PSEUDEPIGRAPHA AND ARAMAIC WATCH: The Odes of Solomon and other ancient Syriac poetry pertaining to the Nativity are discussed in Commonweal Magazine:

The Mary We Never Knew
New Light from the Syrian Tradition

Sally Cunneen

It’s hard to maintain the spirit of anticipation that should mark the season of Advent when Christmas itself has become little more than an occasion for extravagance and consumption. We could all use some fresh inspiration concerning what Advent is preparing us for.

I have found an unexpected source for such insight in the increasing number of English translations from ancient Syriac literature. It turns out that the early Christians pondered the same questions we face. And while Gnostic texts have been widely touted in the mainstream media in recent decades as alternatives to the canonical Gospels, the lesser-known Syrian Christian tradition opens up an equally ancient but orthodox theology and devotionalism that are surprisingly fresh, deeply human, and, despite the differences in time and culture, relevant to our own needs.

Of the three international languages of the early church, Greek, Latin, and Syriac, Syriac was closest to the Aramaic and Hebrew of Jesus and the Bible. It was rich in imagery and imagination, and was widely used in the Middle East until it was supplanted by Arabic, following Islam’s sweeping military conquests in the seventh century. The Odes of Solomon, which translator James Hamilton Charlesworth calls “the earliest Christian hymnbook,” suggests that there was a vital Christian community of Syriac speakers even before the end of the first century. At a time when prayers to Mary did not yet exist in the Western church, the description of the Nativity in The Odes is startling:

[...]

Syriac is clearly "in" this year.

A REPORT ON THE JERUSALEM SYNDROME from a Reuters journalist at the FaithWorld blog:

Desperately seeking the Jerusalem Syndrome
December 17th, 2007, filed by Ari Rabinovitch

One of the basic rules of journalism is to “be in the right place at the right time.” This is not easy to do when the story you want to cover happens only 10 or 12 times a year, at any one of dozens of locations indoors or outdoors and at any hour of the day or night. The odds were against me massively, but why should I let that get in the way when the story was as interesting as the Jerusalem Syndrome described in my feature “Come to Jerusalem, see the Messiah“?

Only about a dozen Jerusalem tourists per year suddenly get agitated, imagine themselves to be characters from the Bible, fashion makeshift togas out of hotel sheets and go out to holy sites to recite the Psalms, sing hymns or harangue passers-by to repent. There are enough anecdotes around to write a colourful story about the syndrome, but I wanted to get closer to the story. Maybe even see a syndrome sufferer first hand.

[...]

No such luck, but he did miss one at the Western Wall by just a week:

Just last week, the site apparently proved so overwhelming for a young woman in her 20s that she stripped naked and lay on the group, muttering “the holy temple, the holy temple” and “it is all from God” while pointing at the sky. She was later sent to hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

Poor thing. Although there is a biblical precedent (1 Samuel 19:19-24), not everything done in the Bible is a good example to follow.

19] And it was told Saul, "Behold, David is at Nai'oth in Ramah."
[20] Then Saul sent messengers to take David; and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as head over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied.
[21] When it was told Saul, he sent other messengers, and they also prophesied. And Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they also prophesied.
[22] Then he himself went to Ramah, and came to the great well that is in Secu; and he asked, "Where are Samuel and David?" And one said, "Behold, they are at Nai'oth in Ramah."
[23] And he went from there to Nai'oth in Ramah; and the Spirit of God came upon him also, and as he went he prophesied, until he came to Nai'oth in Ramah.
[24] And he too stripped off his clothes, and he too prophesied before Samuel, and lay naked all that day and all that night. Hence it is said, "Is Saul also among the prophets?"

For more on the Jerusalem Syndrome, see here.

YALE UNIVERSITY is offering a free, not-for-credit online course on the Hebrew Bible.

(Via the T&T Clark blog.)

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Cabinet okays renewing controversial Temple Mount Mugrabi excavation
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Temple Mount, Jerusalem

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has been instructed by the cabinet to continue its work at the Mugrabi walkway near the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The cabinet recently instructed the IAA to complete the work "as soon as possible, with full transparency and with the cooperation of the relevant bodies."

Excavations at the site, a walkway leading to the Mugrabi Gate at the Temple Mount, were halted in June after they raised an international protest. At the end of September, following a report in Haaretz that the Ministerial Committee for Jerusalem Affairs had approved the continuation of the work, Science, Culture and Sport Minister Ghaleb Majadele appealed the decision to the cabinet secretariat and it was frozen. Two weeks ago, Majadele acceded to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's request to withdraw his appeal.

On November 29, the cabinet approved the Ministerial Committee for Jerusalem Affairs decision, instructing the IAA to "remove any finding that is not archaeological, and provide a solution to elements of conservation, esthetics, security, safety and possible social impairments." The latter element was a reference to homeless individuals who have taken shelter in structures at the site that have no archaeological value.

The cabinet decided to allocate NIS 3.5 million for the completion of archaeological and conservation work. The director-general of the Prime Minister's Office was charged with locating this money, as well as the funds for construction of a permanent bridge at the site, at an estimated cost of NIS 14 million. The budgetary source will be located as soon as the plans are approved by the Jerusalem Regional Planning Commission.

[...]

This sentence is strange:

The phrase "removing any find that is not archaeological" refers to all Palestinian finds and most of those of the Ottoman period.

I'm not at all sure what "Palestinian finds" are. The term does not have an archaeological meaning. And what is "archaeological" and what isn't in this context? What does "removing" it mean? It sounds almost sinister, as though some finds are "archaeological" and (by implication) should be treated accordingly, while others are not and should just be "removed." On his list, Joseph I. Lauer writes:

With regard to the statement in the English article that "The phrase 'removing any find that is not archaeological' refers to all Palestinian finds and most of those of the Ottoman period", the Hebrew version (which should be referred to) states that this refers "to the removal of all post-1700 finds - that is, most of the finds from the period of Ottomon rule."

That is somewhat helpful, but still doesn't explain what the post-1700 finds are and what "removing" them involves. I doubt that Haaretz is giving us a clear understaning of what's going on.

MORE ON CARTAGENA: The 2005 Carthaginians and Romans Festival at Cartagena (a festival discussed earlier here) has a spot on YouTube:



Are those Phoenician cherubim from about 0:03 to 0:21?

APOCRYPHA WATCH: The story of Tobit figures in a London Times review by Waldemar Januszczak of a National Gallery exhibition of Renaissance German stained glass. He certainly has his own take on the story.

At its outset, however, I was much taken by a beautiful little panel from the Lower Rhine, produced anonymously in about 1520 and showing Tobias and Sarah tucked up in bed on their wedding night. Both of them appear to be sleeping soundly. And so, at the foot of their bed, is their dog, curled up neatly in a single circle of glass.

The story of Tobias and Sarah is one of my favourite examples of madly inventive biblical moralising. If you don’t know it, then your own past has been too godless and you are probably keener than you should be on sex with married women. According to the Apocrypha, Sarah was a dangerous woman. No fewer than seven of her husbands died on their wedding night, murdered cruelly by wicked spirits as they tried, unsuccessfully, to consummate the marriage. Undeterred by this nuptial carnage, Sarah’s cousin, Tobias, fell in love with her, and was about to become her eighth victim when the Archangel Raphael came down to him and advised him to catch a giant fish in the River Tigris, and to remove its heart, gall and liver. On the appointed wedding night, the angel advised Tobias to grill the fish’s liver in the nuptial chamber, so its smell would scare off the evil demons. All this Tobias did, and the marriage was successfully consummated. And the two of them lived happily ever after.

But none of the scary sexual fearfulness that underpins this weird tale of Sarah and Tobias, or any of its mad mood of fish-frying primitive magic, has been allowed to disturb the air of quiet German domesticity that the anonymous glass master of the Rhine has brought to his sweet telling of the story. There’s no hint of wedding-night anxiety. No touch of conjugal excitement. All of the story’s biblical terror has been smothered in an eiderdown of comfortable married bliss. Look how properly Sarah and Tobias are dressed for their wedding night, in their neat village bonnets. Look how well ordered the fateful bedchamber is. Sarah might be a dangerous demon in bed, but when it comes to cleaning and sweeping, she’s a perfect German Hausfrau.

The show’s point is that the stained-glass artists of Germany were mimicking the moods and approaches of the painters of the time, and therefore avoiding the ecstatic, light-filled sensuality you find in medieval stained glass. It’s true; they were. Accompanying this lurch into an unexpected realism – who would ever have imagined that a stained-glass window might one day go in search of house-proud village moods! – were various technical and stylistic developments that are, indeed, mightily impressive.

Look, for instance, at the rolled-up curtain hanging to the right of Sarah’s bed. It’s a fabulous piece of illusionism that really captures the folds and squashings of the cloth. And what about the decorated blue bedspread? All its folds are amazingly convincing, but I particularly enjoyed the two lumpy creases that mark the spot where Tobias and Sarah have chastely folded their hands over their genitals. At least, I think that’s what the folds mark.

What’s happening here is that German stained glass is trying, rather desperately, not to be stained glass at all. It’s trying to copy the illusionism and detail you find in, say, a Dürer painting. The show has a decent stab at describing the techniques involved in achieving this difficult descriptive-ness. Some of the best effects were achieved not by adding, but by taking away. The design of Sarah and Tobias’s fabulously illusion-istic bedcloth involved covering the blue glass in a dark film, then selectively scratching sections of it away. And how typical of the Germans to be extra-good at this.

Overall, he wasn't much impressed by the exhibit.

THE SAN DIEGO DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION receives yet another review, this one in the Salt Lake Tribune:

The Dead Sea Scrolls in San Diego
Words apart
Exhibit provides a fascinating glimpse of these ancient, mysterious manuscripts
By Kurt Kragthorpe
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 12/15/2007 03:14:36 PM MST

SAN DIEGO - The impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls, written more than 2,000 years ago, painstakingly pieced together and displayed under glass at the San Diego Natural History Museum, is being recorded on index cards, preserved in plastic sheets in a looseleaf binder on a table positioned just outside the exhibit.
Visitors have expressed their impressions, with one describing the tour as "one of the greatest experiences of my life." That was from a 93-year-old woman.
And then there was the guest who wrote, "Now I can die, after seeing the scrolls for myself." Judging by his handwriting and his spelling of "othentick," Joshua Lopez is probably about 10.
More than 300,000 visitors over the past six months have witnessed the most extensive collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls ever displayed in the U.S.
Discovered in caves in Israel some 60 years ago, the scrolls contain manuscripts from the Hebrew Bible. The 12 scrolls being displayed through the exhibit's Jan. 6 closing depict the Ten Commandments from Deuteronomy, as well as parts of Psalms, Genesis, Leviticus and other Old Testament books.
Another guest commented that the exhibit was "breathtaking and humbling, to be so close to the origins of how our faith has been recorded."

[...]

ROBERT ALTER'S PSALMS TRANSLATION is reviewed in the Washington Times. Excerpt:

Ever since the King James Bible came off the press at the close of the Elizabethan era, biblical scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have attempted to correct and update it. The most recent laborer in this vineyard is Robert Alter, who teaches Hebrew at Stanford. In his "The Book of Psalms," he focuses on eponymous Bible book and seeks to present the passages "in a kind of English verse that is readable yet sounds something like Hebrew." I'm not competent to judge the accuracy of his translation, but I am bold enough to say that his revised version fails to come trippingly off the tongue.

CARTAGENA, Hannibal's home town, is gearing up for the tourist season. So far so good.

More on Cartagena here.

A SCHOLAR OF PHOENICIAN STUDIES has been appointed an honorary member of Malta's National Order of Merit:

CLAUDIA SAGONA M.O.M.

(in absentia)

A Senior Research Fellow in Archaeology at the Centre for Classics and Archaeology, Melbourne University who since 1990 has devoted much of her scholarly efforts to a better and more detailed understanding of Malta’s ancient past especially the Phoenician and Punic periods. Her service to Malta is achieved through her international standing as a scholar and her promotion of Maltese heritage. Her publications include four substantial books on Malta and a large number of articles, reviews and reports. Her detailed studies on Malta are considered benchmarks in the discipline and are often cited in scholarly works. In 2005 she organised a Round Table at the 6th International Congress of Phoenician-Punic Studies in Lisbon and in 2006 she organised another conference in collaboration with Heritage Malta and the University of Malta on Phoenician-Punic Ceramics.

Since 1996 she has been senior investigator in charge of pottery finds at the excavations at Tas-Silg, conducted by the Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Malta. Dr Sagona has a commitment to promote Maltese heritage to the public at large. She has done this through interviews for a film documentary and public lectures at the University of Melbourne and Sidney, the Maltese Historical Association (Melbourne), and the Archaeological Society (Malta). She encourages students in Australia to pursue the study of Malta, whereas in Malta, during her annual visit, she has willingly trained students in her specialist area and encouraged them with their research.

Congratulations to Dr. Sagona.

MODERN ALEXANDRIA is profiled in a Travel piece in the NYT. Some of its ancient history comes up as well.

A City of Legend Embarks on a New Journey

By KAREEM FAHIM
Published: December 16, 2007

ON a cloudless morning in mid-September, it was not quiet around the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern disc-shaped library in Cleopatra’s ancient hometown in Egypt. Outside, students flirted and joked on the edge of a reflecting pool. Behind them, cars whizzed by on the Corniche, the spruced-up sea road that hugs the Mediterranean.

Inside, a tour guide, a fast-talking young woman wearing a bright hijab, led a group of tourists into the library’s immense reading room, stopping on a wooden terrace that looked down onto more terraces. The sun threw spots of blue and green light onto the floors through colorful glass as she pointed out the library’s art galleries, theaters, rare manuscript collections and planetarium, as well as its more than half a million books.

But the thing that caught everyone’s attention was the Espresso Book Machine in the main reading room. The giant photocopier-like machine can print, on demand, virtually any book, complete with color covers and glue bindings in minutes.

It is a fitting symbol for Alexandria, a faded metropolis that is rising again from the sea, one replicated landmark at a time.

[...]

In recent years, however, efforts by preservationists and the government to restore the city’s luster have started to bear fruit. The first sign of Alexandria’s renewal was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the glimmering vision in steel and glass that opened on the Corniche in 2002.

Built near the site of the original Library of Alexandria — perhaps the ancient world’s greatest, with an unrivaled collection that included original manuscripts of Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles — the Bibliotheca seeks to resurrect that lost monument with shelf space for eight million books and a massive granite wall inscribed with what officials say are characters from all the world’s written languages.

[...]

And there are plans, though still not financed, to restore the city’s Eastern Harbor with an underwater archaeology museum, a waterfront promenade and hotels, including one inspired by the third-century B.C. Pharos lighthouse, whose ruins lie underwater.

[...]

THE SAN DIEGO DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION has been extended for a week to 6 January. Not surprisingly, attendance has been very high:

The San Diego Natural History Museum extended the exhibition, which opened in June, to meet demand. Delle Willett, the museum's director of marketing, said 315,552 people had seen it as of Dec. 13 and 10,400 others have bought advance tickets.

"Our normal attendance for the entire year is usually under 300,000," she said. "So we've really outdone ourselves. This is huge."

THE 'DE-POSHING' OF LATIN. Bring it on!

ANOTHER OBITUARY FOR JOHN STRUGNELL, this one in the LA Times:

John Strugnell, 1930 - 2007
Dead Sea Scrolls project editor lost post after anti-Semitic remarks

By Mary Rourke, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 14, 2007
John Strugnell, a prominent biblical scholar who was the editor in chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls project for six years but was dismissed from his position for anti-Semitic remarks he made during an interview with an Israeli newspaper, has died. He was 77.

[...]

He was replaced by Emanuel Tov, an Israeli scholar who had been a part of the team. With Tov's encouragement, Strugnell continued working on the scrolls.

In his close to 40 years on the project he translated and deciphered several liturgical and biblical texts, including, in the 1990s, a work of previously unknown Jewish wisdom literature that he completed with Father Daniel J. Harrington.

"John Strugnell was one of the first and most brilliant decipherers of the Dead Sea Scrolls," said Harrington, a former student of Strugnell who is on the faculty of Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass. "He had a genius for reading them and piecing them together."

Strugnell also trained several generations of scholars in the painstaking work of deciphering the scrolls and was generous with his time and expertise both toward students and colleagues, Harrington said.

[...]

UPDATE: There is also a brief and unhelpful mention of Strugnell's death in the Seattle Times (scroll down to "Passages"). I think it is unconscionable for them to highlight his dismissal for anti-Semitic remarks without mentioning his illness at all.

UPDATE: A short but excellent Strugnell obituary by Sidnie White Crawford has been posted at the Biblical Archaeology Society website.

BLOGGING ARCHAEOLOGY: Bill Caraher gives us an overview at the Ancient World Bloggers Group blog.

A NEW COPTIC TV CHANNEL in Egypt.

UPDATE: More info here.

UPDATE: Hmmm ... I guess it doesn't actually say that it's a Coptic language channel does it? Oh well. But it does mention that

Egypt has a Coptic TV channel already, called Aghapi TV, which started brodcasting in 2005. But Aghapi specializes in broadcasting lithurgical services.

Presumably the liturgical services are in the Coptic language.

A DEAD SEA SCROLLS CONFERENCE is coming, to be held at the Center for Ancient Studies at NYU. Details are sketchy, but this has been posted on the Agade list:

From Diana Pittet dlp5@nyu.edu:
==================================

* Save the Date:

March 6 & March 7, 2008
Center for Ancient Studies Conference
"Dead Sea Scrolls at Sixty: Scholarly Contributions by NYU Faculty & Alumni"
New York University

We'll soon post information on our Web site (http://ancientstudies.fas.nyu.edu/page/home) and send e-mails and posters by February 2008. We hope that you can make it to our annual

This reads as though something was lost at the end of the message, but that's how it arrived.

MEGILLAT ANTIOCHUS, The Scroll of Antiochus, is noted as relevant to the season in an Arutz Sheva article:

The Unknown Megillah of Chanukah
by Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple

The theme of the book is the Hasmonean victories.

Chanukah and Purim are often compared. But the differences are substantial. In particular, without Megillat Esther there would be no Purim, whilst Chanukah without its megillah is not only possible, but taken for granted.

Yet, there is actually a megillah for the festival. Known variously as Megillat Antiochus ("The Scroll of Antiochus"), Megillat Beit Chashmona'i(m) ("The Scroll of the House of the Hasmoneans") and Megillah Y'vanit ("The Greek Scroll"), it is a post-Biblical compilation in 76 verses, originally in Aramaic, in deliberate imitation of the style of the Scroll of Esther. Presumably, the authors hoped their work would achieve the status of Megillat Esther on Purim, but the dream was never realised, for reasons we shall explain.

The theme of the book is the Hasmonean victories, ending with the destruction of the Second Temple. It is more legend than objective history. ...

We first intended to include this text in the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project, but we couldn't find anyone willing to defend a pre-seventh-century date. Still, it's an interesting document that deserves more attention. A number of Geniza fragments were published in the 1970s and, as far as I know, there is no complete critical edition. There might be a good doctoral dissertation there.

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

A NONCANONICAL PAPYRUS ONLINE: A fragmentary papyrus of the Greek text of the Gospel of Thomas has been posted online by the Houghton Library of Harvard University.

MS Gr SM4367

P.Oxy.4.655

Gospel of Thomas, [ca. 200-ca. 250]

Bibliography

Digital Images

The main page of the Houghton Library papyri site is here. Fragment of the New Testament, the Homeric epics, other known and unknown literary texts, and documentary texts are included as well.

(Via Peter Head at Evangelical Textual Criticism. An earlier version of this post implied incorrectly that Peter hadn't mentioned this fragment. Apologies for the error.)

MORE ON THE ALEPPO CODEX and the new effort to recover all surviving bits of it:

From Maimonides to Brooklyn:
The mystery of the Aleppo Codex

By Dina Kraft Published: 12/09/2007

TEL AVIV (JTA) -- It's been a long journey for the brittle pieces of parchment inked more than 1,000 years ago along the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

The manuscript considered the most authoritative text of the Bible, the Aleppo Codex, was studied by Maimonides, ransomed by Crusaders and dismembered during rioting in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

A tiny patch of the codex even spent several decades in the wallet of a businessman from Brooklyn, N.Y. -- Sam Sabbagh revered it as an amulet with sacred powers.

Several weeks ago that fragment was brought to Israel, prompting a new drive for the return of the text's other long missing pieces.

"Our feeling is that if there is one piece of it, there must be others," said Michael Glatzer, academic secretary of the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, which has worked to track and study the codex.

Last week, the institute launched a new campaign to bring other missing pieces of the famous codex home to the Holy Land.

[...]

Covers much the same ground as this article, but I think it has a few new details.