ANOTHER REVIEW of the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition:

Mysterious Qumran finally reveals some secrets to 21st-century voyeurs

Sacred words, never meant to be seen by outsiders, are on display now to the world

Michael Valpy

From Saturday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Friday, Jul. 17, 2009 11:58PM EDT

The crowds move slowly through the soft, muted light at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum exhibit of the Dead Sea scrolls. They are focused, mesmerized, reading every word on display. As intense, perhaps, as peeping toms.

That is Chad Stauber's thought. The 29-year-old doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto, who spends his academic life studying the scrolls and their meaning and whose recorded voice reading documents in Aramaic is part of the exhibit, said encountering the 2,000-year-old documents ignites a feeling of voyeurism.

The people who wrote the scrolls, who ritually recited them, who may have spirited them away from other libraries and from Jerusalem's great Second Temple, and who finally hid them in caves as an advancing Roman army destroyed everything in its path – the mysterious Dead Sea community of Qumran – never intended they should be seen by outsiders.

[...]

Despite the headline, this is the longest and most thoughtful review of the exhibit I've seen so far. And there's this additional information:

As awe-inspiring as the fragments of the scrolls on display are the two inscribed chunks of Jerusalem limestone from the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

The first bears the message, in Hebrew, “to the place of trumpeting,” suggesting it marked the spot where a temple priest would have stood to blow a trumpet to indicate the beginning and end of the sabbath. The second contains part of a warning, in Greek, that non-Jews who venture into the temple's precincts can be put to death by order of the high priest.

Chad Stauber stands beside the two temple fragments and says repeatedly that he is astonished that the Israeli Antiquities Authority allowed them to come on tour with the selection of scrolls.

He said, gesturing to the “place of no trumpeting” fragment of the temple: “Jesus would have walked under that, or by that.”

Background to the exhibition is here (and keep following the links back).

Some background to the Greek Temple inscription is here.

THE LATEST ON THE PALESTINIAN PROTESTS of the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition: looks like the protest-backfire effect is in operation:

Toronto’s Jews rally around Dead Sea Scrolls

July 16, 2009

TORONTO (JTA) -- Toronto's Jews have responded with their wallets to accusations that an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls is illegal.

More than 500 tickets were sold last weekend to the exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum following an e-mail blast from UJA Federation of Greater Toronto to community members warning that pro-Palestinian groups want the exhibit closed.

[...]

Background here.

THE PALESTINIAN PROTESTS over the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum continue to get coverage.

From The Forward:

Furor Over Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition
By Michael Kaminer
Published July 15, 2009, issue of July 24, 2009.

Toronto — Crowds at the Royal Ontario Museum’s heavily hyped Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition — Dead Sea Scrolls: Words That Changed the World, which runs until January 3, 2010 — have far exceeded the museum’s own expectations. In the show’s first nine days, more than 18,000 people flocked to the museum’s spectacular new Daniel Libeskind-designed Michael Lee-Chin Crystal pavilion — about 52% above the exhibitors’ own projections.

But hosannas for the showing, featuring four scroll fragments on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority and displayed in public for the first time, have not been universal. Last April, the Palestinian Authority appealed to Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, to cancel the show, citing international conventions that make it illegal for a government agency to take archaeological artifacts from a territory that its country occupies.

[...]

This article has some welcome detail about the specifics of the protests and the responses of the exhibition organizers.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Toronto Jews rally around museum taking flak over Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit
By LEA KAPLAN

A coalition of pro-Palestinian organizations is demanding that the Royal Ontario Museum close a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit that opened last month, saying Israel looted the "Palestinian artifacts" during the Six Day War.

Toronto's Palestine House and the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid say the "Words that Changed the World" presentation is illegal.

When the museum refused to cancel the exhibit, which runs through January 3, the NGOs instead asked it "to release to the public and publish on its Web site the legal opinion that it obtained and on the basis of which it decided to go ahead with this exhibit," Palestine House said in a statement

The organizations are asking the museum to seek an opinion from UNESCO on the legal and ethical issues involved in the exhibit.

[...]

There was also a protest by about 30 people outside the museum.

Both articles point out that, in terms of the exhibition itself, the protests may backfire. They amount to a lot of free publicity, ticket sales have exceeded expectations, and there is a counter-movement encouraging people to buy tickets.

Background here.

PHILIP R. DAVIES is worried about biblical illiteracy and its long-term impact on biblical scholarship and on society:

... But even non-religious scholars like me were sharply conscious of the irony of our situation: without the affection and interest of religious people, we would be out of a job. More recently, Hector Avalos, the only non-religious scholar I know of that actually seems to hate the Bible, has suggested that the Bible and its academic followers should go the way of all flesh—not his phrase, nor of course mine either.

Avalos may have his way before long if the confessional/non-confessional argument persists. I think it’s time for some cooperation. As with numerous political conflicts (Northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel) the real battle is between moderate and extreme, not between those in the centre but on either side of the perceived issue. On one extreme are those who believe that the Bible is literally true, in defiance of all common sense: but scholars already spend enough of their time trying to counter this nonsense, and in any case, fundamentalists don’t care about the future of the Bible, because the future is God’s business. The real battle is with the other extreme, the biblically illiterate—whose ignorance is not even their own fault!

An interesting essay ("Whose Bible? Anyone's?") on the Bible and Interpretation website.

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES has just published Volume 12 Number 2 (Summer 2009). TOC:

Papers

The Syriac Life of John of Tella and the Frontier Politeia.
Nathanael J. Andrade, University of Michigan

Luke 17:21: "The Kingdom of God is inside you." The Ancient Syriac Versions in Support of the Correct Translation.
Ilaria Ramelli, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan

Monks, Manuscripts, and Muslims: Syriac Textual Changes in Reaction to the Rise of Islam.
Michael Philip Penn, Mount Holyoke College

Brief Article

A Bibliography of Süryânî Periodicals in Ottoman Turkish.
Benjamin Trigona-Harany

Book Review

Holger Gzella and Margaretha L. Folmer, eds., Aramaic in its Historical and Linguistic Setting.
Aaron Michael Butts, University of Chicago

Conference Reports

EACL 2009 Workshop on Computational Approaches to Semitic Languages. Athens, Greece. March 31st, 2009.
Wido van Peursen and Constantijn Sikkel, Peshitta Institute, Leiden

THE TALMUD BLOG is a new blog on the academic study of the Talmud. From the first post:

Welcome to a new home for scholars of rabbinic literature working in the monkish cramped carrels and offices of academe, and the magnificently isolating reading rooms of libraries around the world. The goal is to build a kind of command center that keeps up with new trends in the field, reviews recent research, covers conferences, meetings, and symposia, looks at nifty new tools, and occasionally, considers the broader implications of the scholarship. If we have learned that the internet is the collective brain of humankind, and that the Talmud is an epitome of rabbinic culture, then this site expresses but the will of the people! So comments are appreciated, and advice is golden. Take a look around. The sidebar is catered especially for your research needs - particularly students of the Bavli. But what's missing, and what's extraneous...

(Via Hagahot.)

AN OBITUARY FOR MARTIN HENGEL has been published in the Telegraph:

Professor Martin Hengel

Professor Martin Hengel, who died on July 2 aged 82, was professor of New Testament studies at the German university of Tübingen between 1972 and 1992, and one of the greatest biblical scholars of his time.


Published: 6:32PM BST 12 Jul 2009

Although Hengel enjoyed an international reputation, the early years of his academic career were seriously hampered by his father's insistence that he should be involved in the family textile business. He was obliged to manage a factory in Leicester for several years.

None the less he made a unique contribution to the understanding of the New Testament and Christian origins by combining his work in this field with no less expertise in the fields of Judaism and early church history. Thus his magnum opus Judaism and Hellenism (1969) broke new ground and changed the course of New Testament studies by demonstrating that the Judaism out of which Christianity evolved was one deeply influenced by Hellenism.

[...]

More here.

MORE ON PALESTINIAN PROTESTS over the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum:

First, Robert Fisk has an essay in the Independent ("You won't find any lessons in unity in the Dead Sea Scrolls"), chiefly mocking the efforts of the exhibit to emphasize religious "unity" and expressing disappointment that certain political issues, including the Palestinian protests, were not mentioned. Also the Armenian genocide of 1915:

So cautious are the dear old Canadians – who should by now have learned that concealing unhappy truths will only create fire and pain – that they do not even mention that "Kando", the first recipient of the scrolls, was Armenian. Of course not. Because then they would have to explain why an Armenian was in Jerusalem, not in western Turkey. Which would mean that they would have to mention the Armenian Holocaust of 1915 (one and a half million Armenian civilians murdered by Ottoman Turks).

Actually, the sources I can find which discuss Kando's background report that he was a member of the Syrian Orthodox Church (e.g., here, here, etc.). There seems also to have been an Armenian antiquities dealer involved in the early negotiations over the Cave One scrolls (see, e.g., here), so perhaps Fisk is conflating the two (and maybe he could have done his research more carefully). In any case, were Kando Armenian, I don't see why that would obligate the exhibition to bring up the Armenian genocide.

This would anger Canada's Turkish community, who are holocaust deniers. And in turn, it would anger the Israel Antiquities Authority, who do not acknowledge that the Armenian Holocaust ever happened, there being only one True Holocaust, which is that of the Jews of Europe.

It's not clear to me what this is about. Is he really saying that the IAA has denied the historical reality of the Armenian genocide of 1915? That seems, first, unlikely, and, second, rather beyond its remit. Or is the issue that the IAA has not used the specific language "holocaust" or "genocide?" Or that the Israeli Government doesn't and the IAA is guilty by association? The ADL got into some trouble over this issue a while ago and, more recently, so has President Obama. I'm not going to go into that debate except to say that the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition would have no reason either to get involved in it.

He summarizes the Palestinian case as follows:

... But up come the spoilsports, namely the Canadian "Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid", to suggest that the scrolls, originally in the hands of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and the Ecole Biblique Française, were "confiscated and illegally removed by Israel" in 1967. The Royal Ontario Museum, the protesters say, is showing "looted" property which it has no right to exhibit. The Palestinian Authority itself has intervened, arguing that the museum is "displaying artefacts removed from the Palestinian territories". (Let us not, O Reader, mention the Elgin marbles, albeit that the Brits don't occupy Greece.)

Second, The Ottawa Citizen has an editorial about the Palestinian protests ("The old bait-and-switch"). Excerpt:

An odd assortment of groups are protesting the exhibit on the grounds that the scrolls are stolen artifacts and really belong to Arabs, not Jews. Yes, you read that correctly. Hebrew manuscripts of the Jewish Bible that were written centuries before Muhammad was born are, apparently, Muslim property.

It’s easy to see what’s going on here. Just as Holocaust denial circulates in some corners of the anti-Israel movement, there is a parallel effort to deny the Jewish people’s ancestral connection to the Holy Land. The idea is to delegitimize Israel by denying the indigenous rights of Jews. Some Israel-haters have even taken to arguing that Palestinian Arabs are the real descendants of “ancient Hebrews.”

Background here.

EXTRAORDINARY FINDS AT THE MT ZION EXCAVATION are reported by James Tabor. Lots of interesting new architecture and artifacts. This in particular caught my epigrapher's eye:

1. A stone vessel with an ancient inscription of ten lines written in an archaic Jewish script. Such stone vessels were used in connection with maintaining ritual purity related to Temple worship, and they are found in abundance in areas where the priests lived. We have found a dozen or more on our site over the past three years. However, to have ten lines of text is unprecedented. One normally might find a single name inscribed, or a line or two, but this is the first text of this length ever found on such a vessel. We have shared high-resolution photos with various epigraphic experts in Jerusalem who are working together to try and decipher this text. It is written in a very informal cursive hand and is quite difficult to read.

Note also that they are dependent on donations to continue the work. Details on contributing are at the end of the post.

NO SURPRISE:

ROM Scrolls attendance beyond expectations

James Bradshaw

Toronto — From Thursday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Friday, Jul. 10, 2009 02:47AM EDT

Attendance at the Royal Ontario Museum's Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World exhibition has exceeded even its organizers' most hopeful projections, attracting an average of more than 2,000 people each day since it opened.

[...]

TORY LEADER DAVID CAMERON is descended from a Jewish Renaissance Hebraist according to a University of Manchester scholar:

Illustrious Jewish roots of Tory leader revealed

10 Jul 2009
David Cameron’s Jewish history goes back hundreds – if not thousands - of years, according to a University of Manchester historian.

Dr Yaakov Wise, who specialises in Jewish history, says the Tory leader is descended from a German-born Jewish scholar whose writings furthered the study of Hebrew in European Christendom at a time of widespread hostility toward its Jews.

And according to Dr Wise, who has been using archival material to examine the Cameron family tree, the Tory leader could also be a direct descendent of the greatest ever Hebrew prophet, Moses.

Cameron is a descendent of banker Emile Levita, who came to Britain as a German immigrant in the 1850s. Emile Levita was himself a descendent of Elijah Levita, who lived from 1469-1549.

During the last years of his life Elijah Levita produced, among other works, two major books: the 1541 Translator’s Book, the first dictionary of the Targums or Aramaic commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.

His lexicon of 1542 explained much of the Mishnaic Hebrew language and was a supplement to two important earlier dictionaries.

[...]

The bit about his being descended from Moses is rather more speculative. There's a Wikipedia article (take usual caveats as read) on Elia Levita here.

QUMRAN SCHOLAR LARRY SCHIFFMAN has become an officer in an organization for inter-religious relations:

New Leaders to Represent World Jewry to Other Faiths

NEW YORK, July 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- IJCIC, (The International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultation) the consortium charged with representing world Jewry in its relationships with other faiths, announced the election of new officers. IJCIC which is comprised of the three major religious streams and major secular organizations has existed for over 40 years. It is widely recognized as the spokesgroup and representative body for dealings with other world religious bodies.

Rabbi Richard Marker has been elected as Chair of IJCIC after serving for two years as vice chair. Professor Lawrence Schiffman who will assume the role of Vice Chair, and Betty Ehrenberg, who will serve as Treasurer, join him.

[...]

Schiffman, who serves as Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies and chair of the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University is an internationally known scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Judaism. His writings have helped to redefine our understanding of the Jewish background of Christianity. In both academic and religious contexts, he has been active throughout his career in interfaith relations. He is a member of the international team that published the entire corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a past president of the Association for Jewish Studies and a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He has served as visiting professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. He serves IJCIC as a delegate of the Orthodox Union.

[...]

RAPHAEL GOLB has pleaded not guilty to ID theft in response to charges that he assumed the identity of Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Larry Schiffman in order to defame him.

Background here.

THE LOD MOSAIC has come to the attention of the New York Times:

Polishing a Lost Gem to Dazzle Tourists

By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: July 8, 2009

LOD, Israel — The beauty of the exquisitely preserved ancient mosaic only seemed to underline the incongruity of its surroundings.

The late-Roman-era mosaic floor, one of the largest and finest in Israel, was unveiled by the authorities last week for just the second time since it was discovered 13 years ago in the dilapidated eastern section of this poor town near the international airport, south of Tel Aviv.

Some 1,700 years old, the magnificent tiled floor spreads over almost 2,000 square feet, shaded from the harsh summer sun by a thin awning and surrounded by a canvas fence. A panoply of colorful depictions of birds, fish, exotic animals and merchant ships, the mosaic conjures up an intriguing reminder of Lod’s more glorious past.

[...]

Background here.

BOOK REVIEW in BMCR:

Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. ix, 483. ISBN 9780521874571. $135.00.

Reviewed by David Frankfurter, University of New Hampshire (davidTf@unh.edu )
Word count: 2445 words

This learned and thoughtful book, building on the spate of publications of Jewish magical texts over the past thirty years (as well as the refinement of the study of magic in the ancient Mediterranean world), aims first of all to replace Ludwig Blau's 1914 Das Altjüdische Zauberwesen as the essential resource on ancient Jewish magic. But Bohak, who readers might know best for his superb on-line collection of University of Michigan magical texts is also a very engaging writer. In many ways, Ancient Jewish Magic reads more like an extended essay on the place of magic in developing Jewish religion than a systematic tour of sources. With amusing metaphors and asides about contemporary Israeli politics, and at the same time little jargon, the book deserves (and rewards) a leisurely read as much as reference consultation. (Indeed, the publishers seem to have opted against reference consultation. The Table of Contents is so woefully inadequate, lacking all Bohak's critical sub-sections, that the volume can be difficult to consult for particular topics).

The overall goal of the book is to describe the development of Jewish magical practices from the Second Temple through late rabbinic eras. This development reflected an increasingly confident sense of what is foreign to Judaism, the increasing hegemony of rabbinic sages, and an increasingly textual sense of magic itself. Magic, in Bohak's perspective, was neither peripheral nor entirely central to formative Judaism.

[...]

UPDATE: Dead link now fixed. Sorry!

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Another manuscript imaging and digitizing project:

High-tech imaging reveals hidden past in ancient texts
July 7th, 2009

(PhysOrg.com) -- It might simply look like a smudge, but even the slightest stain on the ancient writing surface of papyrus could obscure a revelation of a past civilization. Now, with the advent of high-tech imaging, some of those secrets could reveal fascinating insights into everyday life of early Egyptian, Greek and Roman societies.

For the last four weeks, a team of national researchers and scholars examined dozens of papyri among the thousands of papyrological pieces in the University of Michigan collection. Using multi-spectral imaging, the Ancient Textual Imaging Group—led by acclaimed papyrology expert Stephen Bay of Brigham Young University—examined ancient text written on papyrus that had become illegible because they are stained, discolored and faded. Recording through a range of filters, the technology captures high-resolution color images, making clear the layers of text hidden beneath words and letters written on levels of papyrus.

The Ancient Textual Imaging Group, based at Brigham Young, is conducting a two-year venture to record illegible papyrus documents from historically significant U.S.-based collections. The project is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

[...]

For other manuscript imaging and conservation projects see here, here, and here, following the links back as indicated.

BIBLINDEX:

The ultimate goal of this site is to permit the identification of biblical quotations in all Jewish and Christian literature of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. For the time being, it already allows simple interrogation in a corpus of about 400,000 biblical references.

(Via the Agade list.)

THE COPPER SCROLL is the subject of an essay by Robert R. Cargill at the Bible and Interpretation website: "On the Insignificance and the Abuse of the Copper Scroll." Excerpt:

Scholars aren’t quite sure what to do with the Copper Scroll. Milik concluded the Copper Scroll was placed in Cave 3 around 100 CE, after the other scrolls were abandoned in the other caves. Others like Lancaster Harding and Cross believe the Copper Scroll to be the folklore of Qumran. Still others believe it describes actual treasure belonging to the residents of Qumran. I join the scholars who conclude that the Copper Scroll describes articles from the second Jerusalem Temple (most likely legendary) supposedly hidden after its destruction in 70 CE, in keeping with later date of its composition. The Copper Scroll was most likely placed in Cave 3 long after the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls were placed in their respective caves. And while it was discovered during the excavations that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Copper Scroll should not be considered part of this collection because its author(s), script, style, language, genre, content, and medium are otherwise unattested among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Because of this irregularity, amateur treasure hunters and even some scholars regularly appeal to the Copper Scroll in a seemingly perpetual effort to promote sensational fringe theories, raise money, and bring attention to their far-fetched claims. Sensationalists prey on the ambiguous and everyone loves a treasure hunt; the Copper Scroll is both.

There follows much entertaining debunking.

I think the Copper Scroll is a genuine (i.e., not legendary) list of treasures, perhaps treasures associated with the Temple. I have more on the Copper Scroll here (follow the links back) and here.

THE LOD MOSAIC is going to New York in March to be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art while a visitor's center is being built for it in Israel:

Ancient Mosaic to Be Displayed at Metropolitan Museum of Art
By Genevieve Long & Dalia Hartaz
Epoch Times Staff Jul 6, 2009

LOD, Israel—An archaeological treasure from Israel will make its maiden journey for display to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in March. The Lod Mosaic, as it is dubbed, is an extraordinarily rich and detailed mosaic that was discovered 13 years ago in the city of Lod in central Israel.

It has been undergoing excavation and is now being prepared for transport to labs where it will be cleaned and restored. The work’s next stop after that will be New York City.

[...]

This was noted in earlier coverage, but this article has more details. Background here and here.

ANOTHER QUARRY:

Ancient Temple Mount quarry found in Jerusalem
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

A quarry from the late Second Temple Period that produced stone to build the Temple Mount's supporting walls has been uncovered in central Jerusalem, the Antiquities Authority said Monday.

The latest discovery brought to three the number of quarries found in the city over the past two years which archeologists believe were used in the construction of the Temple walls.

The 2,030-year-old quarry, which spans more than one dunam (0.1 hectare), was discovered during a salvage excavation on the city's Rehov Shmuel Hanevi ahead of planned construction of residential buildings at the site, the Authority said.

[...]

(Thanks to readers who brought this to my attention.) For the other two quarries in the Jerusalem area, go here and follow the links. And for another quarry found recently in the Jordan Valley, see here and here.