The news of the discovery of a large public building in Jerusalem has hit the biblio-bloggers and email discussion lists: Jim Davila at PaleoJudaica leads the pack with a great discussion of the news article here. Ken Ristau at Anduril.ca has a brief, but insightful note here, as does Chris Heard at Higgaion. And Jim West at Biblical Theology has an updated post here.

The Canadian Jewish News posted a story about the “The New Hebrews: A Century of Art in Israel” exhibition running until 5 September 2005 at the Martin-Gropius Bau museum in Berlin. One of the main features of the exhibition is the Temple Scroll (11QT). This is the first time it has been displayed publically since its discovery in 1956.

For more information on this scroll, see my Temple Scroll Introduction.

OK, yesterday’s public blog confession of the messy state of my desk, I decided to clean up my home office today! Sorry, Jim, this is as good as it gets:

And here are some of my minions:

Hmmm… only Grandpa Simpson appears scared of Gollum. (I never did find that JetsGO folder!)

The Jerusalem Post reports on a paper given by Prof. Cia Sautter at the UK’s first Harry Potter conference, “Accio.” The paper, entitled “Blessed are you for Creating Harry: Jewish Affinity with Rowling’s tale,” argues that Harry Potter is a Kabbalist – or at the very least, he espouses some values and characteristics that make up that Jewish tradition.

Convinced? Judy Silkoff concludes her news story: “Unless J.K. Rowling decides to elaborate by entitling her next book Harry Potter and the Kiddush Goblet or Harry Potter and the Order of the Seder, we may never really know.”

The Jewish Press has posted a story on the race for the lost Ark of the Covenant (Not Noah’s Ark — for the search for that Ark see here).

Evidently, both “famous archaeologist” “Dr.” Vendyl Jones and Lt. Barry S. Roffman of the U.S. Coast Guard are searching for the Ark using such proven techniques as the Bible Code (for Roffman) and the Talmud and “a mysterious kabbalist who has now given him his blessing to reveal the Ark by Tisha B’Av (August 14th)” (for Jones).

I’m not familiar with the Jewish Press, so I’m not entirely sure if the following is meant to be tongue-in-cheek:

So now, the world is waiting with bated breath. Will it be Jones or Roffman who finds the Ark of the Covenant? Will it be found in Israel or in Egypt? Will it be discovered by means of ground-penetrating radar?

What will be the religious, political and scientific implications and ramifications if it is found? And what else can we learn of the future from the words encrypted in the Bible codes or the secrets of the Talmud? We may not have long to wait.

At least for Jones there is a deadline! Ten days and counting…

I am looking for a file. Lately, I have spent too much time looking for files and articles (books are easier to locate because they stand out more). I have a great filing system; the problem is that I don’t use it! I don’t put things back in there proper places and then they get buried under the piles. Sometimes I feel like I should divide my home office into balks and start an archaeological dig! I guess I come by it honestly. I remember buying my Dad a plaque for his office that read, “A Clean Desk is the Sign of a Sick Mind.” When my Dad passed away, I looked everywhere for the plaque as I figured I could use it now!

While I have you here, I may as well give you a tour of my desk. You’ll notice my Dell Laptop in the middle and my Mac monitor to the right (Accordance is up and running on the Mac). My 160 Gig back-up drive and DVD burner are above my laptop. The tel to the left of my laptop has my BHS, New Oxford Annotated Bible (it’s the Bible we require our students to use in Religion & Theology courses at Taylor), as wel as some other books. The tel in front and to the right of the laptop consists of sundry files and articles (You’ll notice the latest Harry Potter by my Telephone). Then to the right of my Mac there is another pile of folders and books. On my desk hutch if you could look closely you’d notice various Simpsons/Lord of the Rings/Coke paraphernalia as well as numerous homemade Father’s Day gifts. And of course, the ubiquitous “Double Gulp” cups filled with my addiction of choice, Diet Coke (in various states of decay — did you know Diet Coke molds? I thought it was indestructible!)

Overseeing the entire mess is my “Buddy Christ” figurine — he is perpetually giving me the “thumbs up” — OK, I’ll persevere!

If anyone knows where my “JetsGo” file folder is, please let me know…

I can’t believe it… Satan must certainly be wearing a toque and parka! After some twenty years Apple Computer released a mouse that has more than one button! Unbelievable!! Dubbed the Mighty Mouse, this mouse has side buttons as well as a scroll ball (ball… not wheel!).

First Apple announces Macs are going to be made with Intel inside and now this!

Mark my words… the end is nigh!

Here are some more Bible Software news items, this time in connection with Logos Bible Software:

• Logos has launched a Logos Bible Software Blog. According to the first post, the blog will but “provide a single site where you could find all of our [=Logos employees who already have blogs] posts related to Logos Bible Software.” Welcome to the blogosphere!
• Logos is taking pre-orders for Old Testament Greek Pseudepigrapha with Morphology, a new resource for Logos Bible Software. Ken Penner from the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha project is working on the tagging and lemmatization. All the details about the project and screenshots are here.

For information on other software packages, see my Software for Biblical Studies pages.

OakTree Software has just released Accordance Bible Software version 6.7. The free update fixes some font smoothing problems and includes a nifty little Accordance Widget for Macintosh OS 10.4 users. This widget is installed into your dashboard and allows you to retrieve verses instantly (OK, perhaps not instantly, but pretty quick!) from any text you may have installed in Accordance and paste them into a document you are working on. It’s like having your own Dead Sea Scroll on your desktop! Nifty-keen-o-wow is all I can say.

Here are some screen shots. I have it set to retrieve from the tagged Hebrew Bible text (BHS-W4):

This is the widget as it appears “closed”

Here is the widget with some text ready to be copied into a word file

OK, now that I have your attention, VisionTV — the primary religious cable television channel in Canada — announced the world primiere of a multi-part documentary series on archaeology and the Bible starting in September 2005. From the press release it looks like it will be interesting to say the least! Sorry… no pictures available!

Here is the press release:

Simcha Jacobovici is The Naked Archaeologist.

In this world premiere documentary series for VisionTV, the two-time Emmy Award winning producer and director shows viewers Biblical archaeology like they’ve never seen it before.

He dances. He raps. He clambers under barbed wire and over fences in search of the most extraordinary archaeological finds from the ancient Middle East, and crosses swords with some of the world’s foremost archaeologists, historians and scientists.

Shot on location in Israel, Egypt and Greece, The Naked Archaeologist airs on Mondays, starting Sept. 5 at 9:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. ET , and repeats on Tuesdays, starting Sept. 6, at 10:30 p.m. ET .

Fast, funny and irreverent (think the Ali G. meets Indiana Jones), Jacobovici asks the questions we all want to know the answers to: Why is it so bad to be called a Philistine? Was Jezebel really that sexy? What do you do when you find a 2,000-year-old palace under your house? And where do you stop for a good falafel when you’re on your way to find the real Mount Sinai?

“My goal,” says Jacobovici, “is to demystify the Bible in general, and archaeology in particular, to brush away the cobwebs and burst academic bubbles.”

Drawing on years of personal research and his experience in bringing history to life on the screen, Jacobovici fearlessly probes some of the most controversial new theories in Biblical archaeology: that an African army rescued Jerusalem in the 8th Century B.C.; that the invention of the alphabet contributed to the Biblical Exodus; and that recently discovered Bronze Age ceramic penises may explain why Delilah fell for Samson.

Says Alberta Nokes, VisionTV’s Director of Independent Production and the Executive Producer of The Naked Archaeologist : “This series is a completely fresh way of looking at archaeology and history. Simcha takes the viewer to places most of us will never have access to and reveals what archaeology can – and cannot – tell us about history and the Bible. And he has great fun doing it.

“The show also helps us to see that the ancient past is still with us. Only The Naked Archaeologist could relate a history of the alphabet that brings together ancient inscriptions, the Biblical story of Exodus and the ‘tags’ of modern-day graffiti artists.”