OH, AND BY THE WAY, happy birthday to me. I'm having a pizza and video evening to celebrate. Later I may go wild and pop some popcorn.

JESUS PLAYED CRICKET, MANUSCRIPT SUGGESTS:

Dr Abraham Terian, recently a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, points to a rare manuscript as his source.

He notes that in the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, translated into Armenian in the 6th century from a much older lost Syriac original, a passage tells of Jesus playing what may well be the precursor of cricket, with a club and ball.

Terian discovered the manuscript more than a decade ago at the Saint James Armenian Monastery in the Old City of Jerusalem.

His English translation of the book has been published by Oxford University Press.

[...]

"The most amazing part of the story of the nine-year-old Jesus playing a form of cricket with the boys at the sea shore, is that he would go on playing the game on water, over the sea waves.''

He gives the following translation: "He (Jesus) would take the boys to the seashore and, carrying the playing ball and the club, he would go over the waves of the sea as though he was playing on a frozen surface, hitting the playing ball. And watching him, the boys would scream and say: 'Watch the child Jesus, what he does over the waves of the sea!' Many would gather there and, watching him, would be amazed.''

[...]

Obviously, this is not about the historical Jesus. But it's very interesting that a Syriac apocryphal tradition that made it into Armenian has Jesus playing something like cricket. The Armenian manuscript is from the thirteenth century, but I would think that the Syriac tradition might well go back to late antiquity, as Professor Terian suggests. I hope Tony Chartrand-Burke takes this one up at Apocryphicity.

HOW WOULD ISAIAH TEXT?

A BYZANTINE-ERA OLIVE PRESS has been discovered in the Galilee:

Large Ancient Olive Press Discovered In Nth Israel
Thursday, 7 August 2008, 10:40 am
Press Release: Israel Government

Large Olive Press Discovered In Northern Israel

6 August 2008 - An ancient olive- oil production complex dating from the 6th-7th Centuries CE – one of the largest ever exposed in Israel – was discovered at Ahihud, in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

A unique and impressive complex for producing oil that dates to the Byzantine period, which is also one of the largest uncovered in the country so far, was discovered recently during trial excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in Moshav Ahihud, in the Western Galilee. The excavations are being carried out as part of a development plan to enlarge the village.

According to Michael Cohen, the excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “a mighty conflagration occurred in the olive press in the seventh century CE. Remains of the blaze, which are quite evident on the walls of the building, destroyed the structure and negated the installation’s use”. This event “preserved” many of the details of the olive press.

[...]

UPDATE" Here's the press release at the IAA website. (Via the Agade list.)

THE RALEIGH DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION is reviewed by Brian Howe in IndyWeek.com. Excerpt:

Regardless of the controversy surrounding the exhibit, which we'll address shortly, the presentation is quite impressive. Impatient museumgoers may proceed directly to the dim, climate-controlled room that houses the scroll fragments, but spending an hour or so perusing the background exhibits preceding the scrolls is advisable. A preliminary video looping in a stylized cave, shot in the gauzy style of a Discovery Channel documentary, summarizes the discovery of the scrolls and some of the still-unanswered questions about them, the most troublesome being who actually wrote them and the nature of the settlement of Qumran. This summary video is developed with texts, maps, models, artifacts and a useful audio tour throughout the presentation. You'll learn about the major players in the discovery, interpretation and circulation of the scrolls, and about what daily life was like in this region of the Middle East more than 2,000 years ago.

This being a science museum, you'll also learn how the climate of the caves helped to preserve the scrolls (which began to decompose badly once they were removed from the caves and their linen wraps), and about modern techniques of preservation and reconstruction. You'll learn about the religious and political climate in which the scrolls were written, and you'll see an amazing array of ancient artifacts recovered from Qumran: coins, ossuaries, leather sandals, linen tunics, phylacteries (or tefillin, in Hebrew), combs, pottery and oil lamps. All of this provides a remarkably thorough and immersive context in which the viewer can perceive the scroll fragments with the proper depth and gravity.

Background here, here, and here.

EMPEROR HADRIAN: YOU-TUBE HERO. Sort of. Tom Holland reviews the British Museum Hadrian exhibition for the London Times. Excerpt:

It is the supreme merit of the new exhibition Hadrian: Empire and conflict at the British Museum that it meets these issues head on, and from the start. Directly inside the vestibule, the darkness is lit by the flickering of a video screen: images of our moody, backlit hero loom, then morph back into the shadows, just as they might do on a particularly stylish YouTube promo. This is Hadrian as international man of mystery: “always in all things changeable”, as the Historia Augusta described him. Next to the screen there stands a solitary display-case, containing a couple of Marguerite Yourcenar’s notebooks, and a manuscript of Mémoires d’Hadrien.

It is possible that not a few visitors, drawn by the promise of a blockbuster show, will feel themselves to have been mildly short-changed as they stare down at an assortment of scribblings in French and Latin – but they should not abandon hope. Carry on into the Reading Room, where the main body of the exhibition is being staged, and all their expectations will be spectacularly met. For directly ahead of them, positioned at the top of a stairway, they will find three hulking pieces of marble, fragments of the kind of statue that form our own picture of Imperial Rome. A giant foot, a chunk of leg, and a colossal head: here are exhibits that have never before been displayed. Indeed, only a year ago, no one even suspected that they so much as existed: for they lay buried amid the ruins of the Pisidian city of Sagalassos, in what is now south-west Turkey. A photograph of the head at the precise moment of its discovery, still half-covered by dirt, serves to emphasize the point that is being made here. There can never be a final history of Hadrian. New finds will always be made. Memorials to the Emperor’s reign will continue to be uncovered and dusted down. Dead he may be, and the Empire he ruled as well, but the study of ancient Rome, and the ways in which we interpret it, refuse to stand still.

[...]

This is an exhibition in which context is all.

Take, for example, the section which showcases what is, to a British audience, the most familiar monument from Hadrian’s reign: his Wall. To earlier generations – and it may be to the Romans themselves – this massive undertaking served as an inspiringly visible stamp of Rome’s civilizing mission. “An encamped army encloses the fairest portion of the world in a ring like a rampart”: so gushed Aelius Aristeides, enthusing over Rome’s supposed eirenic vocation. Recent scholarship, however, has given such rhapsodies predictably short shrift. The Wall now tends to be seen in a much more sinister light, less as a bulwark of civilization than as a deliberately intimidatory tool of control and repression. Even so, it can still give a jolt to turn from inspecting artefacts as familiar as the Vindolanda tablets to the adjacent display-case, where there is another letter, very different in tone, waiting to be perused. Written on the orders of the Jewish insurrectionist Simon bar Kokhba – or perhaps even in his very hand – it was found in the so-called Cave of Letters, where desperate refugees had ended up taking refuge after the failure of the third Jewish uprising against Roman rule in barely fifty years.

The twin troves of letters, one found on the moors of northern England, and the other in a desert wadi beside the Dead Sea, have never before been brought together – and their close proximity serves to inspire a measure of sombre reflection. Britannia and Judaea, for all that they stood at the opposite ends of the Empire, suddenly do not seem so far apart. We know that the general entrusted by Hadrian with the ultimate suppression of the Jewish revolt throughout 135–6 was one Sextus Julius Severus, a former governor of Britain. The same man who was to show himself so proficient in the arts of counter-insurgency and extermination in Judaea would also have been intimately involved in the construction of the Wall. This, in Hadrian’s Empire, was what globalization could mean.

[...]

A thoughtful review, although, as usual, it tries too hard to find improving parallels to the world of 2008.

Background here.

GOG, OG, WHATEVER.

Background here.

THE CARTHAGINIANS and their ancient Mediterranean neighbors as consultants for modern global computer networking? Yep.

You might be forgiven for wondering just what the traditions, techniques and technologies of crafts-people from Ancient Greece who lived between 1500 and 200 BCE could have to do with the development of something so cutting-edge as global ubiquitous computing.

Yet a University of Leicester-led project, working with teams from the Universities of both Exeter and Glasgow in the United Kingdom, has just been awarded UKP £1.75 million from the Leverhulme Trust to investigate just that.

'Tracing Networks: Craft Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond' received the award for its theme of networking. Combining archaeology, archaeological science and computer science to investigate not only ancient cultural networks but to apply that knowledge to modern computer networking concepts.

Looking at these ancient networks across the Mediterranean region, encompassing Greek, Punic and other peoples, the research will focus on crafts-people of the period. It will ask how, and why, their traditions, techniques and technologies changed during that time and managed to cross cultural boundaries.

[...]

Gosh, £1.75 million. Wish I'd thought of that.

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH – New decisions on the Mughrabi (Mugrabi) Gate bridge reconstruction project:

Panel nixes expansion at Western Wall
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Mugrabi Gate, Western Wall

The Interior Ministry's Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee approved the original plan of the reconstruction project for the Temple Mount's Mugrabi Gate on the condition that certain changes be made in it. At the end of a hearing some two weeks ago, the committee accepted the objections submitted by the Ir Amim organization to the plan for transformation of the area underneath the new bridge into a space for Jewish prayers. In so doing, it rejected an initiative of the Western Wall's rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, which had gained the support of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, to take advantage of the collapse of the bridge as an opportunity to expand the women's section at the site.

The bridge leading from the Western Wall plaza collapsed in 2004, and the "rescue dig" conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority ahead of construction of a new bridge sparked the anger of the Muslim Waqf, the Arab world and especially Jordan and Turkey. The significance of this latest decision is that it will now be necessary to revise the construction plans according to the committee's directives before a building permit is issued.

[...]

Background here and keep following the links back.

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY is advertising a number of academic posts:

Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Tenure-track and tenured positions for appointments beginning in the academic year of 2009/10

The academic departments of the Faculty of Humanities invites applications from outstanding candidates (Ph.D. required, postdoctoral training highly desireable) for tenure-track and tenured positions in the following fields:

Arabic Language and Literature
Comparative Literature
Hebrew Language: Biblical Hebrew/ Modern Hebrew
Holocaust Studies
Islamic Material Culture and Archaeology
Jewish History of the Biblical period
Modern Hebrew Literature
Philosophy
Romance Studies: Spanish Language and Literature
Talmud
Theatre Studies
Yiddish Language and Literature

Responsibilities will include teaching both required and elective courses in the candidate's field(s) of specialization and related disciplines.

The language of instruction is Hebrew.

Candidates should provide 12 copies of the application no later than September 1, 2008.

For details please see our site www.hum.huji.ac.il at "faculty news".

Please note that finalists may be requested to deliver a lecture on the subject of their research. Rank will be determined according to the candidate's qualifications. Appointment will begin on October 1, 2009.

Contact Info:
Prof. Israel Bartal
Dean
Faculty of Humanities
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mount Scopus 91905
Jerusalem
Israel
Website: http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/

From the H-Judaic list.

LARRY SCHIFFMAN will be speaking on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Raleigh, N.C.:

NC Museum To Host Dead Sea Scrolls Lecture
By The Raleigh Telegram Staff 04.AUG.08

RALEIGH The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh is hosting an eight-part lecture series about Israel at the time of the scrolls as part of its The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition.

The museum says that New York University Professor Lawrence Schiffman will present the second lecture of the series called "Israel at the Time of the Dead Sea Scrolls," on Wednesday, August 27 at 4pm and again at 7 pm in the Museum's WRAL Digital Theater. The museum says that due to the overwhelming popularity of the first lecture, the Museum strongly recommends purchasing tickets in advance.

[...]

According to the museum, the Second Temple period (538 BC - 70 AD) was a pivotal time in ancient Israel, beginning with the conquest of Alexander the Great that expanded
the rise of Hellenism and the great Jewish religious movements.

Schiffman will survey these developments and illustrate their significance, providing background for the Dead Sea Scrolls and explaining how they have enriched the understanding of the history of this period, says the museum.

Schiffman is Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Chair of the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University. He lectures widely on the Dead Sea Scrolls; Jewish religious, political and social history in late antiquity; as well as
the history of Jewish law and Talmudic literature.

[...]

A COIN FIND at the Ramat Rachel excavation:

J'lem Dig turns up gold coins from end of Second Temple period
By Ofri Ilani (Haaretz)
Tags: archeology, second temple

In ancient times, the inhabitants of the Land of Israel and its environs would raise pigeons in underground caves. Called "columbariums," the caves had small niches, in which the birds laid their eggs. Over the years many columbariums have been unearthed at ancient sites around the country, particularly at those containing finds from the Second Temple period. A few days ago, archaeologists made a most surprising find at the bottom of such a columbarium, at a site at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel near Jerusalem - a hoard of coins from the time of the destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.).

Late in July, archaeologists from Tel Aviv University identified, beneath the floor of the columbarium, a ceramic cooking pot from the 1st century C.E. that held 15 large gold coins. "It's very special to find a hoard like this, and it's very exciting," related the director of the excavations at the site, Dr. Oded Lipschits, of TAU. "We discovered the hoard with a metal detector, and then we went down into the niche and found this small cooking pot inside it."

[...]

The article also mentions the find of Byzantine coins noted earlier on PaleoJudaica. Follow the link for the Ramat Rachel excavation blog.

Also, reader Brent Neely points out that the article seems to have confused the Babylonian Exile of Judah with the earlier (8th century BCE) Assyrian exile of Israel:

Lipschits believes that the palace was built during the period of the Assyrian subjugation. "This entire complex is, in my opinion, an administrative center for the occupying regime, a place where agricultural produce was collected, for delivery as a tax to the Assyrians."

During the period of the return to Zion (beginning 539 B.C.E.), the Assyrian regime was replaced by a Persian one, but the administrative center continued to operate. ...

UPDATE (6 August): Todd Bolen thinks the journalist got it right.

INFLATED HEADLINE OF THE WEEK:

Archaeologists unearth proof of plot to kill Prophet Jeremiah
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Jerusalem, Israel

Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a seal impression belonging to a minister of the biblical King Zedekiah, which dates back 2,600 years, during an archeological dig in Jerusalem's ancient City of David. The finding helps corroborate the story pertaining to the biblical minister's demand to have the prophet Jeremiah killed.

[...]

The seal impression does support the probability that the book of Jeremiah remembers some historical details from Jeremiah's time, but it's a long stretch from there to say it proves the historicity of this particular story.

Background here.

(Via Joseph I. Lauer, who comments, "I'm sure that the article's title will bring comments on many a blog." Indeed. He also notes, "Ha'aretz's Hebrew on-line article is longer and includes a reference to the Temple Mount Antiquities Salvage Operation of Dr. Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Zweig and that project's use of wet sifting of debris, a method which the article credits for the find of the Gedalyahu bulla in the City of David excavations of Dr. Eilat Mazar.")

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL XXXII has been published by John F. Hobbins at the Ancient Hebrew Poetry blog. It is very thorough and comes in three parts: (1) Rock Hard Rockin’ Scholarship based on Primary Sources; (2) Controversies; and (3) Posts on Specific Texts.

TODAY IS A PUNIC ANNIVERSARY:

216 BC - A Carthaginian army lead by Hannibal defeated a numerically superior Roman army at the Battle of Cannae. It happened during the Second Punic War as Rome and Carthage battled it out for control of the mediterranean and its trade and riches.

More here.

UPDATE (4 August): Dorothy King has more here.

MORE EPIGRAPHIC NEWS:

Seal of King Zedekiah's minister found in J'lem dig
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

A seal impression belonging to a minister of the Biblical King Zedekiah which dates back 2,600 years has been uncovered completely intact during an archeological dig in Jerusalem's ancient City of David, a prominent Israeli archeologist said on Thursday.

The seal impression, or bulla, with the name Gedalyahu ben Pashur, who served as minister to King Zedekiah (597-586 BCE) according to the Book of Jeremiah, was found just meters away from a separate seal impression of another of Zedekia's ministers, Yehukual ben Shelemyahu, which was uncovered three years ago, said Prof. Eilat Mazar who is leading the dig at the site.

The excavation at the history-rich City of David, which is located just outside the walls of the Old City near Dung Gate, has proven, in recent years, to be a treasure trove for archeologists.

"On the one hand it is so unexpected to find such a fragile bulla in such harsh conditions of excavation, while on the other hand it was logical to find precisely here the bulla of Gedalyahu ben Pashur - only meters away from the place where we found the bulla of Yehukhal ben Shelemyahu - since these two ministers are mentioned side by side in the Bible as having served together in the kingdom of King Zedekiah," Mazar said.

[...]

Both ministers are mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 38 1-4) along with two other ministers when they came to King Zedekiah demanding the death of the prophet Jeremiah for preaching to the besieged city to surrender.

[...]

Again, excellent news. An Iron Age II (i.e., First Temple era) Hebrew inscription scientifically excavated and bearing a name that (given the date and location) is very likely to be of a person mentioned in the Bible. That's pretty impressive.

For the Yehukhal (Jehucal) seal, see here, here, and here.

Incidentally, assuming Pashhur the father of Gedaliah is the same person as Pashhur the son of Malchiah (they both are mentioned in Jer 38:1), he also figures in the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project. Darrell Hannnah is translating Jeremiah's Prophecy to Pashhur, a brief apocryphal text preserved in Sahidic Coptic and Ethiopic. You can read more about it here.

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

UPDATE (4 August): More here. Also, Douglas Mangum has blog roundups on the Biblia Hebraica blog here and here.

EPIGRAPHIC NEWS from Jack Sasson's Agade list:

From Foy Scalff (calffd@uchicago.edu):
=================================

NEW ALPHABETIC INSCRIPTION FROM ZINCIRLI

On July 21, 2008, the Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli, directed by Prof. David Schloen of the University of Chicago and by associate director Amir Fink, found an inscribed basalt stele at the site of Zincirli (pronounced "Zin-jeer-lee") in Gaziantep province in southeastern Turkey.

The remarkably well-preserved stele, 70 centimeters wide and 95 centimeters tall, was found intact in its original location. It was set into a stone wall with its protruding tenon still inserted into the stone-paved floor. The alphabetic inscription on the stele is written in Sam'alian, the language spoken in the region of Zincirli (ancient Sam'al) during the Iron Age.

It commemorates the life of "Kattammuwa servant of Panamuwa," probably a high official of King Panamuwa, who reigned during the eighth century B.C. A bearded figure is depicted on the stele, seated in a chair in front of a table laden with food. Beside him is a thirteen-line inscription, elegantly carved in raised relief and preserved in almost pristine condition nearly three millennia after it was inscribed. It describes the establishment of the memorial stele and associated mortuary rites. This stele is unique in its combination of pictorial and textual features and thus is an important addition to our knowledge of ancient language and culture.

An analysis and translation of the inscription will be presented by Prof. Dennis Pardee of the University of Chicago at the November 2008 meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature in Boston and will be published soon thereafter.

Zincirli is the site of the ancient walled city of Sam'al, capital of an Iron Age kingdom that inherited both West Semitic and Neo-Hittite (Luwian) cultural traditions. The 40-hectare (100-acre) site was first excavated more than a hundred years ago and produced a number of royal inscriptions and other fascinating finds that are on display in various museums. Since 2006, Zincirli has been excavated annually by a team from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago—the Neubauer Expedition, a large-scale and long-term project of archaeological research at this important site.

This is excellent news. It's exciting to have a new, substantial Northwest Semitic inscription, one that was actually excavated scientifically and whose provenance and authenticity are not in doubt.

UPDATE (1 August): Peter Bekins comments at Balshanut and notes some bibliography on the language of Sam'al. He also points to a post by H H Hardy at Daily Hebrew. Hardy has seen the inscription, but cannot disclose its contents before Dennis Pardee presents a paper on in at the SBL meetings in November. But he promises "it is well worth the admission price for the Boston meeting, both from the point of view of philology and archeaology!" I'll be looking forward to Professor Pardee's presentation.

SHE'AN NIGHTS – more virtual history:

She'an Nights, a multi-media multi-sensory night tour of the ancient city of Beit She'an-Scythopolis, has recently opened at the Beit She'an National Park, located in the Jordan Valley. Developed at a cost of $3 million in a joint initiative of the Ministry of Tourism via the Israel Government Tourist Corporation, the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority and the Beit She'an Municipality, this unique project is the first of its type in the world in an archeological site and the fourth largest such project in the world.

[...]

She'an Nights, which is expected to attract 400,000 visitors annually, will operate nine months of the year, offering visitors the opportunity to enjoy the site in the cool night air in a region known for its sweltering summer days. After watching a 10 minute presentation that relates the history of the area (in English or Hebrew), visitors set off on a multi-sensory experience as they stroll through the streets of the excavated city of Scythopolis with its marble columns, stone streets, bathhouses, temples and mosaics, while watching audiovisual presentations projected onto dozens of giant screens on the columns, walls and even the tel behind the site.

[...]

Related story here.

ARAMAIC WATCH: The Catholic News Service has a nice piece on Maaloula (Ma'aloula, Malula) with information on its new Aramaic Institute:

In the Syrian desert, the language of Jesus lives on

By Brooke Anderson
Catholic News Service

MAALOULA, Syria (CNS) -- Aramaic, the language of Jesus that flourished in villages thousands of years ago, is being kept alive in the Syrian desert, about an hour's drive from Damascus.

Today, Aramaic is spoken in Maaloula, an ancient mountainous town with two historic monasteries, Catholic and Orthodox, both built into the cliffs.

Georgette Halabi, a tour guide at St. Serge Melkite Catholic convent in Maaloula, grew up speaking Aramaic.

"I don't write it," she said. "But I want to learn."

[...]

In the summer of 2007, the language went through something of a renaissance in Maaloula when the town, with the encouragement of the Syrian government, opened the Aramaic Language Institute. The program teaches written Aramaic to students of all ages, particularly children, and is affiliated with the University of Damascus.

"I've been studying since the school opened," said 11-year-old Murshed Diab, as he played with his friends on a hot summer evening after classes. "It's useful. They teach us songs in Aramaic."

His sister, Bushra Diab, 13, added: "People here don't speak Arabic. It's Aramaic. They teach us the alphabet, and I'm already starting to learn complex grammar."

The two siblings began singing an Aramaic song they learned in school, and their playmates quickly joined in.

[...]

A group of scholars from Germany started studying Aramaic in Maaloula about 20 years ago, when the language had begun to die.

"The Germans opened our eyes and showed us we had something special," Rihan said. "A lot of Arabic had entered the language, and it (Aramaic) had almost died. It was resuscitated."

Now, Maaloula's relatively new Aramaic Committee is trying to gather information on the language from the town's elders to create a modern Aramaic dictionary. But Rihan said he hoped this was only the beginning.

[...]

Indeed. More power to them.

Background here. This article is much more upbeat than the NYT piece in April. And here's a post noting the founding of the Aramaic Institute in 2004.