THE JERUSALEM POST has an editorial on Mel Gibson's The Passion:

Editorial: This battle is Christian, not Jewish (via Bible and Interpretation News)

It concludes:

Uncouth threats notwithstanding, stifling this film strikes one as wrongheaded and counterproductive. The best way to combat potential anti-Semitism here is to turn to our Christian friends.

It is they who should be trying to influence Gibson into removing from the movie elements which perpetuate the canard of deicide and eternal collective Jewish guilt. Failing that, they should be teaching the faithful that a true Christian rejects doctrinal anti-Semitism and all that comes with it. It is Christianity that must come to terms with its own theology and history, and decide whether it wants to allow Mel Gibson to steer it back to another era.

Leading Christian Zionist Rev. Elwood McQuaid strikes just the right note: For Christians, the Crucifixion "was a crime of humanity. Scapegoating Jewry is only a cop-out for the rest of us."

MAYBE NOT. According to this New York Times article, 20th Century Fox has declined to distribute Mel Gibson's The Passion. " Many executives in Hollywood say that Mr. Gibson's movie, which chronicles in bloody detail the last hours of Jesus' life, is potentially inflammatory and not commercial enough for a high-profile mainstream studio like Fox."

HERE'S WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING lately on the Temple Mount.

THE LINKS COLUMN on the right has just been thoroughly updated. I have made small changes and corrections to the "About PaleoJudaica.com" page and (the space provider did this, not I) it also now has a slightly different address (http://www.flyservers.com/members4/paleojudaica.com/About%20PaleoJudaica.com.html - the "%20" can also be written as a single blank space). In the unlikely event that you have a link to it, you will need to update the link to get the latest version. In addition, in the links to other sites I have corrected a dead link and added about thirty new links, mostly to things I mentioned in the blog over the last few months, bringing the grand total to around 150. If you encounter any dead or incorrect links among them, please let me know.

I've already found several other pages I meant to add and I have a number of things in the queue to be profiled on the blog. I will add them as time permits. Meanwhile, there's a lot of new content in the links section. Enjoy.

GEORGE NICKELSBURG has a new book out:

Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins: Diversity, Continuity, and Transformation

Synopsis:

In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, Christian scholars portrayed Judaism as the dark religious backdrop to the liberating events of Jesus� life and the rise of the early church. Since the 1950s, however, a dramatic shift has occurred in the study of Judaism, driven by new manuscript and archaeological discoveries and new methods and tools for analyzing sources. George Nickelsburg here provides a broad and synthesizing picture of the results of the past fifty years of scholarship on early Judaism and Christianity. He organizes his discussion around a number of traditional topics: scripture and tradition, Torah and the righteous life, God�s activity on humanity�s behalf, agents of God�s activity, eschatology, historical circumstances, and social settings. Each of the chapters discusses the findings of contemporary research on early Judaism, and then sketches the implications of this research for a possible reinterpretation of Christianity. Still, in the author�s view, there remains a major Jewish�Christian agenda yet to be developed and implemented.

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST got it right too. Last week I watched the video: there are two crucifixion close-ups and both clearly show the nails going through the wrists, not the palms. I won't carp about the movie's historical inaccuracies and weirdnesses, since both the book and the movie make clear that the story is just the fantasy of Nikos Kazantzakis. But it's worth noting that, nevertheless, Martin Scorsese did bother to get that crucifixion detail right. I have some other comments that include spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie and intend to, don't read the next paragraph.

I'm struck by the "Gnostic" themes taken up in the story, things found particularly in the Nag Hammadi library. The docetic myth, which inverts the traditional meaning of the crucifixion story, is itself inverted to a procosmic stance. And then there's laughing savior on the cross. For both, read The Apocalypse of Peter. Some of the Nag Hammadi texts also make Mary Magdalene a close confidante of Jesus, although not, um, that close (e.g., the Dialogue of the Savior and � the non-Nag Hammadi text in the Berlin Museum � the Gospel of Mary). The theme of the "holy whore" also appears: see for example The Thunder: Perfect Mind. I don't think Kazantzakis could have read all these in 1955 when the book was published, but perhaps he picked up on descriptions of similar heretical ideas criticized at length in the Church Fathers. Or maybe he just had Gnostic revelatory fantasies. If you're interested in this stuff, you should invest in James Robinson's (ed.) The Nag Hammadi Library, which translates the texts, and John Dart's The Jesus of Heresy and History (earlier title, The Laughing Savior) which gives a basic, nontechnical and user-friendly introduction to them and their context and implications. Unfortunately the latter is out of print, but you can pick up a used copy from Amazon at the link above. You can read selections from the Nag Hammadi texts, along with lots of other interesting information, at the Gnostic Society Library website.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS disses the Ten Commandments. A bit shrill, especially toward the end, but he makes some good points. Strangely, he seems to think it's debatable whether Moses was "pre-Christian."

MORE ARAMAIC ON THE BIG SCREEN:

SEPT. 5

The Order: Directed by Brian Helgeland. Starring Heath Ledger, Shannyn Sossamon, Mark Addy.

Ledger plays a New York priest investigating the death of the head of his order, whose body was covered in religious symbols and Aramaic writing. He heads off to Rome and discovers the murder may have been committed by a sect known as the Sin Eaters. Sossamon plays an artist whom he once helped by performing an exorcism on her, and Addy plays another priest who helps him out. Helgeland, who wrote the screenplay for L.A. Confidential, also directed A Knight's Tale.

I thought the Sin Eaters were British (scroll down for entry). What's with the Aramaic? Weird.

UPDATE: Anders at Phluzein comments.

A NEW REVIEW ARTICLE IN TC:

James A. Sanders, "Avenues of Access to Scripture in Early Jewish Literature," a review of David L. Washburn, A Catalog of Biblical Passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Abstract: David Washburn's A Catalog of Biblical Passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls is the latest example of an index or catalog of biblical passages found in early Jewish literature. It is compared with the earlier efforts by Scanlin, VanderKam/Flint, Abegg, and others. Despite its shortcomings, Washburn provides a useful tool for scholars, but future publications of a similar nature could be improved by considering the publications mentioned in the present article and by being more comprehensive in scope.

OUR SCHOOL LIBRARIAN just casually mentioned to me that for space reasons they have to get rid of Lane's multi-volume Arabic-English Lexicon and would I like it. Hyperventilating around the fangs I'd just grown, I told him yes please. Plus they're giving me the Lewis and Short Dictionary of Latin.

The Zayed Centre has officially been shut down for "engaging in a discourse that starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance."

I BLOGGED ON THE "REVADIM" ("Layers" in English) approach to Talmud some time ago. Here's the website of the Revadim program (via Protocols).

PHILOLOGOS ON ARAMAIC AND LATIN:

What would Jesus Speak? (Forward Magazine)

Probably no film in history has been written about as much before its public debut as Mel Gibson's new movie about the last days of Jesus. Many of the critics and scholars who have seen it screened in advance have accused it of both antisemitism and historical ignorance � an ignorance all the more appalling in light of its pretensions to be cinema verit�.

One commonly cited illustration of this is the movie's choice of Aramaic and Latin as the two languages spoken by its characters � the former by Jesus, his disciples and other Jews, and the latter by non-Jews. In fact, as has been pointed out, the language of most non-Jews in the Palestine of Jesus' time was Greek and not Latin, which would have been spoken only by Roman officials and soldiers conversing among themselves. And to Jews like Jesus, such men, too, would have spoken in Greek, since this was the lingua franca of the country.

In the early centuries C.E., Greek and Aramaic were indeed the two languages most widely spoken throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean world; Latin, though the official language of the Roman Empire, was rarely used east of Italy. It was a newcomer to the Levant, having arrived only with the Roman military occupation of the region in the first century B.C.E. Greek, on the other hand, had been around since the fourth century, when it was spread as far east as Persia and Afghanistan by Alexander the Great's conquering army, which left behind ruling elites that Hellenized vast stretches of territory � especially along the Mediterranean littoral from Syria to Egypt, where it was, by the time of Jesus, the language of the educated and urbanized classes. Aramaic � a more ancient Middle-Eastern lingua franca originally disseminated by the expansion of the Assyrian Empire hundreds of years before Alexander � remained the tongue of the uneducated, the peasantry and minority groups like the Jews that refused to be Hellenized. (Apart, that is, from the large Jewish community of Egypt, which went over to Greek entirely, perhaps because the language of the Egyptian countryside was not Aramaic but Coptic.)

[�]

Read on for a story about a rabbi, an expensive courtesan, and Greek.

A NEW ACADEMIC YEAR IS UPON US and other people (heh heh) need to be thinking about class preparations. As a public service, I refer you to the following article (via Arts & Letters Daily):

PowerPoint is Evil

HERE'S A PETRA TRAVELOGUE from the Jerusalem Post. Excerpt:

How did it all begin? Archeological findings prove that the Nabateans were not the first inhabitants of this region; they were preceded by groups of hunters and food gatherers who came in about 9,000 BCE. Then came the Orites, who were chased away by the Edomites, a people of Semitic origin.

But the creation of the magnificent Petra is attributed to the ancient Nabateans, one of the nomadic Arab tribes that migrated north from present-day Yemen as part of Babylonian expansionism. The year was around 600 BCE, and the Nabateans, who wandered the region's mountains, are known to have begun as highway robbers when the spice trade became the prominent activity of the day.

By the mid-fourth century BCE, the Nabateans had already settled Petra and taken control of the trade routes between Arabia and the Mediterranean, Egypt and Mesopotamia. With Petra located at the crossroads of these routes, prosperity came quickly. The Nabateans supplied the caravans with food and water, imposed a levy, and themselves traded spices, silk, silver, and frankincense.

In the first century BCE, the Nabatean capital was already an affluent city, and the nomadic mindset came to be replaced by refined tastes for lavish dwellings and public buildings, a great many of which still exist, and are the main draw of today's Petra.

[�]

The end of the kingdom's 700 years of existence came suddenly, and without much resistance. In 106 CE, when the city was home to 30,000 residents, it was conquered by Roman troops and annexed to the empire. And then the Romans rerouted trade through Arabia, thus throwing the city into a long decline.

Ultimately, Petra would capitulate, not to conquerors but to the forces of nature. In 551 CE, a series of powerful earthquakes convinced the last inhabitants that it was time to leave. The grand homes crumbled, and Beduin nomads used the tombs and temples carved in the rock as shelter.

With lots of descriptions of specific monuments as well.

WHICH TEN COMMANDMENTS AGAIN?

Just which commandments are the 10 Commandments? (San Francisco Chronicle)

Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer

Let's say the Supreme Court of the United States allows the chief justice of the great state of Alabama to keep his 2-ton monument to the Ten Commandments in his office building in Montgomery.

Next question:

Which Ten Commandments?

You've got your Jewish Ten Commandments, your Catholic Ten Commandments, your Lutheran Ten Commandments, your Charlton Heston Ten Commandments, your King James Bible Ten Commandments, your New Revised Standard Version Ten Commandments, and they don't all agree as to which commandment is which -- or what they really mean.

Even the Bible contains two versions, one in Exodus 20:1-17 and a slightly different one in Deuteronomy 5:6-21.

There are, of course, various English translations of those ancient Hebrew texts.

Further complicating the commandments are the fact that neither Exodus nor Deuteronomy neatly number the no-nos from one to 10. . . .

And it just gets worse from there.

HERE ARE THE LINKS to the recent articles on Mel Gibson's The Passion by Eric J. Greenberg in the Jewish Week:

"Burning �Passion�"

"Jews Horrified By Gibson�s Jesus Film"

"Gibson To Launch �Jewish Initiative�"

Kindly sent to me by Carla Sulzbach.

THE ENOCHIAN DISCUSSION LIST is not about the academic study of Enoch, it's a venue for practicing Enochic magicians to discuss their craft. (Found via someone's Google search for "enochian movie," which led them here. I hope they find their movie.) This list is run by Jerry Schueler, who also has a very full Enochian website that I haven't noted before, and the list has been going on since 2001. All the postings are archived. If you want to listen in on actual magicians talking with each other about what they do, have a look. Enoch lives!

My interest is anthropological and I have a pretty high tolerance for such things. But as in my earlier posting on Enochiana, if occult materials make you uncomfortable, best leave these sites alone.

JAMES CAVIEZEL (Jesus in Mel Gibson's The Passion) is here in St. Andrews right now, working on the film "Stroke of Genius," the story of golfer Bobby Jones.

Small world.

RUMOR HAS IT that distributors are lining up to take on Mel Gibson's The Passion, which, it seems, may have to change its title.