... Fulco claims that several film students take archaeology classes to prepare for working on films set in ancient time periods. Fulco himself has consulted on several films and TV series such as “Passion of the Christ” and “True Blood.” He is currently working with Vin Diesel on a film about Hannibal the Conqueror.

“I’ve also provided a tattoo for Angelina Jolie,” he added nonchalantly, explaining that she wanted him to translate the words “God is love” into Aramaic.

The Gospel of Mark: Priority Does not Mean Primacy

By James D. Tabor
Department of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
November 2009

For Christian believers, general readers, and scholars alike the most dramatic and riveting section of our N.T. Gospels is the “Passion Narrative,” found in three versions in the Synoptics (Mark, Matthew, Luke), as well as in the gospel of John. Whether John’s Gospel offers an independent version of the narrative is a sharply disputed point among the scholars. When Dom Crossan recently addressed my students in Jerusalem he began his talk on “The Last Days of Jesus” with that very question, one he considers to be absolutely fundamental to any historical reconstruction. Is John’s account simply an edited expansion of the core account we have in Mark, our earliest gospel, or is it an independent production? Crossan is convinced that John is simply recasting Mark, just as Matthew and Luke do, taking out things here and there, expanding in other places, with each contributing their own theological perspectives and emphases relevant to their times and to the tradition and communities from which they come.


I have struggled with this question for years and my conclusion is different from that of Crossan. Although the final editors of John are likely aware of Mark, the core narrative of John offers an independent account based on materials and testimony the authors (the “we” of John 21:24) attribute to the mysterious unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved,” who only shows up at the “last supper” and appears again at the crucifixion, the empty tomb, and up on the Sea of Galilee when the disciples had returned to their fishing (John 21:24; 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7 & 20). To what degree this source, independent of Mark, runs through earlier sections of John, is a larger and more complex question that I can not address here, though in general my sense is that the narrative and chronological materials are more likely from this source, and perhaps the “Signs Source” as well, while the extended discourses of Jesus, with the distinct theology, style, and tone we see also reflected in the letters of 1, 2, and 3rd John, are overlaid on this more primitive source. In terms of the Last Days of Jesus that would mean that the “red letter” material that runs so extensively through John 13-17 has little if any connection to the historical Jesus.

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A peek into Temple Mount excavations

Western Wall Heritage Foundation holds tour of tunnels in attempt to ward off Muslim claims that al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger of collapsing. Waqf refuses offer for similar tour for Muslims, saying 'settlers won't give us approval to enter a Muslim-owned area'

Ronen Medzini
Published: 11.08.09, 18:56 / Israel News

Traces of Mithras in Malta
by Noel Grima (Malta Independent)

The Mithraic Mysteries was a mystery religion that became popular among the military in the Roman Empire, from the 1st to 4th centuries AD. Information on the cult is based mainly on interpretations of monuments, which depict Mithras as born from a rock and sacrificing a bull. His worshippers had a complex system of seven grades of initiation, with ritual meals and they met in underground temples. Little else is known for certain.

Last week, the Archaeological Society of Malta organised a lecture by Dr Claudia Sagona, Honorary Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne (Australia), entitled Looking for Mithra in Malta. Dr Sagona is the author of The Archaeology of Punic Malta and her latest publication is Looking for Mithra in Malta. ...

730-year-old Torah scroll on auction this month
By TALI MINSBERG (Jerusalem Post)

The oldest complete Spanish Torah scroll will be up for sale at Sotheby's Judaica auction on November 24.

The scroll, the only Spanish Torah to include the kabbalistic traditions of curved letters, has an estimated worth of $300,000-$500,000.

Yitzchok Reisman, a world-renowned sofer (scribe), discovered the 730-year-old scroll about 10 years ago, and was able to date it and identify its origin.

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UK scholars linked to 'stolen' bowls of Babylon

Suppressed report reveals archaeological treasures were dug up after Gulf war

* Vanessa Thorpe and James Doeser
* The Observer, Sunday 8 November 2009
* Article history

A secret report on the chequered history of priceless Aramaic bowls loaned to a leading university has exposed an apparent attempt to cover up UK academic connections to a potentially deadly trade in stolen Iraqi antiquities.

The findings of the study, which was suppressed by a controversial legal agreement in 2007, have at last solved a long-standing archaeological mystery.

Commissioned by University College London in 2005, it confirms the expert view that the bowls were stolen from the historical site of Babylon and should be returned to Iraq or handed over to the police. The report was completed in 2006 but suppressed a year later in a legal settlement made between the university and the putative owner of the bowls, the multimillionaire Norwegian collector, Martin Schøyen.

But a copy of its findings recently placed in the House of Lords library reveals that specialists in archaeology are convinced that the incantation bowls, dating from the fifth to eighth centuries, must have come from Iraq illegally. They believe the rare finds were probably dug up from the remains of Babylon some time after the 1991 Gulf war and were not found in Jordan, as believed by Schøyen. The UCL report concludes that "the bowls are subject to the Iraq United Nations sanctions order 2003 as cultural objects illicitly removed from Iraq after 6 August 1990 and that UCL has therefore a duty to deliver them to a constable".

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2,000-Year-Old Scrolls, Internet-Era Crime

By JIM DWYER
Published: November 6, 2009

Early one morning in March, the law banged on the door of an apartment on Thompson Street in Greenwich Village. Investigators had a warrant to arrest Raphael Haim Golb and seize his computer. He was caught red-handed.

Mr. Golb is, or was, a guerrilla fighter in a cyberbrawl over the Dead Sea Scrolls, a war about the origins of 2,000-year-old documents that has consumed the energy of academics around the globe.

He was being arrested for fighting dirty.

Mr. Golb is 49 years old and had 50 e-mail aliases. He used pseudonyms to post on blogs. Under the name of a professor he was trying to undermine, prosecutors charged, Mr. Golb wrote a quasi confession to plagiarism and circulated it among students and officials at New York University.

[...]

In court papers filed last week, Mr. Golb’s lawyers argued that prosecutors were trying to criminalize the commonplace. Both sides in the Dead Sea Scrolls debate, they said, use “sock puppets” — fake identities — on the Internet to make it seem as if scores of people are arguing a point.

“These bloggers marshaled their legion of sock puppets to engage in intellectual combat with the sock puppets allegedly created by Raphael Golb and others,” the lawyers wrote.

[...]

But what about the injury Mr. Golb apparently tried to inflict on Lawrence H. Schiffman, the chairman of Judaic studies at N.Y.U.? Someone wrote from larry.schiffman@gmail.com to Professor Schiffman’s graduate students and dean, alerting them to an article that suggested he had committed plagiarism. Perhaps two things go without saying: The article was actually written under one of Raphael Golb’s pseudonyms, and Professor Schiffman has been critical of the theories of Golb père.

The defense claims that the e-mail messages were transparent parodies, and that in any event, injury to a reputation is a civil matter, not a criminal violation.

“He writes letters in my names in which I am admitting to horrendous offenses,” Professor Schiffman said Friday. “This is the rough-and-tumble of the Internet?”

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Latest ancient finds to go display in J'lem

By DANIELLE ROTHMAN (Jerusalem Post)

The Israel Antiquities Authority is presenting a new exhibition which includes ancient coins uncovered at the Temple Mount and a 2,000-year-old sarcophagus lid. The new display will open on November 11 at the Davidson Center and in the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden, just south of the Temple Mount. Many of the artifacts have not previously been shown to the public.

The exhibition integrates the most recent research done about ancient Jerusalem. It includes three sections: one features the sarcophagus [funeral receptacle] lid inscribed with the words "Ben HaCohen HaGadol" - "Son of the High Priest."

Another display presents Jerusalem as a metropolis during the late Second Temple Period, while a third exhibits artifacts from the time of the destruction of the Second Temple.

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2 Beduins charged in Uvdat archeological vandalism rampage
By YAAKOV LAPPIN (Jerusalem Post)

Two Beduin men, both 22 were indicted in Beersheba Magistrate's Court on Wednesday for going on a vandalism rampage at the UNESCO-recognized Uvdat archeological park last month.

According to police, Hassan and Ahmad Al-Marrak, were motivated by a desire to avenge the state's demolition of illegal structures that belonged to the suspects' clan, police added.

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