Iraq's Christians

MODERN ARAMAIC WATCH: Iraq's Christians. More than 125,000 of Iraq's Christians have been forced to flee the homeland they have lived in for nearly 2,000 years because of ISIS violence and threats (Lara Logan, CBSN).

On the side of a mountain, overlooking the Nineveh Plains of ancient Mesopotamia, is the Monastery of St. Matthew. It's one of the oldest on earth.
The voices of its monks have echoed here since the fourth century, uttering prayers that have not changed.

Lara Logan: You do the service in Aramaic?

Father Joseph Ibrahim: Yes.

Lara Logan: Which was the language of Jesus.

Father Joseph Ibrahim: Yes.

Lara Logan: Are you among the last people on earth to speak this language?

Father Joseph Ibrahim: We think so because we kept this language through the language of prayers.

Ms. Logan also interviews Nicodemus Sharaf, the Archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Mosul, and Bashar Warda, the archbishop of the Erbil diocese, and others.

Background on the plight of modern Aramaic speakers in the Middle East and on the modern Aramaic-speaking diaspora is here, here, here, and links. Background on the Monastery of St. Matthew is here; on the destruction of a church in Mosul is here; and on the situation in Erbil is here and here.

Is Aramaic dying out?

NOT DEAD YET! Where Do Languages Go to Die? The tale of Aramaic, a language that once ruled the Middle East and now faces extinction (JOHN MCWHORTER, The Atlantic).

If a Middle Eastern man from 2,500 years ago found himself on his home territory in 2015, he would be shocked by the modern innovations, and not just electricity, airplanes, and iPhones. Arabic as an official language in over two dozen countries would also seem as counterintuitive to him as if people had suddenly started keeping aardvarks as pets.

In our time-traveler’s era, after all, Arabic was an also-ran tongue spoken by obscure nomads. The probability that he even spoke it would be low. There were countless other languages in the Middle East in his time that he’d be more likely to know. His idea of a “proper” language would have been Aramaic, which ruled what he knew as the world and served, between 600 and 200 B.C.E., as the lingua franca from Greece and Egypt, across Mesopotamia and Persia, all the way through to India. Yet today the language of Jesus Christ is hardly spoken anywhere, and indeed is likely to be extinct within the next century. Young people learn it ever less. Only about half a million people now speak Aramaic—compared to, for example, the five and a half million people who speak Albanian.

How does a language go from being so big to being on the verge of dying out entirely?

[...]

A nice summary history of the Aramaic language. One point deserves some nuancing:

Here is also why Jesus and other Jews lived in Aramaic, and why goodly portions of the Hebrew Bible are actually in Aramaic. The two languages are part of the same Semitic family, but still, when the Book of Daniel switches into Aramaic for five chapters because Chaldeans are being addressed, it’s rather as if Cervantes had switched into Italian in Don Quixote for the tale of the Florentine nobleman.

The "Chaldeans" (and I could get sidetracked on a long discussion of the development of that word) would have spoken Babylonian Akkadian rather than Aramaic, and the writer of Daniel probably would have been aware of this. No one is quite sure why the middle of the book of Daniel (2:24b through chapter 7) is written in Aramaic (with 1:1-2:4a and chapters 8-12 in Hebrew), but it doesn't seem to have to do with a change in the language of the speakers in the story. True, the Masoretic text may imply this when it says "(in?) Aramaic" in 2:4a, but this could just be an addition to mark the change in language in the book. The only Qumran Daniel manuscript that contains this passage is damaged at just this point and it is unclear if it contained the word "Aramaic." Daniel converses with Babylonians in chapter 1 and chapter 8 as well, with no indication of a language change.

As for the future of Aramaic, I hope it doesn't die out. A vast Aramaic literature survives and there are dispersed Aramaic-speaking communities that are trying to maintain their traditions. We'll see. I wish them the best. Cross-file under Aramaic Watch and Modern Aramaic Watch.

Damage to the Al Aqsa Mosque

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Clashes Damage Al Aqsa Mosque at Jerusalem, and Jordan Warns Israel (DIAA HADID, NYT).

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian youths and the Israeli police clashed again Tuesday at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and King Abdullah II of Jordan issued a rare warning to Israel that the fighting could weaken relations between the two countries.

Concerns are growing that the clashes over Jewish visits to the contested holy site, which began on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, could set off wider violence.

[...]

In Tuesday’s fighting, Palestinian youths, some masked, took up positions in Al Aqsa Mosque, where they had built barricades from wood and iron rods, and from the closets where worshipers leave their shoes before entering the holy site, said Luba Samri, an Israeli police spokeswoman.

Omar Kiswani, the director of Al Aqsa Mosque compound, said centuries-old woodwork, windows and doors had been damaged in the violence. “We are making calls for intervention,” Mr. Kiswani said. “We hope these problems won’t continue. We want quiet, to preserve the lives of the worshipers.”

The youths pelted police officers, who used sound grenades in an effort to quell the demonstrators. A small fire erupted on some of the wooden panels being used as barricades.

I've been watching this story for some time, but haven't posted on it. But damage to one of the ancient monuments on the site brings it into the area of PaleoJudaica's concerns. Not surprisingly, the cause of the damage is disputed:

Ms. Samri said the blaze was ignited by Palestinians who threw firecrackers. But a mosque official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared arrest, said Israeli forces were to blame because they fired stun grenades that burned holes in the mosque’s carpet and probably ignited a wooden panel.

I hope things settle down without any more harm to the site or anyone in the area.

The Book of Giants in art

EXHIBITION IN MINNEAPOLIS: MICHAEL THOMSEN EXPLORES HIS TIES TO THE OCCULT THROUGH ART (SHEILA REGAN, City Pages).

Michael Thomsen's interest in secret societies, mythologies, and the occult stems from his grandfather, an auctioneer who belonged to the Blue Lodge of the Masonic Temple.

"I was really flipped out by that as a kid," Thomsen recalls.

When Warren (Barney) Thomsen, the Master Mason, passed away in the early 1990s, Michael Thomsen was given some of his jewelry and other items from the lodge. In recent years, he's researched the Masons and other secret groups.

"It all goes back to pre-religions," he says. "Religions came out of cults, and cults were secret societies of some sort."

For "Mystery School," Thomsen's solo show at Public Functionary, he not only dives into Masonic imagery, but also takes bits from the Bible, Greek and Roman mythology, and an assortment of esoteric narratives, including angel-descended mutant giants, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and third eyes that see beyond ordinary sight.

[...]

It seems the Enochic giants feature in one of his works:

While he's creating the work, Thomsen admits that he can sometimes get a little spooked by the imagery. "[The Dead Sea Scrolls' Book of Giants piece] kind of gets underneath my skin at certain points," he admits.

Unfortunately, I can't find an image of this piece. Such images of his work that I can find online look interesting.

Past posts relating to the Book of Giants are here and here and links

George Brooke in Australia

LECTURE: Dead sea scrolls come to life with Professor George J. Brooke (IAN KIRKWOOD, Newcastle Herald).

VISITING British academic Professor George J. Brooke unlocked some of the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls to a rapt audience of about 250 at the annual Morpeth Lecture at Christ Church Cathedral on Tuesday night.

Professor Brooke, Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis and Early Judaism at the University of Manchester, spoke for almost an hour on the ‘‘Dead Sea Scrolls and the authority of the Bible’’, before taking questions.

[...]

Kahn and Rubin (eds.), Handbook of Jewish Languages

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Judæo-Iranian Languages. New article in a new book: Borjian, Habib. 2015. Judeo-Iranian Languages. In Lily Kahn & Aaron D. Rubin (eds.), Handbook of Jewish Languages, 234–296. (Brill’s Handbooks in Linguistics). Leiden: Brill, 2015.

Jacob Neusner Chair

FULL-TIME TENURE TRACK/TENURED POSITION: Jacob Neusner Chair in the History and Theology of Judaism of Bard College.

Bard College invites applications for a full-time, open rank position in the Religion Program, in the area of Judaic Studies. This is an endowed chair, the Jacob Neusner Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism, in recognition of his distinguished contributions to the field and to Bard College. The position contributes centrally to both the Religion Program and the Jewish Studies concentration.

The position requires a strong commitment to teaching and scholarship in a liberal arts setting. The period of specialization is open.

Big shoes to fill.

Shutdown of St. Catherine's Monastery

"FOR SECURITY REASONS": Sinai's St. Catherine's Starves, Monastery Shuts Down (Mohannad Sabry, Al-Monitor).

ST. CATHERINE'S — In the Sinai city of St. Catherine, a few thousand people and around 800 camels have been left struggling since the first week of August, when Egyptian security authorities ordered the total shutdown of the town's 1,500-year-old monastery. Bedouin residents of the mountainous area were forced to sell their camels, which they cannot feed, to feed their families.

Over the past 50 years, St. Catherine's Monastery closed its gates twice, in 1977 when former President Anwar Sadat made his historic visit to Jerusalem, and in 1982 when the Egyptian military entered Sinai after the withdrawal of Israeli forces. This time, the shutdown, which wasn’t explained by any official statements from either the Defense or Interior Ministry, was allegedly ordered after a failed attempt to kidnap a monk traveling in South Sinai in June and rising suspicions of a possible attack on the monastery.

[...]

This has been very difficult both for the Monastery and the local residents whose income came from tourism. The report says that the Egyptian Government has not provided any financial help.

At the town's coffee shop, Mousa, as well as several others who have sold or struggled to feed their camels and a few tribal elders, agreed that the town's main request for the government is for it to provide townspeople with food for their camels, the community's most precious possession.

A simple calculation made by the Bedouin gathering proposed that one month's food for the town's 800 camels would cost the government around $68,000 if bought at retail prices the Bedouins normally pay, an amount equivalent to that paid by 13,600 tourists for entrance tickets, which according to the monastery's estimates was collected in less than four days until January 2011.

"We are not asking the government for millions of dollars, we are just asking it for camel food, which would cost it nothing in comparison with the fortunes it made with the help of this community," said Mousa. "We don’t mind suffering until the tourism crisis is over, but selling our camels means destroying our lives permanently."

More on St. Catherine's Monastery and its precious repository of manuscripts is here and many links.

Sites damaged and destroyed by ISIS

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Here Are the Ancient Sites ISIS Has Damaged and Destroyed. Shocking destruction in the Syrian city of Palmyra is part of the militant group's ongoing campaign against archaeology. You can find more on almost all of these sites by searching for them in the PaleoJudaica archive.

Background on ISIS and its assault on the past and its caretakers is here and links.

Archaeology, the Bible, and history

THE DOG ATE MY EVIDENCE: King David Slept Here. Thoughts about Evidence and Method in Biblical Archaeology (Michael Press, ASOR Blog).

The continuing search for the historical David appears, like the conclusions of the Albright School, to be driven – problematically – by heavy investment in the historicity of the Bible. And here lies the paradox: heavy investment in the Bible is what motivates work in the field in the first place, and what drives public interest. Without it, our field simply would not exist. (Why else would anyone care about a tiny corner of southwestern Asia?). We must be careful in crafting responsible scholarly approaches that acknowledge this investment, with all its positives and negatives. In any attempt to historicize the United Monarchy, we must also historicize our own scholarship by acknowledging this context. After all, mythic history has a tremendous appeal, to scholars and non-scholars alike. It is why people still care, over 200 years later, where George Washington slept – and why people still care, 3000 years later, where David might have slept.

Archaeology does not readily align itself with the concerns of the ancient biblical texts, and the texts themselves were often not interested in the historical questions that interest us and cannot readily be used to answer them.

Daniel Boyarin's doctoral thesis

THE TALMUD BLOG: DANIEL BOYARIN’S DISSERTATION ON B. NAZIR. Downloadable as a PDF file.

Bauckham response regarding eyewitnesses

THE JESUS BLOG: Richard Bauckham Responds.

For background see my earlier post: Eyewitness accounts. A couple of other past posts that seem relevant to the discussion are here and here.

My view at present? The Gospels may well reflect a large amount of eyewitness testimony, although, as I have said before, I am happier drawing generalizations from them than relying on any specific story as historical. Jesus was a healer and an exorcist who taught about the Kingdom of God and perhaps about the Son of Man — not to say that it is particularly clear what he meant about either subject. Also, he was reputed to have had a special, divinely attended birth and some of his disciples reported that he remained in contact with them after his death. I accept that something like this account of him probably goes back to his lifetime and the lifetimes of his closest followers. That said, what these eyewitnesses experienced was embedded in a cultural framework very, indeed nearly unimaginably, different from ours. For them, Jesus was an intermediary with the divine and did the things such intermediaries do. If we obtained time-travel 3-D stereophonic videos of the events, they might look rather different to us.

Some more or less relevant past posts concerning or touching on the historical Jesus are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE: I should add that my view as summarized above is much influenced by Pieter Craffert's book The Life of a Galilean Shaman (Cascade/Matrix, 2008).

4 Ezra in Old Georgian

ADAM MCCOLLUM: On 4 Ezra in Old Georgian, with a synoptic text sample of 5:22-30. 4 Ezra: another philologist's gift that keeps on giving.

Recent related posts are here and links.

Antiquities looting in Egypt

IT'S A PROBLEM EVERYWHERE: Digging for antiquities, a dream to get rich fast in Upper Egypt (Egypt Independent).

Researcher Ayman al-Wakil says the people of Upper Egypt believe in ancient Egyptian tales passed on from generation to generation about treasures buried underground. He also says they believe in jinns that guard those treasures, which can be contacted through witchery to tell where the treasures are buried.

Wakil says there are impostors who convince people they can decipher ancient Egyptian codes. They say they know where the treasures are hidden, in exchange for money.

Mahmoud al-Sayed from Upper Egypt says the phenomenon has spread since the January 25 revolution, when there was a state of lawlessness and people could infringe on state property.

“Usually, they do not find anything and they end up fighting and perhaps even killing each other,” he says.

Fathy, a sheikh to whom people go to contact jinns, says those tales are true. “I do not take money unless they find the treasure,” he says. “I only take the expenses for the incense and other material needed to recall the jinns.”

The looters often die in soil collapses as well. It's not a pretty undertaking.

Related posts here and links.

More conflict over the Church of Loaves and Fishes

INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC NEWS: Israel refuses compensation for church damaged in arson attack (Dan Bergin). Which can be juxtaposed with this: Jewish Groups Raise Funds to Rebuild Church on Site Where Jesus Multiplied Loaves and Fishes to Feed 5,000 (VINCENT FUNARO, The Christian Post).

Background here and links.

Rosh HaShanah 2015

HAPPY NEW YEAR (ROSH HASHANAH - Jewish New Year 5776)! The New Year begins tonight at sundown.

This concludes the Shmita (Sabbatical year), on which there is more here and links. For biblical and historical background on Rosh HaShanah, see here and links.

Also, the Coptic Orthodox Church celebrated its New Year on 11 September, year 1732 according to the Coptic Calendar. Happy slightly belated New Year to them as well.

Byzantines and the Bible

CALL FOR PAPERS: Byzantines and the Bible, Belgrade, 22-27 August 2016 (Tommy Wasserman, ETC). The deadline is 30 September 2015, so don't dawdle!

CFP for Divine Sonship Symposium at St. Andrews

CONFERENCE: Call for Papers: Son of God: Divine Sonship in Jewish and Christian Antiquity.

The organisers of the St Andrews Symposium for Biblical and Early Christian Studies are happy to announce the theme of the next installation of this series taking place at the University of St Andrews 6-8 June 2016.

[...]

Follow the link for further particulars. The CFP (as well as early-bird registration) closes on 15 February, 2016.

THEOT meeting in Hamburg

MARYLHURST UNIVERSITY: Garry Jost Presents at Consultation in Germany. Dr. Garry Jost, religious studies faculty, gave a presentation at an Ethiopic manuscript consultation at the University of Hamburg, Germany, in June 2015. This was a meeting of The Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament Project, on which you can find more here.

Review of Taylor (ed.), Jesus and Brian

JAMES MCGRATH: Review of Jesus and Brian. More on the book and the conference is here and links.