating more Jewish-Temple denial and other way-out claims from the usual suspects:

Israel is conspiring to encroach on the Temple Mount to build a Jewish temple near the Al-Aqsa mosque, Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement northern branch, said Thursday.

Salah called on Arab and Muslim nations to "prevent the division of the Al-Aqsa by Israel."

In a letter to Arab kings and leaders of Muslim countries, Salah urged all Muslims to torpedo "Israel's plan that aims at dividing the Al-Aqsa Mosque between Muslims and Jews whereas in the Jewish part it plans to build its imaginary temple."

UPDATE (4 September): More here.

ANCIEN JUDAISM JOB AT DUKE (from the Agade list):

Via Nancy Hurtgen nhurtgen@duke.edu:
=====================================

Duke University's Department of Religion in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences invites applications and nominations for a tenure-track assistant professor position in late ancient Judaism to begin August 2008.

Candidates should have expertise in classical Jewish literature and an interest in Jewish interactions with late-ancient Christianity and/or early Islam. Additional areas of interest may include art, archaeology, gender studies or any discipline related to the cognate fields of Classical Studies, History, or Islamic Studies. The appointment includes graduate and undergraduate instruction. The appointee will participate in Duke's Graduate Program in Religion and Judaic Studies Program. They also will collaborate with faculty members in the Department of Religious Studies at the nearby University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Candidates are asked to send a letter of application, a curriculum vitae, and three letters of reference to: Chair of the Late-Ancient Judaism Search Committee, Department of Religion, Box 90964, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0964. Applications received by October 15, 2007 will be guaranteed full consideration but the search will continue until the position is filled. Duke University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. Women and minorities strongly are encouraged to apply.

TWO CONFERENCES AT KCL (from the Agade list):

From Diana Lipton diana.lipton@kcl.ac.uk:
================================================


TWO BIBLICAL STUDIES CONFERENCES AT KING'S COLLEGE LONDON

(1) GRADUATE STUDENT DAY CONFERENCE ON HEBREW BIBLE AND POST-BIBLICAL TEXTS

Thursday 15th May 2008, 11am-5.30pm, Council Room, Strand Campus

PhD students at any stage of their research and MA students thinking of continuing are invited to attend a one conference on the Hebrew Bible and early post and para-biblical texts (Dead Sea Scrolls, pseudepigrapha, targum, midrash) specifically for Graduate Students. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet your peers, acquire experience giving papers, get feedback on your research, and spend a day at King's College in the heart of London. We welcome proposals for papers on any aspect of your work. Papers will be 20 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes of audience questions and constructive feedback from a small panel of highly supportive professionals - Drs Lutz Doering (KCL), Charlotte Hempel (Birmingham), Diana Lipton (KCL) and Deborah Rooke (KCL), and Prof. Hugh Williamson (Oxford).

For more information, to register, and to propose a paper:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/trs/news/

(2) A QUESTION OF SEX: EMBROIDERED GARMENTS

Monday August 4th to Wednesday August 6th 2008, Council Room, Strand Campus

Keynote Speakers: Prof. Athalya Brenner (University of Amsterdam and Tel Aviv University), Dr. Tarja Philip (Hebrew University), and Dr. Deborah Rooke (King's College London).

Proposals are warmly invited for short papers (30 minutes plus 15) and designated Graduate Student papers (20 minutes plus 10) on sex and gender in biblical and post-biblical texts (Dead Sea Scrolls, pseudepigrapha, midrash) with a priestly worldview or concerns. Among biblical texts we include Leviticus, Numbers, Ezekiel, and Ezra, along with parts of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua and Chronicles, and are open to other suggestions. Programmed events include 'Group Texts', a creative Hebrew reading session, and 'Comparing Notes: Ancient Sex and Gender in the British Museum', a tailor-made tour of the collections, followed by a guided discussion. 'Embroidered Garments' follows a successful 2006 conference on gender and difference in biblical studies, papers from which are forthcoming with Sheffield Phoenix Press.

For more information, to register, and to propose a paper:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/trs/news/

Diana Lipton
Lecturer in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies
King's College London
diana.lipton@kcl.ac.uk