THE ST. ANDREWS CONFERENCE ON OLD TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, held by my colleague Professor Philip Esler, begins this evening. I am not directly involved, but I do plan to drop in on some of the papers. The conference schedule follows.


WEDNESDAY 30 JUNE 2004

noon � 7.00 p.m. Registration at St Salvator�s Hall, North Street, St Andrews

6.00 � 6.30 p.m. Dinner in St Salvator�s Hall

7.30 � 9.00 p.m. Opening Function in Parliament Hall


THURSDAY 1 JULY 2004

7.45 � 8.30 a.m. Breakfast in St Salvator�s Hall

8.45 � 9.45 a.m. Marvin Chaney, �Models Matter: Some Implications of Political Economy for the Textual Exegesis of Micah 6:9-11�

9.45 � 10.45 a.m. Lester Grabbe, �Prophets Ancient and Modern: Anthropological Insights on Israelite Prophecy�

10.45 � 11.15 a.m. Morning Tea

11.15 - noon John H. Elliott, �Euphemism and Dysphemism in the Biblical Communities and Their Cultural Roots: A Social-Scientific Study of Deut 25:11-12�

Noon � 12.45 p.m. Philip F. Esler, �What Solomon�s Father Did in the Ammonite War: A Narrative and Social-Scientific Study of 2 Samuel 10-12�

1.00 � 1.30 p.m. Lunch in St Salvator�s Hall

1.45 � 3.30 p.m. Guided tour of ruins of Castle, Cathedral and Chapter House (or free time)

3.30 � 4.00 p.m. Afternoon tea at St Mary�s

4.00 � 5.00 p.m. Mario Aguilar, �Symbolic Wars, Age-Sets and the Anthropology of War in 1 Maccabees�

5.00� 6.00 p.m. Jutta Jokiranta, �The Prototypical Teacher in the Qumran
Pesharim�

6.30 � 7.00 p.m. Dinner in St Salvator�s Hall


FRIDAY 2 JULY 2004

7.45 � 8.30 a.m. Breakfast in St Salvator�s Hall

8.45 � 9.45 a.m. Robert Coote, �Tribalism in Ancient Palestine and the Hebrew Bible�

9.45 � 10.45 a.m. Adriana Destro and Mauro Pesce, �Levitical Sacrifice in Anthropological Perspective�

10.30 � 11.00 a.m. Morning Tea

11.00 � 11.45 a.m. Zeba Crook, �Modelling Exchange in the Biblical Era�

11.45 � 12.30 p.m. Gary Stansell, �Wealth in Ancient Israel: or, How Abraham Became Rich�

1.00 � 1.30 p.m. Lunch in St Salvator�s Hall

2.00 � 3.00 p.m. Richard E. DeMaris and Carolyn Leeb, �(Dis)honor and Ritual Enactment in the Jephthah Story�

3.00 � 6.00 p.m. Tour of Falkland Palace and Gardens (summer palace of the Stewart kings), or golf or free time

6.30 � 7.00 p.m. Dinner in St Salvator�s Hall


SATURDAY 3 JULY 2004

7.45 � 8.30 a.m. Breakfast in St Salvator�s Hall

8.45� 9.45 a.m. Carolyn Leeb, �Polygyny in the Biblical World: Insights from Haiti�

9.45 � 10.45 a.m. Dietmar Neufeld, �Body, Ritual and States of Ecstasy in the Old Testament�

10.45 � 11.15 a.m. Morning Tea

11.15 � noon John Pilch, �Altered States of Consciousness and Visions in Ezekiel�

Noon � 12.45 p.m. Anselm Hagedorn, �Ethnicity and Stereotypes in the Book of Nahum: Social-Scientific Insights into the Literary History of a
Prophetic Book�

1.00 p.m. Lunch in St Salvator�s Hall

2.00 � 2.45 p.m. Andrew Mayes, �Freud, Moses and Monotheism�

2.45 � 3.30 p.m. Bruce J. Malina, �Identity Theory, Politics and the Pontifical Biblical Commission�s The Jewish People and Its Scriptures in the Christian Bible �

3.30 � 4.00 p.m. Afternoon Tea

4.30 � 5.30 p.m. Douglas E. Oakman, �Marcion's Truth: Biblical Hermeneutics in Developmental Perspective�

8.00 for 8.30 p.m. Conference Dinner at Rufflets Restaurant


SUNDAY 4 July 2004

8.00 � 8.30 a.m. Breakfast in St Salvator�s Hall

9.00 � 10.00 a.m. Conference liturgy in St Leonard�s Chapel

10.00 a.m. & after Departures

Noon St Salvator�s to have been vacated (but we can arrange other accommodation for those wanting to stay on)

NEW BOOK REVIEWS from the Review of Biblical Literature:

Cazeaux, Jacques
Sa�l, David, Salomon: Le Royaut� et le destin d'Isra�l
Reviewed by John Engle

Futato, Mark D.
Beginning Biblical Hebrew
Reviewed by Steven Mason

Garbini, Giovanni
Myth and History in the Bible
Reviewed by Meir Malul

Green, Barbara
How the Mighty are Fallen?: A Dialogical Study of King Saul in 1 Samuel
Reviewed by Serge Frolov

Kessler, Martin
Battle of the Gods: The God of Israel Versus Marduk of Babylon: A Literary/Theological Interpretation of Jeremiah 50-51
Reviewed by Alice Ogden Bellis

Park, Eung Chun
Either Jew or Gentile: Paul's Unfolding Theology of Inclusivity
Reviewed by Alan Segal

De Troyer, Kristin, Judith A. Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson and Anne-Marie Korte, eds.
Wholly Woman, Holy Blood: A Feminist Critique of Purity and Impurity
Reviewed by Carole R. Fontaine

Wright, Melanie J.
Moses in America: The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative
Reviewed by Mark McEntire

BUDGET CUTS for the Israel Antiquities Authority are leading to layoffs at the Beit She'an and Ad Halom excavations. But President Katsav is showing the workers at the latter some support.

WHOLLY MOSES, the 1980 biblical spoof, is now available on DVD. Quote from the DVD Talk review: "No collection of the unfunniest comedies of all time could be complete without this DVD, since it surely ranks in the top ten."

JEWISH SCHOLARS IN IRAQ: I've posted the following e-mail to the IraqCrisis list.

I am surprised and rather concerned that there has been no reply to the query below from 4 June by Arthur Houghton. I would think that the second question, and that's the one that really concerns me, ought to be easy to answer, i.e., "Of course Jewish scholars will be able to work in Iraq on the same basis as anyone else." I don't care what past policies were under the Baathists, but I do care that they be gotten right now.

I realize that things must be hectic at present, especially with the transfer of sovereignty bumped up to today without warning. But perhaps Zainab Bahrani could make inquiries and get us an official answer to the question as quickly as possible? This is an issue that should not be lost sight of.

Thanks,

Jim Davila

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hebrew-jewish/ijs/news.htm

Would anyone be able to comment on the accuracy of the allegations that underlie this article, in particular a) whether the letter cited exists in fact and b) that Jewish scholars may not be permitted to work in Iraq?

Thank you.

Arthur Houghton

Regular readers will recall that this issue was discussed on PaleoJudaica earlier in the month in this post. I'll let you know when I get a response.

HOW EVIL WAS PONTIUS PILATE? This brief Associated Press article, "�Passion� sparks new Pilate debate" summarizes a Bible Review discussion between New Testament scholars Paul Meier and Stephen J. Patterson.

ALEXANDER H. JOFFE has just published two articles online that ought to generate some controversy. One, "Are Fakes So Bad?" has recently been posted at the Bible and Interpretation website. Excerpt:

Therefore the fear expressed by Israel Antiquities Authority director Shuka Dorfman regarding the commodification of archaeology, in response to an interesting proposal to sell surplus sherds, is entirely correct and entirely besides the point. In the real world money makes everything go, and commodification has been there all along; archaeology could not exist without it, since at the very least we sell an image of ourselves as romantic explorers or dispassionate scientists to an unsuspecting public and expect them to pony up their gift or even tax dollars. Commodification is a means of disseminating the real, and what could be more real than a body sherd in lucite. Reality could thus be disseminated in bite sized pieces. If we don�t entertain such notions seriously, then we become much like ancient Egyptian mortuary temples, or the modern European social welfare system, condemning future generations to care in perpetuity for body sherds that we excavated without a clue as to how or why.

For those who pronounce categorically on the problem, to the effect that sales are anathema, a small comparison might be in order. In one season at Megiddo I would reluctantly throw away more Early Bronze Age sherds from bad contexts than have been collected in 150 years of New York State archaeology, sherds numbering in the thousands or tens of thousands. There was no place to put them, nothing to do with them, and it pained me to do it. In the New York State Museum, however, every prehistoric sherd has its own custom fitted foam slot in custom made metal shelving, and to examine these sherds one must run a gauntlet of curators and don white cotton gloves in the presence of watchful minders . Now, there is not enough shelving in the known world to hold even one season�s sherds from one decent sized site in Israel, much less a sherd hell like Rome. And there are not enough graduate students in this quadrant of the galaxy to lock in basements with orders to analyze even the sherds from good contexts.

We should therefore be realistic about our embarrassment of riches. A legalized lucite sherd paperweight trade would share the wealth, provided that the absurd fiction of a legalized market in complete items were eliminated, at the pinnacle of which are the beautiful, the rare, and the fake, things seen only by collectors, their fences, and compliant scholars. Opening up the bottom would only work if the top were shut down, something that might be a political impossibility. In that case the entire market should be shut down. That too is an impossibility, given political realities, not least of which being that Israel is an open rather than a closed society like its neighbors. But professionals must realize that by making idealistically sweeping and categorical judgments such as these, that have no bearing on the real politics much less the economics of things, our viewpoints are going to be immediately dismissed.

If the only choices we can come up with for our excess body sherds are for them to be recycled as road fill, reburied in the manner of sacred objects, or treated like drugs � pick up a sherd, go to jail - then we have reached a laughable point. If we can�t even figure out what to do with the real stuff, then we should stop excavating so damn much of it and worry about the fake stuff later. If cannot even slow the destruction of archaeological sites, most supremely the continuing evisceration of the Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif in Jerusalem by the Waqf, then we should not waste what energy we have kvetching about fakes. The 21st century will see an unprecedented global archaeological extinction event, especially in the Middle East. In the real world, fakes are a red herring.

[...]

Archaeology, particularly in the Near East, has no moral standing because of its wretched record of tolerating and embracing genocide and totalitarianism in the present, from Sudan to Syria, and most lately in the form of Saddam Hussein, as a means of facilitating its own petty prerogatives. We should not happy about having benefited from the more dreadful consequences of colonialism, which in a few places included mass murder. But that was then and this is now. Our present complicity in the murder of between 300,000 and 1.3 million Iraqis taints, or should taint, any claims to moral standing and practical funding made by the profession as a whole, on questions of funding, looting, markets, fakes, and to be sure, culture, society and politics at large. Not a peep of protest, indeed, the most shameful excuses and justifications were offered, CNN-like contortions were employed to maintain or regain access, and the global profession looked the other way as people were slaughtered.

[...]

The other, "Museum Madness in Iraq," was published in the spring issue of the Middle East Quarterly. It concludes:

Ethical Lapse

Western archaeologists speak the language of scholarly authority, pacifism, and universalism. Stone's statement revealed an underlying truth: the profession only values high culture in its most rarified form and is entirely possessed with its role of mediating the meaning of objects to a high-brow Western audience.

Working in a wretched totalitarian country was a conscious choice for archaeologists as it was for businessmen. Iraq purchased most of its weapons from Russia and France, sophisticated electronics from the United States, and germ samples from all over the world. Profit is its own excuse, and those who armed and supported Iraq have much for which to answer. But archaeologists submitted paperwork to the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, knowing full well that staff lists would be vetted by Iraqi intelligence. European and American Jews, among the pioneers of Mesopotamian archaeology during the first half of the twentieth century, were systematically excluded from participation, as they still are in Syria and Saudi Arabia. No one protested.

The teams did their fieldwork under the watchful eye of government minders, came back, kept their mouths shut about whatever they might have seen or heard, and not infrequently sang the praises of Hussein, at least his treatment of archaeology. Access was everything. The situation is uncannily similar to that finally admitted by the president of CNN, Eason Jordan. Even the regime's torture of CNN employees was hushed up, lest it jeopardize CNN's access to reporting from Baghdad. John Burns of The New York Times has expanded this indictment, graphically pointing out the mutual lies, collusion, and bribery that kept the Western press working in Iraq.[58]

No such admissions have been forthcoming from archaeologists. Even today, the profession disguises its pursuit of self-interest beneath the language of service to the heritage of humankind or the Iraqi people. Only a small group of German professionals, Archaeologists for Human Rights, have taken the courageous stand of putting the archaeological focus on the calamity of Baathist rule. Their efforts to organize the excavations of mass graves have met with strong support from Kurdish authorities but clumsy indecision from the CPA. Nonetheless, they have touched a nerve, and nearly 300 archaeologists and forensic specialists have volunteered to undertake this mournful research, the only ethical type of archaeology that should be conducted in Iraq at the present time.[59]

But the archaeological establishment is already busy building a new order, which looks surprisingly like the old one. They have recently recommended that archaeology in Iraq be supported directly through the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Army Corps of Engineers, but that it come under the formal supervision of old friends at the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.[60] With the archaeological status quo restored in Iraq, where are the incentives for moral reassessment?

Both articles are a definite Read It All.

Regarding the first, I basically agree with what he says about archaeology and capitalism, but I don't see any very good solutions to the problem. Nor, it seems, does he.

As for the second, I think all I will say is to read it yourself and make up your own mind. It will be interesting to see the response of the people he names. You can read my view on some of the same issues here and here.

I have more things on Iraq in the queue, but I'll leave them for later.

FORMAT CHANGES: I've made two format changes to PaleoJudaica. The first is that the archive is now posted by month rather than by week, so as to save space in the links bar to the right. I don't think this should have any undesirable knock-on effects, since I assume that if people want to find a past post they use the search engine rather than the archive. But let me know if it causes any problems.

The second change is that the permalink for each post now has its own page rather than being part of the weekly archive as before. This will allow Google etc. to index the site more accurately and should eliminate referrals for things like "Iranian prostitute blogger" and "arabic� site� showing� american� b*heading". (Mark Goodacre was quite right to point to this feature as a signficant improvement offered by the new Blogger.) Should be interesting to set if the change makes a significant dent in the search engine referrals.

MORE ON THE POOL OF SILOAM DISCOVERY from the Jerusalem Post:

History unearthed
By MARION FISCHEL

An archeological discovery sheds light on the Second Temple-period water system

Earlier this month archeologists explored an area of the City of David that had lain untouched for more than 2,000 years.

What is thought to be the Pool of Siloam, discovered when archeologists decided to check the site before the municipality launched infrastructure work in the area, dates back to the Second Temple period.

"One of the supporting walls of the pool was the southernmost wall of the city," says Jerusalem regional archeologist John Seligman, who is working on the excavation. "The wall acted as both a dam and a fortification. The pool was actually a reservoir where the waters of the Gihon Spring were collected for the city. It is a very important find because it helps form our understanding of the water system of Jerusalem in ancient times."

Seligman works alongside archeologist Eli Shukrun of the Israel Antiquities Authority who, together with Prof. Ronny Reich of Haifa University, has been exploring the area since 1995. Pursuing a gut feeling that there was an interesting discovery to be made, Shukrun and his colleagues set to work brushing away the dirt for several hours, until Shukrun discovered they were working on a step.

"We knew that the Siloam Pool from the Second Temple period was located in this area, we just didn't know where it was exactly," he says, pointing to a map in Dan Bar's Jerusalem Encyclopedia that shows the City of David with the supposed area of the Siloam Pool. Although the shape of the pool in the drawing is different from that of the actual discovery, the general area of the location correlates.

Until now, another pool from the Byzantine era (adjacent to the Byzantine Church), discovered by archeologist Blis Vediki at the end of the 19th century, was known as the Siloam Pool.

Shukrun claims his recent discovery is the Second Temple-era Pool of Siloam, mentioned twice in the Torah, both in Nehemia 3:15 ("Pool of Shelah") and in Isaiah 8:6 ("waters of Shiloah"). It is also referred to in the New Testament, in John 9:7 ("Pool of Siloam"). By comparing Nehemiah 3:15 and 12:37, it is clear that the "Pool of Shelah," the stairs that descend from the City of David at the southern part of the Temple Mount, and the king's garden were all near each other. Judeo-Roman historian Josephus Flavius also makes frequent mention of Siloam in The Jewish Wars.

[...]

UPDATE (16 August): Archeologist Blis Vediki? I'm afraid not. Todd Bolen unpacks this mystery name, which is really an interesting textual corruption:

Actually he is two people, and the phrase was something the journalist apparently copied down in haste without bothering to check himself. Ve is "and" in Hebrew - it's Blis AND Diki, or more correctly, Bliss and Dickie. Frederick Jones Bliss and Archibald Campbell Dickie.

THE VIRTUAL TEMPLE PROJECT is the subject of an article in the Jerusalem Post:

Maverick visionary or eccentric academic?
By DANIEL BEN-TAL

Yitzhak Hayut-Man, a cyber-architect with outlandish ideas, is gaining followers

The imaginings of Dr. Yitzhak Hayut-Man (B Arch, MSc, PhD) undermine the very axioms of the mainstream academic and religious establishments that shun him.

The Hebrew media has ignored his maverick proposals for a floating hologram of the Third Temple and multiple-player interactive computer games "set in the Old City of Jerusalem and its celestial counterpart, the Heavenly Jerusalem that will enable multitudes to conduct a spiritual pilgrimage."

[...]

"Six potential investors wrote to say that they'd like to help, and I consulted with my existing team developing the game system. After we demanded that they sign a confidentiality agreement to protect our intellectual property, the interest petered out."

Hayut-Man heads the self-styled Academy of Jerusalem, a think-tank association of 20 "multidisciplinary visionaries. My main mission is to design the games, to show a truth about Jerusalem that nobody seems to notice: The [Third] Temple already exists. It's straight in front of our eyes, in the most conspicuous place. Depicted as a temple of wisdom and womb for the three religions, it can breed interfaith understanding."

He envisages a hovering holographic temple, projected by an array of high-powered, water-cooled lasers fired into a smoke-filled transparent polyurethane cube with a lightweight metal frame suspended beneath a blimp. The ephemeral, flickering image in the three-dimensional projection screen will fulfill an ancient Jewish prophecy that the Temple will descend from the heavens as a manifestation of light, he explains.

[...]

I have to say that his interpretation of the Dome of the Rock doesn't sound very likely to me:

"The Dome of the Rock, he explains, was conceptualized as an observatory into the fifth dimension. It was built as a 3-D model of a 4-D cube.

I don't think the mathematics to conceptualize this were in place in the seventh century.

THE JORDAN CHURCH MYSTERY has been solved by observant reader Stephen Goranson. Xinhuanet picked up the story from Tuesday's Jordan Times, not noticing that it was from the daily "25 Years Ago" column. It appears that the preliminary early dating was not upheld. Goranson also notes that Jerash is north of Amman, not south.

HERE IS AN OBITUARY of Ya'akov Meshorer, who, as reported here yesterday, died on Wednesday:

Pioneer numismatist Ya'acov Meshorer dies (Jerusalem Post)
By MEIR RONNEN

Prof. Ya'acov Meshorer, the country's pioneer numismatist, died in Jerusalem Wednesday and was buried there Wednesday evening. He was 69. He leaves a wife and three children.

Meshorer established the Numismatic Department of the Israel Museum in 1969 and headed it for 25 years. He was born in Jerusalem and was wounded participating in the battle for the city in 1967.

[...]

(Via Bible and Interpretation News.)

SOME HEBREW, SOME ARABIC, BUT . . . "No Sex with Buildings." Philologos reviews Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in the Forward. Excerpts from this week's part one:

I had never heard of an Italian Renaissance book entitled "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,"a Greco-Latin title rendered into English by the its recent translator, Joscelyn Godwin, as "Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream," until I read a front-page article about it in the New York Times. Published in Venice in 1499, the Times said, the "Hypnerotomachia" has been called, because of its fine woodcuts and convoluted text, "the most beautiful book in the world and the most unreadable"; it has a hero who has "sex with buildings"; and it is "written in many languages, including Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean [and] Italian." It was on the newspaper's front page because it is the inspiration of Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason's new novel, "The Rule of Four," which was number two on the Times's June 13 best-seller list, right behind "The Da Vinci Code" (to which I devoted a column several weeks ago).

The Times' description piqued my interest not only because of its reference to misbehaving architecture, but also because of
its mention of Hebrew, Arabic and "Chaldean" (an archaic word for Aramaic), and so I obtained a copy of the Hypnerotomachia and had a look at it. Although, disappointingly, I found no sex with buildings, there was a bit of Hebrew and Arabic.

[...]

The Hypnerotomachia is a story in which a semi-deified woman, such as Dante's Beatrice or Petrarch's Laura, leads a love-struck mortal through the perils of existence to a higher life. Facing the three portals, Poliphilo is confronted by two temptations that he must reject. . . . .

The Greek inscriptions above the three portals mean the same as the Latin, with the slight difference that Erototrophos means not "mother of love," but "nourisher of love."

The Hebrew and Arabic inscriptions, however, are more divergent. As brief as they are, they give us some clues as to how much of these languages the author of the Hypnerotomachia or his research assistant knew, which in turn tells us something about their status in Renaissance Italy.

[To be continued.]

THE VILNA EDITION of the Babylonian Talmud is available here in .gif format (via Rebecca Lesses at Mystical Politics).

TOM HARPUR'S bogus Egyptology and other problems with his latest book, which claims Jesus is a mythical figure who never actually lived, are exposed by W. Ward Gasque of Regent College in "Comment: Was Christ's life based on pagan myths?" (CanadianChristianity.com). Excerpts:

Harper does not quote any contemporary Egyptologist or recognized academic authority on world religions, nor does he appeal to any of the standard reference books, such as the magisterial three volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (2001) or any primary sources. Rather, he is entirely dependent on the work of [Alvin Boyd] Kuhn [(1880-1963)], who he describes as "the most erudite, most eloquent, and most convincing . . . of any modern writer on religion I have encountered in a lifetime dedicated to such matters.

[...]

As it turns out, Kuhn was a high school language teacher who earned a PhD from Columbia University by writing a dissertation on Theosophy. A prodigious author and lecturer, he had difficulty finding a publisher for his works; most of them were self-published. His only link with an institution of higher learning was a short stint as the secretary to the president of a small college.

I sent an email to 20 of the world's leading Egyptologists, outlining the following claims put forth by Kuhn (and hence Harpur):

* That the name of Jesus was derived from the Egyptian "Iusa," which means "the coming divine Son who heals or saves".

* That the god Horus is "an Egyptian Christos, or Christ.... He and his mother, Isis, were the forerunners of the Christian Madonna and Child, and together they constituted a leading image in Egyptian religion for millennia prior to the Gospels."

* That Horus also "had a virgin birth, and that in one of his roles, he was 'a fisher of men with twelve followers.'"

* That "the letters KRST appear on Egyptian mummy coffins many centuries BCE, and . . . this word, when the vowels are filled in, is really Karast or Krist, signifying Christ."

* That the doctrine of the incarnation "is in fact the oldest, most universal mythos known to religion. It was current in the Osirian religion in Egypt at least four thousand years BCE."

Only one of the 10 experts who responded to my questions had ever heard of Kuhn, Higgins or Massey! Professor Kenneth A. Kitchen of the University of Liverpool pointed out that not one of these men is mentioned in M. L. Bierbrier's Who Was Who in Egyptology (1995), nor are any of their works listed in Ida B. Pratt's very extensive bibliography on Ancient Egypt (1925/1942). Since he died in 1834, Kitchen noted, "nothing by Higgins could be of any value whatsoever, because decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs was still being finalized, very few texts were translated, and certainly not the vast mass of first-hand religious data."

Another distinguished Egyptologist wrote: "Egyptology has the unenviable distinction of being one of those disciplines that almost anyone can lay claim to, and the unfortunate distinction of being probably the one most beleaguered by false prophets." He goes on to refer to Kuhn's "fringe nonsense."

There's more. Read it all if you if you were ever tempted to take Harpur's book seriously.

YA'AKOV MESHORER, the Israeli numismatist, passed away yesterday according to Nikos Kokkinos on Ioudaios-L. May his memory be for a blessing.

I'VE ADDED TWO LONG UPDATES to today's earlier post on Lubavitcher messianism. Do scroll down and have a look.

MY ATOMZ SEARCH ENGINE WILL BE OFFLINE for neccessary maintenance on Thursday, 24 June, from 9:00 pm to Friday 1:00 am, Pacific Time. We apologize for the inconvenience.

THE INSTITUTUM JUDAICUM DELITZSCHIANUM in M�nster, Germany, has a website with pages on some important projects involving Josephus and Philo, as well as other interesting material.

OLDEST CHRISTIAN CHURCH EXCAVATED IN JORDAN?

Oldest Christian church possibly discovered in Jordan: report (via Archaeologica News)
www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-22 15:08:03

AMMAN, June 22 (Xinhuanet) -- The earliest known Christian church in Jordan was discovered, if the preliminary dating of the remains as first to second century A.D. proves correct, the local newspaperJordan Times reported Tuesday.

Director of Jordanian Department of Antiquities, Adnan Hadidi, told the newspaper that the church was found during the third season of excavations at Artemis Temple and its vicinity in Jerash,about 50 km south of Amman.

The excavations have been carried out by the department in cooperation with the Italian Archaeological Center of Oriental Research in Turin within a bilateral agreement between Italy and Jordan to carry out photogrammatic surveys, the report said.

The surveys were made in preparation for reconstruction work to be undertaken this year, it added.

I have to say I'm skeptical about this one. If it's true, it's qute important and I can't understand why the major media haven't picked it up. The article doesn't make clear whether this is supposed to be the earliest church found anywhere, as the headline implies, or the earliest church in Jordan. But either way, there can't be many first-to-early-second-century churches around, so it would be a big deal. But I wonder if something has been lost (or gained) in translations between Italian, Arabic, Chinese, and English. If anyone has more information, please let me know.

UPDATE (25 June): Mystery solved. I was right to be skeptical.