GJW in the CHE

KAREN KING is interviewed by Tom Bartlett in the Chronicle of Higher Education: The Lessons of Jesus’ Wife. Excerpts:

King told the magazine that, while there was a chance that ink testing might prove that the fragment was a forgery, she thought it was more likely to be “cherry on the cake.”

Now she, like everyone else, is waiting for the results of that test, which should be available late this month. The test could prove that the ink has modern elements, which would mean that it is a forgery. If it comes back negative for such elements, the debate will go on. If it is positive, not having waited for that test will look like a mistake.

But how do you roll out a potential blockbuster discovery like this? King said she’s been asking colleagues how they would have handled it differently, and they’ve reassured her that they would have done what she did. And while she’s been dinged by some for jumping the gun, others would have attacked her for keeping it to herself. “The longer I held back, the more criticism there would have been,” she said.

Agreed, except she should have resisted the temptation to cooperate with a television documentary before all tests were completed, mighty though that temptation must have been.

One thing she would change? The title of the fragment. Calling it “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” seemed natural. And for scholars like King, one of the authors of a book about The Gospel of Judas, alternative accounts of the Jesus story are not shocking. She misjudged just how inflammatory that title would turn out to be. She’s been asking around for ideas on a new, less exciting name.

I agree here too, but I think it's too late now to change the name.

Background here and links.

Aramaic-speaking pirates and a woman ruler at ed-Dur?

ARAMAIC WATCH:

Was ed-Dur ruled by a woman?

Rym Ghazal (The National)
Oct 2, 2012

Images on a coin can tell the story of place and time.

But for some of the coins found at ed-Dur, it is a name that is causing the greatest debate.

“It is a real mystery,” says Dr Ernie Haerinck. “The coins minted locally have a name added to them in Aramaic. It is ‘Abi’el’, the daughter of so and so.

“Perhaps ed-Dur was a kingdom run by a woman?”

The name was added to “imitations of imitations” of common coins, attributed to the first century AD.

[...]

“One of the biggest problems we have is that a lot of the pre-Islamic rituals and histories have not been noted down anywhere, and the fact that we have less and less specialists around who can read Aramaic and its different ancient dialects,” says Dr Haerinck.

Besides locally minted coins, which offer proof of autonomy and political and economic independence, there are many unexplained discoveries at ed-Dur, one that led Dr Haerinck to say: “Maybe there were pirates here?

“For the vastness of what has been found here could be explained through one theory and texts by Romans about this area, that just maybe some ed-Dur pirates brought back lots of plunder and treasures from across the world.”

The site of ed-Dur where the coins were excavated is in the UAE. There are plenty of specialists in different Aramaic dialects; they need to look around a little more. But, granted, pirate Aramaic might prove to be a challenge.

Ahmadinejad and Haman

BIBLE IN MODERN POLITICS WATCH:

Peres likens Ahmadinejad to ‘modern-day Haman’
President stresses preference for non-military means to remove Iranian threat

By Asher Zeiger October 2, 2012, 10:32 pm 0 (The Times of Israel)

President Shimon Peres described Iran’s president as “a modern-day Haman,” during a meeting with Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef on Tuesday.

Despite comparing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the ancient Persian official who sought to eradicate all the Jews in the empire in the fifth century BCE, Peres said that “we would be happy to be rid of him through non-military means.”

[...]

Cyrus the Great was also invoked:

Peres said that the speech was proof of the Iranian leader’s “profound historical ignorance” and that Ahmadinejad needs to be taught a history lesson about the ancient Persian king Koresh, who “more than 2,500 years ago allowed the Jews … to return to Israel and rebuild their home.”

See the Book of Esther for Haman, who was gotten rid of through military means (chapter 7), and Ezra 1:1-4 and Isaiah 45:1-4 for Cyrus/Koresh.

The use of the Book of Esther (e.g., here), Haman (e.g., here), and Cyrus (e.g., here with many links) for political purposes is not new.

Church vandalism in Jerusalem

VANDALISM AT THE CHURCH OF THE DORMITION: Vandals strike 1 of Jerusalem’s most famous churches; Jewish extremists suspected (AP). The church is built on the traditional site of the death (dormition—"falling asleep") of the Virgin Mary.

High-Tech Magic

HIGH-TECH MAGIC (in the sense of Clarke's third law) is illustrated at the HMML Digitial Collections and Imaging blog with a 1960s image of a cuneiform tablet.  (HT Adam McCollum on Facebook.)

For those interested, Clarke's three laws, all of them relevant to various discussions on PaleoJudaica, are:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

GJW: Goodacre sums up

THE CURRENT STATE OF PLAY regarding the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is aptly summarized by Mark Goodacre: The Gospel of Jesus' Wife Latest. He concludes:

As I see it, there are two options here. Either the author of the Jesus fragment got hold of Codex II before it went into the jar in Nag Hammadi in the late fourth century to be buried for 1500 years, or s/he got hold of it after it came out of the jar in 1945. While we cannot rule out the possibility that s/he got hold of Codex II before it went into the jar, it is much more likely that the author got hold of it in the modern period with its multiple reproductions, in print and internet, of that one witness.

And therefore the GJW is a modern fake.

I'm sure the discussion will continue in the blogosphere and perhaps sporadically in the media, but most or all of this will probably amount to wheel spinning until we get some new information, most probably the results on the test(s) of the composition of the ink used to write the text. I myself am not an expert on materials science of ancient manuscripts and I do not know how definitive the results of such tests would be in principle. Is it possible to fake the composition of ancient ink? Can ancient ink recovered, say, in an excavated ancient inkwell be rehydrated and used undetectably to create a modern forgery? I don't know. If the ink turns out to be modern, that should settle the discussion in favor of the GJW being a modern fake, which seems to be the most widely held view at present. If the ink appears to be ancient, the questions above will have to be asked and the probabilities weighed.

As I've said from the beginning, I am very skeptical about its authenticity. But we'll see where new information leads us when we get it.

Background here and links.

Qumran month

ASOR BLOG: Qumran Month Comes to a Close.

I linked to some, but not all of the Qumran posts during September. But this final post links to all of them.

Carnival at Sansblogue

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL: September: Spring comes to Biblical Blogaria.

Ancient Judaism lecture

AT HARVARD: Professor Speaks on Greco-Roman Influence on Ancient Rabbis.

Discussing the relationship between Greco-Roman folklore and ancient rabbinic texts, [Galit] Hasan-Rokem talked about the interdependence of the cultures, emphasizing the influence of a specific figure from Greco-Roman folklore: the sirens.

The sirens and other Greco-Roman tropes, Hasan-Rokem said, influenced the rabbinic view of women as alluring and punishable. She noted that the oral transmission of information in rabbinic culture facilitated the incorporation of new voices and ideas.

Mapping Israel

HAARETZ: Mapping Israel one foot at a time. The Israel Antiquities Authority seeks to precisely map every historical and archaeological site west of the Jordan. The project, which began in 1964, is due to end - if at all - in a few decades. The results are now being published online.

Happy Sukkot

SUKKOT, the festival of Booths or Tabernacles, began last night at sundown. Best wishes to all those celebrating

Smithsonian GJW documentary on hold

THIS IS PROBABLY A GOOD THING:

Smithsonian delays 'Jesus wife' film as doubts mount

3:40 PM, Sep 28, 2012 |

USA Today
by Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY

The Smithsonian Channel has postponed plans to broadcast a documentary on the discovery of a "Jesus wife" papyrus that a Vatican newspaper declares is a probable fake.

A promo for the documentary The Gospel of Jesus's Wife on the channel's website refers to the "damaged and fragile" ancient papyrus as "one of the most significant discoveries of all time."

While the website still carries the description of the program, a small note to the right says it is "not currently airing."

A spokesman says the broadcast has been postponed "until the text undergoes further tests," according to The Washington Post.

[...]

Events have clearly overtaken whatever the documentary said when it was filmed, and I should think it would sound very out of date if it were aired as is. A documentary should not have been planned at all before the authentication process was fully completed, one way or another.

Background on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is here with many links.

Paananen on Watson on GJW

OKAY, OKAY, I thought I was going to be able to ignore this subject today, but it seems not.  Have a look at James McGrath: Timo S. Paananen on Methods of Forgery Detection and the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, a rebuttal of Francis Watson's case against the authenticity of the GJW.

I agree that Watson's case does not in itself demonstrate that the text is inauthentic. But the combination of a highly suspicious coherence with the immediate Zeitgeist, plus physical irregularities that bother papyrologists, plus pretty clear dependence on the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, including (granted, possibly coincidental) hints of dependence on the same Coptic Gospel of Thomas manuscript that we have, cumulatively cast considerable doubt on the authenticity of the GJW.

Background here and links.

New book: Klawans, Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism

NEW BOOK:

Jonathan Klawans, Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism (OUP)

(HT Carla Sulzbach on Facebook.)

GJW latest

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS' WIFE is still getting lots of attention in the media and the blogosphere, but I think that for now we're entering a period of diminishing returns in terms of new information.  Nevertheless, here are some blog posts that are interesting or entertaining or both.

Mark Goodacre: Revised versions of Francis Watson's Articles on the Jesus Wife Fragment.

Christian Askeland: Was Mrs Jesus Pimped?

James McGrath: The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife at SBL in Chicago? I'll come to the session if it fits my schedule.

James McGrath: Erwin Schrödinger Cat and Karen King’s Article. There's something really comforting about quantum physics.

And, tangentially related, congratulations to Mark Goodacre: My new book has arrived!

UPDATE: Background on the GJW is here and links.

New JSIJ articles

JEWISH STUDIES, AN INTERNET JOURNAL has published some new articles, two of which are of PaleoJudaic interest. Click on the links below to download a pdf version of the whole article.

Rabin Shushtri, "Two Geniza Documents from Chapter Lulav Hagazul: A Testament to the Antiquity of the Western Text" (Heb.)

The analysis of different textual traditions is one of the foundations of academic Talmudic studies in general and of research on the Babylonian Talmud in particular. Analysis of the manuscripts of Tractate Sukka in the Babylonian Talmud shows clearly that there are two main branches of the text of this tractate: the vulgate branch and the Yemenite branch. One of the main methods for evaluating a manuscript is comparison to indirect text-witnesses. In this paper I have compared the version of the talmudic text attested by Maimonides’ writings to that found in extant manuscripts and secondary text-witnesses. There are seventeen places where Maimonides’ rulings depend upon a specific version of a sugya. My analysis shows that in fifteen of them Maimonides conforms to the Yemenite version. As for the other two instances, in one Maimonides’ version is secondary, and in the other the Yemenite branch is secondary. Thus, we conclude that Maimonides and the scribes of the Yemenite branch had a common source. Moreover, in the vast majority of places this common tradition appears to reflect the original version of the Talmud, before it was edited. This is a reflection of the high quality of the Yemenite tradition, which was hardly affected by later intervention. It is unlikely that scholars changed the text of the Talmud to make it conform with Maimonidean rulings, and indeed a study of the aforementioned passages shows this to be impossible. This tradition persisted, reaching the greatest halachic authority of Medieval times, Maimonides, and therefore when we analyse his rulings, which often do not suit the conclusion of the sugya in the text of the Talmud known to us, we must take into account the possibility that his ruling was based on a different version of the talmudic text.

Tzvi Novick, "Din and Debate: Some Dialectical Patterns in Tannaitic Texts"

The paper examines a set of technical terms employed in tannaitic literature in connection with the analysis of a din, or logical inference. I demonstrate that anonymous Akivan midrash transforms rhetorical terms that occur in debates between named parties into punctuation that structures the argumentation. In analogous contexts in Ishmaelian midrash, such punctuation does not occur. The first appendix addresses the relationship between the dialectical patterns examined in the body of the article and a collection of baraitot marked as illogical by the Bavli. The second appendix, building on one of the technical terms examined in the body of the article that employs the rhetoric of surprise, addresses the expression of surprise in homiletical contexts.

GJW discussed on Alin Suciu's blog

JUST IN: On the So-Called Gospel of Jesus’s Wife. Some Preliminary Thoughts by Hugo Lundhaug and Alin Suciu. "In conclusion, both the physical appearance of the fragment, in particular its paleographical features, and its text give reasons for serious doubts concerning its authenticity."

Background here and links.

UPDATE:  James McGrath: Are Reports of the Death of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Greatly Exaggerated?

HTR rejects King's GJW article?

RUMOR at the First Things blog: Harvard Theological Review Rejects “Jesus’ Wife.” The report is that the information comes from Helmut Koester via Gesine Robinson, but I have seen no direct verification.

Background on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is here and links.

UPDATE:  Daniel Burke at Religion News Service reports Harvard Theological Review: Gospel of Jesus’ Wife NOT rejected.  But the acceptance is still conditional.  This on the authority of an e-mail from Harvard Divinity School spokesman Jonathan Beasley.  (HT David Meadows.)

Talmudic "Chaucerian verve"

DAF YOMI COLUMN: This week Adam Kirsch writes on Talmudic Pride and Prejudice in The Tablet.

For me, one of the powerful lessons of reading Berachot, the tractate on prayers, has been to see just how ancient and continuous the Jewish tradition really is. The Shema, the Amidah, the Birkat—we still recite all these prayers today, in almost or exactly the same form as the Tannaim, the rabbis of the Mishna, did 2,000 years ago. What has changed, as suggested by this week’s reading—which is largely focused on the prayer after meals, the Birkat Hamazon—is our attitude toward precedence and rank.

For the rabbis of the Talmud, as for the elite of any premodern society, gradations of prestige and authority were part of the nature of things. At many moments in this week’s Daf Yomi, we see that they could be as touchy about these distinctions as any courtier at Versailles. The difference is that, in post-Temple Judaism, the lack of traditional power structures—a royal court, an army, a functioning priesthood—meant that new forms of hierarchy had to be created; and they were based, in a way that came to seem essentially Jewish, less on birth or wealth than on learning.

[...]

Includes some interesting discussion of the am haaretz—the "people of the land."

More on Thomas and GJW

MARK GOODACRE: Gospel of Jesus' Wife: the last line is also from Thomas.  Oh oh.

Background on the GJW is here and links.