National Geographic’s Dead Sea Scrolls Documentary

The National Geographic Channel produced a fantastic documentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and amazingly, it is almost entirely available on You Tube. Hosted by Robert Cargill. Very informative and well produced.

HT: New Testament Interpretation

The History of the Alphabet

A blog post on I Love Typography details the captivating history of the alphabet, showing the development of Cuneiform, Hieroglyphics, Proto-Sinaitic Script, Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan, Latin, and the eventual development of more modern Uncial, Gothic, and Roman scripts. The post includes some really nice illustrations and diagrams. Informative and easy to understand.

Read the post here: The origins of abc

HT: Paleojudaica

X-Ray Gun Identifies Artifacts’ Origins

Credit: AFTAU

Not exactly on-topic for this blog, but I thought it was cool:

An Israeli archaeologist developed a hand-held x-ray scanner that automatically tells you the geographical origins of an artifact’s raw materials by analyzing its chemical composition!

Now, by adapting an off-the-shelf portable x-ray lab tool that analyzes the composition of chemicals, Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations can reveal hidden information about a tablet’s composition without damaging the precious ancient find itself. These x-rays reveal the soil and clay composition of a tablet or artefact, to help determine its precise origin.

But Prof. Goren’s process, based on x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry, can go much further. Over the years, he has collected extensive data through physical “destructive” sampling of artefacts. By comparing this data to readouts produced by the XRF device, he’s built a table of results so that he can now scan a tablet –– touching the surface of it gently with the machine ― and immediately assess its clay type and the geographical origin of its minerals.

Read Reading the zip codes of 3,500-year-old letters at Eurekalert.

Have the Remains of John the Baptist been found?

Kopf Johannes des Täufers by Alexander Andrejewitsch Iwanow

The BBC is reporting that a sarcophagus containing bone fragments from John the Baptist (who would have answered to Yochanan ben Zecharyah in his day) were discovered embedded in an altar in the ruins of an ancient monastery located on the Island of St. John, in the Black Sea.

[See BBC report with video.]

I find the difference between Jewish and Christian approaches to ancient human remains interesting. When Jewish graves are discovered, the religious community takes great care to leave them undisturbed, sometimes leading to conflicts with the secular community. Orthodox Christianity often prominently places human remains on display as “relics” in order to strengthen faith.

This would be an extraordinary find if it were found to be legitimate. Usually claims this extraordinary are deemed false or highly disputed. As this article notes:

Even after further analysis, the find could be dated, but there would be no proof that the remains did in fact belong to one of the founders of Christianity, they added.

The archaeologists explain this, as well as other announcements of sensational finds from recent years, with the fact that it is much easier to find additional finances if you discover something unique and big.

Furthermore, even if it could be determined that this was John the Baptist, it would not ultimately prove any form of Christianity to be true (any more than it would prove Mandaeism or Islam). After all, few secular scholars would dispute the claim that John the Baptist existed, although they frequently dispute that he had direct ties to Jesus or his followers.

HT: The Aramaic Blog

UPDATE: Robert Cargill has a reasonably scathing post against it.

When it comes down to it, I think the most serious argument against these remains being legitimate is the fact that John’s disciples would have gone to great lengths to ensure that he got a proper and dignified Jewish burial. They would be aghast at the thought that his remains would be disturbed.

David Bivin on the “Hypocrisy of the Pharisees”

David Bivin at Jerusalem Perspective has posted a really good article about the Pharisees. Excerpt:

Without reading the Scriptures carefully, and without a familiarity with Second Temple-period extra-biblical sources, a simple reader of the New Testament might assume that a majority of the Pharisees were hypocrites and that the Pharisees as a movement were indeed a “brood of vipers.” As a result of this common Christian assumption, the word “Pharisee” has become a synonym for “hypocrite” in the English language.

However, this widespread Christian misreading of the New Testament is a terrible mistake, which, in the course of the last two millennia, often has resulted in appalling consequences for Jews.

I recommend that you give it a read!

NOTE: If you enjoyed this, see my own article about the Pharisees that I wrote back in January 2007.

Rabbi Shmuley Pitches Shabbos to the Pope!

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach suggested to the Pope that Christians should start having Shabbos meals. CNN Reports:

A rabbi walks into St. Peter’s Square, meets the pope, and tells the Holy Father that one way to defuse the sex abuse scandal plaguing the church is for the Vatican to begin promoting a secular version of Shabbat dinner, the traditional Jewish Friday meal.

…

The brief exchange came after the pope’s regular Wednesday address at the Vatican, during which Boteach was seated on a dais along with other Vatican guests. When he met Benedict on a receiving line afterward, Boteach pitched him on his family dinner initiative, called “Turn Friday Night into Family Night.”

…

The pope appeared to be receptive to the idea, Boteach said. ” ‘We have to work together on this, we have to work together on this,’ ” Boteach quoted the pope as saying. But, Benedict did not make a firm commitment to the family dinner initiative, the rabbi said.

Rabbi Boteach has expressed views like this before. Though I haven’t read it, I think he brought this idea up in his book Judaism for Everyone.

UPDATE: Rabbi Shmuley expressed these views in an opinion piece in the Jerusalem post. He signs off by saying:

The Church must return to its previous posture as a champion of the family, and what better way than to require that all Catholic families worldwide do as Jesus’ did?

Put the worldly stuff away on Friday night and consecrate it as an evening of holy togetherness.

Historical ignorance and hostility to Jews

From an article in the Jewish Chronicle:

The separation of Jesus from his Jewishness appears of little consequence until you pause to consider how much violence has been done to Jews as a result. Pullman’s book was published on Palm Sunday, a day upon which, throughout history, Jews have been subjected to vicious attacks. Last weekend, many Christians will have sat in church listening to Gospel readings riddled with antisemitic rhetoric.

Historical ignorance and hostility to Jews have always gone hand-in-hand, the one facilitating and justifying the other. In the 1st-century face-offs between Jews and early Christians, the latter became increasingly venomous in their representation of the former, and increasingly silent about the fact that Jesus was a Jew, steeped in Jewish tradition, preaching to fellow Jews, concerned with reforming, not abandoning Judaism. Jews have lived with the consequences of that silence ever since.

Not to set Jesus in his proper cultural context is to condone an ignorance that breeds misunderstanding at best, abuse at worst. The Good Man Jesus will offend and delight Christians in equal measure. What it will not do is bring them any closer to an understanding of Jesus of Nazareth.

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