ARAMAIC WATCH: Ariel Sabar's book My Father's Paradise, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the Spring, has been getting some more media attention lately. The Los Angeles Times notes the book and appears to interview both him and his father, Yona. Excerpt:

Asked to assess the future of the culture that has consumed him, Yona shakes his head. "I felt I was an undertaker, because I felt this was the last stage of the language," he says. "So I felt what I can do to salvage this heritage is by documenting it in books for scholars who are interested. Ariel's book in a way is a monument to that lost life. Because you cannot restore it physically."

What neither man could have anticipated is how the book's success has spurred interest in Aramaic and the Jewish Kurds and helped reconnect those who were raised in that culture.

Yona now hears regularly from friends, colleagues and former students with whom he had lost touch over the decades. He fields inquiries from screenwriters asking for assistance in translating snatches of Aramaic. He gets e-mails from prisoners who've found religion and want to learn Christ's language. He does his best to accommodate them all.

Not only that, but "My Father's Paradise" has given comfort to relatives who have wondered how they would be able to pass on the old family stories to future generations.

"Now," they tell Yona, "I can give my children a book to read."

Background here.

Two other books are reviewed by Nick Owchar, again in the LA Times. The first, by Alan Jacobs, When Jesus Lived in India: The Quest for the Aquarian Gospel: The mystery of the Missing Years, supports the baseless notion that Jesus traveled to India in his lifetime. Baseless not because it couldn't have happened – Jesus' contemporary, the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, is reported to have done just that – but because there is no evidence for it except for very much later accounts from India of the sort that someone would have had to make up sooner or later (plus a modern forgery). More on the subject here.

The second is a review of Janet Soskice, The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels. Excerpt:

Agnes and Margaret Smith turned their passion for exploration into a stunning discovery of an early copy of the Gospels written in Syriac during the heyday of British mania for such artifacts. A theology professor at the University of Cambridge, Soskice has crafted a thoughtful, detailed reconstruction of the lives of two people with unique resources that led to even more unique opportunities.

The Smiths chanced upon this precious object in 1892, locked away in a "dark closet" in St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. Though other treasure-seekers had been there before them, those earlier visitors ignored a filthy-looking, ruined volume with "its leaves nearly all stuck together." This item, the sisters realized, turned out to be a palimpsest text: Long ago, monks had scratched away the older text (the Syriac version of the Gospels) to reuse the pages for something else. But somehow the old text didn't entirely disappear and was "revived by the action of the common air." It bled through the other writing on the pages.

Background here.

HEADING TO EDINBURGH TODAY to give a paper on the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project at New College.

A LEAGUE OF CANAANITE, PHOENICIAN, AND PUNIC CITIES is being founded:

30 Mideastern towns form League of Phoenician, Canaanite, Punic cities
By Mohammed Zaatari
Daily Star staff
Thursday, October 15, 2009

TYRE: The International Committee for the Safeguarding of Tyre announced on Wednesday the launching of the League of Phoenician, Canaanite and Punic Cities. The league will be part of the Tyre Foundation, a new international organization that is to include about 30 cities located on the Mediterranean coast. It will aim at reinforcing cooperation between the cities on four main aspects: culture, tourism, preservation of traditional crafts and combating sea pollution. The Tyre Foundation would also be collaborating with more than 40 universities across the Mediterranean.

Head of the International Committee for the Safeguarding of Tyre Maha al-Khalil Shalabi explained that the idea for the league was presented at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris. The goal was to create an association of cities that were founded by the Phoenicians or that had commercial, cultural or human relations with the Phoenicians.

[...]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

TODAY IS CYRUS-THE-GREAT DAY:

Another Iran: King Cyrus Day
by Amil Imani (Arutz Sheva)

October 29th honors Cyrus the Great, a pioneer in promoting human rights who allowed the Jews to return to Israel in 539 B.C.E. Iran's present barbaric Islamic regime is attempting to erase vestiges of its enlightened non-Islamic cultural heritage.

October 29th has been designated as the international day of Cyrus the Great, a matchless king of Persia. Commemorating Cyrus the Great is synonymous with honoring the glorious ancient Iranians and Iranians’ way of life. Palpable reminders to Iranians and all liberty-loving people of the world of this just king’s reign stand in the field of Pasargad.

The International Committee to Save the Archeological Sites of Pasargad has the undying gratitude of the diverse people of the Greater Iran for its work in safeguarding these magnificent symbols of Iran’s luminous past which serve as beacons for guiding all people in their quest for freedom and dignity.

The arduous task undertaken by the Committee to Save the Archeological Sites of Pasargad is all the more difficult in the face of the present Islamic regime’s relentless barbaric attempts to wipe out any and all vestiges of Iran’s proud and praiseworthy cultural heritage. To these barbaric Islamists, any ideals or symbols representing humanity’s non-Islamic enlightenment is good only for the fire of their bigotry.

[...]

The Cyrus-as-human-rights-pioneer is rather overplayed, although, as I've said before, he does look good compared to Iran's current leaders. Background here and follow the links.

THE GOLEM rises again for Halloween in Los Angeles:

Bringing a ‘Golem’ to Life

By Karla S. Blume (JewishJournal.com)

For a scare steeped in Jewish mysticism this Halloween, REDCAT is bringing Paul Wegener’s “The Golem” to the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater on Friday and Saturday night. But the screening of the 1920 silent horror classic, which recounts the Eastern European legend of a large clay figure brought to life to protect the Jews of Prague, will be accompanied by the debut of an improvised musical score by Brian LeBarton.

LeBarton, 30, a keyboardist best known as music director for alternative rocker Beck, will lead a costumed band that includes a cellist and a guest percussionist, Carla Azar of the L.A. band Autolux.

“I’m going to have lots of toys and beastly synths around that night to help make the music sound ancient,” LeBarton said.

[...]

More Golem posts here.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The political flare-up continues. Here is some recent coverage.

• The Boston Globe editorializes against current excavations. Excerpt:

The current crisis originates in Palestinian fear and anger over archaeological excavations near, but not underneath, the Al Aqsa mosque. The digs are under the control of an ultra-nationalist Israeli group intent on justifying a Jewish claim to Jerusalem by locating remnants of what is called the City of David. Those excavations have weakened the foundations of nearby Arab houses and led critics across the Muslim world to warn of a plot to cause the collapse of the Al Aqsa mosque.

For more controversy over the Elad excavations, see here and follow the links back.

• Dr. Eilat Mazar is interviewed by Israel National Radio about the City of David excavations:

What is the most controversial site today in Israel? The City of David. The focus of that fight is the northern top of the hill where a massive structure has been uncovered by Dr. Eilat Mazar, who attributes it to King David! This conclusion is under attack by scholars. Eilat addresses it head-on! The story of what made her dig here is fantastic. She tells the story of how the destruction of Temple Mount remains brought about the adoption of wet sifting, in turn producing 60 percent of her finds including the personal seals of biblical characters. This success influenced Elah Fortress and other digs. Dr. Mazar conducts a wide ranging discussion on archaeology, its importance, new and old methods, the thinking, the implications, and her own story of how she was drawn into this world by her grandfather Benjamin Mazar. This a unique, personable, exciting, and enlightening session with one of the most articulate spokespeople for Israel's history. Really a day seminar condensed into less than an hour.
Dr. Mazar is in the forefront of protecting the site and the remains of the Temple Mount. Eilat asks that you participate in the petition to stop the destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities at http://www.har-habayt.org/what.html, and become familiar with this topic.

• The Israeli Security Minister weighs in on the political situation:

Minister slams both Jews, Arabs over Temple Mount unrest

Internal Security Minister Aharonovitch attempts to calm tensions, avert future riots in capital. 'Stop messing with Temple Mount' he says, addressing both Jews, Arabs

Amnon Meranda
Published: 10.28.09, 18:20 / Israel News (Ynetnews.com)

Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch urged on Wednesday both Arabs and Jews to abstain from provocations, in the wake of recent riots in the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem.

Addressing the issue of violence in the Old City at the Knesset, the minister said, "I will not allow leaders on both sides, the Arab and the Jewish, to further incite and use the holy sites for their political interests. I will not let the Temple Mount turn into a boxing ring."

Following a brief quiet spell, riots broke out again earlier in the week in Jerusalem's Old City. More than 20 people were detained while members of the Islamic Movement, accused by police of inflaming the crowds, claimed that Arabs only wished to pray at the site and slamming police for provoking the unrest by using excessive force.

Speaking at the Knesset on Wednesday, Aharonovitch said, "I call on both sides – the Jewish MKs, who encourage visits to the Temple Mount and falsely accuse the police, and the Arab MKs, who urge to save the al-Aqsa mosque thus stirring and inciting - you know that al-Aqsa wasn't in danger, is not in danger and will not be in danger in the future."

[...]

ROBERT EISENMAN wants to rebuild the Temple! In a Jerusalem Post Opinion piece, Remember, the Temple was built by Herod, he writes:

The problem is we must start from scratch based on being a territorial people once again.

We need a new approach to religion if, for instance, we are to combat the J Streets, Goldstones or George Soroses of this world, not to mention appealing to the imagination of questioning disaffected youth; and the first step should have been to start rebuilding the Temple.

This does not mean one should revive the priesthood or the sacrificial cult. You need living symbols to move the people. If nothing else, Herod showed us this and the durability of the wall he built is its final proof.

Unfortunately, Rabbinic Judaism can no longer provide us these. Two millennia, yes, and up to the Holocaust. But no further. It cannot provide us with the blueprint for becoming territorial once again. Moshe Dayan was wrong in ordering the Israeli flag taken down, in effect, surrendering sovereignty and giving the Muslim Wakf control over the Temple Mount. No self-respecting people after two victorious wars would have behaved in this way. But he had no guideposts to rely upon, only egocentrism and his own pragmatism - plus he loved the grande geste.

But now, almost three generations after the Holocaust and with its memory beginning to fade, we have nothing positive to appeal to our young generations in Israel and abroad. It is poetry and the spirit that provide this. They are the positives, not humiliating renunciations. The reconstruction of a Temple - any Temple - should have begun 40 years ago and we would be well on our way toward achieving these things. This does not mean we should emulate the old design. Its content, shape and operation should be open to investigation, even architectural competitions, and creativity; but the symbol would be there.

It took the Herodian Temple almost 90 years to be completed. Ours and even its early stage - archeological investigation - hasn't even begun. People need a positive historical Judaism to go forward and this does not mean a Roman/Herodian-sponsored Phariseeism. People need positive symbols to rally around. The time is late. There is plenty of room on the Mount for everyone.

In no other manner can we gain the respect of the world and regain our own self-respect, and the world come to understand us - and we come to understand ourselves.

I'm certainly not persuaded that efforts to rebuild the Temple would strengthen Israel's political hand. And as I've said many times before, there should be no digging on the Temple mount apart from scientifically-controlled archaeological excavations, preferably at a (probably not too distant) future time when they can done nonintrusively via molecular technology and the like.

For Herod's Arab background, see here. For the recent discovery (perhaps) of Herod's tomb at Herodium, see here and here. I don't see that Herod's background and character are going to have much effect on the symbolism of the Temple for Judaism.

MORE ON THE BEIT SHEARIM CAVES:

93-year-old architect claims he discovered the Beit Shearim caves, not Alexander Zaid
By Eli Ashkenazi (Haaretz)

A leading interior architect and exhibition designer claims he discovered the burial caves at the ancient necropolis in Beit Shearim 73 years ago, not the famed watchman Alexander Zaid.

[...]

"It was Purim 1936. Three of us went for a hike and entered a large deserted cave, which the Arabs used to keep goats in," Maron, 93, said yesterday.

He says he threw a stone at a wall in the cave and heard an echo, indicating a hollow behind it.

"I looked for an opening in the wall, and entered a cave containing sarcophagi, whose walls were inscribed with drawings and Menorahs," he said.

[...]

Background here.

SOME ANCIENT BURIAL CAVES in Beit Shearim have been restored and opened to the public:

2,000-year-old 'Menorah' burial caves in Beit Shearim opened to public
By Eli Ashkenazi (Haaretz)

Seventy-three years after the famous watchman Alexander Zaid went looking for a stray goat and stumbled upon ancient burial caves, Beit Shearim national park yesterday held a ceremony for two newly opened caves in the ancient necropolis, whose burial vaults date to Mishnaic times, roughly the first two centuries C.E.

Zaid, famous as the founder of the Bar Giora and Shomer self-defense groups active before the founding of the state, was just being a shepherd in 1936 when he found the caves dug out of rock. Conservation work began there four years ago, and the two new caves were discovered. They contain a relief of a seven-branched menorah, and so the newly opened site is being called "the Menorah caves."

[...]

Beit Shearim Menorah Caves Restored

by Gil Ronen

(IsraelNN.com) Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin unveiled a huge ancient relief depicting a seven branched menorah at Beit Shearim in the Galilee Tuesday. The menorah, which is 1.90 m. (75”) high, is one of the major tourist attractions at the renovated ancient burial cave site.

The burial caves were discovered decades ago but their recent renovation took place largely thanks to Rivlin's initiative. In 2004, during his first term as Knesset Speaker, Rivlin visited the site and was stirred by the site of the numerous depictions of the menorah, which is the modern State of Israel's symbol as well.

[...]

UPDATE: Incorrect link fixed. Sorry!

NEW BOOK:

The Commentators' Bible (Leviticus)
The JPS Miqra'ot Gedolot: Leviticus
By Michael Carasik PhD (author)

$75.00 · add to cart

Hardcover, 9" x 12", 270 pages
ISBN: 9780827608979


Available October 2009

The second volume of the acclaimed English edition of Miqra’ot Gedolot

First published 500 years ago as the “Rabbinic Bible,” the biblical commentaries known as Miqra’ot Gedolot have inspired and educated generations of Hebrew readers. With this edition, the voices of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Nahmanides, Rashbam, and other medieval Bible commentators come alive once more, speaking in a contemporary English translation annotated and explicated for lay readers.

Each page of this second volume in The Commentators’ Bible series contains several verses from the Book of Leviticus, surrounded by both the 1917 and 1985 JPS translations, and by new contemporary English translations of the major commentators. The book also includes an introduction, a glossary of terms, a list of names used in the text, notes on source texts, a special topics list, and resources for further study.

This large-format volume is beautifully designed for easy navigation among the many elements on each page, including explanatory notes and selected additional comments from the works of Bekhor Shor, Hizkuni, Abarbanel, Sforno, Gersonides, and others.

(Via the H-JUDAIC list.)

ENOCH LECTURE:

The Faculty of Divinity,
The Cambridge Theological Federation and
The Centre for The Study of Jewish–Christian Relations


invite you to a lecture


The Cultural History of Enoch from Antiquity to Christian Thrillers

Prof. Gyorgy Szonyi, Leverhulme Visiting Research Fellow
Central European University and University of Szeged

30 November 2009, 5pm

Runcie Room,
Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University, West Road.

Drinks served afterwards.

Sent by Richard Bauckham.

I'M BACK IN ST. ANDREWS. Long trip. More tomorrow.

I'M HEADING BACK TO ST ANDREWS later this morning. I expect to get there Tuesday evening.

A REVIEW of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum by Jennifer Merrick in the Buffalo News. Excerpt:

The collection gives you an excellent sense of what life was like at that time, setting the scene before you even catch sight of the scrolls. Videos provide background and introduce some of the mysteries surrounding the documents. One of the greatest riddles is how they ended up in the Qumran caves. In the presentation, three scholars convincingly present their theories as to why they were found in this location.

“The jury is still out,” Rahimi says when asked what his thoughts were on this debate. He says he would rather present the information and let people make their own conclusions.

There suspense builds while going through the exhibits. Anticipation heightens as you finally enter the dimly lighted room that contains the scrolls themselves. The majesty of the writings combined with the lighting and music create a somber and contemplative atmosphere that reflects the weight of these pages’ impact on history.

Each of the eight fragments has its own case with a translation and a commentary putting the material in context. Some are biblical, including texts from Genesis, Psalms and Daniel, while others are secular, like one on papyrus of a property deed. The signature can clearly be seen.

“It’s like having an autograph of people you know about historically,” says Rahimi.

Also, this paragraph, which comes a little earlier in the piece, is odd:

“One of the exhibit’s goals,” says Dan Rahimi, gallery developer and archaeologist, “is to give visitors the context; to show what was going on in 13th century B. C., a time of major, major change.”

I suspect that someone's notes got confused and that "13th" is a mistake for "the first to third."

OH OH!

Tsunami Wave 'Likely' to Hit Israel, Says U. Haifa Researcher

by Hana Levi Julian

(IsraelNN.com) A researcher at the University of Haifa says there is a "likely chance" that a tsunami wave could hit the shores of Israel, and that she has uncovered evidence it has happened before.

Dr. Beverly Goodman, a researcher at the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, said following a geo-archaeological study at the port of Caesarea that "Tsunami events in the Mediterranean do occur less frequently than in the Pacific Ocean, but our findings reveal a moderate rate of recurrence."

Goodman's original intent was to track down the remains of ships while examining the ancient port of Caesarea and its offshore shipwrecks. However, the geo-archaeologist said she was surprised to discover "unusual geological layers, the likes of which we had never seen in the region before."

[...]

The geo-archaeologist found evidence of four tsunami events at Caesarea: in 1500 BC, 100-200 CE, 500-600 CE, and 1100-1200 CE, which she described in an article published in Geological Society of America.

Goodman explained that the earliest of these tsunamis resulted from the eruption of the Santorini volcano, which affected the entire Mediterranean region. The later, more local tsunami waves, Goodman assumes, were generated by underwater landslides caused by earthquakes.

[...]

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Lots of unrest lately.

Battle of the Al-Aqsa mosque erupts

Published Date: 26 October 2009 (The Scotsman)
By MATTI FRIEDMAN AND BEN LYNFIELD in Jerusalem

ISRAELI police with stun grenades fought masked Palestinian protesters hurling stones and plastic chairs outside the Holy Land's most volatile shrine, where past violence has escalated into prolonged conflict.

A wall of Israeli riot police yesterday marched towards young men covering their faces with scarves and T-shirts, sending many running for cover into the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the Islamic structures in the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

[...]

The police accused the Islamic Movement, a fundamentalist group among Israel's Arab citizens, of provoking the violence.

But Zahi Najedat, a spokesman for the Islamic Movement, said tensions had been high because of a leaflet issued by Jewish extremist groups calling on Jews to come to the site, Judaism's holiest place because it housed ancient temples destroyed by the Babylonians and Romans.

[...]

ED COOK AT RALPH: Toward a Theory of Hebrew Poetic Tenses.

ANCIENT SYNAGOGUES IN THE GOLAN are discussed in the Jerusalem Post in two recent articles by Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg:

The Synagogues of Kanaf and Deir Aziz
By STEPHEN G. ROSENBERG

There are twenty-five known ancient synagogues in the Golan. While some are only known from stone fragments found during construction of recent villages, many of the sites have been positively located, and six of them have been excavated. Their presence points to the existence of a strong Jewish culture in the area, one with a fine tradition in carving the tough black basalt stone that covers the region.

Some of these synagogues are surprisingly close in proximity, such as those in Kanaf and Deir Aziz. Kanaf, which is most easily accessible from the settlement of Ma'ale Gamla, can be reached by taking the private road which stretches through the community. As the blue and white signs start changing to black and white, you will reach a fork. There you will need to leave the car and, by foot, begin climbing up the hill toward the square building which sits on the skyline.

[...]

The ancient synagogues of Ein Nashut and Yehudiya
By STEPHEN GABRIEL ROSENBERG

Situated less than three kilometers away from the famous Talmudic village of Katzrin is the synagogue of Ein Nashut. Discovered after the Six-Day War, and first excavated by archaeologist Zvi Maoz in 1978, the synagogue lies within a ruined village, whose destroyed walls and remnants of two olive oil presses are spread over six acres.

The synagogue was constructed at an earlier date than many others in the Golan. During excavations of the foundations, eight coins dated to around the year 390 CE were discovered, and another 103 coins dated to as late as the rule of Emperor Honorius (408-423 CE) were found under the entrance paving . While the presence of the coins has assisted modern archeologists in their work, they also served a purpose for the villagers of the time. Back then, it was tradition to set a large number of low-value coins in the foundations. High-value gold coins were also found during the digs, but their purpose was different - they were either part of a private cache which was left abandoned or part of an unutilized offering.These coins, together with a smaller collection of 51 copper bits dating from 425 CE to 450 CE which were found in a chamber below the synagogue, date the building to the mid-fifth century - only a generation or two after the completion of the Jerusalem Talmud.

In the sixth century, repairs were made to the ark, and a new floor was laid to the entry porch, probably following the earthquake of 551 CE. The synagogue continued to be used until the seventh century, when the village was abandoned.

[...]

GOING BACK to Katzrin, and then turning onto Route 87 southward will lead to Yehudiya, a ruined Jewish village on the east side of the road. Travelers can leave their cars at the parking lot opposite the ruins.

The name Yehudiya was given to the site by the nineteenth-century German Templer engineer and explorer Gottlieb Schumacher, and adopted by the local Beduin. The Syrians, however, were not happy with the name. In 1967, when Syrian army maps were found by advancing Israeli forces, the village had been renamed, "Ya'arabaya".

The synagogue has not yet been excavated, but pieces of its decor have been found among the ruins of the village houses, and scattered columns lie in the main courtyard between the houses. One wall plate, found built into a village house, is of particular importance. It is a basalt tablet of the menora together with the usual shofar and incense shovel. Of special interest is that the menora has nine branches, like the one on the capital at Ein Nashut. The tablet is now in the Katzrin Museum.

[...]

(Both articles noted on Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

IAA SALVAGE ARCHAEOLOGY is profiled in the Jerusalem Post. Excerpt:

Elia and Gendler work in salvage excavation, the branch of archeology that just about every construction worker, contractor and developer - especially in Jerusalem - is familiar with. The Antiquities Authority inspects most construction sites, public and private, in the country to try to make sure that the treasures of the past are preserved.

"We try to be involved in every project that cracks the ground," said Jon Seligman, the authority's Jerusalem regional archeologist. Archeologists accompany construction projects throughout the country, but they are ubiquitous at projects in the capital, whose underground, in Seligman's words, is "essentially one big antiquities site."

(However, salvage excavation, Seligman said, has nothing to do with the two major controversies involving archeology in Jerusalem: the dig underneath City of David/Silwan, which local Palestinians say endangers their homes, and the claim by Israeli Islamic leader Ra'ed Salah that "al-Aksa is in danger" due in part to supposed excavation underneath the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. The dig underneath City of David/Silwan isn't meant to salvage antiquities uncovered by construction workers, but rather is meant directly for archeological purposes. As for digs underneath the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, there are none, said Seligman.)

In the last year or so, salvage excavations in Jerusalem have turned up such extraordinary finds as a Second Temple pool in Silwan, which was uncovered during the laying of a sewage pipe in an open field, and a Middle Bronze Age cemetery, uncovered during work on the Holy Land housing project.

Read it all.

(Via Explorator 12.27, although I think Joseph Lauer also noted it awhile ago.)

HAPPY FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY this year to the Leiden Peshitta Project.

IN THE MAIL - waiting for me when I arrived:

Accordance Bible Software Library Scholar's 8 Premier Level

I've only just gotten around to buying this, although I've had the Dead Sea Scrolls module for some time.

UPDATE (25 October): Oops! Had the wrong collection above. The right one is the Original Language Texts and Tools version, of course.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: A few items.

'Dig improving Temple Mount stability'
By ABE SELIG (Jerusalem Post)

Despite recent accusations to the contrary, the chief site engineer for the Western Wall tunnels declared on Thursday that Israeli archeological excavations were not being done under the Temple Mount, were in no way detrimental to the structural stability of the mount or its surroundings, and were actually improving such stability "tenfold."

"There's been a lot of talk about instability [based on ongoing archeological excavations in the area], and let me reassure you, we have improved the structural stability here tenfold over the last few years and have actually strengthened areas where there was danger of further collapse," the chief engineer, Ofer Cohen, said during a Government Press Office-sponsored tour of the tunnels on Thursday afternoon.

Standing in a section of the tunnels known as the "Hall of Ages" - so named because the archeological and subsequent reinforcement work there spans from the First Temple period until today - Cohen and the tour's participants were dwarfed by a series of huge steel beams that had been set up to prevent the walls from caving in.

[...]

The same story is covered by Ynetnew: "PR tour brings foreign journalists to Western Wall tunnels."

There's also this Arutz Sheva news brief:

Israel Plans Major Excavation at Western Wall

Reported: 11:00 AM - Oct/23/09

(IsraelNN.com) Israel is planning a major archaeological dig under the Western Wall (Kotel) plaza, opposite the Temple Mount, officials announced Thursday. The excavations will create an archaeological park directly underneath the area where worshippers currently stand while praying at the Kotel.

The current prayer area will remain open, supported by pillars, while a new area will be added underneath, at the level at which worshippers at the ancient Temple stood in the past.

FINALISTS for the official Hebrew names of the planets Uranus and Neptune have resonances with ancient Greek and Jewish mythology:

Some planets need Hebrew names, and you can help

By Ofri Ilani (Haaretz)

Tags: Israel News, Hebrew Language

For more than 1,000 years, when Hebrew speakers looked at the sky, they saw five planets - Hama (Mercury), Noga (Venus), Maadim (Mars), Tsedek (Jupiter) and Shabtai (Saturn). The five planets closest to earth all have ancient Hebrew names, some of them dating back to the time of the Talmud.

On the other hand, the two planets that are further away - Uranus and Neptune - were not known in ancient times, and are therefore referred to by these names in Hebrew, too. Now the Hebrew Language Academy is inviting the public to help choose Hebrew names for the solar system's farthest flung planets.

[...]

In the end, the jury chose the two names, "Oron" and "Shahak," for Uranus. The first was chosen because it sounds similar to Uranus, and means "little light" - a reference to the planet's pale light when viewed from Earth.

Since the god Uranus, in Greek mythology, represents the sky, the name "Shahak" was proposed because it comes from "shehakim," a synonym for "shamayim" (sky).

Neptune's candidates are "Rahav" and "Tarshish."

Since the foreign names were taken from Classical mythology, many of the participants suggested the planet be named after a god from Hebrew mythology. However, since Judaism is monotheistic, there are merely hints of early gods in the Bible. One is Rahav - a name that is associated with the sea, as is the Roman name Neptune.

The second proposed name, Tarshish, is the name of a stone worn by the High Priest on his breast-plate. The sages consider it a synonym for the sea, which is similar in color to Neptune.

What about Pluto? "Sheol," maybe?

A SUPREME COURT RULING in relation to the City of David excavation:

Court rules against residents near archaeological dig
Written by --
Tuesday, 20 October 2009 (Jewish Tribune)
JERUSALEM-TORONTO – The Archaeological Research currently taking place in the ‘Walls Around the Old City’ national park at the City of David in Jerusalem is in the public’s best interests, according to an Israeli Supreme Court decision regarding two recent petitions against the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

The petitions were submitted by residents living near the excavation site. According to a press release issued by Yaen Vered, the IAA representative in Canada, it is the IAA’s opinion that “these residents are being incited by other factors whose considerations are political and improbable.”

In a telephone conversation with the Jewish Tribune, Jon Seligman, Jerusalem regional archaeologist for the IAA, explained that the objections being raised in the petitions would not ordinarily be of interest to a resident.

[...'

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SCROLL that was on display at the Royal Ontario Museum exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls was, according to the Jewish Tribune, the Nash Papyrus:

ROM ‘very gratified by response’ to Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit
Written by Atara Beck
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
TORONTO – Since the June 27 opening of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, more than 160,000 visitors have gone to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) to view the display, which is “about ideas and values as much as artifacts and ideology,” said William Thorsell, the ROM’s CEO.

A week ago Saturday, the exhibit’s eight scrolls were replaced by eight others, on loan with 200 artifacts from the Israel Antiquities Authority. The exhibit, titled Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World – complemented by full interpretations, translations and background information – includes items from the ROM’s own collections as well.

Also on display until Oct. 18 was the oldest known text of the Ten Commandments. The Nash Papyrus, discovered in Egypt, is in Hebrew and dates back to 150-100 BCE. Followed by the famous Hebrew Shema Yisrael prayer, many experts believe it may have been a piece used for prayer rather than a part of Deuteronomy. I

[...]

That's news to me, and it contradicts this earlier report, which says the Scroll was discovered "at a cave near the Dead Sea in 1952" and dates it to the Herodian period. The Nash Papyrus is not a Dead Sea Scroll: it was discovered long before them and in Egypt. There seems to be some confusion on whether the fragment on display is the Nash Papyrus or a Deuteronomy fragment from Qumran, which was on display in the San Diego exhibition two years ago.

Images of the Nash Papyrus are here (Wikimedia Commons). I saw it in Cambridge in 2003. More background to the ROM exhibition here.

UPDATE (1 November): A reader reports that the scroll on display was 4QDeutⁿ.

NEW BOOK:

The Exegetical Encounter between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity
Edited by E. Grypeou & H. Spurling


BOOKS
Available
Series: Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series, 18 [Brill]
ISBN-13 (i): 978 90 04 17727 7
ISBN-10: 90 04 17727 2

Cover: Hardback
Number of pages:

List price: € 104.00 / US$ 154.00

Table of contents
Readership
About the author(s)

The ‘Exegetical Encounter between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity’ is a collection of essays examining the relationship between Jewish and Christian biblical commentators.

The contributions focus on analysis of interpretations of the book of Genesis, a text which has considerable importance in both Christian and Jewish tradition. The essays cover a wide range of Jewish and Christian literature, including primarily rabbinic and patristic sources, but also apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus and Gnostic texts.

In bringing together the studies of a variety of eminent scholars on the topic of ‘Exegetical Encounter’, the book presents the latest research on the topic and illuminates a variety of original approaches to analysis of exegetical contacts between the two sets of religious groups. The volume is significant for the light it sheds on the history of relations between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity.

CONGRATULATIONS to Dr James Bowley, who has received a teaching award:

JFP Person of the Day: Dr. James Bowley

by Ronni Mott (Jackson Free Press)
October 19, 2009

"I love my job!" proclaims Dr. James E. Bowley on his Web site. Bowley, an associate professor in the Millsaps College department of religious studies, teaches courses on the Bible and related religious traditions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. "What's not to like about spending the day with great colleagues and students thinking and conversing and researching about religious traditions, reading beautiful or even shocking texts, and investigating intriguing religious practices?" he writes.

In addition to teaching, Bowley as spent years studying fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered around 1950 in several caves surrounding the Dead Sea in Israel. He is considered one of the leading experts on the scrolls, which consist of roughly 900 documents dating from 200 BCE to 50 CE, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

The Mississippi Humanities Council has named Bowley a Humanities Teacher of the Year for 2009, an award that goes to one humanities scholar in each of Mississippi's colleges and universities every year.

[...]

As part of the award, Bowley will present a free public lecture on Wednesday, titled "Living by Fragments."

"Looking at the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls has made me think about the way we look at life by fragments today," Bowley said in a release. "The lecture is not so much about the scrolls but about giving people something interesting and enjoyable to think about."

[...]

JUST ARRIVED in San Diego. Sleep now. More blogging later.

I'M OFF TO SAN DIEGO AGAIN. I will be in transit all day today and expect to get there late in the evening. I should have full internet access and blogging should continue more or less as normally after today.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Will preservation of ancient Roman road destroy the Western Wall?
By Nir Hasson (Haaretz)
Tags: israel antiquities authority

One of the country's leading archaeologists has publicly condemned the Israel Antiquities Authority's failure to object to a plan to construct a building over a site in the Western Wall plaza where a well-preserved ancient Roman road was recently excavated.

"I would like to take advantage of this forum to raise the bothersome, and even despair-inducing, question of what will happen to these wonderful finds after the excavation is complete," Yoram Tsafrir, a former archaeology professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told his colleagues at an archaeology conference Thursday.

[...]

The [Western Wall Heritage ] [F]oundation is also planning to build a 4,800-square meter, three-story museum and educational institute that would display the Roman road on the ground floor, where visitors could see it.

But the plans to integrate the ancient road into the building do not mitigate the potential harm, Tsafrir said.

"Even the most amazing architect will not be able to avoid damaging the find," he said, adding that visitors will not be able to grasp the full extent of the road by seeing a segment in the museum.

The Antiquities Authority, which serves as an observer on the planning committees that approved the construction, said the area in question has been designated for religious purposes since Israel took control of the Western Wall in 1967.

"Yoram is my teacher, but in this case I think he's mistaken," said Uzi Dahari, the deputy director of the Antiquities Authority. "I don't see anything improper in the structure."

[...]

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS are getting more attention than they usually get these days:

Big lines as the Ten Commandments come to Toronto

Updated: Sat Oct. 17 2009 10:18:00 PM

ctvtoronto.ca

Some people who were hoping to get a close up view of the Ten Commandments at the Royal Ontario Museum were left out in the cold because of huge crowds.

The Ten Commandments were unveiled earlier this month for a two-week run as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, which opened at the museum at the end of June.

[...]

Background here and here.

A REPLICA OF THE ISAIAH SCROLL is on display in Orange County, Ca.:

Scroll replica gets home in O.C.
The copy is based on remastered photographs of Dead Sea scrolls taken in 1948.
By CLAUDIA KOERNER
The Orange County Register
Comments 0 | Recommend 0

A new Orange County museum is bringing antiquity to the modern world with a $60,000 piece of paper.

The Museum of Biblical and Sacred Writings unveiled its replica of the Great Isaiah Scroll, the longest and most complete of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Saturday night at Hangar 244 at Orange County Great Park. The museum, still working to build a permanent home for its collection and programs, will announce a temporary exhibit site for the 23-foot long scroll soon, said Ken Kremp, co-director of the museum.

The replica is based on digitally remastered photographs of the 2,000-year-old scrolls taken in 1948, only one year after their discovery in caves near the Dead Sea. A local church donated it to the museum.

"Our facsimile is actually easier and more clear than the originals," said Kremp, adding the originals now show 60 years of wear and tear not on the replica.

[...]

For last year's exhibition of the original Isaiah Scroll (IQIsa^a) see here, here, here, here, and here. And the Isaiah Scroll can be viewed in its entirety online here.

PROFESSOR GEZA VERMES received a tribute from the U.S. House of Representatives last month during his lecture tour in the States. He was also given the the keys of the cities of Monroe LA and Natchez MS and the Secretary of State of Louisiana proclaimed 29 September (the date of his lecture in Baton Rouge) "Geza Vermes Day" for the whole State.

Congratulations to Professor Vermes for these well-deserved honors, and well done to (my former home state) Louisiana, to Mississippi, and to Congress. I'm glad to see that Southern hospitality is still alive and well.

This is the text of the House tribute:

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

E2302 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—Extensions of Remarks September 17, 2009

A TRIBUTE IN RECOGNITION OF
PROFESSOR GEZA VERMES

HON. RODNEY ALEXANDER
OF LOUISIANA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Mr. ALEXANDER.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Professor Geza Vermes, an internationally renowned biblical scholar. His commitment to inspiring and educating the world has been unwavering, and he deserves our congratulations. Among his impressive list of endeavors, Vermes is perhaps best known as publisher of the first English translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His latest work, ‘‘The Story of the Scrolls,’’ is set to be published in February, 2010. Since 1957, Vermes has been teaching in England. Today, he is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Emeritus Fellow for Wolfson College, and is a lecturer at Oxford University and throughout the world. In addition, Vermes is a Fellow of the British Academy (1985) and the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (2001), holder of an Oxford higher doctorate and honorary doctorates from the universities of Edinburgh (1989), Durham (1990), Sheffield (1994) and the Central European University of Budapest (2008). On September 24, Vermes will be a guest lecturer at the University of Louisiana—Monroe. It is an honor to welcome such a distinguished and esteemed scholar to the 5th District.

Madam Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in saluting Professor Geza Vermes for his remarkable career and countless accomplishments.

LOGOS BIBLE SOFTWARE is floating the possibility of an electronic edition of Charlesworth's Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. If you're interested, visit the page and preorder it.

GOOD NEWS FROM SHEFFIELD! This just in from Louise Lawrence on the British New Testament Society list:

THANK YOU FROM SHEFFIELD

Staff and students in the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield would like to thank all of you who wrote to the Vice-Chancellor on our behalf. Hundreds of letters were sent from all over the world, and we have been truly touched by the level of support.

The Department of Biblical Studies is no longer under review and the proposal that it should be reconfigured as a Postgraduate Centre has been withdrawn. The Vice-Chancellor has asked the Faculty of Arts and Humanities to consider a short, medium and longer term plan for the Department, and a decision has now been taken that the Department will recruit undergraduates for the Biblical Studies degree in 2010. The Faculty of Arts and Humanities will work closely with colleagues to ensure that students are appropriately supported, including through the recruitment of additional staff.

We could not have achieved this without your support and the commitment and energy of our students, undergraduate and graduate. We cannot thank you enough.

I heard rumor of this last night on Facebook, but this is the first announcement I've seen. This is a good decision by the Sheffield hierarchy.

Background here.

NOTES ON THE CONSERVATION of the Dead Sea Scrolls in an article by Dylan Robertson in The Varsity (in connection with the Royal Ontario Museum exhibition):

Conservators and biblical scholars sorted and catalogued thousands of pieces of scrolls. Although some had been kept in jars and remained mostly undamaged, most were found in thumbnail-sized bits. One cave alone contained more than 10,000 fragments.

The team compared each piece by texture, colour, and handwriting, assembling the pieces like a massive jigsaw puzzle.

“You have to realize that no computers or analytical tools were used at the time,” said Rahimi.

When a match was found, the pieces would be scotch-taped together and sandwiched between two glass panels.

This process proved to be devastating to the scrolls. Although some were written on papyrus, most were parchment, an organic material highly sensitive to changes in temperature and light. The natural light from the Scrollery’s large windows, combined with the pressure of the glass plates and chemicals from the transparent tape, proved to be detrimental.

One of the most surprising things at the ROM exhibit is photographs of the scientists of the time piecing together ancient scrolls while blithely holding lit cigarettes between their fingers.

As technology improved, so began an effort to restore the scrolls.

First, the scrolls were recorded and photographed. Scientists then removed the adhesive residue from the tape using organic solvents. The pieces were cleaned of any oils and stains, and the back of the scrolls were reinforced if needed.

Conservationists then arranged the scrolls on acid-free cardboard and attached the pieces with hinges of Japanese tissue paper. These sheets were then put in protective boxes in a climate-controlled store room and checked periodically.

When being prepared for exhibition, each scroll was cross-stitched through a frame in order to hold it together.

It's easy to forget that the much-maligned original team of Scrolls scholars devoted ten years of their lives to sorting the many thousands of small fragments into their respective manuscripts - this based just on the handwriting; the content; and the color, consistency, and shape of the leather fragments.

IN THE MAIL:

Hartmut Stegemann (Editor), Eileen Schuller (Editor), Carol Newsom (Translator), Qumran Cave 1.III: 1QHodayot^a: With Incorporation of 4QHodayot^a-f and 1QHodayot^b (DJD XL; Oxford: Clarendon, 2009)

Review copy for Henoch.

ARAMAIC WATCH: The West Semitic Research project is doing important work on the Aramaic texts from the Persepolis Fortification Archive, covered in a University of Chicago press release.

Technology brings new insights to ancient language

October 14, 2009

New technologies and academic collaborations are helping scholars at the University of Chicago analyze hundreds of ancient documents in Aramaic, one of the Middle East’s oldest continuously spoken and written languages.

Members of the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California are helping the University’s Oriental Institute make very high-quality electronic images of nearly 700 Aramaic administrative documents. The Aramaic texts were incised in the surfaces of clay tablets with styluses or inked on the tablets with brushes or pens. Some tablets have both incised and inked texts.

Discovered in Iran, these tablets form one of the largest groups of ancient Aramaic records ever found. They are part of the Persepolis Fortification Archive, an immense group of administrative documents written and compiled about 500 B.C. at Persepolis, one of the capitals of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Archaeologists from the Oriental Institute discovered the archive in 1933, and the Iranian government has loaned it to the Oriental Institute since 1936 for preservation, study, analysis and publication.

[...]

Scholars from the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California helped the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project build and install an advanced electronic imaging laboratory at the Oriental Institute. Together, the two projects are making high-quality images of the Aramaic texts and the seal impressions associated with those texts. They are distributing the new images to the international research community through the Internet.

Inked and incised texts pose different problems that call for different imaging solutions. Making high-resolution scans under polarized and filtered light reveals the ink without interference from stains and glare, and sometimes shows faded characters that cannot be seen in ordinary daylight. Using another advanced imaging technique, called Polynomial Texture Mapping, researchers are able to see surface variations under variable lighting, revealing the marks of styluses and even the traces of pens in places where the ink itself has disappeared.

[...]

Impacts are far-reaching
The collaboration between the Oriental Institute at Chicago and the West Semitic Research Project at Southern California began with support from a substantial grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2007. To date, the teams have made high-quality images of almost all the monolingual Aramaic Fortification tablets. The next phase of the work, supported by a second Mellon grant that runs through 2010, will make images of the short Aramaic notes written on cuneiform tablets, seal impressions on uninscribed tablets and previously unrecorded Elamite cuneiform texts.

[...]

Read it all, and while you're at it have a look at the excellent photo of one of the texts.

(Via the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project blog.)

For background on the Persepolis archive and the political controversy in which it is mired, see here and here. More on the site of Persepolis here.

THIS LIST OF 100 BEST PROFESSORS WHO BLOG includes PaleoJudaica.

AN ESSAY ON THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, with special reference to the Westcott-Hort edition and their "Western non-interpolations," has been published by James Tabor at Bible and Interpretation:

Older is Not Always Better: Remembering Wescott and Hort

By James D. Tabor

Chair, Dept. of Religious Studies,

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

October 2009

Excerpt:

One of the more fascinating aspects of Westcott and Hort’s work was their upholding of certain readings from the so-called Western textual tradition, based on manuscripts like Codex Bezae (designated D). Generally scholars are agreed that the Western text is heavily interpolated with loose paraphrasing and lots of traditional and even apocryphal material added. However, at the end of Luke in particular, as well as a few other scattered places, the Western text is strangely shorter than the Neutral/Alexandrian text, with some surprising omissions that Wescott and Hort judged to be closer to the original.

Wescott and Hort identified nine of these passages, which they labeled by the rather cumbersome term “Western non-interpolations.” They put them as brackets as secondary additions to the original in their edition of the New Testament. I am a great fan of the original Revised Standard Version and to this day prefer it to the New Revised Standard Version (1989), which seems to be the scholarly preference today. The RSV New Testament was published in 1946–the year of my birth. It was roundly condemned as the “Devil’s Bible” and actual book burnings were reported in some circles. The passion and hatred was fueled by any number of features of this impressive new translation but I think the most widespread charge was that the scholars were trying to destroy God’s revelation by a subtle removal of key passages, including the secondary ending of Mark (16:9-20), which was printed in smaller text to mark it as an addition to the original text. In fact, the protest was so great that eventually subsequent printings of the RSV put the text size back to normal and just added a note indicating that these verses were likely secondary to the original.

I like the RSV better too.

A SURPRISE FROM THE LOD MOSAIC:

The Footprints of the Builders of the Lod Mosaic were Exposed

While removing the mosaic from the ground, Israel Antiquities Authority conservators were surprised to discover 1,700 year old foot and sandal prints beneath it

Head of the Israel Antiquities Authority Art Conservation Branch, “It’s exciting. This is the first time I have ever encountered personal evidence such as this under a mosaic”.

[...]

(Temporary IAA press release, via Joseph I. Lauer's list.)

Background on the Lod Mosaic is here.

UPDATE (29 March 2010); The permanent location of the press release is here.

THE EARLY JEWISH MONOTHEISMS PROJECT at the University of Göttingen now has a website.

The origins and development of monotheism in ancient Israel has been one of the most significant debates within the study of the Old Testament of the last thirty years. It has generated numerous books and articles and resulted in a significant shift in scholarly consensus and added considerably to our understanding of ancient Israelite religious life and thought.

Unfortunately, the discussion is frequently concluded prematurely with the exilic ‘breakthrough’ to monotheism by Deutero-Isaiah. Often scholars have worked with assumptions about the nature of monotheism which has obscured the fact that the meaning and consequences of belief in one God continue to be under negotiation into and beyond the Persian period.

The Sofja-Kovalevskaja Research Group under the leadership of Dr Nathan MacDonald seeks to examine the considerable diversity in Israelite and Jewish monotheistic thought and practice during the exilic and Persian periods, particularly through an examination of the relevant biblical texts. This website describes the academic activities of the research group and seeks to provide a number of resources for those who are interested in the subject of monotheism

And a blog.

Dr. Nathan MacDonald is a colleague at the University of St. Andrews who is currently on a five-year secondment at the University of Göttingen for this project.

MAKE YOUR OWN SHROUD OF TURIN:

Luigi Garlaschelli created a copy of the shroud by wrapping a specially woven cloth over one of his students, painting it with pigment, baking it in an oven (which he called a "shroud machine") for several hours, then washing it.

His result looks like the cloth that many Christians through the centuries have believed is the actual burial shroud of Jesus, he told CNN.

Presumably the student was removed before the baking.

Full article here.

A NEW EDITION OF A MAJOR SYRIAC LEXICON:

Michael Sokoloff, A Syriac Lexicon

Subtitle:
A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum
Publisher:
Gorgias Press & Eisenbrauns
By Michael Sokoloff
ISBN:
978-1-60724-620-6
Language:
English and Syriac
Format:
Hardback, Black, 6 x 9 in
Pages:
1738

The second edition of Carl Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum, published in 1928, is rightly considered to be the best dictionary of Syriac ever written. However, its Latin language and the ordering of words according to triliteral Semitic roots make its use difficult for most students and scholars. Moreover, the dictionary was composed in an extremely concise manner, which meant that references were given without citing any of the text. This often makes the glosses impossible even for someone who knows Latin.

In the 81 years that have passed since the book's publication, there have been great advances in both Aramaic and Semitic studies. Moreover, Syriac studies—especially the publication of the critical texts of classical authors, such as Ephrem—have greatly enhanced our knowledge of Syriac and have made the publication of a new and up-to-date dictionary imperative. However, because a new dictionary project does not yet exist and would take decades to complete, this edition of Brockelmann's work has been undertaken to make Syriac vocabulary more accessible to scholars, students, and Syriac speakers. Following are the changes introduced into the Syriac Lexicon in this revision:

The meanings are given in English, not Latin
The vocabulary is ordered alphabetically.
All text citations have been verified by consulting the original publications, and where new critical editions have appeared (e.g., those of E. Beck for the works of Ephrem), references have been changed to point to the new editions.
Text citations with partial or complete translations have now been provided.
All of the etymologies have been thoroughly revised.
Two electronic indexes (English-Syriac and Text References) have been prepared.
This dictionary is an essential tool for anyone working in Syriac studies, Semitic linguistics, and biblical studies.

The link above is to the Gorgias Press page. You can also buy it from Eisenbrauns.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: I haven't had time to follow this story closely, but this Ynetnews.com aticle should give you some idea of what it's about.

PM to Arabs: Don't believe lies on Temple Mount dig

In attempt to defuse tension in east Jerusalem, Netanyahu calls on Arab sector not to believe extremists' claims that Israel planning to conduct excavations under Muslim holy site. 'You are a part of the State of Israel,' he says. MK Erdan: Abbas not a partner

Roni Sofer
Latest Update: 10.12.09, 10:56 / Israel News

MORE ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SCROLL in the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto Star):

"The response to the intellectual part of this show has been very strong," Royal Ontario Museum director William Thorsell said Friday as he opened the final instalment of the scrolls exhibit, featuring the oldest known parchment of the Ten Commandments.

[...]

As part of the second phase of the show, the Ten Commandments scroll goes on display today. But to prevent light or humidity damage, it will only be on view until Oct. 18, said Risa Levitt Kohn, curator of the exhibit, and for a total of 80 hours. The scroll, discovered in a cave at the Dead Sea in 1952 and dating from 30 to 1 BC, is remarkably well-preserved, she said. "You can still read them, depending how good your Hebrew is," says Kohn, a Toronto native and director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University.

Background here.

THE BIBLICAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD is under threat of closure, as was abruptly announced last week. This is the only department in the UK devoted solely to biblical studies and it has been well known for many years for its innovative scholarship and its out-of-the-box thinking. This seems to have taken people completely by surprise, which does not say much for a consultation process. The University of Sheffield also seems to think that it can preserve the doctoral program in biblical studies, but it is hard to imagine that this kind of vote of no confidence won't damage its reputation and recruitment. The University seems at least to be listening to the protests, although they are also reportedly discontinuing recruitment to the undergraduate program for 2010-11. They would be well advised to work closely with the department to find strategies for increasing its financial contribution to the University rather than shutting the department down in the very optimistic hope that the same benefits can still be reaped from its postgraduate program.

There is further background at the Save Biblical Studies website and this call for action at the SBL Forum. There is also a Don't shut down Biblical Studies at Sheffield Facebook page.

UPDATE (16 October): Good news here.

THE CYRUS CYLINDER is now the center of a political row:

Museum's refusal to lend Persian artefact strains UK relations with Iran

British Museum wary of lending 2,500-year-old Cyrus cylinder because of unrest since disputed election

* Matthew Weaver
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 October 2009 13.12 BST

The Cyrus cylinder, made around 530BC. Its lettering decrees that everyone should be free to practise their own religion. Photograph: British Museum

Britain's troubled relations with Iran have become further strained by a row about an ancient Persian artefact described as the world's first charter of human rights.

The British Museum is refusing to honour an agreement to lend the Cyrus cylinder to Iran because of the political turmoil that has gripped the country since the violently disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June.

The Iranian authorities have responded by threatening to sever links with the British Museum if it delays lending the 2,500-year-old cylinder, which was ordered by the Persian king Cyrus the Great to enshrine religious toleration.

Persian scholars claim the museum is right to be wary of lending the cylinder because of attempts by antisemitic historians in Iran to attack Cyrus's reputation as the father of the Iranian nation.

[...]

Hannah Boulton, head of press and public relations at British Museum, tried to play down the row. "When lending any material you have to check that is an appropriate moment," she said.

"We are committed to lending the Cyrus cylinder to Iran. We hope to be able to honour that commitment, we can't say when that will be. At the moment we are monitoring the situation in Iran."

[...]

The British Museum's position seems entirely reasonable to me.

Background on the Cyrus Cylinder is here, here, here, and here.

HEBREW PHILOLOGY is in the news today, which doesn't happen often enough.

God is not the Creator, claims academic
The notion of God as the Creator is wrong, claims a top academic, who believes the Bible has been wrongly translated for thousands of years.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent (The Telegraph)
Published: 5:45PM BST 08 Oct 2009

Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis "in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" is not a true translation of the Hebrew.

She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world -- and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.

Prof Van Wolde, 54, who will present a thesis on the subject at Radboud University in The Netherlands where she studies, said she had re-analysed the original Hebrew text and placed it in the context of the Bible as a whole, and in the context of other creation stories from ancient Mesopotamia.

She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate".

The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth"

According to Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the Earth out of nothing.

[...]

Hmmm ... The idea that Genesis 1:1 does not describe creatio ex nihilo is hardly new. The interpretation of Qal/basic stem of bara' as "to separate spatially" may be, I'm not sure. Presumably it's based on the only other usage of the root: in the Piel/factitive stem it means to chop down (trees), appearing only (I believe) in Joshua 17:15, 18. It's likely enough that Genesis 1:1 is about God reworking the primordial goo rather than creating out of nothing.

MORE ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS coming to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the ROM:

Oldest copy of 10 Commandments on display in Toronto
Posted: October 08, 2009, 7:35 PM by Ron Nurwisah
Christianity, judaism, dead sea scrolls

By Charles Lewis, National Post

The 10 Commandments, the moral giant of Western civilization, usually depicted as giant slabs raised over the head of Moses descending from Mount Sinai -- or of Charlton Heston in the movie -- actually fit neatly onto a 2,000-year-old document a mere 18 inches across and seven inches high.

The fragile piece of parchment, the oldest known written version of the complete 10 Commandments, will be on display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto starting tomorrow. Those who study ancient biblical texts say that the tiny piece of parchment is profound.

[...]

Background here.

MORE on the third-century synagogue found recently in Turkey:

ARCHAEOLOGY: ANCIENT SYNAGOGUE UNEARTHED IN TURKEY

(ANSAmed) - ANKARA - The remains of an ancient synagogue have been revealed in an archeological dig in Turkey. The ruins, estimated to be at least 1,500 years old, were unearthed by a team of archaeologists from Akdeniz University in September and new artifacts are being discovered daily. Among those discovered on the site is a marble tablet featuring a menorah (a seven-branched candelabrum which has been a symbol of Judaism for almost 3000 years and is the emblem of Israel) flanked by a shofar (a horn, traditionally that of a ram, used for Jewish religious purposes) and a bugle on one side and a palm tree and lemon tree on the other.

Background here.

EZEKIEL BREAD: Eeeugh!

SHEMINI ATZERET begins this evening at sundown. In Israel, this is also the holiday of Simchat Torah (Simhat Torah). Outside of Israel, that holiday begins tomorrow night at sundown.

Shemini Atzeret is a biblical holiday mentioned in Numbers 29:35-38. Simchat Torah is not a biblical holiday, but it marks the beginning and ending of the annual cycle of Torah readings.

COOL: The Oxyrhynchus Hymn.



(Via Mark Goodacre's NT Blog.)

For more on the Oxyrhynchus papyri, follow the links at this post.

MORE ON THE AVDAT VANDALISM:

Court extends Avdat suspects' remands
By YAAKOV LAPPIN (Jerusalem Post)

One of the two men arrested on Monday for taking part in a vandalism attack at the Negev's Avdat archeological park is the sole guard who was hired by the Nature and Parks Authority to protect the site, police announced on Tuesday.

The two men are accused by police of causing widespread damage to the site, knocking down ancient columns and splattering paint and oil on ruins, in revenge for the demolition of several illegal Beduin structures by the state on Sunday.

[...]

Aharonovich: Ovdat Culprits Will Pay for their Crime

Reported: 17:40 PM - Oct/06/09

(IsraelNN.com)

On a tour of the vandalized Ovdat archaeological site, Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharanovich said that Israel would "deal harshly" with the vandals that caused irreparable damage to an important cultural and historical site. Two suspects from a neighboring Bedouin village are being held as suspects, one of them a security guard at the national park, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

[...]

MK Sanaa condemns 'witch hunt' on Arabs in Avdat vandalism case
By JPOST.COM STAFF

MK Taleb A'Sanaa (UAL-Ta'al) on Tuesday criticized what he called a "field trial and media lynch" against two Beduin arrested on suspicion of vandalizing the ancient Nabatean site of Avdat on Sunday night.

[...]

HaTikva: J'lem Riots, Ovdat Vandalism Related

Reported: 13:15 PM - Oct/06/09

(IsraelNN.com) The HaTikva Party stated Tuesday that there is a common denominator between the Arab rioting on the Temple Mount and the vandalism perpetrated against the archaeological site at Ovdat in the Negev.

[...]

Background here.

THE JESUS PROJECT seems to be stalled and perhaps dead. Co-chair R. Joseph Hoffmann has a rambling essay on it at Bible and Intepretation: Threnody: Rethinking the Thinking behind The Jesus Project.

Excerpt (on Jesus):

With due regard to the complexity of evidence surrounding Christian origins—a subject that has been complicated, in a good way, rather than solved by the discoveries of modern scholarship—I no longer believe it is possible to answer the “historicity question. “ No quantum of material discovered since the1940’s, in the absence of canonical material would support the existence of an historical founder. No material regarded as canonical and no church doctrine built upon it in the history of the church would cause us to deny it. Whether the New Testament runs from Christ to Jesus or Jesus to Christ is not a question we can answer.

Obviously I do not deny the existence of mythic materials entwined with a more or less historical memory of a real individual. But as I have written elsewhere, we cannot point to a stratum of ancient biography where such intertwining does not exist: it is a matter of degree, not genre, and a matter of guesswork, not reconstructive surgery. The fate of the Jesus Seminar and the potential fate of the Jesus Project had it continued—or rather, had it been advisable for it to continue—reveals more about the history of guesswork than about the “reality” of Jesus. The NT documents, especially the Gospels, are precisely the sort of literature we would expect to emerge from a time when the dividing line between the natural and “supernatural,” indeed, the divine and human, was not clearly drawn: the true miracle would have been for the NT to stand completely outside the limits of Hellenistic storytelling and the rudimentary historiographical interests of a religious community.

I think what he's saying is that our sources about Jesus are not such that they are useful for answering the questions we wish to ask about him as a historical person. If so, I quite agree. (The same problem, incidentally, holds true for the Hebrew Bible and the history of ancient Israel.) That makes the effort to recover a clear picture of who Jesus was and what he said and did very difficult and perhaps futile. But are there actually New Testament scholars (i.e., who publish in peer-review journals etc.) who are "mythers" who think the historical person Jesus never existed? Who are they? That seems to me to be an extreme and highly implausible position.

Excerpt (on good collaborations):

In general, collaboration is suited to constructive and technical rather than interpretative or highly theoretical work. Because of the close traditional alliance between biblical studies and theology, as well as the nature of the biblical literature itself, it is notoriously hard to keep theology at bay in the realm of interpretation. Constructive work is different. Although far from perfect on a number of levels the Hennecke-Schneemelcher Neutestamenliche Apokryphen in Deutscher Ubersetzung was a pioneer work in the non-parochial study of extracanonical literature when it was first published in German, and in English translation in 1963, making the eccentric one-man collection of ghost-story writer M. R. James virtually useless. The same can be said of James Charlesworth’s editorial management in the translation of Old Testament apocrypha in relation to the 1913 collection edited by R. H. Charles and James Robinson’s production of a serviceable English edition of the Nag Hammadi materials. We owe to that generation of scholarship a way of moving beyond the legendary slings and arrows that were characteristic of the Dead Sea Scrolls “collaboration,” tactics that spawned a whole genre of intrigue and tarnished biblical studies as being theologically interested, religiously mysterious, and academically second class.

I agree with most of this, although the last sentence baffles me a little. It was only when the editing of the Dead Sea Scrolls was broadened out into a large international collaboration involving 40+ people that publication began to make real progress. The original team was just too small, but it took time to come to terms with this and remedy it. It took the original team (yes, they did all the work) ten years just to piece together the heaps of many thousands of fragments into separate scrolls. (Incidentally, two other major comparable archives, the Oxyrhynchus Papyri and the Cairo Geniza are still very far indeed from being fully published, despite being discovered long before the Dead Sea Scrolls.) And I think that unfortunate genre of Dead Sea Scrolls studies would have spawned itself whatever the original team had done or not done.

As for M. R. James, his work on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha is dated but still useful. But perhaps that is less true about his work on the New Testament Apocrypha. I haven't worked with it enough to know.

Excerpt (on the Jesus Project):

Do I regard the Project as worth pursuing, reviving? I think the historicity question, as I have said many times over, is an interesting one. But it is not a question that in the absence of a “real” archeological or textual discovery of indubitable quality can be answered. It cannot be answered directly and perhaps not even through the slow accumulation of new sources. The issue is not merely that such a discovery would not persuade die-hard mythers and would not support believers in the divine Christ. It is that such evidence is really not an academic possibility. Not even the unearthing of an unknown archive of the forced and sworn confession of a skilled forger and tale-teller by the name of Rufus, appearing in front of a magistrate in the year 68 CE, would suffice. We already possess material like that, it is forged.

But the chief reason that it is time to sound the knell for all such projects is that that they cannot function collaboratively, both by virtue of what they want to achieve—that is, the over-speculative nature of the task—and because they are examples of the perils of false collaboration: an incoherent anthology of opinion derived from the private prejudices and objectives of Jesus-makers.

Jesus Project, requiescat in pace?

Background to the Jesus project is here, here, here, and here.

THE LIBRARY OF THE JEWISH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY in New York is holding an open house in which a twelfth-century Talmud manuscript and fragments from the Cairo Geniza will be on display.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

'Hall of Ages' uncovered within Western Wall tunnels
By JPOST.COM STAFF


As police forces guarded the closed-off Temple Mount Monday, a group of visitors accompanied by a Jewish-Ukrainian philanthropist toured Jerusalem's Western Wall tunnels.
A view of the "Hall of Eras"...

The affluent Ukrainian's donation to the archaeological project made possible the rehabilitation of a Second Temple-era hall which was recently unearthed in the bowels of the Old City.

[...]

THE SAMARITANS are celebrating Sukkot too:

Ancient Samaritans celebrate different Sukkot in West Bank

by Saud Abu Ramada, Hua Chunyu, Emad Drimly

NABLUS, West Bank, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- As Jewish people all around Israel are celebrating their traditional feast of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), in northern West Bank, Samaritans, a small religious sect who consider themselves descendants of the ancient northern Kingdom of Israel, are also celebrating Sukkot, but in a somehow different way.

In the village of Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim near the West Bank city of Nablus, the Samaritan priest and Director of Samaritan's Museum Husney W. Kohen and his family have built theirin-door Sukkah (Tabernacles) with fruits of the holy land. Kohen said the sukkah was built to recall the same Tabernacle build by ancient Israelites after they left Sinai Desert in Egypt 3,500 years ago.

Priest Kohen considers himself as one of the best among his people in building up the sukkah. According to Kohen and his family, the sukkah was made up of 300-400 kg of fruits, and it took them eight hours to put the sukkah together.

The Samaritan sect celebrate Sukkot every year, just as the world's Jews do. Although, the basic principles of the two sects are the same, however, each celebrates their own feast differently.

According to Kohen, during Sukkot, the Jews build their sukkah outside the home, while Samaritans build in-door ones.

"Both people build tents to commemorate the years ancient Israelites spent in Sinai before reaching Canaan, but according to Samaritan Torah, we have settled down in this land, so we should build sukkah inside the house, which will enable us to do everything in it," said Kohen.

[...]

ANTIQUITIES VANDALISM in the Negev:

Police arrest 2 in Avdat vandalism
By JPOST.COM STAFF

Police in Dimona on Monday evening arrested two Beduin men, a 47-year-old and a 51-year-old, on suspicion of vandalizing the Avdat National Park in the Negev on Sunday night.

The men denied involvement in the incident which left hundreds of archaeological artifacts at the UNESCO World Heritage Site severely damaged.

The suspects will be brought before the Beersheba Magistrate's Court on Tuesday for a remand extension hearing.

Police launched an investigation on Monday morning after church pillars at the ancient Nabatean City in the Negev were knocked down, stones and scripts were smashed, the altar was severely damaged and the walls of the compound were spray-painted.

[...]

This is tragic.

DID DAVID AND SOLOMON EXIST? asks Eric H. Cline in a long, good essay at Bible and Interpretation which surveys the current evidence. His take:

So, did David and Solomon exist? It is fair to say that they most likely did, at least if the Tel Dan Stele with its mention of a Davidic dynasty (Beit David) is any indication. However, the jury is still out as to how important they actually were, how large their empires were, and whether the biblical traditions and stories concerning the two men are essentially correct or were concocted later, either in the time of Josiah in the seventh century BCE or even after. Although David and Solomon have successfully overcome the sabotaging nihilism of the 1990s and the early part of the new millennium, the debates about them are still ongoing, with new discoveries impacting the debate as well as benefiting biblical archaeology as a whole.

That sounds about right to me.

THE STORY BEHIND the upcoming Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in Minnesota:

St. Paul Science Museum Of Minnesota / Exhibit: $4 million. Bringing Dead Sea Scrolls to Minnesota? Priceless
By Devin Henry (TwinCities.com)
dhenry@pioneerpress.com
Updated: 10/04/2009 11:39:59 AM CDT

Science Museum archaeology curator, Dr. Ed Fleming, left, and Science Museum Senior Vice President, Mike Day, at the Science Museum. Day brought the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit here; Fleming helped develop the content. (Pioneer Press: Jean Pieri)

It took nearly two millennia to find the Dead Sea Scrolls hidden in a cave in eastern Israel. It took the Science Museum of Minnesota just five years to arrange to bring them to St. Paul.

When the scrolls go on display March 12, the event will cap off a multiyear, intercontinental endeavor undertaken by the Science Museum that involved trips to Israel and around the country to see how other museums had exhibited the famous sacred Jewish texts.

"It's the biggest exhibit we've ever done in terms of storyline," Science Museum Vice President Mike Day said. "In terms of artifacts, there aren't many as precious as the Dead Sea Scrolls."

Day's interest in a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition was piqued in 2004 when he attended his first
This is a model that is currently being worked on of the dead sea scroll exhibit that will be at the Science Museum next year.
meeting as a member of the Association of Midwest Museums in Michigan: A museum there was hosting the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In 2005, the Science Museum first contacted the Israel Antiquities Authority, which catalogs and conserves the scrolls, about a possible exhibit. It would take three years of site visits and careful negotiations to get the scrolls to Minnesota.

[...]

This cloak-and-dagger tidbit is particularly interesting:

The antiquities authority continues to play a major role in the exhibit, finalizing exhibit outlines and planning another trip to Minnesota in November. To protect the scrolls, the authority is delivering each one by private courier to St. Paul, unannounced until the last minute. Once here, the scrolls will be set up in special climate controlled cases.

Even specifics about which scrolls will be coming are closely guarded. Science Museum archaeology curator Ed Fleming said the museum knows only which scrolls are "probably" coming, but he couldn't reveal them.

There's more to the exhibition's story, not quoted here, if you're interested.

The background at the end of the article is a little muddled. The Scrolls are not "older translations of books in today's Bible," they are exceptionally old manuscripts in the original Hebrew. And as for this:

For example, one common copy of the book of Jeremiah was written in Hebrew. Another version was shorter and written in Greek, another language used by the Jews of the day. The Dead Sea Scrolls feature texts of both editions in the same language, making the texts easier to compare.

It would have been clearer to note that the "same language" is Hebrew. The point is that we now know that the short edition of Jeremiah, which survives complete only in the Greek translation of the Septuagint (LXX) was translated from a Hebrew original, not abbreviated by the Greek translator. That means that, in principle, it has just as much claim to orginality as the long edition that survives in Hebrew in the Masoretic Text.

More on the exhibition here.

BOOK REVIEW (BMCR):

Gregg Gardner, Kevin L. Osterloh, Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World. Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum, 123. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Pp. viii, 475. ISBN 9783161494116. €109.00.

Reviewed by Sabrina Inowlocki-Meister, Université de Lausanne (Sabrina.Inowlocki-Meister@unil.ch)
Word count: 4195 words

This high quality volume edited by G. Gardner and K. Osterloh is the result of a colloquium entitled "Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World" and organized by the editors and P. Schäfer from January 22-24, 2006 at Princeton University. The collection of articles presented here will be of interest as much to students of Greco-Roman antiquity as to those of the Near-Eastern world.

[...]

THE NEXT FEW WEEKS are looking very busy indeed and blogging may suffer for it. Just so you know.

SOME OF THE VINDOLANDA TABLETS are going home for a while:

Roman 'postcards' to go on show

(BBC)

"Postcards" written by Roman soldiers stationed in Northumberland are to be returned to the county.

The Vindolanda Tablets, named after the camp on Hadrian's Wall, are currently held in The British Museum in London.

Using a £4m Heritage Lottery Fund grant, a gallery is to be created at Vindolanda allowing some of them to be returned on temporary loan.

The tablets are among the earliest examples of the written word discovered in Britain.

They include a birthday party invitation from a commander's wife, while another reveals that soldiers wore underpants to keep warm in the northern winter.

[...]

Background to this exhibition (I think) is here. Follow the links there for more on the Vindolanda texts and their importance.

JOB: Bibliographer needed:

Gorgias Press is publishing a large bibliography on Syriac studies edited by Sebastian Brock (based on Brock’s former bibliographical works). We are looking for a researcher to validate all bibliographical data, make sure the format is standard, and proof our text against the originals. Familiarity with bibliographical information is important. This is a paid project. We are open to pay either in cash or in Gorgias books. There are 10,000 or so bibliographical entries which will be provided for proofing in chunks of 1,500 to 2,000. Deadline for the entire project is spring 2010. (Please make sure you have the time to do this before applying.) If you are interested, please send a CV and an email cover letter to gkiraz@gorgiaspress.com.

George A. Kiraz

(From the Hugoye List.)

ARAMAIC WATCH: A new book on the Aramaic texts from Elephantine:

Aramaic and Egyptian Legal Traditions at Elephantine
An Egyptological Approach
by Alejandro F. Botta

Alejandro Botta locates the Aramaic legal formulary in the context of the Egyptian legal tradition and looks at the influence of foreign legal practices on other formulae which do not have their roots in Egypt.

* Imprint: T & T Clark International
* Series: Library of Second Temple Studies, The
* Series Volume: 64
* Pub. date: 25 Aug 2009
* ISBN: 9780567045331

256 Pages, hardcover World rights $130.00

Follow the link for more details.

(Via the Agade List.)