A JOB in Premodern Judaism at UC Davis:

The Religious Studies Program at the University of California Davis announces a search for a tenure-track faculty position in “The History of Premodern Judaism.” Applicants must have strong research plans and teaching records and an expertise in Jewish texts for either the biblical, Second Temple, rabbinic or medieval periods. Applicants should be prepared to teach a broad range of introductory and advanced courses in Jewish Studies and to take an active role in UC Davis’ Jewish Studies Program. The program also welcomes applicants with an interest in the historical, comparative and theoretical study of religion. Rank is assistant professor and a Ph.D. is required. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and expertise.

Please submit application materials—a cover letter including a statement of research and teaching interests and curriculum vitae--electronically to:
https://secure.caes.ucdavis.edu/Recruitment/
(3) professional letters of reference via e-mail to dbiale@ucdavis.edu, followed by signed original copies to:
David Biale
Search Committee Chair
Religious Studies Program
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA
95616
Please also submit a writing sample (electronic PDF)to David Biale via e-mail at dbiale@ucdavis.edu

For full consideration applications should be received by October 15, 2008. The position is open until filled.

The University of California, Davis, is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer with a strong institutional commitment to the achievement of diversity among its faculty and staff.

(Via the H-JUDAIC list.)

CAESAREA'S underwater archaeological park: the video.

BNTC 08 REPORTS: I've been lax about commenting on the British New Testament Conference this year, but others have made up for that. Sean the Baptist (congratulations on the Australia job, Sean!) has his own report and he links to others. And let me echo his and Mark's thanks to Louise Lawrence, who did a great job of keeping things running smoothly.

I'm looking forward to the Aberdeen meeting in 2009 (assuming the world doesn't end tomorrow - maybe toss up a prayer to Michael and the Hashmal just in case).

ANCIENT ISRAELITE BLING:

“Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver” Exhibit Opens
(September 8, '08, 6:47 Edahn Golan) (IDEX online)

Small, delicately designed gold jewelry items dating as far back as 2,500 BCE document fashion, class and even manufacturing capabilities in an exhibit about to open at the Harry Oppenheimer Diamond Museum in Ramat Gan, Israel.

More than 100 gold jewelry items found in archeological digs in Israel are on display at the exhibition, the latest from the Ottoman period (1517-1917). Animals, goddesses and geometric shapes dominate the designs, used to signify power, wealth, status as well as beliefs. The items, on loan from the Hecht and Rockefeller museums, are mostly minute and could be a reflection of the scarcity of gold.

[...]

UPDATE: And more from Diamond Intelligence Briefs (Tacy):

ISRAEL DIAMOND MUSEUM OFFERS FIRST VIEW OF ANCIENT JEWELRY FROM ARCHEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS IN ISRAEL

8 September 2008

The Harry Oppenheimer Israel Diamond Museum, located within the Israeli Diamond Industry complex, has opened the ‘Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver’ exhibition of rare and ancient jewelry excavated in archeological sites throughout Israel.

The exhibition, which takes its name from the Book of Proverbs, chapter 25, verse 11: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver", features gold jewelry that has never before been seen, much of which dates from Biblical times and even earlier. In the days of the Bible, golden balls used in intricate jewelry designs were known as ‘apples’. Though the exhibit does not focus solely on diamonds, it makes a clear statement about the vital nature of the interaction between the diamond industry and the jewelry industry, throughout the world.

The jewels, some of which are set with precious stones, enable a rare glimpse into the lifestyle and culture of the ancient Israelites, and attest to the Land of Israel's unique position as a cultural and commercial crossroad of the ancient world. All of the items have been lent to the Diamond Museum courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The exhibition also reveals a great deal about the creation of ancient jewelry – the methods, the craftsmen, the influences of other ancient civilizations and the role jewelry played in the religion and culture of the times. Over 100 pieces from the huge collections of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Hecht Museum were individually chosen by curator Yehuda Kassif to shed light on this subject.

[...]

MARTIN GOODMAN'S Rome and Jerusalem: the Clash of Civilizations is reviewed by Rivkah Fishman-Duker in Jewish Political Studies Review. Excerpt:

Rome and Jerusalem appears at a time of world crisis for the Jewish people and religion. Many doubt the very existence of a Jewish people and call Jews an "imagined community." The ancient heritage and roots of the Jews in the Land of Israel have been subject to corrosive deconstruction and doubt and have come under vicious and libelous attacks. A wide array of intellectuals, politicians, and Christian and Muslim leaders challenge the existence of a sovereign Jewish state of Israel. Moreover, Judaism often seems so diluted that it cannot be clearly defined.

In light of this background, Martin Goodman's erudite and encyclopedic volume restores ancient Jewish civilization to its proper place in world history and contributes to the ongoing debate about the origins of hatred toward Jews and Judaism. The work is indeed a tour de force.

Earlier reviews are noted here and here.

GOT BACK TO ST. ANDREWS on Saturday evening. There was heavy flooding in northern England and the train was delayed repeatedly while the tracks were cleared. But we made it. Many thanks to everyone at Durham for hosting a very good conference.

I'M HEADING BACK to St. Andrews later this afternoon. If you don't hear from me until Monday, it's because I'm temporarily without Internet access at home.

THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL as the Patron of High-Energy Physics? Well, okay, but I would have thought that the Hashmal was in charge of such things.

HELEN INGRAM, who has attended the BNTC regularly in recent years (see, e.g., here, here, here, and here), can't make it this year, but she sent strict instructions that I am to post pictures of the whisky drinking event in Lloyd Pietersen's room, which took place last night. I obey.





Helen, Cat, and Mark, we miss you!

Oh ... and there were some good papers at the conference too.

UPDATE (9 September): More here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: I have noted before that between the 1920s and the 1990s the Supreme Muslim Council has changed its tune regarding ancient Jewish occupation of the Temple Mount. Arutz Sheva has published some photographic documentation.

The Temple Institute's Rabbi Chaim Richman writes that the pamphlet provides proof that the Waqf's current position is a departure from traditional Muslim belief. "In recent years," he writes, "the Moslem Waqf has come to deny the historic existence of the Holy Temple, claiming that the Temple Mount belongs solely to the Moslem nation, and that there exists no connection between the Jewish nation and the Temple Mount. It is clear from this pamphlet that the revised Waqf position strays from traditional Moslem acknowledgment of the Mount's Jewish antecedents."

(Heads up, reader Yoel Heltai)

UPDATE (5 September): The scans come (via the Temple Institute, unattributed) from Todd Bolen's Bible Places blog. Thanks to Joseph I. Lauer for e-mailing to point this out. He relays that an Arutz Sheva video does give correct attribution. I'm taking part of the lunch period to blog and don't have time to watch it myself.

METATRON WATCH: "So, with my guardian angel Metatron, who I imagine looks like a black Lamborghini Transformer with big bazooka arms, at my side I ventured forth to find out the past of the woman who was telling me my future."

SECOND-TEMPLE ERA CITY WALLS have been found in Jerusalem:

Jerusalem ancient walls unveiled
(BBC)

Archaeologists in Jerusalem have given a first glimpse of what they say is a newly-exposed section of the city walls built 2,100 years ago.

They say the mortarless stone structure is the best preserved section of the city's walls ever seen from the period of the Second Jewish Temple.

[...]

The construction dates from the period of the Second Temple - the 2nd Century BC until the temple's destruction by the Romans in the year 70.

The researchers believe the walls show the ancient city's boundaries when it was at its largest, with a circumference of 6km, compared to the 4km of walling surrounding what is now the Old City.

[...]

UPDATE: More details in the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs press release. Excerpt:

The Fortifications of the Second Temple Period
South of the line of fortifications from the Byzantine period and at a depth of approximately 4 meters below the elevation of its base, a tower that is preserved to a height of 3.20 meters was exposed which dates to the time of the Hasmonean Dynasty (the Second Temple period). The tower was built on the bedrock which was straightened and made fairly level. It was constructed of large stones that are characterized by a dressed boss in their center, with no bonding material between them. The “header-stretcher” construction method used in building the tower is typical of the Hasmonean period. The tower was part of the line of the “First Wall” that is described by Josephus. Other sections of the “First Wall” were revealed at the base of the western wall of the Ottoman city wall, in David’s Citadel and in other excavations that were conducted in the Jewish Quarter. The soil fill and the pottery sherds that abut the city wall prove that it was used until the time of the Great Revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in the year 70 CE. Afterwards, the stones of the wall were taken for secondary use, probably in order to build “Aelia Capitolina”, the Roman colony which the emperor Hadrian established on the ruins of Jerusalem in the year 131 CE.

I'M IN DURHAM, blogging from the St. John's College Library. Curiously, Firefox is not cooperating with their wireless setup, but Safari works fine. I've found Firefox (both 2 and 3) to be unusually buggy lately. Is anyone else having that problem?

I'M OFF to Durham for the annual British New Testament Conference, which starts later today and goes through Saturday. Darrell Hannah and I co-chair the NT & Second Temple Judaism Seminar. I'm not presenting a paper this year, but I'm responding to the paper by Preston Sprinkle.

I pre-posting this yesterday on Wednesday afternoon. I expect to have full Internet access at Durham, in which case blogging should continue more or less as usual. Look for me again later today (Thursday).

BARACK OBAMA meets Hebrew epigraphy and the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Sort of.

Barack, Thy Name is Biblical (Washington Post)

Vilifying Barack Obama's name has become a favorite blood sport in the 2008 presidential campaign. Recent examples range from repeated mentions of "B. Hussein Obama" by conservative pundit Ann Coulter to four allusions to Obama's "Muslim sounding middle name" by Republican strategist Cheri Jabobus on MSNBC in defense of similar language. Time correspondent Mark Halperin predicts that the McCain campaign will likely continue to "emphasize Barack Hussein Obama's unusual name," despite McCain's repudiation of this tactic. Obama himself warns supporters that his "funny" name will be targeted.

The actual lineage of Barack Obama's name, however, extending back to a revered biblical namesake, befits his status as a Christian of rich ancestral influences. Obama's first name, Barack, means "blessed" in the African languages of Luo and Swahili, both spoken widely in his deceased father's birthplace of Kenya. The African "Barack" originates from the Arabic word "baracka." Barack and "baracka" mean the same as the Hebrew word "baruch," as Obama himself noted in his 1995 memoir, "Dreams from My Father," and at recent campaign appearances.

[...]

Barack Obama shares with past American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, Zachary Taylor, and Benjamin Harrison, the distinction of a notable biblical namesake. Baruch Ben Neriah was a scribe and friend of the prophet Jeremiah and also the reputed author of the apocryphal Book of Baruch, a canonical biblical book for Roman Catholics. He is the subject of Jewish and Christian religious lore from the Talmud to the writings of fourth-century church father Jerome and is portrayed as a righteous sage granted a tour of heaven itself.

Baruch Ben Neriah makes a fascinating appearance in recent archeological finds, as detailed by J. Edward Wright in his book, "Baruch Ben Neriah: From Biblical Scribe to Apocalyptic Seer." Showing up also, indirectly, in these finds is Ebed-Melech, a black Ethiopian who is identified with Baruch Ben Neriah in some ancient rabbinic commentaries and who rescued Jeremiah after the prophet was imprisoned by three ministers of King Zedekiah (Jeremiah 38:1-13). The names of Baruch Ben Neriah, "the scribe," and of two of these royal ministers all appear in ancient Hebrew inscriptions on clay seals, the first on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the others unearthed in dramatic recent finds by archeologist Eilat Mazar in Jerusalem just this July and in August 2005.

[...]

Some think that the Baruch bulla is a forgery, but this is debated.

There are three or four ancient books of Baruch. In the OT Apocrypha, 1 Baruch. In the OT Pseudepigrapha, 2 Baruch (preserved in Syriac, a Greek fragment, and an Arabic translation of the Syriac), 3 Baruch (preserved in Greek and Slavonic), and the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah, which is also sometimes known as 4 Baruch.

The only Arabic rendering of the name Baruch which I can find (in the Arabic version of 2 Baruch and in the United Bible Society translation of the Bible) is Bārūxa (بآرُوخّ), with x for k. Curious. The Arabic name Mubarak is from the same root and has the same meaning - "blessed."

UPDATE: Robert Schwartz e-mails:

Obama’s given name may be from the Arabic word that is cognate to the Hebrew baruch. Or it may be from the word that means lightning (e.g. Ehud Barak אֵהוּד בָּרָק). Without knowing the Arabic spelling of his name (something that could probably only be garnered from his late father’s papers) I do not think that we can know which it is. I believe that he has cited both possibilities.

Likewise, Richard Bauckham also wrote to suggest it is the same name, which comes from the Barak (or Baraq) in the Judges 4-5. Could be; it sounds plausible. But the name seems to have been mediated through Luo or Swahili, and I don't know what changes that might have involved.

GEZA VERMES has an article on "The Truth about the Historical Jesus" in Standpoint Online. Excerpt:

To recapitulate, the philological, literary and historical analysis of the Semitic meaning of Jesus’s titles corroborates his image as it emerges from the Synoptic Gospels. Hence the only reasonable conclusion to draw from a combined study of the Gospel picture and the honorific titles is that the historical Jesus was a Galilean charismatic whose aim was to conduct his repentant Palestinian Jewish contemporaries into the spiritual realm called the Kingdom of God through preaching, healing and exorcising.

Traditional Christianity does not stop at this portrait of the human Jesus, but overlays it with the majestic ! image of the Christ of faith arising from the mystical meditations of Paul and John and the Hellenistic philosophy of the Greek Church Fathers.

In a nutshell, Jesus’s preaching was centred on God, the heavenly Father, on the dignity of all human beings as children of God, on life turned into worship by total trust, on an overwhelming sense of urgency to do one’s duty without procrastination, on the sanctification of the here and now, and above all on the love of God through the love of one’s neighbour.

TWO NEW BOOKS on plants in the Bible are given brief reviews in the Christian Science Monitor. And I may as well seize the chance to plug two new books by my colleague, Dr. Nathan MacDonald: What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?: Diet in Biblical Times (Eerdmans 2008) and Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament (OUP, 2008).

BETWEEN MEETINGS and heading to Edinburgh in a few minutes for the next one. My home broadband is down for the next week or two, so probably no blogging today. In case you hadn't worked it out, I'm back from research leave and holiday and am now Head of School again. Oh joy! But I expect (hope for!) things to quiet down some by the middle of the month.

THE SPIEGEL ARTICLE ON CYRUS THE GREAT (noted here) has received a vigorous response from one Cyrus Kar at Payvand. It looks interesting and I've been meaning to take some time to fact-check it, but it's become clear that time for that won't be forthcoming anytime soon. But you can follow the link and see what you think yourself. I blog, you decide.

I stand by my own evaluation of Cyrus, at the first link.

Things are still going to be busy this week, and I'll be off for a conference on Thursday, but I'll blog as much as I can.