ARAMAIC WATCH? Arutz Sheva has an article on the new stone-jar inscription excavated on Mt. Zion and raises doubt on whether the inscription is in Aramaic or Hebrew:

Stone Vessel with 'Priestly Inscription' Uncovered In Jerusalem

by Hana Levi Julian and Gil Ronen

(IsraelNN.com) A rare 2,000-year-old ritual vessel made of limestone and inscribed with 10 lines of text has been discovered in an excavation near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is an unprecedented find, according to Dr. Shimon Gibson, the archaeologist who heads the University of North Carolina team conducting the dig.

Inscription found on Mt. Zion. Israel news photo: UNC

"Such stone vessels were used in connection with maintaining ritual purity related to Temple worship, and they are found in abundance in areas where the priests lived," Gibson reported. "We have found a dozen or more on our site over the past three years. However, to have ten lines of text is unprecedented. One normally might find a single name inscribed, or a line or two, but this is the first text of this length ever found on such a vessel," he said.

Although the letters are clearly visible it will take some time before their meaning can be discerned due to the style of the writing. Gibson estimated in his preliminary report that it could take up to six months to translate the inscription. "It is written in a very informal cursive hand and is quite difficult to read," he explained.

Initially, Gibson thought the inscription was written solely in Aramaic. However, a group of experts consulting on the matter was not convinced; they say there is a possibility that the text contains the sacred name of G-d and is deliberately cryptic.

"Stephen Pfann, of the University of the Holy Land, is leaving open the possibility that it is Hebrew. He has also suggested that the text might have had meaning within a closed circle of priests, similar to texts at Qumran," said Dr. James D. Tabor, co-director of the dig.

[...]

If they are not yet sure what language it is in, that's a good sign that it's a difficult text and decipherment is still at an early stage.

There's also this bit of context:

Also uncovered were at least half a dozen Murex snail shells with holes drilled through them. "Prior to our excavation one or two such shells had been found in all of Jerusalem," Gibson said. "That so many would be found at our site further supports our supposition that we are in a priestly residential area."

Also, Joseph I. Lauer has noted a larger version of that photo of the two lines of the inscription, this at the Mt. Zion excavation website.

Background here.

THE NEW YORK TIMES has been dissing the Pharisees and Philologos calls them out on it in The Forward:

The New York Times: Ignorant and Antisemitic?

On Language

By Philologos
Published July 29, 2009, issue of August 07, 2009.

‘Pharisees on the Potomac” is the headline from a July 18 attack by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on what she considers to be the moral hypocrisy — “the ancient political art of Tartuffery,” as she calls it — of Republican Party leaders on Capitol Hill.

Let’s stay away from politics. Let’s even stay away from Maureen Dowd, being it’s likely that her column’s headline was written by the editors of the Times’ op-ed page rather than by the columnist herself. Headlines of newspaper and magazine articles are generally an editorial prerogative.

Let’s stick to the word “Pharisee” in its common English sense of a hypocrite who preaches morality to others without practicing it himself. Is this a usage Jews should be up in arms about? Should we be bombarding The New York Times, and others who resort to it, with our protests?

There certainly would seem to be good reasons for doing so. After all, the Pharisees were not just another ancient sect of Jews, like the Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots, who lived toward the end of the Second Temple period; they were the founders of rabbinic tradition and the direct spiritual and intellectual ancestors of the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud who came after them — that is, of normative halachic Judaism as we know it. To perpetuate the English language’s equation of them with self-righteous hypocrites is to perpetuate the belief that Judaism is a self-righteous and hypocritical religion.

Philogos concludes that such usages should be challenged and I agree. One nitpick, though:

The original source of this belief is, of course, Jesus’ remarks about the Pharisees in the New Testament — remarks that owe no small part of their venom to the fact that Jesus was a maverick Pharisee himself who shared many of the Pharisees’ assumptions and values. We rebel most strongly against our own predecessors, and when Jesus is quoted as saying things like, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of extortion and wickedness… you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God,” he is venting his anger and disappointment on those to whom he is religiously closest. A loyal Jew in his fashion, it never would have occurred to him that such statements would form the basis of rabid anti-Jewish sentiments in a new religion he had no intention of founding.

[...]

We know very little about the Pharisees: they are mentioned in the New Testament and by Josephus, both of which have their own not-entirely-reliable agendas. And we can squeeze some more information from the earliest stratum of the oral traditions of the Mishnah, but that still doesn't add up to a complete or clear picture. So it is not at all clear that Jesus was "a maverick Pharisee" or any kind of Pharisee. But the point Philologos is making is valid in a more general sense: Jesus (and also his first-generation followers who transmitted and likely augmented these sayings) was a first-century Jew who shared a great many assumptions with his opponents, who was engaged in an internal dialogue with them, and who would have been horrified at the use later made of these sayings about the Pharisees.

MORE on Martin Abegg's recent lecture at the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition:

Dead Sea Scrolls almost identical to Pentateuch, Haftorahs

Written by Rick Kardonne (Jewish Tribune)
Tuesday, 28 July 2009

TORONTO – For the most part, the Torah and Jewish prophetic portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which can be seen at the Royal Ontario Museum, are identical to the traditional Pentateuch and Haftorahs. But their authorship remains a topic of scholarly debate.
So said Dr. Martin Abegg, Ben Zion Wacholder Professor of Dead Sea Scrolls Studies at the religious studies department at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC, and co-director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute.

Professor Abegg delivered an enthusiastic speech at the Royal Ontario Museum Signy and Cleophee Eaton theatre last Thursday as part of the Anne Tannenbaum Dead Sea Scrolls lecture series, which coincides with the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit.

[...]

More background to the exhibition here.

PETRA AND THE NABATEANS are discussed in a BAR article:

Solving the Enigma of Petra and the Nabataeans

by Joey Corbett

For every tourist who visits the ancient city of Petra in modern day Jordan, there is one breathtaking moment that captures all of the grandeur and mystery of this city carved in stone. After passing the final bend of the tortuous narrow canyon that leads into the site (the Siq), one is confronted by the awe-inspiring spectacle of a towering rock-cut façade, its sun-struck sandstone gleaming through the darkness of the canyon.

[...]

It's a nice and nicely illustrated article, although I think it's a little odd that it never mentions that the language of the Nabateans (at least their official written language) was Aramaic.

TISHA B'AV (the Ninth of Av) started last night at sundown. An easy fast to all observing it.

ARAMAIC WATCH: The inscribed stone cup found recently at the Mt. Zion excavation turns out to be written in Aramaic:

J'lem: Rare 2nd Temple inscription found
By JPOST.COM STAFF

A unique ten-line Aramaic inscription on the side of a stone cup commonly used for ritual purity during Second Temple times was recently uncovered during archaeological excavations on Jerusalem's Mount Zion, it was announced Wednesday.

Inscriptions of this kind are extremely rare and only a handful have been found in scientific excavations made within the city.

[...]

The new Aramaic inscription from the first century CE is currently being deciphered by a team of epigraphic experts in an effort to determine the meaning of the text, which is clear but cryptic. The dig also produced a sequence of building remains dating back to the First and Second Temple periods through to Byzantine and Early Islamic periods.

[...]

No word yet on what the inscription says, but the article includes a photo of two lines of it, so I'm sure Aramaists, including blogging Aramaists, will be having a go at it. (I don't have time right now.)

(Via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

Background here.

THE SHROUD OF TURIN has Aramaic and Hebrew on it?

Traces of Aramaic on Shroud of Turin

Published: July 29, 2009 (CathNews)

As Pope Benedict confirmed his intention to visit the Shroud of Turin next year, French scientist Thierry Castex has revealed that he has found traces of Aramaic on the Shroud.

Pope Benedict confirmed his intention to visit the Shroud of Turin when it goes on public display in Turin's cathedral April 10-May 23, 2010, Catholic News Service reports.

[...]

A recent study by French scientist Thierry Castex has revealed that on the shroud are traces of words in Aramaic spelled with Hebrew letters.

A Vatican researcher, Barbara Frale, told Vatican Radio on July 26 that her own studies suggest the letters on the shroud were written more than 1,800 years ago.

She said that in 1978 a Latin professor in Milan noticed Aramaic writing on the shroud and in 1989 scholars discovered Hebrew characters that probably were portions of the phrase "The king of the Jews."

Count me as interested, but very skeptical. I've not heard anything about this before and I've been following Shroud of Turin news for quite a while. I don't know Thierry Castex, what kind of "scientist" he is, or who this Latin professor in Milan is, or who the unnamed other scholars are. I don't know where this recent study has been published, if it has been. Barbara Frale is a specialist in the Templars and has just published a book on them.

Castex's recent discovery of the word "found" with another word next to it, which still has to be deciphered, "together may mean 'because found' or 'we found'," she said.

What is interesting, she said, is that it recalls a passage in the Gospel of St Luke, "We found this man misleading our people," which was what several Jewish leaders told Pontius Pilate when they asked him to condemn Jesus.

I wouldn't base too much on one word that is still of uncertain meaning.

She said it would not be unusual for something to be written on a burial cloth in order to indicate the identity of the deceased.

I don't know what the basis for this statement is. We have very few Judean burial shrouds from the first century. The only one I know of is the Jerusalem Shroud (see here and here) and it is not inscribed. There is at least one other that is several thousand years older (and of course is not inscribed either). Are there other surviving Roman-era shrouds?

As I said, I am quite skeptical of this report, but I would be happy to read the evidence (with good photographs please) in a scientific (peer-reviewed) publication.

BOOK REVIEW:

Reconstructing a fragmented past
By DAVID SCHONBERG (Jerusalem Post)

Adama Shehora (Black Earth)
By Natalie Messika
(in Hebrew)
Dofen
338 pp.,
NIS 78 (recommended price)

This gripping historical novel, set in the first century CE in Judea, Galilee, Rome and Pompeii, focuses upon two events: the siege and fall of Yodfat (67 CE) in Galilee during the Great Revolt and the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy several years later (79 CE) that engulfed the surrounding area, unexpectedly ending in a dramatic moment the lives of many, including the inhabitants of Pompeii.

[...]

The author is an Israeli archaeologist.

JUDAS ISCARIOT in recent scholarship and popular perception (especially as fueled by the Coptic Gospel of Judas) is the subject of a long article in the New Yorker:

Betrayal
Should we hate Judas Iscariot?
by Joan Acocella August 3, 2009

[...]

For two thousand years, Judas has therefore been Christianity’s primary image of human evil. Now, however, there is an effort to rehabilitate him, the result, partly, of an archeological find. In 1978 or thereabouts, some peasants digging for treasure in a burial cave in Middle Egypt came upon an old codex—that is, not a scroll but what we would call a book, with pages—written in Coptic, the last form of ancient Egyptian. The book has been dated to the third or fourth century, but scholars believe that the four texts it contains are translations of writings, in Greek, from around the second century. When the codex was found, it was reportedly in good condition, but it then underwent a twenty-three-year journey through the notoriously venal antiquities market, where it suffered fantastic abuses, including a prolonged stay in a prospective buyer’s home freezer. (This caused the ink to run when the manuscript thawed.) The book was cracked in half, horizontally; pages were shuffled, torn out. By the time the codex reached the hands of restorers, in 2001, much of it was just a pile of crumbs. The repair job took five years, after which some of the book was still a pile of crumbs. Many passages couldn’t be read.

[...]

Acocella concludes:

All this, I believe, is a reaction to the rise of fundamentalism—the idea, Christian and otherwise, that every word of a religion’s founding document should be taken literally. This is a childish notion, and so is the belief that we can combat it by correcting our holy books. Those books, to begin with, are so old that we barely understand what their authors meant. Furthermore, because of their multiple authorship, they are always internally inconsistent. Finally, even the fundamentalists don’t really take them literally. People interpret, and cheat. The answer is not to fix the Bible but to fix ourselves.

Now there's a thought.

Some background to the Gospel of Judas is here.

WHEN CHIASMUS IS OUTLAWED, only outlaws will use chiasmus.

BOOK REVIEW IN BMCR:

Jörg Rüpke, Fasti sacerdotum: A Prosopography of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian Religious Officials in the City of Rome, 300 BC to AD 499. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. viii, 1107. ISBN 9780199291137. $399.00.

Reviewed by Linda Zollschan (zollschan@yahoo.com)
Word count: 2575 words

[Table of Contents below]

Scholars of ancient Rome will be delighted that Rüpke's monumental work, Fasti sacerdotum, has been translated into English and thus become accessible to a wider readership. The work of translation was done by David Richardson who has faithfully rendered the original German into English.1 For those unfamiliar with the German edition, its aim was to construct annual lists for the city of Rome of attested priests, cult officials and followers from 300 BCE to 499 CE, lists that included not just pagan priests but also the officials from Jewish and Christian groups. The work falls into two main parts: a compilation of annual lists of priests and religious functionaries and a set of alphabetically arranged individual biographies. Understandably, the whole work was 14 years in the making and required a team of assistants.

[...]

THE VISION OF GABRIEL INSCRIPTION is the subject of a popular article by John J. Collins in the Yale Forum. He thinks that, despite its lack of provenance, "for now, the text's authenticity must be given the benefit of the doubt." He also is very skeptical of Israel Knohl's theory about a reference to a dying and rising messiah in the text.

Background here and follow the many links back.

ANOTHER REVIEW of the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition, this one in Dawn.com:

Fragments of history

Maheen A. Rashdi
Sunday, 26 Jul, 2009 | 09:47 AM PST |

The Dead Sea lies between Israel and the West Bank on one side and Jordan to the east, with Jordan River as its main tributary. Known as the deepest and saltiest of lakes, at 1,385 feet below sea level, it is also said to have been the refuge of King David; the place where Herod went for health reasons and from where the chemicals to mummify the Egyptian royals were brought.

Most importantly though, it is the surrounding area of the caves at Qumran from where the most ancient archaeological objects were discovered, namely, The Dead Sea Scrolls. Qumran is a dry plateau bordering the Dead Sea in the West Bank.

[...]

The ROM exhibition is an exhilarating and awe-inspiring experience. The build up to the actual display of the Scrolls is most skillfully executed and it leaves one saturated with every piece of information on the worth, discovery, origin and geographical detail of the Scrolls’ resting area. The artefacts include numerous shards and complete pottery vessels, glass and stone vessels, coins that signified the various stages of the site, jewelry, ostraka and organic materials. Objects found were from the Iron Age and from the Second Temple period.

The first set currently on display—from June 27, 2009 until October 2009—includes biblical scrolls, non-biblical texts and Apocryphal (i.e. non-verified) Psalms. Intriguing were the fragments from the Book of War (non-biblical text, 1st century AD, Hebrew), which scholars believed contained the text of a blessing describing how God will enable the universe to produce fertility and prevent disease and destruction. It is supposedly a description of the apocalyptic war between good and evil.

The other most astounding scroll display for me was the biblical text from Genesis (150 BC to 68 AD, Hebrew). The details state that approximately 20 manuscripts of the Book of Genesis were uncovered in the caves and this scroll contains some of the oldest fragments of Genesis discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Twelve fragments had to be pieced together to reconstruct this portion of the Scroll.

The displayed fragments contain parts of the story of the death of Jacob’s wife Rachel and of Joseph’s encounter with the wife of Potiphar. To my own amazement reading the text translation in archaic English was almost identical to reading a verse (Surah 12; verse 23-25) from the Quran which narrates the same tale. That was my moment of becoming a believer in the authenticity of the scrolls.

[...]

The article is pretty accurate, although it takes the "theory" that the Dead Sea Scrolls are of Christian origin too seriously. It's also interesting that a Muslim reviewer appreciates the exhibition's efforts to tie the Scrolls to the three Abrahamic religions:

Without doubt though, there is one indelible truth that emerges from the discovery of the Scrolls: that there are more similarities in the origins of the three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—than disparities

Contrast Robert Fisk's sour evaluation here.

Further background to the exhibition is here and here.

A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS is reviewed in the Jerusalem Post:

Judging Josephus
By MORTON I. TEICHER

Jerusalem's Traitor
By Desmond Seward
Da Capo Press
314 pp.
$28

Among all the tragedies that stain the pages of Jewish history, the cataclysmic events of the first century are an especially dark epic. We owe much of our knowledge of what befell the Jews in this terrible time to Josephus who used his role as a participant-observer to write his book, The Jewish War. His contemporary account of what happened is biased on his identification with the Romans as is masterfully described in this gripping biography.

Scholars have debated the accuracy of Josephus's observations and the issue of whether or not he was a traitor. Desmond Seward, a Cambridge graduate, is a British historian who has written many books, including biographies of numerous historical figures. He has carefully examined the evidence and he offers this narrative for general readers as an introduction to the life and times of Josephus.

[...]

PHOENICIAN WATCH: Sex, lies, and audiotapes - and Phoenician tombs?

Berlusconi in Phoenician tomb flap

Premier asked to explain alleged finds at Sardinian villa

(ANSA) - Rome, July 24 - Premier Silvio Berlusconi must come clean about whether he is 'hiding' 30 ancient Phoenician tombs at his Sardinian villa, a former culture minister said Friday, adding to calls from archaeologists and opposition politicians. The possible existence of the tombs came to light in audio tapes published by left-leaning weekly Espresso this week alleged to be of conversations between Berlusconi and an escort girl, Patrizia D'Addario, who claims she was paid to attend parties at his home in Rome.

In one of the conversations posted Thursday, the male speaker alleged to be the premier appears to be showing D'Addario photos of his Sardinian residence, Villa Certosa, and points out where the 30 tombs, dating to 300 BC, were found.

The Italian media has reported that the Sardinian authorities are unaware of the archaeological find on the premier's private property, which by law must be reported to the authorities to inspect and decided whether to excavate.

[...]

The National Association of Archaeologists said that if the discovery was confirmed it would be ''incredibly important'' for the study of settlements on the island by the Phonecians, an ancient maritime trading people who formed a massive commercial empire throughout the Mediterranean from their bases along the coast of modern-day Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

''Experts have been debating for years about whether the ancient city of Olbia was founded by Greeks or Phoenicians,'' said association president Giuseppina Manca di Mores.

''If the discovery of new Phoenician material is confirmed, it would represent a new detail for the story of the island and would open new channels of research,'' she said.

[...]

However, according to Monsters and Critics, the Premier's lawyer denies the claims:

Berlusconi's lawyer, Niccolo Ghedini, has disputed the veracity of the series of tapes that began appearing on left-leaning magazine L'Espresso's site on Monday.

On Friday he slammed what he said were the latest 'unverified reports.'

'Berlusconi would have never spoken of the discovery of 30 Phoenician tombs in his park, because nothing of the sort exists or has been found in the area of Villa Certosa,' Ghedini was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency.

According to Ghedini, the grounds surrounding Villa Certosa - where Berlusconi often hosts foreign dignitaries - have been inspected by Italian judicial officials in the past.

'Any additional controls can be carried out at any time,' Ghedini told ANSA.

HERODIUM AND HEROD'S (POSSIBLE) TOMB are the subject of a long Smithsonian article:

Finding King Herod's Tomb
After a 35-year search, an Israeli archaeologist is certain he has solved the mystery of the biblical figure’s final resting place

* By Barbara Kreiger
* Smithsonian magazine, July 2009

Shielding my eyes from the glare of the morning sun, I look toward the horizon and the small mountain that is my destination: Herodium, site of the fortified palace of King Herod the Great. I'm about seven miles south of Jerusalem, not far from the birthplace of the biblical prophet Amos, who declared: "Let justice stream forth like water." Herod's reign over Judea from 37 to 4 B.C. is not remembered for justice but for its indiscriminate cruelty. His most notorious act was the murder of all male infants in Bethlehem to prevent the fulfillment of a prophecy heralding the birth of the Messiah. There is no record of the decree other than the Gospel of Matthew, and biblical scholars debate whether it actually took place, but the story is in keeping with a man who arranged the murders of, among others, three of his own sons and a beloved wife.

Long an object of scholarly as well as popular fascination, Herodium, also called Herodion, was first positively identified in 1838 by the American scholar Edward Robinson, who had a knack for locating biblical landmarks. After scaling the mountain and comparing his observations with those of the first century Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, Robinson concluded that "all these particulars...leave scarcely a doubt, that this was Herodium, where the [Judean] tyrant sought his last repose." Robinson's observation was confirmed later that century by Conrad Schick, the famous German architect and archaeologist who conducted extensive surveys of Jerusalem and its nearby sites.

But where precisely was the king entombed? At the summit of Herodium? At the base? Inside the mountain itself? Josephus didn't say. By the late 1800s, Herod's tomb had become one of biblical archaeology's most sought-after prizes. And for more than a century archaeologists scoured the site. Finally, in 2007, Ehud Netzer of Hebrew University announced that after 35 years of archaeological work he had found Herod's resting place. The news made headlines worldwide—"A New Discovery May Solve the Mystery of the Bible's Bloodiest Tyrant," trumpeted the London Daily Mail.

"In terms of size, quality of decoration and prominence of its position, it's hard to reach any other conclusion," says Jodi Magness, an archaeologist in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has excavated at other sites where Herod oversaw construction projects. Ken Holum, a University of Maryland archaeologist and historian who served as a curator for the traveling Smithsonian exhibition "King Herod's Dream," cautions that "it is always wise to be less than certain when there is no identifying inscription or other explicit identification." But he says he personally believes Netzer has indeed discovered Herod's tomb.

[...]

But not everyone is convinced. Read it all.

CANADA and the Dead Sea Scrolls:

Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition gives long-awaited nod to Canada’s contribution, says scholar

(Exchange)

Hamilton - A leading scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls says the hugely popular exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum is helping to foster an appreciation of Canada’s role in the saga of one of the greatest archeological finds in modern times.

Eileen Schuller, professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University, has researched Canada’s involvement and says that from the moment the Scrolls were discovered Canadians have provided money and expertise toward the acquisition and eventual publication of the Scrolls, earning Canada an international reputation in Scrolls study.

Schuller herself has, since 1980, worked on and catalogued a series of thanksgiving prayers and psalmic texts from Cave 4 as well as published the reconstruction of the Hodayot scroll from Cave 1. An author of numerous academic papers on the Scrolls, Schuller is part of the ROM’s lecture series being held in conjunction with the exhibit. She has written extensively on women in the Scrolls and published a more popular series of lectures, The Dead Sea Scrolls: What Have We Learned (2002). Her colleague at McMaster University, Daniel Machiela is publishing a new edition of the Genesis Apocryphon this Fall. Their research has made McMaster a centre for Scrolls study.

[...]

Background here and keep following the links back.

MORE ON THE PALESTINIAN PROTESTS of the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition:

Palestinians ask Canada to seize Dead Sea Scrolls

Blake Lambert, Foreign Correspondent (The National)

* Last Updated: July 23. 2009 11:31PM UAE / July 23. 2009 7:31PM GMT

TORONTO // A new exhibit featuring the Dead Sea Scrolls at Canada’s largest museum has ignited Palestinian claims of cultural theft.

[...]

The argument is summarized as follows:

The problem for Palestinian Authority officials, who contacted ROM executives in April, is that the exhibition contains artefacts illegally acquired by Israel when it annexed East Jerusalem in the 1967 war.

The PA’s archaeological department said it was important for Canadian institutions to be responsible and act in accordance with their country’s obligations.

“I’m not saying those scrolls are not Jewish and Christian in nature,” said Issam al Ahmed, the executive director of Palestine House, an educational and cultural organisation in the Toronto area. “But they were discovered prior to the Israeli occupation and they were exhibited in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem in Palestine.”

After the 1967 war, the Israelis moved the scrolls to the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, a Montreal-based advocacy group, argues that ROM’s partnership with the Israeli body violates Canada’s obligations under the conventions of Unesco, the UN body that helps to conserve mankind’s heritage, regarding the protection of cultural property.

According to its interpretation, Canada cannot import cultural property from an occupied territory and must, if possible, take that property into custody and return it to the competent authorities at the end of hostilities.

The ROM's response:

Notwithstanding the claims of theft, the ROM said it “remained satisfied that the exhibition is lawful”.

Background here.

A TRIBUTE TO GRAHAM STANTON has been posted by Peter Head at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog. And there's also an obituary at the Cambridge Network as well.

(Via Mark Goodacre at the NT Blog here and here.)

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY also has a Geniza Project, to which Mike Fieschko has alerted me in an e-mail. There's also a recent blog post on Princeton's IT's Academic blog, which links to a podcast of a recent lecture by Professor Mark Cohen and Ben Johnston from the Princeton Humanities Resource Center, with an accompanying pdf document. (I mentioned the project briefly in 2003, but did not give much detail.)

From the project website:

Initiated in the mid-1980s, the Computer Geniza Project of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University seeks to extend the methodologies available to Hebrew, Judaeo-Arabic, and Arabic scholars working with the documents found in the Geniza chamber of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo in the late 19th century.

The project is dedicated to transcribing documents from film copies, photocopies, draft texts typed by S. D. Goitein, and printed editions to computer files, creating a full text retrieval text-base of transcribed documents, developing new tools such as dictionaries, semantic categories and morphological aids to further the study of Geniza texts.

Finally, the project is committed to disseminating its materials as widely as possible to the international community of scholars with an interest in the life of the medieval Middle East, as well as to all with an interest in Judaica. Ultimately, we hope to provide links to digitized images of manususcripts in our corpus, as libraries pursue the imaging of their collections..

It is our hope that by making materials from this very esoteric field widely available that new insights can be gained into the interaction of the peoples of the Middle East in past time. Funding has come from Princeton University and from the Friedberg Genizah Project.