Jennifer Westerfeld (University of Louisville)

Recovering Christian Abydos: Coptic Graffiti from the Temple of Seti I

The temple of Seti I at Abydos was the site of intense epigraphic activity from the Late Period into early Islamic times. A significant corpus of late antique graffiti from the temple appears to have been produced by a community of Coptic nuns who periodically visited the site. Although such a collection of epigraphic evidence for female monastic activity is virtually unparalleled in Egypt, this material has never been fully edited or studied. This paper will discuss a newly-proposed research mission to document the Coptic graffiti at the temple of Seti I, considering in particular the circumstances under which the graffiti were produced and the ways in which the Seti temple functioned within the Christianized landscape of late antique Abydos.

Jerusalem's time tunnels

Horizontal excavations throughout the Old City of Jerusalem and Silwan are producing important archaeological discoveries, but opponents charge that they are undermining Palestinian foundations, in more ways than one

By Nir Hasson

After a few dozen meters, the tunnel suddenly drops from street level into the sewer below, which Josephus described. Once work is complete, visitors touring the City of David tunnels will be able to descend beneath the Old City walls and emerge from the ground at the Davidson Center, the archaeological park between just within the Dung Gate, to the immediate southwest of the Temple Mount. In the future, visitors may even be able to enter the Western Wall tunnels and continue all the way to the Via Dolorosa, in the heart of the Muslim Quarter. From there, it is a quick walk to the immense Zedekiah's Cave under the Muslim Quarter buildings. All told, this means that visitors could potentially spend hours on end exploring subterranean Jerusalem from end to end of the ancient city (though not including the Temple Mount), barely seeing the light of day.

The excavation of the extensive network of caves and tunnels below the Western Wall, Silwan and the Muslim Quarter is now nearing completion. The intensive activity has been under way for decades, generally without collaboration between the various agencies involved. Yet despite the lack of a unified policy, critics of the tunnels charge that the excavations have changed the geography and geopolitics of Jerusalem's Holy Basin. The tunnels have created a new Jerusalem, one illuminated by fluorescent bulbs - a Jewish-Israeli expanse devoid of Palestinians and conflicts. Whatever the case may be, it seems that from this point on, anyone who wants to talk about dividing Jerusalem will need two maps, one for above the surface and another for the subterranean.

[...]

The project's critics, mainly members of left-wing groups and independent archaeologists, view the excavations as a right-wing tool. The left argues that the tunnels are physically undermining Palestinian homes in Silwan and the Old City, while politically reinforcing Jewish settlement in the Muslim Quarter and Silwan. Others are concerned that the tunnels could be used by extremists to attack the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount.

[...]

The most important tunnel excavator in the city's history was the noted British archaeologist Charles Warren. In the 1860s, tunneling was partly necessitated by the need to conceal from the Ottoman authorities some of the work adjacent to - or beneath - the Temple Mount. At the same time, the tunneling was also motivated by a mystical romantic hunt for the treasures of the ancient Israelites' Temple.

The tunneling halted during the British Mandate and Jordanian rule, and was renewed following the Six-Day War. Then, as well, it was the pursuit of Temple treasures that underlay the excavations. The most significant figure in this pursuit was then-Western Wall Rabbi Yehuda Meir Getz. Getz, who had a spiritual, mystical approach to life in general and to the Temple Mount in particular, believed he could find the greatest treasure of them all - the Ark of the Covenant.

Archaeologist Dr. Ronny Reich is considered the father of the new tunnels. He and Shukron conducted most of the excavations. Reich was recently appointed chairman of the archaeological advisory council, the supreme professional body of the Antiquities Authority, after which he announced he was retiring from Jerusalem excavations after 40 years.

[...]

"Despite the allegations, we didn't excavate haphazardly," he says. "We decided to do without what we would have found by excavating garbage and mudslides in favor of discoveries whose added value to Jerusalem's history is immeasurably larger. We found that the entire slope is covered with 8 to 10 meters of garbage. The archaeologists who worked here in the past excavated with a bulldozer. We carried out a meticulous excavation; we sampled the dirt. No one has ever done such a scrupulous charting, even those who are criticizing us."

Reich admits that it is not ideal to have a private foundation with a pointed political ideology underwriting the excavation. It would be better if the state itself were to fund it, he says. Yet Elad has never interfered with the scientific work, says Reich.

Masada Most Popular Pay-to-Enter Tourist Site

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva)

The ancient Masada Fortress, overlooking the Dead Sea, was the most pay-to-enter popular tourist site last year, topping the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo and the Safari Park in Ramat Gan, adjacent to Tel Aviv.

The most popular tourist site, including those where entry is free, continues to be the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem.

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The combination is a readable, engaging and very edifying 241-page text of varying intensity. The parts about the quest, even something of a race, to find the geniza and bring its contents to England, and about the generations of scholars who discovered and pursued different areas of emphasis, read almost like a novel. But explanations of some of the most significant literary findings are thicker, more like an academic paper. And the authors are casual with precise but unusual words such as agon, vatic and sacredotal.

The result is a lively overview that downshifts for deeper details.

[...]

“Geniza” is the 18th book in the “Jewish Encounters” series, and it has annoying design quirks. One is numbering only right-hand pages. Another, diminishing the useful placement of illustrations on the relevant pages of text, puts the captions in the back of the book. And like its series predecessor, Deborah Lipstadt’s “The Eichmann Trial,” it is not indexed — cheapskate treatment for work of such value.

Archeological finds announced

(The Saudi)

RIYADH: The Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) has announced a series of discoveries of historical interest made over the last year at sites across the country. An annual report from the SCTA’s Antiquities and Museums Research Center said explorations by a joint Saudi-German team of archeologists at the site of a village in the Tayma region of Tabuk uncovered Aramaic engravings and earthenware pots decorated in the style of similar artifacts found in Madina and usually dated to the second millennium BC.

[...]

Ok. Clarification:

‘Authentic’ means they are what they pretend to be. In the context of
a hypothesis tat they are ‘early Christian’ that would mean form the
1st or 2nd century CE. This I doubt, though if the scientific tests
continue to point to this timeframe, at least the metal is that old.
Which does not date the images, some of which are undoubtedly much later.

What is most curious to me is the trouble taken to bind hundred of
sheets into book forms and stack them in a cave (if this story is
true, of course – the place need proper investigating). What has
really been going on?

As I have said ‘forgery’ is not quite the right term for objects that
are not making any claims to be anything. Maybe they are just trying
to look old. But I can’t see that they are more valuable in book form
than as single sheets. And why have they been hawked around museums and not gullible tourists or collectors?

Prof. Rachel Elior from the Hebrew University is an expert on Jewish mystical thought across the ages. She recently edited a thick volume titled "A Garden Eastward in Eden: Traditions of Paradise" (Magnes Press, Hebrew ), which examines the representation of paradise in religious, literary, artistic and cultural works from ancient times to the present.

What does the Jewish paradise look like?

Elior: "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Apocrypha contain marvelous descriptions of paradise with incense and perfume trees, as in the Song of Songs. It is pictured as a magnificently beautiful place where angels poeticize and do the sacred work. It was created on the third day, time does not control it, and everything that lives in it has eternal life. After the destruction of the Temple, it's already a different story. Rabbi Akiva says then, 'All Israel have a portion in the world to come, other than the wicked.'"

[...]

Paradise is an ancient Iranian conception, says Prof. Emeritus Guy Stroumsa, from the Hebrew University (Sarah Stroumsa's husband), who is currently professor of Abrahamic Studies at Oxford and recently edited a book about the concept of paradise in Judaism and Christianity in ancient times. "The word pardes [orchard] is a Hebraized version of faradis, an ancient Iranian word," he says. "In Greek it is paradiso, which means a closed place. The Greeks added the notion of 'closed garden,' and the Greek translation of the Bible used the term 'Gan Eden,' Garden of Eden."

Last Supper was not Jesus' last supper, researcher says
A British academic believes Jesus used a largely abandoned 3,000-year-old calendar that had Passover beginning Wednesday evening, and that the meal was indeed a Seder. So his actual last supper would probably have been jail fare.

By Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times

April 22, 2011
The Last Supper was probably the next-to-last supper of Jesus' life, a British researcher has concluded after using ancient calendars and astrological data to rethink the chronology of what Christians know as Holy Week.

Colin Humphreys, a scientist who previously explored the Exodus of the Old Testament, believes his studies show that Holy Thursday — the day that Jesus gathered his disciples for the famous supper, according to tradition — was actually a Wednesday.

Humphreys also believes he has resolved a longstanding disagreement over whether the Last Supper was a Jewish Passover Seder: It was, he says.

Humphreys' book, "The Mystery of the Last Supper" (Cambridge University Press), was published Thursday, a day that many Christians observed as one of the holiest of the year. That's a mistake, according to the researcher, a professor of materials science at Cambridge University who has made a sideline of biblical research.

"The Last Supper was on Wednesday, April 1, AD 33, with the crucifixion on Friday, April 3, AD 33," Humphreys writes. He believes that his research not only definitively establishes the dates, which have eluded most scholars, but that it resolves an apparent conflict within the Gospel accounts of Jesus' last days.

[...]

Humphreys' book is likely to create a stir among biblical scholars, whether or not it alters prevailing views.

"I think it's really fascinating the way he brings in astronomy and ancient calendars and other contributions from outside the field of biblical studies," said Paul Anderson, a professor of biblical studies at George Fox University, a Quaker school in Newberg, Ore. Anderson previewed Humphreys' book before publication.

However, he said, "scholars won't agree with many of his presuppositions."

But Humphreys said he has received mostly warm reviews from Bible scholars, even if they don't "agree with every word." And, as a scientist and Christian, he said he hopes his efforts will contribute to the dialogue between science and religion.

Photo-op on Mount Gerizim

How an ancient Samaritan ritual turned into a tourist free-for-all.

By Chaim Levinson (Haaretz)

In this animal-conscious era where people are willing to eat steak so long as they don't have to hear about the cow, it seems unlikely that thousands of Israelis would be willing to wait hours to see slaughtered lambs, hanging and smelling of burned oil. But this Passover ritual, practiced by Samaritans, has become a magnet. This is no mere killing of animals, but an anthropological phenomenon - a holy ritual that takes place not too far from home, a throwback to ancient days. Thousands of Israelis, and foreign tourists, are apparently prepared to push through crowds each year to photograph a white-clothed man slitting the throat of a lamb.

[...]

In 2004, the Israel Antiquities Authority brought charges against Golan for forging antiquities. But all did not go as planned. Some expert witnesses changed their evaluations, and others could say little more than they could not make a determination. The trial dragged on for years: 138 witnesses testified, with 52 of them being experts in some area of antiquity or archaeology. The trial ended and the judge has been considering his ruling ever since. Indications are that he will announce a verdict soon.

If the judge determines Golan is not guilty of forging the inscription, does that mean the inscription refers to James the head of the Jerusalem church? Not necessarily. Not only must the inscription be proven forged "beyond a reasonable doubt," but the charge is only that the forgery is modern. The inscription as a whole or the part of it saying "brother of Jesus" could have been added in antiquity, perhaps after Emperor Constantine and his successors transformed Palestine into the "Holy Land" after 324.

It is even probable that the Jacob/James mentioned in the inscription is not James the brother of Jesus. Jacob, Joseph and Yeshua (short for Joshua) were common Jewish names at the time.

Given the nature of belief, however, a verdict against forgery will strengthen many Christians' belief that the ossuary links to Jesus through his brother and thus "proves" the Bible. Indeed, many people will continue to believe in the inscription's authenticity even if it is declared a forgery.

House approves certificate program in study of Talmud

Posted on 04/20/2011

By DANIELLE CAPALBO

[Stamford] Times Staff Writer

STAMFORD -- Yeshiva Bais Binyomin, a Stamford-based college for men, has come one step closer to providing a certificate program in studies of the Talmud, a central text of the Jewish faith.

The House of Representatives voted this week to approve legislation to authorize the program at Bais Binyomin and The Talmudic Institute of Connecticut, in Bridgeport.

The state Senate must also approve the bill.

"This legislation expands opportunities in higher education for students looking to pursue a degree that focuses on Jewish heritage," said State Rep. Gerald Fox III, D--146, who introduced the bill.

[...]

... But a dissonant voice has come from Peter Thonemann, an Oxford University historian who was shown a photograph of a copper engraving, apparently found along with the lead codices; what he saw, at least, was a crude forgery, he insists. But so far, no scientific authority in a position to judge has seen more than a fraction of the objects.

Prof’s mystery texts

Published on Wednesday 20 April 2011 08:43

Tiny books could be most important find since the Dead Sea Scrolls

A PROFESSOR from Sheffield has been asked to help authenticate dozens of mysterious texts being talked about as the most important find since the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Philip Davies, The University of Sheffield’s emeritus professor of biblical studies, is one of a handful experts from across the world asked to investigate the 70 ancient texts, found in a cave in Jordan.

For some the find forms what could be one of the most important discoveries in Christian history - but others doubt their authenticity.

[...]

“It is extremely exciting and a very curious case - it’s not normal for books to be bound on both sides,” said Philip. “They may be sheets of secret signs and people may have prayed over them.”

Tests suggest the scrolls date back to at least the first century AD but one of the books has a carved image of Christ with depth - an artistic feature not associated with anything as early as the first century AD.

“That looks too modern in style for my liking,” said Philip.

“I think some of them may be authentic, and as yet I can’t work out what sort of a hoax they might be.”

[...]

“At the moment the codices are hard to reach so it’s difficult for any of us to actually see them at first hand,” said Philip.

“At the moment there is every reason to be extremely cautious.”

So just because one of the codices is a fake, does it mean they all are? Let's see. Some guy makes a major epigraphic discovery. So what does he do? He goes out and finds a forger and has the forger make up some very similar fakes and salts the real cache of codices with them. You believe that?

Hoffman and Cole’s vivid portrayal of the discovery of the ancient Cairo Geniza — the world’s richest depository of Jewish manuscript fragments, which the authors playfully describe as “a kind of holy junk heap’’ — is equal parts treasure hunt for the sacred and historical and Herculean rescue of important texts.

Creighton prof studies comics religiously

By Howard K. Marcus
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
« Metro/Region

Leonard J. Greenspoon is serious about the funny papers — especially when it comes to religion.

“Each comic strip has its own sort of language,” said Greenspoon, who holds the Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization and is professor of classical and Near Eastern languages at Creighton University. “You have to know how to read comic strips in the same way you have to know how to read everything else.”

His familiarity with ongoing stories in strips makes it easier for him to follow as many as he does. Each day he reads more than 100.

For him, looking at comic strips is something of a ritual.

“I need to do it,” said Greenspoon, who is also a theology professor at Creighton. “I don't let a day pass. If I do let a day pass — if I'm not feeling well or something — then I have to go back. I don't want to miss anything.”

He's hardly a casual reader.

“I read the comic strips more carefully than the average reader. But that's what my professional life is, really. I analyze manuscripts. Greek manuscripts, mainly, biblical manuscripts and Hebrew manuscripts,” he said. “I'm used to analyzing life down to the smallest elements, which is not a bad thing to do, because I have to imagine that cartoonists and those responsible for comic strips think through what they do.”

[...]