Category Archives: News

Ancient Hebrew Alphabetic Inscription Discovered

Posted on by

Another significant archaeological discovery in Israel was just announced. A large limestone boulder with an “abecedary” (an inscription with the letters of the alphabet written from beginning to end) was discovered on the last day of the 2005 season of excavations at Tel Zeitah, Israel, which is about 30 miles south of Tel Aviv.

What is also exciting about this discovery is that the stone was embedded in a wall in the 10th century BCE strata of the site. This dating — if confirmed — makes the inscription the oldest Hebrew alphabetic inscription to date. P. Kyle McCarter is pictured (see above) with the inscription in the background during the news conference in Pittsburgh yesterday (photo: AP).

For more information see the Zeitah Excavations website, the New York Times, Associated Press, as well as Michael Homan’s blog (Michael was participating in the dig this last summer). Joe Cathy also has a couple posts about the discovery (here and here), as does Jim West (here and here). Finally, Chris Heard responds to Joe’s blog here.

In addition, if you are interested in reading a bit about the origin of the alphabet, you can check out my blog entry here.

All in all, this last summer was a good season for archaeology in Israel. In addition to this inscription, a large public structure was discovered by Eilat Mazar in Jerusalem (see here). The same dig also unearthed a seal mentioning a “Yehukal son of Shelemyahu son of Shobi” (see here). Finally, some fragments of Leviticus came to light earlier in the summer (see here) — with continued controversy (see here).

Investigation Surrounding the Purchase of Leviticus Scroll

Posted on by

The scroll fragments of the book of Leviticus that came to light in July 2005 (see my coverage and analysis of the scroll fragments here), are in the news again, as noted by Jim West at Biblical Theology blog here and here.

On the biblical studies email list Yitzhak Sapir directed our attention to three news articles about a police investigation on the illegal sale of an ancient scroll. The news story in the Jerusalem Post is short and sweet:

Jerusalem police were investigating suspicions that an academic man and his aide were involved in the illegal sale of an ancient scroll worth around $1 million.

According to the allegations, the two purchased the scroll from Bedouins for $3,000.

They were accused of illegal dealing in antiquities, failure to report the find to the proper authorities, and illegal excavations.

Joseph I. Lauer followed up on Sapir’s post with a link to a fuller story in Ha’aretz in Hebrew that identifies Hanan Eshel as the academic involved in the investigation concerning the Leviticus scroll fragment.

UPDATE: Yitzhak Sapir on the ANE list has provided a brief English summary of another fuller article in Hebrew on ynet:

  • The three bedouins, were also interrogated and are under arrest by the IDF/Police. One admitted to selling the scroll to Eshel.
  • Eshel claimed in the interrogation that: he feared the IAA “will steal his credit,” and that the assessment and study of the scroll will take time. He claimed he was not aware of the law requiring him to notify the IAA of the artifact’s existence within two weeks. It’s this claim Noqed was replying to, although the claim itself is not reported in the Haaretz/Walla article.
  • Some other prominent people at Bar Ilan University were interrogated.
  • The man whom Eshel claimed provided the money was also interrogated.
  • Bar Ilan stands behind Eshel in a released statement that states that Eshel goals are prevention of antiquities theft and even destruction.

UPDATE 2: A longer English version of the article has been published on Haaretz.com.
Hebrew language versions of the shorter article are available on ynet and here.

Spong’s Errors in the Name of God

Posted on by

The Globe and Mail has published a review of John Shelby Spong’s latest book, The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). The review, entitled “Errors in the Name of God,” is quite positive about the book (to say the least), though it should be noted that the review was by a “lapsed Catholic neo-Taoist sensualist” (huh?). I have note read the book, but from what I can glean from the review it looks like it will be just as controversial — and as misinformed — as Spong’s other works. Here are some excerpts from the review:

Error in the name of God

By ANTONELLA GAMBOTTO

If John Shelby Spong knows fear, he never shows it. Foaming evangelical detractors depict him as a sly Mephistophelean backslider, alleging bad faith and wicked tricks — omission, distortion — but he holds firm. Spong, the bestselling author of Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and an intellectually ferocious retired Episcopal bishop (of Newark, N.J.), celebrates expansion and diversity within the church, rejecting prejudice, murder and punitive stupidity in the name of God.

His latest book is simply spectacular. A scholarly expose of the Bible’s fatal ideological and factual errors, The Sins of Scripture not only challenges injustices excused by fundamentalists as the “mysterious” ways of God, but presents the blueprint for a far more accurate and honest Christianity.

“I believe now that these insights would have come to me even sooner had I not been what the Bible seems to regard as a privileged person,” he writes. “I do not refer to my social or economic status, which was modest to say the least, but to the fact that I was white, male, heterosexual and Christian. The Bible affirmed, or so I was taught, the value in each of these privileged designations.”

The philosophically primitive rigidity of dead white males aside, how is it possible for the Bible to be considered the “Word of God” when it consists of 66 books (more if you count the Apocrypha) written over the course of more than 1,000 years? Spong asks: “Can such a claim stand even the barest scrutiny?” At a loss as to how God can be saddled with the motivations of authors warped by the “tribal and sexist prejudices of that ancient time,” he is left no choice but to enter the ring swinging.

…

The errors in translation and interpretation revealed by Spong call for a complete restructuring of the Christian faith. Matthew, whom he accuses of manipulation by tearing stories from their Hebrew context, “bases his virgin birth story, for example, on Isaiah 7:14. Yet he translates that text to read that a virgin shall conceive (see Matt. 1:23) when the text in Isaiah not only does not use the word ‘virgin’ but says that a young woman is with child.” This pregnant “virgin” promptly became “the ideal woman against which all women were to be measured. . . . Since it is quite impossible in the normal course of events for a woman to be both a virgin and a mother, every other woman was immediately, by definition, assumed to be less than the ideal.”

With a trial lawyer’s acuity, Spong follows the evolution of the “virgin” myth throughout history. Mary first became a virgin mother in the ninth decade, when Matthew, and then Luke, promoted the grotesquely tabloid concept. Entering the creeds in the third and fourth centuries, it became the “chief bulwark in the battles that engaged the church in later centuries as that body sought to define the divinity of Jesus.”

In short, the Western Catholic tradition could not glorify a woman unless she had been both desexed and dehumanized — that is, debased.

Spong’s primary — and most devastating — charge is that Christian evangelists have made an idol of the Bible itself, worshipping the Word of God above God. “Religion has so often been the source of the cruellest evil,” he elaborates. “Its darkest and most brutal side becomes visible at the moment when the adherents of any religious system identify their understanding of God with God.” It’s an infinitely elegant distinction, and one with serious repercussions. “[W]hen one is ‘born again,’ one is newly a child. It represents a second return to a state of chronic dependency. Perhaps what we specifically need is not to be ‘born again,’ but to grow up and become mature adults.”

The Sins of Scripture should not only be read by all those who consider themselves Christians, but also by those whose lives have been deformed or lessened by the word of anti-Semites, homophobes and misogynists masquerading as mouthpieces of God.

From this review it appears that Spong is primarily taking potshots at texts and issues that are rather complex (e.g., the use of the LXX instead of the MT in Matthew’s virgin birth narrative). Since I haven’t read it, I should refrain from further comment. At the very least it would be good to see some serious reviews of this book, rather than the popular and very un-critical review that the Globe and Mail published.

Filed in:

Palindromes, Ecclesiastes, and Weird Al

Posted on by

As it turned out, Loren Rosson III at the busybody had posted some of his thoughts on Palindromes (the movie, not the trope) here and most recently here. In his original post Loren linked to Ebert’s collection of excerpts from other reviews. I found these to be quite reassuring — evidently I was not alone in my reactions to the film! (See my original post here).

I did a bit more searching and found that Peter Chattaway had also blogged on the movie here and here. Peter thought that the film was a bit tilted towards the pro-choice side of things, though I’m not so sure. I found this series of dialogue quite damming to the pro-choice side:

  • Mom: But really, be reasonable, the baby has got to go. What happens if it turns out deformed, if it’s missing a leg, or an arm, or a nose, or an eye? Or if it is brain-damaged or mentally retarded. Children of very young mothers often turn out that way… and then what? And ten you’re stuck, your life is ruined forever, you end up on food stamps alone.
  • Aviva: But it’s my baby!
  • Mom: But it’s not a baby, not yet, really, it’s just… it’s like it’s just a tumour.
  • Aviva: I’m keeping it.
  • Mom: No you’re not!
  • Aviva: Yes I am.
  • Mom: You have the baby you find another home!
  • Aviva: You can’t take my baby away from me!
  • Mom: It’s too late, I’ve already made the appointment.

This next conversation — really more of a monologue since Aviva doesn’t say anything but nonchalantly eats her sandwich– is even more chilling, IMHO:

  • Mom: When you were just a little girl, around three or four, I was pregnant. And at first I was all happy and excited. A new friend for you I thought, a little baby brother. I used to think I’d call him “Henry” after my grandfather Heinric who never cared about money. But then our father and I had a long talk and I begun to realize that there were other things to think about. Your father was out of work, my paintings weren’t selling (I was blocked), I started smoking again, there were bills, a mortgage, a lawsuit. If I’d had another child I wouldn’t have been able to give you all that I had. The time we spend together, just you and me, and the little things your father and I pick up for you. The N’Sync tickets, Gap account,… Ben and Jerry’s. We couldn’t have afforded it. It would have been too much of a strain and we all would have been miserable.

In the context of the movie you realize Aviva doesn’t have any choice (it’s her parent’s choice), and it’s the Christian family who does accept into their family the “deformed” and “brain damaged.” Of course, like I said, no one comes out unscathed. The Christian family is also played so over the top that it’s ridiculous (and the father is complicit in the killing of an abortionist).

Loren also suggests a connection with the book of Ecclesiastes. I think it would be quite interesting to flesh out this connection — especially considering that Norbert Lohfink argues that Qohelet borrowed heavily from Greek thought and structured his book as a palindrome! (See his Qoheleth: A Continental Commentary [Fortress, 2003; Amazon.ca or Amazon.com]). The deterministic view expressed in the film fits well with Ecclesiastes, as does the frequent juxtaposition of opposing viewpoints with no easy resolution. Finally, Qohelet’s overarching assessment that everything is hebel — absurd, meaningless — conforms well with the film.

Take, for instance, this piece dialogue near the end of the film between Aviva and her cousin Mark Wiener, who has been accused (unjustly?) of child molestation:

  • Mark: People always end up the way they started out. No one ever changes. They think they do, but they don’t…. There’s no freewill. I mean I have no choice but to choose as I choose, to do as I do, to live as I live. Ultimately we’re all just robots programmed arbitrarily by nature’s genetic code.
  • Aviva: Isn’t there any hope?
  • Mark: For what? We hope or despair because of how we’ve been programmed. Genes and randomness — that’s all there is and none of it matters…
  • Aviva: What if you’re wrong? What if there’s a God?
  • Mark: Then that makes me feel better.

It sounds like Mark has been reading Ecclesiastes! Of course one of the keys to interpreting Ecclesiastes is to read right up until the end:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil (Eccl 12:13-14).

For those interested in exploring the connection between Ecclesiastes and popular film, I encourage you to pick up Robert K. Johnston’s Useless Beauty: Ecclesiastes through the Lens of Contemporary Film (Baker, 2004; Buy from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com).

At any rate, as you can probably tell, this movie gives you much to think about, and for that reason alone it is worth watching — but be warned, even though this movie has no profanity or nudity, it is nonetheless not for the faint of heart or easily offended.

A little known palindrome fact: the comedy singer “Weird Al” Yankovic produced a song entirely of rhyming palindromes on his 2003 album Poodle Hat, called “Bob.”