TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Support Sought for Temple Mount Synagogue

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) Haifa's long-time Chief Rabbi She'ar-Yashuv Cohen, who has taken part in many interfaith conferences and gatherings with Moslem religious leaders, says he's trying to gather support for a synagogue on the Temple Mount.

Rabbi Cohen, son of the late renowned Torah scholar known as the Nazir, Rabbi David Cohen, chairs the Chief Rabbinate Council for the Establishment of a Synagogue on the Temple Mount. Speaking on a special Temple Mount radio program on Voice of Israel's Moreshet (Tradition)-channel this week, he said he is working in the United States to amass support for the project.

Other rabbis have also called for the construction of a Jewish prayer site on the Temple Mount. Former Chief Sephardic Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu is among them, though he has not campaigned for this cause. Other members on the Chief Rabbinate committee are Be'er Sheva's Chief Rabbi Yehuda Deri and Tzfat's Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu.

[...]

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. No construction, please, on the Temple Mount unless it is done with controlled, scientific archaeological excavation. And I would prefer not even then. Let's wait a few decades until we have far more sophisticated technologies that might be able to scan and analyze what's there nonintrusively.

A COLLOQUIUM ON ANCIENT HEBREW:

The 9th Mainz International Colloquium on Ancient Hebrew (9. MICAH) will take place at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (Germany), from Friday, 14 to Sunday 16 November, 2008.

You are invited to give a lecture, either a short paper (20 min plus 5 discussion) or a full lecture (45 min plus 10 discussion), as you please.

Topics cover the grammar and linguistics of Ancient and Classical Hebrew (Epigraphic and Biblical Hebrew, Qumran and related Hebrew, and Ben Sira), as well as studies of adjacent languages and epigraphy, for instance Ugaritic, Phoenician-Punic, Old and Imperial Aramaic, Moabite and Edomite. Also welcome are topics on general epigraphy, paleography, and general linguistics in connection with these languages.

Submitted paper topics will be arranged into special sessions, within the following areas:

Biblical Hebrew
Postbiblical Hebrew
Ugaritic
Canaanite
Phoenician-Punic
Aramaic
Transjordan
Lexicography & Semantics
Epigraphy & Palaeography
General topics of Northwest Semitic paleography.

Conference languages are German, English, and French. As we wish to avoid parallel sessions, sessions will be deemed closed when the optimal number of proposed papers for each are accepted. For this reason, if you are considering participation, the earlier you send your proposal the better.

Postgraduates, or PhD. doctorate students are explicitly invited to present their projects where they might benefit from collegial discussions. Any one applying In this category, please indicate clearly your institution and supervisor.

For participation, we request a fee of 35 Euro, which is due on site. For those who present a paper, participation is free. Active students can request the suspension of fees and it might be granted depending on the availability of funds.

Please send paper proposals to the undersigned (lehmann@uni-mainz.de) and indicate the topic (preliminary or working title) and the preferred length of presentation.

While no formal pre-registration form is needed, for planning purposes, it is nevertheless important that we receive soon an email declaration of intent, at the above address.

We are not organizing travel or housing arrangements, but will gladly inform you on available lodging near the University. For all questions and concern please contact:

Dr. Reinhard G. Lehmann
Academic Director / Ancient Hebrew and NWS Languages
Research Unit on Ancient Hebrew and Epigraphy
Faculty of Protestant Theology
Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz
Tel. +49-6131-39-23284 (office)
Phone and fax +49-6132-799873
Email: lehmann@uni-mainz.de

In co-operation with:
Anna Zernecke (University of Mainz)
Johannes F. Diehl (University of Frankfurt)

We look forward to hosting you in Mainz next year.

(From the Canaanite list.)

ANOTHER JOHN STRUGNELL OBITUARY, this one in the Harvard Crimson, the Harvard student newspaper. It's better and more balanced than any of the ones so far from the mainstream media. Excerpt:

“I think that while the things he said and did can’t be condoned, they can be forgiven because of his illness,” said Sidnie W. Crawford, who also worked with him on the Scrolls project. According to Crawford, Strugnell was instrumental in bringing both female and Jewish scholars to the team.

CONTINUING A LEGACY

Strugnell’s students remember him as a inspirational teacher and scholar.

“He was a marvelous teacher—really was incredibly erudite,” Crawford said. “He just knew so much about so many things. No matter what you were working on, he always had something very helpful to say.”

Crawford, who is currently a professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said that Strugnell’s scholarly influence lives on.

“His students are going to be his legacy,” Crawford said. “All the students that he trained won’t forget him.”

According to Anne-Christine Strugnell, her father was so immersed in his work that it was sometimes difficult for him to find time for his family of five children.

“But it’s interesting to see that he was a father figure for a lot of his students­—that was where his interests lay,” she said. “He was totally engrossed and enthralled by his work.”

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

PRETEND TO BE A TIME TRAVELER DAY was yesterday and I missed it! Just as well, maybe ...

REBECCA LESSES remembers John Strugnell.

ANOTHER PETRA TRAVELOGUE. There sure are a lot of these.

Following Indy's Footsteps
Visit to ancient city of Petra proves to be truly awe-inspiring

Larry Perry
Sunday, December 9, 2007

Walking down a mile-long, 25-foot-wide slot canyon known as the Siq in southern Jordan, Daniel Martin, son of Lee Martin of Knoxville, turned the corner and stopped suddenly to gaze in disbelief at the scene before him. With eyes as big as saucers, he looked at his dad and said, “Wow Dad!”

As we turned the corner from a narrow part of the canyon walls, there appeared a scene right out of Indiana Jones’ “The Last Crusade” movie. There before us stood the ancient city of Petra. The first structure seen is the Treasury Building, which bears a facade that is carved into the sandstone cliff wall and is about 150 feet high. It dates back to a civilization from the sixth century B.C., the Nabataean period.

[...]

Lee, Daniel, my wife, Eloise, and I were on a photo shoot that took us to most of the Holy Land and parts of Jordan. The shoot included the World Heritage Site of Petra, which, incidentally, was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World by the New Open World Corp.

While not mentioned by name in the Bible, Petra, which means “rock,” is often identified as “Sela,” which also means “rock,” in the Bible and other ancient writings. The Petra area was the home of the Edomites of the Old Testament. They were cave dwellers. Rekem is another ancient name for Petra and appears in the Dead Sea scrolls. This region in southern Jordan is on the main east/west trade route between much of Arabia and the Mediterranean and Red seas. The city of Petra is about 60 miles north of the Red Sea and easily accessible by the King’s Highway.

[...]

I'm pretty sure that the treasury building was built a lot later than in the sixth century B.C.E.

THIS IS FUNNY: With the Christmas season comes the dreaded Christmas letter. Here's an amusing parody:

Others equally haunted by the ghosts of Christmas letters past have launched dozens of Web sites this year where people can post the most egregious examples of self-absorption. An Internet favorite facetiously speaks to the trend: "Junior has re-translated the Rosetta Stone, correcting several errors previously made by linguists which has changed the meaning and importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and shed new light and understanding on the Bible. ... He earned 72 Merit Badges in the Boy Scouts of America in one month and can field strip a F-116 fighter jet blindfolded and restore it to flight status using only a Swiss Army Knife."

ANOTHER OBITUARY FOR JOHN STRUGNELL, this one in the New York Times.

John Strugnell Dies at 77; Scholar Undone by His Slur

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: December 9, 2007

John Strugnell, a respected biblical scholar at Harvard whose tenure as the chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls ended in controversy over anti-Semitic remarks he made in an interview, died on Nov. 30 in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77 and lived in nearby Arlington.

He died while hospitalized for an infection associated with treatment of cancer, said his daughter Anne-Christine Strugnell.

At 23, while still a student of languages at the University of Oxford, Mr. Strugnell joined the original team of scholars piecing together and translating the scrolls, one of the great ancient finds of the 20th century. About 900 documents in Hebrew and Aramaic, bearing on a critical period in the history of Judaism and the origins of Christianity, were uncovered from 1947 to 1956 in caves near the Dead Sea, in the West Bank.

[...]

Scholars consider the Dead Sea Scrolls a reflection of the thinking of Jews during the turbulent period of the beginnings of Rabbinic Judaism and the emergence of Christianity. In his research, Mr. Strugnell personally translated several notable texts of Jewish religious literature, including one important document that he completed with a former student, the Rev. Daniel J. Harrington of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, in the years after his downfall.

Krister Stendahl, a former dean of the divinity school, described Mr. Strugnell as “a linguistic prodigy” in classical and Semitic languages and “a scholar’s scholar, one you would go to when you knew your own knowledge was not enough to solve a problem.”

Dr. Stendahl said that Mr. Strugnell had been plagued with depression for much of his life and that particularly given that struggle, it “was amazing how much research he managed to accomplish and the large number of students he prepared to be biblical scholars.”

[...]

AN UNOFFICIAL BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVALETTE has been published by Doug Chaplin at the Metacatholic blog.

Mark Goodacre comments that this "just goes to show that non-canonical texts can be as interesting as canonical ones." Well yeah.

ANOTHER REVIEW of Nadia Abu El-Haj's book, Facts on the Ground, has been published in The Current, an alternative student publication at Columbia University. It's of interest because it's by an anthropologist. He doesn't like it.

Searching for "Facts" on the Ground
David Rosen
Professor of Anthropology, Fairleigh Dickinson University

The very title of the Nadia Abu El-Haj's Facts on the Ground invites controversy. The phrase "facts on the ground" originally referred to a cardinal principle of the post-1967 Israeli settler movement, which held that by building and occupying settlements in the newly-controlled West Bank it would be able to create an undeniable dominion over Palestinian lands that would be impossible to dislodge. As used in El-Haj's book, the phrase refers to the entire archeological enterprise in this region of the world, which beginning in the 19th century, she charges, invented a mythological story of Israelite and Jewish historical presence in the land of Israel, and imbued that story with the false aura of factuality that has also proven impossible to dislodge. In her view, archeology is a "colonial science" whose main goal has been to intellectually erase the history of Palestinians from the land.

[...]

It is within this framework that Facts on the Ground is situated. Post-colonial discourse has intellectually colonized much of the anthropology of the Middle East. As a form of bricolage unburdened by rules of evidence or proof, it pulls together snippets of anything and everything to weave its dismal tale of unfettered nationalism and colonialism. The task is made easier by the book's definition of archeology, which intentionally conflates professional and scientific practices with popular and political uses of archeological material. Imagine the results if this definition were applied to cultural anthropology in the United States. Every use of anthropology, from the crackpot to the sublime, could be attributed back to the profession. And so it goes: a potsherd here and a potsherd there, a bizarre comment by a tour guide, a film in a museum exhibition all become grist for the mill.

[...]

Background on the tenure controversy at Barnard and its aftermath here. And just keep following the links back.

CAN'T MAKE IT UP -- A COMIC BOOK ON RASHI:

Jewish comic book hero
By NETANYA HOFFMAN (Jerusalem Post)

Rashi Hakadosh: A Light after the Dark Ages
By Rabbi Berel Wein
Mahrwood Press
64 pages; $14.95
If your teenager is a Jewish history buff (or if you would like him to be), Rashi Hakadosh: A Light after the Dark Ages may be just for him. Produced by scholar, historian, educator and Jerusalem Post columnist Rabbi Berel Wein and written by J. Cogan and Aryeh Mahr, this comic book about the life of 11th-century talmudic scholar Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki comes as a companion to other comic books on the lives of Maimonides and Shmuel Hanagid. Rashi's analysis is the most widely read Torah commentary, and he spent his life making the Torah and Talmud accessible to the layman.

[...]

I accidentally posted these last two posts on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog for a few minutes. Apologies.

MARVIN MEYER, one of the National Geographic's translators of the Gospel of Judas, responds to the criticisms of April Deconick in her recent NYT Op-Ed piece. Marlon Brando is invoked. I would have found his response more helpful if he had listed what he saw as the positive things about Judas in the document. A National Geographic representative responds as well.

Background here.

IF ONLY IT WERE SO: Jack Sasson on the Agade list points to this curious fictional account of the archaeological discovery of a medieval library of heterodox chants and scriptures in Morocco.

SCRIPTURE

Gnostic Chants of North Africa

by Prof. Ephraim Weinherz,
Coordinator of the Harvard Commission on the Wadi al-'Irfan Texts

During the first weeks after the discovery of the ruins at Wadi al-'Irfan in southern Morocco in January, 2000, it became clear that the texts found there were of far-reaching significance. To say the least, the mere juxtaposition of scriptures in Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek was most surprising especially for a dervish monastic library in such a remote region.

[...]

The author is making a subversive point in a lateral and perhaps overly subtle way (see the disclaimer at the end), but the scenario is quite well thought out and surprising plausible. It may well be that equally startling libraries actually are buried in out of the way places, and let's hope that they're found in our time.

But meanwhile, it occurred to me while reading the essay that our corpus in the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project bears some striking resemblances to this fictional library in terms of contents, languages, and dates of texts and manuscripts. The same languages appear and more. The texts are scripture based, come in both prose and poetry, and sometimes have heterodox elements. At least one (the Balaam Text from Deir 'Alla) goes back to the actual period of the Hebrew Bible. The manuscripts are of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic origin (and pagan) with a generally similar range of dates. A pyramid even figures in one (the Surid Legend).

We may not have any newly recovered archives of lost apocryphal scriptures handy at the moment, but there's an amazing amount of work to be done on such documents that survive piecemeal in manuscripts scattered all around the world.

I've been coming down with a cold all day, so I hope these rumination still make sense to me when I'm feeling less muzzy!

AN OBITUARY FOR JOHN STRUGNELL has been published in the Boston Globe:

John Strugnell, 77; Dead Sea Scrolls expert who was dismissed after comments

Globe Staff / December 5, 2007

John Strugnell was perched at a scholarly pinnacle in 1990 when he sat for an interview with a reporter from an Israeli newspaper and made the anti-Semitic remarks that effectively ended his career.

As chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls project, he had been leading a team of translators in piecing together fragments of the ancient documents that shed light on early Judaism and Christianity. A language prodigy, Mr. Strugnell had joined the effort when he was 23 and in college. Nearly four decades later, he was heading the project and teaching at Harvard Divinity School.

"He was a linguistic genius," said Krister Stendahl, a former dean of the divinity school and a retired Lutheran bishop of Stockholm. "We brought him in to get the best man we could imagine for philological and textural criticism precision in our New Testament department."

Few colleagues, however, knew that while Mr. Strugnell labored in two high-profile jobs, he also was being treated for manic depression and struggling with alcoholism. Upon publication, his anti-Semitic comments led to his firing and public denunciations, though a few friends spoke in his defense, attributing his remarks to "mental imbalance" and a "drinking problem."

[...]

Actually, many of his friends and students, myself included, signed a statement in his defense which was published in Biblical Archaeology Review in 1991. John suffered from a bipolar mood disorder and alcoholism. And the fact is that people in the throes of a manic episode say things that they don't mean and would not say when in their right mind. He was still to some degree in this state in 1994, when he tried, with limited success, to nuance his views in a BAR interview with Hershel Shanks. John's problems were a part of his life, but they should be put in the context of other parts that are much more important, and indeed his acccomplishments in spite of these problems are remarkable. He made a huge contribution to the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls in terms of his own work, his administrative work, and supervising the research of his students. Those who knew him well will remember him for his vast erudition and his steadfast support of his students. The Boston Globe piece does try to be fair, but they could have tried harder.

(UPI has also published a summary of the Boston Globe obituary. It focuses almost entirely on his unfortunate comments in 1990. Alas, it's a good example of the journalistic taste for dirt and sensationalism. I'm not going to link to it.)

QUEEN HELENE'S MANSION?

Israeli archaeologists find 2,000-year-old mansion linked to historic queen

Remains of mansion archaeologists believe likely belonged to Queen Helene of Adiabene unearthed during dig in east Jerusalem parking lot; building by far the largest and most elaborate structure discovered in the City of David area

Associated Press
Published: 12.06.07, 10:56 / Israel News

Israeli archaeologists digging in an east Jerusalem parking lot have uncovered a 2,000-year-old mansion they believe likely belonged to Queen Helene of Adiabene, a minor but exceptional character in the city's history.

The remains of the building were unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, underneath layers of later settlement that were themselves hidden until recently under the asphalt of a small parking lot. The dig site is in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan, built on a slope that houses the most ancient remnants of settlement in Jerusalem and is known to scholars as the City of David.

The building, which includes storerooms, living quarters and ritual baths, is by far the largest and most elaborate structure discovered by archaeologists in the City of David area, which was home 2,000 years ago almost exclusively to the city's poor. The contemporary Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, who penned detailed descriptions of Jerusalem, mentions only one wealthy family that lived there - the family of Queen Helene.

According to Josephus and Jewish texts, Helene was from a royal clan that ruled Adiabene, a region now in northern Iraq. Along with her family, she converted to Judaism and came to Jerusalem in the first half of the first century A.D.

[...]

UPDATE: Joseph I. Lauer notes that Arutz Sheva has more info, a map, and photos here.

RESTORING THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS:

Italy to restore dead sea scrolls

By Web Editor. Filed under General, Arton December 5th, 2007 (Italy Magazine)

Italy to restore dead sea scrollsItaly is to help restore the Dead Sea Scrolls, Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli announced on a visit to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem Tuesday.

Rutelli said Italy was ”honoured” to lend its know-how to preserving Jerusalem’s batch of the famous Biblical scrolls, which have been slowly deteriorating since their discovery 60 years ago.

”The decision to entrust such a fundamental document to Italy bears witness to our acknowledged global expertise in conservation and restoration,” Rutelli said.

Italy’s Central Institute for Restoration and its Institute for Book Pathology will be involved in the two-year project, the minister said.

[...]

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

THERE IS NOW AN ANCIENT WORLD BLOGGERS GROUP BLOG. I am a member.

AN OBITUARY FOR JOHN STRUGNELL has been posted by his daughter, Anne-Christine Strugnell, at Jim West's blog.

MORE GOODIES are emerging from the new Herculaneum excavation:

Rare ancient wooden throne found in Herculaneum

Tue Dec 4, 10:13 AM ET

ROME (Reuters) - An ancient Roman wood and ivory throne has been unearthed at a dig in Herculaneum, Italian archaeologists said on Tuesday, hailing it as the most significant piece of wooden furniture ever discovered there.

The throne was found during an excavation in the Villa of the Papyri, the private house formerly belonging to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, built on the slope of Mount Vesuvius.

The name of the villa derives from the impressive library containing thousands of scrolls of papyrus discovered buried under meters (yards) of volcanic ash after the Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79.

[...]

I didn't know that the new excavation at the Villa of the Papyri had already commenced, but I'm glad to hear it has. If they're finding wooden furniture, there's reason to be optimistic that more scrolls are preserved there as well.

(Via the Agade list.)

UPDATE: David Meadows comments on the "throne" and has a photo.

THE JERUSALEM POST seems to be taking something of a Scrooge line on Hanukkah this year:

Hard times now, hard time then
By ELI KAVON

In the Zionist imagination, the holiday of Hanukka is a celebration of triumph, glory, and a golden age of Jewish power and sovereignty under the leadership of the Maccabees and their descendants.

While Ahad Ha'am and Max Nordau were early Zionist thinkers and activists who disagreed on almost every aspect of the emerging movement, the one element they agreed upon was the importance of Hanukka to modern Jews. Both men admired the Maccabees and placed them in the center of their ideologies. Looking back in history, however, the idea that the Hasmonean kingdom of Judah and his descendants were all-powerful and truly independent is, in part, a myth.

Yes, Judah Maccabee led a successful rebellion against the mighty Seleucid empire, he retook the temple in Jerusalem and reestablished it as a cultic center, and he founded a sovereign Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Yet, the history of the Maccabees after the triumph of Hanukka in 164 BCE is, for the most part, dismal and depressing.

[...]

Well, history is like that.