COPTIC GOSPEL OF JUDAS WATCH: The Tertullian Project website has a huge page on The Coptic Gospel of Judas (Iscariot). It collects lots of articles and has some photos and a copy of at least part of the Hedrick transcription and translation. There's a great deal of information there, not all of which is necessarily accurate. Keep in mind, for example, that it's now being claimed that some of Hedrick's pages are from a different text in the same codex.

(Via the Spero Forum weblog.)

THE DA VINCI CODE is "dissected" once again, this time by Mark Shea in an interview in Catholic Online. It's shooting at fish in a barrel, but unfortunately it's still necessary, especially with the movie coming out. And this is worth repeating:

His book is so laughably bad, its claims so easily and demonstrably false, the whole thing so silly, that debunking takes on a rather gleeful quality -- which is, I think, only fitting. The best cure for "The Da Vinci Code" is, in the end, hearty gales of well-informed laughter.

BOOK REVIEW:

Unlocking secrets of the past
By JEREMY WIMPFHEIMER (Jerusalem Post)

Jerusalem Talmud
Schottenstein Edition Talmud Yerushalmi - Tractate Berachos vol. 1
Mesorah Publications
$34.99

For centuries, folios of the Jerusalem Talmud languished in the backs of libraries acquiring dust and being opened only by leading rabbinic sages and Talmudic scholars. Mesorah Publications, whose English and Hebrew translations and elucidations of the Babylonian Talmud have been credited with enabling Talmud study among the masses, is now embarking on a similar effort for a more complex text - the Jerusalem Talmud.

[...]

Indeed, for Talmudists and students all over the world, one cannot overestimate the impact the Artscroll series has had upon Talmudic scholarship. The completion of the English elucidation of the Babylonian Talmud in 2005 resulted in more than 70,000 people around the world relying on Artscroll for their Talmud Study.

[...]

THE ADL HAS CHANGED ITS MIND:

ADL withdraws call for halting construction of J'lem museum
By Haaretz Service

The Anti-Defamation League has withdrawn its call for halting construction on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, saying the Wiesenthal Center was taking "adequate steps to deal respectfully" with Muslim graves discovered at the building site.

[...]

STEPHEN C. CARLSON is hot on the trail of another manuscript forgery. Go get 'em, Stephen!

THREE BOOKS ON KABBALAH are reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement:

Kabbala then and now
Jeremy Adler
Daniel C. Matt
THE ZOHAR
Pritzker edition
Volume One
500pp. 0 80474747 4.
Volume Two
496pp. 0 804 74868 3
Stanford University Press. $49.95 each; distributed in the UK by Eurospan. £29.95 each.
Arthur Green
A GUIDE TO THE ZOHAR
191pp. Stanford University Press. Paperback, $15.95.
0 8047 4908 6
Moshe Idel
KABBALAH AND EROS
371pp. Yale University Press. £25 (US $45).
0 300 10832 X

More than just a review, this is an essay on Kabbalah, its background, the history of modern scholarship on it, and the current state of the question. Merkavah mysticism and Hekhalot literature also get a mention:

This evocative, light-filled imagery and the vision of a heavenly throne in which it culminates gave rise to the most ancient form of Jewish mysticism, so-called merkabah or “throne” mysticism. The doctrine was apparently established by the period of the Second Temple, and the key documents concerning this journey of the soul stem from the period before the expansion of Islam: as in related traditions, upon performing sundry ascetic rites the mystic approaches the Divinity, in this case after a journey through His “seven Heavens” into the “seven palaces”, until he finally witnesses the manifestation of His glory on the “throne”. Unlike the literal truths in the Pentateuch, a text like Ezekiel that enshrines this mystery demands to be approached symbolically, a mode which could hardly differ more sharply from that required by the law. Thus, whereas the Talmudists interpret the Bible rationally, expounding the laws in a continuous dialectic by adducing other parts of the Bible as evidence, the mystics read the sacred Book the other way round: they begin with the visionary mode in Ezekiel and treat the earlier Books as symbolic. This enables them to search behind the literal truth.

This is basically right, although it's hard be sure exactly when the key documents took the form(s) that we have now. Some of the material clearly goes back at least to the fourth century, and many of the key ideas to the Second Temple period. But the texts continued to be heavily edited well into the Middle Ages and some of the material -- it's hard to say how much -- must be medieval. We're only in the early stages of understanding the history of the texts and their transmission. (I'm thinking about such matters a lot right now, since I'm writing the "Merkavah Mysticism" article for the New International Dictionary of the Bible. I also gave them the "Enoch, Third Book of" article earlier this month.)

Anyhow, this TLS piece is a very good brief introduction to Kabbalah. Read it all.

(Via the Agade list.)

A CONFERENCE ON COPTIC STUDIES near Sohag, Egypt, is covered by Jill Kamil in Al Ahram:

Desert fathers in the limelight
The Third Symposium on Coptic Studies that took place at the White Monastery of St Shenoude west of Sohag early this month cast light on the life and times of an extraordinary Upper Egyptian monk, says Jill Kamil

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION IN CHARLOTTE is getting lots of good (and well done) press, especially from the Charlotte Observer. Here's another article on how much of an impression the exhibit made on the reporter:

You'll be moved by its magnificence

RICHARD MASCHAL
rmaschal@charlotteobserver.com

What got me was the inkwell.

I was in "The Dead Sea Scrolls" exhibit at Discovery Place but not yet at the Scroll Gallery, drinking in the artifacts, photographs and text panels interpreting these ancient biblical fragments, how they were discovered and what they mean.

And here was this pottery piece from Jerusalem, an inkwell. Like the scrolls, it is about 2,000 years old and similar to inkwells from Qumran, the Dead Sea community where the scrolls were found about 60 years ago.

A spark jumped between me and this small artifact. I could see evidence of the human hand -- the one that made its nicely curved handle and the one that used it to ink a reed pen and perhaps copy Holy Scripture.

[...]

MORE ON THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS CONCERT:

3:18 pm | Dead Sea Scrolls inspire 2 concerts (Charlotte Observer)

"Sing unto him a new song," Psalm 33 says. Carolina Voices will obey the biblical command by premiering two choral pieces by Charlotte composers in a tribute to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The concerts March 3 and 5 will focus on the Psalms -- one of the biblical books most represented in the scrolls, subject of a just-opened show at Discovery Place. ...

SPEAKING OF THE DA VINCI CODE, Catholic Online reports on "DaVinciOutreach.com" being "[l]aunched as the One-Stop Shop for Resources and Commentators Responding to Controversial Book and Movie Attacking the Catholic Faith." Fine, but the article has this odd comment:

“A simple Google search would have revealed to Academy Award-Winning director Ron Howard the myriad of factual errors in The Da Vinci Code. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls are identified in the novel as Jewish documents, not Christian, and Brown cites the Vatican eleven centuries before it even existed,” said Matthew Pinto, president of Ascension Press, which is spearheading this outreach.

The general statement is true, but Mr. Pinto got his example backwards: the Dead Sea Scrolls are identified in the novel as Christian documents, whereas they are actually Jewish.

THE ISRAELI SUPREME COURT HAS RULED on the Museum of Tolerance and the Muslim Cemetery. The building has been halted but the archaeological work will continue. Evidently the Court has also appointed a mediator to work out a long-term resolution. Arutz Sheva has published a response from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Excerpt:

The Simon Wiesenthal Center welcomes the decision of the Supreme Court of Israel to appoint former Chief Justice Meir Shamgar as the mediator for a 30-day period to help facilitate a resolution regarding the remains found on the construction site of the Center For Human Dignity - Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem.

INDIANA JONES 4 is now at the top of both Lucas's and Spielberg's to-do list. Here's a website for the film, but it doesn't have a great deal of information yet.

AN AGREEMENT HAS BEEN REACHED by a number of Mediterranean countries on standards for the protection of ancient mosaics:

ARCHAEOLOGY:MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES PAPER ON MOSAIC PROTECTION
(AGI) - Ragusa, Feb. 22 - Mediterranean countries have written a "paper" on the protection of ancient mosaics, which characterise a common cultural heritage. The document will be drawn up in Modica (Ragusa), where the international conference has begun this morning under the aegis of Unesco and will finish tomorrow. Delegations are present from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Israel, Jordan, Malta, France, Cyprus, and the Palestinian Authority and aims to reinforce cooperation in the field. ...

ALTERNATE HISTORY, The Da Vinci Code, the Muhammad cartoons, and caustic satire: David Aaronovich combines them all in an essay for the Times of London.

'Whoever insults the one true Church deserves to be killed.' (News report)

David Aaronovitch

“EUROPE MUST LEARN to live in and with the world, not to dominate it, nor to assume it is superior or more virtuous. Any continent that has inflicted such brutality on the world over a period of 200 years has not too much to be proud of, and much to be modest and humble about.” Martin Jacques, The Guardian, on the cartoons row.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe . . .

From a Reuters report, Rome, some time around now

The Vatican has protested in “the strongest possible terms” against the publication in paperback of Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Cardinal Loopi, of the Office of the Defence of the Faith, condemned the book for defaming Catholicism and, in its suggestion that Jesus Christ was married, of heresy. “We demand that the book be destroyed and that the author be punished,” said Loopi, “otherwise we cannot be held responsible for how Catholics throughout the world may react.”

And so on. I thought the funniest bit was the final paragraph:

And finally, the good news . . .

From hiding, somewhere in Pakistan, Dan Brown apologises to the Judaeo-Christian world for the publication of The Da Vinci Code, promises to donate the proceeds from all his books to any charity nominated for the purpose by Opus Dei and undertakes to become a monk in a silent order at a monastery atop a high mountain in the Apennines.

At least there's one journalist in Britain who has some guts.

MILESTONES IN BIBLICAL STUDIES: Stephen C. Carlson shows the importance of February 21st for the field.

MORE ON THE COPTIC GOSPEL OF JUDAS: Beliefnet has published the same article that appeared last week in the Winston-Salem Journal, but a longer version with more information about the current state of the manuscript's authentication. The extra part at the end reads:

James Robinson, a retired professor of Coptic studies at Claremont Graduate University and general editor of the English edition of the Nag Hammadi Library, vouched for the document's authenticity based on his experience in trying to purchase the codex as early as 1983.

"I don't know of any scholar who thinks this is fake," said Robinson, who is not involved in the National Geographic project.

Although Robinson has never seen the manuscript firsthand, he arranged a meeting in 1983 between Stephen Emmel, a Coptic scholar at the University of Muenster in Germany, and John Pedrios, a Greek dealer who was negotiating the sale of the manuscript.

In a report filed after the meeting, Emmel said he was able to authenticate the codex as a genuine fourth- or fifth-century manuscript. But he said the 30-minute meeting ran too short for him to detect whether it contained the gospel.

Reached by phone in Cairo, Emmel confirmed his report but declined to say whether the manuscript he saw decades ago is the forthcoming gospel.

"I can say that the thought never crossed my mind that it was anything but a genuine Coptic papyrus codex from the fourth or fifth century," he said.

So it seems that the manuscript was in circulation as early as 1983 and that at least one specialist got to examine the actual codex and concluded it was genuine. But I'd like to see a thorough authentication that goes beyond a 30-minute examination and which confirms all its contents.

DANIEL DRIVER has moved. His old blog, Figured Out, is no longer active, but it has been replaced with his new one, DRD Blog. Be sure to change your bookmark or RSS feed.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION in Charlotte has drawn a much larger crowd than was expected:

Learn more about Dead Sea Scrolls

(Charlotte Observer)

Tickets will be sold at the door tonight for a lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls -- the sacred objects explored in the exhibit that drew 9,200 people to Discovery Place in its first three days.

[...]

That's double the 4,600 they were hoping for in those three days. I'm not surprised -- the Scrolls seem to generate endless public interest.

The article also notes that Shalom Paul of the Hebrew University will be lecturing in Charlotte on the Scrolls later today.

ANCHORS AWASH: Israel Today has an article on the ancient wooden anchors found recently in the Dead Sea:

Ancient Aweigh
The discovery of two well-preserved anchors on the receding shoreline of the Dead Sea is just the beginning of several archaeological possibilities, a main one being to find if a boat was once attached to either of them. “It is wishful thinking, but I hope to find what it was connected to,” Gideon Hadas, archaeologist and discoverer of the anchors, told israel today.

[...]

REHABILITATING JEZEBEL?

'The Jezebel Letters'

Monday, February 20, 2006 (The Register-Mail, IL)

MONMOUTH - Eleanor Ferris Beach, a lecturer in Monmouth College's department of philosophy and religious studies, has written a book on Jezebel, the much-maligned Israelite queen.

Beach's "The Jezebel Letters" combines her biblical scholarship with a fictionalized first-person account of the biblical character. In the process, she transforms the stereotype of the conniving Jezebel into a more historically-based portrayal of a powerful, literate woman.

[...]