SO FAR SO GOOD. The new Indiana Jones trailer is a hit, in no small part thanks to the Intenet:

Trailer for upcoming 'Indiana Jones' film a smash hit with audiences in theaters and online

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Times sure have changed in the 19 years since Harrison Ford last donned the signature fedora of thrill-seeking archaeologist Indiana Jones. The viral spread of the trailer for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is proof of that.

The trailer for the May 22 release has drawn highly enthusiastic responses in theaters. But it may have had its biggest impact online, on a younger audience that may not think of Ford, 65, as equal to today's spry action heroes.

After premiering Feb. 14 on "Good Morning America," Lucasfilm and Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures sent the trailer to the Web, plus movie theaters and TV stations around the world. Paramount estimates the trailer was seen more than 200 million times worldwide in the first week alone.

Harry Knowles, who runs the movie fan site AintItCool.com (his official title is Head Geek), says he first saw a bootleg version of the trailer online, then the official version online, and then saw it twice in theaters.

There were cheers in the theater when the familiar theme song kicked in, Knowles said, and comments on his Web site have been positive. "People generally really, really loved the trailer," he said.

I've linked to the trailer here.

NUBIAN ANTIQUITIES are at risk in the Sudan, as are modern Nubians:

Nubia at Risk as the Next Sudanese Tragedy

Contact: Loralei Coyle, 202-682-4131, 202-905-6852 cell, lcoyle@TheIRD.org; Radio Interviews: Jeff Walton, jwalton@TheIRD.org; both with The Institute on Religion and Democracy

WASHINGTON, March 6 /Christian Newswire/ -- An ancient civilization that has survived the tumult of history could fall prey to rising floodwaters if the National Islamic Front regime if the Sudan has its way. Construction has been completed on the Chinese-built Merowe dam, scheduled to begin submersion of the region later this year. The newly dammed river will displace hundreds of thousands of Nubians and drown ancient sites, home to unexcavated historical treasures and monuments from the time of the Pharaohs and the ancient Christian and Jewish communities of Kush.

The Nubians have long been oppressed by the Khartoum government, which has banned them from teaching their children in their native language as part of an aggressive Arabization project and now seeks to use the dam as a tool to disperse the ancient community.

[...]

MORE ON TUDOR PARFITT'S ARK OF THE COVENANT, including a picture:

The man who says he has the lost Ark
07/03/2008 (Jewish Chronicle)
By Simon Rocker
In the Bible, it could be seen only by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies. Anyone who lay an unauthorised finger upon it would instantly drop dead. It was the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, where it vapourised its Nazi captors.

Now a British academic believes he has unravelled the mystery behind one of antiquity’s most sought-after objects — the lost Ark of King Solomon’s Temple.

Tudor Parfitt, professor of Hebrew at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, has located an object he believes could be the successor to the original Ark.

[...]

And so on. (Background here.) But I haven't seen this before:

But Professor Parfitt believes that the biblical Ark was not quite what it appears. It was a drum-like object which doubled as a primitive cannon, releasing a kind of early, perhaps saltpetre-based explosive. “The Ark did blast things,” he said. “It was a kind of weapon, it is obvious from the text.”

There is no basis for this in the biblical texts about the Ark. I remain unconvinced.

ANNE RICE has published a new Jesus book. Chapter one is available online.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Settlers dig tunnels around Jerusalem

James Hider in Jerusalem (London Times)

Jewish settler groups are digging an extensive tunnel network under Muslim areas of Jerusalem's Old City while building a ring of settlements around it to bolster their claim to the disputed city in any future peace deal, anti-settlement campaigners have told The Times.

One group, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, said that settler tunnels could one day extend under the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, and claimed that extremists could use the access route to attack the structure in an attempt to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. Settler groups flatly deny such allegations.

[...]

Arutz Sheva has more:

New Tunnel Expands Jewish Quarter of Old City

by Ezra HaLevi

(IsraelNN.com) Israel is opening a 25-meter long tunnel that will connect the Western Wall Tunnels with an ancient restored synagogue in the so-called Muslim Quarter, uniting the Old City.

Channel 2 television was brought on an exclusive tour of the new network of tunnels, which was broadcast during Wednesday’s 8 o’clock news. (click here to view the report - in Hebrew)

The tunnel will lead from the Western Wall plaza to the Ohel Yitzchak synagogue, which is being reconstructed and rehabilitated by the Moskowitz Foundation, headed by Land of Israel philanthropist Irving Moskowitz.

[...]

Also, I'm not sure if the following is related to yesterday's story:

Police detain three Arabs over illicit work on Temple Mount
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

Jerusalem police on Wednesday detained two Arab Israeli members of the Islamic Movement for carrying out unauthorized construction work on the Temple Mount, police said.

The two men were taken in for questioning after trying to carry out "surfacing work" in an unauthorized area of the holy site for the second straight day, Jerusalem Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

A third Arab Israeli suspect was detained for trying to create a disturbance at the site.

[...]

HIGH ON MOUNT SINAI?

Researcher: Moses was tripping at Mount Sinai
By Ofri Ilani (Haaretz)

"And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking." Thus the book of Exodus describes the impressive moment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

The "perceiving of the voices" has been interpreted endlessly since these words were first written. When Professor Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reads the verse, he recalls a powerful hallucinatory experience he had when he visited the Amazon and drank a potion made from a plant called ayahuasca.

"One of the things that happens when you drink the potion is a visual experience created via sounds," he says.

Shanon presents a provocative theory in an article published this week in the philosophy journal Time and Mind. The religious ceremonies of the Israelites included the use of psychotropic materials that can found in the Negev and Sinai, he says. "I have no direct proof of this interpretation," and such proof cannot be expected, he says. However, "it seems logical that something was altered in people's consciousness. There are other stories in the Bible that mention the use of plants: for example, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden."

[...]

I have argued elsewhere (see here, here, and here) that Jewish intermediaries in the second temple and rabbinic periods generated visions and spirit encounters for themselves using shamanistic ritual techniques. It's not unlikely that they were doing this at at earlier time as well. That said, I have never found any evidence that they used psychotropic drugs and it is pure speculation to say that they did.

UPDATE (6 March): This from an Israeli chatroom, via the Guardian:

One poster writes: "Maybe it is true - then religion really is the opiate of the people."

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Police stop Islamic work on Temple Mt.
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

Police on Tuesday stopped Wakf Muslim trust officials from performing unauthorized construction work on the Temple Mount.

Officers blocked workers from continuing unauthorized "surfacing word," said Jerusalem police chief Cmdr. Aharon Franco. "It is our duty to ensure that the status quo is maintained on the Temple Mount."

He said Wakf officials had planned to carry out the work as a result of the tensions in east Jerusalem over the recent violence in the Gaza Strip and that the unusual police intervention sparked opposition on the holy site.

[...]

BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL XXVII has been published by Kevin A. Wilson at Blue Cord.

EVA ETZIONI-HALEVY is interviewed in the Albany Herald about her novels on biblical women:

Reviving biblical heroines
Israeli author brings biblical women to the forefront with her fictional novels.
ASHLEY HINDSMAN ashley.hindsman@.at.albanyherald.com

TEL AVIV, Israel — When mystery, romance and suspense book lovers are looking for a page-turner, they usually look for the names they know.

James Patterson. Terry McMillan. Nora Roberts.

But for three-time author Eva Etzioni-Halevy, all of the elements that make for a good read are in the best-selling book of all time — the Bible.

“I was searching for my roots in the Bible and when I read the Bible I found it very fascinating,” Etzioni-Halevy said in a phone interview from her Israel home.

Etzioni-Halevy, a Jewish retired professor emeritus of political sociology at Var-Ilan University in Israel and child Holocaust survivor, said when she decided to trace her heritage in the Bible, she didn’t expect to it to be as entertaining as it was enlightening.

“The people described in the Bible are so similar to us,” she said. “They lived thousands of years ago, yet they’re so similar to us in their desires and hopes. They are not described as angels. They all had strengths and weaknesses, many of which stem from their personality.

“The Bible is a divine book and also a very human book,” she said. “If everyone in the Bible were described as innocent, I would have put it down.”

She said she was especially intrigued by the women of the Bible for their various acts of bravery and leadership, though they are not as spotlighted in the Bible as their male counterparts.

With this in mind, Etzioni-Halevy said she took her rekindled religion and decided to give the heroines of the Bible her own version of the spotlight that she felt they deserved.

“Five years ago I decided to switch over to writing biblical novels,” she said. “This is a completely new chapter of my life which I never dreamed of doing before.”

Her first novel, “The Song of Hannah,” was released in 2005. Then came “The Garden of Ruth” in 2006 and her latest installment, “The Triumph of Deborah,” released late last month.

[...]

IN THE MAIL, from the author:

Ian C. Werrett, Ritual Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 72; Leiden: Brill, 2007)

This is a revised version of the doctoral thesis Ian wrote under my supervision.

NEWS IS SCARCE about developments around the kidnapping of the Chaldean archbishop in Iraq, but here's what I can come up with.

From an APF article on Saturday:

The Syriac Christian archbishop of Mosul, Baptiste Georges Casmoussa, himself a kidnap victim two years ago, said he had begun negotiating with the kidnappers for his Chaldean counterpart's release.

"We received a telephone call from the kidnappers and have begun negotiations for the release of Monsignor Farraj Rahhu," the Rome-based missionary news agency MISNA reported Casmoussa as saying.

Casmoussa was himself kidnapped in January 2005 and held for a day before being released.

And from an AP article on the recent demise of an al-Qaeda-Iraq leader:

It remains unclear if al-Qaida was responsible for Friday's kidnapping of Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho and the killing of three people who were with him.

[U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Gregory] Smith said that Iraqi and U.S. forces were searching for those who abducted the cleric as he left Mass in the northern city of Mosul. The European Union also appealed for his release and condemned the kidnapping in an announcement.

Background here.

STOLPER'S LAW - important philological principles for the decipherment of Akkadian:

Professor Stolper also has a healthy mythology surrounding him at the Oriental Institute. He is widely credited with the invention of "Stolper's Law," which stipulates that, when translating Akkadian, an unknown adjective is likely to mean "pure," and an unknown verb probably means "destroy."

(From the Matthew Stolper Wikipedia entry, via the Agade list.)

CHALDO-ASSYRIAN WATCH: Bad news from Iraq.

Iraqi Chaldean archbishop seized (BBC)

Gunmen have kidnapped the archbishop of the Chaldean Catholic Church in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and killed three of his aides, his church says.

Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was seized as he left a church in the eastern al-Nour district, it added.

Pope Benedict XVI deplored the kidnapping as a "despicable" crime.

Most of Iraq's estimated 700,000 Christians are Chaldeans - Catholics who are autonomous from Rome but recognise the Pope's authority.

[...

Originally made up of members of the Nestorian Church, the traditional liturgical language of the Chaldean church is Syriac - a descendent of Aramaic, which is thought to have been spoken by Jesus and his disciples.

[...]

Barbaric. We pray for his safe return.

The BBC has more on the Chaldeans in Who are the Chaldean Christians?

A DEAD SEA SCROLLS SYMPOSIUM in Palmyra, NY:

Dead Sea Scrolls myths unfurled
scrolls

GateHouse News Service (Wellsville Daily Reporter)
Fri Feb 29, 2008, 12:50 PM EST

Dead Sea Scrolls scholars, wanting to separate Hollywood movie fiction from fact, are holding a symposium at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Palmyra Stake Center.

“One of the things that most Dead Sea scholars realize is that we have an obligation to get out what the Dead Sea Scrolls really are,” said Dr. Lawrence Schiffman, chairman of New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. “There is so much misinformation out there. When there is an opportunity to educate a lot of people, you have to do that.”

[...]

The original documents are housed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. Facsimiles of the scrolls, painstakingly reproduced to look like genuine leather, are currently on display at the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center at 603 Route 21 in Manchester until the end of March.

Joining Schiffman is his long-time friend and colleague Dr. Donald Parry, professor of Hebrew Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls at Brigham Young University. Parry is also a member of the International Team of Translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Both men have spent more than 20 years dedicated to the preservation, translation and research of the scrolls.

The two will be conducting tours of a traveling exhibit of scroll facsimiles at the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center, as well as giving evening lectures on various aspects of the scrolls in the evenings at the Palmyra Stake Center at 2801 Temple Road.

[...]

LUKE THE EVANGELIST'S BODY?

MARK GOODACRE is mixed up with the BBC Jesus movie. Good for him (and them!) and why am I not surprised? He's been blogging on it. for some time and went to the premiere yesterday.

CIVILIZED, OR WHAT? Here I am at a School retreat in a Georgian mansion in the woods in Edzell -- and it has Wifi! We live in an age of wonders.

I'M AWAY THIS WEEKEND and am not likely to have Internet access on Saturday. Look for me again late on Sunday.

THE STORY OF THE LATEST INSCRIBED SEAL FROM JERUSALEM is taken up by the Jerusalem Post and Arutz Sheva.

THE LOST ARK OF THE COVENANT, by Tudor Parfitt, is excerpted by MSNBC. Here's an excerpt of the excerpt:

This was the gist of the document he held in his hand: Muhammad swears in the letter that it was the Jews of Medina and the other oasis towns of Arabia who had always come to his aid in his many battles against the heathen tribes of the desert. The Jews were even ready to desecrate their holy Sabbath to help him. They never left his side. They never betrayed him. During a single bloody campaign, the Jews killed over 20,000 heathen enemies of the Prophet: 7,000 knights, 7,000 regular horsemen, and 7,000 foot soldiers.

“This is what the Prophet actually promised the Jews,” declared Reuven reverently, raising one finger for emphasis. “Not centuries of contempt and persecution!” “Just listen.” He put on a pair of reading glasses, scrutinized the document, and read aloud. “‘O men of the Children of the lost ark of the covenant Israel, by Allah I shall reward you for this … I shall grant you my protection, my covenant, my oath and my witness for as long as I live and as long as my community shall live after me, until they see my face upon the Day of Resurrection.’ “Did you hear that?” he asked, his voice suddenly shrill, thrusting the document in my face and revealing an immaculately laundered cuff. “If the Muslim world knew about this, they would change their attitude to Israel overnight! There’d be no more Arab–Israel wars! No more terrorist attacks!”

Unfortunately, there was more to the letter than met the eye. It was probably quite old, I could see that.

The body of the text was in Arabic and there was a short introduction in Hebrew.

I knew something about Hebrew palaeography—the study of the form of ancient writing—and I could see this was a medieval Hebrew Yemenite script.

This much was genuine. Then I recalled that once in the Yemen I had seen an almost identical document in the home of an antiquarian in Sana’a, the capital of the Yemen. It was called Dhimmat al-Nabi (The Protection of the Prophet) and was an ancient Jewish fabrication, an old forgery, which the Yemenite Jews had created to counter the animosity of their Muslim neighbors. There was no Jewish community in the Muslim world quite as wretched and persecuted as the Jews of the Yemen. They needed all the help they could get. However, this document would not persuade many Muslim scholars to turn their received opinions upside down. It would not change the world. “It’s a shame,” I said, “but it is a forgery. A very old forgery.” A yellow hamseen wind was blowing in from the desert. It was stiflingly hot. Reuven’s face fell when I gave him my assessment of his document, and he grew silent. He just sat there grimacing, rubbing the side of his head where he had been grazed by an Egyptian bullet in the last of his wars.

Background here.